| Event | Year |
| Japanese planes attack Pearl Harbor | |
| Six-Day War between Israeli and Arab forces | |
| Pulitzer Prizes are first awarded | |
| Sentencing of Nazis at Nuremburg Trials | |
| Harper Lee publishes To Kill a Mockingbird | |
| Coca Cola temporarily changes its formula | |
| Amelia Earhart becomes first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic | |
| Benito Mussolini marches on Rome, Fascism arises | |
| Elvis Presley dies | |
| Germany invades Poland, World War II begins | |
| Iranian militants seize the U.S. embassy and begin holding Americans hostage for 444 days | |
| The Pentagon is completed to become the largest office building in the world | |
| Roe v. Wade: abortion becomes legal | |
| George W. Bush defeats John Kerry for reelection | |
| NBC is established as a radio network | |
| Colombine High School shootings | |
| Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs debuts | |
| The Beatles break up | |
| The British oceanliner Lusitania is sunk | |
| The first nuclear power plant is built | |
| The Hawley-Smoot Tariff is passed/The Great Depression worsens | |
| Bombing of Oklahoma City federal building kills 168 | |
| Brown v. The Board of Education case | |
| Apple introduces the first Macintosh personal computer | |
| Jackie Robinson breaks the color barrier in baseball | |
| George W. Bush defeats Al Gore to become President in a very tight race | |
| Prohibition is made law as the 18th Amendment is ratified | |
| Munich Olympics: 11 Israeli athletes are killed by Arab terrorists | |
| Adolf Hitler becomes the German Chancellor | |
| MTV debuts | |
| Gandhi is assassinated | |
| George H. W. Bush is elected President | |
| Deepwater Horizon oil spill | |
| Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay become first known men to reach the top of Mount Everest | |