323 BC - Alexander the Great (356-323 BC) built an empire from Greece to India before dying of natural causes at age 33
221 BC - Shih Huang Ti (259-210 BC), known as the “First Emperor” unified China for the first time. During his Chin Dynasty (221-210 BC), he initiated a centralized government, conducted a census and standardized the country's currency, written language, laws, and weights & measures. He also began constructing the Great Wall of China.
March 15, 44 BC - Julius Caesar (102-44 BC) was assassinated by disgruntled colleagues after establishing the Roman Empire.
325 AD - Emperor Constantine (280-337 AD) embraced Christianity and initiated the Council of Nicaea where the differences between Eastern & Western factions of the Christian Church were resolved. The Council drafted the Nicene Creed, the basic Christian beliefs that became the dominant religion in Europe.
476 AD - Last Roman Emperor, Romulus Augustulus (?-476 AD) taken prisoner at Ravenna in 476 AD by German King Odovacar, ending 505 years of the Roman Empire.
July 16, 622 - Mohammed (570-632) while meditating near Mecca in 610 AD, had visions from Allah to write the Koran
December 25, 800 - Charlemagne (742-814) unified most of Europe under his rule. While attending Mass in Rome, he was unexpectedly crowned “Emperor of the Romans” by Pope Leo III.
October 14, 1066 - William of Normandy (1027-1087) crossed the English Channel from France and defeated British King Harold II (1027-1066) at the Battle of Hastings.
June 15, 1215 - At Runnymede, King John of England (1167-1216) signed the Magna Carta, a 63-part document of human rights that became the foundation of the English legal system.
October 12, 1492 - Christopher Columbus (1451-1506) set sail on September 6, 1492 from Castille, Spain with three ships— the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria.
October 31, 1517 - Martin Luther (1483-1546) nailed to the door of Wittenberg Cathedral “95 Theses Against the Sale of Indulgences” detailing the abuses of the Roman Church. This act marked the beginning of the Protestant Reformation in Germany.
1687 - Isaac Newton (1643-1727) published the Principia where he developed the three laws of motion, demonstrated the structure of the universe, the movement of the planets, and calculated the mass of the heavenly bodies.
July 4, 1776 - The 13 colonies in America met in Philadelphia to sign their Declaration of Independence, declaring themselves free of British rule and taxation.
July 14, 1789 - The French middle class stormed the Bastille, capturing the royal fortress in Paris, and starting the French Revolution.
May 18, 1804 - Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) lifted the crown from the Pope's hands and crowned himself Emperor at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris.
June 19, 1815 - Napoleon defeated at Waterloo by Duke Wellington and was exiled to St. Helena where he died on May 8, 1821.
April 12, 1861 - The Confederacy attacked an US Army post at Fort Sumter, starting the American Civil War. The four-year war resulted in the death of 364,511 Union troops & 133,821 Confederates.
April 15, 1865 - President Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) assassinated at Ford's Theater, Washington DC, by John Wilkes Booth only six days after the end of the Civil War.
December 17, 1903 - Wilbur Wright (1867-1912) & Orville Wright (1871-1948) made the first heavier-than-air flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, as their biplane Wright Flyer remained in the air for 12 seconds covering 120 feet
June 23, 1914 - Archduke Franz Ferdinand (1863-1914) assassinated in Sarajevo by Bosnian Serbs initiating World War I
November 7, 1917 - Kerenky's Constitutional Democrats that was set up after the abdication of Czar Nicholas on March 2, 1917, was toppled in a bloody coup on November 7, 1917 by the Bolsheviks under Nikolai Lenin (1870-1924).
October 29, 1929 - New York Stock Market crashed on Black Tuesday where stocks tumbled across the board. It was the most disastrous trading day in the stock market's history. Billions of dollars in open market values were wiped out.
September 1, 1939 - Germany invaded Poland overrunning it in four weeks. Britain & France declared war on Germany two days later.
December 7, 1941 - Japan attacks Pearl Harbor by surprise. United States enters World War II.
June 6, 1944 - Allied Invasion of Normandy on D-Day. 2.9 million Allied troops, 15,000 planes, and 5000 ships were mobilized in crossing the English Channel to land on the beaches of Normandy. Paris was liberated from German rule on August 25 and Brussels on September 2
September 3, 1945 - After the U.S. dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima (August 6) and Nagasaki (August 9), Japan officially surrendered on August 15, and formally on September 3 when the signing took place aboard the U.S. battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay
October 1, 1949 - Chinese Communist Chairman Mao Tse-Tung (1893-1976) declared his country the People's Republic of China after defeating Chiang Kai-Shek's Kuomingtang forces who fled to Taiwan.
April 12, 1961 - Soviet Union's Yuri A. Gagarin (1934-1968) became the first man to complete an orbit of Earth.
July 20, 1969 - Neil Armstrong became the first human to set foot on the Moon.
November 1989 - German people attacked the Berlin Wall, chipping it with hammers and bashing it with rocks until the wall came tumbling down. On October 3, 1990, the German Democratic Republic ceased to exist, and the first unified German elections in 58 years were held in December 1990.
October 1990 - Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web while working at CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland.
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