It will be convenient to have a timeline of the major world events that I can refer to in my posts. Please let me know any errors that you may see. My goal is to provide a consistent and accurate timeline.
Note: I used c. to denote circa or about
I have added descriptive links to some events, and will try to add more links in the future.
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| Before 10k BCE | Last Ice Age |
| 3.1k BCE | First king of Egypt, King Menes |
| 2.5k BCE | Mohenjo Daro civilization in India |
| 2.1k - 1.6k BCE | The Xia Dynasty of China |
| Before 1.7k BCE | Abraham came to Jerusalem from Ur (Old Testament) |
| 1.4k BCE | City of Troy, kingdom of Crete, and other Greek cities |
| 1.4k - 0.9k BCE | Olmec civilization in Mexico |
| 776 BCE | First Olympiad |
| 558-530 BCE | Cyrus ruled North India |
| Until 536 BCE | Daries I, II, III ruled North India; until Chandagupta, Persian and Greek kings ruled North India |
| 563-483 BCE | Buddha Gotama |
| 470-399 BCE | Philosopher Socrates |
| 538 BCE | Old Testament was written |
| 424-348 BCE | Plato: First Western philosopher whose writings survived intact |
| 384 - 322 BCE | Aristotle: student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great |
| c. 333 BCE | Emperor Alexander's Empire peaks |
| 323 - 325 BCE | Alexander the Great in India |
| 268-231 BCE | Emperor Asoka ruled North India |
| 307-276 BCE | King Devanampiyatissa in Sri Lanka |
| 247 BCE | Ven. Mahinda in Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka |
| 41 BCE | Beginning of the Roman Empire |
| 29 BCE | Tipitaka written down in Sri Lanka |
| 6–4 BC to 30–33 AD | Jesus of Nazareth or Jesus Christ |
| 31 BCE | Augustus becomes the first Roman Emperor and ruled until 14 CE |
| c. 150-250 CE | Life of Nagarjuna; considered to be the founder of Mahāyāna Buddhism |
| After 200 CE | Roman empire starts to decline |
| 4th century CE | Buddhism introduced to Korea |
| 380 CE | Christianity became the official religion in Roman empire |
| 5th century CE | Burma adopts Theravada Buddhism |
| 412-434 CE | Buddhaghosa arrives in Sri Lanka and writes Visuddhimagga |
| 552 CE | Buddhism enters Japan from Korea |
| 589 CE | First Chinese commentaries written |
| 586 CE | Beginning of the Dark Ages in Europe with the decay of the Roman empire |
| 6th century CE | First diffusion of Buddhism in Tibet |
| 570-632 CE | Prophet Muhammad |
| 622 CE - (1258-1492) CE | Islamic Golden Age |
| 618-907 CE | Chinese T’ang dynasty; golden age of Buddhism in China |
| 1215 CE | King John signs the Magna Carta granting rights to English citizens |
| 1280 | Eyeglasses invented in Italy |
| c. 1420 - c. 1600 | Renaissance in Europe starting in Florence, Italy |
| 1450 | Gutenberg in Germany invents the printing press |
| 1492 | Modern Age begins with the arrival of Columbus in America |
| 1564–1642 | Galileo Galilei |
| 1596–1650 | René Descartes |
| 1610 | Galelio announces observation of mountains on the Moon and the existence of four planets. |
| 1642 | Adding machine invented by Blaise Pascal |
| 1643–1727 | Isaac Newton |
| c. 1650 - c. 1800 | European "Enlightenment" |
| 1662 | Fermat's Principle of Least Time |
| 1678 | Huygens' wave theory |
| 1687 | Newton published Principia Mathematica |
| 1688 | English revolution |
| 1698 | Steam engine invented by Thomas Savery |
| 1749–1827 | P.S. de Laplace |
| 1774 | Priestly isolates oxygen |
| 1776 | America declares independence from England |
| 1789 | French revolution period |
| 1791 | Steamboat invented by John Fitch |
| 1798 | Vaccination invented by Edward Jenner |
| 1804 | Locomotive invented by Richard Trevithick |
| 1809–1882 | Charles Darwin |
| 1816 | Huygens–Fresnel principle explaining light interference |
| 1821 | Faraday demonstrates the principle of the electric motor |
| 1822 | Charles Babbage designs his first mechanical computer |
| 1826 | Photography invented by Joseph Nicephore Niepce |
| 1834 | Refrigerator invented by Jacob Perkins |
| 1835 | Morse code invented by Samuel Morse |
| 1837 | American Samuel Morse invented telegraph |
| 1842 | Anaesthesia invented by Crawford Long |
| 1843 | Typewriter invented by Charles Thurber |
| 1846 | Rotary printing press invented by Richard M. Hoe |
| 1859 | Charles Darwin publishes The Origin of Species |
| 1868 | Poisson explained Young's double slit experiment with Huygens–Fresnel principle |
| 1869 | Mendeleev produces the Periodic Table |
| 1873 | Maxwell states the laws of electro-magnetic radiation |
| 1877 | Phonograph invented by Thomas Alva Edison;Microphone invented by Emile Berliner |
| 1878 | Edison invents the incandescent lamp |
| 1883 | First skyscraper built in Chicago (ten stories) |
| 1888 | Hertz produces radio waves |
| 1893 | Wireless communication invented by Nikola Tesla |
| 1895 | Diesel engine invented by Rudolf Diesel |
| 1898 | Remote control invented by Nikola Tesla |
| 1900 | Planck develops quantum theory |
| 1901 | Vacuum cleaner invented by Hubert Booth |
| 1903 | Powered airplane invented by Wilbur Wright and Orville Wright |
| 1905 | Einstein proved that photon is a particle |
| 1905 | Einstein’s Theory of Relativity |
| 1907 | Color photography invented by Auguste and Louis Lumiere |
| 1908 | Henry Ford mass-produces the Model T |
| 1919 | London to Paris air service begins |
| 1923 | Sound film invented by Lee DeForest |
| 1923 | Edwin Hubble discovers the first galaxy other than Milky Way |
| 1928 | Antibiotics, penicillin invented by Alexander Fleming |
| 1937 | Jet engine invented by Frank Whittle and Hans von Ohain |
| 1937 | Alan Turing develops the concept of a theoretical computing machine |
| 1945 | The atomic bomb |
| 1951 | Nuclear power reactor invented by Walter Zinn |
| 1957 | Sputnik I and Sputnik II: Sputnik I and Sputnik II are launched by the Russians |
| 1958 | The first integrated circuit, or silicon chip, is produced by the US Jack Kilby & Robert Noyce |
| 1960 | Laser invented by Theodore Harold Maiman |
| 1961 | Uri Gagarin is the first man in space |
| 1965 | The Big Bang theory confirmed by Penzias and Wilson |
| 1969 | Neil Armstrong sets foot on the moon |
| 1971 | E-mail invented by Ray Tomlinson |
| 1971 | Floppy Disk invented by David Noble with IBM |
| 1973 | Ethernet invented by Bob Metcalfe and David Boggs |
| 1973 | Personal computer invented by Xerox PARC |
| 1983 | Camcorder invented by Sony |
| 1990 | World Wide Web invented by Tim Berners-Lee |
| 2001 | World center attack |
| 2001 | Digital satellite radio |
| 2003 | Completion of the Human Genome Project |
| 2008 | Discovery of ice on Mars |
| 2014 | First comet landing |
| 2014 | NASA completes a successful test flight of Orion spacecraft for future trips to Mars |
| 2014 | Number of websites on the internet reached 1 billion |