Save the dates: Make time to celebrate these notable non-250th milestones in 2026

While the 250th anniversary of the United States is this year’s marquee celebration – especially in Philadelphia, site of the nation’s founding – the semiquincentennial is only one of numerous milestones in 2026. City & State takes a look at several other notable anniversaries of phenomena that have shaped the commonwealth, modern political discourse, or both.  

Illuminati: 250th

Two months before the Declaration of Independence, the Bavarian Illuminati founded a secret society in the Holy Roman Empire. Two-and-a-half centuries later, the shadowy group remains central to innumerable conspiracy theories about a global cabal – as well as a never-ending source of speculation about which celebrities are part of it.

Telephone call: 150th

Talk about cutting out the middleman: When Alexander Graham Bell famously telephoned his assistant, Thomas Watson, from his Boston laboratory in 1876, he set in motion 150 years of electronic communication that put first horses and steamships, then entire postal services (see: Denmark), out of business – and spurred generations of internecine household warfare between parents and their chatty teens.

U.S. Steel: 125th 

Gilded Age financier J.P. Morgan founded the Pittsburgh manufacturing giant in 1901 through a nearly $500 million merger ($18 billion in today’s dollars). It was for years the nation’s largest steelmaker and the world’s largest corporation, with headquarters in the Empire State Building; at its peak, during World War II, the U.S. Steel workforce numbered nearly 350,000, roughly 16 times that of today.

Pittsburgh Flood: 90th

On St. Patrick’s Day in 1936, melting snow coupled with torrential rains flooded the Steel City, with water levels rising to 46 feet. Downtown was submerged, trains and trolleys were halted, steel mills sustained heavy damage and electricity was out for over a week. The devastation gave momentum to flood control measures – including, eventually, construction of the upstate Kinzua Dam.

Twitter: 20th

What did journalists and politicians even do before Twitter founder and original CEO Jack Dorsey and his fellow techies launched Twitter? That little blue bird and its distinctive alert guaranteed a dopamine rush for media junkies; rebranded post-acquisition by Elon Musk as X, the site has outlived numerous rumors of its demise and counts some 600 million users.