Aphg susan Hollier’s Dates for American Cultural Literacy

711 Moors reached Spain via Morocco

1066 Battle of Hastings

1492 Voyage of Columbus; Moors defeated by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella

1588 British defeated the Spanish Armada

1607 Settlement at Jamestown, Virginia

1620 Pilgrims arrive at Plymouth, Massachusetts

1776 American colonists declared independence from Britain

1789 French Revolution

1803 Louisiana Purchase from Napoleon’s France, Jefferson President of the US, doubled the size of the US;

World population reaches 1 billion

1830s Cyrus McCormack invented reaper; trains made transportation and communication easier;

Samuel Morse invented the telegraph

1860s Civil War, Lincoln President of the US

1869 Transcontinental Railroad finished (Golden Spike – Promontory, Utah);

Suez Canal formally opened to traffic, 100 miles long connecting the Gulf of Suez and the Indian Ocean

1898 Plessy v. Ferguson, Supreme Court ruling creates “Separate but Equal” doctrine

1914 The Great War or World War I (1914 – 1918)

1917 Bolshevik Revolution led by Lenin overthrows the Romanov Dynasty in Russia, start of Communism

1920 Women in the United States received suffrage

1929 Black Thursday, October, Stock Market Crash starts worldwide Depression

1939 Start of World War II (1939/1941 – 1945)

1950 Start of Korean War (1950 - 1953)

1954 Brown v. Board of Education overturns Plessy v. Ferguson, beginning of the end of racial segregation

1960s Vietnam War; Civil Rights Movement

1989 Fall of the Berlin Wall in November

1991 End of USSR Communism; beginning of Desert Storm

2001 US declared war on Terrorism