Social / Political Timeline Outline

The Oldest-Known List of Titles and Occupations
(Circa 3,200 BCE)

The Wooden Panels of Hesy-Ra: Government Official, Physician, and Scribe
(Circa 2,600 BCE – 2,500 BCE)

The Foundation of Paris
(Circa 250 BCE)

Caesar's Gallic Wars
(58 BCE – 51 BCE)

Foundation of Lugdunum (Lyon)
(43 BCE)

The Persecution, Imprisonment and Torture of Origen
(249 CE – 251 CE)

Certificates of Conformation to Pagan Religious Practice
(249 CE – 251 CE)

Warrant for the Arrest of a Christian: One of the Earliest Surviving Recorded Uses of the Word Christian
(February 28, 256 CE)

The Emperor Constantine Converts to Christianity
(October 28, 312 CE – 315 CE)

Constantine Becomes Emperor of the Entire Roman Empire
(September 18, 324 CE)

De rebus bellicis, Including Images of War Machines
(Circa 337 CE – 378 CE)

The Edict of Thessalonica makes Nicene Christianity the Official State Religion of the Roman Empire
(February 27, 380 CE)

At the Beginning of the Dark Ages Production of New Manuscripts Essentially Ceased
(Circa 400 CE – 600)

One of the Few Surviving Sources for the Administrative Structure of the Late Roman Empire
(Circa 420 CE)

The Church Assumes Role of Educator and Civil Service for the Tribal Kingdoms
(Circa 450 CE – 650)

The Church Replaces the Roman State as the Source of Order and Stability
(Circa 450 CE – 650)

The Last Victory Achieved by the Western Roman Empire
(451 CE)

The Franks Convert to Christianity
(497 CE)

The Plague of Justinian
(541 – 542)

The Anglo-Saxons Conquer England
(Circa 550)

Muslims Occupy Jerusalem for 451 Years
(638 – 1099)

Arabs Begin their Invasion of North Africa
(670)

The Carolingian Revival
(779 – 814)

The Codex Spirensis, of which Only a Single Leaf of the Original Survives
(Circa 860 – 920)

More than One Million Charters Survive from the Period of Norman Rule in England
(1066 – 1307)

Norman Crusaders Take Manuscripts as Spoils of War
(1175)

Foundation of the Tresor des Chartes
(July 3, 1194)

Perhaps the Oldest State-Supported University
(June 5, 1224)

Louis IX Orders the Burning of 12,000 Manuscripts of the Talmud
(June 1242)

Early Origins of the Star Chamber
(1275)

Zilbaldone
(Circa 1350)

Published to Raise Money to Repel the Turks
(April 1471)

The Sultan Prohibits Turks from Printing
(1484)

"A Horse, A Horse, My Kingdom for a Horse."
(August 1485)

Handbook for Witch-Hunters and Inquisitors
(April 1487)

Restoring the Whole of Spain to Christian Rule
(January 30, 1492)

Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand Expell the Jews from Spain
(March 31, 1492)

Departure of Columbus for the New World & the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain
(July 30 – October 12, 1492)

Sultan Bayezid II Wellcomes Jewish Refugees from Spain
(August 1492)

The First Eyewitness Report to Become a Bestseller
(February 15, 1493)

The First Book Printed in the Ottoman Empire
(December 13, 1493)

The Sack of Rome Marks the End of the High Renaissance
(May 6, 1527 – February 1528)

In an Expose of the Witchcraft Delusion, One of the First Scientific Approaches to the Study of Mental Illness
(1563)

The First Extended Series of Prints Attempting to Depict Great Events of the Recent Past
(1569 – 1570)

Consolidating and Amplifying the Regulation of Printing in England
(June 23, 1586)

Foundation of the Accademia dei Lincei, the First Scientific Society
(August 17, 1603)

The First Prepaid Letter Sheets
(1608)

The Pilgrims Land at Plymouth in New England
(1620)

Maximilian Donates the Bibliotheca Palatina to the Vatican
(1622)

Precursor of the Royal Society
(August 23, 1633 – June 10, 1641)

Introduction of Book Burning by the Hangman
(1634)

Sixty Printed Books and Three Newsbooks Ordered to be Burned
(1640 – 1660)

Abolition of the Star Chamber Stimulates Publishing
(1641)

The First Doctoral Degree is Awarded to a Woman
(June 25, 1678)

The First General-Interest Periodical and the First to Use the Word "Magazine" to Indicate a Storehouse of Knowledge
(January 1731)

The Central Enterprise of the French Enlightenment
(1751 – 1780)

The First American Political Cartoon: "JOIN, or DIE."
(May 9, 1754)

Candide, ou l'Optimism
(1759)

Probably the Earlest Illustrated Medical Book Published in the American Colonies
(1766)

The American Revolutionary War Begins
(April 17, 1775)

The Declaration of Independence
(July 4 – August 2, 1776)

The Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union
(November 15, 1777 – March 1, 1781)

Technology Leading to Disruptive Economic and Social Change
(1779)

The Constitution of the United States
(September 17, 1787 – June 21, 1788)

Martyr to Chemistry
(1789)

Bastille Day
(July 14, 1789)

Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen
(August 26 – August 27, 1789)

The Bill of Rights
(September 25, 1789 – December 15, 1791)

The First U.S. Census
(August 2, 1790)

Jews Receive Full Citizenship in France
(September 27, 1791)

"The Magna Carta of Industrial America"
(December 5, 1791)

The First Free Public National Library
(1793)

Proposal for a National Bibliography of France
(1793 – 1794)

Printing Manual for the French Revolution
(1793)

The Metric System
(1793 – 1794)

Suppression of Printing in Russia
(1798)

Probably the First Printing Presses in Africa since 1519
(1798 – 1799)

The First Census of England, Scotland and Wales
(1801)

The Meter (Metre) is Calculated Scientifically
(1806 – 1821)

The Abolition of Slavery in the British Empire
(1807)

The Ludd Riots
(November 11, 1811 – January 12, 1813)

The Library of Congress is Destroyed During the War of 1812
(August 25, 1814)

The Star Spangled Banner
(September – November 1814)

Babbage Begins Construction of his Difference Engine
(1822)

Foundation of the Birth Control Movement
(1822)

The First Indigenous Arabic Press in Egypt
(December 1822)

The First Opinion Poll
(1824)

The Penny Post: Perhaps the Greatest Single Stimulus to Written Communication
(1837 – 1840)

Exposition of Bubbles
(1841)

Funding Cut Off for the Difference Engine No. 1
(1842)

The First Commercial Christmas Card
(May 1, 1843)

The Communist Manifesto
(February 21, 1848)

Origins of the Internal Revenue Service
(July 1, 1861 – 1862)

Foundation of the National Museum of Health and Medicine
(1862)

The Emancipation Proclamation
(January 1, 1863 – 1864)

The Role of Women as Typesetters in the French Printing Industry
(1865 – 1867)

The Library and Museum Moved to the Site of Lincoln's Assassination
(1867)

Das Kapital
(September 14, 1867)

British Telegraph is Nationalized
(1870)

Requring Universal Education of Children Between the Ages of 5 and 12 in England and Wales
(1870)

Formation of the National Audubon Society
(1886)

The Sierra Club
(May 28, 1892)

The Garden City Movement
(1898)

Destruction of the University Library at Leuven
(August 25, 1914)

The First National Opinion Poll?
(1916)

Napoleon's Penis, and Other Napoleon Memorabilia
(1916 – 1924)

The Proclamation of the Irish Republic
(April 23, 1916)

The Russian Revolution
(October 1917)

The End of World War I
(November 11, 1918)

Foundation of Public Relations
(1923)

Blue-Print for The Third Reich
(1925 – 1927)

Burning 100,000,000 Books and Killing 6,000,000 People
(1933 – 1945)

Hitler Seizes Power
(January 30, 1933)

Invention of the Sociogram: Some of the Earliest Graphic Depictions of Social Networks
(April 3, 1933 – 1934)

Purging Germany of Jewish Culture
(April 6 – April 8, 1933)

Burning 25,000 Volumes of "un-German" Books
(May 10, 1933)

The Social Security Program Creates a Giant Data-Processing Challenge
(1935 – 1936)

Foundation of The Wilderness Society
(January 21, 1935)

The First Automatic Sequence-Controlled Calculator
(September 1935)

An Experimental Electromechanical Cryptanalysis Machine Capable of Binary Multiplication
(1937)

Kristallnacht
(November 9, 1938)

Liste des schädlichen und unerwünschten Schrifttums
(December 31, 1938)

One of the First "Maps of Science"
(1939)

The Polish Cipher Bureau Reveals Enigma Decription Techniques to the French and British
(July 25, 1939)

The Full Extent of the Holocaust
(September 1939 – April 1945)

Britain and France Declare War on Germany
(September 3, 1939)

The Second Armistice at Compeigne forms the Vichy Government
(June 22, 1940)

The Nazis Destroy the National Library of Serbia
(April 6, 1941)

Japan Attacks Pearl Harbor; U.S. Declares War on Japan
(December 7, 1941)

Repeated Dispersal and Eventual Burning of the Greatest Library in Poland
(October 1944)

VE Day
(May 8, 1945)

World War II Ends
(September 2, 1945)

Predecessor of the ACM
(September 15, 1947)

Automated Detection and Interception System
(1949)

"Nineteen Eighty-Four"
(1949)

UNIVAC Predicts the Election of Dwight D. Eisenhower
(November 4, 1952)

Coining the Phrase "Social Network"
(1954)

One of the Earliest Surviving British Television Dramas
(December 12 – December 14, 1954)

Standing up to Censorship and McCarthyism
(1956)

"Nineteen Eighty-Four" Filmed
(1956)

Sputnik is Launched
(October 4, 1957)

ARPA is Founded
(February 7, 1958)

ARPA Increases Funding for Research on Computing
(1960)

The Gutenberg Galaxy
(1962)

The Largest Archive of Digital Social Science Data
(1962)

First of the "Ten Greatest Software Bugs of All Time"
(July 28, 1962)

Dylan's "The Times They Are A-Changin' "
(1963)

Social Security Numbers as Identifiers
(1964)

"Information Overload" Coined
(1964)

Smoking and Health
(January 11, 1964)

720 Million Copies Printed and Distributed in Under Four Years
(May 1964)

Invasion of Privacy by Computers
(1965)

First System for Interactive Display of Molecular Structures
(1966)

"Computational Analysis of Present-Day American English"
(1967)

Computer Privacy
(March 1967)

Problem with the Apollo 11 Guidance Computer Nearly Prevents the First Moon Walk
(July 21, 1969)

UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property 1970
(November 14, 1970)

The Politics of Nonviolent Action
(1973)

The Privacy Act of 1974
(May 1974)

The Declining Role of Print in Total Information Flow
(1983)

Match.com
(1994)

"Death by Government" Statistics 1900-1987
(1994)

Whitehouse.gov
(October 1994)

The National Digital Library Program is Announced
(October 13, 1994)

A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace
(1996)

The Internet is Entitled to the Full Protection Given to Printed Material
(June 26, 1997)

"Weapons of Financial Mass Destruction"?
(December 14 – December 21, 2000)

Regulations.gov is Launched
(January 2003)

AOL Buys The Huffington Post
(May 9, 2005 – February 7, 2011)

The First Intelligible Word from an Extinct South American Civilization?
(August 12, 2005)

The EPA Begins to Close its Scientific Libraries
(November 20, 2006)

"An Uncensorable System for Mass Document Leaking"
(December 2006)

Wikileaks Manifesto
(December 31, 2006)

More than 4.7 Billion Bibles Were Been Printed Between 1455 and 2007
(2007)

My.BarackObama.com
(February 11, 2007)

The First Embassy of a Real Country in a Virtual World
(May 30, 2007)

Statistical Analysis Correctly Forecasts the Election of Obama
(March 3, 2008)

The Obama-Biden Campaign Launches Facebook Connect Integration on My.BarackObama.com
(October 20, 2008)

An Election Reported Interactively in Real Time
(November 4, 2008)

Change.gov is Founded
(November 5, 2008)

Securing Cyberspace
(December 8, 2008)

Australia to Build National Fiber Optic 100 Megabit Network
(April 7, 2009)

"Green Dam Youth Escort"
(May 19, 2009)

"The Web Pries Lid off Iranian Censorship"
(June 23, 2009)

Displaying Crowdsourced Road Congestion Data on Google Maps
(August 25, 2009)

U.S. National Text Pager Intercepts from 9/11 Are Released
(November 26 – November 26, 2009)

After the Earthquake in Haiti, Donating by SMS Text
(January 13, 2010)

"Assessing the Future Landscape of Scholarly Communication. . . "
(February 2010)

Liberte ou la Mort: Haiti's Declaration of Independence Discovered
(February 2010)

Social Media Interviews the President
(February 1, 2010)

After Five Years, More Than Two Billion Views Per Day
(May 16, 2010)

Wikileaks Installs an "Insurance File"
(July 29, 2010)

The Wikileaks U. S. Diplomatic Cables Leak
(November 28 – December 8, 2010)

The Website of MasterCard is Hacked by Wikileaks Supporters
(December 8, 2010)

Culturomics Introduced by the Cultural Observatory
(December 16, 2010)

Facebook is the Most Searched for and Most Visited Website in America
(December 29, 2010)

Worldwide Technological Capacity to Store, Communicate, and Compute Information
(February 10, 2011)

Digital Democracy is Not So Democratic
(June 10, 2011)

Leading British Tabloid Closed Because of Cell Phone Hacking Scandal
(July 7 – July 17, 2011)

Burning of the Library of l'Institut de l'Egypte
(December 17, 2011)

Transforming Google into a Search Engine that Understands Not Only Content but People and Relationships
(January 10, 2012)

2.5 Quintillion Bytes of Data Each Day
(October 23, 2012)

Historicizing Big Data
(November 2012)

"Anonymous" Plans to Shut Down Syrian Government Websites in Response to Countrywide Internet Blackout
(November 29 – December 1, 2012)

U.S. Bill to Stengthen Privacy Protection for Emails
(November 29, 2012)

The Secret Race to Save Manuscripts in Timbuktu and Djenne
(December 27, 2012)

"Libraries Have Shifted from Warehouses of Books & Materials to Become Participatory Sites of Culture and Learning"
(December 28, 2012)

Online Reviews Used as Attack Weapons to Kill Sales of a Book
(January 20, 2013)

The Digital Public Library of America is Launched
(April 18, 2013)

How the "The Brazen Bibliophiles of Tumbuktu" Saved Manuscripts from Terrorists
(April 25, 2013)