Major World Events

150​0 CE/AD - Present

Beginning to 1 BCE * 1-999 AD/CE * 1000-1499 AD/CE. *. 1500 AD/CE - Present

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Luther-Bible-1_b_9_fp.jpg

A geocentric model on the opposite page of Luther’s 1534 German Translation of the Bible

1500-1599

  • 1500s - Scientists were understanding that sound travel through the air with invisible waves (although not captured till 1857)

  • 1502 - First African Slaves arrive in North America

  • 1507 - Martin Luther, a geocentrist, is ordained as a priest at Erfurt

  • 1509 -

    • John Calvin born (d. 1564)

    • Henry VIII succeeds to English throne

  • 1510 Luther sent to Rome on monastic business. He saw the corruption of the church

  • 1513  Juan Ponce de Leon claims Florida for Spain

    • Leo X becomes Pope

    • Niccolo Machiavelli writes "The Prince"

  • 1515 Teresa of Avila Spain b. - d. 1582 mentored John of the cross

    • 1515 While teaching on Romans, Luther realizes faith and justification are the work of God

  • 1516  Sir Thomas More writes "Utopia"

  • 1517 - Luther nailed 95 theses to W. Door

    • Zwingli's reform is also underway

  • 1519 - Death of Leonardo da Vinci (artist and scientist)

  • 1519-22 - Magellan sailed around the world and arrived back and was a day behind- thus discovering the international dateline and confirming round and not flat.. This shattered all worldviews. They also met tons who knew nothing of Jesus and were completely happy. (IDS-Messner)

  • 1521 (April 18) - Luther was excommunicated - "I cannot and will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe.”

  • 1526 - Tyndale’s NT were first printed and were considered contraband. Confiscated and destroyed.  Read behind closed doors in England.

  • 1531 -

    • Henry VIII became head of Anglican Church

    • Death of Ulrich Zwingli (religious reformer and statesman)

    • Luther completes the German translation of the Bible that has a geocentric picture of the universe on the opposite page of Gen 1.

  • 1534 - Tyndale martyred - never finished the OT translation.

    • Church of England begins

  • 1535 - Death of Sir Thomas More (scholar and statesman)

  • 1536  - Death of Erasmus (scholar)

  • 1541 - Reformist John Calvin regains authority in Geneva

  • 1542 - John of the cross b. - d 1591

    • Mary Queen of Scots became queen at 6 days old til 1567

  • 1543 -

    • Caspar Vopell made an armillary sphere depicting North America and Asia as the same landmass and had the sun, moon, known planets, and important stars circling the Ptolemaic idea of the earth-centered world.

    • Nicolaus Copernicus' book, just prior to death, presented his heliocentric model of cosmology. (Wikipedia) - the church condemned it. (Galieo confirmed with a telescope in 1609.) This view Built on Pythagoras’s view (c 570-495 BCE) that the Earth was round and Aristarchus suggesting that the earth and planets revolved around the sun. Egyptian mathematician and astronomer Ptolemy (AD 100) believed that the stars and planets reviewed around the earth. The church adopted this theory for 1400+ years.

  • 1546 - Luther died (born 1483)

  • 1546 - Council of Trent - No one shall interpret Scripture contrary to the Mother Church.

  • 1554 - NT divided into verses.

  • 1555 - Whole Bible with current verse division was printed

  • 1556- Ignatius of Loyola dies. Spiritual exercises

    • Shaanxi earthquake kills 830,000

  • 1558 - Queen Elizabeth 1 Had no kids. Nephew James became King. - reigned till 1603 - sister was Blood Mary. Cousin is Mary Queen of Scots.

  • 1562 - Sir John Hawkins starts British slave trade in West Indies

  • 1564 - Galileo is born (1579 considers becoming a monk but dad discourages it)

    • Death of Michelangelo (artist)

  • 1565 - John Calvin dies

  • 1577  - Sir Francis Drake begins voyage around the world

  • 1582 - Teresa of Avila dies - Mystic and spiritual director

    • Gregorian calendar introduced by Pope Gregory XIII gradually adopted as the international calendar of choice to replace the pagan developed Julian calendar in 45 BCE. 10 days were dropped from the Julian calendar. This calendar had 12 months, like the Julian version, but with irregular lengths, This began happening in all countries except for Eastern Orthodox countries make both branches of Christianity (Eastern and Western) would celebrate Easter on different Sundays in most years. (See 325 CE when the date for Easter was originally set.)

  • 1587- Mary Queen of Scots executed for treason

  • 1590 - spectacle glass disks set in front of each other instead of side by side by father and son Hans and Zacharias Janssen’s (Netherlands) to make the first microscope.

  • 1591 -John of the cross died at 49

  • 1596.03.31 - Descartes b. - I think therefore I am "But what then am I? A thing that thinks. What is that? A thing that doubts, understands, affirms, denies, wills, refuses, and that also imagines and senses.”

  • 1598 - Edict of Nantes allows Calvinism in France

1600-1699

  • 1600 - British East India Company founded

  • 1603 - Arminius takes the position that predestination is based on fore-knowledge

    • King James of England and Ireland till 1625. Son of Mary Queen of Scots.

  • 1607 - First permanent British settlement founded in Virginia, North America

  • 1608 - The telescope was invented by Hans Lippershey (Netherlands) who used it to spy on others (alternate name: spyglass)

  • 1609

    • Galileo (Italian), focused on how not why, with an artistic background, observes the hills and valleys of the moon and was able to view stars in the Pleides through his telescope (He converted a carnival telescope into one with 20x normal vision). (Galileo, Kepler, and Descartes laid the work for Newton). He was convinced that Copernicus (1543) was correct that the Sun was indeed the center of the universe defying the Church’s stance that the Earth was the center of reality. He also studied bones with a microscope.

    • Tycho Brahe, a contemporary, combined Ptolemaic system (heart at center) and Copernican system. His view was the planets Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn orbited the Sun and all of them orbit the earth (hybrid model between Copernicus and Ptolemy). But he was flat out wrong. He did have a great pupil, Johannes Kepler (1571-1630). Brahe kept some of his research from Kepler for fear of his prize student’s abilities.

    • Johannes Kepler (German) (between 1609 and 1619) publishes his 3 laws of planetary motion. 1) Planets orbit around the sun in an elliptical pattern. 2) “A line segment joining a planet and the Sun sweeps out equal areas during equal intervals of time.” 3) “the squares of the orbital periods of the planets are directly proportional to the cubes of the semi-major axes of their orbits.” Kepler didn’t know about gravity (Newton), his theories influenced Newton’s own theories.

  • 1610 - b. of Brother Lawrence

    • Louis XIII of France begins to rule at 9 years old - He never took a bath for the first 7 years of his life because of his hygiene understanding of the times - see 1655 French Doctor’s thoughts.

  • 1611

    • KJV translated

    • Cardinal Robert Bellarmine, based on 4 church mathematicians, accepted that Galileo’s discovers were valid (but would later get him in trouble)

  • 1616 - Roman inquisition that denounced Galileo's support of heliocentrism (Wikipedia). How could the sun be the center?  Man and his space are the center. You are rejecting God!

    • Death of William Shakespeare (dramatist and poet)

  • 1620 - Francis Bacon published Novum Organum (New Instrument) - use reason

    • Puritan Pilgrim Father establish a colony in New England

  • 1621 - John Arndt d.

  • 1622 - Francis of Sales dies

  • 1623 - Blaise Pascal born. (died 1662) Pascal’s Wager -

  • 1626 - Francis Bacon d. - father of the scientific method of experimentation

  • 1628 - William Harvey writes about how the blood is pumped throughout the body by the heart and then returns to the heart. Was very controversial, but became the basis for modern blood and heart research.

  • 1632-33 - Galileo was tried, "found 'vehemently suspect of heresy,' forced to recant, and spent the rest of his life under house arrest." (Wikipedia).

    • He confesses that he defended Copernican theory too vigorously (PBS/Nova).

  • 1641 - Galileo draws up the plans for the first pendulum clock

  • 1642

    • Galileo dies (Jan 8) (had three kids out of wedlock with the same woman, 14 yrs younger, whom he never lived with)

    • Isaac Newton is born (Dec 25) (d. 1727) - Greatest Physicist of all time because of his curiosity or scientific inquiry.

  • 1643 - Torricellia created the first vacuum tube that led scientists to discover that air was made of something

  • 1648 - Taj Mahal built by Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan

  • 1650 - Rene Descartes (b. 1596) dies - human intellect is capable of deciding what is true and false.

  • 1654 - Grotius dies - cut loose the OT from the NT.

  • 1655 - a French doctor recommended that submerging your body in water was unhealthy and even dangerous because humans need dirt and oil to keep pores clogged to protect against getting diseases. See 1847 for Semmelweis suggesting doctors wash their hands.

  • 1656

    • Sir Christopher Wren was the first to administer medicine intravenously by means of an animal bladder attached to a sharpened quill.

    • The first pendulum clock was invented by Dutch scientist and inventor Christiaan Huygens who was influenced by Galileo.

  • 1657 - William Harvey (born on April 1, 1578) an English physician was the first to notice the human body’s circulation of blood through veins and capillary system.

  • 1659 English scientist Robert Boyle put a bird into a vacuum jar - bird died and froze!

  • 1662 - Death of Blaise Pascal (mathematician and philosopher) Pascal’s Wager - (1623–1662)

  • 1665 - Great Plague

  • 1666  

    • Great Fire of London

    • Newton invents Calculus allowing him to mathematically predict the movements of planets and was used by the 20th-century space program.

  • 1667 - Brit Robert Hooke draws microscope images and coins "cells"

  • 1669  - Death of Rembrandt (artist)

  • 1670 - Anton van Leeuwenhoek refines the microscopen. Discovers blood cells and microorganisms.

  • 1672 - Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) invents a calculating machine capable of multiplying, dividing, finding square roots

  • 1674  - Death of John Milton (poet)

  • 1677 - Benedict Spinoza dies - Scripture is for irrational people. reason alone is a sufficient guide to life, not theology.

  • 1684 - Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) independently invents Calculus along with Newton

  • 1687 - Newton publishes Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica that starts the 2nd great age of science after the Babylonians and Greeks. In it is his 3 laws of motions: 1) (Inertia) An object remains at rest or continues in its motion unless acted on by another force. 2 (Acceleration) The pull of an object or planet is inversely squared to its distance. 3)Every force has an equal and opposite reaction.

  • 1691 - George Fox, Quaker, dies

    • Richard Baxter dies

  • 1692  - Witchcraft trials in Salem, Massachusetts

  • 1694 - Bank of England founded

  • 1696- Jonathan Edwards blistering response to The heliocentric apostates based on feeling an earthquake and we don't feel the. Earthmoving! ​

1700-1799

  • 1703 - Jonathan Edwards is born

  • 1704 - John Locke dies (b. 1632) - Reason and revelation are not opposed or mutually exclusive

  • 1705 - Philip Jakob Spener died - Father of Pietism (b. 1635) (reaction to Descartes??)

  • 1715 - Louis XIV dies and Louis XV succeeds him.

    • Age of Enlightenment Begins (till 1789)

  • 1722 - Whalers captured a sperm whale, out of which the spermaceti was harvested (500 pounds/whale - taking 2 days of men crawling inside to scrape the substance to be used for candles replacing beeswax and the more popular Tallow and animal fat candles.

  • 1724 -

    • Immanuel Kant born - leader of Romantic movement - knowledge is not what is, but what our minds can grasp. Also said that we were made for this universe and the universe was made for us.

    • Daniel Fahrenheit created the first Mercury temperature scale (18 yrs before Celsius proposed his scale)

  • 1727 - Isaac Newton died (b. 12.25.1642)

  • 1729  - Voltaire starts to preach ideas of political freedom

  • 1733  - Jethro Tull advances new agricultural practices

  • 1734-37 - Great Awakening continues - Jonathan Edwards preached in Mass

  • 1741-J Edwards preaches “Sinners in the Hands of An Angry God.” at 25 on July 8. Puritan fire and brimstone. Associated with the Great Awakening. Denied the reality of the heliocentric model of the universe based on the “fact” that because we feel earthquakes, we would surely feel the earth flying around the sun!

  • 1742  - Anders Celsius, a Swedish physicist proposed his thermometer scale that bears his name (18 yrs after Fahrenheit did)

    • Handel’s Messiah first performed

  • 1747 - James Lind discovers that citrus fruit prevented scurvy but it took 40 years for it to be ordered on Scottish ships

  • 1750 - Death of Johann Sebastian Bach (composer)

  • 1752 - England adopted the Gregorian calendar, 200 years after it was first switched from the Julian version by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582. When first adopted, European Protestant churches refused the Catholic version out of fear that it was the Catholic church's attempt to silence the protestant movement. Sept 2, 1752 became Sept 14, 1752. George Washington’s birthday is listed as February 11 but is today celebrated as Feb 22.

  • 1759 - Halley's Comet - Sir Edmund Halley proves periodic return of comets

    • Death of George Frederick Handel (composer)

  • 1761 - William Law d.

  • 1766 - J. Austruc dies - develops four sources of the Pentateuch (JEDP)

  • 1768 - Hermann Samuel Reimarus dies (b 1694) - eliminates the miraculous in the life of Jesus

  • 1773 - Boston Tea Party signals start of American Revolution

  • 1776 - America declares independence from Britain

    • David Hume dies - argues for miracles to be eliminated

    • Adam Smith publishes "Wealth of Nations" (economic treatise)

  • 1778 - Deaths of Voltaire and Rousseau (Enlightenment philosophers)

  • 1781 - British finally surrender to Americans at Yorktown

    • Immanuel Kant publishes "Critique of Pure Reason"

  • 1783 - Montgolfier brother becomes the first men to fly (in a hot-air balloon)

  • 1787 - American Constitution drafted

  • 1788 - Alexander Campbell born (d. 1866) - a Scott-Irish immigrant who joined his Father Thomas Campbell as a reformer in the Restoration Movement of churches (associated also with Barton W. Stone, Raccoon John Smith)

  • 1789 - George Washington becomes the first US President

    • The storming of the Bastille - the start of the French Revolution

  • 1791 - Death of John Wesley (founder of Methodist Church)

    • Death of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (composer)

    • J. S. Semler dies - said there was no supernatural - Others during this time declared that Genesis had several sources, Gen 1-3 were mythical, Isaiah had two parts

    • The French Academy of Sciences established the definition of a metre or meter.

  • 1793 - Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette beheaded

  • 1796

    • Napoleon Bonaparte begins conquests in Italy

    • Edward Jenner made the first attempt to use inoculations to control the smallpox virus (happened 3 yrs later)

  • 1797 - John Adams becomes the 2nd US President

  • 1798 - Edward Jenner discovers vaccination for smallpox. Discovers it by exposing people to cowpox. Father of immunology

  • 1799 - Benjamin Waterhouse introduces the smallpox vaccine

1800-1899

  • 1800 - Haiti becomes the first independent state in Latin America

    • Sir Humphry Davy announces the anesthetic properties of nitrous oxide, but it takes dentists 45 years to use the gas on patients. OUCH.

    • The first camp meeting in Kentucky is presided over by Calvinist James McGready

  • 1801 - Cane Ridge Revival in Kentucky is an early stirring of the Second Great Awakening

    • Richard Trevithick develops high-pressure steam engine

    • Thomas Jefferson becomes the 3rd US President

    • Napoleon sells Louisiana to America to finance his wars

  • 1804 - Meriwether Lewis and William Clark start fact-finding voyage across America

    • Immanuel Kant (b 1724) - have the courage to make use of your own understanding - Enlightenment is man's emergence from a self-inflicted state of minority (or dependence)

    • Napoleon makes himself Emperor of France

    • World population reaches 1 billion estimated: (2 billion in 1927, 3 billion in 1960, 4 billion in 1974, 5 billion in 1987, 6 billion in 1999, 7 billion in 2013, with an estimate to hit 8 billion 2024)

  • 1807  - Slave trade abolished in Britain

  • 1809

    • Harvard having been lost to Unitarianism, Andover Seminary is founded

    • James Madison becomes the 4th US President

    • Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin both born on Feb 12

  • 1812 - Princeton Seminary Founded

  • 1814 - George Stevenson builds first steam locomotive

  • 1815 - British under Duke of Wellington finally defeat Napoleon at Waterloo

    • Fredrick Tudor, of Boston, cracked the secret of harvesting, insulating, shipping, storing, & marketing ice from New England to around the world.  

  • 1817 - James Monroe becomes the 5th US President

  • 1818 - First blood transfusion by James Blundel

    • Frankenstein by Mary Shelley published

  • 1820 - Fredric Tudor ships a frozen NE lake (Ice) to the American south which was a hit for the summer months of cool drinks and ice cream

  • 1821 - Michael Faraday (1791-1867) with little formal education was one of the most influential scientists in history establishing the basic concepts for the electromagnetic field, suggesting that magnetism could affect light rays. Even Albert Einstein had his picture on his wall. With little Mathematic skills, he relied on experiments and simple but clear language to communicate his theories. James Clerk Maxwell (1865) took Faraday’s work (et. al.) and provided the mathematical expressions of modern theories of electromagnetism.

  • 1822 - Colony for freed American slaves established in Liberia

    • French chemist and biologist Louis Pasteur was born #onthisday in 1822. He discovered the role of bacteria in fermentation, proved the germ theory of disease, and invented the process of pasteurization. Pasteur is considered the founder of microbiology.

  • 1824.- First Dinosaur was discovered. William Buckland, a professor of geology at the University of Oxford, studied the fossil remains of a gigantic partial skeleton that had been unearthed in Oxfordshire. He named it Megalosaurus.

  • 1825 - First railway (Stockton to Darlington) opened

    • John Quincy Adams becomes the 6th US President

  • 1826  - Thomas Jefferson and John Adams die

  • 1829 - Andrew Jackson becomes the 7th US President

  • 1831 - Hegel dies - Religion is simply an imaginative, pictorial way of representing philosophical truth

  • 1832 - Death of Sir Walter Scott (poet)

  • 1834 - Schleiermacher dies - said that the Bible is to be interpreted like any other book. How can anyone interpret anything?

  • 1835 - Jacob Perkins is granted a patent for producing ice and cooling. Father of refrigeration.

  • 1837 - Early photography pioneered by Louis Daguerre

    • Martin Van Buren becomes the 8th US President

  • 1838 - Trail of Tears - mass relocation of American Indians

  • 1841 - China cedes Hong Kong to Britain

    • David Livingstone begins African explorations

    • William Henry Harrison becomes the 9th US President (March 4)

    • John Tyler becomes the 10th US President (April 4)

  • 1842 - First use of general anesthetic during surgery by Crawford W. Long but doesn’t get the credit.

    • Dr. John Gorrie invented built a cooling machine to bring down fevers without the use of hauled ice from the North

  • 1843-Charles Dickens publishes A Christmas Carol, which was a social statement on the harsh child labor practices in London

  • 1845 - James K. Polk becomes the 11th US President

  • 1846

    • John Warren, a Harvard Dean, first uses anesthesia in surgery. William T. G. Morton used ether as an anaesthetic during surgery

    • Great Potato Famine in Ireland

    • US war against Mexico over unpaid debts: Gained Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah.

  • 1847 - Hungarian Ignaz Semmelweis went against the medical practice, insisting that medical personal must wash their hands. It took another 50 yrs for basic antiseptic practices to take hold. For his insistence, he lost his job & died in an insane asylum.

  • 1848 - Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels publish "Communist Manifesto"

    • Texas becomes part of America after wars with Mexico

    • California Gold Rush begins

  • 1849 - Henry David Thoreau publishes "Civil Disobedience"

    • DeWette dies (German school - biblical view can't be accepted)

    • Elizabeth Blackwell - first woman to receive a medical degree - Geneva NY

    • GMT was standardized for trains in England, 20 years before America.

    • Zachary Taylor becomes the 12th US President

  • 1850 - Only 1 Billion People on the earth

    • Dennison makes Wm. Ellery pocket (pendulum styled) watch that was a hit with Lincoln and Civil War soldiers

    • CA becomes a US state

    • Millard Filmore becomes the 13th US President

  • 1853 - Franklin Pierce becomes the 14th US President

  • 1855 -

    • On Feb 14, the Chicago Board of Sewer Commissioners was established, hiring Ellis Chesbrough to fix the sewage problem from people and animals for a growing city. With an army of men, they used 6000 jackscrews to live city buildings 10 ft to install sewer lines that flowed into the city’s rivers, making the water absolutely disgusting, even by their standards. One problem at a time.

    • The first rubber condom is produced

  • 1856 - John Snow of London proved cholera was caused by contaminated water and not miasmatic smells, a thought that dominated public health up to this time (see Black plague)

  • 1857

    • Frenchman Edouard-Leon Scott invents the phonautograph, an automatic stenograph system that only recorded but didn’t have a way to play it back. 20 years before Edison’s He didn’t think of that. Thought humans could learn the waves.

    • James Buchanan becomes the 15th US President

    • Philip Gosse, the inventor of the aquarium, believed that he came up with the idea that would resolve the contradiction between the age of the earth and the evidence in God’s Word for a young earth. He suggested that even though Adam would not have needed a belly button since he was not born, he had one, that first created trees would have had rings showing years despite being created minutes before, and that God placed fossils in the earth of animals that never existed. Basically, he thought that God was faking out mankind.

  • 1859 - Charles Darwin (an English Unitarian) publishes Origin of the Species after an extensive five-year, scientific voyage on the Beagle that began on Dec 27, 1831 and taking him to the Galapagos Islands

  • 1860 - Baur - Tubingen School - dies (b. 1792)

    • Wescott, Hort, and Lightfoot produce NT commentaries in response to Tubingen school teachings: focused on progressive revelation, historical-grammatical exegesis, teaching applicable 

  • 1861 - Start of American Civil War

    • The Northern States blocked the ships of ice causing the southern states, Cuba, to master their own ice-making machines and starting making more artificial ice than anywhere in the world.

    • Abraham Lincoln becomes the 16th US President

  • 1863 - Abraham Lincoln gives Gettysburg Address speech

  • 1865

    • Abolition of slavery in America

    • April 9 - Robert E Lee surrenders thus ending the Civil War (even if the Civil war didn’t officially end until August 20, 1866, because Texas and other southern states kept fighting.)

    • April 15 - Abraham Lincoln (56) assassinated by John Wilkes Booth

    • Andrew Johnson becomes the 17th US President

    • Anti-black Ku Klux Klan formed on Dec 24 in Pulaski TN

    • James Clerk Maxwell (Scottish) provided the mathematical equations (that Michael Faraday [1821] couldn’t) that introduced that there was an electromagnetic field (of electricity and magnetism) that traveled through space in waves at the speed of light. Predicted radio waves and the electromagnetic spectrum. Considered the second great unification of physics after Isaac Newton (1543).

  • 1866

    • Swede Alfred Nobel produces dynamiteAlexander Campbell dies (b 1788)Alexander Campbell dies (b 1788)Alexander Campbell dies (b 1788)

    • Alexander Campbell dies

    • August 20 - President Andrew Johnson finally is able to declare that the Civil War was over.

  • 1867 - Death of Michael Faraday (physicist)

    • America buys Alaska from Russia

    • Joseph Lister promotes cleanliness in operating rooms, antiseptic surgical methods. It Saves 1000s of lives.

  • 1866 Wright brothers born near Millville IN

  • 1869 -

    • Suez Canal opened in Egypt

    • The American Woman’s Home advocated a dally body wash, almost unheard of up and to this time.

    • Transcontinental railroad opened

    • Dmitri Mendeleev, a Russian chemist, created the Periodic Table of Elements, after a dream. He woke up after thinking about it and wrote it down, almost as we have it today. 

    • DNA was discovered but wasn’t practically understood until 1953

    • Ulysses S Grant becomes the 18th US President

  • 1870 - Death of Charles Dickens (writer)

    • The 1860-70s - Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch promote germ theory of disease. Before this, most docs believed that germs were spontaneously generation. Doctors thought that disease could appear out of thin air, rather than being air-borne or transferred via skin-to-skin contact.. Wash your hands after autopsies and then care for living patients, like mothers giving birth.

    • Koch later uses new microscope tech from Zeiss’ new lenses to determine below 100 colonies per milliliter was safe to drink

  • 1871 - Great Chicago fire

  • 1874 - Strauss dies - was not important to ask what really happened in history. The Biblical authors were evangelizing not writing history. All miracles are myths.

  • 1876 - Alexander Graham Bell invents the telephone

    • Great Famine in Southern India kills over 5 million

    • Custer’s Last Stand - killed fighting in Indian Wars

    • Johns Hopkins University begins studying medicine without incorporating God so that they can practice scientific understanding. It was the only university to do this. Harvard, Yale, et. al. studied theologically influenced medicine.

  • 1877 - Thomas Edison invents the first phonograph that he thought would send audio letters through the postal system. Bell thought the telephone would be for people to listen to the opera on the other end. They both had it backward.

    • Rutherford B Hayes becomes the 19th US President

  • 1878  - Salvation Army founded by Rev William Booth

    • Thomas Edison develops electric light

    • Gustavus Swift hired an engineer to build a refrigeration car to haul meat all year long all over the US

  • 1879 - James Clerk Maxwell died. Electromagnetic field.

    • Edison offered stock in his company to his employee, first stock option

  • 1880 - Gospel came to Korean (Buddhism and Confucius based)

  • 1881 - James A Garfield becomes the 20th US President

    • Chester A Authur becomes the 21st US President

  • 1882 - Edison’s company powers the Pearl Street district in Manhattan with electric lights. (People were inventing electric lights for 80 yrs prior to this but Edison figured it out.

  • 1883

    • William Allen created four railroad time zones (still in use today) Easter, Central, Mountain, and Pacific. Nov 18 had two noons because all cities rang their noon bells according to their town and then based on the telegraph set up a system

    • Brooklyn Bridge was completed (older than London’s Tower Bridge by 11 years)

    • World’s First Rodeo in Texas

  • 1884 - The entire globe was divided into time zones that were based on the international clock in Greenwich (GMT)

  • 1885 - Apocrypha was removed from King James (274 years it was in there)

    • George Eastman markets first box camera

    • Stanford Univ starts

    • Glover Cleveland becomes the 22nd US President

  • 1886 - All American Indians now in reservations

    • Gottlieb Daimler and Karl Benz produce the first automobiles

  • 1887 - Charles Vernon Boys created fiberglass - strings of glass (later we figured out how to send signals through it - Fiber optics -1970)

    • First flash photography, called Blitzlicht

  • 1888

    • Jack the Ripper was causing havoc in London

    • Washington Monument was completed

  • 1889 - Eiffel Tower built in Paris (designed by Gustave Alexandre Eiffel)

    • Benjamin Harrison becomes the 23rd US President

    • Nintendo began as a company not yet selling game consoles but selling hand-painted playing cards.

  • 1890 - London Underground (electric subway system) opens

    • Death of Vincent Van Gogh (artist)

    • Lumière brothers to develop motion pictures

    • The 1890s - Marie Curie discovered carbon dating (Carbon 14 had a 5000-year half-life)

  • 1893  - New Zealand becomes the first country to give a vote to women

    • Death of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (composer)

    • Glover Cleveland again becomes the US President, 24th this time

  • 1894 - Guglielmo Marconi first transmitted radio signals

  • 1895 - Wilhelm Conrad Rӧntgen accidentally discovers x-rays when experimenting with electrical currents through glass cathode-ray tubes.

    • H.G. Wells writes The Time Machine

  • 1897 - William McKinley becomes the 25th US President

  • 1898 - a waste product of liquid air, Neon gas was discovered that later was electrified to light up Las Vegas in the 20s

    • HG Wells published The War of the Worlds

    • The filing cabinet and the deli meat slicer were invented

  • 1899 - Felix Hoffman develops aspirin (juice from willow tree bark had been used since 400 BC to relieve pain but caused mouth and stomach problems.

1900-1999

  • 1900 - Death of Friedrich Wilhelm Nietsche (philosopher)

  • 1901 -Marconi sends first transatlantic radio message from Britain

    • Theodore Roosevelt becomes the 26th US President

  • 1902 - Eruption of Mount Pelée, Martinique (40,000 killed)

  • 1903 - First Manned airplane flight by the Wright brothers (Dec 17)

    • Henry Ford designs the first mass-produced cars

    • Bolshevik Party established in Russia

  • 1904 - Ivan Petrovich Pavlov wins Nobel Prize for work on animal behavior

  • 1905 - Einstein's miracle year. E=MC2 as a Switzerland patten clerk.

    • Koch wins Nobel Prize for work on cholera bacterium - uses new microscope tech from Zeiss’ new lenses to determine below 100 colonies per milliliter was safe to drink

  • 1906 - Movement for Women's Suffrage becomes active in Britain

    • Sir Frederick Hopkins suggests using vitamins and concludes that they are essential to health.

    • Azusa St. Revival, a major catalyst to the Pentecostal and Charismatic churches

    • Dr. John Leal risked his job & life by adding chlorine to the New Jersey Water Supply, secretly! That bold act made drinking water a reality reducing mortality by 43%. Until this time 1 of the realities for parents was that you would lose at least 1 child at an early age!

  • 1909 - American Robert Peary first to reach the North Pole

    • William Howard Taft becomes the 27th US President

  • 1910 - First Post-Impressionist art exhibition (Cezanne/Van Gogh/Gauguin) in London

    • Death of Florence Nightingale (nurse and hospital reformer)

    • Death of Leo Tolstoy (writer)

    • Jan 13 - The first live public radio broadcast at NY Metropolitan Opera. Terrible. Sold to AT&T which improved it allowing the wide acceptance of Jazz, broadcasted in white homes during the 20s.

  • 1911 - Norwegian Roald Amundsen becomes first to reach the South Pole

  • 1912 - The Titanic sunk (April 15)

    • Niels Bohr abandoned his belief in classical physics as a description for what went on in the atomic world.

  • 1913 - Reginald Fessenden created early sonar, because of Titanic, and later WWI (but the Royal Navy didn’t want anything to do with it) Sonar wasn’t regularly used till WW2 nearly 25 years later. This technology gave birth to the ultrasound machine invented 1956.

    • Woodrow Wilson becomes the 28th US President

  • 1914 - First World War - Germany/Austria vs Britain/France/Russia

    • Panama Canal opened

    • Charlie Chaplin makes his first silent movies

    • Albert Einstein publishes General Theory of Relativity

  • 1916 - Margaret Sanger opens the first birth control clinic in the United States

  • 1917 - US enters First World War - balance tips in Allies' favor

    • Bolshevik Revolution under Vladimir Ilych Lenin and Leon Trotsky

  • 1918 - End of First World War (25m killed) - Versailles Conference

    • Women over 30 granted the right to vote in Britain

    • Earnest Rutherford splits the atom

    • Death of Claude Debussy (composer)

    • Spanish influenza pandemic (50 to 100 million killed worldwide)

  • 1919 - Germany proclaimed a republic

    • Prohibition of alcohol in North America

    • Jewish Zionists start immigration into Palestine

    • League of Nations formed

  • 1920 - First Commercial Radio station in Pittsburg PA - during this decade, Jazz Black Artists Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong became household names even in white homes, adopted by the youth driving their elders crazy; it wasn’t opera or classical.

    • Decibel became the unit to measure newly amplified sounds.

    • Chinese Communist Party founded

    • Changing attitudes toward bathing led to public baths and skimpier women’s swimsuits: from 10 yards of fabric in the 1900s to 1 yard by 1930.

  • 1921 - Economic collapse and famine in Russia - 5 million die

    • William Harding becomes the 29th US President

    • May 30 - Tulsa Massacre - “Following World War I, Tulsa was recognized nationally for its affluent African American community known as the Greenwood District. This thriving business district and surrounding residential area was referred to as “Black Wall Street.” In June 1921, a series of events nearly destroyed the entire Greenwood area” https://www.tulsahistory.org/exhibit/1921-tulsa-race-massacre/#flexible-content

  • 1922 - Dane Niels Bohr wins Nobel Prize for work on atomic theory - “If you are not completely confused by quantum mechanics, you don’t understand it.”

    • Fascist Benito Mussolini seizes power as dictator in Italy

    • Insulin first used to treat diabetes by Elliott Joslin

    • "Shall the Fundamentalists Win?" sermon by Harry Emerson Fosdick

  • 1923 - Arnold Schoenberg develops a 12-tone system of music

    • Calvin Coolidge becomes the 30th US President

    • Eliot Cutler performs the world’s first successful heart valve surgery

  • 1924 - Joseph Stalin becomes the Premiere of Russia after the Death of Lenin

  • 1925 - Scopes Monkey Trial in Dayton TN

    • William Carrier debuted his AC in a Manhattan movie theatre

    • For 50+ years Bell Labs played a significant role in nearly every major tech: radio, vacuum tubes, transistors, TV, computers) They convinced the government that their monopoly of AT&T was good for society (util 1984)

    • Advertising via radio promoted healthy living: Palmolive soap, Listerine, antiperspirant Odorono. Humiliation for NOT using these. Listerine ad: "Often a bridesmaid, never a bride"

  • 1927 - Werner Heisenberg publishes a treatise on the Uncertainty Principle

    • Charles Lindbergh makes the first solo flight of the Atlantic

    • First "talkie" movie - "The Jazz Singer" starring Al Jolson

    • The world population reaches 2 billion (estimated 1 billion in 1804, 3 billion in 1960, 4 billion in 1974, 5 billion in 1987, 6 billion in 1999, 7 billion in 2013, with an estimate to hit 8 billion in 2024)

  • 1928 -

    • Sir Alexander Fleming discovers the first antibiotic, PENECILLIAN. Before this, common infections (strep throat, pneumonia, whooping cough, etc.) from bacteria were often fatal.

    • Walt Disney introduces the character of Mickey Mouse in "Steamboat Willie”

    • Bell Labs built the first clock that kept time from the regular vibrations of a quartz crystal, better than a pendulum clock. It also revealed that the earth’s rotation was not consistent and couldn’t be relied on for an accurate time.

    • Sliced Bread (machine) hit the market (July 7)

  • 1929 -

    • Valentines Day Massacre - Al Capone gains control of the Chicago underworld

    • Herbert Hoover becomes the 31st US President

    • Astronomer Edwin Hubble shows that the universe is expanding - BUT INTO WHAT?

    • US Stock Market Crash

    • General Foods was born, after buying Robert Birdseye Flash Freezing technology for meat and veggies (early 1920s)

    • Martin Luther King Jr. was born (Jan 15)

  • 1930 - Mahatma Gandhi leads Salt March in India

    • Pluto (last planet) discovered by Clyde Tombaugh

  • 1931  

    • Gustaf Aulén  Bishop of Strängnäs in the Church of Sweden and the author of Christus Victor: An Historical Study of the Three Main Types of the Idea of Atonement, which suggested the three main atonement interpretations in Christian history are the Christus Victor theory, the Satisfaction theory, and the Moral Influence theory.

    • Georges Lemaître, a Belgian cosmologist and Catholic priest, proposed the Big Bang theory, “the expansion of the observable universe began with the explosion of a single particle at a definite point in time.” Many scientists were uncomfortable with this expanding idea, claiming it seemed preposterous. Note

  • 1932 - Aldous Huxley writes "Brave New World"

    • LEGOs (meaning “play well”) were introduced in Billund Denmark

  • 1933 - Adolph Hitler becomes dictator after coup

    • End of Prohibition of alcohol

    • Franklin D Roosevelt becomes the 32st US President

  • 1933-34 Stalin terminated 7 mill Ukrainians - starved them. Horrific

  • 1934 - Billy Graham converted

    • Bonnie Parke and Clyde Barrow ("Bonnie and Clyde") killed in Louisiana

  • 1935 - Germany under Hitler begins the persecution of Jews (6m killed)

    • Hitler utilizes new technology of sound amplification for his Nuremberg rallies to mobilize crowds.

    • Count Basie leads his Big Band Orchestra

  • 1936 - Joe Louis becomes heavyweight boxing champion

  • 1937 - First blood bank used at Cook County Hospital in Chicago - Bernard Fantus.

  • 1939 - "Wizard of Oz" and "Gone with the Wind" movies released

    • Britain and France enter Second World War after Hitler invades Poland

  • 1940 - Discovery of nuclear fission by German physicists Hahn, Meitner, Strassmann, and Frisch

    • Sir Winston Churchill becomes British Prime Minister

    • Battle of Britain - Germany defeated in the air

  • 1941 - Evelyn Underhill dies (modern-day spiritual director)

    • Germany invades Russia - Russia enters Second World War

    • Orson Wells' movie "Citizen Cane" released

    • Dec 7 - Pearl Harbor Bombed. US enters World War II

    • Dec 8 - the scheduled but canceled vote for Northern California and Southern Oregon to become a new state.

    • 1941-43 Reinhold Niebuhr's The Nature and Destiny of Man

  • 1943 - Historical call from Pentagon to London using the secret SIGSALY digital code was made using 1s and 0s - July 15, the birth of the digital age, where digital copies could be perfect copies without the analog electric static.

  • 1942 - Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus develop Existentialism

    • Manhattan Project established to develop the atomic bomb

    • Mussolini was overthrown and Fascist Party dissolved

  • 1944 - D-Day - Allies make a crucial push into France

    • International Monetary Fund (IMF) established

    • 250,000 women were employed by AT&T as switchboard operators. The phone popularized “hello” and made it possible for skyscrapers to be build so that carriers wouldn’t have to run upstairs (1908)

  • 1945 - Germany surrenders - end of Second World War (45m killed)

    • Harry S Truman becomes the 33rd US President

    • Bonhoeffer hanged by Nazis

    • US drops first atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki - Japan surrenders

    • ENIAC considered being the first functional computer

    • Russian intransigence after Potsdam conference starts "Cold War"

    • United Nations (UN) formed

    • First vaccine for influenza

    • The first perfected use of Pap smear to detect cervical cancer happens

  • 1946 - The two-piece bikini was first introduced by French designer Louis Réard at the Piscine Molitor, a popular swimming pool in Paris (July 5)

  • 1947 - Bell labs invents the transistor

  • 1946 - Nuremburg War Crimes Tribunal

  • 1948 -

    • George Orwell writes “1984"

    • British pull out of Palestine - the state of Israel established

    • Korea divided into North and South Republics

    • Mahatma Gandhi assassinated

    • Claude Shannon in “A Mathematical Theory of Communication,” proposed digital coding using 1010010101 - that data should be measured in bits—discrete values of zero or one began the information age similar to Crick and Watson (1953) using ACTG for genetic coding of cells.

  • 1949 - People's Republic of China proclaimed by Mao Tse-Tung

    • North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) formed

  • 1950 - The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, the first of The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis

    • Korean War starts - Communist North vs Capitalist South

  • 1952 -

    • First pacemaker used by Paul Zoll

    • Charlotta Bass was the first Black woman to run for vice president

  • 1953

    • Dwight D Eisenhower becomes the 34th US President (Inauguration day moved from March 4 to January 20)

    • DNA - the discovery of the double-helical structure of the DNA molecule in 1953 (2.28) by Francis Crick and James Watson (Nobel Prize) - DNA was discovered in 1869. (Watson wrote The Double Helix)

    • Soviets successfully test a hydrogen bomb

    • Korean War ends after involving China, the US, and several other countries

  • 1954

    • The first oral contraceptives begin being used

    • Rock'n'Roll music becomes popular - Bill Haley, Elvis Presley, etc

    • Anti-Communist McCarthyism censured in the US

    • First organ transplant (Kidney)

    • Roger Bannister broke the four-minute mile for a human being at 3 min 59.4 seconds in Oxford England. The record lasted 46 days (May 6)

  • 1955

    • Death of Albert Einstein, German-born physicist

    • Jonas Salk develops the first inactive polio vaccine.

  • 1956

    • The first transatlantic telephone line was laid on the ocean floor allowing only 24 conversations at a time.

    • The ultrasound machine invented by OBGYN Ian Donald and Tom Brown

    • (Sept 9) Elvis first performed on the Ed Sullivan Show - 82% of the American Audience tuned into that performance. The day Rock and Roll went mainstream America.

  • 1957 - Russian Sputnik satellite launched

    • Aug 5 - American Bandstand premieres hosted by 26-year-old Dick Clark and is produced 5 days a week until 1963 when it became a weekly show.

  • 1958

    • Dalai Lama flees Tibet from Chinese persecution

    • oral contraceptive pill becomes available

    • Great Chinese Famine of 1958-61 kills an estimated 36 million

    • Jack Kirby developed the first integrated circuit

  • 1959 - Fidel Castro establishes a communist dictatorship in Cuba

  • 1960 -

    • Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) established

    • “The Pill” is approved by FDA (first testing was in 1954)

    • Bassist Grady Martin first created a heavy distorted sound - fuzz tone — for his band.

    • World population reaches 3 billion (estimated 1 billion in 1804, 2 billion in 1927, 4 billion in 1974, 5 billion in 1987, 6 billion in 1999, 7 billion in 2013, with an estimate to hit 8 billion 2024)

  • 1961 - Cuban Missile Crisis after US-backed anti-Castro Bay of Pigs invasion fails

    • John F Kennedy becomes the 35th US President

    • Berlin Wall built between East and West Germany

    • Russian Yuri Gagarin becomes the first man in space

  • 1962 - Death of Marilyn Munroe (actress)

    • Niels Bohr died - Pioneer of quantum mechanics

  • 1963

    • Measles vaccine is first used

    • Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream speech (Aug 28)

    • The Beatles rise to popularity

    • US President John F Kennedy shot

    • Lyndon B Johnson becomes the 36th US President

  • 1964 -

    • Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) formed

    • Nelson Mandela jailed for campaigning against apartheid in South Africa

    • Civil Rights Act passed in US

    • US becomes involved in Vietnam War

    • Because of AC, the flow of people from North to South was dominant, causing southern cities to explode, changing the political map

    • Long-term storage of human blood is first introduced

    • Feb 9 - Beetles appear on Ed Sullivan Show and watched by a then-record 73 million people launching Beetlemania

  • 1965 - voting rights act

    • march  - Bloody Sunday - March at Selma Alabama

    • Rolling Stones manipulates sound for their guitar on Satisfaction.

  • 1967 - First Arab-Israeli (6-Day) War

    • First human heart transplant performed in South Africa - .Dr. Christiaan Barnard.

    • The International Conference on Weights and Measurements set the world on an atomic clock with a day becoming 86,400 atomic seconds (and must be reset every year to keep it close with the earth's rotation). This was necessary for GPS and satellites to work.

  • 1968 - Thomas Merton dies

    • Black rights campaigner Martin Luther King assassinated (April 4)

    • Karl Barth dies - sought to recapture the reality of the apostles and biblical authors. The Word of God is not a thing but God himself speaking.  thinks that scripture has been torn apart. Utter loyalty to the text

  • 1969 - Moammar al-Qaddafi (Gadafi) leads a military coup in Libya

    • Richard M Nixon becomes the 37th US President

    • Neil Armstrong becomes the first man to walk on Moon

    • US involvement in Vietnam War peaks

    • Murray Gell-Man proposed the idea of a quark was an elementary particle that made up protons and neutrons (there are three, 2 up and 1 down)

  • 1970

    • The Beatles break up.

    • Fiber optics created to send signals through it

  • 1971 - Indira Gandhi becomes Prime Minister of India

    • Apollo 15 lands on the moon and uses the Lunar Rover vehicle for the first time.

    • The microprocessor – the foundation of today's computers – is introduced.

    • The environmentalist group Greenpeace is founded.

    • U.S. Supreme Court rules unanimously that busing students may be ordered to achieve racial desegregation of schools.

    • The US dollar becomes unlinked to Gold for the first time

  • 1972 - "Bloody Sunday" massacre in Ireland

    • “the Blue Marble” picture taken of the Earth

    • Francis Ford Coppola's movie "The Godfather” released

    • Eleven Israeli athletes are killed at the Munich Olympic Games. Five terrorists and one policeman are also killed.

  • 1973

    • Second Arab-Israeli (Yom Kippur) War

    • Saudi Arabia leads huge oil price increases - world economy slows

    • Death of Pablo Picasso (Spanish artist)

    • US launches Pioneer II to explore outer planets

    • Henry Kissinger becomes US Secretary of State

    • The mobile phone is invented.

    • Supreme Court rules on Roe v. Wade legalizing abortion.

    • Researchers develop a noninvasive fetal heart monitoring procedure

  • 1974 - Watergate Scandal - Richard Nixon quits as President

    • Gerald Ford becomes the 38th US President

    • Patricia Hearst, the 19-year-old daughter of publisher Randolph Hearst, is kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army. Later she is photographed robbing a bank with her captors

    • The laser beam was used to read a UPC code for a stick of gum

    • World population reaches 4 billion (estimated 1 billion in 1804, 2 billion in 1927, 3 billion in 1960, 5 billion in 1987, 6 billion in 1999, 7 billion in 2013, with an estimate to hit 8 billion 2024)

    • The Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974 was signed into law. Prior to this, “banks could refuse to issue a credit card to an unmarried woman, and if a woman was married, her husband was required to cosign.”

  • 1975 - the US pulls out of Vietnam War

    • Oct 11 - Saturday Night Live premiered

  • 1976 - Martin Heidegger dies - held that we cannot know anything objectively, only subjectively.

    • Rudolph Bultman dies (b. 1884) - Kerygma - calling people to decision - need to translate the NT out of the mythical form

    • Punk (rebel music cult) develops - Sex Pistols, Clash, etc

    • The United States celebrates the Bicentennial marking 200 years as a nation.

    • Jimmy Carter is elected the 39th President.

    • The Viking 2 spacecraft lands on Mars.

    • Apple Computer is founded by Steve Jobs and Stephen Wozniak.

  • 1977

    • Elvis Presley is found dead.

    • Jimmy Carter becomes the 39th US President (Jan 20)

    • The first full-body MRI (Magnetic resonance imaging) technique used to generate images of organs inside the body was developed by Dr. Raymond Damadian

    • The movie Star Wars is released to great acclaim and box office.

  • 1978 - 3 mile island accident

    • Cult leader Jim Jones' followers commit mass suicide in Jonestown, Guyana.

    • The world's first test-tube baby, Louise Brown, is born (July 25)

  • 1979 - Margaret Thatcher becomes British Prime Minister

    • Soviet invasion of Afghanistan

  • 1980 - John Lennon (singer) shot

    • Iranian Hostage Crisis - hostages held in US Embassy in Tehran

    • The eruption of Mount St Helens (60 killed)

    • The wreck of the Titanic is found.

    • Smallpox announced that it was eradicated

  • 1981 - Prince Charles marries Lady Diana Spenser

    • Ronald Reagan becomes the 40th US President

    • AIDS becomes a major health threat throughout the world

    • Xerox markets the first mouse as an integrated part of a personal computer.

    • Aug 1 - The cable channel MTV is launched.

  • 1982 - First artificial heart implanted into Barney Clark (Dec 2), lived 112 days. Over the next 10 years, 236 artificial hearts were implanted.

  • 1983 - Astronaut Sally Ride becomes the first American woman in space.

    • First cellular phone call from Chicago's Soldier's Field-Verizon

    • May 16 - Michael Jackson moonwalks for the first time.

  • 1984 - Indira Gandhi assassinated by Sikhs - violence erupts in India

    • Apple introduces the Macintosh personal computer with a graphical user interface.

  • 1985 - Mikhail Gorbachev becomes Russian Premiere - "Glasnost" and “Perestroika"

    • July 13 - Live Aid concert (benefiting Ethiopian starvation) with 60+ artists with Queen stealing the show.

  • 1986 -

    • Chernobyl nuclear power station explodes, contaminating most of Europe

    • Challenger Explodes

    • Chromosome 21, the gene for the brain protein, linked with Alzheimer’s disease

  • 1987 - A severe earthquake hits Los Angeles killing six and injuring 100.

    • The world's population hits 5 billion. (estimated 1 billion in 1804, 2 billion in 1927, 3 billion in 1960, 4 billion in 1974,, 6 billion in 1999, 7 billion in 2013, with an estimate to hit 8 billion 2024)

    • DNA is used in a criminal court case for the first time.

    • Seedless Watermelon introduced

    • June 12 - Reagan “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” speech at Berlin Wall and it came down on November 9, 1989

    • Nov 22 - Northrup Gruman’s B-2 Stealth Bomber introduced

  • 1989 - Tiananmen square (June 5)

    • George H Bush becomes the 41st US President (January 20)

    • The Fall of the Berlin Wall (November 9) reshaping the modern world

    • Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska

    • A terrorist bomb destroys a Pan-Am 747 over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 259 onboard and 11 on the ground.

  • 1990 - Margaret Thatcher resigns - John Major takes over as British PM

    • East and West Germany unite as the Federal Republic of Germany

    • Nelson Mandela released - end of apartheid in South Africa

    • Hubble Space Telescope launched

  • 1991 - Persian Gulf War starts after Iraq invades Kuwait

    • Kodak invents the Digital camera

  • 1992 - Presidents Bush and Yeltsin declare a formal end to the Cold War.

    • Los Angeles erupts in riots after Rodney King is videotaped being beaten by police.

  • 1993 - New York World Trade Center bombing

    • Bill Clinton becomes the 42nd US President (Jan 20)

    • Nokia sends text messages between mobile phones.

    • Fire kills 72 religious cult members at the Branch Davidian compound outside of Waco Texas.

    • “Jurassic Park” directed by Stephen Speilburg was the first time CG tech was fully used without puppet/stop animation which revolutionized the movie-making industry. Computers were getting really good.

  • 1994 - Amazon started July 5

    • Nelson Mandela becomes first black President of South Africa

    • Major league baseball players strike and the World Series is canceled.

    • Chunnel connecting England and France (31 miles) was completed

    • Nov - Netscape web-browser introduced

    • Today Show hosts were arguing about what the “@” sign meant in the new Today Show email

  • 1995 - OJ Simpson found not guilty

    • Sony demonstrates a flat-screen TV.

    • Timothy McVeigh bombs the Oklahoma City federal building in retaliation for the Branch Davidian standoff in 1993. He's caught and put on trial for murder.

  • 1996 - Dolly the sheep becomes the first mammal cloned from adult cells.  Dies in 2003.

  • 1997 - US spacecraft begins an exploration of Mars

    • Princess Diana killed in Paris car accident

    • Catholic nun Mother Teresa dies after nearly 50 years of work in India

    • Timothy McVeigh sentenced to death for the Oklahoma City bombing.

    • Scottish scientists cloned a sheep named Dolly.

    • J. K. Rowling publishes the first Harry Potter book.

    • Portable Defibulator Introduced

  • 1998 - Male impotence drug Viagra licensed for use in the USA

    • Google started September (launching the search tool in 1999)

  • 1999 - Bill Clinton acquitted in an impeachment trial

    • Columbine High School murders

    • China launches their first spacecraft

    • World population reaches 6 billion (estimated 1 billion in 1804, 2 billion in 1927, 3 billion in 1960, 4 billion in 1974, 5 billion in 1987, 7 billion in 2013, with an estimate to hit 8 billion 2024)

    • Vladimir Putin becomes acting Russian President after Yeltsin resigns

    • Tobacco companies admit that their products harm smokers.

    • The Y2K Scare raises the possibility that databases all over the world – including in U.S. military computers – would go haywire because they were designed to recognize only two digits in dates

    • Dec 31 initiated, by Danny Hillis, the Clock of the Long Now that is a 10,000-year clock that ticks once a year prompting long term questions so that we can be good ancestors. ​ ​

    • The FDA approves Plan B that can used after intercourse to prevent pregnancy.

2000-Present

  • 2000 - Human Genome is deciphered - Human Genome mapping successfully completed the first draft by Francis Collins and Craig Venter (50 years from discovery to mapping)

  • 2001

    • George W Bush becomes the 43rd US President (Jan 20)

    • 911 - World Trade Center attacked (Sept 11)

    • Massive earthquake - 30k dead

    • Enron debacle

    • US invades Afghanistan

    • Wikipedia founded

    • Apple intros the first iPod

  • 2002 - Guantanamo Bay is established

    • Beltway sniper killing 11??

  • 2003 -

    • Invades Iraq, topples Saddam Hussein

    • Columbia shuttle explodes killing 7

    • The Human Genome Project is finalized (first draft in 2000) (April 14)

    • Microsoft’s Xbox Live went online

  • 2004 - Facebook started February

    • Boxing Day Tsunami hits Indonesia, killing 230,000

  • 2005 - YouTube posts first videos

    • YouTube formed- February

    • Google Maps first introduced

    • Gay marriage legalized in Canada - July 20

    • Hurricane Katrina, killing 1836 - August

    • Benedict XVI becomes pope

    • Angela Merkel becomes Germanys first woman leader

  • 2007 - iPhone introduced to the world. (Jan)

    • The first discovery of human skin cells to create embryonic stem cells

    • Virginia Tech shooting, killing 17

  • 2008 - (Sept) Wall Street Crisis

    • OJ Simpson is acquitted

    • Wall-E is released

    • Large hadron Collider (LHC) first run. A 26.6 KM circular undergrown tunnel under the French-Swiss border. Protons go around the circle 11,000 times per second (Sept 10)

  • 2009 - Barak Obama becomes the 44th US President, the first black president (Jan 20)

    • June 25 - Michael Jackson died

  • 2010 - 7.0 earthquake kills 230,000 in Haiti

    • Arab Spring

    • Full face transplant in Spain

  • 2011 - 9.0 earthquake in Japan triggers tsunami and meltdown of Fukushima Nuclear power plant

    • Iraq war ends

    • World population hits 7 billion (estimated 1 billion in 1804, 2 billion in 1927, 3 billion in 1960, 4 billion in 1974, 5 billion in 1987, 6 billion in 1999, with an estimate to hit 8 billion 2024)

    • Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced a CalTech team as the winner for the Toilet Challenge: no sewer or electricity connection

  • 2012 - US rover Curiosity takes a selfie on Mars

    • Higgs boson discovered

    • Hurricane Sandy

    • Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting

    • Aurora Movie Theater Shooting

    • Costa Concordia Ship disaster

  • 2013 -

    • Jan Krames (South African geochemist) determined the glass from the Libyan desert came from a comet

    • CRISPR Cas9 - 5 Papers on the invention of CRISPR Cas9 Gene Editing (in soma cells-one generation-and inheritable germline cells affecting future generations) were published (by Jennifer Doudna, Emmanuelle Charpentier, Feng Zhang, et. al.) signifying a major breakthrough for humans unleashing the possibilities to prevent diseases, treat diseases, enhance human traits, and possibly even super-enhance humans (see infrared light or hear different frequencies) with ethical issues to come. (Jan 29)

    • Pope Benedict resigns and Pope Francis becomes pope (Feb 28)

    • Boston Marathon bombing and manhunt (April 15)

    • The National Ignition Facility pointed 192 high-powered lasers to create fuel pellets with hopes to power the world. ??

  • 2014 - Worst Ebola epidemic hits west Africa, killing 11,000

    • Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappears from radar - never recovered.

  • 2015 - DNA from an extinct wooly mammoth is spliced into that of an elephant and then sequence the mammoth’s complete genome.

    • A group of Chinese scientists used CRISPER-Cas9 to make inheritable gene edits in 86 zygotes but were never implanted. But they could have!

    • 195 nations agree to lower carbon emissions

    • Liquid water found on Mars

    • First close up images of Ceres and Pluto

    • Terry Byland received the first two retinal prostheses — one in each eye enabling him to regain some sight signals (One of the inventors: Mark Humayun)

  • 2016 - the first man to receive a penis transplant - Thomas Manning - Veterans injury to the pelvic region.

    • Donald J Trump was elected as US President surprisingly beating Hilary Clinton

  • 2017

    • Donald becomes the 45th US President, surprisingly beating Hilary Clinton

    • Hurricane Harvey and Irma hit the US and the Virgin Islands

    • 58 people die in Las Vegas Mass Murder

    •  October 15, 2017, American actress Alyssa Milano posted a tweet urging women to speak up and out about their experiences with sexual assault or harassment using the phrase “me too.” Harvey Weinstein, and many other prominent men, were taken down as a result, exposing sexual abusers in public and churches.

    • (Oct) AlphaGo Zero defeated Alpha Go as a self-learning computer.

  • 2018 - Apple becomes the first Trillion Dollar company

    • He Jiankui, a Chinese researcher, helped produce genetically edited babies that led to CRISPR twins (Nana and Lulu) being born prematurely. It was a hack job, crossing the red lines of international standards and not fully reviewed. He was later sentenced to 3 yrs in precision for violating “national regulations on biomedical research and medical ethics.”

  • 2019 - The US House of Representatives impeach the 45th President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, who was later acquitted by the Senate in February of 2020.

    • April 15 - the church at Notre Dame in Paris burns

  • 2020 -

    • Jan 26 - Kobe Bryant and daughter killed in a helicopter crash

    • Coronavirus (COVID-19), a virus originating in Wuhan China in Dec 2019 shuts the whole world down. March 12 is known as Black Thursday when the NBA stopped the season catapulting the nation to shelter in place.

    • George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor ignited Black Lives Matter protests in many American cities

  • 2021

    • Jan 6 - President Trump holds a rally of “Patriots” in an effort to take back the country “from the Democrats who stole the election by cheating with voting machines and mail-in ballot counting.” Thousands get into the Capital, some walking in with police letting them in, some fight cops, others break windows. It is labeled as the great insurrection and hundreds of people are arrested.

    • Jan 13 - President Trump becomes the first US president to be impeached by the House of Representatives for a second time. He was acquitted by the Senate

    • Jan 20 - Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were inaugurated as President and Vice President, the first black woman as VP

    • April 19 - Ingenuity, NASA’s little helicopter makes the first test flight on another planet, 118 years after the Wright Brothers first flew their plane.

    • Dec 25 - James Webb Space Telescope launched

  • 2022

    • Jan 14 - First genetically modified pig heart transplant into human

Beginning to 1 BCE * 0-999 AD/CE * 1000-1499 AD/CE. *. 1500 AD/CE - Present