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A History Time Line... Of Little And Well Know Facts

6,000 BC

The first human settlements in Ireland, an island lying on the western fringe of Europe, were made relatively late in European prehistory, around 6000 BC. These were mostly Celtic people called Pretani or Cruithin. The arrived from Britain and settled mostly in east Ulster. The Loiges, another branch of the Cruitin, live in the midlands.

600 BC

Sometime between about 600 and 150 BC, other Celtic peoples from western Europe, who came to be known as GAELS, invaded Ireland and subdued the previous inhabitants.

250 BC

250 BC - Laigin from Armorica in northwestern France arrived in southeast Ireland.

44 BC

• Mar 15 - The assassination of Julius Caesar by his fellow friends and countrymen.

795

Ireland -Vikings land near St. Columcille's monastery on Lambay Island.

800

800-850 Norwegian Vikings plunder many Irish monasteries. In 845, Thorgils, king of the Norsemen in Ireland, is captured and killed by Maelseachlainn, king of Meath.

853

The Danish fleet defeats the Norwegians and takes possession of Dublin.

1014

The Irish defeat Norwegian and Danish forces at Clontarf.

1066

William the Conqueror becomes King of England.

1215

The Magna Carta

1550

1550s British Queen Mary encourages English setllements in Ireland.

1579

• Jan 25 - The Treaty of Utrecht was signed, markingthe beginning of the Dutch Republic

1598

1620

The Mayflower Compact

• Nov 11 - The Mayflower sailed into Plymouth harbor

1624

NYC - Dutch settlements truly began the city. In 1624 the town of New Amsterdam was established on lower Manhattan; Peter Minuit purportedly bought the island from its Native American inhabitants for about $24 worth of trinkets.

In 1664 the English seized the colony and renamed it; during the American Revolution they held it from 1776 to 1781. New York was briefly (1789-90) the U.S. capital and was state capital until 1797. By 1790 it was the largest U.S. city,

1629

The Charter of Massachusetts Bay

1636

An Irish rebellion against the English began.

• Oct 28 - The college that would later be known as Harvard University is founded by an act of the General Court of Massachusetts Bay Colony.

1652

Deep Hollow ranch in Montauk, Long Island, NY, was the site of the oldest cattle ranch in America and the birth place of the America cowboy.

1658

• Aug 12 -In New Amsterdam (New York), the first police force in America is formed.

1673

Father Jacques Marquette, French-born missionary of the Jesuit order, and Louis Jolliet, Canadian explorer and mapmaker, were the first Europeans to view the land on which the City of Chicago was to stand. Returning with five other Europeans from exploration of the Mississippi River, Marquette and Jolliet struck out alone and found a large Indian village near the present city of Ottawa. Guided by friendly Indians in the Fall of 1673, the two men first traversed the region that is now Chicago.

1696

1696-1700 Mission of the Guardian Angel. The Chicago area was traveled by traders and explorers for some years after 1673. Late in the century two Indian villages were settled at Chicago and in 1696 Father Francois Pinet, a Jesuit missionary, founded the Mission of the Guardian Angel. The mission was abandoned in 1700 when missionary efforts proved fruitless.

1706

• Jan 17 - Benjamin Franklin was born in Boston

1725

1725 Peter the Great dies On February 8, 1725, Peter the Great, emperor of Russia, dies and is succeeded by his wife, Catherine.

1732

• Feb 22 - George Washington was born in Westmoreland County, Va.

1764

• Jan 01 - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart played for the Royal Family at Versailles in France this day.

1774

• Oct 26 - The First Continental Congress adjourned in Philadelphia.

1775

• Jun 14 - US Army founded
• Oct 13 - US Navy established
• Nov 10 - US Marines founded

1779

The pioneer settler of Chicago, Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, an African American from Santo Domingo, built the first permanent settlement at the mouth of the river just east of the present Michigan Avenue Bridge on the north bank.

1782

• Aug 07 - The US Purple Heart Medal established

1787

• Sep 17 - US Constitution approved
• Oct 27 - The first of the Federalist Papers, a series of essays calling for ratification of the U.S. Constitution, was published in a New York newspaper.
• Dec 07 - Delaware became the first state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.

1788

• Jun 21, The US Constitution ratified. New Hampshire became the ninth state -- and final vote needed -- to approve the document on June 21, 1788, thereby officially ratifying the U.S. Constitution and springing the new government into action

1789

• Sep 15 - The U.S. Department of Foreign Affairs was renamed the Department of State.
• Apr 30 - George Washington took office in New York City

1793

• Jan 21 - King Louis XVI, was condemned for teason and executed on the guillotine.
• Oct 28 - Eli Whitney applied for a patent for his cotton gin.

1795

• Oct 27 - The U.S. and Spain signed the Treaty of San Lorenzo, which provided for free navigation of the Mississippi River.

1796

• Dec 07 - Electors chose John Adams to be the second president of the U.S.

1799

• Dec 14 - George Washington died at his estate.

1803

• Aug 17 - Chicago: It was not until 1803 that the War Department ordered the construction of a fort at the mouth of the river. Troops arrived in the area on August 17 and began building shelters and a stockade. A year later, Fort Dearborn, named in honor of the Secretary of War, was completed.

1807

Jan 19 - Robert E. Lee, Civil War: Confederate General was born.

1809

Jan 19 - Born, Edgar Allan Poe, author

1814

• Sep 14 - Francis Scott Key wrote "The Star Spangled Banner" after witnessing the British bonbardment of Fort McHenry in Maryland

1818

Illinois Admitted to Statehood

• Nov 11 - Veterans Day, Signing of the WWI Armistice

1819

Walt Whitman was born in West Hills, Huntington, Long Island, NY.

1821

• Jan 04 - Louis Braille, inventor of a reading system for the blind, was born in Copvray, France, in 1821
• Sep 14 - Independence was proclaimed for Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and El Salvador.

1822

• Apr 27 - Ulysses S. Grant was born in Point Pleasant, Ohio

1825

• Jan 19 - Ezra Daggett and Thomas Kensett of New York City patented a canning process to preserve salmon, oysters and lobsters this day.
• Oct 25 - The Erie Canal opened in Upstate New York connecting Lake Erie and the Hudson River.

Erie Canal, historic artificial waterway (opened 1825) between Lake Erie and the Hudson R., providing a link between the Atlantic Ocean and the Great Lakes. Its use declined after 1850 as traffic was diverted to railroads. It was incorporated (1918) into the larger New York State Barge Canal. Today its use is almost entirely recreational.

1830

The platform scale was invented in Saint Johnsbury, VT in 1830, when Thaddeus Fairbanks needed a way to weigh hemp.

1836

• Dec 07 - Martin Van Buren was elected the eighth president of the U.S.

1839

• Dec 5 - George Armstrong Custer, Soldier; born in New Rumley, Ohio

1842

• Nov 4 - Abraham Lincoln married Mary Todd in Springfield, Ill

1884

In 1884, Copeland strapped a steam engine to a Star bicycle -- the kind with the large main wheel and a much smaller support wheel -- and roared off at speeds up to 12 miles per hour.

• Nov 4 - Democrat Grover Cleveland was elected to his first term as president, defeating Repubican James Blaine.

1886

• Oct 28 - The Statue of Liberty , a gift from the people of France, was dedicated in New York Harbour by President Glover Cleveland.
• Liberty, Statue of, colossal (152-ft/46-m) statue on Liberty Island, N.Y.C., in Upper New York Bay, in New Jersey waters but under New York jurisdiction. Designed by F.A. Bartholdi, it was presented to the U.S. by the Franco-American Union to commemorate the American Revolution. Dedicated in 1886, it became a national monument in 1924 and was extensively restored in 1986.

1861

• Apr 12 - Fort Sumter was fired on and on the 15th the President issued his first call for seventy-five thousand volunteer troops.

1857

• Sep 15 - William Howard Taft, U.S. President, was born in Cincinnati, Ohio

1858

• Oct 27 - The 26th president of the U.S., Theodore Roosevelt, was born in New York City.

1860

• May 18 - First National Political Convention--Abraham Lincoln Nominated in Chicago.

1863

• President Lincoln declared the last Thursday in November as Thanksgiving Day, 1863.

1865

• Apr 15 - Abraham Lincoln died by assassination
• Dec 25 - 1865 Chicago Union Stock Yard Completed

1869

• Apr 05 - Daniel Bakeman, the last surviving soldier of the Revolutionary War, died at the age of 109.

1870

• Congress established Independence Day as a holiday in 1870. In 1938 Congress reaffirmed it as a holiday.

1871

• Oct 8 - The Great Chicago Fire
• Dec 19 - Corrugated paper was patented this day by Albert L. Jones of New York City. The rippled cardboard stuff still gets used today in boxes and as packing protection.

1872

Montgomery Ward - First Mail-Order House

1880

• Oct 27 - Theodore Roosevelt married Alice Lee

1881

• The gunfight at the OK Corral took place in Tombstone, AZ.

1883

The first fully steel-frame building was the Home Insurance Building in Chicago (1883), designed by William Jenney. Chicago subsequently became the center of skyscraper development.

1884

• May 01 - The Home Insurance Building, the first skyscraper in America was under construction on this day. No, it wasn't in New York. It was a 10-story building located on the corner of LaSalle and Adams in Chicago, IL

1885

• Jul 23 - Ulysses S. Grant died

1886

• May 3 - The Haymarket Riot (The rally stated May 1 and ended May 4 with 8 Police officers dead)
• Oct 28 - The Statue of Liberty is formally dedicated by American president Grover Cleveland.

1890

• Jan 25 - The United Mine Workers of America was founded
• Dec 15 - Sitting Bull, a Sioux Indian chief, and 11 other tribe members were killed in Grand River, S.D., during a fracas with Indian police.

1893

• Jan 17 - Hawaii's monarchy was overthrown as a group of businessmen and sugar planters forced Queen Liliuokalani to abdicate
• May 01 - Chicago's World's Columbian Exposition

1896

• Jan 04 - Utah was admitted as the 45th state

1898

Boxer Uprising, 1898-1900, antiforeign movement in China. By the late 19th cent. the West and Japan had wide interests in China. The dowager empress Tz'u Hsi favored expelling the foreigners and encouraged an antiforeign society called I Ho Ch'uan [Chinese,=righteous, harmonious fists] or, in English, the Boxers. The movement grew menacing in 1899, and in June 1900 some 140,000 Boxers occupied Beijing and besieged Westerners and Chinese Christians there. The siege was lifted in August by an international force of British, French, Russian, U.S., German, and Japanese troops. In 1901 China was compelled to pay an indemnity of $333 million, to amend commercial treaties in favor of foreign nations, and to allow foreign troops to be posted in Beijing.

Britain signs 99-year lease for New Territories of Hong Kong

• Aug 14 - Montauk Point, Long Island, NY, was the site where Colonel Theodore Roosevelt and his Rough Riders returned to America after the Spanish American War.

1899

• Sep 29 - VFW established
• Jan 17 - Al Capone was born in Brooklyn, NY

1900

McKinley was reelected in 1900. He was shot in Buffalo, N.Y., by Leon Czolgosz, an anarchist, on Sept. 6, 1901, and died on Sept. 14.

New Suffolk on Long Island, NY, was the site of the first U.S. Naval submarine base when inventor John Holland conducted tests and sea trials on the Navy's first submarine, Holland SS-1.

1901

Babylon, Long Island, NY was the site of the first radio transmission by wireless inventor Guglielmo Marconi.

• Sep 14 - President William McKinlry died in Buffalo, NY, of gunshot wounds inflicted by an assassin.
• Dec 5 - Walt Disney, Animator, producer, showman; born in Chicago, IL; creator of Mickey Mouse and the Disneyland theme park

1902

Packard patents the "H" shift pattern for stick shift automoblies.

1903

Guantánamo Bay, which is also the site of a large U.S. naval station established in 1903. Since the revolution of 1959, Cuba has refused to accept the token annual U.S. rent for the naval base and has pressed for its surrender.

1904

1904 The Russo-Japanese War begins

• Oct 27 - The first rapid transit subway, the IRT, opened in New York City

1906

The San Fransico earthquake.

The first car is stolen in St. Louis.

November 9, 1906, The first time a U.S. president traveled outside the country (T. Roosevelt).

1908

Long Island, NY was the site of the nation's first concrete non-stop exclusive automotive road, the Vanderbilt Long Island Parkway, from Queens, NY border to Lake Ronkonkoma.

1909

On August 2, 1909, the first Lincoln Penny was issued

1910

• Feb 08 - Boy Scouts of America founded

1911

The first U.S. airmail flight originated from Garden City, Long Island, NY to Mineola, Long Island, NY.

• May 19 - The first person to commit a crime and be convicted through the use of fingerprints turned out to be Caesar Cella. He had been "thumbed" in New York City.

1912

• Mar 12 - Girl Scouts, Inc founded, later to be renamed Girl Scouts of America, in the 1940's or 1950's.

1914

• Oct 27 - Author-Poet Dylan Thomas was born in Swansea, Wales.

1915

On February 8, 1915, D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation, a landmark film in the history of cinema, premieres at Clune's Auditorium in Los Angeles.

• Jan 19 - George Claude of Paris, France, patented the neon tube advertising sign.
• Jul 24 - Chicago's Eastland Disaster. The lake passenger steamer Eastland cast off from the Chicago River dock at the Clark Street Bridge with 2,572 people aboard. Immediately the ship listed away from the dock, righted herself, listed again and slowly rolled over on her side and settled on the mud of the river bottom. Some of those on board, all Western Electric Company employees and their families, were able to jump into the water and swim ashore, but 844 excursionists lost their lives before rescuers reached them, making the Eastland disaster by far the worst in the city's history in terms of loss of life.

1916

• Dec 15 - The French defeated the Germansin the WWI battle of Verdun.

1917

• Sep 14 - Russia was proclaimed a republic by Alexander Kerensky, the head of the provisional government

1918

Doomsday flu kills 20 million people world wide

• Nov 11 - World War One ends with German defeat.

1919

Detroit, MI installs the first tri-colored traffic light.

• Apr 28 - League of Nations founded.
• Jun 28 - Signing of the Treaty of Versailles.

1920

• Mar 19 - The United States Senate rejected for the second time the Treaty of Versailles by a vote of 49-35, falling short of the two-thirds majority needed for approval.

1921

• Jul 29 - Adolf Hitler becomes leader of National Socialist 'Nazi' Party.

1922

• Oct 28 - Benito Mussolini gained control of Italy's government.
• Nov 04 - The entrance to King Tutankhamen's tomb was discovered in Egypt.

1923

• Mar 3 - The first issue of Time magazine.

1924

First execution by lethal gas The first execution by lethal gas in American history is carried out in Carson City, Nevada. The executed man was Tong Lee, a member of a Chinese gang who was convicted of murdering a rival gang member. Lethal gas was adopted by Nevada in 1921 as a more humane method of carrying out its death sentences, as opposed to the traditional techniques of execution by hanging, firing squad, or electrocution.

• Russian revolutionary, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin died at age 54

1926

• Jul 02 - The US Army Air Corp Established

1927

Charles Lindbergh took off from Roosevelt Field in Nassau County, Long Island, NY on his histroric non-stop flight to Paris.

1929

• Feb 14 - The St Valantines Day Massacre. Six killed by Al Capone's gang.
• Oct 29 known as "Black Tuesday," the U.S. stock market lost $10 billion to $15 billion in value

1930

Empire State Building, in New York City, on Fifth Ave., between 33d St. and 34th St. It was designed by Shreve, Lamb, and Harmon, and built in 1930-31. With 102 stories, it was for years the tallest building in the world.

America's first supermarket, King Kullen, started on Long Island, NY

In New York City - the Holland Tunnel opened in 1930

1931

In New York City - the George Washington Bridge opened in 1931

• Mar 03 -For years, The Star-Spangled Banner had been the country's unofficial song, but on this date, President Herbert Hoover signed the National Anthem Act of Congress into law, making Francis Scott Key's poem the official song of the United States of America.

1932

• Nov 08 - Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) elected President of the United States.

1933

• Apr 05 - The first operation to remove a lung was performed on this day at Barnes Hospital in St. Louis, MO.

1938

• Oct 27 - Du Pont announced a name for its new synthetic yarn: nylon
• Dec 15 - Groundbreaking ceremonie for the Jefferson Memorial tool place in Washington, DC

1937

In New York City - the Lincoln Tunnel opened in 1937

• Jan 19 - Howard Hughes set a transcontinental air record, flying from Los Angeles to New York City in 7 hours, 28 minutes.

1938

• Congress established Independence Day as a holiday in 1870. In 1938 Congress reaffirmed it as a holiday.

1939

• Sep 1 - Germany, under Adolph Hitler and the National Socialist (Nazi) Party, invaded Poland.
• Sep 03 - England and France declare war on Germany.
• Sep 17 - Russia invades Poland, Baltics, Finland (Nov. 30)
• Sept 29 - German / Russian treaty partitions Poland.
• Nov 04 - FDR signs Neutrality Act of 1939.

1940

• Sep 14 - Congress passed the Selective Service Act, providing the first peacetime draft in U.S. history.

1941

• Dec 07 - Japanese forces launched a surprise attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Nineteen U.S. ships were sunk or damaged, and 3,000 Americans lost their lives. Japan also attacked Guam, Wake Island, the Philippines, and other strategic points in the Pacific at the same time Pearl Harbor was attacked.
• Dec 08 - The U.S. Congress declared war against Japan

1942

• Pledge of Allegiance recognized by the US Congress
• Oct 28 - The U.S. aircraft carrier Hornet was sunk in the battle of Santa Cruz Islands.
• Dec 02 - First Controlled Atomic Reaction. Italian physicist Enrico Fermi and scientists from his laboratory achieved the first controlled release of nuclear energy on the squash court beneath the stands of Stagg Field at the University of Chicago.

1943

Jan 19 - Janis Joplin, singer was born

1944

• Jun 06 - D-Day, the invasion of Normandy, France by the Allied Armies.
• Jun 22 - The US GI Bill was signed into law
• Band leader Glenn Miller disappeared over the English Channel while enroute to Paris
• Dec 16 - During WWI, the Battle of the Bujge began

1945

• Feb 23 - US Marines rasied the US flag on Mt Suribachi, Iwo Jima
• May 08 - Germany surrenders.
• May 08 - The United States and Europe celebrated VE (Victory in Europe) Day.
• Aug 06 - The United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. On August 6, 1945, a B-29 bomber--the Enola Gay--released a 9,700-pound uranium bomb, nicknamed Little Boy, over the city of Hiroshima in southern Japan. Hiroshima was an important military and communications center with a population of 300,000. It was also the only primary target city not thought to have American prisoners. Little Boy detonated 1,900 feet above the city, killing 70,000 people and wounding another 70,000. The bomb devastated everything within five square miles. President Truman warned Japan that if it didn't surrender, the United States would attack other targets with equally devastating results.
• Aug 09 - Another B-29 bomber--Bock's Car--headed to bomb Kokura Arsenal; however, the pilot switched to his secondary target, Nagasaki, because of the weather over Kokura. Nagasaki was the home of a Mitsubishi torpedo manufacturing plant. Bock's Car dropped a 10,000-pound plutonium bomb, nicknamed Fat Man, over the slopes of Nagasaki. Fat Man killed 40,000, injured 60,000, and destroyed three square miles of the city.
• Aug 14 - Japan surrendered.
• Sep 02 - V-J day, Japan signed formal surrender

Go to 1946 - present

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