Samantha's Top Ten Events
in American History
1
Battle of Saratoga - October 17, 1777
The battle was fought between British forces led by John Burgoyne against American forces led by Horatio Gates and Benedict Arnold. The Americans were able to defeat the British troops, that had been weakened in a previous battle, forcing them to retreat and later surrender. The American victory convinced the French government to formally recognize the colonist’s cause and enter the war as their ally, providing support that made it possible for the Americans to win the war.
2
Civil Rights Act of 1964 - July 2, 1964
After violent discrimination protests in the south, such as in Birmingham, Alabama, where police brutally suppressed nonviolent anti-discrimination demonstrators with dogs, clubs, and high-pressure fire hoses, Kennedy and later Johnson put their support behind the anti-discrimination movement. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 ended segregation in public places and banned employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin, paving the way to the end of discrimination in the United States.
3
Election of 1876
The presidential election of 1876 was close with Samuel J. Tilden pulling 184 electoral votes and the popular vote, and Rutherford B. Hayes pulling 165 electoral votes. With 20 electoral votes in dispute, a compromise was struck where the Republicans would get the white House with Hayes but they would also pull their troops out of the south. This ended reconstruction and led to the south being controlled by the Democratic Redeemers.
4
Mexican Land Cession - February 2, 1848
After a boundary dispute, over the bottom boundary of Texas, America and Mexico went to war, eventually ending with the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo. Through the treaty the US bought a large chunk of land from Mexico, that later made up California, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah. The cession increased the size the the United States and made it so that the country stretched from coast to coast, But it also led to increasing tensions between the Northern and Southern states over the issue of slavery in the territories.
5
Pearl Harbor - December 7, 1941
The US government had placed aggressive economic sanctions and trade embargoes on Japan in their response to their increasingly belligerent attitude toward China. In response the Japanese carried out a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, devastation the naval base. This attack forced the United States into World War II and out of its Isolationist era.
6
19th Amendment - August 18, 1920
Protests by woman suffrages organization and the large contribution of women during World War I pushed Woodrow Wilson to all for the 19th amendment, giving women the right to vote. this was a large turning point in the equalization of the sexes and a large step forward for women in America.
7
Hiroshima and Nagasaki - August 6 & 9, 1945
Following the defeat of Germany, Japan vowed to fight to the bitter end in the Pacific and managed to inflict allied casualties totaling nearly half those suffered in the three full years of war in the Pacific. After the Japanese refused to surrender the US felt that there only solution war to us the secret Manhattan project and dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The bombs caused large devastation, the surrender of Japan, and began the arms race with Russia.
8
Creation of NASA - July 29, 1958
9
Columbine Shooting - April 20, 1999
Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold when on a shooting spree at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, killing 13 and wounding 20 others. The shooting led to national concern over school safety, gun control, and reform in police response technics.
10
Founding of Google - September 4, 1998
Stanford University Ph.D. Students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, founded Google to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. Google has now become a Multinational technology company that produces a variety of products and is used all over the world by billions of people.