Timeline
History’s titans, in chronological order.
551 BC – 479 BC
Ancient China
The teacher whose ideas on governance, morality, and social harmony shaped Chinese civilization for two and a half millennia.
356 BC – 323 BC
Ancient Greece & Macedon
In thirteen years he created an empire stretching from Greece to India, spreading Greek culture throughout the ancient world.
100 BC – 44 BC
Ancient Rome
Dictator perpetuo who transformed the Roman Republic and whose assassination set in motion the rise of the Roman Empire.
69 BC – 30 BC
Ancient Egypt
The last active pharaoh of Egypt — a polyglot, a diplomat, and one of the most gifted political minds of the ancient world.
c. 1162 – 1227
Medieval Asia
Founder of the largest contiguous land empire in history, uniting the Mongolian steppe and unleashing conquests that reshaped Eurasia.
1332 – 1406
Medieval North Africa
The father of historiography and sociology, whose Muqaddimah anticipated modern social science by four centuries.
1452 – 1519
Italian Renaissance
Painter, engineer, anatomist, and philosopher — the Renaissance ideal of the universal man, incarnate.
1494 – 1566
Ottoman Empire
The longest-reigning Ottoman sultan, who presided over the empire's golden age of military expansion, legal reform, and cultural brilliance.
1533 – 1603
Tudor England
The Virgin Queen who guided England through religious turmoil, survived invasion, and presided over one of history's great cultural flourishings.
1564 – 1642
Renaissance Italy
The father of modern observational astronomy and experimental physics, whose telescope revealed a universe the Church was not ready to accept.
c. 1583 – 1663
Early Modern Africa
Queen of Ndongo and Matamba who fought Portuguese colonialism for four decades with diplomacy, military brilliance, and an iron will.
1769 – 1821
Revolutionary & Napoleonic Europe
Rose from Corsican obscurity to become Emperor of the French, remaking the map of Europe and leaving a legal legacy that endures to this day.
c. 1822 – 1913
19th-Century America
Born into slavery, she escaped and then returned nineteen times to lead others to freedom on the Underground Railroad — and later served as a Union spy and scout in the Civil War.
1867 – 1934
Modern Europe
The only person to win Nobel Prizes in two different sciences, she discovered radioactivity, isolated radium and polonium, and transformed our understanding of the atom.