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Aug 3, 1492
The Discovery of America by Columbus
Columbus “discovered” America, but Viking may have been the first European to ever have touched North American soil. But these facts aside there was Indigenous Americans already living here. His voyage to find a shorter way to Asia was funded by Spain, but he also miscalculated the distance to Asia so yeah… -
The Settlement of Jamestown
Jamestown was America’s first permanent English colony; it was founded 13 years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth. This colony was chartered in 1606 by King James I. Tobacco and Jamestown, tobacco cultivation required large amounts of land and labor this stimulated the rapid growth of Jamestown. This caused problems as Settlers moved onto the lands occupied by the Powhatan Indians, and increased numbers of indentured servants came to Virginia. -
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The French and Indian War
The French and Indian War also known as the Seven Years’ War, this conflict marked another chapter in the long struggle between Britain and France. When France expanded into the Ohio River Valley it brought repeated conflict with the British colonies, and series of battles led to the British declaring war in 1756. There was a peace conference in 1763, and the British received the territories of Canada from France and Florida from Spain, this opened the Mississippi Valley to expansion. -
The Boston Tea Party
On December 16, 1773, in Boston Harbor, a group of Massachusetts colonists (Samuel Adams and the Sons of Liberty) disguised as Mohawk Indians board three British tea ships and dump 342 chests of tea into the harbor. -
The Battle of Lexington and Concord
This was the first Revolutionary Battle at Lexington and Concord. In April 1775, when the British troops were sent to confiscate the colonial weapons, they then run into an untrained and angry militia. This surprise army defeated 700 British troops. -
The Declaration of Independence
The Declaration of Independence was adopted on July 4, 1776, by the Second Continental Congress meeting at the Pennsylvania State House (Independence Hall) in Philadelphia -
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The Battle of Yorktown
General George Washington, commanding a force of 17,000 French and Continental troops, begins the siege known as the Battle of Yorktown against the British General Lord Charles Cornwallis and 9,000 British troops at Yorktown, Virginia, in what is called the most important battle of the Revolutionary War. -
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The Constitutional Convention
The Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia met to address the problems of the weak central government that existed under the Articles of Confederation. -
The invention of the cotton gin
In 1794, Eli Whitney patented the cotton gin the machine revolutionized the production of cotton by greatly speeding up the process of removing seeds from cotton fiber. -
The Alien and Sedition Acts
The Alien and Sedition Acts where Signed into law by President John Adams in 1798, the Alien and Sedition Acts consisted of four laws passed by the Federalist-controlled Congress as America prepared for war with France -
The Louisiana Purchase
The Louisiana Purchase was the acquisition of the Louisiana territory by the United States from France in 1803. The U.S. paid $11,250,000 and a cancellation of debts worth 3,750,000 for a total of 15,000,000, or around $250m in 2016 dollars. The Louisiana territory included land from fifteen present U.S. states and two Canadian provinces. -
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War of 1812
The War of 1812 (1812–1815) was a conflict fought between the United States and the United Kingdom and their allies. Since the outbreak of war with Napoleonic France, Britain had enforced a naval blockade to choke off all neutral trade to France, which was contested by United States as illegal under international law. In order to man the blockade, Britain started forcibly impressed American merchant sailors into the Royal Navy. -
The Missouri Compromise
In the years leading up to the Missouri Compromise tensions began to rise between the pro-slavery and the anti-slavery factions within the U.S. They reached a boiling point after Missouri’s request in 1819 for admission to the Union as a slave state, which threatened to upset the delicate balance between slave states and free states. To keep the peace, Congress decided to orchestrate a two-part compromise, granting Missouri’s request but also admitting Maine as a free state. -
Andrew Jackson’s Election
The United States presidential election of 1828 was the 11th quadrennial presidential election, it was held from Friday, October 31, to Tuesday, December 2, 1828. It featured a re-match between President John Quincy Adams, and Andrew Jackson. -
The invention of the telegraph
The telegraph was developed in the 1830s and 1840s by Samuel Morse and other inventors, the telegraph revolutionized long-distance communication. -
The Panic of 1837
The Panic of 1837 was a financial crisis in the United States that touched off a major recession that lasted until the mid-1840s. Profits, prices, and wages all went down while unemployment went up. -
The Trail of Tears
The Trail of Tears was a series of forced removals of Native American nations from their ancestral homelands in the Southeastern United States to an area west of the Mississippi River that had been designated as Indian Territory. The relocated people suffered from exposure, disease, and starvation while en route and more than four thousand died before reaching their various destinations. -
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The Mexican-American War
The Mexican-American War marked the first U.S. armed conflict chiefly fought on foreign soil. A border skirmish along the Rio Grande started off the fighting and was followed by a series of U.S. victories. When the dust cleared, Mexico had lost about one-third of its territory, including nearly all of present-day California, Utah, Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico. -
The Compromise of 1850
Senator Henry Clay introduced a series of resolutions on January 29, 1850, in an attempt to seek a compromise and avert a crisis between the North and South. -
The Firing on Fort Sumter
The Battle of Fort Sumter (April 12–13, 1861) was the bombardment of Fort Sumter by the Confederate Army, and the return gunfire and subsequent surrender by the United States Army that started the American Civil War -
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The Emancipation Proclamation
The Emancipation Proclamation was a presidential proclamation issued by President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863. It changed the federal legal status of more than 3 million enslaved people in the designated areas of the South from slave to free. As soon as a slave escaped the control of the Confederate government, by running away or through advances of federal troops, the slave became legally free. -
Surrender at Appomattox Courthouse
On April 9, near the town of Appomattox Court House, Virginia, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia to Union General Ulysses S. Grant, this effectively brought the four-year Civil War to an end. -
Abraham Lincoln’s Assassination
Abraham Lincoln, was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth on Friday, April 14, 1865, while attending the play Our American Cousin at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., as the American Civil War was drawing to a close. -
Andrew Johnson’s Impeachment
On February 24, 1868, the House of Representatives voted 126 to 47 in favor of a resolution to impeach the President for high crimes and misdemeanors. -
13th, 14th, 15th Amendments
The 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, known as the Civil War Amendments, were designed to ensure equality for recently emancipated slaves. The 13th Amendment banned slavery and all involuntary servitude, except in the case of punishment for a crime. -
The invention telephone
1876 -
The invention of the electric light
1879 by Thomas Alva Edison, although he could be said to have created the first commercially practical incandescent light. -
The Organization of Standard Oil Trust
John D. Rockefeller created Standard Oil Trust by trading stockholders' shares for trust certificates. The trust was designed to allow Rockefeller and other Standard Oil stockholders to get around state laws prohibiting one company from owning stock in another. -
The Pullman and Homestead Strikes
The dispute occurred at the Homestead Steel Works in the town of Homestead, Pennsylvania, between the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers (the AA) and the Carnegie Steel Company. -
The Spanish-American War
The Spanish-American War was a conflict between the United States and Spain that resulted in U.S. acquisition of territories in the western Pacific and Latin America. -
Theodore Roosevelt becomes president
The presidency of Theodore Roosevelt began on September 14, 1901, when he became the 26th President of the United States upon the assassination and death of President William McKinley. -
The invention of the airplane
December 17, 1903, Wilbur and Orville Wright made four brief flights at Kitty Hawk with their first powered aircraft.
