CHAPTER FOUR:
The Modern Era:
From Columbus to the Apocalypse
1492 to 2121 AD
1492 AD
Christopher Colombus Discovers America
1498 AD
Vasco da Gama discovers a sea route from Europe to India. European trading posts are soon set up in Bombay and other Indian cities.
c.1500 AD
Personal firearms become widespread in Europe.
1501 AD
A new Persian Empire is founded by the Safavids.
1517 AD
The Protestant Reformation.
Martin Luther nails his “Ninety-Five Theses” to the door of Castle Church in Wittenburg and many Christians begin seperating from the Roman Catholic Church.
1519-1521 AD
Spanish conquistadors under Hernán Cortés conquer the Aztec Empire in Mexico.
1519-1522 AD
Ferdinand Magellan with his motley crew become the first to circumnavigate the Earth.
c.1520 AD
The height of the Ottoman Empire.
1526 AD
The Moghul Empire is founded in India.
Together with the empires of the Ottomans and the Safavids, these three make the “gunpowder empires” of the Middle-East.
1533 AD
The Inca Empire is conquered by Spanish conquistadors led by Francisco Pizarro.
1538 AD
The Anglican Church of England seperates from the Roman Catholic Church.
1547-1584 AD
The Reign of Ivan the Terrible; The most terrible Tsar of all.
1556-1605 AD
The Reign of Moghul Emperor Akbar the Great.
1564-1642 AD
The Life of Galileo; Godfather of astronomy.
1588 AD
The Battle of Gravelines
The English narrowly defeat the Spanish Armada and save their country from invasion.
1602 AD
The Dutch East India Company is founded.
1607 AD
Jamestown is established in Virginia.
1608 AD
The telescope is invented in the Netherlands.
1618-1648 AD
The Thirty Years’ War
1620 AD
The Mayflower delivers the Pilgrims to Plymouth Harbour.
1621 AD
The Pilgrims celebrate the First Thanksgiving with some indians.
1641-1651 AD
The English Civil War
The crown is abolished with the execution of King Charles I in 1649. Oliver Cromwell rules as Lord Protectorate from 1653 until his death in 1658.
1643-1727 AD
The Life of Sir Isaac Newton; Great physicist and discoverer of gravity.
1644 AD
The Ching Dynasty is founded in China. Last of the imperial dynasties.
1660 AD
The English crown is restored as Charles II is declared king.
1674 AD
The Maratha Empire is founded in India, the last of the Hindu empires.
1688 AD
The Glorious Revolution occurs in England.
1688-1697 AD
The Nine Years’ War
1701-1714 AD
The War of Spanish Succession
1721 AD
Tsar Peter the Great proclaims the Russian Empire.
1732 AD
George Washington, the Father of America, is born in Virginia.
1756-1763 AD
The Seven Years’ War
1756-1791 AD
The Life of Mozart; Classical composer.
1765-1785 AD
Rip van Winkle sleeps for twenty years.
1769 AD
Napoleon Bonaparte is born.
1770 AD
Captain James Cook of Great Britain discovers Australia, mate.
1770-1827 AD
The Life of Beethoven; Greatest of the classical composers.
1775-1783 AD
The American Revolutionary War
1776 AD
The Declaration of Independance is signed in America.
c.1780 AD
The steam engine is invented by James Watt.
c.1780-1910 AD
The Industrial Revolution
1783 AD
The British Empire recognizes the sovereignty of the United States of America.
1789 AD
George Washington is elected first president of the United States of America.
1789-1799 AD
The French Revolution
1799 AD
Napoleon is made consul of France after a coup d’etat.
The death of George Washington. His body passes on but his memory lives on forever in the hearts his citizens.
c.1800 AD
Coal replaces wind, water and wood as the World’s primary source of energy.
1803-1815 AD
The Napoleonic Wars
1804 AD
Napoleon crowns himself emperor of France.
1806 AD
The End of the Holy Roman Empire
the last emperor, Francis II, abdicates following military defeat to the French emperor Napoleon.
1812-1815 AD
The War of 1812.
1815 AD
Napoleon is defeated at the Battle of Waterloo and is sent into exile on St. Helena Island.
1818 AD
Britain defeats the Maratha Empire and gains control of India.
1821 AD
Napoleon Bonaparte dies.
1826 AD
Photography is invented.
1829 AD
The steam locomotive is invented.
1833 AD
Slavery is abolished in the British Empire.
1837 AD
The telegraph is invented by Samuel M. Morse.
1837-1901 AD
The Reign of Victoria; Queen of Great Britain and Empress of India.
1839-1842 AD
The First Opium War in China.
1853 AD
Matthew Perry (of Friends fame) steams into Edo Bay and opens the doors of Japan to the West.
1856-1860 AD
The Second Opium War in China.
1858 AD
The Indian Mutiny
Britain exiles the last Moghul emperor and establishes her own empire in India.
1861-1865 AD
The American Civil War
Slavery is abolished in America.
1868 AD
The Meiji Restoration re-establishes the Empire of Japan.
1869-1948 AD
The life of Mohandas Gandhi; Indian spiritual leader. Helps win independence for India.
1871 AD
Kaiser William I unifies Germany and founds the Second Reich.
1876 AD
The telephone is invented by Alexander Graham Bell.
1877 AD
Thomas Edison invents the phonograph.
1879 AD
Thomas Edison invents the lightbulb.
1879-1955 AD
The Life of Albert Einstein; The greatest physicist of all time.
1881 AD
October 26
The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral.
1883 AD
Tesla discovers the secret of alternating electrical currents.
1885 AD
The first automobile is put into production.
1889 AD
Adolf Hitler is born in Austria.
1894-1895 AD
The First Sino-Japanese War.
1892-1973 AD
The Life of J.R.R. Tolkien; Master of fantasy.
1893 AD
Radio transmission is invented by Tesla.
1896 AD
The first modern Olympics are held in Athens, Greece.
1897 AD
Count Dracula returns from the dead to haunt the streets of London.
c.1900 AD
Petroleum becomes the World’s primary source of energy.
1903 AD
The airplane is invented by the Wright Brothers.
1912 AD
Sun Yat-Sen establishes the Republic of China, putting to an end over 2,000 years of imperial rule.
The unsinkable ship Titanic hits an iceberg and sinks.
1914 AD
Tensions between European imperial powers comes to a head with the assination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, setting off the First World War.
1914-1918 AD
World War I
1915 AD
Edgar Marin, the Old Man Down the Road, is born.
1917 AD
The October Revolution
Led by Vladimir Lenin, the Russian crown is overthrown and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is founded.
1922 AD
The Ottoman Empire disintegrates and is partitioned into European protectorates across the Middle-East.
Benito Mussolini comes into power in Italy.
c.1925 AD
Radio broadcasting comes into widespread use.
1929 AD
October 29
The Great Depression begins.
1933 AD
Adolf Hitler and his Nazi goons take over Germany.
1936 AD
The computer is invented by Alan Turing.
1937 AD
The Empire of Japan invades northern China.
1939 AD
September 1
Nazi Germany invades Poland, igniting the Second World War.
1939-1945 AD
World War II
The allied powers of Russia and the West join forces against the Axis powers of Germany, Italy and Japan in the greatest conflict the World has ever seen.
1941 AD
December 7
The Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor.
America is forced into the war.
1942-1945 AD
The Jewish Holocaust
Eleven million souls, including six million European Jews, are exterminated systematically by the Nazis.
1944 AD
June 6
D-Day; The Allied forces storm the beaches of Normandy, turning the tides of war against the Nazis.
1945 AD
May 8
V-E Day; The Fall of Nazi Germany
August 6 & 9
America drops atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, ending the war in the Pacific.
1947 AD
The nation of Israel is returned to the Jews by the British Empire.
India gains independence from Britain.
1947-1989 AD
The Cold War
1949 AD
The People’s Republic of China is founded following the communist victory in the Chinese Civil War (1946-1950).
1950-1953 AD
The Korean War
c.1950s AD
Television comes into widespread use.
1957 AD, 1 AS
The Space Age Begins
Mankind’s first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, is launched by the U.S.S.R.
The Oenotrian Calendar begins: Year 1 A.S.
1958-1962 AD
The Great Leap Forward is implemented in China.
Chairman Mao, paramount leader of Communist China, orders the complete restructuring and centralization of the entire nation’s economy, ordering all the farmers in the country onto state-owned communal farms.
These ill-concieved policies ultimately resulted in the greatest famine the world has ever seen and the deaths of over 55 million souls.
1961 AD
Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin becomes the first man in space.
1964-1975 AD
The Vietnam War (it’s a crime, man)
1966-1976 AD
The Cultural Revolution is commited in Communist China.
In a grand effort to accumulate more power unto himself, Chairman Mao, paramount leader of Communist China, conducts a series of purges and massacres that result in the deaths of over 20 million souls.
1969 AD
July 20
American astronaut Neil Armstrong becomes the first man to set foot on the Moon.
1969-1972 AD
The Apollo Missions
Mankind’s first seven voyages to The Moon.
1974 AD
October 31
Roopirt Pasqal, the best damn logger in Fort Frankforp, is born.
1975 AD
Todd Ferguson IV, third generation Fort McMurrian and oilsands worker, is born in Fort McMurray.
1977 AD
Elvis Presley dies. Long live the King of Rock and Roll.
1979 AD
The Iranian Revolution
1985 AD
November 27
Ryley David Douglas Nickel is born in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
Genius, scholar and gentleman.
1989 AD
June 4
The Tiananmen Square Massacre
10,000 students protesting for democracy are brutally murdered by the Chinese Communist Party under paramount leader Deng Xiaoping.
November 9
The fall of the Berlin Wall.
1991 AD
The End of the Cold War and Fall of the U.S.S.R.
The Gulf War
1993 AD
The European Union is Founded
1995 AD
Edgar Marin, the Old Man Down the Road, dies.
c.1996 AD
The internet comes into widespread use.
2000 AD
R.D.D. Nickel begins his great life’s work of cataloguing the future history of Mankind.
2001-2009 AD
The administration of American President George W. Bush.
2001 AD
Tuesday, September 11
The World Trade Center in New York is destroyed by Moslem terrorists under the leadership of Osama bin Laden.
The War on Terror Begins
2001-2021 AD
The Afghanistan War
2003-2011 AD
The Iraq War
2008 AD
The Great Recession
2010 AD
R.D.D. Nickel posts this beauty on the world wide web. His great work is dissemitated to the masses.
2011 AD
Osama bin Laden is shot and killed in his secret lair by America’s finest, and justice is finally served.
2012 AD
Xi Jinping becomes paramount leader of Communist China.
The most authoritarian hardliner since Chairman Mao.
2016 AD
Tuesday, May 3
A devastating wildfire named “The Beast” decimates the northern Canadian city of Fort McMurray.
May 4
Jacob “Jack” Jenkins-Fisher is born at Syncrude Camp, a few miles north of Fort McMurray.
An evacuee baby.
2017-2029 AD
Arnold Schwarzenegger serves as the 46th president of the United States.
2019 AD
Man returns to the Moon. Establishes first permanent base.
c.2020 AD
~ Peak Oil ~
Unbeknownst to the majority of the world’s population, after over 150 years of constant growth, global oil production finally reaches its peak and begins its long, painful decline.
Global leaders and nations, under a number of pretexts, scramble to adopt increasingly centralized solutions to deal with the problem, but only succeed in artificially stunting the world economy at a time when industrial ingenuity was needed more than ever.
2025 AD
The first manned journey to the planet Mars.
2026 AD
The European Union consolidates itself as a unified state and the European Federation is born.
2033 AD
Jack Jenkins-Fisher, at the age of 16, incurs a rare, incurable, terminal disease.
Thursday, January 13:
Under doctors suggestion and his parent’s permission, he is put under suspended animation until a cure can be found.
No cure is found and he is never woken up while his parents are still alive...
c.2035 AD
Large scale automation come into widespread use.
2037 AD
The first permanent bases are constructed on Mars.
2039 AD
Scientists discover an Earth-like planet orbiting the star Alpha Centauri A. Nations race to develop the technology needed to send men to this new world.
c.2050 AD
The world’s economy grows bleak as fossil fuels slowly run dry.
2054 AD
December 21
The Antichrist, Leopold Nicolai, is born in the city of Rome.
2057-2061 AD
World War III
America vs. China
c.2060-2100 AD
The Times of Tribulation
Following the Third World War, China lies defeated and the power of America is greatly weakened. Global resources are diminished and despotic powers arise in Europe, Russia, and the Middle East to vie for what remains.
In the decades following the war, the World suffers from a series of famines and plagues, the likes of which the modern world has never known, and previously rich nations begin to resemble third world countries....
2061 AD
Chuck Norton, the New Federalist Party nominee, defeats both Republicans and the Democrats in the federal elections and becomes President of the United States of America, serving five terms and dying in office in 2079.
The Jewish Third Temple is constructed in Jerusalem over the ruins of the Dome of the Rock (destroyed during the war).
2064 AD
The People’s Republic of China, defeated by America in World War III, is overthrown following the Second Chinese Civil War (2061-2064) and the New Empire of China is established. A much weaker power than it’s predecessor.
2067 AD
Canada is annexed by the United States of America.
2069 AD
Project Helios is founded.
A daring mission by the United States of America to send human beings to the blue planet discovered around Alpha Centauri, which is named: Phaethon.
In the dark times of the post-war, late 21st Century, this mission is seen as a light of hope for all Mankind.
2075 AD
Fort Mueller is established in the mountains of Montana, in preparation for the daring plan to send a manned starship to Alpha Centauri.
2076 AD
Leopold graduates from the University of Paris, magna cum laude.
Mexico is annexed by the United States of America, in the year of it’s tricentennial.
2084-2088 AD
The Great Pestilence
Hundreds of millions are killed world-wide by the worst plague ever to strike Mankind.
World population stalls and reverses at 11 billion.
2096 AD
The Launch of Starship Helios
After decades of preparation, mankind’s first interstellar spacecraft, is launched towards Alpha Centauri with a crew of 144.
It is slated to reach its destination in 40 years.
2101 AD
April 18
Leopold enters the European Parliament.
2102 AD
At the age of 40, Hujjat bin Hassan becomes Mohammed al-Mahdi, great leader of Moslems.
2114 AD
September 6
Leopold is appointed as the president of the European Federation.
October 28
Leopold declares the formation of the “New Roman Empire” and himself as the self-proclaimed new Emperor of Rome;
allies himself with the corrupt Pope Constantine III. Signs a peace treaty with Israel.
2116 AD
April 20
Israel is suddenly attacked by a coalition of Russian, Turkish and Egyptian forces.
2116-2121 AD
World War IV
Russia and a coalition of Middle Eastern powers go to war against Israel who is supported by America.
Europe remains strangely neutral and offers refuge for anyone afflicted by the horrors of war. Leopold is regarded as a saviour.
2117 AD
April
America, who have been formally at war all along, finally sends its military to the shores of Israel.
2118 AD
Friday, April 8
Leopold is stabbed in the head in an assassination attempt.
Sunday, April 10
Leopold makes a seemingly miraculous recovery. Pope Constantine declares him to be the Second Coming of Christ.
Leopold outlaws and persecutes any and all “heretics” who do not submit to him and his New Roman Church.
May
Leopold, in a sudden reversal of policy, begins his military campaign against Israel.
That very month, the mysterious figure known as the “White Rider” begins to raise followers in Israel.
August
A small asteroid named “Absinthion” crashes into the Mediterranean and destroys the fleets of Leopold.
September
Russia, taking advantage of her former ally’s weakened position, declares war on the New Roman Empire.
October 17
Mohammed al-Mahdi and his holy representative, Musa Akbar, kneel before the “White Rider” and begin their holy mission of justice.
November 8
America declares war on the New Roman Empire.
2119 AD
Now fighting a war on three fronts, Leopold’s Roman Empire is slowly but surely pinched in on all sides.
2120 AD
After the American and Russian invasions of mainland Europe, the forces of Leopold succesfully manage to hold their enemies back at the borders of Italy, Greece, and Anatolia. From here, the New Roman Emperor rebuilds his forces for one final great offensive.
2121 AD
Friday, April 4
Mohammed al-Mahdi and Musa Akbar are assassinated in Jerusalem hours prior to the city being destroyed by a terrible earthquake.
There are some who say that they were resurrected three days later and ascended unto heaven. Either way, the people of Israel cry out against Leopold sends the entire remainder of the army of the New Roman Empire to Israel where they descend upon the country “like locusts”.
June
Russia breaks through the Caucasus and succesfully invades Anatolia.
July
Russia invades Greece.
America breaks through the Alps and begins its invasion of the Italian peninsula.
August
The Americans push back the battered remnants of the New Roman Army until they finally surround Rome itself.
August 29 - September 11
Nuclear Holocaust
Leopold, utterly beaten and surrounded, in one final act of malice, launches his entire nuclear arsenal against his enemies.
This sparks immediate retaliation against Europe and her allies (including China), and for thirteen days, a volley of thousands of nuclear warheads decimate nearly every major city in the world.
Civilisation is left in ruins and for the next three and a half years, Nuclear Winter darkens the skies across the Earth.
Friday, September 26
The Battle of Armageddon
The armies of Leopold and Israel convene on the field of Megiddo in northern Israel. Leopold is slain by the “White Rider” at the conclusion of the battle.
The Post-Apocalypse Begins...
