Politics
1901-1910
(1901) U.S. President William McKinley assassinated by anarchist; succeeded by Theodore Roosevelt.
1911-1920
(1913) President Wilson, pressing an electric button at the White House, blew up the Gamboa Dike. With its destruction in the Isthmus of Panama, passage by ship through the new ocean-to-ocean Canal became possible.
1921-1930
(1923) President Warren Harding lamented that his friends had been indicted and he was unable to legally save them from jail.
1931-1940
(1932) Franklin D. Roosevelt pledges a "New Deal;" he wins U.S. presidential election in Democratic landslide over Herbert Hoover.
1941-1950
(1942) President Roosevelt signs into law an executive order that allows the military to move 112,000 Japanese-Americans from their homes on the West Coast to inland concentration camps.
1951-1960
(1953) President Eisenhower signed a bill surrendering federal ownership of $80 billion of offshore oil and gas reserves to oil corporations.
1961-1970
(1963) President John F. Kennedy assassinated in a Dallas motorcade; Lyndon Johnson became 36th president.
1971-1980
(1974) President Nixon resigns in the wake of the Watergate scandal.
1981-1990
(1985) Under President Reagan's leadership, U.S. invades Panama and arrests its president, Emanual Noriega, on criminal drug charges.
1991-2000
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1901-1910
(1909) President Taft opened 700,000 acres of government land in Washington, Idaho and Montana for settlers.
1911-1920
(1918) WW I ends; Armistice signed at 11th hour on the 11th month.
1921-1930
(1924) Congress decreed that admissions of immigrants be on a quota basis, 2 percent of the number of persons of foreign birth residing in the U.S. in 1890.
1931-1940
(1933) 21st amendment to U.S. Constitution repeals prohibition.
1941-1950
(1941) U.S. declares war on Germany and Italy; U.S. savings bonds and stamps go on sale.
1951-1960
(1951) Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are sentenced to death for stealing atomic bomb secrets.
1961-70
(1964) U.S. destroyer is allegedly attack off North Vietnam; U.S. aircraft attack North Vietnam bases in reprisal; escalation of war; heavy fighting.
1971-1980
(1976) U.S. and USSR sign a treaty limiting the size of underground nuclear explosions set off for peaceful purposes; it provides some on-site inspection of compliance.
1981-1990
(1989) The Berlin Wall, a symbol of the Cold War, falls.
1991-2000
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1901-1910
(1903) Henry Ford, with capital of $100,000, founds the Ford Motor Company.
1911-1920
(1916) Law establishing 8-hour work day for railroad workers prevents national strike.
1921-1930
(1929) "Black Friday" in NY; U.S. stock exchanges collapse on Oct. 28; world economic crisis begins.
1931-1940
(1934) A refrigeration process for meat cargoes is devised.
1941-1950
(1942) Gasoline rationing was put into effect. Allocation: 3 gallons a week.
1951-1960
(1951) Color television first introduced in U.S.
1961-1970
(1966) A young lawyer, Ralph Nader, emerged as a leader in the fight for new automobile safety regulations.
1971-1980
(1974) The price of sugar skyrocketed 400 percent in a single year.
1981-1990
1991-2000
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1901-1910
(1909) First commercial manufacture of Bakelite marks beginning of the Plastic Age.
1911-1920
(1919) Observations of the total eclipse of the sun bear out Albert Einstein's theory of relativity.
1921-30
(1923) U.S. physicist A.H. Compton discovers that x-rays change in wavelength when scattered by matter.
1931-40
(1937) Insulin used to control diabetes.
1941-50
(1945) The atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan.
1951-60
(1952) Contraception pill first produced.
1961-1970
(1963) Dr. Michael De Balay first uses an artificial heart to take over the circulation of a patient's blood during heart surgery.
1971-1980
(1972) The National Academy of Sciences reports that gases from spray cans can cause damage to the atmosphere's ozone layer.
1981-1990
1991-2000
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1901-1910
(1903) Orville and Wilbur Wright successfully fly a powered airplane.
1911-1920
(1915) First transcontinental telephone call between Alexander Graham bell in N.Y. and Dr. Thomas A. Watson in S.F.
1921-1930
(1927) Charles A. Lindbergh flies monoplane "Spirit of St. Louis" nonstop from NY to Paris in 33.5 hours.
1931-1940
(1937) First jet engine built by Frank Whittle.
1941-1950
(1949) U.S. Air Force jet flies across the U.S. in 3 hours, 46 minutes.
1951-1960
(1952) First hydrogen bomb exploded by U.S. at Eniwetok Atoll, Pacific, on Nov. 6.
1961-1970
(1961) Alan Sheppard makes first U.S. space flight.
1971-1980
(1972) Apollo 16 astronauts spend 71 hours on surface of the moon.
1981-1990
1991-2000
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1901-1910
(1904) Edwin S. Porter's The Great Train Robbery, the first well-known American film with a story line, was released to exhibitors.
1911-1920
(1917) Performer Charlie Chaplin's annual salary tops $1 million.
1921-1930
(1928) Disney produces first Mickey Mouse film, "Plane Crazy;" "talkies" kill silent films.
1931-1940
(1935) Gershwin's "Porgy and Bess" opera opens in NY
1941-1950
(1943) Rodgers & Hammerstein's "Oklahoma," a musical play, wins special Pulitzer prize after 2,248 consecutive performances.
1951-1960
(1951) John Huston's "An American in Paris" wins Academy Award.
1961-1970
(1963) Cleopatra, the most expensive movie ever made ($40 million) with the highest paid star (Elizabeth Taylor, $1.7 million plus 10 percent) opened in New York.
1971-1980
(1972) "Fiddler on the Roof," largest running Broadway show in history, closes after 3,242 performances.
1981-1990
1991-2000
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1901-1910
(1906) Upton Sinclair's expose of the Chicago Stockyards, The Jungle, was published.
1911-1920
(1918) U.S. Post Office burns installments of James Joyce's "Ulysses," published in the "Little Review."
1921-1930
(1930) Sinclair Lewis becomes first American to win Nobel Prize for Literature, winning for his novel Babbitt.
1931-1940
(1936) Margaret Michell's "Gone with the Wind" wins Pulitzer prize.
1941-1950
(1947) "Diary of Anne Frank" published.
1951-1960
(1954) Henry David Thoreau's Walden was banned from U.S. Information Service libraries and categorized "downright socialist."
1961-1970
(1967) 50,000 to 150,000 people marched to the Pentagon and 647 were arrested in the antiwar demonstration immortalized by Norman Mailer in "Armies of the Night."
1971-1980
1981-1990
1991-2000
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1901-1910
(1906) First radio program of voice and music broadcast in the U.S. by R.A. Fessenden.
1911-1920
(1915) Classic New Orleans jazz is in bloom.
1921-1930
(1924) George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, a new kind of symphonic jazz, was performed for the first time.
1931-1940
(1931) "Spar-spangled banner," words by Francis Scott Key, music from "Anacreon in Heaven," officially becomes U.S. national anthem.
1941-1950
(1948) Columbia Records introduced the 33 1/3 rpm "long-playing record" at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York.
1951-1960
(1954) Elvis Presley's songs "Hound Dog" and "Don't be Cruel" were hits of the year.
1961-1970
(1964) An English rock group, the Beatles, became so popular that the media coined the phrase, Beatlemania.
1971-1980
1981-1990
1991-2000
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1901-1910
(1903) First transcontinental crossing of American continent by car; 65 days.
1911-1920
(1918) The death rate in the influenza epidemic hit a peak of 202 daily; acoffee shortage delayed burials.
1921-1930
(1925) 2.5 million radios in use in U.S.
1931-1940
(1934) "We want beer" marches were held in many cities in protest of Prohibition.
1941-1950
(1942) U.S. Supreme Court rules Nevada divorces valid in the U.S.
1951-1960
(1954) U.S. Supreme Court rules that segregation by color in public schools is a violation of the 14th amendment to the Constitution.
1961-1970
(1968) 50,000 persons demonstrate against Vietnam war at Lincoln memorial in Washington D.C.
1971-1980
(1974) Year-round daylight savings time is adopted to save fuel during an energy crisis; it is later repealed.
1981-1990
1991-2000
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1901-1910
(1903) The first post-season baseball season is held.
1911-1920
(1919) "Black Sox" bribery scandal rocks baseball.
1921-1930
(1926) 19-year-old Gertrude Ederle of New York becomes first woman to swim the English Channel, spending 14 hours and 31 minutes.
1931-1940
(1936) Jess Owens wins four gold medals at Olympics in Berlin.
1941-1950
(1947) Jackie Robinson becomes first black to sign a contract with a major league baseball club.
1951-1960
(1953) Casey Stengel's New York Yankess beat the Brooklyn Dodgers 4 games to win their 5th straight world series championship.
1961-1970
(1964) "Constellation" (U.S. boat) outsails "Sovereign" (British boat) 4-0 to win America's Cup yacht race.
1971-1980
(1974) Hank Aaron hit his 715th home run, breaking Babe Ruth's 47-year-old record.
1981-1990
1991-2000
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1901-1910
1911-1920
1921-1930
1931-1940
1941-1950
1951-1960
"Groovy."
1961-1970
1971-1980
"Like, you know."
1981-1990
"Rad."
1991-2000
"Random."
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This page was last updated by Sharon Jones on September 29, 1996.