What was happening everywhere else?
History class covers one country at a time. Slide the timeline and see what ten regions of the world were doing at the same moment — every entry says where it came from.
Around 1492 , across the world: Beginning of the Columbian Exchange c. 1492 CE – 1700 CE · C./S. America·Treaty of Tordesillas 1494 CE · Europe·Construction of the Badaling Section of the Great Wall c. 1501 CE – 1600 CE · E. Asia·Triangular trade and Atlantic slave trade begin 1482 CE · Sub-Sahara
Read history sideways
A textbook moves through one place at a time: first Rome, then China, then the Americas. You finish knowing each thread, and still cannot say what the others were doing on the same afternoon.
This is a synchronological chart — ten parallel bands, one per world region, time running left to right. Put the cursor on a year and every band answers at once.
Pick a year and land in it
You have probably met these years in class. What you get on the way in is not just that one event — it is what all ten regions were doing that same year.
Or pick a century
For a wider view, choose a century: what each of ten regions was doing across those hundred years, side by side.
- 6th century BC26
- 5th century BC38
- 4th century BC48
- 3rd century BC58
- 2nd century BC40
- 1st century BC50
- 1st century44
- 2nd century35
- 3rd century34
- 4th century47
- 5th century53
- 6th century72
- 7th century137
- 8th century90
- 9th century91
- 10th century92
- 11th century139
- 12th century182
- 13th century191
- 14th century157
- 15th century183
- 16th century325
- 17th century288
- 18th century338
- 19th century695
- 20th century1564
- 21st century174
The longer the bar, the more events recorded for that century; the number on the right is the count. Colour only marks how early or late the century is.
Every fact carries its source
Each event lists where it comes from — Wikidata, the language Wikipedias, and for World Heritage sites the UNESCO listing itself. You can check any claim without leaving the page.
Dates that are only known to a century are shown as a century, not a false exact year. Where a location is schematic rather than a precise site, the map says so.