Timeline

The Modern Short Story

1941

  • Rosie the Riveter, named for Rosina Bonavita, becomes the emblem of female factory workers.
  • President Roosevelt signs Executive Order 8802, which bans racial discrimination in the defense industries and creates the Fair Employment Practices Committee.
  • Japan bombs Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The next day, President Roosevelt signs a declaration of war against Japan.
  • The Manhattan Project begins.
  • Mount Rushmore is completed.
  • Nazi Rudolf Hess flies to Britain on a peace mission.
  • Siege of Leningrad.

1942

  • President Roosevelt signs Executive Order 9066, which orders the removal of all Japanese-Americans on the West Coast to internment camps during the war.
  • The t-shirt is introduced.

1943

  • The Construction of the Pentagon is completed in Arlington, Virginia.
  • President Roosevelt dedicates the Jefferson memorial on the two-hundredth anniversary of Jefferson’s birthday.
  • French Resistance Leader Jean Moulin is killed.
  • Italy joins the Allies.
  • Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
  • Oswald Avery discovers that DNA carries genetic information.

1944

  • Air conditioning is introduced in motor vehicles.
  • The United Negro College Fund is established.
  • The first automatic, general-purpose computer is created.
  • The U.S. Supreme Court rules that blacks cannot be barred from voting in political party primaries.
  • CBS televised news shows the attack on Pearl Harbor.
  • D-Day.
  • First German V1 and V2 rockets are fired.
  • Hitler escapes an assassination attempt.

1945

  • The U.S. military drops a bomb with a photo of Rita Hayworth on the Bikini Islands, and four days later a bathing suit is named after the islands.
  • FDR dies.
  • U.S. drops atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
  • The Germans surrender.
  • Hitler commits suicide.
  • The United Nations is founded.
  • The microwave oven is invented.

1946

  • Critic Robert Coates uses the term Abstract Expressionism to describe New York modernist painters.
  • Dr. Spock publishes The Common Book of Baby and Child Care.
  • Juan Perón becomes President of Argentina.
  • Nuremberg Trials.
  • Winston Churchill gives his "Iron Curtain" speech.

1947

  • Bernard Baruch coins the term “Cold War.”
  • The CIA is founded.
  • Jackie Robinson signs with the Brooklyn Dodgers, becoming the first African American to play in white major league basketball.
  • The Hollywood Ten begins appearing before the House Un-American Activities Committee.
  • Chuck Yeager breaks the sound barrier.
  • The Dead Sea Scrolls are discovered.
  • The British turn back Jewish refugees aboard the Exodus.

1948

  • A Nevada court declares prostitution legal in Reno.
  • The "Big Bang" theory is formulated.
  • Mahatma Gandhi is assassinated.
  • Policy of apartheid begins in South Africa.
  • State of Israel is founded.

1949

  • China becomes a Communist nation.
  • First non-stop flight around the world.
  • NATO is established.
  • The Soviet Union has the atomic bomb.

1950

  • The first modern credit card is introduced.
  • The first organ transplant takes place.
  • The first Peanutscartoon strip appears.
  • The Korean War begins.
  • Senator Joseph McCarthy begins hunt for communists in the United States
  • President Truman orders construction of a hydrogen bomb.

1951

  • South Africans are forced to carry ID cards that identify their race.
  • Truman signs a peace treaty with Japan, officially ending WWII.
  • Winston Churchill is again Prime Minister of Great Britain.

1952

  • Golden arches are designed for McDonald's.
  • The first Holiday Inn motel opens in Memphis, Tennessee.
  • G.D. Laboratories in Chicago develops a contraceptive pill for women.
  • Seat belts are introduced in automobiles.
  • Polio vaccine is created.
  • Princess Elizabeth is crowned at age 25.

1953

  • Architects of America design new super shopping centers.
  • Harvard Lampoon editor George Plimpton establishes The Paris Review.
  • Joseph Stalin dies.
  • Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are executed for espionage.

1954

  • C.A. Swanson and Sons introduce frozen TV dinners.
  • Britain sponsors an expedition to search for the abominable snowman.
  • The first atomic submarine is launched.
  • A report suggests that cigarettes cause cancer.
  • Segregation is declared illegal in the U.S.

1955

  • Disneyland opens in California.
  • James Dean dies in a car accident.
  • Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat on a bus.
  • The Warsaw Pact is signed.

1956

  • Elvis Presley gyrates on the Ed Sullivan Show.
  • Actress Grace Kelly marries Prince Rainier III of Monaco.
  • The Hungarian Revolution begins.
  • Khrushchev denounces Stalin.
  • Suez crisis.
  • The TV remote control is invented.

1957

  • Wham-O Manufacturing introduces the Frisbee and the Hula Hoop.
  • Lawrence Ferlinghetti, owner of San Francisco’s City Lights Books, is arrested for selling lewd materials (including “Howl” by Allen Ginsberg).
  • “Leave it to Beaver” first appears on CBS.
  • Soviet satellite Sputnik launches the space age.

1958

  • Chinese Leader Mao Zedong launches the Great Leap Forward.
  • The Hope Diamond is donated to the Smithsonian.
  • Lego toy bricks are first introduced.
  • NASA is founded.

1959

  • The U.S. Public Road’s Bureau reports that 1 of every 2.5 Americans has a registered vehicle.
  • Fidel Castro becomes Dictator of Cuba.
  • The Sound of Music opens on Broadway.

1960

  • Envoid 10 is the first birth control pill.
  • The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee is founded at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina.
  • Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho is released.
  • The first televised presidential debates take place.
  • Lasers are invented.

1961

  • Ray Kroc discovers the McDonald brothers and opens two hundred chains in southern California.
  • President Kennedy announces the formation of the Peace Corps.
  • Adolf Eichmann stands trial for his role in the Holocaust.
  • The Bay of Pigs Invasion takes place in Cuba.
  • The Berlin Wall is built.
  • The Soviets launch the first man in space.

1962

  • John Glenn orbits the earth three times.
  • Andy Warhol exhibits his “Campbell's Soup Can.”
  • Cuban Missile Crisis.
  • Marilyn Monroe dies.

1963

  • United States President John F. Kennedy's assassination becomes the most heavily reported piece of news reportage in the history of television.
  • Martin Luther King, Jr. makes his "I Have a Dream" speech.

1964

  • Martin Luther King, Jr. receives the Nobel Peace Prize.
  • The Beatles become a music phenomenon.
  • Cassius Clay (a.k.a. Muhammad Ali) becomes the world heavyweight champion.
  • The Civil Rights Act passes in the U.S.
  • Hasbro launches its G.I. Joe action figure.
  • Nelson Mandela is sentenced to life in prison.

1965

  • The federal government passes the Motor Vehicle Air Pollution Act, which regulates automobile design.
  • Japan's bullet train begins operation.
  • Los Angeles riots.
  • Malcolm X is assassinated.
  • The U.S. sends troops to Vietnam.

1966

  • Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale organize the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense in San Francisco.
  • The National Organization for Women is established.
  • The Department of the Interior publishes its first rare and endangered species list.
  • Mao Tse-tung launches the Cultural Revolution.
  • Mass draft protests take place in the U.S.

1967

  • Thurgood Marshall becomes the first black Supreme Court justice.
  • The Ibos in Eastern Nigeria create their own state called Biafra.
  • The first Rolling Stone magazine is published in San Francisco by 21-year-old Jann Wenner.
  • Che Guevara is killed.
  • The first Super Bowl takes place.
  • Six-Day War in the Middle East.

1968

  • The Gateway Arch in St. Louis is completed.
  • Feminists protest the Miss America pageant in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
  • Yale University begins to admit women.
  • 32 African nations boycott the Olympics in protest of the admission of South Africa.
  • U.S. President Johnson orders 35-50,000 more troops to Vietnam.
  • In Paris, hundreds of thousands protest police repression.
  • Martin Luther King. Jr. is assassinated; African-Americans riot in four U.S. cities.
  • Robert F. Kennedy is assassinated.
  • Commercial flights begin between Moscow and the U.S.
  • Tet Offensive.

1969

  • The gay rights movement intensifies after the Stonewall Riot, which erupts in response to a police raid of a dance club and bar in Greenwich Village.
  • Approximately 700 million people watch Apollo 11 land on the moon.
  • Thousands attend the Woodstock Festival.
  • Ho Chi Minh dies.
  • Harvard initiates a Black Studies program.
  • The U.S. Supreme Court orders desegregation.
  • Charles Manson is arrested for the murder of Sharon Tate and others.
  • Neil Armstrong becomes the first man to walk on the moon.
  • Sesame Street airs for the first time.
  • Yasser Arafat becomes leader of the PLO.