Us History Timeline
...in Florida.
1518 Smallpox, brought by the Europeans, begins to decimate the native population of Central and South America. The epidemic will last until 1530.
1521 The surrender of Tenochtitlan to Spanish explorer/conqueror Ferdinand Cortes, and his empire falls.
1533 Henry VIII starts the English Reformation mainly to gain a divorce from Catherine of Aragon.
1539 Hernando de Soto begins exploration of what will be the southeastern United States.
1540 Francisco Vasquez de Coronado does the same in the southwest.
1558 Henry VIII's daughter Elizabeth I becomes Queen of England.
1587 Sir Walter Raleigh starts, and fails, with a colony in Roanoke; the first attempt in North America.
1588 The English navy, helped by violent storms, defeats the Spanish Armada.
1603 James I becomes King of England.
Samuel de Champlain of France explores what will be present day Canada.
1607 Jamestown, Virginia is founded.
1611 The first Virginia tobacco crop is harvested.
1619 The first African-Americans arrive in Virginia.
1620 Plymouth Colony (Massachusetts) is founded.
1622 The Powhatan Confederacy attacks the Virginia Colony.
1624 The Dutch settle Manhattan Island.
1625 Charles I becomes King of England.
1630 The Massachusetts Bay Colony is founded.
1634 Maryland is founded as a "haven for English Catholics"
1635 Roger Williams is "expelled" from The Massachusetts Bay Colony, and founds Providence (Rhode Island).
1636 Connecticut is founded.
1637 1. The Pequot War virtually wipes out the Pequot Indian tribe.
2. Anne Marbury Hutchinson and her followers are exiled to Rhode Island, from Massachusetts Bay Colony, for preaching what the Puritan elite call heresy.
1642 The English Civil War sends many in search of the...
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