American History

In 1889, amidst the slums of Chicago's Near West Side, pioneer social worker Jane Addams (1860-1935) opened Hull House to aid the poor, largely immigrant residents of the neighborhood.

The topics include: Sandinistas oust Somoza in Nicaragua; Thatcher elected Prime Minister; Three Mile Island; the Shah flees and Khomeini returns to Iran; palimony; Idi Amin overthrown; Skylab falls; Chinese invasion of Vietnam.

The topics include: Proposition 13; Nazis march in Skokie; Aldo Moro kidnapping; Vietnamese boat people; Jonestown suicides; Rev. Sun Myung Moon; hot tubs; Panama Canal; Bakke case; disco music; Camp David.

The topics include: Sadat and Begin peace talks; Carter inauguration; solar energy; Gary Gilmore execution; punk rock; Son of Sam murders; Elvis dies; NYC blackout; Sylvester Stallone in Rocky; Bert Lance resigns.

The topics include: American Bicentennial; Jimmy Carter elected; Viking spacecraft lands on Mars; mud wrestling; Israeli raid on Entebbe; post-Mao party purge in China; Idi Amin; Legionnaire’s disease; Howard Hughes dies.

The topics include: Saigon falls; Margaret Thatcher elected; Ford assassination attempts; Saturday Night Live; Patty Hearst arrested; UN equates Zionism with racism; Jimmy Hoffa disappears; primal scream therapy; Franco dies.

The topics include: Nixon resigns; gay rights demonstration in NYC; Boston anti-busing demonstrations; sex discrimination; Arctic pipeline; truckers’ strike; streaking; Ford pardons Nixon; Fanne Fox scandal.

The topics include: Watergate grand jury proceedings; Agnew resigns; Wounded Knee; military coup in Chile; U.S. out of Vietnam; Yom Kippur War; gas crisis; the Partridge Family; hang gliding; mass murders; LBJ dies.

The topics include: Nixon wins in landslide; Olympics terror; SALT talks; George Wallace shot; skyjackings; Betty Friedan; Howard Hughes biography hoax; Bobby Fischer and chess as spectator sport; Angela Davis; J. Edgar Hoover dies.

The topics include: Pentagon Papers; Attica prison revolt; Lt. Calley and the My Lai massacre; Bangladesh; unisex hair and clothes; deaths of Khrushchev and Louis Armstrong; DNA; Apollo missions; D.B. Cooper.

The topics include: Kent State killings; Chicago 7 Trial; ERA; Cambodian invasion; mercury pollution; Muhammad Ali; water beds and hot pants; Solzhenitzyn; Bernadette Devlin; tragedy at Chappaquiddick; Sesame Street; civil war in Biafra.

U.S. POWs in Vietnam; John Lennon and Yoko Ono; Stokely Carmichael; Woodstock music festival; Chinese Red Guards; Apollo 11 and first man on the moon; birth control pills; Easy Rider; Vietnam Moratorium; Nixon's world tour.

Worldwide student protests; assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.; Abbie Hoffman and the Yippies; Eugene McCarthy's anti-war campaign; LBJ out of race; Tet Offensive; assassination of Robert Kennedy; Nixon elected President.

Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco; three U.S. astronauts die; March on the Pentagon; Six Day War in Mideast; Greek Junta seizes power; LBJ and Kosygin meet; Pan American Games; urban revolt in Detroit; Che Guevara killed in Bolivia.

Mass murderers Richard Speck and the Boston Strangler; Ralph Nader and auto safety; grape boycott in California; Cultural Revolution in China; credit card boom; Beatles banned in the South; George Wallace.

Walks in space; Vietnam War; Timothy Leary and drug culture; assassination of Malcolm X; Salvador Dali and happenings; Watts riot; deaths of Albert Schweitzer and Winston Churchill; Pope Paul VI at UN.

The Beatles invade the U.S.; Khrushchev overthrown; LBJ in the White House; Martin Luther King, Jr. Receives Nobel Prize; Cassius Clay; Marshall McLuhan; China becomes nuclear power; Civil Rights workers killed in Mississippi.

Racial tensions in the South; Martin Luther King, Jr.; Kennedy forms Peace Corps; Vietnam under Diem; Surgeon General's report on smoking; Hugh Hefner and Playboy magazine; nuclear test ban treaty signed with Moscow; JFK assassinated.

Malcolm X; bomb shelters; Cuban missile crisis and threat of nuclear confrontation; JFK vs. the steel companies; James Meredith goes to school; Thalidomide tragedy; Seattle World's Fair; Marilyn Monroe dies.

JFK inauguration; first man in space; Kennedy meets Khrushchev; East Germany builds the wall; Bay of Pigs invasion; trial of Adolf Eichmann; Civil Rights Freedom Riders; the pill; Chubby Checker and the Twist.