Stories of the Century

Women Get the Vote! 

After a century of fighting for suffrage, the USA's women finally win the right to vote. This was a huge success for American women, and suffragettes celebrated nation-wide. Though a huge milestone in feminism, there would be, and still are, more to come.

This is one of the major news stories of the 20th century because it is the beginning of America taking steps forward in civil rights. There were still men who believed that women shouldn't be able to vote, but the amendment still passed in favor of the suffragettes. It would take 40 more years for the next similar civil rights movement to make a large success such as this.

First Man On the Moon! 

In 1969, nine years after John F. Kennedy declared that a man would be on the moon within the decade and seven years after his untimely death, Neil Armstrong sets foot on the moon. Though the Soviet Union won the space race, getting a man in orbit before anyone else, the US managed to get a man on the moon first with the Apollo 11 mission. 600 million people watched the moon landing from their own homes.

It's impossible to imagine what it would be like to watch another human being set foot on an entirely different celestial body than Earth for the first time, less than 70 years after the first airplanes flew. No one knew exactly what was going to happen, for space was still a great unknown for the most part, and this was a huge milestone that would be the catalyst to send the human race to the stars.

The Unsinkable Sinks! 

The Titanic was a British passenger liner that was deemed "unsinkable" by the press. On her mother voyage from New York, however, she hit an iceberg and sank. Due to a lack of lifeboats over 1500 people perished in icy waters—only 675 survived, mostly women and children, who were given first privilege to lifeboats.

Each generation has their own major tragedy, and the Titanic's sinking is one of these. The ship was called "unsinkable" and yet on her first voyage she went down with the majority of those on it. People were absolutely shocked, and the press had a field day no doubt, as they do with most tragedies of this scale .