Carina's Year 4 Timeline

Events

The Second Boer War rages in Africa.

1899 - 1901

Max Planck develops quantum theory.

1900

The Introduction of the "Brownie" camera makes photography accessible to amateurs.

1900

Queen Victoria dies, bringing an end to the Victorian Age of England. Her son, Edward VII, comes to the throne.

1901

Theodore Roosevelt serves his first term as President after McKinley is assassinated.

1901 - 1904

Guglielmo Marconi sends the first wireless trans-atlantic message.

1902

The Wright brothers achieve the first successful flight in Kitty Hawk, NC.

1903

Construction begins on the Panama Canal.

1904

Russo-Japanese War is fought, ending when Roosevelt mediates a peace treaty in Portsmouth, NH.

1904 - 1905

Albert Einstein publishes his theory of relativity.

1905

Freud publishes, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality.

1905

Roosevelt serves his second term as president.

1905 - 1909

San Francisco earthquake kills over 700 people.

1906

Roosevelt sends out the Great White Fleet

1907

John Arthur "Jack" Johnson becomes the first black heavyweight champion in the world.

1908

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

1909

William Howard Taft is President.

1909 - 1913

Great Britain lays the world's first oil pipeline in Persia.

1910

146 people die in a fire at Manhattan's Triangle Shirt-waist Factory.

1911

Revolutionary leader Sun Yat-sen establishes a new republic in South China.

1911

1,517 people perish when the "unsinkable" Titanic sinks.

1912

Ottoman Empire collapses; great European powers carve it up.

1912

Sun Yat-sen establishes the Republic of China.

1912

Yuan Shikai is President of the Republic of China.

1912 - 1916

Congress passes the Federal Reserve Act, the most wide-reaching banking bill in the nation's history.

1913

Seventeenth Amendment provides for direct election of senators.

1913

Sixteenth Amendment authorizes in income tax.

1913

Wilson signs the Underwood Tariff Act, reducing or eliminating import tariffs.

1913

Woodrow Wilson is President.

1913 - 1921

Assassination of Archduke Ferdinand sparks World War I.

1914

Balkan campaign fails for Austria-Hungary.

1914

Congress passes the Clayton Antitrust Act, the Adamson Act (8-hour day for railroad workers), and the Child Labor Act.

1914

The failure of the Schlieffen Plan and the final battles of the Race to the Sea necessitate trench warfare on the Western Front.

1914

Alexi Brusilov launches his campaign against Austria-Hungary.

1915

Germans utilize a poison gas against Allied troops during the Second Battle of Ypres.

1915

German U-boats sink the Lusitania.

1915

Italy joins the Allies.

1915

The Allies lose 50,000 men in the disastrous Dardanelles campaign (Gallipoli)

1915

Both the Allies and Central Powers claim victory at the Battle of Jutland.

1916

Over a million men die at the Battle of Verdun.

1916

Over a million men die in the Battle of the Somme.

1916

China dissolves into civil war and chaos.

1917

Jerusalem is overtaken by the Allies.

1917

Police arrest White House suffragette picketers.

1917

The British issue the Balfour Declaration, supporting a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

1917

Wilson ends diplomatic relations with Germany after Germans sink the U.S.S. Housatonic.

February 1917

Wilson's administration makes the Zimmermann Note public to Americans.

March 1917

Congress declares war against Germany.

April 1917

The heartbreaking Third Battle of Ypres (known as Passchendaele) takes thousands of lives.

July 1917 - November 1917

Italians are devastated at the Battle of Caporetto.

October 1917 - November 1917

Bolsheviks take over the Russian Government

November 1917

Russian Civil War is fought between Reds (Communists) and Whites (anti-Communists).

1918 - 1920

Wilson announces his Fourteen Points for a just peace.

January 1918

Germany breaks the Allied line on the Western Front during its Spring Offensive.

March 1918

Russia signs the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, conceding enormous amounts of land and people to Germany.

March 1918

U.S. troops help the Allies win the Second Battle of the Marne.

July 1918 - August 1918

Allies break the Hindenburg Line and pursue the retreating Germans.

September 1918

The Ottoman Empire collapses.

October 1918

Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicates.

November 1918

Allies and Germans agree to an armistice, effective at 11 a.m.

November 11, 1918

British fire on Indians in the Amritsar Massacre.

1919

Germany is forced to sign the Treaty of Versailles.

1919

Eighteenth Amendment prohibits the manufacture and sale of alcohol in the United States.

1920

First radio network broadcast

1920

Nineteenth Amendment gives women the right to vote.

1920

Congress refuses to ratify the Treaty of Versailles or join the League of Nations.

1921

Mao participates in the First Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

1921

Warren Harding is President.

1921 - 1923

Mussolini secures dictatorial powers in Italy.

1922

Stalin is named the general secretary of the Russian Communist Party.

1922

Calvin Coolidge is President.

1923 - 1929

Hitler is arrested and put in prison, where he writes Mein Kampf after the failed Beer Hall Putsch.

1923

The CCP and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) unite to fight against Japanese invaders.

1923

Gandhi begins the Great Fast in opposition to Hindu-Muslim violence.

1924

J. Edgar Hoover becomes head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

1924

Lenin dies.

1924

Chiang Kai-shek becomes the leader of the KMT.

1925

The Scopes Trial takes place.

1925

Robert Goddard launches the first modern rocket.

1926

Charles Lindbergh successfully flies an airplane nonstop from New York to Paris.

1927

Mao forms the Red Army.

1927

Stalin introduces the first Five-Year Plan to expand the U.S.S.R.'s military and industry.

1928

FDR becomes governor of New York.

1929

Herbert Hoover serves as President.

1929 - 1933

Stalin rules as undisputed dictator of the Soviet Union.

1929 - 1953

The stock market crashes on Black Tuesday.

1929

Gandhi leads the salt march to protest British rule.

1930

Stalin persecutes church members and leaders, drastically reducing active churches in the U.S.S.R.

1930 - 1939

15,000 veterans march on Washington, D.C., demanding to be paid their bonus insurance early.

1932

Stalin forces a secret famine in the Ukraine and other rich farming areas in order to break the people's resistance to his seizure of personal property.

1932 - 1934

Adolf Hitler becomes Chancellor of Germany in January.

1933

Franklin D. Roosevelt serves as President.

1933 - 1945

In late February, the Reichstag is burned to the ground.

1933

In March, the Enabling Act is passed, and Hitler becomes dictator of Germany.

1933

Roosevelt has his first "fireside chat."

1933

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) is established.

1933

Twentieth Amendment is ratified.

1933

Twenty-first Amendment is ratified, repealing Prohibition.

1933

A drought hits the Great Plains, causing the Dust Bowl and displacing 60% of the Plains population.

1934

Mao leads his army on the Long March.

1934 - 1935

Congress passes the Social Security Act.

1935

Italy invades Ethiopia.

1935

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) is established.

1935

Francisco Franco leads the Nationalists against the left-wing Republicans in the Spanish Civil War.

1936 - 1939

German troops occupy the Rhineland.

1936

The Boulder (later Hoover) Dam is completed.

1936

The Works Progress Administration (WPA) begins.

1936

Japan seizes the main ports of China and commits many heinous acts against the Chinese people.

1937 - 1938

Demanding Anschluss (unification), Germany takes over Austria.

1938

British "White Paper" policy limits Jewish immigration into Palestine.

1939

Franco turns Spain into a fascist state.

1939

Germany seizes the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia under the Munich Agreement.

1939

Hitler and Stalin sign a non-aggression pact to divide Poland.

1939

Japan invades Chinese Manchuria.

1939

Germany invades Poland. Hitler and Stalin divide Polish lands and people between them.

September 1, 1939

Soviets invade Finland.

November 30, 1939

Finland surrenders to the U.S.S.R.

March 12, 1940

Nazi troops invade Norway and Denmark.

April 9, 1940

German armies invade Belgium and Holland.

May 10, 1940

Miracle of the Dunkirk rescue.

May 27, 1940

Battle of France ends when France signs an armistice with Germany.

June 12, 1940

The Battle of Britain is fought.

July 10, 1940 - September 17, 1941

The United States repeals the Neutrality Act of 1935 and passes the Lend-Lease Act.

March 11, 1941

The German army unleashes the first airborne invasion in history on the island of Crete.

May 20 1941

Hitler launches Operation Barbarossa and invades the U.S.S.R.

June 22, 1941

The Japanese attack Pearl Harbor.

December 7, 1941

U.S. declares war on Japan, entering World War II.

December 8, 1941

Executive Order 9066 directs all Japanese-Americans to relocation camps in the American West.

February 19, 1942

Bataan, the last defense of the Philippines, falls to the Japanese.

April 1942

Japan's advance is stopped by the U.S. at the Battle of the Coral Sea.

May 1942

U.S. victory at the Battle of Midway is the turning point of the war in the Pacific.

June 1942

General Montgomery defeats Rommel at the Battle of El Alamein in Africa.

October 1942

The Germans surrender to the Soviets at the Battle of Stalingrad.

February 2, 1943

German officers attempt to assassinate Hitler.

July 1943

The Allies liberate Rome.

June 4, 1944

The Allied troops land in Normandy on D-Day.

June 6, 1944

Harry Truman serves as President.

1945 - 1953

Nuremberg Trials are held.

1945 - 1946

FDR, Churchill, and Stalin meet at Yalta.

February 1945

U.S. bombs Dresden, killing 135,000 civilians.

February 1945

Iwo Jima and Okinawa are taken by the Allies.

March 1945

President Roosevelt dies.

April 12, 1945

The Soviet army surrounds Berlin.

April 16, 1945

Hitler commits suicide.

April 30, 1945

Victory in Europe (V-E) Day

May 8, 1945

Atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

August 6, 1945

Atomic bomb dropped on Nagaski.

August 9, 1945

Japan announces surrender (V-J Day).

August 15, 1945

The United Nations Charter is ratified.

October 1945

Churchill's "Iron Curtain" speech

1946

Soviet Communists take control of Bulgaria and Romania.

1946

Yugoslavia joins the Communist bloc.

1946

Baby boom marks a dramatic increase in U.S. births.

1947 - 1961

Marshall Plan offers aid to European countries.

1947

President Truman issues the Truman Doctrine, supporting the containment of Communism.

1947

Soviet Communists take control of Poland and Hungary.

1947

United Nations authorizes a sovereign Jewish state.

1947

Pakistan becomes an independent nation: Mohammad Ali Jinnah is Pakistan's first governor-general.

August 14, 1947

India becomes an independent nation: Jawaharlal Nehru is the first prime minister of India.

August 15, 1947

Berlin Airlift

1948 - 1949

Czechoslovakia becomes a Soviet satellite.

1948

Gandhi is assassinated.

1948

Israel fights a brief war for independence against five Arab states.

1948 - 1949

Israel is officially declared a state.

1948

Allies merge their occupied territories in Germany to create West Germany.

1949

Israel enters the United Nations.

1949

Mao defeats Chiang and declares the People's Republic of China.

1949

North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is formed.

1949

Soviets successfully test a nuclear bomb.

1949

Joseph McCarthy conducts investigations.

1950 - 1953

Korean War is fought.

1950 - 1953

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are tried and executed as Communist spies.

1951 - 1953

Twenty-second Amendment limits presidents to two terms.

1951

Dwight D. Eisenhower is President of the U.S.

1953 - 1961

Mao's Five-Year Plan is announced.

1953

Nikita Khrushchev leads the U.S.S.R. after Stalin's death.

1953 - 1964

Jonas Salk's polio vaccine ends the polio epidemic.

1955

Ray Kroc founds the McDonald's Corporation.

1955

Construction of an interstate highway system begins.

1956

Elvis Presley stars on the Ed Sullivan show, performing his new rock 'n' roll music.

1956

Mao initiates the Hundred (Many) Flowers campaign, followed by his anti-Rightist campaign.

1956 - 1957

The Little Rock Nine attend a previously all-white high school.

1956

Mao's Great Leap Forward begins; it ends with the worst famine in world history.

1957 - 1961

The U.S.S.R.'s Sputnik I orbits the earth.

1957

Khrushchev and Mao disagree, causing Khrushchev to reduce Soviet aid to China.

1958

Fidel Castro takes control of Cuba.

1959

Seventy anti-apartheid protesters are massacred by the South African government.

1960

The Greensboro Four sit in at a white-only lunch counter, igniting a flame of civil rights sit-ins.

1960

Alliance for Progress program offers aid to South American countries.

1961

Bay of Pigs invasion fails.

1961

Freedom riders test the Supreme Court's decision to desegregate interstate buses.

1961

John F. Kennedy serves as President of the U.S.

1961 - 1963

Khrushchev orders the Berlin Wall to be built.

1961

The Peace Corps is established.

1961

Cuban Missile Crisis

1962

James Meredith becomes the first black student at the University of Mississippi.

1962

King is arrested and writes "Letter from a Birmingham Jail."

1963

Lyndon B Johnson is President of the U.S.

1963 - 1969

Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi begins the White Revolution in an attempt to modernize Iran.

1963

South Vietnam's President Diem is assassinated.

1963

President John F. Kennedy is assassinated.

November 22, 1963

Civil Rights Act of 1964 becomes law.

1964

Congress passes over 90 bills as a part of Johnson's Great Society initiative.

1964 - 1965

Gulf of Tonkin Resolution

1964

"Bloody Sunday" occurs in Selma, Alabama.

1965

Malcolm X is assassinated.

1965

Race riots occur in major U.S. cities, especially Watts, Los Angeles.

1965

Voting Rights Act of 1965 becomes law.

1965

Mao initiates the Cultural Revolution in China.

1966

Martin Luther King, Jr., is assassinated.

1968

Robert Kennedy is assassinated.

1968

The North Vietnamese gain a political (not military) triumph through the Tet Offensive.

1968

Half a million people attend the Woodstock Festival.

1969

Neil Armstrong takes the first step on the moon.

1969

Richard Nixon is President.

1969 - 1974

The U.S. table-tennis team is invited to a table-tennis tournament in China, thus beginning the repairing of relations between U.S. and China.

1971

Palestinians known as the Black September take nine Israelis hostage at the Olympics in Munich.

1972

Arab-Isreali War (or Yom Kippur War)

1973

OPEC places the first oil embargo on the U.S.

1973

The Supreme Court rules that women have the right to abortion in Roe v. Wade.

1973

U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War ends.

1973

Vice President Spiro Agnew resigns and is replaced with Gerald Ford.

1973

Ford Pardons Nixon.

1974

Gerald Ford is President.

1974 - 1977

President Nixon resigns after the Watergate scandal.

1974

South Vietnam falls to Communist North Vietnam.

1975

Mao Zedong dies at the age of 82.

1976

Jimmy Carter is President.

1977 - 1981

Camp David Accords promote peace between Isreal and Egypt.

1978

James Warren Jones leads the Jonestown massacre, killing over 900 people at his compound in Guyana.

1978

Economic reform called the Four Modernizations is carried out in China.

1979

Iranian hostage crisis

1979 - 1981

Khomeini leads the Iranian Revolution and declares Iran an Islamic Republic.

1979

OPEC enforces another oil embargo.

1979

Saddam Hussein makes himself President of Iraq.

1979

The U.S.S.R. invades Afghanistan.

1979

Three Mile Island nuclear plant accident occurs.

1979

Iran-Iraq War is fought.

1980 - 1988

Ronald Reagan is President.

1981 - 1989

Congress investigates the Iran-Contra scandal.

1986

The space shuttle Challenger explodes.

1986

About 1,000 protesters are killed by Communist troops at Tiananmen Square in Beijing.

1989

George H.W. Bush is President.

1989 - 1993

The Berlin Wall separating East (Communist) Berlin and West Berlin is torn down.

1989

Saddam Hussein invades Kuwait.

1990

Operation Desert Storm (Persian Gulf War of 1991) commences in an effort to liberate Kuwait.

1991

The U.S.S.R. officially dissolves.

1991

Bosnia declares independence from Yugoslavia, resulting in civil war and ethnic cleansing in Bosnia.

1992

Bill Clinton is President.

1993 - 2001

Branch Davidian massacre occurs in Waco, TX.

1993

PLO leader Yasir Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin make a historic peace agreement (that later falls apart when Rabin is assassinated).

1993

Civil war between Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda leads to genocide.

1994

Nelson Mandela is elected President of South Africa.

1994

Bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City

1995

O.J. Simpson trial

1995

Dolly the sheep is the first mammal to be successfully cloned.

1997

Princess Diana is killed in a car accident.

1997

NATO intervenes in Kosovo, forcing Milosevic to withdraw.

1999

George W. Bush is President.

2001 - 2009

The Patriot Act gives far-reaching powers to law-enforcement agencies to fight terrorism in the U.S.

2001

The U.S. declares war on Afghanistan.

2001

Al-Qaeda terrorists hijack four passenger jets, crashing two into the Twin Towers and one into the Pentagon.

September 11, 2001

The U.S. invades Iraq.

2003

The Supreme Court rules that prisoners at Guantanamo must be given access to U.S. courts.

2004

Hurricane Katrina devastates New Orleans.

2005

Bush orders a successful troop surge in Iraq.

2007

Barack Obama becomes President of the United States.

2009