History Final Timeline

Main

Japan Invades Manchuria

1931

United States officially recognizes the Soviet Union

1933

Neutrality Acts passed by Congress

1935 - 1939

Sino-Japanese War begins

1937

Munich Agreement

1938

Germany invades Poland

1939

Draft established

1940

Executive Order 8802

1941

Four Freedoms Speech

1941

Henry Luce's The American Century

1941

Lend-Lease Act

1941

Pearl Harbor attacked

1941

Battle of Midway Island

1942

Congress of Race Equality (CORE) formed

1942

Executive Order 9066

1942

Congress lifts Chinese Exclusion Act

1943

Detroit Race Riot

1943

Zoot Suit Riots

1943

Battle of the Bulge

1944

Bretton Woods Conference

1944

D-Day

1944

Freidrich A. Hayek's The Road to Serfdom

1944

GI Bill of Rights

1944

Gunnar Myrdal's An American Dilemma

1944

Korematsu vs. United States

1944

Smith vs. Allwright

1944

Atomic bombs dropped on Japan

1945

Roosevelt dies; Harry Truman becomes president

1945

V-E Day (May)

1945

V-J Day (August)

1945

Yalta Conference

1945

Federal employee loyalty program

1947

Freedom Train exhibition

1947

House Un-American Activities Committee investigates Hollywood

1947

Jackie Robinson integrates major league baseball

1947

Levittown development starts

1947

Marshall Plan

1947

Taft-Hartley Act

1947

Truman Doctrine

1947

Berlin blockade and airlift

1948 - 1949

The UN adopts the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

1948

North Atlantic Treaty Organization established

1949

People's Republic of China established

1949

Soviet Union tests atomic bomb

1949

David Riesman's The Lonely Crowd

1950

Korean War

1950 - 1953

McCarran Internal Security Act

1950

McCarthy charges that 205 communists work for the State Department

1950

NSC-68 issued

1950

United States explodes first hydrogen bomb

1952

CIA-led coups in Iran and Guatemala

1953

Earl Warren appointed Chief Justice

1953

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg executed for spying

1953

Soviet Union explodes first hydrogen bomb

1953

Army-McCarthy hearings

1954

Brown vs. Board of Education

1954

CIA-led Guatemalan coup

1954

Geneva Accords with Vietnam

1954

AFL and CIO merge

1955

Allen Ginsberg's Howl

1955

Montgomery bus boycott

1955 - 1956

Warsaw Pact organized

1955

Federal Interstate Highway Act

1956

Southern Christian Leadership Conference organized

1956

Suez crisis

1956

Eisenhower Doctrine

1957

Integration of Little Rock's Central High School

1957

Sputnik launched

1957

National Defense Education Act

1958

Cuban Revolution

1959

Nixon-Khrushchev "kitchen debate"

1959

John F. Kennedy elected president

1960

Young Americans for Freedom founded Greensboro, N.C., sit-in

1960

Bay of Pigs

1961

Freedom Rides

1961

Cuban missile crisis

1962

Rachel Carson's Silent Spring

1962

SDS issues the Port Huron Statement

1962

University of Mississippi integrated

1962

Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique

1963

Kennedy assassinated

1963

King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail"

1963

March on Washington

1963

Medgar Evers Killed

1963

Civil Rights Act passed

1964

Freedom Summer

1964

Free Speech movement at Berkeley

1964

Gulf of Tonkin Resolution

1964

Great Society

1965 - 1967

Griswold vs. Connecticut

1965

Hart-Celler Immigration Reform Act

1965

Voting Rights Act

1965

Watts riots

1965

National Organization for Women organized

1966

American Indian Movement founded

1968

Martin Luther King Jr. assassinated

1968

My Lai massacre

1968

Richard Nixon elected president

1968

Robert Kennedy assassinated

1968

Tet offensive

1968

Police raid on Stonewall Bar

1969

Woodstock festival

1969

Ohio National Guard kills four students at Kent State

1970

United States invades Cambodia

1970

Pentagon Papers published

1971

United States goes off the gold standard

1971

Congress approves Title IX

1972

Congress passes the Equal Rights Amendment for ratification

1972

Nixon travels to the People's Republic of China

1972

SALT is signed

1972

CIA-aided Chilean coup

1973

Paris peace agreement ends war in Vietnam

1973

Roe vs. Wade

1973

War Powers Act

1973

Nixon resigns in Watergate scandal

1974

Saigon falls to North Vietnamese communists

1975

Jimmy Carter elected president

1976

Regents of the University of California vs. Bakke

1978

Camp David Accords signed between Israel and Egypt

1979

Fifty-three Americans taken hostage in Iran

1979

Sagebrush Rebellion

1979

Three Mile Island accident

1979

Ronald Reagan elected president

1980

Air traffic controllers strike

1981

Strategic Defense Initiative introduced

1983

Iran-Contra Affair

1985 - 1987

Bowers vs. Hardwick

1986

Communism falls in eastern Europe

1989

U.S.-led Panamanian coup

1989

Americans with Disabilities Act

1990

Germany reunifies

1990

Dissolution of the Soviet Union

1991

Gulf War

1991

Casey vs. Planned Parenthood of Pennsylvania

1992

William Jefferson Clinton elected president

1992

North American Free Trade Agreement approved

1993

Republican victory in Congress; Contract with America

1994

Rwandan genocide

1994

Timothy McVeigh bombs a federal building in Oklahoma City

1995

Clinton eliminates Aid to Families with Dependent Children

1996

Clinton impeached

1998

Kosovo War

1999

Protests in Seattle against the World Trade Organization

1999

Repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act

1999

Bush vs. Gore

2000

George W. Bush elected president

2000

Al Qaeda terrorists attack America

2001

United States launches air strikes in Afghanistan

2001

USA PATRIOT Act

2001

Bush identifies "axis of evil"

2002

Department of Homeland Security established

2002

Lawrence vs. Texas

2003

Operation Iraqi Freedom

2003

Saddam Hussein captured

2003

Supreme Court upholds affirmative action

2003

Hurricane Katrina hits New Orleans

2005

Hamdan vs. Rumsfeld

2006

Great Recession begins

2007

Barack Obama Elected president

2008

Boumediene vs. Bush

2008

Sonia Sotomayor named to Supreme Court

2009

Republicans make major gains in Congressional elections

2010