1717 — The United Kingdom de facto goes onto the gold standard, as Sir Isaac Newton, warden of the mint, links money at the fixed rate of 77 shillings, 10 ½ pennies per gold ounce.
1792 — Coinage Act was passed by United States Congress establishing the U. S. Mint. Dollar defined as 371.25 grains of silver or 24.75 grains of gold.
1861 — United States suspends payment in gold and silver as an exigency of the Civil War.
1879 — Gold and Silver Resumption Act takes effect in the United States.
1870-1900 — All major countries, except China, adopt the gold standard, making their currencies convertible to gold.
1896 — William Jennings Bryan campaigns for "soft money" - in three presidential races. Gives his famous "cross of gold" speech, loses all three elections. President McKinley implements the Gold Standard Act in 1900.
1914-1925 — United Kingdom departs from the gold standard during World War I.
1922 — Genoa Conference, introduction of a gold exchange standard with use of paper notes in place of gold.
1925 — United Kingdom returns to the gold standard — but at pre-war gold price, the price level having doubled during the war. The wrong monetary technique for restoration and resumption of gold convertability.
1933 — United States goes off the gold standard, private holdings prohibited.
1934 — United States restores convertibility, but not for citizens only sovereign nations. President Roosevelt restores convertibility at $35 per troy ounce. George F. Warren, a professor of farm management at Cornell University, told FDR that the way to raise prices was by reducing the gold value of the dollar.
1939 — World War II closes the London gold market.
1944 — 44 nations meet in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire to negotiate a world monetary system permitting countries to use either gold or dollars as the asset against which they can create their domestic money, the "gold-exchange standard" critiqued by economist Jacques Rueff as a "grotesque caricature" of the gold standard.
1971 — On August 15, Nixon officially ("temporarily") suspends convertibility of the US dollar to gold.
1981 — United States Treasury Department convenes 17-member Gold Commission. A majority report againt gold was submitted along with a minority report in favor of the gold standard by Ron Paul and Lewis E. Lehrman.
A History of Gold — The Telegraph
The History of the Gold Standard - 25 Great Websites to Research Its Rise and Fall — Bankling.com