Annals Fold · The timeline
Every turning point on one axis Turning points, filed by region and century. Four lanes cover the same thousand years — Europe, Asia, the Americas, Africa. Each dot is a published entry; a diamond marks one that belongs to two regions at once. Use the search and the century drawer to narrow the board.
17 of 34 entries are published. Entries that have not reached their publication date have no page yet.
Search title or place Century All 13th century 14th century 15th century 16th century 17th century 18th century 19th century 20th century Region All Europe Asia The Americas Africa
Showing 17 of 17 published entries
1279 The Battle of Yamen and the End of the Song Yamen, Xinhui, Guangdong 1453 The Fall of Constantinople Constantinople (Istanbul) 1492 Columbus Reaches the Caribbean Palos, the Canaries, Guanahani (San Salvador), Hispaniola 1517 Luther's Ninety-five Theses Wittenberg and Mainz, Holy Roman Empire 1648 The Peace of Westphalia Münster and Osnabrück, Westphalia 1776 The American Declaration of Independence Philadelphia, Boston, Yorktown 1789 The French Revolution Begins Versailles and Paris 1793 Two Embassies, One Autumn: Macartney in Beijing and the First Coalition Fold · Jehol and Beijing; the Austrian Netherlands 1839 The First Opium War Canton, the Pearl River, the Yangtze estuary 1848 The Revolutions of 1848 Paris, Vienna, Berlin, Milan, Budapest, Bucharest 1868 The Meiji Restoration Kyoto, Edo, Satsuma and Choshu domains 1885 1885: The Berlin Conference and the Sino-French War Fold · Berlin; Tonkin and Taiwan 1905 Two Empires in Manchuria: 1905 Fold · Manchuria, the Yellow Sea, Tsushima Strait, St Petersburg 1914 The July Crisis and the Outbreak of 1914 Sarajevo, Vienna, Berlin, St Petersburg, Belgrade 1947 The Partition of India Punjab, Bengal, Delhi, Lahore 1957 Ghana's Independence Accra, the Gold Coast 1989 The Fall of the Berlin Wall East Berlin, and the crossings at Bornholmer Strasse Enter by century 13th century 14th century 15th century 16th century 17th century 18th century 19th century 20th century Enter by region Europe From the fall of Constantinople to the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
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Asia Yamen, Sekigahara, the opium trade, the Meiji restoration and after.
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The Americas Landfall in 1492, the colonial order, and the republics that replaced it.
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Africa Partition, the one army that was not defeated, and the year of independence.
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Most recently published What this fold is Annals Fold is a reading room for turning points. Each entry gives the conditions, the chain and the consequence, and separates the short-run result from the long-run one, because they are frequently not the same thing. Each entry also carries a note on the misconception that most often attaches to it.
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