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The Zimmerman Telegram
In the telegram, intercepted and deciphered by British intelligence in January 1917, Zimmermann instructed the ambassador, Count Johann von Bernstorff, to offer significant financial aid to Mexico if it agreed to enter any future U.S-German conflict as a German ally. -
The WWI Armistice
In 1918, the infusion of American troops and resources into the western front finally tipped the scale in the Allies' favor. Germany signed an armistice agreement with the Allies on November 11, 1918. World War I was known as the “war to end all wars” because of the great slaughter and destruction it caused. -
The 19th Amendment
Ratified on August 18, 1920, the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution granted American women the right to vote—a right known as woman suffrage. At the time the U.S. was founded, its female citizens did not share all of the same rights as men, including the right to vote. -
Charles Lindbergh’s Flight
Arrives Le Bourget Aerodrome, Paris after 33 hours, 29 minutes, and 30 seconds. Lindbergh lands at Paris' Le Bourget airfield, becoming the first pilot to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. -
The invention of the Model T
On October 1, 1908, the first production Model T Ford is completed at the company's Piquette Avenue plant in Detroit. Between 1908 and 1927, Ford would build some 15 million Model T cars. It was the longest production run of any automobile model in history until the Volkswagen Beetle surpassed it in 1972. -
Black Thursday
DEFINITION of 'Black Thursday' The name given to Thursday, Oct. 24, 1929, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged 11% at the open in very heavy volume, precipitating the Wall Street crash of 1929 and the subsequent Great Depression of the 1930s. -
Hitler becomes chancellor
In 1933, President Paul von Hindenburg names Adolf Hitler, leader or fÜhrer of the National Socialist German Workers Party (or Nazi Party), as chancellor of Germany. -
The New Deal
The New Deal was a series of domestic programs enacted in the United States between 1933 and 1938, and a few that came later. They included both laws passed by Congress as well as presidential executive orders during the first term (1933–37) of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. -
The Munich Pact
The Munich Agreement was a settlement permitting Nazi Germany's annexation of portions of Czechoslovakia along the country's borders mainly inhabited by German speakers, for which a new territorial designation "Sudetenland" was coined. -
Hitler Invades Poland
The German-Soviet Pact of August 1939, which stated that Poland was to be partitioned between the two powers, enabled Germany to attack Poland without the fear of Soviet intervention. On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland. -
Pearl Harbor
The attack on Pearl Harbor, also known as the Battle of Pearl Harbor,the Hawaii Operation or Operation AI by the Japanese Imperial General Headquarters, and Operation Z during planning, was a surprise military strike by the Imperial Japanese Navy against the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor 1941. -
The formation of United Nations
The Formation of the United Nations, 1945. On January 1, 1942, representatives of 26 nations at war with the Axis powers met in Washington to sign the Declaration of the United Nations endorsing the Atlantic Charter, pledging to use their full resources against the Axis and agreeing not to make a separate peace. -
D-Day
the Battle of Normandy, which lasted from June 1944 to August 1944. The invasion was one of the largest amphibious military assaults in history and required extensive planning. By late August 1944, all of northern France had been liberated, and by the following spring the Allies had defeated the Germans. -
Hiroshima & Nagasaki
On August 6, 1945, Hiroshima was almost completely destroyed by the first atomic bomb ever dropped on a populated area. Followed by the bombing of Nagasaki, on August 9, this show of Allied strength hastened the surrender of Japan in World War II. -
The formation of NATO
In 1949, the prospect of further Communist expansion prompted the United States and 11 other Western nations to form the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The Soviet Union and its affiliated Communist nations in Eastern Europe founded a rival alliance, the Warsaw Pact, in 1955. -
Russians acquire the Atomic Bomb
Barely four years after the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Japan in August 1945, the Soviet Union detonated its own in August 1949, much sooner that expected. The Soviets did not lack for available recruits for spying, says John Earl Haynes, espionage historian and author of Early Cold War Spies. -
The Korean War
The Korean War was a war between North and South Korea, in which a United Nations force led by the United States of America fought for the South, and China fought for the North, which was also assisted by the Soviet Union. -
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka,
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), was a landmark United States Supreme Court case in which the Court declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students to be unconstitutional. -
JFK’s Assassination
John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States, was assassinated at 12:30 p.m. Central Standard Time on Friday, November 22, 1963, in Dealey Plaza, Dallas, Texas. -
The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution
The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution or the Southeast Asia Resolution, Pub.L. 88–408, 78 Stat. 384, enacted August 10, 1964, was a joint resolution that the United States Congress passed on August 7, 1964, in response to the Gulf of Tonkin inciden -
The Apollo 11 Moon Landing
Apollo 11 was the first spaceflight that landed humans on the Moon. Americans Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on July 20, 1969, at 20:18 UTC. Armstrong became the first to step onto the lunar surface six hours later on July 21 at 02:56 UTC -
The Watergate Break-ins
The Watergate scandal was a major political scandal that occurred in the United States in the 1970s as a result of the June 17, 1972 break-in at the Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C., and the Nixon administration's attempted cover-up of its involvement. -
Nixon’s Resignation
On August 9, 1974, Richard M. Nixon resigned the presidency of the United States after what has become known as the Watergate scandal. In June of 1972, five men were arrested during a break-in at the Democratic National Committee's offices in the Watergate complex. -
The invention of the Internet
ARPANET adopted TCP/IP on January 1, 1983, and from there researchers began to assemble the “network of networks” that became the modern Internet. The online world then took on a more recognizable form in 1990, when computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. -
The Fall of the Berlin Wall
The Berlin Wall: The Fall of the Wall. On November 9, 1989, as the Cold War began to thaw across Eastern Europe, the spokesman for East Berlin's Communist Party announced a change in his city's relations with the West. -
The 9/11 Attacks
The September 11 attacks were a series of four coordinated terrorist attacks by the Islamic terrorist group al-Qaeda on the United States on the morning of Tuesday, September 11, 2001 -
Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat
December 1, 1955, after a long day of work as a seamstress for a Montgomery, Alabama, department store, Rosa Parks boards a city bus to go home, and is arrested for not sitting in the back. -
The Long Telegram
The Long Telegram outlining his opinions and views of the Soviets; it arrived in Washington on February 22, 1946. Among its most-remembered parts was that while Soviet power was impervious to the logic of reason, it was highly sensitive to the logic of force. -
The Cuban Missile Crisis
The Cuban Missile Crisis, also known as the October Crisis, the Caribbean Crisis, or the Missile Scare, was a 13-day confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union over Soviet ballistic missiles deployed in Cuba. -
The Vietnam War
The Vietnam War, also known as the Second Indochina War, and also known in Vietnam as Resistance War Against America or simply the American War, was a Cold War-era proxy war that occurred in Vietnam,