January 31, 2020
United Kingdom leaves the European Union
January 23, 2020
China imposed a quarantine on travel in or out of Wuhan, Huanggang & Ezhou in response to a novel coronavirus outbreak which later came to kill millions people and infect over 100 million people globally. On January 30th the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus a global health emergency.
June 23, 2016
United Kingdom European Union membership referendum, UK electorate voted to leave the EU by a margin of 51.89% to 48.11%
September 17, 2011
Beginning of Occupy Wall Street movement
March 11, 2011
Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, which lead to meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant
December 17, 2010
Arab Spring begins
January 9, 2009
Satoshi Nakamoto published bitcoin whitepaper
2007-2009
Global financial crisis caused by popping of United States subprime mortgage driven housing bubble. The bear market in U.S. stocks began on October 9, 2007 & ended on March 9, 2009.
June 29, 2007
Steve Jobs announced the iPhone, ushering in the mobile web
December 26, 2004
Indian Ocean earthquake & tsunami
August 19, 2004
Google (later Alphabet) has initial public offering at $85 per share, priced in a Dutch auction.
March 20, 2003
Iraq War begins
September 11, 2001
9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center & Pentagon in the United States
January 15, 2001
Wikipedia founded by Jimmy Wales & Larry Sanger
March 10, 2000
Dot com bubble peak
January 10, 2000
AOL & Time Warner merged
November 12, 1999
President Clinton signed the Financial Services Modernization Act that repealed Glass-Steagall, setting stage for the great recession less than a decade later
January 1, 1999
Euro launched
November 20, 1998
launch of the International Space Station
September 4, 1998
Larry Page & Sergey Brin found Google
August 29, 1997
Reed Hastings & Marc Randolph found Netflix
July 1, 1997
United Kingdom transfers sovereignty of Hong Kong to the People's Republic of China
August 9, 1995
Netscape commenced their IPO listing on Nasdaq, marking the beginning of the web-fueled tech stock bubble
January 1, 1995
World Trade Organization commenced
July 5, 1994
Jeff Bezos founds Amazon.com
January 23, 1993
Marc Andreessen released xmosaic 0.5 web browser
April 27, 1994
South Africa holds multiracial election, ending apartheid with the election of Nelson Mandela
February 7, 1992
Maastricht Treaty signed, created the European Union
December 26, 1991
Soviet Union dissolution
August 6, 1991
Sir Tim Berners-Lee announces his invention of the World Wide Web on the alt.hypertext newsgroup
November 9, 1989
fall of the Berlin Wall
June 4, 1989
Tiananmen Square Massacre
October 19, 1987
Black Monday - 22.61% crash in the Dow Jones Industrial Average
April 26, 1986
Chernobyl disaster - catastrophic nuclear accident
April 23, 1984
Margaret Heckler, Secretary of Health and Human Services announces the discovery of HIV as the "probable" cause of AIDS
September 26, 1983
Soviet Air Defence Forces lieutenant colonel Stanislav Petrov saved the world from nuclear war
April 1, 1976
Steve Jobs & Steve Wozniak found Apple
April 30, 1975
Fall of Saigon, end of the Vietnam War
April 4, 1975
Bill Gates & Paul Allen found Microsoft
October 6–25, 1973
Yom Kippur War
January 22, 1973
United States Supreme Court rules on Roe v. Wade
January 11, 1973
Beginning of 1973-74 stock market crash which lasted until December 6, 1974 & popped the bubble in the Nifty Fifty "one-decision" blue chip stocks which traded at exceptionally high P/E ratios
June 17, 1972 - September 8, 1974
Watergate scandal
January 30, 1972
Northern Ireland Bloody Sunday
November 15, 1971
Intel advertises their 4004 microprocessor - the first commercially available computer processo - in Electronic News
August 15, 1971
President Nixon closed the gold window
November 17, 1970
Douglas Engelbart patented the computer mouse
May 4, 1970
Ohio National Guard Kent State shootings
August 15–18, 1969
Woodstock Music & Art Fair
July 20, 1969
Apollo 11 lunar landing
June 21, 1968
Bob Taylor approved ARPANET computer network plan - an early packet-switching network and the first network to implement the TCP/IP protocol suite
April 4, 1968
Martin Luther King Jr. assasinated
November 22, 1963
John F. Kennedy assasinated
August 28, 1963
Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech
October 16–28, 1962
Cuban Missile Crisis
November 1, 1955
Vietnam War begins
July 29, 1958
National Aeronautics and Space Administration formed
December 1, 1955
Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat to a white man in Montgomery, Alabama.
May 14, 1955
Warsaw Pact
May 17, 1954
United States Supreme Court rules on Brown v. Board of Education
December 10, 1949
Mao Zedong's People's Liberation Army laid siege to Chongqing and Chengdu. Chiang Kai-shek fled to Taiwan
April 4, 1949
NATO formed
January 30, 1948
Mahatma Gandhi assasinated
August 14, 1945
Japan's Emperor Shōwa's accepts the Potsdam Declaration
August 9, 1945
United States drops nuclear bomb on Nagasaki
August 6, 1945
United States drops nuclear bomb on Hiroshima
June 26, 1945
United Nations formed
May 8, 1945
World War II in Europe & The Holocaust end
June 6, 1944
D-Day - Normandy landings
December 7, 1941
Japan attacks Pearl Harbor
June 22, 1941
Operation Barbarossa - Germany invades the Solviet Union
September 1, 1939
Germany invades Poland
March 12, 1938
Anschluss - Nazi Germany annexation of Austria
July 7, 1937
Second Sino-Japanese War begins
May 6, 1937
The Hindenburg explodes
December 26, 1933
Edwin H. Armstrong granted 5 U.S. patents for widebrand FM radio transmission
July 28, 1932
Bonus Army conflict
January 30, 1930
Adolph Hitler appointed Chancellor of Germany
October 29, 1929
Wall Street Crash of 1929 begins Great Recession
September 28, 1928
Alexander Fleming discovers penicillin, the first antibiotic
September 23, 1928
Philo Farnsworth demonstrates electronic television to press
November 11, 1918
Armistice Day - end of WW1
December 18, 1917
18th Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits "intoxicating liquors"
November 7-8, 1917
Bolshevik's October Revolution creates Soviet Russia
June 28, 1914
Archduke Franz Ferdinand II assasinated in Sarajevo - begin WW1
December 23, 1913
President Woodrow Wilson signed the Federal Reserve Act
December 13, 1913
Wilbur and Orville Wright's first flight
October 1, 1908
First Model T Ford completed
June 30, 1908
Tunguska event - explosion in Russian forest area believed to be caused by an air burst of a meteor
May 13, 1897
Guglielmo Giovanni Maria Marconi sent the first ever wireless communication over open sea, leading to the development of commercial radio broadcasting
October 14, 1878
Thomas Edison filed his first patent application for "Improvements in Electric Lights"
March 10, 1876
Alexander Graham Bell made first telephone call
January 3, 1868
The Meiji Restoration: Shogun rule in Japan ended, restoring imperial rule
August 20, 1866
President Andrew Johnson signed a Proclamation—Declaring that Peace, Order, Tranquillity, and Civil Authority Now Exists in and Throughout the Whole of the United States of America
April 14, 1865
President Abraham Lincoln assassinated by John Wilkes Booth
January 1, 1863
President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation
April 12, 1861
American civil war began
November 24, 1859
Charles Darwin publishes "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life"
July 19-20, 1848
Woman’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, NY begins the Women's Suffrage movement, which would last until 1920
February 21, 1848
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels publish "The Communist Manifesto"
1845 — 1847
Railway mania bubble across the United Kingdom
May 24, 1844
Samuel F. B. Morse sends "WHAT HATH GOD WROUGHT" telegraph message to Alfred Vail
August 29, 1831
Michael Faraday created the electric generator
July 5, 1830
France begins occupation & colonization of Algiers
July 23, 1829
William Austin Burt received U.S. patent No. 5581X covering his “typographer.”
June 2, 1825
Bubble Act of 1720 repealed, setting stage for Railway Mania
1816
Joseph Nicéphore Niépce captured negatives inventing the first permanent photograph of a camera image
February 21, 1804
Locomotive using Richard Trevithick’s ‘Pen-y-derren’ steam engine hauls 10 tons of iron, 5 wagons and 70 men 9.75 miles
May 18, 1803 - November 20, 1815
The Napoleonic Wars
May 5, 1789 - November 9, 1799
French revolution
July 4, 1776
United States Congress approved the Declaration of Independence
March 9, 1776
Adam Smith published "An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations"
April 19, 1775 - September 1783
American Revolutionary War
December 16, 1773
The Boston Tea Party
1712
Thomas Newcomen invented the steam engine
1711
South Sea Company formed, a British joint-stock company established to reduce the cost of the national debt. It would lead to the South Sea Bubble crash in 1720
February 3, 1637
Tulip bulb contracts reached their mania peak before crashing
1631 - 1653
Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan begins building the Taj Mahal in 1631. He opens the mausoleum for his favorite wife Mumtaz Mahal in 1648 & the building is completed in 1653
October 2, 1608
Hans Lippershey files patent for telescope
October 31, 1517
Martin Luther published the Ninety-five Theses / Disputation on the Power of Indulgences, marking the beginning of the Protestant Reformation, which would last until 1648
October 12, 1492
Christopher Columbus discovered America
May 29, 1453
Fall of Constantinople - Byzantine Empire comes to an end from Ottoman army attack
1440
Johannes Gutenberg creates the printing press using movable type
October 1347
Black death: bubonic plague hits Europe through Sicilian port of Messina
1300 - 1600
The Renaissance
June 15, 1215
King John of England signed Magna Carta Libertatum, a charter of rights drafted by the Archbishop of Canterbury
Spring 1206 – August 18, 1227
Genghis Khan ruled over the Mongol Empire
April 22, 571
Muhammad born
72 - 80
Roman Colosseum built
April 5, 33
Resurrection of Jesus
April 3, 33
Crucifixion of Jesus
~ 6 BC - 4 BC
Jesus of Nazareth born
January 16, 27 BC - March 17, 180
Pax Romana - peace across the Roman Empire
336-323 BC
Alexander the Great rules as king of Macedon
480–400 BC
life of Gautama Buddha, birth of Buddhism
499–449 BC
Greco-Persian Wars
551–479 BC
life of Confucius (孔子), birth of Confucianism
1754 BC
Code of Hammurabi, a Babylonian code of law
200,000 BC
modern humans
7,000,000 - 5,000,000 BC
first human ancestors appeared
4,540,000,000 BC
Earth formed
13,800,000,000 BC
big bang
How Old Was I on a Certain Day?
