History.

The Arkadiko Bridge in the Peloponnese, Greece, built by the Mycenaeans around 1300 BCE using a corbelled (false-arch) construction technique, is commonly cited as the oldest bridge in the world still standing and usable — though some engineering historians note it is technically a corbel bridge rather than a true arch bridge, a distinction debated among specialists.

Chinese alchemists, seeking an elixir of immortality, are believed to have accidentally developed gunpowder sometime around the 9th century CE, with the earliest surviving written formula appearing in a military text dated to 1044 CE — initially used for fireworks and signaling before its military applications (rockets, then firearms) were developed over subsequent centuries.

Mohenjo-daro, built around 2500 BCE in the Indus Valley (in present-day Pakistan), featured a grid layout of streets, standardized baked-brick construction, and one of the earliest known urban drainage and sanitation systems — making it one of the earliest known examples of deliberately planned city design anywhere in the ancient world.

The Step Pyramid of Djoser at Saqqara, designed by the architect Imhotep for the Third Dynasty pharaoh Djoser around 2670 BCE, is the oldest Egyptian pyramid and among the oldest large-scale cut-stone buildings in the world. It is about 4,700 years old and part of the UNESCO site Memphis and its Necropolis.

Damascus, Syria, is among the most commonly cited candidates for the oldest continuously inhabited city, with archaeological evidence of settlement dating back roughly 11,000 years — though Jericho, in the West Bank, has archaeological evidence of settlement dating back even further (around 11,000-12,000 years), and both cities' advocates dispute the other's claim to 'continuous' habitation given gaps in the archaeological record.

The Terracotta Army buried in pits near the mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of unified China (died 210 BCE), is estimated to contain about 8,000 life-size soldiers, along with chariots and horses. Discovered by farmers digging a well near Xi'an in 1974, it was inscribed as part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987.

The Varna Necropolis on Bulgaria's Black Sea coast, discovered in 1972, contained more than 3,000 gold objects weighing about 6 kg in graves dated to around 4600–4200 BCE. It is the oldest known processed gold treasure, roughly 6,500 years old, and is displayed at the Varna Archaeological Museum.

The Soviet thermonuclear bomb known as Tsar Bomba was air-dropped over the Novaya Zemlya test site on 30 October 1961 and produced a yield of about 50 megatons of TNT (estimates range from 50 to 58 Mt) — the most powerful explosion ever created by humans.

The Pesse canoe, a dugout hollowed from a single Scots pine trunk and found in 1955 during road construction near Pesse in the Netherlands, has been radiocarbon dated to between 8040 and 7510 BCE — roughly 10,000 years old. It is regarded as the oldest known boat in the world and is displayed at the Drents Museum in Assen.

Edmund Hillary of New Zealand and Tenzing Norgay, a Sherpa of Nepal, reached the summit of Mount Everest on 29 May 1953 as members of the British expedition led by John Hunt — the first confirmed ascent of the world's highest mountain.

During the Berlin Airlift, from June 1948 to September 1949, U.S. and British aircraft flew more than 270,000 flights to deliver about 2.3 million tons of food, coal, and other supplies to West Berlin during the Soviet blockade. It remains the largest humanitarian airlift in history.

The Second World War (1939–1945) killed an estimated 70 to 85 million people, about 3% of the world's 1940 population, including tens of millions of civilians who died in the Holocaust and other genocides, bombing, and famine. It is the deadliest conflict in human history, with the Soviet Union and China suffering the largest absolute losses.

The Trinity test, conducted by the U.S. Army's Manhattan Project in the Jornada del Muerto desert of New Mexico on 16 July 1945, was the first detonation of a nuclear weapon. The plutonium implosion device yielded roughly 25 kilotons of TNT equivalent by modern estimates.

The Battle of Leyte Gulf in the Philippines, fought from 23 to 26 October 1944 between the United States and Australian navies and the Imperial Japanese Navy, involved roughly 280 warships and some 200,000 naval personnel. It is generally regarded as the largest naval battle in history and crippled the Japanese fleet for the rest of the war.

On D-Day, 6 June 1944, the Allies landed about 156,000 American, British, Canadian, and other troops on five beaches in Normandy, France, by sea and air, supported by nearly 7,000 vessels. Operation Neptune, the assault phase of Operation Overlord, remains the largest seaborne invasion in history.

During Operation Dynamo, from 26 May to 4 June 1940, 338,226 British and French soldiers were evacuated from the beaches and harbor of Dunkirk, France, as German forces closed in. Carried by Royal Navy warships and hundreds of civilian 'little ships', it is the largest military evacuation in history.

Enheduanna, daughter of Sargon of Akkad and high priestess of the moon god Nanna at Ur around 2300 BCE, is credited with hymns including the 'Exaltation of Inanna'. She is widely regarded as the earliest known author identified by name in world history, about 4,300 years ago, though some scholars question how much of the attributed work is hers.

In 1924 two Douglas World Cruiser biplanes of the U.S. Army Air Service, crewed by aviators from an eight-man team, completed the first flight around the world — a 175-day journey from April to September covering more than 26,345 miles (about 42,400 km).

British aviators John Alcock and Arthur Whitten Brown flew a modified Vickers Vimy bomber from St. John's, Newfoundland, to Clifden, Ireland, on 14–15 June 1919 — the first non-stop transatlantic flight, taking about 16 hours.

On 1 July 1916, the first day of the Battle of the Somme in northern France, the British Army suffered 57,470 casualties, including 19,240 killed. It remains the bloodiest day in the history of the British Army.

The British Empire governed approximately 23-24% of the world's population at its peak around 1913 (roughly 412 million people out of a global population of about 1.8 billion) — the largest empire in history by both share of world population and total land area, though the Qing Dynasty and Mongol Empire also ranked among history's most populous empires at their own peaks.

Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen and four companions — Olav Bjaaland, Helmer Hanssen, Sverre Hassel and Oscar Wisting — reached the geographic South Pole on 14 December 1911, about five weeks before Robert Falcon Scott's British party.

French aviator Louis Blériot flew his Blériot XI monoplane from near Calais to Dover on 25 July 1909 in about 36 minutes, the first airplane crossing of the English Channel, winning the Daily Mail's £1,000 prize.

On 12 December 1901, Guglielmo Marconi reported receiving the Morse letter 'S' at Signal Hill in St. John's, Newfoundland, transmitted from his station at Poldhu in Cornwall, England, about 3,500 km away. Although some historians question whether the faint signal was truly received, the event is generally credited as the first transatlantic radio transmission.

The Anglo-Zanzibar War of 27 August 1896 lasted roughly 38 to 45 minutes, from a Royal Navy bombardment of the sultan's palace starting at about 9:00 a.m. to the lowering of its flag. It followed Sultan Khalid bin Barghash's seizure of power without British approval and is widely recognized as the shortest war in recorded history.

The Games of the I Olympiad were held in Athens from 6 to 15 April 1896 at the Panathenaic Stadium, featuring 43 events in 9 sports. They were the first Olympic Games of the modern era, revived by Pierre de Coubertin's International Olympic Committee.

New Zealand's Electoral Act 1893, given royal assent on 19 September 1893 after campaigning led by Kate Sheppard, gave all women aged 21 or older the right to vote — the first self-governing country to do so. Women voted for the first time in the general election of 28 November 1893.

Pope Pius IX reigned from June 16, 1846, until his death on February 7, 1878 — nearly 32 years — the longest verified papal reign in the history of the Roman Catholic Church, a period that included the loss of the Papal States and the First Vatican Council.

On 10 March 1876 in Boston, Alexander Graham Bell transmitted the words 'Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you' to his assistant Thomas Watson in another room — the first successful telephone transmission of intelligible speech, recorded in Bell's laboratory notebook.

On 16 August 1858, Queen Victoria sent a 98-word message of congratulation to U.S. President James Buchanan over the first transatlantic telegraph cable, laid between Valentia Island, Ireland, and Newfoundland by the Atlantic Telegraph Company. The message took about 16 hours to transmit, and the cable failed within weeks; a durable link followed in 1866.

The United States Constitution, ratified in 1788 and in effect since 1789, is the oldest still-active written national constitution governing a sovereign country's central government. (San Marino's governing statutes date to 1600, but function differently from a single codified constitutional document.)

On 21 November 1783 Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and the Marquis d'Arlandes flew over Paris in a hot-air balloon built by the Montgolfier brothers — the first confirmed free flight by humans.

The Siege of Ceuta, in which Moroccan forces besieged the Spanish-held (later Portuguese-held) enclave of Ceuta in North Africa, lasted from 1694 to 1727 — 33 years — commonly cited by Guinness World Records as the longest siege in recorded history.

The Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England, opened in 1683 in a building specifically constructed to house and display Elias Ashmole's collection — widely regarded as the first purpose-built museum building in the world to open to the public, predating the British Museum by seven decades.

The Magellan-Elcano expedition completed the first circumnavigation of the globe in September 1522, though Ferdinand Magellan himself died in the Philippines in 1521 partway through the journey — the voyage was completed under Juan Sebastián Elcano's command, with only 18 of the original roughly 270 crew members surviving the three-year journey.

The Reconquista — the centuries-long series of campaigns by Christian kingdoms to retake the Iberian Peninsula from Muslim rule, from the initial Umayyad conquest in 711 CE to the fall of Granada in 1492 — spanned 781 years, and is often cited as the longest war in history, though historians debate whether such a long, intermittent series of conflicts should be treated as a single 'war' at all.

The 'Erdapfel' (earth apple), made in Nuremberg between 1490 and 1492 under the direction of the merchant and cosmographer Martin Behaim, is the oldest surviving terrestrial globe. Completed just before Columbus's first voyage, it shows no Americas, and it is held by the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg.

Johannes Gutenberg completed his mechanical movable-type printing press around 1440 in Mainz, Germany, and printed his famous 42-line Bible around 1455 — a technology that dramatically reduced the cost of producing books and is widely credited as a key catalyst for the Renaissance, Reformation, and the spread of literacy across Europe. (Movable type had been independently invented earlier in China and Korea, but Gutenberg's press was the version that transformed European society.)

The faceless iron clock in Salisbury Cathedral, England, is believed to date from about 1386 and is widely described as the oldest working mechanical clock in the world. It struck the hours until 1884, was rediscovered in 1928, and was restored to working order in 1956.

The Jikji, an anthology of Korean Seon (Zen) Buddhist teachings, was printed with movable metal type at Heungdeok Temple in Cheongju, Korea, in 1377 — 78 years before Gutenberg's Bible. Its only surviving volume is held by the Bibliothèque nationale de France, and it was added to UNESCO's Memory of the World Register in 2001.

The Icelandic Althing was founded in 930 CE at Þingvellir, where Icelandic chieftains gathered annually to make laws and settle disputes — it is widely regarded as the oldest parliamentary institution still in existence, even though its powers, form, and location have changed enormously since then.

The University of Al-Qarawiyyin, founded in Fez, Morocco, in 859 CE by Fatima al-Fihri, is recognized by Guinness World Records and UNESCO as the oldest existing, continuously operating institution of higher education granting degrees — founded over two centuries before the University of Bologna (1088), which is instead credited as the oldest university in the specific European institutional sense.

The Kallanai, or Grand Anicut, a stone weir across the Kaveri River in Tamil Nadu, India, is traditionally attributed to the Chola king Karikala in about the 2nd century CE. Still diverting water for irrigation in the Kaveri delta about 1,800–1,900 years later, it is widely cited as the oldest water-diversion structure in the world still in use.

Cai Lun, a court official of the Han Dynasty, is traditionally credited with inventing paper around 105 CE by refining a papermaking process using mulberry bark, hemp, and rags — though archaeological evidence suggests cruder forms of paper existed in China somewhat earlier, Cai Lun's process was the first practical enough for widespread writing use, eventually spreading along trade routes to the Middle East and Europe over the following centuries.

The Flavian Amphitheatre in Rome, known as the Colosseum, was started under Emperor Vespasian and opened by his son Titus in 80 CE. It held an estimated 50,000 spectators, measures about 189 by 156 meters, and is the largest amphitheatre ever built in the Roman world.

Ancient Rome is generally estimated to have reached roughly one million inhabitants around the reign of Augustus, at the turn of the first century BCE and CE, making it the first city to do so. No other European city reached that size again until London around 1800, though ancient population figures are estimates based on grain distributions and housing records.