2014-0511 World Events During My Mother's Life

Dear All –

Today, on Mother’s Day, I want to share with you some of the events that occurred during the lifetime of my mother who passed away on this day 20 years ago.  Reading through all the things that she lived through, you can develop a sense of how fast the world is changing and how fast it will continue to change.  Will we as a people develop wisdom fast enough to keep up with the changes we face?

Note:  I’ve included a couple of events from 1916 and 1917 which precede my mother’s birth in 1918.

Have a great week!

Kevin

World Events During the Lifetime of Lilja Crittenden, 1918 - 1994

                     Source:  “Rediscovering America” – Carla Blank

1916                     Woodrow Wilson elected president, 2^nd term.

1917                     The Russian Revolution begins forcing Czar Nicholas to abdicate.  The Mensheviks, led by Aleksandr Kerensky, come into power.  Revolutionary factions led by the Bolshevik leaders Lenin and Trotsky stage the October Revolution and establish Lenin as chairman.

                     Balfour Declaration of 1917 – promises the “Holy Land of Palestine” as a national home for the Jewish people.

1918                     Sedition Act of 1918 prohibits and penalizes any speech or press activities disloyal to the government.

                     A worldwide influenza epidemic, the “Spanish Flu”, kills 548,452 people in the U.S.  Over the next three years, it will take between twenty and thirty million lives around the world.  It finally – mysteriously – vanishes.

                     Every state now has a compulsory education requirement.

                     Daylight savings time is instituted.

                     WW I ends with Germany’s surrender.  50,000 American soldiers have died.

                     Czar Nicholas, his wife and five children are executed by a firing squad in Russia.

1919                     The Eighteenth Amendment (The National Prohibition Act) is ratified.  It becomes effective January 1920.

                     The Paris Peace Conference formulates the Treaty of Versailles and establishes a League of Nations.

1920                     Warren G. Harding elected president promising “ a return to normalcy” with the end of World War I.

                     U.S. women win the right to vote with passage of the Nineteenth Amendment.

                     After the war has ended, corporations, in an effort to clear themselves of bank debts, begin issuing stock to the general public. 

                     Westinghouse receives the first commercial radio broadcasting license and station KDKA begins broadcasting from Pittsburgh.  By 1930, 46% of American households will own radios.

                     The gramophone (also known as a phonograph) becomes commercially available giving people the ability to listen to music in the comfort of their own homes.

                     The ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) is founded,

                     The National League of Women Voters is formed.

                     Mahatma Gandhi organizes a noncooperation protest movement in India against the British colonial rule.

1921                     The Emergency Quota Act responds to anti-immigrant hysteria.  Establishes a national-origins quota system setting entry limits.

                     Missouri congressman L.C.Dyer introduces a bill making lynching a federal crime and participation in mob murder a felony.  It is defeated three times in the Senate by 1922.

                     Adolph Hitler reorganizes the German Worker’s Party in Bavaria in the National Socialist German Worker’s Party, known as the Nazi Party.

                     Insulin is extracted and used to treat diabetes.

1922                     The U.S. Post Office burns the first 500 copies of the first shipment of James Joyce’s “Ulysses”.

                     Oil is discovered on the Navajo reservation.  Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall tries to manipulate the illegal transfer of leasing rights for large sections of traditional Pueblo lands to European Americans without tribal consent.  This fails and leads to passage of the Pueblo Lands Act and the Reorganization Act of 1934.

                     Country Club Plaza, the world’s first shopping center, opens in Kansas City.

                     Radio broadcasters come up with the idea of selling commercial advertising time.

                     Frigidaire designs a self-contained icebox.  Americans will be able to stock up on perishables that they can safely store in their homes without immediately having to can, smoke or cook them.

                     The first edition of “Reader’s Digest” is published.

                     King Tutankhamen’s tomb is discovered in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings, near Luxor.

                     With a “March on Rome,” the Fascist Party takes over in Italy.  The king appoints Benito Mussolini as prime minister and grants him dictatorial powers to organize the government.

                     Kemal Ataturk overthrows the last sultan and becomes the first president of Turkey.

1923                     Calvin Coolidge succeeds Harding who died of a heart attack.  Coolidge’s management of the Teapot Dome scandal restores public confidence in the Republican Party.

                     U.S. Steel Corporation reduces the standard workday from twelve to eight hours.

                     Henry Luce and Briton Hadden form a new weekly magazine called “Time.”

                     General Motors introduces a mechanical refrigeration unit under a division called “Frigidaire.” 

                     American inventor Garrett Morgan receives a patent for an automatic traffic signal to regulate vehicles moving through city streets.  His system is eventually replaced by the system of red, yellow, and green lights in use today.

1924                     Calvin Coolidge elected president.  His laissez-faire policies toward government’s role in big business gives a sense of prosperity, hiding the  economic speculation that leads to the stock market crash and the Great Depression.

                     J. Edgar Hoover is selected to head the Bureau of Investigation (becomes FBI in 1935).

                     The Indian Citizenship Act confers U.S. citizenship and voting rights on “all non-citizen Indians born within the territorial limits of the U.S.”

                     Under the authority of the Immigration Act of 1924, Congress establishes a Border Patrol as the mobile and uniformed arm of the Immigration and Naturalization Service under the Department of Justice.

                     Astronomer Edwin Hubble observes Andromeda through a 100-inch reflecting telescope at the Mount Wilson Observatory in Pasadena, CA.  He proposes Hubble’s Law in 1929 which becomes the basis of Big Bang theory.

                     Evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson builds a radio station in Los Angeles and sets a precedent for using public media as a pulpit.

                     V. I. Lenin dies and Joseph Stalin gains leadership over the Soviet Union after a power struggle with Leon Trotsky.

1925                     High school science teacher John T. Scopes is arrested and convicted of teaching Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.  Attorney Clarence Darrow defends Scopes with support from the American Civil Liberties Union.  William Jennings Bryan acts as the state’s prosecuting attorney in a 10-day trial known as the “Monkey Trial” and hyped by the press as “the trial of the century.”  This is the first trial to be broadcast to the public over the radio.  Scopes and Darrow lose.

                     Nellie Ross becomes the first woman to hold the office of governor of a state when she is inaugurated in Wyoming.

                     The Klu Klux Klan boasts it has reached a peak membership of 4 million since its rejuvenation after World War I.

                     Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” is published.

                     Art Deco is introduced in Paris.

1926                     Martha Graham makes her solo dance concert debut in New York City.

                     Treasury Secretary Andrew W. Mellon invokes the first use of trickle-down theory to get the economy moving and reduce the national deficit that  has risen with World War I-related expenses.  He lobbies Congress to pass the 1926 Revenue Act, which gives corporate tax cuts that benefit the largest corporations and income tax cuts that benefit the wealthiest Americans.  As a result, the deficit is reduced and the tax cuts help produce a flood of investments in the stock market, beginning the great bull market that will end with the 1929 crash.

                     RCA’s David Sarnoff organizes the first nationwide radio network, the National Broadcasting Company (NBC).

                     Warner Brothers, a Hollywood film studio, demonstrates the first motion picture using sound.

                     Robert Goddard designs and successfully launches the first liquid-fueled rocket.

                     Cambridge University economist John Maynard Keynes publishes a book in which he advocates for government intervention in free-market economies.

1927                     “The Jazz Singer” gains credit as the first “talkie”

                     American architect Buckminster Fuller champions creating designs that are characteristically modern, efficient and economical.

                     Jimmy Rodgers, considered the father of country music, records “Blue Yodel #1”

                     Perfection of the mechanical cotton picker in Texas reduces the need for field workers and spurs black migration to the urban north.

                     The first transatlantic telephone call between the publisher of the “New York Times” and the editor of the London “Times” establishes a new service.

                     Charles Lindbergh succeeds in his attempt at the first solo nonstop flight to make it across the Atlantic, flying his plane, the Spirit of St. Louis.

                     Inventor and engineer Philo Farnsworth transmits the first all-electronic television image from his San Francisco lab, by broadcasting a dollar sign to potential investors.  RCA keeps him from receiving earnings from the multimillion-dollar industry his invention makes feasible.

                     Nuclear physicist Werner Heisenberg formulates his Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.

1928                     Herbert Hoover is elected president, saying he is for continuing Prohibition and widening prosperity.  He takes advantage of the new technologies of radio and film to broadcast his speeches.

                     The first “talkie” animated cartoon film, “Steamboat Willie”, debuts.

                     Congress passes the Boulder Dam Project Act.  In 1947, the project will be renamed Hoover Dam.

                     Chemist Waldo Semon, while working for B. F. Goodrich Company, invents vinyl.  It fails to find an application until Semon’s wife makes curtains out of it, inspiring its first uses as fabric for umbrellas, raincoats and shower curtains.

                     Anthropologist Margaret Mead publishes “Coming of Age in Samoa,” the first cultural study about women by a woman.

                     Dr. Alexander Fleming discovers the first antibiotic, penicillin, by accident.  Penicillin receives no further attention until 1940 when it is used to prevent infection in war wounds.

1929                     The Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) is founded by three wealthy art collectors.

                     On October 24, “Black Thursday,” the market loses $9 billion in value.  Thirty billion dollars in capital disappears as the New York stock market collapses on “Black Tuesday,” October 29.  The crash leads to the Great Depression; by 1932, twelve million are unemployed.

                     Astronomer Edwin Hubble observes that the universe is expanding.

                     The national origins quota, limiting immigration to a yearly maximum of 150,000 takes effect.

1930                     Sculptor Gutzon Borglum unveils the first of four portraits that will be carved into the granite top of Mount Rushmore.

                     President Hoover signs the Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act, following through on his campaign promise to raise duties on most industrial and agricultural commodities.  The stiffer tariffs set off trade wars, depress production because of decreased demand for American-made goods and cause unemployment to rise.

                     Vannevar Bush and co-workers at MIT develop the first analog computer.

                     Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company (3M) introduces a transparent cellulose tape, called Scotch Tape.

                     Thomas Midgley Jr. develops Freons which will be used as working fluids in refrigeration and air conditioning and as aerosol propellants.

                     Pluto, the ninth planet, is discovered.

                     Hitler’s Nazi Party emerges as a major political force in Germany after the 1930 national elections.

1931                     The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is established to oversee the enforcement of laws protecting the nation’s consumers from impure and unsafe drugs, cosmetics, foods, and other potentially hazardous substances.

                     Physicist Ernest Lawrence invents the first particle accelerator, called the cyclotron.

                     Chemist Harold Urey discovers deuterium, the isotope of hydrogen.

                     Dr. Earle Haas invents the prototype for Tampax, inspired by a wife who hates sanitary pads.

                     Nevada sets in motion two legal ordinances that will create new industries out of divorce and gambling.

                     Japan invades Manchuria, initiating hostilities that lead to World War II.

                     The British Commonwealth is created by the Statute of Westminster, granting all the dominions in the British Empire, including Canada, full self-government.

1932                     Franklin D. Roosevelt elected president promising a “new deal” for “the forgotten man.”

                     Twenty thousand businesses go bankrupt and 1,616 banks fail as the Depression locks in on the country’s economy.  Industrial production falls by 50 percent.  By 1933, 15 million people, from one-fourth to one-third of the labor force are out of work.

1933                     Roosevelt persuades Congress to give him special powers to turn the failing economy around.  He ends Prohibition by getting Congress to pass the Twenty-first Amendment, repealing the Eighteenth Amendment.  Then he pushes the “New Deal” establishing a variety of programs.

                     The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) hires more than 120,000 young men to build roads, bridges, cabins, culverts, trails, entrance stations, and lay water and sewage lines.

                     The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is established by Congress and becomes a model for regional planning.

                     Albert Einstein immigrates to the U.S. and accepts a position at Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study while the Nazis confiscate his property and revoke his German citizenship.

                     The first drive-in movie theater is build in Camden, New Jersey.

                     The Nazis come into power in Germany with the election of Adolf Hitler as chancellor.  He proclaims the ascendancy of the Third Reich. By 1935, the Nazis pass the Nuremberg Laws which deprive all Jews of citizenship and forbids marriage of Jews with Gentiles. 

1934                     Between 1934 and 1937 the U.S. experiences the greatest drought in its history.  This becomes known as the Dust Bowl.  Thousands of families leave their farms and become known as “Okies.”

                     Sixty-four million pairs of nylon stockings are sold in the U.S. when they go on the market for the first time.  They replace silk stockings which are far more expensive.

                     The Catholic Legion of Decency is founded to let Catholics know what movies are acceptable for viewing.

                     Adolf Hitler assumes the title of Fuhrer on the death of President Paul von Hindenburg and nullifies the Treaty of Versailles by beginning to rearm Germany.

1935                     The Works Progress Administration (WPA) is formed to create jobs for millions of visual artists, musicians, writers, actors, dancers and photographers.

                     The Wagner Act gives workers the right to join labor unions and collectively bargain for their rights.  It also institutes the National Labor Relations Board to supervise collective bargaining.

                    

                     Congress passes the Social Security Act of 1935, a federal old-age pension for people no longer able to work, financed by a payroll tax on employees and employers.

                     Kodachrome, a color film transparency stock is invented.

                     George Gallup, a statistician, establishes the American Institute of Public Opinion which will produce the Gallup Poll.

                     Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) is founded.

                     Mussolini’s Italian Fascist troops march into Ethiopia.  The rest of the world does not intervene.

1936                     Franklin D. Roosevelt elected president, 2^nd term

                     Frank Lloyd Wright begins designing a private family weekend home called Fallingwater.

                     Henry Luce founds Life magazine.

                     Adolph Hitler opens the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin.  He leaves the stadium humiliated after African American Jesse Owens wins four gold medals in track and long jump, dashing the Nazis’ hopes of using the Olympics to prove their theory of Aryan racial superiority.

                     The Spanish Civil War begins.

                     Germany reoccupies the Rhineland, defying the treaties of Versailles and Locarno.

                     Mussolini’s army conquers Ethiopia.  Emperor Haile Selassi flees.

                     The BBC starts the world’s first public high-definition electronic television service in London.

1937                     The Golden Gate Bridge is opened to the public.

1938                     The House of Representatives creates the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) to be a watchdog over activities it considers subversive to the government.

                     The Fair Labor Standards Act sets a minimum wage and a forty-hour work week and prohibits child labor in businesses employed in interstate commerce.

                     DuPont begins to market its first product made of nylon, a toothbrush.

                     Roy J. Plunkett, a chemist for the DuPont Company, accidentally discovers a plastic which he calls Teflon.  It will be kept secret until 1946 because of its possible military applications, including use by the Manhatten Project.

                     Orson Welles produces and directs “The War of the Worlds” in a radio version which creates a panic among listeners.

                     German scientists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann discover fission.

                     Ladoslao and Georg biro, two Hungarian brothers, invent the ballpoint pen.

                     Germany officially endorses acts of anti-Semitism.

1939                     The film “Gone With the Wind” is released.

                     Self-taught painter Anna Mary Robertson Moses,  Grandma Moses, who begins painting at the age of seventy-eight, receives her first exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art.

                     Congress passes the Neutrality Act of 1939 which allows Britain and France to buy American weapons.

                     Pan American Airways begins transatlantic air service with their fleet of three Boeing Clipper seaplanes.

                     Engineer William Hewlett and manager David Packard start up a company to manufacture audio oscillators in a garage in Palo Alto, CA.

                     FM radio is invented

                     John Atanasoff and Clifford Berry design and make the first electronic digital computer by applying Boolean algebra to computer circuitry.  However, WW II keeps this project from developing further.

                     Chester Carlson takes out a patent for technology that leads to the Xerox copying machine.

                     The first disposable can for dispensing liquids under pressure is patented by Julian Seth Kahn of New York.

                     American engineer Earl A. Thompson invents the Hydramatic drive, the precursor of the automatic transmission.

                     Twenty-two thousand American Nazis rally in Madison Square Garden, listening to speeches denouncing the nation’s Jews.

                     New York hosts the World’s Fair with the theme “Building the World of Tomorrow.”

                     World War II begins as Hitler invades Poland.  Britain and the Allied powers respond by declaring war on Germany.

                     The Swiss chemist Paul Muller introduces DDT as an effective, inexpensive pesticide.

1940                     Franklin D. Roosevelt elected president for an unprecedented 3^rd term.

                    

                     The U.S. prepares for war.  The Army Air Force is established.  Congress passes the Naval Supply Act and the Military Supply Act.  The United Service Organizations (USO) is set up to provide armed forces  and defense industry7 personnel with social, educational, religious, and welfare services. 

                     The Smith Act, aka the Alien Registration Act, is passed by Congress.  It requires all aliens to register with the government and be fingerprinted.  It also outlaws any organizations that advocate the overthrow of the U.S. government by force or violence and, for the first time, sanctions "guilt by association."

                     The federal government contracts with industry to design and build planes, tanks, ships, and munitions to help lift the economy out of the Great Depression.

                     Electronics engineer Vladimir Zworykin demonstrates his invention, an electron microscope.

                     Hitler invades France and signs an armistice with the fascist Vichy government.  He also invades Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg.  Italy agrees to join the Axis powers against England and France.

                     Exiled Leon Trotsky is assassinated in Mexico by a Stalinist agent.

1941                     Orson Welles directs "Citizen Kane."

                     President Roosevelt's State of the Union address contains what he considers are the "four essential freedoms" that the U.S. is dedicated to preserving:  freedom of speech and expression; freedom of worship; freedom from want; freedom from fear.

                     The Lend-Lease Act is passed which gives the president the go-ahead to furnish arms and war matériel to Britain, France and other allies.

                     On October 17, a German U-boat torpedoes the U.S. destroyer Kearney near Iceland.  Because of continuing isolationist and neutralist pressure against entering the war, Roosevelt does not make a formal declaration of war.

                     Japan attacks U.S. bases in the Pacific beginning with Pearl Harbor on December 7.  The U.S. reacts with a formal declaration of war on the Empire of Japan.  Within a week, the U.S. also declares war on Germany and Italy.

                     The Fair Employment Practices Commission (FEPC) is established which eliminates discrimination in employment.

                     Penicillin is tested on humans. 

                     Dr. Charles Drew, an African American hematologist, surgeon, scientist and educator, develops a long-term preservation technique for blood plasma which saves lives on WW II battlefields after Dr. Drew founds the first system of blood banks administered under the American Red Cross.  He will die after an auto accident when the nearest "white" hospital refuses to give him blood to save his life.

                     Seventeen-thousand-year old Paleolithic Period cave paintings are discovered in a cave in Lascaux, in the Pyrenees Mountains of southwest France.

1942                     Women's military service is established when Congress passes a bill creating the Women's Auxiliary Army Corps three weeks after Pearl Harbor.  Besides the navy and army nursing corps, the army forms a women's branch called the WACS, the navy forms the WAVES, the marines the MCWR and the Coast Guard the SPARS.  Close to 350,000 women serve in the military.  1,000 women fly commercial and air transport planes and even serve as test pilots in the Women's Air Force Service Pilots corps (WASP).

                     In February, Japanese submarines shell an oil refinery near Santa Barbara, CA.  In June, they also shell the Oregon coast.

                     California, Oregon, Washington and Arizona are designated as military areas from which suspect peoples could be excluded.  Roosevelt authorizes the internment of 120,313 Japanese Americans living in those states. 

                     The U.S. and Mexican governments make a bilateral agreement, the Mexican Farm Labor Supply Program, commonly known as the Bracero Program.  This allows Mexicans to enter the Southwest to work as farm laborers, filling job vacancies caused by the employment of American workers in heavier industries for the war effort.  The program is unilaterally terminated by the U.S. in 1964.

                     The War Manpower Commission wages a persuasive propaganda campaign to mobilize women as a “second line of defense,” as many men go off to war at the same time the defense industry is creating more labor demands.  They create a heroine “Rosie the Riveter.”

                     Physicist Enrico Fermi and his team achieve the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction.

                     Magnetic recording tape is invented.

                     The U.S. tests its first jet aircraft, the Bell XP-59A Airacomet.

                     The “Pap” test for cervical cancer is accepted as the standard test for cervical cancer.

                     During WWII, 420 Navajo U.S. Marine recruits work in the South Pacific on assignment to radio cryptographers. 

                     All Japanese internees are required to fill out loyalty questionnaires to prove their allegiance to the U.S. government.

                     The U.S. Navy issues a new type of white cotton undershirt which looks like a “T” earning it the name “T-shirt.”

                     Adolph Hitler orders the “Final Solution to the Jewish question” at the Wannsee Conference, a meeting of Nazi leaders in Berlin beginning the program of systematic genocide that becomes known as the Holocaust.

1943                     The Supreme Court rules that schoolchildren should not be compelled to salute the American flag if doing so poses a religious conflict.

                     Automatic withholding of federal income tax is signed into law.

                     The U.S. government institutes a regimen of rationing.  Civilians are required to buy certain items with coupon books.

                     Mussolini’s dictatorship collapses when the Allied forces invade Italy in July.

                     Goebbels proclaims Berlin “free of Jews,” as the “Final Solution” is methodically carried out.

                     FDR, Churchill, and Stalin hold their first summit meeting where they discuss the projected invasion of Europe and plan for the founding of the United Nations.

1944                     Franklin D. Roosevelt is elected president for a 4^th term even though he is extremely ill.

                     In June, FDR signs the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act (known as the GI Bill) which provides WWII veterans with various kinds of financial aid.

                     The Supreme Court rules that voting rights cannot be denied because of color in Smith v. Allwright.

                     Bell Labs designs a radar device used in bombsights which now can see through overcast and darkness.  This new technology is placed on B-29 Superfortress high-altitude bombers.

                     D-Day:  On June 6, the Allies land at Normandy, France and move on to liberate Paris.

1945                     FDR meets with Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin in February at Yalta to plan for the defeat of the Axis powers and provide the basis for the postwar future of Europe.

                     Harry S. Truman succeeds Roosevelt who died of a cerebral hemorrhage on April 12.

                     On May 8, one day after Germany surrenders, President Truman declares V-E Day.

                     The Japanese surrender Okinawa to the U.S. Army on June 21.  General Douglas MacArthur’s forces recapture the Philippine Islands on July 7.

                     Truman authorizes dropping a plutonium-based fission bomb on Japan.  The city of Hiroshima, Japan is bombed on Aug. 6 with an atomic bomb.  On Aug. 9, an atomic bomb is exploded over Nagasaki, Japan.  It is kept secret that this exhausts the U.S. supply of atomic bombs.  Japan surrenders on August 14; September 2 is known as V-J Day.

                     Grand Rapids, MI. becomes the first city in the U.S. to add fluoridation to its drinking water.

                     On Apr. 12, U.S. troops free the survivors of the Buchenwald concentration camp.  On Apr. 30, as Russian troops enter Berlin, Hitler commits suicide.

                     WW II claims the lives of more than 55 million people, 20 million of whom are Russian civilians.

                     The United Nations charter is signed in San Francisco by forty-seven nations.

1946                     The U.S. Congress grants full independence to the Philippines on July 4.

                     Charge-It, the precursor of the credit card, is launched by the Flatbush National Bank of New York.  It gives the consumer credit through a cashless payment method.

                     The Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC), the first large electronic digital computer is built.  It weighs 30 tons.

                     Pediatrician Dr. Benjamin Spock publishes “The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care.”

                     Civil war begins in China after negotiations between the U.S.-supported Kuomintang forces, led by General Chiang Kai-shek, and the Soviet-supported Communists, led by Mao Zedong, fail to result in a coalition government.

                     The 1946 tribunal at Nuremberg is held.  It is the first time “genocide” is invoked as a legal concept.

1947                     Jackson Pollock uses a “drip” painting technique.

                     The soap opera travels from radio to television with “A Woman to Remember.”

                     Congress passes the anti-union Taft-Hartley Act over President Truman’s veto.  Although it allows the union shop it outlaws the closed shop.    The bill expedites the merger of the AFL and CIO.

                     Congress passes the National Security Act which strengthens the executive branch of government’s role in foreign policy by authorizing the formation of the National Security Council (NSC) to coordinate military and foreign policy under the president.    It also reorganizes all military services under the National Military Establishment which will be renamed the Department of Defense.  The CIA is placed under the NSC.  The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is also established out of the existing Bureau of Investigation.

                     In what will become known as the Truman Doctrine, President Truman initiates the U.S. government’s Cold War policy to “contain Communism.” 

                     On March 22, Truman initiates what will become known as the “Red Hunt.”  This program requires the Justice Department to search out any “infiltration of disloyal persons” in the U.S. government and to draw up an official list of organizations that are “totalitarian, fascist, communist, or subversive.”

                     Truman establishes the Committee on Civil Rights.  The committee condemns racial discrimination and prejudice and proposes a bill to outlaw lynching.

                     Chemist Willard Libby discovers the radioactive carbon-14 dating method.

                     The Bell X-1 becomes the first airplane to fly faster than the speed of sound.  It reaches a speed of 700 mph at an altitude of 43,000 feet and is piloted by Chuck Yeager.

                     The solid-state transistor is invented by three Bell Laboratories scientists, William Shockley, Walter Brattain, and John Bardeen.  They will replace vacuum tubes.

                     The United Nations establishes its permanent location in New York City.

1948                     Harry S. Truman elected president

                     Congress funds the Voice of America, the overseas radio broadcasting arm of the U.S. Information Agency.

                     Secretary of State General George C. Marshall proposes a “European Recovery Program” known as the Marshall Plan.  It provides $17 billion in aid to Western European countries devastated by WW II.

                     On June 26, the Soviet Union blockades the western sector of Berlin, cutting off the city’s supply line to food and fuel.  The U.S. responds with airlifts to carry in supplies.

                     The U.S. Supreme Court declares religious education in public schools a violation of the First Amendment.

                     The Polaroid Land Camera goes on sale.

                     Hungarian American inventor Peter Goldman of CBS demonstrates his 33 1/3 rpm long-playing phonograph record (LP) which offers 20 minutes of music.  They quickly replace the 78-rpm format.

                     Cybernetics is coined and defined by MIT mathematician Norbert Wiener.

                     George Gamow, Ralph Alpher and Robert Herman produce research supporting the Big Bang theory on the origin of the universe.

                     The State of Israel is formed.  Skirmishes between Arabs and Jews break out immediately into the first Arab-Israeli War.  The United Nations arranges a cease-fire; the armistice gives Israel the right to occupy 80 percent of the former Palestine.

                     Mahatma Gandhi is assassinated in New Delhi by Hindu extremists.

                     Mao Zedong’s Red Army pushes the Nationalist Chinese army of Chiang Kai-shek off mainland China.  The Nationalist forces retreat to the island of Formosa (now Taiwan).  Mao Zedong establishes a new Chinese government, the People’s Republic of China.

                     The Organization of American States (OAS) signs its charter in Columbia. 

                     The Republic of South Korea is established.  North Korea responds by establishing a People’s Republic, claiming jurisdiction over both North and South Korea.

1949                     A practical method to refrigerate trucks is invented which transforms the U.S. food transport industry.

                     A military alliance known as NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) is formed by twelve Western nations.

                     The U.S.S.R. tests its first atomic bomb.

                     The German Federal Republic (known as West Germany) is formally established.

                     Apartheid (racial separation) is formally enacted in South Africa.

1950                     The National Security Council recommends a policy of “rolling back Communist gains” throughout the world.  This entails restructuring our economy to undergo a continuous, massive buildup and expansion of our military and technological capabilities, emphasizing the use of nuclear weapons.

                     Over Truman’s veto, Congress passes the McCarran Act (Internal Security Act) which calls for the registration and restriction of Communists and associated organizations.  The Department of Justice, using its FBI division, compiles a list of hundreds of organizations.  Thousands of people are “purged” from federal jobs.

                     Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin begins his four-year-long anti-Communist witch-hunt.

                     President Truman approves production of the hydrogen bomb by the Atomic Energy Commission.

                     The Habloid Company produces the first photocopying machine.

                     The Korean War begins on June 25 when the North Korean army invades South Korea.  By June 30 the United Nations Security Council, with Soviet Russia boycotting, votes to intervene with a “police action.” The struggle continues until 1953.

1951                     The Twenty-second Amendment to the Constitution is ratified, limiting presidents to two terms in office.

                     Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, husband and wife, are convicted of selling top-secret information to the Soviet Union and sentenced to death.  They are the first civilians ever convicted of spying.

                     The U.S. Wage Stabilization Board freezes wages and salaries to prevent inflation as the U.S. economy gears up at the beginning of the Korean War.

                     At the Nevada Test Site, the U.S. begins testing atmospheric nuclear weapons developed by physicist Edward Teller and a team of other atomic scientists.

                     The Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) sponsors an “Atoms for Peace” campaign to urge peaceful uses of atomic energy,  promoting it as an energy alternative to fossil fuels.

                     The first commercial all-electronic digital computer, UNIVAC-1 (Universal Automatic Computer) is built.  It stores data on magnetic tape instead of punch cards.  The U.S. Census installs the first UNIVAC-1 in Philadelphia.

                     The first transcontinental television broadcast is made from San Francisco, when President Truman addresses the nation.

1952                     Dwight D. Eisenhower elected as the thirty-fourth president.  Fulfilling his campaign slogan of “peace and prosperity,” Eisenhower focuses on economic development and national security measures.

                     Congress passes the Immigration and Nationality Act of June 27, 1952 which makes all races eligible for naturalization, eliminating bans on African and Asian immigration in place since 1790.

                     In McLaurin v. Oklahoma, the Supreme Court declares that racial segregation is illegal in institutions of higher learning. 

                     Puerto Rico becomes a commonwealth on July 25.

                     On Nov. 6, 1952, a hydrogen bomb with a force 500 times greater than the atomic bomb which destroyed Hiroshima, is exploded over Eniwetok Atoll in the Marshall Islands.    The Cold War intensifies as both the U.S. and the Soviet Union race to develop their first hydrogen bombs.  The U.S. Air Force contracts with Bell Labs to build a network of more than fifty early-warning radar stations as a defense against Soviet attack.

                     Dr. Jonas Salk begins public testing of a killed-virus vaccine to immunize against polio.  Dr. Albert Sabin will develop a safe live-virus oral vaccine that becomes available in the U.S. in 1960.

                     Searle Laboratories develops an oral contraceptive for women that will be made available commercially in 1960.

                     Upon his release from prison, where he has been introduced to the Muslim religion, Malcolm X joins the Black Muslims.  He becomes a militant separatist and Muslim minister.

                     King George VI dies and his daughter Elizabeth becomes the next British monarch.

1953                     Congress announces their intention to free Native Americans “from Federal supervision and control and from all disabilities and limitations specially applicable to Indians,” officially beginning its policy of “termination.”  In practice, this means that tribes experience loss of status and have to sell off lands to meet tax obligations.  Thirteen tribes are terminated before the policy is ended by the Kennedy administration in 1962.

                     James Watson, a graduate student, and biophysicist Francis Crick elucidate the double-helix structure of DNA.

                     Hugh Hefner’s Playboy magazine publishes its first issue.

                     Alfred Kinsey publishes the second half of the Kinsey report, “Sexual Behavior in the Human Female.”

                     The Korean War ends with the signing of an armistice at Panmunjom, Korea.  25,604 Americans have been killed.

                     Premier Joseph Stalin dies.  Tens of thousands of political prisoners are released and there is a power struggle for leadership as Georgy Malenkov becomes premier with Nikita Khrushchev appointed first secretary of the Communist Party.

                     Egypt becomes a republic ruled by a military junta, which forced King Farouk to abdicate in 1952. 

                     Tito (Josip Broz) becomes president of Yugoslavia.  He will become president-for-life.

                     In a coup d’état in Iran, Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi is returned to the throne.

1954                     The Supreme Court unanimously rules that segregation of public schools is unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education ( of Topeka, Kansas).  Thurgood Marshall argues the case.  This decision overturns Plessy v. Ferguson, the Court’s legal sanction of segregation that had been on the books since 1896.  It marks the beginning of the end of the Jim Crow doctrine of “separate but equal.”  Eleven years after this decision, more than 75 percent of the school districts in the South still remain segregated.

                     Senator Joseph McCarthy is censured by a Senate vote of 67 to 22 “for conduct …unbecoming a Member of the U.S. Senate,” following the Army-McCarthy hearings.

                     Operation Wetback, a government policing effort to locate and deport undocumented workers, deports 3.8 million people of Mexican descent with few receiving a hearing.

                     RCA markets the first American-produced consumer color television sets.

                     The first commercial transistor radio, the Regency TR1, comes on the market.

                     The merger of the two largest labor unions, the AFL and CIO into the AFL-CIO incorporates 15 million U.S. workers as members.

                     The first full transistorized computer (TRADIC – Transistorized Digital Computer) is built for the air force by Whippany Engineers.

                     Kodak releases Eastman color, a color film stock that is cheaper than Technicolor and can be used with standard cameras.

                     The French are defeated at Dien Bien Phu, Vietnam and the Indochina War is formally ended.  The country is divided in the northern, Communist-controlled Viet Minh government under Ho Chi Minh and the southern monarchist government under Bao Dai.  Civil war begins as does U.S. involvement in Vietnam.  Bao Dai will be deposed in 1955 by his premier, Ngo Dinh Diem.

1955                     Rosa Parks, an African American seamstress and secretary of the Montgomery NAACP, refused to give up her seat to a  white man and move to the back of a city bus on December 1.  The bus driver has her arrested.  Her action and arrest come to the attention of Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. who organizes a citywide bus boycott that continues for 381 days and cuts the bus company’s profits by almost two-thirds.  The following year, the Supreme Court rules that segregation of buses, public parks, golf courses, etc. is unconstitutional and illegal.  This incident is the spark that ignited the Civil Rights Movement.

                     Ray Kroc opens his first McDonald’s fast-food restaurant in Des Plaines, Illinois.  The burgers are 15 cents and fries are a dime.

                     Nautilus, the first atomic submarine, is launched by the U.S. Navy at Groton, Connecticut.

                     Walt Disney opens Disneyland, a theme park covering 160 acres in Anaheim, CA. that ABC helps finance.

                     Winston Churchill resigns as British prime minister and is succeeded by Anthony Eden.

1956                     Dwight D. Eisenhower elected president

                     Almost 6,000 Japanese Americans who renounced their citizenship while interned in WWII relocation camps are reinstated as U.S. citizens.

                     The Interstate Highway System receives federal approval. 

                     Transatlantic cable telephone service begins.

                     The first computer programming language, FORTRAN, is invented by John Backus and his IBM team.

                     The first airborne H-bomb explodes in a new series of tests over Bikini Atoll.

                     Oceanographer Bruce Heezen and geologist William Ewing discover a global network of oceanic ridges; the only theory to explain their discovery is plate tectonics, which divides the Earth’s shell into twelve large “plates” and several smaller ones.

                     Colonial Gamal Abdel Nasser, newly elected president of Egypt, nationalizes the Suez Canal and expels British oil and embassy officials after the U.S. and Britain withdraw their promise of financial aid to build the proposed Aswan High Dam on the Nile River.  Israel invades the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula and occupies them.  These actions lead Egypt into a war with England, France and Israel. A United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) is deployed to stop the attack and remain to supervise a cease-fire, occupying the Suez Canal zone from 1957 to 1967.

1957                     West Side Story premiers on Broadway.

                     David Seville creates the singing group known as the Chipmunks by playing recordings of human voices at double speed.

                     The  Space Age begins when the Soviet Union launches Sputnik on October 4, 1957.  One month later, Sputnik II, carrying a live dog, is also successfully launched.  Based on this, President Eisenhower authorizes the formation of a new agency within the Department of Defense, the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA).  Their mission is to find ways to make the U.S. the world leader in science and technology applications, especially for military purposes.

                     Congress passes the Civil Rights Act of 1957 which safeguards any U.S. citizen’s voting rights.  It also creates the Civil Rights Commission to advise Congress on creating civil rights policy and laws, and to investigate any denial of voting rights based on color, race, creed, or national origin. 

                     Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus blocks federal orders to desegregate Little Rock schools, acting in violation of the Supreme Court decision.  He declares he will not protect African American students from white segregationists and calls out the Arkansas National Guard, posting them in front of Central High School’s front door.  In response, Eisenhower sends 1,000 federal troops into Little Rock to enforce the federal court order.

                     The first commercial U.S. nuclear reactor is brought on line in Shippingport, Pennsylvania.

                     The Vanguard I rocket explodes on its launch pad at Cape Canaveral in an attempt to launch the first American artificial satellite.

                     Syria and Egypt agree to a merger, called the United Arab Republic, which Yemen joins later.

1958                     Critic Lawrence Alloway uses the term “Pop Art” as an abbreviation for Popular Art.

                     Congress funds the establishment of the National Aeronautics and Space Agency (later Administration) known as NASA, to promote space exploration after a panel of experts recommends that the U.S. quickly launch a scientific satellite to counter the fact that the Soviet Union has beaten the U.S. into space.

                     United Press and the International New Service merge to form United Press International (UPI).

                     National Airlines puts two Boeing 707s into jet passenger service for the first time.

                     NASA appoints Wernher von Braun as its chief rocket engineer and recruits astronauts.  It then launches Explorer I, a science satellite.

                     Stereophonic sound recordings are produced.

                     Electrical Engineer Jack Kilby has a key inspiration leading to the monolithic integrated circuit (IC).  He actuates his idea and builds the prototype IC for Texas Instruments.  Several months later, engineer Robert Noyce of Fairchild Semiconductor files a patent claim for an IC similar to Kilby’s.  The companies eventually agree on a cross-licensing deal. 

                     The “Great Leap Forward” begins in China, a government campaign to increase agricultural and industrial output by reorganizing the entire population into communes, causing massive disruption to Chinese society.

                     The European Economic Community (EEC) is established.

1959                     Alaska is admitted as the forty-ninth state.

                     Hawaii is admitted as the fiftieth state.

                     The FCC creates the equal-time rule, granting all political candidates equal time on TV newscasts.

                     The St. Lawrence Seaway opens, giving ships access to the Midwest.  The once-busy port of Buffalo goes into economic decline.

                     Mattel introduces the Barbie doll.

                     Xerox produces the first commercial copying machine.

                     The Atomic Energy Commission announces that the first direct conversion of energy into electricity has been achieved at the Los Alamos atomic reactor.

                     The U.S. government authorizes research into the effects of nuclear fallout from testing or war.  Citizens are advised to build fallout shelters.

                     The satellite Explorer 6 sends back the first television pictures showing all of Earth’s surface.

                     After two years of rebellion, Fidel Castro overthrows Fulgencio Batista’s regime in Cuba.

                     The Chinese puppet government in Tibet brutally suppresses a revolt, burning monasteries and their ancient texts and killing 500,000 people.  The Dalai Lama flees his country; 100,000 Tibetan refugees follow him into exile before the Chinese seal the border.

1960                     Eisenhower secretly authorizes the CIA to arm and train anti-Castro Cuban exiles in Guatemala for a future invasion of Cuba.

                     The Nixon-Kennedy debates are the vehicle for the first presidential election in which television plays a significant role, favoring the youthful-looking John Kennedy over the perspiring Richard Nixon.

                     John F. Kennedy is elected president and is the first Catholic to hold that office.

                     AT&T requests an FCC license for an experimental satellite and, with agreements with NASA, builds the Telstar series of communications satellites which are first launched in 1962.

                     The U.S. launches a military Midas I satellite, replacing the U-2 espionage reconnaissance flights.

                     In August, an aluminized plastic balloon called Echo becomes the first communications satellite to be launched.  The U.S. also launches its first weather satellite, Tiros 1.

                     The first operational laser is developed by physicist Theodore Maiman

                     Endocrinologist Gregory Pincus develops an oral contraceptive pill for women.

                     Bilingual education originates in Dade County, Florida when children of Cuban immigrants fleeing the Castro regime begin flooding the public schools.

                     Del Webb opens a “retirement village” for people over fifty-two in Sun City, near Phoenix, Arizona. 

                     The world population reaches three billion.

                     The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is formed to coordinate petroleum policies and stabilize international oil prices.

1961                     President Kennedy establishes the Peace Corps, an agency that sends thousands of young people throughout the world for two years of service, working mostly as teachers or with community-based development projects.

                     In April, the CIA sponsors an invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs.

                     By December, the first U.S. military companies, including 4,000 men and 32 helicopters arrive in Vietnam as “advisers” assigned to Vietnamese units. 

                     Kennedy creates the Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity and uses the term “affirmative action” for the first time in reference to hiring practices in federally funded projects.

                     Yuri Gagarin, a Russian astronaut, becomes the first man in space when he orbits the earth in Vostok I on April 12.

                     On May 5, Alan Shepard Jr. becomes the first U.S. astronaut in space, on a fifteen-minute and twenty-two second suborbital flight in the Mercury spacecraft Freedom 7.

                     An industrial robot replaces humans in the workplace for the first time when General Motors installs a “Programmed Article Transfer” to unload parts from a die-casting operation.

                     “Freedom Rides” are organized by the biracial Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) to nonviolently test whether segregation practices continue to be used in bus terminals serving state and interstate travel.  Police stand by as riders are beaten and clubbed in Rock Hill, South Carolina, and a mob of 1,000 stops them in Montgomery, Alabama, injuring 20.

                     Amnesty International is founded in London as a grassroots activist organization dedicated to freeing prisoners of conscience, gaining fair trials for political prisoners, ending torture, and monitoring human rights abuses throughout the world.

                     The Berlin Wall is constructed by the East German government to stop the flow of refugees to the West.

1962                     The U.S. Supreme Court declares mandatory prayer in public schools is unconstitutional.

                     James Meredith enrolls in the fall semester at the University of Mississippi as a political science student after the  Supreme Court orders the university to accept him.  He is the first black student in the history of the school.  The riots that result require 12,000 federal troops and 200 arrests before he can go to classes.

                     The Communications Satellite Act is passed which inaugurates the age of global satellite communication with the formation of the Communications Satellite Corporation (COMSAT).  In 1965, COMSAT launches the Early Bird, its first satellite.

                     The United Farm Workers Organizing Committee in California (known today as the United Farmworkers of America or UFW) organizes California agricultural laborers under Cesar Chavez.

                     High- fidelity (hi-fi) sound gear is commercially produced.

                     Telstar I, the first commercial communications satellite, is built by AT&T and launched into orbit by NASA on July 10.

                    

                     The drug thalidomide is linked to birth defects and removed from the market.

                     Lasers are introduced for use in eye surgery.

                     Biologist Rachel Carson publishes “Silent Spring,” an environmental whistle-blower.  Within a few weeks, President Kennedy cites the book in ordering a review of government pesticide programs but it takes almost a decade to establish the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970. 

                     The U.S. space probe Mariner 2, the first man-made object to travel to another planet, transmits data on the temperature and atmosphere of Venus.

                     In October, the world watches events that are known as the Cuban Missile Crisis.  The U.S. sets up an arms blockade of Cuba and threatens to retaliate with nuclear weapons if the Russians do not dismantle their Cuban missile and bomber sites.

1963                     The Defense Department establishes a diplomatic “hot line” linking Moscow and Washington to avoid delays such as those experienced during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

                     The U.S. Post Office inaugurates a Zone Improvement Program, or ZIP to speed up mail delivery.

                     The U.S.A., the USSR, and Britain are among 99 nations who sign the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty which still allows underground testing.

                     Lyndon B. Johnson succeeds Kennedy following his assassination in Dallas, Texas on November 22.

                     NASA launches Syncom II, the first geosynchronous communications satellite.

                     The farthest objects ever observed through a telescope are made.  The quasi-stellar radio source is given the name “quasar.”

                     In June, the National Guard forces Alabama’s governor, George Wallace, to step aside at the door of the University of Alabama to allow the enrollment of two black students.

                     On June 12, Medgar Evers, the first NAACP field secretary in Mississippi, is shot and dies.

                     On August 28, 250,000 people participate in the March on Washington.  Martin Luther King delivers his famous “I Have a Dream” speech.

                     In June, President Kennedy gives a speech at the Berlin Wall in which he says “Ich bin ein Berliner.”

1964                     Lyndon B. Johnson elected president.  Under his guidance, Congress passes the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  It establishes the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).

                     Betty Friedan writes “The Feminine Mystique” after interviewing educated women who reveal their lack of fulfillment in living only through their  husbands and children.  She later founds the National Organization of Women (NOW).

                     Congress passes the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which gives President Johnson the power to “take all necessary measures to  . . . prevent further aggression.”  This escalates the Vietnam War into a large-scale U.S. military intervention that will continue until 1975.

                     In September, the Warren Commission headed by Chief Justice Earl Warren issues its report on the assassination of President Kennedy.

                     President Johnson launches a “War on Poverty” with passage of the Economic Opportunity Act (EOA).  This leads to  various programs to help poor people including the Job Corps, the Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA) and the Community Action Program (CAP). 

                     Gordon Moore, co-founder with Robert Noyce of the microchip company Intel in 1968, posits Moore’s Law:  the number of transistors in, and thus computational power of, integrated circuits or “chips” will double every year.  In 1975 Moore updates his prediction to every two years.

                     Container ships are introduced, making international trade faster and easier.

                     Permanent-press clothing is introduced.

                     The Free Speech Movement begins at the University of California, Berkeley as a student revolt against institutional monitoring of political activities on campus.

                     The first of two Indian occupations of Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay starts in late winter.

                     Nikita Khrushchev is forced to retire from power in the USSR and is replaced by Aleksei Kosygin as premier and Leonid Brezhnev as Communist Party secretary.

1965                     Eldridge Cleaver, who will become a leader in the Black Panther Party, publishes an autobiography called “Soul on Ice.”

                     Martin Luther King, Jr. of SCLC and John Lewis of SNCC lead a march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama on March 7 to dramatize how state-wide practices remain in place that deny the right of African Americans to vote.  Governor Wallace refuses to provide the marchers with protection and they are attacked by state troopers and sheriff’s deputies.  President Johnson calls a joint session of Congress to do something; five months later the Voting Rights Act of 1965 is passed.

                     Congress passes an antipollution bill that directs the Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare to set government emission standards for maximum levels of toxic pollutants allowable in new cars.

                     The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is established to administer housing programs to assist in developing the nation’s communities.

                     President Johnson inaugurates his Great Society programs, including the War on Poverty.  He succeeds in instituting the first national health insurance programs ever provided by the federal government, Medicaid and Medicare, which offer subsidized medical care for  elderly, disabled and indigent citizens.

                     The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) are established.

                     The passage of the Freedom of Information Act gives citizens greater access to public information.

                     The national origin quota system is abolished.

                     President Johnson makes affirmative action a federal policy when he requires government contractors to guarantee fair hiring and employment practices for minorities.

                     The bracero program is ended and hundreds of thousands of Mexicans are forced to return to Mexico.

                     Lawyer Ralph Nader publishes “Unsafe at Any Speed,” an exposé of the American automobile industry.

                     The most violent urban outbreak since WWII takes place in the Watts section of Los Angeles.

                     Civil rights leader Malcolm X is assassinated in February.

                     Singapore becomes an independent republic.

                     The Palestine Liberation Organization is established at the urging of Egypt’s President Nasser who sees the need for an umbrella organization to unite Palestinian resistance groups.

1966                     President Johnson signs the Clean Waters Restoration Act, providing federal grants to fund pollution-control research and projects to clean U.S. waterways.

                     The war in Vietnam continues to escalate.  U.S. B-52s bomb the city of Hanoi.  In this year, 5,008 Americans are killed.  Student protests continue.

                     Ronald Reagan is elected governor of California.

                     Luna 9 conducts the first “soft” landing on the moon and Luna 10 becomes the first spacecraft to orbit the moon.

                     Pan American World Airways orders the new Boeing 747 passenger jets known as the “jumbo jets.”  Commercial service begins in 1970.

                     Office and home electronic communication is extended with the commercial introduction of Telecopier, a facsimile (fax) machine sold by Xerox.

                     The Senate issues a federal prohibition against the use of consciousness-altering drugs such as marijuana and LSD.  Dr. Timothy Leary promotes a “politics of ecstasy” in which the practitioners “tune in, turn on, drop out.”

                     Scholar and activist Maulana Karenga invents Kwanzaa, an African American festival.

                     The National Organization for Women (NOW) is founded by Betty Friedan.

                     Dr. William Masters, a medical doctor, and Virginia Johnson, his co-researcher, publish “Human Sexual Response.”

                     Chairman Mao Zedong launches the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China, calling for purges of his enemies within the Chinese Communist Party and destroying any signs of revisionism of  his revolutionary programs in the culture.  The Red Guards emerge as the shock troops within the student groups.

                     A program is initiated to airlift Cubans to the U.S.  which continues to 1973 until it is stopped by Fidel Castro.

1967                     President Johnson bans sex discrimination in federally connected employment.

                     Congress passes the Public Broadcasting Act which allows for the creation of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and the National Public Radio (NPR).

                     Solicitor General Thurgood Marshall becomes the first African American to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court.

                     Seeking ways to “squeeze and cut and trim” government spending, California’s Governor Ronald Reagan fires 3,000 hospital mental health workers and shuts down most state-operated mental health facilities, dispersing patients into counties for local treatment.

                     R. M. Dolby invents a recording method that removes high-frequency hiss and background noise.

                     The Bilingual Education Act is passed by Congress, establishing federal aid for bilingual classes.  It requires schools to provide programs to aid children with limited English.

                     The media appoint San Francisco home of the psychedelic movement’s “Summer of Love.”

                     After ten years of patrolling the border between Egypt and Israel, the UN’s peacekeeping force withdraws in May.  The Six-Day War explodes between Israel and neighboring Arab nations June 5-10; Israel takes possession of the West Bank and Arab East Jerusalem from Jordan and the Golan Heights from Syria, retakes Gaza and the Sinai Peninsula to the east bank of the Suez Canal from Egypt and increases its territory to four times its size at the time of the 1949 armistice.  These occupied areas become a major political issue after 1967.

                    

                     The Beatles release “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.”

1968                     In March, American soldiers massacre between 350 and 500 civilians in My Lai, Vietnam.

                     President Johnson pushes through the Civil Rights Act of 1968 to provide freedom from discrimination in the sale, rental or financing of housing. 

                     Robert F. Kennedy is assassinated on June 5 in Los Angeles, shortly after he wins the California Democratic Party’s presidential primary.

                     Ten thousand demonstrators stage massive protests at the Democratic Convention in Chicago, opposing the war in Vietnam, racism and the nomination of Vice President Hubert Humphrey as the Democratic nominee for President.  A Youth International Party (Yippie) manifesto is delivered by Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, and others in which they nominate a pig for presidential candidate.  Mayor Richard Daley authorizes the Chicago police to respond with violence against rock-throwing crowds.

                     Richard M. Nixon is elected president, pledging he will get the U.S. out of Vietnam with a “secret plan.”

                     Cubicles, creating a variety of office spaces, are invented by Robert Propst. 

                     A U.S. House of Representatives committee reports that Lake Erie is essentially dead and that it will take 500 years to restore it to its WWII condition if all polluting is stopped.

                     The American Indian Movement (AIM) is founded in Minneapolis.  The organization works to protect the traditional ways of Indian peoples.

                     Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., leader of the U.S. civil rights movement and Nobel Peace Prize winner, is assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee.

                     Hollywood’s film censorship authority, the Hays Office, is abolished.  As a result, the Catholic Church loses its power to influence the content of movies produced in the U.S.

                     The Soviet Union invades Czechoslovakia with tanks and troops, blocking political and economic reforms.

                     The United Nations General Assembly approves a draft resolution to stop the spread of nuclear weapons.

1969                     Congress passes the Tax Reform Act which requires foundations to disperse a minimum of 5 percent of their endowment earnings.

                     The Apollo 11 spacecraft is launched on July 16 to make the first landing on the Moon.

                     A human ovum is successfully fertilized in a test tube.

                     The U.S. Department of Defense’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) funds the establishment of a computer network called ARPANET which is the precursor of the Internet.

                     The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) if founded by a group of students and faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to protest the misuse of science and technology, and to encourage scientists to direct their research toward innovative applications for environmental and social problems, rather than military programs.

                     “Sesame Street” premiers on PBS, revolutionizing children’s television programming.

1970                     April 22 marks the first Earth Day showing American participation in the growing global environmental movement.  The widespread public support encourages Congress to pass a National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) requiring an environmental-impact statement for every large project funded by a federal agency and to create the Environmental Protection Agency.

                     Protests over the secret invasion of Cambodia by 18,000 American soldiers sets off student protests including one at Kent State University in Ohio where the National Guard opens fire and kill four students.

                     The Senate holds the first Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) hearing since 1956 for the purpose of deciding whether “equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the U.S. or by any state on account of sex.”

                     Congress passes the Voting Rights Act of 1970 which protects minority voters from practices that prevent people from voting.

                     The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is proposed by President Nixon.

                     IBM introduces the floppy disk as a new way to store computer data.

                     Mariner 9, a U.S. space probe, orbits Mars and transmits photographs.

1971                     The Supreme Court rules to protect women with small children from hiring-discrimination practices.

                     The right to print the “Pentagon Papers,” a series of articles based on a secret Pentagon study of the Vietnam War and published by the “New York Times” and the “Washington Post” is upheld by the Supreme Court.

                     Vice President Spiro T. Agnew resigns and pleads no contest on a charge of income-tax evasion.

                     Apollo 15 astronauts David Scott and James Irwin take the first ride on the Moon in their lunar rover.

                     Cigarette ads are banned from U.S. television.

                     General Idi Amin, commander of Uganda’s armed forces, overthrows President Obote while he is out of the country.  Amin will hold absolute power for the next eight years.

                     The new nation of Bangladesh is established when, after a brutal civil war, East Pakistan secedes from West Pakistan.

                     The People’s Republic of China formally joins the United Nations.

1972                     Pink Floyd’s album “The Dark Side of the Moon” is released.

                     President Nixon travels to China on February 17 for a week after his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, lays the  groundwork for a series of meetings with Premier Zhou Enlai and Chairman Mao Zedong.  These meetings lead to an opening of trade and cultural exchange between the two nations and the admitting of China into the United Nations (and the expelling of Taiwan).

                     On June 17, five burglars are arrested while in the process of staling papers from the Democratic Party’s national headquarters in a Washington, D.C. hotel complex known as Watergate.

                     Richard M. Nixon is elected president for a second term but the Watergate scandal will drive him from office.

                     In Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court grants women the inviolable right to an abortion in the first trimester of pregnancy, and at all times placing “the life and health of the mother” first.

                     The American Indian Movement (AIM) organizes the Trail of Broken Treaties Caravan, traveling from San Francisco to Washington, D.C. to bring attention to the long history of treaties that have been broken by the U.S. government.

                     All U.S. airports install machines that screen passengers and their luggage at security gate before they may board an airplane.

                     Atari, Inc., releases the first commercially successful home version of a video game, Hockey Pong.

                     Ray Tomlinson develops the first electronic mail program. Known as “e-mail,” it becomes a central ingredient to the success of the Internet.

                     The Alto I, considered the first display-based, networked, interactive personal computer is invented at Xerox Corporation’s Palo Alto Research Center.

                     The United Nations ratifies a Biological Warfare Ban Treaty.

1973                     The Watergate scandals begin to be uncovered, spurred on by a combination of the rulings of Judge John J. Sirica, the investigative journalism of Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, and a Senate investigatory committee headed by Sam Ervin Jr.  

                     President Nixon creates the Energy Policy Office to deal with the increasing incidents of energy supply shortages.

                     President Nixon signs the Endangered Species Act, which offers protections for species threatened by development.

                     The Universal Product Code (UPC) is invented by IBM and approved for use in 1973.

                     Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP), an internetwork design that interprets addresses and routes computer-to-computer communications, is invented by Vint Cerf from Stanford and Bob Kahn from DARPA.

                     Electrical engineer Martin Cooper at Motorola invents the first portable handheld cell phone.

                     Medicine gains two high-tech diagnostic tools that allow physicians to see cross-sectional images of internal organs:  the CAT scanner and the MRI scanner.

                     An Arab oil embargo creates an energy crisis in the U.S. as a retaliation for U.S. support of Israel during the Yom Kipper War.

1974                     On Aug. 9, Gerald Ford succeeds Nixon following his resignation in the wake of the Watergate scandal.  On September 8, President Ford pardons Nixon.

                     Congress passes the Equal Educational Opportunity Act of 1974 to create equality in public schools.

                     The U.S. space probe Mariner 10 transmits photographs of Venus.

                     The first U.S. experimental space station, Skylab, is launched.

1975                     The U.S. forces quit Vietnam on April 30.  Vietnam is reunited under Communist rule, as the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.  On April 17, Phnom Penh, the capital city of Cambodia, falls to Khmer Rouge troops.

                     The Apollo Soyuz Test Project, the first cooperative U.S.-Soviet space mission, docks the three-man Apollo spacecraft with the two-man Soyuz 19.

                     The first personal computer, the Altair 8800, is introduced in the U.S.  It has 256 bytes of RAM.

                     The world’s population reaches 4 billion.

1976                     Jimmy Carter is elected president.  He will help Israel and Egypt come to an agreement on their first treaty, the “Framework for Peace,” at the Camp David Accords.

                     The first genetic engineering company, Genentech, Inc. is founded and is considered to  be the birth of biotechnology.  In 1978, they clone human insulin.

                     U.S. spacecraft Viking I and Viking II, launched in 1975, make soft landings on Mars.

                     The Episcopal Church ordains its first woman priest.

                     In Beijing, China, after the death of Zhou Enlai and Mao Zedong, rivalries surface among different factions.  The clique that is known as the Gang of Four is tried for crimes of the Cultural Revolution and convicted in 1981.  Deng Xiaoping emerges as a leader and begins shifting away from Maoism and looking toward new economic policies.

                     A nuclear proliferation pact, to curb the spread of nuclear weapons, is signed by fifteen countries, including the U.S. and the USSR.

                     VHS and Beta videocassette recorder formats are introduced. 

1977                     George Lucas directs a science fiction thriller, Star Wars.

                     Two new personal computers (PCs) hit the market.  One is the Apple II, the  other is the Commodore PET.

                     The Trans-Alaska oil pipeline opens.  Oil begins flowing from the North Slope oilfields in the Arctic Prudhoe Bay and arrives in refineries in Valdez on Prince William Sound. 

                     Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 are launched from Kennedy Space Center.  The probes transmit photographs of Jupiter in 1979, Saturn in 1981, Uranus in 1986 and Neptune in 1989.

                     The first functional synthetic gene is constructed at MIT.  Its first commercial application, for human insulin, is approved in 1982.

1978                     California voters approve Proposition 13 which places a cap on local property tax rates. 

                     Nimbus 7, an environmental satellite, is launched.  It sends back the first complete view of the hole in the Antarctic’s ozone layer.  The U.S. government bans the use of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs).

                     In San Francisco, Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk are shot dead in City Hall by ex-supervisor Dan White.

                     A Soviet-supported rebel coup topples Afghanistan’s government. 

1979                     President Jimmy Carter and Leonid Brezhnev, president of the Soviet Union, sign the Strategic Arms Limitations Treaty, known as SALT II in Vienna on June 18.  Both countries agree to set limits on the main nuclear weapons in their arsenals.  The U.S. Senate refuses to ratify the treaty after Soviet troops invade Afghanistan in December.

                     On March 28 the nuclear power plant at Three Mile Island near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania is shut down permanently after radioactive gases are released into the environment.

                     U.S. Steel closes fifteen plants and mills blaming the pollution-control demands of the EPA which it says make the company’s products uncompetitive with lower-priced imports.

                     Congress approves a $1.5-billion load to the Chrysler corporation when it is in danger of failing.

                     Oracle releases the first relational database management system.

                     The Shah of Iran flees the country and an Islamic leader, the Ayatollah Khomeini, establishes an Islamic government. 

                     In Nicaragua, the Sandinista Front for National Liberation comes into power.

1980                     Ronald Reagan is elected the fortieth president, appealing to old-fashioned patriotism and “traditional” values.

                     Ted Turner founds the Cable News Network (CNN) in Atlanta, GA.

                     Native Americans find a new source of income on tribal lands through establishing gambling casinos.

                     The U.S. Civil Rights Commission reports that nearly half of all minority children attend “racially isolated” schools.  Two factors are re-creating segregation:  family choices of private and parochial schools and “white flight” to the suburbs.

                     In the landmark case Diamond v. Chakrabarty, the U.S. Supreme Court clears the way for the growth of the biotechnology industry when it rules that new life-forms created in  a laboratory can be patented.

                     The Reagan administration announces production has begun on the neutron bomb.

                     Indira Gandhi becomes prime minister of India.

                     Rhodesia becomes the independent nation Zimbabwe on April 17.

                     Iran and Iraq engage in open warfare that starts with a dispute over the Shatt al-Arab waterway in Southern Iraq.  A 1988 UN initiative will lead to a cease-fire.

                     The World Health Organization announces that smallpox has been eradicated worldwide.

1981                     Music Television (MTV) premieres.

                     Maya Lin wins the competition to design the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.  It is completed in 1982.

                     President Reagan proposes to stop inflation by decreasing federal spending and deregulating U.S. industries and trade while keeping taxes at their current levels.

                     Reagan extends the CIA’s power to allow spying within the U.S. borders.

                     Reagan is wounded by a would-be assassin, John Hinckley, Jr.

                     Sandra Day O’Connor becomes the first woman and the 102^nd person to sit on the Supreme Court.

                     IBM introduces its first personal computer with MS-DOS, its key operating system software, designed by a little-known company called Microsoft.

                     The 3M Corporation starts producing Post-it Notes.

                     American Airlines offers the first frequent-flyer program, Aadvantage Travel Awards.

                     The AIDS virus is identified for the first time.

                     The space shuttle, Columbia, launches.

                     Egyptian President Anwar el-Sadat is assassinated by Islamaic fundamentalists and is succeeded by Mohammed Hosni Mubarak.

1982                     The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) is defeated in Congress.

                     The Boland Amendment prohibits and U.S. funding of Contra forces who are waging war against the elected Sandinistas.

                     The Bell System is broken up, after over 100 years of service.

                     The U.S. enters the worst recession in forty years.

                     Surgeon William DeVries performs the first total replacement of a heart.

                     Interferon, a natural virus-fighting substance, is produced through genetic engineering by scientists in Boston.

                     The Equal Employment Opportunities Commission (EEOC) establishes sexual harassment guidelines.

                     USSR leader Leonid Brezhnev dies and is succeeded by former head of the KGB, Yuri Andropov.  Andropov will also die in less than two years and Konstantin Chernenko will succeed Andropov.

                     Israel invades Lebanon in June to drive out the PLO in response to an attempted assassination by Palestinians of the Israeli ambassador in London.

                     World Wide Web protocols are defined at CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Research in Geneva, Switzerland.

1983                     Sequential Circuits develops the first MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) keyboard.

                     President Reagan recommends funding a ballistic-missile shield in space, the Strategic Defense Initiative, known as SDI or “Star Wars.”

                     President Reagan orders an invasion of Grenada in an effort to thwart a Soviet-Cuban presence on the island.  The United Nations denounces the U.S., calling the invasion a “flagrant violation of international law.”

                     General Motors and Toyota agree to a joint venture to build a new subcompact car plant in Fremont, California.

                     The National Institute of Standard Technologies (NIST) redefines its standard for the meter, when an atomic clock is developed.

                     Sally Ride, a physicist, is selected to become the first American woman in space and prepares to ride on the space shuttle Challenger.

1984                     Ronald Reagan is elected president for a second term.

                     Apple launches the Macintosh computer which uses a new handheld device called a mouse.  This computer and the hardware and software industry that grows around it creates the world of desktop publishing.

                     The Soviets announce they will boycott the Los Angeles Olympics.

                     India’s prime minister, Indira Gandhi, is assassinated by two Sikh bodyguards after the army attacks the Sikhs’ Golden Temple in Amritsar, in the Punjab.  Her son, Rajiv Gandhi, succeeds her as prime minister.

1985                     America Online (AOL), an Internet service provider (ISP), is founded by Steven Case who serves as chairman and CEO.  It goes public in 1992.

                     Research and development of synfuels – alternative energy sources based on coal or oil shales – loses nearly all its funding because of a glut of petroleum on the world market.

                     Construction begins on the world’s largest telescope called the Keck Observatory, on the peak of Mauna Kea in Hawaii. 

                     When Communist Party General Secretary Konstantin Chernenko dies in March, the Kremlin picks his number-two man, Mikhail Gorbachev, to head the Soviet Union.  Gorbachev introduces a restructuring of the economy and systems of government operation, called perestroika, and appeals for openness, called glasnost, to radically reconsider Soviet politics, culture and history.

1986                     The National Security Council violates the Boland Amendment by taking funds made through secret sales of weapons to Iran in exchange for freeing hostages in Lebanon and then clandestinely diverting the profits to fund the Nicaraguan Contra fighting forces.  This becomes known as the Iran-Contra Affair.

                     In January, the Reagan administration accuses Libyan leader Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi of fostering international terrorist acts in his country and imposes trade and commercial sanctions on Libya, besides ordering all U.S. citizens to leave the country.

                     Ivan Boesky, one of the best-known speculators in takeover stocks, pleads guilty to using illegal secret information to buy and sell stocks and securities.

                     On January 28, the space shuttle Challenger explodes after takeoff from Cape Canaveral.

                     A Soviet-designed nuclear reactor explodes in a meltdown at Chernobyl, just north of Kiev in the Ukraine.  Over the next fourteen years in the Ukraine itself, 4,000 cleanup workers will die and 70,000 will be disabled by radiation.

                     Former Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos goes into exile in Hawaii and Corazon Aquino, widow of the assassinated opposition leader, is sworn into office as the new president.

1987                     President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev sign the first arms-control agreement between the two countries.

                     On October 19, the stock market experiences the worst crash since 1929.

                     Treatment of women in the workforce becomes a major issue, especially with the attention given congressional hearings that include sexual harassment charges brought by Anita Hill against her former boss, Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, who will receive an appointment as a Supreme Court judge.

                     The Montreal Protocols, an agreement to eliminate the use of CFCs by 2000, are signed by fifty-three industrial nations.

                     Jordan releases the West Bank, an area mainly populated by Palestinians, which has been under Israeli occupation since 1967, to the Palestinians.

1988                     On August 10, President Reagan signs the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, a law that issues a formal apology to the Japanese American community by the U.S. government.

                     The Termination Resolution of 1953 in which 13 tribes were officially terminated , or lost federal protections and services, is officially repealed by Congress.

                     Prozac, a synthesized fluoxetine that increases serotonin levels in the brain, receives FDA approval for use as an antidepressant in the U.S.

                     TAT-8, the first fiber optic telephone cable, is laid across the Atlantic Ocean.

                     Benazier Bhutto becomes prime minister of Pakistan, the first Islamic woman to hold this office.

                     George H. W. Bush is elected as the forty-first president

1989                     The National Assembly of Panama places General Manuel Noriega as head of the government and proclaims that a state of war exists between the U.S. and Panama.  After an American soldier is killed on December 16, Noriega’s government is overthrown in an invasion of Panama by U.S. troops.

                     Army General Colin Powell becomes the first African American chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

                     President Bush signs legislation authorizing $166 billion to bail out the savings and loan industry over a ten-year period.

                     As of this year, 66,000 deaths have resulted from the AIDS epidemic in the U.S. alone.

                     The Civil Rights Memorial, honoring those who died fighting for equal rights, is dedicated in Montgomery, Alabama.

                     The USSR holds its first competitive elections since 1917.  Mikhail Gorbachev is elected president.

                     Six weeks of student-led hunger strikes protesting for human rights and democracy take place in Tiananmen Square in central Beijing, China.  Martial law is declared and on June 4 the People’s Liberation Army moves to retake Tiananmen Square, killing many civilians at the scene.

                     The Cold War comes to a symbolic end when East German border guards knock down parts of the Berlin Wall and Germany is reunited for the first time since the end of World War II.

                     In Poland, the majority of voters oppose election of Communist Party candidates and select candidates of Solidarity, an independent reformist political party.  By the following year, Lech Walesa will be elected president.

                     Defeated Soviet troops evacuate Afghanistan following acceptance of a  UN-brokered agreement.  One of the most prominent Mujahedeen leaders, Osama bin Laden, forms a new international network of Muslim militants called Al-Qaeda. 

1990                     Congress passes the Americans with Disabilities Act, to protect the civil rights of the nation’s 43 million people with disabilities.  The bill also requires architects and city planners to incorporate design changes in future constructions, including modifications of existing public buildings and streets.

                     On August 8, President Bush tells Saddam Hussein, president of Iraq, that he has “drawn a line in the sand” that must not be crossed, six days after Hussein invades Kuwait and annexes the oil-rich nation.

                     The U.S. economy starts a decade of expansion, the longest in history, presided over by Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan.

                     The Hubble Space Telescope is launched on the space shuttle Discovery by NASA.

                     The Department of Energy’s Human Genome Project (HGP) formally begins in October.  The project has two goals to achieve by 2005: first, to characterize an estimated 100,000 human genes that provide meaningful instructions for making functional proteins and second, to sequence the 3.1 billion total DNA subunits, called bases, that make up the forty-six human chromosomes.  Almost immediately, an ethical debate over how to control potential abuses of the HGP begins; its first topic is how to prevent medical discrimination against people with genetic predispositions to various diseases.

                     The Supreme Court rules that states can outlaw religious practices (such as the use of peyote in the Native American Church and animal sacrifice in the Voodoo religions).  This is considered a major setback to First Amendment protections including religious freedom.

                     South Africa’s president F.W. deKlerk legalizes opposition groups and releases Nelson Mandela, international hero of the struggle against apartheid in South Africa who has been a political prisoner for twenty-seven years.

                     Namibia gains independence.

                     The original program for the World Wide Web, a hypertext system for publishing information on the Internet, is created by Tom Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau for internal use at CERN.  In 1992, CERN releases the WWW protocols to the general public.

1991                     On January 17k United Nations forces, led by U.S. General Norman Schwarzkopf, launch a short, massive, high-tech air war, called Operation Desert Storm to expel Iraqi soldiers from Kuwait and protect Saudi Arabian and American interests in the Persian Gulf region.

                     Three out of four U.S. homes own VCRs, the fastest-selling domestic appliance in history.

                     The U.S. tries out its high-tech weaponry systems in Iraq.  It drops so-called “smart-bombs” from F-117 Stealth fighter-bombers by using laser designators that lock onto targets.

                     Biosphere II, a quasi-scientific experiment located in the Arizona desert, places four men and four women in a hermetically sealed three-acre environment made of glass and steel, to test whether these conditions could allow humans to survive on Mars.

                     Four Los Angeles police officers are indicted on March 15 for violently beating Rodney King, a black motorist, as he lay on the ground.

                     Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev resigns and Russian Federation President Boris Yeltsin and the leaders of Belarus and Ukraine dissolve the United Soviet Socialist Republic and form the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).

                     The Yugoslavian confederation, including Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia and Serbia, formally breaks apart after the Communist Party relinquishes total control.  Ethnic animosities that had been held back under Communism ignite into a terrible bloodbath of civil war. 

                     The world’s worst man-made environmental disaster is caused by Iraqi troops who methodically dynamite and set fire to 650 of Kuwait’s oil wells during the Persian Gulf War.

1992                     William Jefferson “Bill” Clinton is elected as forty-second president.  He promises to bring down the largest deficit in U.S. history, reform health care and create new jobs.

                     On May 2, 1992, an all-white Simi Valley jury acquits four Los Angeles police officers who were televised beating Rodney King.  Los Angeles explodes in three days of rioting.  Fifty-eight people are killed.

                     The Russian Federation is formed from the nineteen republics of the former Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic, making it the world’s largest country.

                     In the Kyoto Protocol, delegates from industrialized nations around the world agree for the first time to set legally binding reductions in their countries’ emissions of heat-trapping gases.  The U.S. never formally ratifies the accord or implements a reduction plan and in 2001 the George W. Bush administration abandons the treaty altogether.

                     When CERN ends restricted access to the Internet by releasing the World Wide Web (WWW) protocols to the general public, the Internet is revolutionized as millions begin logging on to the World Wide Web.

1993                     NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, which liberalizes trade between the U.S., Mexico, and Canada by eliminating tariffs and other trade barrier, is ratified.

                     The FBI and the Branch Davidian sect, a religious group that lives in a compound in Waco, Texas, engage in a standoff.  When the sect’s compound catches fire,  more than eighty members are killed, including children.   The FBI is charged with mismanagement at the least, and use of pyrotechnic tear-gas canisters at the worst.  “Remember Waco!” becomes an anthem of the radical right, inspiring more acts of violence, especially the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995.

                     In 1993, the U.S. White House goes online as does the united Nations.

                     One in three Americans now works at home instead of driving to an office.

                     The Environmental Protection Agency releases a report that identifies secondhand smoke as a proven carcinogen.

                     The U.S. Congress kills “Star Wars” research (the popular name for the Strategic Defense Initiative program or SDI)

                     Dr. David Gunn is shot dead outside a Pensacola, Florida abortion clinic by an anti-abortion protestor.

                     Terrorists bomb the basement parking garage under the twin towers of the World Trade Center.  this is the first of  a series of violent attacks to be linked to Islamic fundamentalist militant leader Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda. 

                     Dr. Andras Nagy and Dr. Janet Rossant, University of Toronto scientists, report their collaboration on successfully growing an entire mouse from individual embryonic mouse stem cells.  This research sparks debate over whether it would be ethical to use human embryonic stem cells to grow an entire human.

1994                     California’s Proposition 187, used by Governor Pete Wilson as the centerpiece of his reelection campaign, is passed .  It denies undocumented immigrants social services such as subsidized medical care, welfare, and education.  It denies American citizenship to children born of illegal immigrants.  It requires teachers, doctors and other officials to report anyone suspected of being an illegal alien to the California attorney general and the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS).  Governor Pete Wilson issues an executive order to cut off government services to undocumented pregnant women and nursing-home patients. 

                     On January 1, the  North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) goes into effect.

                     The digitalization of technology begins to pervade the U.S. economy.  The first cyber bank opens online, the first cyber station broadcasts form Interop, Las Vegas, dot-com shopping malls arrive on the Internet and advertisements routinely include Web addresses.  Marc Andreessen and Jim Clark co-found Netscape Communications.

                     DVD, a new digital technology for video discs and players, is introduced.

                     Lou Montulli, a programmer at Netscape Communications, invents an Internet data filling system called a “persistent client state object,” more commonly known as a “cookie.”  The system allows the Web to develop a memory that can track users’ visits to Web sites.

                     On May 24, the Hubble Space Telescope confirms the existence of black holes.

                     Oregon voters approve the Death with Dignity Act, making them the first state to pass a measure legalizing physician-assisted suicide.

                     O.J. Simpson, a former football star and movie actor, is charged with the murder of his wife, Nicole, and her friend Ron Goldman.