Woodrow Wilson

28th President of the United States, Nobel laureate (d. 1924)

Woodrow Wilson is elected to the presidency of the United States.

U.S. President Woodrow Wilson triggers the explosion of the Gamboa Dike thus ending construction on the Panama Canal.

The Federal Reserve Act is signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson, creating the Federal Reserve System.

U.S. President Woodrow Wilson marries Edith Bolling Galt Wilson.

William Jennings Bryan resigns as Woodrow Wilson's Secretary of State over a disagreement regarding the United States' handling of the sinking of the RMS Lusitania.

World War I: President Woodrow Wilson of the still-neutral United States calls for "peace without victory" in Europe.

World War I: The United States declares war on Germany (see President Woodrow Wilson's address to Congress).

U.S. President Woodrow Wilson sails for the World War I peace talks in Versailles, becoming the first US president to travel to Europe while in office.

The armistice between the Allies and Germany – known as the Armistice of Compiègne after the location in which it was signed – was the agreement that ended the fighting in western Europe that comprised the First World War. It went into effect at 11 a.m. Paris time on November 11, 1918, and marked a victory for the Allies and a complete defeat for Germany, although not formally a surrender. The Germans were responding to the policies proposed by United States president Woodrow Wilson in his Fourteen Points of January 1918. The actual terms, largely written by French Marshal Ferdinand Foch, included the cessation of hostilities, the withdrawal of German troops to behind their own borders, the preservation of infrastructure, the exchange of prisoners, a promise of reparations, the disposition of German warships and submarines, and conditions for prolonging or terminating the armistice. Although the armistice ended the actual fighting, it took six months of negotiations at the Paris Peace Conference to conclude the peace treaty, the Treaty of Versailles.

U.S. President Woodrow Wilson suffers a massive stroke, leaving him partially paralyzed.

The National Prohibition Act, known informally as the Volstead Act, was enacted to carry out the intent of the Eighteenth Amendment, which established prohibition in the United States. The Anti-Saloon League's Wayne Wheeler conceived and drafted the bill, which was named for Andrew Volstead, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, who managed the legislation. While the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibited the production, sale, and transport of "intoxicating liquors", it did not define "intoxicating liquors" or provide penalties. It granted both the federal government and the states the power to enforce the ban by "appropriate legislation." A bill to do so was introduced in Congress in 1919. Later this act was repealed by the Twenty-first amendment. The bill was vetoed by President Woodrow Wilson, largely on technical grounds because it also covered wartime prohibition, but his veto was overridden by the House on the same day, October 28, 1919, and by the Senate one day later. The three distinct purposes of the Act were: 1. to prohibit intoxicating beverages, 2. to regulate the manufacture, sale, or transport of intoxicating liquor (but not consumption), and 3. to ensure an ample supply of alcohol and promote its use in scientific research and in the development of fuel, dye and other lawful industries and practices, such as religious rituals. It provided further that "no person shall manufacture, sell, barter, transport, import, export, deliver, or furnish any intoxicating liquor except as authorized by this act." It did not specifically prohibit the use of intoxicating liquors. The act defined intoxicating liquor as any beverage containing more than 0.5% alcohol by volume and superseded all existing prohibition laws in effect in states that had such legislation.