The Biggest Event In American History From The Year You Were Born

Still standing proud in Manhattan’s Midtown after more than nine decades, the Empire State Building was the uber-skyscraper of its day. It was the tallest building in the world when it was built, a distinction it hung onto all the way up to 1971. The steel-framed structure’s 86 stories took just 13 months to build. The tower’s spire was originally intended as a docking station for airships — but that idea never really caught on.

Amelia Earhart, a pilot with an apparently insatiable appetite for aviation records, was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic. Overcoming poor weather and mechanical glitches, her flight from Harbour Grace, Newfoundland, to the city of Derry on Ireland’s north coast took 14 hours and 56 minutes. Tragically, six years later Earhart took one risk too many when she disappeared during her attempt to circumnavigate the world.

The only man to win four presidential elections in the history of the U.S., Franklin D. Roosevelt is remembered for his ability to relate to ordinary Americans. One of the ways he achieved this was through his fireside chats which started in 1933. Using the relatively new medium of radio, FDR was able to speak to families in their homes as they sat around their old-time receivers.

The drought that blighted parts of the southern USA in the early part of the 1930s was catastrophic. It made as much as 35 million acres of agricultural land so parched that it was unusable. The dust storms whipped up by sweltering winds were so intense that they killed people and their animals. It wasn’t until 1939 that rainfall recovered enough to alleviate the situation.

The American economy was blighted by the Great Depression of the 1930s, meaning unemployment, poverty, and misery for many. FDR was elected on his promise to get America back to work, and one of the ways the new president did this was through the creation of his New Deal. This was a government employment project that involved massive infrastructure projects and abundant job opportunities.

Always with a keen eye for propaganda, Hitler intended that the 1936 Olympics in the German capital Berlin would be a showcase for Nazism and the superiority of the Aryan race. But one African-American tore up the script. Jesse Owens, the outstanding athlete of his generation won gold in the long jump, the relay, and both the 100- and 200-meter sprints. And he was no Aryan.

The German rigid airship Hindenburg was the largest of its kind ever built and was intended to herald the dawn of a new age of passenger flight. The airship made its first commercial flights in 1936, traveling between Germany and the U.S. Calamity struck the next year when the aircraft caught fire and exploded as it came in to land at Lakehurst, New Jersey, killing 36.

The War of the Worlds is a work of fiction that came from the pen of H. G. Wells in 1897. Orson Welles narrated an updated radio version of this tale of an invasion of our planet by Martians. But many Americans apparently took the storyline as actual fact. So you can imagine the panic that gripped some households, under the misapprehension that other-worldly beings might be knocking at their doors any minute.

Up until 1939, none of Britain’s monarchs had ever graced North America with their presence. It’s worth remembering that the British royalty had some cause to be displeased with the Americans. They had, after all, risen up against one of them, George III, and violently kicked his colonial administration out of the country. But it was a case of let bygones be bygones when FDR invited George VI and his Queen Elizabeth for a visit.

After failing to make it big with a movie theater the brothers McDonald — Richard and Maurice — opened their first restaurant in California’s San Bernardino. It was a drive-in with carhops called McDonald’s Bar-B-Que, and the signature dish was the hot dog, which isn’t something you’ll find in a modern McDonald’s. The surprising truth is that the San Bernardino restaurant didn’t serve a single hamburger until a revamp in 1948.

Surely one of the most traumatic events in America’s history, Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor catapulted the U.S. headlong into World War II. Some 2,400 people lost their lives in the attack, and 19 ships and 330 aircraft were destroyed or damaged. One immediate result was the appearance of long lines at recruiting centers across the nation — in the aftermath of the attack hundreds of thousands joined up to fight for their country.

With America now an active participant in World War II, the authorities turned their attention to people of Japanese heritage living in the United States. Executive Order 9066 decreed that all people of Japanese descent were to be rounded up and interned in camps. That included even those who were actually U.S. citizens. Some 127,000 people — men, women, and children — were incarcerated in ten camps, all located in isolated spots.

There’s some interesting symbolism in the 1,100 acres of land that the Pentagon was built on. At one time these acres were a private estate belonging to a leading Confederate soldier, General Robert E. Lee. The property was seized by the Federal government as the Civil War raged. The sheer size of this gargantuan edifice is confirmed by the fact that, during World War II, a staff of 33,000 was based there.

G.I.s wade ashore on the first day of the invasion of Northern France, an operation that would ultimately end in complete German defeat the following year. As well as U.S. troops, the joint operation included many fighters from Britain and Canada plus smaller contingents from a variety of nations such as Greece, Czechoslovakia, and Norway. Almost 5,000 Allied soldiers lost their lives on that first day of the assault.

The first nuclear attack the world has ever seen resulted in the devastation of the Japanese city of Hiroshima, and the loss of 120,000 lives within four days. A second attack on Nagasaki three days later killed some 73,000. Two B-29 bombers from the U.S. Army Air Force dropped a single bomb on each city in a terrifying display of humanity’s destructive capability.

Once World War II was over, one of the activities that many Americans turned to with considerable enthusiasm was making babies. The results were astonishing and the tidal wave of births after the war is aptly known as the baby boom. In 1946 alone 3.4 million babies were born and in the decade from 1954 the average number of births was around four million each year. Just think of all the diapers.

It was a highly significant year in Jackie Robinson’s life, but it was also an important event for the wider nation. For the first time, an African-American player was hired by a Major League Baseball team, the Brooklyn Dodgers. Robinson’s career got off to a flying start when he was named National League Rookie of the Year. And it only took him a couple more years to earn the accolade of National League Most Valuable Player.

In a sign that, however gradually, the U.S was moving away from outright discrimination against African-Americans, the U.S. armed services were desegregated in 1948. Not everyone welcomed this progress with open arms, despite the fact that a million African-Americans had been in uniform during World War II. The Army Secretary Kenneth Royall’s opposition to the move was so strong that he was forced to resign.

The Northern Atlantic Treaty Organization, the military alliance between the Western democratic nations, was formed as the Cold War between the West and the communist East took shape. The basic principle behind the alliance is that if any member is attacked by a hostile power, the other members will defend it. The mirror image of NATO was the Warsaw Pact of Eastern European nations led by the Soviet Union.

As the Cold War between the NATO nations and the communist bloc hotted up, many Americans became increasingly worried about hostile infiltration of U.S. society. A leading figure in the hunt for real or imagined spies and subversives was Senator Joseph McCarthy, a Republican who represented Wisconsin. So enthusiastic was McCarthy that he became synonymous with the fevered search for clandestine communists in government departments and elsewhere.

Perhaps the most notorious spies in U.S. history, Julius Rosenberg and his wife Ethel were both found guilty of espionage. Specifically, it was said that Julius, aided by Ethel, had lead a spy ring which passed on nuclear weapons secrets to the Soviet Union. Julius had worked as a U.S. Army Signal Corps engineer, and both Rosenbergs had been members of the Young Communist League. The two were executed.

The physics involved in hydrogen bombs differs from that in atomic bombs, like the ones used to destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. The result is that the explosive force of the hydrogen bomb far exceeds that of the atom bomb. A Time magazine article published in 2017 asserted that, “a hydrogen bomb has the potential to be 1,000 times more powerful than an atomic bomb.” Considering what atom bombs did to those two Japanese cities, that’s terrifying.

Scientists at England’s Cambridge University James Watson and Francis Crick made a groundbreaking discovery which offered a massive leap in our understanding of life itself. They were the first to reveal the double-helix structure of DNA and its significance. They were able to show how DNA could copy itself and be passed on through the generations. The science of genetics was forever transformed.

Linda Brown of Topeka, Kansas, had to make a perilous crossing of a railroad track to get to her Blacks-only school. Yet there was a white school closer to her home. The significance of this court case was that its verdict declared that racial segregation in American schools was counter to the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution. This meant that segregation was unconstitutional.

In the city of Montgomery, Alabama, African-Americans were compelled to give up seats at the front of public buses to white people. But Rosa Parks decided to defy this racist regulation, refusing to give up her seat. She was arrested and this sparked a boycott of Montgomery buses. Historians regard this as a key episode in the growth of the civil rights movement.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower was a keen proponent of the idea of a network of highways linking American cities and regions. During World War II he became a great admirer of the German autobahn system of high-speed roads. Eisenhower argued that an efficient highway system would allow easier evacuation of citizens in the event of nuclear war. Eventually the Federal-Aid Highway Act would result in 41,0000 miles of new roads.

The Little Rock Nine was a group of African-American school students who campaigned against racial segregation in the school system in Little Rock, Arkansas. Their activism became a focus for the national civil rights movement’s efforts to end school segregation. The nine enrolled at the whites-only Little Rock Central High School and were met by a violent mob as they tried to enter. Ultimately, they were only able to attend the school under military escort. The school was finally desegregated in 1960.

The Soviets had ignited the space race with the U.S. by launching Sputnik 1 in October 1957, the first satellite to orbit the Earth. America wasn’t too far behind when its first satellite, Explorer 1, took off from Florida’s Cape Canaveral and flew into orbit in January 1958. Explorer 1 carried a cosmic ray detector which was able, for the first time, to measure the radiation belts which encircle Earth.

By any measure February 3, 1959, was a terrible day for American popular music. It was the day when a plane crash cost the lives of three leading stars in the form of Ritchie Valens, J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson, and Buddy Holly. The three were aboard a plane headed for Moorhead, Minnesota, which came down shortly after take-off from Mason City in Iowa. Ever since, this day has been known as “The Day the Music Died.”

One day, four African-American students, all civil rights activists, decided that they wanted to eat at the lunch counter in a Woolworths store in Greensboro, North Carolina. But this counter was marked as being for whites only, so the young men were told they wouldn’t be served. The four refused to leave, sparking protests throughout the South. Eventually, Woolworths and other stores were forced to desegregate.

The Bay of Pigs was an ill-fated mission involving an armed group opposed to Cuba’s communist regime. Their aim was to invade the island and overthrow Fidel Castro’s government. The Bay of Pigs was the main landing point for the amphibious invasion that was backed by the CIA. In the event, the invaders were routed in a few days by the Cuban defenders, and 1,100 of them were taken prisoner.

In her 1950s prime Norma Jeane Baker — better known as Marilyn Monroe — was one of the hottest stars in Hollywood. Her last film Something’s Got to Give was something of a disaster, with Monroe regularly failing to show up on set. She was fired in June 1962 and the movie was never completed. Just a couple of months later her body was found in her Los Angeles residence. It seems she overdosed on sleeping tablets. A gut-wrenching 20th-century tragedy.

The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom was a major event during the years when many African-Americans and their supporters were campaigning for full civil rights and an end to racial discrimination. In a massive peaceful demonstration some 200,000 people assembled by the Lincoln Memorial. They were addressed by Martin Luther King who gave his acclaimed “I have a dream” speech.

British pop icons the Beatles crossed the Atlantic and arrived in the U.S. to extraordinary scenes of adulation, at times verging on hysteria. They appeared on Ed Sullivan’s TV show shortly after arriving and some 73 million Americans tuned in to watch them play. They may have been watched, but they were scarcely heard as their music was all but drowned out by the screams of their female fans.

An Alabama state trooper shot dead Jimmy Lee Jackson, a civil rights campaigner, in Selma, Alabama, and this brutal act prompted a peaceful march from the scene of the shooting to Montgomery, also in Alabama. Just as the protesters were walking over a bridge leading out of Selma, the police launched an attack, firing tear gas and wielding nightsticks. Some 50 marchers ended up in hospital and the unprovoked assault became known as “Bloody Sunday.”

The Miranda v. Arizona court case radically changed the way police were allowed to act towards those they had arrested. Law enforcement agents were now compelled to inform anyone suspected of a crime of their rights. These include the right to a lawyer and the right to remain silent when being questioned. These are what we still today call the Miranda Rights.

Protests against America’s involvement in the Vietnam War had started small-scale, mainly on university campuses. But by 1967 the anti-war movement had grown enormously. Towards the end of the year, the total of American dead stood at more than 15,000. Discontent with the war spread far beyond the students and hippies who had originally protested. In October, an anti-war demonstration at the Lincoln Memorial attracted a crowd of 100,000 and ended in considerable violence.

The best known of all the leaders of America’s Civil Rights movement, Martin Luther King was brutally gunned down in 1968. He was standing on the balcony of his motel in Memphis, Tennessee, when he was shot by a career criminal and fugitive called James Earl Ray, who ultimately died in jail in 1998. King’s murder shocked the nation to its core.

In 1961 President Kennedy had told Congress that America would land a man on the Moon before the decade’s end. In 1969 NASA made good on that promise when not one but two Americans set foot on the Moon: Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. A spellbound world watched on TV as humans actually walked on the lunar surface, a scientific achievement without parallel at the time.

Although Henry Kissinger, America’s National Security Advisor, was conducting secret talks with the North Vietnamese Communists, the U.S. actually expanded the scope of the Vietnam War in 1970. The U.S. Air Force flew clandestine bombing raids over Cambodia on the grounds that the North Vietnamese Army had troops in the country. Ground attacks were also launched. That same year, four anti-war protestors were shot dead at a Kent State University demonstration.