1900 Boxer Rebellion; siege of the Legations in Peking

1904 The British invaded Tibet

1905 Japanese fl. et sinks Russian Navy at Tsushima; partition of Ik gal

1906 The "Unit ist" (Imperialist) party in Great Britain defeated b) the Liberals upon the question of tariffs

1907 Philippine assembly becomes first freely elected legislature in Asia; the Confederation of South Africa established

1908 Austria annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina; death of Chinese Empress Ci Xi

1909 M Bleriot flew in an aeroplane from France to Eng-land

1910 : Japan annexes Korea

1911 Chinese nationalist revolution ends Qing dynasty; Italy wages war against Turkey and seizes Tripoli; Partition of Be ,al is abolished

1912 China became a republic; the Balkan league makes war on Turkey

1913 Dalai Lama pnxlaims Tibet's independence; bloodshed at Londonberry in Ireland caused by "Unionist" gunrunning

1914 The first World War in Europe begins

1917 The two Russi. n revolutions; establishment of the

Bolshevik regin * in Russia

1918 : The Armistice

1919 China's May Fourth movement; Amritsar massacre in India

1919 The Peace of \ rsailles

1920 First meeting the League of Nations; last invaders (Wrangel, Pok i expelled from Russia

1921 Chinese Communist Party founded in Shanghai

1922 Russian famine; Ataturk defeats Greeks; Irish Free established

1923 French occupy the Ruhr; collapse of German currency; the Great Kanto Earthquake claims 140,000 lives

1924 Death of Lenin; first steps taken to Stalin's autocracy

1925 Voting rights for men guaranteed in Japan

1926 China comes under Kuomintang control

1927 Sukarno founds influential party, Perserikatan Na-sional Indonesia

1929 Oil discovered in Brunei; American Wall Street crash starts world wide slump

1930 Mohandas Gandhi leads Salt March protesting British rule in India; The campaign of 'civil disobedience' led by Mahatma Gandhi begins in India

1931 Japan invades Manchuria; Spain becomes a republic

1932 : Bloodless revolution ends absolute monarchy in Thailand

1933 : Inai juration of Roosevelt's "New Deal" in the United States; Nazis take power in Germany; Japan invades northern China

1935 Long March ends, after a year and 9,660 km; Italy invades and conquers Abyssinia; League of Nations fails to act

1936 Franco rebels against Spanish republic; with aid of Nazis and Fascists

1937 Rape of Nanjing, "Axis" formed (Germany, Italy, Japan; later Franco Spain); full-scale Japanese invasion of China

1938 Germany annexes Austria; Munich conference

1939 Germany annexes Czechoslovakia; Italy annexes Albania; Spanish civil war ends; Soviet-Nazi pact signed; Germany attacks Poland; Russia and Germany partition Poland; Russia annexes Baltic states and attack Finland

1940 Germany overruns Denmark, Norway, Holland and Belgium; Chamberlain replaced by coalition government headed by Churchill; fall of France; Battle of Britain

1941 British beat off German air attacks, re-conquer Abyssinia; Germany conquers Yugoslavia and Greece; Germany invades Russia; Japan attacks US fleet at Pearl Harbour and later seize Hong Kong and Singapore; the Atlantic Charter 1942 Axis victories until late in year. Allied victories follow (El Alamein, New Guinea, Stalingrad, North African landings)

1943 Fall of Mussolini

1944 Capture of Rome; US General Douglas MacArthur and American troops return to the Philippines; Allied landing in Normandy; Germans expelled from Russia, France and Belgium

1945 Suicide of Hitler: Nazi surrender; atom bomb devas-* tates Hiroshima and Nagasaki; Japan surrenders; Charter of United Nations signed; Arab League comes into being; Battle of Surabaya establishes Indonesian resistance to Dutch colonial rule

1946 Guerrilla war in Palestine; beginning of British Welfare state; first Soviet "cold war" aggressions

1947 India-Pakistan partition; Ceylon granted independence; Burma leaves British Commonwealth; Marshall Plan; Soviet rejects atom control plan, eliminates opposition in Hungary and Bulgaria

1948 : Gandhi assassinated in New Delhi by Hindu extremist; British quit Palestine; Arab-Jew war; Chinese communists defeat Kuomintang; Soviet completes subjugation of Romania and Czechoslovakia; Berlin blockade

1949 Atlantic pact signed leading to NATO; Soviet takes over Poland; Dutch ousted from Indonesia; Chiang ousted from China; People's Republic of China founded

1950 Korean war; beginning of European army under US general

1^52 Mau Mau revolt; Egyptian revolutions

1953 : Sherpa Tenzing Norgay and New Zealand's Edmund Hillary reach peak of Mount Everest; death of Stalin; Korean armistice; East Berlin revolt

1954 Siege at Dien Bien Phu

1955 : Sukarno's Bandung Conference hails Third World and Non-Aligned Movement

1956 Hungarian revolution, crushed by Russia; Franco-British attack on the Suez Canal

1957 : China launches Great Leap Forward

1958 : The European Community comes into being; the United Arab Republic is formed by a union of Egypt and Syria 1959 Fidel Castro overthrows the govri nment of Fulgencio Batista; Dalai lama flees Tibet

1960 Many African colonies become independent; char in Congo; Si no- Soviet split

1961 South Africa becomes a republic, withdrawing from the Commonwealth; Berlin Wall built

1962 Sino-lndian border dashes

1963 Organisation of African Unity J* created; USA, USSR, Britain sign Nuclear Test Ban Treaty; US President John F Kennedy assa&xinated

1965 . Sukarno deposed as bloody purges across Indonesia claim half a million lives; Singapore splits front Federation of Malaysia

1964 Nelson Mandela and other ANU leaders imprisoned; Nikita Khruschev ousted from Soviet leadership; PLO formed; Malaysia Indonesia war

1965 US marines enter Vietnam; Indo Pak war over Kashmir

1966 : Cultural revolution in China begins; France NATO; a six-day Arab-Israel war results in Israeli expansion (66-67).

1967 China joins the nuclear club by exploding its first atomic bomb; Che Guevara killed in Bolivia

1968 Tet Offensive surprises US forces in Vietnam; ASEAN established; Martin Luther King assassinated

1969 Libyan revolution, Moamer el-Khaddafi making it a one-party Islamic socialist rule; US bombing raids on neutral Cambodia; Anti-Chinesc violence in Malaysia sparks race riots

1971 East Pakistan breaks away to form Bangladesh; Cev-lone granted independence; China joins the UN

1972 US President Richard Nixon visits China

1973 US troops leave devastated Vietnam; Arab Israeli war (Yom Kippur)

1974 : Impeachment of US President Nixon, Monarchy restored in Spain upon Franco's death, Portuguese announce withdrawal from East Timor

1975 Civil war in Lebanon begins; I Iclsinki Conference on Peace and Co-operation in Europe; Cambodia's Khmer Rouge sets up Killing Fields regime; Saigon falls to North Vietnam army; exodus of boat p opk from Vietnam and Cambodia begins

l M . Zedong dies; North and South Vietnam reunite

di^ republic; East Timor annexed by I nd one-

*ia, ferae I settles in West Bank

j 9,Dpwx r icy Wall movement

t poops storm into Afghanistan; Camp David

* cou nt • on Peace in ME between Egypt and Is-

rael, the latter agreeing to withdraw from the Sinai peninsula, Khmer Rouge ousted in Cambodia by

• Vietnamem; Brief Chinese invasion of Vietnam; Islamic rvvoluHon in Iran led by Ayatollah Khomeini

1930 Solidarity formed in Poland; Iran-Iraq war begins; Hundr.-. Is of South Korean democracy advocates ma^.iured in Kwangju by military dictatorship

1961 Tg^M' President Anwar Sadat assassinated.

p/82 hdkhnd Wai between Great Britain and Argentina; krael invades Lebanon.

1 483 Tamil Tigers ambush Sri Lankan army soldiers, lead-uiv to civil war; Malaysia's Mahathir Mohamad mv, ik New’ fir onomic Policy; US invades Grenada I cople Tower revolution in the Philippines ousts !\id mand Marcos; Mikhail Gorbachev introduces

* p,.r Troika (reforms) and

glasnost (openness) in the USSR

USA, USSR sign Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty to reduce the number of ground-based missiles; mar-lial law ends in Taiwan; Intifada (Palestinian upris-inf) begins in Gaza and spreads to other Israeli-occupied tei rilories

1988 Benazir Bhutto becomes the first female leader of a Muslim state; students rise up in Rangoon, military junta tightens control

’989 Cold war declared over; Soviet troops leave Afghanistan; pro-democracy demonstrations crushed in China, students massacred at Tiananmen Square in Beijing; US invades Panama; military withdrawal of Vietnam from Cambodia complete; Berlin Wal! ■ j»ened; Nikkei stock index hits peak of 38,916 before Japan ■ economic bubble bursts

1990 Civ il War in Liberia; Iraq invades Kuwait; Germany unifk-i; free elections in Hungary, Che-

-hodevakia, Romania and Bulgaria; unification North and South Yemen

1 *91 h i.u forces forced to withdraw from Kuwait by US-kd UG forces civil war in Yugoslavia; Warsaw Pact disbanded

'2 Yugoslavia breaks up amidst civil war; McDonald's opens in Beijing

993 PLO recognises Israel's existence; Israel agrees to Palestinian -elf-rule and demilitarisation of the occupied territories; Czechoslovakia splits into two; USA and Russia sign START II treaty to reduce nuclear arsenals

1 994 PLO chairman Arafat and Israeli PM Rabin sign an accord to implement Palestinian self-rule in Gaza strip and Jericho; first multi-racial elections held in South Africa and Mandela becomes first black president

19'5 /\um Shmrikyo's gas attack in Tokyo subway kills

19 ’7 ; Hong Kong handover; Thai baht collapses, leading to Asian economic crisis; CHT Peace Accord Signed to tw ? decades of bloody conflict in the hill tracts el Bangle ic. h

1 ’ c Suharto ousted from power; India and Pakistan conduct nulcar tests; US President Bill Clinton im-peached on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice on to be acquitted by the Senate

1998 India and Pakistan engages in armed conflict along the Line of Control in Kargil; Israel and Palestine sign a Peace Accord in Oslo; NATO airstrikes on Belgrade to force the Serbian forces to withdraw from Kosovo; referendum held in East Timor pro-Jure. overwhelming popular support for indepen-knee ‘rorn Indonesian rule; pro-Jakarta militia kills md mutrkfc-s hundreds of East Timorese before UN peac« -ki cping force takes control