Annals Fold

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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.

14 of 34 entries are published. Entries that have not reached their publication date have no page yet.

Showing 14 of 14 published entries

1453The Fall of ConstantinopleConstantinople (Istanbul)1492Columbus Reaches the CaribbeanPalos, the Canaries, Guanahani (San Salvador), Hispaniola1648The Peace of WestphaliaMünster and Osnabrück, Westphalia1776The American Declaration of IndependencePhiladelphia, Boston, Yorktown1789The French Revolution BeginsVersailles and Paris1793Two Embassies, One Autumn: Macartney in Beijing and the First CoalitionFold · Jehol and Beijing; the Austrian Netherlands1839The First Opium WarCanton, the Pearl River, the Yangtze estuary1848The Revolutions of 1848Paris, Vienna, Berlin, Milan, Budapest, Bucharest1868The Meiji RestorationKyoto, Edo, Satsuma and Choshu domains18851885: The Berlin Conference and the Sino-French WarFold · Berlin; Tonkin and Taiwan1914The July Crisis and the Outbreak of 1914Sarajevo, Vienna, Berlin, St Petersburg, Belgrade1947The Partition of IndiaPunjab, Bengal, Delhi, Lahore1957Ghana's IndependenceAccra, the Gold Coast1989The Fall of the Berlin WallEast Berlin, and the crossings at Bornholmer Strasse

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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

1989The Fall of the Berlin Wall2026-09-181957Ghana's Independence2026-09-151947The Partition of India2026-09-121914The July Crisis and the Outbreak of 19142026-09-1018851885: The Berlin Conference and the Sino-French War2026-09-08

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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