My list of the 50 most important events (good or bad) in history (with the frank acknowledgment that I am a white, male, North American, Christian and that my background has a profound effect on how I see things).
1. The birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ (c. 4-37 AD)
2. The birth of the Church at Pentecost and conversion of Saul to Christianity (c. 37 AD)
3. The dawn of Greek Civilization (and ultimately Western culture) (c. 1600 BC)
4. Guttenberg’s invention of moveable type (1455 AD)
5. Martin Luther launches the Protestant Reformation (1517 AD)
6. Dawn of Egyptian culture (3414 BC)
7. Hammurabi’s Code is history’s first system of laws (c. 1760 BC)
8. The fall of Roman Empire (476 AD)
9. United States Declares Independence (1776 AD)
10.. Birth of Muhammad (c. 520 AD)
11. Constantine converts to Christianity (312 AD)
12. Birth of William Shakespeare (c. 1564)
13. Columbus sails west (1492 AD)
14. The Wright Brothers prove that human flight is possible (1903 AD)
15. Germany’s invasion of Poland and the beginning of WW2 (1939 AD)
16. The Holocaust (1939-45 AD)
17. The signing of the Magna Charta (1215 AD)
18. The French Revolution overthrows the French monarchy (1789 AD)
19. Assassination of John F. Kennedy (1963 AD)
20. Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. (1968 AD)
21. The Silicon chip is invented ushering in the modern computer age (1959 AD)
22. Aristotle writes Poetics, the first detailed account of drama (c. 335 BC)
23. Small pox vaccine developed (1700’s AD)
24. Jonas Salk develops a polio vaccine (1952 AD)
25. The US drops atomic bombs on Japan (1945 AD)
26. The Berlin Wall comes down ending the Cold War (1990 AD)
27. D-Day landings in France (1944 AD)
28. Washington and Rochambeau defeat Cornwallis at Yorktown (1781 AD)
29. First human to walk on the moon (1969 AD)
30. The Tale of Genji the world’s first novel, is written in Japan (c. 1021 AD)
31. Birth of Alexander the Great (356 BC)
32. Henry Ford perfects the assembly line (1913 AD)
33. The Russian Revolution overthrows the Tsar (1917 AD)
34. Jessie Owens wins gold at the Munich Olympics to Hitler’s embarrassment (1936 AD)
35. End of Apartheid in South Africa (1990-93 AD)
36. Development of the motion picture camera (c. 1880 AD)
37. Stalin becomes leader of the Soviet Union (1924 AD)
38. Civil Rights march at Selma, Alabama (1965 AD)
39. India gains independence from Britain (1947 AD)
40. Elizabeth I becomes Queen of England (1558 AD)
41. Elvis Presley records “That’s All Right” (1954 AD)
42. First TV broadcast takes place in London (1926 AD)
43. The Beatles appear on the Ed Sullivan Show (1964 AD)
44. Live Aid concerts for African famine relief organized by Boomtown Rats front man Bob Geldoff (1985 AD)
45. The attack on the World Trade Center in New York (2001 AD)
46. Great Chinese Famine kills anywhere from 15 to 40 million people (1958-62 AD)
47. United Nations founded (1945 AD)
48. Antonio Meucci invents the telephone (c. 1871 AD)
49. Native slavery abolished in Spanish American colonies (1542 AD)
50. Oil discovered in the Middle East (1908 AD)
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