Evolutionary, Prehistory and Early Human History Timeline

Evolutionary, Prehistory and Early Human History Timeline

4.6–4 billion years ago – the Hadean geologic eon

4.6 billion–541 million years ago – Precambrian or Pre-Cambrian (a supereon spanning several eons)

4.54 billion years ago – Earth formed over about 10–20 million years

4.31 billion years ago – Theia, a hypothetical planetary-sized object, collides with the Earth, ejecting materials into orbit, which form the Moon

4–2.5 billion years ago – Archean Eon

2.5 billion–542 million years ago – Proterozoic geological eon

2.4–2.3 billion years ago – Huronian “snowball Earth”

750 and 700 million years ago – Sturtian glaciation

660–635 million years ago – Varanger (or Marinoan) glaciation

c. 541 million years–present – Phanerozoic eon, the current geologic eon in the geologic time scale:

c. 541 million years–present – Phanerozoic eon
541–485.4 million years ago – Cambrian Period
485.4–443.8 million years ago – Ordovician Period
443.8–419.2 million years ago – Silurian Period
419.2–358.9 million years ago – Devonian Period
358.9–298.9 million years ago – Carboniferous Period
298.9–252.17 million years ago – Permian period
252.17–201.3 million years ago – Triassic period
201.3–145 million years ago – the Jurassic period
145–66 million years ago – the Cretaceous period
66–23.03 million years ago – Paleogene period
23.03–2.58 million years ago – Neogene period
2.58–0 million years ago – Quaternary period

542 million years ago – Cambrian period explosion lasting for about the next 20–25 million years

c. 541 million years–present – Phanerozoic eon, current geologic eon in the geologic time scale

541–252.17 million years ago – Paleozoic (or Palaeozoic) Era

541–485.4 million years ago – Cambrian Period
485.4–443.8 million years ago – Ordovician Period
443.8–419.2 million years ago – Silurian Period
419.2–358.9 million years ago – Devonian Period
358.9–298.9 million years ago – Carboniferous Period
298.9–252.17 million years ago – Permian period

252.17–66 million years ago – Mesozoic Era

252.17–201.3 million years ago – Triassic period
201.3–145 million years ago – the Jurassic period
145–66 million years ago – the Cretaceous period

66 million–present – Cenozoic Era

66–23.03 million years ago – Paleogene period
23.03–2.58 million years ago – Neogene period
2.58–0 million years ago – Quaternary period

450 million–420 million years ago – Andean-Saharan glaciation occurred during the Paleozoic

434 million years ago – the first primitive plants move onto land

360–260 million years ago – Karoo Ice Age, which perhaps came and went in regular cycles, and was driven by changes in Earth’s orbit

252 million years – Permian–Triassic extinction event (Great Dying, the End Permian or the Great Permian Extinction)

221–203 million years ago – time of the Postosuchus, an extinct genus of rauisuchid reptiles

220–216 million years ago – time of the Placerias, an extinct genus of dicynodonts

231.4 million years ago – dinosaurs first appeared during the Triassic period

201.3–145 million years ago – the Jurassic period:

298.9–252.17 million years ago – Permian period
252.17–201.3 million years ago – Triassic period
201.3–145 million years ago – the Jurassic period
145–66 million years ago – the Cretaceous period
66–23.03 million years ago – Paleogene period
23.03–2.58 million years ago – Neogene period
2.58 million years ago – the Quaternary glaciation (Pleistocene glaciation) started just a few million years ago and continues
2.58–0 million years ago – Quaternary period
2,500,000–c. 8,800 BC – Paleolithic period in Europe

c. 200 million–66 million years ago – dinosaurs dominant lifeform on earth for 135 million years, from the start of the Jurassic (about 200 million years ago) until the end of the Cretaceous (66 million years ago)

160–155 million years ago – time of Liopleurodon, a genus of large, carnivorous marine reptile of Pliosauroidea, a clade of short-necked plesiosaurs

92–66 million years ago – time of the Mosasaurs, an extinct group of large marine reptiles

66,043,000 years ago – Chicxulub asteroid impact

66–23.03 million years ago – Paleogene period:

66–56 million years ago – Paleocene epoch
56–33.9 million years ago – Eocene Epoch
33.9–23 million years ago – Oligocene epoch

56–33.9 million years ago – Eocene Epoch

40–34 million years ago – time of Basilosaurus, a genus of early whales that lived in the late Eocene

34.1–33.6 million years ago – abrupt cooling

33.9–23 million years ago – Oligocene epoch of the Paleogene Period

33.5 million years ago – Grande Coupure (“Great Break”) extinction event

23–2.6 million years ago – time of the Megalodon

4 million years ago – emergence of the Australopithecus genus in eastern Africa

2.8–1.5 million years ago – time of Homo habilis

2.6–1.7 million years ago – Oldowan culture, the earliest stone tool archaeological industry of prehistory, in Africa, South Asia, the Middle East and Europe

2.58–0 million years ago – Quaternary period:

2,588,000–9,700 BC – the Pleistocene epoch
9,700 BC–present – Holocene epoch

2,586,000–9,700 BC – the Pleistocene era (the Ice Age), the last glacial period

2.58–0 million years ago – Quaternary period:

2.58 million years ago – the Quaternary glaciation (Pleistocene glaciation) started just a few million years ago and continues
2.58–0 million years ago – Quaternary period

2.58 million years ago – the Quaternary glaciation (Pleistocene glaciation) started just a few million years ago and continues

2,500,000–c. 8,800 BC – Paleolithic period in Europe

1.9 million–70,000 years ago – time of Homo erectus

1.9 million years ago – Homo erectus migrated from out of Africa via the Levantine corridor and Horn of Africa to Eurasia during the Early Pleistocene

1.76 million—100,000 years ago – Acheulean culture, of stone tools in Africa, West Asia, South Asia, and Europe

1.66 million years ago – China was populated by Homo erectus

c. 700,000–200,000 years ago – Homo heidelbergensis inhabited Africa, Europe and western Asia

c. 600,000–370,000 years ago – time of the steppe mammoth, which populated northern Eurasia

c.400,000–8,000 BC – time of the Woolly mammoth

300,000 years ago – Denisovans may have split from Homo heidelbergensis. See the map here

300,000–250,000 – Homo heidelbergensis evolves into Neanderthals outside Africa

200,000 BC

200,000 years ago – Homo sapiens first appears in East Africa

130,000–114,000 years ago – the ice retreated during the Eemian interglacial

125,000 years ago – Homo sapiens reached the Near East, but evidence suggests they retreated back to Africa, as their settlements were replaced by Neanderthals

120,000–81,000 years ago – Skhul and Qafzeh in modern-day Israel contain evidence that Homo sapiens lived at those sites but then went back to Africa

c. 118,000–c. 88,000 BC – the time of the Abbassia Pluvial when North Africa had a wet and rainy climate, and North Africa had lush vegetation, lakes, swamps, and river systems

108,000–9,700 BC – last Ice Age

113,000–9,700 BC – the Würm glaciation, last glacial period of the Alpine region of Europe. See map here

100,000 BC

100,000–c. 50,000 years ago – dwarf Homo floresiensis (hobbits), which evolved from Homo erectus, lives on the island of Flores in Indonesia

c. 100,000 years ago – Gigantopithecus probably becomes extinct owing to the climate change in the Pleistocene era

c. 73,000 BC (± 900 years) – Lake Toba supervolcanic eruption (in Sumatra, Indonesia). This is the largest known explosive eruption on Earth in the last 25 million years. According to the Toba catastrophe theory, it had global consequences for human populations: it killed most humans living at that time and is believed to have created a population bottleneck in central east Africa and India, which affects the genetic make-up of the human world-wide population to the present

75,000 years ago – Homo sapiens left Africa again about across the Bab el Mandib, connecting Ethiopia and Yemen into Middle East

70,000 years ago – cold, dry low point; most of northern Europe and Canada were covered by thick ice sheets

60,000 years ago – humans settle New Guinea

60,000–50,000 BC – outside Africa, Homo sapiens lives in Near East, Greece, south Asia, New Guinea and Australia

c. 58,000 BC – most areas north of the tropics not inhabited by Homo sapiens because of the cold and difficulty of food supply

50,000 years ago – Homo sapiens in South Asia

c. 50,000–40,000 years ago – southeast Asians reach Australia; in Australia by 46,000 years ago at the latest

c. 48,000–28,000 BC – the time of the Mousterian Pluvial in North Africa, with a wet and rainy climate

c. 48,000 BC – the ancestor languages of the Dene Caucasian, Austric, Dravidian, Indo-Pacific, and Australian language families probably established in south Asia, Sunda, and Sahul (Australia-New Guinea continent)

c. 43,000–41,000 BC – Cro-Magnon Homo sapiens reached Europe from the Near East, eventually replacing the Neanderthal population by 40,000 years ago

c. 43,000–c. 38,000 BC – the Châtelperronian culture in central and south-western France and northern Spain

c. 41,000–c. 26,000 BC – the Aurignacian culture is found in Europe (probably associated with GoyetQ116 type people), the archaeological culture of the Upper Palaeolithic; this first appears in Eastern Europe around c. 41,000 BC, and spread into Western Europe c. 38,000 and 34,000 BC, but replaced by the Gravettian culture c. 26,000 to 24,000 BC

39,000–37,000 BC – Neanderthals die out in Europe

c. 38,000 BC – humans start to settle the northern Eurasian regions

c. 38,000 BC – time of the proposed proto-language that developed into the proto-Amerind and proto-Eurasiatic languages spoken around the northeast coast of Asia; the linguist Joseph Greenberg dates this to 13,000 to 9,000 BC; this proposed proto-language might have been descended from proto-Austric or proto-Sino-Tibetan

c. 38,000 BC – earliest proposed date for the beginning of human settlement of Alaska and north America via the Bering straits

c. 38,000 BC – Paleolithic hunter-gatherers live in Japan

35,000–12,000 BC – European hunter-gatherers descend from a single ancestral population with no significant genetic inflow from other regions

c. 33,000 BC – the Proto-World language?

c. 29,000–c. 22,000 BC – the Gravettian tool-making culture of the European Upper Paleolithic of Vestonice cluster type people; ice age glaciation seems to have wiped out Gravettian culture people c. 22,000 BC

28,000 BC – East Asia was reached by Homo sapiens

28,000–13,000 BC – last cool phase of the Ice age; humans withdraw from north Eurasia to more southerly areas

c. 27,000–18,000 BC – Last Glacial Maximum (when the ice sheets were at their greatest extension) c. 24,500 BC; deglaciation began in the Northern Hemisphere gradually from c. 18,000 to 17,000 BC

26,000 BC – last group of Neanderthals disappear from southern Spain

c. 22,000–13,000 BC – Mal’ta-Buret’ culture on the upper Angara River in the area west of Lake Baikal in the Irkutsk Oblast, Siberia. These people were important for the genetic ancestry of Siberians, Native Americans and Bronze Age Yamnaya people. The Ancient North Eurasian (ANE) population was either the people of the Mal’ta-Buret’ culture or a closely-related population

20,000 BC

c. 20,000–15,000 BC – Solutrean industry in France and southern Spain, a flint tool-making style of the Upper Palaeolithic in Europe. See the map here

c. 18,000–17,000 BC – deglaciation began in the Northern Hemisphere

c. 18,000–12,500 BC – Kebarian culture of the Levant; this was followed by the Natufian culture. Some think the Kebarian culture was associated with speakers of the Proto-Nostratic language

c. 17,000 BC – as the Ice Age ended in Europe, people (of the El Miron cluster type, with admixture of GoyetQ116 and the Villabruna branch) from the southwest and Spain re-migrated and expanded over Europe. These people are associated with the Magdalenian culture

c. 16,000–c. 10,000 BC – time of Proto-Afroasiatic, with its homeland in Levant, Red Sea/Horn of Africa, or North Africa

c. 15,000–10,000 BC – the Magdalenian culture, a culture of the Upper Paleolithic in western Europe

15,000–12,000 BC – possible date of the older, hypothetical Proto-Nostratic language, which gave rise to the proposed Nostratic macrofamily of languages, including

(1) Indo-European
(2) Uralic
(3) Altaic
(4) Kartvelian languages
(5) Afroasiatic languages
(6) Dravidian (or Elamo-Dravidian) language families.

The original homeland of Proto-Nostratic was possibly the Mesolithic Fertile Crescent, perhaps the (1) Kebarian culture (c. 18,000 to 12,500 BC) of the Levant or the (2) Zarzian culture (12,400–8,500 BC) of the Zagros mountains, which stretched northwards into Kohistan in the Caucasus and eastwards into Iran. The migrations of these people displaced the earlier Dené–Caucasian langauges (e.g., such as Hurrian and Hattic). Modern scholars reject the old Nostratic hypothesis, and favour the proposed Eurasiatic language family hypothesis

c. 14,300 BC – Homo sapiens reach North America? (c. 16,500–13,000 years ago)

c. 14,000–c. 13,000 BC – the Oldest Dryas, a cold period

before 13,000 BC – the possible date of the hypothetical Proto-Dené-Caucasian language, which gave rise to the Dené-Caucasian languages including

Western
Vasconic languages (Aquitanian, Iberian, Tartessian?, modern Basque)
Tyrsenian (disputed) (Etruscan, Raetic, Lemnian, Camunic?)
Paleo-Sardinian languages of the Balares and Iolaei
Sicanian language of Sicily
Hurro-Urartian (Hurrian, Urartian, Kassite?)
Hattic
North Caucasian languages
Sumerian (disputed)
Burushaski

Northern
Yeniseian
Na-Dené (in north America, including Athabaskan, Eyak, and Tlingit languages)

Eastern
Sino-Tibetan (Tibetan, Mandarin, Cantonese, Hakka, Wu, Burmese, Karen, Bodo)

This language family is probably older than the Eurasiatic family, and Dené-Caucasian spread in a first migration, and was later overrun by Eurasiatic. See the family tree here. A proposed homeland is the Sino-Tibetan homeland in south China c. 30,000 BC. Proto-Dené-Caucasian speakers might have migrated into the steppe, east and west, and to the west along the Silk Road into Central Asia, the Caucasus region, and Europe. Original connections between the East and West Dene-Caucasian groups are probably older than 10,000 years

c. 13,000 BC – spread of the proposed proto-Eurasiatic language (of Joseph Greenberg, Indo-European and its Closest Relatives: The Eurasiatic Language Family, Stanford, 2000) giving rise to the Eurasiatic language family, possibly from a refuge area in the Last Glacial Maximum, including

Indo-European
Uralic (or Uralic-Yukaghir)
Altaic (Mongolic, Tungusic and Turkic)
Korean-Japanese-Ainu
Gilyak
Chukchi-Kamchatkan
Eskimo-Aleut
Dravidian (now largely rejected or disputed)
Kartvelian (now largely rejected or disputed)

See here. Amerind is possibly a sister language group of the Eurasiatic languages, and some scholars date proto-Eurasiatic to c. 38,000 BC and place its homeland in the north Pacific coast of Asia, with proto-Amerind; proto-Amerind then spread into America and Eurasiatic langauges into central Asia through the steppe. Proto-Eurasiatic might have descended from proto-Nilo-Saharan, proto-Afroasiatic, proto-Dravidian, proto-Dene-Caucasian, or proto-Austric. Austric may be the parent language of proto-Eurasiatic, and migrations of Eurasiatic speakers displaced earlier Dené–Caucasian languages

c. 13,000 BC – proto-Na-Dene speaking people move into Alaska from Asia

12,800 BC – Amerindians reach Patagonia in southern Chile

12,700–10,700 BC – Bølling-Allerød interstadial, the first important warm and moist period at the end of the last glacial period; in certain regions, there was a cold period called the Older Dryas during the middle of the Bølling-Allerød interstadial

12,500–9,500 BC – the Natufian culture in the Levant; harvesting of wild plants allows more free time; Natufians may have spoken a proto-Afroasiatic language, but others disagree

c. 12,180–11,780 BC – possibly a great migration to Europe from the west via Italy?; Villabruna branch ancestry people spread out; during this time after the Ice Age, there was population movement into Europe from either the Near East or the Balkans of the Villabruna Cluster people, some of whom had a genetic affinity to east Asians (Fu, Posth et al. 2016)

c. 12,100–c. 11,700 – the Older Dryas, a cold period

12,000 BC

12,000 BC onwards – Europeans are Western hunter gatherers

c. 12,000 BC – beginning of possible migration from the Near East or the Balkans of the Villabruna Cluster people into Europe

after c. 12,000 BC – a subset of European hunter-gatherers of the Villabruna branch people have some East Asian-related DNA (possible migration of Dene Caucasian speakers into Europe and the Caucasus and Anatolia?)

12,000–8,000 BC – most mammoths die out; small population of 500–1000 woolly mammoths lived on Wrangel Island until 1,650 BC

c. 12,000 BC – dogs probably domesticated by the Natufians in the Near East

12,000–300 BC – the hunter-gatherer Jōmon culture in Japan; some estimates put it as early as 14,500 BC

c.11,200–10,000 BC – the prehistoric Paleo-Indian Clovis culture in North America; Clovis culture ended by the Younger Dryas (10,900–9,700 BC) and associated dust storms

11,000 BC

c. 11,000–8,000 BC – the Late Glacial or Tardiglacial, the beginning of the warm period when the Northern Hemisphere warmed substantially with significant accelerated deglaciation after the Last Glacial Maximum (c. 23,000–11,000 years ago). Human beings in refuge areas started to repopulate northern Europe and Eurasia. See the map here

c. 11,000 BC – the Grand Banks of Newfoundland (now underwater plateaus south-east of Newfoundland on the North American continental shelf) were glaciated during the last glacial maximum, but left exposed as the ice sheets melt

c. 11,000 BC – outflow of water from Lake Agassiz (which may have been the largest lake on Earth then) into the Arctic Ocean

11,000–9,000 BC – the Ahrensburg culture (Ahrensburgian culture), a late Upper Paleolithic nomadic hunter culture in north-central Europe during the Younger Dryas

c. 11,000–9,000 BC – Windermere interstadial in Britain, the warm phase at the end of the last glaciation preceding the Younger Dryas; perhaps it began 12,000 BC

10,900–9,700 BC – mini ice age called the Younger Dryas causes sharp decline in temperatures over much of the northern hemisphere. Younger Dryas was triggered by vast meltwater probably from Lake Agassiz flowing into the North Atlantic, which caused disruption to thermohaline circulation. This causes severe problems in Natufian culture from drought; Natufians abandoned settlements and became nomadic; on the shores of disappearing lake Galilee, Natufians began farming; others began herding

c. 10,700 BC – extinction of the North American megafauna, including giant sloths, American lion, giant tortoises, Smilodon, dire wolves, giant beaver, giant Columbian mammoth, woolly mammoth, mastodons, American cheetah, scimitar cats (Homotherium), American camels, and American horses

10,000 BC – possible human population at 4 million
c. 10,000 BC – Jericho is a settlement, and before that a camping ground for Natufian hunter-gatherer groups

c. 10,000 BC – the Komsa culture (Komsakulturen), a Mesolithic culture of hunter-gatherers in Northern Norway, in which the Komsa people settled the Norwegian coastline as glaciation receded at the end of the last ice age (11,000 and 8000 BC); the Komsa may be proto-Saami speakers

after 9,700 BC – after the end of Younger Dryas, climate in Near East perfect for farming, which then spreads with combination of farming and herding

c. 9,500 BC – first phase of construction of the temple complex at Göbekli Tepe

9,000 BC

c. 8,800 – 4,900 BC – Mesolithic period in Europe

c. 8,000 BC – end of the Quaternary extinction event of the megafauna, which was a long process from the mid-Pleistocene

c. 8,000 BC – wall of Jericho constructed; domestication of goats in the Near East; domestication of dogs from wolves in Asia

8,000 BC – world population is possibly around 5,000,000

c. 8,000–7,000 BC – the hypothetical Austric proto-langauge is spoken in the Burma-Yunnan frontier. The proposed Austric macrofamily has two subgroups:

(1) Hmong-Mien and

(2) a proto-langauge that gave rise to

(i) Austroasiatic and
(ii) Austro-Tai including Austronesian and Tai-Kadai (e.g., Thai and Lao; see map here).

See here.

c. 7,600–c. 6,000 BC – Pre-Pottery Neolithic B in the Near East; this was ended by Bond climatic event 5

c. 7,500 BC – Mesolithic hunter-gatherers reach Ireland

c. 7,500–3,500/3000 BC – Neolithic Subpluvial (Holocene Wet Phase), a period of wet and rainy conditions in the climatic history of northern Africa

c. 7,200 BC – Çayönü, a Neolithic settlement in southeastern Turkey, is the site where emmer wheat is first cultivated, and where the first domestic cattle and pigs are domesticated

7,000 BC
c. 7,000–2,000 BC – time of the Proto-Uralic language, ancestral to the Uralic language family; the Proto-Uralic homeland may have been around the Kama River, close to the Great Volga Bend and the Ural Mountains; Proto-Uralic language diverged into Proto-Samoyedic and Proto-Finno-Ugric:

(1) Finno-Ugric

(i) Finnic

Baltic Finnic
Estonian
Finnish
Karelian
Livonian
Ingrian
Sami (Lapp languages)
Permic

(ii) Ugric

Ob Ugric
Hungarian

(2) Samoyedic

Nenets
Enets
Selkup

c. 7,000 BC – farming spreads into Elam

7,000–3,000 / c. 1,700 BC – Neolithic Europe; 7,000–3,000 BC in southeast Europe; c. 4,500–1,700 BC in northwest Europe

c. 6,500 BC–4,000 BC – Neolithic Anatolian farmers from northern Greece and north-western Turkey started migrating into central Europe through the Balkan route and then by the Mediterranean route to the Iberian Peninsula (see here)

c. 6,500–3,800 BC – Ubaid period, a prehistoric period of Mesopotamia; in North Mesopotamia, from c. 5,300 and 4,300 BC

c. 6,500 BC – first known settlement in southern Mesopotamia established at Eridu by farmers with the Hadji Muhammed culture, which was derived from the Samarran culture of north MesopotamiaThe archaeological history of Sumer:

6,500–4,100 BC – Ubaid period (Neolithic to Chalcolithic pottery)
4,100–2,900 BC – Uruk period (Late Chalcolithic to Early Bronze Age I)
4,100–3,300 BC – Uruk XIV–V
3,300–3,100 BC – Uruk IV period
3,100–2,900 BC – Jemdet Nasr period (Uruk III)
2,900–2,800 BC – Early Dynastic I period
2,800–2,600 BC – Early Dynastic II period
2,600–2,500 BC – Early Dynastic IIIa period
c. 2,500–2,334 BC – Early Dynastic IIIb period
c. 2,334–2,218 BC – Akkadian Empire period
c. 2,218–2,047 BC – Gutian period
c. 2047–1940 BC – Ur III period

c. 6,400 BC – the Black Sea, until this time a fresh water lake, is connected to the Mediterranean Sea, perhaps in a flood

6,200 BC – Bond climatic event 5 ends Middle Eastern Neolithic B culture (see Bond event), a sudden cold period lasting 200 to 400 years causing problems to humans worldwide and migrations in search of food and water

c. 6,100 BC – the Storegga Slide

c. 6,100 BC – Britain gradually becomes an island after a tsunami from the underwater Storegga Slide and the later bursting of Lake Agassiz (which flooded the oceans and caused sea levels to rise in the space of two years) permanently floods Doggerland (Dogger Bank, an upland area of Doggerland, is believed to have remained as an island until at least 5000 BC)

6,000–5,000 BC – the time of the Proto-Altaic language with its homeland in Central Asian steppes. The Altaic languages:

Turkic
Mongolic
Tungusic

6,000 BC – the Copper Age begins in the Fertile Crescent; the Torres Strait (separating Australia from New Guinea) is formed as sea levels rise

c. 6,000 BC – the Grand Banks of Newfoundland (underwater plateaus south-east of Newfoundland on the North American continental shelf) are submerged by rising sea levels

6,000 BC

c. 6,000 BC – the ancestors of the Austronesians migrate from South China to Taiwan

5,700–4,500 BC – time of the Vinča culture (the Turdaș culture or Turdaș-Vinča culture), a Neolithic archaeological culture in Central Europe and Southeastern Europe, of Old Europe

c. 5,500–4,800 BC – Samarra culture in Mesopotamia

c. 5,500 BC – agriculture spreads throughout ancient Egypt

5,500 BC – copper technology (e.g., a copper axe) used in Serbia

5,000 BC

c. 5,000 BC – speakers of pre-proto-Indo-European migrate into the regions north of the Black Sea from central Asia

5,000–3,500 BC – Danube Valley civilization (or Vinča culture)

5,000–4,000 BC – the Sahara in its wet phase may have been home to the proto-Semitic speakers

4,300–3,300 BC – Chalcolithic age in the Near East

4,000 BC – possible human population at 7 million

c. 4,000–3,000 BC – beginning of migrations of the Austronesian-speaking people from Taiwan to the Philippines, Borneo, Indonesia and the Pacific islands (see map here).

c. 4,000 BC – the Proto-Sino-Tibetan language still undifferentiated; the Proto-Sino-Tibetan homeland was possibly around the sources of the Yellow, Yangtze, Mekong, Brahmaputra, Salween, and Irrawaddy rivers

4,000–3,000 BC – time of the Proto-Dravidian language in India; some scholars think that Dravidian and the ancient Elamite language form the Elamo-Dravidian language family

4,000–2,000 BC – possible date of the Proto-Kartvelian language, which was spoken in the western and central areas of the Lesser Caucasus

c. 4,000–3,100 BC – the Uruk period in Mesopotamia

c. 3,900 BC – 5.9 kiloyear event (Bond event 4), which intense aridification of various regions

c. 3,900 BC – the Sahara becomes a desert during Bond event 4 or the 5.9 kiloyear event. A severe drought occurs ending the Ubaid period and a migration of people from the Sahara in search of food and water to Egypt

c. 3,800–3,500 BC – emergence of Proto-Semitic?

c. 3,800–c. 3,350 BC – the Middle Chalcolithic Ghassulian culture in the Southern Levant

3,700–3,600 BC – Minoan culture emerges in Crete

3,500–1,700 BC – Chalcolithic Europe (Copper Age) period of prehistoric Europe

3,500–2,340 BC – cities develop in Sumeria

3,500–2,300 BC – Yamna (or Pit Grave Culture) culture of Indo-European-speakers in the Pontic-Caspian, a late Copper Age/early Bronze Age culture; followed by north: Corded Ware culture (c. 2,900–2,350 BC); west: Catacomb culture (c. 2800–2200 BC); east: Poltavka culture (2,700–2,100 BC), Srubna culture

c. 3,500 BC – the Sahara becomes a desert and Proto-Semites may have emigrated into the Nile Delta and Palestine; the collapse of the Ghassulian culture in Palestine c. 3,300 BC may have been caused by this migration

c. 3,400—c. 2,000 BC – the Kura–Araxes culture (or early trans-Caucasian culture) spread from the Ararat plain north into the Caucasus by 3,000 BC, and then south Caucasus, northwestern Iran, the northeastern Caucasus, eastern Turkey, and Syria; these people were ancestors of Hurrian, Urartian and Northeast Caucasian language speakers; (see map here); most probably home of proto-Hurro-Urartian, which developed into Hurrian, Urartian and possibly the Kassite language. See the map here. Also dated to 3,500 to 2,450 BC

c. 3,300–1,200 BC – Bronze Age in Near East

3,300–2,800 BC – Early Harappan Ravi Phase of the Indus Valley civilisation

c. 3,300 BC – Ötzi the Iceman dies (on border of modern Austria and Italy); his body discovered in 1991 in a glacier of the Ötztal Alps

3,300–2,500 BC – Afanasevo culture in the Minusinsk Basin and the Altai Mountains

c. 3,200–600 BC – Bronze Age in Europe

c. 3,200–c. 2,000 BC – Cycladic culture, an Early Bronze Age culture of the Cyclades in the Aegean Sea

c. 3,100–1,900 BC – Corded Ware culture in central and eastern Europe

c. 3,100 BC – Narmer Palette

c. 3,100 BC – earliest phase of Stonehenge

3,100–2,600 BC – time of the archaic Sumerian language

3,000–2,000 BC – Indo-European-speaking Yamnaya-culture people swept into Europe from the Russian steppe

c. 3,000 BC – Akkadians migrate into northern Babylonia?

3,000 BC – possible human population at 14 million

c. 3,000–1,000 BC – common Proto-Balto-Slavic language in eastern Poland, Russia and the Ukraine

2,900–2,350 BC – Early Dynastic period in Mesopotamia (Middle Chronology; 2800–2230 BC under Short Chronology)

c. 2,700—2,100 BC – the Poltavka culture, a middle Bronze Age culture of the middle Volga near Don-Volga canal into north of present Kazakhstan; Proto-Indo-Iranian speakers

c. 2,686–c. 2,181 BC – Old Kingdom of Egypt

c. 2,667–2,648 BC – step pyramid of Djoser

c.2,600 BC – large urban centres appear in the Indus Valley civilisation at Harappa, Ganeriwala, Mohenjo-Daro, Dholavira, Kalibangan, Rakhigarhi, Rupar, and Lothal; c. 1,052 cities and settlements develop

2,600–1,900 BC – height of the Indus Valley civilisation

2,400–2,000/1,700 BC – Indo-Europeans speakers arrive in Greece bringing with them the Proto-Greek language that would evolve into Mycenaean Greek and then the later Greek dialects of Classical Greece

2,340–2,316 BC – reign of Lugalzagesi (Lugalzaggesi; c. 2,294–2,270 BC under short chronology); the last Sumerian king who began his rule from Umma, and who conquered Sumer as king of the third dynasty of Uruk; he conquered Kish, Lagash, Ur, Nippur, Larsa, and Uruk. He made Uruk his new capital (see the map here)

c. 2,340–c. 2,284 BC – Sargon of Akkad, first ruler of the Akkadian empire

2,350–2,170 BC – Akkadian empire (Middle Chronology; 2230–2050 BC under Short Chronology)

c. 2,300 BC – the Hattians are attested in Anatolia in the Mesopotamian cuneiform tablets from the period of Sargon of Akkad; the Hattians may be descendants of Anatolian farmers

c. 2,266–c. 1,761 BC – Third Kingdom of Mari

2,200 BC – the Bond Event 3 (or 4.2 kiloyear event) causes the collapse of the Egyptian Old Kingdom and the Akkadian Empire

c. 2,181–c. 2,055 BC – First Intermediate Period of Egypt

c. 2,150 BC – invasion of Mesopotamia by the Guti?; defeat of Ur-Utu of Uruk

c. 2,115 BC – conquest of Akkad by the Guti?

c. 2,154 BC–c.2,112 BC – Gutian dynasty of Sumer (Middle Chronology)

2,112–2,004 BC – Third Dynasty of Ur (Middle Chronology; 2055–1940 BC under Short Chronology)

2,100–1,800 BC – the Sintashta culture of Indo-European proto-Indo-Iranian speakers, a Bronze Age archaeological culture of the north Eurasian steppe; the earliest known chariots found in Sintashta burials (see map here

2,100–1,800 BC – Amorite migration into Mesopotamia

c. 2,100–1,700 BC – time of the use of Cretan hieroglyphic on Crete

c. 2,055–c. 1,650 BC – Middle Kingdom of Egypt

2,025–1,378 BC – Old Assyrian Empire

before c. 2,000 BC – migration of Hittites into Anatolia, either from Balkans or the Caspian Sea, possibly from 3,000 to 2,000 BC. Some scholars put the arrival as early as c.4,000 BC. For Sturtevant’s Indo-Hittite hypothesis (1926) which places the split of Indo-Hittite from Pre-Proto-Indo-European language as early as 7,000 BC, see here. For another view, see here

2,000 BC – possible human population at 27 million

c. 2,000–900 BC – the Andronovo culture, a Bronze Age culture in western Siberia and the west Asiatic steppe; the culture of the Indo-Iranians; Andronovo culture gave rise to the Saka (Scythians), Sarmatians and Alans.

c. 2,000 BC – Stonehenge completed

c. 2,000–700 BC – Bronze Age in China

c. 2,000 BC – early Proto-German develops in northern Germany and in southern Scandinavia

c. 2,000 BC – last woolly mammoths go extinct on Wrangel island, an island in the Arctic Ocean

c. 1,900 BC – Minoan Old Palace (or Protopalatial) period begins in Crete

1,894–1,595 BC – the Amorite Dynasty of Babylon

c. 1,830 BC – Mari becomes the seat of the Amorite Lim dynasty under king Yaggid-Lim

c. 1,809–c. 1,776 BC – Shamshi-Adad I, an Amorite king of the Old Assyrian Empire, conquers a large area in north Mesopotamia

1,800–1,300 BC – Troy VI archaeological period

1,800–1,600 BC – the Indo-European speakers of India split off from Indo-Iranian language

c. 1,800–1,450 BC – period of use of Linear A script on Crete for the Minoan language, which was also used on the Aegean islands (Kea, Kythera, Melos, Thera) and Greek mainland (Laconia)

c. 1,795 BC – Shamshi-Adad I occupied Mari

c. 1,792–1,750 BC – rule of Hammurabi in Babylonia (middle chronology)

1,700–1,600 BC – height of the Minoan civilization

c. 1,732–1,460 BC – Sealand Dynasty in southern Mesopotamia

c. 1,650–1,550 BC – Second Intermediate Period of Egypt

c. 1,650 BC – Hyksos conquest of Memphis and the collapse of the 13th Dynasty of Egypt

c. 1,642–c. 1,540 BC – Minoan eruption of Thera (Santorini eruption)

c. 1,600–after c. 1,180 BC – Hittite empire

c. 1,600–1,100 BC – Mycenaean Greece

1,595 BC – Hittites sack Babylon and end Old Babylonian Kingdom

1,595–1,155 BC – Kassite Dynasty of Babylon

c. 1,550 BC – Ahmose I (ruled c. 1,539–1,514 BC) expelled the Hyksos and their last king Khamudi from Egypt

c. 1,550–c. 1,077 BC – New Kingdom of Egypt

c. 1,500 BC – migration of Indo-Iranians into Iran and northern Mesopotamia who become the elite of the Mitanni kingdom

c. 1,500 BC – migration of Indo-European speakers into northern India (Vedic people)

c. 1,500–1,300 BC – kingdom of the Mitanni, a Hurrian-speaking state in north Syria and southeast Anatolia, ruled by a Indo-Iranian elite (see map)

c. 1,490 BC – Mycenaean conquest of the Minoans

1,450 BC – the oldest Mycenaean writing, derived from the older Linear A, which remains the undeciphered earlier script of the Minoan language

c. 1,450–1,200 BC – period of the use of Linear B script for Mycenaean Greek, found in Crete (Knossos) and mainland Greece (Pylos, Mycenae, Thebes, Tiryns)

1,392–934 BC – Middle Assyrian Empire

c. 1,340–1,100 BC – Minoan Warm Period

c. 1,300–c. 750 BC – Urnfield culture, late Bronze Age culture of central Europe, within which was the Proto-Italo-Celtic homeland

1,279–1,213 BC – reign of Ramesses II

1,277 BC – an attack of the Sherden (or Shardana) on the Nile Delta repulsed and defeated by Ramesses II

c. 1,258 BC – the Treaty of Kadesh between the Hittite ruler Hattusili III and Rameses II

1,250 BC – Troy VI probably destroyed by an earthquake

c. 1,207–1,178 BC – the reign of Suppiluliuma II (the son of Tudhaliya IV), the last known king of the New Kingdom of the Hittite Empire (on short chronology)

1,200–c. 900 BC – the Proto-Villanovan culture in Italy (either early Etruscan or proto-Italic); possibly two waves of Tyrsenian-speakers came to Italy from north-west Anatolia c.1,100 BC and 900 BC; and c. 800 BC to Lemnos

c. 1,184 BC – Troy VIIa destroyed by war: there is evidence of fire and slaughter, which brought Troy VIIa to an end

c. 1,180 BC – the Hittite capital Hattusa burnt to the ground after invasions by the Kaskans, Phrygians and Bryges

c. 1,178 BC – invasion of Sea peoples during the battle of Djahy, between the forces of Ramesses III, fought in Djahy or modern day southern Lebanon

c. 1,155–1,025 BC – Dynasty IV of Babylon (from Isin)

c.1,150 – final destruction of citadel of Mycenae

c. 1,126–1,103 BC – reign of Nebuchadnezzar I

c. 1,100 BC – great Bronze Age civilizations collapse, probably by a severe drought; end of the Minoan Warm Period

c.1,100–1,000 – gradual invasion or migration of Dorians into mainland Greece (perhaps from c.1,000–900)

c. 1,069–c. 664 BC – Third Intermediate Period of Egypt

1069–945 BC – the 21th Dynasty of Egypt (ruled from Tanis)
945–720 BC – the 22nd Dynasty of Egypt (originally ruled from Bubastis), Meshwesh Libyans
837–728 BC – the 23rd Dynasty of Egypt, Meshwesh Libyan kings in Upper Egypt
732–720 BC – the 24th Dynasty of Egypt (ruled from Sais)
760–656 BC – the 25th Dynasty of Egypt (or the Nubian Dynasty or Kushite Empire)

c. 1,050–950 BC – migration of Ionians to the islands and west Anatolia

1,006–965 BC – traditional date of David, king of the ancient Israelites

1,000 BC

1,000–750 BC – the Dark Age in Greece

c. 1000 BC – proto-Thracians in the Balkans from which Dacians and Thracians develop

c. 950–900 BC – migration of Arameans and Suteans into Babylonia; in the late 10th or early 9th century BC the Chaldeans followed

965–925 BC – traditional date of Solomon, king of the ancient Israelites

945–720 BC – the 22nd Dynasty of Egypt (the Bubastite Dynasty), which originally ruled from the city of Bubastis

911–612 BC – the Neo-Assyrian Empire:

Kings of Assyria
911–891 BC – Adad-nirari II
891–884 BC – Tukulti-Ninurta II
883–859 BC – Ashurnasirpal II
859–824 BC – Shalmaneser III
824–811 BC – Shamshi-Adad V
811– 808 BC – Shammurāmat (or Sammuramat), regent
811–783 BC – Adad-nirari III
783–773 BC – Shalmaneser IV
772–755 BC – Ashur-dan III
755–745 BC – Ashur-nirari V
745–727 BC – Tiglath-Pileser III
727–722 BC – Shalmaneser V
722–705 BC – Sargon II
705–681 BC – Sennacherib
681–669 BC – Esarhaddon
668–c. 627 BC – Ashurbanipal
c. 631–c. 627 BC – Ashur-etil-ilani
626 BC – Sin-shumu-lishir
c. 627 – 612 BC – Sinsharishkun
612–c. 609 BC – Ashur-uballit II (ruled from the city of Harran)

900 BC

c. 900–700 BC – time of the Villanovan culture proper (Villanovan II), which developed to Etruscan culture

c. 900–800 BC – Scythians (Eastern Iranian speakers) migrate into southern Russia

860–590 BC – the era of the kingdom of Urartu (or Kingdom of Ararat or Van), an Iron Age kingdom situated on Lake Van in the Armenian Highlands. See map

859–824 BC – reign of Shalmaneser III

850 BC – the Assyrian king Shalmaneser III conquers Babylon and makes it king subject to Assyria

837–728 BC – the 23rd Dynasty of Egypt, of Meshwesh Libyan kings, who ruled Upper Egypt at the same time as the 22nd Dynasty

811–808 BC – Shammurāmat (or Sammuramat) is regent of Assyria for her son Adad-nirari III; she becomes the legendary queen Semiramis in Greek myth

800 BC
c. 800 BC – possible migration of Tyrsenian-speakers from north-west Anatolia to Lemnos (with the Lemnian language)

800–500 BC – Tyrsenian culture on Lemnos

c. 800–c. 500 BC – Hallstatt culture in Western and Central Europe, within which was the Proto-Celtic homeland

c. 800 BC – Iranian speakers who became the Medes and Persians migrate into Iran?

776 BC – traditional date of the first Olympic Games

760–656 BC – the Twenty-Fifth Dynasty of Egypt (or the Nubian Dynasty or the Kushite Empire), the last dynasty of the Third Intermediate Period of Ancient Egypt

760–740 BC – time of Eumelus of Corinth, a semi-legendary early Greek poet, who supposedly wrote the Titanomachy, Corinthiaca, Europia (Bougonia), and Return from Troy

750–650 BC – time of Hesiod, author of Works and Days, Theogony, and Shield of Heracles

750–480 BC – the Archaic Period in Greece

750–700 BC – Homeric poems the Iliad and Odyssey written down

747–721 BC – rule of Piye, the Kushite king and founder of the Twenty-Fifth Dynasty of Egypt who ruled from Napata in Nubia

743–724 BC – the First Messenian War between Messenia and Sparta

738 BC – Tiglath-Pileser III occupies Philistia and invaded Israel

732 BC – Assyria takes the Aramean state of Damascus, deporting many of its inhabitants

c. 728 – the Kushite Nubian ruler Piye invades Upper and Lower Egypt

727 BC – Babylonia becomes independent of Assyria

722 BC – Shalmaneser V dies during the siege of Samaria; Sargon II takes Samaria, ending the northern Kingdom of Israel and deporting 27,000 people into captivity

716–678 BC – rule of Gyges, founder of the Mermnad dynasty of Lydian kings

c. 714 BC – the Cimmerians (from the Pontic steppe) attacked Urartu

c. 710–650 BC – the Lelantine War, the war between Chalcis and Eretria in Euboea over the control of the fertile Lelantine Plain on the island of Euboea; many other city states join in

705 BC – the Cimmerians defeated by Assyrian forces under Sargon II; the Cimmerians conquered Phrygia in 696/5

700 BC

c. 700 BC – dating of Hesiod’s Works and Days and Theogony

687 BC – office of archon is established in Athens

685–668 BC – the Second Messenian War between Messenia and Sparta, after a helot slave rebellion

679 BC – Cimmerians and Scythians cross the Taurus Mountains and attack Assyrian colonies in Cilicia

677 BC – Esarhaddon sacks Sidon

673 BC – Esarhaddon raids Egypt

671 BC – Assyrian invasion of Egypt by Esarhaddon; Esarhaddon drives Pharaoh Taharqa back to Nubia

664–610 BC – rule of Psamtik I (Psammeticus), the first of Saite or Twenty-Sixth Dynasty of Egypt

663 BC – Assyrian invasion of Egypt; sack of Thebes

654 or 652 – Gyges of Lydia dies in battle against the Cimmerians; the Cimmerians sack Sardis, and plunder Ionian colonies

645–560 BC – Sparta fights wars with Tegea

644 – the Cimmerians occupy Sardis

632 BC – the Athenian aristocrat Cylon invades Attica from Megara

626–539 BC – Neo-Babylonian empire

626 – accession of Nabopolassar

626–605 – Nabopolassar
605–562 – Nebuchadnezzar II
562–560 – Amel-Marduk
560–556 – Nergal-shar-usur
556 – Labashi-Marduk
556–539 – Nabonidus

c. 619 BC – the Cimmerians are defeated by Alyattes of Lydia

612 BC – alliance of Medes, Babylonians and Susianians conquer the Assyrian capital Nineveh

610–595 BC – the reign of Necho II, a Pharaoh of the 26th Dynasty

609 BC – battle of Carchemish

c. 609 BC – Necho II (610–595) constructs a canal from the Nile to the Red Sea; he also founds Tell el-Maskhuta

c. 605–c. 562 BC – reign of Nebuchadnezzar II, king of the Neo-Babylonian Empire

600 BC

590–580 BC – the reforms of Solon (c. 638–c.558 BC) in ancient Athens

559–530 BC – reign of Cyrus the Great:

559–530 – Cyrus the Great
530–522 – Cambyses
522 – Bardiya (Gaumata)
522–486 – Darius I
485–465 – Xerxes I
465–424 – Artaxerxes I
424 – Xerxes II
424–423 – Sogdianus
424–404 – Darius II
404–358 – Artaxerxes II
358–338 – Artaxerxes III
338–336 – Artaxerxes IV
336–330 – Darius III

546–528/27 BC – the tyrant Peisistratos controlled Athens

539 BC – Babylon conquered by Cyrus the Great

528/27 BC–514 BC – rule of the tyrant Hipparchus (528/27 BC–514 BC) and Hippias (528/27 BC–511/10 BC) in Athens

September 522–October 486 – reign of Darius I

514 BC – assassination of the Athenain tyrant Hipparchus

511/10 BC – the tyrant Hippias from Athens expelled by the Spartans

507–501 BC – Cleisthenes takes power and reforms Athenian democracy

500 BC
October 486–August 465 – reign of Xerxes I

480–322 BC – the Greek Classical Period

480–479 BC – the Persian invasion of Greece

480 BC – lions (the Panthera leo europaea) common in Greece; by 300 BC they were dying out and were extinct by c. 100 BC

478 BC – the Delian League founded as an alliance of Greek states

460–445 – First Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta:

460 BC – the battle of Oenoe

457 BC – Athenians defeated at Tanagra

457 BC – the battle of Oenophyta and defeat of Aegina

c. 451 – five year truce

449–448 BC – Second Sacred War

447 BC – the revolt of Boeotia from Athens and Athenian defeat at Coronea

446–445 BC – conflict ends with the Thirty Years’ Peace

431–404 BC – the Peloponnesian War in Greece

431–404 BC – the Peloponnesian War in ancient Greece:

431–421 BC – the Archidamian war; Sparta invaded Attica and Athens uses naval power to attack Sparta; ended with the Peace of Nicias (421 BC)

421 BC – Peace of Nicias

421–413 – the middle phase of the Peloponnesian War

415–413 BC – the Sicilian Expedition by Athens to Sicily

413–404 – the Decelean War (or Ionian War); Sparta incites revolts within Athens’ empire

405 BC – the Athenian fleet defeated at battle of Aegospotami

404 BC – the Thirty Tyrants in Athens

404–371 BC – the Spartan hegemony in Greece; ended by the Battle of Leuctra (371 BC)

400 BC

396–395 BC – the king of Sparta Agesilaus II invades Asia Minor

395–387 BC – the Corinthian War; the city states of Argos, Thebes, Corinth and Athens fight Sparta

387/386 – King’s Peace, peace settlement in Greece

379/378 – expulsion of the Spartan garrison from Thebes

378–355 BC – the Second Athenian League in Greece

371 BC – the Greek city state Thebes defeats Sparta at the battle of Leuctra

371–362 BC – the Theban hegemony in Greece; ended by the Battle of Mantinea (362 BC)

370–369 BC – Thebes liberates Messenia

362 BC – Athens and other Greek cities defeat Thebes in the battle of Mantinea

357–355 BC – the Social War in Greece, a rebellion against Athens by its allies in the Second Athenian League

359–336 BC – reign of Philip II of Macedon

356–346 BC – Third Sacred War; the city of Delphi seized by the Phocians

348 BC – Philip II captures Olynthos

346 BC – the Peace of Philocrates ends the Sacred war and conflict between Athens and Macedonia

338 BC – the Macedonian king Philip II defeats the Greeks at the Battle of Chaeronea

336 BC – the assassination of Philip II

336–323 BC – the reign of Alexander the Great

323–322 BC – the Lamian War

322/1 BC – democracy overthrown at Athens by Antipater

spring 318 BC – democratic revolution at Athens and the overthrow of Phocion

317 – Cassander (the king of Macedonia 305–297 BC) appoints Demetrius of Phalerum as ruler of Athens

317–307 BC – rule of the tyrant Demetrius of Phalerum at Athens

307–300 – restored democracy at Athens

c. 300–295 – rule of the tyrant Lachares in Athens

300 BC

295–287 – rule of Demetrius the Besieger (king of Macedon 294–288 BC)

287–260 – Athenian democracy restored

260 – Antigonus Gonatas captures Athens and abolished democracy

300 BC–AD 300 – the Iron Age Yayoi period in Japan

250 BC–400 AD – Roman Warm Period or the Roman climatic optimum

1 AD

500 AD – Slavic-speaking people rapidly expand from a homeland in eastern Poland and western Ukraine

950–1250 AD – Medieval Warm Period.

Geologic Eons
4.6–4 billion years ago – the Hadean geologic eon
4.6 billion–541 million years ago – Precambrian or Pre-Cambrian (a supereon spanning several eons)
4–2.5 billion years ago – Archean Eon
2.5 billion–542 million years ago – Proterozoic geological eon
c. 541 million years–present – Phanerozoic eon, current geologic eon in the geologic time scale

Copper Age
c. 3,500–1,700 BC – Chalcolithic Europe (Copper Age)
4,300–3,300 BC – Chalcolithic age in the Near East

Bronze Age
c. 3,300–1,200 BC – Bronze Age in Near East
c. 3,200–600 BC – Bronze Age in Europe
c. 3000–1200 BC – Bronze Age in South Asia

Iron Age
1,200 BC–500 BC – Iron Age in Ancient Near East
1,200 BC–1 BC – Iron Age in Europe
1,200 BC–200 BC – Iron Age in India
600 BC–200 BC – Iron Age in China

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Fu, Qiaomei, Posth, Cosimo et al. 2016. “The Genetic History of Ice Age Europe,” Nature 534: 200–205.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v534/n7606/full/nature17993.html

Chronology of the 19th Century

Below is a chronology of the 19th century with major military, political, social and cultural events of the time and biographical details of many historically important individuals:

1810s5 February 1811 – the Prince of Wales George becomes the Prince Regent

25 October 1760–29 January 1820 – reign of George III

18 June 1815 – Battle of Waterloo

summer of 1816 – famous summer at the Villa Diodati by Lake Geneva, Switzerland, where Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Shelley and Lord Byron meet

5 May 1818 – Karl Marx born to Heinrich Marx (a middle class lawyer) and Henrietta Pressburg in Trier

1820s29 January 1820–26 June 1830 – reign of George IV

8 July 1822 – Percy Bysshe Shelley drowned in the Gulf of Spezia while returning from Leghorn (Livorno)

1824 – Marx was baptised as a Christian

19 April 1824 – death of Lord Byron

1830s1830–1835 – Marx attended Trier High School

26 June 1830–20 June 1837 – reign of William IV (son of George III)

27 December 1831–2 October 1836 – the famous voyage of the Beagle of Charles Darwin

1835–1836 – Marx attended the University of Bonn to study law

1836 – before leaving for Berlin Marx became engaged to Jenny von Westphalen

1836–1840 – Marx attended the University of Berlin and joined the Young Hegelians

1837 – Marx was a follower of Hegel and neglected his studies, all to his father’s intense disapproval

20 June 1837 – accession of Queen Victoria (reigned from 1837–1901)

1838 – Marx visited his family in Trier to find his father on his death bed

late 1839 – Marx embarked on his Doctoral dissertation called The Difference between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature

1840s10 February 1840 – marriage of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha

April 1841 – Marx was awarded his PhD from the University of Jena called The Difference between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature

June 1841 – Marx returned to Trier, and had firm plans to be an academic, but the Prussian state had entered a period of pronounced hostility to the Young Hegelians

1842 – Marx moved to Cologne in 1842, and became a journalist, often writing for Rheinische Zeitung

October 1842–February 1843 – Marx is the informal editor of the Rheinische Zeitung

2 January 1843 – premiere of Richard Wagner’s opera The Flying Dutchman at the Semper Oper in Dresden

April 1843 – the Rheinische Zeitung was banned by the government and ceased publication

19 June 1843 – Marx marries Jenny von Westphalen

October 1843–1845 – Marx moves to Paris and writes for the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher (German-French Annals) and then Vorwärts! (Forward!).

February 1844 – the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher publishes Marx’s “A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right,” and “On the Jewish Question.”

28 August 1844 – Marx meets Friedrich Engels in Paris

1844 – Marx wrote extended papers running to about 50,000 words called the “Paris Manuscripts” or “Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844,” which were only published well after his death in 1927.

1843–1845 – Marx embarks on a reading of political economy, and in particular the works of Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and James Mill in French translation, Jean-Baptiste Say and Wilhelm Schulz

January 1845 – the Prussian government demanded Marx’s expulsion and the French government agreed to this

April 1845 – Marx moves from Paris to Brussels

April 1845 – Helene “Lenchen” Demuth (1820–1890), a von Westphalen family servant, joined Marx’s household as a housekeeper and maid

1845–1847 – Marx lives in Brussels in Belgium

July 1845 – Marx and Engels visit Britain

1845 – Marx and Engels publish The Holy Family

1845–1847 – Marx and Engels wrote The German Ideology, but this was never published in Marx’s lifetime

1846 – Marx and Engels formed the Communist Correspondence Committee of Brussels

1847 – Marx publishes The Poverty of Philosophy, an attack on Pierre-Joseph Proudhon’s The System of Economic Contradictions, or The Philosophy of Poverty. Marx also set out his materialist view of history in this work, in which he had moved on from both Hegel and Ludwig von Feuerbach.

June 1847 – the London-based “League of the Just” held a meeting in London in which it decided to merge with Marx and Engels’ Communist Corresponding Committee. The new organisation was called the “Communist League” (1847–1852).

December 1847 to January 1848 – Marx and Engels write The Communist Manifesto

21 February 1848 – The Communist Manifesto first published

March 1848 – Belgium expels Marx after putting him in jail for a night

23 March 1848–24 March 1849 - First Italian War of Independence fought between the Kingdom of Sardinia and the Austrian Empire

1848 – Marx in France

15 March 1848–4 October 1849 – Hungarian Revolution of 1848

April 1848 – Marx moved to Cologne

1848–1849 – Marx in Cologne

September 1848 – there was an insurrection in Cologne but this was suppressed by the Prussians and the Neue Rheinische Zeitung was shut down in October

September 1848 – Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood founded at the home of John Millais’s parents on Gower Street, London by John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and William Holman Hunt

February 1849 – Marx was indicted for incitement to rebellion in Cologne, but in a trial was acquitted

19 May 1849 – Marx left Cologne

27 or 28 August 1849 – Marx arrived in London

12 November 1849 – Engels arrived in London

1849–1883 – Marx lives in London

1850 – Marx had an affair with Helene “Lenchen” Demuth (1820–1890) and an illegitimate son Frederick Demuth was born in 1851.

8 May–2 December 1850 – Marx lived at 64 Dean Street, Soho

June 1850 – Marx acquired an admission card to the library of the British Museum

1850–1856 – Marx lived at 28 Dean Street, Soho

c. November 1850 – Engels moves to Manchester to serve as a clerk in his father’s business Ermen and Engels

1850sApril 1851 – Marx visits Engels in Manchester

1 May–11 October 1851 – Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nations or The Great Exhibition, in the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park, London

23 June 1851 – Marx’s illegitimate child Henry Frederick was born

November 1851 – Marx visits Engels in Manchester

26 May–26 June 1852 – Marx visits Engels in Manchester

1852 – Marx published The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon, an analysis of the French revolution of 1848 and the rise of the emperor Louis Napoleon III

October–November 1852 – the Cologne communist trial saw a number of the members of the Communist league connected with Marx and Willich jailed as seditious revolutionaries, and Marx agreed to the dissolution of the league

20 December 1852 – Lower Burma was formally annexed by the British empire

October 1853–30 March 1856 – Crimean war

1853–1862 – Marx turned to journalism in papers in England, the US, Prussia, Austria and South Africa, but mostly in the New York Tribune

30 April–May 1853 – Marx visits Engels in Manchester

1854 – Marx befriended by David Urquhart (1805–1877)

2 March 1855–13 March 1881 – reign of Alexander II of Russia

April 1855 – Marx’s son Edgar died

16 April–May 1855 – Marx and his wife visit Engels in Manchester

September–c.November 1855 – Marx and his wife visit Engels in Manchester

1856 – Marx moved out of Soho to 9 Grafton Terrace in Kentish town

6 May 1856 – birth of Sigmund Freud

c. July 1856 – Marx visits Engels in Manchester

1857–1858 – John Hanning Speke and Richard Francis Burton discover Lake Tanganyika and Lake Victoria, the source of the Nile

May 1857–June 1858 – Indian mutiny

2 May 1857 – the Reading Room of the British Library officially opened

2 August 1858 – Government of India Act 1858, the company was formally dissolved and its ruling powers over India were transferred to the British Crown

1856–1859 – the Second Opium War

1857 – UK recession

1857–1858 – Marx writes Grundrisse der Kritik der Politischen Ökonomie (Outlines of the Critique of Political Economy), which were not even published until 1939

1 May–c. late May 1858 – Marx visits Engels in Manchester

June 1859 – Marx published A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy

c.June–July 1859 – Marx visits Manchester to see Engels and Dundee to see Peter Imandt and Heise

24 November 1859 – Origin of Species published

1859–1864 – the novelist Samuel Butler in New Zealand

1860 – Marx published Karl Vogt

1860 – Marx became anathema to the German émigré community in London when Karl Vogt accused Marx of being a police informer and having sold out his political allies

16 February–23 March 1860 – Marx visits Manchester to see Engels

11 May–30 September 1860 – Garibaldi’s Redshirts invade Sicily and Naples

November 1860 – Marx’s wife Jenny fell seriously ill with smallpox; Marx read Darwin’s revolutionary book On the Origin of Species

1860s1861
February–May 1861 – Marx travels to Germany, and arrived in Berlin on 18 March, in order to attempt to organise with Lassalle a new radical newspaper in Germany that he could edit. He visited Trier at this time and saw his mother, but the visit did not go well and she broke off contact. Marx visits Holland. Marx arrived back in England in May 1861

17 March 1861 – Victor Emmanuel II was proclaimed King of Italy

12 April 1861–May 9 1865 – American Civil War

August–September 1861 – Marx visits Manchester to see Engels

14 December 1861 – death of Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha

1862
11 February 1862 – death of Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal, wife of Dante Gabriel Rossetti

April 1862 – Marx visits Manchester to see Engels

July 1862 – the German radical Ferdinand Lassalle (1825–1864) visited Marx in London

c. September 1862 – Marx sought a job in a railway company but was turned down for bad handwriting

December 1862 – Jenny Marx travels to Paris to try and obtain a loan from an old friend, but fails

1863 – Marx starts to have severe health problems involving carbuncles, which may have been caused by an autoimmune disease

7 January 1863 – Mary Burns (1823–1863), partner of Friedrich Engels, dies

8 January 1863 – Marx writes a money-grubbing letter to Engels, which outrages Engels; however, Engels later sends £100 to Marx

30 November 1863 – Marx’s mother dies, and Marx journeys to Trier to claim an inheritance of £580

1864–December 1865 – King Ludwig II has Richard Wagner brought to Munich and Wagner’s time in Munich

1864
8 January 1864 – birth of Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence and Avondale

1 February–30 October 1864 – Second Schleswig War

March 1864 – Marx moved to 1 Modena Villas (now 1 Maitland Park) in North London

12 March–25 March 1864 – Marx visits Manchester to see Engels

3 May–19 May 1864 – Marx visits Manchester to see Wilhelm Wolff with Engels

after 9 May 1864 – Marx receives an inheritance of £700 from his friend Wilhelm Wolff

31 August 1864 – death of Ferdinand Lassalle in a duel

28 September 1864 – Marx was involved with the International Workingmen’s Association or the First International (1864–1876), which was founded in a workmen’s meeting held in Saint Martin’s Hall, London

1865
1865–1869 – Richard Burton in Brazil

January 1865 – Marx visits Manchester to see Engels

19 March–April 8 1865 – Marx visits Dutch relatives in Zalt-Bommel

20 and 27 June 1865 – Marx’s delivers a series of lectures later published as Value, Price and Profit (in 1898)

20 October–November 1865 – Marx visits Manchester to see Engels

November 1865 – Alfred Marshall elected to a fellowship at St John’s College at Cambridge

1866
1866–1871 – David Livingstone’s famous trip to find the source of the Nile

March 1866 – Marx spends four weeks convalescing in Margate

14 June–23 August 1866 – Austro-Prussian War or Seven Weeks’ War

20 June–12 August 1866 – Third Italian War of Independence fought between the Kingdom of Italy and the Austrian Empire

3–8 September 1866 – 1st General Congress of the International Workingmen's Association, held in Geneva, Switzerland

1867
9 April 1867 – Marx took the manuscript of volume 1 of Capital to his in Hamburg.

22 May–2 June 1867 – Marx visits Manchester with Hermann Meyer to see Engels

2–8 September 1867 – 2nd General Congress of the International Workingmen's Association (IWA), held in the city of Lausanne, Switzerland

14 September 1867 – the first volume of Das Kapital published in German

13–23 September 1867 – Marx visits Engels in Manchester

14 November 1867 – Henrik Ibsen’s play Peer Gynt published in Copenhagen

1868
2 April 1868 – Marx’s daughter Laura Marx marries Paul Lafargue

30 May–20 June 1868 – Marx visits Engels in Manchester

6-13 September 1868 – the Brussels Congress of the First International

1869
1869–1871 – Richard Francis Burton in Damascus

May–14 June 1869 – Marx visits Engels in Manchester with his daughter Eleanor

30 June 1869 – Engels retires from Ermen and Engels

August 1869 – John Ruskin appointed as the first Slade Professor of Fine Art at Oxford University

6–12 September 1869 – Basle Congress of the International Workingmen's Association

September 1869 – Engels and Lizzie Burns visit Dublin, Killarney and Cork

10 September-11 October 1869 – Marx and his daughter Jenny Marx visit Hanover

November 17 1869 – Suez Canal officially opened

1870
25 August 1870 – Richard Wagner’s marriage to Cosima Liszt (the daughter of the Hungarian composer Franz Liszt)

summer 1870 – Marx visits Engels in Manchester

20 September 1870 – Engels moved from Manchester to London and lived with Lydia “Lizzie” Burns, Mary Burns’s sister

1870s19 July 1870–10 May 1871 – Franco-Prussian war

1870 – Italian troops take Rome from Papacy

2 September 1870 – Napoleon III surrenders to the Germans at Sedan

4 September 1870 – Léon Gambetta proclaimed the return of the French Republic

1871
1871–1874 – Oscar Wilde attends Trinity College, Dublin

18 January 1871 – Wilhelm I formally proclaimed German Emperor in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles

28 January 1871 – the French Government of National Defence signs an armistice with the Prussians

1 March 1871 – the French national assembly officially deposed Napoleon III

18 March–28 May 1871 – Paris Commune

c. June 13 1871 – Marx published The Civil War in France

10 November 1871 – Livingstone’s famous meeting with H. M. Stanley

25 November 1871 – Henry Irving abandons his wife Florence O’Callaghan

1872
1872 – Samuel Butler’s Erewhon: or, Over the Range is first published

1872–1890 – Richard Francis Burton British Consul in Trieste

January 1872 – Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music (Die Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geiste der Musik) first published by E. W. Fritsch in Leipzig

22 April 1872 – Wagner leaves Switzerland and travels to live in Bayreuth

18 May 1872 – birth of Bertrand Russell at Ravenscroft, Trellech, Monmouthshire

26 June 1872–22 February 1873 – Engels publishes The Housing Question in Volksstaat

2–7 September 1872 – 5th congress of the First International meets in the Hague; Bakunin was expelled from the International and the General Council was moved to New York, which effectively killed the International so that it dissolved in 1876

10 October 1872 – Marx’s daughter Jenny Marx marries the French socialist Charles Longuet

1873
19 March 1873 – Marx goes on a trip to Brighton with his daughter Eleanor

April 1873 – Marx leaves his daughter Eleanor in Brighton, since she wishes to leave home and find employment

8 April 1873–6 July 1875 – Julius Vogel is Premier of New Zealand

9 May 1873 – the Vienna Stock Exchange crashes, and a number of bank failures in Austria occur

22 May–June 1873 – Marx visits Manchester to see Dr Gumpert

June 1873 – the second German edition of volume I of Das Kapital is published in Hamburg

June 1873 – George Bernard Shaw leaves Dublin for London

Autumn 1873 – Freud enters Vienna University as medical student

early September 1873 – Marx’s daughter Eleanor returned to London

18 September 1873 - the American company Jay Cooke & Company declares bankruptcy; the Panic of 1873 begins

20 September 1873 - the New York Stock Exchange closes for ten days starting on this day

24 November 1873 – Marx leaves London for a spa in Harrogate (near Leeds in North England), owing to bad heath; he is accompanied by Eleanor “Tussy” Marx and visits Manchester twice during the holiday; he stays until December 15

15 December 1873 – Marx returns to London

1874
1874–1878 – Oscar Wilde attends Magdalen College, Oxford

20 February 1874–21 April 1880 – Benjamin Disraeli is Prime Minister of the UK

mid-April 1874 – Marx takes a three-week seaside cure alone at Ramsgate (near Canterbury), owing to bad health (carbuncles and liver trouble)

July 1874 – Marx took a three-week vacation in Ryde on the Isle of Wight

15 August 1874 – Marx departed for the spa town of Karlsbad in Bohemia (which he also visited in 1875 and 1876) with his daughter Tussy

August–19 September 1874 – Marx in Karlsbad (a spa resort, now Karlovy Vary in the Czech Republic); before 8 September Marx breaks with Louis (Ludwig) Kugelmann

September 1874 – Marx went on a two-week tour of German cities and travels to Dresden, Leipzig (where he met Liebknecht), Berlin and Hamburg; he meets his publisher Meissner

17 October 1874 – Oscar Wilde enters Magdalen College, Oxford

30 November 1874 – birth of Winston Churchill

1875
March 1875 – Marx family moves to 41 Maitland Park Road (44 Maitland Street), and lived here until he died

April or early May 1875 – Marx writes the letter that would become the Critique of the Gotha Program, which was only published in 1891

21 April 1875 – Charles Stewart Parnell elected to the House of Commons

9 July 1875–4 August 1877 – Herzegovina Uprising, an uprising of ethnic Serbs against the Ottoman Empire, firstly in Herzegovina and then in Bosnia

August 1875 – Marx returned to the Karlsbad spa

November 1875 – Benjamin Disraeli buys the Khedive of Egypt’s 44% stake in the Suez canal

1876
1876 – Cesare Lombroso’s L’Uomo Delinquente (Criminal Man) first published

24 February 1876 – the play Peer Gynt first performed in Oslo, with original music composed by Edvard Grieg

15 February 1876–1 September 1876 – Julius Vogel is Premier of New Zealand

April–May 1876 – April Uprising, the insurrection of Bulgarians against the Ottoman Empire

1 May 1876 – Queen Victoria declared empress of India

June-July 1876 – Serbia and Montenegro declare war on Turkey

18 June 1876–19 February 1878 – Montenegrin–Ottoman War, which ends in Montenegrin victory

30 June 1876–3 March 1878 – Serbo-Turkish War

13 August 1876 – beginning of the famous 1876 Bayreuth Festival and performance of Wagner’s Das Rheingold, prelude of Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelungen) at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus. The following plays are performed:

13 August 1876 – Das Rheingold (The Rhinegold)
14 August 1876 – Die Walküre (The Valkyrie)
16 August 1876 – Siegfried
17 August 1876 – Götterdämmerung (The Twilight of the Gods)

Marx arrives in Nuremberg at about 5 pm on 14 August and was unable to find accommodation in Nuremberg; he travels on to Weiden and arrives at midnight but finds no accommodation there either, because of the festival at Bayreuth; first Bayreuth Festival continues until 30 August 1876

16 August 1876 – Richard Wagner’s Siegfried premiered at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus

17 August 1876 – Richard Wagner’s Götterdämmerung (Twilight of the Gods) premiered at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus

19 August 1876 – Marx writes a letter to Engels from Karlsbad calling the Bayreuth Festival “Wagner’s Festival of Fools”

August–September 1876 – Marx returned to the Karlsbad spa with his daughter Tussy

21 August 1876 – Benjamin Disraeli was created Earl of Beaconsfield

5 September 1876 – William Gladstone published The Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East

6–12 September 1876 – Marx delayed in Karlsbad after his daughter Eleanor becomes ill with a fever

mid-September 1876 – Marx visits Max Oppenheim in Prague and then journeys the down the middle Rhine

21 September 1876 – Marx in Liège, Belgium

October 1876–August 1881 – Arthur Conan Doyle studies at the University of Edinburgh Medical School; Arthur Conan Doyle meets the Scottish lecturer Joseph Bell in 1877, who is the inspiration for Sherlock Holmes

November 1876 – Eugene Schuyler, the American Consul in Istanbul, publishes a report about the Bulgarian atrocities after his own investigation

23 December 1876–20 January 1877 – Constantinople Conference of the Great Powers (namely, Russia, Germany, France, Britain, Austria-Hungary and Italy) held in Istanbul

1877
24 April 1877–3 March 1878 – Russo-Turkish War

August–September 1877 – Marx, his wife Jenny and daughter Eleanor travel for a holiday to Neuenahr, a spa town in Rhenish Prussia

August 1877 – establishment of the Dogberry Club, a Shakespeare reading group

1878
3 March 1878 – the preliminary Treaty of San Stefano

25 May 1878 – Gilbert and Sullivan’s H.M.S. Pinafore first performed at the Opera Comique, London

4 June 1878 – Cyprus Convention, the secret agreement between the United Kingdom and the Ottoman Empire which granted Cyprus to Great Britain

13 June–13 July 1878 – Congress of Berlin

July 1878 – Engels published the Anti-Dühring (1878), which was first published in serial form from January 3 1877 to July 7 1878 in the journal Vorwärts

13 July 1878 – Treaty of Berlin signed at the Radziwill Palace in Berlin

August 1878 – the famous Victorian actor Henry Irving takes the lease of the Lyceum Theatre, London; the Irish writer Bram Stoker becomes his business manager in October

12 September 1878 – Lydia “Lizzie” Burns dies

c. September 1878 to 1880 – Second Anglo–Afghan War

4–14 September 1878 – Marx is in Malvern, Worcester, with his wife, his daughter Jenny and his grandson

16 September 1878 – Engels leaves for Littlehampton (near Worthing)

20 September 1878 – Jenny Marx arrives in London

19 October 1878 – Anti-Socialist laws in Germany

November 1878 – Oscar Wilde graduates from Magdalen College, Oxford

25–26 November 1878 – James McNeill Whistler sues the critic John Ruskin, and wins

4 December 1878 – Florence Balcombe (1858–1937) and Bram Stoker married

30 December 1878 – Henry Irving revives the play Hamlet at the Lyceum with Ellen Terry as Ophelia

1879
11 January–4 July 1879 – Anglo-Zulu War between the British Empire and the Zulu Kingdom

after January 1879 – Midlothian campaign

22 January 1879 – Battle of Isandlwana, first encounter of the Anglo–Zulu War between the British Empire and the Zulu Kingdom

2 May 1879 – Friedrich Nietzsche resigns his position at the University of Basel

4 July 1879 – Battle of Ulundi, last major battle of the Anglo-Zulu War

c.6 August–28 August 1879 – Engels and Carl Schorlemmer are on holiday in Eastbourne

18 August 1879 – Marx’s daughter Jenny Longuet gives birth to a son, Edgar, in Ramsgate

8–20 August 1879 – Marx and Eleanor (Tussy) Marx on holiday in St. Aubin’s and St. Helier, on the Isle of Jersey

20 August 1879 – Marx and Eleanor (Tussy) Marx leave Jersey

21 August–17 September 1879 – Marx arrived in Ramsgate to visit his daughter Jenny Marx and her new son Edgar

17 September 1879 – Marx returns to London

21 October 1879 – Irish National Land League founded in Castlebar, with Charles Stewart Parnell elected president

1 November 1879 – Henry Irving’s production of The Merchant of Venice opened at the Lyceum; the famous Beefsteak Room dinners at the Lyceum begin

21 December 1879 – Henrik Ibsen’s play A Doll’s House premiered at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen, Denmark

1880
14 February 1880 – famous banquet held to celebrate the 100th performance of Henry Irving’s play The Merchant of Venice

March–May 1880 – Engels published Socialism: Utopian and Scientific (1880)

March–April 1880 – United Kingdom general election of 1880

3 April 1880 – Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance opens at at the Opera Comique

23 April 1880–9 June 1885 – William Ewart Gladstone Prime Minister of Britain

20 May 1880 – Henry Irving’s production of Iolanthe at the Lyceum

July 1880 – amnesty in France; Hippolyte-Prosper-Olivier Lissagaray returns to France on 4 July 1880

18 September 1880 – Henry Irving’s production of The Corsican Brothers opened at the Lyceum

1880s1881
3 January 1881 – Henry Irving’s production of Tennyson’s The Cup opened at the Lyceum; William Ewart Gladstone attends

24 January 1881 – William Ewart Gladstone introduced a Coercion Bill in the House of Commons, to deal with the Irish National Land League, with royal assent in March 1881

13 March 1881 – death of Alexander II of Russia

13 March 1881–1 November 1894 – reign of Alexander III of Russia

19 April 1881 – death of Benjamin Disraeli

23 April 1881 – Gilbert and Sullivan’s Patience first performed at the Opera Comique, London; the play moved to the famous Savoy Theatre on 10 October 1881

2 and 9 May 1881 – revival of Othello at the Lyceum

7 June 1881 – first meeting of the Social Democratic Federation (SDF), first socialist political party in Britain, organised by H. M. Hyndman, and whose members included William Morris, George Lansbury and Eleanor Marx

July 1881 – Eleanor Marx decides to become an actress

August–September 1881 – Marx and his wife visit Argenteuil near Paris

16 August 1881 – Marx gets a letter about his daughter Tussy’s break down, and returns to London

28 September 1881 – Charles Darwin meets Edward Aveling and Ludwig Büchner at Down House

October 1881 – Marx’s wife bedridden for weeks

10 October 1881 – the famous Savoy Theatre opened

2 December 1881 – Marx’s wife Jenny dies

5 December 1881 – Jenny Marx buried at Highgate cemetery

29 December 1881 – Marx and Tussy go to Ventnor on the Isle of Wight.

1882
2 January 1882 – Oscar Wilde arrives in America

January 1882 – Eleanor Marx ends her engagement to Hippolyte-Prosper-Olivier Lissagaray

February 1882 – Marx goes to Argenteuil with Eleanor Marx to see his daughter Jenny

February 20 1882 – Marx arrives in Algiers and spent 3 months there, with stopovers in Argenteuil and Marseille on the way

8 March 1882 – début of Henry Irving’s production of Romeo and Juliet at the Lyceum, with Ellen Terry as Juliet

9 April 1882 – death of Dante Gabriel Rossetti

19 April 1882 – death of Charles Darwin

early May 1882 – Marx leaves Algiers for France via Monte Carlo

26 May–29 August 1882 – beginning of the second Bayreuth Festival with Richard Wagner’s play Parsifal

summer 1882 – Marx in Artenteuil

June 1882 – Arthur Conan Doyle sets up a medical practice at 1 Bush Villas in Elm Grove, Southsea, Portsmouth

30 June 1882 – Eleanor Marx attends the annual celebration of the Browning Society at University College London

July 1882–mid-August – Eleanor Marx goes to Artenteuil

31 July 1882 – Sigmund Freud begins clinical training at the General Hospital of Vienna

August 1882 – Marx then went from Artenteuil to Vevey in Switzerland, then returning to London

September 1882 – British conquer Egypt

14 September 1882 – Bram Stoker attempts to save a man attempting suicide while on a Thames ferry

20 September 1882 – Rudyard Kipling sails for India

October 1882 – Marx returns to London

11 October 1882 – début of Henry Irving’s production of Much Ado about Nothing at the Lyceum; production continues until June 1883

11 October 1882 – Eleanor Marx goes to the Lyceum to see Henry Irving’s production of Much Ado about Nothing

18 October 1882–9 March 1889 – Rudyard Kipling in India; from March to October 1889, he visits Japan and America

November 1882–January 1883 – Marx goes to Ventnor on the Isle of Wight

1883
1883–1891 – Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None (Also sprach Zarathustra: Ein Buch für Alle und Keinen) is published

6 January 1883 – Oscar Wilde arrives in Liverpool from his American tour

11 January 1883 – Marx’s daughter Jenny dies

11 January 1883 – Marx informed of the death of his daughter Jenny from cancer on Marx and returned to London

13 January 1883 – Marx returns to London from Ventnor?

13 February 1883 – death of Wilhelm Richard Wagner

February–mid-May 1883 – Oscar Wilde in Paris

14 March 1883 – Marx dies in London of bronchitis and pleurisy

17 March 1883 – Marx buried at Highgate cemetery, with 11 in attendance

21 March 1883 – death of Harry Longuet, grandson of Marx, who was buried at Highgate cemetery

24 May 1883 – Eleanor Marx meets Beatrice Potter (later Beatrice Webb) in the Reading Room of the British Museum; Eleanor frequents the Reading Room

May 1883 – Eleanor Marx publishes an article on the life of Marx in Progress magazine

June 1883 – Eleanor Marx publishes “Karl Marx II,” Progress (June): 362–366

5 June 1883 – birth of John Maynard Keynes at 6 Harvey Road in Cambridge

15 June 1883 – Henry Irving’s production of Robert Macaire at the Lyceum

26–27 August 1883 – the famous 1883 eruption of Krakatoa in the Dutch East Indies

September 1883 – Eleanor Marx goes on a holiday to Eastbourne with Engels and Helene “Lenchen” Demuth; after her return to London the Marx family home at 41 Maitland Park Road (44 Maitland Street) is vacated and Eleanor moves into 122 Great Coram Street, Bloomsbury

September 1883–6 May 1907 – Evelyn Baring (1st Earl of Cromer) is 1st Consul-General of Egypt

October 1883 – socialist debating group that would become the Fabian Society formed in London

11 October 1883 – Henry Irving leaves Britain for his American tour

October 1883–1884 – Henry Irving’s first American tour

29 October 1883 – Henry Irving’s American theatrical tour begins in New York

26 November 1883 – Henry Irving’s American tour opens in Philadelphia

1884
4 January 1884 – Fabian Society was founded in London

March 1884 – demonstration at Highgate Cemetery to commemorate the death of Marx

20 March 1884 – Henry Irving and Bram Stoker meet Walt Whitman

April 1884 – Henry Irving returns to Britain

29 May 1884 – marriage of Oscar Wilde and Constance Lloyd

June 1884 – Eleanor Marx and Edward Aveling (1849–1898) decide to move in together

18 July 1884 – Eleanor Marx and Edward Aveling move into 55 Great Russell Street

July 1884 – Aveling and Eleanor join the launch of the Westminster branch of the Social Democratic Federation

8 July 1884 – Aveling and Eleanor leave for a honeymoon in Middleton, Derbyshire

8 July 1884 – Henry Irving’s production of Twelfth Night; Or What You Will at the Lyceum

August 1884 – Aveling and Eleanor elected to the Executive Council of the Social Democratic Federation (SDF)

30 September 1884 – Henry Irving’s second north American theatrical tour begins in Quebec City

October 1884 – Friedrich Engels first published Der Ursprung der Familie, des Privateigenthums und des Staats (The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State)

October 1884 – Laura Marx visits Eleanor

late November 1884 – the showman Tom Norman begins exhibiting Joseph Merrick (the Elephant man) at 123 Whitechapel Road; the doctor Frederick Treves sees Merrick

2 December 1884 – the doctor Frederick Treves presents Joseph Merrick (the Elephant man) to the Pathological Society of London at 53 Berners Street, Bloomsbury

27 December 1884 – split in the Social Democratic Federation; William Morris, Belfort Bax, Eleanor Marx, and Edward Aveling resign and form the Socialist League on 29 December 1884, funded by William Morris

December 1884 – John Ruskin leaves Slade Professorship of Fine Arts in protest at vivisection in Oxford; resigns March 1885

1885
January 1885 – Socialist League starts its newspaper the Commonweal

1885 – the second volume of Das Kapital published by Engels

26 January 1885 – defeat of General Gordon at the fall of Khartoum fell

4 March 1885 – Walter Pater’s philosophical novel Marius the Epicurean is published

14 March 1885 – Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado; or, The Town of Titipu opens at the Savoy Theatre

April 1885 – Henry Irving returns to Britain from his second American tour

9 June 1885 – William Gladstone leaves office as Prime Minister of Britain

23 June 1885–28 January 1886 – Marquess of Salisbury is prime Minister of Britain

June 1885 – Eleanor Marx starts to become disenchanted with Edward Aveling

July 1885 – the famous Victorian actor Henry Irving and Bram Stoker visit Nuremburg in preparation for the production of Faust

August 1885 – Walter Pater moves to London to 12 Earls Terrace, Kensington from Oxford

18 September 1885 – unification of Bulgaria

21 September 1885 – Eleanor Marx in court over political meeting at Dod Street

7–29 November 1885 – Third Anglo-Burmese War

14–28 November 1885 – Serbo-Bulgarian War

19 December 1885 – opening night of the first run of Faust at the Lyceum theatre of Henry Irving; production runs from 19 December 1885 to 31 July 1886

26 December 1885 – Eleanor Marx organises a charity Christmas for 200 children

28 December 1885 – Bram Stoker delivers his lecture “Personal Impressions of America” at the London Institution, Finsbury Circus London

1886
1886 – Friedrich Nietzsche first published Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy in Leipzig

1 January 1886 – Britain annexed Upper Burma by Lord Randolph Churchill

January 1886 – Eleanor Marx Aveling publishes “The Woman Question: From a Socialist Point of View” (Westminister Review 125: 207–222)

5 January 1886 – publication of the Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

1886 – new edition of Friedrich Nietzsche’s book The Birth of Tragedy, or: Hellenism and Pessimism (Die Geburt der Tragödie, Oder: Griechentum und Pessimismus)

1 February 1886–20 July 1886 – William Gladstone is Prime Minister of Britain

March 1886–9 November 1888 – Sir Charles Warren (1840–1927) is Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis, the head of the London Metropolitan Police

April 1886 – Sigmund Freud’s private medical practice opens

1 May 1886 – American workers demonstrate for an 8 hour day

24 June 1886 – arrival of Joseph Merrick at Liverpool Street Station from Belgium

25 July 1886–11 August 1892 – Marquess of Salisbury is prime Minister of Britain

25 July 1886 – performance of Tristan und Isolde (Tristan and Isolde) at Bayreuth

31 July 1886 – end of first run of Faust at the Lyceum theatre

31 August 1886 – Aveling and Eleanor Marx leave Liverpool for an American trip

9 September 1886 – Aveling and Eleanor Marx arrive in New York

11 September 1886 – beginning of second run of Henry Irving’s Faust at the Lyceum theatre; productions runs from
11 September to 22 April 1887

2 October 1886 – Aveling and Eleanor set out from New York on a 3 month speaking tour

28 October 1886 – statue of liberty unveiled

25 December 1886 – Aveling and Eleanor depart from New York

1887
4 January 1887 – Aveling and Eleanor arrive in Liverpool from New York; they stay with Engels and move to 65 Chancery Lane

22 January 1887 – Gilbert and Sullivan’s play Ruddigore; or, The Witch’s Curse opens at the Savoy Theatre

January 1887 – first English translation of volume 1 of Capital, translated by Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling (who had become the partner of Marx’s daughter Eleanor “Tussy” Marx in 1884)

March–April 1887 – Charles Stewart Parnell involved in the Pigott forgeries in The Times

22 April 1887 – end of second run of Henry Irving’s Faust

30 May 1887 – Aveling and Eleanor resign from the Socialist League

spring – Aveling and Eleanor move to Dodwell, Warwickshire

1 June 1887 – Henry Irving’s production of Werner at the Lyceum

20 June 1887 – the Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria was celebrated, to mark the 50th anniversary of her accession

October 1887 – Eleanor Marx returns to London from Dodwell

7 November 1887–March 1888 – Henry Irving’s third north American theatrical tour begins in New York; 7 November 1887–10 December 1887 New York; 12–23 December 1887 Philadelphia; 26 December 1887–21 January 21 1888 Chicago; 23 January 1888–18 February 1888 Boston; 20 February 1888–24 March 1888 New York

8 November 1887 – government bans meetings in Trafalgar square

13 November 1887 – Bloody Sunday; demonstration towards Trafalgar square with Eleanor Marx and Aveling broken up by military and police

December 1887 – publication of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s novel A Study in Scarlet in Beeton’s Christmas Annual 1887 in which Sherlock Holmes appears for the first time; first published as a book in July 1888

1888
9 March 1888 – the death of the German Emperor Wilhelm I (king of Prussia from 2 January 1861)

9 March 1888–15 June 1888 – reign of the German Emperor Frederick III

11 March–14 March 1888 – the Great Blizzard of 1888 on the eastern coast of the United States of America

26 March 1888 – Henry Irving sailed for England after the end of his third north American theatrical tour

14 April 1888 – revival of Faust at the Lyceum theatre

15 April 1888 – death of Matthew Arnold

17 April 1888–December 1892 – Winston Churchill was sent to Harrow School

15 June 1888 – Wilhelm II becomes German Emperor

summer – Eleanor Marx in Dodwell, Warwickshire

23 July 1888 – performance of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (The Mastersingers of Nuremberg) at Bayreuth

4 August 1888 – opening of the play Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde at the Lyceum Theatre with the actor Richard Mansfield

9 August 1888 – Engels leaves for New York, with Aveling and Eleanor; they travel to Albany, Boston, Niagara falls, lake Ontario, Toronto, Montreal

August–September 1888 – Engels in America

31 August–9 November 1888 – period of the infamous Jack the Ripper murders

August 1888–1901 – Sir Robert Anderson (1841–1918) is Assistant Commissioner of the London Metropolitan Police

19 September 1888 – Engels, Aveling and Eleanor return to England

29 September 1888 – closing of the play Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde at the Lyceum Theatre in the wake of Jack the Ripper murders

3 October 1888 – Gilbert and Sullivan’s play The Yeomen of the Guard opens at the Savoy Theatre

29 December 1888 – opening night of Henry Irving’s production of Macbeth at the Lyceum theatre

1889
3 January 1889 – Friedrich Nietzsche suffers a mental collapse

26 April 1889 – Henry Irving gives a command performance for the Prince of Wales and Queen Victoria at Sandringham

6 May–31 October 1889 – Exposition Universelle of 1889 in Paris

15 May 1889 – Eiffel Tower officially opened to the public

7 June 1889 – first performance of Ibsen’s play A Doll’s House at the Novelty theatre in Britain

29 June 1889 – end of Henry Irving’s production of Macbeth at the Lyceum

6 July 1889 – beginning of the Cleveland Street scandal

14 July 1889 – Second International (1889–1916) founded; Second International declared May 1 to be “May Day” (International Workers’ Day); Eleanor Marx in Paris

14 August 1889–16 September – London Dock Strike

September–14 December 1889 – Silvertown strike in London

28 September 1889 – opening night of Henry Irving’s production of The Dead Heart at the Lyceum theatre

5 October 1889 – Rudyard Kipling arrives back in England

October 1889–December 1890 – the 1889–1890 flu pandemic, with recurrences March–June 1891, November 1891–June 1892, spring 1893 and winter 1893–1894

late 1889 – Eleanor Marx speaks at the International Working Men’s Club (IWMC) at 40 Berner Street

9 November 1889–May 1890 – Indian tour of Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence and Avondale

7 December 1889 – Gilbert and Sullivan’s play The Gondoliers; or, The King of Barataria opens at the Savoy Theatre

1890
1890 – Alfred Marshall’s Principles of Economics first published

11 April 1890 – death of Joseph Merrick at London Hospital

30 April 1890 – Arminius Vambery meets Bram Stoker at the Lyceum during dinner in the Beefsteak Room

4 May – May day demonstration in Hyde Park, London

5 May 1890 – W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan end their collaboration

June 1890 – Vincent van Gogh paints the oil painting The Church at Auvers

July 1890 – Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray first published

July 1890 – Engels in Norway

29 July 1890 – death of Vincent van Gogh

6 August 1890 – Aveling and Eleanor Marx set sail for Norway for a 3 week tour

August 1890 – the novelist Bram Stoker takes a famous holiday at Whitby

20 September 1890 – opening night of Henry Irving’s production of Ravenswood at the Lyceum theatre

October 1890 – Eleanor Marx travels to the Lille congress of the French Workers’ Party

October 1890 – Bertrand Russell goes up to Trinity College, Cambridge

20 October 1890 – death of Sir Richard Burton

4 November 1890 – death of Helene “Lenchen” Demuth

17 November 1890 – Captain W. H. O’Shea obtains a decree nisi of divorce against his wife Katharine O’Shea; this ruins the political career of Parnell

December 1890 – Thomas Henry Huxley moves to Eastbourne

December 1890–24 March 1891 – Arthur Conan Doyle studies ophthalmology in Vienna

1890s1891
31 January 1891 – famous Royal English Opera House opened (renamed the Palace Theatre of Varieties in 1892)

25 June 1891 – first story of Arthur Conan Doyle’s character Sherlock Holmes published in The Strand Magazine

June 1891 – first meeting of Lord Alfred Douglas (1870–1945) and Oscar Wilde

22 August 1891 – performance of Tannhäuser at Bayreuth

22 August 1891–10 January 1892 – Rudyard Kipling visits South Africa, New Zealand (18 October–6 November), Australia, Ceylon (early December), India

September–12 December 1891 – Henry Irving and the Lyceum company undertake a tour of the provinces

6 October 1891 – death of Charles Stewart Parnell

1892
1892 – Max Nordau’s book Degeneration first published in German; English edition in 1895

5 January 1892 – opening night of Henry Irving’s production of Henry VIII at the Lyceum theatre

14 January 1892 – death of Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence and Avondale

18 January 1892 – Carrie Balestier and Rudyard Kipling married in London

2 February 1892 – Rudyard Kipling and his wife travel to the US; visits New York, Chicago and the Rocky mountains

22 February 1892 – Oscar Wilde’s play Lady Windermere’s Fan, A Play About a Good Woman first produced at the St James’s Theatre in London

26 March 1892 – death of Walt Whitman

20 April–c.9 June 1892 – Rudyard Kipling and his wife travel to Japan

June 1892–29 August 1896 – Rudyard Kipling and his wife live in America

15 August 1892 – William Gladstone becomes British Prime Minister

6 October 1892 – death of Alfred Tennyson

10 November 1892 – opening night of Henry Irving’s production of King Lear at the Lyceum theatre

December 1892 – Winston Churchill left Harrow

1893
1893 – the year in which Bram Stoker’s famous novel Dracula is set

14–16 January 1893 – foundation conference of the Independent Labour Party

6 February 1893 – opening night of Henry Irving’s production of Becket at the Lyceum theatre

February 1893 – Winston Churchill sent to a “crammer” school in London to pass entrance examination for Sandhurst

February 1893 – Oscar Wilde’s play Salome first published in French

19 April 1893 – Oscar Wilde’s play A Woman of No Importance opens at London’s Haymarket Theatre

1 May 1893–30 October 1893 – World’s Columbian Exposition, world’s fair held in Chicago in 1893

summer 1893 – Bram Stoker takes a holiday in the village of Cruden Bay

summer 1893 – Walter Pater moves back to Oxford

summer 1893 – Henry Irving and Ellen Terry take a holiday in Canada; proceed to San Fancisco

6–13 August 1893 – the Zurich Socialist and Labour Congress, the 3rd congress of the Second International. Friedrich Engels gave a closing address; Eleanor Marx attends

16 August 1893 – death of Jean-Martin Charcot

1 September 1893 – Churchill enters Royal Military College, Sandhurst

4 September 1893–21 March 1894 – Henry Irving’s 4th American tour; opened in San Francisco with The Bells, and includes Chicago, Seattle, Portland, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, Washington, Boston, New York

December 1893–February 1894 – Lord Alfred Douglas in Egypt

December 1893 – Arthur Conan Doyle’s story “The Adventure of the Final Problem” in which Sherlock Holmes dies is published in The Strand Magazine

1894
1894 – publication of Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book

February 1894 – Oscar Wilde’s play Salome first published in English, with illustrations by Aubrey Beardsley

2 March 1894 – William Gladstone leaves office as British Prime Minister

21 March 1894 – Henry Irving and Ellen Terry return to England after their 4th American tour

14 April 1894 – revival of Faust by Henry Irving at the Lyceum

April–August 1894 – Rudyard Kipling and his wife visit England on a holiday

August–October 1894 – Oscar Wilde spends a summer holiday in Worthing where he writes The Importance of Being Earnest

June 1894 – Bertrand Russell graduates from Cambridge

20 July 1894 – performance of Lohengrin at Bayreuth

30 July 1894 – death of Walter Pater

summer 1894 – Bram Stoker takes a second holiday in the village of Cruden Bay

August 1894 – Engels on holiday in Eastbourne suffers a stroke

September 1894 – publication of The Green Carnation by Robert Hichens, a parody of Oscar Wilde

21 September to 8 December 1894 – provincial tour of Henry Irving; first production of Henry Irving’s A Story of Waterloo played at the Princes Theatre, Bristol, on September 21, 1894; London performance at the Garrick Theatre on 17 December 1894

October 1894 – the third volume of Das Kapital published by Engels

1 November 1894 – accession of Nicholas II of Russia

28 November 1894 – final birthday of Engels

25 December 1894 – Eleanor Marx has Christmas dinner with Engels and is assured she will inherit Marx’s manuscripts

December 1894 – Winston Churchill graduated from Royal Military College, Sandhurst

December 1894 – treason conviction of Captain Alfred Dreyfus for allegedly sharing French military secrets to the German Embassy in Paris

1895
January–July 1895 – H. G. Wells’s Time Machine first published

3 January 1895 – Oscar Wilde’s play An Ideal Husband opens at the Haymarket Theatre

12 January 1895 – opening night of Henry Irving’s production of King Arthur at the Lyceum theatre

24 January 1895 – death of Randolph Churchill

4 February 1895 – début of The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde at the St James’s Theatre

14 February 1895 – Oscar Wilde’s play The Importance of Being Earnest, A Trivial Comedy for Serious People opens at St James's Theatre in London

20 February 1895 – Winston Churchill commissioned as officer and joins the 4th Hussars, a cavalry regiment

March 1895 – Aveling and Eleanor travel to Hastings for a holiday

3 April 1895 – opening of the libel trial of the Marquess of Queensberry

4 May 1895 – performances of The Story of Waterloo and Don Quixote at the Lyceum

25 May 1895 – announcement of Henry Irving’s knighthood

25 May 1895 – Oscar Wilde convicted and sentenced to two years hard labour

June 1895 – Engels, Laura Marx and Eleanor take a holiday in Eastbourne

21 June 1895 – Lord Rosebery resigns as British Prime Minister

29 June 1895 – death of Thomas Henry Huxley

1 July 1895 – Eleanor and Edward Aveling start a holiday in Orpington in Kent

18 July 1895 – Henry Irving knighted at Windsor Castle

c. 21 July 1895 – Eleanor Marx learns that Frederick Lewis Demuth (1851−1929) is the son of Karl Marx

5 August 1895 – Friedrich Engels dies

10 August 1895 – funeral of Friedrich Engels

27 August 1895 – Friedrich Engels’ ashes scattered at sea off Eastbourne

October 1895 – Bertrand Russell receives a 5-year fellowship from Trinity College, Cambridge

November 1895 – publication of Rudyard Kipling’s The Second Jungle Book

November–December 1895 – Churchill visits America and Cuba

14 December 1895 – Eleanor Marx and Edward Aveling move into a new house in Sydenham

29 December 1895–2 January 1896 – the Jameson Raid, a failed raid on Paul Kruger’s Transvaal Republic by British colonial statesman Leander Starr Jameson and his troops

16 September 1895–May 1896 – Henry Irving’s 5th American tour; opened in Montreal with Faust, and includes New Orleans, Philadelphia, Chicago

1896
May 1896 – Henry Irving returns to England from his 5th American tour

8 June 1896 – Eleanor Marx, Edward Aveling and Karl Liebknecht (1871–1919) visit Marx’s old houses in London

July 1896 – Bram Stoker takes a holiday in the village of Cruden Bay

26 July–1 August 1896 – International Socialist Workers and Trade Union Congress, held in London, the 4th congress of the Second International

29 August 1896 – Rudyard Kipling and his wife return to England from the US

22 September 1896 – opening night of Henry Irving’s production of Cymbeline at the Lyceum theatre

1 October 1896 – Winston Churchill arrives in Bombay, India and travels with his regiment to Bangalore

19 December 1896 – opening night of Henry Irving’s Richard III at the Lyceum; Irving injuries himself after the play and Lyceum closes until 25 January 1897

1897
18 May 1897 – Oscar Wilde released from prison

26 May 1897 – publication of Bram Stoker’s Dracula

5 April–8 May 1897 – Greco-Turkish War of 1897

8 June 1897 – Edward Aveling secretly married the actress Eva Frye

22 June 1897 – Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee procession

July 1897 – Keynes undergoes Eton College Scholarship Examinations

August 1897 – Bram Stoker takes a holiday in the village of Cruden Bay

after 22 August 1897 – Edward Aveling abandons Eleanor Marx, but returns some days later

c. September 1897 – Edward Aveling and Eleanor Marx travel to Paris to see Laura Marx

September 1897 – John Maynard Keynes began study at Eton; educated at Eton from 1897–1902

16 September 1897 – Winston Churchill present on a cavalry patrol in India which is ambushed in the Mamund Valley

25 September 1897 – Rudyard Kipling and his family move to Rottingdean, East Sussex

December 1897 – Edward Aveling ill with the flu

1898
January 1898 – H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds first published; first published as a serial in Pearson’s Magazine April to December 1897

1 January 1898 – opening night of Henry Irving’s production of Peter the Great at the Lyceum theatre

January 1898 – Edward Aveling asks Ellen Terry for a loan

9 February 1898 – Edward Aveling has surgery at University College Hospital

c. 18 February 1898 – Edward Aveling and Eleanor Marx travel to Margate

18 February 1898 – disastrous fire at the Lyceum storage area

27 March 1898 – Edward Aveling and Eleanor Marx return to their house in Sydenham

31 March 1898 – death of Eleanor Marx Aveling

2 April 1898 – inquest on the death of Eleanor Marx Aveling

5 April 1898 – funeral of Eleanor Marx Aveling

19 May 1898 – death of William Ewart Gladstone

June 1898 – Winston Churchill leaves India

July 1898 – Winston Churchill arrives in London from India

1898 – publication of Marx’s Value, Price and Profit (a series of lectures Marx delivered in 1865)

summer 1898 – Henry Irving begins his relationship with Elizabeth Aria

2 August 1898 – Winston Churchill arrives in Cairo

2 August 1898 – death of Edward Aveling

2 September 1898 – Battle of Omdurman, with Winston Churchill present in the army of Sir Herbert Kitchener

13 October 1898 – Henry Irving stricken at Glasgow with pleurisy and pneumonia while playing Madame Sans Gene

1899
31 March 1899 – Henry Irving surrenders the lease of Lyceum theatre to a syndicate

March 1899 – Winston Churchill departs India

October 1899–May 1900 – Henry Irving’s 6th American tour

12 October 1899 – the Second Boer War between Britain and the Boer Republics begins

14 October 1899 – Winston Churchill leaves England for South Africa to report on the Anglo-Boer War as correspondent for the Morning Post

15 November–12 December 1899 – capture and imprisonment of Winston Churchill; imprisoned in a POW camp in Pretoria

1900
20 January 1900 – death of John Ruskin

25 August 1900 – death of Friedrich Nietzsche

22 November 1900 – death of Arthur Sullivan

30 November 1900 – death of Oscar Wilde

1901
22 January 1901 – death of Queen Victoria

summer 1901 – Bram Stoker attends the Wagner Cycle at Bayreuth?

22 July 1901 – première of Richard Wagner’s play Der fliegende Holländer (The Flying Dutchman) at Bayreuth

August 1901–April 1902 – Arthur Conan Doyle’s novel The Hound of the Baskervilles serialised in The Strand Magazine

19 July 1902 – Henry Irving’s farewell performance at the Lyceum

2 September 1902 – Rudyard Kipling and his family move to a home called Bateman’s, in Burwash, East Sussex, England

30 April 1903 – début of Henry Irving’s production of Dante at the Theatre Royal

October 1903–March 1904 – Henry Irving’s 8th American tour

winter 1904 – Henry Irving’s final provincial tour

13 October 1905 – death of Sir Henry Irving

1909 – Arthur Conan Doyle moves to Windlesham Manor, Crowborough, East Sussex

British Prime Ministers
1868 (Feb–Dec.) – Benjamin Disraeli (Conservative)
1868–1874 – William Ewart Gladstone (Liberal)
1874–1880 – Benjamin Disraeli (Conservative)
1880–1885 – William Ewart Gladstone (Liberal)
1885–1886 – Marquess of Salisbury (Conservative)
1886 (Feb.–July) – William Ewart Gladstone (Liberal)
1886–1892 – Marquess of Salisbury (Conservative)
1892–1894 – William Ewart Gladstone (Liberal)
1894–1895 – Archibald Philip Primrose, fifth earl of Rosebery (Liberal)
1895–1902 – Marquess of Salisbury (Conservative)
1902–1905 – Arthur James Balfour (Conservative)
1905–1908 – Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman (Liberal)