World History

NATO was founded in 1949.

See an animated map of the entire Cold War.

See the major Egyptian monuments in high definition.

Explore the roughly 190 Egyptian pharaohs across 31 dynasties.

China doubled its nuclear stockpile between 2020 and 2025, with plans for further expansion.

As of 2025, every NATO member spent at least 2% of GDP on defense, a target the alliance had been pushing toward for over a decade.

Language and regional differences are faults lines in Ukraine's conflict.

British economist John Maynard Keynes originally proposed a global currency called the bancor.

The United Nations was founded in San Francisco in 1945.

The US dollar became the world's reserve currency, backed by gold, after 44 nations gathered in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, in 1944 with the intention of rebuilding the global economy.

See South Korea's nighttime light usage, which far surpasses that of North Korea.

The first combat-deployed submarine vessel debuted during the American Revolution.

Protesters in Boston tossed chests of a type of Chinese black tea called Bohea.

Hear how the US and Iran went from close allies to bitter adversaries after the 1979 revolution.

The attack at Pearl Harbor led to the world's first around-the-world commercial flight.

Japan's imperial expansion in Asia in the 1930s set the stage for war with the US.

See a visualization of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Explore an interactive map of WWII shipwrecks.

Historians estimate that only 1% of shipwrecks have been discovered.

Ceasefires rarely produce a total cessation of violence.

Watch a 3D animation of Pompeii's final day.

See unused gladiator helmets discovered in Pompeii.

Colosseum spectators needed tickets and social rank to get a good seat.

See where the 100 million barrels of crude oil the world consumes daily end up.

OPEC's 1973 embargo sparked the first global energy shock.

OPEC (the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) has grown from five to 12 members since 1960.

The Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan fell after a brutal 75-day siege.

The Aztecs worshipped a vast pantheon of more than 200 gods.

The Continental Army invaded Canada in an attempt to seize Montreal and Quebec City in 1775.

Experience 14 billion years of important moments in world history with this scrollable interactive timeline.

Tarring and feathering was a violent form of vigilante justice in Colonial America.

Experts believe Peggy Shippen played a larger role than originally thought in her husband Benedict Arnold's treasonous plot.

See a timeline of colonial settlement in North America.

European leaders pursued appeasement of Hitler in the 1930s, hoping to avoid war.

The treaty that ended the First World War laid the groundwork for the Second.

King George III was Britain's longest-reigning male monarch.

King George III assembled a 65,000-volume personal library.

Ukraine once had the third-largest nuclear arsenal—and gave them all up by 1996.

Read the New York Times 2016 obituary of Fidel Castro, the defining figure of the Cuban Revolution.

Pre-revolution Cuba was prosperous—and deeply unequal.

The Cuban Revolution, from 1953 to 1959, overthrew the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista and established the first socialist state in the Western Hemisphere.

Every Swiss resident is entitled to a spot in a nuclear fallout shelter.

Check out information on the over 1,000 protests across the globe since 2017.

Global population growth peaked six decades ago, at 2.3%.

More than 500,000 people worked to contain Chernobyl's fallout, many with very little protection from radiation.

See what became of Pripyat, the Soviet town built to house Chernobyl's plant workers, a year after the nuclear disaster forced its evacuation.

The Chernobyl disaster released more radioactive material than the Hiroshima bomb.

The United States ranks 32nd globally in religious diversity, though it ranks first among the ten most populous nations.

Explore the state of religious freedom worldwide with an interactive data visualization.

It's likely a myth that Ellis Island inspectors changed immigrants' names, and historians say the errors actually happened overseas.