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| Designed by John Augustus The Brooklyn Bridge is a hybrid cable-stayed/suspension bridge in New York City and is one of the oldest bridges of either type in the United States. Completed in 1883, it connects the boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn by spanning the East River. It has a main span of 1,595.5 feet (486.3 m), and was the first steel-wire suspension bridge constructed. |
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| A prolific inventor, holding 1,093 US patents in his name. More significant than the number of Edison's patents was the widespread impact of his inventions: electric light and powerutilities, sound recording, and motion pictures all established major new industries world-wide. Edison's inventions contributed tomass communication and, in particular, telecommunications. These included a stock ticker, a mechanical vote recorder, a battery for an electric car, electrical power, recorded music and motion pictures. |
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| A landmark federal statute in the history of United States antitrust law (or "competition law") passed by Congress in 1890. It prohibits certain business activities that federal government regulators deem to be anti-competitive, and requires the federal government to investigate and pursue trusts. |
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| Was established in 1891 during the Populist movement.Based among poor, white cotton farmers in the South And hard-pressed wheat farmers in the plains states. it represented a radical crusading form of agrarianism and hostility to banks, cities, railroads, gold, and elites generally. It sometimes formed coalitions with labor unions in the North and with the Republican Party in the South. Its strongest election came in 1894. In 1896 the Populists endorsed the Democratic presidential nominee, William Jennings Bryan, |
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| When the Union Pacific Railroad was chartered in 1864 by the federal government and the associated Crédit Mobilier was established. In 1868 Congressman Oakes Ames had distributed Crédit Mobilier shares of stock to other congressmen, in addition to making cash bribes, during the Andrew Johnson presidency. |
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| Was an atrocity in the American Indian Wars that occurred on November 29, 1864, when a 700-man force of Colorado Territory militia attacked and destroyed a peaceful village of Cheyenne and Arapaho inhabited in southeastern Colorado Territory,[3] killing and mutilating an estimated 70–163 Indians, about two-thirds of whom were women and children. The location has been designated the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site and is administered by theNational Park Service. |
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| Was a Hunkpapa Lakota holy man who led his people as a tribal chief during years of resistance to United States government policies. He was killed by Indian agency police on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation during an attempt to arrest him, at a time when authorities feared that he would join the Ghost Dance movement. |
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| A period of social activism and political reform in the United States that flourished from the 1890s to the 1920s.[1] One main goal of the Progressive movement was eliminating corruption in government by exposing and undercutting political machines and their bosses and establishing further means of direct democracy. Progressives also sought regulation of monopolistic trust corporations throughantitrust laws, which were seen as a means to promote fair competition for the benefit of consumers. |
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| American teacher, author and journalist. She was one of the leading "muckrakers" of the progressive era. She wrote many notable magazine series and biographies. She is best known for her 1904 book The History of the Standard Oil Company, which was listed as No. 5 in a 1999 list by New York University of the top 100 works of 20th-century American journalism.[1] She depicted John D. Rockefeller as crabbed, miserly, money-grabbing, and viciously effective at monopolizing the oil trade. |
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| American settlement social worker, public philosopher, sociologist, author, and leader in women's suffrage and world peace, Addams was one of the most prominent[1] reformers of theProgressive Era. She helped turn America to issues of concern to mothers, such as the needs of children, local public health, and world peace. She said that if women were to be responsible for cleaning up their communities and making them better places to live, they needed the vote to be effective in doing so. She is increasingly being recognized as a member of the American pragmatist school of philosophy.[2] In 1931 she became the first American woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and is recognized as the founder of the social workprofession in the United States. |
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| An American suffragist, feminist, and women's rights activist, and the main leader and strategist of the 1910s campaign for the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which prohibits gender discrimination in the right to vote. Along with Lucy Burns and others, Paul strategized the events, such as the Silent Sentinels, which led the successful campaign that resulted in its passage in 1920.[1]After 1920 Paul spent a half century as leader of the National Woman's Party, which fought for her Equal Rights Amendment to secure constitutional equality for women. She won a large degree of success with the inclusion of women as a group protected against discrimination by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 |
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| A 1917 diplomatic proposal from the German Empire for Mexico to join an alliance with Germany in the event of the United States entering World War I against Germany. The proposal was intercepted and decoded by British intelligence. Revelation of the contents outraged American public opinion. President Woodrow Wilson moved to arm American merchant ships to defend themselves against German submarines, which had started to attack them. The news helped generate support for the United States declaration of war on Germany in April of that year |
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| One of the peace treaties at the end of World War I. It ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers. It was signed on 28 June 1919, exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The other Central Powers on the German side of World War I were dealt with in separate treaties.[6] Although the armistice, signed on 11 November 1918, ended the actual fighting, it took six months of negotiations at the Paris Peace Conferenceto conclude the peace treaty. |
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| a "new breed" of young Western women in the 1920s who wore short skirts, bobbed their hair, listened to jazz, and flaunted their disdain for what was then considered acceptable behavior. Flappers were seen as brash for wearing excessive makeup, drinking, treating sex in a casual manner, smoking, driving automobiles, and otherwise flouting social and sexual norms.[1] Flappers had their origins in the liberal period of the Roaring Twenties, the social, political turbulence and increased transatlantic cultural exchange that followed the end ofWorld War I, as well as the export of American jazz culture to Europe. |
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| A bribery incident that took place in the United States from 1920 to 1923, during the administration ofPresident Warren G. Harding. Secretary of the Interior Albert B. Fall had leased Navy petroleum reserves at Teapot Dome in Wyomingand two other locations in California to private oil companies at low rates without competitive bidding. In 1922 and 1923, the leases became the subject of a sensational investigation by Senator Thomas J. Walsh. Fall was later convicted of accepting bribes from the oil companies and became the first Cabinet member to go to prison. |
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| A cultural movement that spanned the 1920s. During the time, it was known as the "New Negro Movement", named after the 1925 anthology by Alain Locke. The Movement also included the new African-American cultural expressions across the urban areas in the Northeast and Midwest United States affected by the Great Migration (African American),[1] of which Harlem was the largest. Many francophone black writers from African and Caribbean colonies who lived inParis were also influenced by the Harlem Renaissance. |
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Johnson-Reed Immigration Act |
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| Was a United States federal law that limited the annual number of immigrants who could be admitted from any country to 2% of the number of people from that country who were already living in the United States in 1890, down from the 3% cap set by the Immigration Restriction Act of 1921, according to the Census of 1890. It superseded the 1921 Emergency Quota Act. The law was primarily aimed at further restricting immigration of Southern Europeans, Eastern Europeans, and Jews. In addition, it severely restricted the immigration of Africans and prohibited the immigration of Arabs, East Asians, and Indians. According to the U.S. Department of State Office of the Historian the purpose of the act was "to preserve the ideal of American homogeneity".[1]Congressional opposition was minimal. |
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Italian-born anarchists who were convicted of murdering two men during the armed robbery of a shoe factory in Braintree,Massachusetts, United States in 1920. Both adhered to a strain of anarchism that advocated relentless warfare against violent and oppressive governments. |
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| Reconstruction Finance Corporation |
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| Was a government corporation in the United States that operated between 1932 and 1957 which provided financial support to state and local governments and made loans to banks, railroads, mortgage associations and other businesses. Its aim was to boost the country’s confidence and help banks return to performing daily functions after the start of the great depression. It continued to operate through the New Deal where it became more prominent and through World War II. It was disbanded in 1957 when the US government felt it no longer needed to stimulate lending. |
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| Was an act passed by the United States Congress in 1933 in an attempt to stabilize the banking system. Fears of other bank closures spread from state to state as people rushed to withdraw their money just in case. Following his inauguration in March 1933, Prepared by the Treasury staff during Herbert Hoover's administration, the legislation was passed on March 9, 1933 The new law allows the twelve Federal Reserve Banks to issue additional currency on good assets and thus the banks that reopen will be able to meet every legitimate call. |
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| First Hundred Days (New Deal) |
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| A series of domestic programs enacted in the United States between 1933 and 1938, and a few that came later. They included both laws passed by Congress as well as presidential executive orders during the first term (1933–37) of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The programs were in response to the Great Depression, and focused on what historians call the "3 Rs": Relief, Recovery, and Reform. That is Relief for the unemployed and poor; Recovery of the economy to normal levels; and Reform of the financial system to prevent a repeat depression |
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| The Act provided benefits to retirees and the unemployed, and a lump-sum benefit at death. Payments to current retirees are financed by a payroll tax on current workers' wages, half directly as a payroll tax and half paid by the employer. The act also gave money to states to provide assistance to aged individuals (Title I), for unemployment insurance (Title III), Aid to Families with Dependent Children (Title IV), Maternal and Child Welfare (Title V), public health services (Title VI), and the blind (Title X).Appoint new judges |
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| A period of severe dust storms that greatly damaged the ecology and agriculture of the US and Canadian prairies during the 1930s; severe drought and a failure to apply dryland farming methods to prevent wind erosion (the Aeolian processes) caused the phenomenon. The drought came in three waves, 1934, 1936, and 1939–40, but some regions of the High Plains experienced drought conditions for as many as eight years.[1] With insufficient understanding of the ecology of the Plains, farmers had conducted extensive deep plowing of the virgin topsoil of the Great Plains during the previous decade; this had displaced the native, deep-rooted grasses that normally trapped soil and moisture even during periods of drought and high winds. |
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| On December 7, 1941, the base was attacked by the Imperial Japanese Navy airplanes and midget submarines, causing the American entry into World War II. Over the years, Pearl Harbor remained a main base for the US Pacific Fleet after World War II along with Naval Base San Diego. |
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| Nazi Germany's plan during World War II to systematically rid the world of its Jewish population through genocide. This policy was formulated in procedural terms at the Wannsee Conference in January 1942, and culminated in the "Shoah – the Holocaust of the Jewish people, the attempt to annihilate the Jewish people," as defined by Avner Shalev, director of Yad Vashem, which resulted in the killing of two thirds of the Jewish population of Europe. |
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| A United States presidential executive order signed and issued during World War II by the United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 19, 1942, authorizing the Secretary of War to prescribe certain areas as military zones. Eventually, EO 9066 cleared the way for the deportation of Japanese Americans to internment camps. The executive order was spurred by a combination of war hysteria and reactions to the Niihau Incident. |
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| A United States policy to stop Soviet expansion during the Cold War.[1] United States President Harry S. Truman pledged to contain communism in Europe and elsewhere and impelled the US to support any nation with both military and economic aid if its stability was threatened by communism or the Soviet Union. The Truman Doctrine became the foundation of the president's foreign policy and placed the U.S. in the role of global policeman. |
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a United States policy to prevent the spread of communism abroad. A component of the Cold War, this policy was a response to a series of moves by the Soviet Union to enlarge communist influence in Eastern Europe, China, Korea, Africa, andVietnam. It represented a middle-ground position between appeasement and rollback.The basis of the doctrine was articulated in a 1946 cable by U.S. diplomat George F. Kennan. |
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| The American initiative to aid Europe, in which the United States gave $13 billion (approximately $160 billion in current dollar value) in economic support to help rebuild European economies after the end of World War II. The plan was in operation for four years beginning in April 1948. The goals of the United States were to rebuild war-devastated regions, remove trade barriers, modernize industry, and make Europe prosperous again. |
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| the Soviet Union blocked the Western Allies' railway, road, and canal access to the sectors of Berlin under allied control. The Soviets offered to drop the blockade if the Western Allies withdrew the newly introduced Deutschmark from West Berlin. In response, the Western Allies organised the Berlin airlift to carry supplies to the people in West Berlin.[1][2] Aircrews from the United States Air Force, the British Royal Air Force, theRoyal Canadian Air Force, the Royal Australian Air Force, the Royal New Zealand Air Force, and the South African Air Force[3]:338 flew over 200,000 flights in one year, providing up to 4700 tons of necessities daily, such as fuel and food, to the Berliners.[4] Neither side wanted a war; the Soviets did not disrupt the airlift |
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| The term has its origins in the period in the United States known as the Second Red Scare, lasting roughly from 1950 to 1956 and characterized by heightened political repression against communists, as well as a campaign spreading fear of their influence on American institutions and of espionage by Soviet agents. Originally coined to criticize the anti-communist pursuits of Republican U.S. SenatorJoseph McCarthy of Wisconsin, "McCarthyism" soon took on a broader meaning, describing the excesses of similar efforts. |
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was a 13-day confrontation in October 1962 between the United States and the Soviet Union over Soviet ballistic missiles deployed in Cuba. It played out on television worldwide and was the closest the Cold War came to escalating into a full-scale nuclear war. In response to the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961, and the presence of American Jupiter ballistic missiles in Italy andTurkey against the USSR with Moscow within range, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev decided to agree to Cuba's request to place nuclear missiles in Cuba to deter future harassment of Cuba. An agreement was reached during a secret meeting between Khrushchev and Fidel Castro in July and construction on a number of missiles sites started later that summer. |
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is a landmark United States Supreme Court decision upholding the constitutionality of state laws requiring racial segregation in public facilities under the doctrine of "separate but equal." The decision was handed down by a vote of 7 to 1 with the majority opinion written by Justice Henry Billings Brown and the dissent written by Justice John Marshall Harlan. |
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Between 1890 and 1915, Washington was the dominant leader in the African-Americancommunity. Washington was of the last generation of black American leaders born into slavery and became the leading voice of the former slaves and their descendants, who were newly oppressed by disfranchisement and the Jim Crow discriminatory laws enacted in the post-Reconstruction Southern states in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In 1895 his Atlanta compromise called for avoiding confrontation over segregation and instead putting more reliance on long-term educational and economic advancement in the black community. |
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| Were a group of African American students enrolled in Little Rock Central High School in 1957. Their enrollment was followed by the Little Rock Crisis, in which the students were initially prevented from entering theracially segregated school by Orval Faubus, the Governor of Arkansas. They then attended after the intervention ofPresident Dwight D. Eisenhower. |
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| On December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, Parks refused to obey bus driver James F. Blake's order that she give up her seat in the colored section to a white passenger, after the white section was filled. Parks was not the first person to resist bus segregation. Others had taken similar steps, including Irene Morgan in 1946, Sarah Louise Keys in 1955, and the members of the Browder v. Gayle lawsuit (Claudette Colvin, Aurelia Browder, Susie McDonald, and Mary Louise Smith) who were arrested in Montgomery months before Parks. |
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A series of nonviolent protests in Greensboro, North Carolina in 1960[1] which led to the Woolworthdepartment store chain reversing its policy of racial segregation in the Southern United States. While not the first sit-ins of the African-American Civil Rights Movement, the Greensboro sit-ins were an instrumental action, leading to increased national sentiment at a crucial period in US history.[3] The primary event took place at the Greensboro, North CarolinaWoolworth store, now the International Civil Rights Center and Museum. |
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| Civil rights activists who rode interstate buses into the segregated southern United States in 1961 and following years to challenge the non-enforcement of the United States Supreme Court decisions Irene Morgan v. Commonwealth of Virginia (1946) and Boynton v. Virginia (1960),[1] which ruled that segregated public buses were unconstitutional.[2] The Southern states had ignored the rulings and the federal government did nothing to enforce them. |
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| Was an American pastor, activist, humanitarian, and leader in theAfrican-American Civil Rights Movement. He is best known for his role in the advancement of civil rights using nonviolent civil disobedience based on his Christian beliefs. |
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| Was an African-American Muslim minister and a human rights activist. To his admirers he was a courageous advocate for the rights of blacks, a man who indicted white America in the harshest terms for its crimes against black Americans; detractors accused him of preaching racism and violence. He has been called one of the greatest and most influential African Americans in history. |
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| AIM was initially formed to address American Indian sovereignty, treaty issues, spirituality, and leadership, while simultaneously addressing incidents of police harassment and racism against Native Americans forced to move off of reservations and away from tribal culture by the 1950s-era enforcement of federal government termination policies originally created in the 1930s. "As independent citizens and taxpayers, without good education or experience, most 'terminated' Indians were reduced within a few years to widespread illness and utter poverty, whether or not they were relocated to cities" from the reservations. |
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| Was a theory prominent from the 1950s to the 1980s, that speculated that if one state in a region came under the influence of communism, then the surrounding countries would follow in a domino effect. The domino theory was used by successive United States administrations during the Cold War to justify the need for American intervention around the world. |
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| Was a Vietnamese Communist revolutionary leader who was prime minister (1945–55) and president (1945–69) of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam). He was a key figure in the foundation of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in 1945, as well as the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) and the Việt Cộng (NLF or VC) during the Vietnam War. |
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| It is of historical significance because it gave U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson authorization, without a formaldeclaration of war by Congress, for the use of "conventional'' military force in Southeast Asia. Specifically, the resolution authorized the President to do whatever necessary in order to assist "any member or protocol state of the Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty". This included involving armed forces. |
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| Was one of the largest military campaigns of the Vietnam War, launched on January 30, 1968 by forces of the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army against the forces of South Vietnam, the United States, and their allies. It was a campaign of surprise attacks against military and civilian commands and control centers throughout South Vietnam.[10] |
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| Was a policy of the Richard Nixon administration during the Vietnam War to end the U.S.' involvement in the war and "expand, equip, and train South Vietnam's forces and assign to them an ever-increasing combat role, at the same time steadily reducing the number of U.S. combat troops".[1] Brought on by the Viet Cong's Tet Offensive, the policy referred to U.S. combat troops specifically in the ground combat role, but did not reject combat by the U.S. Air Force, as well as the support to South Vietnam, consistent with the policies of U.S. foreign military assistance organizations. |
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| The term is often used in reference to the general easing of the geo-political tensions between the Soviet Union and the United Stateswhich began in 1969, as a foreign policy of U.S. presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford called détente; a "thawing out" or "un-freezing" at a period roughly in the middle of the Cold War. |
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Strategic Defense Initiative |
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| Was proposed by U.S. President Ronald Reagan on March 23, 1983,[1] to use ground-based and space-based systems to protect the United States from attack by strategic nuclear ballistic missiles. The initiative focused on strategic defense rather than the prior strategic offense doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD). The Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO) was set up in 1984 within the United States Department of Defense to oversee the Strategic Defense Initiative. |
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| A major political scandal that occurred in the United States in the 1970s as a result of the June 17, 1972, break-in at the Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C., and the Nixon administration's attempted cover-up of its involvement. When the conspiracy was discovered and investigated by the U.S. Congress, the Nixon administration's resistance to its probes led to a constitutional crisis.[1] The term Watergate has come to encompass an array of clandestine and often illegal activities undertaken by members of the Nixon administration. |
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| Was a political scandal in the United States that occurred during the second term of the Reagan Administration. Senior administration officials secretly facilitated the sale of arms to Iran, the subject of an arms embargo.[3]Some U.S. officials also hoped that the arms sales would secure the release of several hostages and allow U.S. intelligence agencies to fund the Nicaraguan Contras. Under the Boland Amendment, further funding of the Contras by the government had been prohibited by Congress. |
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