Philadelphia historical timeline

Origins

The Lenape held this land. William Penn founded the city in 1682 as the capital of a colony built on religious tolerance, naming it from the Greek for brotherly love and laying out a grid of five squares he intended as a "greene countrie towne".

Turning points

The Second Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence here in 1776, and the Constitutional Convention drafted the Constitution in the same building in 1787. Philadelphia served as the national capital from 1790 to 1800 while the permanent one was built.

Influential people

Benjamin Franklin shaped the city more than anyone: its first hospital, first lending library, fire company and university all trace to him. He is buried at Christ Church Burial Ground, where visitors still throw pennies onto the stone.

Cultural evolution

Nineteenth-century Philadelphia was the workshop of America — textiles, locomotives, shipbuilding — and the decline of that industry after 1950 shaped the modern city. In 1985 city police dropped an explosive device on an occupied row house during a confrontation with the MOVE organisation, killing eleven people including five children and burning down 61 homes. It remains the only aerial bombing of a civilian building by an American police force.

Present-day significance

Medicine, education and biotechnology now carry the economy, anchored by a dense cluster of universities and teaching hospitals.