20th CENTURY HISTORY

Some of the most important events in the twentieth century took years to accomplish,
while others took only minutes. Twentieth century history is made up of both the large
and the small events that shaped it.

Disasters & Tragedy

Natural or man-made, disasters are destructive. They can wreak havoc and cause fear.
Find out what horrible disasters occurred within the 20th century.

 1906 San Francisco Earthquake & Fire

 Chernobyl
 First Airplane Crash
 Great Smog of 1952
 Great Depression
 Hindenburg Explodes
 Huge Poison Gas Leak in Bhopal

 Mt. St. Helens Erupts

 Mysterious Explosion in Siberia
 Stock Market Crash of 1929
 Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster
 Tangshan Earthquake
 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

Medical Advances & Issues

From the discovery of penicillin to the AIDS epidemic, learn more about the medical
advances and deadly diseases that occurred throughout the 20th century.

 Alexander Fleming Discovers Penicillin

 History of the American Red Cross
 Mengele's Medical Experiments on Twins at Auschwitz
 Typhoid Mary
 World's First Test-Tube Baby

Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was the struggle over Vietnam from 1959 to 1975 between the
communist Vietnamese forces in North Vietnam who wanted an end to all foreign
occupation of their country and the United States (allied with South Vietnam) who
wanted to prohibit any expansion of communism. The prolonged war left many
Americans bitter about U.S. involvement in a war they could not win.
World War I
The First World War, originally called the Great War, raged from 1914 to 1918. Mostly
fought in western Europe in muddy, bloody trenches, WWI saw the introduction of the
machine gun and poison gas into battle.

World War II
A truly world war which lasted from 1939 to 1945. The countries of the world aligned
with either the Axis powers or the Allies and battled in a total war.

Technology
 The first airplane was flown in 1903. With the engineering of the faster jet engine in
the 1940s, mass air travel became commercially viable.
 The assembly line made mass production of the automobile viable. By the end of the
century, billions of people had automobiles for personal transportation. The combination
of the automobile and air travel allowed for unprecedented personal mobility.
 The integrated circuit revolutionized computers, leading to the proliferation of the
personal computer in the 1980s and the public-use Internet in the 1990s.
 New materials, most notably plastics, polyethylene, Velcro, and teflon, came into
widespread use for many various applications.
 The Space Race between the United States and the Soviet Union gave a peaceful
outlet to the political and military tensions of the Cold War, leading to the first human
spaceflight with the Soviet Union's Vostok 1 mission in 1961, and man's first landing on
another world--the Moon--with America's Apollo 11 mission in 1969. At the same time,
the first space docks and space stations were being launched by the Soviet space
program. The United States developed the first (and to date only) reusable spacecraft
system with the Space Shuttle program, first launched in 1981. As the century ended, a
permanent manned presence in space was being founded with the ongoing construction of
the International Space Station.
 In addition to Human spaceflight, unmanned space probes became a practical and
relatively inexpensive form of exploration. The first orbiting space probe, Sputnik 1, was
launched by the Soviet Union in 1957. Over time, a massive system of artificial satellites
was placed into orbit around Earth. These satellites greatly advanced navigation,
communications, military intelligence, geology, climate, and numerous other fields. Also,
by the end of the century, unmanned probes had visited the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars,
Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and various asteroids and comets. The Hubble Space
Telescope, launched in 1990, greatly expanded our understanding of the Universe and
brought brilliant images to TV and computer screens around the world.