In honor of our nation’s 250th birthday, we are looking back at some of the events that have shaped our history. 

1800s

1852 – Frederick Douglas speaks out against the Fourth of the July

1854 – The First Modern Library Opens in Boston, Massachusetts.

1863 – Combahee River Raid led by Harriet Tubman is the most successful slave rebellion

1869 – The Transcontinental Railroad is completed

1878 – Henrietta Wood wins reparations for slavery

1896 – First American Public Beach opens in Revere, Massachusetts. There were about 45,000 people who celebrated the opening.

1900 – 1960

1920 – 19th Amendment gives women the right to vote

1929 – The Stock Market crashes in October, ushering in the Great Depression

1933 – President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s fireside chats begin on the radio

1937 – The Golden Gate Bridge opens in San Francisco

1938 – Benny Goodman brings intergrated Jazz to Carnegie Hall

1941 – Attack on Pearl Harbor makes the United States join the allied troops for WWII

1943 – Vesta Stoudt invents duct tape

1955 – Mamie Till addresses the nation

1955-1956 – The Montegomery Bus Boycott

1956 – Althea Gibson is the first black tennis player to win a grand slam

1960-1999

1961 – President John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address to the nation

1963 – Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech on the Lincoln Memorial

1964 – Fannie Lou Hamer testifies at the DNC

1970 – Kent State Massacre

1971 – Soul Train premieres on television

1974 – President Richard Nixon resigns from the presidency

1980 – Winter Olympics wins the Gold in men’s hockey, beating the Soviet Union

1980 – Who Shot JR episode on Dallas drew acclaim

1981 – MTV airs first music video

1983 – MASH series finale airs on television

1987 – Epi-pen was approved by the Federal Food and Drug Administration

1988 – US Government apologizes to Japanese-Americans for the camps during WWII

1990 – The Hubble Telescope launches into space

1999 – Columbine

2000s to the Present

2002 – The Boston Globe releases the Spotlight Edition showing the Abuse Scandal of the Catholic Church

2005 – Hurricane Katrina devastated the city of New Orleans

2007 – Steve Jobs and Apple reveal the iphone

2008 – President Barack Obama becomes the first Black President of the United States

2021 – Kamala Harris becomes the first woman to become the Vice President

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