History of Europe

Timeline

700 BC: Epic poem Iliad by Homer, earliest account on the continent.
440 BC: Herodotus defends the Athenian political freedom in the Histories.
323 BC: Alexander the Great dies and his Macedonian Empire fragments.
44 BC: Julius Caesar is murdered. The Roman Republic drawing to a close.
27 BC: Establishment of the Roman Empire under Octavian.

293: Diocletian founded the Tetrarchy.
330: Constantine makes Constantinople into his capital, a new Rome.
365: A single catastrophic earthquake near Crete in 365 or an amalgamation of a number of earthquakes between 350 and 450 occurs.
395: Following the death of Theodosius I, the Empire is permanently split into Eastern Roman Empire (later Byzantium) and Western Roman Empire.
476: Odoacer captures Ravenna and the Western Roman Empire ends.
597: Christianization of Anglo-Saxon England
527: Justinian I is crowned emperor of Byzantium. Corpus Juris Civilis, Digest (Roman law).
600: Saint Columbanus uses the term "Europe" in a letter.
655: Jus patronatus.
722 : Battle of Covadonga in the Iberian Peninsula . Pelayo, a noble Visigoth, defeats a Muslim army that tried to conquer the Cantabrian coast. It helped establish the Christian Kingdom of Asturias, and marks the beginning of the Reconquista.
732: Battle of Tours, the Franks stop the advance of Arabs into Europe.
800: Coronation of Charlemagne as Holy Roman Emperor.
813: Third Council of Tours: Priests are ordered to preach in the native language of the population.
843: Treaty of Verdun.
863: Saints Cyril and Methodius arrive in Great Moravia.
872: Unification of Norway.
895: Hungarian people led by Árpád start to settle in the Carpathian Basin.
983: Otto III became the first ruling "King of the Romans", which meant "future Emperor".
1054: Start of the East-West Schism, which divides the Christian church for centuries.
1066: Successful Norman Invasion of England by William the Conqueror.
1095: Pope Urban II calls for the First Crusade.
12th century: The 12th century in literature saw an increase in texts. Renaissance of the 12th century.
1128: Battle of São Mamede, formation of Portuguese sovereignty.
1248: Pope Innocent IV gave the unique privilege of using the Glagolitic alphabet in the liturgy.
1303: The period of the Crusades is over.
1309–1378: The Avignon Papacy
1315–1317: The Great Famine of 1315–1317 in Northern Europe
1341: Petrarch, the "Father of Humanism", becomes the first Poet Laureate since antiquity.
1337–1453: The Hundred Years' War
1340: Black Death kills a third of Europe's population.
1439: Johannes Gutenberg invents first printing press starting the Printing Revolution
1453: Fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks.
1492: A Spanish expeditionary group, commanded by Christopher Columbus, land in the New World. The Reconquista ends up in the Iberian Peninsula.
1497: Vasco da Gama departs to India starting direct trade with Asia.
1498: Leonardo da Vinci paints The Last Supper in Milan, as the Renaissance flourishes.
1508: Maximilian I the last ruling "King of the Romans" and the first "elected Emperor of the Romans".
1517: Martin Luther nails his demands for Reformation to the door of the church in Wittenberg.
1519: Ferdinand Magellan and Juan Sebastian Elcano begin first global circumnavigation. Expedition returns 1522.
1519: Hernán Cortés begins conquest of Mexico for Spain.
1532: Francisco Pizarro begins conquest of Peru for Spain.
1543: Nicolaus Copernicus. De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres).
1547: Assumption of the title Tsardom of Russia.
1582: The introduction of Gregorian calendar.
1608: Hans Lippershey designs first practical telescope
1610: Galileo Galilei discovers the moons of Jupiter.
1648: The Peace of Westphalia ends the Thirty Years' War.
1687: Isaac Newton published Principia Mathematica.
1699: Treaty of Karlowitz concludes the Austro-Ottoman War - marks end of Ottoman control of Central Europe and beginning of Ottoman stagnation and established Habsburg Monarchy as dominant power in Central and Southeastern Europe.
1707: The Kingdom of Great Britain is formed by the union of the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland.
1712: Thomas Newcomen invents first practical steam engine which begins Industrial Revolution in England.
1721: Foundation of the Russian Empire.
1775: James Watt invents a new efficient steam engine accelerating the Industrial Revolution in England.
1784: Immanuel Kant published Answering the Question: What Is Enlightenment?. Age of Enlightenment.
1786: The Duchy of Tuscany becomes the first state in the modern era to completely abolish the death penalty.
1789: The French Revolution.
1807: The Slave Trade Act was passed by the British Parliament on 25 March 1807, making the slave trade illegal throughout the British Empire.
1815: Following the defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte by the Duke of Wellington at the Battle of Waterloo the Treaty of Vienna is signed.
1825: George Stephenson opens the Stockton and Darlington Railway the first steam train railway for passenger traffic in the world.
1833: Slavery abolished throughout the British Empire
1836: Louis Daguerre invents first practical photographic method - in effect the first camera.
1838: SS Great Western the first steamship purpose-built for regularly scheduled trans-Atlantic crossings enters service.
1848: Revolutions of 1848 and The Communist Manifesto.
1852: Start of Crimean War to 1855.
1861: Unification of Italy after victories by Giuseppe Garibaldi
1866: First commercially successful transatlantic telegraph cable was successfully completed.
1859: Charles Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species.
1860s: Russia emancipates its serfs and Karl Marx completes the first volume of Das Kapital.
1870: Franco-Prussian War and the fall of the Second French Empire.
1871: Unification of Germany under the direction of Otto von Bismarck
1873: Panic of 1873 and the Long Depression begins.
1885: Karl Benz invents Benz Patent-Motorwagen worlds first automobile.
1885: First permanent city-wide electrical tram system in Europe (Sarajevo).
1895: Auguste and Louis Lumière begin exhibitions of projected films before the paying public with their cinematograph, a portable camera, printer, and projector.
1898: The NW First Truck is manufactured.
1899: In Budapest is a 1.5 km long test track with three-phase electric power for electric railways put into operation.
1902: Guglielmo Marconi sends first transatlantic radio transmission.
1905: Albert Einstein publishes his theory of special relativity and E = mc2.
1914: Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria is assassinated in Sarajevo and World War I begins.
1917: Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks seize power in the Russian Revolution. The ensuing Russian Civil War lasts until 1922.
1918: End of World War I Germany defeated.
1922: Benito Mussolini and the Fascists take power in Italy.
1926: John Logie Baird gives the world's first demonstration of a working television system.
1933: Adolf Hitler and the Nazis take power in Germany
1936: Start of the Spanish Civil War to 1939
1939: Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin agree partition of Poland in Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact
1939: Germany invades Poland starting World War II
1940: Great Britain under Winston Churchill become the last nation to hold out against the Nazis after winning the Battle of Britain
1941: Germany invades the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa.
1942: Nazi Germany commences Final Solution an attempted genocide of the Jews.
1944: U.S., British and Canadian armed forces invade Nazi-occupied France at Normandy.
1945: World War II ends with Europe in ruins and Germany defeated.
1947: British Empire begins to be voluntarily dismantled with the granting of independence to India and Pakistan.
1949: The military alliance NATO was established.
1950: The Schuman Declaration begins European unity
1954: French Empire begins to be dismantled after suffering defeat at Dien Bien Phu in Vietnam.
1956: Hungarian Uprising crushed by Soviet tanks.
1957: Treaties of Rome establish the European Economic Community from 1958.
1968: The May 1968 protests in France leads France to the brink of revolution
1968: The Prague Spring crushed by Soviet tanks. The Club of Rome is founded.
1980: The Solidarność movement under Lech Wałęsa begin opposition to the Communist government in Poland.
1985: Mikhail Gorbachev becomes leader of Soviet Union and begins reforms which inadvertently lead to the collapse of Communism and USSR.
1989: Communism overthrown by popular uprisings in all the Warsaw Pact countries except the USSR. The Berlin Wall is torn down.
1990: German reunification
1991: Breakup of Yugoslavia
1991: Dissolution of the Soviet Union
1991: Tim Berners-Lee invents the World Wide Web, a vital part of the Internet
1993: Treaty of Maastricht establishes the European Union
2002: End of modern European colonial empires with the independence of Portuguese Timor
2004: The European Union takes in Slovenia, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Cyprus and Malta
2007: The European Union takes in Romania and Bulgaria
2008: The Great Recession starts. Unemployment rises in some parts of Europe