AP U.S. History Timeline

Main

Columbus Arrives in New World

1492

Settlement at Roanoke Fails

1585

Jamestown, VA established by John Smith

1607

Santa Fe established by Spain

1608

Quebec founded by France

1609

House of Burgesses established

1619

Pilgrims arrive in Plymouth

1620

Escaping religious persecution in England

Maryland Founded

1634

Dutch Driven from New Amsterdam (New York)

1664

Pennsylvania founded by William Penn

1682

Salem Witch Trials take place

1692

Supported by Cotton Mather

Navigation Acts / Mercantilism

1696

Great Awakening

1730 - 1755

Georgia founded by James Oglethorpe

1733

Benjamin Franklin's Albany Plan of Union

1754

French and Indian War

1754 - 1763

Pontiac's Rebellion

1763

Proclamation Line of 1763

1763

Treaty of 1763

1763

Sugar Act

1764

Quartering Act

1765

Stamp Act / Stamp Act Congress

1765

Declaratory Act replaces Stamp Act

1766

Townshend Acts

1767

Boston Massacre

1770

Committees of Correspondence

1772

Boston Tea Party

1773

Coercive Acts

1774

First Continental Congress

1774

Second Continental Congress

1775

Battles at Lexington / Concord

1776

Declaration of Independence signed

1776

Battle of Saratoga / France enters with Americans

1778

Articles of Confederation ratified

1781

Battle of Yorktown / British surrender

1781

Treaty of Paris

1783

Land Ordinance of 1785

1785

Annapolis Convention

1786

Constitutional Convention

1787

Federalist Papers

1787

Northwest Ordinance of 1787

1787

Shay's Rebellion

1787

Alexander Hamilton's Financial Programs

1790

Second Great Awakening

1790 - 1840

Bank of the United States established

1791

Bill of Rights added to the Constitution

1791

Eli Whitney invents cotton gin

1793

Washington's Proclamation of Neutrality

1793

Jay's Treaty

1794

Whiskey Rebellion

1794

Pinckney's Treaty

1795

Alien and Sedition Acts

1797

XYZ Affair

1797

Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions

1798

Louisiana Purchase

1803

Marbury v. Madison establishes judicial review

1803

Lewis and Clark with Sacajawea explore the West

1804 - 1807

Embargo Act of 1807

1807

War of 1812

1812 - 1815

Lowell Mills

1813

Treaty of Ghent

1814

Battle of New Orleans

1815

Hartford Convention

1815

Second Bank of the United States

1816

American Colonization Society founded

1817

Rush-Bagot Agreement

1817

Dartmouth v. Woodward upholds sanctity of private contracts

1819

Gibbons v. Ogden establishes Congress's power over interstate commerce

1819

McCulloch v. Maryland establishes federal authority

1819

Tallmadge Amendment

1819

Missouri Compromise

1820

Monroe Doctrine

1823

Corrupt Bargain

1824

Erie Canal built

1825

Tariff of Abominations / Nullification Crisis

1828

Webster-Hayne Debate over nullification

1830

Nat Turner's Rebellion

1831

William Lloyd Garrison publishes The Liberator

1831

Bank War

1832

Indian Removal Act / Worcester v. Georgia

1832

Whig Party formed

1834

Texan Independence

1836

Transcendentalist Movement

1836

Panic of 1837 cause speculative fever / inflation

1837

Trail of Tears

1838

Oregon Dispute

1841

Annexation of Texas

1845

Mexican War

1846 - 1848

Wilmot Proviso

1846

Frederick Douglass publishes the North Star

1847

Free Soil Party established

1848

Seneca Falls Convention

1848

Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo

1848

California Gold Rush

1849

Compromise of 1850

1850

Kansas-Nebraska Act

1854

Dred Scott v. Sanford

1857

First oil well drilled

1859

John Brown's Raid on Harper's Ferry

1859

Crittenden Compromise

1860

South Carolina secedes from the Union

1860

Battle at Fort Sumter

1861

Civil War

1861 - 1865

Confederate States of America formed

1861

Battle at Antietam

1862

Homestead Act

1862

Morrill Land Grant Act

1862

Pacific Railway Act

1862

Battle at Gettysburg

1863

Battle at Vicksburg

1863

Emancipation Proclamation

1863

National Banking Act of 1863

1863

General Sherman captures Atlanta

1864

Sherman's March to the Sea

1864

Reconstruction

1865 - 1877

Thirteenth Amendment ratified

1865

Ex Parte Milligan

1866

Fourteenth Amendment ratified

1866

Tenure of Office Act passed

1867

President Johnson impeached

1868

Fifteenth Amendment ratified

1870

Klu Klux Klan formed

1870

Exodusters leave South

1875 - 1885

Custer's Last Stand

1876

National Baseball League formed

1876

Compromise of 1877

1877

Knights of Labor formed for all workers

1878

Standard Oil Trust formed by John Rockefeller

1879

Chinese Exclusion Act passed

1882

American Federation of Labor formed

1886

Haymarket Square Riot

1886

Dawes Act divides Indian tribal lands

1887

Interstate Commerce Act

1887

Carnegie writes "The Gospel of Wealth" essay

1889

Hull House established

1889

Ghost Dance and Wounded Knee Massacre

1890

Sherman Anti-Trust Act

1890

Populist Part established

1891

Panic of 1893

1893 - 1897

World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago

1893

Pullman Strike

1894

Plessy v. Ferguson approves "separate but equal" facilities

1896

William Jennings Bryan's "Cross of Gold" speech delivered

1896

Spanish-American War

1898

Open Door Policy with China

1899

Anthracite Coal Strike

1902

Roosevelt Corollary

1904

Hepburn Act states ICC can set maximum railroad rates

1906

Pure Food and Drug Act passed

1906

Upton Sinclair publishes The Jungle

1906

Muller v. Oregon protects women and children

1908

NAACP formed

1909

Triangle Shirtwaist Fire

1911

Federal Reserve Banking Act passed

1913

Seventeenth Amendment passed

1913

Sixteenth Amendment passed

1913

Clayton Anti-Trust Act

1914

Marcus Garvey founds UNIA

1914

World War I

1914 - 1918

Selective Service Act of 1917

1917

Zimmerman Telegram

1917

President Wilson announces Fourteen Points

1918

Schneck v. United States declares resistance to drafts wrong

1919

Senate rejects Treaty of Versailles

1919

Nineteenth Amendment passed

1920

Palmer Raids

1920

Prohibition

1920 - 1933

Teapot Dome Scandal

1920 - 1923

Washington Naval Conference between U.S. and Pacific

1921

Congress passes the restrictive National Origins Act of 1924

1924

Harlem Renaissance

1924 - 1929

Scopes Monkey Trial

1925

Sacco - Vanzetti Trials

1927

Black Thursday / Wall Street crashes

1929

Congress creates Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC)

1932

Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) subsidizes farms

1933

Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) established

1933

FDIC established through Glass-Steagall Banking Act

1933

Good Neighbor Policy with Latin America announced

1933

Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) established

1933

Emergency Banking Relief Act

March 5, 1933

FDR's Hundred Days

March 9, 1933 - June 16, 1933

Securities and Exchange Commission established to regulate stock market

1934

Senator Gerald Nye organizes Nye Committee

1934

Works Projects Administration (WPA) established

1934

AFL splits from CIO

1935

Neutrality Acts

1935 - 1937

Social Security Act established

1935

Wagner Labor Relations Act recognizes collective bargaining

1935

FDR's Court Reform Bill declared unconstitutional

1937

World War II begins in Europe

1939

FDR uses term "arsenal of democracy"

1940

Selective Service Act provides for first draft during peacetime

1940

Atlantic Charter

1941

Lend-Lease Act ends isolationism

1941

U.S. declares war against Japan

1941

World War II

1941 - 1945

Japan attacks Pearl Harbor

December 7, 1941

FDR authorizes Japanese internment

1942

Zoot Suit Riots in Los Angeles

1943

Atomic bombs dropped on Japan; Japan surrenders

1945

Big Three meet at Yalta

1945

Issuance of the Potsdam Declaration

1945

U.S. tests first atomic bomb in New Mexico

1945

Baby Boom Generation

1946 - 1964

Taft-Hartley Act curbs labor union powers

1947

Truman Doctrine

1947

Truman's Marshall Plan to help Europe

1947

Berlin Airlift

1948 - 1949

Strom Thurmond forms Dixiecrat Party

1948

NATO established

1949

Joseph McCarthy and McCarthyism

1950 - 1954

Korean War

1950 - 1953

Truman relieves MacArthur of military post

1950

Rosenbergs executed

1953

French lose to Vietnam at Dien Bien Phu

1954

Montgomery Bus Boycott

1955 - 1956

Federal Highway Act creates interstates

1956

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka

1957

U.S.S.R. launches Sputnik

1957

Congress creates NASA

1958

Congress passes National Defense Education Act

1958

Greenboro Four sit-in

1960

Bay of Pigs Invasion

1961

Freedom Riders Movement

1961

President Kennedy creates Peace Corps

1961

President Kennedy forms Alliance for Progress

1961

President Kennedy orders help to South Vietnam's Diem

1961

Baker v. Carr

1962

Rachel Carson publishes Silent Spring

1962

U-2 spy planes discover Soviet missiles in Cuba

1962

Betty Friedan publishes The Feminine Mystique

1963

Gideon v. Wainwright

1963

March on Washington / Dr. King's "I Have a Dream" speech

1963

Congress passes the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution

1964

President Johnson signs Civil Rights Act

1964

Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 passed

1965

Immigration Act of 1965 passed

1965

National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities passed

1965

Social Security Amendments of 1965 create Medicare and Medicaid

1965

Tinker v. Des Moines protects freedom of speech

1965

Votings Rights Act of 1965 ends literacy tests, poll taxes

1965

Griswold v. Connecticut

1966

Miranda v. Arizona

1966

National Organization for Women (NOW) formed

1966

Race Riots

1966 - 1967

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., assassinated

1968

Robert Kennedy assassinated

1968

Tet Offensive

1968

President Johnson orders halt on troops; peace talks with North Vietnam

March 31, 1968

Vietnam War

1969 - 1975

Kent State shootings

1970

President Nixon sends troops to Cambodia

1970

Congress passes Equal Rights Amendment

1972

President Nixon visits the People's Republic of China

1972

President Nixon visits U.S.S.R.

1972

Watergate Scandal

1972 - 1974

Congress passes War Powers Act

1973

Organization of Petroleum Countries (OPEC) established

1973

Yom Kippur War

1973

Roe v. Wade legalizes abortion

1975

Egypt and Israel meet with President Carter

1978

Iran Hostage Crisis

1979 - 1981

Iran–Contra Affair

1985 - 1987

Berlin Wall falls

1989

Exxon Valdez oil spill

1989

Gulf War

1990 - 1991

Operation Desert Storm

1991

Soviet Union collapses

1991

World Trade Center bombing

1993

NAFTA created

1994

Republican Revolution

1994

Oklahoma City bombings

1995

Clinton-Lewinsky scandal

1998

September 11 terrorist attacks

September 11, 2001

Iraq War

2003 - 2011

2008 Recession

2008 - 2010

Congress passes the Affordable Care Act

2010