What is a person, place, idea, or event that is important in the shaping of the 20th century?

Question

Nothing too complicated, something a 10th grade first year world history student would have studied.

Answer 1

The automobile - internal combustion engine - was important in shaping the 20th Century in particular the direction of personal life in the United States.

"At the end of the 19th century, Americans put a great deal of emphasis on personal freedom and individual mobility. The automobile encompassed both of these ideals. Individuality was increased for the automobile. This individual zeal didn’t apply to everyone.

Conservative critics felt that the automobile decreased church attendance, increased sexual activity, and weakened family unity."

Answer 2

Ludicrous to ban Rosa Parks and not Martin Luther King... You could be creative and pick 5 inventors/inventions. It's hard to imagine any single person who shaped the 20th century more than the development of the automobile, the airplane, television, computers, and the Internet. If you don't like one of those, substiitute the development and delivery of electric power across the country, or the development of truly effective drugs. Before 1900 about the only thing a doctor could do, regardless of the illness, was to give some form of opium or ether, cut off your arm or leg, or 'prescribe' lots of rest. (I know - my great grandfather was one, at the turn of the last century, and I've seen his medical kit - scary!) Imagine how different modern American life would be without any one of those. A bonus would be that your teacher wouldn't be reading the 10th paper citing Teddy Roosevelt and MLK, so you might get points for creativity too.

Answer 3

Of the ones above I'd go cars. They literally changed everything from where people work to how they live to how cities are designed. I'd also consider:

Electricity (it was started in the 19th century but did not become widespread until the 20th). One of it's most important benefits was food preservation.

FILM (a huge one that's almost exactly as old as the 20th century [oldest surviving movies on YouTube & Google Movies date to 1888 but it was 1900 before most cities began to get movie theaters])

Air-conditioning (this is why the south became an economic powerhouse again for the first time since before the Civil War)

Radio- it began in the 1920s, was a HUGE and IMMEDIATE success (a radio cost more than most families saw in a month but they couldn't make them fast enough). Radios came into being because of the Titanic disaster (for the full story look up David Sarnoff and Titanic as keywords) and led directly to television (also David Sarnoff, but also look up Philo Farnsworth [14 year old Mormon farmboy when the idea occurred to him]) and that of course changed everything forever and led to cable television and indirectly to the Internet. So radio because in addition to the changes it brought (it was the first time most people ever heard the voices of the people they read about in the newspapers) it led to television and mass communication in general.

Answer 4

The Space Race/ Landing on the Moon

The bombing of Pearl Harbor

Polio vaccine

The Great Depression

The Cuban Missile Crisis

The Panama Canal

The addition of Hawaii and Alaska (20th ?)

The Oklahoma City Bombing

Summiting Mt. Everest

The 'invention' of the Assembly Line (Henry Ford)

The creation of the Internet/World Wide Web

Y2K

The coming down of the Berlin Wall

Answer 5

You will in all likelihood receive the names of Hitler, Stalin Roosevelt, the assassination of President Kennedy, 9-11, and a myriad of others which each in its own way was an important factor in thee shaping of the 20th century.
I would like to suggest three names that were most predominant in this era
1 Wilbur Wright
2 Orville Wright, and
3 Alexander Graham Bell

I hope this helps you.

Answer 6

The 1800's brought in the industrial age. Steel production and the internal combustion engine. the horseless carriage began to be produced and carriage manufacturers like Studebaker switched over to automobile production. In the early 1900's mass production was introduced by Henry Ford.

Answer 7

Albert Einstein and the theory of relativity

Answer 8

nuclear energy

it ended a war but nearly started a few more
it benefited human civilisation but can destroy it too
it deter some conflict but it is a cause of more conflict

Answer 9

WW 2, we are still suffering from the outcome of that war. ie: the middle east conflict

Answer 10

How to move a mountain, one stone at a time.
Building bridges across troubled waters.