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Period: 1492 to 1504
Columbus' four voyages
Columbus made four trips across the Atlantic Ocean from Spain in 1492, 1493, 1498, and 1502. He want to find a direct water route west from Europe to Asia but he never ended up making it to Asia and instead found the Americas. -
Period: 1519 to 1521
Cortes conquers the Aztecs
The Spanish conquest of the Aztecs in 1521, led by Hernando Cortes, was a landmark victory for the European settlers. Following the Spanish arrival in Mexico, a huge battle erupted between the army of Cortes and the Aztec people under the rule of Montezuma. -
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Roanoke Island Colony
The Roanoke Island colony, the first English settlement in the New World, was founded by English explorer Sir Walter Raleigh in August 1585. Known as the "lost colony" a group of about 115 English settlers arrived on Roanoke Island in August of 1587. Later that year John White, the governor of the new colony, sailed to England to get supplies but when he came back the whole colony was gone without a trace. The only thing they found was the word Croatoan carved in a wooden post. -
Jamestown, Virginia founded
The Virginia Company of England made a proposition which was to sail to the new, mysterious land, which they called Virginia in her of Elizabeth I, the Virgin Queen, and begin a settlement. They established Jamestown, Virginia, on May 14, 1607, the first permanent British settlement in North America. -
First Africans arrive in Virginia
Virginia's first Africans arrived at Point comfort, on the James River, late in august 1619. There 20 Africans from the English ship White Lion were sold in exchange for food and some were transported to Jamestown, where thy were sold again, likely into slavery -
Virginia House of Burgesses formed
The first democratically-elected legislative body in British North America. This group of representatives met from 1619 until 1776. The members, or burgesses, were elected from each county in Virginia with each county sending two burgesses -
Pilgrims found Plymouth, MA
First colonial settlement in New England. The settlers were a group of about 100 Puritan Separatist Pilgrims, who sailed on the Mayflower and settled on what is now Cape Cod bay, Massachusetts. They need the first town after their port of departure. -
Puritan migration to Massachusetts
The term "Great Migration" usually refers ti the migration in this period of English Puritans to Massachusetts and the West Indies, especially Barbados. -
Calvert found Maryland
George Calvert took an interest in the British colonization of the Americas, at first for commercial reasons and later to create a refuge for persecuted English catholics. Calvert died 5 weeks before the Charter was sealed and left the settlement of the Maryland colony to his son Cecil -
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Pequot Indian War, Maryland
An armed conflict that took place between 1636 ad 1638 in New England between the Pequot tribe and an alliance of the colonists of the Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, and Saybrook colonies and their allies from Narragansett and Mohegan tribes. -
Anne Hutchinson convicted of heresy
Hutchinson refused to recant and accepted her exile. She the declared that her knowledge of the truth came as direct revelation from God, a heresy in Puritan Massachusetts -
Fundamental Orders of Connecticut
An early colonial constitution that established a rule of law that governed the tows of Wethersfield, Windsor, and Hartford, beginning in 1639 -
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English civil war
A period of armed conflict and political turmoil between 1642 and 1660 which pitted supporters of Parliament against the Crown, the trial and execution of Charles I, the replacement of the monarchy with the Commonwealth of England, the rise of Oliver Cromwell to a virtual military, dictatorship, and the eventual restoration of the monarchy. -
First Navigation Act
They were efforts to put the theory of mercantilism into actual practice. Beginning in 1650, Parliament acted to combat the threat of the rapidly growing Dutch carrying trade. Later laws were passed in 1651, 1660, 1662, 1663, 1670, and 1673. -
English conquer New Netherlands > NY
King Charles II wanted to control the Atlantic coast of North America. He wanted more settlements, more lands rich in natural resources, and control of the fur trade. -
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King Philip's (Metacomet) War, MA
Marked the last major effort by the native Americans of southern New England to drive out the English settlers. With tensions spilling over following the collapse of trade partnerships and aggressive expansion of colonist territories, King Philip led a bloody uprising of Wampanoag, Nipmuck, Pocumtuck, and Narragnsett tribes. -
Bacon's Rebellion
The government in Virginia became frightened by the threat of Civil War. Bacon's Rebellion was the first rebellion in the American Colonies. -
Pennsylvania settled
On March 4, 1681, Charles II of England granted the Province of Pennsylvania to William Penn to settle a debt of 16,000 pounds that the king owed to Penn's father. Penn founded a proprietary colony that provided a place of religious freedom for quakers. -
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English Glorious Revolution and Bill of Rights
The 1689 English bill of Rights was a British Law, passed by the Parliament of Great Britain in 1689 that declared the rights and liberties of the people and settling the succession in William III and Mary II following the Glorious Revolution. -
Massachusetts becomes a royal colony
The Charter of 1691 merged the Plymouth colony and Maine into the Massachusetts Bay colony. -
Salem witch hunts
These trials occurred in colonial Massachusetts between 1692 and 1693. More than 200 people were accused of practicing witchcraft and 20 were executed. Eventually, the colony admitted the trials were a mistake and compensated the families of those convictied. -
Period: to
Queen Anne's War
The counterpart of the war of the Spanish Succession in Europe. Under the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, Britain also acquired Newfoundland and the Hudson Bay region from France during this important conflict in the French and Indian Wars. -
England, Wales, and Scotland unite into the UK
On May 1, 1707, the United Kingdom of Great Britain came into being, the result of Acts of Union being passed by the parliaments of England and Scotland to ratify the 1706 Treaty of Union and so unite the two kingdoms. -
Period: to
George I's reign
The King of Great Britain and Ireland and ruler of the Duchy and Electorate of Brunswick-Luneburg in the Holy Roman Empire form 1698 until his death -
Period: to
George II's reign
King of Great Britain and Ireland, Duke of Brunswick-Luneburg and a prince-elector of the Holy Roman Empire from June 11 1727 until his death in 1760 -
Georgia founded
It had been more than five decades since the British had established a new colony, James Edward Oglethorpe, a philanthropist and an English general, along with twenty-one other men, created a charter to settle a new colony which they named Georgia in honor of Kind George II -
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First Great Awakening
The most important event in American religion during the eighteenth century, was a series of emotional religious revivals that spread across the American colonies in the late 1730s and 1740s. -
John Peter Zenger trial
The trial of John Peter Zenger, a New York printer, was an important step toward this most precious freedom for American colonists. John Peter Zenger was a German immigrant who printed a publication called The New York Weekly Journal -
Stono Rebellion, NC
A slave rebellion that began on 9 September 1739, In the colony of South Carolina. It was the largest slave uprising in the British mainland colonies, with 25 white people and 35 to 50 black people killed. -
Period: to
King George's War
American phase of the War of the Austrian Succession, third and inconclusive struggle between France and Great Britain for mastery of the North American continent. The was was characterized by bloody border raids by both sides with the aid of their Indian allies. -
Albany Congress
On July 10, 1754, representatives from seven of the British North American colonies adopted the plan. Although never carried out, the Albany Plan was the first important proposal to conceive of the colonies as a collective whole united under one government.
