1830 The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad opens
The first steam locomotive was developed

1866 "Roebling" Suspension Bridge opens to Covington

1870 Eden Park opens in Walnut Hills

1871 Tyler Davidson Fountain erected in Fountain Square

1872 Cincinnati's Frank Duveneck paints Whistling Boy. setting him on the road to international fame.

1873 Cincinnati College becomes University of Cincinnati
Cincinnati Zoo is founded

1876 Alexander Graham Bell invents telephone

1879 Thomas Alva Edison develops incandescent lightbulb

1880 Maria Longworth Nichols founds Rookwood Pottery

1881 Cincinnati Art Museum is established

1883 Brooklyn Bridge opens across East River in New York

1884 Mark Twain publishes The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

1886 Statue of Liberty is dedicated in New York Harbor

1888 John Henry Twachtman moves his studio from Cincinnati to Connecticut, as he becomes one of the nation's premiere impressionist painters.

1890 Sherman Antitrust Act begins Federal effort to curb monopolies

1894 Thomas Edison gives first public showing of motion pictures
Joseph Henry Sharp's Harvest Dance establishes his reputation as a painter of American Indians.

1898 U.S. battleship Maine blows up in Havana Harbor, triggering start of Spanish-American War

1900 Carrie Nation starts raiding saloons with a hatchet

1903 Orville and Wilbur Wright pioneer powered flight

1904 Henry Farny paints The Song of the Talking Wire under commission from Charles Phelps Taft and Anna Sinton Taft.

1906 Earthquake devastates city of San Francisco, California 1908 Hamilton County Memorial Hall is dedicated
Henry Ford introduces Model T

1912 The "unsinkable" RMS Titanic hits iceberg and sinks in North Atlantic

1913 Union Central Life Insurance Building (Tower) is completed at Fourth and Vine--becoming the fifth tallest building in the world

1914 Assasinations at Sarajevo trigger start of World War I
Panama Canal opens

1919 Constitutional amendment makes Prohibition the law of the land
Cincinnati Reds take first World Series

1920 Constitutional amendment gives women the right to vote

1926 Cincinnati Charter Committee succeeds in throwing out political machine system in favor of City Manager/City Council form of government

1928 Amelia Earhart becomes first woman to fly the Atlantic

1929 Stock market crash sets off worldwide Great Depression

1930 Carew Tower, Art Deco "city within a city," opens on Fountain Square

1931 Empire State Building opens in New York City

1932 Taft residence on East Fourth Street becomes Taft Museum

1933 Cincinnati Union Terminal is completed Prohibition ends
Krohn Conservatory opens in Eden Park
Dachau, the first concentration camp, is established, marking the beginning of the Holocaust

1937 Great flood of 1937 devastates midwest including Cincinnati

1938 Elizabeth Nourse dies in Cincinnati, bringing to a close the career of Cincinnati's preeminent female artist.

1941 Attack on Pearl Harbor triggers U.S. involvement in World War II

1944 Allied invasion of Europe begins with landings on Normandy beaches
President Franklin D. Roosevelt is elected to unprecedented fourth term

1945 First use of atomic bomb ushers in nuclear age
Americans liberate the Buchenwald concentration camp; the British liberate the Bergen-Belsen camps

1946 New Cincinnati area airport opens in Boone County, Kentucky, replacing Lunken Field

1947 Captain Tom Greene brings paddlewheeler Delta Queen to Cincinnati as cruiseboat
Internationally-known artist Joan Miro paints mural for Gourmet Room French restaurant at Cincinnati's new Terrace Plaza Hotel

1948 Berlin Blockade begins

1949 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is established
Cincinnatian Ezzard Charles becomes Heavyweight Champion of the World

1950 Korean War begins

1952 U.S. explodes hydrogen bomb at Eniwetok Atoll in Pacific

1954 The U.S. Supreme Court's unanimous decision in Brown vs the Board of Education that segregation in public schools is unconstitutional

1955 Rosa Parks refuses to give up seat on bus to white man, in Montgomery, Alabama

1956 President Dwight D. Eisenhower launches U.S. Interstate Highway System

1957 Russian earth satellite "Sputnik" starts race for space
First domestic jet airline service in U.S. begins, between New York and Miami

1959 Alaska and Hawaii become 49th and 50th U.S. states

1961 The Berlin Wall is built
The Peace Corps is founded
The Soviets launch the first man into space

1962 Lt. Col. John H. Glenn, Jr. becomes first American to orbit earth
Cuban missile crisis threatens world war

1963 President John F. Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas, Texas

1964 President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination of all kinds based on race, color, religion, or national origin and gives the government the power to enforce desegregation

1965 Congress passes the Voting Rights Act, outlawing efforts to restrict black voting
Medicare is enacted
Japan's Bullet Train opens
Malcolm X is assassinated
U.S. sends troops to Vietnam

1967 The Six-Day War is fought in the Middle East
The first heart transplant occurs

1968 Civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee

1969 U.S. Apollo 11 mission puts first men on the moon
ARPANET is created. ARPANET is the precursor of the Internet

1972 President Richard M. Nixon reopens relations with China
Police apprehend five individuals who are trying to bug the Democratic National Committee headerquarters in Wshington, D.C.'s Watergate complex, kicking off the Watergate scandal

1974 A tornado outbreak -- the largest on record -- hits 13 states on April 3; from that storm, a massive tornado damages Cincinnati and Saylor Park, killing three, and moves on to devastates Xenia, Ohio, killing 34, injuring over a thousand and leaving nearly 10,000 homeless;
Richard M. Nixon becomes the first U.S. President to resign

1975 U.S. military and civilians evaucate South Vietnam as the government surrenders to North Vietnam

1976 U.S. celebrates its Bicentennial with nationwide festivities

1980 Mt. St. Helens erupts, in Washington state

1981 First U.S. space shuttle goes into operation

1986 Birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. becomes national holiday
Space Shuttle Challenger explosion

1988 Greater Cincinnati celebrates Bicentennial of City's founding with year-long festivities including first "Tall Stacks" riverboat extravaganza

1989 Fall of the Berlin Wall

1990 Cincinnati Museum Center opens in renovated Cincinnati Union Terminal
Berlin Wall is torn down, signaling end of "Iron Curtain"

1991 Persian Gulf War forces Iraq out of Kuwait
Cincinnati Art Museum acquires The Sound of Your Cold Voice, by Jim Dine, Cincinnati's most celebrated living artist.

1994 North American Free Trade Agreement takes effect

1995 New Aronoff Center for the Arts opens on Walnut Street, as sister location to Music Hall, under joint management by the Cincinnati Arts Association

1997 Hong Kong is returned to China

1999 The Panama Canal returns to Panama

2001 Terrorists destroy the World Trade Center in New York City and part of the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.

2002 The euro debuts in 12 European countries

2003 February 1 - The space Shuttle Columbia breaks apart upon re-entry, killing all seven astronauts onboard
The U.S. and Great Britain launch war against Iraq

2004 The deadliest Tsunami in World History, occurring in the Indian Ocean, devastated eleven countries, killed over 225,000 people, injured hundreds of thousands, and left millions homeless

2005 Hurricane Katrina kills more than 1,000 people and leaves millions homeless as it ravages the Gulf Coast
Pope John Paul II dies; he is succeeded by Benedict XVI