Some important events in American history

The first Americans (pre-Columbus America): First Americans arrived from Asia thousands years ago. As food supplies improved, the population of the Americas increased. By 1500 A.D., millions of Native Americans, belonging to more than 2000 different groups, lived on the two continents of North America and South America. Among the largest and most advanced of these early civilizations were the Olmec, the Maya, the Aztec and the Inca. When Europeans arrived in the Americas in the late 1400s, they found Native Americans living there and wondered where these peoples had come from. Some believed the Native Americans had come from Atlantis, an island that was supposed to have sunk beneath the waves of the Atlantic Ocean.
Discovery and settlement of America The first European in America was a Viking explorer named Leif (leef) Ericson. He most likely reached North America around 1000, almost 500 years before Columbus. In 1492, an Italian sea captain, Christopher Columbus, convinced Spain to finance a bold plan: finding a route to Asia by sailing west across the Atlantic Ocean. In October of that year, Columbus reached an island in the Caribbean. His voyage would open the way for European colonization of the Americas – a process that would forever change the world. The immediate impact of Columbus’s voyage, however, was to increase tensions between Spain and Portugal. Columbus thought that he had indeed reached Asia. Believing him to be right, Portugal suspected that Columbus had claimed for Spain lands that Portuguese sailors might have reached first. The rivalry between Spain and Portugal grew more tense. Then the UK came on. In 1588 the British navy defeated Spanish Armada and started with a consolidation of authority in Atlantic ocean and North America The explorations of the Spanish and French fired the imagination of the English. In 1606, a company of London investors obtained from King James a charter to found a colony in North America. In 1607, the company’s three ships – and more than 100 settlers – pushed out of an English harbor. Four months later, the North American shore rose along the horizon. After reaching the coast of Virginia, the vessels slipped into a broad coastal river. They sailed inland until they reached a small peninsula. There, the colonists climbed off their ships and claimed the land as theirs. This is known as the Virginia Colony. They named the settlement Jamestown in honor of their king.
The next step was Pilgrims‘ Plymouth Colony in 1620. In 1630, only about 3,000
people lived there, but in the next ten years, 16,000 more colonists arrived.
The English soon became hungry for more land to suit their growing colonial
population. So they pushed further west into the continent. Early relations between
English settlers and Native Americans were cooperative. However, they quickly
worsened – mostly over the issues of land and religion. The hostility between the
English settlers and Native Americans led to warfare. As early as 1622, the Powhatan
tribe attacked colonial villages around Jamestown and killed about 350 settlers. The
colonists eventually struck back and massacred hundreds of Powhatan. One of the
bloodiest battles colonists and Native Americans waged was known as King Philip’s
War. It began in 1675 when the Native American ruler Metacom (also known as King
Philip) led an attack on 52 colonial villages throughout Massachusetts. In the months
that followed, both sides massacred hundreds of victims. After a year of fierce
fighting, the colonists defeated the natives. Throughout the 17th century, many more
smaller skirmishes erupted throughout North America. While the Native Americans
fought fiercely, they were no match for the colonists’ rifles and cannons.
18th century
With the colonization of Georgia in 1732, the 13 colonies that would become the
United States of America were established. In 1773 a group of patriots, dressed as
Indians, threw the cargo of British tea into the Boston Harbour. This event is known
as Boston Tea Party. The Continental Congress began to work as a national
government and on July 4th, 1776 they agreed on the Declaration of Independence
written mainly by Thomas Jefferson.
The first shots of the War of Independence were fired in Massachusetts in 1775.
George Washington was named the commander of the army and fought against the
British, who had more soldiers, weapons and money than the Americans. The Native
Americans even fought with the British because they hoped if the English won, the
Americans would stop taking over their land.
The war ended when the British army surrendered to George Washington in 1781.
Now they had to figure out how to rule without the British. In 1787, delegates from
each state got together to write a constitution. It appointed a congress with the right
to collect money from the states, manage the military and made the states into a
single nation. Because the people were still worried about too much power being in
the government’s hands, the delegates added a Bill of Rights to the Constitution that
guaranteed individual liberties. The Bill of Rights was adopted in 1791.
The federal government was reorganized into three branches, on the principle of
creating salutary checks and balances, in 1789. George Washington, who had led the
revolutionary army to victory, was the first president elected under the new
constitution.
19th century
America expanded greatly in the 19th century. In 1803, President Thomas Jefferson
bought the Louisiana territory from Napoleon Bonaparte of France. The Louisiana
Purchase added 2.1 million square km to the US.
This period also saw many wars. In 1812, the US went to war again with Britain, and
was victorious after three years. There was also War with Mexico for Texas. But the
biggest and the bloodiest war America fought was the Civil War, 1861 – 1865.
The southern states tried to leave the union because they did not want slavery to be
abolished. They formed a new country, the Confederate States of America, and
went to war with the US. After four bloody years, the industrial North was able to
defeat the agrarian South, and the war came to an end. President Abraham Lincoln
wanted to allow the South to re-join the union without penalty, but he was
assassinated just as the war ended.
Without Lincoln, the US punished the South for the rebellion, and kept soldiers in the
former Confederate states for twelve years. This is something southerners still
cannot forget.
20th century and present
In the 20th century, the US became one of the most dominant powers in the world.
America participated in both world wars during this time, and ended WWII as one of
two superpowers (the USSR was the other).
The Atomic Age began in 1945 when the US dropped A-bombs on Japan. This ended
WWII, but afterwards the US and USSR began a contest to dominate the world. The
Cold War lasted over forty years and ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union in
the 1990s. While the Soviets were able to compete in technology, they could not
match America’s economy and natural resources.
The space race was attached to Cold war, too. It began with launches of Sputnik in
1957. Unable to let this challenge go unanswered, the United States began beefing
up its own space program. However, next triumph similarly devolves on (belonged
to) The Soviet Union – Yuri Gagarin became the first human orbits the earth in 1961.
Then Soviets starts with programme Luna and Americans with Apollo to reach the
Moon. Finally, Apollo was more successful and the first men on the surface of Moon
were Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on July 20, 1969.
Today the US is the only superpower in the world, and because of this many
countries do not like America. American involvement in the Middle East has been
very unpopular, and many people dislike American domination of world markets and
politics. Though the US may not be as popular as it once was, no one can deny the
experiment in democracy has been a success.
Contemporary history
After the Cold War, the 1990s saw the longest economic expansion in modern U.S.
history, ending in 2001. Originating in U.S. defence networks, the Internet spread to
international academic networks, and then to the public in the 1990s, greatly
impacting the global economy, society, and culture.
On September 11, 2001, Al-Qaeda terrorists struck the World Trade Center in New
York City and the Pentagon near Washington, D.C., killing nearly 3,000 people. In
response the United States launched the War on Terror, which includes the ongoing
war in Afghanistan and the 2003–11 Iraq War.
Barack Obama, the first African-American, and multiracial president, was elected in
2008.