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Between 1347 and 1351, the bubonic plague killed between one third and one half of Europe's entire population, destroying the old social order and inadvertently paving the way for a new world.

Flourishing in the city-states of 14th to 17th century Italy, the Renaissance produced Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Galileo, and a transformation in how humanity understood itself and the natural world.

Napoleon Bonaparte rose from obscure Corsican origins to dominate Europe, winning over 60 pitched battles and remaking the legal and political landscape of the continent before his final defeat in 1815.

From 1861 to 1865, the United States fought the bloodiest conflict in its history, a war that killed 620,000 soldiers and ended with the abolition of slavery and the question of what kind of nation America would be.

Fought between 1914 and 1918 across three continents, the First World War killed 20 million people and dismantled four empires, replacing the 19th-century world order with one that no one had wanted or planned.

Between 1941 and 1945, the Nazi regime systematically murdered six million Jewish people alongside millions of Roma, disabled people, and others, in the most documented genocide in human history.

On 6 August 1945, the United States dropped the first atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima, killing 80,000 people instantly and inaugurating the nuclear age that continues to shape our world.

Mohandas Gandhi's philosophy of nonviolent resistance transformed the Indian independence movement and provided a model for social change that inspired movements from the American Civil Rights struggle to anti-apartheid campaigns.

On 20 July 1969, astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first human being to set foot on the Moon, fulfilling a decade-long national commitment and marking one of the defining moments in the history of exploration.

From Rosa Parks refusing to give up her bus seat in 1955 to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Black Americans and their allies forced the United States to live up to its founding promise of equality.

The Tang Dynasty, which ruled China from 618 to 907 CE, is regarded by historians as one of the highest points of Chinese civilisation, a cosmopolitan golden age of poetry, art, trade, and religious diversity.

In 221 BC, Qin Shi Huang became the first emperor of a unified China, creating the administrative framework of a country that has endured for over two thousand years and beginning the construction of the Great Wall.