Poems and
Meditations
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History of Rock and
Dance Music
A History of Silicon
Valley
A timeline of the USA and Canada
(revised in 2011 by Tyler Maxin)
World News | Politics | History | Editor
(Copyright © 2008 Piero Scaruffi)
See also a timeline of Britain
TM, ®, Copyright © 2011 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
Oct 1492: the Italian explorer Cristoforo Colombo
sails west on behalf of Spain looking for a way to
reach Asia, and instead lands in a new continent
May 1499: the Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci sails
to the new continent on behalf of Spain
1500: About seven million Native Americans live in
North America
Apr 1507: German cartographer Martin Waldseem?
ller's "Cosmographiae Introductio" names the new
continent "America"
Mar 1524: the Italian explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano
sails up the coast of north America and discovers
Manhattan
Sep 1542: Portuguese explorer Juan Cabrillo
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USA presidents
(In parenthesis how much i like them.
In bold those who lasted two terms)
George Washington (1789-96) ++
John Adams (1797-1800) Thomas Jefferson (1801-08) ++
James Madison (1809-16) James Monroe (1817-24) +
John Quincy Adams (1825-28) -Andrew Jackson (1829-36) ++
Martin Van Buren (1837-40) William Henry Harrison (1841)
John Tyler (1841-44) James Knox Polk (1845-48) +
Zachary Taylor (1849-50) pdfcrowd.com
Zachary Taylor (1849-50) discovers California
Millard Fillmore (1850-53) Sep 1565: the Spanish found the first permanent
Franklin Pierce (1853-56) European settlement in North America at St
James Buchanan (1857-60) Augustine (Florida)
Abraham Lincoln (1861-65) ++
1573: The first Chinese goods reach the Americas via Andrew Johnson (1865-68) Spanish ships coming from the Philippines
Ulysses Grant (1869-76)
May 1607: Jamestown is the first English colony in
Rutherford Hayes (1877-80) the Americas
James Garfield (1881)
Aug 1607: John Smith founds the colony of Virginia
Chester Arthur (1881-84) Jul 1608: The first French town is founded in North
Grover Cleveland (1885-88) +
America, Quebec City
Benjamin Harrison (1889-92) 1609: Santa Fe is founded by Spanish explorers (New Grover Cleveland (1893-97)
Mexico)
William McKinley (1897-1900) 1612: A tobacco plantation opens in Virginia
Theodore Roosevelt (1901-08) ++
Aug 1619: the Dutch begin the slave trade between
William Taft (1909-12) Africa and North America (Virginia)
Woodrow Wilson (1913-20) +
Nov 1620: English pilgrims aboard the "Mayflower"
Warren Harding (1921-23) -land at Plymouth Rock on Cape Cod, Massachusetts Calvin Coolidge (1923-28) Jun 1623: the Dutch West India Company founds the Herbert Clark Hoover (1929-32) colony of Nieuw Nederland
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1933Jul 1625: the Dutch West India Company founds a
45) ++
trading post in America, Nieuwe Amsterdam (New
Harry Truman (1945-52) +
York)
Dwight Eisenhower (1953-60) +
Sep 1630: Boston is founded
John Kennedy (1961-63) +
Jun 1632: Maryland is born as the private possession Lyndon Johnson (1963-68) of an individual
Richard M. Nixon (1969-74) -1634: The governor of Massachusetts reports that all Gerald Ford (1974-76) -the natives have died of smallpox
Jimmy Carter (1977-80) +
Sep 1636: Harvard University is founded near
Ronald Reagan (1981-88) Boston, the first American university
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Boston, the first American university
1637: English Puritan militias led by John Mason
massacre 700 Pequos Native Americans ("Mystic
Massacre")
1638: Virginia has become the major source of
tobacco for Europe
Sep 1638: John Harvard bequeaths half of his fortune
to a newly-founded school near Boston, the first
major act of philanthropy
Jan 1639: settlers from Massachusetts Bay unite in
the colony of Connecticut
1639: Elizabeth Glover sets up the first printing press
in North America in Boston
1650: the West Indies still attract more British
immigrants than the mainland
Sep 1654: the first Jewsish immigrants arrive in
Nieuwe Amsterdam (New York)
Mar 1663: eight noblemen are granted Carolina
Sep 1664: Britain obtain Nieuwe Amsterdam and
renames it New York
Jul 1667: Britain captures Nieuw Nederland and
renames it Delaware
Mar 1681: Quakers led by William Penn found the
colony of Pennsylvania and the city of Philadelphia
Apr 1682: France claims the territory of Louisiana
Oct 1691: several New England colonies unite in the
Massachusetts Bay Colony
1692-3: 19 "witches" are burned at the stake near
Boston
Oct 1701: Yale University is founded
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George H. Bush (1989-93) +
Bill Clinton (1993-2000) +
George W. Bush (2001-2008) -Barack Obama (2009-2012)
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Feb 1704: Elias Neau opens a school for enslaved
African Americans in New York
1712: North Carolina is separated from South
Carolina
Apr 1713: Britain and France sign a peace treaty
("Treaty of Utrecht") that hands most of Canada to
Britain and leaves Britain as the dominant force in
north America
May 1718: French colonists found La NouvelleOrleans (New Orleans)
Dec 1729: The first orphanage in the USA is founded
at the Ursuline Convent of New Orleans
Jun 1732: the British found the colony of Georgia, the
13th English colony in north America
1735: the first Italian immigrants arrive in New York
Jul 1741: the Russian explorer Vitus Bering
"discovers" Alaska
May 1743: Benjamin Franklin and others found the
"American Philosophical Society"
1750: the population of the USA is 1,170,800
Jun 1752: Benjamin Franklin invents the lightening
conductor
1758: The African Baptist Church is founded on the
William Byrd plantation in Mecklenburg, Virginia, the
first black church
Oct 1762: France surrenders Louisiana to Spain, so
that Spain controls all the Gulf Coast to Mexico and
the region west of the Mississippi to the Pacific Ocean
Feb 1763: France surrenders Canada, Dominica,
Grenada, and eastern Louisiana to Britain, Spain
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Grenada, and eastern Louisiana to Britain, Spain
surrenders western Louisiana to France and Florida
to Britain
Dec 1763: The first Jewish synagogue opens in
Newport, Rhode Island ("Touro Synagogue")
1768: Gaspar de Portola is appointed governor of Las
Californias
1769: Spanish captain Gaspar de Portola founds San
Diego and discovers the San Francisco Bay
1769: Franciscan friar Junipero Serra builds the
mission at San Diego, the first of 20 along the coast of
California ("Sacred Expedition"), while Gaspar de
Portola founds the first Spanish presidio, the Presidio
of San Diego
1770: the population of the 13 colonies has almost
doubled in 20 years to 2,131,000
Jan 1773: The Charleston Museum opens, the first
museum in the USA
Dec 1773: American colonists stage an uprising
against British rule ("Boston Tea Party")
Jun 1774: Britain enacts a constitution for Canada
and divides Upper (English) Canada and Lower
(French) Canada
Apr 1775: the first abolitionist society is founded in
Philadelphia
1775: There are about 50 printers in the British
colonies of America
1776: Nueva Espana's explorer Juan Bautista de
Anza reaches the site of future San Francisco
Jul 1776: the North American colonies of Britain
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ratifies the Declaration of Independence ("American
revolution")
Dec 1776: The honor society "Phi Beta Kappa" is
founded by five students at the College of William and
Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia
Jul 1777: Vermont declares its independence from
Britain and abolishes slavery
1778: James Cook is the first European to visit the
Hawaii
1779: James Cook is killed by Hawaiians
Nov 1780: The Free African Union Society is founded
in Newport, Rhode Island, the first cultural
organization established by blacks
Oct 1781: Revolutionary troops led by general George
Washington and French troops led by Rochambeau
defeat the British Army led by Charles Cornwallis at
the battle of Yorktown, Britain surrenders, the
independence war ends and Philadelphia (50,000
inhabitants) becomes the capital of the United States
of America
1781: Spanish colonizers found El Pueblo de Nuestra
Senora la Reina de los Angeles
Jul 1783: Massachusetts abolishes slavery
Sep 1783: Britain recognises the independence of the
United States of America , which now extends from
the Atlantic coast to the Mississippi river (population
3.5 million)
Sep 1783: Britain surrenders Florida to Spain
Apr 1784: Benjamin Franklin suggests the use of
daylight saving time to save energy
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daylight saving time to save energy
Apr 1789: In the first presidential election George
Washington is elected first president of the USA (4
million inhabitants)
1789: the English Privy Council concludes that
almost 50% of the slaves exported from Africa die
before reaching the Americas
1790: at the height of the British slave trade, one
slave vessel leaves England for Africa every other
day
1790: the first turnpike opens between Philadelphia
and Lancaster
1790: Philadelphia, the largest city of the USA, has
42,000 people
Dec 1791: the Bill of Rights guarantees individual
freedoms
1792: Washington enacts a policy of "educating" the
"Indians"
1792: British equestrian John Ricketts founds the
first USA circus
Apr 1792: The US dollar is introduced
May 1793: Eli Whitney invents the cotton gin, thus
enabling large-scale production of cotton
1794: The army decisively defeats the Western
Confederacy of Native Americans at the battle of
Fallen Timbers
1796: Philadelphia pioneers the use of gaslight to
light streets
Jul 1799: The Russian-American company is
chartered by Russia
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1800: New York's population is 60,000
Oct 1800: Spain surrenders Louisiana to France
Feb 1801: Thomas Jefferson's DemocraticRepublican Party win elections against John Adams'
Federalists
Feb 1801: president Thomas Jefferson wins the first
universal male suffrage
May 1801: Thomas Jefferson orders the bombing of
the barbary states of Algiers, Morocco, Tunis and
Tripoli after Yusuf Karamanli, the ruler of Tripoli,
demands ransom from the USA
Aug 1801: Robert Fulton builds the "Nautilus"
submarine and invents the torpedo
1801: the USA's population is five million
Mar 1802: the United States Military Academy is
established at West Point
1802: Robert Fulton imports the steamboat to the
USA
Apr 1803: president Thomas Jefferson purchases
Louisiana (which extended from the Mississippi to the
Rocky Mountains, from Montana to New Orleans)
from Napoleon, thus essentially doubling the size of
the USA
Sep 1806: The explorers Meriwether Lewis and
William Clark reach the Pacific Ocean after setting out
two years earlier from St Louis in search of the
"northwest passage"
Aug 1807: Robert Fulton introduces steam-powered
boats
Mar 1807: Britain outlaws slavery
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Mar 1807: Britain outlaws slavery
Mar 1807: US Congress abolishes the slave trade
1808: Russia establishes the colony of Noviiy
Rossiya in California
1810: Virginia is the most populous state of the USA
Jun 1812: The USA declares war on Britain after
Britain imposes trade restrictions and supports
Native-American tribes
Aug 1814: British troops storm Washington and burn
the Capitol and the White House
1814: Francis Cabot Lowell builds an integrated
cotton factory (spinning + weaving) in Massachusetts
Jan 1815: Andrew Jackson, helped by the French
pirate Jean Lafitte, defeats the British army at the
battle of New Orleans
Aug 1815: David Low Dodge organizes in New York
the first peace society in history
1816: Baltimore becomes the first city in the USA to
equip streets with gas lights, provided by Rembrandt
Peale's Gas Light Company of Baltimore
Oct 1817: first scheduled passenger ship from New
York to Liverpool (Black Ball Line)
Mar 1817: the New York Stock Exchange opens in
Wall Street
1818: The USA and British sign a treaty to jointly
control the Oregon Territory (Oregon, Washington,
Idaho and southwestern Canada)
1819: an economic depression hits the farmers of the
south and the west
Feb 1819: the USA acquires Florida from Spain
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Jun 1819: the "Savannah" completes the first
transatlantic crossing by a steamboat (18 days)
1820: the population of New York City is 123,700
1820: 72% of workers work in agriculture
Mar 1820: The "Missouri compromise" allows the
creation of the slave state of Missouri in exchange for
the creation of the nonslave state of Maine and sets a
line dividing slave states and non-slave states
Jan 1821: The USA citizen Moses Austin obtains
Spain's permission to establish a colony of
Anglosaxons in Texas
1821: New Spain declares independence from Spain
and changes its name to Mexican Empire (Mexico,
California, Texas, Central America)
1821: Stephen Austin leads 300 families to Texas
Dec 1823: James Monroe proclaims the doctrine that
the USA will police the entire American continent
against European interference
1823: Jedediah Smith discovers the South Pass of
Wyoming's Rocky Mountains into the future Utah
1824: only 5% of adult USA citizens vote in the
presidential elections
Oct 1825: the Erie Canal is inaugurated
Oct 1826: James Smithson bequeaths his fortune to
founding the Smithsonian Institution "for the increase
and diffusion of knowledge among men"
Apr 1827: John Walker invents the matches
1827: Abraham Brower inaugurates the first horsedriven omnibus service in the USA (along Broadway
in New York)
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in New York)
1828: The Democratic-Republican Party splits in two
parties
Jul 1829: William Austin Burt invents the typewriter
Apr 1830: Joseph Smith founds the Mormon Church
May 1830: the USA Congress approves a law to
resettle Indians further west
Sep 1830: the first National Negro Convention meets
in Philadelphia
1830: the USA is the sixth industrial power of the
world
1830: An overland trail is opened to Los Angeles that
brings Anglosaxon colonists to Mexico's California
Aug 1831: the black slave Nat Turner leads a slave
revolt that kills 60 white people in Virginia
Jul 1831: Cyrus McCormick invents the mechanical
harvesting machine
May 1832: Indians are massacred in Illinois for not
abandoning their homeland
1832: Sam Houston arrives in Mexican Texas and
begins scheming for independence
1832: John Stephenson builds the first horse-drawn
streetcar (running on rails) in the USA (along Bowery
Street in New York)
1833: Chicago has a population of 350
1835: Samuel Colt invents the revolver
Mar 1836: Mexico's dictator Santa Anna crushes a
Texan uprising at the battle of the Alamo (San
Antonio), but general Sam Houston defeats the
Spanish and Texas declares its independence with
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Houson as president
1837: an economic depression follows a wave of
speculation
1837: John Deere invents the steel plow
Apr 1837: Samuel Morse invents a code for the
telegraph
1838: The Cherokee are massacred while being
resettled in Oklahoma
1839: Yellow fever kills 12% of Houston's population
1839: Charles Goodyear develops a process to
vulcanize rubber (to make it elastic)
1839: An expedition led by John Stephens and
Frederick Catherwood rediscovers the Maya ruins
1840: Robert Hoe builds the first type-revolving press
1840: California's population is 15,000
1840: Chicago has a population of 5000
1841: Kentucky trapper William Wolfskill opens the
first orange grove in California
1842: Richard Owen discovers the first fossils of
dinosaurs
1842: New York builds the Croton Aqueduct
Apr 1842: The New York Philharmonic symphony
orchestra is founded
1843: Mass migration towards Oregon
1844: the USA has over 5,000 kms of railway (3,000 in
Britain, 2,000 in Germany, 500 in France)
May 1844: Samuel Morse sends the first public
telegraph
Jul 1844: The Treaty of Wangxia between China and
the USA opens five Chinese ports to the USA
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the USA opens five Chinese ports to the USA
Dec 1844: James Polk is elected president (with a
margin of 38 thousand votes out of 2.7 million votes)
on a platform to annex Texas
Mar 1845: The first Jew ever is elected to the USA
Congress and takes office (Lewis Charles Levin)
May 1845: slave owners found the protestant
denomination called "Southern Baptists"
Sep 1845: Alexander Cartwright invents the sport of
baseball
Oct 1845: Texas is annexed by the USA
Apr 1846: the USA provokes a war with Mexico
1846: The Oregon Territory is split between the USA
and British Canada
1846: A wagon train of 81 pioneers (the "Donner
Party") is decimated by bad weather
1846: the Marble Palace opens in New York, the first
department store
1846: Five daily newspapers in New York City
organize the Associated Press to share the costs of
collecting and broadcasting news
1847: the chocolate bar is introduced by Frys
1847: Yerba Buena (459 inhabitants) changes name
to San Francisco
1848: the first Chinese immigrants arrive in the USA
Jan 1848: James Marshall, a worker of Johann
Sutter's sawmill, discovers gold in California, a region
whose population is 6,000, and the "gold rush"
begins
Feb 1848: at the end of the Mexican war, the USA
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acquires New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona, Utah and
California (almost half of Mexico)
Jul 1848: the first woman's right convention is held
near New York
Aug 1848: Oregon Territory
1848: John Curtis invents chewing gum
Aug 1849: Vanderbilt establishes a coach service
from New Orleans to California via Nicaragua and
Mexico
1849: 64% of Southern cotton is for export, mainly via
Northern trading companies and Northern ports, and
mainly to Britain
1850: Henry and Mayer Lehman found the brokerage
house Lehman Brothers (for buyers and sellers of
cotton)
1850: California's population is 165,000, Los Angeles'
population is 8,329
Sep 1850: California becomes the 31st state
Aug 1851: Isaac Singer begins selling the sewing
machine
Sep 1851: the New York Times is founded
1851: The population of the USA is 20,067,720 free
persons and 2,077,034 slaves
1852: Harriet Stowe publishes an anti-slavery novel,
"Uncle Tom's Cabin"
1852: The first public bathhouse opens in New York
1852: Southern plantation owners derails the
Homestead Bill in the Senate
1852: Elisha Graves Otis builds the first elevator in
New York
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New York
1853: A railway between New York and CHicago is
inaugurated
1853: Elisha Otis founds the Otis Elevator Company
in Yonkers (New York)
1853: Levi Strauss invents "blue jeans" in San
Francisco
1854: Congress creates the territories of Kansas and
Nebraska
1854: The USA forces Japan to sign a trade
agreement ("treaty of Kanagawa") which reopens
Japan to foreigners after two centuries (Matthew
Perry's expedition)
1854: Abraham Gesner invents kerosene, based on
coal
1856: The New York and Mississippi Valley Printing
Telegraph Company renames itself Western Union,
the largest telegraph company in the country
1857: George Pullman invents the bus
1857: The magazine The Atlantic is founded in
Boston
1857: Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux
design Central Park in New York
1858: a telegraph wire is laid at the bottom of the
ocean between Ireland and Canada
1858: the USA stock market crash spawns an
international market crash
1858: William Parker Foulke discovers the world's
first full dinosaur skeleton (in Haddonfield, New
Jersey)
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1858: in the elections for senator of Illinois, Lincoln
challenges the incumbent to a series of face-to-face
debates, widely publicized throughout the nation
(Lincoln loses)
1859: Edwin Drake strikes oil in Pennsylvania and
launches the first oil boom in the world
1859: John Brown leads an uprising against slavery
but is captured and hanged
1859: The French Opera House opens in New
Orleans, the first opera house in the USA
1859: the USA produces 2/3rds of the world cotton
1859: the Great Atlantic Tea Company (1859) is
founded, the first chain-store system
1860: cotton represents three fifths of all United
States exports
1860: The population of the USA (31 million) passes
the population of Britain (29 million)
1860: President Buchanan vetoes the Homestead Bill
despised by Southern plantation owners
1860: the population of New York City is 814,000
1860: Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln is
elected president although he gains only 40% of the
popular vote
1860: Josiah Dwight Whitney founds the California
Geological Survey
1860: eleven southern states secede from the Union
on the grounds that Lincoln wants to abolish slavery,
and form the Confederate States of America
1860: Chicago has 100 thousand people
1860: California's population is 380,000 of which
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1860: California's population is 380,000 of which
34,000 are Chinese, 34,000 are Irish and 20,000 are
Germans
1861: Civil war erupts between the northern
("unionist") states and the southern ("confederate")
states (26.2 million versus 8.1 million)
1861: The Bethlehem Iron Company builds its first
blast furnace
1861: The territories of Nevada and Colorado are
organized
1861: Western Union completes the first
transcontinental telegraph line across North America
1861: Yale University awards the first PhD west of the
Atlantic
1861: The first oil tanker sails off from Philadelphia
1862: John Rockefeller founds a company to refine
oil (later renamed Standard Oil)
Dec 1862: 38 Dakota Indians are executed in Mankato
(Minnesota), accused of killing 490 settlers
Jan 1863: Abraham Lincoln signs the Emancipation
Proclamation and the Homestead Act (granting 0.6
square kms of land to anyone willing to develop the
land for five years)
1863: The territories of Arizona and Idaho are
organized
1863: James Plimpton invents the rollerskates
1863: Henry Dunant founds the International
Committee for Relief to the Wounded (later renamed
the "Red Cross")
1863: The Union wins the battle of Gettysburg
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(Pennsylvania)
1864: The Frontier is rapidly settled and new states
enter the Union, starting with Nevada
1864: All the major powers agree at the Geneva
convention on rules for the treatment of prisoners of
war
Apr 1865: The Union, led by general Ulysses Grant,
defeats the Confederates, slavery is abolished (13th
amendment of the constitution) and blacks are given
the right to vote (370,000 Union citizens and soldiers
and 258,000 Confederate citizens and soldiers have
died)
1865: 15,000,000 Africans have been deported in the
Americas since the slave trade began, and 30-40
million have died before reaching the Americas
1865: the first "minstrels" are formed in Georgia
1865: the population of the "indians" (native
Americans) is 294,000
1865: the "Salvation Army" is founded
1865: president Lincoln is assassinated
1866: "The Black Crook", combining drama, music
and ballet, is the first musical
1866: The "Ku Klux Klan" is founded in Tennessee
by former Confederate army officers to persecute
African-Americans
1867: the USA buys Alaska from Russia
1867: The price of oil drops to $2.40/barrel from the
peak of $13.75 a barrel
1867: George Peabody establishes the Peabody
Fund, the first foundation
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Fund, the first foundation
1867: Britain creates the Dominion of Canada, a selfgoverning federation of provinces that formally
recognize the British monarchy
1867: at Bright Hope, the first major coal-mine
disaster catastrophe claims 69 lives
1867: The Pullman Palace Car Company is founded
by George Pullman to manufacture railroad cars
1868: the 14th amendment of the constitution grants
blacks the same rights as whites
1868: The first campus of the University of California
opens in Berkeley
1868: Christopher Latham Sholes invents a better
kind of typewriter
1869: The Union and Central Pacific railroads meet in
Ogden, Utah, and create the first transcontinental
railroad (Western Pacific between Oakland and
Sacramento, the Central Pacific between Sacramento
and Utah and the Union Pacific between Utah and the
Missouri River)
1869: Charles Eliot becomes president of Harvard
University and turns it into a German-style university
with emphasis on research and a graduate degree
1869: William Cameron Coup founds the first giant
circus
1869: the first "football" game between colleges is
held, which is actually a variant of rugby (real football
will be renamed "soccer" in the USA)
1869: Goldman Sachs is founded by German
immigrant Marcus Goldman and (in 1882) Goldman's
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son-in-law Samuel Sachs
1870: universal male suffrace
1870: The Metropolitan Museum of Art is founded in
New York
1870: the 15th amendment of the constitution
protects the right of blacks to vote (granted in 1865)
1870: the population of the USA is 38.5 million and the
population west of the Mississippi is 6,877,000 (Los
Angeles has 5,728 people)
1870: Victoria Woodhull advocates free love in her
"Weekly" magazine
1870: Charles Dowd divides the USA into "time
zones"
1871: the National Rifle Association is founded
1871: Korea expels the ships sent by the USA to open
up its ports
1871: The Great Chicago Fire - 18,000 houses burn in
the fire of Chicago
1871: The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company,
better known as A&P, expands from New York to
Chicago, pioneering the "chain" approach
1871: Western Union introduces money transfer
1871: a white crowd kills 19 Chinese in Los Angeles
1872: Chicago's salesman Aaron Montgomery Ward
sends out the first mail-order catalog
1872: Yellowstone National Park is established, the
world's first national park
1872: Victoria Woodhull is the first woman to run for
president of the USA
1873: the first San Francisco cable car is inaugurated
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1873: the first San Francisco cable car is inaugurated
1873: Eliza Thompson from Ohio leads a nationwide
crusade against alcohol
1873: Christopher Latham Sholes invents the
QWERTY keyboard (1873), which Remington begins
to mass produce
1873: an economic depression causes rise in
unemployment and bankrupcies
1873: the USA adopts the gold standard
1873: USA magnate Andrew Carnegie donates
thousands of organs to churches
1874: Buchanan Eads builds a steel bridge across
the Mississippi at St Louis
1874: the Woman's Christian Temperance Union is
founded
1875: Ottmar Mergenthaler builds the first linotype (in
Baltimore)
1875: Helena Blavatsky founds the Theosophical
Society
1876: Sioux chief Crazy Horse defeat the USA cavalry
at Powder River
1876: Pico Canyon Oilfield, near Los Angeles, is the
first major oil field in the Far West
1876: Western Union declares that "the wireless
music box has no imaginable commercial value"
1876: Sioux chief Sitting Bull leads the Sioux and
Cheyennes to victory against the USA cavalry at the
Rosebud (Montana)
1876: Thomas Edison opens a research lab in Menlo
Park, 80 kms from New York
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1876: general Custer and his troops are massacred
by Sioux Indians at Little Big Horn
1876: railroad magnate Leland Stanford purchases a
ranch in California and renames it Palo Alto
1876: Alexander Bell demonstrates the telephone
1877: Thomas Edison invents the phonograph that
uses cylinders
1877: Alexander Bell installs the world's first
commercial telephone service
1877: Hayes is elected president after a disputed
election and the "Reconstruction" is de facto over
1877: the Washington Post is founded
1877: Strikes spread nation-wide among railroad
workes
1877: Edison develops a better telephone than Bell's
for Western Union
1878: New Haven publishes the first telephone
directory (with 50 names in it)
1878: Theodore Vail is hired as general manager of
the American Bell Telephone Company and files a
lawsuit against Western Union over the patent of the
telephone, obtaining Wester Union's technology
(developed by Edison)
1879: Thomas Edison invents the light bulb
1879: Frank Woolworth founds a retail store in
Lancaster
1880: men outnumber women by more than 2 to 1 in
Colorado, Nevada and Arizona
1880: 100,000 male Chinese and only 3,000 female
Chinese live in the western USA
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Chinese live in the western USA
1880: The population of the USA is 50 million
1880: California's population is 865,000
1880: The Salvation Army opens a chapter in the USA
1880: the median age is 21
1880: The Pullman Palace Car Company builds its
own town, Pullman, near Chicago
1881: Sitting Bull surrenders
1881: A wave of anti-Jewish pogroms in Russia
causes mass migrations of eastern European Jews
(2.5 million Jews settle in the United States,
thousands settle in Palestine)
1881: Youstol Dispage Fromscaruffi dies
1882: bandit Jesse James is assassinated
1882: Thomas Edison inaugurates the first electrical
power plant (in New York)
1882: Chicago passes Philadelphia as the second
largest city
1882: The USA bans Chinese immigrants for ten
years and forbids existing Chinese immigrants from
becoming USA citizens (renewed and made
permanent in 1902)
1882: John Slater establishes the first philanthropy
devoted to education for blacks
Nov 1883: the railroads divide the USA in four time
zones to standardize their schedules
1883: the second transcontinental railroad is
inaugurated by Northern Pacific Railroad
1883: Hiram Maxim invents the machine gun
1883: designed by John-Augustus Roebling, and
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completed by his son, the Brooklyn Bridge is
inaugurated in New York City, the longest suspension
bridge in the world
1884: LeMarcus Thompson builds the first USA
rollercoaster in Coney Island, Brooklyn, New York
1884: The first iron mine opens in the Gogebic Range
(Michigan and Wisconsin)
1892: The first iron mine opens in the Mesabi Range
(Minnesota)
TM, ®, Copyright © 2008 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
1884: James Ritty invents the cash register
1885: the Santa Fe Railroad reaches Los Angeles
1885: popcorn carts are introduced in fairs
1885: William Le Baron Jenney builds a ten-story
building for the Home Insurance Company in
Chicago, the first building to use a metal skeleton
1885: William Burroughs develops an adding
machine
1885: white miners kill 28 Chinese workers in
Wyoming
1885: Bell incorporates the American Telephone and
Telegraph Company (AT&T) to build and operate the
long distance telephone network, and Theodore Vail
becomes its president
1886: The American Federation of Labor (AFL) is
founded in Columbus (Ohio) by Samuel Gompers
1886: the Atlanta pharmacist John Pemberton invents
"Coca-Cola", a drink based on coca leaves
1886: The mob in Seattle expels the Chinese
community
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community
1886: A Santa Clara County court rules for the
Southern Pacific railroad that corporations are
persons and have rights like human beings
1886: Josephine Cochrane invents the dishwasher
1886: a bomb set off by anarchists kills 11 people in
Chicago
1886: George Westinghouse founds the
Westinghouse Electric Company
1887: Emile Berliner invents the platter/gramophone
record to play music
1887: The Santa Fe railway reaches Los Angeles
1888: Thomas Adams begins selling chewing gum in
a vending machine in New York
1888: Frank Sprague installs electric streetcars in
Richmond (Virginia)
1888: George Eastman introduces the first consumer
camera, the "Kodak"
1888: Nikola Tesla invents the alternating-current
motor
1888: The National Geographic Society is is
established
1889: Apache chief Geronimo surrenders
1889: Thomas Edison's business empire is
consolidated in the Edison General Electrical
Company
1889: The first Conference of American States is held
in Washington
1889: Andrew Carnegie writes "The Gospel of
Wealth", encouraging philanthropy
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1889: Columbia Phonograph is founded to
manufacture dictaphones
1889: George Fuller builds the Tacoma Building in
Chicago, the first skyscraper (steel structure,
elevators)
1889: for the first time, the USA produces more steel
than Britain
1889: the first "Oklahoma opening" to auction off
frontier territory
1889: Adolphus and Arthur Caille invent the slot
machine
TM, ®, Copyright © 2003 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
1890: Hermann Hollerith's tabulator is chosen for the
national census
Dec 1890: The army massacres the Lakotas in South
Dakota ("Wounded Knee Massacre"), the last battle of
the "Indian wars"
1890: The USA enacts the Sherman Antitrust Act to
limit the power of monopolies
1890: The population west of the Mississippi is
16,776,000
1890: female journalist Nellie Bly travels around the
world in 72 days
1890: The work week in the USA is 60 hours
1890: Congress passes the Anti-Trust Act to protect
against monopolies
1890: USA soldiers massacre 200 Sioux men, women
and children at Wounded Knee (South Dakota), the
last "Indian war"
1891: USA oil accounts for 78% of illuminating oil
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1891: USA oil accounts for 78% of illuminating oil
exports vs 29% of Russia
1891: Westinghouse builds the world's first
commercial alternating-current system (based on
Tesla's patent) in Colorado
1891: John Burgess founds the first graduate school
at Columbia University
1891: eleven Italians are lynched in New Orleans
1891: Jesse Reno invents the escalator
1891: Leland Stanford establishes a new university in
Palo Alto, the Stanford University
1892: Edward Doheny strikes oil in Los Angeles
1892: Thomas Edison's Edison General Electrical
Company merges with Thompson-Houston and
becomes General Electric
1892: popular music becomes big business and
music publishers rent offices around 28th Street in
New York City, "Tin Pan Alley"
1892: the "Great Northern Railroad" is completed
1892: John Muir founds the "Sierra Club", the first
environmental organizations
1892: the Coca Cola company is founded in Atlanta
1893: Mafia boss Don Vito Cascio Ferro flees from
Sicily to New York and exports the mafia to the USA
1893: Chicago's Columbian Exposition
1893: Chicago's Richard Warren Sears and Alvah
Curtis Roebuck found a mail-order catalog
1893: The Chicago Columbian Exposition focuses on
electricity and is the largest world fair ever
1893: George Ferris builds the first Ferris Wheel for
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the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago
1893: an economic depression causes
unemployment and bankrupcies
TM, ®, Copyright © 2005 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
1893: the first shopping center opens in Cleveland
1893: Interior minister Lorrin Thurston (son of USA
missionaries) overthrows the monarchy of Hawaii
and appoints Sanford Dole (also son of USA
missionaries) as its first president
1894: the magazine "Billboard" is founded
1894: Jacob Coxey leads protesters on a march from
Ohio to Washington
1894: the Society of Women in the Wilderness creates
a utopian community in Pennsylvania
1894: the USA limits Japanese immigration
1895: the first professional "football" game is held (a
different kind of football)
1895: Joseph Pulitzer's New York World and William
Randolph Hearst's New York Journal engage in
"yellow journalism" (fake news)
1895: The Livermore company opens a 35 km
hydroelectric power line to bring electricity from
Folsom to Sacramento, with water powering four
colossal electrical generators (dynamos), the first
time that high-voltage alternating current had been
successfully conducted over a long distance
1896: Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse build a
hydro-electric power plant to bring electricity from
Niagara Falls to Buffalo
1896: Ford builds his first car
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1896: Ford builds his first car
1896: Jesse Reno builds the first escalator at Coney
Island
1896: The Republicans win elections and consolidate
a huge majority
1896: the USA dominates the first modern Olympic
Games in Athens, winning 9 of 15 events
1896: the first "ragtime" record is cut
1897: the first car is sold in Los Angeles
1897: the first movies to advertise products are
shown in theaters
1897: Klondike gold rush in Alaska
Feb 1898: The USA goes to war against Spain after a
warship explodes (probably by accident) in Havana,
and Spain is rapidly defeated (345 soldiers of the USA
die)
1898: Frederick Taylor at Bethlehem Steel pioneers
"scientific management"
1898: New York is extended beyong Manhattan by
annexing neighboring cities and reaches 3.5 million
inhabitants, the second largest city in the world after
London
1898: Caleb Bradham of North Carolina invents
"Pepsi-Cola", another drink based on coca leaves
1898: the USA navy builds its first submarines
1898: The USA annexes Hawaii
1899: the coal output in Pennsylvania alone is more
than 54,000,000 tons
Jan 1899: Emilio Aguinaldo leads a rebellion against
the USA in the Philippines
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1899: The MIT publishes the Technology Review, the
first technology magazine
1899: 2 billion cigarettes are sold in the USA
1899: The USA obtains eastern Samoa from Australia
Jan 1899: Emilio Aguinaldo leads a rebellion against
the USA in the Philippines
1900: the first mass-market camera, the "Brownie" is
introduced by Kodak
1900: The largest city in Texas is San Antonio with a
population of 53 thousand
1900: A six-room house costs $3,000 to buy
1900: Los Angeles' population is 100,000
1900: 2,300 automobiles are registered in the USA, of
which 1,170 are steam-powered, 800 are electric, and
400 are gasoline-powered
1900: Benjamin Holt invents the tractor
1900: the anti-western Boxer (Yihetuan) Rebellion in
China is crushed by foreign troops (primarily USA
marines)
1900: 5% of USA households own a telephone
1900: Life expectancy in the USA is 47.3
1900: the USA's population is 76 million or 89 million
1901: one million people emigrate from Europe to the
USA in just one year
1901: Henry Huntington founds the Pacific Electric
Railroad to create a network of trolley cars and a
network of new suburbs around Los Angeles (and
becomes one of the richest men in the USA thanks to
land speculation)
1901: J. Pierpont Morgan acquires Carnegie Steel
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1901: J. Pierpont Morgan acquires Carnegie Steel
Company from Andrew Carnegie and Henry Phipps,
merges it with Elbert Gary's Federal Steel Company
and Judge Moore's National Steel Company, and
founds U.S. Steel
1901: Melville Clark builds the first full 88-key player
piano
1901: 16,000 patents are filed in just one year
1901: John Pierpont Morgan creates U.S. Steel in
Pittsburgh
1901: George Cohan stages his first musical show
1901: the first record by an African-American
musician is cut
1901: King Camp Gillette invents the razor
1901: oil is discovered near Beaumont, Texas, and in
Oklahoma
1901: Andrew Mellon founds the Gulf Oil Company in
Texas and Joseph Cullinan founds the Texas Fuel
Company (later Texaco)
1901: Ransome Eli Olds introduces the Curved Dash
Oldsmobile and thereby starts the Detroit automobile
industry
1902: president William McKinley is assassinated by
an anarchist
Apr 1902: The Filipino rebels surrender to the USA in
the Philippines after 220,000 Filipinos and more than
4,000 US soldiers have been killed
1902: Frank Hardart and Joseph Horn launch the first
Horn & Hardart Automat in Philadelphia, which soon
becomes the first chain of restaurants
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1902: Caffeine replaces cocaine in the formula for
Coca-Cola
1902: Willis Carrier invents the air conditioner
1902: oil is discovered in Texas
1902: George Fuller builds the Flatiron Building in
New York, one of New York's first skyscrapers
1902: irrigation of the western lands begins
1902: a female journalist, Ida-Minerva Tarbell,
exposes Standard Oil's dubious practices
1903: Wilbur and Orville Wright fly the first airplane at
Kitty Hawk in North Carolina
1903: the USA produces 11,200 cars (1,700 from Ford)
1903: the first World Series of baseball are held
1904: Coca-Cola is the most recognized brand name
in the USA
1904: George Hale opens the observatory of Mt
Wilson, near Los Angeles, with the largest telescope
ever br>1904: Amadeo Giannini founds the Bank of
Italy
1904: the New York subway opens
1904: Harvey Hubbell invents the electrical plug and
socket
1905: Ford leaves Cadillac and founds the Ford Motor
Company
1905: The "San Pedro, Los Angeles & Salt Lake
Railroad" from Salt Lake City to southern California is
completed
1905: The city of Las Vegas is founded in Nevada
1905: a huge oil field is discovered in Oklahoma (the
"Glenn Pool")
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"Glenn Pool")
1905: the first gas station opens in St Louis
1905: the first Nickelodeon (movie theater) opens in
Pennsylvania
1905: more than one million immigrants enter the USA
in just one year
1905: Detroit is the main center for car manufacturing
in the USA
1906: the San Francisco earthquake and fire
1906: San Francisco segregates all Oriental children
in one Chinatown school
1906: US Steel opens the largest integrated steel mill
in the world near Chicago, Gary Works
1906: a Stanley Steamer steam-powered car, built by
Freelan and Francis Stanley, sets the world record for
speed (205 km/h)
1907: Leo Baekeland invents the first plastic
("bakelite")
1907: Detroit Electric begins manufacturing electric
cars
1907: The USA sends its new navy on a tour around
the world
1907: at Monongah, the worst coal disaster of all
times kills 361 miners
1907: the Warner Brothers film company is founded
1907: George Freeth surfs from Hawaii to California
1907: in the USA there is a car every 800 people
1907: The first gasoline station is inaugurated in St
Louis
1908: Ford introduces the Model T, the first mass
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vehicle
1908: Thor, by the Hurley Machine Company of
Chicago, is the first electric-powered washing
machine
1908: People in the USA mail 677,777,798 postcards
out of a population of 88,700,000
1908: Texas builds a ship channel to connect
Houston with the sea
1908: William D'Arcy discovers oil in Iran
1908: Durant founds General Motors in Detroit
1908: six cars race from NewYork to Parigi via Siberia
in 5 months
1908: Harvard creates the Graduate School of
Business Administration
1909: the average hourly salary in the USA is $0.19
1909: the Metlife tower in Madison Square is the
tallest building in the world
1909: The USA forces the dissolution of Standard Oil,
an event that creates Chevron, Mobil, Amoco, etc
1910: Los Angeles opens the first international airport
in the USA
1910: Los Angeles' population reaches 300,000
1910: The Boy Scouts of America are established
1910: California produces 22% of the world's oil
(more than any country in the world except the USA)
1910: 350,000 pianos are manufactured in the USA
1910: Nevada becomes the last western state to
outlaw gaming
1910: the "Boy Scouts" are founded
1910: the success of Victor Herbert's "Naughty
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1910: the success of Victor Herbert's "Naughty
Marietta" (1910) imports "operetta" to the USA
1910: the NAACP is founded to protect the rights of
African Americans
1910: the Wurlitzer company invents an organ with
special sound effects to accompany silent films
1910: the first Nickelodeon (movie) theater opens in
Los Angeles
1910: the first film is shot in Hollywood (by DW
Griffith)
1910: The Bible Institute of Los Angeles begins
publishing the "Fundamentals", the manifesto of
Christian fundamenalism
1910: a bomb killa 20 people in Los Angeles
1911: the antitrust law dissolves Rockefeller's
financial empire (Standard Oil Company)
1911: Sales of gasoline exceed sales of kerosene
1911: Chevrolet is founded
1911: General Electric introduces the first commercial
refrigerator
1911: A fire kills 146 workers in a New York factory
1911: Hollerith's Tabulating Machine Company is
acquired by a new company that will change name to
International Bussiness Machines (IBM) in 1924
1912: New Mexico and Arizona become states
1912: All the stores affiliated with Woolworth merge,
creating a retail chain of 596 stores
1912: A&P operates 400 stores and inaugurates the
no-frill store
1912: the first blues record is cut
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1912: the USA sends marines to protect the dictator
of Nicaragua
1912: Carl Laemmle founds Universal, the first major
film studio
1913: John Rockefeller is worth $212 billions, 1/44th
of the USA economy, and establishes the Rockefeller
Foundation "to promote the well-being of mankind
throughout the world"
1913: The Lincoln Highway, the first transcontinental
highway, opens, linking New York and San Francisco
1913: William Mulholland completes the Los Angeles
aqueduct
1913: the police and militia kill 14 strikers at Ludlow
Oct 1913: Ford installs the first assembly line (at
Highland Park)
1913: 2% of USA citizens control 60% of the national
product (Morgan and Rockefeller alone control 20% )
1913: Grand Central Station is inaugurated in New
York
1913: the Woolworth Building opens in New York, the
tallest building in the world
1913: Bell sells Wester Union to avoid antitrust
proceedings
1913: The Federal Reserve is created
1914: the USA and Panama open the Panama Canal
1914: For the first time senators are elected directly
by the people instead of being appointed by state
legislatures
1914: composer Jerome Kern invents the "musical"
by integrating music, drama and ballet
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by integrating music, drama and ballet
1914: Robert Goddard invents the liquid-fuel rocket
1914: World War I begins
1914: Ford's market share of the car market is 48%
1914: Marcus Garvey founds the "Universal Negro
Improvement Association"
1914: The Federal income tax is introduced
1914: The first scheduled passenger airline service is
started in Florida by Percival Fansler, the St
Petersburg-Tampa Airboat Line, using Thomas
Benoist's "flying boat" piloted by Tony Jannus, flying
between St Petersburg and Tampa (34 km) in 23
minutes instead of the two hours it took by steamship
1915: the "Ku Klux Klan" is refounded in Georgia as a
racist organization by William Simmons, persecuting
Catholics and Jews as well as Blacks
1915: The government forces the dissolution of
Edison movie trust
1915: the USA has 100 million people, of which 1315% are foreign-born
1915: AT&T's long-distance telephone service
reaches San Francisco
1915: the USA sends marines to restore order in Haiti
1915: A German submarine sinks the USA ship
Lusitania killing 120 people
TM, ®, Copyright © 2003 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
1916: the USA produces 1.5 million cars
1916: Polish immigrant Nathan Handwerker opens
Nathan's Famous hot-dog stand in Coney Island that
soon becomes the first fast-food chain
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1916: Margaret Sanger and Ethel Byrne open the first
birth control clinic in the USA
1916: Margaret Sanger founds the National Birth
Control League (later renamed Planned Parenthood)
1916: for the first time a woman is elected to the USA
COngress (Jeannette Rankin)
1916: Merrill Lynch is founded
1916: William Fox founds the Fox studios in
Hollywood
1916: Adolph Zukor founds the Paramount studios
1916: Los Angeles has 1700 kms of trolley lines
1916: the USA signs a treaty with Nicaragua to build a
canal
1916: the USA establishes a military government over
the Dominican Republic
1916: There are 3.4 million cars in the USA
1916: William Boeing founds a company to
manufacture airplanes
1917: 40% of USA households own a telephone
April 1917: The USA enters World War I on the side of
Britain and France against Germany
1917: Columbia University establishes the Pulitzer
Prize
1917: The USA accounts for 67% of the world's oil
output
1917: the first jazz record is cut in New York
1917: Denmark sells the islands of St Thomas, St
Croix and St John to the United States
1918: the USA post office inaugurates "air mail"
(between New York and Washington)
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(between New York and Washington)
1918: Walter Jacobs in Chicago founds a car-rental
business that becomes Hertz in 1923
1918: an epidemics of influenza kills 20 million people
worldwide (500,000 in the USA)
1918: the first world war ends: 2 million Russians, 1.8
million Germans, 1.3 million French, 1.1 million
Austro-Hungarians, 0.9 million Britons, 0.6 million
Turks and 0.5 million Italians are dead.
TM, ®, Copyright © 2005 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
1919: the USA overtakes Europe as total industrial
output
1919: Barnum and Bailey's circus merges with the
Ringling Brothers to form the "Ringling Brothers and
Barnum and Bailey Circus"
1920: KDKA (Pittsburgh) is the first commercial radio
station in the USA
1920: The USA has one car for every 13 people and
Los Angeles has one car for every 5 people (Britain: 1
for every 228, Germany 1 for every 1017)
1920: 43% of the population of Hawaii is Japanese
1920: the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is
founded
1920: The population of the USA is 105 million
1920: the USA has more urban than rural dwellers
1920: eight million USA citizens own a car
1920: A law is enacted by parliament against the veto
of the president that outlaws alcohol ("Prohibition")
1920: universal female suffrage
1920: Earle Dickson invents the band-aid
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1920: a bomb kills 30 people in Manhattan
1920: attorney general Mitchell Palmer has 6,000
people arrested for communist activities ("red scare")
1920: The USA founds the Black Chamber to spy on
telegrams
1921: the first wirephoto is sent by Western Union
Jul 1921: David Sarnoff at RCA backs the nationwide
broadcasting of a boxing match
1921: Rudolph Valentino becomes the first male sex
symbol
1921: 43 billion cigarettes are sold in the USA
1921: General Motors introduces cars for every
market bracket
1921: The film "The Four Horsemen of the
Apocalypse" turns Rudolph Valentino into a star and
creates the stereotype of the "Latin lover"
Nov 1921: The USA, Britain and Japan agree to
reduce their navies at the Washington Conference
1922: the "Country Club Plaza" opens near Kansas
City, the first shopping mall
Feb 1922: Britain, the USA, France, Japan and Italy
sign the Washington Naval Treaty to limit the size of
their navies
1922: Time Magazine is launched
1922: there are 60,000 radios in the USA
1923: Garrett Morgan invents a three-way traffic
signal
1923: Unemployment is 2.4%
1923: The Springfield is the first car with a radio
1923: president Warren Harding dies and is replaced
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1923: president Warren Harding dies and is replaced
by Calvin Coolidge
1923: Roy Allen and Frank Wright's A&W Root Beer
opens a drive-in branch in Sacramento, becoming the
first drive-in chain
1924: the USA Congress passes the "Exclusion Act",
that prohibits further immigration from Japan
1924: The Society for Human Rights is founded in
Chicago to promote homosexual rights
1924: boom of the stock market
1924: Metro and Mayer merge into MGM
1924: three million USA citizens are members of the
"Ku Klux Klan"
1924: 441,000 cars are registered in Los Angeles
1925: Wyoming' Nellie Tayloe Ross becomes the first
woman governor in the history of the USA
1925: Cellophane is introduced
1925: Burroughs introduces a portable adding
machine
1925: Alphonse Capone rules the Mafia
Dec 1925: The Milestone Motel opens in San Luis
Obispo, the first motel
1926: Robert Goddard launches the first liquid-fueled
rocket
1926: James McKinsey founds the management
consulting firm McKinsey
1926: Atlanta opens the largest theater in the world,
renamed "Roxy" in 1938
1926: A road connects Las Vegas to California
(Highway 91)
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1926: films with synchronized voice and music are
introduced
1926: The second oil rush in Oklahoma
1926: Robert Goddard launches the first liquid fueled
rocket
1926: Hugo Gernsback founds the first sciencefiction magazine, "Amazing Stories"
1926: Vitaphone introduces 16-inch acetate-coated
shellac discs playing at 33 1/3 RPM (a size and speed
calculated to be equivalent to a reel of film)
1926: the Atlanta airport opens
1927: the Scotch tape is introduced
1927: sales of "race records" reach $100 million
1927: General Motors sells more than one million cars
and moves head of Ford
1927: the juke-box is introduced by Automatic Music
Instrument
1927: Pan American World Airways is founded
1927: Philo Farnsworth invents the television in San
Francisco
1927: The pipe-organ becomes the most popular
instrument in the USA (2,400 sold in one year)
1927: anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti are sentenced to
death
1927: Lindberg flies from New York to Paris
1928: first daily passenger flight between Los
Angeles and San Francisco
1928: Texas passes California as the main producer
of oil
1928: William Randolph Hearst's news empire
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1928: William Randolph Hearst's news empire
reaches a circulation and revenue peak
1928: the Philadelphia accountant Walter Diemer
invents bubblegum
1928: seven gangsters are killed on San Valentine's
day
1928: Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks create the animated
character Mickey Mouse
1929: Herbert Hoover is elected president
1929: 78% of the world's cars are in the USA
1929: between may 1928 and september 1929 stock
prices climb 40%
1929: the USA produces 4.5 million cars, compared
with France's 211,000 and Britain's 182,000
1929: there are 10 million radios in the USA
1929: stock markets crash around the world ("great
depression")
1929: the richest 1% owns 40% of the nation's
wealth, while workers' productivity has increased
43% since 1919
1929: William Gericke invnts hydroponics, a way to
grow food without soil
1930: Frank Whittle patents the first jet engine
1930: The population of the USA is 138 million
1930: The USA post office refuses to deliver any mail
coming from Spain that bears a stamp depicting
Goya's masterpiece "Maja Desnuda"
1930: Britain, Japan, France, Italy and the USA sign
the London Naval Treaty, an agreement to reduce
naval warfare
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1930: Clyde William Tombaugh discovers a ninth
planet, Pluto
1930: the Bank of Italy is renamed Bank of America
1930: TWA is founded to transport mail by plane
1930: five big studios (Fox, MGM, Paramount, RKO
and Warner) control the majority of USA movies
1930: William Fard founds the "Nation of Islam" in
Detroit
1930: Polystyrene is invented
1930: Ellen Church, a nurse, becomes the first
airplane stewardess (for Boeing)
1930: the popularity of radios causes a decline in the
sales of records
1930: the Chrysler Building in New York is completed,
the tallest building in the world
1930: the population of the USA is 120 million
1930: most immigrants to the USA are Italians
1930: the GDP of the USA falls 9.4% from the year
before and unemployment reaches 8.7%
1930: Second oil rush in Texas
1931: Alphonse Capone is imprisoned for life
1931: The USA deports 138,000 Mexicans (half a
million between 1929 and 1935)
1931: The price of oil plunges to $0.15/barrel
1931: Last "tong" war between rival Chinese gangs
1931: Congress votes to make "The Star-Spangled
Banner" the official anthem of the USA
1931: Canada declares its independence
1931: the Empire State Building, the tallest building in
the world of all times, opens in New York
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the world of all times, opens in New York
1931: the Rockefeller Center is inaugurated in New
York
1931: the GDP of the USA falls 8.5% from the year
before and unemployment reaches 15.9%
1931: Gambling is legalized in Las Vegas
1932: between april 8 and july 8 stocks fall 34%
1932: Ford manufactures one third of the world's cars
1932: Thomas Dorsey's Precious Lord invents gospel
music in Chicago
1932: the last steam-powered car is built
1932: 10,000 banks have failed since 1929, GDP has
dropped 31% since 1929, the stock market has lost
almost 90% of its value from boom to bust, and
unemployment reaches 23.6%
1932: The USA enacts a tariff on foreign oil
1932: Howard Hughes founds Hughes Aircraft
Company in Los Angeles
1933: president Franklin Roosevelt launches the
"New Deal"
1933: Frigidaire exhibits the fully air-conditioned
home at the World's Fair in Chicago
1933: The USA recognizes the Soviet Union and
establishes diplomatic relations
1933: Roosevelt institutes the Tennessee Valley
Authority to help poor regions of the USA
1933: the economy has shrunk 27% from 1929 to
1933 and unemployment has skyrocketed to 25%
1933: the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp is created
to insure deposits in banks and thrift institutions
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1933: the USA withdraws its last soldiers from
Nicaragua
1933: Richard Hollingshead opens the first "drive-in"
movie theater in New Jersey
1933: the Prohibition is repealed
1933: FM radio broadcasting is born (Edwin
Armstrong)
1933: unemployment in the USA peaks at 25%
1933: the first stereo records are produced
1934: Wurlitzer introduces multiple-selection juke
boxes
1934: The first lesbian nightclub opens in San
Francisco, "Mona's"
1934: The USA leaves Haiti
1934: Youstol Dispage Fromscaruffi dies
1934: the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) is
created to protect investors
1934: Clock manufacturer Laurens Hammond invents
the Hammond organ
1934: William Ward disappears mysteriously and
Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the Chicago mosque,
becomes the new leader of the "Black Muslims" (or
"Nation of Islam"), and advocates racial separation
("African-American nationalism")
1935: Wallace Carothers at DuPont invents nylon, the
first totaly synthetic fibre, and the decline of cotton
begins
1935: the drought of the Dust Bowl
1935: Carl Magee invents the parking meter
1935: Lucky Luciano rules the Mafia
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1935: Lucky Luciano rules the Mafia
Aug 1935: The USA enacts a universal pension
system, Social Security, and unemployment benefits
1935: The USA grants the Philippines independence
and Manuel Quezon becomes the first president
1936: The economic ideas of John Maynard Keynes
are applied in the USA
1936: Henry Luce founds Life magazine
1936: San Francisco builds the longest bridge in the
world
1936: Roosevelt sets up the Works Progress
Administration to fund public works
1936: Sylvan Goldman invents the shopping cart
1936: The first major concrete dam, Hoover Dam, is
inaugurated
1937: The first nylon stockings appear
1937: The Pacific Coast Highway opens in California
1937: USA businessman Carl Crow, who operates out
of Shanghai, publishes the book "400 Million
Customers" about doing business in China
1937: General Motors is the largest privately owned
manufacturing company in the world
1937: Chester Carlson invents the photocopier
1937: A zeppelin explodes in New Jersey and ends
the zeppelin industry
1937: USA tycoon Howard Hughes sets a new
transcontinental airspeed record by flying non-stop
from Los Angeles to New York City in 7 hours and a
half
Dec 1937: Japan sinks the "Panay" ship of the USA
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1938: David Packard and William Hewlett found a
company in Palo Alto to sell oscillators
1938: Unemployment is still 19%
1938: USA tycoon Howard Hughes sets a world
record by completing a flight around the world in 91
hours (New York, Paris, Moscow, Omsk, Yakutsk,
Anchorage, Minneapolis, New York)
1938: John Atanasoff conceives the electronic digital
computer
1939: Russian aviator Igor Sikorsky invents the
helicopter
See the timeline for World War II
1939: Pan American inaugurates the world's first
transatlantic passenger service, flying between New
York and Marseilles
1940: The first freeway opens, the Pasadena freeway
in Los Angeles
1940: James Fifield, pastor of the First
Congregational Church of Los Angeles, founds
Spiritual Mobilization to combat the New Deal and to
promote the alliance of religion and capitalism ("The
blessings of capitalism come from God")
1940: Unemployment is 15%
1940: the CBS radio quiz show, "Take It or Leave It"
(later renamed "the $64 Question") airs for the first
time
1940: New York has 7.45 million inhabitants, the
largest city in the world
1940: Peter Goldmark invents color television
TM, ®, Copyright © 2003 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
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1940: Karl Pabst invents the jeep
1941: Japanese attack Pearl Harbor (Hawaii) killing
more than 2,300 people (almost all military personnel)
and the USA enters world war II against Italy,
Germany and Japan
1941: Roosevelt authorizes a project to develop an
atomic bomb (later renamed the Manhattan Project)
1941: The El Rancho Vegas is the first casino to open
on on what would become the Las Vegas Strip
1942: Enrico Fermi achieves the first nuclear reaction
1942: The USA enacts the "bracero program" to
import Mexican laborers, a form of indentured labor
1942: The health-care organization Kaiser
Permanente is founded in Oakland
1943: Tommy Flowers and others build the Colossus
Mark I, the world's first programmable digital
electronic computer
1943: The first full-scale plutonium production reactor
in the world opens in Hanford (Washington state)
1943: The ban on Chinese immigrants is repealed
1943: Leo Kanner describes autism
1943: Thomas Watson of IBM declares that "there is a
world market for maybe five computers"
1943: Albert Hofmann discovers the hallucinogenic
effects of LSD
1943: the first disc-jockeys began performing for the
USA troops overseas
1944: USA oilman Everette DeGolyer announces that
the Arabian peninsula, Iraq and Iran hold colossal
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reserves of oil, which prompts two USA companies
(Socal and Texaco) to form Arabian American Oil
Company (or Aramco)
Jan 1944: the world's monetary system is anchored
to the dollar and the dollar to gold, the World Bank
and the International Monetary Fund are created
("Bretton Woods agreement")
1944: Howard Aiken unveils the first programcontrolled computer, the Mark I
1945: Germany surrenders and is divided in a
Western and a Soviet area, while Soviet troops
occupy Eastern European countries
1945: On july 16 the USA explodes the first atomic
bomb at Alamogordo (New Mexico), using plutonium
transported from Hanson
1945: Hughes Aircraft is the single largest supplier of
weapons systems to the Air Force and Navy, and
Howard Hughes is one of the richest men in the
country
1945: the USA drops two atomic bombs on Japan
(Hiroshima and Nagasaki) and World War II ends
1945: the United Nations Organization is founded in
New York
1945: Earl Tupper founds Tupperware to make
polyethylene plastic containers for home use
1946: Churchill delivers in the USA the "Iron Curtain"
speech, virtually opening the "Cold War" against the
Soviet Union
1946: Restrictions on the manufacture of television
sets are lifted (there are about ten thousand tv sets in
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sets are lifted (there are about ten thousand tv sets in
the USA)
1946: The USA exports twice as much what it imports
1946: Malcom McLean introduces the shipping
container
1946: While testing vaccines, the USA infects
hundreds of mentally ill patients and prisoners in
Guatemala with gonorrhoea and syphilis
1946: The USA founds the School of the Americas in
Panama to train military officers to fight against leftist
regimes and insurgency
Jul 1946: The USA tests a nuclear bomb on the Bikini
Atoll
1946: John Pastore becomes governor of Rhode
Island, the first Italian-American governor in the USA
1946: the USA population is 133 million
1946: Percy Spencer invents the microwave oven
1946: George Marshall envisions a plan to promote
the economic recovery of European democracies
1946: The first venture capital firms are founded in the
USA, American Research and Development
Corporation (ARDC) by former Harvard Business
School's dean Georges Doriot, J.H. Whitney &
Company by John Hay Whitney, Rockefeller Brothers
by Laurance Rockefeller (later renamed Venrock)
TM, ®, Copyright © 2005 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
1946: the French bomb Vietnam
1946: RCA Victor releases the first vinyl record
1946: TWA and United begin transcontinental flights
from New York to California
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1946: A gangster, Bugsy Siegel, opens "The
Flamingo" casino in Las Vegas
1946: the first non-military computer, Eniac, is
unveiled, built by John Mauchly and Presper Eckert
1946: Percy Spencer invents the microwave oven
1947: Truman proclaims the "Truman doctrine" about
containing the expansion of communism and
defending democracies (specifically Greece and
Turkey)
1947: George Kennan advocates a "containment"
policy to curb Soviet expansionism ("It is clear that
the main element of any United States policy toward
the Soviet Union must be that of a long-term, patient
but firm and vigilant containment of Russian
expansive tendencies")
1947: two ships carrying ammonium nitrate fertilizer
explode in a Texas harbor killing about 576 people
Apr 1947: the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade
(GATT) is created to eliminate trade bareers
1947: the first widely publicized sighting of a UFO
1947: The USA sets up the Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA)
1947: William Shockley invents the transistor at Bell
Labs
1947: Edwin Land invents Polaroid, the first instant
camera
1947: Pan Am introduces the first round-the-world
flight
1948: The Soviet Union blockades West Berlin
1948: John Walson and Margaret Walson launch the
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1948: John Walson and Margaret Walson launch the
first cable-television service
1948: The "American Society of Human Genetics"
(ASHG) is established
1948: Bell Laboratories demonstrates the first
prototype transistor radio
1948: Harry Stockman invents RFID
1948: Ed Sullivan begins his tv variety show
1948: Senator Joseph McCarthy launches a "witch
hunt" against intellectuals suspected of being
communist
1948: Leo Fender invents the electric guitar
1948: the Jews are granted their own country in
Palestine: Israel
1948: Invention of "xerography" (copying machines)
by Chester Carlson
1948: Columbia introduces the 12-inch 33-1/3 RPM
long-playing vinyl record
1948: Cable TV is deployed in rural areas
1948: the Declaration of Human Rights
1948: John Rock fertilizes a human egg in a test tube
1949: Jean-Paul Getty buys a concession to drill for
oil in the neutral zone between Kuwait and Saudi
Arabia
May 1949: The USA establishes the Armed Forces
Security Agency (AFSA) (later National Security
Agency, NSA) to conduct communications and
electronic intelligence surveillance
1949: There are one million tv sets in the USA
Apr 1949: NATO is formed by western European
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countries and USA
1949: the first foreign car, the Volkswagen Beetle, is
sold in the USA, which is also the first "compact" ever
sold in the USA
1949: The Soviet Union detonates its first atomic
bomb and the nuclear arm race begins
1949: RCA Victor introduces the 7" 45 RPM vinyl
record
1950: United Nations troops led by the USA push
back Chinese troops in Korea (33,000 USA citizens
die)
1950: Harry Hay and Chuck Rowland found the
Mattachine Society in Los Angeles, the first gay
political organization
1950: The USA has 40 million cars and gasoline
consumption has increased 42% over 1945
1950: the USA's population is 152 million
1950: Remington purchases Eckert-Mauchly
Computer
1950: the first credit card (Diners) is introduced
1950: the first sperm bank is created at the University
of Iowa
1950: Enrico Fermi wonders why, if advanced
extraterrestrial civilizations exist, we have never
observed any of their artifacts
1950: the population of the USA is 151 million, with
64% living in cities
1951: first color TV transmissions
Sep 1951: Japan and the USA sign a military alliance
1951: Ed Teller and Stanislaw Ulam invent the
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1951: Ed Teller and Stanislaw Ulam invent the
hydrogen bomb
1951: electricity is generated for the first time by a
nuclear reactor (Experimental Breeder Reactor
Number 1 in Idaho)
1951: A senate investigation links Las Vegas
gambling with organized crime
1951: The USA detonates the first of over a hundred
atomic bombs at the Nevada Test Site
1951: Hannah Arendt publishes "The Origins of
Totalitarianism" that compares the nazist and the
communist regimes
1951: the first commercial computer is built, the
Univac
1951: Fred Terman of Stanford University conceives
an industrial park for high technology (the
foundations of Silicon Valley)
1951: Carl Djerassi invents synthetic progesterone,
"the birth-control pill", at Syntex of Mexico City
1951: 9% of USA citizens own stocks
1951: The sitcom "I Love Lucy" debuts on television
1952: First sex change operation (George Jorgenson)
November 1952: The first hydrogen bomb (700 times
stronger than Hiroshima's bomb) is tested on the
Pacific island of Elugelab, that is vaporized
1952: African-American activist Malcom X joins the
"Nation of Islam", becoming the head of the New York
City mosque
1952: 73% of world cars are produced in the USA
1953: Francis Crick and James Watson discover the
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double helix of the DNA
1953: The USA launches the Atoms for Peace
program to help developing countries such as Iran
and Pakistan to build their first atomic reactors
1953: The CIA finances a project named "MkUltra" to
study the effects of psychoactive drugs
1953: Jean-Paul Getty's company strikes oil in the
neutral zone
1953: the USA's and the British secret services
engineer a coup to remove Iran's prime minister
Mohammad Mossadegh, and the USA replaces Britain
as the main player in the Middle East
1953: Remington Rand introduces UNIVAC 1103, the
first computer with Random Access Memory (RAM)
1953: Hugh Hefner starts the magazine "Playboy"
1953: Korea is permanently partitioned across the
DMV (55,000 USA soldiers, one million south
Koreans, one million Chinese soldiers, two million
North Koreans have died)
1953: the first sperm-bank child is born
1953: the police raid a polygamist compound with
hundreds of children in the twin communities of
Colorado City, Arizona and Hildale, Utah, also known
as "Short Creek", run by the Fundamentalist Church
of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints
1954: the USA threatens to use nuclear weapons to
stop Soviet aggression in Europe
1954: The USA launches the first nuclear submarine,
the Nautilus
1954: The Howard Johnson restaurant chain opens
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1954: The Howard Johnson restaurant chain opens
its first motor lodge in Savannah, Georgia
1954: mutual defense treaty between the USA and
Taiwan
1954: The first commercial transistor radio, the
Regency TR-1, is introduced by IDEA, using circuits
by Texas Instruments
1954: France leaves Vietnam
1954: a rebel force trained by the CIA invades
Guatemala
1954: The USA Senate denounces Joseph
McCarthy's "witch hunt"
1954: the USA explodes its largest bomb ever (15
megatons) at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands
1955: Rock and roll records climb the charts
1955: The "Daughters of Bilitis" is founded in San
Francisco, the first exclusively lesbian organization in
the USA
1955: "The $64,000 Question" airs for the first time
1955: Roy Kepler founds the Kepler's bookstore in
Menlo Park
1955: Lawrence Ferlinghetti founds the City Lights
bookstore in San Francisco
1955: Remington Rand merges with Sperry to form
Sperry Rand
1955: William Shockley moves to Silicon Valley,
founds his own company and hires Robert Noyce,
Gordon Moore and others
1955: The first McDonald's restaurant opens near
Chicago, started by Ray Kroc
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1955: the first conference on Artificial Intelligence is
held at Dartmouth College
1955: Disneyland opens in Los Angeles
1955: Jack Gleason's sitcom "Honeymooners" airs
on tv
1955: A black woman, Rosa Parks, refuses to give her
seat to white folks on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama,
and her arrest sparks non-violent protests led by
Martin Luther King
1956: South Vietnam refuses the referendum on
unification with North Vietnam and the Vietminh start
a guerrilla war
1956: Dwight Eisenhower signs the Federal Aid
Highway Act to build a nation-wide network of
freeways
1956: Fred and Pat Cody found the Cody's bookstore
in Berkeley
1956: the first Japanese car is sold in the USA
1956: Malcom X becomes the spokesman of the
"Nation of Islam"
1956: Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" heralds the "beat
generation"
1956: telephone line between Europe and the United
states laid at the bottom of the Atlantic
1956: Fidel Castro and Che Guevara land in Cuba to
fight the US-sponsored dictatorship of Fulgencio
Batista
1957: Little Rock, Arkansas is the site of a racial
confrontation after black kids are forbidden to enter a
high school
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high school
1957: ARDC invests $70,000 in Digital Equipment
Corporation (DEC)
1957: Jean-Paul Getty is the richest man in the USA
and its only billionaire
1957: the Soviet Union launches the Sputnik, the first
artificial satellite
1957: Carlo Gambino rules the Mafia
1957: Albert Sabin develops the oral polio vaccine
1957: 4.5 million babies are born in the USA, the
highest number in its history (the "baby boomers")
1957: Frederick Kohner's novel "Gidget" popularizes
the Hawaian sport of surfing
1958: Arthus Melin and Richard Knerr invent the
frisbee
Jul 1958: The USA sends 19,000 soldiers to protect
the regime of Lebanon's Christian president Camille
Chamoun
1958: Robert Noyce (at Fairchild) and Jack Kilby (at
Texas Instruments) invent the integrated circuit
1958: The USA government sets up the National
Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA) as well as the
the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
(DARPA)
1958: Bank of America adopts the credit card
1958: Civilian jet service begins in the USA with a Pan
Am flight from New York to Paris
1958: the telex service is introduced
1958: Jim Backus (at IBM) invents the FORTRAN
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independent language
1958: the Boeing 707
1958: the USA's gross national product is 50% of the
world's national product
1958: RCA introduces the first stereo long-playing
records
1958: Alaska becomes a state of the USA
1958: Samuel Cohen invents the neutron bomb
1959: Hawaii becomes the 50th state of the USA
1959: A court law about Lawrence's "Lady
Chatterley" overturns the USA's obscenity laws
1959: the first commercial Xerox machine is released
1959: Mattel introduces the doll "Barbie"
1959: Ornette Coleman introduces "free jazz"
1959: Fidel Castro leads to success the revolution
against the Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista
1959: The USA launches the first reconnaissance
satellite, Corona, to take pictures from the sky of the
Soviet Union
1960: Gregory Pincus invents the birth control pill
1960: NASA launches the first weather satellite,
TIROS-1
1960: Timothy Leary begins a research program at
Harvard Univ to study hallucinogenic drugs
1960: Almost 90% of households owns a tv set
May 1960: The Soviet Union shoots down a U2 spy
plane of the USA and captures its pilot
May 1960: Theodore Maiman builds the first
successful laser
1960: Frank Drake devises an equation to calculate
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1960: Frank Drake devises an equation to calculate
the potential number of extraterrestrial civilizations in
the Milky Way ("Drake Equation"), a foundation of
SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence)
1960: the population of the USA is 179 million, with
70% living in cities
1960: There are 50 million tv sets in the USA
1960: In retaliation for the USA's imposition of quotas
on Venezuelan oil (to favor (Canada and Mexico),
Venezuela joins Arab countries to found OPEC
(Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries)
1960: Manhattan has 98 buildings which are taller
than 100 meters
1960: Russ Solomon opens the first Tower Records
in Sacramento (California), the first music megastore
1960: first laser (Theodore Maiman)
1960: Inspired by Gandhi, black students including
Ella Baker and Stokely Carmichael found the Student
Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to fight
for civil rights
1960: The ratio of debt to personal disposable income
is 55%
1961: John Kennedy is inaugurated as president, the
first catholic and the youngest ever, and promises a
"New Frontier"
1961: Robert Schuller builds the first drive-in church
(Garden Grove, Los Angeles)
1961: A B-52 plane carrying two nuclear bombs
crashes over North Carolina
1961: Sargent Shriver founds the Peace Corps
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1961: The MIT demonstrates the Compatible TimeSharing System (CTSS), the first time-sharing
operating system
1961: Los Angeles' surface is 1,175 square kms and
its population passes Philadelphia, becoming the
third largest city in the country
1961: Soviet troops build a wall to isolate West Berlin
and discourage people from fleeing Eastern Germany
Apr 1961: a Cuban rebel force trained by the CIA tries
to invade Cuba ("Bay of Pigs" invasion)
1961: Yuri Gagarin becomes the first astronaut
1961: first stereo radio broadcasting
1961: the Beach Boys launch surf-music
1961: Charles Bachman at General Electric develops
the first database management system, IDS
1962: the USA intervenes in Vietnam to counter
Soviet help to the Vietcong
1962: Sam Walton open the first Walmart store in
Rogers, Arkansas
1962: Rachel Carson publishes "Silent Spring"
warning of the danger of pesticides
1962: Franck Gerow performs the first silicon implant
in a woman's breast
Jul 1962: Sam Walton opens the first Wal-Mart in
Arkansas
1962: Warren Buffett acquires Berkshire Hathaway,
the beginning of his multibillion dollar empire
1962: the average price for gasoline is $0.31 per
gallon
1962: Paul Baran proposes a distributed network as
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1962: Paul Baran proposes a distributed network as
the form of communication least vulnerable to a
nuclear strike
Oct 1962: John Kennedy forces the Soviet Union to
stop building missile bases in Cuba
1962: Tom Hayden and others found the "Student for
Democratic Society" (SDS)
1962: Michael Murphy founds the "Esalen Institute" at
Big Sur to promote spiritual healing
1962: 30,000 troops have to escort a young black
student, James Meredith, to the University of
Mississippi
TM, ®, Copyright © 2005 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
1962: Bob Dylan sings "Blowin' In The Wind"
1962: the audio cassette is introduced
1962: The USA lifts into orbit the first
telecommunication satellite, the Telstar
1962: Helen Gurley Brown publishes "Sex and the
single girl", defending a woman's right to have sex for
pleasure
1963: president John Kennedy is assassinated
1963: The first quasar (170,000 light-years wide) is
identified
1963: Syntex moves from Mexico City to the Stanford
Industrial Park
1963: the first skateboarding contest is held in Los
Angeles
1963: Bell Labs introduces the touch-tone phone
1963: Martin Luther King leads 200,000 blacks on a
march to Washington and delivers the speech "I have
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a dream"
1963: a bomb blows up in a black church of
Birmingham, Alabama
1963: Malcom X, considered too extremist, is expelled
from the "Nation of Islam"
1963: The Arecibo Observatory is inaugurated in
Puerto Rico, the largest single-aperture telescope in
the world
1964: Cable TV is deployed in USA cities
1964: The USA terminates the "bracero program"
1964: Phil Knight founds Blue Ribbon Sports, later
renamed Nike
1964: The first reverse-osmosis plant (that purifies
waste-water) is patented in San Diego
1964: The situation comedy "Bewitched" debuts on
television
1964: Syntex introduces the birth-control pill
1964: Bear Stearns acquires Orkin Exterminating
Company, the first major leveraged buyout
transactions
1964: Mario Savio founds the "Free Speech
Movement" and leads student riots at the Berkeley
campus
1964: jazz musician John Coltrane cuts "A Love
Supreme", possibly the greatest jazz album ever
1964: Smoking is proved to be dangerous
1964: IBM introduces the first "mainframe" computer
(the 360) and the first "operating system" (the OS/360)
1964: president Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act
1964: The CIA fabricates the Gulf of Tonkin incident
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1964: The CIA fabricates the Gulf of Tonkin incident
as a pretext for direct USA intervention in Vietnam
1964: John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz (at Dartmouth
College) invent the BASIC programming language
1964: Michael Scott-Morton introduces the concept of
a decision-support system
Jan 1964: The USA issues a report that blames
cigarettes as a cause of lung cancer
1965: Gordon Moore predicts that the processing
power of computers will double every 18 months
1965: Half of USA households own a Polaroid
Apr 1965: The USA dispatches the marines to restore
order in the Dominican Republic after the
communists try a coup
1965: civil-rights activist Stokely Carmichael delivers
a speech on "Black Power"
1965: Fidel Castro allows one million Cubans over
five years to leave Cuba and settle in the USA
Feb 1965: The Vietcong attack the marines at Pleiku
causing a rapid escalation of the war
1965: the Digital Equipment Corporation unveils the
first mini-computer, the PDP-8, that uses integrated
circuits
1965: 34 people die in racial riots in the Los Angeles
ghetto of Watts
1965: African-American leader Malcolm X is
assassinated at a rally by members of the "Nation of
Islam"
1965: the SDS organizes the first pacifist march on
Washington
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1965: spacecraft Mariner 4 takes the first pictures of
Mars' surface
1965: The National Endowment for the Arts is
established by the USA government
1966: Cassius Clay is jailed for refusing to serve in
Vietnam
1966: The USA establishes Daylight Saving Time
Sep 1966: Gene Rodenberry's Star Trek debuts on
television
1966: William Buckley starts the tv show "Firing Line"
that will run until 1999 and promote a convervative
ideology
1966: there are 2,623 computers in the USA (1,967
work for the Defense Department)
1966: the first "Summer of Love" of the hippies in San
Francisco
1966: Rock composer Frank Zappa debuts with
"Freak Out", a double album
1966: Psychedelic rock comes out of of San
Francisco's hippie culture
1966: Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, Angela Davis and
other African-American activists found the "Black
Panther Party" at Oakland, California
1967: Jack Kilby (at Texas Instruments) develops the
first hand-held calculator
Jun 1967: Israel attacks a USA warship, the USS
Liberty, killing 34 sailors
1967: Ray Browne founds the "Center for the Study
of Popular Culture" at Bowling Green, that
popularizes the term "pop culture"
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popularizes the term "pop culture"
1967: Darryl McCray, or "Cornbread", creates graffiti
art in Philadelphia
1967: the USA has 200 million people, of which 9.7
million are foreign-born
1967: the first "Super Bowl" final of "football" (a USA
version of rugby) is held
1967: racial riots kill 26 people in Newark and 43 in
Detroit
1967: Cuban liberation hero Che Guevara is killed by
USA agents in Bolivia
1967: pacifists march on the Pentagon to protest the
Vietnam war
1967: the CIA supports a coup in Greece that installs
a dictatorship of colonels
1967: sixteen states still refused to recognize mixedrace marriages
1967: ARCO discovers oil in Alaska
1967: Thurgood Marshall becomes the first black to
serve on the Supreme Court
1967: The first Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is
held in New York
1968: civil rights leader Martin Luther King is
assassinated
Jun 1968: Bob Kennedy is assassinated by
Palestinian immigrant Sirhan Sirhan in retaliation for
the USA's support of Israel
1968: The hypertext system FRESS created by
Andries van Dam at Brown University for the IBM 360
introduces the "undo" feature
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1968: Tommie Smith protests the USA anthem at the
Olympic games
Jan 1968: The Vietcong and North Vietnam (the "Tet
Offensive") begin a joint attack against the USA in
South Vietnam
1968: reporter Seymour Hersh reveals that USA
soldiers under the command of William Calley
massacred more than 500 civilians at My Lai, Vietnam
1968: Philip Noyce, Gordon Moore and Andy Grove
found Intel to build memory chips
1968: 520,000 USA troops are in Vietnam
1968: Stewart Brand publishes the first "Whole Earth
Catalog"
1968: ARDC's investment in Digital Equipment
Corporation (DEC) is valued at $355 million
1969: the Unix operating system is born
1969: Stanley Milgram proves that we are all
connected via "six degrees of separation"
1969: Homosexuals fight police in New York
("Stonewall riots"), the birth of the Gay and Lesbian
Rights Movement
1969: president Nixon characterizes drugs as "public
enemy number one in the United States"
1969: the USA uses chemical weapons in Vietnam
1969: Charles Manson, leader of a satanic cult, and
his followers kills seven people in a Bel Air mansion
1969: The USA begins a secret bombing campaign of
Cambodia
1969: Captain Beefheart records "Trout Mask
Replica", possibly the greatest rock album ever
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Replica", possibly the greatest rock album ever
1969: the first "automatic teller machines"
1969: the computer network ArpaNET is born in the
USA (it will be renamed Internet in 1985)
1969: USA astronaut Neil Armstrong becomes the
first man to set foot on the Moon
1969: Ted Codd invents the relational database
1969: USA president Richard Nixon approves carpet
bombing and land invasion of Cambodia
1969: 300,000 young people attend the Woodstock
festival of rock music
1969: A huge crowd marches on Washington to
demand an end to the Vietnam war
1969: Sylvia Rivera founds the gay liberation
movement out of New York
1969: an oil spill in California provokes a ban to
offshore drilling
1969: Leo Laurence in San Francisco calls for the
"Homosexual Revolution"
1969: After polls show that the majority of US citizens
oppose the antiwar movement, Nixon talks about "the
silent majority"
1970: Rock guitarist Jimi Hendrix dies of an overdose
1970: The USA passes the "Clean Air Act" that limits
the pollution caused by cars
1970: 20 million USA citizens have experimented with
illegal drugs
1970: The first Earth Day is celebrated
1970: the population of the USA is 203 million, with
73% living in cities
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1970: the first Kinko's opens near the University of
California at Santa Barbara
1970: The USA invades Cambodia
1970: The first practical optical fiber is developed by
glass maker Corning Glass Works
1970: five of the seven largest USA semiconductor
manufacturers are located in Santa Clara Valley,
California
1970: there are more immigrants from Latin America
(39% ) than Europe (18% )
1970: The first "San Francisco Gay Pride Parade" is
held
1971: during riots at the Attica prison, 33 convicts and
10 guards are killed
Mar 1971: Richard Nixon (USA) and Mao (China)
support Pakistan's dictator Agha Mohammed Yahya
Khan in his genocide of East Pakistani intellectuals,
Hindus and assorted civilians
1971: A third of all working women in the USA are
secretaries
1971: Gil Kane and Archie Goodwin publish
"Blackmark", the first graphic novel
1971: Michael Tracy, or "Tracy 168", creates the "wild
style" of graffiti art painting trains in the New York
subway
1971: Michael Hart launches the "Project Gutenberg"
to make digital versions of books available for free on
the Internet
1971: One third of all working women in the USA are
secretaries
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secretaries
1971: Bob Hunter and others founds the
environmental activist group Greenpeace in Canada
1971: the USA imports more oil than it exports
1971: Richard Nixon secretely helps Pakistan against
India and Bangladesh
1971: Cetus, the first biotech company, is founded
1971: a journalist renames Santa Clara Valley the
"Silicon Valley"
1971: Ted Hoff and Federico Faggin at Intel invent the
micro-processor (a programmable set of integrated
circuits)
1971: The USA pulls out of the Bretton Woods
agreement of fixed exchange rates and forces foreign
currencies to float
1971: journalist Gloria Steinem founds the first
feminist magazine, "Ms Magazine"
Feb 1972: USA president Richard Nixon meets with
Mao in China
Apr 1972: Hamilton Watch introduces the Hamilton
Pulsar P1, the first electronic digital watch and the
first using a digital LED display
May 1972: USA president Richard Nixon meets with
Breznev in Russia
1972: Magnavox introduces the first videogame
console
1972: Nolan Bushnell invents the first videogame
(Pong)
Nov 1972: Charles Dolan and Gerald Levin launched
the first pay-television network, Home Box Office
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(HBO)
1972: Richard Nixon orders carpet bombing of
civilian areas in North Vietnam during the Christmas
holidays
1972: strategic parity between USA and Soviet Union
1972: the Dow Jones index reaches 1000
1972: a novel by David Gerrold coins the term
"computer virus"
1972: Ray Tomlinson invents e-mail for sending
messages between computer users, and invents a
system to identify the user name and the computer
name separated by a "@"
1972: the Global Positioning System (GPS) is
invented by the USA military, using a constellation of
24 satellites for navigation and positioning purposes
1972: There are 112 million cars in the USA, almost
half of all the cars in the world
TM, ®, Copyright © 2003 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
1973: Henry Kissinger becomes the first Jewish
secretary of state
1973: The USA, defeated, leaves Vietnam after killing
close to 2 million civilians and 1 million soldiers, and
losing 58,000 men
1973: Robert Bernstein establishes the "Fund for
Free Expression", later renamed "Human Rights
Watch"
1973: PBS' "An American Family" is the first "reality
show" on television
1973: Vinton Cerf first uses the term "Internet"
(because it is now connecting networks)
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(because it is now connecting networks)
1973: the Arpanet has 2,000 users
1973: The USA abolishes the military draft in favor of
an all-volunteer army
1973: the CIA helps the Chilean army, led by general
Augusto Pinochet, overthrow the socialist
government of Salvador Allende (30,000 dissidents
are imprisoned and tortured, and 2,000 "disappear")
1973: Martin Cooper at Motorola invents the first
portable, wireless (cellular) telephone
1973: abortion is legalized
1973: members of the Organization of Arab Petroleum
Exporting Countries (OAPEC) impose an oil embargo
against the West and oil prices skyrocket (the first "oil
crisis"), thus precipitating a world depression
(october)
1973: the World Trade Center is inaugurated in New
York, the world's tallest skyscraper
1973: Gary Kindall invents the first operating system
for a microprocessor, the CP/M
1973: Stanley Cohen of Stanford University and
Herbert Boyer of UC San Francisco create the first
recombinant DNA organism, virtually inventing
"biotechnology"
1974: Ed Roberts invents the first personal computer,
the Altair 8800
1974: The barcode, invented by George Laurer at IBM,
debuts
1974: Scientists send a message from the Arecibo
Observatory to the globular star cluster M13, which is
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25,000 light years from Earth
1974: the Sears Towers open in Chicago, the world's
tallest skyscraper
1974: president Richard Nixon is forced to resign
after the Watergate scandal
1974: the "Rocky Horror Picture Show" is released
1974: Jim Bakker begins the "Praise The Lord"
ministry
1974: The Universal Product Code, the standard for
barcode, is used commercially for the first time
1975: MacDonald's opens the first drive-through
restaurant in Arizona
1975: The government terminates Project Shamrock,
a top-secret program to spy on communications
Jul 1975: The first joint Soviet-US mission in space
(spaceships Apollo 18 and Soyuz 19 meet in space)
1975: Hugh Carey becomes governor of New York
and enacts a program of spending and job cuts to
rescue the state from financial disaster
1975: A senate committee presided by senator Frank
Church reveals that the CIA tried to assassinate
foreign leaders (notably Fidel Castro) and political
activists in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
1975: The Helsinki Conference on Security and
Cooperation defines human rights in the Cold War
1975: Six economic powers meet in Paris (USA,
Japan, Germany, France, Britain and Italy) forming the
G6
1975: Unemployment peaks at 9%
1975: "Saturday Night Live" airs on tv
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1975: "Saturday Night Live" airs on tv
1975: the last USA personnel flee South Vietnam as
the Vietcongs enter Saigon and terminate the Vietnam
War
1975: Bill Gates and Paul Allen develop a version of
BASIC for the Altair personal computer and found
Microsoft
1975: The USA accounts for 26.3% of world GDP
1976: the supersonic airplane Concorde begins
service between Paris and New York
1976: Marantz introduces the first boombox, the
Superscope
1976: Kodak accounts for 90% of film and 85% of
cameras in the USA
1976: Ted Turner created the first basic cable network
(using a satellite), WTCG (later WTBS), based in
Atlanta
1976: Richard Corben publishes the graphic novel
"Bloodstar"
1976: anti-Castro terrorists (possibly led by Luis
Posada Carriles and funded by the CIA) blow up a
Cuban airliner
1976: the G6 is created to bring the leaders of the
biggest national economies together (USA, Canada,
Britain, Germany, Japan, France)
1976: the sitcom "Charlie's Angels" has three women
as protagonists
1976: punk-rock and new-wave come out of New
York's alternative music scene
1977: Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak develop the
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Apple II
1977: Visa launches its first credit card
1977: There are more university students from Iran
than any other nationality in the USA
1977: San Francisco's city supervisor Harvey Milk
becomes the first openly gay man to be elected to
office in the USA
1977: George Coates founds his multimedia theater
group, Performance Works
1977: the soundtrack of "Saturday Night Fever"
inaugurates the age of disco-music
1977: the Voyager is launched to reach other galaxies
TM, ®, Copyright © 2005 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
1977: Atari introduces a videogame console
1977: Dennis Hayes invents the modem (a device that
converts between analog and digital signals)
1978: religious guru Jim Jones and his believers
commit a mass suicide at Jamestown, Guyana (917
dead)
1978: Bell Labs deploys the first cellular phone
network in Chicago
1978: The rainbow flag debuts at the San Francisco
Gay and Lesbian Freedom Day Parade
1978: the USA begins installation of the GPS
1978: the USA abandons the gold standard
1978: First test-tube (in vitro) baby
1978: Louis Farrakhan seizes power of the "Nation of
Islam", reasserting the principles of African-American
nationalism
1978: journalist Myron Farber of the New York Times
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1978: journalist Myron Farber of the New York Times
is sent to jail for refusing to reveal his confidential
sources
1978: Lydia Villa-Komaroff clones a human gene,
insulin
1979: the Soviet Union invades Afghanistan and the
USA organizes an Islamic resistance led by Osama
Bin Laden
1979: Saudi Arabia accounts for more than 50% of
arms sold by the USA
1979: the spacecraft "Pioneer 11" reaches Saturn
1979: Kevin MacKenzie invents symbols such as :-)
to mimic the cues of face-to-face communication
1979: an accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear
power plant stops development of new nuclear power
plants in the USA
1979: the Sandinistas seize power in Nicaragua
overthrowing the US-sponsored dictatorship
1979: the shah Reza Pahlevi is overthrown by the
Islamic Revolution and Iran becomes a theocratic
republic led by the ayatollah Khomeini with a strong
anti-American posture
1979: the Global Positioning System (GPS) is
operational
1979: serial killer Ted Bundy (suspected of murdering
up to 50 people) is convicted
1980: Ted Turner launches CNN, the first cable
television service devoted to world news
1980: Walmart has 276 stores and reached $1 billion
in annual sales, faster than any other company until
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then
1980: Chicago economist Milton Friedman publishes
"Free to Choose" advocating a reduction in the role
of government
1980: The USA grants mainland China most-favorednation status, i.e. access to US investors, technology
and market
1980: The private equity industry raises $2.4 billion
1980: the population of the USA is 226 million, with
73% living in cities
1980: Rick Warren founds the Saddleback Church in
Lake Forest (California)
1980: the Arpanet has 430,000 users, who exchange
almost 100 million e-mail messages a year
1980: the value of gold peaks at $850 an ounce
1980: integrated circuits incorporate 100,000 discrete
components
1980: Fidel Castro allows 125,000 people to leave
Cuba for the USA
1980: racial riots kill 18 people in Miami
1980: Ronald Reagan is elected president
1980: serial killer John Wayne Gacy is convicted of
about 30 murders
1980: the Usenet is born, an Internet-based
discussion system divided in "newsgroups"
1980: Inflation peaks at 13.5%
1980: The largest semiconductor manufacturers in
the world are: Texas Instruments, National, Motorola,
Philips (Europe), Intel, NEC (Japan), Fairchild, Hitachi
(Japan) and Toshiba (Japan).
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(Japan) and Toshiba (Japan).
1981: newly elected president Reagan trades
hostages for arms with Iran, helps Saddam Hussein's
Iraq against Iran, and authorizes funding and training
of Islamic terrorists led by Osama Bin Laden to fight
the Soviet Union in Afghanistan
1981: Reagan and Islamist dictator Zia of Pakistan
sign a treaty of alliance that includes military aid to
Pakistan
1981: The MacArthur Fellows Program awards its first
"genius grants"
1981: the magazine "Thrasher" is founded as a
reference point for the skateboarding subculture
1981: Wayne Williams is accused of killing twentyseven young black boys in Atlanta that are probably
victims of the KKK
1981: American Airlines introduces a "frequent flyer
program"
1981: Techno music
1981: the West Edmonton Mall opens in Alberta
(Canada), the largest shopping mall in the world
(including more than 800 stores, a hotel, an
amusement park, a miniature-golf course, a church, a
water park, a zoo and a lake)
1981: USA and Libya fighters engage in combat off
the coast of Libya
1981: MTV debuts on cable tv with the Buggles'
"Video Killed The Radio Star"
1981: the USA launches the first space shuttle
1981: the IBM PC is launched, running an operating
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system developed by Bill Gates' Microsoft
1981: John Gotti rules the Mafia
1981: first cases of AIDS are discovered
1981: the compact disc (CD) is introduced
1981: IBM introduces the PC ("Personal Computer"),
that spreads world-wide
1981: Sister Angelica (Rita Rizzo) founds the Eternal
World Television Network
1981: Chicago disc-jockeys organize the first "raves",
or clandestine all-night parties
1981: Sandra Day O'Connor becomes the first woman
to serve on the Supreme Court
May 1981: American Airlines launches the world's
first mileage-based frequent flier program,
AAdvantage
1982: the USA government breaks up the largest
company in the world, AT&T, worth $60 billion,
because it has become a monopoly
1982: Pakistan recruits, trains and arms Islamic
fighters from more than 40 countries with funds from
the USA and Saudi Arabia to fight the Soviet Union in
Afghanistan, the first "global jihad"
1982: Honda is the first Japanese company to
manufacture cars in the USA
1982: Hubick invents aeroponics, a way to grow food
in the air
1982: Robert Jarvik implants an artificial heart in a
patient
1982: Reagan sends the marines to restore order in
Lebanon
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Lebanon
1982: Unemployment peaks at 10.8%
Jun 1982: One million people meet in Central Park
(New York) to protest against Reagan's nuclear buildup
1982: The USA approves the first geneticallyengineered drug, a form of human insulin produced
by bacteria
1983: the USA, under president Reagan, engages the
Soviet Union in a nuclear-arms race
1983: Paul Mockapetris invents the Domain Name
System for the Internet
1983: peak of the career of Jimmy Connors, who sets
the record of tennis with 109 tournament victories
1983: suicide commandos directed by Imad
Mughniyeh (Mugniyah) blow up the USA embassy,
killing 63 people
1983: Hezbollah suicide commandos organized by
Iran blow up the USA and French barracks killing 241
marines and 58 French soldiers
1983: at his trial, serial killer Henry Lee Lucas
confesses having killed more than 200 people
1983: Howard Rheingold founds the environmental
magazine "Whole Earth Review" at Sausalito
1983: Reagan removes Iraq from the list of nations
that support international terrorism
1983: Los Angeles passes Chicago as the second
largest city in the country
Oct 1983: Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdul Aziz Al
Saud is appointed ambassador to the USA with the
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goal to create a military alliance
1983: William Inmon builds the first data warehousing
system
October 1983: The USA invades Grenada to depose
its communist leader Hudson Austin
1984: HIV is identified as the cause of AIDS
1984: The first TED conference is held
1984: A leak at the Union Carbide pesticides plant in
India (Bhopal) causes 14,000 deaths
1984: Saudi Arabia becomes the financial arm of the
CIA to bypass the USA parliament, selling arms to
Nicaragua's rebels, to Angola's rebels and to
Afghanistan's rebels fighting communist regimes in
three continents
1984: The Getty Foundation is established in Los
Angeles to support the visual arts
1984: The "Cirque du Soleil" is founded in Quebec by
a group of street performers
1984: The "Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence" or
SETI Institute is founded
1984: The The Santa Fe Institute is founded to carry
out interdisciplinary research
1984: William Gibson's "Neuromancer" popularizes
the "cyberpunks"
1984: Apple introduces the Macintosh, which
revolutionizes desktop publishing
1984: the CDROM is introduced
1984: the Domain Name Server is introduced to
classify Internet addresses with extensions such as
.com
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.com
1984: Arab terrorists kill 241 USA marines in Lebanon,
causing a hasty retreat by USA, French and Italian
troops
1985: the Arpanet is renamed Internet
1985: The USA forces the other Western economies
to let the dollar devalue in order to rectify its trade
deficit ("Plaza Accord")
Feb 1985: King Fahd of Saudi Arabia meets with USA
president Ronald Reagan in the USA, carrying a "gift"
of $2 million in diamonds
1985: Stewart Brand and Larry Brilliant create the
"Whole Earth Lectronic Link" (or "WELL"), a virtual
community
1985: between 1977 and 1985 consumption of oil in
the USA drops 17% , imports drop 50% , and imports
from the Middle East drop 87%
1985: the dollar declines against European and
Japanese currencies (it will decline 50% in three
years)
1985: Leonard Knight begins building "Salvation
Mountain" in California
1985: there are more immigrants from Asia (48% ) than
Latin America (35% )
1985: Ronald Reagan announces a program of "star
wars" (SDI)
1985: a hole in the Ozone Layer is discovered over
Antartica
1985: Procter & Gamble builds the first businessintelligence system
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Sep 1985: Saudi Arabia announces an increase in oil
production that causes a fall in the price of oil
1985: The USA signs a free-trade treaty with Israel,
the first in its history
1986: the USA bombs Libyan cities to deter colonel
Qaddafi
1986: Charles Hull invents 3D printing
1986: Art Spiegelman publishes the graphic novel
"Maus"
1986: Larry Harvey starts the first "Burning Man" on
Baker Beach in San Francisco
1986: newspapers discover that the Reagan
administration sold weapons to Iran to fund anticommunist rebels in Nicaragua ("Irangate")
1986: the space shuttle "Challenger" explodes during
take off killing the whole crew
1986: Sperry and Burroughs merge to form Unisys
1986: the USA has 14,000 nuclear warheads and the
Soviet Union has 11,000
1986: Reagan signs into law a bill that grants amnesty
to an estimated 3 million illegal immigrants
1987: the Montreal Protocol limits the use of
substances that damage the ozone layer
1987: Matt Groening's "The Simpsons" animated
sitcom debuts on television
1987: Alan Greenspan is appointed chairman of the
Federal Reserve Bank
1987: USA warships destroy two Iranian patrol boats
in the Persian Gulf
1987: Tele-evangelist and multi-millionaire Jim Bakker
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1987: Tele-evangelist and multi-millionaire Jim Bakker
resigns from "Praise The Lord" due to a sex scandal
1987: Matt Groening launches the animated television
sitcom "The Simpsons"
1987: The largest semiconductor manufacturers in
the world are Japan's NEC, Japan's Toshiba and
Japan's Hitachi
1988: Harvard University announces the first
genetically engineered animal
1988: a member of the Japanese Red Army (Yu
Kikumura) is arrested with explosives on the New
Jersey Turnpike
1988: James Hansen of the NASA Goddard Institute
for Space Studies sounds the alarm on rising
temperatures worldwide ("global warming")
1988: president Reagan creates the office of "Drug
Czar" to fight the traffic of illicit drugs
1988: a person is convicted after a DNA test
1988: USA warships blow up two Iranian oil rigs, sink
an Iranian frigate and destroy an Iranian missile boat
1988: a member of the Japanese Red Army (Yu
Kikumura) is arrested with explosives on the New
Jersey Turnpike
1988: "Morris", the first digital worm, infects most of
the Internet
1988: Pat Robertson founds the Christian Coalition,
an anti-abortionist movement
1988: a missile fired by a USA warship downs an
Iranian civilian plane and kills all 290 passengers
aboard
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1988: first fiber optic cable across the Atlantic
1988: terrorists backed by Libya blow up a Pan Am
plane over Scotland killing 259 people probably on
behalf of Iran
1988: Reagan's vice-president George Bush is
elected president
1988: The circulation of the magazine "Time" is
almost five million
1989: the USA fights the drug cartels of Colombian
1989: Japan's Mitsubishi purchases the Rockefeller
Center in the USA
1989: The private equity industry raises $21.9 billion
1989: Magellan Corporation introduces the first handheld GPS receiver
1989: the Berlin wall falls, thus ending the Cold War
1989: the USA invade Panama and remove dictator
Manuel Noriega
1989: the Soviet Union withdraws from Afghanistan
and Afghanistan plunges into chaos
1989: Congress declares sanctions against Iraq to
protest Iraq's use of poison gas against the Kurds
1989: the Arsenio Hall show debuts on tv, the first
major talk show hosted by an African-American
1989: the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC)
is founded to bring together the USA, Japan,
Australia, Canada, Thailand, Singapore, South Korea,
Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, New Zealand, Philippines
1989: Gartner analyst Howard Dresner coins the term
"business intelligence"
1989: Tele-evangelist Jim Bakker is convicted of
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1989: Tele-evangelist Jim Bakker is convicted of
fraud
1990: Jack Kevorkian performs the first assisted
suicide
1990: There are more than 14 million drug addicts in
the USA
1990: After the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan,
the USA imposes sanctions on Pakistan as
punishment for its nuclear program
1990: the population of the USA is 248 million, with
75% living in cities
1990: the Human Genome Project is launched to
decipher human DNA
1990: computer viruses spread over the Internet
1990: Saddam Hussein's Iraq invades Kuwait and
USA president Bush organizes an anti-Iraqi coalition
1990: the Hubble space telescope is launched
1990: San Luis Obispo is the first city in the world to
ban smoking inside public buildings
1991: the USA leads the Gulf War against Iraq, the first
war to use high-precision bombs guided by the GPS
1991: Karlheinz Brandenburg at Bell Labs invents the
mp3 format
1991: serial killer Dennis Rader kills ten people in
Kansas between 1974 and 1991
1991: serial killer Aileen Wuornos, a prostitute, is
arrested for killing seven men who abused her
1991: the Soviet Union is dismantled
1991: serial killer Arthur Shawcross is sentenced to
250 years in jail for the murders of ten women and
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claims to have killed (and eaten) women and children
since the Vietnam war
1991: Pan Am goes out of business
1991: MTV's "The Real World" launches the fad of
"reality shows"
1991: the "Riot Grrrls!" movement is born at Olympia,
Washington
1991: 2200 homicides are committed in New York,
1050 in Los Angeles
1991: the World-Wide Web (invented by Tim BernersLee in Geneve) debuts on the Internet
1991: The first economic recession ever strikes
California
1991: John Gotti is arrested and the USA mafia
declines
1992: racial riots erupt in Los Angeles, Las Vegas, etc
(48 dead)
1992: John Mackey founds the food store "Whole
Foods"
1992: Jeffrey Dahmer is convicted for killing and
dismembering 17 young men
1992: one million USA citizens are in jail
1992: street gangs terrorize entire areas of
metropoles like Los Angeles
TM, ®, Copyright © 2005 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
1992: USA troops land in Somalia to stop fighting by
clans, but are massacred
1992: Bill Clinton is elected president of the USA, the
youngest ever since John Kennedy
1993: Marc Andreessen develops the first browser for
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1993: Marc Andreessen develops the first browser for
the World Wide Web (Mosaic)
1993: The USA adds Pakistan to the list of countries
sponsoring terrorism
1993: 88 of the 100 most viewed films of the year
around the world were made in the USA
1993: serial killer Joel David Rifkin is arrested for
killing 17 prostitutes in the New York area
1993: the "Youth Day" in Colorado is the largest
youth event since Woodstock
1993: Colin Ferguson opens fire on a train killing six
commuters
1993: the USA, Canada, Japan, Russia, the European
Space Agency and Brazil launch a project to build the
International Space Station, the largest international
scientific project in history
1993: Islamic terrorists try to blow up the World Trade
Center
1994: the first genetically engineered vegetable (Flavr
Savr tomato) is introduced
1994: The USA, Canada and Mexico sign the North
American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)
Oct 1994: Protesters waving Mexican flags march in
Los Angeles to protest laws against illegal
immigration
1994: DirecTV launches the first satellite-based
television service
1994: Pizza Hut begins selling pizzas sia the WWW
1994: Fidel Castro allows 50,000 people to leave Cuba
1994: the USA invades Haiti to restore Aristide as
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president
1994: Netscape, the company founded by Marc
Andreesen, goes public even before earning money
and starts the "dot.com" craze and the boom of the
Nasdaq
1994: Jerry Yang launches the first search engine,
Yahoo
1994: University of North Carolina's college radio
station WXYC becomes the first radio station in the
world to broadcast its signal over the Internet
1994: The Democrats lose the House of
Representatives for the first time in 40 years
1995: a right-wing extremist blows up a federal
building in Oklahoma City, killing 160 people in the
worst terrorist incident in the history of the USA
1995: Russia and the USA begin a program designed
by Thomas Neff to decommission 20,000 Soviet
nuclear warheads and convert them into fuel for the
nuclear power plants of the USA ("Megatons to
Megawatts")
Oct 1995: Following the rape of a girl by US soldiers,
that follows many similar incidents over the years,
Japanese in Okinawa stage the largest protect rally
since the end of the war
1995: The Internet is used by 16 million people
1995: Bill Gates becomes the richest man in the world
1995: John Lasseter's "Toy Story" is the first featurelength computer-animated film
1995: Craig Newmark starts craigslist.com on the
Internet, a regional advertising community
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Internet, a regional advertising community
1995: the GATT ( General Agreement on Tariffs and
Trade) evolves into the World Trade Organization
1995: 36 million cars are manufactured in the world,
of which 7.6 million in Japan and 6.3 million in the
USA, although 8.6 million cars are sold in the USA
alone
1995: African-American Muslim Louis Farrakhan
organizes the "million man march" on Washington
1995: David Koresh's Branch Davidian religious
fanatics fight the FBI at Waco, Texas
1995: the DVD is introduced
1995: Ward Cunningham creates WikiWikiWeb, a
manual on the internet maintained in a collaborative
manner
1995: the first extrasolar planet is detected (orbiting
51 Pegasi, a star in the Pegasus constellation, 40 light
years from the Sun)
1995: the Federal Reserve's chairman Alan
Greenspan describes the stock market's behavior as
"irrational exuberance"
1995: South Korean conglomerate LG acquires Zenith
1996: Walt Disney builds a dream town, Celebration,
in Florida
1996: Rupert Murdoch's right-wing 24-hour cable
network Fox News debuts
1996: Sabeer Bhatia launches Hotmail, a website to
check email from anywhere in the world
1996: the computer "Deep Blue" by IBM beats the
world champion of chess
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1996: Eric Rudolph sets off bombs at the Atlanta
Olympic Games that kill two people
1996: Gary Faye Locke becomes the first ChineseAmerican governor in the USA (governor of
Washington state)
1996: Terry Jones founds Travelocity to sell air
tickets on the Internet
1996: South Korean conglomerate Samsung builds a
factory in Texas, one of the largest foreign
investments in the history of the USA
1996: The USA enacts the Defense of Marriage Act
defines marriage as the union of a man and a woman,
excluding homosexual couples
1997: Jay Walker founds Priceline to bid for air ticket
prices on the Internet
1997: Newt Gingrich becomes the first House of
Representatives Speaker to be censured for ethics
violations
1997: Amazon.com is launched on the web as the
"world's largest bookstore", except that it is not a
bookstore, it is a website
1997: Reed Hastings founds Netflix to rent videos via
the Internet
1997: the USA signs a treaty banning chemical
weapons
1997: Evite is founded by Al Lieb and Selina
Tobaccowala
1997: Orville Lynn Majors is arrested for having
willingly caused the death of over 100 patients at an
Indian hospital
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Indian hospital
1997: there are 23,000 McDonald's restaurants in 109
countries, the biggest chain of restaurants in the
world
1997: most countries of the world agree on reducing
the level of greenhouse-gas emissions in order to
avoid climate changes such as global warming,
(Kyoto Protocol)
1997: The average yearly income of a USA citizen is
$29,000 whereas the average income of a Mexican is
$8,000 and the average income of a Nigerian is $900
1997: the AIDS epidemis peaks (50,000 people die)
1998: Pierre Omidyar founds Ebay, a website to trade
second-hand goods
Feb 1998: 20 people are killed by a US military jet that
accidentally hits an aerial tramway in northern Italy
Jul 1998: 120 countries of the world agree to
establish an international criminal court, opposed
only by the USA, mainland China, Israel and a few
Arab dictatorships
1998: The USA adopts legislation that extends
copyright protections to 70 years after an author's
death
Nov 1998: 46 states and four of the largest tobacco
companies agree to warn consumers about the risks
of smoking
1998: "Sex and the City" airs on television
1998: Mercedes-Benz buys Chrysler and forms
DaimlerChrysler in the largest industrial merger in
history until then
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1998: the average price for gasoline is $1.19 per
gallon
1998: Adam Riess discovers that the expansion of the
universe is accelerating (dark energy)
1998: Two truck bombs orchestrated by Osama bin
Laden's Al Qaeda destroy the USA embassies in
Kenya and Tanzania, killing 213 people in Kenya and
11 in Tanzania
1998: 38 million vehicles sold worldwide (4.5 million
workers and revenues of 1.5 billion dollars)
1998: Yahoo, Amazon, Ebay and scores of Internetrelated start-ups create overnight millionaires
1998: a pill to fight impotency, Viagra, is the bestseller of the year
Aug 1998: Clinton authorizes a strike against Osama
bin Laden's camp in Afghanistan and a
pharmaceutical factory in Sudan, wrongly claiming
that it was used to manufacture nerve gas
december 1998: Clinton is impeached for lying about
his adultery with Monica Lewinsky
1998: Jorn Barger coins the term "weblog" for
webpages that simply contain links to other
webpages
1998: Larry Page and Sergey Brin found Google to
develop a search engine
1998: Bob Somerby starts "The Daily Howler", the
first major political blog
december 1998: Clinton lands at Gaza's new
internatinal airport, the first USA president to visit
Palestine
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Palestine
december 1998: Clinton authorizes 70 hours of
bombing against Iraqi infrastructure and a program to
overthrow Saddam Hussein ("As long as Saddam
remains in power, he will remain a threat to his
people, his region and the world")
1998: George Mitchell employs hydraulic fracturing or
"fracking" to extract natural gas from the shale rock
of Texas' Barnett Shale
1999: the USA women's soccer team wins the world
cup
1999: Colombia replaces Turkey as the main recipient
of USA military aid
1999: Sarah Knauss, oldest person in the world, dies
at 119
1999: the first planetary system outside the Solar
System is detected (Upsilon Andromedae, 44 light
years from the solar system)
1999: 500 million people in the world take
international flights
1999: Mickey Kaus starts the blog "Kausfiles", the
second major political blog
1999: Blogger.com allows people to create their own
"blogs" (personal journals)
1999: an outbreak of the West Nile virus kills nine
people in New York
1999: the recording industry sues Shawn Fanning's
Napster, a website that allows people to exchange
music
1999: the world prepares for the new millennium
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amidst fears of computers glitches due to the change
of date (Y2K)
1999: Microsoft is worth 450 billion dollars, the most
valued company in the world, even if it is many times
smaller than General Motors, and Bill Gates is the
world's richest man at $85 billion (1/109th of the USA
economy)
1999: NATO bombs Serbia to stop repression against
ethnic Albanians in Kosovo
1999: 13 people are killed in a high school of
Littleton/Columbine, Colorado, by two students (eight
fatal shooting spree in two years)
1999: Internet fever: 100 new Internet companies in
the USA stock market, and their stocks reap huge
profits for investors
1999: artificial viruses spread through the Internet
1999: the USA has 250 billionaires, and thousands of
new millionaires are created in just one year
1999: Clinton announces a second year of budget
surplus, the first time since 1957 that the USA has had
two consecutive years of budget surplus
1999: 125 billion galaxies have been discovered since
Hubble discovered Andromeda in 1925
1999: Ahmed Ressam, an Algerian terrorist with links
to Afghanistan, tries to enter the USA and bomb the
Los Angeles airport
1999: Tiger Woods, a black, becomes the superstar of
golf
2000: life expectancy in the USA is 77
2000: Walmart employs more than one million people
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2000: Walmart employs more than one million people
in almost 4,000 stores worldwide
2000: About 750 thousand Mexicans cross illegally
into the USA, the peak of the Mexican wave
2000: The Border Patrol arrests 1,600,000 illigal
immigrants
2000: Justin Frankel and Tom Pepper of Nullsoft
create the file-sharing system Gnutella
2000: the population of the USA is 281 million, with
79% living nin cities
2000: More than 50% of USA citizens own stocks
2000: between 1970 and 2000 the percentage of the
USA population living in suburbs grows from 38% to
50%
Jan 2000: the Dow Jones reaches an all-time high of
11,723
2000: the economic expansion in the USA is the
longest in the history of the US
2000: 10 billion e-mail messages a day are exchanged
over the Internet
2000: More than 500 billion dollars have been spent
worldwide to prepare computers for the year 2000
(Y2K)
2000: the NASDAQ stock market crashes, wiping out
trillions of dollars of wealth
2000: the population of the USA is 280 million and the
most populated state is California with over 30 million
people
2000: British and USA biologists decipher the entire
human DNA
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2000: Clinton announces a record budget surplus,
the largest in USA history
2000: George W Bush becomes president on a
technicality, even though Clinton's vice-president Al
Gore wins the majority of votes
2000: the divorce rate in the USA is 57% , the highest
ever in history
2000: the state of Texas executes 40 people in just
one year, an all-time record for the USA
2000: the USA approves a law (AGOA) to eliminate
tariffs on hundreds of items for African countries
March 2000: Microsoft and Cisco together are worth
$1 trillion (25 times their yearly revenues)
April 2000: the USA stock market for high technology
companies (NASDAQ) crashes
TM, ®, Copyright © 2003 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
November 2000: the first astronauts enter the
international space station orbiting the Earth
2001: scientists map the human genome
2001: Napster is forced to shut down, while Limewire
is launched
2001: Jimmy Wales founds Wikipedia, a multilingual
encyclopedia that is collaboratively edited by the
Internet community
2001: the USA enters a recession, ending the longest
economic expansion of its history
2001: the USA tests a missile defence shield
Aug 2001: Counter-terrorism czar Dick Clarke writes a
memo titled "Osama Bin Laden determined to strike
USA"
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USA"
Sep 2001: Arab terrorists affiliated with Osama Bin
Laden's Al Qaeda organization blow up the World
Trade Center, killing 4,000 people
Oct 2001: The USA begins a bombing campaign
against the Taliban in Afghanistan
2001: the USA opens a special prison camp at
Guantanamo to hold terrorist suspects and
authorizes the use of torture
2001: several cases of the biological weapon anthrax
are detected around the United States and five people
die (a USA scientist, Bruce Ivins, would later be
charged with the crime)
2001: Bush announces that the USA withdraws from
the anti-ballistic treaty (ABM)
2001: 3% of the USA population is in jail
2001: satellite radio is introduced in the USA
2001: Enron collapses, unveiling the biggest
corporate scandal in USA history
2001: there are five million Muslims living in the USA
Dec 2001: The USA expels the last Taliban from
Afghanistan and appoints Hamid Karzai as new
president (12,000 Taliban have been killed and 4,000
Afghan civilians versus only 1 US casualty)
2001: The USA signs free-trade agreements with
Jordan
2002: Russia becomes an ally of NATO
Jun 2002: 812 Afghan civilians are killed in june alone
by USA air strikes
2002: Bram Cohen unveils the peer-to-peer file
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sharing protocol BitTorrent
2002: Rick Warren publishes "The Purpose-Driven
Life", which sells one million copies a month for two
years, becoming the bestselling nonfiction book in
the history of publishing
2002: the trade deficit with China increases to a
record $103 billion
2002: USA stock markets crash, following corporate
scandals, the third consecutive year of decline
2002: Bush announces the first budget deficit since
1998, bringing the grand total to six million billion
dollars (about $21,000 per USA citizen)
2002: USA scientists synthesize a live virus from
chemicals
2002: the NASDAQ falls below its post-September
11's low
2002: Wal-Mart is the biggest company in the world
with over 200 billion dollars in revenues (followed by
Exxon and General Motors, also USA companies)
2002: the West Nile virus spreads from state to state
and kills dozens of people
Sep 2002: George W Bush enacts a doctrine of first
strike against foes and of continued military
supremacy by the USA
2002: a serial sniper (John Allen "MUhammad"
Williams) shoots a dozen people at random in the
Washington/Maryland area
2002: Texas executes more people (33) than all of the
other 49 states (32)
2002: cardinal Bernard Law has to resign following a
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2002: cardinal Bernard Law has to resign following a
wave of sex-abuse scandals involving Catholic
priests
2002: Bush coins to expression "axis of evil" to
describe the totalitarian regimes of Iraq, Iran and
North Korea
Oct 2002: The Dow Jones falls to 7,286, 37.8% lower
than its peak of january 2000
2002: Robert William Pickton is suspected of killing
more than 50 drug-addicted prostitutes during the
1990s in Vancouver, Canada
2002: Corporate lobbyists bribe Republican leader
Tom DeLay, who uses the money to fund the election
of fellow Republicans so that the Republican Party
takes control of Texas' Congress for the first time in
modern history
2002: After four years of surpluses, the 2002 budget
runs a $158 billion deficit, the beginning of a decade
of budget deficits
2003: The space shuttle "Columbia" crashes during
landing, killing the whole crew
2003: Airbus passes Boeing as the world's largest
civilians aircraft manufacturer
2003: Texas executes the 300th inmate since the
death penalty was reinstated in 1982
2003: George W Bush orders the invasion of Iraq to
depose Saddam Hussein
2003: the USA has a record 2 million inmates
2003: Tom DeLay's Republicans in Texas change
electoral districts to maximize their gains in national
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elections
2003: USA interest rates reach a 45-year-low
TM, ®, Copyright © 2005 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
2003: the dollar falls 25% to the euro in just one year
2003: Austrian-born Hollywood star Arnold
Schwarzenegger becomes governor of California
2003: serial killer Gary Ridgway confesses to be the
"Green River Murderer" who killed at least 48
prostitutes and strippers in the Seattle area between
1982 and 1998
2003: the USA economy grows by 7% in the third
quarter, the fastest rate in 20 years
2003: serial killer Gary Ridgway admits murdering 48
women (mostly prostitutes)
2003: the foreign-born populationof the USA reaches
33.5 million, out of 280 million people
2003: the USA dispatches 1,700 soldiers to the
Philippines, to help fight the Abu Sayyaf terrorists
2003: scientists estimate the age of the universe is
13.7 billion years and 95% of the universe is invisible
"dark matter"
2003: serial killer Charles Cullen, a hospital nurse, is
arrested for causing the death of at least 40 patients
with drug overdoses
2003: 15 million people worldwide suffer from
Alzheimer's disease
2003: 43,220 people die in traffic accidents in the
USA,
2003: Skype is founded by Niklas Zennstroem and
Janus Friis to offer voice over IP
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Janus Friis to offer voice over IP
2003: Calvin Willis is released from a Louisiana prison
after serving more than 21 years for a crime he did not
commit
2004: the "Spirit" and the "Opportunity" spacecrafts
land on Mars and send the first pictures of the
planet's surface
2004: The USA signs free-trade treaties with Chile,
Singapore and Australia
2004: Dickson Despommier proposes to build vertical
farms
2004: Google launches a project to digitize all the
books ever printed
2004: Mark Zuckerberg founds Facebook
2004: the World Health Organization estimates that
1.3 million people are killed every year in car
accidents
2004: A NASA plane sets a new speed record of Mach
7 (8000 km/h)
2004: abuses of Iraqi prisoners, revealed by reporter
Seymour Hersh, cause international outcry
2004: Mikhail Gorbacev, Margaret Thatcher and other
leaders of the past attend Ronald Reagan's funeral
2004: scientists transfer properties of one atom and
to another atom by entangling their quantum waves
2004: the Bush administration admits that Saddam
Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction (which
was the reason to invade Iraq)
2004: the dollar falls to an all-time low against the
euro (1.30)
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2004: Congress approves an $800 billion increase in
the nation's debt limit, the third such increase since
George W. Bush became president (the budget deficit
exceeds $7 trillion)
2004: Ryan Matthews becomes the 115th prisoner in
the USA since 1973 to be released from death row on
the grounds of innocence
2004: Evidence of abuses surfaces at both Iraqi and
Afghan prisons (Abu Ghraib and Bagram) run by the
USA military, notably by Lynndie England who is
sentenced to prison
2004: the number of millionaires jumps almost 10% in
the USA
2004: Massachussetts legalizes gay marriage
2004: California approves $3 billion to human
embryonic stem-cell research, resulting in the
founding of the California Institute for Regenerative
Medicine (CIRM), the biggest-ever public scientific
program in the USA
2004: The first Major League Gaming for computer
gaming is held in New York
2005: the monthly USA trade deficit reaches $69
billion of which about 25% with China, 12% with
Canada and 12% with Japan
2005: Carlton Cuse's "Lost" (2005) and Tim Kring's
Heroes (2006) pioneer interactive television programs
2005: Gnutella connects 1.81 million computers
2005: The Internet is used by one billion people
2005: the Kyoto protocol (to reduce the level of
greenhouse-gas emissions in order to avoid climate
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greenhouse-gas emissions in order to avoid climate
changes such as global warming) is adopted by 141
countries of the world but not the USA, China, India
and Australia
2005: a gunman kills seven people at a hotel in
Brookfield, Wisconsin
2005: a student kills nine people (and himself) at a
high school on the Red Lake Indian Reservation of
Minnesota
2005: Newsweek magazine reports that guards at
Guantanamo desecrated the Quran, a news that
sparks deadly riots in Afghanistan and anti-USA
protests in many Islamic countries
2005: Los Angeles elects a Hispanic mayor, Antonio
Villaraigosa
2005: the Six Flags amusement park in New Jersey
debuts the fastest and tallest rollercoaster in the
world, "Kingda Ka"
2005: Microsoft displays the error message "This item
contains forbidden speech" whenever someone tries
to write the word "democracy" on its Chinese blog
2005: sales of notebook computers account for 53%
of the computer market
2005: the Planetary Society of Pasadena, California,
launches an experimental solar-sail spacecraft from a
Russian submarine
2005: Bernard Ebbers, former Worldcom's CEO, is
sentenced to 25 years in jail, capping a string of
corporate scandals
2005: Lance Armstrong, a USA citizen, wins a
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seventh tour de France, an all-time record
2005: the USA approves the Central American Free
Trade Agreement (CAFTA) with Guatemala, Costarica,
Nicaragua, Honduras and Dominican Republic
2005: the price of oil jumps from $35 at the beginning
of the year to an all-time record of $67 a barrel
2005: USA television channel ABC interviews the
most wanted terrorist in Russia, Shamil Basayev
2005: Google's market capitalization is $84 billion
2005: Yahoo, Google, America OnLine (AOL) and MSN
(Microsoft's Network) are the four big Internet portals
with a combined audience of over one billion people
worldwide
2005: scientists map the genome of the chimpanzee
2005: the "Katrina" hurricane destroys New Orleans
and other cities of Louisiana and Mississippi,
displacing more than 500,000 people
2005: under pressure from the USA, North Korea
gives up its nuclear weapons program
2005: the "Deep Impact" probe "lands" on a comet,
Comet Tempel 1, and confirms that comets contain
organic material
2005: members of the Bush administration are
indicted for leaking to the press the name of a CIA
agent in a vicious attempt to silence a critic of the
Iraqi war
2005: agriculture accounts for 2% of all jobs,
manufacturing for 10% (but manufacturing output
expanded 4% yearly from 1991 to 2001)
2005: the state of Kansas decides to teach
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2005: the state of Kansas decides to teach
alternatives to Darwin's theory of evolution
2005: the USA carries out the 1,000th execution since
the death penalty was reinstated in 1976
2005: anti-USA sentiment brings to power leftist
regimes throughout Latin America
2005: Hybrid cars represent only 1% of total cars sold
2005: the Atlanta airport, the busiest in the world,
handles 88.4 million passengers from more than half
a million flights
2005: Ebay acquires Skype for $3.1 billion
2005: Republican representative Tom DeLay of Texas
is indicted of corruption (campaign finance violations)
2005: The largest solar plant in the world is
inaugurated in the Mojave Desert of California,
producing 354MW of electricity, which is more than all
the rest of commercial production of solar energy in
the world
2005: the USA and India sign a nuclear agreement
2005: China's Lenovo acquires IBM's personal
computer business
2006: Google acquires YouTube for $1.65 billion
2006: The NSA starts collecting records on every
phone call made in the USA
2006: Lyndon and Peter Rive found SolarCity
2006: Jack Dorsey creates the social networking
service Twitter
2006: Alan Greenspan is retires from chairman of the
Federal Reserve Bank
2006: The USA signs free-trade agreements with
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Morocco, Oman and Bahrain
2006: a spacecraft ("New Horizons") is launched
towards Pluto
2006: USA search engine Google accepts to
cooperate with the government of mainland China in
censoring the world-wide web
2006: both Ford and General Motors post huge
losses and lay off thousands of workers
2006: after George W Bush appoints another Roman
catholic to the Supreme Court, the majority of the
Supreme Court judges are Catholics for the first time
in the history of the USA
2006: Exxon Mobil posts the largest profit of any
company in USA history
2006: the USA has 1,210 megachurches (churches for
2,000 or more people) that draw more than four
million people a week
2006: Christian fundamentalist governor Mike
Rounds of South Dakota bans abortion
2006: the USA admits that marines killed 25 civilians
in cold blood in the Iraqi town of Haditha
2006: the USA has 300 million people, of which 35
million are foreign-born, and it is the third most
populous country in the world after China and India
2006: Warren Buffet donates $37 billion to charity, the
largest donation ever
2006: Most immigrants to the USA are Mexicans
2006: Keith Ellison is the first Muslim to be elected to
Congress
2006: after six years the Dow Jones index briefly
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2006: after six years the Dow Jones index briefly
trades above its record high close of 11,722
2006: Enron's CEO Jeffrey Skilling is sentenced to 24
years in prison
2006: the world-wide web has 100 million websites
2006: Marijuana is the largest cash crop in the USA
($35 billion)
2006: the first Muslim ever is elected to the USA
Congress (Keith Ellison)
2006: the USA bombs Islamists in Somalia as Ethiopia
help push them out of Somalia
2007: After the Democratic Party takes control of
Congress, Republicans start employing filibuster to
stop every Democratic initiative
2007: The USA and Peru sign a free-trade treaty
2007: 138 million USA citizens have experimented
with illegal drugs
2007: the USA trade deficit hits a record $764 bilion
2007: The "The Million Book Project" led by Carnegie
Mellon University digitizes more than one million
books worldwide
2007: South Korean student Cho Seung-Hui kills 32
people at Virginia Tech
2007: China overtakes the USA to become the world's
second largest exporter and overtakes Canada to
become the main exporter to the USA
2007: Toyota passes General Motors as the world's
largest car manufacturer and Japanese car
manufacturers pass USA car manufacturers even in
the USA market
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2007: There are 12.5 million Illegal immigrants in the
USA, of which more than half are from Mexico
2007: Republican senator Larry Craig of Idaho
resigns following his arrest for soliciting gay sex
2007: USA government agencies declare that Al
Qaeda has regrouped in Pakistan and that the
terrorist threat against the USA has increased
2007: after crashing due to the crisis of sub-prime
mortgage lenders, the USA stock market sets a new
record high
2007: Texas carries out its 400th death penalty
2007: the USA dollar falls to 1:2 to the British pound
and to an all-time low of 1.50 to the euro and is worth
less than a Canadian dollar for the first time in three
decades
2007: a fund of the United Arab Emirates buys a 4.9%
stake in Citigroup for $7.5 billion, making it the single
largest shareholder, ahead of Prince Walid bin Talal of
Saudi Arabia
Jun 2007: A USA strike kills more than 80 civilians in
Chora, Afghanistan
Sep 2007: USA mercenaries hired by the company
Blackwater and including Nicholas Slatten open fire
on a crowd in Baghdad and kill 14 people ("Nissour
Square Massacre")
2007: home prices fall 5.1% , the sharpest drop in 20
years
2007: at the end of the economic expansion of the
2000s the median income of USA families has
declined from $61,000 to $60,500
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declined from $61,000 to $60,500
2007: Piyush "Bobby" Jindal becomes the first
Indian-American governor in the history of the USA
(governor of Louisiana)
2007: The number of Afghan civilian deaths caused
by USA bombings triples between 2006 and 2007
2007: Serial killer Anthony Sowell murders 11 women
and keeps their corpses in his house
Sep 2007: Blackwater security guards shoot on a
crowd in Baghdad, killing 17 people
Oct 2007: The Dow Jones hits a record high of 14,164
on 9 october 2007
Dec 2007: The USA economy enters a recession
2007: 1.4 million violent crimes are committed in the
USA, including 17,000 murders and 9.8 million
property crimes, while 1.35 million high-school
students report being either threatened or injured
with a weapon
2007: the highest number of births in the history of
the USA (4.3 million)
2007: The ratio of debt to personal disposable income
is 133%
2007: The world's largest vendors of personal
computers are HP, Dell, Taiwan's Acer, China's
Lenovo and Japan's Toshiba
Sep 2007: The Canadian dollar rises above the USA
dollar
2008: the average price for gasoline passes $4 per
gallon
Oct 2008: Shirwa Ahmed, a Somali-American, blows
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himself up in Somalia killing 20 other people
2008: Rickey Johnson is released from a Louisiana
prison after serving 25 years for a crime he did not
commit
May 2008: Al Jazeera's cameraman Sami al-Hajj is
released from Guantanamo
Now 2008: For a few months San Francisco issues
marriage license to same-sex couples
2008: Warren Buffett is the richest man in the world
jan 2008: Gold reaches an all-time high of $880
jan 2008: the stock market collapses, triggering
similar collapses around the world
jan 2008: the Encyclopedia of Life (Eol.org) goes on
line
feb 2008: more than 1% of adult USA citizens is in
prison
mar 2008: the price of gold hits $1,000 for the first
time ever and oil passes $110 a barrel, while the dollar
sets another all-time low against the euro (1.56) and
dips below 100 yen (a drop of 6.5% in less than three
months), home prices plunge 9.1% , the Eurozone
overtakes the USA as the world's largest economy
mar 2008: five years after the invasion, the USA has
lost 4,000 soldiers in Iraq
mar 2008: the police raid a polygamist compound
with hundreds of children in Eldorado, Texas, run by
the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter
Day Saints
may 2008: USA's home prices drop by 15.8% , the
steepest decline in 21 years
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steepest decline in 21 years
june 2008: oil prices pass $140 a barrel
june 2008: a USA air strike kills 11 Pakistani soldiers
june 2008: President George W Bush's job approval
falls to 23% , one of the lowest ever recorded
june 2008: For the first time more USA soldiers die in
the war in Afghanistan than in the war in Iraq
july 2008: George W Bush's associate Karl Rove
refuses to testify before a commission investigating
whether the Justice Department prosecuted people
for political reasons
july 2008: George W Bush's aide Karl Rove is
accused of having engineered the dismissals of
prosecutors on political grounds
july 2008: USA inflation hits a 26-year High
july 2008: Republican senator Ted Stevens of Alaska
is indicted of corruption
August 2008: A USA airstrike in Azizabad (western
Afghanistan) kills 92 civilians including 60 children
august 2008: The USA and Libya restore diplomatic
relationships that were broken after Reagan bombed
Libya
august 2008: Following Russia's invasion of Georgia,
the USA and Poland sign a treaty for a missile
defense
sep 2008: NATO killed 3,200 civilians in Afghanistan
from 2005 to mid 2008
sep 2008: Having repaired relations, Condy Rice
becomes the first USA secretary of state to visit Libya
since 1953
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sep 2008: The USA takes over the two largest
mortgage companies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,
and the largest insurance company, American
International Group
sep 2008: USA missiles target Taliban inside Pakistan
sep 2008: In a financial crisis, Lehman Brothers files
for bankruptcy and Merrill Lynch is sold to Bank of
America, the two remaining investment banks in the
United States, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs,
decide to become traditional banks, and the
government buys $700 billion of bad mortgages in the
largest financial bailout since the Great Depression,
and on September 29 the Dow Jones loses 778
points, the biggest single-day point loss ever
sep 2008: A bomb against the USA embassy in
Yemen kills 16 people
oct 2008: the Dow Jones loses more 22% in a week of
continuous losses, including the biggest single-day
decline since 1987
oct 2008: Unemployment reaches 6.5% , the highest
rate since march 1994.
oct 2008: Blowing himself up in Somalia, Shirwa
Ahmed is the first USA citizen to become a suicide
bomber
nov 2008: Barack Obama, a black man, is elected
president of the USA
nov 2008: the world's oldest person, Edna Parker,
dies at the age of 115
Dec 2008: the price of oil plunges to $34 per barrel
amid the world recession
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amid the world recession
Dec 2008: The median home price falls 13.2% from a
year before, down to $181,300, the largest drop since
the Great Depression
Dec 2008: The USA loses two million jobs in 2008 and
the unemployment rate climbs to 6.7%
Dec 2008: More USA workers lost jobs in 2008 than in
any year since World War II, with employers laying off
2.6 million people.
Dec 2008: The USA loses $3.6 trillion in the financial
crisis
Dec 2008: The GDP of the USA falls 6.2% in the last
quarter of 2008, the worst decline since 1982, with
exports falling 23.6%
Dec 2008: Microsoft Windows owns almost 90% of
the operating system market for personal computers,
while Google owns almost 70% of the Internet search
market
2008: More than 10,000 people die of heroin overdose
in the NATO countries in just one year, a number
higher than all casualties from all NATO wars since
2001
2008: 1.6 million people are in federal prisons, an alltime high
2008: 41% of children are born to single mothers,
about 25% to a Hispanic mother, and births to women
over 40 account to 3% (triple the rate of the 1980s)
2008: Almost one in three Medicare recipients
undergo surgery in their last year of life, a way for
hospitals to maximize their profits
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2008: Between 1985 and 2008 the federal taxes paid
by the wealthiest 400 citizens have dropped from
29% to 18% of their income
Jan 2009: The USA loses 741,000 jobs in january
alone, the most since 1949
2009: Fiat buys Chrysler
Jan 2009: Facebook has 140 million users and grows
by about 500,000 users a day, the fastest product
ever to reach that many users in five years
Feb 2009: An unmarried woman, Nadya Suleman,
gives birth to 14 children (eight at the same time)
through in-vitro procedures
Feb 2009: Car sales decline more than 40% from a
year before
Feb 2009: The price of oil plunges to $40/barrel
Mar 2009: Ten people are killed by an armed man in
Alabama
Mar 2009: Bill O'Reilly's show is the number one
news show on tv for the 100th consecutive month
Mar 2009: A gunman kills eight people in a nursing
home of Carthage (North Carolina)
Mar 2009: A gunman kills 13 people in upstate New
York
May 2009: A USA air strike on Granai (in the western
district of Bala Baluk) kills 147 Afghan civilians
May 2009: Unemployment hits 9.2% , the highest rate
in 25 years
Jun 2009: The recession begun in 2007 ends in june
2009, the longest USA recession since World War II
(18 months)
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(18 months)
Jul 2009: The USA budget deficit tops $1 trillion
Aug 2009: Sonia Sotomayor becomes the first
Hispanic to serve in the Supreme Court
sep 2009: Yielding to Russian pressure, the USA
cancels a missile defense system in Eastern Europe
Oct 2009: The unemployment rate reaches 10.1% , a
26-year high
2009: China passes Germany as the world's top
exporter and China passes Canada as the USA's top
exporter
2009: LimeWire, the largest free file-sharing system,
has over 70 million unique monthly users
Oct 2009: There are more than 100,000 NATO troops
(including about 68,000 USA soldiers) in Afghanistan
alongside 200,000 Afghan soldiers fighting less than
25,000 Taliban
Oct 2009: Luquman Ameen Abdullah, who was trying
to establish an Islamic state in Michigan, is killed by
the FBI
Jul 2009: The "Great Recession" ends in the USA
Nov 2009: The US dollar hits a 14-year low against the
Japanese yen down to 86.5 yen
Nov 2009: A Muslim in the USA army, Nidal Hasan,
kills 13 people at the Fort Hood base in Texas
Dec 2009: The Internet is used by more than two
billion people
Dec 2009: The USA accounts for 26.7% of world GDP
Dec 2009: Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian
Muslim trained by Al Qaeda in Yemen, tries to bomb a
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USA airplane
Dec 2009: A USA court sends free the Blackwater
security guards who shot on a crowd in Baghdad in
2007, killing 17 people
Dec 2009: Jordanian suicide bomber and Al Qaeda
secret agent Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi kills
seven CIA agent a Jordanian secret agent in
Afghanistan
Dec 2009: Facebook has 350 million users and grows
by about one million users a day; Wikipedia has 350
million users per month and 14 million articles.
Dec 2009: A US drone strike kills 14 women and 21
children in Yemen
2009: Between 2005 and 2009 the median wealth of
white households fell by 16% , of Hispanics fell by
66% , of Asians by 54% and of blacks by 53%
2009: 10.8 million motor vehicle accidents result in
36,000 deaths
Jan 2010: Three USA soldiers are killed in Pakistan by
the Pakistani Taliban, the first USA casualties inside
Pakistan
Jan 2010: The Supreme Court rules that corporations
are persons, entitled to spend unlimited money to
influence elections
Jan 2010: USA missionaries, mostly belonging to a
Baptist church in Idaho, try to kidnap 33 Haitian
children after the country is devastated by an
earthquake
Feb 2010: Right-wing movements organize a
"National Tea Party Convention" in Nashville
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"National Tea Party Convention" in Nashville
Apr 2010: The USA discloses that it has a total of
5,113 nuclear warheads in its arsenal
Apr 2010: An explosion on a BP rig causes a massive
oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the biggest
environmental disaster in the history of the USA
May 2010: Pakistani-born Faisal Shahzad tries to
blow up a car bomb in Times Square, New York
May 2010: A soldier stationed in Iraq, Bradley
Manning, is arrested for passing classified
information to WikiLeaks
Jun 2010: A former employee kills five people and
himself a business in New Mexico
Jun 2010: General Motors sells more cars in China
than in the USA
Jul 2010: A USA strike kills 52 civilians in Afghanistan
including 17 children
Jul 2010: More than 90,000 secret USA military
records about the Afghanistan war are leaked to a
website
Jul 2010: 66 USA soldiers die in Afghanistan in july
2010, the deadliest month since the war began
Jul 2010: WikiLeaks releases thousands of top-secret
USA documents about the war in Afghanistan
Aug 2010: Nine people are shot dead by a worker at a
warehouse in Connecticut
Aug 2010: Thirty-eight USA billionaires, led by Warren
Buffet and Bill Gates, pledge 50% of their wealth to
charity
Aug 2010: The USA declares a formal end to its
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combat mission in Iraq
Sep 2010: After an argument with his wife, a man in
eastern Kentucky kills five people with a shotgun
before killing himself
Sep 2010: The CIA launches more than 20 drone
attacks against Pakistani territories, the highest
number ever
Oct 2010: The Australian dollar reaches parity with
the USA dollar
Nov 2010: WikiLeaks releases thousands of topsecret USA documents
Dec 2010: Nigeria's anti-corruption agency charges
former US vice-president Dick Cheney of bribing
officials
Dec 2010: Former Republican leader Tom DeLay is
convicted of money laundering financing and
sentenced to jail
2010: Asians overcome Hispanics as the largest
group of immigrants to the USA
Dec 2010: The SpaceX Falcon 9, the first private
spaceship to orbit Earth, takes off
2010: A record 700,000 foreign students study in the
USA, of which 128,000 are from China and 105,000 are
from India
2010: The budget deficit reaches $14 trillion or almost
100% of annual GDP
2010: For the first time in history, the population of
the West is gretare than the population of the Midwest
2010: The USA has become mainland China's
second-largest export market and mainland China
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second-largest export market and mainland China
has become the USA's third-largest export market
and the fastest-growing one
2010: Mainland China holds about $1.6 trillion in
Treasury bonds of the USA
2010: Almost 2.9 million home owners foreclose on
homes they cannot afford, an all-time record
Dec 2010: Wikipedia has 17 million articles in 250
languages
Dec 2010: For the first time since 2003 the USA
spends more in the war in Afghanistan than in Iraq
2010: The USA exports over $400 billion of goods to
the European Union, and its firms own $1 trillion of
direct investment in the European Union
2010: Social media allow to raise millions for the
victims of the Haiti earthquake
2010: 38,364 commit suicide in 2010
2010: There are 38,350 suicides in 2010, more than
people who die in car accidents
Jan 2011: A gunman kills six people and wounds a
dozen during a political meeting in Tucson, Arizona
2011: 62% of women age 20 to 24 who gave birth in
the previous 12 months are unmarried
Mar 2011: A USA drone kills 40 people in Pakistan
Mar 2011: Gibbs and other soldiers are photographed
after allegedly killing three Afghan civilians and taking
fingers off their bodies as war trophies
Apr 2011: More than 320 people are killed by
tornadoes
Apr 2011: For the first time in decades ownership of
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television sets declines in the USA
May 2011: The United Nations estimates that opiate
use increased 35% worldwide from 1998 to 2008,
cocaine by 27% , and cannabis by 8.5% .
June 2011: New York becomes the sixth state to
legalize gay marriage
June 2011: Fewer than half of cohabiting couples are
married
2011: The USA has 413 billionaires, China has 115
billionaires, Russia 101, India 55, Germany 52, Britain
32, Brazil 30, and Japan 26
Jul 2011: The USA withdraws the last space shuttle
Aug 2011: A man kills seven people in Akron
Aug 2011: World stock markets crash for fear of the
national debt of the USA and of several European
countries
Aug 2011: The Taliban down a US helicopter killing 30
US soldiers
Aug 2011: Apple passes ExxonMobil to become the
most valuable company in the world based on market
capitalization
Aug 2011: Gold reaches an all-time high of $1900 per
ounce
Aug 2011: Anti-Qaddafi rebels helped by NATO reach
Tripoli, end Qaddafi's dictatorship over Libya and
install Mahmoud Jibril as head of the transitional
government
Aug 2011: 66 USA soldiers die in Afghanistan, making
august 2011 the deadliest month yet since the
invasion
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invasion
Sep 2011: Troy Davis is executed in Georgia despite
the fact that most witnesses recanted
Sep 2011: US-born al-Qaeda leader Anwar al-Awlaki is
assassinated by a US drone strike in Yemen
Sep 2011: Thousands of people stage protests
against Wall Street firms in new York
Oct 2011: The USA foils a plot by the Iranian Islamic
Revolutionary Guards to assassinate the Saudi
ambassador to the USA and to bomb the embassy of
Saudi Arabia in the USA
Oct 2011: A man kills eight people at a hair salon in
Seal Beach (California)
Oct 2011: The USA signs free-trade treaties with
Colombia, Panama and South Korea
Oct 2011: The world's population is 7 billion, up from
1 billion in 1850 and less than 3 billion in 1950.
Dec 2011: Only 51% of adults in the USA are married
compared with 72% in 1960
Dec 2011: The USA withdraws the last soldiers from
Iraq, after more than 100,000 civilians have been killed
in the occupation and civil war, with 15000 civilians
killed directly by the USA or allies, plus about 50,000
non-civilian "insurgents" for a grand total of about
162,000
Dec 2011: Saudi billionaire prince Alwaleed bin Talal
invests a huge sum in social media Twitter
Dec 2011: Facebook has 800 million users worldwide
Dec 2011: There are 327 million wireless-phone
subscribers in the USA, more than its population
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Dec 2011: A man in Grapevine (Texas) kills six family
members and himself on Christmas day
2011: The USA spends $739bn in defense while
China spends $90bn
2011: In a decade the cost of tuition in universities
has increased from 23% of median income to 38%
Jan 2012: The USA shuts down one of the world's
largest file-sharing sites, Megaupload, and arrests its
chief Kim Schmitz
Jan 2012: A USA drone kills 12 al Qaeda militants in
southern Yemen
Mar 2012: A USA soldier, Robert Bales, kills 16
Afghani civilians, including nine children and three
women
Apr 2012: One Goh kills seven people at a Oakland
high school
Apr 2012: The USA begins deploying soldiers in
Australia
Apr 2012: A gunmen kills five black men in Tulsa
May 2012: The USA thwarts a plot to blow up an
airplane and kills Fahd al-Quso, al-Qaeda's leader in
Yemen
May 2012: NATO activates a missile defence system
in Europe despite strong Russian opposition, and in
response Russia launches a program of rearmament
May 2012: Ian Stawicki walks into a cafe and kills 5
people and himself in Seattle
May 2012: A NATO strike kills 18 civilians in
Afghanistan
Jul 2012: An armed madman, James Holmes, kills 12
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Jul 2012: An armed madman, James Holmes, kills 12
people in a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado
Aug 2012: Wade Michael Page shoots six people
dead at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin.
Aug 2012: A NASA rover lands on Mars (The
"Curiosity")
Aug 2012: Lance Armstrong is stripped of his seven
Tour de France titles because of doping
Aug 2012: Badruddin Haqqani is killed in a US drone
strike
Aug 2012: the Voyager I is the first human-made
object to leave the solar system
2012: Only 3% of chief executives of corporations are
women
Sep 2012: Dozens of people are killed in the Islamic
world during violent protests against an anti-Islamic
amateur video posted online in the USA, including the
US ambassador in Libya
Oct 2012: SpaceX's rocket takes off, the first
commercial flight to the International Space Station
Nov 2012: Mazie Hirono becomes the first Japaneseborn senator (also the first Buddhist and the first
Asian-American woman)
Nov 2012: Puerto Rico votes to become a state of the
USA
Nov 2012: Kyrsten Sinema becomes the first openly
bisexual person elected to Congress
Dec 2012: Possession of marijuana becomes legal in
the states of Washington (Seattle) and Colorado
Dec 2012: 34080 people die in traffic accidents in
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2012 in the USA, 14.7% motorcyclists
Dec 2012: Adam Lanza kills 26 people at an
elementary school in Newtown (Connecticut)
including 20 children
2012: 72 million people are overweight in the USA
2012: The number of patent lawsuits increased by
nearly 50% between 2010 and 2012
Mar 2013: The Dow Jones returns to the high of 2007
Apr 2013: Two Chechen immigrants, Tamerlan
Tsarnaev and Dzhokar Tsarnaev, set off bombs that
kill three people at the Boston Marathon
May 2013: Three women (Amanda Berry, Gina
DeJesus and Michelle Knight) are freed after being
held captive for about a decade in Cleveland by Ariel
Castro
Apr 2013: About 100 people are killed by a giant
tornado in Oklahoma
Jun 2013: The USA announces peace talks with the
Taliban in Afghanistan
Jun 2013: NSA employee Edward Snowden reveals
details of a vast government operation to spy on
citizens and on foreign allies and is then granted
asylum in Russia
Jun 2013: The supreme court condemns the Defense
of Marriage Act that defines marriage as between a
man and a woman only, while 30 states of the USA
still ban same-sex marriages
Jul 2013: The city of Detroit, whose population has
declined from two million in 1950 to 700 thousand and
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whose murder rate hit a 40-year high, files the largestever municipal bankruptcy in the history of the USA
Sep 2013: The USA and Russia agree on a plan to
remove Syria's chemical weapons after the USA
threatened military intervention
Sep 2013: A former Navy serviceman, Aaron Alexis,
kills 12 people and himself at a naval installation in
Washington
Sep 2013: For the first time since 1979 the president
of the USA and the president of Iran speak on the
phone
Oct 2013: Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act
("Obamacare") rolls out against massive Republican
complaints
2013: Income inequality in the USA is the highest
since 1928, wwith the richest 1% of people taking
19% of the national income
2013: 8 of the 15 fastest-growing cities of the USA are
in Texas
Oct 2013: The USA captures al-Qaeda leader Anas alLibi, accused of the 1998 bombings of the embassies
in Kenya and Tanzania, and tries to kill the Kenyanborn terrorist Ikrima (Abdulkadir Mohamed
Abdulkadir) in Somalia
Oct 2013: Pakistan reveals that 317 US drone strikes
since 2008 have killed 2,160 militants and 67 civilians
Oct 2013: The leader of the Pakistani Taliban,
Hakimullah Mehsud, is killed by a US drone
Nov 2013: More than 2,000 wrongfully convicted
people have been exonerated between 1989 and 2012
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in the USA
Dec 2013: Colorado becomes the first state in the
USA to open recreational pot stores and regulate
marijuana from seed to sale
2013: 48 million Americans, or about 1 in 7 of us,
receive "food stamps" from the government
2013: Barack Obama has ordered more than 400
aerial drone assassinations since 2008
2013: The USA has carried out more than 80 attacks
in Yemen, killing almost 500 people, since 2009
2013: TED talks have been watched more than 2
billion times
World News | Politics | History | Editor
(Copyright © 2008 Piero Scaruffi)
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