1066
POL
Norman Conquest of England
1095
POL
First Crusade begins
1151
MUSIC
Hildegard of Bingen: Ordo Virtutum
1163
SCULP
Notre-Dame de Paris begun
1200
MUSIC
Pérotin: Viderunt omnes
1215
POL
Magna Carta sealed at Runnymede
1265
PHIL
Dante Alighieri born
1305
PAINT
Giotto: Arena Chapel frescoes completed
1321
PHIL
Dante completes the Divine Comedy
1347
POL
Black Death reaches Europe
1365
MUSIC
Machaut: Messe de Nostre Dame
1378
POL
The Great Schism divides the papacy
1387
PHIL
Chaucer begins the Canterbury Tales
1395
PAINT
Wilton Diptych
1440
POL
Gutenberg develops the printing press
1501
MUSIC
Petrucci prints Harmonice Musices Odhecaton A
1503
PAINT
Leonardo begins the Mona Lisa
1517
PHIL
Luther posts the Ninety-Five Theses
1543
PHIL
Copernicus publishes De revolutionibus
1564
SCULP
Michelangelo dies
1567
MUSIC
Palestrina: Missa Papae Marcelli
1600
PHIL
Giordano Bruno burned at the stake
1601
Hamlet
William Shakespeare
A prince paralyzed between medieval certainty and Renaissance doubt — the inwardness that defines the early-modern subject.
Read historical context · → 1603
POL
Death of Elizabeth I
1607
POL
Jamestown founded
1609
PHIL
Galileo turns the telescope skyward
1610
PAINT
Caravaggio dies
1618
POL
Thirty Years' War begins
1620
POL
Mayflower voyage
1623
PHIL
Shakespeare First Folio published
1624
SCULP
Bernini: David
1625
SCULP
Bernini: Apollo and Daphne
1633
PHIL
Galileo's trial before the Inquisition
1642
POL
English Civil War begins
1648
POL
Peace of Westphalia
1649
POL
Execution of Charles I
1651
PHIL
Hobbes publishes Leviathan
1652
SCULP
Bernini: Ecstasy of St. Teresa completed
1656
PAINT
Velázquez paints Las Meninas
1660
POL
Restoration of Charles II
1666
POL
Great Fire of London
1667
Paradise Lost
John Milton
A blind poet rewrites Genesis as Baroque epic — scale, light, and shadow weaponized to justify the ways of God to men.
Read historical context · → 1685
MUSIC
J. S. Bach born
1687
PHIL
Newton's Principia Mathematica
1688
POL
Glorious Revolution
1689
PHIL
Locke's Two Treatises of Government
1710
PHIL
Statute of Anne — first copyright law
1733
PAINT
Hogarth: A Rake's Progress
1741
MUSIC
Handel composes Messiah
1751
PHIL
Diderot's Encyclopédie begins publication
1755
POL
Lisbon earthquake
1762
PHIL
Rousseau's Social Contract
1776
POL
American Declaration of Independence
1781
PHIL
Kant's Critique of Pure Reason
1781
SCULP
Houdon: Voltaire Seated
1784
PAINT
David: Oath of the Horatii
1786
MUSIC
Mozart's Marriage of Figaro premieres
1789
POL
French Revolution begins
1793
SCULP
Canova: Psyche Revived by Cupid's Kiss
1798
PHIL
Lyrical Ballads published
1799
PAINT
Goya: Los Caprichos
1804
POL
Napoleon crowned Emperor
1805
POL
Battle of Trafalgar
1813
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Austen
A novel of manners that turns the Enlightenment social contract into living-room comedy — observing oneself observing others.
Read historical context · → 1815
POL
Battle of Waterloo
1818
PHIL
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
1824
MUSIC
Beethoven's Ninth Symphony premieres
1840
PAINT
Turner exhibits The Slave Ship
1842
POL
Chartist Movement peaks
1848
POL
European Revolutions
1848
PHIL
Marx & Engels: The Communist Manifesto
1851
SCULP
Great Exhibition opens in the Crystal Palace
1851
Moby-Dick
Herman Melville
A Romantic sublime turned outward across the Pacific — the white whale as the universe's unreadable face.
Read historical context · → 1857
PHIL
Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du mal
1859
PHIL
Darwin's On the Origin of Species
1861
POL
American Civil War begins
1869
POL
Suez Canal opens
1871
POL
German unification
1874
PAINT
First Impressionist Exhibition (Paris)
1884
POL
Berlin Conference partitions Africa
1899
PHIL
Freud's Interpretation of Dreams
1905
PHIL
Einstein's special relativity
1907
PAINT
Picasso paints Les Demoiselles d'Avignon
1913
MUSIC
Stravinsky's Rite of Spring premieres
1913
SCULP
Boccioni: Unique Forms of Continuity in Space
1914
POL
World War I begins
1917
POL
Russian Revolution
1918
POL
World War I ends
1922
PHIL
Joyce's Ulysses · Eliot's The Waste Land
1927
SCULP
Brancusi: Bird in Space
1929
POL
Stock-market crash
1931
SCULP
Calder invents the mobile
1933
POL
Hitler becomes Chancellor
1936
POL
Spanish Civil War begins
1939
POL
World War II begins
1941
PAINT
Jacob Lawrence: The Migration Series
1945
POL
Hiroshima · end of WWII
1947
POL
Indian independence & Partition
1948
PHIL
UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights
1949
PHIL
Beauvoir's The Second Sex
1952
Invisible Man
Ralph Ellison
A novel of fragmented identity in a country that refuses to see — Modernist form meeting the unfinished American question.
Read historical context · → 1954
POL
Brown v. Board of Education