History Timeline

1926 - 1950 AD

1926 Birth of Michel Foucault
   Birth of Marilyn Monroe
   Birth of Fidel Castro
   Birth of Allen Ginsberg
   Birth of John Coltrane
   Television invented
1927 Birth of Edward Abbey
1928 Birth of Stockhausen
   Birth of Andy Warhol
   Birth of Che Guevara
   Birth of Gabriel Garcia Marquez
   Birth of Carlos Fuentes
   Birth of Jack Kevorkian
   Penicillin is first observed by Alexander Fleming
   French build Maginot Line
1929 Great Depression - world economy in shambles
   Birth of Martin Luther King Jr.
   Birth of Frank Gehry
   Birth of Jurgen Habermas
   Museum of Modern Art founded
   Hydrogen fusion proposed as the energy source for stars
1930 Nazi's rise to power
   Birth of Jacques Derrida
   AIDS virus originates in central Africa
   Birth of Helmut Kohl
   Pluto discovered
   Frederick Werner invents a complete television system
1931 Japan occupies Manchuria
   Birth of Mikhail Gorbachev
   Birth of Richard Rorty
   Empire State building is completed
   Nylon invented
1932 Electron microscope invented
   Birth of Umberto Eco
1933 Hitler made German Chancellor
   New Deal introduced by F.D.R.
1934 Birth of Ralph Nader
   Birth of Michael Graves
   Birth of baseball player Hank Aaron
1934 - 1935 Long March in China
1935 Birth of Elvis Presley
   The AP develops the Wirephoto
   US Social Security Act
1936 China at war with Japan
   Japan signs anti-communist pact with Germany and Italy
   Birth of Vaclav Havel
   First broadcast television programs (England)
   Birth of Steve Reich
   Hoover Dam completed
1936 - 1939 Spanish civil war
1937 Japan takes over northern China
   China, however, under Chiang Kai-Shek retreats to Sichuan province
   Birth of Saddam Hussein
   Birth of Philip Glass
   Birth of Thomas Pynchon
   Birth of Madeleine Albright
1938 Birth of Kofi Annan
   Abbott and Costello begin comedic performances on radio
1939 - 1945 World War II
1940 Disney releases "Fantasia"
   British scientists develop radar
   France surrenders to Germany
1941 Japan attacks U.S. at Pearl Harbor
   Citizen Kane released (movie)
   Hanford nuclear site in Washington developed
1942 Manhatten project in U.S.
   Birth of Isabel Allende
   Birth of Stephen Hawking
   Birth of Muhammed Ali
1943 Birth of Julio Iglesius
   Jacques Cousteau makes first dive with compressed air aqualung
1944 World Bank is established
   Howard Aiken introduces the electromechanical Mark I - the world's first program-controlled calculator
1945 First atomic bomb detonated at Alamagordo, New Mexico
   First Atomic bomb (to be used against people) dropped on Hiroshima
   Then on Nagasaki, Japan
   Birth of Bob Marley
   United Nations is established
1946 Birth of Stephen Spielberg
   Birth of Bill Clinton
   Birth of Robert Mapplethorpe
   Abdullah becomes first king of Jordan
1946 - 1954 First Indochina war (France v. Vietnam)
1946 - 1966 "La Violencia" in Columbia (claimed some 200,000 lives)
1947 Birth of Salman Rushdie
   Truman Doctrine
   The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is born
   Debut of the instant camera
   India gains independence
   First supersonic flight
   Carbon-14 dating introduced
   Birth of Kareem Abdul Jabbar - basketball player
1948 Israel becomes a nation
   Korea becomes an independent nation
   World Health Organization (WHO) established
   Transistor invented at Bell Laboratories
   "LP" (record) is introduced
   Sri Lanka gains independence from Britain
1940 - 1980 Cold war
1949 NATO comes into existence
   Mao Zedong's Communist China begins
1950 Pedro Albizu Campos masterminds nationalist uprising in Puerto Rico
1950 - 1953 Korean war