Ok, so you might want to go back to the Agricultural Revolution or the dawn of writing for the first item on the list, but when it comes to actual history – the kind that’s purposely written down for later generations – the war between the ancient Greeks and the Persian Empire is really where it all began, partly because the world’s first historian, Herodotus, wrote about it in great detail.

While the first Greek city-states emerged back in the 800s BC, the war began when the Persians attacked at the Battle of Marathon in 490BC and it ended in a Greek victory at the Battle of Salamis in 479 BC, despite the Greeks being woefully outnumbered.

This victory would change the course of Western history as the Persians lost power in Europe and Asia and the Greeks would go on to colonize cities and spread their ideas throughout three continents.

While there’s argument among historians about where “Western culture” (whatever you take that to mean) started, the rise of the Greeks and the flourishing of Greek culture – music, theater, architecture, philosophy, the sciences, etc. – certainly played a large role in molding the way our world looks today.

The Qin Dynasty in China is one of the most important eras in Asian history but is often glossed over by those who only see the benefits of “Western” culture. Nevertheless, the Chinese had their own blossoming civilization with brilliant literature, philosophy, and science.

While some have claimed that the Qin emperor burned books and executed scholars during his reign, that seems to be an embellishment. He was, however, obsessed with standardizing thought throughout his empire, and he undertook massive infrastructural projects to connect his people (and to protect them – maybe you’ve heard of The Great Wall of China?).

He’s also known for using massive amounts of wealth and slave labor to build his famous mausoleum, full of the famous terracotta soldiers.

His reign from 221 BE – 206 BC unified a large swath of China and allowed later rulers to consolidate power and turn the country into the massive political entity it is today.

Like Greece, it’s hard to separate mythology from history when it comes to Rome. It’s also difficult to choose one decisive moment in its history that served as a turning point.

While some will argue that the founding of the Republic or the Pax Romana are the seminal moments, we’re going with the assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 BC by his fellow senators on the Ides of March.

What’s so important about it? Well, it’s incredibly complicated, but a lot of it comes down to the other Roman rulers not wanting one man to consolidate power (mostly because they wanted to keep their own, not out of any sense of democracy). Caesar was a literal “dictator,” after all.

Unfortunately for them, the wars that broke out after Caesar’s death did bring about Rome’s first emperor, who gained not just ultimate political, but near-godlike, status.

It would be almost 500 years until the Roman Empire would be well and fully dismantled.

Regardless of your religious opinions, there’s no argument among historians that a man named Jesus existed. Whether or not he was the son of God, his life would change the course of history as we know it.

While he was never politically or even religiously powerful in his lifetime, his teachings would survive to give rise to modern Christianity. His execution by the Roman governor of his town in 30AD (although some date it to 33AD) would leave a lasting impression on a relatively small group of people who spread his words throughout the world and in 325AD, Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire.

One thing you may not know? Jesus is also considered an important prophet in Muslim tradition.

Islam is the second largest religion in the world and just like the largest, it started with the teachings of one man.

Just like Jesus, there was no doubt a historical figure named Mohammed too. One day, he claimed that he was visited by the angel Gabriel and given the words that would make up the Qu’ran.

Mohammad’s life and his new religion would forever leave a mark on the world. Unlike Jesus, Mohammed was very influential during his lifetime and Islam spread quickly throughout the Middle East and all the way to Spain in its early days.

Wars will always be some of the most influential events in history, but they can’t be fought without weapons. That’s what makes the accidental invention of gunpowder such a pivotal moment.

It was discovered in China when alchemists were trying to create an elixir of life, but instead created one of the deadliest substances on earth.

The first reference to its use in war (as “fire arrows”) to massacre and terrorize the enemy occurred in 904AD when the Chinese were fighting the Mongols. After that, it would become the basis for rifles, cannons, and grenades around the world.

From then on, weapons would only get more fierce and would cease to require close proximity to subdue one’s enemies.

The universal leader of the Mongols came from a humble background but eventually conquered the majority of Asia. As brilliant as he was brutal, he used his conquered land to create a complex trade network that would connect Asia and Europe and greatly enrich his empire.

A ruler who imposed no religious obligations on his subjects and let free trade thrive, Ghengis Khan reigned over the entirety of the Silk Road which people used to transport not just goods like spices and animals but also ideas (and even diseases, like the Black Death).

Of course, in order to do this, he had to lead an army that would massacre millions and he was fond of destroying some of the world’s great repositories of ancient knowledge. Still, he is responsible for connecting the world in a way that no one else had yet accomplished.

The Black Death, or plague, is one of the many things that traveled along The Silk Road, affecting hundreds of millions of people between the years 1346 and 1353 (dates differ depending on how you want to measure the beginning and end). It’s estimated that anywhere between 75 to 200 million people (roughly 30-60% of Europe’s population) died during this time.

The plague is important not just for the effect it had on the population, but because of the religious, social, and economic upheavals it brought with it. It was seen as a punishment from God, but monks and priests fled infested areas instead of staying to deliver last rites. Sometimes it was blamed on specific groups of people, leading to genocidal rampages in cities with immigrant populations.

While historians still argue over the details, it’s clear that the plague had an effect on religion, art, commerce, and people’s views of “others.”

Many argue that the moment that sparked the Italian Renaissance was when the Italian poet Petrarch climbed Mont Ventoux in 1336. A letter he wrote about the journey in 1350 would become one of the first documents associated with the Italian Renaissance.

While this might not sound like a big deal, it touched off a massive landslide of literature and art in which humans would value their own views on history, the world, religion, and nature as well as a rediscovery of and appreciation for ancient texts (many of which has been destroyed during wars but saved by Muslims who stored them away for centuries).

Whereas the medieval period is seen as one of devout reverence, Petrarch’s letter would inaugurate an era of humanistic thinking and Renaissance spirit that would drive art, culture, and science in entirely new directions and give us some of our most famous Western artists and thinkers, from Leonardo da Vinci to Galileo.

The so-called Age of Discovery allowed Europeans to map huge swaths of the world previously unknown to them and would change the way they saw themselves in relation to the natural world, divinity, and each other – but there was a much darker side to it as well.

While the first voyages were undertaken by the Portuguese who discovered islands off their own coast, many use 1492 as the initial date of this era, since it’s when Columbus landed in the Bahamas (then called the West Indies).

Of course, the relationship between explorers and the natives of the new regions they “discovered” were devastating for the latter. “Explorers” forced their religion on the new people they encountered, engaged in genocide in order to claim their lands, and stole then sold human beings along these routes as well.

The Age of Exploration touched off the colonization of North and South America and sub-Saharan Africa, leading to the infamous slave trade.

The world is a different place once information travels easily. So when Johannes Gutenberg invented a press using movable letters and oil-based ink, he touched off a revolution in knowledge. Only then could books be printed cheaply instead of hand-written one-by-one.

While moveable type had been invented in China in 1040 and in Korea in 1377, the press itself allowed for books to be created quickly and uniformly.

The first mass-produced book? The Gutenberg Bible in 1455. Now Christians could read scripture themselves instead of depending on a priest to interpret it. Think about the effect that would have on people’s view of the world!

Maybe you’ve heard of the fall of this major city (now Istanbul) and wondered why it was important.

On May 29, 1453, the Ottoman (Turkish) Empire defeated the final blow to the remaining Eastern Roman Empire (also referred to as the Byzantine Empire). Of course, any empire that falls marks a turning point in world affairs, but this gave new life and power to a large swath of the world covering southeastern Europe, southwest Asia, the Middle East, and northern Africa.

When the Turks defeated this Empire is was a major defeat of Christianity and a triumph for Islam.

There are entire books written on the background leading up to this act, but it’s significance lies mostly in the fact that this was a major public event showing that Christians were no longer happy following the Pope.

Martin Luther’s challenge to the papacy caused others to do the same and his translation of the Bible from Latin (which only the educated could read) into common language (German, in this case) allowed people to take religion into their own hands.

The resulting schism would result in various sects of Christianity separating themselves from the Catholic Church for the first time.

Jamestown was the first formal English settlement in America where the very first homes were built and established.

The Virginia Company of England was the first to set sail to the land eventually named Virginia in honor of Elizabeth I, the Virgin Queen and the settlers eventually grew enough tobacco in Jamestown to make it a successful colony for England.

There is so much to unpack about the importance of this episode, which marked the real start of the colonization of what is now America, but not before genocide, slavery, starvation, and violence preceded it.

Using a homemade (but very sophisticated) telescope, Galileo was the first person to really see the detail of the universe. In doing so, he discovered the moons of Jupiter, the first clear example of celestial bodies orbiting around a center other than the Earth.

In 1610 he published The Starry Messenger which put him on a path to clash with the Catholic Church over whether or not the Earth was at the center of the universe.

While there were people before him who spoke out about the universe’s order, he knew enough important people to make it a scandal and his influence made him a central figure of the scientific revolution of the 17th century.

The Industrial Revolution is one of the biggest turning points in history (and that’s saying something after what we’ve just read) and impacted every aspect of daily life for people in Britain, where it began.

The date 1760 is typically given as the start date for the use of mechanized labor, though the revolution wasn’t in full swing until a few decades into the 1800s.

The mass production of British iron and the harnessing of steam power were the main thrusts behind the revolution and the economic impact of machinery was staggering.

For the first time, the population began to increase consistently as factories opened, jobs became available, and people could afford to sustain a family. Of course, this also brought long hours, hard labor, and overwork – hallmarks of our daily life in a capitalist society.

The rowdiest tea party in history helped kick off the American Revolutionary War in which America would eventually establish its independence.

Fed up with high British taxes on tea brought to America, the colonists dumped entire shiploads of the stuff into the Boston harbor to show the British king that the colonies would not stand for taxation without appropriate representation in the British government.

While it would be another 2 years before the revolution would start with the battles of Lexington and Concord and 3 years before the Declaration of Independence, this event is often seen as a tipping point towards American independence.

Revolution against governments and monarchies was happening around the world in the 18th century, not just in the U.S. The French revolution was sparked, quite literally, with the famous storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789.

The Bastille was a fortress used by French kings to imprison political prisoners and the common people saw it as a symbol of an oppressive monarchy.

Eventually, the revolution led to the overthrow of King Louis XVI and his monarchy as well as stripping power from France’s other noble families.

After this, other countries in Europe followed suit and monarchy was on the decline in Europe.

In 1848, The Declaration of Sentiments was written and signed by Elizabeth Cady Stanton (and 67 other women and 32 men in total) at the first Women’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, NY. This called for giving U.S. women the right to vote, among other freedoms already granted to men.

Despite support, it would be a long time before women would gain the right to vote. In fact, in 1872 Susan B. Anthony would be arrested while trying to vote in a presidential election.

New Zealand was the first country to grant suffrage (the right to vote) to its women in 1893 and the U.S. state of Colorado followed the same year.

But Australia, Finland, and part of the Russian Empire would all grant suffrage to women before the 19th Amendment was finally added to the U.S. Constitution in 1920.

Many agree that the tipping point that started WWI was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife Sophie during an official visit to the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo.

Nationalism played an important role in World War I and his assassin was a member of a Serbian nationalist group fighting against Austria-Hungary’s rule over Bosnia.

After a series of events in which political leaders miscalculated others’ desire to go to war to protect or reestablish boundaries, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, triggering the involvement of other European states and ultimately leading to the first World War.

Part of the medical revolution that would change the life expectancy of people in developed countries around the world, Alexander Fleming’s discovery of the first man-made antibiotic has saved countless lives.

As usual, there’s more to the story, but in addition to changing medicine, it also changed the course of warfare. Up until that point, more soldiers tended to die from infections than from battle wounds. WWII was the first war that allowed those infections to be treated successfully, thanks to penicillin.

Sadly, our abuse of antibiotics has led to even worse infections that are resistant to modern interventions.

There’s some debate about when the Second World War began, but things finally got so complex that there was no return when Britain and France declared war on Germany in 1939 following their invasion of Poland. This was Adolf Hitler’s and the Nazi party’s attempt to regain lost territory and rule the country, but most European leaders knew he wouldn’t stop there.

Hitler’s power also allowed him to commit mass genocide of what he thought of as inferior races – the Jews in particular – leading to the deaths of 6 million people. The Jewish population has never recovered from the Holocaust.

When Mao Zedong, the Chairman of the Communist Party of China, reestablished Chinese Communism and brutally purged the last remnants of capitalism and traditional culture from Chinese society, things would change forever on the Asian continent.

In 1949, Mao named himself head of state and proclaimed the existence of the People’s Republic of China after years of fighting with the American-backed regime of Chiang Kai-Shek. The Cultural Revolution had begun and would change China and the U.S.’s relationship with it forever.

Even after Mao’s death and the re-opening of China’s economy, Mao’s reputation would have permanent effects on how China’s leaders would handle state affairs.

The first atomic bomb to be used as a weapon was named “Little Boy” and dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. The bomb vaporized buildings and killed roughly 70,000 people in quick order, though nearly 100,000 died by the end of the year from its effects.

Just three days later a second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki.

These were unprecedented acts of war the likes of which we have luckily never seen again. While Hitler was already dead and the Germans had surrendered, the Americans chose to secure Japanese surrender with the most brutal weapon ever employed.

This act has led to decades of debate about whether it was a necessary measure and it also encouraged other countries to become nuclear powers.

You might wonder how one little satellite changed the world, but Sputnik not only kicked off the space race but was a pivotal moment in the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the U.S.

By launching the first object into space, the Soviets put America on the defensive when it came to technological advancement. The anxiety this satellite caused all over the world would lead to trillions of dollars of investment in science and technology that would determine who governed space (a conversation we’re still having today).

The Soviets also sent the first man to space in 1961 and all of this led to the U.S. investment in putting a man on the moon in 1969.

A defining moment in the American civil rights movement, Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered this speech to 200,000 people at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington on August 28, 1963. The words would stay with Americans forever.

In this seminal civil rights speech, King preached that all people are created equal and should enjoy the same rights and privileges as well as expressing hope that children would be judged by “the content of their character, not the color of their skin.”

His powerful words delivered to the largest audience ever on the mall up until that point put pressure on President Lyndon B. Johnson to push civil rights laws through Congress.

A catastrophic explosion at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine in 1986 released a huge amount of radioactive particles into the atmosphere and still stands as the worst nuclear power plant accident in history.

Half a million workers were needed to contain the contamination and the long term effects on their health are still being determined.

But the reason this incident changed the world is that it changed people’s perception of nuclear power, turning it from a hopeful source of energy into something to be feared. Today, we’re still debating whether this energy source is worth the potential devastation.

The Berlin Wall was both a physical and a symbolic division between East and West Berlin, and between communism and capitalism.

The wall summed up the Cold War in one structure, so tearing it down was a monumental occasion.

While the wall was not formally demolished until 1992, Gorbachev relaxed his policies towards people at the wall’s checkpoints by 1989, and finally, a critical mass appeared there one day and began climbing it and chipping away.

Because no one wanted to be responsible for putting down the protest, guards allowed it to go on. The next year, Germany was reunified and the Soviet Union effectively collapsed in 1991, events that largely ended the Cold War.

On September 11, 2001, at 8.46am, an American Airlines flight crashed into the North tower of the World Trade Center. Around 3000 people would die that day in a set of coordinated attacks on America.

The ways in which America and the world have changed since that day are immeasurable, but it set off a seemingly neverending war on the nebulous concept of “terror” as well as a very real war against the Taliban in Afghanistan and beyond. It also changed the way that Muslims were treated throughout the country and has had long-lasting effects on the way we travel, vote, and interact with the rest of the world.

It was a horrible attack designed to make us live in fear and change the way we live and enjoy our world – and to some extent, that’s precisely what it did.

Like it or not, Facebook has profoundly changed our world, from the way we communicate with friends and family to the way we discuss politics and get our news.

It all began in a Harvard dorm room on February 4, 2004 when Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes launched the site for Harvard students. Later, they expanded to other colleges in the Boston area, then to the Ivy League, other universities, high schools – and then to everyone and their grandmother.

Now, there are over two billion Facebook users in the world. It’s impossible to imagine what things would be like without the social network (even if you don’t use it, it still affects the world around you), for better or worse.