Events in American history: Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points, African American suffrage in DC, national debt eradication, Citizen Kane controversy, Watergate trial, Mona Lisa exhibit, Battle of New Orleans, War on Poverty, Gallipoli withdrawal, No Child Left Behind Act.
Woodrow Wilson outlined his Fourteen Points. (1918) The Points would continue to form the backbone of American foreign policy after World War I and would later be used to establish the League of Nations.
African American men have been granted the right to vote in Washington DC. (1867) President Andrew Johnson had tried to veto a bill allowing suffrage for African American men in Washington, but Congress overrode the veto and passed the bill. It was one of the first steps towards universal suffrage in America and was instrumental in forming the 15th amendment, which made it illegal to discriminate against a voter on the basis of race anywhere in the United States.
The US national debt has been eradicated. (1835) The United States had started out with debt, which grew to a brief period of prosperity under President Andrew Jackson. The debt soared into the millions again during the Civil War and has continued to grow ever since.
Newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst has stopped running ads for Citizen Kane. (1941) The film, by Orson Welles, was very similar to Hearst’s life, but he painted it in an unflattering light. Hearst also used his influence in Hollywood to downplay the film, which was actually booed at that year’s Academy Awards. Since then, it has been declared one of the best American films ever made.
A trial has begun for the breaking into the Watergate building which has led to the Watergate scandal. (1973) Although the significance of the event was unknown at the time, the trial piqued the interest of Washington Post reporters. President Nixon was eventually found to have authorized the burglary and he resigned dishonorably.
The Mona Lisa has been exhibited at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. (1963) It was one of the few times that the painting left Italy intentionally (without being stolen). That it even made it to the United States was largely due to the influence of First Lady Jackie Kennedy, whom she told a French dignitary she would like to see. She replied off the cuff that the painting was supposed to visit America, and Kennedy stood by it.
President Andrew Jackson defeated the British at the Battle of New Orleans. (1815) This would be the last engagement between British and American forces in the War of 1812 and marked the last British-American conflict on the North American continent.
US President Lyndon B. Johnson has declared war on poverty. (1964) Johnson initiated a program of social reform known as the War on Poverty in response to a poverty rate of nearly 20% in the United States. While many of the program’s initiatives were later phased out, its legacy lives on in the Head Start program and the Job Corps.
US forces have left Gallipoli. (1916) It was the end of a disastrous campaign against the Ottoman Empire. The Allied forces were greatly discredited by the campaign and lost an estimated 250,000 soldiers in less than a year.
The No Child Left Behind Act was signed into law. (2002) George W. Bush initiated a major overhaul of the education system with the No Child Left Behind Act, which rewarded schools based on the performance of their students. The act was hugely controversial, as some felt it caused schools to sacrifice a good education just to get good test scores.
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