1901 CE
Australia became a nation on 1 January 1901. Six separate British self-governing colonies of Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania, South Australia, and Western Australia agreed to unite and form the Commonwealth of Australia, establishing a system of federalism in Australia.
1902 CE
Second Boer War ends.
1903
The 1903 Wright airplane was the first successful heavier-than-air powered aircraft. It was designed and built by the Wright brothers.
1903 CE
The Mensheviks and Bolsheviks, factions of the Russian socialist movement emerged in 1903, following a dispute in the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party.
1903 CE
The Teddy Bear was invented in honor of President Theodore Roosevelt.
1904 CE
The Russo-Japanese War was fought during 1904 and 1905 between the Russian Empire and the Empire of Japan over rival imperial ambitions in Manchuria.
1904 CE
President Theodore Roosevelt expanded the Monroe Doctrine in 1904, asserting the right of the United States to intervene to stabilize the economic affairs of states in the Caribbean and Central America, if they were unable to pay their international debts.
1905 CE
Albert Einstein's formulation of relativity.
1907 CE
A peasants' revolt in Romania. About 11,000 die.
1908 CE
The Ford Model T automobile (known as the Tin Lizzie, Leaping Lena, jitney or flivver) was produced by Ford Motor Company from October 1, 1908.
The Ford Model T automobile (known as the Tin Lizzie, Leaping Lena, jitney or flivver) was produced by Ford Motor Company from October 1, 1908.
 |
| 1925 Ford Model T touring, built at Henry Ford’s Highland Park Plant in Dearborn, Michigan. This example now resides in Australia, owned by the founder of FordModelT.net, ModelTMitch |
1908 CE
Messina earthquake kills over 70,000 people.
1910 CE
George V becomes King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions and Emperor of India.
1910 CE
In 1910, the Earth was to pass through the tail of Halley's Comet, which caused extreme public panic, that the apocalypse was coming.
1911 CE
Xinhai Revolution in China overthrows the last imperial dynasty, Qing Dynasty.
1911 CE
Roald Amundsen first reaches the South Pole.
1911 CE
The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, on March 25, 1911, led to the deaths of 146 workers and the implementation of many workplace safety reforms.
1911 CE
Ernest Rutherford identifies the atomic nucleus.
1912 CE
End of the Chinese Empire and Republic of China established.
1912 CE
Morocco becomes a protectorate of France.
1912 CE
RMS Titanic was a British passenger liner operated by the White Star Line that sank in the North Atlantic Ocean in the early morning hours of 15 April 1912, after striking an iceberg. |
| RMS Titanic departing Southampton on April 10, 1912. F.G.O. Stuart |
1912 CE
The Chinese nationalist party is founded. The Kuomintang.
The Balkan Wars consisted of two conflicts that took place in the Balkan Peninsula in 1912 and 1913.
1913 CE
Niels Bohr makes foundational contributions to understanding atomic structure and quantum theory.
1913 CE
Henry Ford installs the first moving assembly line enabling the mass production of an entire automobile.
1913 CE
Yuan Shikai tried to install himself as as the Hongxian Emperor of China.
1914 CE
Gavrilo Princip assassinates Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria in Sarajevo, triggering the start of World War I.
1915 CE
The British ocean liner, RMS Lusitania, was sunk on 7 May 1915 by a German U-boat 11 miles (18 km) off the southern coast of Ireland, killing 1,198 passengers and crew.
1915 CE
The Armenian Genocide was the systematic mass murder and expulsion of 1.5 million ethnic Armenians carried out in Turkey and adjoining regions.
1916 CE
Easter Rising in Ireland.  |
| Sackville (now O'Connell) Street, Dublin, after the 1916 Easter Rising. |
1915 CE
Allied troops landed on the Gallipoli peninsula in Ottoman Turkey, at dawn on 25 April 1915. |
| WW1 Trench Warfare, 28 April 2016 |
1916 CE
Grigory Rasputin is assassinated.
1917 CE
Abolition of the monarchy in 1917 and beginning of Russian Revolution.
1917 CE
Independence of Poland and Finland.
1918 CE
The Hundred Days Offensive defeats Germany. Armistice of 11 November 1918 ends World War I.
1918 CE
Spanish flu pandemic.1918 CE
The Russian Imperial Romanov family (Emperor Nicholas II, his wife Empress Alexandra and their five children: Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia, and Alexei) were shot and bayoneted to death by communist revolutionaries under Yakov Yurovsky in Yekaterinburg on the night of 16–17 July 1918.
1918 CE
The defeat of the Ottomans led to the subsequent partitioning of the Ottoman Empire.
1919 CE
The Treaty of Versailles was signed on June 28, 1919; forced Germans to pay substantial financial penalties and Germany lost about 13% of its territory.1919 CE
Establishment of the Weimar Republic after the collapse of the German Empire.
1919 CE
The League of Nations was established to maintain world peace.
1919 CE
The Italian National Fascist Party is established by Benito Mussolini.
1919 CE
Egyptian Revolution of 1919. Turkish War of Independence begins. 1919 CE
1929 CE
Prohibition in the United States was a nationwide ban on the production, importation, transportation, and sale of alcoholic beverages from 1920 to 1933.
 |
| New York City Deputy Police Commissioner John A. Leach, right, watching agents pour liquor into sewer following a raid during the height of prohibition |
1920 CE
Mohandas Gandhi, an Indian lawyer, led a successful campaign for India's independence from the British.
1921 CE
Adolf Hitler becomes Führer of the Nazi Party.
1922 CE
Irish Free State is established, ending the three-year Irish War of Independence. The Province of Northern Ireland is created within The United Kingdom.
1922 CE
Egypt gains independence from the United Kingdom.
1922 CE
Howard Carter discovers Tutankhamun's tomb.
 |
| Harry Burton: Tutankhamun tomb photographs: c1922 |
1922 CE
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), was a federal socialist state in Northern Eurasia that existed from 1922 to 1991.
1922 CE
The Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 was signed by major nations to prevent an arms race by limiting naval construction.
1925 CE
Benito Mussolini was the fascist dictator of Italy from 1925 to 1945.
1923 CE
Hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic caused considerable internal political instability.
1924 CE
After the death of Lenin, Joseph Stalin won the leadership power battle. Trotsky was eventually expelled from the Soviet Union in February 1929 and he spent the rest of his life in exile.Kemal Atatürk abolished the caliphate and founded Turkey as a modern secular state.
1925 CE
Mein Kampf is published.
1926 CE
Scottish engineer, John Logie Baird, one of the inventors of the mechanical television, demonstrated the first working television system on 26 January 1926.
1926 CE
Hirohito became the 124th emperor of Japan and was the longest-lived and longest-reigning historical Japanese emperor and the second longest-reigning monarch in the world.
1927 CE
The Jazz Singer, a film released in 1927, was the first feature-length motion picture with a synchronized recorded music score and lip-synchronous singing and speech.
1927 CE
The provisional Parliament House, opened in 1927, served as the home for Australia's Federal Parliament until 1988.
1927 CE
Chinese Civil War begins.
1927 CE
World population reaches 2 billion.
1927 CE
Charles Lindbergh made the first solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean on May 20-21, 1927.
1928 CE
Discovery of penicillin by Alexander Fleming.
1928 CE
The Kellogg–Briand Pact of 1928 is an international agreement in which signatory states promised not to use war to resolve disputes or conflicts.
1929 CE
The Wall Street Crash was a major stock market crash that occurred in 1929 and led to the Great Depression. |
| Unemployed men queued outside a depression soup kitchen opened in Chicago by Al Capone, February 1931 |
1931 CE
Floods in China kill up to 2.5 million people.
1931 CE
The 102-story Art Deco skyscraper in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, the Empire State Building, was built in 1931.
1931 CE
The Chinese Soviet Republic was established in November 1931, by future Communist Party of China leader, Mao Zedong.1932 CE
Soviet famine of 1932–33.
1932 CE
BBC World Service, the world's largest international broadcaster, began broadcasting in 1932.
1933 CE
Adolf Hitler becomes Chancellor of Germany and in the following year, Hitler declares himself Fuhrer of Germany.
1935 CE
Conquest of Abyssinia by Benito Mussolini. In the following year, Italy annexes Ethiopia.
1936 CE
Edward VIII was King of the United Kingdom from 20 January 1936, until his abdication on 11 December of that year.
1936 CE
The last known thylacine, dies in Hobart Zoo. |
| Thylacine (juvenile in foreground) pair in Hobart Zoo. c1921 |
1937 CE
Japanese invasion of China. The Nanking Massacre, committed by Imperial Japanese troops against the residents of Nanjing (Nanking), then the capital of China.
1937 CE
The Irish Republican Army attempts to assassinate King George VI.
1938 CE
Anschluss unifies Germany and Austria. Munich agreement hands Czechoslovakia to Nazi Germany. Great Purge ends after nearly 700,000 executions. Kristallnacht in Germany, 1939 CE
End of Spanish Civil War; Francisco Franco becomes dictator of Spain. Nazi invasion of Poland triggers the beginning of World War II in Europe.
1940 CE
Nazis invade France, the Netherlands, Denmark and Norway.
1941 CE
Operation Reinhard begins the main phase of The Holocaust.
1941 CE
The attack on Pearl Harbor, a surprise military strike by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service upon the United States at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Territory of Hawaii. The attack led to the United States' formal entry into World War II the next day.
1941 CE
The Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union.
1943 CE
Battle of Stalingrad ends with over two million casualties and the retreat of the German Army.
1944 CE
D-Day landings in Normandy. Liberation of Paris. The Siege of Leningrad ends with Soviet victory after over a million deaths.  |
| British Forces during the Invasion of Normandy 6 June 1944 Troops of 3rd Infantry Division on Queen Red beach, Sword area, circa 0845 hrs, 6 June 1944. |
1944 CE
The world's first programmable electronic digital computer, Colossus, was invented by British codebreakers to aid the deciphering of German coded radio messages.
1945 CE
Allied bombing of Dresden. Battle of Berlin. Yalta Conference.
1946 CE
Philippines independent from USA.
1947 CE
Independence of India and Pakistan and beginning of First Indo-Pakistani War.
1947 CE
The Truman Doctrine, to contain Soviet geopolitical expansion during the Cold War, was announced by President Harry S Truman. The Central Intelligence Agency was created on July 26, 1947.
1948 CE
The Marshall Plan was an American initiative passed in 1948 for foreign aid to Western Europe.
1948 CE
Founding of the OECD and the World Health Organization (WHO).
1948 CE
Assassination of Mohandas Gandhi.
1949 CE
Creation of NATO.