1721 Danish king sends Hans Egede to Greenland to convert Norse settlers to Lutheranism, finding none establishes trading post instead

1325 Aztecs arrive in the valley of Mexico and establish Tenochtitlán on islands in Lake Texcoco

1497 John Cabot explores northeast coast of North America

1500 Aztecs dominate most of present-day Mexico

1504 St. John’s, Newfoundland, established as base for British fishing operations

1508 Spanish colonization of Puerto Rico begins

1513 Vasco Nunez de Balboa crosses Isthmus of Panama and sights Pacific Ocean

1517 King Carlos V of Spain authorizes the importation of 4,000 slaves to Spanish possessions in the Caribbean

1521 Cortés seizes Tenochtitlán

1534 Jacques Cartier claims Gaspé for France

1535 First viceroy of New Spain appointed by Spanish King

1554 Silver mining operations in Mexico greatly expanded to maintain flow of treasure to Spain

1576 Martin Frobisher claims Arctic islands for England

1603 Samuel de Champlain explores St. Lawrence

1607 Founding of Jamestown, first permanent British settlement in America

1609 Henry Hudson sails up Hudson River to site of Albany

1617 Louis Hébert first agricultural settler in New France

1629 Massachusetts Bay Company established, Puritan migration to New England begins

1634 Maryland established

1643 Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, Connecticut, New Haven form New England confederation

1663 New France made a Royal Colony

1664 Britain takes New Amsterdam from Dutch renames city New York

1666 First census of New France records 3,215 persons living there

1670 Hudson’s Bay Company granted exclusive rights to Rupert’s Land

1670 Charleston founded, beginning of British colonies in the Carolinas

1681 William Penn establishes Pennsylvania

1713 Treaty of Utrecht ends war between France and England

1733 Georgia, last of original 13 British colonies established

1741 Vitus Bering sails from Kamchatka to Alaska extending Russian fur trade to North America

1743 La Vérendrye sights the Rocky Mountains

1744 War of the Austrian Succession between England and France

1745 Louisbourg on Cape Breton falls to British

1749 Halifax founded

1755 Acadians expelled from Nova Scotia

1756 Beginning of Seven Years’ War between England and France

1759 Quebec falls to British

1760 Montreal falls to British

1763 British capture Quebec, Treaty of Paris ends French rule in North America, British Royal Proclamation establishes western boundary of the 13 Atlantic colonies

1765 Stamp Act introduced to raise revenues for the Crown in the American colonies

1770 Samuel Hearne reaches the Arctic Sea overland

1774 British Parliament passes the Quebec Act setting out arrangements for governing post-conquest possessions in North America

1774 First Continental Congress meets in Philadelphia

1775 Beginning of American Revolutionary War

1776 American Declaration of Independence, 

1778 James Cook explores coast of British Columbia

1779 North West Company established in Montreal

1783 American independence conceded by Britain

1784 New Brunswick created as separate colony due to influx of "loyalists"

1789 American Constitution ratified, Washington inaugurated as first president, French Revolution sparks unrest in French Caribbean colonies

1791 Constitutional Act creates Upper and Lower Canada (now Ontario and Quebec)

1793 Alexander Mackenzie travels overland to the Pacific

1803 US purchases from France 828,000 square miles of land extending west of the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains and from the Gulf of Mexico to the Canadian border (the "Louisiana Purchase")

1804 Lewis and Clark explore the American west to the Pacific, Haiti wins independence from France

1810 Rebellions break out in New Spain

1812 US goes to war with Britain, American troops invades British North America but are turned back

1821 Merger of Hudson’s Bay Company and the North West Company marks end of the continental fur trade era in British North America

1821 Mexican independence proclaimed (recognized by Spain in 1836)

1823 Monroe Doctrine declares the western hemisphere subject to US diplomatic protection

1824 Mexico enacts democratic constitution 

1825 Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua join in short-lived political federation (dissolved 1828), Erie Canal built to link Buffalo to New York

1828 Jackson becomes president of US

1829 first Welland canal opened for traffic between Lake Ontario and Lake Erie

1833 Santa Anna elected President and rules intermittently and badly for next 20 years

1835 Texas declares independence from Mexico

1837 Rebellions in Upper and Lower Canada

1838 France attacks Veracruz to collect money owing by Mexican government

1839 Lord Durham reports on the state of affairs in Canada, proposes ways to resolve conflicts between French and English 

1840 Act of Union creates the united Province of Canada

1846 US declares war and invades Mexico

1846 Oregon Treaty sets boundary at 49º N latitude

1848 California gold rush

1848 Mexico cedes nearly 50% of its territory to the US 

1849 Annexation Manifesto published in Montreal

1852 Grand Trunk Railway Company chartered

1854 Mexico sells much of present day Arizona and New Mexico to the US

1855 Mexican war of reform begins with the Church supporting the established oligarchy

1857 A new Mexican constitution is adopted separating Church and State 

1858 Gold rush in British Columbia

1859 A Zapotec Indian, Benito Juárez leads campaign to expropriate Church property and close the convents in Mexico

1860 Lincoln elected President

1860 Southern states secede from Union

1861 American Civil War begins

1861 Benito Juárez elected President of Mexico

1863 Lincoln emancipates slaves, France invades Mexico capturing Mexico City and Pueblo, Juárez flees

1864 Charlottetown Conference to discuss union of the Maritime colonies of British North America becomes forum for proposals to establish a larger federal union in BNA

1864 France with support of Mexican conservatives installs Austrian Archduke Maximillian as Emperor of Mexico

1865 Union forces defeat the Confederate Army ending American Civil War, Lincoln assassinated

1866 US terminates Reciprocity (reciprocal trade agreement) with British North America

1867 British North America Act passed by British parliament creating Canada

1867 Reconstruction Acts consolidate US federal power over the south

1867 Maximillian deposed and executed, Benito Juárez reinstalled as President

1869 First Riel Rebellion at Red River (near present-day Winnipeg)

1869 Union Pacific Railway completed

1870 Manitoba enters Confederation

1871 British Columbia enters Confederation on promise a railway will be built to link with central Canada

1872 Dominion Lands Act establishes framework for disposition of agricultural lands in western Canada

1873 Prince Edward Island enters Confederation

1876 General Porfirio Diaz elected President, rules until 1880

1878 John A. Macdonald re-elected and introduces the "National Policy"

1883 Santa Fe, Southern Pacific and Northern Pacific Railways completed

1884 Diaz again elected President of Mexico initiating, a period known as the "Porfiorate" (to 1911) during which Mexico receives influx of foreign investment and a wealthy business class becomes entrenched in the centres of power

1885 Canadian Pacific Railway completed, second Northwest Rebellion put down by Canadian militia, Louis Riel hanged at Regina

1889 Battle of Wounded Knee ends Indian wars in American west

1893 Great Northern Railway completed in US

1895 Cuban revolution against Spain begins

1896 Wilfred Laurier becomes Prime Minister of Canada, Sifton immigration policy promotes immigration from Europe to settle prairies

1898 United States goes to war with Spain resulting in end to Spanish rule in the Americas, Klondike gold rush leads to creation of Yukon Territory

1900 Puerto Rico placed under US military control

1903 Grand Trunk Pacific and National Transcontinental railways undertaken in Canada

1905 Saskatchewan and Alberta enter Confederation

1906 Ontario Hydro-Electric Power Commission established

1911 Canadian Northern Railway built from Montreal to Pacific coast

1911 Diaz forced out of office to be replaced by Francisco Madero as President of Mexico in 1912

1913 Woodrow Wilson becomes president of US

1913 Madero assassinated, another US invasion of Mexico threatened

1914 Canada enters World War I, Turner Valley oil field discovered in Alberta, US Congress passes the Harrison Act criminalizing the non-medical use of opium, morphine and coca derivatives

1914 US captures Veracruz and civil war breaks out in Mexico with factions led by Pancho Villa, Emilia Zappata, and Venustiana Carranza

1916 Puerto Rico made a US territory

1917 US enters World War I

1917 Carranza elected President and a new reformed constitution is adopted

1918 World War I ends, Canadian women given vote in federal elections

1919 Winnipeg General Strike, Canadian troops dispatched to fight Bolsheviks in Siberia, 

1920 Arthur Meighen replaces Borden as Prime Minister of Canada

1920 Prohibition and women’s suffrage introduced in US

1921 Mackenzie King elected Prime Minister of Canada 

1924 Plutarco Calles becomes President of Mexico, labour unions gain power and the influence of the Church is drastically reduced despite armed peasant resistance, the PRI (Party of the Institutionalized Revolution) is established.

1929 Stock market crash and world financial panic

1930 R.B. Bennett becomes Prime Minister of Canada, prairie provinces given control over their natural resources, Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina establishes dictatorship in Dominican Republic (to 1961)

1931 Canada's constitutional autonomy from Britain confirmed by Statute of Westminster

1932 Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) founded in Regina, work camps created for unemployed men in Canada

1932 Election of Roosevelt, first "New Deal" proposed to alleviate effects of depression in US 

1933 Repeal of prohibition in US

1934 Lázaro Cárdenas elected President and proceeds to make widespread social and economic reforms including nationalization of the railways and the petroleum industry.

1935 Bennett announces a Canadian "New Deal", unemployed march on Ottawa, Social Credit government elected in Alberta, Conservatives lose federal election to Liberals

1935 National Labor Relations Act (Wagner Act) strengthens US labour movement

1936 Canadian Broadcasting Corporation established, Maurice Duplessis elected in Quebec beginning long period of Union Nationale domination of Quebec political scene

1937 Royal Commission on Dominion-Provincial Relations established to look into possibilities of constitutional reform in Canada, Trans Canada Airlines founded, Somoza dynasty established in Nicaragua (to 1979), US makes marijuana use illegal

1939 World War II begins ending economic depression in Canada

1940 Avila Camacho elected President in Mexico, pursues moderate reform program

1941 Japanese attack Pearl Harbour (Dec. 7), US enters war on side of Allies

1944 CCF government elected in Saskatchewan, popular uprising in Guatamala

1945 US, Britain and Soviet Union negotiate spheres of postwar global influence at Yalta Conference 

1945 Roosevelt dies, Truman becomes President, US drops atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan surrenders, World War II ends

1946 Saskatchewan introduces universal hospital insurance plan

1949 Newfoundland enters Confederation

1949 Soviet Union explodes atomic bomb, "cold war" begins

1950 Korean war begins

1951 Colonel Jacobo Arbenz Gutman elected president of Guatamala on reform platform

1952 US explodes hydrogen bomb

1953 Korean war ends, Stalin dies, Soviet Union explodes hydrogen bomb, Greenland given representation in Danish parliament

1954 Guatemala government led by Colonel Jacobo Arbenz overthrown by CIA-led coup precipitating new political instability in central America

1957 John Diefenbaker becomes Prime Minister of Canada

1957 US passes Civil Rights Act, troops sent to Little Rock to enforce desegregation

1959 Fidel Castro establishes Communist government in Cuba, St. Lawrence Seaway opened, Canadian federal government introduces national hospital insurance , 10 British possessions in Caribbean form West Indies Federation (dissolved 1962)

1960 Beginning of Quebec’s "Quiet Revolution" as Lesage Liberals defeat Union Nationale

1960 Kennedy elected President of US

1961 Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, Kennedy promises aid to South Viet Nam

1962 Cuban missile crisis threatens to provoke nuclear war between US and Soviet Union

1963 Kennedy assassinated

1965 Canada-US automobile agreement signed

1967 race riots in Newark and Detroit

1968 Martin Luther King assassinated, Civil Rights Bill passed, Robert Kennedy assassinated, Nixon elected President, Mexico City hosts Olympic Games; violent suppression of student protests in Mexico City

1969 soccer war between Honduras and El Salvador

1970 Kent State killings heighten anti-Vietnam war efforts in US

1972 Nixon administration initiates "war on drugs" campaign

1973 First OPEC oil crisis, Petro-Canada created, Mexico uses new oil revenues to finance massive government spending 

1974 Nixon resigns in disgrace over Watergate affair, Ford becomes President and pardons Nixon

1975 Viet Cong occupy Saigon

1976 Parti Québecois government elected in Quebec

1979 Home-rule government established in Greenland, civil war breaks out in Nicaragua

1980 National Energy Program implemented in Canada, Quebec referendum rejects "sovereignty-association"

1980 Ronald Reagan (Republican) elected President on neo-conservative platform

1982 Canadian constitution "repatriated", severe recession begins

1982 Mexican banking industry nationalized; oil price falls and Mexico experiences economic crisis

1984 Brian Mulroney becomes Prime Minister of Canada and begins implementing neo-conservative agenda

1985 Severe earthquakes destroy parts of Mexico City

1987 Free Trade Agreement between Canada and US, cease fire agreement in central America signed by Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, Meech Lake constitutional agreement in Canada collapses 

1988 Carlos Salinas de Gortari elected President in first modern election seriously contested by non-PRI parties

1989 Salinas government begins to reign in the powerful oil workers union and to pursue further economic and social restructuring along free market lines, US invades Panama and arrests President Noriega on drug charges

1990 Nicaragua's Marxist Sandinista regime replaced by coalition government, "contras" disbanded

1991 Persian Gulf War 

1992 Bill Clinton (Democrat) elected President, Charlottetown constitutional agreement in Canada rejected in national referendum

1993 Mexico joins US and Canada in North American Free Trade Agreement

1994 Chiapas uprising in Mexico, Zedillo installed as President

1995 Quebec referendum narrowly rejects proposed separation from Canada

1996 Clinton re-elected President of US

1999 Clinton impeachment fails, Canadian Northwest Territories divided to create territory of Nunavut,