I have sold items to coutries such as Afghanistan * Albania * Algeria * American Samoa (US) * Andorra * Angola * Anguilla (GB) * Antigua and Barbuda * Argentina * Armenia * Aruba (NL) * Australia * Austria * Azerbaijan * Bahamas * Bahrain * Bangladesh * Barbados * Belarus * Belgium * Belize * Benin * Bermuda (GB) * Bhutan * Bolivia * Bonaire (NL) * Bosnia and Herzegovina * Botswana * Bouvet Island (NO) * Brazil * British Indian Ocean Territory (GB) * British Virgin Islands (GB) * Brunei * Bulgaria * Burkina Faso * Burundi * Cambodia * Cameroon * Canada * Cape Verde * Cayman Islands (GB) * Central African Republic * Chad * Chile * China * Christmas Island (AU) * Cocos Islands (AU) * Colombia * Comoros * Congo * Democratic Republic of the Congo * Cook Islands (NZ) * Coral Sea Islands Territory (AU) * Costa Rica * Croatia * Cuba * Curaçao (NL) * Cyprus * Czech Republic * Denmark * Djibouti * Dominica * Dominican Republic * East Timor * Ecuador * Egypt * El Salvador * Equatorial Guinea * Eritrea * Estonia * Ethiopia * Falkland Islands (GB) * Faroe Islands (DK) * Fiji Islands * Finland * France * French Guiana (FR) * French Polynesia (FR) * French Southern Lands (FR) * Gabon * Gambia * Georgia * Germany * Ghana * Gibraltar (GB) * Greece * Greenland (DK) * Grenada * Guadeloupe (FR) * Guam (US) * Guatemala * Guernsey (GB) * Guinea * Guinea-Bissau * Guyana * Haiti * Heard and McDonald Islands (AU) * Honduras * Hong Kong (CN) * Hungary * Iceland * India * Indonesia * Iran * Iraq * Ireland * Isle of Man (GB) * Israel * Italy * Ivory Coast * Jamaica * Jan Mayen (NO) * Japan * Jersey (GB) * Jordan * Kazakhstan * Kenya * Kiribati * Kosovo * Kuwait * Kyrgyzstan * Laos * Latvia * Lebanon * Lesotho * Liberia * Libya * Liechtenstein * Lithuania * Luxembourg * Macau (CN) * Macedonia * Madagascar * Malawi * Malaysia * Maldives * Mali * Malta * Marshall Islands * Martinique (FR) * Mauritania * Mauritius * Mayotte (FR) * Mexico * Micronesia * Moldova * Monaco * Mongolia * Montenegro * Montserrat (GB) * Morocco * Mozambique * Myanmar * Namibia * Nauru * Navassa (US) * Nepal * Netherlands * New Caledonia (FR) * New Zealand * Nicaragua * Niger * Nigeria * Niue (NZ) * Norfolk Island (AU) * North Korea * Northern Cyprus * Northern Mariana Islands (US) * Norway * Oman * Pakistan * Palau * Palestinian Authority * Panama * Papua New Guinea * Paraguay * Peru * Philippines * Pitcairn Island (GB) * Poland * Portugal * Puerto Rico (US) * Qatar * Reunion (FR) * Romania * Russia * Rwanda * Saba (NL) * Saint Barthelemy (FR) * Saint Helena (GB) * Saint Kitts and Nevis * Saint Lucia * Saint Martin (FR) * Saint Pierre and Miquelon (FR) * Saint Vincent and the Grenadines * Samoa * San Marino * Sao Tome and Principe * Saudi Arabia * Senegal * Serbia * Seychelles * Sierra Leone * Singapore * Sint Eustatius (NL) * Sint Maarten (NL) * Slovakia * Slovenia * Solomon Islands * Somalia * South Africa * South Georgia (GB) * South Korea * South Sudan * Spain * Sri Lanka * Sudan * Suriname * Svalbard (NO) * Swaziland * Sweden * Switzerland * Syria * Taiwan * Tajikistan * Tanzania * Thailand * Togo * Tokelau (NZ) * Tonga * Trinidad and Tobago * Tunisia * Turkey * Turkmenistan * Turks and Caicos Islands (GB) * Tuvalu * U.S. Minor Pacific Islands (US) * U.S. Virgin Islands (US) * Uganda * Ukraine * United Arab Emirates * United Kingdom * United States * Uruguay * Uzbekistan * Vanuatu * Vatican City * Venezuela * Vietnam * Wallis and Futuna (FR) * Yemen * Zambia * Zimbabwe and major cities such as Tokyo, Yokohama, New York City, Sao Paulo, Seoul, Mexico City, Osaka, Kobe, Kyoto, Manila, Mumbai, Delhi, Jakarta, Lagos, Kolkata, Cairo, Los Angeles, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, Moscow, Shanghai, Karachi, Paris, Istanbul, Nagoya, Beijing, Chicago, London, Shenzhen, Essen, Düsseldorf, Tehran, Bogota, Lima, Bangkok, Johannesburg, East Rand, Chennai, Taipei, Baghdad, Santiago, Bangalore, Hyderabad, St Petersburg, Philadelphia, Lahore, Kinshasa, Miami, Ho Chi Minh City, Madrid, Tianjin, Kuala Lumpur, Toronto, Milan, Shenyang, Dallas, Fort Worth, Boston, Belo Horizonte, Khartoum, Riyadh, Singapore, Washington, Detroit, Barcelona,, Houston, Athens, Berlin, Sydney, Atlanta, Guadalajara, San Francisco, Oakland, Montreal, Monterey, Melbourne, Ankara, Recife, Phoenix/Mesa, Durban, Porto Alegre, Dalian, Jeddah, Seattle, Cape Town, San Diego, Fortaleza, Curitiba, Rome, Naples, Minneapolis, St. Paul, Tel Aviv, Birmingham, Frankfurt, Lisbon, Manchester, San Juan, Katowice, Tashkent, Fukuoka, Baku, Sumqayit, St. Louis, Baltimore, Sapporo, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Taichung, Warsaw, Denver, Cologne, Bonn, Hamburg, Dubai, Pretoria, Vancouver, Beirut, Budapest, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Campinas, Harare, Brasilia, Kuwait, Munich, Portland, Brussels, Vienna, San Jose, Damman , Copenhagen, Brisbane, Riverside, San Bernardino, Cincinnati and Accra
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A girl reading a 21 July 1969 copy of The Washington Post reporting on the Apollo 11 Moon landing
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A newspaper is a periodical publication containing written information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background. Newspapers can cover a wide variety of fields such as politics, business, sports, art, and science. They often include materials such as opinion columns, weather forecasts, reviews of local services, obituaries, birth notices, crosswords, editorial cartoons, comic strips, and advice columns.
Most newspapers are businesses, and they pay their expenses with a mixture of subscription revenue, newsstand sales, and advertising revenue. The journalism organizations that publish newspapers are themselves often metonymically called newspapers. Newspapers have traditionally been published in print (usually on cheap, low-grade paper called newsprint). However, today most newspapers are also published on websites as online newspapers, and some have even abandoned their print versions entirely.
Newspapers developed in the 17th century as information sheets for merchants. By the early 19th century, many cities in Europe, as well as North and South America, published newspapers. Some newspapers with high editorial independence, high journalism quality, and large circulation are viewed as newspapers of record. With the popularity of the Internet many newspapers are now digital, with their news presented online rather than in a physical format, with there now being a decline in sales for paper copies of newspapers.[further explanation needed]
Overview
Front page of The New York Times on Armistice Day, 1918
Newspapers are typically published daily or weekly. News magazines are also weekly, but they have a magazine format. General-interest newspapers typically publish news articles and feature articles on national and international news as well as local news. The news includes political events and personalities, business and finance, crime, weather, and natural disasters; health and medicine, science, and computers and technology; sports; and entertainment, society, food and cooking, clothing and home fashion, and the arts.
Usually, the paper is divided into sections for each of those major groupings (labelled A, B, C, and so on, with pagination prefixes yielding page numbers A1-A20, B1-B20, C1-C20, and so on). Most traditional papers also feature an editorial page containing editorials written by an editor (or by the paper's editorial board) and expressing an opinion on a public issue, opinion articles called "op-eds" written by guest writers (which are typically in the same section as the editorial), and columns that express the personal opinions of columnists, usually offering analysis and synthesis that attempts to translate the raw data of the news into information telling the reader "what it all means" and persuading them to concur. Papers also include articles that have no byline; these articles are written by staff writers.
A wide variety of material has been published in newspapers. Besides the aforementioned news, information and opinions, they include weather forecasts; criticism and reviews of the arts (including literature, film, television, theater, fine arts, and architecture) and of local services such as restaurants; obituaries, birth notices and graduation announcements; entertainment features such as crosswords, horoscopes, editorial cartoons, gag cartoons, and comic strips; advice columns, food, and other columns; and radio and television listings (program schedules). Newspapers have classified ad sections where people and businesses can buy small advertisements to sell goods or services; as of 2013, an increase in Internet websites for selling goods, such as Craigslist and eBay has led to significantly less classified ad sales for newspapers.[citation needed]
Most newspapers are businesses, and they pay their expenses with a mixture of subscription revenue, newsstand sales, and advertising revenue (other businesses or individuals pay to place advertisements in the pages, including display ads, classified ads, and their online equivalents). Some newspapers are government-run or at least government-funded; their reliance on advertising revenue and profitability is less critical to their survival. The editorial independence of a newspaper is thus always subject to the interests of someone, whether owners, advertisers or a government. Some newspapers with high editorial independence, high journalism quality, and large circulation are viewed as newspapers of record.
Many newspapers, besides employing journalists on their own payrolls, also subscribe to news agencies (wire services) (such as the Associated Press, Reuters, or Agence France-Presse), which employ journalists to find, assemble, and report the news, then sell the content to the various newspapers. This is a way to avoid duplicating the expense of reporting from around the world. c. 2005, there were approximately 6,580 daily newspaper titles in the world selling 395 million print copies a day (in the U.S., 1,450 titles selling 55 million copies).[1] The late 2000s–early 2010s global recession, combined with the rapid growth of free web-based alternatives, has helped cause a decline in advertising and circulation, as many papers had to retrench operations to stanch the losses.[2] Worldwide annual revenue approached $100 billion in 2005–7, then plunged during the worldwide financial crisis of 2008–9. Revenue in 2016 fell to only $53 billion, hurting every major publisher as their efforts to gain online income fell far short of the goal.[3]
The decline in advertising revenues affected both the print and online media as well as all other mediums; print advertising was once lucrative but has greatly declined, and the prices of online advertising are often lower than those of their print precursors. Besides remodelling advertising, the internet (especially the web) has also challenged the business models of the print-only era by crowdsourcing both publishing in general (sharing information with others) and, more specifically, journalism (the work of finding, assembling, and reporting the news). Besides, the rise of news aggregators, which bundle linked articles from many online newspapers and other sources, influences the flow of web traffic. Increasing paywalling of online newspapers may be counteracting those effects. The oldest newspaper still published is the Ordinari Post Tijdender, which was established in Stockholm in 1645.
Definitions
Newspapers typically meet four criteria:[4][5]
Public accessibility: Its contents are reasonably accessible to the public, traditionally by the paper being sold or distributed at newsstands, shops, and libraries, and, since the 1990s, made available over the Internet with online newspaper websites. While online newspapers have increased access to newspapers by people with Internet access, people without Internet or computer access (e.g., homeless people, impoverished people and people living in remote or rural regions) may not be able to access the Internet, and thus will not be able to read online news. Literacy is also a factor that prevents people who cannot read from being able to benefit from reading newspapers (paper or online).
Periodicity: They are published at regular intervals, typically daily or weekly. This ensures that newspapers can provide information on newly emerging news stories or events.
Currency: Its information is as up to date as its publication schedule allows. The degree of up-to-date-ness of a print newspaper is limited by the need for time to print and distribute the newspaper. In major cities, there may be a morning edition and a later edition of the same day's paper, so that the later edition can incorporate breaking news that have occurred since the morning edition was printed. Online newspapers can be updated as frequently as new information becomes available, even several times per day, which means that online editions can be very up-to-date.
Universality: Newspapers covers a range of topics, from political and business news to updates on science and technology, arts, culture, and entertainment.
History
Gazettes and bulletins
In Ancient Rome, Acta Diurna, or government announcement bulletins, were produced. They were carved in metal or stone and posted in public places. In China, early government-produced news-sheets, called Dibao, circulated among court officials during the late Han dynasty (second and third centuries AD). Between 713 and 734, the Kaiyuan Za Bao ("Bulletin of the Court") of the Chinese Tang dynasty published government news; it was handwritten on silk and read by government officials. In 1582, there was the first reference to privately published newssheets in Beijing, during the late Ming dynasty.[6]
In early modern Europe, the increased cross-border interaction created a rising need for information which was met by concise handwritten news-sheets. In 1556, the government of Venice first published the monthly notizie scritte, which cost one gazetta, a small coin.[7] These avvisi were handwritten newsletters and used to convey political, military, and economic news quickly and efficiently to Italian cities (1500–1700)—sharing some characteristics of newspapers though usually not considered true newspapers.[8] However, none of these publications fully met the classical criteria for proper newspapers, as they were typically not intended for the general public and restricted to a certain range of topics.
Newspapers
Main article: History of newspaper publishing
See also: List of the earliest newspapers and Newspaper production process
Europe
See also: History of British newspapers
Title page of Johann Carolus' Relation from 1609, the first newspaper
Josef Danhauser's portrait Newspaper readers, 1840
The first mechanical, movable type printing that allowed the mass production of printed books was invented by Johann Gutenberg around 1450. In the 50 years after Gutenberg started printing, an estimated 500,000 books were in circulation, printed on about 1,000 presses across the continent. Gutenberg's invention was a simple device, but it launched a revolution marked by repeated advances in technology and, as a result, a popularization of the ideals of liberty and freedom of information exchange.[9]
The emergence of the new media in the 17th century has to be seen in close connection with the spread of the printing press from which the publishing press derives its name.[10] The German-language Relation aller Fürnemmen und gedenckwürdigen Historien, printed from 1605 onwards by Johann Carolus in Strasbourg in the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, is often recognized as the first newspaper.[11][12] The second newspaper, the German Avisa, was published from 1609 in Wolfenbüttel. Both newspapers distinguished themselves from other printed material by being published on a regular basis. They reported on a variety of current events to a broad public audience. Within a few decades, newspapers could be found in all the major cities of Europe, from Venice to London.
The Dutch Courante uyt Italien, Duytslandt, &c. ("Courant from Italy, Germany, etc.") of 1618 was the first to appear in folio- rather than quarto-size. Amsterdam, a center of world trade, quickly became home to newspapers in many languages, often before they were published in their own country.[13] The first English-language newspaper, Corrant out of Italy, Germany, etc., was published in Amsterdam in 1620. In the same year, the Antwerp periodial Nieuwe Tijdinghen[14] was published by Abraham Verhoeven.[15] In 1621, Corante, or weekely newes from Italy, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Bohemia, France and the Low Countreys was published in England by an "N.B." (generally thought to be either Nathaniel Butter or Nicholas Bourne) and Thomas Archer.[16] The first newspaper in France was published in 1631, La Gazette (originally published as Gazette de France).[7] The first newspaper in Italy, in accordance with the oldest issue still preserved, was Di Genova published in 1639 in Genoa.[17] The first newspaper in Portugal, A Gazeta da Restauração, was published in 1641 in Lisbon.[18] The first Spanish newspaper, Gaceta de Madrid, was published in 1661.
Post- och Inrikes Tidningar (founded as Ordinari Post Tijdender) was first published in Sweden in 1645, and is the oldest newspaper still in existence, though it now publishes solely online.[19] Opregte Haarlemsche Courant from Haarlem, first published in 1656, is the oldest paper still printed. It was forced to merge with the newspaper Haarlems Dagblad in 1942 when Germany occupied the Netherlands. Since then the Haarlems Dagblad has appeared with the subtitle Oprechte Haerlemse Courant 1656. Merkuriusz Polski Ordynaryjny was published in Kraków, Poland in 1661. The first successful English daily, The Daily Courant, was published from 1702 to 1735.[13][20]
Americas
See also: History of American newspapers
Fanciful drawing of a general store by Marguerite Martyn in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on October 21, 1906. On the far left, a group of men share reading a newspaper.
In Boston in 1690, Benjamin Harris published Publick Occurrences Both Forreign and Domestick. This is considered the first newspaper in the American colonies even though only one edition was published before the paper was suppressed by the government. In 1704, the governor allowed The Boston News-Letter to be published and it became the first continuously published newspaper in the colonies. Soon after, weekly papers began being published in New York and Philadelphia. These early newspapers followed the British format and were usually four pages long. They mostly carried news from Britain and content depended on the editor's interests. In 1783, the Pennsylvania Evening Post became the first American daily.[21]
In 1752, John Bushell published the Halifax Gazette, which claims to be "Canada's first newspaper". However, its official descendant, the Royal Gazette, is a government publication for legal notices and proclamations rather than a proper newspaper; In 1764, the Quebec Gazette was first printed 21 June 1764 and remains the oldest continuously published newspaper in North America as the Quebec Chronicle-Telegraph. It is currently published as an English-language weekly from its offices at 1040 Belvédère, suite 218, Quebec City, Quebec, Canada. In 1808, the Gazeta do Rio de Janeiro[22] had its first edition, printed in devices brought from England, publishing news favourable for the government of the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves since it was produced by the official press service of the Portuguese crown.
In 1821, after the ending of the ban of private newspaper circulation, appears the first non-imperial printed publication, Diário do Rio de Janeiro, though there existed already the Correio Braziliense, published by Hipólito José da Costa at the same time as the Gazeta, but from London and with forcefully advocated political and critical ideas, aiming to expose the administration's flaws. The first newspaper in Peru was El Peruano, established in October 1825 and still published today, but with several name changes.
Asia
Main articles: Print media in India, Japanese newspapers, and History of Chinese newspapers
During the Tang dynasty in China (618–906), the Kaiyuan Za Bao published the government news; it was block-printed onto paper. It is sometimes considered one of the earliest newspapers to be published. The first recorded attempt to found a newspaper of the modern type in South Asia was by William Bolts, a Dutchman in the employ of the British East India Company in September 1768 in Calcutta. However, before he could begin his newspaper, he was deported back to Europe. In 1780 the first newsprint from this region, Hicky's Bengal Gazette, was published by an Irishman, James Augustus Hicky. He used it as a means to criticize the British rule through journalism.[23]
The Jobo, which is discussed in the Annals of the Joseon Dynasty, is published in 1577 as a privately run commercial newspaper. It was printed daily, and covered a range of topics, including weather, constellations, and current affairs. In 2017, a Korean monk claimed to have discovered an extant copy of the Jobo.[24][25]
Middle East
Main article: History of Middle Eastern newspapers
The history of Middle Eastern newspapers goes back to the 19th century. Many editors were not only journalists but also writers, philosophers and politicians. With unofficial journals, these intellectuals encouraged public discourse on politics in the Ottoman and Persian Empires. Literary works of all genres were serialized and published in the press as well.
The first newspapers in the Ottoman Empire were owned by foreigners living there who wanted to make propaganda about the Western world.[26] The earliest was printed in 1795 by the Palais de France in Pera. Indigenous Middle Eastern journalism started in 1828, when Muhammad Ali, Khedive of Egypt, ordered the local establishment of the gazette Vekayi-i Misriye (Egyptian Affairs).[27] It was first paper written in Ottoman Turkish and Arabic on opposite pages, and later in Arabic only, under the title "al-Waqa'i'a al-Masriya".[28]
The first non-official Turkish newspaper, Ceride-i Havadis (Register of Events), was published by an Englishman, William Churchill, in 1840. The first private newspaper to be published by Turkish journalists, Tercüman-ı Ahvâl (Interpreter of Events), was founded by İbrahim Şinasi and Agah Efendi and issued in 1860.[29] The first newspaper in Iran, Kaghaz-e Akhbar (The Newspaper), was created for the government by Mirza Saleh Shirazi in 1837.[30] The first journals in the Arabian Peninsula appeared in Hijaz, once it had become independent of Ottoman rule, towards the end of World War I. One of the earliest women to sign her articles in the Arab press was the female medical practitioner Galila Tamarhan, who contributed articles to a medical magazine called "Ya'asub al-Tib" (Leader in Medicine) in the 1860s.[31]
Industrial Revolution
Front page of the Helsingin Sanomat (Helsinki Times) on July 7, 1904
By the early 19th century, many cities in Europe, as well as North and South America, published newspaper-type publications though not all of them developed in the same way; content was vastly shaped by regional and cultural preferences.[32] Advances in printing technology related to the Industrial Revolution enabled newspapers to become an even more widely circulated means of communication, as new printing technologies made printing less expensive and more efficient. In 1814, The Times (London) acquired a printing press capable of making 1,100 impressions per hour.[33] Soon, this press was adapted to print on both sides of a page at once. This innovation made newspapers cheaper and thus available to a larger part of the population.
In 1830, the first inexpensive "penny press" newspaper came to the market: Lynde M. Walter's Boston Transcript.[34] Penny press papers cost about one sixth the price of other newspapers and appealed to a wider audience, including less educated and lower-income people.[35] In France, Émile de Girardin started La Presse in 1836, introducing cheap, advertising-supported dailies to France. In 1848, August Zang, an Austrian who knew Girardin in Paris, returned to Vienna to introduce the same methods with Die Presse (which was named for and frankly copied Girardin's publication).[36]
Categories
While most newspapers are aimed at a broad spectrum of readers, usually geographically defined, some focus on groups of readers defined more by their interests than their location: for example, there are daily and weekly business newspapers (e.g., The Wall Street Journal and India Today) and sports newspapers. More specialist still are some weekly newspapers, usually free and distributed within limited regional areas; these may serve communities as specific as certain immigrant populations, the local gay community or indie rock enthusiasts within a city or region.
Frequency
Daily
"Daily paper" redirects here. For the brand, see Daily Paper (clothing).
"Sunday editions" redirects here. For other uses, see Sunday Edition (disambiguation).
A daily newspaper is printed every day, sometimes with the exception of Sundays and occasionally Saturdays (and some major holidays).[note 1] Saturday and, where they exist, Sunday editions of daily newspapers tend to be larger, include more specialized sections (e.g., on arts, films, entertainment) and advertising inserts, and cost more. Typically, the majority of these newspapers' staff members work Monday to Friday, so the Sunday and Monday editions largely depend on content made in advance or content that is syndicated.
Most daily newspapers are sold in the morning. Afternoon or evening papers, once common but now scarce, are aimed more at commuters and office workers. In practice (though this may vary according to country), a morning newspaper is available in early editions from before midnight on the night before its cover date, further editions being printed and distributed during the night. The later editions can include breaking news which was first revealed that day, after the morning edition was already printed. Previews of tomorrow's newspapers are often a feature of late night news programs, such as Newsnight in the United Kingdom. In 1650, the first daily newspaper appeared, Einkommende Zeitung,[37] published by Timotheus Ritzsch in Leipzig, Germany.[38]
In the United Kingdom and some other Commonwealth countries, unlike most other countries, daily newspapers do not publish on Sundays. In the past there were independent Sunday newspapers; nowadays the same publisher often produces a Sunday newspaper, distinct in many ways from the daily, usually with a related name; e.g., The Times and The Sunday Times are distinct newspapers owned by the same company, and an article published in the latter would never be credited to The Times.
In some cases a Sunday edition is an expanded version of a newspaper from the same publisher; in other cases, particularly in Britain, it may be a separate enterprise, e.g., The Observer, not affiliated with a daily newspaper from its founding in 1791 until it was acquired by The Guardian in 1993. Usually, it is a specially expanded edition, often several times the thickness and weight of the weekday editions and containing generally special sections not found in the weekday editions, such as Sunday comics and Sunday magazines (such as The New York Times Magazine and The Sunday Times Magazine).
In some countries daily newspapers are not published on Christmas Day, but weekly newspapers would change their day e.g. Sunday newspapers are published on Saturday December 24, Christmas Eve when Christmas Day falls on Sunday.
Semi-weekly
Some newspapers are published two times a week and are known as semi-weekly publications.
Triweekly
As the name suggests, a triweekly publishes three times a week. The Meridian Star is an example of such a publication.[39]
Weekly
Main article: Weekly newspaper
Weekly newspapers are published once a week, and tend to be smaller than daily papers.
Biweekly
Some publications are published, for example, fortnightly (or biweekly in American parlance). They may have a change from normal weekly day of the week during the Christmas period depending the day of the week Christmas Day is falling on.
Geographical scope and distribution
Local or regional
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A local newspaper serves a region such as a city, or part of a large city. Almost every market has one or two newspapers that dominate the area. Large metropolitan newspapers often have large distribution networks, and can be found outside their normal area, sometimes widely, sometimes from fewer sources.
National
See also: List of national newspapers
International newspapers on sale in Paris
Most nations have at least one newspaper that circulates throughout the whole country: a national newspaper. Some national newspapers, such as the Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal, are specialised (in these examples, on financial matters). There are many national newspapers in the United Kingdom, but only a few in the United States and Canada. In Canada, The Globe and Mail is sold throughout the country. In the United States, in addition to national newspapers as such, The New York Times is available throughout the country.[40]
There is also a small group of newspapers which may be characterized as international newspapers. Some, such as The New York Times International Edition, (formerly The International Herald Tribune) have always had that focus, while others are repackaged national newspapers or "international editions" of national or large metropolitan newspapers. In some cases, articles that might not interest the wider range of readers are omitted from international editions; in others, of interest to expatriates, significant national news is retained. As English became the international language of business and technology, many newspapers formerly published only in non-English languages have also developed English-language editions. In places as varied as Jerusalem and Mumbai, newspapers are printed for a local and international English-speaking public, and for tourists. The advent of the Internet has also allowed non-English-language newspapers to put out a scaled-down English version to give their newspaper a global outreach.
Similarly, in many countries with a large foreign-language-speaking population or many tourists, newspapers in languages other than the national language are both published locally and imported. For example, newspapers and magazines from many countries, and locally published newspapers in many languages, are ready to be found on news-stands in central London. In the US state of Florida, so many tourists from the French-speaking Canadian province of Quebec visit for long stays during the winter ("snowbirds") that some newsstands and stores sell French-language newspapers such as Le Droit.
Subject matter
General newspapers cover all topics, with different emphasis. While at least mentioning all topics, some might have good coverage of international events of importance; others might concentrate more on national or local entertainment or sports. Specialised newspapers might concentrate more specifically on, for example, financial matters. There are publications covering exclusively sports, or certain sports, horse-racing, theatre, and so on, although they may no longer be called newspapers.[citation needed]
Technology
Soldiers in an East German tank unit reading about the erection of the Berlin Wall in 1961 in Neues Deutschland
Print
Main article: printing press
For centuries newspapers were printed on paper and supplied physically to readers either by the local distribution or in some cases by mail, for example for British expatriates living in India or Hong Kong who subscribed to British newspapers. Newspapers can be delivered to subscribers homes and/or businesses by a paper's own delivery people, sent via the mail, sold at newsstands, grocery stores and convenience stores, and delivered to libraries and bookstores. Newspaper organizations need a large distribution system to deliver their papers to these different distributors, which typically involves delivery trucks and delivery people. In recent years, newspapers and other media have adapted to the changing technology environment by starting to offer online editions to cater to the needs of the public. In the future, the trend towards more electronic delivery of the news will continue with more emphasis on the Internet, social media and other electronic delivery methods. However, while the method of delivery is changing, the newspaper and the industry still have a niche in the world.
Online
Main article: Online newspaper
As of 2007, virtually all major printed newspapers produced online editions distributed over the Internet, which, depending on the country, may be regulated by journalism organizations such as the Press Complaints Commission in the UK.[41] But as some publishers find their print-based models increasingly unsustainable,[42] Web-based "newspapers" have also started to appear, such as the Southport Reporter in the UK and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which stopped publishing in print after 149 years in March 2009 and became an online-only paper.
Since 2005 in the UK more than 200 regional newspapers have closed down resulting in a 50% decline in the number of regional journalists. A 2016 study by King's College, London, found that the towns that lost their local newspapers receded from democratic values and experienced the loss of public faith in the authorities.[43]
A new trend in newspaper publishing is the introduction of personalization through on-demand printing technologies or with online news aggregator websites like Google news. Customized newspapers allow the reader to create their individual newspaper through the selection of individual pages from multiple publications. This "Best of" approach allows revival of the print-based model and opens up a new distribution channel to increase coverage beneath the usual boundaries of distribution. Customized newspapers online have been offered by MyYahoo, I-Google, CRAYON, ICurrent.com, Kibboko.com, Twitter. times and many others. With these online newspapers, the reader can select how much of each section (politics, sports, arts, etc.) they wish to see in their news.
Organization and personnel
The Telegraph printing house in Macon, Georgia, c. 1876
A newsboy selling the Toronto Telegram in Canada in 1905
The newsroom of Gazeta Lubuska in Zielona Góra, Poland
The office building of Tyrvään Sanomat in Sastamala, Finland
A night in the newsroom at Daily Nebraskan
In the U.S., the overall manager or chief executive of the newspaper is the publisher.[44] In small newspapers, the owner of the publication (or the largest shareholder in the corporation that owns the publication) is usually the publisher.[citation needed] Most newspapers have four main departments devoted to publishing the newspaper itself—editorial, production/printing, circulation, and advertising, although they are frequently referred to by a variety of other names. Most papers also have the non-newspaper-specific departments found in other businesses of comparable size, such as accounting, marketing, human resources, and IT.
Throughout the English-speaking world, the person who selects the content for the newspaper is usually referred to as the editor. Variations on this title such as editor-in-chief, executive editor, and so on are common. For small newspapers, a single editor may be responsible for all content areas. At large newspapers, the most senior editor is in overall charge of the publication, while less senior editors may each focus on one subject area, such as local news or sports. These divisions are called news bureaus or "desks", and each is supervised by a designated editor. Most newspaper editors copy edit the stories for their part of the newspaper, but they may share their workload with proofreaders and fact checkers.
Reporters are journalists who primarily report facts that they have gathered, and those who write longer, less news-oriented articles may be called feature writers. Photographers and graphic artists provide images and illustrations to support articles. Journalists often specialize in a subject area, called a beat, such as sports, religion, or science. Columnists are journalists who write regular articles recounting their personal opinions and experiences. Printers and press operators physically print the newspaper. Printing is outsourced by many newspapers, partly because of the cost of an offset web press (the most common kind of press used to print newspapers), and also because a small newspaper's print run might require less than an hour of operation, meaning that if the newspaper had its own press it would sit idle most of the time. If the newspaper offers information online, webmasters and web designers may be employed to upload stories to the newspaper's website.
The staff of the circulation department liaise with retailers who sell the newspaper; sell subscriptions; and supervise distribution of the printed newspapers through the mail, by newspaper carriers, at retailers, and through vending machines. Free newspapers do not sell subscriptions, but they still have a circulation department responsible for distributing the newspapers. Sales staff in the advertising department not only sell ad space to clients such as local businesses, but also help clients design and plan their advertising campaigns. Other members of the advertising department may include graphic designers, who design ads according to the customers' specifications and the department's policies. In an advertising-free newspaper, there is no advertising department.
Zoned and other editions
Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz in its Hebrew and English editions
Newspapers often refine distribution of ads and news through zoning and editioning. Zoning occurs when advertising and editorial content change to reflect the location to which the product is delivered. The editorial content often may change merely to reflect changes in advertising—the quantity and layout of which affects the space available for editorial—or may contain region-specific news. In rare instances, the advertising may not change from one zone to another, but there will be different region-specific editorial content. As the content can vary widely, zoned editions are often produced in parallel. Editioning occurs in the main sections as news is updated throughout the night. The advertising is usually the same in each edition (with the exception of zoned regionals, in which it is often the 'B' section of local news that undergoes advertising changes). As each edition represents the latest news available for the next press run, these editions are produced linearly, with one completed edition being copied and updated for the next edition. The previous edition is always copied to maintain a Newspaper of Record and to fall back on if a quick correction is needed for the press. For example, both The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal offer a regional edition, printed through a local contractor, and featuring locale specific content. The Journal's global advertising rate card provides a good example of editioning.[45]
See also Los Angeles Times suburban sections.
Format
Yomiuri Shimbun, a broadsheet in Japan credited with having the largest newspaper circulation in the world
Most modern newspapers[46] are in one of three sizes:
Broadsheets: 600 mm × 380 mm (23+1⁄2 in × 15 in), generally associated with more intellectual newspapers, although a trend towards "compact" newspapers is changing this. Examples include The Daily Telegraph in the United Kingdom.
Tabloids: half the size of broadsheets at 380 mm × 300 mm (15 in × 11+3⁄4 in), and often perceived as sensationalist in contrast to broadsheets.[citation needed] Examples include The Sun, The National Enquirer, The Star Magazine, New York Post, the Chicago Sun-Times, and The Globe.
"Microdaily" is infrequently used to refer to a tabloid-sized free daily newspaper that offers lower ad rates than its broadsheet competitors.[citation needed] The content of a microdaily can range from intense local news coverage to a combination of local and national stories.[citation needed]
Berliner or Midi: 470 mm × 315 mm (18+1⁄2 in × 12+1⁄2 in) used by European papers such as Le Monde in France, La Stampa in Italy, El País in Spain and, from 2005 until 2018, The Guardian in the United Kingdom.
Newspapers are usually printed on cheap, off-white paper known as newsprint. Since the 1980s, the newspaper industry has largely moved away from lower-quality letterpress printing to higher-quality, four-color process, offset printing. In addition, desktop computers, word processing software, graphics software, digital cameras and digital prepress and typesetting technologies have revolutionized the newspaper production process. These technologies have enabled newspapers to publish color photographs and graphics, as well as innovative layouts and better design.
To help their titles stand out on newsstands, some newspapers are printed on coloured newsprint. For example, the Financial Times is printed on a distinctive salmon pink paper, and Sheffield's weekly sports publication derives its name, the Green 'Un, from the traditional colour of its paper. The Italian sports newspaper La Gazzetta dello Sport is also printed on pink paper while L'Équipe (formerly L'Auto) is printed on yellow paper. Both the latter promoted major cycling races and their newsprint colours were reflected in the colours of the jerseys used to denote the race leader; for example the leader in the Giro d'Italia wears a pink jersey.
Circulation and readership
Main articles: List of newspapers in the World by circulation, Newspaper circulation, and Ageing of newspaper readership
The number of copies distributed, either on an average day or on particular days (typically Sunday), is called the newspaper's circulation and is one of the principal factors used to set advertising rates. Circulation is not necessarily the same as copies sold, since some copies or newspapers are distributed without cost. Readership figures may be higher than circulation figures, because many copies are read by more than one person, although this is offset by the number of copies distributed but not read (especially for those distributed free). In the United States, the Alliance for Audited Media maintains historical and current data on average circulation of daily and weekly newspapers and other periodicals.
According to the Guinness Book of Records, the daily circulation of the Soviet newspaper Trud exceeded 21,500,000 in 1990, while the Soviet weekly Argumenty i Fakty boasted a circulation of 33,500,000 in 1991. According to United Nations data from 1995 Japan has three daily papers—the Yomiuri Shimbun with circulations well above 5.5 million. Germany's Bild, with a circulation of 1.15 million, was the only other paper in that category. In the United Kingdom, The Sun is the top seller, with around 1.2 million copies distributed daily. In the U.S., The Wall Street Journal has a daily circulation of approximately 2.02 million, making it the most widely distributed paper in the country.[47]
While paid readership of print newspapers has been steadily declining in the developed OECD nations, it has been rising in the chief developing nations (Brazil, India, Indonesia, China and South Africa), whose paid daily circulation exceeded those of the developed nations for the first time in 2008.[48] In India,[49] The Times of India is the largest-circulation English newspaper, with 3.14 million copies daily. According to the 2009 Indian Readership Survey, the Dainik Jagran is the most-read, local-language (Hindi) newspaper, with 55.7 million readers.[50] According to Tom Standage of The Economist, India currently has daily newspaper circulation of 110 million copies.[51]
A common measure of a newspaper's health is market penetration, expressed as a percentage of households that receive a copy of the newspaper against the total number of households in the paper's market area. In the 1920s, on a national basis in the U.S., daily newspapers achieved market penetration of 123 percent (meaning the average U.S. household received 1.23 newspapers). As other media began to compete with newspapers, and as printing became easier and less expensive giving rise to a greater diversity of publications, market penetration began to decline. It was not until the early 1970s, however, that market penetration dipped below 100 percent. By 2000, it was 53 percent and still falling.[52] Many paid-for newspapers offer a variety of subscription plans. For example, someone might want only a Sunday paper, or perhaps only Sunday and Saturday, or maybe only a workweek subscription, or perhaps a daily subscription. Most newspapers provide some or all of their content on the Internet, either at no cost or for a fee. In some cases, free access is available only for a matter of days or weeks, or for a certain number of viewed articles, after which readers must register and provide personal data. In other cases, free archives are provided.
Newspaper vendor, Paddington, London, February 2005
Newspaper vendor, Paddington, London, February 2005
Duration: 40 seconds.0:40
Attempting to buy a newspaper
Advertising
Newspaper and advertisement, Argentina
A newspaper typically generates 70–80% of its revenue from advertising, and the remainder from sales and subscriptions.[53] The portion of the newspaper that is not advertising is called editorial content, editorial matter, or simply editorial, although the last term is also used to refer specifically to those articles in which the newspaper and its guest writers express their opinions. (This distinction, however, developed over time – early publishers like Girardin (France) and Zang (Austria) did not always distinguish paid items from editorial content.). The business model of having advertising subsidize the cost of printing and distributing newspapers (and, it is always hoped, the making of a profit) rather than having subscribers cover the full cost was first done, it seems, in 1833 by The Sun, a daily paper that was published in New York City. Rather than charging 6 cents per copy, the price of a typical New York daily at the time, they charged 1-cent, and depended on advertising to make up the difference.[54]
Newspapers in countries with easy access to the web have been hurt by the decline of many traditional advertisers. Department stores and supermarkets could be relied upon in the past to buy pages of newspaper advertisements, but due to industry consolidation are much less likely to do so now.[55] Additionally, newspapers are seeing traditional advertisers shift to new media platforms. The classified category is shifting to sites including Craigslist, employment websites, and auto sites. National advertisers are shifting to many types of digital content including websites, rich media platforms, and mobile.
In recent years, the advertorial emerged. Advertorials are most commonly recognized as an opposite-editorial which third parties pay a fee to have included in the paper. Advertorials commonly advertise new products or techniques, such as a new design for golf equipment, a new form of laser surgery, or weight-loss drugs. The tone is usually closer to that of a press release than of an objective news story. Such articles are often clearly distinguished from editorial content through either the design and layout of the page or with a label declaring the article as an advertisement. However, there has been growing concern over the blurring of the line between editorial and advertorial content.[56]
1938 Dutch newspaper advertisement for women's clothing sold at C&A stores
1938 Dutch newspaper advertisement for women's clothing sold at C&A stores
US newspaper advertising revenue—Newspaper Association of America published data[57]
US newspaper advertising revenue—Newspaper Association of America published data[57]
Journalism
Main article: Journalism
The editorial staff of Severnyi Kray in Yaroslavl, Russia in 1900
Since newspapers began as a journal (record of current events), the profession involved in the making of newspapers began to be called journalism. In the yellow journalism era of the 19th century, many newspapers in the United States relied on sensational stories that were meant to anger or excite the public, rather than to inform. The restrained style of reporting that relies on fact checking and accuracy regained popularity around World War II. Criticism of journalism is varied and sometimes vehement. Credibility is questioned because of anonymous sources; errors in facts, spelling, and grammar; real or perceived bias; and scandals involving plagiarism and fabrication.
In the past, newspapers have often been owned by so-called press barons, and were used for gaining a political voice. After 1920 most major newspapers became parts of chains run by large media corporations such as Gannett, The McClatchy Company, Hearst Corporation, Cox Enterprises, Landmark Media Enterprises LLC, Morris Communications, The Tribune Company, Hollinger International, News Corporation, Swift Communications, etc. Newspapers have, in the modern world, played an important role in the exercise of freedom of expression. Whistle-blowers, and those who "leak" stories of corruption in political circles often choose to inform newspapers before other mediums of communication, relying on the perceived willingness of newspaper editors to expose the secrets and lies of those who would rather cover them. However, there have been many circumstances of the political autonomy of newspapers being curtailed. Recent research has examined the effects of a newspaper's closing on the reelection of incumbents, voter turnout, and campaign spending.[58]
Opinions of other writers and readers are expressed in the op-ed ("opposite the editorial page") and letters to the editors sections of the paper. Some ways newspapers have tried to improve their credibility are: appointing ombudsmen, developing ethics policies and training, using more stringent corrections policies, communicating their processes and rationale with readers, and asking sources to review articles after publication.
Impact of television and Internet
Main article: Decline of newspapers
Further information: Online newspapers
A newspaper press in Limoges, France
By the late 1990s, the availability of news via 24-hour television channels and the subsequent availability of online journalism posed an ongoing challenge to the business model of most newspapers in developed countries. Paid newspaper circulation has declined, while advertising revenue—the bulk of most newspapers' income—has been shifting from print to social media and news websites, resulting in a general decline. One of the challenges is that a number of online news websites are free to access. Other online news sites have a paywall and require paid subscription for access. In less-developed countries, cheaper printing and distribution, increased literacy, a growing middle class, and other factors have compensated for the emergence of electronic media, and newspaper circulation continues to grow.[59]
In April 1995, The American Reporter became the first daily Internet-based newspaper with its own paid reporters and original content.[60] The future of newspapers in countries with high levels of Internet access has been widely debated as the industry has faced down soaring newsprint prices, slumping ad sales, the loss of much classified advertising, and precipitous drops in circulation. Since the late-1990s, the number of newspapers slated for closure, bankruptcy, or severe cutbacks has risen—especially in the United States, where the industry has shed a fifth of its journalists since 2001.[61] A June 2022 report estimated that 2 newspapers die each week, and revealed that the US dropped from 8,891 newspapers in 2005 to 6,377 at the end of May 2022. Journalism jobs dropped from about 75,000 in 2006 to 31,000 in 2022.[62]
The debate has become more urgent lately, as the 2008–2009 recession shaved newspapers' profits and as once-explosive growth in web revenue has leveled off, forestalling what the industry hoped would become an important source of revenue.[63] At issue is whether the newspaper industry faces a cyclical trough (or dip), or whether new technology has rendered print newspapers obsolete. As of 2017, an increasing percentage of millennials get their news from social media websites. In the 2010s, many traditional newspapers have begun offering "digital editions", accessible via computers and mobile devices. Online advertising allows news websites to show catered ads, based on a visitor's interests.
See also
Current events portal
Journalism portal
List of newspaper comic strips
List of online newspaper archives
Lists of newspapers
Off stone
Notes
Example of Monday to Friday-only publishing: the London Evening Standard, once a paid newspaper, now free-of-charge, aimed largely at commuters, does not publish on Saturdays
References
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Plambeck, Joseph (26 April 2010). "Newspaper Circulation Falls Nearly 9%". The New York Times.
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Werner Faulstich: "Grundwissen Medien", 4th ed., ya UTB, 2000, ISBN 978-3-8252-8169-4, chapter 4
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Nelson, Heming (11 February 1998). "A History of Newspaper: Gutenberg's Press Started a Revolution". The Washington Post.
Weber, Johannes (2006). "Strassburg, 1605: The Origins of the Newspaper in Europe". German History. 24 (3): 387–412 (387). doi:10.1191/0266355406gh380oa.:
At the same time, then as the printing press in the physical technological sense was invented, 'the press' in the extended sense of the word also entered the historical stage. The phenomenon of publishing was now born.
"Weber, Johannes: Straßburg 1605: Die Geburt der Zeitung, in: Jahrbuch für Kommunikationsgeschichte, Vol. 7 (2005), S. 3–27" (PDF) (in German). Archived from the original (PDF) on 10 April 2008.
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Arnold, Th.J. Bibliotheca Belgica. Article (in Dutch) (Part 129-130 ed.). Ghent.
De Bom, Emmanuel (1903). Tijdschrift voor Boek- en Bibliotheekwezen. Periodical (in Dutch). Antwerp: Antwerp Library. p. 27.
"Concise History of the British Newspaper in the Seventeenth Century". bl.uk.
Farinelli, Giuseppe (2004). Storia del giornalismo italiano : dalle origini a oggi (in Italian). Torino: UTET libreria. p. 15. ISBN 88-7750-891-4. OCLC 58604958.
"Biblioteca Nacional Digital – Gazeta..., Em Lisboa, 1642–1648". Purl.pt. Retrieved 21 February 2012.
"WAN – Oldest newspapers still in circulation". Wan-press.org. Archived from the original on 7 January 2004. Retrieved 21 February 2012.
Concise History of the British Newspaper in the Eighteenth Century[dead link]
Teeter, Dwight L (July 1965). "Benjamin Towne: The Precarious Career of a Persistent Printer". Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography. 89 (3): 316–330. JSTOR 20089817.
Novo Milênio: MNDLP - Gazeta do Rio de Janeiro, de 1808
"Exclusive: Corrupt system and media". Zee News. 4 April 2014. Retrieved 3 January 2015.
"Korean monk claims to have found world's oldest newspaper". Korea JoongAng Daily. 18 April 2017. Retrieved 1 May 2017.
"세계 최초의 신문…1577년 조선시대 '조보' 실물 발견". 네이버 뉴스 (in Korean). Retrieved 1 May 2017.
Stavrianos, Leften Stavros (2000) [first published 1958]. The Balkans since 1453. C. Hurst & Co. p. 211. ISBN 978-0814797662.
E. J. Brill's First Encyclopaedia of Islam, 1913–1936, p. 952.
Tripp (ed.), p. 2; Amin, Fortna & Frierson, p. 99; Hill, p. 172.
Ágoston & Masters, p. 433.
Camron Michael Amin (2014). "The Press and Public Diplomacy in Iran, 1820–1940". Iranian Studies. 48 (2): 269–287. doi:10.1080/00210862.2013.871145. S2CID 144328080.
Sakr, p. 40.
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Philip B. Meggs, A History of Graphic Design (1998) pp 130–133
David R. Spencer, The Yellow Journalism (2007) p. 22.
Bird, S. Elizabeth. For Enquiring Minds: A Cultural Study of Supermarket Tabloids. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1992: 12–17.
Wurzbach, C. (1891). Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich, enthaltend die Lebensskizzen der denkwürdigen Personen, welche seit 1750 in den österreichischen Kronländern geboren wurden oder darin gelebt und gewirkt haben, (162–165); Jim Chevallier, "August Zang and the French Croissant: How Viennoiserie Came to France", p. 3–30; Diepresse.com Archived 7 March 2009 at the Wayback Machine Article in "Die Presse" on its founding.
"Erste Tageszeitung kam aus Leipzig". www.leipzig.de.
Johannes Weber. "Strassburg, 1605: The origins of the newspaper in Europe". German History 24.3 (2006): 387-412.
Atkinson, Bill (31 March 2020). "Letter to readers and advertisers: The Meridian Star changing to 3 days per week in print". Meridian Star. Meridian, Mississippi. Retrieved 30 April 2020. Effective April 7, we will reduce publishing and delivering the printed newspaper to three days a week (Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday) instead of five days (Tuesday through Friday and Sunday.)
Herszenhorn, David (29 August 2001). "Ask a Reporter". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 27 January 2016. Retrieved 23 January 2015. As of January of this year [2001], the national editions of The Times were being printed at 19 different locations across the United States and home delivery was available in 195 markets throughout the country.
"Journalism Magazine". Journalism.co.uk. 19 January 2007. Retrieved 21 February 2012.
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"WSJ Advertising: Rates". Advertising.wsj.com. Archived from the original on 29 October 2008. Retrieved 10 October 2008.
See K.G. Barnhurst and J. Nerone, The Form of News, A History (2001) for an overview of newspaper form from the late 17th to late 20th centuries.
Liedtke, Michael (26 October 2009). "Newspaper circulation drop accelerates April–Sept". The Seattle Times. Retrieved 26 October 2011.
OECD Working Party on the Information Economy (11 June 2010). "The evolution of news and the internet" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 4 July 2010. Retrieved 14 July 2011."Growth in the BIICS countries by about 35% from 2000 to 2008 very much contributed to this growth, most notably India with a 45% increase in circulation between 2000 and 2008, South Africa (34%) and China (an estimated 29%). Gains are not only occurring there but also in other countries and continents, including Africa and South America." p. 24
"Hindi Newspaper". Dainik Jagran. Retrieved 23 January 2015.
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Standage, Tom (13 July 2011). "Technology and the Global Press". The Kojo Nnamdi Show (Interview). Interviewed by Kojo Nnamdi. Washington, D.C.: WAMU. Retrieved 13 July 2011. See also Print media in India#Readership.
"Newspapers: Audience – State of the Media 2004". Archived from the original on 28 August 2017. Retrieved 27 January 2014.
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"wallstreetcosmos.com". wallstreetcosmos.com. Archived from the original on 21 March 2008. Retrieved 21 October 2012.
Frédéric, Filloux (16 May 2011). "Dangerous blend: how lines between editorial and advertising are blurring". The Guardian. Retrieved 5 October 2014.
"Trends & Numbers". Newspaper Association of America. 14 March 2012. Archived from the original on 18 September 2012. Retrieved 18 September 2012.
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Saba, Jennifer (16 March 2009). "Specifics on Newspapers from 'State of News Media' Report". Editor & Publisher. Archived from the original on 23 September 2015. Retrieved 17 March 2009.
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Clifford, Stephanie (12 October 2008). "Newspapers' Web Revenue is Stalling". The New York Times. Retrieved 10 April 2010.
Further reading
Willings Press Guide (134th ed. 3 vol. 2010), comprehensive guide to world press. Vol 1 UK, Vol 2 Europe and Vol 3 World. ISBN 1-906035-17-2
Editor and Publisher International Year Book (90th ed. 2009), comprehensive guide to American newspapers
Kevin G. Barnhurst, and John Nerone. The Form of News, A History (2001) excerpt and text search
Bleyer, Willard Grosvenor. Newspaper Writing and Editing. (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1913, 364pp.).
Conley, David, and Stephen Lamble. The Daily Miracle: An Introduction to Journalism (3rd ed. 2006), 518pp; global viewpoint
Harrower, Tim. The Newspaper Designer's Handbook (6th ed. 2007) excerpt and text search
Jones, Alex. Losing the News: The Future of the News That Feeds Democracy (2009)
Pettegree, Andrew. The Invention of News: How the World Came to Know About Itself (2014) ISBN 978-0300212761
Shaw, Matthew J. An Inky Business: A History of Newspapers from the English Civil Wars to the American Civil War (2021) ISBN 978-1789143867
Smith, Anthony, ed. (1980). Newspapers and Democracy: International Essays on a Changing Medium. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Sousa, Jorge Pedro Sousa (Coord.); Maria do Carmo Castelo Branco; Mário Pinto; Sandra Tuna; Gabriel Silva; Eduardo Zilles Borba; Mônica Delicato; Carlos Duarte; Nair Silva; Patrícia Teixeira. A Gazeta "da Restauração": Primeiro Periódico Português. Uma análise do discurso VOL. II — Reproduções(2011) ISBN 978-989-654-061-6
Walravens, Hartmut, ed. Newspapers in Central And Eastern Europe (2004) 251pp
Williams, Kevin. Read All About It!: A History of the British Newspaper (2009) excerpt and text search
External links
Wikiquote has quotations related to Newspaper.
Look up newspaper in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article "Newspapers".
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Newspapers.
Scholia has a topic profile for Newspaper.
"Newspaper" . The New Student's Reference Work . 1914.
NewsTornado – Worldwide Newspaper Circulation Map
Print Culture at A History of Central Florida Podcast
Chart – Real and Fake News (2016)/Vanessa Otero (basis) (Mark Frauenfelder)
Chart – Real and Fake News (2014) (2016)/Pew Research Center
Newspaper archives
Newspapercat – University of Florida Historical Digital Newspaper Catalog Collection
Historical newspapers from 1700s–Present: Newspapers.com
Historical newspaper database, from NewspaperARCHIVE.com
More than 8m pages of Historic European newspapers (Free)
Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers from National Digital Newspaper Program.
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World War I, also known as the Great War, started in 1914 after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria. His murder catapulted into a war across Europe that lasted until 1918. During the four-year conflict, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire (the Central Powers) fought against Great Britain, France, Russia, Italy, Romania, Canada, Japan and the United States (the Allied Powers). Thanks to new military technologies and the horrors of trench warfare, World War I saw unprecedented levels of carnage and destruction. By the time the war was over and the Allied Powers had won, more than 16 million people—soldiers and civilians alike—were dead.
Archduke Franz Ferdinand
How a Wrong Turn Started World War I
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Tensions had been brewing throughout Europe—especially in the troubled Balkan region of southeast Europe—for years before World War I actually broke out.
A number of alliances involving European powers, the Ottoman Empire, Russia and other parties had existed for years, but political instability in the Balkans (particularly Bosnia, Serbia and Herzegovina) threatened to destroy these agreements.
The spark that ignited World War I was struck in Sarajevo, Bosnia, where Archduke Franz Ferdinand—heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire—was shot to death along with his wife, Sophie, by the Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip on June 28, 1914. Princip and other nationalists were struggling to end Austro-Hungarian rule over Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The assassination of Franz Ferdinand set off a rapidly escalating chain of events: Austria-Hungary, like many countries around the world, blamed the Serbian government for the attack and hoped to use the incident as justification for settling the question of Serbian nationalism once and for all.
Kaiser Wilhelm II
Because mighty Russia supported Serbia, Austria-Hungary waited to declare war until its leaders received assurance from German leader Kaiser Wilhelm II that Germany would support their cause. Austro-Hungarian leaders feared that a Russian intervention would involve Russia’s ally, France, and possibly Great Britain as well.
On July 5, Kaiser Wilhelm secretly pledged his support, giving Austria-Hungary a so-called carte blanche, or “blank check” assurance of Germany’s backing in the case of war. The Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary then sent an ultimatum to Serbia, with such harsh terms as to make it almost impossible to accept.
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World War I History
World War I Begins
Convinced that Austria-Hungary was readying for war, the Serbian government ordered the Serbian army to mobilize and appealed to Russia for assistance. On July 28, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, and the tenuous peace between Europe’s great powers quickly collapsed.
Within a week, Russia, Belgium, France, Great Britain and Serbia had lined up against Austria-Hungary and Germany, and World War I had begun.
The Western Front
According to an aggressive military strategy known as the Schlieffen Plan (named for its mastermind, German Field Marshal Alfred von Schlieffen), Germany began fighting World War I on two fronts, invading France through neutral Belgium in the west and confronting Russia in the east.
On August 4, 1914, German troops crossed the border into Belgium. In the first battle of World War I, the Germans assaulted the heavily fortified city of Liege, using the most powerful weapons in their arsenal—enormous siege cannons—to capture the city by August 15. The Germans left death and destruction in their wake as they advanced through Belgium toward France, shooting civilians and executing a Belgian priest they had accused of inciting civilian resistance.
First Battle of the Marne
In the First Battle of the Marne, fought from September 6-9, 1914, French and British forces confronted the invading German army, which had by then penetrated deep into northeastern France, within 30 miles of Paris. The Allied troops checked the German advance and mounted a successful counterattack, driving the Germans back to the north of the Aisne River.
The defeat meant the end of German plans for a quick victory in France. Both sides dug into trenches, and the Western Front was the setting for a hellish war of attrition that would last more than three years.
Particularly long and costly battles in this campaign were fought at Verdun (February-December 1916) and the Battle of the Somme (July-November 1916). German and French troops suffered close to a million casualties in the Battle of Verdun alone.
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World War I Books and Art
The bloodshed on the battlefields of the Western Front, and the difficulties its soldiers had for years after the fighting had ended, inspired such works of art as “All Quiet on the Western Front” by Erich Maria Remarque and “In Flanders Fields” by Canadian doctor Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae. In the latter poem, McCrae writes from the perspective of the fallen soldiers:
Published in 1915, the poem inspired the use of the poppy as a symbol of remembrance.
Visual artists like Otto Dix of Germany and British painters Wyndham Lewis, Paul Nash and David Bomberg used their firsthand experience as soldiers in World War I to create their art, capturing the anguish of trench warfare and exploring the themes of technology, violence and landscapes decimated by war.
The Eastern Front
On the Eastern Front of World War I, Russian forces invaded the German-held regions of East Prussia and Poland but were stopped short by German and Austrian forces at the Battle of Tannenberg in late August 1914.
Despite that victory, Russia’s assault forced Germany to move two corps from the Western Front to the Eastern, contributing to the German loss in the Battle of the Marne.
Combined with the fierce Allied resistance in France, the ability of Russia’s huge war machine to mobilize relatively quickly in the east ensured a longer, more grueling conflict instead of the quick victory Germany had hoped to win under the Schlieffen Plan.
Russian Revolution
From 1914 to 1916, Russia’s army mounted several offensives on World War I’s Eastern Front but was unable to break through German lines.
Defeat on the battlefield, combined with economic instability and the scarcity of food and other essentials, led to mounting discontent among the bulk of Russia’s population, especially the poverty-stricken workers and peasants. This increased hostility was directed toward the imperial regime of Czar Nicholas II and his unpopular German-born wife, Alexandra.
Russia’s simmering instability exploded in the Russian Revolution of 1917, spearheaded by Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks, which ended czarist rule and brought a halt to Russian participation in World War I.
Russia reached an armistice with the Central Powers in early December 1917, freeing German troops to face the remaining Allies on the Western Front.
America Enters World War I
Lusitania
At the outbreak of fighting in 1914, the United States remained on the sidelines of World War I, adopting the policy of neutrality favored by President Woodrow Wilson while continuing to engage in commerce and shipping with European countries on both sides of the conflict.
Neutrality, however, it was increasingly difficult to maintain in the face of Germany’s unchecked submarine aggression against neutral ships, including those carrying passengers. In 1915, Germany declared the waters surrounding the British Isles to be a war zone, and German U-boats sunk several commercial and passenger vessels, including some U.S. ships.
Widespread protest over the sinking by U-boat of the British ocean liner Lusitania—traveling from New York to Liverpool, England with hundreds of American passengers onboard—in May 1915 helped turn the tide of American public opinion against Germany. In February 1917, Congress passed a $250 million arms appropriations bill intended to make the United States ready for war.
Germany sunk four more U.S. merchant ships the following month, and on April 2 Woodrow Wilson appeared before Congress and called for a declaration of war against Germany.
Gallipoli Campaign
Battle of Gallipoli
With World War I having effectively settled into a stalemate in Europe, the Allies attempted to score a victory against the Ottoman Empire, which entered the conflict on the side of the Central Powers in late 1914.
After a failed attack on the Dardanelles (the strait linking the Sea of Marmara with the Aegean Sea), Allied forces led by Britain launched a large-scale land invasion of the Gallipoli Peninsula in April 1915. The invasion also proved a dismal failure, and in January 1916 Allied forces staged a full retreat from the shores of the peninsula after suffering 250,000 casualties.
Did you know? The young Winston Churchill, then first lord of the British Admiralty, resigned his command after the failed Gallipoli campaign in 1916, accepting a commission with an infantry battalion in France.
British-led forces also combated the Ottoman Turks in Egypt and Mesopotamia, while in northern Italy, Austrian and Italian troops faced off in a series of 12 battles along the Isonzo River, located at the border between the two nations.
Battle of the Isonzo
The First Battle of the Isonzo took place in the late spring of 1915, soon after Italy’s entrance into the war on the Allied side. In the Twelfth Battle of the Isonzo, also known as the Battle of Caporetto (October 1917), German reinforcements helped Austria-Hungary win a decisive victory.
After Caporetto, Italy’s allies jumped in to offer increased assistance. British and French—and later, American—troops arrived in the region, and the Allies began to take back the Italian Front.
World War I at Sea
In the years before World War I, the superiority of Britain’s Royal Navy was unchallenged by any other nation’s fleet, but the Imperial German Navy had made substantial strides in closing the gap between the two naval powers. Germany’s strength on the high seas was also aided by its lethal fleet of U-boat submarines.
After the Battle of Dogger Bank in January 1915, in which the British mounted a surprise attack on German ships in the North Sea, the German navy chose not to confront Britain’s mighty Royal Navy in a major battle for more than a year, preferring to rest the bulk of its naval strategy on its U-boats.
The biggest naval engagement of World War I, the Battle of Jutland (May 1916) left British naval superiority on the North Sea intact, and Germany would make no further attempts to break an Allied naval blockade for the remainder of the war.
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For four years, from 1914 to 1918, World War I raged across Europe’s western and eastern fronts after growing tensions and then the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria ignited the war. Trench warfare and the early use of tanks, submarines and airplanes meant the war’s battles were devastatingly bloody, claiming an estimated 40 […]
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World War I Planes
World War I was the first major conflict to harness the power of planes. Though not as impactful as the British Royal Navy or Germany’s U-boats, the use of planes in World War I presaged their later, pivotal role in military conflicts around the globe.
At the dawn of World War I, aviation was a relatively new field; the Wright brothers took their first sustained flight just eleven years before, in 1903. Aircraft were initially used primarily for reconnaissance missions. During the First Battle of the Marne, information passed from pilots allowed the allies to exploit weak spots in the German lines, helping the Allies to push Germany out of France.
The first machine guns were successfully mounted on planes in June of 1912 in the United States, but were imperfect; if timed incorrectly, a bullet could easily destroy the propeller of the plane it came from. The Morane-Saulnier L, a French plane, provided a solution: The propeller was armored with deflector wedges that prevented bullets from hitting it. The Morane-Saulnier Type L was used by the French, the British Royal Flying Corps (part of the Army), the British Royal Navy Air Service and the Imperial Russian Air Service. The British Bristol Type 22 was another popular model used for both reconnaissance work and as a fighter plane.
Dutch inventor Anthony Fokker improved upon the French deflector system in 1915. His “interrupter” synchronized the firing of the guns with the plane’s propeller to avoid collisions. Though his most popular plane during WWI was the single-seat Fokker Eindecker, Fokker created over 40 kinds of airplanes for the Germans.
The Allies debuted the Handley-Page HP O/400, the first two-engine bomber, in 1915. As aerial technology progressed, long-range heavy bombers like Germany’s Gotha G.V. (first introduced in 1917) were used to strike cities like London. Their speed and maneuverability proved to be far deadlier than Germany’s earlier Zeppelin raids.
By the war’s end, the Allies were producing five times more aircraft than the Germans. On April 1, 1918, the British created the Royal Air Force, or RAF, the first air force to be a separate military branch independent from the navy or army.
Second Battle of the Marne
With Germany able to build up its strength on the Western Front after the armistice with Russia, Allied troops struggled to hold off another German offensive until promised reinforcements from the United States were able to arrive.
On July 15, 1918, German troops launched what would become the last German offensive of the war, attacking French forces (joined by 85,000 American troops as well as some of the British Expeditionary Force) in the Second Battle of the Marne. The Allies successfully pushed back the German offensive and launched their own counteroffensive just three days later.
After suffering massive casualties, Germany was forced to call off a planned offensive further north, in the Flanders region stretching between France and Belgium, which was envisioned as Germany’s best hope of victory.
The Second Battle of the Marne turned the tide of war decisively towards the Allies, who were able to regain much of France and Belgium in the months that followed.
The Harlem Hellfighters and Other All-Black Regiments
The Legendary Harlem Hellfighters
By the time World War I began, there were four all-Black regiments in the U.S. military: the 24th and 25th Infantry and the 9th and 10th Cavalry. All four regiments comprised of celebrated soldiers who fought in the Spanish-American War and American-Indian Wars, and served in the American territories. But they were not deployed for overseas combat in World War I.
Blacks serving alongside white soldiers on the front lines in Europe was inconceivable to the U.S. military. Instead, the first African American troops sent overseas served in segregated labor battalions, restricted to menial roles in the Army and Navy, and shutout of the Marines, entirely. Their duties mostly included unloading ships, transporting materials from train depots, bases and ports, digging trenches, cooking and maintenance, removing barbed wire and inoperable equipment, and burying soldiers.
Facing criticism from the Black community and civil rights organizations for its quotas and treatment of African American soldiers in the war effort, the military formed two Black combat units in 1917, the 92nd and 93rd Divisions. Trained separately and inadequately in the United States, the divisions fared differently in the war. The 92nd faced criticism for their performance in the Meuse-Argonne campaign in September 1918. The 93rd Division, however, had more success.
Love letters written by poet Rupert Brooke, to his sweetheart Phyllis Gardner, on display at the British Museum in London. (Credit: Matthew Fearn/PA Images/Getty Images)
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With dwindling armies, France asked America for reinforcements, and General John Pershing, commander of the American Expeditionary Forces, sent regiments in the 93 Division to over, since France had experience fighting alongside Black soldiers from their Senegalese French Colonial army. The 93 Division’s 369 regiment, nicknamed the Harlem Hellfighters, fought so gallantly, with a total of 191 days on the front lines, longer than any AEF regiment, that France awarded them the Croix de Guerre for their heroism. More than 350,000 African American soldiers would serve in World War I in various capacities.
Toward Armistice
By the fall of 1918, the Central Powers were unraveling on all fronts.
Despite the Turkish victory at Gallipoli, later defeats by invading forces and an Arab revolt that destroyed the Ottoman economy and devastated its land, and the Turks signed a treaty with the Allies in late October 1918.
Austria-Hungary, dissolving from within due to growing nationalist movements among its diverse population, reached an armistice on November 4. Facing dwindling resources on the battlefield, discontent on the homefront and the surrender of its allies, Germany was finally forced to seek an armistice on November 11, 1918, ending World War I.
Treaty of Versailles
At the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, Allied leaders stated their desire to build a post-war world that would safeguard itself against future conflicts of such a devastating scale.
Some hopeful participants had even begun calling World War I “the War to End All Wars.” But the Treaty of Versailles, signed on June 28, 1919, would not achieve that lofty goal.
Saddled with war guilt, heavy reparations and denied entrance into the League of Nations, Germany felt tricked into signing the treaty, having believed any peace would be a “peace without victory,” as put forward by President Wilson in his famous Fourteen Points speech of January 1918.
As the years passed, hatred of the Versailles treaty and its authors settled into a smoldering resentment in Germany that would, two decades later, be counted among the causes of World War II.
World War I Casualties
World War I took the lives of more than 9 million soldiers; 21 million more were wounded. Civilian casualties numbered close to 10 million. The two nations most affected were Germany and France, each of which sent some 80 percent of their male populations between the ages of 15 and 49 into battle.
The political disruption surrounding World War I also contributed to the fall of four venerable imperial dynasties: Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia and Turkey.
Legacy of World War I
The Spanish Flu Was Deadlier Than WWI
World War I brought about massive social upheaval, as millions of women entered the workforce to replace men who went to war and those who never came back. The first global war also helped to spread one of the world’s deadliest global pandemics, the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918, which killed an estimated 20 to 50 million people.
World War I has also been referred to as “the first modern war.” Many of the technologies now associated with military conflict—machine guns, tanks, aerial combat and radio communications—were introduced on a massive scale during World War I.
The severe effects that chemical weapons such as mustard gas and phosgene had on soldiers and civilians during World War I galvanized public and military attitudes against their continued use. The Geneva Convention agreements, signed in 1925, restricted the use of chemical and biological agents in warfare and remain in effect today.
Photo Galleries
French soldiers work together to camouflage a 370mm railway gun before battle.
French machine gunners take their position in the ruins during the battle of Aisne, in 1917.
French soldiers in Verdun endure the horrors of trench warfare, a strategy that led to rampant disease, shell shock and mass casualties during WWI.
Soldiers in France ready to charge into battle, in an Image titled "Fighting through the night at Mory."
Troops in Passchendaele, Belgium carry a wounded soldier to a medical post for treatment.
A group of Swiss border guards pose behind a fence separating Switzerland and France.
Weathered troops gather behind the French line at Het Sas, near the village of Boezinge in Belgium, after it had been devastated by artillery fire.
Despite destruction all around, the towers of the Our Lady of Reims Cathedral in Reims, France can be seen through the damaged windows of a destroyed building.
Senegalese soldiers serving in the French Army as infantrymen take in a rare moment of rest.
War is all around a little girl, as she plays with her doll in Reims, France, in 1917.
George "Pop" Redding , an Australian soldier from the 8th Light Horse Regiment, is shown picking flowers during the war against the Ottoman Empire in the Middle Eastern theater of World War I. 1918. Palestine.
Some cheerful wounded soldiers wear captured German helmets after the Battle of Neuve Chapelle. The British offensive from March 10-13, 1915 in the Artois region of France lasted only three days, but led to around 11,600 casualties for the British, Indian and Canadian troops, and 10,000 casualties on the German side.
1 / 12: Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Images
Battle of the Somme
Men of the Royal Irish Rifles in the trenches during the opening hours of the Battle of the Somme on July 1, 1916.
Battle of the Somme
British machine gunners firing during the Battle of the Somme. The battle was costly in terms of casualties, particularly for the British army who lost 57,470 soldiers on the first day of fighting alone.
Battle of the Somme
An artillery shell is hoisted into position by French and English soldiers. Artillery weapons caused 70 percent of all battle causalities. Heavy artillery included the French 75mm gun and Germany’s devastating 420mm howitzer, which was nicknamed “Big Bertha.”
Battle of the Somme
British troops during the Battle of the Somme, September 1916.
Battle of the Somme
A British soldier gazes out of a dug-out as the body of a dead German soldier lies nearby.
Battle of the Somme
British soldiers advancing under cover of gas and smoke. World War I saw the first use of chemical weapons in battle.
Battle of the Somme
Battle of the Somme
German soldiers lay dead in a shell hole between Montauban and Carnoy.
Battle of the Somme
British and German soldiers wounded on their way to the dressing station near Bernafay Wood at the Battle of Bazentin Ridge.
Battle of the Somme
A German soldier walking through the ruins of Peronne, in northern France, in November 1916.
1 / 10: Royal Engineers No 1 Printing Company/ IWM via Getty Images
Sergeant Stubby
Renowned World War I canine hero, Stubby, is photographed on the battlefield wearing a coat, hat and collar, with a gun at his side. Stubby once saved multiple soldiers when he roused them from their sleep after a German mustard gas attack.
WWI Dogs
The phrase "war dog" is a technical one, and did not apply to U.S. dogs at this time, according to Kathleen Golden, curator of the National Museum of American History's Division of Armed Forces History. "It wasn't until World War II that the United States began using dogs officially," she says. Before then, they were considered "mascots."
WWI Dogs
In 1922, a bulldog named Jiggs was inducted into the U.S. Marine Corps by General Smedley Butler. He later was promoted to Sergeant Major Jiggs. Germans called the U.S. Marines "Teufel-Hunden," or "Devil Dogs," inspiring Jiggs and a succession of other decorated bulldog mascots.
WWI Dogs
Belgians decorated their dogs with the hats of German soldiers in 1914, after the dogs were used to move light artillery and machine guns on small carts. Ronald Aiello, president of the United States War Dogs Association, says that German shepherds, bulldogs, Airedale terriers and retrievers were the most commonly used dog breeds during World War I.
WWI Dogs
Terriers were a preferred breed during the war, Golden says, for their loyalty, rodent-hunting skills and friendly demeanors. New Zealander soldier W. J. Batt poses here with a regimental mascot at Walker's Ridge during the Gallipoli campaign in Turkey on April 30, 1915.
WWI Dogs
A German Army dog is photographed wearing a hat and glasses, with a pair of binoculars around his neck. The Germans began using dogs in an official capacity during wartime in the late 19th century, not long before the start of World War I. The Allied Forces had at least 20,000 dogs on the battlefields of World War I, while the Central Powers—primarily Germany—had about 30,000.
WWI Dogs
Golden says that during World War I, "Dogs were primarily used as messengers." On July 5, 1916, this messenger dog used by the British Army in Flanders, Belgium runs to the front with urgent messages.
WWI Dogs
Message dogs were often outfitted with collars that had attached cylinders. Here, a sergeant of the Royal Engineers places a message into the cylinder on August 28, 1918, at Etaples, France.
WWI Dogs
Messenger dogs such as "Wolf," an Alsatian, often had to negotiate dangerous obstacles, including barbed wire entanglements. Here, Wolf clears a fence at the Western Front in Flanders, Belgium.
WWI Dogs
While horses were often used to haul heavy guns and other equipment, teams of dogs would also be recruited for hauling weapons and other objects. Italian soldiers oversee dogs performing such work in 1917.
WWI Dogs
Dogs, with their keen sense of hearing, endured frequent exposure to gunfire and other loud sounds during World War I. This dog belonged to Captain Richardson of the U.K., who brought his canine companion with him to the trenches in 1914.
WWI Dogs
Visual cues were critical for dogs on missions during World War I. German soldiers in 1916 appear to point something important out to a dog serving as a messenger in the field.
WWI Dogs
World War I dogs, especially terriers, proved to be productive rat hunters. That was an invaluable skill in the war's rat-infested trenches. Here, a terrier poses with some of his kill near the front lines of France in May 1916.
WWI Dogs
In France in 1915, a dog is dressed up as a German soldier—complete with pipe and goggles—to the amusement of soldiers marching by.
WWI Dogs
Resting in a wooden building at an airfield, German military pilots smoke pipes and chat alongside their canine companion. Dogs were great "morale boosters" for troops on both sides of the battlefields during World War I, Golden says.
WWI Dogs
Mascots such as "Doreen," an Irish wolfhound, were often brought to memorial services. World War I was one of the deadliest conflicts in human history, with military and civilian casualties estimated at over 16 million. Doreen was a mascot of the 1st Battalion of the Irish Guards.
WWI Dogs
These dogs are armed with first aid equipment and stimulants as they help search for wounded soldiers in no man's land.
WWI Dogs
Aiello explains that "dogs were trained to find the wounded or dying soldiers on the battlefield. This would let the medics know who was still alive so the injured could get immediate medical treatment." This dog finds a wounded soldier lying under a tree in Austria, July 1916.
WWI Dogs
A French Red Cross dog demonstrates his climbing skills by scaling a 6-foot-high wall. Dogs often had to maneuver over comparable obstacles while searching for wounded soldiers.
WWI Dogs
"I think that Red Cross dogs were the heroes of World War I," Aiello says. The dogs would not only locate wounded soldiers, as shown in this 1917 image, they would also help to transport them from the battlefield.
WWI Dogs
A French sergeant and a dog, both wearing gas masks, marched to the front lines. Many dogs were injured by toxic gas. Still others died from exposure to chemical agents like chlorine and phosgene.
WWI Dogs
During the spring of 1917 a French messenger dog wearing a gas mask runs through a cloud of poisonous gas.
WWI Dogs
German soldiers and their dogs wore gas masks as well. The Germans were the first to use such chemical weapons during this war, releasing clouds of poisonous chlorine at Ypres, Belgium in April 1915.
WWI Dogs
A German Army dog manages to leap over a trench in France while delivering a message from one outpost to another. Thousands of dogs died while serving in World War I, often while delivering messages. Once a message was delivered, the dog would be turned loose to move silently to a second handler.
WWI Dogs
Two soldiers captured a pair of German dogs during World War I. The canines were named Crown Prince and Kaiser Bill. The men, wounded in battle, posed with the dogs before returning with them to the United States.
WWI Dogs
This dog, photographed in 1915 in a trench at Flanders, Belgium, and other military dogs have safeguarded and aided people on battlefields from before World War I to the present, says Aiello, who was deployed to Vietnam in 1966 with his own canine companion, Stormy. "They protect our troops and would die for us."
1 / 26: Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain
Dazzle Camouflage
One of Germany’s most feared weapons during World War I was its fleet of submarines that targeted ships with torpedoes. A Royal Navy volunteer reserve lieutenant, Norman Wilkinson, came up with a radical solution: Instead of trying to hide ships, make them conspicuous. Shown: British Gunboat HMS Kildangan, 1918
Dazzle Camouflage
Ships’ hulls were painted with startling stripes, swirls and irregular abstract shapes that made it more difficult to figure out the ship’s size, speed, distance and direction. Shown: 1st Aero Squadron
Dazzle Camouflage
Here is an exterior view of a wooden ship built for the United States Shipping Board Emergency Fleet Corporation, by the Pacific American Fisheries, in Bellingham, Washington, 1918.
When submerged, the Germans’ only way of sighting a target was through the periscope, which they could only poke through the water for a fleeting moment. Contrasting patterns helped throw off Germans' quick calculations when aiming a torpedo. Shown is the U.S.S. Minneapolis painted in dazzle camouflage, Hampton Roads, Virginia, 1917.
Dazzle Camouflage
A U.S. warship with dazzle camouflage heading to Europe from the USA, circa 1914-1918.
Dazzle Camouflage
The USS Nebraska (BB14) is shown with camouflage paint, 1918.
Dazzle Camouflage
The USS Leviathan docked at Pier Number 4, Hoboken, New Jersey, April 1918.
Dazzle Camouflage
British WWI transport, Osterle, camouflaged with zebra stripes, November 11, 1918 in New York Harbor. Studies have shown that zebra's stripes can serve the same purpose, making a herd appears to a predator as a chaotic mess of lines from a distance.
1 / 8: IWM/Getty Images
WWI Trenchcoats
Now a fashion icon, the trench coat first gained popularity among British officers during World War I because of its functionality. The water-resistant overcoats proved superior to the standard wool coats in repelling the rain and chill of the trenches—from which the garment gained its name.
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This is a timeline of the 20th century.
1900s
See also: Edwardian Era, Gilded Age, and Progressive Era
1901
January 1: The Australian colonies federate.
January 22: Edward VII became King of England and India after Queen Victoria's death.
March 2: The Platt Amendment provides for Cuban independence in exchange for the withdrawal of American troops.
June: Emily Hobhouse reports on the poor conditions in 45 British internment camps for Boer women and children in South Africa.
September 6: The assassination of William McKinley ushered in office Vice President Theodore Roosevelt after McKinley's death on September 14.
September 7: The Eight-Nation Alliance defeats the Boxer Rebellion, and imposes heavy financial penalties on China.
December 10: First Nobel Prizes awarded.
December 12: Guglielmo Marconi received the first transatlantic radio signal.
1902
January 13: The Unification of Saudi Arabia begins.
May 20: Cuba given independence by the United States.
May 31: Second Boer War ends in British victory.
July 12: Arthur Balfour becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
July 17: Willis Carrier invents the first modern electrical air conditioning unit.
Venezuelan crisis of 1902–1903, in which Britain, Germany and Italy impose a naval blockade on Venezuela in order to enforce collection of outstanding financial claims.
1903
February 15: The first teddy bear is invented.
June 11: King Alexander I of Serbia and his wife Queen Draga are assassinated in a military coup.
July 1: The first Tour de France is held.
July – August: In Russia the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks form from the breakup of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party.
August 4: Pius X becomes Pope.
November 18: Independence of Panama, the Hay–Bunau-Varilla Treaty is signed by the United States and Panama.
December 17: First controlled heavier-than-air flight of the Wright brothers.
The Ottoman Empire and the German Empire sign an agreement to build the Constantinople-Baghdad Railway.
1904
February 8: A Japanese surprise attack on Port Arthur (Lushun) starts the Russo-Japanese War.
April 8: Entente Cordiale signed between Britain and France.
May: U.S. begins construction of the Panama Canal and eradication of yellow fever.
June 21: Trans-Siberian Railway is completed.
Herero and Nama genocide, the first genocide of the 20th century, begins in German South West Africa.
Roger Casement publishes his account of Belgian atrocities in the Congo Free State.
1905
January 22: The Revolution of 1905 in Russia erupts.
March: The First Moroccan Crisis begins, going until May 1906.
June 7: The Norwegian Parliament declares the union with Sweden dissolved, and Norway achieves full independence.
September 5: The Russo-Japanese War ends in Japanese victory.
September 26: Albert Einstein's formulation of special relativity.
October 16: The British Indian Province of Bengal, partitioned by the Viceroy of India, Lord Curzon, despite strong opposition.
December 5: Liberal Henry Campbell-Bannerman becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
Schlieffen Plan proposed in Berlin to defeat France.
The Persian Constitutional Revolution begins.
1906
April 18: An earthquake in San Francisco, California, magnitude 7.9, kills 3,000.
July 13: Alfred Dreyfus is exonerated and reinstated as a major in the French Army; the Dreyfus Affair ends.
August 16: An earthquake in Valparaíso, Chile, magnitude 8.2, kills 20,000.
September 28: The US begins the Second Occupation of Cuba.
October 23: Brazilian inventor Alberto Santos-Dumont takes off and flies his 14-bis to a crowd in Paris.
December 30: The Muslim League is formed by Nawab Salimullah Khan of Dacca.
The Stolypin reform in Russia creates a new class of affluent kulaks.
1907
February – April: A peasants' revolt in Romania kills roughly 11,000.
March 15 – 16: Elections to the new Parliament of Finland are the first in the world with woman candidates, as well as the first elections in Europe where universal suffrage is applied.
July 24: Japan–Korea Treaty of 1907.
The Indian National Congress splits into two factions at its Surat session, presided by Rash Behari Bose.
Persian Constitutional Revolution ends with the establishment of a parliament.
The Anglo-Russian Entente bring an end to The Great Game in Central Asia.
Bakelite, the world's first fully synthetic plastic, invented in New York by Leo Baekeland, who coins the term "plastics".
1908
April 8: Liberal H. H. Asquith becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
May 26: First commercial Middle-Eastern oilfield established, at Masjed Soleyman in southwest Persia.
June 30: The Tunguska impact devastates thousands of square kilometres of Siberia.
July: Young Turk Revolution in the Ottoman Empire.
July 26: Founding of the Bureau of Investigation (BOI)
October 1: The Ford Motor Company invents the Model T.
early October: Austria-Hungary annexes Bosnia-Herzegovina, triggering the Bosnian Crisis.
October 5: Independence of Bulgaria.
December 2: Pu Yi, the last Emperor of China, assumes the throne.
December 28: The 1908 Messina earthquake in southern Italy, magnitude 7.1, kills 70,000 people.
Herero and Namaqua Genocide ends.
First commercial radio transmissions.
The coldest year since 1880 according to NASA.
1909
March 4: William Howard Taft is inaugurated as President of the United States; deep divisions in his Republican Party over tariffs.
March 10: Anglo-Siamese Treaty of 1909 signed (effective on July 9).
March 12: Indian Councils Act passed.
April 6: Robert E. Peary claims to have reached the North Pole though the claim is subsequently heavily contested.
April 13: A countercoup fails in the Ottoman Empire.
July 16: A revolution forces Mohammad Ali Shah, Persian Shah of the Qajar dynasty to abdicate in favor of his son Ahmad Shah Qajar.
Japan and China sign the Jiandao/Gando Treaty.
United States troops leave Cuba.
1910s
See also: Timeline of World War I
1910
February 8: Boy Scouts of America is founded.
April: Halley's Comet returns.
May – July: Albanian Revolt of 1910.
May 6: George V becomes King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions and Emperor of India upon the death of Edward VII.
May 31: Union of South Africa created.
August 28: Kingdom of Montenegro is proclaimed independent.
August 29: Imperial Japan annexes Korea.
October 5: The 5 October 1910 revolution in Portugal and proclamation of the First Portuguese Republic.
November 20: Beginning of the Mexican Revolution (Plan of San Luis Potosí).
1911
January 18: Eugene B. Ely lands on the deck of the USS Pennsylvania stationed in San Francisco harbor, marking the first time an aircraft lands on a ship.
March 25: Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City results in the deaths of 146 workers and leads to sweeping workplace safety reforms.
April – November: Agadir Crisis.
September 29: The Italo-Turkish war which led to the capture of Libya by Italy, begins.
October 10: Xinhai Revolution, which overthrew the Qing dynasty of China, begins.
November 3: Swiss race car driver and automotive engineer Louis Chevrolet co-founds the Chevrolet Motor Company in Detroit with his brother Arthur Chevrolet, William C. Durant and others.
December 12: New Delhi becomes the capital of British India.
December 14: Roald Amundsen first reaches the South Pole.
Ernest Rutherford identifies the atomic nucleus.
1912
February 8: The African National Congress is founded.
February 12: End of the Chinese Empire. Republic of China established.
February 14: Arizona becomes the last state to be admitted to the continental Union.
March: Captain Scott and his companions die in a blizzard on their way back from the South Pole.
March 30: Morocco becomes a protectorate of France.
April 15: Sinking of the RMS Titanic.
July 30: Emperor Meiji dies, ending the Meiji Era; his son, the Emperor Taishō, becomes Emperor of Japan.
August 25: The Kuomintang, the Chinese nationalist party, is founded.
October 8: The First Balkan War begins.
Banana Wars: United States occupation of Nicaragua begins.
1913
January 23: In the 1913 Ottoman coup d'état, Ismail Enver comes to power.
February 9 – 19: La Decena Trágica in Mexico City.
March 4: Woodrow Wilson is inaugurated as President of the United States.
May 29: Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring infamously premiers in Paris which causes a riot.
May 30: Treaty of London.
June – August: Second Balkan War.
August 10: Treaty of Bucharest.
October 7: Ford Motor Company introduces the first moving assembly line.
December 23: The Federal Reserve System is created.
Yuan Shikai uses military force to dissolve China's parliament and rules as a dictator.
Niels Bohr formulates the first cohesive model of the atomic nucleus, and in the process paves the way to quantum mechanics.
1914
June 28: Gavrilo Princip assassinates Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria in Sarajevo, triggering the start of World War I.
July 28: World War I begins.
August 15 : Panama Canal opens.
August 26 – 30: Battle of Tannenberg.
September 1: Martha, last known passenger pigeon, dies.
September 3: Benedict XV becomes Pope.
September 6 – 12: First Battle of the Marne.
September – October: The Race to the Sea leaves Germany and the Allies entrenched along the Western Front.
December 19: The United Kingdom establishes the Sultanate of Egypt as a protectorate.
December 25: The Christmas truce is celebrated by the Germans and the British along the Western Front.
1915
April 22: Second Battle of Ypres begins, first widespread use of poison gas.
April 24: The deportation of Armenian leaders and notables in Constantinople signals the onset of the Armenian Genocide.
May 7: Sinking of the RMS Lusitania.
July 28: In the Banana Wars, the United States occupation of Haiti begins.
The first large scale use of poison gas by both sides in World War I occurs, first by the Germans at the Battle of Bolimów on the eastern front, and at the Second Battle of Ypres on the western front, and then by the British at the Battle of Loos.
1916
January 9: The Allies' Gallipoli campaign ends in failure; heavy losses of Australian troops.
February – December: Battle of Verdun.
March 7: Bayerische Flugzeugwerke, later to become BMW, is founded in Germany.
April 24 – 30: Easter Rising in Ireland.
April 30: The first nationwide implementation of daylight saving time in the German Empire and Austria-Hungary.
June–September: Brusilov Offensive by Russia.
June: The Arab Revolt begins.
June 6: The Warlord Era begins in China after the death of Yuan Shikai.
July – November: Battle of the Somme on Western Front; massive casualties.
September 15 – 22: First use of tanks at the Battle of Flers-Courcelette.
December: The Pact is agreed upon by both the Congress and the Muslim League at the Indian city of Lucknow.
December 6: Liberal David Lloyd George becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
December 30: Grigori Rasputin is assassinated in Russia.
Market Square, one of the earliest shopping malls, opens in the Chicago metropolitan area.
1917
March 8: Russian Revolution ends the Russian Empire; beginning of Russian Civil War.
April 6: USA joins the Entente for the last 17 months of World War I.
May – October: Apparitions of Our Lady of the Rosary in Fatima, Portugal.
June 4: The first Pulitzer Prizes announced.
July–November: Battle of Passchendaele.
October – November: Battle of Caporetto.
November 1 – 2: The Third Battle of Gaza ends in British victory.
November 7 (O.S. October 25): October Revolution in Russia.
November 8: The Ukrainian–Soviet War begins.
November 26: The National Hockey League is formed in Montreal, Canada.
December 6: Independence of Finland.
The first known sale of Girl Scout Cookies begins.
1918
January – May: Finnish Civil War.
January 22: Ukraine declares independence from Russia.
February: Beginning of the Spanish flu pandemic, which lasts until April 1920 and kills tens of millions.
March – July: The German spring offensive.
March 25: Belarus declares independence from Russia.
March 30: The Armenian–Azerbaijani War begins.
May 28: Azerbaijan Democratic Republic declared.
July 4: Mehmed VI becomes the last Sultan of the Ottoman Empire and the last Caliph.
July 16 – 17: Assassination of Tsar Nicholas II and his family.
August 8 – 12: Battle of Amiens.
August–November: The Hundred Days Offensive sends Germany into defeat.
October: the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs is established.
October 29: German Revolution begins.
October 30:
The Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen founded.
The Partitioning of the Ottoman Empire begins.
November 1:
Independence declared in the West Ukrainian People's Republic.
The Polish–Ukrainian War begins.
November 9: Abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II.
November 11:
The Armistice of 11 November 1918 ends World War I.
Poland declares independence from Russia.
December 1: The Kingdom of Iceland, a personal union with Denmark, is formed.
The British occupy Palestine.
1919
Paris Peace Conference writes Treaty of Versailles that punishes Germany.
January 21: The First Red Scare in the United States. Irish War of Independence begins.
February 14: Polish-Soviet War.
March 2: Comintern established in the Kremlin to coordinate Communist parties worldwide.
April 11: The International Labour Organization is established.
April 13: The Jallianwala Bagh massacre in northern India: Acting Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer orders troops of the British Indian Army to fire their rifles into a crowd of unarmed Indian civilians, killing from 379 to 1,000 people and injuring another 1,500.
May 19: Turkish War of Independence begins.
June 28: The Treaty of Versailles redraws European borders.
July: The Egyptian Revolution of 1919 erupts.
July 18: End of Polish–Ukrainian War.
August 11: German Revolution ends with the collapse of the German Empire and the establishment of the Weimar Republic.
November 19: Release date of Feline Follies, the first appearance of Felix the Cat (then known as Master Tom).
First experimental evidence for the General theory of relativity obtained by Arthur Eddington.
Ernest Rutherford discovers the proton.
1920s
See also: Roaring Twenties
1920
January 10: League of Nations founded.
January 17: Prohibition in the United States begins.
February 2: Victory for Estonia in the Estonian War of Independence.
April 25: Mandatory Palestine established.
April 27 – 28: Red Army invasion of Azerbaijan and Armenia ends the Armenian–Azerbaijani War and concludes with their incorporation into the Soviet Union.
September 5: Mahatma Gandhi launches Non-cooperation movement.
Greece restores its monarchy after a referendum.
1921
Mexican Revolution ends.
Russian famine of 1921–1922 begins.
January 25: Premiere of the science-fiction play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots), in which the word "robot" was first used.
February – March: Russia invades Georgia and incorporates it into the Soviet Union.
March 4: Warren G. Harding is inaugurated as President of the United States.
March 18: End of the Polish-Soviet War.
July 29: Adolf Hitler becomes Führer of the Nazi Party as hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic begins.
November 9: The Italian National Fascist Party is established by Benito Mussolini.
November 17: End of the Ukrainian–Soviet War.
December 15: Coup brings the Pahlavi dynasty to power in Iran.
1922
February 2: James Joyce publishes Ulysses.
February 6:
Pius XI becomes Pope.
The Washington Naval Treaty is signed.
February 28: Egypt gains independence from the United Kingdom, though British forces still occupy the Suez Canal.
June 16: End of Russian Civil War.
June 28: The Irish Civil War begins.
October 23: Conservative Bonar Law becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
October 28: March on Rome brings Benito Mussolini to power in Italy.
November 1: Ottoman Sultanate abolished by the Turkish Grand National Assembly; Sultan Mehmed VI is deposed.
November 4: Howard Carter discovers Tutankhamen's tomb.
November 14: British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) established.
December 6: Irish Free State is established, while the Province of Northern Ireland is created within The United Kingdom.
December 16: Gabriel Narutowicz, President of Poland, is assassinated.
December 30: The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), the world's first officially Communist state, is formed.
The union of Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador is dissolved.
The Italian reconquest of Libya begins.
Mohandas Gandhi calls off Non-cooperation movement.
1923
March 3: Time Magazine is first published.
May 22: Stanley Baldwin becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
May 24: The Irish Civil War ends.
June 9: A military coup ousts and kills Bulgarian Prime Minister Aleksandar Stamboliyski.
August 2: Death of Warren G. Harding; Vice President Calvin Coolidge assumes office as President of the United States.
September 1: The Great Kantō earthquake kills at least 105,000 people in Japan.
October 11: Turkish War of Independence ends; Ankara replaces Istanbul as its capital.
October 16: The Walt Disney Company is founded.
October 29: Kemal Atatürk becomes the first President of the newly established Republic of Turkey.
November 8: The Beer Hall Putsch, an attempt to overthrow the Weimar Republic, ends in failure and brief imprisonment for Adolf Hitler but brings the Nazi Party to national attention.
November 15: Hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic ends with the introduction of the Rentenmark.
1924
January 21: The death of Vladimir Lenin triggers power struggle between Leon Trotsky and Joseph Stalin.
January 22: Ramsay MacDonald becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom; first Labour Party prime minister.
January 25 – February 5: The first edition of the Winter Olympic Games is hosted in Chamonix, France.
February 12: Rhapsody in Blue by George Gershwin premieres in New York City.
March 3: The Caliphate is abolished by Kemal Atatürk.
May 24: Immigration Act of 1924 significantly restricts immigration from Asia, the Middle East, and Southern Europe to USA.
August 28: The August Uprising in Georgia against Soviet rule.
November 4: Conservative Stanley Baldwin becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
1925
January 3: Benito Mussolini delivers a speech to begin his dictatorship.
March – April: First televisual image introduced by John Logie Baird.
July 18: Hitler's Mein Kampf is published.
October 5 – 16: Locarno Treaties signed.
Saudi conquest of Hejaz.
Serum run to Nome.
1926
May 12 – 14: May Coup in Poland.
May 28: 28 May 1926 coup d'état in Portugal.
June 19: National Broadcasting Company (NBC) founded in New York City.
July 1: The Kuomintang begins the Northern Expedition, a military unification campaign in northern China.
August 22: General Georgios Kondylis overthrows General Theodoros Pangalos in Greece.
December 25: Emperor Taishō dies; his son, the Emperor Shōwa (Hirohito) becomes Emperor of Japan.
1927
January 1: The BBC is granted a Royal Charter in the United Kingdom.
May: Australian Parliament convenes in Canberra for the first time.
May 13: The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland officially becomes the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
May 18: The Bath School disaster, a series of violent attacks by Andrew Kehoe results in 45 deaths in Michigan, USA.
May 20: Saudi Arabia gains independence.
May 20 – 21: Charles Lindbergh performs the first nonstop flight from New York City to Paris; becomes a world hero.
August 1: The Chinese Civil War begins.
September 18: Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) founded in New York City.
October 4: Mount Rushmore construction begins in South Dakota, U.S.
October 6: The Jazz Singer, the first "talkie", is released.
November 12: Soviet general secretary Joseph Stalin becomes dictator of the Soviet Union.
World population reaches two billion.
1928
March: Hassan al-Banna founds the Muslim Brotherhood.
July 24: The Kellogg-Briand Pact is signed in Paris.
September 1: King Zog I is crowned in Albania.
September 3: Accidental rediscovery of penicillin by Alexander Fleming.
November 14: Afghan Civil War (1928–1929) begins.
November 18: Steamboat Willie, is the first appearance of Mickey Mouse.
December 29: The Warlord Era ends in China.
Malta becomes a British Dominion.
Chinese famine of 1928–1930 begins.
Bubble gum is invented.
1929
February: Leon Trotsky is exiled.
February 11: Pope Pius XI signs the Lateran Treaty with Italian leader Benito Mussolini, after which the Vatican City is recognised as a sovereign state.
February 14: Saint Valentine's Day Massacre, the murder of seven members and associates of Chicago's North Side Gang.
March 4: Herbert Hoover is inaugurated as President of the United States.
May 16: The first Academy Awards are presented.
June 5: Ramsay MacDonald becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
October 24 – 29: Wall Street crash of 1929 and the beginning of the Great Depression.
First people sent to the gulag in the Soviet Union as Stalin assumes effective control.
1930s
See also: Timeline of the Great Depression
1930
February 18: Clyde Tombaugh discovers Pluto.
March 12: Salt March by Mohandas Gandhi and the official start of civil disobedience in British India.
April 2: Haile Selassie becomes Emperor of Abyssinia.
April 19: Sinkin' in the Bathtub, the first Looney Tunes short, is released.
May 27: Construction of Chrysler Building completed.
August 4: King Kullen, widely regarded as the first supermarket, opens in Queens, New York City.
September 14: Aided by the Great Depression, the Nazi Party increases its share of the vote from 2.6% to 18.3%.
November: First Round Table Conference between India and Great Britain, which goes until January 1931.
November 3: The Vargas Era begins in Brazil.
Soviet famine of 1930–1933 and Holodomor begin.
1931
February 12: Vatican Radio first began broadcasting.
March 3: "The Star-Spangled Banner" is adopted as the United States's national anthem.
April 14: The Second Spanish Republic is declared.
May 1: Empire State Building completed.
June: Floods in China kill up to 2.5 million people.
September: Japan invades Manchuria, part of the chain of events leading to the start of World War II.
October 5: Clyde Edward Pangborn and Hugh Herndon Jr. complete the first non-stop flight across the Pacific Ocean in their plane, Miss Veedol, in 41½ hours.
November 7: The Chinese Soviet Republic is proclaimed by Mao Zedong.
December 11:
Statute of Westminster creates the British Commonwealth of Nations.
Independence of South Africa.
December 12: Christ the Redeemer completed.
1932
March 1: Lindbergh baby kidnapping.
March 9: Éamon de Valera becomes President of the Executive Council (prime minister) of the Irish Free State.
June 4: Military coup in Chile.
June 24: Siamese Revolution establishes a constitutional monarchy.
September 9: The Chaco War between Bolivia and Paraguay begins.
November – December: Failed Emu War in Australia.
Third Round Table Conference.
December 19: BBC World Service starts broadcasting.
The neutron is discovered by James Chadwick.
The Nazi party becomes the largest single party in the German parliament.
1933
January 30: Adolf Hitler becomes Chancellor of Germany.
March 4: Franklin Roosevelt is inaugurated as President of the United States
March 27: Japan announces it will leave the League of Nations.
October 14: Germany announces its withdrawal from the League of Nations and the World Disarmament Conference, after the U.S., the U.K. and France deny its request to increase its defense armaments under the Versailles Treaty.
December 5: Prohibition in the United States is abolished.
New Deal begins in America.
United States occupation of Nicaragua ends.
1934
February 12 – 15: The Austrian Civil War results in Fascist victory.
March 24: The United States grants more autonomy to the Philippines.
May 23: Bonnie and Clyde are shot to death in a police ambush.
June 30 – July 2: Adolf Hitler instigates the Night of the Long Knives, which cements his power over both the Nazi Party and Germany.
July 22: John Dillinger is gunned down by the FBI outside the Biograph Theater.
July 25: Engelbert Dollfuss, Chancellor of Austria, is shot dead as part of a failed Nazi coup d'état.
August 1: The United States occupation of Haiti ends.
August 2: With the death of President Hindenburg, Hitler declares himself Führer of Germany.
October 16: Mao Zedong begins the Long March.
November: David Toro overthrows the government of Bolivia in a military coup.
1935
May 31: Establishment of 20th Century Fox.
March 21: Reza Shah of Iran asks the international community to formally adopt the name "Iran" to refer to the country, instead of the name "Persia".
June 12: Chaco War ends.
September 15: Enactment of the Nuremberg racial laws.
October 3: The Second Italo-Abyssinian War begins and goes until February 1937. It includes events such as the exile of Haile Selassie and the conquest of Abyssinia by Benito Mussolini.
1936
January 20: Edward VIII becomes King of the British Commonwealth and Emperor of India.
May 9: Italy annexes Ethiopia.
July 17: Beginning of the Spanish Civil War.
September 7: "Benjamin", the last known thylacine, dies in Hobart Zoo.
October 31: Boy Scouts of the Philippines is founded.
December 11: After a reign shorter than one year, Edward VIII abdicates and hands the throne to his brother, George VI.
The Hoover Dam is completed.
Great Purge begins under Stalin.
1936-1939 Arab Revolt in Palestine against the British begins to oppose Jewish immigration.
George Nissen and Larry Griswold build the first modern trampoline.
1937
May 6: German zeppelin Hindenburg crashes in Lakehurst, New Jersey, ending the airship era.
May 28: Neville Chamberlain becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
July 7: Japanese invasion of China, and the beginning of World War II in the Far East.
August 28: Toyota founded in Japan by Kiichiro Toyoda.
September 21: J. R. R. Tolkien publishes The Hobbit.
December 13: The Nanjing Massacre begins, ending about a month later in January 1938. It results in from 40,000 to 300,000 deaths according to various estimates.
December 21: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is the first feature-length animated movie released.
The Irish Republican Army attempts to assassinate King George VI of the United Kingdom.
Volkswagen founded by the German Labour Front.
1938
March 12: Anschluss unifies Germany and Austria.
April 18: DC Comics hero Superman has its first appearance.
June 15: Hungarian newspaper editor László Bíró fills a British patent of the first commercially successful ballpoint pen. This would popularize the instrument, currently the most widely used for writing, after World War II.
July 6 – 15: Évian Conference ends with all attendee nations save the Dominican Republic refusing to accept more Jewish refugees from the Third Reich.
September 30: Munich agreement hands Czechoslovakia to Nazi Germany.
November 9 – 10: Kristallnacht, a pogrom of over 90 Jews in Germany.
December: Time Magazine declares Adolf Hitler as Man of the Year.
The Great Purge ends after nearly 700,000 executions.
1939
March 2: Pius XII becomes Pope.
April 1: End of Spanish Civil War; Francisco Franco becomes dictator of Spain.
August 23: The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact between Germany and the Soviet Union.
August 25: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer releases The Wizard of Oz.
September 1 – October: Nazi invasion of Poland triggers World War II in Europe. Soviet invasion of Poland begins 16 days later.
September 3: Britain and France declare war on Germany; World War II begins.
September 13: Ferrari founded in Modena, Italy (as Auto Avio Costruzioni) by Enzo Ferrari.
The Palestinian revolt against the British ends.
1940s
See also: Timeline of World War II
1940
January: Chechen insurgency begins in Soviet Union.
March 13: The Winter War between Soviet Union and Finland ends with a costly victory for the USSR.
April – May: The Katyn massacre of Polish soldiers in USSR and the Soviet occupation of the Baltic states.
May 10: Winston Churchill becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
May 15: McDonald's founded in San Bernardino, California.
May – June: Nazis invade Denmark and Norway, followed by Belgium, the Netherlands and France; their governments (except Denmark) are exiled to the United Kingdom.
June: The Soviet Union annexes the Baltic states.
July – October: Battle of Britain, the first entirely aerial military campaign, becomes the first significant defeat for the Axis powers.
August 20: Leon Trotsky is assassinated in Mexico.
September 7: The Blitz, a German bombing campaign against the United Kingdom, begins.
Neptunium is synthesized.
1941
June – December: Hitler commences the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union.
June 25: Continuation War between Finland and the Soviet Union begins. Siege of Tobruk in North Africa is the first major defeat for Hitler's land forces.
September 8: Siege of Leningrad begins.
October: Operation Reinhard commences the main phase of The Holocaust.
December 7: The Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor leads to the USA joining World War II.
Mount Rushmore construction ends.
1942
April 9: Bataan Death March.
May 4 – 8: Battle of the Coral Sea.
May 5 – 6: Battle of Corregidor.
June 4 – 7: Battle of Midway.
July 1 – 27: First Battle of El Alamein.
August: Battle of Stalingrad and Guadalcanal Campaign begin.
Internment of Japanese-American citizens in the US begins.
August 13: Release date of Disney's Bambi.
October–November: Second Battle of El Alamein.
The Manhattan Project begins.
1943
January 15: The Pentagon is completed.
February 2: Battle of Stalingrad ends with over two million casualties and the retreat of the German Army.
April – May: Warsaw Ghetto uprising fails.
May 15: American Broadcasting Company (ABC) founded in New York City.
July – August: The failed Battle of Kursk becomes the last Nazi offensive on the Eastern Front.
October 14: José P. Laurel takes the oath of office as President of the Second Philippine Republic.
November – December: Tehran Conference between Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin agrees to launch Operation Overlord.
A famine in Bengal kills up to 3 million people.
1944
January 27: The Siege of Leningrad ends with Soviet victory after over a million deaths.
February – March: Chechen insurgency ends with deportation of the entire Chechen population.
June 1: First operational electronic computer, Colossus, comes online.
June 6: D-Day landings in Normandy.
June – August: Soviet forces launch Operation Bagration on the Eastern Front, the biggest defeat in German military history.
July 20: Adolf Hitler survives the 20 July plot to assassinate him led by Claus von Stauffenberg.
August 19 – 25: Liberation of Paris.
September 19: The Continuation War ends.
October – December: American and Filipino troops begin the Battle of Leyte in the Philippines.
1945
February 4 – 11: Yalta Conference.
February 13 – 15: Allied bombing of Dresden.
February: Death of Anne Frank.
February 3 – March 3: Battle of Manila.
March – July: Battle of Okinawa.
April 12: Death of Franklin D. Roosevelt; Vice President Harry Truman assumes office as President of the United States.
April – May: Battle of Berlin.
April 28: Execution of Benito Mussolini.
April 30: The Suicide of Adolf Hitler in Berlin as Nazi Germany collapses.
May: End of World War II in Europe.
The Holocaust ends after ~12 million deaths, including 6 million Jews.
June 26: United Nations founded (UN Charter).
July 26: Clement Attlee becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
July – August: The Potsdam Conference divides Europe into Western and Soviet blocs.
August 6 – 9: Harry S. Truman orders the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
August 15: Victory over Japan Day.
August 17: Independence of Indonesia proclaimed begin Indonesian National Revolution.
September 2: End of World War II in Asia with the beginning of the Surrender of Japan.
Related subsequent announcement of the Proclamation of Independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.
October 8: The microwave cooking oven is patented, with the one of the first prototypes placed at a Boston restaurant for testing.
October 29: In Brazil, Getúlio Vargas is deposed in a coup.
1946
March 22: Independence of Jordan.
March 30: Greek Civil War begins.
June 2: Italy becomes a republic.
June 9: Bhumibol Adulyadej becomes King of Thailand.
July 4: The Treaty of Manila declares Philippines independent.
August 16: Mustafa Barzani founds the Kurdistan Democratic Party.
September 30 – October 1: Nuremberg trials end.
October 27: French Fourth Republic established.
December 19: First Indochina War begins.
First images of the Earth taken from space.
1947
March 12: Harry Truman establishes the Truman Doctrine of containment of Communism.
April 15: Jackie Robinson becomes the first African American baseball player to play modern Major League Baseball.
July 26: Creation of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.
August 14 – 15: Partition of India. Independence of India and Pakistan and beginning of First Indo-Pakistani War.
November – December: Three Bell Labs engineers give the first public demonstration of the transistor, an electrical component that could control, amplify, and generate current.
Breaking of the sound barrier by Chuck Yeager in Bell X-1.
Hyundai Group founded by Chung Ju-yung in Seoul, South Korea.
1948
January 30: Assassination of Mahatma Gandhi.
February 4: Independence of Burma and Ceylon (Sri Lanka) from Britain.
April 3: The Marshall Plan, an American initiative for foreign aid of $13 billion to 16 Western European countries, comes into effect.
April 7: The World Health Organization (WHO) founded.
April 16: The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) founded.
April 23: The Soviet Sever-2 expedition become the first party to indisputably set foot on the North Pole.
May 14: United Nations establishes Israeli Independence and the formation of the official State of Israel.
May 15: The Arab–Israeli War begins.
June 24: Berlin Blockade begins.
August – September: Division of North and South Korea.
September 24: Honda founded in Hamamatsu, Japan by Soichiro Honda and Takeo Fujisawa.
December 10: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations General Assembly.
Beginning of apartheid in South Africa.
1949
January 5: The First Indo-Pakistani War ends.
January 5 – 8: COMECON founded by USSR and the Eastern Bloc.
March 10: The Arab–Israeli War ends.
April 4: The Creation of NATO.
May 12: Berlin Blockade ends.
May 23: Creation of NATO-backed Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany).
June 8: George Orwell publishes Nineteen Eighty-Four.
June 14: Albert II became the first mammal launched into space
October 1: Chinese Communist Revolution: Establishment of the People's Republic of China under CCP Chairman Mao Zedong; The Republic of China relocates to Taiwan.
October 7: Creation of the socialist German Democratic Republic (East Germany).
Partition of Kashmir.
Soviet Union tests an atomic bomb.
1950s
See also: Timeline of events in the Cold War
1950
January 26: The Constitution of India comes into effect.
February 15: Release date of Disney's Cinderella.
June 25: North Korean invasion of South Korea begins the Korean War.
June – September: The Bodo League Massacre of prisoners during the Korean War.
August – September: North Korean forces capture most of Korea, to the Pusan Perimeter.
August 25: Bertie the Brain, one of the first computer games, is released.
September – November: UN forces reclaim Seoul and invade North Korea.
October: Alan Turing publishes the Turing test, one of the most influential yet controversial concepts in artificial intelligence research.
November 17: Lhamo Dondrub assumes full political powers as the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet.
Communist victory in the Landing Operation on Hainan Island (March–May) and Wanshan Archipelago Campaign end the Chinese Civil War (May–August).
1951
July 1: Colombo Plan, a regional organisation of 27 countries designed to strengthen economic and social development of member countries in the Asia-Pacific region, commences.
September 8: The Treaty of San Francisco ends the Occupation of Japan and formally concludes hostilities between Japan and the US.
September 18: Release date of the acclaimed science fiction film The Day the Earth Stood Still.
October 26: Winston Churchill becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
1952
February 6: Queen Elizabeth II becomes Monarch of the Commonwealth realms.
May: Bonn–Paris conventions end allied occupation of West Germany.
May 2: The first passenger jet flight route opens between London and Johannesburg.
June 28: Establishment of Miss Universe.
July 23: Egyptian Revolution under Gamal Abdel Nasser overthrows King Farouk and ends British occupation.
July 26: Death of Eva Perón.
November 1: The United States successfully detonates the first hydrogen bomb, codenamed "Ivy Mike", at Eniwetok Atoll in the Marshall Islands in the central Pacific Ocean, with a yield of 10.4 megatons.
Development of the first effective polio vaccine by Jonas Salk.
The Mau Mau Uprising begins in Kenya.
The Slansky Trial in Czechoslovakia.
1953
January 20: Dwight D. Eisenhower is inaugurated as President of the United States.
March 5: Death of Stalin.
April 25: Discovery of the three-dimensional structure of DNA.
May 29: First ascent of Mount Everest.
June 2: Coronation of Elizabeth II.
June 16 – 17: An East German Uprising leads to the arrest and execution of Lavrentiy Beria; power struggle begins between Georgy Malenkov and Nikita Khrushchev.
July 27: End of the Korean War.
August 19: Mohammed Mossadeq deposed in Iran.
October 23: ABS-CBN first began broadcasting.
November 9: Independence of Cambodia.
The first color television is produced.
1954
April 12: The song Rock Around the Clock, by Bill Haley and His Comets, brings rock and roll to the American mainstream.
May 17: The Supreme Court of the United States decides Brown v. Board of Education, ordering an end to racial segregation in public schools.
July 29: J. R. R. Tolkien publishes The Fellowship of the Ring, the first volume of The Lord of the Rings.
August 1: First Indochina War ends.
September 3: First Taiwan Strait Crisis begins.
September 14: The Soviet Union generates first electricity by nuclear power.
October 23: The Western European Union is established.
November 1: Algerian War begins.
November 3: Godzilla is released in Japan.
Two Miami-based franchisees, David Edgerton and James McLamore, purchase the company "Insta-Burger King" and rename it "Burger King".
1955
February 24: Formation of the Central Treaty Organization.
April 12: The Salk polio vaccine having passed large-scale trials earlier in the United States, receives full approval by the Food and Drug Administration.
April 18: Death of Albert Einstein.
April 18 – 24: Bandung Conference.
May 1: First Taiwan Strait Crisis ends.
May 14: Signing of the Warsaw Pact.
August 18: First Sudanese Civil War begins.
After winning the power struggle that followed Stalin's death two years earlier, Nikita Khrushchev assumes control of the Soviet Union.
Antimatter first produced.
1956
January 1: Independence of Sudan from Britain.
March 7: The United States recognises Moroccos independence from France
March 20: Independence of Tunisia from France.
March 23: Pakistan becomes a republic.
May 9: The first Eurovision is held in Switzerland.
October 29 – November 7: Nasser's nationalisation of the Suez Canal triggers the Suez crisis.
November 11: The Hungarian Uprising crushed by Soviet troops.
Construction of Brasília, the new capital of Brazil to replace Rio de Janeiro, begins.
1957
Boeing 707 jet airliner introduced in 1957
January 10: Harold Macmillan becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
March 6: Independence of Ghana from Britain.
March 17: Philippine President Ramon Magsaysay and 24 others are killed in a plane crash.
March 25: Treaty of Rome, which would eventually lead to the European Union.
August 31: Independence of the Federation of Malaya.
October 4: Launch of Sputnik 1 and the beginning of the Space Age.
November 3: Laika becomes the first animal launched into Earth orbit.
December 20: First flight of the Boeing 707.
First prescription of the combined oral contraceptive pill.
Beginning of the Asian flu in China, leading to a worldwide pandemic that lasts until the following year.
1958
May 31: Pizza Hut founded.
May: May 1958 crisis in France.
July 29: NASA formed.
July – October: 1958 Lebanon crisis.
August 23: Federal Aviation Administration formed.
August – September: Second Taiwan Strait Crisis.
October 2: Guinea gains independence from France.
October 4: French Fifth Republic established, with Charles de Gaulle as its first President.
October 28: John XXIII becomes Pope.
November: Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) founded. CND's symbol, the peace sign, is first used.
Invention of the optical disc and the cassette tape.
Start of the great leap forward in China.
1959
January 1: Cuban Revolution ends.
January 3: Admission of Alaska, the 49th state, into the United States.
March 9: Mattel's Barbie doll debuts in the United States.
February 19: Independence of Cyprus.
March 10 – 23: Uprising in Tibet against China leads to the exile of the Dalai Lama.
August 21: Admission of Hawaii, the 50th state, into the United States.
October 7: The USSR probe Luna 3 sends back the first ever photos of the far side of the Moon.
November 1: Beginning of the Vietnam War, which lasts until 1975.
World population reaches three billion.
Laotian Civil War begins.
Great Chinese Famine begins in China.
First documented AIDS cases.
By this time, the GULAG has been effectively disbanded, after over a million recorded deaths.
1960s
See also: Civil Rights Movement and Swinging Sixties
1960
January 22: First crewed descent to the deepest point on Earth, the Mariana Trench.
March 21: The Sharpeville Massacre, in which the police opened fire against a protesting crowd at a police station in the South African township of Sharpeville in Transvaal, resulting in 69 deaths and 180 injuries.
April 21: Construction of Brasília, Brazil's new capital, finished.
May 1: 1960 U-2 incident sparks deterioration in relations between superpowers.
May 9: The birth control pill becomes commercially available.
May 16: Construction of the first laser.
May 22: An earthquake in Valdivia, Chile of magnitude 9.4 to 9.6, the highest ever recorded, causes 1,000 to 6,000 deaths.
September 18 – 25: The first edition of the Summer Paralympic Games is hosted in Rome.
October 12: Inejiro Asanuma, a Japanese socialist politician, is assassinated during a broadcast on TV.
November 8: The 1960 United States presidential election marks the first televised debates between presidential candidates.
European Free Trade Association formed.
Year of Africa: Independence of 17 African nations.
Khrushchev withdraws Soviet cooperation with China, initiating the Sino-Soviet split.
Mau Mau Uprising ends.
The Beatles form in Liverpool.
1961
January 17: The assassination of Patrice Lumumba begins the Congo Crisis.
January 20: John F. Kennedy is inaugurated as President of the United States.
April 12: Yuri Gagarin, flying the Vostok 1 spacecraft as part of the Vostok program, becomes the first human in space.
April 17 – 20: Bay of Pigs Invasion by Cuban exiles ends in failure.
May 25: In an address to Congress, John F. Kennedy declares the United States' objective of "landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth" by the end of the decade. This would be in fact achieved by the Apollo Project, despite several challenges and much doubt.
August 13: Construction of the Berlin Wall.
September 18: UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld dies in a plane crash.
The Great Leap Forward ends in China after the deaths of roughly 20–45 million people.
The Portuguese Colonial War begins with the Angolan War of Independence.
1962
March 19: The Algerian War ends with the independence of Algeria.
July 2: Walmart founded in Rogers, Arkansas, by Sam Walton.
September 26: A coup ends the Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen, establishing the Yemen Arab Republic and starting the North Yemen Civil War.
October 11: The Second Vatican Council is opened by Pope John XXIII.
October 16 – 29: The Cuban Missile Crisis nearly causes nuclear war.
October–November: The Sino-Indian War, caused by a border dispute in Aksai Chin, ends with a Chinese victory.
1963
January 1: Premiere of the Astro Boy anime, the first to be broadcast overseas.
January 20: Indonesia–Malaysia confrontation begins.
March–April: Birmingham campaign, a key event in the 1954-1968 Civil rights movement
March 22: The Beatles' first record, "Please Please Me", and the beginnings of the British Invasion.
May 8: Beginning of the Buddhist crisis in South Vietnam during the Vietnam War.
May 27: Bob Dylan releases The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan.
June 21: Paul VI becomes Pope.
July 26: Launch of the first geostationary satellite, Syncom 2.
August 28: Martin Luther King Jr. delivers "I Have a Dream" speech at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
November 2: 1963 South Vietnamese coup: Arrest and assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem, the South Vietnamese President.
November 22: Assassination of John F. Kennedy. Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson assumes office as President of the United States.
December 10 – 12: Independence of Kenya and Zanzibar and creation of Malaysia.
1964
January 12: Zanzibar Revolution overthrows Afro Shiraz ruling class; Zanzibar merges with Tanganyika to form Tanzania.
March 31 – April 1: A coup d'état establishes a military dictatorship in Brazil.
March 27: The Great Alaska Earthquake has a magnitude of 9.2 and lasted almost three minutes resulting in the death of approximately 131 people.
May 27: Colombian armed conflict begins.
July 2: Civil Rights Act abolishes segregation in the USA.
July 4: Rhodesian Bush War begins.
July 6: Independence of Malawi.
August 2: The Gulf of Tonkin incident led to the escalation of U.S. military involvement in the Vietnam War.
September 21: Independence of Malta.
October 14: Leonid Brezhnev ousts Khrushchev and assumes power in the Soviet Union.
October 16: China detonates its first nuclear weapon.
November 28: NASA launches the Mariner 4 space probe from Cape Kennedy toward Mars to take television pictures of that planet in July 1965.
1965
January 24: Death of Winston Churchill.
February 21: Assassination of Malcolm X.
March 17: The Voting Rights Act of 1965, inspired by the Selma to Montgomery marches.
April 24: Dominican Civil War: Forces loyal to former president Juan Bosch overthrow current leader Donald Reid Cabral.
April 26: Establishment of Rede Globo, now the largest TV network in Brazil and Latin America and the second-largest in the world after ABC.
May 18: Israeli spy Eli Cohen is hanged in Damascus.
August 9: Singapore gains independence.
August 30: Bob Dylan releases Highway 61 Revisited.
August – September: Second Indo-Pakistani War.
September 30: 30 September Movement in the Indonesia.
November 24 – 25: Congo Crisis ends; Joseph Mobutu becomes dictator of the Congo.
December 8: Second Vatican Council is closed by Pope Paul VI.
December 30: Ferdinand Marcos becomes President of the Philippines.
Beginning of the anti-Communist purge in Indonesia, which killed up to 500,000 people.
1966
May 16:
The Beach Boys release Pet Sounds.
China's Cultural Revolution begins.
August 11: The Indonesia–Malaysia confrontation ends.
September 30: Independence of Botswana.
October 4: Independence of Lesotho.
October 21: The Aberfan disaster, the catastrophic collapse of a colliery spoil tip (pile of waste coal mining material) in Aberfan, Wales results in 144 deaths.
November 30: Independence of Barbados.
December 15: Death of Walt Disney.
Joseph Weizenbaum, a German computer scientist at MIT, completes ELIZA, the first chatbot.
1967
A 0 series Shinkansen high-speed rail set in Tokyo, May 1967
April 21: Greek military coup establishes a military dictatorship led by Georgios Papadopoulos. The dictatorship ends in 1974.
June 5 – 10: The Six-Day War, a conflict between Israel and Arab states that resulted in Israel occupying the Gaza Strip, the Sinal Peninsula, the West Bank and the Golan Heights.
July 6: Attempted secession of the Republic of Biafra from Nigeria triggers the Nigerian Civil War.
July 17: Death of John Coltrane, American jazz saxophonist, clarinettist and composer.
August 8: Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) founded.
May 26: The Beatles release their landmark album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
October 21: The March on the Pentagon becomes a major event in public opposition to the Vietnam War
December 17: Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt disappears while swimming at Cheviot Beach, Victoria.
First high-speed rail introduced in Tokyo.
Mid-year: Summer of Love, in which as many as 100,000 people, mostly young people sporting hippie fashions of dress and behavior, converged in San Francisco's neighborhood of Haight-Ashbury.
1968
January – March: Protests erupt in the United States, Europe and Latin America.
January – August: Prague Spring crushed by the Eastern Bloc military intervention.
January – September: The Tet Offensive occurs in South Vietnam.
March 16: My Lai massacre, a mass murder and rape of unarmed South Vietnamese civilians by U.S. troops in the Vietnam War.
March 21: Battle of Karameh in Jordan (part of the War of Attrition between Israel and Arab states).
April 4: Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
June 5: Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy
August: 1968 Democratic National Convention protests ("The whole world is watching")
September 6: Swaziland gains independence from Great Britain
September – Zond 5 travels to the Moon with the first lifeforms to reach Earth's satellite
December – Apollo 8 orbits the Moon with three NASA astronauts
Another new strain of a flu in Hong Kong spreads again.
The Troubles begin in Northern Ireland.
The Years of Lead, a period of social turmoil, political violence, and upheaval in Italy, begin.
Palestinian insurgency in South Lebanon begins.
1969
Concorde 001 first flight in 1969
January 13: Samsung Electronics founded in Suwon, South Korea.
January 20: Richard Nixon is inaugurated as President of the United States.
March 2: Concorde 001 flies from the first time, from Toulouse, piloted by André Turcat.
March – September: Sino-Soviet border conflict.
April 28: Charles de Gaulle resigns as President of France after a referendum on political reform is voted down.
June 28 – July 3: The Stonewall riots in New York City instigate the gay rights movement.
July 20: Apollo 11 Moon landing, in which Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin become the first two humans on the Moon.
August 8 – 9: The Manson Family Murders – Under Charles Manson's orders, his followers, the "Manson Family" cult, enter the home of Hollywood actress Sharon Tate and murder her and four others.
August: The Woodstock festival in Bethel, New York, attracts an audience of more than 400,000.
September 1: Muammar Gaddafi overthrows King Idris of Libya in a Coup d'état and establishes the Libyan Arab Republic.
October 29: Creation of Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET), the earliest incarnation of the Internet.
November 10: Sesame Street premieres its debut episode.
1970s
1970
January 15: The Nigerian Civil War ends with the reintegration of the Republic of Biafra with Nigeria after ~3 million deaths.
January 22: Maiden flight of the Boeing 747.
January 26 – March 17: First Quarter Storm.
February 18: The Chicago Seven are found not guilty of conspiring to incite riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention.
March 5: Ratification of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.
April 1: U.S. President Richard M. Nixon signs Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act.
April 10: Break-up of the Beatles.
April 11: Apollo 13 (Jim Lovell, Fred Haise, Jack Swigert) is launched toward the Moon.
July 12: Thor Heyerdahl's papyrus boat Ra II arrived in Barbados, bringing an end to its 3,200 mi (5,100 km) journey across the Atlantic Ocean.
September 6: Black September in Jordan begins, lasting until mid-1971.
October – December: FLQ seizes hostages, causing Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau of Canada to issue the War Measures Act.
October 5: The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) began broadcasting as a successor to National Educational Television (NET) in the United States.
October 15: Anwar Sadat becomes President of Egypt.
November 3 – 13: The Bhola Cyclone kills 500,000 people in East Pakistan.
December 1: North Yemen Civil War ends.
December 14 – 19: 1970 Polish protests.
December 18: Establishment of Airbus.
Containerisation adopted globally, massively boosting global trade.
1971
January 25: Idi Amin seizes power in Uganda.
March 26: Bangladesh Liberation War occurred, independence of Bangladesh from Pakistan and precipitates Third Indo-Pakistani War.
April 20: National Public Radio (NPR) airs its first broadcast.
July 5: The 26th Amendment to the United States Constitution, formally certified by President Richard Nixon, lowers the voting age from 21 to 18.
July 17: Black September in Jordan ends.
August 9 – 10: Internment begins in Northern Ireland.
October 27: Joseph Mobutu renames The Republic of the Congo Zaire.
November 15: Intel releases the world's first microprocessor, the Intel 4004.
December: Third Indo-Pakistani War.
Nixon shock removes gold back-up for the US Dollar triggering export of inflation from rich to poor nations.
COINTELPRO officially ends.
Greenpeace founded.
1972
January: Sheikh Mujibur Rahman returns to Bangladesh from imprisonment in Pakistan.
January 30: Northern Ireland's Bloody Sunday.
February 21 – 28: U.S. President Richard M. Nixon makes an unprecedented 8-day visit to the People's Republic of China and meets with Mao Zedong.
March 27: The First Sudanese Civil War ends.
May 8: The airplane serving Sabena Flight 571 from Brussels to Lod, Tel Aviv is hijacked by four members of the Black September Organization, a Palestinian terrorist group, resulting in 3 deaths and 3 injuries.
May 26: Richard Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev sign the SALT I treaty in Moscow, as well as the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and other agreements.
May 30: Lod Airport massacre.
September 5 – 6: The Munich massacre, perpetrated by the Black September terrorist organization and aimed at the Israeli Olympic team, results in 17 total deaths.
November 29: The arcade game Pong, the first commercially successful video game, is released.
Release of A Computer Animated Hand, one of the first ever computer animations.
1973
January 1: Denmark, Ireland and the United Kingdom joins the European Communities.
January 22: The Supreme Court of the United States decides Roe v. Wade.
March 1: Pink Floyd's album The Dark Side of the Moon is released in the UK.
May 3: Construction of the Sears Tower (later renamed to Willis Tower) completed.
May 14: The first space station, Skylab, is launched.
September 11: 1973 Chilean coup d'état.
October: 1973 oil crisis.
October 6 – 25: Yom Kippur War.
December 3: Pioneer 10 sends back the first close-up images of Jupiter.
1973–1975 recession begins.
1974
March 29:
First close-up images of Mercury by Mariner 10.
The Terracotta Army of Qin Shi Huang is discovered at Xi'an, China.
April 25: Carnation Revolution in Portugal begins transition to democracy.
July – August: The Turkish invasion of Cyprus leads to the creation of the Northern Cyprus.
August 8 – 9: Watergate scandal: Resignation of Richard Nixon; Vice President Gerald Ford assumes office as President of the United States, the first person not elected as either President or Vice President to take the role.
September 12: Emperor Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia is overthrown in a military coup. Beginning of the Ethiopian Civil War.
November 24: Discovery of "Lucy" (Australopithecus afarensis) in Tanzania's Olduvai Gorge.
Dirty War begins in Argentina.
World population reaches four billion.
1975
January: Altair 8800, the first commercially successful personal computer, is released.
April 4: Microsoft founded in Albuquerque, New Mexico, by Bill Gates and Paul Allen.
April 13: Bus massacre in Lebanon triggers the Lebanese Civil War which lasts until 1990
April 17: The Cambodian Civil War ends with victory for the Khmer Rouge. Cambodian genocide begins.
April 30: The Fall of Saigon ends the Vietnam War.
June 25: Prime Minister Indira Gandhi declares a state of emergency in India, suspending civil liberties and elections.
August 1: The Helsinki Accords, which officially recognize Europe's national borders and respect for human rights, are signed in Finland.
November 11: Angola declares independence from Portugal and Angolan Civil War erupts.
November 20: Death of Francisco Franco.
November 22: Juan Carlos I becomes King of Spain.
December 7: Indonesian invasion of East Timor begins.
The Killing Fields murders begin.
1976
March 24: 1976 Argentine coup d'état leads to a military dictatorship in Argentina.
April 1: Steve Wozniak invents the Apple I and Steve Jobs then convinces Wozniak to sell the system, giving birth to Apple Computer.
June 16 – 18: Around 20,000 students took part in the Soweto uprising during Apartheid in South Africa.
July 4: Operation Entebbe, a successful counter-terrorist hostage-rescue mission carried out by commandos of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) at Entebbe Airport in Uganda.
September 9:
Death of Mao Zedong.
Release of VHS (Video Home System) in Japan.
October 6: End of Cultural Revolution.
Church Committee, a U.S. Senate select committee that investigated abuses by the CIA, NSA, FBI and Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
First outbreak of the Ebola virus in Zaire.
1977
January 20: Jimmy Carter is inaugurated as President of the United States.
February 9: Queen Alia of Jordan is killed in helicopter crash.
March 27: The Tenerife disaster in the Canary Islands, with 583 fatalities, marks the deadliest accident in aviation history.
March – May: Shaba I conflict involves Safari Club.
May 25: Star Wars is released and quickly becomes the highest-grossing film of all-time.
June 27: Djibouti gains independence from France.
July 13: Somalia declares war on Ethiopia setting off the Ethio-Somali War.
August 20: Voyager 2 launched by NASA.
September 5: Voyager 1 launched by NASA.
September 5: German Autumn: Red Army Faction abduction of Hanns Martin Schleyer.
October 19: Suicide of members of Baader-Meinhoff Group and murder of Hanns Martin Schleyer ends crisis in West Germany.
October 26: The last wild case of smallpox is eradicated by the WHO.
November 19: Egyptian President Anwar Sadat becomes the first Arab leader to visit Israel in the hopes of establishing peace between the two countries.
Introduction of the first mass-produced personal computers.
1978
February 5 – 7: The Northeastern United States blizzard of 1978 hits the New England region and the New York metropolitan area, killing about 100, and causing over US$520 million in damage.
March 14: 1978 South Lebanon conflict.
April 27: The War in Afghanistan begins with the Saur Revolution.
June 19: Garfield's first comic strip, originally published locally as Jon in 1976, goes into nationwide syndication.
June 22: Discovery of Pluto's moon Charon.
July: Louise Brown is the first child successfully born after her mother received in vitro fertilisation treatment.
August 26: John Paul I becomes pope.
September 17: The Camp David Accords are signed between Israel and Egypt.
September 28: John Paul I dies, his papacy being one of the shortest in history.
October 1: Independence of Tuvalu from Britain.
October 9: The Uganda–Tanzania War begins.
October 16: John Paul II becomes pope.
November 18: Jim Jones's New religious movement, the Peoples Temple, ends in the organized mass killing and suicide of 920 people in Jonestown.
November 27: San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and City Supervisor Harvey Milk are assassinated by former Supervisor Dan White.
December 18: Deng Xiaoping commences the Chinese economic reform.
December 25: The Cambodian-Vietnamese War begins.
December 29: The current Constitution of Spain comes into effect, which for some marks the completion of the Spanish transition to democracy.
Beginning of the Nicaraguan Revolution.
Invention of artificial insulin.
1979
January 7: The Vietnamese invasion of Kampuchea ends Cambodia's Khmer Rouge regime.
February – March: Sino-Vietnamese War.
February 11: The Iranian Revolution ends. Shah Reza Pahlavi is overthrown and forced into exile.
March 16: Central Treaty Organization dissolves.
March 28: The Three Mile Island nuclear accident, a partial meltdown of reactor number 2 of Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station (TMI-2) in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, near Harrisburg, and subsequent radiation leak.
May 4: Margaret Thatcher becomes the first female Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
June: Arrival of Pope John Paul II in Poland, eventually sparking the Solidarity movement.
June 3: The Uganda–Tanzania War ends with defeat for Uganda and the exile of Idi Amin.
June 11: Death of John Wayne.
October 15: Beginning of the Salvadoran Civil War.
October 26: Assassination of Park Chung Hee, President of South Korea.
November 4: The Iran hostage crisis begins.
November – December: Insurgensts seize the Grand Mosque in Mecca.
December 12: The Rhodesian Bush War ends.
December 24: The Soviet–Afghan War begins.
Implementation of China's one-child policy.
1.7 million people known to have been murdered in the Killing Fields.
The Nicaraguan Revolution begins.
The 1979 oil crisis becomes the second one since 1973.
1980s
1980
April 18: Independence of Rhodesia, which becomes Zimbabwe.
May 8: WHO announces the eradication of smallpox.
May 18: 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens in Skamania County, state of Washington, leaves approximately 57 deaths and $1 billion of property damage.
May 22: Release of Pac-Man, the best-selling arcade game.
June 1: Launch of Cable News Network (CNN).
July 1: Adoption of "O Canada" as the national anthem of Canada.
July 30: Independence of Vanuatu.
August 31: Solidarity union forms at Poland's Gdańsk Shipyard under Lech Wałęsa, and begins agitation for greater personal freedoms.
September 22: Beginning of the Iran–Iraq War.
November 13: Voyager 1 takes the first close-up pictures of Saturn.
December 8: Murder of John Lennon.
Internal conflict in Peru begins.
Invention of the Rubik's Cube.
1981
January 1: Greece joins the European Communities.
January 20:
Ronald Reagan is inaugurated as President of the United States.
Iran releases the 52 U.S. hostages held in Tehran after 444 days.
March 30: Assassination attempt on U.S. president Ronald Reagan.
April 12: First orbital flight of the Space Shuttle.
May 13: Pope John Paul II assassination attempt.
June 5: The AIDS epidemic officially begins in the United States, having originated in Africa; making this to be an ongoing pandemic.
June 7: Operation Opera, a surprise airstrike conducted by the Israeli Air Force on an unfinished Iraqi nuclear reactor near Baghdad.
August 1: Launch of MTV.
August 12: IBM Personal Computer released.
October 6: Assassination of Anwar Sadat.
December 13: Martial law in Poland begins.
1982
February 2 – 28: The Hama massacre in Syria, a conflict between Syria and the Muslim Brotherhood, results in a decisive Syrian victory and about 10,000 deaths.
April 25: Israel withdraws from Sinai Peninsula.
April – June: Falklands War.
June 6: First Israeli invasion of Lebanon begins.
October 1: Sony releases the world's first commercially sold CD player, the Sony CDP-101.
November 10 – 15: Death of Leonid Brezhnev; Yuri Andropov becomes General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
November 30: Michael Jackson releases his landmark album Thriller, the best-selling album of all time.
December 7: The first execution by lethal injection takes place in Texas.
1983
January 1: Independence of Brunei.
April 18: The Bombing of U.S. Embassy in Beirut results in 63 deaths.
June 5: Second Sudanese Civil War begins.
July 14: Nintendo releases Mario Bros.
September 1: Korean Air Lines Flight 007, a scheduled flight from New York City to Seoul via Anchorage, Alaska, is shot down by a Soviet Su-15 interceptor, resulting in 269 fatalities and no survivors. This leads to the declassification of GPS development.
September 17: Vanessa Lynn Williams becomes the first African-American to be crowned Miss America, in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
October 23: The Beirut barracks bombing results in the deaths of 307 people, hastening the removal of international peacekeeping forces in Lebanon.
October 25 – 29: Invasion of Grenada by the United States.
December 10: End of dictatorship in Argentina.
1984
October 31: Assassination of Indira Gandhi, Indian Prime Minister.
December 3: Bhopal disaster.
December 19: Sino-British Joint Declaration agrees to hand Hong Kong back to China by 1997.
Operation Moses, the covert evacuation of Ethiopian Jews from Sudan during a civil war that caused a famine.
The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is recognized as the cause of HIV/AIDS, and research on zidovudine and other treatments gets underway.
Beginning of the 1983–1985 famine in Ethiopia and the 1984–85 UK miners' strike.
1985
March 11: Mikhail Gorbachev becomes General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
March 15: End of military leadership in Brazil.
June: End of 1982 Lebanon War.
July 13: Live Aid.
August 20: Beginning of the Iran–Contra affair, a political scandal in the United States that occurred during the second term of the Reagan Administration involving the sale of arms to the Khomeini government of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
September 1: 73 years after its infamous disaster, the wreck of the Titanic is found off the coast of Newfoundland by a joint French–American expedition led by Jean-Louis Michel of IFREMER and Robert Ballard of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
September 19: An earthquake in Mexico City, magnitude 8.0, kills from 5,000 to 45,000 people.
October 1: Release date of the Macintosh 128K, the first successful mass-market personal computer to feature a graphical user interface, built-in screen, and mouse.
November 13: The Armero tragedy, in which 20,000 people die following the eruption of the Nevado del Ruiz stratovolcano in Tolima, Colombia.
November 20: Windows 1.0, the first Microsoft Windows operating system, released.
First use of DNA fingerprinting.
1986
January 1: Portugal and Spain joins the European Communities.
January 12 – 24: South Yemen Civil War.
January 24: First close-up images of the planet Uranus
January 28: The Space Shuttle Challenger breaks apart 73 seconds into its flight, killing all seven crew members aboard.
February 22 – 25: End of dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines.
February 28: Assassination of Olof Palme, Prime Minister of Sweden.
March: Return of Halley's Comet.
April 15: U.S. planes bomb Libya in Operation El Dorado Canyon.
April 26: The Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine kills about 100 people.
October 11 – October 12: A breakthrough in nuclear arms control at the Reykjavík Summit.
October 19: Samora Machel, the first President of Mozambique, dies in a plane crash.
November 3: The Iran–Contra affair publicly announced.
1987
June 10 – 29: The June Democratic Struggle, a nationwide pro-democracy movement in South Korea, leads to democratic reforms and an end to authoritarian rule.
September 10: The Battle of Cuito Cuanavale, Angola begins and further intensifies the South African Border War.
September 13: A radioactive contamination accident in Goiânia, Brazil, leaves 249 people contaminated, four of which die.
September 15: Huawei founded in Shenzhen, China by Ren Zhengfei.
October 19: Stock market crash of 1987.
December: The antidepressant drug fluoxetine (marketed as Prozac) becomes commercially available.
December 8:
The First Intifada between Israel and Palestine begins.
The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty is signed in Washington, D.C., by U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.
December 20: The passenger ferry MV Doña Paz sinks after colliding with the oil tanker MT Vector 1 in the Tablas Strait in the Philippines, killing an estimated 4,000 people (history's worst peacetime maritime disaster).
World population reaches five billion.
1988
January 2: Beginning of the perestroika ("restructuring"), a political movement for reformation within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union during the 1980s associated with Gorbachev and his glasnost ("openness") policy reform.
January 13: Lee Teng-hui takes control of Taiwan and oversee end of martial law and full democratization of island.
March 16: The Halabja chemical attack is carried out by Iraqi government forces, killing thousands.
July 6: The Piper Alpha oil rig in the North Sea catches fire and explodes, killing 165.
August 20: End of the Iran–Iraq War.
October 5: Chile's Augusto Pinochet loses a national plebiscite on his rule.
November 2: Morris worm, first computer virus distributed through the Internet.
November 15: Israeli–Palestinian conflict; beginning with the independent State of Palestine being proclaimed from Algiers.
December 2: Benazir Bhutto elected Prime Minister of Pakistan months after restoration of civilian rule in the wake of Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq's death in plane crash.
December 7: Spitak earthquake in Armenia.
December 21: Pan Am Flight 103 is destroyed by a bomb and falls over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 259 people on-board, leaving no survivors, and 11 in town.
1988 Polish strikes.
Myanmar Armed Forces launch a military coup, ending the 8888 uprising.
The First Nagorno-Karabakh War begins.
Construction of the Channel Tunnel begins.
Invasive species, Zebra mussels, found in the Great Lakes system.
1989
Revolutions of 1989 bring down Communist and authoritarian regimes around the world.
January 7: Emperor Shōwa (Hirohito) dies; his son, Akihito (the Emperor Heisei) becomes Emperor of Japan.
January 20: George H. W. Bush is inaugurated as President of the United States.
February 2: Alfredo Stroessner is overthrown in Paraguay. End of dictatorship.
February 14: Fatwa issued against Salman Rushdie.
February 15: End of the Soviet war in Afghanistan.
March 24: The oil tanker Exxon Valdez spills 10.8 million US gallons of crude oil after striking a reef, causing severe damage to the environment.
April – June: Tiananmen Square Massacre, in which troops armed with assault rifles and accompanied by tanks fired at student-led demonstrations held in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, resulting in an undisclosed number of deaths (estimated in hundreds to thousands).
June 3: Ruhollah Khomeini dies; Ali Khamenei becomes Supreme Leader of Iran.
June 4:
1989 Polish legislative election although the elections were not entirely democratic, they led to the formation of a government led by Tadeusz Mazowiecki and a peaceful transition to democracy in Poland and elsewhere in Central and Eastern Europe.
1989 Tiananmen Square protests. A crackdown takes place in Beijing on the army's approach to the square, and the final stand-off in the square is covered live on television.
June 5: An unknown Chinese protester, "Tank Man", stands in front of a column of military tanks on Chang'an Avenue in Beijing, temporarily halting them, an incident which achieves iconic status internationally through images taken by Western photographers.
August 25: Voyager 2 makes its closest approach to Neptune and its largest moon, Triton.
October 17: The 6.9 Mw Loma Prieta earthquake shakes the San Francisco Bay Area and the Central Coast, killing 63.
November 9: Fall of the Berlin Wall; the Revolutions of 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Bloc begin in Europe, which leads to the end of the Cold War.
November 15 – December 17: The first direct Presidential election in Brazil since 1960.
November 24: The Communist government of Czechoslovakia falls during the Velvet Revolution.
December 17: The first episode of The Simpsons premieres on Fox.
December 20: The United States invasion of Panama begins.
December 24: The First Liberian Civil War begins.
December 25: Romanian Revolution: Trial and execution of Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu in Romania.
1990s
1990
January 31: The first McDonald's in Moscow, Russian SFSR opens 8 months after construction began on May 3, 1989
February 11: Nelson Mandela is released from Victor Verster Prison outside Cape Town, South Africa after 27 years as a political prisoner.
March 11: End of the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet in Chile.
March 27: The United States begins broadcasting Radio y Televisión Martí to Cuba.
April 24 – May 20: Launch of the Hubble Space Telescope.
April 7: Scandinavian Star, a Bahamas-registered ferry, catches fire en route from Norway to Denmark, leaving 158 dead.
May 22: North and South Yemen unify to form the Republic of Yemen.
June 21: The 7.4 Mw Manjil–Rudbar earthquake affects northern Iran with a maximum Mercalli intensity of X (Extreme), killing 35,000–50,000, and injuring 60,000–105,000.
July 16: An earthquake in Luzon happens, measuring Mw 7.7 kills more than 1,600 in the Philippines.
August 2 – 4: Gulf War begins.
September 6: Myanmar Armed Forces place Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest.
October 3: German reunification.
November 2: Transnistria War begins.
December 20: Tim Berners-Lee publishes the first web site, which described the World Wide Web project.
The Contra War ends.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change releases its first assessment report, linking increases in carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere, and a resultant rise in global temperature, to human activities.
1991
February 28: The Gulf War ends in US withdrawal and a failed uprising.
March 3: A video captures the beating of motorist Rodney King by Los Angeles police officers. Four Los Angeles police officers are indicted on March 15 for the beating.
March 23: Beginning of the Sierra Leone Civil War.
May 16: Elizabeth II becomes the first British monarch to address the U.S. Congress during a 13-day royal visit in Washington, D.C.
May 21: Assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, Indian Prime Minister.
May 24 – 25: Operation Solomon, a covert Israeli military operation to airlift Ethiopian Jews to Israel.
June 12 – 15: Mount Pinatubo erupts with a Volcanic Explosivity Index of 6 and reduces global temperatures.
June 27 – July 7: The Ten-Day War in Slovenia begins the Yugoslav Wars.
July 1: President George H. W. Bush nominates the controversial Clarence Thomas for the Supreme Court of the United States to replace Thurgood Marshall, who had announced his retirement.
The world's first GSM telephone call is made in Finland.
July 10: Boris Yeltsin becomes the first President of Russia.
July 11: A solar eclipse of record totality occurs in the Northern hemisphere. It is seen by 20 million people in Hawaii, Mexico, and Colombia.
July 22: Tracy Edwards escapes Jeffrey Dahmer's apartment and flags down a police car and the cops search through Jeffrey's stuff and find photographs of dismembered bodies and other gruesome images, which finally leads to the arrest of Jeffrey Dahmer and ends his killing spree.
August 19: Soviet coup attempt of 1991: A coup occurs in response to a new union treaty to be signed on August 20.
August 25: Michael Schumacher, regarded as one of the greatest Formula One drivers in history, makes his Formula One debut at the Belgian Grand Prix.
September 17: North and South Korea are admitted to the United Nations.
September 19: Ötzi the Iceman is found in the Alps.
October 3: Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Tom Foley announces the closure of the House Bank by the end of the year after revelations that House members have written numerous bad checks.
October 5: Linus Torvalds launches the first version of the Linux kernel.
October 30 – November 1: Madrid Conference of 1991.
Early November: Tropical Storm Thelma lashes into Eastern Visayas, leaving 8,000 people dead.
December 26:
Dissolution of the Soviet Union and independence of 15 former Soviet republics.
Beginning of the Algerian Civil War.
Beginning of the Somali Civil War.
1991 Sino-Soviet Border Agreement.
1992
January 9: Discovery of the Kuiper belt and the first extrasolar planets.
January 16: End of the Salvadorian Civil War.
February 7: The Maastricht Treaty is signed, creating the European Union.
February 17: A court in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, sentences serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer to 15 terms of life in prison. Dahmer is murdered in prison 2 years later.
April 3: End of communism in Albania.
April 6: The Bosnian War begins.
April 22: Fuel leaking into a sewer causes a series of explosions in Guadalajara, Mexico; 215 are killed, 1,500 injured.
April 29 – May 4: Los Angeles riots over the acquittal of those involved in the beating of Rodney King.
May 13: Falun Gong is introduced by Li Hongzhi in China.
June 8: The first World Oceans Day is celebrated, coinciding with the Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
July 21: Transnistria War ends.
August 24 – 28: Hurricane Andrew kills 65 and causes $26.5 billion in damages in the Bahamas and the United States.
October 4: El Al Flight 1862, in which a Boeing 747 cargo aircraft of the then state-owned Israeli airline El Al crashes into the Groeneveen and Klein-Kruitberg flats in the Bijlmermeer neighbourhood of Amsterdam, resulting in 43 deaths.
October 6: Lennart Meri becomes the first President of Estonia after regaining independence.
December 18: The South Korean presidential election is won by Kim Young-sam, the first non-military candidate elected since 1961.
1993
January 1: Velvet Divorce between Czech Republic and Slovakia.
January 20: Bill Clinton is inaugurated as President of the United States.
February 26: 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
February 28 – April 19: The Waco siege, the law enforcement siege of the compound that belonged to the Seventh-day Adventist religious sect Branch Davidians near Waco, Texas, carried out by the U.S. federal government, Texas state law enforcement, and the U.S. military, which results in a gunfight, a fire at the compound and 86 deaths.
March 12: Several bombs explode in Bombay, India, killing 257 and injuring hundreds more.
May 24: Independence of Eritrea.
August 24: 1993 child sexual abuse accusations against Michael Jackson.
September 13: Oslo accords end First Intifada between Israel and Palestine.
September 26: The first mission in Biosphere 2 ends after two years.
October 3 – 4: Battle of Mogadishu leaves over 3,000-4,000 people dead.
October 4: Tanks bombard the Russian parliament, while demonstrators against President Boris Yeltsin rally outside.
November 1: The Maastricht Treaty comes in to effect.
November 30: Release date of Schindler's List.
December 2: Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar is gunned down by police.
1994
January 1: Establishment of North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
January 17: The 6.7 Mw Northridge earthquake strikes the Greater Los Angeles Area with a maximum Mercalli intensity of IX (Violent), leaving 57 people dead and more than 8,700 injured.
February 25: Cave of the Patriarchs massacre in the West Bank, a shooting massacre carried out by American-Israeli Baruch Goldstein, which resulted in 30 deaths and 125 injuries.
April 6: The assassination of Juvénal Habyarimana and Cyprien Ntaryamira triggers the Rwandan genocide.
May – July: First Yemeni Civil War.
May 6: Opening of the Channel Tunnel.
May 10: End of apartheid in South Africa and election of Nelson Mandela.
June 15: Release date of Disney's The Lion King.
June 23: Release date of Forrest Gump.
July 1: Plano Real introduces the new real currency in Brazil.
July 5: Amazon founded in Bellevue, Washington, by Jeff Bezos.
July 8 – 17: Death and state funeral of Kim Il-sung. Kim Jong-il becomes Supreme Leader of North Korea.
September 19: Operation Uphold Democracy, a military intervention to remove the military regime installed by the 1991 Haitian coup d'état, begins, eventually restoring Jean-Bertrand Aristide to power
September 28: The car ferry MS Estonia sinks in the Baltic Sea, killing 852 people.
October 1: Palau gains independence from the United States.
November 5: George Foreman wins the WBA and IBF World Heavyweight Championships by KO'ing Michael Moorer becoming the oldest heavyweight champion in history.
December 11: The First Chechen War begins.
December 14: Construction of the Three Gorges Dam begins in Hubei, China.
Rise of a wave of Palestinian terrorist attacks in Israel.
1995
January 1:
Establishment of the World Trade Organization.
Austria, Finland and Sweden join the European Union.
January 17: A 6.9 Mw Great Hanshin earthquake strikes the southern Hyōgo Prefecture of Japan with a maximum Shindo of VII, leaving 5,502–6,434 people dead, and 251,301–310,000 displaced.
March 14: Astronaut Norman Thagard becomes the first American to ride into space aboard a Russian launch vehicle (the Soyuz TM-21), lifting off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
March 20: The Tokyo subway sarin attack, an act of domestic terrorism perpetrated by members of the doomsday cult movement Aum Shinrikyo (now Aleph), in which they released sarin, an extremely toxic synthetic compound, in five coordinated attacks, resulting in 13 deaths and 6,252 injuries.
April 19: American terrorist Timothy McVeigh bombs the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.
May 14: The Dalai Lama proclaims 6-year-old Gedhun Choekyi Nyima as the 11th reincarnation of the Panchen Lama.
June 29: The Sampoong Department Store collapse, a structural failure in a department store in Seoul, South Korea, kills 502 people and injures other 1,445.
July 11 – 22: The Srebrenica massacre of over 8,000 Bosniak Muslim men and boys.
July 21: The Third Taiwan Strait Crisis begins.
August–September: NATO bombing raids in Bosnia end the Bosnian War.
August 24: Release date of Windows 95.
September 3: eBay is founded by Pierre Omidyar.
September 19: The Washington Post and The New York Times publish the Unabomber manifesto.
September 28: Oslo II Accord.
October 3: O. J. Simpson is found not guilty of double murder for the deaths of former wife Nicole Simpson and Ronald Goldman in 1994.
October 16: The Million Man March is held in Washington, D.C. The event was conceived by Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.
October – November: Typhoon Angela leaves the Philippines and Vietnam devastated, with 882 deaths and US$315 million in damage.
November 4: Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, Israeli Prime Minister and Defence Minister, by Yigal Amir, an Israeli right-wing extremist.
November 22: Premiere of Toy Story, the first computer-animated feature film and the first Pixar Animation Studios film.
December 14: The signing of the Dayton Accords put an end to the three-and-a-half-year-long Bosnian War.
The North Korean famine begins.
1996
January 9 – 20: Serious fighting breaks out between Russian soldiers and rebel fighters in Chechnya.
February 13: Nepalese Civil War begins.
March 23: The Third Taiwan Strait Crisis ends.
April 3: The FBI arrested Theodore Kaczynski, the suspected Unabomber at his cabin in Lincoln, Montana.
April 28 – 29: The Port Arthur massacre in Tasmania, Australia leaves 35 people dead, leading to tighter gun regulations in Australia.
May 10: A sudden storm engulfs Mount Everest with several climbing teams high on the mountain, leaving eight people dead. By the end of the month, at least four other climbers die in the worst season of fatalities on the mountain to date.
May 11: After takeoff from Miami, a fire started by improperly handled oxygen canisters in the cargo hold of Atlanta-bound ValuJet Flight 592 causes the Douglas DC-9 to crash in the Florida Everglades, killing all 110 people on board.
July 5: Dolly the sheep becomes the first successful cloned mammal.
July 17: TWA Flight 800 crash.
July 27: Centennial Olympic Park bombing.
August 31: The First Chechen War ends.
September 2: A permanent peace agreement is signed at the Malacañan Palace between the Government of the Philippines and the Moro National Liberation Front.
September 27: The Taliban government takes control of Afghanistan, creating the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.
October 24: The First Congo War begins.
November 1: Release of DVD in Japan.
End of dictatorship in Taiwan.
Increasing terrorist attacks in Israel.
1997
January – August: The Albanian civil unrest (Lottery Uprising), sparked by pyramid scheme failures, in which the government was toppled, with new parliamentary elections, and more than 2,000 people killed.
February 4: 1997 Israeli helicopter disaster, when two Israeli Air Force transport helicopters ferrying Israeli soldiers into Israel's security zone in southern Lebanon collided in mid-air, killing all 73 Israeli military personnel on board.
March 13: Island of Peace massacre, a mass murder attack that occurred at the Island of Peace on the Israeli-Jordanian border, in which 7 people were killed and 6 injured.
March 24 – 26: 39 Heaven's Gate cultists commit mass suicide at their compound in San Diego, California.
April 1: The first episode of Pokémon airs on TV Tokyo.
April 22: A 126-day hostage crisis at the residence of the Japanese ambassador in Lima, Peru.
May 2: Tony Blair becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
May 17: Kabila ousts Mobutu; Zaire becomes the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
June 21: The Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) plays its first game at The Great Western Forum in Los Angeles.
June 25: J. K. Rowling publishes Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.
July 1: Handover of Hong Kong from the United Kingdom to China.
July 2: The Bank of Thailand floats the baht, triggering the Asian financial crisis.
July 17: The F. W. Woolworth Company closes after 117 years in business.
August 2: The First Liberian Civil War ends.
August 29: Netflix is launched.
August 31: Diana, Princess of Wales is killed in a car accident in Paris.
September 5: Death of Mother Teresa.
November 17: 62 people are killed by 6 Islamic militants outside the Temple of Hatshepsut in Luxor, Egypt.
December 19: Release date of Titanic.
Sound barrier broken on land.
1998
February: Osama bin Laden publishes a fatwa against the West.
February 2: Cebu Pacific Flight 387 crashes on the slopes between Mount Sumagaya and Mount Lumot in Claveria, Misamis Oriental, killing all 104 people on board.
February 3: A United States military pilot causes the deaths of 20 people near Trento, Italy, when his low-flying EA-6B Prowler severs the cable of a cable-car.
February 28: A study led by Andrew Wakefield is published in The Lancet suggesting an alleged link between MMR vaccine and autism. Now known to be full of data manipulation, the study was instantly controversial and fueled the nascent anti-vaccination movement.
April 10: The Good Friday Agreement brings an end to The Troubles in Northern Ireland.
April 15: Death of Pol Pot.
May 4 – 15: Riots in Indonesia, including incidents of mass violence, demonstrations, and civil unrest of a racial nature, result in the Fall of Suharto and the independence of East Timor.
July 17: Nicholas II of Russia and his family are buried in St. Catherine Chapel, 80 years after he and his family were killed by the Bolsheviks in 1918.
August 2: The Second Congo War begins.
August 7: Kenya and Tanzania bombings.
August 15: Omagh bombing.
September 4: Google is founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin.
October – November: Hurricane Mitch leaves more than 19,325 dead in Central America as a result of catastrophic flooding and mudslides.
November 20: A Russian Proton rocket is launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, carrying the first segment of the International Space Station, the 21-ton Zarya Module.
December 19: The impeachment of Bill Clinton begins as a result of the Clinton–Lewinsky scandal.
The North Korean famine has killed an estimated 2.5 million people by this point.
1999
January 1: Euro introduced to the financial markets. Coins and banknotes enter circulation in participating countries in 2002.
February 2: Hugo Chavez becomes President of Venezuela.
April: A crisis in East Timor, which led to 1,400 deaths, begins.
April 20: The Columbine High School massacre in Colorado, United States, causes 15 deaths.
April 21: The Second Liberian Civil War begins.
May 1: The first episode of SpongeBob SquarePants airs on Nickelodeon.
May – July: The Fourth Indo-Pakistani War.
June 11: The end of the Kosovo War ends the Yugoslav Wars.
August 3: At least 58 people die and hundreds of homes are buried in a massive landslide in Cherry Hills subdivision in Antipolo, Rizal, which has caused by the heavy rains brought by Typhoon Olga.
August 26: The Second Chechen War begins.
September 3 – 16: Russian apartment bombings kill more than 350 people.
October 12: World population reaches 6 billion.
October 31: EgyptAir Flight 990, travelling from New York City to Cairo, crashes off the coast of Nantucket, Massachusetts, killing all 217 on board.
November 30: ExxonMobil founded.
December 3: Tori Murden becomes the first woman to cross the Atlantic Ocean by rowboat alone, when she reaches Guadeloupe from the Canary Islands.
December 20: Handover of Macau from the Portuguese Republic to the People's Republic of China after 442 years of Portuguese rule in the settlement.
December 31:
Vladimir Putin becomes the President of Russia.
The U.S. turns over complete administration of the Panama Canal to the Panamanian Government, as stipulated in the Torrijos–Carter Treaties of 1977.
2000s
2000
January 1: The first day of the 3rd millennium is celebrated on New Year's Day; though with dispute.
February 9: Torrential rains in Africa lead to the worst flooding in [until March and kills 800 people.
March 10: Dot-com bubble bursts, causing stock markets worldwide to crash.
March 4: The Sony PlayStation 2 releases in Japan. The system became the highest-selling video game console in history.
March 12: Pope John Paul II apologizes for the wrongdoings by members of the Roman Catholic Church throughout the ages.
March 17: 778 members of the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God die in Uganda.
March 26: Vladimir Putin is elected President of Russia.
April 30: The Canonization of Faustina Kowalska occurs in the presence of 200,000 people and the first Divine Mercy Sunday celebrated worldwide.
May 6: The British Army launches Operation Palliser which effectively ends the Sierra Leone Civil War.
May 11: India becomes the second country to reach 1 billion people.
May 25: End of Israeli occupation of Lebanon.
June 13–15: First inter-Korean summit.
June 17: A centennial earthquake (6.5 on the Richter scale) hits Iceland on its national day.
July 1: The Øresund Bridge between Denmark and Sweden is officially opened for traffic.
July 7: The draft assembly of Human Genome Project is announced at the White House by US President Bill Clinton, Francis Collins, and Craig Venter.
July 10: At least 218 people are killed, about 700 are missing and presumed dead, and about 800 shanties are buried in a collapse of a dumpsite, destabilized by torrential rains caused by tropical cyclones, in Payatas, Quezon City.
July 11–25: The 2000 Camp David Summit, aimed at reaching a "final status" agreement between the Palestinians and the Israelis, was held between United States president Bill Clinton, Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian Authority chairman Yasser Arafat.
July 14: A powerful solar flare, later named the Bastille Day event, causes a geomagnetic storm on Earth.
July 25: Concorde Air France Flight 4590 crashes in France, killing 113 including all people aboard.
August 12: Russian submarine Kursk explodes, killing all 118 crew.
September 10: A British military operation to free five soldiers from the Royal Irish Regiment that were held captive for over two weeks during the Sierra Leone Civil War, all of which were rescued.
September 13: Steve Jobs introduces the public beta of Mac OS X.
September 26: The Greek ferry Express Samina sinks off the coast of the island of Paros; 80 out of a total of over 500 passengers perish in one of Greece's worst sea disasters.
September 28: The Second Intifada begins.
October 5: Yugoslav President Slobodan Milošević resigns following a revolution in Belgrade.
October 12: al-Qaeda suicide bombs the USS Cole; 17 sailors are killed.
November 2: International Space Station begins operations; its first crew, composed of three men, arrives.
December 12: In Bush v. Gore, the United States Supreme Court declares George W. Bush President of the United States.
December 25: The Luoyang Christmas fire at a shopping center in China kills 309 people.
Horizontal timelines
1850–present
Dates are approximate range (based upon influence), consult particular article for details
Modern Age Other
1900–2000
See also
Timeline of the 21st century
20th century in fiction
Further reading
Morris, Richard B. and Graham W. Irwin, eds. Harper Encyclopedia of the Modern World: A Concise Reference History from 1760 to the Present (1970) online
For later events, see Timeline of the 21st century.
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