Ms. Densley APUSH
Essential Events
The following is a list of events that are essential to understanding US history. These
events were chosen because they were major turning points or had a great impact on the
course of history. We will be discussing the details of these events in detail throughout
the course, you will not be expected to memorize an event until we have covered it in
class. Knowing the dates and names of these events will provide you with a chronological
framework through which you can organize your understanding of history.
Directions: You are expected to memorize 40 events each semester. You will have both
oral and written quizzes to prove your memorization of these events. You need to know
both the date of the event when given the name, and the significance of the event. I
highly suggest flashcards to practice, and getting someone to quiz you periodically.
1. 1492 – Columbus arrives in the New World
2. 1607 – Jamestown settled
3. 1619 -- 1st Africans arrive in Virginia
4. 1620 -- Pilgrims settle Plymouth
5. 1629 -- Puritans settle Massachusetts Bay
6. 1643 -- New England Confederation
7. 1675 -- King Philip's War
8. 1676 -- Bacon's Rebellion
9. 1692 -- Salem Witch Trials
10. 1733 -- Georgia, last of 13 colonies, founded
11. 1736 -- Zenger Case
12. c. 1739 – Great Awakening
13. 1756 -- Albany Plan for Union
14. 1763 -- Proclamation of 1763
15. 1765 -- Stamp Act
16. 1775 -- Lexington and Concord
17. 1776 -- Declaration of Independence
18. 1783 -- Treaty of Paris
19. 1787 --Constitutional Convention; NW Ordinance
20. 1790 -- First turnpike (Lancaster)
21. 1791 -- Slater builds first textile factory; 1st Bank of the US
22. 1793 -- Eli Whitney's cotton gin
23. 1803 -- Louisiana Purchase; Marbury v. Madison
24. 1807 -- Robert Fulton's steamboat travels up the Hudson
25. 1812 -- War of 1812
26. 1819 -- Panic of 1819
27. 1820 -- Missouri Compromise
28. 1825 -- Erie Canal completed
29. 1828 -- first railroad line in U.S.
30. c. 1830--2nd Great Awakening peaks
31. 1830 -- Indian Removal Act
32. 1831 -- William Lloyd Garrison's Liberator; Nat Turner’s Rebellion
33. 1832 -- Nullification Crisis/BUS issue
34. 1845 -- Texas annexed
Ms. Densley APUSH
Essential Events
35. 1846 – Oregon territory; Mexican War
36. 1848 -- Seneca Falls Convention; Wilmot Proviso
37. 1850 -- Compromise of 1850
38. 1854 -- Kansas-Nebraska Act
39. 1861 -- Fort Sumter; Bull Run
40. 1865 -- Lincoln assassinated; 13th Amendment
41. 1869 -- Transcontinental Railroad
42. 1873 -- Panic of 1873
43. 1876 -- telephone invented
44. 1877--"Compromise of 1877"; Great RR Strike
45. 1879 -- Edison invents light bulb
46. 1885 -- Louis Sullivan builds first skyscraper
47. 1886 -- Haymarket Square bombing; AFL
48. 1887 -- Dawes Act
49. 1890—Sherman Act; Wounded Knee; no frontier
50. 1892 -- Populists; Homestead Steel Strike
51. 1893 -- Panic of 1893
52. 1896 -- McKinley defeats Bryan; Plessey v. Ferguson
53. 1898 -- Spanish-American War
54. 1903 -- Wright Bros.; first movie
55. 1913 -- Ford's Model T; assembly line
56. 1915 -- Birth of a Nation, KKK
57. 1917 -- U.S. enters WWI
58. 1919 – treaty of Versailles; Red Scare; 18th Amendment
59. 1920 – 19th Amendment; radio
60. 1927 -- First "talkie": Jazz Singer
61. 1929 -- stock market crash
62. 1933 -- New Deal; rise of Hitler
63. 1941 – Lend-Lease/Pearl Harbor
64. 1945 -- A-bomb against Japan
65. 1947 – TV
66. 1949 -- China falls; Soviet A-bomb
67. 1950 -- Korean War begins; McCarthyism
68. 1952 -- U.S. explodes H-bomb
69. 1954 -- Brown v. Board of Education
70. 1957 -- Sputnik
71. 1962 -- Cuban Missile Crisis
72. 1963 -- Betty Friedan: The Feminine Mystique
73. 1964 -- Gulf of Tonkin incident; “Great Society”
74. 1968 – Tet offensive, assassination of MLK and RFK
75. 1969 – 1st man on the moon
76. 1973 -- Roe v. Wade
77. 1974 -- Watergate
78. 1989—Fall of communism in Eastern Europe
79. 1991 – Fall of the Soviet Union; 1st Gulf War
80. 2001 – 9/11 terrorist attacks