"The Events that Shaped and Define America" Is Now Available
There Could Have Been a Thousand Rather than 130
These are the events I cover in my upcoming book The Events that Shaped and Define America: From Columbus to the Capitol Riot:
1) 1492 — Columbus Invades the Americas
2) May 14, 1607 — England’s First North American Outpost (Jamestown) Founded
3) August 20, 1619 — First African Slaves Arrive in Jamestown
4) December 18, 1620 — Arrival of the Mayflower in Massachusetts
5) 1675 — King Philip’s War
6) 1692 — Salem Witch Trials
7) February 10, 1763 — French and Indian Wars / Seven Years War Ends
8) 1765 — Imposition and Abolishment of the Stamp Act
9) March 5, 1770 — The Boston Massacre
10) December 16, 1773 — The Boston Tea Party
11) 1774, 1775 — Colonies Protest the “Intolerable Acts” and King George 3’s Harsh Response
12) April 1775 — Revere, et al Warn and Rally the Minutemen; Revolutionary War Begins
13) January 10, 1776 — Thomas Paine Publishes “Common Sense”
14) July 4, 1776 — Declaration of Independence Adopted
15) December 1776 — Thomas Paine’s “The American Crisis”; Washington and His Men Cross the Delaware
16) September 1789 — Congress Passes the Bill Of Rights
17) April 30, 1803 — Louisiana Purchased
18) May 14, 1804 to September 23, 1806 — Lewis & Clark Expedition
19) February 7, 1812 — Strongest New Madrid Earthquake
20) 1812-1815 — War of 1812
21) December 2, 1823 — The Monroe Doctrine
22) May 28, 1830 — Andrew Jackson Evicts Indians From Their Land
23) August 21, 1831 — Nat Turner’s Rebellion
24) April 21, 1836 — Texans Win the Battle of San Jacinto
25) 1838 and 1839 — Trail of Tears
26) January 24, 1848 — Gold Discovered in California
27) October 16, 1859 — John Brown at Harper’s Ferry
28) 1860, 1861 — Lincoln Elected President, Civil War Begins
29) January 1, 1863 — Emancipation Proclamation
30) July 1-3, 1863 — Battle of Gettysburg
31) November 19, 1863 — Gettysburg Address
32) April 12, 1864 — Fort Pillow Massacre
33) April 14, 1865 — Abraham Lincoln Shot by a Sore Loser
34) December 21, 1866 — Fetterman Massacre
35) March 30, 1867 — Controversial Purchase of Alaska (”Seward’s Folly”)
36) May 10, 1869 — Transcontinental Railroad Completed
37) October 8, 1871 — Deadliest Fire in U.S. History (Peshtigo, Wisconsin)
38) October 8, 1871 — Great Chicago Fire
39) June 25, 1876 — Battle of Greasy Grass / Little Bighorn (“Custer’s Last Stand”)
40) May 4, 1886 — Haymarket Square Riot
41) April 22, 1889 — Oklahoma Boomers and Sooners
42) May 31, 1889 — Johnstown Flood
43) December 29, 1890 — Wounded Knee Massacre
44) January 1, 1892 — First Intake of Immigrants at Ellis Island
45) May 18, 1886 — Plessy v. Ferguson
46) February 15, 1898 — Remembering The Maine (Spanish-American War)
47) April to August 1898; 1899-1902 — The United States Extends Its Empire
48) December 17, 1903 — Wright Brothers First in Flight
49) April 18, 1906 — San Francisco Earthquake
50) October 1, 1908 — First Ford Model T Off the Assembly Line
51) March 25, 1911 — Triangle Shirtwaist Fire
52) April 15, 1912 — Titanic Sinks
53) April 6, 1917 — U.S. Officially Enters World War 1
54) March 4, 1918 — First Case of “Spanish” Flu Reported
55) January 16, 1919 to January 17, 1920 — Prohibition
56) May 31, 1921— Tulsa Race Massacre
57) October 29, 1929 — “Black Tuesday” Stock Market Implosion
58) July 28, 1932 — Bonus Marchers Driven Away
59) December 5, 1933 — Prohibition Repealed
60) May 11, 1934 — Massive Dust Bowl Storm
61) December 7, 1941 — Pearl Harbor Attacked
62) February 19, 1942 — FDR Sends Japanese-Americans to Concentration Camps
63) June 6, 1944 — Invasion of Normandy (D-Day)
64) July 17, 1944 — Ammo Explodes at Port Chicago, California
65) March 9, 1945 — U.S. Conducts Most Destructive Firebombing in History
66) 1945 — League of Nations Replaced by the United Nations
67) August 6 and 9, 1945 — Nuclear Bombs Dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
68) April 15, 1947 — Jackie Robinson Becomes the First Black Major League Baseball Player
69) April 16, 1947 — Texas City Explosion Kills 581
70) 1947 to 1954 — Blacklists, Conspiracies, and McCarthyism
71) 1953, 1954 — Polio Vaccine
72) May 17, 1954 — Brown vs Board of Education
73) August 28, 1955 — Emmett Till Murdered and Mutilated in Mississippi
74) December 1, 1955 — Rosa Parks Rightly Stubborn
75) February 1, 1960 — Greensboro Sit-In Begins
76) November 14, 1960 — Ruby Bridges Integrates Her School
77) January 17, 1961 — Eisenhower Warns of a Military-Industrial Complex
78) April 17, 1961 — Bay of Pigs Fiasco
79) May 4, 1961 — First “Freedom Ride” for Civil Rights Begins
80) July 25, 1961 — JFK Warns Americans to Prepare for Nuclear War
81) October 1962 — Cuban Missile Crisis
82) August 28, 1963 — MLK Tells About His Dream
83) November 22, 1963 — John F. Kennedy Murdered
84) November 24, 1963 — Lee Harvey Oswald Killed by Jack Ruby
85) August 4, 1964 — Three CORE Members Found Murdered in Mississippi
86) August 11, 1965 — Watts Riots in L.A.
87) March 16, 1968 — Mỹ Lai Massacre
88) April 4, 1968 — Martin Luther King Murdered
89) June 5, 1968 — Robert F. Kennedy Murdered by Sirhan Sirhan
90) August 26, 1968 — Police Riot at DNC
91) October 16, 1968 — Black Power Salute at the Olympics
92) July 20, 1969 — A Giant Leap for Mankind
93) August 15, 1969 — Woodstock Music & Art Festival Begins
94) April 1, 1970 — Cigarette Ads Banned
95) May 4, 1970 — Four Dead in Ohio
96) June 13, 1971 — Pentagon Papers Published
97) June 17, 1972 — Creeping Creeps Arrested at the DNC (Watergate)
98) January 22, 1973 — Roe v. Wade
99) April 4, 1975 — Microsoft Begins Business
100) March 28, 1979 — Three Mile Island Meltdown
101) November 4, 1979 — Iran Hostage Crisis Begins
102) May 18, 1980 — Mt. St. Helens Wakes Up Angry
103) January 20, 1981 — Iran Hostages Released
104) January 28, 1986 — Challenger Explodes
105) March 24, 1989 — Exxon Valdez Ecological Disaster
106) October 17, 1989 — Loma Prieta Earthquake
107) March 3, 1991 — Rodney King Battered with No Consequences
108) April 29, 1992 — Rodney King’s Assailants Found Innocent, Riots Ensue
109) February to April, 1993 — Branch Davidian Compound Raided, Burned
110) April 30, 1993 — WorldWide Web
111) January 17, 1993 — Northridge (Los Angeles) Earthquake
112) 1994 and 1995 — O.J. Simpson Murder Trial
113) April 19, 1995 — Oklahoma City Bombing
114) 1995 and 1996 — “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski
115) April 20, 1999 — Columbine School Shooting
116) November and December 2000 — Contested Presidential Election Between Gore and Bush
117) September 11 and October 7, 2001 — 9/11 and Its Aftermath
118) December 2, 2001 — Enron Implodes
119) August 29, 2005 — Hurricane Katrina
120) October 31, 2008 — Bitcoin Introduced
121) November 4, 2008 — Barack Obama Becomes First Black President of the U.S.
122) May 2, 2011 — Osama bin Laden Located and Killed
123) December 14, 2012 — Sandy Hook School Shooting
124) April 15, 2013 — Boston Marathon Bombing
125) November 22, 2014 — 12-Year-Old Tamir Rice Killed by Police
126) August 26, 2016 — Colin Kaepernick Takes a Knee
127) October 1, 2017 — 58 Killed at Las Vegas Concert
128) October 5, 2017 — Harvey Weinstein Exposed (#MeToo)
129) 2019 and 2020 — COVID-19
130) January 6, 2021 — Capitol Riot
Kindle version here. Hardcover version here. The Paperback version is available in other Countries; hopefully it will be available on the US amazon site soon.
A free PDF (to read online or download) can be accessed here.