What are the most important dates (years) in history?

In My Humble Opinion
1

“What are the ten dates students should be made to memorize?”

I’m not sure the above question is actually what I want to ask. I welcome more intelligent suggestions for good criteria. And I don’t need a single Top Ten List; it might be fun to see a Ten Most Important Dates in Science List, as well as Ten Key Turning-points in European History, and so on.

Despite the forum name (“MY Opinion”) I’m really interested in OTHERS’ opinions. But I’ll start with a few of my own.

“In fourteen hundred and ninety-two Columbus sailed the ocean blue.” All Americans know this one!

1492 was definitely one of the greatest turning-points in history, not just in the Americas but in Europe. Let’s not quibble about the fact that Europe didn’t learn of any discovery until 1493. And let’s not quibble about exact dates in general.

70 AD - the destruction of Jerusalem. This was an important turning point for Christianity and for Judaism.

1177 BC - a huge turning-point in the Late Bronze Age.

Are the following just “also-rans”?

800 AD is a nice easy-to-memorize date! The actual crowning of Charlemagne to be Emperor of the West isn’t important, but the Carolingian Renaissance was a turning point.

1453 - the Fall of Constantinople. This may not be important, but at least it’s easy to memorize for bridge-players! (We know all the 4-digit combos adding to 13.)

  1. If only one science date is allowed, Einstein’s “Miracle Year” seems a good candidate.

One date I think is hugely over-memorized is 1215 (John signs Magna Carta). The shifting of power among king, nobles and commoners was not a simple progression. And John’s father Henry II contributed much to English democracy. Nobles already had much power under the Anglo-Saxon kings. And consider the huge power wielded by Tudor monarchs, centuries after King John.

Help!?

2

It’s debatable, but I think Tuesday, November 5, 2024, may very well be one of them.

3

First post hijacking the thread is bad form. Please, no replies to this post.

Moderating

4

Sorry!

5

I’m not sure I buy 70 AD, seems pretty weak without a lot more explanation. Also, wasn’t this far more important to Jewish history than Christian? It moved Christianity further from its Judaic roots, but that was happening anyway.

I think 49 BC when Julius Caesar became dictator of Rome was far more important.

1945 with the ending of WWII seems like an extremely important year, including the use of atomic bombs and rockets and jets. As WWII doesn’t have a single year building up to it but a series of events that marched towards it instead, dating back before WWI I think WWII’s ending was the most pivotable moment in modern history. It was a new world after that.

6

Something space-related. Sputnik’s launch? Yuri Gagarin’s flight? I’m a Yank, so I’ll go with July 20, 1969 and the moon landing.

Something World War II-related. Not sure if I would go with the Japanese invasion of China in 1937, the German invasion of Poland in 1939, or the end in 1945.

I will agree with the OP about 1492.

221 BCE, when the King of Qin consolidated China and proclaimed himself Emperor.

Something Mongol-related. Possibly 1206, when Temujin adopted the title Genghis Khan, Possibly 1279, when Kublai Khan established the Yuan Dynasty.

7

Just to nitpick, the question immediately invites another - whose history?

Every country/polity has its foundational dates, many of them contested (as to their importance). Putin could do you some sort of number on Kievan Rus, no doubt.

For Einstein’s 1905, you might include whenever it was he wrote to FDR about the possibility of a nuclear bomb, and then one more point for 1945 as the year the possibility became awful reality.

For space exploration, you could include 1944 as the year rockets were successfully launched and landed more or less where expected, albeit destructively.

Gutenberg and printing, perhaps?

8

Yes, absolutely yes. That was huge. But what year to assign it to? 1436 I guess?

9

0 AD. Whether or not you buy into the date of Christ’s birth or whether or not he actually existed, it is still when many in the modern world bases there counting of years from.

10

1066 and 1215 are both famous enough to have “The Great Courses” lecture series devoted to them (“1066: The Year That Changed Everything” and “Years That Changed History: 1215”)

11

The date of the first known example of written language.

12

And “In fourteen hundred and ninety-two Iberia expelled the Jews.”

13

The Gospels (and thus much of the mythologization) were allegedly written after the destruction of Jerusalem. And that event was an essential cause of the split between Judaism and Christianity.

14

313 - Constantine I permitting Christianity in the Roman Empire.

622 - Muhammad’s journey from Mecca to Medina.

1529 - Failed Siege of Vienna, stopping the Ottoman advance in Europe.

1815 - Waterloo and the end of Napoleon’s reign.

1949 - Chiang Kai-shek’s evacuation to Taiwan and communist takeover of China

15

?? The only “historical” event I can think of around that time was the alleged Exodus and revelation at Sinai, but I assume you’re thinking of something else?

16

C.E. 33 crucifixion of Jesus
C.E.622 hejira of Muhammad

1917 Russian Revolution
1945 Hiroshima and Nagasaki
1993 World Trade Center

These are events that changed the world in drastic ways. I was only around for one of them, but I remember that day vividly. I remember the older man in the grocery store that day, who turned to me in the check out line and said only, “Everything’s changed now.” True words.

17

That is the year generally given to a massive collapse in civilization on the Med. I’ll try to find a link for you.

18
  1. Circa 530 BCE: Beginning of Buddha’s preaching career
  2. 146 BCE, sack of Carthage, establishing Roman control over the whole Mediterrean.
  3. 70 CE, fall of the Temple in Jerusalem; reasons discussed above.
  4. 1687, publication of Newton’s Principia, basic text of modern science
  5. 1776, American Revolution
  6. 1837,Queen Victoria’s coronation (not a critical event per se, but I think we need something representing the British Empire).
  7. 1865 End of American Civil War, and of chattel slavery as practiced in Western civilization
  8. 1917, Russian Revolution
  9. 1921, Theory of Relativity
  10. 1945, end of WW2, first use of atomic weapons, founding of UN

The ones I feel worst about leaving out are 1492, Mohammed’s hegira, the global political upheavals of 1968, and the fall of the USSR (though the last two are sorta related). Luther’s posting of the 95 theses is right up there, too.

19

And the Moors (that’s what we called them: an exonym). Or the Muslims (that is rather how they saw themselves).
Many relevant years have already been mentioned, I would add 1648, the year the Peace of Westphalia ended the 30 Years’ War and planted the seeds for so many future wars.
And something between 1346 to 1353, when the Black Death killed so many in Europe.

20

I’ll go by the order of what I think are the most important events and that affect a large majority, if not all, of the planet. A few dates are approximate.

1492 CE has to top the list. Yeah, it was a process and all that, but that’s the year we started down the path to having one global civilization rather than hundreds or thousands of scattered civilizations.

312 CE, the year that Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity.

610 CE, the year that Mohamed started Islam.

1440 CE (or 1436 CE as proposed above), the invention of the printing press, which allowed for the development of the scientific method.

1945 CE, the end of WWII and only use of nuclear weapons during war.

1776 CE, July 4th, Independence Day for the United States.

1995 CE, the year (roughly) the internet became available to ordinary people around the world.

2001 CE, September 11th, the date we lost the (admittedly gradual) path to world peace that humanity had been on following the end of the Cold War.

1991 CE, December 26th, the date Mikhail Gorbachev dissolved the Soviet Union, providing us with a peaceful ending the Cold War. The fact that later world leaders squandered the opportunity to pursue world peace shouldn’t count against Gorbachev or against the significance of the date.

2007 CE, the year Apple released the first iPhone.