Douglass’ Timeline of Significant Events – US History Review
DATE
1587-1590
1607
1619
1620
1676
1711-1713
1712
1756-1763
1765-1775
1770
1773
1775-1783
1781
1789
1789
1791
1803
1812-1815
1820
1823
1830
1830
1832-1833
1835-1836
1838
1845
1846-1848
1849
1850
1854
1857
1859
1860
1860
1861-1865
1865-1877
1877-1900
1898
1890s-1920s
1914-1919
EVENT
Lost Colony at Roanoke Island
Founding of Jamestown Colony
First slaves at Jamestown Colony
Pilgrims land at Plymouth
Bacon’s Rebellion
Tuscarora War in NC
North and South Carolina split and become separate colonies
French & Indian War (Seven Years War)
British impose new laws and taxes on colonists:

Stamp Act, Quartering Act, Townshend Acts, Tea Act, etc.
Boston Massacre
Boston Tea Party
American Revolutionary War

April, 1775: Battles of Lexington & Concord

May, 1775: Second Continental Congress meets

July 4, 1776: Declaration of Independence (July 4)

1781: Battle of Guilford Courthouse (Greensboro)

1783: Treaty of Paris ends the war
Articles of Confederation are ratified
George Washington elected president (steps down after 2 terms)
US Constitution ratified
Bill of Rights added to Constitution
Louisiana Purchase
War of 1812
Missouri Compromise
Monroe Doctrine was created
Second Great Awakening
Indian Removal Act was passed
Nullification Crisis
Texas Revolution (Battle of the Alamo)
Trail of Tears
Annexation of Texas to the United States
Mexican-American War
California Gold Rush begins
Compromise of 1850
Kansas-Nebraska Act/ Bleeding Kansas
Dred Scott decision
John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry
Abraham Lincoln elected President
South Carolina secedes from the Union; 10 other states follow
Civil War

1861: Fort Sumter

1862: Battle of Antietam

1863: Battle of Gettysburg, Emancipation Proclamation

1864: Sherman’s March to the sea

1865: Lee surrenders to Grant in Appomattox, VA; Lincoln is assassinated; 13th Amendment is passed (freeing
slaves)
Reconstruction

1868: 14th Amendment is passed

1870: 15th Amendment is passed
Gilded Age

1890: Sherman Anti-Trust Act (Government begins to regulate big business for the first time)

1890s: Labor strikes ensue
Explosion of the USS Maine; Spanish-American War
Progressive Era

1901-1909: Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt (Reformed the government)

1903: Ford Motor Company founded; 1908: First Model-T

1909: Founding of NAACP by W.E.B. DuBois
World War I

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1919
1920
1929-1941
1939-1945
1947-1991
1990-1991
1993-2001
2001
2001
2003
2006
2008
2011
2011
1914: Germany invaded Belgium
1915: Sinking of the Lusitania
1917: Zimmermann Telegram
1919: Treaty of Versailles (Territory in Europe divided; Germany to pay reparations); League of Nations founded
(rejected by US)
18th Amendment passed (Prohibition, banning the sale of alcohol)
19th Amendment passed (Women’s suffrage, right to vote for women)
Great Depression & the New Deal

October 29, 29 1929: Stock Market Crash; Great Depression begins

1933: Franklin D. Roosevelt becomes President (President until 1945) and creates the New Deal; 21st
Amendment passed (Repeals the 18th, Ends Prohibition)

1934: Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) created; Dust Bowl

1935: Social Security Act passed
World War II

1933-1945: Holocaust

1939: Germany invades Poland, War begins

1941: Pearl Harbor, FDR declares war

1942: Japanese Internment begins

1944: D-Day; Battle of the Bulge;

1945: V-E Day (May 8); Dropping of Atomic Bombs on Hiroshima & Nagasaki (August 6 & 9); V-J Day (September
2); United Nations is founded; Nuremburg Trials
Cold War/ Civil Rights Era

1949: Founding of NATO

1950: Joseph McCarthy gains influence and leads hearings/McCarthyism

1950-1953: Korean War

1954: Brown v. Board of Education (overturning Plessy v. Ferguson)

1955: Founding of Warsaw Pact

1955: Rosa Parks is arrested, launching the Montgomery Bus Boycott

1955-1975: Vietnam War

1957: Beginning of Space Race (USSR launched Sputnik

1960: John F. Kennedy elected President

1960: Greensboro Sit-Ins
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1961: Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba

1961: Berlin Wall built

1962: Cuban Missile Crisis
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1963: March on Washington (MLK, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech)
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1963: John F. Kennedy assassinated (November 22)
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1964: Civil Right Act of 1964

1965: Voting Rights Act of 1965

1965: Malcolm X assassinated
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1968: Martin Luther King, Jr. assassinated
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1968: Most violent year of Vietnam (Tet Offensive)

1969: Woodstock Music Festival
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1972: Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education

1972: Watergate Scandal

1973: Roe v. Wade (legalizing abortion)

1973: Oil Crisis

1974: Nixon impeached & resigns; Gerald Ford succeeded him as President and then pardoned Nixon

1981-1989: Presidency of Ronald Regan

1986: Iran-Contra Affair
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1989-1993: Presidency of George H.W. Bush
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1991: End of Cold War; Tearing down of the Berlin Wall
Gulf War (United Nations against Iraq)
Presidency of Bill Clinton
September 11 Terrorist Attacks on World Trade Centers and the Pentagon
War in Afghanistan begins (Still going on today in 2013)
Invasion of Iraq - Beginning of “Operation Iraqi Freedom”
Saddam Hussein executed
Barack Obama elected president
Osama Bin Laden assassinated
Technical end of the Iraqi War