posted
History and Government > World History Millennium Milestones The 100 Most Significant Events of the Last Thousand Years
Reducing the millennium to a laundry list of highlights cannot pretend to be a definitive or accurate exercise. Note that only events judged to have world significance are included. Apologies for the inevitable bias toward Western as well as twentieth century events—we are all prisoners of our own history. For a less whirlwind glance at the last thousand years, see our Millennium Timeline.
1066—Norman Conquest of Britain 1095—Pope Urban II calls for the Crusades 1100s—Angkor Wat is built 1206—Genghis Khan begins creation of largest land empire in history 1215—Magna Carta signed 1260—Chartres Cathedral consecrated 1271—Marco Polo begins travels to Asia 1273—Thomas Aquinas's Summa theologica 1300s—Renaissance begins in Italy 1347—Bubonic plague (Black Death) spreads in Europe c.1387—Chaucer's Canterbury Tales 1399—Tamerlane begins last great conquest 1438—Incan Empire formed in Peru 1455—Gutenberg's movable-type printing press produces the Bible 1492—Columbus reaches the New World 1509—Michelangelo begins painting Sistine Chapel 1513—Machiavelli's The Prince 1517—Martin Luther initiates Reformation 1519—Aztec Empire at height as Spanish arrive 1520—Suleiman I “the Magnificent” presides over the Ottoman Empire's greatest period 1522—Magellan's expedition circumnavigates the globe 1543—Copernicus postulates a heliocentric universe 1582—Pope Gregory XIII reforms calendar 1603—Shakespeare's Hamlet 1605—Cervantes's Don Quixote, first modern novel 1609—Galileo makes first astronomical observations with a telescope 1637—Descartes publishes Discours de la méthode 1643—Taj Mahal completed 1664—Newton's theory of universal gravitation 1667—Milton's Paradise Lost 1684—Leibniz's calculus published 1690—Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding 1721—Bach completes the Brandenburg Concertos 1755—Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language 1760—Industrial Revolution begins in England 1762—Rousseau's The Social Contract 1764—Mozart (aged eight) writes first symphony 1769—Watt patents first practical steam engine 1776—U.S. Declaration of Independence; Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations 1787—U.S. Constitution signed 1789—French Revolution begins 1792—Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Woman 1796—Jenner discovers smallpox vaccine 1808—Beethoven's Fifth Symphony 1815—Battle of Waterloo crushes Napoleon 1819—Bolívar defeats Spanish forces at Boyacá 1826—Niepce takes first photograph 1833—Slavery abolished in British Empire 1842—Long uses first anesthetic (ether) 1859—Darwin's On the Origin of Species; Lenoir builds first practical internal-combustion engine 1862—Pasteur's experiments lead to germ theory; Salon des Refusés introduces impressionism 1867—Japan ends 675-year shogun rule 1876—Bell patents the telephone 1879—Edison invents electric light 1880s—Europe colonizes African continent 1885—World's first skyscraper built in Chicago 1893—New Zealand becomes first country in the world to grant women the vote 1895—Lumiére brothers introduce motion pictures; Marconi sends first radio signals 1897—Herzl launches Zionist movement 1900—Freud's Interpretation of Dreams 1903—Wright brothers fly first motorized airplane 1905—Einstein announces theory of relativity 1907—Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon introduces cubism 1911—Rutherford discovers structure of atom 1913—Ford develops first moving assembly line 1914—World War I begins 1916—Sanger founds international birth control movement 1917—Lenin leads the Bolshevik Revolution 1918—Global “Spanish flu” epidemic 1922—Joyce's Ulysses published 1927—Farnsworth demonstrates working model of a television; Lemaitre proposes big bang theory 1928—Fleming discovers penicillin 1929—Hubble proposes theory of expanding universe; U.S. stock market crash precipitates global depression 1936—Keynes's The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money 1939—Hitler invades Poland; World War II begins 1942—Nazi leaders at Wannsee Conference coordinate “final solution to the Jewish question” 1945—Atomic bombs are dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki; first electronic computer, ENIAC, is built; Arab League launches modern pan-Arabism 1946—First meeting of U.N. General Assembly; Churchill's “Iron Curtain” speech marks beginning of cold war 1947—Gandhi's civil disobedience movement leads to an independent India 1949—Communist victory in China under Mao Zedong 1950s—Abstract expressionism introduced 1953—Watson, Crick, and Franklin discover DNA's structure 1954—Brown v. Board of Education begins unraveling of U.S. racial segregation 1957—Russia launches first satellite, Sputnik I 1959—Mary and Louis Leakey uncover hominid fossils 1969—Armstrong and Aldrin walk on the Moon; Internet (ARPA) goes online 1980—Smallpox eradicated 1981—Scientists identify AIDS 1989—Fall of Communism in Eastern Europe 1991—Breakup of Soviet Union; apartheid ends in South Africa
Hmmm ... I thought I came across something about an older (maybe less legitamit anesthetic)...
quote:1903—Wright brothers fly first motorized airplane
Represent! OHIO! (I know where Wilbur was born ... we still got Orville, and the state they both grew up in!)
Posts: 5555 | From: Tha 5th Dimension. | Registered: Apr 2006
| IP: Logged |
posted
^ Though the timeline is about modern events and has nothing to do with ancient times let alone ancient Egypt. I smell a distraction.
Posts: 26280 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
| IP: Logged |