Historical Events: U.S.

Maryland is the thirteenth and final state to ratify the Articles of Confederation, at which point they become the supreme law of the land.

Eli Whitney is awarded a patent for the first cotton gin capable of removing seeds from the fibers of the short-staple cotton grown in the US, inadvertently revitalizing the dying institution of slavery.

In a surprise military strike, the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service attacks the US Naval Base at Pearl Harbor, in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Senator John F. Kennedy is elected President in a close race, receiving only 118,000 more votes than Vice President Richard M. Nixon.

Over a period of ten weeks, stocks on the New York Stock Exchange lose 50% of their value, ushering in the Great Depression.

The New Deal begins to take shape immediately after the inauguration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

South Carolina becomes the first state to secede from the Union over political and economic tensions between the northern industrialized states and the southern agrarian states.

Explorer Juan Ponce de Léon claims peninsular Florida for Spain — a claim that will incrementally expand to include all of present-day Florida plus portions of Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana.

President Chester A. Arthur signs the Chinese Exclusion Act, banning the immigration of Chinese laborers for ten years.

In Brown v. Board of Education, the US Supreme Court unanimously rules that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal,” legally ending racial segregation in public schools and overruling the “separate but equal” principle set forth in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1889.

Vermont becomes the 14th state.

The first production Ford Model T is built in Detroit, Michigan.

Thomas Edison patents what will become the first commercially successful light bulb.

Anarchist Leon Czolgosz assassinates President William McKinley in Buffalo, New York.

The London Company sends out its first expedition to begin colonizing Virginia.

The First Continental Congress meets for the first time, in Philadelphia, in response to escalating tensions between Great Britain and its North American colonists.

Severe drought hits the Great Plains, exacerbating the effects of poor soil conservation practices, and causing the Dust Bowl during which 400,000 residents of 19 states lost their homes and livelihoods.

The French and Indian War (known in Europe as the Seven Years’ War) ends, leaving Great Britain with a huge debt that they try to reduce in part by levying taxes on North American colonists.

To jointly oversee the removal of Japanese forces, the US and the Soviet Union agree to divide the Korean Peninsula into two occupation zones — using the 38th parallel as the dividing line.

Leland Stanford ceremonially taps the “Golden Spike” at Promontory Summit, Utah, opening the country’s first transcontinental railroad — built with the help of between 15,000 and 20,000 Chinese immigrants.

The Congress of Confederation (the renamed Continental Congress) finalizes the Articles of Confederation as the first framework of government.

128 US citizens die when an Imperial German Navy U-boat sinks the RMS Lusitania off the coast of Ireland.

Congress passes the 18th Amendment to the Constitution, prohibiting the manufacture, transportation and sale of alcoholic beverages, inadvertently contributing to the growth of organized crime.

The California Gold Rush begins when James W. Marshall finds gold at Sutter’s Mill in Coloma, accelerating the California Genocide that began after the Conquest of California during the Mexican-America War.