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1901 President McKinley assassinated
On September 6, 1901, William McKinley, the 25th President of the United States, was shot on the grounds of the Pan-American Exposition at the Temple of Music in Buffalo, New York. He was shaking hands with the public when Leon Czolgosz, an anarchist, shot him twice in the abdomen. McKinley died eight days later on September 14 of gangrene caused by the gunshot wounds. He was the third American president to have been assassinated, following Abraham Lincoln in 1865 and James A. Garfield in 1881. -
1903 US granted control of corridor across Panama
On November 6, 1903, Philippe Bunau-Varilla, as Panama's ambassador to the United States, signed the Hay–Bunau-Varilla Treaty, granting rights to the United States to build and indefinitely administer the Panama Canal Zone and its defenses. -
1906 Great San Francisco earthquake killed 3000 people
On April 18, 1906, an earthquake and subsequent fires devastated San Francisco, California, leaving more than 3,000 people dead and destroying more than 28,000 buildings -
1912 Titanic struck iceberg and sunk, 1503 died
On its maiden voyage, however, it hit an iceberg in the Atlantic and sunk, killing 1,503 people. The sinking of the RMS Titanic occurred on the night of 14 April through to the morning of 15 April 1912 -
1916 Haiti became US protectorate
U.S. Invasion and Occupation of Haiti, 1915–34. Following the assassination of the Haitian President in July of 1915, President Woodrow Wilson sent the United States Marines into Haiti to restore order and maintain political and economic stability in the Caribbean. This occupation continued until 1934. -
1929 Great Depression began
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression that took place mostly during the 1930s, beginning in the United States. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations; in most countries it started in 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s. -
1939 World War II, Hitler attacked Poland
On September 1, 1939, the German army under Adolf Hitler launched an invasion of Poland that triggered the start of World War II (though by 1939 Japan and China were already at war). The battle for Poland only lasted about a month before a Nazi victory. -
1945 Enola Gay dropped atomic bomb on Hiroshima
The Enola Gay is a Boeing B-29 Superfortress bomber, named after Enola Gay Tibbets, the mother of the pilot, Colonel Paul Tibbets. On 6 August 1945, during the final stages of World War II, it became the first aircraft to drop an atomic bomb. The bomb was targeted at the city of Hiroshima, Japan, and caused the near-complete destruction of the city. Enola Gay participated in the second atomic attack as the weather reconnaissance aircraft for the primary target of Kokura. -
1963 U.S. President John F. Kennedy assassinated
John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy, often referred to by initials JFK, was an American politician who served as the 35th president of the United States from January 1961 until his assassination in November 1963. -
1969 First moon landing
Apollo 11 was the spaceflight that first landed humans on the Moon. Commander Neil Armstrong and lunar module pilot Buzz Aldrin formed the American crew that landed the Apollo Lunar Module Eagle on July 20, 1969, at 20:17 UTC. -
1986 "Challenger" exploded, 7 astronauts killed
On Jan. 28, 1986, the space shuttle Challenger exploded just 73 seconds after blasting off from Florida's Kennedy Space Center, killing all seven astronauts on board — including New Hampshire educator Christa McAuliffe, a civilian who had been selected to fly via NASA's "Teacher in Space" program. -
1993 Bomb exploded in World Trade Center
The 1993 World Trade Center bombing was a terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, carried out on February 26, 1993, when a truck bomb detonated below the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City. -
1994 NAFTA enacted, US, Canada and Mexico agree
Provisions. The goal of NAFTA was to eliminate barriers to trade and investment between the U.S., Canada and Mexico. The implementation of NAFTA on January 1, 1994, brought the immediate elimination of tariffs on more than one-half of Mexico's exports to the U.S. and more than one-third of U.S. exports to Mexico. -
1996 Serious riots in Quebec City
The 1996 Quebec student protests were a result of an increase in post-secondary tuition fees. Between the early 1980s and 1990s, average Canadian university tuition fees more than doubled. Before this time, there had been talk of eliminating tuition fees altogether. In 1976, the Canadian government signed the United Nations' International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights.
