Timeline of American History since the Civil War

A Brief History

This article presents a timeline of American history since the Civil War. Please click on any of the dates to learn more about that date’s events.

Digging Deeper

I. Reconstruction – 1865-1877

On July 21, 1865, a real life showdown resulting in face to face gunplay happened for the first time, the first of the classic duels we have come to know as a Wild West gunfight.
On November 10, 1865, the long sad saga of the Camp Sumter prisoner of war camp located in Andersonville, Georgia finally came to a conclusion of sorts when the Camp Commandant, Confederate Major Henry Wirz was hanged for the crimes of conspiracy and murder for his terrible treatment of Union soldiers held captive at the camp popularly known as “Andersonville.”
On December 24, 1865, 6 former Confederate veterans of the recently concluded US Civil War formed the first known chapter of the Ku Klux Klan, an organization largely founded on the principles of White Supremacy and violence against African Americans and those not in agreement with Klan beliefs.
On May 16, 1866, the United States congress authorized the elimination of the “half-dime” coin and the minting of a new 5 cent piece, the “nickel.”
On July 28, 1866, Vinnie (Lavinia) Ream, an 18 year old girl became the first woman in the United States to win a commission for a statue, that of the recently deceased President Lincoln.
On December 25, 1868, much maligned and embattled President of the United States Andrew Johnson issued a blanket pardon for all Confederate veterans of the US Civil War.
On February 25, 1870, history was made when Hiram Rhodes Revels, an African American man from Mississippi, was sworn in as a US Senator, the first African American member of the US Congress.
On November 10, 1871, Welsh-American journalist Henry Morton Stanley finally met the man he had come so far to see, the missionary Rev. David Livingstone, prompting Stanley to blandly state, “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?”
On November 16, 1871, the National Rifle Association received its charter from the State of New York, starting a long and distinguished history as a major force in encouraging marksmanship by Americans as preparation for possible military service and promoting the shooting sports.
On March 5, 1872, George Westinghouse patented the air brake, a system for use with railroad trains.
On December 9, 1872, P. B. S. Pinchback became the first ever African American governor of Louisiana, and in fact the first ever African American governor of any US State.
On July 1, 1874, E. Remington and Sons placed the first successful typewriter on the market, a model also known as the Remington No. 1 and invented by Christopher Sholes, Samuel Soule, and Carlos Glidden.
On March 7, 1876, Alexander Graham Bell received a patent for his invention he called the “telephone.”
On September 7, 1876, the infamous James-Younger gang attempted to pull off a bank robbery in Northfield, Minnesota, but an alert and irate group of citizens quickly armed themselves and foiled the robbery, killing three of the robbers and wounding others.
On November 23, 1876, a public cry for justice was answered when W. M. “Boss” Tweed was turned over to legal authorities in New York city after having been captured in Spain.
On November 25, 1876, the US Army took revenge for the Little Bighorn massacre of George Custer and his 7^th Cavalry, by sacking a peaceful Cheyenne village led by Chief Dull Knife, a translation of his Lakota Sioux name.
On October 29, 1877, former Confederate States of America Army General Nathan Bedford Forrest died, but despite being an early member of the infamous racist organization, the Ku Klux Klan and serving as the first Grand Wizard of the notorious hate group, he had changed his tune, denying involvement with the Klan and denouncing the racism and violence associated with the KKK

II. Expansion of American Civilization – 1877-1898

On February 15, 1879, President Rutherford B. Hayes signed a Bill allowing women attorneys to argue cases before the Supreme Court of the United States.
On August 30, 1879, American Army and Confederate Army General John Bell Hood died of Yellow Fever, only 6 days after his wife and daughter died of that disease, leaving behind 10 orphaned children and a rich heritage as a fighting man.
On January 27, 1880, Thomas Edison patented the incandescent light bulb, the first truly commercially viable electric light bulb, but certainly not the first light bulb!
On January 25, 1881, 2 of the great names in the annals of inventions teamed up to form the Oriental Telephone Company.
On April 28, 1881, the notorious outlaw and gunman known as Billy the Kid escaped from his jail cell where he was being held after he was convicted of murder and sentenced to death.
On July 4, 1881, Tuskegee Institute opened, beginning a glorious history of educating mostly African American students.
On July 14, 1881, the outlaw known as Billy the Kid was shot and killed by Sheriff Pat Garret in New Mexico.
On October 26, 1881, Tombstone, Arizona saw the Earp brothers and Doc Holliday faced off with the Clantons and the Cowboys in perhaps the most famous gunfight in US history, The Gunfight at The O.K. Corral.
On April 3, 1882, notorious Wild West train and bank robber Jesse James was gunned down in his own house by a new member of his reconstituted gang, Bob Ford.
On June 30, 1882, the assassin of President Garfield, Charles J. Guiteau, was executed by hanging in Washington, D.C.
On September 4, 1882, the Pearl Street Station opened for business in New York City, the first commercial provider of electric power to customers.
On April 4, 1883, Peter Cooper died at the age of 92 in New York City, the same city he was born in.
On November 26, 1883, at the age of 86 Sojourner Truth, perhaps the greatest African-American woman advocate of Civil Rights died of natural causes, ending one of if not the greatest life of fighting for African-American rights.
On December 6, 1884, the Washington Monument in Washington, D.C. was completed.
On April 24, 1885, Phoebe Ann Moses, better known as Annie Oakley, joined Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show and was a star attraction for the next 16 years.
On April 24, 1885, Annie Oakley joined Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show and went on to become America’s first female superstar.
On September 2, 1885, the Wyoming Territory was the scene of a terrible racially motivated riot that resulted in the deaths of a minimum of 28 Chinese immigrants, and possibly as many as 50.
On June 2, 1886, President of the United States, Grover Cleveland, aged 49, married 21 year old Frances Folsom in the White House, a wedding that today may well draw negative comments, but received no particular censure at the time.
On September 4, 1886, after almost 30 years of raiding Mexican and white settlers and battling the U.S. Army, Apache war leader Geronimo finally surrendered in Arizona to U.S. Army General Nelson Miles.
On October 28, 1886, President Grover Cleveland dedicated the Statue of Liberty (Liberty Enlightening the World), that great beacon of freedom welcoming immigrants into New York Harbor, for many, the gateway to a better life in the United States.
On October 29, 1886, the first recorded use of ticker-tape was noted during the parade for the dedication of the Statue of Liberty.
On July 6, 1887, the King of Hawaii, David Kalākaua, was forced to sign off on The 1887 Constitution of the Hawaiian Kingdom, thus ceding his monarchical powers to the legislature, effectively giving power to American and European wealthy traders along with the Hawaiian upper crust.
On November 19, 1887, Emma Lazarus, the author of “The New Colossus,” a sonnet that appears on a plaque at the base of the Statue of Liberty, died in New York city at the age of 38, possibly of Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
On September 4, 1888, George Eastman patented the first camera that used rolls of film and with it, the trade name Kodak.
On March 8, 1889, the anniversary date of the Battle of Hampton Roads, the clash of ironclad warships USS Monitor and CSS Virginia, the inventor of the Monitor died.
On July 3, 1890, Idaho was admitted to the Union as the 43^rd US State.
On December 15, 1890, legendary Hunkpapa Lakota (aka, Teton Sioux) leader and holy man, Sitting Bull, was killed by Indian Agency Police at Standing Rock Indian Reservation in the Grand River area of South Dakota.
On December 29, 1890, the 7th Cavalry Regiment of the United States Army perpetrated a massacre Native Americans of the Lakota People near Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota.
On December 29, 1890, the United States Army 7^th Cavalry Regiment conducted a massacre of about 200 Native Americans at a place called Wounded Knee in South Dakota, (see our article “Wounded Knee Massacre”).
On June 7, 1892, Homer Plessy, an African-American, was arrested for refusing to vacate his seat in a “Whites Only” railroad car.
On August 4, 1892, the father and stepmother of 32 year old Lizzie Borden were brutally murdered, hacked to pieces with an axe!
On February 28, 1893, the United States Navy made an enormous step toward eventually ruling the seas by launching its first ever battleship commensurate with those of other great naval powers.
On June 5, 1893, the murder trial of Lizzie Borden began.
On June 13, 1893, President Grover Cleveland was only a few months into his second term when he went to his doctor to complain of soreness and a rough patch in his mouth.
On September 20, 1893, Charles Duryea and his brother, J. Frank Duryea, tested their gasoline powered automobile, the first gasoline powered car in the United States.
On January 7, 1894, Ohio born uber-inventor Thomas Edison made and demonstrated a kinetoscope, a sort of device using multiple photos or drawings to show the illusion of movement, in this case of a man sneezing.
On November 17, 1894, the murderous career of H. H. Holmes, one of the first modern documented serial killers, came to an end when he was arrested in Boston, Massachusetts.
On November 5, 1895, an unlikely candidate from Rochester, New York, became the first American to patent an automobile.
On May 18, 1896, the Supreme Court of the US ruled that “separate but equal” was a legal doctrine for segregating Caucasian Americans from Americans of sub-Saharan African descent, especially regarding school children.
On November 22, 1896, George Washington Gale Ferris, Jr., the inventor of the Ferris Wheel, died in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania of Typhoid Fever.
On August 21, 1897, Ransom Eli Olds founded the car company that became the first assembly line producer of automobiles in the world.
On November 2, 1898, the day recognized as the “birth of cheerleading,” University of Minnesota student Johnny Campbell became the first cheerleader in history, directing fans in cheering on the Golden Gophers football team.

III. America’s Appearance on World Stage – 1898-1918

On February 4, 1899, a war broke out between the First Philippine Republic and the US, called the Tagalog Insurgency, the Filipino-American War, and other names, that lasted until July of 1902, and continued as the Moro Rebellion until 1913.
On June 14, 1900, the United States expanded by officially adding the territory of Hawaii to is growing empire.
On November 6, 1900, William McKinley was re-elected President of the US with Teddy Roosevelt as his running mate.
On February 1, 1901, Clark Gable was born in Cadiz, Ohio, and would go on to movie greatness earning the nickname, “The King of Hollywood.”
On January 4, 1903, Thomas Edison filmed the execution of Topsy the Elephant, the largest casualty in the “War of the Currents”!
On February 23, 1903, Cuba made a deal with the United States to lease 45 square miles of land and sea for a period of time with no expiration, virtually forever!
On February 23, 1903, the United States signed a lease with Cuba for a 45 square mile chunk of land on Guantanamo Bay on that island, a lease for $2000 per year, payable in gold, and lasting in perpetuity (forever).
On February 26, 1903, Michael Joseph Owens was granted a patent for a glass blowing machine, one of five inventions he patented for the mass production of glass objects such as light bulbs and bottles.
On October 13, 1903, the American League’s Boston Americans won the 8^th and decisive game of the first modern World Series of major league baseball by defeating the National League’s Pittsburg Pirates 3-0.
On February 16, 1904, African American movie actor and singer James Franklin Baskett was born in Indianapolis.
On May 5, 1904, Denton “Cy” Young of the Boston Americans pitched an historic American League game against the Philadelphia Athletics, not allowing any base runners in the first major league “Perfect Game” of the modern baseball era.
On February 20, 1905, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that states have the authority to require mandatory vaccinations against disease, well over a century before the controversy over the Covid vaccine in 2020 and 2021.
On April 1, 1906, the Chicago Tribune, a major American newspaper, reported that prehistoric monsters, also known as dinosaurs, allegedly invaded Chicago, wreaking havoc and destruction upon the city.
On December 10, 1906, President Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt became the first American to earn a Nobel Prize when he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his mediation of the Russo-Japanese War.
On January 29, 1907, Charles Curtis of Kansas was sworn in a United States Senator, the first US Senator of Native American heritage.
On February 5, 1909, New Yorker Leo Baekeland presented his invention of Bakelite, the first synthetic plastic, to the American Chemical Society.
On February 22, 1909, President Teddy Roosevelt made good on his advice to “carry a big stick.”
On December 14, 1909, the last paving brick was laid at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in Indiana, giving the venue its iconic nickname, The Brickyard.
On April 16, 1910, Boston Arena opened for the first time, an indoor ice hockey arena that is still in operations, the oldest such building still operating.
On April 23, 1910, President Theodore Roosevelt gave one of his most famous speeches at the Sorbonne in Paris, France.
On October 11, 1910, with aviation still in its infancy, President Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt took a flight in a Wright Brothers airplane piloted by Archibald Hoxsey, a former auto mechanic from Illinois.
On October 15, 1910, the non-rigid airship, America, set off from Atlantic City, New Jersey on the first attempt to cross the Atlantic Ocean by humans in a powered aircraft.
On November 14, 1910, self-taught aviator Eugene Ely took off from the deck of the USS Birmingham, near Norfolk, Virginia.
On November 3, 1911, one of the most iconic American companies was founded when Louis Chevrolet teamed up with former General Motors William Durant to form the Chevrolet Motor Car Company.
On October 14, 1912, a certain bad-ass former U.S. president was shot while giving a speech…and he continued to speak!?
On December 19, 1912, US President William H. Taft pardoned the skipper of the ill-fated cruise ship, the PS General Slocum, which had burned and sunk on June 15, 1904, costing over 1000 people their lives.
On December 24, 1913, someone, either as a prank or as an evil way of messing with the crowd, yelled, “Fire!” in the crowded Italian Hall in Calumet, Michigan.
On August 15, 1914, the Panama Canal was opened for traffic, with the SS Ancon making the first transit of the great canal.
On November 16, 1914, The Federal Reserve Bank of the United States officially opened as a series of 12 banks serving 12 Federal Reserve Districts with each bank tasked with implementing the monetary policy of the United States as set forth by the Federal Open Market Committee, all being authorized by the Federal Reserve Act of 1913.
On January 25, 1915, telephone inventor Alexander Graham Bell made the first telephone call spanning the continental United States, placing a call from New York to his assistant, Thomas Watson in San Francisco.
On August 29, 1915, US Navy salvage crews raised the submarine, F-4, from the seabed off Honolulu where she had sunk with all hands on March 25, 1915, the first USN sub lost and another in a long list of Naval “Oops Moments.”
On October 16, 1916, Margaret Sanger (nee Higgins), nurse, writer, and sexual educator opened the first family planning (birth control) clinic in the United States.
On February 5, 1917, the Congress of the United States overrode a veto by President Woodrow Wilson and enacted the Immigration Act of 1917, a law that targeted Asians to prevent their immigration to the US.
On April 13, 1917, Diamond Jim Brady died at the age of 60, not surprisingly of a heart attack.
On July 12, 1917, the local sheriff deputized 2000 men as a posse to do the dirty work for the local mining company, called Phelps Dodge Corporation, and forcibly and illegally “deported” 1300 people to New Mexico.
On January 9, 1918, in Southern Arizona near the border with Mexico at a place called Bear Valley, one of the last battles of the American Indian Wars (1540-1924) was fought.
On February 5, 1918, American US Army soldier Stephen W. Thompson while flying as a machine gunner in a French airplane shot down a German aircraft, the first ever air to air combat victory by an American member of the US Military.
On March 4, 1918, the USS Cyclops kept a date with destiny!
On June 22, 1918, a passenger train carrying US military troops plowed into the rear end of the Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus train that had stopped on the tracks for repairs.
On August 8, 1918, the Allied offensive known as the “Hundred Days Offensive” began with the start of the Battle of Amiens.
On August 13, 1918, Opha Mae Johnson became the first of 305 women to enlist in the United States Marine Corps Women’s Reserve, proving that women can do and be just about anything!
On October 8, 1918, United States Corporal Alvin C. York killed 28 German soldiers and captured 132 in France’s Argonne Forest during World War I making York one of America’s most decorated soldiers of the war.
On October 8, 1918, 2^nd Lt. Ralph Talbot of Massachusetts earned the coveted Medal of Honor, the highest American military honor.
On November 11, 1918, Germany signed an armistice agreement with the Allies in a railroad car in the forest of Compiègne, France, officially ending fighting at the eleventh hour on the eleventh day in the eleventh month, but fighting did not actually end at that exact time and nor did the war!

IV. Inter-war period – 1918-1945

On February 13, 1919, American football legend Eddie Robinson was born in Jackson, Louisiana.
From October 2, 1919 and for some weeks afterwards, First Lady Edith Wilson (October 15, 1872 — December 28, 1961) unofficially ran the U.S. government following her husband’s (then President Woodrow Wilson’s) life-changing stroke.
On October 2, 1919, First Lady of the United States, Edith Wilson, the wife of President Woodrow Wilson, unofficially ran the U.S. government following her husband’s (then President Woodrow Wilson’s) life-changing stroke.
On October 28, 1919, The U.S. Congress passed the Volstead Act over President Woodrow Wilson’s veto, paving the way for Prohibition to begin the following January and setting the stage for the eventual production of HBO’s Boardwalk Empire.
On December 26, 1919, the owner of the Boston Red Sox gave the owner of the New York Yankees probably the greatest Christmas gift in history when he sold Babe Ruth, the greatest baseball player of all time to him.
On January 10, 1920, The Treaty of Versailles went into effect, marking the official end of World War I, although the United States did not endorse the treaty.
On January 20, 1920, a new organization devoted to the freedoms guaranteed to all Americans by the Constitution of the United States (and its amendments) was formed from the National Civil Liberties Bureau, an organization formed in 1917 to protect the Freedom of Speech, mainly by those Americans opposed to the US joining in World War I.
On February 13, 1920, the Negro National League of professional baseball was founded, not the first all African American baseball league, but the first to last more than one season and the foundation for African American professional baseball in the United States.
On March 28, 1920, Palm Sunday for Christians that are keeping track, a flurry of tornadoes swept across the Midwest and Southern United States, 37 of the terrible storms that left 380 Americans dead in their paths!
On August 18, 1920, the United States ratified the 19th Amendment to the Constitution.
On September 16, 1920, years before the great stock market crashes of 1929 and 2008, some unknown, disaffected malcontents showed the fat cats of Wall Street some serious financial terrorism of their own by setting off a bomb in a horse-drawn wagon in front of J.P. Morgan Bank in New York’s financial district.
On May 3, 1921, the state legislature of West Virginia enacted the first Sales Tax in the United States, although problems in creating the mechanism to administer the tax precluded enforcement for several years.
On May 19, 1921, the Emergency Immigration Act of 1921 became effective, a law also called The Emergency Quota Act, a law specifically designed to limit the immigration of certain people to the United States.
On May 31, 1921, one of the saddest examples of racial hatred in American history occurred when White Oklahomans attacked a wealthy Black neighborhood of Tulsa, Oklahoma known as the Greenwood District, or just “The Black Wall Street.”
On November 23, 1921, Warren Harding signed a law to prohibit doctors from prescribing alcoholic beverages to patients, closing a loophole in the 18^th Amendment, which since 1920 had outlawed alcoholic beverages in the US.
On May 10, 1922, the US annexed an atoll in the North Pacific, an unoccupied, mostly underwater formation called Kingman Reef.
On November 13, 1922, the United States Supreme Court decision called Zucht v. King, upheld the discretion that allowed a Texas school board to require mandatory vaccination of school children against smallpox.
In December 1922, “Winter Dreams”, a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald, first appeared in Metropolitan Magazine.
On June 18, 1923, an American legend was born when the first Checker Taxi Cab hit the street in Chicago, the product of a Russian American Jewish immigrant named Morris Markin.
On January 30, 1925, Douglas Engelbart was born in Portland, Oregon.
On October 7, 1925, baseball great and Hall of Fame pitcher Christy Mathewson died of tuberculosis brought on by a weakening of his respiratory system due to accidental exposure to poison gas during World War I.
On November 28, 1925, a one hour “barn dance” radio show began in Nashville, Tennessee broadcast on WSM that became known as The Grand Ole Opry.
On May 20, 1927, Charles Lindbergh took off on his non-stop, solo trans-Atlantic flight, a flight into aviation history.
On September 5, 1927, long before he became famous for his feature film cartoons and amusement parks, Walt Disney’s production of Trolley Troubles, an animated cartoon featuring the character Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, was released by Universal Pictures.
On November 21, 1927, the grossly inappropriately named Serene, Colorado, failed to live up to its idyllic name and was witness to a massacre of unarmed coal miners by the Colorado State Militia, an event usually called the “Columbine Mine Massacre” and alternatively called simply “The Columbine Massacre.”
On December 2, 1927, Henry Ford revealed the successor to his iconic Model T, the Ford Model A.
On October 24, 1929, the New York Stock Exchange suffered the catastrophic day of losses known as Black Thursday, the day that for all intents and purposes started the Great Depression.
On January 31, 1930, the 3M Company (then going by the name of Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing) revealed Scotch Tape.
On February 18, 1930, Elm Farm Ollie (Also known as “Nellie Jay,” “Sunnymede Ollie” and “Sky Queen.”
On March 31, 1930, censorship came to Hollywood!
On September 8, 1930, 3M, the better known name of what was the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company, began selling their Scotch brand of household and office pressure sensitive tape, the transparent stuff no self-respecting school kid, office worker, or housewife would do without!
On October 11, 1932, in the heart of Depression Era Tennessee, little Dorothy Marie Marsh, better known to Country Music fans as “Dottie” West, was born.
On December 18, 1932, the first NFL Championship game was played between the Chicago Bears and the Portsmouth (Ohio) Spartans.
On February 10, 1933, Primo Carnera, a heavyweight boxer called “The Monster” by Time Magazine, dealt Ernie Schaaf fatal blows during a boxing match in New York City.
On February 25, 1933, the USS Ranger was launched at Newport News, Virginia, as the first American aircraft carrier built for the purpose of carrying aircraft.
On August 10, 1933, baseball legendary slugger Rocco Domenico “Rocky” Colavito Jr was born in New York.
On December 5, 1933, history was made that would change the United States (back) forever!
On May 23, 1934, waiting policemen ambushed notorious robbers and murderers Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, filling them and their stolen car full of holes.
On May 23, 1934, bank robbers Bonnie and Clyde were gunned down by law enforcement.
On August 11, 1934, the Federal Penitentiary located on the island of Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay opened for civilian prisoners.
On October 22, 1934, US FBI agents shot and killed infamous bank robber Charles Arthur “Pretty Boy” Floyd in East Liverpool, Ohio.
On January 8, 1935, Elvis Aron Presley, the King of Rock and Roll was born in Mississippi.
On January 11, 1935, American aviatrix Amelia Earhart became the first person to fly solo from Hawaii to California, one of her many aviation firsts.
On January 24, 1935, the Gottfried Krueger Brewing Company of Newark, New Jersey, introduced the world to the convenience of beer in cans.
On July 24, 1935, the heat wave aspect of the Great Dust Bowl hit its high point, with temperatures soaring in the Midwest and on the Plains, cities such as Chicago reaching 109 °F and Milwaukee hitting 104 °F.
On September 3, 1935, Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah was the scene of an historic automobile event, the first ever car to achieve a documented speed of over 300 mph.
On December 9, 1935, muckraking journalist, Walter Liggett, was gunned down in front of his wife and children by a Minneapolis, Minnesota mobster with a Tommy Gun.
On January 29, 1936, the first class of baseball “Hall of Famers” was named and was comprised of Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Honus Wagner, Christy Mathewson and Walter Johnson.
On August 3, 193 6, James Cleveland “Jesse” Owens won the 100-meter dash at the Berlin Olympics and blazed into the record books.
On January 20, 1937, Franklin D. Roosevelt became the first US president to be sworn in on January 20^th, a date changed from the previous inauguration day of March 4^th by the 20^th Amendment of 1933.
On December 12, 1937, the USS Panay, a gunboat afloat on the Yangtze River near the city of Nanking (now called Nanjing) was attacked by Japanese military aircraft and sunk, with the loss of 3 American lives.
On October 14, 1938, the Curtiss P-40 Warhawk made its first flight, leading to an eventual production run of 13,738 of the rugged fighters.
On January 27, 1939, one of the great American fighter planes of World War II, the Lockheed P-38 Lightning, made its first flight.
On May 23, 1939, the submarine USS Squalus demonstrated the dangers faced by submarine sailors even in peacetime.
On June 11, 1939, a picnic at which hot dogs were served helped re-establish the political closeness between the United States and Great Britain and introduced the traditionally American food to an international public.
On June 12, 1939, for the first time production began an a horror film filmed in “three strip” Technicolor.
On September 1, 1939, US Army General George C. Marshall, Jr., was appointed as the Chief of Staff of the United States Army.
On January 24, 1940, The Grapes of Wrath, a drama film directed by John Ford, was released in theaters in the United States of America.
On February 29, 1940, for her portrayal of Mammy in the classic motion picture, Gone with the Wind, Hattie McDaniel became the first African American to win an Academy Award, better known as an Oscar.
On August 19, 1940, the B-25 Mitchell was flown for the first time.
On October 7, 1940, the Director of the Far East Section of the Office of Naval Intelligence, Lt. Cmdr. Arthur McCollum, sent an infamous memo up his chain of command that seems to recommend the United States provoke Japan into attacking US forces, thus allowing the US an excuse to enter World War II in spite of President Roosevelt’s promise to stay out of the war.
On November 5, 1940, Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected to his third term as US President, and would win yet another presidential election in 1944, ending up serving a record 12+ years as US President.
On December 14, 1940, at the University of California at Berkeley, atomic scientists first isolated the element Plutonium, a radioactive element with a designation of Pu-238 on the atomic chart of the elements (also known as the Periodic Chart), Element #94 for those keeping track.
On January 6, 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt (FDR) delivered perhaps his greatest speech, known as the “Four Freedoms Speech.”
On May 6, 1941, the Republic P-47 Thunderbolt made its first flight, a maiden flight that would eventually see over 16,000 of the mighty fighter aircraft built, more than any other fighter aircraft produced by the United States in all of aviation history.
On September 4, 1941, US Navy destroyer USS Greer was attacked by German submarine (U-boat) U-652, and returned the compliment by depth charging the German sub.
On September 11, 1941, aviator Charles Lindbergh delivered a speech for the America First Committee in Des Moines, Iowa, in which he claimed the US was being coerced into World War II, alleging, “…pressing this country toward war; the British, the Jewish, and the Roosevelt Administration.”
On December 7, 1941, the Japanese launched a massive aerial surprise attack against U.S. military forces on the Hawaiian island of Oahu, mainly at Pearl Harbor.
On December 7, 1941, a date that US President Franklin Roosevelt said “would live in infamy,” the Japanese navy attacked the naval and air bases on Oahu, Hawaii, most notably at Pearl Harbor, in a surprise attack (sneak attack in the vernacular of the time) that devastated the American Pacific Fleet.
On December 10, 1941, Colin Purdie Kelly, Jr. became the first in a long line of American heroes that flew the great Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress, a pairing of the greatest bomber of World War II and the greatest bomber pilots.
On December 20, 1941, the American Volunteer Group, better known by its nickname, the Flying Tigers, engaged in its first air-to-air combat when its fighters encountered 10 Japanese “Sally” bombers.
On December 25, 1941, US Navy Admiral, later Fleet Admiral, Chester Nimitz arrived at the devastated Pearl Harbor Naval Base to take command of the US Pacific Fleet.
On April 18, 1942, Lt. Col. Jimmy Doolittle led one of the most famous bombing raids in aviation history when he led 16 B-25 medium bombers over Tokyo, Kobe, Nagoya and Yokohama, Japan.
On May 12, 1942, the German Kriegsmarine submarine, U-507, a Type IXC boat, sank an American tanker, the SS Virginia, with one of its deadly torpedoes while the tanker was in the mouth of the Mississippi River, an affront to the United States bringing deadly danger to shipping right to America’s doorstep.
On August 7, 1942, U.S. Marines landed on an island few Americans had ever heard of, Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands.
On August 7, 1942, U.S. Marines landed on the island of Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands chain, initiating the first US ground offensive of World War II.
On August 16, 1942, while on routine anti-submarine patrol, the 2 man crew of US Navy Blimp L-8 disappeared without a trace.
On September 9, 1942, the mainland of the United States was bombed by a Japanese military aircraft when a float plane dropped incendiary bombs on Oregon near Brookings.
On November 26, 1942, the classic movie, Casablanca, starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, premiered in New York City.
On January 5, 1943, African American agricultural scientist George Washington Carver died at the age of 79 after a fall.
On January 15, 1943, the largest “office” building in the world was dedicated in Arlington County, Virginia, the Pentagon, a building that would become the symbol of the American military.
On February 19, 1943, the Battle of Kasserine Pass started, the first major American engagement of ground forces with the Axis forces in the Western Theater of World War II.
On June 20, 1943, World War II came to the American heartland when a massive race related riot broke out in Detroit.
On August 2, 1943, the US Navy patrol torpedo boat, PT-109, commanded by Lieutenant John F. Kennedy, was rammed and sunk by a Japanese destroyer in the Solomon Islands.
On August 17, 1943, the U.S. 8th Air Force, the main American unit of heavy bombers stationed in England, launched 376 B-17 bombers against Schweinfurt and Regensburg in Germany, a raid that came to symbolize the dangers of unescorted bombing.
On August 31, 1943, the Buckley Class destroyer, USS Harmon DE-678 was commissioned, the first American Navy ship named after an African-American person.
On September 3, 1943, the Allies (mainly the United States and the United Kingdom) invaded mainland Europe, thus living up to the promise to Soviet Premier Josef Stalin to invade mainland Europe in 1943.
On October 14, 1943, the United States Army Air Force conducted one of the most catastrophic bombing raids in history, catastrophic for the bombers, that is!
On October 19, 1943, a French cargo ship that had been seized by Germany in 1942, was sunk by USAAF North American B-25 Mitchell and RAF Bristol Beaufighter bombers near Crete, taking 2,098 Italian soldiers being held as POWs to a watery grave.
On October 19, 1943, the antibiotic drug, Streptomycin, was isolated by researchers at the esteemed Rutgers University.
On January 3, 1944, the top American air combat ace, Pappy Boyington, was shot down.
On January 3, 1944, America’s leading fighter Ace of that time, Marine Major Pappy Boyington, was shot down and taken captive by the Japanese.
On February 22, 1944, American bombers accidentally bombed the Dutch cities of Nijmegen, Arnhem, Enschede and Deventer, killing over 800 civilians in the Netherlands towns.
On March 24, 1944, the hard work of 600 American and British POW’s was ready to pay off, and 200 of them were ready to escape from Stalag Luft III!
On April 22, 1944, the China-Burma-India Theater of World War II (CBI) was the scene of the first ever use of a helicopter in a combat zone.
On April 22, 1944, an Allied “sledge patrol” attacked a German Bassgeiger weather station in Greenland, as part of the ongoing and important, although often overlooked, North Atlantic Weather War during World War II.
On June 6, 1944, American, British, and Canadian forces stormed the heavily defended beaches of Normandy, France, signaling the doom of the Third Reich.
On June 16, 1944 (exact date is unknown, said to be sometime in the Spring of 1944, so we chose this date), American Army Air Force pilot William Overstreet, Jr. was flying his North American P-51 Mustang in pursuit of a German Messerschmitt Bf-109 when the 2 fighter planes amazed onlookers on the ground by flying right under the lower arches of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France.
On July 17, 1944, US P-38 fighter bombers dropped napalm bombs on a German Army fuel depot near St. Lo in Normandy, France, one of the earliest uses of napalm.
On September 27, 1944, The Kassel Mission, which resulted in the largest loss by a United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) group on any mission in World War II, was so successfully covered up that even today few non-WWII experts are even aware it occurred.
On September 27, 1944, the American bombing command in Europe, the US Army Air Forces’ 8^th Air Force, conducted its Kassel Mission, a horrendous raid that resulted in the worst losses for any US bomb group in World War II, a tale we told back in 2013.
On October 20, 1944, Army and Naval forces of the United States landed on the Philippine island of Leyte in an amphibious assault to reclaim the islands from the Japanese who had taken the Philippines from the US and Philippine forces led by General Douglas MacArthur in 1942.
On October 25, 1944, the U.S. submarine USS Tang (SS-306), commanded by ace submarine skipper Richard O’Kane, was sunk when a torpedo that it had fired malfunctioned, turned around and struck the hapless submarine.
On November 1, 1944, the first of what would end up to be thousands of missions by the famous Boeing B-29 Superfortress flew over Tokyo, Japan on a reconnaissance mission, the first allied aircraft over Tokyo since the 1942 Doolittle Raid.
On February 13, 1945, bombers from the Royal Air Force (RAF) and the American Air Force (USAAF) struck the eastern German city of Dresden, a city so beautiful it was once known as the “Florence on the Elbe,” incinerating tens of thousands of people.
On February 19, 1945, the most cracked battle in history of the United States Marine Corp (USMC) began with 30,000 Marines hitting a beach.
On February 19, 1945, 30,000 US Marines landed on the Japanese held island of Iwo Jima, part of the Volcano Islands chain.
On March 7, 1945, the fortunes of war cost a German Field Marshall his job, and five German officers a sentence of death!
On March 9, 1945, 324 B-29 bombers of the United States Army Air Force inflicted the deadliest and most destructive single bombing raid in history!
On March 16, 1945, the battle for the island of Iwo Jima supposedly was won by the US, although fighting would continue for another two weeks.
On March 17, 1945, the Ludendorf Bridge over the Rhine River fell 10 days after the US Army seized the span allowing them to cross the Rhine into Germany.
On March 27, 1945, the United States Army Air Forces began Operation Starvation, an extensive program of using naval mines in all the waterways in and around Japan in an effort to greatly inhibit the transportation of food and essentials between Japanese islands.
On April 7, 1945, the biggest and most heavily armed battleship created by man was sunk without ever fighting another battleship!
On May 2, 1945, an American Artillery Battalion intercepted a death march of concentration camp inmates being taken from the Dachau concentration camp to the Austrian border, in turn saving the lives of hundreds of the starving inmates.
On May 5, 1945, a rare circumstance arose when German SS troops fought alongside US Army troops against an attack by the German 17th SS Panzergrenadier Division.
On May 29, 1945, the Consolidated B-32 Dominator, an American heavy bomber, made its first combat flight.
On July 16, 1945, Manhattan Project scientists held their breath as the clock ticked down to the first man-made nuclear blast in history.
On July 26, 1945, the leaders of the major Allied countries fighting Japan in World War II met in Potsdam, Germany to issue the conditions by which the Japanese were to surrender to the Allies.
On August 6, 1945, the American Boeing B-29 Superfortress named Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima, killing about 70,000 people right away and perhaps a few tens of thousands later from wounds, burns, and radiation.
On August 6, 1945, near end of World War II, a modified B-29 dropped a uranium gun-type (“Little Boy”) bomb on Hiroshima.
On August 9, 1945, a Boeing B-29 bomber named “Bockscar” dropped the second atomic bomb on Japan, incinerating 39,000 people within seconds.
On October 12, 1945, Corporal Desmond T. Doss of Lynchburg, Virginia, was awarded the Medal of Honor, the highest award for valor given to only the bravest of our military heroes.

V. America as World Leader – 1945-present

On March 5, 1946, while speaking at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, former British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, uttered the term “Iron Curtain” in reference to the divide between the Soviet led Communist Bloc and the democratic/capitalist Western group of nations led by the United States.
On May 4, 1946, the US Marine Corps was called to assault and secure an island, this time in San Francisco Bay!
On May 10, 1946, at the White Sands Proving Ground in New Mexico the US Army made the first successful launch of a German designed V-2 rocket, the same sort of weapon the Germans had used to terrorize England and Holland during World War II.
On January 15, 1947, Betty Bersinger was walking with her 3 year old daughter near Leimert Park in Los Angeles, California at about 10 in the morning when they came upon the naked, dead body of a young woman.
On January 20, 1947, only three months before Jackie Robinson broke the “color barrier” and became the first African American major league baseball player, the famous catcher and slugger from the Negro Leagues of baseball, Josh Gibson, died at the young age of 35 of a stroke brought on by a brain tumor.
On April 16, 1947, the SS Grandcamp, a French freighter carrying 2,300 tons of ammonium nitrate blew up at the dock in Texas City, Texas, one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history.
On September 30, 1947, the “fall classic” of the “great American pastime” kicked off, the 1947 MLB Championship known as The World Series.
On November 25, 1947, the United States was in the glow of having decisively won World War II and stepping up to become the major economic and military power in the world, the only nation with nuclear bombs.
On December 17, 1947, the Boeing B-47 Stratojet made its first flight.
On January 7, 1948, a Kentucky National Guard pilot, a World War II veteran, attempted to intercept a UFO along with 3 other US F-51 Mustang fighters.
On July 26, 1948, President Truman issued Executive Order 9981, which ordered the desegregation of the US military, a move many Americans thought was long overdue.
On August 10, 1948, the American public first heard an unseen television announcer say, “Smile, you’re on Candid Camera!”
On September 22, 1948, USAF pilot Lt. Gail Halvorsen began dropping candy via parachute to the children of Berlin.
On November 23, 1948, one of major league baseball’s greatest hitters and onetime highest paid player in the National League died penniless, and no one, not even his own son, would claim the body.
On January 17, 1949, American television audiences were treated to a new form of entertainment, the situation comedy, or more familiarly known as the sitcom.
On March 2, 1949, The Old Lamplighter became a memory and a song, but not an occupation, as automatic street lights start to shine, adding to the list of “Famous Inventions by Ohioans”!
On June 24, 1949, NBC premiered the first Western themed TV show, an adaptation of a character created by Clarence E. Mulford in 1904, Hopalong Cassidy.
On August 1, 1949, T.J. Slowie, a secretary of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), sent a letter to Leroy E. “Ed” Parsons, requesting he “furnish the Commission full information with respect to the nature of the system you may have developed and may be operating.”
On September 4, 1949, after a concert by African American singer, actor and activist Paul Robeson, riots broke out in the Peekskill, New York location of the concert.
On February 1, 1950, the first successful night landing of jet aircraft onto an aircraft carrier occurred when the US Navy landed an octet of Grumman F9F Panthers onto the deck of the USS Valley Forge.
On August 24, 1950, Edith Spurlock Sampson, an attorney of African American heritage, became the first African American of either gender to become a United States delegate to the United Nations.
On March 3, 1951, music history was made when the first song deemed to be “rock and roll” was recorded.
On May 26, 1951, Sally Ride was born in Los Angeles, California.
On November 1, 1951, the US Army conducted nuclear tests in the Nevada desert that included a diabolical exercise in which 6500 US Army troops were exposed to the effects of a nearby nuclear detonation and its associated radiation.
On December 25, 1951, Civil Rights activists Harry T. Moore and Harriette V. S. Moore were killed by a bomb explosion at their home in Sanford, Florida.
On January 14, 1952, the Today Show, also simply called Today, made its debut on NBC television, the first daily morning television talk show.
On March 21, 1952, disc jockey Alan Freed (inventor of the term “rock and roll”) and record store owner Leo Mintz staged the first rock concert in Cleveland, Ohio!
On April 15, 1952, a milestone in aviation history was crossed when the Boeing B-52 Stratofortress made its first flight!
On May 3, 1952, the Kentucky Derby, probably the most famous and prestigious horse racing event in the United States, was first broadcast on television.
On April 10, 1953, moviegoers in the US were treated to the first 3D movie in color released by a major studio: The House of Wax, starring Vincent Price, a remake of the 1933 film, Mystery of the Wax Museum.
On April 13, 1953, Director of the CIA, Allen Dulles signed the order authorizing Project MKUltra, research into how to use mind control drugs against Soviet and Chinese targets during the Cold War.
On July 26, 1953, the Arizona Department of Public Safety and Arizona National Guard conducted a raid on an enclave of fundamentalist Mormons at Short Creek, Arizona, an enormous law enforcement effort that netted about 400 people taken into custody, including men, women and children.
On January 7, 1954, Georgetown University teamed up with IBM to perform the first public computer translation of different languages automatically, showing the promise of speedier and easier translation tasks.
On February 2, 1954, the Detroit Red Wings of the National Hockey League played the first ever outdoor hockey game in the history of the NHL in Marquette, Michigan, up North in the Upper Peninsula.
On September 30, 1954, the American submarine, USS Nautilus, was commissioned for service as the first ever nuclear powered warship.
On December 2, 1954, the United States and the Republic of China, known to us today more familiarly as “Taiwan,” signed a mutual defense treaty that was really just the US promising to ensure the integrity of the island of Taiwan which claimed to be the “legitimate” government of China against any invasion or aggression from mainland/Communist China or perhaps the USSR.
On April 12, 1955, the Polio vaccine developed by Dr. Jonas Salk was declared safe and effective for use in the United States, ending the epidemic that killed or crippled mass numbers of children in the 19^th and 20^th Centuries.
On April 15, 1955, McDonald’s hamburger and fast-food chain claims their founding by Ray Kroc in Illinois when he opened a franchise restaurant of the hamburger stand brand founded by Richard and Maurice McDonald in California.
On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, the celebrated civil rights pioneer, triggered the “Montgomery Bus Boycott” in Alabama by refusing to sit in the back of the bus as decreed by segregation laws of that time.
On January 28, 1956, Elvis Aron Presley, all-American boy from Tupelo, Mississippi, made his first television appearance on CBS’s Stage Show, the day after “Heartbreak Hotel” was released as a single.
On June 5, 1956, the King of Rock and Roll, Elvis Presley, introduced what would become his top selling hit, Hound Dog, on The Milton Berle Show, an early television favorite.
On July 16, 1956, the last “Big Top” circus produced by Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus ended its run in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and all subsequent circus productions would be held in arenas instead of the giant tents.
On November 3, 1956, future New York Giants quarterback Phil Simms was born, and while he played in the NFL from 1979 to 1993, it is unlikely he would recognize the NFL from the year of his birth!
On January 23, 1957, inventor Walter Morrison sold his plastic flying disc to the Wham-O company, which named the item “Frisbee” and has now sold over 100 million of the tossable toys!
On May 16, 1957, Eliot Ness, former head of the “Untouchables” and former Safety Director of Cleveland, Ohio, died in relative obscurity, unlike the famous character of television and movies.
On August 5, 1957, the iconic pop music show American Bandstand made its debut, starting a 37-season run of 3002 episodes and making host Dick Clark a national icon.
On January 26, 1959, the California State Lands Commission posted Chain Island, a 41 acre island in Suisun Bay where the Sacramento River and San Joaquin River meet, for sale with a minimum acceptable bid of $5,226.
On February 3, 1959, a Beechcraft Bonanza airplane crashed in Clear Lake, Iowa, a crash that would become one of the most famous plane crashes in aviation and music history.
On February 6, 1959, an engineer at Texas Instruments, Jack Kilby, filed for the first patent for the “integrated circuit,” a small piece of silicon with many circuits called MOSFETs integrated on it, a device we know as the “microchip.”
On February 28, 1959, a Thor-Agena A rocket was launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, carrying a spy satellite designated Discoverer 1, the first in a spy satellite program of the American military and intelligence network.
On May 4, 1959, the first ever Grammy music awards were held, with no category for rock and roll despite the fact that this new type of music had already long taken the country by storm.
On June 8, 1959, the US Navy teamed up with the United States Post Office Department to attempt to resurrect the concept of sending mail via rocket or missile.
On November 21, 1959, music DJ and rock and roll legend Alan Freed was fired by WABC in New York for refusing to sign a statement that he had never taken “payola,” bribes from record companies to play and promote certain records.
On January 28, 1960, the NFL expanded from 12 to 13 teams with the addition of the Dallas Cowboys.
On February 16, 1960, the US Navy submarine, USS Triton SSRN-586, set out on a voyage of circumnavigation of the Earth, the first time anyone had made such a voyage completely underwater!
On April 25, 1960, the nuclear powered US Navy submarine, Triton, completed the first circumnavigation of the Earth while underwater.
On May 1, 1960, CIA employee Gary Powers was flying a reconnaissance mission over the Soviet Union when his high flying top secret U-2 spyplane was shot down by an SA-2 surface to air missile.
On May 9, 1960, the Searle manufactured drug, Enovid, was approved by the Food and Drug Administration of the United States as a birth control measure, making Enovid the first oral contraceptive pill approved for use by any nation.
On June 19, 1960, the first auto race under the NASCAR banner was run at Charlotte Motor Speedway in North Carolina.
On January 3, 1961, a steam explosion occurred at the SL-1 US Army experimental nuclear reactor located outside Idaho Falls, Idaho, leaving three technicians dead, the only immediately fatal US nuclear reactor accident so far.
On February 15, 1961, the sporting world was rocked by one of the worst disasters in sports history, the crash of Sabena Flight 548 in Belgium, killing all 72 people on board, including the entire US Figure Skating team, both competitors and coaches and even some family members.
On May 9, 1961, the Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Newton Minow, shocked Americans by declaring commercial television programming to be a “vast wasteland.”
On May 25, 1961, President John F. Kennedy made a bold announcement to Congress that the US “should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.”
On August 10, 1961, the US began Operation Ranch Hand, a ten year program of using chemical herbicides against the flora of Vietnam and surrounding countries to both deprive the Viet Cong of food crops and of foliage for cover.
On August 21, 1961, Motown Records of Detroit, Michigan released what became their first #1 hit song, “Please Mr. Postman” by the Marvelettes.
On September 17, 1961, downtown Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania was the site of the first retractable roof arena in the world, although its purpose may surprise you!
On September 25, 1961, the State of Wisconsin first required any new automobile made starting in 1962 to be equipped with front seat safety belts.
On November 29, 1961, the US space agency, NASA, launched Mercury Atlas 5, the first mission to send an American into orbit around the Earth in space.
On December 13, 1961, renowned American painter known as Grandma Moses died at the age of 101.
On March 2, 1962, Wilt Chamberlain, center for the Philadelphia Warriors, scored an National Basketball Association (NBA) single-game record of 100 points against the New York Knicks.
On May 24, 1962, an American Atlas LV-3B rocket blasted off, carrying astronaut Scott Carpenter in his Project Mercury space capsule he had named Aurora 7, the 6^th manned space flight in history.
On July 9, 1962, the United States Defense Atomic Support Agency and Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) launched a rocket from a remote Pacific Ocean island called Johnston Island (Or Johnston Atoll), a rocket carrying a thermonuclear bomb (aka, Hydrogen Bomb) into space.
On July 22, 1962, the US space agency, NASA, launched Mariner 1, the first in a series of probes designed to visit other planets in our solar system.
On September 27, 1962, the book, Silent Spring, by Rachel Carson was published.
On October 27, 1962, US Air Force Major Rudolf Anderson was shot down and killed while flying his U-2 spy plane over Cuba.
On November 4, 1962, the US conducted the last event of Operation Fishbowl, a series of nuclear blasts conducted at high altitude.
On December 25, 1962, To Kill a Mockingbird, an American drama film directed by Robert Mulligan, opened in theaters.
On June 11, 1963, George Wallace, the governor of Alabama stood in the doorway to the University of Alabama in a vain attempt to block 4 newly admitted African-American students from entering the school.
On June 11, 1963, on the same day that Alabama Governor George Wallace tried to block two Black students from entering the University of Alabama, President John F. Kennedy made a speech telling the country about his plan for the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a law that would end segregation and provide equal access to all aspects of American life for people of any race.
On June 26, 1963, President John F. Kennedy addressed Germans in Berlin and made his famous “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech.
On September 2, 1963, CBS Evening News made TV history by becoming the first major nightly news show to be 30 minutes long instead of only 15 minutes.
On September 7, 1963, the Pro Football Hall of Fame opened to the public in Canton, Ohio, the birthplace of American professional football.
On November 29, 1963, in the wake of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, President Lyndon B. Johnson formed a committee under the direction of Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States Earl Warren to investigate the assassination and related events.
On January 9, 1964, a riot broke out between Panamanian nationalists and American Canal Zone Police and US Military forces stationed in the Canal Zone after a Panamanian flag had been torn during a confrontation between the Panamanians and Canal Zone Police.
On January 13, 1964, a 14-year-old Pamela Mason was murdered in New Hampshire, her alleged murderer later having his conviction overturned on the basis of 4^th Amendment rights regarding police searches in a Supreme Court case called Coolidge v. New Hampshire in 1971.
On February 1, 1964, the British sensational band, The Beatles, hit the top of the American charts for the first time with their smash hit, “I Want to Hold Your Hand.”
On February 9, 1964, Beatlemania hit the US when the Fab Four made their appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, snagging 73 million American viewers.
On March 14, 1964, Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby was convicted of killing the alleged assassin of President John F. Kennedy, Lee Harvey Oswald.
On June 21, 1964, three civil rights workers were kidnapped and murdered by the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi, an event commemorated in the 1988 feature film, Mississippi Burning.
On August 28, 1964, the City of Philadelphia erupted into a race riot when the predominantly African American neighborhoods of North Philadelphia in the Columbia Avenue area broke out into a full blown riot between the police and African American residents that had long complained of police brutality.
On December 5, 1964, Captain Roger Donlon, US Army Special Forces, became the first Army Special Forces member (ever) and the first US military person to earn a Medal of Honor in the Viet Nam War.
On February 21, 1965, former Nation of Islam officer and African American nationalist, Malcom X, was gunned down prior to making a speech at the Audubon Ballroom in New York City.
On April 11, 1965, the Mid-Western and Southern US experienced a deadly rash of tornadoes infamous as the “Palm Sunday Tornado Outbreak.”
On August 31, 1965, fans of super-different airplanes could add another oddity to their list when the Aero Spacelines Super Guppy made its first flight.
On November 8, 1965, a North Vietnamese force of 1,200 soldiers ambushed 400 of the US Army’s 173rd Airborne Brigade West of the Dong Nai River and paid dearly for their disregard of American military prowess.
On November 9, 1965, 22 year old American Roger Allen LaPorte, a former Catholic seminarian, sat down calmly, poured gasoline over himself, and burned himself to death in front of the United Nations in New York in a protest of the Viet Nam War.
On December 16, 1965, General William Westmoreland, the American commander in Viet Nam requested an additional 243,000 US troops to go with the 184,300 US military men already in South Viet Nam.
On June 30, 1966, the Women’s movement took a giant leap forward when the National Organization for Women (NOW) was founded by 28 women’s rights activists.
On July 4, 1966, The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) was enacted, with an effective date one year later, July 4, 1967.
On September 8, 1966, Americans in love with science fiction were treated to the most iconic space-oriented television show of all time when Star Trek made its debut on NBC.
On October 9, 1966, the war torn nation of South Viet Nam was the scene of not one, but two notable massacres you may never have heard of.
On January 15, 1967, the NFL Champion Green Bay Packers faced off with the American Football League Champion Kansas City Chiefs, defeating the Chiefs 35-10 in a game later called “The First Super Bowl.”
On February 10, 1967, the United States adopted the 25^th Amendment to the Constitution, a new national law that deals with the succession to the Presidency of the United States, and a topic of recent debate during the Trump Administration.
On April 29, 1967, heavyweight boxing champ, Muhammad Ali, was stripped of his crown when he refused induction into the US military.
On May 10, 1967, an experimental “lifting body” aircraft created by Northrup for NASA, the M2-F2, made its 16^th and final flight, crashing into the dry lake bed on the desert floor, ruining the aircraft and severely injuring the pilot, Bruce Peterson.
On July 18, 1967, little Mark Sinclair was born in Alameda County, California, a baby that would become one of the highest grossing film actors, Vin Diesel.
On August 25, 1967, US Navy World War II pilot, George Lincoln Rockwell, was shot and killed by a former member of his hateful group.
On December 12, 1967, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, an American comedy-drama film produced and directed by Stanley Kramer, and written by William Rose, was released in the United States of America.
On January 30, 1968, the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong guerillas launched surprise attacks all over South Vietnam during a supposed “cease fire” period to celebrate the Asian Lunar New Year, known as Tet.
On February 11, 1968, African-American garbage collection and sewer workers in Memphis, Tennessee went on strike, prompted by the horrible death of two garbage men crushed in the back of a garbage truck.
On February 25, 1968, South Korean Marines fighting against the communist Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army alongside Americans and the South Vietnamese committed a terrible atrocity in the town of Hà My in South Vietnam.
On August 28, 1968, the profession of policing in the United States reached one of its lowest points when the Chicago Police Department under the direction of dictatorial Mayor Richard Daley moved to violently put down protests at the 1968 Democratic Convention (August 26-29, 1968), resulting in what has been described as a “police riot.”
On October 31, 1968, in a political move intended to help Hubert Humphrey win the Presidential election, President Lyndon Johnson made an announcement that became known as “The October Surprise,” in which he stated that all bombardment of North Viet Nam would be halted.
On November 15, 1968, the Cleveland Transit System of Cleveland, Ohio linked downtown with the metro airport, becoming the first city in the western hemisphere to link its downtown and its main airport by rapid transit.
On December 20, 1968, the killer later known as “The Zodiac Killer” shot and murdered 2 victims in Vallejo, California, the first confirmed victims of this still unidentified killer.
On January 12, 1969, the New York Jets of the AFL beat the Baltimore Colts of the NFL, a monumental upset that spurred a merger of the two major pro football leagues.
On January 14, 1969, we were once again reminded how navies around the world manage to make mistakes that cost lives and even entire ships.
On May 20, 1969, the Battle of Hamburger Hill came to an end.
The summer of July 1969 was unlike any other summer.
On July 20, 1969, the promise by President John F. Kennedy that the USA would put men on the Moon came true when Apollo 11’s Lunar Module, the Eagle, landed on the surface of the Moon, with astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin.
On April 11, 1970, NASA launched their third moon-landing mission from Cape Canaveral, Florida carrying three astronauts.
On May 4, 1970, the M-1 Garand rifles of the Ohio National Guard were used in combat; against college kids!
On December 21, 1970, one of the great naval fighter jets made its debut flight when an F-14 Tomcat first took to the air.
On February 9, 1971, baseball pitcher Leroy “Satchel” Paige was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, the first player from the Negro Leagues so honored.
On January 5, 1972, President Richard M. Nixon announced the Space Shuttle program, an American space exploration system that would go on to make 135 trips to space over 3 decades, carrying astronauts from 16 different countries.
On March 22, 1972, the US Supreme Court decided that unmarried Americans were allowed to have sex!
On September 9, 1972, an exploration team mapping the Mammoth Cave system in Kentucky discovered that the Mammoth Cave system was linked to the Flint Ridge cave network, making it the longest cave passageway in the world.
On October 11, 1972, a race riot took place not in a city, but at sea!
On December 28, 1972, the last day for inductees to be sworn in to the US armed forces due to the draft, most induction centers were closed due to President Nixon declaring the day a National Day of Mourning due to the death of former President Truman.
On January 14, 1973, the world was treated to Aloha From Hawaii, a concert televised across the world live, in 40 European and Asian countries, via satellite (a first), that was watched by as many as a one and a half billion music fans, making it the most watched televised concert by a single performer in music/television history.
On January 27, 1973, the United States, North Viet Nam and South Viet Nam signed a treaty in Paris, France, effectively ending direct American involvement in the Viet Nam War.
On June 9, 1973, Secretariat, often called “Big Red,” won the final round of horse racing’s Triple Crown, the Belmont Stakes, by an unprecedented and unequaled 31 lengths!
On June 21, 1973, the US Supreme Court handed down a decision in Miller v. California, establishing a way to determine if something is “free speech” guaranteed by the 1^st Amendment or if it is obscene.
On October 12, 1973, soon to be disgraced President Richard Nixon nominated US Representative Gerald Ford to replace Vice President Agnew who had resigned due to a criminal scandal.
On December 15, 1973, with a vote of 13-0, the American Psychiatric Association agreed to remove homosexuality from its list of psychiatric disorders.
On February 22, 1974, President Richard Nixon was the target of a failed assassination attempt.
On February 22, 1974, US Army veteran Samuel Byck failed miserably in his attempt to assassinate President Richard Nixon, when he was unable to successfully hijack a DC-9 jetliner in order to crash it into the White House.
On April 5, 1974, Stephen King published the first of his more than 60 full length novels, Carrie, setting the stage for what may well be the greatest horror fiction writing career in world history, and possibly the greatest writing career by an American author.
On November 16, 1974, a radio signal was sent from Earth to the star cluster known as M13 in an attempt to communicate with whatever intelligent life forms may exist in that area of the Universe.
On December 19, 1974, former governor of New York, Nelson Rockefeller, was sworn in as Vice President of the US.
On December 19, 1974, Nelson Rockefeller was sworn in as Vice President of the United States, a job he was not elected to, to serve under President Gerald Ford, another guy not elected to the office he held, or even to the vice presidency before that!
On February 21, 1975, the highest ranking culprits in the Watergate Scandal were sentenced, including former Attorney General John Mitchell, and White House aides John Ehrlichman and HR Haldeman.
On March 6, 1975, entranced Americans were glued to their television sets to watch the first mass public showing of the infamous “Zapruder Film” that depicted the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963.
On July 15, 1975, the United States and the USSR simultaneously launched manned spacecraft, an American Apollo capsule and a Soviet Soyuz capsule, bound for a rendezvous in space, the first ever international space effort.
On September 14, 1975, Elizabeth Ann Seton was canonized by Pope Paul VI, thus she became the first person born in what is now the United States to be granted sainthood.
On November 10, 1975, the SS Edmund Fitzgerald sank in Lake Superior, taking the 29 men aboard to a watery grave.
On December 22, 1975, President Gerald Ford ordered a national stockpile of oil, or petroleum if you prefer, be created in underground storage located in Texas and Louisiana.
On June 5, 1976, the Teton Dam on the Teton River in Idaho collapsed, a catastrophic failure while it was filling for the first time!
On September 3, 1976, an American Viking 2 spacecraft landed on the surface of Mars.
On January 17, 1977, an otherwise unremarkable murderer, Gary Gilmore, became famous when he was executed by firing squad by the State of Utah.
On January 21, 1977, newly inaugurated President Jimmy Carter created perhaps the biggest controversy of his presidency by pardoning Viet Nam War era draft dodgers.
On July 19, 1977, the first ever Global Positioning System, GPS, signal was received in Cedar Rapids, Iowa courtesy of Navigation Technology Satellite 2, ushering in an era that prevents fumbling around with intricately folded maps while trying to drive a car.
On August 1, 1977, former USAF and CIA pilot, Francis Gary Powers, died when his news helicopter crashed in Encino, California.
On September 13, 1977, American automotive giant General Motors made one of the epic blunders of its long business history when it introduced the Oldsmobile Diesel engine, a lame attempt to quickly gain an advantage in the race to improve the miles per gallon performance of its cars in order to compete with more fuel-efficient foreign cars.
On December 30, 1977, serial murderer Ted Bundy escaped from jail in Colorado, only to continue his murderous ways. Incredibly, he had also escaped only 6 months previously.
On March 22, 1978, Karl Wallenda of the famous “Flying Wallendas” family of risk takers and circus performers, tragically died during a daring high wire stunt, falling to his death from a high wire strung between 2 hotels in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
On August 7, 1978, President Jimmy Carter recognized the toxic waste that had been disposed of negligently into a residential area canal as a federal emergency.
On August 17, 1978, Ben Abruzzo, Maxie Anderson, and Larry Newman made ballooning history by becoming the first to pilot a manned balloon across the Atlantic Ocean, flying from Maine to France in the Double Eagle II, a Helium balloon.
On September 15, 1978, the self-proclaimed “Greatest” boxer, Muhammad Ali, won a decision on points against former US Marine, Leon Spinks, winning back the heavyweight boxing championship he had held twice before.
On December 15, 1978, US President Jimmy Carter announced that the United States would no longer recognize the government of the Republic of China (based on the island of Taiwan) as the legitimate government of China, and instead would recognize the Red Chinese government, The Peoples Republic of China.
On July 11, 1979, America’s first space station, Skylab, reentered Earth’s atmosphere and disintegrated over the Indian Ocean and Australia.
On September 16, 1979, the Rap music trio The Sugarhill Gang was formed, and they released their groundbreaking hit, “Rapper’s Delight,” the first Rap song to land in the Billboard Top 40 as a mainstream hit song.
On June 3, 1980, the long history of the Statue of Liberty was threatened by a bomb that exploded at the base of the statue, although luckily no one was killed and damage was minimal.
On July 24, 1980, a quartet of Australian swimmers took the Olympic Gold Medal in the Men’s Swimming 4 by 100-meter medley relay race, the only time an American team failed to win this particular event.
On February 13, 1981, an incredible 13 miles of sewers and streets in Louisville, Kentucky blew up, the explosion caused by the detonation of hexane gas vapors.
On March 30, 1981, only a bit past two months into his presidency, Ronald Reagan was shot by a mentally ill assassin!
On April 3, 1981, the Osborne Computer Corporation unveiled it latest creation, the Osborne 1, the first portable computer to be commercially viable.
On June 12, 1981, movie goers were treated to a film of action, adventure, romance, supernatural, and comedy, when Raiders of the Lost Ark was released, the first of the Indiana Jones movie franchise that now includes four complete films and the upcoming The Dial of Destiny, due for release in the US on June 30, 2023.
On September 15, 1981, Sandra Day O’Connor was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee to become the first female Justice of the Supreme Court.
On June 21, 1982, John Warnock Hinckley Jr. was found not guilty by reason of insanity in the attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan in March of 1981.
On October 1, 1982, Disney’s latest and greatest attraction opened at their Orlando, Florida Walt Disney World location, EPCOT Center, now known as EPCOT.
On November 1, 1982, Honda Motor Company of Japan started making cars in the United States.
On November 30, 1982, Michael Jackson, known as “The King of Pop” for good reason, released his 6th solo album, the “monster” hit “Thriller.”
On January 19, 1983, a space traveling chimpanzee named Ham died at the age of 25 at the North Carolina Zoo.
On February 28, 1983, the 11-season journey of TV viewers finally came to an end with the airing of the final episode of M*A*S*H.
On March 23, 1983, President Ronald Reagan proposed the development and deployment of what he called The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), which would become known as “Star Wars” and would cost around one trillion dollars!
On May 17, 1983, the US government was obligated to release information due to a newspaper’s Freedom of Information Act request about the largest Mercury pollution source in history, the Oak Ridge, Tennessee, home of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Y-12 National Security Complex, nuclear facilities first constructed during World War II as part of the Manhattan Project.
On September 17, 1983, Syracuse University student Vanessa Williams was crowned Miss America, the first African American woman to win the coveted title.
On September 26, 1983, the Cold War between the Soviet Union and their allies versus the United States and their allies nearly erupted into full blown nuclear Armageddon when the early warning system employed by the Soviet military falsely reported the launch of United States Air Force Minuteman ICBM’s.
On September 26, 1983, Australian 12-metre-class yacht, Australia II, finally won an America’s Cup yacht race, the first time in 132 years that the Cup was lost by an American sailboat representing the New York Yacht Club.
On October 22, 1983, the Federal Penitentiary at Marion, Illinois was the scene of a tragedy when inmates overpowered and killed 2 corrections officers in 2 separate incidents.
On October 23, 1983, 241 US servicemen (220 Marines of 1 Battalion 8th Marines Regiment, 18 US Navy sailors, and 3 US Army soldiers) were killed when a truck bomb was driven into the building where the men were quartered.
On November 7, 1983, the United States Capitol building was bombed by a female left wing group calling themselves the Armed Resistance Unit.
On January 22, 1984, Apple introduced their iconic home computer, the Macintosh, on a television ad during Super Bowl XVIII.
On February 7, 1984, two astronauts from the Space Shuttle Challenger on mission STS-41-B made space exploration history by taking the first untethered space walk outside of their space ship.
On August 11, 1984, President Reagan caused the Soviet Union to raise their security and defense levels by joking about bombing Russia.
On September 14, 1984, retired USAF Colonel Joseph Kittinger made aviation history by becoming the first person to pilot a gas balloon solo across the Atlantic.
On December 1, 1984, a joint operation between NASA and the FAA conducted a “Controlled Impact Demonstration,’ a fancy way of saying purposely crashing an unoccupied jetliner.
On December 22, 1984, the tables got turned on criminals when their victim shot them!
On June 27, 1985, US Route 66, known as “The Main Street of America,” was officially taken off the list of US highways.
On October 30, 1985, the American Space Shuttle Challenger lifted off on its 9^th mission, a successful flight that lasted over 7 days and was notable for having taken the first Dutch astronaut into space.
On January 28, 1986, the U.S. space shuttle Challenger took off right on schedule, only to explode 74 seconds later, killing all seven crew members on board in front of a horrified live television audience.
On March 21, 1986, Debra Janine Thomas made athletic history by becoming the first African American woman to take the Gold Medal at the World Figure Skating Championships.
On May 19, 1986, President Ronald Reagan signed into law an act of Congress known as the Firearm Owners Protection Act.
On September 23, 1986, Houston Astros’ pitcher Jim Deshaies set a record, striking out the first eight batters he faced.
On October 3, 1986, Vince DiMaggio died, the eldest of the three DiMaggio brothers of major league baseball, the others being Dom and the most famous, Joltin’ Joe.
On November 3, 1986, a Lebanese magazine reported that the US had been selling weapons to Iran as part of a negotiation to get seven Americans released in Lebanon.
On November 21, 1986, Marine Corps Lt. Col. Oliver North, a member of the National Security Council of the Ronald Reagan administration, was busy shredding documents, destroying evidence of criminal activity of the Reagan administration as part of the Iran-Contra Affair.
On March 9, 1987, Chrysler Corporation, then maker of Chrysler, Dodge, and Plymouth cars and trucks, announced the absorption of American Motors under the Chrysler banner.
On August 4, 1987, the Federal Communications Commission officially removed any obligation of television and radio media to present controversial issues in an even and “fair” manner when they rescinded the Fairness Doctrine.
On January 31, 1988, Doug Williams quarterbacked the Washington Redskins to victory in Super Bowl XXII, the first time an African American quarterback had played in Super Bowl history.
On March 16, 1988, Marine Lieutenant Colonel (Lt. Col.) Oliver North and National Security Adviser Vice Admiral John Poindexter were indicted on charges of conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government.
On April 18, 1988, the US Navy retaliated against the Navy of Iran in response to the USS Samuel Roberts being damaged by a mine.
On May 4, 1988, one of those spectacular disasters that can be associated with a space program gone wrong occurred at Pacific Engineering and Production Company of Nevada (PEPCON), a chemical plant only 10 miles from Las Vegas.
On October 7, 1988, a native Alaskan hunter found three Gray Whales trapped by the sea ice near Point Barrow, Alaska in the Beaufort Sea, initiating a chain of events that culminated in a massive international rescue effort of the giant cetaceans.
On October 27, 1988, President Ronald Reagan made one of his most shocking Cold War related announcements while President when he decided to have the newly completed US Embassy in Moscow mostly destroyed and started over again!
On November 18, 1988, President Ronald Reagan signed into law legislation (Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988) that made certain drug trafficking offenses punishable by the death penalty, a sharp escalation of the “War on Drugs.”
On January 4, 1989, two Libyan pilots made the massive blunder of attempting to engage a pair of US Navy F-14 Tomcat fighters over the Gulf of Sidra off the Libyan coast, with the entirely predictable result of both MiG-23 “Flogger” fighters being promptly shot down.
On April 19, 1989, one of those naval oops moments we keep writing about occurred, and this particular one had catastrophic consequences for the history of the battleship.
On July 21, 1989, Do the Right Thing, an American comedy-drama film produced, written, and directed by Spike Lee, who also played the part of Mookie in the film, was released in the United States of America.
On December 17, 1989, The Simpsons premiered on American television with their first episode, “Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire.”
On February 11, 1990, Iron Mike Tyson went into his match against James “Buster” Douglas as a 42 to 1 favorite.
On September 29, 1990, the prototype jet fighter plane designated YF-22 Raptor, built by a powerful consortium of American airplane manufacturers, Lockheed, Boeing and General Dynamics, made its maiden flight.
On April 4, 1991, US Senator from Pennsylvania John Heinz along with six other people died when a helicopter suffered a mid-air collision with the small airplane carrying Heinz over Lower Merion Township, Pennsylvania.
On August 6, 1991, Tim Berners-Lee, a professor with ties to the University of Oxford and MIT, announced his invention, plans for what he called the “World Wide Web.”
On January 22, 1992, NASA launched mission STS-42, the space shuttle Discovery, into space with a crew that included Ukrainian Canadian Dr. Roberta Bondar, a neurologist.
On May 7, 1992, the State of Michigan ratified the 27^th Amendment after a two century struggle to pass this “common sense” law, namely that Congress cannot give itself a raise during a current term.
On July 7, 1992, the New York Court of Appeals, the highest state court in New York, ruled that women in that state have every bit as much a right to go bare breasted as men do.
On September 12, 1992, NASA launched mission STS-47, an historic flight of Space Shuttle Endeavour.
On September 25, 1992, NASA launched a probe known as the Mars Observer, alternately known as Mars Geoscience/Climatology Orbiter, an unmanned spacecraft sent to study the surface, atmosphere, climate, and magnetic field on Mars.
On November 11, 1993, a sculpture honoring the women that served in the Vietnam War was dedicated at the site of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C..
On November 18, 1993, the US House of Representatives passes the North American Free Trade Agreement that had been negotiated by President George H. W. Bush in 1992.
On January 6, 1994, American figure skater and favorite to win the US Figure Skating Championships, Nancy Kerrigan, was attacked by two men hired by the ex-husband of her rival, Tonya Harding, beating the skater’s leg with a metal baton.
On August 24, 1994, an extraordinary American warrior was posthumously commissioned a second lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force.
On March 31, 1995, American singer and “Queen of Tejano Music,” Selena, was murdered, incredibly by the president of her fan club!
On May 17, 1995, San Diego, California was the scene of one of the oddest and perhaps the scariest police chase of a stolen vehicle in the annals of motor vehicle theft.
On September 22, 1995, a United States Air Force Boeing E-3B Sentry (AWACS, early warning spy in the sky type aircraft) flew into a flock of birds immediately after taking off from Elmendorf Air Force Base in Alaska, putting 2 of the 4 jet engines out of commission and causing a crash of the big plane, killing all 24 crewmen aboard.
On June 13, 1996, after a tense 81 day standoff with the FBI, a group of Americans in the area of Jordan, Montana that had declared themselves “sovereign citizens” not subject to the laws of the United States, finally surrendered.
On January 21, 1997, an historic event took place when the sitting Speaker of the US House of representatives, Newton Leroy “Newt” Gingrich of Georgia, was reprimanded by his peers by a vote of 395 to 28 for “ethics violations.”
On July 20, 1997, the famous American warship, the USS Constitution, better known as “Old Ironsides,” celebrated 200 years of service by embarking on a cruise under her own sails for the first time in 116 years!
On September 6, 1997, two to two and a half billion people worldwide were glued to their TV sets watching the funeral of Princess Diana, a similar number of TV viewers that watched the 2009 funeral of pop rocker Michael Jackson.
On September 7, 1997, the latest and greatest of America’s jet fighter air superiority fighter planes first took to the sky.
On February 3, 1998, a bizarre aircraft accident occurred on the ski slopes of Italy when a USMC EA-6B Prowler electronic warfare jet flew below allowable altitude and cut the cable to a cable car carrying skiers.
On March 1, 1998, the movie industry reached a new milestone when the James Cameron epic film Titanic passed the magical $1 billion mark, the first movie to do so.
On February 6, 1998, Washington National Airport in Washington, D.C. was renamed Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.
On August 17, 1998, US President Bill Clinton admitted in a taped deposition that he had am “improper physical relationship” with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, a lie that led to his impeachment.
On September 4, 1998, a pair of Stanford University students founded what has become the premier internet search engine, Google, although Google is also heavily involved in other areas, such as software, AI, electronics, advertising, and cloud computing.
On November 19, 1998, the United States House of Representatives began hearings on the Monica Lewinsky-President Bill Clinton sex scandal that would result in Clinton being impeached for lying about the affair.
On January 4, 1999, former professional wrestler and actor Jesse Ventura was sworn in as the Governor of Minnesota.
On May 3, 1999, the state of Oklahoma experienced a catastrophic weather event known as the “1999 Oklahoma Tornado Outbreak.”
On June 12, 1999, the next day after the end of the Kosovo War, some 250 Russian peacekeeping troops occupied the Pristina International Airport ahead of the arrival of NATO troops and were to secure the arrival of reinforcements over the air.
On February 14, 2000, the American spacecraft NEAR Shoemaker orbited asteroid 433 Eros, the first spacecraft from Earth to orbit an asteroid.
On August 8, 2000, the remains of Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley were raised to the surface 136 years after this pioneering vessel was sunk, probably by itself during the US Civil War.
On September 23, 2000, journalist, author, government official, and gun control advocate, Carl Rowan, died at the age of 75.
On January 16, 2001, President Bill Clinton, in one of his final remaining acts as President of the United States, posthumously awarded former President Theodore Roosevelt the Medal of Honor, the highest military honor in the United States.
On May 15, 2001, a 47-car freight train in Walbridge, Ohio took off away from the train station sans engineer who had dismounted to set a switch.
On May 25, 2001, American mountain climber, adventurer, author, and speaker, Erik Weihenmayer, became the first blind person to reach the top of Mt. Everest in Nepal.
On September 11, 2001, the fanatical Islamist terror group, al-Qaeda, carried out coordinated attacks against the United States, resulting in the crashing of a fully occupied jetliner into the Pentagon, the hijacking and subsequent crash of another jetliner, and the crashing yet another 2 jetliners into the World Trade Center, taking down 2 of the tallest buildings in the world.
On September 20, 2001, US President George W. Bush addressed congress and the American people and declared a “War on Terror.”
On October 11, 2001, Polaroid Corporation filed for bankruptcy and a year later went out of business.
On October 28, 2001, the indie movie, Donnie Darko, was released.
On January 23, 2002, Wall Street Journal reporter, Daniel Pearl, was kidnapped in downtown Karachi, Pakistan by Islamist militants.
On January 29, 2002, US President George W. Bush coined a new phrase in his State of the Union Address to Congress, labeling Iraq, Iran, and North Korea as the “Axis of Evil.”
On May 24, 2002, emissaries of the United States and Russia signed a treaty to reduce each country’s nuclear arsenal to between 1700 and 2200 warheads.
On May 26, 2002, Interstate highway I-40 in Oklahoma was the scene of a disaster when barges towed on the Arkansas River struck a support pier on a bridge, crashing it to the water and killing 14 people.
On June 11, 2002, the House of Representatives of the United States Congress officially recognized Italian American inventor Antonio Meucci as the inventor of the telephone.
On December 23, 2002, the first known air to air battle between a manned fighter plane and an unmanned aerial drone took place in the sky above Iraq, when an Iraqi MiG-25 fighter jet shot down an American General Atomics MQ-1 Predator.
Because the Northeast blackout of August 14–16, 2003 came only two years after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the first thought in the minds of many people was that a terrorist attack had occurred.
On October 14, 2003, Chicago’s Wrigley Field was the scene of a baseball play that fit right in with the “Curse of the Billy Goat.”
On August 8, 2004, Chicago’s Little Lady, a tour boat carrying 120 passengers, was bombed by a tour bus belonging to the Dave Matthews Band.
On September 30, 2004, the AIM-54 Phoenix air to air missile was retired from service with the US Navy, having been the prime air to air weapon of the F-14 Tomcat swing wing fighter plane, the king of naval aviation from 1974 to 2006.
On October 27, 2004, the Boston Red Sox ended a World Series victory drought that went back to 1918, an incredible 86 years between Major League triumphs.
On January 12, 2005, the American space exploration agency known as NASA launched a mission called Deep Impact, a probe designed to violently impact the comet Tempel 1.
On February 16, 2005, the National Hockey League cancelled its entire 2004-2005 regular season and playoffs after locking out the players due to labor problems.
On May 21, 2005, Six Flags Great Adventure became home to the tallest roller coaster in the world.
On June 19, 2005, the United States Grand Prix in Indianapolis, Indiana, suffered a mass exodus when 14 cars running on Michelin tires withdrew from the race due to tire failures by the French tire giant.
On February 11, 2006, the sitting Vice President of the United States, Dick Cheney, accidentally shot his hunting buddy, Harry Whittington, while on a managed Quail hunt.
On August 27, 2006, Comair Flight 5191, a connecting flight from Lexington, Kentucky to Atlanta, Georgia, crashed, killing all aboard the aircraft except a single survivor.
On February 10, 2007, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination for President in the 2008 Presidential election.
On August 7, 2007, Giants slugger Barry Bonds slammed his 756^th career home run at his home field, AT&T Park, in San Francisco.
On August 16, 2008, the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Chicago, Illinois, topped out, and immediately became the tallest residence above ground level of any building in the world.
On August 17, 2008, 6 foot 4 inch tall American swimmer Michael Phelps broke the previous record held by American swimmer Mark Spitz by winning his 8^th Olympic Gold Medal at a single Olympic Games.
On September 28, 2008, the history of space exploration reached a new milestone when SpaceX, a private company, launched their Falcon 1 unmanned spacecraft, the first private spacecraft launched into orbit.
On October 16, 2008, Ohio handyman Samuel “Joe” Wurzelbacher was all the rage among supporters of Senator John McCain’s bid for the presidency.
On January 22, 2009, only a couple days after being sworn in, President Barack Obama issued an Executive Order ordering the closure of the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where suspected terrorists were being held.
On January 26, 2009, a single California woman gave birth to 8 babies at one time, becoming the first mother of octuplets that survived infancy.
On January 29, 2009, Governor of Illinois Rod Blagojevich was successfully impeached by the state legislature and booted from office for the crime of soliciting appointment as the replacement as US senator for President-elect Obama.
On December 25, 2009, one of the most bizarre terrorist plots to destroy an airliner and its passengers failed when Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was unable to get his bomb hidden in his underwear to explode.
On January 27, 2010, Apple, Incorporated introduced their industry leading line of tablet computers they called the iPad.
On February 18, 2010, the international hacker and leaker organization, WikiLeaks, released the first batch of an enormous trove of classified American documents, in fact, hundreds of thousands of top secret files turned over to WikiLeaks by a US Army soldier, Bradley Manning.
On June 4, 2010, the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket booster made its first flight, and since then has been used as the launch booster for well over 200 launches, only one of which was a failure and one other a partial failure.
On December 31, 2010, the Central and Southern portion of the US was bombarded with 37 tornadoes, leaving nine people dead, more injured, and much damage across mainly Missouri and Mississippi, but also including Arkansas, Oklahoma, Illinois, and Louisiana.
On February 27, 2011, Frank Buckles died at 110 years old, just one of the many fascinating things about his life!
On May 2, 2011, American military Special Forces carried out a surprise raid on the Abbottabad, Pakistan compound where Al Qaeda leader and mastermind of the 9/11 terror attacks in the United States, Saudi Arabian Osama bin Laden, had been hiding.
On May 11, 2011, former NBA and current European league basketball player Robert Taylor died of an apparent heart attack at his home in Puerto Rico.
On July 31, 2012, Ukrainian gymnast, Larisa Latynina, was passed as the most prolific Olympic Medal winner, when American swimmer Michael Phelps won his 19^th Olympic medal.
On August 9, 2012, Shannon Eastin became the first woman to referee an NFL football game.
On January 17, 2013, renowned American cyclist Lance Armstrong admitted on Oprah’s Next Chapter, a prime time television show, that he was, as suspected and accused, a cheater that won 7 consecutive Tour de France bicycle races through the assistance of banned drugs.
On September 12, 2013, the American space agency, NASA, reported that its spacecraft, Voyager 1, had become the first ever man-made object to leave our solar system.
On April 17, 2014, the Kepler space telescope operated by NASA confirmed the existence of Kepler-186f, the first discovery of a planet of equivalent size to Earth within the “habitable zone” of another solar system.
On May 28, 2016, animal lovers were subjected to the horror of a zoo worker from the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden shooting a beloved adult male gorilla named Harambe to death.
On September 8, 2016, NASA launched its OSIRIS-Rex mission to near-Earth asteroid 101955 Bennu with the goal of returning to Earth with a sample of the asteroid.
On November 2, 2016, the Chicago Cubs broke the “Curse of the Billy Goat,” a championship drought of 108 years, by beating the Cleveland Indians in the 2016 World Series.
On November 9, 2016, Donald John Trump, New York real estate mogul and television star, was verified as the winner of the 2016 US Presidential election.
On April 6, 2017, President Trump ordered an attack against Shayrat Airbase in Syria.
On April 9, 2017, Dr. David Dao, age 69, found out how bad flying on commercial airlines can be when he was forcibly dragged off of a United Express jet to make room for United employees.
On May 28, 2017, Japanese race car driver, Takuma Sato, won the Indianapolis 500 motor race, making history as the first Asian, and the first Japanese driver to take the big prize.
On June 27, 2017, a massive cyber attack began on Europe, the USA, and Australia, with Ukraine being the main target.
On August 8, 2017, country and pop music superstar Glen Campbell passed away.
On October 24, 2017, rock and roll and New Orleans jazz pioneer Antoine “Fats” Domino died.
On October 31, 2017, an Uzbek immigrant to the United States deliberately drove a rented truck into a New York City bicycle and jogging path, killing 8 people and injuring another 11 in a terrorist mass killing that proves bad people do not need guns to commit terrible crimes.
On December 14, 2017, the Walt Disney Company continued a trend of corporate mergers and acquisitions that are killing competition in many markets when they announced the deal to acquire the 20th Century Fox movie studio for over $52 billion.
On January 24, 2018, defrocked medical doctor Larry Nassar was sentenced to 175 years in prison for molesting American female gymnasts over the course of his career as the gymnastic team’s doctor.
On March 6, 2018, founder and former boss of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, was named by Forbes as the richest person in the world, with a net worth of $112 billion.
On June 13, 2018, Volkswagen was fined a whopping billion Euros by the EU in conjunction with an emissions tricking scheme hatched by VW to beat clean air requirements in Europe and the US.
On August 26, 2018, a nation mourns the loss of US Navy veteran John McCain, a prominent US Senator from Arizona and former Presidential candidate who finally succumbed to brain cancer on August 25, 2018, after a courageous fight.
On April 25, 2019, the National Basketball League and basketball fans everywhere, especially in Boston, were saddened by the death of legendary Boston Celtic John Havlicek.
On April 25, 2019, NBA (National Basketball Association) Hall of Famer, John Havlicek, died in Jupiter, Florida at the age of 79.
On November 21, 2019, cutting edge technology and electric vehicle producer, Tesla, proudly demonstrated their latest gem, the Cybertruck, and its alleged unbreakable windows.
On December 20, 2019, the United States Space Force became a branch of the US Military, a military that far exceeds any current competitor.
On January 16, 2020, the US Senate confirmed a new trade agreement between the US, Canada, and Mexico, aptly called the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement.
On January 26, 2020, the United States and the entire world was shocked by the news feed that basketball legend, Kobe Bryant, age 41, had died in a helicopter crash in California.
On February 29, 2020, the American Trump administration and the Afghan Islamist group known as The Taliban, met in Doha, Qatar, and signed an agreement by which the US would pull out military forces and bring an end to the longest war in US history.
On March 4, 2020, Nik Wallenda of the famous acrobat and daredevil family, became the first person to walk on a wire above the crater of the Masaya Volcano in Nicaragua.
On May 9, 2020, the unemployment rate in the United States hit the staggering number of 14.9%, the worst employment number since the Great Depression in 1939.
On May 30, 2020, the Crew Dragon Demo-2 spacecraft was launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida courtesy of a Falcon 9 booster rocket from the private firm of SpaceX.
On September 17, 2020, the National Football League (NFL) celebrated its 100th birthday!
On December 7, 2020, fighter ace and aviation record breaker, Chuck Yeager, Brigadier General US Air Force, died at the age of 97.
On January 6, 2021, a throng of supporters of President Donald Trump stormed the US Capitol in response to claims by Trump and his allies that the 2020 US Presidential election was “stolen” from Trump in favor of Joe Biden.
On January 18, 2021, the United States celebrates the birthday of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., an icon in the Civil Rights Movement and an African American man of historic importance.
On April 2, 2021, a 25 year old African American “Black Nationalist,” Noah Green, murdered a US Capitol police officer and injured another when Green drove his car into the officer and a vehicle barricade at the US Capitol.
On April 19, 2021, the aptly named Ingenuity became the first man-made aircraft to fly on any planet other than Earth.
On June 17, 2021, President Biden signed the law that made “Juneteenth,” the 19^th day of June each year, a National Holiday, the first designated as such since Martin Luther King, Jr. Day in 1983.
On August 30, 2021, the United States of America suffered one of its all-time worst humiliations when the last of the American forces were flown out of Afghanistan, a country the US had invaded in 2001 and was the scene of the longest armed conflict in American history.
On October 21, 2021, film actor Alec Baldwin fired a single shot from a movie prop pistol on the set of Rust, a movie being filmed at the Bonanza Creek Ranch in New Mexico.
On November 5, 2021, the Astroworld Festival in Houston, Texas, a rap fest, went horribly wrong when a crowd fueled by drugs and alcohol overwhelmed insufficient concert security and created a “crowd crush” that cost eight lives and injured over 300 people.
On November 15, 2021, Jury instructions and final arguments in the murder trial of Kyle Rittenhouse, 18 year old defendant who was 17 years old when he shot and killed two rioters in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and wounded another in a clear example of self-defense.
On January 2, 2022, the Omicron variant of the Covid virus was on the rise, but that was minor news compared to the top stories of 2022.
On January 13, 2022, the National Shooting Sports Foundation warned American firearms enthusiasts of an online scam targeting those looking to buy a new firearm.
On June 15, 2022, Microsoft retired its iconic internet browser, Internet Explorer, in favor of its new system, Microsoft Edge.
On August 1, 2022, NFL and especially Cleveland Browns football fans finally got the long-awaited verdict in the case of quarterback Deshaun Watson, accused by more than 2 dozen women of various levels of sexual harassment while receiving massages.
On August 2, 2022, US Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, was on a trip to Asian countries, including Taiwan, an island that officially considers itself to be the true and legitimate government of China.
On August 26, 2022, we all celebrate National Dog Day, a day invented by Colleen Paige in 2004.
NASA’s planned launch of a new gigantic rocket called Artemis scheduled for August 29, 2022 has been scrubbed due to a problem with an engine, with a new launch date scheduled for September 2, 2022.
On September 6, 2022, we celebrate National Read a Book Day, one of the truly worthwhile “days” of the year, when we are all reminded that there is more to life than television and the internet.
On January 3, 2023, we at History and Headlines just want to send out some positive thoughts to actor Jeremy Renner and athlete Damar Hamlin, both of whom have experienced potentially life-threatening accidental injuries on January 1st and January 2nd, respectively.
On January 4, 2023, the United States House of Representatives struggled to elect a new Speaker of the House to succeed Nancy Pelosi.
On January 12, 2023, Lisa Marie Presley, the only child of the King of Rock and Roll, Elvis Presley, died at the age of 54, one of the many early deaths of those related to Elvis.
On January 18, 2023, Americans celebrate another National Thesaurus Day, a day to be thankful for that reference book that helps us find other ways to say the same thing.
On January 24, 2023, Americans celebrate National Peanut Butter Day, a day when we can savor the flavor of our favorite bread spread that lends itself to making cookies, pies, candies, and other foodstuffs.
On January 24, 2023, the nominations for the Academy Awards, better known as the “Oscars,” had been released!
On January 24, 2023, the dreaded Doomsday Clock that charts the danger of nuclear war was moved to within 90 seconds of “Midnight,” the ominous harbinger of nuclear disaster.
February 1^st, 2023 is the anniversary of the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster.
On February 2, 2023, while the US celebrated Groundhog Day, more serious Americans were celebrating a much more important “national day,” namely National Heavenly Hash Day!
On February 3, 2023, we asked some questions about notable news stories from this first week of February 2023.
On February 5, 2023, Americans were flooded with a variety of opinions about the Chinese “spy” balloon that had crossed much of the US and was shot down by a US fighter plane off the coast of South Carolina the previous day.
On February 5, 2023, America was abuzz with partisan bickering over the way President Biden handled the alleged Chinese spy balloon shot down on February 4^th.
An article, published on February 5, 2023, presents a compilation of our three recent videos that in some way mention the 2023 China balloon incident.
On February 7, 2023, US President Joe Biden gave his second State of the Union Address.
On February 18, 2023, the USA celebrated another National Battery Day!
On March 5, 2023, Americans celebrated yet another of those strange “National Days” that you may not be aware of, this time, honoring that fabled alcoholic beverage, Absinthe, known as “The Green Fairey.”
On March 8, 2023, Dr. Zar, wished all of his family, friends, colleagues, students, and subscribers who are women a Happy International Women’s Day!
On March 11, 2023, Americans celebrate another National Worship of Tools Day, a day in which professional craftsmen and do it yourselfers alike can glory in the inventions of their favorite tools.
On March 20, 2023, whether we celebrated it or not, the Vernal Equinox marked the end of Winter and the beginning of Spring in the Northern Hemisphere.
On April 4, 2023, Finland became the 31^st member of the NATO alliance, a pact originally meant to counter the threat from the USSR, consisting of 12 European and North American nations.
On April 4, 2023, former President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, was arraigned in New York City on charges of falsifying records.
On April 20, 2023, the giant SpaceX Starship rocket booster vehicle proudly made its first flight, although the huge and hugely expensive rocket blew up only four minutes into that maiden flight!
On May 13, 2023, Americans can celebrate the annual National Train Day, a day invented by Amtrak back in 2008, but cancelled for 2016 due to budget cuts!
On May 16, 2023, Americans celebrate National Barbecue Day, something that means different things in different parts of the country.
On May 29, 2023, Americans celebrated National Paperclip Day, possibly the single most useful implement ever devised.
On June 3, 2023, the world celebrates Chimborazo Day, a day to admire and adore the highest mountain on Earth.
On June 3, 2023, Dr. Matt Zar thanked the first 30,000 subscribers to our YouTube channel (a milestone reached on June 1, 2023) and also shared with you that two of our favorite history themed YouTube channels also happen to be run by authors named Matt.
On June 16, 2023, Warner Brothers and DC Studios released yet another big budget superhero movie, in this case, The Flash.
On June 18, 2023, we celebrated National Turkey Lovers’ Day, and yes, we too love Turkey!
On June 23, 2023, Americans celebrated National Detroit Style Pizza Day, a day to honor perhaps America’s favorite food in a unique style.
On July 6, 2023, we sadly and gladly watched the final Harrison Ford version of Indiana Jones, this time in the blockbuster film Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, the fifth film in the exciting action series.
On August 3, 2023, as with every First Thursday in August, Americans celebrated National IPA Day.
As September 23, 2023 marked the ten-year anniversary of the debut of our website in September of 2013, we presented our YouTube channel’s ten most popular adaptations of our articles in their historical chronological order.
On October 2, 2023, Americans celebrated National Name Your Car Day.
On October 9, 2023, the second Monday in October, we once again celebrated National Kick Butt Day, a day not for kicking other people but for kicking yourself into gear to accomplish some personal or professional achievement.
On November 29, 2023, we celebrated National Package Protection Day, an annual event since 2016, founded by Ring.com, a company known for doorbell cameras.
On February 16, 2024, we celebrated another National Do a Grouch a Favor Day.
On March 1, 2024, American sci-fi movie fans were treated to the opening of the latest of the movies based on Frank Herbert’s 1965 novel, Dune.
On March 7, 2024, the 46th president of the United States of America, 81-year-old Joe Biden, a Democrat currently running for reelection, gave the 2024 State of the Union Address in the House Chamber at the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C.
On March 22, 2024, the fifth movie in the Ghostbusters franchise made its wide release across the United States, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, a movie featuring some of the original characters and actors from the 1984 smash hit film as well as some of the new crew introduced in the 2021 third edition in the lineal series, Ghostbusters: Afterlife.
On April 3, 2024, Americans celebrated National Walking Day, a day celebrated only since 2007 in spite of being an activity people have been doing since proto-humans came down from the trees.
On April 8, 2024, Dr. Zar, along with his miniature dachshund, watched the solar eclipse from within the zone of totality that included his home in Ashland, Ohio.
On September 29, 2024, we celebrated another National Coffee Day, reveling in our appreciation for that “Cup of Joe,” “Shot of Caffeine,” “Java,” “Go Juice,” or whatever you want to call it.
On February 27, 2025, a collaboration of several history YouTubers attempted to help promote and uplift the history black people in the United States and diaspora as well as their ancestors both in and out of Africa.

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Historical Evidence

For more information, please see…

Foner, Eric. Give Me Liberty!: An American History (Seagull Fourth Edition) (Vol. 2). W. W. Norton & Company, 2013).

The featured image in this timeline, an 1872 painting by John Gast titled American Progress depicting Columbia as the “Spirit of the Frontier” carrying telegraph lines across the Western frontier to fulfill Manifest Destiny, is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author’s life plus 70 years or less. This image is available from the United States Library of Congress‘s Prints and Photographs division under the digital ID ppmsca.09855.

Timeline of American History since the Civil War

A Brief History

Digging Deeper

Historical Evidence

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Timeline of American History since the Civil War

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