Name: United States Continent: North America Population: 290,300,000 Religion: Protestant 56%, Roman Catholic 28%, Jewish 2%, other 4%, none 10% (1989)

Britain's American colonies broke with the mother country in 1776 and were recognized as the new nation of the United States of America following the Treaty of Paris in 1783. During the 19th and 20th centuries, 37 new states were added to the original 13 as the nation expanded across the North American continent and acquired a number of overseas possessions. The two most traumatic experiences in the nation's history were the Civil War (1861-65) and the Great Depression of the 1930s. Buoyed by victories in World Wars I and II and the end of the Cold War in 1991, the US remains the world's most powerful nation-state. The economy is marked by steady growth, low unemployment and inflation, and rapid advances in technology. Information from the CIA World Fact Book

Timeline of Events Date Event 1584   1584 English attempt to establish colony on Roanoke Island; All colonists disappear 1619   1619 African slaves introduced to Virginia 1649   1649 Religious toleration in Maryland 1691   1691 Plymouth Colony becomes part of Massachusetts Bay colony 1692   1692 Salem witch trials   1692 College of William and Mary, Virginia, founded 1706   1706 Benjamin Franklin born 1733 12 February 1733 Georgia colony founded by James Oglethorpe 1765   1765 Colonists oppose Stamp Act 1773   1773 Boston Tea Party 1789   1789 George Washington inaugurated 1st U. S. President 1793   1793 Construction on the U. S. Capitol begins 1796   1796 George Washington's Farewell Address 1800   1800 Thomas Jefferson elected President 1803 30 April 1803 Louisiana Purchase Treaty signed in Paris; The United States purchases rights to 828,800 square miles of territory from France 1804 14 May 1804 Lewis & Clark begin expedition to survey the Louisiana Purchase 1807   1807 The 1st steamship Clermont sails 1811   1811 Indian Wars in United States begins 1812 18 June 1812 War of 1812 begins with U.S. declaration of war on the United Kingdom 1815   1815 Rose Greenhow born 18 February 1815 The War of 1812 ends with the Treaty of Ghent, reaffirming prewar status quo between the United States and United Kingdom 1819   1819 Spain cedes Florida to United States 1820   1820 Missouri Compromise 1823 2 December 1823 The Monroe Doctrine declares that European powers must not colonize or interfere with independent nations in the Americas 1825   1825 Erie Canal opens 1829 24 May 1829 Baltimore and Ohio Railroad opens; Becomes first major railroad system in the U.S. 1832   1832 Louisa May Alcott born 1833   1833 Slave trade abolished 17 December 1833 James Holtzclaw born 1835   1835 Second Seminole War begins   1835 Mark Twain born 1836   1836 Ralph Waldo Emerson establishes the principles of American Transcendentalism in his essay "Nature"   1836 Winslow Homer born   1836 Betsy Ross dies   1836 Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe 1841   1841 The Murders on the Rue Morgue by Edgar Allan Poe   1841 Oliver Wendell Holmes, Supreme Court Justice, born 1842   1842 Second Seminole War ends 1843   1843 Noah Webster dies   1843 Dorothea Dix and insane asylum reforms 1844 24 May 1844 Samuel F. B. Morse dispatches the first telegraph message from Washington, D.C. to Baltimore.  November 1844 James K. Polk elected President 1845   1845 Florida becomes a state 29 January 1845 First publication of Edgar Allen Poe's poem "The Raven" 1846   1846 United States acquire California 8 August 1846 The Wilmot Proviso 1847   1847 Thomas Edison born 1848   1848 U.S.-Mexican War ends   1848 Mormons to Utah 2 February 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ends U.S.-Mexican War; U.S. gains California and other Mexican territory 1850   1850 Compromise of 1850 1851   1851 James Fenimore Cooper dies 14 November 1851 Moby Dick by Herman Melville 1852   1852 Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe 1853   1853 Gadsden Purchase Treaty 1854   1854 Bleeding Kansas 30 May 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Bill 6 July 1854 Republican Party formed in Jackson, Michigan in protest of the Kansas-Nebraska Act 1855   1855 Percival Lowell born 4 July 1855 Walt Whitman publishes first edition of his collection of poetry Leaves of Grass 1856   1856 Booker T. Washington born 6 May 1856 Robert E. Peary, polar explorer, is born. 1857  March 1857 Dred Scott decision in U. S. Supreme Court 1863   1863 Henry Ford born 17 April 1863 Confederate General Daniel Donelson dies 3 July 1863 Union General Samuel Zook dies at the battle of Gettysburg 1865 6 June 1865 William Quantrill dies 30 July 1865 Union General George Wright dies 1867   1867 United States buys Alaska 2 March 1867 Reconstruction Act 1868   1868 Ulysses Grant elected President   1868 Cincinnati Reds established; First Major League Baseball team 1869 10 May 1869 The first transcontinental railroad acoss the US is completed when the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific railways meet at Promontory Summit, in Utah Territory. 1871   1871 Orville Wright born 1 November 1871 Stephen Crane born 1872   1872 Brooklyn Bridge opens 1875   1875 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain 1876   1876 Telephone invented by Alexander Graham Bell 25 June 1876 General George Armstrong Custer and the 265 men under his command are killed in the Battle of Little Big Horn. 1877   1877 Phonograph invented by Alexander Graham Bell 6 May 1877 Crazy Horse surrenders to General George Crook in Nebraska 1879 29 April 1879 Confederate General Douglas Cooper dies 1880   1880 Afghan-British War, Second ends 27 July 1880 Battle of Maiwand 1881 4 July 1881 Booker T. Washington founds the Tuskegee Institute, a major center for African-American higher education 1884 10 December 1884 First publication of Mark Twain's novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn 1886 28 October 1886 Statue of Liberty dedicated in New York 1890   1890 Lakota Sioux defeated by U.S. Army at Wounded Knee 1895   1895 Publication of Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage 18 September 1895 Booker T. Washington gives "Atlanta Compromise" speech on race relations in the United States 1898 25 April 1898 The United States defeats Spain in the Spanish-American War and annexes the Philippines, Guam, and Puerto Rico 7 July 1898 President William McKinley signs the Newlands Resolution, officially annexing Hawaii to the United States 1903   1903 Jack London's novel The Call of the Wild 17 December 1903 Orville and Wilbur Wright make first successful airplane flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina 1904 4 May 1904 United States begins construction of Panama Canal 1915 7 May 1915 German submarine sinks the Lusitania resulting in the loss of 1,198 lives, including 128 Americans 1917 6 April 1917 United States formally declares war against Germany. 1921   1921 Wall Street bomb explodes 1923 9 April 1923 Charles G. Dawes presents a plan for restructuring Germany's war debt 1924 2 June 1924 The U.S. Congress grants citizenship to all Native Americans born in the U.S. 1927   1927 First talking pictures 1928 15 May 1928 First appearance of Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse in the silent cartoon Plane Crazy 1929 28 October 1929 The Dow Jones drops over 20% in 2 days during the Wall Street Crash of 1929; Often cited as the beginning of the Great Depression 1930 7 July 1930 Construction begins on the Hoover Dam (originally known as the Boulder Dam) 1931   1931 Thomas Edison dies 1933 5 January 1933 Construction begins on Golden Gate bridge 1936 3 November 1936 Franklin D. Roosevelt reelected as President of the United States in a landslide 1939   1939 The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck   1939 Booker T. Washington dies 1941   1941 Manhattan Project begins 1944 6 June 1944 D-Day, the Allied Invasion of Normandy, France 20 October 1944 Allied forces launch amphibious invasion of the Philippines 1945 1 April 1945 Battle of Okinawa 16 July 1945 First successful test detonation of a nuclear weapon at Alamogordo, New Mexico 6 August 1945 Atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan 9 August 1945 Atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan 1947   1947 Henry Ford dies 1948   1948 Abstract-Expressionist Jackson Pollock's Number 5 3 December 1948 Tennessee Williams' play A Streetcar named Desire debuts on Broadway 1949   1949 Orville Wright dies 1954 17 May 1954 The Supreme Court unanimously outlaws racial segregation in public schools in Brown vs. BOE 1955 12 April 1955 Jonas Salk announces the development of a vaccine for polio 17 July 1955 Disneyland theme park opens in Anaheim, California 1956 9 September 1956 Elvis Presley's first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show 1958   1958 Guggenheim Museum opens   1958 USS Nautilus sails to North Pole 1959   1959 Frank Lloyd Wright dies 1961   1961 Alan Shepard first American in space 1962   1962 Mariner 2 launched  October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis 1965   1965 first human space walks 8 March 1965 First U.S. ground combat forces arrive in South Vietnam 1968 31 January 1968 North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces launch Tet Offensive throughout South Vietnam 1969   1969 Hurricane Camille 1973   1973 Skylab launched 1974   1974 Patty Hearst kidnapped 1975   1975 Patty Hearst caught 28 April 1975 The last group of Americans are evacuated from Saigon, South Vietnam during North Vietnamese invasion 1976 3 September 1976 Viking 2 lands on Mars; marks second automated visitor to land successfully 1977   1977 Elvis Presley dies 14 October 1977 Singer/actor Bing Crosby dies 1981   1981 Personal Computer introduced 1983   1983 Sally Ride first American woman in space 1984 24 January 1984 First release of Apple's Macintosh computers; First successful personal computer with graphical interface 1986   1986 Voyager 2 reaches Uranus 1989 6 October 1989 U. S. actress Bette Davis dies. 1991   1991 Persian Gulf War 17 January 1991 U.S. led coalition defeats Iraqi military forces and liberates Kuwait in Operation Desert Storm 1992 3 November 1992 Democratic candidate Bill Clinton elected 42nd President of the United States 1993   1993 Steven Spielberg's film Schindler's List 3 October 1993 19 American soldiers die during the Battle of Mogadishu in Somalia 1995   1995 O.J. Simpson acquitted 1996   1996 George Burns dies 1997 4 July 1997 Mars Pathfinder lands on Mars 1998 14 May 1998 U.S. singer Frank Sinatra dies 2000 12 October 2000 USS Cole Attacked in Aden 2001 7 October 2001 U.S. and allies begin military operations against the Taliban in Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom 2003 1 February 2003 Space shuttle Columbia breaks up on re-entry over Texas 29 June 2003 U.S. actress Katharine Hepburn dies at age 96. 11 July 2003 Former U. S. poet laureate Josephine Jacobsen dies. 9 August 2003 U.S. dancer/actor Gregory Hines dies. 9 September 2003 Edward Teller, "Father of the H-Bomb," dies. Go here for timeline sources.