2nd millennium

(1st millennium – 2nd millennium – 3rd millennium – other millennia)

Events

• The Black Death
• Mongol Empires in Asia
• The Renaissance in Europe
• The Protestant Reformation
• The agricultural and industrial revolutions
• The rise of nationalism and the nation state
• European discovery of the Americas and Australia and their colonization
• European colonization and decolonization in Africa and Asia
• Population explosion
• World-spanning wars (Seven Years' War, French Revolutionary Wars, Napoleonic Wars, World War I, World War II)
• Capitalism and Communism

Significant persons

• Thomas Aquinas, Italian theologian
• Genghis Khan, Mongolian conqueror
• Dante Alighieri, Italian poet
• Christopher Columbus, Spanish explorer
• Martin Luther, German religious reformer
• René Descartes, French philosopher and mathematician
• Nicholas Copernicus, Polish astronomer and mathematician
• Miguel de Cervantes, Spanish playwright and novelist
• Johannes Gutenberg, Inventor of movable type
• Galileo Galilei, Italian scientist
• William Shakespeare, British playwright and poet
• Isaac Newton, British scientist
• Charles Darwin, British natural scientist
• Benjamin Franklin, American founding father and scientist
• Thomas Jefferson, American founding father and president
• George Washington, first American president
• Napoleon Bonaparte, French conqueror and emperor
• Abraham Lincoln, American president
• Otto von Bismarck, German chancellor
• Friedrich Nietzsche, German philosopher
• Karl Marx, German political philosopher
• Sigmund Freud, Austrian psychoanalyst
• Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin, Soviet leaders
• Nikola Tesla, Inventor
• Thomas Edison, Inventor
• Mao Zedong, Chinese revolutionary
• Henry Ford, Industrialist
• Franklin D. Roosevelt, American president
• Adolf Hitler, German dictator
• Winston Churchill, British prime minister
• Albert Einstein, German physicist (1879 – 1955)
• John Paul II, Pope of the Roman Catholic Church
• Bill Gates, American computer engineer (b. 1955)

Inventions, Discoveries, Introductions

• The Printing press
• Gunpowder
• The Steam engine
• The discovery of the scientific method
• Theory of evolution
• The discovery of genetics and DNA
• Calculus
• Human Flight
• Nuclear Power
• Space travel and mankind's first flight to the moon
• The internal combustion engine
• Capitalism and socialism
• The computer and the Internet
• Universal suffrage

Centuries and Decades