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507 BCE
Democracy develops in Athens, Greece
demokratia, or "rule by the people" was introduced as a series of political reforms by the Athenian leader Cleisthenes. ... One of the earliest forms of democracy in Athens was a legislative council of 500. All citizens were eligible for this council. However, citizens were only free, Greek-born males of a certain age. -
318 BCE
Roman Senate votes dictatorial powers
The chief-magistrates, the consuls, appointed all new senators. They also had the power to remove individuals from the Senate. Around the year 318 BC, the "Ovinian Plebiscite" gave this power to another Roman magistrate, the censor, who retained this power until the end of the Roman Republic. -
Two treatises of government
Locke proceeds through Filmer's arguments, contesting his proofs from Scripture and ridiculing them as senseless, until concluding that no government can be justified by an appeal to the divine right of kings. The Second Treatise outlines a theory of civil society. -
Three Branches
Montesquieu explained the need for power -
The Continental Congress
Was a convention of delegates called together from the Thirteen Colonies. It became the governing body of the United States during the American Revolution. -
Federal organization of Haudenosaunee
The nations of the confederacy recognize themselves as Haudenosaunee from their own language meaning symbolizing all the nations coming together as one. -
British North American Act
Nation state of Canada was created -
Secret Ballot Federal Election
Before the secret ballot, citizens had to declare their votes in public. As a result they were easily intimidated by threats of violence. The secret ballot is an essential tool of democracy. -
Lenin dies, opens the door for Stalin
After Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin (1870-1924) died, Stalin outmaneuvered his rivals for control of the party. Once in power, he collectivized farming and had potential enemies executed or sent to forced labor camps. -
Federal Organization of the Haudenosaunee
The Haudenosaunee Confederacy is renowned for its organization and democratic system, one of the first of its kind. -
Persons Case
The Persons Case (officially Edwards v. A.G. of Canada) was a constitutional ruling that established the right of women to be appointed to the Senate. The case was initiated by the Famous Five, a group of prominent women activists. -
Enabling Act
The Enabling Act was a 1933 Weimar Constitution amendment that gave the German Cabinet – in effect, Chancellor Adolf Hitler – the power to enact laws without the involvement of the Reichstag. -
World War 2 ends
During World War II, the two countries were briefly allies. At the end of the war, the first signs of post-war mistrust and hostility began to appear between the two countries, escalating into the Cold War; a period of tense hostile relations -
Berlin Blockade
was one of the first major international crises of the Cold War. During the multinational occupation of post–World War II Germany, the Soviet Union blocked the Western Allies' railway, road, and canal access to the sectors of Berlin under Western control -
Marshall Plan
The Marshall Plan (officially the European Recovery Program, ERP) was an American initiative to aid Western Europe, in which the United States gave over $13 billion in economic assistance to help rebuild Western European economies after the end of World War II. -
Creation of NATO
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was created in 1949 by the United States, Canada, and several Western European nations to provide collective security against the Soviet Union. NATO was the first peacetime military alliance the United States entered into outside of the Western Hemisphere. -
Korean War begins
Korean War began when some 75,000 soldiers from the North Korean People's Army poured across the 38th parallel, the boundary between the Soviet-backed Democratic People's Republic of Korea to the north and the pro-Western Republic of Korea to the south. -
Warsaw Pact
Warsaw Pact, formally Warsaw Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance, treaty establishing a mutual-defense organization (Warsaw Treaty Organization) composed originally of the Soviet Union and Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Romania. -
Vietnam War Ends
The domino theory was a theory prominent from the 1950s to the 1980s that posited that if one country in a region came under the influence of communism, then the surrounding countries would follow in a domino effect. Two months after the signing of the Vietnam peace agreement, the last U.S. combat troops leave South Vietnam as Hanoi frees the remaining American prisoners of war held in North Vietnam. America's direct eight-year intervention in the Vietnam War was at an end -
Khrushchev calls for peaceful co existence
Khrushchev's foreign policy of pursuing peaceful coexistence with the United States and its allies was a dramatic change from previous leaders' attitudes -
Hungarian Uprising
The Hungarian Uprising of 1956 was a nationwide revolt against the communist government of the Hungarian People's Republic and its Soviet-imposed policies. -
First Nations Suffrage
First Nations people were given a conditional right to vote status at the time of Confederation in 1867. To do so, they had to give up their treaty rights and Indian status. -
START deterrence
Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) treaties all reflected attempts by the superpowers to manage strategic nuclear developments in such a way as to stabilize mutual deterrence. -
Berlin Wall
The Berlin Wall was a guarded concrete barrier that physically and ideologically divided Berlin from 1961 to 1989. -
Cuban Missile Crisis
During the Cuban Missile Crisis, leaders of the U.S. and the Soviet Union engaged in a tense, 13-day political and military standoff in October 1962 over the installation of nuclear-armed Soviet missiles on Cuba, just 90 miles from U.S. shores -
Nuclear Non proliferation Treaty
Non-Proliferation Treaty or NPT, is an international treaty whose objective is to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and weapons technology, to promote cooperation in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy, and to further the goal of achieving nuclear disarmament and general and complete disarmament. -
Prague Spring
The Prague Spring was a period of political liberalization in Czechoslovakia during the era of its domination by the Soviet Union after World War II -
Helsinki Accords
The Helsinki Final Act was an agreement signed by 35 nations that concluded the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, held in Helsinki, Finland. The multifaceted Act addressed a range of prominent global issues and in so doing had a far-reaching effect on the Cold War and U.S.-Soviet relations. -
Soweto Uprisings in South Africa
The Soweto uprising was a series of demonstrations and protests led by black school children in South Africa. It is estimated that 20,000 students took part in the protests. They were met with fierce police brutality. -
Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan
The Soviet Union sent thousands of troops into Afghanistan and immediately assumed complete military and political control of Kabul and large portions of the country. This event began a brutal, decade-long attempt by Moscow to subdue the Afghan civil war and maintain a friendly and socialist government on its border. -
Triple E Senate
Is a proposed variation of reform to the current Canadian Senate, calling for senators to be elected to exercise effective powers in numbers equally representative of each province. -
Bush Presidency
Wins his first term as president of the USA -
Solidarity trade
As a result of the Round Table Agreement between the Polish government and the Solidarity-led opposition, elections were held in Poland on 4 June 1989, in which the opposition were allowed to field candidates against the Communist Party—the first free elections in any Soviet bloc country. -
Berlin Wall is torn down
The Berlin Wall: The Fall of the Wall. On November 9, 1989, as the Cold War began to thaw across Eastern Europe, the spokesman for East Berlin's Communist Party announced a change in his city's relations with the West. Starting at midnight that day, he said, citizens of the were free to cross the country's borders -
Warsaw Pact is Dissolved
After 36 years in existence, the Warsaw Pact—the military alliance between the Soviet Union and its eastern European satellites—comes to an end. The action was yet another sign that the Soviet Union was losing control over its former allies and that the Cold War was falling apart -
Cold War Ends
The Cold War came to an end when the last war of Soviet occupation ended in Afghanistan, the Berlin Wall came down in Germany, and a series of mostly peaceful revolutions swept the Soviet Bloc states of eastern Europe in 1989. -
Charlottetown Accord
The Charlottetown Accord (French: Accord de Charlottetown) was a package of proposed amendments to the Constitution of Canada, proposed by the Canadian federal and provincial governments in 1992. It was submitted to a public referendum on October 26 of that year, and was defeated. -
Cholera outbreak in Zimbabwe
Robert Mugabe's government has blamed "biological warfare" waged by Britain for the cholera outbreak that has killed at least 800 people in Zimbabwe. -
Bill C-16
An Act to amend the Canadian Human Rights Act and the Criminal Code
