Other events

In-depth guides that start simply enough for children and go deep enough for researchers.

22 articles

• History · c. 753 BCEFounding of RomeThe Romans said their city was founded by Romulus on 21 April 753 BCE, but archaeology shows that Rome actually grew slowly out of small hilltop villages beside the Tiber River over several centuries.Map
• History · 44 BCEAssassination of Julius CaesarOn 15 March 44 BCE a group of Roman senators stabbed Julius Caesar to death at a meeting of the Senate, hoping to save the Roman Republic, but their act led instead to new civil wars and to Rome being ruled by emperors.Map
• History · 476 CEFall of the Western Roman EmpireIn 476 CE a soldier named Odoacer removed the teenage emperor Romulus Augustulus in Italy and did not replace him, and this moment is often used to mark the end of the western half of the Roman Empire, which had been losing its lands and power for generations.Map
• History · 605–618 CEImperial examinationThe imperial examination was a system of written tests for choosing government officials, begun in China under the Sui dynasty around 600 and abolished in 1905, which put classical learning at the centre of official recruitment while still favouring families who could afford long study; Korea and Vietnam adapted it, and how far it influenced Western civil services is still debated.Map
• History · 645–646 CETaika ReformThe Taika Reform was a set of changes announced in Japan after a palace coup in 645, which tried to turn a kingdom of powerful clans into a centralised state run by officials, following the example of Tang China.Map
• History · 800 CECoronation of CharlemagneOn Christmas Day in the year 800, in the old church of St Peter in Rome, Pope Leo III put a crown on the head of Charlemagne, king of the Franks, and the crowd hailed him as emperor, reviving the title of Roman emperor in western Europe for the first time in more than 300 years.Map
• History · 1346–1353Black DeathThe Black Death was a pandemic of plague, caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, that swept across western Eurasia and North Africa between 1346 and 1353 and killed a very large share of the population—perhaps a third to a half of all Europeans.Map
• History · 1453Fall of ConstantinopleIn 1453 the army of the young Ottoman sultan Mehmed II besieged and captured Constantinople, ending the Byzantine Empire, the last continuation of the Roman Empire, and making the city the capital of a new world power.Map
• History · 1492–1493Columbus’s First Voyage (1492–1493)In 1492 Christopher Columbus sailed west across the Atlantic for the Spanish monarchs hoping to reach Asia, and instead reached the Caribbean islands of the Lucayan and Taíno peoples, beginning lasting contact between Europe and the Americas that brought conquest, enslavement and disease to Indigenous peoples and reshaped the whole world.Map
• History · 1607–1811Joseon missions to Japan (Tongsinsa)Between 1607 and 1811 the Joseon kingdom of Korea sent twelve large embassies, each of several hundred people, to the Tokugawa shoguns of Japan; born of the peace after Hideyoshi’s invasions and the return of Korean captives, they became the main channel of diplomacy and cultural exchange between the two countries for two centuries, and their records were inscribed on UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register in 2017.Map
• History · 1776United States Declaration of IndependenceThe Declaration of Independence was a document adopted in Philadelphia on 4 July 1776 in which thirteen British colonies in North America announced that they were breaking away from Britain, explaining why and claiming that all people have rights no government may take away.Map
• History · 1789Storming of the BastilleOn 14 July 1789 a crowd of Parisians attacked and captured the Bastille, an old royal fortress and prison, and the day became a symbol of the French Revolution and of people standing up to unlimited royal power.Map
• History · 1791–1804Haitian RevolutionBetween 1791 and 1804, enslaved people in the French colony of Saint-Domingue rose up, destroyed slavery, defeated the armies of three European powers, and founded Haiti, the first nation created by people who had freed themselves from slavery.Map
• History · 1839–1876TanzimatThe Tanzimat was a period of sweeping reforms in the Ottoman Empire from 1839 to 1876, in which statesmen in Istanbul tried to save the empire by promising equal legal rights to all subjects, rewriting laws, reorganising taxes, provinces and schools, and finally introducing a constitution.Map
• History · 1848Seneca Falls ConventionThe Seneca Falls Convention was a two-day meeting held in July 1848 in a small town in New York State, where about three hundred people discussed women’s rights and one hundred of them signed the Declaration of Sentiments, which demanded equality for women, including the right to vote.Map
• History · 1861Emancipation reform of 1861The emancipation reform of 1861, signed into law by Emperor Alexander II of Russia on 19 February (3 March) 1861, legally freed more than twenty million privately owned serfs, but made them pay heavily for land over decades, so that it both opened the way to a modern Russia and left a deep grievance in the countryside.Map
• History · 1868Meiji RestorationThe Meiji Restoration was the 1868 change of government in which the Tokugawa shoguns lost power to a new regime ruling in the name of the young Emperor Meiji, followed by decades of reforms that turned Japan into a modern industrial state and, later, an empire.Map
• History · 1894–1895Donghak Peasant RevolutionThe Donghak Peasant Revolution was a great uprising of Korean farmers in 1894–1895, led by followers of the Donghak religion, who rose up against corrupt officials and then against the Japanese army; the first uprising helped trigger the First Sino-Japanese War, while the movement’s later defeat helped Japan extend its domination of Korea.Map
• History · 1914Assassination of Archduke Franz FerdinandOn 28 June 1914 a 19-year-old Bosnian Serb named Gavrilo Princip shot and killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife Sophie in Sarajevo, starting a crisis that turned into the First World War.Map
• History · 1917October RevolutionIn October 1917 (November by today’s calendar) the Bolshevik party led by Vladimir Lenin seized power in Petrograd from Russia’s Provisional Government, creating the world’s first state ruled by a communist party.Map
• History · 1919March First MovementOn 1 March 1919, Koreans living under Japanese colonial rule read out a declaration that Korea was an independent country, and in the weeks that followed hundreds of thousands of people across the peninsula marched peacefully shouting “Long live Korean independence!”, even though many were shot, beaten or imprisoned.Map
• History · 1945United Nations Conference on International Organization (San Francisco, 1945)In the spring of 1945, as the Second World War was ending, delegates from fifty countries met in San Francisco for two months and wrote the Charter of the United Nations, the rulebook for a new world organization meant to keep the peace.Map