Contemporary
Alan Shepard and Freedom 7 (1961): First American in Space
Shepard completed a 15-minute suborbital flight, the first American human spaceflight, and was safely recovered.
All Articles
Every Chronicle article on world history, newest first: battles, empires, disasters, discoveries and revolutions.
Contemporary
Operation Polo 1948: India's Annexation of Hyderabad State
The Hyderabad army surrendered within five days and the state was integrated into India, but the operation was followed by widespread communal killings.
Contemporary
McCarthyism (1950-1954): Joseph McCarthy and the Red Scare
McCarthy's influence collapsed after the televised Army-McCarthy hearings, and the Senate condemned him on 2 December 1954.
Ancient World
Tollense Valley Battlefield: Europe's Oldest Known Battle Site
The site provided the first direct evidence of a large-scale battle in Bronze Age northern Europe, with remains of at least 140 people recovered.
Ancient World
Settlement of Tonga and Samoa: The Birth of Polynesia
The settlement of Tonga and Samoa created the homeland where Ancestral Polynesian language and culture developed before the later voyages into eastern Polynesia.
Ancient World
Warring States Period (475-221 BC): China's Age of Rival Kingdoms
After two and a half centuries of war and reform, Qin conquered the other six kingdoms between 230 and 221 BC and founded China's first unified empire.
Ancient World
Battle of the Ten Kings: The Rigveda's Account of a Tribal War
Victory of Sudas and the Bharata tribe over a confederation of ten kings, strengthening the Bharatas in the Punjab.
Ancient World
Battle of Sentinum (295 BC): Rome Defeats Samnites and Gauls
Decisive Roman victory that broke the anti-Roman coalition of Samnites, Gauls, Etruscans and Umbrians.
Ancient World
Treasury of Atreus (c. 1250 BC): The Great Tholos Tomb of Mycenae
The largest and finest Mycenaean tholos tomb; its dome remained the widest in the world for more than a thousand years.
Ancient World
Diary of Merer: Oldest Papyri and the Building of Giza
The papyri gave the first eyewitness account of logistics behind the Great Pyramid and are the oldest inscribed papyri yet found.
Ancient World
Epic of Gilgamesh: The World's Oldest Great Work of Literature
The epic was copied across the Near East for some 1,500 years, was forgotten, and was rediscovered in the 19th century as one of the world's oldest great works of literature.
Prehistory
Almendres Cromlech: The Largest Stone Circle in Iberia
A megalithic enclosure of about 95 standing stones, the largest such monument in the Iberian Peninsula.