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1901 - 2000
 

1901 AD: The "American Standard Version"; The First Major American Revision of the King James Bible.

1901-Harry Grovier Seeley publishes Dragons of the Air, the first popular book on pterosaurs, arguing that they were warm-blooded and should be classified parallel to birds, in between reptiles and mammals. This is in direct opposition to Richard Owen's classification of pterosaurs as cold-blooded and poor flyers. 

1902-Barnum Brown of the American Museum of Natural History discovers Tyrannosaurus rex. 

1902-Walter Sutton deduces that chromosomes separate for reproduction. This becomes the basis for the chromosome theory of inheritance, to become official two years later. 

1904 - Ice-cream cones are introduced at the World's Fair in St. Louis, Missouri. 

1905-Albert Einstein proposes his theory of relativity (E=mc2). 

1908-Charles and George Sternberg discover a dinosaur mummy, a duckbill dinosaur with skin, tendons and bits of flesh all fossilized.

1908 - Henry Ford introduced the Model-T automobile to the market. 

1909 - Explorer Robert E. Peary plants the U. S. Flat in the icy ground at the North Pole. 

1909-Charles Doolittle Walcott discovers the fossils of a number of soft-bodied animals in the Burgess Shale in the Canadian Rockies. He proceeds to publish several papers in which he describes these animals, which lived over 500 million years ago, as primitive ancestors of modern groups. 

1909-The Abbé Breuil discovers carefully buried Neanderthal skeletons in France. 

1911-Amateur archaeologist Charles Dawson discovers the skull of the Piltdown Man in southern England. 

1912-Alfred Wegener proposes the theory of continental drift. His ideas will be almost completely ignored until the late 1960s.

1913 - for the first time, Henry Ford's entire Highland Park automobile factory was run on a continuously moving assembly line.
 
1913-Geologist-physicist Arthur Holmes concludes that the breakdown of radioactive isotopes in igneous rocks can be used to determine when the rocks solidified. The ability to determine the absolute ages of rocks will enable scientists to better date fossils. 

1913 - Henry Ford introduces a moving assembly line to speed up production of the Model T car. 

1914-World War I begins in Europe. 

1914-Charles Doolittle Walcott identifies fossil bacteria in Cryptozoon-like structures (stromatolites). 

1916-Two duckbill dinosaur fossils, with extremely rare skin impressions, sink to the bottom of the Atlantic when a German warship fires on the vessel carrying them. 

1916 - in the most lopsided football game on record, Georgia Tech humbled Cumberland University, 222-0.

1917-The Bolshevik Revolution begins in Russia.

1919 - President Wilson suffered a stroke that left him partially paralyzed. 

1920 - Women gain the right to vote in the United States. 

1922 - The Lincoln Memorial is dedicated in Washington, D. C., to honor the 16th president. 

1922 - Rebecca Felton, a Georgia Democrat, became the first woman to serve in the U.S. Senate. She was 87 years old at the time and served only two days -- having been appointed on an interim basis upon the death of Sen. Thomas E. Watson.

1922 - The American Museum of Natural History begins a series of excavations in central Mongolia, led by Roy Chapman Andrews. Hoping to find fossil human remains, Chapman's team instead finds dinosaurs. 

1924 - Macy's department store in New York City holds its first Thanksgiving Day Parade. 

1925-Raymond Dart publishes a description of the "Taung Child", a hominid child's skull from Africa. He classifies it as Australopithecus africanus and concludes that it's the missing link between humans and apes. 

1925-Tennessee schoolteacher John Thomas Scopes is tried for teaching evolution. Two-time presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan leads the prosecution. Labor lawyer Clarence Darrow leads the defense and goads Bryan into declaring that humans are not mammals. 

1927-Paleoneurologist Tilly Edinger studies brain casts of pterosaurs and concludes that they more closely resemble those of modern birds than the brain of Archaeopteryx. 

1930 - At the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, astronomer Clyde Tombaugh discovers Pluto, the ninth planet in the solar system.

1930 - Laura Ingalls became the first woman to fly across the United States as she completed a nine-stop journey from Roosevelt Field, N.Y, to Glendale, Calif.
 
1931-The highly influential paleobotanist Sir Albert Charles Seward rejects the biologic interpretation of Cryptozoon fossils (stromatolites). This rejection will become known as "Seward's folly". 

1932 - the first American political telecast took place as the Democratic National Committee sponsored a program from a CBS television studio in New York.

1934 - Bruno Hauptmann was indicted for murder in the death of the infant son of Charles A. Lindbergh.

1938-Fishermen find a coelacanth, a fish long believed to be extinct, off the coast of South Africa. 

1939 - World War II begins in Europe. 

1942 - The U. S. Government begins rationing gasoline and sugar during wartime. 

1942 - the World War II Battle of Cape Esperance began in the Solomons, resulting in an American victory over the Japanese.

1940-1944 - Seventeen dinosaur fossils, including several type specimens (fossils used as examples of named species) are lost when the European museums housing them are damaged or destroyed in various WWII battles.

1945 - President Truman announced that the secret of the atomic bomb would be shared only with Britain and Canada. 

1945-46 - The Nuremberg War Crimes Trial
A special panel of eight judges convened in this German town to try Nazi officers for crimes against peace, crimes against humanity and war crimes committed during World War II. The judges came from the USA, Great Britain, France and the Soviet Union. Twenty-four Nazis were tried and twelve received death penalties (although one defendant, Hermann Göring, committed suicide hours before his execution). This trial was important as it showed that even in times of war, basic moral standards apply in spite of military law principles which oblige a subordinate officer to obey orders. "The true test," wrote the Tribunal, "is not the existence of the (superior) order but whether moral choice (in executing it) was in fact possible". The crimes included torture, deportation, persecution and mass extermination. 

1947 - Jackie Robinson becomes the first African American to play major league baseball. 

1947-American Museum of Natural History curator Edwin Colbert finds a massive quarry of Coelophysis dinosaurs in New Mexico and concludes from their skeletons that these Triassic dinosaurs were swift runners with a bird-like posture. 

1947-Rudolph Zallinger completes The Age of Reptiles mural in the Yale Peabody Museum. This image of slow-moving dinosaurs will remain the predominant view until it is overturned by John Ostrom and Bob Bakker in the 1960s. 

1948 - The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) - The GATT was developed by the United Nations and has served as a catalyst for the lifting of legal barriers against the free movement of goods, services and people. Now under the auspices of the World Trade Organization, the implementation of GATT by almost all countries is causing commercial law interplay between differing legal systems and, in most cases, providing impetus for those legal systems to move towards similarity and compatibility. The GATT also shows a new emphasis of the development of law in the world: from military and basic rights to trade and economic matters.

1948-Mary Leakey finds hominoid Proconsul, about 16 million years old. Although a very significant find, it does little to bolster Louis and Mary Leakey's meager research funding.

1950 - the comic strip "Peanuts," created by Charles M. Schulz, was first published in nine newspapers. 

1953-Piltdown Man is determined to be a hoax: the jaw of an ape and a human skull. 

1953-James Watson and Francis Crick publish their paper on the molecular structure of DNA in Nature Magazine. 

1953-Fiesel Houtermans and Claire Patterson publish independent estimates inferring the age of the earth through radiometric dating of meteorites. Both estimates are over 4.5 billion years. 

1955 - the children's show "Captain Kangaroo," with Bob Keeshan in the title role, was broadcast for the first time. Keeshan had portrayed Clarabelle the Clown on the kids' show "Howdy Doody."

1956 - Don Larsen pitched the only perfect game in a World Series to date as the New York Yankees beat the Brooklyn Dodgers, 2-0.

1957 - the Brooklyn Dodgers played their last game at Ebbets Field, defeating the Pittsburgh Pirates 2-0.

1957- the Space Age began as the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first man-made satellite, into orbit.

1958 - The first American satellite, Explorer I, is launched into space. 

1958 - the first trans-Atlantic passenger jetliner service was begun by British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) with flights between London and New York.

1959-Mary Leakey finds hominid skull belonging to Australopithecus boisei. 

1961-Martin Glaessner determines fossils in the Ediacara Hills of South Australia (Ediacaran fauna) to be Precambrian in age, making them the oldest-known multicelled organisms.

1961 - Roger Maris of the N.Y. Yankees hit his 61st home run during a 62-game season, compared with Babe Ruth's 60 home runs during a 154-game season.

1962 - The Telstar communications satellite goes into orbit, sending the first TV broadcasts from Europe to the United States.

1962 - Pope John XXIII convened the first session of the Roman Catholic Church's 21st Ecumenical Council, also known as "Vatican II."

1962 - James H. Meredith, an African-American, was escorted onto the University of Mississippi campus by U.S. Marshals, setting off a deadly riot during which two men were killed before the racial violence was quelled by more than 3,000 soldiers. Meredith enrolled the next day.

1964 - the Warren Commission issued a report concluding that Lee Harvey Oswald had acted alone in assassinating President Kennedy.

1964-W. Brian Harland and Martin J.S. Rudwick publish a theory that the earth experienced a great ice age in the Neoproterozoic (late Precambrian). Rudwick suggests that the climate's return to moderate conditions paved the way for the evolution of multicelluar life. 

1966-Harry Whittington begins reexamining Burgess Shale fossils originally identified by Charles Walcott starting in 1909. Over the next two decades, Whittington (with the assistance of his graduate students Simon Conway Morris and Derek Briggs), will eventually overturn Walcott's theories and propose that most of the specimens are much more complex than originally believed, and have left no living relatives. 

1967 - The first National Football League title game, the Super Bowl, is played in Los Angeles on January 15. 

1967 - one of the worst riots in U.S. history broke out on 12th Street in the heart of Detroit's predominantly black inner city. By the time it was quelled four days later by 7,000 National Guard and U.S. Army troops, 43 people were dead, 342 injured.

1969-Americans land the first man on the moon. 

1969-John Ostrom publishes a description of Deinonychus with a frontispiece illustration by Bob Bakker, suggesting that the dinosaur is alert, agile and intelligent. 

1971 - Walt Disney World opens in Orlando, Florida. 

1971 AD: The "New American Standard Bible" (NASB) is Published as a "Modern and Accurate Word for Word English Translation" of the Bible.

1971-Polish and Mongolian paleontologists discover the entwined skeletons of a Protoceratops and a juvenile Velociraptor in the Gobi Desert, most likely locked in mortal combat. 

1971-Grad student Douglas Lawson discovers the humerus of a giant pterosaur in Texas. Over the next four years, he will continue collecting and finally publish a description of Quetzalcoatlus northropi, the largest flying reptile ever found, with an estimated wingspan of 39 feet. 

1971-Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge publish their theory of punctuated equilibrium, stating that evolution often occurs in short bursts, followed by long periods of stability. 

1973 AD: The "New International Version" (NIV) is Published as a "Modern and Accurate Phrase for Phrase English Translation" of the Bible.

1973 -Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox served subpoenas on the White House after President Nixon refused to turn over tapes and documents.

1973 - Vice President Spiro T. Agnew, accused of accepting bribes, pleaded no contest to one count of federal income tax evasion, and resigned his office.

1974-Donald Johanson and his team discover a female fossil hominid, Australopithecus afarensis, and name her Lucy. Lucy's discovery establishes that hominids walked upright before developing large brains, overturning many long-held beliefs about hominid evolution. 

1974-Bob Bakker proclaims that birds are dinosaur descendants.

1975 - Soviet scientist Andrei Sakharov was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
 
1976 - The Concorde, the first supersonic passenger plane, flies from Europe to the U. S. 

1978-Mary Leakey discovers fossil footprints at Laetoli, demonstrating that hominids walked upright 3.6 million years ago. 

1979 - The worst nuclear accident in U.S. history occurs at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant near Harrisberg, Pennsylvania. 

1980-Louis W. Alvarez, Walter Alvarez, Frank Asaro and Helen V. Michel publish their asteroid impact theory of dinosaur extinction in Science Magazine. The theory will not gain widespread acceptance among scientists for several years. 

1982 - The first permanent artificial heart, Jarvik-7, is implanted in a 61 year old man at the University of Utah Medical center.

1982 AD: The "New King James Version" (NKJV) is Published as a "Modern English Version Maintaining the Original Style of the King James."

1984 - Richard Miller became the only FBI agent ever to be charged with espionage. He was convicted two years later of passing government secrets to the Soviet Union through his Russian lover.

1985 - the "Palestinian" hijackers of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro killed American passenger Leon Klinghoffer.  "Palestinian" gunmen hijacked the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro in the Mediterranean and threatened to blow it up unless Israel freed Palestinian prisoners. There were 511 passengers and crew aboard.  The hijackers surrendered in Port Said two days later.

1989 - the Soviet news agency Tass, under Mikhail Gorbachev's policy of increasing openness in society, reported a flying saucer visit to the Soviet Union.

1989 - The tanker ship Exxon Valdez accidentally spills nearly 11 million gallons of oil into the sea near Alaska. 

1990 - after 45 years of division and just four days short of the 41st anniversary of East Germany's founding (Oct. 7, 1949). It was perhaps the most historic reunion of the 20th century. The newly reunited Germany took the name the Federal Republic of Germany, the formal name of the former West Germany, and adopted West Germany's constitution. Today the German capital is once again Berlin

1990 - Mongolia invites the American Museum of Natural History to reinstate excavations in the Gobi desert. 

1991 - The Soviet Union ends, and so does the Cold War. 

1991 - Chicxulub crater is discovered in the Yucatán Peninsula, supporting the asteroid impact theory first suggested in 1980. 

1991 - four men and four women entered the huge, airtight greenhouse Biosphere II in Arizona. The idea was for them to be self-sustaining, growing their own food and recycled air and water -- with no outside help -- for two years. While that was the goal, in actuality, it was later revealed that oxygen had to be pumped in after levels within the Biosphere dropped dangerously low. The eight "bio-nauts" emerged again on Sept. 26, in 1993.

1992 - Congress approved a bill requiring the release of nearly all government files concerning the assassination of President Kennedy.

1992 - President Bush and the leaders of Mexico and Canada signed the North American Free Trade Agreement. The NAFTA pact created the world's largest trading block.

1993 - J. William Schopf publishes a description of the oldest fossils known to science -- 3.5 billion-year-old microfossils of the Apex Basalt in Australia.

1993 - Israeli parliament, the Knesset, approved the peace agreement with the PLO

1994 - the double murder trial of football legend O.J. Simpson opened in a Los Angeles courtroom. The athlete-turned-actor was accused of killing his ex-wife and her friend. While Simpson would be acquitted of criminal charges in Oct. 1995, a civil jury would later find him liable in the deaths -- and order him to pay more than $33 million 

1995 - NASA's first female space shuttle pilot, Lieutenant Colonel Eileen Collins, pilots the shuttle Discover on a mission to Russia's Mir Space station.

1995- Israel freed some 900 Palestinian prisoners and pulled its troops out of four towns as the second phase of the peace plan was implemented on the West Bank.

1995 - the Treasury Department unveiled a new version of the $100 bill, complete with an off-center, but enlarged picture of Ben Franklin.

1995 - the jury in the O.J. Simpson murder trial found the former football star innocent of the 1994 slayings of his former wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and Ronald Goldman (however, Simpson was later found liable in a civil trial).

1995 - a newly acquitted O.J. Simpson agreed to a live one-hour interview with NBC News. He pulled out two days later, saying he feared he was being "set up."

1997 - the major tobacco companies agreed to a settlement in the class-action suit brought against them by 60,000 present and former flight attendants, who claimed second-hand smoke in airplanes had caused
them to get cancer and other diseases

1998-Paul F. Hoffman, Alan J. Kaufman, Galen P. Halverson and Daniel P. Schrag publish a Neoproterozoic snowball earth theory in Science Magazine arguing that in the late Precambrian, the earth underwent global glaciations followed by extreme greenhouse conditions, spurring the evolution of multicellular life forms. 

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