Principle: There actually is a principle involved in the construction here. One of the things which annoys me about many time lines is that they make no attempt to separate by significance. One winds up with 1 line that says 'discovery of fire' and, equally weighted 'Bannister runs 4 minute mile'. The latter is quite significant, but I believe Bannister would agree with me that his breaking the 4 minute mile doesn't quite rate with the discovery of fire.
So what I've done is broken the time line in to period, one is for the history of the universe, down to one which covers the last 600 years. Within each one, I've tried to list items which are significant when compared against all other events in that time period. Some recent things may well be significant against a long perspective, so they'll be listed. Some are significant, but only against recent perspective, so are on the shorter time scale.
This listing, I realize, is both very incomplete (even relative to my knowledge) and biased. So I do sincerely invite additions/corrections/ promotions/demotions.
In the mean time, enjoy!
Robert Grumbine, bobg@radix.net
Last Modified 4 July 1999
