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Alaska is purchased from Russia
Russia sold the state of Alaska to the United States for $7.2 million. However, the Civil War delayed the sale but was eventually settled between the Secretary of State William Seward and a Russian Minister named Edouard de Stoeckl. Many Americans calle dAlaska "Seward's Ice Box" due to the extremely cold weather. -
Completion of the Transcontinental Railroad
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John D. Rockefeller started Standard Oil
Although there is no specific day or month Standard Oil became a company, this business would change the United States forever. This company became a very infamous monopoly in the late 1800s, and it ruled by purchasing other companies to distribute its products. John D. Rockefeller was a very rich man because of this, and his fortune was estimated to be $318.3 billion. -
Alexander Graham Bell invents the telephone
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Thomas Edison brings light to the world with the light bulb
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Chinese Exclusion Act
The Chinese Exclusion Act was an immigration rule that made Chinese laborers not be able to immigrate to the United States. This was the first law that restricted immigration into the United States. President Chester A. Arthur was the one to pass this law. -
Samuel Gompers founded the American Federation of Labor (AFL)
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Sherman Antitrust Act
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Ellis Island opens
Ellis Island was a port where many immigrants from western Europe came to start a new life. Annie Moore was a seventeen-year-old from County Cork, Ireland, and she was the first immigrant to go under a process to become a U.S citizen. Over 12 million immigrants came to the United States through the port of Ellis Island. -
Carnegie Steel’s Homestead Strike
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Plessy v Ferguson
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The U.S. declares war on Spain
The sinking of the Battleship Maine in Havana harbor was a catalyst for this war between the United States and Spain. Another reason the war was declared was due to the ongoing struggle between the Filipinos and the Cubans against Spanish rule. This war ended with the signing of the Treaty of Paris. -
Hawaii is annexed
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Rudyard Kipling published “The White Man’s Burden” in The New York Sun
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The Philippine Insurrection comes to an end
The Philippines wanted independence from the United States. Generalissimo Don Emilio Aguinaldo y Famy was the leader of this independence movement in the late 1800s. The insurrection birthed Reconcentrado camps, which kept Natives in camps and treated them poorly. -
The start of the Boxer Rebellion
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Tenement Act
Many immigrants could only afford to live in large apartment-like buildings called tenements. These buildings were dark and damp, and extremely overcrowded, This act provided one bathroom per twenty people, and it prohibited the construction of dark buildings without windows or proper ventilation. -
Pres. McKinley is assassinated and Progressive Theodore Roosevelt becomes President
President McKinley was shaking hands at a social gathering when he was shot twice by a member of an anarchist movement, Leon Czolgosz. The initial bullet wounds did not kill him, but the gangrene affecting his tissues did. Leon Czolgosz was killed by capital punishment. -
The Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe doctrine declares the U.S. right to intervene in the Wesern Hem
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Upton Sinclair releases “The Jungle”
Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle to expose the meat-packing industry and the working conditions the workers were put through. His description of diseased, rotten, and contaminated meat led to new federal food safety laws and the labeling of both food and medicine. This led to reform and gave American citizens a new look at how their food could be handled. -
Peak year of immigration through Ellis Island
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Pure Food & Drug Act and The Meat Inspection Act are passed
President Theodore Roosevelt signed this law due to the extremely unsanitary conditions in which meat was handled at meat factories. He even considered going vegetarian after knowing how the food was being treated and how the workers were placed in such unclean places. This act put detailed labels on food and medicine to show exactly what was in it. -
Henry Ford produced his first Model T (car)
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Creation of the NAACP
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The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire
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The Assassination on Austria’s archduke Franz Ferdinand starts WWI
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The Panama Canal is completed and opened for traffic
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The United States enters WWI
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Ratification of the 18th Amendment - Prohibition
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Women got the right to vote.
