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Timeline of the Twentieth Century

Click on the decade for a detailed year-by-year timeline of that decade.

1900-1909
Model-T, First Flight, San Francisco Earthquake, Einstein's Theory of Relativity, Boxer Rebellion, First Silent Movie
1910-1919
World War I, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, the Titanic, Russian Revolution, Mata Hari, Prohibiton
1920-1929
Women's Suffrage, King Tut's Tomb, Mussolini, J. Edgar Hoover, Mein Kampf, Monkey Trial, Charles Lindbergh
1930-1939
Great Depression, Mohandas Gandhi, Empire State Building, Amelia Earhart, Nazis, "Monopoly," the Hindenburg
1940-1949
World War II, Adolf Hitler, Pearl Harbor, Manhattan Project, Chuck Yeager, Berlin Airlift, Apartheid, Communist China
1950-1959
Hydrogen Bomb, McCarthyism, Korean War, Color TV, Polio Vaccine, Mt. Everest, Disneyland, Rosa Parks, Sputnik
1960-1969
JFK, Martin Luther King Jr., Eichmann Trial, Berlin Wall, Cuban Missile Crisis, Draft Protests, Charles Manson
1970-1979
Vietnam War, Munich Olympic Games, Watergate, Abortion, Patty Hearst, Pol Pot, Star Wars, Disco, Margaret Thatcher
1980-1989
Mikhail Gorbachev, Mount St. Helens, AIDS, Pac-Man, Personal Computers, Ethiopian Famine, Exxon Valdez
1990-1999
Internet, Nelson Mandela, Operation Desert Storm, Waco, O.J. Simpson, Oklahoma City Bombing, Princess Diana, Y2K
Car photograph part of the Robert Runyon Photograph Collection, [08638], courtesy of The Center for American History, The University of Texas at Austin.
World War I photograph courtesy the Photos of the Great War Archive.
Women's Suffrage photograph courtesy of Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [LC-USZ62-30776 DLC]
Great Depression photograph part of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library Collection, courtesy of the National Archives.
Adolf Hitler photograph part of the Estelle Bechoefer Collection, courtesy of USHMM Photo Archives.
Atomic Cloud photograph courtesy of the National Archives.
Martin Luther King, Jr. photograph courtesy of the National Archives.
Vietnam photograph courtesy of the National Archives.
Gorbachev and Reagan photograph part of the Ronald Reagan Library Collection, courtesy of the National Archives.
Computer photograph taken by your About.com Guide, Jennifer Rosenberg.
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