CHRONOLOGY OF EARTH
-15 billion => Big bang
-5 billion => Earth formed, along with the rest of our solar system, including sun
-4 billion => Oldest rock (not melted and re-aggregated after it was originally formed)
-3.5 billion => First bacterium-like fossils, found in West Australia and South Africa
-1.2 billion => First protoctist fossils
-600 million => First animal fossils
-543 million to present => Phanerozoic eon, the age of abundant and diverse life on earth, including the Paleozoic, Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras
-543 million to -248 million => Paleozoic era, beginning with an explosion of the diversity of life, with most animal phyla appearing withing the first few million years of the era, and ending with a mass extinction of many species, about 248 million years ago
-500 million => First fish
-488 million => The Cambrian-Ordovician extinction, the first major extinction, eliminating diverse species of brachiopods and conodont
-480 million => Start of the formation of the Appalachian mountain range and, consequently, of the construction of pangea. When pangea broke apart (see -200 million), most of the Appalachians stayed in the Eastern North American continent, but some of the Appalachian mountains went to Scotland, and some went to Morocco.
-470 million => First fungus fossils
-430 million => First plant fossils
-420 million => Horseshoe crabs (Limulus in phylum Chelicerata), virtually unchanged from modern day Limulus
-360 million => First amphibians
-310 million => Scorpions present, the most primitive arachnids (phylum Chelicerata)
-300 million => First reptiles
-251 million => Permian-Triassic extinction event, also called the Great Dying, with extinction of up to 96% of aquatic species and 70% of terrestrial vertebrate species. The only known mass extinction of insects
-248 million to -65 million => Mesozoic era, encompassing the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous Periods, and beginning with the mass extinction marking the end of the Paleozoic era
-248 million to -206 million => Triassic period, early dinosaurs and mammals
-206 million to - 144 million => Jurassic period, first birds
-200 million => Triassic-Jurassic extinction event occurs, marking the end of class Conodont, and the reduction of several other existing classes, enabling the rise of the dinosaurs
-200 million => First cockroach fossils
-200 million => Pangaea begins to break apart
-150 million => First birds
-144 million to -65 million => Cretaceous period, first flowering plants (angiosperms)
-140 million => Angiosperm pollen grain fossils
-120 million => Earliest preserved flower fossils (angiosperm)
-65 million to present => Cenozoic era, beginning with the mass extinction of most dinosaurs, and leading to the diversity of flowering plants, insects, mammals and birds that we see today
-65 million => Massive extinction of dinosaurs (some birds survive)
-2.58 million => Pleistocene age begins. Long period of repeated glaciations, extending to about 12,000 years ago
-2.5 million => First member of Homo genus appears
-2 million => Old stone age begins (See 7000 B.C.E.)
500000 B.C.E. => Fire invented
200000 B.C.E. => First human looking more or less like modern humans
30000 B.C.E. => Modern human beings now the only human species remaining on the planet
20000 B.C.E. => Cave drawings - Altamira Spain
12000 B.C.E. => Animal domestication
12000 B.C.E. => Glaciers recede
10000 B.C.E. => Virtually entire planet now settled by man
10000 B.C.E. => Neolithic (new stone) age begins in middle east. Last chapter of stone age, characterized by cultural uses of stone items, some agriculture, and the domestication of animals
8000 B.C.E. => Agriculture and first city (in Iraq). 5 million humans on earth
7000 B.C.E. => Neolithic (new stone) age begins in Europe. Ends about 2000 B.C.E., when bronze age begins
5000 B.C.E. => Beginning of Egyption, Minoan, and Sumerian civilizations
3600 B.C.E. => First occupational health hazard, copper alloy contaminated by arsenic
3500 B.C.E. => Writing invented
3000 B.C.E. => Earliest known human dam, Jawa, Jordan
2800 B.C.E. => modern solar calendar invented
2500 B.C.E. => Surgical operations depicted in pyramid of pharoahs at Saqquarah
2500 B.C.E. => Gilgamesh epic written in Sumeria (first documented novel and a good one, too)
2500 B.C.E. => Potato cultivated in South America
2050 B.C.E. => Code of Ur-Nammu, King of Ur (laws)
2000 B.C.E. => Sundials used in Egypt
2000 B.C.E. => Bronze age begins in Europe (See 1000 B.C.E.)
1800 B.C.E. => Leavened bread invented
1790 B.C.E. => Code of Hammurabi (Babylonian laws)
1775 B.C.E. => Hammurabi's laws engraved in stone, in Babylon
1700 B.C.E. => Ahmes (in Egypt) writes first textbook of arithmetic and geometry. Contained in the Rhind collection of hieratic papyri. Said to be based in an older work written about 3400 B.C.E. (about the same time that writing was invented; See 3500 B.C.E.)
1628 B.C.E. => Thera erupts, destroying Minoan civilization (about 3400 B.C. to about 1600 B.C.) and wreaking havoc in Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean regions
1550 B.C.E. => Egyptian medical texts written, now called the Ebers Papyri after the man who obtained them at Thebes, Egypt, in 1872. Colchicine, opium, and castor oil are mentioned in a large and non-selective pharmacopia included in the papyri
1500 B.C.E. => Phoenician alphabet (replaces pictograph writing)
1500 B.C.E. => Fingergrints used on clay tablets, for business transactions, in Babylonia
1375 B.C.E. => Monotheism invented by Amenhotep, beating Abraham by several centuries
1319 B.C.E. => Earliest dam still in use today, the Quatinah barrage in Homs, Syria
1182 B.C.E. => Trojan horse invented (Troy conquered)
1105 B.C.E. => Annual statistical records of disease in the Chon Li (China)
1000 B.C.E. => Chinese cut and store ice, early refrigeration
1000 B.C.E. => Iron age begins in Europe. (See 2000 B.C.E.)
753 B.C.E. => Rome founded (April 21, to be precise)
640 B.C.E. => Ashurbanipal library built in Nineveh
612 B.C.E. => Ashurbanipal library destroyed (by fire) in Nineveh. Many of the texts, written on clay tablets, were actually baked and strengthened by the fire
480 B.C.E. => Battle of Thermopylae, a prelude to the defeat of the Persion invasion (of Greece), in which Spartan King Leonidas I sacrifices 300 Spartans and contingents from Thespia and Thebes, to slow the advance of Xerxes.
480 B.C.E. => Persians, under Xerxes, defeated by Greece at Salamis
460 B.C.E. => Hippocrates used boiled water when irrigating wounds (first use of asepsis)
460 B.C.E. => Zeno of Elea proposes his "Dichotomy" paradox; basically, you need to traverse half a distance before you traverse a whole distance, but there an an infinite number of half-distances in any traversal, so how can you traverse any distance?
460 B.C.E. => Pericles leads Athens into golden age
440 B.C.E. => Democritus invents "atoms"
429 B.C.E. => Plague in Greece, also known as Plague of Athens (see 541 and 1350)
420 B.C.E. => Hippocrates observed that each side of the brain controls the opposite side of the body,
404 B.C.E. => Athens capitulates to Sparta, ending Peloponnesian Wars. Sparta wisely spared Athens; simply added it to Sparta's province
350 B.C.E. => Aristotle determines that earth must be round
350 B.C.E. => Aristotle classifies animals. His assignment of dolphins with mammals was received with derision for about two millennia, when he was belatedly proven correct
337 B.C.E. => Philip II of Macedon creates League of Corinth and essentially becomes the commander of the all-Greek army, set to attack the Persian empire. After Philip's assassination (in 336 B.C.E.), his son, Alexander, picked up the gauntlet
331 B.C.E. => Alexandria founded in Egypt (by Greece), grafting Grecian culture (itself highly influenced by Egyptian culture) back into Egypt. In the following years, at least five cities conquered by Alexander were likewise named Alexandria
331 B.C.E. => Alexander captures Mesopotamia and Babylon
326 B.C.E. => Alexander captures the Punjab, but his long, exhausting campaign for world domination stops at the River Hyphasis
323 B.C.E. => Alexander the Great (356 B.C.E. - 323 B.C.E.) dies
320 B.C.E. => Theophrastus classifies 500 plants (de Historia Plantarum). He divided plants into two larg categories: flowering (angiosperms) and non-flowering (gymnosperms) and recognized that flowers were specialized leaves
300 B.C.E. => Euclid's Elements written in Alexandria. Becomes geometry standard for over 2,000 years and counting
300 B.C.E. => Pytheas sails from Greece to Iceland. Nobody believes him
300 B.C.E. => Pytheas describes Atlantic tides (absent in Mediterranean). Nobody believes him
280 B.C.E. => Aristarchus reasons that the sun is the center of the universe
260 B.C.E. => Archimedes describes principles of levers
260 B.C.E. => Archimedes calculates Pi as 3.142
240 B.C.E. => Eratosthenes, working in Alexandria, computes size of earth correctly
214 B.C.E. => Great wall of China
150 B.C.E. => Hipparchus calculates distance to moon correctly, 250,000 miles
146 B.C.E. => Corinth (Greece) plundered, essentially marking the end of the free Greek city states and increased Roman influence in Greece and Macedonia. Rome benefitted by the absorption of Greek philosophers, physicians and scientists
146 B.C.E. => Carthage (Africa) destroyed by Rome, and Africa becomes a Roman province
134 B.C.E. => Hipparchus finds a newly appearing star (nova). The next recorded nova in Europe came from Tycho Brahe in 1572. See 1054
134 B.C.E. => Hipparchus makes first star map (includes about 850 of the 2500 stars visible to the naked eye)
1 C.E. => Codex invented; read by turning pages instead of by scrolling through one long page
25 C.E. => Celsus, a Roman encyclopedist (not a physician), writes De Medicina (On Medicine), a book largely ignored for the following 1453 years, until it was printed in 1478, and found to be an excellent medical textbook, used by generations of physicians until the turn of the 19th century
60 C.E. => Materia Medica written by Dioscorides, establishing botanical medicine
60 C.E. => Colchicine described as a treatment for gout in the Materia Medica. Colchicine is produced by members of the plant genus Colchicum, particularly Autumn crocus, Colchicum autumnale, also known as Meadow saffron. See 1550 B.C.
78 C.E. => Naturalis Historia (Natural History), a scientific encyclopedia, published by Pliny the Elder
79 C.E. => Mt. Vesuvius erupts; kills Pliny the Elder (see 78 A.D.)
105 C.E. => Paper invented in China, using hemp pulp, pored atop a stretched cloth frame having a smooth thin covering, and dried
177 C.E. => Galen writes "On Prognosis". Galen was a Greek, who worked for Rome, and lived in Rome and Pergamum (in Turkey). A physician who retired to become a researcher and writer, he left about 3 million words (about 2 million lost), and his opinions (some correct, many wrong) dominated European medicine until the time of Vesalius (see 1543)
250 C.E. => Diophantes writes first algebra book
300 C.E. => Hourglasses widely used
347 C.E. => First oil wells drilled, in China, to depth of 800 feet, beating the rest of the world by about 1,000 years
395 C.E. => Birth of Byzantine Empire (ends 1453)
476 C.E. => Fall of Western Roman Empire
541 C.E. => Plague of Justinian. Involved primarily the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantium), centering on Constaninople. Probably produced by the agent that causes bubonic plague (Yersinia pestis). Extended to Arabia, North Africa, Asia and Europe, killing an estimated 100 million people. After the primary plague outbreak, which ended in 542, small populations were hit by plague over the next 150-200 years. Afterwards, a major plague did not strike Europe until the 14th century (see 1350)
571 C.E. => Mohammed born
590 C.E. => Epidemic of ergotism in France (St. Anthony's fire)
600 C.E. => Smallpox described in Aaron of Alexandria's Pandectae Medicinae
622 C.E. => Mohammed flees from Mecca to Medina (Hegira), year zero for Muslims
673 C.E. => Greek fire invented in time to save Constantinople from Arab invasion
750 C.E. => Mayan empire at its height
810 C.E. => Zero invented by Al-Khwarizmi
827 C.E. => Abassad Muslim empire reaches height
868 C.E. => First printed book, Diamond Sutra, published in China, with woodblock type
870 C.E. => Ottar the Viking visits Arctic Circle
910 C.E. => Razi (Rhazes), great Persian Physician, philosopher, scientist, alchemist, and prolific writer, writes Book of Medicine and many other volumes essentially establishing the state of the art of medicine at the time. Many of his works were written in Persian and Arabic and later translated to Latin
982 C.E. => Russians attack Constantinople and fought off with Greek fire
1025 C.E. => Mayan civilization declines
1054 C.E. => Eastern Christian Church led by Patriarch of Constantinople. The Patriarch's excommunication created split betwen Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox Churches
1054 C.E. => The Crab Supernova, was recorded by Chinese, Japanese, Persian/Arab and Indian astronomers (but somehow missed by Europeans, who were literally in the dark ages). It was sufficiently bright to see in daylight for a length of 23 days.
1066 C.E. => William of Normandy takes England. All later English Monarchs descended from him
1075 C.E. => Chia Hsien uses what would eventually be named Pascal's triangle to calculate square roots and cube roots of integers
1076 C.E. => Anasazi pueblo builders construct five astronomical observatories at Chaco Canyon
1095 C.E. => Pope Urban II launches crusade to defend Byzantine Empire (Eastern Roman Empire) and to free Holy Land
1110 C.E. => University of Paris founded
1147 C.E. => Second Crusade, a complete disaster for the crusaders
1158 C.E. => University of Bologna founded
1161 C.E. => Jewish physicians burned in Prague, on charge of "poisoning wells"
1167 C.E. => Students move to Oxford (mostly from Paris) to study, but Oxford University not named as such until 1201
1180 C.E. => Europeans use magnetic compass to guide ships, leading eventually to European world domination
1189 C.E. => Third Crusade, a failure for the crusaders
1202 C.E. => Fibonacci introduces Arabic numerals to West
1215 C.E. => Magna Carta, King John of England recognizes that free men have certain rights, and the King is bound by laws
1223 C.E. => Cambridge University named
1231 C.E. => Medical School at Salerno
1242 C.E. => Arabic scholar Ibn an-Nafis describes heart-lung role in circulation and aeration four centuries before Wlliam Harvey, in 1628. See 1553, 1628 and 1669
1266 C.E. => Teodorico Borgognoni teaches aseptic treatment of wounds
1291 C.E. => Glass mirrors invented in Venice, along with the invention of the "Trade secret"
1300 C.E. => First mechanical clocks installed in European towers
1302 C.E. => First judicial autopsy, Bologna
1316 C.E. => Dissections in Italian Medical School
1319 C.E. => First prosecution for body snatching (for medical dissection)
1316 C.E. => European famine year - 10-15% of population dies in this famine
1350 C.E. => European plague year (black death). About 25 million dead in Europe (out of 65-75 million Europeans) and 60 million worldwide (see 429 B.C.E., 541)
1362 C.E. => A windstorm and subsequent sea surge known as the Grote Mandrenke (Great Drowning) kills 25,000 people living along the Netherlands coast. The death toll would have been much higher had the Black plague not already reduced the population
1376 C.E. => Board of Medical Examiners in London
1424 C.E. => Yung-Lo, Chinese Emperor who had raised enormous navy, led by Cheng Ho, dies. Successor chooses to dismantle navy and isolate China
1420 C.E. => Tomas de Torquemada (1420 - 1498), grand inquisitor of the Spanish Inquisition (see 1478), born
1438 C.E. => Pachakuti Inca comes to power, increasing the size of the Incan empire to about 2500 miles of coast including much of (today's) Peru and Chile. Marks the beginning of the height of the Incan Empire (which will only last one century; See 1531)
1436 C.E. => Perspective invented and art becomes 3-D
1452 C.E. => Barber surgeons of Hamburg incorporated
1453 C.E. => End of hundred years war. England fails to conquer France
1453 C.E. => Fall of Constantinople to Moslem Turks. Ends the Eastern Roman Empire, which lasted 1000 years after the fall of Rome
1454 C.E. => Gutenberg's printing press production of Bible (300 made), jumpstarts Renaissance
1470 C.E. => Printed medical treatises of Valescus de Taranta, Jacopo de Dondis and Matthaeus Sylvaticus
1471 C.E. => Printed medical treatises of Mesue and Nicolaus Salernitanus (Antidotarium)
1473 C.E. => First medical dictionary printed; Simone de Cordo's Synonyma
1476 C.E. => Saliceto's Cyrurgia (Surgery) printed
1478 C.E. => Spanish Inquisition begins. Torquemada gets a job for life. Inquisition not officially halted until 1834
1480 C.E. => Latin text of Regimen Sanitatis printed
1492 C.E. => Army of Ferdinand and Isabella defeats muslim forces in Granada (Spain), on January 2, establishing full Christian rule in Spain, and heralding the full expulsion of Jews later that year and the gradual expulsion of Muslims over the next century (see 1609)
1492 C.E. => Epulsion of Jews from Spain. On July 30, 200,000 Jews were forced to leave the country, thousands of whom were murdered in the process
1496 C.E. => European pandemic of syphilis (1496-1500). See 1905
1496 C.E. => Albert Durer's drawing of a syphlilic patient is printed
1497 C.E. => Vasco da Gama sails from Lisbon to Calcutta around Africa
1497 C.E. => Da Gama's adventure was first voyage sufficiently long to induce scurvy, killing 3/5 of his men
1499 C.E. => Johannes Trithemius writes Steganographia (not actually published until 1606) on cryptography and steganography
1501 C.E. => Spanish brought black slaves to West Indies, beginning the slave trade
1504 C.E. => Mainspring watches
1510 C.E. => Pandemic influenza
1512 C.E. => Portuguese land in Canton, China
1517 C.E. => Luther's 95 theses, beginning the Protestant reformation
1518 C.E. => Johannes Trithemius publishes Polygraphia on cryptography
1519 C.E. => Cortes arrives in Mexico and destroys Aztec civilization
1520 C.E. => Ottoman empire under Suleyman the Magnificent at its peak of power
1523 C.E. => Magellan circumnavigates the earth (actually he died in Philippines en route)
1531 C.E. => Pizarro conquers Incas in Peru
1534 C.E. => Henry VIII marries Anne Boleyn and Anglican Church born
1538 C.E. => De Simmetria (Symmetria) published, posthumously, by the great artist Albrecht Durer (1471 - 1528), describing the application of anthropometry (human proportions) to accurate depictions of human form
1543 C.E. => Andreas Vesalius (1514 - 1564) presents "De Fabrica Humani Corporis," detailing human anatomy. Afterwards, Vesalius was condemned, mocked, or ignored by many of his peers for challenging Galen and for being a "barber." Vesalius died alone, penniless, and almost friendless on the Island of Zante (Zakynthos)
1543 C.E. => Copernicus agrees with Aristarchus in heliocentric system and explained planetary orbits with math. Waits until day of his death to publish his opinion in his book De Revolutionibus Orbium Caoelestium
1545 C.E. => Pare greatly improved surgical technique and published in French (not Latin)
1545 C.E. => Negative numbers
1548 C.E. => Charles V declares surgery honorable
1551 C.E. => Trigonometric Tables
1553 C.E. => Servetus (1509 - 1553) publishes Restitutio Christianismi, in which he notes that the pulmonary vessels deliver blood to the heart, after the blood has mixed with air in the lungs. That same year, Servetus was burned at the stake (along with most of the copies of his book) by Calvin for a poorly written sentence that seemed heretical at the time. See 1242, 1628 and 1669
1555 C.E. => Pierre Belon finds similarities (homologies) in skeletons of all vertebrates
1556 C.E. => Earthquake in Shansi Province (China) kills 830,000 people
1572 C.E. => Tycho Brahe reports a new star in sky, challenging belief in a fixed universe. See -134
1574 C.E. => Pandemic plague
1580 C.E. => Pandemic influenza
1586 C.E. => Stevin invents decimals
1589 C.E. => Viete decrypts leading "unbreakable code" used by Phillip II
1590 C.E. => First microscope by Zacharias Janssen
1591 C.E. => Coordinate system (x,y) invented by Viete, father of cryptanalysis
1591 C.E. => Pandemic plague
1592 C.E. => First crude thermometer
1596 C.E. => Ludolf calculates Pi to 20 decimal places
1604 C.E. => Johann Kepler demonstrates inversion of optic image on the retina
1609 C.E. => Beginning April 9, the Moriscos (descendants of Muslims in Spain who had nominally converted to Christianity), were expelled; about 300,000 people. See 1492
1609 C.E. => Kepler claims that planets move in ellipses
1609 C.E. => Galileo discovers Milky Way composed of many stars
1612 C.E. => First nebula (Andromeda nebula) described, by Simon Marius
1614 C.E. => Logarithms - Napier
1622 C.E. => Slide rule (which adds logarithms and finds the anti-log) invented
1627 C.E. => First scientific tables of planetary motion published (Rudolphine Tables)
1628 C.E. => William Harvey (1578 - 1657) publishes De Motu Cordis, describing the circulation of blood from heart to lungs and back, and from the heart to the periphery and back. See 1242, 1553, and 1669
1637 C.E. => Fermat's last theorem
1642 C.E. => Inca indians had long known that bark from cinchona tree treats malaria. In 1642 this treatment reached Europe where it was called quinine
1648 C.E. => Jean Baptiste van Helmont rejects belief that plants are fed exclusively by the soil. This rejection of dogma was the first major breakthrough towards understanding photosynthesis
1650 C.E. => Fermat's Principle: light's path between two points minimizes its travel time
1653 C.E. => Rudbeck discovers lymphatics
1654 C.E. => Probabilities of various dice combinations worked out by Pascal and Fermat, laying foundations of probability theory
1657 C.E. => Christian Huygens builds first pendulum clock
1659 C.E. => Malpighi describes a lymph node disorder later named Hodgkin's disease (see 1832)
1662 C.E. => Differential calculus, Newton and Leibnitz
1664 C.E. => Circle of Willis discovered, (Thomas Willis, Cerebri anatome, London, 1664)
1665 C.E. => Great plague of London
1666 C.E. => Great fire of London
1666 C.E. => Newton determines that white light is composed of different colors
1666 C.E. => Smallpox epidemic in Europe
1667 C.E. => Thomas Willis publishes Pathologicae cerebri, et nervosi generis specimen, a work on the anatomy, pathology and neurophysiology of the brain
1668 C.E. => Redi disproves spontaneous generation
1669 C.E. => Newton and Leibniz invent calculus
1669 C.E. => Richard Lower shows that venous blood takes up air in the lungs, in Tractatus De Corde: Item De Motu Et Colore Sanguinis. See 1242, 1553, and 1628
1669 C.E. => Steno explains that fossils are petrified remains of long dead creatures
1675 C.E. => Speed of light calculated as 141,000 miles per second by Roemer
1677 C.E. => Pandemic malaria in England
1676 C.E. => van Leeuwenhoek sees microorganisms (which he called animalcules) in pond water
1677 C.E. => van Leeuwenhoek sees sperm in semen
1678 C.E. => Edmond Halley travels to south Atlantic and charts the Southern stars for Europeans who had never seen the Southern sky
1680 C.E. => Last dodo dies on Mauritius in Indian Ocean
1680 C.E. => Denis Papin makes miniature steam engine
1680 C.E. => Leeuwenhoek uses microscope and discovers yeast
1683 C.E. => Leeuwenhoek uses microscope and discovers bacteria
1685 C.E. => Imaginary numbers really invented
1685 C.E. => Govert Bidloo (1649 - 1713) publishes precise, and beautiful anatomic renditions in Anatomia (Amsterdam, 1685) attaining high level of precision
1687 C.E. => Newton's Principia
1691 C.E. => Ray's animal classification supersedes that of the Roman, Pliny
1691 C.E. => Yellow fever in Boston
1693 C.E. => First mortality tables by Edmond Halley (first scientific demonstration that the older you get, the more likely you are to die)
1703 C.E. => Great October Storm hits England, and 8,000 people die
1705 C.E. => Halley calculates that his comet would return to the solar system in 1758. Nobody took him seriously, until 1758, when Halley's comet returned
1707 C.E. => First precision instrument in medicine, the pulse watch, ran for a minute exactly and stopped (until re-wound)
1711 C.E. => First commercial steam engine developed by Thomas Newcomen, a British blacksmith who had almost no formal education
1714 C.E. => Fahrenheit thermometer
1717 C.E. => Emanuel Timoni, a physician in Constantinople, inoculates against smallpox, using material from smallpox scars. The technique was first developed by Arabic doctors, centuries earlier
1728 C.E. => Harrison invents terrific chronometer in a British competition. Did not get full prize money until 1773
1733 C.E. => Hall makes achromatic lens. Dolland's 1757 achromatics lens often incorrectly given credit
1733 C.E. => Normal distribution introduced (as per Stigler's Statistics on the Table)
1735 C.E. => Carl von Linne (Linnaeus) publishes Systema Naturae
1740 C.E. => First Irish potato famine, 1740-1741, due to The Great Frost of the prior year, causing devastating crop failure for Ireland, as well as most of Europe
1742 C.E. => Goldbach's conjecture. All even numbers greater than 2 can be expressed as sum of primes
1744 C.E. => Concept of transcendental numbers invented by Euler. These can't be expressed as a polynomial expression. First transcendental number determined in 1873
1747 C.E. => Lind determines that citrus prevents scurvy. Another 50 years passes before British navy listens
1751 C.E. => First modern encyclopedia published by Diderot
1754 C.E. => Charles Bonnet observes gas bubbles coming from green leaves held underwater under bright lighting. Major clue to understanding photosynthesis
1759 C.E. => Kaspar Friedrich Wolff, father of embryology, shows that specialized organs develop from unspecialized tissue
1760 C.E. => Giovanni Battista Morgagni, father of pathology, publishes results of 640 autopsies. Credited as the beginning of modern pathology
1768 C.E. => Spallanzani refutes spontaneous generation using heated and carefully sealed broth containers (see 1668)
1771 C.E. => Messier publishes 45 celestial fuzzy objects (nebula) for the purpose of distinguishing these from [more interesting] comets
1773 C.E. => Muller sees bacilli and divides them into different morphologic types
1772 C.E. => Scheele discovers oxygen 2 years before Priestley but loses credit when publisher fails to put work into print
1774 C.E. => Scheele does fundamental work discovering Manganese, but Gahn finishes effort and gets all the credit
1774 C.E. => Scheele isolates chlorine but fails to identify it as element. Gets no credit
1775 C.E. => Withering tests fox-glove from "old wives tale" and digitalis is re-discovered
1780 C.E. => First industrial revolution begins (different historians choose different starting years, ranging from about 1750 to 1830)
1781 C.E. => Herschel infers the existence of binary stars, using Newton's principles and showing that physics of distant stars behaves the same as physics in our own solar system
1783 C.E. => Black holes: with remarkable prescience, John Mitchell (1724 - 1793) suggests that some stars might have sufficient mass to stop light from escaping their gravitational fields
1784 C.E. => Benjamin Franklin invents bifocal lenses
1786 C.E. => William Playfair publishes "The Commercial and Political Atlas," introducing the many uses of graphs and bar charts to visualize complex numeric information
1787 C.E. => Lavoisier and coworkers publish The Method of Chemical Nomenclature, giving chemistry a common language that has persisted to this day
1779 C.E. => First human parachutist
1796 C.E. => Carl Friedrich Gauss invents modular arithmetic
1796 C.E. => Carl Friedrich Gauss proves quadratic reciprocity law
1796 C.E. => Jenner vaccinates against smallpox using cowpox incoluation. Next vaccination not until 1881 when Paster vaccinates against anthrax
1798 C.E. => Interchangeable parts invented by Eli Whitney (used for muskets)
1798 C.E. => Cavendish measures the gravitational constant and computes (correctly) the mass of the earth
1799 C.E. => Law of Definite Proportions, by Joseph-Louis Proust. Distinguishes between mixtures (parts in any proportion) and true compounds (elements in definite proportions)
1799 C.E. => Rosetta stone found in Rosetta, Egypt. Inscription in Greek and two types of Egyptian (I think hieroglyph and cuneiform)
1800 C.E. => Bichat showed that organs made from different types of tissues - histology begins
1800 C.E. => William Playfair publishes "Statistical Breviary," and introduces the pie chart
1800 C.E. => Alessandro Volta develops voltaic pile (battery) from chemical reactions in an electrolytic cell
1803 C.E. => John Dalton publishes New System of Chemical Philosophy and vindicates (through experiment) the ancient Greeks who "invented" atoms in 440 BC (Democritus)
1810 C.E. => Central Limit Theorem proved (as per Stigler's Statistics on the Table)
1812 C.E. => Candolle invents the word "taxonomy"
1813 C.E. => Candolle creates plant classification still used today
1814 C.E. => Spectral lines observed and counted by Fraunhofer using very good prisms. Observation had no use for chemists and astronomers for another 50 years
1816 C.E. => Stethoscope invented
1818 C.E. => Encke's comet named for man who calculated orbit, not man who sighted comet
1818 C.E. => Dr. James Blundell, in England, performs the first beneficial blood transfusion, for a patient with postpartum hemorrhage
1820 C.E. => The active anti-malarial ingredient, quinine, was extracted and isolated from the bark of the Peruvian Cinchona tree
1822 C.E. => Babbage conceives of computer
1822 C.E. => After discovery of Rosetta Stone (1799) little progress was made deciphering hieroglyphics until work of Champollion, founder of modern Egyptology
1823 C.E. => Prout shows stomach contains hydrochloric acid
1824 C.E. => Carnot publishes Reflexions on the motive power of fire. Showed that limitations in steam engine were inherent in the way nature that the universe worked. Ignored for over 20 years
1824 C.E. => Portland cement invented, first real improvement over the cement used by ancient Romans
1824 C.E. => Abel (1802-1829) completes the proof (developed by several predecessors) that it is impossible to find solutions to quintic equations (Abel's impossibility theorem)
1826 C.E. => First permanent photograph, by French inventor Joseph Nicephore Niepce (1765-1833)
1827 C.E. => Prout classifies foods as, roughly, carbohydrate, fat or protein
1828 C.E. => Wohler synthesizes urea, destroying the distinction between living matter and chemicals. See 1833
1829 C.E. => Daguerre invents photograph
1829 C.E. => Babington invents glottiscope
1830 C.E. => Achromatic microscope invented by Joseph Jackson Lister. Now bacteria could be visualized
1830 C.E. => End of the era, in the west, in which books were printed almost exclusively on pulped rags (not pulped wood)
1831 C.E. => Michael Farady generates electricity from rotary motion
1832 C.E. => Hodgkin describes Hodgkin's disease (See 1659)
1833 C.E. => Diastase extracted by Payen, showing that chemicals obtained from living things (sugar beets in this case) could display their activity outside the organism. See 1828
1834 C.E. => Official end of the Spanish Inquisition (1478 - 1834)
1838 C.E. => Morse code invented
1838 C.E. => Proteins discovered
1845 C.E. => Great potato famine in Ireland, 1845 to 1852, (due to Phytophthora infestans) killing approximately 1 million people. For earlier potato famine, see 1740
1846 C.E. => Rawlinson uses the ancient Persion king Darius' mountain inscription of his ascension to the throne, written in Persian, Assyrian and Elamitic as the Rosetta stone of cuneiform text
1847 C.E. => Semmelweiss reduces rate of puerperal fever by hand-washing. Hand-washing soon abandoned by hospital staff. See 1865
1849 C.E. => Canadian geologist Abraham Gesner distills kerosene from crude oil, leading to the use of cheap, plentiful, drilled oil as a replacement for whale oil in lamps and fuel
1850 C.E. => Second Industrial Revolution begins
1854 C.E. => Cholera epidemic in London ended by John Snow who removed a water pump handle used by people where disease incidence highest. Earley use of hygiene to prevent disease
1856 C.E. => Pasteurization
1857 C.E. => Abel Niepce de Saint-Victor first discoverer of radioactivity when he noticed that a solution of uranium nitrate produces an image of itself when drawn on a photographic plate. Probably didn't understand significance
1858 C.E. => Rudolph Virchow publishes Cellular Pathology
1859 C.E. => Darwin's The Origin of Species is published
1859 C.E. => Kirchoff announces that every element produces characteristic spectral lines
1860 C.E. => Pasteur disproves spontaneous generation again (see Spallanzini 1768)
1862 C.E. => Pasteur publishes article advancing germ theory of disease
1863 C.E. => Irish physicist John Tyndall discovers greenhouse effect (carbon dioxide transparent to incoming light but opaque to re-radiated infrared light)
1863 C.E. => First Salon de Refuses sponsored by the French government to display the art rejected by the traditional Salon. The rejected art (of impressionists) proved to be much more influential than the accepted art and strengthened popular support for innovation
1865 C.E. => Lister introduces phenol in surgical suite. Post-op sepsis rates drop. See 1847
1865 C.E. => Mendel's laws of genetics published but ignored for another 33 years
1865 C.E. => Maxwell's equations relating electricity to magnetism, brought about the first unification in physics
1866 C.E. => Timothy Lewis showed that microfilariae caused elephantiasis
1867 C.E. => Newton publishes Principia
1869 C.E. => One-armed civil war veteran John Wesley Powell is denied federal funding and explores Grand Canyon on privately raised funds
1869 C.E. => Mendeleyev prepares periodic table of elements
1869 C.E. => Nucleic acid isolated by Miescher and Hoppe-Seyler
1871 C.E. => Darwin publishes The Descent of Man
1872 C.E. => Ferdinand Julius Cohn publishes 3-volume classification of bacteria into genera and species
1873 C.E. => Hermite shows that e is the first transcendental number found
1873 C.E. => Carl von Linde makes first practical portable compressor refrigeration machine, in Munich
1876 C.E. => Koch devlops his postulates for disease causation, using anthrax model. Also develops techniques for culturing bacteria
1876 C.E. => Bell credited with invention of telephone
1879 C.E. => Edison's invention of electric light bulb
1880 C.E. => Electric calculator invented for use in the 1880 census, by Hollerith
1880 C.E. => Laveran identifies the organism that causes malaria as a one-celled animal (later recognized as a protoctist, phylum Apicomplexa, genus Plasmodium)
1880 C.E. => Eberth identifies the bacillus that causes typoid fever (Salmonella typhi)
1881 C.E. => Sternberg isolates pneumococcus
1881 C.E. => Pasteur vaccinates against anthrax
1882 C.E. => von Lindemann shows that Pi is transcendental
1882 C.E. => Koch isolates tubercle bacillus
1883 C.E. => Klebs discovers the bacteria that causes diphtheria
1884 C.E. => World Time Conference in Washington, D.C. recognizes Greenwich Observatory as prime meridian against which world time is standardized
1884 C.E. => Gram stains positive and negative bacteria
1885 C.E. => Pasteur vaccinates against rabies
1865 C.E. => Maxwell's equations unifies electricity and magnetism and light. First unification in physics
1888 C.E. => Waldeyer coins term chromosome
1889 C.E. => Cordite invented, reducing the amount of smoke produced by gunpowder
1889 C.E. => Kitasato isolates bacillus that causes tetanus
1890 C.E. => Halsted "perfects" radical mastectomy
1890 C.E. => Surgical gloves used (by Halsted)
1892 C.E. => Galton publishes "Fingerprints," detailing a classification system (three types: loop, whorl, and arch)
1892 C.E. => Juan Vucetich (Croation-born immigrant to Argentina) made the first positive identification of a criminal using dactylography (dactyloscopy). A bloody fingerprint (finger print) identified the killer
1893 C.E. => Theobald Smith shows that cattle fever spread by ticks carrying a protozoan parasite (Babesia microti, which also causes babesiosis in humans). First demonstration of disease spread by arthropods
1896 C.E. => Eijkman corrects beri beri with unpolished rice. Work based on chicken animal model of beri beri, chicken polyneuritis
1896 C.E. => Henri Becquerel rediscovers radioactivity when he notices uranium and pitchblend fog photographic plates in the dark
1897 C.E. => Sir Ronald Ross shows that the malaria protoctist, Plasmodium, can be spread by anopheles mosquito
1898 C.E. => Botanist Beijerinck infers that a filterable virus (virus is latin for poison) causes tobacco mosaic virus disease. Essentially, this marks invention of viruses
1898 C.E. => Benda discovers mitochondria
1900 C.E. => David Hilbert announces 23 of the most important problems in mathematics
1900 C.E. => France abandons efforts to try to replace days and hours with a decimal time system
1900 C.E. => Lazear dies from yellow fever experiment in which he allowed mosquitoes that had stung yellow fever patients to sting him
1900 C.E. => Karl Landsteiner finds O, A, and AB blood groups (therapeutic blood transfusion, a practice that began in 1818, becomes much safer)
1900 C.E. => George Carmichael Low determined the transmission of filaria by demonstrating the worm in the proboscis of the mosquito vector
1901 C.E. => Deep-drilling technology yields first deep oil gusher, 1,020 feet, in Texas, indicating that vast oil reserves could be drilled and tapped
1903 C.E. => First known successful manned flight powered by engine by Wright Brothers (120 feet in 12 seconds)
1905 C.E. => Fritz R. Schaudinn and Erich Hoffman identify Treponema pallidum as the agent of syphilis
1905 C.E. => Last U.S. outbreak of yellow fever, in New Orleans
1905 C.E. => Albert Einstein publishes special reltativity theory
1908 C.E. => Carlos Finlay, a Cuban doctor working in Havana, provided evidence that mosquitoes transmitted yellow fever, to and from humans
1908 C.E. => Ricketts discovers rickettsia as the pathogenic agent spread by cattle ticks to cause Rocky Mountain spotted fever
1909 C.E. => Charles Walcott discovers Burgess Shale mudstone preserve, a superb collection of the highly divers mid-Cambrian (circa 505 million years ago) soft-bodied and hard-bodied aquatic organisms
1910 C.E. => Sickle cell anemia first described in paper by Herrick
1910 C.E. => Alexis Carrell describes coronary artery bypass
1910 C.E. => Raimond Sabouraud publishes Les Teinges, on dermatophytic conditions (fungal diseases of skin)
1911 C.E. => Peyton Rous discovers the first tumor virus, the Rouse chicken sarcoma virus
1912 C.E. => Nikolai Anichkov discovered that cholesterol responsible for coronary artery disease
1912 C.E. => Henrietta Swan Leavitt (1868 - 1921) shows that cepheids can be used to deterimine distances to galaxies. Receives almost no credit during her lifetime
1915 C.E. => Pellagra found to be non-infectious disease produced by poor diet. Vitamin deficiency still unknown at this time
1916 C.E. => Einstein publishes general theory of relativity
1916 C.E. => Schwarzschild theorizes the existence of black holes (first use of general theory)
1917 C.E. => Jan 16, 1917, Zimmermann telegram intercepted and decoded by British intelligence. Proved that Germany was courting Mexico to join with Germany against the (then neutral) U.S.
1917 C.E. => April 6, 1917. U.S. declares war on Germany
1918 C.E. => World influenza epidemic, 1918 - 1919 kills 20 to 40 million people between fall 1918 and winter 1919. Killed more people than World War I
1919 C.E. => WWI ends after 20 million war-related deaths in military and civilian populations. Treaty of Versailles, signed on June 28, 1919 (ending WWI) though an armistice with Germany was in place November 11, 1918.
1920 C.E. => Physicians begin the practice of radiating the thymus gland of children to prevent "crib death". Aside from lacking any beneficial value, prophylactic radiation treatments beginning in the 1920s eventually caused 20,000 to 30,000 deaths from radiation-induced cancers
1921 C.E. => Sheppard-Towner Act was passed by Congress, giving federal aid to states in effort to reduce infant mortality. Bill repealed in 1929
1925 C.E. => Heisenberg formulates first version of quantum mechanics
1927 C.E. => Werner Heisenberg discovered the uncertainty principle
1927 C.E. => First refrigerator to enjoy widespread use, General Electric's Monitor-Top
1928 C.E. => Fleming notices that Penicillium rubrum inhibits growth of staph
1928 C.E. => St. Francis Dam, built by William Mulholland, breaks on March 12, 1928, five days after the dam reservoir was filled, killing 400 to 450 people. The cause of the failure was probably due to hydrostatic uplift when dam water entered the foundational abutments
1930 C.E. => Paul Dirac (1902 - 1984) predicts the existence of antiparticles (antimatter)
1930 C.E. => Vitamin A synthesized
1931 C.E. => Dupont produces commercial quantities of R-12 (Freon)
1931 C.E. => Chandrasekhar limit: a white dwarf star cannot have more than 1.4 times the mass of the sun
1931 C.E. => 102-story Empire state building finsihed, New York city
1932 C.E. => Prontosil, dye with antibiotic properties
1932 C.E. => Land invents synthetic polarizing lens by embedding crystals in plastic film
1932 C.E. => Quinacrine, a synthetic substitute for quinine, provides large quantities of malaria medicine
1932 C.E. => electron microscope. Much-improved electron microscope made in 1937
1933 C.E. => Birth of Modern Mathematical Statistics (as per Stigler's Statistics on the Table)
1934 C.E. => Fallingwater built by Frank Lloyd Wright
1935 C.E. => Sulfanilamide and sulfa drugs derived from prontosil and with more antibiotic activity
1935 C.E. => radar invented by Robert Alexander Watson-Watt
1935 C.E. => riboflavine synthesized
1935 C.E. => Kendall isolates the adrenal corticosteroids, including cortisone
1936 C.E. => Thiamine isolated and synthesized. Cures beri beri
1937 C.E. => Safe and effective vaccine against yellow fever (Max Theiler)
1937 C.E. => Rape of Nanking, Dec. 13
1938 C.E. => Florey demonstrated medical use of Penicillin
1938 C.E. => Vitamin e synthesized
1938 C.E. => Bethe explains how sun gets its energy by hydrogen fusion
1938 C.E. => Magnetic resonance understood, Isidor Isaac Rabi
1938 C.E. => Live coelacanth, a fish thought long extinct, found off South Africa. The coelacanth is a close relative of the fish that came to land, several hundred million years ago, spinning off the animal phyla that includes mammals
1939 C.E. => Vitamin k synthesized
1941 C.E. => Cardiac catheterization invented by Dournand and Dickinson
1941 C.E. => Papanicolaou publishes paper establishing the diagnostic value of examining cervical smears to screen for cervical precancer (the invention of the Pap smear)
1941 C.E. => December 7, attack on Perl Harbor
1944 C.E. => Avery (age 67; hooray for senior citizens), MacLeod, and McCarty show that DNA (not protein) is the hereditary material
1945 C.E. => August 6 and 9, atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
1945 C.E. => Karl Storz makes first ENT (ear, nose and throat) endoscope
1946 C.E. => Nuclear magnetic resonance imaging
1947 C.E. => Home television
1947 C.E. => Chloramphenicol
1947 C.E. => Richard Doll, statistician, links smoking to lung cancer
1947 C.E. => UFO incident in Roswell, New Mexico, July 8; directly linked to numerous cheesy movies and television shows
1948 C.E. => Transistor invented at Bell Labs
1948 C.E. => Claude Shannon (1916-2001) publishes "A Mathematical Theory of Communication."
1949 C.E. => Atomic clock created
1949 C.E. => First commercial jet aircraft service, offered by British Overseas Aircraft Corporation (BOAC)
1949 C.E. => Linus Pauling shows a defective gene causes sickle cell anemia
1950 C.E. => Chargoff discovers base complementarity in DNA
1950 C.E. => Arthur Vineburg routs internal mammary artery, in place, into heart and vascularing heart muscle
1950 C.E. => Isaac Asimov publishes I, Robot
1951 C.E. => Univac
1951 C.E. => Fluoridation
1952 C.E. => Isoniazid
1952 C.E. => Nuclear fusion bomb, tested on a coral atoll in the Pacific, 500 times the energy of the Hiroshima bomb
1952 C.E. => Harold Hopkins designs "fibroscope," a coherent bundle of flexible glass fibres that transmits an image (birth of fiberoptics)
1953 C.E. => Double helix
1953 C.E. => John Gibbon performs open heart surgery with cardiopulmonary bypass machine
1953 C.E. => D. W. Gordon Murray uses arterial grafts to replace the left anterior descending coronary artery
1954 C.E. => Oral contraceptives (birth control pills)
1954 C.E. => Salk vaccine for polio
1954 C.E. => First controlled fission reactors
1954 C.E. => First solar cells (photovoltaic cells)
1956 C.E. => Pakistan recognized as a nation, with two parts, West and East Pakistan
1957 C.E. => Sabin vaccine for polio
1957 C.E. => Sputnik I orbits earth
1957 C.E. => Interferon
1957 C.E. => Pacemaker
1958 C.E. => Jack Kilby invents integrated circuit (microchip), at Texas Instruments
1958 C.E. => Photcopying
1959 C.E. => Russian probe (lunik II) hits the moon, and lunik III takes photos of far side of the moon
1959 C.E. => First practical business computer sold
1959 C.E. => Malpasset Dam, in southern France, breaks, killing 400-500 people. Occurred when the dam reservoir was filled for the first time, and resulted from hydrostatic uplift, repeating the failure of the St. Francis dam (see 1928)
1959 C.E. => TRANSIT, the first operational satellite navigation system. Developed by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. Forerunner of GPS (Global Positioning system).
1960 C.E. => Birth control pills go on sale in the U.S.
1960 C.E. => Laser
1960 C.E. => The Nedelin disaster. Mitrofan Nedelin led a Soviet effort to build an ICBM (Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile). A launch explosion killed over 100 workers on the launch-pad, including Nedelin. The disaster was kept secret until the fall of the Soviet empire
1961 C.E. => Yury Gargarin first human in space
1961 C.E. => Genetic code determined by Nirenberg and Khorana
1961 C.E. => Maurits Escher uses perspective to create the impossible lithograph, "Waterfall"
1961 C.E. => Robert Heinlein publishes Stranger in a Strange Land
1961 C.E. => Stanislaw Lem publishes Solaris
1962 C.E. => Paul Baran invents the internet, detailed in an 11-volume RAND (then a government agency) report delivered to the Pentagon
1962 C.E. => Rachel Carson publishes Silent Spring
1963 C.E. => Fernando Alves Martins invents the first fibre optics endoscope
1964 C.E. => Gulf of Tonkin resolution, following half-baked report that the USS Maddox had been fired upon (but it wasn't really)
1964 C.E. => Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson of Bell Laboratories detect a nuisance background microwave radiation, which, after much speculation and inquiry, proves to be the afterglow of the big bang
1966 C.E. => U.S. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA, rymes with Goya), one of the greatest tools of democracy, is passed in U.S.
1966 C.E. => Starship Enterprise treks into the final frontier
1966 C.E. => MUMPS invented at Mass General by Octo Barnett and colleagues
1968 C.E. => Pueblo incident; North Korea captures US surveillance ship and reaps enormous harvest of classified information, marking one of the dumbest moments in the history of U.S. "intelligence"
1969 C.E. => U.S. puts humans on moon and brings them back to earth safely (2 successful moon flights in 1969)
1969 C.E. => Internet becomes reality, under the name of ARPANET
1970 C.E. => Raymond Damadian, a medical doctor and research scientist, discovered the basis for using magnetic resonance imaging as a tool for medical diagnosis
1971 C.E. => Texas Instruments markets first transistor calculator. Weighed 2.5 pounds and cost $150
1972 C.E. => Raymond Damadian files patent for MRI (patent 3789832). First MRI completed 1977
1972 C.E. => CAT scan (CT scan) invented by Godfrey Hounsfield, England and Allan Cormack of Tufts University, Massachusetts.
1972 C.E. => First email program was created by Ray Tomlinson of BBN
1973 C.E. => Development began on the protocol later to be called TCP/IP, it was developed by a group headed by Vinton Cerf from Stanford and Bob Kahn from DARPA
1975 C.E. => Georg Kohler and Cesar Milstein create monoclonal antibodies by fusing mouse lymphocytes with myeloma cells producing hybridomas that yield specific antibodies
1976 C.E. => Fair use provisions in Copyright Act of 1976
1976 C.E. => Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman invent public-key cryptography
1977 C.E. => Fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH)
1977 C.E. => Walter Gilbert and Fred Sanger develop separate methods to sequence DNA
1977 C.E. => Woese newly discovers oldest branch of life, Archaee. His work was ridiculed until the mid-1990s, when biologists yielded to the overwhelming scientific data supporting his assertion
1979 C.E. => Partial core meltdown at Three Mile Island nuclear generating station, Dauphin County, Pennsylvania
1980 C.E. => Bayh-Dole act permitting grantees to own inventions made under federal funding
1982 C.E. => Stanley B. Prusiner discovers infectious proteins (prions) causing scrapie disease in sheep
1982 C.E. => Willy Burgdorfer and colleagues demonstrate that a treponema-like spirochete (later named Borrelia burgdorferi), that can be treated with antibiotics, causes Lyme disease
1983 C.E. => Warren and Marshall publish on [later named] Helicobacter pylori gastritis
1983 C.E. => Richard Stallman founds free software movement
1983 C.E. => On January 1st, every machine connected to ARPANET had to use TCP/IP. TCP/IP became the core Internet protocol
1985 C.E. => Henan Province, China, dams overflow and break after massive August rains, killing 85,000 people
1986 C.E. => Lee Hood, tags DNA with 4 dyes, opens way to automate DNA sequencing
1986 C.E. => Nuclear reactor explodes at Chernobyl in Northern Ukraine, near town of Pripyat. There were 47 workers killed at the site. Nine children died of thyroid cancer attributed to the release of radioactive iodine, and an estimated 4,000 extra cancer deaths among the approximately 600,000 most highly exposed persons
1987 C.E. => Perl (1.0) released by Larry Wall
1988 C.E. => Polymerase chain reaction invented by Kary Mullis
1990 C.E. => Hubble space telescope orbits 381 miles from earth
1990 C.E. => Tim Berners-Lee and CERN in Geneva implements a hypertext system to provide efficient information access to the members of the international high-energy physics community
1994 C.E. => Python (1.0) programming language released, by Guido van Rossum
1995 C.E. => First complete sequence of an organism, Haemophilus influenzae, by Craig Venter and colleagues. Many other organisms, including humans, soon follow
1996 C.E. => The initial draft of XML (eXtensible Markup Language) was presented in 1996 at a conference in Boston. The official W3C (WorldWideWeb Consortium) specification (XML 1.0) was presented in 1998
1996 C.E. => Ruby (1.0) programming language released, by Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto
1997 C.E. => Dolly the sheep cloned by British team (Ian Wilmut et al)
1999 C.E. => Together, distributed.net and the Electronic Frontier Foundation break a DES (Data Encryption Standard) key in 22 hours and 15 minutes. DES was made the U.S. standard for secure data encryption in 1976
2000 C.E. => R (The statistical programming language) 1.0.0 is released
2002 C.E. => Grigori Perelman posts his proof of the Poincare Conjecture
2005 C.E. => Google Earth
2006 C.E. => Yamanaka and coworkers induce somatic cells to behave like embyronic stem cells, by transfecting 4 transcription factors into mouse fibroblast cells
Last modified: March 5, 2010 C.E., Jules Berman
key words: world timeline, world time line,
terran chronology, terrestrial chronology, chronology of science,
timeline of science, science events, history of science, medical history
history of earth, science through history, science through the ages,
science past and present, when did it happen?, date of occurrence,
jules j berman, Jules J. Berman, Ph.D., M.D., jules berman,
Jules Berman, Ph.D., M.D.
