World History

— 1799: Having successfully won many battles, General Napoleon Bonaparte is named First Consul of France and assumes sweeping powers
— 1804: Napoleon becomes Emperor of the new French Empire
— 1805: The French fleet loses to the British and Spanish, led by Admiral Horatio Nelson in the Battle of Trafalgar (Spain)
— 1812: During the French invasion of Russia, Napoleon wins the Battle of Borodino and takes Moscow, but must eventually retreat after huge losses resulting both from Russian troops and the Russian winter (Russia)
— 1813: Napoleon’s forces suffer a major defeat at the Battle of Leipzig against a coalition of Russian, Prussian, Austrian and Swedish armies (Germany)
— 1814: Napoleon abdicates and is exiled to the Mediterranean island of Elba (Italy)
— 1815: Napoleon escapes from Elba and raises an army, but is defeated by British and Prussian Armies Led by the Duke of Wellington and Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher at the Battle of Waterloo (Belgium)
— 1815: Napoleon is exiled to the southern Atlantic island of St. Helena, off the coast of Africa

— 1804: Richard Trevithick’s early steam locomotive pulls a train with 10 tons of iron and 70 passengers nine miles Merthyr Tydfil, to Abercynon in Wales
— 1812: Matthew Murray builds the Salamanca, the first commercially-successful steam locomotive, and runs it on the Middleton Railway in Leeds 
— 1813: Christopher Blackett and William Hedley build Puffing Billy, a steam locomotive, and run it on the Wylam Colliery Railway
— 1814:  George Stephenson improves on earlier designs with the Blücher
— 1825: The Stockton & Darlington Railway, the first public steam railway, opens; Stephenson drives his locomotive the Locomotion nine miles in two hours hauling an 80-ton load
— 1829: Stephenson’s new locomotive, the Rocket, wins the Rainhill Trials, a steam railway competition in Lancashire
— 1830: Opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, the first railway to rely exclusively on steam-powered trains

— 4/19/1775: The Battles of Lexington and Concord
— 7/4/1776: America Issues its Declaration of Independence from Great Britain
— 1777: British General John Burgoyne, surrounded and unreinforced, surrenders his entire army to the Americans at the Battle of Saratoga
— 1778: France signs a treaty of alliance with the US
— 1781: British General Cornwallis surrenders to George Washington, effectively ending the American Revolutionary War
— 1783: The Treaty of Paris officially ends the war between the US and Great Britain

— 1663: Edward Somerset invents the first steam pump
— 1698: Thomas Savery designs an improved steam pump to pump water from mines
— 1705-1733: Thomas Newcomen invents the atmospheric engine, a more powerful steam pump, and teams up with Savery to build and distribute the machines
— 1765: James Watt invents a steam engine with a separate condenser that is five times more efficient than earlier versions
— 1776: Watt teams up with Matthew Boulton to build their first commercial steam engine
— 1799: Richard Trevithick builds a high-pressure steam engine
— 1801: Oliver Evans builds the first high-pressure steam engine in the US

— c. 1350: The Renaissance begins in Florence (Italy)
— c. 1410-1420: Florentine artist and architect Filippo Brunelleschi sets out the rules of linear perspective
— 1435: Leon Battista Alberti publishes Della Pittura, a treatise on painting
— c. 1436: Brunelleschi completes the dome of the Florence Cathedral
— 1452: Sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti completes the East Doors of the Florence Baptistery, known as the Gates of Paradise
— c. 1486: Sandro Botticelli paints The Birth of Venus
— 1501: Michelangelo completes his sculpture of David
— c. 1504: Leonardo da Vinci paints the Mona Lisa
— 1508-1512: Michelangelo paints the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome
— 1513: Niccolò Machiavelli writes The Prince, a treatise on politics

— 1206: Mongolian leader Temujin defeats his rivals and receives the title Genghis Khan, Universal Ruler of the Mongols (Mongolia)
— 1215: Genghis Khan captures the capital of the Jin Dynasty (China)
— 1221: The Mongols defeat the Khwarezmid Empire and take over Persia (Iran, Afghanistan)
— 1227: Death of Genghis Khan in battle against the Western Xia Dynasty (China)
— 1241: The Mongols defeat an army of Poles and Moravians at the Battle of Liegnitz (Poland)
— 1258: The Mongols capture and destroy Baghdad, capital of the Islamic Abbasid Caliphate (Iraq)
— 1260: The victory of the Islamic Mamluks over the Mongols at the Battle of Ain Jalut signals the waning of the Mongol Empire (Israel/Palestine)

— c. 800: Chinese alchemists seeking an elixir of life produce gunpowder instead
— c. 904: First reference to the use of fire arrows (gunpowder-fueled projectiles) in warfare
— c. 1000: By this time, fire arrows, fire lances and rocket arrows are commonly used by Chinese armies
— c. 1110: First reference to a fireworks display using gunpowder-fueled rockets
— c. 1130: Bombs and cannons fueled by gunpowder have appeared in China by this time
— c. 1240: Knowledge of gunpowder spreads to the Middle East
— c. 1258: First evidence of gunpowder use in India
— c. 1300: By this time, gunpowder use has spread throughout Europe

— 338 BCE: The Macedonians, led by King Philip II and his son Alexander, take Athens in the Battle of Chaeronea, giving Macedon power over all the Greek city-states
— 336 BCE: Upon the death of Philip II, Alexander becomes king of Macedon (Greece)
— 333 BCE: Alexander wins the Battle of Issus over Darius III of Persia (Turkey)
— 332 BCE: Alexander conquers Syria and Egypt
— 331 BCE: Alexander becomes ruler of the Persian Empire after defeating the Persians at the Battle of Gaugamela (Iraqi Kurdistan)
— 327 BCE: Alexander invades the Indian subcontinent (Pakistan)
— 323 BCE: Alexander dies at Babylon (Iraq)

— 753 BCE: Legendary date of founding of Rome
— 509 BCE: Legendary date of founding of the Roman Republic
— 202 BCE: Rome under Scipio Africanus defeats Carthage under Hannibal at the Battle of Zama to end the Second Punic War (Tunisia)
— 146 BCE: Roman armies destroy the city of Carthage at the end of the Third Punic War (Tunisia)
— 49 BCE: Julius Caesar and his army cross the Rubicon, starting Roman Civil War
— 44 BCE: Julius Caesar is assassinated in the Senate by Brutus, Cassius and others
— 31 BCE: Octavian defeats Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium, ending the Roman civil wars (Greece)
— 27 BCE: The Senate makes Octavian (later called Augustus) Imperator, effectively ceding power to him and marking the beginning of the Roman Empire
— 27 BCE-180 CE: Pax Romana, a period of relative peace in the Roman Empire
— 9 AD: In the Battle of Teutoberg Forest, Germanic forces led by Arminius ambush and destroy three Roman legions led by Publius Quinctilius Varus (Germany)

— 312 AD: Constantine defeats rival Maxentius at the Battle of Milvian Bridge to become co-emperor
— 313 AD: Co-emperors Constantine and Licinius issue the Edict of Milan, which makes Christianity legal in the Roman Empire
— 390 AD: Theodosius the Great issues the Edict of Thessalonica, which makes Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire

— 395 CE: Death of Theodosius; from this point, the Roman Empire is permanently divided between Eastern and Western portions
— 410 CE: Sack of Rome by the Visigoths under Alaric
— 476 CE: Flavius Odoacer leads a revolt that deposes Emperor Romulus Augustulus, marking the end of the Western Roman Empire

— c. 800 BCE: The Greek Dark Ages end and the Archaic Period begins; the first Greek city-states emerge 
— 776 BCE: Traditional date of first Olympic Games athletic competitions
— c. 595-575 BCE: Solon institutes wide-ranging constitutional reforms in Athens
— 490 BCE: The Greeks stop the first Persian invasion at the Battle of Marathon
— 480-479 BCE: Greek city-states (led by Athens and Sparta) repel the second Persian invasion at Salamis and Plataea; Classical Period begins 
— 461-429 BCE: Pericles leads Athens during a golden age of arts and culture
–—– 458 BCE: The Oresteia, a trilogy of tragic plays by Aeschylus, is performed in Athens
—— 440 BCE: Herodotus writes The Histories, an account of the Greco-Persian wars
—— 432 BCE: Completion of the Parthenon on the Acropolis in Athens
—— 429 BCE: Oedipus Rex, a tragic play by Sophocles, is performed in Athens
— 404 BCE: Sparta defeats Athens, ending the Peloponnesian War
— 400 BCE: First articulation of the Hippocratic Oath for physicians
— 386 BCE: Plato opens the Academy in Athens
— 336 BCE: Aristotle opens the Lyceum in Athens

— c. 3000-2700 BCE: First evidence of smelting iron ore to make wrought iron (Iraq, Syria)

— c. 1500-1200 BCE: The Hittites are working iron in bellows-aided furnaces (“bloomeries”) (Turkey)
— c. 1200 BCE: The Iron Age begins in the Ancient Near East (Iraq, Turkey, Iran, Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine) and India
— c. 800 BCE: The Iron Age begins in Central and Western Europe
— c. 500 BCE: The Iron Age begins in Northern Europe and China

— c. 1850 BCE (or 1550 BCE): First evidence of the Proto-Sinaitic/Proto-Canaanite script, which gives rise to the Phoenician alphabet

— c. 1050 BCE: Development of the all-consonant Phoenician alphabet, which gives rise to the Semitic, Hebraic and Arabic scripts
— c. 800 BCE: The Greeks adapt the Phoenician alphabet by converting some of the letters to vowels; the Greek alphabet gives rise to the Roman and Cryllic alphabets

— c. 5400 BCE: According to legend, the Sumerians create their first settlement in Mesopotamia at Eridu
— c. 4500 BCE: The Sumerian settlement of Uruk becomes the first city in Mesopotamia
— c. 2900 BCE: Uruk is the largest city in the world
— c. 2075 BCE: The Sumerian city of Lagash is the largest city in the world
— c. 2030 BCE: The Sumerian city of Ur is the largest city in the world

— c. 20,000 BCE: Earliest evidence of humans exerting some control over wild grain (Israel)
— c. 11,000 BCE: Planned cultivation and trait selection of rye (Syria); evidence of domestication of lentils, vetch, pistachios and almonds (Greece)
— c. 9,500 BCE: By  this time, eight key crops (emmer wheat, einkorn wheat, barley, peas, lentils, bitter vetch, chickpeas and flax) have been domesticated in the Levant (Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Israel, Jordan, Cyprus, Turkey)
— c. 9,100 BCE: Oldest known agricultural settlement, at Klimonas (Cyprus)
— c. 9,000 BCE: Domestication of sheep in several locations in central and southwest Asia
— c. 8,000 BCE: Farming is fully established along the Nile River by this time (Egypt); rice and millet are domesticated in China; domestication of goats (Iran); domestication of pigs (Near East; China; Germany); domestication of maize and squash (Mexico)
— c. 7,000 BCE: Agriculture is well-established in Mesopotamia (Iraq); first evidence of agriculture in the Indus Valley (Pakistan, India); domestication of cattle in North Africa, India and Mesopotamia
— c. 6,000 BCE: First evidence of agriculture on the Iberian Peninsula (Spain, Portugal); domestication of chickens (India; Southeast Asia); domestication of llamas (Peru)
— c. 5,500 BCE: Farmers in Sumeria have developed large-scale intensive cultivation of land, mono-cropping, organized irrigation and a specialized agricultural labor force (Iraq)
— c. 5,000 BCE: Domestication of rice and sorghum in Africa’s Sahel region (Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Algeria, Niger, Nigeria, Chad, Sudan, South Sudan, Eritrea, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Ethiopia)
— c. 4,000 BCE: Domestication of the horse (Ukraine; Kazakhstan)
— c. 3,700 BCE: Oldest known field systems, including stone walls (Ireland)
— c. 3,000 BCE: Earliest known use of the ox-drawn ard plow (Egypt)