This timeline presents events related to this site, with links to pertinent parts of it.

Date

Event

Human Population Statistics

c. 4.6 billion BCE

A star is born.  We call it the Sun.

c. 4.56 billion BCE

Earth forms.

c. 4.53 billion BCE

Moon forms.

c. 4.0 billion BCE

Continents begin to form.

c. 3.8-3.5 billion BCE

Life appears on Earth.

c. 3.4 billion BCE

Photosynthetic organisms first appear.

c. 2.4 billion BCE

First ice age known of begins.

c. 1.7 billion BCE

Algae appears.

c. 1.2-1.0 billion BCE

Sexual reproduction first appears.

c. 850 million BCE

Second ice age known of begins.

c. 570 million BCE

Complex sea animals appear in Earth’s ocean.

c. 500 million BCE

Fish appear, world’s ocean teems with life.

c. 460 million BCE

Ice age appears and lasts for 30 million years.

c. 443 million BCE

First mass extinction episode of complex life, with 85% of Earth’s species becoming extinct.

c. 470 million BCE

Land plants appear.

c. 430 million BCE

Land animals appear.

c. 365 million BCE

Amphibians appear.

c. 375-360 million BCE

Second mass extinction episode, with 70% of Earth’s species becoming extinct.

c. 270-250 million BCE

Third and so far greatest extinction episode, with more than 90% of earth’s species becoming extinct.

c. 231 million BCE

Dinosaurs appear.

c. 225 million BCE

Mammals appear.

c. 200 million BCE

Fourth major extinction event, claiming 70-75% of earth’s species. 

c. 160 million BCE

Birds appear.

c. 160 million BCE

Flowering plants appear.

c. 85 million BCE

Primates appear.

c. 66 million BCE

Dinosaurs become extinct in fifth major extinction event, which claims 75% of all species.   First primates appear. 

c. 50 million BCE

Whales begin evolving from land-based to aquatic life.

c. 35 - 30 million BCE

Apes appear, who are the ancestors of humans.

c. 13 million BCE

Evolutionary split, which separated eventual orangutans from other great apes, begins.

c. 7 -10 million BCE

Evolutionary split that leads to chimpanzees begins.

c. 7-5 million BCE

Evolutionary split that leads to humans begins.

c. 4 million BCE

First protohumans appear in Africa, differentiating from their great ape cousins.

Human population = 0

> 2 million BCE

Large-brained bipedal hominids, of the genus homo, appear in Africa.

< 2 million BCE

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

c. 2.6 million BCE

Pleistocene ice age begins, ending 12,000 years ago.

c. 2-1 million BCE

Fire consistently used.  First regular food processing practiced – cooking.

1 million BC

First motion picture, starring Raquel Welch.

c. 200,000 BCE

Homo sapiens appears.

c.  60,000 BCE

Advances in hunting skill and technology allow humans to hunt larger animals.  Boats invented.  Behaviorally modern humans migrate beyond Africa and displace all other human species.

c. 5,000

c. 48,000 – 46,000 BCE

Humans migrate to Australia, and the Sixth Mass Extinction begins. 

c. 43,000 BCE

Humans populate Tasmania and eventually become isolated from peoples in Australia from the rising ocean as the current interglacial period began. 

c. 40,000 BCE

Cave murals are first drawn, in European caves. 

c. 31,000 BCE

The dog is the first domestic animal.

c. 25,000 BCE

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.  23,000 BCE

Bow and arrow in use in Europe, but may have been invented as early as 60,000 BCE.

c. 20,000 BCE

Pottery first appears, in China. 

c. 13,000 – 11,000 BCE

Humans probably first appear in North and South America.  Pig and modern dog domesticated. 

c. 10,000 BCE

The most recent ice age ends.  

c. 9000 BCE

Extinction of most large mammals in North America, possibly caused by human over-hunting, probably also influenced by climate changes.  Agriculture begins in Fertile Crescent.  First permanently inhabited town, Jericho, begins developing.  Copper, the first metal ever worked, is used in the Fertile Crescent region. 

c. 8500 - 8000 BCE

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.  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.  Goat domesticated in today's Iran.  Cattle domesticated near Anatolia.  Early settlements are egalitarian.

c. 5 million

c. 7500 BCE

Domestication Revolution begins in east Asia. 

c. 7000 BCE

Sheep begins domestication in Fertile Crescent region.  First large human communities, such as Çatal Höyük, appear in present-day Turkey.  Beginnings of urban class system appear.

c. 6500 BCE

The clearing of forest to make farm fields, and the resultant puddles, led to the spread of malaria, which probably originated in Africa. 

c. 6000 BCE

Chicken and rice begin domestication in east Asia.  Agricultural communities appear along the Nile river.

c. 5400 BCE

First city established, in Mesopotamia near mouth of Euphrates River.

c. 5000 BCE

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. 

c. 4500 BCE

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 BCE

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 in Mesopotamia. 

c. 7 million

c. 3500 BCE

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.  Bronze age begins in Fertile Crescent. 

c. 3300 BCE

Migrating farmers from Fertile Crescent settle Indus valley in present day Pakistan. 

c. 3000 BCE

Sumer 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.  The world’s most sophisticated agricultural system, the paddy system, is developed in China.

c. 14 million

c. 2600 BCE

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. 2570

Necropolis at Giza begins construction.

c. 2400 BCE

Crop yields continue declining in Sumerian fields.  Wheat yields decline by 42% between 2400 and 2100 BCE. 

c. 2100 BCE

Ur abandons wheat cultivation.  Wheat comprises only 2% of Sumerian crops. 

c. 2000 BCE

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.  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. 1800 BCE

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 BCE

Wheat yields in Sumeria decline by 65% since 2400 BCE.  Fields turn white from salt.  Sumer declines as a power, and the center of Mesopotamian civilization shifts north.

c. 1500 BCE

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.

c. 38 million

c. 1300 BCE

First Iron Age civilization begins in Anatolia.  Agriculture begins in Japan.

c. 1200 BCE

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.  The Polynesian expansion, from the region near New Guinea to the South Pacific’s islands, begins.

c. 1100 BCE

The Phoenician maritime civilization rises, based in today’s Lebanon, and flourishes for centuries.  They invent the alphabet.  

c. 1000 BCE

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.  Greeks make the first heat-treated iron weapons.  Chinese begin using coal for smelting copper coins. 

c. 50 million

c. 900 BCE

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’s daughters. 

c. 750 BCE

A village begins with shepherds’ huts, eventually known as Rome. 

c. 650 BCE

Expanding Greek settlements begin causing noticeable environmental degradation. 

590 BCE

Solon argues against agriculture on steep slopes in Greece because of rapid erosion. 

586 BCE

Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II’s armies destroy Jerusalem, with tens of thousands of Jews being taken to Babylon as slaves.  Their first forced emigration was in 597 BCE, when skilled Jews were taken.  It began the dispersal of the Jews across the world.

c. 563

Gautama Buddha is born; he died around 483 BCE.

560 BCE

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 BCE

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 BCE

Republic of Rome begins, which takes power away from local kings.  The Roman republic tries balancing the needs of peasants and aristocrats. 

c. 500 BCE

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. 

480 BCE

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 BCE

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 BCE

Peak of the Greek classic period.  Hippocrates, Socrates, Thucydides, and Aristophanes are alive.  During Peloponnesian War (begun in 431 BCE), 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’s decline.

c. 400 BCE

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 BCE

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 BCE

After subduing Italy, Rome engages in its first war against Carthage.  Italy and Sicily are rapidly deforested to meet Rome’s needs.

202 BCE

Rome defeats the forces of Carthaginian general Hannibal, ending the second Punic War.  

c. 200 BCE

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.  Chinese probably invented paper around this time, although tradition gives the date as 105 CE.

197 BCE

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 BCE

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 BCE

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 that it is today. 

54 BCE

Julius Caesar’s armies defeat the inhabitants of southern Britain.  

31 BCE

Cleopatra and Anthony’s forces defeated by Rome, and Egypt comes under Roman rule the next year. 

27 BCE

After a century of 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 CE

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 1492 by perhaps more than one million, and are loosely known as the Taino. 

World population: c. 170 million.

C. 30 CE

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: c. 50 million

66 CE

First Jewish revolt against Roman rule.  Rome responds with typical brutality, the revolt ending with the mass suicide at Masada in 73 CE.  Jews begin their dispersal from Palestine. 

122 CE

Hadrian’s Wall built by Rome in northern England, which marked the northern extent of its empire. 

132 CE

Jews revolt against Roman rule again.  Rome responds in standard fashion, completely destroying the Jewish state in 135 CE 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 CE

The Antonine Plague, which may have been 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 CE

Marcus Aurelius appoints Galen to be personal physician to his heir, Commodus.  Galen writes prodigiously, and his work guided Western medicine until the 1500s. 

c. 200 CE

c. 200 million

251 CE

An epidemic again sweeps through the Roman Empire until 270, killing 5,000 of Rome’s residents 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 CE

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 eradicated. 

300 CE

Babylonia becomes the center of the Jewish culture.  At this time, and perhaps a few centuries later, Polynesians begin colonizing the Hawaiian Islands. 

324 CE

Roman Emperor Constantine convenes the Council of Nicaea, which is one of his gambits to hold the fragmenting empire together through a state religion.  There were 20 different versions of Jesus’s crucifixion circulating among the numerous Christian sects of the day.  The council was charged with creating a state-approved institution and version of Jesus’s 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 CE.  The Council of Nicaea may have something to do with the fact that more than half of Jesus’s life is missing from the New Testament.  Feminine imagery is almost completely missing from Christian religious mythology.  Constantine also establishes Constantinople in 324 CE 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 CE

Visigoths invade Rome, for the first invasion of the city in eight centuries. 

451 CE

Hun invasion of Roman Empire stopped by a great battle in France.  Hundreds of thousands die in battle. 

476 CE

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’s 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. 

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. 

c. 250 million

c. 570

Islam's founder Muhammad is born. 

632

Muhammad dies. 

c. 650

Mesoamerican empire centered in city of Teotihuacan begins its collapse, to be replaced in power by the militaristic Toltecs, which is 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 that lasts 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 CE, 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 Normans.  Others go inland and become Russians. 

c. 900

Brown bear nearing extinction in the British Isles. 

c. 1000

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 5,000 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 explorers discover Easter Island and soon colonize it.  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 perhaps 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, which is 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.

c. 360 million

c. 1250

Polynesian people begin colonizing New Zealand. 

1254

Jews expelled from France.

1257

Coal smoke from local fires drives Queen Eleanor from Nottingham Castle. 

1258

Mongol armies raze Baghdad while slaughtering perhaps a million people.  Islam is devastated.

1264

Iceland accedes to Norwegian rule and begins its decline, with 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. 

1315

Europe is gripped by a major famine that lasts until 1317.  Dante Alighieri finishes his Divine Comedy.  

c. 1325

Immigrants to Valley of Mexico settle in marsh in the valley’s lake, which is 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, gunpowder 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 75-200 million people by 1351, wiping out up to half 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.  Warfare and death imagery would become prevalent in European art.

c. 450 million.  Europe would not regain 1345 levels until the 16th century.

1378

Contested election of Pope Urban VI leads to the Great Schism, an embarrassment that would last half a century, which climaxed 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.

c. 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 15th 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. 

1434

Portugal enters the African slave trade. 

c. 1439

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: 30 to 100 million (this site uses 50-80).  Europe’s population: 70 to 80 million.  Taino population: at least one million.

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 Western Hemisphere 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 as 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 England's throne.

1510

Portuguese ships conquer the Muslim port of Goa in India and begin 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 a small fraction 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 while 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, which probably kills several million people in Mesoamerica. 

1521

The Cortés-led siege of Tenochtitlán completely destroys one of the world’s most spectacular cities.  Ponce de León invades Florida again and dies from battle wounds.  Diet of Worms convenes, 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

Epidemic sweeps through Incan Empire, kills emperor, and ignites civil war.

1528

Pánfilo de Narváez's entrada into Florida ends in disaster. 

1529

Ottoman armies lay siege to Vienna, but fail, in the greatest advance into Europe it would make.  S'

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's posthumously published work theorizes that the earth orbits the sun, re-establishing what Pythagoras's followers thought nearly 2,000 years earlier.  Considered the first work of the scientific revolution.  Andreas Vesalius's 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 7,000 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, which are 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, which was 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 CE, 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’s 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 that 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 several hundred 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. 

1600

Giordano Bruno burned at the stake for his heresies, and notably for stating that 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, is 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 Galilei 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 the survivors are sold into Caribbean slavery.

1649

Only 40 years after receiving military assistance from the French, the Huron tribe becomes extinct.  King Charles I of England is publicly tried and beheaded. 

Native population of the Americas: 9 million

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; it was 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 Enlightenment's ideals.

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 global 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 begins 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 half of New Zealand’s forests by that time, and large animals, such as the Moa, were 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 has at least 250,000 inhabitants.  Within 100 years, fewer than 50,000 Hawaiians were alive. 

1782

Kamehameha begins conquering the Hawaiian islands by using Western arms and waging bloody battles.  It takes 13 years to complete his empire building.  Padre Serra establishes his last mission, San Buenaventura, today called Ventura.  The Austrian emperor issues an edict of toleration toward Jews. 

1783

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. 

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 5,000 aboriginal inhabitants remain on the island.  Only 43 survived in 1843, and the last Tasmanian aborigine died in 1905.

1789

French Revolution begins.  George Washington becomes the first American 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 USA, 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 USA 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 USA's theft of the upper Ohio River Valley. 

1795

260 years after Jacques Cartier’s crew is cured of scurvy, and perhaps two 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 falsifying 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 USA 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, which is 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 Earth’s crust, aluminum, is first isolated. 

Humanity passes 1 billion

1826

After decades of bitter fighting, Maryland passes its “Jew Bill,” which gives Jews the right to vote.

1830

Belgium emancipates it Jews, which leads 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 the 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 as it pushed 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 arrive off the California coast, hunting the gray whale and seals. 

1847

Ignaz Semmelweis invents Western medicine’s first sterile practices, which is used in maternity wards.  Peak year of American whaling. 

1848

Louis Pasteur discovers molecular chirality, which begins his career.  The USA finishes stealing most of southwestern USA from Mexico.  Gold discovered at Sutter’s Mill in California.  Revolution sweeps Europe.  Karl Marx presents his Communist Manifesto. 

1850

California is admitted to the union, and its first governor declares an 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 20th 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, which initiated an 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 USA recognizes Haitian independence.

1863

John Rockefeller enters the oil industry and concentrates on controlling 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, which initiates the 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 USA and France, scientists discover how to economically refine aluminum. 

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 the USA'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 and supplants it as Korea's dominator. 

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 partly recovered.  The right whale was also considered extinct in the Northeast Atlantic.  Some survived, however, but its population has not recovered. 

1901

Nikola Tesla begins building radio and free energy tower.

1903

Wright brothers first fly.  Science and the media ignore them for five years.  The USA steals Panama from Colombia and creates the divided nation of Panama so that it can own the route for its proposed canal.  J.P. Morgan stops funding Tesla.

1.6 billion

1904

The devastation of the world’s last unplundered whale habitat, 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. 

1911

Winston Churchill converts the British Navy from coal to oil. 

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 the USA'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, it is human history’s most spectacular extinction episode. 

1915

The USA invades Haiti and overthrows 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, which is 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 process. 

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.

c. 2.0 billion

1929

American Tobacco Company begins campaign to addict American women to tobacco.  Wall Street collapses later that year. 

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 American 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 a lawsuit that destroys 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 the USA 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 the USA'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 a 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.  The USA 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, which ends 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.  The USA'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.  The USA prevents nationalization of British oil monopoly in Iran by overthrowing the government and installing the Shah and one of the 20th century’s more brutal regimes. 

1954

JAMA finally discontinues running cigarette ads, because the drug advertisers complained.  The USA prevents nationalization of United Fruit’s investments in Guatemala by overthrowing its U.S.-friendly government, which leads to a generation of brutal rule by Guatemalan juntas.  The USA takes over from the French failure of trying to recolonize Southeast Asia. 

1957

Wilhelm Reich dies in an American federal penitentiary.  His work was burned in the USA and Nazi Germany.

1960

John Crane thrown into prison for pursuing Rife’s work. 

c. 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 USA 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 is elected president.  In Saigon, Ralph McGehee finally realizes the CIA's purpose. 

1969

United States lands on moon, and begins “secret” war in Cambodia, which kills hundreds of thousands of people and sets 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 end the Postwar Boom, and the American standard of living begins declining.  Vice president Agnew resigns to avoid criminal charges of bribery and income tax evasion.  The USA 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. 

c. 4.0 billion

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.    

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 USA manipulates the Soviet Union into invading Afghanistan.

1980

Ronald Reagan is 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 to that time. 

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. 

1985

The USA 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 American 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. 

c. 5.0 billion

1989

Gaston Naessens is put on trial.  Berlin Wall falls.  The USA invades Panama and Bush apprehends his former employee, Noriega. 

1990

With virtual encouragement from the United States, Iraq invades Kuwait.  The tomb of Omar Torrijos is 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 USA bombs Iraq into the Stone Age, and the death toll in the next several years 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. 

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. 

2000

George Bush the Second comes to office in a voting scandal. 

c. 6.0 billion

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.