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Hinges of history

84 events 10 sources c. 3201 BCE to 30 November 2022 created 19 Jul 2026, 03:36

The moments after which the world ran on different rails: Constantinople, Columbus, the Bastille, Sarajevo, the Wall, September 11.

The moments after which the world ran on different rails: Constantinople, Columbus, the Bastille, Sarajevo, the Wall, September 11.

Figures Adolf HitlerAlbert EinsteinAlexander FlemingAlexander the GreatBuzz AldrinCharlemagneCharles DarwinClement AttleeConstantine the GreatDavid Ben-GurionDeng XiaopingDuke of Wellington

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part of this 1947: the postwar order is built part of this 1971: the dollar unchained

  1. Invention of writing

    Scribes in Sumer develop cuneiform, the first full writing system, letting societies record law, trade, and memory beyond a single lifetime. Recorded history begins here.

  2. Battle of Gaugamela

    Alexander the Great destroys the Persian army of Darius III, ending the Achaemenid Empire. Greek language and culture spread across the Near East, shaping the Hellenistic world for centuries.

  4. Assassination of Julius Caesar

    Roman senators stab Caesar to death on the Ides of March, hoping to save the Republic. Instead the murder triggers civil wars that end the Republic and bring one-man rule under Augustus.

  6. Crucifixion of Jesus

    Roman authorities execute Jesus of Nazareth outside Jerusalem around the year 30. His followers' belief in his resurrection founds Christianity, which grows into the world's largest religion.

  8. Fall of the Western Roman Empire

    The Germanic general Odoacer deposes the boy emperor Romulus Augustulus, ending the line of Western Roman emperors. The date marks the conventional close of antiquity and the start of the medieval world in Europe.

  9. The Hijra

    also in How Islam began and spread, Religion and ideology

    Muhammad and his followers migrate from Mecca to Medina, founding the first Muslim community. The event marks year one of the Islamic calendar and the start of Islam's rise into a world religion and civilization.

  10. Coronation of Charlemagne

    Pope Leo III crowns Charlemagne emperor of the Romans on Christmas Day. The act revives the idea of a Western empire under papal blessing and shapes the politics of medieval Europe.

  11. The Great Schism

    Papal legates excommunicate the Patriarch of Constantinople, who responds in kind. The break splits Christianity into the Catholic West and Orthodox East, a division that has never healed.

  13. Council of Clermont

    Pope Urban II calls on Western Christians to march east and take Jerusalem, launching the First Crusade. Two centuries of crusading follow, reshaping relations between Christian Europe and the Islamic world.

  14. Genghis Khan unites the Mongols

    Temujin is proclaimed Genghis Khan, ruler of all the Mongol tribes. His armies go on to build the largest contiguous land empire in history, linking and devastating much of Eurasia.

  15. Magna Carta

    King John seals a charter accepting that even the king is bound by law. Magna Carta becomes a founding symbol of limited government and individual rights in the English-speaking world.

  16. Mongol sack of Baghdad

    Hulagu's Mongol army takes Baghdad, kills the caliph, and destroys the city, ending the Abbasid Caliphate. The sack closes the Islamic Golden Age centered on Baghdad and shifts power in the Muslim world.

  17. Black Death reaches Europe

    Genoese ships carry plague from the Black Sea to Sicily, and within five years the disease kills perhaps a third to half of Europe's people. Labor shortages, social upheaval, and religious crisis follow, loosening the medieval order.

  19. Fall of Constantinople

    Ottoman forces under Mehmed II storm Constantinople, ending the Byzantine Empire after more than a thousand years. The conquest secures Ottoman power, pushes Greek scholars west, and spurs Europe to seek new sea routes to Asia.

  21. Luther's Ninety-five Theses

    Martin Luther publishes ninety-five theses attacking the sale of indulgences. The protest ignites the Reformation, splitting Western Christianity and redrawing the political and religious map of Europe.

  22. First circumnavigation of the globe

    Magellan's expedition sails west from Spain; three years later one surviving ship under Elcano returns having circled the Earth. The voyage proves the world's oceans are connected and opens the age of global sea trade.

  23. Fall of Tenochtitlan

    also in Falls of nations

    Hernan Cortes, with indigenous allies and after a devastating smallpox epidemic, captures the Aztec capital. The conquest opens the Americas to Spanish colonial rule and centuries of European domination.

  24. Copernicus publishes De revolutionibus

    Nicolaus Copernicus publishes his argument that the Earth orbits the Sun. The book displaces humanity from the center of the cosmos and starts the Scientific Revolution.

  26. Newton publishes the Principia

    Isaac Newton publishes the Principia, setting out the laws of motion and universal gravitation. A single mathematical framework now explains motion on Earth and in the heavens, defining physics for two centuries.

  28. American Declaration of Independence

    Thirteen British colonies declare themselves free and independent states, grounding the claim in universal rights. The declaration creates the United States and gives republican revolution a template copied worldwide.

  29. Storming of the Bastille

    A Paris crowd storms the Bastille fortress, the symbol of royal power. The French Revolution accelerates from this moment, spreading ideas of popular sovereignty, nationalism, and rights across Europe and beyond.

  30. Independence of Haiti

    Jean-Jacques Dessalines proclaims Haiti's independence after the world's only successful slave revolution, creating the first Black republic.

  31. Abolition of the British slave trade

    Parliament passes the Slave Trade Act, outlawing the Atlantic slave trade across the British Empire. The Royal Navy begins suppressing the traffic, a turning point in the long fight against slavery.

  32. Battle of Waterloo

    also in The Napoleonic Wars

    Allied armies under Wellington and Blucher defeat Napoleon, ending his rule for good. The victory closes a quarter century of revolutionary wars and opens a century of relative great-power peace in Europe.

  34. Revolutions of 1848

    Uprisings demanding constitutions, national unity, and social reform sweep across Europe from Paris to Vienna and Berlin. Most are crushed, but the ideas of liberalism, nationalism, and socialism they spread shape the next century.

    • the two “Red Scares” of 1848 and 1919, when powerful interests feared a revolution among our own industrial poor.
      Dumbing Us Down , p. 48-54

  35. Publication of On the Origin of Species

    Charles Darwin publishes his theory of evolution by natural selection. The book transforms biology and permanently changes how humanity understands its own place in nature.

  36. Meiji Restoration

    Loyalist forces seize the imperial palace and proclaim the restoration of rule by the Meiji Emperor, ending the Tokugawa shogunate. Japan launches crash modernization and becomes the first non-Western industrial great power.

  38. First powered flight

    Orville and Wilbur Wright make the first controlled, powered airplane flights near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Within decades aviation shrinks the planet, transforms war, and creates a global transport network.

  39. Einstein publishes special relativity

    Albert Einstein, then a patent clerk, submits his paper on special relativity, one of four groundbreaking papers that year. His work rebuilds the foundations of physics and later underpins nuclear energy and modern cosmology.

  40. Assassination at Sarajevo

    Gavrilo Princip shoots Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary and his wife Sophie. The murder sets off the July Crisis and the First World War, which destroys four empires and remakes the world order.

  43. Discovery of penicillin

    Alexander Fleming notices that a stray mold kills bacteria in his laboratory at St Mary's Hospital. Penicillin becomes the first antibiotic, and the drugs that follow save hundreds of millions of lives.

  45. Hitler appointed Chancellor

    President Hindenburg appoints Adolf Hitler Chancellor of Germany. Within months the Nazis destroy German democracy, setting the course toward the Second World War and the Holocaust.

  48. Partition of India

    also in The British Empire and its dark history

    British India is divided into independent India and Pakistan along religious lines. Around 15 million people are displaced and hundreds of thousands to a million killed in communal violence, leaving a rivalry that still shapes South Asia.

  49. Creation of the State of Israel

    Following the UN's 1947 partition plan for Palestine, David Ben-Gurion proclaims the State of Israel as the British mandate ends. War with neighboring Arab states begins at once, and the Arab-Israeli conflict becomes a defining fault line of the modern Middle East.

  51. Discovery of the structure of DNA

    Watson and Crick publish the double-helix structure of DNA, drawing on Rosalind Franklin's X-ray data. The discovery reveals how heredity works and founds molecular biology, genetic medicine, and biotechnology.

  53. Launch of Sputnik

    also in Russia, the USSR, and Ukraine

    The Soviet Union puts Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite, into orbit. The launch opens the space age and the space race, and spurs massive Western investment in science and technology.

  54. Cuban Missile Crisis

    also in JFK: the presidency and the assassination, Russia, the USSR, and Ukraine, The Cold War

    The Cuban Crisis of October 1962 brought the United States and Soviet Union to the edge of an unwanted war and revealed to both the need to ease tension, marking the end of the period begun in 1945.

    • the Cuban Crisis of October 1962, somewhat like the Fashoda Crisis of 1898, by bringing the United States and the Soviet Union to the edge of a war that neither wanted, revealed to both the mutual balance of error and the need to do something about it.
      Tragedy and Hope , p. 729-731

  55. Cuban Missile Crisis

    also in Russia, the USSR, and Ukraine

    The discovery of Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba brings the United States and the Soviet Union to the edge of nuclear war for thirteen days. The scare leads to the hotline and the first arms-control agreements.

  57. Nixon ends the gold standard

    also in Capitalism, liberalism, and the isms

    In 1971 Richard Nixon unpegged the dollar from precious metals and ended the international gold standard. This introduced the floating currency system that has dominated the world economy since.

    • Richard Nixon’s decision in 1971 to unpeg the dollar from precious metals entirely, eliminate the international gold standard, and introduce the system of floating currency regimes that has dominated the world economy ever since.
      Debt: The First 5,000 Years

  59. Nixon visits China

    President Nixon arrives in Beijing and meets Mao Zedong, ending more than two decades of US-Chinese estrangement. The opening realigns the Cold War and prepares the ground for China's integration into the world economy.

  60. 1973 oil shock

    Arab oil producers cut output and embargo supporters of Israel during the Yom Kippur War, and oil prices quadruple. The shock ends the postwar boom, triggers stagflation, and reveals the industrial world's dependence on Middle East oil.

  62. Deng Xiaoping's reforms begin

    The Communist Party's Third Plenum endorses Deng Xiaoping's policy of reform and opening. China turns toward markets and foreign trade, beginning the fastest large-scale rise out of poverty in history and China's return as a great power.

  63. First report of AIDS

    US health authorities report unusual infections in five young men in Los Angeles, the first recognized cases of AIDS. The epidemic goes on to kill tens of millions and transforms public health, medicine, and attitudes toward sexuality.

  64. Chernobyl disaster

    also in Russia, the USSR, and Ukraine

    Reactor 4 at the Chernobyl nuclear plant explodes, spreading radioactive fallout across Europe. The disaster discredits Soviet secrecy, energizes environmental movements, and stalls nuclear power for a generation.

  66. Tiananmen Square crackdown

    also in Communism: rise and fall

    The Chinese army crushes pro-democracy protests centered on Tiananmen Square, killing hundreds or more. The crackdown sets China's course of economic opening without political liberalization.

  68. World Wide Web made public

    Tim Berners-Lee announces the World Wide Web project publicly from CERN, inviting anyone to use it. The web turns the internet into a universal medium that transforms commerce, media, politics, and daily life.

  70. Rwandan genocide begins

    After the president's plane is shot down, Hutu extremists begin the systematic killing of Tutsi, murdering around 800,000 people in a hundred days while the world stands by. The failure haunts international politics and drives the doctrine of a responsibility to protect.

  72. Human genome draft announced

    Scientists announce the first draft sequence of the human genome. Reading humanity's genetic code opens the era of genomic medicine and biotechnology.

  73. September 11 attacks

    The attacks of September 11 were the catastrophic failure Tenet had predicted three years earlier. It was the Pearl Harbor the CIA had been created to prevent.

  74. September 11 attacks

    Al-Qaeda hijackers fly airliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, killing nearly 3,000 people. The attacks reshape global security, trigger the war in Afghanistan, and open two decades of conflict in the Middle East.

  75. China joins the WTO

    China becomes a member of the World Trade Organization after fifteen years of negotiation. Its full entry into world trade accelerates globalization, remakes supply chains, and shifts economic power toward Asia.

    • When China had been admitted to the World Trade Organization in 2001, its gross domestic product had been just 13 per cent of US GDP on a current-dollar basis.
      The Ascent of Money

  76. Invasion of Iraq begins

    A US-led coalition invades Iraq and topples Saddam Hussein, citing weapons of mass destruction that are never found. The decision destabilizes the region, fuels insurgency and sectarian war, and erodes trust in Western intervention.

  77. iPhone unveiled

    Steve Jobs presents the iPhone, combining phone, internet, and touchscreen computer in one device. The smartphone era it launches puts the internet in most human hands and rewires social life, media, and commerce.

  78. Global financial crisis erupts

    Lehman Brothers files for bankruptcy and panic spreads through the world financial system. The deepest downturn since the Depression follows, discrediting elites and feeding a decade of populist politics.

  79. Arab Spring begins

    The self-immolation of Tunisian vendor Mohamed Bouazizi sparks protests that topple rulers in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya. The uprisings raise hopes of democratic change but also lead to civil wars in Syria, Libya, and Yemen.

  80. Paris Agreement adopted

    Nearly every nation adopts the Paris Agreement, pledging to keep global warming well below 2 degrees Celsius. Climate change becomes a permanent organizing problem of world politics and economics.

  82. COVID-19 declared a pandemic

    The World Health Organization declares COVID-19 a pandemic as the new coronavirus spreads worldwide. Lockdowns halt much of global life, millions die, and the crisis accelerates remote work, state spending, and geopolitical rivalry.

  83. Russia launches full-scale invasion of Ukraine

    Russian forces invade Ukraine from the north, east, and south in the largest attack on a European state since 1945. The moment shatters the post-Cold War security order, revives NATO, and turns energy and food into geopolitical weapons.

  84. Release of ChatGPT

    OpenAI releases ChatGPT, and within two months a hundred million people are using conversational AI. The launch sets off a global race in artificial intelligence that reshapes technology, work, and policy debates.

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