20th century

◍ Open on the globe

1901 – 2000 · 200 events

What happened around the world

Whole world

1914–1918 World War I — A shot in Sarajevo brings down four empires
1918–1920 Spanish flu pandemic — Flu infects a third of humanity and kills more than the war
1920 League of Nations founded — The first worldwide organisation to keep the peace
1939–1945 World War II — Germany invades Poland, starting history's largest war
1945 Founding of the United Nations — Nations create a body to prevent future wars
1947–1991 Cold War — The US and USSR rival worldwide without direct war
1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights — The UN sets out rights shared by all people
1949 Founding of NATO — An attack on one is an attack on all: the West unites
1980 Smallpox declared eradicated — For the first time, humanity wipes out a disease

Europe

1901 First Nobel Prizes — Nobel's will creates the top award in science and letters
1905 Einstein's miracle year and relativity — A patent clerk's four papers lay the base of modern physics
1908 Messina earthquake — A Sicilian city in ruins — Russian sailors are first to help
1910 Earth passes through Halley's Comet's tail — Newspapers spread panic as hucksters sell 'comet pills'
1912–1913 Balkan Wars — The Ottomans lose almost all of Europe — a prelude to world war
1918 Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes — The South Slavs unite in what will become Yugoslavia
1919 Treaty of Versailles — Peace terms that help sow the Second World War
1922 March on Rome: Mussolini takes power — Europe's first fascist regime takes power
1926 First public demonstration of television — Baird transmits moving human faces for the first time
1928 Discovery of penicillin — A mould kills bacteria — the first mass antibiotic
1933 Hitler comes to power — The Nazis build a dictatorship within months
1936–1939 Spanish Civil War — A rehearsal for WWII: the Republic against Franco
1936 Turing's universal machine — An abstract model that underlies every computer
1937 Picasso's Guernica — A response to a bombing becomes an anti-war icon
1938 Discovery of nuclear fission — Uranium splits — the road to nuclear power and the bomb
1938 Munich Agreement — Britain and France hand Hitler the Sudetenland for "peace"
1941–1945 The Holocaust — Nazi Germany murders six million European Jews
1944 D-Day: Normandy landings — The largest seaborne invasion opens a second front
1945–1946 Nuremberg trials — An international tribunal tries the leading Nazi war criminals
1948–1952 Marshall Plan — American billions rebuild Western Europe
1952 Great Smog of London — Coal smoke chokes the capital and leads to a Clean Air Act
1953 Discovery of the DNA double helix — Watson and Crick's model explains how heredity works
1957 Treaty of Rome — Six nations launch a common market, the core of the future EU
1961 Berlin Wall built — A city is cut in two overnight — the Cold War made concrete
1963 The Beatles' first album — An album cut in a day sets off Beatlemania
1968 May 1968 in France — Students build barricades and France grinds to a halt
1977 Last execution by guillotine — The guillotine is still in use in the year of Star Wars
1989 Invention of the World Wide Web — Berners-Lee links documents with hypertext
1989 Fall of the Berlin Wall — The border opens as the Cold War draws to a close
1990 German reunification — East Germany joins the West — Germany is one again
1991–2001 Yugoslav Wars — Yugoslavia's break-up brings war and ethnic cleansing
1992 Maastricht Treaty — Twelve states create the EU and set a path to the euro
1996 Dolly the sheep cloned — An adult animal copied — the world debates human cloning
2000 Death of the last Pyrenean ibex — A lost species is cloned — and goes extinct a second time

Eastern Europe & Russia

1905–1907 Russian Revolution of 1905 — After Bloody Sunday, the tsar grants a Duma and civil liberties
1908 Tunguska event — A cosmic blast flattens 80 million trees in the Siberian taiga
1917 October Revolution — The Bolsheviks seize power and found a socialist state
1917–1922 Russian Civil War — Reds against Whites — millions dead and mass emigration
1917 February Revolution — Nicholas II abdicates and Russia's monarchy falls
1922 Formation of the USSR — Four republics sign a treaty forming a new union
1925 Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin — Bold editing and the Odessa Steps reshape film language
1928–1932 First Five-Year Plan: Soviet industrialisation — Magnitka and Dneproges: the USSR builds industry at speed
1929–1933 Collectivization in the Soviet Union — Peasants are forced into collective farms, "kulaks" deported
1932–1933 Soviet famine of 1930–1933 — Forced grain requisitions cause millions of deaths
1936–1938 Great Purge — Mass arrests and executions sweep the Soviet Union
1939 Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact — A secret protocol splits Eastern Europe into spheres of influence
1941–1944 Siege of Leningrad — 872 days under siege, kept alive by the Road of Life
1941 German invasion of the USSR — The Eastern Front opens as Germany strikes the USSR
1941–1942 Battle of Moscow — A counteroffensive at the capital's gates drives the Germans back
1942–1943 Battle of Stalingrad — Paulus's army is encircled as the war turns
1943 Battle of Kursk — After Prokhorovka the initiative passes to the Red Army for good
1944 Warsaw Uprising — The Home Army battles the occupiers for 63 days
1945 German surrender and Victory Day — Unconditional surrender ends the war in Europe
1945 Yalta Conference — Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill shape the post-war world
1949 First Soviet atomic bomb test — The US nuclear monopoly ends and the arms race speeds up
1952 European bison return to the wild — A species saved only in captivity roams Białowieża again
1953 Death of Stalin — The ruler of three decades dies, opening a struggle for power
1954 Obninsk, the first grid-connected nuclear power plant — The atom feeds an industrial power grid for the first time
1955 Warsaw Pact — The Eastern Bloc forms a military alliance to counter NATO
1956 Secret Speech and the Khrushchev thaw — Khrushchev denounces Stalin and Gulag prisoners are rehabilitated
1956 Hungarian Revolution of 1956 — Budapest moves to leave the bloc; Soviet troops crush the revolt
1957 Sputnik 1, the first satellite — The USSR opens the space age
1961 Gagarin's flight — The first human in space circles the Earth
1963 Valentina Tereshkova's spaceflight — The first woman in space orbits Earth 48 times
1968 Prague Spring — Dubček's reforms are halted by Warsaw Pact troops
1979–1989 Soviet–Afghan War — The USSR fights the mujahideen for nearly a decade
1980 Solidarity — A shipyard strike sparks the movement that ends Polish communism
1984 Creation of Tetris — Falling blocks from Moscow conquer the world
1985–1991 Perestroika — Gorbachev launches glasnost and sweeping reforms
1986 Chernobyl disaster — The worst nuclear power accident empties Pripyat
1989 Revolutions of 1989 — Communist regimes fall one after another, mostly peacefully
1989 Baltic Way — A 675-km human chain links three nations seeking independence
1991 Dissolution of the Soviet Union — Fifteen independent states emerge from the Union
1991 1991 Soviet coup attempt — A failed bid to oust Gorbachev hastens the Soviet collapse
1993 Adoption of the Constitution of Russia — A national vote establishes a presidential republic
2000 Vladimir Putin elected President — Yeltsin's successor wins the election in the first round

Middle East

1905–1911 Persian Constitutional Revolution — Merchants and clerics force the shah to share power
1908 Oil struck at Masjed Soleyman — A gusher in the Persian hills opens the region's oil age
1908 Young Turk Revolution — Conspirator officers force the sultan to restore the constitution
1915 Armenian genocide — Deportations and massacres destroyed Anatolia's Armenians
1915–1916 Gallipoli campaign — A failed push on Istanbul becomes a day of ANZAC remembrance
1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement — The secret deal behind the map of the modern Middle East
1916–1918 The Arab Revolt — The Sharif of Mecca rises against the sultan, with Lawrence
1923 Proclamation of the Republic of Turkey — Atatürk builds a secular state from an empire's remains
1932 Kingdom of Saudi Arabia proclaimed — Thirty years of campaigns create a country named after a dynasty
1939 Erzincan earthquake — A frozen-night tremor: Turkey's deadliest 20th-century disaster
1948 Founding of the State of Israel — Ben-Gurion declares a state as war breaks out
1967 Six-Day War — Israel takes Sinai, Gaza, the West Bank and the Golan
1973 1973 oil crisis — An embargo quadruples prices and shakes the West
1979 Iranian Revolution — The shah leaves and Khomeini takes the helm
1980–1988 Iran–Iraq War — Eight years of trench warfare, and the border stayed put
1990–1991 Gulf War — Hundreds of burning oil wells and a 100-hour ground war

Africa

1904–1908 The Herero and Nama genocide — The 20th century's first genocide, in German South West Africa
1922 Discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb — A nearly intact pharaoh's tomb in the Valley of the Kings
1935–1937 Italy invades Ethiopia — Mustard gas against spears, and a powerless League of Nations
1942 Second Battle of El Alamein — Montgomery halts Rommel and secures the Suez Canal
1954–1962 Algerian War of Independence — A fight for independence topples France's Fourth Republic
1956 The Suez Crisis — Nasser seizes the canal, and Britain's superpower days end
1957 Independence of Ghana — First in sub-Saharan Africa to end colonial rule
1958 Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart — Colonialism through African eyes: Africa's defining novel
1960 Year of Africa — Seventeen nations win independence in a single year
1963 The Organisation of African Unity is founded — The Pan-African dream takes shape; 25 May becomes Africa Day
1967 First human heart transplant — Barnard swaps a heart — the transplant era begins
1967–1970 Nigerian Civil War and Biafra — Biafra's famine is the first beamed into living rooms worldwide
1974 Lucy is discovered — A 3.2-million-year-old skeleton shows ancestors walked upright
1983–1985 The Ethiopian famine — A BBC report gives birth to Band Aid and Live Aid
1992 Living in Bondage and the birth of Nollywood — A straight-to-video hit launches Nigeria's film industry
1994 End of apartheid in South Africa — The first all-race election makes Mandela president
1994 Rwandan genocide — About a hundred days of mass killing, mostly of Tutsi

Asia

1904–1905 Russo-Japanese War — Defeat at Tsushima hastens revolution in Russia
1911–1912 Xinhai Revolution — The fall of the Qing ends imperial China
1913 First Indian feature film — Phalke's silent epic gives birth to Indian cinema
1913 Tagore wins the Nobel Prize for Gitanjali — First non-European laureate opens Indian letters to the West
1923 Great Kantō earthquake — Tremors and fire whirls destroy Tokyo and Yokohama
1930 Gandhi's Salt March — Gandhi defies Britain's salt monopoly on foot
1931 China floods — Three great rivers overflow at once, drowning Wuhan for months
1934–1935 Long March — The communist retreat that made Mao their leader
1937–1945 Second Sino-Japanese War — A clash at Marco Polo Bridge becomes full-scale war
1945 Atomic bombing of Hiroshima — Nuclear weapons are used in war for the first time
1945 Indonesia proclaims independence — A few lines read out on a porch in Jakarta
1947 Independence and Partition of India — British rule ends and Pakistan is born
1949 Founding of the People's Republic of China — Mao proclaims a new state as the Kuomintang flees to Taiwan
1950–1953 Korean War — An armistice fixes a divided peninsula
1953 First ascent of Everest — Hillary and Tenzing on the roof of the world
1954 Battle of Dien Bien Phu — Guns hauled up mountains by hand end an empire in Asia
1955–1975 Vietnam War — A long Cold War conflict ends with the fall of Saigon
1955 Bandung Conference — Former colonies speak to the world on their own terms
1958–1962 Great Leap Forward — Mao's rush to industrialise brings a catastrophic famine
1964 First Shinkansen high-speed railway — Tokyo to Osaka at 210 km/h — the first high-speed line
1964 Tokyo Olympics — Asia's first Games show the world a renewed Japan
1970 Bhola cyclone — History's deadliest storm, a prelude to Bangladesh's independence
1971–1971 Bangladesh Liberation War — Nine months of war, and a new nation on the map
1972 Tu Youyou discovers artemisinin — An ancient wormwood recipe yields a malaria cure
1975–1979 The Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian genocide — 'Year Zero': a capital emptied within days
1976 Tangshan earthquake — A night tremor flattens an industrial city in seconds
c. 1976 Last traces of the Javan tiger — A crowded island leaves no room for its big cat
1978 Deng Xiaoping's reform and opening-up — Markets and opening-up launch China's decades of growth
1984 Bhopal disaster — The worst industrial disaster ever struck as a city slept
1989 Tiananmen Square protests — The army ends the protest and political reform stalls
1991 Eruption of Mount Pinatubo — Forecasts save thousands as the planet cools by half a degree
1998 Launch of the International Space Station — The Zarya module begins a shared home in orbit

Americas

1902 Eruption of Mount Pelée — A searing cloud erases the 'Paris of the Caribbean' in minutes
1903 Wright brothers' first flight — Twelve seconds aloft launch the age of aviation
1906 San Francisco earthquake — Shaking and fires destroy 80% of the city and teach seismology
1910–1920 Mexican Revolution — Díaz's fall leads to land reform and workers' rights
1912 Sinking of the Titanic — The “unsinkable” liner sinks after hitting an iceberg
1913 Ford's moving assembly line — Cars built in 90 minutes — motoring goes mass-market
1914 Opening of the Panama Canal — Ships no longer have to round Cape Horn
1914 Death of Martha, the last passenger pigeon — The bird whose flocks once darkened the sky is gone forever
1918 Death of the last Carolina parakeet — The eastern US loses its only native parrot
1922 Modern Art Week — Brazil seeks its own voice — its modernism begins
1927 The Jazz Singer and the talkies — The screen starts talking and silent film fades
1929 Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression — A stock crash triggers the century's worst slump
c. 1930–1936 Dust Bowl — Ploughed prairies turn to desert and farmers flee west
1945 ENIAC, the first general-purpose electronic computer — An 18,000-tube machine opens the computer age
1947 Invention of the transistor — A tiny semiconductor replaces the vacuum tube
1955 Salk polio vaccine declared safe — Trials prove it works — polio begins to retreat
1956 Dartmouth workshop: AI is born — A Dartmouth seminar names the science of thinking machines
1958 Birth of bossa nova — Whispered samba that conquered the world
1959 Cuban Revolution — Castro ousts Batista and the island allies with the USSR
1960 Great Chilean earthquake — The strongest quake ever measured sends waves across the Pacific
1960 Inauguration of Brasília — A plane-shaped capital raised in the savanna in four years
1962 Cuban Missile Crisis — Thirteen days on the brink of nuclear war
1963 March on Washington — Martin Luther King delivers "I Have a Dream"
1967 García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude — Macondo becomes the peak of magical realism
1968 Tlatelolco massacre — Students gunned down ten days before the Olympics
1969 Moon landing — Humans set foot on another world for the first time
c. 1970 Mass deforestation of the Amazon begins — A jungle highway opened the way for chainsaws and fires
1970 Pelé's third World Cup — Brazil keeps the Jules Rimet Trophy for ever
1971 First commercial microprocessor — A whole CPU on one chip — the road to personal computers
1973 Chilean coup d'état — Jets bomb the presidential palace; Allende dies
1977 Star Wars is released — Lucas's space saga launches the blockbuster era
1980 Eruption of Mount St. Helens — A mountainside collapses in the largest landslide ever recorded
1983 Birth of the Internet: ARPANET adopts TCP/IP — One common language links networks into a global web
1989 Last sighting of the golden toad — Monteverde's bright amphibian vanishes amid drought and fungus
1990 Launch of the Hubble Space Telescope — An eye in orbit refines the age of the universe
1997 Deep Blue defeats Kasparov — A machine beats a reigning world champion for the first time

Oceania

1901 Federation of Australia — Six colonies unite into one nation
1911 Amundsen reaches the South Pole — Norwegians beat Scott in the race to the Pole
1912 The death of Scott's polar party — Amundsen's tent awaited them at the Pole, then death
1936 Death of the last thylacine — The 'Tasmanian tiger' dies 59 days after gaining protection
1941 Attack on Pearl Harbor — Japan's strike pulls the US into World War II
1942 The Battle of Midway — Minutes that turned the tide of the Pacific War
1942–1943 The Guadalcanal campaign — Six months in the jungle for a single airfield
1954 The Castle Bravo test at Bikini — Expected 6 megatons, got 15 and radioactive snow
1959 The Antarctic Treaty — A whole continent declared a zone of peace and science
1973 Sydney Opera House opens — Utzon's sails become the symbol of Australia
1976 Hōkūleʻa sails to Tahiti — No compass, no charts: only stars, swells and birds
1985 Discovery of the ozone hole — CFCs thin the ozone over Antarctica and the world responds
1985 The sinking of the Rainbow Warrior — French spies bombed a Greenpeace ship in a foreign port
1992 The Mabo decision — A court ruled Australia was never "nobody's land"

Who ruled

Rus and Russia: Nicholas II 1894 – 1917, Provisional Government 1917 – 1917, Vladimir Lenin 1917 – 1924, Joseph Stalin 1924 – 1953, Nikita Khrushchev 1953 – 1964, Leonid Brezhnev 1964 – 1982, Yuri Andropov 1982 – 1984, Konstantin Chernenko 1984 – 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev 1985 – 1991, Boris Yeltsin 1991 – 1999, Putin 2000 – 2008
England and Britain: Queen Victoria 1837 – 1901, Edward VII 1901 – 1910, George V 1910 – 1936, George VI 1936 – 1952, Elizabeth II since 1952
Franks and France: Third Republic 1870 – 1940, Vichy France 1940 – 1944, Fourth Republic 1946 – 1958, Fifth Republic since 1958
Holy Roman Empire & Austria: Franz Joseph I 1848 – 1916, Charles I of Austria 1916 – 1918
Ottoman Empire: Abdul Hamid II 1876 – 1909, Mehmed V Reşad 1909 – 1918, Mehmed VI 1918 – 1922, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk 1923 – 1938
US presidents: William McKinley 1897 – 1901, Theodore Roosevelt 1901 – 1909, William Howard Taft 1909 – 1913, Woodrow Wilson 1913 – 1921, Warren G. Harding 1921 – 1923, Calvin Coolidge 1923 – 1929, Herbert Hoover 1929 – 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt 1933 – 1945, Harry S. Truman 1945 – 1953, Dwight D. Eisenhower 1953 – 1961, John F. Kennedy 1961 – 1963, Lyndon B. Johnson 1963 – 1969, Richard Nixon 1969 – 1974, Gerald Ford 1974 – 1977, Jimmy Carter 1977 – 1981, Ronald Reagan 1981 – 1989, George H. W. Bush 1989 – 1993, Clinton 1993 – 2001
China: dynasties: Qing 1644 – 1912, Republic of China 1912 – 1949, People's Republic since 1949
Japan: shoguns & emperors: Emperor Meiji 1868 – 1912, Emperor Taishō 1912 – 1926, Hirohito (Emperor Shōwa) 1926 – 1989, Emperor Akihito (Heisei era) since 1989
India: empires: British Raj 1858 – 1947, Republic of India since 1947

20th century

What happened around the world

Whole world

Europe

Eastern Europe & Russia

Middle East

Africa

Asia

Americas

Oceania

Who ruled

Largest states