(1900-2000) US had a era with rapid economy growth and industrialization from the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century.

(1920s) The Roaring twenties. Industralial growth. The automobile, the telephone, electricity, the motion picture. Stock marked Crash on wall street 1929.

(1940s) Pearl Harbor, a US navybase in Hawaii, attacked by the Japanese, December 7, 1941. It made the USA enter the war, side of the Allies. Europa was in ruins, had to be rebuilt after WWII. No battles had taken place on American mainland, the USA was intact.

(1960s) War and change. Civil Rights Movement, the Space Race, the Kennedys, the Cold War, the Vietnam War and the hippies. The Vietnam War was the first war that people protested against and the first war America had ever “lost.” Thousends of Americans (men and woman) died. The hippie movement, slogan, “make love, not war”, typical of this period.
In 1962, with the Cuban Missile Crisis, US, on the brink of war with the Soviet Union. Soviet placed nuclear missiles on Cuba, 90 miles from US. President Kennedy insisted missiles withdrawn, full-scale war avoided. The Civil Rights Movement intensified the demands for equal rights for everyone. 1969, astronaut Neil Armstrong, first man to set foot on the moon.

(1980s) decade of Ronald Reagan and conservative USA. The country a Cold War the Soviet Union and supported anti-communist movements around the globe. The Berlin Wall, symbol of the “Iron Curtain” that separated the democratic western countries from the communist countries of Eastern Europe throughout the Cold War. 1989 the Berlin Wall came down, the Cold War to an end, USA as the world’s only superpower.

The 80s will also be remembered as the decade of MTV and the music video, and pop icons like Madonna and Michael Jackson.

The 21st century New Year’s Eve 1999, western world worried: worldwide computer crash? Our lives ever be the same? The crash did not happen, events in 2001 did change the world. September 11, 2001, terror struck, US soil, 3000 people died. Four planes were hijacked. Two crashed into the Twin Towers on Manhattan, one hit the Pentagon and the fourth plane missed its target and crashed. 9/11, remembered as the “day that changed the world” and the beginning of the Global War on Terror. Following the attacks the US and its allies declared war on the Taliban in Afghanistan.

The worldwide economic recession, US hard, millions of people struggled financially, many losing their jobs, having to leave their homes. The 2008 election of Barack Obama, the first African American US president, brought hope to many Americans, who believed his health and poverty programs would bring change.