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Assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand
This caused the beginning of World War I. -
Japan Makes 21 Demands on China
Seizing the opportunity effected by the onset of war in 1914, and by its status as an Allied power, Japan presented China with a secret ultimatum in January 1915 designed to give Japan regional ascendancy over China. -
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Gallipoli Campaign
The Gallipoli Campaign, also known as the Dardanelles Campaign, was a World War I campaign that took place on the Gallipoli peninsula in the Ottoman Empire -
Bolshevik Revolution
Also known as the October Uprising, a seizure of state power instrumental in the larger Russian Revolution of 1917. -
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Russian Cvil War
A multi-party war in the former Russian Empire fought between the Bolshevik Red Army and the White Army, the loosely allied anti-Bolshevik forces. -
Treaty of Brest-Litovsk
The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was a peace treaty between the new Bolshevik government of Russia and the Central Powers, that ended Russia's participation in World War I. -
Mussolini Launches Fascist Movement in Italy
Benito Mussolini, an Italian World War I veteran and publisher of Socialist newspapers, breaks with the Italian Socialists and establishes the nationalist Fasci di Combattimento. Commonly known as the Fascist Party, Mussolini's new right-wing organization advocated Italian nationalism and launched a program of terrorism and intimidation against its leftist opponents. -
Paris Peace Conference
The Paris Peace Conference was the meeting of the Allied victors, following the end of World War I to set the peace terms for the defeated Central Powers following the armistices of 1918. -
First Meeting of the League of Nations
The League of Nations was an intergovernmental organization founded as a result of the Paris Peace Conference that ended WWI. -
US Stock Market Crash
The Wall Street Crash of 1929, also known as the Stock Market Crash of 1929, began in late October 1929 and was the most devastating stock market crash in the history of the United States. The crash signaled the beginning of the 10-year Great Depression that affected all Western industrialized countries. -
Japanese Invasion of Manchuria
The Japanese invasion of Manchuria began on September 19, 1931, when the Kwantung Army of the Empire of Japan invaded Manchuria. The Japanese established a puppet state, called Manchukuo, and their occupation lasted until the end of World War II. -
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Hitler is Ruler in Germany
He was chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945 and dictator of Nazi Germany from 1934 to 1945. Hitler was at the centre of Nazi Germany, World War II in Europe, and the Holocaust. -
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Stalin's Great Purge
The Great Purge was a series of campaigns of political repression and persecution in the Soviet Union orchestrated by Joseph Stalin. It involved a large-scale purge of the Communist Party and Government officials, repression of peasants, Red Army leadership, and the persecution of unaffiliated persons, characterized by widespread police surveillance, widespread suspicion of "saboteurs", imprisonment, and executions. -
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Long March by Chinese Communists
The Long March was a military retreat undertaken by the Red Army of the Communist Party of China, to evade the pursuit of the Kuomintang army. There was not one Long March, but a series of marches, as various Communist armies in the south escaped to the north and west. -
German Anschluss with Austria
Adolf Hitler announces an "Anschluss" (union) between Germany and Austria, in fact annexing the smaller nation into a greater Germany. -
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Invasion of Poland by Germany
On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland. The Polish army was defeated within weeks of the invasion. German units, with more than 2,000 tanks and over 1,000 planes, broke through Polish defenses along the border and advanced on Warsaw in a massive encirclement attack. After heavy shelling and bombing, Warsaw surrendered to the Germans on September 27, 1939. -
German Invasion of USSR
Under the codename Operation "Barbarossa," Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, in the largest German military operation of World War II. -
Soviet Victory at Stalingrad
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D-Day
On June 6, 1944, 160,000 Allied troops landed along a 50-mile stretch of heavily-fortified French coastline to fight Nazi Germany on the beaches of Normandy, France. General Dwight D. Eisenhower called the operation a crusade in which “we will accept nothing less than full victory." -
Capture of Berlin by Soviet Forces
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Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Event was caused by the need to get Japan to surrender in WWII -
United Nations Established
Less than two months after the end of World War II, the United Nations is formally established with the ratification of the United Nations Charter by the five permanent members of the Security Council and a majority of other signatories. -
Partition of India
The Partition of India was the partition of the British Indian Empire that led to the creation of the sovereign states of the Dominion of Pakistan and the Union of India. -
Creation of Israel
On May 14, 1948, David Ben-Gurion, the head of the Jewish Agency, proclaimed the establishment of the State of Israel. U.S. President Harry S. Truman recognized the new nation on the same day. -
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Arab-Israeli War
Also known as the First Arab–Israeli War, this was fought between the State of Israel and a military coalition of Arab states and Palestinian Arab forces. -
NATO Established
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was established by 12 Western nations: the United States, Great Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Italy, Luxembourg, Norway, Iceland, Canada, and Portugal. -
Establishment of the People's Republic of China
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Korean War
The Korean War began when some 75,000 soldiers from the North Korean People’s Army poured across the 38th parallel, the boundary between the Soviet-backed Democratic People’s Republic of Korea to the north and the pro-Western Republic of Korea to the south. This invasion was the first military action of the Cold War. -
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Algerian War of Liberation
A war between France and the Algerian independence movements from 1954 to 1962, which led to Algeria gaining its independence from France. An important decolonization war, it was a complex conflict characterized by guerrilla warfare, maquis fighting, terrorism, the use of torture by both sides, and counter-terrorism operations. -
Establishment of the Warsaw Pact
The Soviet Union and seven of its European satellites sign a treaty establishing the Warsaw Pact, a mutual defense organization that put the Soviets in command of the armed forces of the member states. -
Hungarian Uprising
Hungary in 1956 seemed to sum up all that the Cold War stood for. The people of Hungary and the rest of Eastern Europe were ruled over with a rod of iron by Communist Russia and anybody who challenged the rule of Stalin and Russia paid the price. -
Castro Comes to Power in Cuba
On this date, Castro's army of 800 guerilla soldiers defeated the current standing government, effectively gaining him power. -
Construction of the Berlin Wall
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Creation of the PLO
The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) is an organization founded in 1964 with the purpose of creating an independent State of Palestine. It is recognized as the "sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people." -
US Sends Troops to Vietnam
In response to the Gulf of Tonkin Incident of August 2 and 4, 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson decided to escalate the Vietnam Conflict by sending U.S. ground troops to Vietnam. On March 8, 1965, 3,500 U.S. Marines landed near Da Nang in South Vietnam; they are the first U.S. troops arrive in Vietnam. -
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Iraq-Iran War
The protracted war between these neighboring Middle Eastern countries resulted in at least half a million casualties and several billion dollars’ worth of damages, but no real gains by other side. Started by Iraq dictator Saddam Hussein in September 1980, the war was marked by indiscriminate ballistic-missile attacks, extensive use of chemical weapons and attacks on third-country oil tankers in the Persian Gulf. -
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Dissolution of the USSR
On December 26, 1991, the dissolution of the Soviet Union was finalized by declaration no. 142-H of the Soviet of the Republics of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union, acknowledging the independence of the twelve republics of the Soviet Union, and creating the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). -
Soviet Withdrawl form Afghanistan
The withdrawal of Soviet combatant forces from the Afghanistan began on 15 May 1988 and successfully executed on 15 February 1989 under the leadership of Colonel-General Boris Gromov. -
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Persian Gulf War
Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein ordered the invasion and occupation of neighboring Kuwait in early August 1990. Alarmed by these actions, fellow Arab powers such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt called on the United States and other Western nations to intervene. Hussein defied United Nations Security Council demands to withdraw from Kuwait by mid-January 1991, and the Persian Gulf War began with a massive U.S.-led air offensive known as Operation Desert Storm. -
Transfer of Hong Kong to China
The transfer of sovereignty over Hong Kong from the United Kingdom to China, referred to as "the Handover" internationally or "the Return" in China, took place on 1 July 1997, and marked the end of British rule in Hong Kong.