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Complete Science Timeline
From simplest discovery to the most austere theory, scientific thinking has kept man occupied forever. Each new advance generates still more ideas, questions, and mysteries to be solved. Some of the most common items taken for granted today were once cutting edge technology. Think about what a technological marvel that first paper clip must have seemed. It would be quite amazing to see what scholars of the next thousand years think about the leading technologies of today.
1000 - 1100
1000: Iron Plow - Farmers in northern Europe began using iron wheels instead of wooden wheels. This innovation meant larger yields of agriculture but it did not eliminate famine entirely. Before the century was over, France experienced 26 famines and England averaged one famine every 14 years.
1030: Canon of Medicine - The Arab physician, Avicenna (Abu Sina) published this treatise of medicine. It is based on works from Aristotle and Galen but is better organized and well written than previous Greek medical documents. Avicenna?s work influenced medical practices for centuries.
1036: Modern Musical Notation - Guido d?Arezzo begins his groundbreaking work on documenting modern music, using mathematics as a basis, particularly the number 6. He calls his work the gamut (great scale). The hexachord and hexachord solmization (ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la) are his creations.
1041: Moveable Type - A Chinese printer developed the first moveable type. Pi Sheng began using moveable clay blocks with Chinese ideograms carved on them. His blocks numbered in the hundreds and were used for eight years.
1054: Crab Nebula - On July 5, a minor star in the constellation, Taurus, exploded. The explosion was so great it was visible during the day for 23 days and at night for an additional 633 days. This event, recorded in China and the Western Hemisphere, created the supernova known today as the Crab Nebula.
1067: First Leprosarium - The world?s first sanctuary for lepers was established. Its founder was a 27-year-old Castilian solider named Ruy Diaz de Vivar. Diaz legendary heroics in battle, along with his noble diplomacy and interest in humanitarianism, led to the name, El Cid Campeador (The Master of Military Arts), or El Cid, by which he is known today.
1066: Halley?s Comet - A tremendous light appeared in the night skies and traveled from one end of the heavens to the other. Similar events were documented in 1531, 1607, and 1682, prompting astronomer Edmund Halley to predict its return in 1758, which it did. The comet was eventually named Halley?s Comet, in his honor.
1080: Medicine Translated into Latin - Constantine the African, a physician who studied medicine in Babylon begins translation of medical texts into Latin. Work is done at a Benedictine monastery but the Latin translations, especially those of Galen and Avicenna, deliberately separated the science of medicine from religious doctrine. Constantine disguised himself as a monk to avoid detection.
1080: First Pharmacy - In Salerno, 125 miles from Constantine?s Benedictine monastery, a medical school was established and some female students were admitted. Christian dogma was not emphasized, blood letting was encouraged, pigs were dissected, and dietary practices from Arabia were followed. The school established the world?s first pharmacopoeia.
1086: Magnetic Compass - Shen Kua, a Chinese waterworks director, first began work on a magnetic compass. He claimed magicians could find directions by rubbing a needle on a lodestone and hanging the magnetized needle by a string. According to Shen, the needle would usually point south but sometimes it pointed north.
1101 - 1200
1120: Latitude and Longitude - Anglo-Saxon scientist Welcher of Malvern began trying to measure latitude and longitude using degrees, minutes, and seconds. He wanted to calculate the difference in time between England and Italy. His inspiration came from a solar eclipse in 1092.
1028: Horse and Cattle Breeding - When Cistercian monks from Normandy moved to England, they began extensive programs of stock breeding, agriculture, and swamp reclamation. Vows of poverty and devotion to an austere lifestyle required them to live strictly off the land but their efforts raised agricultural standards across Europe. They enjoyed significant advances in breeding cattle and horses that were soon implemented elsewhere.
1150: Navigation by Compass - Using technologies pioneered the previous century, Chinese explorers use magnetized compasses to guide their journeys. Caravan leaders relied on them to cross the continent by land. Sea merchants used compasses to guide their travels over water.
1154: Mount Hekla - This volcano in Iceland erupted for the second time in 50 years. Word quickly spread throughout the global Catholic network. It was believed Hekla?s craters were the entrance to Hell.
1063: Human Dissection Discouraged - A dictum is issued by the Church that discouraged the dissection of human bodies. The practice had gained favor during the Crusades, where dead Christian warriors were dismembered and boiled to the bone for easier transport home. The dictum declared, ?The Church abhors the shedding of blood.?
1201 - 1300
1202: Arabic Numerals in Europe - Leonardo Fibonacci, also known as Leonardo da Pisa, an Italian mathematician and traveler, publishes the Liber Abaci. Its publication introduces Europe to the Arabic numerals he discovered in northern Africa and the concept of zero from India. Both concepts make mathematical calculation much easier than the Roman numerals in widespread use at the time.
1204: Bubonic Plague - Bubonic plague struck and halted the Fourth Crusade, well on its way toward the Holy Land. Jerusalem was spared. Returning warriors brought home Damsom plum trees, sugar, lemons, rice, and cotton from the Middle East.
1231: The Medical Degree - Frederick II founded a medical school in Salerno, the first to award a medical degree earned through a standardized curriculum. Graduates were required to study 3 years of logic, 5 years of medicine, and spend one year practicing their skills. Nine years of study were required to earn a diploma.
1235: Human Dissection - The Salerno medical school began allowing surgeons to perform human dissections as a means of study. Frederick II was in full support of the program. The last time medical students performed human dissection in schools was in Ptolemic Alexandria in the third century BC.
1236: Anesthesia for Surgery - A Dominican friar, Theodoric of Lucca, who teaches at the Bologna medical school and whose father had been a surgeon in the Crusades, experiments with anesthesia during surgery. He soaked sponges in opiate narcotics and applied them to patients? noses so they?d sleep through surgery. Theodoric also recommended using mercury-laced ointments for skin disorders.
1237: Mongols Invade Europe - Using gunpowder and possibly firearms, too, Mongol invaders conquered much of Eastern Europe. Their invasion introduced these technologies to the continent. They also brought distilled alcoholic beverages and eyeglasses with them.
1247: Bedlam - The St. Mary of Bethlehem (Bedlam) hospital for the mentally insane is established in London. The term, bedlam, to define a chaotic state of insane confusion and uproar, is put into use. It describes the state of the hospital perfectly and St. Mary?s became the standard for treating the mentally ill for many years to come.
1249: Oxford?s University College - The University College in Oxford is founded. Roger Bacon, who had mastered the art of making gunpowder, fought to get science included in the curriculum. Until that time, science was thought to oppose religious doctrine.
1267: Roger Bacon - Considered the first truly modern scientist, Bacon makes some startling predictions about life in the future. He predicts radiology, the airplane, steamship, television, and the existence of the Western Hemisphere. He even describes picture projection technology he called camera obscura.
1297: Extinction - Extinction claimed the last of a species of giant, flightless bird native to some islands in the South Pacific. The Moas giraffe bird stood about 10 feet tall. The islands would come to be known as New Zealand in the future.
1301 - 1400
1306: Fossil Fuels - Until this time, almost all power harnessed by man comes from either man- or animal power or the sun, wind, and water. Wood and dung are burned but on a very small scale globally. Coal, however, was becoming more popular.
1315: Anatomia - Italian surgeon Mondino de Luzzi supervised the first public human dissection. During it, he directed students to the brain and organs of the thorax and abdomen. The manual he published as a result of his work, Anatomia, was the first medical manual to describe practical dissection.
1333: Black Death - The Chinese populace was physically weakened by famine following a prolonged drought. The people could not fight off infection from a form of bubonic plague known as Black Death, which decimated a substantial percentage of the population. Travelers from China unknowingly transported plague-carrying ticks to other parts of Asia and Europe but no one knew at the time the ticks were causing the disease.
1343: Inventorius sive Collectorium Partis Chirurgicalis Medicinae - French surgeon Guy de Chauliac published this manual that would be used by doctors for 300 years. He also developed the use of slings and weights to treat broken bones, performed surgery to repair hernias and remove cataracts, and surgically removed superficial growths from the external body. He advocated cleaning pus from wounds to speed the healing process.
1348: Black Death Reaches Europe - De Chauliac remained even though most other physicians at Auvergne fled the spread of disease. He describes two forms of disease: one that kills in three days and another that kills in five. He recommended bloodletting to prevent disease in people who did not evacuate. As the disease extinguished more than 60% of the European population, de Chauliac wrote of a situation in which ?charity was dead and hope abandoned.?
1350: Black Death?s Effect on Farming - Field hands were earning higher wages than ever before but the labor market and demand for food had been drastically depleted by the plague. As the disease claimed the workers, the price of agricultural products rose substantially but there weren?t enough people to work the fields. Many landowners converted their farmlands to livestock pasturage that required less human labor.
1362: Greenland - The Norse king Magnus Ericson initiated a seafaring expedition to Greenland. Explorers were to look for signs of 700 colonists who set sail in 981 but had not been heard of since. Some of those colonists did settle in Greenland but others are thought to have gone on to North America?s Hudson Bay area.
1371: The Julian Calendar - The calendar was off by 11 minutes,15 seconds each year but iit was used since Julius Caesar adapted it in 46BC. The Vatican commissioned an astronomer to correct the error. Mathematical and astrological calculations were so complex that the astronomer died before completing the task.
1374: Dancing Mania - A dancing mania swept through the city of Aix-la-Chapelle, where townspeople flocked to the streets for hours of frenzied dancing. The urge to dance was pathological and resistance impossible, leaving men and women dancing until sheer exhaustion or injury stopped them. There has never been an explanation for how or why this maniacal outbreak of dancing occurred.
1377: Population of England - Poll tax records indicate the population of the nation is hardly more than 2 million people. Previous surveys place the English population at 3.5 million to 5 million. After decades of Black Death, the population has dwindled dramatically.
1401 - 1500
1401: Inca Agricultural Technology - The development of andanes (terraces) built into the steep slopes of the Andes Mountains of South America produced arable land were there had not been any. This terracing technology required workers to carry soil and topsoil up onto the mountains from the fertile valleys below. The food supply prospered and so did the Incan people.
1403: Quarantine - With the Black Death still raging across Europe, the doge of Venice declared the world?s first order for quarantine to protect Venetians from exposure. Anyone wishing to enter the city was required to wait outside for a specific number of days and, if no signs of illness were evident, entry was allowed. In 1485, quarantine time was standardized to 40 days.
1410: Geography - The treatise, Geography, written by Ptolemy, the Macedonian ruler of Egypt in the third century BC, was translated into Latin. Ptolemy was a leading astronomer, mathematician, and geographer of his time. This translation revived his suspicion that the world might be round.
1421: Navigation - Portugal?s Prince Henry the Navigator assembled a conference of Europe?s leading scientists to establish a new science he called navigation. Attending the conference were astronomers, mapmakers, pilots, instrument makers, and scholars. Henry also commissioned shipwrights to design and create the three-masted caravel, a ship that would be highly maneuverable even under the most harsh situations encountered on the high seas.
1449: Cataloging the Skies - Turkestan prince Ulugh-Beg used a 130-foot-long curved device set on rails to catalog 1,018 stars. His charting of the constellations was so precise they differ by only seconds from today?s calculations of Mars? and Venus? orbits . Muslims so feared his scientific mind they assassinated him this same year.
1456: The Gutenberg Press - Johann Gutenberg used the latest technology in printing to produce a translation of the Bible in the language of commoners (vulgate). Using his Gutenberg press, he printed the Vulgate bible in two volumes formatted for double columns of 42 lines per page. His project took five years.
1474: Christopher Columbus - This Italian seaman began planning a westward journey to China using several latest technologies. German mathematical projections, maps produced from the new science of navigation, an advanced version of the compass, and a new invention, the mariner?s astrolabe, helped him plan his route. One mission he hoped to accomplish was to prove the ancient Greek theory that the Earth is round.
1484: Witchcraft, Medicine, and the Church - Tensions flare between midwives, doctors, and the clergy as Pope Innocent VIII issues a bull recommending harsh measures against witches and magicians in Germany. Midwives were angered by this declaration which seemed to redistribute their work to that of physicians. At the time, all midwives were thought to be witches.
1492: The New World - Christopher Columbus uses modern seafaring technologies to accidentally discover the New World. His voyage relied on the caravels developed earlier in the century. His Atlantic Ocean crossing took five weeks.
1499: Food Preservatives - Explorer Vasca da Gama discovered a route around southern Africa that would take him to India and the Orient. He returned with spices such as cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, and pepper that were used to preserve meat between seasonal slaughters. The spices also helped disguise the taste of rotting meat, which was common during late winter and early spring.
1501 - 1600
1503: Rubber - Columbus and his Spanish colonists were astonished to discover the rubber balls that bounced around as if alive. New World natives were using these big, black balls to play games with. The latex (rubber) was extracted from native shrubs.
1510: Leonardo da Vinci - Da Vinci?s designs for a horizontal water wheel led to the development of the water turbine. His book, Anatomy, includes drawings of internal organs but he did not allow it to be published. Human dissection was a crime against the Church, punishable by death.
1511: Watches - Hailed as a mathematical marvel, Petrus Hele?s horologia was mentioned in print for the first time. This small metallic device was said to work for 40 hours, even if pinned to the breast or kept in the purse. This first watch had hour hands but none to mark the minutes.
1520: The Pacific Ocean - Ferdinand Magellan withstood 38 days of icy, stormy weather as he negotiated his way around the southernmost tip of South America. This passage, although difficult, proved to be a short cut to the South Sea. The South Sea seemed so calm and peaceful after his ordeal through treacherous South American straits that he renamed the sea the Pacific Ocean.
1522: Circumnavigation - Juan Sebastian d?Elcano landed in Seville on September 6, completing the first circumnavigation of the world, started years earlier by Magellan. Only 18 members of the original crew returned with him. A lieutenant, D?Elcano took the helm when Magellan was killed in a skirmish in the Philippine Islands the year before.
1524: Standard Time - Peter Bennewitz, a German mathematician, proposed the concept of standardized time. He proposed a lunar observatory that would compare the moon?s position against more fixed constellations as a way to standardize the measure of time. From these observations, he proposed navigators could use longitude to mark time.
1527: Chemotherapy - Physician Theophrastus von Hohenhein pioneered the concept of chemotherapy while rejecting some traditional medical standards. He burned Greek medical books because they were outdated, according to him, rejected the idea of the body having four humors, and listed the three prime elements as mercury, salt, sulfur. He was ridiculed and exiled from Basel the following year.
1543: Nikolaus Copernicus - This Polish/Prussian astronomer established the theory of daily Earth rotations and the Earth and other planets rotated annually around the sun. Church doctrine dictated that all heavenly bodies rotated around the sun. Fear of execution for heresy prevented him from publishing his work.
1551: Zoology - Historia Animalium was published. Its author, a Swiss naturalist named Konrad von Gesner collected and studied animals from both the New and Old Worlds. His compendium is the foundation of the science of zoology.
1591: Francois Viete - This ?father of algebra? introduced to the French court a system of letters that represented coefficients and unknown quantities when used in algebraic equations. He became privy councilor to Henri IV, who valued his work in decoding secret messages between Spain and the Netherlands. Viete used his letter formulations to advance geometry and trigonometry.
1601 - 1700
1604: Tobacco - Englands?s King James I published the ?Counterblaste to Tobacco.? The anonymous publication questioned the peculiar smoking custom of New World natives brought to England. Although used to cure the ?pockes,? James I described the dirty habit as ?a custome lothsome to the eye, hatefull to the nose, harmefull to the braine, dangerous to the lungs and in the blacke stinking fume thereof, nearest resembling the horrible Stigian smoke of the pit that is bottomlesse.?
1609: Johannes Kepler - This German astronomer established two cardinal principles of astronomy while working at the Prague observatory. One principle proves that planets travel in elliptical, not circular, paths around the sun. The other established that planets do not all travel at the same rate of speed.
1610: Galileo - Italy was scandalized when Galileo Galilei first spoke of the peaks and valleys on the moon?s surface, which at that time had been thought to be smooth. He also discovered three moons orbiting Jupiter. He used his spyglass for these ground-breaking observations.
1624: Santorio Santorius - This Italian medical professor resigned from the University of Padua at the age of 63. Two of his most significant inventions went unnoticed and unused until centuries later. They were a device that measured the pulse and the thermometer.
1637: Rene Descartes - Descartes established his theory that metaphysical demonstrations are better based on mathematical certitude than scholastic subtlety. His Cartesian principle suggested the best approach to scientific clarity was to doubt systematically everything until proven by clear, simple ideas beyond doubt. He penned the words, ?I think, therefore I am.?
1642: Blaise Pascal - This teenage mathematical prodigy invented a counting machine that used numbered wheels for addition and subtraction. A ratchet mechanism made it possible to carry numbers greater than 9. His reason for the machine was to help his father, a French tax collector, with his calculations.
1651: William Harvey - Famous for his theory of blood circulation, this physician to the king proposed the theory that all animals born alive, including humans, evolve from eggs. He claimed lower forms of life are capable of generating life, too. He proposed the insect?s pupal stage was its egg.
1661: The Sceptical Chymist - Robert Boyle cast aside the Aristotelian theory that all things consist of only four basic elements - air, earth, fire, and water. He proposed instead an experimental theory of the elements. Although met with skepticism at the time, Boyle is now known as the father of chemistry.
1674: Diabetes Mellitus - Oxford professor Thomas Willis noted the association between patients with diabetes mellitus and their ?wonderfully sweet? urine, fragrant like honey and sugar. He also determined that diabetes mellitus was but one form of the disease.
1683: Anton von Leuwenhoek - This Dutch naturalist perfected the microscope. He used it to identify living organisms in the calculus he?d scraped off his own teeth. This discovery led to the theory that germs cause disease.
1701 - 1800
1701: Jethro Tull - English agriculturalist Tull invented a drill that made the planting of seeds faster. His drill simultaneously sowed three parallel rows of seeds at a controlled rate. This latest technology used seeds more effectively and reduced the cost of labor for planting.
1713: Immunization - Greek physician Emanuel Timoni wrote to fellow physician John Woodward in London describing a method to prevent smallpox. The process, being performed by Giacomo Pylarini, involved removing a smallpox pustule from a victim and rubbing it into a deliberate wound in someone not yet infected. From this procedure, the practice of immunization grew.
1727: Photography - German chemist J. H. Schulze used a mixture of silver nitrate and chalk to advance his understanding of photography. He placed the mixture under stenciled letters for effect. His experiment established the fact that it?s light, not heat, that caused the silver salts to darken.
1730: Scientific Farming - England?s Charles Townshend discovered that livestock could eat turnips throughout the winter with no ill effect. To feed them this way meant cows didn?t have to be slaughtered each fall. By allowing them to live longer lives, larger cattle were produced, fresh meat could be available year-round, and the need for costly spices to disguise the taste of rotting meat was minimized.
1742: Centigrade Scale - Swedish astronomer Anders Celsius devised a thermometer that is known today by his name. The Celsius thermometer divided the temperature range between boiling and freezing into 100 equal units. In this system, water freezes at 0 degrees and boils at 100.
1751: The Lightning Rod - American Benjamin Franklin discovered that lightning is electricity by flying a kite during a rainstorm. His experiment led to publication of the paper, ?Experiments and Observations on Electricity Made at Philadelphia.? Further work led to invention of the lightning rod, which became instrumental in preventing house fires during thunderstorms.
1769: The Gulf Stream - Benjamin Franklin charted the flow of the Gulf Stream. The forceo f the flow was generally accepted and used by most American navigators but English sea captains were mostly unaware of it. They faced slow progress trying to sail against it rather than with it.
1771: Encyclopaedia Britannica, or a Dictionary of Arts and Sciences Compiled Upon a New Plan - This three-volume work, containing 2,659 pages, sold for 12 Pounds Sterling, about the same as the annual earnings of an artisan. One entry described California as ?a large country of the West Indies? and another defined a woman as ?the female of man.? In the following 203 years, 14 revised editions would be published.
1781: Uranus - English music teacher William Herschel discovered the planet Uranus on March 31. It?s the first new planet to be identified since the time of Babylon. He used a homemade telescope set up in the rear garden of his home.
1795: Theory of the Earth - Scottish geologist James Hutton advocated the study of scientific geology. His theory described the formation of the Earth?s crust. He also proposed the doctrine of uniformitarianism, a philosophy of naturalism that assumes the laws of nature at work in the universe have been in operation forever and they are applied with equal force everywhere.
1801 - 1900
1802: The First Photograph - British physician Thomas Wedgewood produced the world?s first photograph but the image quickly faded. He applied moist silver nitrate to a paper surface to produce the image but had no way to keep it from fading quickly. He reported to the Royal Society that silver chloride was the more sensitive chemical to use.
1811: Iodine - French chemist Bernard Courtois discovered iodine while studying the byproducts produced from leaching ashes of burnt seaweed. It became useful as an antiseptic and for purification of drinking water. Further study proved it to be an essential element of human nutrition.
1823: Macintosh Raincoat - Scottish chemist Charles Macintosh developed the first raincoat and his name remains synonymous with the garment today. He applied naphtha, a coal tar distillate, to cloth to make it waterproof. The first raincoats were brittle when cold and sticky when the weather was hot.
1834: Refrigeration - US inventor Jacob Perkins invented a compression machine that became the starting point for the development of gas refrigeration. He obtained a volatile liquid by distilling rubber. The liquid absorbed heat from its surroundings as it evaporated and, with controlled application of compression and expansion, could cool water the point of freezing.
1849: America?s First Female Physician - Female physicians were common in Europe but Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman in the US to graduate from medical school. She graduated head of her class at Geneva Medical College in Syracuse, New York. During her school years, she endured ostracism from her male classmates and it would be more than one hundred years before female doctors became common in the US.
1850: Energy in the US - Americans were using energy at the rate of 7,091 pounds of coal for every person in the country. It would take most of the world?s industrialized nations 120 years to match that rate of fuel consumption. In spite of the high rate of coal being burned in the US, 91% of its energy came from burning wood and the remainder was from whale oil.
1864: Man and Nature - In his book, ecology pioneer George Perkins Marsh warned that ?the ravages committed by man subvert the relations and destroy the balance which nature had established.? He described locations around the world that man had rendered as desolate as the face of the moon. He witnessed this desolation as a member of the US foreign service.
1873: The Chemistry of Perfume - Chemists at French perfumeries revolutionized the industry with a new method of chemical extraction. The process involved taking a solid essence from flower roots and other fragrant solids and dissolving them with other essential elements of the perfume. As the elements evaporated, the chemists were able to isolate the individual ingredients.
1882: Electricity Put to Use - Street lights and incandescent bulbs in 30 buildings in London illuminated the night for the first time ever and their use quickly spread to other parts of Great Britain. The same thing was happening in New York City. In December, Edward H. Johnson, an associate of Thomas Edison, installed the world?s first Christmas tree decorated with electric lights.
1895: Canned Food - Canning had been a common practice but frequent spoilage was thought to be caused when air had been improperly expelled from the can during the canning process. The discovery of harmful bacteria in canned goods led to safer practices. MIT?s S. C. Prescott and William Lyman Underwood produced charts describing optimum temperature and cook times for many commonly canned foods.
1901 - 2000
1905: The Theory of Relativity - Albert Einstein, a 26-year-old theoretical physicist from Switzerland, published a paper describing his theory of the relative way time and space interact. His theory was based on the equation E=mc2. His predictions included the likelihood that light or radio waves traveling through space would bend when encountering large masses, such as the sun, and that this bending of the waves would slow the speed at which they travel.
1915: Poison Gas Weaponry - World War I was in full swing when Germany first used poison gas at the Second Battle of Ypres on April 22. The greenish-yellow gas, chlorine, could be seen billowing from French trenches. French infantrymen fled but Canadian soldiers stepped in to win the battle.
1924: Round-the-World Air Flight - Two World Cruiser airplanes landed in California, marking the end of a 30,000-mile round-the-world flight accomplished in segments over a 5-month journey. The canvas, plywood, and spruce airships saw only 15 days of actual flight time during the mission. The planes? designer, Donald Douglas, won a US Army contract for 50 observation planes as a result of this feat.
1933: Margarine and Ford Motor Company - At Chicago?s world?s fair, the Ford Motor Company introduced margarine made from soybeans. Robert Boyer, a company chemical engineer, had been experimenting with soybean-based plastics to use as buttons, control knobs, and gearshift handles. His more recent work involved substituting soybeans for traditional foods.
1944: The First Computer - Harvard University?s Engineering School completed the first general-purpose automatic, digital computer. Five million dollars in research funding for the project came from IBM. The computer broke down often.
1955: The Pill - During the Fifth International Conference on Planned Parenthood, Gregory Pincus unveiled his findings that two chemicals inhibit ovulation in women. These active ingredients - progesterone and norethynodrel - would soon become the basis for the contraceptive formulation known as, simply, The Pill. Pincus reported a failure rate of just one pregnancy per thousand women per year.
1969: The Moon - The first human steps on the moon were taken on July 21 when the Apollo 11 lunar module landed with three men on board. Real-time televised coverage of the event drew harsh criticism. Some critics believed the lunar landing was a staged event meant to draw attention away from the Vietnam War; others thought the tremendous amount of money and technology required to achieve a real lunar landing would be better invested in more socially productive endeavors.
1975: Microsoft - William Henry Gates III and his friend, Paul Gardner Allen, aged 19 and 22 respectively, founded the Microsoft computer company in Seattle. Gates, a college dropout, wrote his first computer program at age 13 and entered Harvard with a perfect math SAT score. He was a billionaire by the time he turned 30.
1985: Rock Hudson - Although the ravages of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) was well documented, the general public was not truly concerned about treating or stopping the growing epidemic, assuming it was limited to just small, isolated segments of the population. When film star Rock Hudson suddenly collapsed in public and died just months later, the American populace was shocked into increased awareness of the disease. Before effective treatment methods could be developed, tens of thousands of people, mostly men, died each year.
1990: The Clean Air Act - This law, signed on November 15, called on businesses of all kinds to alter their methods of operation to encompass more environmentally sound manufacturing and business practices. Automobile tailpipe emission standards were required, as were special nozzles on gas pumps to reduce the amount of toxic fumes that were being released into the atmosphere. The act required automobiles that would run on alternative fuels to be on the market by 1995 and all cars made after that time had to have gauges alerting drivers of problems within the car?s pollution-control system.
2001 - 2009
2001: Human Genome Project - This international research project into human genetics published its first draft of the human genome. This map of human genetic coding revealed 24,000 genes in the human body, or just about the same number as mice and twice as many as roundworms. A full genetic sequence was published in 2004.
2002: Mars - A robotic spacecraft dubbed 2001 Mars Odyssey began mapping the surface of the Red Planet in February. One result of this mapping project was the prediction that water does or once did exist on Mars. Evidence of water ice was found in 2008.
2003: Cloning of Mammals - On May 4, Idaho Gem, the first mule ever to be cloned, was born. The first cloned horse, Prometea, was born on May 28. Dolly, a goat cloned in 1996, died on Valentine?s Day; she was the first mammal ever cloned.
2004: Homo floresiensis - In October, a species of human, previously unknown, was discovered on the Indonesian island of Flores. Its apparently short stature led to speculation that Flores man was a dwarf species. Critics said the remains were of a normal-sized human child.
2005: Human Face Transplant - Doctors in France performed the first successful human face transplant. The female patient had been mauled by her pet dog who tried to revive her during a suicide attempt. Several successful face transplants have been performed since.
2006: Saturn - Reservoirs of liquid water that erupt as geysers were discovered in March. Nine natural satellites were found orbiting Saturn in June, bringing the total number of such objects to 31. A second ring around Saturn, farther away from the planet, was discovered in September.
2007: Cancer-Fighting Eggs - Genetic engineering produced chickens that lay eggs with unique cancer-fighting properties. The eggs contain proteins that can be used in anti-cancer drugs. The work was done at the Roslin Institute in Scotland.
2008: Human/Cow Genetic Engineering - A fertilized embryo containing genetic materials from humans and cows lived three days at England?s Newcastle University. The embryo is said to be 99% human. Similar embryos are being developed to further research into human diseases.
2009: Stone Axes - Archaeologists working in Malaysia unearth seven stone axes believed to be 1.8 million years old. The axes could have been used for weapons or as tools. They are the oldest stone axes known to man.
Additional Resources:
Computer Science Photo History
Cosmic Microwave Background Timeline
Department of Energy Genomics Timeline
Environmental History Timeline
