General Chronology
1776:
Signing of the Declaration of Independence.
1789:
French Revolution begins with the storming of the Bastille.
1793:
Eli Whitney patents his cotton gin—a machine that, by making cotton profitable, spurs the expansion of slave labor in the southern United States.
1801:
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland is established.
1803:
Administration of President Thomas Jefferson negotiates the Louisiana Purchase from France, whereby the United States doubles its geographic size, adding some 827,000 square miles (2,144,500 sq km)—all for the price of only $15 million.
1812:
Napoleon invades Russia in June, but by October, his army, cold and hungry, is in retreat.
1815:
Napoleon returns from Elba, and his supporters attempt to restore him as French ruler; but just three months later, forces led by the Duke of Wellington defeat his armies at Waterloo. Napoleon spends the remainder of his days as a prisoner on the island of St. Helena in the south Atlantic.
1818:
In a decisive defeat of Spanish forces, soldier and statesman Simón Bolívar leads the liberation of New Granada, which includes what is now Colombia, Panama, Venezuela, and Ecuador. With Spanish power now waning, Bolívar becomes president and virtual dictator of the newly created nation of Colombia.
1820s-1850s:
Struggle for a 10-hour workday in the United States.
1823:
Industrial organization experiment begun in Lowell, Massachusetts.
1825:
Opening of the New York Stock Exchange.
1830:
French troops invade Algeria, and at home, a revolution forces the abdication of Charles V in favor of Louis Philippe, the "Citizen King."
1834:
Abolition of slavery in the British Empire.
1836:
In Texas's war of independence with Mexico, the defenders of the Alamo, among them Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie, are killed in a siege.
1839:
England launches the First Opium War against China. The war, which lasts three years, results in the British gaining a free hand to conduct a lucrative opium trade, despite opposition by the Chinese government.
1845:
From Ireland to Russia, famine plagues Europe, killing some 2.5 million people.
1848:
Revolutions rock Europe, and Marx and Engels publish the Communist Manifesto.
1850:
U.S. Congress passes a series of laws, known collectively as the Compromise of 1850, to address growing divisions over slavery and the disposition of territories acquired in the Mexican War.
1853:
Crimean War begins in October. The struggle, which will last until February 1856, pits Russia against the combined forces of Great Britain, France, Turkey, and Sardinia-Piedmont. A war noted for the work of Florence Nightingale with the wounded, it is also the first conflict to be documented by photojournalists.
1860s-1900s:
Struggle for an eight-hour workday in the United States.
1861:
Within weeks of President Abraham Lincoln's inauguration, the American Civil War begins with the shelling of Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor.
1863:
President Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing all slaves in Confederate territories, on 1 January. Thus begins a year that sees the turning point of the Civil War, with decisive Union victories at Gettysburg, Vicksburg, and Chattanooga.
1864:
International Working Men's Association, later known as the First International, is formed in London.
1865:
U.S. Civil War ends with the surrender of General Robert E. Lee to General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox, Virginia. More than 600,000 men have died and the South is in ruins, but the Union has been restored. A few weeks after the Confederate surrender, John Wilkes Booth shoots President Lincoln while the latter attends a performance at Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C.
1865:
Beginning of Reconstruction, a 12-year period during which federal troops occupy the former states of the Confederacy. This era also sees the passing of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth amendments to the Constitution, which end slavery and extend the civil rights of all Americans, particularly former slaves.
1870:
Beginning of Franco-Prussian War. German troops sweep over France, Napoleon III is dethroned, and France's Second Empire gives way to the Third Republic. The war ends in the next year with France's surrender of Alsace-Lorraine to Germany, which proclaims itself an empire under Prussian king Wilhelm, crowned Kaiser Wilhelm I.
1871:
Parisians establish the Commune, a revolutionary government that controls the capital—similar revolts break out in other cities—for about two months. In the end, the Third Republic suppresses the Commune with a brutality exceeding that of the Reign of Terror.
1873:
Panic of 1873, followed by a nationwide depression, wipes out most labor unions in the United States.
1876:
Alexander Graham Bell introduces the telephone.
1881:
President James A. Garfield is assassinated in a Washington, D.C., railway station by Charles J. Guiteau.
1885:
Belgium's King Leopold II becomes sovereign of the so-called Congo Free State, which he will rule for a quarter-century virtually as his own private property. The region in Africa, given the name of Zaire in the 1970s (and Congo in 1997), becomes the site of staggering atrocities, including forced labor and genocide, at the hands of Leopold's minions.
1886:
Formation of the American Federation of Labor.
1889:
Second International formed.
1890s-1920s:
Rise of syndicalism in Europe.
1890:
Congress passes the Sherman Antitrust Act, which in the years that follow will be used to break up large monopolies.
1890:
United Mine Workers of America formed.
1895:
Brothers Auguste and Louis Lumiè re show the world's first motion picture—Workers Leaving the Lumiè re Factory
—at a caféin Paris.
1898:
United States defeats Spain in the three-month Spanish-American War. As a result, Cuba gains its independence, and the United States purchases Puerto Rico and the Philippines from Spain for $20 million.
1900:
China's Boxer Rebellion, which began in the preceding year with attacks on foreigners and Christians, reaches its height. An international contingent of more than 2,000 men arrives to restore order, but only after several tens of thousands have died.
1904:
Beginning of the Russo-Japanese War, which lasts into 1905 and results in a Japanese victory. In Russia, the war is followed by the Revolution of 1905, which marks the beginning of the end of czarist rule; meanwhile, Japan is poised to become the first major non-Western power of modern times.
1905:
Formation of the Industrial Workers of the World.
1910:
Revolution breaks out in Mexico, and will continue for the next seven years.
1911:
Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire in New York City kills 146 workers, mostly women, and leads to the establishment of the New York Factory Investigating Commission.
1913: Two incidents illustrate the increasingly controversial nature of the arts in the new century. Visitors to the 17 February Armory Show in New York City are scandalized by such works as Marcel Duchamp's cubist Nude Descending a Staircase, which elicits vehement criticism, and theatergoers at the 29 May debut of Igor Stravinksy's ballet Le Sacrédu Printemps
(The Rite of Spring) are so horrified by the new work that a riot ensues.
1913:
U.S. Department of Labor established.
1914:
On 28 June in the town of Sarajevo, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip assassinates Austrian Archduke Francis Ferdinand and wife Sophie. In the weeks that follow, Austria declares war on Serbia, and Germany on Russia and France, while Great Britain responds by declaring war on Germany. By the beginning of August, the lines are drawn, with the Allies (Great Britain, France, Russia, Belgium, Serbia, Montenegro, and Japan) against the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey).
1915: A German submarine sinks the Lusitania,
killing 1,195, including 128 U.S. citizens. Theretofore, many Americans had been sympathetic toward Germany, but the incident begins to turn the tide of U.S. sentiment toward the Allies.
1916:
Battles of Verdun and the Somme on the Western Front. The latter sees the first use of tanks, by the British.
1917:
The intercepted "Zimmermann Telegram" reveals a plot by the German government to draw Mexico into an alliance against the United States in return for a German promise to return the southwestern U.S. territories taken in the Mexican War. Three months later, in response to German threats of unrestricted submarine warfare, the United States on 6 April declares war on Germany.
1917:
In Russia, a revolution in March (or February according to the old Russian calendar) forces the abdication of Czar Nicholas II.By July, Alexander Kerensky has formed a democratic socialist government, and continues to fight the Germans, even as starvation and unrest sweep the nation. On 7 November (25 October old style), the Bolsheviks under V. I. Lenin and Leon Trotsky seize power. By 15 December, they have removed Russia from the war by signing the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Germany.
1918:
The Second Battle of the Marne in July and August is the last major conflict on the Western Front. In November, Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicates, bringing an end to the war.
1918:
Upheaval sweeps Germany, which for a few weeks in late 1918 and early 1919 seems poised on the verge of communist revolution. But reactionary forces regain strength and suppress the revolts. Even stronger than reaction or revolution, however, is republican sentiment, which opens the way for the creation of a democratic government based at Weimar.
1918:
Influenza, carried to the furthest corners by returning soldiers, spreads throughout the globe. Over the next two years, it will kill nearly 20 million peop|e—more than the war itself.
1919:
Treaty of Versailles signed by the Allies and Germany but rejected by the U.S. Senate. This is due in part to rancor between President Woodrow Wilson and Republican Senate leaders, and in part to concerns over Wilson's plan to commit the United States to the newly established League of Nations and other international duties. Not until 1921 will Congress formally end U.S. participation in the war, but it will never agree to join the league.
1922:
Inspired by the Bolsheviks' example of imposing revolution by means of a coup, Benito Mussolini leads his blackshirts in an October "March on Rome," and forms a new fascist government.
1923:
Conditions in Germany worsen as inflation skyrockets, and France, attempting to collect on coal deliveries promised at Versailles, marches into the Ruhr basin. In November, an obscure political group known as the National Socialist German Workers' Party attempts to stage a coup, or putsch, in a Munich beer hall. The revolt fails, and in 1924 the party's leader, Adolf Hitler, will receive a prison sentence of five years. He will only serve nine months, however, and the incident will serve to attract attention for him and his party, known as the Nazis.
1924: V. I. Lenin dies, and thus begins a struggle for succession from
which Josef Stalin will emerge five years later as the undisputed leader of the Communist Party, and of the Soviet Union.
1927:
Charles A. Lindbergh makes the first successful solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic and becomes an international hero.
1929:
On "Black Friday" in October, prices on the U.S. stock market, which had been climbing wildly for several years, suddenly collapse. Thus begins the first phase of a world economic crisis and depression that will last until the beginning of World War II.
1930:
Collectivization of Soviet agriculture begins, and with it one of the greatest crimes of the twentieth century. In the next years, as Soviet operatives force peasants to give up their lands, millions will die either by direct action, manmade famine, or forced labor.
1933:
Hitler becomes German chancellor, and the Nazi dictatorship begins. During this year, virtually all aspects of the coming horror are manifested: opening of the first concentration camps (and the sentencing of the first Jews to them); the establishment of the first racial purity laws; destruction of Jewish-owned shops and bans on Jewish merchants; elimination of political opposition (including the outlawing of trade unions); and book-burning.
1933:
In the United States, newly inaugurated president Franklin D. Roosevelt launches the first phase of his New Deal to put depression-era America back to work.
1935:
Formation of the Committee for Industrial Organization within the American Federation of Labor.
1936:
The election of a leftist Popular Front government in Spain in February precipitates an uprising by rightists under the leadership of General Francisco Franco. Over the next three years, war will rage between the Loyalists and Franco's Nationalists. The Spanish Civil War will prove to be a lightning rod for the world's tensions, with the Nazis and fascists supporting the Nationalists, and the Soviets the Loyalists.
1937:
AFL expels CIO over charges of dual unionism or competition. A year later, the CIO, heretofore the Committee for Industrial Organization, becomes the Congress of Industrial Organizations, with John L. Lewis as president.
1938:
Fair Labor Standards Act creates a $0.25 minimum wage and time-and-a-half for hours over 40 per week.
1939:
After years of loudly denouncing one another (and quietly cooperating), the Nazis and Soviets sign a non-aggression pact in August. This clears the way for the Nazi invasion of Poland, which results in a declaration of war by France and Great Britain.
1941:
Two events occur that will ultimately turn the tide of the war. On 22 June, Hitler invades the Soviet Union, and on 7 December, the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor. Thus the Soviet Union and the United States are brought into the fighting on the side of the Allies.
1941:
First-ever union-shop agreement, between the United Auto Workers and Ford Motor Company. Also in 1941, the AFL and CIO announce a no-strike pledge for the duration of the war.
1943:
Worn down by two Russian winters, the Germans begin to fall back. In January, the siege of Leningrad (which at more than 800 days is the longest in modern history) is broken, and a month later, the German Sixth Army surrenders at Stalingrad.
1943:
President Roosevelt signs an executive order creating a Committee on Fair Employment Practices to eliminate employment discrimination in war industries.
1944:
Allies land at Normandy on 6 June, conducting the largest amphibious invasion in history.
1945:
On 7 May, Germany surrenders. Four months later, the United States drops atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. On 2 September, Japan surrenders.
1946:
Largest strike wave in U.S. history occurs, as pent-up labor troubles are unleashed by the end of wartime controls.
1948:
Israel becomes a nation, and a war with neighboring Arab countries ensues. In Eastern Europe, Stalin places a blockade on areas of Berlin controlled by the Western democracies, and communists seize control of Czechoslovakia—adding yet another communist government to a growing sphere of Soviet influence.
1949:
CIO anticommunist drive leads to the expulsion of two unions at its annual convention. Nine other unions are expelled by mid-1950.
1950:
North Korean troops pour into South Korea, starting the Korean War. A conflict with no clear victors, the war ends with an armistice establishing an uneasy peace between South Korea and North Korea.
1955:
AFL and CIO reunite, with George Meany as first president.
1956:
Workers revolt against communist rule in Poland, inspiring Hungarians to rise up against the Soviets. Soviet tanks and troops crush these revolts.
1961:
President Eisenhower steps down, warning of a "military-industrial complex" in his farewell speech, and 43-year-old John F. Kennedy becomes the youngest elected president in U.S. history. Three months later, he launches an unsuccessful invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs.
1962:
As a result of an executive order by President Kennedy, federal employees' unions are given the right to bargain collectively with government agencies.
1963:
Assassination of President Kennedy in Dallas.
1964:
Congress approves the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, giving President Johnson broad powers to prosecute the by now rapidly escalating war in Vietnam.
1964:
Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination in employment based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.
1968:
Communist victories in the Tet Offensive mark the turning point in the Vietnam War, and influence a growing lack of confidence in the war, not only among America's youth but within the establishment as well. At home, Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy are assassinated.
1970:
President Nixon sends U.S. troops into Cambodia on 30 April. Four days later, National Guardsmen open fire on antiwar protesters at Kent State University in Ohio. By 24 June, antiwar sentiment is so strong that the Senate repeals the Gulf of Tonkin resolution. On 29 June, Nixon orders troops back out of Cambodia.
1970:
Congress passes the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA).
1973:
Signing of peace accords in Paris in January ends the Vietnam War.
1974:
On 30 July, the House Judiciary Committee adopts three articles of impeachment against President Nixon for his role in the Watergate break-in and the subsequent cover-up. Rather than undergo a lengthy trial, Nixon on 8 August becomes the first president in U.S. history to resign. His successor, Gerald Ford, pardons him in September.
1979:
After years of unrest, the Shah of Iran leaves the country, and Islamic fundamentalist revolutionaries under the leadership of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini take control. Conditions in neighboring Afghanistan, meanwhile, are approaching anarchy until, on Christmas Day 1979, Soviet troops arrive to restore order. Thus begins a ten-year war—one of the twentieth century's most vicious—that will help bring an end to the Soviet empire.
1980:
Formation of Solidarity in Poland, the first significant labor union within the communist bloc.
1981:
Most U.S. air-traffic controllers are fired by President Ronald Reagan, who then de-certifies their union in response to an illegal strike.
1985:
A new era begins in the USSR as Konstantin Chernenko dies and is replaced by Mikhail Gorbachev, who at 54 years old is the youngest Soviet leader in decades.
1989:
The Iron Curtain begins to crumble, most dramatically in Berlin, where massive protests erupt at the hated Berlin Wall on 9 November. Two days later, for the first time in 28 years, the wall is opened between East and West. The following month, on Christmas Day, the people of Romania execute the dictator Ceausescu and his wife.
1991:
The United States and other members of the United Nations attack Iraq on 15 January. By 3 April, the war is over, a resounding victory for the Allied force.
1992:
Passage of North American Free Trade Agreement.
1993:
European nations sign the Maastricht Treaty, which creates the European Union.
1997:
Financial crisis sweeps east Asia. The crisis, which will continue into 1998, foreshadows the end of the economic boom in the United States in 2000.
1999:
Demonstrations at World Free Trade Conference in Seattle highlight a growing antiglobalization movement.
2000:
In the most disputed presidential election in U.S. history, Democrats demand a recount after initial tabulation of votes in Florida shows a narrow victory for Republican candidate George W. Bush. The battle goes on for five weeks and involves numerous recounts and court injunctions, until the U.S. Supreme Court puts an end to recounts and declares Bush the winner.
2001:
On the morning of 11 September, terrorists hijack four jets, two of which ram the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, which later collapse. A third plane slams into the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and a fourth crashes in an empty field in Pennsylvania.
Read the rest of this Article with our General Chronology Access Pass.
