History

Non-avian dinosaurs went extinct approximately 66 million years ago when a 10-km asteroid struck what is now the Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico, creating the 180-km-wide Chicxulub crater.

ARPANET — the internet's precursor — launched in 1969 with a message between UCLA and Stanford. Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1991. The internet now connects over 5.3 billion users.

Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space on April 12, 1961, orbiting Earth once aboard Vostok 1 in a flight lasting 108 minutes. He reached an altitude of 327 km.

Apollo 11 landed on the Moon on July 20, 1969. Neil Armstrong became the first human to set foot on the lunar surface, followed by Buzz Aldrin 19 minutes later. The mission lasted 8 days.

The Great Fire of London raged from September 2–6, 1666, destroying 13,200 houses, 87 churches, and St. Paul's Cathedral. Remarkably, only 6 verified deaths were recorded.

The Black Death peaked between 1347 and 1351, killing an estimated 75–200 million people — roughly 30–60% of Europe's population. It was caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis.

The Eiffel Tower was built between 1887 and 1889, completed in just 2 years, 2 months, and 5 days. Standing 330 meters tall, it was originally meant to be temporary for the 1889 World's Fair.

Anatomically modern humans, Homo sapiens, emerged in Africa roughly 300,000 years ago. Our wider genus, Homo, dates back more than 2 million years.

The earliest known full writing system, Sumerian cuneiform, appeared in Mesopotamia around 3400 to 3200 BCE. Egyptian hieroglyphs emerged at nearly the same time.

The Western Roman Empire fell in 476 CE, when the last emperor was deposed. The Eastern half, the Byzantine Empire, endured until 1453.

The last glacial period ended about 11,700 years ago, as Earth warmed into the current Holocene epoch, allowing agriculture and civilization to flourish.

The Great Pyramid of Giza was built around 2560 BCE for Pharaoh Khufu. It was the tallest human-made structure on Earth for nearly 3,800 years.

The earliest dinosaurs appeared about 230 million years ago during the Triassic period, long before the more famous giants of the Jurassic and Cretaceous.

Johannes Gutenberg invented the movable-type printing press in Europe around 1440. It revolutionized the spread of information and helped launch the modern age.

World War II ended in 1945 — in Europe on May 8 (V-E Day) and in the Pacific on September 2, after Japan's formal surrender.

Alexander Graham Bell patented the telephone in 1876 and made the first call that year. It transformed human communication forever.

Farming began around 12,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East, as people domesticated wild plants and animals at the end of the last Ice Age.

World War One began in 1914, triggered by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and lasted until 1918.

Practical electric power arrived in the 1880s, when Thomas Edison opened the first commercial power stations to light cities.

The Cold War ended in 1991 with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, after decades of tension between it and the United States.

The wheel was invented around 3500 BCE in Mesopotamia — first for making pottery, and only later for transport.

The Renaissance began in Italy around the 14th century and flourished through the 17th, reviving art, science, and learning.

The telescope was invented in the Netherlands in 1608, and Galileo turned an improved version to the sky the following year.

The Industrial Revolution began in Britain around 1760, transforming manufacturing with machines, factories, and steam power.

The first permanent photograph was made in 1826 by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, after an exposure lasting several hours.

ENIAC, one of the first general-purpose electronic computers, was completed in 1945 and filled an entire room.

The ancient Olympic Games began in 776 BCE in Olympia, Greece. The modern Olympics were revived in 1896.

Practical steam engines emerged in the early 1700s, and James Watt greatly improved the design in the 1760s and 1770s.

Humans reached the Americas at least 15,000 years ago, and possibly earlier, likely crossing from Asia during the last Ice Age.

The antibiotic era began in 1928 with Alexander Fleming discovery of penicillin, though it took until the 1940s to become a usable drug.

The first photograph to include a person was taken by Louis Daguerre in 1838, showing a man having his shoes shined on a Paris street.

The Rosetta Stone was discovered by French soldiers in July 1799 during Napoleon campaign in Egypt.

Edward Jenner created the first vaccine in 1796 by inoculating a boy with cowpox material to protect against smallpox.

RMS Titanic sank in the early hours of 15 April 1912 after striking an iceberg in the North Atlantic.

Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin in September 1928 when he noticed mould killing bacteria in a petri dish.

The Chernobyl nuclear disaster occurred on 26 April 1986 at the No. 4 reactor in the Ukrainian SSR.

The first network email was sent by Ray Tomlinson in late 1971 between two ARPANET-connected computers sitting side by side.

The Berlin Wall fell on 9 November 1989, when East Germany opened its borders after weeks of mass protests.

The first successful human heart transplant was performed on 3 December 1967 by Dr Christiaan Barnard in Cape Town, South Africa.

Mount Vesuvius erupted on 24 August 79 AD (some recent evidence suggests October), burying Pompeii under metres of volcanic ash.

The Suez Canal opened on 17 November 1869, connecting the Mediterranean and Red Seas.

King John of England sealed the Magna Carta on 15 June 1215 at Runnymede, near Windsor.

Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite, was launched by the Soviet Union on 4 October 1957.

The Black Death arrived in Europe in October 1347 when infected merchant ships docked at the Sicilian port of Messina.

The Diamond Sutra, printed in China in 868 AD, is the earliest known dated printed book; Gutenberg Bible (c. 1455) was the first with movable type in Europe.

James Watson and Francis Crick published the double-helix structure of DNA on 25 April 1953.

The French Revolution is generally dated from the storming of the Bastille on 14 July 1789.

Dmitri Mendeleev published his periodic table in 1869, organising elements by atomic weight and predicting undiscovered elements.

The Silk Road trade network was formally established around 130 BC when the Chinese Han Dynasty opened trade routes westward.

Orville and Wilbur Wright achieved the first sustained, controlled, powered flight on 17 December 1903 at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.

The Great Fire of Rome broke out on 18 July 64 AD during the reign of Emperor Nero and burned for six days.

The Roman Republic was established around 509 BC when the Romans overthrew their last king, Tarquinius Superbus.

The earliest surviving photograph, "View from the Window at Le Gras," was taken by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce around 1826-27.

The Bronze Age began around 3300 BC in the Near East, when humans first alloyed copper with tin to create bronze.

John Logie Baird demonstrated the first live television broadcast on 26 January 1926 in London.

The Panama Canal officially opened on 15 August 1914, connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

Charles Darwin published "On the Origin of Species" on 24 November 1859, presenting the theory of evolution by natural selection.

The first nuclear weapon, codenamed "Trinity," was detonated on 16 July 1945 in New Mexico, USA.

The transistor was invented on 16 December 1947 at Bell Telephone Laboratories in New Jersey by John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley.

The Mongol Empire reached its greatest extent around 1279 under Kublai Khan, controlling about 24 million square kilometres — the largest contiguous land empire in history.

The first clinical use of penicillin on a human patient occurred on 12 February 1941, when Albert Alexander, a policeman dying of sepsis at the Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford, received injections of partially purified penicillin.

The Age of Exploration is generally considered to have begun in the early 15th century, around 1415, when Portugal Prince Henry the Navigator sponsored voyages along the West African coast.

The first successful coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery was performed on 9 May 1960 by Dr Robert Goetz at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York.

The Suez Crisis occurred from 29 October to 7 November 1956, when Britain, France, and Israel invaded Egypt after President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalised the Suez Canal.

The first organised mass vaccination campaign began shortly after Edward Jenner published his smallpox vaccine findings in 1798 — by 1801, over 100,000 people in Britain had been vaccinated.

The Great Wall was built and rebuilt over roughly 2,000 years, from the 7th century BCE through the Ming Dynasty; the most iconic stone-and-brick sections were completed during the Ming era (1368-1644).

Pluto was discovered on 18 February 1930 by Clyde Tombaugh at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, after a systematic photographic survey of the sky.

The Viking Age is traditionally dated from the raid on Lindisfarne monastery in northeast England on 8 June 793 CE, and lasted until the Norman Conquest of England in 1066.

Joseph Fourier first described the greenhouse effect in 1824, and Eunice Newton Foote demonstrated CO2 warming experimentally in 1856, three years before John Tyndall published similar findings.

The Maya Classic Period, representing their cultural and population peak, lasted from approximately 250 to 900 CE, when great cities like Tikal, Palenque, and Calakmul flourished in present-day Guatemala, Mexico, Belize, and Honduras.

The Soviet Union launched Salyut 1, the world first space station, on 19 April 1971, and the first crew (Soyuz 11) occupied it for 23 days in June 1971.

Dolly the sheep, the first mammal cloned from an adult somatic cell, was born on 5 July 1996 at the Roslin Institute in Scotland, created by Sir Ian Wilmut and Keith Campbell.

The ESA Rosetta spacecraft completed its mission on 30 September 2016 with a controlled crash-landing on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, after orbiting and studying the comet for over two years and deploying the Philae lander in 2014.

The Ottoman Empire officially ended on 1 November 1922, when the Grand National Assembly of Turkey abolished the sultanate; the last sultan, Mehmed VI, left Istanbul on 17 November aboard a British warship.

The original Hubble Deep Field image was taken between 18 and 28 December 1995, when the Hubble Space Telescope was pointed at an apparently empty patch of sky for 10 consecutive days, revealing about 3,000 galaxies in an area smaller than a grain of sand held at arm's length.

The Neolithic Revolution — the transition from hunter-gatherer nomadism to settled agriculture — began independently in several regions starting about 12,000 years ago (circa 10,000 BCE) in the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East.

The first successful long-term organ transplant was a kidney transplant on 23 December 1954 by Dr Joseph Murray at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston, between identical twins Richard and Ronald Herrick.

The Dead Sea Scrolls were first discovered in early 1947 by Bedouin shepherds in caves near Qumran on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea in the West Bank.

The first crude electric vehicles were built in the 1830s, with Scottish inventor Robert Anderson constructing one around 1832-1839; by the 1890s, electric cars were among the most popular automobiles in America.

The Terracotta Army was discovered on 29 March 1974 by local farmers digging a well near Xi'an, Shaanxi Province, China — they unearthed pottery fragments that led to the excavation of one of the most spectacular archaeological finds in history.

The 1918 influenza pandemic (misleadingly called "Spanish flu") was first officially recorded on 4 March 1918 at Camp Funston, Kansas, USA, and spread worldwide over three devastating waves through 1920.

Fruit flies became the first animals in space on 20 February 1947, launched aboard a US V-2 rocket; the first mammal in orbit was Laika, a Soviet dog launched on Sputnik 2 on 3 November 1957.

The Home Insurance Building in Chicago, completed in 1885, is generally considered the world first skyscraper — it was the first tall building to use a structural steel frame rather than load-bearing masonry walls.

On 9 September 1947, operators of the Harvard Mark II computer found a moth trapped in a relay, which they taped into the logbook with the note "first actual case of bug being found" — popularising the term "debugging" in computing.

Jonas Salk announced his inactivated polio vaccine (IPV) on 12 April 1955, following a massive trial involving 1.8 million children; Albert Sabin oral vaccine (OPV) followed in 1961, enabling the near-eradication of polio worldwide.

The non-bird dinosaurs went extinct about 66 million years ago after an asteroid impact.

The Great Depression began with the Wall Street Crash of October 1929 and lasted through the 1930s.

Humans first landed on the Moon on 20 July 1969, when NASA Apollo 11 mission touched down and astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first person to step onto the lunar surface, followed by Buzz Aldrin.

The ancient Olympics began in 776 BC in Greece; the modern Games were revived in 1896.

Electricity was not discovered in a single moment; ancient people knew of static electricity and electric fish, but the scientific understanding developed over the 1600s-1800s, with key breakthroughs by Franklin, Volta, Faraday, and others.

The first general-purpose electronic computers appeared in the 1940s, though the idea is older.

The Wright brothers made the first powered, controlled aeroplane flight on 17 December 1903.

The Great Pyramids of Giza were built during Egypt Fourth Dynasty, around 2600-2500 BCE — more than 4,500 years ago; the Great Pyramid of Khufu was completed around 2560 BCE and remained the world tallest structure for nearly 4,000 years.

The Black Death, the deadliest pandemic in recorded history, swept through Europe, Asia, and North Africa between 1347 and 1351, killing an estimated 75-200 million people — up to half of Europe population.

The internet foundations were laid in 1969 with ARPANET, the first network to use packet switching; the modern internet took shape in the 1980s with the TCP/IP protocol (1983), and the World Wide Web was invented in 1989-1991.

Dinosaurs first appeared around 230-240 million years ago during the Triassic period; they dominated life on land for about 165 million years until a mass extinction wiped out all non-bird dinosaurs 66 million years ago.

Agriculture first developed independently in several regions starting around 10,000-12,000 years ago, after the last Ice Age; the earliest known farming arose in the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East, transforming human society forever.

The Great Fire of London raged from 2 to 6 September 1666, destroying much of the medieval city.

The first antibiotic era began in 1928 with penicillin, though mass production only arrived in the 1940s.

Antarctica was first sighted in 1820 by Russian, British, and American expeditions; the first confirmed landing came in 1821, and the interior remained largely unexplored until the early 20th-century "Heroic Age" of exploration.

The Berlin Airlift ran from June 1948 to May 1949, when Western allies flew in supplies to West Berlin after the Soviet Union blockaded all land routes into the city.

The California Gold Rush began in 1848 after gold was discovered at Sutter Mill and peaked in 1849, drawing around 300,000 fortune-seekers known as forty-niners.

The Cuban Missile Crisis unfolded over 13 days in October 1962, when the discovery of Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba brought the United States and the Soviet Union to the brink of nuclear war.

The first wheeled vehicle to operate on the Moon was the Soviet robotic Lunokhod 1, which landed in November 1970; the first crewed lunar rover was driven by Apollo 15 astronauts in 1971.

The First World War began in 1914, triggered by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in June, and lasted until the armistice on 11 November 1918.

The last Ice Age, or the most recent glacial period, ended around 11,700 years ago as the climate warmed and vast ice sheets retreated, marking the start of our current warm era.

The Mongol Empire rose in 1206 when Genghis Khan united the Mongol tribes, and it grew into the largest contiguous land empire in history within a few decades.

The Space Race began in 1957 when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite, igniting fierce competition with the United States that culminated in the Moon landing in 1969.

The Spanish flu pandemic struck in 1918 to 1920, infecting about a third of the world population and killing an estimated 50 million people or more, making it one of the deadliest pandemics in history.

The Vietnam War ended on 30 April 1975 with the fall of Saigon to North Vietnamese forces, reuniting the country under communist control after decades of conflict.

The magnetic compass was first developed in China during the Han dynasty around the 2nd century BC for divination, and it was adapted for navigation by roughly the 11th century AD.

The first working television demonstration was given by Scottish inventor John Logie Baird in 1926, and regular public broadcasting began in the 1930s.

The Great Wall of China was built over many centuries, with early walls dating from around the 7th century BC and the most famous surviving sections constructed during the Ming dynasty between the 14th and 17th centuries.

The United Nations was founded on 24 October 1945, when its charter came into effect after being ratified by the majority of the 51 founding member states in the aftermath of the Second World War.

The first sustained, controlled, powered flight of a heavier-than-air aircraft took place on 17 December 1903 at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, when the Wright brothers flew their Wright Flyer.

The first cash machine went into service on 27 June 1967 at a Barclays bank branch in Enfield, north London, and was created by John Shepherd-Barron.

The first widely used general purpose charge card, the Diners Club card, appeared in 1950 in the United States and could be used at multiple restaurants and businesses.

The first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction was achieved on 2 December 1942 in a reactor called Chicago Pile-1, built under the stands of a stadium at the University of Chicago.

The oldest surviving photograph from nature was taken by Joseph Nicephore Niepce around 1826 or 1827 in France, showing the view from a window of his estate.

The first photographs of Earth taken from space were captured on 24 October 1946 by a camera aboard a captured V-2 rocket launched from White Sands, New Mexico.

The worlds first underground passenger railway opened in London on 10 January 1863, running between Paddington and Farringdon on what became the London Underground.

The first mobile phone text message was sent on 3 December 1992, when engineer Neil Papworth typed Merry Christmas and sent it over a UK network.

The first modern coin-operated vending machine appeared in London in the early 1880s to sell postcards, though a coin-operated device dispensing holy water was described in ancient Greece.

The first webcam was set up in 1991 at the University of Cambridge to monitor a coffee pot, so researchers could check whether it was full without leaving their desks.

The first product with a barcode was scanned on 26 June 1974 at a Marsh supermarket in Troy, Ohio, and the item was a pack of Wrigley chewing gum.

The first commercially successful colour television compatible with existing broadcasts, the RCA CT-100, went on sale in the United States in 1954.

Thomas Edison began selling his practical incandescent light bulbs commercially around 1880, after patenting a long-lasting design in 1879.

The first known photograph of the Moon was made in 1840 by John William Draper in New York, using an early daguerreotype process.

The first fully implantable heart pacemaker was placed in a patient in 1958 in Sweden, in a man named Arne Larsson.

The first commercial microwave oven, the Raytheon Radarange, appeared in 1947, after engineer Percy Spencer discovered the heating effect of microwaves in 1945.

The first digital camera was built in 1975 by engineer Steven Sasson at Kodak, and it recorded a black and white image of just 0.01 megapixels onto a cassette tape.

In Western churches, Easter falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon on or after 21 March, so it can land anywhere between 22 March and 25 April.

Ramadan is the ninth month of the Islamic lunar calendar, so it begins about 10 to 11 days earlier each year in the Gregorian calendar and lasts 29 or 30 days.

Chinese New Year, or the Spring Festival, begins on the second new moon after the winter solstice, which always falls between 21 January and 20 February.

Diwali, the festival of lights, is celebrated on the new moon night of the Hindu month of Kartika, which usually falls in October or November.

American Thanksgiving traces back to a 1621 harvest feast at Plymouth Colony, but it became a national holiday only in 1863, proclaimed by President Abraham Lincoln.

Steve Jobs unveiled the first iPhone on 9 January 2007, and it went on sale in the United States on 29 June 2007.

Google was officially founded on 4 September 1998 by Stanford PhD students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who ran it from a rented garage in Menlo Park, California.

Mark Zuckerberg launched TheFacebook from his Harvard dormitory on 4 February 2004, initially only for Harvard students.

YouTube was created in February 2005 by former PayPal employees Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim, and its first video was uploaded on 23 April 2005.

World War II began on 1 September 1939, when Nazi Germany invaded Poland, and Britain and France declared war on Germany two days later.

The US Declaration of Independence was adopted on 4 July 1776, but most delegates actually signed the engrossed copy on 2 August 1776.

The first FIFA World Cup was held in Uruguay in July 1930, and the hosts won, beating Argentina 4-2 in the final in Montevideo.

The Statue of Liberty was built in France between 1875 and 1884, shipped to New York in 1885 and dedicated on 28 October 1886.

The earliest known record of Christmas on 25 December comes from Rome in AD 336, though the Bible does not give the date of the birth of Jesus.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was published by Bloomsbury in the UK on 26 June 1997, with a first hardback print run of just 500 copies.

Construction of the Colosseum in Rome began around AD 70 to 72 under Emperor Vespasian and was completed in AD 80 under his son Titus.

Valentine's Day began as a Christian feast honouring Saint Valentine, established by Pope Gelasius I in AD 496, but it became linked with romance only in the late Middle Ages.

Halloween grew from Samhain, an ancient Celtic festival held around 31 October to mark the end of harvest, which later merged with the Christian All Saints' Day.

The September 11 attacks took place on Tuesday, 11 September 2001, when 19 al-Qaeda hijackers seized four US passenger jets.

He delivered it on 28 August 1963 at the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

President Kennedy was shot and killed in Dallas, Texas, on 22 November 1963, while riding in an open-top motorcade.

The American Civil War lasted from 12 April 1861 to 1865, with the main Confederate army surrendering on 9 April 1865.

Slavery was formally abolished nationwide when the 13th Amendment was ratified on 6 December 1865.

Shakespeare was baptised on 26 April 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, and his birthday is traditionally celebrated on 23 April.

Japan attacked the US naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on the morning of Sunday, 7 December 1941.

The US dropped the atomic bomb Little Boy on Hiroshima on 6 August 1945, followed by a second bomb on Nagasaki on 9 August.

Fighting stopped with the Armistice at 11 am on 11 November 1918, and the Treaty of Versailles was signed on 28 June 1919.

New Zealand was first in 1893; UK women got partial voting rights in 1918 and US women won the vote with the 19th Amendment in 1920.

India became independent from British rule at midnight on 15 August 1947, and became a republic on 26 January 1950.

Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and killed on 4 April 1968 at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. He was 39 years old.

Abraham Lincoln was shot on 14 April 1865 at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C., and died the next morning, 15 April.

The oldest surviving film, Roundhay Garden Scene, was shot in 1888. The first public paid cinema screening was held by the Lumière brothers in Paris on 28 December 1895.

Nelson Mandela walked free on 11 February 1990 after 27 years in prison.

Elizabeth II became queen on 6 February 1952, when her father King George VI died. She was crowned on 2 June 1953.

The Soviet Union officially dissolved on 26 December 1991, a day after Mikhail Gorbachev resigned as its president.

Apollo 13 launched on 11 April 1970. An oxygen tank exploded two days later, and the crew returned safely to Earth on 17 April 1970.

Louise Brown, the world’s first baby conceived by in vitro fertilisation, was born on 25 July 1978 in Oldham, England.

Alexander the Great died in Babylon in June 323 BC, aged 32.

Julius Caesar was assassinated on 15 March 44 BC, the Ides of March.

Cleopatra VII died in Alexandria in August 30 BC, aged 39.

Edward Jenner created the first vaccine in 1796 against smallpox.

French soldiers found the Rosetta Stone in July 1799 during Napoleon's Egyptian campaign.

Penicillin was first used to treat a human patient in February 1941.

Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier on 14 October 1947 in the Bell X-1.

The first modern Olympics took place in Athens, Greece, in April 1896.

Germany's Konrad Zuse completed the Z3, the first programmable computer, in 1941.

The Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1 on 4 October 1957.

The earliest walls were built around the 7th century BC, with major construction under Qin Shi Huang from 221 BC.

American historian Hiram Bingham III brought Machu Picchu to international attention on 24 July 1911.

The first nuclear test, codenamed Trinity, took place on 16 July 1945 in New Mexico.

Henri Fabre flew the first successful seaplane on 28 March 1910 near Marseille, France.

The last woolly mammoths survived on Wrangel Island until about 4,000 years ago.

Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov performed the first spacewalk on 18 March 1965.

Ancient Chinese records describe a solar eclipse as early as around 2136 BC.

The first documented human blood transfusion was performed by Jean-Baptiste Denys in 1667.

The first successful transatlantic telegraph cable was completed on 5 August 1858.

France officially adopted the metric system on 7 April 1795.

The SS Savannah made the first Atlantic crossing using steam power in 1819, though mostly under sail.

Dr Joseph Murray performed the first successful kidney transplant on 23 December 1954.

Raymonde de Laroche became the first woman to fly solo in a powered aircraft on 8 March 1910.

The Hoover Dam was completed in 1936, two years ahead of schedule, on the Colorado River between Nevada and Arizona.

A major fire broke out at Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris on 15 April 2019, destroying its spire and much of its roof.

The Brooklyn Bridge opened on 24 May 1883, linking Manhattan and Brooklyn across New York's East River.

The British ocean liner RMS Lusitania was sunk by a German U-boat off the coast of Ireland on 7 May 1915.

The German airship Hindenburg caught fire and was destroyed while landing at Lakehurst, New Jersey, on 6 May 1937.

The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster began on 11 March 2011, after a massive earthquake and tsunami struck Japan.

The volcano Krakatoa in Indonesia erupted catastrophically on 26–27 August 1883, in one of the deadliest eruptions in history.

Mount Tambora on the Indonesian island of Sumbawa erupted in April 1815, the most powerful volcanic eruption in recorded history.

The great San Francisco earthquake struck on the morning of 18 April 1906, followed by fires that destroyed much of the city.

The first flushing toilet was designed by Sir John Harington in 1596, and Alexander Cumming patented the S-bend flush toilet in 1775.

Paper money was first used in China, where merchants used paper notes in the Tang dynasty and the Song government issued official banknotes in the 11th century.

The first feature-length film with synchronised dialogue, The Jazz Singer, premiered on 6 October 1927.

Christopher Columbus reached the Americas on 12 October 1492, landing on an island in the Bahamas.

Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama reached Calicut, India, on 20 May 1498, becoming the first European to reach India by sea.

Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space on 16 June 1963, aboard Vostok 6.

The Gregorian calendar was introduced by Pope Gregory XIII in October 1582 to correct errors in the older Julian calendar.

The American Revolutionary War began on 19 April 1775 with the Battles of Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts.

The State of Israel was proclaimed on 14 May 1948 by David Ben-Gurion in Tel Aviv, as the British Mandate for Palestine ended.

The Meiji Restoration began in 1868, when power in Japan was returned from the Tokugawa shogunate to Emperor Meiji.

Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks on 29 May 1453, ending the Byzantine Empire after more than a thousand years.

The Aztec Empire fell on 13 August 1521, when Spanish conquistadors and their Indigenous allies captured the capital, Tenochtitlan.

The Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire began in 1532, when Francisco Pizarro captured the emperor Atahualpa at Cajamarca.

Cats began living alongside people around 10,000 years ago in the Near East, as early farmers stored grain that attracted rodents.

Greenpeace was founded in 1971 in Vancouver, Canada, by activists who sailed to protest US nuclear weapons testing in Alaska.

Hurricane Katrina made landfall on the US Gulf Coast on 29 August 2005, devastating New Orleans and the surrounding region.

The Dust Bowl struck the southern Great Plains of the United States during the 1930s, when severe drought and poor farming caused massive dust storms.

The teddy bear was created in 1902–1903, named after US President Theodore 'Teddy' Roosevelt after a famous hunting story.

The world's first adhesive postage stamp, the Penny Black, was issued in the United Kingdom on 1 May 1840 and became valid on 6 May.

Concorde, the Anglo-French supersonic airliner, made its first flight on 2 March 1969 from Toulouse, France.

The Space Shuttle Challenger broke apart 73 seconds after launch on 28 January 1986, killing all seven crew members.

The Louisiana Purchase was agreed in 1803, when the United States bought about 2.1 million square kilometres of land from France for $15 million.

The United States bought Alaska from Russia in 1867 for $7.2 million, a deal signed on 30 March 1867.

The Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre on 21 August 1911 and missing for over two years until it was recovered in Florence in December 1913.

Archaeological evidence shows people reached Australia at least 50,000 years ago, and some sites suggest as early as about 65,000 years ago.

The oldest zoo still operating is Tiergarten Schönbrunn in Vienna, Austria, founded in 1752 as an imperial menagerie.

The first Grammy Awards ceremony took place on 4 May 1959, honouring music released in 1958.

The first Ferris wheel was built for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, designed by engineer George Washington Gale Ferris Jr.

Amelia Earhart disappeared on 2 July 1937 over the central Pacific Ocean while trying to fly around the world with navigator Fred Noonan.

The Great Chicago Fire burned from 8 to 10 October 1871, destroying about 17,000 buildings and leaving some 100,000 people homeless.

On 30 June 1908, a huge explosion flattened forest near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in Siberia.

The first modern bungee jumps were made on 1 April 1979 from the Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol, England, by members of the Oxford University Dangerous Sports Club.

Concorde's final commercial flight was on 24 October 2003, when British Airways retired the supersonic jet; Air France had ended its flights that May.

The Hundred Years' War between England and France lasted from 1337 to 1453 — actually 116 years, with long periods of truce.

The Treaty of Versailles was signed on 28 June 1919 in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles, formally ending the First World War between Germany and the Allies.

The world's first nuclear power plant to supply electricity to a power grid was at Obninsk, near Moscow, which began doing so on 27 June 1954.

The Space Shuttle's final mission, STS-135 on Atlantis, launched on 8 July 2011 and landed on 21 July 2011, ending 30 years of shuttle flights.

The first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic was Amelia Earhart in 1932. She completed the flight from Newfoundland to Northern Ireland.

The first permanent Antarctic station was established in 1904. It was Orcadas Base on the South Orkney Islands.

The first successful undersea telegraph cable was laid across the English Channel in 1851. It connected England and France.

The first woman in space was Valentina Tereshkova in 1963.

The first recorded ancient Olympic Games were held in 776 BCE.

The first nuclear bomb test took place on 16 July 1945. It was the Trinity test in New Mexico.

The earliest known printed book dates to around 868 CE. It is the Diamond Sutra from China.

The first practical military submarine, the Turtle, was built in 1775. It was used during the American Revolutionary War.

The first mass-produced car sold in large numbers was the Ford Model T, introduced in 1908. Assembly line production began in 1913.

The first underground railway subway opened in 1863. It was the Metropolitan Railway in London.

The earliest known vending machine dates back to ancient Egypt, around the 1st century CE. It dispensed holy water when a coin was inserted.

The first recorded successful blood transfusion between humans took place in 1818. It was performed by British physician James Blundell.

Women first gained national voting rights in New Zealand in 1893. It was the first self-governing country to do so.

New Zealand became the first self-governing country to grant women the national right to vote in 1893.

Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 CE, with the catastrophe traditionally dated to 24 August.

The Lisbon earthquake struck on 1 November 1755, on All Saints’ Day.

The International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling was signed in 1946. It created a global framework for managing whaling after decades of heavy hunting.

The Antarctic marine conservation convention was agreed in 1980 and entered into force in 1982. It was created to manage fishing in Southern Ocean waters.

Large-scale embankments on the Yellow River were developed over many centuries, with major state-led works already in place by the Han dynasty. The river has been heavily managed for more than 2,000 years.

European explorer John Hanning Speke reached Lake Victoria in 1858. He named it after Queen Victoria.

David Livingstone first recorded Victoria Falls in 1855. He described it as the most wonderful sight he had seen in Africa.

The first major European navigation of the Amazon River was in 1541–1542 by Francisco de Orellana. He traveled from the Andes to the Atlantic Ocean.

John Hanning Speke reached Lake Victoria in 1858 and proposed it as the source of the Nile. The debate over the Nile’s true sources continued afterward.

The Tennessee Valley Authority was created in 1933. It was part of the New Deal and helped manage floods, power, and navigation.

Major Rhine straightening works were carried out in the 19th century, especially from the 1810s onward. Johann Gottfried Tulla’s plans were central to the project.

Serious Three Gorges dam planning dates to the early 20th century, with major Chinese proposals emerging in the 1920s and 1930s. The project took much longer to realize.

One of the earliest major river basin authorities was the Tennessee Valley Authority, created in 1933. It became a model for integrated river management.

The first ascent of the Matterhorn was completed on 14 July 1865.

The Gobi was described in European travel accounts in the 13th century, especially through the journeys of Marco Polo.

European American exploration of Death Valley dates to the California Gold Rush era, especially 1849.

The first recorded ascent of Mount Ararat was made in 1829 by Johann Jacob Friedrich Parrot.

On 1 August 1861, James Glaisher issued one of the first operational weather forecasts in Britain using telegraphed observations.

The U.S. began formally recognizing drought disasters through federal emergency systems in the 20th century, especially during the Dust Bowl era of the 1930s.

The platypus was first described scientifically in 1799, and a formal name followed in 1800.

The giant panda was first described scientifically in 1869 by Armand David.

The bald eagle was adopted as the United States’ national emblem in 1782.