The 20th century was a very momentous time for the United States and for the world. Stateside, we saw our fortunes rise to the point of becoming one of the world’s superpowers, and by the middle of the century, we were leading the world in terms of military might and cultural influence. Around the world, wars were waged, empires fell, and new orders created. Let us tell you about some of the most historic moments of the 20th century and where to go to learn about them.
The beginning of the 20th century through to World War I (1900-14) saw many historical events that shook the United States to the core, as well as many innovations that would change our lives forever. At the start of the century, President William McKinley was assassinated at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. While there is a small memorial plaque in Buffalo, the place to learn more about the life of the former president would be Canton, Ohio, where his presidential library, museum, and final resting place (pictured) are located. The Wright Brothers’ first manned flight occurred over the Outer Banks of North Carolina in 1903; today you can learn about that fateful first flight at the Wright Brothers Museum and Monument, located in the town of Kill Devil Hills. The 1906 earthquake in San Francisco absolutely devastated the Golden City, and people today visiting San Fran can learn about the impact of this earthquake on local history by visiting the California Academy of Sciences, located in Golden Gate Park next to the Botanical Garden.
The 1910s saw the ends of many world powers and the beginnings of others. Before the outbreak of war in Europe, revolutions overthrew governments in Portugal and Mexico. Popular tourist attractions commemorating the Mexican Revolution include Pancho Villa’s house in Chihuahua and the Monumento a la Revolución in Mexico City. The assassination of Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914 eventually hastened the demise of Austria-Hungary, Ottoman Turkey, and the czardom of Russia. The Latin Bridge in Sarajevo, crossing the Miljacka River, was where the Archduke was shot, and today is home to a memorial with photographs from 1914. Topkapi Palace in Istanbul is a great place to visit to learn about the rise and the fall of the Ottomans, and Russia should be on your list if you want to learn about the fall of the Romanovs; both the Kremlin Museums in Moscow and the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg housing the State Hermitage Museum (pictured) are stellar museums showcasing Romanov history and artifacts.
Much of the fighting in World War I was focused on the “Western Front”, which between 1914 and 1918 was situated anywhere from the outskirts of Paris to the Ardennes Forest near the border with Belgium. A central place to stay in relation to a lot of the battlegrounds, cemeteries, and memorials of World War I is the city of Lille, France, 45 minutes away from the site of the Battle of Ypres in Belgium and an hour north of the Battle of the Somme, fought near Lens, France. Ypres is home to the In Flanders Fields Museum and The Menin Gate, the latter honoring the Commonwealth’s contributions to the war effort. Thousands of Canadians were injured or killed in the Battle of Passchendaele, west of Ypres. American losses were largest (15,000+) during the 1918 Meuse-Argonne Offensive, fought west of Metz, France and southwest of Luxembourg (pictured: the American cemetery). The Museum of the Great War is located in Péronne, near the site of the Battle of the Somme, and is home to 70,000 artifacts. The Treaty of Versailles in 1919 officially ended the war and was signed in the Palace of Versailles’ Hall of Mirrors, just outside Paris.
Monument (Kitty Hawk, NC)
California Academy of Sciences (San Francisco)
Archduke Franz Ferdinand
was killed (Sarajevo)
Many things come to mind when one thinks of the 1920s. Jazz music was all the rage, and New Orleans was its epicenter. You can experience jazz and the rest of the Southern music scene by checking out the vacation package linked here. The prohibition of alcohol led to the Mafia taking hold in major cities such as New York, Chicago, and Boston. Hollywood (pictured: the Hollywood and Highland entertainment complex, inspired by the 1916 film Intolerance) became the biggest pop culture influence in the world, displacing smaller film industries in the UK, France, Germany, and Sweden, ensuring that American celebrities would be worshipped the world over. In the U.S., there was a growing trend of writers and artists moving abroad, to London, Paris, Amsterdam, and Berlin, just as the first transatlantic flight was ready to take off. Art Deco as a decorative style exploded in popularity worldwide, from New York City to Miami Beach to Napier, New Zealand; the latter two destinations hold Art Deco-themed celebrations annually. New nations were formed, such as the Republic of Ireland, Turkey, Egypt, and the USSR (now Russia).
By the 1930s, the Great Depression subjected a large portion of the world to poverty and unemployment. Public works projects such as Hoover Dam outside Las Vegas; the Grand Coulee Dam northwest of Spokane, Washington; the Triborough Bridge in New York City; and the locks of the Upper Mississippi River, running parallel to the Great River Road from Minnesota down to Illinois and Missouri, are tourist attractions today. Speaking of roads, 25 million Americans owned their own cars by 1930, in large thanks to the Ford Motor Company, based in Dearborn, west of Detroit. Many families that were impacted by the Dust Bowl of the mid-’30s lived in a swath of the U.S.’s midsection from Dodge City, Kansas down to Amarillo, Texas. Many more still traveled west on Route 66, “The Mother Road” (pictured), to look for employment. Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly solo over the Atlantic in 1932 and attempted a world circumnavigation in 1937, starting in Oakland, California and stopping at places like Miami; San Juan, Puerto Rico; Fortaleza and Natal, Brazil; Bangkok, Thailand; Singapore; and Darwin, Australia, before disappearing over the Pacific. At the decade’s end, German ruler Adolf Hitler invaded Poland, starting yet another world war.
(New York City)
(San Francisco)
World War II involved nearly all the countries of the world splitting into two factions: the Allies, led by the UK, France, and the USSR; and the Axis, led by Germany, Italy, and Japan. The European theater was home to many noteworthy battles, such as the Battle of Dunkirk (in extreme northeastern France, 40 minutes west of Ostende, Belgium) and the Battle of Britain (aka the German bombing called “The Blitz” which leveled cities like London, Birmingham, and Coventry) in 1940; Germany’s one airborne battle on the Greek island of Crete and the German invasion of the Soviet Union and sieges on Moscow and Leningrad in 1941; the Russian defense of Stalingrad in 1942; the Allied victory in occupied north Africa, also in 1942; the Battle of Monte Cassino, northwest of Naples, which led to the fall of Rome and Axis Italy in 1944; the Battle of Normandy, in June 1944 (pictured: the American cemetery), which was one of the largest water invasions ever at that time, and led to the liberation of Paris; the Battle of the Bulge in 1944-45, from the Ardennes Forest between France and Belgium east to Luxembourg; and the Battle of Berlin in 1945, which eventually saw Adolf Hitler committing suicide and the Germans surrendering shortly after.
The fighting in the Pacific theater revolved around Axis power Japan‘s colonial ambitions, which spread from Korea and China south and east to Thailand, Singapore, the Philippines, and Indonesia. The Battle of Pearl Harbor on Oahu, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941, provoked the Americans into World War II against Japan and by extension Germany and Italy. The Americans were quick to thwart Japanese ambitions on the U.S. mainland by soundly defeating them at the Battle of Midway in 1942. The United States liberated Pacific islands piece by piece, beginning at Midway in 1942 and continuing with Guadalcanal in 1942-43, Guam and Saipan in 1944, and finally the Philippines in 1944 with a victory in the Battle of Leyte Gulf. The 1945 battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa brought American forces within striking distance of mainland Japan by mid-1945, leading to the two final decisions of the war: the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima (pictured: the Peace Memorial) and Nagasaki in August 1945. Japan surrendered shortly thereafter, and the U.S. occupied Honshu and the three other main islands until 1952.
(Washington, D.C.)
(west of Krakow, Poland)
The postwar era (1946-63) saw the world rebuild better and stronger than ever before. The United Nations is founded, based in New York City, and NATO is founded as well, and their headquarters are in Brussels. India, Pakistan, Israel, and Vietnam all become independent nations by the end of the 1940s, and the Communists won the civil war in China around the same time. Republican forces fled into exile on the island of Taiwan. As Europe rebuilt its economies, its cities were also rebuilt. Such important reconstructions as Vienna‘s St. Stephen’s Cathedral; Berlin Cathedral and Dresden Frauenkirche; Budapest‘s Chain Bridge and Parliament Building; and Warsaw‘s Old Town were carried out in painstaking detail in the years after the war. The Cold War began, with most eastern European countries under the influence of the Soviet regime in Moscow. Berlin was divided in two (pictured: Checkpoint Charlie), with the west effectively a democratic island inside Communist East Germany. The United States, the largest democratic superpower, had a nominal influence on western Europe, primarily West Germany, where Bonn was the seat of government.
The war in Korea started in the 1950s, with the Chinese backing northern forces and the U.S. backing southern forces. Eventually, a stalemate was reached and Korea was split into two, with the U.S.-backed South rebuilding from the ashes with astonishing speed. Eventually, Seoul and Busan became world-renowned for their commerce and shipbuilding, respectively, and became world-class cities. The Space Race saw the United States and the Soviet Union race to put satellites into orbit, then to man spacewalks, then finally to put a man on the moon, achieved by the U.S. at the end of the 1960s. You can learn about the titans of the Space Race by visiting the Memorial Museum of Cosmonautics in Moscow; the National Space Centre in Leicester, England; the Museum at the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston; and Kennedy Space Center on Cape Canaveral, near Titusville, Florida. Rock ‘n’ roll and rhythm and blues are the hottest musical styles, with Memphis, Nashville, Atlanta, and Detroit becoming epicenters for popular music worldwide. As television becomes the most popular mass medium, the Camelot Era comes to an end as President John F. Kennedy is assassinated at Dealey Plaza in Dallas (pictured: the Old Red Courthouse at Dealey Plaza).
(New York City)
The European colonial powers saw their subjects yearn for independence. India and Pakistan were the first to become independent of Britain in the postwar. Malaya followed in the 1950s, eventually breaking up into the nations of Malaysia and Singapore. The British eventually granted independence to Sudan in 1956 and Ghana in 1957, leading to over a dozen states reaching independence, such as Nigeria (1960), Tanganyika and Zanzibar (1963), now called Tanzania, Kenya (1963, pictured: Nairobi), Rhodesia, now called Zimbabwe (1965), and Bechuanaland, now called Botswana (1966). Mauritius and the Seychelles would be granted independence in 1968 and 1976. France and Spain pulled out of Morocco in the late 1950s, and by 1962 France had left most of its colonies in Africa, such as the Ivory Coast and Madagascar. Portugal left its colonies in Africa in the 1970s. Many Caribbean nations, like Barbados and Jamaica, would become independent in the 1960s, with countries like Dominica and Belize earning the right to self-govern by the early 1980s.
(Pictured: India Gate in Delhi)
Indeed, the 1960s was a time that social upheaval was at its highest during the 20th century. The Civil Rights Movement in the United States saw the integration of schools across the South, from Little Rock to Oxford to Charlottesville. Nonviolent marches such as the march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, and the 1963 March on Washington, D.C. led to landmark legislation being passed giving equal rights to the Black community, such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, with movement leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a minister from Atlanta, attending the signings of both bills. The hopeful tone of change that had permeated the 1960s stopped in its tracks with the turbulence of 1968. Dr. King was murdered at a motel in Memphis, presidential hopeful Robert F. Kennedy was murdered at a hotel in Los Angeles, and cities from Los Angeles to Chicago to Washington, D.C. were up in smoke due to riots. 1968 was a year of protest no matter where you looked, from government protests in Prague to university protests in France and Japan to Black solidarity on the Olympic podium in Mexico City. (Pictured: Dr. King’s tomb at the King Center in Atlanta.)
The 1960s and 1970s gave voice to people who were up until then considered relatively voiceless. Second-wave feminism did much to improve the standing of women in Western society, with “women’s lib” organizations being formed by the end of the 1960s not just in the U.S. and the UK, but as far away as Stockholm, Buenos Aires, Madrid, and Tokyo. By the 1970s, women were marching for liberation in dozens of countries across the world, led by the cry of “I Am Woman”, the feminist anthem was written by Melbourne, Australia-based singer Helen Reddy. In 1973, Billie Jean King beat Bobby Riggs in an exhibition tennis match called “The Battle of the Sexes” at the Astrodome in Houston, Texas. If the 1960s gave women a voice, the 1970s gave them more and more platforms to advance their message. The gay and lesbian community reached an era of liberation following the riots at The Stonewall Inn in New York City in 1969. The first “pride parades” were held in Chicago, New York City, Los Angeles, and San Francisco in 1970, and by the end of the decade, “prides” were held in Helsinki, Madrid, Mexico City, Stockholm, and Sydney, just to name a few major cities.
One of the reasons there was a rise in tension and disarray of what was considered to be the social fabric at the time was the involvement of the United States and coalition forces in the Vietnam War. A deeply unpopular war, it was not one the U.S. could win, and a foray into Cambodia in an attempt to stop the Chinese-backed north, while successful for American military forces, proved unpopular still. A treaty signed in Paris in 1973 ended American involvement in Vietnam, and Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City, pictured: Independence Palace) fell two years later, effectively uniting Vietnam under a socialist government. Vietnam is home to a budding tourism industry today, and many Americans are among the tourists visiting places like Hanoi, Hue, and Halong Bay. Also in the 1970s, the Middle East became more and more of a player on the world stage, first in 1973 when Saudi Arabia announced an oil embargo, and again in 1979 as a people-power revolution in Tehran overthrew the Shah of Iran and installed a cleric as head of state in his place. Ayatollah Khomeini would lead Iran until 1989.
Hanoi’s Old Quarter.
The 1980s was the last full decade of the Cold War, and tensions between the U.S. and the Soviets reached all-time highs, with superpower-funded wars raging in Afghanistan, Lebanon, and Iraq. Ethiopia experienced their worst famine on record, and the dual Live Aid concerts of 1985, held at Wembley Stadium in London and JFK Stadium in Philadelphia, raised nearly $500 million (in today’s dollars) for famine relief. Anti-Communist sentiment in Eastern Europe started with the rise of Solidarity in Gdansk (pictured: a mural of Solidarity leader Lech Walesa), which led to a two-year martial law across all of Poland. Discontent rose with each year until 1989, when pro-democracy protests were seen across the Iron Curtain, in Berlin (where the iconic Berlin Wall was dismantled), Leipzig, Prague, Warsaw, Krakow, Budapest, Timisoara, and Bucharest. Protests were even seen as far away as Tiananmen Square in Beijing. Democratic elections occurred during 1990 in Eastern Europe, and in 1991, Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union broke up into smaller, independent states. For the Yugoslavians, the price of independence ranged from a six-day offensive in Slovenia to a four-year war in Croatia, Bosnia, and Serbia, which saw Sarajevo and the Old Bridge in Mostar reduced to rubble.
The 1980s and 1990s saw unparalleled economic growth. Some economies were known as “tigers” due to their growth, and international corporations invested in fast-growing world capitals like Seoul, Singapore, Taipei, New Delhi, Manama, Abu Dhabi, Oslo, Dublin, Madrid, and Lisbon. The European Union was formed in 1993 in Maastricht in the Netherlands; EU-related buildings and museums can be found in Brussels, Frankfurt, Luxembourg, and Strasbourg. The Olympic Games, televised in more countries than ever before, brought the excitement of Barcelona, Lillehammer, Atlanta, and Nagano to living rooms worldwide. We fell in love with Prince Charles and Princess Diana, who were married at St. Paul’s Cathedral in 1981 in the “wedding of the century”. The People’s Princess would leave us too soon, perishing in a car accident in Paris in 1997; memorials to Diana live on in Hyde Park, London, and at Althorp, near Northampton, which is her final resting place. The first mammal to be cloned was Dolly, the sheep, in 1996; she is taxidermied at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh. Peace was brought to the Middle East, while two of the last colonial holdings in Asia, Hong Kong (pictured) and Macau, were returned to China, just as we rang in the new millennium! (No Y2K bugs; hooray!)
That was an exciting ride through the history of the 20th century! Hopefully we’ve given you a good amount of vacation inspiration in this blog post. Do you know where you can find even more inspiration? Tripmasters.com, where you can peruse the destinations discussed above, as well as our destinations in 120 countries and territories throughout the world.
