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313
Spread of Christianity
Christianity emerged as a leading religion in the Imperial Roman age for a variety of factors. The teachings of Christ and Christian ideology including the concept of equality in the afterlife were obvious draws. However, people gravitated towards anything that would offer a new hope, especially as the stability of the late Empire continued to unravel. Some have suggested that the spread of Christianity had direct responsibility for the fall of the Empire, but it was more a symptom of the failin -
Period: 323 to 356
Alexander the Great
Alexander III of Macedon (356–323 BC), popularly known as Alexander the Great (Greek: Μέγας Ἀλέξανδρος, Mégas Aléxandros), was a Greeki[›] king (basileus) of Macedon. He is the most celebrated member of the Argead Dynasty and created one of the largest empires in ancient history. Born in Pella in 356 BC, Alexander received a classical Greek education under the tutorship of famed philosopher Aristotle, succeeded his father Philip II of Macedon to the throne in 336 BC after the King was assassinat -
431
Peloponnesian War
431 to 404 B.C., was an ancient Greek war, fought by Athens and its empire against the Peloponnesian League, led by Sparta. Historians have traditionally divided the war into three phases. -
Jan 1, 650
Sparta
From c. 650 BC, following the reforms of Lycurgus, it rose to become the dominant military land-power in ancient Greece. -
Oct 10, 732
Battle of Tours
The Battle of Tours also called the Battle of Poitiers and in Arabic: معركة بلاط الشهداء (ma‘arakat Balâṭ ash-Shuhadâ) Battle of Court of the Martyrs[3], was fought in an area between the cities of Poitiers and Tours, located in north-central France, near the village of Moussais-la-Bataille about 20 kilometres (12 mi) northeast of Poitiers. The location of the battle was close to the border between the Frankish realm and then-independent Aquitaine -
May 20, 1095
Crusades
The Crusades were a series of religiously sanctioned military campaigns waged by much of Latin Christian Europe, particularly the Franks of France and the Holy Roman Empire. The specific crusades to restore Christian control of the Holy Land were fought over a period of nearly 200 years, between 1095 and 1291. Other campaigns in Spain and Eastern Europe continued into the 15th century. The Crusades were fought mainly by Roman Catholic forces (taking place after the East-West Schism and mostly be -
May 20, 1417
Renaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Florence in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historic era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not uniform across Europe, this is a general use of the term. As a cultural movement, it encompassed a resurgence of lea -
Apr 15, 1452
Leonardo Da Vinci
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was an Italian polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist and writer. Leonardo has often been described as the archetype of the Renaissance man, a man whose unquenchable curiosity was equaled only by his powers of invention. He is widely considered to be one of the greatest painters of all -
Mar 6, 1475
MichelAngelo
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, poet, and engineer. Despite making few forays beyond the arts, his versatility in the disciplines he took up was of such a high order that he is often considered a contender for the title of the archetypal Renaissance man, along with his rival and fellow Italian Leonardo da Vinci. -
Nov 10, 1483
Martin Luther
Martin Luther had a small head-start on Tyndale, as Luther declared his intolerance for the Roman Church’s corruption on Halloween in 1517, by nailing his 95 Theses of Contention to the Wittenberg Church door. Luther, who would be exiled in the months following the Diet of Worms Council in 1521 that was designed to martyr him, would translate the New Testament into German for the first time from the 1516 Greek-Latin New Testament of Erasmus, and publish it in September of 1522. -
John Locke (natural Rights)
John Locke, widely known as the Father of Liberalism, was an English philosopher and physician regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers. Considered the first of the British empiricists, he is equally important to social contract theory. His work had a great impact upon the development of epistemology and political philosophy. His writings influenced Voltaire and Rousseau, many Scottish Enlightenment thinkers, -
Declaration of rights of Man
The representatives of the French people, organized as a National Assembly, believing that the ignorance, neglect, or contempt of the rights of man are the sole cause of public calamities and of the corruption of governments, have determined to set forth in a solemn declaration the natural, unalienable, and sacred rights of man, in order that this declaration, being constantly before all the members of the Social body, shall remind them continually of their rights and duties; -
Execution of King Louis
Louis XVI, king of France, arrived in the wrong historical place at the wrong time and soon found himself overwhelmed by events beyond his control. Ascending the throne in 1774, Louis inherited a realm driven nearly bankrupt through the opulence of his predecessors Louis XIV and XV. After donning the crown, things only got worse. The economy spiraled downward (unemployment in Paris in 1788 is estimated at 50%), crops failed, the price of bread and other food soared. The people were not happy. To -
Robespierre
Robespierre was guillotined because of his unrightful ways of the law. As were many people during the Renaissance. -
Invasion of Russia
The French invasion of Russia of 1812 was a turning point in the Napoleonic Wars, which reduced the French and allied invasion forces (the Grande Armée) to a tiny fraction of their initial strength and triggered a major shift in European politics, as it dramatically fragilized the previously dominant French position on the continent. The campaign's sustained role in Russian culture may be seen in Tolstoy's War and Peace, Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture, and -
Napoleon Bonaparte
The 6th Coalition defeated his forces at Leipzig -
Period: to
Julius Ceasar
Gaius Julius Caesar was a Roman military and political leader. He played a critical role in the transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire. As a politician, Caesar made use of popularist tactics. During the late 60s and into the 50s BC, he formed political alliances that led to the so-called First Triumvirate, an extra-legal arrangement with Marcus -
Period: to
Spartacus
Spartacus was the most notable leader of the slaves in the Third Servile War, a major slave uprising against the Roman Republic. Little is known about Spartacus beyond the events of the war, and surviving historical accounts are sometimes contradictory and may not always be reliable. Spartacus' struggle, often seen as oppressed people fighting for their freedom against a slave-owning aristocracy, has found new meaning for modern writers sinc -
Persian Wars
The Greco-Persian Wars (also often called the Persian Wars) were a series of conflicts between the Achaemenid Empire of Persia and city-states of the Hellenic world that started in 499 BC and lasted until 449 BC. The collision between the fractious political world of the Greeks and the enormous empire of the Persians began when Cyrus the Great conquered Ionia in 547 BC. Struggling to rule the independently-minded cities of Ionia, the Persians appointed tyrants to rule each of them. This would pr