Turning points in world history

346 events from every region, in order, from the beginnings of writing to this decade.

• 3500 BCE The Green Sahara dries out, North and West Africa. As monsoon rains shift south, the grassland Sahara turns to desert over centuries, pushing herders toward the Nile valley, the Sahel and Lake Chad.
• 3500 BCE Horses tamed at Botai, Central and North Asia. People of the Kazakh steppe build their lives around horses, leaving bits of wear on teeth and traces of mare's milk in pots, some of the earliest evidence of horse herding.
• 3300 BCE Otzi the Iceman dies in the Alps, Europe. A Copper Age man is killed by an arrow high in the Otztal Alps. His frozen body, found in 1991 with his clothes, bow and copper axe, is Europe's oldest natural human mummy.
• 3300 BCE Earliest known use of cacao, South America. People at Santa Ana-La Florida in the Ecuadorian Amazon use domesticated cacao, about 1,500 years before it appears in Mesoamerica.
• 3200 BCE Writing invented at Uruk, Middle East. Temple scribes at Uruk press accounting signs into clay tablets. Over the following centuries this proto-cuneiform grows into a full writing system used for 3,000 years.
• 3100 BCE Unification of Egypt, North and West Africa. Narmer, king of Upper Egypt, brings the Nile valley and the Delta under one crown, shown on the Narmer Palette. Memphis becomes the capital.
• 3100 BCE Liangzhu builds flood dams, East Asia. The Liangzhu people raise a system of earthen dams and levees north of their city, among the oldest large water control works in the world.
• 3000 BCE Stonehenge begun, Europe. The first phase of Stonehenge, a circular ditch and bank with a ring of pits, is dug on Salisbury Plain. The great sarsen stones are raised around 2500 BCE.
• 2600 BCE Indus cities reach their height, South Asia. Mohenjo-daro and Harappa grow into planned cities of tens of thousands, with brick drains, granaries and standard weights shared across a huge area.
• 2600 BCE Caral builds the first cities of the Americas, South America. Platform mounds and sunken plazas rise at Caral in the Supe valley, part of a network of towns that traded cotton and fish between coast and valley.
• 2560 BCE Great Pyramid of Giza, North and West Africa. Khufu's pyramid at Giza is completed, 146 metres high and the tallest human-made structure on Earth for nearly 4,000 years.
• 2500 BCE Paleo-Eskimos settle the eastern Arctic, North America. Arctic Small Tool tradition hunters cross from Alaska to Greenland in a few centuries, the first people to live in the Canadian high Arctic.
• 2334 BCE Sargon founds the Akkadian Empire, Middle East. Sargon defeats Lugalzagesi of Umma and unites the Sumerian cities with the north, creating the first known multi-ethnic empire.
• 2200 BCE Austronesians reach the Philippines, Southeast Asia. Farmers from Taiwan cross the Luzon Strait with red-slipped pottery and rice, the first step of the Austronesian spread through the islands.
• 2100 BCE Maize reaches the Southwest, North America. Maize from Mexico appears in Arizona and New Mexico, and within a millennium farmers in the Tucson Basin are digging irrigation canals.
• 2004 BCE Elamites sack Ur, Middle East. An Elamite army destroys Ur and carries off its last king, Ibbi-Sin, ending the Third Dynasty of Ur. The Lament for Ur mourns the city's fall.
• 2000 BCE First spoke-wheeled chariots, Central and North Asia. Sintashta warriors are buried with light two-wheeled chariots, a technology that spreads within centuries to Egypt, India and China.
• 1900 BCE Indus cities decline, South Asia. As rivers shift and rainfall drops, the large Indus cities empty out, the script disappears and people move east toward the Ganges plain.
• 1754 BCE Code of Hammurabi, Middle East. Hammurabi of Babylon has 282 laws carved on a basalt stele, from trade and family disputes to the principle of an eye for an eye.
• 1650 BCE Oldest known ballcourt built, Mesoamerica and Caribbean. Villagers at Paso de la Amada on the Chiapas coast build a court for the rubber ball game, a sport played across Mesoamerica for the next 3,000 years.
• 1600 BCE Thera eruption, Europe. The volcano on Santorini buries the Minoan town of Akrotiri under metres of ash in one of the largest eruptions of the last 10,000 years.
• 1600 BCE Poverty Point earthworks built, North America. Foragers in Louisiana raise six concentric ridges and Mound A, one of the largest earthworks in North America, without farming.
• 1595 BCE Hittites sack Babylon, Middle East. Mursili I marches 2,000 km down the Euphrates and sacks Babylon, ending Hammurabi's dynasty and opening the way for the Kassites.
• 1500 BCE Rigveda hymns composed, South Asia. Priests in the Punjab begin composing the Rigveda, the oldest text in any Indo-Aryan language, passed down orally for centuries before it was written.
• 1500 BCE Seafarers settle the Marianas, Oceania. Voyagers, probably from the Philippines, cross more than 2,000 km of open sea to settle the Marianas, the first people in Remote Oceania.
• 1500 BCE Dingoes reach Australia, Oceania. Dogs brought by seafarers from island Southeast Asia arrive around this time and spread across the mainland, though they never reach Tasmania.
• 1470 BCE Hatshepsut's expedition to Punt, North and West Africa. Queen Hatshepsut sends five ships down the Red Sea to Punt. Reliefs at Deir el-Bahari show myrrh trees, incense and the queen of Punt.
• 1346 BCE Akhenaten founds Amarna, North and West Africa. Pharaoh Akhenaten moves the capital to a new city at Amarna devoted to the sun disc Aten, a religious revolution reversed after his death.
• 1274 BCE Battle of Kadesh, Middle East. Ramesses II and the Hittite king Muwatalli II fight one of the largest chariot battles in history in Syria. Both claim victory, and a peace treaty follows in 1259 BCE.
• 1250 BCE Oracle bone writing at Anyang, East Asia. Diviners of the Shang king Wu Ding carve questions to the ancestors on turtle shells and ox bones, the oldest surviving Chinese writing.
• 1200 BCE Late Bronze Age collapse, Europe. Palaces at Mycenae, Pylos and Thebes burn and Linear B writing disappears as trade across the eastern Mediterranean breaks down.
• 1200 BCE San Lorenzo rises as the first Olmec center, Mesoamerica and Caribbean. Olmec rulers at San Lorenzo carve colossal basalt heads from stone dragged some 60 km from the Tuxtla Mountains.
• 1177 BCE Late Bronze Age collapse, Middle East. Within a few decades Hattusa is abandoned, Ugarit is burned and Sea Peoples raid the coasts. The palace states of the eastern Mediterranean collapse.
• 1050 BCE Phoenician alphabet, Middle East. Phoenician scribes use a 22-letter alphabet of consonants. Carried by traders, it becomes the ancestor of the Greek, Latin, Hebrew and Arabic scripts.
• 1046 BCE Battle of Muye, East Asia. King Wu of Zhou defeats the last Shang king, who kills himself, and the Zhou claim the Mandate of Heaven.
• 1000 BCE Bantu farmers reach the Great Lakes, Central and Southern Africa. Around this time Bantu-speaking farmers moving east along the northern edge of the rainforest reach the Great Lakes, the start of the Eastern Bantu spread that later reaches the Cape.
• 1000 BCE Iron spreads across the Ganges plain, South Asia. Iron tools let farmers clear the forests of the middle Ganges, opening the way for the towns and kingdoms of the later Vedic age.
• 1000 BCE Lapita voyagers settle Vanuatu and Fiji, Oceania. Lapita canoes cross from the Solomons into Remote Oceania and settle Vanuatu, New Caledonia and Fiji within a few generations.
• 900 BCE Chavín de Huántar becomes a pilgrimage center, South America. The temple at Chavín draws pilgrims from across the Andes, and its art becomes the first style shared over most of Peru.
• 853 BCE Battle of Qarqar, Middle East. A coalition including Ahab of Israel and Hadadezer of Damascus checks Shalmaneser III. His inscription names Gindibu the Arab with 1,000 camels, the first record of Arabs.
• 850 BCE First settlers reach Tonga, Oceania. Lapita voyagers found a settlement at Nukuleka on Tongatapu, the first human presence in Polynesia.
• 814 BCE Founding of Carthage, North and West Africa. Phoenician settlers from Tyre found Carthage on the Gulf of Tunis, according to tradition under Queen Dido. It becomes the leading city of the western Mediterranean.
• 776 BCE First Olympic Games, Europe. By tradition the first Olympic festival is held at Olympia in honour of Zeus. Greeks later counted years in four-year Olympiads from this date.
• 753 BCE Traditional founding of Rome, Europe. Roman writers dated the founding of the city by Romulus to 21 April 753 BCE, the starting point of their year count.
• 728 BCE Piye conquers Egypt, North and West Africa. The Kushite king Piye sails down the Nile, takes Memphis and receives the submission of Egypt's rival kings, beginning a century of Nubian pharaohs.
• 722 BCE Assyria conquers Samaria, Middle East. Assyria takes Samaria after a three-year siege, ends the Kingdom of Israel and deports its people, the origin of the legend of the ten lost tribes.
• 612 BCE Fall of Nineveh, Middle East. Babylonians and Medes storm and burn the Assyrian capital. Within three years the Neo-Assyrian Empire is gone.
• 587 BCE Destruction of Jerusalem, Middle East. Nebuchadnezzar II destroys Jerusalem and Solomon's Temple and deports the Judean elite to Babylon. The exile reshapes Jewish religion and scripture.
• 551 BCE Birth of Confucius, East Asia. Kong Qiu is born in the state of Lu. His teachings on ritual, family duty and good government become the foundation of East Asian political thought.
• 539 BCE Cyrus takes Babylon, Middle East. Cyrus the Great enters Babylon without a fight and allows deported peoples, including the Judeans, to go home. Persia now rules from the Aegean to Central Asia.
• 530 BCE Cyrus the Great killed by the Massagetae, Central and North Asia. Herodotus says Cyrus died fighting Queen Tomyris east of the Caspian, who dipped his severed head in a skin full of blood.
• 508 BCE Athenian democracy, Europe. Cleisthenes reorganises the citizens of Athens into ten tribes and gives power to the assembly, creating the first known democracy.
• 500 BCE Iron smelting in the Great Lakes, Central and Southern Africa. Furnaces of the Urewe culture around Lake Victoria are producing iron by about 500 BCE, among the earliest ironworking south of the Sahara.
• 500 BCE Iron smelting in West Africa, North and West Africa. Furnaces at Nok sites in Nigeria and at Taruga smelt iron by about 500 BCE, one of the earliest iron industries south of the Sahara.
• 500 BCE Dong Son bronze drums, Southeast Asia. Red River valley smiths cast large decorated bronze drums, traded as prestige goods across mainland and island Southeast Asia.
• 500 BCE Monte Albán founded, Mesoamerica and Caribbean. Zapotec communities of the Valley of Oaxaca build a new capital on a mountaintop, one of the first cities in Mesoamerica.
• 483 BCE Death of the Buddha, South Asia. Siddhartha Gautama dies at Kushinagar after decades of teaching in Magadha and Kosala. The traditional date is about 483 BCE, and many scholars now prefer about 400 BCE.
• 480 BCE Battle of Salamis, Europe. The Athenian-led Greek fleet destroys Xerxes' navy in the straits off Salamis, turning back the Persian invasion of Greece.
• 334 BCE Alexander invades Persia, Europe. Alexander crosses the Hellespont with about 40,000 men and begins the conquest of the Persian Empire.
• 331 BCE Founding of Alexandria, North and West Africa. Alexander the Great founds Alexandria on the Mediterranean coast of Egypt. Under the Ptolemies it becomes the largest Greek city and home of the Great Library.
• 331 BCE Battle of Gaugamela, Middle East. Alexander defeats Darius III near Erbil. Babylon, Susa and Persepolis fall within months, and the Achaemenid Empire is finished.
• 327 BCE Alexander marries Roxana, Central and North Asia. After two years of hard fighting in Bactria and Sogdiana, Alexander marries the daughter of a Sogdian noble to secure the region.
• 326 BCE Alexander at the Hydaspes, South Asia. Alexander defeats King Porus on the Jhelum, but his exhausted army mutinies at the Beas and he turns back down the Indus.
• 261 BCE Ashoka's Kalinga war, South Asia. Ashoka conquers Kalinga on the east coast. His own edicts record over 100,000 dead, and his remorse led him to promote Buddhism and dhamma across his empire.
• 247 BCE Buddhism reaches Sri Lanka, South Asia. Mahinda, said to be Ashoka's son, converts King Devanampiya Tissa, and the Mahavihara monastery at Anuradhapura becomes the center of Theravada Buddhism.
• 221 BCE Qin unifies China, East Asia. King Zheng of Qin conquers the last of the Warring States and takes the new title Huangdi, emperor.
• 218 BCE Hannibal crosses the Alps, Europe. The Carthaginian general leads his army and elephants from Spain over the Alps into Italy and wins at Trebia, Trasimene and Cannae.
• 210 BCE First Emperor buried with the Terracotta Army, East Asia. Qin Shi Huang dies on tour and is buried near Xi'an, guarded by about 8,000 life-size clay soldiers rediscovered by farmers in 1974.
• 146 BCE Destruction of Carthage, North and West Africa. Roman forces under Scipio Aemilianus storm and burn Carthage after a three-year siege, ending the Third Punic War. Its territory becomes the province of Africa.
• 138 BCE Zhang Qian travels west, Central and North Asia. The Han envoy Zhang Qian sets out to find the Yuezhi. His reports of Fergana, Bactria and Parthia lead to the opening of the Silk Road.
• 111 BCE Han conquest of Nanyue, Southeast Asia. Han armies take the Nanyue capital at Panyu, bringing northern Vietnam under Chinese rule for most of the next thousand years.
• 53 BCE Battle of Carrhae, Middle East. Parthian horse archers destroy the army of Marcus Licinius Crassus in Upper Mesopotamia, fixing the Euphrates as the frontier between Rome and Iran.
• 44 BCE Assassination of Julius Caesar, Europe. Senators led by Brutus and Cassius stab Caesar, dictator for life, on the Ides of March, setting off the civil wars that end the Republic.
• 32 BCE Early Long Count date at Tres Zapotes, Mesoamerica and Caribbean. Stela C at Tres Zapotes records a date in 32 BCE in the Long Count calendar, later used by the Classic Maya.
• 30 BCE Death of Cleopatra, North and West Africa. After defeat at Actium, Cleopatra VII and Mark Antony take their own lives. Octavian annexes Egypt, ending three centuries of Ptolemaic rule.
• 9 Battle of the Teutoburg Forest, Europe. Arminius of the Cherusci destroys three Roman legions under Varus, and Rome gives up the conquest of Germany beyond the Rhine.
• 30 Crucifixion of Jesus, Middle East. Jesus of Nazareth is executed in Jerusalem under the Roman prefect Pontius Pilate, around 30 to 33 CE. His followers spread a new religion across the empire.
• 40 Trung sisters' revolt, Southeast Asia. Trung Trac and Trung Nhi drive out the Han governor and rule as queens for three years, later honoured as Vietnam's national heroines.
• 50 The Periplus describes Azania, Central and Southern Africa. A Greek merchant's guide, the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, calls the East African coast Azania and names Rhapta as its southernmost market for ivory and tortoiseshell.
• 70 Romans destroy the Second Temple, Middle East. Titus captures Jerusalem and burns the Temple, ending the Jewish revolt. Judaism reorganises around rabbis and synagogues.
• 100 Hopewell exchange network at its height, North America. Ohio Hopewell earthworks such as Newark draw obsidian from Yellowstone, copper from Lake Superior and shells from the Gulf of Mexico.
• 100 Nazca Lines drawn, South America. The Nazca begin scraping huge animal figures and straight lines into the desert of southern Peru, many visible in full only from the air.
• 105 Cai Lun presents paper, East Asia. The court eunuch Cai Lun reports a method of making paper from bark, hemp and rags to the Han emperor, and paper spreads across Asia.
• 127 Kanishka becomes Kushan emperor, South Asia. Kanishka's reign starts a new era. He patronizes Buddhism, and his empire links Rome, Parthia and Han China through the trade routes of Bactria and Gandhara.
• 184 Yellow Turban rebellion, East Asia. A Daoist millenarian movement rises across north China. The warlords who suppress it end up dividing the Han empire among themselves.
• 200 Pyramid of the Sun completed, Mesoamerica and Caribbean. Teotihuacan finishes its largest monument, about 65 m tall, over a cave that was a sacred place before the city grew.
• 301 Armenia adopts Christianity, Middle East. King Tiridates III, converted by Gregory the Illuminator, makes Armenia the first state to adopt Christianity as its official religion.
• 313 Edict of Milan, Europe. Constantine and Licinius grant Christians freedom of worship across the Roman Empire.
• 330 Aksum adopts Christianity, North and West Africa. King Ezana of Aksum converts under the influence of the Syrian bishop Frumentius, and his coins switch from pagan symbols to the cross.
• 330 Constantinople dedicated, Europe. Constantine dedicates his new capital on the site of Byzantium. It stays the seat of the eastern Roman Empire for over 1,100 years.
• 372 Buddhism reaches Korea, East Asia. Former Qin sends a monk with Buddhist images and scriptures to Goguryeo. Baekje accepts Buddhism in 384 and Silla in 527.
• 378 Teotihuacan intervenes at Tikal, Mesoamerica and Caribbean. The warlord Siyaj K'ak' arrives at Tikal from Teotihuacan on the day its king dies and installs a new dynasty.
• 410 Visigoths sack Rome, Europe. Alaric's Visigoths plunder Rome for three days, the first time in 800 years that the city falls to a foreign enemy.
• 476 End of the Western Roman Empire, Europe. Odoacer deposes the boy emperor Romulus Augustulus and sends the imperial regalia to Constantinople.
• 499 Aryabhata writes the Aryabhatiya, South Asia. The astronomer Aryabhata uses place-value numbers, gives pi as 3.1416 and argues that the earth spins on its axis.
• 541 Plague of Justinian, Europe. Bubonic plague reaches Constantinople, killing perhaps a quarter of its people, and returns in waves across Europe for two centuries.
• 600 Wari and Tiwanaku expand, South America. Two highland states spread their power across the Andes, Wari through roads and administrative centers and Tiwanaku through colonies and trade.
• 609 Grand Canal completed, East Asia. The Sui finish a network of canals linking Hangzhou, the Yangtze, the Yellow River and the north, carrying southern grain to the capitals for over a thousand years.
• 622 The Hijra, Middle East. Muhammad and his followers leave Mecca for Medina, founding the first Muslim community. The year becomes the start of the Islamic calendar.
• 628 Brahmagupta's rules for zero, South Asia. Working at Bhinmal in Rajasthan, Brahmagupta writes the first known rules for calculating with zero and negative numbers.
• 636 Battles of Yarmouk and Qadisiyyah, Middle East. Arab armies crush the Byzantines at the Yarmouk River and then the Sasanians at Qadisiyyah, opening Syria and Iraq to Islamic rule.
• 641 Arab conquest of Egypt, North and West Africa. Amr ibn al-As takes Babylon fortress and then Alexandria, ending Byzantine rule. He founds Fustat, the nucleus of later Cairo.
• 645 Taika reforms, East Asia. After a palace coup against the Soga clan, the Japanese court begins land and tax reforms modeled on Tang China.
• 652 The Baqt treaty, North and West Africa. After failing to take Dongola, an Arab army agrees a treaty with Makuria trading slaves for grain and cloth. It keeps the peace for some six centuries.
• 668 Silla unifies Korea, East Asia. With Tang help Silla destroys Goguryeo, then fights the Tang until 676 to take control of the peninsula south of the Taedong river.
• 670 Founding of Kairouan, North and West Africa. Uqba ibn Nafi founds Kairouan in Tunisia as a garrison for the conquest of the Maghreb. Its Great Mosque becomes a centre of Islamic learning.
• 671 Yijing studies at Srivijaya, Southeast Asia. The Chinese monk Yijing stops at Srivijaya on his way to India and advises pilgrims to study Sanskrit and Buddhist texts there first.
• 680 Battle of Karbala, Middle East. Umayyad troops kill Husayn, grandson of Muhammad, and his small band at Karbala. His death becomes the central event of Shia Islam.
• 695 Tikal defeats Calakmul, Mesoamerica and Caribbean. Jasaw Chan K'awiil of Tikal defeats Yich'aak K'ahk' of Calakmul, ending the dominance of the Snake kingdom in the southern lowlands.
• 712 Arab conquest of Sindh, South Asia. The Umayyad general Muhammad bin Qasim defeats Raja Dahir and brings Sindh and Multan into the caliphate.
• 732 Battle of Tours, Europe. Charles Martel's Franks defeat an Umayyad army from al-Andalus between Tours and Poitiers, ending Muslim raids deep into Gaul.
• 732 Orkhon inscriptions raised, Central and North Asia. Stone memorials for Kul Tigin and Bilge Khan in the Orkhon valley record the history of the Turks in their own runic script.
• 751 Battle of Talas, Central and North Asia. An Abbasid army defeats Tang forces near the Talas river after the Karluks change sides, ending Chinese expansion into Central Asia.
• 755 An Lushan rebellion, East Asia. The frontier general An Lushan rebels and takes both Tang capitals. Eight years of war cost millions of lives and leave the dynasty dependent on regional governors.
• 762 Founding of Baghdad, Middle East. Caliph al-Mansur builds his round city on the Tigris. Within a century Baghdad is one of the largest cities in the world and home to the House of Wisdom.
• 762 Uyghur khagan adopts Manichaeism, Central and North Asia. Bogu Khagan converts after meeting Manichaean priests in Luoyang, making the Uyghurs the only state ever to adopt the religion officially.
• 793 Viking raid on Lindisfarne, Europe. Norse raiders sack the monastery of Lindisfarne off Northumbria, the conventional start of the Viking Age.
• 800 Charlemagne crowned emperor, Europe. Pope Leo III crowns Charlemagne emperor of the Romans in Saint Peter's on Christmas Day, reviving the imperial title in the west.
• 825 Borobudur completed, Southeast Asia. The Sailendra dynasty completes Borobudur in central Java, a stepped stone mandala with 2,672 relief panels and 504 Buddha statues.
• 850 Classic Maya collapse, Mesoamerica and Caribbean. Over about a century, the southern lowland Maya cities stop raising monuments and lose most of their people, amid drought, warfare and failing kingship.
• 868 Diamond Sutra printed, East Asia. A woodblock-printed copy of the Diamond Sutra, later found in the Dunhuang Library Cave, is the oldest dated printed book in the world.
• 938 Battle of Bach Dang, Southeast Asia. Ngo Quyen plants iron-tipped stakes in the Bach Dang River and wrecks the Southern Han fleet at low tide, ending Chinese rule over Vietnam.
• 969 Fatimids found Cairo, North and West Africa. The Fatimid general Jawhar conquers Egypt and lays out al-Qahira, 'the victorious', next to Fustat. Al-Azhar mosque opens soon after.
• 985 Erik the Red settles Greenland, North America. About 14 ships of Icelandic settlers reach southwest Greenland and found the Eastern Settlement.
• 988 Baptism of the Rus, Europe. Vladimir I of Kiev adopts Orthodox Christianity from Byzantium and has the people of Kiev baptised in the Dnieper.
• 1000 Norse reach Vinland, North America. Leif Erikson's voyages bring the first Europeans to North America, about 500 years before Columbus. The camp at L'Anse aux Meadows was found in 1960.
• 1000 Polynesians settle East Polynesia, Oceania. After a long pause in Tonga and Samoa, voyagers reach the Society Islands and within a few centuries Hawaii, the Marquesas, Rapa Nui and New Zealand.
• 1025 Mahmud of Ghazni sacks Somnath, South Asia. Mahmud's army plunders the temple of Somnath on the Gujarat coast, the most famous of his seventeen raids into India.
• 1025 Chola fleet raids Srivijaya, South Asia. Rajendra Chola sends a navy across the Bay of Bengal to sack Kedah and other ports of Srivijaya, the most distant expedition of any Indian state.
• 1025 Chola raid on Srivijaya, Southeast Asia. Rajendra I's fleet from south India sacks Palembang, Kedah and other Srivijayan ports, breaking Srivijaya's hold on the straits.
• 1044 Gunpowder formula recorded, East Asia. The Song military manual Wujing Zongyao gives the first written recipes for gunpowder, used in fire arrows and bombs.
• 1050 Banu Hilal migration, North and West Africa. Arab Bedouin tribes sent west by the Fatimids sweep into Ifriqiya, sacking Kairouan in 1057 and speeding the spread of Arabic in the Maghreb.
• 1050 Cahokia grows into a city, North America. Within a generation Cahokia expands from a village into a planned city with a Grand Plaza and Monks Mound, the largest earthwork in the Americas.
• 1054 East-West Schism, Europe. Papal legates and the Patriarch of Constantinople excommunicate each other, splitting the Catholic and Orthodox churches.
• 1066 Norman conquest of England, Europe. William of Normandy defeats Harold II at Hastings and is crowned king of England on Christmas Day.
• 1071 Battle of Manzikert, Middle East. Seljuk sultan Alp Arslan defeats and captures Emperor Romanos IV. Turkmen tribes pour into Anatolia, which slowly becomes Turkish.
• 1095 First Crusade proclaimed, Europe. At Clermont, Pope Urban II calls on western knights to aid Byzantium and take Jerusalem, which the crusaders capture in 1099.
• 1099 Crusaders take Jerusalem, Middle East. The First Crusade storms Jerusalem and massacres much of its population, founding the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem.
• 1113 Construction of Angkor Wat begins, Southeast Asia. Under Suryavarman II, who takes the throne this year, builders begin Angkor Wat, the largest religious monument in the world, dedicated to Vishnu.
• 1141 Battle of Qatwan, Central and North Asia. The Kara-Khitai defeat Sultan Sanjar near Samarkand, a defeat of a Muslim power that helped feed the European legend of Prester John.
• 1180 Building of Nan Madol, Oceania. Megalithic construction at Nan Madol off Pohnpei expands under the Saudeleur, using basalt columns hauled from across the island.
• 1185 Battle of Dan-no-ura, East Asia. The Minamoto destroy the Taira fleet in the Shimonoseki strait, and the child emperor Antoku drowns. Warrior rule in Japan begins.
• 1187 Battle of Hattin, Middle East. Saladin destroys the Crusader field army near Tiberias and retakes Jerusalem three months later.
• 1192 Second Battle of Tarain, South Asia. Muhammad of Ghor defeats Prithviraj Chauhan north of Delhi, opening the Ganges plain to the rule of Turkic and Afghan sultans.
• 1193 Nalanda sacked, South Asia. Troops of Bakhtiyar Khalji destroy the Buddhist monastic university of Nalanda in Bihar around this time, and Buddhism fades from its Indian homeland.
• 1204 Crusaders sack Constantinople, Europe. Knights of the Fourth Crusade and the Venetian fleet storm and loot Constantinople and divide the Byzantine Empire among themselves.
• 1206 Temujin proclaimed Genghis Khan, Central and North Asia. A great assembly on the Onon river names Temujin ruler of all the felt-tent peoples, founding the Mongol Empire.
• 1215 Magna Carta, Europe. English barons force King John to seal a charter limiting royal power at Runnymede.
• 1220 Mongols sack Bukhara and Samarkand, Central and North Asia. Genghis Khan's armies storm the great cities of Transoxiana, killing or deporting much of their populations and destroying the Khwarazmian Empire.
• 1235 Battle of Kirina, North and West Africa. Sundiata Keita defeats the Sosso king Sumanguru Kante, founding the Mali Empire, a story still told by griots in the Epic of Sundiata.
• 1240 Mongols sack Kiev, Europe. Batu's army storms Kiev, completing the Mongol conquest of the Rus principalities, then strikes Poland and Hungary in 1241.
• 1258 Mongols sack Baghdad, Middle East. Hulagu's army storms Baghdad, kills the caliph al-Musta'sim and many thousands of residents, ending the Abbasid caliphate in Iraq.
• 1260 Battle of Ain Jalut, Middle East. The Mamluks of Egypt defeat a Mongol army in Galilee, the first major Mongol defeat, and keep the Mongols out of Syria and Egypt.
• 1276 The Great Drought, North America. A drought of over 20 years helps drive the Ancestral Puebloans out of Mesa Verde and the Four Corners by 1300.
• 1280 Polynesians reach New Zealand, Oceania. Canoes from East Polynesia land in New Zealand, the last major landmass on Earth to be settled by humans.
• 1281 Kamikaze wreck the Mongol fleet, East Asia. A typhoon destroys most of Kublai Khan's second invasion fleet off Kyushu, remembered in Japan as the divine wind.
• 1287 Mongols invade Pagan, Southeast Asia. Yuan armies invade Burma after earlier clashes, and the Pagan kingdom breaks apart into rival successor states.
• 1288 Dai Viet defeats the Mongols, Southeast Asia. Tran Hung Dao repeats Ngo Quyen's stake trap at the Bach Dang River and destroys the Yuan fleet, ending the third Mongol invasion.
• 1293 Mongol expedition to Java, Southeast Asia. A Yuan fleet sent to punish Kertanegara is used by Raden Wijaya to crush his rivals and then driven out, and Majapahit is founded.
• 1324 Mansa Musa's pilgrimage, North and West Africa. Mansa Musa of Mali crosses Cairo on the way to Mecca with thousands of followers and so much gold that its price falls in Egypt for years.
• 1325 Tenochtitlan founded, Mesoamerica and Caribbean. The Mexica settle on an island in Lake Texcoco where, in their legend, an eagle perched on a cactus.
• 1331 Ibn Battuta visits Kilwa, Central and Southern Africa. The Moroccan traveller Ibn Battuta visits Mombasa and Kilwa and calls Kilwa one of the most beautiful and well-built towns in the world.
• 1347 Black Death reaches Egypt, North and West Africa. Plague arrives in Alexandria and kills perhaps a third of Egypt's people, wrecking the Mamluk economy and irrigation system.
• 1347 Black Death reaches Europe, Europe. Plague carried from the Black Sea reaches Sicily in 1347 and kills between a third and half of Europe's people by 1351.
• 1350 Great Enclosure built at Great Zimbabwe, Central and Southern Africa. Builders raise the Great Enclosure, the largest ancient structure south of the Sahara, with mortarless granite walls up to 11 metres high.
• 1398 Timur sacks Delhi, South Asia. Timur defeats the Tughlaq sultan and massacres much of Delhi's population, leaving the sultanate broken into regional kingdoms.
• 1405 Zheng He's first voyage, East Asia. The eunuch admiral sails with over 200 ships and nearly 28,000 men, the first of seven voyages that reached India, Arabia and East Africa.
• 1405 Zheng He's fleets reach Malacca, Southeast Asia. The Ming admiral's treasure fleets begin calling at Malacca, and Ming backing helps the young sultanate resist Siam.
• 1428 Ulugh Beg's observatory, Central and North Asia. Timur's grandson builds a huge observatory at Samarkand, whose star catalog was the most accurate since Ptolemy.
• 1428 Triple Alliance formed, Mesoamerica and Caribbean. Tenochtitlan, Texcoco and Tlacopan defeat Azcapotzalco and form the alliance that becomes the Aztec Empire.
• 1431 Ayutthaya sacks Angkor, Southeast Asia. Siamese armies take Angkor, and the Khmer court soon moves south toward Phnom Penh.
• 1438 Pachacuti defeats the Chanka, South America. After saving Cusco from the Chanka, Pachacuti takes the throne and begins the conquests that create Tawantinsuyu.
• 1446 Hangul proclaimed, East Asia. King Sejong publishes the Korean alphabet, designed so that ordinary people could learn to read and write their own language.
• 1450 Gutenberg's printing press, Europe. Johannes Gutenberg develops printing with movable metal type in Mainz. His Bible is finished around 1455.
• 1453 Fall of Constantinople, Europe. Mehmed II breaches the Theodosian Walls after a 53-day siege, ending the Roman state that had lasted over 1,400 years.
• 1471 Dai Viet conquers Vijaya, Southeast Asia. Le Thanh Tong takes the Cham capital Vijaya, killing or capturing tens of thousands and reducing Champa to a southern remnant.
• 1482 Portuguese build Elmina, North and West Africa. Portugal builds the fortress of São Jorge da Mina on the Gold Coast, opening direct European trade in gold and later enslaved people.
• 1483 Diogo Cão reaches the Congo River, Central and Southern Africa. The Portuguese navigator Diogo Cão sails into the mouth of the Congo and opens contact with the Kingdom of Kongo.
• 1491 Kongo's king is baptised, Central and Southern Africa. Nzinga a Nkuwu is baptised as João I. His son Afonso I, who ruled from 1509 to 1542, made Catholicism the state religion and wrote letters to the kings of Portugal.
• 1492 Fall of Granada and Columbus's voyage, Europe. Ferdinand and Isabella take Granada, the last Muslim state in Iberia, and send Columbus west across the Atlantic.
• 1492 Columbus reaches the Caribbean, Mesoamerica and Caribbean. Columbus lands in the Bahamas on 12 October and goes on to Cuba and Hispaniola, beginning permanent contact between Europe and the Americas.
• 1497 John Cabot reaches Newfoundland, North America. Sailing for Henry VII of England, Cabot lands on the coast of Newfoundland or Cape Breton and reports cod so thick they could be caught in baskets.
• 1498 Vasco da Gama on the Swahili coast, Central and Southern Africa. Da Gama's fleet calls at Mozambique, Mombasa and Malindi, where he hires a pilot to guide him across the Indian Ocean to Calicut.
• 1498 Vasco da Gama reaches Calicut, South Asia. The Portuguese fleet lands on the Malabar coast after sailing around Africa, opening a direct sea route from Europe to India.
• 1500 Cabral lands in Brazil, South America. Pedro Álvares Cabral's fleet, bound for India, reaches the coast of Bahia and claims Brazil for Portugal.
• 1505 Portuguese sack Kilwa and Mombasa, Central and Southern Africa. Francisco de Almeida's fleet storms Kilwa and burns Mombasa, beginning Portuguese domination of the Swahili coast.
• 1511 Portuguese capture Malacca, Southeast Asia. Afonso de Albuquerque storms Malacca, giving Portugal control of the main gateway between the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea.
• 1514 Battle of Chaldiran, Middle East. Ottoman cannon and muskets defeat the Safavid cavalry of Ismail I. The frontier between Sunni Ottoman lands and Shia Iran takes shape.
• 1517 Luther's Ninety-five Theses, Europe. Martin Luther attacks the sale of indulgences in Wittenberg, starting the Protestant Reformation.
• 1521 Magellan killed at Mactan, Southeast Asia. Ferdinand Magellan's expedition reaches the Philippines, converts the ruler of Cebu and loses Magellan in battle with Lapulapu on Mactan.
• 1521 Fall of Tenochtitlan, Mesoamerica and Caribbean. After a siege of about 80 days, Cortés and tens of thousands of Tlaxcalan and other allies capture the Aztec capital, already ravaged by smallpox.
• 1526 First Battle of Panipat, South Asia. Babur's smaller army, using field guns and cavalry flanking, defeats Ibrahim Lodi and founds the Mughal Empire.
• 1529 Battle of Shimbra Kure, North and West Africa. Imam Ahmad of Adal routs Emperor Lebna Dengel, beginning fourteen years of conquest across the Christian highlands of Ethiopia.
• 1532 Pizarro captures Atahualpa at Cajamarca, South America. About 170 Spaniards seize the Inca emperor, fresh from victory in a civil war. Atahualpa is executed in 1533 despite paying a room full of gold.
• 1540 De Soto and Coronado expeditions, North America. Hernando de Soto marches through the Southeast from 1539 to 1542 and Coronado searches the Southwest and plains for golden cities. Epidemics follow in their wake.
• 1542 Orellana descends the Amazon, South America. Francisco de Orellana's party travels the length of the Amazon and reports dense populations along its banks, later emptied by disease.
• 1545 Cocoliztli epidemic, Mesoamerica and Caribbean. A pestilence called cocoliztli kills a large part of the native population of New Spain between 1545 and 1548.
• 1545 Silver found at Potosí, South America. The Cerro Rico of Potosí proves the richest silver deposit ever found. Its output fuels Spanish power and world trade for two centuries.
• 1565 Battle of Talikota, South Asia. An alliance of Deccan sultanates crushes the army of Vijayanagara, and the victors spend months looting the capital at Hampi.
• 1565 Manila galleon route opens, Southeast Asia. Andrés de Urdaneta finds the return route across the Pacific, opening the galleon trade that carried American silver to Asia for 250 years.
• 1572 Execution of Tupac Amaru, South America. Viceroy Francisco de Toledo has the last Inca ruler of Vilcabamba beheaded in the main square of Cusco.
• 1578 Altan Khan names the Dalai Lama, Central and North Asia. The Tumed Mongol ruler Altan Khan meets the Tibetan lama Sonam Gyatso and gives him the title Dalai Lama, starting the Mongols' conversion to Tibetan Buddhism.
• 1582 Yermak takes Sibir, Central and North Asia. A Cossack band hired by the Stroganov merchants captures Qashliq, the capital of the Khanate of Sibir, opening Siberia to Russia.
• 1591 Battle of Tondibi, North and West Africa. A Moroccan army of musketeers sent across the Sahara by Ahmad al-Mansur routs the Songhai, ending the last great Sahelian empire.
• 1592 Japanese invasion of Korea, East Asia. Toyotomi Hideyoshi sends some 150,000 troops into Korea. Ming armies, Korean guerrillas and Admiral Yi Sun-sin's fleet force a withdrawal by 1598.
• 1598 Battle of Curalaba, South America. Mapuche forces kill the governor of Chile and destroy the Spanish towns south of the Biobío, which stays the frontier for nearly 300 years.
• 1600 Battle of Sekigahara, East Asia. Tokugawa Ieyasu defeats the western daimyo coalition and becomes master of Japan, taking the title of shogun in 1603.
• 1606 Duyfken lands in Australia, Oceania. Willem Janszoon's Dutch ship Duyfken charts part of Cape York, the first recorded European landing on Australia.
• 1607 Jamestown founded, North America. The Virginia Company plants the first permanent English settlement in America inside Powhatan territory. Tobacco soon makes the colony profitable.
• 1608 Champlain founds Quebec, North America. Samuel de Champlain builds a trading post at Quebec, the seat of New France for the next 150 years.
• 1619 Batavia founded, Southeast Asia. Jan Pieterszoon Coen destroys Jayakarta and builds Batavia, the headquarters of the Dutch East India Company in Asia.
• 1632 Taj Mahal begun, South Asia. Shah Jahan starts building a white marble tomb at Agra for his wife Mumtaz Mahal, finished about twenty years later.
• 1642 Tasman reaches New Zealand, Oceania. Abel Tasman sights Tasmania and New Zealand, where a clash with Māori at Golden Bay kills four of his crew.
• 1644 Fall of Beijing, East Asia. Li Zicheng's rebels take Beijing and the last Ming emperor hangs himself. The general Wu Sangui lets the Manchus through the Great Wall and they seize the capital.
• 1648 Peace of Westphalia, Europe. Treaties at Munster and Osnabruck end the Thirty Years' War, recognise Dutch and Swiss independence and weaken the emperor.
• 1652 Founding of Cape Town, Central and Southern Africa. Jan van Riebeeck lands at Table Bay to build a supply station for Dutch East India Company ships, the start of European settlement in South Africa.
• 1665 Battle of Mbwila, Central and Southern Africa. Portuguese forces from Luanda defeat Kongo and kill King António I, setting off decades of civil war that split the kingdom.
• 1680 Pueblo Revolt, North America. Led by Popé of Ohkay Owingeh, the Pueblos kill about 400 colonists and drive the Spanish out of New Mexico for twelve years.
• 1683 Siege of Vienna, Europe. A Polish, Austrian and German army under Jan Sobieski routs the Ottoman army besieging Vienna, beginning the Ottoman retreat from Hungary.
• 1689 Treaty of Nerchinsk, Central and North Asia. Russia and Qing China sign their first treaty, fixing the border north of the Amur. Jesuit priests interpret the negotiations in Latin.
• 1694 Fall of Palmares, South America. A colonial army led by bandeirante Domingos Jorge Velho destroys Macaco, capital of the largest runaway slave kingdom in Brazil.
• 1697 Fall of Nojpetén, Mesoamerica and Caribbean. Spanish forces storm the island capital of the Itza, the last independent Maya kingdom.
• 1698 Omanis take Fort Jesus, Central and Southern Africa. After a siege of almost three years, Omani forces capture Fort Jesus at Mombasa and end Portuguese power on the Swahili coast north of Mozambique.
• 1700 Peak of the Atlantic slave trade, North and West Africa. In the 18th century over six million Africans are shipped from the West African coast to the Americas, much of the trade passing through Dahomey, Oyo and the Gold Coast forts.
• 1739 Nader Shah sacks Delhi, South Asia. The Persian ruler routs the Mughal army at Karnal and carries off the Peacock Throne and the Koh-i-Noor diamond.
• 1755 Destruction of the Dzungars, Central and North Asia. The Qianlong emperor sends armies against the Dzungar Khanate. War, massacre and smallpox kill most of the Dzungar people by 1758.
• 1757 Battle of Plassey, South Asia. Robert Clive's East India Company troops defeat the Nawab of Bengal after bribing his commander, starting British territorial rule in India.
• 1761 Third Battle of Panipat, South Asia. Ahmad Shah Durrani destroys the Maratha army north of Delhi in one of the largest battles of the 18th century.
• 1763 Treaty of Paris ends New France, North America. France gives Canada and the lands east of the Mississippi to Britain and Louisiana to Spain, ending its North American empire.
• 1767 Fall of Ayutthaya, Southeast Asia. Konbaung armies sack and burn Ayutthaya after a long siege, ending a kingdom that had lasted over 400 years.
• 1769 Watt's steam engine, Europe. James Watt patents a separate condenser that makes steam engines far more efficient, powering the Industrial Revolution in Britain.
• 1776 Declaration of Independence, North America. The Continental Congress declares the Thirteen Colonies independent of Britain. The war ends with British recognition in 1783.
• 1778 Cook reaches Hawaii, Oceania. James Cook's ships land on Kauai, opening Hawaii to European contact. Cook is killed at Kealakekua Bay the following year.
• 1780 Rebellion of Tupac Amaru II, South America. The kuraka José Gabriel Condorcanqui leads the largest Indigenous revolt in colonial Spanish America. Tens of thousands die before he is executed in 1781.
• 1788 First Fleet lands at Sydney Cove, Oceania. Eleven ships carrying about 750 convicts and their guards arrive at Port Jackson, beginning British colonisation of Australia.
• 1789 French Revolution, Europe. The storming of the Bastille on 14 July begins the revolution that abolishes feudal privileges and, in 1792, the monarchy.
• 1791 Haitian Revolution begins, Mesoamerica and Caribbean. Enslaved people in northern Saint-Domingue rise up. Under Toussaint Louverture and Dessalines they abolish slavery and win independence in 1804.
• 1798 Napoleon invades Egypt, North and West Africa. Napoleon defeats the Mamluks at the Battle of the Pyramids. The short French occupation breaks Mamluk power and brings Egypt to European attention.
• 1803 Louisiana Purchase, North America. The United States buys about 2.1 million square km west of the Mississippi from France for 15 million dollars, doubling its size.
• 1804 Usman dan Fodio's jihad, North and West Africa. The Fula scholar Usman dan Fodio declares a holy war against the Hausa king of Gobir, founding the Sokoto Caliphate within a few years.
• 1808 Portuguese court arrives in Rio, South America. Fleeing Napoleon, the Portuguese royal family moves to Rio de Janeiro, making it the capital of a European empire.
• 1810 Grito de Dolores, Mesoamerica and Caribbean. The priest Miguel Hidalgo calls for revolt against Spanish rule, starting the Mexican War of Independence, won in 1821.
• 1815 Battle of Waterloo, Europe. British, Dutch and Prussian armies defeat Napoleon in Belgium, and the Congress of Vienna redraws the map of Europe.
• 1815 Eruption of Tambora, Southeast Asia. Mount Tambora on Sumbawa produces the largest eruption in recorded history, killing tens of thousands and causing the year without a summer in 1816.
• 1816 Shaka becomes Zulu king, Central and Southern Africa. Shaka takes power among the Zulu. The wars and migrations of the next two decades, the Mfecane or Difaqane, remade states from Natal to Lake Tanganyika.
• 1824 Anglo-Dutch Treaty, Southeast Asia. Britain and the Netherlands divide the Malay world along the Strait of Malacca, roughly fixing the later border between Malaysia and Indonesia.
• 1824 Battle of Ayacucho, South America. Antonio José de Sucre defeats the last royalist army in Peru, ending Spanish rule on the South American mainland.
• 1836 The Great Trek begins, Central and Southern Africa. Thousands of Boer families leave the Cape Colony for the interior, founding the Natalia, Orange Free State and Transvaal republics.
• 1838 Trail of Tears, North America. The US Army forces about 16,000 Cherokee from their homeland to Indian Territory. Thousands die on the way.
• 1839 First Opium War, East Asia. After Lin Zexu destroys British opium at Canton, Britain goes to war and forces the Treaty of Nanjing, opening ports and taking Hong Kong.
• 1840 Treaty of Waitangi, Oceania. Over 500 Māori chiefs and the British Crown sign a treaty whose English and Māori texts differ on sovereignty, the founding document of New Zealand.
• 1847 Caste War of Yucatán begins, Mesoamerica and Caribbean. Maya peasants rise against the Yucatecan elite and nearly take Mérida. Rebels hold eastern Yucatán for over 50 years.
• 1848 Mexican Cession and California Gold Rush, North America. Mexico cedes the Southwest and California in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, days after gold is found at Sutter's Mill.
• 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, Mesoamerica and Caribbean. Mexico cedes California, New Mexico and its claims to Texas to the United States, about half its territory.
• 1851 Australian gold rushes, Oceania. Gold finds in New South Wales and Victoria draw hundreds of thousands of migrants and more than double Australia's colonial population within a decade.
• 1853 Perry's black ships, East Asia. US Commodore Matthew Perry sails into Edo Bay and demands that Japan open its ports, which it does in 1854.
• 1857 Indian Rebellion, South Asia. Sepoys at Meerut mutiny and march on Delhi, setting off a revolt across north India. After its defeat the Crown takes over from the East India Company.
• 1861 American Civil War begins, North America. Confederate guns fire on Fort Sumter. Four years of war end slavery in the United States through the Thirteenth Amendment of 1865.
• 1864 Paraguayan War begins, South America. Paraguay fights Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay until 1870, the deadliest interstate war in Latin American history.
• 1865 Russia captures Tashkent, Central and North Asia. General Mikhail Chernyayev storms Tashkent, the largest city of Central Asia, starting Russia's conquest of the khanates.
• 1867 Canadian Confederation and Alaska Purchase, North America. Four British colonies unite as the Dominion of Canada on 1 July, and the United States buys Alaska from Russia in the same year.
• 1868 Meiji Restoration, East Asia. Samurai from Satsuma and Choshu overthrow the shogunate and restore power to the young emperor Meiji, launching a rapid modernization.
• 1869 Suez Canal opens, North and West Africa. The canal linking the Mediterranean and Red Sea opens under Khedive Ismail, cutting the sea route from Europe to India by thousands of kilometres.
• 1871 Unification of Germany, Europe. After victory over France, Wilhelm I of Prussia is proclaimed German Emperor in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles.
• 1876 Battle of the Little Bighorn, North America. Lakota and Cheyenne warriors under Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse wipe out Custer's command in Montana, the high point of plains resistance.
• 1879 Battle of Isandlwana, Central and Southern Africa. A Zulu army destroys a British column at Isandlwana, the worst defeat of a British force by an African army, though Britain wins the war within months.
• 1879 War of the Pacific, South America. Chile defeats Peru and Bolivia over the nitrate deserts of Atacama. Bolivia loses its coast, and Peru loses Tarapacá.
• 1883 Krakatoa erupts, Southeast Asia. The explosion of Krakatoa in the Sunda Strait and its tsunamis kill over 36,000 people, and the blast is heard nearly 5,000 km away.
• 1884 Berlin Conference, North and West Africa. European powers meet in Berlin to set rules for claiming African territory, accelerating the Scramble for Africa that left only Ethiopia and Liberia independent.
• 1885 Berlin Conference ends, Central and Southern Africa. European powers meeting in Berlin set rules for claiming African territory and recognise Leopold II's Congo Free State, accelerating the Scramble for Africa.
• 1886 Witwatersrand gold rush, Central and Southern Africa. Gold is found on the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg grows almost overnight, and the Transvaal becomes the world's leading gold producer.
• 1888 Brazil abolishes slavery, South America. Princess Isabel signs the Golden Law, freeing about 700,000 enslaved people. Brazil is the last country in the Americas to end slavery.
• 1893 Overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom, Oceania. American businessmen backed by US Marines depose Queen Liliuokalani, leading to annexation by the United States in 1898.
• 1893 Women's suffrage in New Zealand, Oceania. New Zealand becomes the first self-governing country to give all adult women the vote, after petitions led by Kate Sheppard.
• 1896 Rinderpest sweeps southern Africa, Central and Southern Africa. A rinderpest epidemic moving south from the Horn of Africa kills around 90 percent of cattle in places, bringing famine to herding peoples.
• 1896 Battle of Adwa, North and West Africa. Emperor Menelik II's army defeats an Italian invasion force, securing Ethiopia's independence through the colonial era.
• 1896 Philippine Revolution, Southeast Asia. The Katipunan secret society launches a revolt against Spain, and the execution of the writer Jose Rizal in December hardens the rebellion.
• 1899 Second Boer War begins, Central and Southern Africa. War between Britain and the Boer republics leads to scorched-earth tactics and concentration camps where about 26,000 Boer women and children and many Black Africans die.
• 1901 Federation of Australia, Oceania. The six Australian colonies unite as the Commonwealth of Australia on 1 January 1901.
• 1904 Herero and Nama genocide, Central and Southern Africa. German forces under Lothar von Trotha crush the Herero and Nama risings, driving survivors into the Omaheke desert and into concentration camps.
• 1905 Maji Maji rebellion, Central and Southern Africa. Peoples of southern German East Africa rise against forced cotton growing. German scorched-earth reprisals cause famine that kills well over 100,000 people.
• 1908 Oil struck at Masjed Soleyman, Middle East. William Knox D'Arcy's drillers find oil in southwest Iran, the first big strike in the Middle East. The Anglo-Persian Oil Company, later BP, is founded in 1909.
• 1908 Tunguska explosion, Central and North Asia. An exploding meteor flattens about 80 million trees over 2,000 square kilometers of Siberian forest near the Podkamennaya Tunguska river.
• 1910 Mexican Revolution, Mesoamerica and Caribbean. A revolt against Porfirio Díaz turns into a decade of civil war that kills about a million people and produces the Constitution of 1917.
• 1911 Xinhai Revolution, East Asia. An army mutiny at Wuchang spreads across the provinces, and the last Qing emperor Puyi abdicates in February 1912.
• 1914 First World War begins, Europe. The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo sets off a war that kills about 17 million people and destroys four empires.
• 1914 Panama Canal opens, Mesoamerica and Caribbean. The US-built canal links the Atlantic and Pacific after ten years of work, cutting about 13,000 km off the voyage from New York to San Francisco.
• 1915 Armenian genocide, Middle East. The Ottoman government deports and massacres its Armenian population. Between 600,000 and 1.5 million Armenians die.
• 1916 Arab Revolt and Sykes-Picot, Middle East. Sharif Hussein of Mecca rises against the Ottomans, while Britain and France secretly agree to divide the Arab provinces between them.
• 1917 Russian Revolution, Europe. The tsar abdicates in March, and in November the Bolsheviks under Lenin seize power in Petrograd.
• 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre, South Asia. British troops under General Dyer fire on an unarmed crowd at Amritsar, killing hundreds and turning many moderates toward the independence movement.
• 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, Middle East. The Allies recognise the Republic of Turkey within its present borders, and a population exchange uproots over a million Greeks and Turks.
• 1930 Gandhi's Salt March, South Asia. Gandhi walks 390 km to Dandi on the Gujarat coast to make salt in defiance of the British salt tax, starting a mass civil disobedience campaign.
• 1931 Kazakh famine, Central and North Asia. Forced collectivization and the seizure of livestock kill about 1.5 million Kazakhs between 1930 and 1933, perhaps 40 percent of the nation.
• 1937 War with Japan and the Nanjing massacre, East Asia. Fighting at the Marco Polo Bridge becomes full-scale war. Japanese troops take Nanjing in December and kill tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of civilians and prisoners.
• 1939 Second World War begins, Europe. Germany invades Poland on 1 September. The war in Europe kills tens of millions, including six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust, before Germany surrenders in May 1945.
• 1941 Attack on Pearl Harbor, Oceania. Japanese carrier aircraft strike the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor on 7 December, bringing the United States into the Second World War.
• 1942 Fall of Singapore, Southeast Asia. About 80,000 British, Indian and Australian troops surrender to Japan, and Japanese forces occupy all of Southeast Asia within months.
• 1942 Guadalcanal campaign, Oceania. US forces land on Guadalcanal in August and, after six months of fighting on land and sea, force Japan into its first major retreat of the Pacific War.
• 1945 Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, East Asia. US atomic bombs destroy two Japanese cities in August, killing over 100,000 people, and Japan surrenders days later.
• 1945 Indonesia declares independence, Southeast Asia. Sukarno and Mohammad Hatta proclaim independence in Jakarta on 17 August, starting a four-year war against the returning Dutch.
• 1946 Nuclear tests at Bikini, Oceania. The United States begins nuclear testing at Bikini Atoll, moving its people away. Testing in the Marshalls continues until 1958.
• 1947 Independence and partition, South Asia. British India splits into India and Pakistan. Around 15 million people cross the new borders and between several hundred thousand and two million die in communal violence.
• 1948 Apartheid becomes law, Central and Southern Africa. The National Party wins the South African election and begins passing laws for racial classification, segregated areas and separate institutions.
• 1948 Founding of Israel and the Nakba, Middle East. Israel declares independence as Britain leaves Palestine. Arab states invade, and about 700,000 Palestinians flee or are expelled from their homes.
• 1949 People's Republic proclaimed, East Asia. Mao Zedong declares the People's Republic from Tiananmen on 1 October, and the Nationalist government retreats to Taiwan.
• 1950 Korean War, East Asia. North Korea invades the south. UN forces led by the United States and Chinese armies fight to a stalemate, and the 1953 armistice leaves Korea divided.
• 1954 Algerian War begins, North and West Africa. The FLN launches coordinated attacks on 1 November. Eight years of war and terror end with Algerian independence in 1962.
• 1954 Battle of Dien Bien Phu, Southeast Asia. The Viet Minh under Vo Nguyen Giap besiege and capture the French base at Dien Bien Phu, ending French rule in Indochina.
• 1956 Suez Crisis, North and West Africa. Nasser nationalises the Suez Canal, and Britain, France and Israel invade. American and Soviet pressure forces them out, a blow to European imperial power.
• 1957 Ghana wins independence, North and West Africa. Kwame Nkrumah leads the Gold Coast to independence as Ghana, the first sub-Saharan colony to break free and a model for the rest of Africa.
• 1957 Treaty of Rome, Europe. France, West Germany, Italy and the Benelux countries found the European Economic Community, forerunner of the European Union.
• 1957 Sputnik launched from Baikonur, Central and North Asia. The Soviet Union launches the first artificial satellite from the Kazakh steppe, and in 1961 Yuri Gagarin's flight leaves from the same cosmodrome.
• 1959 Tibetan uprising, East Asia. A revolt in Lhasa is crushed by the People's Liberation Army, and the 14th Dalai Lama escapes to India, where he sets up a government in exile.
• 1959 Cuban Revolution, Mesoamerica and Caribbean. Fidel Castro's guerrillas take Havana after Batista flees. Within two years Cuba is a socialist state allied with the Soviet Union.
• 1960 Congo independence and crisis, Central and Southern Africa. Congo becomes independent on 30 June. Within weeks the army mutinies, Katanga secedes and UN troops arrive, a defining crisis of the Cold War in Africa.
• 1960 Year of Africa, North and West Africa. Seventeen African countries win independence in a single year, including Nigeria, Mali, Senegal, Niger, Chad and Somalia.
• 1960 The Aral Sea begins to shrink, Central and North Asia. Soviet cotton irrigation diverts the Amu Darya and Syr Darya, and within fifty years the fourth-largest lake in the world loses most of its area.
• 1960 Brasília inaugurated, South America. Brazil moves its capital to a planned city built in under four years on the central plateau, designed by Lúcio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer.
• 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, Mesoamerica and Caribbean. A standoff over Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba brings the United States and the Soviet Union close to nuclear war for thirteen days in October.
• 1967 ASEAN founded, Southeast Asia. Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand sign the Bangkok Declaration, founding the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
• 1969 Apollo 11 lands on the Moon, North America. NASA astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin become the first people to walk on the Moon.
• 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War, South Asia. After a brutal Pakistani army crackdown in East Pakistan, Bengali guerrillas and the Indian army win independence for Bangladesh in December.
• 1973 Coup in Chile, South America. The armed forces overthrow President Salvador Allende, who dies in the presidential palace. Augusto Pinochet rules until 1990.
• 1975 Fall of Saigon and Phnom Penh, Southeast Asia. The Khmer Rouge take Phnom Penh on 17 April and North Vietnamese tanks enter Saigon on 30 April, ending the Indochina wars.
• 1978 Reform and opening, East Asia. Deng Xiaoping's leadership begins decollectivizing farms and opening China to foreign investment, starting four decades of rapid growth.
• 1979 Iranian Revolution, Middle East. Mass protests drive out the shah and Ayatollah Khomeini founds an Islamic Republic. Students seize the US embassy in Tehran that November.
• 1979 Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, South Asia. Soviet troops enter Afghanistan to prop up the communist government, starting a nine-year war that drove millions of refugees into Pakistan and Iran.
• 1989 Fall of the Berlin Wall, Europe. East German border guards open the Wall on 9 November as communist regimes fall across eastern Europe.
• 1991 Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Europe. After a failed coup in August the Soviet republics declare independence, and the USSR is formally dissolved on 26 December.
• 1991 Gulf War, Middle East. A US-led coalition expels Iraqi forces from Kuwait after a six-week air campaign and a 100-hour ground war.
• 1991 Central Asian republics become independent, Central and North Asia. As the Soviet Union dissolves, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan become sovereign states for the first time.
• 1992 Mabo decision, Oceania. Australia's High Court rules in favour of Eddie Mabo and the Meriam people, recognising native title and rejecting terra nullius.
• 1994 Rwandan genocide, Central and Southern Africa. Over about a hundred days, Hutu extremists kill around 800,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutu while the world fails to intervene.
• 1994 Mandela elected president, Central and Southern Africa. South Africa holds its first election open to all races, and Nelson Mandela becomes president after 27 years in prison and four years of negotiations.
• 1998 India and Pakistan test nuclear weapons, South Asia. India's tests at Pokhran in May are answered within weeks by Pakistan's tests in the Chagai hills.
• 1999 Nunavut created, North America. Canada splits the Northwest Territories to create Nunavut, a territory of about 2 million square km with an Inuit majority.
• 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, Middle East. American and British forces overthrow Saddam Hussein in three weeks. Occupation, insurgency and sectarian war follow.
• 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, South Asia. A tsunami from a Sumatran earthquake kills over 35,000 people in Sri Lanka and more than 10,000 in India on 26 December.
• 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, Southeast Asia. An earthquake off Sumatra sends tsunamis across the Indian Ocean, killing about 230,000 people, over 160,000 of them in Aceh.
• 2011 Arab Spring, North and West Africa. Protests that began in Tunisia in December 2010 topple Ben Ali, then Mubarak in Egypt, and set off the war in Libya that ends Gaddafi's rule.
• 2011 Arab Spring reaches Syria, Middle East. Protests against Bashar al-Assad are met with gunfire and turn into a civil war that kills over 500,000 people and displaces half the population.
• 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, East Asia. A magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami kill about 18,000 people in northeast Japan and cause meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.
• 2021 Taliban retake Kabul, South Asia. As US forces withdraw, the Afghan republic collapses within weeks and the Taliban enter Kabul on 15 August.
• 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Europe. Russia launches a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February, the largest war in Europe since 1945.
• 2024 Fall of the Assad regime, Middle East. A rebel offensive led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham takes Aleppo and then Damascus in December, ending 53 years of Assad family rule.