Chronology: American History

25,000 BC

Approximate date of earliest human settlement in the Americas

c.5000 BC

Beginning of Athapaskan migration

c.3000 BC

Inupiat and Aleut migrations

2500 BC

Date of the Serpent Mound located in the Ohio Valley

1000 BC

Leif Eriksson sails to Newfoundland

c.ad 500

Height of Mayan culture (Mexico)

AD 650

Earliest evidence of bow and arrow, flint hoes, and Northern Flint corn in the Northeast

1000

Cultivation of tobacco throughout North America

1050–1250

Peak of Cahokia Culture (Illinois)

c.1200

High point of Mississippian and Anasazi cultures

1300

Athapaskans reach Southwest

1325

Aztec city Tenochititlán founded

1451

Founding of the Iroquois Confederacy

1492

Christopher Columbus reaches Caribbean

1497

John Cabot explores east coast of North America

1513

Juan Ponce de Leon lands in Florida

1519

Hernan Cortés arrives in Mexico; imprisons Aztec emperor Montezuma, who later dies in battle

1519–22

Ferdinand Magellan circumnavigates the world

1535

Jacques Cartier begins exploring the St. Lawrence River

1539–40

Expeditions of Hernando de Soto and Francisco de Coronado

1565

Spanish found St. Augustine; French Huguenot colony of Ft. Caroline in Florida is destroyed by Spanish; Spanish missions introduce Roman Catholicism to Florida

1584–87

Sir Walter Raleigh establishes colony on Roanoke Island

1586

Sir Francis Drake destroys Spanish settlements in Florida and the West Indies

1598

Juan de Onate leads Spain into New Mexico; Spanish missions are established in New Mexico

1607

Settlement of Jamestown, Virginia

1608

Samuel Champlain founds Quebec

1609

Henry Hudson discovers the Hudson River; Spanish found Santa Fe (first Spanish settlement in New Mexico); Church of England is established by law in Virginia

1612

Introduction of tobacco cultivation in Virginia

1619

First Africans are sold as slaves in Virginia

1620

Pilgrims settle Plymouth

1621

William Bradford is elected governor of the Plymouth Colony; Treaty between Plymouth and Massasoit, Wampanoag chief

1625

Puritans settle Massachusetts Bay; Jesuit missionaries arrive in New France

1650–96

Parliament enacts the Navigation Acts

1656

First Quakers arrive in Boston

1661

Algonquian New Testament becomes the first Bible printed in North America

1664

English conquer New Amsterdam

1665

New Jersey colony founded

1669

South Carolina founded

1675

King Philip’s War

1676

Bacon’s Rebellion

1681

Settlement of Philadelphia; Exploration of the Mississippi River by Sieur de La Salle

1683

Earliest Mennonites settle in Pennsylvania

1692

Salem witch trials

1696

Introduction of rice cultivation in South Carolina

1700s

Plains Indians begin using horses

1702

St. Augustine burned by South Carolinians

1705

Virginia Slave Code established

1716

Spanish build missions in Texas

1732

Benjamin Franklin begins publication of Poor Richard’s Almanac

1733

Molasses Act; Georgia settled

1738

George Whitefield begins preaching in the colonies

1740s

Indigo production starts in South Carolina

1740

Naturalization Act

1741

Vitus Bering explores Alaska

1745

British take Louisburg, Canada, from France

1754–63

French and Indian War

1759

John Winthrop publishes Two Lectures on Comets

1760s

Height of the Great Awakening

1763

Pontiac’s Rebellion; Paxton Boys Massacre; Proclamation of 1763

1764

Sugar Act

1765

Stamp Act

1767

Townshend Acts

1767–68

Daniel Boone explores Kentucky; Spanish begin settling California; Boston Massacre

1773

Boston Tea Party

1774

First Continental Congress meets

1775

Daniel Boone crosses Cumberland Gap to Kentucky’s bluegrass region; Battles of Lexington and Concord and Bunker Hill; George Washington named commander-in-chief of Continental Army

1776

Declaration of Independence; Washington occupies Boston; Battles of Long Island, Trenton, and Princeton; San Francisco founded; Thomas Paine publishes Common Sense

1777

Battle of Saratoga

1777–78

Continental Army winters over at Valley Forge

1778

British capture Savannah and Charleston

1781

Ratification of the Articles of Confederation; General Cornwallis surrenders at Yorktown

1783

Treaty of Paris; Britain recognizes U.S. independence

1784

Russians settle Aleutian Islands of Alaska

1785

Land Ordinance of 1785

1787

Shays’ Rebellion; Constitutional Convention; Northwest Ordinance; first American steamboat is launched on the Delaware River by John Fitch

1789

Washington inaugurated as president; Annapolis Convention; Bill of Rights

1790

First U.S. ship reaches Hawaii; Samuel Slater opens his first mill in Rhode Island

1793

Eli Whitney invents the cotton gin

1794

Whiskey Rebellion

1795

Ratification of Jay’s Treaty

1798

XYZ Affair; Alien and Sedition Acts are passed

1803

Louisiana Purchase

1804–6

Louis and Clark expedition

1806

Zebulon Pike explores the Great Plains to the Rocky Mountains

1807

Robert Fulton builds his first successful steamboat, the Clermont

1808

Congress bars importation of slaves

1811

Battle of Tippecanoe

1812

War of 1812

1814

Francis Scott Key writes “The Star Spangled Banner”

1815

Battle of New Orleans; Stephen Decatur’s Algerian expedition

1817

Rush-Bagot Agreement with Great Britain

1818

1st Seminole War

1820

Missouri Compromise

1821

Mexico achieves independence from Spain

1823

Monroe Doctrine

1825

Baltimore and Ohio railroad begins operation; Erie Canal opens

1830

Indian Removal Act; Joseph Smith founds Mormon Church

1830s

Height of the Second Great Awakening

1831

Nat Turner’s slave uprising

1835

Texas Revolt against Mexico

1836

Battles of the Alamo and San Jacinto

1843–44

John C. Fremont maps trails to Oregon and California

1844

First successful telegraph transmission

1845

U.S. annexes Texas as slave state

1846

Beginning of Mexican-American War; Wilmot Proviso; Oregon Treaty; Elias Howe invents the sewing machine

1848

Women’s Rights Convention at Seneca Falls, N.Y.; treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ends Mexican-American War

1849

California Gold Rush

1850

Compromise of 1850; California admitted as a free state

1851

Publication of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin

1853

Commodore Matthew Perry opens Japan to U.S. trade; Washington Territory established

1854

Kansas-Nebraska Act; Henry David Thoreau publishes Walden

1856

John Brown’s raid; caning of Sen. Charles Sumner

1857

Dred Scott case

1858

Lincoln-Douglas debates

1860

Abraham Lincoln elected president; Pony Express established

1861

Civil War begins; First Battle of Bull Run

1862

Battles of the Monitor and the Merrimack, Shiloh, Antietam, and Fredericksburg; Pacific Railway Act; Homestead Act

1863

Emancipation Proclamation; Battles of Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, and Vicksburg

1864

Sherman’s march to the sea

1865

Freedmen’s Bureau established; Lee surrenders at Appomattox; Lincoln assassinated

1865–66

Enactment of Black Codes in the South

1865–67

Great Sioux War

1867

Reconstruction Acts passed; U.S. purchases Alaska from Russia

1868

House of Representatives impeaches Andrew Johnson; Senate acquits him in 1871

1871

Chicago fire

1871–86

Apache Wars in New Mexico

1874

Invention of barbed wire

1876

Battle of Little Big Horn; Rutherford B. Hayes wins disputed presidential election; Alexander Graham Bell invents telephone

1879

Carlisle Indian School founded; Thomas Edison invents light bulb

1881

President Garfield assassinated; Tuskegee Institute founded

1882

Chinese Exclusion Act

1886

American Federation of Labor founded; Haymarket bombing

1887

Dawes Severalty (Allotment) Act; Interstate Commerce Act

1889

Jane Addams founds Hull House

1890

Wounded Knee Massacre; National American Women’s Suffrage Association founded; Sherman Antitrust Act

1894

Pullman Strike

1896

Plessy v. Ferguson upholds “separate but equal” doctrine; William Jennings Bryan’s Cross of Gold” speech

1898

Spanish-American War; U.S. acquires overseas territories from Spain; annexes Hawaii

1901

Pres. McKinley assassinated, V.P. Theodore Roosevelt succeeds as president

1903

U.S. secures canal rights in Panama; W.E.B. Du Bois publishes The Souls of Black Folk; Wright brothers launch the first successful manned flight in Kittyhawk, N.C.

1905

Albert Einstein develops his theory of relativity

1907

“Gentlemen’s Agreement” with Japan

1908

Henry Ford produces first Model T automobile

1909

W.E.B. Du Bois helps found National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)

1914

World War I begins; Panama Canal opens; Clayton Anti-Trust Act

1914

Keating-Owen Act bars child-labor products from interstate commerce

1916–17

Mexican Border Campaign

1917

U.S. declares war on the Central Powers; 18th Amendment passes, prohibiting the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages

1918

U.S. troops fight in France; armistice ends World War I; Wilson announces his Fourteen Points; Sedition Act passed; Eugene Debs imprisoned

1919

Senate rejects the Treaty of Versailles; Red Scare and Palmer Raids begin; Chicago race riot

1919–30

Harlem Renaissance

1920

19th Amendment guarantees women’s right to vote

1921

Congress establishes first immigration quotas

1921–22

Washington Armament Conference

1923

Pres. Warren Harding dies; exposure of Teapot Dome and other Harding administration scandals

1924

Congress extends citizenship to all Indians

1925

Scopes Monkey trial in Dayton, Tenn.

1927

Execution of Sacco and Vanzetti; Charles Lindbergh’s solo flight from New York to Paris

1929

New York Stock Exchange crashes

1930s

Great Depression

1932

Bonus March on Washington

1933

First New Deal

1934

Indian Reorganization Act

1935

Social Security Act passed

1937

Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Court Packing plan thwarted

1938

Formation of Congress of Industrial Organizations

1939

World War II begins

1940

Selective Service and Raining Act passed

1941

Japan attacks Pearl Harbor; United States enters World War II

1942

Internment of Japanese Americans; Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) established

1943

Race riots in Detroit and Los Angeles

1945

Yalta Conference; Roosevelt dies and V.P. Harry Truman becomes president; Germany surrenders; first atomic bomb detonated at Alamogordo, N.M.; U.S. drops atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki; Japan surrenders; union membership reaches 14.8 million

1946

United Mine Workers’ strike; Richard Evelyn Byrd leads an expedition to the South Pole

1947

Marshall Plan proposed; Truman Doctrine; HUAC hearings in Hollywood; Jackie Robinson becomes the first African-American major league baseball player; Taft-Hartley (Labor-Management Relations) Act

1948

Military desegregation ordered by Harry Truman

1948–49

Berlin Airlift

1949

Truman announces Fair Deal; NATO founded

1950

Korean War starts

1951

Gen. MacArthur dismissed by Pres. Truman

1952

Dwight D. Eisenhower elected president

1953

Armistice agreement in Korea

1954

Supreme Court Brown v. Board of Education desegregation decision; United States explodes first hydrogen bomb; Army-McCarthy Hearings; first atomic-powered ship, USS Nautilus, launched

1955

Merger of AFL and CIO; Jonas Salk develops polio vaccine

1956

Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott ends successfully

1957

Pres. Eisenhower sends the National Guard to desegregate Little Rock High School

1960

John F. Kennedy elected president; founding of the Student-Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)

1962

Cuban Missile Crisis

1963

Pres. Kennedy assassinated; V.P. Lyndon B. Johnson succeeds

1964

Civil Rights Act; U.S. role in Vietnam expands after Gulf of Tonkin Resolution; Economic Opportunity Act

1965

Malcolm X assassinated

1966

Formation of National Organization of Women (NOW) and of Black Panthers

1968

Vietnam War protests grow; Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy assassinated

1969

American Neil Armstrong becomes first man to walk on the moon

1970

Shooting of Kent State student protesters against Vietnam War

1972

Pres. Nixon visits China

1973

Signing of the Vietnam cease-fire; OPEC forms; Supreme Court issues Roe v. Wade abortion decision; American Indian Movement occupies Wounded Knee; Watergate hearings

1974

House Judiciary Committee votes to impeach Pres. Nixon; Nixon resigns; Gerald Ford pardons Nixon

1980

Ronald Reagan elected president

1982

Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) dies

1983

U.S. leads international force to occupy Grenada to halt Communist influence

1986

Space shuttle Challenger explodes, killing all aboard

1987

Iran-Contra hearings

1989

United States invades Panama, overthrows regime of Gen. Noriega; tanker Exxon Valdez causes the largest oil spill in U.S. history in the Gulf of Alaska

1990–91

Persian Gulf War

1991

Hewlett-Packard introduces a handheld lightweight computer

1993

Congress approves North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)

1997

Congress and Pres. Bill Clinton agree to balance budget

1998

House of Representatives impeaches Clinton for perjury and obstruction of justice

1999

Senate fails to convict Clinton of impeachment charges