65th United States Congress - Major Events

Major Events

• March 4, 1917: Jeannette Rankin of Montana became the first woman member of the United States House of Representatives.
• March 8, 1917: The United States Senate adopted the cloture rule to limit filibusters.
• March 31, 1917: The United States took possession of the Danish West Indies, which become the US Virgin Islands, after paying $25 million to Denmark.
• April 2, 1917: World War I: President Woodrow Wilson asks the U.S. Congress for a declaration of war on Germany.
• April 10, 1917: An ammunition factory explosion in Chester, Pennsylvania kills 133.
• May 21, 1917: Over 300 acres (73 blocks) are destroyed in the Great Atlanta fire of 1917.
• May 26, 1917: A tornado strikes Mattoon, Illinois, causing devastation and killing 101 people.
• July 1, 1917: A labor dispute ignited a race riot in East St. Louis, Illinois, which left 250 dead.
• July 12, 1917: The Phelps Dodge Corporation deported over 1,000 suspected Industrial Workers of the World members from Bisbee, Arizona.
• July 28, 1917: The Silent Protest was organized by the NAACP in New York to protest the East St. Louis Riot of July 2, as well as lynchings in Texas and Tennessee.
• August, 1917: The Green Corn Rebellion, an uprising by several hundred farmers against the World War I draft, took place in central Oklahoma.
• November 24, 1917: In Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 9 members of the Milwaukee Police Department were killed by a bomb, the most fatal single event in U.S. police history until the September 11, 2001 attacks.
• December 26, 1917: President Woodrow Wilson used the Federal Possession and Control Act to place most U.S. railroads under the United States Railroad Administration, hoping to more transport troops and materials efficiently for the war effort.
• January 8, 1918: Woodrow Wilson delivered his Fourteen Points speech.
• March 4, 1918: A soldier at Camp Fuston, Kansas fell sick with the first confirmed case of the Spanish flu.
• May 15, 1918: The United States Post Office Department (later renamed the United States Postal Service) began the first regular airmail service in the world (between New York City, Philadelphia and Washington, DC).
• October 8, 1918: World War I: In the Argonne Forest in France, U.S. Corporal Alvin C. York almost single-handedly killed 25 German soldiers and captures 132.
• December 4, 1918: U.S. President Woodrow Wilson sailed for the Paris Peace Conference, becoming the first U.S. president to travel to Europe while in office.
• January 6, 1919: Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th President of the United States, died
• January 15, 1919: The Boston Molasses Disaster: A wave of molasses released from an exploding storage tank sweeps through Boston, killing 21 and injuring 150.
• February 25, 1919: Oregon placed a 1 cent per U.S. gallon (.26¢/L) tax on gasoline, becoming the first U.S. state to levy a gasoline tax.
• January 16, 1919: The 18th Amendment to the United States Constitution, authorizing Prohibition, went into effect in the United States.