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A timeline of the USA and CanadaWorld News | Politics | History | Editor(Copyright © 2008 Piero Scaruffi) |
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See a timeline of Britain TM, ®, Copyright © 2003 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved. 1492: the Italian explorer Cristoforo Colombo sails west on behalf of Spain looking for a way to reach Asia, and instead lands in a new continent 1497: the Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci sails to the new continent on behalf of Spain 1507: German cartographer Martin Waldseemller's "Cosmographiae Introductio" names the new continent "America" 1524: the Italian explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano sails up the coast of north America and discovers Manhattan 1565: the Spanish found the first permanent European settlement in North America at St Augustine (Florida) 1607: Jamestown is the first English colony in the Americas 1607: John Smith founds the colony of Virginia 1608: The first French town is founded in North AMerica, Quebec City 1612: Tobacco plantation in Virginia 1619: the Dutch begin the slave trade between Africa and North America (Virginia) 1620: English pilgrims aboard the "Mayflower" land at Plymouth Rock on Cape Cod, Massachusetts 1624: the Dutch West India Company founds the colony of Nieuw Nederland 1625: the Dutch West India Company founds a trading post in America, Nieuwe Amsterdam (New York) 1630: Boston is founded 1632: Maryland is born as the private possession of an individual 1636: Harvard University is founded near Boston, the first American university 1638: Virginia has become the major source of tobacco for Europe 1639: settlers from Massachusetts Bay unite in the colony of Connecticut 1650: the West Indies still attract more British immigrants than the mainland 1654: the first Jewsish immigrants arrive in Nieuwe Amsterdam (New York) 1663: eight noblemen are granted Carolina 1664: Britain obtain Nieuwe Amsterdam and renames it New York 1667: Britain captures Nieuw Nederland and renames it Delaware 1681: Quakers led by William Penn found the colony of Pennsylvania and the city of Philadelphia 1682: France claims the territory of Louisiana 1691: several New England colonies unite in the Massachusetts Bay Colony 1692: 19 "witches" are burned at the stake near Boston 1712: North Carolina is separated from South Carolina 1713: Britain and France sign a peace treaty ("Treaty of Utrecht") that hands most of Canada to Britain and leaves Britain as the dominant force in north America 1718: French colonists found La Nouvelle-Orleans (New Orleans) 1732: the British found the colony of Georgia, the 13th English colony in north America 1735: the first Italian immigrants arrive in New York 1750: the population of the USA is 1,170,800 1752: Benjamin Franklin invents the lightening conductor 1762: France surrenders Louisiana to Spain 1763: France surrenders Canada to Britain, and Spain surrenders half the eastern half of Louisiana 1768: Benjamin Franklin suggests the use of daylight saving time to save energy 1769: Spanish captain Gaspar de Portola discovers the San Francisco Bay 1770: the population of the 13 colonies has almost doubled in 20 years to 2,131,000 1771: Britain enacts a constitution for Canada and divides Upper (English) Canada and Lower (French) Canada 1773: American colonists stage an uprising against British rule ("Boston Tea Party") 1775: the first abolitionist society is founded (in Philadelphia) 1776: the American colonies ratifies the Declaration of Independence (American revolution) 1776: San Francisco is founded by the Spanish 1777: Vermont declares its independence from Britain and abolishes slavery 1781: Britain surrenders, the independence war ends and Philadelphia (50,000 inhabitants) becomes the capital of the United States of America 1783: Britain recognises the independence of the United States of America , which now extends from the Atlantic coast to the Mississippi river (population 3.5 million) 1783: Britain surrenders Florida to Spain 1783: Massachusetts abolishes slavery 1789: George Washington is elected first president of the USA (4 million inhabitants) 1789: the English Privy Council concludes that almost 50% of the slaves exported from Africa die before reaching the Americas 1790: at the height of the British slave trade, one slave vessel leaves England for Africa every other day 1790: the first turnpike opens between Philadelphia and Lancaster 1791: the Bill of Rights guarantees individual freedoms 1792: Washington enacts a policy of "educating" the "Indians" 1793: Eli Whitney invents the cotton gin, thus enabling large-scale production of cotton 1796: Philadelphia pioneers the use of gaslight to light streets 1800: New York's population is 60,000 1800: Spain surrenders Louisiana to France 1801: president Thomas Jefferson wins the first universal male suffrage 1801: Thomas Jefferson orders the bombing of the barbary states of Algiers, Morocco, Tunis and Tripoli after Yusuf Karamanli, the ruler of Tripoli, demands ransom from the USA 1801: the USA's population is five million 1801: Robert Fulton builds the "Nautilus" submarine and invents the torpedo 1802: the United States Military Academy is established at West Point 1802: Robert Fulton imports the steamboat to America 1803: president Thomas Jefferson purchases Louisiana (which extended from the Mississippi to the Rocky Mountains, from Montana to New Orleans) from Napoleon, thus essentially doubling the size of the USA 1804: the explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark travel from St Louis to the Pacific Ocean 1807: Robert Fulton introduces steam-powered boats 1807: Britain outlaws slavery 1808: Russia establishes the colony of Noviiy Rossiya in California 1808: Congress abolishes the slave trade 1808: the USA abolishes the slave trade 1810: Virginia is the most populous state of the USA 1812: the USA declares war on Britain 1814: British troops storm Washington and burn the Capitol and the White House 1814: Francis Cabot Lowell builds an integrated cotton factory (spinning + weaving) in Massachusetts 1815: Andrew Jackson, helped by the French pirate Jean Lafitte, defeats the British army at the battle of New Orleans 1815: David Low Dodge organizes in New York the first peace society in history 1817: first scheduled passenger ship from New York to Liverpool (Black Ball Line) 1817: the New York Stock Exchange opens in Wall Street 1819: an economic depression hits the farmers of the south and the west 1819: the "Savannah" completes the first transatlantic crossing by a steamboat (18 days) 1819: the USA acquires Florida from Spain 1820: James Monroe proclaims the doctrine that the USA will police the entire American continent against European interference 1820: the population of New York City is 123,700 1820: the "Missouri compromise" sets a line dividing slave states and non-slave states 1821: The USA citizen Moses Austin obtains Spain's permission to establish a colony of Anglosaxons in Texas 1825: the Erie Canal is inaugurated 1827: John Walker invents the matches 1829: William Austin Burt invents the typewriter 1830: Joseph Smith founds the Mormon Church 1830: the first National Negro Convention meets in Philadelphia 1830: the USA is the sixth industrial power of the world 1830: the US Congress approves a law to resettle Indians further west 1830: An overland trail is opened to Los Angeles that brings Anglosaxon colonists to Mexico's California 1831: the black slave Ned Turner leads a slave revolt that kills 60 white people in Virginia 1831: Cyrus McCormick invents the mechanical harvesting machine 1832: Indians are massacred in Illinois for not abandoning their homeland 1836: Mexico's dictator Santa Anna crushes a Texan uprising at the battle of the Alamo (San Antonio), but general Sam Houston defeats the Spanish and Texas declares its independence 1837: an economic depression follows a wave of speculation 1837: John Deere invents the steel plow 1837: Samuel Morse invents the telegraph 1838: the Cherokee are massacred while being resettled in Oklahoma 1839: Yellow fever kills 12% of Houston's population 1840: Robert Hoe builds the first type-revolving press 1842: Richard Owen discovers the first fossils of dinosaurs 1843: Mass migration towards Oregon 1844: the US has over 5,000 kms of railway (3,000 in Britain, 2,000 in Germany, 500 in France) 1844: James Polk is elected president on a platform to annex Texas 1844: Samuel Morse sends the first public telegraph 1844: The first Jew ever is elected to the USA Congress (Lewis Charles Levin) TM, ®, Copyright © 2008 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved. 1845: Alexander Cartwright invents the sport of baseball 1845: Texas is annexed by the USA 1845: slave owners found the protestant denomination called "Southern Baptists" 1846: the USA provokes a war with Mexico 1846: One fifth of the population of San Francisco is Anglosaxon immigrants 1846: the Marble Palace opens in New York, the first department store 1848: the first Chinese immigrants arrive in the USA 1848: at the end of the Mexican war, the USA acquires New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona, Utah and California 1848: Oregon Territory 1848: John Curtis invents chewing gum 1848: James Marshall discovers gold in California, a region whose population is 6,000, and the "gold rush" begins 1848: the first woman's right convention is held near New York 1849: Vanderbilt establishes a coach service from New Orleans to California via Nicaragua and Mexico 1850: Samuel Morse invents the "Morse Code" 1850: Henry and Mayer Lehman found the brokerage house Lehman Brothers (for buyers and sellers of cotton) 1851: Isaac Singer begins selling the sewing machine 1851: the New York Times is founded 1851: The population of the USA is 20,067,720 free persons and 2,077,034 slaves 1852: Harriet Stowe publishes an anti-slavery novel, "Uncle Tom's Cabin" 1852: Elisha Graves Otis builds the first elevator in New York 1853: a railway between New York and CHicago is inaugurated 1853: Levi Strauss invents "blue jeans" in San Francisco 1854: Congress creates the territories of Kansas and Nebraska 1857: George Pullman invents the bus 1858: a telegraph wire is laid at the bottom of the ocean between Ireland and Canada 1858: the USA stock market crash spawns an international market crash 1858: William Parker Foulke discovers the world's first full dinosaur skeleton (in Haddonfield, New Jersey) 1858: in the elections for senator of Illinois, Lincoln challenges the incumbent to a series of face-to-face debates, widely publicized throughout the nation (Lincoln loses) 1859: Edwin Drake strikes oil in Pennsylvania and launches the first oil boom in the world 1859: John Brown leads an uprising against slavery but is captured and hanged 1859: the USA produces 2/3rds of the world cotton 1859: the Great Atlantic Tea Company (1859) is founded, the first chain-store system 1860: cotton represents three fifths of all United States exports 1860: the population of New York City is 814,000 1860: Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln is elected president although he gains only 40% of the popular vote 1860: eleven southern states secede from the Union on the grounds that Lincoln wants to abolish slavery, and form the Confederate States of America 1861: civil war erupts between the northern ("unionist") states and the southern ("confederate") states (26.2 million versus 8.1 million) 1861: the territories of Nevada and Colorado are organized 1861: Yale University awards the first PhD west of the Atlantic 1862: John Rockefeller founds a company to refine oil (later renamed Standard Oil) 1863: the territories of Arizona and Idaho are organized 1863: James Plimpton invents the rollerskates 1863: the Union wins the battle of Gettysburg (Pennsylvania) 1864: the Frontier is rapidly settled and new states enter the Union, starting with Nevada 1864: all the major powers agree at the Geneva convention on rules for the treatment of prisoners of war 1865: the Union, led by general Ulysses Grant, defeats the Confederates, slavery is abolished (13th amendment of the constitution) and blacks are given the right to vote (370,000 Union citizens and soldiers and 258,000 Confederate citizens and soldiers have died) 1865: 15,000,000 Africans have been deported in the Americas since the slave trade began, and 30-40 million have died before reaching the Americas 1865: the first "minstrels" are formed in Georgia 1865: the population of the "indians" (native Americans) is 294,000 1865: the "Salvation Army" is founded 1865: president Lincoln is assassinated 1866: "The Black Crook", combining drama, music and ballet, is the first musical 1866: The "Ku Klux Klan" is founded in Tennessee by former Confederate army officers to persecute African-Americans 1867: the USA buys Alaska from Russia 1867: Britain creates the Dominion of Canada, a self-governing federation of provinces that formally recognize the British monarchy 1867: at Bright Hope, the first major coal-mine disaster catastrophe claims 69 lives 1867: The Pullman Palace Car Company is founded by George Pullman to manufacture railroad cars 1868: the 14th amendment of the constitution grants blacks the same rights as whites 1869: The Union and Central Pacific railroads meet in Ogden, Utah, and create the first transcontinental railroad 1869: the first "football" game between colleges is held, which is actually a variant of rugby (real football will be renamed "soccer" in the USA) 1870: universal male suffrace 1870: the 15th amendment of the constitution protects the right of blacks to vote (granted in 1865) 1870: the population of the USA is 38.5 million and the population west of the Mississippi is 6,877,000 (Los Angeles has 5,728 people) 1870: Victoria Woodhull advocates free love in her "Weekly" magazine 1870: Charles Dowd divides the USA into "time zones" 1871: the National Rifle Association is founded 1871: a white crowd kills 19 Chinese in Los Angeles 1871: 18,000 houses burn in the fire of Chicago 1872: Aaron Montgomery Ward sends out the first mail order catalog 1872: Victoria Woodhull is the first woman to run for president of the USA 1873: the first San Francisco cable car is inaugurated 1873: Remington begins to mass produce the typewriter 1873: an economic depression causes rise in unemployment and bankrupcies 1873: the USA adopts the gold standard 1873: American magnate Andrew Carnegie donates thousands of organs to churches 1874: Buchanan Eads builds a steel bridge across the Mississippi at St Louis 1874: the Woman's Christian Temperance Union is founded 1875: Ottmar Mergenthaler builds the first linotype (in Baltimore) 1876: Sioux chief Crazy Horse defeat the American cavalry at Powder River 1876: Sioux chief Sitting Bull leads the Sioux and Cheyennes to victory against the American cavalry at the Rosebud (Montana) 1876: general Custer and his troops are massacred by Sioux Indians at Little Big Horn 1876: railroad magnate Leland Stanford purchases a ranch in California and renames it Palo Alto 1876: Alexander Bell demonstrates the telephone 1877: Thomas Edison invents the phonograph and his records spin at 78 RPM 1877: Hayes is elected president after a disputed election and the "Reconstruction" is de facto over 1877: the Washington Post is founded 1877: Strikes spread nation-wide among railroad workes 1878: New Haven publishes the first telephone directory (with 50 names in it) 1879: Thomas Edison invents the light bulb 1880: men outnumber women by more than 2 to 1 in Colorado, Nevada and Arizona 1880: the median age is 21 1880: The Pullman Palace Car Company builds its own town, Pullman, near Chicago 1881: Sitting Bull surrenders 1881: Youstol Dispage Fromscaruffi dies 1882: bandit Jesse James is assassinated 1882: Chicago passes Philadelphia as the second largest city 1882: the USA bans Chinese immigrants for ten years and forbids existing Chinese immigrants from becoming USA citizens 1883: the railroads divide the USA in four time zones to standardize their schedules 1883: the second transcontinental railroad is inaugurated by Northern Pacific Railroad 1883: Hiram Maxim invents the machine gun 1883: designed by John-Augustus Roebling, and completed by his son, the Brooklyn Bridge is inaugurated in New York City, the longest suspension bridge in the world 1884: LeMarcus Thompson builds the first American rollercoaster in Coney Island, Brooklyn, New York TM, ®, Copyright © 2008 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved. 1884: James Ritty invents the cash register 1885: the Santa Fe Railroad reaches Los Angeles 1885: popcorn carts are introduced in fairs 1885: William Le Baron Jenney builds a ten-story building for the Home Insurance Company in Chicago, the first building to use a metal skeleton 1885: William Burroughs develops an adding machine 1885: white miners kill 28 Chinese workers in Wyoming 1886: the first consumer camera is introduced by Kodak 1886: The American Federation of Labor (AFL) is founded in Columbus (Ohio) by Samuel Gompers 1886: the Atlanta pharmacist John Pemberton invents "Coca-Cola", a drink based on coca leaves 1886: Josephine Cochrane invents the dishwasher 1886: a bomb set off by anarchists kills 11 people in Chicago 1887: Emile Berliner invents the platter record to play music 1888: Thomas Adams begins selling chewing gum in a vending machine in New York 1888: Nikola Tesla invents the alternating-current motor 1889: Apache chief Geronimo surrenders 1889: Columbia Phonograph is founded to manufacture dictaphones 1889: George Fuller builds the Tacoma Building in Chicago, the first skyscraper (steel structure, elevators) 1889: for the first time, the USA produce more steel than Britain 1889: the first "Oklahoma opening" to auction off frontier territory 1889: Adolphus and Arthur Caille invent the slot machine TM, ®, Copyright © 2003 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved. 1890: Hermann Hollerith's tabulator chosen for the national census 1890: the population west of the Mississippi is 16,776,000 1890: female journalist Nellie Bly travels around the world in 72 days 1890: The work week in the USA is 60 hours 1890: Congress passes the Anti-Trust Act to protect against monopolies 1890: USA soldiers massacre 200 Sioux men, women and children at Wounded Knee (South Dakota), the last "Indian war" 1891: John Burgess founds the first graduate school at Columbia University 1891: eleven Italians are lynched in New Orleans 1891: Jesse Reno invents the escalator 1891: Leland Stanford establishes a new university in Palo Alto, the Stanford University 1892: Edward Doheny strikes oil in Los Angeles 1892: popular music becomes big business and music publishers rent offices around 28th Street in New York City, "Tin Pan Alley" 1892: the "Great Northern Railroad" is completed 1892: the Coca Cola company is founded in Atlanta 1893: Mafia boss Don Vito Cascio Ferro flees from Sicily to New York and exports the Mafia to America 1893: George Ferris builds the Ferris Wheel for the Chicago World Fair 1893: an economic depression causes unemployment and bankrupcies TM, ®, Copyright © 2005 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved. 1893: the first shopping center opens in Cleveland 1893: interior minister Lorrin Thurston (son of USA missionaries) overthrows the monarchy of Hawaii and appoints Sanford Dole (also son of USA missionaries) as its first president 1894: the magazine "Billboard" is founded 1894: Jacob Coxey leads protesters on a march from Ohio to Washington 1894: the Society of Women in the Wilderness creates a utopian community in Pennsylvania 1894: the USA limits Japanese immigration 1895: the first professional "football" game is held (a different kind of football) 1896: Ford builds his first car 1896: the USA dominates the first modern Olympic Games in Athens, winning 9 of 15 events 1896: the first "ragtime" record is cut 1897: the first car is sold in Los Angeles 1897: the first movies to advertise products are shown in theaters 1897: Klondike gold rush in Alaska 1898: the US defeats Spain and gains Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines, while Cuba becomes independent but de facto a USA protectorate 1898: New York is extended beyong Manhattan by annexing neighboring cities and reaches 3.5 million inhabitants, the second largest city in the world after London 1898: Caleb Bradham of North Carolina invents "Pepsi-Cola", another drink based on coca leaves 1898: the US navy builds its first submarines 1898: the US annexes Hawaii 1899: the coal output in Pennsylvania alone is more than 54,000,000 tons 1899: 2 billion cigarettes are sold in the USA 1900: the first mass-market camera, the "Brownie" is introduced by Kodak 1900: A six-room house costs $3,000 to buy 1900: Los Angeles' population is 100,000 1900: 2,300 automobiles are registered in the USA, of which 1,170 are steam-powered, 800 are electric, and 400 are gasoline-powered 1900: Benjamin Holt invents the tractor 1900: the anti-western Boxer (Yihetuan) Rebellion in China is crushed by foreign troops (primarily U.S. Marines) 1900: 5% of American households own a telephone 1900: life expectancy in the US is 47.3 1900: the USA's population is 76 million 1901: one million people emigrate from Europe to the USA in just one year 1901: Melville Clark builds the first full 88-key player piano 1901: 16,000 patents are filed in just one year 1901: John Pierpont Morgan creates U.S. Steel in Pittsburgh 1901: oil is discovered in Texas 1901: George Cohan stages his first musical show 1901: the first record by an African-American musician is cut 1901: King Camp Gillette invents the razor 1902: president William McKinley is assassinated by an anarchist 1902: Willis Carrier invents the air conditioner 1902: oil is discovered in Texas 1902: George Fuller builds the Flatiron Building in New York, one of New York's first skyscrapers 1902: irrigation of the western lands begins 1903: Wilbur and Orville Wright fly the first airplane 1903: the US produces 11,200 cars (1,700 from Ford) 1903: the first World Series of baseball are held 1904: Coca-Cola is the most recognized brand name in America 1904: George Hale opens the observatory of Mt Wilson, near Los Angeles, with the largest telescope ever br>1904: Amadeo Giannini founds the Bank of Italy 1904: the New York subway opens 1904: Harvey Hubbell invents the electrical plug and socket 1905: Ford leaves Cadillac and founds the Ford Motor Company 1905: the first gas station opens in St Louis 1905: the first Nickelodeon (movie) opens in Pennsylvania 1905: more than one million immigrants enter the USA in just one year 1905: Detroit is the main center for car manufacturing in the USA 1906: the San Francisco earthquake and fire 1906: a Stanley Steamer steam-powered car, built by Freelan and Francis Stanley, sets the world record for speed (205 km/h) 1907: Leo Baekeland invents the first plastic ("bakelite") 1907: at Monongah, the worst coal disaster of all times kills 361 miners 1907: the Warner Brothers film company is founded 1907: George Freeth surfs from Hawaii to California 1907: in the USA there is a car every 800 people 1908: Ford introduces the Model T, the first mass vehicle 1908: Texas builds a ship channel to connect Houston with the sea 1908: William D'Arcy discovers oil in Iran 1908: Durant founds General Motors in Detroit 1908: six cars race from NewYork to Parigi via Siberia in 5 months 1908: Harvard creates the Graduate School of Business Administration 1909: the average hourly salary in the US is $0.19 1909: the Metlife tower in Madison Square is the tallest building in the world 1910: Los Angeles opens the first international airport in the USA 1910: 350,000 pianos are manufactured in the USA 1910: the "Boy Scouts" are founded 1910: the success of Victor Herbert's "Naughty Marietta" (1910) imports "operetta" to the USA 1910: the NAACP is founded to protect the rights of African Americans 1910: the Wurlitzer company invents an organ with special sound effects to accompany silent films 1910: the first Nickelodeon (movie) theater opens in Los Angeles 1910: a bomb killa 20 people in Los Angeles 1911: the antitrust law dissolves Rockefeller's financial empire (Standard Oil Company) 1911: Chevrolet is founded 1911: General Electric introduces the first commercial refrigerator 1911: A fire kills 146 workers in a New York factory 1911: Hollerith's Tabulating Machine Company is acquired by a new company that will change name to International Bussiness Machines (IBM) in 1924 1912: New Mexico and Arizona become states 1912: the first blues record is cut 1912: the USA sends marines to protect the dictator of Nicaragua 1912: Carl Laemmle founds Universal, the first major film studio 1913: John Rockefeller is worth $212 billions, 1/44th of the US economy 1913: the police and militia kill 14 strikers at Ludlow 1913: Ford installs the first assembly line (at Highland Park) 1913: the first film is shot in Hollywood 1913: 2% of Americans control 60% of the national product (Morgan and Rockefeller alone control 20%) 1913: Grand Central Station is inaugurated in New York 1913: the Woolworth Building opens in New York, the tallest building in the world 1914: the USA and Panama open the Panama Canal 1914: composer Jerome Kern invents the "musical" by integrating music, drama and ballet 1914: World War I begins 1914: Ford's market share of the car market is 48% 1914: Marcus Garvey founds the "Universal Negro Improvement Association" 1915: the "Ku Klux Klan" is refounded in Georgia as a racist organization by William Simmons, persecuting Catholics and Jews as well as Blacks 1915: the USA has 100 million people, of which 13-15% are foreign-born 1915: the USA sends marines to restore order in Haiti TM, ®, Copyright © 2003 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved. 1916: the US produces one and a half million cars 1916: Margaret Sanger founds the National Birth Control League (later renamed Planned Parenthood) 1916: the first woman ever is elected to the USA COngress (Jeannette Rankin) 1916: Merrill Lynch is founded 1916: William Fox founds the Fox studios in Hollywood 1916: Adolph Zukor founds the Paramount studios 1916: Los Angeles has 1700 kms of trolley lines 1916: the USA signs a treaty with Nicaragua to build a canal 1916: the USA establishes a military government over the Dominican Republic 1917: 40% of American households have a telephone 1917: the first jazz record is cut in New York 1917: Denmark sells the islands of St Thomas, St Croix and St John to the United States 1918: the US post office inaugurates "air mail" (between New York and Washington) 1918: Walter Jacobs in Chicago founds a car-rental business that becomes Hertz in 1923 1918: an epiudemics of influenza kills 20 million people worldwide (500,000 in the USA) 1918: the first world war ends: 2 million Russians, 1.8 million Germans, 1.3 million French, 1.1 million Austro-Hungarians, 0.9 million Britons, 0.6 million Turks and 0.5 million Italians are dead. TM, ®, Copyright © 2005 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved. 1919: the USA overtakes Europe as total industrial output 1920: KDKA (Pittsburgh) is the first commercial radio station in the USA 1920: The population of the USA is 105 million 1920: the USA has more urban than rural dwellers 1920: eight million Americans own a car 1920: alcohol is outlawed ("Prohibition") 1920: universal female suffrage 1920: Earle Dickson invents the band-aid 1920: a bomb kills 30 people in Manhattan 1920: attorney general Mitchell Palmer has 6,000 people arrested for communist activities ("red scare") 1921: the first fax is sent by Western Union 1921: Rudolph Valentino becomes the first male sex symbol 1921: 43 billion cigarettes are sold in the USA 1921: General Motors introduces cars for every market bracket 1922: the "Country Club Plaza" opens near Kansas City, the first shopping mall 1922: Time Magazine is launched 1922: there are 60,000 radios in the USA 1923: Garrett Morgan invents a three-way traffic signal 1924: the US Congress passes the "Exclusion Act", that prohibits further immigration from Japan 1924: Metro and Mayer merge into MGM 1924: three million Americans are members of the "Ku Klux Klan" 1924: 441,000 cars are registered in Los Angeles 1925: Wyoming' Nellie Tayloe Ross becomes the first woman governor in the history of the USA 1925: Cellophane is introduced 1925: Burroughs introduces a portable adding machine 1925: Alphonse Capone rules the Mafia 1926: Robert Goddard launches the first liquid-fueled rocket 1926: Atlanta opens the largest theater in the world, renamed "Roxy" in 1938 1926: films with synchronized voice and music are introduced 1926: Robert Goddard launches the first liquid fueled rocket 1926: Hugo Gernsback founds the first science-fiction magazine, "Amazing Stories" 1926: Vitaphone introduces 16-inch acetate-coated shellac discs playing at 33 1/3 RPM (a size and speed calculated to be equivalent to a reel of film) 1926: the Atlanta airport opens 1927: the Scotch tape is introduced 1927: sales of "race records" reach $100 million 1927: General Motors sells more than one million cars and moves head of Ford 1927: the juke-box is introduced by Automatic Music Instrument 1927: Pan American World Airways is founded 1927: Philo Farnsworth invents the television in San Francisco 1927: The pipe-organ becomes the most popular instrument in America (2,400 sold in one year) 1927: anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti are sentenced to death 1927: Lindberg flies from New York to Paris 1928: first daily passenger flight between Los Angeles and San Francisco 1928: the Philadelphia accountant Walter Diemer invents bubblegum 1928: seven gangsters are killed on San Valentine's day 1929: the USA produces 4.5 million cars, compared with France's 211,000 and Britain's 182,000 1929: there are 10 million radios in the USA 1929: stock markets crash around the world ("great depression") 1930: Frank Whittle patents the first jet engine 1930: Britain, Japan, France, Italy and the USA sign the London Naval Treaty, an agreement to reduce naval warfare 1930: Clyde William Tombaugh discovers a ninth planet, Pluto 1930: the Bank of Italy is renamed Bank of America 1930: TWA is founded to transport mail by plane 1930: five big studios (Fox, MGM, Paramount, RKO and Warner) control the majority of USA movies 1930: William Fard founds the "Nation of Islam" in Detroit 1930: Polystyrene is invented 1930: Ellen Church, a nurse, becomes the first airplane stewardess (for Boeing) 1930: the popularity of radios causes a decline in the sales of records 1930: the Chrysler Building in New York is completed, the tallest building in the world 1930: the population of the USA is 120 million 1930: most immigrants to the USA are Italians 1931: Alphonse Capone is imprisoned for life 1931: last "tong" war between rival Chinese gangs 1931: Congress votes to make "The Star-Spangled Banner" the official anthem of the USA 1931: Canada declares its independence 1931: the Empire State Building, the tallest building in the world of all times, opens in New York 1931: the Rockefeller Center is inaugurated in New York 1932: Thomas Dorsey's Precious Lord invents gospel music in Chicago 1932: the last steam-powered car is built 1933: president Franklin Roosevelt launches the "New Deal" 1933: the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp is created to insure deposits in banks and thrift institutions 1933: the USA withdraws its last soldiers from Nicaragua 1933: Richard Hollingshead opens the first "drive-in" movie theater in New Jersey 1933: the Prohibition is repealed 1933: FM radio broadcasting is born (Edwin Armstrong) 1933: unemployment in the US peaks at 25% 1933: the first stereo records are produced 1934: Wurlitzer introduces multiple-selection juke boxes 1934: The USA leaves Haiti 1934: Youstol Dispage Fromscaruffi dies 1934: the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) is created to protect investors 1934: Clock manufacturer Laurens Hammond invents the Hammond organ 1934: William Ward disappears mysteriously and Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the Chicago mosque, becomes the new leader of the "Black Muslims" (or "Nation of Islam"), and advocates racial separation ("African-American nationalism") 1935: Wallace Carothers invents nylon, the first totaly synthetic fibre, and the decline of cotton begins 1935: the drought of the Dust Bowl 1935: Carl Magee invents the parking meter 1935: Lucky Luciano rules the Mafia 1935: The USA grants the Philippines independence and Manuel Quezon becomes the first president 1936: The economic ideas of John Maynard Keynes are applied in the U.S. 1936: Henry Luce founds Life magazine 1936: San Francisco builds the longest bridge in the world 1936: Sylvan Goldman invents the shopping cart 1936: the first major concrete dam, Hoover Dam, is inaugurated 1937: The first nylon stockings appear 1937: General Motors is the largest privately owned manufacturing company in the world 1937: Chester Carlson invents the photocopier 1937: A zeppelin explodes in New Jersey and ends the zeppelin industry 1938: David Packard and William Hewlett found a company in Palo Alto to sell oscillators 1938: John Atanasoff conceives the electronic digital computer 1939: Russian aviator Igor Sikorsky invents the helicopter 1939: Pan American inaugurates the world's first transatlantic passenger service, flying between New York and Marseilles 1940: the first freeway is built in Los Angeles (the Pasadena freeway) 1940: the CBS radio quiz show, "Take It or Leave It" (later renamed "the $64 Question") airs for the first time 1940: New York has 7.45 million inhabitants, the largest city in the world 1940: Peter Goldmark invents color television TM, ®, Copyright © 2003 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved. 1940: Karl Pabst invents the jeep 1941: Japanese attack Pearl Harbor (Hawaii) and the USA enters world war II 1941: Roosevelt authorizes a project to develop an atomic bomb (later renamed the Manhattan Project) 1942: Enrico Fermi achieves the first nuclear reaction 1943: Tommy Flowers and others build the Colossus Mark I, the world's first programmable digital electronic computer 1943: Albert Hofmann discovers LSD 1943: the first disc-jockeys began performing for the American troops overseas 1944: the world's monetary system is anchored to the dollar and the dollar to gold, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund are created ("Bretton Woods agreement") 1944: Howard Aiken unveils the first program-controlled computer, the Mark I 1945: Germany is divided in a Western and a Soviet area 1945: on july 16 the USA explodes the first atomic bomb at Alamogordo (New Mexico) 1945: the U.S. drops two atomic bombs on Japan (Hiroshima and Nagasaki) and World War II ends 1945: the United Nations Organization is founded in New York 1945: Earl Tupper founds Tupperware to make polyethylene plastic containers for home use 1946: Churchill delivers in the USA the "Iron Curtain" speech, virtually opening the "Cold War" against the Soviet Union 1946: John Pastore becomes governor of Rhode Island, the first Italian-American governor in the USA 1946: the U.S. population is 133 million 1946: Percy Spencer invents the microwave oven 1946: George Marshall envisions a plan to promote the economic recovery of European democracies TM, ®, Copyright © 2005 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved. 1946: the French bomb Vietnam 1946: RCA Victor releases the first vinyl record 1946: TWA and United begin transcontinental flights from New York to California 1946: the first non-military computer, Eniac, is unveiled, built by John Mauchly and Presper Eckert 1946: Percy Spencer invents the microwave oven 1947: Truman proclaims the "Truman doctrine" about containing the expansion of communism and defending democracies (specifically Greece and Turkey) 1947: George Kennan advocates a "containment" policy to curb Soviet expansionism ("It is clear that the main element of any United States policy toward the Soviet Union must be that of a long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies") 1947: two ships carrying ammonium nitrate fertilizer explode in a Texas harbor killing about 576 people 1947: the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) is created to eliminate trade bareers 1947: the first widely publicized sighting of a UFO 1947: William Shockley invents the transistor at Bell Labs 1947: Edwin Land invents Polaroid, the first instant camera 1947: Pan Am introduces the first round-the-world flight 1948: The Soviet Union blockades West Berlin 1948: Harry Stockman invents RFID 1948: Ed Sullivan begins his tv variety show 1948: Senator Joseph McCarthy launches a "witch hunt" against intellectuals suspected of being communist 1948: Leo Fender invents the electric guitar 1948: the Jews are granted their own country in Palestine: Israel 1948: Invention of "xerography" (copying machines) by Chester Carlson 1948: Columbia introduces the 12-inch 33-1/3 RPM long-playing vinyl record 1948: Cable TV is deployed in rural areas 1948: the Declaration of Human Rights 1948: John Rock fertilizes a human egg in a test tube 1949: NATO is formed by western European countries and USA 1949: the first foreign car, the Volkswagen Beetle, is sold in the USA, which is also the first "compact" ever sold in the USA 1949: The Soviet Union detonates its first atomic bomb and the nuclear arm race begins 1949: RCA Victor introduces the 7" 45 RPM vinyl record 1950: United Nations troops led by the USA push back Chinese troops in Korea (33,000 Americans die) 1950: the USA's population is 152 million 1950: Remington purchases Eckert-Mauchly Computer 1950: the first credit card (Diners) is introduced 1950: the first sperm bank is created at the University of Iowa 1951: first color TV transmissions 1951: electricity is generated for the first time by a nuclear reactor (Experimental Breeder Reactor Number 1 in Idaho) 1951: William Boyle invents the credit card 1951: Hannah Arendt publishes "The Origins of Totalitarianism" that compares the nazist and the communist regimes 1951: the first commercial computer is built, the Univac 1951: Fred Terman of Stanford University conceives an industrial park for high technology (the foundations of Silicon Valley) 1952: First sex change operation (George Jorgenson) 1952: African-American activist Malcom X joins the "Nation of Islam", becoming the head of the New York City mosque 1952: 73% of world cars are produced in the USA 1953: Francis Crick and James Watson discover the double helix of the DNA 1953: the USA's secret services engineer a coup to remove Iran's prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh 1953: Remington Rand introduces UNIVAC 1103, the first computer with Random Access Memory (RAM) 1953: Hugh Hefner starts the magazine "Playboy" 1953: Korea is permanently partitioned across the DMV (55,000 USA soldiers, one million south Koreans, one million Chinese soldiers, two million North Koreans have died) 1953: the first sperm-bank child is born 1953: the police raid a polygamist compound with hundreds of children in the twin communities of Colorado City, Arizona and Hildale, Utah, also known as "Short Creek", run by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints 1954: the USA threatens to use nuclear weapons to stop Soviet aggression in Europe 1954: mutual defense treaty between the USA and Taiwan 1954: first transistor radio 1954: France leaves Vietnam 1954: a rebel force trained by the CIA invades Guatemala 1954: The US Senate denounces Joseph McCarthy's "witch hunt" 1955: Rock and roll records climb the charts 1955: "The $64,000 Question" airs for the first time 1955: Roy Kepler founds the Kepler's bookstore in Menlo Park 1955: Lawrence Ferlinghetti founds the City Lights bookstore in San Francisco 1955: Remington Rand merges with Sperry to form Sperry Rand 1955: William Shockley moves to Silicon Valley, founds his own company and hires Robert Noyce, Gordon Moore and others 1955: the first McDonald's restaurant opens near Chicago 1955: the first conference on Artificial Intelligence is held at Dartmouth College 1955: Disneyland opens in Los Angeles 1955: Jack Gleason's sitcom "Honeymooners" airs on tv 1955: A black woman, Rosa Parks, refuses to give her seat to white folks on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, and her arrest sparks non-violent protests led by Martin Luther King 1956: South Vietnam refuses the referendum on unification with North Vietnam and the Vietminh start a guerrilla war 1956: Dwight Eisenhower signs the Federal Aid Highway Act to build a nation-wide network of freeways 1956: Fred and Pat Cody found the Cody's bookstore in Berkeley 1956: the first Japanese car is sold in the USA 1956: Malcom X becomes the spokesman of the "Nation of Islam" 1956: Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" heralds the "beat generation" 1956: Robert Noyce (at Fairchild) and Jack Kilby (at Texas Instruments) invent the integrated circuit 1956: the U.S. explodes the first hydrogen bomb at Bikini Atoll 1956: telephone line between Europe and the United states laid at the bottom of the Atlantic 1956: Fidel Castro and Che Guevara land in Cuba to fight the US-sponsored dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista 1957: Little Rock, Arkansas is the site of a racial confrontation after black kids are forbidden to enter a high school 1957: the Soviet Union launches the Sputnik, the first artificial satellite 1957: Carlo Gambino rules the Mafia 1957: Albert Sabin develops the polio vaccine 1957: 4.5 million babies are born in the USA (the "baby boomers") 1958: Arthus Melin and Richard Knerr invent the frisbee 1958: American civilian jet service begins with a Pan Am flight from New York to Paris 1958: the telex service is introduced 1958: Jim Backus (at IBM) invents the FORTRAN programming language, the first machine-independent language 1958: the Boeing 707 1958: the USA's gross national product is 50% of the world's national product 1958: RCA introduces the first stereo long-playing records 1958: Alaska becomes a state of the USA 1959: Hawaii becomes the 50th state of the USA 1959: the first commercial Xerox machine is released 1959: Mattel introduces the doll "Barbie" 1959: Ornette Coleman introduces "free jazz" 1959: Fidel Castro leads to success the revolution against the Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista 1960: Gregory Pincus invents the birth control pill 1960: In retaliation for the USA's imposition of quotas on Venezuelan oil (to favor (Canada and Mexico), Venezuela joins Arab countries to found OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) 1960: Manhattan has 98 buildings which are taller than 100 meters 1960: Russ Solomon opens the first Tower Records in Sacramento (California), the first music megastore 1960: Martin Luther King delivers his speech "We shall overcome" 1960: first laser (Theodore Maiman) 1960: Inspired by Gandhi, black students including Ella Baker and Stokely Carmichael found the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to fight for civil rights 1961: John Kennedy is inaugurated as president, the first catholic and the youngest ever, and promises a "New Frontier" 1961: Los Angeles' surface is 1,175 square kms and its population passes Philadelphia, becoming the third largest city in the country 1961: Soviet troops build a wall to isolate West Berlin and discourage people from fleeing Eastern Germany 1961: a Cuban rebel force trained by the CIA tries to invade Cuba 1961: Yuri Gagarin becomes the first astronaut 1961: first stereo radio broadcasting 1961: the Beach Boys launch surf-music 1961: Charles Bachman at General Electric develops the first database management system, IDS 1962: the USA intervenes in Vietnam to counter Soviet help to the Vietcong 1962: the average price for gasoline is $0.31 per gallon 1998: the average price for gasoline is $1.19 per gallon 1962: 1962: Paul Baran proposes a distributed network as the form of communication least vulnerable to a nuclear strike 1962: John Kennedy forces the Soviet Union to stop building missile bases in Cuba 1962: Tom Hayden and others found the "Student for Democratic Society" (SDS) 1962: Michael Murphy founds the "Esalen Institute" at Big Sur to promote spiritual healing 1962: 30,000 troops have to escort a young black student, James Meredith, to the University of Mississippi TM, ®, Copyright © 2005 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved. 1962: Bob Dylan sings "Blowin' In The Wind" 1962: the audio cassette is introduced 1962: Americans lift into orbit the first telecommunication satellite, the Telstar 1962: Helen Gurley Brown publishes "Sex and the single girl", defending a woman's right to have sex for pleasure 1963: president John Kennedy is assassinated 1963: Bell Labs introduces the touch-tone phone 1963: Martin Luther King leads 200,000 blacks on a march to Washington and delivers the speech "I have a dream" 1963: a bomb blows up in a black church of Birmingham, Alabama 1963: Malcom X, considered too extremist, is expelled from the "Nation of Islam" 1964: Cable TV is deployed in U.S. cities 1964: Mario Savio founds the "Free Speech Movement" and leads student riots at the Berkeley campus 1964: jazz musician John Coltrane cuts "A Love Supreme", possibly the greatest jazz album ever 1964: Smoking is proved to be dangerous 1964: IBM introduces the first "mainframe" computer (the 360) and the first "operating system" (the OS/360) 1964: president Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act 1964: The CIA fabricates the Gulf of Tonkin incident as a pretext for direct US intervention in Vietnam 1964: John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz (at Dartmouth College) invent the BASIC programming language 1964: Michael Scott-Morton introduces the concept of a decision-support system 1965: Gordon Moore predicts that the processing power of computers will double every 18 months 1965: civil-rights activist Stokely Carmichael delivers a speech on "Black Power" 1965: Fidel Castro allows one million Cubans over five years to leave Cuba and settle in the USA 1965: the Digital Equipment Corporation unveils the first mini-computer, the PDP-8, that uses integrated circuits 1965: 34 people die in racial riots in the Los Angeles ghetto of Watts 1965: African-American leader Malcolm X is assassinated at a rally by members of the "Nation of Islam" 1965: the SDS organizes the first pacifist march on Washington 1965: spacecraft Mariner 4 takes the first pictures of Mars' surface 1966: Cassius Clay is jailed for refusing to serve in Vietnam 1966: William Buckley starts the tv show "Firing Line" that will run until 1999 and promote a convervative ideology 1966: there are 2,623 computers in the USA (1,967 work for the Defense Department) 1966: the summer of Love of the hippies in San Francisco 1966: Rock composer Frank Zappa debuts with "Freak Out", a double album 1966: Psychedelic rock comes out of of San Francisco's hippie culture 1966: Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, Angela Davis and other African-American activists found the "Black Panther Party" at Oakland, California 1967: Jack Kilby (at Texas Instruments) develops the first hand-held calculator 1967: the USA has 200 million people, of which 9.7 million are foreign-born 1967: the first "Super Bowl" final of "football" (American rugby) is held 1967: racial riots kill 26 people in Newark and 43 in Detroit 1967: Cuban liberation hero Che Guevara is killed by American agents in Bolivia 1967: pacifists march on the Pentagon to protest the Vietnam war 1967: the CIA supports a coup in Greece that installs a dictatorship of colonels 1967: sixteen states still refused to recognize mixed-race marriages 1968: civil rights leader Martin Luther King is assassinated 1968: Tommie Smith protests the American anthem at the Olympic games 1968: The Vietcong and North Vietnam (the "Tet Offensive") begin a joint attack against the USA 1968: reporter Seymour Hersh reveals that American soldiers massacre more than 500 civilians at My Lai, Vietnam 1968: Philip Noyce, Gordon Moore and Andy Grove found Intel to build memory chips 1968: 520,000 US troops are in Vietnam 1969: the Unix operating system is born 1969: president Nixon characterizes drugs as "public enemy number one in the United States" 1969: the first Kinetic Sculpture Race is held in Ferndale 1969: the USA uses chemical weapons in Vietnam 1969: Charles Manson, leader of a satanic cult, and his followers kills seven people in a Bel Air mansion 1969: The US begins a secret bombing campaign of Cambodia 1969: Captain Beefheart records "Trout Mask Replica", possibly the greatest rock album ever 1969: the first "automatic teller machines" 1969: the computer network ArpaNET is born in the U.S. (it will be renamed Internet in 1985) 1969: American astronaut Neil Armstrong becomes the first man to set foot on the Moon 1969: Ted Codd invents the relational database 1969: US president Richard Nixon approves carpet bombing and land invasion of Cambodia 1969: 300,000 young people attend the Woodstock festival of rock music 1969: A huge crowd marches on Washington to demand an end to the Vietnam war 1969: Sylvia Rivera founds the gay liberation movement out of New York 1970: Rock guitarist Jimi Hendrix dies of an overdose 1970: the first Kinko's opens near the University of California at Santa Barbara 1970: The USA invades Cambodia 1970: optical fiber is invented 1970: five of the seven largest USA semiconductor manufacturers are located in Santa Clara Valley, California 1970: there are more immigrants from Latin America (39%) than Europe (18%) 1971: during riots at the Attica prison, 33 convicts and 10 guards are killed 1971: Richard Nixon secretely helps Pakistan against India and Bangladesh 1971: Cetus, the first biotech company, is founded 1971: a journalist renames Santa Clara Valley the "Silicon Valley" 1971: Ted Hoff and Federico Faggin at Intel invent the micro-processor (a programmable set of integrated circuits) 1971: the video-cassette recorder (VCR) is introduced 1971: end of the Bretton Woods agreement and of fixed exchange rates: currencies float 1971: journalist Gloria Steinem founds the first feminist magazine, "Ms Magazine" 1972: US president Richard Nixon meets with Mao 1972: Magnavox introduces the first videogame console 1972: Nolan Bushnell invents the first videogame (Pong) 1972: Richard Nixon orders carpet bombing of civilian areas in North Vietnam during the Christmas holidays 1972: strategic parity between USA and Soviet Union 1972: the Dow Jones index reaches 1000 1972: a novel by David Gerrold coins the term "computer virus" 1972: Ray Tomlinson invents e-mail for sending messages between computer users, and invents a system to identify the user name and the computer name separated by a "@" 1972: the Global Positioning System (GPS) is invented by the US military, using a constellation of 24 satellites for navigation and positioning purposes TM, ®, Copyright © 2003 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved. 1973: the USA, defeated, leaves Vietnam after killing close to 2 million civilians and 1 million soldiers, and losing 58,000 men 1973: PBS' "An American Family" is the first "reality show" on television 1973: Vinton Cerf first uses the term "Internet" (because it is now connecting networks) 1973: the Arpanet has 2,000 users 1973: the CIA helps the Chilean army, led by general Augusto Pinochet, overthrow the socialist government of Salvador Allende (30,000 dissidents are imprisoned and tortured, and 2,000 "disappear") 1973: Martin Cooper at Motorola invents the first portable, wireless (cellular) telephone 1973: abortion is legalized 1973: members of the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC) impose an oil embargo against the West and oil prices skyrocket (the first "oil crisis"), thus precipitating a world depression (october) 1973: the World Trade Center is inaugurated in New York, the world's tallest skyscraper 1973: Gary Kindall invents the first operating system for a microprocessor, the CP/M 1974: Ed Roberts invents the first personal computer, the Altair 8800 1974: the Sears Towers open in Chicago, the world's tallest skyscraper 1974: president Richard Nixon is forced to resign after the Watergate scandal 1974: the "Rocky Horror Picture Show" is released 1974: Jim Bakker begins the "Praise The Lord" ministry 1975: MacDonald's opens the first drive-through restaurant in Arizona 1975: "Saturday Night Live" airs on tv 1975: the last USA personnel flee South Vietnam as the Vietcongs enter Saigon and terminate the Vietnam War 1975: Bill Gates and Paul Allen develop a version of BASIC for the Altair personal computer and found Microsoft 1976: the supersonic airplane Concorde begins service between Paris and New York 1976: anti-Castro terrorists (possibly led by Luis Posada Carriles and funded by the CIA) blow up a Cuban airliner 1976: the G6 is created to bring the leaders of the biggest national economies together (USA, Canada, Britain, Germany, Japan, France) 1976: the sitcom "Charlie's Angels" has three women as protagonists 1976: punk-rock and new-wave come out of New York's alternative music scene 1977: Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak develop the Apple II 1977: the soundtrack of "Saturday Night Fever" inaugurates the age of disco-music 1977: the Voyager is launched to reach other galaxies TM, ®, Copyright © 2005 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved. 1977: Atari introduces a videogame console 1977: Dennis Hayes invents the modem (a device that converts between analog and digital signals) 1978: religious guru Jim Jones and his believers commit a mass suicide at Jamestown, Guyana (917 dead) 1978: the USA begins installation of the GPS 1978: the USA abandons the gold standard 1978: First test-tube (in vitro) baby 1978: Louis Farrakhan seizes power of the "Nation of Islam", reasserting the principles of African-American nationalism 1978: journalist Myron Farber of the New York Times is sent to jail for refusing to reveal his confidential sources 1979: the Soviet Union invades Afghanistan and the USA organizes an Islamic resistance led by Osama Bin Laden 1979: the spacecraft "Pioneer 11" reaches Saturn 1979: Kevin MacKenzie invents symbols such as :-) to mimic the cues of face-to-face communication 1979: an accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant stops development of new nuclear power plants in the USA 1979: the Sandinistas seize power in Nicaragua overthrowing the US-sponsored dictatorship 1979: the shah Reza Pahlevi is overthrown by the Islamic Revolution and Iran becomes a theocratic republic led by the ayatollah Khomeini with a strong anti-American posture 1979: the Global Positioning System (GPS) is operational 1979: serial killer Ted Bundy (suspected of murdering up to 50 people) is convicted 1980: billionaire Ted Turner launches CNN, the first cable tv devoted to world news 1980: Rick Warren founds the Saddleback Church in Lake Forest (California) 1980: the Arpanet has 430,000 users, who exchange almost 100 million e-mail messages a year 1980: the value of gold peaks at $850 an ounce 1980: integrated circuits incorporate 100,000 discrete components 1980: Fidel Castro allows 125,000 people to leave Cuba for the USA 1980: racial riots kill 18 people in Miami 1980: Ronald Reagan is elected president 1980: serial killer John Wayne Gacy is convicted of about 30 murders 1980: the Usenet is born, an Internet-based discussion system divided in "newsgroups" 1981: newly elected president Reagan trades hostages for arms with Iran, helps Saddam Hussein's Iraq against Iran, and authorizes funding and training of Islamic terrorists led by Osama Bin Laden to fight the Soviet Union in Afghanistan 1981: Wayne Williams is accused of killing twenty-seven young black boys in Atlanta that are probably victims of the KKK 1981: American Airlines introduces a "frequent flyer program" 1981: Techno music 1981: the West Edmonton Mall opens in Alberta (Canada), the largest shopping mall in the world (including more than 800 stores, a hotel, an amusement park, a miniature-golf course, a church, a water park, a zoo and a lake) 1981: USA and Libya fighters engage in combat off the coast of Libya 1981: MTV debuts on cable tv with the Buggles' "Video Killed The Radio Star" 1981: the U.S. launches the first space shuttle 1981: the IBM PC is launched, running an operating system developed by Bill Gates' Microsoft 1981: John Gotti rules the Mafia 1981: first cases of AIDS are discovered 1981: the compact disc (CD) is introduced 1981: IBM introduces the PC ("Personal Computer"), that spreads world-wide 1981: Sister Angelica (Rita Rizzo) founds the Eternal World Television Network 1981: Chicago disc-jockeys organize the first "raves", or clandestine all-night parties 1982: the US government breaks up the largest company in the world, AT&T, worth $60 billion, because it has become a monopoly 1982: Robert Jarvik implants an artificial heart in a patient 1982: the compact disc is introduced 1982: Reagan sends the marines to restore order in Lebanon 1983: the USA, under president Reagan, engages the Soviet Union in a nuclear-arms race 1983: Paul Mockapetris invents the Domain Name System for the Internet 1983: peak of the career of Jimmy Connors, who sets the record of tennis with 109 tournament victories 1983: suicide commandos directed by Imad Mughniyeh (Mugniyah) blow up the US embassy, killing 63 people 1983: Hezbollah suicide commandos organized by Iran blow up the US and French barracks killing 241 marines and 58 French soldiers 1983: at his trial, serial killer Henry Lee Lucas confesses having killed more than 200 people 1983: Howard Rheingold founds the environmental magazine "Whole Earth Review" at Sausalito 1983: Reagan removes Iraq from the list of nations that support international terrorism 1983: Los Angeles passes Chicago as the second largest city in the country 1983: William Inmon builds the first data warehousing system October 1983: The USA invades Grenada to depose its communist leader Hudson Austin 1984: HIV is identified as the cause of AIDS 1984: Americans, French and Italians withdraw from Lebanon 1984: William Gibson's "Neuromancer" popularizes the "cyberpunks" 1984: Apple introduces the Macintosh, which revolutionizes desktop publishing 1984: the CDROM is introduced 1984: the Domain Name Server is introduced to classify Internet addresses with extensions such as .com 1984: Arab terrorists kill 241 American marines in Lebanon 1985: the Arpanet is renamed Internet 1985: between 1977 and 1985 consumption of oil in the USA drops 17%, imports drop 50%, and imports from the Middle East drop 87% 1985: the dollar declines against European and Japanese currencies (it will decline 50% in three years) 1985: Leonard Knight begins building "Salvation Mountain" in California 1985: there are more immigrants from Asia (48%) than Latin America (35%) 1985: Ronald Reagan announces a program of "star wars" (SDI) 1985: a hole in the Ozone Layer is discovered over Antartica 1985: Procter & Gamble builds the first business-intelligence system 1986: the USA bombs Libyan cities to deter colonel Qaddafi 1986: the Iran-contra scandal in the USA reveals that the USA sold arms to Iran to fund the contras in Nicaragua 1986: newspapers discover that the Reagan administration sold weapons to Iran to fund anti-communist rebels in Nicaragua ("Irangate") 1986: the space shuttle "Challenger" explodes during take off killing the whole crew 1986: Sperry and Burroughs merge to form Unisys 1986: the US has 14,000 nuclear warheads and the Soviet Union has 11,000 1987: the Montreal Protocol limits the use of substances that damage the ozone layer 1987: Alan Greenspan is appointed chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank 1987: USA warships destroy two Iranian patrol boats in the Persian Gulf 1987: Tele-evangelist and multi-millionaire Jim Bakker resigns from "Praise The Lord" due to a sex scandal 1988: first genetically engineered animal (Harvard Univ) 1988: president Reagan creates the office of "Drug Czar" to fight the traffic of illicit drugs 1988: a person is convicted after a DNA test 1988: USA warships blow up two Iranian oil rigs, sink an Iranian frigate and destroy an Iranian missile boat 1988: a member of the Japanese Red Army (Yu Kikumura) is arrested with explosives on the New Jersey Turnpike 1988: "Morris", the first digital worm, infects most of the Internet 1988: Pat Robertson founds the Christian Coalition, an anti-abortionist movement 1988: a missile fired by an American warship downs an Iranian civilian plane and kills all 290 passengers aboard 1988: first fiber optic cable across the Atlantic 1988: terrorists backed by Libya blow up a Pan Am plane over Scotland killing 259 people probably on behalf of Iran 1988: Reagan's vice-president George Bush is elected president 1989: the USA fights the drug cartels of Colombian 1989: Magellan Corporation introduces the first hand-held GPS receiver 1989: the Berlin wall falls, thus ending the Cold War 1989: the USA invade Panama and remove dictator Manuel Noriega 1989: the Soviet Union withdraws from Afghanistan and Afghanistan plunges into chaos 1989: Congress declares sanctions against Iraq to protest Iraq's use of poison gas against the Kurds 1989: the Arsenio Hall show debuts on tv, the first major talk show hosted by an African-American 1989: the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) is founded to bring together the USA, Japan, Australia, Canada, Thailand, Singapore, South Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, New Zealand, Philippines 1989: Gartner analyst Howard Dresner coins the term "business intelligence" 1989: Tele-evangelist Jim Bakker is convicted of fraud 1990: Jack Kevorkian performs the first assisted suicide 1990: the Human Genome Project is launched to decipher human DNA 1990: computer viruses spread over the Internet 1990: Saddam Hussein's Iraq invades Kuwait and US president Bush organizes an anti-Iraqi coalition 1990: the Hubble space telescope is launched 1991: the USA leads the Gulf War against Iraq, the first war to use high-precision bombs guided by the GPS 1991: serial killer Dennis Rader kills ten people in Kansas between 1974 and 1991 1991: serial killer Aileen Wuornos, a prostitute, is arrested for killing seven men who abused her 1991: the Soviet Union is dismantled 1991: serial killer Arthur Shawcross is sentenced to 250 years in jail for the murders of ten women and claims to have killed (and eaten) women and children since the Vietnam war 1991: Pan Am goes out of business 1991: MTV's "The Real World" launches the fad of "reality shows" 1991: the "Riot Grrrls!" movement is born at Olympia, Washington 1991: 2200 homicides are committed in New York, 1050 in Los Angeles 1991: the world-wide web (invented by Tim Berners-Lee in Geneve) debuts on the Internet 1991: The first economic recession ever strikes California 1991: John Gotti is arrested and the American Mafia declines 1992: racial riots erupt in Los Angeles, Las Vegas, etc (48 dead) 1992: John Mackey founds the food store "Whole Foods" 1992: Jeffrey Dahmer is convicted for killing and dismembering 17 young men 1992: one million Americans are in jail 1992: street gangs terrorize entire areas of metropoles like Los Angeles TM, ®, Copyright © 2005 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved. 1992: Bill Clinton is elected president of the U.S., the youngest ever since John Kennedy 1992: USA troops land in Somalia to stop fighting by clans, but are massacred 1993: Marc Andreesen develops the first browser for the World Wide Web (Mosaic) 1993: serial killer Joel David Rifkin is arrested for killing 17 prostitutes in the New York area 1993: the "Youth Day" in Colorado is the largest youth event since Woodstock 1993: Colin Ferguson opens fire on a train killing six commuters 1993: the USA, Canada, Japan, Russia, the European Space Agency and Brazil launch a project to build the International Space Station, the largest international scientific project in history 1994: the first genetically engineered vegetable (Flavr Savr tomato) is introduced 1994: Pizza Hut begins selling pizzas sia the WWW 1994: Fidel Castro allows 50,000 people to leave Cuba 1994: the USA invades Haiti to restore Aristide as president 1994: Netscape, the company founded by Marc Andreesen, goes public even before earning money and starts the "dot.com" craze and the boom of the Nasdaq 1994: Jerry Yang launches the first search engine, Yahoo 1995: a right-wing extremist blows up a federal building in Oklahoma City, killing 160 people in the worst terrorist incident in the history of the USA 1995: Craig Newmark starts craigslist.com on the Internet, a regional advertising community 1995: the GATT ( General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) evolves into the World Trade Organization 1995: 36 million cars are manufactured in the world, of which 7.6 million in Japan and 6.3 million in the USA, although 8.6 million cars are sold in the USA alone 1995: African-American Muslim Louis Farrakhan organizes the "million man march" on Washington 1995: David Koresh's Branch Davidian religious fanatics fight the FBI at Waco, Texas 1995: the DVD is introduced 1995: Ward Cunningham creates WikiWikiWeb, a manual on the internet maintained in a collaborative manner 1995: the first extrasolar planet is detected (orbiting 51 Pegasi, a star in the Pegasus constellation, 40 light years from the Sun) 1996: Walt Disney builds a dream town, Celebration, in Florida 1996: Rupert Murdoch's right-wing 24-hour cable network Fox News debuts 1996: Sabeer Bhatia launches Hotmail, a website to check email from anywhere in the world 1996: the computer "Deep Blue" by IBM beats the world champion of chess 1996: Eric Rudolph sets off bombs at the Atlanta Olympic Games that kill two people 1996: Gary Faye Locke becomes the first Chinese-American governor in the USA (governor of Washington state) 1997: Amazon.com is launched on the web as the "world's largest bookstore", except that it is not a bookstore, it is a website 1997: the USA signs a treaty banning chemical weapons 1997: Evite is founded by Al Lieb and Selina Tobaccowala 1997: Orville Lynn Majors is arrested for having willingly caused the death of over 100 patients at an Indian hospital 1997: there are 23,000 McDonald's restaurants in 109 countries 1997: most countries of the world agree on reducing the level of greenhouse-gas emissions in order to avoid climate changes such as global warming, (Kyoto Protocol) 1997: The average yearly income of a USA citizen is $29,000 whereas the average income of a Mexican is $8,000 and the average income of a Nigerian is $900 1998: Pierre Omidyar founds Ebay, a website to trade second-hand goods 1998: Adam Riess discovers that the expansion of the universe is accelerating (dark energy) 1998: 38 million vehicles sold worldwide (4.5 million workers and revenues of 1.5 billion dollars) 1998: Yahoo, Amazon, Ebay and scores of Internet-related start-ups create overnight millionaires 1998: a pill to fight impotency, Viagra, is the best-seller of the year 1998: Osama bin Laden, from his base in Afghanistan, wages a holy war against the USA by bombing two USA embassies in Africa 1998: Clinton is impeached for lying about his adultery with Monica Lewinsky 1998: Jorn Barger coins the term "weblog" for webpages that simply contain links to other webpages 1998: Larry Page and Sergey Brin found Google to develop a search engine 1999: the AIDS epidemis peaks 1999: the USA women's soccer team wins the world cup 1999: Sarah Knauss, oldest person in the world, dies at 119 1999: the first planetary system outside the Solar System is detected (Upsilon Andromedae, 44 light years from the solar system) 1999: 500 million people in the world take international flights 1999: Blogger.com allows people to create their own "blogs" (personal journals) 1999: an outbreak of the West Nile virus kills nine people in New York 1999: the recording industry sues Napster, a website that allows people to exchange music 1999: the world prepares for the new millennium amidst fears of computers glitches due to the change of date (Y2K) 1999: Microsoft is worth 450 billion dollars, the most valued company in the world, even if it is many times smaller than General Motors, and Bill Gates is the world's richest man at $85 billion (1/109th of the US economy) 1999: NATO bombs Serbia to stop repression against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo 1999: 13 students are killed in a high school of Littleton, Colorado, by two students (eight fatal shooting spree in two years) 1999: Internet fever: 100 new Internet companies in the US stock market, and their stocks reap huge profits for investors 1999: artificial viruses spread through the Internet 1999: the US has 250 billionaires, and thousands of new millionaires are created in just one year 1999: Clinton announces a second year of budget surplus, the first time since 1957 that the USA has had two consecutive years of budget surplus 1999: two heavily-armed students kill 13 teachers and fellow students at a high-school in Columbine and then commit suicide 1999: 125 billion galaxies have been discovered since Hubble discovered Andromeda in 1925 1999: Ahmed Ressam, an Algerian terrorist with links to Afghanistan, tries to enter the US and bomb the Los Angeles airport 2000: life expectancy in the USA is 77 2000: between 1970 and 2000 the percentage of the USA population living in suburbs grows from 38% to 50% Jan 2000: the Dow Jones reaches an all-time high of 11,723 2000: the economic expansion in the US is the longest in the history of the US 2000: 10 billion e-mail messages a day are exchanged over the Internet 2000: British and American biologists decipher the entire human DNA 2000: the NASDAQ stock market crashes, wiping out trillions of dollars of wealth 2000: the population of the USA is 280 million and the most populated state is California with over 30 million people 2000: British and American biologists decipher the entire human DNA 2000: Clinton announces a record budget surplus, the largest in US history 2000: George W Bush becomes president on a technicality, even though Clinton's vice-president Al Gore wins the majority of votes 2000: the divorce rate in the USA is 57%, the highest ever in history 2000: the state of Texas executes 40 people in just one year, an all-time record for the USA 2000: the USA approves a law (AGOA) to eliminate tariffs on hundreds of items for African countries March 2000: Microsoft and Cisco together are worth $1 trillion (25 times their yearly revenues) April 2000: the U.S. stock market for high technology companies (NASDAQ) crashes TM, ®, Copyright © 2003 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved. November 2000: the first astronauts enter the international space station orbiting the Earth 2001: scientists map the human genome 2001: Jimmy Wales founds Wikipedia, a multilingual encyclopedia that is collaboratively edited by the Internet community 2001: the USA enters a recession, ending the longest economic expansion of its history 2001: the USA tests a missile defence shield 2001: the Voyager leaves the solar system 2001: Arab terrorists affiliated with Osama Bin Laden's Al Qaeda organization blow up the World Trade Center, killing 4,000 people 2001: the USA bombs the Taliban out of power in Afghanistan and chases Al Qaeda members throughout the world 2001: the USA opens a special prison camp at Guantanamo to hold terrorist suspects and authorizes the use of torture 2001: several cases of the biological weapon anthrax are detected around the United States and five people die (a USA scientist, Bruce Ivins, would later be charged with the crime) 2001: Bush announces that the US withdraws from the anti-ballistic treaty (ABM) 2001: 3% of the American population is in jail 2001: satellite radio is introduced in the USA 2001: Enron collapses, unveiling the biggest corporate scandal in USA history 2001: there are five million Muslims living in the USA 2002: Russia becomes an ally of NATO 2002: Rick Warren publishes "The Purpose-Driven Life", which sells one million copies a month for two years, becoming the bestselling nonfiction book in the history of publishing 2002: the trade deficit with China increases to a record $103 billion 2002: US stock markets crash, following corporate scandals, the third consecutive year of decline 2002: Bush announces the first budget deficit since 1998, bringing the grand total to six million billion dollars (about $21,000 per US citizen) 2002: American scientists synthesize a live virus from chemicals 2002: the NASDAQ falls below its post-September 11's low 2002: Wal-Mart is the biggest company in the world with over 200 billion dollars in revenues (followed by Exxon and General Motors, also American) 2002: the West Nile virus spreads from state to state and kills dozens of people 2002: George W Bush enacts a doctrine of first strike against foes and of continued military supremacy by the USA 2002: a serial sniper (John Allen "MUhammad" Williams) shoots a dozen people at random in the Washington/Maryland area 2002: Texas executes more people (33) than all of the other 49 states (32) 2002: cardinal Bernard Law has to resign following a wave of sex-abuse scandals involving Catholic priests 2002: Bush coins to expression "axis of evil" to describe the totalitarian regimes of Iraq, Iran and North Korea Oct 2002: The Dow Jones falls to 7,286, 37.8% lower than its peak of january 2000 2002: Robert William Pickton is suspected of killing more than 50 drug-addicted prostitutes during the 1990s in Vancouver, Canada 2003: The space shuttle "Columbia" crashes during landing, killing the whole crew 2003: Airbus passes Boeing as the world's largest civilians aircraft manufacturer 2003: Texas executes the 300th inmate since the death penalty was reinstated in 1982 2003: George W Bush orders the invasion of Iraq to depose Saddam Hussein 2003: the USA has a record 2 million inmates 2003: USA interest rates reach a 45-year-low TM, ®, Copyright © 2005 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved. 2003: the dollar falls 25% to the euro in just one year 2003: Austrian-born Hollywood star Arnold Schwarzenegger becomes governor of California 2003: serial killer Gary Ridgway confesses to be the "Green River Murderer" who killed at least 48 prostitutes and strippers in the Seattle area between 1982 and 1998 2003: the USA economy grows by 7% in the third quarter, the fastest rate in 20 years 2003: serial killer Gary Ridgway admits murdering 48 women (mostly prostitutes) 2003: the foreign-born populationof the USA reaches 33.5 million, out of 280 million people 2003: the USA dispatches 1,700 soldiers to the Philippines, to help fight the Abu Sayyaf terrorists 2003: scientists estimate the age of the universe is 13.7 billion years and 95% of the universe is invisible "dark matter" 2003: serial killer Charles Cullen, a hospital nurse, is arrested for causing the death of at least 40 patients with drug overdoses 2003: 15 million people worldwide suffer from Alzheimer's disease 2003: 43,220 people die in traffic accidents in the USA, 2003: Skype is founded by Niklas Zennstroem and Janus Friis to offer voice over IP 2004: the "Spirit" and the "Opportunity" spacecrafts land on Mars and send the first pictures of the planet's surface 2004: the World Health Organization estimates that 1.3 million people are killed every year in car accidents 2004: A NASA plane sets a new speed record of Mach 7 (8000 km/h) 2004: abuses of Iraqi prisoners, revealed by reporter Seymour Hersh, cause international outcry 2004: Mikhail Gorbacev, Margaret Thatcher and other leaders of the past attend Ronald Reagan's funeral 2004: scientists transfer properties of one atom and to another atom by entangling their quantum waves 2004: the Bush administration admits that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction (which was the reason to invade Iraq) 2004: the dollar falls to an all-time low against the euro (1.30) 2004: Congress approves an $800 billion increase in the nation's debt limit, the third such increase since George W. Bush became president (the budget deficit exceeds $7 trillion) 2004: Ryan Matthews becomes the 115th prisoner in the USA since 1973 to be released from death row on the grounds of innocence 2004: Evidence of torture surfaces at both Iraqi and Afghan prisons (Abu Ghraib and Bagram) run by the USA military 2004: the number of millionaires jumps almost 10% in the USA 2004: Massachussetts legalizes gay marriage 2005: the monthly USA trade deficit reaches $69 billion of which about 25% with China, 12% with Canada and 12% with Japan 2005: the Kyoto protocol (to reduce the level of greenhouse-gas emissions in order to avoid climate changes such as global warming) is adopted by 141 countries of the world but not the USA, China, India and Australia 2005: a gunman kills seven people at a hotel in Brookfield, Wisconsin 2005: a student kills nine people (and himself) at a high school on the Red Lake Indian Reservation of Minnesota 2005: Newsweek magazine reports that guards at Guantanamo desecrated the Quran, a news that sparks deadly riots in Afghanistan and anti-American protests in many Islamic countries 2005: Los Angeles elects a Hispanic mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa 2005: the Six Flags amusement park in New Jersey debuts the fastest and tallest rollercoaster in the world, "Kingda Ka" 2005: Microsoft displays the error message "This item contains forbidden speech" whenever someone tries to write the word "democracy" on its Chinese blog 2005: sales of notebook computers account for 53% of the computer market 2005: the Planetary Society of Pasadena, California, launches an experimental solar-sail spacecraft from a Russian submarine 2005: Bernard Ebbers, former Worldcom's CEO, is sentenced to 25 years in jail, capping a string of corporate scandals 2005: Lance Armstrong, an American, wins a seventh tour de France, an all-time record 2005: the USA approves the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) with Guatemala, Costarica, Nicaragua, Honduras and Dominican Republic 2005: the price of oil jumps from $35 at the beginning of the year to an all-time record of $67 a barrel 2005: USA television channel ABC interviews the most wanted terrorist in Russia, Shamil Basayev 2005: Google's market capitalization is $84 billion 2005: Yahoo, Google, America OnLine (AOL) and MSN (Microsoft's Network) are the four big Internet portals with a combined audience of over one billion people worldwide 2005: scientists map the genome of the chimpanzee 2005: the "Katrina" hurricane destroys New Orleans and other cities of Louisiana and Mississippi, displacing more than 500,000 people 2005: under pressure from the USA, North Korea gives up its nuclear weapons program 2005: the "Deep Impact" probe "lands" on a comet, Comet Tempel 1, and confirms that comets contain organic material 2005: members of the Bush administration are indicted for leaking to the press the name of a CIA agent in a vicious attempt to silence a critic of the Iraqi war 2005: agriculture accounts for 2% of all jobs, manufacturing for 10% (but manufacturing output expanded 4% yearly from 1991 to 2001) 2005: the state of Kansas decides to teach alternatives to Darwin's theory of evolution 2005: the USA carries out the 1,000th execution since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976 2005: anti-USA sentiment brings to power leftist regimes throughout Latin America 2005: hybrid cars represent only 1% of total cars sold 2005: the Atlanta airport, the busiest in the world, handles 88.4 million passengers from more than half a million flights 2005: Ebay acquires Skype for $3.1 billion 2005: Republican representative Tom DeLay of Texas is indicted of corruption (campaign finance violations) 2005: The largest solar plant in the world is inaugurated in the Mojave Desert of California, producing 354MW of electricity, which is more than all the rest of commercial production of solar energy in the world 2006: Google acquires YouTube for $1.65 billion 2006: Alan Greenspan is retires from chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank 2006: a spacecraft ("New Horizons") is launched towards Pluto 2006: American search engine Google accepts to cooperate with the government of mainland China in censoring the world-wide web 2006: both Ford and General Motors post huge losses and lay off thousands of workers 2006: after George W Bush appoints another Roman catholic to the Supreme Court, the majority of the Supreme Court judges are Catholics for the first time in the history of the USA 2006: Exxon Mobil posts the largest profit of any company in USA history 2006: the USA has 1,210 megachurches (churches for 2,000 or more people) that draw more than four million people a week 2006: the USA and India sign a nuclear agreement 2006: Christian fundamentalist governor Mike Rounds of South Dakota bans abortion 2006: the USA admits that marines killed 25 civilians in cold blood in the Iraqi town of Haditha 2006: the USA has 300 million people, of which 35 million are foreign-born, and it is the third most populous country in the world after China and India 2006: Warren Buffet donates $37 billion to charity, the largest donation ever 2006: most immigrants to the USA are Mexicans 2006: after six years the Dow Jones index briefly trades above its record high close of 11,722 2006: Enron's CEO Jeffrey Skilling is sentenced to 24 years in prison 2006: the world-wide web has 100 million websites 2006: Marijuana is the largest cash crop in the USA ($35 billion) 2006: the first Muslim ever is elected to the USA Congress (Keith Ellison) 2006: the USA bombs Islamists in Somalia as Ethiopia help push them out of Somalia 2007: the USA trade deficit hits a record $764 bilion 2007: South Korean student Cho Seung-Hui kills 32 people at Virginia Tech 2007: China overtakes the USA to become the world's second largest exporter and overtakes Canada to become the main exporter to the USA 2007: Toyota passes General Motors as the world's largest car manufacturer and Japanese car manufacturers pass USA car manufacturers even in the USA market 2007: Republican senator Larry Craig of Idaho resigns following his arrest for soliciting gay sex 2007: USA government agencies declare that Al Qaeda has regrouped in Pakistan and that the terrorist threat against the USA has increased 2007: after crashing due to the crisis of sub-prime mortgage lenders, the USA stock market sets a new record high 2007: Texas carries out its 400th death penalty 2007: the USA dollar falls to 1:2 to the British pound and to an all-time low of 1.50 to the euro and is worth less than a Canadian dollar for the first time in three decades 2007: a fund of the United Arab Emirates buys a 4.9% stake in Citigroup for $7.5 billion, making it the single largest shareholder, ahead of Prince Walid bin Talal of Saudi Arabia 2007: home prices fall 5.1%, the sharpest drop in 20 years 2007: at the end of the economic expansion of the 2000s the median income of USA families has declined from $61,000 to $60,500 2007: Piyush "Bobby" Jindal becomes the first Indian-American governor in the history of the USA (governor of Louisiana) 2007: The number of Afghan civilian deaths caused by USA bombings triples between 2006 and 2007 Oct 2007: The Dow Jones hits a record high of 14,164 2008: the average price for gasoline passes $4 per gallon jan 2008: Barack Obama, a black man, is the leading candidate for president of the USA jan 2008: Gold reaches an all-time high of $880 jan 2008: the stock market collapses, triggering similar collapses around the world jan 2008: the Encyclopedia of Life (Eol.org) goes on line feb 2008: more than 1% of adult USA citizens is in prison mar 2008: the price of gold hits $1,000 for the first time ever and oil passes $110 a barrel, while the dollar sets another all-time low against the euro (1.56) and dips below 100 yen (a drop of 6.5% in less than three months), home prices plunge 9.1%, the Eurozone overtakes the USA as the world's largest economy mar 2008: five years after the invasion, the USA has lost 4,000 soldiers in Iraq mar 2008: the police raid a polygamist compound with hundreds of children in Eldorado, Texas, run by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints may 2008: USA's home prices drop by 15.8%, the steepest decline in 21 years june 2008: oil prices pass $140 a barrel june 2008: a USA air strike kills 11 Pakistani soldiers june 2008: California legalizes gay marriage june 2008: President George W Bush's job approval falls to 23%, one of the lowest ever recorded june 2008: For the first time more USA soldiers die in the war in Afghanistan than in the war in Iraq july 2008: George W Bush's associate Karl Rove refuses to testify before a commission investigating whether the Justice Department prosecuted people for political reasons july 2008: George W Bush's aide Karl Rove is accused of having engineered the dismissals of prosecutors on political grounds july 2008: USA inflation hits a 26-year High july 2008: Republican senator Ted Stevens of Alaska is indicted of corruption august 2008: The USA and Libya restore diplomatic relationships that were broken after Reagan bombed Libya august 2008: Following Russia's invasion of Georgia, the USA and Poland sign a treaty for a missile defense august 2008: A USA bomb kills 90 Afghan civilians including 60 children sep 2008: NATO killed 3,200 civilians in Afghanistan from 2005 to mid 2008 sep 2008: Having repaired relations, Condy Rice becomes the first USA secretary of state to visit Libya since 1953 sep 2008: The USA takes over the two largest mortgage companies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the largest insurance company, American International Group sep 2008: USA missiles target Taliban inside Pakistan sep 2008: In a financial crisis, Lehman Brothers files for bankruptcy and Merrill Lynch is sold to Bank of America, and the government buys $700 billion of bad mortgages in the largest financial bailout since the Great Depression, and on September 29 the Dow Jones loses 778 points, the biggest single-day point loss ever sep 2008: A bomb against the USA embassy in Yemen kills 16 people oct 2008: the Dow Jones loses more 22% in a week of continuous losses, including the biggest single-day decline since 1987 |
USA presidentsGeorge Washington (1789-96) John Adams (1797-1800) Thomas Jefferson (1801-08) James Madison (1809-16) James Monroe (1817-24) John Quincy Adams (1825-28) Andrew Jackson (1829-36) Martin Van Buren (1837-40) William Henry Harrison (1841) John Tyler (1841-44) James Knox Polk (1845-48) Zachary Taylor (1849-50) Millard Fillmore (1850-53) Franklin Pierce (1853-56) James Buchanan (1857-60) Abraham Lincoln (1861-65) Andrew Johnson (1865-68) Ulysses Grant (1869-76) Rutherford Hayes (1877-80) James Garfield (1881) Chester Arthur (1881-84) Grover Cleveland (1885-88) Benjamin Harrison (1889-92) Grover Cleveland (1893-97) William McKinley (1897-1900) Theodore Roosevelt (1901-08) William Taft (1909-12) Woodrow Wilson (1913-20) Warren Gamaliel Harding (1921-23) Calvin Coolidge (1923-28) Herbert Clark Hoover (1929-32) Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1933-45) Harry Truman (1945-52) Dwight Eisenhower (1953-60) John Kennedy (1961-63) Lyndon B. Johnson (1963-68) Richard M. Nixon (1969-74) Gerald Ford (1974-76) Jimmy Carter (1977-80) Ronald Reagan (1981-88) George Bush (1989-93) Bill Clinton (1993-2000) George W. Bush (2001-2008) |
| (Copyright © 2008 Piero Scaruffi) |