Top five most significant historical events of the past 2100 years.

[[Phill]]

tagtastic,

Life has changed more in the past 300 years than it has in the last 3000.

I did kinda chuckle that instead of a normal span of two millenia, OP decided to add on a century just to get his number 1 pic of the birth of some black dude in Palestine in.

[ncboiler]

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Stuff like sanitation, germ theory, antibiotics, etc have impacted humans far more than anything listed in the OP.

Electricity and assembly line/mass production has impacted industrialized nations massively as well.

Printing press is a good one, don't really like the others on your list though. Agriculture advances would be another big one.

Someone will say "but it's a 2100 span!" - in reality life has changed far more in the last 200 years than the previous 1900, thus making those changes more significant imo.

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No doubt harnessing of electricity has to be at or near the top of the list. That has had the effect of increasing the standard of living exponentially over the last 120 years.

[ruefulrabbit]

1. Gutenberg's printing press
2. Television
3. Industrial Revolution
4. Renaissance
5. Evolution of muskets to Pistols and Machine Guns

Nothing beyond a 1000 years ago. [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]

(Replaced Magna Carta with Industrial Revolution, fleshed 5th item)

[[Phill]]

shadowrun,

The black plague killed off anywhere up to two thirds of the population of humanity world wide. Not significant today, but pretty significant over the time span.

microbob,

No. It might have been slightly different, but to put it top 5 is a joke. I wouldnt be shocked if it didnt come top 100 (at least in the opinion of everyone world over). Id put it lower down than Marie Curie discovering radiation. I mean so many more important things have happened. No offense dude, its just not up there.

[NT!]

printing press - led to the translation of the bible into languages other than latin, which was a major factor in the protestant reformation, increased literacy, mass communication, etc etc.

steam engine / industrial revolution - this one is pretty obvious, industry and urbanization have caused a major acceleration in the pace of change and the expansion of wealth and technology. if you don't like the steam engine as the symbol, take assembly lines instead, whatever.

colonization of the americas / european colonialism - this started 500 years ago and the effects are still playing themselves out today

invention of computers - again, major accelerator in the flow of information, commerce, technology etc. democratization of information technology may be the most crucial factor in the direction of society in the next 100 years.

rise of the nation state - which event do you choose for this one? french revolution? probably too late. maybe the treaty of westphalia (1648).

[MEbenhoe]

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Declaration of Independence?

I think an argument could be made to put that somewhere in the top 5 or top 10.
How different would the world be today if the United States had never come to be?

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Magna Carta > Declaration of independence because magna carta started a chain of events that pretty much led to the creation of democracy.

[[Phill]]

Gotta be said, most of these are as good as each other, and naming a top five is harsh.

I had a few other options i picked and chose from, and i didnt even think of electricty which probably should be in there.

I havent noticed anyone say the invention of the internal combustion engine or the car (together probably Germany's greatest positive legacy) or the Holocaust (Germany's biggest negative legacy).

The Crusades were a pretty big event, then there is the English Civil War, the Beheading of Charles I, the Great War, Hiroshima and Nagasaki being nuked (or specifically the invention of the nuke).

Im sure with a pen and pad i could reel off 100, and im not much for history. To pick a top ten is hard, top five is really tough.

[Semtex]

this doesn't really work, because certain events had a ton of significance over the past 2100 years as a whole but have had very little significance for the past 100 years or so (since the world has transformed significantly). the birth (or death) of jesus is one such event. for events that have been the most significant for the modern world (in no particular order):

1. the colonization of the world by the european empires
2. the invention of the microprocessor
3. the invention of the printing press
4. flight
5. the modernization of warfare (including nuclear/chemical/biological weapons)

[Shadowrun]

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shadowrun,

The black plague killed off anywhere up to two thirds of the population of humanity world wide. Not significant today, but pretty significant over the time span.

microbob,

No. It might have been slightly different, but to put it top 5 is a joke. I wouldnt be shocked if it didnt come top 100 (at least in the opinion of everyone world over). Id put it lower down than Marie Curie discovering radiation. I mean so many more important things have happened. No offense dude, its just not up there.

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Do you seriously doubt that i dont know what the black plague is? You offer no analysis other then the fact it killed lots of people, and even THAT you screwed up.

The black plague killed anywhere from 1/3 to 2/3 of Europe's population not the whole world.

[Shadowrun]

unless anyone not living in europe doesnt count as a person