The first decade of the 20th century
A Chronology of Events
Editor: Piero Scaruffi

Back to the History page

  • 868: First printed document, the "Diamond Sutra"
  • 1000: about 300 million people live in the world (the same number as in the first year of the millennium)
  • Kaifeng (CHina) is the largest city in the world with about one million inhabitants
  • 1024: First paper money in China
  • 1350 1.5 people die in England of the plague (out of 4 million)
  • 1431: Joan of Arc burned
  • 1492: Columbus discovers America
  • 1661: Johan Palmstruch invents the first European paper money (Sweden)
  • 1681 Pierre Paul Riquet's Canal du Midi links the Atlantic and the Mediterranean
  • 1765: James Watt steam engine
  • 1776: American revolution
  • 1783: First balloon flight (Paris) by the Montgolfier brothers
  • 1796: Edward Jenner invents the vaccine against smallpox
  • 1800: Alessandro Volta invents the electrical battery
  • 1800: about one billion people live in the world
  • 1801: Britain's population is 10.7 million
  • 1803: John Dalton proposes that matter is composed of atoms
  • 1830: The world's population tops 1,000,000,000
  • 1838: Samuel Morse invents the code for telegraphy
  • 1839: First commercial telegraph
  • 1839: Louis Daguerre invents the "daguerrotype", a precursor of the photographic camera
  • 1842: Richard Owen discovers the first fossils of dinosaurs.
  • 1844: In the US there are over 5,000 kms of railway (3,000 in Britain, 2,000 in Germany, 500 in France)
  • 1848: All adult men can vote in French national election
  • 1851: The population of the USA is 20,067,720 free persons and 2,077,034 slaves (source: Scientific American)
  • 1858: Telegraph wire laid at the bottom of the ocean between Ireland and Canada
  • 1859: First oil well drilled in America
  • 1860: eleven southern states secede from the Union
  • 1861: U.S. civil war
  • 1861: Italy unified by Garibaldi
  • 1861: The czar abolishes serfdom in Russia
  • 1864: James Clerk Maxwell unifies electricity and magnetism in his equations of the electromagnetic field
  • 1865: End of U.S. civil war
  • 1869: The Union and Central Pacific railroads meet in Ogden, Utah
  • 1870: All adult men can vote in US national election
  • 1871: Germany unified
  • 1873: First San Francisco cable car
  • 1876: General Custer and his troops are massacred by Indians at Little Big Horn
  • 1876: Alexander Bell demonstrates the telephone
  • 1879: Thomas Edison invents the light bulb
  • 1881: Sitting Bull surrenders
  • 1883: Time zones first used by the railroads to standardize their schedules
  • 1885: The Santa Fe Railroad reaches Los Angeles
  • 1885: First skyscraper, in Chicago
  • 1886: First consumer camera (by Kodak)
  • 1889: Germany enacts the first pension plan in the world
  • 1890: Hermann Hollerith's tabulator chosen for the national census: it uses punched cards
  • 1890: The work hour in the US is 60 hours
  • 1891: In Java archeologists unearth Pithecanthropus Erectus demonstratesul>
      1892:
    • Edward Doheny strikes oil in Los Angeles 1895:
    • the Lumiere brothers invent cinema
      1896:
    • Marconi files a patent for wireless cable
      1897:
    • The atom is not indivisible, constituents are first observed 1897:
    • Aspirin invented by Felix Hoffmann 1897:
    • First car in Los Angeles
    • 1900: Sigmund Freud publishes the Interpretation of Dreams
    • 1900: First mass-market camera, the "Brownie" (by Kodak)
    • 1900: Max Planck invents Quantum Theory
    • 1900: 5% of American households own a telephone
    • 1900: Life expectancy in the US is 47.3
    • 1900: Los Angeles population is 100,000
      1901:
    • Guglielmo Marconi conducts the first transatlantic radio transmission
    • Britain's population is 37.1 million
      1902:
    • a criminal case is solved thanks to fingerprints (Paris)
      1903:
    • Wilbur and Orville Wright fly first airplane
    • Marie Curie discovers radioactivity
    • The US produces 11,200 cars (1,700 from Ford)
    • the first Tour de France
      1905:
    • Einstein publishes the Special Theory of Relativity
      1906:
    • Frederick Hopkins discovers vitamins
    • San Francisco earthquake and fire
      1907:
    • Leo Baekeland invents the first plastic ("bakelite")
    • Alzheimer describes a form of "pre-senile dementia"
      1908:
    • The first "zeppelin", created by Ferdinand von Zeppelin, lands in a Germany city
    • Ford introduces the Model T, the first mass vehicle
    • First oil well drilled in the Middle East
    • William D'Arcy discovers oil in Iran
      1909:
    • Invention of plastic
    • The average salary in the US is $0.19

    Editorial correspondence | Advertising
2000's
1990's
1980's
1970's
1960's
1950's
1940's
1930's
1920's
1910's
1900's