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Discover the battles, declarations, discoveries, and defining moments that shaped America.
24 events
1863
Civil War
Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation declared enslaved people in areas still rebelling against the United States free and made emancipation a central Union war aim.
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1864
Civil War
John Wilkes Booth shot President Abraham Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre on April 14, 1865; Lincoln died the next morning as the Civil War was ending.
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1871
Spanish American War & American Expansion
The Great Chicago Fire swept through the rapidly growing city in October 1871, killing about 300 people, displacing roughly 100,000, and destroying thousands of buildings.
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1898
Spanish American War & American Expansion
The Spanish-American War was a brief conflict fought mainly in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines that ended Spanish colonial rule and expanded U.S. power overseas.
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1906
Spanish American War & American Expansion
The 1906 San Francisco earthquake and the fires that followed killed more than 3,000 people, left hundreds of thousands homeless, and transformed earthquake science and rebuilding.
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1941
World War II
Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor killed more than 2,400 Americans, crippled much of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, and brought the United States into World War II.
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1955–1956
Civil Rights
Black residents of Montgomery sustained a year-long bus boycott after Rosa Parks’s arrest, combining mass protest and legal action to defeat segregated city bus seating.
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1963
Civil Rights
President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas on November 22, 1963, triggering a rapid presidential transition, national mourning, and investigations that remain closely studied.
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1964
Civil Rights
Signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson on July 2, 1964, the Civil Rights Act outlawed major forms of segregation and discrimination and expanded federal civil rights enforcement.
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1969
Space Race & Apollo
Apollo 11 carried Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins to the Moon, achieving the first crewed lunar landing and returning safely to Earth in July 1969.
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1972
Vietnam War & Social Change
The June 17, 1972 burglary of Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate complex exposed political espionage and a cover-up that ultimately led to President Nixon’s resignation.
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2001
September 11th & War on terror
On September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda hijackers used four commercial airliners in coordinated attacks that killed 2,977 victims in New York, Virginia, and Pennsylvania.
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