Pirates and Privateers

Talk Like a Pirate Day, September 19

 
National Maritime Day, May 22

20th Century

1901

February 2: Queen Victoria's funeral takes place in St. George's Chapel in London's Windsor Castle.

April 25: New York becomes the first state to mandate license plates on automobiles and motorcycles when the governor signs a law requiring owners to post their initials on a conspicuous place on the rear of the vehicles.

July 2: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid rob a train in Wagner, Montana. They get away with $40,000.

August 14: SS Islander strikes an iceberg near Alaska and sinks. 70 people die.

September 5: The National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues forms.

September 6: Anarchist Leon Czolgosz shoots President William McKinley during the Pan-American Exposition in New York.

September 7: The Boxer Rebellion, an attempt to drive foreigners out of China, ends.

September 14: US President William McKinley succumbs 8 days after being shot by an anarchist in Buffalo, New York. Vice President Teddy Roosevelt is sworn in as president.

October 12: Theodore Roosevelt officially changes "The Executive Mansion" to "The White House."

October 24: Annie Edson Taylor, a sixty-three-year-old schoolteacher, is the first person to successfully go over Niagara Falls in a barrel.

October 26: First time a getaway car is used during a holdup, this one in Paris, France.

October 29: Leon Czolgosz, the anarchist who assassinated President McKinley, is executed.

December 2: King C. Gillette begins selling safety razor blades.

December 10: Distribution of the first Nobel Prizes is made on the fifth anniversary of the death of Alfred Nobel, who invented dynamite and endowed the awards.

December 14: The first table tennis tournament is held. It takes place at the the London Royal Aquarium.

1902

February 1: Tzu-hsi, China's empress, forbids the binding of women's feet.

February 21: The United States' first brain surgeon, Dr. Harvey Cushing, performs the first brain operation.

April 14: J. C. Penney opens his first dry-goods store in Kemmerer, Wyoming.

April 20: Marie and Pierre Curie isolate radium chloride, a radioactive isotope.

May 8: Mount Pelée erupts on the island of Martinique. It wipes out the city of St-Pierre where 30,000 people are killed. There are only 2 survivors.

May 31: The Boer War, also known as the South African War, ends with the signing of the Peace of Vereeniging in Pretoria, South Africa.

October 2: The Tale of Peter Rabbit, by Beatrix Potter, is published in London.

November 18: Morris Michton, a toy maker in Brooklyn, New York, names the teddy bear after President Teddy Roosevelt.

1903

January 19: First regular transatlantic radio broadcast between the United States and England

February 15: Morris and Rose Michtom introduce the first Teddy Bear.

March 1: The Martha Washington Hotel opens in New York City. It caters to women only.

March 3: North Carolina requires nurses to be registered. It is the first state to do so.

June 16: The Pepsi Cola Company is founded.
June 16: The Ford Motor Company is founded in Detroit, Michigan.

July 1: First Tour de France

July 19: Maurice Garin of France becomes the first winner of the Tour de France, after cycling 1,508 miles (2,428 kilometers).

August 17: Joseph Pulitzer donates $1,000,000 to Columbia University, endowing the Pulitzer Prizes.

October 1: The first game of the first Baseball World Series is played. The Pittsburgh Pirates defeat the Boston Americans 7-3.

October 10: Emmeline Pankhurst founds the Women's Social and Political Union to fight for women's rights in Britain.

November 3: A revolutionary junta declares that Panama is no longer part of Colombia.

December 17: Orville and Wilbur Wright make the first successful sustained airplane flight near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Orville glides for 12 seconds.

1904

Oseberg ship excavated in Norway.

January 8: Women are forbidden to wear low-cut dresses in the presence of churchmen by Pope Pius X.

January 25: An explosion at a coal mine in Cheswick, Pennsylvania kills 179.

February 7: Great Fire of Baltimore. Believed to have been started by a discarded cigarette, the wind soon causes a conflagration that burns for 31 hours and destroys 80 city blocks in the downtown area. No lives were lost, but more than 1,500 buildings are gone and another 1,000 suffer severe damage. The monetary value of property lost is estimated at $100,000,000, making it the most destructive since the Chicago fire of 1871.

April 10: Fire sweeps through Toronto, Canada, destroying much of the city.

April 30: Ice cream cone makes its debut.

May 4: The United States begins construction of the Panama Canal.

June 15: The General Slocum, a side-wheeler steamboat, catches fire on New York's East River. 1,031 men, women, and children die.

July 21: The Trans-Siberian railroad in Russia is completed. Construction takes 13 years and extends for 4,607 miles.

August 16: Construction begins on Grand Central Station in New York City.

September 28: A woman, smoking a cigarette in a car, is arrested in New York City.

October 27: The first section of the New York subway opens. Trains run from Lower Manhattan to Broadway Harlem for a nickel.

November 15: King Camp Gillette receives a US patent for the first razor that uses disposable blades.

1905

January 22: Czarist troops fire on a peaceful group of workers on their way to the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, Russia.

January 26: The largest diamond in the world is found in South Africa. It is 3,106 carats.

March 13: Mata Hari gives her first performance as a dancer at the Guimet Museum in Paris, France.

June 19: The world's first nickelodeon opens in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The storefront theater seats 96 people and a ticket can be had for a nickel (5 cents). Vaudeville acts and short films were often shown.

June 27: Russian sailors aboard the battleship Potemkin mutiny and sail for Odessa.

July 8: Russian sailors aboard the battleship Potemkin surrender to Romanian authorities. That government turns the ship over to Russia shortly thereafter.

September 5: The signing of the Treaty of Portsmouth ends the Russo-Japanese War.

November 10: Sailors join a rebellion at Russia's naval base in Kronstadt.

1906

January 2: The first US patent for an air conditioner is awarded to Willis Carrier.

February 1: The building of the first federal penitentiary is completed. It is located in Leavenworth, Kansas.

March 10: An underground fire sparks an explosion in an underground maze of mines in Courrieres, France. More than 1,000 miners and people on the surface die.

April 18: An earthquake, followed by fire, strikes San Francisco, California. Around 3,000 people die and 75% of the city is in ruins.

June 30: The US Congress passes the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act. Both laws are the direct result of exposé journalism, in particular Upton Sinclair's The Jungle.

July 12: Alfred Dreyfus is found innocent in France during his retrial on charges of treason. He was initially judged guilty of those charges in 1894 and imprisoned for a time on Devil's Island. A controversy ensues and he is eventually retried, but found guilty a second time. He accepts clemency, but reservea the right to prove himself innocent and after another retrial is granted in 1904 at which a civilian appeals court finally finds him innocent.

October 22: 3,000 Blacks riot in Philadelphia

November 18: Anarchist bomb explodes in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome.

1907

January 6: Maria Montessori's first school opens. It is located in Rome, Italy.

February 13: Suffragettes in England storm Parliament. 60 women are arrested.

April 24: Milton S. Hershey opens Hershey Park for the exclusive use of his employees.

May 27: Bubonic Plague strikes San Francisco.

June 21: The United Press is founded by E. W. Scripps.

July 29: Sir Robert Baden-Powell forms the Boy Scouts in England.

August 28: James E. Casey of Seattle, Washington, founds the United Parcel Service (UPS).

October 1: The stock market falls, leading to a run on the US dollar.

October 22: Ringling Brothers Greatest Show on Earth purchases the Barnum & Bailey circus.
October 22: A run on the Knickerbocker Trust Company leads to a run on United States banks, becoming known as the Panic of 1907.

December 6: More than 350 people, many of them children, are killed when there is an explosion in a Monongah, West Virginia, coal mine.

1908

January 11: President Teddy Roosevelt names the Grand Canyon a National Monument.

January 22: Katie Mulcahey violates the Sullivan Ordinance when she lights up a cigarette. She is arrested and charged with violating the ban on women smoking in public. She is fined $5. Prior to her appearance in court, she declares, "I've got as much right to smoke as you have. I never heard of this new law, and I don't want to hear about it. No man shall dictate to me."

January 24: Robert Baden-Powell organizes the first Boy Scout troop in England.

March 4: An elementary school burns in Collingwood, Ohio. 180 die.

May 5: The Great White Fleet arrives in San Francisco, California.

May 14: The first passenger flight of an airplane takes place.

June 1: John Krohn sets out on his mission to walk around the perimeter of the United States. He accomplishes this feat in 357 days.

June 30: A giant fireball levels 80,000,000 trees and flattens 2,000 square kilometers (500,000 acres) in Siberia near Stony Tungunska River. It is believed to be caused when a meteoroid or comet explodes in the Earth's atmosphere. It is the largest impact in recent history.

July 1: S.O.S. becomes the worldwide standard distress signal for help.

July 6: Robert Peary sets sail from New York City on his Arctic expedition to reach the North Pole.

August 3: Amadee and Jean Bouyssonie, two brothers, discover the fossilized remains of a nearly complete 60,000-year-old skeleton of Neanderthal man at La Chapelle-aux-Saints, France.

August 12: Henry Ford's company builds the first Model T car. It costs $825.

October 3: Leon Trosky and other Russians living in exile in Vienna, Austria establish the newspaper Pravda.

November 10: The first Gideon Bible is placed in a hotel room.

December 19: A coal mine explosion in Jacobs Creek, Pennsylvania kills 239 miners.

1909

Alice Huyler Ramsey of New Jersey is the first woman to drive across the United States.

February12: The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is formed.

April 6: Robert Peary and Matthew Henson reach the North Pole.

April 19: The Roman Catholic Church beatifies Joan of Arc.

June 20: Roger Burhma and Eleanor Waring become the first couple to honeymoon in a balloon.

August 2: The first Lincoln head penny is minted.

August 18: Mayor of Tokyo Yukio Ozaki gives Washington, DC 2,000 cherry trees.

November 13: A fire erupts in the St. Paul Mine in Cherry, Illinois. 259 miners die.

December 6: Explosions in coal mine kill 361 in Monongah, West Virginia.

1910

French passes found that Captain Kidd claimed would prove his innocence.

March 1: Two trains, recently released from snow slides that had closed the rail tracks, near Wellington, Washington, wait on a side track at Stevens Pass for the tracks to clear. After midnight, the temperature warms and the snow changes to rain. At 1:42 am, an avalanche crushes the trains and sweeps the remains and those sheltered within down the mountain. The official death toll is 96 people, but more likely died. It takes days to uncover the red-dyed snow to retrieve the dead. The rail line doesn't reopen until 15 March. Avalanche sheds are later erected so this doesn't happen again. The incident is the deadliest snow slide in the United States.

April 14: Taft is the first president of the United States to throw out the first pitch at a major league baseball game.

June 9: A passenger aboard SS Arawatta tosses a bottle with a note inside into the ocean. It is found in Queensland, Australia on 3 June 1983.

June 19: First time Father's Day is celebrated.

August 9: Alva Fisher patents the electric washing machine.

August 25: Yellow Cab is founded.

October 22: Dr. Hawley Harvey Crippen is convicted at the Old Bailey for poisoning his wife. He will later hang.

November 14: The first airplane takes off from a ship's deck in Norfolk, Virginia.

November 20: Francisco Madero launches a revolt in Mexico. It fails, but inspires others, such as Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata, to fight for Mexican independence from a dictator.

December 21: A coal mine explosion kills 344 miners in Hulton, England.

1911

Winston Churchill becomes First Lord of the Admiralty.

Tung Meng Hui (Alliance Society) overthrows Manchu regime and founds the Republic of China.

January 18: A plane lands on a ship, the USS Pennsylvania, for the first time. The event takes place in San Francisco Bay. The pilot is Eugene Ely.

March 25: Fire ignites at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York City. 146 people die and, in the aftermath, health and safety legislation is passed in hopes of preventing similar tragedies.

May 30: The running of the first Indianapolis 500 automobile race. Ray Harroun wins in roughly 6 hours and 42 minutes.

June 16: International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) is incorporated.

July 24: Explorer Hiram Bingham discovers Machu Picchu, a "lost" city of the Incas in the Andes Mountains.

August 21: Three Italians steal Leonardo da Vinci's "Mona Lisa" from the Louvre. The painting isn't recovered for 2  years.

August 29: Ishi is discovered in California. He is the last surviving member of the Yahi tribe.

October 25: Last horse-drawn omnibus in London travels from London Bridge Station to Moorgate.

December 14: Roald Amundsen of Norway and his expedition become the first to reach the South Pole.

1912

January 18: Robert Falcon Scott and 4 others reach the South Pole, only to learn that they aren't the first to do so. All 5 men die trying to return to their base camp.

February 2: Frederick Rodman Law parachutes from the Statue of Liberty. The act is considered the first motion-picture stunt.

February 12: Six-year-old Emperor Puyi is forced to abdicate. He is the last imperial emperor of China and the last of the Qing Dynasty.

March 12: Juliette Gordon Low of Savannah, Georgia founds the Girl Scouts.

March 15: After 511 wins, baseball pitcher Cy Young retires.

March 27: Mrs. William Howard Taft plants the first cherry trees in Washington, D. C.

April 10: RMS Titanic sets sail from Southampton on her maiden voyage.

April 11: RMS Titanic departs Queenstown, Ireland for New York City.

April 14: Titanic hits an iceberg and sinks at 2:27 the next morning off the coast of Newfoundland. Between 1,490 and 1,635 people die.

April 16: Harriet Quimbey becomes the first woman to fly across the English Channel.

April 18: RMS Carpathia arrives in New York City with 705 survivors from the Titanic.

May 5: Pravda, the newspaper of the Soviet Communist Party, is published for the first time.

May 29: Curtis Publishing in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, fires 15 women for dancing the "Turkey Trot" during their lunch break.

September 4: The first collision in the London Underground. 22 are injured.

November 12: The body and diary of British explorer Robert Scott are found in Antarctica.

1913

January 26: Jim Thorpe returns his Olympic medals, won the previous year, for playing as a professional.

February 3: The ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment to the US Constitutions allows Congress to levy income taxes.

February 19: A prize is inserted into Cracker Jack boxes for the first time.

February 21: Battle of Verdun begins. When it ends 9 months later, it becomes the longest battle in World War I. More than 1,000,000 dead, wounded, captured, or missing.

March 8: The Internal Revenue Service begins levying and collecting taxes in the United States.

April 3: Emmeline Pankhurst, a British suffragette, is sentenced to 3 years in jail.

July 8: Alfred Carlton Gilbert is awarded a patent for the Erector Set. It will become one of the most popular toys of all time.

August 27: A Swedish engineer applies for a patent on an all-purpose zipper.

September 10: The Lincoln Highway opens and becomes the first paved highway that goes from coast to coast.

October 22: 263 coal miners are killed in an explosion in Dawson, New Mexico.

December 1: First moving assembly line in the world begins production of Ford's Model T in Michigan. It revolutionizes the auto industry.

December 11: Two years after it was stolen from the Louvre in Paris, the "Mona Lisa" is recovered.

December 21: The New York World publishes the first modern crossword puzzle.

1914

January 5: Henry Ford announces that the minimum pay per day for workers will be $5, which doubles most workers salaries. Instead of having to work 9 hours a day, their workday becomes 8 hours.

February 19: Charlotte May Pierstorff, a four year old, is transported by train via the US Mail from Grangeville, Idaho to her grandparents' house 73 miles away.

April 28: Coal mine collapses in Eccles, West Virginia. 181 miners die.

May 7: The US Congress establishes Mother's Day.

June 28: Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife, Sophie, are assassinated by a Serbian nationalist named Gavril Princip. This incident will lead to World War I.

June 29: Jina Guseva, a peasant woman, stabs Grigori Rasputin in the stomach in his home town in Siberia. The assassination attempt fails.

July 28: Austria-Hungary declares war on Serbia, a conflict that will become World War I.

August 1: Emperor Wilhelm II of Germany declares war on his nephew, Tsar Nicholas II of Russia.

August 4: Great Britain declares war on Germany, following that country's invasion of Belgium.

August 5: The first electric traffic light, which features red and green lights, is installed in Cleveland, Ohio.

August 10: France declares war on Austria-Hungary.

August 15: Handyman Julian Carlton, murders Martha Borthwick Cheney, Frank Lloyd Wright's mistress, and her two children, as well as four others, at Taliesin, Wright's home in Wisconsin. Afterward, he sets the house afire.
August 15: The Panama Canal opens and the SS Ancon becomes the first ship to pass through the canal.

September 1: The last passenger pigeon dies in captivity at the Cincinnati Zoo.
September 1: The Russian government changes the name of St. Petersburg to Petrograd, a name which will last until 1924, when the city becomes Leningrad.

September 6: First Battle of the Marne

September 22: A German submarine sinks 3 British ironclads. 1,459 are killed.

October 19: For the first time, the US post office delivers mail using a car.

November 2: Russia declares war on the Ottoman Empire.

December 25: The "Christmas Truce" takes place during World War I. British and German soldiers exchange gifts and play football, rather than fight each other.

1915

January 7: Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany okays the bombing of strategic sites in Britain as long as no bombs are dropped on London, because his relatives within the royal family reside there.

January 19: Germans launch the first Zepplin air raid on England. Four people die in Norfolk.

February 17: Edward Stone, fighting for the French Foreign Legion is mortally wounded in battle, becoming the first American combatant to die during World War I before the United States enters the conflict.

March 28: Leon Thrasher is the first American citizen killed during World War I after a German submarine torpedoes his ship off the coast of England.

April 22: German troops release chlorine gas at the Second Battle of Ypres. This act is the first systematized use of chemical warfare.

May 7: A German submarine, off the Irish coast, torpedoes RMS Luisitania. The ship sinks and 1,198 people die.

July 15: Dr. Heinrich Albert, head of German propaganda in the United States, loses his briefcase while riding on the subway in New York City. When the contents are examined, they reveal an extensive network of German espionage and subversion across the country.

July 24: The passenger liner SS Eastland capsizes in the Chicago River. More than 840 people die, making it one of the worst maritime disasters in American history.

August 17: A mob lynches Leo Frank, a Jewish business, in Georgia after his death sentence for murdering a 13-year-old girl is commuted to life in prison.

September 6: England produces Little Willie, a prototype of the first tank. It weighs 14 tons, tends to get stuck in trenches, and only goes 2 miles per hour.

October 7: A German court sentences Edith Cavell, an English nurse, and 34 others to death for running an underground network to free Allied soldiers in German-occupied Belgium.

October 12: Edith Cavell is executed.

1916

January 1: Stored and cooled blood is first used in a blood transfusion.

February 21: The Battle of Verdun begins. It becomes one of the most-devastating engagements of the First World War.

April 24: Irish nationalists launch what becomes known as the Easter Rebellion in Dublin in an attempt to oust the British from Ireland.
April 24: Ernest Shackleton and 5 of his men launch a lifeboat from the uninhabited Elephant Island to organize a rescue for his ice-trapped ship Endurance.

April 29: After 5 days. Irish republicans abandon the post office in Dublin and surrender unconditionally, ending the Easter Rebellion.

June 15: The Boys Scouts of America is founded.

June 24: Hollywood film star Mary Pickford signs a $1,000,000 contract, becoming the first female actor to receive this high a sum.

July 1: The Battle of the Somme begins. By the time it ends in mid-November, 29,240 British soldiers will die.

August 25: President Woodrow Wilson establishes the National Park Service.

September 6: Clarence Saunders opens Piggly Wiggly, the first true supermarket, in Memphis, Tennessee.

September 8: President Woodrow Wilson signs the Emergency Revenue Act. This doubles the income tax rate and adds an inheritance and munitions profits tax.

September 15: British troops use the tank in combat for the first time.

October 16: Margaret Sanger opens the first birth control clinic in the United States in Brooklyn, New York.

November 7: Jeannette Rankin is elected to Congress, becoming the first female Representative and the first woman elected to Congress.

December 30: Murder of Grigori Rasputin. He is poisoned and shot before drowning in a river, because of his influence over the royal family.

1917

February 13: Mata Hari, an exotic dancer born in the Netherlands, is arrested in Paris, France on charges of being a German spy.

March 15: Nicholas II, the last tsar of Russia and the last Romanov to rule Russia, abdicates. He names his brother, Grand Duke Michael to succeed him, but Michael declines the next day.

April 6: The United States declares war on Germany. American soldiers enter the First World War 3 years after the conflict begins.

April 16: Vladimir Lenin returns to Russia, after living in exile for 17 years, to form a provisional government.

May 21: Great Fire of Atlanta displaces 10,000. Only one person dies.

June 15: Britain grants amnesty to prisoners taken during the Easter Rising (1916) in Ireland.
June 15: The US Congress passes the Espionage Act, making it a crime for anyone to pass information to or aid the enemy. Those found guilty of doing so can be fined $10,000 and imprisoned for 20 years.

July 9: HMS Vanguard explodes off Scapa Flow, Scotland. 804 are killed.

July 17: The British royal family changes their name from the House and Family of Hanover to the House and Family of Windsor.

July 24: Mata Hari goes on trial on charges of espionage. Her alleged spying for the Germans causes the deaths of 50,000 soldiers. She is eventually found guilty and executed by a firing squad.

August 14: China declares war on German and Austria-Hungary during World War I.

October 15: A firing squad executes Mata Hari as a spy during World War I near Paris.

November 7: Lenin and the Bolsheviks seize power in Russia. They capture the Winter Palace and overthrow the Provisional Government. This becomes known as Red October.

November 20: Tanks are used effectively for the first time during war at the Battle of Cambrai during World War I.

November 24: Bombing at police headquarters in Milwaukee, Wisconsin kills 9 police officers and 1 civilian.

November 26: Founding of the National Hockey League. It features 4 Canadian teams. The first American team, the Boston Bruins, won't join the league for 7 more years.

December 1: Father Edward Flanagan founds Boys Town near Omaha, Nebraska.

December 6: Mount Blanc, a French munitions ship, explodes in Halifax, Canada. 1,700 people die.

December 7: The United States declares war on the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

1918

January 25: Russia becomes a republic of Soviets.

March 4: The first recorded case of Spanish Flu. It occurs at Funston Army Camp in Kansas and is the beginning of a worldwide pandemic. Between 50,000,000 and 100,000,000 die.

March 31: Daylight Savings Time goes into effect in the United States for the first time.

April 1: The United Kingdom establishes the Royal Air Force.

April 14: First dogfight in which American pilots engage over the western front in World War I.

April 21: Manfred von Richthofen (the Red Baron) is shot down over Vaux sur Somme, France and dies in the crash one day after the World War I ace shot down his 80th plane of the Allies. The ace who kills the Red Baron is a Canadian pilot named Arthur Roy Brown.

May 13: The United States issues its first airmail stamp, which costs 24 cents.

May 15: The first regular airmail route opens in the United States. Mail travels by plane between New York City and Washington, DC.

July 16: Bolsheviks execute Tsar Nicholas and his family, as well as several retainers, in the basement of the Ipatiev House in Yekaterinburg, Siberia. Their executions end the 300-year Romanov dynasty.
July 16: The Carpathia, which rescued survivors from Titanic, sinks when attacked by a German U-boat during World War I.

July 22: A train carrying troops rams a circus train at Ivanhoe, Illinois. 68 die.

August 30: Fanya Kaplan of the Social Revolutionary party shoots Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin at a Moscow factory. He is seriously wounded. The attack launches a wave of reprisals by the Bolsheviks.

October 8: Corporal Alvin C. York almost single-handedly kills 25 German soldiers and captures 132 in the Argonne Forest in France during the Meuse-Argonne offensive in World War I. He will later receive the Medal of Honor for this.

October 31: 21,000 died from Spanish influenza in one week.

November 11: At 11:00 World War I ends when the armistice is signed.

November 28: Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicates.

December 19: New York Globe begins publishing Robert Ripley's "Believe It or Nor" column.

1919

January 15: Great Boston Molasses Flood

January 16: Ratification of the 18th Amendment to the US Constitution. It authorizes the prohibition of alcohol.

January 21: Sinn Fein establishes its own parliament in Dublin and declares Ireland's independence from Great Britain. These moves spark the Irish War of Independence.

January 25: The League of Nations is founded.

February 26: Grand Canyon National Park is established.

April 13: British and Gurkha troops massacre hundreds of unarmed demonstrators in Amritsar, India.

June 11: Sir Barton wins the Belmont Stakes. Having already won the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness, this horse becomes the first winner of the Triple Crown of American horse racing.

June 28: The Treaty of Versailles is signed in France, bringing the first World War to an end.

July 27: After a young black man is stoned and drowned in Lake Michigan for swimming in an area reserved for whites, violence erupts in what becomes known as the Chicago Race Riot.

August 13: Man o' War, the famous racehorse, suffers his only defeat.

September 9: When city officials refuse to allow the police to unionize, the Boston Police go on strike.

October 28: Congress passes the Volstead Act and prohibition begins.

November 10: National Book Week is observed for the first time.

November 28: Born in the United States, Lady Nancy Astor becomes the first female elected to the British House of Commons.

1920

March 10: British Parliament passes the Home Rule Act, dividing Ireland into two parts.

March 28: Silent screen stars Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks wed.

May 5: The Communist Party becomes illegal in the United States.

May 16: Joan of Arc is canonized.

June 13: The United States Postal Service decrees that children will no longer be permitted to be sent via parcel post.

August 18: Tennessee ratifies the 19th Amendment by a single vote, giving women the right to vote in US elections after a 72-year-old struggle.

September 16: A horse-drawn wagon explodes on Wall Street in New York City at 12:01 pm, killing 38 and injuring 143.

September 28: A grand jury indicts 8 members of the Chicago White Sox on charges that they threw the 1919 World Series to the Cincinnati Red Sox after accepting a bribe. This becomes known as the Black Sox Scandal.

November 14: With the occupation of Sevastopol, the Russian Bolshevik army puts an end to anti-Communist attempts to regain control of Russia.

November 15: First meeting of the League of Nations occurs in Geneva, Switzerland.

November 21: Bloody Sunday. The Irish Republican Army kills 11 Englishmen whom they believe are spies. That afternoon, the Black and Tans strike back. They attack spectators and players at a football match in Dublin, Ireland. 12 people die and 60 are wounded.

November 25: The first Thanksgiving parade takes place in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

1921

Chinese Communist Party officially forms.

January 21: Publication of Agatha Christie's first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, which introduces Hercule Poirot to readers

March 13: Mongolia declares its independence from China.

May 31: During the night, thousands of whites descend on Tulsa, Oklahoma's Black Greenwood District. Homes and businesses over a 35-block radius are razed and hundreds are slain. Eventually, this event becomes known as the Tulsa Race Massacre.

July 14: Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti are convicted of killing two men and sentenced to die.

July 29: Adolf Hitler becomes leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party.

August 2: A Chicago jury begins deliberations in the Black Sox scandal. Three hours later, they render a not guilty verdict, but the next day, 8 Chicago White Sox players are banned from playing organized baseball for the duration of their lives.

August 10: A paralytic illness -- possibly Guillain-Barré Syndrome, although thought to be polio at the time -- strikes President Franklin D. Roosevelt, while he is vacationing at his summer home on Campobello.

September 7: The first Miss America Pageant is held in Atlantic City, New Jersey. At this time, it is known as the Inner-City Beauty Contest. Margaret Gorman, who is 16 and comes from Washington, DC, is crowned the next day.

November 11: Three years after the end of World War I, President Warren G. Harding dedicates the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington Cemetery, Virginia.

November 23: President Warren G. Harding signs the Willis Campell Act. This law forbids doctors from prescribing beer or liquor for medicinal purposes.

December 6: Irish Free State declared

December 16: Ratification of the Anglo-Irish Treaty between the British Parliament and Sinn Fein.

1922

Lai Choi San (Lai Sho Sz'en) is born into a pirate family and will succeed her father on his death to command 12 ships. She reigns until 1939.

Rafael Sabatini’s Captain Blood is published.

January 24: Iowan Christian K. Nelson patents the ice cream treat Eskimo Pie.

February 5: First publication of Reader's Digest

March 18: British magistrates in India sentence Mahatma Gandhi to 6 years in prison for disobedience.

May 27: 937 Jewish refugees aboard SS St. Louis are turned away in Havana, Cuba. They are fleeing Nazi persecution. Neither the United States nor Canada permit them entry either. They eventually return to Europe where they are permitted to disembark in several different countries, including Great Britain and France.

May 30: 50,000 people watch US Chief Justice William H. Taft dedicate the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC.

June 1: The Royal Ulster Constabulary is founded.

June 14: Warren G. Harding becomes the first president to use the radio when he dedicates the Francis Scott Key Memorial in Baltimore, Maryland.

June 27: The first Newbery Medal honoring children's literature is awarded to Hendrik Willem van Loon for The Story of Mankind.

August 22: Michael Collins, an Irish revolutionary and Sinn Fein politician, is ambushed in County Cork, Ireland and dies.

September 13: The Straw Hat Riot beings in New York City. People protest the right to wear straw hats later than 15 September.

September 21: Approval to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine is given when President Warren G. Harding signs a joint resolution.

September 22: Cable Act passes in the US Congress. American women who wed "aliens" will not lose their citizenship. Women who marry American men will not be granted automatic citizenship in the United States.

October 11: Alaska Davidson becomes the first woman appointed as an FBI Special Investigator.

November 4: Howard Carter discovers the entrance to Tutankhamun's tomb in Egypt.

November 17: Mehmed VI, the last sultan of the Ottoman Empire, steps down and is taken to Malta aboard a British warship. The Ottoman Empire ends.

November 21: Rebecca Ann Felton takes the oath to serve as a senator from Georgia. She becomes the first woman to serve in the US Senate, but only does so for 2 days.

December 17: Last British troops withdraw from the Irish Free State (Republic of Ireland).

December 30: Formation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). The capital is set in Moscow and, eventually, be comprised of 15 republics, making it the largest country geographically in the world until the USSR is dissolved in 1991.

1923

March 3: Time, a news magazine, is first published.

March 14: Warren G. Harding becomes the first U. S. president to pay an income tax.

May 3: The first nonstop transcontinental flight in North America is completed. The plane flies from New York City, New York to San Diego, California.

June 27: First aerial refueling takes place.

July 13: Roy Chapman Andrews discovers the first dinosaur eggs in Mongolia's Gobi Desert.

July 20: Pancho Villa is assassinated while driving in his car through Parral, Chihauhua.

September 1: Tokyo and Yokahama, Japan experience an earthquake, which kills 142,800 people.

September 7: Interpol forms in Vienna, Austria.

November 20: Garret Morgan, an inventor and newspaperman, is granted a patent for a traffic signal with three positions: Stop, Go, and Warning. It is not the first traffic signal -- that was installed in 1868 in London -- but it improves the safety of earlier signals. (Today, these signs are now lights: Red, Green, and Yellow.)

December 6: President Calvin Coolidge makes the first presidential radio broadcast in the United States.

December 23: During the filming of The Wizard of Oz, Margaret Hamilton's witch's costume catches fire.

December 24: President Coolidge lights the first national Christmas tree on the grounds of the White House.

1924

January 3: Howard Carter opens the inner burial chamber of Pharaoh Tutankhamun. Within the archaeologist finds the pharaoh's sarcophagus.

January 24: Communists rename St. Petersburg. The Russian city is now called Leningrad and remains so until 1991, when it once again becomes St. Petersburg.

January 25: The first Olympic Games held in the winter open in Chamoix, France

February 8: Lethal gas is used for the first time on a convicted prisoner sentenced to die by execution. The man's name was Gee Jon, who was judged guilty for murdering a rival gang member. The execution takes place in Carson City, Nevada.

March 4: Claydon Sunny publishes "Happy Birthday to You."

May 2: The arrest of Patrick Mahon, whom police believe committed murder, is arrested in London. He takes them to a bungalow in Sussex, England where the remains of his mistress are found dismembered and hidden in hatboxes, trunks, and biscuit tins. Rubber gloves become standard issue at murder scenes after investigators combed through this grisly scene using bare hands.

May 10: J. Edgar Hoover is appointed to head the FBI. He will remain its director for 48 years.

May 21: Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb kidnap and kill fourteen-year-old Bobby Franks. They do this to show their superior intellect that allows them to commit the "perfect crime." They are later arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment. A fellow inmate kills Loeb in 1936. Leopold is eventually released in 1958.

June 2: The Snyder Act grants US citizenship to all Native Americans.

July 17: The Spanish Civil War begins.

November 4: Nellie Tayloe Ross becomes the first woman to be elected governor of a US state (Wyoming).

November 27: The first Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade is held in New York City. It will become an annual tradition that becomes known for its balloons, which first appear in the parade in 1927.

1925

January 3: After dissolving Italy's parliament, Benito Mussolini proclaims himself dictator and takes the title "Il Duce."

January 5: Nellie Tayloe Ross becomes the first female governor in the United States when she takes office in Wyoming.

March 13: It becomes illegal to teach evolution in Tennessee.

May 5: John T. Scopes is arrested in Tennessee for teaching evolution.

June 6: The automobile corporation known as Chrylser is founded by Walter Chrysler.

July 10: The Scopes Trial begins in Dayton, Tennessee. William Jennings Bryan prosecutes; Clarence Darrow defends.

July 18: Adolf Hitler publishes Mein Kampf.

July 21: John T. Scopes if found guilty of teaching evolution and fined $100 plus court costs.

December 15: First hockey game played at Madison Square Gardens in New York. The Montreal Canadiens beat the New York Americans 3 to 1.

1926

League of Nation’s Committee of Experts for the Progressive Codification of International Law publishes Draft Provisions for the Suppression of Piracy.

Forty pirates, disguised as passengers, hijack the Sunning on her way to Canton, China.

March 16: Robert H. Goddard launches the first liquid-fueled rocket. It climbs 184 feet.

May 18: Aimee Semple McPherson, an evangelist known throughout the United States, disappears. Her friend, Kenneth Ormiston, also vanishes. She turns up a month later, after a nationwide hunt, in New Mexico, claiming she had been kidnapped. News reporters prove otherwise.

August 5: Harry Houdini is placed within an underwater airtight coffin. It takes 90 minutes for him to escape. It is his last public stunt.

August 6: Gertrude Ederle becomes the first woman to swim the English Channel. She does so in 14 hours, 39 minutes, beating the men's record by nearly 2 hours.

August 22: Gold is discovered in Johannesburg, South Africa.

August 23: At the age of 31, film star Rudolph Valentino dies. His many fans around the world mourn his passing.

September 20: Bugs Moran tries to kill Al Capone in a drive-by shooting.

October 14: A. A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh is published.

October 22: Harry Houdini is punched in the stomach by J. Gordon Whitehead in Montreal, Canada.

October 31: Anteo Zamboni (15) attempts to assassinate Benito Mussolini and is summarily lynched.
October 31: Harry Houdini dies of peritonitis, a result of the stomach injury that he suffered earlier in the month.

December 3: Author Agatha Christie mysteriously disappears for eleven days.

1927

April 30: The Federal Industrial Institution for Women opens in Alderson, West Virginia. It is the first prison for women convicted of federal crimes and serving sentences lasting longer than 1 year.

May 1: Imperial Airways serves cooked meals to its passengers, becoming the first British airlines to do so.

May 18: Grauman's Chinese Theater opens in Hollywood, California.

May 19: Charles Lindbergh takes off in the Spirit of St. Louis on the first nonstop flight from New York to Paris.

May 21: Charles Lindbergh lands in Paris, completing the first nonstop solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean. The trip takes about 33.5 hours.

May 26: The last Model T Ford (Tin Lizzie) rolls off the assembly line at the Ford Motor Company.

June 1: Opening of the Peace Bridge between Canada and the United States

August 23: Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti are electrocuted in Massachusetts, even though many believe they are innocent of the crime for which they are convicted.

September 14: Dancer Isadora Duncan dies in France when the long scarf she is wearing becomes entangled in the rear wheel of the car in which she is riding.

October 6: The Jazz Singer, starring Al Jolson, is released. It is the first motion picture with a soundtrack.

1928

April 13: Plane flying from Europe to North America makes the first nonstop flight.

April 19: The last volume of The Oxford English Dictionary is published, 44 years since the first was published.

May 1: Six children die and another 10 are injured when hailstones rain down on Klausenberg, Romania.

May 15: Mickey Mouse appears for the first time in Plane Crazy, a silent film.

June 2: Kraft begins selling Velveeta Cheese.

June 18: Amelia Earhart becomes the first woman to fly across the Atlantic when she lands in Burry Point, Wales.

July 6: The first all-talking motion picture debuts. It is shown in New York.

July 7: Bread, sliced by a machine invented by Otto Frederick Rohwedder, is sold for the first time.

September 15: Alexander Fleming of Scotland discovers penicillin.

September 21: Debut of My Weekly Reader

October 12: The iron lung is used for the first time.

October 15: The Graf Zeppelin, a German dirigible, lands in Lakehurst, New Jersey. This is its first transatlantic crossing.

October 22: China expels all Russian instructors and civil servants.

November 18: Release of Steamboat Willie from Walt Disney, the first animated sound film to feature Mickey Mouse.

1929

February 14: St. Valentine's Day Massacre in Chicago, Illinois. 7 gangsters working for George Moran are murdered on orders from Al Capone.

March 29: President Herbert Hoover has a telephone installed in the Oval Office at the White House.

June 7: The ratification of the Lateran Treaty establishes Vatican City as a sovereign state.

June 8: Margaret Bondfield becomes Britain’s first female cabinet member.

October 24: The stock market crashes after a record 12,894,650 shares are traded. This becomes known as "Black Thursday."

October 25: Albert B. Fall, the former Secretary of the Interior, is convicted of accepting a bribe in the Teapot Dome Scandal. He is the first US Cabinet member to be imprisoned.

October 29: Another 16,000,000 shares are sold on Wall Street, following 5 days of selling 13,000,0000 shares. This becomes known as "Black Tuesday," and further fuels what becomes known as the Great Depression.

December 1: Edwin S. Lowe invents Bingo.

1930

January 5: Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow meet for the first time.

February 18: Pluto, a dwarf planet, is discovered.

February 24: The first traffic light showing red and green is installed. It is found in Manhattan, New York.

March 12: Mohandas Gandhi begins his 241-mile march of civil disobedience to protest British salt tax.

March 20: Kentucky Fried Chicken opens for the first time. It's founder is Colonel Harland Sanders.

March 28: Constantinople, Turkey, becomes Istanbul.

April 6: Hostess Twinkies are invented.

May 5: Amy Johnson takes off on her bid to fly solo from England to Australia. She becomes the first woman to achieve this.

May 15: Ellen Church becomes the first female airline stewardess when she serves aboard a United flight flying from San Francisco, California to Cheyenne, Wyoming.

May 27: Richard Drew invents masking tape.
May 27: The Chrysler Building opens in New York City. At the time, it is that tallest man-made structure, standing at 1,046 feet in height.

June 17: The United States imposes the Smoot-Hawley Tariff, which is meant to protect the United States and raises the average tariff by 20%. In actuality, it is worsens the beleaguered world economy.

August 12: Clarence Birdseye receives a patent for developing a way to quickly freeze food.

August 29: 36 people, the last remaining residents, of Saint Kilda Island are voluntarily evacuated to other parts of Scotland.

September 2: The first nonstop flight by an airplane between Europe and the United States takes 37 hours to complete.

September 8: Blondie, a comic strip, appears for the first time.
September 8: Public schools in New York begin teaching Hebrew.
September 8: Richard Drew invents transparent adhesive tape, which later becomes known as Scotch tape. Marketing is done by 3M.

October 9: Laura Ingalls becomes the first woman to complete a transcontinental flight.

November 5: Sinclair Lewis wins the Nobel Prize for Literature, becoming the first American to do so.

1931

March 3: "The Star-Spangled Banner" becomes the official national anthem of the United States. It was written by Francis Scott Key in 1814 as he watched the bombardment of Fort McHenry in Baltimore from the deck of a British ship.

March 25: Arrest of the Scottsboro Boys in Alabama. The 9 African-American boys are falsely accused of raping two white women.

May 1: The Empire State Building opens in New York City.

May 24: The B&O Railroad becomes the first company to install air conditioning on its train.

July 1: Ice vending machines are introduced in Los Angeles, California. 25 pounds of ice can be purchased for 15¢.

July 27: Grasshoppers destroy thousands of acres of crops in Iowa, Nebraska, and South Dakota.

August 21: Babe Ruth hits his 600th home run.

October 4: Chester Gould's Dick Tracy comic strip debuts.

October 18: Al Capone is convicted of federal income-tax evasion. He is sentenced to 11 years in prison.

November 7: Mao Zedong proclaims the Chinese People's Republic.

December 3: Alka Seltzer goes on sale.

1932

March 1: The son of Charles and Anne Lindbergh is kidnapped from their New Jersey home. The baby is 20 months old.

May 12: The body of the Lindbergh baby is discovered in Hopewell, New Jersey.

May 14: "We Want Beer!" parade in New York takes place.

May 19: Amelia Earhart departs Newfoundland to become the first woman to fly solo and nonstop across the Atlantic.

May 21: Amelia Earhart lands near Londonderry, Northern Ireland.

June 6: The United States enacts is first gasoline tax with the Revenue Act of 1932. The tax rate is 1 cent per gallon sold.

August 29: The United Cigar Stores close 800 shops.

November 8: Franklin D. Roosevelt defeats the incumbent Herbert Hoover to become president of the United States. FDR will go on to win 3 additional terms of office, making him the only president to serve 4 consecutive terms of office.

December 27: Radio City Music Hall opens in New York City.
December 27: In the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin reinstates the internal passport system. Vladimir Lenin has previously denounced this as a stigma of tsarism and abolished it.

1933

January 6: Deputy Sheriff Malcolm Davis of Tarrant County, Texas, is slain in ambush by Clyde Barrow, who intended to shoot another gangster.

January 30: Adolf Hitler is named chancellor of Germany.

January 30: The Lone Ranger is introduced on radio.

February 15: An assassin attempts to kill President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt. Although FDR survives, the Mayor of Chicago is fatally wounded and succumbs on 29 March.

February 17: Newsweek is published for the first time.

February 28: Frances Perkins is appointed Secretary of Labor, making her the first woman in the United States Cabinet.

March 2: King Kong, starring Faye Wrey, opens in movie theaters.

March 3: Dedication of Mount Rushmore

March 10: Dachau, Germany's first concentration camp, opens. At least 32,000 people will die from disease, malnutrition, physical oppression, and execution during its operation.

March 12: President Franklin D. Roosevelt delivers his first "fireside chat."

April 26: Hermann Göring forms the Gestapo.

June 2: Franklin Delano Roosevelt authorizes the building of an indoor pool at the White House.

June 5: After people begin hoarding gold following the many bank failures during the Great Depression, President Roosevelt signs a Congressional resolution that takes the United States off the gold standard.

June 6: The first park-in movie theater opens in the United States. It is located in Pennsauken, New Jersey and allows motorists to watch films from the convenience of their cars. At the time, attendees pay 25 cents per car and 25 cents per person in the vehicle, although no group is charged more than $1. Later these park-in theaters become better known as drive-in theaters.

June 10: John Dillinger robs his first bank. The robbery takes place in New Carlisle, Ohio, and he absconds with $10,600.
June 10: The car in which Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker are riding crashes into a ravine. Parker suffers serious third-degree burns.

July 1: The Nazi regime in Germany declares that married women should not work.

July 8: The Public Works Administration goes into effect.

July 10: Eastchester Township, New York installs the first police radio system.

August 17: Lou Gehrig plays his 1,308th consecutive baseball game, setting a record.

October 4: First issue of Esquire Magazine is  published.

October 12: John Dillinger escapes from jail in Ohio.
October 12: Machine Gun Kelly is sentenced to life imprisonment.

October 23: John Dillinger and his gang rob a bank in Indiana of $75,000.

November 10: A combination snowstorm and dust storm, known as the Black Blizzard, spreads from South Dakota to the Atlantic.

November 12: Hugh Gray takes the first known photograph of what might be the Loch Ness monster.

November 28: Grand jury in Dallas, Texas hands down an indictment against Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow for killing Tarrant County Deputy Malcolm Davis in January.

December 5: 21st Amendment to the US Constitution is ratified, repealing the 18th and ending Prohibition.

December 6: The United States lifts its ban on James Joyce's Ulysses.

December 21: At the age of 5, Shirley Temple signs a studio contract with Fox Films.

1934

January 21: Henri Littière of Paris, a French baker and adherent of medieval life, answers charges of forcing his wife, Juliette, to wear a chastity belt because of her adultery. Having already faced similar charges 2 years before, the court imprisons him for 3 months and fines him 50 francs after judging him guilty of cruelty to his wife.

February 17: The first high school driving course is offered in the United States. The class is provided in State College, Pennsylvania.

March 3: Using a wooden pistol, John Dillinger breaks out of jail.

April 19: Shirley Temple, a child star, appears in her first film.

May 11: A massive dust storm sweeps across the Midwest during the Great Depression. The dust eventually reached the East Coast. Some dust even lands on the decks of ships 300 miles offshore.

May 15: The US Department of Justice offers a reward of $25,000 for John Dillinger, who's wanted dead or alive.

May 23: Police officers ambush Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow as they drive along a Louisiana road. Both are killed.

June 6: The Securities and Exchange Commission is established, following an investigation into the 1929 collapse of the stock market.

June 30: The Night of the Long Knives. Fearing the the paramilitary SA is becoming too strong, Chancellor Adolf Hitler of Germany orders his SS to conduct a bloody purge in which many SA leaders are slain, as well as hundreds of Hitler's perceived opponents.

July 22: John Dillinger, deemed Public Enemy No. 1, is mortally wounded outside Chicago's Biograph Theatre by FBI agents.

August 3: After merging the offices of German chancellor and president, Adolf Hitler declares himself Führer of Germany.

August 11: The first federal prisoners arrive at Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay.

September 8: Morro Castle, a luxury passenger ship bound for New Jersey, catches fire. 133 are killed.

September 19: Bruno Hauptmann is arrested and charged with kidnapping Charles Lindbergh's baby son.

September 22: Explosion at Gresford Colliery in Wales kills 266 miners and those working to rescue them.

September 24: Babe Ruth's farewell at Yankee Stadium. 2,500 fans attend.

October 8: Bruno Hauptmann is indicted for the murder of Charles Lindbergh's son.

October 16: Mao Zedong, with 25,000 troops, begins the Long March (6,000 miles) in China. It switches their revolutionary base from southeast to northwest China and seals Mao Zedong as the undisputed leader of the Communist Party. Known as Ch'ang Cheng, the march lasts 368 days.

October 22: FBI agents kill bank robber Charles (Pretty Boy) Floyd in Ohio.

November 27: Baby Face Nelson is killed in a shoot-out with the FBI.

December 21: Appearing in the French film Zouzou, Josephine Baker becomes the first black woman to star in a major motion picture.

1935

January 2: Bruno Hauptmann stands trial on charges of kidnapping and murdering Charles Lindbergh's son. He is eventually found guilty and executed.

January 11: Amelia Earhart successfully flies solo from Hawaii to California, becoming the first aviator to make this flight.

January 24: Canned beer goes on sale for the first time.

February 6: The board game Monopoly goes on sale.

February 13: A jury pronounces Bruno Richard Hauptmann guilty of the kidnapping and murder of the infant son of Charles Lindbergh.

February 22: Airplanes are no longer allowed to fly over the White House.

March 21: Persia is officially renamed Iran.

April 14: A massive dust storm blankets the Midwest in the United States. It becomes known as "Black Sunday" and takes place during the Dust Bowl and Great Depression.

May 19: Pope Pius XI canonizes Cardinal John Fisher and Sir Thomas More, both of whom were executed by Henry VIII.

May 24: First night game in major league baseball takes place in Cincinnati. The Reds beat the Phillies 2-1.

June 1: England introduces license plates and a test for automobile drivers.

July 10: Two recovering alcoholics, Dr. Robert Smith and Bill Wilson, found Alcoholics Anonymous.

July 16: The first parking meters in the world are installed in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. For 5 cents, cars can be parked in numbered spaces along the curb for 1 hour.

July 30: Penguin publishes the first paperback-covered book, sparking a revolution in the publishing industry.

August 14: Social Security Act becomes law. This establishes a permanent national old-age pension system.

August 15: The plane carrying Will Rogers and Wiley Post crashes near Point Barrow, Alaska. Both men are killed.

September 2: Hurricane strikes Florida on Labor Day. It is the strongest and most intense hurricane to strike the United States. 423 people die.

September 15: Germany passes the Nürnberg Laws, which strip Jews of their citizenship and forbids them to marry non-Jews.

October 22: Mao Zedong's Long March ends in China.

October 23: Dutch Schultz and 3 others are gunned down in a Newark, New Jersey saloon. The killing becomes known as The Chophouse Massacre.

December: Errol Flynn stars in Captain Blood.

1936

February 15: Adolf Hitler announces the construction of the people's car, the Volkswagen Beetle.

February 17: The first superhero in the world appears for the first time in comics. He is the Phantom and his creator is Lee Falk.

April 3: Bruno Hauptmann is executed after being convicted of kidnapping and murder.

June 30: Approval is given for federal employees to only work 40 hours a week.
June 30: Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind is published.

July 17: An uprising by nationalist rebels begins in Spain, sparking a bloody civil war that lasts for 3 years.

August 1: Adolf Hitler opens the XI Summer Olympic Games in Berlin, Germany.

August 3: While Adolf Hitler watches, American Jesse Owens wins the first of 4 gold medals at the Berlin Olympics.

August 19: Soviet officials begin the Great Purge of prominent Old Bolsheviks who are seen as real or potential threats to Joseph Stalin.

August 25: An odorless form of corn starch is patented by Ralph W. Kerr.

November 23: The first issue of Life magazine is published by Henry R. Luce. It's primary purpose is to showcase photographs.

November 30: Fire destroys the Crystal Palace in London. The exhibition hall had been erected for the Great Exhibition of 1851.

December 11: Edward VIII abdicates, relinquishing the British throne so he can wed Wallis Simpson. He is the only sovereign to voluntarily relinquish the crown.

1937

March 18: In New London, Texas, Consolidated School explodes from a natural gas leak. More than 300, mostly students, die.

April 28: Pan Am makes the first commercial flight across the Pacific Ocean.

May 3: Margaret Mitchell wins a Pulitzer for her novel, Gone with the Wind.

May 6: The Hindenburg, a German airship, explodes in flames at Lakehurst, New Jersey. Out of the 97 passengers, 35 die. One person on the ground also succumbs.

May 28: The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, California, opens to vehicles. The day before, around 200,000 people walk across the bridge.

June 3: Prince Edward, duke of Windsor (formerly Edward VIII), weds Wallis Simpson, an American socialite.

June 4: Humpty Dumpty, a grocery store chain, introduces the world's first shopping carts in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

June 5: Henry Ford initiates the 32-hour work week.

June 30: London launches the world's first emergency call telephone service. Those in need of assistance must call 999.

July 2: Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan disappear while flying to Howland Island during their round-the-world flight.

August 14: China declares war on Japan.
August 14: The Appalachian Trail is completed. It traverses 2,000 miles in 14 states from Georgia to Maine.

September 21: J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit is published.

December 21: Premiere of Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the first full-length animated feature film.

1938

January 3: The March of Dimes is established to fight polio.

June 14: Ben Grushkin patents chlorophyll.
June 14: Dorothy Lathrop is awarded the first Caldecott Medal for her artwork in Animals of the Bible.

June 30: Superman makes his first appearance in DC Comics.

July 10: Howard Hughes flies around the world in 91 hours.

August 27: Two subway trains collide in New York City, killing 2 and injuring 51 people.

September 21: Great Hurricane of 1938 strikes Long Island and southern New England, killing 500-700 people.

September 27: First training school for Santa Claus opens in New York.
September 27: Nazis forbid Jewish lawyers from practicing.

October 30: Orson Welles's Mercury Theater broadcasts H. G. Wells's The War of the Worlds. Mass panic ensues because many radio listeners are unaware this is a dramatization.

November 1: Seabiscuit defeats War Admiral, a former Triple Crown winner, by 4 lengths in a horse race at Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore, Maryland.

November 9: Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass) begins in Germany and Austria. The destruction continues for 48 hours, causing damage to synagogues and Jewish businesses throughout the two countries. At least 91 Jews die.

1939

January 16: "Superman" debuts as a daily newspaper comic strip.

April 9: After the Daughters of the American Revolution refuse to allow Marian Anderson to sing at Constitution Hall, she performs on Easter Sunday at the Lincoln Memorial. 75,000 people attend.

May 1: Batman makes his first appearance in Detective Comics #27.

May 17: NBC televises the first baseball game. Princeton defeats Columbia 2-1.

August 15: The Wizard of Oz premieres at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. Judy Garland plays Dorothy. Ray Bolger is the Scarecrow. Jack Haley is the Tin Man. Bert Lahr is the Cowardly Lion. Frank Morgan is the Wizard. Billie Burke is Glinda, while Margaret Hamilton is the Wicked Witch.

August 26: The first game of Major League baseball is televised. It is a game between the Cincinnati Reds and the Brooklyn Dodgers.

September 1: Adolf Hitler orders the extermination of those with mental illnesses.
September 1: Germany invades Poland, an offensive that ultimately launches World War II. The Poles fight bravely, but are only able to stem the tide of invasion for 26 days before the country's leaders capitulate.

September 3: Britain and France declare war on Germany.

September 27: 140,000 Polish troops become prisoners of war after Poland surrenders to German forces.

October 24: Nylon stockings are sold for the first time.

November 8: An attempt on Adolf Hitler's life in Munich fails.

November 15: Franklin D. Roosevelt lays the cornerstone for the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C.

November 18: Three bombs, planted by the Irish Republican Army, explode in Piccadilly Circus in London.

December 15: Gone With the Wind premieres in Atlanta, Georgia. The film stars Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable.

1940

January 8: Britain begins rationing bacon, butter, and sugar.

February 17: Sailors of the Cossack, a British destroyer, board the German vessel Altmark in Jossingfjord, Norway. After hand-to-hand combat using bayonets and cutlasses, they free 299 British prisoners of war. It becomes known as the Altmark Incident and is the last recorded action involving cutlasses by the Royal Navy.

February 29: Hattie McDaniel wins an Oscar for her role in Gone with the Wind. She is the first African-American woman to win the film award.

April 27: Heinrich Himmler orders the establishment of Auschwitz Concentration Camp.

June 4: The British complete the evacuation of 338,226 Allied troops from France in a flotilla of more than 800 assorted vessels. The feat becomes known as the Miracle of Dunkirk.

June 10: In declaring war against France and Great Britain, Benito Mussolini leads Italy into World War II.

June 14: Auschwitz Concentration Camp opens in Poland to house Polish prisoners of war. Approximately 3,000,000 people will died within Auschwitz's walls before the war ends.
June 14: Germany invades Paris.

June 22: Marshal Philippe Petain signs an armistice with Germany, creating Vichy France.

July 27: Bugs Bunny debuts in a short film from Looney Tunes entitled A Wild Hare.

August 20: A Stalinist agent in Mexico assassinates Leon Trotsky.

September 7: The German Luftwaffe begins bombing London. It is the first night of bombing and continues for 57 nights in a row. It is the first step in Hitler's plan to invade England.

September 12: 4 teens follow their dog down a hole near Lascaux, France, where they discover drawings that are 17,000 years old. The find becomes known as the Lascaux Cave Paintings.

September 13: German bombs damage Buckingham Palace.

October 1: The Pennsylvania Turnpike opens. It is one of the first controlled-access highway in the United States.

October 16: The German governor-general in Warsaw, Poland forms the Warsaw Ghetto.

October 24: The US Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 calls for a 40-hour work week, which goes into effect on this day.

October 31: Deadline for all Jews in Warsaw to relocate to the Warsaw Ghetto.

November 5: Franklin D. Roosevelt is re-elected president of the US. It is the first and only time that one man serves 3 consecutive terms of office.

November 13: Walt Disney releases the animated film Fantasia.

November 26: The Nazis begin construction on a wall separating the Jewish Ghetto from the rest of Warsaw.

December 6: Helen Ernst, a resistance fighter and poster artist, is arrested by the Gestapo.

1941

January 9: 6,000 Jews are exterminated in Bucharest, Romania.

February 20: The first transport train carrying Jews leaves Plotsk, Poland, heading to concentration camps.
February 20: Nazi Germany forbids all Polish Jews from using public transportation.

March 15: A blizzard in North Dakota kills 151 people.

May 1: Cheeri Oats, a new cereal, is introduced to the public by General Mills. It will change its name in 1945 to Cheerios.

May 5: Coco Chanel unveils a new perfume, Chanel No. 5.

May 6: Joseph Stalin becomes Premier of the Soviet Union.

May 9: After capturing an Enigma machine, British intelligence breaks Germany's secret codes.

May 10: Rudolf Hess, one of Hitler's deputies, flies to Britain to open secret negotiations with the Allies. After parachuting near Glasgow, Scotland, he is taken prisoner.

May 27: 3 vessels of Great Britain's Royal Navy sink Germany's Bismarck near France. Only 115 men out of a crew of 2,221 survive the destruction and sinking of the German battleship.

June 22: Germany violates the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact when it attacks the Soviet Union 2 years after the treaty's signing.

August 1: The first Jeep is produced.

August 29: A German death squad kills 1,469 Jewish children in Russia.

September 1: Any Jew over the age of 6 and living in Germany must wear the yellow Star of David.

September 8: The armies of Germany and Finland lay siege to Leningrad, Russia. The siege lasts for 872 days, ending on 27 January 1944.

September 11: Construction begins in Arlington, Virginia on the Pentagon. It will serve as headquarters for the Department of Defense, which includes the US Army, Navy, and Air Force.

September 23: General Charles de Gaulle forms the French government in exile in London.
September 23: Auschwitz conducts its first experiments in gas murder.

September 29: On the outskirts of Kiev at the Babi Yar ravine, the Nazis begin executing 33,771 Ukrainian Jews (majority of fatalities), Soviet officials, prisoners of war, and Romani.

October 23: Walt Disney releases Dumbo, an animated film.

October 25: 16,000 Jews are killed in Odessa, Ukraine.

October 31: Mount Rushmore National Memorial is completed after 15 years. Located in the Black Hills of South Dakota, the sculpture depicts the heads of 4 US presidents: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Teddy Roosevelt.

December 7: 353 Japanese warplanes attack Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. 2,403 people die.

December 8: Franklin D. Roosevelt declares war on Japan, bringing the United States into World War II.

1942

January 20: The Wannsee Conference is held in Berlin. Its purpose is to organize the "final solution," the extermination of Europe's Jews.

February 19: President Franklin Roosevelt orders that all Japanese-Americans, living on the West Coast, be detained and interned in camps during World War II.

February 22: The Nazis behead 3 members of the nonviolent resistance group the White Rose in Munich, Germany.

February 24: First broadcast of the Voice of America

May 3: Dutch Jews are required to wear the Star of David for the first time on orders of the Nazis.

May 8: The Japanese sink the USS Lexington during the Battle of the Coral Sea. She becomes the first US aircraft carrier to be be sunk during World War II.

May 12: 1,500 Jews are gassed at Auschwitz.

May 27: Czech rebels shoot Reichsprotektor Reinhard Heydrick (The Hangman) in Prague. He dies from his wounds and 1,800 Czechs will die in retaliation.

June 1: The Liberty Brigade, an underground newspaper in Warsaw, publishes the first public article about the gassing of tens of thousands of Jews at Chelmo.

June 4: Battle of Midway ends. It is the first time that the US Navy, under Admiral Chester Nimitz, defeats Japan.

June 9: Nazis round up all residents of Lidice, Czechoslovakia. The next day the majority of these people are murdered in reprisal for Reichsprotektor Reinhard Heydrich's assassination, which was actually carried out by the Czech underground.

June 12: Anne Frank receives a diary for her birthday.

June 14: Anne Franks records her first entry in her diary.

July 6: Anne Frank and her family go into hiding. They will remain in the secret annex in Amsterdam until their capture on 4 August 1944.

July 17: Late in the evening, a series of explosions rocks Port Chicago, California. Around 320 men, many of whom were loading two vessels with ammunition, are caught in the explosion. The majority of African Americans, the majority of whom had little training in the handling of the ordnance.

July 22: 300,000 Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto in Poland are sent to Treblinka's extermination camp.

August 7: The first major Allied offensive begins when US Marines land on Guadalcanal and capture a Japanese airfield. The fighting continues for 6 months.

August 21: Walt Disney releases Bambi, an animated movie based on Felix Salten's book.

August 23: 600 planes of the German Luftwaffe drop bombs on Stalingrad, killing 40,000 people.

September 12: A German U-boat fires upon the Laconia, a British troop ship. Afterward, Captain Werner Hartenstein learns that among the passengers are 1,500 Italian POWs. He surfaces to pick up survivors and calls for assistance from an Italian submarine and two other U-boats. French and British warships also come; even though Hartenstein informs them of his humanitarian effort to rescue survivors, an Ally plane launches a bomb. Although damaged, the U-boat submerges and, thereafter, all Axis efforts to help survivors cease, leading to the deaths of more than 1,400 passengers.

October 1: The first Little Golden Book is published.

October 5: 5,000 Jews are killed in Dubno, Russia.

October 18: Hitler orders the execution of captured Allied commandos.

November 11: Congress lowers the draft age to 18. They also raise the upper limit of the draft to 37 years of age.

November 23: After a German U-boat torpedoes the British SS Benlomond, Poon Lim, a Chinese steward, remains adrift on a raft for 133 days before he is found. He is the only person to survive the sinking.

November 27: The French navy scuttles 73 ships and submarines at Toulon to keep them from the Nazis.

November 28: Fire sweeps through Cocoanut Grove nightclub in Boston and kills 492.

December 10: Poland's government-in-exile delivers a report on the Holocaust to the Allies.

1943

January 18: The United States rations bread and metal. The connection between the two items stems from the fact that by banning the sale of presliced bread lessens bakers' demand for metal parts.

February 2: German troops surrender to the Soviets, marking the end of the Battle of Stalingrad.

February 3: A German U-boat torpedoes an American transport ship in the Atlantic ocean. The Dorchester is carrying 902 soldiers, merchant seamen, and civilians. 4 chaplains of different faiths selflessly give their life jackets to others and are among the 672 who die.

February 9: Last day of fighting in the Battle of Guadacanal. The Allies defeat Japan.

March 13: Nazis liquidate the Jewish ghetto in Krakow, Poland. Receiving advance warning, Oskar Schindler keeps his workers at his factory overnight to save them.

March 21: Attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler fails

April 13: Dedication of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial in Washington, DC

April 19: When SS officer Jürgen Stroop demands the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto, the Jews refuse. Stroop orders the ghetto destroyed, which launches the beginning of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. The Jews hold out for almost 1 month.

April 27: Witold Pileckr, a Polish resistance fighter, escapes from Auschwitz after voluntarily being imprisoned there in order to gain information about the Holocaust.

May 1: The United States begins rationing food during World War II.

May 16: SS officer Jürgen Stroop gives orders to burn the Warsaw Ghetto and to destory the Great Synagogue. During the month of resistance, 13,000 Jews die. Less than 300 Germans are killed. Those Jews who survive the uprising are transported to the extermination camp at Treblinka.

May 17: The US Army signs a contract with the University of Pennsylvania to develop ENIAC, an early computer.

June 10: Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler orders the liquidation of the Lodz Ghetto in Poland.

June 15: SS Colonel Paul Blobel is ordered to oversee the destruction of any evidence that will reveal to the Allies the Nazi's systematic extermination of European Jews.

July 1: First time a withholding tax is deducted from paychecks.

August 1: Future President John F. Kennedy's PT-boat sinks near the Solomon Islands during World War II after hit by a Japanese destroyer.

August 2: An armed uprising begins at Treblinka Concentration Camp; the crematorium is destroyed.

August 29: The Danish Navy scuttles her warships to prevent them from falling into German hands.

October 14: At least 300 Jews escape from the extermination camp in Sobibor, Poland. Several SS supervisors and Ukrainian guards are slain, and the revolt leads to the dismantling of the camp.

October 17: Allied prisoners of war and Asian laborers complete the Burma railway for the Japanese army.

November 15: Romani are deemed equivalent to Jews and ordered to be deported to concentration camps by Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler.

December 24: General Dwight D. Eisenhower is appointed supreme commanded of the Allied Expeditionary Force during World War II.

1944

January 27: Soviets finally break the German Siege of Leningrad. It lasts 880 days and more than 2,000,000 Russians lose their lives.

February 20: The Batman and Robin comic strip first appears in newspapers.

February 28: The ten-Boom family is arrested in Nazi-occupied Netherlands for hiding Jews.

February 29: A Nazi truck runs down Karol Wojtyla in Krakow, Poland, injuring the future pope (John Paul II).

May 9: First eye bank opens in New York.

June 6: D-Day. 156,000 Allied Expeditionary troops land on the beaches of Normandy, France during World War II.

June 16: Convicted of a crime he did not commit, George Stinney is executed for the murders of 2 white girls. Stinney is only 14 at the time of his execution, making him the youngest person to be executed during the 20th century.

July 6: The world's largest circus tent catches fire in Hartford, Connecticut and spreads quickly. It belongs to Ringling Brothers - Barnum and Bailey circus. Within 10 minutes, 167 people die -- the majority of these are children -- and 682 are injured. The cause is unknown, but 6 years later, Robert D. Segee confesses that he started the fire.

July 20: An assassination attempt is made on Adolf Hitler, but the bomb fails to kill him. The plot is led by German army officer Claus Von Stauffenberg.

August 1: Anne Frank records the last entry in her diary, which she has kept for 2 years while in hiding during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands.

August 4: The Gestapo discovers the secret annex in Amsterdam where Anne Frank, her family, and 3 others have been hiding. They are all arrested and sent to concentration camps; only her father, Otto Frank, will survive.

August 9: Smokey Bear debuts as the spokesman for fire prevention.

September 2: Anne Frank is sent to Auschwitz.

September 12: Troops of the US Army enter Germany for the first time.

October 7: Jews at Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp rise up and burn down the crematoriums.

October 14: Field Marshal Edwin Rommel (Desert Fox) drinks poison and dies after it becomes known that he is involved in a conspiracy to assassinate Adolf Hitler.

November 7: Franklin D. Roosevelt is elected to an unprecedented fourth term as President of the United States.

November 10: 800 Romani children, at least 100 of whom are boys between the ages of 9 and 14, are killed at Auschwitz.

November 28: Allied leaders (Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin) meet in Iran at the Tehran Conference to map out strategy.

December 15: Bandleader Glenn Miller's plane goes down over the English Channel.

December 16: The Battle of the Bulge begins in the Ardennes Forest.

1945

January 16: Adolf Hitler moves into the Führerbunker (air raid shelter) in Berlin, Germany.

January 17: The evacuation of Auschwitz begins.
January 17: The Soviets enter Warsaw.
January 17: The Soviet secret police arrest Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat who saves thousands of Jews from the Nazis, in Hungary.

January 20: Franklin D. Roosevelt is sworn-in as president of the United States for the fourth time. It is the first and last time that a president serves more than 2 consecutive terms.

January 27: The Soviet Army liberates the concentration camps of Auschwitz and Birkenau, which are located in Poland.

January 30: Around 9,000 die after a Soviet submarine sinks the Wilhelm Gustloff, a German ocean liner.

January 31: For the first time since the American Civil War, a soldier is executed for desertion. His name is Private Eddie Slovik.

February 4: For the next 7 days, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin meet at Yalta in Crimea to discuss the reorganization of Europe after World War II ends.

February 13: The Allies begin bombing Dresden, Germany. Fires erupt as a result of the bombing and sweep through the city. More than 22,000 people die.

February 19: 30,000 United States Marines invade Iwo Jima, which is held by the Imperial Japanese Army. 18,000 Japanese and 6,000 Americans die.

February 23: Six US Marines raise the American flag atop Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima.
February 23: First mass inoculation using the Salk vaccine for polio takes place in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

April 4: Ohrdruf Concentration Camp becomes the first camp in Germany to be liberated by the US Army.

April 11: The US Army liberates Buchenwald concentration camp.

April 12: President Franklin Delano Roosevelt succumbs in office before the end of World War II. Vice President Harry S. Truman becomes the 33rd president.

April 16: The Russian Red Army launches its attack on Berlin, the capital of Nazi Germany.
April 16: American soldiers liberate Colditz Castle, a high-security prisoner of war facility in Germany.

April 28: Benito Mussolini is captured and executed while trying to flee Italy.

April 29: The US Seventh Army liberates tens of thousands of inmates at the Nazi concentration camp in Dachau, Germany.

April 30: Adolf Hitler and his new wife, Eva Braun, commit suicide in the Führerbunker as the Red Army captures Berlin.

May 7: The Germans surrender unconditionally to the Allies, ending the second World War in Europe.

May 8: Victory in Europe Day

June 21: Less than 3 months after US forces land on Okinawa, Japanese resistance is crushed.

June 26: Representatives from 50 nations, gathered in San Francisco, California, to  sign the charter establishing the United Nations.

July 16: The first test detonation of an atomic bomb takes place in New Mexico as part of the US Manhattan Project, prior to dropping such bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan.

July 30: A Japanese submarine torpedoes the USS Indianapolis, which sinks in the Pacific. 800 crew members die.

August 2: Flying a PV-1 Ventura, Wilbur "Chuck" Gwinn spots the survivors of the USS Indianapolis, 3 1/2 days after she sinks. 316 survive.

August 6: The US B-29 Enola Gay drops an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan in an effort to hasten the end of World War II. More than 70,000 people die and most of the city is destroyed.

August 9: The United States drops a second atomic bomb on Nagasaki, Japan.

August 14: Japan surrenders unconditionally.
August 14: Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Minh launch a coordinated uprising against the French in Vietnam after Japan surrenders.

August 30: General Douglas MacArthur lands in Japan.

September 2: V-J Day, marking the formal surrender of Japan aboard the USS Missouri, and bringing a close to World War II
September 2: Ho Chi Minh declares independence from France for Vietnam.

September 9: Grace Hopper discovers a moth in a computer, making it the first "bug" in computer systems.

October 8: Patent for microwave oven awarded

October 11: Chinese civil war begins. Chiang Kai-shek leads the Kuomintang government; Mao Zedong leads the Communist Party.

October 21: French women are permitted to vote for the first time.

October 24: The United Nations is established.

November 19: The Allies (United States, Soviet Union, France, and Great Britain) convene an international war tribunal for 24 Nazi leaders in Nürnberg, Germany. It is the first time that such a trial is held. Charges against the accused pertain to crimes against peace, crimes of war, and crimes against humanity. Proceedings last for 10 months and are presided over by Lord Justice Geoffrey Lawrence. 12 Nazis are eventually sentenced to death, 7 to prison (terms vary between 10 years and life), and 3 are acquitted. Of the remaining 2, 1 commits suicide and the other is judged incompetent to stand trial.

1946

February 10: Gangster Charles "Lucky" Luciano is deported from the United States to Italy.

February 14: ENIAC, the first general-purpose high-speed electronic digital computer, is unveiled to the public.

April 18: The League of Nations dissolves.

April 27: Radar is installed for the first time in a commercial ship.

July 5: The first bikini debuts in Paris. The swimsuit is named for the site of the world's first atomic-weapons test.

July 7: Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini becomes the first US citizen to be canonized by the Roman Catholic Church.

September 5: Amon Göth, who was in command of the Krakow-Plaszow concentration camp, is found guilty of imprisoning, torturing, and exterminating individuals and groups of people. His is the first conviction at a Polish war crimes court. He is hanged 8 days later.

October 1: Hermann Göring and 21 other Nazi leaders are convicted and sentenced to death or imprisonment at the war crime trials in Nürnberg. Göring commits suicide the night before his scheduled execution.

October 16: 10 Nazi leaders convicted of being war criminals are hanged at Nürnberg, Germany.

November 23: More than 6,000 Vietnamese civilians died when the French navy bombards the port city of Haiphong.

December 19: In response to the attack on Haiphong, Ho Chi Minh attacks the French in Hanoi, sparking the First Indochina War.

1947

January 9: Last time anyone sees Elizabeth Short (the Black Dahlia) alive

January 15: Elizabeth Short's corpse is found in a park in Los Angeles, California. Her murder remains unsolved.

February 20: An error in mixing chemicals causes an explosion in Los Angeles, California that results in the destruction of 42 city blocks.

February 28: An uprising against the Taiwanese government is put down by Chiang Kai-shek. Between 18,000 and 28,000 people die. The February 28 Massacre marks the start of the White Terror.

April 6: The first Tony Awards are presented.

April 15: Jackie Robinson becomes the first African American to play in baseball's major league.

April 16: A massive explosion and fire in Texas City, Texas kills 522 people.

April 28: Thor Heyerdahl and the crew of Kon-Tiki set sail from Peru to arrive in Polynesia nearly 4 months later.

May 16: Billie Holiday is arrested in New York on charges of possessing narcotics.

June 25: Publication of Anne Frank's diary for the first time

August 7: Thor Heyerdahl and his crew aboard Kon-Tiki run aground on a reef in French Polynesia after crossing the Pacific in 101 days.

August 14: Pakistan becomes a sovereign state.

August 15: India gains its independence from Britain after nearly 200 years of foreign rule.

September 30: The World Series is broadcast on television for the first time. Game 1 features the New York Yankees over the Brooklyn Dodgers with a score of 5-3. It is also the first World Series in which Jackie Robinson becomes the first Black player in the series.

October 14: Chuck Yeager, an American test pilot, becomes the first person to break the sound barrier.

November 20: Princess Elizabeth (future Queen Elizabeth II) weds Philip Mountbatten at Westminster Abbey in London, England.

November 24: A group of film producers, directors, and screenwriters, who become known as the Hollywood Ten and who appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee in October, are found in contempt of Congress.

November 25: The first blacklist in Hollywood denies employment to professional entertainers with alleged Communist sympathies or ties.

1948

Formation of the International Maritime Organization

January 27: First tape recorder is sold.

January 30: Nathuram Godse, a Hindu extremist, assassinates Mahatma Gandhi.

March 16: Billie Holiday is released from prison.

April 19: Chiang Kai-shek is elected President of Nationalist China.

May 3: CBS Evening News begins broadcasting. It will become the longest running network news program in the United States.

May 13: The State of Israel is established.

May 25: Witold Pilecki, a Polish war hero, is executed by communist police after a show trial in Warsaw.

September 9: Declaration of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea)

September 13: Margaret Chase Smith of Maine is elected senator, becoming the first woman to serve in both Congressional houses.

October 30: Smog in Donora, Pennsylvania kills 20 and sickens 6,000.

December 10: The General Assembly of the United Nations adopts the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

December 21: Eire, formerly the Irish Free State, declares its independence.

1949

February 16: Israel's first Knesset (unicameral parliament) opens in Jerusalem.

April: Mao Zedong's liberation army crosses the Yangtze and occupy Nanking, China.

May: Chiang Kai-shek establishes his government on Taiwan.

May 25: Shanghai falls to Mao Zedong.

June 20: Gussie Moran shocks Wimbledon when she appears wearing a short dress.

September 15: The Long Ranger airs for the first time on television. It stars Clayton Moore and Jay Silverheels.

October 1: Mao Zedong declares the founding of the People's Republic of China.

October 4: Dedication of the United Nations' permanent headquarters in New York City

October 7: Proclamation of the German Democratic Republic, more commonly known as East Germany. It will not reunite with West Germany to form a single country until 1990.

November 2: Indonesia gains independence from Netherlands

November 25: "Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer" appears on music charts.

1950

January 1: The first female doctor is commissioned in the U. S. Navy Medical Corps.

January 17: 11 thieves rob an armored car company's Boston offices of $1.2 million in cash and $1.5 million in securities. It becomes known as the Great Brinks Robbery.

March 14: Debut of the FBI's "10 Most Wanted Fugitives" list

June 17: The first kidney transplant occurs.

June 25: North Korea's army crosses the 38th parallel to start the Korean War. 3 days later, they capture Seoul, South Korea.

July 5: United States forces enter the Korean conflict during the battle of Osan.

October 25: China enters the Korean conflict, siding with North Korea against South Korea and the United Nations.

December 19: The Chinese invade Tibet. The Dalai Lama flees.

1951

February 27: The US Congress enacts the Twenty-second Amendment, which limits a president to 2 consecutive terms of office.

March 6: Opening day of the trial against Julius and Ethel Rosenberg on charges of espionage

March 29: Julius and Ethel Rosenburg are convicted of spying for the Soviet Union and are condemned to die.

June 14: UNIVAC 1, the first commercial computer, is turned on at the US Census Bureau.

September 11: Florence Chadwick becomes the first woman to swim across the English Channel from England to France and back again (a year earlier for France to England). It takes her 16 hours and 19 minutes to make this return trip.

October 6: Joseph Stalin announces that the Soviet Union has the atomic bomb.

October 15: I Love Lucy premieres on television. The comedy stars Lucille Ball and her husband, Desi Arnaz.

November 10: The first long distance telephone call is placed without the assistance of an operator.

1952

February 6: Elizabeth II ascends to the British throne upon the death of George VI. She learns of the death while in Kenya. She will reign for 70 years, 7 years longer than her grandmother, Queen Victoria.

May 1: Mr. Potato Head is introduced as a new toy.
May 1: TWA introduces a new classification of airline tickets: tourist class.

May 2: A British Overseas Airway Corporation Comet becomes the first jet airliner to offer passenger service.

July 23: Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser and his followers stage a coup, ousting King Farouk of Eypt.

August 22: The French penal colony on Devil's Island closes.

September 19: The United States prevents Charlie Chaplin from reentering the country after a trip to England.

October 6: Agatha Christie's Mousetrap opens in London and is still being performed there.

October 7: American Bandstand premieres on television in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Dick Clark does not become host until 1955.

October 30: Clarence Birdseye sells the first frozen peas.

December 5: Smog blankets London. Thousands die as a result and the Clean Air Act is passed as a result of the lethal smog.

1953

February 11: President Dwight David Eisenhower refuses to grant clemency to Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, who are convicted of spying on the United States for the Soviet Union.

March 1: Joseph Stalin attends an all-night session of movies and dinner with his top advisors. Afterward, he suffers a stroke and collapses. He dies 4 days later.

March 9: After 4 days of national mourning, Joseph Stalin's funeral is held in Moscow, Russia.

May 18: Jacqueline Cochran becomes the first female pilot to break the sound barrier.

May 29: Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay become the first people to reach the summit of Mount Everest.

June 2: Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II at Westminster Abbey

June 19: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, the first American civilians to be convicted of espionage during peace time, are executed at Sing Sing Prison in New York. They maintain their innocence and their case remains controversial.

July 27: North Korea and the United Nations sign an armistice, which divides Korea between the north and south at the 38th parallel.

August 12: Ann Davison arrives in Miami, becoming the first woman to sail solo across the Atlantic.

September 10: Swanson sells the first "TV dinner."

September 12: Wedding of John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Bouvier in Newport, Rhode Island

November 17: The last residents of the Blasket Islands are evacuated to the Irish mainland.

1954

January 21: The first nuclear-powered submarine, USS Nautilus, is launched in Connecticut.

March 25: RCA manufactures the first color television set. It has a 12 1/2-inch screen and costs $1,000.

April 1: Congress establishes the United States Air Force Academy, which is later built in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

May 6: Roger Bannister of the United Kingdom becomes the first person to run a mile in 4 minutes.

May 17: In a unanimous vote, the United States Supreme Court decides that racial segregation in public schools is unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education. As a result, racial segregation is no longer tolerated by the federal government.

August 16: The first issue of Sports Illustrated is released.

August 31: Hurricane Carol strikes New England. 70 people die and it becomes the costliest hurricane ever (at the time). The name is retired, becoming the first time this occurs.

September 11: The Miss America Pageant is telecast for the first time. Nineteen-year-old Lee Meriwether of California becomes the 27th Miss America.

September 30: The world's first nuclear submarine, USS Nautilus, is commissioned.

October 10: After the withdrawal of French forces, Ho Chi Minh enters Hanoi, Vietnam.

November 12: The immigration station on Ellis Island closes. While opened, more than 12,000,000 immigrants pass through its gates.

November 23: For the first time, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closes above the peak it reached just before the stock market crash in 1929.

December 23: First human kidney transplant. Dr. Joseph E. Murry performs the operation at a Boston, Massachusetts's hospital.

December 26: The Shadow airs on the radio for the last time.

1955

January 19: Debut of the board game Scrabble

March 2: On her way home from school, Claudette Colvin refuses to relinquish her seat on a bus in Montgonery, Alabama. The fifteen year old is arrested.

April 12: The US Food & Drug Administration approves Jonas Salk's polio vaccine.

April 15: Ray Kroc opens the first McDonald's fast food restaurant in Des Plaines, Illinois.

July 13: Ruth Ellis becomes the last woman executed in Britain. Her death occurs at Holloway Prison in London. She is convicted of murdering her boyfriend.

July 17: Disneyland, an amusement park, opens in Anaheim, California.

August 27: The Guinness Book of World Records is published for the first time.

September 30: Actor James Dean dies in a car crash.

October 25: Tappan sells the first microwave oven.

December 1: Rosa Parks is arrested in Montgomery, Alabama for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white passenger. Her arrest sparks a bus boycott, led by Martin Luther King, Jr., that lasts for 381 days.

1956

January 9: First time the column "Dear Abby" appears in newspapers

February 25: First Secretary of the Soviet Union delivers a secret speech denouncing the deceased Joseph Stalin.

March 2: Morocco proclaims its independence from France.

April 18: Grace Kelly foregoes her Hollywood career to marry Rainier III, prince of Monaco, in a civil ceremony. The religious ceremony takes place the next day.

June 25: The last Packard, considered a classic American car, comes off the production line at the Packard-Studebaker Corporation in Detroit, Michigan.

July 9: Dick Clark makes his first appearance as host of American Bandstand.

July 16: Last time the Ringling Brothers, Barnum & Bailey Circus takes place under a tent

July 25: The Andrea Doria, an Italian ocean liner, and the Stockholm, an ocean liner from Sweden, collide in fog off the coast of Nantucket Island. 51 people die. A hole is ripped into the side of the Italian ship. 1,660 survivors are rescued from the vessel before she sinks the next day.

July 26: Gamal Abdel Nasser, president of Egypt, seizes control of and nationalizes the Suez Canal.

July 30: "In God We Trust" becomes the national motto of the United States by law.

September 9: Elvis Presley's first appearance of The Ed Sullivan Show.

October 6: Albert Sabin discovers an oral vaccine for polio.

October 23: The Hungarian Revolution begins.

October 29: Chet Huntley and David Brinkley team up for the first time to deliver NBC's The Huntley-Brinkley Report.

November 3: CBS televises The Wizard of Oz for the first time.

1957

January 3: In Lancaster, Pennsylvania, the first electric watch is introduced.

May 6: John F. Kennedy receives a Pulitzer for Profiles in Courage.

June 13: The Mayflower II arrives in Plymouth, Massachusetts.

July 6: Althea Gibson becomes the first Black tennis player to win the singles competition at Wimbledon.

August 5: American Bandstand debuts on ABC.

September 4: Ford Motor Company introduces the public to the Edsel.
September 4: Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus calls out the National Guard to keep 9 Black students from entering Little Rock's Central High School.

September 21: Perry Mason, starring Raymond Burr, premieres on CBS TV.

September 24: President Eisenhower sends federal troops to enforce integration at Little Rock, Arkansas's Central High School.

October 4: The Soviet Union launches Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite. It will orbit the earth until the following year. Its launch heightens the Cold War between the USSR and USA, and is the beginning of the space age.

November 3: The USSR launches Sputnik 2, which carries Laika, a dog and the first living creature shot into space to orbit the Earth.

1958

March 24: Elvis Presley joins the US Army.

May 13: The motorcade carrying Vice President Richard M. Nixon is attacked in Caracas, Venezuela. Several of his staff are injured.
May 13: The Velcro trademark is registered.

July 10: England installs its first parking meters.

August 3: The USS Nautilus, the world's first nuclear submarine, becomes the first submarine to travel under the Arctic ice cap to reach the top of the world.
 
September 12: The US Supreme Court orders all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas to integrate.

October 23: Boris Pasternak of the USSR receives the Nobel Prize for Literature.
October 23:  An underground earthquake traps 174 coal miners in Nova Scotia. By 1 November rescuers have dug out 100 victims from the deepest coal mine in North America. 74 miners die.

October 26: Pan American World Airways flies the first transatlantic jet, a Boeing 707, from New York to Paris.

November 10: The Hope diamond is given to the Smithsonian Institution. It becomes one of its most popular displays.

December 21: Charles de Gaulle is elected president of France.

1959

January 1: Fidel Casto seizes power in Cuba.

February 1: Men in Switzerland vote to deny women the right to vote.

February 3: Musicians Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and J. P Richardson, and their pilot die when their plane crashes. The accident becomes known as "The Day the Music Died."

March 9: Barbie is introduced at the American Toy Fair in New York. Over a billion dolls have been sold worldwide since then.

July 28: The United Kingdom begins using postal codes.

August 7: Explorer VI transmits the first televised photograph of Earth from space.

August 21: Hawaii becomes the 50th US state.

October 7: USSR's Luna 3, a space probe, provides glimpses of the moon's far side for the first time.

October 21: The Guggenheim Museum opens in New York. Its architect is Frank Lloyd Wright.

November 15: Richard Hickock and Perry Smith murder 4 members of the Clutter family in their home near Holcomb, Kansas. The murders become well known because of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood.

1960

February 1: Four African Americans stage a sit-in at the segregated lunch counter at Woolworth's in Greensboro, North Carolina.

March 21: Police in South Africa kill 72 people and the African National Congress is outlawed. The killings become known as the Sharpeville Massacre.

April 4: Senegal declares its independence from France.

May 11: Mossad agents capture Adolf Eichmann in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Having organized Hitler's "final solution," he is taken to Israel to stand trial for war crimes committed during World War II.

June 23: The first contraceptive pill goes on sale in the United States.

July 4: The United States flag, depicting 50 states, is unfurled for the first time.

July 11: J. B. Lippincott & Company publishes Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird.

August 17: Francis Gary Powers U-2 spy trial opens in Moscow.

August 19: Francis Gary Powers is found guilty of spying by the USSR in what becomes known as the U-2 Affair. He is sentenced to 10 years imprisonment, but is released in 1967 in an exchange for Soviet spy Rudolf Abel.

September 5: Leopold Sedar Senghor, a poet, is elected president of Senegal. He is the country's first president.

September 26: First televised US president debate. The candidates are Vice President Richard M. Nixon and Senator John F. Kennedy.

September 30: During the final episode of the Howdy Doody Show, Clarabelle finally speaks, saying "Goodbye, kids."

October 21: Dreadnought, the first British nuclear submarine, launches.

November 8: John F. Kennedy is elected President of the United States, defeating Richard Nixon, the current vice president.

November 13: 152 children die in a fire at a movie theater in Amude, Spain.

1961

January 20: John F. Kennedy takes the oath of office, becoming the youngest president of the United States.

January 22: The Santa Maria, a luxury liner, is hijacked soon after leaving Curaçao.

February 15: The entire United States Figure Skating team, including coaches and others, die in a plane crash outside of Brussels, Belgium. They were on their way to the World Championships in Prague.

March 1: President John F. Kennedy establishes the Peace Corps.

April 11: Adolf Eichmann's trial for war crimes during World War II begins in Jerusalem, Israel. The trial ends 8 months later. It is the only time in which an Israeli court imposes the death sentence.

April 12: Yuri Gagarin, a Russian cosmonaut, becomes the first person to orbit and the first to venture into outer space.

April 13: The General Assembly of the United Nations condemns South Africa's policy of apartheid.

April 17: 1,400 Cuban exiles land at the Bay of Pigs in an attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro. It ends in disaster.

April 24: Vasa, a 17th-century Swedish warship that sank on her maiden voyage in 1628, is salvaged.

April 29: The Wide World of Sports premieres on ABC.

May 1: First hijacking of an United States airplane takes place aboard a flight from Key West to Cuba.

May 5: Navy Commander Alan Bartlett Shephard, Jr. becomes the first American launched into space. He is aboard the Freedom 7 space capsule and flies for 15 minutes, reaching 116 miles into the atmosphere.

June 16: Rudolf Nureyev, a star of the USSR's Kirov Ballet, defects just before boarding a homeward-bound plane in Paris, France.

July 21: Virgil "Gus" Grissom becomes the second American to enter space.

August 13: East Germany begins constructing the Berlin Wall, which separates East and West Berlin until 1989.

September 5: President John F. Kennedy authorizes the beginning of underground testing of nuclear bombs.
September 5: President Kennedy signs a law that makes hijacking a death penalty offense.

September 18: United Nations Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold dies in a plane crash in Africa. The cause of the crash remains unknown.

September 30: Mayor Snyder of Oregon pays the bill for the Boston Tea Party. The total amount due for the lost tea is $196.

December 12: An Israeli court finds Adolf Eichmann guilty of war crimes.

December 15: Adolf Eichmann is sentence to death.

1962

January 1: The US Navy establishes the SEALS.

January 23: Kim Philby, a British intelligence officer, defects to the USSR.

February 10: Francis Gary Powers, pilot of a downed U-2 plane in the Soviet Union, is exchanged for Rudolf Abel, a Soviet informer.

February 20: John Glenn becomes the first American astronaut to orbit the Earth. He does so 3 times.

March 1: The Kresge Corporation opens the first Kmart store in Garden City, New York.

April 16: Walter Cronkite becomes the anchor of CBS Evening News.

May 31: Adolf Eichmann, a former officer of the SS, is executed in Israel after being convicted of war crimes.

July 2: Sam Walton opens his first Walmart store in Rogers, Oklahoma.

July 5: Algeria gains its independence from France.

July 10: Telstar, the first geosynchronous communications satellite, is launched.

July 11: The first transatlantic television transmission is accomplished via a satellite.

August 5: Nelson Mandela is arrested in South Africa.

August 6: After 300 years of British rule, Jamaica gains its independence.

August 16: Ringo Starr replaces Pete Best as the Beatles' drummer.

August 22: Assassination attempt on President Charles de Gaulle of France fails.

October 1: Johnny Carson begins hosting The Tonight Show.

October 16: Start of the Cuban missile crisis

October 22: President Kennedy addresses the US via television about the Russian missiles in Cuba.

October 28: Soviet Premier Nikita Krushchev halts delivery of nuclear-armed missiles to Cuban, which ends the Cuban missile crisis.

1963

March 1: 200,000 miners go on strike in France.

March 5: Patsy Cline, a country and western singer, dies in a plane crash.
March 5: Hula Hoop receives a patent.

March 21: Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary in San Francisco Bay is closed. The National Park Service later assumes oversight of the island and open the prison to tourists.

June 16: The Soviets launch Vostok 6, and Valentina Tereshkova becomes the first woman in space.

June 21: Paul VI is elected pope.

July 1: Zip codes go into effect in the United States to aid in the delivery of mail.

August 8: Armed robbers rob the Glasgow to London Royal Mail Train north of London. They get away with £2.6 million ($7.3 million). It becomes known as the Great Train Robbery.

August 28: Martin Luther King, Jr. delivers his "I have a dream" speech at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC during a civil rights march.

August 30: A hotline communication link is established between the Pentagon in Washington, DC and the Kremlin in Moscow. It is often referred to as the "red phone," even though no telephones have ever been used.

September 7: American Bandstand moves from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to California and begins airing once a week on Saturdays.

September 15: The Ku Klux Klan bombs the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. 4 girls die.

October 12: An archaeological dig begins at Masada in Israel.

November 18: The first touch-tone (push button) telephone is introduced by Bell Telephone to its customers in Pennsylvania.

November 22: President John F. Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas, Texas, while riding in a motorcade. Lyndon Baines Johnson, the vice president, is sworn in as the 36th US President.

November 24: Jack Ruby, a nightclub owner in Dallas, Texas, kills Lee Harvey Oswald, who stands accused of assassinating the president.

November 25: President John F. Kennedy is laid to rest in Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.

November 29: President Lyndon Johnson sets up the Warren Commission to investigate President Kennedy's assassination.

December 12: Frank Sinatra, Jr. returns home after being kidnapped.

1964

January 11: US Surgeon General Luther L. Terry announces the link between cigarette smoking and lung cancer.

February 2: GI Joe, a toy for boys, goes on sale for the first time in the United States.

February 9: The Beatles make their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show.

March 14: Jack Ruby is sentenced to die for killing Lee Harvey Oswald while in police custody in Dallas, Texas.

June 1: Jomo Kenyatta is elected as the first President of Kenya.

June 12: Nelson Mandela is sentenced to life imprisonment in South Africa.

July 2: President Lyndon Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act.

August 13: Two men become the last to be hanged in the United Kingdom.
       
August 27: Walt Disney's Mary Poppins premieres, starring Julie Andrews and Dick van Dyke.

October 14: Martin Luther King, Jr. wins the Nobel Peace Prize.

October 16: China becomes the 5th country in the world with nuclear power.

October 22: Jean-Paul Sartre, the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, becomes the first person to decline the award.

December 6: First television broadcast of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer

1965

January 30: Winston Churchill's state funeral is held at St. Paul's Cathedral in London.

February 15: Canada official adopts the Maple Leaf flag.

February 18: Jimmie Lee, a church deacon, is beaten and shot during a peaceful march in Marion, Alabama. He dies 8 days later. His death inspires others to march from Selma to Montgomery.

February 21: Malcolm X is murdered by followers of the Nation of Islam at New York City's Audubon Ballroom.

March 2: Premiere of The Sound of Music, starring Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer.

March 8: 3,500 US Marines become the first American combat ground forces in Vietnam.
 
March 18: Pillsbury introduces the Poppin' Fresh Dough Boy.
March 18: Cosmonaut Aleksey Leonov becomes the first person to walk in space. He walks for 12 minutes.

March 21: Martin Luther King, Jr. begins to march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.

April 9: The Astrodome opens in Houston, Texas, when it hosts the first indoor baseball game.

June 3: Ed White becomes the first American astronaut to walk in space.

June 7: Sony Corporation introduces the first home video tape recorder to consumers. It sells for $995.

August 11: Rioting erupts in the Watts district of Los Angeles. 34 people die.

1966

June 13: US Supreme Court rules in Miranda v. Arizona that suspects of criminal acts must be advised of their rights prior to being interrogated. The rights afforded to these persons are the right to remain silent and the right to an attorney. Also, anything they say can and will be used against them should they stand trial.

July 1: Medicare goes into effect in the United States.

July 4: President Lyndon Johnson signs the Freedom of Information Act.

August 1: Standing in the clock tower on the University of Texas at Austin's campus, Charles Whitman shoots 14 people dead and wounds 31. It is one of the worst mass murders in a public area in American history.

August 29: The Beatles' last public concert takes place at Candlestick Park in San Francisco, California.

September 5: Jerry Lewis hosts the first Muscular Dystrophy Labor Day telethon. He raises $1,000,000.

September 6: South African Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd, a developer and rigorous adherent of apartheid, is stabbed to death by a temporary messenger for parliament, who is later ruled insane.

September 8: The first episode of Star Trek airs on American television.

October 21: Coal waste engulfs a Welsh school in Aberfan in the morning. 116 children and 28 adults die. Only 5 survive.

November 24: Heavy smog in New York City kills 400, who die from respiratory failure and heart attacks.

1967

January 27: Fire erupts in the command module of Apollo 1 during a launch rehearsal. Astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger B. Chaffee die.

June 5: The Six-Day War begins between Israel and Egypt, Jordan, and Syria.

June 12: The US Supreme Court rules that Virginia's state law banning interracial marriage is unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment in Loving v. Virginia.

June 13: Thurgood Marshall becomes the first African American to be nominated to the US Supreme Court.

June 30: Robert Henry Lawrence, Jr. becomes the first Black astronaut.

July 29: Fire erupts aboard the USS Forrestal in the Gulf of Tonkin. 134 seamen die.

August 30: The US Senate confirms Thurgood Marshall as the first Black justice of the Supreme Court.

October 2: Thurgood Marshall is sworn in as the 1st Black Supreme Court Justice.

October 8: Guerilla Che Guevara, a prominent figure in Cuba's revolution, and his men are captured in Bolivia. The Bolivian Army later executes him.

December 3: The world's first human heart transplant operation is conducted at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa. The surgeon is Christiaan Barnard.

1968

January 23: North Korea captures the USS Pueblo, a US Navy vessel surveilling and gathering intelligence off the North Korean coast. The US commander and two sailors are wounded in an escape attempt. They are all taken to Pyongyang and charged with espionage.

February 16: The first 911 phone system in the United States goes into service. This happens in Haleyville, Alabama.

March 16: American soldiers kill around 400 unarmed Vietnamese civilians in what becomes known as the My Lai Massacre.

April 4: Martin Luther King, Jr. is assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, by James Earl Ray.

June 5: Sirhan Sirhan, a Palestinian with Jordanian citizenship, shoots Senator Robert F. Kennedy after a presidential campaign speech at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, California. Kennedy succumbs the next day. 5 others are wounded during the attack.

July 20: The first Special Olympics is held. Some 1,000 athletes participate at Chicago's Soldier Field.

August 20: During the night, 250,000 Soviet and Warsaw Pact troops invade Czechoslovakia.

November 22: The first interracial kiss is seen on television when Star Trek's Captain Kirk and Lieutenant Uhura kiss.

December 21: Apollo 8 launches, becoming the first manned moon mission. The astronauts aboard are Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and William Anders.

December 23: After 11 months in captivity, the captain and crew of the USS Pueblo are released by the North Koreans.

1969

February 11: Diana Crump becomes the first American female jockey to compete against men when she races at Hialelah, Florida.

February 17: Golda Meir is the first woman sworn in as Prime Minister of Israel.

April 17: Sirhan Sirhan is convicted of assassinating Senator Robert F. Kennedy.

May 18: Launch of Apollo 10 from Kennedy Space Center. The mission will go on to transmit the first color pictures of Earth from space.

May 21: Sirhan Sirhan is sentenced to death for killing Robert F. Kennedy. His sentence is later commuted to life imprisonment.

June 28: Police raid Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, New York early in the morning. Between 400 and 1,000 patrons riot for 3 days against police. The incident launches the LGBT rights movement.

July 16: Apollo 11 launches. Aboard are the men who will walk on the moon.

July 20: Apollo 11's lunar module lands on the moon. 7 hours after touchdown, Neil Armstrong becomes the first man to walk on the moon.

July 24: Apollo 11's crew returns to Earth.

August 9: Sharon Tate and four others are murdered by Charles Mason's followers.

August 15: Woodstock opens at Max Yasgur's dairy farm in New York for 3 days of music.

September 1: Muammar al-Qaddafi, leading a group of young army officers, deposes the Libyan king and institutes a republic.

September 2: First automatic teller machine (ATM) debuts at Chemical Bank in New York.

September 23: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid premieres, starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford.

October 15: Bodyguards assassinate Abdirashid Ali Shermarke, the Somali Republic’s second elected president. General Mohamed Siad Barre assumes power and controls the country for two decades.

November 10: Sesame Street premieres on National Educational Television, later known as PBS.

1970

January 16: Having led a coup against Libya's monarchy 4 months before, Muammar al-Qaddafi begins ruling the country.

April 17: Apollo 13 arrives back on Earth safely after an oxygen tank fails while the astronauts are in space.

May 2: Diane Crump becomes the first female jockey to ride in the Kentucky Derby.

May 4: A protest against the Vietnam War turns fatal on the campus of Kent State University in Ohio. The National Guard shoots and kills 4 unarmed protestors, 9 others are injured.

May 17: Thor Heyerdahl and his crew set sail in a papyrus boat, similar to those used by ancient Egyptians, to prove that people from the Mediterranean could sail to the Americas. He reaches Barbados 57 days later.

July 4: Casey Kasem's American Top 40 debuts.

July 31: Known as Black Tot Day, it is the last day in which the rum ration in the Royal Navy is officially sanctioned. The serving of a daily tot of rum to seamen began in 1740.

September 11: Ford Motor Company introduces the Pinto.

October 8: Alexander Solzhenitsyn receives the Nobel prize for literature.

November 27: A Bolivian painter in the guise of a priest stabs Pope Paul VI in the Philippines.

December 21: Elvis Presley meets President Richard Nixon in the White House.

1971

January 25: Charles Mason and three of his followers are convicted of the Tate-LaBianac murders.
January 25: Military coup in Uganda is led by Idi Amin.

February 2: Idi Amin declares himself Uganda's president. His 8-year regime is marked with brutality.

May 1: Amtrak Railroad begins operating.

June 13: The New York Times begins publishing the "Pentagon Papers," which deal with the US's role in Indochina from World War II  through May 1968. These documents fuel the growing opposition to the Vietnam War.

June 30: Cosmonauts Georgi Dobrovolski, Vladislav Volkov, and Viktor Patsayev successfully dock with and occupy a space station. They are the first men to spend 23 days in space. When the Soyuz 11 capsule returns to earth's atmosphere, the splashdown goes perfectly, but when the rescue team opens the hatch they discovered all three cosmonauts dead. An air vent malfunctioned and the men suffocated. Lavish state funerals are given and all of Russia mourns.

July 1: US citizens aged 18 and older are granted the right to vote with the passage of the 26th Amendment.

September 13:The inmate revolt at New York's Attica Correctional Facility ends when the state police assault the prison. 29 inmates and 10 hostages die.

September 30: The keel is laid for the reproduction of Sir Francis Drake's Golden Hinde.

October 1: Walt Disney World opens in Florida.

October 23: Two female members of the Irish Republican Army are killed by the British Army in Belfast.

November 24: Dan "D. B." Cooper hijacks and parachutes from Northwest Airlines flight 727 with $200,000. He is never apprehended or identified.

December 2: 6 small emirates form the United Arab Emirates. A 7th will join in February 1972.

1972

January 30: Roman Catholic civil rights supporters demonstrate in Londonderry, Northern Ireland. British paratroopers fire on the crowd. 13 die and 14 are injured, one of whom later succumbs to his injuries. The inceident becomes known as Bloody Sunday.

February 21: Richard Nixon visits China and meets with Mao Zedong. becoming the first US president to visit China.

March 31: Final issuance of the daily rum ration in the Royal Canadian Navy.

May 15: Arthur Bremer tries to assassinate Governor George Wallace in Laurel, Maryland.

June 17: The Watergate, an office-apartment building in Washington, DC that houses the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee, is broken into by 5 men. They are later arrested, which leads to the Watergate scandal and the eventual resignation of President Richard M. Nixon.

July 17: The first 2 women begin training as FBI agents at Quantico, Virginia.

July 21: The Provisional Irish Republican Army sets off 22 bombs in Belfast, Norther Ireland, killing 6 civilians, 2 British soldiers, and 1 Ulster Defence Association volunteer and injuring 130. The day becomes known as Bloody Friday.

August 1: Carl Bernstein and Robert Woodward, reporters for The Washington Post, publish their first article exposing the Watergate scandal.

August 21: A hot air balloon flies over the Alps for the first time.

September 1: Bobby Fischer defeats Russian Boris Spassky at the World Chess Championship in Reykjavik, Iceland, becoming the first American to do so.

September 4: Mark Spitz, an American swimmer, becomes the first athlete to win 7 gold medals at a single Olympic Games.

September 5: Palestinian terrorists take 11 Israeli athletes hostage during the Summer Olympics in Munich, Germany. The athletes are later killed.

October 13: The chartered plane carrying Uruguay's rugby team crashes in Argentina's Andes Mountains. It takes more than 2 months for the wreckage to be found and the survivors rescued. To survive, they resort to cannibalism.

December 29: Life magazine ceases publication.

December 31: Roberto Clemente, a baseball player, dies when the plane he is on crashes on its way to Nicaragua. It is carrying relief supplies for survivors of an earthquake.

1973

January 26: The Paris accord between the United States and Vietnam is signed, bringing an end to America's longest war, the Vietnam War.

February 12: North Vietnam releases the first U. S. prisoners of war.

March 14: After more than 5 years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam, John McKain is released.

April 2: An employee of Motorola makes the first call from a handheld mobile telephone. He contacts AT&T's Bell Laboratories.

April 4: The World Trade Center, the tallest building in the world at this time, opens in New York.

May 8: After 10 weeks, Native Americans holding Wounded Knee surrender.

May 13: The first US space station is launched. It is called Skylab.

June 9: After winning the Belmont Stakes, Secretariat becomes the first horse since 1948 to win the coveted Triple Crown.

July 10: Italian gangsters kidnap 16-year-old John Paul Getty III in Rome. 2 days later his mother receives a ransom demand for $17,000,000. Neither of his parents can raise that amount of money and his grandfather refuses to pay the ransom. While in captivity, Getty is chained to a stake in a cave and regularly beaten and tortured. When no money is forthcoming, the kidnappers cut off one of his ears and send it to his mother. His grandfather relents and negotiates for his grandson's release in exchange for a reported $3,000,000. His father has to pay Getty Senior back at a rate of 4% interest. Getty is found on a snowy mountain road on 15 December. Eventually, 9 of the kidnappers are arrested, but only 2 are convicted of any charges. Getty becomes a drug user and alcoholic as a result of the trauma and, 8 years later, suffers a debilitating stroke that leaves him without the use of his limbs and partially blind. He passes away in 2011.

September 20: Billie Jean King wins the battle-of-sexes tennis match against Bobby Riggs.

October 6: The Yom Kippur War begins when Syria and Egypt attack Israel on this Jewish holy day.

October 10: Vice President Spiro T. Agnew resigns after pleading no contest to allegations of tax fraud while he was governor of Maryland.

December 6: Gerald Ford begins the first unelected vice president after the resignation of Spiro T. Agnew.

December 15: Disneyland opens its Pirates of the Caribbean ride.

1974

February 4: Newspaper heiress Patty Hearst is kidnapped by 3 armed assailants, who turn out to be members of the Symbionese Liberation Army.

March 1: The grand jury reviewing the Watergate break-in indicts 7 presidential aides.

March 8: Opening of the Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, France

March 29: Chinese farmers uncover clay statues in China. Further excavation reveals the Terra Cotta Army, 8,000 statues buried to guard the tomb of China's first emperor, Qin Shi Huang.

April 8: Hank Aaron hits his 715th career home run in baseball, breaking Babe Ruth's record, which stood since 1935. When Aaron completes his career in 1976, his home runs stand at 755.

April 30: President Richard Nixon hands over partial transcripts of Watergate tape recordings.

June 1: The Journal of Emergency Medicine publishes an article outlining the Heimlich maneuver for rescuing victims who are choking.

June 29: While the Kirov Ballet is in Toronto, Canada, Mikhail Baryshnikov defects from the Soviet Union.

August 8: Richard M. Nixon resigns as president of the United States. Vice President Gerald Ford is sworn into office.

September 8: President Gerald Ford issues a pardon for the former president, Richard M. Nixon.

September 12: Emperor Haile Selassie is overthrown during a coup in Ethiopia.

November 8: After the death of his nanny, the Earl of Lucan disappears and is never seen again.

November 25: Britain outlaws the Irish Republican Army after 21 people die.

1975

February 20: A feud erupts between the Irish Republic Army and the Irish National Liberation Army. Volunteers are slain by each side until the feud is resolved in June.

April 4: A US Air Force plane evacuating Vietnamese orphans crashes during an emergency landing in South Vietnam. 138 people die.
April 4: Bill Gates and Paul Allen found Microsoft.

April 29: The evacuation of American citizens from Saigon, South Vietnam begins as North Vietnamese troops advance on the city.

April 30: When Saigon falls, South Vietnam surrenders to the People's Army of Vietnam and the Viet Cong.

May 12: The Cambodian navy seizes the Mayaguez, an American freighter. The crew is imprisoned. President Ford declares the seizure an "act of piracy." 2 days later the United States bombs the port where the navy gunboats originated from and US Marines attack the island of Koh Tang, where the crew is. At the time, the Cambodian government is in the process of releasing the captives. An accidental explosion during the attack kills most of the 41 Americans.

June 2: London, England records its first snowfall in June.

July 30: Jimmy Hoffa, president of the US Teamsters, disappears in Detroit, Michigan. He is never seen again and his body has never been found.

September 5: Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme tries to assassinate President Gerald Ford in Sacramento, California. She is a follower of Charles Manson and is eventually sentenced to life imprisonment, but later released in 2009.

September 14: Mother Elizabeth Ann Seton becomes the first American-born saint. She is canonized by Pope Paul VI.

September 18: Patty Hearst, newspaper heiress and a self-proclaimed member of the SLA, is captured by the FBI in San Francisco, California over a year after she was kidnapped.

October 1: Trial for the Watergate cover-up begins in Washington, DC.

October 21: The US Coast Guard Academy allows the first woman to enroll.

October 23: Women take the day off in Iceland, shutting down the country for the day.

November 10: The Edmond Fitzgerald sinks in Lake Superior during a storm. All 29 crew members go down with her. She is later immortalized by Gordon Lightfoot in a song.

November 11: Angola declares its independence from Portugal.

November 22: After 31 years, the Spanish monarchy is restored with the proclaiming of Juan Carlos I as King of Spain.

November 25: The Shankill Butchers, a gang of Protestants, begins its campaign of late-night kidnapping, torture, and throat slashing of random Catholics in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

1976

January 21: First commercial flight of the Concorde, a supersonic airplane

March 20: Patricia Hearst is found guilty of armed robbery, in spite of her claims of having been brainwashed by the SLA, and sentenced to 7 years.

April 1: Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs, and Ronald Waye found Apple Computer.

April 11: The first Apple computer is released.

June 28: The first woman is admitted to the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

July 3: Israel launches a mission to rescue the hostages of an Air France flight who are being held at Entebbe Airport in Uganda. The hijackers are pro-Palestinians. 3 hostages, all the hijackers, many Ugandan soldiers, and 1 Israeli soldier (Yonatan Netanyahu) die. The remainder of the hostages, many of whom are Jewish, are rescued.

July 6: The first women (81) are inducted into the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. Elizabeth Anne Rowe will become the first to graduate 4 years later. In 1984, Kristine Holderied becomes the first midshipman to graduate at the top of her class.

July 7: The first women enroll in the US Military Academy at West Point. 62 will graduate 4 years later and be commissioned as second lieutenants.

July 15: 26 school children and their bus driver are kidnapped in California. They are held captive for 36 hours.

July 18: Nadia Comaneci of Romania scores a perfect 10 on the uneven bars. She becomes the first gymnast at an Olympic event to receive this honor.

August 14: 10,000 women in Northern Ireland demonstrate for peace in Belfast.

August 17: An earthquake and tsunami in the Philippines kill as many as 8,000 people.

September 3: Viking 2 lands on Mars. It takes nearly a year to reach the planet. Once it lands, it begins sending information about the atmosphere, as well as color photographs, back to Earth.

September 5: Jim Henson's The Muppet Show premieres on television.

October 6: Once Mao Zedong dies, the Gang of Four loses its influence. His widow, Jiang Qing, and the Gang of Four are arrested on charges of plotting a coup.

October 19: A Chorus Line premieres on Broadway. After 6,137 performances, it becomes Broadway's longest-running show.

December 4: Separatist Free Aceh Movement and Indonesian armed forces begin a 30-year-long conflict that drives many young Achenese on Sumatra to become pirates. Only the 2004 tsunami and a 2005 peace treaty bring the piracy to an end.

1977

January 21: President Jimmy Carter pardons nearly all those who evaded the draft during the Vietnam War.

January 23: Roots, a mini-series, premieres on television.

March 4: The CRAY supercomputer is shipped to the Los Alamos Labs in New Mexico.

March 27: Two Boeing 747s collide at Tenerife airport in Spain. 583 people die in what is the world's worst air disaster.

May 22: Final European scheduled run of the Orient Express after 94 years of service

May 29: Janet Guthrie becomes the first woman to drive in the Indianapolis 500.

August 10: David Berkowitz, who works at the post office, is accused of being the Son of Sam, who murders 6 people. He later confesses and is sentenced to 365 years in prison.

August 16: Elvis Presley dies of a heart attack, brought on by drug abuse.

September 5: The Red Army Faction kidnaps and later murders, Hanns Martin Schleyer, a West German business executive.

September 10: A Tunisian immigrant, convicted of murder, becomes the last person to be beheaded by the guillotine in France.

1978

January 19: The last German-made Volkswagen Beetle leaves the Emden plant. The car continues to be made in Latin American until 2003.

February 1: Harriet Tubman becomes the first African-American woman to be honored on a United States first-class postage stamp.

March 1: Charlie Chaplin's coffin and remains are stolen from a cemetery in Switzerland in connection with an extortion plot.

May 11: Margaret A. Brewer becomes the first female general of the United States Marine Corps.

July 25: Louise Brown is born in England. She is the first human conceived using vitro fertilization.

August 22: Rebel Sandinistas occupy the National Palace in Managua, Nicaragua. They hold more than 1,000 hostages for 2 days.

October 27: Anwar Sadat of Egypt and Menachem Begin of Israel are awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

November 18: In Jonestown, Guyana, 918 members of Jim Jones's Peoples Temple are murdered or commit suicide.

December 11: The largest cash theft in the United States occurs when cash and jewels are stolen from the Lufthansa air cargo building at JFK International Airport.

1979

January 16: The Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, flees his country during a revolution. He goes to Egypt.

January 29: 16-year-old Brenda Spencer arms herself with a Ruger semi-automatic rifle and enters Grover Cleveland Elementary School in San Diego, California. After randomly firing 30 rounds, she kills 2 adults and injures 9 children. When asked why, she tells a journalistic that she doesn't like Mondays and wanted to liven up the day. She is sentences to 25 years to life the following year.

February 7: A man dies from a stroke while swimming in Brazil. Six years pass before his identity is confirmed. He is Joseph Mengele whose medical experiments at Auschwitz during the second World War earned him the moniker "Angel of Death."

February 18: Snow falls in the Sahara Desert.

February 20: The Shankill Butchers, 11 loyalists in Belfast, Northern Ireland, are sentenced to life in prison for 19 murders. The gang is so named because they randomly kidnapped, tortured, and murdered Catholics -- slashing their victims' throats -- late at night.

March 28: The failed closing of an automatic valve at Three Mile Island near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania culminates in radioactive leakage.

April 11: The Tanzanian army captures Kampala, Uganda. Ugandan dictator Idi Amin is forced to flee into exile in Libya.

May 3: Margaret Thatcher becomes the first woman to be elected Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

May 13: The Shah of Iran, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, and his family are sentenced to death in Tehran.

June 2: Pope John Paul II visits Poland, becoming the first pontiff to visit a Communist country.

July 2: The United States issues the Susan B. Anthony dollar coin. She becomes the first woman depicted on American currency.

August 12: Censors in Iran begin burning books.

August 27: The First Earl of Mountbatten dies after the IRA plant a bomb on his boat. 3 companions, including 2  children, also die.

October 17: The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded to Mother Teresa of Calcutta.

November 4: 500 Iranian students seize the US Embassy in Tehran. 90 hostages are taken and 444 days pass before they are released.

December 9: The World Health Organization declares that it has eradicated smallpox.

December 15: The board game Trivial Pursuit is developed by Chris Haney and Scott Abbott.

December 24: The Soviet Union invades Afghanistan.

1980

February 22: In Lake Placid, New York, during the Olympics, the United States ice hockey team beats the Soviet Union's team 4-3, even though the latter is heavily favored to win.

March 12: John Wayne Gacy is found guilt of murdering 33 people in Chicago, Illinois.

March 21: The television show Dallas ends its season with JR Ewing being shot.

March 27: After 123 years of dormancy, Mount St. Helens becomes an active volcano.

April 6: 3M Post-it Notes are sold in stores for the first time.

May 18: Eruption of Mount St. Helens in Washington State, following a 5.1 earthquake. It causes the largest landslide in history, killing 57 people and causing $1,000,000,000 in damages.

June 30: The British sixpence is taken out of circulation and no longer has any value as standard currency. It had been in use since 1551.

July 4: The US Navy shoots down an Iranian civilian jet. 290 people die.

August 14:17,000 workers go on strike at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk, Poland. This marks the beginning of the Solidarity movement.

December 8: Mark David Chapman shoots and kills John Lennon outside his apartment in New York City.

1981

January 20: 52 American diplomats and citizens, held hostage in Tehran for 444 days, are released and head home. They arrive in the United States 5 days later.

January 25: Mao Zedong's widow, Jiang Qing, is sentenced to die.

February 24: Prince Charles announces his engagement to Lady Diana Spencer.

March 6: Walter Cronkite's hosting of the CBS Evening News comes to an end.

March 30: John Hinckley tries to assassinate President Ronald Reagan. Reagan and 3 others are wounded in the attack.

April 12: NASA launches the first space shuttle, Columbia.

May 5: Bobby Sands,a member of the Provisional IRA and of Parliament, dies in Maze Prison at the age of 26. His hunger strike lasts 66 days.

May 13: Pope John Paul II is critically wounded when shot by Turkish gunman Mehemet Ali Agca in Saint Peter's Square in Vatican City.

June 5: After a rare form of pneumonia is detected in 5 men, an announcement is made in Los Angeles about AIDS.

July 29: Prince Charles of England weds Lady Diana Spencer at St. Paul's Cathedral in London.

August 5: President Ronald Reagan fires more than 11,000 air traffic controllers who are on strike.

August 12: IBM introduces its first personal computer.

August 24: Mark David Chapman receives 20 years to life for killing John Lennon.

September 22: Sandra Day O'Connor is appointed to the US Supreme Court, becoming the first woman to sit on the court.

October 3: Irish Nationalists, imprisoned in Maze Prison near Belfast, Northern Ireland, end a hunger strike that has lasted for 7 months.

October 6: President Anwar Sadat of Egypt is assassinated.

1982

January 13: Air Florida 737 crashes after takeoff into the 14th Street Bridge in Washington, DC. The plane falls into the Potomac River and 78 people die.

March 4: Bertha Wilson becomes the first female to serve on Canada's Supreme Court.

April 2: Troops from Argentina seize the Falkland Islands. This act precipitates the Falkland Islands War with Britain.

April 19: Sally Ride becomes the first American female astronaut.

May 13: Braniff Airlines files for bankruptcy.

June 14: Argentina surrenders to Great Britain, ending the 74-day conflict over the Falkland Islands.

June 21: T he court rules John Hinckley, Jr. innocent by reason of insanity in the shooting of President Ronald Regan.

September 14: Grace Kelly, wife of Prince Rainier III of Monaco, suffers a fatal stroke and loses control of her car while driving.

October 10: The Reverend Maximilian Kolbe becomes a saint. He volunteered to die in place of another Auschwitz  inmate.

October 11: The Mary Rose, an English warship that sank in 1545, is raised at Portsmouth, England.

November 30: Michael Jackson releases Thriller. It goes on to become the best-selling album in the world and wins an unprecedented 8 Grammy Awards.

December 2: Barney Clark receives the first permanent artificial heart. The device is called the Jarvik-7 and is implanted by William C. DeVries.

December 10: United Nations Convention on Law of the Sea of 1982 is signed by 117 countries. It extends nations’ territorial waters from 3 miles to 12 miles. It does not go into effect until 16 November 1994, when the last member nation signs. As of 2012, the United States still has not ratified UNCLOS, although 161 other nations have.

December 26: Time announces the computer as its Man of the Year.

1983

January 25: Klaus Barbie, a Nazi war criminal, is arrested in Bolivia.

February 28: The final episode of M*A*S*H* airs.

June 18: With the launch of Challenger 2, Sally Ride becomes the first American woman in space.

July 17: The International Olympic Committee restores the Olympic medals Jim Thorpe won 70 years earlier. They were taken from him because he was paid $25 as a semi-pro baseball player.
 
July 21: Vostosk Station in Antarctica records the world's lowest temperature at: 128.6 degrees Farenheit.

August 4: Barry Clifford and his divers discover first artifacts from the wreck of pirate Sam Bellamy's Whydah off Cape Cod.

September 17: Vanessa Williams becomes the first Black woman to be crowned Miss America.

October 5: The Nobel Prize for Peace goes to Lech Walesa, who leads Poland's Solidarity union.

October 11: The last hand-cranked telephones in the United States go out of service.

October 23: Suicide bombers drive trucks loaded with explosives into the barracks of US Marines and French paratroopers in Beirut, Lebanon. 299 servicemen die.

October 25: The US invades the island of Grenada.

1984

Remains of the commerce raider CSS Alabama are discovered by a minesweeper.

February 7: Navy Captain Bruce McCandless begins the first person to walk in space without being tethered.

July 20: Divers exploring the Whydah discover their first cannons.

July 25: Cosmonaut Svetlana Yevgenyevna Savitskaya becomes the first woman to walk in space.

August 3: Mary Lou Retton of the United States wins the all-around gymnastics event at the Olympics in Los Angeles. She becomes the first American woman to win an individual gold medal in gymnastics.

September 10: Jeopardy! premieres with Alex Trebek as host.

September 30: Murder, She Wrote, starring Angela Lansbury, debuts on American television.

October 11: Dr. Kathryn Sullivan of NASA becomes the first female astronaut to walk in space.

October 31: India's Prime Minister Indira Gandhi is assassinated by 2 of her bodyguards at her home.

December 3: Union Carbide's Bhopal, India, plant suffers a gas leak that kills between 15,000 and 20,000 people. Around 500,000 survivors will suffer chronic medical conditions as well.

1985

The ICC begins recording pirate attacks.

July 10: Moored in Auckland, New Zealand, Greenpeace's Rainbow Warrior sinks after 2 bombs explode. It is later revealed that the devices were planted on the ship by French intelligent agents.

September 1: Robert Ballard and Jean-Louis Michel discover the wreck of the Titanic. Her remains lies at a depth of approximately 13,000 feet.

September 29: MacGyver, starring Richard Dean Anderson, premieres on television.
September 29: The first of 5 victims die after taking cyanide-laced Tylenol.

October 7: The Achille Lauro is hijacked by members of the Palestine Liberation Front. An American, who is partly paralyzed and in a wheel chair, is killed the next day, and his body is thrown overboard. 3 days later, US Navy F-14 fighter planes intercept an Egyptian airliner carrying the hijackers to freedom and force it to land at a NATO base in Sicily. American and Italians troops surrounded the plane and the hijackers are taken into custody by the Italians.

October 19: The first Blockbuster store opens. The video-rental store is situated in Dallas, Texas.

November 13: Two eruptions of Mount Ruiz in the Colombian Andres buries Armero, a town, and kills around 25,000 people.

December 14: Wilma Mankiller is sworn in as chief of the Cherokee Nation. She becomes the first female chief of a major Native American tribe.

December 16: John Gotti takes control of the Gambino crime family.

December 26: Dian Fossey, known worldwide for her work with mountain gorillas, is found dead in Rwanda. It is believed poachers kill her.

1986

January 28: The space shuttle Challenger explodes 73 seconds after launch. All 7 crew members die, including the first teacher in space, Christa McAuliffe.

March 12: Susan Butcher wins the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, a trek of 1,158 miles.

March 13: After a successful docking with the space station Mir, cosmonauts Leonid Kizim and Vladimmir Solovyev become the first to occupy it.

April 26: A fourth reactor at Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the USSR explodes. 31 people die, and the radioactive contamination reaches most of western Europe. It is the worst nuclear disaster in the world. 2 days pass before Soviet television news announces the accident.

October 9: Andrew Lloyd Weber's Phantom of the Opera premieres in London.

October 14: Elie Wiesel, who survived Auschwitz, receives the Novel Peace Prize for his efforts to ensure that people remember the Holocaust.

October 21: Edward Tracy, an American writer, is kidnapped in Beirut, Lebanon.
October 21: Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos are indicted on racketeering charges.

1987

January 3: Aretha Franklin becomes the first female artist inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

August 23: A 15-year-old boy hijacks KLM B737 and demands $1,000,000,000.

September 28: Star Trek: The Next Generation premieres on television.

October 19: Stock markets around the world crash.

1988

February 20: Brian Boitano wins the gold medal in Men's Figure Skating at the XV Winter Olympic Games in Calgary, Canada. One of his competitors is Brian Orser and the matchup becomes known as the "Battle of Brians."

June 25: Cal Ripkin, Jr. plays his 1,000th consecutive baseball game.

October 13: The archbishop of Turin announces that the Shroud of Turin dates back only to the Middle Ages based on carbon-14 testing and cannot be Jesus's shroud.

December 21: A terrorist bomb kills 258 passengers and crew aboard Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.

1989

Somali pirates attack a Greek-owned cargo ship and take the crew hostage. 1 week later, the crew overpowers the pirates and escapes.

January 17: A gunman opens fire on a schoolyard in California. 5 students die and 30 others are wounded.

February 14: Ayatollah Khomeini issues a fatwa, calling for the death of author Salman Rushie and his publishers because of his novel, The Satanic Verses.

February 15: Soviet troops withdraw from Afghanistan.

February 24: A fossilized egg with a fossilized dinosaur embryo inside is found in Utah. It dates back 150,000,000 years.

March 24: The Exxon Valdez runs aground in Prince William Sound, creating an oil spill of 11,000,000 gallons. It is the largest oil spill in American history at the time.

June 2: 10,000 Chinese citizens block 10,000 Chinese soldiers during a student protest for democracy in Tienanmen Square.

June 3-4: The Chinese army opens fire on protesters in Tienanmen Square in Beijing. Several hundred die and at least 7,000 are wounded.

August 24: Pete Rose is suspended from baseball for life for gambling.

November 7: Douglas Wilder is elected governor of Virginia, making him the first African American to hold the office of governor in the US.

November 21: President H. W. Bush signs the law banning smoking on domestic flights in the United States.

December 22: Nicolae Ceausescu is ousted after 24 years of ruling Romania as a dictator.
December 22: Reopening of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin signifies the reunification of East and West Germany.

December 25: Nicolae Ceausescu, former dictator of Romania, and his wife go on trial for genocide and personal enrichment. Both are found guilty and summarily executed by firing squad.

1990

February 11: Nelson Mandela is released after being imprisoned for 27 years on political charges in South Africa. He will later become President of South Africa and win the Nobel Peace Prize.

February 27: Last day in which sailors of the Royal New Zealnd Navy receive a rum ration.

March 11: Lithuania becomes the first Soviet republic to declare its independence from the USSR.

August 2: Iran invades Kuwait, an act which sparks the Persian Gulf War.

September 13: Law & Order premieres. It will become one of the longest-running prime time television dramas in the United States.

October: Erria Inge, a cargo ship, is captured by pirates in the Indian Ocean. She is re-registered as Palu 111 and she visits several ports without the authorities challenging her.

October 3: After 4 decades, the reunification of East and West Germany reestablishes a unified Germany.

October 13: For the first time in more than 70 years, a Russian Orthodox service is held in St. Basil's Cathedral in Red Square in Moscow.

1991

 President Siad Barre's socialist government falls and anarchy rules in Somalia.

January 12: Somali pirates board the Naviluck, and take 3crewman ashore, where they are executed. Then the pirates force the remaining crew to jump overboard before setting the cargo ship on fire. A passing trawler rescues the crew from the water.

January 17: Start of Operation Desert Storm during the Gulf War, when US-led coalition forces bomb Iraq

January 18: After 60 years of flying, Eastern Air Lines goes out of business.

May 1: Angolan civil war ends.

July 10: Boris Yelstin is sworn in as Russia's first elected president.

July 22: Jeffrey Dahmer confesses to killing 17 men in 1978.

September 6: Leningrad, Russia is renamed St. Petersburg, the name under which it was originally founded.
September 6: The Soviet Union recognizes the independence of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.

September 19: German tourists discover the mummified body from 3300 BCE. This human is later dubbed the Iceman.

November 7: Magic Johnson, a professional basketball player, announces that he has tested positive for HIV.

December 21: The dissolution of the Soviet Union. 11 of the 12 republics form the Commonwealth of Independent States.

1992

January 13: Jeffrey Dahmer, a serial killer, pleads guilty but insane.

March 17: A vote ends apartheid in South Africa.

April 29: The jury acquits Los Angeles police officers of the beating of Rodney King. Rioting follows.

September 12: Mae Jemison becomes the first African-American woman to fly in space.

November 11: The ordination of female priests is approved by the Church of England.

1993

The British Royal Navy integrates women into the regular navy as full-fledged sailors.

February 26: A truck bomb explodes in the parking garage of the World Trade Center in New York at 12:18 pm. 6 people die and more than 1,000 are injured. Islamic radicals are later convicted of the bombing.

March 12: Janet Reno becomes the first woman to serve as the US attorney general.

April 19: After a FBI siege lasting 51 days, 76 Branch Davidians dies in a fire near Waco, Texas. The exact cause of the blaze is disputed.

July 9: Forensic scientists in England announce that the remains found in a mass grace in 1991 near Yekaterinburg, Russia are those of Tsar Nicholas II, Tsarina Alexandra, and Grand Duchesses Olga, Tatiana, and Anastasia. The remains of Tsarevich Alexei and Grand Duchess Maria are not found until 2007.

August 10: Ruth Bader Ginsburg becomes the second woman to serve on the US Supreme Court.

October 3: During the Battle of Magadishu in Somalia, a Black Hawk helicopter goes down and 18 American solders die, while another 73 are wounded during the 2-day battle.

October 7: Toni Morrison receives the Nobel prize for literature.

1994

February 12: Thieves steal Edvard Munch's "The Scream" from the National Gallery in Oslo, Norway.

April 7: The plane carrying Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana and Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira is shot down. No one every claims responsibility, but the assassination leads to the Rwandan Genocide in which 800,000 people are killed.

May 7: "The Scream," a painting by Edvard Munch is recovered 3 months after it was stolen.

July 5: Amazon.com is founded.

August 14: Carlos the Jackal, a terrorist who orchestrats some of the highest-profile attacks during the 1970s and 1980s, is captured by French agents in Khartoum, Sudan. The Venezuelan militant is later sentenced to life in prison.

1995

March: UN peace-keeping forces withdraw from Somalia after 3 years of attempting to restore order.

March 20: Poisoned gas is released in subways in Tokyo, Japan, killing 12 and injuring 4,700 people.

April 19: A truck bomb explodes outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. 168 die and more than 500 are injured.

May 3: N.U.M.A. archeologists discover the H. L. Hunley, the Confederate submarine that blew up the Housatonic, buried in the sand and silt outside Charleston Harbor.

May 27: Christopher Reeve, an actor competing in a riding competition, falls from his horse. He is paralyzed from the neck down.

Summer: Ol'Chumbucket and Cap'n Slappy invent a new holiday, Talk Like a Pirate Day, to be celebrated annually on 19 September.

September 5: Cal Ripken, Jr., of the Baltimore Orioles, ties Lou Gehrig's record of playing in 2,130 consecutive baseball games.

September 6: After 56 years, Lou Gehrig's record for number of consecutive games played falls when Cal Ripkin, Jr. surpasses it with 2,131 games.

September 19: The New York Times and Washington Post publish the Unabomber's Manifesto.

November 4: Yitzhak Rabin, the prime minister of Israel, is assassinated during a peace rally by a Jewish extremist.

1996

February 10: Grand Master Gary Kasparov plays IBM's Deep Blue computer in a 6-game chess match. Kasparov wins 4-2. When they play a rematch in 1997, Deep Blue wins.

March 13: A gunman opens fire inside a Dunblane, Scotland primary school and kills 16 children and their teacher before killing himself. As a result, changes are made to British gun laws.

April 3: Ted Kaczynzki is arrested as being the Unabomber, who uses explosives sent via the mail to kill 3 people and injure more than 20 others.

June 18: Ted Kaczynski, the alleged Unabomber, is indicted on 10 criminal counts.

July 27: A pipe bomb explodes at Atlanta's Olympic Centennial Park. 1 person dies and 111 are injured.

November 21: A search team from Intersal, Inc. finds a cluster of cannons and anchors near Beaufort Inlet that are believed to belong to Queen Anne's Revenge.

November 30: 700 years after Edward I of England stole the Stone of Scone, the block of sandstone connected to the coronation of Scottish kings, is returned to Scotland.

1997

February 23: Scottish scientists announce that they have cloned an adult sheep who produces a lamb named "Dolly."

April 3: Guerillas kill 52 villagers of Thaliet, Algeria. There is only 1 survivor.

June 2: A jury finds Timothy McVeigh guilty of murder and conspiracy because of the 168 people who died in the Oklahoma City bombing at the federal building 2 years earlier.

July 1: Hong Kong officially reverts back to Chinese sovereignty, ending 156 years of British rule.

August 31: Diana, Princess of Wales, dies in a car crash in Paris.

September 6: Princess Diana's funeral is held at Westminster Abbey in London as an estimated 2.5 billion mourners around the world watch on television.

November 7: Pirates attack the Ploflat, an Australian yacht. The skipper defends himself with Molotov cocktails until the attack is broken off.

December 12: Carlos the Jackal, a terrorist, goes on trial in Paris.

1998

Manila Declaration on the Prevention and Control of Transnational Crime

Work Program to Implement the ASEAN Plan of Action to Combat Transnational Crime

Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts Against the Safety of Maritime Navigation (also known as SUA or the “Rome Convention”)

March 24: Two students, aged 11 and 13, fire upon teachers and students at Westside Middle School in Jonesboro, Arkansas. 5 people are killed and 10 others are wounded. It becomes known as the Jonesboro Massacre.

May: Puntland State of Somalia is proclaimed with Abdullahi Yusuf as its first president.

May 5: Theodore Kaczynski, also known as the Unabomber, is sentenced to 4 life terms  plus 30 years for killing 3 people and injuring 22 others in 16 attacks between 1979 and 1995.

July 17: Russia buries Tsar Nicholas II and his family 80 years after they are assassinated.

July 19: Barry Clifford and his divers discover the hull of the Whydah in waters off Cape Cod.

August 15: A car bomb explodes in Omagh, Northern Ireland, killing 29 people and injuring 220. It is the worst terrorist incident of The Troubles.

September 20: Cal Ripken, Jr. ends "The Streak," having played in 2,632 consecutive baseball games.

September 27: The freighter Tenyu and her crew of 15 disappear after leaving Kualatanjung, Indonesia.

October 23: Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and Yasser Arafat of Palestine reach a "land for peace" agreement.

November 9: Having already abolished capital punishment for murder, the United Kingdom abolishes it for all other capital offenses.

November 16: Pirates, dressed as Chinese officials, seize Cheung Son near Hong Kong. The crew of 23 is blindfolded at the ship's railing, after which they are clubbed, shot, or stabbed prior to being thrown overboard. Some are still alive at the time.

1999

January 1: The European Union introduces the euro as its new currency for member states.

March 24: A fire ignites in the Mont Blanc Tunnel, which connects France and Italy via a roadway in the Alps. It takes 2 days for firefighters to extinguish the blaze, in which 39 people die.

April 20: Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold open fire on classmates and teachers at Columbine High School in Colorado. They commit suicide after killing 13 and wounding 24 in what becomes known as the Columbine Massacre.

May 8: Nancy Mace becomes the first female cadet to graduate from South Carolina's military college, The Citadel.

May 29: Discovery docks with the International Space Station, becoming the first space shuttle to do so.

June: Indonesian pirates hijack the Siam Xanxai.

October 23: Pirates seize MV Alondra Rainbow. They are eventually captured by Indian warship.

December 31: The United States hands over control of the Panama Canal to Panama.

Copyright ©2023 Cindy Vallar

Home

Pirate Articles

Book Reviews

Pirate Links

Sea Yarns Galore

Thistles & Pirates