Year
Generations
Propagation
Generation Length
Generation Overlap
spanning 1795 to 2025
17752050
1795 - 1875
1945 - 2025
1870 - 1950
Large marks: 100 years
Small marks: 5 years
Small marks: 5 years
1776
U.S. Declaration of Independence; Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations
1787
U.S. Constitution signed
1789
French Revolution begins
1792
Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Woman
1796
Jenner discovers smallpox vaccine
1808
Beethoven's Fifth Symphony
1815
Battle of Waterloo crushes Napoleon
1819
Bolívar defeats Spanish forces at Boyacá
1826
Niepce takes first photograph
1833
Slavery abolished in British Empire
1842
Long uses first anesthetic (ether)
1859
Darwin's On the Origin of Species; Lenoir builds first practical internal-combustion engine
1862
Pasteur's experiments lead to germ theory; Salon des Refusés introduces impressionism
1865
End of the American Civil War.
1867
Japan ends 675-year shogun rule
1876
Bell patents the telephone
1879
Edison invents electric light
1880
Europe colonizes African continent
1885
World's first skyscraper built in Chicago
1893
New Zealand becomes first country in the world to grant women the vote
1895
Lumiére brothers introduce motion pictures; Marconi sends first radio signals
1897
Herzl launches Zionist movement
1900
Freud's Interpretation of Dreams
1903
Wright brothers fly first motorized airplane
1905
Einstein announces theory of relativity
1907
Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon introduces cubism
1911
Rutherford discovers structure of atom
1913
Ford develops first moving assembly line
1914
World War I begins
1916
Sanger founds international birth control movement
1917
Lenin leads the Bolshevik Revolution
1918
Global “Spanish flu” epidemic
1922
Joyce's Ulysses published
1927
Farnsworth demonstrates working model of a television; Lemaitre proposes big bang theory
1928
Fleming discovers penicillin
1929
Hubble proposes theory of expanding universe; U.S. stock market crash precipitates global depression
1936
Keynes's The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money
1939
Hitler invades Poland; World War II begins
1942
Nazi leaders at Wannsee Conference coordinate “final solution to the Jewish question”
1945
Atomic bombs are dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki; first electronic computer, ENIAC, is built; Arab League launches modern pan-Arabism
1946
First meeting of U.N. General Assembly; Churchill's “Iron Curtain” speech marks beginning of cold war
1947
Gandhi's civil disobedience movement leads to an independent India
1949
Communist victory in China under Mao Zedong
1950
Abstract expressionism introduced
1953
Watson, Crick, and Franklin discover DNA's structure
1954
Brown v. Board of Education begins unraveling of U.S. racial segregation
1957
Russia launches first satellite, Sputnik I
1959
Mary and Louis Leakey uncover hominid fossils
1969
Armstrong and Aldrin walk on the Moon; Internet (ARPA) goes online
1980
Smallpox eradicated
1981
Scientists identify AIDS
1989
Fall of Communism in Eastern Europe
1991
Breakup of Soviet Union; apartheid ends in South Africa
2016
Present day
earliest event
1796
Jenner discovers smallpox vaccine
latest event
2016
Present day
1796
Jenner discovers smallpox vaccine
1808
Beethoven's Fifth Symphony
1815
Battle of Waterloo crushes Napoleon
1819
Bolívar defeats Spanish forces at Boyacá
1826
Niepce takes first photograph
1980
Smallpox eradicated
1981
Scientists identify AIDS
1989
Fall of Communism in Eastern Europe
1991
Breakup of Soviet Union; apartheid ends in South Africa
2016
Present day