Attachment #2: Key Dates in World History: 4 BC to 1798 AD

Moving from B.C. (before Christ) to A.D. (anno domini – “in the year of our Lord”)

Note re systems to measure dates: 

BC (Before Christ) and BCE both refer to years before the birth of Jesus Christ, and AD (Anno Domini) and CE both refer to years after the birth of Jesus Christ. The current-day custom is to down play the use of the abbreviations BC and AD. There are scholars from various religious traditions other than Christianity – including the religion of atheism – who object to worldwide dating being hinged on the appearance of Jesus. 

The current trend is to use, instead, the more secular abbreviations CE – Common Era – and BCE – Before the Common Era. Even with the more generic initials, the hinge time is the same – the birth of Jesus Christ. Given all that, for simplicity I have stuck with BC and AD in this document.

Another system can be added when the Islamic calendar is considered. The Hijra year is the era used in the Islamic lunar calendar. It begins its count from the Islamic New Year in which Muhammad and his followers migrated from Mecca to Yathrib (now Medina). This event, known as the Hijrah, is commemorated in Islam for its role in the founding of the first Muslim community. The Islamic date is the number of years “after the Hijra” or AH. I have not used this.

To add further complexity re time scales Before Present (BP) years, or “years before present”, is a time scale used mainly in archaeology, geology and other scientific disciplines to specify when events occurred relative to the origin of practical radiocarbon dating. Measuring the amount of radiocarbon (C) in a sample from a dead plant or animal, such as a piece of wood or a fragment of bone, provides information that can be used to calculate when the animal or plant died. The older a sample is, the less C there is to be detected. I will not use this, either.

• ~5 BC: Birth of Christ and the question of his existence. Most biblical scholars assume a year of birth between 6 and 4 BC. However as to the place of his birth, excavations at and around the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem have so far turned up no artifacts dating to the time of Christ, nor any sign that early Christians considered the site sacred. It is likely Jesus was raised in Nazareth, a small, agricultural village in southern Galilee. Christianity originated with the ministry of Jesus, a Jewish teacher and healer who proclaimed the imminent Kingdom of God. The faith that began as a tiny Jewish sect is now the world’s largest, most diverse religion, with more than two billion believers.
• Might it be possible that Jesus Christ never even existed? It’s an assertion that’s championed by some outspoken skeptics – but not by most scholars, particularly archaeologists, whose work tends to bring flights of fancy down to literal earth. Eric Meyers, an archaeologist and emeritus professor in Judaic studies at Duke University was quoted as saying “The details have been debated for centuries, but no one who is serious doubts that he’s a historical figure.” Stories of Christ’s miraculous deeds – healing the sick with his words, feeding a multitude with a few morsels of bread and fish, walking on water, even restoring life to a corpse four days dead – are hard for modern minds to embrace. But that’s not enough to conclude that Jesus of Nazareth was a religious fable. 

• 9 AD: The Battle of the Teutoburg Forest was one of the most important defeats in Roman history, bringing the triumphant period of expansion under Augustus to an abrupt end. An alliance of Germanic peoples ambushed Roman legions and their auxiliaries. The outcome of this battle dissuaded the Romans from their ambition of conquering Germania, and is thus considered one of the most important events in European history

• ~25 AD: Jesus launched on a preaching and healing mission that ended, three years later, with his execution in Jerusalem. When Jesus was about 30 years old, he waded into the Jordan River with the Jewish firebrand John the Baptist and, according to New Testament accounts, underwent a life-changing experience. So it is said that he, rising from the water, saw the Spirit of God descend on him “like a dove” and heard the voice of God proclaim, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” The divine encounter launched Jesus on a preaching and healing mission that began in Galilee and ended, three years later, with his execution in Jerusalem

• ~28 AD: Death of Jesus Christ by crucifixion. Jesus was condemned to death by the Roman governor Pontius Pilate and was crucified on a hill outside the city walls of Jerusalem in the Roman province of Judea and buried in a rock-cut tomb nearby. The traditional location of that tomb, in what is now the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, is considered the holiest site in Christianity. The shrine at the heart of the church that Christian tradition says was built over the burial place of Jesus is known as the Edicule. In 2016 restorers uncovered remnants of an ancient tomb behind its ornate walls

• 37 AD: Caligula became the third Roman emperor. He (12-41 AD) directed much of his attention to ambitious construction projects and luxurious dwellings for himself, and he initiated the construction of two aqueducts in Rome. He was notorious for cruelty, sadism, and extravagance (reliability of sources questionable). His liberal behaviour gave way to mental instability and his belief in his own divinity. He was assassinated (See “49-54 AD”)

• 45-55 AD: Paul the Apostle spreads the teachings of Jesus. Generally regarded as one of the most important figures of Christianity in the 1st century (the Apostolic Age), he founded several Christian communities in Asia Minor and Europe from the mid-40s to the mid-50s AD. He participated in the persecution of early disciples of Jesus, in the area of Jerusalem, prior to his conversion. Fourteen of the 27 books in the New Testament have traditionally been attributed to Paul. Paul’s epistles continue to be vital roots of the theology, worship and pastoral life in the Latin and Protestant traditions of the West, as well as the Eastern Catholic and Orthodox traditions of the East. Paul’s influence on Christian thought and practice has been characterized as being as “profound as it is pervasive”, among that of many other apostles and missionaries involved in the spread of the Christian faith 

• 45-120 AD: The original texts of the New Testament were written by various authors, most likely sometime between these dates, in Koine Greek, the lingua franca of the eastern part of the Roman Empire. (The first four books are especially debated: the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and which are generally agreed to have been written in the second half of the first century with Matthew and Luke likely between 70 and 110 AD.)

• 49-54 AD: Julia Agrippina was a Roman empress, and mother of Nero. Her personality has been described as ruthless, ambitious, violent, perverted and domineering. She exerted a commanding influence in the early years of Nero’s reign, but then she was killed in 59 AD (Nero had her murdered!). Agrippina was one of the most prominent women in the Julio-Claudian dynasty. She was the granddaughter of Augustus (the first Roman emperor). Her father, Germanicus, was the nephew and heir apparent of the second emperor, Tiberius. Agrippina’s brother Caligula became emperor in 37 AD. After Caligula was assassinated in 41 AD, Germanicus’ brother Claudius took the throne. Agrippina married Claudius in 49 AD and thus became empress (See “37 AD”)

• 50 AD: Paul’s First Letter to the Thessalonians is the earliest known Christian text, i.e. the first book of the New Testament to be written. The church at Thessalonica was facing persecution, but Paul wrote to them to encourage their faithfulness. He also directs them to respond to their persecution with love

• 1-100 AD (First century AD): The split of Christianity and Judaism took place during this century. While the First Jewish-Roman War (66-73 AD), the first of three major rebellions by the Jews against the Roman Empire) and the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 AD were main events, the separation was a long-term process, in which the boundaries were not clear-cut. There is no consensus on the date of the birth of Christianity

• 1-100 AD (First century AD): The Greeks began using sails that allowed for tacking and jibing – technological advancements that are believed to have been introduced to them by Persian or Arabic sailors. Originally, sailboats only had square sails, but eventually triangular, or lateen sails, were developed. Tacking and jibing and similar sailing maneuvers allow a ship to adjust their sails to continue sailing in the preferred direction even if the wind changes, eliminating the need for rowers. Polynesians also invented a mastless lateen-rigged sail that is very different in construction. Then in the 15th century carrack ships were developed by Genoan sailors; they were three-to four-masted sailing ships for use in commerce. Carracks were square-rigged on the fore and main masts and lateen-rigged on the mizzenmast

• 1-400 AD (1st-4th century AD): The Cult of Mithras flourished. It was a Roman mystery religion centred on the god Mithras. Although inspired by Iranian worship of the Zoroastrian divinity Mithra, the Roman Mithras is linked to a new and distinctive imagery, with the level of continuity between Persian and Greco-Roman practice debated. Roman soldiers encountered the cult as they pushed east and met the Parthian Empire pushing west. The central figure in the cult was born from a virgin mother, a human who had given birth to a god. The birth took place around the winter solstice (on or about December 25); during his career on earth, Mithra was attended by 12 followers. All sound familiar? Mithraism flared in the Roman Empire a little before Christianity but then they were in neck-and-neck competition for the soul of the Greco-Roman world. Christianity won out

• 1-650 AD (1st-6th century AD): Teotihuacan was the largest city in the Americas, considered as the first advanced civilization on the North American continent, with a population estimated at 125,000 or more, making it at least the sixth-largest city in the world during its epoch. 40 kilometres NE of Mexico City, Teotihuacan is known today as the site of many of the most architecturally significant Mesoamerican pyramids built in the pre-Colombian Americas, namely the Pyramid of the Sun and the Pyramid of the Moon. Scholars have suggested that Teotihuacan was multi ethnic. The early history of Teotihuacan is quite mysterious, and the origin of its founders is uncertain. Around 300 BC, people of the central and southeastern areas of Mesoamerica began to gather into larger settlements. Teotihuacan was the largest urban center of Mesoamerica before the Aztecs, almost 1,000 years prior to their epoch. The city was already in ruins by the time of the Aztecs. Around 650 AD the core of the city burned; it could have been drought, famine, revolution; no one knows

• Note: The historic region of Mesoamerica comprises the modern day countries of northern Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, Belize, and central to southern Mexico. For thousands of years, this area was populated by groups such as the Olmec, Zapotec, Maya, Toltec, and Aztec peoples

• 54 AD: Nero became Roman emperor. He (37-68 AD) was vain and ostentatious and had a reputation for perversion and cruelty. He took advantage of the fire of 64 AD to clear space for a vast palace in Rome. He murdered his mother and his tutor Seneca. He was forced to flee in 68 AD, and committed suicide. The Julio-Claudian dynasty comes to an inglorious end amid rebellion and civil war. (The dynasty comprised the first five Roman emperors: Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero.)  

• 64 AD: Saint Peter the Apostle, the first Pope of the Roman Catholic Church, died. Roman Catholic tradition holds that Jesus established him as the first pope (Matthew 16:18). After Jesus’ death, he served as the head of the Apostles; he is always listed first among the Twelve Apostles in the Gospels and is often depicted as spokesman of all the Apostles. The two Letters of Peter in the Bible are attributed to his authorship (some scholars dispute this)

• 70 AD: Siege of Jerusalem was the decisive event of the First Jewish-Roman War (66-73 AD, the first of three major rebellions by the Jews against the Roman Empire), in which the Roman army led by future emperor Titus besieged Jerusalem, the centre of Jewish rebel resistance in the Roman province of Judaea. Following a brutal five-month siege, the Romans destroyed the city

• 73 AD: 960 Jewish zealots committed suicide on top of the mountain of Masada by the Dead Sea in Israel rather than be captured by the Romans (some continuing debate on the authenticity of this.)

• 79 AD: Eruption of Mount Vesuvius destroyed the Roman city of Pompeii and several other settlements, releasing 100,000 times the thermal energy of the atomic bombing of Japan in 1945. It has erupted many times since and is the only volcano on Europe’s mainland to have erupted in the last hundred years. It is regarded as one of the most dangerous volcanoes in the world (See “1906, April”) 

• 117 AD: Hadrian became Roman emperor. He (76-138 AD) abandoned the conquests of the previous emperor, Trajan, and fixed the Empire’s frontiers. He built Hadrian’s Wall in Britain and designed the extant Pantheon in Rome, one of the most celebrated buildings of antiquity

• 142 AD: Gunpowder was invented in China. The earliest reference to gunpowder appeared during the Eastern Han dynasty when the alchemist Wei Boyang, also known as the “father of alchemy”, wrote about a substance with gunpowder-like properties. He described a mixture of three powders that would “fly and dance” violently (the three being sulphur, saltpetre and charcoal). The first confirmed reference to what can be considered gunpowder in China occurred in 808 during the Tang dynasty, and then about 50 years later in a Taoist text. The Taoist quest for the elixir of life attracted many experiments; there was also a search for life-longevity increasing drugs

• 150 AD: Ptolemy completed the “Geography”. It is a gazetteer, an atlas, and a treatise on cartography, compiling the geographical knowledge of the 2nd-century Roman Empire. It was a handbook on how to draw maps using geographical coordinates for parts of the Roman world known at the time. In 1400 a Florentine brought back a copy from Constantinople and its translation became a great stimulus to better map-making. (Ptolemy also wrote the Almagest, his mathematical and astronomical treatise on the apparent motions of the stars and planetary paths.) (See “1913”)

• 166 AD: The Plague of Galen highlights the career of Galen of Pergamum who had first-hand knowledge of the disease (probably smallpox), and was present in Rome when it first struck (the mortality rate of the plague was 7-10%). Galen (129-200 AD) was a Greek physician and philosopher and was considered to be one of the most accomplished of all medical researchers of antiquity. He influenced the development of various scientific disciplines, including anatomy, physiology, pathology, pharmacology, and neurology. He declared blood as the most dominant humor. He came very close to identifying the ovaries as analogous to the male testes (reproduction was a controversial topic in Galen’s lifetime.) Galen may have produced more work than any author in antiquity. In his time, Galen’s reputation as both physician and philosopher was legendary

• 200-300 AD: China is credited with being the first mass producer of high-quality steel (which included adding carbon to the iron in coal furnaces.)

• ~250 AD: The religion, Manichaeism, was founded by the Parthian prophet Mani (216-274 AD). It teaches an elaborate dualistic cosmology describing the struggle between a good, spiritual world of light, and an evil, material world of darkness. It spread far through Aramaic-speaking regions. It thrived between the third and seventh centuries, and at its height was one of the most widespread religions in the world. Manichaean churches and scriptures existed as far east as the Han Dynasty and as far west as the Roman Empire. It was briefly the main rival to early Christianity in the competition to replace classical polytheism before the spread of Islam. Under the Roman Dominate (the late Roman Empire), Manichaeism was persecuted by the Roman state and was eventually stamped out in the Roman Empire

• 250-1200 AD: The Maya civilization rose to prominence in present-day southern Mexico, Guatemala, northern Belize and western Honduras. (They originated in the Yucatán around 2600 BC.) Building on the inherited inventions and ideas of earlier civilizations such as the Olmec, the Maya developed astronomy, calendrical systems and hieroglyphic writing. In the second century their civilization collapsed, so they migrated north and built cities such as Uxmal and Tikal (which was at its peak between 600 and 800 AD and home to 100,000 people) around enormous pyramids. Then they moved farther north in the 8th century to the Yucatán Peninsula. There they built Chichén Itzá, one of the most impressive pre-Colombian cities of the Americas; but by the 12th century that too had fallen into ruins. When the northern Maya were integrated into the Toltec society by 1200, the Maya dynasty finally came to a close. The peak Mayan population may have reached 10 to 15 million people throughout the Mayan realm, including many in swampy regions that most archaeologists had thought uninhabitable. New remote sensing laser technology, called lidar, is now able to peer through the jungle to reveal a fuller picture of how more than 6,000 sites once supported millions of people

• 300-1100 AD: Two large-scale empires preceded the Inca Empire in the Andes – the Tiwanaku (c. 300–1100 AD), based around Lake Titicaca, and the Wari or Huari (c. 600–1100 AD), centred near the city of Ayacucho. The Wari occupied the Cuzco area for about 400 years

• 303 AD: The Great Persecution occurred where a series of edicts rescinded Christians’ legal rights and demanded that they comply with traditional religious practices. This was the last, most severe persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire. The persecution failed to check the rise of the Church. Constantine shortly became sole ruler of the empire, and Christianity had become his favoured religion

• 312 AD: Constantine the Great was the first emperor to convert to Christianity after years of war and slaughter and living as a pagan. He was Roman emperor from 306 (after his father’s death) to 337 AD. Constantine (272-337) built a new imperial residence at the city of Byzantium, renamed it New Rome, and later Constantinople after himself. He played an influential role in the Proclamation of the Edict of Milan in 313 (an agreement to treat Christians benevolently within the Roman Empire)

• 319-467 AD: The zenith of the ancient Indian Gupta Empire, considered as the Golden Age of India. The period gave rise to achievements in architecture, great cultural developments (sculpture, and painting that set standards of form and taste that determined the whole subsequent course of art, not only in India but far beyond her borders). Metallurgy and medicine made great strides (Indian doctors learned to cauterize wounds, perform surgeries, and extract medicines from minerals as well as vegetables). Indian mathematicians developed the decimal system of notation, and began formulating trigonometry. Great plays were produced (Kalidasa, the “Shakespeare of India” was writing at this time). Strong trade ties also made the region an important cultural centre and established the region as a base that would influence nearby kingdoms and regions in India and Southeast Asia. Hinduism was followed by the rulers and the Brahmins flourished in the Gupta empire but the Guptas tolerated people of other faiths as well. The empire eventually died out because of factors such as substantial loss of territory and imperial authority caused by their own erstwhile feudal system, as well as the invasion by the Huns from Central Asia

• 324 AD: From this date the city of Istanbul goes through many changes. On this date the ancient city of Byzantium was renamed “New Rome” and declared the new capital of the Roman Empire by Emperor Constantine the Great. In 330, it was renamed Constantinople, and dedicated to Constantine. Constantinople is generally considered to be the centre and the “cradle of Orthodox Christian civilization”. From the mid-5th century to the early 13th century, Constantinople was the largest and wealthiest city in Europe. The city became famous for its architectural masterpieces, such as Hagia Sophia. In 1928, the Turkish alphabet was changed from Arabic script to Latin script. After that, as part of the 1920s Turkification movement, Turkey started to urge other countries to use the Turkish name, Istanbul for the city. It’s a city split by two continents, Europe and Asia, by a thin ribbon of water called the Bosporus

• 325 AD: The first ecumenical council of the Christian church – the First Council of Nicaea. This Council wrote the party line: the Father and Son were co-eternal and equal in divinity. Constantine convoked this First Council which produced the statement of Christian belief known as the Nicene Creed (the defining statement of belief of mainstream Christianity, i.e. ”correct Christian belief”). The council condemned Arianism (a heresy first proposed by Arius of Alexandria that affirmed that Christ is not divine but a created being) and incorporated the nonscriptural word “homoousios” (“of one substance”) into a creed to signify the absolute equality of the Son with the Father. The Council issued decrees on many other matters, including the proper method of consecrating bishops and a condemnation of lending money at interest by clerics

• 376-476 AD: The Great Migration weakened the Roman Empire. (It was also known as the “Wandering of the Nations”.) This migration of peoples, such as the Alans, Goths, and Vandals, disrupted the status quo of Roman society, and their various raids and insurrections were effective

• 376 AD: Huns’ invasion of Europe: the Visigoths under Fritigern were driven into Roman territory by the Huns and, after suffering abuses by Roman administrators, rose in revolt, initiating the First Gothic War with Rome of 376-382 AD, in which the Romans were defeated, and their emperor Valens killed, at the Battle of Adrianople in 378 AD

• 391, 392 AD: Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire when anti-pagan legislation culminated in two edicts (in 391 and 392) when Emperor Theodosius outlawed all the old public and private cults. In this way – via law, coercion, and conviction – a fragile religion hailing from one of the most backward of the Roman provinces triumphed everywhere in the Roman world

• 400 AD: The Kushite empire collapsed leaving behind more than 200 well-preserved pyramids near the town of Meroë, Sudan – the biggest congregation in the world. It was an ancient kingdom in Nubia, centred along the Nile Valley. It was a dominant political force between 2450 and 1450 BC. Christianity began to gain over the old pharaonic religion and by the 5 and 6th century AD the Kingdom of Kush was dissolved

• 434 AD: Attila the Hun was ruler of the nomadic raiders, the Huns, from 434 until his death in 453 AD. He was also the leader of a tribal empire consisting of Huns, Ostrogoths, Alans, and Bulgars, among others, in Central and Eastern Europe

• 476 AD: The fall of the Roman Empire. Romulus, the last of the Roman emperors in the west, was overthrown by the Germanic leader Odoacer, who became the first Barbarian to rule in Rome. The order that the Roman Empire had brought to western Europe for 1000 years was no more. Historians posit explanations including the effectiveness and numbers of the army, the health and numbers of the Roman population, the strength of the economy, the competence of the emperors, the internal struggles for power, the religious changes of the period, and the efficiency of the civil administration. Increasing pressure from invading barbarians outside Roman culture contributed greatly to the collapse. While its legitimacy lasted for centuries longer and its cultural influence remains today, the Western Empire never had the strength to rise again. The Eastern Roman, or Byzantine Empire, survived and, although lessened in strength, remained for centuries an effective power of the Eastern Mediterranean

• 480 AD (to 547): Start of the Benedictine order of monks. St. Benedict wrote his rule, the so-called Benedictine Rule, which became the fundamental rule of western monasticism. It consisted of 73 chapters dealing with spiritual matters, organization, liturgy and discipline. carefully integrating prayer, manual labour, and study into a well-rounded daily routine. Known as the Black Monks, the regime is simple but not harshly ascetic

Middle Ages (or Dark Ages or medieval era)

476 to beginning of 14c: the Middle Ages (also known as the Dark Ages as Europeans made few advances in science and art). The Middle Ages is also called the Age of Faith due to the tremendous power of the Catholic Church. It is not an exaggeration to say that the overwhelming majority of Europeans were Christians during this time; only a small percentage were Jewish, Muslim, or pagan. It was a time of great social and political stagnation, where monarchies held total power and most people were poor peasants.

• 501-600 (6th century): European higher education took place for hundreds of years in cathedral schools or monastic schools, in which monks and nuns taught classes; evidence of these immediate forerunners of the later university date back to this century. The earliest universities were developed under the aegis of the Latin Church by a type of public decree, or charter issued by a pope of the Catholic Church (a papal bull) as a place where students from everywhere were welcomed 

• 501-600 (6th century): The use of quill pens dates back to this period when the feathers of large birds – primarily geese, turkeys, swans, and even crows – replaced the reed pens that had been used previously. Though it’s an obsolete writing utensil today, the quill pen remains a symbol of education, literature, and artistic expression. Many important historical documents were written using quill and ink, from the Magna Carta to the Declaration of Independence, and white quills are still laid out every day the US Supreme Court is in session (See “800 BC”) 

• 525 (or 1278 AUC): Dionysius Exiguus, invented the concept of A.D. He was a mathematically-minded monk and member of the Roman Curia

• 536: One scholar nominated 536 AD as the “worst year to be alive” because of the extreme weather events caused by volcanic eruptions. A severe volcanic winter was caused by at least three volcanic eruptions of uncertain origin. Average temperatures in Europe and China declined resulting in crop failures and famine for well over a year. This was later accompanied by a bubonic plague epidemic and the first recorded major outbreak of the first plague pandemic (the Plague of Justinian), famine, and millions of deaths and initiated the Late Antique Little Ice Age, which lasted from 536 to 560

• 541-549:The plague of Justinian was the first recorded major outbreak of the first plague pandemic: the first Old World pandemic of plague, the contagious disease caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, the same bacterium responsible for the Black Death in 1347. The disease afflicted the entire Mediterranean Basin, Europe, and the Near East. It was one of the deadliest pandemics in history, resulting in the deaths of an estimated 15-100 million people during two centuries of recurrence, a death toll equivalent to 25-60% of Europe’s population at the time of the first outbreak. At the height of the epidemic it killed about a fifth of the population of Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine Empire whose emperor was Justinian (who contracted and recovered from the plague). Periodic outbreaks that devastated half of the globe for two subsequent centuries finally came to an end in the second half of the 8th century. In its wake came an upswing in population, land cultivation, and general prosperity

• 581: Wen.di declared himself the first emperor of the Sui dynasty in China. He is regarded as one of the most important emperors in Chinese history, reunifying China proper in 589 after centuries of division since the independence of the Cheng Han and Han Zhao dynasties from the Western Jin dynasty in 304. During his reign, the construction of the Grand Canal began. When he died in 604 his son, Yangdi took over (See “604-618”)

• 596: The Gregorian mission was sent to convert Britain’s Anglo-Saxons. It was sent by Pope Gregory I, the Great (540-604) and by 653 the mission had established Christianity in pagan southern Britain. (When the Roman Empire recalled its legions from the province of Britannia in 410, parts of the island had been and were settled by pagan German tribes.) By the way, Pope Gregory declared after he became pope in 590 that he outranked all the other bishops. He was not first among equals; he was head of the whole Christian body. Local bishops in Europe fell into line

• 601-800 (7th and 8th centuries): Three distinct civilizations – Byzantine, European, and Islamic were sibling heirs of Rome. The rise of Islam in the Arabic world and its triumph over territories that had for centuries been dominated by either Rome or Persia is the first astonishing fact of the 7th and 8th centuries. The second is the persistence of the Roman Empire both politically, in what historians call the “Byzantine Empire,” and culturally, in the Islamic world and Europe. By 750 AD three distinct and nearly separate civilizations – Byzantine, European, and Islamic – crystallized in and around the territory of the old Roman Empire. They professed different values, struggled with different problems, adapted to different standards of living. Yet all three bore the marks of common parentage. They were sibling heirs of Rome 

• 604-618: Yangdi, the son of Wen.di becomes emperor in China, but he is the last of the Sui dynasty. (It is generally agreed that he did so after assassinating his father and his elder brother!) He strengthened China’s northern border by rebuilding, at great expense, the Great Wall separating China from Inner Asia. The Sui dynasty comes to an end with his assassination in 618 (See “581”)

• 611: Prophet Muhammed receives a message from Jibril (the Archangel Gabriel) insisting he “recite” (Iqra or “read”). Over the next 22 years Muhammed (570-632)receives a number of messages, which form the basis of the Qur’an, the holy book of Islam. According to Muslim belief and Islamic scholarly accounts, the revelation of the Qur’an to Muhammed began in 610 when the angel Gabriel appeared to Muhammad in the cave of Hira, near the city of Mecca. Muslims believe that Muhammad continued to receive revelations until his death in 632. These early revelations are interpreted as pointing to the existence of a single God, contradicting the polytheistic beliefs of the pre-Islamic Arabian Peninsula

• 618-907: The Tang Dynasty (or Tang Empire) ruled China (except for 690-705). Li Yuanne, one of Yangdi’sformer officials reunited the empire and founded the Tang Dynasty (see 618–907), ruling as the Gaoze emperor. It was a golden age of arts and culture. Through the practice of Buddhism, it spread its culture across much of Asia. Through woodblock printing (a Chinese invention) it made the printed book a commercial product for the first time

• 622: Flight of Muhammed from Mecca to Medina. He left (called “the Hijra” or the flight) for Yathrib (now called ‘al- Madina). In 630 he returns and purges idols and images from Mecca. Called the “Seal of the Prophets”, his message, Muslims believe, is the true, final and uncorrupted Word of God (Allah). He is not the founder of Islam as Muslims believe Islam has always been; Muhammad is the final revelation. Muslims believe the Qur’an is Allah’s own word, not that of any human being

• 632: Death of Muhammed and beginning of Hijiri Era. When Muhammad died he had not named a successor. One faction, the Shi’a, believed that only individuals with direct lineage to the Prophet could guide the Muslim community righteously. The other faction, the Sunnis, believed that the Prophet’s successor should be determined by consensus and successively elected three of his most trusted companions. Today the Islamic community remains divided

• 632: The Qur’an is completed – or started. Muslims say that after Muhammad would receive revelations, he would later recite them to his Companions, who also memorized it or wrote it down. Before the Qur’an was commonly available in written form, speaking it from memory prevailed as the mode of teaching it to others. Society during the time of Muhammad was predominantly oral. Therefore, it is unknown whether the Qur’an was ever written and collected during the time of Muhammad. While writing was not a common skill during Muhammad’s time, Mecca, being a commercial centre, had a number of people who could write

• 701-800 (8th century): Glastonbury Abbey was built. It was  a monastery in Glastonbury, Sommerset,  England. From at least the 12th century the Glastonbury area has been associated with the legend of the Holy Grail and King Arthur, and the mythical island, Avalon. Christian legends have claimed that the abbey was founded by Joseph of Arimathea in the 1st century

• 701-900 (8th and 9th centuries): In the course of these two centuries, the three heirs of Rome established clearly separate identities, each largely bound up with its religious affiliation. As historian Barbara Rosenwein says “Byzantium saw itself as the radiating centre of Orthodox faith; the caliphate first asserted itself as the guarantor of Islam, then ceded that position to the ulama; Francia and the papacy cooperated and vied for the leadership of Catholic Europe. From this perspective, there were few commonalities. Yet today we are struck more by the similarities than the differences. All were centralizing monarchies shored up by military might. All had a bit of wealth, though the East certainly had more than the West. All had pretensions to God-given power. And all used culture and scholarship to give luster and expression to their political regimes. All may also have known, without explicitly admitting it, how strong were the forces of dissolution.” 

• 711: Arabs invade Spain: Muslim forces in seven years conquered the Iberian peninsula. It became one of the great Muslim civilizations; reaching its summit with the Umayyad caliphate of Cordova in the tenth century. Muslim rule declined after that and ended in 1492 when Granada was conquered

• 732: Battle of Tours in effect ended the Muslim invaders surge northward into Europe. France could be Muslim now, not Catholic, if the Muslims had prevailed. The Franks, led by Charles Martel, defeat a Umayyad Caliphate army under Abdul Rahman Al Ghafiqi. As Martel was the progenitor of the Carolingian line of Frankish rulers and grandfather of Charlemagne, it could be said with a degree of certainty that the subsequent history of the West would have proceeded along vastly different currents had Abdul Rahman been victorious

• 768-987: The Carolingian Empire was the first centralized, Christian power in Western Europe. It was a dynasty of Frankish kings, characterized by a revival of Roman literacy, architecture, the decorative arts in gold and silver. Named after Charles I (Charlemagne). The Empire extended from western France to the Elbe in Germany and from Denmark to the Mediterranean. The Empire was the first centralized, Christian power in Western Europe, leading to the papal title “Holy Roman Empire”. Churches and monasteries were founded and encouraged to improve education and literacy

• 768: Charlemagne becomes King of the Franks and in 800 AD Pope Leo III crowned him the First Holy Roman Emperor. By 804 he had conquered Saxon territory, while extending his control across northern Italy and Bavaria to areas of modern Austria and Croatia. He established the first major Christian state in western Europe since the Roman Empire

• 800 (approx): The Book of Kells is an illuminated manuscript Celtic Gospel book in Latin, containing the four Gospels of the New Testament. It is regarded as a masterwork of Western calligraphy and the pinnacle of Insular illumination (the combining of Celtic and Anglo-Saxon styles). It was produced by Columban monks closely associated with the community on the island of Iona in Western Scotland (and one of the oldest Christian religious centres in Western Europe)

• 801-900 (9th century): Windmills appear. Interestingly, there is no clear evidence of windmills prior to this century. (There are some vague references to windmills to do with a Persian millwright in 644 AD.) Their rapid demise began following WWI with the development of the internal-combustion engine and the spread of electric power 

• 801-1200 (9th-12th century): Kievan Rus – a powerful East Slavic state existed; the beginning of Russia. Shaped in the 9th century it went on to flourish for the next 300 years.  Kyivan Rus was a confederation of princedoms. Its centre was the city of Kyiv, now Ukraine’s capital. Its rulers were the Rus, Scandinavian Vikings who gradually established dominance over the region and merged with local Slavic tribes. (“Rus”, or Rus’, is the origin of the word “Russia”.) When it comes to political and cultural tradition, Kyivan Rus is indeed the cradle of Russia and Ukraine, as well as the country now called Belarus. It was a refined European civilization with roots in the Byzantine empire and its Orthodox Christian religion. Kievan Rus reached its greatest extent under Yaroslav the Wise (r. 1019–1054); his sons assembled and issued its first written legal code, the Russkaya Pravda (or Russian Justice), shortly after his death. It finally fell to the Mongol invasion in the mid-13th century. The empire is traditionally seen as the beginning of Russia (See “980”)

• 825: Borobudur Temple, the largest Buddhist temple ever built, was finished. It is surrounded by lush jungle in Magelang, Indonesia and is a UNESCO World Heritage site. It has a surface area of ~26,000 sq ft. Abandoned and overgrown with jungle sometime between the 10th and 15th centuries, it was restored in the 1970s

• 825: The Baghdad mathematician Al-Khwarizmi wrote his famous treatise that when translated into Latin is Algebra et Almucabal. This is the branch of mathematics in which arithmetical operations and formal manipulations are applied to abstract symbols rather than specific numbers. While the concept of the equation, number systems, symbols for conveying and manipulating mathematical statements, and the modern abstract structural view of algebra evolved over time, the Islamic mathematicians, using the frameworks from India, pushed the principles forward. One other example was the brilliant idea of treating zero as one of the numerals. And the Islamic mathematicians added one more notation, a mark to stand for “particular unknown quantity.” Today, x is the mark that usually denotes this quantity

• 843: The Chinese Tang emperor ordered all the Buddhist monasteries closed, confiscated their lands, and forced a quarter of a million Buddhist monks and nuns out to work

• 843: Charles II became King of France, then Holy Roman Emperor from 875. He (823-877) fought with his brothers over their inheritance until the Carolingian Empire was divided at Verdun

• 868: The oldest known printed book was created in China with a method known as block printing, which utilized panels of hand-carved wood blocks in reverse. The Diamond Sutra, a Buddhist book from Dunhuang, China was made during the Tang Dynasty. The printing press revolutionized society there before being further developed in Europe in 1450 by Johannes Gutenberg and his invention of the Gutenberg press

• 869-883: The Zanj Rebellion was a major revolt against the Abbasid Caliphate (the third caliphate to succeed the prophet Muhammad) near the city of Basra in present-day southern Iraq. The insurrection involved enslaved Bantu-speaking people (Zanj) who had originally been captured from the coast of Southeast Africa and transported to the Middle East, principally to drain the region’s salt marshes. Scholars have characterized the conflict as being “one of the bloodiest and most destructive rebellions which the history of Western Asia records.”

• 878: Alfred the Great defeated the Danes at the battle of Edington. Alfred (849-899) was the Anglo-Saxon King of Wessex (England south of the Thames). The Danes had controlled much of England. Alfred entered into a peace agreement with their Danish ruler, Gunthrum (who converted to Christianity). The Danes returned in 892 but by 896 were forced out again. After Alfred died in 899, his son, Edward the Elder, took the throne and ruled until 924. After his death, his son Athelstan was crowned king in 925 (See “925”) 

• 900-1300: A plough was invented that could plough deep and turn over heavy clay soil particularly in medieval Northern Europe. The invention of the heavy plough made it possible to harness areas with clay soil, and clay soil was more fertile than the lighter soil types. Suddenly the fields with the heavy, fatty and moist clay soils became those that gave the greatest yields. This led to prosperity and literally created a breeding ground for economic growth and cities. (Loose, more sandy and dry soil is more common in Southern Europe, where farmers were doing fine with the earliest functioning plough – known as the “ard, or the scratch plough.)

• 900 on: Ploughing side planks and horses then made farmers more productive. Peasants added a side plank that turned the soil as the plough cut its furrow, thus combining two arduous steps into one. Then they perfected a collar that let them yoke horses to their plows instead of oxen. Since horses are faster, they could plow more land in less time

• 900 on: Invention of the stirrup is an example of a small yet crucial innovation from the Middle Ages. It enabled warriors to sit steadily on a horse and transfer the horse’s strength to, for example, a lance. This marked a change in warfare practices

• 904: The first recorded military application of fire arrows as a form of incendiary projectiles. In the following centuries various gunpowder weapons such as bombs, and then gun bombs, fire lances, and the gun appeared in China. Scholars overwhelmingly concur that the gun was invented in China. There is evidence that documents the evolution of gunpowder from a medicine to an incendiary and explosive, and the evolution of the gun from the fire lance to a metal gun. Gunpowder technology was transferred quickly from China to the West. Gunpowder and gun technology spread throughout Eurasia during the 14th century

• 925: Aethelstan became true first king of England. Just like his grandfather and father, Aethelstan began as King of the Anglo-Saxons. He differed in the extent of his domain, notably after the Battle of Brunaburh in 937. He spent the decade after he became king bringing York and Northumbria under his control. By 937, the kings of the Scots, of Viking Dublin, and parts of Wales united against Aethelstan, ultimately facing off against their common foe at Brunanburh. Aethelstan only lived for two years after this fight but, to many, he became the true first king of England with that victory (See “878” and “937”)

• 937: Battle of Brunaburh considered to be one of the defining events in British history, leading to the creation of the nation of Britain itself. The exact location of Brunanburh remains unclear, but the fight that took place there is considered by many scholars to be one of the defining events in British history. Aethelstan’s victory at Brunanburh extended the King of the Anglo-Saxons’ dominion into Scotland and Wales. It also solidified his rule over all of England (See “925”)

• 960-1279: The Song Dynasty seized control of China in 960 for the next 300 years, uniting the many factions into which the country was divided under one central rule. Buddhism declined during the dynasty and Confucianism became the state religion. They were like “Tang part two”. The practice was taken up by upper-class Chinese families of binding young girls’ feet in bandages that caused their foot bones to break as they developed. These girls grew into women with abnormally small, dysfunctional feet, incapable of common labour. During Song times, men of the Chinese elite saw these broken feet as beautiful (the dark side of cultural power and wealth.) The Song conquered the rest of the Ten Kingdoms, ending the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period. After retreating to southern China, the Song was eventually conquered by the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty in 1279

• 980: Vladimir the Great consolidated the Rus realm from modern-day Belarus, Russia and Ukraine to the Baltic Sea and solidified the frontiers against incursions. Originally a follower of Slavic paganism, Vladimir(958-1015) converted to Christianity in 988 and Christianized the Kievan Rus (thus he also known as Saint Vladimir). He introduced the Byzantine law code into his territories following his conversion but reformed some of its harsher elements; he notably abolished capital punishment, along with judicial torture and mutilation (See “801-1200” and “1240”)

• 982: Eric the Red sailed west from Iceland to Greenland. Within a few decades, two Norse colonies with several thousand inhabitants sprang up on the shores of Greenland

• 1000: There were about 500 distinct, autonomous, more or less evenly matched political states in Europe competing with each other at this point

• 1021: The first and only Norse settlement in North America was at L’Anse aux Meadows, at the northern tip of Newfoundland. It was settled by the Norse from Greenland, who themselves had only been in Greenland since 982 AD. It is the only undisputed site of pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact of Europeans with the Americas outside of Greenland. The site was only inhabited for a few years (See “100,000-70,000 yrs ago”)

• 1025: An encyclopedia of medicine was compiled by a Persian, Ibn Sina. He is commonly known in the West as Avicenna (970–1037). His medical Canon formed the basis of medical instruction in European universities until the 17th century. It presented an overview of the contemporary medical knowledge of the Islamic world which had been influenced by Greco-Roman, Persian, Chinese and Indian medicine. Sina was a polymath who is regarded as one of the most significant physicians, astronomers, philosophers, and writers of the Islamic Golden Age (8th century to the 13th century) and the father of early modern medicine

• 1040: The earliest chemical formula for gunpowder appeared in the 11th century Song dynasty text, “Complete Essentials from the Military Classics”

• 1054: Schism (split) of the Christian Church (the Great Schism) into the Roman Catholic centred in the Papacy in Rome, and Greek Orthodox centred in the Byzantine capital of Constantinople with their patriarch. The schism was the culmination of theological and political differences between Western and Eastern Christianity that had developed during the preceding centuries. A series of ecclesiastical differences and theological disputes between them preceded the formal split. Prominent among these were the procession of the Holy Spirit (for some, the term “and from the Son” implies a serious underestimation of God the Father’s role role in the Trinity; for others, its denial implies a serious underestimation of the role of God the Son in the Trinity); whether leavened or unleavened bread should be used in the Eucharist; the bishop of Rome’s claim to universal jurisdiction; and the place of the See of Constantinople in relation to the pentarchy (the five major episcopal Sees of the Roman Empire: Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem). Sounds like simple things to work out, but they couldn’t

• 1066, Oct: England defeated by invading Normans, ending Anglo-Saxon phase of English history. At the Battle of Hastings, Anglo-Saxon King Harold II of England was defeated by the invading Norman forces led by the Duke of Normandy, later styled William the Conqueror (with an army made up of thousands of Norman, Breton, Flemish, and French troops). By the end of the bloody, all-day battle, Harold was dead and his forces were destroyed. William was crowned King of England at Westminster Abbey. The Anglo-Saxon phase of English history came to an end. Anglo-Saxon elites, the largest landholders in England, were replaced by Franco-Normans. The power of the earls was reduced and taxes were increased. Many of the upper levels of church government were replaced. Every major Anglo-Saxon cathedral or abbey, apart from Westminster, was rebuilt bigger and more fashionably. Parish churches were also widely rebuilt in stone. The Normans started a huge building program in Norman castles in order to help secure their power. Latin replaced English as the language of government (See “2023, May”)

• 1071, Aug: Battle of Manzikert: the Seljuk Turks warrior tribes defeated the Byzantine army (marking the beginning of the end for the Byzantine Empire as a militarily viable state) and marched south to conquer what Christians were calling the Holy Lands, the strip of fertile territory along the eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea. These conquests triggered the immense event known as the Crusades as the weakened Byzantine Empire called on fellow Christians in Western Europe to come to their aid

• 1086: The Domesday Book is a manuscript record of the “Great Survey” of much of England and parts of Wales. Completed by order of King William I, known as William the Conqueror, it was the most detailed account of life in England, until the first national census was carried out in England in 1801. The Domesday Book is an useful primary source and it provides a lot of information about what life was like in England after the Norman Conquest

• 1088: The first university in Europe was the University of Bologna. Then came the University of Paris (c.1150, later associated with the Sorbonne), and the University of Oxford (c. 1167). Then a renegade branch of Oxford scholars broke away and started their own university at Cambridge

• 1090: The Order of Assassins, or simply the Assassins, was founded. They were a heretical sect of Shīʿa Islam that existed between 1090 and 1275. During that time, they lived in the mountains of Persia and in Syria, and held a strict subterfuge policy throughout the Middle East through the covert murder of Muslim and Christian leaders who were considered enemies of the Nizari Ismaili state. They became infamous for their strategy of singling out opposition figures and murdering them, usually in knife-wielding teams. The modern term assassination is believed to stem from the tactics used by the Assassins

• 1095: The first known use of plenary indulgences. This is where Pope Urban II remitted all penance of persons who participated in the crusades who confessed their sins. A plenary (meaning “full”) indulgence is a special type of indulgence that, if all the requirements are met, removes all temporal punishment due to one’s sin. Later cash contributions to the efforts sufficed. This highly complicated theological system, which was framed as a means to help people achieve their eternal salvation, easily lent itself to misunderstanding and abuse (as early as the 13th century, much sooner than is usually thought). A principal contributing factor was money 

• 1095-99: The First Crusade gained Jerusalem for the Christians.These crusades were military expeditions from Western Christianity to Syria and Palestine in the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries. The aim was to secure the Christian sites allowing proper access to them. Direct impetus was given the crusade by the great speech of Pope Urban II where he exhorted Christendom to go to war for the Sepulcher, promising that the journey would count as full penance and that the homes of the absent ones would be protected by a truce. The battle cry of the Christians, he urged, should be Deus volt (God wills it). From the crosses that were distributed at this meeting the Crusaders took their name. Anti-Jewish feeling was also linked to the crusades. Christians trying to reclaim the holy land (including famous crusading kings like Richard I) increasingly saw Jews as ‘Christ-killers’, against whom violence could legitimately be used. The First Crusade was the most successful; Jerusalem was captured in 1099; the Crusaders killed many of its Muslim and Jewish inhabitants. Succeeding crusades were less successful (See “1291”)

• 1119: Order of the Knights Templar is founded then became the world’s first multinational corporation (also known as the Order of Solomon’s Temple, or simply the Templars). It was a Catholic military order, one of the most wealthy and popular military orders in Western Christianity. They were headquartered on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, and existed for nearly two centuries during the Middle Ages. The Templars were closely tied to the Crusades. They would safeguard pilgrims on the way to and from the Holy Lands. Eventually they developed innovative financial techniques that were an early form of banking, building a network of nearly 1,000 commanders and fortifications across Europe and the Holy Land, and arguably forming the world’s first multinational corporation. Pope Clement V disbanded the order in 1312 

• Other orders were the Knights Hospitaller, the Order of Saint James, the  Order of Calatrava, and the Teutonic Knights. These orders arose in the Middle Ages in association with the Crusades, both in the Holy Land, the Baltics, and the Iberian peninsula; their members being dedicated to the protection of pilgrims and the defence of the Crusader states. They are the predecessors of chivalric orders. The role and function of the military orders extended beyond their military exploits in the Holy Land, Prussia and the Baltics. In fact, they had extensive holdings and staff throughout Western Europe. The majority were laymen. They provided a conduit for cultural and technical innovation, such as the introduction of fulling (a step in wooden clothmaking) into England by the Knights Hospitaller, and the banking facilities of the Knights Templar

• 1147: The Second Crusade begins and confirms the Christian presence in the Levant, which includes Crusades in parts of Muslim-ruled Spain, Eastern Germany and the East

• 1150: Angkor Wat is built by King Suryavarman II of the Khmer Empire (in Cambodia). It was originally dedicated to the Hindu God Vishnu. It became a Buddhist temple by the end of the 12th century. Construction started in 1122 and took 28 years. It is the largest religious monument in the world, on a site measuring 402 acres

• 1154: Henry II becomes King of England; the basis for the English Common Law gets laid. At various points in his life (he died in 1189), he controlled England, large parts of Wales and Ireland, and the western half of France. He was an energetic and ruthless ruler, driven by a desire to restore the royal lands and privileges of his grandfather Henry I. His tempestuous marriage with Eleanor produced eight children in thirteen years. He also had illegitimate children with several mistresses, possibly as many as twelve. Henry’s desire to reform the English Church led to conflict with his former friend Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury, leading to Becket’s murder in 1170. Henry’s legal changes are generally considered to have laid the basis for the English Common Law 

• 1154-1485: The House of Plantagenet held the English throne for over 300 years with the accession of Henry II to 1485, when Richard III died. Under this royal house, which originated from the lands of Anjou in France, England was transformed. The Plantagenet kings were often forced to negotiate compromises such as Magna Carta, which had served to constrain their royal power in return for financial and military support. The king was no longer considered an absolute monarch in the nation but now also had defined duties to the kingdom, underpinned by a sophisticated justice system (See “1485”)

• 1169: Averroes Ibn Rushd’s massive commentaries on Aristotle were published. He was an Andalusian (modern day Spain and Portugal – ruled by Muslims between 711 and 1492) polymath and jurist who wrote about many subjects, including philosophy, theology, medicine, astronomy, physics, psychology, mathematics, Islamic jurisprudence and law, and linguistics. Averroes (1126-1198) was a strong proponent of Aristotelianism; he attempted to restore what he considered the original teachings of Aristotle. He believed that philosophy should play a central role within religious inquiry, rather than being an alternative to religion

• 1170, Dec: Thomas Becket was murdered in his cathedral, Canterbury Cathedral. Becket was one of the most powerful figures of his time, serving as royal Chancellor and later as Archbishop of Canterbury. Initially a close friend of King Henry II, the two men became engaged in a bitter dispute that culminated in Becket’s shocking murder by knights with close ties to the king. In death Becket remained a figure of opposition to unbridled power and became seen as the quintessential defender of the rights of the Church. Becket was made a saint (canonized) by the Pope in February 1173. It was one of the fastest canonizations in history (See “1154”)

• 1180: Maimonides wrote the Mishnah Torah which still carries significant canonical authority as a codification of Halacha. Written when he was living in Egypt, it is the only Medieval-era work that details all of Jewish observance. He (1138–1204) was a Sephardic Jewish philosopher who became one of the most prolific and influential Torah scholars of the Middle Ages. In his time, he was also a preeminent astronomer and physician, serving as the personal physician of Saladin

• 1184: The first medieval inquisition, the episcopal inquisition, was established by a papal bull of Pope Lucius III entitled, “For the purpose of doing away with.” It was a response to the growing Catharist movement (they believed in dualism; if they refused to repent they were burned) in southern France. It was called “episcopal” because it was administered by local bishops and obliged bishops to visit their diocese twice a year in search of heretics 

• 1189-92: The Third Crusade featured an epic dual between two leaders famous for their supposed generosity and civility. It became the stuff of legends with the famous Crusader leader Richard I (the Lion-hearted) of England (along with Philip II of France, and Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I) against Saladin the sultan of Egypt. It followed with the capture (1187) of Jerusalem by Saladin and a treaty that ceded it back to the Muslims

• ~1190: The first European use of a compass. The early prototype used lodestones (pieces of naturally-occurring magnetic ore) attached to sticks or corks so that they could float in water. Then the design graduated to a magnetized needle mounted on a pin at the bottom of a bowl. In time, a directional card with 32 points of direction began to be mounted beneath the needle. (The astrolab was also used, beginning in the 3rd or 2cd century BC in ancient Greece to measure the position of celestial bodies relative to the user.) (See “200 BC approx”)

• 1192: Start of 675 years of Shogunate rule in Japan. Shogun Minamoto Yorimoto overthrows the Taira emperor. Shogunates, or military governments, led Japan until the 19th century 

• 1200: Europeans finally learned to make paper. They were basically bookless until this point. Before the Crusades, most books produced in Europe were written on vellum, a calfskin leather stretched and scraped and worked into thin sheets. By this time, the Chinese had also invented not just the printing press but movable type. While Chinese and Arabic script made it complicated, the Latin alphabet used in Europe (with 26 unchanging stand-alone letters) simplified the process of using moveable type to copy a book. All that was then needed was using type to imprint an image on a sheet of paper. This was solved in 1450  when Gutenberg figured it out (See “1450”)

• 1202: Mathematician Leonardo of Pisa, published his book Liber Abaci (Book of Calculation). He was nicknamed Fibonacci. His book about Arabic math (which was, actually, Indian math) opens with the fateful words: “The nine Indian figures are: 987654321. With these nine figures, and with the sign 0…any number whatsoever is written.” Arabic numerals and arithmetical calculations used in Dar-ul-Islam – place value, decimals, long division algorithms, algebra, and much more – quickly spread through Europe, along with various business methods of the east: double-entry bookkeeping, and credit instruments (instead of cash) in business transactions, all of which required sophisticated accounting. European business was never the same 

• 1202-1204: The Fourth Crusade begins but they never made it to the Holy Lands. It was a Western European armed expedition originally intended to conquer Muslim-controlled Jerusalem by means of an invasion through Egypt. In 1204, they ran amok in Constantinople, ripped up the city, looted the churches, disposed the Byzantine emperor, and declared Constantinople the capital of their (short-lived) Latin Empire. This marked the final schism between the Greek-speaking Christian empire of the east and the successors of the Roman Empire in the west

• 1206: Genghis Khan came to power and united the warring tribes under the Great Mongol Empire. He (1162-1227)was the founder and first khagan, or emperor, of the Mongol Empire, which later became the largest contiguous land empire in history. The Mongolian Empire was extended all the way to eastern Europe and to all of China and Central Asia, among other parts under his successors (including his grandson Kublai Khan), e.g. all of modern-day China and Mongolia in addition to parts of Armenia, Georgia, Russia, Ukraine, Romania, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan and Korea (9.15 million square miles, equal to 10% of Earth’s total land mass). The historic region of Mongolia was split into two, with Outer Mongolia becoming the independent nation of Mongolia, while Inner Mongolia remained a province of China. Since that time, Mongolia has had a close relationship with Russia. The Mongols created a military-feudal form of government, and enhanced trade (including along the Silk Road) throughout conquered territories. The armies adopted advanced technologies of the time, such as powerful siege weapons and possibly gunpowder, and were innovators (the composite bow and stirrups being examples)

• 1209: Francis of Assisi founded the Franciscan Order. It was a mendicant religious order in 13th century High Medieval Europe. The order was given papal recognition in 1210. The Franciscans presented medieval Europe with a radically new type of religious order. They were an urban rather than a rural religious order. They lived lives that involved wandering, preaching, begging, and poverty, and they answered to the spiritual needs of townspeople. Francis was known for embracing poverty and begging for a living. He forbade his followers from possessing any material objects. The Franciscans are sometimes called Friars, and this is a term derived from fratres, which means brothers in Latin

• 1215, June: Magna Carta agreed to by King John of England at Runnymede. This restricted John’s powers. The royal charter of rights still forms an important symbol of liberty today, often cited by politicians and campaigners, and is held in great respect by the British and American legal communities. It was the first document to put into writing the principle that the king and his government was not above the law. The remarkable fact is not that war broke out between John and his barons in the months following the signing but that the king had ever been brought to agree to such a document at all. That the king genuinely wished to avoid civil war, that he was prepared to accede to reasonable demands for a statement of feudal law, and that he had a basic desire to give good government to his subjects are all strikingly shown by his submission to clauses that, in effect, authorized his subjects to declare war on their king. The basic rights embodied in the Constitution of the US of America (1789) and the Bill of Rights (1791) echo the charter, and the Fourteenth Amendment (1868) can trace its ancestry to the Magna Carta as well (See “2023, May”)

• 1215, Nov: The Fourth Lateran Council was convened and had three objectives: crusading, Church reform, and combating heresy. It provided rules for good Christians and it turned against all others. Some canons singled out Jews and heretics for special punitive treatment; others were directed at Byzantines and Muslims. With the development of a papal monarchy that declared a single doctrine and the laws pertaining to it, dissidence was perceived as heresy, non-Christians seen as treacherous. The Council for example declared as church doctrine that within the Mass (the ritual in which the bread and wine of the Eucharist was transformed into the flesh and blood of Christ) that this transformation was promulgated according to which Christ’s body and blood were truly present in the bread and wine on the alter. They explained it by using a technical term – that the bread and wine were “transubstantiated”, i.e. though the Eucharist continued to look like bread and wine, after the consecration during the Mass the bread became the actual body and the wine the real blood of Christ. The Council’s emphasis on this potent event strengthened the role of the priest, for only he could celebrate this mystery through which God’s grace was transmitted to the faithful

• 1217: The Fifth Crusade begins. Invasion of Egypt under the rule of al-Malik al-Kamil is led by Cardinal Pelagius. Crusaders besiege Damietta and Crusaders try to take Cairo. Al-Kamil’s forces and a rising Nile isolates and defeats the Crusader army. Al-Kamil provides bread and supplies to save the Crusader army from starvation 

• 1228-29: The Sixth Crusade was a military expedition to recapture Jerusalem and the rest of the Holy Land. It wasalso known as the Crusade of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II, The emperor made a truce with the Muslims, securing the partial surrender of Jerusalem and other holy places

• 1231: The Roman Catholic tribunal for prosecuting heresy, called the Inquisition, was created by Pope Gregory IX in France and Germany. Inquisitors would arrive in a town and announce their presence, giving citizens a chance to admit to heresy. Those who confessed received a punishment ranging from a pilgrimage to a whipping. Those accused of heresy were forced to testify. If the heretic did not confess, torture and execution were inescapable. Heretics weren’t allowed to face accusers, received no counsel and were often victims of false accusations. The Spanish Inquisition was set up in 1480

• 1240: Kievan Rus was invaded by the Tatars. In the mid-11th century, Kyivan Rus began to fragment into semi-autonomous principalities. These included Galicia-Volhynia, which covered parts of modern Ukraine and Belarus, Novgorod in north-western modern-day Russia, and Vladimir-Suzdal, in western Russia. In 1240 the Mongol empire besieged Kyiv, finally destroying what remained of Kyivan Rus as a single entity. Their state, the Empire of the Golden Horde, ruled over Russian lands for almost three centuries (See “801-1200”,“980”, “1569” and “1648”)

• 1245: Construction began on the present Westminster Abbey on the orders of Henry III. All coronations of English and British monarchs have occurred here (since that of William the Conquerer in 1066) (See “2023, May”)

• 1248-54: The Seventh Crusade begins, led by the forces of Louis IX of France attacking Tunis. It was conducted in response to setbacks in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, beginning with the loss of the Holy City in 1244. It initially met with success but ended in defeat, with most of the army – including the king – captured by the Muslims. The king was released In 1254 and returned to France having concluded some important treaties

• 1258, Feb: The sack of Baghdad by the Mongols and subsequent massacre and the execution of Al-Musta’sim Billah (the last caliph to rule from Baghdad). Hulagu Khan’s Mongol army entered Baghdad after a 12-day siege. The city had approximately one million residents, and the army massacred most of them – estimates range from the hundreds of thousands all the way up to a million! It was a horrendous act that, in one fell swoop, brought an end to the Islamic Golden Age – the Abbasid age of cultural revival. The Abbasid caliphs had presided over perhaps the greatest empire of scholarship and knowledge the world had seen up to that point. Palaces, mosques, churches, hospitals, and the city’s 36 public libraries were smashed  and burned to the ground. The House of Wisdom, with its centuries of knowledge from all cultures across the planet, was razed

• 1258: Rumi, the 13th-century Persian poet, commenced his best-known work, the Masnavi during the final years of his life. This Islamic scholar and Sufi mystic (1207-1273) began dictating the first book around the age of 54 and continued composing verses until his death. This six-volume poem holds a distinguished place within the rich tradition of Persian Sufi literature, and has been commonly called “the Quran in Persian”. Many commentators have regarded it as the greatest mystical poem in world literature. Rumi believed in the use of music, poetry and dance as a path for reaching God. For Rumi, music helped devotees to focus their whole being on the divine. It was from these ideas that the practice of whirling Dervishes developed into a ritual form

• 1259: The first recorded bullet in history was a pellet wad that filled the barrel. It was used as a fire lance projectile by Jin soldiers in China. The Jin dynasty (the “Great Jin”) was an imperial dynasty of China that existed between 1115 and 1234 when they succumbed to Mongol conquest after Genghis Khan invaded

• 1260: Kublai Khan became emperor of the Mongol empire of Yuan China and ruled until his death in 1294. He founded a new capital, now called Beijing, and in 1276 conquered the Sung dynasty capital. By 1292 all of China was under his control, though he failed to conquer Japan. He opened China to foreigners, encouraged art and trade and established Buddhism, adopting Tibetan Buddhism which became the official religion of the Yuan dynasty (1271-1368). (See 566 BC – the founding of Buddhism in India and 1368)

• 1260, Sept: Mongols lose the Battle of Ayn Jalut. The victory of the Islamic Mamluks of Egypt in southeastern Galilee saved Egypt and Islam and halted the westward expansion of the Mongol empire (they were poised to sweep across Europe to the Atlantic Ocean). It was a watershed and signalled the waning of the Mongol Empire. It lasted only another 50 years or so, but during that time the entire territory from the Pacific Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea, from the Baltic to the South China Sea, was under one political jurisdiction. (It was the biggest contiguous empire the world had ever seen, and there would never be a bigger one until the rise of the Soviet Union.)

• 1261-64: St. Thomas Aquinas wrote the Summa contra Gentiles(“Book on the truth of the Catholic faith against the errors of the unbelievers”). It was written in response to a request for a book that would help the Dominican missionaries in Spain convert the Muslims and Jews there. Aquinas (1224-74) was an ItalianDominican friar and priest, who was an immensely influential philosopher, theologian, and jurist in the tradition of scholasticism (a method of learning, more than a theology). He is considered one of the Catholic Church’s greatest theologians and philosophers. Bertrand Russell’s assessment of Aquinas was acerbic: “ He does not, like the Platonic Socrates, set out to follow wherever the argument may lead. He is not engaged in an inquiry, the result of which it is impossible to know in advance. Before he begins to philosophize, he already knows the truth; it is declared in the Catholic faith.”

• 1267: Roger Bacon is credited as one of the earliest European advocates of the modern scientific method. In this year he wrote his major work, Opus Majus which covers mathematics, optics, alchemy and astronomy. Bacon (1219-1292) was a medieval English philosopher and Franciscan friar who placed considerable emphasis on the study of nature through empiricism. He suggested that the validity of a proposition be determined by a three-step process: prediction, experiment, and follow-up observation. He thus laid out a method for gaining true information about the world without any reference to God. This was revolutionary. He was also the first in Europe, in 1280, to record the formula of gunpowder (although it was invented and described in China)

• 1270: The world’s first mechanical clocks are thought to have been tower clocks built in the region spanning northern Italy to southern Germany from around 1270 to 1300 during the renaissance period. These clocks did not yet have dials or hands, but told the time by striking bells. Then the move was to continue to make them smaller and smaller and independent from wind or water

• 1270: The Eighth Crusade was against the Hafsid dynasty in Tunisia. It was the second Crusade launched by Louis IX of France, however Louis died of dysentery shortly after arriving in Tunisia. The Treaty of Tunis was negotiated between the Crusaders and the Hafsids. No changes in territory occurred, though there were commercial and some political rights granted to the Christians. The Crusaders withdrew back to Europe soon after

• 1272-75: Marco Polo develops the Silk Road. This Venetian merchant, plus his father and uncle, took a series of overland traders’ routes, that, in the 19th century, would become known as the Silk Road. Over a period of three years they slowly trekked through deserts, high mountain passes and other rough terrain, meeting people of various religions and cultures along the way. Finally, around 1275 they arrived at Kublai Khan’s opulent summer palace at Shangdu, or Xanadu, located about 200 miles northwest of his winter quarters in modern Beijing. He wrote “The Travels of Marco Polo” in 1298. (Historians have since questioned whether Polo made it as far as China or merely retold stories from other travellers.) 

• 1273: The start of the Habsburg empire which dominated European history for five centuries until 1918. It started when Rudolf I, a Habsburg, was elected king in 1273 of Germany. He then conquered Austria

• 1290: All the Jews of England were expelled on the orders of Edward I. Many migrated to Spain or to France where they only faced more persecution. From the middle of the twelfth century, there was growing antisemitism in England and across Europe and enthusiasm for cleansing Europe of Jews (populist rumours arose that Jews were eating Christian babies for Passover). However Jewish people were fundamental to the working of the English economy. Jewish lenders provided loans for many of the most important figures at the royal court. Many were making a living as moneylenders. English monarchs cultivated this; when kings needed money they could wring it out of the Jewish moneylenders as fines for usury. To meet the king’s demands, they had to call in their loans, sort of an indirect way of taxing and this built up Jewish resentment 

• 1290: The first eyeglasses were estimated to have been made in Central Italy, most likely in Pisa. These were essentially two magnifying glasses (reading stones) joined by a hinge that rested on the bridge of the nose. (In 1262, Roger Bacon is also known to have written on the magnifying properties of lenses.) A separate guild of Venetian spectacle makers was formed in 1320. These early glasses had convex lenses that could correct both hyperopia (farsightedness), and the presbyopia that commonly develops as a symptom of aging. Although concave lenses for myopia (near-sightedness) had made their first appearance in the mid-15th century, it was not until 1604 that Johannes Kepler published the first correct explanation as to why convex and concave lenses could correct presbyopia and myopia. Benjamin Franklin (likely) invented bifocals ~1750s

• 1291: The country of Switzerland was formed out of 20 local cantons. At the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, it attained legal independence from the Holy Roman Empire. A new constitution was adopted in 1848

• 1291: Effective end of the Great Crusades. In 1289 Tripoli fell to the Muslims, and in 1291, Acre, the last Christian stronghold, followed. Remaining Crusaders retreated to the island of Cyprus. Physical reminders of the Crusades remain in the monumental castles built by the Crusaders, such as that of Al Karak. The chief material beneficiaries of the Crusades were Venice and the other great Mediterranean ports (See “1095-1099”)

• 1296: The First War of Scottish Independence was the first of a series of wars between English and Scottish forces. It lasted from the English invasion of Scotland in 1296 until the legal restoration of Scottish independence with the Treaty of Edinburgh-Northampton in 1328. (This is where William Wallace, a Scottish knight became one of the main leaders. He defeated an English army at the Battle of Stirling Bridge in September 1297. He was finally captured and King Edward I of England had him hanged, drawn and quartered for high treason.) Real independence was established in 1314 at the Battle of Bannockburn. The wars were caused by the attempts of the English kings to establish their authority over Scotland while Scots fought to keep English rule and authority out of Scotland

The Renaissance period: 14c-17c

It promoted the rediscovery of classical philosophy, literature and art. Some of the greatest thinkers, authors, statesmen, scientists and artists in human history thrived during this era, while global exploration opened up new lands and cultures to European commerce. The Renaissance is credited with bridging the gap between the Middle Ages and modern-day civilization. It started in Florence, Italy, expanded to other Italian city-states, such as Venice, Milan, Bologna, Ferrara and Rome. Then, during the 15th century, Renaissance ideas spread from Italy to France and then throughout western and northern Europe.

• 1314: The first settlement of New Zealand by Polynesians from Eastern Polynesia (and originally from Taiwan). The descendants of these settlers became known as the Maori

• 1314, June: The Battle of Bannockburn is considered a landmark moment in Scottish history. It was a victory of the army of King of Scots Robert the Bruce over the army of King Edward II of England in the First War of Scottish Independence (1296-1328). King Edward assembled the largest army ever to invade Scotland. The Scottish army was divided into four divisions of schiltrons. This is a compact body of troops forming a battle array where the front ranks knelt with their spear butts fixed in the earth and the rear ranks leveled their lances over their comrades heads; the thick-set grove of twelve foot spears was far too dense for the cavalry to penetrate). It was a major turning point in the war, which only officially ended 14 years later with the de jure restoration of Scottish independence under the Treaty of Edinburgh-Northampton

• 1320: Dante completed “The Divine Comedy”, widely considered to be the pre-eminent work in Italian literature and one of the greatest works of world literature.  It details Dante’s journey through the nine circles of a very vivid Hell. The poem’s imaginative vision of the afterlife is representative of the medieval worldview as it had developed in the Western Church by the 14th century. Dante Alighieri was an Italian philosopher, poet, writer and political thinker (1265-1321)

• 1325-late 1400s: The rise of the Aztec civilization. In 1325 the nomadic Mexica (Aztec) people founded the city of Tenochtitlán (modern-day Mexico City) on an island in Lake Texcoco. In 1487, for the dedication of the Templo Mayor, Aztec Emperor Ahuitzotl sacrifices 20,000 prisoners of war to the Aztec god Huitzilopochtli. (He was famous for promoting the Aztec practice of ritual sacrifice.)

• 1326: The first secularized military order was the Order of Saint George. It was founded by King Charles I of Hungary, through which he made all the Hungarian nobility swear loyalty to him

• 1332-1357: Scotland prevailed in the Second War of Scottish Independence between England and Scotland. It began with the English-supported invasion by Edward Balliol and the ‘Disinherited’ in 1332, and ended in 1357 with the signing of the Treaty of Berwick. The wars were part of a great crisis for Scotland and the period became one of the most defining times in its history. At the end of both wars, Scotland retained its status as an independent state until the unification of the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland to create the single Kingdom of Great Britain was completed in the Treaty of Union of 1707. The wars were important for other reasons, such as the emergence of the longbow as a key weapon in medieval warfare

• 1337: The Hundred Years’ War broke out. This was a series of armed conflicts between the kingdoms of England and France during the Late Middles Ages. For 116 years, interrupted by several truces, five generations of kings from two rival dynasties fought for the throne of the dominant kingdom in Western Europe. The war’s effect on European history was lasting. Both sides produced innovations in military technology and tactics, including professional standing armies and artillery, that permanently changed warfare in Europe. Stronger national identities took root in both countries, which became more centralized and gradually rose as global powers

• 1347-1351: Black Death (bubonic plague) – the worst pandemic in history (taking a proportionately greater toll of life than any other known epidemic or war up to that time).This outbreak of plague ravaged Europe, the Middle East and north Africa, and wiped out an estimated one-third to one-half of the population. More followed during the rest of this century. Interestingly the whole era of what is defined as the “Renaissance” in Europe (revival of classical wisdom and knowledge, explosion of artistic brilliance, development of better medicine) – all of that happened while people were dying at regular intervals from a disease that no one understood. The last European outbreak was in Marseille in 1720. It also rattled the human genome. A set of genetic variations that helped some people survive the bubonic plague has recently been identified (October/22). While it offers a stark case of evolution at work, the protection they offered came with a trade-off: One of the genes found to be most strongly associated with resistance to plague is also implicated in various autoimmune disorders, including Crohn’s disease

• 1353: Boccaccio’s The Decameron is published. It is a collection of short stories by the 14th-century Italian author Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–1375). He was an Italian writer, poet, correspondent of Petrarch, and an important Renaissance humanist. (During this period most humanists were Christians, so their concern was to “purify and renew Christianity”, not to do away with it.) They are earthy tales told by a group of seven young women and three young men as they shelter in a secluded villa just outside Florence in order to escape the Black Death, which was afflicting the city. Boccaccio probably conceived of the Decameron after the epidemic of 1347-1351

• 1357, July: Construction started on the Charles Bridge in Prague, the oldest preserved bridge over the Vitava River and one of the oldest stone bridges in Europe. The foundation stone was laid by Emperor Charles IV and was completed in 1402. It was the heart of the medieval Prague road system and its huge Gothic towers protected the city from attackers

• 1362: The “Great Drowning of Men” event was deemed the most destructive weather-related disaster ever to hit the British Isles. The storm developed over the Atlantic Ocean and moved across Western Europe creating a south-westerly gale. As the depression approached the North Sea, it combined with high tides and produce a storm surge. The surge impacted eastern part of England like a tsunami.  It was reported that at least 25,000 people in south-east England and the nearby Netherlands were killed, either as the result of high winds as trees, homes, and churches collapsed or drowned as a result of the storm surge

• 1368: Petrarch finished writing his collection of lyric poems. Often referred to as “the father of the Renaissance”, he (1304-1374) was a scholar and poet of early Renaissance Italy, and one of the earliest humanists. His rediscovery of Cicero’s letters is often credited with initiating the 14th century Italian Renaissance and the founding of Renaissance humanism. Regarded as the greatest scholar of his age, he attempted to synthesize the two seemingly ideals of classical culture (rich promise, values) and the Christian message (divine fulfillment) (See “43 BC”)

• 1368: In China, a rebel militia called the Red Turbans drove out the Mongols and put an end to the “Yuan dynasty”. Led by a barely literate ruffian named Zhu Yuanzhang, they seized the city of Nanjing and from that base they attacked the Mongol capital of Dadu. When this Han Chinese leader sat upon the throne again, a new authentically Chinese imperial era had begun. Zhu called his dynasty the Ming, which means “the brilliant”, and it united China for nearly 400 yers (to 1644); see next

• 1368-1644: The Ming dynasty was an imperial dynasty of China, ruling following the collapse of the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty. The Ming dynasty was the last orthodox dynasty of China ruled by the Han people, the majority ethnic group in China. The dynasty’s founder, the Hongwu Emperor (r. 1368–1398 – or Zhu, our ruffian fellow just mentioned), attempted to create a society of self-sufficient rural communities ordered in a rigid, immobile system that would guarantee and support a permanent class of soldiers for his dynasty:the empire’s standing army exceeded one million troops and the navy’s dockyards in Nanjing were the largest in the world. By the 16th century, however, the expansion of European trade spread the Columbian Exchange of crops, plants, and animals into China, introducing highly productive maize and potatoes, which diminished famines and spurred population growth. The growth of Portuguese, Spanish, and Dutch trade created new demand for Chinese products and produced a massive influx of Japanese and American silver. (Note: the Columbian Exchange was the widespread transfer of plants, animals, precious metals, commodities, culture, human populations, technology, diseases, and ideas between the Americas and the Old World, in the late 15th and following centuries.) (See “1644”)

• 1378: The Great Schism (or the Papal Schism) was a split within the Catholic Church lasting from 1378 to 1417 in which bishops residing in Rome (Gregory XII) and Avignon (Benedict XIII) both claimed to be the true pope, and were joined by a third line of Pisan claimants (John XXIII) in 1409. The schism was driven by personalities and political allegiances, with the Avignon papacy being closely associated with the French monarchy. These rival claims to the papal throne damaged the prestige of the office (See ”1414-1418” and “1517, Oct”)

• 1381: The first great popular rebellion in English history, the Peasants’ Revolt (also called Wat Tyler’s Rebellion). Its immediate cause was the imposition of the unpopular poll tax of 1380, which brought to a head the economic discontent that had been growing since the middle of the century. The rebellion drew support from several sources and included well-to-do artisans and villeins as well as the destitute]. Probably the main grievance of the agricultural labourers and urban working classes was the Statute of Labourers (1351), which attempted to fix maximum wages during the labour shortage following the Black Death (see “1347-1351”). The rebellion lasted less than a month and failed completely as a social revolution, however, as a protest against the taxation of poorer classes it did prevent further levying of the poll tax

• 1386: The worlds oldest surviving working clock was made. It is in Salisbury Cathedral and still has most of its original parts. (See the Tang Dynasty in the early eighth century, where a Buddhist monk built the first mechanical clock, three stories high, driven by a water wheel. Water flowed into scoops at the periphery of a wheel, whose controlled rotation was transferred to the astronomical devices. In effect, time was measured by the successive weighings of scoopfuls of water.) (See “1656”)

• 1387: Geoffrey Chaucer started writing “The Canterbury Tales.” This English poet (1343-1400) was seen as crucial in legitimizing the literary use of Middle English when the dominant literary languages in England were still Anglo-Norman French and Latin. Chaucer has been called the “father of English literature”

• 1397: The Medici Bank was set up, initially in Florence, Italy. It was the largest and most respected bank in Europe during its prime. The Medici family was, for a period of time, the wealthiest family in Europe. With this monetary wealth, the family acquired political power initially in Florence, and later in the wider spheres of Italy and Europe

• 1397: Union of Kalmar unites Denmark, Sweden and Norway under a single monarch. Denmark is the dominant power 

• 1405: Christine de Pizan, the first known female professional writer, published a collection of stories defending women’s general skills and moral excellence. Her The Book of the City of Ladies relates examples of scholarly, brave, and inspiring women. It was both an imitation of and a response to Boccaccio’s Decameron. She (1364-~1430) advocated for women’s equality

• 1405-1433: The Ming dynasty’s new emperor, Jongle, assembled an enormous fleet and sent this armada on seven expeditions. It included62 of the biggest wooden ships ever built, plus 200 smaller ones for support services. Each of the big ships measured 400 feet long; the armada was a floating city of some 28,000. They headed out over the period through the area of Southeast Asia to ports in India, down the African coast to Kenya, the Persians, Yemen, and beyond. They did no serious trading, conquering, or exploring. Its assignment was to demonstrate how utterly China dwarfed all other lands. When they returned from their last voyage further explorations were halted and the fleet destroyed

• 1414-1418: The Council of Constance ended/healed the Western Schism (i.e. the Roman Catholic Church found with three popes) by deposing or accepting the resignation of the remaining papal claimants and by electing Pope Martin V. (He was a good choice for the humanistic scholars of the time as he liked their eloquence and writings and gave them administrative/secretarial jobs.) The Council was an ecumenical council of the Catholic Church summoned to reunite Christendom. The Council failed to effect stronger reforms, which likely contributed to the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century (See “1378” and “1517, Oct”)

• 1415: Henry V of England invaded France and won a devastating victory at Agincourt when English long bowman decimated French mounted knights. A second expedition in 1417 led to the surrender of Rouen in 1419 and his marriage with Catherine, daughter of Charles VI of France, in 1520. By this, Henry became heir to the French throne. However the war continued and Henry died on the campaign in 1422

• 1420: The Incas built Machu Picchu on a 2,430-meter mountain ridge in southern Peru but abandoned it a century later, at the time of the Spanish conquest. It is often referred to as the “Lost City of the Incas”, and is the most familiar icon of the Inca Empire. Most archaeologists believe that Machu Picchu was constructed as an estate for the Inca emperor Pachacuti (1438–1472). It was occupied from around 1420 to 1532

• 1431: St. Joan of Arc was condemned and burned at the stake in Rouen, France. She is the most famous victim of the Inquisition. Joan inspired the armies of the Dauphin Charles (eventually King of France) in a series of stunning military victories which lifted the siege of Orleans (which was the watershed of the Hundred Years’ War between France and England) and destroyed a large percentage of the remaining English forces at the battle of Patay (a victory often credited to Joan, although she wasn’t there). A series of military setbacks eventually led to her capture. She was placed on trial for heresy before a Church court and declared a heretic and burned at the stake. This method of execution was practiced in Babylonia and ancient Israel and later adopted in Europe and North America. It was a traditional form of execution for women found guilty of witchcraft. Joan was eventually canonized in 1920

• 1438-1533: The Inca people create an empire in South America. The civilization arose from the Peruvian highlands and incorporated a large portion of western South America, centred on the Andean Mountains, using conquest and peaceful assimilation, among other methods – and they did it without the use of the wheel, draft animals, nothing that could be herded (sheep, goats), knowledge of iron or steel, or even a system of writing, and functioning largely without money and without markets. The Inca people were a pastoral tribe in the Cusco area around the 12th century. In 1438, they began a far-reaching expansion under the command of Sapa Inca. At its largest, the empire joined modern-day Peru, what are now western Ecuador, western and south central Bolivia, northwest Argentina, the southwesternmost tip of Colombia and a large portion of modern-day Chile into a state comparable to the historical empires of Eurasia 

• 1440s: Italian sculptor Donatello (1386-1466) created the lifelike statue “David”. Commissioned by the Medici family, it is arguably the first major work of Renaissance sculpture

• 1450: Invention of the Gutenberg printing press. In Germany, Johannes Gutenberg invented the movable-type printing press, which started the Printing Revolution. This introduced the era of mass communication, which permanently altered the structure of society. The relatively unrestricted circulation of information and (revolutionary, sometimes) ideas transcended borders, captured the masses in the Reformation and threatened the power of political and religious authorities. The sharp increase in literacy broke the monopoly of the literate elite on education and learning and bolstered the emerging middle class. It allowed ideas to spread more quickly. It’s important to realize that to survive until the era of printing, an ancient author’s words had to be copied by hand, and the copies had to be copied, and so on over the course of centuries – by which time the original would have long perished. The copying process inevitably resulted in some corruption. The first two books Gutenberg printed were a book of psalms and the Holy Bible

• 1453, May: Capture of Constantinople: end of the Roman Empire; rise of the Turks: The Turks (the Ottoman Army) captured Constantinople, the capital of the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire. The city’s collapse marked the end of the Middle Ages. The fall of the Byzantine Empire was a watershed, marking the effective end of the last remains of the Roman Empire, a state which began in roughly 27 BC and had lasted nearly 1500 years. Among many modern historians, the Fall of Constantinople is considered the end of the medieval period. TheOttoman Empire (also known as the Turkish Empire) then controlled much of Southeast Europe, Western Asia, and Northern Africa between the 14th and early 20th centuries.  (See “27 BC”)

• 1455-1487: The Wars of the Roses were the civil wars fought between the Yorkist and Lancastrian dynasties in the 15th century. One of the bloodiest episodes in English history, it was a period that saw the deaths of kings, the extinction of royal dynasties and the brutal slaughter of much of England’s nobility (See “1461” and “1485”)

• 1456, July: Battle (or seige) of Belgrade. The Ottoman Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror’s plan was to subjugate the Kingdom of Hungary so he started at Belgrade. The siege escalated into a major battle, during which the Count of Temes and captain-general of Hungary led a sudden counterattack that overran the Ottoman camp, ultimately compelling the wounded Mehmed II to lift the siege and retreat. This was significant as it stabilized the southern frontiers of the Kingdom of Hungary for more than 70 years and considerably delayed the Ottoman advance into Christian Europe; the Sultan withdrew to Constantinople. The day of the victory has been a memorial day in Hungary ever since

• 1461, March: The Battle of Towton, England – the bloodiest and biggest battle ever fought in England. As many as 40,000 died. (The battle may rank as the most lethal, as a share of the population, ever fought by the English people anywhere in the world.) As a result, Edward IV deposed the Lancastrian Henry VI (whose adult years were punctuated by periods of insanity) and secured the English throne. It was part of the complicated dynastic and political struggle known as the Wars of the Roses (1455-1487) which was about which royal house would rule England – York (the household symbolized by a white rose) or Lancaster (symbolized by a red rose). For the next quarter century, as the ruling families chased a crown that changed heads six times, England reverted to anarchy (See ”1455-1487” and “1485”)

• 1471: The Incas had the largest empire in the world by this date – 10 million people, ruled by 40,000 Incas. They built 25,000 miles of road. As they had not developed the wheel they used a system of runners to spread messages. They had no written language so the runner carried a quipui, an Andean textile, that used a system of knots to record data and information

• 1480: The Spanish Inquisition was created to investigate the orthodoxy of Jews (1492) and Muslims of Castile (1502) who had been forced to accept the Christian faith. Most of the Muslims had fled to Africa, so the Spanish Inquisition went after the Jews. They were ordered to wear special ribbons so that they could be readily identified. Then they pressured them to convert (conversos). Benchmarks were set designating what ratio of Jewish “Blood” made a person a Jew. Clergyman Tomas de Torquemada was named Inquisitor General and established courts across Spain. Torture became systemized and routinely used to elicit confessions. Sentencing of confessed heretics was done in a public event called the Auto-da-Fe. All heretics wore a sackcloth with a single eyehole over their heads. Heretics who refused to confess were burned at the stake. Sixteen permanent tribunals were eventually created in Spain between 1500-1640. In the first 10 years it burnt 2,000 people and punished 15,000 others. It played a major role in the extermination of Islam from Spain in the 15th to 17th centuries. The Inquisition was extended to Portugal, Goa, Brazil, Peru, and Mexico. It was finally abolished in Spain in 1834

• 1480: Moscow took the leading role in liberating Russia from Mongol domination. Ivan III (Ivan the Great 1440-1505) finally broke the Russians free from Tatar control and overthrew the Mongols. He had recaptured Ukranian territory from Poland and Lithuania. Moscow later became the capital of an empire that would eventually encompass all of Russia and Siberia, and parts of many other lands. By 1500 Moscow (Muscovy) had a population of 100,000 and was one of the largest cities in the world. It was, however, under Mongol rule, then, that Russia became Russian

• 1485: Richard III died in the Battle of Bosworth Field; he was the last English king to die in battle. The reign of the Plantagenets and the English Middle Ages both met their end with the death of King Richard III. Richard faced a revolt by the supporters of his brother King Edward IV, who died in 1483. It was widely thought that Richard had his brother’s sons murdered to secure his place on the throne. (Shakespeare portrayed the doomed king as a power-hungry despot in his play Richard III.) Then, members of the House of Tudor rose up against him. The Battle of Bosworth Field marked the defeat of Richard’s family, the House of York by Henry Tudor, who became Henry VII and founder of the house of Tudor. This was the final salvo of the Wars of the Roses, fought between the houses of Lancaster and York for the English throne. The Plantagenets had ruled England for over 300 years, ending with Richard III (See “1461, March”)

• 1486: “Birth of Venus” painted by Italian painter Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510). It is among the most famous paintings in the world, and an icon of Italian Renaissance painting. It was virtually unprecedented in Western art since classical antiquity, as was the size and prominence of a nude female figure

The 15th to 17th century period in European history was also denoted as The Age of Discovery (or the Age of Exploration). It was also known as the early modern period. This was a period largely overlapping with the Age of Sail, in which seafaring Europeans explored regions across the globe. The extensive overseas exploration, with the Portuguese and Spanish at the forefront, later joined by the Dutch, English, and French, emerged as a powerful factor in European culture, most notably the European encounter with and colonization of the America. It also marks an increased adoption of colonialism as a government policy in several European states. As such, it is sometimes synonymous with the first wave of European colonization.

The early “modern period” of history spans the period after the Late Middle Ages (lasting from 1300 to 1500) of the post-classical era (c. 1400–1500) through the beginning of the Age of Revolutions (c. 1800). Although the chronological limits of this period are open to debate, the timeframe is variously demarcated by historians as beginning with the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453, the Renaissance period in Europe and Timurid Central Asia, the Muslim conquests in the Indian subcontinent, the end of the Crusades, the Age of Discovery (especially the voyages of Christopher Columbus beginning in 1492 but also Vasco da Gama’s discovery of the sea route to India in 1498), and ending around the French Revolution in 1789, or Napoleon’s rise to power.

Historians in recent decades have argued that from a worldwide standpoint, the most important feature of the early modern period was its spreading globalizing character. New economies and institutions emerged, becoming more sophisticated and globally articulated over the course of the period. The early modern period also included the rise of the dominance of mercantilism as an economic theory. Other notable trends of the period include the development of experimental science, increasingly rapid technological progress, secularized civic politics, accelerated travel due to improvements in mapping and ship design, and the emergence of nation states (where the state and nation are congruent).

Europeans had always wanted land and gold; the greed was not new. They also had an abundance of religious zeal. What was new at this time was growing confidence derived from knowledge and success. In 1500 Europeans stood at the beginning of an age in which their energy and confidence would grow seemingly without limit. The world did not come to them; they went out and took it.

1500-1800s: The “Little Ice Age” descended upon the planet in conjunction with the above, spanning the late Middle Ages through the Renaissance era, ending around the dawn of the Industrial Revolution in the mid 1800s. Some areas cooled down more than others, including northern Europe and western North America – which experienced temperature fluctuations between 1.8 and 3.4 degrees Fahrenheit cooler than the thousand-year averages for those regions. Causes theorized to be one of (or a combo of all) the following: a decrease in sunspot activity (causing less solar radiation to reach Earth’s surface); big changes in atmospheric patterns cooling temperatures; increase in volcanic eruption; the depopulation of the Americas following the arrival of European colonists (mass warfare and disease caused the death of 56 million Indigenous people by 1600, with large areas of once-cultivated land turned into forests, absorbing massive amounts of CO2 and preventing it from reaching the atmosphere to warm the planet.)

The impacts of the Little Ice Age were global, causing food shortages in parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa. China’s long-standing Ming dynasty fell in 1644, partially due to agricultural woes. Widespread famine uprooted the regular order of society, and Europe’s medieval feudal system (which relied on peasants growing crops for their lords) collapsed (partly due to climate change, though many other factors contributed), giving way to markets and trade systems. This new way of life led into the 17th-century Age of Enlightenment, when exploration, religion, art, and philosophy transformed European society.

• 1488, March: The Cape of Good Hope was first reached by Bartolomeu Dias opening the important sea route to India and the Far East, but European exploration of Africa itself remained very limited during the 16th and 17th centuries. Exploration of the interior of Africa was thus mostly left to the Muslim slave traders, who in tandem with the Muslim conquest of Sudan established far-reaching networks. This “Heart of Africa” remained one of the last remaining “blank spots” on world maps of the later 19th century (alongside the Arctic, Antarctic and the interior of the Amazon basin). It was left for 19th-century European explorers, including those searching for the famed sources of the Nile, notably John Hanning Speke, Sir Richard Burton, David Livingstone and Henry Morgan Stanley, to complete the exploration of Africa by the 1870s

• 1492, from 711: The last remnant of Islamic rule on the Iberian peninsula – the end of the Reconquista period – the 781 year history between the Umayyad conquest of Hispania (or the Visigothic Kingdom who had ruled for 300 years) in 711 and the fall of the Nasrid kingdom of Granada in 1492, in which the Christian kingdoms expanded through war and conquered al-Andalus, the territories of Iberia ruled by Muslims

• 1492, Jan: The last Muslim sultan in Spain surrendered to the Christian kingdoms. Muhammad XII, surrendered the Emirate of Granada, the last European stronghold of the Muslim Moors, to Prince Ferdinand of Aragon (1452-1516) and Queen Isabella I of Castile (a royal couple by then). This completed the Christian Reconquista of the Iberian Peninsula. They now titled themselves the Catholic Monarchs. (The Reconquista is the historical term used to describe the military campaigns that Christian kingdoms waged from the 8th century until 1492, in order to retake the Iberian territories which were lost due to Muslim conquests.) 

• 1492, Oct: Christopher Columbus stumbled upon the Americas. His first landfall was the Bahamas which he claimed for Spain (he thought he was in India); later he reached Cuba (which he thought was Japan). He made four trips across the Atlantic Ocean from Spain: in 1492, 1493, 1498 and 1502. He was determined to find a direct water route west from Europe to Asia, but he never did. Instead, as said, he found America. Though he did not really “discover” the so-called New World (millions of people already lived there), his journeys marked the beginning of centuries of exploration and colonization of North and South America. More bluntly, a dog-eat-dog competition commenced for colonies in the New World. Portugal and Spain were the most aggressive sea powers. Spain captured the Americas; the Portuguese soon rounded the horn of Africa and gained access to the spices of India and points east. Then the pope stepped in…

• 1493, May: Pope Alexander VI issued a decree forcing Christianity upon any lands discovered.The papal bull (“Inter Caetera”) declared that the world was divided in two parts, one being given to the Spanish, the other to the Portuguese. The document supported Spain’s strategy to ensure its exclusive right to the lands discovered by Columbus the previous year. The bull established the Doctrine of Discovery, announcing that any lands discovered that were not held by a “Christian king or prince” should be claimed, the Indigenous owners overthrown and enslaved, and Christianity forced upon the population. (In 1455 Pope Nicholas V issued the bull, Romanus Pontifex, which relates to West Africa. It asserts that the Pope had a responsibility to Christianize the world and he authorized King Alphonso V of Portugal “to invade, search out, capture, vanquish and subdue all Saracens and pagans whatsoever, and other enemies of Christ wheresoever placed,” seize their property, and “reduce their persons to perpetual slavery.”) In March 2023, the Vatican announced (in a carefully worded fashion) that it was repudiating this         Doctrine of Discovery

• 1494: The original book on accounting is published by Luca Pacioli (1446-1517), a Franciscan monk. He is well known for his 615-page mathematical compendium, Summa de Arithmetica Geometria Proportioni et Proportionalità, as well as his acquaintance with Leonardo da Vinci. Today, double-entry bookkeeping is taught based on Pacioli’s concepts. All manual and electronic accounting systems owe a large portion of their processing logic to the principles and methods he detailed. He also wrote a book on mathematical problems, puzzles, and tricks. The book has been described as the “foundation of modern magic and numerical puzzles.”  

• 1497: John Cabot completed the first exploration of the New World under British colours (in the ship Matthew). He discovered Newfoundland and Cape Breton Island on the North American coast                                                                                                               

• 1498: Establishment of the sea route to India by Vasco da Gama, a Portuguese explorer. He traveled around the tip of Africa and returned with jewels and spices. This is considered a very remarkable voyage, as it initiated the Portuguese maritime and trade presence in Kerala in India and the Indian Ocean. Portugal establishes trading posts in the Spice Islands (Indonesia) and the country becomes a trading empire

• 1499: The founder of the Sikh religion, Guru Nanak, experienced God’s call. He was the first Sikh Guru(1469-1534). He became pre-occupied with a spiritual quest and in this year he experienced God’s call. He went on to teach that God is “One and eternal”. He taught the irrelevance of caste – inner purity was vital. The Sikh gurus are the spiritual masters of Sikhism, who established this religion over the course of about two and a half centuries, beginning in 1469 (the birth year of Nanak). He was succeeded by nine other human gurus until, in 1708, the Guruship was finally passed on by the tenth guru to the holy Sikh scripture, Guru Granth Sahib, which is now considered the living Guru by the followers of the Sikh faith

• 1501-02: Amerigo Vespucci first defined America. This Italian-born merchant and explorer, took part in early voyages to the New World on behalf of Spain around the late 15th century. He was a pioneer of Atlantic exploration. His voyage of 1501–02 is of fundamental importance in the history of geographic discovery in that Vespucci himself, and scholars as well, became convinced that the newly discovered lands were not part of Asia but a “New World.” A German cartographer created a new map, naming the territory now known as South America in Vespucci’s honour. For the first time, the word “America” was in print

• 1503-06: Painting of “The Mona Lisa” done by Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), an Italian painter, architect, inventor and “Renaissance man”. Considered an archetypal masterpiece of the Italian Renaissance, it has been described as “the best known, the most visited, the most written about, the most sung about, the most parodied work of art in the world”

• 1506: Rebuilding of the St. Peter’s Basilica initiated by Pope Julius II. The design and construction of the new church in Vatican City went through three major architects, and four popes, before it was finally finished and consecrated in 1626. Julius wanted a perfect dome similar to that of the Pantheon (which can’t be seen at street level) and bigger and better than any in Florence. It is the most renowned work of Renaissance architecture and the largest church in the world by interior measure. As a work of architecture, it is regarded as the greatest building of its age. One of the holiest sites of Christianity and Catholic Tradition, it is traditionally the burial site of its titular, St. Peter, who was the head of the twelve Apostles of Jesus and, according to tradition, the first Bishop of Antioch and later the first Bishop of Rome, rendering him the first Pope 

• 1508-12: The Sistine Chapel ceiling in Rome is painted by Michelangelo (1475-1564). The work of this Italian sculptor, painter and architect had a major influence on the development of Western art, particularly in relation to the Renaissance notions of humanism and naturalism. He is often considered a contender for the title of the archetypal Renaissance man, along with his rival and elder contemporary, Leonardo da Vinci

• 1510: Enslaved African people are brought to America as early as this period. King Ferdinand of Spain authorizes a shipment of 50 African slaves to be sent to Santo Domingo. This is the early days of the slave trade. Africans also played a role in England’s early colonization efforts. Enslaved Africans may have been on board Sir Francis Drake’s fleet when he arrived at Roanoke Island in 1586 and failed to establish the first permanent English settlement in America (See “1619, Aug”)

• 1513: “The Prince” released by Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527), an Italian diplomat and philosopher. The Prince was one of the first works of modern political philosophy in which the “effectual” truth is taken to be more important than any abstract ideal. It is also notable for being in direct conflict with the dominant Catholic and scholastic doctrines of the time, particularly those concerning politics and ethics 

• 1513: Raphael painted the “Sistine Madonna”. Raphael (1483-1520) was an Italian painter who learned from da Vinci and Michelangelo. Best known for his paintings of the Madonna and “The School of Athens.”

• 1513, April: Florida reached by Ponce de León (1460-1521). In pursuit of a rumoured fountain of youth located on an island known as Bimini, he led an expedition to the coast of what is now Florida. Thinking it was the island he sought, he sailed back to colonize the region in 1521, but was fatally wounded in a Native American attack soon after his arrival

• 1513, Sept: The Pacific Ocean was sighted by Vasco Núñez de Balboa (1475-1519). He helped establish the first stable settlement on the South American continent at Darién, on the coast of the Isthmus of Panama. While leading an expedition in search of gold, he sighted the Pacific Ocean. Balboa claimed the ocean and all of its shores for Spain, opening the way for later Spanish exploration and conquest along the western coast of South America

• 1517, Oct: Martin Luther sparked the Protestant Reformation and changed Christianity when he nailed his ’95 Theses’ to a church door in Wittenberg, Germany. In 1522 he organized a new church, Lutheranism. Luther called into question some of the basic tenets of Roman Catholicism, challenging the Catholic Church’s role as intermediary between people and God, specifically when it came to the indulgence system. Broadly speaking, most of the challenges to the Catholic Church revolved around the notion that individual believers should be less dependent on the Catholic Church, and its pope and priests, for spiritual guidance and salvation. Instead, Protestants believed people should be independent in their relationship with God, taking personal responsibility for their faith and referring directly to the Bible, the Christian holy book, for spiritual wisdom. Luther’s followers soon split from the Roman Catholic Church to begin the Protestant tradition. His actions set in motion tremendous reform within the church. It resulted in the creation of a branch of Christianity called Protestantism, a name used collectively to refer to the many religious groups that separated from the Roman Catholic Church due to differences in doctrine (See”1414-1418”) 

• 1519: Horses were introduced into the Americas by the Spanish when Hernán Cortés arrived on the continent in Mexico. Indigenous peoples then transported horses north along trade networks. (Horses evolved in the Americas around four million years ago, but by about 10,000 years ago, they had mostly disappeared from the fossil record.)

• 1519, Aug: Ferdinand Magellan proved that the globe could be circled by sea. This Portuguese explorer set out from Spain with a fleet of five ships to discover a western sea route to the Spice Islands. En route he discovered what is now known as the Strait of Magellan and became the first European to cross the Pacific Ocean. His expedition proved that the globe could be circled by sea and that the world was much larger than had previously been imagined (See “1522, Sept”)

• 1521: The fall of the Aztec civilization was executed by Hernán Cortés with the help of European diseases. The Aztec city of Tenochtitlan in the early 1500s was one of the largest cities in the world. It has an estimated population of 200-300,000. The empire was at the height of its power. Their monarch ruled over some 5 to 6 million people spread over 80,000 square miles and contained about 400 to 500 city-states. Then Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés arrived in 1519. With the superior iron weapons, arquebuses (matchlock rifles), cannons and cavalry of the Spanish, he succeeded in capturing the city two years later in 1421. Montezuma II had welcomed Cortés and his men into the palace in Tenochtitlán. However Cortés seized Montezuma and killed him. He was the last Aztec emperor of Mexico. European diseases, especially smallpox, played a decisive roles in Cortés’ victory (between one-quarter and one-half of the inhabitants of the Valley of Mexico, including the Aztecs and other Indigenous peoples, died of the disease.) 

• 1522, Sept: Juan Sebastian Elcano was the first person to sail around the world. Magellan started the voyage, but died half way through. Elcano was the navigator and stepped up to lead the crew (See “1519, Aug”) 

• 1524: The Florentine navigator Giovanni da Verrazzano was the first European to visit the site of present-day New York City (after convincing King Francis I to commission an expedition to find a western route to Cathay (China))

• 1524, Sept: The Dutch Christian humanist, Desiderius Erasmus, wrote his On Free Will. It was written expressly to refute a specific teaching of Martin Luther, on the question of free will. Luther had become increasingly aggressive in his attacks on the Roman Catholic Church to well beyond Erasmus’ reformist agenda (that of checking clerical abuses, honouring inner piety, considering reason as meaningful in theology as in other ways; he also promoted the notion that Christianity must remain under one church, both theologically and literally, under the body of the Catholic Church.) In 1500 Erasmus (1466-1536), wrote a collection of over 4600 proverbs containing essays on political-moral topics, which he kept adding to until his death. While a priest, he was one of the greatest humanists of all times

• 1526: The Mughal empire, the Timurid Empire, was founded by Babur, a warrior chieftain from what is today Uzbekistan, who employed aid from the neighbouring Savavid and Ottoman empires, to defeat the Sultan of Delhi in the First Battle of Panipat and to sweep down the plains of North India. (The Mughal imperial structure, however, is sometimes dated to 1600, to the rule of Babur’s grandson, Akbar.) This imperial structure lasted until 1720, shortly after the death of the last major emperor during whose reign the empire also achieved its maximum geographical extent. The relative peace maintained by the empire during much of the 17th century was a factor in India’s economic expansion. Reduced subsequently to the region in and around Old Delhi by 1760, the empire was formally dissolved by the British Raj after the Indian Rebellion of 1857 (See “1857”)

• 1527: Rome was sacked by the emperor Charles V. Many of the soldiers were following Martin Luther, leader of the Protestant Reformation. Pope Clement VII escaped out of the Vatican. This shocked all of Catholic Europe. How could anyone feel safe if Rome was attacked – and the rest of 1500s bore out such fears, as religious war and chaos raged through Europe

• 1528: The Queen of Spain, Isabella of Portugal, grants Francisco Pizarro the license to conquer Peru after he has made first contact with the Inca Empire at Tumbes, the northernmost Inca stronghold along the coast. He doesn’t know that his proposed enemy was being devastated by the diseases brought to the American continents during earlier Spanish contacts

• 1529, Sept: Suleiman the Magnificant lost a battle outside Vienna ending Turkish expansion into Europe.The Ottoman Empire made a determined effort to capture Vienna, the capital of the Hapsburg Austrian Empire. Ottoman losses were 16,000 of 100,000, with thousands more dead in the retreat. The failure to take Vienna marked the end of Turkish expansion into Europe and was followed by the diversion of the Ottoman effort toward Asia and the Mediterranean. The Ottoman siege of Vienna was a key battle in world history. The Ottoman Empire reached its peak with the Turks settled in Buda on the left bank of the Danube after failing in their siege of Vienna. Suleiman (1494-1566) was the longest-reigning sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1520 until his death in 1566. He personally led Ottoman armies in conquering the Christian strongholds of Belgrade and Rhodes as well as most of Hungary before his conquests were checked in 1529. Under his administration, the Ottoman Empire ruled over at least 25 million people

• 1531, Dec: The Virgin of Guadalupe near Mexico City appears to Juan Diego, an Aztec convert. It is now the most-visited Catholic shrine in the world, and the world’s third most-visited sacred site. It is a Catholic title of Mary, mother of Jesus, associated with a series of supernatural appearances by her, which are believed to have occurred four times to Diego. And apparently she looked like a Native American woman. Eventually a basilica was built on the site in the town of Guadalupe, a suburb of Mexico City. The Virgin gave natives of the Spanish-speaking Americas an image to embrace, a way to own the Christianity into which they’re converting. Today, about half the Catholics in the world are those who live in the Americas

• 1532, Nov: Francisco Pizarro captures the Inca king, Atahualpa in a battle in the Inca town of Cajamarca in the highlands of Peru. Firearms were mismatched against spears, arrows, slings, and clubs, and 7,000 Incas were killed against zero Spanish losses. Atahualpa was captured alive. His safe return was promised if a room were filled with all the treasures the Incas could provide. This was done, and the chamber was piled high with gold objects from jewellery to idols (the value today of the treasures would have been over $300 million). Pizarro tried and executed Atahualpa anyway in 1533. The Inca Empire was then the largest in the world – a mere 40,000 Incas governed a huge territory with some 10 million subjects speaking over 30 different languages but no writing system, but they were ripe for the taking. The arrival of the visitors to the New World and consequent collapse of the Inca Empire was the greatest humanitarian disaster to ever befall the Americas (See “1572” and “1911, July”)

• 1534: The colony of New France was claimed by France with permanent settlements beginning 1608. Canada became a British Colony in 1537 (and became an independent country in 1867). France ceded nearly all of its North American possessions to the UK in 1763 under the Treaty of Paris after the Seven Year War (See “1608” and “1763, Feb”) 

• 1534, April: Jacques Cartier is credited with naming Canada, though he used the name – derived from the Huron-Iroquois kanata, meaning a village or settlement – to refer only to the area around what is now Quebec City. He traveled along the west coast of Newfoundland, discovered Prince Edward Island, and explored the Gulf of St. Lawrence as far as Anticosti Island. His explorations of the Canadian coast and the St. Lawrence River (1534, 1535, 1541-42) laid the basis for later French claims to North America  

• 1534, Oct: Pope Paul III became pope. He was a reforming pope who encouraged artists and architects – including completion of the Sistine Chapel by Michelangelo. A report he commissioned formed the basis of the Council of Trent (1545). He recognized the Society of Jesus (1540) and in 1542 created the Holy Office of the Inquisition to combat heresy

• 1534: Protestant reform in England began with Henry VIII because the Pope would not grant him a marriage annulment to Catherine of Aragon (so Henry could marry Anne Boleyn, which he did in 1433). Subsequently, King Henry rejected the Pope’s authority, instead creating and assuming authority over the Church of England, a sort of hybrid church that combined some Catholic doctrine and some Protestant ideals. Henry proceeded to dissolve monasteries and confiscate their wealth. Over the next 20 years, there was religious turbulence in England as Queen Mary (1553–1558) reinstated Catholicism in England while persecuting and exiling Protestants, only to have Queen Elizabeth I and her Parliament attempt to lead the country back toward Protestantism during her reign (1558–1603)
  
• 1535: St. Thomas More was beheaded. He was Lord Chancellor to Henry VIII, but was unable to support Henry’s drive for a divorce and to recognize the king as head of the English Church. He was imprisoned in the Tower of London where he wrote Dialogue of Comfort against Tribulation. After he was beheaded his head was displayed on Tower Bridge. He was made a saint shortly after

• 1536: William Tyndale was burned at the stake for translating the Bible into English. His translation was the first English Bible to draw directly from Hebrew and Greek texts, the first English translation to take advantage of the printing press, the first of the new English Bibles of the Reformation, and the first English translation to use Jehovah (“Iehouah”) as God’s name as preferred by English Protestant Reformers. (One estimate suggests that the New Testament in the King James Version is 83% Tyndale’s words and the Old Testament 76%.) It was taken to be a direct challenge to the hegemony both of the Catholic Church and of those laws of England maintaining the church’s position. This English biblical translator, humanist and scholar (1494-1536) was convicted of heresy then burned

• 1536-1541: The dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII. He disbanded monasteries, priories, convents, and friaries in England, Wales, and Ireland, expropriated their income, disposed of their assets, and provided for their former personnel and functions. He was given the authority to do this in England and Wales by the Act of Supremacy, passed by Parliament in 1534, which made him Supreme Head of the Church in England, thus separating England from papal authority, and by the First Suppression Act (1535) and the Second Suppression Act (1539). The dissolution of the monasteries was one of the most revolutionary events in English history

• 1540: St. Ignatius Loyola founded the Jesuits (the Society of Jesus). He (1491-1556) took vows of poverty, chastity and obedience in 1534

• 1541: The first European to cross the Mississippi River was Hernando de Soto. Spanish explorer and conquistador de Soto (1496-1542) accompanied Pizarro in his conquest of Peru in 1532. (One revealing anecdote: before the battle of Cajamarca, Pizarro had sent de Soto to the Atahualpa’s camp. Soto rode to meet Atahualpa on his horse, an animal that Atahualpa had never seen before. With one of his young interpreters, Soto read a prepared speech to Atahualpa telling him that they had come as servants of God to teach them the truth about God’s word.) Seeking greater glory and riches, de Soto embarked on a major expedition in 1538 to conquer Florida for the Spanish crown. De Soto and his men traveled nearly 4,000 miles throughout the region that would become the southeastern United States in search of riches, fighting off Native American attacks along the way. In 1539, for example, when exploring Florida’s West Coast he fought two battles with Timucua groups. After defeating the resisting warriors, de Soto had 200 executed, in what was to be called the Napituca Massacre, the first large-scale massacre by Europeans on what later became US soil (Florida). In 1541, they became the first Europeans to encounter the Mississippi River and cross it 

• 1543: A model of the universe was formulated by Copernicus that placed the Sun rather than Earth at its centre. Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) was a mathematician and astronomer. His publication, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium began it all.This was a major event in the history of science and a bold new theory challenging Catholic dogma proclaiming that the Earth was at the centre of the solar system, triggering the Copernican Revolution and making a pioneering contribution to the Scientific Revolution. His pupil Kepler improved on the theory and showed that the Copernican model worked perfectly well if you added just one elegant assumption: that the paths of the planets around the sun were not necessarily circular but were always elliptical (See “~280 BC”, “1543”, “1609” and ”1687, July”) 

• 1543-1687: The Copernican Revolution from Copernicus to Newton.Beginning with Copernicus until finally ending with Isaac Newton’s work more than a century later. This was a paradigm shift from the Ptolemaic model of the heavens, which described the cosmos as having Earth stationary at the centre of the universe, to the heliocentric model, with the Sun at the centre of the Solar System. This revolution consisted of two phases; the first being extremely mathematical in nature and the second phase starting in 1609 with the publication of The Starry Messenger by Galileo (See “1609”)

• 1545: The Roman Inquisition was established by the Council of Trent, which made humanism and any views that challenged the Catholic church an act of heresy punishable by death 

• 1546: King Henry VIII shut down the public bathrooms in England, blaming them for sickness (See “2000 BC”, “1592” and “1775”)

• 1547: Nostradamus started his second career as foreteller of the future making cryptic predictions. He (1503-1566) was a French astrologer and reputed seer. He qualified initially as a physician in 1519 but then published two collections of cryptic pronouncements, The Prophecies, in 1555 and 1558. Their persistence in popular culture seems to be partly because their vagueness and lack of dating make it easy to quote them selectively after every major dramatic event and retrospectively claim them as “hits”

• 1547: Ivan IV (the Terrible) became the first Tsar of Russia. He was also Grand Duke of Moscow. In 1552 he crushed the Tatar stronghold of Kazan. The campaign began Russia’s expansion into Siberia, annexing a large Muslim population. He started his reign with reforms but degenerated into ruthless and suspicious despotism, thereby founding the tsarist style of autocratic rule (for example the sacking of Novgorod). He initiated a secret police force, which operated through summary arrest, torture and execution. In 1570 he killed his son in a fit of temper

• ~1550: The move, begun in the late 14th century, to Modern English was largely completed. It is the form of the English language, subsequent to Middle English, which has been spoken since the Great Vowel Shift (generally the perceived length of a vowel sound) in England. The works of Shakespeare and the King James Bible, are considered Modern English texts

• 1553: “Venus and Adonis” was painted by Titian (1488-1576) an Italian painter celebrated for his portraits of Pope Paul III and Charles I and his later religious and mythical paintings, like this one, and “Metamorphoses.”

• 1556, Jan: The 1556 Shaanxi earthquake in China was one of the deadliest natural disasters in the country’s history. Estimates put the direct deaths from the earthquake at over 100,000, while over 700,000 migrated away or died from famine and plagues, which summed up to a total loss of 830,000 people

• 1556-1605: The emperor, Akhbar the Great, reigned and expanded the Mughal Empire to include much of the Indian subcontinent. To preserve peace and order in a religiously and culturally diverse empire, he adopted policies that won him the support of his non-Muslim subjects. Akhbar’s reign significantly influenced the course of Indian history. During his rule, the Mughal Empire tripled in size and wealth. He started when he was 18 and at the end of 40 years he controlled all India. He tried to create a new religion combining the best of all faiths. He saw that Muslim-Hindu rivalry spelled disaster, so he married a Hindu princess

• 1558: Elizabeth I became Queen of England. She (1533-1603) was the daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. Highly intelligent and fluent in several languages, she established an archetype of Protestant monarchic power. Her accession was followed by the 1559 Religious Settlement enforcing Protestantism. Her cousin, Mary, Queen of Scotts plotted to kill her in 1587. Elizabeth had her executed. She died in 1603, one of the longest-serving and most effective rulers England has known

• 1563: Frederick II, King of Denmark and Norway started a war to conquer Sweden to unify all three counties. He failed and in 1570, peace secured Sweden’s independence

• 1568-1648: TheEighty Years’ War (or Dutch Revolt) was an armed conflict in the Habsburg Netherlands between disparate groups of rebels and the Spanish government. The causes of the war included the Reformation, centralization, taxation, and the rights and privileges of the nobility and cities. The aftermath of the war had far-reaching military, political, socio-economic, religious, and cultural effects on the Low Countries, the Spanish Empire, the Holy Roman Empire, England as well as other regions of Europe and European colonies overseas

• 1568-1637: The Spanish Road was created under Philip II of Spain as a vital artery for the Spanish war effort during the Eighty Years’ War against the Dutch Republic (as, for a staggering 80 years, Philip II and his successors sought to quell the Dutch Protestant Revolt). It was safer for Spain to transfer its armies across the relatively secure waters of the Mediterranean to Italy and then on this Spanish Road through to Luxembourg (through Spanish territory) vs the dangerous English Channel

• 1568: The Spanish Riding School of Vienna began operating and became world famous for their Lipizzaner white horses. A school of classical horsemanship, it was probably founded in the late 16th century. It is the only remaining institution where haute école (“high school”) riding and training methods are exclusively practiced, much as they were in the 18th century

• 1569: Gerardus Mercator created a world map based on a new projection which represented sailing courses of constant bearing (rhumb lines) as straight lines – an innovation that is still employed in nautical charts. It is unique in representing north as up and south as down everywhere while preserving local directions and shapes. (As a side effect, the Mercator projection inflates the size of objects away from the equator. This inflation is very small near the equator but accelerates with increasing latitude to become infinite at the poles. As a result, landmasses such as Greenland, Antarctica and Russia appear far larger than they actually are relative to landmasses near the equator.) The projection he invented is still today the most familiar – a map of the world devised as if it were in an enclosed cylinder (with Europe as its centre). This proved to be one of the most significant advances in the history of cartography. He was the first man to print on a map the word “America”; he also made his first globe in 1541

• 1569: The Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania joined forces to create the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Background: when the Mongol empire and its successors began to decline in the 14th century, rival polities rose to fill the vacuum. In the east of the region, power eventually accumulated in Moscow, leading to the creation of the Grand Principality of Muscovy. To the west, as noted, what had become the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania joined forces in 1569 to create the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (See “801-1200”, “980”, “1240” and “1648”)

• 1570: Abraham Ortelius, published the world’s first atlas. It was a collection of maps called the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (Epitome of the Theatre of the World). He was a Flemish book collector and engraver. With better projections, navigation was simpler

• 1571, Oct: The last major sea battle fought with galleys: the Battle of Lepanto, between the Holy League (a coalition of Christian maritime states) and the Ottoman Empire; the latter lost 117 ships and the battle

• 1572, Aug: The brutal massacre of thousands of Huguenots (French Protestants) by the Spanish-allied Catholic League during the reign of Charles IX (the St. Bartholomew Day’s Massacre). The massacre was welcomed by Philip II of Spain, and Pope Gregory XIII had a medal struck to celebrate the event. It was one event in the series of civil wars between Roman Catholics and Huguenots that beset France in the late 16th century

• 1572: The fall of the Inca empire – the last Inca stronghold was taken by the Spanish. A Spanish force led by Viceroy Toledo captured the Inca king Thupa Amaru, took him back to Cuzco, and executed him. The last Inca ruler was gone. The Incas were able to construct one of the greatest imperial states in human history without the use of the wheel although they had a vast road network, draft animals although they used llamas as pack animals, knowledge of iron or steel, or even a system of writing. It functioned largely without money and without markets. Instead, exchange of goods and services was based on reciprocity between individuals and among individuals, groups, and Inca rulers. The speed of disease brought by the Spanish helped the collapse (smallpox, typhus, influenza, diphtheria, measles) (See “1532, Nov” and “1911, July”)

• 1576, Nov: The Sack of Antwerp was the greatest massacre in the history of the Low Countries (what is now the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and most of the French departments of Nord). Mutinying Spanish tercios of the Army of Flanders led to three days of horror; deaths were assessed at 17,000. (It became known as the Spanish Fury. The savagery of the sack led the provinces of the Low Countries to unite against the Spanish crown

• 1577-1580: Francis Drake sails to the Pacific and around the world. He sets out from Plymouth, England, with five ships and 164 men on a mission to raid Spanish holdings on the Pacific coast of the New World and explore the Pacific Ocean. His return to Plymouth marked the first circumnavigation of the earth by a British explorer

• 1580: Michel de Montaigne publishes his Essays (Essais). Like Erasmus before him, he was non fanatical and respected the god of limits, looking for middle paths in everything. His dislike of violence made him abhor the prevailing tendency to burn heretics, witches, and anyone else thought to be in league with the Devil. One of the great humanists of history and one of the most significant philosophers of the French Renaissance, he (1533-1592) felt the most universal quality in mankind is diversity. It is said that he is creator of the essay style of writing

• 1582, Oct: The Gregorian calendar was introduced. It is also known as the Western or Christian calendar.It is the calendar used in most parts of the world. It was introduced by Pope Gregory XIII as a modification of, and replacement for, the Julian calendar

• 1585: Simon Stevin first advocated the use of decimal numbers for everyday purposes in his booklet De Thiende (Middle Dutch for ‘The Tenth’). He also declared that it would only be a matter of time before decimal numbers were used for currencies and measurements. His notation for decimal fractions was clumsy, but this was overcome with the introduction of the decimal point, generally attributed to Bartholomaeus Pitiscus who used this notation in his trigonometrical tables in 1595

• 1588-1672: The Dutch Golden Age was a period in the history of the Netherlands, roughly spanning the era from 1588 (the birth of the Dutch Republic) to 1672 (the Rampjaar, “Disaster Year”), in which Dutch trade, science, and art and the Dutch military were among the most acclaimed in Europe. The first section is characterized by the Eighty Years’ War, which ended in 1648. The Golden Age continued in peacetime during the Dutch Republic until the end of the century, when costly conflicts, including the Franco-Dutch War and War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1715) fuelled economic decline. The transition by the Netherlands to becoming the foremost maritime and economic power in the world has been called the “Dutch Miracle”. Outside of Europe, the Republic also prospered. The Dutch East India Company (VOC) and the Dutch West India Company (WIC) not only obtained a monopoly on the spice trade, their ships also controlled the world’s seas. This was very much against the wishes of England, who was envious of the economic success of the Republic. Although they had both fought the Spanish during the Eighty Years’ War, the two countries were diametrically opposed when the Republic captured a large colonial empire. This led to the Anglo-Dutch Wars

• 1588, Aug: The Spanish Armada was defeated (helped by the design of the English cannons). England, under Queen Elizabeth I, repels a Spanish invasion, which was a tactic started by Philip II of Spain (1527-1598). Its purpose was to reinstate Catholicism in England, end support for the Dutch Republic, and prevent attacks by English and Dutch privateers against Spanish interests in the Americas. The English ships had cannon they could fire at a safe distance and could be reloaded quickly. Sir John Hawkins’s drastic redesign of the galleons a decade earlier gave those vessels the necessary speed and firepower. Of the 150 ships that set out, only 65 returned to Lisbon. The design of the Spanish cannon meant that they could only fire over short distances and were slow to re-load. Spain’s so-called “Invincible Armada” was defeated by an English naval force under the command of Lord Charles Howard and Sir Francis Drake.  It was not until the reign of James I (ruler of Scotland and England 1603–1625) that peace was finally made between the two countries

• 1591: “Romeo and Juliet” was written by William Shakespeare (1564-1616). It is among his most popular plays and, along with Hamlet 1599), is one of his most frequently performed plays. Shakespeare was England’s “national poet” and the most famous playwright of all time, celebrated for his sonnets and plays

• 1592: The flush toilet was invented by Sir John Harrington, godson of Elizabeth I, who invented a water closet with a raised cistern and a small down pipe through which water ran to flush the waste. He built one for himself and one for his godmother; his invention was ignored for almost 200 years. It was was not until 1775 that Alexander Cummings, a watchmaker, developed the S-shaped pipe under the toilet basin to keep out the foul odours. (Joseph Bramah,an English inventor and locksmith also is similarly credited.) Thomas Crapper patented a number of toilet-related inventions but did not actually invent the modern toilet, although he was the first to display his wares in a showroom (See “2000 BC”, “1546” and “1775”)

• 1600, Oct: The Battle of Sekigahara brought the Japanese Warring States period to a definitive end when Tokugawa Ieyasu’s forces secured victory. Over the next three years, Tokugawa consolidated his power, finally establishing himself as shogun in 1603, the first in a dynasty that would govern the destiny of Japan until 1868. One of his first policies addressed firearms. Europeans had introduced them to Japan in the mid-16th century. However skillfully a samurai wielded his traditional weapon, the long matchlock guns were much more effective. The new shogun requisitioned a large proportion of the arquebuses in use across Japan. In the Siege of Osaka in 1614-15 the Tokugawa troops massacred the followers of Hideyori, Tokugawa’syoung regent. The bloodbath consolidated the Tokugawa dynasty’s grip on Japan, and it would not let go for centuries; it held onto power until the Meiji Restoration in 1868. Tokugawa Ieyasu died in 1616, and his heirs maintained absolute authority over Japan, imposing a strict class system on its people while keeping the nation isolated from foreign powers (See “1868”)

• 1600, Dec: British East India Company established in India. Queen Elizabeth gave this small, private consortium of men a guaranteed monopoly on all English trade with India and points east. She also authorized them to raise and field their own private armies, build forts, and negotiate treaties with foreign governments. She declared it a limited liability corporation, which meant that no individual associated with the company was liable for its debts or misdeeds. Shortly after the original partnership of some 200 merchants decided to issue an expanded number of shares, whose value was determined on the open market. At its peak, the company was the largest corporation in the world. The EIC had its own armed forces (twice the size of the British army at the time). The company eventually came to rule large areas of India, exercising military power and assuming administrative functions. It was dissolved in 1874 

• 1600s: Portuguese and French missionaries begin converting the Vietnamese people. The country has had a complicated relationship with Christianity ever since

• 1603-1868: This was the so-called samurai era when the House of Tokugawa ruled over Japan. “Edo” is the old word for Tokyo, and the “Edo period” is the name of this time period that lasted around 260 years. During this period, the current Imperial Palace was called Edo Castle and the area that could be seen from the top floor was called Edomae. Also, dishes using seafood caught from Edo Bay (Tokyo Bay) or the river, which could be seen from Edo Castle, came to be called Edomae cuisine

• 1605: The world’s first newspaper was a German language paper called Relation was published in Strasbourg. By another definition, the world’s first newspaper would be the 1618 publication of Dutch Courant uyt Italien, Duytslandt. (See 1833 for the US). Newspapers then appeared all across Europe, formalizing the printing press’ contribution to the growth of literacy, education and the far-reaching availability of uniform information for ordinary people. The emergence of the new media branch was based on the spread of the printing press from which the publishing press derives its name. Historian Johannes Weber says, “At the same time, then, as the printing press in the physical, technological sense was invented, ‘the press’ in the extended sense of the word also entered the historical stage.” 

• 1606, Feb: The first recorded European landfall on the Australian continent by Dutch explorer Willem Janszoon. He was an employee of the Dutch East India Company and had been instructed to explore the coast of New Guinea in search of economic opportunities. Note: the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people had been inhabiting the continent for the past 50,000 years. The Aboriginals are the world’s oldest civilization

• 1607, May: Jamestown, Virginia became the first permanent English settlement started in North America. By 1619 it had a legislative assembly – the start of legislative government in the US 

• 1608: France established a firm colonial base at Quebec City, after a century of preliminary exploration of the St. Lawrence regions and the Atlantic seaboard

• 1608: The first telescope. The first person to apply for a patent for a telescope was Dutch eyeglass maker Hans Lippershey. He laid claim to a device that could magnify objects three times. His telescope had a concave eyepiece aligned with a convex objective lens. Galileo improved on this design the following year and applied it to astronomy

• 1609: Astronomer Johannes Kepler publishes one of the most significant books in the history of astronomy, Astronomia nova. It was a ten-year-long investigation of the motion of Mars and provided strong arguments for heliocentrism (the astronomical model in which the Earth and planets revolve around the Sun at the centre of the universe ). It contributed valuable insight into the movement of the planets. This included the first mention of the planets’ elliptical paths and the change of their movement to the movement of free floating bodies as opposed to objects on rotating spheres. It is recognized as one of the most important works of the Scientific Revolution. This mathematician and astronomer (1571-1630) was the Imperial Court Mathematician of the Habsburgs and taught at the provincial academy of Linz, Austria. He goes on in 1615 to publish his work Harmonices Mundi

• 1609: Galileo publishes The Starry Messenger, which announces a series of astronomical discoveries using a home-made telescope. Galileo (1564-1642) was an Italian astronomer, physicist and engineer whose pioneering work with telescopes enabled him to describes the moons of Jupiter and rings of Saturn. He pioneered the modern method of scientific investigation by experimentation. He is thought to be the first person to notice that a pendulum swings at a constant frequency even though its arc decreases with gradual loss of momentum, and therefore noted its value for timekeeping (in 1582). By way of his simple observation, length and time were seen to be linked. He showed Aristotle was wrong by demonstrating that objects of different weight but the same density will fall at equal rates by dropping objects from the tower at Pisa (See “1543-1687”, “1632” and “1668”)

• 1609: The world’s first central bank commenced. The Dutch in Amsterdam chartered a group of private bankers to form a single central bank. Anyone wishing to do business in Amsterdam had to take their money to this bank and open an account. The bank decided how much the various coins and whatnot were worth and issued banknotes clearly marked to the amount of value deposited. The idea spread and they were associated with tightly organized social wholes of a novel type – nation states

• 1613: The nobles chose Mikhail Romanov as Tsar of Russia. He was one of the closest surviving relatives of the royal family. The Romanov dynasty ruled Russia until the 1917 Revolution brought an end to the Tsarist state

• 1614: The method of logarithms was publicly propounded by John Napier in a book called Description of the Wonderful Canon of Logarithms. Prior to Napier’s invention, there had been other techniques of similar scopes, such as the prosthaphaeresis or the use of tables of progressions, extensively developed by Jost Bürgi around 1600. Logarithms were introduced by Napier as a means of simplifying calculations. They were rapidly adopted by navigators, scientists, engineers, surveyors and others to perform high-accuracy computations more easily. Using logarithm tables, tedious multi-digit multiplication steps can be replaced by table look-ups and simpler addition. The slide rule (which this discovery triggered), also based on logarithms, allows quick calculations without tables, but at lower precision (See “1622”)

• 1614: The first official rite of exorcism was sanctioned by the Catholic Church. The basic steps to an exorcism are described in Rituale Romanum and remained largely unchanged through the first half of the 20th century. It included Of Exorcisms and Certain Supplications and, after reforms undertaken by the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), was the last part of the Rituale Romanum to be revised. An updated version was published in 1999

• 1618, May: Defenestration of Prague: three Catholic officials were thrown from a top-floor window of Prague Castle by an angry mob of Bohemian Protestant activists. The events proved to be the catalyst for the bloodiest war in European history, the Thirty Years’ War

• 1618-1648: The Thirty Years’ War was one of the longest and most destructive conflicts in European history. Fought primarily in Central Europe, an estimated 4.5 to 8 million soldiers and civilians died as a result of battle, famine, and disease. Differences over religion and Imperial authority were important factors in causing the war. Also its scope and extent were driven by the contest for European dominance between Habsburg-ruled Spain and Austria, and the French House of Bourbon. This concluded with the Peace of Westphalia (see “1648”), By weakening the Habsburgs relative to France, the conflict altered the European balance of power and set the stage for the wars of Louis XIV 

• 1619, Aug: The “first” enslaved Africans landed in the British colony of Virginia and were sold to colonists (but there were likely earlier dates). The White Lion, an English privateer commanded by John Jope,dropped anchor in the James River. Virginia colonist John Rolfe documented the arrival of the ship and “20 and odd” Africans on board. His journal entry is immortalized in textbooks, thus this date isoften used as a reference point for teaching the origins of slavery in America. But the history is far more complicated than a single date. It is generally agreed that people of African descent have been in America longer than the English colonies. Christopher Columbus likely transported the first Africans to the Americas in the late 1490s on his expeditions to the island of Hispaniola, now Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Enslaved Africans may have been on board Sir Francis Drake’s fleet in 1586 when he arrived at Roanoke Island off the coast of what is now North Carolina (See “1510”)

• 1620: Members of the English Separatist Church (also called Puritans) set sail aboard the Mayflower for New England and eventually landed near Plymouth, Massachusetts. They were ready for a try at establishing a new life and church. Those who did, would, in time, become known as the Pilgrims. In 1630, a decade after the Pilgrims embarked on a similar journey for similar reasons, the first Puritans traveled to the New World and established the Massachusetts Bay Colony in Boston, Massachusetts. Both groups of early North American colonists shared a dissatisfaction with the church and a mindset that they were free to establish a church more in alignment with their spiritual views 

• 1620: Coal as a heat source surpasses the use of biomass fuels (in England). By 1650, the burning of fossil carbon supplies two-thirds of all heat; and the share reaches 75% by 1700

• ~1622: William Oughtred of Cambridge, make a device that is recognizably the modern slide rule by combining two handheld Gunter rules. Two years before that Edmund Gunter of Oxford developed a calculating device with a single logarithmic scale; with additional measuring tools it could be used to multiply and divide. Just before that John Napier, the discoverer of logarithms, had published his findings on logarithms. The slide rule is a hand-operated mechanical calculator consisting of slidable rulers for evaluating mathematical operations such as multiplication, division, exponents, roots, logarithms, and trigonometry. It is one of the simplest analog computers. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, the slide rule was the symbol of the engineer’s profession in the same way the stethoscope is that of the medical profession. Cheap hand-held scientific electronic calculators became available in the mid-1970s made the slide rule obsolete (See “1614” and  “1971, Jan”)

• 1628-1631: The War of the Mantuan Succession was a related conflict of the Thirty Years’ War, caused by the death in 1627 of Vincenzo II, last male heir in the direct line of the House of Gonzaga, an Italian princely family that ruled the city of Mantua in northern Italy from 1328 to 1708. These territories were key to control of the Spanish Road, an overland route that allowed Hapsburg Spain to move recruits and supplies from Italy to their army in Flanders. The result was a proxy war between France, who supported the French-born Duke of Nevers, and Spain, who backed his distant cousin the Duke of Guastalia

• 1632: Galileo was forced to recant his views of a heliocentric universe. They appeared to attack Pope Urban VII and thus alienated both the Pope and the Jesuits. He was tried by the Inquisition, found “vehemently suspect of heresy”, and forced to recant. He spent the rest of his life under house arrest (See “1609”)

• 1633-1644: The Great Plague in the late Ming dynasty. The epidemic started in Shanxi Province in 1633, and reached Beijing in 1641, where the plague caused the deaths of more than 200,000 people in 1643, directly contributing to the collapse of the Ming dynasty in 1644  (See “1636-1910” and “1644”)

• 1635-1659: The Franco-Spanish War was fought between France and Spain. Both sides became financially exhausted and agreed to peace terms in the Treaty of the Pyrenees. Although Spain retained a vast global empire until the early 19th century, the Treaty of the Pyrenees has traditionally been seen as marking the end of its status as the dominant European state and the beginning of the rise of France during the 17th century

• 1636-1912: Qing dynasty in China was a Manchu-led imperial dynasty of China and the last orthodox dynasty in Chinese history. It emerged from the Later Jin dynasty founded by the Jianzhou Jurchens. The dynasty was officially proclaimed in 1636 in Manchuria (modern-day Northeast China and Outer Mongolia). It seized control of Beijing in 1644, then later expanded its rule over the whole of China proper and Taiwan. The height of Qing power was reached in the reign of the Qianiong Emperor (1735-1796). He led Ten Great Campaigns that extended Qing control into Inner Asia and personally supervised Confucian cultural projects. After 1707 Christianity was outlawed in the Qing empire. The dynasty lasted until 1911 when it was overthrown in the Xinhai Revolution (or the 1911 Revolution) (See “1644”)

• 1637, Feb: Collapse of the first recorded asset bubble in history (“tulip mania”) when contract prices for some bulbs of the recently introduced and fashionable tulip reached extraordinarily high levels. The term “tulip mania” is now often used metaphorically to refer to any large economic bubble when asset prices deviate from intrinsic values 

• 1637: “I think; therefore I am” was stated by Rene Descartes (1596-1650) in his Discourse on the Method and summarized in his Principles of Philosophy of 1644. He wasa French philosopher and mathematician and regarded as the father of modern philosophy. The statement (phrased also “I am thinking, therefore I exist”) became a fundamental element of Western philosophy, as it purported to provide a certain foundation for knowledge in the face of radical doubt. While other knowledge could be a figment of imagination, deception, or mistake, Descartes asserted that the very act of doubting one’s own existence served, at minimum, as proof of the reality of one’s own mind; there must be a thinking entity – in this case the self – for there to be a thought (See “1671” and “1950, Nov”)

• 1640: The use of rudimentary condoms emerges in the form of sheaths made of fish and animal intestine. During the English Civil War, the forces of King Charles I contracted syphilis from the periodic use of prostitutes. Condoms of fish, cattle, and sheep intestine were deployed to the army to reduce transmission of syphilis

• 1640-1668: The Portuguese Restoration War: wasa war between Portugal and Spain. It was marked by periodic skirmishes, as well as short episodes of more serious warfare, much of it occasioned by Spanish and Portuguese entanglements with non-Iberian powers. It ended with the Treaty of Lisbon in 1668, bringing a formal end to the Iberian Union (the dynastic union of the Crowns of Castile and Aragon and the Kingdom of Portugal)

• 1642: The first calculating machine was invented by Blaise Pascal (known as the arithmetic machine or Pascaline). Pascal was led to develop a calculator by the laborious arithmetical calculations required by his father’s work as the supervisor of taxes in Rouen, France. He designed the machine to add and subtract two numbers directly and to perform multiplication and division through repeated addition or subtraction (See “1971”)

• 1642: The Puritan-led English Parliament issued an order for stage plays to cease. The official reason was that “Spectacles of Pleasure, too commonly expressing lascivious Mirth and Levity” were not in tune with “Times of Humiliation”. It took the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 for London’s stage houses to open – whereupon women were permitted to perform on professional stage for the first time

• 1642: The first year of the series of conflicts known as the English Civil War (1642-60). After years of conflict, relations between King Charles I and parliament break down. The Parliamentary army wins a decisive victory over Charles at the battle of Naseby in 1645 (See “1649, Jan”)

• 1642, Dec: The Dutch navigator Abel Tasman was the first European explorer to visit New Zealand plus Tasmania, Tonga, and the Fiji Islands

• 1643: The Taj Mahal mausoleum complex in India was essentially completed at a cost estimated to be around US 1 billion in 2020 dollars. The construction project employed some 20,000 artisans. The most spectacular feature is the 35 metre high marble dome that surmounts the tomb. It was commissioned in 1631 by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan (r. 1628–1658) to be built in the memory of his wife, who died that year, while giving birth to their 14th child. (The Mughal Empire controlled much of South Asia between the 16th and 19th centuries.) It is an Islamic ivory-white marble mausoleum in the Indian city of Agra. It also houses the tomb of Shah Jahan himself. It was designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Scute in 1983 for being “the jewel of Muslim art in India and one of the universally admired masterpieces of the world’s heritage”. Due to the global attention that it has received and the millions of visitors it attracts, the Taj Mahal has become a prominent image that is associated with India, and in this way has become a symbol of India itself

• 1644: Collapse of the Ming dynasty. Combined with crop failure, floods, and an epidemic, the dynasty (officially the Great Ming)collapsed as Li Zicheng’s rebel forces entered Beijing. Li then established the Shun dynasty, but it was defeated shortly afterwards by the Manchu-led Eight Banner armies of the Qing dynasty, with the help of the defecting Ming general Wu Sangui (See “1368-1644”)

• 1648: The Cossacks led an uprising against the Polish-Lithuania commonwealth. The Cossacks were settlers on the steppe who amalgamated into disciplined military units. This led to the formation of their own state, the Hetmanate. Many Ukrainians look back to the Hetmanate as the origin of their identity as an independent state. Indeed, the original Cossack lands were often called “Ukraine”, a Slavic word meaning “borderland”. Early Cossack warriors practised a limited form of democracy, a contrast to Muscovy’s autocratic regime (see “1569”). That the Hetmanate came about as an act of resistance to larger neighbouring powers is a history that resonates with Ukrainians today. In the 19th century, the folk memory of the Cossacks’ state helped inspire the birth of a recognizable form of Ukraine’s cultural nationalism (See “980”, 1240”, “1569”, “1708” and “1721”)

• 1648, Oct: The Peace of Westphalia is the collective name for two peace treaties that ended the Thirty Years’ War and brought peace to the Holy Roman Empire. They were signed in the Westphalian cities of Osnabrück and Münster. They closed a calamitous period of European history that killed approximately eight million people. The religious civil wars had gone on for nearly two centuries. Treaty provisions included greater autonomy within the Holy Roman Empire for states like Bavaria and Saxony, as well as acceptance of Dutch independence by Spain. The treaties established the interesting principle that secular rulers would henceforth decide which version of Christianity would be practiced in their secular realm. Nation states would begin to mature over the next few centuries

• 1649, Jan: Execution of Charles I after he was convicted of treason. The execution was the culmination of political and military conflicts between the royalists and the parliamentarians in England during the English Civil War. One of the most important statesmen in English history, Oliver Cromwell, was a leading advocate for his execution. The execution has been described as one of the most significant and controversial events in English history. Some view it as the martyrdom of an innocent man; others view it as a vital step towards democracy in Britain, as with Charles’ death the main obstacle to the establishment of a constitutional system had been removed (See “1642”)

• 1652: “The Religious Society of Friends” (the Quakers) began by George Fox. He taught that the Holy Spirit could come directly to people without the mediation of Church or scripture

• 1652-1784: The Anglo-Dutch Wars were a series of conflicts over trade and overseas colonies. Almost all the battles were naval engagements. The First Anglo-Dutch War (1652-54) began during a tense period following England’s institution of the 1651 Navigation Act. It was aimed at barring the Dutch from involvement in English sea trade. The commercial rivalry of the two nations again led to war in 1665 (the Second Anglo-Dutch War of 1665–67). The Third Anglo-Dutch War (1672–74) formed a part of the general European war of 1672–78. England and the Dutch Republic had been allied for a century when they again went to war (the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War of 1780–84) over secret Dutch trade and negotiations with the American colonies, then in revolt against England. When the war ended in 1784, the Dutch were at the nadir of their power and prestige (See “1666, July”)

• 1654: Cossack leaders pledged allegiance to the tsar of Muscovy. (The Cossack state had a hard time; they were threatened by the Poles as well as the Ottomans to the south). A few decades later intellectuals in Kyiv wrote what is believed to be one of the oldest texts outlining the basis of a “Slavo-Rossian” nation. They hoped to convince the tsar to defend them, not only because of their shared history and Orthodox religion, but also in the name of ethno-national unity. By the end of the 17th century the Hetmanate’s territory had split into two: Muscovy took control of the east bank of the Dnieper river, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth seized the west. In 1708 Ivan Mazepa, a Cossack leader, led a failed uprising against Tsar Peter the Great. (Russia regards Mazepa as a traitor; in Ukraine he is a hero.) Peter went on to become Russia’s first emperor in 1721 (See “980”, “1240”, “1569”, “1648” and “1721”)

• 1656: Christiaan Huygens invents the first pendulum clock. It was the next development in accuracy. Gallileo had the idea to use a swinging bob to regulate the motion of a time-telling device earlier in the 17th century.Huygens, however, is usually credited as the inventor. He determined the mathematical formula that related pendulum length to time (about 39.1 inches for the one second movement) and had the first pendulum-driven clock made. In 1670 a clock with a second pendulum for tracking minutes is created. In 1680, Daniel Quare, a British maker of pendulum clocks, creates a pendulum clock that has a minute hand. As late as the 1800s, the three main sources of determining the time were the clock at the centre of your town, the railroads, and the sun, but it would not be uncommon for all three to tell you different times (See “1386”)

• 1660: Monarchy restored in England (and Scotland and Ireland) when King Charles II (son of Charles I) returned from exile in continental Europe (thus theRestoration of the Stuart monarchy). Charles (1630-1685) spent much off his reign secretly planning to establish himself as a Catholic absolute monarch 

• 1662: John Boyle published Boyle’s Law, which describes the inversely proportional relationship between the absolute pressure and volume of a gas (i.e. when the volume is halved, the pressure is doubled; and if the volume is doubled, the pressure is halved), if the temperature is kept constant within a closed system. This law was the first physical law to be expressed in the form of an equation describing the dependence of two variable quantities. Boyle (1627-1691) is largely regarded today as one of the founders of modern chemistry, and one of the pioneers of modern experimental scientific method 

• 1665: The Hudson’s Bay Company’s roots can be traced back to when Pierre-Esprit Radisson and Médard Chouart Des Groseilliers, journeyed to London, UK, seeking royal backing for their fur-trading enterprise in North America. This was the year of the bubonic plague in London and King Charles had moved his court to Oxford. The two got an audience and the king granted the charter; but the ownership of the land was largely an abstraction. He had no idea of its size and viewed it as a commodity (See “1670”)

• 1665-66: The Great Plague in England. The actual number of deaths in London alone, which was severely hit, is suspected to have exceeded 100,000 out of a total population estimated at 460,000. It was the last major epidemic of the bubonic plague to occur in England

• 1666, July: St James’ Day Battle was won by England during the Second Anglo-Dutch War. It was fought between an English fleet and a Dutch force (See “1652-1784”)

• 1666, Sept: The Great Fire of London was a major conflagration that swept through central London for five days gutting the medieval city inside the old Roman city wall. The city was a disaster waiting to happen: most of the houses were built of oak timber, walls were covered in tar to keep out the rain but vulnerable. As a result of these events, London was largely rebuilt. Not only was the capital rejuvenated, but it became a healthier and safer environment in which to live (brick or stone houses, wider streets, etc.). The miracle of the fire was that London was saved, that the fire was stopped, and that the great king (Charles II) would rebuild it. Londoners had a greater sense of community after they had overcome the great adversities of 1665 and 1666 

• 1666: Legend has it that Isaac Newton formulated gravitational theory after watching an apple fall and asking why the apple fell straight down, rather than sideways or even upward. He showed that the force that makes the apple fall and that holds us on the ground is the same as the force that keeps the moon and planets in their orbits (See “1687, July”)

• 1667: The poet, John Dryden, wrote Annus Mirabilis. It commemorated 1665-1666, the “year of miracles” of London and England. Despite the poem’s name, the year had been one of great tragedy, including the Great Plague and Great Fire of London. The title was perhaps meant to suggest that the events of the year could have been worse.

• 1667: The epic poem, “Paradise Lost”, was written by John Milton (1608-1674), an English poet and historian. It is considered to be Milton’s masterpiece, and it helped solidify his reputation as one of the greatest English poets of all time

• 1668: Englishman John Wilkins, at least nominally, was the inventor of the idea of a metric system, but Gabriel Mouton gets the historical credit. Wilkins proposed new units of length, volume, and mass that could be divided or multiplied by ten. He used Galileo’s 1582 discovery by proposing to simply make a pendulum that had a beat of exactly one second – and then, whatever the length of the pendulum arm that resulted would be the new unit; ironically, his system faded into oblivion (See “1609”, “1670” and “1799, April”)

• 1669, March: Eruption of Mount Etna on the east coast on Sicily, Italy. It was the worst eruption in modern times. The lava flow covered nearly 40 square kilometres

• 1670: Gabriel Mouton is considered by many to be the founding father of the metric system (now known as the SI, or International System of Units). He proposed a decimal system of measurement that French scientists would spend years further refining. In 1790, the national assembly of France called for an invariable standard of weights and measurements having as its basis a unit of length based on the Earth’s circumference. As a convenience, the system would be decimal-based, with larger and smaller multiples of each unit arrived at by dividing and multiplying by 10 and its powers. The French government officially adopted the system in 1795. Great Britain began adopting the metric system in 1965; Canada formally switched from imperial to metric April 1975. The US continues to use a dual system of measurement even though the system is now employed widely throughout the world. In 1957 the US Army and Marine Corps adopted the metric system; it is used as the basis for their weapons and equipment (See “1668” and “1975, April”)

• 1670: Canada’s claims to Arctic sovereignty: the Hudson’s Bay Company assumed a trade monopoly in Rupert’s Land when King Charles II granted it a charter when it ceded an area of nearly four million square kilometres (Rupert’s Land is now Canada’s Northwest Territories). Canada’s claim to its North rests first on this charter.This gave the company legal title to Rupert’s Land (the watershed of Hudson Bay, or about half of present-day Canada). In 1821, the rest of the present-day Northwest Territories and Nunavut south of the Arctic Coast were added to the HBC charter. The company transferred title to its lands to Canada in July 1870; the new Dominion thus acquired sovereignty over all of the present-day Northwest Territories and Nunavut except for the Arctic islands. This sovereignty has never been questioned. (Where doubt has risen over Canada’s claims to Arctic sovereignty is in the islands north of the Canadian mainland. Some of the early explorers here were British but many of these islands were reached and explored by Scandinavians or Americans.) (See “1665” and “1870, July”)

• 1675, June-1778, April: Start of King Philip’s War (sometimes called the First Indian War or Metacom’s Rebellion) was an armed conflict between a group of indigenous peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands and the English New England Colonies and their indigenous allies. (Metacomet was the Pokanoket chief who adopted the English name Philip because of the friendly relations between his father and Plymouth Colony, the first permanent English colony in New England. Plymouth holds a special role in American history. Most of the citizens of Plymouth were fleeing religious persecution and searching for a place to worship as they saw fit.) The war was the greatest calamity in 17-century New England and is considered by many to be the deadliest war in Colonial American history. King Philip’s War began the development of an independent American identity. The New England colonists faced their enemies without support from any European government or military, and this began to give them a group identity separate and distinct from Britain (See “1688, Nov”)

• 1677: The Portuguese philosopher Spinoza’s major work, the treatise Ethics, was published just after his death. The work opposed Descartes’s philosophy of mind-body dualism and earned him (1632-1677) recognition as one of Western philosophy’s most important thinkers. His writing was banned shortly after his early death (and his books were placed on the Catholic Church’s Index of Forbidden Books. (His philosophical system was completely severed from any specific religious or historical perspective, and he was strongly opposed to any form of supernaturalism.) It was said that Spinoza was the first philosopher to make atheism into a philosophical system 

• 1683, Sept: Battle of Vienna resulted in the relinquishment of Ottoman power to the Christian world. The battle was fought by the Holy Roman Empire against the Ottomans and their vassal and tributary states. The battle marked the first time the Commonwealth and the Holy Roman Empire had cooperated militarily against the Ottomans, and it is often seen as a turning point in history, after which the Ottoman Turks ceased to be a menace to the Christian world. In the ensuing war that lasted until 1699, the Ottomans lost almost all of Hungary to the Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I. The battle is noted for including the largest known cavalry charge in history

• 1684: German mathematician Gottfried Leibniz formulated and published his mathematical theories. As a philosopher, he (1646-1716) was one of the greatest representatives of 17th-century rationalism and idealism. As a mathematician, his greatest achievement was the development of the main ideas of differential and integral calculus. He also invented one of the earliest mechanical calculators

• 1685-1815: Age of Reason, or simply the Enlightenment. Enlightenment thinkers in Britain, in France and throughout Europe questioned traditional authority and embraced the notion that humanity could be improved through rational change. Common Enlightenment themes were that of rational questioning and belief in progress through dialogue. The American and French Revolutions were directly inspired by Enlightenment ideals and respectively marked the peak of its influence and the beginning of its decline. The Enlightenment ultimately gave way to 19th-century Romanticism

• 1685-1730: The Early Enlightenment: The Enlightenment’s important 17th-century precursors included the Englishmen Francis Bacon and Thomas Hobbes, the Frenchman René Descartes and the key natural philosophers of the Scientific Revolution, including Galileo Galilei, Johannes Kepler and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Its roots are usually traced to 1680s England, where in the span of three years Isaac Newton published his “Principia Mathematica” (1687) and John Locke his “Essay Concerning Human Understanding” (1689) – two works that provided the scientific, mathematical and philosophical toolkit for the Enlightenment’s major advances. 

• 1686, May: Treaty of Perpetual Peace between the Czardom of Russia and the Polish-Lithuania Commonwealth, in which the Polish-Lithuania Commonwealth agreed that Kyiv, among other territories, belonged to the Czardom of Russia. These parties were incited to cooperate after a major geopolitical intervention in Ukraine on the part of the Ottoman Empire. The treaty secured Russia’s possession of Left-bank Ukraine (the part of Ukraine on the left (east) bank of the Dnieper) plus the right-bank city of Kiev. By signing this treaty, Russia became a member of the anti-Turk coalition, which comprised Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Holy Roman Empire and Venice

• 1687, July: The scientific method essentially established by Isaac Newton when he published his “Principia Mathematica” which established three breathtakingly simple laws of motion and the law of universal gravity. Newton’s (1643-1727) work (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy) was a foundational part of the European Enlightenment. His precise methodology gave birth to what is known as the scientific method. The publication of Newton’s law of universal gravitation has become known as the “first great unification”, as it marked the unification of the previously described phenomena of gravity on Earth with known astronomical behaviours. His work became the foundation for the science of physics until Einstein (See “1543-1687”, “1543”, “1666” and “1915, Dec”)

• 1688, Nov: The Glorious Revolution in England (or “The Bloodless Revolution”) is the sequence of events leading to the deposition of the Catholic King James II and VII of England and Scotland, and his replacement by his Protestant daughter Mary II and her Dutch husband and James’s nephew William III of Orange, de facto ruler of the Dutch Republic (a joint monarchy). The king and queen both signed the Declaration of Rights, which became known as the Bill of Rights. This document acknowledged several constitutional principles, including the right for regular Parliaments, free elections and freedom of speech in Parliament. Additionally, it forbade the monarchy from being Catholic. The Glorious Revolution was one of the most important events leading to Britain’s transformation from an absolute monarchy to a constitutional monarchy. The event ultimately changed how England was governed, giving Parliament more power over the monarchy and planting seeds for the beginnings of a political democracy. After this event, the monarchy in England would never hold absolute power again 

• The event also had an impact on the 13 colonies in North America. The colonists were temporarily freed of strict, anti-Puritan laws after King James was overthrown. Since the Glorious Revolution, Parliament’s power in Britain has continued to increase, while the monarchy’s influence has waned. It has been notable in the years since for having been described as the last successful invasion of England as well as an internal coup, with differing interpretations from the Dutch and English perspectives respectively (See “1675, June-1778, April”)

• 1689: John Locke’s “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding” is published. It is a work concerning the foundation of human knowledge and understanding. Locke (1632-1704) was a British philosopher, Oxford academic and medical researcher. He describes the mind at birth as a blank slate filled later through experience. The essay is one of the first great defences of modern empiricism and concerns itself with determining the limits of human understanding in respect to a wide spectrum of topics

• 1693: The last Salem “witch” was convicted of witchcraft and sentenced to death at the height of the Salem Witch Trials in England (she was never executed)

• 1696: Peter the Great became Russia’s de facto ruler. He reigned jointly with his half-brother Ivan V from 1682. He transformed Russia into a European state. In 1703 he started a brand new capital on the Gulf of Finland, St. Petersburg. Peter I (1672-1725) became an absolute monarch and assumed the title of Emperor in 1721 and Russia officially became the Russian Empire (See “1703, May”)

• 1697: The island of Hispaniola was divided into two separate nations: the Spanish-speaking Dominican Republic to the east and the French/Haitian Creole-speaking Haiti to the west. (The Spanish Empire controlled the entire island of Hispaniola from the 1490s until the 17th century, when French pirates began establishing bases on the western side of the island.) Relations have long been hostile due to substantial ethnic and cultural differences between the two nations, historic conflicts, territorial disputes, and sharing the island. The distinction between the colonies was accentuated by differing settlement patterns. Spain developed a settler-based society with a mixed-race majority, while the French brought thousands of African slaves to their side of the island. France imported nearly ten times as many slaves, creating a divergent population in their colony. These historical events led to Dominicans and Haitians becoming culturally and ethnically different groups. During the start of the 19th century Haiti became independent from France after a series of slave revolts in 1804. Afterwards the Spanish colony of Santo Domingo, the predecessor of the Dominican Republic, also became independent from Spain in 1821 after more than 300 years of Spanish control. Haiti would eventually become the poorest country in the region, while the Dominican Republic developed into one of the largest economies of Latin America (See “1791, Aug”, “1804, Jan” and “2024, March”)

• 1700: Between the year 1 and 1700, the world’s population went from about 200 million to about 600 million. (By 1800, it barely hit one billion, then it explodes first in the United Kingdom and the US, next in much of the rest of Europe, and eventually in Asia.) (See “1800”, “1900”, “1975”, “2000” and “2022, Nov”)

• 1703, May: Peter the Great started his most dramatic project – Saint Petersburg sprang up, a brand new capital on the Gulf of Finland – at tremendous human and financial cost. It became the capital of the Russian Empire for more than two hundred years (1712–1728, 1732–1918). Saint Petersburg ceased being the capital in 1918 after the Russian Revolution of 1917 (See “1696” and “1721, Oct”)

• 1704, Aug: The Battle of Blenheim was one of the turning points of the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-14) during the reign of Louis XIV. The overwhelming Allied victory saved Vienna from the Franco-Bavarian army and preventing the collapse of the Grand Alliance

• 1707, May: Union of England and Scotland. England and Scotland were officially separate Kingdoms until this. The Treaty of Union (often referred to as the Articles of Union) is the name usually now given to the treatywhich led to the creation of the new state of Great Britain, providing that the Kingdom of England (which already included Wales) and the Kingdom of Scotland were to be “United into One Kingdom by the Name of Great Britain”

• 1715: The Englishman John Lethbridge invented and successfully built his own underwater diving machine, but though the air supply was carried in the diving apparatus, it relied on surface tenders to deploy and move around under the water, and was effectively an atmospheric pressure diving bell 

• 1717, June: The first Grand Lodge of the Masonry fraternal organization was founded as the Grand Lodge of London and Westminster, later called the Grand Lodge of England. Masons trace their origins to the local guilds of stonemasons. Over the next decade, most of the existing Lodges in England joined the new regulatory body, which itself entered a period of self-publicity and expansion. New lodges were created and the fraternity began to grow. Due to misconceptions about Freemasonry’s tradition of not discussing its rituals with non-members, the fraternity has become associated with many conspiracy theories. Freemasonry may have been an outgrowth of Rosicrucianism 

• 1718, Nov: The English pirate, Blackbeard, was tracked down and killed. He had captured a French slave ship, equipped her with 40 guns, and crewed her with over 300 men. Blackbeard became a renowned pirate, operating around the West Indies and the eastern coast of Britain’s North American colonies. He was a shrewd and calculating leader who spurned the use of violence, relying instead on his fearsome image to elicit the response that he desired from those whom he robbed. He was romanticized after his death 

• 1720: The South Sea Bubble has been called the world’s first financial crash, the world’s first Ponzi scheme. It was centred on the South Sea Company which agreed to assume the £80 million national debt in return for guaranteed annual payments to be obtained from duties on imports, and the monopoly of British trade, mainly in slaves, in the South Seas and South America. Speculation drove the price of shares up dramatically, but within months the chairman and some directors sold out and the “bubble” or market collapsed. Thousands of investors were ruined

• 1721, April: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu introduced smallpox inoculation to Western medicine after witnessing it during her travels and stay in the Ottoman Empire. When a smallpox epidemic struck England, she had her daughter inoculated by the same physician who had inoculated her son at the Embassy in Turkey, and she publicized the event.This was the first such operation done in Britain. Nevertheless, inoculation was not always a safe process. Introduction of smallpox inoculation ultimately led to the development of vaccines, and the later eradication of smallpox

• 1721, Oct: Peter the Great assumed the title of Emperor and Russia officially became the Russian Empire. In 1712 Peter (1672-1725) moved the capital from Moscow to Saint Petersburg, where it remained – with only a brief interruption – until 1918. His reign is now seen as the decisive formative event in the Russian imperial past. According to Encyclopaedia Britannica, “He did not completely bridge the gulf between Russia and the Western countries, but he achieved considerable progress in development of the national economy and trade, education, science and culture, and foreign policy. Russia became a great power, without whose concurrence no important European problem could thenceforth be settled. His internal reforms achieved progress to an extent that no earlier innovator could have envisaged.” (See “1703, May”)

• 1725, Feb: Catherine I ascended to the throne as the first empress of Russia upon the death of her husband, Peter the Great. She (1684-1727) was an illiterate orphan that caught Peter’s eye, became his mistress and eventually wife. They had 12 children, but only two reached adulthood, both girls, Elizabeth (1709-1762; Empress Elizabeth ruled Russia 1741-1762) and Anna (See “1762, July”)

• 1727, April: First performance of J. S. Bach’s St. Matthew’s Passion. It is one of the greatest masterpieces of Baroque sacred music. Bach (1685-1750) is regarded as one of the finest composers in the history of Western music 

• 1727, June: Janet Horne was the last person to be executed legally for witchcraft in the British Isles. The neighbours accused Horne (a generic name for witches in Scotland) of having used her daughter as a pony to ride to the Devil, where she had her shod by him. Janet was stripped, smeared with tar, paraded through the town on a barrel and burned alive. Nine years after her death the witchcraft acts were repealed  

• 1729: Greenland becomes a Danish province. In 1979 it is granted home rule. Denmark retains control over Greenland’s foreign affairs and defence

• 1730-1780: The High Enlightenment: centred on the dialogues and publications of the French “philosophes” (Voltaire, Rousseau, Montesquieu, Buffon and Denis Diderot), the High Enlightenment might best be summed up by one historian’s summary of Voltaire’s “Philosophical Dictionary”: “a chaos of clear ideas.” Foremost among these was the notion that everything in the universe could be rationally demystified and cataloged. The signature publication of the period was Diderot’s “Encyclopédie” (See “1751-72”), which brought together leading authors to produce an ambitious compilation of human knowledge. It was an age of enlightened despots like Frederick the Great, who unified, rationalized and modernized Prussia in between brutal multi-year wars with Austria, and of enlightened would-be revolutionaries like Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson, whose “Declaration of Independence” (1776) framed the American Revolution in terms taken from one of John Locke’s essays.

• It was also a time of religious (and anti-religious) innovation, as Christians sought to reposition their faith along rational lines and deists and materialists argued that the universe seemed to determine its own course without God’s intervention. Locke, along with French philosopher Pierre Bayle, began to champion the idea of the separation of Church and State. Secret societies – like the Freemasons, the Bavarian Illuminati and the Rosicrucians – flourished, offering European men (and a few women) new modes of fellowship, esoteric ritual and mutual assistance

• 1731: The principle of the sextant was first implemented by John Hadley plus simultaneously by Thomas Godfrey. It was also found later in the unpublished writings of Isaac Newton where he invented the reflecting quadrant around 1699. By 1780, the octant and sextant had almost completely displaced all previous navigational instruments. One common practice among navigators up to the late nineteenth century was to use both a sextant and an octant. The sextant was used with great care and only for lunars, while the octant was used for routine meridional altitude measurements of the Sun every day. This protected the very accurate and pricier sextant, while using the more affordable octant where it performs well. The combined use of a sextant and a good chronometer enabled a skilled mariner to find his position at sea with a fair degree of accuracy (See “1687, July” and “1762”)

• 1733: The flying shuttle weaving machine was invented by John Kay. This was one of the key developments in the industrialization of weaving during the early Industrial Revolution. It allowed a single weaver to weave much wider fabrics, and it could be mechanized, allowing for automatic machine looms

• 1740-1748: The War of the Austrian Succession regarding the right of Maria Theresa to succeed her father, Emperor Charles VI, as ruler of the Habsburg monarchy. Itwas a European conflict fought primarily in Central Europe, the Austrian Netherlands, and Italy. France, Prussia, and Bavaria saw it as an opportunity to challenge Habsburg power. The result was the realignment known as the Diplomatic Revolution. Austria and France ended the rivalry which had dominated European affairs for centuries, while Prussia allied with Great Britain. These changes set the scene for the outbreak of the Seven Years’ War in 1756. This was all part of the constantly shifting pattern of alliances throughout the 18th century in efforts to preserve or upset the European balance of power (See “1756-1763”)

• 1741: Elizabeth of Russia commences her reign of Russia until her death in 1762. She (1709-1762) was a popular monarch and chose not to execute a single person during her reign

• 1741: Vitus Bering, a Danish explorer in Russian service, claimed the Alaskan territory for the Russian Empire in his second voyage. Russia later confirmed its rule over the territory with a decree which established the southern border of Russian America along the 55th parallel north. The Russians were primarily interested in the abundance of fur-bearing mammals on Alaska’s coast, as stocks had been depleted by overhunting in Siberia. By the middle of the 19th century the Russians concluded that their North American colonies were too expensive to retain so they sold it to the US in 1867 (See “1867, Oct” and “1870, July”) 

• 1744-1763: During this period the struggle for the colonies came down to battles between the French and the British; the French lost and the British Empire was launched. They fought a cluster of battles all over the world, on the high seas, in the forests of North America, in West Africa, on the coastal rim of India, in the Philippines. In Europe this was called the Seven Years’ War; in North America, the French and Indian War; in India, the Carnatic Wars. However, almost immediately, Britain’s 13 American colonies broke away

• 1746, April: The Battle of Culloden was the last pitched battle fought on British soil. The Jacobite army of Charles Edward Stuart was decisively defeated by a British government army under Prince William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, near Inverness in the Scottish Highlands

• 1748: The advent of modern refrigerators. Scottish professor William Cullen designed a small refrigerating machine using the cooling effect of rapidly evaporating a liquid into gas. Cullen’s invention, though ingenious, was not suitable for any practical purpose. However the modern mechanical refrigeration process of today grew from the work of numerous inventors in the 1800s. In 1834 the first practical refrigerating machine was built by Jacob Perkins with a design that cooled temperatures using a vapour compression cycle. In 1851, American physician John Gorrie patented a compressed air refrigerator to cool the air for his yellow fever patients. And in 1876, German engineer Carl von Linden patented the process of liquefying gas that has become part of basic refrigeration technology. Now the world is one huge “cool chain” from source to home, allowing food seasons to be overridden, perishable goods to be cooled, reduced health risks, etc. (See “1913”)

• 1749: The first recorded game of “Bass-Ball” (baseball) took place in Surrey, England. Then an English lawyer recorded a game of baseball in 1755 in Guilford, Surrey. This early form of the game was apparently brought to Canada by English immigrants. Rounders was also brought to the US by Canadians of both British and Irish ancestry. The first known American reference to baseball appears in a 1791 Pittsfield, Massachusetts town bylaw. (The once widely accepted story that US Army officerAbner Doubleday invented baseball in Cooperstown, NY, in 1839 has been conclusively debunked by sports historians.)

• 1750: The beginning of the Industrial Revolution.This was the biggest transformation in economic history. Evidence for a few key factors is emerging in Britain: slave-owners’ capital (the riches Britons extracted from slaves in the Americas flowed mainly to a few cities. By the 1830s these regions had large numbers of cotton mills and shares of workers employed in manufacturing), entrepreneurs who stood to benefit from investing, and shortages of lower-skilled workers (adoption of devices replacing manual labour was greatest in areas that provided the most servicemen – so long as those regions also had mechanics)

• 1751-1772: Encyclopédie, a general encyclopedia with a secular tone, was published in France in this period, with later supplements. It had many writers, but was edited by Denis Diderot (1713-1784), a cautious atheist and a prominent figure during the Age of Enlightenment. Its secular bent, which included articles skeptical about Biblical miracles, angered both religious and government authorities. In 1758 it was banned by the Catholic Church and in 1759 the French government banned it as well. The Encyclopédie is considered one of the forerunners of the French Revolution 

• 1751: The first fully documented, all-metal slide rest lathe was invented by a Frenchman, Jacques de Vaucanson. The lathe was very important to the Industrial Revolution. It is known as the mother of machine tools, as it was the first machine tool that led to the invention of other machine tools. (It was described in the Encyclopédie.) Other improvements were made in this period, including the “slide rest” and the ability to make that most essential component of the industrialized world, the screw. (The basic lathe is an ancient tool. The earliest evidence of a lathe dates back to Egypt around 1300 BC. As well, clear evidence of turned artifacts have been found from the 6th century BC: fragments of a wooden bowl in an Etruscan tomb in Northern Italy, plus the Chinese used rotary lathes to sharpen tools and weapons c. 400 BC.) (See”1775”)

• 1755, April: A Dictionary of the English Language was published and written by Samuel Johnson (1709-1784). It is among the most influential dictionaries in the history of the English language. Johnson’s Dictionary had far-reaching effects on Modern English, and was pre-eminent until the arrival of the Oxford English Dictionary 150 years later. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography calls Johnson “arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English history”. (Interestingly, if you were able to read and write Chinese you would not necessarily be able to speak to another person who can read and write Chinese, for the Chinese symbol is not phonetic. Recently China decided to transcribe Chinese into Western alphabetic script and set up a single dialect – the Mandarin – as the basis for the national language.)

• 1755, Aug: The expulsion of the Acadians from their colony of Acadia in Nova Scotia begins. In the summer of 1755 war between France and England was imminent and Britain, fearful the French-speaking Catholic Acadians would side with the French, wanted a contract saying they would fight for the crown. The Acadians refused. So the order came for their expulsion. The British forced more than 10,000 Acadians onto ships bound for France, England, the Antilles and Louisiana, where “Acadian” became known as “Cajun,” now a distinct ethnic group. A third of them drowned or died of disease. In 1764, Acadians were allowed to return to Nova Scotia around the Bay of Fundy, but much of their land had been taken

• 1755, Nov: Lisbon earthquake of 1755. A series of earthquakes caused serious damage to Lisbon, Portugal, killing an estimated 60,000 people in Lisbon alone. Violent shaking demolished large public buildings and about 12,000 dwellings. Lisbon’s destruction was used to force the religious country into the modern era. (Lisbon’s devout Catholic population saw the ruined city as divine punishment.) The Lisbon that arose after the earthquake displayed modern thinking about seismology, architecture, and disaster planning

• 1756, June: Black Hole of Calcutta incident in which a number of Europeans were imprisoned and many suffocated. The Europeans were the remaining defenders of Calcutta (now Kolkata) following the capture of the city by the nawab (ruler) Sirāj al-Dawlah, of Bengal, and the surrender of the East India Company’s garrison. The incident became a cause célèbre in the idealization of British imperialism in India and a subject of controversy

• 1756-1763: TheSeven Years’ War was a global conflict that involved most of the European Great Powers, and was fought primarily in Europe, the Americas, and Asia-Pacific – like an 18th-century equivalent of World War I. (The French and Indian War was the North American conflict in this larger imperial war which resulted from ongoing frontier tensions in North America as both French and British imperial officials and colonists sought to extend each country’s sphere of influence in frontier regions.) The opposing alliances were led by Great Britain (plus Prussia and Hanover) and France (plus Austria, Sweden, Saxony, Russia, Spain) respectively, both seeking to establish global pre-eminence at the expense of the other. The war was successful for Great Britain, which gained the bulk of New France in North America (which included Canada as it was defined then, Hudson Bay, Acadia, Louisiana), Spanish Florida, and some individual Caribbean islands. The Seven Years’ War was perhaps the first global war and it was very much about land. It restructured not only the European political order, but also affected events all around the world, paving the way for the beginning of later British world supremacy in the 19th century (See “1740-1748” and “1763, Feb”)

• 1757, June: The Battle of Plassey in India where the British beat the Bengali army to start nearly two centuries of British rule in India. The British (really the British East India Company) with an army of only 3,000 were led by soldier and statesman Robert Clive; they defeated the ruler, or nawab of Bengal, Sirāj al-Dawlah, and his army of 50,000. The nawab was captured and executed. The British went on to take control of the whole subcontinent as they did in Bengal. For appearance sake they left a figurehead Mughal emperor on the throne in Delhi (who they sent into exile – see “1857”)

• 1758: The start of the Linnaean system of classification for the natural world. Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778), a Swedish naturalist, was the first to frame principles for defining natural genera and species of organisms and to create a uniform system for naming them (binominal nomenclature). The first edition of his Species Plantarum and the 10th edition of Systema Naturae, published in 1758, was the agreed starting points for botanical and zoological nomenclature, respectively. The internationally accepted taxonomic system of naming organisms is the Linnaean system, which, although founded on Linnaeus’s rules and procedures, has been greatly modified through the years. Interestingly, Linnaeus vastly underestimated the variety of plants and animals on Earth, whose number could be between four and ten million species

• 1759: Voltaire wrote the satire, Candide, considered his magnum opus. A number of historical events inspired Voltaire to write it, most notably the publication of Leibniz’s “Monadology“, the Seven Years’ War, and the 1755 Lisbon earthquake. In Candide, he had Pangloss articulate his mantra: “All is best” in this “best of all possible worlds”. Voltaire (1694-1778) was a French Enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher. He was famous for his wit, and his criticism of Christianity – especially of the Roman Catholic Church – and of slavery. Voltaire was an advocate of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and separation of church and state.  He didn’t shy away from criticizing those in power – not even religious institutions and the government were safe from his condemnation, which resulted in his imprisonment and exile. He loved truth and reason: “Love truth, but pardon error.” Or “It is dangerous to be right in matters where established men are wrong.” This quote has relevance regarding key authoritative figures today: “Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities, has the power to make you commit injustices.” 

• 1759, Sept: British victory at the Plains of Abraham at Quebec City. Both generals, Wolfe and Montcalm, died in battle. Thus France surrendered much of its eastern North American territories to Great Britain (in 1763 through the Treaty of Paris)

• 1760-1840: The Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes in Great Britain, continental Europe, and the US, that occurred during the period from around 1760 to about 1820–1840. This transition included going from hand production methods to machines, new chemical manufacturing and iron production processes, the increasing use of steam power and water power, the development of machine tools and the rise of the mechanized factory system. Output greatly increased, and a result there was an unprecedented rise in population and in the rate of population growth

• 1760, Sept: France surrendered New France (now Quebec) to British invasion force at Montreal. Governor Marquis de Vaudreuil surrendered

• 1762: John Harrison, an English carpenter and clockmaker, satisfied all the requirements for the Longitude Prize for discovering longitude at sea (the British Parliament initiated the prize). He built five chronometers, two of which were tested at sea. (H1 ~1830; H2 ~1843, H3 in 1758; his H4 in 1761; and H5 in 1762.) Discovering a means of determining the longitude (the east or west position of a point on the surface of the Earth) of any given place on Earth is important to both cartography and navigation. In particular, for safe ocean navigation, knowledge of both latitude and longitude is required, however latitude can be determined with good accuracy with local astronomical observations. Today we have satellite navigation (See “1731”)

• 1762: Jean-Jacques Rousseau published The Social Contract. In it he spent a lot of time exploring the contradictions of freedom. Society was expanding at the time, and people were growing more dependent on others for survival. A strong state was necessary to help ensure equality and justice. But how to build strong political institutions, endowed with power and authority, and still protect individual freedoms? Rousseau’s (1712-1778) solution was his theory of “the general will”. Under a monarchy or dictatorship, laws routinely impinge on freedoms. Rousseau argued that, to protect those freedoms, laws had to be determined by the collective will (or “general will”) of the citizenry. And the best tool to interpret the general will was via democracy. Only then could the state truly serve the will of the people. His theory is credited with sparking the French Revolution and possibly inspiring many of the Founding Fathers of the US. Certainly, his political philosophy influenced the progress of the Age of Enlightenment throughout Europe

• 1762, July: Catherine II (Catherine the Great) came to power in Russia in a coup d’état against her husband, Peter III. She governed at a time when the Russian Empire was expanding rapidly by conquest and diplomacy. The Russian empire broke up the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, with help from Austria and Prussia. The Russians also seized territory in what is now southern Ukraine from the Ottomans. This included Crimea, annexed to Russia by Catherine in 1783. She oversaw the final dismantling of the Cossack Hetmanate. Under her long reign (through to her death in 1796), inspired by the ideas of the Enlightenment, Russia experienced a renaissance of culture and sciences, which led to the founding of many new cities, universities, and theatres; along with large-scale immigration from the rest of Europe, and the recognition of Russia as one of the great powers of Europe. Russians also became the first Europeans to colonize Alaska (See “1725, Feb” and “1787”)

• 1763, Feb: The Treaty of Paris was signed, ending the Seven Years’ War between France, Britain and Spain, however fostering conditions that led to the American Revolutionary War. (It was known in the US and elsewhere as the French and Indian War.) It marked the end of the war in North America and created the basis for the modern country of Canada. France formally ceded New France to the British, and largely withdrew from the continent. Britain guaranteed French Canadians limited freedom of worship; it also secured Dominica, Tobago, St. Vincent and Grenada, returned Martinique and Guadeloupe, plus received Florida from Spain (in compensation, Spain received part of France’s vast Louisiana territory.) France retained fishing rights in Newfoundland and acquired the islands of Saint Pierre and Miquelon. The treaty resulted in the enhancement of Great Britain as a global power. However ultimately, the exorbitant expense of the Seven Years’ War resulted in Great Britain levying increased taxes upon the American colonies, fostering conditions that led to the American Revolutionary War  (See “1534”, “1756-1763”, “1775, April-1783, Sept” and “1867, July”)

• 1763, Oct: The Royal Proclamation of 1763 was the first legal recognition of aboriginal title, rights and freedoms in Canada. It was issued by King George III following the Treaty of Paris, which formally ended the Seven Years War and transferred French territory in North America to Great Britain. The Proclamation forbade all settlements west of a line drawn along the Appalachian Mountains, which was delineated as an Indian Reserve. (Many colonists disregarded the proclamation line and settled west, which created tension between them and the Native Americans.) The Royal Proclamation continues to be of legal importance to First Nations in Canada, being the first legal recognition of aboriginal title, rights and freedoms, and is recognized in the Canadian Constitution of 1982, in part as a result of direct action by indigenous peoples of Canada, known as the Constitution Express movement of 1981–1982

• 1764, Aug: The Niagara Treaty – Canada’s first Confederation. When news of the Paris Treaty reached the western Indian nations and they learned that France purported to hand over the Indian nations’ lands to Britain, they took up arms against Britain and its American colonies (the Pontiac uprising). That war ended only when, at Niagara in 1764, representatives of 24 nations native to North America accepted British peace terms – to respect the Indian nations’ ownership of their lands and to restrict European settlement to lands acquired by the Crown through treaties with their native owners. As political scientist Peter Russell in his book Canada’s Odyssey said, “The Niagara treaty can be regarded as Canada’s first Confederation, for it set out the terms on which Britain and many Indian nations agreed to share the country and have peaceful relations.” Today these rights and freedoms are enshrined in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (See “1791, Dec”)

• 1765, March: The British Parliament passed the Stamp Act requiring colonists to pay a tax on documents used in the colonies. The tax helped pay for British troops stationed in the colonies after the Seven Years’ War. The British government decided they would raise revenue by taxing the American colonists without their consent. This was something new; Parliament had previously passed measures to regulate trade in the colonies, but it had never before directly taxed the colonies to raise revenue. The Stamp Act was very unpopular among colonists. A majority considered it a violation of their rights as Englishmen to be taxed without their consent – consent that only the colonial legislatures could grant. Their slogan was “No taxation without representation”. Delegates from 9 of the 13 colonies met to form the Stamp Act Congress (Continental Congress). The Stamp Act was eventually repealed in 1766 but it was too late. The episode played a major role in defining the 27 colonial grievances that were clearly stated within the text of the Indictment of George III section of the United States Declaration of Independence, enabling the organized colonial resistance which led to the American Revolution, April 1775

• 1765, May: The Virginia Resolves were a series of resolutions passed in response to the Stamp Act by the Virginia House of Burgesses (the elected representative element of the Virginia General Assembly, the legislative body of the Colony of Virginia). The resolves (laid out by Patrick Henry, the “Give me liberty, or give me death!” guy, as well the Governor of Virginia and a member of the First Continental Congress) claimed that in accordance with long established British law, Virginia was subject to taxation only by a parliamentary assembly to which Virginians themselves elected representatives. Since no colonial representatives were elected to Parliament, the only assembly legally allowed to raise taxes would be the Virginia General Assembly. Note: while taxes were a major point of contention, they were not the sole reason for the conflict. Mounting tensions between American colonists and the British were also caused by disputes over land distribution – the British planned to reserve the western part of North America for Indigenous peoples, angering colonists with plans to expand outward

• 1768: The circus was designed in England by a previous Calvary sergeant major Philip Astley who served in the Seven Years’ War. Astley’s idea emerged from horse riders who would perform stunts on their horses. Considering he was an accomplished horse trainer he decided to open his riding school in 1968; he then became a showman and was successful in Europe after he combined the equestrian acts with various performances including clowns, rope dancers, and jugglers. However this form of entertainment has been around since ancient Roman times. Performances can be traced back to early African civilizations who did acrobatic routines, ancient Chinese jugglers, and Greeks rope dancing. (The first circus in the city of Rome was the Circus Maximus from 27 BC to 549 AD.) The word circus came from the English word circle which was the shape of the amphitheater Astley constructed for his acts but was credited by his former employee Charles Hughes who introduced The Royal Circus in 1782 in London

• 1769, Jan: James Watt was awarded a patent for a fully functioning steam-power machine. The first steam engines were introduced by a Devon-born ironmonger named Thomas Newcomen in 1712. Watt took Newcomen’s very rudimentary steam engine and made two key improvements (the inclusion of a separate steam condenser and changing the inlet pipes  to allow for the injection of new steam into the upper rather than the lower part of the main cylinder) which turned it into a device that in theory could produce almost limitless amounts of power. He just need to solve his leaking steam problem, which he did in 1776 with the help of John Wilkinson. For interest: the “watt” – the unit of power in the International System of Units (SI) – is named in honour of James Watt (1736–1819) (See “1776, May”)

• 1770, April: Captain Cook maps the east coast of Australia, in his ship theEndeavor, after charting the coast of New Zealand in 1769. He then claimed the Society Islands in the Pacific for England. The journey took three years (1768-71). He made two other voyages from 1772 to 1775 and 1776 to 1779

• 1773, Dec: The Boston Tea Party. Protesters destroyed an entire shipment of tea in the Boston harbour sent by the East India Company. Colonists objected to the Tea Act believing it violated their rights as Englishmen to “no taxation without representation”, that is, to be taxed only by their own elected representatives and not by a parliament in which they were not represented. The crisis escalated, and the American Revolutionary War began near Boston in 1775. (The Tea Act was an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain. The principal objective was to reduce the massive amount of tea held by the financially troubled British East India Company in its London warehouses and to help the struggling company survive.)  (See “1775, April”)

• 1774, Jan: John Wilkinson invented a technique for the manufacture of high quality cannons. Up until then naval cannons were cast hollow and a cutting tool smoothed out the tube’s interior, but this left thin spots that proved dangerous resulting in explosions and bursting tubes and subsequent injuries. An English ironmaster, John “Iron-Mad”Wilkinson, decided to cast the iron cannon not hollow but solid and then bore the cannon hole after. Great accuracy was achieved which resulted in the grapeshot or canister shot or explosive shells hitting their intended target. He became very wealthy supplying the Royal Navy (See “1769, Jan” and 1776, May”) 

• 1774: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe published his first novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther. He (1749-1832) was a German poet, playwright, novelist, scientist, statesman, theatre director and critic. His works include plays, poetry, literature, and aesthetic criticism, as well as treatises on botany, anatomy, and colour. He is widely regarded as the greatest and most influential writer in the German language, his work having a profound and wide-ranging influence on Western literary, political, and philosophical thought from the late 18th century to the present day

• 1774: The first inland settlement in present-day Western Canada was established by Samuel Hearne, an employee of the Hudson’s Bay Company. It was called Cumberland House and located on the lower Saskatchewan River. It marked a change in HBC policy, which had hitherto expected Indigenous people to bring their furs to the Bay posts to trade 

• 1774, June: Through the Quebec Act, French Canadian nationality was maintained as one of the “two founding nations” of Canada. It was done legally through the Quebec Act of 1774 (sort of French Canada’s magna carta), which abandoned assimilationist and anti-Catholic sentiments and ensured the maintenance of the Canadian French language, Catholic religion, and French civil law within Canada; this remains true today

• 1774, Aug: The discovery of oxygen by English chemist Joseph Priestley. Of his discovery of several “airs” (gases), the most famous was what Priestley dubbed “dephlogisticated air” (oxygen). Priestly (1733-1804) was also a natural philosopher, separatist theologian, grammarian, multi-subject educator, and liberal political theorist. Subsequently he informed the French chemist Antoine Lavoisier how he obtained the new “air.” Between 1775 and 1780 Lavoisier conducted intensive investigations from which he derived the elementary nature of oxygen, recognized it as the “active” principle in the atmosphere, interpreted its role in combustion and respiration, and gave it its name

• 1775, April-1783, Sept: The American Revolutionary War, also known as the American War of Independence, was the military conflict of the American Revolution in which American Patriot forces of the 13 colonies in America, largely under George Washington’s command, defeated the British. This resulted in the Treaty of Paris (1783) which recognized the independence and sovereignty of the United States (See “1783, Sept”)

• 1775, April: The Battles of Lexington and Concord were the first military engagements of the American Revolutionary War. They marked the outbreak of armed conflict between Great Britain and its 13 colonies in America. The poet, Ralph Waldo Emerson, describes the first shot fired by the Patriots in his “Concord Hymn” as the “shot heard around the world” 

• 1775: The first patent for the flushing toilet was issued to Alexander Cummings. However the invention of this goes way back to 26 BC in the Hindus Valley Civilization where houses were even attached to a sophisticated sewage system. Around 2800 years ago King Minos of Crete had the first flushing water closet recorded in history. Joseph Bramah,an English inventor and locksmith, improved the design by replacing the usual slide valve with a hinged flap that sealed the bottom of the bowl (self-cleansing or flushing for the first time). He obtained the patent for it in 1778, and made a fortune producing them

• 1776: The Bolshoi Ballet was founded. It is an internationally renowned classical ballet  company based at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, Russia. The Bolshoi is among the world’s oldest ballet companies. In the early 20th century, it came to international prominence as Moscow became the capital of Soviet Russia. The Bolshoi has been recognized as one of the foremost ballet companies in the world. Over the years it has developed its own unique identity

• 1776, Jan: Thomas Paine published his “Common Sense” pamphlet. Along with “The American Crisis”, they weretwo of the most influential pamphlets at the start of the American Revolution, and helped inspire the Patriots in 1776 to declare independence from Great Britain, theretofore an unpopular cause. He was an English-born American political activist, philosopher, and revolutionary. His ideas reflected Enlightenment-era ideals of transnational human rights. Paine (1736-1809) has a claim to the title The Father of the American Revolution, which rests on his pamphlets which crystallized sentiment for independence in 1776

• 1776, March: Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations. Itis considered his magnum opus and the first modern work that treats economics as a comprehensive system and as an academic discipline. Smith (1723-1790) was a Scottish economist and philosopher who was a pioneer in the thinking of political economy and key figure during the Scottish Enlightenment. He argued that the best way to serve the common good was to pursue one’s own economic self interest. Those who got richest were those who most successfully helped meet the greatest needs of the greatest number. He proposed that wealth concentrated in private hands was the most efficient way of organizing human labour, so long as the government didn’t interfere.  It would maximize production, which would benefit the whole society because a rising tide lifted all boats. Smith refused to explain the distribution of wealth and power in terms of God’s will and instead appeals to natural, political, social, economic and technological factors and the interactions between them. He was the worlds first important economist. He influenced many, such as Karl Marx, and Alexander Hamilton (who argued against many of Smith’s policies) 

• 1776, May: The Watt steam engine improved significantly so was introduced commercially and became the central power source for the next century. James Watt performed a lengthy series of trials on ways to seal the piston in the cylinder, which considerably reduced the leakage during each power stroke, preventing power loss. John Wilkinson solved the problem by applying his cannon-boring technique (using the boring machine he invented in 1774) into making steam engine cylinders that didn’t leak steam. (As Watt put it he “bored us several cylinders almost without error…does not err the thickness of an old shilling”. The final design produced a more reliable engine which also used half as much coal to produce the same amount of power. Once perfected the steam engine was to be the central power source for almost all factories and foundries and transportation systems in Britain and around the world for the next century and more *See “1769, Jan”)

• 1776, July 4: America is founded– the Continental Congress voted to adopt the Declaration of Independencedeclaring the independence from Great Britain of the colonies as the United States. The US Constitution was a pioneering document. America became the first large nation to rule itself without a monarchy and instead fill its most important political offices via regular elections (See “1789, April”) 

• 1777, Oct: American victory at the second Battle of Saratoga over the British during the American Revolutionary War, under General John Burgoynean, who attempted to gain military control of the strategically important Hudson River valley. It ended in the surrender of the British army, which historians argue, “was a great turning point of the war” 

• 1779: Samuel Crompton, a retired genius from Lancashire, invented the spinning mule, which made possible the mechanization of cotton manufacture. But it was improved by Henry Stokes who added metal rollers to the mule; and James Hargreaves who figured out how to smooth the acceleration and deceleration of the spinning wheel; and William Kelly who worked out how to add water power to the draw stroke; and John Kennedy who adapted the wheel to turn out fine counts; and finally Richard Roberts who created the “automatic” spinning mule

• 1779: The Luddite movement emerged during the harsh economic climate of the Napoleonic Wars, which saw a rise of difficult working conditions in the new textile factories. Luddites objected primarily to the rising popularity of automated textile equipment, threatening the jobs and livelihoods of skilled workers as this technology allowed them to be replaced by cheaper and less skilled workers. Ned Ludd, a weaver from Anstey, near Leicester, England, is supposed to have broken two stocking frames in a fit of rage. When the “Luddites” emerged in the 1810s, his identity was appropriated to become the folkloric character of Captain Ludd, the Luddites’ alleged leader and founder. Ned Ludd, however, was completely fictional and used as a way to shock and provoke the government 

• 1781, Oct: British General Cornwallis surrenders to General George Washington at Yorktown, effectively ending the American Revolutionary War. Thiswas the last major land battle of the American Revolutionary War in North America, and led to the capture of both Cornwallis and his army. The Continental Army’s victory at Yorktown prompted the British government to negotiate an end to the conflict

• 1781: The Critique of Pure Reason was first published by Immanuel Kant. In it Kant, a Prussian philosopher (1824-1804) and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers, addresses the fundamental nature of reality (metaphysics). He explains that by a “critique of pure reason” he means a critique “of the faculty of reason in general”.  He believed that reason is the source of morality. Kant promotes the Enlightenment goal of progress by helping individuals to reach their highest capacity. By bringing together rationalism and empiricism, he is considered the “father of modern philosophy”

• 1783, June: The volcanic Laki fissure in Iceland erupted violently over an eight-month period. It, and the adjoining volcano Grímsvötn, poured out billion of tonnes of basalt lava and clouds of poisonous compounds that contaminated the soil, leading to the death of over 50% of Iceland’s livestock population, and the destruction of the vast majority of all crops. This led to a famine which then killed approximately a quarter of the island’s human population

• 1783, Aug: The world’s first hydrogen-filled balloon was launched from the Champ-de-Mars  (now the site of the Eiffel Tower). The balloon flew northwards for 45 minutes, pursued by chasers on horseback, and landed 21 kilometres away in the village of Gonesse where the reportedly terrified local peasants attacked it with pitchforks and destroyed it. In December the first manned hydrogen balloon flight was launched by Professor Jacques Charles (after whom a hydrogen balloon came to be called a Charlière)

• 1783, Sept: The Treaty of Paris ended the American Revolutionary War. It was signed by the US and Great Britain and ended the state of conflict between the two countries. Only Article 1 of the treaty, which acknowledges the United States’ existence as free, sovereign, and independent states, remains in force (See “1775, April”)

• 1785: James Madison, the key thinker behind the US Constitution, wrote “Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments.” In it he explained that what was at stake was not just religion, but also representative government itself. The establishment of one religion over others attacked a fundamental human right – an unalienable right – of conscience. If lawmakers could destroy the right of freedom of conscience, they could destroy all other unalienable rights. Those in charge of government could throw representative government out the window and make themselves tyrants. He had seen his home state of Virginia arrest itinerant preachers for undermining the established church in the state. He came to believe that men had a right to the free exercise of religion. In order to make sure men had the right of conscience, the framers added the First Amendment to the Constitution. It read: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof….” The framers of the Constitution thus quite deliberately excluded religion from the US Constitution (See “1791, Dec”)

• 1786: Invention of a rotary threshing machine by Andrew Meikle, a Scottish mechanical engineer. It threshes grain, that is, it removes the seeds from the stalks and husks. It does so by beating the plant to make the seeds fall out. Hand threshing was very laborious and time-consuming, taking about one-quarter of agricultural labour by the 18th century. (A farmer, Michael Sterling, in 1758, has also some unverified claim to the process.)

• 1787: The Northwest Ordinance (or the Ordinance of 1787) is the first guarantee of freedom of contract in the US. It is considered one of the most important legislative acts of the Confederation Congress. It established the precedent by which the federal government would be sovereign and expand westward with the admission of new states rather than with the expansion of existing states. The most significant intended purpose of the legislation was its mandate for the creation of new states from the region. It provided that at least three but not more than five states would be established in the territory and that once such a state achieved a population of 60,000, it would be admitted into representation in the Continental Congress on an equal footing with the original thirteen states. The first state created from the Northwest Territory was Ohio in 1803, and the remaining territory was renamed Indiana Territory. The other four states were Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin. A portion (about a third) of what later became Minnesota was also part of the territory. The Ordinance of 1787 established the concept of fee simple ownership by which ownership was in perpetuity, with unlimited power to sell or give it away. That was called the “first guarantee of freedom of contract in the United States”

• 1787: The term “Potemkin village” comes from stories of a fake portable village built by field marshal Grigory for the Russian Empress Catherine II, solely to impress the Empress during her journey to Crimea. Potemkin was a lover of the Empress (Catherine the Great, 1729-1796) and had became governor of Crimea, after the 1783 Russian annexation of the area from the Ottoman Empire. Crimea had been devastated by the war, and the Muslim Tatar inhabitants of Crimea were viewed as a potential fifth column of the Ottoman Empire. Potemkin’s tasks were to pacify and rebuild by bringing in Russian settlers. The original story was that Potemkin erected phony portable settlements along the banks of the Dnieper River in order to impress the Russian Empress and foreign guests. The structures would be disassembled after she passed, and re-assembled farther along her route to be seen again (See “1762, July”)

• 1789, April: Captain William Bligh sailed 5,800 km from Tahiti to Timor, Indonesia. After his ship’s crew mutinied, they put Bligh and 18 loyal men into a 6-metre boat with some navigational instruments and five days’ food. Bligh sailed directly for Timor, 3,600 miles (5,800 km) away. It was a voyage of extreme hardship and brilliant navigation, and lasted 47 days 

• 1789, April: George Washington was elected the first president of America. In 1781 with the aid of French allies, he forced the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown. He became a prime mover in the steps leading to the Constitutional Convention at Philadelphia in 1787. When the new Constitution was ratified, the Electoral College unanimously elected Washington President (See “1776, July”)

• 1789, July: Start of the French Revolution indicated by the storming of the Bastille. Widespread social distress and public outrage over the troop presence directed by King Louis XVI culminated in the attack on the Bastille, a medieval armoury and political prison, which was seen by the revolutionaries as a symbol of the monarchy’s abuse of power. Its fall was the flashpoint of the French Revolution. This led to a series of radical measures by the Assembly, including the abolition of feudalism, the imposition of state control over the Catholic Church in France, and extension of the right to vote. The next three years were dominated by the struggle for political control, exacerbated by civil disorder and economic depression 

• 1790-1815: The Late Enlightenment:The French Revolution of 1789 was the culmination of the High Enlightenment vision of throwing out the old authorities to remake society along rational lines, but it devolved into bloody terror that showed the limits of its own ideas and led, a decade later, to the rise of Napoleon

• 1790: The English inventor Thomas Saint invented the first sewing machine design. His machine was meant to be used on leather and canvas material. It is likely that Saint had a working model but there is no evidence of one. The first practical and widely used sewing machine was invented by Barthélemy Thimonnier, a French tailor, in 1829. His machine sewed straight seams using chain stitch like Saint’s model. In 1831, 150-200 tailors confronted the owners of the first machine-based clothing manufacturing company in the world, destroying dozens of machines in the process, reportedly by workers fearful of losing work and lower wages

• 1791, Aug: The slaves of St. Domingue (now Haiti) organized a massive rebellion ending with the former colony’s independence in 1804. Extensive slave labour was required by plantations to produce sugar as a commodity crop from cultivation of sugarcane to satisfy the European demand for sugar. (In 1789, Saint-Domingue produced 60% of the world’s coffee and 40% of the sugar imported by France and Britain. The colony was not only the most profitable possession of the French colonial empire, but it was the wealthiest and most prosperous colony in the Caribbean.) The revolution was the only slave uprising that led to the founding of a state which was both free from slavery and ruled by non-whites and former captives. The successful revolution was a defining moment in the history of the Atlantic World (Europe, Africa, the Americas) and the revolution’s effects on the institution of slavery were felt throughout the Americas. The revolution was the largest slave uprising since Spartacus’ unsuccessful revolt against the Roman Republic nearly 1,900 years earlier, and challenged long-held European beliefs about alleged black inferiority and about slaves’ ability to achieve and maintain their own freedom. The rebels’ organizational capacity and tenacity under pressure inspired stories that shocked and frightened slave owners in the hemisphere. Things have turned sour in the country in the second decade of the 21st century (See “1697”, “1804, Jan” and “2024, March”)

• 1791, Dec: The Constitution Act was introduced into Canada that divided the Province of Quebec into two parts, Upper Canada, where most Loyalists had settled and which used English common law, and Lower Canada, where the French Canadians lived, retaining the privileges from 1774. (It helped accommodate the 10,000 United Empire Loyalists who had arrived from the US following the American Revolution.) A bill of rights (the first version) was entrenched into the Constitution

• 1791, Dec: The US Bill of Rights went into effectwhen three quarters of the states agreed that they were fair. The Bill of Rights is the name for the first ten amendments to the US Constitution, which limit the power of the federal government and guarantee citizens certain rights. The amendments were written in 1789 by Jame Madison, and were based on important ideas about personal rights. The roots of the Bill of Rights lie deep in Anglo-American history. In 1215 England’s King John, under pressure from rebellious barons, put his seal to the Magna Carta, which protected subjects against royal abuses of power. They cover such areas as: the government can’t make any religion an official religion nor stop anyone from practicing a religion; freedom of speech and the press; freedom to peaceably assemble (first amendment); people have right to own firearms (second amendment); the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures (fourth amendment); the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed (sixth amendment), etc. (See ”1785”)

• 1791, Dec: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart died while working on his famous Requiem. He is one of the greatest and most influential composers in the history of Western music. He composed over 600 works for all the musical genres of his day. Mozart was a child prodigy (born 1756) and composed his first piece of music when he was only five years old

• 1792-1802: The French Revolutionary Wars were a series of sweeping military conflicts lasting during this period and resulting from the French Revolution. They pitted France against Britain, Austria, Prussia, Russia, and several other monarchies. In 1802, the British and French signed the Treaty of Amiens, ending the war. The treaty is generally considered to be the most appropriate point to mark the transition between the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars (See “1798-1815”)

• 1793, Jan: Louis XVI, the King of France, was executed by guillotine. Hewas the last King of France before the fall of the monarchy during the French Revolution. He (1754-1793) was the only king of France ever to be executed, and his death brought an end to more than a thousand years of continuous French monarchy. He went to the guillotine followed by his wife, Marie Antoinette. To some, his death at the hands of his former subjects symbolized the long-awaited end of an unbroken thousand-year period of absolute monarchy in France and the true beginning of democracy within the nation. Others (even some who had supported major political reform) condemned the execution as an act of senseless bloodshed and saw it as a sign that France had devolved into a state of violent, amoral chaos

• 1790s to 1863: The Underground Railroad was created for slaves to escape the US. It was a network of clandestine routes and safe houses established in the US during the early- to mid-19th century. It was used by enslaved African Americans primarily to escape into free states and Canada

• 1793: Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin, one of the key inventions of the Industrial Revolution that shaped the economy of the Antebellum South (from the War of 1812 to the start of the American Civil War in 1861; this era was marked by the prevalent practice of slavery and the associated societal norms it cultivated.) Whitney’s invention was a machine that quickly and easily separated cotton fibres from their seeds, enabling much greater productivity than manual cotton separation. It made upland short cotton into a profitable crop, which strengthened the economic foundation of slavery in the US and prolonged the institution 

• 1796, May: Edward Jenner created the smallpox vaccine, the world’s first vaccine. Called “the father of immunology”, Jenner’s work is said to have “saved more lives than the work of any other human”. Noting the common observation that milkmaids were generally immune to smallpox, Jenner postulated that the pus in the blisters that milkmaids received from cowpox (a disease similar to smallpox, but much less virulent) protected them from smallpox. Jenner tested his hypothesis by inoculating an eight-year-old boy. He scraped pus from cowpox blisters on the hands of a milkmaid who had caught cowpox from a cow; the boy showed no sign of infection

• 1798: An Essay on the Principle of Population was published by Thomas Malthus. The book warned of future difficulties, on an interpretation of the population increasing in geometric progression (so as to double every 25 years) while food production increased in an arithmetic progression, which would leave a difference resulting in the want of food and famine, unless birth rates decreased. Malthus, who was an Anglican clergyman, recommended late marriage and sexual abstinence as methods of birth control. But just as Malthus reached his conclusions, the world changed. Increased crop yields, improvements in sanitation, and accelerated urbanization led not to an endless cycle of impoverishment and contraction but to an explosion of global population in the nineteenth century  

• 1798-1815: The Napoleonic Wars were a series of major global conflicts pitting the French Empire and its allies, led by Napoleon I, against a fluctuating array of European states formed into various coalitions. It produced a period of French domination over most of continental Europe. The wars stemmed from the unresolved disputes associated with the French Revolution and the French Revolutionary Wars (See “1792-1802”, “1804, Dec”,1812, Sept”, “1813, Oct” and “1814, Sept-1815, June”)

• 1798, July: Napoleon attacked Egypt. While the campaign eventually flagged and Napoleon returned the France, the expedition had a tremendous scientific success examining and recording Egypt’s history and collecting artifacts (including the Rosetta Stone)

• 1799, Dec: The metric system was officially born: the standard meter, kilogram and litre were calculated. It is the international decimal system of weights and measures, based on the metre for length and the kilogram for mass. It is now used officially in almost all countries except Myanmar (Burma), Liberia, and the United States. (In the US it would help in communicating better.) The French parliament decided that the meridian of the Earth – but just the quarter of it that ran from the North Pole to the equator – was to be measured and divided into 10 million parts; the result would be called the meter (from the Greek noun meaning measure). They calculated the surveyed length in terms of 5,130,740 French toise; that became the standard meter that post revolutionary France would gift to the world. This length was then cast out of platinum and presented to the National Assembly. A few months later a kilogram and litre were also calculated. It took the International community seven decades to agree (See ”1668”, “1770” and “1975”)