Greece and Rome dominate the written record, but Europe's story runs from Bronze Age traders to medieval kingdoms and the industrial states of the modern era. These articles follow the cities, wars and institutions that shaped the continent.
Priscus's fragment 8, in J. B. Bury's translation, follows the East Roman embassy of 449 to Attila, a Greek merchant turned Hun and a banquet in wood.
· AD 449The Nika riot of 532 burned Constantinople's Great Church. Justinian's Hagia Sophia rose by 537, Procopius described it, and its dome fell in 558.
· AD 537In 1939 Basil Brown excavated a 27-meter ship burial at Sutton Hoo for Edith Pretty; an inquest gave the find to her, who gave it to the British Museum.
· AD 625Alcuin's two letters and two Anglo-Saxon Chronicle texts record the Lindisfarne raid of 793. Digs since 2016 found graves of adults, children and babies.
· AD 793Four accounts of Christmas Day 800 disagree on who planned it. Einhard wrote Charlemagne would have stayed away; the court annals recorded an acclamation.
· AD 800Tree-ring dating puts the Oseberg ship's timber at about 820 and its burial at 834; Gabriel Gustafson excavated it in 1904 after a farmer's report in 1903.
· AD 834Wood cut at L'Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland, dates to AD 1021 by a radiocarbon spike from a 993 solar storm. It is the cutting year, not the arrival year.
· 1021Ancient DNA from graves dated 1338 near Lake Issyk-Kul, in what is now Kyrgyzstan, put the Black Death's source strain at the root of the plague family tree.
· 1347Mehmed II took Constantinople on May 29, 1453, with a giant cannon, ships hauled overland past the harbor chain, and 53 days against under 5,000 defenders.
· 1453A notary's record of November 6, 1455, is the only contemporary source for the Gutenberg Bible, printed at Mainz in about 180 copies; 49 are known.
· 1455The colophon reads Basel, Oporinus, June 1543. Vesalius's Fabrica gave the sternum three parts, not Galen's seven. His annotated 1555 copy surfaced in 2007
· 1543Henry VIII's Mary Rose sank in the Solent on July 19, 1545. Two museums disagree on why and on the death toll; she was raised on October 11, 1982.
· 1545Galileo's Sidereus Nuncius, printed by Baglioni in Venice in 550 copies, reported a rough Moon and four bodies circling Jupiter, seen from January 7, 1610.
· 1610The Vasa Museum says the warship foundered minutes into its 1628 voyage. The inquest found no one guilty; Franzén found the wreck in 1956, raised in 1961.
· 1628An orphan sale at Alkmaar on February 5, 1637, raised about 90,000 guilders for tulip bulbs. Krelage, Garber, Goldgar and Thompson trace what happened before and after.
· 1637The London Gazette no. 85 dated the fire to 1 a.m. on September 2, 1666, in Pudding Lane. An Act of 1666 set a yearly fast and ordered a pillar.
· 1666How many died in Lisbon on November 1, 1755? Pombal told his governors 6,000 to 8,000; NOAA lists 50,000, then 60,000 to 100,000. No register was kept.
· 1755Lancashire machines from 1764, the Cromford mill of 1771, high wages and cheap coal explain why cotton factories appeared first in the English Midlands and North.
· 1771Paris fell on February 24, 1848 and four capitals followed by March 22; by 1849 liberals had split from workers, nations from nations, and armies won.
· 1848Queen Victoria opened the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park on May 1, 1851. The Royal Commission put its glass hall at 1,851 feet; its catalogue, 1,848.
· 1851MPs asked in June 1858 how to protect Parliament from the Thames; on July 15 Disraeli called the river a Stygian pool and named a 3,000,000 pound plan.
· 1858Carrington and Hodgson each saw a white-light flare on September 1, 1859, as Kew's magnetographs jumped. Auroras and telegraph failures followed.
· 1859Darwin's diary says the 1,250 copies of the Origin sold on publication day, November 24, 1859; Murray's trade sale had already taken orders for 1,500.
· 1859Historic Environment Scotland records the Tay Bridge high girders falling on December 28, 1879. The 1880 inquiry split into a joint report and Rothery's own.
· 1879
