Site Timeline

This section grew from a friend’s trouble with trying to keep straight in his mind various names, dates and events that are on this web site.

This is not supposed to be a history-of-the-world timeline, although it can appear that way. It is a linear listing of various events discussed on this site, including links where the events are dealt with in some depth.

	This timeline presents events related to this site, with links to pertinent parts of it.
Date	Event	Human Population Statistics
4.6 billion BC	A star is born. We call it the sun.
4.5 billion BC	Earth appears.
3.8 billion BC	Life appears on earth.
2.3 billion BC	First ice age known of occurs.
950 million BC	Ice age appears and lasts for 350 million years. Ice ages have periods of advancing and retreating ice sheets over parts of earth.
900 million BC	Algae appears on earth.
570 million BC	Complex sea animals appear in earth’s oceans.
500 million BC	Fish appear, world’s oceans teem with life.
450 million BC	Ice age appears and lasts for 50 million years.
438 million BC	First mass extinction episode, with 85% of earth’s species becoming extinct.
435 million BC	Land plants appear, with vascular systems.
410 million BC	Insects and amphibians appear.
367 million BC	Second mass extinction episode, with 82% of earth’s species becoming extinct.
360 million BC	Large fern forests appear.
330 million BC	Reptiles appear. Ice age appears and lasts for 90 million years.
245 million BC	Third and so far greatest extinction episode, with more than 90% of earth’s species becoming extinct.
240 million BC	Dinosaurs and mammals appear.
208 million BC	Fourth extinction episode, claiming 76% of earth’s species.
205 million BC	Birds appear.
135 million BC	Flowering plants appear.
65 million BC	Dinosaurs become extinct in fifth mass extinction episode, which claims 76% of all species. First primates appear.
45 million BC	Whales are evolving from land-based to aquatic life.
38 million BC	Anthropoid apes appear, the ancestors of humans.
12 million BC	Evolutionary split, which separated eventual orangutans from other great apes, begins.
7 million BC	Evolutionary split that leads to chimpanzees begins.
> 4 million BC	First erect protohumans appear in Africa, differentiating from their great ape cousins.	Human population = 0
> 2 million BC	Large-brained bipedal hominids, of the genus homo, appear in Africa.
< 2 million BC	Homo erectus begins migrating from Africa, and fire was first used as a tool. The African ape diet was partly abandoned as fruit, blossoms, seeds and leaves were less available beyond the tropics, meaning more meat eating.	Human population <100,000
1.6 million BC	Pleistocene ice age begins, ending 12,000 years ago.
1 million BC	First motion picture, starring Raquel Welch.
c. 400,000 BC	Fire consistently used. First regular food processing practiced – cooking.	>100,000
c. 130,000 - 100,000 BC	First anatomically modern humans appear in Africa and migrate across Asia, eventually displacing other hominid species.
c. 40,000 BC	Advances in hunting skill and technology allow humans to hunt larger animals. Boats invented. Modern humans first appear in Europe and Australia.
c. 35,000 BC	Humans populate Tasmania and eventually become isolated from peoples in Australia, probably from rising ocean as Ice Age ends.
c. 30,000 BC	Humans probably first appear in North and South America. Cave murals are first drawn, in European caves. One of the earliest artistic works, and possibly a religious artifact, the Venus of Willendorf, is made in central Europe. It, and many works like it, is evidence that goddess-based religion flourished from humanity’s earliest days.
c. 25,000 BC	Pottery first appears, in Europe.
c. 23,000 BC	Bow and arrow invented, probably in Europe.
c. 11,000 BC	Methods for processing and storing food appear in Fertile Crescent. Australia experiences extinction of its large animals, probably due to over-hunting by humans. Australia did not have a continental ice sheet. Extinction of large mammals begins in northern Eurasia, probably due to over-hunting and climate/biome change.
c. 10,000 BC	The most recent ice age ends. Dogs are the first domestic animals, appearing in the Fertile Crescent region. Copper, possibly the first metal ever worked, is worked in the Fertile Crescent region.
c. 9000 BC	Extinction of most large mammals in North America, possibly caused by human over-hunting, probably also influenced by climate changes.
c. 8500 - 8000 BC	Large mammals become extinct in South America, which was not covered in a continental ice sheet, probably from human over-hunting. Hunter-gatherer lifestyle is increasingly unsustainable. First permanently inhabited town, Jericho, begins developing. Domestication Revolution begins in Fertile Crescent and the Americas. Wheat, peas and olives domesticated in Fertile Crescent. Squash and pumpkins first domesticated in Mesoamerica. Beginnings of marine-based culture of North America’s Pacific Northwest.	4 million
c. 7500 BC	Domestication Revolution begins in east Asia.
c. 7000 BC	Sheep and goats begin domestication in Fertile Crescent region.
c. 6500 BC	First large human communities, such as Catal Huyuk, appear in present-day Turkey. The clearing of forest to make farm fields, and the resultant puddles, led to the spread of malaria, probably originating in Africa.
c. 6000 BC	Cattle and pigs begin domestication in Fertile Crescent region. Chicken and rice begin domestication in east Asia.
c. 5500 BC	Agricultural communities appear along the Nile river.
c. 5000 BC	Civilization begins forming in the Fertile Crescent. Early societies are egalitarian. The agricultural societies have goddess-based religions, while the pastoral, herd-tending societies develop male-based religions. The mobile pastoral societies begin invading the sedentary agricultural societies. Irrigation is first used in the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, and in Nile river valley. Villages appear along Yangtze river. Metallurgy first practiced near mountains of Eastern Europe. Copper weapons developed by herder societies of steppe regions. People of Greece and the southern Balkans adopt agricultural practices.	5 million
c. 4500 BC	First large religious facilities built at site of today’s Iraq. Stratification of early society begins, with elites - priest class, craftsmen, rulers and probably the first medical doctors. Earliest known bronze implements are made in Thailand.
c. 4000 BC	Horse domesticated in steppe region north of Black Sea. Llama and Alpaca domesticated in South America. Camel first domesticated near Fertile Crescent. Invasions from steppe regions wash across Europe, Fertile Crescent and Middle East. Warfare practiced on large scale. Iberians migrate to today’s Spain, from either northern Africa or central Europe. They also become the British Isles’ first permanent inhabitants during the historical period.
c. 3500 BC	Migrating farmers from Fertile Crescent settle Indus valley in present day Pakistan. Bronze age begins in Fertile Crescent. Soil salination begins affecting Mesopotamian agriculture, and salt resistant barley is raised in place of wheat, comprising half of southern Mesopotamian grain production. Siltation of river water from upstream deforestation also contributes to environmental degradation. The wheel is invented in Mesopotamia. By this time, corn, potatoes, manioc, beans and turkeys are domesticated in the Americas.
c. 3000 BC	Sumeria becomes the world’s first literate society. History begins. State bureaucracy and military establishment are developed. The earth-based Mother Goddess begins being replaced by thunderous, male, sky gods in Middle Eastern mythology. Elephants, giraffes and rhinoceroses are extinct in Nile valley. Plow agriculture begins in Fertile Crescent. The Pacific Northwest marine-based culture begins fully developing, from southern Alaska to Northern California.	14 million
c. 2600 BC	Imhotep is credited with building the world’s first large stone building, a step pyramid in Egypt. Imhotep was also a physician. He was later deified, and was probably the model for the Greek god of medicine, Asclepius.
c. 2400 BC	Crop yields continue declining in Sumerian fields. Wheat yields decline by 42% between 2400 and 2100 BC.
c. 2100 BC	Ur abandons wheat cultivation. Wheat comprises only 2% of Sumerian crops.
c. 2000 BC	Great migration wave of pastoral societies from steppe regions (generally between the Caspian and Black Seas) into the Fertile Crescent, India and Europe. Third Dynasty of Ur collapses. Violent, male, sky-god religion accompanies the invaders. Feminine, earth-based religion and mythology in the Fertile Crescent, Mediterranean region and Europe are eventually overthrown by the invaders, replaced with male, sky-god religions. Helen of Troy becomes a famous female healer and mythological figure, but female healers begin disappearing from medicine at this time. Intense deforestation of the region from Morocco to Afghanistan commences. Today, only about 10% of that forest remains; much has turned to desert.
c. 1900 BC	Indus valley society collapses. Declining food production due to soil salination probably led to population decline and internal collapse, combined with foreign invasion.
c. 1700 BC	Wheat yields in Sumeria decline by 65% since 2400 BC. Fields turn white from salt. Sumer declines as a power, and the center of Mesopotamian civilization shifts north.
c. 1500 BC	A four hundred year period of chaos and warfare begins to sweep Europe, the Fertile Crescent and Mediterranean region. The violent, male sky-gods come to dominate religion, including one named Jehovah. The Aryan (pastoral tribes of the steppe regions) invasion of India leads to their caste system; the invaders are the favored class.	38 million
c. 1400 BC	Iron first smelted by Hittite civilization in present-day Turkey. Agriculture begins in Japan.
c. 1200 BC	Iron made into weaponry. Iron weapons rapidly replace bronze and become common throughout Europe, the Fertile Crescent, Egypt and elsewhere. The feminine-friendly Minoan civilization on Crete collapses, as does Mycenaean civilization. Joshua’s Israelites lay siege to Jericho. Celts invade from region of today’s Austria into France and Germany. The Polynesian expansion, from the region near New Guinea to the South Pacific’s islands, begins.
c. 1100 BC	The Phoenician maritime civilization rises, based in today’s Lebanon, and flourishes for centuries. They invent the alphabet.
c. 1000 BC	Agriculture collapses in central Mesopotamia due to soil salination. In 1990, Iraq imported 70% of its food. The anti-feminine culture of ancient Greece develops, known as Greece’s “dark age.” Women are gradually excluded from public life. Although male gods dominated Greek mythology, women were also present, if subservient. The Picts migrate to Scotland from Europe. The Greeks make the first heat-treated iron weapons. Chinese begin using coal for smelting copper coins.	50 million
c. 900 BC	Asclepius lives at this time, and eventually became “sainted” in Greek culture and became the Greek god of healing during its classical period. The mythological Asclepius was the son of Apollo, who was the son of Zeus. Hygeia and Panacea were Asclepius’ daughters.
c. 700 BC	A village that began with shepherds’ huts, eventually known as Rome, is growing.
c. 650 BC	Expanding Greek settlements begin causing noticeable environmental degradation.
590 BC	Solon argues against agriculture on steep slopes in Greece because of rapid erosion.
586 BC	Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II’s armies destroy Jerusalem, with remaining Jews being taken to Babylon as slaves. Their first forced emigration was in 597 BC, when skilled Jews were taken. It began the dispersal of the Jews across the world.
c. 563	Gautama Buddha is born; he died in about 483 BC.
560 BC	Peisistratus becomes tyrant of Athens, and pays bounty for farmers to plant olive trees, as they can survive on the badly eroded land, and put down roots to penetrate the exposed rock.
539 BC	Persia conquers Babylonia, under Cyrus the Great. Persian Empire becomes the Old World’s largest. Babylon’s Jews are allowed to return home, but many, if not most, prefer to stay.
509 BC	Republic of Rome begins, which takes power away from local kings. The Roman republic tries balancing the needs of peasants and aristocrats.
c. 500 BC	Celts begin invading the British Isles, absorbing the Iberians. Women enter the healing profession in Danish Celtic culture. Pythagoras, the world’s first mathematician and the West’s first vegetarian, dies. His followers taught that the earth orbited the sun. Etruscan civilization is at its peak influence, to eventually fall to neighboring states. The world’s most sophisticated agricultural system, the paddy system, is developed in China, expanding across Southeast Asia during the next millennium.
480 BC	Persians sack and nearly destroy Athens. Themistocles, and later Pericles, rebuilds Athens into a great city. At its height, of its 200,000 inhabitants, only 50,000 were citizens (men). The rest were women, slaves and foreigners.
c. 450 BC	Roman law codified on twelve wooden tablets. The laws make men the absolute rulers of family households, giving them the authority to sell their children into slavery, among other rights.
432 BC	Peak of the Greek classic period. Hippocrates, Socrates, Thucydides and Aristophanes are alive. During Peloponnesian War (begun in 431 BC), war-crowded Athens is afflicted with a plague (probably smallpox or typhus) in 430 that lasts three years, killing about a third of the population and leading to Athens’ decline.
c. 400 BC	Centuries of Greek deforestation and agricultural practices devastate the environment and soils, remarked upon by Plato and other observers. The degraded environment led to falling crop yields and Greece’s decline, as had been happening to other empires for thousands of years. Rome begins rising as a power, eventually defeating the Etruscans of today’s northern Italy, and incorporate Etruria’s cultural and technical achievements. By the time of Jesus, Etruscan culture was almost completely absorbed into Roman culture.
334 BC	Alexander the Great of Macedonia conquers Persia and tries uniting East and West. The short-lived Macedonian Empire helps pave the way for the Roman Empire. Alexander supposedly said that he “died by the help of too many physicians.”
264 BC	After subduing Italy, Rome engages in its first war against Carthage. Italy and Sicily are rapidly deforested to meet Rome’s needs.
202 BC	Rome defeats the forces of Carthaginian general Hannibal, ending the second Punic War.
c. 200 BC	Picts migrate to Ireland from Scotland. Lion and leopard are extinct in Greece and coastal regions of Asia Minor. Beaver is extinct in northern Greece due to trapping.
197 BC	Rome invades Greece and conquers them. Rome would incorporate much of Greek culture into its own, borrowing its gods and technology, although denigration of Greek physicians and medicine was typical.
146 BC	Greek resistance to Roman rule leads to the complete destruction of Corinth and the sale of its inhabitants into slavery. That same year, Rome does the same to Carthage. The Roman Republic begins expanding across Europe, northern Africa and the Middle East.
58 BC	Rome begins handing out free food. Eventually, hundred of thousands of Rome’s citizens received free food for political reasons. Intensive agricultural exploitation of imperial lands are undertaken to feed the empire. Places such as today’s Libya are forced to become farms for Rome, with the agricultural practices eventually turning Libya into the desert nation it is today.
54 BC	Julius Caesar’s armies defeat the inhabitants of southern Britain.
31 BC	Cleopatra and Anthony’s forces defeated by Rome, and Egypt comes under Roman rule the next year.
27 BC	After a century of bitter civil war, the Roman Republic ends with the naming of Augustus Caesar as the first Roman Emperor. Rome’s citizens cease having representation in government.
1 AD	Jesus is alive. Much of Palestine, Syria, Lebanon and surrounding regions are deforested by Rome, eventually turning it into desert. In the Caribbean, agricultural Arawakan peoples begin migrating along the archipelago from South America, eventually displacing/absorbing the hunter-gatherer peoples there. They populate the Greater Antilles in the millions by 1492, and are loosely known as the Taino. At this time, and perhaps a few centuries earlier, Polynesians begin colonizing the Hawaiian Islands. The Chinese probably invented paper around this time, although tradition gives the date as 105 AD.	World population: 170 million.
C. 30 AD	Roman writer Celsus translates works of Hippocrates, writes a mammoth series of books, and the eight devoted to medicine have survived.	Roman Empire’s population: 50 million
66 AD	First Jewish revolt against Roman rule. Rome responds with typical brutality, the revolt ending with the mass suicide at Masada in 73 AD. Jews begin their dispersal from Palestine.
122 AD	Hadrian’s Wall built by Rome in northern England, which marked the northern extent of its empire.
132 AD	Jews revolt against Roman rule again. Rome responds in standard fashion, completely destroying the Jewish state in 135 AD and laying waste to the entire region. Hundreds of thousands of Jews die; the survivors are sold into slavery and dispersed across the Roman Empire and beyond.
165 AD	The Antonine plague, probably smallpox, sweeps through the Roman Empire, brought back by returning soldiers from Syria. It rages for 15 years, killing about five million people, or about a quarter to a third of all of those exposed to the disease, including Emperor Marcus Aurelius in 180, as it did his predecessor in 169.
c. 169 AD	Marcus Aurelius appoints Galen to be personal physician to his heir, Commodus. Galen writes prodigiously, his work guiding Western medicine until the 1500s.
c. 200 AD		200 million
251 AD	An epidemic again sweeps through the Roman Empire until 270, killing 5000 of Rome’s citizens each day during the epidemic’s peak, including the Emperor Claudius in 270. Rome was forced by the population loss to recruit barbarian troops. The first mass conversions to Christianity were apparently a consequence of the epidemic. Centuries of Roman games have rendered the elephant, rhinoceros and other animals extinct in Northern Africa. Tiger is extinct in Persia and Mesopotamia.
c. 276 AD	Mani dies in captivity. Unlike Jesus or Buddha, Mani attempts to create a religion, and he succeeds. It is a syncretic religion that incorporated elements of Christianity, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism and Gnosticism. Although the Roman Empire and others heavily persecute Manicheans, Manichaeism becomes one of the world’s great religions, and lasts for a thousand years before it is finally wiped out.
300 AD	Babylonia becomes the center of the Jewish culture.
324 AD	Roman Emperor Constantine convenes the Council of Nicea, his gambit to hold the fragmenting empire together through a state religion. There were 20 different versions of Jesus’ crucifixion circulating among the numerous Christian sects of the day. The council was charged with creating a state-approved institution and version of Jesus’ life for mass consumption. The other 19 versions were suppressed, as well as rival Christian sects, such as the Arians. Roman Catholicism became the official religion of the Roman Empire in 325 AD. The Council of Nicea may have something to do with the fact that more than half of Jesus’ life is missing from the New Testament. Feminine imagery is almost completely missing from Christian religious mythology. Constantine also establishes Constantinople in 324 AD at the site of the ancient city of Byzantium, and it becomes the center of the Eastern Roman Empire and the repository of Hellenistic (Greek) culture and learning.
410 AD	Visigoths invade Rome, for the first invasion of the city in eight centuries.
451 AD	Hun invasion of Roman Empire stopped by a great battle in France. Hundreds of thousands die in battle.
476 AD	Western Roman Empire falls. Germanic peoples invade the Roman Empire’s lands in Europe during the late 400s, including the Anglo-Saxon invasion of Britain. The Eastern Roman Empire lasts nearly continually for the next 1000 years, with Constantinople (earlier named Byzantium and later Istanbul) as its capital city. Europe, however, fell into its Dark Ages. Ancient Greek texts were burned as pagan, including Hippocrates’ works. The Roman Catholic Church largely took over medicine, and Galen’s work became dogmatized by the Church. That situation would dominate Western medicine for more than 1000 years. By this time, whales are extinct in the Mediterranean.
c. 500	Polynesian explorers discover Easter Island, and soon colonize it.
541	First recorded instance of bubonic plague, beginning in Egypt and racing to Constantinople, where it killed off as many as 10,000 people per day and 40% of the population. Epidemic diseases would periodically sweep Europe and Asia, with cites such as Rome suffering greatly.
562	32-year drought begins to afflict the Moche culture in South America. El Niño cycles regularly affect South American civilization, and elaborate food production and storage systems are designed to cope with them, as well as other environmental challenges. That region’s people become the world’s greatest agricultural experimenters.	250 million
c. 570	Muhammad born, founder of Islam.
632	Muhammad dies, after an amazing life that founds one of the world’s great religions. Islam sweeps throughout the Arab world, spreading widely.
c. 650	Mesoamerican empire centered in city of Teotihuacan begins its collapse, to be replaced in power by the militaristic Toltecs, similar to the way empires rose and fell in the Fertile Crescent.
711	Islamic armies invade the Iberian Peninsula. Jews live under Moorish rule in Iberia, and it is their golden age in Europe, lasting for 300 years. Learning was an Islamic ideal, and Islamic scholars kept the teachings of the ancient Greeks alive in the West. Influential doctors such as Abu’l Qasim (936-1013) and Maimonides (1135-1204) came from Moorish Iberia. China is undergoing urbanization and population explosion.
C. 800	Mayan civilization begins its collapse. It attained a peak population of several million, before its overtaxed environment failed to support the population. Famine, war and disease accompanied the collapse of the Mayan population to perhaps a million before 1000 AD, similar to Fertile Crescent dynamics. The forest recovers and covers the Mayan ruins. Charlemagne tries to create a new Western Roman Empire, with a unity of church and state. The Holy Roman Empire lasted until Napoleon. Vikings begin raiding the British Isles, and some settle in France and become the Normans. Others go inland and become the Russians.
c. 900	Brown bear nearing extinction in the British Isles.
c. 1000	Polynesian explorers discover New Zealand. Invaders, probably from Tahiti, come to the Hawaiian islands and conquer the inhabitants, setting themselves up as the ruling class, and a slave class was created. Leif Ericson extends Viking colonization past Greenland settlements to North America, probably in today’s Newfoundland. They may have driven Irish monks from Iceland before them to North America. The Vikings’ violent ways quickly create resistance from the local Algonquin people, and their colonization is not permanent. In Iceland, the Vikings are unable to easily plunder neighboring lands and quickly become a peaceful people, engaging in trade.
1012	Jews expelled from the Rhineland, in one of Europe’s earliest expulsions of Jews.
1036	Umayyad dynasty ends in Moorish Iberia, and fractures into mutually hostile, petty kingdoms.
c. 1050	Northern and central Europe, especially the Germanic lands, engage in great age of deforestation, making way for civilization, clearing about a third of the forest in a couple of centuries, and up to 75% deforestation by the end of the medieval era. This is the beginning of the High Middle Ages. In 1900, about 25% of the forest remains.
1056	Ferdinand I, who proclaimed himself the Emperor of Spain, undertakes “Reconquest” of the Iberian peninsula.
1066	William the Conqueror leads the Norman invasion of Britain. Islamic preachers incite anti-Jew riot in Granada, which kills about 5000 Jews.
1085	Christian conquest of Toledo, which introduces European scholars to the ancient Greek writings via Islam. The introduction of the Greek writings leads to humanism, the Renaissance and Protestant Revolution.
1096	Christian Europe makes its first united act: the first Crusade to Palestine. The first wide-scaled Jew slaughters in Europe take place as a warm-up for the first Crusade, in France and Germany. Jews would no longer be safe in Europe, and warfare would be the European way of life until World War II ended.
1144	In England, the rumor begins that Jews murder babies in their religious rites, which is Europe’s first such rumor.
1145	Bernard of Clairvaux (Saint Bernard), who may have established the Order of the Knights Templar, visits southern France, Europe’s most cosmopolitan region. He finds it ripe for heretical sects to flourish, and his Cistercian monks begin to try countering the nascent Cathar influence in the region. Their efforts are ineffectual.
1158	Munich founded.
1163	Notre Dame cathedral in Paris begins construction.
c. 1170	Mesoamerican Toltec city of Tula is destroyed, probably due to major drought and population migrations that led to war.
1175	Peter Waldo tries reforming Catholic Church corruption, and eventually forms the Waldensian sect.
1182	Jews expelled from France.
1184	Peter Waldo is excommunicated from the Church and a papal bull orders bishops to “direct inquisitions” on heresy.
1195	Council of Evreux tries stemming Catholic Church corruption, such as bishops selling relics.
c. 1200	Polynesian people begin colonizing New Zealand. The Islamic culture attains the world’s highest standard of living. Incan people conquer the land around Lake Titicaca, the first step in their empire building. Human hunters render large mammals on Madagascar extinct.
1204	Fourth Crusade ends up sacking its “ally” Constantinople. Pope Innocent III tries getting the Cistercian order to preach against the Cathars, an attempt that fails.
1209	After a decade of attempting to curb the Church’s corruption, and after gentle methods to try bringing the Languedoc region back to the Church’s fold, Pope Innocent III calls for a Crusade on France to eliminate Catharism. The resulting Albigensian Crusade kills about one million people. Innocent also authorizes the formation of the Franciscan sect, which copies Cathar austerity.
1212	In a great battle near Toledo, Christian armies defeat the Islamic forces in the decisive conflict of the “Reconquest” of the Iberian Peninsula.
1214	The Dominican order is founded, which also copies Cathar austerity.
1215	Magna Carta sealed by England’s King John I. Pope Innocent III convenes the Fourth Lateran Council.
1221	Genghis Khan’s Mongol armies conquer Islamic armies in Indus valley. Islamic peoples are devastated by the Mongol invasion, and Islam begins its decline as a social force.
1244	Massacre at Montségur, the last stronghold of the Cathars. The Catholic Church eliminates the greatest threat to its religious monopoly, until Martin Luther posts his Ninety-Five Theses in 1517.	360 million
1254	Jews expelled from France.
1257	Coal smoke from local fires drives Queen Eleanor from Nottingham Castle.
1258	Mongol armies raze Baghdad while slaughtering at least a million people. Islam is devastated.
1264	Iceland accedes to Norwegian rule and begins its decline, their fortunes turning worse when Denmark takes over in 1380, and Iceland eventually becomes a captive nation.
1274	Dominican monk Thomas Aquinas dies. He tried reconciling Christian theology with other systems of thought, most notably Aristotle’s.
1290	Jews expelled from England.
1295	Marco Polo returns to Venice from many years in the court of Kublai Khan in China. His account deeply influences European merchants.
1307	Royal edict issued in London, banning coal fires. The edict is ignored.
1314	Europe is gripped by major famine that lasts until 1317.
1315	Dante Alighieri finishes his Divine Comedy.
c. 1325	Immigrants to Valley of Mexico settle in marsh in the valley’s lake, the only land available to them. They are known as the Mexica, and eventually form the Aztec Empire.
1326	Ottoman Empire is born, as the Turks attack the Eastern Roman Empire.
1337	England and France begin the 100 Years War. Originally invented in China several centuries earlier, but used for fireworks, gunpowder for weaponry begins to be manufactured in England and Germany at about this time. English Parliament restricts fur wearing to royalty, as fur-bearing animal populations collapsed.
1344	The Pope “awards” the Canary Islands to Castile.
1346	The Black Death probably originated in China. In 1347 it swept across Asia to Europe. The death toll for Europe and Asia was about 50 million people by 1351, wiping out one quarter to one-third of Europe’s population, and periodically recurring for the next three centuries. Epidemiology being what it was in those days, Jews were accused throughout Europe of causing the plague, and 50,000 Jews were consequently killed. War and death imagery would become prevalent in European art.	Europe’s population declines from about 75 million to 50 million. It would not regain 1345 levels until the 16^th century.
1378	Contested election of Pope Urban VI leads to the Great Schism, an embarrassment that would last half a century, climaxing with the spectacle of three men claiming to be Pope at the same time.
c. 1385	Turkish ruler Tamerlane’s armies catapult plague victims into cities they are besieging, in perhaps history’s first instance of biological warfare.
1391	Anti-Semitic furor leads to Jew slaughters in Seville, and Jews began accepting conversion to Christianity to survive.
Late 1300s	Beginning in northern Italy’s city-states, a multifaceted phenomenon begins which is now called the Renaissance. Humanism takes root, which eventually undermines the Catholic Church’s influence.
1399	The Black Death makes a final visit to Europe, and then disappears for many years.
1400	After a century of unrelenting epidemics, warfare and calamity, Europe’s population is two-thirds-to-half of what it had been in 1300.	400 million.
1405	Ming Dynasty begins mounting great naval expeditions along southern Asia, which reach Africa. They do not plunder the people or lands they sail to. The last expedition is in 1433.
1410	Christian Reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula reenergized with attack on Granada.
1415	Portuguese defeat Moors at Ceuta in North Africa. Prince Henry subsequently encourages and helps fund the study of maritime science. Henry’s motivation is outflanking Islamic rivals in the gold trade.
1418	Portugal begins colonizing the Madeira Islands, the Azores in 1439 (discovered in 1427) and the Cape Verde Islands in 1456. The prominent cash crop is sugar, which played to the biological predisposition of humans to sweet food, reflecting the distant ape past in Africa, when fruit comprised most of the diet. Settlers to Madeiran island of Santo Porto introduce two rabbits, and soon they rapidly reproduce and denude the entire island.
1421	Jews expelled from Vienna, in one of many European expulsions during the 15^th century.
1428	Itzcoatl leads Mexica to military victory and Aztec Empire begins.
c. 1430	“Little Ice Age” begins, and runs for four centuries, until about 1850.
1431	Joan of Arc burned at the stake.
1444	Portugal enters the African slave trade.
c. 1450	Gutenberg invents printing press in the German city of Mainz.
1453	Ottoman armies capture Constantinople, which terminates the Eastern Roman Empire, controls Europe’s trade route to the Orient, and inspires effort to find another European route.
1455	The Wars of the Roses, which are several dynastic civil wars that last until 1485, begin in England.
1456	Walruses could still be found on the Thames River.
1469	Isabella I of Castile marries Ferdinand V of Aragon.
c. 1470	Incas conquer the imperial city of Chan Chan and the Chimoran people, completing their imperial consolidation.
1474	Paolo Toscanelli of Florence suggests to Prince Alfonso V of Portugal that the quickest way to the Indies (spice trade) is sailing across the Atlantic. Toscanelli was wrong. Christopher Columbus eventually obtains the letter from Toscanelli that makes the suggestion. Castile and Aragon formerly united under Isabella and Ferdinand.
1479	Portugal cedes Canary Islands to Castile, and Queen Isabella I mounts their invasion. The Canary Islands were inhabited by the Guanche, who settled the islands in antiquity, building step pyramids and making mummies, much as the Egyptians did. The conquest of the Guanches was complete in 1496, and the Guanches became an extinct culture by 1600.
1480	Isabella I initiates the Spanish Inquisition, which is largely concerned with hunting down Moors and Jews who were forced to convert to Christianity, but may still practice their erstwhile faith in secret.
1486	Last wolf sighted in England.
1488	Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias rounds the southern tip of Africa, and Portugal abandons the idea of reaching Asia by crossing the Atlantic Ocean. Columbus, who made a living in the Portuguese slave trade, takes his plan to sail across the Atlantic Ocean to Castile, which the experts thought was an impossible plan because the distance to Asia would be too great. Columbus had badly miscalculated the earth’s circumference. His early attempts to convince the Castilian court fail.


1492	The Spanish “Reconquest” of the Iberian peninsula ends in January with the conquest of Granada, the last city held by the Moors. Jews are given the options of conversion, expulsion or death. In April, Columbus finally gets authorization for his doomed plan to reach Asia via the Atlantic Ocean. He stumbles into the New World in October, enslaving the first humans he meets. He builds a fort on Española from the wreckage of his flagship. By this time, the Bay of Biscay has been “whaled out.”	World population: 470 million, at least half in East Asia and India. Population in the Americas: 50 to 100 million (this site uses 80). Europe’s population: 70 to 80 million. Taino population: 2 to 10 million. At least one million on Española (this site uses 2)
1493	Columbus is named Admiral of the Ocean Sea and returns to Española to mount a large-scale invasion. The Incan Empire is at its peak in South America.
1494	Treaty of Tordesillas delineates the eventual New World domains of Portugal and Spain.
1496	The genocide of the Taino is well underway on Española. Selling the Taino in the European slave markets does not work, because they quickly die upon being shipped to Europe, and the Spanish sovereigns officially frown upon the idea when it proves unprofitable. Columbus devises a tribute system to force the Taino into mining gold.
1497	Vasco da Gama sails from Portugal to India around Africa; Arab traders cure his crew of scurvy in 1498, and he returns in 1499 with trade specimens, including valuable spices.
1499	First major gold strike on Española.
1502	Montezuma II crowned, the last pre-invasion Aztec emperor.
1504	Michelangelo finishes sculpting his David statue.
1506	Leonardo da Vinci finishes his Mona Lisa. Columbus dies a rich man in bed in Spain, although he is an obscure figure.
1509	Henry VIII ascends throne of England.
1510	Portuguese ships conquer the Muslim port of Goa in India, beginning the era of Portuguese dominance along southern Asia. Portugal makes its first official sale of African slaves in the New World.
1511	Portuguese traders capture Malacca, in today’s Malaysia, establishing themselves in the spice trade.
1512	Michelangelo finishes painting the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling.
1513	Vasco Núñez de Balboa “discovers” the Pacific Ocean in present-day Panama, and claims it in the name of the Spanish crown. Juan Ponce de León hunts for slaves for Caribbean gold mines and “discovers” Florida. Natives likely already knew of white men, as they battle and drive off the Spaniards. Niccolò Machiavelli writes The Prince, which foreshadows future European political practice.
1516	Hieronymous Bosch dies, leaving behind a surreal body of work that will later influence Salvador Dali, among others.
1517	Martin Luther publishes his Ninety-Five Theses, which begins the Protestant Reformation.
1518	First New World smallpox epidemic begins, wiping out most of the surviving Taino on Española, who were already only about 1% of their 1492 population.
1519	Hernan Cortés and his men kidnap Aztec Emperor Montezuma and loot all the gold they can get. As Columbus did, Ferdinand Magellan seeks route across Atlantic to the Asian spice trade. He dies in 1521, battling the natives in the Philippines, but his mission circumnavigates the planet in 1522. Charles of Spain bribes his way into becoming the Holy Roman Emperor.
1520	Smallpox epidemic that began on Española in 1518 comes across with the Cuban governor’s army, probably killing several million people in Mesoamerica.
1521	The Cortés-led siege of Tenochtitlán completely destroys what is probably the world’s most spectacular city. Ponce de León invades Florida again, and dies from battle wounds. Diet of Worms, where Martin Luther is asked to recant his criticisms of the Catholic Church. He refuses, and is declared an outlaw.
1524	Giovanni Verrazano, an Italian explorer in the employ of France, sails along the coast of North America.
1525	European epidemic sweeps through Incan Empire, kills emperor and ignites civil war.
1528	Pánfilo de Narváez’ entrada into Florida ends in disaster.
1529	Ottoman armies lay siege to Vienna, but fail, in the greatest advance into Europe it would make.
1530	The Portuguese begin their colonization of Brazil.
1532	Francisco Pizarro invades Incan Empire, kidnaps Incan emperor and sacks empire. Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII’s second wife, gives birth to Elizabeth.
1535	Native American medicine man cures Jacques Cartier’s crew of scurvy on Saint Lawrence River with evergreen foliage and tree bark tea, which was high in vitamin C. Henry VIII’s England begins confiscating Roman Catholic properties.
1536	The world’s first life insurance policy is written.
1537	Ambroise Paré accidentally ends the practice of pouring boiling oil on battlefield wounds and initiates more gentle treatment.
1539	Hernando de Soto invades southeastern North America, seeking gold.
1540	Francisco Vázquez de Coronado invades southwestern North America, seeking gold.
1542	Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo “discovers” the Californian coast. Hernando de Soto dies on banks of Mississippi River after his fruitless gold quest devastates southeastern North America. Spanish expedition asserts Spain’s claims to the Philippines. Efforts of Bartolomé de Las Casas persuade emperor Charles V to sign laws repealing native slavery.
1543	Nicolas Copernicus’ posthumously published work theorizes that the earth orbits the sun, re-establishing what Pythagoras thought more than 2000 years earlier. Considered the first work of the scientific revolution. Andreas Vesalius’ De Humani Corporis Fabrica is considered the first work of modern scientific medicine. It challenges a thousand years of dogma based on Galen’s work. The Catholic Church increases its efforts to ban books. Portugal begins trading with Japan.	Taino population on Española: 200
1545	The great silver mine at Potosí (in modern-day Bolivia) is established.
1549	A Portuguese expedition establishes a large colonial presence in Brazil.
c. 1550	Easter Island reaches its peak population, of about 7000 people. Clans compete in making stone idols, and the island is quickly deforested by idol-transporting activities, leading to environmental and population collapse by about 1600. The English deforestation of Ireland is underway. Neither Ireland nor Easter Island has recovered its forests.
1552	Las Casas publishes his A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies, which quickly becomes a bestseller, especially in Protestant Europe, and the “Black Legend” begins.
1553	Michael Servetus publishes an accurate description of pulmonary circulation. Escapes Spanish Inquisition to only be burned at the stake in Calvin’s Geneva for his heresies.
1556	Portuguese establish port of Macau on Chinese coast.
1557	Spanish crown goes bankrupt, the first of several bankruptcies that would chart Spain’s decline as an imperial power.
1558	Elizabeth I becomes England’s first ruling queen.
1559	Catholic Church publishes its index of banned books. Index survives until the 1960s. Tristán de Luna expedition goes where de Soto’s went, hoping to find rich lands to plunder as de Soto did, and finds the region depopulated from aftermath of de Soto expedition. Portuguese Crown gives official approval to begin shipping African slaves to Brazil.
1562	Wars of Religion begin in France, a series of nine conflicts that last until 1598.
1564	Spain begins conquest of the Philippines, and establishes Manila in 1572.
1565	Saint Augustine, in today’s Florida, is established, originally a fort to protect Spain’s plunder route from pirates. It is the first permanent European settlement in North America.
1566	Ottoman sultan Suleiman dies, and the Ottoman Empire begins its long decline.
1568	Oppressive Spanish rule leads to Dutch revolt, which lasts until 1648. Spanish “discovery” of the Solomon Islands.
c. 1570	Hiawatha and Deganawidah form the Great Law of Peace and the Iroquois Confederation, which influences the creation of the U.S. Constitution. It might have been formed as early as 1200 AD, however.
1576	Martin Frobisher seeks gold near Baffin Island. He ravages natives and hauls back hundreds of tons of fool’s gold to England on the next voyage. Last wolf sighted in Wales.
1577	Francis Drake mounts pirate expedition to plunder the Pacific ports of Spain’s empire. His successful voyage circumnavigates the world, returning home in 1580, and got him knighted as well as made him England’s richest private citizen.
1580	Spain annexes Portugal, and remains in control of it for sixty years. Castile is no longer able to produce enough food to feed its population.
1582	Russia invades Siberia in pursuit of fur trade.
1585	Walter Raleigh establishes the ill-fated Roanoke colony.
1586	Spain goes to war with England, to try ending the Dutch revolt.
1588	Spanish Armada is destroyed in battle with English navy. The defeat marks the end of Spain’s imperial dominance.
1593	South Pacific islanders cure Richard Hawkins’ crew of scurvy with citrus fruit.
1595	Walter Raleigh seeks golden city of El Dorado in South America.
1596	Spitsbergen whaling grounds opened. Bubonic plague visits Spain, carrying off 10% of its population during the next several years.
1598	The year its Wars of Religion finally conclude, the French try to establish a colony on uninhabited Sable Island off of Nova Scotia, in a rich fishing area, and with no interference from natives or European rivals, the colony completely fails.
1599	Spanish forces slaughter hundreds of Pueblo Indians at Acoma, in present day New Mexico, in revenge for the killing of eleven Spanish soldiers who had been plundering and raping the natives at will. Spain ends the 16th century probably worse off than it began it.	Native population of the Americas: 8 million
1600	Giordano Bruno burned at the stake for his heresies, notably for stating that the earth orbits the sun. The English East India Company is incorporated. The Dutch begin sailing to Asia for spices, and establish their own East India company in 1602.
c. 1601	William Shakespeare writes Hamlet.
1603	Elizabethan Era ends with the death of Elizabeth I of England. England completes its conquest and subjugation of Ireland.
1604	King James I publishes A Counter-Blaste to Tobacco, and tours England to warn of its dangers. English war with Spain ends, and Spain never again rises to its former imperial dominance.
1605	Squanto, of Puritan fame, first kidnapped by the English.
1607	Jamestown established. The first task is finding gold.
1609	With their French allies using guns, Huron warriors surprise a war party of their Mohawk rivals, with deadly effectiveness. On behalf of the Dutch, Henry Hudson, while searching for the Northwest Passage, explores the river that is named for him, in present-day New York.
1610	Galileo Galilee publishes his discovery of Jupiter’s moons, using the newly invented telescope.
1614	Squanto is captured by John Smith’s men.
1615	Jews are legally allowed to live in the Netherlands, for their only haven in Western Europe.
1618	The Thirty Years’ War, Europe’s last great religious war, begins. About 4 million people die in the conflict.
1619	Squanto returns as interpreter with English, and discovers that his entire tribe had been wiped out by European disease. The Puritans would settle on that tribe’s land. The Dutch establish Jakarta, which becomes the center of the Asian spice trade.
1620	The Pilgrims land at Plymouth, and Squanto teaches them how to survive in the New World. Squanto dies in 1622 of disease.
1626	The Dutch “buy” Manhattan Island from the natives.
1627	Last wild European bison dies
1628	William Harvey publishes his research on function of human heart. Dutch ships seize entire Spanish silver fleet off of Cuba.
1637	The English surround Pequot village of several hundred people on the Mystic River at night, then burn it to the ground while killing nearly every inhabitant, selling the few survivors into slavery.
1638	Three million pounds of tobacco per year are exported from present-day Virginia, reaching 17 million in 1672. Caribbean sugar growing becomes a business on Barbados, and the great period of New World sugar growing begins. New Sweden established in present-day Delaware.
1639	Japan kicks out Portuguese traders, and thereafter trades exclusively with the Dutch. Dutch fleet defeats Spanish fleet in the English Channel.
1640	Fur trade renders the beaver extinct in the Hudson River Valley. English Civil War, also called the Puritan Revolution, begins. It is the last significant religious conflict in Europe.
1641	The Dutch governor of Manhattan offers the first scalp bounty.
1643	Spanish army destroyed by French army at Rocroi.
1644	John Underhill successfully reproduces his strategy of strategy of surrounding Native American villages at night and annihilating all of its inhabitants. That time, he did it under hire to the Dutch, and the Manhattan church fathers declared the second Thanksgiving to celebrate the feat.
1646	Pamunkey tribe (natives who initially fed the Jamestown invaders) is completely destroyed, and survivors sold into Caribbean slavery.
1649	Only forty years after receiving military assistance from the French, the Huron tribe becomes extinct. King Charles I of England is publicly tried and beheaded.
1652	English and Dutch navies begin a series of wars that last until 1684.
1661	Coal smoke in London creates the greatest lung hazard on earth.
1664	The Dutch lose their North American possessions to the English.
1668	Antoni van Leeuwenhoek invents the microscope.
1670	Charleston founded, which becomes the center of the early English-American slave trade.
1672	Nantucket becomes heart of American whaling industry.
1675	The French East India Company establishes its first outpost in Bombay.
1676	King Phillip’s War results in the extinction of the tribe that welcomed the Puritans.
1680	The Pueblo Indians revolt against brutal Spanish rule, and kick them out of today’s New Mexico. The Spaniards begin their reconquest of them two years later. The revolt leads to horses becoming part of Native American life, especially benefiting the Plains Indians.
1682	Frenchman La Salle explores Mississippi river, finds it deserted, depopulated by disease left by de Soto’s expedition and other European-introduced epidemics.
1687	Isaac Newton’s Principia is published.
1688	England has its Glorious Revolution, which limits the power of English sovereigns and empowers its Parliament.
1689	King William’s War begins, between France and England, largely over dominance in North America, and it involves the native tribes. The English Bill of Rights is passed by Parliament, and the Toleration Act, which promotes religious toleration. Those laws become the model for the U.S. Bill of Rights.
1692	Twenty people executed in Salem, Massachusetts, for practicing witchcraft.
1700		600 million
1702	Queen Anne’s War begins between the French and English in North America. It was known in Europe as the War of Spanish Succession.
1707	England unites with Scotland, becoming Great Britain.
1709	Englishman Abraham Darby advances brass-making science, and invents coke smelting in this year, producing iron with it. It initiates increased demand for coal and metallurgical advances.
1712	Thomas Newcomen invents steam engine for pumping water.
1717	Voltaire spends his first stint in the Bastille, for his satirical writings. His work would come to embody the ideals of the Enlightenment.
1739	Spain tries halting trade between England and its American colonies, and the conflict is called the War of Jenkins’ Ear, and becomes part of the War of the Austrian Succession, which begins in 1740.
1743	Last wolf sighted in Scotland.
1744	King George’s War begins, which is waged in North America, but is also part of a larger war, the War of the Austrian Succession.
1750	The Enlightenment becomes prominent in France at about this time. Johann Bach dies. China and India comprise 57% of world industrial output.
1754	James Lind’s experiments aboard HMS Salisbury prove that citrus fruit cures scurvy. French and Indian War begins in North America, which was the last war of dominance between England and France in North America. Benjamin Franklin, influenced by the Iroquoian model of government, introduces his Albany Plan of Union, which sought to unite the colonies. The plan becomes the first step toward creating the U.S. Constitution.
1756	The Seven Years’ War breaks out in Europe between the imperial powers, England and France most notably. The Third Carnatic War in India between France and England breaks out at this time.
1763	Lord Jeffrey Amherst suggests deliberately introducing smallpox amongst the Native Americans who resisted the English invasion. The subsequent epidemic kills more than 100,000 natives. The French and Indian War ends in North America, with the English prevailing. The Third Carnatic War in India ends, with the English victorious over the French. The English announce the Royal Proclamation of 1763, which forbids the American colonists to settle west of the Appalachians.
1764	Battle of Buxar establishes British rule over Bengal. The British rape of India begins.
1768	James Cook visits Australia, names it New South Wales, and targets it for British colonization.
1769	James Cook visits New Zealand and claims it in the name of Great Britain. The Maoris had eliminated about a third of New Zealand’s forests by that time, and large animals, such as the Moa, were about extinct. In the first century of the European invasion, more than 75% of the Maori population dies off. Similar population collapse accompanies the Europeans wherever they appear in the South pacific. Junípero Serra establishes first mission at San Diego. James Watt patents the modern steam engine, and the Industrial Revolution begins. Daniel Boone begins the illegal invasion of Kentucky.	800 million worldwide
1770	British exploitation of Bengal leads to a great famine that killed one-third of Bengal’s peasantry. Famines always greatly increased wherever Europe had colonial dominance.
1773	James Cook makes the first visit to Antarctic icepack and surmises that it had to be formed in connection with a landmass. Boston Tea Party helps lead to the American Revolution. The King of Sweden allows Jews to migrate there.
1776	The American Revolution begins. Adam Smith publishes his Wealth of Nations.
1778	James Cook “discovers” the Hawaiian Islands, with the world’s human-friendliest climate. His crew’s venereal disease rapidly spreads through the islands, quickly depopulating Hawaii. The Hawaiian Islands’ population possibly approaches one million inhabitants. Within 100 years, fewer than 50,000 Hawaiians were alive.
1782	Kamehameha begins conquering the Hawaiian islands, using Western arms and waging bloody battles. It takes 13 years to complete his empire building. George Washington proposes a plan to the Continental Congress to swindle the Native Americans out of their land. His plan becomes national policy for the next century. Padre Serra establishes his last mission, San Buenaventura, today called Ventura. The Austrian emperor issues an edict of toleration toward Jews.
1786	Because of the American Revolution, England can no longer ship its criminals to North American penal colonies. Australia is picked as the next English penal colony. The population of the aborigines in southeastern region of Australia (site of the penal colony) declines by about 95% in 60 years. Shays’ Rebellion begins in the United States.
1788	Britain claims Tasmania, and within 50 years, none of the 5000 aboriginal inhabitants remain on the island. Only 43 survived in 1843, and the last Tasmanian aborigine died in 1876.
1789	French Revolution begins. George Washington becomes the first U.S. president. The U.S. Bill of Rights is passed, 100 years after the English Bill of Rights.
1791	Inspired by the American and French revolutions, Haitian slaves lead a successful revolution against the French colonial masters. The U.S., with its millions of slaves, would not officially recognize Haiti until the American Civil War. Wolfgang Mozart dies, which marks the beginning of the end of the classical era of music. The U.S. Army suffers it greatest proportional defeat ever, at the hands of Native Americans, as it invades the Ohio River Valley.
1793	Benjamin Rush begins era of “heroic” medicine in U.S. during yellow-fever epidemic.
1794	Antoine Laurent Lavoisier is beheaded in France. His work with oxygen, combustion and respiration founds modern chemistry. Whiskey Rebellion over American taxation begins. The Battle of Fallen Timbers completes the U.S. theft of the upper Ohio River Valley.
1795	260 years after Jacques Cartier’s crew is cured of scurvy, and more than one million preventable deaths later, the British navy begins issuing citrus juice to its sailors.
1796	Samuel Hahnemann first uses the term homeopathy to describe a new system of medicine that he was developing. Edward Jenner performs his first smallpox inoculation.
1798	U.S. Congress passes the Alien Act and the Sedition Act. The Sedition Act makes it a crime to criticize American government officials. The Alien Act authorizes summary deportations of “aliens.” It is specifically intended to rid the nation of people with revolutionary ideas, such as French and Irish immigrants.
1799	Napoleon leads overthrow of French government. He begins war with neighbors in 1803 and crowns himself Emperor in 1804. Benjamin Thompson and Humphry Davy’s work demonstrates that heat transfer is an exchange of energy, eventually killing the phlogiston theory.
1800	Woodland bison is rendered extinct in Eastern North America. Fur industry in Siberia collapses from centuries of trapping. Sea otter population of northern Pacific also collapses due to Russian over-hunting.
1802	French invasion to try reconquering Haiti fails.
1803	The United States consummates Louisiana Purchase from France. Lewis and Clark expedition sets out to reconnoiter the new territory. The expedition initiates the short-lived exploitation of the fur trade’s last frontier.
1804	First locomotive built in England by Richard Trevithick. Haiti declares itself independent, for the world’s only successful slave rebellion.
1807	Robert Fulton’s steamboat Clermont makes its famous voyage from New York to Albany up the Hudson River. Spain supports Napoleon in war against Portugal, which ignites the Peninsular War, which lasts until 1814.
1808	In reaction to Napoleon crowning his brother as the King of Spain, Venezuelan colonists form self-government, and send Simón Bolivar to England as its emissary, to try gaining recognition.
1811	Venezuela is first Spanish colony to declare its independence, a revolution that fails the next year.
1812	Napoleon begins his disastrous invasion of Russia. War of 1812 begins.
1814	British troops burn Washington DC. First self-contained cotton mill is built, in Waltham, Massachusetts. Napoleon’s reign ends, as all of Europe unites against France.
1815	Battle of Waterloo ends Napoleon’s bid for a comeback to power, a year after he was finally defeated. The Congress of Vienna is convened by the European powers, to reestablish lines of political demarcation.
1819	After years of battles and exile, Simón Bolivar and his troops overthrow the Spanish Crown in 1819 in New Granada, now called Colombia. It is the first successful Latin American revolution, with Bolivar becoming Colombia’s first president. Bolivar seeks to unite South America on the model of North America’s United States, a plan that fails.
1822	Americans establish colony to ship slaves back to Africa. In 1847 the colony became Liberia. Brazil achieves its independence peacefully.
1823	The Monroe Doctrine is formulated.
1824	Sadi Carnot publishes treatise that becomes the basis for the second law of thermodynamics.
1825	The most abundant metal in the earth’s crust, aluminum, is first isolated.	Humanity passes 1 billion
1826	After decades of bitter fighting, Maryland passes its “Jew Bill,” giving Jews the right to vote.
1830	Belgium emancipates it Jews, leading to emancipation movements throughout Europe.
1835	Charles Cagniard-Latour works with yeast, and theorizes that it is alive. Theodor Schwann, the father of histology, confirms Cagniard-Latour’s work at about the same time and takes it further. Using Western arms, Maori warriors of New Zealand brutally invade and conquer the Moriori people of the Chatham Islands. By this time, the beaver pelt trade has collapsed in western North America, after only 30 years of exploitation.
1836	American settlers complete theft of Texas from Mexico.
1838	Cherokee and other “civilized” tribes are forced into migrating to Oklahoma, even after the Cherokee prevailed in the U.S. Supreme Court. The genocidal relocation becomes known as the Trail of Tears.
1839	Three million Americans use Samuel Thomson’s brand of medicine. Britain begins exploitation of China with first Opium War, and forces opium addiction on China by also forcing the Bengal region into opium production. Prickly pear cactus introduced to Australia, and by 1925 it dominated 30 million acres, pushing out all other plants.
1841	Britain captures Hong Kong.
1843	Charles Dickens publishes A Christmas Carol.
1844	American Institute of Homeopathy founded. Anesthetic properties of nitrous oxide first used by American dentist Horace Wells. European “hunters” render the great auk, which once lived in great numbers on the islands of the North Atlantic Ocean, extinct.
1845	American Medical Association (AMA) founded. Irish potato famine begins.
1846	America wages war on Mexico to steal what becomes the Southwestern United States. American whalers show up off California coast, hunting the gray whale and seals.
1847	Ignaz Semmelweis invents Western medicine’s first sterile practices, used in maternity wards. Peak year of American whaling.
1848	Louis Pasteur discovers molecular chirality, beginning his career. U.S. finishes stealing most of southwestern United States from Mexico. Gold discovered at Sutter’s Mill in California. Revolution sweeps Europe. Karl Marx presents his Communist Manifesto.
1850	California admitted to the union, and its first governor declares open season on the natives.
1851	Herman Melville publishes Moby Dick.
1853	Diplomatic invasion of Japan by the American Commodore Perry forces Japan into the world economy. Expanding rail system allows mass “hunting” and shipping of passenger pigeons from American Midwest to markets in east. Passenger pigeon population begins collapsing. Seal fur trade collapses in North Atlantic. Crimean War begins, in the first great struggle of the great European powers, a conflict that would eventually lead to the World Wars of the 20^th century. A French diplomat publishes book that marks the rise of anti-Semitism in France.
1854	Antoine Béchamp begins his Beacon Experiments. German parasitologists have documented parasitic pleomorphic life cycles, ending the spontaneous-generation controversy regarding parasites.
1858	Rudolf Virchow publishes his Cellular Pathology.
1859	First American oil well drilled. Charles Darwin publishes his Origin of the Species. Rabbits introduced to Australia, initiating ecological disaster.
1861	American Civil War begins. Calomel is the standard medicine for the troops. Antiseptic surgery is not yet invented. Pasteur tries taking credit for discovery of Béchamp. Semmelweis publishes his great work on sanitary practices.
1862	The United States recognizes Haitian independence.
1863	John Rockefeller enters the oil industry and concentrates on taking over oil refining. American whaling industry is collapsing.
1864	Pasteur publicly takes credit for overturning spontaneous-generation theory. The germ theory of disease follows from his work. Sand Creek massacre of Black Kettle’s Cheyenne tribe in dawn attack. The AMA steps up its anti-abortion campaign.
1865	American Civil War ends. Svend Foyn perfects cannon-harpoon, initiating industrial phase of whaling.
1866	Béchamp calls the sub-cellular life forms that he discovered microzyma.
1868	George Custer’s troops slaughter Black Kettle’s Cheyenne tribe in dawn attack. Revolution in Japan leads to a unified nation, and Japan begins playing catch-up with the West.
1870	Joseph Lister produces his first report of the success of sterile surgical procedures. Franco-Prussian War begins. It is the last major conflict on European soil until World War I.
1876	“Custer’s luck” runs out at the Little Big Horn. Beginning of proprietary medicine craze in America. El Niño-caused drought that lasts three years, combined with European export crop imperialism, devastates India, China and Brazil, causing as many as 30 million deaths from starvation and disease. Japan forces trade agreement on Korea; similar to what Perry did to Japan in 1853. William W. Keen begins using Joseph Lister’s sterile surgical procedures at the St. Mary’s Hospital in Philadelphia.
1878	Yellow-fever epidemic begins in New Orleans. People treated with homeopathy have less than half the death rate of the general population. Congress is impressed. One million American families use homeopathy.
1879	Thomas Edison perfects light bulb, and science refuses to acknowledge his feat.
1880	John Rockefeller’s empire controls 95% of U.S. oil refining. Pacific whaling industry has largely collapsed, in less than 80 years of Pacific whaling.
1881	William Halsted begins his surgical career in the United States.
1882	Jews expelled from Moscow, and Jewish pogroms spread in the Russian Empire.
1884	New York Cancer Hospital opens. Later named Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, the world’s most influential cancer research organization. Elephant seal extinct on islands off California.
1885	Belgium begins plundering the Congo.
1886	In the United States and France, scientists discover how to refine aluminum economically.
1887	John Rockefeller begins rebuilding a Baptist seminary into the University of Chicago. The Tesla Electric Company files its first patent on alternating current technology, which provides electric power to the world today.
1890	Massacre at Wounded Knee, ending Native American resistance to U.S. land theft. Extermination of Plains Indian sustenance, the bison, is also complete, as only 23 animals survive in the wild, compared to 40 to 60 million before the white man’s invasion. Vincent van Gogh commits suicide.
1891	Starlings introduced to America, and displace native species in their population explosion. Walrus extinct on Pribilof Islands off Alaska, once known as the Fur Seal Islands.
1893	Columbian Exhibition in Chicago, celebrating 400 years of European presence in the New World. Largest event attendance in world history to that time.
1894	Japan wages a war and easily defeats China, supplanting China as the dominator of Korea.
1896	Emil Grubbé invents X-Ray treatment of cancer. Another El Niño-caused drought, combined with European exploitation, ravages India and China, causing perhaps another 30 million deaths over several years, similar to 1876 event.
1899	George Simmons hired by the AMA. He soon takes it over. Chinese uprising against foreign occupation becomes the Boxer “Rebellion.” It is put down by foreign troops, including American, British, French, Russian, Japanese and German troops.
1900	After 150 years of European exploitation, beginning in Bengal, China and India produce 8% of world industrial output, versus 57% in 1750. The gray whale is thought to be extinct at this time. Some survived, however, and its population has largely recovered. The right whale was also considered extinct in the Northeast Atlantic. Some survived, however, but its population has not recovered.
1903	Wright brothers first fly. Science and the media ignore them for five years. U.S. steals Panama from Colombia, creating the divided nation of Panama so it can own the route for its proposed canal.	1.6 billion
1904	The devastation of the world’s last unplundered whaling grounds, the Antarctic Ocean, begins.
1905	Japan beats Russia in war. Albert Einstein publishes his paper on special relativity.
1906	Mark Twain writes King Leopold’s Soliloquy regarding the Belgian rape of the Congo, and the American publishing establishment completely suppresses its publication in the United States.
1910	Flexner Report is issued, and directs Carnegie and Rockefeller “philanthropic” funding of medical schools.
1913	Ludlow Massacre committed by Rockefeller strikebreakers. Rockefeller founds American Cancer Society predecessor organization. Morris Fishbein is recruited to the AMA by Simmons. Federal Reserve Act sneaks through U.S. legislature.
1914	Pasteur Institute confirms bacterial pleomorphism. World War I begins. The last passenger pigeon dies in captivity in Cincinnati. From a population of 5 billion pre-white man birds to extinction in little more than one century, for history’s most spectacular extinction episode.
1915	The United States invades Haiti, overthrowing its government.
1918	World War I ends. Prescott Bush, father of George Bush the First, allegedly robs the grave of Geronimo, and the remains were put on display at the Skull and Bones Society, an oligarchical secret society at Yale. George the First and Second also belong to the club. The Great Powers of Europe begin carving up the Ottoman Empire into controllable nation-states. Oil politics dominates the affair.
1924	Divorce scandal forces Simmons to step down at AMA. Fishbein takes over. He tries to buy out Hoxsey’s cancer treatment and begins persecuting Dinshah Ghadiali. Hitler writes Mein Kampf.
1926	Pancho Villa’s tomb raided, and his skull allegedly acquired by the Skull and Bones Society at Yale.
1927	John Rockefeller begins funding the Memorial Hospital, later named Sloan-Kettering. Rockefeller’s Empire enters into its first cartel agreement with I.G. Farben.
1929	American Tobacco Company begins campaign to addict American women to tobacco. Wall Street collapses later that year.
1930		2.0 billion
1931	The findings of Royal Rife’s microscopes begin generating great scientific interest, and Thomas Rivers of the Rockefeller Institute tries discouraging it. Three independent studies conclude that the fluorine ion is responsible for tooth mottling.
1933	Hitler comes to power. Franklin Roosevelt takes office as president. American industrialists try to mount a Fascist coup of the White House.
1935	Under Fishbein’s guidance, Phillip Morris launches an ad campaign for its cigarettes, making a health claim to do so, quickly becoming the biggest U.S. cigarette seller. JAMA’s pages are filled with cigarette ads for a generation. Smedley Butler writes War is a Racket.
1937	Japan invades China, and the Rape of Nanking is the first major atrocity of what became World War II. Gerald Cox, of the Mellon Institute, begins suggesting that the fluoride ion is good for teeth.
1939	After hearing of miraculous success with Rife’s treatment, Fishbein tries buying into Rife’s company. When that fails, the AMA wages lawsuit, destroying Rife’s company. Nazi Germany is in midst of anti-smoking campaign led by Hitler, as well as beginning World War II.
1941	Japan attacks Pearl Harbor, and U.S. enters World War II. Hitler’s Final Solution is underway.
1942	The FDA has Dr. William Koch thrown into jail. The tide of World War II turns with the Nazi disaster at Stalingrad late in the year. Father of George Bush the First is director and shareholder of company that U.S. government seizes because it helped arm and finance Nazi Germany. The Rockefeller Empire, which also helped Nazi Germany, escapes that fate.
1943	George Orwell writes Animal Farm and has trouble finding British publisher, and a censored version of book is eventually published. The censorship still exists.
1944	Manhattan Project has huge fluorine accident, which the government covers up. Harold Hodge of the Manhattan Project helps with the accident cover-up, and soon begins promoting the health benefits of fluoride.
1945	Third Reich ends, as well as greatest war in human history, ending with two nuclear bombs being dropped onto civilian population centers. After only 30 years of exploitation, the sardine industry in California collapses due to overfishing.
1946	Dr. Max Gerson presents recovered cancer patients using his treatment to a U.S. Senate committee. Anti-Jewish sentiment in the United States reaches its all-time high.
1947	The term “flying saucer” is coined by UFO sighting by pilot near Mount Rainier, and the Roswell Incident happens soon after. The CIA and NSA are formed. The United Nations proposes the establishment of Israel. U.S. engages in first major manipulations of post-war era, as it overthrows popular communist movements in Greece and Italy. Oscar Ewing, lead counsel for ALCOA, the world’s largest fluoride polluter, heads government effort to fluoridate America’s water supplies.
1948	Israel established, and Jewish oppression of Palestinian people begins. Bell Labs invents the transistor.
1949	George Orwell’s 1984 published. In the wake of Harry Hoxsey’s victory in court, Morris Fishbein is dumped from the AMA, ending his 25-year reign. Fishbein goes to work for cigarette-maker Lorillard.
1950	Immediately after Fishbein’s fall, JAMA publishes its first report on the link between smoking and cancer. ALCOA is selling its sodium fluoride refining waste to municipal water districts in the most profitable hazardous waste disposal program in history. U.S. invasion of Korea begins.
1952	Lorillard begins an ad blitz promoting its asbestos cigarette filter, using research that their highly-paid consultant Fishbein helped design. The CIA recruits Ralph McGehee into its ranks; as an All-American football player, he is one of the CIA’s more treasured recruits.
1953	Fitzgerald Committee finds that organized medicine wiped out a dozen alternative cancer treatments, including Krebiozen and Hoxsey’s treatment. U.S. prevents nationalization of British oil monopoly in Iran by overthrowing the government, installing the Shah and one of the 20^th century’s more brutal regimes.
1954	JAMA finally discontinues running cigarette ads, because the drug advertisers complained. U.S. prevents nationalization of United Fruit’s investments in Guatemala by overthrowing its U.S.-friendly government, leading to a generation of brutal rule by Guatemalan juntas. The U.S. takes over from the French failure of trying to recolonize Southeast Asia.
1957	Wilhelm Reich dies in a U.S. federal penitentiary. His work was burned in the U.S. and Nazi Germany.
1960	John Crane thrown into prison for pursuing Rife’s work.	3.0 billion
1963	John Kennedy murdered. Gerald Ford of the Warren Commission would help concoct the “magic bullet” theory to pin the crime on “lone nut” Lee Harvey Oswald.
1964	American Surgeon General releases report that makes smoking hazard clear. The AMA and tobacco companies produce their own “research” that attempts to counter the Surgeon General’s report. Gaston Naessens is run out of France. Beatles appear on Ed Sullivan Show. The U.S. fabricates the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, and begins the destruction of Southeast Asia.
1965	CIA helps military junta take power in Indonesia. Suharto’s forces “cleanse” Indonesia of about a million “communists” by murder. Globally, the whaling industry collapses, as there are few whales left to kill.
1967	Israel invades neighboring areas and seizes large swaths of land.
1968	Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy are murdered by “lone nuts.” Nixon elected president. In Saigon, Ralph McGehee finally figures out what the CIA is all about.
1969	United States lands on moon, and begins “secret” war in Cambodia, killing hundreds of thousands of people and setting the stage for the Khmer Rouge’s reign.
1972	Watergate burglary, planned by the CIA’s E. Howard Hunt, begins Nixon’s downfall. George Wallace shot by “lone nut” while campaigning for president.
1973	OPEC oil price shocks create worldwide cycle of inflation until the 1980s. Vice president Agnew resigns to avoid criminal charges of bribery and income tax evasion. U.S. overthrows elected Marxist government of Chile and installs one of the world’s most repressive regimes.
1974	Nixon resigns, taken down by his own people. Gerald Ford takes office, makes Nelson Rockefeller his vice president, and pardons Nixon for alleged crimes.
1975	Two assassination attempts on Gerald Ford by “lone nuts,” nearly making Rockefeller the second appointed president, Ford being the first. With American approval, Indonesia invades East Timor using U.S. weapons, killing off about a third of East Timor’s inhabitants.	4.0 billion
1977	Sloan-Kettering rejects laetrile as a cancer treatment, although its famous chemotherapy researcher Kanematsu Sugiura found positive results, and fires Ralph Moss for making that contradiction public. Jimmy Cater signs treaty to give Panama Canal back to Panama.
1979	The Shah of Iran is overthrown in a revolution. The United States manipulates the Soviet Union into invading Afghanistan.
1980	Ronald Reagan elected president. October Surprise operation, probably aided by George Bush, helps sabotage Carter’s attempt for re-election. John Lennon murdered by “lone nut.” Iraq invades Iran, beginning eight-year war.
1981	Ronald Reagan becomes president. “White paper” of fabricated documents “justifies” reign of terror that the U.S. begins in Central America. Reagan shot by “lone nut” friend of vice-president George Bush’s family. Panamanian national hero Omar Torrijos dies in “plane crash,” and Manuel Noriega takes over.
1982	Ronald Reagan signs Savings and Loan deregulation law, setting the stage for America’s greatest financial scandal.
1983	Dr. Ernst Krebs, the discoverer of laetrile, goes to jail. After a two-year legal battle, Ralph McGehee’s heavily censored Deadly Deceits is published.
1984		5.0 billion
1985	U.S. ships weapons to “enemy” Iran through Israel. It becomes basis for Iran-Contra Scandal. Dennis Lee makes a run at bringing alternative energy to the United States marketplace, in perhaps the most formidable effort yet made in U.S. history.
1988	George Bush is elected president, and the next week the American people are told of the magnitude of the Savings and Loan Scandal.
1989	Gaston Naessens is put on trial. Berlin Wall falls. U.S. invades Panama and Bush apprehends his former employee, Noriega.
1990	With virtual encouragement from the United States, Iraq invades Kuwait. Tomb of Omar Torrijos robbed, probably by the Skull and Bones Society that both George Bushes belong to.
1991	Jimmy Keller is kidnapped by U.S. Justice Department from Mexico. After actively avoiding negotiations for an Iraqi withdrawal, the U.S. bombs Iraq into the Stone Age, and the subsequent death toll is more than one million people.
1995	Canadian factory trawlers cause collapse of the Grand Banks fisheries, which was about the world’s most prolific. It is only one of many examples of collapsing fisheries across the planet. A slow recovery is happening.
1996	Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski is put on trial.
1998	Charles Pixley is released from prison. His crime was trying to make 714X a legal import. Jimmy Keller is put back into prison.
1999		6.0 billion
2000	George Bush the Second comes to office in a voting scandal.
2001	714X treatment making news in the U.S. Keller gets outs of prison again, has stroke. Terrorist attacks on World Trade Center and Pentagon. George Bush the Second begins his “war on terror.”
2002	Enron Scandal makes news. America prepares to invade Iraq.