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Jan 1, 1440
Invention of the Printing Press
The mechanization of bookmaking led to the first mass production of books in history in assembly line-style.[3] A single Renaissance printing press could produce 3,600 pages per workday,[4] compared to forty by typographic hand-printing and a few by hand-copying.[5] Books of bestselling authors like Luther or Erasmus were sold by the hundreds of thousands in their lifetime.[6] From a single point of origin, Mainz, Germany, printing spread within several decades to over two hundred cities in a d -
Jan 1, 1500
The Peak of the Renaissance Era
During this time, artists and musicians produced works that displayed more artistic freedom and individualism. This creativity allowed artists to abandon the stricter ways of the Medieval Era. Their art forms rediscovered the ancient Greek ideals. The great masters of the Renaissance were revered in their own lifetimes (rather than after their deaths), which was different from most of their Medieval predecessors. With the new printing techniques, music and musical ideas were able to be preserve -
Jan 1, 1503
The Painting of the Mona Lisa
This painting is a half-length portrait and depicts a seated woman, Lisa del Giocondo, whose facial expression has been frequently described as enigmatic. -
Jan 1, 1517
Posting of the 95 theses
The background to Luther's Ninety-Five Theses centers on practices within the Catholic Church regarding baptism and absolution. Significantly, the Theses reject the validity of indulgences (remissions of temporal punishment due for sins which have already been forgiven). They also view with great cynicism the practice of indulgences being sold, and thus the penance for sin representing a financial transaction rather than genuine contrition. Luther's Theses argued that the sale of indulgences was -
Sep 1, 1522
Luther's Trunslation of the Bible
The Luther Bible is a German Bible translation by Martin Luther, first printed with both testaments in 1534. This translation became a force in shaping the Modern High German language. The project absorbed Luther's later years[1] The new translation was very widely disseminated thanks to the printing press. -
Dec 13, 1545
Council of Trent
The council issued condemnations on what it defined as Protestant heresies and defined Church teachings in the areas of Scripture and Tradition, Original Sin, Justification, Sacraments, the Eucharist in Holy Mass and the veneration of saints. It issued numerous reform decrees.[3] By specifying Catholic doctrine on salvation, the sacraments, and the Biblical canon, the Council was answering Protestant disputes.[1] The Council entrusted to the Pope the implementation of its work; as a result, Pope -
30 Years War
The Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) was fought primarily in what is now Germany, and at various points involved most countries in Europe. It was one of the most destructive conflicts in European history. The origins of the conflict and goals of the participants were complex, and no single cause can accurately be described as the main reason for the fighting. Initially, the war was fought largely as a religious conflict between Protestants and Catholics in the Holy Roman Empire, although disputes -
Age if the Monarchs
By the 17th century there was already a tradition and awareness of Europe: a reality stronger than that of an area bounded by sea, mountains, grassy plains, steppes, or deserts where Europe clearly ended and Asia began—“that geographical expression” which in the 19th century Otto von Bismarck was to see as counting for little against the interests of nations. In the two centuries before the French Revolution and the triumph of nationalism as a divisive force, -
The Invention of the First Steam Engine
The history of the steam engine stretches back as far as the first century AD; the first recorded rudimentary steam engine being the aeolipile described by Greek mathematician Hero of Alexandria.[3] In the following centuries, the few steam-powered 'engines' known about were essentially experimental devices used by inventors to demonstrate the properties of steam. A rudimentary steam turbine device was described by Taqi al-Din[4] in 1551 and by Giovanni Branca[5] in 1629.[6] Following the inven -
Newton's Law of Gravity
Newton's law of universal gravitation states that every point mass in the universe attracts every other point mass with a force that is directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. (Separately it was shown that large spherically symmetrical masses attract and are attracted as if all their mass were concentrated at their centers.) This is a general physical law derived from empirical observations by what Newton called -
The Reign of Louis
King Louis was a Bourbon monarch who ruled as King of France and Navarre until 1791, and then as King of the French from 1791 to 1792. Suspended and arrested as part of the insurrection of 10 August during the French Revolution, he was tried by the National Convention, found guilty of high treason, and executed by guillotine on 21 January 1793 as a desacralized French citizen known as "Citoyen Louis Capet". He is the only King of France ever to be executed. -
French Revolution
The French Revolution (French: Révolution française; 1789–1799), sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution'[1] (La Grande Révolution), was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years. French society underwent an epic transformation as feudal, aristocratic and religious privileges evaporated under a sustained assault from radical left-wing political groups, masses on the st -
The First Electric Battery
In strict terms, a battery is a collection of multiple electrochemical cells, but in popular usage battery often refers to a single cell.[1] For example, a 1.5-volt AAA battery is a single 1.5-volt cell, and a 9-volt battery has six 1.5-volt cells in series. The first electrochemical cell was developed by the Italian physicist Alessandro Volta in 1792, and in 1800 he invented the first battery, a "pile" of many cells in series.[4] The usage of "battery" to describe electrical devices dates to B -
Age of Reason
The Age of Reason; Being an Investigation of True and Fabulous Theology is a deistic pamphlet, written by eighteenth-century British radical and American revolutionary Thomas Paine, that criticizes institutionalized religion and challenges the legitimacy of the Bible, the central sacred text of Christianity. Published in three parts in 1794, 1795, and 1807, it was a bestseller in the United States, where it caused a short-lived deistic revival. British audiences, however, fearing increased polit -
Attack on Pearl Habor
The attack on Pearl Harbor (called Hawaii Operation or Operation AI[6][7] by the Japanese Imperial General Headquarters (Operation Z in planning)[8] and the Battle of Pearl Harbor[9]) was a surprise military strike conducted by the Imperial Japanese Navy against the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on the morning of December 7, 1941 (December 8 in Japan). The attack was intended as a preventive action in order to keep the U.S. Pacific Fleet from interfering with military actions -
D-day
June 1944 was a major turning point of World War II, particularly in Europe. Although the initiative had been seized from the Germans some months before, so far the western Allies had been unable to mass sufficient men and material to risk an attack in northern Europe. By mid-1944 early mobilization of manpower and resources in America was beginning to pay off. Millions of American men had been trained, equipped, and welded into fighting and service units. American industrial production had re -
Enola Gay Drops the Bomb
Enola Gay is a Boeing B-29 Superfortress bomber, named after Enola Gay Tibbets, mother of the pilot, then-Colonel (later Brigadier General) Paul Tibbets.[2] On August 6, 1945, during the final stages of World War II, it became the first aircraft to drop an atomic bomb as a weapon of war. The bomb, code-named "Little Boy", was targeted at the city of Hiroshima, Japan, and caused extensive destruction. The Enola Gay gained additional attention in 1995 when the cockpit and nose section of the airc -
Nelson Mandela Becomes President
South Africa's first multi-racial elections in which full enfranchisement was granted were held on 27 April 1994. The ANC won 62% of the votes in the election, and Mandela, as leader of the ANC, was inaugurated on 10 May 1994 as the country's first black President, with the National Party's de Klerk as his first deputy and Thabo Mbeki as the second in the Government of National Unity.[80] As President from May 1994 until June 1999, Mandela presided over the transition from minority rule and apar -
The Introduction of the Heliocentric Theory
Heliocentrism, or heliocentricism,[1] is the astronomical model in which the Earth and planets revolve around a stationary Sun at the center of the solar system. The word comes from the Greek (ἥλιος helios "sun" and κέντρον kentron "center"). Historically, heliocentrism was opposed to geocentrism, which placed the Earth at the center. The notion that the Earth revolves around the Sun had been proposed as early as the 3rd century BC by Aristarchus of Samos,[2] but had received no support from mos -
Invention of the First Telescope
Phoenicians cooking on sand discovered glass around 3500 BCE, but it took about 5,000 years more for glass to be shaped into a lens for the first telescope. A spectacle maker probably assembled the first telescope. Hans Lippershey (c1570-c1619) of Holland is often credited with the invention, but he almost certainly was not the first to make one. Lippershey was, however, the first to make the new device widely known.
The telescope was introduced to astronomy in 1609 by the great Italian scienti
