All of world history at once, on a globe

How it works

1. Scrub time on the timelineDrag the timeline at the bottom or press ▶ — the years run by themselves and state borders shift before your eyes.
2. See what was happening worldwideThe “Meanwhile” panel gathers the events, people and rulers of those years from every continent.
3. Tap an event or a countryYou get the story, a picture, the capital, the rulers and who lived nearby.

Four ways to look

Articles and collections

What happened at the same time

Key events

• c. 300,000 BC The earliest Homo sapiens — Our species already lives in Africa, with faces like ours
• c. 2000 BC Last woolly mammoths — Mammoths still roam while the pyramids are centuries old
• c. 261 BC Kalinga War — A bloody conquest turns Ashoka toward Buddhism
• 622 Hijra: Muhammad's migration to Medina — The first Muslim community forms and the Islamic calendar starts
• 1215 Magna Carta — Barons curb the king — a root of the rule of law
• 1521 Fall of Tenochtitlan — The Aztec empire ends and Mexico City rises from its ruins
• 1721 Proclamation of the Russian Empire — Victory over Sweden makes Peter the Great an emperor
• 1853–1854 Commodore Perry's Black Ships — American steamships' guns force open a closed Japan
• 1914 Opening of the Panama Canal — Ships no longer have to round Cape Horn
• 1939–1945 World War II — Germany invades Poland, starting history's largest war
• 1961 Gagarin's flight — The first human in space circles the Earth
• 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami — Waves cripple Fukushima: worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl

All 829 events →

People

Hammurabi1810 BC–1750 BCQin Shi Huang259 BC–210 BCVladimir the Great960–1015Nicolaus Copernicus1473–1543Kangxi Emperor1654–1722Alexander Pushkin1799–1837Mahatma Gandhi1869–1948Yuri Gagarin1934–1968

All 697 people →

By century

• 36th century BC
• 34th century BC
• 33rd century BC
• 32nd century BC
• 31st century BC
• 28th century BC
• 27th century BC
• 26th century BC
• 24th century BC
• 23rd century BC
• 22nd century BC
• 21st century BC
• 20th century BC
• 18th century BC
• 17th century BC
• 16th century BC
• 15th century BC
• 14th century BC
• 13th century BC
• 12th century BC
• 11th century BC
• 10th century BC
• 9th century BC
• 8th century BC
• 7th century BC
• 6th century BC
• 5th century BC
• 4th century BC
• 3rd century BC
• 2nd century BC
• 1st century BC
• Prehistory
• 1st century
• 2nd century
• 3rd century
• 4th century
• 5th century
• 6th century
• 7th century
• 8th century
• 9th century
• 10th century
• 11th century
• 12th century
• 13th century
• 14th century
• 15th century
• 16th century
• 17th century
• 18th century
• 19th century
• 20th century
• 21st century

Questions