Top 100 Events of the 2nd Millennium
Source: “The Millennium” issue; Life mag., Fall 1997

11th Century
1008 83 1st Novel: “Tale of Genji”
1088 50 1st Modern University
1095 18 Crusades begin

12th Century
1100 7 China develops gunpowder weapons
1117 10 Earliest account of nautical compass
1120 56 1st known restaurants
1150 71 Temple of Angkor Wat completed
1169 85 Ibn-Rushd translates Aristotle

13th Century
1211 29 Genghis Khan invades China
1215 19 Magna Carta signed
1260 75 Chartres Cathedral completed

14th Century
1324 89 Mansa Musa’s pilgrimage to Mecca
1325 66 Aztecs establish Tenochtitlan
1348 21 The Black Plague
1350 73 Birth of Fashion

15th Century
1407 84 Public banking
1413 65 Brunelleschi adds perspective
1450 78 Coffee brewed in Yemen
1453 92 Ottomans take Constantinople
1455  1 Gutenberg printing press
1492  2 Columbus’s voyage to the Americas

16th Century
1509 12 1st slaves brought to the New World
1517  3 Martin Luther launches Protestant reformation
1535 54 Europeans introduced to tobacco
1537 39 Europeans introduced to potato
1543 69 Vesalius reveals human anatomy’s secrets
1545 81 Peruvian silver enriches Spanish empire
1582 100 Gregorian calendar
1588 94 Spanish Armada defeated
1596 60 1st flush toilet

17th Century
1601 79 1st Welfare program
1603 35 Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”
1605 96 Cervantes’ “Don Quixote”
1609 56 1st regularly printed newspaper
1610  5 Galileo proves earth revolves around the sun
1610 28 Tea imported to Europe
1628 49 Harvey explains human circulatory system
1633 55 1st child-rearing book
1656 52 1st Pendulum clock
1666 23 Newton’s law of gravity
1674 44 Microorganisms observed
1683 95 1st public museum

18th Century
1722 43 Bach standardized scales
1769  4 Industrial revolution begins
1776  8 U.S. declaration of independence
1789 34 French revolution begins
1796 13 Smallpox vaccine
1799 98 Rosetta stone found

19th Century
1804 91 Haiti wins independence
1812 48 1st canned food
1821 74 Bolivar liberates Venezuela
1826 37 Niepce takes the 1st photograph
1829 46 1st water filtration system
1830 24 1st all-steam railway
1834 53 Refrigeration
1838 72 Rise of labor movement
1839 58 Goodyear vulcanizes rubber
1844 38 Marx meets Engles
1844 41 Morse’s telegraph
1846 93 Anesthesia used in surgery
1848 40 Birth of women’s suffrage movement
1851 67 Singer’s sewing machine
1854 77 Otis’s Elevator
1854 62 Bessemer refines steel
1859 15 Darwin’s “Origin of Species”
1859 47 1st oil well drilled
1865 51 US. Civil War ends southern slavery
1866 42 Mendel’s law of heredity
1867 63 Nobel  invents dynamite
1868 88 Rise of Japan
1869 80 Suez canal opens
1876 20 Bell invents the telephone
1876 11 Edison opens laboratory
1880 87 Cezanne paints Mont Ste.-Victoire
1882 6 Germ theory of disease proved
1886 82 Coca-Cola bottled
1895 32 1st picture show
1895 61 Rontgen discovers X-rays
1896 97 Modern Olympics

20th Century
1900 31 Freud’s “Interpretation of Dreams”
1901 25 Marconi sends transatlantic wireless message
1903 27 Wright brothers fly
1905 36 Einstein’s E=mc2
1906 68 Rise of Pentecostal movement
1907 90 Baekeland synthesizes plastic
1908 17 Ford builds model T
1914 26 World War I begins
1914 57 Sanger founds birth control movement
1917 45 Russian revolutions begins
1928 22 Fleming discovers penicillin
1928 14 1st regular TV broadcasting  begins
1933 9 Hitler takes power
1934 64 Mao leads long march to Chinese revolution
1945 16 U.S. drops atomic bomb on Hiroshima
1947 30 Transistors lead way to computer age
1947 86 India wins independence
1953 76 Crick & Watson map structure of DNA
1954 99 Birth of Rock’n’Roll
1962 70 Carson’s “Silent Spring”
1969 33 Armstrong walks on the moon