| 1902 Boer War Ends |
| 1903 First Flight at Kitty Hawk First Message to Travel Around the World First Silent Movie, The Great Train Robbery |
| 1904 First Popular American Film New York City Subway Opens Trans-Siberian Railway Completed |
| 1905 Einstein Proposes His Theory of Relativity Freud Publishes His Theory of Sexuality |
| 1906 Finland First European Country to Give Women the Right to Vote |
| 1907 Ten Rules of War Established at the Second Hague Peace Conference Picasso Introduces Cubism |
| 1908 Ford Introduces the Model-T |
| 1909 National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is Founded Plastic is Invented Robert Peary Becomes the First to Reach the North Pole |
| 1910 Boy Scouts Established in U.S. Halley's Comet Makes an Appearance |
| 1911 The Chinese Revolution Ernest Rutherford Discovers the Structure of an Atom Greenwich Mean Time Adopted Roald Amundsen Reaches the South Pole |
| 1912 SOS Accepted as Universal Distress Signal |
| 1913 Henry Ford Creates Assembly Line |
| 1914 Charlie Chaplin First Appeared as the Little Tramp First Traffic Light Panama Canal Officially Opened |
| 1915 D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation Released Germans Use Poison Gas as a Weapon |
| 1916 Battle of the Somme Easter Rising in Ireland |
| 1917 First Pulitzer Prizes Awarded Mata Hari Executed for Being a Spy Russian Revolution U.S. Enters World War I |
| 1918 Daylight Saving Time Introduced |
| 1919 Prohibition Begins in the U.S. Treaty of Versailles Ends World War I |
| 1920 First Commercial Radio Broadcast Aired League of Nations Established Pancho Villa Surrenders Women Granted the Right to Vote in U.S. |
| 1921 Irish Free State Proclaimed Lie Detector Invented |
| 1922 Kemal Atatürk Founds Modern Turkey King Tut's Tomb Found The Reader's Digest Published |
| 1923 Charleston Dance Becomes Popular Hitler Jailed After Failed Coup Ruhr Occupied by French and Belgian Forces Talking Movies Invented Time Magazine Founded |
| 1924 First Olympic Winter Games J. Edgar Hoover Appointed FBI Director V.I. Lenin Dies |
| 1925 Flapper Dresses in Style Hitler Publishes Mein Kampf |
| 1926 A.A. Milne Publishes Winnie-the-Pooh Houdini Dies After Being Punched Robert Goddard Fires His First Liquid-Fuel Rocket A Woman Swims the English Channel |
| 1927 Babe Ruth Makes Home-Run Record BBC Founded The First Talking Movie, The Jazz Singer Lindbergh Flies Solo Across the Atlantic |
| 1928 Bubble Gum Invented First Academy Awards First Mickey Mouse Cartoon First Oxford English Dictionary Published Kellogg-Briand Treaty Outlaws War Penicillin Discovered |
| 1929 Byrd and Bennett Fly Over South Pole Car Radio Invented |
| 1930 Gandhi's Salt March Pluto Discovered Sliced Bread Available |
| 1931 Auguste Piccard Reaches Stratosphere Christ Monument Built on Rio de Janeiro Hilltop Empire State Building Completed U.S. Officially Gets National Anthem |
| 1932 Air Conditioning Invented Amelia Earhardt First Woman to Fly Solo Across the Atlantic Scientists Split the Atom Zippo Lighters Introduced |
| 1933 Adolf Hitler Becomes Chancellor of Germany First Nazi Concentration Camp Established Loch Ness Monster First Spotted Prohibition Ends in the U.S. Wiley Post Flies Around the World in 8 1/2 Days |
| 1934 Bonnie and Clyde Killed by Police Cheeseburger Created Mao Zedong Begins the Long March Parker Brothers Sells the Game "Monopoly" |
| 1935 Alcoholics Anonymous Founded Germany Issues the Anti-Jewish Nuremberg Laws |
| 1936 Carnegie Publishes How to Win Friends and Influence People Hoover Dam Completed King Edward VIII Abdicates Spanish Civil War Begins |
| 1937 Amelia Earhart Vanishes Golden Gate Bridge Opened The Hindenberg Disaster Japan Invades China |
| 1938 Broadcast of "The War of the Worlds" Causes Panic Chamberlain Announces "Peace in Our Time" "Extinct" Fish Found Hitler Annexes Austria |
| 1939 First Commercial Flight Over the Atlantic Helicopter Invented World War II Begins |
| 1940 Battle of Britain Leon Trotsky Assassinated Nylons on the Market |
| 1941 Japanese Attack Pearl Harbor Jeep Invented Mount Rushmore Completed Nazi Rudolf Hess Flies to Britain on a Peace Mission Siege of Leningrad |
| 1942 T-shirt Introduced |
| 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising |
| 1944 Ballpoint Pens Go On Sale D-Day First German V1 and V2 Rockets Fired |
| 1945 First Computer Built Germans Surrender Hitler Commits Suicide Microwave Oven Invented United Nations Founded U.S. Drops Atomic Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki |
| 1946 Bikinis Introduced Nuremberg Trials Winston Churchill Gives His "Iron Curtain" Speech |
| 1947 Chuck Yeager Breaks the Sound Barrier Dead Sea Scrolls Discovered Polaroid Cameras Invented |
| 1948 "Big Bang" Theory Formulated Gandhi Assassinated Policy of Apartheid Begun State of Israel Founded |
| 1949 China Becomes Communist First Non-Stop Flight Around the World George Orwell Publishes Nineteen Eight-Four NATO Established Soviet Union Has Atomic Bomb |
| 1950 First Modern Credit Card Introduced First Organ Transplant U.S. President Truman Orders Construction of Hydrogen Bomb |
| 1951 Color TV Introduced South Africans Forced to Carry ID Cards Identifying Race Truman Signs Peace Treaty With Japan, Officially Ending WWII |
| 1952 Car Seat Belts Introduced Polio Vaccine Created Princess Elizabeth Becomes Queen at Age 25 |
| 1953 DNA Discovered Hillary and Norgay Climb Mt. Everest |
| 1954 First Atomic Submarine Launched Report Says Cigarettes Cause Cancer Roger Bannister Breaks the Four-Minute Mile Segregation Ruled Illegal in U.S. |
| 1955 McDonald's Corporation Founded Rosa Parks Refuses to Give Up Her Seat on a Bus Warsaw Pact Signed |
| 1956 Hungarian Revolution Khrushchev Denounces Stalin Suez Crisis T.V. Remote Control Invented Velcro Introduced |
| 1957 European Economic Community Established Soviet Satellite Sputnik Launches Space Age |
| 1958 Boris Pasternak Refuses Nobel Prize Chinese Leader Mao Zedong Launches the "Great Leap Forward" Lego Toy Bricks First Introduced NASA Founded |
| 1959 Castro Becomes Dictator of Cuba International Treaty Makes Antarctica Scientific Preserve |
| 1960 Brazil's Capital Moves to Brand New City Lasers Invented |
| 1961 Berlin Wall Built Soviets Launch First Man in Space |
| 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis First Person Killed Trying to Cross the Berlin Wall |
| 1963 Martin Luther King Jr. Makes His "I Have a Dream" Speech |
| 1964 Civil Rights Act Passes in U.S. Nelson Mandela Sentenced to Life in Prison |
| 1965 Japan's Bullet Train Opens Malcolm X Assassinated U.S. Sends Troops to Vietnam |
| 1966 Black Panther Party Established Mao Zedong Launches the Cultural Revolution |
| 1967 First Heart Transplant First Super Bowl |
| 1968 Martin Luther King Jr. Assassinated |
| 1969 ARPANET, the Precursor of the Internet, Created Neil Armstrong Becomes the First Man on the Moon Yasser Arafat Becomes Leader of the PLO |
| 1970 Aswan High Dam Completed Computer Floppy Disks Introduced |
| 1971 London Bridge Brought to the U.S. United Kingdom Changes to Decimal System for Currency VCRs Introduced |
| 1972 Mark Spitz Wins Seven Gold Medals Pocket Calculators Introduced |
| 1973 U.S. Pulls Out of Vietnam |
| 1974 Halie Selassie, Emperor of Ethiopia, Deposed Terracotta Army Discovered in China |
| 1975 Arthur Ashe First Black Man to Win Wimbledon Microsoft Founded Pol Pot Becomes the Communist Dictator of Cambodia |
| 1976 Nadia Comaneci Given Seven Perfect Tens North and South Vietnam Join to Form the Socialist Republic of Vietnam |
| 1977 South African Anti-Apartheid Leader Steve Biko Tortured to Death |
| 1978 First Test-Tube Baby Born |
| 1979 Margaret Thatcher First Woman Prime Minister of Great Britain Mother Theresa Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize Sony Introduces the Walkman |
| 1980 Rubik's Cube Popular |
| 1981 New Plague Identified as AIDS Personal Computers (PC) Introduced by IBM |
| 1982 King Henry VIII's Ship the Mary Rose Raised After 437 Years |
| 1983 Reagan Announces Defense Plan Called Star Wars Sally Ride Becomes the First American Woman in Space |
| 1984 PG-13 Movie Rating Created |
| 1985 Hole in the Ozone Layer Discovered Mikhail Gorbachev Calls for Glasnost and Perestroika |
| 1986 U.S.S.R. Launches Mir Space Station |
| 1987 DNA First Used to Convict Criminals |
| 1988 Pan Am Flight 103 Is Bombed Over Lockerbie |
| 1989 Berlin Wall Falls |
| 1990 Hubble Telescope Launched Into Space Lech Walesa Becomes First President of Poland Nelson Mandela Freed |
| 1991 Collapse of the Soviet Union South Africa Repeals Apartheid Laws |
| 1992 Official End of the Cold War |
| 1993 Use of the Internet Grows Exponentially |
| 1994 Channel Tunnel Opens, Connecting Britain and France |
| 1995 Yitzhak Rabin Assassinated |
| 1996 Mad Cow Disease Hits Britain |
| 1997 Hale-Bopp Comet Visible Hong Kong Returned to China Pathfinder Sends Back Images of Mars Scientists Clone Sheep Tallest Buildings in the World Built in Kuala Lumpur |
| 1998 India and Pakistan Test Nuclear Weapons |
| 1999 The Euro the New European Currency Panama Canal Returns to Panama |
| 2000 Presidents of North and South Korea sign peace accord Nationwide uprising overthrows Yugoslavian president Milosevic |
| 2001 Slobodan Milosevic is delivered to UN tribunal in The Hague Without U.S., 178 nations reach agreement on climate accord IRA begins to dismantle its weapons arsenal Afghani factions meet to create a post-Taliban government |
| 2002 Tamil Tigers and Sri Lankan government sign a cease-fire agreement U.S. and Russia reach agreement to cut both countries' nuclear arsenals East Timor becomes a new nation |
| 2003 First Palestinian prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, sworn in Libya accepts blame for 1988 bombing of flight over Lockerbie |
| 2004 NATO formally admits 7 new countries: Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia Israeli prime minister Sharon announces plan to unilaterally withdraw from Gaza Strip Hamid Karzai inaugurated as Afghanistan's first popularly elected president |