1800s
This invention by Samuel Morse in the 1830s revolutionized long-distance communication.
The Telegraph
This 1962 confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union brought the world to the brink of nuclear war.
The Cuban Missile Crisis
This political system, established in Italy in the 1920s, emphasized ultranationalism, state control, anti-communism, and the glorification of violence.
Fascism
This 1929 event marked the beginning of the Great Depression and had devastating global economic effects, including mass unemployment and banking collapses.
The Wall Street Crash
This 1940 air campaign saw the German Luftwaffe attempt to gain air superiority over Britain but ultimately failed.
The Battle of Britain
This British naturalist published On the Origin of Species in 1859, introducing the theory of natural selection.
Charles Darwin
This South African system of institutionalized racial segregation lasted until the early 1990s.
Apartheid
This 1989 protest in China ended in a violent military crackdown, symbolizing resistance to authoritarianism.
The Tiananmen Square Massacre
This country experienced extreme hyperinflation in 1923, where prices doubled every few days, and citizens often used currency as wallpaper or fuel.
The Weimar Republic in Germany
This 1916 WWI battle, lasting over 300 days, became a symbol of French resistance and resulted in nearly 700,000 casualties without a decisive strategic gain.
The Battle of Verdun
This war, fought between Britain and China in the 1830s–40s, was sparked by disputes over trade of a specific plant
The First Opium War
This treaty formed the military alliance between Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy before World War I.
Triple Alliance
This German Chancellor used realpolitik to unify Germany in the 1870s through “blood and iron” diplomacy and a series of strategic wars.
Otto Von Bismarck
This economic philosophy, associated with Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, emphasized deregulation, privatization, and reduced government spending.
Neoliberalism
This 1906 British battleship revolutionized naval warfare, making all previous battleships obsolete and sparking a naval arms race.
The HMS Dreadnought
This 1804 event marked the first successful slave revolt in the modern era, leading to independence from France.
The Haitian Revolution
This 1950s–60s global health campaign, backed by the WHO, successfully eradicated this deadly disease by 1980.
Smallpox
This campaign of political repression in the Soviet Union during the late 1930s involved widespread arrests, executions, and forced confessions under Stalin.
The Great Purges (Great Terror)
This 20th-century policy approach emphasizes domestic control of the economy, tariffs, and self-sufficiency, often at the expense of global trade.
Economic nationalism
NATO stands for
North Atlantic Treaty Organization
This Russian tsar was assassinated in 1881 by a revolutionary group after implementing significant reforms, including the emancipation of the serfs.
This policy, launched by Stalin in 1928, aimed to rapidly industrialize the Soviet Union but resulted in widespread famine and millions of deaths.
Stalin's First Five Year Plan
This 1933 German law effectively gave Hitler dictatorial powers by allowing him to pass laws without Reichstag approval.
The Enabling Act
This 1992 event saw the British pound crash out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, forcing the UK government to spend billions in failed currency defense.
Black Wednesday
This 1954 battle marked the decisive end of French colonial rule in Indochina and directly led to the Geneva Accords and U.S. involvement in Vietnam.
Battle of Dien Bien Phu