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Bessemer Process
A process by which Andrew Carnegie made steel stronger and cheaper; allowed for massive industrial growth of the U.S. The Bessemer process was the first inexpensive industrial process for the mass production of steel from molten pig iron before the development of the open hearth furnace. The key principle is removal of impurities from the iron by oxidation with air being blown through the molten iron. The oxidation also raises the temperature of the iron mass and keeps it molten. -
YMCA
The YMCA was founded on June 6, 1844, in response to bad social conditions arising in the big cities at the end of the Industrial Revolution. Growth of the railroads and centralization of commerce and industry brought many rural young men who needed jobs into cities. Far from home and family, these young men often lived at the workplace. Outside the shop things were bad -- open sewers, pickpockets, thugs, beggars, drunks, lovers for hire and abandoned children running wild by the thousands. -
Cornelius Vanderbilt
Shipping and railroad tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt was a self-made multi-millionaire who became one of the wealthiest Americans of the 19th century.After working as a steamship captain, Vanderbilt went into business for himself in the late 1820s, and eventually became one of the country’s largest steamship operators. In the process, the Commodore, as he was publicly nicknamed, gained a reputation for being fiercely competitive and ruthless. -
Period: to
Transforming the West
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Homestead Act
The Homestead Act was used to populate the West. The west was a new place to most so offering free land was a good advantage to win these movers over. Settlers that moved west were guaranteed 160 acres of free land. You could go from being poor to having new land in this area of empty space. Many people in the west were farmers and made good use of this free land. The Homestead Act was a good maneuver to get settlers to take a risk and move everything they had. -
Morrill Land Grant College Act
The Morrill Land Grant College Act was established on July 2 1862, its purpose was to provide education to the people in the states that were involved in agriculture, home economics, mechanical arts, and other professions that were a part of the states at the time. The Land Grant act was introduced by a congressman from Vermont named Justin Smith Morrill. -
Period: to
Becoming an Industrial Power
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Knights of Labor
The Knights of Labor began as a secret society of tailors in Philadelphia in 1869. The organization grew slowly during the hard years of the 1870s, but worker militancy rose toward the end of the decade, especially after the great railroad strike of 1877, and the Knights’ membership rose with it. Grand Master Workman Terence V. Powderly took office in 1879, and under his leadership the Knights flourished; by 1886 the group had 700,000 members. -
Transcontinental Railroad
The Transcontinental Railroad, crossing the western half of America was pieced together between 1863 and 1869. The eastern part worked by the Union Pacific, began construction from Omaha and extended 1,087 miles west. The western part, accomplished by the Central Pacific, continued east for 690 miles. It was 1,776 miles long and served the Atlantic and Pacific shores of the United States to be combined by rail for the first time in history. -
Promontory Point
It was the site of the dramatic completion, on 10 May 1869, of the first transcontinental railroad, which linked the Union Pacific on the east and the Central Pacific on the west. A giant crowd gathered to witness the final ceremonies. Following prayers and brief but grandiloquent speeches, the president of the Central Pacific, Leland Stanford, using a silver sledgehammer, nervously drove the last spike, made of gold, into a polished California laurel tie. -
The Ghost Dance Movement
The Ghost Dance originated among the Paiute Indians However, the tide of the movement came in 1889 with a Paiute shaman Wovoka. Wovoka had a vision during a sun eclipse in 1889. In this vision he saw the second coming of Christ and received warning about the evils of white man. The religion promised an apocalypse that would destroy the earth and the white man. The earth then would be restored to the Native Americans. -
Standard Oil Trust
The standard oil trust was created by John Rockefeller. Rockefeller had built up his own company buy buying other companies eventually becoming the largest oil refining firm in the world. The company faced legal issues in 1890 and this lead to the Sherman Antitrust Act. The standard oil trust had become an industrial monster and the Antitrust act had established a strong foothold in the U.S. -
Temperance
Temperance movement, movement dedicated to promoting moderation and, more often, complete abstinence in the use of intoxicating liquor. Although an abstinence pledge had been introduced by churches as early as 1800, the earliest temperance organizations seem to have been those founded at Saratoga, New York, in 1808 and in Massachusetts in 1813. The movement spread rapidly under the influence of the churches; by 1833 there were 6,000 local societies in several U.S. states. -
Frances Willard
Willard participated in the founding convention of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union and was elected the first corresponding secretary of the WCTU. She worked hard during these early years to broaden the WCTU’s reform movement to include such things as woman’s suffrage, woman’s rights, and labor reforms. She later became an anti-lynching advocate as well. The support for this broader view of the WCTU’s reform work became clear when Willard was elected President of the WCTU in 1879. -
Period: to
The Gilded Age
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Exodusters
Exoduster was a name given to blacks who migrated from states along the Mississippi River to Kansas in the late nineteenth century. It was the first general migration of black people following the Civil War. Liberal land laws offered blacks the opportunity to escape the racism and oppression of the post-war South and become owners of their own tracts of private farmland. For people who had spent their lives working the lands of white masters with no freedom or pay, the opportunities meant a lot. -
Thomas Edison
More than 150 years ago, inventors began working on a bright idea that would have a dramatic impact on how we use energy in our homes and offices. This invention changed the way we design buildings, increased the length of the average workday and new businesses. Like all great inventions, the light bulb can’t be credited to one inventor. It was a series of small improvements on the ideas of previous inventors that have led to the light bulbs we use in our homes today. -
Assassination of President Garfield
On Sep. 19, 1881, James Abram Garfield, the 20th president died. His final weeks were an agonizing march towards oblivion that began on July 2, while preparing to leave Washington for a family vacation to the New Jersey seashore. A man of great energy, eloquence and charm, Garfield was in a superlative mood that morning. At the breakfast table, he horsed around with his two teenaged sons while singing a few patter songs written by the musical kings of his day, Gilbert and Sullivan. -
Chinese Exclusion Act
The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was the first significant law restricting immigration into the United States. Those on the West Coast were especially prone to attribute declining wages and economic ills on the despised Chinese workers. Although the Chinese composed only .002 percent of the nation's population, Congress passed the exclusion act to placate worker demands and assuage prevalent concerns about maintaining white "racial purity." -
Buffalo Bill
William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody opened Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show on May 19, 1883 at Omaha, Nebraska. The idea had been around for a long time. The earliest event to Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show may actually have been staged in France in the middle of the sixteenth century when fifty Brazilian Indians were brought to Rouen to populate a replica of their village. Many people around the world came to watch this event as entertainment. Over the years the show modernized and became more popular. -
Cocaine Toothache Drops
Cocaine in the 1800's was considered a cure for many things and it also served as anesthesia to help cure pain during dental procedures. these procedures allowed for teeth and nerves to be removed with little to no pain. These adverts for quack cures claimed the products would heal a long list of illnesses including cancer, liver disease and coughs. But the miracle cures were often loaded with substances such as cocaine, morphine and alcohol. -
Coca-Cola
Coca Cola was invented by the pharmacist John Pemberton. He had failed as a pharmacist, despite inventing many drugs that still did not make profit. Soda became popular at parties and socials, and he used this trend as a better way to start a business by advertising a new fountain drink. this is when he invented coca cola. -
Dawes Severalty Act
The Dawes Act of 1887 authorized the federal government to break up tribal lands by partitioning them into individual plots. Only those Native American Indians who accepted the individual allotments were allowed to become US citizens. The objective of the Dawes Act was to assimilate Native American Indians into mainstream US society by annihilating their cultural and social traditions. Over ninety million acres of tribal land were stripped from Native American Indians and sold to non-natives. -
Kodak Camera
George Eastman was the inventor of the Kodak Camera. Prior to planning a trip, Eastman became frustrated by the excessive materials needed to operate a camera. He began doing some research and developed a new more efficient camera that would make photography less of a hassle to deal with while traveling. -
Sherman Anti-Trust Act
The first law to limit monopolies in the United States. This wanted to create a fairer competition in the workforce and to limit any take-over's of departments of merchandise.One of the act’s main provisions outlaws all combinations that restrain trade between states or with foreign nations. This prohibition applies not only to formal cartels but also to any agreement to fix prices, limit industrial output, share markets, or exclude competition. -
Period: to
Imperial America
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Ida B. Wells
Ida Bell Wells, better known as Ida B. Wells, was an African-American journalist, abolitionist and feminist who led an anti-lynching crusade in the United States in the 1890s. She went on to found and become integral in groups striving for African-American justice. Wells wrote articles decrying the lynching of her friend and the wrongful deaths of other African Americans. Putting her own life at risk, she spent two months traveling in the South, gathering information on other lynching incidents. -
The Depression of 1893
The Panic of 1893 was a serious economic depression in the United States that began in that year. Similar to the Panic of 1873, this panic was marked by the collapse of railroad overbuilding and shaky railroad financing which set off a series of bank failures. Until the Great Depression, the Panic of '93 was considered the worst depression the United States had ever experienced. -
Yellow Journalism
Yellow journalism, the use of lurid features and sensationalized news in newspaper publishing to attract readers and increase circulation. The phrase was coined in the 1890s to describe the tactics employed in furious competition between two New York City newspapers, the World and the Journal. The era of yellow journalism may be said to have ended shortly after the turn of the century, with the World’s gradual retirement from the competition in sensationalism. -
The Radio
The radio was used extensively during the 1920’s which altered society’s culture. Society’s culture was significantly affected by the radio because the radio allowed people to listen to new entertainment. Radio became deeply integrated into people’s lives during the 1920’s. It transformed the daily lifestyles of its listeners. Radio altered the definition of fame and celebrity which were acquiring greater worth during the 1920’s. -
Period: to
The Progressive Era
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Klondike Gold Rush
The radio was used extensively during the 1920’s which altered society’s culture. Society’s culture was significantly affected by the radio because the radio allowed people to listen to new entertainment. Radio became deeply integrated into people’s lives during the 1920’s. It transformed the daily lifestyles of its listeners. Radio altered the definition of fame and celebrity which were acquiring greater worth during the 1920’s. -
Election of 1896
The United States presidential election of 1896 saw Republican McKinley defeat William Jennings Bryan in a campaign considered to be one of the most dramatic and complex in history. The 1896 campaign is often considered by political scientists to be a realigning election that ended the old Third Party System and began the Fourth Party System. -
Plessy v. Ferguson
Plessy v. Ferguson was a supreme court case that focused on Jim Crow railroad cars in Louisiana. The Court had decided by 7 to 1 that legislation could not overcome racial attitudes because of how people had been used to racism during the decade and it became constitutional to have "separate but equal" schools, hospitals, and facilities for black and whites. Scotus thought having separate but equal resources would help, But instead divided whites from colored people even more. -
U.S.S Maine Incident
The U.S. battleship Maine exploded and sank in Havana Harbor; 260 Americans died. During this time media played a big role in story telling, so many people believed the Spanish sunk the ship.It was later found that it was an internal explosion caused by a fire in the coal bunker. This was the last straw for Americans especially right after they told the Spanish to stop sinking their boats. The sinking of the U.S.S. Maine provided an excuse for those anxious for war with Spain. -
Rough Riders
A group of American volunteers that formed to fight at San Juan Hill in Cuba. Many of them were cowboys, ex-convicts, and other rugged men. Colonel Leonard Wood led the group. These courageous men led an uphill victory in the fight at San Juan Hill. This event had a big impact in the Spanish-American war. This also cause Teddy Roosevelt to become famous. They were named "Wood's Weary Walkers" because by the time they got to Cuba to fight most of their horses were gone. -
Treaty of Paris
This treaty confirmed the terms of the armistice concerning Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Guam. American negotiators had startled the Spanish by demanding that they also cede the Philippines to the U.S, but an offer of 20 million for the islands softened Spain's resistance. This agreement between the two sides ended the feuds and gave rules in order to keep peace with each other. The Spanish accepted the Americans terms. -
William Randolph Hearst
William Randolph Hearst published the largest chain of American newspapers in the late 19th century, and was a big part in the creation of yellow journalism. Yellow Journalism showed the people the problems that would have been kept secret from the people. This media was also responsible for blaming the U.S.S Maine incident on the Spanish. This changed America by giving people more knowledge of what was going on around them. -
George Dewey
A United States naval officer remembered for his victory at Manila Bay in the Spanish-American War, U.S. naval commander who led the American attack on the Philippines. He was admiral of the Navy, and the only person in history to hold that rank. Dewey became famous for his bold acts during war that he was able to become a political character later on. -
Battle of Manila Bay
In the Philippines, the U.S. Asiatic Squadron destroyed the Spanish Pacific fleet in the first major battle of the Spanish-American War. This great start in the war gave the United States the upper hand for the remainder of the Spanish-American war. The United States went on to win the war, which ended Spanish colonial rule in the Americas and resulted in U.S. acquisition of territories in the western Pacific and Latin America. -
Open Door Policy
These Open Door Notes aimed to secure international agreement to the U.S. policy of promoting equal opportunity for international trade and commerce in China, and respect for China’s administrative and territorial integrity. British and American policies toward China had long operated under similar principles, but once Hay put them into writing, the “Open Door” became the official U.S. policy towards the Far East in the first half of the 20th century. -
Henry Cabot Lodge
Henry Cabot Lodge was a Republican who disagreed with the Versailles Treaty, and who was the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He mostly disagreed with the section that called for the League to protect a member who was being threatened. -
Boxer Rebellion
The Boxer Rebellion was a secret Chinese organization called the Society of the Righteous and Harmonious Fists led an uprising in northern China against the spread of Western and Japanese influence there. The rebels, referred to by Westerners as Boxers because they performed physical exercises they believed would make them able to withstand bullets, killed foreigners and Chinese Christians and destroyed foreign property.The government secretly funded the uprising of this dangerous group. -
Child Labor
In the late 1700's and early 1800's, power-driven machines replaced hand labor for making most manufactured items. Factories began to spring up everywhere, first in England and then in the United States. The factory owners found a new source of labor to run their machines — children. Operating the power-driven machines did not require adult strength, and children could be hired more cheaply than adults. By the mid-1800's, child labor was a major problem. -
Carrie A. Nation
Prohibitionist Carry Nation smashes up the bar at the Carey Hotel in Wichita, Kansas, causing several thousand dollars in damage and landing in jail. Nation, who was released shortly after the incident, became famous for carrying a hatchet and wrecking saloons as part of her anti-alcohol crusade. -
Platt Amendment
This amendment to the new Cuban constitution authorized U.S. intervention in Cuba to protect its interests. This allowed the U.S military to intervene in Cuba if a problem was to occur. Cuba pledged not to make treaties with other countries that might compromise its independence, and it granted naval bases to the United States, most notable being Guantanamo Bay. This amendment was later repealed in 1934. -
Teddy Roosevelt
The young Republican politician Theodore Roosevelt unexpectedly became the 26th president of the United States in 1901, after the assassination of McKinley. Young and physically robust, he brought a new energy to the White House, and won a second term on his own merits in 1904. Roosevelt confronted the bitter struggle between management and labor head-on and became known as the great “trust buster” for his strenuous efforts to break up industrial combinations under the Sherman Antitrust Act. -
Pure Food and Drug Act
The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 passed in the U.S. House of Representatives. Muckraking journalists had long reported on the appallingly unsanitary conditions of the country’s manufacturing plants. But it wasn’t until the public outcry following the publication of Upton Sinclair’s "The Jungle" that Congress moved on legislation that would prevent “the manufacture, sale, or transportation of adulterated or misbranded or poisonous or deleterious foods, drugs or medicines, and liquors.” -
Meat Inspection Act
Meat Inspection Act of 1906, U.S. legislation, signed by Pres. Theodore Roosevelt on June 30, 1906, that prohibited the sale of adulterated or misbranded livestock and derived products as food and ensured that livestock were slaughtered and processed under sanitary conditions. The law reformed the meatpacking industry, mandating that the U.S. Department of Agriculture inspect all cattle, swine, sheep, goats, and horses both before and after they were slaughtered and processed for consumption. -
Great White Fleet
The Great White Fleet, consisting of 14,000 sailors on 16 battleships and accompanying vessels, was sent around the world for fourteen months by President Roosevelt. The fleet's journey started on December 16, 1907, and concluded on February 22, 1909. Called the Great White Fleet because the ships were painted white instead of modern gray, the fleet covered 43,000 miles and made twenty port calls on six different continents. -
Paper Sons
From 1910 to 1940, Chinese immigrants were detained and interrogated at the U.S. Immigration Station located on Angel Island in the bay of San Francisco. They were detained for weeks, months and sometimes even years. Those who did not pass the scrutiny of the interrogations were deported back to China. Several historical events created these documents that would allow individuals to sell and purchase these “paper son” certificates. -
President Woodrow Wilson
Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924), the 28th U.S. president, served in office from 1913 to 1921 and led America through World War I (1914-1918). An advocate for democracy and world peace, Wilson is often ranked by historians as one of the nation’s greatest presidents. On October 2, he suffered a stroke that left him partially paralyzed. Wilson’s condition was kept largely hidden from the public, and his wife worked behind the scenes to fulfill a number of his administrative duties. -
Panama Canal
The United States built the Panama Canal to have a quicker passage to the Pacific from the Caribbean and vice versa. It cost 40 million dollars to build. Colombians would not let Americans build the canal, but then with the assistance of the United States a Panamanian Revolution occurred. The new ruling people allowed the United States to build the canal. This man-made creation made it faster to transport goods on the waterway. -
Trench Warfare
Trench warfare, warfare in which opposing armed forces attack, counterattack, and defend from relatively permanent systems of trenches dug into the ground. The opposing systems of trenches are usually close to one another. Trench warfare is resorted to when the superior firepower of the defense compels the opposing forces to “dig in” so extensively as to sacrifice their mobility in order to gain protection. -
Ludlow Massacre
Ludlow Massacre, attack on striking coal miners and their families by the Colorado National Guard and Colorado Fuel and Iron Company guards at Ludlow, Colorado, resulting in the deaths of 25 people, including 11 children. About 10,000 miners under the direction of the United Mine Workers of America had been on strike since September 13, 1913, protesting low pay and abysmal working conditions in the coalfields of Colorado. -
Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand
Later that day, on the way to visit the injured officer, the archduke’s procession took a wrong turn at the junction of Appel quay and Franzjosefstrasse, where one of Cabrinovic’s cohorts, 19-year-old Gavrilo Princip, happened to be loitering. Seeing his opportunity, Princip fired into the car, shooting Franz Ferdinand and Sophie at point-blank range. Princip then turned the gun on himself, but was prevented from shooting it by a bystander who threw himself upon the young assassin. -
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World War I
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Bombing of Lusitania
The Germans started out by attacking many of the Allies' merchant ships, but instead they bombed the Lusitania, which was a British passenger ship. Along with the innocent British men, there were American men who also died in the bombing. This aggravated many Americans and many more anti-German feelings arose in the United States. With this, many Americans wanted to fight back against Germany. -
Great Immigration
The Great Migration was the relocation of more than 6 million African Americans from the rural South to the cities of the North, Midwest and West from about 1916 to 1970. Driven from their homes by unsatisfactory economic opportunities and harsh segregationist laws, many blacks headed north, where they took advantage of the need for industrial workers that first arose during the First World War. -
Tanks
The tank had an interesting role in World War One. The tank was first used at the little known Battle of Flers. It was then used with less success at the Battle of the Somme. Though the tank was highly unreliable – as one would expect from a new machine – it did a great deal to end the horrors of trench warfare and brought back some mobility to the Western Front. -
Mustard Gas
The Germans used mustard gas for the first time during war in 1917. They outfitted artillery shells and grenades with mustard gas that they fired in the vicinity of the troop target. After encountering several attacks, the Allies referred to mustard gas as Hot Stuff. By the end of the war, more than two dozen chemical agents had injured 1 million soldiers and civilians, killed 100,000 people and earned the well-deserved title of weapons of mass destruction. -
Zimmerman Telegram
The Zimmermann Telegram was a telegram to Mexico from Germany. It told Mexico of Germany's plan to bomb some ships with their U-Boats. In the telegram, Germany was asking whether, if America joins from the attack, Mexico would join the war as an ally to Germany. But the telegram was intercepted in England and eventually, it was decoded. After being decoded, it was shown to the U.S. The Americans were very angry, and had many anti-German feelings growing. -
Shellshock
In the wake of World War I, some veterans returned wounded, but not with obvious physical injuries. Instead, their symptoms were similar to those that had previously been associated with hysterical women – most commonly amnesia, or some kind of paralysis or inability to communicate with no clear physical cause. Shell shock was first thought to be the result of hidden damage to the brain caused by the impact of the big guns. -
Spanish Flu
The Spanish flu pandemic, the deadliest in history, infected an estimated 500 million people worldwide, and killed an estimated 20 million to 50 million victims, including some 675,000 Americans. At the time, there were no effective drugs or vaccines to treat this killer flu strain. Citizens were ordered to wear masks, schools, theaters and businesses were shuttered and bodies piled up in makeshift morgues before the virus ended its deadly global march. -
Argonne Forest
on the morning of September 26, 1918, after a six-hour-long bombardment over the previous night, more than 700 Allied tanks, followed closely by infantry troops, advance against German positions in the Argonne Forest and along the Meuse River. Building on the success of earlier Allied offensives at Amiens and Albert during the summer of 1918, the Meuse-Argonne offensive, carried out by 37 French and American divisions, was even more ambitious. -
Nativism
Nativism, in general, refers to a policy or belief that protects or favors the interest of the native population of a country over the interests of immigrants. In the United States, greatest nativist sentiment coincided with the great waves of 19th-century European immigration on the East Coast and, to a lesser extent, with the arrival of Chinese immigrants on the West Coast. -
Harlem Reneissance
The Harlem Renaissance was the development of the Harlem neighborhood in New York City as a black cultural mecca in the early 20th Century and the subsequent social and artistic explosion that resulted. Lasting roughly from the 1910s through the mid-1930s, the period is considered a golden age in African American culture, manifesting in literature, music, stage performance and art. -
The Lost Generation
The generation was “lost” in the sense that its inherited values were no longer relevant in the postwar world and because of its spiritual alienation from a United States that, basking under Pres. Warren G. Harding’s “back to normalcy” policy, seemed to its members to be hopelessly provincial, materialistic, and emotionally barren. The term embraces F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Dos Passos, E.E. Cummings, and many other writers who made Paris the centre of their literary activities in the 1920s. -
Al Capone
In 1920 during the height of Prohibition, Capone’s multi-million dollar Chicago operation in bootlegging, prostitution and gambling dominated the organized crime scene. Capone was responsible for many brutal acts of violence, mainly against other gangsters. The most famous of these was the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre in 1929, in which he ordered the assassination of seven rivals. Capone was never indicted for his racketeering but was finally brought to justice for income-tax evasion in 1931. -
18th Amendment
The Eighteenth Amendment is the only Amendment to ever have been repealed from the United States Constitution–via the inclusion of the Twenty-First Amendment. The 18th Amendment called for the banning of the manufacture, sale, or transportation of alcoholic beverages. Known as national Prohibition, the Eighteenth Amendment banned “intoxicating liquors” with the exception of those used for religious rites. -
19th Amendment
On this date, Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby certified that the 19th Amendment—extending the vote to women—was ratified as part of the Constitution. The State of Tennessee ratified the amendment on August 18, 1920. More than a year earlier, the House voted to approve the amendment on May 21, 1919. Introduced by Woman Suffrage Committee Chairman James R. Mann of Illinois, the Susan B. Anthony Amendment was successfully pushed by suffrage lobbyists. -
Speakeasies
The result of Prohibition was a major and permanent shift in American social life. The illicit bars, also referred to as “blind pigs” and “gin joints,” multiplied, especially in urban areas. They ranged from fancy clubs with jazz bands and ballroom dance floors to dingy backrooms, basements and rooms inside apartments. No longer segregated from drinking together, men and women reveled in speakeasies and another Prohibition-created venue, the house party. -
Marcus Garvey
Born in Jamaica, Marcus Garvey became a leader in the black nationalist movement by applying the economic ideas of Pan-Africanists to the immense resources available in urban centers. After arriving in New York in, he founded the Negro World newspaper, an international shipping company called Black Star Line and the Negro Factories Corporation. Indicted for mail fraud by the U.S. Justice Department in 1923, he spent two years in prison before being deported to Jamaica, and later died in London. -
Great Depression in Germany
The government was unable to deal with the economic crisis left by the war. The economic situation in Germany briefly improved between 1924-1929. Though, Germany in the 1920s remained unstable. The democracy could not withstand the Great Depression. The disaster began in the U.S., the leading economy in the world. The Wall Street stock exchange collapsed in 1929 and the American economy collapsed with it. This event was known as the Wall Street Crash, and was the start of the Great Depression. -
Immigration Act of 1924
The new law reflected the desire of Americans to isolate themselves from the world after fighting World War I in Europe, which exacerbated growing fears of the spread of communist ideas. It also reflected the pervasiveness of racial discrimination in American society at the time. Many Americans saw the enormous influx of largely unskilled, uneducated immigrants during the early 1900s as causing unfair competition for jobs and land. -
Hitler Youth
The Hitler Youth and the League of German Girls were the primary tools that the Nazis used to shape the beliefs, thinking and actions of German youth. Leaders used tightly controlled group activities and staged propaganda events such as mass rallies full of ritual and spectacle to create the illusion of one national community that characterized Germany before 1933. Founded in 1926, the original purpose of the Hitler Youth was to train boys to enter the SA, a Nazi Party paramilitary formation. -
Charles Lindbergh's Flight
May 20, 1927 Charles Lindbergh gunned the engine of the "Spirit of St Louis" and aimed her down the dirt runway of Roosevelt Field, Long Island. Heavily laden with fuel, the plane bounced down the muddy field, gradually became airborne and barely cleared the telephone wires at the field's edge. The crowd of 500 thought they had witnessed a miracle. Thirty-three and one half-hours and 3,500 miles later he landed in Paris, the first to fly the Atlantic alone. -
The Valentine's Day Massacre
On February 14, seven members of Moran’s operation were gunned down while standing lined up, facing the wall of the garage. Some 70 rounds of ammunition were fired. When police officers from Chicago’s 36th District arrived, they found one gang member, Frank Gusenberg, barely alive. In the few minutes before he died, they pressed him to reveal what had happened, but Gusenberg wouldn’t talk. No one was ever brought to trial for the murders. -
The Wall Street Crash
On October 29, 1929, Black Tuesday hit Wall Street as investors traded some 16 million shares on the New York Stock Exchange in a single day. Billions of dollars were lost, wiping out thousands of investors. In the aftermath of Black Tuesday, America and the rest of the industrialized world spiraled downward into the Great Depression (1929-39), the deepest and longest-lasting economic downturn in the history of the Western industrialized world up to that time. -
The Great Depression in the U.S.
The Great Depression lasted from 1929 to 1939, and was the worst downturn of the industrialized world. It began after the stock market crash of 1929, which sent Wall Street into a panic and wiped out millions of investors. Gradually, consumer spending and investment dropped, causing declines in output and employment as failing companies laid off workers. By 1933, when the tragedy reached its lowest point, some 15 million Americans were unemployed and nearly half the country’s banks had failed. -
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The Great Depression
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The Dust Bowl
The Dust Bowl refers to the drought-stricken Southern Plains region of the United States, which suffered severe dust storms during a dry period in the 1930s. As high winds and choking dust swept the region from Texas to Nebraska, people and livestock were killed and crops failed across the entire region. The Dust Bowl intensified the crushing economic impacts of the Great Depression and drove many farming families on a desperate migration in search of work and better living conditions. -
The Bonus March
In 1924, Congress rewarded veterans of World War 1 with certificates redeemable in for $1,000 each. By 1932, many of these former servicemen had lost their jobs and fortunes in the early days of the Depression. They asked Congress to redeem their bonuses early. Led by Walter Waters, the so-called Bonus Expeditionary Force set out for the nation's capital. Hitching rides, hopping trains, and hiking finally brought the Bonus Army, now 15,000 strong, into the capital in June 1932. -
The Nazi Party
Under the leadership of Adolf Hitler, the Nazi Party, grew into a mass movement and ruled Germany through totalitarian means from 1933 to 1945. Hitler joined the party the year it was founded and became its leader in 1921. After Germany’s defeat in World War II (1939-45), the Nazi Party was outlawed and many of its top officials were convicted of war crimes related to the murder of some 6 million European Jews during the Nazis’ reign. -
The New Deal
By 1932, one of the bleakest years of the Great Depression, at least one-quarter of the American workforce was unemployed. When President Franklin Roosevelt took office in 1933, he acted fast to try and stabilize the economy and provide jobs and relief to those who were suffering. Over the next eight years, the government instituted a series of experimental projects and programs, known collectively as the New Deal, that aimed to restore some measure of dignity and prosperity to many Americans. -
20th Amendment
The 20th Amendment, also known as the Lame Duck Amendment, moved the date in which a newly elected president and member of Congress took office closer to election time. A lame duck is an official who continues to hold office after not being re-elected. Before the 20th Amendment, a newly elected congress person did not take office for four months after being elected. President Franklin D. Roosevelt was the first and last president to ever serve more than two presidential terms. -
21st Amendment
The 21st Amendment was a direct response to the preexisting 18th Amendment of the Constitution of the United States, which mandated the sale, possession, consumption, and transport of alcoholic beverages as illegal. In addition to this amendment overturning statutes deeming alcoholic beverages to be illegal, the 21st Amendment allowed individual states to regulate all applicable legislature with regard to the commercial availability of alcoholic beverages. -
Eleanor Roosevelt
First lady Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the U.S. president from 1933 to 1945, was a leader in her own right and involved in numerous humanitarian causes throughout her life. In the White House, she was one of the most active first ladies in history and worked for political, racial and social justice. After President Roosevelt’s death, Eleanor was a delegate to the United Nations and continued to serve as an advocate for a wide range of human rights issues. -
Assassination of Huey Long
By 1935, tensions ran high in Louisiana, as rumors of multiple plots to assassinate Huey Long swirled around the capital. Huey’s consolidation of personal power led to talk of armed insurrection by his enemies. On September 8, Huey was shot by the relative of a political enemy in the State Capitol, and he died two days later at age 42. News of Huey’s death made headlines around the world, and an estimated 200,000 mourners flocked to Baton Rouge to pay their respects. -
FDR's concealment
During his 12 years in the White House, FDR was hardly ever photographed in a wheelchair. Not surprisingly, the longest-serving president in American history disliked drawing attention to his polio symptoms. He had been stricken by the disease in 1921, seven years before he was elected governor of New York and 11 years before his first presidential campaign. Later, he learned to stand with leg braces and to walk for short distances with the assistance of crutches or a cane. -
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler, the leader of the Nazi Party, was one of the most powerful dictators. Hitler capitalized on economic woes, popular discontent and political infighting to take absolute power in Germany. Germany’s invasion of Poland in 1939 led to the outbreak of World War II, and by 1941 Nazi forces had occupied a lot of Europe. Hitler’s virulent anti-Semitism fueled the murder of 6 million Jews, along with other victims of the Holocaust. Hitler committed suicide in a Berlin bunker in April 1945. -
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World War II
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Dunkirk
Dunkirk evacuation, (1940) in World War II, the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) and other Allied troops from the French seaport of Dunkirk to England. Naval vessels and hundreds of civilian boats were used in the evacuation, which began on May 26. When it ended on June 4, about 198,000 British and 140,000 French and Belgian troops had been saved. -
Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill is one of the best-known statesmen of the 20th century. Though he was born into a life of privilege, he dedicated himself to public service. His legacy is a complicated one–he was an idealist and a pragmatist; an orator and a soldier; an advocate of progressive social reforms and an unapologetic elitist; a defender of democracy as well as of Britain’s fading empire–but for many people in Great Britain and elsewhere, Winston Churchill is simply a hero. -
Tuskegee Airmen
The Tuskegee Airmen were the first black military aviators in the U.S. Army Air Corps (AAC), a precursor of the U.S. Air Force. Trained at the Tuskegee Army Air Field in Alabama, they flew more than 15,000 individual sorties in Europe and North Africa during World War II. Their impressive performance earned them more than 150 Distinguished Flying Crosses, and helped encourage the eventual integration of the U.S. armed forces. -
Pearl Harbor
Pearl Harbor is a U.S. naval base near Honolulu, Hawaii, and was the scene of a devastating surprise attack by Japanese forces on December 7, 1941. Just before 8 a.m. on that morning, hundreds of Japanese fighter planes descended on the base, where they managed to destroy or damage American naval vessels, including enormous battleships, and airplanes. Many Americans died in the attack, including civilians, and more people were wounded. The day after, FDR asked Congress to declare war on Japan. -
D-Day
Code named Operation Overlord, the battle began on June 6, 1944, also known as D-Day, when some 156,000 American, British and Canadian forces landed on five beaches along a 50 mile stretch of the heavily fortified coast of France’s Normandy region. The invasion was one of the largest amphibious military assaults in history and required extensive planning. Prior to D-Day, the Allies conducted a large-scale deception campaign designed to mislead the Germans about the intended invasion target. -
First Red Scare
As the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States intensified in the late 1940s and early 1950s, hysteria over the perceived threat posed by Communists in the U.S. became known as the Red Scare. (Communists were often referred to as “Reds”.) The Red Scare led to a range of actions that had a profound and enduring effect on U.S. government and society. The climate of fear and repression linked to the Red Scare finally began to ease by the late 1950s.
