Historical Timeline

The following dates provide a framework for contextualizing The Great Conversation. Jeff has his students memorize these dates in the grammar stage (grades K-5).

Before Christ (BC)
c. 2050 BC	Abraham offers to sacrifice Isaac
c. 1406 BC	Joshua leads Jews into Promised Land
c. 1150 BC	Troy falls to the Greeks
1003 BC	David crowned king over all of Israel
586 BC	Fall of Jerusalem; Jews exiled
c. 563 BC	Buddha born
516 BC	Jewish temple rebuilt under Zerubbabel
c. 460 BC	Queen Esther intercedes for the Jews
445 BC	Nehemiah rebuilds wall around Jerusalem
c. 427 BC	Plato born
27 BC	Caesar Augustus assumes power over Roman Empire
19 BC	Virgil completes his Aeneid

Anno Domini (AD)
30	Christ is risen!
35	Paul’s conversion on Damascus Road
70	Fall of Jerusalem
95	Last book of the Bible written (Revelation); John dies
313	Edict of Milan legalizes Christianity in Roman Empire
325	Council of Nicea
426	Augustine finishes City of God
432	Patrick begins mission to Ireland
476	Last Roman Emperor overthrown
529	Benedict founds monastery in Monte Cassino
c. 600	Talmud formally closed
632	Mohammed finishes Koran and dies
800	Charlemagne crowned Holy Roman Emperor
1054	The Great Schism divides Eastern Orthodox from Catholicism
1066	Norman Conquest of Britain
1095	First Crusade begins
1215	King John signs Magna Carta
c. 1313	Dante finishes his Inferno
1388	John Wycliffe's English translation of the Bible distributed
1415	John Hus martyred
1453	Constantinople falls to the Turks
c. 1456	Gutenburg prints first Bible using movable type
1492	Columbus sails to America
1513	Machiavelli finishes The Prince
1517	Martin Luther posts his 95 Theses
1523	Ulrich Zwingli's First Disputation
1534	English Act of Supremacy
1536	John Calvin publishes his Institutes; William Tyndale martyred
1549	Xavier begins mission to Japan
1588	England defeats the Spanish Armada
1605	Miguel Cervantes finishes first book of Don Quijote
1608	John Smith becomes governor of Jamestown
1616	William Shakespeare dies
1620	Mayflower lands at Plymouth Rock
1642	Rene Descartes published his Meditations
1654	Blaise Pascal trusts Christ; Oliver Cromwell tells Parliament that freedom of religion is a fundamental right
1667	John Milton publishes Paradise Lost
1688	The Glorious Revolution replaces King James II with William and Mary
1739	John Wesley founds Methodism
1743	David Brainerd begins mission to American Indians
1776	Thomas efferson authors Declaration of Independence
1788	U.S. Constitution ratified
1789	French Revolution begins
1803	Lewis and Clark begin expedition to Pacific
1830	Joseph Smith writes Book of Mormon
1833	Britain frees all slaves
1838	Trail of Tears
1842	Lord Shaftesbury frees British miners
1845	Frederick Douglass publishes Narrative
1848	Marx and Engels publish the Communist Manifesto
1859	Charles Darwin publishes Origin of Species
1865	America frees all slaves
1889	Nietzsche goes insane
1901	Booker T. Washington publishes Up from Slavery
1914-1918	World War I
1917	Lenin leads the October Revolution
1925	Scopes Monkey Trial
1933	Humanist Manifesto I published
1941	Japanese attack Pearl Harbor
1942	Planned Parenthood is established
1945	Dietrich Bonhoeffer executed
1947	Jackie Robinson integrates baseball
1948	Alan Paton publishes Cry, the Beloved Country
1969	Armstrong walks on the moon
1973	Roe v. Wade legalizes abortion in America
1974	Solzhenitsyn publishes the Gulag Archipelago
1989	The Berlin Wall falls
2001	World Trade Center destroyed by terrorists

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