XXI
2004
Google Unveils Gmail to the World
On the first of April, Google announced its electronic post service offering one gigabyte of storage — a sum so prodigious that the press dismissed it as an April jest. It was, in fact, an act of revolution in correspondence.
An Act of Modern Correspondence
2001
The Netherlands Permits Same-Sex Marriage
The Kingdom of the Netherlands becomes the first nation upon Earth to recognise marriage between persons of the same sex, a quiet ceremony at midnight in Amsterdam echoing across a watching century.
A Ceremony Heard Round the World
XX
20th Century
XX1976
Apple Computer is Founded in a Garage
Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne sign their partnership in Cupertino, beginning a small enterprise to sell hand-built computing machines — an undertaking that would reshape the parlours and pockets of the world.
A Garage Becomes a Workshop of Empire
1924
Adolf Hitler is Sentenced for the Beer Hall Putsch
A Munich court hands down a sentence of five years' fortress detention to the future chancellor following the failed coup of November — a punishment soon shortened, whose lenience the century would have great cause to mourn.
A Sentence Delivered, A Warning Ignored
XIX
19th Century
XIX1873
The RMS Atlantic Founders Off Nova Scotia
The White Star Line steamer strikes Marr's Rock near Halifax in the small hours, and five hundred and sixty-two souls are lost to the cold Atlantic — the worst civil maritime disaster of the age before Titanic.
A Maritime Tragedy of the Gilded Age
1826
Samuel Morey Patents the Internal Combustion Engine
An American inventor in New Hampshire receives the first United States patent for a gas and vapour engine — the slow combustion of an idea that, decades hence, would set the carriages of the world in restless motion.
An Engine Drawn upon Parchment
XVIII
18th Century & Earlier
XVIII1789
The First United States House of Representatives Convenes
In Federal Hall in New York City, a quorum is at last achieved and the lower chamber of the new American Congress is called to order — the parliamentary curtain rising upon a republic.
A Republic Calls Itself to Order