Events

A 1987 radiological accident in Brazil caused by the dispersal of caesium-137 from an abandoned medical source.

The Great Depression was a worldwide economic crisis beginning in 1929, marked by collapsing output, mass unemployment, banking failures, and uneven recovery during the 1930s.

A series of mass killings in Guangxi during China’s Cultural Revolution, principally in 1967–1968, including documented cases of cannibalism.

The international research program that mapped and sequenced the human genome, establishing a foundation for modern genomics.

A series of conflicts from 1337 to 1453 between the English and French crowns over the French throne and territory.

Hurricane Isaias was a Category 1 Atlantic hurricane that affected the Caribbean and eastern United States in 2020, causing destructive winds, flooding, tornadoes, and widespread power outages.

A devastating 2005 Atlantic hurricane whose storm surge and flood-protection failures caused catastrophic losses along the United States Gulf Coast.

The shift from hand production to machines, factories and fossil-fuel power, beginning in Britain around 1760 and later spreading worldwide.

A high-altitude war fought between India and Pakistan in Kashmir from May to July 1999.

The 1950–1953 armed conflict on the Korean Peninsula between North and South Korea, with UN, U.S. and Chinese involvement, ended in an armistice that left the peninsula divided.

The 1934–35 retreat of the Chinese Red Army that moved the Chinese Communist Party's core to northern Shaanxi and helped consolidate Mao Zedong's leadership.

The Manhattan Project was the secret United States–led wartime program that developed the first nuclear weapons, combining scientific research with large-scale industrial production.

A Chinese student-led protest movement beginning in 1919, closely associated with wider transformations in politics, literature, education, and cultural thought.

The Meiji Restoration (from 1868) was the transformation in which samurai from western domains overthrew the Tokugawa shogunate, after which Japan built a centralized state, abolished feudal domains, and industrialized rapidly.

The Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815) were a series of conflicts between Napoleon's French Empire and shifting European coalitions, with Britain as the most persistent opponent, ending with Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo.

The Nobel Banquet is the formal dinner held in Stockholm on 10 December to celebrate Nobel laureates following the prize award ceremony.

The 2025 Nobel awards honoured fourteen individuals for achievements in physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, peace, and economic sciences.

The Allied airborne and amphibious assaults of 6 June 1944 that established a foothold in German-occupied Normandy during World War II.

Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, involving mass killings and hostage-taking and precipitating the Gaza war.

The Olympic Games are the world's largest multi-sport festival, held in summer and winter editions and governed by the International Olympic Committee since 1894.

The Opium Wars (1839–1842 and 1856–1860) were two armed conflicts in which Western powers, chiefly Britain, fought the Qing dynasty over the opium trade and broader disputes over trade and diplomacy.

Pan Am Flight 103 was destroyed by a bomb over Lockerbie, Scotland, on 21 December 1988, killing 270 people.

The 2026 acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery by Paramount Skydance, forming the combined company Skydance.

A movement of religious reform that transformed Western Christianity and established Protestant churches in sixteenth-century Europe.

Three wars (264–146 BC) between Rome and Carthage that decided control of the western Mediterranean and ended Carthage as a state.

Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine began on 24 February 2022. It escalated a conflict that began in 2014 into Europe's largest interstate war since 1945, and it was still ongoing in October 2026.

The revolutions of 1917 that ended Russia’s monarchy and brought the Bolsheviks to power, followed by civil war and Soviet state formation.

A transformation of European knowledge in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that reshaped explanations of nature, investigative methods, and scientific institutions.

The Scramble for Africa was the late-19th-century race by European powers to claim and colonise almost all of Africa, formalised by the 1884–1885 Berlin Conference.

The war between China and Japan, fought on a full scale from 1937 to 1945, that became a major theater of World War II.

Coordinated al-Qaeda terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001 in the United States that killed nearly 3,000 people and reshaped security policy worldwide.

The sinking of the Taiping was a January 1949 maritime disaster on the Shanghai–Taiwan route that killed approximately a thousand people.

The 1936–1939 conflict between Spain’s Republican government and Nationalist rebels that ended in Francisco Franco’s victory and dictatorship.

The Taiping Rebellion (1850–1864) was a massive civil war in Qing China led by Hong Xiuquan. It produced the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and caused tens of millions of deaths.

The systematic Nazi persecution and murder of about six million European Jews, alongside Roma, disabled people, and other groups, from 1933 to 1945.

A series of European wars (1618–1648) that began as a Bohemian revolt and ended with the Peace of Westphalia.

The 1919 peace settlement that formally ended World War I between Germany and the Allied Powers, setting terms on territory, the military, reparations and the League of Nations.

US sanctions on the International Criminal Court are financial and entry restrictions imposed on court personnel and, since October 2026, the institution itself.

The 1954–1975 conflict in which North Vietnam and its allies fought South Vietnam and the United States, ending with reunification under communist rule.

A wave of demonstrations against China’s COVID-19 restrictions and censorship in November 2022, symbolized by blank sheets of paper.

A global war fought from 1914 to 1918 that defeated the Central Powers, dismantled empires, and transformed international politics and modern warfare.

A global conflict from 1939 to 1945 between the Allies and the Axis powers. It was the deadliest war in history and reshaped the world order.

WTT China Smash is a table tennis Grand Smash event held annually in Beijing, the final stop of the sport's season-long Grand Smash series.

A military uprising on 10 October 1911 that initiated the decisive phase of the Xinhai Revolution and the overthrow of the Qing dynasty.

The 1911–1912 revolution that overthrew China’s Qing dynasty and established the Republic of China.

A religiously organized uprising against the Eastern Han in 184 CE that contributed to China’s subsequent political fragmentation.