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Timeline: 1900-1980
Major Economists of This Era
1900
- Guglielmo Marconi transmits messages across Atlantic with wireless
telegraph
- Orville and Wilbur Wright make first heavier-than-air machine flight
- Albert Einstein publishes Theory of Relativity
- Earthquake and fire destroy much of San Francisco
- Financial panic in 1907 begins with the fall of the Stock Market and
causes many banks to close
- Gold Standard Act enacted in USA
- Payne-Aldrich Tariff Act raises tariffs on imports into USA
1910
- Marie Curie discovers radium
- Federal Reserve Act creates central bank for the USA
- Assassination of Austria's Archduke Francis Ferdinand brings about
World War I
- Gilbert Lewis develops electron theory of valency explaining structure
of atoms
- Revolution overthrows monarchy in Russia
- Paris Peace Conference redraws map of Europe after World War I and
establishes the League of Nations
1920
- Women in USA receive the right to vote
- Prohibition begins in the USA as sale of all alcoholic beverages becomes
illegal
- Germany suffers financial collapse as hyperinflation destroys value
of mark
- U.S. Steel Company abolishes twelve hour work day and seven day work
week
- Alexander Fleming discovers penicillin
- Charles Lindbergh makes first solo airplane flight across the Atlantic
- Collapse of Stock Market ushers in decade of economic hardship
1930
- Worldwide Depression worsens, fostering the rise of political extremists
- Hawley-Smoot Tariff Bill sets highest duties in US history, hurting
world trade
- James Chadwick discovers the neutron, Carl Anderson discovers the
positron
- U.S. repeals Prohibition Amendment
- President Franklin Roosevelt begins New Deal government spending programs
- Adolf Hitler becomes Chancellor of Germany
- Wallace Carothers produces Polymer 66, or nylon
- Germany invades Poland starting World War II
- Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor and USA enters war against Japan, Germany
and Italy
- By 1944 war rages throughout the world
- "D Day" offensive by USA, Britain and allies begins end
of war in Europe
- Germany surrenders in April 1945
- USA drops atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japanese surrender
- The United Nations is formed
- John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley invent the transistor
- Communist forces seize power in China
1950
- Cold War between USA and Russia develops as Russia builds an atomic
bomb
- Korean War breaks out as North Korea invades south Korea. War ends
in 1953
- Electricity produced by atomic power in USA
- James Watson and Francis H. C. Crick describe the "double helix"
structure of DNA
- UNIVAC is first mass produced computer
- Jonas Salk develops anti-polio vaccine
- Russia launches Sputnik I, the Earth's first spacecraft
- U.S. Supreme Court orders desegregation of public schools
1960
- Russia launches first man into space
- President Kennedy establishes Peace Corps to assist underdeveloped
countries
- Rachel Carson writes Silent Spring, marking concern with
environmental pollution
- Martin Luther King leads massive Civil Rights demonstration in Washington,
D.C.
- President Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas, Texas
- Vietnam War intensifies as USA begins massive military buildup. Anti-war
movement begins on college campuses
- Israel defeats Arab forces in Six-Day War
- USA lands astronauts on the moon
1970
- Equal Rights Amendment to US Constitution passes Congress but fails
to be ratified by the necessary number of states
- President Nixon resigns in the wake of the Watergate scandal
- Following Israeli-Arab War in 1973, oil-producing countries double
oil prices causing energy crisis and economic hardship
- Vietnam War ends as South Vietnam surrenders and USA evacuates troops
- Egypt and Israel sign historic peace accord
- Personal computers change the way businesses do business
- Environmental issues become a major concern for most Americans
- AIDS, a disease destroying the human immune system, becomes pandemic
- U.S. sees rise of the largest federal budget deficit in history
- Free market emphasized; deregulation of airlines and S&L's; stock
market boom
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