Colonial Events

he accidentally stumbled upon the Americas. Though he did not really “discover” the New World–millions of people already lived there–his journeys marked the beginning of centuries of trans-Atlantic conquest and colonization

Virginia Company founded the first permanent English settlement in North America on the banks of the James River

Mayflower wasn't taken over by pirates -- the ship sailed on a northern path across the Atlantic to avoid them -- but she was damaged by a bad storm halfway to America

King Philip's war marked the last major effort by the Native Americans of southern New England to drive out the English settlers. The fighting lasted fourteen months and destroyed twelve frontier towns, ending shortly after Metacom was captured and beheaded.

For many years, historians considered the Virginia Rebellion of 1676 to be the first stirring of revolutionary sentiment in America, which culminated in the American Revolution almost exactly one hundred years later

The Salem witch trials were a series of hearings and prosecutions of people accused of witchcraft in colonial Massachusetts.The trials resulted in the executions of twenty people, fourteen of them women, and all but one by hanging.

the Declaration of Independence is at once the nation's most cherished symbol of liberty and Jefferson's most enduring monument

America declared its independence in 1776, but it took another five years to win freedom from the British. That day came on October 19, 1781, when the British General Charles Cornwallis surrendered his troops in Yorktown, Virginia.