Jeannette Rankin (R, MT) serves her first day in the U.S. House of Representatives.
1918
President Woodrow Wilson outlines his “Fourteen Points” for peace.
1919
On June 4, the Senate passes a women’s suffrage measure.
1920
The Eighteenth Amendment (Prohibition amendment) is ratified.
On August 18, the Nineteenth Amendment is ratified, giving women the right to vote.
1924
On May 10, J. Edgar Hoover is appointed the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
1925
On May 5, teacher John Scopes is arrested in Dayton, Tennessee, for teaching evolution.
1929
On February 14, the Valentine’s Day Massacre occurs as a result of a gangland war between gangsters Al Capone and Bugs Moran. Capone orders a hit on Moran’s headquarters.
On May 16, the first Academy Awards ceremony is held.
On October 24, the New York Stock exchange collapses in a day known as “Black Thursday.”
1931
On March 19, the Nevada legislature votes to legalize gambling as a way to combat the Great Depression.
1933
On March 12, President Franklin D. Roosevelt broadcasts his first fireside chat to the American public.
On May 18, President Roosevelt signs the Tennessee Valley Authority Act, authorizing the building of damns.
1934
On June 6, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is established.
1937
On May 3, Margaret Mitchell wins the Pulitzer Prize for her book Gone with the Wind.
On May 30, Chicago police fire on striking steel workers in what came to be known as the “Memorial Day Massacre.”
1939
On May 16, the U.S. government first issues food stamps.
1940
On May 15, the first McDonald’s restaurant is opened in San Bernardino, California.
1941
On June 18, heavyweight champion Joe Louis rallies and knocks out Billy Conn to retain his world heavyweight title.
On December 7, Japanese aircraft bomb U.S. ships docked in Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. This attack led the U.S. to enter into World War II.
1945
On February 23, 1945, U.S. troops display the American flag at Iwo Jima after a brutal battle with Japanese forces.
On August 6, the U.S. drops an atomic bomb over Hiroshima, Japanese. More than 140,000 people died from this attack.
On August 9, the U.S. drops an atomic bomb over Nagasaki, Japan.
1947
On March 12, President Harry Truman announces the so-called “Truman Doctrine” in a message before Congress.
On April 15, Los Angeles Dodger Jackie Robinson becomes the first African American to break the color barrier in major league baseball.
On June 5, Secretary of State George Marshall introduces the so-called “Marshall Plan” to assist West Berlin, which had become surrounded by the USSR occupation of East Germany.
1950
On April 25, Chuck Cooper becomes the first African American to play in an NBA game.
1952
On April 8, President Truman seizes the nation’s steel mills to avoid a strike.
1954
On May 17, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously rules in Brown v. Board of Education that segregation in secondary public schools in unconstitutional and violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
On June 9, Joseph Welch, head counsel for the U.S. Army, famously asks U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy “Have you no decency, sir?” during Senate hearings.
1955
On April 10, Dr. Jonas Salk successfully tests a vaccine for the deadly disease polio.
1956
On April 27, Rocky Marciano retires from boxing. The heavyweight champion ended his career with an undefeated record of 49-0.
1959
On January 3, Alaska becomes the forty-ninth state admitted into the United States.
On May 4, the first Grammy Awards are held.
On Aug. 21, Hawaii becomes the fiftieth state.
1961
On March 1, President John F. Kennedy establishes the Peace Corps.
On May 1, Harper Lee wins the Pulitzer Prize for Literature for her book To Kill a Mockingbird.
On May 14, a bus carrying the Freedom Riders is attacked and burned in Alabama.
1962
On March 2, Wilt Chamberlain scores 100 points in a professional basketball game.
1963
On April 12, the Children’s Crusade in Birmingham, Alabama, receives nationwide attention after the police use fire hoses and dogs on black children protesting civil rights abuses.
On June 10, President Kennedy signs the Equal Pay Act.
On August 28, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivers his historic “I Have a Dream” speech during the March on Washington. Several other civil rights leaders delivered speeches, but Dr. King’s is the one that has had the most historic significance.
On November 22, President John F. Kennedy is assassinated while riding in a motorcade in Dallas, Texas.
1964
On February 25, Cassius Marcellus Clay—later known as Muhammad Ali—defeats Charles “Sonny” Liston to win the world heavyweight title.
On July 2, President Johnson signs into law the Civil Rights Act of 1964, arguably the most important civil rights bill of the twentieth century.
1965
On February 21, Malcolm X is assassinated in New York City.
On May 25, Muhammad Ali successfully defends his heavyweight title in Lewiston, Maine, with a first-round stoppage of former champion Sonny Liston. Some claim that Liston took a dive.
1967
On April 27, heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali refuses induction into the U.S. Army and is stripped of his title.
On May 19, the U.S. bombs Hanoi.
On June 3, Aretha Franklin, the so-called “Queen of Soul,” hits #1 with her signature song Respect.
On June 13, President Johnson nominates Thurgood Marshall as the first African American to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court.
1968
On March 16, 1968, a platoon of American soldiers kills hundreds of unarmed civilians in the so-called Mai Lai Massacre.
On April 4, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, while on the balcony of the second floor of the Lorraine Motel.
On June 3, the Poor Person’s March on Washington takes place.
On June 6, Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy dies from gunshot wounds at an assassin’s hands the previous evening.
1969
On July 20, 1969, Apollo 11 lands on the Moon. Neil Armstrong becomes the first human to walk on the Moon, followed by crew member Buzz Aldrin. Fellow astronaut Michael Collins remains in orbit in the command spacecraft.
August 15–18, the Woodstock music festival is held in Bethel, New York. It is arguably the high point of the 1960s rock music and hippie era.
1970
On May 1, four students are shot to death by national guardsmen during a disturbance at Kent State University.
On June 22, President Nixon signs the 26th Amendment, lowering the voting age from 21 to 18.
1972
On June 22, President Nixon signs into law Title IX, prohibiting gender discrimination in college sports.
1973
On January 22, the U.S. Supreme Court strikes down a Texas law that criminalized abortion in Roe v. Wade.
1974
On April 8, Henry Aaron of the Atlanta Braves hits his 715th career home run, breaking the record of former New York Yankee great Babe Ruth.
On August 8, President Nixon resigns because of fallout from the Watergate scandal. He is the first (and as of now, only) U.S. president to resign from office.
1975
On April 4, Bill Gates and Paul Allen form Microsoft.
1976
On April 1, Stephen Wozniak and Steve Jobs found Apple Computer.
1977
On April 18, Alex Haley wins a Pulitzer Prize for his book Roots.
1978
On June 9, Larry Holmes defeats Ken Norton via split decision over 15 rounds to win the world heavyweight championship—a title he would hold until 1985.
1979
On June 18, President Jimmy Carter and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev sign the SALT II treaty limiting nuclear weapon.
1980
On June 23, David Letterman’s late night show—“The Letterman Show”—debuts on network television.
1981
On January 30, John F. Hinckley Jr. shoots President Ronald Reagan, who later recovers from his wounds.
On May 1, tennis star Billie Jean King announces that she is in a relationship with another woman.
1982
On April 19, Sally Ride becomes the first female astronaut in U.S. history.
On June 21, a jury finds John Hinckley Jr. not guilty by reason of insanity in the shooting of President Ronald Reagan.
On June 24, the Equal Rights Amendment is defeated.
