The third millennium actually started at about 21h00 on 31 December 2000, or even more correctly, on 31 December 1995. See the history of the calendar 2000 Final Peanut comic strip published. Largest ever corporate merger as AOL buys Time-Warner for $162 billion. Vladimir Putin elected President of Russia. George W Bush defeats Al Gore [...]

1975 South Vietnam surrenders to North Vietnamese Communists troops. Junko Tabei of Japan becomes first woman to reach Everest summit. Soviet Soyuz 19 docks with Apollo 18. IBM launches the laser printer. Popular Electronics announces Altair, the first “personal computer”. 1976 Viking I lands on Mars. 14-year old Romanian Nadia Comaneci scores 5 perfect 10′s [...]

1950 Otis invents the passenger lift. Charles Schultz launches “Peanuts“. Mr Potato Head debuts. Diners Club issues the first credit card. Korean war erupts. Danish doctor Christian Hamburger performs the first sex change operation on New Yorker George Jorgensen, who becomes Christine Jorgensen. Yoshuito Nakamats invents the floppy disc (but it is introduced by IBM [...]

1925 Red double-decker buses enter service in London. In-flight movie offered by German airline. Walter P Chrysler founded vehicle company. Frisbee is invented – by Yale students, using empty plates used to hold pies from the Frisbie Baking Company. 1926 Marion B Skaggs founded Safeway food stores. Scottish engineer John Logie Baird demonstrates a machine [...]

1900 Escalator invented by Charles Seeberger. Paperclip patented by Norwegian Johann Vaaler. Loudspeaker invented by Horace Short. Charlotte Cooper becomes the first woman to win an Olympic gold, for tennis. Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck, in a lecture to the German Physical Society, announces that matter absorbs heat energy and emits light energy discontinuously, giving [...]

Twenty years after the telephone was invented and music was first sent down a telephone line, Guglielmo Marconi sent radio signals. Marconi (1874-1937) was born in Italy and studied at the University of Bologna. He was fascinated by Heinrich Hertz’s earlier discovery of radio waves and realised that it can be used for sending and [...]

1875 Telephone invented (see 1876). Electric dental drill patented by George Green. Siegfried Marcus patents an internal combustion engine. While using paraffin in an attempt to invent and improve telegraphy tape, Thomas Alva Edison discovers a way to make duplicate copies of documents instead. 1876 Alexander Graham Bell receives patent for the invention of the [...]

1850 Thomas Cook, one of the world’s first travel agencies is founded. Millard Fillmore becomes US President. Rabbits introduced to Australia and soon became pests. Phineas Quimby issued patent for a steering machine. Beer first sold in glass bottles (before then beer was poured into a bucket or cup the patron would bring along). 1851 [...]

1825 Stockton and Darlington railway opens. Michael Faraday discovers benzene. William Sturgeon invents the electromagnet in London. 1826 Jesuits return to France. Samuel Mory patents the internal combustion engine. William Austin Burt patents typographer, the first practical typewriter machine. After almost 450 years the last case of the Spanish inquisition is held in Valencia (approximately [...]

1800 The population of the world is about one billion. Worcestershire Sauce invented. James Ross discovers the magnetic North Pole. Pius VI becomes Pope. Thomas Jefferson elected US President. Alessandro Volta invents the voltaic cell. 1801 Kingdom of Etruria founded by Napoleon in Tuscany. Thomas Young publishes proof of the principle of interference of light, [...]