Virginia

state of the United States of America

30 dated entries naming Virginia, drawn from 25 separate years between 1584 CE and 1908 CE. Nothing here is written by us: each line is the sentence a Wikipedia year article used, and the link beside it opens the exact revision.

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16th century

1584June 4 – Walter Raleigh sends Philip Amadas and Arthur Barlowe to explore the Outer Banks of Virginia (modern-day North Carolina), with a view to establishing an English colony; they locate Roanoke Island.source

17th century

1611August 2 – Jamestown's Deputy Governor Sir Thomas Gates returns to Virginia with 280 people, provisions and cattle on six ships and assumes control, ruling that the fort must be strengthened.source
1616With small profits to show, the Virginia Company decides to distribute land in Virginia to shareholders according to the number of shares owned. Each stockholder can set up a "particular" plantation and pay associated expenses, receiving 100 acre km2 of land for each share and 50 acre m2 for each person transported (the "headrights" system).source
1619December 4 – Thirty-eight colonists from England disembark in Berkeley Hundred, Virginia from the Margaret of Bristol and have a day of celebration to give thanks to God, in what is considered by some historians to be the first Thanksgiving in the Americas.source
1620"A Dutch Ship, putting in this Year [of 1620, before June], sold 20 Negroes to the Colony [as slaves], which were the first of that Generation, that were ever brought to Virginia."source
1623June 14 – The first breach-of-promise lawsuit: Rev. Gerville Pooley, in Virginia, files against Cicely Jordan, but loses.source
1623March 5 – The first American temperance law is enacted, in Virginia.source
1630September 24 – The first ship of de Sauce's emigrants arrive at Southampton Hundred, on the James River in Virginia.source
1677May 29 – The Treaty of Middle Plantation establishes peace between the Virginia colonists and the local Indians.source
1678About 1,200 Irish families sail from Barbados to Virginia and the Carolinas.source

18th century

1718November 22 – Citing violations of the amnesty agreement with Blackbeard, Virginia Governor Alexander Spotswood sends a Royal Navy contingent to North Carolina, where they battle Blackbeard and his crew in Ocracoke Inlet. Blackbeard is killed in action, after receiving five musketball wounds and twenty sword lacerations.source
1743July 31 – At a summit in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, the British colonies of Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania conclude a treaty with the Six Nations, conceding that the member tribes are entitled to the territory west of the Appalachian mountains and north of the Ohio River.source
1753October 31 – Virginia Lieutenant Governor Dinwiddie commissions 21-year-old militia Major George Washington to dissuade the French from occupying the Ohio Country.source
1774October 10 – Dunmore's War – Battle of Point Pleasant: Cornstalk is forced to make peace with Dunmore at the Treaty of Camp Charlotte, ceding Shawnee land claims south of the Ohio (modern Kentucky) to Virginia.source
1776December 5 – The Phi Beta Kappa society is founded at the College of William & Mary in Virginia.source
1776December 6 – The General Assembly of Virginia votes to create Kentucky County as the portion of the colony's Fincastle County that is located west of the Cumberland Mountains.source
1776June 7 – American Revolution: Lee Resolution – Richard Henry Lee of Virginia proposes to the Second Continental Congress (meeting in Philadelphia) that "these united colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states."source
1778June 24 – A total solar eclipse takes place across parts of North America, from Texas to Virginia.source
1781January 2 – Virginia passes a law ceding its western land claims, paving the way for Maryland to ratify the Articles of Confederation.source

19th century

1846September 7 – The portion of the District of Columbia in the United States that was ceded by Virginia in 1790 is re-ceded to Virginia.source
1851August 1 – Virginia closes its Reform Constitutional Convention, deciding that all white men have the right to vote.source
1852November 2 – 1852 United States presidential election: Democrat Franklin Pierce of New Hampshire defeats Whig Winfield Scott of Virginia.source
1859October 16 – John Brown raids the Harpers Ferry Armory in Harper's Ferry, Virginia, in an unsuccessful bid to spark a general slave rebellion.source
1862U.S. President Abraham Lincoln signs an act that admits West Virginia to the Union, thus dividing Virginia into two.source
1862March 8 – Ironclad (formerly USS Merrimack) is launched at Hampton Roads, Virginia; the Battle of Hampton Roads starts the same day.source
1865April 26 – Union cavalry corner John Wilkes Booth in a Virginia barn, and cavalryman Boston Corbett fatally shoots the assassin.source
1865March 25 – American Civil War: In Virginia, Confederate forces capture Fort Stedman from the Union, although it is retaken the same day. Lee's army suffers heavy casualties: about 2,900, including 1,000 captured in the Union counterattack. Confederate positions are weakened. After the battle, Lee's defeat is only a matter of time.source
1870January 26 – Reconstruction Era (United States): Virginia rejoins the Union. This year it adopts a new Constitution, drawn up by John Curtiss Underwood, expanding suffrage to all male citizens over 21, including freedmen.source
1897October 23 – The Kappa Delta sorority is founded in Farmville, Virginia.source

20th century

1908September 17 – At Fort Myer, Virginia, Thomas Selfridge becomes the first person to die in an airplane crash. The pilot, Orville Wright, is severely injured in the crash but recovers.source