Important Dates in World History: A Timeline for Exams

The correct answer is A, 1889. The Eiffel Tower was completed in Paris in 1889, a hundred years after the storming of the Bastille in 1789, and it served as the entrance arch of the World's Fair held that year to mark the centenary of the French Revolution. Designed by Gustave Eiffel's firm, it was meant to stand for twenty years and remained the tallest structure in the world for about four decades. B is wrong because 1900 was another Paris exposition year but the tower was already eleven years old by then. C is wrong because 1886 is the year the Statue of Liberty, also linked to Gustave Eiffel through its internal framework, was dedicated in New York, which is why the year is offered here. D is wrong because 1913 falls just before the First World War and carries no connection with the tower.

The correct answer is C, Waterloo. Napoleon Bonaparte was finally defeated on 18 June 1815 at Waterloo in present-day Belgium by the allied armies led by the Duke of Wellington and the Prussian commander Blucher. The defeat ended the Hundred Days that followed his return from exile on Elba, and he was sent to the remote island of Saint Helena, where he died in 1821; the phrase to meet one's Waterloo comes from this battle. A is wrong because at Ligny, fought two days before Waterloo, Napoleon actually beat the Prussians. B is wrong because Jena in 1806 was one of his greatest victories, in which Prussia was crushed. D is wrong because Arcole in 1796 was an early victory in his Italian campaign that helped make his reputation.

The correct answer is B, 1799. Napoleon Bonaparte seized power in November 1799 in the coup that overthrew the Directory, and he became First Consul of France, which is the point at which the French Revolution is usually said to have ended; he crowned himself emperor five years later, in 1804. A is wrong because 1797 is the year of the Treaty of Campo Formio, which ended his first Italian campaign but gave him no political office in Paris. C is wrong because by 1800 he was already in power and fought the battle of Marengo as First Consul. D is wrong because in 1798 he was away in Egypt, where his fleet was destroyed by Nelson at the Battle of the Nile, and he returned from that campaign only in 1799. The chain worth keeping is 1789 revolution, 1799 Napoleon in power, 1804 emperor, 1815 Waterloo.

The correct answer is B, 1919. The Treaty of Versailles was signed on 28 June 1919 in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles and formally ended the First World War between Germany and the Allied powers. It placed the guilt for the war on Germany, imposed heavy reparations, cut its territory and limited its army, and the resentment it created is treated by historians as one cause of the Second World War. A is wrong because 1921 saw separate agreements between the United States and Germany, as the American Senate had refused to ratify Versailles. C is wrong because 1933 is the year Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, a consequence of the post-war settlement rather than part of it. D is wrong because 1940 falls in the middle of the Second World War, twenty-one years after the treaty.

The correct answer is A, The fission bomb dropped at Hiroshima. Little Boy was the code name of the uranium fission bomb dropped by the United States on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on 6 August 1945, the first use of a nuclear weapon in war. Three days later, on 9 August, a plutonium bomb named Fat Man was dropped on Nagasaki, and Japan surrendered shortly afterwards. B is wrong because the bomb dropped at Nagasaki was Fat Man, and it was a fission bomb as well, not a fusion or hydrogen bomb, which came only in the 1950s. C is wrong because the first nuclear device tested by the United States was code-named Trinity and was exploded in New Mexico in July 1945. D is wrong because North Korea's first nuclear test came decades later and has no connection with these code names.

The correct answer is D, 1929. The Great Depression began with the crash of the New York stock market in October 1929, remembered through Black Thursday and Black Tuesday of that month. Banks failed, industrial output collapsed and unemployment rose across the United States and Europe through the early 1930s; the recovery in America came with Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal from 1933. A is wrong because 1911 is associated with the Chinese Revolution, not with any economic collapse. B is wrong because 1931 falls in the depth of the Depression but is two years after it began, and this is the option that catches candidates who remember only that the worst years were in the early thirties. C is wrong because 1914 is the year the First World War started.

The correct answer is B, 14 July 1789. A Paris crowd attacked and captured the Bastille, a royal fortress and prison that stood for the arbitrary power of the Bourbon monarchy, on 14 July 1789, and that day is taken as the start of the French Revolution; France keeps it as its national day, known as Bastille Day. A is wrong because 4 July 1776 is the date of the American Declaration of Independence, which came thirteen years earlier and is the national day of the United States. C is wrong because 26 August 1789 is the date of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, an important document of the same revolution but six weeks after it began. D is wrong because 18 June 1815 is the Battle of Waterloo, which closed the Napoleonic era twenty-six years later.

The correct answer is C, 24 October 1945. The United Nations Charter came into force on 24 October 1945 once it had been ratified by the five permanent members of the Security Council and a majority of the other signatories, and that date is observed every year as United Nations Day. B is wrong, and is the main trap, because 26 June 1945 is the day the Charter was signed at San Francisco; signing and coming into force are four months apart. A is wrong because 10 January 1920 is the date the League of Nations, the predecessor body created after the First World War, came into being. D is wrong because 1 January 1942 is the date of the Declaration by United Nations, a wartime statement by twenty-six Allied countries in which the name was first used, but no organisation existed then.

The correct answer is C, Yuri Gagarin, 1961. The Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin orbited the Earth once aboard Vostok 1 on 12 April 1961, becoming the first human being in space; the day is observed as the International Day of Human Space Flight. A is wrong because Alan Shepard of the United States made a short sub-orbital flight in May 1961, a few weeks after Gagarin and not in 1959. B is wrong because Neil Armstrong was the first person to walk on the Moon, on 20 July 1969, which is a different first altogether and the one most often confused with this. D is wrong because Valentina Tereshkova, also Soviet, became the first woman in space in 1963, two years after Gagarin. The ladder to remember is Sputnik 1957, Gagarin 1961 and Apollo 11 in 1969.

The correct answer is A, 1989. The Berlin Wall, built in 1961 to stop movement from East Berlin to West Berlin, was opened and then demolished by crowds on both sides from 9 November 1989, and its fall is the symbol of the collapse of communist rule in eastern Europe. B is wrong because 1990 is the year in which East and West Germany were formally reunified, on 3 October, which follows the fall of the wall but is a separate event. C is wrong because 1991 is the year the Soviet Union itself was dissolved, in December, ending the Cold War; the sequence of wall, reunification and dissolution runs 1989, 1990, 1991. D is wrong because 1987 is the year of the speech in which the American president called for the wall to be torn down, two years before it actually was.

The correct answer is C, 1969. Apollo 11 landed on the Moon on 20 July 1969, and Neil Armstrong became the first person to set foot on its surface, followed by Buzz Aldrin, while Michael Collins stayed in the command module in orbit. The mission was the culmination of the space race begun by the Soviet Union with Sputnik. A is wrong because 1961 is the year Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space and the year the American president set the goal of reaching the Moon before the decade ended. B is wrong because 1965 belongs to the middle of the programme, when the first spacewalks were made. D is wrong because 1972 is the year of Apollo 17, the last crewed mission to the Moon, so it marks the end of the Moon landings rather than their beginning.

The correct answer is A, 1453. Sultan Mehmed the Second captured Constantinople in 1453, ending the Byzantine or Eastern Roman empire, and the city became the Ottoman capital under the name Istanbul. The closing of the overland route to the east pushed European states to look for a sea route to India, and many historians treat 1453 as the end of the Middle Ages. B is wrong because 1492 is the year Christopher Columbus reached the Americas sailing west for Spain, an outcome of the search that the fall of Constantinople set off. C is wrong because 1498 is the year Vasco da Gama reached Calicut by sea, on 17 May. D is wrong because 1517 is the year Martin Luther is said to have published his theses, beginning the Reformation.