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Oct 12, 1492
The Discovery of American by Columbus
They arrived at a small island of the Lucayos, called, in the language of the Indians, Guanahani. He seen their was naked people there and he gave them cotton, gifts, and other goods. -
The Settlement of Jamestown
The settlement became the first permanent English settlement in North America.The settlers were now protected against any attacks that might occur from the local Powhatan Indians, whose hunting land they were living on.The settlers were unhappy about their tobacco being sold only to English merchants due to the Navigation Acts, high taxes, and attacks on outlying plantations by American Indians on the frontiers. -
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The French and Indian War
The Seven Years’ War, lasted from 1756 to 1763, forming a chapter in the imperial struggle between Britain and France called the Second Hundred Years’ War.n 1756 the British formally declared war, but their new commander in America, Lord Loudoun, faced the same problems as his predecessors and met with little success against the French and their Indian allies.In July 1758, the British won their first great victory at Louisbourg, near the mouth of the St. Lawrence River. -
The Boston Tea Party
Seeking to boost the troubled East India Company, British Parliament adjusted import duties with the passage of the Tea Act in 1773.On the night of December 16, 1773, Samuel Adams and the Sons of Liberty boarded three ships in the Boston harbor and threw 342 chests of tea overboard.The Tea Act adjusted import duties in such a way that the company could undersell even smugglers in the colonies.500,000 pounds of tea were shipped across the Atlantic in September.Two more arrived shortly thereafter. -
The Battle of Lexington and Concord
April 18, 1775, hundreds of British troops marched from Boston to nearby Concord in order to seize an arms cache. A confrontation on the Lexington town green started off the fighting, and soon the British were hastily retreating under intense fire.On April 18, 1775, Joseph Warren learned from a source inside the British high command that Redcoat troops would march that night on Concord.April 19, some 700 British troops arrived in Lexington and came upon 77 militiamen gathered on the town green. -
The Declaration of Independence
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. -
The Battle of York Town
General George Washington, commanding a force of 17,000 French and Continental troops, begins the siege known as the Battle of Yorktown against British General Lord Charles Cornwallis and a contingent of 9,000 British troops at Yorktown, Virginia, in the most important battle of the Revolutionary War.September 28, Washington had completely encircled Cornwallis and Yorktown with the combined forces of Continental and French troops. -
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The Constitutional Convention
The most contentious disputes revolved around composition was to be defined whether to divide the executive power between three persons or invest the power into a single president, how to elect the president, how long his term was to be and whether he could run for reelection, what offenses should be impeachable, the nature of a fugitive slave clause, whether to allow the abolition of the slave trade, and whether judges should be chosen by the legislature or executive. -
The invention of the cotton gin
U.S.-born inventor Eli Whitney patented the cotton gin, a machine that revolutionized the production of cotton by greatly speeding up the process of removing seeds from cotton fiber. By the mid-19th century, cotton had become America’s leading export. Despite its success, the gin made little money for Whitney due to patent-infringement issues.Also, his invention offered Southern planters a justification to maintain and expand slavery even as a growing number of Americans supported its abolition. -
The Alien and Sedition Acts
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. These acts increased the residency requirement for American citizenship from five to fourteen years, authorized the president to imprison or deport aliens considered "dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States" and restricted speech critical of the government. -
The Louisiana Purchase
The U.S. purchased approximately 828,000,000 square miles of territory from France, thereby doubling the size of the young republic.What was known as Louisiana Territory stretched from the Mississippi River in the east to the Rocky Mountains in the west and from the Gulf of Mexico in the south to the Canadian border in the north.Part or all of 15 states were eventually created from the land deal, which is considered one of the most important achievements of Thomas Jefferson’s presidency. -
The War of 1812
The United States took on the greatest naval power in the world, Great Britain, in a conflict that would have an immense impact on the young country’s future. Causes of the war included British attempts to restrict U.S. trade, the Royal Navy’s impressment of American seamen and America’s desire to expand its territory. The United States suffered many costly defeats at the hands of British, Canadian and Native American troops over the course of the War of 1812. -
The Missouri Compromise
In the years leading up to the Missouri Compromise of 1820, tensions began to rise between pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions within the U.S. Congress and across the country. They reached a boiling point after Missouri’s 1819 request 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 orchestrated a two-part compromise, granting Missouri’s request but also admitting Maine as a free state. -
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Andrew Jackson’s Election
When war broke out between the United States and Britain. His leadership in that conflict earned Jackson national fame as a military hero, and he would become America’s most influential–and polarizing–political figure during the 1820s and 1830s. After narrowly losing to John Quincy Adams in the contentious 1824 presidential election, Jackson returned four years later to win redemption, soundly defeating Adams and becoming the nation’s seventh president. -
The Firing on Fort Sumter
island fortification located in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina. Originally constructed in 1829 as a coastal garrison, Fort Sumter is most famous for being the site of the first shots of the Civil War (1861-65). U.S. Major Robert Anderson occupied the unfinished fort in December 1860 following South Carolina’s secession from the Union, initiating a standoff with the state’s militia forces.After a 34-hour exchange of artillery fire, Anderson and 86 soldiers surrendered the fort on April 13. -
Trail of Tears
125,000 Native Americans lived on millions of acres of land in Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, North Carolina and Florida–land their ancestors had occupied and cultivated for generations. By the end of the decade, very few natives remained anywhere in the southeastern United States.Working on behalf of white settlers who wanted to grow cotton on the Indians’ land. -
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The invention of the telegraph
the telegraph revolutionized long-distance communication. It worked by transmitting electrical signals over a wire laid between stations. In addition to helping invent the telegraph, Samuel Morse developed a code (bearing his name) that assigned a set of dots and dashes to each letter of the English alphabet and allowed for the simple transmission of complex messages across telegraph lines. -
The Panic of 1837
the United States that touched off a major recession that lasted until the mid-1840s. Profits, prices, and wages went down while unemployment went up. Pessimism abounded during the time. The panic had both domestic and foreign origins. Speculative lending practices in western states, a sharp decline in cotton prices, a collapsing land bubble, international specie flows, and restrictive lending policies in Great Britain were all to blame. -
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The Mexican-American War
the first U.S. armed conflict chiefly fought on foreign soil. It pitted a politically divided and militarily unprepared Mexico against the expansionist-minded administration of U.S. President James K. Polk, who believed the United States had a “manifest destiny” to spread across the continent to the Pacific Ocean.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. -
The Compromise of 1850
five laws passed in September of 1850 that dealt with the issue of slavery. In 1849 California requested permission to enter the Union as a free state, potentially upsetting the balance between the free and slave states in the U.S. Senate. Senator Henry Clay introduced a series of resolutions on January 29, 1850, in an attempt to seek a compromise and avert a crisis between North and South. -
The Emancipation Proclamation
The proclamation declared "that all persons held as slaves" within the rebellious states "are, and henceforward shall be free."It applied only to states that had seceded from the Union, leaving slavery untouched in the loyal border states. It also expressly exempted parts of the Confederacy that had already come under Northern control. Most important, the freedom it promised depended upon Union military victory. -
The Organization of Standard Oil Trust
He built up the company through 1868 to become the largest oil refinery firm in the world. In 1870, the company was renamed Standard Oil Company, after which Rockefeller decided to buy up all the other competition and form them into one large company.he Standard Oil Trust had quickly become an industrial monster. The trust had established a strong foothold in the U.S. and other countries in the transportation, production, refining, and marketing of petroleum products. -
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13th, 14th, 15th Amendments
first amendments made to the U.S. constitution in 60 years. Known collectively as the Civil War Amendments, they were designed to ensure the equality for recently emancipated slaves.While the Emancipation Proclamation ended slavery in the 10 states that were still in rebellion, many citizens were concerned that the rights granted by war-time legislation would be overturned.The Republican Party controlled congress and pushed for constitutional amendments that would be more permanent and binding. -
Surrender at Appomattox Courthouse
Days earlier, Lee had abandoned the Confederate capital of Richmond and the city of Petersburg; his goal was to rally the remnants of his beleaguered troops, meet Confederate reinforcements in North Carolina and resume fighting. But the resulting Battle of Appomattox Court House, which lasted only a few hours, effectively brought the four-year Civil War to an end.April 9, Confederate troops led by Major General John B. Gordon mounted a last-ditch offensive that was initially successful. -
Abraham Lincoln’s Assassination
John Wilkes Booth, a famous actor and Confederate sympathizer, assassinated President Abraham Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C. The attack came only five days after Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered his massive army at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, effectively ending the American Civil War.the president slumped in his chair, paralyzed and struggling to breathe. -
Andrew Johnson’s Impeachment
Johnson decided to rid himself of Stanton once and for all and appointed General Lorenzo Thomas, an individual far less favorable to the Congress than Grant, as secretary of war. Stanton refused to yield, barricading himself in his office, and the House of Representatives, which had already discussed impeachment after Johnson’s first dismissal of Stanton, initiated formal impeachment proceedings against the president. -
Telephone
He would later face years of legal challenges to his claim that he was its sole inventor, resulting in one of history’s longest patent battles. Bell continued his scientific work for the rest of his life, and used his success and wealth to establish various research centers nationwide.Detect metal in wounds and with a vacuum-jacket respirator that led to the development of the iron lung. -
Electric light
Some historians claim there were over 20 inventors of incandescent lamps prior to Edison’s version. Credited with the invention because his version was able to outstrip the earlier versions because of a combination of three factors: an effective incandescent material, a higher vacuum than others were able to achieve and a high resistance that made power distribution from a centralized source economically viable. -
The Pullman and Homestead Strikes
The Homestead strike, in Homestead, Pennsylvania, pitted one of the most powerful new corporations, Carnegie Steel Company, against the nation’s strongest trade union, the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers. An 1889 strike had won the steelworkers a favorable three-year contract; but by 1892 Andrew Carnegie was determined to break the union. -
The Spanish-American War
A conflict between the United States and Spain that ended Spanish colonial rule in the Americas and resulted in U.S. acquisition of territories in the western Pacific and Latin America.The war originated in the Cuban struggle for independence from Spain, which began in February 1895.Spain’s armed forces from the island, and authorized the President’s use of force to secure that withdrawal while renouncing any U.S. design for annexing Cuba. -
Theodore Roosevelt becomes president
Young and physically robust, he brought a new energy to the White House, and won a second term on his own merits in 1904. Roosevelt confronted the bitter struggle between management and labor head-on and became known as the great “trust buster". He was also a dedicated conservationist, setting aside some 200 million acres for national forests, reserves and wildlife refuges during his presidency. -
Airplane
American inventors and pioneers of aviation. First powered, sustained and controlled airplane flight; they surpassed their own milestone two years later when they built and flew the first fully practical airplane. When Lilienthal died in a glider crash, the brothers decided to start their own experiments with flight.
