100 History Facts, Each One Checked and Sourced

All 100 History facts

• The Code of Hammurabi established early written law
• The Rosetta Stone unlocked ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs
• The Great Pyramid of Giza was built for Pharaoh Khufu
• Athenian forces defeated Persia at the Battle of Marathon
• The Cyrus Cylinder recorded ancient imperial tolerance
• The Library of Alexandria gathered ancient world knowledge
• Qin Shi Huang unified China and began the Great Wall
• Emperor Ashoka carved Buddhist edicts across India
• Julius Caesar was assassinated on the Ides of March
• The Edict of Milan granted religious freedom in Rome
• The Roman Colosseum opened with one hundred days of games
• The Pax Romana maintained stability across the Mediterranean
• The Han Dynasty established the Silk Road trade route
• Spartan troops staged a heroic stand at Thermopylae
• Hadrian's Wall marked the northern border of Roman Britain
• Hannibal crossed the Alps with war elephants to fight Rome
• Cai Lun standardized paper making in Han China
• The Western Roman Empire fell in 476 CE
• The Code of Justinian preserved Roman legal tradition
• Greek warships won the decisive naval Battle of Salamis
• The Maya created an accurate long count calendar system
• Harappan cities featured advanced brick drainage networks
• The Epic of Gilgamesh is one of the oldest literary works
• The Peloponnesian War reshaped ancient Greek politics
• Alexander the Great forged an empire from Greece to India
• The Battle of Hastings launched the Norman conquest of England
• King John sealed the Magna Carta at Runnymede in 1215
• The Black Death devastated Eurasia during the fourteenth century
• Sultan Mehmed II conquered Constantinople in 1453
• Bi Sheng invented clay movable type printing in China
• Johannes Gutenberg revolutionized printing with movable metal type
• Mansa Musa displayed immense wealth on his pilgrimage to Mecca
• The Grand Canal of China connected northern and southern rivers
• Zheng He commanded massive Ming Dynasty treasure fleets
• The Domesday Book surveyed land ownership in Norman England
• The House of Wisdom in Baghdad preserved world philosophy
• The Aztecs founded Tenochtitlan on Lake Texcoco in 1325
• Gunpowder was invented by Chinese alchemists during the Tang Dynasty
• The raid on Lindisfarne monastery launched the Viking Age
• The First Crusade ended with the capture of Jerusalem in 1099
• Genghis Khan united nomadic tribes to form the Mongol Empire
• Joan of Arc led French forces to relieve the Siege of Orleans
• The Treaty of Tordesillas divided non-European exploration zones
• Teaching began at Oxford University before the twelfth century
• English longbowmen secured victory at the Battle of Agincourt
• Charles Martel checked the Umayyad advance at the Battle of Tours
• Angkor Wat was constructed as a Hindu temple by Suryavarman II
• Machu Picchu was constructed high in the Andes for Pachacuti
• The Republic of Venice became a Mediterranean maritime powerhouse
• Marco Polo documented seventeen years at the court of Kublai Khan
• Christopher Columbus reached the Americas in October 1492
• Martin Luther sparked the Reformation with his Ninety-five Theses
• The Magellan-Elcano expedition completed the first globe circumnavigation
• The English navy defeated the Spanish Armada in 1588
• Jamestown became the first permanent English settlement in America
• The Edict of Nantes granted religious rights to French Protestants
• The Peace of Westphalia established modern state sovereignty
• The Great Fire of London destroyed the medieval city centre
• Galileo Galilei discovered the four main moons of Jupiter
• Isaac Newton published his universal laws of motion and gravity
• Peter the Great founded St Petersburg as Russia's window to Europe
• The English Bill of Rights curtailed absolute royal authority
• The Continental Congress adopted the US Declaration of Independence
• Parisian citizens stormed the Bastille fortress on 14 July 1789
• The Haitian Revolution created the first independent Black republic
• Admiral Nelson secured British naval supremacy at Trafalgar
• The Battle of Waterloo ended the reign of Napoleon Bonaparte
• Colonists dumped East India Company tea in Boston Harbour
• James Watt patented an efficient separate condenser steam engine
• The Lewis and Clark expedition explored the American West
• Tsar Alexander II emancipated millions of Russian serfs
• The Meiji Restoration transformed Japan into a modern power
• The Suez Canal opened connecting the Mediterranean to the Red Sea
• The First Opium War concluded with the Treaty of Nanking
• Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address in 1863
• The Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery in the United States
• The Wright brothers achieved the first controlled motor-powered flight
• The RMS Titanic struck an iceberg and sank on its maiden voyage
• The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand triggered World War I
• The October Revolution brought Lenin and Bolsheviks to power
• The Treaty of Versailles formally concluded World War I
• The Nineteenth Amendment guaranteed US women the right to vote
• The Wall Street Crash of 1929 triggered the Great Depression
• Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin in his London laboratory
• The surprise attack on Pearl Harbor drew the US into World War II
• Allied forces landed on Normandy beaches on D-Day
• Fifty nations signed the United Nations Charter in San Francisco
• The Partition of India created two independent nations in 1947
• The UN adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
• The Berlin Airlift supplied West Berlin during the Soviet blockade
• East Germany constructed the Berlin Wall in August 1961
• The Cuban Missile Crisis brought super-powers to nuclear brink
• Apollo 11 landed the first humans on the Moon in July 1969
• The fall of the Berlin Wall heralded the end of the Cold War
• The Soviet Union dissolved into fifteen independent republics
• The Antarctic Treaty set aside an entire continent for peace
• The Marshall Plan financed post-war reconstruction in Europe
• Howard Carter discovered the intact tomb of Tutankhamun
• Smallpox became the first human disease officially eradicated
• The first modern Olympic Games were hosted in Athens in 1896

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How many history facts are there?

100, each with a named source and a link to it. People, dates and turning points from the distant past to the last century.

Where do these facts come from?

Mostly primary sources: NASA, the ESA, museums, universities and peer-reviewed papers. A fact is only published here once a source can be linked, and the wording is written fresh rather than copied.

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The page lists the newest first and the search box narrows by word. Every fact links onward to a quiz, game or calculator on the same subject, so it works as a browse or as a jumping-off point.