Dateline in Memphis
- 1541 Hernando de Soto views Mississippi River from fourth Chickasaw bluff, site of today's Memphis.
- 1682 La Salle claims Mississippi Valley for France.
- 1739 French governor of Louisiana orders a fort built on fourth Chickasaw bluff.
- 1795 Manuel Gayoso, in order to expand Spanish lands in North America, erects Fort San Fernando on Mississippi River.
- 1797 Americans build Fort Adams on ruins of Fort San Fernando, and the Spanish flee to the far side of the river.
- 1818 Chickasaw Nation cedes western Tennessee to the United States.
- 1819 Town of Memphis founded.
- 1826 Memphis is incorporated.
- 1840s Cheap land makes for boom times in Memphis.
- 1857 Memphis and Charleston Railroad completed, linking the Atlantic and the Mississippi.
- 1862 Memphis falls to Union troops but becomes an important smuggling center.
- 1870s Several yellow-fever epidemics leave the city almost abandoned.
- 1879 Memphis declares bankruptcy and its charter is revoked.
- 1880s Memphis rebounds.
- 1890s Memphis becomes largest hardwood market in the world, attracting African Americans seeking to share in city's boom times.
- 1892 First bridge across Mississippi south of St. Louis opens in Memphis.
- 1893 Memphis regains its city charter.
- 1899 Church Park and Auditorium, the city's first park and entertainment center for African Americans, are built.
- 1909 W. C. Handy, a Beale Street bandleader, becomes the father of the blues when he writes first blues song for mayoral candidate E. H. "Boss" Crump.
- 1916 Nation's first self-service grocery store opens in Memphis.
- 1925 Peabody hotel built. Tom Lee rescues 23 people from sinking steamboat.
- 1928 Orpheum Theatre opens.
- 1940 B.B. King plays for first time on Beale Street, at an amateur music contest.
- 1952 Jackie Brenston's "Rocket 88," considered the first rock-'n'-roll recording, is released by Memphis's Sun Studio.
- 1955 Elvis Presley records his first hit record at Sun Studio.
- 1958 Stax Records, a leader in the soul-music industry of the 1960s, founded.
- 1968 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., assassinated at Lorraine Motel.
- 1977 Elvis Presley dies at Graceland, his home on the south side of Memphis.
- 1983 Renovated Beale Street reopens as tourist attraction and nightlife district.
- 1991 National Civil Rights Museum opens in former Lorraine Motel. Pyramid completed.
- 1992 Memphis elects its first African-American mayor.
- 1993 Two movies based on John Grisham novels, The Firm and The Client, are filmed in Memphis.
- 1998 Memphis booms with $1.4 billion in expansion and renovation projects.
- 2000 Memphis Redbirds baseball team play their first season in new, $68.5-million AutoZone Park downtown.
- 2001 Grizzlies move to Memphis, becoming city's first, long-awaited NBA team.
- 2002 Groundbreaking begins on FedEx Forum downtown.
- 2003 Sun Studio founder Sam Phillips dies.
- 2003 Soulsville USA: Stax Museum of American Soul Music opens in South Memphis.
- 2004 FedEx Forum basketball arena and concert venue opens at foot of Beale Street.
- 2005 Films including Hustle & Flow, Forty Shades of Blue, and Walk the Line were shot in Memphis.
- 2006 Craig Brewer's Black Snake Moan is shot in Memphis.
- 2007 Ground-breaking begins on Ground Zero Blues Club, a Clarksdale, MS-based juke-joint and restaurant partly owned by Oscar-winning actor Morgan Freeman.