| 1450 | Gutenberg perfects movable type |
| 1636 | Harvard College established |
| 1691 | Jacob Leisler executed |
| 1692 | Salem Village wracked by witch trials |
| 1837 | Massachusetts establishes a state board of education |
| 1852 | Harriet Beecher Stowe's antislavery novel Uncle Tom's Cabin is published and becomes a best-seller |
| 1854 | Henry David Thoreau's Walden published |
| 1857 | Hinton R. Helper attacks slavery on economic grounds in The Impending Crisis of the South; the book is suppressed in the southern states |
| 1862 | Morrill Land Grant gives land to states for establishment of colleges |
| 1869 | Rutgers and Princeton play in nation's first intercollegiate football game; Cincinnati Red Stockings, baseball's first professional team, organized |
| 1873 | Comstock Law bans obscene articles from U.S. mail, Nation's first kindergarten opens in Saint Louis, Missouri |
| 1876 | Johns Hopkins University opens first separate graduate school, Centennial Exposition held in Philadelphia, Mark Twain publishes The Adventures of Tom Sawyer |
| 1879 | Henry George analyzes problems of urbanizing America in Progress and Poverty |
| 1881 | Booker T. Washington opens Tuskegee Institute in Alabama |
| 1881 | Dr. John H. Kellogg advises parents to teach their children about sex in Plain Facts for Old and Young |
| 1883 | Metropolitan Opera opens in New York, railroads introduce standard time zones |
| 1885 | Home Insurance Building, country's first metal-frame structure, erected in Chicago |
| 1887 | Edward Bellamy promotes idea of socialist utopia in Looking Backward, 2000-1887 |
| 1893 | World Columbian Exposition opens in Chicago |
| 1896 | John Dewey's Laboratory School for testing and practice of new educational theory opens at University of Chicago |
| 1901 | Naturalist writer Theodore Dreiser publishes Sister Carrie |
| 1906 | Upton Sinclair attacks meat-packing industry in The Jungle |
| 1910 | National Collegiate Athletic Association formed |
| 1911 | Irving Berlin popularizes rhythm of ragtime with “Alexander's Ragtime Band,” Frederick Winslow Taylor publishes The Principles of Scientific Management |
| 1912 | Harriet Monroe begins publishing magazine Poetry |
| 1913 | Mother's Day becomes national holiday |
| 1915 | D. W. Griffith produces the first movie spectacular, The Birth of a Nation, T. S. Eliot publishes "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" |
| 1916 | Federal Aid Roads Act creates national road network, New York Zoning Law sets the pattern for zoning laws across the nation |
| 1919 | U.S. agents arrest 1,700 in Red Scare raids, Congress pass Volstead Act over Wilson's veto (October) |
| 1920 | WWJ-Detroit broadcasts first commercial radio program (November) |
| 1923 | Newspapers expose KKK graft, torture, murder, Henry Luce begins publishing Time magazine (March) |
| 1925 | John Scopes convicted of teaching theory of evolution in violation of Tennessee law (July) |
| 1926 | First Martha Graham modern dance recital (April) |
| 1927 | Charles Lindbergh completes first nonstop transatlantic flight from New York to Paris (May), Sacco and Vanzetti executed (August), The movie The Jazz Singer features singing talking soundtrack |
| 1933 | Twenty-first Amendment repeals Prohibition (December) |
| 1947 | Truman orders loyalty program for government employees (March), William Levitt announces first Levittown (May) |
| 1950 | Senator Joseph McCarthy claims communists in government (February), Gwendolyn Brooks become first African American woman to be awarded Pulitzer Prize |
| 1951 | Remington Rand unveils UNIVAC, the first electronic digital computer to be marketed commercially |
| 1952 | Edward R. Murrow inaugurates television news show See It Now |
| 1953 | McDonald's chooses golden arches design for its hamburger shops, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg executed for atomic-secrets spying (June) |
| 1955 | Dr. Jonas Salk reports success of antipolio vaccine (April) |
| 1956 | Eisenhower signs legislation creating the interstate highway system |
| 1957 | Russia launches Sputnik satellite |
| 1958 | Charles Van Doren confesses to cheating on television quiz show Twenty-one |
| 1961 | JFK establishes Peace Corps (March) |
| 1962 | Astronaut John H. Glenn, Jr., becomes first American to orbit the earth (February) |
| 1967 | Riots in Detroit kill 43, injure 2,000, leave 5,000 homeless (July) |
| 1969 | Two American astronauts land on the moon |
| 1974 | Arab oil embargo creates energy crisis in the United States (October) |
| 1976 | Nation celebrates bicentennial with fireworks, patriotic music, and parade of sailing ships (July) |
| 1978 | President Carter signs law raising mandatory retirement age from 65 to 70 (April) |
| 1986 | The space shuttle Challenger explodes killing seven astronauts (January) |