| 1900 |
Boxer uprisings in China against Europeans; Sigmund Freud's "The
Interpretation of Dreams" published |
| 1902 |
U.S. acquires perpetual control over the
Panama Canal; Treaty of Vereeninging ends the Boer War |
| 1903 |
Orville and Wilbur Wright fly a powered
airplane at Kitty Hawk |
| 1904 |
Deaf and blind Helen Keller graduates
from Radcliffe College |
| 1905 |
First regular cinema established in the
United States |
| 1907 |
Rasputin gains influence at the court of
Czar Nicholas II |
| 1910 |
The "week-end" becomes popular in the
U.S. |
| 1911 |
The Manchu Dynasty falls in China |
| 1912 |
The S.S. Titanic sinks |
| 1914 |
World War I begins |
| 1915 |
Germans sink the Lusitania; Albert
Einstein formulates his General Theory of Relativity |
| 1916 |
Jazz sweeps the U.S.; Pancho Villa raids
New Mexico; U.S. law establishing the eight-hour workday for railroad workers
prevents a nationwide strike |
| 1918 |
Ex-Czar Nicholas II executed; Regular
air-mail service established in the United States |
| 1919 |
Versailles Peace Conference; Prohibition
Amendment is ratified in the U.S.; Lady Astor, the first British woman Member
of Parliament to take her seat, is elected |
| 1920 |
The 19th Amendment gives American women
the vote; Mahatma Gandhi emerges as India's leader in its struggle for
independence |
| 1921 |
Britain and Ireland sign a peace treaty;
the Ku Klux Klan activities are violent throughout the southern U.S. |
| 1922 |
Mussolini's March on Rome; Soviet States
form the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics |
| 1925 |
The Scopes Monkey Trial is held in
Dayton, Tennessee |
| 1927 |
Charles Lindbergh flies the "Spirit of
St. Louis" from New York to Paris |
| 1928 |
The first Mickey Mouse films are
produced |
| 1929 |
St. Valentine's Day Massacre of Chicago
gangsters; U.S. Stock Market collapses |
| 1932 |
Amelia Earhart flies solo across the
Atlantic |
| 1933 |
Adolf Hitler is appointed German
Chancellor; Prohibition is repealed in the U.S. |
| 1934 |
Adolf Hitler is elected Fuhrer |
| 1936 |
King Edward VIII abdicates the British
throne; Spanish Civil War |
| 1937 |
Amelia Earhart is lost on a Pacific
flight; Hindenburg disaster |
| 1939 |
World War II begins |
| 1940 |
Winston Churchill is named British Prime
Minister |
| 1941 |
Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor; U.S. declares
war on Germany and Italy |
| 1942 |
Mahatma Gandhi arrested for demanding
independence for India |
| 1944 |
D-Day |
| 1945 |
V.E. Day ends war in Europe; U.S. drops
atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki; Japan surrenders |
| 1946 |
Juan Peron is elected President of
Argentina |
| 1947 |
India is proclaimed independent |
| 1948 |
The Jewish state of Israel comes into
existence |
| 1951 |
Color television is first introduced |
| 1954 |
McCarthy Hearings on communism are held
in the U.S.; Brown versus Board of Education decision requires desegregation of
the public schools in the U.S. |
| 1956 |
Elvis Presley's "Hound Dog" is a hit; The
Polio Vaccine is discovered |
| 1959 |
Fidel Castro becomes the Premier of
Cuba |
| 1961 |
Yuri Gagarin and Alan Shepard make the
first space flights |
| 1963 |
U.S. President John F. Kennedy is
assassinated |
| 1965 |
Watts race riots take place in Los
Angeles |
| 1966 |
Indira Gandhi becomes the Prime Minister
of India |
| 1967 |
Six-Day War between Israel and Arab
nations; Thurgood Marshall is the first black person appointed to the Supreme
Court of the United States |
| 1968 |
The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. is
assassinated |
| 1969 |
Neil Armstrong walks on the moon |
| 1973 |
End of the U.S. involvement in the war in
Indochina; Energy Crisis |
| 1974 |
President Nixon resigns for Watergate and
cover-up |
| 1979 |
Three Mile Island nuclear incident |
| 1981 |
IBM announces the personal computer;
Sandra Day O'Connor becomes the first woman appointed to the Supreme Court of
the United States |
| 1986 |
Chernobyl nuclear accident |
| 1989 |
Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska; Berlin
Wall comes down; Chinese dissidents massacred in Tiananmen Square |
| 1991 |
The Soviet Union officially ceases to
exist; Persian Gulf War -- United Nations forces initiate "Desert Storm"
campaign to force Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait |
| 1992 |
First black woman elected to U.S. Senate:
Carol Moseley-Braun (D-Ill) |
| 1993 |
The Treaty on European Union takes
effect |
| 1994 |
With the end of apartheid in South
Africa, Nelson Mandela is elected President of the Republic of South
Africa |
| 1995 |
Federal Building in Oklahoma City bombed;
Yitzak Rabin, the Prime Minister of Israel, assassinated; HIV/AIDs epidemic
estimated to infect 14 million people worldwide; In "The Trial of the Century,"
former football star and actor O.J. Simpson is found "not guilty" of murdering
his ex-wife and a friend |
| 1996 |
The use of Internet tools such as e-mail
and the World Wide Web grows dramatically |
| 1997... |
O.J. Simpson found civilly liable for the
deaths of his ex-wife and a friend; Hong Kong reverts to Chinese control after
the expiration of a 99-year lease to the British |
