The Seat Moves to the Bench (1713 to 1945)

35 entries, in the order they happened: 35 where the historical record answers. The full timeline holds 53 entries for this era; some of them are only there.

Every entry in this era

c. 1700 – 1793The Enlightenment and the Festival of ReasonThe Enlightenment makes reason the judge, and revolutionary France seats a Goddess of Reason on the altar of Notre-Dame: the garden's pride grown up.
17th–19th centuries (the Old…Pawns for credit on the Atlantic coastFrom the 17th to the 19th century people in much of Atlantic Africa were held as pawns, collateral for debts usually incurred by relatives, to raise…
1712 (Newcomen)Newcomen's engine and Watt's condenserThe first recorded Newcomen steam engine was set up near Dudley Castle in Staffordshire in 1712 to pump water out of mines.
1713 – 1835The law of large numbers and the average manBernoulli proves the law of large numbers, and Quetelet turns it on people: the average man, who exists nowhere and describes everyone, and the…
1757Plassey, the Regulating Act, limited liabilityA trading company wins at Plassey and walks away holding Bengal; Parliament regulates its rule instead of taking it back, and limited liability later…
1769 (the patent)Arkwright's water frame and the factoryRichard Arkwright patented his water-powered spinning machine, the water frame, in 1769; it made a cotton yarn strong enough for warp, and with…
1792 and 1799 (Seringapatam)Mysore's rockets go westMysore's army fired rockets at the British at Seringapatam in 1792 and 1799 (Britannica attributes them to Hyder Ali, though his son Tipu Sultan…
1793The cotton ginEli Whitney's cotton gin (1793) pulled cotton fibre through wire teeth and left the seed behind; it met the demand of England's mechanised spinning…
2 December 1804Napoleon crowns himselfNapoleon takes the crown from the altar at Notre-Dame, with the pope present, and crowns himself, as agreed beforehand: the seat authorising itself…
1821 (the syllabary)The Cherokee syllabary and the Trail of TearsBy 1821 Sequoyah had made a syllabary of 86 symbols for the Cherokee language, some shaped like letters of other alphabets but given new sound…
1822–1825 (the loans)Latin America's first debt crisisBetween 1822 and 1825 Colombia, Chile, Peru, Buenos Aires, Brazil, Mexico, Central America and Guadalajara, and 'Poyais', a country that did not…
1804 (independence)Haiti pays for its freedomHaiti, whose population is almost entirely descended from enslaved Africans, won independence from France in 1804.
1830The Liverpool and Manchester RailwayThe Liverpool and Manchester Railway, designed by George Stephenson and opened in 1830, was the first railway to link two major cities and the first…
1830–1870Java's Cultivation SystemFrom 1830 the Dutch governor-general Johannes van den Bosch required Javanese villagers to set aside a fifth of their rice land for export crops such…
10 July 1832The Bank vetoPresident Jackson vetoes the recharter of the Second Bank of the United States; its federal charter runs out in 1836.
28 August 1833The Slavery Abolition ActBritain abolishes slavery and pays twenty million pounds, about forty per cent of that year's government spending, to the slave-owners for their lost…
1839–1842 (war)The Opium War and the Treaty of NanjingBritish merchants had shipped opium, mostly from India, into China illegally since the 1700s, and in 1839 Chinese officials seized and destroyed more…
6 February 1840The Treaty of Waitangi: two textsOn 6 February 1840 William Hobson and Māori chiefs signed the Treaty of Waitangi, the basis of Britain's annexation of the North Island that May (the…
24 May 1844Morse's telegraphMorse's telegraph runs from the Capitol to Baltimore, and the first message is from Numbers 23:23: “What hath God wrought.” The word leaves the body…
1850–1864The Taiping Heavenly KingdomHong Xiuquan, influenced by Christian teaching, came to believe he was the son of God and younger brother of Jesus and in 1851 proclaimed the Taiping…
24 November 1859 → 1864On the Origin of SpeciesDarwin publishes On the Origin of Species; within a year Huxley argues it against Wilberforce at Oxford, and his circle goes on to run the Royal…
1862 – 1863Greenbacks and the national banksTo pay for the Civil War, Congress makes paper United States notes legal tender in February 1862 and creates nationally chartered banks in February…
1863 (the Settlements Act)Māori land confiscated; the Waitangi TribunalUnder the New Zealand Settlements Act 1863, passed during the wars with Māori, the government confiscated more than 1.2 million hectares of Māori…
17 March 1865The hidden Christians come forward at ŌuraOn 17 March 1865 hidden Christians from the village of Urakami risked their lives to visit the new Ōura church in Nagasaki, built in 1864 in memory…
3 January 1868The Meiji RestorationOn 3 January 1868 a coup in Kyoto ended the Tokugawa shogunate and proclaimed the rule of the young Meiji emperor; its leaders, having watched…
1870The Papal States takenThe Papal States are absorbed into a united Italy, and the papacy spends fifty-nine years as a sovereign without a country.
1863–1876 (the debt)Egypt's debt and the occupationUnder Khedive Ismail, who opened the Suez Canal in 1869 with great display, Egypt's national debt rose from £7 million in 1863 to almost £100 million…
1879–1884The War of the Pacific: a war for nitrateWhen Bolivia tried to raise taxes on a Chilean nitrate company in the Atacama Desert, Chile occupied the port of Antofagasta on 14 February 1879, and…
1883Eugenics; Buck v. BellGalton coins the word eugenics, and in Buck v. Bell the U.S. Supreme Court upholds forced sterilisation: the old war on bloodlines, now wearing a lab…
13 May 1888Brazil's Golden LawOn 13 May 1888 Princess Isabel, regent for her father Pedro II, signed the Golden Law (Law No.
2 May 1889 (the treaty)Wichale's two texts and AdwaArticle XVII of the Treaty of Wichale (1889) said in its Amharic text that Menelik II 'could' use Italy's good offices in foreign affairs and in its…
17 April 1895 (Shimonoseki)The indemnity clock on China: 1895 and 1901The Treaty of Shimonoseki (1895) made China cede Taiwan and pay Japan 200 million taels, plus 30 million more when Japan returned the Liaodong…
28 February 1913The money trust reportThe House's Pujo committee reports on the "money trust". It declines to find a trust in the sense of a definite agreement, and finds a vast and…
1919 (Versailles)Reparations: the bill, the loans, the endThe Treaty of Versailles made Germany liable for Allied war damage, and in 1921 the Reparation Commission set the bill at 132 billion gold marks…
1945Trinity and HiroshimaThe first atomic bomb is tested at Trinity and then dropped on Hiroshima. From here a human act could end the species, and it is Babel a second time…