This is a timeline of events that happened in the 1800s, as gathered from a few different history-oriented websites. In many cases, I have edited the descriptions as I saw fit. An attempt was made to describe all events in the present tense, but this did not seem appropriate in all cases.
Under the yearly subheadings a few world events are usually listed. They are followed by a more detailed list of U.S. events.
1800
Napoleon conquers Italy and establishes himself as First Consul in France.
Robert Owen encourages a labor movement and social reforms in England.
William Herschel discovers infrared rays.
Alessandro Volta produces electricity.
April 23, 1800 - The Natchez Trace post route, following an old trail running from Nashville, Tennessee to Natchez, Mississippi, is established by an Act of Congress.
April 24, 1800 - The United States Library of Congress is founded.
August 4, 1800 - The second census of the United States is conducted. The total population of the USA was 5,308,483.
November 1, 1800 - U.S. President John Adams is the first President to live in the White House, then known as the Executive Mansion and sixteen days later, the United States Congress holds its first session in Washington, D.C.
Slavery is ended in the Northwest Territory, stemming from the Ordinance of 1787 written by Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson had proposed that all slavery be prohibited by the year 1800, but that proposal was defeated by one vote.
1801
Austria makes temporary peace with France.
United Kingdom is established, with one monarch and one parliament; Catholics are excluded from voting.
January 20, 1801 - John Marshall is appointed Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.
February 17, 1801 - Thomas Jefferson is elected as the 3rd president of the United States in a vote of the House of Representatives after tying Aaron Burr, his Vice President, in the electoral college. A flaw in the original vote-for-two system caused the tie. This would be corrected by the 12th Amendment to the Constitution.
March 4, 1801 - Thomas Jefferson is inaugurated for his first term as President of the United States.
May 10, 1801 – The Pasha of Tripoli declares war against the United States after Jefferson refused to pay additional tribute to “protect” U.S. commerce from raiding Arabian ships.
November 16, 1801 - The first edition of the New York Post is published.
1802
March 16, 1802 - West Point, New York is established. Four months later, the United States Military Academy opens on July 4.
October 2, 1802 - War ends between Tripoli and Sweden, but continues with the United States, despite a negotiated peace, due to compensation disagreements.
December 15, 1802 - Thomas Jefferson gives his Second State of the Nation address to the House and Senate, focusing on peace in the European conflict and payment of the public debt.
1803
January 30, 1803 - Discussions to buy New Orleans begin when Monroe and Livingston sail to Paris, ending with the complete purchase of the Louisiana Purchase three months later.
February 24, 1803 - The United States Supreme Court overturns its first U.S. law in the case of Marbury versus Madison, establishing the context of judicial review as they declared a statute within the Constitution void. This established the Supreme Court's position as an equal member of the three branches of United States government.
March 1, 1803 - Ohio is admitted to the Union as the 17th U.S. state.
April 30, 1803 - President Jefferson arranges the purchase of the Louisiana Territory from France, thus paving way for western expansion throughout the rest of the 1800s. The price of the purchase included bonds of $11,250,000 and $3,750,000 in payments to United States citizens with claims against France.
December 20, 1803 - The United States of America takes title to the Louisiana Purchase, doubling its domain, an increase of 827,000 sq mi (2,144,500 sq km). The new land stretches from the Mississippi River to the Rockies and the Gulf of Mexico to British North America.
1804
Haiti declares independence from France.
Napoleon proclaims himself emperor of France, systematizes French law under "Code Napoleon."
February 15, 1804 - New Jersey becomes the last northern state to abolish slavery.
May 14, 1804 - Ordered by Thomas Jefferson to map the Northwest United States, Lewis and Clark begin their expedition from St. Louis and Camp Dubois. The journey begins with navigation of the Missouri River.
July 11, 1804 - A duel between Alexander Hamilton and Vice President Aaron Burr, longtime political rivals, occurs in Weehawken, New Jersey, resulting in the death of Hamilton.
October 1, 1804 - Russians and their allies in the Aleut community attack Sitka, Alaska and besiege a Tlingit Indian fort. One week later, the Tlingits are forced to leave.
October 26, 1804 - The Lewis and Clark Expedition arrives at the confluence of the Knife and Missouri Rivers, in what is now the state of North Dakota, where they camped until the spring of 1805 as the guests of Mandan and Minitari Indians.
November 4 to December 5, 1804 - Thomas Jefferson wins reelection over Charles Pinckney.
1805
Lord Nelson defeats French-Spanish fleets in the Battle of Trafalgar.
Napoleon scores a victory over Austrian and Russian forces at Austerlitz.
January 11, 1805 - The Michigan Territory is established.
April 27, 1805 - American Marines and Berbers attack the Tripoli city of Derna. Land and naval forces would battle against Tripoli until peace was concluded with the United States on June 4, 1805.
June 13, 1805 - Meriweather Lewis and four companions confirm their correct heading by sighting the Great Falls of the Missouri River, as the Lewis and Clark expedition continues west.
December 8, 1805 - Members of the Lewis and Clark expedition upon sighting the Pacific Ocean on November 15, build Fort Clatsop, a log fort near the mouth of the Columbia River in present-day Oregon. They would spend the winter of 1805-1806 in the newly constructed fort.
1806
March 23, 1806 - Lewis and Clark begin the several thousand mile trek back to St. Louis, Missouri from their winter camp near the Pacific Ocean.
March 29, 1806 - The National Road, also known as the Great National Pike or the Cumberland Road, the first federally funded highway that ran between Cumberland, Maryland to Ohio, is approved by President Jefferson with the signing of legislation and appropriation of $30,000.
The highway ran through three states; Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Ohio.
July 15, 1806 - A second exploratory expedition led by U.S. Army Lieutenant Zebulon Pike begins from Fort Bellefountaine near St. Louis. Later that year, during a second trip, he reaches the distant Colorado foothills of the Rocky Mountains and discovers Pike's Peak.
September 23, 1806 - The Lewis and Clark Expedition ends.
Essential to the journey was Sacagawea, their female Indian guide.
Noah Webster publishes his first American English dictionary.
1807
February 17, 1807 - Vice President Aaron Burr is arrested for treason in Alabama, charged with a scheme to annex parts of Louisiana and Mexico into an independent republic. Three months later, a grand jury indicts the former Vice President under the same charges.
March 2, 1807 - Congress passes an act that prohibits the importation of slaves into any port within the confines of the United States from any foreign land, to take effect on the 1st of January 1808.
August 17, 1807 - The first practical steamboat journey was made by Robert Fulton in the steamboat Clermont. He navigated the Hudson River from New York City to Albany in thirty-two hours, a trip of 150 miles.
This later becomes the first commercial steamboat service in the world.
September 1, 1807 - Aaron Burr is acquitted of treason.
1808
French armies occupy Rome and Spain, temporarily extending Napoleon's empire.
Britain begins aiding Spanish guerrillas against Napoleon in Peninsular War.
Beethoven's "Fifth" and "Sixth Symphonies" performed.
In Germany, a new term is proposed for the profession of treating the insane: “Psychiatry.”
January 1, 1808 - The importation of slaves is outlawed. But between 1808 and 1860, than 250,000 slaves were illegally imported.
February 11, 1808 - Anthracite coal is first burned, as an experimental fuel.
April 6, 1808 - The American Fur Company is incorporated by John Jacob Astor.
December 7, 1808 - James Madison is elected as the 4th President of the United States, defeating Charles C. Pinckney.
1809
February 3, 1809 - The Illinois Territory is created.
February 12, 1809 - Abraham Lincoln born.
February 20, 1809 - The Supreme Court of the United States rules that the legal power of the Federal Government is greater than the power of any individual state.
March 4, 1809 - James Madison is inaugurated as President of the United States.
August 1809 - The U.S.S. Constitution is re-commissioned as the flagship of the North Atlantic Squadron.
1810
During 1810, the causes of the War of 1812 began to emerge. Four thousand naturalized American sailors had been seized by British forces, which caused trade between England and the United States to grind to a halt.
June 23, 1810 - The Pacific Fur Company is formed by John Jacob Astor.
August 6, 1810 - The population of the United States is listed as 7,239,881 in the 1810 census.
September 8, 1810 - Thirty-three employees of the Pacific Fur Company embark on a six month journey around South America from New York Harbor. Arriving at the mouth of the Columbia River on the ship Tonquin, in present day Oregon, they found the fur-trading town of Astoria.
December 3, 1810 - Ex-slave Tom Molineaux, born at a Virginia plantation in 1784, fights English boxing champion Tom Cribb, and is narrowly defeated after 39 rounds when he collapsed from exhaustion.
1811
May 8, 1811 - Construction of the Cumberland Road begins. An important route through the Allegheny Mountains for westward expansion, it had been authorization as the first federal highway by Thomas Jefferson in 1806. It broadly followed Braddock's Road, a military route used by George Washington in 1754. The National Road, as it would later be called, and now known as Rt. 40, measured 128 miles from Cumberland, Maryland to Wheeling, West Virginia, and would later have its terminus in Vandalia, Illinois.
October 11, 1811 - The first steam-powered ferry service between New York City and Hoboken, New Jersey is started on John Steven's ship, the Juliana.
November 7, 1811 - At the battle of Tippecanoe, Indian warriors under the command of Tecumseh and his brother Tenskwatawa, known as the Prophet, are defeated by a force led by William Henry Harrison, the governor of Indiana.
December 16, 1811 - An earthquake near New Madrid, in the Mississippi Valley, reverses the course of the Mississippi River for a period of time. This quake was the first of two major earthquakes which preceded the largest quake ever in the United States two months later.
1812
Napoleon's “Grand Army” invades Russia in June. Forced to retreat that winter, most of Napoleon's 600,000 men are lost.
February 7, 1812 - With an estimated magnitude of 7.4 to 8.3, the final New Madrid earthquake strikes near New Madrid, Missouri. This quake was the largest earthquake ever recorded in the continental United States, destroying one-half of the town of New Madrid. It was felt strongly for 50,000 square miles, created new lakes, caused numerous aftershocks, and reversed the course of the Mississippi
River. A request for federal help by William Clark, the Missouri territory governor, one month earlier, may have been the first request for Federal disaster relief.
June 1, 1812 - U.S. President James Madison asks Congress to declare war on the United Kingdom. Before the vote could be approved, on June 16, British ships raise a blockade against the United States.
June 18, 1812 - Although unaware of the blockade at the time of their vote, Madison signs the declaration of war after Congress narrowly approves it. Western states generally favored the action while New England states disapproved. This included the state of Rhode Island, which refused to participate in the war.
August 13, 1812 - Naval battles begin when the United States Navy’s U.S.S. Essex captures the Alert. Three days later, the tide would turn in British favor when English forces captured Fort Detroit without a fight.
On August 19 the U.S.S. Constitution secures another victory for the U.S. Navy off the coast of Nova Scotia by destroying the British frigate Guerriere.
On October 25, off the Azores, the U.S.S. United States defeated the Macedonian, towing the ship back to the U.S., the first British warship brought back to an American port.
December 2, 1812 - President James Madison defeats De Witt Clinton in the U.S. presidential election, securing a second term.
1813
April 27, 1813 - The Battle of York (Toronto) is held. American troops raid and destroy, but do not occupy, the city.
June 1, 1813 - The city directory of Albany, New York is first published.
June 6, 1813 - Despite having a force three times the size of its British foe, Americans lose the Battle of Stoney Creek to a British army of 700 men under John Vincent.
September 10, 1813 - The Battle of Lake Erie is won by the U.S. Navy when Commodore Perry's fleet defeats the ships of British Captain Robert Barclay. This victory allows U.S. forces to take control of the majority of the Old Northwest and lake region.
October 5, 1813 - A United States victory at the Battle of Thames, Ontario allows American forces to break the Indian alliance with the British and secure the frontier of Detroit. Native Indian leader Tecumseh of the Shawnee tribe is killed during this battle.
1814
France is defeated by allies (Britain, Austria, Russia, Prussia, Sweden, and Portugal) in “War of Liberation.” Napoleon is exiled to Elba, off Italian coast.
Bourbon king Louis XVIII takes French throne.
George Stephenson builds first practical steam locomotive.
March 27, 1814 – Large parts of Alabama and Georgia are opened to white settlement opens after Andrew Jackson's militia from Tennessee defeat the Red Stick Creeks of Chief Menawa along the Tallapoosa River at Horseshoe Bend.
August 24, 1814 - The White House is burned by British forces after they occupy Washington, D.C., in retaliation for the destruction by U.S. troops of Canadian public buildings. President Madison evacuates. The mansion takes three years to rebuild.
September 11, 1814 - The Battle of Lake Champlain is won by U.S. naval forces with the U.S.S. Ticonderoga leading the way.
September 13-14, 1814 - Francis Scott Key writes the words to the Star Spangled Banner during the twenty-five hour bombardment of Fort McHenry at the head of the river leading to the Baltimore harbor.
December 24, 1814 - A peace treaty is signed between the British and American government at Ghent, ending the War of 1812.
1815
Napoleon returns: “Hundred Days” begin. His forces are finally defeated by Wellington at Waterloo, and he is banished to St. Helena in the South Atlantic.
Congress of Vienna: Victorious allies change the map of Europe.
January 8, 1815 - On the Chalmette plantation at New Orleans, five thousand three hundred British troops still unaware of the peace treaty signed two weeks earlier, but not ratified until February 17, attack American forces in the last battle of the War of 1812. Major General Andrew Jackson leads his American soldiers to victory over British troops under the command of Sir Edward Pakenham. British
troops suffer over two thousand casualties; American forces seventy-one.
February 6, 1815 - The first American railroad charter is granted by the state of New Jersey to John Stephens.
April 10, 1815 - Mount Tambora (Indonesia) erupts.
August 6, 1815 - Piracy on the high seas by Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli is effectively ended by a flotilla from the United States.
December 25, 1815 - The oldest continuing performance arts organization in the United States, the Handel and Haydn Society of Boston, gives its first performance.
1816
"Year without a Summer" occurs in the northern hemisphere due to global cooling.
Eliphalet Remington begins making rifle barrels.
April 10, 1816 – The Second Bank of the United States is chartered, five years after the expiration of the 1st Bank of the United States.
December 4, 1816 - James Monroe defeats Federalist Rufus King in the United States presidential election.
December 11, 1816 - The territory of Indiana is admitted into the United States of America as the 19th state.
1817
The second wave of Amish immigration to North America begins, bringing 3,000 Amish from Europe to relocate in the United States. The first wave of Amish immigration occurred through 1770.
March 4, 1817 - James Monroe is inaugurated as the President of the United States. His vice president, Daniel D. Tompkins, who would serve alongside Monroe for his entire eight years.
April 28-29, 1817 - The Rush-Bagot treaty is signed. This would limit the amount of British and American armaments allowed on the Great Lakes.
July 4, 1817 - The construction of the Erie Canal begins at Rome, New York. The first section between Rome and Utica would be completed two years later. The canal would eventually connect the Atlantic Ocean, through the Hudson River, to the Great Lakes, with 83 locks over its 363 miles. The canal, when completed in 1825, would cut transport costs (over land) by 90%.
December 10, 1817 - The United States of America admits its 20th state, Mississippi.
1818
The first edition of the Farmer's Almanac is published in Morristown, New Jersey.
March 15, 1818 – The U.S. Army led by Andrew Jackson invades Florida in the Seminole War, causing repercussions with Spain as negotiations to purchase the territory had just begun.
April 4, 1818 - The flag of the United States is officially adopted by Congress with the configuration of thirteen red and white stripes and one star for each state in the union. At the time of adoption, the flag had twenty stars.
October 20, 1818 - The northern boundary of the United States and Canada is established between the U.S.A. and the United Kingdom. Its location from the Lake of the Woods to the Rocky Mountains would be the 49th parallel.
December 3, 1818 - The state of Illinois is admitted to the Union.
1819
Simón Bolívar liberates New Granada (now Colombia, Venezuela, and Ecuador) as Spain loses hold on South American countries.
January 2, 1819 - The “Panic of 1819” occurs, the first major financial crises in the United States, leading to foreclosures, bank failures, and unemployment. Causes identified, include the heavy borrowing done to finance the War of 1812, as well as tightening of credit by the Second Bank of the U.S. in response to risky lending practices by wildcat banks in the west.
February 15, 1819 - The Tallmadge Amendment is passed by the U.S. House of Representatives, stating that slaves would be barred in the new state of Missouri. This becomes the opening round in the Missouri Compromise controversy.
February 22, 1819 - The territory of Florida is ceded to the United States by Spain in the Adams-Onis Treaty.
May 22, 1819 - The American steamship Savannah, under part steam and sail-power, crosses the Atlantic Ocean from Savannah, Georgia to Liverpool, England, arriving on June 20.
August 6, 1819 - The first private military school in the United States, Norwich University, is founded by Captain Alden Partridge in Vermont.
1820
In U.S., Missouri admitted as slave state but slavery barred in rest of Louisiana Purchase north of 36°30' N.
February 6, 1820 - Free African American colonists, eighty-six in number, plus three American Colonization society members, leave the United States from New York City and sail to Freetown, Sierra Leone.
March 3, 1820 - The Missouri Compromise bill, sponsored by Henry Clay, passes in the United States Congress. This legislation allows slavery in the Missouri territory, but not in any other location west of the Mississippi River that was north of 36 degrees 30 minutes latitude, the then southern border of the territory.
August 7, 1820 - The census of 1820 now includes 9,638,453 people living in the United States, 33% more than in 1810. The most populated state is New York, with 1,372,812 residents.
September 28, 1820 - To prove that a tomato is not poisonous, Colonel Robert Gibbon Johnson eats one in public in Salem, New Jersey.
December 6, 1820 - James Monroe is elected to a second term by a landslide.
1821
Guatemala, Panama, and Santo Domingo proclaim independence from Spain.
February 23, 1821 - The first pharmacy college is founded as the Philadelphia College of Apothecaries. This same year, the first women's college in the United States, Troy Female Seminary, is founded by Emma Willard.
July 10, 1821 - Possession of the territory of Florida is taken by the United States after its purchase is completed with Spain. No money exchanged hands between Spain and the U.S. in this purchase; the U.S. had agreed to pay five million dollars to citizens for property damage.
August 4, 1821 - The Saturday Evening Post is published for the first time as a weekly newspaper by Atkinson and Alexander.
August 10, 1821 – State of Missouri admitted into the Union.
November 16, 1821 - The first legal international trade on the Santa Fe Trail begins after William Becknell, a Missouri trader, meets with Governor Melgares. The huge profit earned convinced Becknell that he should return over the trail route the following year.
In this year a Massachusetts court outlawed the novel Fanny Hill by Englishman John Cleland, and convicted publisher Peter Holmes for printing a "lewd and obscene" book. This was the first obscenity case in U.S. history.
1822
Greeks proclaim a republic, and independence from Turkey.
Turks invade Greece. Later, Russia declares war on Turkey (1828). Greece is then aided by France and Britain, the war ends and Turks recognize Greek independence (1829).
Brazil becomes independent of Portugal.
Schubert composes his Eighth Symphony (“The Unfinished”).
January 7, 1822 - The first group of freed American slaves settle a black colony known as the Republic of Liberia when they arrive on African soil at Providence Island. The capital, Monrovia, is named after President James Monroe.
February 13, 1822 - Advertisements for “Ashley's Hundred,” organized by General William H. Ashley and Major Andrew Henry to ascend the Missouri River on a fur trading mission, appear in Missouri newspapers. The men who would answer the call to employ included Jedediah Smith and Jim Bridger. These expeditions would leave St. Louis at irregular intervals over the next decade.
March 30, 1822 - Florida becomes an official territory of the United States.
May 6, 1822 - A law prohibiting the sale of alcohol to Indians is passed, causing a disruption in the fur trade pattern that relied on Indians to procure the furs, in exchange for alcohol and other goods.
1823
April 5, 1823 - Funding for the creation of the Albany Basin, a man-made port linked to the Erie Canal, in Albany, New York, is approved.
April 25, 1823 - The War Department issues an order for an expedition up the Red River and along the 49th parallel led by Stephen Long, which would mark the point of the official border between the United States and Canada.
August 9, 1823 – The Arikara Indian War begins as the U.S. Army engages in the first conflict with an Indian tribe in the western territories after the tribe had attacked a trapping party on June 1.
December 2, 1823 - In a speech before Congress, James Monroe announces the Monroe Doctrine, stating the policy that European intervention anyplace in the Americas is opposed and that America would remain neutral in future European wars.
1824
Mexico becomes a republic, three years after declaring independence from Spain.
Bolívar liberates Peru, and becomes its president.
Beethoven composes "Ninth Symphony."
March 11, 1824 - The Bureau of Indian Affairs is established by the United States War Department to “regulate trade” with Native American tribes.
April 17, 1824 - A frontier treaty between the United States and Russia is signed, negotiated by John Quincy Adams, Secretary of State. Russia agreed to set its southern border at 54 degrees, 40 minutes and allow U.S. ships within the one hundred mile limit of its Pacific territories.
May 24, 1824 - In Pawtucket, Rhode Island, the first strike by female workers occurs.
December 2, 1824 - The Electoral College vote yields no majority; John Quincy Adams is elected president by the House of Representatives on February 9, 1825, outpolling fellow Democrat Republicans, now a loose coalition of competing factions, including Andrew Jackson, who had
actually received a higher number of Electoral College votes, 99, than Adams, 84. There was no majority due to votes for Henry Clay, 37, and William Crawford, 41. In the first election with popular vote totals, Adams garnered less votes there as well, with 105,321 to 155,872 to Jackson.
December 24, 1824 - The first fraternity in the United States is begun, Chi Phi, at Princeton University.
1825
First passenger-carrying railroad in England.
February 12, 1825 - In the state of Georgia, the Creek Indian tribe give up their last lands to the United States government and move west.
March 4, 1825 - John Quincy Adams is inaugurated as President, with John C. Calhoun as his Vice President.
October 26, 1825 - Use of the Erie Canal begins in Buffalo, New York with the first boat departing for New York City. This opened up the Great Lakes region to travel and trade. Cost of the canal was $7 million.
November 4, 1825 – The first boat navigating the Erie Canal arrives in New York City. The opening of the Erie Canal contributed to making the city of New York a chief Atlantic port.
November 26, 1825 - The first college social fraternity, Kappa Alpha, is formed at Union College, Schenectady, New York.
1826
Joseph-Nicéphore Niepce takes the world's first photograph.
September 3, 1826 - The first United States warship to navigate the world, the U.S.S. Vincennes, leaves New York City under the command of William Finch.
October 26, 1826 - Kit Carson, mountain man of the western lands, is wanted in Franklin, Missouri, after running away to join a trading party at the age of 16. A reward of one cent is offered for his return to his bondage to learn the saddler's job in Franklin.
In this year, David Edward Jackson, for whom Jackson Hole, Wyoming is named, as well as Jedediah Smith and William Sublette purchase William Ashley's interest in the fur trade.
Their company, later to become known as the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, was sold in 1830, and continued to profit from the fur trade across the mountain west.
December 21, 1826 – A group of Texas settlers make their first attempt to secede from Mexico as the Fredonian Republic. The Republic lasts one month, and causes the Mexican government to curb immigration from U.S. This leads to an eventual Texas Revolution.
1827
February 26, 1827 - The Senate ratifies the Treaty of Limits that establishes the Sabine River as the Mexican and United States border, in agreement with the Adams-Onis Treaty of 1819.
February 28, 1827 - The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad is incorporated, and would become the first railroad in the United States to offer transportation for people and commercial goods.
July 4, 1827 - In New York State, slavery is legally abolished.
July 14, 1827 - The first Roman Catholic Mass is held in the Hawaiian Islands and leads to the foundation of the Diocese of Honolulu.
September 22, 1827 - Joseph Smith, Jr. claims the angel Moroni gave him a record of gold plates, later translated into The Book of Mormon.
1828
January 12, 1828 - The Treaty of Limits with Mexico goes into effect.
April 14, 1828 - The copyright for The American Dictionary of the English Language is registered and the book published that year by Noah Webster.
July 4, 1828 – The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad begins passenger service.
December 2, 1828 – Andrew Jackson wins the electoral college vote against John Quincy Adams.
October 28, 1828 - Opposing the Tariff of Abominations, the state of South Carolina begins the process of a formal nullification campaign, declaring the right of state nullification of federal laws.
1929
March 4, 1829 - Andrew Jackson, now a Democratic, is inaugurated as President.
June 1, 1829 - The Philadelphia Inquirer newspaper is founded as the Pennsylvania Inquirer.
June 27, 1829 - The Smithsonian Institution is founded when British scientist James Smithson bequeathed one hundred thousand pounds ($500,000) from his estate for its initial funding, on the condition that his nephew have no heirs. The establishment of the Smithsonian building would be passed by an act of Congress in 1846 and was completed in 1855.
July 23, 1829 - William Austin Burt, of the United States, invents and patents the typewriter, then known as a “typographer.”
1830
France invades Algeria. Louis Philippe becomes “Citizen King” as a revolution forces Charles X to abdicate.
March 26, 1830 – Joseph Smith publishes the Book of Mormon.
April 6, 1830 - The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is organized in Fayette, New York.
May 26, 1830 - The United States Congress approves the Indian Removal Act, which led to the relocation of Indian tribes living east of the Mississippi. Although this act did not order their removal, it paved the way for increased pressure on the tribes to accept land-exchange treaties with the U.S. government which eventually resulted in the Trail of Tears.
June 1, 1830 – The 1830 Census reports a population increase of 33% in the last decade to a total of 12,860,702.
This year, William L. Sublette, with goods from the Rocky Mountain Fur Company (known by that name from 1830-1833), took the first wagons along the Oregon Trail to the Rocky Mountains, diverting at South Pass as he went to the 1830 trade rendezvous at the Little Wind River in present-day Wyoming. The supply caravan included eighty-one men on mules, ten wagons, and two carriages.
1831
The Polish revolt against Russia, but fail.
Belgium separates from the Netherlands.
March 19, 1831 - The first bank robbery in United States history occurs at the City Bank of New York. Edward Smith robbed the Wall Street bank of $245,000. He would be caught and convicted of the crime, and sentenced to five years in Sing Sing prison.
May 27, 1831 - Jedediah Smith, legendary mountain man and fur trader with the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, is killed on the Cimarron River in an altercation with a group of Native Americans. Expeditions by Smith were noted as the most dangerous ones attempted during the height of the fur trade years.
August 21, 1831 - A local slave rebellion in Southampton County, Virginia, led by Nat Turner, a black slave, kills fifty-seven white citizens. Turner would be captured on October 30 of the same year, tried, and hanged on November 11 for his part in the uprising.
This year, Cyrus H. McCormick invented and demonstrated the first commercially successful reaper. He developed the reaper over a six week period with the assistance of his black helper Jo Anderson. The reaper would be used in their 1831 harvest in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. McCormick would patent the reaper in 1834.
1832
April 20, 1832 - The first act of Congress to protect a natural resource was signed by President Andrew Jackson. It reserved four parcels of land with hot mineral springs in Arkansas Territory at Hot Springs.
April 8, 1832 - The Black Hawk War begins and would rage from Illinois to Wisconsin through September. It would consequently lead to the removal of Sauk and Fox Indians west, across the Mississippi River.
July 24, 1832 - The first wagons crossed the Continental Divide on the Oregon Trail at Wyoming's South Pass when Captain Benjamin Bonneville and Joseph R. Walker navigated one hundred and ten men with twenty-one wagons into the Green River Valley.
October 8-10, 1832 - The six year campaign known as the Trail of Tears begins when Washington Irving, Henry Levitt Ellsworth, and Captain Jesse Bean, at the Arkansas River, begin one of the first steps in the U.S. campaign to remove Indians from their homes on the east coast.
November 24, 1832 - South Carolina convention passed the Ordinance of Nullification, which was against the institution of permanent tariffs. The state also threatened to withdraw from the Union.
December 28, 1832 – John Calhoun resigns as Vice President
1833
Slavery is abolished in the British Empire.
March 1, 1833 - The United States Congress passes a compromise tariff act in response to South Carolina's objections. The state of South Carolina subsequently withdrew the Nullification Ordinance.
March 2, 1833 - The Force Bill is signed by President Andrew Jackson, which would authorize him to use troops to enforce Federal law in South Carolina, if necessary.
March 4, 1833 - President Jackson is inaugurated for a second term, with Martin Van Buren as Vice President. Jackson had won a convincing victory in the November election.
June 24, 1833 - The United States frigate Constitution, "Old Ironsides," is retired to the initial naval drydock at the Charlestown Naval Yard. It remains on exhibit there, as part of Boston's history.
September 2, 1833 - Oberlin College is founded, becoming the first college (1837) in the United States to offer coeducation. It began to admit black students in 1835.
1834
Charles Babbage invents “analytical engine,” precursor of computer.
January 3, 1834 - Stephen F. Austin, the Father of Texas, is imprisoned by Mexican government officials in Mexico City for insurrection. He was not tried and finally returned to Texas in August 1835.
March 18, 1834 - Pennsylvania's Main Line canal is linked between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh by a system of ten inclined planes which crossed the Allegheny Mountains.
March 28, 1834 - The United States Senate censures President Andrew Jackson for defunding the Second Bank of the United States.
In this year, John Jacob Astor sells the American Fur Company, and goes on to become a major owner of real estate in New York City.
October 14, 1834 - Henry Blair receives the second patent awarded to an African American for a corn planter.
1835
January 30, 1835 - Richard Lawrence, an unemployed house painter, attempts to shoot Andrew Jackson. After two point-blank shots misfired, Jackson confronted his attacker with a cane. This was the first attempt on the life of a President of the United States.
June 2, 1835 - P.T. Barnum begins his first circus tour of the United States.
October 2, 1835 - The Revolution of Texas begins with the Battle of Gonzales when Mexican soldiers try to disarm the people of Gonzales, but are resisted by local militia.
By November, Texas proclaimes the right to secede from Mexico, and Sam Houston takes command of the Texas army. They capture San Antonio on December 9.
December 16, 1835 - A fire in New York City rages, eventually destroying 530 buildings, including the New York Stock Exchange.
December 29, 1835 - The Cherokee tribe is forced to cede lands in Georgia and cross the Mississippi after gold is found on their land in Georgia.
1836
Boer farmers start their “Great Trek.” Natal, Transvaal, and Orange Free State are founded in South Africa.
Dickens writes "Pickwick Papers."
February 3, 1836 - The first convention of the American Whig Party is held in Albany, New York.
February 23 - March 6, 1836 - The battle for the Alamo is waged in San Antonio, Texas when 3,000 Mexican troops under Santa Ana attack the mission and its 189 defenders. Texas troops lose the battle after a thirteen day siege.
March 2, 1836 – Texas independence is declared at a convention of delegates from fifty-seven Texas communities at Washington-on-the-Brazos, making them an independent nation.
February 25, 1836 - The patent for the first revolver is awarded to inventor Samuel Colt.
April 21, 1836 - The battle of San Jacinto is waged. Sam Houston leads the Texas army to victory over Mexican forces. Santa Ana and his troops are taken prisoner the next day along the San Jacinto River.
July 11, 1836 - The Specie Act is issued by executive order of President Andrew Jackson. This act would lead to an economic failure and the Panic of 1837.
December 7, 1836 - Martin Van Buren of the Democratic party, defeats William H. Harrison, a Whig, in the Presidential election.
1837
Victoria becomes queen of Great Britain.
February 25, 1837 - The first electric motor is patented in the U.S. by Thomas Davenport. He uses it in 1840 to print a newspaper on the first electric-run printer.
March 4, 1837 - Martin Van Buren, as President, and Richard M. Johnson, Vice President, are inaugurated into office.
March 4, 1837 - The city of Chicago is granted a charter by Illinois.
May 10, 1837 - A global economic crises known as the Panic of 1837 begins with the failure of New York City banks. Unemployment reaches record levels as the crisis develops.
November 7, 1837 - Elijah P. Lovejoy, an abolitionist printer, is killed by a mob of slavery supporters, while trying to protect his shop from being destroyed for the third time.
1838
January 6, 1838 - Samuel Morse, a portrait painter who later turned to invention, first publicly demonstrates the telegraph and his Morse Code system of communication.
January 27, 1838 – A young Abraham Lincoln delivers the speech "The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions".
June 12, 1838 - The Territory of Iowa is organized.
September 3, 1838 - Frederick Douglass, future abolitionist, boards a train in Maryland to freedom from slavery, with borrowed identification and a sailor's uniform from a free Black seaman.
October 27, 1838 - Missouri governor Lilburn Boggs issues an order for the expulsion of Mormons from the state of Missouri.
1839
First Opium War (to 1842) between Britain and China starts.
During the decade of the 1830's, German American immigrants introduced to America the tradition of decorating trees during the holidays.
February 11, 1839 - The University of Missouri is established, first university west of the Mississippi.
February 15, 1839 - In Mississippi, the first state law allowing women to own property is passed.
February 24, 1839 - American inventer William Otis receives a patent for the steam shovel.
Later that year, American Thaddeus Fairbanks invents platform scales.
November 11, 1839 – The Virginia Military Institute is founded in Lexington.
1840
Lower and Upper Canada are united.
January 13, 1840 – The steamship Lexington burns and sinks four miles off the coast of Long Island, New York. 139 people lose their lives.
January 19, 1840 - Wilkes Land in Antarctica is claimed for the United States when Captain Charles Wilkes circumnavigates the continent.
June 1, 1840 - The census of the United States counts 17,063,353, up 33% from the decade before. May 7, 1840 - The Great Natchez Trace Tornado strikes Natchez, Mississippi and wreaks havoc. 317 people are killed and 209 are injured. It is the second most deadly tornado in U.S. history.
December 2, 1840 - President Martin Van Buren is defeated for reelection by William Henry Harrison. Harrison, a Whig, receives 234 Electoral College votes to 60 and also wins the popular vote.
1841
March 9, 1841 - The Supreme Court of the U.S. states that in the case of the slave ship Amistad that the Africans who had wrested control of the ship had been bound into slavery illegally.
April 4, 1841 - President William Henry Harrison, sworn into office only one month before, dies of pneumonia. His death in office is the first for a president of the United States. He is succeeded by Vice President John Tyler.
May 1, 1841 - The first wagon train to California, with sixty-nine adults and several children, leaves from Independence, Missouri. The journey would take six months.
May 1, 1841 – The Second Seminole War, ongoing since 1835, starts to wind down after Lieutenant William Tecumseh Sherman escorts Seminole chieftain Coacoochee to a meeting, leading to the surrender of many of his band. The few remaining Seminoles would be allowed to remain on an informal reservation in south Florida.
August 16, 1841 - President Tyler vetoes the bill re-establishing the Second Bank of the United States,
causing an angry riot among Whig party members on White House grounds. It was the most violent demonstration on those grounds in U.S. history.
1842
Crawford Long uses first anesthetic (ether).
March 5, 1842 - In a prelude to the Mexican War, troops under Mexican leader Rafael Vasquez invade Texas and briefly occupy San Antonio; the first invasion since the Texas Revolution.
May 16, 1842 - The second organized wagon train on the Oregon Trail leaves with more than one hundred pioneers from Elm Grove, Missouri. Although not welcomed due to company policy that discouraged emigration, they were offered food and farming equipment at Fort Vancouver by the Hudson Bay Company upon arrival.
May 19, 1842 - The People's Party of Providence, Rhode Island, founded by lawyer Thomas Wilson Dorr in 1841, proposes liberalizing the Rhode Island charter of 1663 to extend voting rights to non-property owners. They stage The Dorr Rebellion, with militiamen attacking an arsenal in Providence. The attack was later repulsed, but it forced conservatives to abolish the charter and adopt a new constitution one year later.
August 9, 1842 - The border between the United States and Canada east of the Rocky Mountains is fixed by the Webster-Ashburton Treaty, thus including Maine and Minnesota.
November 26, 1842 - The University of Notre Dame is founded by Father Edward Sorin of the Congregation of the Holy Cross. The University would be granted a charter by the state of Indiana two years later.
1843
Wagner composes his opera "The Flying Dutchman."
February 6, 1843 – The first minstrel show in the United States debuts at the Bowery Amphitheatre in New York City.
May 22, 1843 – In “The Great Migration” a wagon train heads for the northwest via the Oregon Trail with approximately one thousand people from Elm Grove, Missouri.
June 4, 1843 - The Black Horse Troop of the 1st United States Dragoons from Fort Scott, Kansas join a military escort into Indian Territory along the Santa Fe Trail and apprehend Jacob Snively and his Texas freebooters.
June 21, 1843 - Edgar Allan Poe publishes his story The Gold Bug in the Dollar Newspaper. He is paid $100, having won the grand prize.
November 28, 1843 - The Kingdom of Hawaii is officially recognized by European nations as an independent nation. This date signifies Hawaiian Independence Day.
1844
April 6, 1844 - Edgar Allan Poe departs his home in Philadelphia for New York City. Although most of this best works were written while in Philly, he left the city with only $4.50 to his name.
May 24, 1844 - Samuel B. Morse, inventor of the telegraph, sends the first message over the first telegraph line from Washington to Baltimore. His words were, "What God hath wrought."
June 15, 1844 - The patent for vulcanization, a process for strengthening rubber, is granted to Charles Goodyear.
July 3, 1844 - The United States signs the treaty of Wanghia with China. It is the first treaty signed between the two nations. Five Chinese ports are opened to U.S. ships.
December 4, 1844 - Democrat James K. Polk defeats Henry Clay for president with 170 Electoral College votes to 105 for Clay.
1845
Edgar Allan Poe publishes "The Raven and Other Poems."
March 3, 1845 - Congress overrides President Tyler's veto of a military appropriation.
July 4, 1845 - The Congress of Texas votes for annexation to the United States of America with the majority of voters in Texas approving a constitution on October 13. These actions followed the signing of a bill by President Tyler on March 1, authorizing the United States to annex the Republic of
Texas and led to the United States adding the Republic of Texas into the Union as the 28th state on December 29.
October 21, 1845 - The New York Herald becomes the first newspaper to mention the game of baseball. In this year, Alexander Cartwright and his New York Knickerbockers baseball team codify the "rules of baseball" for the first time, including nine men per side.
December 2, 1845 - U.S. President Polk invokes the concept of Manifest Destiny, announcing to Congress that the Monroe Doctrine should be strictly enforced and that the settlement of the West should be aggressively pursued.
Elias Howe invents a sewing machine. Howe would patent the device on September 10, 1846.
1846
Brigham Young leads Mormons to Great Salt Lake.
W. T. Morton uses ether as anesthetic.
Frederick Douglass launches abolitionist newspaper "The North Star."
Failure of potato crop causes famine in Ireland, leading to mass exodus of Irish to other countries.
January 5, 1846 - The United States House of Representatives changes its policy toward sharing the Oregon Territory with the United Kingdom. On June 15, the Oregon Treaty is signed with Great Britain, fixing the boundary of the United States and Canada at the 49th parallel from the Rocky Mountains to the Straits of Juan de Fuca.
May 8, 1846 - The first major conflict of the Mexican War occurs north of the Rio Grande River at Palo Alto, Texas when United States troops under the command of Major General Zachary Taylor rout a larger Mexican force.
Taylor had been ordered by President Polk to seize disputed Texas land settled by Mexicans.
May 13, 1846 – War is declared by the United States against Mexico. The declaration is backed by southerners while northern Whigs oppose. Ten days later, Mexico declares war on the U.S.
June 10, 1846 - The Republic of California declares independence from Mexico.
June 14, 1846 – The bear flag of the Republic of California is raised at Sonoma.
July 28, 1846 - The Army of the West, under the command of Brigadier General Stephen Watts Kearny, travels down the Santa Fe Trail and arrive at Bent's Old Fort en route to the conquest of New Mexico.
August 14, 1846 – A meteorite strikes south of the town of Cape Girardeau in Missouri. It is a 2.3kg chondrite (a non-metallic type of meteorite).
1847
March 27-29, 1847 - Twelve thousand American troops under the command of General Winfield Scott take Vera Cruz, Mexico after a siege.
May 7, 1847 - The American Medical Association is founded in Philadelphia.
July 1, 1847 - The first adhesive postage stamps in the United States go on sale, with Benjamin Franklin gracing the 5 cent stamp and George Washington on the 10 cent stamp.
July 24, 1847 - One hundred and forty-eight Mormons under Brigham Young settle at Salt Lake City, Utah after leaving Nauvoo, Illinois for the west on February 10, 1846, where they were ousted due to violent clashes over their beliefs including the practice of polygamy.
September 8-15, 1847 - The Battle for Mexico City is fought, beginning two miles outside the city at King's Mill. On September 12, the main assault against the fortress Capultepec was undertaken, under the command of General Winfield Scott, with combatants including Ulysses S. Grant and John Quitman's 4th Division, of which George Pickett and James Longstreet were a part. Quitman's division entered a deserted city, which had been abandoned by Santa Anna's forces during the night on September 15.
1848
Revolt in Paris: Louis Philippe (see 1830) abdicates; Louis Napoleon elected president of French Republic. There follows revolutions in Vienna, Venice, Berlin, Milan, Rome, Warsaw, and many other places in Europe. Though the revolutionaries were eventually suppressed, some of their reforms were adopted.
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels write "Communist Manifesto."
Harriet Tubman escapes from slavery and joins the Underground Railroad.
January 12, 1848 - Abraham Lincoln, as Congressman from Springfield, Illinois, attacks President Polk's handling of the Mexican War in a speech in the House of Representatives.
January 24, 1848 - Gold is discovered in California by James W. Marshall at Sutter's Mill in the town of Colona. Seven months later, on August 19, the New York Herald breaks the news to East Coast readers, prompting eighty thousand prospectors to flood California and the Barbary Coast of San Francisco by the following year.
February 2, 1848 - The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ends the Mexican War. Mexico relinquishes its rights to Texas above the Rio Grande River and cedes New Mexico and California to the United States. The United States also gained claims to Arizona, Nevada, Utah, and part of Colorado. In exchange, the United States assumed $3 million in American claims and paid Mexico $15 million. The treaty is March 10, 1848 – Treaty with Mexico ratified by the U.S. Senate.
May 19, 1848 – Mexico ratifies the treaty.
July 20, 1848 - The Declaration of Sentiments calling for equal rights for women and men is signed by 100 men and women in the Wesleyan Methodist Chapel, Seneca Falls, New York at the 1st Women's Rights Convention led by Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
November 7, 1848 - Zachary Taylor, hero of the Mexican War, defeats Lewis Cass in the presidential election. This was the first U.S. election held on the same date in every state.
1849
January 23, 1849 - The first woman doctor in the United States, Elizabeth Blackwell, is granted her degree by the Medical Institute of Geneva, New York.
April 4, 1849 - The first baseball uniforms are introduced by the New York Knickerbockers club in the form of blue and white cricket outfits.
February 28, 1849 - With the arrival of the SS California in San Francisco after a four month twenty-one day journey around the Cape Horn from New York City, regular steamboat service is inaugurated between the east and west coasts.
March 3, 1849 - The United States Department of the Interior is established.
1850
January 29, 1850 - Debate on the future of slavery in the territories escalates when Henry Clay introduces the Compromise of 1850 to the U.S. Congress.
On March 7, Senator Daniel Webster endorses the bill as a measure to avert a possible civil war.
June 1, 1850 - The United States census of 1850 counts 23,191,876 population, a 35.9% increase from the prior decade.
July 10, 1850 - Millard Fillmore is sworn into office as the 13th President of the United States after the death of Zachary Taylor the day before. His policies on the topic of slavery fail to appease expansionists or slave-holders.
September 9, 1850 - The Compromise of 1850, pushed by Senator Henry Clay, admits California as the 31st state, without slavery, and adds Utah and New Mexico as territories with no decision on the topic. The Fugitive Slave Law is strengthened under the Compromise, while the slave trade in the District of Columbia is officially ended.
September 11, 1850 - P.T. Barnum introduces the “Swedish Nightingale” Jenny Lind, to an American audience of six thousand at a charge of $3 per person. Her debut at Castle Garden, a converted fort on Manhattan Island, is a rousing success.
1851
May 1, 1851 - The United States of America participates in the opening ceremony of the first World's Fair in history, the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations, in the Crystal Palace designed by Joseph Paxton, in Hyde Park, London, England. The world's fair becomes the first major gathering of the works of nations in one location. It was urged on by Prince Albert and supported by Queen Victoria.
August 22, 1851 - The America's Cup yachting race is inaugurated.
October 11, 1851 - The first world's fair closes after 141 days of exhibition. 6,039,195 visitors attend the Crystal Palace exhibition, with exhibits from fifty nations and thirty-nine colonies. The United States had 499 exhibits, of which McCormick's reaper won a gold medal and Charles Goodyear a council medal. To this day, profits from the first world exposition still provide funds for scholarships and cultural endowments throughout England, and this exhibition would spawn over one hundred others, to date.
November 14, 1851 - Herman Melville's "Moby-Dick" is published.
Nathanial Hawthorne's "House of Seven Gables," is also published in 1851.
The painting "Washington Crossing the Delaware" is completed by German-American artist Emmanuel Leutze.
December 29, 1851 - The first YMCA opens in Boston, Massachusetts.
1852
South African Republic established.
Louis Napoleon proclaims himself Napoleon III (“Second Empire”).
February 16, 1852 - The Studebaker Brothers Wagon Company is established and would become the largest producer in the world of wagons.
February 19, 1852 – The Phi Kappa Psi fraternity is begun at Jefferson College in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania.
March 20, 1852 - Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin is published. Stowe wrote this anti-slavery story in response to the Fugitive Slave Act. It sold 300,000 copies in its first years of publication.
June 29, 1852 - American Senator Henry Clay dies. He was author of much legislation on the slavery issue. Later that year, on October 24, statesman Daniel Webster passes away. This void in American politics would be felt throughout the next decade.
November 2, 1852 - Franklin Pierce, a Democrat, wins a convincing victory for President, defeating Whig Winfield Scott by a tally of 254 to 42 electoral votes. He also garners the majority in the popular vote. However, he does not prove popular with his own party.
1853
Crimean War begins as Turkey declares war on Russia.
January 11, 1853 - John Ericsson, designer of the ironclad Monitor one decade later, tests his ship powered by a caloric, hot air, engine in New York Harbor, but the experiment fails.
April 22, 1853 - The Indian Frontier Post, Fort Scott, in Indian Territory (Kansas) is evacuated by the United States Army riflemen.
July 8, 1853 - Commodore Matthew C. Perry and the United States Navy arrive in Edo Bay, Japan. They would “negotiate” a treaty to allow U.S. ships to trade with Japan.
July 14, 1853 - U.S. President Franklin Pierce opens the first world's fair held in the United States, the Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations. Located on 6th Avenue in a large palace on the site of the current New York Public Library, twenty-three foreign nations and colonies participated.
December 30, 1853 - The Gadsden Purchase is consummated, with the United States buying a 29,640 square mile tract of land in present-day Arizona and New Mexico (approximately from Yuma to Las Cruces) from Mexico for $10 million to allow a railroad to cross the southwest and settle border disputes lingering after the Mexican-American War. This act finalized the borders of the Continental United States.
1854
Britain and France join Turkey against Russia in Crimean War.
Japanese allow American trade (under threats of war).
Tennyson writes "Charge of the Light Brigade" concerning a British defeat in the Crimean War.
Thoreau writes "Walden."
February 28, 1854 - In Ripon, Wisconsin, the Republican Party is founded by anti-slavery men, in opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act. It would hold its first convention later that year on July 6 in Jackson, Michigan.
May 30, 1854 - The Kansas-Nebraska act becomes law, allowing the issue of slavery to be decided by a vote of settlers. This established the territories of Kansas and Nebraska and would breed much of the rioting and bloodshed that culminated in the actions of the next years of "Bleeding Kansas."
June 10, 1854 - The United States Naval Academy graduates its first class at Annapolis, Maryland.
October 31, 1854 - The New York World's Fair, extended for a second season, closes after 393 exhibit days. The second season, under the presidency of P.T. Barnum, raises the total attendance to over 1,150,000.
1855
Florence Nightingale (British nurse and social reformer) tends to wounded in Crimea.
Walt Whitman writes "Leaves of Grass."
March 3, 1855 - The United States Camel Corps is created with a $30,000 appropriation in Congress.
April 21, 1855 - The first railroad train crosses the Mississippi River on the first bridge constructed at Rock Island, Illinois to Davenport, Iowa.
July 1, 1855 – The Quinault River Treaty between the United States and the Quinault and Quileute tribes of the Olympic Peninsula in Washington Territory cedes their lands to the United States. It was a goal of territorial governors at the time to acquire land cession treaties with Native Americans.
October 9, 1855 - The Shuttle Sewing Machine and its machine motor are patented by Isaac M. Singer, improving the development of the sewing machine.
1856
Flaubert writes "Madame Bovary."
The Second Opium War pits commercial interests in Britain and France against the Qing dynasty of China. It lasts for four years.
April 5, 1856 - Booker T. Washington is born into slavery on a tobacco farm in Franklin County, Virginia, later to emerge as one of the foremost black leaders and educators of the 20th century.
May 21, 1856 - Pro-slavery forces under Sheriff Samuel J. Jones burn the Free-State Hotel and destroy two anti-slavery newspapers and other businesses in Lawrence, Kansas. Three days later, the Pottowatomie Massacre occurs in Franklin County, Kansas when followers of abolitionist John Brown kill five homesteaders.
May 22, 1856 - South Carolina Congressman Preston Brooks attacks Senator Charles Sumner with a cane in the hall of the U.S. Senate after Sumner gave a speech attacking Southern sympathizers for the pro-slavery violence in Kansas. Sumner would take three years to recover while Brooks was lionized throughout Southern states.
November 4, 1856 - John C. Fremont, the first candidate for president under the banner of the Republican Party, loses his bid for the presidency to James C. Buchanan, despite support for Fremont from Abraham Lincoln. Buchanan, the only bachelor to become president as well as the sole Pennsylvanian garnered 174 Electoral College votes to 114 for Fremont. Millard Fillmore, running on the American Know-Nothing and Whig tickets was also defeated.
November 17, 1856 - Fort Buchanan is established by the U.S. Army on the Sonoita River in current southern Arizona to administrate the new land bought in the Gadsden Purchase.
1857
Sepoy Rebellion begins in India. As a result, India is placed under crown rule (was previously governed by East India Company).
March 4, 1857 - James Buchanan is sworn into office as the 15th President of the United States. His tenure as President would be marred by the question of slavery and a compromise stance that would neither alleviate nor eradicate the intractable question from American society.
March 6, 1857 - The United States Supreme Court rules in the Dred Scott decision, 6-3, that a slave did not become free when transported into a free state. It also ruled that slavery could not be banned by the U.S. Congress in a territory, and that blacks were not eligible to be awarded citizenship.
March 23, 1857 - The first elevator is installed by Elisha Otis on Broadway in New York City.
August 11, 1857 - Colonel Isaac Neff Ebey, leader of the first permanent white settlers to Whidbey Island, Washington Territory seven years earlier, is beheaded and shot by Indian raiders.
August 24, 1857 – The Panic of 1857 starts in earnest when the Ohio Life Insurance and Trust Company announces its inability to make payments. The panic eventually spreads through Europe as well.
December 21, 1857 - Two companies of the 1st Cavalry under Captain Samuel Sturgis arrive at Fort Scott, Kansas to attempt to restore order to "Bleeding Kansas."
1858
January 4, 1858 – Kansas Territory voters overwhelmingly defeat a pro-slavery state constitution.
April 28, 1858 - Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, landscape architects, win the competition and adoption of their plan for Central Park in New York City.
June 16, 1858 – Lincoln delivers his “House Divided” speech at Springfield after accepting the Republican Party’s nomination for U.S. Senator.
June 23, 1858 - With strife between pro-slavery and anti-slavery partisans escalating to dramatic chaos, the 2nd Infantry and 3rd Artillery regiments under the command of Captain Nathanial Lyon attempt to restore order during the "Bleeding Kansas" campaign.
August 5, 1858 - The first transatlantic cable is completed by Cyrus West Field and others. It would fail its test due to weak current on September 1.
August 21 to October 15, 1858 - A series of seven debates between politicians Stephen Douglas and Abraham Lincoln occur in Illinois.
September 17, 1858 - Dred Scott, the American slave who precipitated the decision by the Supreme Court on the topic of slavery, dies.
1859
Work begins on Suez Canal.
Unification of Italy commences under leadership of Count Cavour, Sardinian premier.
France joins Italy in war against Austria.
Jean-Joseph-Étienne Lenoir builds first practical internal-combustion engine.
Edward Fitzgerald translates "The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam."
Charles Darwin writes "Origin of Species."
John Stuart Mill writes "On Liberty."
February 14, 1859 - Oregon is admitted to the Union as the 33rd state.
August 27, 1859 - The first productive oil well for commercial use is drilled by Edwin L. Drake in Titusville, Pennsylvania.
October 16, 1859 - The United States Armory at the confluence of the Shenandoah and Potomac Rivers at Harper's Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia) is seized by twenty-one men under the leadership of abolitionist John Brown in the hopes of causing an uprising of slaves in the surrounding territories.
October 18, 1859 – Troops under the command of Colonel Robert E. Lee, kill several of the raiders and capture John Brown.
November 1, 1859 - The Cape Lookout, North Carolina lighthouse, with a Fresnel lens seen nineteen miles away, is lit for the first time.
December 2, 1859 - John Brown is hanged for treason by the state of Virginia due to his leadership role in the raid on the Harper's Ferry armory and failed attempt to spur revolt among Virginia slaves.
1860
February 22, 1860 - Twenty thousand New England shoe workers strike and subsequently win higher wages.
April 3, 1860 - The Pony Express begins. Overland mail between Sacramento, California and St. Joseph's, Missouri is carried over the Oregon Trail for eighteen months by this series of riders on horseback, then rendered obsolete when the transcontinental telegraph is completed.
Service ended on October 24, 1861.
1860-1861 - Emmanuel Leutze is commissioned by Congress and begins to paint the mural, "Westward Ho the Course of Empire Takes Its Way," in July 1861 for the U.S. Capitol.
The mural represents frontier settlement (but its intentions as expressed in its title are obvious).
November 6, 1860 - Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln, running on an anti-slavery platform, defeats three opponents in the campaign for the presidency; Democrats Stephen A. Douglas and John C. Breckinridge, and John Bell, Constitutional Union Party, leading to ardent cries of potential rebellion in southern slave states. Although Lincoln won the Electoral College by a large majority, 180
to 123 for all other candidates, the popular vote showed just how split the nation was. Lincoln garnered 1.9 million votes to the 2.8 million spread amongst his opponents.
December 20, 1860 - South Carolina responds to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President by being the first southern state to secede from the Union.
1861
Serfs emancipated in Russia.
Pasteur publishes his theory of germs.
Independent Kingdom of Italy proclaimed under Sardinian king Victor Emmanuel II.
Congress creates Colorado, Dakota, and Nevada territories, and the first income tax (which lasts for ten years).
February 4, 1861 - In Montgomery, Alabama, the convention to form the Confederated States of America opens. Four days later, with Jefferson Davis as president, seven southern states officially set up the C.S.A. Those states were Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Texas.
March 4, 1861 - Abraham Lincoln is sworn in as president of the United States with Hannibal Hamlin as Vice President.
April 12, 1861 - Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina harbor is bombarded for 34 hours
by Confederate forces after the U.S. Army commander failed to evacuate, thus starting the four years of conflict and the U.S. Civil War. The Confederate States of America had sought to force federal troops from occupation of its territory. On April 14 Major Robert Anderson turned the fort over to the Confederacy.
April 15, 1861 - President Lincoln calls for 75,000 volunteers to fight the secessionist activities in the Confederated States of America. By May Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, North Carolina have joined the Confederacy.
July 21, 1861 - The first Battle of Bull Run at Manassas, Virginia occurs with the repulsion of Union forces by the Confederacy. Led by generals such as Stonewall Jackson, the overwhelming defeat by the Confederate forces of the Union, seen by onlookers who viewed the battle as nothing than an exercise that would be easily won, showed vibrant indication that the Civil War would not be over quickly or without much cost.
1862
Salon des Refusés introduces impressionism in painting.
March 9, 1862 - The USS Monitor wins a battle against the Confederate ironclad Virginia off the coast of Hampton Roads, Virginia.
April 7, 1862 - The Army of the Tennessee, under General Grant, repulses the Confederate advance of the day earlier at the Battle of Shiloh, one of the largest battles of the western theater in the U.S. Civil War. This battle, along with the unconditional surrender of Fort Donelson to General Grant on February 16, signaled the first major successes of the Union army in the west.
May 20, 1862 - The Homestead Act is approved, granting family farms of 160 acres (65 hectares) to settlers, many of which were carved from Indian territories. Two months later, on July 7, the Land Grant Act was approved, which called for public land sale to fund agricultural education. This act eventually led to the establishment of the state university systems.
September 17, 1862 - Emboldened by the victory at 2nd Manassas at the end of August, Confederate troops began the first invasion of Northern territory. Beginning with a skirmish the night before north of Sharpsburg, Maryland, this is the bloodiest day of the Civil War. Along the Bloody Lane of the Sunken Road, around the Dunker Church, on the bluffs above Burnside Bridge, and in the ripped stalks of the cornfield, Union and Confederate troops fell in large numbers. Considered a Union victory when the Confederates abandoned the field, Southern troops marching from Harper's Ferry nevertheless stemmed the Union tide the night before at Antietam, but are later reversed.
September 22, 1862 - President Abraham Lincoln, fresh on the heals of the Antietam victory, issues the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, stating that all slaves in places of rebellion against the Federal Government would be free as of January 1, 1863.
December 11, 1862 - General Ambrose Burnside begins the Battle of Fredericksburg when Union troops cross the Rappahannock River on pontoons, leading two days later to an ignominious and one-sided defeat by General Robert E. Lee. At locations such as Marye's Heights, Union troops engaged in futile and deathly charges against fortified positions only to be repulsed again and again. Subsequent withdrawal to the other side of the river signaled Burnside's defeat.
December 26, 1862 - The Dakota war that began in August between bands of Sioux and the U.S. government over late payments of annuities culminates in the jailing in Minnesota of over one thousand Dakota Sioux, and the hanging of 38 in Mankato. It was the largest mass execution in U.S. history.
1863
French capture Mexico City; proclaim Archduke Maximilian of Austria emperor.
January 1, 1863 - Daniel Freeman files one of the first homestead applications at the Brownsville Land Office in Nebraska, on the first day of implementation of the Homestead Act. The Emancipation Proclamation also goes into effect this date.
July 1-3, 1863 - After three days of battle surrounding the tiny town of Gettysburg, including over 150,000 troops, Union defenders of Cemetery Ridge turn back Generals Pickett and Pettigrew during
Pickett's Charge. With over 51,000 dead, wounded, or missing, the Battle of Gettysburg, on the farm fields of central Pennsylvania, proved to be the "high water mark of the Confederacy" and the last major push of Confederate forces into Union territory.
July 4, 1863 - The city of Vicksburg surrenders to General Grant (Union) after a two month siege. The Vicksburg campaign included major battles from May 19, including the sinking of gunboats on the Mississippi River by Confederate defenders. This major accomplishment in the western theater, plus the actions of Meade at Gettysburg one day earlier with the repulse of Pickett's charge, prove to be the two most important battles of the Civil War. It would take nearly two years for the Confederate States of America to decide to surrender.
July 13-16, 1863 - The New York draft riots kill about 1,000 people. Rioters protested the draft provision that allowed for money to be paid to get out of service. These payments would cease in 1864.
November 19, 1863 - "Four score and seven years ago," began what many perceive as the best speech in American history, delivered by President Abraham Lincoln in the town cemetery overlooking the fields of Gettysburg. The Gettysburg Address, only 272 words long and taking about two minutes to speak, captured the essence of the Civil War.
November 24, 1863 - Union General George Thomas scales the heights of Chattanooga during one of the most arduous military charges in history. This charge caused Confederate forces to abandon the area, leaving Chattanooga and the majority of Tennessee under Union control.
1864
May 5-12, 1864 - At the Battles of the Wilderness and Spotsylvania, General Grant, now the first three star lieutenant general since George Washington and in charge of the U.S. Army, marches against the forces of General Lee in a remarkable series of clashes within the dense forests of Virginia. Union casualties alone numbered nearly 3,000 dead, 21,000 wounded, and 4,000 missing.
July 14, 1864 - In an attempt to cut the railroad supply route and stop General William T. Sherman's march on Atlanta, Lt. General Nathan Bedford Forrest engaged Union forces in the Battle of Tupelo, Mississippi.
September 29, 1864 - Union forces, including black Union soldiers, capture the Confederate Fort Harrison, south of Richmond. The Confederates realign their southern defenses.
November 8, 1864 - President Lincoln defeats former Union General George B. McClellan to remain president of the United States, a repudiation of the tactics of delay favored by his former commander, and a signal of support for the President as he continued to prosecute the war. Lincoln receives 2.2 million votes and 212 in the electoral college compared to 1.8 million votes and 21 in the electoral college for McClellan.
November 29, 1864 - While awaiting terms of surrender, Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians are raided by 900 cavalrymen at Sand Creek. Between 150-500 men, women, and children from the tribes died.
1865
Joseph Lister begins antiseptic surgery.
Gregor Mendel publishes his "Law of Heredity."
Lewis Carroll writes "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland."
April 1, 1865 - Major General Philip H. Sheridan, leading cavalry and infantry, are victorious at Five Forks against Major General George E. Pickett, southwest of Petersburg Virginia. This battle cuts the railroad supply line to Confederate troops. One day later, General Grant leads the final assault on Petersburg, forcing Lee’s forces to evacuate.
April 9, 1865 - General Robert E. Lee, as commander in chief of Confederate forces, surrenders his 27,000 man army to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, effectively ending the four years of Civil War conflict. Additional troops under southern command would continue to surrender until May 26.
April 14, 1865 - Abraham Lincoln is assassinated in Ford's Theatre, Washington, D.C. The shot was fired by actor John Wilkes Booth, during the play "Our American Cousin." Lincoln would die one day later.
June 28, 1865 - In the final desperate offensive act of the Civil War, two and one-half months after Lee's official surrender at Appomattox, the Confederate ship Shenandoah seized eleven American whaling ships in the Bering Strait, Alaska.
December 18, 1865 - The Thirteenth Amendment, abolishing slavery, takes effect.
1866
Alfred Nobel invents dynamite (patented in Britain, 1867).
Seven Weeks' War: Austria defeated by Prussia and Italy.
Strauss composes "Blue Danube" waltz.
March 13, 1866 - The Civil Rights Act of 1866 is passed by Congress, the first federal law protecting
the rights of African Americans. It is vetoed by President Johnson, but the veto overridden by Congress.
April 6, 1866 - The first post of the Grand Army of the Republic forms in Decatur, Illinois, and subsequently became a major political force. The G.A.R. began the celebration of Memorial Day in the north.
July 28, 1866 - Weights and measures are standardized in the United States when the Metric Act of 1866 passes Congress.
November 6, 1866 - The final Congressional elections of the year and election of additional Republicans lead to southern reconstruction being taken over by the federal government and an attempt to protect the rights of freedmen using federal troops.
December 24, 1866 - The Klu Klux Klan forms secretly, issuing in a brutal era of terror and crime against African Americans in many southern states.
1867
Austria-Hungary dual monarchy established.
French leave Mexico, and Maximilian is executed.
Dominion of Canada established.
South African diamond field discovered.
Japan ends 675–year shogun rule.
Marx pulishes Volume I of "Das Kapital."
January 1867 - First of twelve installments of Ragged Dick by Horatio Alger is published and one year later expanded into a book in the "rags to riches" theme.
March 30, 1867 - Secretary of State William H. Seward completes the purchase of Alaska from Russia for $7.2 million dollars, approximately two cents per acre, by signing the Treaty of Cession of Russian America to the United States.
June 6, 1867 - The first running of the Belmont Stakes occurs at Jerome Park race track.
December 4, 1867 - The Grange organizes to protect the interest of the American farmer.
In 1867 the first practical typewriter is invented by Christopher Sholes, Carlos Glidden, and S.W. Soule'. One year later, it was patented, then went into production in 1874 by E. Remington and Sons.
1868
Revolution in Spain; Queen Isabella is deposed and flees to France.
March 5, 1868 - George Westinghouse invents and patents the air brake for railroad trains and organizes a company to produce them. Westinghouse would go on to patent four hundred inventions and found sixty companies, including Westinghouse Electric Company.
March 5, 1868 - The impeachment trial of Andrew Johnson begins in the Senate. Johnson was charged with violating the Tenure of Office Act by trying to remove the Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton. The President is acquitted by one vote.
October 28, 1868 - Thomas Edison applies for his first patent for the electric vote recorder.
November 3, 1868 - Republican Ulysses S. Grant, with Shuyler Colfax as his running mate, defeats Horatio Seymour, 214 to 80 in the Electoral College.
November 27, 1868 - The Battle of the Washita River ends with Lt. Colonel George Custor's defeat of Black Kettle's Cheyenne. This ended the organized campaign of Indian forces against white settlers.
1869
Suez Canal opens.
Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev publishes first periodic table of elements.
March 4, 1869 – Grant sworn in as President.
May 10, 1869 - At Promontory, Utah, the final golden spike of the transcontinental railroad is driven into the ground, marking the junction of the Central Pacific and Union Pacific Railroads.
June 15, 1869 - John W. Hyatt, a New York printer, invents and patents celluloid, the first synthetic plastic used widely for commercial applications, including combs, dentures, curtains, and photographic film, as well as billiard balls. He was seeking to find a substitute for ivory.
August 15, 1869 - The first scientific expedition of the Colorado River is conducted by Major John Wesley Powell.
September 24, 1869 - Prompted by an attempt by investors James Fisk and Jay Gould to corner the gold market, the “Black Friday” panic occurs in New York City. Fisk and Gould were aided by Abel Corbin, as son-in-law of the President. Thus, the Presidency was sullied by this scandal.
December 10, 1869 - In one of the first acts of success in the women's suffrage movement, a Women's Suffrage law passes in the Territory of Wyoming.
1870
Franco-Prussian War (to 1871): Napoleon III capitulates at Sedan.
Revolt in Paris; Third Republic proclaimed.
January 10, 1870 - Standard Oil Company is incorporated by John D. Rockefeller.
February 25, 1870 - Hiram Rhodes Revels, a Republican from Mississippi, is sworn in as a U.S. Senator. He is the first African-American to hold an elected office in the United States Congress.
March 30, 1870 - The 15th Amendment to the Constitution is declared ratified by the Secretary of State. It gives black Americans the right to vote.
June 1, 1870 - The 1870 census counts 38,558,371, an increase 22.6% over the 1860 census.
July 15, 1870 - Georgia is readmitted into the Union, and the Confederated States of America is officially dissolved.
November 1, 1870 - The National Weather Service, then known as the Weather Bureau, makes its first official meteorological forecast. "High winds at Chicago and Milwaukee... and along the Lakes."
1871
France surrenders Alsace-Lorraine to Germany; war ends.
German Empire proclaimed, with Prussian King as Kaiser Wilhelm I.
Stanley meets Livingstone in Africa.
January 17, 1871 - Andrew Smith Hallidie patents an improvement in endless wire and rope ways for cable cars. Regular service on the Clay Street Hill cable railway in San Francisco begins in September, 1873.
April 4, 1871 - The first professional baseball league, the National Association, debuts with a game between the Cleveland Forest Citys and the Fort Wayne Kekiongas. Fort Wayne won 2 to 0.
October 8, 1871 - The great fire of Chicago starts in a cowshed, as reported by Daniel Sullivan. The fire caused $196 million in damages. It burned 1.2 million acres of land, destroyed 17,450 buildings, killed 250 people, and left 90,000 homeless. Starting on the same day, a fire in Peshtigo, Wisconsin spreads across six counties in one day, and kills 1,200 to 2,500 people, making it the deadliest fire in United States history.
October 27, 1871 - New York Mayor Boss Tweed is arrested. Thomas Nast, German-American caricaturist, who had skewered the Boss Tweed ring in his cartoons, is credited with playing an important role in his downfall.
November 17, 1871 - The National Rifle Association is granted a charter by the State of New York.
1872
Jules Verne writes Around the World in 80 Days.
February 20, 1872 – The Metropolitan Museum of Art opens in New York.
March 1, 1872 – President Grant signs legislation enabling the establishment of Yellowstone National Park in the states of Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho. It is the first National Park.
May 22, 1872 - Civil rights are restored to citizens of the South, except for five hundred Confederate leaders, with the passage of the Amnesty Act of 1872 and its signing by President Ulysses S. Grant.
October 21, 1872 - Kaiser Wilhelm I of the “German Empire” arbitrates an international boundary dispute, the Pig War, between the United States and Great Britain. He rules that San Juan Island in Washington Territory is the property of the United States, ending 12 years of occupation by both armies.
November 5, 1872 - Susan B. Anthony, women's suffragette, illegally casts a ballot at Rochester, New York in the presidential election to publicize the cause of a woman's right to vote.
The reelection of Republican President Ulysses S. Grant is granted by a landslide Electoral College victory, with 286 cast for Grant. His opponent, Horace Greeley, had died prior to the Electoral College vote.
1873
An economic crisis begins in Europe, following excessive borrowing to finance war and industry.
July 21, 1873 - Jesse James leads the James-Younger Gang in the first successful train robbery in the American West, taking $3,000 from the Rock Island Express at Adair, Iowa.
August 4, 1873 - The Seventh Cavalry under the command of Lt. Colonel George Armstrong Custer, protecting a railroad survey party in Montana, engage the Sioux for the first time near the Tongue River.
The Indian Wars, which raged throughout 1873, saw the First Battle of the Stronghold on January 17, and the Second Battle of the Stronghold on April 15-17, and the end of the Modoc War on June 4 when Captain Jack was captured.
May 23, 1873 - The first running of the Preakness Stakes horse race debuts in Baltimore, Maryland.
September 18, 1873 - The New York stock market crashes, setting off a financial panic that caused bank failures. The impact of the resulting depression would continue for five years.
December 15, 1873 - The Women's Crusade of 1873-74 is started when women in Fredonia, New York march against retail liquor dealers, leading to the creation of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union.
1874
January 1, 1874 - The Bronx is annexed by New York City.
July 1, 1874 - The first United States zoo opens in Fairmount Park, Philadelphia.
July 1, 1874 - First commercially successful typewriter, the Sholes and Glidden typewriter, or Remington No. 1, is placed on the market.
November 7, 1874 - The debut of the symbol of the Republican Party, the elephant, occurs when Thomas Nast prints a cartoon utilizing the symbol in Harper's Weekly.
November, 25, 1874 - The U.S. Greenback Party is organized as a political organization by farmers who had been hurt financially in the Panic of 1873.
1875
March 1, 1875 - The Civil Rights Act, giving equal rights to blacks in jury duty and accommodation, is passed by the United States Congress. It would be overturned in 1883 by the U.S. Supreme Court.
March 15, 1875 - The first cardinal in the United States is named by the papacy, John McCloskey, archbishop of New York.
March 18, 1875 - Trade treaty approved by U.S. Senate with the island Kingdom of Hawaii granting the United States exclusive trading rights.
May 17, 1875 - The first Kentucky Derby is run at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Kentucky.
November 9, 1875 - Reporting on the Indian Wars, inspector E.C. Watkins pronounces that hundreds of Sioux and Cheyenne under Indian leaders Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse are openly hostile against the United States government. This report forms U.S. policy over the next year that would lead to battles such as Little Big Horn.
December 4, 1875 - New York City politician Boss Tweed escapes from prison and migrates to Cuba, then Spain. He would be captured and returned to New York authorities on November 23, 1876.
1876
January 31, 1876 - Original date issued by the United States government ordering all Native Americans onto a system of reservations throughout the western lands of the United States. This issue would lead to the Great Sioux War of 1876. The date is later extended by President Grant
May 10, 1876 - The Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition, a world's fair meant to celebrate the 100th birthday of the United States opens on 285 acres in Fairmount Park, Philadelphia. Among its notable public showings include Alexander Graham Bell, with his newly patented telephone, Thomas Edison with the megaphone and phonograph, Westinghouse with the air brake, the first public showing of the top portion of the Statue of Liberty and the Corliss Engine, a steam engine so large it powered the entire exhibition and proved to the 34 nations and 20 colonies who exhibited that not only was the U.S.A. an equal on a par with European nations in manufactured goods, but had surpassed them in innovation.
June 25-26, 1876 - The Battle of Little Big Horn. Lt. Colonel George Custer and his 7th U.S. Cavalry engage the Sioux and Cheyenne Indians on the bluffs above the Little Big Horn River. All 264 members of the 7th Cavalry and Custer perish in the battle, the most complete rout in American military history.
August 2, 1876 - Legislation is approved for the federal government to complete the Washington Monument with an appropriation of $2 million. Up to that time it had been privately funded.
November 7, 1876 – Democrat Samuel J. Tilden outpolls Republican Rutherford B. Hayes the popular vote. But his majority is reversed in the Electoral College by one vote. The election, however, would not be decided until March 2, 1877, when Republicans agree to end reconstruction in the South.
November 10, 1876 - The Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition closes its exposition period after 159 days, not including Sundays, with a paid and free attendance of 8,095,349. This exhibition has been credited with healing many of the wounds left by the Civil War.
1877
Russo-Turkish war begins (ends in 1878; the power of Turkey in Europe is broken).
Tchaikovsky composes "Swan Lake."
Reconstruction ends in the American South, replaced by "Jim Crow" laws which sought to maintain white supremacy, remaining in effect for roughly 90 years.
March 2, 1877 - A joint session of the U.S. Congress convenes on the presidential election dispute, reaching the Compromise of 1877 and electing Rutherford B. Hayes as President and William A. Wheeler as Vice President. They would be inaugurated two days later on March 4. Hayes would
appoint Carl Schurz Secretary of the Interior, who begins efforts to prevent destruction of forests.
May 6, 1877 - Indian leader of the Oglala Sioux, Crazy Horse, surrenders to the United States Army in Nebraska. His people had been weakened by cold and hunger.
June 21, 1877 - The Molly Maguires, an Irish terrorist society in the minefields surrounding Scranton, Pennsylvania is broken up when eleven leaders are hung for murders of police and mine officials.
June 17, 1877 - The Nez Perce War begins when Nez Perce Indians route two companies of United States Army cavalry in Idaho Territory near White Bird. This is the first battle of the war.
On August 9 Colonel John Gibbon commands the 7th U.S. Infantry as they clash with Nez Perce Indians at the Battle of the Little Big Hole. The Nez Perce tribe were attempting to avoid confinement within the reservation system.
September 1, 1877 - Frederick Douglass, the ex-slave civil rights leader and abolitionist moved into his house, Cedar Hill, in the Anacostia section of Washington, D.C.
1878
Congress of Berlin revises Treaty of San Stefano, ending Russo-Turkish War; makes extensive redivision of southeast Europe.
January 28, 1878 - In New Haven, Connecticut, the first commercial telephone exchange is opened.
February 18, 1878 - The Lincoln County War begins in New Mexico between two groups of wealthy businessmen, the ranchers and the Lincoln County general store. William Bonney, aka Billy the Kid, fought alongside the ranchers in a dispute over seizure of horses as a payment of an outstanding debt.
February 19, 1878 - Thomas Edison patents the cylinder phonograph or tin foil phonograph.
October 15, 1878 - The Edison Electric Company begins operation.
1879
Thomas A. Edison invents practical electric light.
Wilhelm Wundt opens the first laboratory ever to be exclusively devoted to psychological studies at the University of Leipzig.
February 15, 1879 - President Rutherford B. Hayes signs a bill that allowed female attorneys to argue in Supreme Court cases.
February 22, 1879 - The first five and dime store is opened in Utica, New York by Frank W. Woolworth with $300 of borrowed money. Woolworth priced all items at five cents and pioneered the concept of fixed prices versus haggling. The store failed weeks later. Woolworth, along with his brother, opened a second store in Lancaster, Pennsylvania in April 1879, including ten cent items, making the second store a success.
May 30, 1879 - The Gilmore's Garden in New York City is renamed Madison Square Garden by William Henry Vanderbilt and opens to the public at 26th Street and Madison Avenue.
September 1879 - Henry George advocates a single tax on land in his book "Progress and Poverty."
1880
U.S.-China treaty allows U.S. to restrict immigration of Chinese labor.
January 1, 1880 - The construction of the Panama Canal begins under French auspices, although it would eventually fail on the sea level canal in 1893, and would be bought out by the United States twenty-four years later.
June 1, 1880 - The national population in 1880 reached 50,189,209 people, an increase of 30.2% over the 1870 census.
June 7, 1880 - The Yorktown Column (now part of Colonial National Historical Park) in Virginia, is commissioned by the United States Congress. Its construction would commemorate the victory of American forces in the Revolutionary War.
October 23, 1880 - Adolph F. Bandelier enters Frijoles Canyon, New Mexico, under the guidance of Cochiti Indians and witnesses the prehistoric villages and cliff dwellings of the national monument that is named after him.
November 2, 1880 – Republican James A. Garfield is elected president. He was opposed by Democrat Winfield S. Hancock. Garfield barely wins the popular vote with a majority of only 7,023.
1881
President Garfield fatally shot by Charles J. Guiteau, who is later convicted and executed (1882).
January 25, 1881 - Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell form the Oriental Telephone Company.
May 21, 1881 - The American Red Cross names Clara Barton president, a post she would hold until 1904 through nineteen relief missions.
July 2, 1881 - James A. Garfield is shot by Charles J. Guiteau in the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad station in Washington, D.C.
July 4, 1881 - The Tuskegee Institute for black students training to be teachers opens under the tutelage of Booker T. Washington as instructor in Tuskegee, Alabama.
July 20, 1881 - Sioux chief Sitting Bull leads the final group of his tribe, still fugitive from the reservation, and surrenders to United States troops at Fort Buford, Montana.
September 20, 1881 – Vice President Chester Arthur succeeds Garfield the day after he dies.
October 26, 1881 – Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. It occurred in Tombstone, Arizona in a livery stable lot between Sheriff Wyatt Earp, his brother Virgil, and Doc Holliday against Billy Claiborne, Frank and Tom McLaury and the Clanton brothers Billy and Ike. The fights lasts just thirty seconds long. The McLaury brothers and Billy Clanton are killed.
1882
Terrorism occurs in Ireland after land evictions.
Britain invades and conquers Egypt.
Germany, Austria, and Italy form Triple Alliance.
In Berlin, Robert Koch announces discovery of tuberculosis germ.
January 2, 1882 - The Standard Oil Company “trust” is created by John D. Rockefeller. It is considered to be the first industrial monopoly.
February 7, 1882 - The final bare knuckle fight for the heavyweight championship is fought in Mississippi City.
March 22, 1882 - The practice of polygamy is outlawed by legislation in the United States Congress.
April 3, 1882 - Western outlaw Jesse James is shot to death by Robert Ford, a member of his own band, for a $5,000 reward.
May 6, 1882 – President Chester Arthur signs the Chinese Exclusion Act. It banned all Chinese immigration into the United States.
1883
January 16, 1883 - The Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act is passed by Congress, overhauling federal civil service and establishing the U.S. Civil Service.
February 28, 1883 – Vaudeville (theatrical entertainment shows) begins when the first theater is opened in Boston, Massachusetts.
May 24, 1883 - The Brooklyn Bridge is opened. It was constructed under a design by German-American Johann A. Roebling and required fourteen years to build. Six days later, a stampede caused by a rumor about its impending collapse kills twelve people.
October 15, 1883 - The U.S. Supreme Court finds part of the Civil Rights Act of 1875 unconstitutional, which allows individuals and corporations to discriminate based on race.
November 18, 1883 - Five standard time zones are established by United States and Canadian railroad companies to end the confusion over thousands of local time zones.
1884
Nikola Tesla emigrates to the United States in June.
The Berlin West Africa Conference is held in Berlin. Lasting until Feb. 1885, the major European nations discuss expansion in Africa.
May 1, 1884 - The Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions in the U.S.A. call for an eight-hour workday.
October 6, 1884 - The U.S. Naval War College is founded in Newport, Rhode Island.
October 23, 1884 - The first post season games in baseball were held between the National League champions, the Providence Grays, and the American Association champions, the New York Metropolitans. Providence would win the series, 3 games to 0.
November 4, 1884 - Grover Cleveland claims victory for the Democratic Party, gaining 277 Electoral College votes to the 182 Electoral College votes for the Republic candidate James G. Blaine.
December 6, 1884 - A capstone weighing 3,300 pounds is positioned atop the Washington Monument by the Corps of Engineers.
1885
British general Charles Gordon killed at Khartoum in Egyptian Sudan.
“Skyscraper”
designs begin to be built in Chicago. They are inspired by French
engineering innovations in the use of structural steel.
February 21, 1885 - The Washington Monument is dedicated at a ceremony by President Chester A. Arthur. The obelisk was completed under federal auspices after private construction was started 37 years earlier.
March 3, 1885 - American Telephone and Telegraph (ATT) is incorporated in New York City as a subsidiary of American Bell Telephone Company.
June 17, 1885 - The Statue of Liberty arrives in New York harbor.
September 2, 1885 - The Rock Spring, Wyoming mining incident occurs. One hundred and fifty white miners attack their Chinese coworkers, killing twenty-eight and forcing several hundred to leave Rock Springs.
1886
Sigmund Freud (Austria) begins using hypnosis in his clinical work.
January 20, 1886 - Thomas A. Edison builds a new laboratory for his experiments and inventions near West Orange, New Jersey. The grounds include a 29 room Queen-Anne-style mansion.
May 4, 1886 - The Haymarket riot and bombing occurs in Chicago, Illinois, three days after the start of a general strike in the United States that pushed for an eight hour workday. This would be followed by additional labor battles centered around that issue.
May 8, 1886 - Dr. John Pemberton, a Georgia pharmacist, invents coca-cola, a carbonated beverage.
On May 29, Pemberton begins advertising Coca-Cola in the Atlanta Journal.
June 2, 1886 - President Grover Cleveland marries Francis Folsom in the White House Blue Room, the only marriage of a president ever carried out there.
September 4, 1886 - At Fort Bowie in southeastern Arizona, Geronimo and his band of Apaches surrender to Brigadier General Nelson A. Miles, ending warfare between the U. S. Army and the tribes.
October 28, 1886 - The Statue of Liberty, then known as "Bartholdi's Light" or "Liberty Enlightening the World" is dedicated by President Grover Cleveland in New York Harbor. It was first shown in the United States at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia ten years earlier.
December 8, 1886 – The American Federation of Labor (AFL) is formed by twenty-five craft unions.
1887
Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee is celebrated.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's first Sherlock Holmes story "A Study in Scarlet" is published.
January 20, 1887 - Pearl Harbor naval base is leased by the United States Navy, upon approval of the U.S. Senate.
February 2, 1887 - The first Groundhog Day is observed in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, beginning the tradition of checking the shadow of a groundhog to predict the coming of spring.
February 4, 1887 - Congress passes the Interstate Commerce Act to regulate and control railroad monopolies.
October 22, 1887 - The statue of Abraham Lincoln, "Standing Lincoln," by Augustus Saint-Gaudens is unveiled in Lincoln Park, Chicago.
November 8, 1887 - Naturalized as a citizen in 1881, Emile Berliner is granted a patent for the gramophone. Berliner, born in Hanover, Germany, had previously worked with Bell Telephone after selling his version of the microphone to the company.
1888
January 21, 1888 - The Amateur Athletic Union (commonly referred to as the AAU) is formed to assist teams and players in a variety of sports.
March 11-14, 1888 - The eastern section of the United States undergoes a great snow storm, killing four hundred people. Property damage exceeds $25 million.
May, 1888 – The “Kodak” box camera is introduced by George Eastman.
June 16, 1888 - The prototype for the commercial phonograph is completed by Thomas A. Edison and staff at his laboratory near Glenmont, his estate in West Orange, New Jersey.
October 8, 1888 - Work begins on the first motion picture camera at Thomas A. Edison's laboratory.
October 9, 1888 - The Washington Monument officially opens to the general public.
November 6, 1888 – In the presidential election, Benjamin Harrison loses the popular vote to Grover Cleveland, but wins the plurality of Electoral College electors, 233 to 168.
1889
Second (Socialist) International founded in Paris.
Eiffel Tower built for the Paris exposition.
Mark Twain writes "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court."
March 2, 1889 - Legislation signed by Cleveland sets aside the first public lands protecting prehistoric features at the Casa Grande ruin in Arizona Territory. These lands could not be settled or sold.
March 23, 1889 - President Benjamin Harrison opens up Oklahoma lands to white settlement.
April 22, 1889 – The first of five land runs in the Oklahoma land rush start. More than 50,000 people waited at the starting line to race for one hundred and sixty acre parcels.
May 31, 1889 - The deadliest flood in American history occurs in Johnstown, Pennsylvania when 2,200 people perish from the water of the South Fork Dam after heavy rains cause its destruction.
June 3, 1889 – The first long distance electric power transmission line in the United States is completed. It runs between the Willamette Falls and Portland, Oregon, a distance of fourteen miles.
July 8, 1889 - The first issue of the Wall Street Journal is published.
September 27, 1890 - Rock Creek Park in Washington, D.C. is created when President Benjamin Harrison signs legislation creating natural preservation in the wooded valley within urban District of Columbia.
1890
June 1, 1890 - Preparations for the United States census begin using an automated tabulating machine with punch cards invented by Herman Hollerith. Hollerith's company eventually became IBM.
June 2, 1890 - The 1890 census indicates a population in the United States of 62,979,766, an increase of 25.5% since the 1880 census.
July 2, 1890 – Congress passes the Sherman Antitrust Act in an attempt to limit anti-competitive business practices.
December 13, 1890 - Wilbur and Orville Wright print the "Dayton Tattler" in their print shop in Dayton, Ohio. The paper was the creation of Paul Laurence Dunbar, an African American poet.
December 15, 1890 – Sioux chief Sitting Bull is arrested by police on Pine Ridge reservation, causing a commotion during which he is killed. The arrest had been ordered by U.S. Indian agent James McGlaughlin, who thought Sitting Bull was planning to start a new rebellion.
December 29, 1890 - The Massacre of Wounded Knee, South Dakota. It is the last major altercation between United States troops and the tribes. It started when troops who were escorting the Lakotas, tried to disarm them. Hundreds of Native American men, women, and children are slain, along with twenty-nine soldiers.
1891
March 3, 1891 - The 51st Congress of the United States passes the International Copyright Act.
April 1, 1891 - The Wrigley Company is founded in Chicago, Illinois, originally selling soap, baking powder, and the next year, chewing gum.
May 5, 1891 - Carnegie Hall, then known as Music Hall, opens its doors in New York with its first public performance under guest conductor Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.
May 20, 1891 - Thomas A. Edison's new strip motion picture film is shown to a public audience for the first time at the convention of the National Federation of Women's Clubs at Edison’s West Orange, New Jersey laboratory.
Later that year, Thomas Edison patents a radio receiver.
June 21, 1891 - Alternating current (pioneered by Nikola Tesla) is transmitted for the first time by the Ames power plant near Telluride, Colorado by Lucien and Paul Nunn.
1892
Battle between steel strikers and Pinkerton guards at Homestead, Pa. The union is "defeated" after militia intervenes.
Silver mine strikers in Idaho fight non-union workers; U.S. troops dispatched.
Diesel engine patented.
January 1, 1892 - Ellis Island, in New York Harbor, opens. It is the main East Coast immigration center, and would remain so until its closure in 1954.
January 15, 1892 - James Naismith publishes the rules of basketball and the first official game of basketball is held five days later at the YMCA in Springfield, Massachusetts.
April 15, 1892 - The General Electric Company is formed, merging the Edison General Electric Company with the Thomson-Houston Company.
October 12, 1892 – Francis Bellamy’s Pledge of Allegiance is recited in U.S. public schools to mark the 400th anniversary of Columbus Day. Francis Bellamy was a Christian Socialist, but apparently was sympathetic to ruling class concerns that the American identity was being undermined by immigration from other cultures. In most schools, it was complemented by Balch’s earlier pledge, which included the words “one language.” The words “under God” did not get added until much later.
November 8, 1892 - Grover Cleveland returns to the presidency with his victory in the presidential election over incumbent President Benjamin Harrison and People's Party candidate James Weaver. Weaver, who would receive over 1 million votes and 22 Electoral College votes, helped defeat Harrison, who garnered only 145 Electoral College votes to Cleveland's 277.
January 14-17, 1893 - The United States Marines, under the direction of U.S. diplomat John L. Stevens, but with no authority from the U.S. Congress, intervene in the affairs of the independent Kingdom of Hawaii, culminating in the overthrow of the government of Hawaiian Queen Liliuokalani. Businessman Stanford Dole is also involved in this action which amounted to a coup d'état.
1893
New Zealand becomes first Westernized country in the world to allow women to vote.
May 1, 1893 - The Chicago World Columbian Exposition opens. Held on 686 acres and known affectionately as the White City, this world's fair hosted fifty nations and twenty-six colonies. It has come to be known as an architectural wonder that saw replication of the styles of its white buildings throughout the United States for years to come, as well as for the first public Ferris Wheel, a behemoth construction that held up to 2,160 riders.
May 5, 1893 - The New York Stock Exchange collapses, starting the financial panic of 1893. It would lead to four years of depression.
September 16, 1893 - The fourth of five land runs in Oklahoma's dash, known as the Oklahoma Land Race or the Cherokee Strip Land Run, opens seven million acres of the Cherokee Strip. It was purchased from the Indian tribe for $7,000,000. There were 42,000 new claims made available.
October 30, 1893 - The Chicago World's Fair closes after 179 days of public admission and over 25 million in attendance. It cost $27,291,715 and included a moving sidewalk and the first picture postcards.
November 7, 1893 - Colorado grants women the right to vote.
1894
First Sino-Japanese War begins. (Ends in 1895 with China giving up Korea and several islands including Formosa.)
In France, Capt. Alfred Dreyfus is convicted on a false treason charge, quite possibly because he was Jewish. When evidence of his innocence was uncovered, it became a huge scandal. He was pardoned in 1906.
April 14, 1894 - The first public showing of Thomas Edison's kinetoscope motion picture is held in New York City. Edison had invented the process seven years earlier.
March 25, 1894 - Jacob S. Coxey of Ohio leads “Coxey's Army” of 500 unemployed workers in a march on Washington, D.C.
April 29, 1894 – Coxey reaches Washington and is arrested for treason.
May 11, 1894 – Nearly four thousand Pullman Palace Car Company workers stage a wildcat strike in Chicago over pay cuts. This sparks a national strike lasting until 20 July, when it was stopped using military force. Labor leader Eugene Debs was arrested.
September 7, 1894 - A fight between heavyweight boxing champ Gentleman Jim Corbett and Peter Courtney is filmed by Thomas Edison at the Black Maria studio, part of his New Jersey laboratory.
December 27, 1894 - Shiloh National Military Park in Shiloh, Tennessee is created to commemorate the field of the two day battle in April of 1862. It was one of the largest engagements between Union and Confederate forces in the western theater of the U.S. Civil War.
1895
X-rays are discovered by German physicist Wilhelm Roentgen.
Auguste and Louis Lumière premiere motion pictures at a café in Paris.
February 20, 1895 - Frederick Douglass dies in Washington, D.C.
September 3, 1895 - The first professional football game is played in Latrobe, Pennsylvania.
October 4, 1895 - The first United States Golf Open run by the USGA is held in Newport, Rhode Island.
November 5, 1895 - The first United States automotive patent, #549160, is granted to George B. Selden for his two stroke engine.
November 25, 1895 - Oscar Hammerstein opens the first theater, Olympia, in the Times Square, New York City.
1896
Alfred Nobel's will establishes prizes for peace, science, and literature.
Marconi receives first wireless radio patent in Britain.
May 18, 1896 - Plessy versus Ferguson decision by the Supreme Court holds that racial segregation is legal under the "separate but equal" doctrine.
April 6-15, 1896 - The first modern Olympic Games is held in Athens, Greece. Thirteen nations participate, including the United States of America.
August 16, 1896 - Gold is discovered by Skookum Jim Mason, George Carmack and Dawson Charlie near Dawson, Canada, setting up the Klondike Gold Rush which would cause a boom in travel and gold fever from Seattle to prospector sites surrounding Skagway, Alaska.
November 3, 1896 - Republican William McKinley claims victory in the presidential election with a majority of Electoral College votes. He was opposed by Democratic and People's Party candidate William Jennings Bryan, famous for his “Cross of Gold” speech.
December 10, 1896 - The New York City Aquarium at Castle Clinton opens on the tip of Manhattan Island. Castle Clinton, or Castle Garden, had been previously utilized in many capacities during the history of New York City; as a fort, entertainment location, and immigrant depot.
1897
Theodor Herzl launches Zionist movement, aimed at finding European Jews a homeland where they can be safe from persecution.
April 15, 1897 - Oil is discovered in Indian territory for the first time on land leased from the Osage tribe, leading to rapid population growth near Bartlesville, Oklahoma.
April 19, 1897 - The first Boston Marathon is run with fifteen runners, won by John McDermott.
July 17, 1897 - The Klondike Gold Rush begins with the arrival of the first prospectors in Seattle. The Gold Rush would be chronicled beginning eight days later when Jack London sailed to the Klondike and wrote his tales.
September 1, 1897 - The era of the subway begins when the first underground public transportation in North America opens in Boston, Massachusetts.
1898
Chinese “Boxers," an anti-foreign organization, is established.
Pierre and Marie Curie discover radium and polonium.
February 15, 1898 – United States battleship Maine explodes and sinks for an unknown reason in Havana Harbor, Cuba, killing 216 sailors. The loss becomes a rallying point for the Spanish-American War.
April 22, 1898 – The United States Navy begins a blockade of Cuba and aids independence forces there. Several days later, the U.S.A. declares war on Spain, backdating its declaration to April 20.
May 1, 1898 – The United States Navy destroys the Spanish fleet in the Philippines.
May 12, 1898 - San Juan, Puerto Rico is bombed by the American navy under the command of Rear Admiral William T. Sampson.
June 20, 1898 – The U.S. takes Guam.
July 7, 1898 – The United States annexes the independent republic of Hawaii.
July 25, 1989 – U.S. troops land at Guanica Bay and gain control of Puerto Rico.
December 10, 1898 - A treaty ending the Spanish-American War is signed in Paris. The Spanish government agrees to grant independence to Cuba and cede Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines to the United States.
1899
Boer War (or South African War): conflict between British and Boers (descendants of Dutch settlers of South Africa). They fight over longstanding territorial disputes and political rights for English and other “uitlanders” who arrived following 1886 discovery of vast gold deposits in Transvaal. (The British are victorious and the war ends in 1902. Casualties: 5,774 British dead, about 4,000 Boers.)
The Union of South Africa is established in 1908 as a confederation of colonies; it becomes a British dominion in 1910.
February 4, 1899 - Filipino independence fighters under leader Emilio Aguinaldo begin a guerrilla war after failing to gain a grant of independence from the United States, which they had been fighting for from Spain since 1896.
February 14, 1899 - The U.S. Congress approves the use of voting machines in federal elections.
March 2, 1899 - Mount Rainier National Park is established in Washington State.
September 6, 1899 - The Open Door Policy with China is declared by Secretary of State John Hay and the U.S. government in an attempt to open international markets to U.S. businesses.
1900
In June, Chinese "Boxers" besiege foreign legations in Beijing.
In August, the legations are relieved by a combined force including Russians and Japanese.
March 14, 1900 - The Gold Standard Act is ratified, placing U.S. currency on the gold standard.
April 15, 1900 - One of the largest world's fairs in history opens to the public in Paris, France. The United States is among 42 nations and 25 colonies exhibiting.
June 1, 1900 - The 1900 census is conducted. In the first census of the 20th century, the population of the United States rose to 76,212,168, a 21% increase since 1890. For the first time, all fifty entities that would become the fifty states are included after Hawaii had officially become a territory of the United States on February 22.
June 5, 1900 - Carrie Nation begins a campaign, prompted by a dream, to demolish saloons. Her Temperance Movement to demolishes over two dozen saloons in Kansas and other Midwest states over the next ten years.
September 8, 1900 - The Galveston, Texas hurricane, with winds of 135 miles an hour, kills 8,000 people. It remains the most deadly natural disaster in American history. It was not named, but would have been a Category 4 storm on the Saffir-Simpson scale.
November 6, 1900 - President William McKinley wins his second term as president, this time with Theodore Roosevelt as Vice President, again defeating William Jennings Bryan.
1901
January 10, 1901 - The first major oil discovery in Texas occurs near Spindletop in Beaumont.
March 2, 1901 - The Platt amendment is passed by the United States Congress, which limits the autonomy of Cuba as a condition for American troop withdrawal.
May 1, 1901 - The Pan-American Exposition opens in Buffalo, New York with nineteen international participants on 342 acres. It would close November 2, 1901 with a disappointing attendance of just over 5 million paid visitors.
June 12, 1901 – Cuba becomes a U.S. protectorate.
September 6, 1901 - President William H. McKinley is shot at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York while shaking hands with fair visitors, following his speech the day before on President's Day. Anarchist Leon Czolgosz is arrested. This dramatically slows down attendance to the expo.
September 14, 1901 – Vice President Theodore Roosevelt is inaugurated as President after McKinley dies from gunshot wounds.
1902
January 1, 1902 - The first Rose Bowl is held. The University of Michigan plays Stanford. Michigan won the initial contest 49-0. The second Rose Bowl is not held until 1916.
January 28, 1902 - A ten million dollar gift from Andrew Carnegie leads to the formation of the Carnegie Institution in Washington, D.C.
April 2, 1902 – The Electric Theater opens in Los Angeles, the first cinema in the U.S.
May 20, 1902 - Cuba gains independence from the United States.
July 17, 1902 – New Yorker Willis Haviland Carrier invents the air conditioner.
1903
January 18, 1903 - The first two-way wireless communication between Europe and the United States is accomplished by Guglielmo Marconi.
November, 3, 1903 - With United States support, Panama declares its independence from Colombia. The Panama government is recognized by President Theodore Roosevelt three days later and a canal treaty is signed on November 18, allowing the U.S. to lead construction of the canal.
December 17, 1903 - Inventors Wilbur and Orville Wright succeed in the first sustained and manned plane flight, taking the heavier-than-air machine through the winds of Kill Devil Hill, North Carolina.
1904
April 30, 1904 - The Louisiana Purchase Exposition opens. Renowned for its spectacular ivory buildings, the inventions of the ice cream cone, and the "Meet Me in St. Louis" song. The St. Louis exposition closed December 1 with over nineteen million visitors. It was held on 1,272 acres. The
Summer Olympic Games of 1904 were also twinned with the fair and were the first Olympic Games held in the western hemisphere.
1905
February 23, 1905 – The Rotary Club is founded in Chicago, Illinois.
March 4, 1905 - President Theodore Roosevelt is inaugurated for his second term.
April 6, 1905 - In the ruling of Lochner vs. New York, the ten hour work day law and sixty hour work week law for bakers is overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court. Work rule laws are routinely overturned until the West Coast Hotel Company vs. Parrish case in 1937.
1906
April 18-19, 1906 - The San Francisco earthquake occurs, estimated at 7.8 on the Richter scale. The subsequent fire and aftershocks caused considerable death and destruction. There were 478 reported deaths, but later estimates peg that figure at nearly 3,000. Between $350-$400 million in damages were sustained. Refugee camps were constructed at twenty-one sites throughout the city, including the Presidio, Fort Point, and Golden Gate Park.
June 8, 1906 - President Theodore Roosevelt grants protection to Indian ruins and authorizes presidents to designate lands with historic and scientific features as national monuments. This act, now known as the Antiquities Act, which would be utilized by Roosevelt to expand the National Parks system over his term was utilized for the first time on September 24, 1906 with the proclamation of Devils Tower National Monument in Wyoming, an 865 foot volcanic column. On June 29, legislation by Congress would continue to expand the national park system when it establishes Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado, preserving the most notable prehistoric cliff dwellings in the United States of America.
June 30, 1906 - The Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act is passed.
November 9, 1906 - Theodore Roosevelt leaves for a trip to inspect the progress in the construction of the Panama Canal. This is the first time a U.S. President has traveled abroad.
1907
March 13, 1907 – Panic and Depression of 1907 starts .
September 7, 1907 - The RMS Lusitania, the largest ship at the time, is launched on its maiden voyage from London to New York. The ship would be sunk by a German U-boat in 1915 during World War I, costing 1,198 people their lives.
October 16, 1907 – Stock market crash starts the Panic of 1907. Banks were weakened by their loans to an unscrupulous broker who was attempting to corner the copper market.
November 16, 1907 - The Oklahoma Territory and the Indian Territory are combined to form Oklahoma and are admitted into the Union as the 46th state.
1908
January 9, 1908 - Muir Woods National Monument, named after conservationist John Muir, is added to the National Park System by a proclamation of President Theodore Roosevelt after the two hundred and ninety-five acres of coastal redwood forest is donated by William Kent. On January 11, Roosevelt would add the Grand Canyon Monument to the system. On January 16, 1908, President Theodore Roosevelt proclaimed the Pinnacle National Forest of rock formations and caves as Pinnacles National Monument.
On February 7, 1908, he would continue the expansion of federally protected lands with Jewel Cave National Monument in southwest South Dakota.
September 27, 1908 - The first production Model T is built at the Ford plant in Detroit, Michigan.
November 3, 1908 - William Howard Taft is elected President over Democratic candidate William Jennings Bryan.
1909
January 28, 1909 – Troops of the United States leave Cuba for the first time since the beginning of the Spanish-American War.
May 30, 1909 - The National Conference of the Negro is conducted, leading to the formation of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, (NAACP).
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