1847 -- Marx's Communist Manifesto Published

1859 -- Charles Darwin's Origin of Species Published

1861-65 -- American Civil War

1887 -- Production of radio shortwaves

1879 -- Light Bulb invented by Thomas Edison

1880- 1910 -- The age of the Robber Barons -- Rockefeller, Pullman, Carnegie, Gould, Morgan. Flourishing of American Capitalism.

1890's -- Massive immigration to U. S. from Eastern Europe and Southern Italy

1893 -- Frederick Jackson Turner's thesis on the closing of the Frontier presented at the Chicago World's Fair

1887 -- Discovery of radiation by the Curies

1896 -- Legalization of public segregation in the U. S. -- (Plessy v. Ferguson)

1898 -- Spanish American War -- lead to the American colonization of Hawaii, Puerto Rico, the Philippines and Cuba

1903 -- Wright Brothers' first flight

1890 -- Battle of Wounded Knee

1890, 1922 -- Frazier's The Golden Bough published -- relationships between Christianity and mythology posited and explored.

1900 -- Increasing industrialization. Mass production techniques introduced in factories. Leads to dangerous and unhealthy conditions for many workers and to the organization of labor and labor strikes.

1900 -- Freud's Interpretation of Dreams published

1903 -- First motion picture produced -- The Great Train Robbery

1905, 1916 -- Einstein's Theories of Relativity

1913 -- Mass production of Model T's by Henry Ford made possible by assembly line technology.

1914-1921 -- WW I -- massive casualties instigate despair. Many philosophers and artists declared that God must be dead. Women take up work outside the home to help in the war efforts.

1910-1920 -- Mass immigration of southern Blacks to New York -- Harlem

1920's -- Peak membership in the KKK

1920, 27 -- Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti tried and executed for alleged robbery. Sacco and Vanzetti were Italian immigrants and political anarchists arrested for the murders of a factory paymaster and guard during a robbery in South Braintree, Mass. Both the judge and the jury were accused of prejudice against the defendants' political and social status

1916 -- First Birth Control clinic founded in America by Margaret Sanger

1917 -- Russian revolution

1915-20's -- First Wave Feminism in the states -- women fighting for the vote, birth control, child care, "free love"

1919 -- 19^th Amendment adopted. Women's suffrage in the U. S.

1927 -- Stalin rises to power in Russia

1925 -- Scopes Monkey Trial

1928 -- Benito Mussolini takes over Italy

1929 -- Stock Market Crashes

1930's -- The Great Depression

1933 -- Hitler's accession to dictatorship in Germany

1935 -- Social Security Act passed

1936-39 -- Spanish Civil War

1939-1945 -- WW II -- Holocaust, Dropping of Atomic bomb, noncombatants at high risk from blitzes and fire bombings, Japanese Americans imprisoned in camps, women back in work place in support of war effort

1945 -- United Nations established

1947 -- Indian independence from Great Britain

1948 -- State of Israel established

1949 -- Mao Tse-Tung establishes the Chinese Peoples' Republic. Not recognized by the U.S. until the 1970's

1953 -- McCarthy's Hunts, the Red Scare, Loyalty Oaths. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, a Jewish couple convicted of conspiring to commit espionage in behalf of the Soviet Union, executed

1950's -- Korean War

1950's -- Era of the "Man in the Grey Flannel Suit." Confomity and materialism of middle-class suburban culture flourish

1950's, 60's -- The Cold War

1950's -- Installment plan purchasing popularized

1957, 1960, 1963 -- Liberation of Ghana, Nigeria, and Kenya from Britain

1945, 60 -- Liberation of Vietnam, Chad, the Congo Republic, Mali and Senegal from France

1950, 60, 70 -- Black Civil Rights Movement

Late 1950's, 1960's early 70's -- Beats, Hippies, Drugs, Student Activism, Vietnam War protests, Sit-ins. The Counter Culture Revolution

1955 -- Rosa Parks sits down in the front of the bus.

1958 -- Brown v. the Board of Education. Segregation is outlawed in U. S. schools

1960-1973 -- Vietnam War

1962 -- Cuban Missile Crisis

1963 -- Amerian Equal Pay Act passed.

1960's -- Second Wave Feminism kicks in. Issues: equal pay, equal education and job opportunities, free contraception and abortion on demand, legal and financial independence, free 24 hour nurseries, and end to discrimination against lesbians and gays, freedom from intimidation by assumptions and institutions that perpetuate male dominance, women's health care issues, rape crisis hotlines and centers, shelters for battered women and children

1963 -- Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique published

1969 -- First Man on the Moon

1972 -- Shirley Chisolm runs for president

1972 -- Ms. Magazine debuts

1972 -- ERA passed congress

1973 -- Roe v. Wade

1982 -- ERA dead for lack of ratification by a minimum of 38 states

1994 -- L. A. riots

1995 -- O. J. Simpson trial

1995 -- Oklahoma City bombing

1996 -- Bombings of Black churches in the South

1997 -- 1^st successful cloning -- Dolly