Yuga Timeline
3300–3400 BC — First Sumerian and Egyptian writings are the oldest known. Prior to that — i.e., looking back into fully developed Treta and Satya Yugas — we enter into pre-history.
3100 BC — Prehistory — Descending Treta Yuga closes; Descending Dwapara Yuga begins.
3100 BC — Mahabharata War.
700 BC — Classical Antiquity — Descending Dwapara Yuga closes; Descending Kali Yuga begins.
700 BC — The Greek poet Hesiod described the last Golden Age of man, presided over by King Chronus of Atlantis. Vases found in South America and identical vases unearthed in Troy by the archaeologist Schliemann bore the inscription, "From the King Chronus of Atlantis."
400 BC — Birth of Siddhartha Gautama (Nepal) – Founder of Buddhism.
0 — Birth of Jesus of Nazareth (Israel) — Founder of Christianity.
Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism are the world's four major religions. Of these, Hinduism is the oldest, with elements traced back to 5500 BC. Strictly, the term should be Sanatan Dharma, literally "eternal religion," the name given to the body of Vedic teachings. Sanatan Dharma has come to be called Hinduism since the time of the Greeks, who designated the people on the banks of the river Indus as Indoos, or Hindus. The word Hindu, properly speaking, refers only to followers of Sanatan Dharma or Hinduism. We have Columbus to thank for the added confusion of "Indian" being used to refer to someone from India or a native of the Americas. Interestingly, Columbus's mistake suggests a karmic link between the Americas and India.
313 — Constantine becomes the first Christian Roman Emperor.
500 AD — Lowest point of Descending Kali Yuga; Ascending Kali Yuga begins.
This marked the fall of the Roman Empire, which itself drew much of its culture from ancient Greece. It had colonized as far as Britannia (England) and Gaul (France). Its legacy was a model of administration, and from Latin we have Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Romanian. The Persian Empire fell shortly thereafter, unable to withstand the lows of Kali Yuga consciousness.
529 — Saint Benedict (Italy) — sets down his rules for monastic life.
Monasticism was to remain almost the only spark of European culture for the next 1000 years. When the Renaissance came, it drew heavily from earlier, more advanced civilizations in Rome, Greece, and the Muslim Middle East and, as it advanced, from the knowledge of India. Even Benedict's rule was revised over time, leading to the development of monasteries throughout Europe that produced alcoholic beverages such as beer, wine, and champagne. The original rule had called for abstinence.
535 — Climate changes dramatically — little sunshine, snow in summer. It is speculated that ash from the volcano Krakatoa caused a volcanic winter, an echo of the 1600 BC eruption of the Volcano Thera, often tied to the Old Testament stories of the Plagues of Egypt.
541 — The Plague of Justinian (Italy) — thought to be the first case of plague.
570 — Birth of Muhammad (Saudi Arabia) – Founder of Islam.
600 — Stirrups (Sweden). Allowed horses to be used in battle, changing the nature of warfare.
790 — Viking age (Britannia) begins.
Scandinavians raid and then colonize the British Isles, Western Europe, and beyond. The scope of travel enabled by the longboat defined the Vikings. It could traverse the Atlantic, coastal waters, rivers, and even be dragged over land.
1066 — Norman Conquest (Britannia).
Vikings from Normandy, France, take over the British Isles — the system of geographically dispersed holdings of the Normans in Britain led to cohesive nobility and the rise of the English language.
1119 — Knights Templar (Jerusalem). Established the first international banking organization.
1200–1600 — The Renaissance — literally "rebirth."
1215 — Signing of Magna Carta, "Great Charter" (England).
This sets the first limit on the power of the King of England. Kali Yuga governance is characterized by brutal force, torture, and oppression, seen only in modern times in the aftermath of the French Revolution and National Socialist and Communist Socialist movements. It survives in backward pockets of the world such as North Korea, Colombia, and some African states.
1229 — Inquisition Formed (France) — goal of suppressing reform movements within the Catholic Church, in particular Catharism and Waldensians.
1248 — Gunpowder arrives in Europe (UK), although many antecedents existed in China, India, and the Muslim world.
1299 — Travels of Marco Polo — the first account of Europeans voyaging to the East.
We still have Columbus's copy with handwritten notes. Polo's voyages, although mocked for supposed exaggeration at the time, drove the popular wish to explore the East.
1315 — Great famine kills millions.
1340 — Black Death — total number of deaths worldwide from the plague pandemic is estimated at 75 million people; there were an estimated 20 million deaths in Europe alone.
1400 — Perspective in painting rediscovered (Italy). The Greeks had it as late as 500 BC, as we know from their use of it in the painted backdrops of plays.
1400 — First clock towers are erected (Italy) — both Egyptians and Romans had these, using other principles and possessing greater accuracy.
The regulation of time became increasingly important in industrialization, with bells and early starts used to condition whole populations in schools in North America and Western Europe for factory work.
1440 — Birth of Kabir.
1450 — First printing press (Germany).
1453 — Byzantine Empire Falls (Constantinople) — drives the Italian Renaissance, taking up knowledge from the Arabic world and Greece.
1469 — Birth of Guru Nanak (Pakistan) — Founder of Sikhism.
Sikhism emphasizes equality of men, women, and all castes — a sharp break with Islam and Hinduism.
1474 — First patent (Italy).
1492 — Columbus discovers the New World, beginning of the so-called Columbian Exchange (Spain).
1500 — Modern musical notation developed, capable of capturing all the elements of music.
Isidore of Seville, writing in the early 7th century, famously remarked that it was impossible to notate music. The record shows the capability slowly developed over the next 800 years. It was, however, possessed by the ancients as early as 2000 BC, according to archaeologists.
1500 — Tobacco was introduced to the Old World.
Trade in spices, tobacco, sugar, tea, coffee, chocolate, alcohol, and, more recently, illegal drugs were early forces of globalization. In the early 90s, traces of both cocaine and tobacco were found in Egyptian mummies dating back to before 1000 BC, suggesting such trading with the New and Old Worlds had taken place in the last descending Dwapara Yuga.
1501 — Typhus pandemic.
1513 — The Prince (Italy) — Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527).
1516 — Utopia — Thomas More (UK) — originally titled "A New Atlantis."
Man begins to wake up to the possibilities of a better world and denounces some of the glaring oppressions of the time, for example, taking away common land to make sheep pasture, forcing peasants to starvation where previously they could live free, and later forcing them into factories and terrace houses. The writings inspire the formation of the Royal Society (see later). It is only in the last 100 years that men have choice in what they might become; previously, the role one was born into was life-determining — Prince or Pauper, explaining the great love affair of the "Little Guy" in the United States and Australia, where personal effort rather than family string-pulling is admired. Unfortunately, modern America has developed its billionaire political dynasties in recent years, the last elections posing one billionaire son of a politician on the left against the same profile on the right. Before the last elections, every French candidate, from left to right, was the product of wealthy families and had attended the same tiny elite university — ENA.
1517 — Ninety-five Theses (Germany) — Martin Luther (1483–1547) — launches a protest movement (Protestant) against decadence and corruption in the many layers of the Catholic Church hierarchy. Luther then translates the Latin Bible into German — making it accessible to ordinary people, as much a political as a religious act (Germany).
1526 — Tyndale New Testament.
1533 — Statute in Restraint of Appeals (England) — England rejects the Pope.
The Protestant idea of individual responsibility (e.g., if you are poor, it is not your lot in life; rather, you must personally work to improve) builds striving societies in England, Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Scandinavia, contrasting with the economic sliding of Catholic Europe and the Moslem nations where an attitude of "it is God's will" prevails... and the individual personally does nothing. The period saw the fall of Muslim empires and of Spain and Portugal. France revived only when the Corsican Napoleon emphasized meritocracy. The contrast between North and South America remains today.
1543 — Beginning of the Scientific Revolution.
1543 — On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres (Poland) — Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543).
1550 — De Subtilitate (Italy) — Girolamo Cardano (1501–1576) distinguishes between electricity and magnetism.
1569 — Mercator Projection (Belgium) facilitates navigation.
1586 — Shakespeare's plays characterize the move from Middle to Modern English (UK).
1590 — First smoking ban (Italy).
In England and France, beer and wine were drunk, respectively, because water was usually contaminated. Low-quality foods, cigarettes, alcohol, and many prescription and illegal drugs cloud the mind, as the ancients of higher ages knew. Amusingly, in modern times, the world's number-one wine exporter, France, published a scientific paper praising the medical properties of wine. The scientific community rejected it as completely flawed, yet it is very often quoted by wine drinkers.
1590 — European famine.
1600 — Ascending Kali Yuga closes with a 100-year Sandhi (transition period).
1600–1700 — Age of Reason.
Sri Yukteswar specifically mentions Gilbert, Kepler, Galileo, Drebbel, Newton, Savery, and Gray in this period.
1602 — First stocks and bonds — Amsterdam Stock Exchange.
1600 — Foundation of the British East India Company (UK).
1600 — William Gilbert discovers magnetic and electrical effects (UK).
1602 — Foundation of the Dutch East India Company (Netherlands).
1609 — Kepler discovers important laws of astronomy (Austria).
1609 — Galileo invented the telescope (Italy).
1610 — Flintlock Rifle (France) — defined warfare for the next 300 years.
1611 — The King James Version of the Bible was published in English, and it very strongly influenced the English language.
1620 — European famine.
1621 — Drebbel invents the microscope (Holland).
1624 — Cardinal-Duc de Richelieu becomes Chief Minister to the King (France).
Besides being the foil to the Three Musketeers, Richelieu defined the modern nation-state and the first police state, with a developed network of spies and a system of bureaucratic oppression (now carried out electronically). His reign gave rise to the phrase "the pen is mightier than the sword," as oppression and coercion moved from the purely physical to the subtle. For example, in the Académie française's successful efforts to complexify French, to make it a language of elites. The American version of English served the opposite function: to make it simpler and more accessible to all. For example, the average reading age of texts in the US is kept low to facilitate commerce and immigration. To this day, it is hard for a French high school graduate to write a paragraph without errors, a task that is simple in English. As the Dwapara Yuga advanced, France was left behind since it best fitted the priorities of Kings, Nobles, and, more recently, graduates of ENA. There is a very close connection between obscurantist language and restrictive, unionized elites in medicine and law. Incomprehensible legal texts in many nations conceal the illegitimate use of power and elite exploitation.
1628 — On the Movement of the Heart and Blood in Animals (UK) — William Harvey (1578–1657).
1643 — First Public School (Massachusetts Colony) — for all children, not simply the rich and titled.
1639 — First modern canal (Massachusetts Colony).
We know the ancients had canals as early as 4000 BC. Perhaps, given their scale, they are among the simplest ancient relics to find.
1658 — Quakers Founded (UK).
ASIDE: The Pennsylvania Colony was alone in not being attacked by Indian tribes while the principles of pacifism were upheld. Presidents Hoover and Nixon were Quakers.
1649 — Commonwealth of England (UK) — Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658)'s Republic.
1660 — The Grand Tour (UK) — the elite of Britain began to tour Europe to soak up culture. In the era of mass transport, the opportunity is open to all who choose to undertake it.
1661 — Reign of Louis XIV (France).
One of his more ingenious ways to limit the political activity of the nobility was to establish elaborate rules for behavior and dress. The rules for dancing were especially complicated. Many of the rules of court etiquette defined one's prestige and superiority over others. As a result, the nobles were so busy mastering appropriate court etiquette and competing for the prestige it conferred that they had no time to plot rebellions — a fantastic Dwapara Yuga way of maintaining control, much like the later Masons and Greek societies in US colleges: elaborate ritual and little substance.
1665 — Journal des sçavans (France), closely followed by the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (UK) that same year, begins freely sharing scientific knowledge.
Great minds simultaneously tune into discoveries in different locations that have often had no contact with one another. Robert Merton, a sociologist, found that 92% of cases of simultaneous discovery in the 17th century ended in dispute. The number of disputes dropped to 72% in the 18th century, 59% by the latter half of the 19th century, and 33% by the first half of the 20th century. The decline in contested claims to priority in research discoveries can be attributed to the increasing acceptance of papers published in modern academic journals.
1665 — Great Plague of London (UK) — recurrence of Black Death.
1666 — Great Fire of London (UK) — the city was largely destroyed.
1679 — Habeas Corpus Act (UK) — relief from unlawful imprisonment.
1680 — Golden Age of Piracy — pirate ships are the floating democracies; crews vote for a captain, and treasures are shared, even among formerly enslaved people, making the ships the freest places on Earth.
1687 — Principia: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy (UK) — Isaac Newton (1642–1727) – gravitational force.
1688 — Lloyd's Insurance (UK) — maritime insurance, founded in a coffee house.
1692 — Salem Witch Trials (US).
Founded on principles of freedom, the ruling elites could not enforce their religious monopoly or their particular set of social beliefs, as pressure mounted over land use and freedom of thought. The Puritans had found England too harsh and Holland too liberal; now in the US, the divisions led to the founding of new colonies as their grip on power waned.
0 Dwapara
1700 — Ascending Dwapara Yuga begins with a 200-year Sandhi.
1700–1800 — Age of Enlightenment.
1700–1900 — Agricultural Revolution (UK).
1700 — Sugar becomes worth its weight in gold, driving colonization, slavery, and industrialization.
1700 — Britain exports the idea of the lawn, driving resource consumption from labor to machines, to seeds and pesticides throughout the world.
1700 — Thomas Savery uses a steam engine to raise water (UK).
1720 — Stephen Gray discovers the action of electricity in the human body (UK).
1729 — Beginnings of Methodism.
1730 — Sextant invented (simultaneously in the US and the UK) — replaces the ancient astrolabe for marine navigation. Newton had discovered it 30 years before, but did not publish the paper.
1730 — Beginning of the Evangelical Protestant Movement (US).
The Great Awakening led people to "experience God in their own way," pulling away from the ritual and ceremony of the established church. Methodism advocated reading the Bible methodically. Many new expressions of Christianity blossomed in the US, from LDS (Mormon) to Adventists to Jehovah's Witnesses to Unity Church.
1732 — Influenza pandemic.
1744 — First mail order catalog (USA) — surprisingly, Ben Franklin.
1750–1850 — Industrial Revolution (UK). Energy and capital become the most valuable commodities.
1755 — First Dictionary of the English Language (UK).
1755 — Lisbon earthquake — killing between 60,000 and 100,000 people and causing a major tsunami that affected parts of Europe, North Africa, and the Caribbean. Inspired passages in Voltaire's Candide.
1756 — Concrete rediscovered (UK) — concrete is found throughout the ancient world, but its formulation had been lost with the Romans. The Romans and Egyptians knew how to make concrete that set underwater and how to prevent it from shrinking.
1775 — Influenza pandemic.
1761 — Harrison (1693–1776) solves the Longitude Problem (UK), allowing precise naval navigation.
1761 — First modern factory (UK).
The mills used slave labor in the US for raw cotton, mistreated their workers in Northern England, and obliged Empire markets such as India to buy their products. Enslaved people were freed in 1863; India gained independence in 1947 (with a symbol of a local cotton spinning wheel on its flag); and conditions for workers in the UK improved. William Blake famously described them as "dark satanic mills." Engels, Marx's collaborator, had detailed the factory conditions and hoped it would fuel revolution. Ironically, neither he nor Marx could explain the improvement in conditions — it did not fit their theories. When revolution came, it was in backward, agricultural Russia.
Along with the rise of factories, terrace or row housing grew, characterized by community walls and tightly packed populations, which imposed uniformity and stifled creativity. In Western Europe, the eastern sides of cities are typically poor areas because they are downwind of factories. The tradition continues in the US with cheaply built, densely packed apartments. In all societies and ages, elites retreat to rural areas with homes surrounded by large areas of land, from Hollywood stars to British nobles.
1763 — Watt's Steam Engine — frees factories from being located next to fast-flowing water needed to drive water wheels.
1766 — Christie's Auction House founded (UK) — efficient sellers' market.
1774 — Chlorine (Bleach) for cleaning and disinfection was isolated.
1768 — Encyclopædia Britannica published (UK).
1776 — Literacy in the State of Massachusetts was over 90% — a side effect of Puritan religious beliefs; similarly, as for Jews or Muslims, reading holy texts develops literacy.
1776 — Independence of the United States of America.
1776 — The Wealth of Nations (UK) — Adam Smith (1723–1790).
Smith was one of the torchbearers of the Scottish Enlightenment, a period of intellectual ferment in Scotland, spanning approximately 1730 to 1800.
1776 — Common Sense (USA) — Thomas Paine (1737–1809).
1785 — Charles Wilkins (1749–1836) makes the first English translation of the Bhagavad-Gita, opening ancient Indian knowledge to the West.
Sanskrit, unlike more modern languages, has an aliveness to words in that their seed sounds support many layers and nuances of meaning. For example, the words "cow" and "horse" support the idea of everyday animals and, at the same time, of light and energy, respectively. A Sanskrit text typically has a literalist sense, often taken up by European scholars (suggesting a certain primitiveness), and at the same time, when read with intuition, its deeper meaning emerges. The gods, different aspects of one divinity, are described as increasing man, bringing him light, pouring on him the fullness of the waters, increasing truth in him; and the demons are powers of division and limitation — coverers, tearers, devourers, confiners, dualisers, and obstructors. The Gita deeply influenced the Transcendentalists (see later).
1785 — US Dollar introduced — becoming, over time, a world currency, rivaled today only by the Euro.
1786 — Birth of Davy Crockett — the last words from his journal were "No time for memos now. Go ahead! Liberty and independence forever!"
1789 — The French Revolution inspires revolution throughout South America.
In the revolution, the Virgin Mary in Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris, was replaced by Lady Liberty (an embodiment of Liberty, similar to the US Statue of Liberty or the UK's Britannia) — an interesting progression from the original temple of Jupiter under the Romans, then the church of the Franks in 500 AD. In modern, secular France, the church is as much a museum as anything else. Monumental structures are not necessary for individual spiritual practice in the Dwapara Yuga.
1789 — Declaration of the Rights of Man (France) — specifically includes the right to privacy.
1789 — Metric System of measurement (France) — now the world standard.
1789 — Bill of Rights (USA).
1792 — Semaphore invented (France).
1796 — First Vaccinations (UK).
1798 — Essay on the Principle of Population (UK) — Thomas Malthus (1766–1834).
1799 — Fourdrinier machine (France) — first modern paper machine, along with the pencil and the modern fountain pen, which fueled the industrial revolution, incidentally reducing the importance of clerks.
1800 — Second Great Awakening (USA) — continuation of the evangelical movement.
1800 — First Battery (Italy).
1815 — End of British-American War.
1817 — Cholera pandemic.
1819 — Market crash — Panic of 1819.
1825 — First railway (UK) — frees cities from being located on the sea, rivers, or canals, as all the world's major cities are.
Manchester was the first industrial city, with its factories driving the Industrial Revolution, and then in Lowell, Massachusetts, where the model was copied. It went on to become the home of the first Red Brick University — modeled on Berlin's Humboldt University, the home of Rolls Royce, the splitting of the atom, and the first modern computer. Both Alan Turing and Einstein were professors at the University.
Families were split apart, with work no longer centered on the home; this led to many social problems. Lowell's mills were originally staffed only with young Yankee women, and, when they were not sufficiently exploitable, with immigrants.
Interestingly, at the age of 7, Sri Aurobindo was sent to Manchester to study with Mr. and Mrs. Drewett.
1822 — Rosetta Stone Translated (France) — Enabled reading of Egyptian hieroglyphics from the descending Dwapara Yuga.
1823–1941 — Bengal Renaissance (India).
1828 — Birth of Lahiri Mahasaya.
1829 — Cholera pandemic.
1830 — Founding of the Latter Day Saints Church (USA) in Manchester, NY.
The Church was a pioneer in opening up the West and building a strong social security system for its members. The Mennonites and Amish had barn raisings; the LDS (Mormon) built successful cities from nothing.
1836 — Birth of Sri Ramakrishna.
1836 — Beginning of Transcendental Movement (USA) — championed by Emerson and Thoreau.
1837 — Market crash — Panic of 1837 (USA) — followed by a 5-year depression.
1839 — First solar cell (component of solar panels) (France).
1840 — First national postal system at one rate (UK).
1841 — First Travel Agency (UK) — organized travel for ordinary citizens.
1842 — End of the First Opium War with China.
Britain made up its trade deficit with China by running a trade surplus with China.
1843 — First Iron Ship (UK).
1845 — First commercial telegraph (UK).
1845 — Rules of Rugby (UK) published.
Rugby went on to become the world game, football (soccer), and the US-only game, American football. The rules were set down in this year, yet the game had been played at Rugby School for 200 years prior. It is an embodiment of Muscular Christianity, i.e., the idea of combining athleticism with Christian principles. In the US, this same movement inspired the YMCA.
1845 — Irish Potato Famine.
1847 — Establishment of Greenwich Mean Time (UK) — now a world standard called Universal or Zulu time.
1847 — Influenza pandemic.
1848 — First modern oil well (Russia).
1849 — California Gold Rush (USA).
This is the most famous of several gold rushes that took place throughout the 19th century in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, New Zealand, South Africa, and the United States. They symbolize the Dwapara Yuga in that anyone from anywhere could become rich and successful simply by making a determined effort, whether by mining or by more intelligently selling services. In the past, even a lifetime of hard work was no guarantee of any positive result beyond non-starvation. Fueled by the rushes, immigration drove people to many new parts of the world, fostering thriving cultures that continue to this day.
1850 — Public Libraries Act (UK) — Public libraries open to all, not just scholars.
1851 — First Red Brick University (UK) emphasizes real-world skills rather than theology alone.
1852 — Mandatory Schooling (USA, State of Massachusetts).
1852 — Metropolis Water Act (UK) — Sand is used to filter drinking water in London for the first time, making it truly fit to drink. Similar filters were described in the Sanskrit writings of 2000 BC.
1852 — Cholera pandemic.
1855 — Birth of Sri Yukteswar (India).
1855 — Cocaine isolated (Germany).
It became the wonder drug at the end of the 19th century, driving soda fountains across Middle America, where ordering a Coca-Cola was described as "taking a shot in the arm." Ironically, it was initially used to treat alcohol and morphine addiction, products that had been known for millennia.
1855 — Bubonic plague pandemic.
1855 — First mass production of steel (UK) — simultaneously discovered in the US also.
1856 — India was completely under the control of the British East India Company.
1857 — Influenza pandemic.
1858 — Birth of JC Bose (India).
1858 — First transatlantic telegraph cable.
1858 — The Great Stink (UK) — the sewage problem of London became unbearable, leading to the construction of a modern sewage system.
To this day, the modern cities of Europe are riddled with catacombs, charnel houses, and mass graves filled with the corpses from the numerous plagues and pestilences of the polluted cities. Paris has a population of 2 million and catacombs containing 6 million bodies. Even in the Roman period, the importance of fresh drinking water, sewage collection, and bathing was understood. With Christianity came an end to the old practice of burning corpses and public bathing. Only in the mid-19th century did the world's great cities begin building fresh water, sewage, and modern sanitation systems, the lack of which still holds back Third World countries.
1859 — On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (UK) — Charles Darwin (1809–1882).
1860 — End of the Second Opium War between Britain and China.
1861 — Lahiri Mahasaya meets Babaji (India).
1861 — Birth of Rabindranath Tagore (India).
1863 — Birth of Swami Vivekananda (India).
1863 — Emancipation Proclamation (USA).
1863 — Adventist Church Founded (USA).
The church members are, to this day, the healthiest population in the US, followed by the LDS (Mormon). Cornflakes were invented to meet part of their dietary needs.
1863 — Cholera pandemic.
1863 — Jules Verne writes Paris in the Twentieth Century, which accurately predicts the pace, technology, and heartlessness of modern cities and living. It was suppressed and only published 125 years later.
1864 — First Geneva Conventions for the humane treatment of POWs.
1865 — End of the American Civil War.
1865 — Assassination of President Lincoln.
1864 — James Clerk Maxwell (1839–1879) shows the unity of electricity and magnetism — electromagnetism.
1866 — Dynamite was invented (Sweden).
1869 — Birth of Gandhi (India).
1869 — Market crash — Black Friday — brought about by gold speculation.
1869 — Suez Canal Reopens (Egypt) — Archaeological evidence suggests it was open as early as 1878 BC.
1869 — Transcontinental Railroad (US) — golden spike driven in Utah.
1870 — Dewey Decimal Classification of Books invented — now used by more than 200,000 libraries worldwide.
1872 — Birth of Sri Aurobindo (India).
1872 — Jehovah's Witnesses founded (USA).
President Eisenhower was a Jehovah's Witness.
1872 — First National Park Established (USA).
1873 — Market crash — the Panic of 1873 initiated the Long Depression in the United States and much of Europe.
1874 — Heroin synthesized (UK). Like cocaine before it, it was initially present in many common remedies like cough syrup.
1885 — First Automobile (Germany).
1886 — Panchanan Bhattacharya founds The Aryya Mission Institution (Chief Disciple of Lahiri Mahasaya).
1877 — First record player (USA).
1887 — First commercial telephone (USA).
1889 — Unity Church formed (USA).
1889 — Influenza pandemic.
1890 — First athletic shoe (trainer or sneaker) invented by Reebok (UK).
1892 — Ellis Island (USA) opens to process 12 million immigrants, and, from 1910, Angel Island processes 175,000 in the West.
The mixture of all races and creeds in the US prevails over the racist "master races" touted in the West in books such as The Myth of the 20th Century.
1892 — Birth of James Lynn (Rajarsi Janakananda, Yogananda's most advanced disciple).
1893 — Birth of Mukunda Ghosh (Paramahansa Yogananda).
1893 — Birth of Minnott Lewis (Yogananda's first US disciple).
1893 — Birth of Oliver Black (Yogacharya Black, Yogananda's second most advanced disciple).
1893 — Swami Vivekananda arrives in the USA.
The Chicago Parliament of World Religions awakened interest in India in the West and revived Hinduism in India. This marked the first formal gathering of representatives of Eastern and Western spiritual traditions. Today, it is recognized as the occasion of the birth of formal interreligious dialogue worldwide. The eloquence of Swami Vivekananda (student of Sri Ramakrishna) and his introduction of Hindu thought to the United States are particularly remembered. The speech has been widely regarded as marking the beginning of Western interest in Hinduism. His opening line, "Sisters and Brothers of America..." was greeted by a three-minute standing ovation from the audience.
1893 — Sears Catalog (USA) — order goods anywhere, by mail.
1894 — Swami Sri Yukteswar meets Babaji (India).
1894 — The Holy Science (India) — Swami Sri Yukteswar (1855–1936).
We began to hear more and more of the concept of energy in the mass media. From the sixties, we begin to hear more and more about energy linked to the breath and spinal column, as esoteric truths hidden in the texts and practices of religions such as Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Hinduism move from mystery schools into a more public view.
1894 — First Radio Receiver (India) — JC Bose (1858–1937).
Bengal, India, at this time produced a wealth of geniuses, from Swami Sri Yukteswar to JC Bose to Paramahansa Yogananda to Sri Ramakrishna Paramahansa to Swami Vivekananda to Sri Aurobindo to the entire Tagore family. They all influenced both the East and the West.
1895 — Birth of Basu Kumar Bagchi (Swami Dhirananda).
1896 — First movie theater (USA).
1896 — Birth of Manamohan Mazumder (Swami Satyananda).
Yogananda's mission began with a team of three Swamis: himself, Satyananda, and Dhirananda; the latter left the path to pursue brain research in academia.
1896 — Revival of the Olympic Games (Greece).
"The sportive, knightly battle awakens the best human characteristics. It does not separate, but unites the combatants in understanding and respect. It also helps to connect the countries in the spirit of peace. That's why the Olympic Flame should never die." — 1936 Games, Hitler's speech.
1897 — First fingerprint bureau opens (India).
1899 — Cholera pandemic.
200 Dwapara
1900 — Complete expression of Dwapara Yuga.
1900 — Discovery of the ancient Greek computer, the Antikythera Mechanism.
1901 — Marconi radios from England to Canada.
1901 — Nobel Prize begins — energy of smokeless gunpowder and dynamite transmuted into force for cultural good (Sweden).
1901 — Freud's works are published (Austria).
Reflections of an early addict are widely read. His student Jung came to consider the science of yoga a better path for humanity than Freud's obsessions, drawn from drug-induced dreams.
1903 — Powered Flight with the Wright Brothers, sponsored by the US Government at College Park, MD, from 1909.
1904 — Geographical Pivot of History (UK) — Halford John Mackinder, 1861–1947.
1905 — Special theory of relativity (Switzerland) — Albert Einstein (1879–1955) — shows the unity of energy and matter.
1906 — Food and Drug Administration formed (USA) — Freedom from quack medicines and adulterated foods.
1906 — San Francisco Earthquake — killed approximately 3,000 people; the most devastating earthquake in California and U.S. history.
1911 — Beginning of the Greatest Generation (participants in WWII).
1911 — Principles of Scientific Management (USA) — Taylor — Sets out principles of mass production.
1914 — Opening of the Panama Canal (Panama).
1917 — Tesla builds the first Radar (USA).
1918 — The end of WWI inspires decolonization movements worldwide.
1918 — Avian flu/Spanish flu pandemic kills twice as many as WWI itself.
1918 — Beginning of the movement to modern corporate structures.
1919 — Formation of the League of Nations (Paris).
1920 — Swami Yogananda arrives in the USA.
In the 1920s and 30s he was the most popular speaker in the US.
1920 — First commercial radio (USA).
1920 — Prohibition of alcohol era begins (USA) — echoes similar moves in Nordic countries and USSR.
1920 — All groups allowed to vote in elections (USA).
1921 — Zenith of the English-speaking British Empire, 25% of the world (England).
1922 — Yogananda establishes the first ashram in the US in Waltham, "Watch City," MA.
1927 — Lindbergh crosses the Atlantic (USA).
Lindbergh ushered in the modern aviation era and became the first international star.
1928 — Birth of Che Guevara (Argentina).
Che came from wealthy Irish-Argentinean stock, leaving his original medical studies to help the poor. He was ultimately betrayed by Castro, who chose power over any campaign promises to actually help people experiencing poverty on his island or elsewhere.
1929 — Swami Dhirananda betrays Yogananda and leaves the Ashram.
1929 — Wall Street Crash — Speculators trigger a worldwide depression (USA).
1930 — Dust Bowl (USA) — an early ecological disaster empties the plains of farmers.
1930 — First Football (Soccer) World Cup — A rare highlight in this dark decade.
The world becomes more and more networked — first via the oceans and rivers, then canals, streets, railways, mail/courier, electricity, water/sewage, telephone/telegraph, motorways, airports, radio, television, cable, satellite, then high-speed modems. In regimes such as France, the WWII generation of politicians remained focused on industrial-age networks like rail and roads and their voting workers, neglecting the importance of high-speed internet in a Dwapara Yuga economy. The present generation of the brightest young French professionals lives and works in Britain, Switzerland, or the US — a mirror of the brain drain the UK had a generation earlier, when its socialist ideologues punished success and believed the twin poles of life were factories and public (aka council or project) housing. Ironically, the elites of all such utopias choose not to live the model themselves.
1931 — Birth of Osho Rajneesh (India).
1932 — Famine in USSR — Communist Collectivization starves 6 to 8 million citizens.
1932 — First autobahn (Germany).
1932 — Brave New World (USA).
Huxley embodied many aspects of the Dwapara Yuga; his dystopian vision, along with his one-time pupil Orwell's 1984, warned generations about the Kali Yuga forces that threaten to constrict society. His early use of psychedelic drugs was taken up by official US government programs in the late fifties and sixties in San Francisco and Boston, with the explicit aim of kick-starting creativity. Huxley was influenced by the Indian mystic Krishnamurti, as well as by other US figures as diverse as Bruce Lee and Joseph Campbell.
1939 — Death of Robert "Crossroads" Johnson, influential bluesman, Age 27 (USA).
1939 — Sri Nerode betrays Yogananda and leaves the ashram.
1939 — Hewlett-Packard formed (USA).
HP was founded in a garage, starting a Silicon Valley tradition that has historically emphasized creative, high-quality products. Its biggest innovation was social, in sharp contrast to rigid, formal East Coast companies (IBM's company "song book," Unilever's interviewing of the entire family, not just the candidate); it effectively invented the modern, informal work environment. In the period where it truly applied its own "HP Way," it was highly successful.
1940 — Birth of Bruce Lee (USA).
Bruce Lee's own mixed racial heritage and openness to training students of all nationalities became a symbol of integration.
1941 — First commercial television (USA).
1942 — V2 weapon (Germany) — world's first ballistic missile. The same team developed both the American and Soviet missile and space programs.
1942 — Formation of OSS.
Warfare is increasingly characterized by the use of intelligence agencies, propaganda, and Special Forces for limited engagements — i.e., "the few and the bright" rather than conventional armies of "the many and the dumb." All sides adopt the same tactics in WWII, the Cold War, and now the "War on Terror." Rank in the CIA, KGB, or any of the world's alphabet soup of agencies becomes a path to political and economic power.
1945 — Fall of National Socialism (Germany).
1945 — Atomic bomb (Japan).
1945 — Close of WWII and acceleration of decolonization.
Knowledge alone is not sufficient; rather, it is what we do with it. Hitler kept Machiavelli's The Prince by his bed. Himmler kept the Bhagavad-Gita with him. Both had been obsessed with the past, past lives, and especially India. The US General Patton frequently commented that he was reliving past lives as he fought through Europe and North Africa.
1945 — British Empire wanes; American sphere of influence blossoms.
1945 — Formation of the United Nations (USA).
1945 — English emerges as the world's Lingua Franca — a universal, standard language, with the largest vocabulary and the largest storehouse of knowledge in book form.
One of the great tragedies of Kali Yuga was that, in the higher ages, people had perfect recall and needed no books. As the ages descended, books were written down, yet the great majority were destroyed in the depths of Kali Yuga, for example, in the burning of the Library of Alexandria. It is a striking fact that those that survive — from the Vedas, to the Old Testament, to the Iliad and Odyssey, to the Epic of Gilgamesh, to the Rubaiyat — have either an overt or a hidden spiritual message. They also tend to provide a consistent picture of past ages in which men were far from limited.
1945 — Formation of International Air Transport Association (IATA) (Cuba) — organizes world air travel.
1945 — Birth of Bob Marley (Jamaica).
Bob was to become an important symbol of unification in the 1970s with his music — "I don't have prejudice against myself. My father was white, and my mother was black. They call me half-caste. I don't dip on nobody's side. I don't dip on the black man's side nor the white man's side. Me dip on God's side, the one who created me and caused me to come from black and white."
1946 — Autobiography of a Yogi (USA) — Paramahansa Yogananda.
1946 — Beginning of the Baby Boom Generation.
1946 — Foundation of the first international business school (USA).
1947 — Independence of India and Pakistan.
1947 — UN conference at Bretton Woods (USA) — set up International Monetary Fund, International Bank, and General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) (later WTO).
1947 — AK-47 Assault Rifle (USSR) — empowers the individual soldier with the firepower of a squad.
1947 — First sighting of a "Flying Saucer" – Washington State (USA).
1947 — Alleged recovery of first UFO – Roswell (USA).
1947 — First Holograph (Hungary).
1947 — First Transistor (USA).
1947 — Marshall Plan (USA) — helps all the nations of Europe recover, including Germany; a stark contrast to the flawed Treaty of Versailles of 1919, which helped ensure another war.
1948 — Foundation of the (modern) state of Israel.
1948 — UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Paris).
1948 — Assassination of Gandhi.
1948 — First modern computer — Manchester "Baby" (UK) — previous WWII machines were specialist code-cracking devices.
1949 — 1984 — George Orwell (UK).
Orwell's book highlights control mechanisms of Kali Yuga states — Newspeak/Doublethink — "war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength," control of language and media, fetishistic need for surveillance, and distinctions of inner party members, outer party members, and disenfranchised populaces — proles. The information age brings more and better tools for oppression. Yet, paradoxically, those same tools feed the march of freedom, liberty, and democracy since regimes in North Korea, China, and France cannot completely block satellite feeds and the Internet. However, all three have tried hard to do so. President Chirac wanted a French Google and a French CNN, so his views, not Washington's, could be imposed. It has been argued that all media reflect the interests of their owners. Thus, state-owned media reflect the agenda of the regime and its owners; corporately owned media reflect the agenda of corporations and their owners. Interestingly, the Internet's dual nature as both a reading and a writing medium has only recently been harnessed by blog technology.
1949 — First commercial photocopier (USA).
1949 — Information Revolution (USA).
Great fortunes used to be based in agricultural land — for example, the Kings and Ministers of France — then in great factories, then in railway, telephone, oil, and commodity barons of all shapes. Today's richest man, Bill Gates, invented nothing, merely recognizing the value of other people's ideas and inventions, from DOS to Word to VMS.
1950 — Project Echelon (USA) — first steps to worldwide electronic surveillance — Big Brother is watching!
1950 — First CNC (computer numerical control) machines — allow physical objects to be created from computer blueprints from wood, metal, etc., blanks.
1951 — Original publication date for Yogananda's Gita Commentaries — SRF spent more than 50 years "editing" them before publication.
1951 — First video game (UK) — Checkers on Manchester Mark I.
Today's video game market is larger than Hollywood.
1952 — Death of Yogananda; Rajarsi Janakananda (James Lynn) becomes president of SRF.
1952 — Siddhartha (US) — Hermann Hesse wrote the novel in German in 1922, but the US version of 1952 became hugely influential.
1953 — End of the Korean War, following America's threat to use nuclear weapons.
1953 — Structure of DNA understood (UK).
1954 — Beginning of Ed Parker's American Kenpo Karate (USA).
This Hawaiian LDS (Mormon) member synthesized elements of Japanese and Chinese martial arts into a uniquely American form. He discovered Bruce Lee and had many famous students, including Elvis Presley. Presley, incidentally, was influenced by Yogananda, embodying a Dwapara Yuga change in bringing African American music to mainstream white audiences, much as the Beatles, Stones, and Zeppelin were to follow in the 60s, also becoming involved in Eastern knowledge.
1955 — Death of Rajarsi Janakananda; Daya Mata (Faye Wright) becomes president of SRF.
1956 — First Eurovision Song Contest (Switzerland).
1956 — First Commercial Robot (USA).
1956 — First commercial nuclear plant (UK).
1956 — Suez Crisis (Egypt) — Britain and France attempt to maintain control of the canal and, in failing, underscore their now-diminished diplomatic and military power.
1957 — Formation of the European Economic Community (Italy).
The European Community began with 6 members and now has 27 in 2007 — a similar rise from the US's 13 original colonies to 50 states today. With NAFTA, the United States of America includes the 50 states, Canada, Mexico, and, practically, Chile, all in line with Yogananda's predictions.
1957 — Sputnik Satellite (USSR).
One of the few Soviet successes, it paradoxically triggers a huge investment in technology in the West that will eventually lead to the downfall of the Socialist-Communist system. Apart from narrow military and scientific bands, the Communist and National Socialist regimes had almost no cultural output (excluding those who fled them). Their propaganda models, however, were widely copied in the West, shaping public opinion and driving consumer culture. In contrast, the San Francisco of the 60s gave rise to military, scientific, business, and artistic excellence, to the extent that the achievements of that period have not been repeated — a triumph not of the will but of real freedom and liberty.
1958 — Beginning of Beat Generation (First modern subculture).
1958 — Visa card launched (USA) — first true credit card.
1958 — Fair, Isaac, and Company developed the first credit scores, enabling lending to anyone creditworthy rather than only to those already wealthy or known to bankers.
1958 — The Great Leap Forward of the Chinese Communists causes a famine that kills 30 million within 3 years.
1959 — Robert Zimmerman begins to introduce himself as Bob Dylan, and a music that encapsulated an age was born (USA).
1959 — Idea of the Knowledge Worker — Peter Drucker — one who works primarily with information or one who develops and uses knowledge in the workplace.
1960 — Beginning of Counterculture/Hippie/Psychedelics/Back-To-Land/Commune Movements (USA).
1960 — First Laser (USA).
1960 — Introduction of 800 numbers (USA) — order goods anywhere rapidly.
1960 — Contraceptive Pill Introduced (USA).
1960 — Great Chilean Earthquake (1960) — Biggest earthquake ever recorded, 9.5 on the Moment magnitude scale, and generated tsunamis throughout the Pacific Ocean.
1961 — Eisenhower warns of the dangers of the Military-Industrial Complex (USA).
1961 — Berlin Wall built (Germany).
Like many walls before it — Hadrian's Wall, Offa's Dyke, the Great Wall of China, the Maginot Line — it represented military and diplomatic weakness.
1962 — Missile escalation in Cuba and Turkey almost leads to WWIII (Cuba).
1962 — Silent Spring (USA) by Rachel Carson — launches environmental movement.
1963 — Assassination of JFK.
1963 — Beginning of Generation X.
1963 — Equal Pay Act (USA).
1963 — First Lear Business Jet (USA) — ancestor of today's VLJs.
Much like computers, jets follow the arc of innovation from military technology to governments, large corporations, smaller corporations, wealthy individuals, and the public. In the European Union, it has been argued that low-cost airlines brought real union where 50 years of bureaucracy had only brought resentment and resistance. Examples of historical planes include Rama's Pushpaka and Elijah's Chariot of Fire, although these may be references to ascending consciousness rather than to physical machines.
1964 — DEC PDP-8 Minicomputer (USA).
1964 — Civil Rights Act (USA).
1964 — First facial recognition software (USA).
1965 — Assassination of Malcolm X (USA).
1966 — First commercial fax machine (USA).
1966 — First commercial satellite (USA).
1966 — First container ship (USA).
1966 — Freedom of Information Act (USA).
1966 — International Standard Book Number – ISBN (UK). Contributes to universal access to information — trend tied to libraries, English language standard, search and retrieval systems.
1966 — Star Trek (USA) — essentially a utopian, Dwapara vision, drawing audiences together around the world. It covered controversial themes such as war, peace, authoritarianism, imperialism, class warfare, racism, human rights, sexism, and feminism. Most famously, the role of technology was explored, inspiring cell phones, sliding doors, and research into replicators (see CNC), matter transporters, and faster-than-light warp drives.
1967 — Controversial meetings of the Beatles/Stones and Maharishi (India).
1967 — Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (UK) — included images of Sri Yukteswar and Paramahansa Yogananda.
1968 — Glashow, Salam, and Weinberg — unity of electroweak and electromagnetic forces.
1968 — Assassination of MLK.
1968 — Assassination of RFK.
1968 — International Baccalaureate (Switzerland) — a non-profit, originally to facilitate the international mobility of children of diplomats; it now provides a curriculum for students of all kinds, all ages, and in all countries — a world education.
1968 — Whole Earth Catalog (USA) — to provide education and "access to tools" so that the reader could "find his own inspiration, shape his own environment, and share his adventure with whoever is interested."
1968 — First acoustic coupler modem (USA).
Within one generation, speeds climbed from 300 baud to 3.5 Mbit/s — i.e., from a page of simple text downloading in a minute, to an entire DVD downloading in a minute.
1968 — Manson becomes the first of many false gurus (USA).
1969 — Moon landing (USA).
1969 — Open University (UK) — Distance university education.
1969 — Led Zeppelin's Indian-Raga influenced music takes the world by storm (UK).
1969 — Death of Brian Jones, the creative heart of the Rolling Stones, Age 27 (UK).
1969 — Woodstock and Altamont Rock Festivals (USA).
1970 — Beginning of telecommuting (US).
1970 — First No-fault divorce procedures (USA).
1970 — First facelifts (USA).
1970 — Standard Model of particle physics unifies all but gravity of the four fundamental forces — strong, electromagnetic, electroweak, and gravity.
1970 — Suspicious death of Janis Joplin, Age 27 (USA).
1970 — Suspicious death of Jimi Hendrix, Age 27 (UK).
1971 — Suspicious death of Jim Morrison, Age 27 (France).
Compare this cluster with the births in 1892–93.
1971 — First laser printer (USA).
1971 — Formation of FedEx (USA).
1971 — First commercial microprocessors (USA).
1971 — First Mars Landing (USSR).
1972 — First pocket scientific calculator (USA).
1972 — First UN conference on human environment (Sweden).
1972 — Nixon warms world relations with China with an official visit.
1973 — SWIFT network for international money transfers.
1973 — Black-Scholes model forms the basis for the explosion of derivatives trading (USA).
1973 — 9/11 (Chile) — Communist Socialist forces are halted at the Moneda.
1973 — First Oil Crisis (US) — first warning that the US was too dependent on fossil fuels.
1973 — Enter the Dragon (US) — Bruce Lee demonstrates a physical unity of the East and West, absorbing the best elements from both in this masterpiece. In doing so, he became the first Asian superstar.
1973 — Suspicious death of Bruce Lee (Hong Kong) — much as in the legacy of Krishnamurti, Lee's name is used and abused by many associates; perhaps his greatest legacy is the example of how anyone can become better and better to an almost superhuman extent.
1975 — End of the Vietnam War.
1975 — Russia and America collaborate on the Apollo–Soyuz space mission.
1975 — Punk movement begins promisingly with ideas of creativity à la Kabuki. Still, it rapidly degenerates into a nihilistic movement, the opposite of hippiedom, morphing into negative movements of Goths and other genres, characterized by a mindset of suicide and despair.
1975 — Beginning of downsizing, outsourcing, rightsizing, and offshoring.
Globalization drives specialization into tertiary (services), secondary (manufacturing), and primary (resource extraction) economies.
1977 — Apple II personal computer (USA).
The PC was a culmination of size reduction and power increases from the 50s mainframes to the 70s minicomputers, placing the means of consumption and production of all media in the hands of individuals, allowing everything from animation, book production, music production, film production, architectural design, DNA sequencing, to advanced simulations in the home, where previously only governments and companies held the capabilities. Combined with the Internet, it provides the resources of Harvard or MIT in individuals' hands.
1977 — Star Wars (US) — draws on themes ranging from the Vedas and the age of chivalry to Nazism and good vs. evil, echoing the Kali vs. Dwapara struggle, and achieves huge commercial success.
1978 — Advent of GUTs — grand unified theories linking all fundamental forces.
1978 — First GPS Satellite (USA).
1978 — Beginning of Generation Y — In the West, universal access to laptops, iPods, cellphones, digital cameras and videos, blogs, instant messages, and the Internet.
1978 — Jonestown massacre (Guyana).
1979 — Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher elected (UK) — together with President Reagan, frees the West.
1979 — Second oil crisis.
1979 — Three Mile Island Meltdown (USA).
1980 — First commercial email — CompuServe (USA).
1980 — First DNA Paternity Testing (USA).
In the adult US population, married people became the minority in 2006, as societal changes make it less and less necessary for men and women to be married for economic, sexual, paternity, or religious reasons. In contrast, cohabitation levels have shot up.
1980 — Launch of CNN — cable network news (USA).
1980 — Beginning of the privatization movement (UK).
1981 — First cellphone service (Nordic countries).
1981 — President Ronald Reagan elected (USA).
1981 — Assassination attempt on President Reagan (USA).
1981 — Assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II.
1981 — First cases of AIDS (USA).
1981 — First retinal scans for identification (USA).
1983 — Free Software Foundation — forerunner of GNU, Linux, etc. (USA).
1984 — Assassination attempt on Prime Minister Thatcher (UK).
1984 — Bhopal Disaster (India) — world's worst industrial disaster.
1985 — Live Aid (UK).
1985 — Fall of Rajneeshpuram (USA).
1986 — Chornobyl Meltdown (Ukraine) — world's worst nuclear disaster.
1987 — Black Monday market crash (UK).
1987 — Stephen Hawking of Cambridge University organized a weeklong meeting at which scientists from around the world brought the story of gravity up to date, 300 years after Newton publicized the Principia (UK).
1988 — First Transatlantic Fiber Optic Cable (USA).
1989 — The US invades Panama to ensure control of the canal.
1989 — Close of the Cold War and fall of Communist Socialism (Germany) — symbolically, the Berlin Wall falls.
1991 — World Wide Web Server (Switzerland).
1991 — End of apartheid in South Africa.
1991 — End of Gulf War I (USA).
1991 — First Reality TV Show (Holland).
With a proliferation of media channels, there are insufficient sport-entertainment stars to fill them. Efforts begin to manufacture them.
1992 — Black Wednesday Market Crash (UK) — mismanagement of exchange rates.
1992 — Hurricane Andrew (US) — 2nd most destructive in US history.
1993 — WebCrawler (USA) — first web search engine.
1993 — Siege of Branch Davidians in Waco (USA).
1994 — Signing of NAFTA, joining Canada, the USA, and Mexico — first steps towards the United States of America, following the lead of the United States of Europe.
1994 — Launch of Amazon.com (USA) — order all media, everywhere.
1995 — EU Directive on Data Protection.
1995 — First commercial 3-D printers (USA) — create physical objects from "thin air" using electronic blueprints. These blueprints can be sent over the Internet, so, say, a new or modified part in the US can be sent to an oil rig off the African coast, printed in 3 dimensions, and used.
1995 — Netscape launched (USA).
Henry Ford unilaterally introduced the five-day work week for his workers, an early example of enlightened self-interest. Similarly, McDonald's, Walmart, and Microsoft grew significantly by focusing on the interests of consumers and regular employees, and by sharing stock and options. In the business world, fantastic success is closely associated with companies that share both risk and reward. For example, Netscape (USA) was the first dot-com to really share wealth with all employees. Sports-entertainment, hedge funds, tech, and I-banks largely define where upside is shared.
1995 — eBay launched (USA) — an efficient sellers' market, for all objects, everywhere.
Pierre Omidyar of eBay and Sergey Brin of Google are the poster children of Dwapara Yuga — young immigrants becoming billionaires in the New Economy. Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, and Steve Jobs, all college dropouts, similarly illustrate the unimportance of formal diplomas such as MBAs in entrepreneurship. In many ways, the 1995 Dot Com bubble echoes the 1849 Gold Rush, offering an opportunity for the bright and determined to make fortunes where previously only the wealthy and well-connected had seats at the table. Similar booms accompanied the introduction of telegraphs, telephones, television, etc. — notice the prefix tele for "far," an echo of Dwapara's tagline of "space-annihilator" — with entrepreneurs in the beginning, then consolidated, conservative business empires over time, until the launch of the next disruptive technology.
1995 — First armed, uncrewed flying vehicle deployed (US).
Such a vehicle had been proposed by Tesla 100 years earlier and by Da Vinci 500 years earlier, but the technology to build it was not yet ready. Tesla was well ahead of his time. He had proposed homes pulling electricity from the air. His ideas were overridden by Edison and Westinghouse in favor of the greater commercial value (to them) of installing power lines and associated infrastructure.
1996 — ICQ Instant Messaging (Israel).
1996 — First cloned mammal (UK).
1996 — North Korean Communists cause a famine that kills 3.5 million in 3 years.
1997 — Asian market crash.
1997 — World Chess Champion loses to a computer program (USA).
1998 — Russian financial crash.
1998 — International Space Station launched.
1999 — Euro introduced.
300 Dwapara
2000 — Y2K bug proves to be hype.
Y2K was the impetus that enabled India to enter the international white-collar space. India has cultivated its elites fantastically, but sadly, less so general education, health, infrastructure, and broader industry.
2000 — Bill Gates follows the example of previous US industrialists in using his fortune for the good of the world (USA).
2000 — Dot Com/Telco Bubbles Burst (USA) — Telco bubble ten times larger than the better-known Dot Com bubble.
2001 — The first space tourist launches from Russia.
2001 — Launch of Wikipedia (USA) — surpasses both Encarta and the Encyclopædia Britannica in depth and quality.
2001 — Launch of iTunes (USA) — download all media, everywhere.
The iPod is a Dwapara Yuga product, conceived in India, manufactured in China, and marketed in the US. India has greatly benefited from the fall of the Soviet Union and the decline of its influence. Similarly, China is benefiting much more broadly from the de facto dropping of Communist Socialist ideology.
2001 — 9/11 (USA).
Kali Yuga elements try to roll back time to a primitive Middle Ages. The symbolic targets of the World Trade Center and Pentagon were hit, and the White House was spared thanks to the heroism of ordinary passengers on Flight 93. Ironically, for such a backward-aiming organization, its name, "The Network," its propagation via the Internet, and its focus on symbolic media victories rather than military ones show that its means are decidedly modern. It's interesting to note the stateless nature of many of the combatants — again, a modern development.
2001 — Post-9/11 market crash (World).
2002 — Launch of Information Awareness Office (IAO) (USA) — worldwide electronic surveillance — Bigger Brother is watching.
2002 — First cases of SARS (China).
2003 — China becomes the third power to have a manned space program.
2003 — Skype Internet telephony (Luxembourg).
2003 — European heat wave kills 50,000, mainly in socialist France.
2004 — FDA approves implantation of RFID ID chips in humans (USA) — perhaps a "sign of the beast" for literalists ;)
2004 — Indian Ocean Tsunami — deadliest in recorded history.
2005 — Human Genome Decoded (International Group and USA).
2005 — Hurricane Katrina (US) — most destructive in US history.
2007 — Apple TV (USA) — integrates television, hi-fi, and the Internet.
2007 — Discovery of the first Earth-like planet — Gliese 581 system (Chile).
This is a mirror of Columbus's 1492 discovery of America. Chile tends to embody the strengths of both the US and Europe and the weaknesses from its exposure to both National and Communist Socialism. It is already a de facto member of NAFTA, with bilateral agreements with Canada, the US, and Mexico — another step to a United States of the Americas. By 2020, Chile expects all students to be bilingual in Spanish and English.
2007 — The Schengen expansion of the European Union means there will be 37 states with no borders between them. This figure is projected to reach 42 by 2012. The beginnings of a worldwide recession as financial and housing markets crack.
3100 BC — Prehistory — Descending Treta Yuga closes; Descending Dwapara Yuga begins.
3100 BC — Mahabharata War.
700 BC — Classical Antiquity — Descending Dwapara Yuga closes; Descending Kali Yuga begins.
700 BC — The Greek poet Hesiod described the last Golden Age of man, presided over by King Chronus of Atlantis. Vases found in South America and identical vases unearthed in Troy by the archaeologist Schliemann bore the inscription, "From the King Chronus of Atlantis."
400 BC — Birth of Siddhartha Gautama (Nepal) – Founder of Buddhism.
0 — Birth of Jesus of Nazareth (Israel) — Founder of Christianity.
Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism are the world's four major religions. Of these, Hinduism is the oldest, with elements traced back to 5500 BC. Strictly, the term should be Sanatan Dharma, literally "eternal religion," the name given to the body of Vedic teachings. Sanatan Dharma has come to be called Hinduism since the time of the Greeks, who designated the people on the banks of the river Indus as Indoos, or Hindus. The word Hindu, properly speaking, refers only to followers of Sanatan Dharma or Hinduism. We have Columbus to thank for the added confusion of "Indian" being used to refer to someone from India or a native of the Americas. Interestingly, Columbus's mistake suggests a karmic link between the Americas and India.
313 — Constantine becomes the first Christian Roman Emperor.
500 AD — Lowest point of Descending Kali Yuga; Ascending Kali Yuga begins.
This marked the fall of the Roman Empire, which itself drew much of its culture from ancient Greece. It had colonized as far as Britannia (England) and Gaul (France). Its legacy was a model of administration, and from Latin we have Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Romanian. The Persian Empire fell shortly thereafter, unable to withstand the lows of Kali Yuga consciousness.
529 — Saint Benedict (Italy) — sets down his rules for monastic life.
Monasticism was to remain almost the only spark of European culture for the next 1000 years. When the Renaissance came, it drew heavily from earlier, more advanced civilizations in Rome, Greece, and the Muslim Middle East and, as it advanced, from the knowledge of India. Even Benedict's rule was revised over time, leading to the development of monasteries throughout Europe that produced alcoholic beverages such as beer, wine, and champagne. The original rule had called for abstinence.
535 — Climate changes dramatically — little sunshine, snow in summer. It is speculated that ash from the volcano Krakatoa caused a volcanic winter, an echo of the 1600 BC eruption of the Volcano Thera, often tied to the Old Testament stories of the Plagues of Egypt.
541 — The Plague of Justinian (Italy) — thought to be the first case of plague.
570 — Birth of Muhammad (Saudi Arabia) – Founder of Islam.
600 — Stirrups (Sweden). Allowed horses to be used in battle, changing the nature of warfare.
790 — Viking age (Britannia) begins.
Scandinavians raid and then colonize the British Isles, Western Europe, and beyond. The scope of travel enabled by the longboat defined the Vikings. It could traverse the Atlantic, coastal waters, rivers, and even be dragged over land.
1066 — Norman Conquest (Britannia).
Vikings from Normandy, France, take over the British Isles — the system of geographically dispersed holdings of the Normans in Britain led to cohesive nobility and the rise of the English language.
1119 — Knights Templar (Jerusalem). Established the first international banking organization.
1200–1600 — The Renaissance — literally "rebirth."
1215 — Signing of Magna Carta, "Great Charter" (England).
This sets the first limit on the power of the King of England. Kali Yuga governance is characterized by brutal force, torture, and oppression, seen only in modern times in the aftermath of the French Revolution and National Socialist and Communist Socialist movements. It survives in backward pockets of the world such as North Korea, Colombia, and some African states.
1229 — Inquisition Formed (France) — goal of suppressing reform movements within the Catholic Church, in particular Catharism and Waldensians.
1248 — Gunpowder arrives in Europe (UK), although many antecedents existed in China, India, and the Muslim world.
1299 — Travels of Marco Polo — the first account of Europeans voyaging to the East.
We still have Columbus's copy with handwritten notes. Polo's voyages, although mocked for supposed exaggeration at the time, drove the popular wish to explore the East.
1315 — Great famine kills millions.
1340 — Black Death — total number of deaths worldwide from the plague pandemic is estimated at 75 million people; there were an estimated 20 million deaths in Europe alone.
1400 — Perspective in painting rediscovered (Italy). The Greeks had it as late as 500 BC, as we know from their use of it in the painted backdrops of plays.
1400 — First clock towers are erected (Italy) — both Egyptians and Romans had these, using other principles and possessing greater accuracy.
The regulation of time became increasingly important in industrialization, with bells and early starts used to condition whole populations in schools in North America and Western Europe for factory work.
1440 — Birth of Kabir.
1450 — First printing press (Germany).
1453 — Byzantine Empire Falls (Constantinople) — drives the Italian Renaissance, taking up knowledge from the Arabic world and Greece.
1469 — Birth of Guru Nanak (Pakistan) — Founder of Sikhism.
Sikhism emphasizes equality of men, women, and all castes — a sharp break with Islam and Hinduism.
1474 — First patent (Italy).
1492 — Columbus discovers the New World, beginning of the so-called Columbian Exchange (Spain).
1500 — Modern musical notation developed, capable of capturing all the elements of music.
Isidore of Seville, writing in the early 7th century, famously remarked that it was impossible to notate music. The record shows the capability slowly developed over the next 800 years. It was, however, possessed by the ancients as early as 2000 BC, according to archaeologists.
1500 — Tobacco was introduced to the Old World.
Trade in spices, tobacco, sugar, tea, coffee, chocolate, alcohol, and, more recently, illegal drugs were early forces of globalization. In the early 90s, traces of both cocaine and tobacco were found in Egyptian mummies dating back to before 1000 BC, suggesting such trading with the New and Old Worlds had taken place in the last descending Dwapara Yuga.
1501 — Typhus pandemic.
1513 — The Prince (Italy) — Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527).
1516 — Utopia — Thomas More (UK) — originally titled "A New Atlantis."
Man begins to wake up to the possibilities of a better world and denounces some of the glaring oppressions of the time, for example, taking away common land to make sheep pasture, forcing peasants to starvation where previously they could live free, and later forcing them into factories and terrace houses. The writings inspire the formation of the Royal Society (see later). It is only in the last 100 years that men have choice in what they might become; previously, the role one was born into was life-determining — Prince or Pauper, explaining the great love affair of the "Little Guy" in the United States and Australia, where personal effort rather than family string-pulling is admired. Unfortunately, modern America has developed its billionaire political dynasties in recent years, the last elections posing one billionaire son of a politician on the left against the same profile on the right. Before the last elections, every French candidate, from left to right, was the product of wealthy families and had attended the same tiny elite university — ENA.
1517 — Ninety-five Theses (Germany) — Martin Luther (1483–1547) — launches a protest movement (Protestant) against decadence and corruption in the many layers of the Catholic Church hierarchy. Luther then translates the Latin Bible into German — making it accessible to ordinary people, as much a political as a religious act (Germany).
1526 — Tyndale New Testament.
1533 — Statute in Restraint of Appeals (England) — England rejects the Pope.
The Protestant idea of individual responsibility (e.g., if you are poor, it is not your lot in life; rather, you must personally work to improve) builds striving societies in England, Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Scandinavia, contrasting with the economic sliding of Catholic Europe and the Moslem nations where an attitude of "it is God's will" prevails... and the individual personally does nothing. The period saw the fall of Muslim empires and of Spain and Portugal. France revived only when the Corsican Napoleon emphasized meritocracy. The contrast between North and South America remains today.
1543 — Beginning of the Scientific Revolution.
1543 — On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres (Poland) — Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543).
1550 — De Subtilitate (Italy) — Girolamo Cardano (1501–1576) distinguishes between electricity and magnetism.
1569 — Mercator Projection (Belgium) facilitates navigation.
1586 — Shakespeare's plays characterize the move from Middle to Modern English (UK).
1590 — First smoking ban (Italy).
In England and France, beer and wine were drunk, respectively, because water was usually contaminated. Low-quality foods, cigarettes, alcohol, and many prescription and illegal drugs cloud the mind, as the ancients of higher ages knew. Amusingly, in modern times, the world's number-one wine exporter, France, published a scientific paper praising the medical properties of wine. The scientific community rejected it as completely flawed, yet it is very often quoted by wine drinkers.
1590 — European famine.
1600 — Ascending Kali Yuga closes with a 100-year Sandhi (transition period).
1600–1700 — Age of Reason.
Sri Yukteswar specifically mentions Gilbert, Kepler, Galileo, Drebbel, Newton, Savery, and Gray in this period.
1602 — First stocks and bonds — Amsterdam Stock Exchange.
1600 — Foundation of the British East India Company (UK).
1600 — William Gilbert discovers magnetic and electrical effects (UK).
1602 — Foundation of the Dutch East India Company (Netherlands).
1609 — Kepler discovers important laws of astronomy (Austria).
1609 — Galileo invented the telescope (Italy).
1610 — Flintlock Rifle (France) — defined warfare for the next 300 years.
1611 — The King James Version of the Bible was published in English, and it very strongly influenced the English language.
1620 — European famine.
1621 — Drebbel invents the microscope (Holland).
1624 — Cardinal-Duc de Richelieu becomes Chief Minister to the King (France).
Besides being the foil to the Three Musketeers, Richelieu defined the modern nation-state and the first police state, with a developed network of spies and a system of bureaucratic oppression (now carried out electronically). His reign gave rise to the phrase "the pen is mightier than the sword," as oppression and coercion moved from the purely physical to the subtle. For example, in the Académie française's successful efforts to complexify French, to make it a language of elites. The American version of English served the opposite function: to make it simpler and more accessible to all. For example, the average reading age of texts in the US is kept low to facilitate commerce and immigration. To this day, it is hard for a French high school graduate to write a paragraph without errors, a task that is simple in English. As the Dwapara Yuga advanced, France was left behind since it best fitted the priorities of Kings, Nobles, and, more recently, graduates of ENA. There is a very close connection between obscurantist language and restrictive, unionized elites in medicine and law. Incomprehensible legal texts in many nations conceal the illegitimate use of power and elite exploitation.
1628 — On the Movement of the Heart and Blood in Animals (UK) — William Harvey (1578–1657).
1643 — First Public School (Massachusetts Colony) — for all children, not simply the rich and titled.
1639 — First modern canal (Massachusetts Colony).
We know the ancients had canals as early as 4000 BC. Perhaps, given their scale, they are among the simplest ancient relics to find.
1658 — Quakers Founded (UK).
ASIDE: The Pennsylvania Colony was alone in not being attacked by Indian tribes while the principles of pacifism were upheld. Presidents Hoover and Nixon were Quakers.
1649 — Commonwealth of England (UK) — Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658)'s Republic.
1660 — The Grand Tour (UK) — the elite of Britain began to tour Europe to soak up culture. In the era of mass transport, the opportunity is open to all who choose to undertake it.
1661 — Reign of Louis XIV (France).
One of his more ingenious ways to limit the political activity of the nobility was to establish elaborate rules for behavior and dress. The rules for dancing were especially complicated. Many of the rules of court etiquette defined one's prestige and superiority over others. As a result, the nobles were so busy mastering appropriate court etiquette and competing for the prestige it conferred that they had no time to plot rebellions — a fantastic Dwapara Yuga way of maintaining control, much like the later Masons and Greek societies in US colleges: elaborate ritual and little substance.
1665 — Journal des sçavans (France), closely followed by the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (UK) that same year, begins freely sharing scientific knowledge.
Great minds simultaneously tune into discoveries in different locations that have often had no contact with one another. Robert Merton, a sociologist, found that 92% of cases of simultaneous discovery in the 17th century ended in dispute. The number of disputes dropped to 72% in the 18th century, 59% by the latter half of the 19th century, and 33% by the first half of the 20th century. The decline in contested claims to priority in research discoveries can be attributed to the increasing acceptance of papers published in modern academic journals.
1665 — Great Plague of London (UK) — recurrence of Black Death.
1666 — Great Fire of London (UK) — the city was largely destroyed.
1679 — Habeas Corpus Act (UK) — relief from unlawful imprisonment.
1680 — Golden Age of Piracy — pirate ships are the floating democracies; crews vote for a captain, and treasures are shared, even among formerly enslaved people, making the ships the freest places on Earth.
1687 — Principia: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy (UK) — Isaac Newton (1642–1727) – gravitational force.
1688 — Lloyd's Insurance (UK) — maritime insurance, founded in a coffee house.
1692 — Salem Witch Trials (US).
Founded on principles of freedom, the ruling elites could not enforce their religious monopoly or their particular set of social beliefs, as pressure mounted over land use and freedom of thought. The Puritans had found England too harsh and Holland too liberal; now in the US, the divisions led to the founding of new colonies as their grip on power waned.
0 Dwapara
1700 — Ascending Dwapara Yuga begins with a 200-year Sandhi.
1700–1800 — Age of Enlightenment.
1700–1900 — Agricultural Revolution (UK).
1700 — Sugar becomes worth its weight in gold, driving colonization, slavery, and industrialization.
1700 — Britain exports the idea of the lawn, driving resource consumption from labor to machines, to seeds and pesticides throughout the world.
1700 — Thomas Savery uses a steam engine to raise water (UK).
1720 — Stephen Gray discovers the action of electricity in the human body (UK).
1729 — Beginnings of Methodism.
1730 — Sextant invented (simultaneously in the US and the UK) — replaces the ancient astrolabe for marine navigation. Newton had discovered it 30 years before, but did not publish the paper.
1730 — Beginning of the Evangelical Protestant Movement (US).
The Great Awakening led people to "experience God in their own way," pulling away from the ritual and ceremony of the established church. Methodism advocated reading the Bible methodically. Many new expressions of Christianity blossomed in the US, from LDS (Mormon) to Adventists to Jehovah's Witnesses to Unity Church.
1732 — Influenza pandemic.
1744 — First mail order catalog (USA) — surprisingly, Ben Franklin.
1750–1850 — Industrial Revolution (UK). Energy and capital become the most valuable commodities.
1755 — First Dictionary of the English Language (UK).
1755 — Lisbon earthquake — killing between 60,000 and 100,000 people and causing a major tsunami that affected parts of Europe, North Africa, and the Caribbean. Inspired passages in Voltaire's Candide.
1756 — Concrete rediscovered (UK) — concrete is found throughout the ancient world, but its formulation had been lost with the Romans. The Romans and Egyptians knew how to make concrete that set underwater and how to prevent it from shrinking.
1775 — Influenza pandemic.
1761 — Harrison (1693–1776) solves the Longitude Problem (UK), allowing precise naval navigation.
1761 — First modern factory (UK).
The mills used slave labor in the US for raw cotton, mistreated their workers in Northern England, and obliged Empire markets such as India to buy their products. Enslaved people were freed in 1863; India gained independence in 1947 (with a symbol of a local cotton spinning wheel on its flag); and conditions for workers in the UK improved. William Blake famously described them as "dark satanic mills." Engels, Marx's collaborator, had detailed the factory conditions and hoped it would fuel revolution. Ironically, neither he nor Marx could explain the improvement in conditions — it did not fit their theories. When revolution came, it was in backward, agricultural Russia.
Along with the rise of factories, terrace or row housing grew, characterized by community walls and tightly packed populations, which imposed uniformity and stifled creativity. In Western Europe, the eastern sides of cities are typically poor areas because they are downwind of factories. The tradition continues in the US with cheaply built, densely packed apartments. In all societies and ages, elites retreat to rural areas with homes surrounded by large areas of land, from Hollywood stars to British nobles.
1763 — Watt's Steam Engine — frees factories from being located next to fast-flowing water needed to drive water wheels.
1766 — Christie's Auction House founded (UK) — efficient sellers' market.
1774 — Chlorine (Bleach) for cleaning and disinfection was isolated.
1768 — Encyclopædia Britannica published (UK).
1776 — Literacy in the State of Massachusetts was over 90% — a side effect of Puritan religious beliefs; similarly, as for Jews or Muslims, reading holy texts develops literacy.
1776 — Independence of the United States of America.
1776 — The Wealth of Nations (UK) — Adam Smith (1723–1790).
Smith was one of the torchbearers of the Scottish Enlightenment, a period of intellectual ferment in Scotland, spanning approximately 1730 to 1800.
1776 — Common Sense (USA) — Thomas Paine (1737–1809).
1785 — Charles Wilkins (1749–1836) makes the first English translation of the Bhagavad-Gita, opening ancient Indian knowledge to the West.
Sanskrit, unlike more modern languages, has an aliveness to words in that their seed sounds support many layers and nuances of meaning. For example, the words "cow" and "horse" support the idea of everyday animals and, at the same time, of light and energy, respectively. A Sanskrit text typically has a literalist sense, often taken up by European scholars (suggesting a certain primitiveness), and at the same time, when read with intuition, its deeper meaning emerges. The gods, different aspects of one divinity, are described as increasing man, bringing him light, pouring on him the fullness of the waters, increasing truth in him; and the demons are powers of division and limitation — coverers, tearers, devourers, confiners, dualisers, and obstructors. The Gita deeply influenced the Transcendentalists (see later).
1785 — US Dollar introduced — becoming, over time, a world currency, rivaled today only by the Euro.
1786 — Birth of Davy Crockett — the last words from his journal were "No time for memos now. Go ahead! Liberty and independence forever!"
1789 — The French Revolution inspires revolution throughout South America.
In the revolution, the Virgin Mary in Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris, was replaced by Lady Liberty (an embodiment of Liberty, similar to the US Statue of Liberty or the UK's Britannia) — an interesting progression from the original temple of Jupiter under the Romans, then the church of the Franks in 500 AD. In modern, secular France, the church is as much a museum as anything else. Monumental structures are not necessary for individual spiritual practice in the Dwapara Yuga.
1789 — Declaration of the Rights of Man (France) — specifically includes the right to privacy.
1789 — Metric System of measurement (France) — now the world standard.
1789 — Bill of Rights (USA).
1792 — Semaphore invented (France).
1796 — First Vaccinations (UK).
1798 — Essay on the Principle of Population (UK) — Thomas Malthus (1766–1834).
1799 — Fourdrinier machine (France) — first modern paper machine, along with the pencil and the modern fountain pen, which fueled the industrial revolution, incidentally reducing the importance of clerks.
1800 — Second Great Awakening (USA) — continuation of the evangelical movement.
1800 — First Battery (Italy).
1815 — End of British-American War.
1817 — Cholera pandemic.
1819 — Market crash — Panic of 1819.
1825 — First railway (UK) — frees cities from being located on the sea, rivers, or canals, as all the world's major cities are.
Manchester was the first industrial city, with its factories driving the Industrial Revolution, and then in Lowell, Massachusetts, where the model was copied. It went on to become the home of the first Red Brick University — modeled on Berlin's Humboldt University, the home of Rolls Royce, the splitting of the atom, and the first modern computer. Both Alan Turing and Einstein were professors at the University.
Families were split apart, with work no longer centered on the home; this led to many social problems. Lowell's mills were originally staffed only with young Yankee women, and, when they were not sufficiently exploitable, with immigrants.
Interestingly, at the age of 7, Sri Aurobindo was sent to Manchester to study with Mr. and Mrs. Drewett.
1822 — Rosetta Stone Translated (France) — Enabled reading of Egyptian hieroglyphics from the descending Dwapara Yuga.
1823–1941 — Bengal Renaissance (India).
1828 — Birth of Lahiri Mahasaya.
1829 — Cholera pandemic.
1830 — Founding of the Latter Day Saints Church (USA) in Manchester, NY.
The Church was a pioneer in opening up the West and building a strong social security system for its members. The Mennonites and Amish had barn raisings; the LDS (Mormon) built successful cities from nothing.
1836 — Birth of Sri Ramakrishna.
1836 — Beginning of Transcendental Movement (USA) — championed by Emerson and Thoreau.
1837 — Market crash — Panic of 1837 (USA) — followed by a 5-year depression.
1839 — First solar cell (component of solar panels) (France).
1840 — First national postal system at one rate (UK).
1841 — First Travel Agency (UK) — organized travel for ordinary citizens.
1842 — End of the First Opium War with China.
Britain made up its trade deficit with China by running a trade surplus with China.
1843 — First Iron Ship (UK).
1845 — First commercial telegraph (UK).
1845 — Rules of Rugby (UK) published.
Rugby went on to become the world game, football (soccer), and the US-only game, American football. The rules were set down in this year, yet the game had been played at Rugby School for 200 years prior. It is an embodiment of Muscular Christianity, i.e., the idea of combining athleticism with Christian principles. In the US, this same movement inspired the YMCA.
1845 — Irish Potato Famine.
1847 — Establishment of Greenwich Mean Time (UK) — now a world standard called Universal or Zulu time.
1847 — Influenza pandemic.
1848 — First modern oil well (Russia).
1849 — California Gold Rush (USA).
This is the most famous of several gold rushes that took place throughout the 19th century in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, New Zealand, South Africa, and the United States. They symbolize the Dwapara Yuga in that anyone from anywhere could become rich and successful simply by making a determined effort, whether by mining or by more intelligently selling services. In the past, even a lifetime of hard work was no guarantee of any positive result beyond non-starvation. Fueled by the rushes, immigration drove people to many new parts of the world, fostering thriving cultures that continue to this day.
1850 — Public Libraries Act (UK) — Public libraries open to all, not just scholars.
1851 — First Red Brick University (UK) emphasizes real-world skills rather than theology alone.
1852 — Mandatory Schooling (USA, State of Massachusetts).
1852 — Metropolis Water Act (UK) — Sand is used to filter drinking water in London for the first time, making it truly fit to drink. Similar filters were described in the Sanskrit writings of 2000 BC.
1852 — Cholera pandemic.
1855 — Birth of Sri Yukteswar (India).
1855 — Cocaine isolated (Germany).
It became the wonder drug at the end of the 19th century, driving soda fountains across Middle America, where ordering a Coca-Cola was described as "taking a shot in the arm." Ironically, it was initially used to treat alcohol and morphine addiction, products that had been known for millennia.
1855 — Bubonic plague pandemic.
1855 — First mass production of steel (UK) — simultaneously discovered in the US also.
1856 — India was completely under the control of the British East India Company.
1857 — Influenza pandemic.
1858 — Birth of JC Bose (India).
1858 — First transatlantic telegraph cable.
1858 — The Great Stink (UK) — the sewage problem of London became unbearable, leading to the construction of a modern sewage system.
To this day, the modern cities of Europe are riddled with catacombs, charnel houses, and mass graves filled with the corpses from the numerous plagues and pestilences of the polluted cities. Paris has a population of 2 million and catacombs containing 6 million bodies. Even in the Roman period, the importance of fresh drinking water, sewage collection, and bathing was understood. With Christianity came an end to the old practice of burning corpses and public bathing. Only in the mid-19th century did the world's great cities begin building fresh water, sewage, and modern sanitation systems, the lack of which still holds back Third World countries.
1859 — On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (UK) — Charles Darwin (1809–1882).
1860 — End of the Second Opium War between Britain and China.
1861 — Lahiri Mahasaya meets Babaji (India).
1861 — Birth of Rabindranath Tagore (India).
1863 — Birth of Swami Vivekananda (India).
1863 — Emancipation Proclamation (USA).
1863 — Adventist Church Founded (USA).
The church members are, to this day, the healthiest population in the US, followed by the LDS (Mormon). Cornflakes were invented to meet part of their dietary needs.
1863 — Cholera pandemic.
1863 — Jules Verne writes Paris in the Twentieth Century, which accurately predicts the pace, technology, and heartlessness of modern cities and living. It was suppressed and only published 125 years later.
1864 — First Geneva Conventions for the humane treatment of POWs.
1865 — End of the American Civil War.
1865 — Assassination of President Lincoln.
1864 — James Clerk Maxwell (1839–1879) shows the unity of electricity and magnetism — electromagnetism.
1866 — Dynamite was invented (Sweden).
1869 — Birth of Gandhi (India).
1869 — Market crash — Black Friday — brought about by gold speculation.
1869 — Suez Canal Reopens (Egypt) — Archaeological evidence suggests it was open as early as 1878 BC.
1869 — Transcontinental Railroad (US) — golden spike driven in Utah.
1870 — Dewey Decimal Classification of Books invented — now used by more than 200,000 libraries worldwide.
1872 — Birth of Sri Aurobindo (India).
1872 — Jehovah's Witnesses founded (USA).
President Eisenhower was a Jehovah's Witness.
1872 — First National Park Established (USA).
1873 — Market crash — the Panic of 1873 initiated the Long Depression in the United States and much of Europe.
1874 — Heroin synthesized (UK). Like cocaine before it, it was initially present in many common remedies like cough syrup.
1885 — First Automobile (Germany).
1886 — Panchanan Bhattacharya founds The Aryya Mission Institution (Chief Disciple of Lahiri Mahasaya).
1877 — First record player (USA).
1887 — First commercial telephone (USA).
1889 — Unity Church formed (USA).
1889 — Influenza pandemic.
1890 — First athletic shoe (trainer or sneaker) invented by Reebok (UK).
1892 — Ellis Island (USA) opens to process 12 million immigrants, and, from 1910, Angel Island processes 175,000 in the West.
The mixture of all races and creeds in the US prevails over the racist "master races" touted in the West in books such as The Myth of the 20th Century.
1892 — Birth of James Lynn (Rajarsi Janakananda, Yogananda's most advanced disciple).
1893 — Birth of Mukunda Ghosh (Paramahansa Yogananda).
1893 — Birth of Minnott Lewis (Yogananda's first US disciple).
1893 — Birth of Oliver Black (Yogacharya Black, Yogananda's second most advanced disciple).
1893 — Swami Vivekananda arrives in the USA.
The Chicago Parliament of World Religions awakened interest in India in the West and revived Hinduism in India. This marked the first formal gathering of representatives of Eastern and Western spiritual traditions. Today, it is recognized as the occasion of the birth of formal interreligious dialogue worldwide. The eloquence of Swami Vivekananda (student of Sri Ramakrishna) and his introduction of Hindu thought to the United States are particularly remembered. The speech has been widely regarded as marking the beginning of Western interest in Hinduism. His opening line, "Sisters and Brothers of America..." was greeted by a three-minute standing ovation from the audience.
1893 — Sears Catalog (USA) — order goods anywhere, by mail.
1894 — Swami Sri Yukteswar meets Babaji (India).
1894 — The Holy Science (India) — Swami Sri Yukteswar (1855–1936).
We began to hear more and more of the concept of energy in the mass media. From the sixties, we begin to hear more and more about energy linked to the breath and spinal column, as esoteric truths hidden in the texts and practices of religions such as Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Hinduism move from mystery schools into a more public view.
1894 — First Radio Receiver (India) — JC Bose (1858–1937).
Bengal, India, at this time produced a wealth of geniuses, from Swami Sri Yukteswar to JC Bose to Paramahansa Yogananda to Sri Ramakrishna Paramahansa to Swami Vivekananda to Sri Aurobindo to the entire Tagore family. They all influenced both the East and the West.
1895 — Birth of Basu Kumar Bagchi (Swami Dhirananda).
1896 — First movie theater (USA).
1896 — Birth of Manamohan Mazumder (Swami Satyananda).
Yogananda's mission began with a team of three Swamis: himself, Satyananda, and Dhirananda; the latter left the path to pursue brain research in academia.
1896 — Revival of the Olympic Games (Greece).
"The sportive, knightly battle awakens the best human characteristics. It does not separate, but unites the combatants in understanding and respect. It also helps to connect the countries in the spirit of peace. That's why the Olympic Flame should never die." — 1936 Games, Hitler's speech.
1897 — First fingerprint bureau opens (India).
1899 — Cholera pandemic.
200 Dwapara
1900 — Complete expression of Dwapara Yuga.
1900 — Discovery of the ancient Greek computer, the Antikythera Mechanism.
1901 — Marconi radios from England to Canada.
1901 — Nobel Prize begins — energy of smokeless gunpowder and dynamite transmuted into force for cultural good (Sweden).
1901 — Freud's works are published (Austria).
Reflections of an early addict are widely read. His student Jung came to consider the science of yoga a better path for humanity than Freud's obsessions, drawn from drug-induced dreams.
1903 — Powered Flight with the Wright Brothers, sponsored by the US Government at College Park, MD, from 1909.
1904 — Geographical Pivot of History (UK) — Halford John Mackinder, 1861–1947.
1905 — Special theory of relativity (Switzerland) — Albert Einstein (1879–1955) — shows the unity of energy and matter.
1906 — Food and Drug Administration formed (USA) — Freedom from quack medicines and adulterated foods.
1906 — San Francisco Earthquake — killed approximately 3,000 people; the most devastating earthquake in California and U.S. history.
1911 — Beginning of the Greatest Generation (participants in WWII).
1911 — Principles of Scientific Management (USA) — Taylor — Sets out principles of mass production.
1914 — Opening of the Panama Canal (Panama).
1917 — Tesla builds the first Radar (USA).
1918 — The end of WWI inspires decolonization movements worldwide.
1918 — Avian flu/Spanish flu pandemic kills twice as many as WWI itself.
1918 — Beginning of the movement to modern corporate structures.
1919 — Formation of the League of Nations (Paris).
1920 — Swami Yogananda arrives in the USA.
In the 1920s and 30s he was the most popular speaker in the US.
1920 — First commercial radio (USA).
1920 — Prohibition of alcohol era begins (USA) — echoes similar moves in Nordic countries and USSR.
1920 — All groups allowed to vote in elections (USA).
1921 — Zenith of the English-speaking British Empire, 25% of the world (England).
1922 — Yogananda establishes the first ashram in the US in Waltham, "Watch City," MA.
1927 — Lindbergh crosses the Atlantic (USA).
Lindbergh ushered in the modern aviation era and became the first international star.
1928 — Birth of Che Guevara (Argentina).
Che came from wealthy Irish-Argentinean stock, leaving his original medical studies to help the poor. He was ultimately betrayed by Castro, who chose power over any campaign promises to actually help people experiencing poverty on his island or elsewhere.
1929 — Swami Dhirananda betrays Yogananda and leaves the Ashram.
1929 — Wall Street Crash — Speculators trigger a worldwide depression (USA).
1930 — Dust Bowl (USA) — an early ecological disaster empties the plains of farmers.
1930 — First Football (Soccer) World Cup — A rare highlight in this dark decade.
The world becomes more and more networked — first via the oceans and rivers, then canals, streets, railways, mail/courier, electricity, water/sewage, telephone/telegraph, motorways, airports, radio, television, cable, satellite, then high-speed modems. In regimes such as France, the WWII generation of politicians remained focused on industrial-age networks like rail and roads and their voting workers, neglecting the importance of high-speed internet in a Dwapara Yuga economy. The present generation of the brightest young French professionals lives and works in Britain, Switzerland, or the US — a mirror of the brain drain the UK had a generation earlier, when its socialist ideologues punished success and believed the twin poles of life were factories and public (aka council or project) housing. Ironically, the elites of all such utopias choose not to live the model themselves.
1931 — Birth of Osho Rajneesh (India).
1932 — Famine in USSR — Communist Collectivization starves 6 to 8 million citizens.
1932 — First autobahn (Germany).
1932 — Brave New World (USA).
Huxley embodied many aspects of the Dwapara Yuga; his dystopian vision, along with his one-time pupil Orwell's 1984, warned generations about the Kali Yuga forces that threaten to constrict society. His early use of psychedelic drugs was taken up by official US government programs in the late fifties and sixties in San Francisco and Boston, with the explicit aim of kick-starting creativity. Huxley was influenced by the Indian mystic Krishnamurti, as well as by other US figures as diverse as Bruce Lee and Joseph Campbell.
1939 — Death of Robert "Crossroads" Johnson, influential bluesman, Age 27 (USA).
1939 — Sri Nerode betrays Yogananda and leaves the ashram.
1939 — Hewlett-Packard formed (USA).
HP was founded in a garage, starting a Silicon Valley tradition that has historically emphasized creative, high-quality products. Its biggest innovation was social, in sharp contrast to rigid, formal East Coast companies (IBM's company "song book," Unilever's interviewing of the entire family, not just the candidate); it effectively invented the modern, informal work environment. In the period where it truly applied its own "HP Way," it was highly successful.
1940 — Birth of Bruce Lee (USA).
Bruce Lee's own mixed racial heritage and openness to training students of all nationalities became a symbol of integration.
1941 — First commercial television (USA).
1942 — V2 weapon (Germany) — world's first ballistic missile. The same team developed both the American and Soviet missile and space programs.
1942 — Formation of OSS.
Warfare is increasingly characterized by the use of intelligence agencies, propaganda, and Special Forces for limited engagements — i.e., "the few and the bright" rather than conventional armies of "the many and the dumb." All sides adopt the same tactics in WWII, the Cold War, and now the "War on Terror." Rank in the CIA, KGB, or any of the world's alphabet soup of agencies becomes a path to political and economic power.
1945 — Fall of National Socialism (Germany).
1945 — Atomic bomb (Japan).
1945 — Close of WWII and acceleration of decolonization.
Knowledge alone is not sufficient; rather, it is what we do with it. Hitler kept Machiavelli's The Prince by his bed. Himmler kept the Bhagavad-Gita with him. Both had been obsessed with the past, past lives, and especially India. The US General Patton frequently commented that he was reliving past lives as he fought through Europe and North Africa.
1945 — British Empire wanes; American sphere of influence blossoms.
1945 — Formation of the United Nations (USA).
1945 — English emerges as the world's Lingua Franca — a universal, standard language, with the largest vocabulary and the largest storehouse of knowledge in book form.
One of the great tragedies of Kali Yuga was that, in the higher ages, people had perfect recall and needed no books. As the ages descended, books were written down, yet the great majority were destroyed in the depths of Kali Yuga, for example, in the burning of the Library of Alexandria. It is a striking fact that those that survive — from the Vedas, to the Old Testament, to the Iliad and Odyssey, to the Epic of Gilgamesh, to the Rubaiyat — have either an overt or a hidden spiritual message. They also tend to provide a consistent picture of past ages in which men were far from limited.
1945 — Formation of International Air Transport Association (IATA) (Cuba) — organizes world air travel.
1945 — Birth of Bob Marley (Jamaica).
Bob was to become an important symbol of unification in the 1970s with his music — "I don't have prejudice against myself. My father was white, and my mother was black. They call me half-caste. I don't dip on nobody's side. I don't dip on the black man's side nor the white man's side. Me dip on God's side, the one who created me and caused me to come from black and white."
1946 — Autobiography of a Yogi (USA) — Paramahansa Yogananda.
1946 — Beginning of the Baby Boom Generation.
1946 — Foundation of the first international business school (USA).
1947 — Independence of India and Pakistan.
1947 — UN conference at Bretton Woods (USA) — set up International Monetary Fund, International Bank, and General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) (later WTO).
1947 — AK-47 Assault Rifle (USSR) — empowers the individual soldier with the firepower of a squad.
1947 — First sighting of a "Flying Saucer" – Washington State (USA).
1947 — Alleged recovery of first UFO – Roswell (USA).
1947 — First Holograph (Hungary).
1947 — First Transistor (USA).
1947 — Marshall Plan (USA) — helps all the nations of Europe recover, including Germany; a stark contrast to the flawed Treaty of Versailles of 1919, which helped ensure another war.
1948 — Foundation of the (modern) state of Israel.
1948 — UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Paris).
1948 — Assassination of Gandhi.
1948 — First modern computer — Manchester "Baby" (UK) — previous WWII machines were specialist code-cracking devices.
1949 — 1984 — George Orwell (UK).
Orwell's book highlights control mechanisms of Kali Yuga states — Newspeak/Doublethink — "war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength," control of language and media, fetishistic need for surveillance, and distinctions of inner party members, outer party members, and disenfranchised populaces — proles. The information age brings more and better tools for oppression. Yet, paradoxically, those same tools feed the march of freedom, liberty, and democracy since regimes in North Korea, China, and France cannot completely block satellite feeds and the Internet. However, all three have tried hard to do so. President Chirac wanted a French Google and a French CNN, so his views, not Washington's, could be imposed. It has been argued that all media reflect the interests of their owners. Thus, state-owned media reflect the agenda of the regime and its owners; corporately owned media reflect the agenda of corporations and their owners. Interestingly, the Internet's dual nature as both a reading and a writing medium has only recently been harnessed by blog technology.
1949 — First commercial photocopier (USA).
1949 — Information Revolution (USA).
Great fortunes used to be based in agricultural land — for example, the Kings and Ministers of France — then in great factories, then in railway, telephone, oil, and commodity barons of all shapes. Today's richest man, Bill Gates, invented nothing, merely recognizing the value of other people's ideas and inventions, from DOS to Word to VMS.
1950 — Project Echelon (USA) — first steps to worldwide electronic surveillance — Big Brother is watching!
1950 — First CNC (computer numerical control) machines — allow physical objects to be created from computer blueprints from wood, metal, etc., blanks.
1951 — Original publication date for Yogananda's Gita Commentaries — SRF spent more than 50 years "editing" them before publication.
1951 — First video game (UK) — Checkers on Manchester Mark I.
Today's video game market is larger than Hollywood.
1952 — Death of Yogananda; Rajarsi Janakananda (James Lynn) becomes president of SRF.
1952 — Siddhartha (US) — Hermann Hesse wrote the novel in German in 1922, but the US version of 1952 became hugely influential.
1953 — End of the Korean War, following America's threat to use nuclear weapons.
1953 — Structure of DNA understood (UK).
1954 — Beginning of Ed Parker's American Kenpo Karate (USA).
This Hawaiian LDS (Mormon) member synthesized elements of Japanese and Chinese martial arts into a uniquely American form. He discovered Bruce Lee and had many famous students, including Elvis Presley. Presley, incidentally, was influenced by Yogananda, embodying a Dwapara Yuga change in bringing African American music to mainstream white audiences, much as the Beatles, Stones, and Zeppelin were to follow in the 60s, also becoming involved in Eastern knowledge.
1955 — Death of Rajarsi Janakananda; Daya Mata (Faye Wright) becomes president of SRF.
1956 — First Eurovision Song Contest (Switzerland).
1956 — First Commercial Robot (USA).
1956 — First commercial nuclear plant (UK).
1956 — Suez Crisis (Egypt) — Britain and France attempt to maintain control of the canal and, in failing, underscore their now-diminished diplomatic and military power.
1957 — Formation of the European Economic Community (Italy).
The European Community began with 6 members and now has 27 in 2007 — a similar rise from the US's 13 original colonies to 50 states today. With NAFTA, the United States of America includes the 50 states, Canada, Mexico, and, practically, Chile, all in line with Yogananda's predictions.
1957 — Sputnik Satellite (USSR).
One of the few Soviet successes, it paradoxically triggers a huge investment in technology in the West that will eventually lead to the downfall of the Socialist-Communist system. Apart from narrow military and scientific bands, the Communist and National Socialist regimes had almost no cultural output (excluding those who fled them). Their propaganda models, however, were widely copied in the West, shaping public opinion and driving consumer culture. In contrast, the San Francisco of the 60s gave rise to military, scientific, business, and artistic excellence, to the extent that the achievements of that period have not been repeated — a triumph not of the will but of real freedom and liberty.
1958 — Beginning of Beat Generation (First modern subculture).
1958 — Visa card launched (USA) — first true credit card.
1958 — Fair, Isaac, and Company developed the first credit scores, enabling lending to anyone creditworthy rather than only to those already wealthy or known to bankers.
1958 — The Great Leap Forward of the Chinese Communists causes a famine that kills 30 million within 3 years.
1959 — Robert Zimmerman begins to introduce himself as Bob Dylan, and a music that encapsulated an age was born (USA).
1959 — Idea of the Knowledge Worker — Peter Drucker — one who works primarily with information or one who develops and uses knowledge in the workplace.
1960 — Beginning of Counterculture/Hippie/Psychedelics/Back-To-Land/Commune Movements (USA).
1960 — First Laser (USA).
1960 — Introduction of 800 numbers (USA) — order goods anywhere rapidly.
1960 — Contraceptive Pill Introduced (USA).
1960 — Great Chilean Earthquake (1960) — Biggest earthquake ever recorded, 9.5 on the Moment magnitude scale, and generated tsunamis throughout the Pacific Ocean.
1961 — Eisenhower warns of the dangers of the Military-Industrial Complex (USA).
1961 — Berlin Wall built (Germany).
Like many walls before it — Hadrian's Wall, Offa's Dyke, the Great Wall of China, the Maginot Line — it represented military and diplomatic weakness.
1962 — Missile escalation in Cuba and Turkey almost leads to WWIII (Cuba).
1962 — Silent Spring (USA) by Rachel Carson — launches environmental movement.
1963 — Assassination of JFK.
1963 — Beginning of Generation X.
1963 — Equal Pay Act (USA).
1963 — First Lear Business Jet (USA) — ancestor of today's VLJs.
Much like computers, jets follow the arc of innovation from military technology to governments, large corporations, smaller corporations, wealthy individuals, and the public. In the European Union, it has been argued that low-cost airlines brought real union where 50 years of bureaucracy had only brought resentment and resistance. Examples of historical planes include Rama's Pushpaka and Elijah's Chariot of Fire, although these may be references to ascending consciousness rather than to physical machines.
1964 — DEC PDP-8 Minicomputer (USA).
1964 — Civil Rights Act (USA).
1964 — First facial recognition software (USA).
1965 — Assassination of Malcolm X (USA).
1966 — First commercial fax machine (USA).
1966 — First commercial satellite (USA).
1966 — First container ship (USA).
1966 — Freedom of Information Act (USA).
1966 — International Standard Book Number – ISBN (UK). Contributes to universal access to information — trend tied to libraries, English language standard, search and retrieval systems.
1966 — Star Trek (USA) — essentially a utopian, Dwapara vision, drawing audiences together around the world. It covered controversial themes such as war, peace, authoritarianism, imperialism, class warfare, racism, human rights, sexism, and feminism. Most famously, the role of technology was explored, inspiring cell phones, sliding doors, and research into replicators (see CNC), matter transporters, and faster-than-light warp drives.
1967 — Controversial meetings of the Beatles/Stones and Maharishi (India).
1967 — Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (UK) — included images of Sri Yukteswar and Paramahansa Yogananda.
1968 — Glashow, Salam, and Weinberg — unity of electroweak and electromagnetic forces.
1968 — Assassination of MLK.
1968 — Assassination of RFK.
1968 — International Baccalaureate (Switzerland) — a non-profit, originally to facilitate the international mobility of children of diplomats; it now provides a curriculum for students of all kinds, all ages, and in all countries — a world education.
1968 — Whole Earth Catalog (USA) — to provide education and "access to tools" so that the reader could "find his own inspiration, shape his own environment, and share his adventure with whoever is interested."
1968 — First acoustic coupler modem (USA).
Within one generation, speeds climbed from 300 baud to 3.5 Mbit/s — i.e., from a page of simple text downloading in a minute, to an entire DVD downloading in a minute.
1968 — Manson becomes the first of many false gurus (USA).
1969 — Moon landing (USA).
1969 — Open University (UK) — Distance university education.
1969 — Led Zeppelin's Indian-Raga influenced music takes the world by storm (UK).
1969 — Death of Brian Jones, the creative heart of the Rolling Stones, Age 27 (UK).
1969 — Woodstock and Altamont Rock Festivals (USA).
1970 — Beginning of telecommuting (US).
1970 — First No-fault divorce procedures (USA).
1970 — First facelifts (USA).
1970 — Standard Model of particle physics unifies all but gravity of the four fundamental forces — strong, electromagnetic, electroweak, and gravity.
1970 — Suspicious death of Janis Joplin, Age 27 (USA).
1970 — Suspicious death of Jimi Hendrix, Age 27 (UK).
1971 — Suspicious death of Jim Morrison, Age 27 (France).
Compare this cluster with the births in 1892–93.
1971 — First laser printer (USA).
1971 — Formation of FedEx (USA).
1971 — First commercial microprocessors (USA).
1971 — First Mars Landing (USSR).
1972 — First pocket scientific calculator (USA).
1972 — First UN conference on human environment (Sweden).
1972 — Nixon warms world relations with China with an official visit.
1973 — SWIFT network for international money transfers.
1973 — Black-Scholes model forms the basis for the explosion of derivatives trading (USA).
1973 — 9/11 (Chile) — Communist Socialist forces are halted at the Moneda.
1973 — First Oil Crisis (US) — first warning that the US was too dependent on fossil fuels.
1973 — Enter the Dragon (US) — Bruce Lee demonstrates a physical unity of the East and West, absorbing the best elements from both in this masterpiece. In doing so, he became the first Asian superstar.
1973 — Suspicious death of Bruce Lee (Hong Kong) — much as in the legacy of Krishnamurti, Lee's name is used and abused by many associates; perhaps his greatest legacy is the example of how anyone can become better and better to an almost superhuman extent.
1975 — End of the Vietnam War.
1975 — Russia and America collaborate on the Apollo–Soyuz space mission.
1975 — Punk movement begins promisingly with ideas of creativity à la Kabuki. Still, it rapidly degenerates into a nihilistic movement, the opposite of hippiedom, morphing into negative movements of Goths and other genres, characterized by a mindset of suicide and despair.
1975 — Beginning of downsizing, outsourcing, rightsizing, and offshoring.
Globalization drives specialization into tertiary (services), secondary (manufacturing), and primary (resource extraction) economies.
1977 — Apple II personal computer (USA).
The PC was a culmination of size reduction and power increases from the 50s mainframes to the 70s minicomputers, placing the means of consumption and production of all media in the hands of individuals, allowing everything from animation, book production, music production, film production, architectural design, DNA sequencing, to advanced simulations in the home, where previously only governments and companies held the capabilities. Combined with the Internet, it provides the resources of Harvard or MIT in individuals' hands.
1977 — Star Wars (US) — draws on themes ranging from the Vedas and the age of chivalry to Nazism and good vs. evil, echoing the Kali vs. Dwapara struggle, and achieves huge commercial success.
1978 — Advent of GUTs — grand unified theories linking all fundamental forces.
1978 — First GPS Satellite (USA).
1978 — Beginning of Generation Y — In the West, universal access to laptops, iPods, cellphones, digital cameras and videos, blogs, instant messages, and the Internet.
1978 — Jonestown massacre (Guyana).
1979 — Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher elected (UK) — together with President Reagan, frees the West.
1979 — Second oil crisis.
1979 — Three Mile Island Meltdown (USA).
1980 — First commercial email — CompuServe (USA).
1980 — First DNA Paternity Testing (USA).
In the adult US population, married people became the minority in 2006, as societal changes make it less and less necessary for men and women to be married for economic, sexual, paternity, or religious reasons. In contrast, cohabitation levels have shot up.
1980 — Launch of CNN — cable network news (USA).
1980 — Beginning of the privatization movement (UK).
1981 — First cellphone service (Nordic countries).
1981 — President Ronald Reagan elected (USA).
1981 — Assassination attempt on President Reagan (USA).
1981 — Assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II.
1981 — First cases of AIDS (USA).
1981 — First retinal scans for identification (USA).
1983 — Free Software Foundation — forerunner of GNU, Linux, etc. (USA).
1984 — Assassination attempt on Prime Minister Thatcher (UK).
1984 — Bhopal Disaster (India) — world's worst industrial disaster.
1985 — Live Aid (UK).
1985 — Fall of Rajneeshpuram (USA).
1986 — Chornobyl Meltdown (Ukraine) — world's worst nuclear disaster.
1987 — Black Monday market crash (UK).
1987 — Stephen Hawking of Cambridge University organized a weeklong meeting at which scientists from around the world brought the story of gravity up to date, 300 years after Newton publicized the Principia (UK).
1988 — First Transatlantic Fiber Optic Cable (USA).
1989 — The US invades Panama to ensure control of the canal.
1989 — Close of the Cold War and fall of Communist Socialism (Germany) — symbolically, the Berlin Wall falls.
1991 — World Wide Web Server (Switzerland).
1991 — End of apartheid in South Africa.
1991 — End of Gulf War I (USA).
1991 — First Reality TV Show (Holland).
With a proliferation of media channels, there are insufficient sport-entertainment stars to fill them. Efforts begin to manufacture them.
1992 — Black Wednesday Market Crash (UK) — mismanagement of exchange rates.
1992 — Hurricane Andrew (US) — 2nd most destructive in US history.
1993 — WebCrawler (USA) — first web search engine.
1993 — Siege of Branch Davidians in Waco (USA).
1994 — Signing of NAFTA, joining Canada, the USA, and Mexico — first steps towards the United States of America, following the lead of the United States of Europe.
1994 — Launch of Amazon.com (USA) — order all media, everywhere.
1995 — EU Directive on Data Protection.
1995 — First commercial 3-D printers (USA) — create physical objects from "thin air" using electronic blueprints. These blueprints can be sent over the Internet, so, say, a new or modified part in the US can be sent to an oil rig off the African coast, printed in 3 dimensions, and used.
1995 — Netscape launched (USA).
Henry Ford unilaterally introduced the five-day work week for his workers, an early example of enlightened self-interest. Similarly, McDonald's, Walmart, and Microsoft grew significantly by focusing on the interests of consumers and regular employees, and by sharing stock and options. In the business world, fantastic success is closely associated with companies that share both risk and reward. For example, Netscape (USA) was the first dot-com to really share wealth with all employees. Sports-entertainment, hedge funds, tech, and I-banks largely define where upside is shared.
1995 — eBay launched (USA) — an efficient sellers' market, for all objects, everywhere.
Pierre Omidyar of eBay and Sergey Brin of Google are the poster children of Dwapara Yuga — young immigrants becoming billionaires in the New Economy. Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, and Steve Jobs, all college dropouts, similarly illustrate the unimportance of formal diplomas such as MBAs in entrepreneurship. In many ways, the 1995 Dot Com bubble echoes the 1849 Gold Rush, offering an opportunity for the bright and determined to make fortunes where previously only the wealthy and well-connected had seats at the table. Similar booms accompanied the introduction of telegraphs, telephones, television, etc. — notice the prefix tele for "far," an echo of Dwapara's tagline of "space-annihilator" — with entrepreneurs in the beginning, then consolidated, conservative business empires over time, until the launch of the next disruptive technology.
1995 — First armed, uncrewed flying vehicle deployed (US).
Such a vehicle had been proposed by Tesla 100 years earlier and by Da Vinci 500 years earlier, but the technology to build it was not yet ready. Tesla was well ahead of his time. He had proposed homes pulling electricity from the air. His ideas were overridden by Edison and Westinghouse in favor of the greater commercial value (to them) of installing power lines and associated infrastructure.
1996 — ICQ Instant Messaging (Israel).
1996 — First cloned mammal (UK).
1996 — North Korean Communists cause a famine that kills 3.5 million in 3 years.
1997 — Asian market crash.
1997 — World Chess Champion loses to a computer program (USA).
1998 — Russian financial crash.
1998 — International Space Station launched.
1999 — Euro introduced.
300 Dwapara
2000 — Y2K bug proves to be hype.
Y2K was the impetus that enabled India to enter the international white-collar space. India has cultivated its elites fantastically, but sadly, less so general education, health, infrastructure, and broader industry.
2000 — Bill Gates follows the example of previous US industrialists in using his fortune for the good of the world (USA).
2000 — Dot Com/Telco Bubbles Burst (USA) — Telco bubble ten times larger than the better-known Dot Com bubble.
2001 — The first space tourist launches from Russia.
2001 — Launch of Wikipedia (USA) — surpasses both Encarta and the Encyclopædia Britannica in depth and quality.
2001 — Launch of iTunes (USA) — download all media, everywhere.
The iPod is a Dwapara Yuga product, conceived in India, manufactured in China, and marketed in the US. India has greatly benefited from the fall of the Soviet Union and the decline of its influence. Similarly, China is benefiting much more broadly from the de facto dropping of Communist Socialist ideology.
2001 — 9/11 (USA).
Kali Yuga elements try to roll back time to a primitive Middle Ages. The symbolic targets of the World Trade Center and Pentagon were hit, and the White House was spared thanks to the heroism of ordinary passengers on Flight 93. Ironically, for such a backward-aiming organization, its name, "The Network," its propagation via the Internet, and its focus on symbolic media victories rather than military ones show that its means are decidedly modern. It's interesting to note the stateless nature of many of the combatants — again, a modern development.
2001 — Post-9/11 market crash (World).
2002 — Launch of Information Awareness Office (IAO) (USA) — worldwide electronic surveillance — Bigger Brother is watching.
2002 — First cases of SARS (China).
2003 — China becomes the third power to have a manned space program.
2003 — Skype Internet telephony (Luxembourg).
2003 — European heat wave kills 50,000, mainly in socialist France.
2004 — FDA approves implantation of RFID ID chips in humans (USA) — perhaps a "sign of the beast" for literalists ;)
2004 — Indian Ocean Tsunami — deadliest in recorded history.
2005 — Human Genome Decoded (International Group and USA).
2005 — Hurricane Katrina (US) — most destructive in US history.
2007 — Apple TV (USA) — integrates television, hi-fi, and the Internet.
2007 — Discovery of the first Earth-like planet — Gliese 581 system (Chile).
This is a mirror of Columbus's 1492 discovery of America. Chile tends to embody the strengths of both the US and Europe and the weaknesses from its exposure to both National and Communist Socialism. It is already a de facto member of NAFTA, with bilateral agreements with Canada, the US, and Mexico — another step to a United States of the Americas. By 2020, Chile expects all students to be bilingual in Spanish and English.
2007 — The Schengen expansion of the European Union means there will be 37 states with no borders between them. This figure is projected to reach 42 by 2012. The beginnings of a worldwide recession as financial and housing markets crack.