This information is taken from the History Channel Website.
 

1900

• The Boxer Rebellion breaks out in China. Nationalists attack foreign diplomats and missionaries, hoping to expel foreign influences from China. The U.S., Japan, and European nations send military forces to put down the uprising.
• The first auto show is held in Madison Square Garden, New York City. The cars exhibited range in price from $280 to $4,000.
• The International Ladies Garment Workers Union is founded.
• The first Pan-African Congress convenes in London.
• Eastman Kodak introduces its $1 Box Brownie camera, making photography accessible to everyone.
• Austrian psychiatrist Sigmund Freud publishes The Interpretation of Dreams. Freud invented psychoanalysis and argues that many human psychological problems are sexual in nature.
• King Humbert I of Italy is assassinated by an anarchist.
• President William McKinley signs the Gold Standard Act, requiring all paper money to be backed by gold, an important move in the international monetary system.
• The first photocopying machine is invented in France.
• A New Haven, Connecticut, restaurant serves a beef patty on two slices of toast, inventing the hamburger, although it would be another 55 years before Ray Kroc starts his McDonald's empire.
• The German physicist Max Planck formulates an energy theory postulating the existence of quanta. His research lays the groundwork for quantum theory and ushers in modern theoretical physics.
• The Paris Metro opens with art nouveau entrances designed by Hector Guimard.
• Carry Nation embarks on a women's temperance crusade across Kansas. She and her group smash saloons with hatchets while singing.
• Spectator sports take center court, as the first Davis Cup tennis tournament is held, organized by Harvard University student Dwight Davis.
• Russia annexes Manchuria.
• In the process of urbanization, one out of five Americans lives in an urban center of 100,000 or more residents.
• 1.5 million telephones are in use in the United States, 24 years after their invention by Alexander Graham Bell.

1901

• President William McKinley is assassinated by anarchist Leon Czolgosz in Buffalo, New York, at the World's Fair. Theodore Roosevelt becomes president at age 42.
• Cuba is forced to ratify the Platt Amendment, which allows the United States military to intervene in Cuban affairs. As part of the agreement, the United States acquires rights to use Guantanamo Bay indefinitely as a naval base.
• Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin builds the first successful dirigible.
• Victoria, Queen of England and Empress of India, dies after a reign of sixty-four years. Edward VII of Great Britain is crowned her successor.
• The first electric typewriter, the Blickensderfer, is introduced.
• Animation pioneer Walt Disney is born in Chicago.
• The Australian commonwealth is created by the passage of its constitution in parliament. The country's first parliament tried to establish a White Australia policy to keep non-European immigration to a minimum.
• Guglielmo Marconi sends the first transatlantic wireless message from England to Newfoundland. The invention is soon used to propel radio and television forward.
• A ping pong craze sweeps the United States.
• Oil is discovered for the first time in Southeast Texas. This tremendous gusher ushers in a lucrative new period in America's oil industry.
• The game of field hockey is introduced to the United States.
• U.S. Steel is created when financier J.P. Morgan and a group of investors purchase the industrial empire of Andrew Carnegie. It is one of the largest deals in United States history and garners a controlling share of the iron and steel industry.
• Booker T. Washington publishes his autobiography Up from Slavery.

1902

• The Boer War between British and Dutch colonists in Southern Africa ends. Britain wins control of South Africa and establishes dominion status.
• The Flatiron Building, an early example of skyscrapers in New York City, is built.
• The Aswan Dam is completed in Egypt.
• Railroads reign for fast transportation; the 20th Century Ltd. sets a record by travelling the rails from New York to Chicago in 20 hours.
• A Brooklyn toy store sells the first teddy bear, named after President Theodore Roosevelt.
• In football, the first Tournament of Roses is held in Pasadena, California. Michigan defeats Stanford, 49-0.
• One of the last of the stunning 24554>Newport ``cottages,'' Rosecliff is completed by architect Stanford White.
• Willis H. Carrier designs a practical system for indoor air-conditioning.
• One of the more advanced labor organizations, the United Mine Workers leads a five-month anthracite coal strike that cripples the United States.
• Immigrants continue to flow to the United States; record numbers arrive this year, most from Italy, Austro-Hungary and Russia.
• The most famous of all dinosaurs, Tyrannosaurus rex, was discovered by Barnum Brown in 1902 in Hell Creek, Montana.

1903

• Antoine Becquerel and Pierre and Marie Curie are awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics for their work in radioactivity.
• A landmark in the history of aviation, the Wright brothers make their first flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.
• Henry Ford founds the Ford Motor Company, a key step forward in automobile history.
• The United States supports an uprising in Panama against Colombian rule. Panama secedes and forms a new government which will allow the building of the Panama Canal.
• Sanka is intoduced in Germany by a coffee merchant whose shipment was accidentally soaked in sea water. Its name is derived from the French sans caffeine--without caffeine.
• Inaugurating a new era in baseball, the Boston Red Sox win the first World Series, beating the Pittsburgh Pirates.
• The first Tour de France bicycle race is staged.
• The Bolsheviks under V.I. Lenin split from the moderate Mensheviks at the London Congress of the Social Democratic party, rupturing the international socialist movement.
• Jack London publishes The Call of the Wild.
• A prolific writer of the African-American experience, W.E.B. DuBois publishes The Souls of Black Folk.

1904

• Work begins on the Panama Canal, signaling an important shift in U.S.-Caribbean relations.
• The Russo-Japanese War marks Japan's emergence as a world military power; President Theodore Roosevelt brokers the peace agreement between the two powers in New Hampshire.
• The Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis--one of the world's fairs--introduces ice cream cones and iced tea to the United States.
• The comic book is invented, building on the tradition of comic strips.
• A telephone answering machine is invented.
• President Theodore Roosevelt adds the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, asserting the United States' right to assume the role of an international police power.
• The first flat-disk phonograph is introduced, replacing wax cylinders as the most popular form of recorded music.
• The first segment of the New York City subway opens, incorporating innovations in this type of public transportation.

1905

• Revolution breaks out in Russia in January after Bloody Sunday when czarist troops fire on marchers in St. Petersburg. The unrest leads to the creation of a State Duma and ends three centuries of autocratic rule by the House of Romanov.
• One of the most influential scientists ever, Albert Einstein, a former patent clerk, proposes his theory of relativity.
• Arthur Griffith founds the Sinn Fein political movement calling for Irish independence.
• In Pittsburgh, the first nickelodeon opens, showing early movies.
• The Industrial Workers of the World is founded in Chicago. Its members, called the Wobblies, advocate strikes and sabotage over collective bargaining.
• The U.S. Supreme Court, in Lochner v. New York, rules that it is unconstitutional to limit the number of hours that bakers can work.
• Norway gains independence from Sweden.
• The National Audubon Society meets for first time, during the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, champion of environmental conservation.
• Chinese revolutionary Sun Yat Sen develops a political philosophy based on his three principles: nationalism, democracy, and livelihood for the people.
• Fauvism, named for its use of bright colors and bold brushwork, evolves in Paris. Participants include Henri Matisse, George Braque, and Raoul Dufy.
• An expressionist movement in painting called Die Brucke (The Bridge) emerges in Dresden, Germany. Influenced by Van Gogh, the work appears intense, expressionistic, and primitive. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner is a leader in the group.

1906

• A great earthquake hits San Francisco. 2,500 people die in the quake and the ensuing fires.
• Finnish women win the right to vote, making Finland the first European nation to grant women suffrage.
• Upton Sinclair publishes The Jungle, a muck-raking novel about the American meat-packing industry.
• German doctor August Wasserman develops a test for syphilis.
• The British Labour party is formed from the Labour Representation Committee.
• Theodore Roosevelt wins the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in negotiating an end to the Russo-Japanese War.
• Maria Montessori opens the first day-care center in Rome. Her Montessori method of early childhood education, part of the progressive education movement, spreads through the world.
• The French Supreme Court of Appeals exonorates Alfred Dreyfus, ending the ten-year long Dreyfus Affair.
• The Pure Food and Drug Act offers American consumers protection from adulterated and tainted food products and patented medicines.
• Britain forces the Ottoman Turks to cede the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt.
• Lawyer Mohandas K. Gandhi begins a campaign of nonviolent resistance to protest the treatment of Indians in South Africa.
• Picasso paints his portrait of American expatriate Gertrude Stein.

1907

• Great Britain formally joins the defense pact between France and Russia, forming the Triple Entente.
• Oklahoma becomes the 46th state.
• A land with more sheep than humans, New Zealand receives dominion status from Great Britain.
• Pope Pius X declares modernism the synthesis of all heresies.
• The panic of 1907 is averted when J.P. Morgan and a pool of investors shore up American financial institutions.
• The first exhibition of cubist paintings is held in Paris. Picasso paints Les Demoiselles d'Avignon.
• The first canned tuna is packed in San Pedro, California.
• A record 1.29 million immigrants enter the United States.

1908

• Henry Ford develops the first Model T automobile, which sells for $850.
• Jack Johnson defeats Tommy Burns to win the World Heavyweight Boxing Championship, becoming the first black heavyweight champion.
• The Federal Bureau for Investigation is founded as a division of the Department of Justice.
• The Belgian Parliament takes over rule of the Belgian Congo from King Leopold II, instituting reforms and criticizing the king for the brutal exploitation of the colony .
• The Gentleman's Agreement between the United States and Japan limits the immigration of Japanese laborers.
• Bulgaria declares independence, further advancing the fragmentation of the Ottoman Empire.
• The Christian Science Monitor is founded by Mary Baker Eddy.
• The first large deposit of petroleum is discovered in Persia, marking the beginning of the Middle East oil boom.
• An exhibit by the Eight marks the emergence of a new realism in American painting, later known as the Ashcan School. The artists in the movement include Robert Henri, John Sloan, George Luks, William Glackens, and later Edward Hopper.
• The first Boy Scout troop is formed in Great Britain by Robert Baden-Powell, a veteran of the Boer War.
• President Theodore Roosevelt visits Panama, becoming the first U.S. president to travel abroad while in office.

1909

• The first completely synthetic plastic, Bakelite, is invented by Belgian-born chemist Leo Baekeland.
• Louis Bleriot successfully flies across the English Channel in 37 minutes.
• Revolts in Constantinople and Armenia further weaken the Ottoman Empire.
• Emilio Marinetti, an Italian poet, publishes his manifesto of futurism.
• Baseball great Honus Wagner orders the American Tobacco Company to take his picture off its Sweet Caporal cigarette packs, fearing they would lead children to smoke. The shortage makes the Honus Wagner card the most valuable of all time, worth close to $500.
• Congress passes the United States Copyright Law.
• Kwame Nkrumah, future leader of Ghana independence, is born on September 18th in the village of Nkroful, Ghana.
• The National Negro Committee, renamed the NAACP a year later, is organized in New York to benefit African Americans. W.E.B. DuBois is selected to lead the organization.
• Japanese forces begin a 36-year occupation of Korea, which is formally annexed the following year.
• Standard Oil's John D. Rockefeller, scion of the Rockefeller family, becomes the world's first billionaire. Rockefeller's fortunes were accumulated in the oil industry.
• The first kibbutz is founded in Jordan Valley, Palestine.

1910

• The Union of South Africa is formed as a dominion of Great Britain.
• A revolution begins in Mexico, overthrowing President Porfirio Diaz the following year. The United States sends military forces, changing the nature of U.S.-Mexican relations.
• Famed Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy, author of War and Peace, dies.
• The trans-Andean railroad between Argentina and Chile opens.
• The Portugese monarchy ends after a revolution in Lisbon.
• Edward VII of Great Britain dies and is succeeded by his son, who is crowned George V.
• Angel Island in San Francisco Bay opens as a quarantine station and point of entry for immigrants from Asia.
• China abolishes slavery.

1911

• A revolution in China ends the 267-year Qing dynasty and introduces liberal reforms. Nationalist leaderSun Yat-Sen returns from exile and is elected president of the new republic.
• American banana shipper Samuel Zemurray sponsors a coup in Honduras to establish a government more favorable to banana growers.
• Revolutionary leader Francisco Madero becomes the new president of Mexico, succeeding ousted dictator Porfirio Diaz.
• A fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in lower Manhattan kills 146 seamstresses, prompting reforms in the garment industry and galvanizing the labor movement.
• Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen becomes the first to reach the South Pole.
• The Supreme Court orders the breakup of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company, citing the monopoly has engaged in unreasonable restraint of trade in the oil industry.
• U.S. explorer Hiram Bingham discovers the lost Inca city of Macchu-Pichu high in the Peruvian Andes.
• German novelist Thomas Mann publishes his classic novella Death in Venice.
• Irving Berlin's song Alexander's Ragtime Band popularizes ragtime for mass audiences.

1912

• New Mexico and Arizona are admitted as states, the last new states to be admitted to the union until 1959.
• U.S. Marines invade Honduras, Cuba, and Nicaragua to protect American business, agricultural, and political interests. The troops will remain in Nicaragua until 1933.
• Theodore Roosevelt runs as the Progressive party candidate for the White House, drawing votes away from Republican incumbent William Howard Taft. Woodrow Wilson wins the election.
• Congress sets an 8-hour workday for all federal employees. Most American workers continue to work 10- to 12-hour days.
• F.F. Woolworth Co. is incorporated when Frank Woolworth buys out several five-and-dime store chains.
• The Titanic sinks on its maiden voyage after hitting an iceberg in the North Atlantic. 1,513 passengers are lost, 711 are rescued.
• Pravda first appears as the official publication of the Russian Communist party.
• Oklahoma Native American Jim Thorpe wins the pentathlon and decathlon at the Olympics in Stockholm, though he loses his medals when he later admits to having played semi-professional baseball.
• In the movie industry, Universal Pictures is founded by several film producers including German Carl Laemmle, who later heads the company.

• The Seventeenth Amendment provides for the direct election of U.S. senators.
• The U.S. Department of Labor is founded in response to demands from the nation's leading union, the American Federation of Labor.
• Mexican President Francisco Madero is killed in a coup. Victoriano Huerta proclaims himself president, while rebel leader Francisco Pancho Villa leads an uprising in Northern Mexico.
• 25,000 textile workers walk off the job in thePaterson Silk Strike to demand an eight-hour workday. The six-month strike draws national attention but fails to produce any gains for workers.
• The Armory Show in New York introduces cubism to the United States. Among the artists shown are Marcel Duchamp, whose Nude Descending a Staircase shocks visitors.
• The Sixteenth Amendment permits Congress to levy a graduated income tax, the beginning of the era of regular personal taxation.
• The ballet Rites of Spring premieres in Paris with choreography by Vaslav Nijinsky. The audience riots over Igor Stravinsky's dissonant score.
• Knute Rockne transforms the game of football with his use of the forward pass.
• Coco Chanel opens a boutique in Deauville, France. Her styles and use of knits revolutionize women's fashion.
• Tobacco gets a boost when the R.J. Reynolds Company introduces its first cigarettes under the brand name Camel. The product's logo is borrowed from a Barnum and Bailey circus ad.
• Built by Cass Gilbert, the Woolworth Building opens in lower Manhattan. At 60 stories, it will remain the world's tallest building until 1931.

1914

• World War I breaks out in Europe after the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand of Austria, catapulting most of Europe into a cataclysmic conflict within months.
• U.S. forces invade the port city of Vera Cruz in Mexico in response to ongoing anti-American acts in the revolution-torn country.
• Mohandas Gandhi returns to India after 21 years in South Africa and begins a non-violent campaign against British rule.
• In an effort to prevent labor conflict, Henry Ford offers workers in his Detroit plants the wage of $5 a day, more than twice the national average.
• After ten years of work and 30,000 casualties suffered in its construction, the Panama Canal opens to shipping traffic.
• Irish author James Joyce publishes his collection of short stories, Dubliners, followed shortly by his novel, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
• The last known passenger pigeon dies in the Cincinnati Zoo, making the species extinct.
• George Washington Carver's experiments with peanuts introduce myriad uses for them and give Southern farmers a new cash crop to grow after boll weevils devastate the cotton industry.
• Feminist Margaret Sanger coins the term birth control in her newspaper, Woman Rebel.

1915

• German U-Boats blockade Britain, intensifying the hostilities of World War I.
• Accusing them of aiding Russia in World War I, Turkey expels 1.75 million ethnic Armenians. 600,000 die of starvation in their forced migration.
• German military leaders pioneer the use of poison gas at the Battle of Ypres.
• A U-boat sinks the passenger ship S.S. Lusitania, killing 1,198. Though a passenger ship, the Lusitania was carrying 173 tons of military supplies for Britain.
• The Ku Klux Klan, dormant since the end of the Reconstruction era, is revived in Georgia to promote the ideology of white supremacy.
• Long-distance telephone service begins between New York and San Francisco.
• Czech novelist Franz Kafka publishes The Metamorphosis.
• D.W. Griffith's motion picture Birth of a Nation introduces many innovations to the industry, but is condemned by African Americans for its racism.

1916

• The Battle of Verdun between French and German forces on the Western Front of World War I claims nearly 700,000 lives.
• Francisco Pancho Villa leads raids into New Mexico, killing 17 Americans. The U.S. military spends the next year chasing him through Northern Mexico to no avail.
• A nationalist rebellion against British rule breaks out in Ireland on Easter Sunday. The rebellion fails when promised support from Germany fails to materialize. Some leaders are convicted of treason and hung.
• In World War I, the Battle of the Somme rages for 140 days on a front of 20 miles. Of the three million soldiers engaged in battle, over 1.4 million soldiers are killed. Germans intensify their air war on England with dirigibles and the first airplane raid on London.
• President Woodrow Wilson narrowly wins re-election with the campaign slogan He kept us out of war.
• Jeannette Rankin of Montana becomes the first woman elected to Congress.
• West Indian black nationalist Marcus Garvey moves to New York and opens an American branch of his Universal Negro Improvement Association.
• Margaret Sanger opens the first American birth-control clinic in Brooklyn. It is raided by police, and Sanger is jailed for thirty days.

1917

• British intelligence intercepts a telegram from German foreign secretary Arthur von Zimmerman announcing German plans for unrestricted submarine warfare and an alliance with Mexico should the U.S. enter World War I.
• V.I. Lenin returns to Russia from exile after the last Romanovs abdicate the Russian throne. Lenin leads a Bolshevik revolution in November.
• The U.S. declares war on Germany in response to its policy of unrestricted submarine warfare.
• The war infiltrates music; popular songs include ``Over There'' by George M. Cohan and ``You're In The Army Now'' by Isham Jones.
• The Jones Act makes Puerto Rico an American territory, granting Puerto Ricans U.S. citizenship and allowing them to be drafted for the war effort.
• French troops mutiny on the Western Front after continued losses on the battlefield.
• British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour issues a declaration calling for the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine.
• New legislation requiring immigrants to pass literacy tests severely restricts immigration to the United States
• World War I produces serious food shortages in Europe, leading to rationing and steep price increases.

1918

• President Wilson introduces his Fourteen Point proposal for peace in Europe.
• The new Communist government of Russia signs the Brest-Litovsk treaty, ending Russian participation in the war.
• Czar Nicholas II and the rest of the Russia's royal Romanov family are executed by the Bolsheviks.
• Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicates, leading to the end of hostilities in Europe. The combined death toll from the war passes six million. Another twenty million are wounded.
• In the wake of World War I, a revolution in Hungary overthrows the Austro-Hungarian monarchy.
• The Supreme Court strikes down the Owen-Keating Child Labor Law of 1916 as unconstitutional. It argues that regulations restricting child labor violate states' rights.
• An influenza epidemic spreads across Asia and war-ravaged Europe to the Americas. The epidemic eventually kills 20 million people, including 500,000 Americans.
• Air mail service begins between Washington, D.C., and New York. Price: 24 cents.
• In the film industry, Warner Brothers Pictures is incorporated in California by Polish-born filmmakers Harry and Albert Warner and their Canadian-born brother, Jack.
• On its tour of Europe, the Original Dixieland Jazz Band spreads the taste for jazz internationally.
• Lever Brothers introduces Rinso, the first granulated soap flakes for laundry.

1919

• The Weimar Republic in Germany passes a new constitution, but is plagued by uprisings and post-war unrest.
• The Treaty of Versailles assigns most of the blame for World War I to Germany. The treaty requires Germany to cede territory to France, Belgium, and Poland; give up its colonies; and pay extensive war reparations.
• The U.S. Senate refuses to ratify the Treaty of Versailles, opposing the League of Nations and the boundaries drawn by the treaty.
• U.S. authorities deport anarchists Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman. The two go to Soviet Russia but quickly become disillusioned with communism.
• The House of Representatives refuses to seat socialist Victor Berger, a congressman from Wisconsin. After being stripped of his seat, Berger is re-elected, but Congress again refuses to seat him.
• Race riots break out in 29 American cities as African-American soldiers returning from Europe and demanding greater civil rights are opposed by mobs of whites.
• Dial telephones are introduced by the American Telephone and Telegraph Company. Telephone operators, mostly women in the workforce, protest and threaten to strike.
• Radical journalist John Reed publishes Ten Days that Shook the World, his firsthand account of the Russian Revolution.
• The United States establishes Grand Canyon National Park and Acadia National Park.
• The New York Daily News, America's first successful tabloid newspaper, begins publication in New York.

1920

• Civil War continues in Russia as the Bolsheviks try to consolidate their power. Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania are granted independence when they resist efforts to make them part of the U.S.S.R.
• Britain introduces unemployment insurance for all workers except domestic servants and farm workers.
• The 1920 census reveals that the U.S. population has surpassed 100 million and that the majority of Americans live in cities.
• The U.S. ratifies the Nineteenth Amendment granting suffrage to American women. Carrie Chapman Catt founds the League of Women Voters to encourage women's participation in politics.
• The Treaty of Sevres between the Allies and the Ottoman Sultan dismantles the Ottoman Empire.
• In the presidential elections, Republican Warren Harding defeats James Cox to become the 29th president of the United States.
• The League of Nations, the predecessor to the United Nations, meets for the first time in Geneva. Although the League was the brainchild of President Woodrow Wilson, the U.S. Senate refuses to let the United States join.
• Social reformers, including Clarence Darrow, Upton Sinclair, Jane Addams, and Helen Keller, found the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
• Henry Ford's Model T automobile accounts for over half of all cars sold in America.
• At the age of 23, F. Scott Fitzgerald publishes This Side of Paradise, one of the first novels from this significant Jazz Age author.
• Babe Ruth, age 24, signs with the New York Yankees and hits 54 home runs in his first baseball season. Baby Ruth, the candy bar named for President Grover Cleveland's daughter, also makes its first appearance.
• In horseracing, Man o' War wins the Preakness and Belmont Stakes, retiring at year's end having won all but one race in his career.
• Atlantic City is the site of the first-ever Miss America beauty pageant.
• Prohibition goes into effect; sales of coffee, soft drinks, and ice cream floats skyrocket.

1921

• After centuries of strife, the British Parliament grants Southern Ireland (Eire) dominion status. Six counties in Protestant Northern Ireland remain part of the United Kingdom.
• The Curb Exchange, forerunner of the American Stock Exchange, moves inside to a building. Members of the Exchange no longer signal trades from their outdoor positions on the street to clerks in surrounding buildings.
• Signalling the rise of the automobile, the German Avus Autobahn, the first road for motor vehicles, opens.
• At age 39, Franklin Delano Roosevelt is seized by polio, which will leave him crippled for life.
• The influential Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein authors Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, which contributes to the school of philosophy known as logical positivism.
• Writing under the pen name of Agatha Christie, Mary Clarissa Miller launches an enormously successful career as a mystery writer.
• In the annals of fashion, Chanel No. 5 makes a splash, becoming the world's best-selling perfume.

1922

• The militant arm of the Sinn Fein party forms the Irish Republican Army (IRA), with a mission to safeguard the independence of the Irish Republic.
• Following Fascist aggression in Italy, Benito Mussolini forms a cabinet of Fascists and Nationalists and is granted temporary dictatorial powers.
• Fuad I begins his rule of the newly proclaimed Kingdom of Egypt, formed when the United Kingdom terminated its protectorate.
• Due to heavy reparations payments from World War I, the German mark begins to devalue.
• British Egyptologists George Carnarvon and Howard Carter unearth King Tutankhamen's tomb in the Valley of the Kings, the only tomb that remained unlooted through the centuries.
• Insulin is isolated and used to save the life of a young man, marking the first successful treatment for diabetes.
• Initially rejected by major publishing houses, James Joyce's Ulysses, one of the most influential books of the twentieth century is published in Paris.
• Other major works of literature include the poem The Wasteland by T.S. Eliot, Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis, and Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse.
• William Randolph Hearst launches the New York Daily Mirror, adding to his stable of newspaper publications.
• Built at a cost of $3 million, the Lincoln Memorial opens on the shores of the Potomac River in Washington, D.C..

1923

• The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.) becomes a formal entity headed by Vladimir Lenin, who builds the first forced-labor camps. The country begins to recover from its economic slump, and gold is discovered in Siberia.
• In the Middle East, Jordan becomes an autonomous state but remains a British protectorate.
• In Germany, the mark continues to fall and social unrest is high. Adolf Hitler and his Nazi party seize Munich's city government; Hitler is arrested and sentenced to 5 years in prison.
• Spanish painter Pablo Picasso finishes four paintings, including The Lovers and Women, in a variety of surrealist and expressionist styles.
• A great earthquake and fire imperil Tokyo and Yokohama in Japan, causing over 800,000 casualties.
• Hollywood, center of the filmmaking industry, releases Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments and Buster Keaton's Our Hospitality.
• Robert Frost, one of the most familiar poets in American literature, pens ``Stopping By The Woods On A Snowy Evening.'' He wins the Pulitzer Prize the following year.
• President Warren G. Harding dies in office. In the months following, charges of corruption and negligence are levied against his appointees, with the Teapot Dome scandal loomed largest.

1924

• In Russia, Vladimir Lenin dies, to be succeeded by a triumvirate headed by Joseph Stalin.
• Republican President Calvin Coolidge is re-elected on a platform of ``Coolidge Prosperity'' and promotes pro-business policies.
• The Ottoman Dynasty is officially terminated after a reign of over 600 years.
• The Dawes Plan goes into effect. The plan develops a schedule for Germany's World War I reparations and also outlines Allied loans for Germany.
• Robert Moses becomes president of the Long Island State Park Commission; over the next 44 years, Moses will oversee the building of at least 12 bridges and 35 highways in the New York City area.
• First appearances this year include the comic strip Little Orphan Annie and George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue.
• In musical theater, Fred Astaire and sister Adele dance in Lady Be Good, a Gershwin production that includes favorites such as ``The Man I Love.''
• The first winter Olympics are held in Chamonix, France.
• Shopping in New York City is booming; Barneys and Saks Fifth Avenue open flagship stores, while Macy's moves to Herald Square and offers its first Thanksgiving Day Parade.

1925

• While in prison, Adolf Hitler has dictated portions of Mein Kampf, which becomes pivotal to Nazi philosophy, to his assistant, Rudolf Hess. The first part of the book is published this year.
• France begins building the Maginot Line, intended as a barrier against German aggression.
• 40,000 members of the Ku Klux Klan march in Washington, D.C..
• Clarence Darrow of the ACLU defends John Scopes in the Scopes ``Monkey'' Trial. Scopes is on trial for teaching evolution to high school students. He is convicted.
• It is a headline year for newspapers and magazines; The New Yorker and Cosmopolitan both hit the stands, and the Scripps-Howard newspaper chain is launched.
• ``This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper,'' is penned by T.S. Eliot in The Hollow Men. William Carlos Williams, Franz Kafka, Ford Madox Ford, Virginia Woolf, Gertrude Stein, Theodore Dreiser, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Willa Cather, Sinclair Lewis, and John Dos Passos all have new novels published in this striking literary year.
• The Roaring `20s are in full swing as this dance music is beginning to emerge as a distinct form from jazz.
• The Marx Brothers take to the vaudeville stage in The Cocoanuts, with music and lyrics by Irving Berlin.
• Baseball player Lou Gehrig joins the New York Yankees.
• Al Capone rises to be the boss of organized crime in Chicago; bootlegging, gambling, and prostitution soon come under his purview.
• Charles Jeanneret (Le Corbusier) exhibits an apartment at an exhibition of Arts Decoratifs in Paris; the term ``Art Deco'' is adopted fifty years hence to describe this style.

1926

• A leader of the Harlem Renaissance, Langston Hughes publishes The Weary Blues.
• After eliminating his competition, Josef Stalin establishes himself as a virtual dictator in the Communist Soviet Union, ushering in a 27-year reign.
• In Italy, Benito Mussolini makes fascism the state party.
• In China, Chiang Kai-shek assumes control of the Kuomintang government after the death of Sun Yat Sen the year prior.
• Emperor Showa Tenno Hirohito comes to power in Japan after the death of his father; in ensuing years Japan's military branches will grow in size and influence.
• The Delta Queen begins running on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. This paddle-wheeled steamboat, originally a sign of the transportation revolution, still meanders the Mississippi today.
• Erwin Schrodinger determines that an electron behaves like a particle and a wave, thus extending knowledge of subatomic particles and of quantum theory.
• Winnie-the-Pooh ambles onto the children's literary scene, with A.A. Milne's first book about the crew (Tigger too!) of the Hundred Acre Wood.
• Marc Chagall, Wassily Kandinsky, and surrealist Rene Magritte finish new paintings this year. Artists Mary Cassatt and Claude Monet pass away.
• Both Rudolf Valentino and the Great Harry Houdini die of peritonitis; movie star Valentino at age 31 after surgery, and magician Houdini, belatedly, after successfully staying underwater for 91 minutes in a tank containing only 5-6 minutes' worth of oxygen.

1927

• Chiang Kai-Shek, at the head of a right-wing government, breaks with the Communists and crushes Communist Mao Zedong's ``autumn harvest uprising.''
• Cheers greet the Spirit of St. Louis when Charles Lindbergh lands this plane in Paris. It is the first nonstop solo transatlantic flight in the history of aviation. Lindbergh flew 3,600 miles in over 33 hours, forsaking a radio for additional gasoline.
• Physicist Werner Heisenberg introduces his famous uncertainty principle at age 26.
• The first transatlantic telephone calls are available to the public. Talking for 3 minutes between London and New York costs $75.
• Television is demonstrated for the first time, but full-scale development is delayed nearly two decades.
• In the movie industry, The Jazz Singer, starring Al Jolson, is the first successful talking motion picture.
• Louis B. Mayer founds the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Its first annual awards, dubbed ``Oscars,'' go to Emil Jannings and Janet Gaynor for best actor and actress.
• In baseball, Babe Ruth sets a new record, hitting sixty home runs in a season. Ruth's record will stand for thirty years.
• The richest man in America is Al Capone, with an income topping $105 million. The Supreme Court determines that illegal activities can be taxed, another way the government will fight crime bosses like Capone.
• In musical theater, Funny Face and Show Boat have their first runs on Broadway.

1928

• 62 nations, including the United States, Japan, Italy, and Great Britain, renounce war by officially subscribing to the Kellogg-Briand Pact. World War II begins eleven years later.
• Ahmed Bey Zogu is crowned Zog I, leader of the Albanian Republic.
• Bolivia and Paraguay begin intermittent fighting over the Chaco territory.
• Josef Stalin implements the first Five-Year Plan and begins to collectivize agriculture in the U.S.S.R..
• At age 26, Margaret Mead, one of the best-known writers in anthropology, publishes Coming of Age in Samoa.
• The culmination of 44 years of work, the Oxford English Dictionary appears.
• Republican Herbert Hoover, secretary of commerce, is elected 31st president of the United States.
• The right to vote is restricted in Fascist Italy, dropping the number of voters by two-thirds. As part of this policy, no women are permitted to vote.
• In the midst of Prohibition, physicians write prescriptions for whiskey as a therapeutic substance.

1929

• On Wall Street, the stock market crashes on October 29, and $30 billion disappears, ushering in the Great Depression.
• In the U.S.S.R., dictator Josef Stalin expels Leon Trotsky.
• The first round-the-world flight ever is completed by the airship Graf Zeppelin, named for its inventor.
• Penicillin, discovered by Alexander Fleming, is first used to fight infection, a landmark in the history of medicine.
• In literature, William Faulkner publishes The Sound and the Fury, and Ernest Hemingway pens A Farewell to Arms.
• The Museum of Modern Art opens with an exhibition of paintings by Van Gogh and impressionists such as Cezanne.
• In the fight for control of the bootleg liquor trade in Prohibition Chicago, 7 gang members are killed in the St. Valentine's Day massacre.
• A wildlife sanctuary is set aside for lions, as the African Serengeti Park is established.
• In astronomy, Edwin Hubble observes that galaxies are moving away from each other and he formulates Hubble's Law.
• The Lateran Treaty restores rule of Vatican City to the pope, now sovereign of over 100 acres in the heart of Rome.
• King Alexander proclaims a dictatorship and changes his Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes to the name Yugoslavia.

1930

• The Nazi party places second in German elections, but Adolf Hitler is kept from his seat in the Reichstag because he is an Austrian citizen.
• In South Africa, white women can now vote, but blacks are still excluded under the regime that would soon be called apartheid.
• Pluto, the ninth planet, is discovered by astronomers.
• Virginia Woolf publishes her essay A Room of One's Own on behalf of women's rights.
• President Herbert Hoover signs the Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act, weakening the already failing global economy.
• In American art, Grant Wood paints American Gothic.
• Over 1,300 American banks fail and unemployment exceeds 4 million as the Depressionsinks lower.
• In Jamaica, Rastafarians proclaim Haile Selassie the messiah.
• Uruguay wins the first World Cup for soccer, defeating Argentina, 4-2.

1931

• The world-famous Scottsboro affair begins when nine black men are arrested on false charges at a train stop in Paint Rock, Alabama.
• Now that Nevada has a 6-week residency law for divorce-seekers, it soon becomes a haven for divorce.
• A 34-year-old Baptist preacher named Elijah Poole joins the Nation of Islam and becomes Elijah Muhammad, leader of the Black Muslims.
• A 27-year-old Salvador Dali paints dripping clocks into his surrealist classic, ``The Persistence of Memory.''
• Chicago mobster Al Capone is convicted of income tax evasion. In this blow to organized crime, Capone is sentenced to 11 years in jail and a $50,000 fine.
• General Motors's Frigidaire replaces ammonia with Freon 12 refrigerant gas, making refrigerators safe for households around the industrialized world.
• Unemployed Americans march on the White House, demanding a national program of employment at a minimum wage. They are turned away.
• Japan occupies Manchuria, marking the rise of Japanese militarism and drawing a hard-line stance from Secretary of State Henry Stimson.
• ``The Star Spangled Banner,'' originally written in 1814 by Francis Scott Key, becomes the American national anthem by order of Congress.
• In China, the Chang (also known as the Yangtze) River bursts a dam, causing fatal damage in the form of floods, famine, and mass deaths.

1932

• Mohandas Gandhi begins a civil disobedience ``fast unto death'' to protest British treatment of India's untouchable caste. After just 6 days, he wins concessions.
• Franklin Delano Roosevelt, pledging a ``New Deal,'' is elected president for the first of his four terms.
• Wall Street's Dow Jones Industrial hits its Depression-era low, 41.22.
• A 23-year-old Harvard College dropout, Edwin Herbert Land, invents Polaroid film.
• Big things happen in the realm of the small. Physicists Sir John Douglas Cockcroft and Ernest Walton split the atom for the first time; James Chadwick discovers the sub-atomic neutron.
• Prominent American intellectuals, including Sherwood Anderson, Erskine Caldwell, and John Dos Passos, publicly endorse the platform of the Communist party in the United States.
• In the United States, the Great Depression continues to take a heavy toll: in this year alone, 1,161 banks fail, nearly 20,000 business go bankrupt, and 21,000 people commit suicide.
• In the film industry, Grand Hotel sports a grand cast, starring Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, and John and Lionel Barrymore.
• One of the best female athletes of the century, Babe Didrikson wins at the Los Angeles Olympics.
• The son of noted aviator Charles Lindbergh is kidnapped and dies in a world-famous affair.

1933

• Adolf Hitler becomes chancellor of crisis-ridden Germany. By the end of the year, Hitler has proclaimed the Third Reich, opened the first concentration camp at Dachau, eliminated all political parties other than National Socialism, and consolidated his dictatorial rule.
• Frequency modulations (FM) permit radio reception without static. President Franklin Roosevelt begins to record his ``fireside chats'' for weekly radio broadcast.
• A federal district court in New York decides, after some debate, that James Joyce's Ulysses is suitable for publication in the United States.
• Prohibition ends in the United States, causing caffeinated soft drink sales to nose-dive.
• The federal government passes a flurry of innovative social legislation, providing a New Deal for all Americans.
• Spam is invented, ushering in a new era of processed food and additives. TV dinners are discovered soon thereafter.
• Fiorella La Guardia's election as New York City mayor unseats the Tammany Hall coalition.
• American expatriate writer Gertrude Stein publishes The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, in which she writes that ``a rose is a rose is a rose.''

1934

• Nicaraguan General Antonio Somoza kills guerrilla General Cesar Sandino in cold blood.
• General Lazaro Cardenas, elected president of Mexico, begins a program of agrarian reform, redistributing land and building the power of organized labor.
• The FCC is created to oversee U.S. telephone, telegraph, and radio communications.
• The National Labor Relations Board is created to regulate collective bargaining between labor and management.
• Noted Columbia University anthropologist Ruth Benedict publishes Patterns of Culture.
• Baseball's Negro National League pitcher Leroy Robert ``Satchel'' Paige breaks Dizzy Dean's 30-game winning streak.
• The Dust Bowl hits the United States West, blowing 300 million tons of topsoil into the Atlantic, devastating farmland in Kansas, Texas, Colorado, and Oklahoma.
• Crime doesn't pay this year. Infamous bank robbers Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker die in a shower of police bullets near Shreveport, Louisiana. The F.B.I. nabs John Dillinger, and Alcatraz becomes a prison.

1935

• The Nuremberg laws, enacted by Germany's Nazi party, make anti-Semitism the law of the land.
• Congress passes the National Labor Relations Act (the Wagner Act), reasserting workers' right to collective bargaining. Dissidents within the AFL create the CIO.
• Irish Protestants in Belfast riot against Catholics, provoking retaliation from Catholics in the Irish Free State.
• The Social Security Act becomes law.
• Artists in the newly created Works Progress Administration are paid to decorate federal buildings.
• Reformed alcoholic Bill Wilson founds Alcoholics Anonymous -- anonymously.
• America's first public housing projects are established on New York's Lower East Side.
• Persia becomes Iran by order of Reza Shah Pahlevi.
• Italy invades Ethiopia. Hitler publicly begins to re-arm Germany, creating the Luftwaffe in violation of the Versailles Treaty. Both totalitarian regimes are beginning to test their strength.

1936

• The Spanish Civil War begins, marking the growing rift between the Fascist right and Marxist left in Europe. Hundreds of Americans volunteer for ``Lincoln Brigades'' to help fight Franco's fascism.
• In India, statesman Jawaharlal Nehru is elected president of the Indian National Congress.
• Joseph Stalin begins a ``great purge'' to liquidate his enemies. By 1939, over 8 million are dead and perhaps 10 million imprisoned.
• John Maynard Keynes makes what is, at the moment, the rather counterintuitive declaration that economic depressions are unnecessary in The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money. Over one-third of U.S. families have incomes below the poverty level.
• In baseball, Joe DiMaggio joins the New York Yankees, who win the World Series, 4-2, against the New York Giants.
• Franklin Delano Roosevelt is re-elected president.

1937

• Hundreds are killed in a massacre in Ponce, Puerto Rico.
• After staging a series of sit-down strikes, the United Auto Workers win official recognition from General Motors, and official harassment from Ford.
• Troubled by the devastation which followed a pro-Franco German attack on the Spanish city of Guernica, Pablo Picasso paints his cubist masterpiece, Guernica.
• One of the most influential architects of the twentieth century, Frank Lloyd Wright completes Falling Water in Bear Rock, Pennsylvania.
• Amelia Earhart and her aircraft disappear mysteriously over the Pacific.
• Japan invades China. Italy withdraws from the League of Nations and joins a Germany-Japan pact.
• George Gershwin dies at age 38. Hollywood releases his musical Shall We Dance, starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers and featuring the song ``Let's Call The Whole Thing Off.''
• The Memorial Day Massacre leaves ten steel strikers dead in Chicago.

• Congress passes the Fair Labor Standards Act, providing a minimum wage for the first time.
• In its most violent display of anti-Semitism yet, German Nazis attack Jewish people and property in Kristallnacht.
• Woody Guthrie takes his one-man, pro-labor folk music show on the road.
• The Dies Committee (aka HUAC), charged with stamping out Nazi activity in the United States, veers off to police Communist activity instead.
• In the radio broadcast War of the Worlds, Orson Welles panics Americans who believe that Martians are actually invading Earth.
• The first real ``Xerox'' image is made in the borough of Queens, New York.
• Under the presidency of Lazaro Cardenas, Mexico nationalizes its petroleum industries.
• Launching a military aggression that would only escalate, Hitler annexes Austria. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and French leaders make the historic mistake of ``appeasing'' Germany at Munich.
• Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is Walt Disney's first full-length animated film.

1939

• Hitler's Germany invades Poland, which falls in a month. France and Great Britain declare war. Spain, exhausted from civil war, remains neutral.
• Ho Chi Minh creates the Viet Minh party to oppose colonialism in the French colony ``Indochina.''
• After the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) refuse to let her hold a concert at Constitution Hall on account of her race, Marian Anderson performs at the Lincoln Memorial. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt resigns from the DAR in protest of its discrimination.
• Art collector Louis Caldor discovers the paintings of Anna Mary Robertson. As ``Grandma Moses,'' she becomes America's most popular folk artist.
• President Roosevelt believes that a longer Christmas shopping season will boost the economy and proclaims that Thanksgiving will fall on the fourth Thursday of November. This shift is soon passed into law.
• With help from University of Chicago physicist Arthur Compton, General Electric invents fluorescent Lighting, a new, efficient form of illumination.
• The Trans-Iranian Railroad, linking the Caspian Sea with the Persian Gulf and built entirely with Iranian capital, is completed.
• Based on recent research, Albert Einstein writes a letter to President Roosevelt regarding the possibility of using uranium to initiate a nuclear chain reaction, the fundamental process behind the atomic bomb.
• Gone With the Wind, starring Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh, premieres in Atlanta. Other Hollywood productions this year include Mr. Smith Goes To Washington and Louis Mayer's The Wizard of Oz.

• Nazi Germany successfully invades Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, and France in quick succession. France is divided into a northern occupied zone and a collaborative Vichy regime in the south.
• 61-year-old former Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky is stabbed and killed in Mexico with an ice pick by Ramon Mercader.
• Germany launches a full-scale air war against England and extends persecution of the Jews into Poland, Romania, and the Netherlands.
• California opens Los Angeles' first highway, the Arroyo Seco Parkway; within 30 years, Los Angeles will become a city of automobiles.
• 23-year-old Carson McCullers publishes her Depression-era novel The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. Literary giant Ernest Hemingway pens For Whom the Bell Tolls.
• Walt Disney's animated motion picture Fantasia, starring Mickey Mouse, debuts.
• Winston Churchill succeeds Neville Chamberlain as Britain's prime minister.
• Jacques Marsal, a French schoolboy, discovers pre-historic cave paintings in Lascaux, France.
• The U.S. adopts its first-ever peacetime military draft, anticipating the escalation of World War II in Europe.
• Crooner Frank Sinatra joins the Tommy Dorsey Band, and his star quickly rises.
• African-American surgeon Dr. Charles Drew opens America's first blood bank, but segregation rules prevent him from donating his own blood.

1941

• A.Phillip Randolph's Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters threatens a march on Washington to protest racism against African Americans in wartime employment.
• The Lend-Lease Act permits President Roosevelt to send military supplies to allies.
• Walker Evans and James Agee publish Let Us Now Praise Famous Men about Depression-era tenant farmers.
• On December 7, Japan attacks Pearl Harbor, drawing the United States into war. Five battleships are sunk, and Admiral Chester Nimitz takes control of what remains of the Pacific fleet.
• The U.S. Treasury begins issuing Liberty Bonds to raise money for the World War II effort.
• Mount Rushmore is left incomplete when its creator, Native American sculptor John Gutzon, dies before completing his work.
• Nazi troops invade Soviet Russia, extending as far as Moscow, a move which will ultimately have drastic consequences for Germany.
• Philosopher Erich Fromm's examination of freedom and authority, Escape From Freedom, is published.
• Orson Welles' Citizen Kane, one of the most celebrated films of the century, premieres.

1942

• Nazi policy builds on its anti-Semitism to make Jewish extermination a systematic policy, the so-called ``Final Solution.''
• American Rabbi Stephen S. Wise holds a press conference announcing current German plans to exterminate the Jews. The American response is lukewarm; most Americans remain unaware of the extent of German anti-Semitism.
• President Franklin Roosevelt allocates over 80% of his budget to the war effort and the production of planes, tanks, and military supplies. The ranks of the Depression-era unemployed begin to flow into industry fueled by war.
• President Roosevelt issues Executive Order 9066, calling for the internment of 110,000 Japanese Americans.
• Despite early losses in the war, Allied forces rally, defeating German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel in North Africa.
• The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) is founded by students at the University of Chicago to oppose racial discrimination using Gandhi's non-violent tactics.
• Albert Camus publishes his existentialist classic, L'Etranger, (The Stranger).
• General Foods begins supplying instant coffee to the U.S. Army.
• Harvard University chemist Louis F. Fieser invents napalm.
• Despite the escalating war, it is Hollywood's heyday. James Cagney wins the Best Actor Academy Award for Yankee Doodle Dandy. Bambi, Now, Voyager (starring Bette Davis and Woman of the Year (starring Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy) also hit the big screen. Casablanca debuts this year and receives the Best Picture Academy Award.
• Americans tighten their belts in preparation for wartime shortages; coffee, sugar, and gasoline are rationed.
• A fungus destroys rice crops outside of Bombay, India, spreading famine and killing 1.6 million people.
• The Office of Price Administration is created to control inflation.
• The U.S. government establishes the Manhattan Project, led by Robert Oppenheimer, to coordinate ongoing American efforts to design and build the atomic bomb.

1943

• Jews in Poland's Warsaw Ghetto heroically rise up against the Nazis, resisting the German army's advance for 6 weeks.
• Race riots explode in Harlem, and 46 other U.S. cities; in Detroit, white mobs riot for 30 hours, killing 25 African Americans.
• Doctors begin to use the Pap Test to detect cervical cancer; within 20 years cervical cancer will no longer be the leading cause of death among American women.
• The Pentagon, the world's largest office building, is completed, heralding the rise of the U.S. military-industrial complex.
• Swiss chemist Albert Hofman discovers in his lab, by accident, the hallucinogenic properties of the drug LSD.
• President Roosevelt repeals the Chinese Exclusion Acts of 1882 and 1902, making Chinese immigrants eligible for U.S. citizenship for the first time in a generation.
• Allied forces invade Italy, resulting in the resignation of the Fascist Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and Italy's surrender to the Allies.
• The Soviet army defeats German troops at Stalingrad.
• Japan has its worst rice crop harvest in 50 years.

1944

• A team of scientists working at Harvard University and funded in part by IBM construct the first automatic, general-purpose computer.
• Allied troops storm the beaches at Normandy, France, on D-Day, under the command of General Dwight D. Eisenhower.
• France is liberated by the Allies, and Vichy falls.
• 15-year-old Dutch-Jewish diarist Anne Frank and her family are discovered by the Nazis and taken to concentration camps.
• Congress passes the G.I. Bill of Rights, which will finance the college educations and home bank mortgages for many World War II veterans after the war.
• Lillian Smith, a white southerner, publishes her anti-lynching classic, Strange Fruit.
• Swedish sociologist Gunnar Myrdal publishes An American Dilemma, a groundbreaking exploration of black-white race relations in the United States.
• Franklin Delano Roosevelt is elected to his fourth term aspresident of the United States.
• The U.S. Supreme Court upholds the constitutionality of Japanese-American internment.

1945

• Soviet troops liberate prisoners of the concentration camp at Auschwitz. An estimated 6 million people died in the German camps.
• In August, U.S. planes drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, prompting Japan's surrender.
• World War II ends: the Allies celebrate victory over the Nazis on May 8th, and over Japan on August 14. Total human casualties from the war exceed 50 million people.
• English author George Orwell publishes Animal Farm, a fable about the failure of communism.
• Egypt and Iraq join with five other Middle East nations to form the League of Arab States.
• Gospel singer Mahalia Jackson records ``Move On Up a Little Higher,'' which soon becomes a national hit song.
• The African-American glossy magazine Ebony appears for the first time on American newsstands, and sells out its first run of 25,000 copies.
• Franklin Roosevelt dies on April 12 and his vice-president, Harry S. Truman, becomes president in the closing days of World War II.
• The Potsdam Conference outlines post-war policies toward Germany and Japan. The United Nations is established at a San Francisco conference and holds its first meeting the following year.

1946

• As conflict intensifies between the United States and the U.S.S.R., Winston Churchill coins the term ``iron curtain'' and perceives the onset of the cold war, a phrase used for the first time in 1948.
• Juan Peron, husband of Evita Peron, is elected president of Argentina.
• The Nuremberg Trials condemn twelve Nazis, including Hermann Goering, to death; Goering commits suicide in his cell before the sentence can be carried out.
• France recognizes Vietnamese independence but refuses to leave Indochina.
• In the United States, Republicans win a majority in both the Senate and the House of Representatives.
• After displacing native inhabitants of the Bikini Atoll island in the Pacific, the United States experiments there with the atomic bomb.
• 43-year-old psychiatrist Dr. Benjamin Spock publishes The Commonsense Book of Baby and Child Care, forever changing Americans' thoughts about child care.
• As veterans return home, the birth rate increases this year by about 20%.
• The United States backs the shah in an Iranian national crisis.
• President Truman fires Secretary of Commerce Henry A. Wallace for criticizing hard-line cold war policies.

1947

• In the Middle East, Arabs and Jews both reject Britain's final proposal for the division of Palestine into two separate nations.
• India gains independence from Britain's colonial domination; later, millions die in riots following partition.
• Congress passes the Taft-Hartley Act over Truman's veto, severely curtailing the power of organized labor.
• The Truman Doctrine establishes the American cold war policy, ``containment.'' Also announced this year, the Marshall Plan will direct massive funds to assist European economic recovery.
• In Long Island, New York, builders erect Levittown, a middle-class suburb; by 1970, more Americans will live in the suburbs than in cities.
• Jackie Robinson joins the Brooklyn Dodgers, becoming the first black man to play in baseball's Major Leagues.
• The National Security Act creates both the Defense Department and the Central Intelligence Agency.
• Archaeologists decipher the law code of Hammurabi. A young boy finds the Dead Sea Scrolls near Qumran.
• The United States' Gross National Product begins its historic postwar surge, ushering in an era of economic growth.

1948

• In newly independent India, Mahatma Gandhi is assassinated.
• The state of Israel is created in the Middle East, prompting Arab-Israel conflict.
• President Harry S. Truman abolishes racial segregation in the United States military.
• The United Nations General Assembly adopts a Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt is particularly influential in this process.
• Birth control activist Margaret Sanger founds the International Planned Parenthood Federation.
• 36-year-old painter Jackson Pollock paints Composition No. 1 (tachisma), bolstering Abstract Expressionism.
• Zoologist Alfred Kinsey publishes his study Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, sparking decades of controversy.
• The United States organizes the Berlin airlift to break the Berlin blockade.
• Syngman Rhee becomes president of the newly proclaimed Republic of Korea. Parties in Northern Korea, however, challenge his regime.
• The invention of the transistor will permit miniaturization in science and technology.
• Television begins its boom; close to one million households have television sets, compared to 5,000 homes in 1945.

1949

• The Soviet Union conducts A-bomb tests, heating up the cold war arms race.
• In South Africa, racial apartheid is instituted.
• The Chinese Civil War ends; Communist leader Mao Zedong becomes the chairman of the People's Republic of China.
• The CIA-sponsored Radio Free Europe begins broadcasting to the Eastern European ``iron curtain.''
• In his State of the Union Address, President Truman promises to give Americans a ``Fair Deal.''
• The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is founded.
• A 31-year-old preacher from North Carolina named Billy Graham gains national attention with a number of noteworthy celebrity conversions.
• Soviet officials lift the Berlin blockade and Germany is divided into two nations, the GDR in the east and the GFR in the west.

1950

• Snoopy, Charlie Brown and the rest of the Peanuts gang premiere in a comic strip by Charles Schulz.
• North Korea invades South Korea, sparking the Korean War. President Truman sends U.S. military troops as part of a United Nations effort. The war is one of the first in which Cold War adversaries, the U.S. and the USSR, support opposing sides in a third-party conflict after World War II.
• Klaus Fuchs is arrested for atomic espionage.
• The biggest heist ever occurs at Brink Express Co. in Boston, when 8 men capture over $3.7 million in 17 minutes. J. Edgar Hoover and the F.B.I spend $129 million over several years to nab the perpetrators.
• Former state department bureaucrat and alleged Communist spy Alger Hiss is convicted of perjury. Senator Joseph McCarthy begins his one-man anti-Communist witch hunt.
• U.S. Gross National Product (GNP) has nearly tripled since 1940, reaching $284 million.
• A black bear cub is burned and orphaned in a New Mexico forest fire. Nursed back to health, the cub ultimately lives in the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. ``Smokey the Bear'' becomes a symbol for forest fire prevention.
• The Point Four Program, intended to provide technological skills, knowledge, and equipment to developing nations, begins.
• Urbanization spills into suburbia. Over the next decade, land values will increase, sometimes up to 3000%, in prime suburban neighborhoods, where population will increase by 44%.

1951

• Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, accused of cold war espionage, are sentenced to death. The Rosenbergs are executed in 1953 amid protest.
• J.D. Salinger publishes The Catcher in the Rye.
• Mohammed Mussadegh becomes prime minister of Iran, nationalizes the oil industry and precipitates a major crisis with Britain.
• One of the greats in baseball history, Mickey Mantle joins the New York Yankees, who win the World Series this year, 4-2.
• In the Middle East, Libya becomes an independent state with help from the United Nations.
• In musical theater, The King and I, by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein, hits Broadway.
• General Douglas MacArthur is relieved of his command in Korea after he advocates more aggressive expansion of the U.S. military effort there.
• Maureen Connolly becomes the youngest woman to win the U.S. Open in tennis.
• U.S. surgeon John Gibbon Jr. creates the first heart-lung machine.
• American automobilemanufacturer Chrysler Corporation introduces power steering.
• Marlon Brando puts on an undershirt and stars in Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire.

1952

• In Kenya, disaffected Kikyu launch the Mau Mau rebellion to contest colonial British land policies.
• African-American novelist Ralph Ellison publishes Invisible Man to immediate popular acclaim.
• Ernest Hemingway, a heavyweight in American literature, publishes The Old Man in the Sea.
• Rocky Marciano beats ``Jersey'' Joe Walcott to win the world heavyweight boxing championship.
• Dick Clark hosts the first American Bandstand, while Cleveland disc jockey Alan Freed organizes what will be recognized as the first rock `n' roll concert.
• In Egypt, revolutionaries overthrow King Farouk and establish a republic.
• Gary Cooper receives a Best Actor Oscar for his performance in High Noon. Cecil B. De Mille's The Greatest Show On Earth wins Best Picture.
• In Bolivia, rebels in the Movimiento Nacionalista win control of the government and launch a nationalist program of agrarian reform.
• The first birth control pill is introduced, although it will not be available to the public for another 8 years. The first oral contraceptive will make management of contraception easier for millions.
• Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower is elected president. Richard Nixon serves as his vice-president.
• Nearly three decades before the famous scare at Three Mile Island, the world's first nuclear power plant accident occurs at Chalk River, in Canada.

1953

• Josep Tito becomes president of liberal Communist state Yugoslavia.
• Edmund Hilary and Tenzing Norgay become the first humans to reach the summit of Mount Everest.
• Experiments with mice link cancer to tobacco tar.
• In the U.S.S.R., the death of Joseph Stalin precipitates a major political power struggle.
• Jomo Kenyata and other Mau Mau rebels are imprisoned by British authorities in Kenya, which is fighting for its independence.
• African-American novelist James Baldwin publishes his first novel, Go Tell It On The Mountain.
• Francis Crick and James Watson discover the ``double helix'' of DNA.
• Georges Braque paints his cubist Apples.
• 20 million households have television sets, up from under 1 million in 1949. Commercial advertising is wide-spread.
• Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot opens in Paris. Arthur Miller's The Crucible, an allegory of the Communist witch hunt, also premieres.

1954

• French colonial rule in Vietnam weakens when Viet Minh rebels take Dien Bien Phu. Vietnam is divided into northern and southern regions.
• In Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas the Supreme Court rules unanimously that racial segregation violates the 14th Amendment to the Constitution.
• Senator Joseph McCarthy accelerates his anti-Communist witch hunt with the nationally televised Army-McCarthy Hearings and is formally censured by Congress.
• Physicist Robert Oppenheimer, head of the Manhattan Project, loses his security clearance and is dismissed from government service.
• Elvis Presley records ``That's All Right Mama'' and several other singles.
• President Eisenhower applies his ``domino theory'' to Southeast Asia.
• Baseball legend Hank Aaron begins his career by joining the Milwaukee Braves.
• William Golding, who will proceed to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, publishes his tale of the dark side of human nature, The Lord of the Flies.
• A CIA-supported coup in Guatemala overthrows President Jacobo Arbenz, as the U.S. fears that Latin American countries will fall into the embrace of communism.
• Sun Myung Moon founds the Unification Church.
• In the Academy Awards, On The Waterfront wins Best Picture, Best Director for Elia Kazan and Best Actor for Marlon Brando.

1955

• Rock music fans get some of their first anthems. Popular songs include Bill Haley `s ``Rock Around the Clock'' and Chuck Berry's ``Maybelline.''
• Ray Kroc buys out a hamburger franchise from the McDonald brothers and launches an empire of golden arches. Harland Sanders also begins his Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise.
• President Eisenhower suffers a heart attack.
• George Meany becomes president of the newly merged labor organization, the AFL-CIO.
• The polio vaccine, developed by microbiologist Jonas Salk, is declared safe for use. Just three years prior, polio had stricken over 50,000 Americans.
• Sukarno hosts an international post-colonial conference in Bandung, Indonesia.
• Sugar ``Ray'' Robinson wins the world boxing championship over Carl ``Bobo'' Olson.
• Vladimir Nabokov publishes his controversial, erotic novel Lolita.
• Argentina's President Juan Peron is overthrown by a military coup, and he flees to Spain.
• Appearing in East of Eden and Rebel Without a Cause, James Dean is killed in an automobile accident. Indian filmmaker Satyajit Ray's movie, The Song of the Road, hits the big screen.
• The U.S.S.R. organizes the Warsaw Pact to defend against the Western European Cold War alliance, NATO.
• Disneyland, part of the empire that Walt Disney built, opens in California, the first theme park in America's history of leisure.

1956

• In North Africa, Morocco wins its independence from French colonial rule.
• In late 1955, Rosa Parks had refused to move to the back of the bus. This year in Montgomery, Alabama, a bus boycott organized by Martin Luther King brings the young preacher into the national eye.
• Prince Rainier of Monaco marries the film actress Grace Kelly.
• Fidel Castro lands on the Eastern coast of Cuba, launching a revolution against the Batista regime.
• Elvis Presley tops the charts this year with ``Love Me Tender,'' ``Hound Dog,'' and ``Heartbreak Hotel.''
• Allen Ginsberg publishes Howl, which will become a classic of the beat generation in American poetry and literature.
• When Egypt's president Gamal Abdal Nasser nationalizes the Suez Canal, Israel, Britain, and France invade Egypt, while the U.S. opposes the invasion.
• Pakistan adopts a new constitution and officially becomes an Islamic state.
• The Soviets subdue an anti-Communist rebellion in Hungary.

1957

• The Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy (SANE), an anti-nuclear protest organization, is created and demands nuclear disarmament.
• Written six years prior, Jack Kerouac's On the Road is published, catapulting him into beat generation stardom.
• Inaugurating a new era in exploration, the U.S.S.R. launches Sputnik I and II, the first earth satellites. Space exploration becomes another arena of Cold War competition.
• In Little Rock, Arkansas, the civil rights movement shifts into high gear when white crowds protest efforts to desegregate public schools. President Eisenhower sends in the National Guard.
• The Gold Coast becomes the first of Britain's African colonies to gain independence, officially becoming Ghana, with Kwame Nkrumah as prime minister.
• Dr. Seuss publishes the captivating The Cat in the Hat, a classic in children's literature.
• In Britain, the Wolfender Report, which supports the legalization of homosexuality, is published.
• Berry Gordy founds Motown, which will become a major force in rock music in the 1960s.
• Posthumous poems by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Wallace Stevens are published. Boris Pasternak publishes his epic Dr. Zhivago, which will win him next year's Nobel Prize in Literature.
• So-called ``killer bees,'' imported from Africa, spread north in the Americas from Brazil.

1958

• The play A Raisin in the Sun, by 29-year-old Lorraine Hansberry, is at tale of the modern African-American family.
• Nikita Khrushchev becomes premier of the U.S.S.R..
• Alarmed by recent advances by the Soviet space program, the United States establishes NASA (the National Aeronautics and Space Administration) to coordinate its own efforts to reach space. America's first satellite is released this year.
• Prince Charles, son of Elizabeth II and future husband of Diana, becomes the Prince of Wales.
• The first atomic submarine, the Nautilus, built in 1954, travels under the North Pole.
• Robert Welch founds the right-wing John Birch Society to combat communism, which he believes has infiltrated the highest levels of government.
• Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe publishes his novel about colonialism, Things Fall Apart.
• The National Defense Education Act places heavy emphasis on math, science, and language education.
• Credit cards get a boost; charge card American Express debuts, and the forerunner of Visa, the BankAmericard, also appears.
• Charles de Gaulle is elected the first president of France's newly created Fifth Republic.
• John Kenneth Galbraith pens The Affluent Society to criticize private consumption in American society and advocate greater spending on public resources.

1959

• The Guggenheim Museum, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, opens in New York City. Wright dies this year at age 89.
• Fidel Castro becomes premier of Cuba.
• Russian Prime Minister Nikita Khrushchev visits the United States.
• In January, Alaska becomes the 49th U.S. state, followed by Hawaii, the 50th, in August.
• In musical theater, the Sound of Music, based on the Von Trapp family, premieres with Mary Martin, while Ethel Merman appears on Broadway in Gypsy.
• Jazz's ``Lady Day,'' Billie Holiday, dies. Rock musician Buddy Holly also dies in a plane crash.
• The U.S.S.R. sets off an international, space-age buzz when it launches a rocket with two monkeys on board.
• Louis Leakey finds the skull of ``nutcracker man'' in Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, suggesting that human evolution began on the continent of Africa not Asia.
• President Eisenhower invokes the Taft-Hartley Act to end a 116-day steel workers' strike.
• The doll industry gets a new major player when Barbie debuts. Barbie is created by the Handlers, a husband and wife team who found Mattel, Inc.
• The microchip, forerunner of the microprocessor, is invented by Jack Kilby and future Intel founder Robert Noyce.
• An uprising against Chinese rule in Tibet is repressed, and the Dalai Lama flees to India.
• Painter Jasper Johns completes Numbers in Color.

1960

• In South Africa, police kill 56 civilians protesting apartheid and the Pass Laws in the Sharpeville Massacre. The government bans two major anti-apartheid groups, the African National Congress and the Pan-Africanist Congress.
• Democrat John F. Kennedy defeats Republican Vice-President Richard Nixon to win the presidential election, He becomes both the youngest and the first Roman Catholic president.
• The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC)-- whose original members include Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, and Qatar --meet in Baghdad to force up oil prices.
• In the Hughes Laboratory in California, physicist Theodore Maiman perfects the laser, now widely used in surgery, holography, communications, and printing.
• Communist China, led by Mao Zedong, criticizes the Soviet Union, causing a split in Sino-Soviet relations; Mao's ``Great Leap Forward,'' intended to increase food production, fails.
• France becomes the fourth nation to acquire atomic capability (after the United States, Britain, and the U.S.S.R.), exploding a nuclear device in the Sahara Desert.
• In Vietnam, the National Liberation Front is formed by Communist dissident groups called Vietcong who seek to overthrow South Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh Diem.
• In a wave of decolonization, French and Belgian colonies in Africa gain their independence, including Senegal, Ghana, Nigeria and Madagascar. The newly independent Congo Republic dissolves into civil war and is sent aid from the United Nations. The Congo Army Commander, Colonel Joseph D. Mobutu, takes control.
• Film classics such as The Magnificent Seven and Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho come out in theaters while ``The Twist,'' by Chubby Checkers, starts a dance craze.
• The Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) is formed, intending to use dramatic non-violent tactics to advance the civil rights movement.

1961

• Fidel Castro's rule in Cuba becomes more communist and the United States breaks off diplomatic relations. In April, an American attempt to overthrow Castro's government in the The Bay of Pigs Invasion ends in disaster.
• The Berlin Wall is built after Warsaw Pact members request that East Germany stop the tide of refugees escaping from East to West Berlin.
• United Nations Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold dies in a plane crash en route to a meeting with Moise Tschombe, the governor of Katanga, a mutinying province of the Congo.
• President John F. Kennedy forms the Peace Corps of Young Americans, in which volunteers work to improve living standards in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
• Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin is the first man to travel in space when he orbits the earth in Vostok I for 89.1 minutes on April 12th.
• Bob Dylan, originally named Robert Zimmerman, is discovered singing in Greenwich Village by Columbia Records and produces his first album. His songs become symbolic of the civil rights movement and the hippie culture.
• Tension mounts between Soviet Union Premier Nikita Khrushchev and American President John F. Kennedy about Communist expansion in the wake of the Cuban conflict. A Vienna conference in June raises questions about nuclear disarmament and a nuclear test ban.
• In Latin-American relations, the United States proposes an Alliance for Progress to assist friendly Latin-American countries and stem Communist influence.
• The Freedom Rides in Alabama attempt to overturn southern segregation in the growing civil rights movement.
• Jerome Robbins, one of the great twentieth-century choreographers, puts West Side Story in motion. The Hustler and Breakfast at Tiffany's are other Hollywood releases this year.

1962

• American surveillance discovers Soviet missiles installed in Cuba, a stone's throw away from the Florida coast. In the brief, tense standoff known as the Cuban Missile Crisis, the possibility of a nuclear war raises its head.
• The U.S. space program is on the rise; Marine Corps pilot John Glenn becomes the first American to orbit the Earth.
• Racial tensions in the U.S. escalate, and President John F. Kennedy sends federal troops to enforce integration at the University of Mississippi after rioting occurs.
• Marilyn Monroe dies and is eulogized as ``a legend in her own time.''
• The Secret Army Organization (OAS) mounts an unsuccessful terrorist campaign to fight Algerian independence from France; Algerians vote on July 1st for independence and their nation receives its independence from France on July 3rd.
• The United Nations sends troops to control civil war in the Congo, after Katanga governor Tshombe rejects a peace plan and attempts to secede.
• Pop Art is at a high, with Andy Warhol's famous painting of a Campbell's soup can and Roy Lichtenstein's Blam! And Head.
• Sam Walton opens the first Wal-Mart.
• In golf, Jack Nicklaus wins the U.S. Open at age 22.
• Burundi, Jamaica, Western Samoa, Uganda, and Trinidad and Tobago all become independent states.

1963

• John F. Kennedy is assassinated on November 22nd in Dallas, Texas, and Vice-President Lyndon B. Johnson takes office. The Warren Commission investigates the assassination. Jack Ruby, a nightclub operator, shoots and kills Kennedy's alleged assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald.
• Martin Luther King, Jr., delivers his famous, ``I have a dream'' speech at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., to celebrate the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation. More than 200,000 Americans march to demonstrate civil rights support.
• The government of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem is overthrown by anti-Communist officers on November 1st in a military coup.
• Scandal breaks out when Britain's war minister, Lord John Dennis Profumo, is discovered to be sleeping with a call girl, Christine Keeler, who happens to also be intimate with a known Soviet spy.
• The Beatles get their first U.S. rock `n' roll hit with ''I Wanna Hold Your Hand.''
• Kenya celebrates independence from British colonial rule; the Kenya African Union becomes the sole political party of the new Republic and Jomo Kenyatta becomes president a year later.
• Congress votes to guarantee women equal pay for equal work, and feminist Betty Friedan publishes The Feminine Mystique, which argues that women suffer from discrimination and the illusion of self-fulfillment through their husbands.
• An artificial heart is used for the first time by Dr. Michael Ellis De Bakey in Houston to sustain blood circulation during surgery.
• A nuclear submarine, the U.S.S. Thresher, sinks off the coast of Cape Cod in 8,400 feet of water, killing all 129 Navy men aboard.
• In Gideon v. Wainwright, the Supreme Court rules that indigent defendants must be provided with an attorney.
• New Hampshire runs the first state lottery in the United States.

1964

• North Vietnam attacks United States naval destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin, prompting Congress to pass the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which authorizes President Lyndon Johnson to ``take all necessary measures'' and later justifies massive military buildup in Vietnam.
• President Johnson is re-elected president of the United States in a landslide victory against Barry Goldwater, and begins his `` War on Poverty'' with the Economic Opportunity Act.
• After being filibustered for 75 days by Southern senators, the Civil Rights Bill is passed on July 2nd and calls for an end to discrimination.
• Malawi and Malta gain independence from British colonial rule after 140 and 73 years, respectively.
• In South Africa, African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela is sentenced to life imprisonment; his incarceration becomes a major point of contention for anti-apartheid supporters.
• The Surgeon General releases a report that links smoking to lung cancer; despite warnings, cigarette smoking increases.
• The first Chinese atomic bomb is exploded, and France recognizes Communist China.
• Khrushchev's agricultural reforms fail and he is ousted from Soviet power and replaced as premier by Aleksei Kosygin.
• Jimmy Hoffa brings all truckers under the Teamsters Union.
• As part of his Great Society initiative, President Johnson signs the Medicare Act to provide health insurance to people age 65 or older.
• In boxing, Cassius Clay defeats Sonny Liston for the heavyweight championship.

1965

• The war in Vietnam escalates, and American bombing of North Vietnam begins. The Marine landing on March 8th represents the first deployment of American troops to Vietnam and a full-scale offensive begins in June.
• At the University of Michigan, a ``teach-in'' is held to protest the Vietnam War and heralds the beginning of the student anti-war movement.
• Malcolm X, the famous militant leader for black power in the civil rights movement, is shot and killed in the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem.
• Civil Rights demonstrations increase despite arrests, and Martin Luther King, Jr., leads a march in Selma, Alabama, as well as a march on Chicago's City Hall.
• President Johnson orders American troops to the Dominican Republic to prevent a Communist takeover; Marines remain for several months.
• In the Congo, Sese Mobutu assumes power in a bloodless coup, declares his government the Second Republic, and begins his program of ``African Authenticity'' by replacing European names with African names.
• Popular songs of the year include the Rolling Stones, ``[I can't get no] Satisfaction,'' Simon and Garfunkel's ``Sounds of Silence,'' Sonny and Cher's ``I Got You Babe,'' and The Beatles' ``Yesterday.''
• In Rhodesia, prime minister Ian Smith refuses to meet Britain's requirement to change from a minority white rule to majority rule. Smith declares Rhodesia to be independent from Britain, which Britain declares illegal. The United Nations calls on all nations to deny Rhodesia recognition.
• In fashion, the miniskirt, designed by Mary Quant, appears in London and will soon be all the rage.
• Indonesia withdraws from the United Nations. An attempted Communist coup is defeated by General Suharto, and there is widespread massacring of Communists.
• Ralph Nader publishes Unsafe At Any Speed, decrying the dangers of automobiles and urging consumer protection.

1966

• The formation of the Black Panthers, a militant civil rights group in the United States, evinces the increasing dissatisfaction with non-violent protest.
• Senator J.W. Fulbright, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, questions the validity of American military intervention in Vietnam, but bombing of North Vietnam escalates.
• France withdraws its troops from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and French President Charles de Gaulle advocates a ``Europeanized Europe'' free from American and Soviet intervention.
• The National Organization for Women (NOW), led by feminist Betty Friedan, is formed in an effort to help American woman gain equal rights.
• Mao Zedong begins the Cultural Revolution in China to purge disaffected party leaders and kindle the revolutionary spirit of the Communist party.
• The Department of the Interior publishes its first rare and endangered species list, enumerating 78 species, part of the century's conservation and environmental movement.
• In South Africa, the ``Group Areas Act'' is passed, which enforces apartheid by compelling blacks and whites to live in separate residential areas. Prime minister Henrik Verwoerd is assassinated and replaced by another apartheid supporter, Balthazar Johannes Vorster.
• The Supreme Court protects the rights of police suspects in Miranda v. Arizona, leading to Miranda Rights.
• Star Trek begins airing on NBC, starring William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy, and becomes a cult classic in American science fiction.
• Indira Ghandi, the daughter of Jawaharlal Nehru, is elected as prime minister of India after Lal Bahadur Shastri dies of a heart attack.

1967

• Anti-war sentiment increases in the United States: Martin Luther King, Jr., encourages draft evasion, more than 100,000 people demonstrate in New York, and 647 people are arrested out of about 150,000 who protest outside the Pentagon. Despite public outcry, more troops are deployed.
• Thurgood Marshall becomes the first black Supreme Court justice.
• A seven-year military dictatorship begins in Greece, when right-wing military officers overthrow Constantine II and force the former king to flee to Rome.
• The Six-Day Arab-Israeli War ends on June 11th, with Israel capturing Arab Jerusalem and Golan Heights and guaranteeing freedom of access for people of all faiths to all holy places. Despite requests from the United Nations, Israel refuses to change its position.
• Riots for civil rights increase in the United States, killing at least 77 people and injuring over 4,000. In Newark, a Black Power Conference encourages anti-white, anti-draft, and anti-Christian resolutions.
• The world's first heart transplant is performed in Cape Town, South Africa, by Christiaan Barnard, but the patient only lives 18 days. New York surgeon Adrian Kantrowitz performs the operation four days later, but his patient only lives a few hours.
• The first Rolling Stone magazine is published in San Francisco by 21-year-old Jann Wenner. The magazine has an initial circulation of 6,000, which booms as it becomes a voice for the counter-culture movement.
• Odumegwo Ojukwu, leader of the Ibo people, proclaims the Republic of Biafra, which secedes from Nigeria.

1968

• At age 29, Ralph Lauren (né Lifshitz) founds what will become a fashion empire.
• An overwhelming North Vietnamese attack on South Vietnamese cities called the Tet Offensive is a turning point in the war. In the South Vietnam village of My Lai, American soldiers kill over 300 men, women, and children. Thus far, the United States has lost over 10,000 planes over Vietnam.
• Democratic Senator Robert F. Kennedy is assassinated in Los Angeles by Jordanian-American Sirhan Bishara Sirhan after making a bid for the presidency.
• Civil Rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., is assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, by James Earl Ray, an ex-convict from the Mississippi Penitentiary.
• Civil rights riots increase, with police receiving orders to ``shoot to kill.'' The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) mounts a Counter-Intelligence Program against black nationalist hate groups.
• The Beatles try to save Pepperland from the Blue Meanies in the movie Yellow Submarine. Other Hollywood releases include Zefirelli's Romeo and Juliet, Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Night of the Living Dead.
• Fearing revolution, Moscow bulks up its Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia to 650,000 troops and sends instructions to Prague to ban all political clubs and introduce a censorship system.
• Japan becomes the world's second strongest economic power after the United States when its Gross National Product (GNP) exceeds $140 billion.
• The Poor People's March on Washington protests the hunger problem in the United States. The Department of Agriculture loosens restrictions on its Food Stamp Program.
• The first cash dispensing machine is installed by First Philadelphia Bank, with Chemical Bank in New York following one year later.
• Inspired by members of the Students for a Democratic Society, Columbia University students stage a sit-in, closing down the university in protest.

1969

• Richard Nixon is inaugurated president of the United States and announces the beginning of troop withdrawal from Vietnam. He bans the use of chemical and biological weapons.
• Through NASA, the U.S. space program flies higher than anyone before. Neil Armstrong becomes the first man to walk on the moon when he exits the lunar capsule Apollo 11 with the famous words ``One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.''
• The gay rights movement begins in New York with the Stonewall Inn Riot, in protest of a police raid of a dance club and bar in Greenwich Village.
• French President Charles de Gaulle resigns from office after his proposal for regional reform is rejected by voters.
• The Woodstock music festival reigns for four days in the Catskill Mountains. Recreational drugs are quite widespread.
• Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) begin between the United States and the U.S.S.R., as President Nixon tries to control the nuclear arms race and promote a policy of détente.
• Somali president Abdi Rashid Ali Shermarke is assassinated and the government is seized by General Muhammad Siad Barre, who dissolves the legislature and establishes himself as a dictator.
• Sesame Street, created by the Children's Television Workshop, debuts on public television and begins to change attitudes about children's learning capabilities.
• Former French President Charles de Gaulle resigns and dies the next year. President Georges Pompidou continues de Gaulle's policies but ends French opposition to Britain's presence in the Common Market.

1970

• Cambodia's Prince Norodom Sihanouk is overthrown and defense minister Lon Nol begins a reign of terror in the newly proclaimed Khmer Republic. American and South Vietnamese forces move into Cambodia.
• Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) activity in Laos is exposed. Senator J. William Fulbright accuses the CIA of ``an undeclared and undisclosed war in Laos.''
• Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin both die this year; the music of the '70s is ushered in with the eponymous Led Zeppelin III, Let It Be (The Beatles) and Déjà vu (Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young).
• At Kent State University in Ohio, a student protest to end the expanding war in Southeast Asia ends in bloodshed when National Guardsmen open fire, killing four and injuring eight.
• 126 runners show up for the first New York Marathon and run around Central Park four times.
• In Libya, Colonel Muammar Qaddafi assumes power as premier after more than a year in power, despite attempts to overthrow him.
• Books in print now include Saul Bellow's Mr. Sammler's Planet, James Dickey's Deliverance, and Love Story, by classics professor-turned-writer Erich Segal.
• Five Arab nations meet in Cairo, Egypt, and resolve to continue to fight for Israeli-occupied territory. Many question the nature of U.S.-Middle East relations with respect to Israel.
• Egyptian President Gamal Abdal Nasser, who later dies in September, accepts an American Peace Proposal for the Middle East. Despite a cease-fire, other states embark on intermittent guerilla violence, and deliberate efforts begin at the United Nations to settle the dispute.
• Crossing Australia from one end to the other, the Indian-Pacific Express railway begins running twice a week. It travels over 2,000 miles between Sydney and Perth.
• The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is created by Congress to control air and water pollution.

1971

• The 26th Amendment lowers the United States' voting age from 21 to 18.
• South Vietnamese forces begin an offensive in Cambodia with American support, but are repulsed after six weeks; the United States reduces its troops in Vietnam to about 200,000.
• Chinese defense minister Lin Pao attempts a failed coup against Mao Zedong and is killed in a plane crash. China is officially seated in the United Nations and launches its first space satellite.
• Masterpiece Theater, All in the Family, and The Electric Company premiere on television.
• Soviet dissident Andrei Solzhenitsyn receives the Nobel Prize for Literature.
• The Supreme Court upholds a measure to bus children in order to enforce integration in schools; a bussing plan imposed in Austin, Texas, draws the criticism of Alabama Governor George Wallace, who had previously urged southern senators to defy integration.
• Soft contact lenses (invented in 1962) receive FDA approval.
• Cigarette sales top $540 billion despite a partial ban on cigarette advertising. A report from British experts likens the mortality rates from cigarette smoking to that of virulent cholera or typhoid epidemics.
• Concerned about inflation, President Richard Nixon announces a ``New Economic Policy'' that includes a 90-day wage freeze, the imposition of a 10% import surcharge, and a freeze on the conversion of dollars to gold. Despite a record one-day jump of almost 33 points in the Dow, the uncooperative AFL-CIO has ``absolutely no faith'' in the measure.
• ``The Pentagon Papers,'' a highly classified document detailing U.S. involvement in Vietnam, is submitted to the New York Times and The Washington Post by Defense Department official Daniel Ellsberg.

1972

• United States President Richard Nixon has an unprecedented state visit with Chairman Mao Zedong in Bejing. Nixon takes advantage of the Sino-Soviet split to ease decades-old American hostilities towards China.
• Offerings in popular culture include M*A*S*H, The Godfather, Don McLean's ``American Pie'' and books such as Watership Down. In musical theater, Cabaret, Pippin and Grease hit the boards.
• United States President Richard Nixon makes an historic visit to the USSR. In the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) I, Nixon and Brezhnev negotiate reductions in their nuclear arsenals. The talks mark a warming in the Cold War and usher in the era of détente.
• Richard Leakey and Glynn Isaac find a skull in Kenya which potentially dates the first humans to 2.5 million B.C. Richard's father Louis, a famed archaeologist, dies this year.
• Bobby Fischer defeats Boris Spassky to become the first American to hold the world chess title.
• Sporadic violence in Northern Ireland takes off on ``Bloody Sunday'' when 13 Roman-Catholics are shot by British troops during a riot. Two months later, Britain assumes direct control of the North Irish government, dissolving the Ulster Parliament.
• Frederick Smith, age 27, founds Federal Express with $72 million in venture capital. It carries 16 packages on its inaugural night, not yet a challenge to the U.S. postal service.
• The United States resumes bombing on the North Vietnam cities Hanoi and Haiphong, leading to arguments in the Senate.
• The Dow Jones Industrial Average crosses the 1000-point mark for the first time in history.
• Three years after Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos is elected, he declares martial law to combat terrorism and a supposed Communist rebellion; thousands are killed as the government imposes order.
• Five men are arrested inside the new Democratic National Headquarters with surveillance equipment and cameras, marking the beginning of the Watergate Scandal that destroys Nixon's presidency. Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein begin to investigate.
• The Senate approves the Equal Rights Amendment, guaranteeing equality for women. The amendment will not become the law of the land, however, as it fails to be ratified by the required number of states.
• Nike, Inc. is founded by Philip H. Knight and William Bowerman, who have been importing Japanese running shoes for the past six years. Nike becomes the world's largest sneaker company.

1973

• Direct American involvement in Vietnam ends with the January declaration of a ceasefire. Bombing of Cambodia continues in an effort to retrieve POWs.
• U.S. Vice-President Spiro Agnew resigns for tax evasion and is replaced by Senate Minority Leader Gerald Ford. National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger becomes secretary of state.
• Fierce fighting surrounds the beginning of the Arab-Israeli Yom Kippur War. The United States supplies Israel with military equipment to offset Soviet support of Arab forces. A United Nations resolution sponsored by the U.S. and U.S.S.R. calls for a ceasefire, finally effected in late October.
• In Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court rules that women have the unrestricted right to abortion in the first trimester of pregnancy, after which the state has some interest in protecting the fetus.
• Both East and West Germany are admitted to the United Nations.
• The tennis match was billed as the ``battle of the sexes''; Billie Jean King, an outspoken proponent of female equality, triumphs over former Wimbledon champ Bobby Riggs in 3 straight sets.
• Chile's Marxist President Salvador Allende Gossens is overthrown and dies under suspicious circumstances; he is replaced by right-wing dictator General Augusto Pinochet Ugarto.
• A global energy crisis emerges, and President Nixon encourages conservation of energy, pointing out that the U.S. has 6% of the population but consumes one-third of the world's energy. Arab nations exacerbate the energy crunch, cutting back oil production for political reasons.
• The towering World Trade Center becomes New York City's latest calling card. The structure briefly reigns as the tallest in the world; the Sears Tower tops it the next year.
• Considered by some to be the greatest artist of the century, Pablo Picasso dies at age 91.
• Erica Jong publishes the startling Fear of Flying. Also new this year is Gravity's Rainbow, one of Thomas Pynchon's best-known works, and The Castle of Crossed Destinies, by maestro of magic realism Italo Calvino.
• Heavyweight boxer George Foreman gains the world championship by knocking out Joe Frazier.

1974

• Richard Nixon becomes the first United States president to resign office. Nixon sought to avoid an impeachment trial stemming from lurid Watergate discoveries. Vice-President Gerald Ford is sworn in and grants Nixon a full pardon.
• Dreyfus offers the first money-market fund for small individual investors. Within six years, there will be over 100 such funds available.
• Primitive word processors begin to populate offices. The machines resemble typewriters and permit basic text-editing.
• Congress approves the Election Reform Act, limiting contributions to presidential campaigns and capping the presidential candidate's budget. The act encourages the growth of political action committees (PACs).
• French President Georges Pompidou dies of cancer; former minister of finance Valery Giscard d'Estaing assumes office and continues Gaullist independent foreign policy.
• EMI Records, flush from sales of The Beatles' records, develops the CAT scanner which is found in broad use this year and enhances the diagnostic process.
• Inflation is climbing around the world; the Dow Jones' low of 570.01 is half of its high (1036.27) of two years ago.
• Turkish forces invade Cyprus, spurring Greece to mobilize troops. Former Premier Constantine Karamanlis returns from exile to head the Greek government after the military junta resigns.
• India successfully detonates an atomic bomb and becomes the fifth nuclear power in the world.
• OPEC jacks up oil prices, and President Nixon signs an act limiting highway speeds to 55 MPH which successfully conserves fuel.
• Dr. Henry Heimlich describes the Heimlich Maneuver, a technique to help prevent people from choking to death, in a medical journal.
• Americans Jimmy Connors and Chris Evert win the men's and women's singles respectively at the Wimbledon tennis championship.

1975

• The last American troops leave Vietnam as North Vietnamese troops complete an invasion of South Vietnam and unite both countries under Communist rule. The final death toll of the war is roughly 1.3 million Vietnamese and more than 56,000 American lives.
• China holds its Fourth National People's Congress to adopt a new national constitution and give the Central Committee Chairman, Mao Zedong, direct control of the military.
• The Cambodian Khmer Rouge, led by Communist Pol Pot, defeats Lon Nol's government and institutes a reign of terror.
• Microsoft is in business in Seattle, Washington. The computer software company is founded by Paul Allen, age 22, and Bill Gates, age 19 and a Harvard drop-out.
• King Faisal of Saudi Arabia is assassinated by his nephew, who is shortly beheaded. Faisal's brother assumes power, continuing moderate policies in OPEC.
• Discos reign over the dancing scene, as people do ``The Hustle'' and groove to The Bee Gees and Donna Summer.
• 36 nations agree to the Helsinki Accords, which outlines the policy for détente between East and West.
• Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi is convicted of electoral fraud. Despite calls for her resignation, Gandhi stays in office, suppressing civil liberties yet instituting some agricultural reforms.
• Civil war erupts in Lebanon.
• Space is getting to be a friendly place; American and Soviet astronauts exchange neighborly visits when Apollo 18 and Soyuz 19 join in an orbital linkup.

1976

• Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai dies of cancer and Central Committee Chairman Mao Zedong dies of Parkinson's disease, prompting sometimes violent power struggles in China.
• Making the first step in his media empire, Ted Turner establishes WTBS Superstation in Atlanta. Australian Rupert Murdoch adds the New York Post to his already impressive stable of nearly 100 publications.
• The United States vetoes a United Nations Security Council resolution that proposes total Israeli withdrawal from Arab areas. The United States Ambassador Francis E. Melroy is killed in Beirut, and Americans are warned to leave Lebanon. Israel agrees to withdraw from more Sinai territory.
• A Wall Street merger forms Drexel Burnham Lambert, which will soon be a driving force in the high yield ``junk'' bond market.
• American demand is skyrocketing for denim jeans and jackets; production of this textile has nearly doubled in the past 3 years, from 482 million yards in 1973 to 820 million this year.
• College drop-outs Stephen Wozniak and Steven Jobs found Apple Computer in a garage.
• Science and technology make headway; fax machines become more common, and Wang builds word processors that are linked to central computers for office use.
• Secretary of State Henry Kissinger announces stricter sanctions against Rhodesia in an attempt to persuade prime minister Ian Smith to switch to majority rule. Smith agrees.
• In a reversal of a 1972 decision, the Supreme Court rules the death penalty constitutional.
• Southern Democrat Jimmy Carter beats Gerald Ford for election to the United States presidency.
• Roots is written by Alex Haley, becoming one of the most well-known narratives of slavery.

1977

• China restores Den Xiaoping to power and The Gang of Four is expelled.
• Former Indian Prime Minister Morarji R. Desai returns to power and Indira Ghandhi is arrested on charges of corruption.
• In finance, the leveraged buyout is introduced by the firm Kolhberg Kravis Roberts.
• U.S. President Jimmy Carter pardons almost all Vietnam draft evaders and calls them home from living abroad.
• Lung cancer becomes the second most common cancer among women.
• Steve Biko, an imprisoned black leader in South Africa, dies in prison from cruelty and neglect, which leads to renewed opposition to apartheid.
• Ethiopian President General Teferi Benti is killed in a council meeting and Lieutenant Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam is empowered as head of state. Mariam ejects American officials and forges an alliance with Communist forces.
• Rock pioneer Elvis Presley dies in Memphis. Charlie Chaplin passes away at age 88 and Bing Crosby at 83.
• Woody Allen's Annie Hall wins the Best Picture Oscar. Other Hollywood releases are Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind, George Lucas' classic Star Wars, and the disco-crazed Saturday Night Fever.
• Pakistani Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto loses power when his army chief of staff General Muhammad Zia ul-Haq imposes martial law.
• The world's last-known case of smallpox appears in Somalia, and the troublesome disease is considered eradicated when it does not appear for two more years.

1978

• Nearly 20 million Volkswagen Beetles have been manufactured since 1949; production is halted this year, and a new Beetle car will not be seen on the road until 1998.
• South African Prime Minister Balthazar Johannes Vorster is replaced by Pieter Willem Botha, who begins dismantling apartheid.
• Nylon draped over paths in a Kansas City park is Christo's latest sculpture.
• Angered by land and other government reforms, Muslim fundamentalists spark riots in Iran and demand removal of the Shah. After failed attempts at appeasement, martial law is imposed.
• In a bizarre cult display, Jim Jones and over 900 followers drink Kool-Aid spiked with cyanide in a mass suicide in Jonestown, Guyana.
• A reportedly Soviet-supported coup occurs in Afghanistan when President Muhammad Daud Khan is murdered and power is seized by the pro-Communist Nur Muhammad Taraki.
• The United States recognizes the People's Republic of China.
• 98% of all American households have a television.
• The world's first test-tube baby, Louise Brown, is born in London to mom Lesley Brown.
• U.S. President Jimmy Carter, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin reach the Camp David Accord.
• Coca-Cola signs a deal to have exclusive selling rights in China, while Pepsi-Cola has a similar arrangement in the U.S.S.R..

1979

• The Iranian Shah flees Iran, and Shiite Muslim leader Ayatollah Khomeini invades Iran. Thousands are killed in fighting and mass executions. The Shah seeks asylum in the United States for a gallbladder operation, and terrorists seize the American embassy and over 60 hostages.
• Egyptian President Sadat and Israel's Prime Minister Begin sign a peace treaty with the help of United States President Jimmy Carter; other Arab nations protest the treaty.
• Violence in Northern Ireland continues when a bomb kills Lord Mountbatten and three others, and injures three more.
• Sony introduces the Walkman radio.
• The U.S.S.R. invades Afghanistan and directs a coup that puts Babrak Kamal in power.
• In broadcasting, nighttime soap operas revel in villainy; Knots Landing joins Dallas on the air, and Dynasty makes its premiere in two years.
• Blacks are enfranchised when Rhodesian whites ratify a new constitution which establishes a black majority in the senate and assembly; the country is renamed Zimbabwe Rhodesia.
• An oil-well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico becomes the largest spill ever as 3.5 million barrels of oil pollute the sea; confidence in environmental protection devices is shaken.
• A nuclear-related accident at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania causes the evacuation of over 100,000 people.
• Oil shortages mean long lines at gas stations, and Paul Volcker, new chairman of the Federal Reserve, moves to stop inflation by raising interest rates.
• Jerry Falwell establishes the Moral Majority, which attempts to block the Equal Rights Amendment, among other conservative efforts.

1980

• The United States attempts to rescue the American hostages held in Iran but fails.
• Voyager I, a NASA probe, explores Saturn.
• Iraq launches an air strike and begins the 8-year Iran-Iraqi War.
• Ted Turner launches CNN, which will air news 24 hours a day on cable television.
• In movies, Ordinary People wins Best Picture, Best Director for Robert Redford, and Best Supporting Actor for Timothy Hutton at the Academy Awards. Robert DeNiro walks away with Best Actor for Raging Bull, a film by Martin Scorsese.
• After Lech Walesa leads a strike by shipyard workers, Poland's Solidarity Party becomes an independent labor union, the first in the sphere of Soviet influence.
• Yugoslavian President Tito dies, leading to a power struggle in this liberal Communist state.
• In Washington, Mount St. Helens erupts.
• The United States and 57 other countries boycott the Moscow summer Olympics in protest of Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
• Cigarette sales exceed $600 billion. Although smoking among adults has declined, it has been on the rise for teenage girls.
• Republican Ronald Reagan, former actor and California governor, is elected president of the United States, ousting incumbent Jimmy Carter. Inflation is running at double-digits, and gas is around $1.20/gallon. To combat the recession, Reagan has developed an election platform based on supply-side economics.
• Music legend John Lennon is shot in New York City.

1981

• After 444 days in captivity, American hostages in Iran are released by the Iranian Ayatollah Khomeini.
• IBM sells its first personal computer. The operating system, MS-DOS, was developed by Bill Gates's Microsoft.
• AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) begins to be recognized as an epidemic.
• Francois Mitterrand becomes president of France.
• Both Pope John Paul II and President Reagan are wounded in assassination attempts. U.S. press secretary James Brady, severely wounded in the latter attack, will become the namesake of a bill advocating greater gun control.
• Walter Cronkite retires from his anchorman position, to be succeeded by Dan Rather.
• President Ronald Reagan launches a supply-side economic program which entails tax and budget cuts but also leads to an explosion of the national deficit.
• Sandra Day O'Connor becomes the first woman to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court. Subsequent changes, such as the appointment of Anthony Scalia to the Court and of William Rehnquist to Chief Justice, mark the turning of the Court to a more conservative judicial stance.
• The irreverent MTV launches on cable television, featuring music videos.
• In a union hailed as a ``fairy-tale'' match, Prince Charles of England marries Lady Diana Spencer. Millions watch the televised nuptials.

1982

• Violence re-ignites between the PLO and Israel in an Arab-Israeli war. Israel invades Lebanon, moving into West Beirut and ousting PLO forces.
• The haunting Vietnam War Memorial, designed by Maya Lin, is dedicated in Washington, D.C.. The memorial lists the names of military personnel either killed or missing in this conflict.
• U.S. Surgeon Everett Koop denounces cigarette smoking.
• Argentina invades the Falkland Islands, and Britain moves in to protect its territory.
• Steven Spielberg's E.T. thrills audiences and becomes the highest-grossing movie yet. Tootsie, Poltergeist and Oscar-winner Gandhi are other Hollywood productions of the year.
• After an 8-year anti-trust suit, telephone behemoth AT&T is fragmented into several companies.
• The Canada Act replaces Canada's 1867 constitution.
• Columbia completes its first mission in space; it is the first space shuttle, which allows vehicles to be reused in space missions.
• In West Germany, Helmut Kohl becomes chancellor. In less than a decade, Kohl will shepherd his country through unification with East Germany.
• The first successful heart transplant is performed in Salt Lake City, Utah.
• Alice Walker publishes The Color Purple, and Cheers begins its 11-year run on television.

1983

• The U.S. Embassy in Lebanon is bombed in a terrorist attack which kills 63. In another attack in Lebanon, U.S Marine and French barracks explode, killing 248 Americans and 58 French citizens.
• Cellular phones make their first U.S. appearance in Chicago.
• Crack cocaine is developed. This highly addictive substance will have disastrous consequences for many American individuals and communities.
• In agriculture, American farmers are subsidized with a PIK (payment-in-kind) program.
• A new chapter opens in the history of toys as Cabbage Patch dolls become a fanatically sought item.
• Eighties music gathers speed as Michael Jackson's Thriller tells millions to ``Beat It.'' Other chart-toppers include ``Every Breath You Take'' (The Police), ``Karma Chameleon'' (Culture Club), and ``All Night Long'' (Lionel Ritchie).
• For 131 years the United States held America's Cup; this year, Australia II takes home the prestigious sailing trophy.
• The U.S. economy begins to emerge from recession, and the . Dow Jones starts to recover.
• Fearing that Grenada may become a Communist outpost, President Reagan sends American troops to combat a recent coup by Deputy Prime Minister Bernard Coard. American allies disapprove of the move.
• David Mamet's play Glengarry Glen Ross premieres in London. Mamet will receive the Pulitzer Prize for drama the following year.

1984

• Over 1,000 are killed when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi sends troops to the Sikh Golden Temple in India.
• Madonna gets her first hit with ``Like a Virgin,'' and Prince releases his album Purple Rain.
• The Olympic Games take place in Los Angeles and are boycotted by fourteen countries of the Soviet bloc.
• John McEnroe wins both the Wimbledon and the U.S. Open tennis championships.
• Shimon Peres becomes prime minister of Israel.
• Apple Computer, founded by Stephen Wozniak and Steven Jobs, releases the Macintosh personal computer.
• British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, a fan of the free market, privatizes telephone service.
• Photographer Ansel Adams dies at age 82.
• Famine in Ethiopia kills hundreds of thousands.
• Incumbent Ronald Reagan wins re-election to the U.S. presidency. His Democrat opponents are Walter Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro, who is the first woman to run for vice-president from a major political party.

1985

• Mikhail Gorbachev becomes general secretary of the Communist Party in the U.S.S.R.. Under Gorbachev's leadership, economic reforms and policies such as ``glasnost'' (openness), lead to a major easing of the cold war with Western powers.
• The first version of the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Act is signed into law in order to control the U.S. national deficit.
• The musical Les Miserables, based on the novel by Victor Hugo, premieres in London. Neil Simon's Biloxi Blues appears at the Neil Simon Theater in New York City.
• Sandinista Daniel Ortega becomes president of Nicaragua and makes peace overtures to the U.S. However, American policy continues to support the Contras in their revolt against the Nicaraguan government
• Anne Tyler's book, The Accidental Tourist, is published and four years later is made into a movie starring William Hurt and Kathleen Turner.
• The manufacturer of the Dalkon Shield, a form of intra-uterine birth control, earmarks over $600 million to settle a class-action suit brought by its users.
• In organized crime, John Gotti is suspected of masterminding the murder of Paul Castellano in a bid for control of the Gambino crime family, which has ruled the streets of New York City for much of the century.

1986

• The United States bombs Tripoli, the capital of Libya, after terrorist groups attack a West Berlin disco.
• The space shuttle Challenger explodes after lift-off, generating national mourning and a setback for the U.S. space program.
• A prominent nonviolent fighter against apartheid, Desmond Tutu becomes archbishop of Cape Town, South Africa.
• The U.S. national debt exceeds $2 trillion and is accompanied by a trade deficit of over $170 billion.
• In the world's worst nuclear accident, the Chernobyl plant in the Ukraine explodes, polluting the environment and causing perhaps 8,000 short-term deaths.
• Oliver Stone's Vietnam-era movie, Platoon, earns Best Picture and Best Director at the Academy Awards.
• Electronic games from Nintendo debut.
• Ivan Boesky and Dennis Levine both plead guilty to insider trading after using non-public information in financial transactions.
• A bombshell lands in American politics as it is discovered that the U.S. is selling arms to Iran during its war with Iraq and using the profits to fund Contra forces in Nicaragua. Congress proceeds to investigate the Iran-Contra affair.

1987

• Oliver North, John Poindexter and Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger testify to Congress about the Iran-Contra Affair.
• A new step occurs in U.S.-Canada relations, as the two countries sign a free-trade agreement. Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney encounters some opposition from Liberal and New Democratic parties, which delays ratification.
• Toni Morrison will receive a Pulitzer Prize for her novel Beloved, published this year.
• Director John Huston makes his last film this year. The Dead stars daughter Anjelica Huston.
• It is the age of music videos in rock music; Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, U2, and Pink Floyd all release new albums.
• Soviet Secretary Gorbachev and U.S. President Reagan sign the INF Treaty in Washington, D.C., to reduce their nuclear stockpiles.
• Nazi leader Klaus Barbie is convicted of World War II crimes.
• Zulu chief Buthelezi begins a civil war against South Africa's Africa National Congress.

1988

• With a death toll of 1.5 million, the Iran-Iraq War ends after 8 years.
• In an attempt to remove dictator Manuel Noriega from power in Panama, the U.S. indicts Noriega for bribery.
• Investment firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts pays nearly $30 billion for R.J. Reynolds-Nabisco, which merged in 1985, in the largest leveraged buyout ever. The investment deal will become the subject of a book and television movie, Barbarians at the Gate.
• King Hussein of Jordan renounces control of the West Bank in favor of the PLO.
• In Pakistan, General Zia ul-Haq dies mysteriously, and Benazir Bhutto is elected prime minister.
• Salman Rushdie publishes The Satanic Verses, enraging many Muslim readers and prompting the Ayatollah Khomeini to put out a death warrant on Rushdie the next year.
• In movies, Dustin Hoffman nabs the Best Actor Academy Award for Rain Man, which also wins Best Picture.
• The Securities and Exchange Commission begins to investigate Michael Milken of the investment firm Drexel Burnham Lambert for violation of securities law. Milken has pioneered the use of high-yield ``junk'' bonds in the `80s craze for mergers and acquisitions.
• In Myanmar, a military coup seizes control of the government, suppressing demonstrations in Yangon (Rangoon), the capital.
• Vice-President George Bush wins the presidential election, defeating Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis.

1989

• Soviet forces leave Afghanistan after nine years of war.
• In the wake of Gorbachev's glasnost, a wave of political activity erodes historic cold war divisions. Soviet states, such as Lithuania and the Ukraine, agitate for independence. East Germany allows citizens to leave the country without exit visas, resulting in a breech of the ``iron curtain'' and a rush of migration to West Germany. The Berlin Wall, symbol of the chilly, decades-old division between East and West, begins to be dismantled piece by piece.
• Nicolae Ceausescu, brutal military dictator of Romania, is overthrown.
• U.S. savings and loan institutions have been failing and losing billions of dollars. The Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation fails this year, prompting new government control of the crisis.
• Vaclav Havel and Civic Forum dissident groups rise against the Communist government of Czechoslovakia and successfully install a multiparty government.
• In Paris, I.M. Pei's pyramid entrance to the Louvre Museum opens to visitors.
• The United States invades Panama to arrest General Noriega on charges of drug trafficking. Noriega escapes briefly to the residence of the Papal Nuncio in Panama City before surrendering to U.S. authorities.
• Chilean voters elect Patricio Aylwin president, formalizing the end of General Pinochet's repressive regime.
• Brazil, the economic heavyweight of South America, has profited from land clearances in the Amazon basin through the 1980s despite the protests of environmentalists. With a loan from the World Bank, Brazil begins to regulate clearances.
• 10 million gallons of oil pollute Alaskan waters when the Exxon Valdez runs aground.

1990

• Approximately 70% of Americans live in cities.
• The Communist party relinquishes its monopoly on power in Yugoslavia, and ethnic tensions increase.
• Syrian troops enter Beirut to intervene in Lebanon's civil war.
• Nelson Mandela is released from a South African prison after serving 27 years for his opposition to apartheid.
• Space shuttle Discovery is launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, carrying the Hubble Space Telescope.
• Sammy Davis, Jr., a legendary African-American variety entertainer, dies at age 65.
• Operation Desert Shield begins in the Persian Gulf, as the United States sends troops to Saudi Arabia after Iraq annexes Kuwait. Yellow ribbons become an American symbol of troop support.
• In response to its invasion of Kuwait, Iraq receives crippling sanctions from the United Nations.
• Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan is forced out of office after being accused of incompetence and corruption estimated at $1.5 billion.
• East and West Germany are united as one country for the first time since World War II.
• Japan's Akihito formally assumes the Chrysanthemum Throne.
• The Cold War further thaws during a Conference of Security and Cooperation in Europe; NATO and Warsaw Pact forces are reduced.
• The office of prime minister of Great Britain transfers to John Major as Margaret Thatcher resigns.
• The movie Dances With Wolves is released. Directed by and starring Kevin Costner, the film will receive the Academy Award for Best Picture of 1990. Ghost, with Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore, and Hamlet, featuring Mel Gibson and Glenn Close, are other Hollywood releases.
• Former priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide becomes Haiti's first democratically elected president.
• After winning a popular election, Lech Walesa becomes president of post-communist Poland.

1991

• The Persian Gulf War begins as the United States and its allies begin bombing Iraq and Kuwait on January 17. Operation Desert Storm begins February 24, with an invasion of Iraq and Kuwait under the leadership of General Norman Schwarzkopf. Iraq accepts the terms of a cease fire shortly thereafter.
• Neil Simon's play Lost in Yonkers premieres; the play will win Simon a Pulitzer Prize.
• In South Africa, the remaining laws for apartheid are repealed.
• New Hampshire high school teacher Pam Smart is convicted of murder after she seduces a student and persuades him to kill her husband.
• The Warsaw Pact is officially dissolved.
• The Dow Jones tops 3000 for the first time, hitting 3004.46 on April 17th.
• In South Africa, Winnie Mandela is sentenced to six years in prison for her participation in the kidnapping and beating of three young men and the death of a fourth.
• Slovenia and Croatia declare their independence from Yugoslavia, and are soon followed by Bosnia, Hercegovina, and Macedonia. Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic objects, and the intervention of the militia escalates into civil war.
• Jeffrey Dahmer, who allegedly drugged, raped, and cannibalized his 17 victims, is arrested by Milwaukee police.
• The U.S. Senate approves the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court despite allegations by Anita Hill of sexual harassment. Thomas becomes the second African American to serve on the court.
• The USSR officially ends, as the Baltic republics declare their independence and the Communist party is stripped of its power. The Commonwealth of Independent States becomes a loose federation of most former Soviet republics, and Boris Yeltsin becomes president of the newly reconstituted Russia.
• United Nations peacekeeping forces enter South Korea to end civil war and oversee elections.
• The United States and the Soviet Union agree to cut back long-range nuclear weapons by over 30% by 1999.

1992

• The Internet Society is chartered, and 1,000,000 host computers are connected in a network. The term "surfing the net" is coined by Jean Polly as an increasing number of people begin exploring the online world.
• About one-third of all American businesses are owned by women, 4% by African Americans, and 5% by Hispanics.
• A French court convicts three officials of allowing HIV-infected blood to be used in transfusions.
• The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, created in 1918, collapses as Europe officially recognizes the republics of Croatia and Slovenia.
• Government officials and rebel leaders sign a pact in Mexico City that ends El Salvador's civil war.
• New York City mob king John Gotti is convicted of five murders after years of eluding arrest.
• A Miami court convicts Manuel Noriega, former leader of Panama, on drug and racketeering charges.
• Euro Disney opens in Marne-La-Vallee, France, to the dismay of French intellectuals lamenting the spread of American popular culture.
• Beijing, China opens its first McDonald's.
• Riots erupt in Los Angeles after local policemen are acquitted of beating Rodney King the previous year in a videotaped incident.
• The International UFO Museum opens in Roswell, New Mexico.
• After a reign of terrorism in Peru, Shining Path is checked by the arrest of leader Abimael Guzman.
• The man from Hope, Bill Clinton, Governor of Arkansas, is elected president of the United States.
• The Church of England allows women to be ordained priests.
• U.S. forces leave the Subic Bay Naval Station in the Philippines.
• Signed by Canada, Mexico, and the U.S., the North American Free Trade Agreement establishes the world's largest trading bloc.
• American forces enter Somalia to ensure proper food distribution to those starving from the civil war.
• In book publishing, Cormac McCarthy's All the Pretty Horses and Jane Smiley's A Thousand Acres both debut.
• In India, thousands of Hindu extremists destroy a mosque, igniting two months of Hindu-Muslim rioting that claims thousands of lives.
• In music, Eric Clapton's Unplugged is released. The album will win the Grammy for Best Album of 1992.

1993

• In the U.S., commemorative stamps of Elvis Presley go on sale January 8, which would have been his 58th birthday.
• Czechoslovakia splits into two new countries: the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
• The bombing of the World Trade Center in New York City kills 6 people and injures over 1,000, escalating fear of terrorism on American soil.
• Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List, a movie about the Holocaust, is released to critical acclaim. The film will win the Oscar for Best Picture of 1993.
• The Holocaust Memorial Museum is dedicated in Washington, D.C.
• Federal agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) raid the ranch of a Branch Davidian sect in Waco, Texas, beginning a 51-day standoff. The crisis ends when federal agents storm the compound of the Davidians. Within hours, their compound becomes engulfed in flames, killing dozens inside.
• Queen Elizabeth II announces that Buckingham Palace will be opened to tourists in order to raise money to repair Windsor Castle, damaged by a fire the previous year.
• In Italy, Florence's Uffizi Gallery is bombed, damaging part of the palace and numerous works of art.
• U.S. President Bill Clinton institutes the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy for gays in the military.
• In Cambodia,the monarchy is re-established and Sihanouk becomes king 38 years after he originally renounced the throne.
• Twelve American soldiers are killed and others are missing when they come under attack in Somalia.
• Thousands of Muscovites protest against Russia's government as hard-line opponents of President Boris Yeltsin occupy the parliament building. The rebellion is put down the next day.
• Two researchers at George Washington University announce that they have successfully cloned nonviable human embryos.
• The Maastricht Treaty officially forms the European Union, building on the previous coalition known as the European Economic Community (EEC).
• The Hubble Space telescope is repaired, and its flawed primary mirror replaced.

1994

• In the United States, approximately 56% of men and 52% of women over the age of 15 are married.
• The first female U.S. attorney general, Janet Reno, appoints an independent counsel to investigate the Whitewater scandal, which allegedly implicates the Clintons in a fraudulent real estate scheme.
• Figure skater Nancy Kerrigan is physically assaulted in an attempt to eliminate her from competing in the 1994 Winter Olympics. Tonya Harding, Kerrigan's rival, and her ex-husband are among those later prosecuted for the attack.
• The Clinton administration's efforts to reform health care fall apart.
• In New York, four men are convicted of bombing the World Trade Center.
• The presidents of Rwanda and Burundi die in a plane crash near Rwanda's capital. The next day, a civil war erupts that claims the lives of thousands.
• The first multiracial free elections are held in South Africa, leading to the triumph of the African National Congress and the election of Nelson Mandela to the presidency.
• Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis dies of non-Hodgkins lymphoma cancer.
• Paula Jones files a sexual harassment suit against United States President Bill Clinton.
• Nicole Simpson and Ronald Goldman are stabbed to death in Los Angeles, California. Five days later, O.J. Simpson is arrested for the murders.
• Israel's Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Jordan's King Hussein I sign a treaty ending the countries' formal state of war.
• In movies, Forrest Gump, starring Tom Hanks, is released and will win an Oscar for Best Picture of 1994.
• In a testament to the escalation of everyday Internet usage, America Online announces that it has reached 1 million subscribers.
• The median income for the American family is $38,782.
• The Republicans win a majority in the House as the Whitewater investigation becomes a problem for the Clintons.
• The Justice Department charges CIA veteran Aldrich Ames with having sold national security secrets to the U.S.S.R.
• The Channel Tunnel (Chunnel) opens between Britain and France.
• Microsoft's founder, Bill Gates, purchases a manuscript written by Leonardo da Vinci for $30.8 million. The work records da Vinci's theories on the movement of air and water.
• John Salvi kills two people when he storms two abortion clinics in Boston, Massachusetts. He commits suicide in prison two years later.
• Israeli leaders Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres and Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) leader Yasir Arafat are awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for the Middle East Peace Accord of 1993.

1995

• The United States House Ethics Committee agrees unanimously to have an independent counsel investigate Newt Gingrich's tax record.
• The History Channel, a subsidiary of A&E Television Networks, launches on cable television and soon becomes the fastest-growing cable network.
• Following the collapse of the peso, the United States authorizes aid in excess of $20 billion to assist Mexico.
• United Nations peace-keeping forces leave Somalia.
• The bombing of the Murrah Federal building in Oklahoma City kills 168 people, leading to nationwide mourning. An FBI investigation leads quickly to the arrest of Army-veteran Timothy McVeigh. It is the worst terrorist attack ever on U.S. soil.
• The first rendezvous of a NASA spacecraft with the Russian space station Mir occurs in a historic advance of the space program.
• An uneasy truce is established between Russia and the breakaway republic of Chechnya. The yearlong war has taken 25,000 lives.
• In Union, South Carolina, Susan Smith is found guilty of drowning her two sons, 3-year-old Michael and 14-month-old Alex, allegedly in order to gain the affection of a man who did not want children. She is sentenced to life in prison.
• The U.S. government partially shuts down because of federal budget issues.
• In a victory for coeducation, Shannon Faulkner becomes the first woman to be admitted to the all-male Citadel College after a protracted legal fight.
• To the chagrin of the international community, France detonates five underground nuclear devices on two South Pacific atolls.
• In October, Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan leads the "million man march" in Washington, DC.
• In United States baseball news, the Atlanta Braves win their first World Series.
• First Lady Hillary Clinton publishes the book, It Takes a Village, which discusses children's needs and the community.
• Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin is assassinated in Tel Aviv by Yigal Amir, a Jewish student angry at Rabin for giving [Israel] to the Arabs.
• Three American servicemen are charged with raping a 12-year-old girl in Okinawa, Japan. The crime sparked outrage in the country, causing Japanese to call for an end to the American military presence on the island.
• As part of Israel's plan to turn over the West Bank in accord with the Middle East peace process, control of the city of Bethlehem transfers to Palestinian authorities. The agreement will cost Yitzhak Rabin his life just weeks later.
• Serbia, Bosnia, and Croatia end fighting in Bosnia with the signing of a peace treaty, and the economic sanctions imposed by the United Nations are lifted. The three and a half years of war have claimed approximately 20,000 lives.
• In a stunning growth spurt, the Dow Jones increases by 33.5% and closes the year at 5117.2
• Dean Martin, an ex-Rat Pack member with Frank Sinatra, dies.
• During the Trial of the Century, O.J. Simpson is acquitted of the murders of his former wife, Nicole, and her friend Ronald Goldman. The verdict triggers nation-wide debates about race, wealth, and the American criminal justice system.

1996

• The United States population is estimated at 264.6 million.
• American film legend Gene Kelly and infamous pool player Minnesota Fats die.
• After a seventeen-year FBI search, Theodore Kaczynski is turned in by his brother as the Unabomber who killed 3 people and injured 23 in sustained acts of mail terrorism.
• The line-item veto is passed through Congress and signed into law by United States President Clinton.
• In Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu defeats Shimon Peres in an election to become prime minister, casting the Middle East peace process into uncertainty.
• Jazz great Ella Fitzgerald passes away.
• Nineteen U.S. servicemen are killed and hundreds wounded in Saudi Arabia when a bomb planted in a fuel truck explodes in front of an apartment complex housing military personnel.
• Protease inhibitors, a new kind of anti-viral drug, is found to dramatically reduce the levels of HIV in the blood of infected individuals.
• During the 100th anniversary of the Olympics, a bomb explodes in Atlanta's Centennial Park, killing one and injuring 111 others.
• Though unpopular, Russian President Boris Yeltsin is re-elected, beating Gennady Zyuganov, the leader of the Communist Party.
• Just minutes after taking off from John F. Kennedy International Airport, Paris-bound TWA flight 800 explodes off the coast of Long Island, killing 230 on board.
• At age 20, Tiger Woods wins the U.S. Amateur Golf Tournament for the third year in a row and turns to a professional career.
• After fifteen years of marriage, Prince Charles and Princess Diana of Great Britain are divorced.
• A shooting in Las Vegas results in the death of rapper Tupac Shakur.
• Continued fighting in central Africa between Tutsi and Hutu creates a refugee crisis after fearful Hutu responsible for the murders of more than 500,000 Tutsi flee to Zaire, Tanzania, and Burundi.
• Pursuant to the Dayton peace accords, armies in Bosnia retreat and national elections are held. Bosnian Muslim President Alija Izetbegovic is elected to lead a presidency that will include a Serb and a Croat.
• Democrat Bill Clinton is re-elected president of the U.S., though Republicans retain control of Congress.
• Tupac Amaru rebels take about 600 people hostage during a reception at the Japanese ambassador's house in Lima, Peru. President Alberto Fujimoro refuses to negotiate with the rebels, who were are killed during a rescue operation four months later.
• In a mysterious case that will lead the tabloids and the police on a goosechase, 6-year-old child beauty pageant queen JonBenet Ramsey is found dead in her parents' cellar in Boulder, Colorado.
• Madeline Albright becomes the first female secretary of state.

1997

• Rwanda disintegrates into civil war as escalating ethnic violence between Hutus and Tutsis ravages the country.
• The Hebron Accord, designed to promote peace between Israel and Palestine, is undermined by both sides as terrorism breaks out and the building of new settlements defies non-expansionist agreements.
• Despite his acquittal in the criminal case, O.J. Simpson loses a civil case to the families of the deceased Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman.
• James Cameron's movie Titanic, based on the infamous 1912 tragedy, costs more than $250 million to make, but becomes a blockbuster hit. Its theme song, My Heart Will Go On, recorded by Celine Dion, will win the Oscar as Best Song of 1997 and the film takes home Best Picture of 1997 honors.
• The Democratic Party is accused of receiving illegal donations, including some generated by inappropriate use of the White House.
• Thirty-nine members of the Heaven's Gate cult commit suicide in a mansion outside of San Diego, California, preparing to board a spaceship they claimed was following the Hale-Bopp comet.
• After experiencing a plunge related to the crisis of Asian markets, Wall Street rebounds and continues to climb. For the third consecutive year, the Dow Jones rose 20 percent.
• Zaire's corrupt leader, Mobutu Sese Seko, is overthrown in May, and Laurent Kabila's guerrilla movement assumes power and changes Zaire's name to the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
• Timothy McVeigh is found guilty of the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. He is sentenced to death for the crime.
• Leaders of the tobacco industry offer to pay $368 billion if numerous states agree to drop lawsuits filed against them.
• Albania's attempt at democracy and a free market goes disastrously awry when citizens lose an estimated $1.2 billion in a nationwide swindle. Resulting riots kill more than 1,500 people and end only when international intervention ousts President Sali Berisha and restores order and President Sali Berisha steps down.
• In Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge tries the former brutal dictator Pol Pot and sentences him to lifetime arrest.
• Hong Kong is returned to the Chinese after years of British sovereignty but maintains its status as a free market port.
• Space exploration leaps forward as the NASA probe Pathfinder lands on Mars to research the fourth planet from the Sun. Traffic gluts the Pathfinder's Internet site, which airs live shots from the sturdy rover Sojourner.
• Dolly the sheep becomes a celebrity when Scottish researchers announce that she is a clone of another living mammal.
• In a tragedy that stuns the world, Princess Diana is killed in an automobile accident with her close friend Dodi Fayed. Tests reveal that the driver of the car, Henri Paul, was legally drunk.
• The collapse of the Thailand economy sparks a chain reaction that leads to an Asian economic crisis and the eventual collapse of the Russian market.
• Mother Teresa, the Roman Catholic nun who spent much of her life comforting Calcutta's destitute and dying, dies of a heart attack. Her efforts earned her the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979.
• The triumph of Tony Blair and the Labour party ends eighteen years of Conservative rule in Britain. Blair's controversial meeting with Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams supports peace in Northern Ireland.
• In defiance of the agreement reached at the end of the Persian Gulf War, Iraq expels members of the United Nations Inspection Team who were attempting to ascertain the presence of nuclear and biological weapons.
• The world's only surviving septuplets are born to Kenny and Bobbi McCaughey.
• America Online announces that its membership has reached 10 million people.

1998

• El Nino, a large-scale periodic warming of the tropical Pacific Ocean, affects the world climate, upsetting normal weather patterns.
• Millions are clicking their mouses on the Internet. The online population numbers between 30-60 million users, and it is estimated that there are 5 million web sites in January 1998.
• Tension mounts in Kosovo as the ethnic Albanian majority demands greater autonomy from Serb-dominated Yugoslavia.
• Northern Ireland acquires a fragile peace when the Good Friday Accord is signed after 22 months of negotiations and 30 years of violence.
• Bill Gates' company, Microsoft, is charged with allegedly using an operating-system monopoly to unfairly expand into the Internet industry.
• To the dismay of many in the Western world, India and Pakistan, historic enemies, conduct independent underground nuclear tests.
• Asian currencies and stock markets continue to plunge, creating an economic crisis for the continent.
• Steven Spielberg's hit movie Saving Private Ryan brings World War II heroism to the big screen.
• 258 people are killed when two American embassies are destroyed by terrorist bombings that were allegedly orchestrated by Islamic radical Osama bin Laden. The United States retaliates with air strikes against Afghanistan and Sudan.
• As the ruble is devalued, international loans go unpaid, and the meager incomes of Russians continue to drop, the republic experiences its most economically difficult year since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1990.
• The Clinton sex scandal explodes when the president denies having a sexual relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, prompting Whitewater investigator Kenneth Starr to refocus his investigation. The explicit Starr Report is released in September, and Clinton becomes the second American president to be impeached.
• Gerhard Schroeder defeats German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, marking a shift in German politics from conservatism to a more left-of-center orientation.
• Hurricane Mitch pounds the Caribbean and Central America, killing thousands and wiping out much of the infrastructure that had taken years to build.
• With mediation from United States President Clinton, a meeting in Maryland between Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Yasir Arafat leads to progress in the Middle East peace talks.
• St. Louis Cardinal baseball player Mark McGwire breaks Roger Maris' single season home-run world record and finishes the season with 70 victorious homers. Chicago Cub Sammy Sosa also breaks the record with 66 home runs.
• The United States and Britain launch air strikes at Iraqi targets in retaliation for its failure to cooperate with the United Nations weapons inspections.

1999

• After 13 years as a star guard for the Chicago Bulls, Michael Jordan announces his retirement from basketball.
• United States President Clinton is acquitted of impeachment charges.
• After a reign of 46 years, King Hussein of Jordan dies of cancer and is succeeded by his son, King Abdullah.
• Joe DiMaggio, the renowned baseball centerfielder for the New York Yankees during their golden years in the 1940s, dies at age 84.
• Stanley Kubrick, the director of 2001: A Space Odyssey and A Clockwork Orange, dies at age 70.
• NATO goes to war against Yugoslavia to protect the ethnic Albanian majority in the province of Kosovo.
• Two teenage students kill 15 and wound 23 in Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado.
• Israel elects its most decorated soldier, Ehud Barak, as prime minister. Barak replaces Benjamin Netanyahu amid allegations of corruption within Netanyahu's administration, as well as criticism for his role in stalling the Middle East peace process.
• John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife, Carolyn Bessette, and Carolyn's sister Lauren die when Kennedy's private plane crashes off the coast of Massachusetts.
• An earthquake that kills some 17,000 people and leaves thousands of others homeless devastates eastern Turkey. Three months later, another earthquake rocks the northwest part of the country, claiming over 400 lives.
• During a United Nations-sponsored referendum, the people of East Timor vote to be independent of Indonesia, sparking an international crisis when pro-Indonesian forces retaliate by wreaking havoc on the new nation.
• For the second time in a decade, Russia launches a major offensive against separatist guerillas in the southern region of Chechnya.
• In a findings of fact, U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson calls Microsoft a monopoly that has used its power and profits to harm smaller firms producing competing products.
• Panama is scheduled to gain control of the Panama Canal from the United States in December.
• Russian President Boris Yeltsin resigns, naming as his successor Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
• As the year 2000 approaches, the world prepares itself for the various perceived challenges of Y2K.

2000

• Charles M. Schulz, creator of the classic comic strip Peanuts, dies at age 77 from cancer. He had announced his retirement on December 14, 1999 in an open letter to fans and he died just hours before the last original strip hit newsstands on February 13.
• Pope John Paul II travels to Israel, the first pontiff to do so since Paul VI in 1964. The ailing pope offered prayers at the Western Wall of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem and apologies for sins committed against Jews by members of the Roman Catholic Church throughout history.
• Vladimir Putin, anointed in 1999 by Russian President Boris Yeltsin as his successor, is formally elected president in March. Putin's election was greeted by mixed international reaction, as some feared a return to a more authoritarian--and expansionist--Russia.
• Chile's Augusto Pinochet is mentally and physically unfit to be extradited to Spain on charges of human rights abuses, ruled British Home Secretary Jack Straw. The 84-year-old former dictator returned to Chile after four years of house arrest in Great Britain. However, he was soon stripped of immunity from prosecution within Chile for murder and kidnapping.
• Software mega-giant Microsoft is found guilty of antitrust violations and ordered to break up into two separate companies. Microsoft CEO Bill Gates appealed the ruling.
• Syria's President Hafez al-Assad dies at age 69. After almost 30 years in office, the authoritarian leader, nicknamed "The Lion of Damascus," was mourned by Syrians and lionized by world leaders as a major player in Mideast peace negotiations, despite having been hostile to Israel.
• An international consortium of genetic researchers--collectively called the Human Genome Project--announce a scientific breakthrough: they had completely mapped the genetic code of a human chromosome, raising a plethora or medical, legal, and ethical questions.
• Elian Gonzalez, the six-year-old Cuban boy snatched from the sea after his mother and 10 others drowned in an attempt to flee the Castro regime and reach Florida in 1999, returns to Cuba with his father.
• Israel explodes in waves of violence as a new intifada ("uprising") is launched by Palestinian Arabs in response to Israeli General Ariel Sharon's provocative visit to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem (also sacred to Muslims as the site of the al-Aqsa Mosque). Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and PLO Chairman Yasir Arafat took tentative steps to rethink a new peace plan.
• Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic steps down from office in the former Yugoslavia. "The Butcher of the Balkans," notorious for his "ethnic cleansing" of non-Serbs in Kosovo and elsewhere, stepped down after domestic protests, general strikes, and international appeals.
• South Korean President Kim Dae-jung wins the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts at cooperation and reconciliation with communist North Korea.
• Nasdaq, the over-the-counter, technology-heavy stock index, declined 39 percent over the year, the w orst one-year slide in its history. The primary causes for the tumble were a slowing economy, rising federal interest rates, and the collapse of many dot.com companies.
• Baseball's New York Yankees become the first team to win three World Series championships in a row since the Oakland Athletics (1972-74).
• Hillary Rodham Clinton wins her bid for the U.S. Senate, becoming the first First Lady to be elected to public office. Mrs. Clinton relocated to New York to run for the Senate.
• President Bill Clinton becomes the first American president to visit Vietnam since Richard Nixon in 1969. Clinton, a one-time anti-Vietnam War protester, encouraged the Vietnamese to open themselves up to trade and freedom.
• Republican George W. Bush is finally declared the president-elect more than a month after Election Day, having lost the popular vote but having obtained the necessary number of electoral votes. A convoluted recount process in Florida ended when the U.S. Supreme Court, by a 5-4 majority, declared the recount constitutionally problematic, effectively handing the election to Bush late on December 12.
• The worst drought in 100 years strikes India, affecting about 130 million people. Ironically, later in the year, flooding became a problem in regions hit by monsoon rains.