Timeline of the 20th century explained
This is a timeline of the 20th century.
See also: Edwardian Era.
See also: Timeline of World War I.
1915
See also: Roaring Twenties.
See also: Timeline of the Great Depression.
1930
See also: Timeline of World War II.
1943
1946
1948
1950s
See also: Timeline of events in the Cold War.
1959
1960s
See also: Swinging Sixties.
- January 22: First crewed descent to the deepest point on Earth, the Mariana Trench.
- March 21: The Sharpeville Massacre, in which the police opened fire against a protesting crowd at a police station in the South African township of Sharpeville in Transvaal, resulting in 69 deaths and 180 injuries.
- April 21: Construction of Brasília, Brazil's new capital, finished.
- May 1: 1960 U-2 incident sparks deterioration in relations between superpowers.
- May 9: The birth control pill becomes commercially available.
- May 16: Construction of the first laser.
- May 22: An earthquake in Valdivia, Chile of magnitude 9.4 to 9.6, the highest ever recorded, causes 1,000 to 6,000 deaths.
- Sirimavo Bandaranaike becomes Prime Minister of Ceylon and the first female Prime Minister in the world.
- September 18 – 25: The first edition of the Summer Paralympic Games is hosted in Rome.
- October 12: Inejiro Asanuma, a Japanese socialist politician, is assassinated during a broadcast on TV.
- November 8: The 1960 United States presidential election marks the first televised debates between presidential candidates.
- European Free Trade Association formed.
- Year of Africa: Independence of 17 African nations.
- Khrushchev withdraws Soviet cooperation with China, initiating the Sino-Soviet split.
- Mau Mau Uprising ends.
- The Beatles form in Liverpool.
1962
1964
The Great Alaska Earthquake has a magnitude of 9.2 and lasted almost three minutes resulting in the death of approximately 131 people.
- April 21: Greek military coup establishes a military dictatorship led by Georgios Papadopoulos. The dictatorship ends in 1974.
- June 5 – 10: The Six-Day War, a conflict between Israel and Arab states that resulted in Israel occupying the Gaza Strip, the Sinal Peninsula, the West Bank and the Golan Heights.
- July 6: Attempted secession of the Republic of Biafra from Nigeria triggers the Nigerian Civil War.
- July 17: Death of John Coltrane, American jazz saxophonist, clarinettist and composer.
- August 8: Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) founded.
- May 26: The Beatles release their landmark album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
- October 21: The March on the Pentagon becomes a major event in public opposition to the Vietnam War
- December 17: Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt disappears while swimming at Cheviot Beach, Victoria.
- First high-speed rail introduced in Tokyo.
- Mid-year: Summer of Love, in which as many as 100,000 people, mostly young people sporting hippie fashions of dress and behavior, converged in San Francisco's neighborhood of Haight-Ashbury.
1968
1969
- January 13: Samsung Electronics founded in Suwon, South Korea.
- January 20: Richard Nixon is inaugurated as President of the United States.
- March 2: Concorde 001 flies from the first time, from Toulouse, piloted by André Turcat.
- March – September: Sino-Soviet border conflict.
- April 28: Charles de Gaulle resigns as President of France after a referendum on political reform is voted down.
- June 28 – July 3: The Stonewall riots in New York City instigate the gay rights movement.
- July 20: Apollo 11 Moon landing, in which Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin become the first two humans on the Moon.
- August 8 – 9: The Manson Family Murders – Under Charles Manson's orders, his followers, the "Manson Family" cult, enter the home of Hollywood actress Sharon Tate and murder her and four others.
- August: The Woodstock festival in Bethel, New York, attracts an audience of more than 400,000.
- September 1: Muammar Gaddafi overthrows King Idris of Libya in a Coup d'état and establishes the Libyan Arab Republic.
- October 29: Creation of Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET), the earliest incarnation of the Internet.
- November 10: Sesame Street premieres its debut episode.
1970s
1976
1979
1980s
- March 11: Mikhail Gorbachev becomes General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
- March 15: End of military leadership in Brazil.
- June: End of 1982 Lebanon War.
- July 13: Live Aid.
- August 20: Beginning of the Iran–Contra affair, a political scandal in the United States that occurred during the second term of the Reagan Administration involving the sale of arms to the Khomeini government of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
- September 1: 73 years after its infamous disaster, the wreck of the Titanic is found off the coast of Newfoundland by a joint French–American expedition led by Jean-Louis Michel of IFREMER and Robert Ballard of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
- September 19: An earthquake in Mexico City, magnitude 8.0, kills from 5,000 to 45,000 people.
- October 1: Release date of the Macintosh 128K, the first successful mass-market personal computer to feature a graphical user interface, built-in screen, and mouse.
- November 13: The Armero tragedy, in which 20,000 people die following the eruption of the Nevado del Ruiz stratovolcano in Tolima, Colombia.
- November 20: Windows 1.0, the first Microsoft Windows operating system, released.
- First use of DNA fingerprinting.
1986
- January 2: Beginning of the perestroika ("restructuring"), a political movement for reformation within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union during the 1980s associated with Gorbachev and his glasnost ("openness") policy reform.
- January 13: Lee Teng-hui takes control of Taiwan and oversee end of martial law and full democratization of island.
- March 16: The Halabja chemical attack is carried out by Iraqi government forces, killing thousands.
- July 6: The Piper Alpha oil rig in the North Sea catches fire and explodes, killing 165.
- August 20: End of the Iran–Iraq War.
- October 5: Chile's Augusto Pinochet loses a national plebiscite on his rule.
- November 2: Morris worm, first computer virus distributed through the Internet.
- November 15: Israeli–Palestinian conflict; beginning with the independent State of Palestine being proclaimed from Algiers.
- December 2: Benazir Bhutto elected Prime Minister of Pakistan months after restoration of civilian rule in the wake of Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq's death in plane crash.
- December 7: Spitak earthquake in Armenia.
- December 21: Pan Am Flight 103 is destroyed by a bomb and falls over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 259 people on-board, leaving no survivors, and 11 in town.
- 1988 Polish strikes.
- Myanmar Armed Forces launch a military coup, ending the 8888 uprising.
- The First Nagorno-Karabakh War begins.
- Construction of the Channel Tunnel begins.
- Invasive species, Zebra mussels, found in the Great Lakes system.
1989
- Revolutions of 1989 bring down Communist and authoritarian regimes around the world.
- January 7: Emperor Shōwa (Hirohito) dies; his son, Akihito (the Emperor Heisei) becomes Emperor of Japan.
- January 20: George H. W. Bush is inaugurated as President of the United States.
- February 2: Alfredo Stroessner is overthrown in Paraguay. End of dictatorship.
- February 14: Fatwa issued against Salman Rushdie.
- February 15: End of the Soviet war in Afghanistan.
- March 24: The oil tanker Exxon Valdez spills 10.8 million US gallons of crude oil after striking a reef, causing severe damage to the environment.
- April – June: Tiananmen Square Massacre, in which troops armed with assault rifles and accompanied by tanks fired at student-led demonstrations held in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, resulting in an undisclosed number of deaths (estimated in hundreds to thousands).
- June 3: Ruhollah Khomeini dies; Ali Khamenei becomes Supreme Leader of Iran.
- June 4:
- 1989 Polish legislative election although the elections were not entirely democratic, they led to the formation of a government led by Tadeusz Mazowiecki and a peaceful transition to democracy in Poland and elsewhere in Central and Eastern Europe.
- 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. A crackdown takes place in Beijing on the army's approach to the square, and the final stand-off in the square is covered live on television.
- June 5: An unknown Chinese protester, "Tank Man", stands in front of a column of military tanks on Chang'an Avenue in Beijing, temporarily halting them, an incident which achieves iconic status internationally through images taken by Western photographers.
- August 25: Voyager 2 makes its closest approach to Neptune and its largest moon, Triton.
- October 17: The 6.9 Loma Prieta earthquake shakes the San Francisco Bay Area and the Central Coast, killing 63.
- November 9: Fall of the Berlin Wall; the Revolutions of 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Bloc begin in Europe, which leads to the end of the Cold War.
- November 15 – December 17: The first direct Presidential election in Brazil since 1960.
- November 24: The Communist government of Czechoslovakia falls during the Velvet Revolution.
- December 17: The first episode of The Simpsons premieres on Fox.
- December 20: The United States invasion of Panama begins.
- December 24: The First Liberian Civil War begins.
- December 25: Romanian Revolution: Trial and execution of Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu in Romania.
1990s
- January 31: The first McDonald's in Moscow, Russian SFSR opens 8 months after construction began on May 3, 1989
- February 11: Nelson Mandela is released from Victor Verster Prison outside Cape Town, South Africa after 27 years as a political prisoner.
- March 11: End of the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet in Chile.
- March 27: The United States begins broadcasting Radio y Televisión Martí to Cuba.
- April 24 – May 20: Launch of the Hubble Space Telescope.
- April 7: Scandinavian Star, a Bahamas-registered ferry, catches fire en route from Norway to Denmark, leaving 158 dead.
- May 22: North and South Yemen unify to form the Republic of Yemen.
- June 21: The 7.4 Manjil–Rudbar earthquake affects northern Iran with a maximum Mercalli intensity of X (Extreme), killing 35,000–50,000, and injuring 60,000–105,000.
- July 16: An earthquake in Luzon happens, measuring kills more than 1,600 in the Philippines.
- August 2 – 4: Gulf War begins.
- September 6: Myanmar Armed Forces place Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest.
- October 3: German reunification.
- November 2: Transnistria War begins.
- December 20: Tim Berners-Lee publishes the first web site, which described the World Wide Web project.
- The Contra War ends.
- The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change releases its first assessment report, linking increases in carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere, and a resultant rise in global temperature, to human activities.
1991
- February 28: The Gulf War ends in US withdrawal and a failed uprising.
- March 3: A video captures the beating of motorist Rodney King by Los Angeles police officers. Four Los Angeles police officers are indicted on March 15 for the beating.
- March 23: Beginning of the Sierra Leone Civil War.
- May 16: Elizabeth II becomes the first British monarch to address the U.S. Congress during a 13-day royal visit in Washington, D.C.
- May 21: Assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, Indian Prime Minister.
- May 24 – 25: Operation Solomon, a covert Israeli military operation to airlift Ethiopian Jews to Israel.
- June 12 – 15: Mount Pinatubo erupts with a Volcanic Explosivity Index of 6 and reduces global temperatures.
- June 27 – July 7: The Ten-Day War in Slovenia begins the Yugoslav Wars.
- July 1: President George H. W. Bush nominates the controversial Clarence Thomas for the Supreme Court of the United States to replace Thurgood Marshall, who had announced his retirement.
- The world's first GSM telephone call is made in Finland.
- July 10: Boris Yeltsin becomes the first President of Russia.
- July 11: A solar eclipse of record totality occurs in the Northern hemisphere. It is seen by 20 million people in Hawaii, Mexico, and Colombia.
- July 22: Tracy Edwards escapes Jeffrey Dahmer's apartment and flags down a police car and the cops search through Jeffrey's stuff and find photographs of dismembered bodies and other gruesome images, which finally leads to the arrest of Jeffrey Dahmer and ends his killing spree.
- August 19: Soviet coup attempt of 1991: A coup occurs in response to a new union treaty to be signed on August 20.
- August 25: Michael Schumacher, regarded as one of the greatest Formula One drivers in history, makes his Formula One debut at the Belgian Grand Prix.
- September 17: North and South Korea are admitted to the United Nations.
- September 19: Ötzi the Iceman is found in the Alps.
- October 3: Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Tom Foley announces the closure of the House Bank by the end of the year after revelations that House members have written numerous bad checks.
- October 5: Linus Torvalds launches the first version of the Linux kernel.
- October 30 – November 1: Madrid Conference of 1991.
- Early November: Tropical Storm Thelma lashes into Eastern Visayas, leaving 8,000 people dead.
- December 26:
- Beginning of the Somali Civil War.
- 1991 Sino-Soviet Border Agreement.
- January 9: Discovery of the Kuiper belt and the first extrasolar planets.
- January 16: End of the Salvadorian Civil War.
- February 7: The Maastricht Treaty is signed, creating the European Union.
- February 17: A court in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, sentences serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer to 15 terms of life in prison. Dahmer is murdered in prison 2 years later.
- April 3: End of communism in Albania.
- April 6: The Bosnian War begins.
- April 22: Fuel leaking into a sewer causes a series of explosions in Guadalajara, Mexico; 215 are killed, 1,500 injured.
- April 29 – May 4: Los Angeles riots over the acquittal of those involved in the beating of Rodney King.
- May 13: Falun Gong is introduced by Li Hongzhi in China.
- June 8: The first World Oceans Day is celebrated, coinciding with the Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
- July 21: Transnistria War ends.
- August 24 – 28: Hurricane Andrew kills 65 and causes $26.5 billion in damages in the Bahamas and the United States.
- October 4: El Al Flight 1862, in which a Boeing 747 cargo aircraft of the then state-owned Israeli airline El Al crashes into the Groeneveen and Klein-Kruitberg flats in the Bijlmermeer neighbourhood of Amsterdam, resulting in 43 deaths.
- October 6: Lennart Meri becomes the first President of Estonia after regaining independence.
- October 31 - Microsoft released Windows 3.1.
- December 18: The South Korean presidential election is won by Kim Young-sam, the first non-military candidate elected since 1961.
- January 1: Velvet Divorce between Czech Republic and Slovakia.
- January 20: Bill Clinton is inaugurated as President of the United States.
- February 26: 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
- February 28 – April 19: The Waco siege, the law enforcement siege of the compound that belonged to the Seventh-day Adventist religious sect Branch Davidians near Waco, Texas, carried out by the U.S. federal government, Texas state law enforcement, and the U.S. military, which results in a gunfight, a fire at the compound and 86 deaths.
- March 12: Several bombs explode in Bombay, India, killing 257 and injuring hundreds more.
- May 24: Independence of Eritrea.
- August 24: 1993 child sexual abuse accusations against Michael Jackson.
- September 13: Oslo accords end First Intifada between Israel and Palestine.
- September 26: The first mission in Biosphere 2 ends after two years.
- October 3 – 4: Battle of Mogadishu leaves over 3,000-4,000 people dead.
- October 4: Tanks bombard the Russian parliament, while demonstrators against President Boris Yeltsin rally outside.
- November 1: The Maastricht Treaty comes in to effect.
- November 30: Release date of Schindler's List.
- December 2: Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar is gunned down by police.
- January 1: Establishment of North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
- January 17: The 6.7 Northridge earthquake strikes the Greater Los Angeles Area with a maximum Mercalli intensity of IX (Violent), leaving 57 people dead and more than 8,700 injured.
- February 25: Cave of the Patriarchs massacre in the West Bank, a shooting massacre carried out by American-Israeli Baruch Goldstein, which resulted in 30 deaths and 125 injuries.
- April 6: The assassination of Juvénal Habyarimana and Cyprien Ntaryamira triggers the Rwandan genocide.
- May – July: First Yemeni Civil War.
- May 6: Opening of the Channel Tunnel.
- May 10: End of apartheid in South Africa and election of Nelson Mandela.
- June 15: Release date of Disney's The Lion King.
- June 23: Release date of Forrest Gump.
- July 1: Plano Real introduces the new real currency in Brazil.
- July 5: Amazon founded in Bellevue, Washington, by Jeff Bezos.
- July 8 – 17: Death and state funeral of Kim Il-sung. Kim Jong-il becomes Supreme Leader of North Korea.
- September 19: Operation Uphold Democracy, a military intervention to remove the military regime installed by the 1991 Haitian coup d'état, begins, eventually restoring Jean-Bertrand Aristide to power
- September 28: The car ferry MS Estonia sinks in the Baltic Sea, killing 852 people.
- October 1: Palau gains independence from the United States.
- November 5: George Foreman wins the WBA and IBF World Heavyweight Championships by KO'ing Michael Moorer becoming the oldest heavyweight champion in history.
- December 11: The First Chechen War begins.
- December 14: Construction of the Three Gorges Dam begins in Hubei, China.
- Rise of a wave of Palestinian terrorist attacks in Israel.
- January 1:
- January 17: A 6.9 Great Hanshin earthquake strikes the southern Hyōgo Prefecture of Japan with a maximum Shindo of VII, leaving 5,502–6,434 people dead, and 251,301–310,000 displaced.
- March 14: Astronaut Norman Thagard becomes the first American to ride into space aboard a Russian launch vehicle (the Soyuz TM-21), lifting off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
- March 20: The Tokyo subway sarin attack, an act of domestic terrorism perpetrated by members of the doomsday cult movement Aum Shinrikyo (now Aleph), in which they released sarin, an extremely toxic synthetic compound, in five coordinated attacks, resulting in 13 deaths and 6,252 injuries.
- April 19: American terrorist Timothy McVeigh bombs the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.
- May 14: The Dalai Lama proclaims 6-year-old Gedhun Choekyi Nyima as the 11th reincarnation of the Panchen Lama.
- June 29: The Sampoong Department Store collapse, a structural failure in a department store in Seoul, South Korea, kills 502 people and injures other 1,445.
- July 11 – 22: The Srebrenica massacre of over 8,000 Bosniak Muslim men and boys.
- July 21: The Third Taiwan Strait Crisis begins.
- August–September: NATO bombing raids in Bosnia end the Bosnian War.
- August 24: Release date of Windows 95.
- September 3: eBay is founded by Pierre Omidyar.
- September 19: The Washington Post and The New York Times publish the Unabomber manifesto.
- September 28: Oslo II Accord.
- October 3: O. J. Simpson is found not guilty of double murder for the deaths of former wife Nicole Simpson and Ronald Goldman in 1994.
- October 16: The Million Man March is held in Washington, D.C. The event was conceived by Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.
- October – November: Typhoon Angela leaves the Philippines and Vietnam devastated, with 882 deaths and US$315 million in damage.
- November 4: Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, Israeli Prime Minister and Defence Minister, by Yigal Amir, an Israeli right-wing extremist.
- November 22: Premiere of Toy Story, the first computer-animated feature film and the first Pixar Animation Studios film.
- December 14: The signing of the Dayton Accords put an end to the three-and-a-half-year-long Bosnian War.
- The North Korean famine begins.
- January – August: The Albanian civil unrest (Lottery Uprising), sparked by pyramid scheme failures, in which the government was toppled, with new parliamentary elections, and more than 2,000 people killed.
- February 4: 1997 Israeli helicopter disaster, when two Israeli Air Force transport helicopters ferrying Israeli soldiers into Israel's security zone in southern Lebanon collided in mid-air, killing all 73 Israeli military personnel on board.
- March 13: Island of Peace massacre, a mass murder attack that occurred at the Island of Peace on the Israeli-Jordanian border, in which 7 people were killed and 6 injured.
- March 24 – 26: 39 Heaven's Gate cultists commit mass suicide at their compound in San Diego, California.
- April 1: The first episode of Pokémon airs on TV Tokyo.
- April 22: A 126-day hostage crisis at the residence of the Japanese ambassador in Lima, Peru.
- May 17: Kabila ousts Mobutu; Zaire becomes the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
- June 21: The Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) plays its first game at The Great Western Forum in Los Angeles.
- June 25: J. K. Rowling publishes Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.
- July 1: Handover of Hong Kong from the United Kingdom to China.
- July 2: The Bank of Thailand floats the baht, triggering the Asian financial crisis.
- July 17: The F. W. Woolworth Company closes after 117 years in business.
- August 2: The First Liberian Civil War ends.
- August 29: Netflix is launched.
- August 31: Diana, Princess of Wales is killed in a car accident in Paris.
- November 17: 62 people are killed by 6 Islamic militants outside the Temple of Hatshepsut in Luxor, Egypt.
- Sound barrier broken on land.
- February: Osama bin Laden publishes a fatwa against the West.
- February 2: Cebu Pacific Flight 387 crashes on the slopes between Mount Sumagaya and Mount Lumot in Claveria, Misamis Oriental, killing all 104 people on board.
- February 3: A United States military pilot causes the deaths of 20 people near Trento, Italy, when his low-flying EA-6B Prowler severs the cable of a cable-car.
- February 28: A study led by Andrew Wakefield is published in The Lancet suggesting an alleged link between MMR vaccine and autism. Now known to be full of data manipulation, the study was instantly controversial and fueled the nascent anti-vaccination movement.
- April 10: The Good Friday Agreement brings an end to The Troubles in Northern Ireland.
- April 15: Death of Pol Pot.
- May 4 – 15: Riots in Indonesia, including incidents of mass violence, demonstrations, and civil unrest of a racial nature, result in the Fall of Suharto and the independence of East Timor.
- June 25 - Microsoft released Windows 98.
- July 17: Nicholas II of Russia and his family are buried in St. Catherine Chapel, 80 years after he and his family were killed by the Bolsheviks in 1918.
- August 2: The Second Congo War begins.
- August 7: Kenya and Tanzania bombings.
- August 15: Omagh bombing.
- September 4: Google is founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin.
- October – November: Hurricane Mitch leaves more than 19,325 dead in Central America as a result of catastrophic flooding and mudslides.
- November 20: A Russian Proton rocket is launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, carrying the first segment of the International Space Station, the 21-ton Zarya Module.
- December 19: The impeachment of Bill Clinton begins as a result of the Clinton–Lewinsky scandal.
- The North Korean famine has killed an estimated 2.5 million people by this point.
- January 1: Euro introduced to the financial markets. Coins and banknotes enter circulation in participating countries in 2002.
- February 2: Hugo Chavez becomes President of Venezuela.
- April: A crisis in East Timor, which led to 1,400 deaths, begins.
- April 20: The Columbine High School massacre in Colorado, United States, causes 15 deaths.
- April 21: The Second Liberian Civil War begins.
- May 1: The first episode of SpongeBob SquarePants airs on Nickelodeon.
- May – July: The Fourth Indo-Pakistani War.
- June 11: The end of the Kosovo War ends the Yugoslav Wars.
- August 3: At least 58 people die and hundreds of homes are buried in a massive landslide in Cherry Hills subdivision in Antipolo, Rizal, which has caused by the heavy rains brought by Typhoon Olga.
- August 26: The Second Chechen War begins.
- September 3 – 16: Russian apartment bombings kill more than 350 people.
- October 12: World population reaches 6 billion.
- October 31: EgyptAir Flight 990, travelling from New York City to Cairo, crashes off the coast of Nantucket, Massachusetts, killing all 217 on board.
- November 30: ExxonMobil founded.
- December 3: Tori Murden becomes the first woman to cross the Atlantic Ocean by rowboat alone, when she reaches Guadeloupe from the Canary Islands.
- December 20: Handover of Macau from the Portuguese Republic to the People's Republic of China after 442 years of Portuguese rule in the settlement.
- December 31:
2000s
- January 1: The first day of the 3rd millennium is celebrated on New Year's Day; though with dispute.
- February 9: Torrential rains in Africa lead to the worst flooding in [until March and kills 800 people.
* [[February 17]] - Microsoft released Windows 2000.
- March 10: Dot-com bubble bursts, causing stock markets worldwide to crash.
- March 4: The Sony PlayStation 2 releases in Japan. The system became the highest-selling video game console in history.
- March 12: Pope John Paul II apologizes for the wrongdoings by members of the Roman Catholic Church throughout the ages.
- March 17: 778 members of the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God die in Uganda.
- March 26: Vladimir Putin is elected President of Russia.
- April 30: The Canonization of Faustina Kowalska occurs in the presence of 200,000 people and the first Divine Mercy Sunday celebrated worldwide.
- May 6: The British Army launches Operation Palliser which effectively ends the Sierra Leone Civil War.
- May 11: India becomes the second country to reach 1 billion people.
- May 25: Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon.
- June 13–15: First inter-Korean summit.
- June 17: A centennial earthquake (6.5 on the Richter scale) hits Iceland on its national day.
- July 1: The Øresund Bridge between Denmark and Sweden is officially opened for traffic.
- July 7: The draft assembly of Human Genome Project is announced at the White House by US President Bill Clinton, Francis Collins, and Craig Venter.
- July 10: At least 218 people are killed, about 700 are missing and presumed dead, and about 800 shanties are buried in a collapse of a dumpsite, destabilized by torrential rains caused by tropical cyclones, in Payatas, Quezon City.
- July 11–25: The 2000 Camp David Summit, aimed at reaching a "final status" agreement between the Palestinians and the Israelis, was held between United States president Bill Clinton, Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian Authority chairman Yasser Arafat.
- July 14: A powerful solar flare, later named the Bastille Day event, causes a geomagnetic storm on Earth.
- July 25: Concorde Air France Flight 4590 crashes in France, killing 113 including all people aboard.
- August 12: Russian submarine Kursk explodes, killing all 118 crew.
- September 10: A British military operation to free five soldiers from the Royal Irish Regiment that were held captive for over two weeks during the Sierra Leone Civil War, all of which were rescued.
- September 13: Steve Jobs introduces the public beta of Mac OS X.
- September 26: The Greek ferry Express Samina sinks off the coast of the island of Paros; 80 out of a total of over 500 passengers perish in one of Greece's worst sea disasters.
- September 28: The Second Intifada begins.
- October 5: Yugoslav President Slobodan Milošević resigns following a revolution in Belgrade.
- October 12: al-Qaeda suicide bombs the ; 17 sailors are killed.
- November 2: International Space Station begins operations; its first crew, composed of three men, arrives.
- December 12: In Bush v. Gore, the United States Supreme Court declares George W. Bush President of the United States.
- December 25: The Luoyang Christmas fire at a shopping center in China kills 309 people.
Horizontal timelines
1850–present
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bar:Timeframe color:age from:1850 till:1945 shift:(-100,4) text: Modern Age from:1850 till:1945 shift:(0,-6) text: Late Modern Period from:1945 till:2013 text: Contemporary Period
bar:Themes color:age from:1850 till: 1860 shift:(0,4) text:Industrial Revolution from:1860 till: 1914 shift:(0,4) text:2nd Industrial Revolution from:1860 till: 1914 shift:(20, -10) text:Long Depression from:1914 till: 1918 shift:(0,4) text: World War I from:1918 till: 1939 shift:(0,-7) text:Interwar from:1939 till: 1945 shift:(0,4) text: World War II from:1945 till: 2013 shift:(10,5) text:Atomic Age from:1945 till: 2013 shift:(10,-5) text: (Information Age)
bar:Germany color:age from:1990 till:2013 text: Germany from:1945 till:1990 text: Post-War Germany from:1933 till:1945 shift:(0,5) text: Nazi Germany from:1919 till:1933 shift:(0,-7) text: Weimar Republic from:1870 till:1919 text: German Empire from:1850 till:1870 text: German Confederation
bar:Italy color:age from: 1850 till: 1865 text:Italian unification from: 1865 till: 1946 shift:(-30,0) text:Italian monarchy from: 1922 till: 1943 text:Fascist Italy from: 1946 till: 2013 text:Italian Republic
bar:France color:age from:1940 till:1944 shift:(0,-6) text: Vichy France from:1944 till:1958 shift:(0,4) text: 4th Republic from:1958 till:2013 shift:(0,-5) text: 5th Republic from: 1850 till:1852 shift:(0,5) text:2nd Republic from: 1852 till:1870 shift:(0,-5) text:2nd Empire from: 1870 till: 1940 shift:(-55,-5) text:3rd Republic from: 1870 till: 1914 shift:(-50,5) text:Belle Époque from: 1870 till: 1940 shift:(-55,-5) text:3rd Republic
bar:British.Isle color:age from: 1850 till: 1922 shift:(-75,6) text:British Empire from: 1850 till: 1922 shift:(-75,-4) text: (Victorian era) from: 1850 till: 1922 shift:(35,-13) text:Great Britain and Ireland from: 1901 till: 1914 shift:(0,5) text:Edwardian era from: 1914 till: 1918 shift:(0,-10) text:WWI Defense from: 1918 till: 1939 shift:(0,10) text:UK Depression from:1939 till:1945 text:WWII Defense from: 1918 till: 2013 shift:(10,-13) text:Great Britain and Northern Ireland from: 1945 till: 2013 shift:(-50,3) text:Postwar Britain from: 1945 till: 2013 shift:(75,3) text:United Kingdom & Ireland
bar:Iberia color:age from: 1975 till: 2013 text:Spain from: 1850 till: 1873 shift:(0,-5) text:Nationalism from:1931 till:1939 shift:(0,5) text:2nd Republic from:1936 till:1939 shift:(0,-7) text:Civil War from:1874 till:1931 shift:(0,-7) text:Restoration from:1873 till:1874 shift:(0,-5) text:1st Republic from:1850 till:1873 shift:(-15,7) text:Spanish Kingdom from:1936 till:1975 shift:(0,-5) text:Francoist Spain
bar:Brazil color:age from:1850 till:1889 text:Empire of Brazil from:1889 till:1930 text:1st Republic from:1930 till:1946 text:Vargas Era from:1946 till:1964 shift:(0,4) text:2nd Republic from:1964 till:1985 shift:(0,-10) text:Military dictatorship from:1985 till:2013 text:Brazil
bar:M.East color:age from:1850 till: 1918 text:Ottoman Empire's Dissolution from:1918 till: 1922 shift:(0,1) text:Partition from:1922 till: 1945 shift:(0,-10) text:French Mandate from:1922 till: 1945 shift:(0,10) text:Mandatory Palestine from:1945 till: 1990 text:Arab–Israeli conflict from:1990 till: 2013 shift:(0,-5)text:Middle East from:2010 till: 2013 shift:(-10,5) text:Arab Spring
bar:India color:age from: 1850 till: 1858 shift:(5,6) text:Company rule from: 1858 till: 1947 text:British Raj from: 1947 till: 1947 shift:(0,6) text:Partition from: 1947 till: 1950 shift:(25,-5) text:Dominion of India from: 1947 till: 1956 shift:(25,-15) text:Dominion of Pakistan from: 1950 till: 2013 shift:(50,-5) text:Non-Aligned India from: 1956 till: 2013 shift:(50,-15) text:Islamic Pakistan
bar:Africa color:age from: 1850 till: 1860 shift:(30,5) text:European exploration from: 1860 till: 1950 shift:(-55,-5) text:Scramble for Africa from: 1860 till: 1950 shift:(0,5) text:Colonisation from: 1950 till: 1960 text:Decolonization from: 1960 till: 2013 text:Post-colonial Africa
bar:China color:age from:1850 till:1912 text: Qing dynasty from:1912 till:1949 shift:(0,5) text: Chinese Republic from:1912 till:1949 shift:(0,-5) text: (Nanjing period) from:1912 till:1949 shift:(75,-5) text: Civil War from:1949 till:2013 text: People's Republic
bar:Japan color:age from:1850 till:1868 text: Edo from:1868 till:1912 text: Meiji from:1868 till:1945 shift:(0,8) text: Imperial Japan from:1928 till:1945 shift:(10,0) text: Shōwa from:1912 till:1928 shift:(-10,-4) text: Taishō from:1945 till:2013 shift:(-40,0) text: Postwar Japan from:1989 till:2013 text: Heisei
bar:Russian color:age from:1850 till:1917 shift:(-30,5) text:Russian Empire from:1850 till:1855 shift:(20,5) text:Tsarist Russia from:1855 till:1892 shift:(0,-5) text:Reforms and reactionaries from:1892 till:1917 shift:(0,-5) text:Russian Imperialism from:1917 till:1991 shift:(0,5) text:Soviet Union from:1917 till:1927 shift:(0,5) text:Revolution from:1927 till:1953 shift:(0,-5) text:Stalin from:1953 till:1964 shift:(0,-5) text:Khrushchev from:1964 till:1982 shift:(0,-5) text:Brezhnev from:1982 till:1991 shift:(0,-5) text:Dissolution from:1991 till:2013 text:Federation
bar:U.S. color:age from:1850 till:1860 text: Antebellum from:1860 till:1865 text: US Civil War from:1865 till:1900 text: Gilded Age from:1900 till:1918 shift:(0,3) text: Progressive Era from:1918 till:1945 text: World Wars from:1945 till:1964 text: Post-War from:1964 till:1980 shift:(0,7) text: Cold War America from:1980 till:1991 text: Republicanism from:1991 till:2013 shift:(0,5) text: America
Dates are approximate range (based upon influence), consult particular article for details
Modern Age Other
1900–2000
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bar:Decades color:era from:1973 till:2010 shift:(0,7) text:Post-Modern from:1920 till:1929 text:Twenties from:1929 till:1939 text:Depression from:1960 till:1969 text:Sixties from:1970 till:1979 text:Seventies from:1980 till:1989 text:Eighties from:1990 till:1999 text:Nineties from:2000 till:2009 text:Noughties from:2010 till:2019 text:Twenty-Tens bar:Machine color:era from:1900 till:1945 text:Machine Age bar:World.Wars color:era from:1914 till:1918 text:World War I from:1918 till:1939 text:Interwar period from:1939 till:1946 text:World War II from:1946 till:1962 text:Post-war era bar:Atomic color:era from:1945 till:2010 text:Atomic Age bar:Cold.War color:era from:1945 till:1991 text:Cold War bar:Space color:era from:1957 till:2010 text:Space Age bar:Info color:era from:1970 till:2010 text:Information Age from:2010 till:2010 text:Big Data bar:Oil color:era from:1901 till:2010 text:Age of Oil
See also
Further reading
- Morris, Richard B. and Graham W. Irwin, eds. Harper Encyclopedia of the Modern World: A Concise Reference History from 1760 to the Present (1970) online
Notes and References
- Web site: National Museum of Australia - Federation . 2024-10-25 . www.nma.gov.au . National Museum of Australia . en.
- Web site: James . Tom . The Origins of the Tour de France . https://web.archive.org/web/20090609115641/http://homepage.ntlworld.com/veloarchive/races/tour/origins.htm . 2009-06-09.
- Book: McMurray, Jonathan S. . Distant ties: Germany, the Ottoman Empire, and the construction of the Baghdad Railway . 2001 . Praeger . 978-0-275-97063-5 . 1. publ . Westport, Conn. . 2.
- News: Oltermann . Philip . 2021-05-28 . Germany agrees to pay Namibia €1.1bn over historical Herero-Nama genocide . 2024-10-25 . The Guardian . en-GB . 0261-3077.
- 1907 . General Act of the International Conference of Algeciras, signed April 7, 1906 . The American Journal of International Law . 1 . 1 . 47–78 . 10.2307/2212340 . 0002-9300 . 2212340 . 246012107.
- Web site: Foundation . Encyclopaedia Iranica . Welcome to Encyclopaedia Iranica . 2024-10-25 . iranicaonline.org . en-US.
- Official Report of Debates. Council of Europe. 1991. p. 113.
- See text in British Documents on the Origins of the War 1898–1914, Volume IV, The Anglo-Russian Rapprochement 1903–7. Edited by G. P. Gooch and H Temperley. Her Majesty's Stationery Office, London 1929. pp 618–621. Appendix I – Full Text of Convention between the United Kingdom and Russia relating to Persia (Iran), Afghanistan, and Tibet, Signed At St Petersburgh, August 31, 1907 (in French)
- Bulgaria/History. 4. Bourchier. James David. James David Bourchier. 778 - 784; see page 784; para 4. Declaration of Independence......
- News: TimesMachine: Sunday June 8, 1913 - NYTimes.com . registration . 2024-10-25 . The New York Times . en . 0362-4331.
- Book: Adalian . Rouben Paul . Centuries of Genocide: Essays and Eyewitness Accounts . 2013 . Routledge . 978-0-415-87191-4 . Totten . Samuel . 121 . en . The Armenian Genocide . Parsons . William Spencer . https://books.google.com/books?id=6XYp-z5aP4MC&q=24+April+1915+Armenians&pg=PA117.
- News: Mike Conklin . April 24, 1997 . Market Square in Lake Forest . February 10, 2010 . Chicago Tribune.
- Web site: January 24, 2019 . Girl Scout cookies: Thin Mints, bakeries, and $5 boxes, explained - Vox . January 27, 2020.
- Book: Scott, George . The rise and fall of the League of Nations . 1973 . Hutchinson . 978-0-09-117040-0 . London.
- Book: China at war: an encyclopedia . 2012 . ABC-CLIO . 978-1-59884-415-3 . Li . Xiaobing . Santa Barbara, Calif.