-
Industrial Revolution Begins
The Industrial Revolution transformed economies that had been based on agriculture and handicrafts into economies based on large-scale industry, mechanized manufacturing, and the factory system. New machines, new power sources, and new ways of organizing work made existing industries more productive and efficient -
James Hargreaves conceives the idea for the spinning jenny.
The spinning jenny is a multi-spindle spinning frame, and was one of the key developments in the industrialization of textile manufacturing during the early Industrial Revolution. It was invented in 1764 or 1765 by James Hargreaves in Stanhill, Oswaldtwistle, Lancashire in England. -
Newcomen Steam Engine
Newcomen invented the world's first successful atmospheric steam engine. The engine pumped water using a vacuum created by condensed steam. It became an important method of draining water from deep mines and was therefore a vital component in the Industrial Revolution in Britain. It receives its patent. -
Hargreaves receives the patent for the spinning jenny
Hargreaves receives his patent on the spinning jenny. -
Arkwright develops mills
Initially designed to be driven by horsepower, the machine's moving rollers drew out the cotton fibres, imitating the action of a hand spinner's fingers. Then, its rotating spindles twisted the cotton into yarn and wound it onto a bobbin -
Spinning Mule
The spinning mule is a machine used to spin cotton and other fibres. They were used extensively from the late 18th to the early 20th century in the mills of Lancashire and elsewhere. Mules were worked in pairs by a minder, with the help of two boys: the little piecer and the big or side piecer. -
Crude Power Loom
The first power loom, patented in 1785, was extremely crude but improvements were made in subsequent versions. Cartwright now established a factory in Doncaster for his looms, but his ignorance of industry and commerce meant that the factory never became much more than a testing site for new inventions. -
wool-combing machine
The wool combing machine was invented by Edmund Cartwright, the inventor of the power loom, in Doncaster. It was patented in 1790. This machine was used to arrange and lay parallel by length the fibers of wool, prior to further treatment. The machine was important in the mechanization of the textile industry. -
Samuel Slater
Samuel Slater was an early English-American industrialist known as the "Father of the American Industrial Revolution" and the "Father of the American Factory System". -
William and John Cockerill
Two Englishmen, William and John Cockerill, brought the Industrial Revolution to Belgium by developing machine shops at Liège (c. 1807), and Belgium became the first country in continental Europe to be transformed economically. -
Luddites begin to rise
The Luddites were a secret oath-based organisation of English textile workers in the 19th century, a radical faction which destroyed textile machinery. The group are believed to have taken their name from Ned Ludd, a weaver from Anstey, near Leicester. -
Mechanical Reaper
The mechanical reaper was invented by Cyrus McCormick in 1831. This machine was used by farmers to harvest crops mechanically. For hundreds of years, farmers and field workers had to harvest crops by hand using a sickle or other methods, which was an arduous task at best -
Elias Howe’s sewing machine
Elias Howe patented the first ever lockstitch sewing machine in the world in 1846. His invention helped the mass production of sewing machines and clothing. That in turn revolutionized the sewing industry and freed women from some of the drudgery of daily life at the time. -
Crimean War
The Crimean War was a military conflict fought from October 1853 to February 1856 in which Russia lost to an alliance of France, the Ottoman Empire, the United Kingdom and Piedmont-Sardinia. The immediate cause of the war involved the rights of Christian minorities in Palestine, which was part of the Ottoman Empire -
Sepoy Rebellion
Indian Mutiny, also called Sepoy Mutiny or First War of Independence, widespread but unsuccessful rebellion against British rule in India in 1857–59. Begun in Meerut by Indian troops (sepoys) in the service of the British East India Company, it spread to Delhi, Agra, Kanpur, and Lucknow. -
Edwin Drake
Edwin Drake, in full Edwin Laurentine Drake, (born March 29, 1819, Greenville, New York, U.S.—died November 8, 1880, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania), driller of the first productive oil well in the United States. -
Italian Unification Begins
The unification of Italy, also known as the Risorgimento, was the 19th-century political and social movement that resulted in the consolidation of different states of the Italian Peninsula into a single state, the Kingdom of Italy. -
Building of the transcontinental railroad starts
North America's first transcontinental railroad was a 1,911-mile continuous railroad line constructed between 1863 and 1869 that connected the existing eastern U.S. rail network at Council Bluffs, Iowa with the Pacific coast at the Oakland Long Wharf on San Francisco Bay -
German Unification Begins
The unification of Germany into the German Empire, a Prussian-dominated nation state with federal features, officially occurred on 18 January 1871 at the Palace of Versailles in France. -
Building of the transcontinental railroad finished
6 years after it starts, the transcontinental railroad is finished being built. -
Telephone becomes patented
During the American Industrial Revolution, Alexander Graham Bell invented the first functional telephone in 1876. Shortly thereafter, major cities across the United States and Europe began to install the revolutionary telephone system. -
Edison introduces the lightbulb
By January 1879, at his laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey, Edison had built his first high resistance, incandescent electric light. It worked by passing electricity through a thin platinum filament in the glass vacuum bulb, which delayed the filament from melting. Still, the lamp only burned for a few short hours. -
Lightbulb system became operational
The system becomes operative in 1882. Electricity is later applied to driving all kinds of machinery. Electric lighting quickly spreads across the United States and is soon adopted in Europe. -
Berlin Conference
Known as The Berlin Conference, they sought to discuss the partitioning of Africa, establishing rules to amicably divide resources among the Western countries at the expense of the African people. -
Second Industrial Revolution
The Second Industrial Revolution, also known as the Technological Revolution, was a phase of rapid scientific discovery, standardization, mass production, and industrialization from the late 19th century into the early 20th century. -
First Airplane Flight
The Wright Flyer made the first sustained flight by a manned heavier-than-air powered and controlled aircraft—an airplane—on 17 December 1903. Invented and flown by Orville and Wilbur Wright, it marked the beginning of the pioneer era of aviation. -
Women’s Political and Social Union
The Women's Social and Political Union was a women-only political movement and leading militant organisation campaigning for women's suffrage in the United Kingdom from 1903 to 1918. -
WWI Begins
At the dawn of the 20th century, few anticipated a global war, but what came to be known as the Great War began on June 28, 1914, with the assassinations of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, while they were visiting Sarajevo, Bosnia, a country recently annexed into the Austrian Empire. -
Russian Revolution
The Russian Revolution was a period of political and social revolution that took place in the former Russian Empire which began during the First World War. This period saw Russia abolish its monarchy and adopt a socialist form of government following two successive revolutions and a bloody civil war. -
Treaty of Versailles
The Treaty of Versailles is one of the most controversial armistice treaties in history. The treaty's so-called “war guilt” clause forced Germany and other Central Powers to take all the blame for World War I. This meant a loss of territories, reduction in military forces, and reparation payments to Allied powers -
Lenin’s NEP
Lenin characterized the NEP in 1922 as an economic system that would include "a free market and capitalism, both subject to state control," while socialized state enterprises would operate on "a profit basis." -
March on Rome
The March on Rome was an organized mass demonstration and a coup d'état in October 1922 which resulted in Benito Mussolini's National Fascist Party ascending to power in the Kingdom of Italy. In late October 1922, Fascist Party leaders planned an insurrection, to take place on 28 October. -
German Hyperinflation
Hyperinflation affected the German Papiermark, the currency of the Weimar Republic, between 1921 and 1923, primarily in 1923. It caused considerable internal political instability in the country, the occupation of the Ruhr by France and Belgium as well as misery for the general populace. -
Stalin’s 5 Year Plans
What was Stalin's Five Year Plan? Between 1928 and 1932, Stalin's Five Year Plan was targeted at collectivizing agriculture and developing heavy industry. This was the first of four so-called plans, which took place in 1928-32, 1933-37, 1938-42 and 1946-53. -
Hitler becomes Chancellor
Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany in 1933 following a series of electoral victories by the Nazi Party. He ruled absolutely until his death by suicide in April 1945. -
Munich Conference
Munich Agreement, (September 30, 1938), settlement reached by Germany, Great Britain, France, and Italy that permitted German annexation of the Sudetenland, in western Czechoslovakia. -
WWII Begins
World War II began in Europe on September 1, 1939, when Germany invaded Poland. Great Britain and France responded by declaring war on Germany on September 3. -
Containment & Domino Theory
The Cold War “containment” notion was born of the Domino Theory, which held that if one country fell under communist influence or control, its neighboring countries would soon follow. Containment was the cornerstone of the Truman Doctrine as defined by a Truman speech on March 12, 1947. -
Operation Barbarossa
Operation Barbarossa, original name Operation Fritz, during World War II, code name for the German invasion of the Soviet Union, which was launched on June 22, 1941. The failure of German troops to defeat Soviet forces in the campaign signaled a crucial turning point in the war. -
Midway
The Battle of Midway was a major naval battle in the Pacific Theater of World War II that took place on 4–7 June 1942, six months after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and one month after the Battle of the Coral Sea. -
Atomic Bombs
The United States detonated two atomic bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August 1945, respectively. The two bombings killed between 129,000 and 226,000 people, most of whom were civilians, and remain the only use of nuclear weapons in armed conflict. -
Yalta Conference
The Yalta Conference was a meeting of three World War II allies: U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin. The trio met in February 1945 in the resort city of Yalta, located along the Black Sea coast of the Crimean Peninsula -
Iron Curtain Speech
Iron Curtain speech, speech delivered by former British prime minister Winston Churchill in Fulton, Missouri, on March 5, 1946, in which he stressed the necessity for the United States and Britain to act as the guardians of peace and stability against the menace of Soviet communism, which had lowered an “iron curtain” -
Khrushchev’s Secret Speech
"On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences", popularly known as the "Secret Speech", was a report by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, made to the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union on 25 February 1956. -
Decolonization
decolonization, process by which colonies become independent of the colonizing country. Decolonization was gradual and peaceful for some British colonies largely settled by expatriates but violent for others, where native rebellions were energized by nationalism. -
Student Protests & Prague Spring
The Prague Spring reforms were a strong attempt by Dubček to grant additional rights to the citizens of Czechoslovakia in an act of partial decentralization of the economy and democratization. The freedoms granted included a loosening of restrictions on the media, speech and travel. -
Detente
Détente is the relaxation of strained relations, especially political, by verbal communication. The term, in diplomacy, originates from around 1912 when France and Germany tried unsuccessfully to reduce tensions. -
Margaret Thatcher is elected as the PM
She was elected to the position in 1979, having led the Conservative Party since 1975, and won landslide re-elections in 1983 and 1987. She gained intense media attention as Britain's first female prime minister. Her premiership ended when she withdrew from the 1990 Conservative leadership election. -
Gorbachev makes reforms
Gorbachev's reforms were gradualist and maintained many of the macroeconomic aspects of the command economy (including price controls, inconvertibility of the ruble, exclusion of private property ownership, and the government monopoly over most means of production). -
Treaty of Maastricht
The Treaty on European Union, commonly known as the Maastricht Treaty, is the foundation treaty of the European Union.