2380 BCE
Urukagina, author of one of the first codes of laws, reigns in Lagash
1760 BCE
Hammurabi's code is published
17th century BCE
Zarathustra, the founder of Zoroastrianism, lives
1812 BCE
Abraham, the father of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, is born
1235 BCE
Sundiata Kieta becomes the King of Mali
1200 BCE
Vyasa writes the Hindu Vedas
900-800 BCE
Homer writes the Iliad and the Odyssey
594 BCE
Solon is entrusted with writing a new Athenian constitution
563 BCE
Siddhartha (Buddha) is born
554 BCE
Confucius is born
550 BCE
Lao-Tze, founder of Taoism, is born
550 BCE
Cyrus overcomes the Medians in the Persians' first victory
434 BCE
Peloponnesian War begins with Pericles as a leading Athenian statesman
360 BCE
Plato publishes The Republic
335 BCE
Aristotle builds his school of philosophy in Athens
329 BCE
Alexander the Great defeats the Achaemenid Persian Empire
320 BCE
Chandragupta found the Maurya Empire
273 BCE
Reign of Ashoka begins in India
210 BCE
Shi Huangdi, 1st emperor of China, founds the Qin dynasty
206 BCE-195 BCE
Liu Bang, the first emperor of the Han dynasty, reigns
63 BCE
Cicero is elected Consul
49 BCE
Julius Caesar becomes sole leader of Rome and dissolves the Roman Republic
27 BCE
Octavian becomes the first Roman emperor
5 BCE
Jesus is born
36 AD
Paul's conversion to Christianity
272 AD
Constantine, who would go on to be Roman emperor
496 AD
Clovis, King of the Franks, converts to Christianity
570 AD
Justinian becomes the Byzantine Emperor
604 AD
Prince Shotoku publishes the Seventeen Article Constitution in Japan
622 AD
Muhammad leads the Hegira
732 AD
Charles Martel leads the Franks to defeat the Moors at the Battle of Tours
800 AD
Charlemagne is crowned the first Holy Roman Emperor
1066 AD
William the Conqueror begins his reign in England
1095 AD
Pope Urban II calls for crusades to take back the holy land
1187 AD
Saladin takes back Jerusalem for the Muslims during the Crusades
1206 AD
At the age of 42, Temujin takes the title Genghis Khan, which means "Universal Ruler"
1270 AD
Marco Polo departs on his voyage to China
1324 AD
Mansa Musa sets out of his famous pilgrimage to Mecca
1368 AD
Hongwu founds the Ming Dynasty
1405 AD
First voyage of Chinese explorer Zheng He
1420 AD
Portuguese explorers begin looking around
1431 AD
Joan of Arc is burned at the stake at age 19
1438 AD
Pachacuti, the founder of the Incan Empire, is born
1439 AD
Johann Gutenberg invents the printing press
1448 AD
Moctezuma I becomes the fifth Aztec emperor
1492 AD
Christopher Columbus "discovers" the "new world"
1497 AD
John Cabot becomes the first explorer to "discover" North America
1503 AD
Leonardo da Vinci is commissioned to paint the Mona Lisa
1509 AD
Henry VIII becomes King of England
1519 AD
Martin Luther posts the 95 Theses
1520 AD
Suleyman the Magnificent becomes Sultan
1534 AD
Cartier lands in Canada
1536 AD
John Calvin publishes the Institutes of Christian Religion
1542 AD
Akbar the Great, who would become an Indian ruler, was born
1558 AD
Queen Elizabeth I becomes Queen of England
1603 AD
The reunification of Japan under Tokugawa Ieyasu
1616 AD
Galileo begins having difficulties with the church
1637 AD
Rene Descartes, the father of modern philosophy, publishes his first works
1648 AD
Taj Mahal is completed in India under the direction of Shah Jahan
1652 AD
Jan van Riebeck and other Dutch settlers found Capetown
1653 AD
Oliver Cromwell becomes the leader of England after the English Civil War
1654 AD
Louis XIV is crowned King of France
1682 AD
Peter the Great becomes Czar of Russia
1687 AD
Newton publishes the Principia
1689 AD
John Locke publishes the Two Treatises of Government
1762 AD
Catherine the Great becomes ruler of Russia
1764 AD
Hargreaves invents the spinning jenny and kicks off the Industrial Revolution
1782 AD
Mary Wollstonecraft wrote A Vindication of Women's Rights
1793 AD
Marie Antoinette is guillotined during the French Revolution
1804 AD
Napoleon crowns himself emperor of France
1812 AD
Shaka Zulu creates the Zulu Empire
1819 AD
Simon Bolivar founds Gran Colombia after liberating South America from Spain
1842 AD
King Leopold I tries and fails to pass a child labor law in Belgium
1848 AD
Karl Marx and Fredrich Engels publish The Communist Manifesto
1859 AD
Charles Darwin publishes The Origin of Species
1861 AD
Victor Emmanuel II becomes the first king of a united Italy
1871 AD
Otto van Bismarck oversees the reunification of Germany
1876 AD
Leo Tolstoy writes Anna Karenina
1877 AD
Thomas Edison invents the phonograph
1889 AD
Cecil Rhodes gets a license from the British government to rule southern Africa
1907 AD
Rachel Carson, author of Silent Spring, is born
1914 AD
Francis Ferdinand is assassinated, starting World War I
1917 AD
V.I. Lenin seizes control of Russia during the Russian Revolution
1921 AD
Albert Einstein receives the Nobel Prize for physics
1922 AD
Joseph Stalin becomes the leader of the USSR after Lenin's death
1930 AD
Gandhi leads the Salt March in India
1932 AD
Adolf Hitler becomes chancellor of Germany
1946 AD
Ho Chi Minh becomes prime minister/president of North Vietnam
1946 AD
Jawarhal Nehru is elected the first president of post-colonial India
1949 AD
Mao Tse-tung becomes the chairman of the People's Republic of China
1953 AD
Nikita Kruschev comes to power in the Soviet Union
1959 AD
Fidel Castro becomes leader of Cuba
1963 AD
Martin Luther King, Jr. delivers the "I Have a Dream" speech during the march to Washington
1990 AD
Mikhail Gorbachev wins the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in ending the Cold War
1994 AD
Former prisoner Nelson Mandela is elected president of South Africa