• Directory / Navigation / Search / Look to See
[ Earth ]
From The Beginning
January 1, 1401 — December 31, 1500
1492 — Christopher Columbus
Discovers The New World.
n — lindazacks.
A is for everything
— the/written/word/the/printing/press
— stargazers/seeing/the/light/shadow/dimension/color
the/empty/rectangle/shapes/symbols/circles/square/triangle/logos
— !
Sir Isaac Newton (1705)
the art of time
At the beginning of recorded time (History), In Europe, the 15th century includes parts of the Late Middle Ages, the Early Renaissance, and the early modern period. Many technological, social and cultural developments of the 15th century can in retrospect be seen as heralding the “European miracle” of the following centuries. The architectural perspective, and the modern fields which are known today as banking and accounting were founded in Italy. Constantinople, known as the Capital of the World and the Capital of the Byzantine Empire (today’s Turkey), fell to the emerging Muslim Ottoman Turks, marking the end of the tremendously influential Byzantine Empire and, for some historians, the end of the Middle Ages. This led to the migration of Greek scholars and texts to Italy, while Johannes Gutenberg‘s invention of the mechanical movable type began the printing press. These two events played key roles in the development of the Renaissance. The Roman Papacy was split in two parts in Europe for decades (the so-called Western Schism), until the Council of Constance. The division of the Catholic Church and the unrest associated with the Hussite movement would become factors in the rise of the Protestant Reformation in the following century. Islamic Spain (Al-Andalus) became dissolved through the Christian Reconquista, followed by the forced conversions and the Muslim rebellion, ending over seven centuries of Islamic rule and returning Spain, Portugal and Southern France to Christian rulers. The search for the wealth and prosperity of India’s Bengal Sultanate led to the colonization of the Americas by Christopher Columbus in 1492 and the Portuguese voyages by Vasco da Gama, which linked Europe with the Indian subcontinent, ushering the period of Iberian empires. The Hundred Years’ War ended with a decisive French victory over the English in the Battle of Castillon. Financial troubles in England following the conflict resulted in the Wars of the Roses, a series of dynastic wars for the throne of England. The conflicts ended with the defeat of Richard III by Henry VII at the Battle of Bosworth Field, establishing the Tudor dynasty in the later part of the century.
— CONTACT / VOYAGER
In Asia, the Timurid Empire collapsed, and the Afghan Pashtun Lodi dynasty was founded under the Delhi Sultanate. Under the rule of the Yongle Emperor, who built the Forbidden City and commanded Zheng He to explore the world overseas, the Ming Dynasty‘s territory reached its pinnacle.
In Africa, the spread of Islam lead to the destruction of the Christian kingdoms of Nubia, by the end of the century, leaving only Alodia (which was to collapse in 1504). The formerly vast Mali Empire teetered on the brink of collapse, under pressure from the rising Songhai Empire.
In the Americas, both the Inca Empire and the Aztec Empire reached the peak of their influence, but the European colonization of the Americas changed the course of modern history.
Filippo Brunelleschi, regarded as one of the greatest engineers and architects of all time.
Joan of Arc, a French peasant girl, directly influenced the result of the Hundred Years’ War.
— 9/11 —
Time’s Up
In The Post-Apocalyptic Area
“Flying” b/ Living Colour
In the days immediately following 911, Vernon wrote this song, painting a vivid picture of the day as he remembered it being burned into his mind.
(play)
— French Television
“Spiderman” (2002)
— The first trailer (with the Twin Towers) was withdrawn after 911.
“Release The Pressure” (December 28, 2001)
— Living Colour @ The (Orlando) House Of Blues
“Self-Evident”
b/ Ani DiFrancoSo Much Shouting, So Much Laughter (2003)
2022 — How Near The End.
James Webb Telescope
1401: Dilawar Khan establishes the Malwa Sultanate in present-day central India.
- 1402: Ottoman and Timurid Empires fight at the Battle of Ankara resulting in the capture of Bayezid I by Timur.
- 1402: Sultanate of Malacca founded by Parameswara.
- 1402: The settlement of the Canary Islands signals the beginning of the Spanish Empire.
- 1403–1413: Ottoman Interregnum, a civil war between the four sons of Bayezid I.
- 1403: The Yongle Emperor moves the capital of China from Nanjing to Beijing.
- 1404–1406: Regreg War, Majapahit civil war of secession between Wikramawardhana against Wirabhumi.
- 1405: The Sultanate of Sulu is established by Sharif ul-Hāshim.
- 1405–1433: During the Ming treasure voyages, Admiral Zheng He of China sails through the Indian Ocean to Malacca, India, Ceylon, Persia, Arabia, and East Africa to spread China’s influence and sovereignty.
- 1405–1407: The first voyage of Zheng He, a massive Ming dynasty naval expedition visited Java, Palembang, Malacca, Aru, Samudera and Lambri. (to 1433)
- 1408: The last recorded event to occur in the Norse settlements of Greenland was a wedding in Hvalsey in the Eastern Settlement in 1408.
- 1410: The Battle of Grunwald is the decisive battle of the Polish–Lithuanian–Teutonic War leading to the downfall of the Teutonic Knights.
- 1410–1413: Foundation of St Andrews University in Scotland.
- 1410–1415: The last Welsh war of independence, led by Owain Glyndŵr.
- 1414: Khizr Khan, deputised by Timur to be the governor of Multan, takes over Delhi founding the Sayyid dynasty.
- 1415: Henry the Navigator leads the conquest of Ceuta from the Moors marking the beginning of the Portuguese Empire.
- 1415: Battle of Agincourt fought between the Kingdom of England and France.
- 1415: Jan Hus is burned at the stake as a heretic at the Council of Constance.
- 1417: A large goodwill mission led by three kings of Sulu, the Eastern KingPaduka Pahala, the Western king Maharaja Kolamating and Cave king Paduka Prabhu as well as 340 members of their delegation, in what is now the southern Philippines, ploughed through the Pacific Ocean to China to pay tribute to the Yongle emperor of the Ming Dynasty.
- 1417: The East king of Sulu, Paduka Pahala, on their way home, suddenly died in Dezhou, a city in east China’s Shandong province. The Yongle Emperor Zhu Di commissioned artisans to build a tomb for the king.
- 1419–1433: The Hussite Wars in Bohemia.
- 1420: Construction of the Chinese Forbidden City is completed in Beijing.
The renaissance king Matthias Corvinus of Hungary. His mercenary standing army (the Black Army) had the strongest military potential of its era.
- 1424: James I returns to Scotland after being held hostage under three Kings of England since 1406.
- 1424: Deva Raya II succeeds his father Veera Vijaya Bukka Raya as monarch of the Vijayanagara Empire.
- 1425: Catholic University of Leuven (Belgium) founded by Pope Martin V.
- 1429: Joan of Arc ends the Siege of Orléans and turns the tide of the Hundred Years’ War.
- 1429: Queen Suhita succeeds her father Wikramawardhana as ruler of Majapahit.
- 1430: Rajah Lontok and Dayang Kalangitan become co-regent rulers of the ancient kingdom of Tondo.
- 1431
- January 9 – Pretrial investigations for Joan of Arc begin in Rouen, France under English occupation.
- March 3 – Pope Eugene IV succeeds Pope Martin V, to become the 207th pope.
- March 26 – The trial of Joan of Arc begins.
- May 30 – Nineteen-year-old Joan of Arc is executed (burned at the stake)
- June 16 – the Teutonic Knights and Švitrigaila sign the Treaty of Christmemel, creating anti-Polish alliance
- September – Battle of Inverlochy: Donald Balloch defeats the Royalists.
- October 30 – Treaty of Medina del Campo, consolidating peace between Portugal and Castille.
- December 16 – Henry VI of England is crowned King of France.
- 1438: Pachacuti founds the Inca Empire.
Depiction of Skanderbeg, who led the Albanian resistance against the Ottoman Empire
- 1440: Eton College founded by Henry VI.
- 1440s: The Golden Horde breaks up into the Siberia Khanate, the Khanate of Kazan, the Astrakhan Khanate, the Crimean Khanate, and the Great Horde.
- 1440–1469: Under Moctezuma I, the Aztecs become the dominant power in Mesoamerica.
- 1440: Oba Ewuare comes to power in the West African city of Benin, and turns it into an empire.
- 1441: Jan van Eyck, Flemish painter, dies.
- 1441: Portuguese navigators cruise West Africa and reestablish the European slave trade with a shipment of African slaves sent directly from Africa to Portugal.
- 1441: A civil war between the Tutul Xiues and Cocom breaks out in the League of Mayapan. As a consequence, the league begins to disintegrate.
- 1442: Leonardo Brunidefines Middle Ages and Modern times.
- 1443: Abdur Razzaq visits India.
- 1443: King Sejong the Great publishes the hangul, the native phonetic alphabet system for the Korean language.
- 1444: The Albanian league is established in Lezha, Skanderbeg is elected leader. A war begins against the Ottoman Empire. An Albanian state is set up and lasts until 1479.
- 1444: Ottoman Empire under SultanMurad II defeats the Polish and Hungarian armies under Władysław III of Poland and János Hunyadi at the Battle of Varna.
- 1445: The Kazan Khanate defeats the Grand Duchy of Moscow at the Battle of Suzdal.
- 1446: Mallikarjuna Raya succeeds his father Deva Raya II as monarch of the Vijayanagara Empire.
- 1447: Wijaya Parakrama Wardhana, succeeds Suhita as ruler of Majapahit.
- 1449: Saint Srimanta Sankardeva was born.
- 1449: Esen Tayisi leads an Oirat Mongol invasion of China which culminate in the capture of the Zhengtong Emperor at Battle of Tumu Fortress.
Modern painting of Mehmed II marching on Constantinople in 1453
Detail of The Emperor’s Approach showing the Xuande Emperor‘s royal carriage. Ming Dynastyof China.
- 1450s: Machu Picchu constructed.
- 1450: Dayang Kalangitan became the Queen regnant of the ancient kingdom of Tondo that started Tondo’s political dominance over Luzon.
- 1451: Bahlul Khan Lodhi ascends the throne of the Delhi sultanate starting the Lodhi dynasty
- 1451: Rajasawardhana, born Bhre Pamotan, styled Brawijaya II succeeds Wijayaparakramawardhana as ruler of Majapahit.[11]
- 1453: The Fall of Constantinople marks the end of the Byzantine Empire and the death of the last Roman Emperor Constantine XI and the beginning of the Classical Age of the Ottoman Empire.
- 1453: The Battle of Castillon is the last engagement of the Hundred Years’ War and the first battle in European history where cannons were a major factor in deciding the battle.
- 1453: Reign of Rajasawardhana ends.
- 1454–1466: After defeating the Teutonic Knights in the Thirteen Years’ War, Poland annexes Royal Prussia.
- 1455–1485: Wars of the Roses – English civil war between the House of York and the House of Lancaster.
- 1456: Joan of Arc is posthumously acquitted of heresy by the Catholic Church, redeeming her status as the heroine of France.
King Henry VII, (1457–1509), the founder of the royal house of Tudor
- 1456: The Siege of Belgrade halts the Ottomans’ advance into Europe.
- 1456: Girishawardhana, styled Brawijaya III, becomes ruler of Majapahit.
- 1457: Construction of Edo Castle begins.
- 1461: The League of Mayapan disintegrates. The league is replaced by seventeen Kuchkabal.
- 1461: The city of Sarajevo is founded by the Ottomans.
The seventeen Kuchkabals of Yucatán after The League of Mayapan in 1461.
- 1461
- February 2 – Battle of Mortimer’s Cross: Yorkist troops led by Edward, Duke of York defeat Lancastrians under Owen Tudor and his son Jasper Tudor, Earl of Pembroke in Wales.
- February 17 – Second Battle of St Albans, England: The Earl of Warwick‘s army is defeated by a Lancastrian force under Queen Margaret, who recovers control of her husband.
- March 4 – The Duke of York seizes London and proclaims himself King Edward IV of England.
- March 5 – Henry VI of England is deposed by the Duke of York during War of the Roses.
- March 29 – Battle of Towton: Edward IV defeats Queen Margaret to make good his claim to the English throne (thought to be the bloodiest battle ever fought in England).
- June 28 – Edward, Richard of York’s son, is crowned as Edward IV, King of England (reigns until 1483).
- July – Byzantine general Graitzas Palaiologos honourably surrenders Salmeniko Castle, last garrison of the Despotate of the Morea, to invading forces of the Ottoman Empire after a year-long siege.
- July 22 – Louis XI of France succeeds Charles VII of France as king (reigns until 1483).
- 1462: Sonni Ali Ber, the ruler of the Songhai (or Songhay) Empire, along the Niger River, conquers Mali in the central Sudan by defeating the Tuareg contingent at Tombouctou (or Timbuktu) and capturing the city. He develops both his own capital, Gao, and the main centres of Mali, Timbuktu and Djenné, into major cities. Ali Ber controls trade along the Niger River with a navy of war vessels.
- 1462: Mehmed the Conqueror is driven back by Wallachian prince Vlad III Dracula at The Night Attack.
- 1464: Edward IV of England secretly marries Elizabeth Woodville.
- 1465: The 1465 Moroccan revolt ends in the murder of the last MarinidSultan of MoroccoAbd al-Haqq II.
- 1466: Singhawikramawardhana, succeeds Girishawardhana as ruler of Majapahit.
- 1467: Uzun Hasan defeats the Black Sheep Turkoman leader Jahān Shāh.
- 1467–1615: The Sengoku period is one of civil wars in Japan.
The Siege of Rhodes (1480).
Ships of the Hospitaliers in the forefront, and Turkish camp in the background.
- 1469: The marriage of Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile leads to the unification of Spain.
- 1469: Matthias Corvinus of Hungary conquers some parts of Bohemia.
- 1469: Birth of Guru Nanak Dev. Beside followers of Sikhism, Guru Nanak is revered by Hindus and Muslim Sufis across the Indian subcontinent.
- 1470: The Moldavian forces under Stephen the Great defeat the Tatars of the Golden Horde at the Battle of Lipnic.
- 1471: The kingdom of Champa suffers a massive defeat by the Vietnamese king Lê Thánh Tông.
- 1472: Abu Abd Allah al-Sheikh Muhammad ibn Yahya becomes the first Wattasid Sultan of Morocco.
- 1474–1477: Burgundy Wars of France,Switzerland, Lorraine and Sigismund II of Habsburg against the Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy.
- 1478: Muscovy conquers Novgorod.
- 1478: Reign of Singhawikramawardhana ends.
- 1478: The Great Mosque of Demak is the oldest mosque in Java, built by the Wali Songo during the reign of Sultan Raden Patah.
- 1479: Battle of Breadfield, Matthias Corvinus of Hungary defeated the Turks.
- 1480: After the Great standing on the Ugra river, Muscovy gained independence from the Great Horde.
- 1481: Spanish Inquisition begins in practice with the first auto-da-fé.
- 1485: Matthias Corvinus of Hungary captured Vienna, Frederick III, Holy Roman Emperor ran away.
- 1485: Henry VII defeats Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth and becomes King of England.
- 1485: Ivan III of Russia conquered Tver.
- 1485: Saluva Narasimha Deva Raya drives out Praudha Raya ending the Sangama Dynasty.
- 1486: Sher Shah Suri, is born in Sasaram, Bihar.
- 1488: Portuguese Navigator Bartolomeu Dias sails around the Cape of Good Hope.
1490-1500
- 1492: The death of Sunni Ali Ber left a leadership void in the Songhai Empire, and his son was soon dethroned by Mamadou Toure who ascended the throne in 1493 under the name Askia (meaning “general”) Muhammad. Askia Muhammad made Songhai the largest empire in the history of West Africa. The empire went into decline, however, after 1528, when the now-blind Askia Muhammad was dethroned by his son, Askia Musa.
- 1492: Boabdil‘s surrender of Granada marks the end of the Spanish Reconquista and Al-Andalus.
- 1492:Ferdinand and Isabella sign the Alhambra Decree, expelling all Jews from Spain unless they convert to Catholicism; 40,000–200,000 leave.
- 1492: Christopher Columbus landed in the Americas from (Portugal) Spain.
- 1494: Spain and Portugal sign the Treaty of Tordesillas and agree to divide the World outside of Europe between themselves.
- 1494–1559: The Italian Wars lead to the downfall of the Italian city-states.
- 1497–1499: Vasco da Gama‘s first voyage from Europe to India and back.
- 1499: Ottoman fleet defeats Venetians at the Battle of Zonchio.
- 1499: University “Alcalá de Henares” in Madrid, Spain is built.
- 1499: Michelangelo‘s Pietà in St. Peter’s Basilica is made in Rome
- 1500: Islam becomes the dominant religion across the Indonesian archipelago.
- 1500: Around late 15th century Bujangga Manik manuscript was composed, tell the story of Jaya Pakuan Bujangga Manik, a Sundanese Hindu hermit journeys throughout Java and Bali.
- 1500: Charles of Ghent (future Lord of the Netherlands, King of Spain, Archduke of Austria, and Holy Roman Emperor) was born.
- 1500: Guru Nanak begins the spreading of Sikhism, the fifth-largest religion in the world.
- 1500: Spanish navigator Vicente Yáñez Pinzón encounters Brazil but is prevented from claiming it by the Treaty of Tordesillas.
- 1500: Portuguese navigator Pedro Álvares Cabral claims Brazil for Portugal.
- 1500: The Ottoman fleet of Kemal Reis defeats the Venetians at the Second Battle of Lepanto.
THE MIRACLE OF GLASS
The Impact Of The Lens
Inventions, Discoveries, Introductions
Science and inventions of Leonardo da Vinci
Johannes Gutenberg
List of 15th century inventions
- renaissance affects philosophy, science and art.
- Rise of Modern English language from Middle English.
- Introduction of the noon bell in the Catholic world.
- Public banks.
- Yongle Encyclopedia — over 22,000 volumes.
- Hangul alphabet in Korea.
- Scotch whisky.
- Development of the woodcut for printing between 1400–1450.
- Movable type first used by King Taejong of Joseon—1403. (Movable type, which allowed individual characters to be arranged to form words, was invented in China by Bi Sheng between 1041 and 1048.)
- Although pioneered earlier in Korea and by the Chinese official Wang Zhen (with tin), bronze metal movable typeprinting is created in China by Hua Sui in 1490.
- Johannes Gutenberg advances the printing press in Europe (c.1455)
- Linear perspective drawing perfected by Filippo Brunelleschi1410–1415
- Invention of the harpsichordc.1450
- Arrival of Christopher Columbus to the Americas in 1492.
- Polybius’ “The Histories” translated into Italian, English, German and French.
- Mississippian culture disappears.
- Medallion rug, variant Star Ushak style, Anatolia (modern Turkey), is made. It is now kept at The Saint Louis Art Museum.
1501-1509
Abu’l-Fazl ibn Mubarak presenting Akbarnama to Mughal Azam Akbar, Mughal miniature
Dr Alberico Gentili, the Father of international law
Battle of Cerignola: El Gran Capitan finds the corpse of Louis d’Armagnac, Duke of Nemours
Spanish conquistadors with their Tlaxcallan allies fighting against the Otomies of Metztitlan in present-day Mexico, a 16th-century codex
- 1501: Michelangelo returns to his native Florence to begin work on the statue David.
- 1501: Safavid dynasty reunifies Iran and rules over it until 1736. Safavids adopt a Shia branch of Islam.[5]
- 1501: First Battle of Cannanore between the Third Portuguese Armada and Kingdom of Cochin under João da Nova and Zamorin of Kozhikode‘s navy marks the beginning of Portuguese conflicts in the Indian Ocean.
- 1502: First reported African slaves in the New World
- 1502: The Crimean Khanate sacks Sarai in the Golden Horde, ending its existence.
- 1503: Spain defeats France at the Battle of Cerignola. Considered to be the first battle in history won by gunpowder small arms.
- 1503: Leonardo da Vinci begins painting the Mona Lisa and completes it three years later.
- 1503: Nostradamus is born on either December 14 or December 21.
- 1504: A period of drought, with famine in all of Spain.
- 1504: Death of Isabella I of Castile; Joanna of Castile becomes the Queen.
- 1504: Foundation of the Sultanate of Sennar by Amara Dunqas, in what is modern Sudan
- 1505: Zhengde Emperor ascends the throne of Ming Dynasty.
- 1505: Martin Luther enters St. Augustine’s Monastery at Erfurt, Germany, on 17 July and begins his journey to instigating the Reformation.
- 1505: Sultan Trenggono builds the first Muslim kingdom in Java, called Demak, in Indonesia. Many other small kingdoms were established in other islands to fight against Portuguese. Each kingdom introduced local language as a way of communication and unity.
- 1506: Leonardo da Vinci completes the Mona Lisa.
- 1506: King Afonso I of Kongo wins the battle of Mbanza Kongo, resulting in Catholicism becoming Kongo’s state religion.
- 1506: At least two thousand converted Jews are massacred in a Lisbon riot, Portugal.
- 1506: Christopher Columbus dies in Valladolid, Spain.
- 1506: Poland is invaded by Tatars from the Crimean Khanate.
- 1507: The first recorded epidemic of smallpox in the New World on the island of Hispaniola. It devastates the native Taíno population.[6]
- 1507: Afonso de Albuquerque conquered Hormuz and Muscat, among other bases in the Persian Gulf, taking control of the region at the entrance of the Gulf.
- 1508: The Christian-Islamic power struggle in Europe and West Asia spills over into the Indian Ocean as Battle of Chaul during the Portuguese-Mamluk War
- 1508–1512: Michelangelo paints the Sistine Chapel ceiling.
- 1509: The defeat of joint fleet of the Sultan of Gujarat, the Mamlûk Burji Sultanate of Egypt, and the Zamorin of Calicut with support of the Republic of Venice and the Ottoman Empire in Battle of Diu marks the beginning of Portuguese dominance of the Spice trade and the Indian Ocean.
- 1509: The Portuguese king sends Diogo Lopes de Sequeira to find Malacca, the eastern terminus of Asian trade. After initially receiving Sequeira, Sultan Mahmud Shah captures and/or kills several of his men and attempts an assault on the four Portuguese ships, which escape.[7] The Javanese fleet is also destroyed in Malacca.
- 1509: Krishnadevaraya ascends the throne of Vijayanagara Empire.
Ferdinand Magellan led the first expedition that circumnavigated the globe in 1519–1522.
- 1509–10: The ‘great plague‘ in various parts of Tudor England.[8]
- 1510: Afonso de Albuquerque of Portugal conquersGoa in India.
- 1511: Afonso de Albuquerque of Portugal conquersMalacca, the capital of the Sultanate of Malacca in present-day Malaysia.
- 1512: Copernicus writes Commentariolus, and proclaims the sun the center of the solar system.
- 1512: The southern part (historical core) of the Kingdom of Navarre is invaded by Castile and Aragon.
- 1526: Qutb Shahi dynasty, founded by Quli Qutb Mulk, rules Golconda Sultanate until 1687.
- 1512: The first Portuguese exploratory expedition was sent eastward from Malacca (in present-day Malaysia) to search for the ‘Spice Islands‘ (Maluku) led by Francisco Serrão. Serrão is shipwrecked but struggles on to Hitu (northern Ambon) and wins the favour of the local rulers.[9]
- 1513: Machiavelli writes The Prince, a treatise about political philosophy
- 1513: The Portuguese marinerJorge Álvares lands at Macau, China, during the Ming Dynasty.
- 1513: Henry VIII defeats the French at the Battle of the Spurs.
- 1513: The Battle of Flodden Field in which invading Scots are defeated by Henry VIII‘s forces.
- 1513: Sultan Selim I (“The Grim”) orders the massacre of Shia Muslims in Anatolia (present-day Turkey).
- 1513: Vasco Núñez de Balboa, in service of Spain arrives at the Pacific Ocean (which he called Mar del Sur) across the Isthmus of Panama. He was the first European to do so.
- 1514: The Battle of Orsha halts Muscovy‘s expansion into Eastern Europe.
- 1514: Dózsa rebellion (peasant revolt) in Hungary.
- 1514: The Battle of Chaldiran, the Ottoman Empire gains decisive victory against Safavid dynasty.
- 1515: The Ottoman Empire wrests Eastern Anatolia from the Safavids after the Battle of Chaldiran.
- 1515: The Ottomans conquers the last beyliks of Anatolia, the Dulkadirs and the Ramadanids.
- 1516–1517: The Ottomans defeat the Mamluks and gain control of Egypt, Arabia, and the Levant.
- 1517: The Sweating sickness epidemic in Tudor England.[10]
- 1517: The Reformation begins when Martin Luther posts his Ninety-five Theses in Saxony.
- 1518: Mir Chakar Khan Rind leaves Baluchistan and settles in Punjab.
- 1518: Leo Africanus, also known as al-Hasan ibn Muhammad al-Wazzan al-Fasi, an Andalusian Berber diplomat who is best known for his book Descrittione dell’Africa (Description of Africa), is captured by Spanish pirates; he is taken to Rome and presented to Pope Leo X.
- 1518: The dancing plague of 1518 begins in Strasbourg, lasting for about one month.
- 1519: Leonardo da Vinci dies of natural causes on May 2.
- 1519: Wang Yangming, the Chinese philosopher and governor of Jiangxi province, describes his intent to use the firepower of the fo-lang-ji, a breech-loading Portuguese culverin, in order to suppress the rebellion of Prince Zhu Chenhao.
- 1519: Barbary pirates led by Hayreddin Barbarossa, a Turk appointed to ruling position in Algiers by the Ottoman Empire, raid Provence and Toulon in southern France.
- 1519: Charles I of Austria, Spain, and the Low Countries becomes Emperor of Holy Roman Empire as Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor (ruled until 1556).
- 1519–1522: Spanish expedition commanded by Magellan and Elcano are the first to Circumnavigate the Earth.
- 1519–1521: Hernán Cortés leads the Spanish conquest of Mexico.
Gun-wielding Ottoman Janissaries and defending Knights of Saint John at the siege of Rhodes in 1522, from an Ottomanmanuscript
Sack of Rome by Charles V forces
- 1520–1566: The reign of Suleiman the Magnificent marks the zenith of the Ottoman Empire.
- 1520: The first European diplomatic mission to Ethiopia, sent by the Portuguese, arrives at Massawa 9 April, and reaches the imperial encampment of Emperor Dawit II in Shewa 9 October.
- 1520: Vijayanagara Empire forces under Krishnadevaraya defeat the Adil Shahi under at the Battle of Raichur
- 1520: Sultan Ali Mughayat Shah of Aceh begins an expansionist campaign capturing Daya on the west Sumatran coast (in present-day Indonesia), and the pepper and gold producing lands on the east coast.
- 1520: The Portuguese established a trading post in the village of Lamakera on the eastern side of Solor (in present-day Indonesia) as a transit harbour between Maluku and Malacca.
- 1521: Belgrade (in present-day Serbia) is captured by the Ottoman Empire.
- 1521: After building fortifications at Tuen Mun, the Portuguese attempt to invade Ming Dynasty China, but are expelled by Chinese naval forces.
- 1521: Philippines encountered by Ferdinand Magellan. He was later killed in the Battle of Mactan in central Philippines in the same year.
- 1521: Jiajing Emperor ascended the throne of Ming Dynasty, China.
- 1521: November, Ferdinand Magellan‘s expedition reaches Maluku (in present-day Indonesia) and after trade with Ternate returns to Europe with a load of cloves.
- 1521: Pati Unus leads the invasion of Malacca (in present-day Malaysia) against the Portuguese occupation. Pati Unus was killed in this battle, and was succeeded by his brother, sultan Trenggana.
- 1522: Rhodesfalls to the Ottomans of Suleiman the Magnificent.
- 1522: The Portuguese ally themselves with the rulers of Ternate (in present-day Indonesia) and begin construction of a fort.[9]
- 1522: August, Luso-Sundanese Treaty signed between Portugal and Sunda Kingdom granted Portuguese permit to build fortress in Sunda Kelapa.
- 1523: Swedengains independence from the Kalmar Union.
- 1523: The Cacao bean is introduced to Spain by Hernán Cortés
- 1524–1525: German Peasants’ War in the Holy Roman Empire.
- 1524 – Giovanni da Verrazzano is the first European to explore the Atlantic coast of North America between South Carolina and Newfoundland.
- 1524 – Ismail I, the founder of Safavid dynasty, dies and Tahmasp I becomes king.
- 1525: Timurid Empire forces under Babur defeat the Lodi dynasty at the First Battle of Panipat, end of the Delhi Sultanate.
- 1525: German and Spanish forces defeat France at the Battle of Pavia, Francis I of France is captured.
- 1526: The Ottomans defeat the Kingdom of Hungary at the Battle of Mohács.
- 1526: Mughal Empire, founded by Babur, dominates India until 1857.
- 1527: Sack of Rome with Pope Clement VII escaping and the Swiss Guards defending the Vatican being killed. The sack of the city of Rome considered the end of the Italian Renaissance.
- 1527: Protestant Reformation begins in Sweden.
- 1527: The last ruler of Majapahit falls from power. This state (located in present-day Indonesia) was finally extinguished at the hands of the Demak. A large number of courtiers, artisans, priests, and members of the royalty moved east to the island of Bali; however, the power and the seat of government transferred to Demak under the leadership of Pangeran, later Sultan Fatah.
- 1527: June 22, The Javanese Prince Fatahillah of the Cirebon Sultanate successfully defeated the Portuguese armed forces at the site of the Sunda Kelapa Harbor. The city was then renamed Jayakarta, meaning “a glorious victory.” This eventful day came to be acknowledged as Jakarta’s Founding Anniversary.
- 1527: Mughal Empire forces defeat the Rajput led by Rana Sanga of Mewar at the Battle of Khanwa
- 1529: The Austrians defeat the Ottoman Empire at the siege of Vienna.
- 1529: Treaty of Zaragoza defined the antimeridian of Tordesillas attributing the Moluccas to Portugal and Philippines to Spain.
- 1529: ImamAhmad Gragn defeats the Ethiopian Emperor Dawit II in the Battle of Shimbra Kure, the opening clash of the Ethiopian–Adal War.
c. 1536 – 1537, Henry VIII,King of England and Ireland.
Portrait of Ivan the Terrible
- 1531–32: The Church of England breaks away from the Catholic Church and recognizes King Henry VIII as the head of the Church.
- 1531: The Inca Civil War is fought between the two brothers, Atahualpa and Huáscar.
- 1532: Francisco Pizarro leads the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire.
- 1532: Foundation of São Vicente, the first permanent Portuguese settlement in the Americas.
- 1533: Anne Boleyn becomes Queen of England.
- 1533: Elizabeth Tudor is born.
- 1534: Jacques Cartier claims Canada for France.
- 1534: The Ottomans captureBaghdad from the Safavids.
- 1534: Affair of the Placards – Francis becomes more active in repression of French Protestants.
- 1535: The Münster Rebellion, an attempt of radical, millennialist, Anabaptists to establish a theocracy, ends in bloodshed.
- 1535: The Portuguese in Ternate depose Sultan Tabariji (or Tabarija) and send him to Portuguese Goa where he converts to Christianity and bequeaths his Portuguese godfather Jordao de Freitas the island of Ambon.Hairun becomes the next sultan.
- 1536: Katherine of Aragon dies in Kimbolton Castle, in England.
- 1536: In England, Anne Boleyn is beheaded for adultery and treason.
- 1536: Establishment of the Inquisition in Portugal.
- 1536: Foundation of Buenos Aires (in present-day Argentina) by Pedro de Mendoza.
- 1537: The Portuguese establish Recife in Pernambuco, north-east of Brazil.
- 1537: William Tyndale‘s partial translation of the Bible into English is published, which would eventually be incorporated into the King James Bible.
- 1538: Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada founds Bogotá.
- 1538: Spanish–Venetian fleet is defeated by the Ottoman Turks at the Battle of Preveza.
- 1539: Hernando de Soto explores inland North America.
Scenes of everyday life in Ming China, by Qiu Ying
- 1540: The Society of Jesus, or the Jesuits, is founded by Ignatius of Loyola and six companions with the approval of Pope Paul III.
- 1540: Sher Shah Suri founds the Suri dynasty in South Asia, an ethnic Pashtun (Pathan) of the house of Sur, who supplanted the Mughal dynasty as rulers of North India during the reign of the relatively ineffectual second Mughal emperor Humayun. Sher Shah Suri decisively defeats Humayun in the Battle of Bilgram (May 17, 1540).
- 1541: Pedro de Valdivia founds Santiago de Chile.
- 1541: An Algerian military campaign by Charles V of Spain (Habsburg) is unsuccessful.
- 1541: Amazon River is encountered and explored by Francisco de Orellana.
- 1541: Capture of Buda and the absorption of the major part of Hungary by the Ottoman Empire.
- 1541: Sahib I Giray of Crimea invades Russia.
- 1542: War resumes between Francis I of France and Emperor Charles V. This time Henry VIII is allied with the Emperor, while James V of Scotland and Sultan Suleiman I are allied with the French.
- 1542: Akbar The Great is born in the RajputUmarkot Fort
- 1542: Spanish explorer Ruy López de Villalobos named the island of Samar and LeyteLas Islas Filipinas honoring Philip II of Spain and became the official name of the archipelago.
- 1543: Ethiopian/Portuguese troops decisively defeat the Adal-Ottoman Muslim army led by Imam Ahmad Gragn at the Battle of Wayna Daga; Imam Ahmad Gragn is killed at this battle.
- 1543: Copernicus publishes his theory that the Earth and the other planets revolve around the Sun
- 1543: The Nanban trade period begins after Portuguese traders make contact with Japan.
- 1544: The French defeat an Imperial–Spanish army at the Battle of Ceresole.
- 1544: Battle of the Shirts in Scotland. The Frasers and Macdonalds of Clan Ranald fight over a disputed chiefship; reportedly, 5 Frasers and 8 Macdonalds survive.
- 1545: Songhai forces sack the Malian capital of Niani
- 1545: The Council of Trent meets for the first time in Trent (in northern Italy).
- 1546: Michelangelo Buonarroti is made chief architect of St. Peter’s Basilica.
- 1546: Francis Xavier works among the peoples of Ambon, Ternate and Morotai (Moro) laying the foundations for a permanent mission. (to 1547)
- 1547: Henry VIII dies in the Palace of Whitehall on 28 January at the age of 55.
- 1547: Francis I dies in the Château de Rambouillet on 31 March at the age of 52.
- 1547: Edward VI becomes King of England and Ireland on 28 January and is crowned on 20 February at the age of 9.
- 1547: Emperor Charles V decisively dismantles the Schmalkaldic League at the Battle of Mühlberg.
- 1547: Grand PrinceIvan the Terrible is crowned tsar of (All) Russia, thenceforth becoming the first Russian tsar.
- 1548: Battle of Uedahara: Firearms are used for the first time on the battlefield in Japan, and Takeda Shingen is defeated by Murakami Yoshikiyo.
- 1548: Askia Daoud, who reigned from 1548 to 1583, establishes public libraries in Timbuktu (in present-day Mali).
- 1548: The Ming Dynasty government of China issues a decree banning all foreign trade and closes down all seaports along the coast; these Hai jin laws came during the Wokou wars with Japanese pirates.
- 1549: Tomé de Sousa establishes Salvador in Bahia, north-east of Brazil.
- 1549: Arya Penangsang with the support of his teacher, Sunan Kudus, avenges the death of Raden Kikin by sending an envoy named Rangkud to kill Sunan Prawoto by Keris Kyai Satan Kober (in present-day Indonesia).
- 1550: The architect Mimar Sinan builds the Süleymaniye Mosque in Istanbul.
- 1550: Mongols led by Altan Khan invade China and besiege Beijing.
- 1550–1551: Valladolid debate concerning the human rights of the Indigenous people of the Americas.
- 1551: Fifth outbreak of sweating sickness in England. John Caius of Shrewsbury writes the first full contemporary account of the symptoms of the disease.
- 1551: North African pirates enslave the entire population of the Maltese island Gozo, between 5,000 and 6,000, sending them to Libya.
- 1552: Russia conquers the Khanate of Kazan in central Asia.
- 1552: Jesuit China Mission, Francis Xavier dies.
- 1553: Mary Tudor becomes the first queen regnant of England and restores the Church of England under Papal authority.
- 1553: The Portuguese found a settlement at Macau.
- 1554: MissionariesJosé de Anchieta and Manuel da Nóbrega establishes São Paulo, southeast Brazil.
- 1554: Princess Elizabeth is imprisoned in the Tower of London upon the orders of Mary I for suspicion of being involved in the Wyatt rebellion.
- 1555: The Muscovy Company is the first major English joint stock trading company.
- 1556: Publication in Venice of Delle Navigiationi et Viaggi (terzo volume) by Giovanni Battista Ramusio, secretary of Council of Ten, with plan La Terra de Hochelaga, an illustration of the Hochelaga.
- 1556: The Shaanxi earthquake in China is history’s deadliest known earthquake during the Ming dynasty.
- 1556: Georgius Agricola, the “Father of Mineralogy“, publishes his De re metallica.
- 1556: Akbar defeats Hemu at the Second battle of Panipat.
- 1556: Russia conquers the Astrakhan Khanate.
- 1556–1605: During his reign, Akbar expands the Mughal Empire in a series of conquests (in the Indian subcontinent).
- 1556: Mir Chakar Khan Rind captures Delhi with Humayun.
- 1556: Pomponio Algerio, radical theologian, is executed by boiling in oil as part of the Roman inquisition.
- 1557: Habsburg Spain declares bankruptcy. Philip II of Spain had to declare four state bankruptcies in 1557, 1560, 1575 and 1596.
- 1557: The Portuguese settle in Macau (on the western side of the Pearl River Delta across from present-day Hong Kong).
- 1557: The Ottomans capture Massawa, all but isolating Ethiopia from the rest of the world.
- 1558: Elizabeth Tudor becomes Queen Elizabeth I at age 25.
- 1558–1603: The Elizabethan era is considered the height of the English Renaissance.
- 1558–1583: Livonian War between Poland, Grand Principality of Lithuania, Sweden, Denmark and Russia.
- 1558: After 200 years, the Kingdom of England loses Calais to France.
- 1559: With the Peace of Cateau Cambrésis, the Italian Wars conclude.
- 1559: Sultan Hairun of Ternate (in present-day Indonesia) protests the Portuguese’s Christianisation activities in his lands. Hostilities between Ternate and the Portuguese.
The Mughal Emperor Akbar shoots the Rajput warrior Jaimal during the Siege of Chittorgarh in 1567
Siege of Valenciennes during the Dutch War of Independence in 1567
St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre of French Protestants
- 1560: Ottoman navy defeats the Spanish fleet at the Battle of Djerba.
- 1560: Elizabeth Bathory is born in Nyirbator, Hungary.
- 1560: By winning the Battle of Okehazama, Oda Nobunaga becomes one of the pre-eminent warlords of Japan.
- 1560: Jeanne d’Albret declares Calvinism the official religion of Navarre.
- 1560: Lazarus Church, Macau
- 1561: Sir Francis Bacon is born in London.
- 1561: The fourth battle of Kawanakajima between the Uesugi and Takeda at Hachimanbara takes place.
- 1561: Guido de Bres draws up the Belgic Confession of Protestant faith.
- 1562: Mughal emperor Akbar reconciles the Muslim and Hindu factions by marrying into the powerful Rajput Hindu caste.
- 1562–98: French Wars of Religion between Catholics and Huguenots.
- 1562: Massacre of Wassy and Battle of Dreux in the French Wars of Religion.
- 1562: Portuguese Dominican priests build a palm-trunk fortress which JavaneseMuslims burned down the following year. The fort was rebuilt from more durable materials and the Dominicans commenced the Christianisation of the local population.[12]
- 1563: Plague outbreak claimed 80,000 people in ElizabethanEngland. In London alone, over 20,000 people died of the disease.
- 1564: Galileo Galilei born on February 15
- 1564: William Shakespeare baptized 26 April
- 1565: Deccan sultanates defeat the Vijayanagara Empireat the Battle of Talikota.
- 1565: Mir Chakar Khan Rind dies at aged 97.
- 1565: Estácio de Sá establishes Rio de Janeiro in Brazil.
- 1565: The Hospitallers, a Crusading Order, defeat the Ottoman Empire at the siege of Malta (1565).
- 1565: Miguel López de Legazpi establishes in Cebu the first Spanish settlement in the Philippines starting a period of Spanish colonization that would last over three hundred years.
- 1565: Spanish navigator Andres de Urdaneta discovers the maritime route from Asia to the Americas across the Pacific Ocean, also known as the tornaviaje.
- 1565: Royal Exchange is founded by Thomas Gresham.
- 1566: Suleiman the Magnificent, ruler of the Ottoman Empire, dies on September 7, during the battle of Szigetvar.
- 1566–1648: Eighty Years’ War between Spain and the Netherlands.
- 1566: Da le Balle Contrade d’Oriente, composed by Cipriano de Rore.
- 1567: After 45 years’ reign, Jiajing Emperor died in the Forbidden City, Longqing Emperor ascended the throne of Ming Dynasty.
- 1567: Mary, Queen of Scots, is imprisoned by Elizabeth I.
- 1568: The TransylvanianDiet, under the patronage of the prince John Sigismund Zápolya, the former king of Hungary, inspired by the teachings of Ferenc Dávid, the founder of the Unitarian Church of Transylvania, promulgates the Edict of Torda, the first law of freedom of religion and of conscience in the World.
- 1568–1571: Morisco Revolt in Spain.
- 1568–1600: The Azuchi-Momoyama period in Japan.
- 1568: Hadiwijaya sent his adopted son and son in-law Sutawijaya, who would later become the first ruler of the Mataram dynasty of Indonesia, to kill Arya Penangsang.
- 1569: Rising of the North in England.
- 1569: Mercator 1569 world map published by Gerardus Mercator.
- 1569: The Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth is created with the Union of Lublin which lasts until 1795.
- 1569: Peace treaty signed by Sultan Hairun of Ternate and Governor Lopez De Mesquita of Portugal.
- 1570: Ivan the Terrible, tsar of Russia, orders the massacre of inhabitants of Novgorod.
- 1570: Pope Pius V issues Regnans in Excelsis, a papal bull excommunicating all who obeyed Elizabeth I and calling on all Catholics to rebel against her.
- 1570: Sultan Hairun of Ternate (in present-day Indonesia) is killed by the Portuguese.[12]Babullah becomes the next Sultan.
- 1571: Pope Pius V completes the Holy League as a united front against the Ottoman Turks.
- 1571: The Spanish-led Holy League navy destroys the Ottoman Empire navy at the Battle of Lepanto.
- 1571: Crimean Tatars attack and sack Moscow, burning everything but the Kremlin.
- 1571: American Indians kill Spanish missionaries in what would later be Jamestown, Virginia.
- 1571: Spanish conquistador Miguel López de Legazpi establishes Manila, Philippines as the capital of the Spanish East Indies.
- 1572: Brielle is taken from Habsburg Spain by Protestant Watergeuzen in the Capture of Brielle, in the Eighty Years’ War.
- 1572: Spanish conquistadores apprehend the last Inca leader Tupak Amaru at Vilcabamba, Peru, and execute him in Cuzco.
- 1572: Jeanne d’Albret dies aged 43 and is succeeded by Henry of Navarre.
- 1572: Catherine de’ Medici instigates the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre which takes the lives of Protestant leader Gaspard de Coligny and thousands of Huguenots. The violence spreads from Paris to other cities and the countryside.
- 1572: First edition of the epic The Lusiads of Luís Vaz de Camões, three years after the author returned from the East.
- 1572: The 9 years old Taizi, Zhu Yijun ascended the throne of Ming Dynasty, known as Wanli Emperor.
- 1573: After heavy losses on both sides the siege of Haarlem ends in a Spanish victory.
- 1574: in the Eighty Years’ War the capital of Zeeland, Middelburg declares for the Protestants.
- 1574: After a siege of 4 months the siege of Leiden ends in a comprehensive Dutch rebel victory.
- 1575: Oda Nobunaga finally captures Nagashima fortress.
- 1575: Following a five-year war, the Ternateans under Sultan Babullah defeated the Portuguese.
- 1576: Tahmasp I, Safavid shah, dies.
- 1576: The Battle of Haldighati is fought between the ruler of Mewar, Maharana Pratap and the Mughal Empire‘s forces under Emperor Akbar led by RajaMan Singh.
- 1576: Sack of Antwerp by badly paid Spanish soldiers.
- 1577–80: Francis Drakecircles the world.
- 1577: Ki Ageng Pemanahan built his palace in Pasargede or Kotagede.
- 1578: King Sebastian of Portugal is killed at the Battle of Alcazarquivir.
- 1578: The Portuguese establish a fort on Tidore but the main centre for Portuguese activities in Maluku becomes Ambon.[12]
- 1578: Sonam Gyatso is conferred the title of Dalai Lama by Tumed Mongol ruler, Altan Khan. Recognised as the reincarnation of two previous Lamas, Sonam Gyatso becomes the third Dalai Lama in the lineage.[15]
- 1579: The Union of Utrecht unifies the northern Netherlands, a foundation for the later Dutch Republic.
- 1579: The Union of Arras unifies the southern Netherlands, a foundation for the later states of the Spanish Netherlands, the Austrian Netherlands and Belgium.
- 1579: The British navigator Sir Francis Drake passes through Maluku and transit in Ternate on his circumnavigation of the world. The Portuguese establish a fort on Tidore but the main centre for Portuguese activities in Maluku becomes Ambon.
Portuguese fusta in India from a book by Jan Huygen van Linschoten
- 1580: Drake‘s royal reception after his attacks on Spanish possessions influences Philip II of Spain to build up the Spanish Armada. English ships in Spanish harbours are impounded.
- 1580: Spain unifies with Portugal under Philip II. The struggle for the throne of Portugal ends the Portuguese Empire. The Spanish and Portuguese crowns are united for 60 years, i.e. until 1640.
- 1580–1587: Nagasaki comes under control of the Jesuits.
- 1581: Dutch Act of Abjuration, declaring abjuring allegiance to Philip II of Spain.
- 1581: Bayinnaung dies at the age of 65.
- 1582: Oda Nobunaga commits seppuku during the Honnō-ji Incident coup by his general, Akechi Mitsuhide.
- 1582: Pope Gregory XIII issues the Gregorian calendar. The last day of the Julian calendar was Thursday, 4 October 1582 and this was followed by the first day of the Gregorian calendar, Friday, 15 October 1582
- 1582: Yermak Timofeyevich conquers the Siberia Khanate on behalf of the Stroganovs.
- 1583: Denmark builds the world’s first theme park, Bakken.
- 1583: Death of Sultan Babullah of Ternate.
- 1584–1585: After the siege of Antwerp, many of its merchants flee to Amsterdam. According to Luc-Normand Tellier, “At its peak, between 1510 and 1557, Antwerp concentrated about 40% of the world trade…It is estimated that the port of Antwerp was earning the Spanish crown seven times more revenues than the Americas.”
- 1584: Ki Ageng Pemanahan died. Sultan Pajang raised Sutawijaya, son of Ki Ageng Pemanahan as the new ruler in Mataram, titled “Loring Ngabehi Market” (because of his home in the north of the market).
- 1585: Akbar annexes Kashmir and adds it to the Kabul Subah
- 1585: Colony at Roanoke founded in North America.
- 1585–1604: The Anglo-Spanish War is fought on both sides of the Atlantic.
- 1587: Mary, Queen of Scots is executed by Elizabeth I.
- 1587: The reign of Abbas I marks the zenith of the Safavid dynasty.
- 1587: Troops that would invade Pajang Mataram Sultanate storm ravaged the eruption of Mount Merapi. Sutawijaya and his men survived.
- 1588: Mataram into the kingdom with Sutawijaya as Sultan, titled “Senapati Ingalaga Sayidin Panatagama” means the warlord and cleric Manager Religious Life.
- 1588: England repulses the Spanish Armada.
- 1589: Spain repulses the English Armada.
- 1589: Catherine de’ Medici dies at aged 69.
1590-1600
- 1590: Siege of Odawara: the Go-Hojo clan surrender to Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and Japan is unified.
- 1591: Gazi Giray leads a huge Tatar expedition against Moscow.
- 1591: In Mali, Moroccan forces of the Sultan Ahmad al-Mansur led by Judar Pasha defeat the Songhai Empire at the Battle of Tondibi.
- 1592–1593: John Stow reports 10,675 plague deaths in London, a city of approximately 200,000 people.
- 1592–1598: Korea, with the help of Ming Dynasty China, repels two Japanese invasions.
- 1593–1606: The Long War between the Habsburg monarchy and the Ottoman Turks.
- 1594: St. Paul’s College, Macau, founded by Alessandro Valignano.
- 1595: First Dutch expedition to Indonesia sets sail for the East Indies with two hundred and forty-nine men and sixty-four cannons led by Cornelis de Houtman.[18]
- 1596: Birth of René Descartes.
- 1596: June, de Houtman’s expedition reaches Banten the main pepper port of West Java where they clash with both the Portuguese and Indonesians. It then sails east along the north coast of Java losing twelve crew to a Javanese attack at Sidayu and killing a local ruler in Madura.[18]
- 1597: Romeo and Julietis published
- 1597: Cornelis de Houtman’s expedition returns to the Netherlands with enough spices to make a considerable profit.
- 1598: The Edict of Nantes ends the French Wars of Religion.
- 1598: Abbas I moves Safavids capital from Qazvin to Isfahan in 1598.
- 1598–1613: Russia descends into anarchy during the Time of Troubles.
- 1598: The Portuguese require an armada of 90 ships to put down a Solorese uprising.[12] (to 1599)
- 1598: More Dutch fleets leave for Indonesia and most are profitable.[18]
- 1598: The province of Santa Fe de Nuevo México is established in Northern New Spain. The region would later become a territory of Mexico, the New Mexico Territory in the United States, and the US State of New Mexico.
- 1598: Death of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, known as the unifier of Japan.
- 1599: The Mali Empire is defeated at the Battle of Jenné.
- 1599: The van Neck expedition returns to Europe. The expedition makes a 400 per cent profit.[18] (to 1600)
- 1599: March, Leaving Europe the previous year, a fleet of eight ships under Jacob van Neck was the first Dutch fleet to reach the ‘Spice Islands’ of Maluku.[18]
- 1600: Giordano Bruno is burned at the stake for heresy in Rome.
- 1600: Battle of Sekigahara in Japan. End of the Warring States period and beginning of the Edo period.
- 1600: The Portuguese win a major naval battle in the bay of Ambon.[19] Later in the year, the Dutch join forces with the local Hituese in an anti-Portuguese alliance, in return for which the Dutch would have the sole right to purchase spices from Hitu.
- 1600: Elizabeth I grants a charter to the British East India Company beginning the English advance in Asia.
- 1600: Michael the Brave unifies the three Romanian principalities: Wallachia, Moldavia and Translyvania after the Battle of Șelimbăr from 1599.
Inventions, discoveries, introductions
- Related article: List of 16th century inventions.
-
- The Columbian Exchange introduces many plants, animals and diseases to the Old and New Worlds.
- Introduction of the spinning wheel revolutionizes textile production in Europe.
- The letter J is introduced into the English alphabet.
- 1500: First portable watch is created by Peter Henlein of Germany.
- 1513: Juan Ponce de León sights Florida and Vasco Núñez de Balboa sights the eastern edge of the Pacific Ocean.
- 1519–22: Ferdinand Magellan and Juan Sebastián Elcano lead the first circumnavigation of the World.
- 1519–1540: In America, Hernando de Soto expeditions map the Gulf of Mexico coastline and bays.
- 1525: Modern square root symbol (√)
- 1540: Francisco Vásquez de Coronado sights the Grand Canyon.
- 1541–42: Francisco de Orellana sails the length of the Amazon River.
- 1542–43: Firearms are introduced into Japan by the Portuguese.
- 1543: Copernicus publishes his theory that the Earth and the other planets revolve around the Sun
- 1545: Theory of complex numbers is first developed by Gerolamo Cardano of Italy.
- 1558: Camera obscura is first used in Europe by Giambattista della Porta of Italy.
- 1559–1562: Spanish settlements in Alabama/Florida and Georgia confirm dangers of hurricanes and local native warring tribes.
- 1565: Spanish settlers outside New Spain (Mexico) colonize Florida‘s coastline at St. Augustine.
- 1565: Invention of the graphitepencil (in a wooden holder) by Conrad Gesner. Modernized in 1812.
- 1568: Gerardus Mercator creates the first Mercator projection map.
- 1572: Supernova SN 1572 is observed by Tycho Brahe in the Milky Way.
- 1582: Gregorian calendar is introduced in Europe by Pope Gregory XIII and adopted by Catholic countries.
- 1583: Galileo Galilei of Pisa, Italy identifies the constant swing of a pendulum, leading to development of reliable timekeepers.
- 1585: earliest known reference to the ‘sailing carriage‘ in China.
- 1589: William Lee invents the stocking frame.
- 1591: First flush toilet is introduced by Sir John Harrington of England, the design published under the title ‘The Metamorphosis of Ajax’.
- 1593: Galileo Galilei invents a thermometer.
- 1596: William Barents discovers Spitsbergen.
- 1597: Opera in Florence by Jacopo Peri.
1601–1650
- 1601: In the Battle of Kinsale, England defeats Irish and Spanish forces at the town of Kinsale, driving the Gaelic aristocracy out of Ireland and destroying the Gaelic clan system.
- 1601–1603: The Russian famine of 1601–1603 kills perhaps one-third of Russia.
- 1602: Matteo Ricci produces the Map of the Myriad Countries of the World (坤輿萬國全圖, Kūnyú Wànguó Quántú), a world map that will be used throughout East Asia for centuries.
- 1602: The Dutch East India Company (VOC) is established by merging competing Dutch trading companies.[5] Its success contributes to the Dutch Golden Age.
- 1603: Elizabeth I of England dies and is succeeded by her cousin King James VI of Scotland, uniting the crowns of Scotland and England.
- 1603: Tokugawa Ieyasu takes the title of shōgun, establishing the Tokugawa shogunate. This begins the Edo period, which will last until 1868.
- 1603: In Nagasaki, the Portuguese Jesuit missionary João Rodrigues publishes Nippo Jisho, the first dictionary of Japanese to a European language (Portuguese)
- 1605: The King of Gowa, a Makassarese kingdom in South Sulawesi, converts to Islam.
- 1605–1627: The reign of Mughal emperor Jahangir after the death of emperor Akbar.
- 1606: The Long War between the Ottoman Empire and Austria is ended with the Peace of Zsitvatorok—Austria abandons Transylvania.
- 1606: Treaty of Vienna ends anti-Habsburg uprising in Royal Hungary.
- 1607: Flight of the Earls (the fleeing of most of the native Gaelicaristocracy) occurs from County Donegal in the west of Ulster in Ireland.
- 1607: Iskandar Muda becomes the Sultan of Aceh (r. 1607–1637). He will launch a series of naval conquests that will transform Aceh into a great power in the western Malay Archipelago.
- 1610: The Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth army defeats combined Russian–Swedish forces at the Battle of Klushino and conquers Moscow.
- 1610: King Henry IV of France is assassinated by François Ravaillac.
- 1611: The Pontifical and Royal University of Santo Tomas, the oldest existing university in Asia, established by the Dominican Order in Manila
- 1611: The first publication of the King James Bible.
- 1612: Cotswold Olympic Games, Robert Dover
- 1613: The Time of Troubles in Russia ends with the establishment of the House of Romanov, which rules until 1917.
- 1613–1617: Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth is invaded by the Tatars dozens of times.[7]
- 1613: The Dutch East India Company is forced to evacuate Gresik because of the Mataram siege of neighboring Surabaya. The VOC enters into negotiations with Mataram and is allowed to set up a trading post in Jepara.
- 1614–1615: The Siege of Osaka (last major threat to Tokugawa shogunate) ends.
- 1616: The last remaining Moriscos (Moors who had nominally converted to Christianity) in Spain are expelled.
- 1616: English poet and playwright William Shakespeare dies.
- 1618: The Defenestration of Prague.
- 1618: The Bohemian Revolt precipitates the Thirty Years’ War, which devastates Europe in the years 1618–48.
- 1618: The Manchus start invading China. Their conquest eventually topples the Ming dynasty.
- 1619: Dutch East India Company, English East India Company, and Sultanate of Banten all fighting over port city of Jayakarta. VOC forces storm the city and withstand a months-long siege by the combined English, Bantenese, and Jayakartan forces. They are relieved by Jan Pieterszoon Coen and a fleet of nineteen ships out of Ambon. Coen had burned Jepara and its EIC post along the way. The VOC levels the old city of Jayakarta and builds its new headquarters, Batavia, on top of it.
Jan Pieterszoon Coen (8 January 1587 – 21 September 1629), the founder of Batavia, was an officer of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) in the early seventeenth century, holding two terms as its Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies.
- 1620–1621: Polish-Ottoman War over Moldavia.
- 1620: Bethlen Gabor allies with the Ottomans and an invasion of Moldavia takes place. The Polish suffer a disaster at Cecora on the River Prut.
- 1620: The Mayflower sets sail from Plymouth, England to what became Plymouth Colony in the New England region of North America.
- 1621: The Battle of Chocim: Poles and Cossacks under Jan Karol Chodkiewicz defeat the Ottomans.
- 1622: Jamestown massacre: Algonquian natives kill 347 English settlers outside Jamestown, Virginia (one-third of the colony’s population) and burn the Henricus settlement.
- 1624–1642: As chief minister, Cardinal Richelieu centralises power in France.
- 1626: St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican completed.
- 1627: Aurochs go extinct.
- 1628—1629: Sultan Agung of Mataram launches a failed campaign to conquer Dutch Batavia.
- 1629: Abbas I, the Safavids king, died.
- 1629: Cardinal Richelieu allies with Swedish Protestant forces in the Thirty Years’ War to counter Ferdinand II’s expansion.
- 1630 : Birth of Chatrapati Shivaji Maharaj at Shivneri fort
- 1631: Mount Vesuvius erupts.
- 1632: Battle of Lützen, death of king of SwedenGustav II Adolf.
- 1632: Taj Mahal building work started in Agra, India.
- 1633: Galileo Galilei arrives in Rome for his trial before the Inquisition.
- 1633–1639: Japan transforms into “locked country”.
- 1634: Battle of Nördlingen results in Catholic victory.
- 1636: Harvard University is founded in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
- 1637: Shimabara Rebellion of Japanese Christians, rōnin and peasants against Edo.
- 1637: The first opera house, Teatro San Cassiano, opens in Venice.
- 1637: Qing dynasty attacked Joseon dynasty.
- 1639: Naval Battle of the Downs – Republic of the United Provinces fleet decisively defeats a Spanish fleet in English waters.
- 1639: Disagreements between the Farnese and BarberiniPope Urban VIII escalate into the Wars of Castro and last until 1649.
- 1639–1651: Wars of the Three Kingdoms, civil wars throughout Scotland, Ireland, and England.
- 1640–1668: The Portuguese Restoration War led to the end of the Iberian Union.
- 1641: The Irish Rebellion.
- 1641: René Descartes publishes Meditationes de prima philosophiaMeditations on First Philosophy.
- 1642: Beginning of English Civil War, conflict will end in 1649 with the execution of King Charles I, abolishment of the monarchy and the establishment of the supremacy of Parliament over the king.
- 1643: L’incoronazione di Poppea, Monterverdi
- 1644: The Manchu conquer China ending the Ming dynasty. The subsequent Qing dynasty rules until 1912.
- 1644–1674: The Mauritanian Thirty-Year War.
- 1645–1669: Ottoman war with Venice. The Ottomans invade Crete and capture Canea.
- 1647–1652: The Great Plague of Seville.
- 1648: The Peace of Westphalia ends the Thirty Years’ War and the Eighty Years’ War and marks the ends of Spain and the Holy Roman Empire as major European powers.
- 1648–1653: Fronde civil war in France.
- 1648–1657: The Khmelnytsky Uprising – a Cossack rebellion in Ukraine which turned into a Ukrainian war of liberation from Poland.
- 1648–1667: The Deluge wars leave Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in ruins.
- 1648–1669: The Ottomans capture Crete from the Venetians after the Siege of Candia.
- 1649: King Charles I is executed for High treason, the first and only English king to be subjected to legal proceedings in a High Court of Justice and put to death.
- 1649–1653: The Cromwellian conquest of Ireland.
1651–1700
- 1651: English Civil War ends with the Parliamentarian victory at the Battle of Worcester.
- 1656–1661: Mehmed Köprülü is Grand Vizier.
- 1655–1661: The Northern Wars cement Sweden’s rise as a Great Power.
- 1658: After his father Shah Jahan completes the Taj Mahal, his son Aurangzeb deposes him as ruler of the Mughal Empire.
- 1660: The Commonwealth of England ends and the monarchy is brought back during the English Restoration.
- 1660: The Royal Society is founded
- 1661: The reign of the Kangxi Emperor of China begins.
- 1663: Ottoman war against Habsburg Hungary.
- 1664: The Battle of St. Gotthard: count Raimondo Montecuccoli defeats the Ottomans. The Peace of Vasvar – intended to keep the peace for 20 years.
- 1665: Robert Hooke discovers cells using a microscope.
- 1665: Portugal defeats the Kongo Empire at the Battle of Mbwila.
- 1665–1667: The Second Anglo-Dutch War fought between England and the United Provinces.
- 1666: The Great Fire of London.
- 1667: The Raid on the Medway during the Second Anglo-Dutch War.
- 1667–1668: The War of Devolution; France invades the Netherlands. The Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle (1668) brings this to a halt.
- 1667–1699: The Great Turkish War halts the Ottoman Empire‘s expansion into Europe.
- 1672–1673: Ottoman campaign to help the Ukrainian Cossacks. John Sobieski defeats the Ottomans at the second battle of Khotyn (1673).
- 1672–1674: The Third Anglo-Dutch War fought between England and the United Provinces
- 1672–1676: Polish–Ottoman War.
- 1672–1678: Franco-Dutch War.
- 1674: Shivaji forms the Maratha Empire, which lasts until 1818.
- 1676–1681: Russia and the Ottoman Empire commence the Russo-Turkish Wars.
- 1678: The Treaty of Nijmegen ends various interconnected wars among France, the Dutch Republic, Spain, Brandenburg, Sweden, Denmark, the Prince-Bishopric of Münster, and the Holy Roman Empire.
French invasion of the Netherlands, which Louis XIV initiated in 1672, starting the Franco-Dutch War
The Battle of Vienna marked the historic end of the expansion of the Ottoman Empire into Europe.
- 1680: The Pueblo Revolt drives the Spanish out of New Mexico until 1692.
- 1682: Chateau de Versailles, Saint-Gobain
- 1682 – In North America, the French explorer Robert La Salle claims all the land east of the Mississippi River.
- 1683: China conquers the Kingdom of Tungning and annexes Taiwan.
- 1683: The Ottoman Empire is defeated in the second Siege of Vienna.
- 1683–1699: The Great Turkish War leads to the conquest of most of Ottoman Hungary by the Habsburgs.
- 1687: Isaac Newton publishes Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica.
- 1688: The Siege of Derry.
- 1688: Siamese revolution of 1688 ousted French influence and virtually severed all ties with the West until the 19th century.
- 1688–1689: The Glorious Revolution starts with the Dutch Republic invading England, England becomes a constitutional monarchy.
- 1688–1691: The War of the Two Kings in Ireland.
- 1688–1697: The Grand Alliance sought to stop French expansion during the Nine Years’ War.
- 1689: The Battle of Killiecrankie is fought between Jacobite and Williamite forces in Highland Perthshire.
- 1689: The Karposh rebellion is crushed in present-day North Macedonia, Skopje is retaken by the Ottoman Turks. Karposh is killed, and the rebels are defeated.
- 1689: Bill of Rights
- 1690: The Battle of the Boyne in Ireland.
- 1692: Port Royal in Jamaica is struck by an earthquake and a tsunami. Approximately 2,000 people die and 2,300 are injured.
- 1692–1694: Famine in France kills two million.[8]
- 1693: The College of William and Mary is founded in Williamsburg, Virginia, by a royal charter.
- 1694: The Bank of England is established.
- 1695: The Mughal Empire nearly bans the East India Company in response to pirate Henry Every‘s capture of the Ganj-i-Sawai.
- 1696–1697: Famine in Finland wipes out almost one-third of the population.[9]
- 1697–1699: Grand Embassy of Peter the Great
- 1699: Thomas Savery demonstrates his first steam engine to the Royal Society.
Inventions, discoveries, introductions
Major changes in philosophy and science take place, often characterized as the Scientific revolution.
- Banknotes reintroduced in Europe.
- Ice cream.
- Tea and coffee become popular in Europe.
- Central Banking in France and modern Finance by Scottish economist John Law.
- Minarets, Jamé Mosque of Isfahan, Isfahan, Persia (Iran), are built.
- 1604: SupernovaSN 1604 is observed in the Milky Way.
- 1605: Johannes Kepler starts investigating elliptical orbits of planets.
- 1605: Johann Carolus of Germany publishes the ‘Relation’, the first newspaper.
- 1608: Refracting Telescopes first appear. Dutch spectacle-maker Hans Lippershey tries to obtain a patent on one, spreading word of the invention.
- 1610: The Orion Nebula is identified by Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc of France.
- 1610: Galileo Galilei and Simon Marius observe Jupiter‘s Galilean Moons.
- 1611: King James Bible or ‘Authorized Version’ first published.
- 1612: The first flintlockmusket likely created for Louis XIII of France by gunsmithMarin Bourgeois.
- 1614: John Napier introduces the logarithm to simplify calculations.
- 1616: Niccolò Zucchi describes experiments with a bronze parabolic mirror trying to make a reflecting telescope.
- 1620: Cornelis Drebbel, funded by James I of England, builds the first ‘submarine‘ made of wood and greased leather.
- 1623: The first English dictionary, ‘English Dictionarie’ is published by Henry Cockeram, listing difficult words with definitions.
- 1628: William Harvey publishes and elucidates his earlier discovery of the circulatory system.
- 1637: Dutch Bible published.
- 1637: Teatro San Cassiano, the first public opera house, opened in Venice.
- 1637: Pierre de Fermat formulates his so-called Last Theorem, unsolved until 1995.
- 1637: Although Chinese naval mines were earlier described in the 14th century Huolongjing, the Tian Gong Kai Wu book of Ming dynasty scholar Song Yingxing describes naval mines wrapped in a lacquer bag and ignited by an ambusher pulling a rip cord on the nearby shore that triggers a steel-wheel flint mechanism.
- 1642: Blaise Pascal invents the mechanical calculator called Pascal’s calculator.
- 1642: Mezzotint engraving introduces grey tones to printed images.
- 1643: Evangelista Torricelli of Italy invents the mercury barometer.
- 1645: Giacomo Torelli of Venice, Italy invents the first rotating stage.
- 1651: Giovanni Riccioli renames the lunar maria.
- 1656: Christiaan Huygens describes the true shape of the rings of Saturn.
- 1657: Christiaan Huygens develops the first functional pendulum clock based on the learnings of Galileo Galilei.
- 1659: Christiaan Huygens first to observe surface details of Mars.
- 1662: Christopher Merret presents first paper on the production of sparkling wine. (Champagne)
- 1663: James Gregory publishes designs for a reflecting telescope.
- 1669: The first known operational reflecting telescope is built by Isaac Newton.
- 1676: Antonie van Leeuwenhoek discovers Bacteria.
- 1676: First measurement of the speed of light.
- 1679: Binary system developed by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz.
- 1684: Calculus independently developed by both Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Sir Isaac Newton and used to formulate classical mechanics.
1701–1750
Europe at the beginning of the War of the Spanish Succession,
1700
The Battle of Poltava in 1709 turned the Russian Empire into a European power.
Mughal emperor Muhammad Shah with the Persian invader Nader Shah.
- 1700–1721: Great Northern War between the Russian and Swedish Empires.
- 1701: Kingdom of Prussia declared under King Frederick I.
- 1701–1714: The War of the Spanish Succession is fought, involving most of continental Europe.[10]
- 1702–1715: Camisard Rebellion in France.
- 1703: Saint Petersburg is founded by Peter the Great; it is the Russian capital until 1918.
- 1703–1711: The Rákóczi Uprising against the Habsburg Monarchy.
- 1704: End of Japan’s Genroku period.
- 1704: First Javanese War of Succession.[11]
- 1706–1713: The War of the Spanish Succession: French troops defeated at the battles of Ramillies and Turin.
- 1707: The Act of Union is passed, merging the Scottish and English Parliaments, thus establishing the Kingdom of Great Britain.
- 1708: The Company of Merchants of London Trading into the East Indies and English Company Trading to the East Indies merge to form the United Company of Merchants of England Trading to the East Indies.
- 1708–1709: Famine kills one-third of East Prussia‘s population.
- 1709: The Great Frost of 1709 marks the coldest winter in 500 years.
- 1710: The world’s first copyright legislation, Britain‘s Statute of Anne, takes effect.
- 1710–1711: Ottoman Empire fights Russia in the Russo-Turkish War.
- 1711–1715: Tuscarora War between British, Dutch, and German settlers and the Tuscarora people of North Carolina.
- 1714: In Amsterdam, Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit invents the mercury-in-glass thermometer, which remains the most reliable and accurate thermometer until the electronic era.
- 1715: The first Jacobite rising breaks out; the British halt the Jacobite advance at the Battle of Sheriffmuir; Battle of Preston.
- 1716: Establishment of the Sikh Confederacy along the present-day India-Pakistan border.
- 1718: The city of New Orleans is founded by the French in North America.
- 1718–1730: Tulip period of the Ottoman Empire.
- 1719: Second Javanese War of Succession.
- 1720: The South Sea Bubble.
- 1720–1721: The Great Plague of Marseille.
- 1721: The Treaty of Nystad is signed, ending the Great Northern War.
- 1721: Sack of Shamakhi, massacre of its Shia population by SunniLezgins.
- 1722–1723: Russo-Persian War.
- 1722–1725: Controversy over William Wood‘s halfpence leads to the Drapier’s Letters and begins the Irish economic independence from England movement.
- 1723: Slavery is abolished in Russia; Peter the Great converts household slaves into house serfs.
- 1723–1730: The “Great Disaster”, an invasion of Kazakh territories by the Dzungars.
- 1724: Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit proposes the Fahrenheit temperature scale.
- 1727–1729: Anglo-Spanish War.
- 1730: Mahmud I takes over Ottoman Empire after the Patrona Halil revolt, ending the Tulip period.
- 1730–1760: The First Great Awakening takes place in Great Britain and North America.
- 1732–1734: Crimean Tatar raids into Russia.[15]
- 1733–1738: War of the Polish Succession.
- 1735–1739: Russo-Turkish War.
- 1735–1799: The Qianlong Emperor of China oversees a huge expansion in territory.
- 1738–1756: Famine across the Sahel; half the population of Timbuktu dies.
- 1739: Great Britain and Spain fight the War of Jenkins’ Ear in the Caribbean.
The extinction of the Scottish clan system came with the defeat of the clansmen at the Battle of Culloden in 1746.
- 1740: Great Awakening, George Whitefield
- 1740–1741: Famine in Ireland kills 20 percent of the population.
- 1740–1748: War of the Austrian Succession.
- 1742:
- Marvel’s Mill, the first water-powered cotton mill, begins operation in England.
- Anders Celsius proposes an inverted form of the Centigrade temperature, which is later renamed Celsius in his honor.
- 1742: Premiere of Handel‘s Messiah
- 1744: The First Saudi State is founded by Mohammed Ibn Saud.[19]
- 1744–1748: The First Carnatic War is fought between the British, the French, the Marathas, and Mysore in India.
- 1745: Second Jacobite rising is begun by Charles Edward Stuart in Scotland.
- 1748: The Treaty of Aix-La-Chapelle ends the War of the Austrian Succession and First Carnatic War.
- 1748–1754: The Second Carnatic War is fought between the British, the French, the Marathas, and Mysore in India.
- 1750: Peak of the Little Ice Age.
1751–1800
- 1754: The Treaty of Pondicherry ends the Second Carnatic War and recognizes Muhammed Ali Khan Wallajah as Nawab of the Carnatic.
- 1754: King’s College is founded by a royal charter of George II of Great Britain.
- 1754–1763: The French and Indian War, the North American chapter of the Seven Years’ War, is fought in colonial North America, mostly by the French and their allies against the English and their allies.
- 1755: The great Lisbon earthquake destroys most of Portugal‘s capital and kills up to 100,000.
- 1755–1763: The Great Upheaval forces transfer of the French Acadian population from Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.
- 1756–1763: The Seven Years’ War is fought among European powers in various theaters around the world.
- 1756–1763: The Third Carnatic War is fought between the British, the French, the Marathas, and Mysore in India Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia.
- 1760: George III becomes King of Britain.
- 1761: Maratha Empire defeated at Battle of Panipat.
- 1762–1796: Reign of Catherine the Great of Russia.
- 1763: The Treaty of Paris ends the Seven Years’ War and Third Carnatic War.
- 1765: The Stamp Act is introduced into the American colonies by the British Parliament.
- 1766: Christian VII becomes king of Denmark. He was king of Denmark to 1808.
- 1766–1799: Anglo-Mysore Wars.
- 1768–1772: War of the Bar Confederation.
- 1768–1774: Russo-Turkish War.
- 1769: Spanish missionaries establish the first of 21 missions in California.
- 1769–1770: James Cook explores and maps New Zealand and Australia.
- 1769–1773: The Bengal famine of 1770 kills one-third of the Bengal population.
- 1769: French expeditions capture clove plants in Ambon, Indonesia ending the VOC monopoly of the plant.(to 1772)
- 1770–1771: Famine in Czech lands kills hundreds of thousands.
- 1771: The Plague Riot in Moscow.
- 1772: Gustav III of Sweden stages a coup d’état, becoming almost an absolute monarch.
- 1772–1779: Maratha Empire fights Britain and Raghunathrao‘s forces during the First Anglo-Maratha War.
- 1772–1795: The Partitions of Poland end the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and erase Poland from the map for 123 years.
- 1773–1775: Pugachev’s Rebellion, the largest peasant revolt in Russian history.
- 1773: East India Company starts operations in Bengal to smuggle opium into China.(China White)
- 1775–1782: First Anglo-Maratha War.
- 1775–1783: American Revolutionary War.
- 1776: Illuminati founded by Adam Weishaupt.
- 1776: The United States Declaration of Independence is adopted by the Continental Congress in Philadelphia.
- 1776: Adam Smith publishes The Wealth of Nations.
- 1778: James Cook becomes the first European to land on the Hawaiian Islands.
- 1779–1879: Xhosa Wars between British and Boer settlers and the Xhosas in the South African Republic.
- 1780: Outbreak of the indigenous rebellion against Spanish colonization led by Túpac Amaru II in Peru.
- 1781: The city of Los Angeles is founded by Spanish settlers.
- 1781–1785: Serfdom is abolished in the Austrian monarchy (first step; second step in 1848).
- 1783: The Treaty of Paris formally ends the American Revolutionary War.
- 1785–1791: Imam Sheikh Mansur, a Chechen warrior and Muslim mystic, leads a coalition of Muslim Caucasian tribes from throughout the Caucasus in a holy war against Russian settlers and military bases in the Caucasus, as well as against local traditionalists, who followed the traditional customs and common law (Adat) rather than the theocratic Sharia.
- 1785–1795: The Northwest Indian War is fought between the United States and Native Americans.
- 1786–1787: Mozart premieres The Marriage of Figaro and Don Giovanni
- 1787–1792: Russo-Turkish War.
- 1788: First Fleet arrives in Australia
- 1788–1790: Russo-Swedish War (1788–1790).
- 1789: George Washington is elected the first President of the United States; he serves until 1797.
- 1789–1799: French Revolution.
Napoleon at the Bridge of the Arcole
- 1789: The Liège Revolution.
- 1789: The Brabant Revolution.
- 1789: The Inconfidência Mineira, an unsuccessful separatist movement in central Brazil led by Tiradentes
- 1791: Suppression of the Liège Revolution by Austrian forces and re-establishment of the Prince-Bishopric of Liège.
- 1791–1795: George Vancouver explores the world during the Vancouver Expedition.
- 1791–1804: The Haitian Revolution.
- 1791Mozart premieres The Magic Flute
- 1792–1802: The French Revolutionary Wars lead into the Napoleonic Wars, which last from 1803–1815.
- 1792: The New York Stock & Exchange Board is founded.
- 1792: Polish–Russian War of 1792.
- 1793: Upper Canadabans slavery.
- 1793: The largest yellow fever epidemic in American history kills as many as 5,000 people in Philadelphia, roughly 10% of the population.
- 1793–1796: Revolt in the Vendée against the French Republic at the time of the Revolution.
- 1794–1816: The Hawkesbury and Nepean Wars, which were a series of incidents between settlers and New South Wales Corps and the Aboriginal Australian clans of the Hawkesbury river in Sydney, Australia.
- 1795: The Marseillaise is officially adopted as the French national anthem.
- 1795: The Battle of Nuʻuanu in the final days of King Kamehameha I’s wars to unify the Hawaiian Islands.
- 1796: Edward Jenner administers the first smallpox vaccination; smallpox killed an estimated 400,000 Europeans each year during the 18th century, including five reigning monarchs.
- 1796: War of the First Coalition: The Battle of Montenotte marks Napoleon Bonaparte‘s first victory as an army commander.
- 1796: The British eject the Dutch from Ceylon.
- 1796–1804: The White Lotus Rebellion against the Manchu dynasty in China.
- 1798: The Irish Rebellion fails to overthrow British rule in Ireland.
- 1798–1800: The Quasi-War is fought between the United States and France.
- 1799: Dutch East India Company is dissolved.
- 1799: Coup of 18 Brumaire – Napoleon’scoup d’etat brings the end of the French Revolution
- 1800: 1 January, The bankrupt Dutch East India Company (VOC) is formally dissolved and the nationalised Dutch East Indies are established.
Inventions, discoveries, introductions
The Spinning Jenny
The Chinese Putuo Zongcheng Temple of Chengde, completed in 1771, during the reign of the Qianlong Emperor.
- 1709: The first piano was built by Bartolomeo Cristofori
- 1711: Tuning fork was invented by John Shore
- 1712: Steam engine invented by Thomas Newcomen
- 1714: Mercury thermometer by Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit
- 1717: Diving bell was successfully tested by Edmond Halley, sustainable to a depth of 55 ft
- c. 1730: Octant navigational tool was developed by John Hadley in England, and Thomas Godfrey in America
- 1733: Flying shuttle invented by John Kay
- 1736: Europeans encountered rubber – the discovery was made by Charles Marie de La Condamine while on expedition in South America. It was named in 1770 by Joseph Priestley
- c. 1740: Modern steel was developed by Benjamin Huntsman
- 1741: Vitus Bering discovers Alaska
- 1745: Leyden jar invented by Ewald Georg von Kleist was the first electrical capacitor
- 1752: Lightning rod invented by Benjamin Franklin
- 1753: The first Clock to be built in the New World (North America) was invented by Benjamin Banneker.
- 1755: The tallest woodenBodhisattva statue in the world is erected at Puning Temple, Chengde, China.
- 1764: Spinning jenny created by James Hargreaves brought on the Industrial Revolution
- 1765: James Watt enhances Newcomen’s steam engine, allowing new steel technologies
- 1761: The problem of longitude was finally resolved by the fourth chronometer of John Harrison
- 1763: Thomas Bayes publishes first version of Bayes’ theorem, paving the way for Bayesian probability
- 1768–1779: James Cook mapped the boundaries of the Pacific Ocean and discovered many Pacific Islands
- 1774: Joseph Priestley discovers “dephlogisticated air”, oxygen
- 1775: Joseph Priestley first synthesis of “phlogisticated nitrous air”, nitrous oxide, “laughing gas”
- 1776: First improved steam engines installed by James Watt
- 1776: Steamboat invented by Claude de Jouffroy
- 1777: Circular saw invented by Samuel Miller
- 1779: Photosynthesis was first discovered by Jan Ingenhousz
- 1781: William Herschel announces discovery of Uranus
- 1784: Bifocals invented by Benjamin Franklin
- 1784: Argand lamp invented by Aimé Argand
- 1785: Power loominvented by Edmund Cartwright
- 1785: Automatic flour mill invented by Oliver Evans
- 1786: Threshing machine invented by Andrew Meikle
- 1787: Jacques Charles discovers Charles’s law
- 1789: Antoine Lavoisier discovers the law of conservation of mass, the basis for chemistry, and begins modern chemistry
- 1798: Edward Jenner publishes a treatise about smallpoxvaccination
- 1798: The Lithographic printing process invented by Alois Senefelder
- 1799: Rosetta Stone discovered by Napoleon‘s troops
Literary and philosophical achievements
- 1703: The Love Suicides at Sonezaki by Chikamatsu first performed
- 1704–1717: One Thousand and One Nights translated into French by Antoine Galland. The work becomes immensely popular throughout Europe.
- 1704: A Tale of a Tub by Jonathan Swift first published
- 1712: The Rape of the Lock by Alexander Pope (publication of first version)
- 1719: Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
- 1725: The New Science by Giambattista Vico
- 1726: Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
- 1728: The Dunciad by Alexander Pope (publication of first version)
- 1744: A Little Pretty Pocket-Book becomes one of the first books marketed for children
- 1748: Chushingura (The Treasury of Loyal Retainers), popular Japanese puppet play, composed
- 1748: Clarissa by Samuel Richardson
- 1749: The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling by Henry Fielding
- 1751: Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard by Thomas Gray published
- 1751–1785: The French Encyclopédie
- 1755: A Dictionary of the English Language by Samuel Johnson
- 1759: Candide by Voltaire
- 1759: The Theory of Moral Sentiments by Adam Smith
- 1759–1767: Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne
- 1762: Emile: or, On Education by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- 1762: The Social Contract, Or Principles of Political Right by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- 1774: The Sorrows of Young Werther by Goethe first published
- 1776: Ugetsu Monogatari (Tales of Moonlight and Rain) by Ueda Akinari
- 1776: The Wealth of Nations, foundation of the modern theory of economy, was published by Adam Smith
- 1776–1789: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire was published by Edward Gibbon
- 1779: Amazing Grace published by John Newton
- 1779–1782: Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets by Samuel Johnson
- 1781: Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant (publication of first edition)
- 1781: The Robbers by Friedrich Schiller first published
- 1782: Les Liaisons dangereuses by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
- 1786: Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect by Robert Burns
- 1787–1788: The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay
- 1788: Critique of Practical Reason by Immanuel Kant
- 1789: Songs of Innocence by William Blake
- 1789: The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano by Olaudah Equiano
- 1790: Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow by Alexander Radishchev
- 1790: Reflections on the Revolution in France by Edmund Burke
- 1791: Rights of Man by Thomas Paine
- 1792: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft
- 1794: Songs of Experience by William Blake
- 1798: Lyrical Ballads by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge
- 1798: An Essay on the Principle of Population published by Thomas Malthus
- (mid-18th century): The Dream of the Red Chamber (authorship attributed to Cao Xueqin), one of the most famous Chinese novels
Musical works
- 1711: Rinaldo, Handel‘s first opera for the London stage, premiered
- 1721: Brandenburg Concertos by J.S. Bach
- 1723: The Four Seasons, violin concertos by Antonio Vivaldi, composed
- 1724: St John Passion by J.S. Bach
- 1727: St Matthew Passion composed by J.S. Bach
- 1733: Hippolyte et Aricie, first opera by Jean-Philippe Rameau
- 1741: Goldberg Variations for harpsichord published by Bach
- 1742: Messiah, oratorio by Handel premiered in Dublin
- 1749: Mass in B minor by J.S. Bach assembled in current form
- 1751: The Art of Fugue by J.S. Bach
- 1762: Orfeo ed Euridice, first “reform opera” by Gluck, performed in Vienna
- 1786: The Marriage of Figaro, opera by Mozart
- 1787: Don Giovanni, opera by Mozart
- 1788: Jupiter Symphony (Symphony No.41) composed by Mozart
- 1791: The Magic Flute, opera by Mozart
- 1791–1795: London symphonies by Haydn
- 1798: The Pathétique, piano sonata by Beethoven
- 1798: The Creation, oratorio by Haydn first performed
- 1801: Giuseppe Piazzi discovers the dwarf planetCeres. – Italy
- 1801: Thomas Jefferson elected President of the United States by the House of Representatives, following a tie in the Electoral College. – United States
- 1801: The Kingdom of Great Britain and the Kingdom of Ireland merge to form the United Kingdom.
- 1801: Ranjit Singh crowned as King of Punjab.
- 1801: Napoleon signs the Concordat of 1801 with the Pope.
- 1801: Cairo falls to the British.
- 1801: Assassination of Tsar Paul I of Russia.
- 1801: British defeat French at the Second Battle of Abukir.
- 1801:1815: the First Barbary War and the Second Barbary War between the United States and the Barbary States of North Africa.
- 1802: Treaty of Amiens between France and the United Kingdom ends the War of the Second Coalition.
- 1802: Ludwig van Beethoven performs his Moonlight Sonata for the first time.
- 1803: William Symington demonstrates his Charlotte Dundas, the “first practical steamboat”.
- 1803: The United States more than doubles in size when it buys out France’s territorial claims in North America via the Louisiana Purchase. This begins the U.S.’s westward expansion to the Pacific referred to as its Manifest Destiny which involves annexing and conquering land from Mexico, Britain, and Native Americans.
- 1803: The Wahhabis of the First Saudi State capture Mecca and Medina.
- 1803: War breaks out between Britain and France; this is considered by some to be the beginning of the Napoleonic Wars.
- 1803: First phase of Padri War. (to 1825)
- 1804: Haiti gains independence from France and becomes the first black republic.
- 1804–1813: Russo-Persian War.
- 1804: Austrian Empire founded by Francis I.
- 1804: Napoleon crowns himself Emperor of the French.
- 1804: World population reaches 1 billion.
- 1804: First steam locomotive begins operation.
- 1804: Morphine first isolated.
- 1804:1810: Fulani Jihad in Nigeria.
- 1804:1815: Serbian revolution erupts against the Ottoman rule. Suzerainty of Serbia recognized in 1817.
- 1805: The Battle of Trafalgar eliminates the French and Spanish naval fleets and allows for British dominance of the seas, a major factor for the success of the British Empire later in the century.
- 1805: Napoleon decisively defeats an Austrian-Russian army at the Battle of Austerlitz.
- 1805:1848: Muhammad Ali modernizes Egypt.
- 1806: Holy Roman Empire dissolved as a consequence of the Treaty of Pressburg.
- 1806: Cape Colony becomes part of the British Empire.
- 1806:1812: Russo-Turkish War, Treaty of Bucharest.
- 1807: Britain declares the Slave Trade illegal. U.S. Congress and President Jefferson declare the Slave Trade illegal, taking effect as per the Constitution (Article 1, Section 9, Clause 1) on 1 Jan 1808.
- 1807: Potassium and Sodium are individually isolated by Humphry Davy. salt?
- 1808: Beethoven performs his Fifth Symphony.
- 1808:1809: Russia conquers Finland from Sweden in the Finnish War.
- 1808:1814: Spanishguerrillas fight in the Peninsular War.
- 1808: Herman Willem Daendels the Governor-general of the Dutch East Indies (1808–1811) begin the construction of Java Great Post Road.
- 1809: Napoleon strips the Teutonic Knights of their last holdings in Bad Mergentheim.
The discoveries of Michael Faraday formed the foundation of electric motor technology.
1819: 29 January, Stamford Raffles arrives in Singapore with William Farquhar to establish a trading post for the British East India Company. 8 February, The treaty is signed between Sultan Hussein of Johor, Temenggong Abdul Rahman and Stamford Raffles. Farquhar is installed as the first Resident of the settlement.
- 1810: The University of Berlin was founded. Among its students and faculty are Hegel, Marx, and Bismarck. The German university reform proves to be so successful that its model is copied around the world (see History of European research universities).
- 1810: The Grito de Dolores begins the Mexican War of Independence.
- 1810: The trumpet gets valves.
- 1810s:1820s: Most of the Latin American colonies free themselves from the Spanish and Portuguese Empires after the Latin American wars of independence.
- 1810s:1820s: Punjab War between the Sikh Empire and British Empire.
- 1812: The French invasion of Russia is a turning point in the Napoleonic Wars.
- 1812: British Prime Minister Spencer Perceval is assassinated.
- 1812:1815: War of 1812 between the United States and Britain; ends in a draw, except that Native Americans lose power.
- 1813: Jane Austen publishes Pride and Prejudice.
- 1813:1837: Afghan-Sikh Wars.
- 1814: Napoleon abdicates and is exiled to Elba.
- 1814: Elisha Collier invents the FlintlockRevolver.
- 1814:16: Anglo-Nepalese War between Nepal (Gurkha Empire) and British Empire.
- 1815: The Congress of Vienna redraws the European map. Reaction and conservatism dominate all of Europe. The Concert of Europe attempts to preserve this settlement, but the forces of liberalism and nationalism make for dramatic changes. It marks the beginning of a Pax Britannica which lasts until 1914.
- 1815: Napoleon escapes exile and begins the Hundred Days before finally being defeated at the Battle of Waterloo and exiled to St Helena. His defeat brings a conclusion to the Napoleonic Wars.
- 1815: April, Mount Tambora in Sumbawa island erupts, becoming the largest volcanic eruption in recorded history, destroying Tambora culture, and killing at least 71,000 people, including its aftermath. The eruption created global climate anomalies known as “volcanic winter.“
- 1815: Jane Austen publishes Emma in December.
- 1816: Year Without a Summer: Unusually cold conditions wreak havoc throughout the Northern Hemisphere, likely influenced by the 1815 explosion of Mount Tambora.
- 1816: Independence of Argentina.
- 1816: Dandy horse/velocipede bicycle invented.
- 1816:1828: Shaka‘s Zulu Kingdom becomes the largest in Southern Africa.
- 1817: Principality of Serbia becomes suzerain from the Ottoman Empire. Officially independent in 1867.
- 1817: First Seminole War begins in Florida.
- 1817: Russia commences its conquest of the Caucasus.
- 1817: Princess Charlotte of Wales dies following childbirth.
- 1818: Mary Shelley publishes Frankenstein.
- 1818: Independence of Chile.
- 1819: John Keats writes his odes of 1819.
- 1819: Peterloo massacre in England.
- 1819: The modern city of Singapore is established by the British East India Company.
- 1819: Théodore Géricault paints his masterpiece The Raft of the Medusa, and exhibits it in the French Salon of 1819 at the Louvre.
1816: Shaka rises to power over the Zulu Kingdom. Zulu expansion was a major factor of the Mfecane (“Crushing”) that depopulated large areas of southern Africa.
- 1820: Missouri Compromise.
- 1820: Regency period ends in the United Kingdom.
- 1820: Revolutions of 1820 in Southern Europe.
- 1820: Discovery of Antarctica.
- 1820: Liberia founded by the American Colonization Society for freed American slaves.
- 1820: Dissolution of the Maratha Empire.
- 1820–1835: At least 5000 Mexicans die in Apache raids, and 100 settlements are destroyed.[4]
- 1821: Napoleon Bonaparte dies in exile on the island of Saint Helena.
- 1821: Mexico gains independence from Spain with the Treaty of Córdoba.
- 1821: Peru declares its independence from Spain.
- 1821: Navarino Massacre.
- 1821–1830: Greecebecomes the first country to break away from the Ottoman Empire after the Greek War of Independence.
- 1822–1823: First Mexican Empire, as Mexico’s first post-independent government, ruled by Emperor Agustín I of Mexico.
- 1822: Prince Pedro of Brazil proclaimed the Brazilian independence on 7 September. On 1 December, he was crowned as Emperor DomPedro I of Brazil.
- 1823–1887: The British Empire annexed Burma (now also called Myanmar) after three Anglo-Burmese Wars.
- 1823: Monroe Doctrine declared by US President James Monroe.
- 1824: Premiere of Beethoven‘s Ninth Symphony.
- 1824: Cadbury is established in Birmingham.
- 1825: Erie Canal opened connecting the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean.
- 1825: First isolation of aluminum.
- 1825: Independence of Bolivia.
- 1825: The Stockton and Darlington Railway, the first public railway in the world, is opened.
- 1825: The Decembrist revolt.
Decembrists at the Senate Square.
- 1825–1828: The Cisplatine War results in the independence of Uruguay.
- 1825: Java War. (to 1830)
- 1826: Samuel Morey patents the internal combustion engine.
- 1826–1828: After the final Russo-Persian War, the Persian Empire took back territory lost to Russia from the previous war.
- 1826: Auspicious Incident; the end of Janissaries in the Ottoman Empire.
- 1827: Death of William Blake, Ludwig van Beethoven.
- 1828–1832: Black War in Tasmania leads to the near extinction of the Tasmanian aborigines.
- 1829: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe‘s Faust premieres.
- 1829: First electric motor built.
- 1829: Robert Peel founds the Metropolitan Police Service, the first modern police force.
- 1829: Treaty of Edirne (1829) following the Russo-Turkish War of 1828-1829.
- 1830: Opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway.
- 1830: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is established on 6 April 1830.
- 1830: Anglo-Russian rivalry over Afghanistan, the Great Game, commences and concludes in 1895.
- 1830: July Revolution in France.
- 1830: The Belgian Revolution in the United Kingdom of the Netherlands led to the creation of Belgium.
- 1830: Greater Colombia dissolved and the nations of Colombia (including modern-day Panama), Ecuador, and Venezuela took its place.
- 1830: November Uprising in Poland against Russia.
- 1830: End of the Diponegoro war. The whole area of Yogyakarta and Surakarta Manca nagara Dutch seized. 27 September, Klaten Agreement determines a fixed boundary between Surakarta and Yogyakarta and permanently divide the kingdom of Mataram was signed by Sasradiningrat, Pepatih Dalem Surakarta, and Danurejo, Pepatih Dalem Yogyakarta. Mataram is de facto and de jure controlled by the Dutch East Indies.
- 1831: Franceinvades and occupies Algeria.
- 1831: Ioannis Kapodistrias, the First Governor of Greece is murdered at Nauplion.
- 1831: The Belgian constitution is ratified and Leopold I is crowned as first “King of the Belgians”.
- 1831: Great Bosnian uprising against Ottoman rule occurs.
- 1831–1836: Charles Darwin‘s journey aboard HMS Beagle.
Emigrants leaving Ireland. From 1830 to 1914, almost 5 million Irish people went to the United States alone.
- 1831: November Uprising ends with crushing defeat for Poland in the Battle of Warsaw.
- 1831–1833: Egyptian–Ottoman War.
- 1831: Second phase of Padri War. (to 1838)
- 1832: The British Parliament passes the Great Reform Act.
- 1833: Slavery Abolition Act bans slavery throughout the British Empire.
- 1833–1876: Carlist Wars in Spain.
- 1834: The German Customs Union is formed.
- 1834: Spanish Inquisition officially ends.
- 1834: Britain amends the Poor Law demanding that any paupers requesting assistance must go to a workhouse.
- 1834–1859: Imam Shamil‘s rebellion in Russian-occupied Caucasus.
- 1835–1836: The Texas Revolution in Mexico resulted in the short-lived Republic of Texas.
- 1836: Battle of the Alamo ends with defeat for Texan separatists.
- 1836: Battle of San Jacinto leads to the capture of General Santa Anna.
- 1836: Samuel Colt popularizes the revolver and sets up a firearms company to manufacture his invention of the Colt Paterson revolver a six bullets firearm shot one by one without reloading manually.
- 1836–1839: War of the Confederation begins between Chile and the Peru-Bolivian Confederation, ending with Chilean victory.
- 1837: Telegraphy patented.
- 1837: Charles Dickens publishes Oliver Twist.
- 1837: Death of Alexander Pushkin.
- 1837–1838: Rebellions of 1837 in Canada.
- 1837–1901: Queen Victoria‘s reign is considered the apex of the British Empire and is referred to as the Victorian era.
- 1838: By this time, 46,000 Native Americans have been forcibly relocated in the Trail of Tears.
- 1838–1840: Civil war in the Federal Republic of Central America led to the foundings of Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica.
- 1839: Kingdom of Belgium declared.
- 1839–1851: Uruguayan Civil War.
- 1839–1860: After the First and Second Opium Wars, France, the United Kingdom, the United States and Russia gain many trade and associated concessions from China resulting in the start of the decline of the Qing dynasty.
- 1839–1919: Anglo-Afghan Wars lead to stalemate and the establishment of the Durand line.
The Great Exhibition in London. Starting during the 18th century, the United Kingdom was the first country in the world to industrialise.
The Charge of the Light Brigade during the Crimean War.
- 1840s: Railway Mania sweeps UK and Ireland.
- 1840: New Zealand is founded, as the Treaty of Waitangi is signed by the Māori and British.
- 1840: Upper and Lower Canada are merged into the Province of Canada.
- 1841: The word “dinosaur” is coined by Richard Owen.
- 1841: William Henry Harrison is the first US president to die in office
- 1842: Treaty of Nanking cedes Hong Kong to the British.
- 1842: Anaesthesia used for the first time.
- 1843: The first wagon train sets out from Missouri.
- 1843: Short stories A Christmas Carol and The Tell-Tale Heart published.
- 1844: Persian Prophet the Báb announces his revelation on 23 May, founding Bábísm. He announced to the world of the coming of “He whom God shall make manifest“. He is considered the forerunner of Bahá’u’lláh, the founder of the Baháʼí Faith.
- 1844: First publicly funded telegraph line in the world—between Baltimore and Washington—sends demonstration message on 24 May, ushering in the age of the telegraph. This message read “What hath God wrought?” (Bible, Numbers 23:23)
- 1844: Millerite movement awaits the Second Advent of Jesus Christ on 22 October. Christ’s non-appearance becomes known as the Great Disappointment.
- 1844: The great auk is rendered extinct.
- 1844: Dominican War of Independence from Haiti.
- 1844: Heinrich Heine coins the term “Lisztomania” in regards to the public’s frenzied reaction to the pianist Franz Liszt.
- 1845: Unification of the Kingdom of Tonga under Tāufaʻāhau (King George Tupou I).
- 1845: Lunacy Act 1845 passes through Parliament.
- 1845–1846: First Anglo-Sikh War.
- 1845–1872: The New Zealand Wars.
- 1845–1849: The Great Famine of Ireland leads to the Irish diaspora.
- 1846–1848: The Mexican–American War leads to Mexico’s cession of much of the modern-day Southwestern United States.
- 1846–1847: Mormon migration to Utah.
Liberal and nationalist pressure led to the European revolutions of 1848.
- 1847: The Brontë sisters publish Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey.
- 1847: Ignaz Semmelweis proposes hand washing as a way to stop the spread of diseases.
- 1847–1901: The Caste War of Yucatán.
- 1848–1849: Second Anglo-Sikh War.
- 1848: The Communist Manifesto published.
- 1848: Revolutions of 1848 in Europe.
- 1848: Seneca Falls Convention is the first women’s rights convention in the United States and leads to the battle for women’s suffrage.
- 1848–1858: California Gold Rush.
- 1848: William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais and Dante Gabriel Rossetti found the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.
- 1849: The first boatloads of gold prospectors arrive in California, giving them the nickname 49ers.
- 1849: Roman Republic‘s constitutional law becomes the first to abolish capital punishment.
- 1849: The safety pin and the gas mask are invented.
- 1849: Earliest recorded air raid, as Austria launches from land and from the ship SMS Vulcano’ some 200 incendiary balloons against Venice.
- 1850: The Little Ice Age ends around this time.
- 1850: Alfred Tennyson is appointed Poet Laureate after the death of William Wordsworth.
- 1850–1864: Taiping Rebellion is the bloodiest conflict of the century, leading to the deaths of 20 million people.
- 1851: The Great Exhibition in London was the world’s first international Expo or World Fair.
- 1851: Louis Napoleon assumes power in France in a coup.
Dead Confederate soldiers. 30% of all Southern white males 18–40 years of age died in the American Civil War.
- 1851–1852: The Platine War ends and the Empire of Brazil has the hegemony over South America.
- 1851–1860s: Victorian gold rush in Australia.
- 1851: Herman Melville publishes Moby-Dick.
- 1852: Frederick Douglass delivers his speech “The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro” in Rochester, New York.
- 1853: William Wells Brown (1814–1884) wrote first novel published by an African American, Clotel.
- 1853: Twelve Years a Slave is a memoir and slave narrative by American Solomon Northup as told to and edited by David Wilson.
- 1853: United StatesCommodoreMatthew C. Perry threatens the Japanese capital Edo with gunships, demanding that they agree to open trade.
- 1853–1856: Crimean War between France, the United Kingdom, the Ottoman Empire and Russia.
- 1854: Battle of Balaclava and the Charge of the Light Brigade.
- 1854: The Convention of Kanagawa formally ends Japan’s policy of isolation.
- 1854: SS Arctic disaster: The steamship SS Arctic collides with the SS Vesta and sinks off the coast of Newfoundland.
- 1854–1855: Siege of Sevastapol; city falls to French and British forces.
- 1855: Bessemer process enables steel to be mass-produced.
- 1855: Walt Whitman publishes the first edition of Leaves of Grass.
- 1855: Cocaine is isolated by Friedrich Gaedcke.
- 1856: Rana dynasty of Nepal established by Jung Bahadur Rana.
- 1856: World’s first oil refinery in Romania.
- 1856: Neanderthal man first identified. Age still unknown.
- 1857: Joseph Whitworth designs the first long-range sniper rifle.
- 1857–1858: Indian Rebellion of 1857. The British Empire assumes control of India from the East India Company.
- 1858–1947: British Empire in India lasts for 90 years.
- 1858: Invention of the phonautograph, the first true device for recording sound.
- 1859: Construction of Big Ben is completed.
- 1859: Charles Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species.
- 1859–1869: Suez Canal is constructed.
The first vessels sail through the Suez Canal.
Robert Koch discovered the tuberculosis bacilli. The disease killed an estimated 25 percent of the adult population of Europe during the 19th century.[6]
David Livingstone, Scottish explorer and missionary in Africa.
- 1860: Giuseppe Garibaldi launches the Expedition of the Thousand.
- 1860: The Pony Express started.
- 1861–1865: American Civil War between the Union and seceding Confederacy.
- 1861: Russia abolishes serfdom.
- 1861–1867: French intervention in Mexico and the creation of the Second Mexican Empire, ruled by Maximilian I of Mexico and his consort Carlota of Mexico.
- 1861: Death of Prince Albert.
- 1861: James Clerk Maxwell publishes On Physical Lines of Force, formulating the four Maxwell’s Equations.
- 1862: The Pony Express ended.
- 1862: Victor Hugo publishes Les Misérables.
- 1862: French gain first foothold in Southeast Asia.
- 1862–1877: Muslim Rebellion in north-west China.
- 1863: United States President Abraham Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln issued a preliminary [7] on September 22, 1862, warning that in all states still in rebellion (Confederacy) on January 1, 1863, he would declare their slaves “then, thenceforward, and forever free.”[8] The Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution,[9] ratified in 1865, officially abolished slavery in the entire country.
- 1863: Bahá’u’lláh declares his station as “He whom God shall make manifest“. This date is celebrated in the Baháʼí Faith as The Festival of Ridván.
- 1863: Formation of the International Red Cross is followed by the adoption of the First Geneva Convention in 1864.
- 1863: First section of the London Underground opens.
- 1863: France annexes Cambodia.
- 1863: Édouard Manet exhibits his painting The Luncheon on the Grass, sparking public outrage.
- 1863: Gordon (slave) Gordon, or “Whipped Peter”, was an enslaved African American who escaped from a Louisiana plantation in March 1863.
- 1863–1865: Polish uprising against the Russian Empire.
- 1864: Circassian Genocide. (21 May 1864)
- 1864–1866: The Chincha Islands War was an attempt by Spain to regain its South American colonies.
- 1864–1870: The Paraguayan War ends Paraguayan ambitions for expansion and destroys much of the Paraguayan population.
- 1864: June, The first railway track in Indonesia was laid between Semarang and Tanggung, Central Java by the Dutch colonial government.[10]
- 1865–1877: Reconstruction in the United States; Slavery is banned in the United States by the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
- 1865-9 April 1865: Robert E. Lee surrenders the Army of Northern Virginia (26,765 troops) to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia, effectively ending the American Civil War.
- 1865-14 April 1865: United States President Abraham Lincoln is assassinated by actor and Confederate sympathiser John Wilkes Booth, while attending a performance at Ford’s Theater, Washington, D.C.. He dies approximately nine hours after being shot on 15 April 1865.
- 1865: Gregor Mendel formulates his laws of inheritance.
- 1865: Lewis Carroll publishes Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
- 1866: Successful transatlantic telegraph cable follows an earlier attempt in 1858.
- 1866: Austro-Prussian War results in the dissolution of the German Confederation and the creation of the North German Confederation and the Austrian-Hungarian Dual Monarchy.
- 1866–1868: Famine in Finland.
- 1866–1869: After the Meiji Restoration, Japan embarks on a program of rapid modernization.
- 1867: The United States purchases Alaska from Russia.
- 1867–1869: Famine in Sweden.
- 1867: Canadian Confederation formed.
- 1867: Alfred Nobel invents dynamite.
- 1867: The Principality of Serbia passes a Constitution which defines its independence from the Ottoman Empire. International recognition followed in 1878.
- 1867: The Luxembourg Crisis: diplomatic confrontation between France and Prussia on the status of Luxembourg and the towns fortifications are torn down.
- 1867: The Marquess of Queensberry Rules for boxing are published.
- 1868: Safety bicycle invented.
- 1868: The Expatriation Act of 1868 is approved by the U.S. Congress, one of the early blows which would eventually lead to the death of the common law doctrine of perpetual allegiance.
- 1868: The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution is approved.
- 1868: Cro-Magnon man first identified.
- 1868: Michael Barrett is the last person to be publicly hanged in England.
- 1868–1878: Ten Years’ War between Cuba and Spain.
- 1868: The Batavian Museum (today National Museum of Indonesia) was officially opened by Dutch East Indies government.
- 1869: Leo Tolstoy publishes War and Peace.
- 1869: First Transcontinental Railroad completed in United States on 10 May. – United States
- 1869: Dmitri Mendeleev created the Periodic table.
- 1869: The Suez Canal opens linking the Mediterranean to the Red Sea.
From 1865–1870 Paraguay lost more than half of its population in the Paraguayan War against Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay.
Black Friday, 9 May 1873, Vienna Stock Exchange. The Panic of 1873 and Long Depression followed.
- 1870: Rasmus Malling-Hansen‘s invention the Hansen Writing Ball becomes the first commercially sold typewriter.
- 1870–1871: The Franco-Prussian War results in the unifications of Germanyand Italy, the collapse of the Second French Empire and the emergence of a New Imperialism.
- 1870: Official dismantling of the Cultivation System and beginning of a ‘Liberal Policy‘ of deregulated exploitation of the Netherlands East Indies.[11]
- 1870–1890: Long Depression in Western Europe and North America.
- 1871–1878: In Germany, Otto von Bismarck attacks the privileges of the Catholic Church in the Kulturkampf (“Culture War”).
- 1871–1872: Famine in Persia is believed to have caused the death of 2 million.
- 1871–1914: Second Industrial Revolution.
- 1871: Royal Albert Hall opens in London.
- 1871: The Paris Commune briefly rules the French capital.
- 1871: The feudal system is dismantled in Japan.
- 1871: Henry Morton Stanley meets Dr. David Livingstone near Lake Tanganyika.
- 1872: Yellowstone National Park, the first national park, is created.
- 1872: The first recognised international soccer match, between England and Scotland, is played.
- 1873: The Panic of 1873 starts the “Long Depression“.
- 1873: Maxwell’s A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism published.
- 1873: The samurai class is abolished in Japan.
- 1873: Blue jeans and barbed wire are invented.
- 1873: The beginning of the bloody Aceh War for Dutch occupation of the province.[11]
- 1874: The Société Anonyme Coopérative des Artistes Peintres, Sculpteurs, and Graveurs, better known as the Impressionists, organize and present their first public group exhibition at the Paris studio of the photographer Nadar.
- 1874: The Home Rule Movement is established in Ireland.
- 1874: The British East India Company is dissolved.
- 1874–1875: First Republic in Spain.
- 1875: HMS Challenger surveys the deepest point in the Earth’s oceans, the Challenger Deep.
- 1875–1900: 26 million Indians perish in India due to famine.
- 1875: Georges Bizet‘s opera Carmen premiers in Paris.
- 1876: Bulgarians instigate the April Uprising against Ottoman rule.
- 1876: Richard Wagner‘s Ring Cycle is first performed in its entirety.
- 1876: Queen Victoria becomes Empress of India.
- 1876: Battle of the Little Bighorn leads to the death of General Custer and victory for the alliance of Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho.
- 1876–1879: 13 million Chinese die of famine in northern China.
- 1876–1914: The massive expansion in population, territory, industry and wealth in the United States is referred to as the Gilded Age.
- 1877: Great Railroad Strike in the United States may have been the world’s first nationwide labour strike.
- 1877: Crazy Horse surrenders and is later killed.
- 1877: Asaph Hall discovers the moons of Mars.
- 1877: Thomas Edison invents the phonograph.
- 1877: On August 17, Henry McCarty (who later becomes Billy the Kid) kills a blacksmith named Francis Cahill who becomes his first murder victim.
- 1877: The first test cricket match, between England and Australia, is played.
- 1877–1878: Following the Russo-Turkish War, the Treaty of Berlin recognizes formal independence of the Principality of Serbia, Montenegro and Romania. Bulgaria becomes autonomous.
- 1878: First commercial telephone exchange in New Haven, Connecticut.
A barricade in the Paris Commune, 18 March 1871. Around 30,000 Parisians were killed, and thousands more were later executed.
- 1879: Anglo-Zulu War in South Africa. – South Africa
- 1879: Thomas Edison tests his first light bulb.
- 1879–1880: Little War against Spanish rule in Cuba leads to rebel defeat.
- 1879–1883: Chile battles with Peru and Bolivia over Andean territory in the War of the Pacific.
- 1879–1884: Belgium is engulfed in a political crisis, dubbed the First School War, over the role of religion in state education.
- 1879: 21 April, Kartini was born in Jepara, today the date is commemorated as women’s emancipation day in Indonesia.
- 1880–1881: the First Boer War.
- 1881: Tsar Alexander II is assassinated.
- 1881: Wave of pogroms begins in the Russian Empire.
- 1881: Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. Sitting Bull surrenders.
- 1881: First electrical power plant and grid in Godalming, Britain.
- 1881: President James A. Garfield is assassinated.
- 1881–1882: The Jules Ferry laws are passed in France establishing free, secular education.
- 1881–1899: The Mahdist War in Sudan.
- 1882: The British invasion and subsequent occupation of Egypt.
- 1883: Krakatoa volcano explosion, one of the largest in modern history.
Thomas Edison was an American inventor, scientist, and businessman who developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb.
- 1883: The quagga is rendered extinct.
- 1883: Robert Louis Stevenson‘s Treasure Island is published.
- 1884: First electric car produced by Thomas Parker in Wolverhampton.
- 1884: Siege of Khartoum.
- 1884: Germany gains control of Cameroon.
- 1884: Mark Twain publishes The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
- 1884: Hiram Maxim invents the first self-powered Machine gun.
- 1884–1885: The Berlin Conference signals the start of the European “scramble for Africa“. Attending nations also agree to ban trade in slaves.
- 1884–1885: The Sino-French War led to the formation of French Indochina.
- 1885: Louis Pasteur creates the first successful vaccine against rabies for a young boy who had been bitten 14 times by a rabid dog.
- 1885: Karl Benz produced first car with internal combustion engine.
- 1885: King Leopold II of Belgium establishes the Congo Free State as a personal fiefdom.
- 1885: Britain establishes a protectorate over Bechuanaland (modern Botswana).
- 1885: Singer begins production of the ‘Vibrating Shuttle‘. which would become the most popular model of sewing machine.
- 1885: Rock Springs massacre: White miners rioted, killing at least 28 Chineseimmigrantminers.
- 1886: “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” by Robert Louis Stevenson is published.
- 1886: Burma is presented to Queen Victoria as a birthday gift.
- 1886: Karl Benz sells the first commercial automobile.
- 1886: Construction of the Statue of Liberty; Coca-Cola is developed.
- 1887: The British Empire takes over Balochistan.
- 1887: Arthur Conan Doyle publishes his first Sherlock Holmes story, A Study in Scarlet.
- 1888: Year of the Three Emperors in Germany marks the beginning of Kaiser Wilhelm II’s 30 year reign.
- 1888: Louis Le Prince records the Roundhay Garden Scene, the earliest surviving film.
- 1888: Jack the Ripper murders occur in Whitechapel, London.
- 1888: Slavery banned in Brazil.
- 1888: Founding of the shipping line Koninklijke Paketvaart-Maatschappij (KPM) that supported the unification and development of the colonial economy.[11]
- 1889: The Mayerling Incident: Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria and Baroness Mary Vetsera die in a suicide pact.
- 1889: Eiffel Tower is inaugurated in Paris.
- 1889: Mirza Ghulam Ahmad establishes the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, a reform sect of Islam.
- 1889: End of the Brazilian Empire and the beginning of the Brazilian Republic.
- 1889: Vincent van Gogh paints The Starry Night.
- 1889: Aspirin patented.
- 1889: Moulin Rouge opens in Paris.
First motor bus in history: the Benz Omnibus, built in 1895 for the Netphener bus company.
Miners and prospectors ascend the Chilkoot Trail during the Klondike Gold Rush.
Studio portrait of Ilustrados in Europe, c. 1890
- 1890: The Wounded Knee Massacre in South Dakota was the last battle in the American Indian Wars. This event represents the end of the American Old West.
- 1890: Italy annexes Eritrea.
- 1890: First use of the electric chair as a method for execution.
- 1890: Death of Vincent van Gogh.
- 1890: The cardboard box is invented.
- 1890: Kaiser Wilhelm II dismisses Germany’s longtime chancellor Otto von Bismarck, thereafter embarking on the foreign policy of Weltpolitik, as opposed to Bismarck’s Realpolitik.
- 1890s: Bike boom sweeps Europe and America.
- 1891: Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, founder of the Ahmadiyya movement, claims to be Promised Messiah and Imam Mahdi.
- 1891: 1891 Chilean Civil War.
- 1891: Wrigley Company is founded in Illinois.
- 1891: PopeLeo XIII launches the encyclicalRerum Novarum, the first major catholic document on social justice.
- 1892: Basketball is invented.
- 1892: The World’s Columbian Exposition was held in Chicago celebrating the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus‘s arrival in the New World.
- 1892: Fingerprinting is officially adopted for the first time.
- 1892: Tchaikovsky‘s Nutcracker Suite premières in St Petersburg.
- 1892: John Froelich develops and constructs the first gasoline/petrol-powered tractor.
- 1893: US forces overthrow the government of Hawaii.
- 1893: The Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organisation is formed.
- 1893: New Zealand becomes the first country to enact women’s suffrage.
- 1893: The Coremans-de Vriendt law is passed in Belgium, creating legal equality for French and Dutch languages.
- 1894: First commercial film release by Jean Aimé Le Roy.
- 1894: First gramophone record.
- 1894: Karl Elsener invents the Swiss Army knife.
- 1894: France and the Russian Empire form a military alliance.
- 1894–1895: After the First Sino-Japanese War, China cedes Taiwan to Japan and grants Japan a free hand in Korea.
- 1894–1906: Dreyfuss Affair in France.
- 1894: Lombok War[11] The Dutch looted and destroyed the Cakranegara palace of Mataram.[12] J. L. A. Brandes, a Dutch philologist discovered and secured Nagarakretagama manuscript in Lombok royal library.
- 1895: Taiwan is ceded to the Empire of Japan as a result of the First Sino-Japanese war.
- 1895: Volleyball is invented.
- 1895: Trial of Oscar Wilde and premiere of his play The Importance of Being Earnest.
- 1895: French troops capture Antananarivo in Madagascar.
- 1895: Wilhelm Röntgen identifies x-rays.
- 1895–1896: Abyssinia defeats Italy in the First Italo–Ethiopian War.
- 1895–1898: Cuban War for Independence results in Cuban independence from Spain.
- 1896: Olympic Games revived in Athens.
- 1896: Philippine Revolution ends declaring Philippines free from Spanish rule.
- 1896: Ethiopia defeated Italy at the Battle of Adwa.
- 1896: Klondike Gold Rush in Canada.
- 1896: Henri Becquerel discovers radioactivity; J. J. Thomson identifies the electron, though not by name.
- 1897: Gojong, or Emperor Gwangmu, proclaims the short-lived Korean Empire: lasts until 1910.
- 1897: Benin Expedition of 1897 loots and burns Benin.
- 1897: Greco-Turkish War.
- 1897: Bram Stoker writes Dracula.
- 1897: First electric bicycle produced by Hosea Libbey.
- 1898: The United States gains control of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines after the Spanish–American War.
- 1898: Empress Dowager Cixi of China engineers a coup d’état, marking the end of the Hundred Days’ Reform; the Guangxu Emperor is arrested.
- 1898: H. G. Wells publishes The War of the Worlds.
- 1898: Empress Elisabeth of Austria is assassinated by anarchistLuigi Lucheni.
- 1898–1900: The Boxer Rebellion in China is suppressed by an Eight-Nation Alliance.
- 1898–1902: The Thousand Days’ War in Colombia breaks out between the “Liberales” and “Conservadores“, culminating with the loss of Panama in 1903.
- 1898: General van Heutz becomes chief of staff of Aceh campaign. Wilhelmina becomes queen of the Netherlands.[11]
- 1898: Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener defeats Mahdist Sudan in the Battle of Omdurman.
- 1898–1900: Zeppelin LZ 1airship first produced.
- 1899–1902: Second Boer War begins.
- 1899–1913: Philippine–American War begins.
- 1899–1900: Indian famine kills over 1 million people.
- Hawaii becomes an official U.S. territory.
- Galveston Hurricane in Texas kills 8000 people.
- L. Frank Baum publishes The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
- King Umberto I of Italy is assassinated.
- Exposition Universelle held in Paris, prominently featuring the growing art trend Art Nouveau.
- Eight nations invaded China at the same time and ransacked Forbidden City.
- 1 January: The Australian colonies federate.
- 22 January: Edward VII becomes King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions and Emperor of India upon the death of Queen Victoria.
- 2 March: Platt Amendment limits the autonomy of Cuba in exchange for withdrawal of American troops.
- June: Emily Hobhouse reports on the terrible conditions in the 45 British concentration camps for Boer women and children in South Africa.
- 6 September: Assassination of William McKinley. Vice President Theodore Roosevelt assumes office as President of the United States following McKinley’s death on September 14.
- 7 September: Boxer Rebellion ends.
- 12 December: Guglielmo Marconi receives the first trans-Atlanticradio signal.
- First Nobel Prizes awarded.
- 13 January: Unification of Saudi Arabia begins.
- 20 May: Cuba gains independence from the United States.
- 31 May: Second Boer War ends.
- 2 July: Philippine–American War ends.
- 12 July: Arthur Balfour becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
- 17 July: Willis Carrier invents the first modern electrical air conditioning unit.
- Venezuela Crisis, in which Britain, Germany and Italy sustain a naval blockade on Venezuela in order to enforce collection of outstanding financial claims.
- 15 February: The first teddy bear is invented.
- 1 July: The first Tour de France is held.
- July to August: In Russia the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks form from the breakup of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party.
- 4 August: Pius X becomes Pope.
- 18 November: Independence of Panama, the Hay–Bunau-Varilla Treaty is signed by the United States and Panama.
- 17 December: First controlled heavier-than-air flight of the Wright Brothers.
- The Ottoman Empire and the German Empire sign an agreement to build the Constantinople-Baghdad Railway.
- 8 February: A Japanese surprise attack on Port Arthur (Lushun) starts the Russo-Japanese War.
- 8 April: Entente cordiale signed between Britain and France.
- May: Construction of the Panama Canal begins.
- 21 June: Trans-Siberian railway is completed.
- September: End of British expedition to Tibet.
- Herero and Namaqua Genocide, the first genocide of the 20th century, begins in German South-West Africa.
- Roger Casement publishes his account of Belgian atrocities in the Congo Free State.
- 22 January: The Revolution of 1905 in Russia begins.
- March: The First Moroccan Crisis begins, going until May 1906.
- 7 June: The Norwegian Parliament declares the union with Sweden dissolved, and Norway achieves full independence.
- 5 September: The Russo-Japanese War ends.
- 26 September: Albert Einstein‘s formulation of special relativity.
- 16 October: The British Indian Province of Bengal, partitioned by the Viceroy of India, Lord Curzon.
- 5 December: Henry Campbell-Bannerman becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
- Schlieffen Plan proposed.
- The Persian Constitutional Revolution begins.
- 18 April: An earthquake in San Francisco, California, magnitude 7.9, kills 3,000.
- 13 July: Alfred Dreyfus is exonerated and reinstated as a major in the French Army; the Dreyfus Affair ends.
- 16 August: An earthquake in Valparaíso, Chile, magnitude 8.2, kills 20,000.
- 28 September: The US begins the Second Occupation of Cuba.
- 23 October: Brazilian inventor Alberto Santos-Dumont takes off and flies his 14-bis to a crowd in Paris.
- 30 December: The Muslim League is formed by Nawab Salimullah Khan of Dacca.
- The Stolypin reform in Russia creates a new class of affluent kulaks.
- February to April: A peasants’ revolt in Romania kills roughly 11,000.
- 15–16 March: Elections to the new Parliament of Finland are the first in the world with woman candidates, as well as the first elections in Europe where universal suffrage is applied.
- 24 July: Japan–Korea Treaty of 1907.
- The Indian National Congress splits into two factions at its Surat session, presided by Rash Behari Bose.
- Persian Constitutional Revolution ends with the establishment of a parliament.
- The Anglo-Russian Entente bring a pause in The Great Game in Central Asia.
- Bakelite, the world’s first fully synthetic plastic, invented in New York by Leo Baekeland, who coins the term “plastics”.
- The coldest year since 1880 according to NASA.
- 24 January: Start of publication of Robert Baden-Powell‘s Scouting for Boys in London.
- 8 April: H. H. Asquith becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
- 26 May: First commercial Middle-Eastern oilfield established, at Masjed Soleyman in southwest Persia.
- 30 June: The Tunguska impact devastates thousands of square kilometres of Siberia.
- July: Young Turk Revolution in the Ottoman Empire.
- 1 October: The Ford Motor Company invents the Model T.
- early October: Austria-Hungary annexes Bosnia-Herzegovina, triggering the Bosnian Crisis.
- 5 October: Independence of Bulgaria.
- 2 December: Pu Yi, the last Emperor of China, assumes the throne.
- 28 December: The 1908 Messina earthquake in southern Italy, magnitude 7.1, kills 70,000 people.
- Herero and Namaqua Genocide ends.
- First commercial radio transmissions.
- United States troops leave Cuba.
- 4 March: William Howard Taft is inaugurated as President of the United States.
- 10 March: Anglo-Siamese Treaty of 1909 signed (effective on 9 July).
- 12 March: Indian Councils Act passed.
- April: Bosnian crisis ends with Austria-Hungary’s annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
- 6 April: Robert E. Peary claims to have reached the North Pole though the claim is subsequently heavily contested.
- 13 April: Ottoman countercoup fails in the Ottoman Empire.
- 16 July: A revolution forces Mohammad Ali Shah, Persian Shah of the Qajar dynasty to abdicate in favor of his son Ahmad Shah Qajar.
- Japan and China sign the Jiandao/Gando Treaty.
- 8 February: Boy Scouts of America is founded.
- April: Halley’s Comet returns.
- May to July: Albanian Revolt of 1910.
- 6 May: George V becomes King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions and Emperor of India.
- 31 May: Union of South Africa created.
- 28 August: Montenegro is proclaimed an independent kingdom.
- 29 August: Imperial Japan annexes Korea.
- 5 October: The 5 October 1910 revolution in Portugal and proclamation of the First Portuguese Republic.
- 20 November: Beginning of the Mexican Revolution (Plan of San Luis Potosí).
- 14 January: Roald Amundsen first reaches the South Pole.
- 18 January: Eugene B. Ely lands on the deck of the USS Pennsylvania stationed in San Francisco harbor, marking the first time an aircraft lands on a ship.
- 25 March: Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City results in the deaths of 146 workers and leads to sweeping workplace safety reforms.
- April to November: Agadir Crisis.
- 29 September: The Italo-Turkish war which led to the capture of Libya by Italy, begins.
- 10 October: Xinhai Revolution, which overthrew the Qing dynasty of China, begins.
- 3 November: Swiss race car driver and automotive engineer Louis Chevrolet co-founds the Chevrolet Motor Company in Detroit with his brother Arthur Chevrolet, William C. Durant and others.
- 12 December: New Delhi becomes the capital of British India.
- Ernest Rutherford identifies the atomic nucleus.
- 8 February: The African National Congress is founded.
- 12 February: End of the Chinese Empire. Republic of China established.
- 14 February: Arizona becomes the last state to be admitted to the continental Union.
- 30 March: Morocco becomes a protectorate of France.
- 15 April: Sinking of the RMS Titanic.
- 30 July: Emperor Meiji dies, ending the Meiji Era; his son, the Emperor Taishō, becomes Emperor of Japan.
- 25 August: The Kuomintang, the Chinese nationalist party, is founded.
- 8 October: The First Balkan War begins.
- Banana Wars: United States occupation of Nicaragua begins.
- 23 January: In the 1913 Ottoman coup d’état, Ismail Enver comes to power.
- 9–19 February: La Decena Trágica in Mexico City.
- 4 March: Woodrow Wilson is inaugurated as President of the United States.
- 29 May: Igor Stravinsky‘s The Rite of Spring infamously premiers in Paris.
- 30 May: Treaty of London.
- June to August: Second Balkan War.
- 10 August: Treaty of Bucharest.
- 7 October: Ford Motor Company introduces the first moving assembly line.
- 23 December: The Federal Reserve System is created.
- Yuan Shikai uses military force to dissolve China‘s parliament and rules as a dictator.
- Niels Bohr formulates the first cohesive model of the atomic nucleus, and in the process paves the way to quantum mechanics.
- 28 June: Gavrilo PrincipassassinatesArchduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria in Sarajevo, triggering the start of World War I.
- 28 July: World War I begins.
- 15 August: Panama Canal opens.
- 26–30 August: Battle of Tannenberg.
- 1 September: Martha, last known passenger pigeon, dies.
- 3 September: Benedict XV becomes Pope.
- 6–12 September: First Battle of the Marne.
- September to October: The Race to the Sea leaves Germany and the Allies entrenched along the Western Front.
- 19 December: The United Kingdom establishes the Sultanate of Egypt as a protectorate.
- Edgar Rice Burroughs publishes Tarzan of the Apes.
- 22 April: Second Battle of Ypres begins, first widespread use of poison gas.
- 24 April: The deportation of Armenian leaders and notables in Constantinople signals the onset of the Armenian Genocide.
- 7 May: Sinking of the RMS Lusitania.
- 28 July: In the Banana Wars, the United States occupation of Haiti begins.
- The first large scale use of poison gas by both sides in World War I occurs, first by the Germans at the Battle of Bolimów on the eastern front, and at the Second Battle of Ypres on the western front, and then by the British at the Battle of Loos.
- 9 January: The Gallipoli Campaign ends in failure.
- February to December: Battle of Verdun.
- 24–30 April: Easter Rising in Ireland.
- 30 April: The first nationwide implementation of daylight saving time in the German Empire and Austria-Hungary.
- June to September: Brusilov Offensive.
- June: The Arab Revolt begins.
- 6 June: The Warlord Era begins in China after the death of Yuan Shikai.
- July to November: Battle of the Somme.
- 15–22 September: First use of tanks at the Battle of Flers-Courcelette.
- 21 November: Sinking of the HMHS Britannic.
- December: The Pact is agreed upon by both the Congress and the Muslim League at the Indian city of Lucknow.
- 6 December: David Lloyd George becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
- 30 December: Grigori Rasputin is assassinated by H.H. Prince Felix Youssoupov.
- Market Square, one of the earliest shopping malls, opens in the Chicago metropolitan area.
- 8 March: Russian Revolution ends the Russian Empire; beginning of Russian Civil War.
- 6 April: USA joins the Allies for the last 17 months of World War I.
- May to October: Apparitions of Our Lady of the Rosary in Fatima, Portugal.
- 4 June: The first Pulitzer Prizes announced.
- July to November: Battle of Passchendaele.
- October to November: Battle of Caporetto.
- 1–2 November: The Third Battle of Gaza ends in British victory.
- 7 November (O.S. 25 October): October Revolution in Russia.
- 8 November: The Ukrainian–Soviet War begins.
- 26 November: The National Hockey League is formed in Montreal, Canada.
- 6 December: Independence of Finland.
- January to May: Finnish Civil War.
- 22 January: Ukraine declares independence from Russia.
- February: Beginning of the Spanish flu pandemic, which lasts until April 1920 and kills tens of millions.
- March to July: The German spring offensive.
- 25 March: Belarus declares independence from Russia.
- 30 March: The Armenian–Azerbaijani War begins.
- 28 May: Azerbaijan Democratic Republic declared.
- 4 July: Mehmed VI becomes the last Sultan of the Ottoman Empire and the last Caliph.
- 16–17 July: Assassination of Tsar Nicholas II and his family.
- 8–12 August: Battle of Amiens.
- August to November: The Hundred Days Offensive sends Germany into defeat.
- October: the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs is established.
- 29 October: German Revolution begins.
- 30 October:
- The Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen founded.
- The Partitioning of the Ottoman Empire begins.
- 1 November:
- Independence declared in the West Ukrainian People’s Republic.
- The Polish–Ukrainian War begins.
- 9 November: Abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II.
- 11 November:
- The Armistice of 11 November 1918 ends World War I.
- Poland declares independence from Russia.
- 1 December: The Kingdom of Iceland, a personal union with Denmark, is formed.
- The British occupy Palestine.
- 14 February: Polish-Soviet War begins.
- 2 March: Comintern established.
- 11 April: The International Labour Organization is established.
- 13 April: The Jallianwala Bagh massacre in northern India: Acting Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer orders troops of the British Indian Army to fire their rifles into a crowd of unarmed Indian civilians, killing from 379 to 1,000 people and injuring another 1,500.
- 19 May: Turkish War of Independence begins.
- 28 June: The Treaty of Versailles redraws European borders.
- July: The Egyptian Revolution of 1919 ends.
- 18 July: End of Polish–Ukrainian War.
- 11 August: German Revolution ends with the collapse of the German Empire and the establishment of the Weimar Republic.
- 19 November: Release date of Feline Follies, the first appearance of Felix the Cat (then known as Master Tom).
- First experimental evidence for the General theory of relativity obtained by Arthur Eddington.
- Ernest Rutherford discovers the proton.
- 10 January: League of Nations founded.
- 17 January: Prohibition in the United States begins.
- 2 February: Victory for Estonia in the Estonian War of Independence.
- 25 April: Mandatory Palestine established.
- 27–28 April: Red Army invasion of Azerbaijan and Armenia ends the Armenian–Azerbaijani War and concludes with their incorporation into the Soviet Union.
- 21 May: The Mexican Revolution ends.
- 5 September: Mahatma Gandhi launches Non-cooperation movement.
- Greece restores its monarchy after a referendum.
- 25 January: Premiere of the science-fiction play R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots), in which the word “robot” was first used.
- February to March: RussiainvadesGeorgia and incorporates it into the Soviet Union.
- 4 March: Warren G. Harding is inaugurated as President of the United States.
- July 29: Adolf Hitler becomes Führer of the Nazi Party as hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic begins.
- 18 October: End of the Polish-Soviet War.
- 9 November: The Italian National Fascist Party is established by Benito Mussolini.
- 17 November: End of the Ukrainian–Soviet War.
- 15 December: Coup brings the Pahlavi dynasty to power in Iran.
- 2 February: James Joyce publishes Ulysses.
- 6 February:
- Pius XI becomes Pope.
- The Washington Naval Treaty is signed.
- Mohandas Gandhi calls off Non-cooperation movement.
- 28 February: Egypt gains independence from the United Kingdom, though British forces still occupy the Suez Canal.
- 16 June: End of Russian Civil War.
- 28 June: The Irish Civil War begins.
- 23 October: Andrew Bonar Law becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
- 28 October: March on Rome brings Benito Mussolini to power in Italy.
- 1 November: Ottoman Sultanate abolished by the Turkish Grand National Assembly; Sultan Mehmed VI is deposed.
- 4 November: Howard Carter discovers Tutankhamen’s tomb.
- 14 November: British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) established.
- 6 December: Irish Free State is established, while the Province of Northern Ireland is created within The United Kingdom.
- 16 December: Gabriel Narutowicz, President of Poland, is assassinated.
- 30 December: The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), the world’s first officially Communist state, is formed.
- The union of Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador is dissolved.
- The Italian reconquest of Libya begins.
- 3 March: Time Magazine is first published.
- 22 May: Stanley Baldwin becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
- 24 May: The Irish Civil War ends.
- 9 June: A military coup ousts and kills Bulgarian Prime Minister Aleksandar Stamboliyski.
- 2 August: Death of Warren G. Harding; Vice President Calvin Coolidge assumes office as President of the United States.
- 1 September: The Great Kantō earthquake kills at least 105,000 people in Japan.
- 11 October: Turkish War of Independence ends; Ankara replaces Istanbul as its capital.
- 29 October: Kemal Atatürk becomes the first President of the newly established Republic of Turkey.
- 16 October: The Walt Disney Company is founded.
- 8 November: The Beer Hall Putsch, an attempt to overthrow the Weimar Republic, ends in failure and brief imprisonment for Adolf Hitler but brings the Nazi Party to national attention.
- 15 November: Hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic ends with the introduction of the Rentenmark.
- 21 January: The death of Vladimir Lenin triggers power struggle between Leon Trotsky and Joseph Stalin.
- 22 January: Ramsay MacDonald becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
- 25 January–5 February: The first edition of the Winter Olympic Games is hosted in Chamonix, France.
- 12 February: Rhapsody in Blue by George Gershwin premieres in New York City.
- 3 March: The Caliphate is abolished by Kemal Atatürk.
- 10 May: The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation founded under J. Edgar Hoover.
- 24 May: U.S. Immigration Act of 1924 significantly restricts immigration from Asia, the Middle East, and Southern Europe.
- 28 August: The August Uprising in Georgia against Soviet rule.
- 4 November: Stanley Baldwin becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
- 3 January: Benito Mussolini delivers a speech which is considered the beginning of this dictatorship.
- March to April: First televisual image introduced by John Logie Baird.
- 18 July: Mein Kampf is published.
- October 5–16: Locarno Treaties signed.
- Serum run to Nome.
- 12–14 May: May Coup in Poland.
- 28 May: 28 May 1926 coup d’état in Portugal.
- 22 August: General Georgios Kondylis overthrows General Theodoros Pangalos in Greece.
- 25 December: Emperor Taishō dies; his son, the Emperor Shōwa (Hirohito) becomes Emperor of Japan.
- World population reaches two billion.
- 1 January: The BBC is granted a Royal Charter in the United Kingdom.
- May: Australian Parliament convenes in Canberra for the first time.
- 13 May: The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland officially becomes the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
- 18 May: The Bath School disaster, a series of violent attacks perpetrated by Andrew Kehoe on May 18, 1927, in Bath Township, Michigan, United States, results in 45 deaths.
- 20 May: Saudi Arabia gains independence.
- 20–21 May: Charles Lindbergh performs the first nonstop flight from New York City to Paris.
- 1 August: The Chinese Civil War begins.
- 4 October: Mount Rushmore construction begins.
- 6 October: The Jazz Singer, the first “talkie”, is released.
- 12 November: Soviet general secretaryJoseph Stalin becomes leader of the Soviet Union.
- March: Hassan al-Banna founds the Muslim Brotherhood.
- 1 September: King Zog I is crowned in Albania.
- 3 September: Accidental rediscovery of penicillin by Alexander Fleming.
- 24 July: The Kellogg-Briand Pact is signed in Paris.
- 18 November: Release date of Steamboat Willie, widely regarded as the first appearance of Mickey Mouse.
- 29 December: The Warlord Era ends in China.
- Malta becomes a British Dominion.
- Bubble gum is invented.
- February: Leon Trotsky is exiled.
- 11 February: Pope Pius XI signs the Lateran Treaty with Italian leader Benito Mussolini, after which the Vatican City is recognised as a sovereign state.
- 14 February: Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre, the murder of seven members and associates of Chicago’s North Side Gang.
- 4 March: Herbert Hoover is inaugurated as President of the United States.
- 16 May: The first Academy Awards are presented.
- 5 June: Ramsay MacDonald becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
- 24–29 October: Wall Street crash of 1929 and the beginning of the Great Depression.
- First people sent to the gulag in the Soviet Union as Stalin assumes effective control.
- 18 February: Clyde Tombaugh discovers Pluto.
- 12 March: Salt March by Mohandas Gandhi and the official start of civil disobedience in British India.
- 2 April: Haile Selassie becomes Emperor of Abyssinia.
- 19 April: Sinkin’ in the Bathtub, the first Looney Tunes short, is released.
- 27 May: Construction of Chrysler Building completed.
- 13–30 July: The first FIFA World Cup is hosted in Uruguay. The champions are Uruguay.
- 4 August: King Kullen, widely regarded as the first supermarket, opens in Queens, New York City.
- 14 September: Aided by the Great Depression, the Nazi Party increases its share of the vote from 2.6% to 18.3%.
- November: First Round Table Conference between India and Great Britain, which goes until January 1931.
- 3 November: The Vargas Era begins in Brazil.
- 3 March: “The Star-Spangled Banner” is adopted as the United States‘s national anthem.
- 1 May: Empire State Building completed.
- June: Floods in China kill up to 2.5 million people.
- 14 April: The Second Spanish Republic is declared.
- September: Japan invades Manchuria, part of the chain of events leading to the start of World War II.
- September to December: Second Round Table Conference.
- 7 November: The Chinese Soviet Republic is proclaimed by Mao Zedong.
- 11 December:
- Statute of Westminster creates the British Commonwealth of Nations.
- Independence of South Africa.
- 12 December: Christ the Redeemer completed.
- 1 March: Lindbergh baby kidnapping.
- 9 March: Éamon de Valera becomes President of the Executive Council (prime minister) of the Irish Free State.
- 9 September: The Chaco War between Bolivia and Paraguay begins.
- 4 June: Military coup in Chile.
- 24 June: Siamese Revolution establishes a constitutional monarchy.
- November to December:
- Failed Emu War in Australia.
- Third Round Table Conference.
- 19 December: BBC World Service starts broadcasting.
- The neutron is discovered by James Chadwick.
- Soviet famine of 1932–33 and Holodomor begin.
- The Nazi party becomes the largest single party in the German parliament.
- Aldous Huxley publishes Brave New World.
- 30 January: Adolf Hitler becomes Chancellor of Germany.
- 2 March: King Kong is released in New York.
- 4 March: Franklin D. Roosevelt is inaugurated as President of the United States, after being elected to the first of his record four terms.
- 27 March: Japan announces it will leave the League of Nations.
- 14 October: Germany announces its withdrawal from the League of Nations and the World Disarmament Conference, after the U.S., the U.K. and France deny its request to increase its defense armaments under the Versailles Treaty.
- 5 December: Prohibition in the United States is abolished.
- New Deal begins in America.
- United States occupation of Nicaragua ends.
- 12–16 February: The Austrian Civil War results in Fascist victory.
- 24 March: The United States grants more autonomy to the Philippines.
- 23 May: Bonnie and Clyde are shot to death in a police ambush.
- 30 June to 2 July: Adolf Hitler instigates the Night of the Long Knives, which cements his power over both the Nazi Party and Germany.
- 22 July: John Dillinger is gunned down by the FBI outside the Biograph Theater.
- 1 August: The United States occupation of Haiti ends.
- 2 August: With the death of President Hindenburg, Hitler declares himself Führer of Germany.
- 16 October: Mao Zedong begins the Long March.
- November: David Toro overthrows the government of Bolivia in a military coup.
- 31 May: Establishment of 20th Century Fox.
- 21 March: Reza Shah of Iran asks the international community to formally adopt the name “Iran” to refer to the country, instead of the name “Persia”.
- 7 June: Stanley Baldwin becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
- 12 June: Chaco War ends.
- 15 September: Enactment of the Nuremberg racial laws.
- 3 October: The Second Italo-Abyssinian War begins and goes until February 1937. It includes events such as the exile of Haile Selassie and the conquest of Abyssinia by Benito Mussolini.
- 23 October: William Lyon Mackenzie King becomes Prime Minister of Canada.
- 15 November: Manuel L. Quezon becomes President of the Philippines.
- 20 January: Edward VIII becomes King of the British Commonwealth and Emperor of India.
- 9 May: Italy annexes Ethiopia.
- 17 July: Beginning of the Spanish Civil War.
- 7 September: “Benjamin”, the last known thylacine, dies in Hobart Zoo.
- 11 December: After a reign shorter than one year, Edward VIII abdicates and hands the throne to his brother, George VI.
- The Hoover Dam is completed.
- Great Purge begins under Stalin.
- Arab Revolt in Palestine against the British begins to oppose Jewish immigration.
- George Nissen and Larry Griswold build the first modern trampoline.
- 6 May: German zeppelin Hindenburgcrashes in Lakehurst, New Jersey, ending the airship era.
- 28 May: Neville Chamberlain becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
- 7 July: Japanese invasion of China, and the beginning of World War II in the Far East.
- 28 August: Toyota founded in Japan by Kiichiro Toyoda.
- 21 September: J. R. R. Tolkien publishes The Hobbit.
- 13 December: The Nanjing Massacre begins, ending about a month later in January 1938. It results in 40,000 to 200,000 deaths according to various estimates.
- 21 December: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is the first feature-length animated movie released.
- The Irish Republican Army attempts to assassinate King George VI of the United Kingdom.
- Volkswagen founded by the German Labour Front.
- The Great Purge ends after nearly 700,000 executions.
- 12 March: Anschluss unifies Germany and Austria.
- 18 April: DC Comics hero Superman has its first appearance.
- 15 June: Hungarian newspaper editor László Bíró fills a British patent of the first commercially successful ballpoint pen. This would popularize the instrument, currently the most widely used for writing, after World War II.
- 6–15 July: Évian Conference ends with all attendee nations save the Dominican Republic refusing to accept more Jewish refugees from the Third Reich.
- 30 September: Munich agreement hands Czechoslovakia to Nazi Germany.
- 9–10 November: Kristallnacht, a pogrom of over 90 Jews in Germany.
- December: Time Magazine declares Adolf Hitler as Man of the Year.
- 2 March: Pius XII becomes Pope.
- 30 March: DC‘s Detective Comics#27 marks the first appearance of Batman in comics.
- 1 April: End of Spanish Civil War; Francisco Franco becomes dictator of Spain.
- 23 August: The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact between Germany and the Soviet Union.
- 25 August: Release date of MGM’s The Wizard of Oz.
- 13 September: Ferrari founded in Modena, Italy (as Auto Avio Costruzioni) by Enzo Ferrari.
- September to October: Nazi invasion of Poland triggers the beginning of World War II in Europe. Soviet invasion of Poland begins 16 days later.
- 15 December: Release date of Gone with the Wind (film).
- The Palestinian revolt against the British ends.
- January: Chechen insurgency begins in Soviet Union.
- 7 February: Release date of Disney’s Pinocchio.
- 13 March: The Winter War between Soviet Union and Finland ends with a costly victory for the USSR.
- April to May: The Katyn massacre of Polish soldiers in USSR and the Soviet occupation of the Baltic states.
- 10 May: Winston Churchill becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
- 15 May: McDonald’s founded in San Bernardino, California.
- May to June: Nazis invade France, the Netherlands, Denmark and Norway.
- June: The Soviet Union annexes the Baltic states.
- July to October: Battle of Britain, the first entirely aerial military campaign, becomes the first significant defeat for the Axis powers.
- 20 August: Leon Trotsky is assassinated in Mexico.
- 7 September: The Blitz, a German bombing campaign against the United Kingdom, begins.
- 13 November: Release date of Disney’s Fantasia.
- Neptunium is synthesized.
- June to December: Hitler commences the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union.
- 25 June: Continuation War between Finland and the Soviet Union begins. Siege of Tobruk in North Africa is the first major defeat for Hitler’s land forces.
- 8 September: Siege of Leningrad begins.
- October:
- Operation Reinhard commences the main phase of The Holocaust.
- All Star Comics#8 marks the first appearance of Wonder Woman in comics.
- 23 October: Release date of Disney’s Dumbo.
- 7 December: Attack on Pearl Harbor, which leads to the USA joining World War II.
- Mount Rushmore construction ends.
- April: Bataan Death March.
- 4–8 May: Battle of the Coral Sea.
- 4–7 June: Battle of Midway.
- 1–27 July: First Battle of El Alamein.
- August: Battle of Stalingrad and Guadalcanal Campaign begin. Internment of Japanese-American citizens in the US begins.
- 13 August: Release date of Disney’s Bambi.
- October to November: Second Battle of El Alamein.
- The Manhattan Project begins.
- 15 January: The Pentagon is completed.
- 2 February: Battle of Stalingrad ends with over two million casualties and the retreat of the German Army.
- April to May: Warsaw Ghetto uprising fails.
- 15 May: American Broadcasting Company (ABC) founded in New York City.
- July to August: The failed Battle of Kursk becomes the last Nazi offensive on the Eastern Front.
- November to December: Tehran Conference between Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin agrees to launch Operation Overlord.
- A famine in Bengal kills up to 3 million people.
- 27 January: The Siege of Leningrad ends with Soviet victory after over a million deaths.
- February to March: Chechen insurgency ends with deportation of the entire Chechen population.
- 1 June: First operational electronic computer, Colossus, comes online.
- 6 June: D-Day landings in Normandy.
- June to August: Soviet forces launch Operation Bagration on the Eastern Front, the biggest defeat in German military history.
- 20 July: Adolf Hitler survives the 20 July plot to assassinate him led by Claus von Stauffenberg.
- 19–25 August: Liberation of Paris.
- 19 September: The Continuation War ends.
- October to December: American and Filipino troops begin the Battle of Leyte in the Philippines.
- 4–11 February: Yalta Conference.
- 13–15 February: Allied bombing of Dresden.
- February: Death of Anne Frank.
- February to March: Battle of Manila.
- March to July: Battle of Okinawa.
- 12 April: Death of Franklin D. Roosevelt; Vice President Harry Truman assumes office as President of the United States.
- April to May: Battle of Berlin.
- 28 April: Execution of Benito Mussolini.
- 30 April: Suicide of Adolf Hitler.
- May: End of World War II in Europe.
- The Holocaust ends after ~12 million deaths, including 6 million Jews.
- 26 June: United Nations founded (UN Charter).
- 26 July: Clement Attlee becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
- July to August: The Potsdam Conference divides Europe into Western and Soviet blocs.
- 6 and 9 August: Harry S. Truman drops the Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
- 17 August: Independence of Indonesia proclaimed.
- 2 September: End of World War II in Asia and beginning of the Surrender of Japan.
- 8 October: The microwave cooking oven is patented, with the one of the first prototypes placed at a Boston restaurant for testing.
- 29 October: In Brazil, Getúlio Vargas is deposed in a coup.
- 22 March: Independence of Jordan.
- 2 June: Italy becomes a republic.
- 9 June: Bhumibol Adulyadej becomes King of Thailand.
- 4 July: The Treaty of Manila declares Philippines independent.
- 16 August: Mustafa Barzani founds the Kurdistan Democratic Party.
- 30 September/October 1: Nuremberg trials end.
- 27 October: French Fourth Republic established.
- 19 December: First Indochina War begins.
- First images of the Earth taken from space.
- 12 March: Harry Truman establishes the Truman Doctrine of containment of Communism.
- 15 April: Jackie Robinson becomes the first baseball player of color.
- 26 July: Creation of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.
- 14–15 August: Independence of India and Pakistan and beginning of First Indo-Pakistani War.
- November to December: Three Bell Labs engineers give the first public demonstration of the transistor, an electrical component that could control, amplify, and generate current.
- Breaking of the sound barrier.
- Hyundai Group founded by Chung Ju-yung in Seoul, South Korea.
- 30 January: Assassination of Mahatma Gandhi.
- 4 February: Independence of Burma and Ceylon (Sri Lanka) from Britain.
- 3 April: The Marshall Plan, an American initiative for foreign aid of $13 billion to 16 Western European countries, comes into effect.
- 7 April: The World Health Organization (WHO) founded.
- 16 April: The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) founded.
- 23 April: The Soviet Sever-2 expedition become the first party to indisputably set foot on the North Pole.
- 14 May: United Nations establishes Israeli Independence and the formation of the official State of Israel.
- 15 May: The Arab–Israeli War begins.
- 24 June: Berlin Blockade begins.
- August to September: Division of North and South Korea.
- 24 September: Honda founded in Hamamatsu, Japan by Soichiro Honda and Takeo Fujisawa.
- Beginning of apartheid in South Africa.
- 5 January: The First Indo-Pakistani War ends.
- 5–8 January: COMECON founded by USSR and the Eastern Bloc.
- 10 March: The Arab–Israeli War ends.
- 4 April: Creation of NATO.
- 28 April: Former First Lady Aurora Aragon–Quezon is killed in an ambush in the Philippines.
- 12 May: Berlin Blockade ends.
- 23 May: Creation of NATO-backed Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany).
- 8 June: George Orwell publishes Nineteen Eighty-Four.
- 1 October: Establishment of the People’s Republic of China under CCP ChairmanMao Zedong; The Republic of China relocates to Taiwan.
- 7 October: Creation of the socialist German Democratic Republic (East Germany).
- Partition of Kashmir.
- Soviet Union tests the atomic bomb.
- 26 January: The Constitution of India comes into effect.
- 15 February: Release date of Disney’s Cinderella.
- Communist victory in the Landing Operation on Hainan Island (March to May) and Wanshan Archipelago Campaign end the Chinese Civil War (May to August).
- 25 June: North Korean invasion of South Korea begins the Korean War.
- June to September: The Bodo League Massacre of prisoners during the Korean War.
- August to September: North Korean forces capture most of Korea, to the Pusan Perimeter.
- 25 August: Bertie the Brain, one of the first computer games, is released.
- September to November: UN forces reclaim Seoul and invade North Korea.
- October: Alan Turing publishes the Turing test, one of the most influential yet controversial concepts in artificial intelligence research.
- 17 November: Lhamo Dondrub assumes full political powers as the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet.
- 1 July: Colombo Plan, a regional organisation of 27 countries designed to strengthen economic and social development of member countries in the Asia-Pacific region, commences.
- 28 July: Release date of Disney’s Alice in Wonderland.
- 8 September: The Treaty of San Francisco ends the Occupation of Japan and formally concludes hostilities between Japan and the US.
- 18 September: Release date of the acclaimed science fiction film The Day the Earth Stood Still.
- 26 October: Winston Churchill becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
- The Soviet Union has the atomic bomb.
- 6 February: Queen Elizabeth II becomes Monarch of the Commonwealth realms.
- May: Bonn–Paris conventions end allied occupation of West Germany.
- 2 May: The first passenger jet flight route opens between London and Johannesburg.
- 27 May: European Defence Community formed.
- 23 July: Egyptian Revolution under Gamal Abdel Nasser overthrows King Farouk and ends British occupation.
- 1 November: The United States successfully detonates the first hydrogen bomb, codenamed “Ivy Mike“, at Eniwetok Atoll in the Marshall Islands in the central Pacific Ocean, with a yield of 10.4 megatons.
- Development of the first effective polio vaccine by Jonas Salk.
- The Mau Mau Uprising begins in Kenya.
- The Slansky Trial in Czechoslovakia.
- 20 January: Dwight D. Eisenhower is inaugurated as President of the United States.
- 5 February: Release date of Disney’s Peter Pan.
- 5 March: Death of Stalin.
- 25 April: Discovery of the three-dimensional structure of DNA.
- 2 June: Coronation of Elizabeth II.
- 16–17 June: An East German Uprising leads to the arrest and execution of Lavrentiy Beria; power struggle begins between Georgy Malenkov and Nikita Khrushchev.
- 29 May: First ascent of Mount Everest.
- 27 July: End of the Korean War.
- 19 August: Mohammed Mossadeq deposed in Iran.
- 9 November: Independence of Cambodia.
- Elvis Presley‘s musical career is launched.
- The first color television is produced.
- “Insta-Burger King” founded in Jacksonville, Florida.
- 12 April: The song Rock Around the Clock, by Bill Haley and His Comets, brings rock and roll to the American mainstream.
- 17 May: The Supreme Court of the United States decides Brown v. Board of Education, ordering an end to racial segregation in public schools.
- 29 July: J. R. R. Tolkien publishes The Fellowship of the Ring, the first volume of The Lord of the Rings.
- 1 August: First Indochina War ends.
- 3 September: First Taiwan Strait Crisis begins.
- 14 September: The Soviet Union generates first electricity by nuclear power.
- 23 October: The Western European Union is established.
- 1 November: Algerian War begins.
- 3 November: Godzilla is released in Japan.
- Two Miami-based franchisees, David Edgerton and James McLamore, purchase the company “Insta-Burger King” and rename it “Burger King”.
- After winning the power struggle that followed Stalin’s death two years earlier, Nikita Khrushchev assumes control of the Soviet Union.
- 24 February: Formation of the Central Treaty Organization.
- 12 March: Death of Charlie Parker, American jazz saxophonist and composer.
- 6 April: Anthony Eden becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
- 12 April: The Salk polio vaccine having passed large-scale trials earlier in the United States, receives full approval by the Food and Drug Administration.
- 18 April: Death of Albert Einstein.
- 18 to 24 April: Bandung Conference.
- 1 May: First Taiwan Strait Crisis ends.
- 14 May: Signing of the Warsaw Pact.
- 22 June: Release date of Disney’s Lady and the Tramp.
- 18 August: First Sudanese Civil War begins.
- 30 September: Death of James Dean, American actor.
- Antimatter first produced.
- 1 January: Independence of Sudan from Britain.
- 20 March: Independence of Tunisia from France.
- 23 March: Full independence of Pakistan.
- 11 November: The Hungarian Uprising crushed by Soviet troops.
- 29 October to 7 November: Nasser’s nationalisation of the Suez Canal triggers the Suez crisis.
- Construction of Brasília, the new capital of Brazil to replace Rio de Janeiro, begins.
Boeing 707 jet airliner introduced in 1957
- 10 January: Harold Macmillan becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
- 6 March: Independence of Ghana from Britain.
- 17 March: Philippine President Ramon Magsaysay and 24 others are killed in a plane crash.
- 25 March: Treaty of Rome, which would eventually lead to the European Union.
- 31 August: Independence of the Federation of Malaya.
- 4 October: Launch of Sputnik 1 and the beginning of the Space Age.
- 3 November: Laika becomes the first animal launched into Earth orbit.
- 20 December: First flight of the Boeing 707.
- First prescription of the combined oral contraceptive pill.
- Beginning of the Asian flu in China, leading to a worldwide pandemic that lasts until the following year.
- 31 May: Pizza Hut founded.
- 29 July: NASA formed.
- 23 August: Federal Aviation Authority formed.
- August to September: Second Taiwan Strait Crisis.
- 4 October: French Fifth Republic established.
- 28 October: John XXIII becomes Pope.
- November: Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) founded. CND’s symbol, the peace sign, is first used.
- Invention of the optical disc and the cassette tape.
- World population reaches three billion.
- 1 January: Cuban Revolution ends.
- 29 January: Disney’s Sleeping Beauty premieres.
- 3 February: Rock and roll musicians Ritchie Valens, Buddy Holly and The Big Bopperdie in a plane crash.
- 19 February: Independence of Cyprus.
- 10–23 March: Uprising in Tibet against China leads to the exile of the Dalai Lama.
- 4 July: Admission of Alaska, the 49th state, into the United States.
- 21 August: Admission of Hawaii, the 50th state, into the United States.
- 7 October: The U.S.S.R. probe Luna 3 sends back the first ever photos of the far side of the Moon.
- 1 November: Beginning of the Vietnam War, which lasted for almost twenty years until 1975.
- 18 November: The Oscar-winning film Ben-Hur premieres.
- Great Chinese Famine begins in China.
- First documented AIDS cases.
- By this time, the gulag has been effectively disbanded, after over a million recorded deaths.
- European Free Trade Association formed.
- Year of Africa: Independence of 17 African nations.
- 17 January: The assassination of Patrice Lumumba begins the Congo Crisis.
- 22 January: First manned descent to the deepest point on Earth, the Mariana Trench.
- 25 January: Release date of Disney’s One Hundred and One Dalmatians.
- 21 March: The Sharpeville Massacre, in which the police opened fire against a protesting crowd at a police station in the South African township of Sharpeville in Transvaal, resulting in 69 deaths and 180 injuries.
- 21 April: Construction of Brasília, Brazil’s new capital, finished.
- 1 May: 1960 U-2 incident sparks deterioration in relations between superpowers.
- 9 May: The birth control pill becomes commercially available.
- 16 May: Construction of the first laser.
- 22 May: An earthquake in Valdivia, Chile of magnitude 9.4 to 9.6, the highest ever recorded, causes 1,000 to 6,000 deaths.
- American boxer Muhammad Ali wins gold.
- 18–25 September: The first edition of the Summer Paralympic Games is hosted in Rome.
- 30 September: The first episode of The Flintstones airs on ABC.
- 12 October: Inejiro Asanuma, a Japanese socialist politician, is assassinated during a broadcast on TV.
- 8 November: The 1960 United States presidential election marks the first televised debates between presidential candidates.
- Khrushchev withdraws Soviet cooperation with China, initiating the Sino-Soviet split.
- Mau Mau Uprising ends.
- The Beatles form in Liverpool.
- 20 January: John F. Kennedy is inaugurated as President of the United States.
- 12 April: Yuri Gagarin, flying the Vostok 1 spacecraft as part of the Vostok program, becomes the first human in space.
- 25 May: In an address to Congress, John F. Kennedy declares the United States’ objective of “landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth” by the end of the decade. This would be in fact achieved by the Apollo Project, despite several challenges and much doubt.
- 13 August: Construction of the Berlin Wall.
- 18 September: UN Secretary GeneralDag Hammarskjöld dies in a plane crash.
- The Great Leap Forward ends in China after the deaths of roughly 20-45 million people.
- 19 March: The Algerian War ends with the independence of Algeria.
- May: Marvel‘s The Incredible Hulk marks the first appearance of the superhero.
- 2 July: Walmart founded in Rogers, Arkansas by Sam Walton.
- August: Marvel‘s Amazing Fantasy#15 marks the first appearance of Spider-Man in comics.
- 4 August: Death of Marilyn Monroe.
- 26 September: A coup ends the Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen, establishing the Yemen Arab Republic and starting the North Yemen Civil War.
- 11 October: The Second Vatican Council is opened by Pope John XXIII.
- 16–29 October: The Cuban Missile Crisis nearly causes nuclear war.
- October to November: The Sino-Indian War, caused by a border dispute in Aksai Chin, ends with a Chinese victory.
- 1 January: Premiere of the Astro Boy anime, the first to be broadcast overseas.
- 20 January: Indonesia–Malaysia confrontation begins.
- Birmingham campaign.
- 22 March: The Beatles‘ first record, Please Please Me, and the beginnings of the British Invasion.
- 27 May: Bob Dylan releases The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan.
- 21 June: Paul VI becomes Pope.
- 26 July: Launch of the first geostationary satellite, Syncom 2.
- 28 August: Martin Luther King Jr. delivers “I Have a Dream” speech at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
- 19 October: Alec Douglas-Home becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
- 22 November: Assassination of John F. Kennedy. Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson assumes office as President of the United States.
- 10–12 December: Independence of Kenya and Zanzibar and creation of Malaysia.
- 25 December: Release date of Disney’s The Sword in the Stone.
- 12 January: Zanzibar Revolution overthrows Arab ruling class; Zanzibar merges with Tanganyika to form Tanzania.
- 7 February: The Beatles’ first visit to the United States.
- 31 March to 1 April: A coup d’état establishes a military dictatorship in Brazil.
- 27 May: Colombian armed conflict begins.
- 2 July: Civil Rights Act abolishes segregation in the USA.
- 4 July: Rhodesian Bush War begins.
- 6 July: Independence of Malawi.
- 2 August: The Gulf of Tonkin incident led to the escalation of U.S. military involvement in the Vietnam War.
- 29 August: Release date of Disney’s Mary Poppins.
- 21 September: Independence of Malta.
- 14 October: Leonid Brezhnev ousts Khrushchev and assumes power in the Soviet Union.
- 16 October: Harold Wilson becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
- 28 November: NASA launches the Mariner 4 space probe from Cape Kennedy toward Mars to take television pictures of that planet in July 1965.
- 24 January: Death of Winston Churchill.
- 21 February: Death of Malcolm X.
- 17 March: The Voting Rights Act of 1965, inspired by the Selma to Montgomery marches.
- 26 April: Establishment of Rede Globo, now the largest TV network in Brazil and Latin America and the second-largest in the world after ABC.
- 18 May: Israeli spy Eli Cohen is hanged in Damascus.
- 9 August: Singapore gains independence.
- 30 August: Bob Dylan releases Highway 61 Revisited.
- August to September: Second Indo-Pakistani War.
- 24–25 November: Congo Crisis ends; Joseph Mobutu becomes dictator of the Congo.
- 30 September: 30 September Movement in the Indonesia.
- 8 December: Second Vatican Council is closed by Pope Paul VI.
- 30 December: Ferdinand Marcos becomes President of the Philippines.
- Beginning of the anti-Communist purge in Indonesia, which killed up to 500,000 people.
- 30 April: The Church of Satan is established in San Francisco by Anton LaVey.
- 16 May:
- The Beach Boys release Pet Sounds.
- China’s Cultural Revolution begins.
- 11 August: The Indonesia–Malaysia confrontation ends.
- 30 September: Independence of Botswana.
- 4 October: Independence of Lesotho.
- 21 October: The Aberfan disaster, the catastrophic collapse of a colliery spoil tip (pile of waste coal mining material) in Aberfan, Wales results in 144 deaths.
- 30 November: Independence of Barbados.
- 15 December: Death of Walt Disney.
- Joseph Weizenbaum, a German computer scientist at MIT, completes ELIZA, the first ever chatbot.
A 0 series Shinkansen high-speed rail set in Tokyo, May 1967
- First high-speed rail introduced in Tokyo.
- Mid-year: Summer of Love, in which as many as 100,000 people, mostly young people sporting hippie fashions of dress and behavior, converged in San Francisco’s neighborhood of Haight-Ashbury.
- 5–10 June: The Six-Day War, a conflict between Israel and Arab states that resulted in Israel occuyping the Gaza Strip, the Sinal Peninsula, the West Bank and the Golan Heights.
- 6 July: Attempted secession of the Republic of Biafra from Nigeria triggers the Nigerian Civil War.
- 17 July: Death of John Coltrane, American jazz saxophonist, clarinettist and composer.
- 8 August: Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) founded.
- 18 October: Release date of Disney’s The Jungle Book.
- 26 May: The Beatles release their landmark album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
- 17 December: Australian Prime MinisterHarold Holt disappears while swimming at Cheviot Beach, Victoria.
- January to March: Protests erupt in the United States, Europe and Latin America.
- January to August: Prague Spring crushed by the Eastern Bloc military intervention.
- January to September: The Tet Offensive occurs in South Vietnam.
- 8 February: 20th Century Fox releases Planet of the Apes.
- 19 February: The US national debut of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood on National Education Television (NET).
- 16 March: My Lai massacre, a mass murder and rape of unarmed South Vietnamese civilians by U.S. troops in the Vietnam War.
- 21 March: Battle of Karameh in Jordan (part of the War of Attrition between Israel and Arab states).
- 4 April: Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. during the Poor People’s Campaign.
- 5 June: Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy during the Poor People’s Campaign.
- Another new strain of a flu in Hong Kong spreads again.
- The Troubles begin in Northern Ireland.
Concorde 001 first flight in 1969
- 13 January: Samsung Electronics founded in Suwon, South Korea.
- 20 January: Richard Nixon is inaugurated as President of the United States.
- 2 March: Concorde 001 flies from the first time, from Toulouse, piloted by André Turcat.
- March to September: Sino-Soviet border conflict.
- June 28 to July 3: The Stonewall riots in New York City instigate the gay rights movement.
- 20 July: The first manned mission to the Moon.
- 8–9 August: The Manson Family Murders – Under Charles Manson‘s orders, his followers, the “Manson Family” cult, enter the home of Hollywood actress Sharon Tate and murder her and four others.
- August: The Woodstock festival in Bethel, New York, attracts an audience of more than 400,000.
- 1 September: Muammar Gaddafi overthrows King Idris of Libya in a Coup d’état and establishes the Libyan Arab Republic.
- 29 October: Creation of Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET), the earliest incarnation of the Internet.
- 10 November: Sesame Street premieres its debut episode.
- 15 January: The Nigerian Civil War ends with the reintegration of the Republic of Biafra with Nigeria after ~3 million deaths.
- 22 January: Maiden flight of the Boeing 747.
- January to March: First Quarter Storm.
- 5 March: Ratification of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.
- April: Break-up of the Beatles.
- 4 May: The Kent State massacre in Ohio leaves four students dead and nine injured.
- 19 June: Edward Heath becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
- 6 September: Black September in Jordan begins, lasting until mid-1971.
- 18 September: Death of Jimi Hendrix.
- 28 September: Death of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser.
- October to December: FLQseizes hostages, causing Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau of Canada to issue the War Measures Act.
- 4 October: Death of Janis Joplin, American rock, soul and blues singer-songwriter.
- 15 October: Anwar Sadat becomes President of Egypt.
- 3–13 November: The Bhola Cyclone kills 500,000 people in East Pakistan.
- 1 December: North Yemen Civil War ends.
- 14–19 December: 1970 Polish protests.
- 18 December: Establishment of Airbus.
- 24 December: Release date of Disney’s The Aristocats.
- Containerisation adopted globally, massively boosting global trade.
- 25 January: Idi Amin seizes power in Uganda.
- 26 March: Bangladesh Liberation War occurred, independence of Bangladesh from Pakistan and precipitates Third Indo-Pakistani War.
- 3 July: Death of Jim Morrison, American lead vocalist of the rock band the Doors.
- 6 July: Death of Louis Armstrong, American musician among the most influential figures in jazz.
- 17 July: Black September in Jordan ends.
- 9–10 August: Internment begins in Northern Ireland.
- 27 October: Joseph Mobutu renames The Republic of the CongoZaire.
- 15 November: Intel releases the world’s first microprocessor, the Intel 4004.
- December: Third Indo-Pakistani War.
- Nixon shock removes gold back-up for the US Dollar triggering export of inflation from rich to poor nations.
- COINTELPRO officially ends.
- Greenpeace founded.
- January: Sheikh Mujibur Rahman returns to Bangladesh from imprisonment in Pakistan.
- 30 January: Northern Ireland‘s Bloody Sunday.
- 24 March: The Godfather premieres.
- 27 March: The First Sudanese Civil War ends.
- 30 May: Lod Airport massacre.
- 8 May: The airplane serving Sabena Flight 571 from Brussels to Lod, Tel Aviv is hijacked by four members of the Black September Organization, a Palestinian terrorist group, resulting in 3 deaths and 3 injuries.
- 5–6 September: The Munich massacre, perpetrated by the Black September terrorist organization and aimed at the Israeli Olympic team, results in 17 total deaths.
- September:
- Martial law declared in the Philippines by President Ferdinand Marcos.
- Release date of the Magnavox Odyssey, the first commercial home video game console.
- 29 November: The arcade game Pong, the first commercially successful video game, is released.
- Release of A Computer Animated Hand, one of the first ever computer animations.
- 22 January: The Supreme Court of the United States decides Roe v. Wade.
- 1 March Pink Floyd‘s album The Dark Side of the Moon is released in the UK.
- 3 May: Construction of the Sears Tower (later renamed to Willis Tower) completed.
- 14 May: The first space station, Skylab, is launched.
- 11 September: 1973 Chilean coup d’état.
- October: 1973 oil crisis.
- 6 to 25 October: Yom Kippur War.
- 3 December: Pioneer 10 sends back the first close-up images of Jupiter.
- World population reaches four billion.
- 4 March: Harold Wilson becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
- 29 March: First close-up images of Mercury by Mariner 10.
- 25 April: Carnation Revolution in Portugal begins transition to democracy.
- July to August: The Turkish invasion of Cyprus leads to the creation of the Northern Cyprus.
- 8-9 August: Resignation of Richard Nixon; Vice President Gerald Ford assumes office as President of the United States, the first person not elected as either President or Vice President to take the role.
- 12 September: Emperor Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia is overthrown in a military coup.
- 8 November: Release date of Disney’s Robin Hood.
- 24 November: Discovery of “Lucy” (Australopithecus afarensis) in Tanzania’s Olduvai Gorge.
- January: Altair 8800, the first commercially successful personal computer, is released.
- 4 April: Microsoft founded in Albuquerque, New Mexico by Bill Gates and Paul Allen.
- 17 April: The Cambodian Civil War ends with victory for the Khmer Rouge.
- 30 April: The Fall of Saigon ends the Vietnam War.
- 20 November: Death of Francisco Franco.
- 22 November: Juan Carlos I becomes King of Spain.
- The Killing Fields murders begin.
- 1 April: Steve Wozniak invents the Apple I and Steve Jobs then convinces Wozniak to sell the system, giving birth to Apple Computer.
- 5 April: James Callaghan becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
- 4 July: Operation Entebbe a successful counter-terrorist hostage-rescue mission carried out by commandos of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) at Entebbe Airport in Uganda.
- 9 September:
- Death of Mao Zedong.
- Release of VHS (Video Home System) in Japan.
- 6 October: End of Cultural Revolution.
- Church Committee, a U.S. Senate select committee that investigated abuses by the CIA, NSA, FBI and Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
- First outbreak of the Ebola virus in Zaire.
- 20 January: Jimmy Carter is inaugurated as President of the United States.
- 9 February: Queen Alia of Jordan is killed in helicopter crash.
- 27 March: The Tenerife disaster in the Canary Islands, with 583 fatalities, marks the deadliest accident in aviation history.
- March to May: Shaba I conflict involves Safari Club.
- 25 May: Star Wars is released and quickly becomes the highest-grossing film of all-time.
- 16 August: Death of Elvis Presley.
- 20 August: Voyager 2 launched by NASA.
- 5 September: Voyager 1 launched by NASA.
- 11 September: Release date of the Atari 2600 video game console in North America.
- 26 October: The last wild case of smallpox is eradicated by the WHO.
- Introduction of the first mass-produced personal computers.
- Invention of artificial insulin.
- 27 April: The War in Afghanistan (1978–present) begins.
- 22 June: Discovery of Pluto‘s moon Charon.
- July: Louise Brown is the first child successfully born after her mother received in vitro fertilisation treatment.
- 26 August: John Paul I becomes pope.
- 28 September: John Paul I dies, his papacy being one of the shortest in history.
- 1 October: Independence of Tuvalu from Britain.
- 9 October: The Uganda–Tanzania War begins.
- 16 October: John Paul II becomes pope.
- 18 November: Jim Jones‘s New religious movement, the Peoples Temple, ends in the organized mass killing and suicide of 920 people in Jonestown.
- 18 December: Deng Xiaoping commences the Chinese economic reform.
- 25 December: The Cambodian-Vietnamese War begins.
- 29 December: The current Constitution of Spain comes into effect, which for some marks the completion of the Spanish transition to democracy.
- Beginning of the Nicaraguan Revolution.
- 7 January: The Vietnamese invasion of Kampuchea ends Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge regime.
- February to March: Sino-Vietnamese War.
- 11 February: The Iranian Revolution ends. Shah Reza Pahlavi is overthrown and forced into exile.
- 16 March: Central Treaty Organization dissolves.
- 28 March: The Three Mile Island nuclear accident, a partial meltdown of reactor number 2 of Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station (TMI-2) in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, near Harrisburg, and subsequent radiation leak.
- 4 May: Margaret Thatcher becomes the first female Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
- June: Arrival of Pope John Paul II in Poland, eventually sparking the Solidarity movement.
- 3 June: The Uganda–Tanzania War ends with defeat for Uganda and the exile of Idi Amin.
- 11 June: Death of John Wayne.
- 15 October: Beginning of the Salvadorian Civil War.
- 4 November: The Iran hostage crisis begins.
- 12 December: The Rhodesian Bush War ends.
- 24 December: The Soviet–Afghan War begins.
- Implementation of China’s one-child policy.
- 1.7 million people known to have been murdered in The Killing Fields.
- The Nicaraguan Revolution begins.
- The 1979 oil crisis becomes the second one since 1973.
- 24 March: Assassination of Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero.
- 18 April: Independence of Rhodesia, which becomes Zimbabwe.
- 30 April: Queen Beatrix becomes monarch of the Netherlands.
- 8 May: WHO announces the eradication of smallpox.
- 18 May: 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens in Skamania County, state of Washington, leaves approximately 57 deaths and $1 billion of property damage.
- 21 May: The Empire Strikes Back is released.
- 22 May: Release of Pac-Man, the best selling arcade game.
- 1 June: Launch of Cable News Network (CNN).
- 30 July: Independence of Vanuatu.
- 31 August: Solidarity union forms at Poland’s Gdańsk Shipyard under Lech Wałęsa, and begins agitation for greater personal freedoms.
- 22 September: Beginning of the Iran–Iraq War.
- 4 November: Ronald Reagan is elected as the 40th President of the United States, the oldest person to be elected.
- 13 November: Voyager 1 takes the first close-up pictures of Saturn.
- 8 December: Murder of John Lennon.
- Invention of the Rubik’s Cube.
- 20 January:
- Ronald Reagan is inaugurated as President of the United States.
- Iran releases the 52 U.S. hostages held in Tehran after 444 days.
- 30 March: President Reagan and three others are injured after an assassination attempt.
- 12 April: First orbital flight of the Space Shuttle.
- 11 May: Reggae singer Bob Marley dies.
- 13 May: Pope John Paul II assassination attempt.
- 5 June: The AIDS epidemic officially begins in the United States, having originated in Africa; making this to be an ongoing pandemic.
- 7 June: Operation Opera, a surprise airstrike conducted by the Israeli Air Force on an unfinished Iraqi nuclear reactor near Baghdad.
- 12 June : Release date of Steven Spielberg‘s Raiders of the Lost Ark.
- 29 July: Wedding of Charles, Prince of Wales, and Lady Diana Spencer.
- 1 August: Launch of MTV.
- 12 August: IBM Personal Computer released.
- 6 October: Assassination of Anwar Sadat.
- 2–28 February: The Hama massacre in Syria, a conflict between Syria and the Muslim Brotherhood, results in a decisive Syrian victory and about 10,000 deaths.
- 25 April: Israel withdraws from Sinai Peninsula.
- April to June: Falklands War.
- 6 June: First Israeli invasion of Lebanon begins.
- 11 June: Release date of Steven Spielberg‘s E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.
- 14 September: Princess Grace of Monaco dies following a car accident.
- 1 October: Sony releases the world’s first commercially sold CD Player, the Sony CDP-101.
- 10–15 November: Death of Leonid Brezhnev; Yuri Andropov becomes General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
- 30 November: Michael Jackson releases his landmark album Thriller, the best-selling album of all time.
- 7 December: The first execution by lethal injection takes place in Texas.
- 1 January: Independence of Brunei.
- 18 April: The Bombing of U.S. Embassy in Beirut results in 63 deaths.
- 5 June: Second Sudanese Civil War begins.
- 15 July: Nintendo releases the Family Computer (Famicom) video game console in Japan.
- 21 August: Benigno Aquino Jr., Philippine opposition leader, is assassinated in Manila just as he returns from exile.
- 1 September: Korean Air Lines Flight 007, a scheduled flight from New York City to Seoul via Anchorage, Alaska, is shot down by a Soviet Su-15 interceptor, resulting in 269 fatalities and no survivors. This leads to the declassification of GPS development.
- October: Invasion of Grenada by the United States.
- 23 October: The Beirut barracks bombing results in the deaths of 307 people, hastening the removal of international peacekeeping forces in Lebanon.
- 10 December: End of dictatorship in Argentina.
- 13 February: Konstantin Chernenko becomes General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
- 1 April: Assassination of Marvin Gaye, American musician.
- 31 October: Assassination of Indira Gandhi, Indian Prime Minister.
- 19 December: Sino-British Joint Declaration agrees to hand Hong Kong back to China by 1997.
- Operation Moses, the covert evacuation of Ethiopian Jews from Sudan during a civil war that caused a famine.
- The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is recognized as the cause of HIV/AIDS, and research on zidovudine and other treatments gets underway.
- 3 December: Bhopal disaster.
- Beginning of the 1983–85 famine in Ethiopia and the 1984-85 UK miners’ strike.
- 7 March: Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie, USA For Africa released We Are the World.
- 11 March: Mikhail Gorbachev becomes General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
- 15 March: End of military leadership in Brazil.
- June: End of 1982 Lebanon War.
- 13 July: Live Aid.
- 20 August: Beginning of the Iran–Contra affair, a political scandal in the United States that occurred during the second term of the Reagan Administration involving the sale of arms to the Khomeini government of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
- 1 September: 73 years after the infamous disaster, the wreck of the Titanic is found off the coast of Newfoundland by a joint French–American expedition led by Jean-Louis Michel of IFREMER and Robert Ballard of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
- 19 September: An earthquake in Mexico City, magnitude 8.0, kills from 5,000 to 45,000 people.
- 1 October: Release date of the Macintosh 128K, the first successful mass-market personal computer to feature a graphical user interface, built-in screen, and mouse.
- 18 October: North American release date of the Nintendo Entertainment System, a rebranding of Nintendo’s Family Computer.
- 13 November: The Armero tragedy, in which 20,000 people die following the eruption of the Nevado del Ruiz stratovolcano in Tolima, Colombia.
- 20 November: Windows 1.0, the first Microsoft Windows operating system, released.
- First use of DNA fingerprinting.
- 12–24 January: South Yemen Civil War.
- 24 January: First close-up images of the planet Uranus.
- 28 January: Challenger breaks apart 73 seconds into its flight, killing all seven crew members aboard.
- 25 February: End of dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines.
- 28 February: Assassination of Olof Palme, Prime Minister of Sweden.
- March: Return of Halley’s Comet.
- 26 April: The Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine kills about 100 people.
- World population reaches five billion.
- 2 February: The new Constitution of the Philippines goes into effect.
- September: Release date of the Master System video game console in North America.
- 13 September: A radioactive contamination accident in Goiânia, Brazil, leaves 249 people contaminated, four of which die.
- 15 September: Huawei founded in Shenzen, China by Ren Zhengfei.
- 19 October: Stock market crash of 1987.
- 22 November: Max Headroom signal hijacking in Chicago (WGN-TV and WTTW).
- December: The antidepressant drug fluoxetine (marketed as Prozac) becomes commercially available.
- 8 December: The First Intifada between Israel and Palestine begins.
- 9 December: Windows 2.0 released.
- 20 December: The passenger ferry MV Doña Paz sinks after colliding with the oil tanker MT Vector 1 in the Tablas Strait in the Philippines, killing an estimated 4,000 people (history’s worst peacetime maritime disaster).
- 2 January: Beginning of the perestroika (“restructuring”), a political movement for reformation within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union during the 1980s associated with Gorbachev and his glasnost (“openness”) policy reform.
- 20 August: End of the Iran–Iraq War.
- 29 October: Release date of the Mega Drive video game console in Japan.
- 21 December: Pan Am Flight 103 falls over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people and leaving no survivors.
- Myanmar Armed Forces launch a military coup.
- Construction of the Channel Tunnel begins.
- George H. W. Bush is elected President of the United States.
- 7 January: Emperor Shōwa (Hirohito) dies; his son, Akihito (the Emperor Heisei) becomes Emperor of Japan.
- 20 January: George H. W. Bush is inaugurated as President of the United States.
- 2 February: Alfredo Stroessner is overthrown in Paraguay. End of dictatorship.
- 14 February: Fatwa issued against Salman Rushdie.
- 15 February: End of the Soviet war in Afghanistan.
- 24 March: The oil tanker Exxon Valdez spills 10.8 million US gallons of crude oil after striking a reef, causing severe damage to the environment.
- April to June: Tiananmen Square Massacre, in which troops armed with assault rifles and accompanied by tanks fired at student-led demonstrations held in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, resulting in an undisclosed number of deaths (estimated in hundreds to thousands).
- 21 April: Release date of the Game Boy handheld console in Japan.
- 3 June: Ruhollah Khomeinidies; Ali Khamenei becomes Supreme Leader of Iran.
- 4 June: 1989 Polish legislative election although the elections were not entirely democratic, they led to the formation of a government led by Tadeusz Mazowiecki and a peaceful transition to democracy in Poland and elsewhere in Central and Eastern Europe.
- 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. A crackdown takes place in Beijing on the army’s approach to the square, and the final stand-off in the square is covered live on television.
- 5 June: An unknown Chinese protestor, “Tank Man“, stands in front of a column of military tanks on Chang’an Avenue in Beijing, temporarily halting them, an incident which achieves iconic status internationally through images taken by Western photographers.
- 31 July: Release date of the Game Boy handheld console in North America.
- 14 August: North American release date of the Sega Genesis, a rebrand of Sega Mega Drive.
- 25 August: Voyager 2 makes its closest approach to Neptune and its largest moon, Triton.
- 9 November: Fall of the Berlin Wall; the Revolutions of 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Bloc begin in Europe, which leads to the end of the Cold War.
- 15 November and 17 December: The first direct Presidential election in Brazil since 1960.
- 17 November: Release date of Disney’s The Little Mermaid.
- 1–9 December: A military coup attempt begins in the Philippines against the government of Philippine PresidentCorazon C. Aquino.
- 17 December: The first episode of The Simpsons premieres on Fox.
- 20 December: The United States invasion of Panama begins.
- 24 December: The First Liberian Civil War begins.
- 25 December: Trial and execution of Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu in Romania.
Bill Hicks “For The War, Against The Troops”
- 11 March: End of dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet in Chile.
- 15 March: After his election in 1989, Fernando Collor begins his term as the first democratically elected President of Brazil since 1964.
- April to May: Launch of the Hubble Space Telescope.
- 22 May:
- North and South Yemenunify to form the Republic of Yemen.
- Windows 3.0 released.
- 16 July: An earthquake measuring Mw 7.7 kills more than 1,600 in the Philippines.
- 2 August: Gulf War begins.
- 3 October: German reunification.
- 21 November: Release date of the Super Famicom in Japan.
- 28 November: John Major becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
- 20 December: Tim Berners-Lee publishes the first web site, which described the World Wide Web project.
- The Contra War ends.
- Myanmar Armed Forces place Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest.
- The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change releases its first assessment report, linking increases in carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere, and a resultant rise in global temperature, to human activities.
- 28 February: The Gulf War ends in US withdrawal and a failed uprising.
- 23 March: Beginning of the Sierra Leone Civil War.
- 21 May: Assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, Indian Prime Minister.
- 24–25 May: Operation Solomon, a covert Israeli military operation to airlift Ethiopian Jews to Israel.
- 12 June: Mount Pinatubo erupts with a Volcanic Explosivity Index of 6 and reduces global temperatures.
- 27 June–7 July: The Ten-Day War in Slovenia begins the Yugoslav Wars.
- 1 July: President George H. W. Bush nominates the controversial Clarence Thomas for the Supreme Court of the United States to replace Thurgood Marshall, who had announced his retirement.
- 10 July: Boris Yeltsin becomes the first President of Russia.
- 22 July: American serial killer Jeffery Dahmer, who murdered 17 people, is arrested.
- 13 September: The Senate of the Philippines rejects the bilateral treaty with United States which would have extended American use of Subic Bay Naval Base.
- 24 September: Nirvana releases Nevermind, its landmark second album.
- 28 September: Death of Miles Davis, American trumpeter, bandleader, and composer.
- 12 August: North American release date of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, a rebranding of the Super Famicom.
- 5 October: Linus Torvalds launches the first version of the Linux kernel.
- 30 October–1 November: Madrid Conference of 1991.
- Early November: Tropical Storm Thelma lashes into Eastern Visayas, leaving 8,000 people dead.
- 24 November: Death of Freddie Mercury, British singer, songwriter, and record producer.
- 22 November: Release date of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast.
- 26 December:
- Dissolution of the Soviet Union and independence of 15 former Soviet republics.
- Beginning of the Algerian Civil War.
- Beginning of the Somali Civil War.
- 1991 Sino-Soviet Border Agreement.
- 16 January: End of the Salvadorian Civil War.
- 7 February: The Maastricht Treaty creates the European Union.
- 3 April: End of dictatorship in Albania.
- 6 April: The Bosnian War begins.
- April to May: Los Angeles riots over the acquittal of those involved in the beating of Rodney King.
- August: Hurricane Andrew kills 65 and causes $26.5 billion in damages in the Bahamas and the United States.
- 8 August: After the end of its dictatorship, South Korea is admitted to the UN.
- 4 October: El Al Flight 1862, in which a Boeing 747 cargo aircraft of the then state-owned Israeli airline El Al crashes into the Groeneveen and Klein-Kruitberg flats in the Bijlmermeer neighbourhood of Amsterdam, resulting in 43 deaths.
- 25 November: Release date of Disney’s Aladdin.
- 30 November: Release date of Schindler’s List.
- 29 December: After controversies surrounding him result in an impeachment process, Fernando Collor resigns and Itamar Franco takes office as President of Brazil.
- Discovery of the Kuiper belt and the first extrasolar planets.
- 1 January: Velvet Divorce between Czech Republic and Slovakia.
- 20 January: Bill Clinton is inaugurated as President of the United States.
- 26 February: 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
- February to April: The Waco siege, the law enforcement siege of the compound that belonged to the Seventh-day Adventist religious sect Branch Davidians near Waco, Texas, carried out by the U.S. federal government, Texas state law enforcement, and the U.S. military, which results in a gunfight, a fire at the compound and 86 deaths.
- 11 June: Release date of Steven Spielberg‘s Jurassic Park.
- 24 May: Independence of Eritrea.
- 28 June: Two UPLB students Eileen Sarmenta and Allan Gomez were abducted and killed by the men of Calauan, LagunaMayor Antonio Sanchez in the Philippines.
- 27 July: Release date of Windows NT 3.1.
- 13 September: Oslo accords end First Intifada between Israel and Palestine.
- 1 November: The Maastricht Treaty founds the European Union.
- 2 December: Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar is gunned down by police.
- 11 December: The Highland Towers collapse in Selangor, Malaysia, leaving 48 dead.
- 1993 child sexual abuse accusations against Michael Jackson.
- 1 January: Establishment of North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
- 25 February: Cave of the Patriarchs massacre in the West Bank, a shooting massacre carried out by American-Israeli Baruch Goldstein, which resulted in 30 deaths and 125 injuries.
- 6 April: The assassination of Juvénal Habyarimana and Cyprien Ntaryamira triggers the Rwandan genocide.
- 8 April: Suicide of Kurt Cobain.
- 10 May: End of apartheid in South Africa and election of Nelson Mandela.
- 6 May: Opening of the Channel Tunnel.
- May to July: First Yemeni Civil War.
- 1 May: Death of Ayrton Senna, Brazilian racing driver.
- 15 June: Release date of Disney’s The Lion King.
- 23 June: Release date of Forrest Gump.
- 1 July: Plano Real introduces the new real currency in Brazil.
- 2 July: Colombian footballer Andrés Escobar is shot dead in Medellín.
- 5 July: Amazon founded in Bellevue, Washington by Jeff Bezos.
- 8–17 July: Death and state funeral of Kim Il-sung. Kim Jong-il becomes Supreme Leader of North Korea.
- 21 September: Release date of Windows NT 3.5.
- 28 September: The car ferryMS Estonia sinks in the Baltic Sea, killing 852 people.
- 1 October: Palau gains independence from the United States.
- 3 December: Release date of the PlayStation in Japan.
- 11 December: The First Chechen War begins.
- 14 December: Construction of the Three Gorges Dam begins in Hubei, China.
- Rise of a wave of Palestinian terrorist attacks in Israel.
- 1 January:
- Establishment of the World Trade Organization.
- Austria, Finland and Sweden join the European Union.
- 17 January: A 6.9 MwGreat Hanshin earthquake strikes the southern Hyōgo Prefecture of Japan with a maximum Shindo of VII, leaving 5,502–6,434 people dead, and 251,301–310,000 displaced.
- 20 March: The Tokyo subway sarin attack, an act of domestic terrorism perpetrated by members of the doomsday cult movement Aum Shinrikyo (now Aleph), in which they released sarin, an extremely toxic synthetic compound, in five coordinate attacks, resulting in 13 deaths and 6,252 injuries.
- 31 March: Murder of Selena.
- 7 April: Release date of Disney’s Pocahontas.
- 19 April: American terrorist Timothy McVeigh bombs the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.
- 29 June: The Sampoong Department Store collapse, a structural failure in a department store in Seoul, South Korea, kills 502 people and injures other 1,445.
- 11–22 July: The Srebrenica massacre of over 8,000 Bosniak Muslim men and boys.
- 21 July: The Third Taiwan Strait Crisis begins.
- August to September: NATObombing raids in Bosnia end the Bosnian War.
- 24 August: Release date of Windows 95.
- 9 September: Release date of the PlayStation in North America.
- 28 September: Oslo II Accord.
- 3 October: O. J. Simpson is found not guilty of double murder for the deaths of former wife Nicole Simpson and Ronald Goldman in 1994.
- October to November: Typhoon Angela leaves the Philippines and Vietnam devastated, with 882 deaths and US$315 million in damage.
- 4 November: Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, Israeli Prime Minister and Defence Minister, by Yigal Amir, an Israeli right-wing extremist.
- 22 November: Premiere of Toy Story, the first computer-animated feature film and the first Pixar Animation Studios film.
- 14 December: The signing of the Dayton Accords put an end to the three-and-a-half-year-long Bosnian War.
- The North Korean famine begins.
- 18 March: The Ozone Disco Club fire in Quezon City, Philippines, kills 162 people.
- 23 March: The Third Taiwan Strait Crisis ends.
- 28–29 April: The Port Arthur massacre in Tasmania, Australia leaves 35 people dead, leading to tighter gun regulations in Australia.Nepalese Civil War begins.
- 23 June: Release date of the Nintendo 64 video game console in Japan.
- 5 July: Dolly the sheep becomes the first successful cloned mammal.
- 24 August: Release date of Windows NT 4.0.
- 31 August: The First Chechen War ends.
- 2 September: A permanent peace agreement is signed at the Malacañan Palace between the Government of the Philippines and the Moro National Liberation Front.
- 7 September: Murder of Tupac Shakur.
- 23–27 September: Western Wall Tunnel riots.
- 27 September: The Taliban government takes control of Afghanistan, creating the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.
- 24 October: The First Congo War begins.
- 1 November: Release of DVD in Japan.
- End of dictatorship in Taiwan.
- Increasing terrorist attacks in Israel.
- January to August: The Albanian Civil War (Lottery Uprising), sparked by pyramid sch failures, in which the government was toppled, with new parliamentary elections, and more than 2,000 people killed.
- 4 February: 1997 Israeli helicopter disaster, when two Israeli Air Force transport helicopters ferrying Israeli soldiers into Israel’s security zone in southern Lebanon collided in mid-air, killing all 73 Israeli military personnel on board.
- March: 39 Heaven’s Gate cultists commit mass suicide at their compound.
- 9 March: Murder of Biggie Smalls, American hip-hop artist.
- 13 March: Island of Peace massacre, a mass murder attack that occurred at the Island of Peace on the Israeli-Jordanian border, in which 7 people were killed and 6 injured.
- 2 May: Tony Blair becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
- 17 May: Kabila ousts Mobutu; Zaire becomes the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
- 21 May: Radiohead release OK Computer.
- 25 June: J. K. Rowling publishes Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.
- 27 June : Release date of Disney’s Hercules.
- 1 July: Transfer of sovereignty over Hong Kong from UK to China.
- 2 July: The Bank of Thailand floats the baht, triggering the Asian financial crisis.
- 15 July: Fashion designer, Gianni Versace is murdered by Andrew Cunanan.
- 2 August: The First Liberian Civil War ends.
- 31 August: Diana, Princess of Wales is killed in a car accident in Paris.
- 19 December: Release date of Titanic.
- Sound barrier broken on land.
- February: Osama bin Laden publishes a fatwa against the West.
- May: Riots in Indonesia, including incidents of mass violence, demonstrations, and civil unrest of a racial nature, result in the Fall of Suharto and the independence of East Timor.
- 28 May: Murder of Phil Hartman.
- 19 June: Release date of Disney’s Mulan.
- 25 June: Release date of Windows 98.
- 30 June: Joseph Estrada becomes President of the Philippines.
- 10 April: The Good Friday Agreement brings an end to The Troubles in Northern Ireland.
- 15 April: Death of Pol Pot.
- 2 August: The Second Congo War begins.
- 7 August: Kenya and Tanzania bombings.
- 4 September: Google is founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin.
- 21 October: Release date of Nintendo’s Game Boy Color handheld console in Japan.
- October to November: Hurricane Mitch leaves more than 19,325 dead in Central America as a result of catastrophic flooding and mudslides.
- 17 November: Release date of Nintendo’s Game Boy Color handheld console in North America.
- 25 November: Release date of A Bug’s Life, Pixar Animation’s second feature movie.
- 27 November: Sega releases the Dreamcast video game console in Japan.
- 19 December: The impeachment of Bill Clinton begins as a result of the Clinton–Lewinsky scandal.
- The North Korean famine has killed an estimated 2.5 million people by this point.
- 1 January: Euro introduced to the financial markets. Coins and banknotes enter circulation in participating countries in 2002.
- 2 February: Hugo Chavez becomes President of Venezuela.
- April: A crisis in East Timor, which led to 1,400 deaths, begins.
- 20 April: The Columbine High School massacre in Colorado, United States, causes 15 deaths.
- 21 April: The Second Liberian Civil War begins.
- 1 May: The first episode of SpongeBob SquarePants airs on Nickelodeon.
- May to July: The Fourth Indo-Pakistani War.
- 11 June: The end of the Kosovo War ends the Yugoslav Wars.
- 18 June: Release date of Disney’s Tarzan.
- 16 July: John F. Kennedy Jr. plane crash.
- 26 August: The Second Chechen War begins.
- 3–16 September: Russian apartment bombings kill more than 350 people.
- 9 September: Sega releases the Dreamcast video game console in North America.
- 12 October: World populationreaches 6 billion.
- 30 November: ExxonMobil founded.