US Congress Events

1848 Aug 14 Congress Creates The Oregon Territory
On August 14, 1848, Congress created the Oregon Territory, an area encompassing present-day Oregon, Idaho, Washington, and parts of western Montana and Wyoming. Peter Burnett, a Missouri ...
1856 Aug 18 The Guano Islands Act Is Passed By The U.S. Congress
The Guano Islands Act is federal legislation passed by the U.S. Congress, on August 18, 1856. It enables citizens of the U.S. to take possession of islands containing guano deposits. The ...
1886 Dec 6 State of the Union Address by President Grover Cleveland
The following is an excert from the State of the Union address related to the US relationship with Hawaii: "I express my unhesitating conviction that the intimacy of our relations with...
1898 Jul 6 Annexation of Hawaii by the United States
When William McKinley won the presidential election in November 1896, the question of Hawaii's annexation to the U.S. was again opened. The previous president, Grover Cleveland, was a fri...
1916 Nov 7 Jeannette Rankin Elected as the First Woman to Serve in US Congress
Jeannette Rankin was the first woman to be elected to the United States House of Representatives and the first female member of the Congress sometimes referred to as the Lady of the House...
1917 Apr 6 United States Declares War on Germany
DECLARATION OF WAR Public Resolution No. 1 S. J. Res. 1 65th Congress Sixty-fifth Congress of the United States of America; At the First Session, Begun and Held at the City of Wash...
1917 Apr 14 Congress Passes $7,000,000,000 Bond Bill to Carry on the War
First Liberty Loan of $2,000,000,000 Oversubscribed by 4,000,000 Wage Earners Ways and means for carrying on the War were the immediate concern of Congress. The mobilization of America...
1917 Jul 14 US Congress Appropriates $640,000,000 for Manufacture of Airplanes
The nation voiced its enthusiastic approval when, on July 14, 1917, the Congress voted an appropriation of $640,000,000 for the manufacture of 22,000 airplanes and the training and equipm...
1941 Dec 26 Winston Churchill Addresses A Joint Meeting Of The United States Congress
The date was December 26, 1941. Outside the U.S. Capitol Building, platoons of soldiers and police stood at high alert. Shortly after noon, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill entere...
1946 Nov John F. Kennedy Elected to Massachusetts' Eleventh Congressional District
After World War II, Kennedy had considered the option of becoming a journalist before deciding to run for political office. Prior to the war, he had not strongly considered becoming a pol...
1959 Nov 2 Charles Van Doren Admits to Cheating on the Game Show Twenty-One
"I was involved, deeply involved, in a deception. The fact that I, too, was very much deceived cannot keep me from being the principal victim of that deception, because I was its principal..." —Charles Van Doren
1974 Dec 16 Safe Drinking Water Act
The Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) is the principal federal law in the United States that ensures safe drinking water for the public. Pursuant to the act, the Environmental Protection Age...
1981 Jan 3 Senator Robert Byrd Elected as Minority Leader
Senator Byrd rose from the hardscrabble hollows of West Virginia to spend 12 years as Senate Democratic leader. He was majority leader from 1977 to 1981 and again from 1987 to 1989, and m...
1992 May 5 The Twenty-seventh Amendment is ratified
The Twenty-seventh Amendment (Amendment XXVII) prohibits any law that increases or decreases the salary of members of the Congress from taking effect, until the start of the next set of t...
1995 Dec 12 Jesse Jackson Jr. Wins 2nd Congressional Seat
Jesse Jackson Jr., the 30-year-old son of the civil rights activist, will bring his famous name to Washington after trouncing Republican Thomas Somer to capture the congressional seat vac...
1998 Oct 2 Sonia Sotomayor is Confirmed to the US Court of Appeals
With complete Democratic support, and support from 25 Republican senators including Judiciary chair Orrin Hatch, Sotomayor was confirmed on October 2, 1998, by a 67–29 vote. She received ...
2004 Apr 1 Senator Robert Byrd Becomes First Senator to Cast 17,000 Roll Call Votes
A new milestone was reached Thursday in the U.S. Senate, when Sen. Robert Byrd -- already the record holder for casting the most ballots in the Senate -- voted for the 17,000th time. A...
2009 Jun 26 CIA Director Leon Panetta Acknowledges that the CIA Misled Congress
CIA Director Leon Panetta told lawmakers in a recent briefing that the intelligence agency he heads misled Congress on "significant actions" for a "number of years," a group of Democrats ...
2010 Jan 8 Shooting of U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, Following Inclusion on Sarah Palin's 'Hit List'
Giffords, who has been in Congress since 2006 and is Arizona's first Jewish representative, is married to astronaut Mark Kelly. (Click for that story.) In March of last year, her Tucson o...
2011 Jan 8 Sarah Palin Offers Condolences Following Tucson Shooting
Sarah Palin, who's been taking flak because of a SarahPac map that put Gabrielle Giffords' district in its crosshairs (literally), issued a quick Facebook statement today offering "sincer...
2011 Jan 8 Surgeon Optimistic Giffords Will Survive
Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords is out of surgery after being shot while hosting a public event today, and a Tucson surgeon said he was "very optimistic" she would survive but th...
2011 Jan 15 Rep. Gabrielle Giffords Off Ventilator for the First Time
Another milestone for Gabrielle Giffords: Doctors today took her off a ventilator for the first time since last week's shooting, reports CNN. They removed her breathing tube—she was breat...
2011 Jan 19 Republican-Controlled House of Representatives Votes to Repeal Health Care Reform Bill
Swiftly honoring a campaign pledge, newly empowered Republicans pushed legislation to repeal the nation’s health care overhaul through the House on Wednesday night, brushing aside implaca...
2011 Jun 12 First Post-Shooting Images of Gabrielle Giffords Released
The first pictures of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords to emerge since a shooting in Tucson nearly took her life five months ago show a smiling face, along with signs of the hard recovery she has ...
2011 Jun 15 US Representative Giffords Released from Hospital
The Arizona congresswoman who survived an assassination attempt earlier this year was released on Wednesday from the hospital where she was undergoing rehabilitation, her doctors said.