World History Timeline

Time

Rise of the Egyptian solar calendar

3000 b.c.

Babylonian lunar calendar

432 B.C.

Julian calendar

46 b.c. - 1582

Council of Nicea

325 A.D.

First sand-filled hourglasses

800

Chinese aromatic, "fire-clock"

1073

Su Sung's Heavenly Clockwork

1090

Creation of the modern hour

1330

Pope Gregory adjusts Julian calendar

1582

Robert Hooke invents spring-driven clock

1658

Timepieces increase in accuracy

1670

John Harrison wins British Parlaiment contest for most accurate portable clock

1714

America & England accept Gregorian calendar

1752

People

King David of Israel

1040 B.C. - 970 B.C.

Homer

770 B.C. - 700 B.C.

Hesiod

750 B.C. - 650 B.C.

Simonides of Ceos

556 B.C. - 468 B.C.

Hecaetus of Miletus

550 B.C. - 489 B.C.

Herodotus

480 B.C. - 425 B.C.

Thucydides

460 B.C. - 400 B.C.

Aristotle

384 B.C. - 322 B.C.

Eratosthenes

276 B.C. - 194 B.C.

Ssu-ma Ch'ien

145 B.C. - 87 B.C.

Chinese historian

Julius Caesar

100 B.C. - 44 B.C.

Jesus Christ

4 B.C. - 28 A.D.

Seneca

4 B.C. - 65 A.D.

Persius

34 A.D. - 62 A.D.

Quintilian

35 A.D. - 95 A.D.

Developed the "architectural technique" for memory.

Plutarch

46 AD - 120 AD

Marinus of Tyre

80 A.D. - 150 A.D.

Ptolemy

90 A.D. - 168 A.D.

Galen

130 - 200

Origen

185 A.D. - 254 A.D.

Greek theologian.

Eusebius of Caesarea

260 A.D. - 340 A.D.

Origen's "successor".

St. Augustine

354 - 430

St. Augustine (Aurelius Augustinius)

354 A.D. - 430 A.D.

St. Benedict of Nursia

480 A.D. - 543 A.D.

Dionysus Exiguus

500 A.D. - 560 A.D.

Muhammad

570 A.D. - 632 A.D.

Alcuin

732 A.D. - 804 A.D.

Charlemagne

742 A.D. - 814 A.D.

Alexander Neckham

1157 - 1217

Roger Bacon

1220 - 1292

St. Thomas Aquinas

1225 - 1274

Marco Polo

1254 - 1324

Fransesco Petrarch

1304 - 1374

Yung Lo

1359 - 1424

Johann Gutenberg

1394 - 1468

Pope Nicholas V

1397 - 1455

Lorenzo Valla

1407 - 1457

William Caxton

1422 - 1491

Ambrogio Calepino

1440 - 1510

Aldus Manutius

1450 - 1515

John Cabot

1450 - 1498

Christopher Columbus

1451 - 1506

Leonardo da Vinci

1452 - 1519

Amerigo Vespucci

1454 - 1512

Martin Behaim

1459 - 1507

Vasco de Gama

1460 - 1524

Pope Paul III

1468 - 1549

Nicolaus Copernicus

1473 - 1543

Bartolome de Las Casas

1474 - 1566

Rabelais

1483 - 1553

Paracelsus

1493 - 1541

King Francis I

1494 - 1547

Leonhart Fuchs

1501 - 1566

John Calvin

1509 - 1564

Erasmus Reinhold

1511 - 1553

Gerardus Mercator

1512 - 1594

Andreas Vesalius

1514 - 1564

Rheticus (Georg Joachim)

1514 - 1574

Konrad Gesner

1516 - 1565

Joachim du Bellay

1522 - 1560

Pierre de Ronsard

1524 - 1585

Joseph Justus Scaliger

1540 - 1609

Leonardo Salviati

1540 - 1589

Tycho Brahe

1546 - 1601

Simon Stevin

1548 - 1620

Matteo Ricci

1552 - 1610

Santorio Santorio

1561 - 1636

Galileo Galilei

1564 - 1642

Heribert Rosweyde of Utrecht

1569 - 1629

Dissolved the legend of St. George.

Johannnes Kepler

1571 - 1630

Dr. Robert Fludd

1574 - 1637

Wiliam Harvey

1578 - 1657

Marin Mersenne

1588 - 1648

Henry Oldenburg

1617 - 1677

Gabriel Mouton

1618 - 1694

Fransesco Redi

1626 - 1697

John Ray

1627 - 1705

Marcello Malpighi

1628 - 1694

Antoni van Leewenhoek

1632 - 1723

Jean Mabillon

1632 - 1707

Opened the sciences of handwriting.

Francis Willughby

1635 - 1672

Robert Hooke

1635 - 1703

Isaac Newton

1642 - 1727

Baron Leibniz

1646 - 1716

Edward Tyson

1651 - 1708

Giambattista Vico

1668 - 1744

Carolus Linnaeus

1707 - 1778

Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon

1707 - 1788

Johann Joachim Winckelmann

1717 - 1768

...If you know what I mean.

Thomas Jefferson

1743 - 1826

Valentin Hauy

1745 - 1822

Talleyrand

1754 - 1838

Thomas Robert Malthus

1766 - 1834

Napoleon Bonaparte

1769 - 1821

Christian Jurgensen Thomsen

1788 - 1865

John Stevens Henslow

1796 - 1861

Charles Lyell

1797 - 1875

Sir Anthony Panizzi

1797 - 1879

Charles Darwin

1809 - 1882

Louis Braille

1809 - 1852

Karl Marx

1818 - 1883

Lewis Henry Morgan

1818 - 1881

Jens Jacob Worsaae

1821 - 1885

Heinrich Schliemann

1822 - 1890

Louis Pasteur

1822 - 1895

Alfred Russell Wallace

1823 - 1913

William James

1842 - 1910

Hermann Ebbinghaus

1850 - 1909

Sigmund Freud

1856 - 1939

Other

Ptolemy's Almagest, Geographia & Tetrabiblos

150

Sung Dynasty

960 A.D. - 1127 A.D.

Legend of Prester John

1100 - 1573

Protestant Reformation

1517 - 1648

Portuguese Inquisition in Goa

1560

Thirty Years' War

1618 - 1648

Opium War

1839 - 1842

Earth & Seas

The Periplus of the Indian Sea

80 AD

Byzantines retake Alexandria

645

Arab fleet defeats Byzantines

655

Vikings settle Faroe Islands

700

Vikings settle Iceland

770

Viking Exploration

780 - 1070

Vikings found Dublin

841

Vikings given Normandy

911

Bjarni Herjolfsson sights North America

986

Eric the Red settles Greenland

986

First magnetized compass used in China

1000

Leif Ericsson sails for and camps in Vinland (Newfoundland)

1001

Viking settlements in Vinland

1001 - 1020

William of Normandy invades England

1066

Decline of Viking voyages

1200 - 1300

Direct trade between Europe & Asia

1250 - 1350

Catalan Atlas

1375

Age of the Portuguese Explorer

1400 - 1550

Cheng Ho's voyages

1405 - 1433

D'Ailly's Imago mundi

1410

Giraffe from Bengal arrives in China

1414

China's Great Withdrawal

1433

Fra Mauro's map

1459

King John II send Dias around Africa

1468

Toscanelli's letter

1474

Pope Pius II's Historia... gestarum

1477

Cohiva sent by King John II to find Prester John

1487

Idn Majid's Nautical Directory

1490

Columbus' voyages to the New World

1492 - 1504

Treaty of Tordesillas

1494

King Manuel I sends Vasco de Gama around Africa to India

1497

Vasco de Gama starts Portuguese-Orient trade

1498

Nature

Dioscorides' De materia medica

77 A.D.

Age of Galen

200 - 1600

Eyeglasses become common

1300

Vesalius' Six Anatomical Tables

1538

Fuch's De Historia Stirpum

1542

Copernicus' De Revolutionibus

1543

Vesalius' Structure of the Human Body

1543

Stevin introduces the decimal system in "The Tenth"

1585

Kepler discovers symmentry of planetary orbits

1595

Kepler's Mysterium Cosmographicum

1596

Fludd invents the thermometer

1600

Tycho Brahe's Progymnasmata

1602

Galieo's discoveries reach Asia

1610 - 1635

Galileo's Starry Messenger

1610

Santorio's Ars de Medicina Statica

1612

Harvey's On the Motion of the Heart & the Blood in Animals

1628

Galileo stands before the Inquisition

February, 1633 - June, 1633

Gesner's Historia Animalium (English)

1658

Royal Society of London established

1660

Hooke's Micrographia

1665

Oldenburg begins his scientific journal, "Philosophical Transactions"

1665

Tyson's Anatomny of a Porpess

1680

Ray's Methodus Plantarum

1682

Newton's Principia I

1686

Ray's Historia Plantarum

1686 - 1704

Newton becomes president of the Royal Society

1703

Newton's Principia II

1713

Newton's Principia III

1726

Linnaeus' Sponsalia Plantarum

1729

Linnaeus' System Naturae

1735

Buffon's Histoire Naturelle

1749 - 1785

Buffon's Theory of the Earth expounded

1749 - 1779

Linnaeus' Species Plantarum

1753

the invention of binomial nomenclature

Malthus' Principles of Population

1798

Talleyrand creates the metric system

1799

Lyell's Principles of Geology

1830

Darwin journeys on the Beagle

1832 - 1835

First public statement on the modern theory of evolution

July 1, 1858

Darwin's Origin of Species

1859

Lyell's Antiquity of Man

1863

Tyson & Cowper's Orang-Outang, sive Homo Sylvestris

1894

Society

Herodotus' History of the Persian Wars

430 B.C.

Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian Wars

404 B.C.

Ad Herrenium, a Roman treatise on Memory

84 B.C.

Paper invented by Ts'ai Lun

105 A.D.

Augustine's The City of God

415 A.D.

If you want to go to college, you must speak Latin.

500 A.D. - 1600 A.D.

Exiguus corrects Pope Hilarius' calendar, adds Anno Domini

540 A.D.

Alcuin reforms the Urbs Regale

782 A.D. - 796 A.D.

Carolingian Miniscule calligraphy font dominates libraries

800 A.D. - 1500 A.D.

Diamond Sutra (oldest surviving printed book)

868 A.D.

Gutenberg invents the printing press

1439

Valla's Treatise on the Donation of Constantine

1440

Gutenberg's Bible

1454

Caxton establishes first printing press in England

1473

Aldine Press established

1494

Moveable type introduced to Japan, book culture flourishes

1500 - 1650

Aldus develops octavo book

1501

Aldus' italic font first used

1501

Calepino's Latin-Italian Dictionary

1502

Valla's Annotations on the New Testament

1505

Pope Paul III's Sublimis Deus

1537

Francis I's Edict of Villers-Cotterets

1539

Officialized Parisian French as the national language

"Battle of Valladolid"

1550

Las Casas defends the Indians.

Mercator's Chronology

1568

Scaliger's Correct System of Chronology

1600

King James Version of the Bible

1611

Salviati's Italian Dictionary

1612

Mabillon's De Re Diplomatica

1681

Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding

1690

Vico's Principles ...concerning the Common Nature of the Nations

1725

Dr. Johnson's English Dictionary

1755

Winckelmann's History of Ancient Art

1764

Hauy founds the Royal Institute for the Young Blind

1785

Braille invents reading system for the blind

1825

Panizzi reforms the British Museum

1831 - 1866

Thomsen's Guide to Scandinavian Artifacts

1836

Marx & Engel's Communist Manifesto

1848

Marx's Das Kapital

1867

Schliemann begins digging in Hissarlik

1871