Early Modern
Hobbes' Leviathan (1651): The Social Contract and Sovereign Power
Leviathan founded modern social contract theory, arguing that people must accept an all-powerful sovereign to escape a war of all against all.
All Articles
Every Chronicle article on world history, newest first: battles, empires, disasters, discoveries and revolutions.
Early Modern
Dissolution of the Monasteries (1536–1541): Henry VIII's Seizure
More than 800 religious houses were closed, their lands passed to the crown and then largely to the gentry, and monastic life ended in England for centuries.
Early Modern
Portuguese Conquest of Goa (1510): Afonso de Albuquerque
Portugal captured Goa from the Bijapur Sultanate; it became the capital of the Portuguese Estado da Índia and remained Portuguese until 1961.
Contemporary
Ethiopian Famine (1983-1985): Drought, War and Live Aid
Estimates of deaths range from about 300,000 to more than one million; the famine prompted the largest public fundraising effort of its time, including Band Aid and Live Aid.
Contemporary
John Paul II's 1979 Pilgrimage to Poland: Nine Days That Mattered
Millions of Poles gathered peacefully outside state control, a shared experience widely seen as preparing the ground for Solidarity in 1980.
Contemporary
The Feminine Mystique (1963): Betty Friedan's Second Wave
The bestselling book helped spark second-wave feminism in the United States and led to the founding of the National Organization for Women in 1966.
Contemporary
Cosmic Microwave Background Discovery (1964): Big Bang Echo
The detection of the cosmic microwave background gave strong evidence for the Big Bang theory and earned Penzias and Wilson the 1978 Nobel Prize in Physics.
Contemporary
Egyptian Revolution of 1952: The Free Officers Overthrow Farouk
The monarchy fell, Egypt became a republic in June 1953 and Gamal Abdel Nasser emerged as its leader by 1954.
Contemporary
Cambridge Five: Britain's Soviet Spy Ring and Its Defections
Burgess and Maclean fled to Moscow in 1951 and Philby in 1963; Blunt confessed secretly in 1964 and was publicly exposed in 1979; Cairncross was publicly named in 1990.
Ancient World
Phoenician Colonies: Trade Networks Across the Mediterranean
A chain of Phoenician colonies and trading posts linked the eastern and western Mediterranean and laid the foundations of Carthage's later power.
Ancient World
Great Temple of Yeha: Ethiopia's Oldest Standing Building
The temple survives with walls still about 14 metres high and is the best-preserved monument of the pre-Aksumite D'mt kingdom and its links with Saba.
Ancient World
Zhuangzi: The Butterfly Dream and Early Daoist Philosophy
The book Zhuangzi became, with the Tao Te Ching, one of the two founding classics of Daoism.