Untitled Document
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