Even if history teachers have stopped making students memorize dates, journalism teachers shouldn’t. Dates are important for a full understanding of events, and students should have precise knowledge of the important events in American and world history. The list of dates on this web site, adapted from The Complete Editor, is a good place for the student to begin acquiring this knowledge. Once the students have studied this list, they will be ready to tackle the two crossword puzzles contained on this site (links just below this paragraph). You can download these puzzles as HTML or PDF files. (Posted Jan. 10, 2005)
time-place-crwd-1, time-place-crwd-2
The following dates are important for an editor to know and should be committed to memory:
July 4, 1776 — Declaration of Independence signed
July 1-3, 1863 — Battle of Gettysburg
November 19, 1863 — President Lincoln’s Gettysburg address
April 14, 1865 — Lincoln shot at Ford’s Theater; died April 15
November 11, 1918 — World War I ends
October 29, 1929 — Stock market crash begims Great Depression
September 1, 1939 — Germany invades Poland
December 7, 1941 — Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor
June 6, 1944 — D-Day; allies invade Europe
August 6, 1945 — Atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima
December 1, 1955 — Rosa Parks refuses to give up seat on Montgomery bus, begins modern Civil Rights movement
February 20, 1962 — John Glenn is first American to orbit the earth
September 15, 1963 — 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham bombed
November 22, 1963 — President John F. Kennedy shot
April 4, 1968 — Martin Luther King killed in Memphis
July 20, 1969 — Neil Armstrong first man to walk on the moon
May 4, 1970 — Four students killed at Kent State
May 15, 1972 — George Wallace shot
June 17, 1972 — Burglars break into to the Democratic party headquarters at Watergate apartment complex in Washington
August 9, 1974 — Nixon resigns over Watergate revelations
August 16, 1977 — Elvis Presley died
January 28, 1986 — Challenger explodes shortly after liftoff
April 19, 1995 — Federal building in Oklahoma City bombed
January 1998 — First reports surface of President Bill Clinton’s affair with a White House intern; scandal eventually led to U.S, Senate impeachment trial in n 1999
September 11, 2001 — Terrorists hijack four airplanes in the U.S., crashing them all; two fly into the World Trade Center towers in New York City, causing them to collapse; a third flies into the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.; a fourth crashes into a rural area in Pennsylvania
December 26, 2004 — An earthquake in the Indian Ocean causes a giant tsunami, killing more than 150,000 people and leaving many more homeless
Inclusive dates:
1861-1865 — American Civil War
1903 — Wright brothers first flight
1914-1918 — World War I
1919-1933 — Prohibition
1925 — Scopes monkey trial in Tennessee
1930s — the Great Depression
1939-1945 — World War II
October 1962 — Cuban missile crisis
Adapted from The Complete Editor
Get a FREE copy of Kill the Quarterback
Get a free digital copy of Jim Stovall's mystery novel, Kill the Quarterback. You will also get Jim's newsletter and advanced notice of publications, free downloads and a variety of information about what he is working on. Jim likes to stay in touch, so sign up today.