The History of the English Language By juliek@rmckenna.org Period: 400 to 1100 Old English 700 Approximate date of the earliest manuscript records of Old English 900 Alfred the Great leads the Anglo-Saxons to victory over the Vikings 1066 The Norman Invasion 1100 Suspected date of Beowulf's writing Period: 1100 to 1500 Middle English 1200 Scholars from Oxford form The University of Cambridge 1300 The bubonic plague, known as the Black Death, swept through Europe in the mid-1300s, including England 1400 Chaucer's Canterbury Tales 1440 The invention of the printing press 1492 The discovery of the Americas, Period: 1500 to 2000 Modern English 1600 Publication of Shakespeare's First Folio 1775 The American Revolution 1876 Alexander Graham Bell invents the telephone 1939 World War II 1988 The Internet (under development for more than 20 years) is opened to commercial interests
