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Method and sources

How we choose the events

Three hundred events in twelve eras, twenty-five per era, chosen following the history curriculum of Italian primary and lower secondary schools. We don't only tell the story of kings and battles: the Italian national curriculum also asks for science, technology, art and everyday life. That is why politics is kept below 30% of the events: today it is at 19%.

Honest dates

For the oldest periods nobody knows the exact year, so we write “about”. Before farming we count in “years ago” rather than “BC”, because 13.8 billion years are easier to understand that way. When historians disagree about a date, we say so in the text.

The scale of the line

Before 10,000 BC the line uses a logarithmic scale: each stretch covers ten times the time of the next one, so the Big Bang and Prehistory fit on the same screen. After that the scale is normal: equal years take up equal space. The “fold” drawn on the line marks the change.

The sources

Every card has its source: encyclopaedias (Treccani, Britannica), museums, universities, scientific journals (such as Nature) and bodies such as UNESCO, NASA, ESA and CERN. Uncertain dates were checked one by one against the cited source. We write the texts ourselves: sources are for reading, not for copying.

Who makes it and how

Storiascopio is built with the help of artificial intelligence, and every card was checked against its source before going online. The texts were written in Italian and translated into English with the help of AI; a review by a native speaker is still to come. We are not professional historians: if you find a mistake, write to us and we will fix it, thanking whoever reported it if they wish.

The numbers

  • 56 politics
  • 103 science and technology
  • 48 art
  • 44 daily life
  • 49 people

Images, maps and fonts

Era and event illustrations
Created with artificial intelligence (Codex) for Storiascopio, starting from a reference of ours. They are ours and can be used in class.
Maps
Land outlines from Natural Earth (public domain), via the world-atlas package.
Fonts
Paytone One, Mulish and Bricolage Grotesque: all under the SIL Open Font License and hosted on this site (no requests to Google).
Voices
The recorded voices are made with Kokoro (Apache 2.0 licence) for Italian, English and Spanish, and with Piper and the “UPMC Pierre” voice for French (data from UPMC, Creative Commons CC-BY-SA 4.0 licence: creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0). Where there is no recording, “Listen” uses your device’s own voice.
QR codes
Generated with QR Code Generator by Kazuhiko Arase (MIT licence). “QR Code” is a registered trademark of DENSO WAVE.

Event pictures are illustrations too, created with artificial intelligence (Codex) for Storiascopio: they are not photographs or real portraits from the period. The information comes from the sources written on every card, not from the pictures.

All the sources cited (299)

Show the list
  • Anne Frank House, Amsterdam
  • Archaeology Magazine, “Denisova Cave Yields a 50,000-Year-Old Needle”
  • British Library, “Magna Carta”
  • British Museum, “The Standard of Ur”
  • Bureau International des Poids et Mesures (BIPM), history of the International System of Units
  • Camera dei deputati, “L'Assemblea Costituente”
  • CBC News, “Fossils of earliest organisms that had sex are a billion years old”
  • CERN, “The birth of the Web”
  • City Museum of Ljubljana (MGML), “The Wheel – 5,200 Years”
  • Communications Biology, 2021, “Archaeogenetic analysis of Neolithic sheep from Anatolia suggests a complex demographic history since domestication”
  • Computer History Museum, “Internet History of 1960s”
  • Computer History Museum, “Timeline of Computer History”
  • EARTHDAY.ORG, “The History of Earth Day”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Akhenaton”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Alexander the Great”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Alfred”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Alphabet”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “American Revolution”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Amphora”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Antikythera mechanism”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Aqueduct”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Aristotle”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Babylonian Exile”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Battle of Marathon”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Battle of Thermopylae”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Berlin Wall”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Black Death”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Carolingian minuscule”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Chariot”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Charlemagne”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Church of San Vitale”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Cleisthenes of Athens”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Clock”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Codex”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Coin”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Concrete”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Crusades”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Cuneiform”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “David”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “DNA”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Egyptian calendar”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Epic of Gilgamesh”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Erik the Red”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Europe, history of”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Fibonacci”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Financial crisis of 2007–08”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Galen”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Great Depression”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Greek alphabet”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Hannibal”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Hanno”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Hanseatic League”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Hatshepsut”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Hieroglyph”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Hundred Years' War”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Iceland”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Indus civilization”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “iPhone”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Islamic world”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “James Watt”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “jazz”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Julian calendar”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Julius Caesar”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Justinian I”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Karl Benz”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Knossos”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Library of Alexandria”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Linear B”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Marshall Plan”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Mill”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Minoan civilization”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Montgolfier brothers”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Mummy”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Narmer”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “newspaper”; World Association of News Publishers (WAN-IFRA)
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Oracle bone”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Paper”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Papermaking”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Pax Romana”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Peloponnesian War”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Pericles”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Phoenicia”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Phoenician alphabet”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Plow”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Pyramids of Giza”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “relativity”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Revolutions of 1848”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Roman Republic”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Saint Hildegard”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Saint Isidore of Seville”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Saint Joan of Arc”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Samuel Morse”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Sargon”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Schism of 1054”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Sea Peoples”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Shang dynasty”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Solon”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Stockton and Darlington Railway”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Suger”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Tenochtitlán”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “the Beatles”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “The Jazz Singer”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Thera”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Thomas Edison”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Thomas Newcomen”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Trajan's Column”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Tyrian purple”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Vasco da Gama”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “William Shakespeare”
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Ziggurat”
  • ESA, “Gaia finds parts of the Milky Way much older than expected”
  • ESA, “International Space Station”
  • ESA, “Webb”
  • ESA, “Yuri Gagarin: first man in space”
  • ESO, “Astronomers Capture First Image of a Black Hole” (press release eso1907)
  • European Union, “Storia dell'Unione europea”
  • European Union, Learning Corner, “Bulgaria joins euro: new chapter begins”; Banca d'Italia, “L'euro”
  • French Ministry of Culture, “Lascaux” – “Dating the figures at Lascaux”
  • Galleria dell'Accademia di Firenze, “David di Michelangelo”
  • Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin, “The First Photograph”
  • INAF Media, “Il teorema di Pitagora al tempo dei Babilonesi” (in Italian)
  • Institut Lumière, Lyon
  • Institute of Human Origins (Arizona State University), “Lucy's Story”
  • Library of Congress, “The Gutenberg Bible”
  • MoMA, “Andy Warhol, Campbell's Soup Cans, 1962”
  • Musée de la Tapisserie de Bayeux, “La Tapisserie de Bayeux”
  • Musée du Louvre, “Code de Hammurabi”
  • Musei Vaticani, “Stanze di Raffaello”
  • Museo Galileo, Florence, “Il cannocchiale di Galileo”
  • Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, “Guernica”
  • NASA Astrobiology, “On the Ground in Greenland”
  • NASA, “Apollo 11 Mission Overview”
  • NASA, “Early Universe” (Webb Space Telescope)
  • NASA, “Moon Formation”
  • NASA, “Overview” (Universe, history of the cosmos)
  • NASA, “Solar System: Facts”
  • NASA, “Sputnik and the Origins of the Space Age”
  • National Archaeological Museum of Athens, Mycenaean gallery
  • Natural History Museum (London), “Charles Darwin”
  • Natural History Museum (London), “Earliest known mammal is identified using fossil tooth records”
  • Natural History Museum (London), “How an asteroid ended the age of the dinosaurs”
  • Natural History Museum (London), “Prehistoric fish: 11 of the largest, weirdest and most significant”
  • Natural History Museum (London), “The Cambrian Period: How animals exploded onto the scene”
  • Natural History Museum (London), “When and how did modern humans, Homo sapiens, spread out of Africa and around the world?”
  • Natural History Museum (London), “Where did dinosaurs come from?”
  • Natural History Museum (London), Dino Directory, “Archaeopteryx”
  • Nature Communications, 2021, “Diurnal Fe(II)/Fe(III) cycling and enhanced O2 production in a simulated Archean marine oxygen oasis”
  • Nature Communications, 2021, “The Great Oxygenation Event as a consequence of ecological dynamics modulated by planetary change”
  • Nature Reviews Earth & Environment, 2022, “Environmental crises at the Permian–Triassic mass extinction”
  • Nature, 2001, “Evidence from detrital zircons for the existence of continental crust and oceans on the Earth 4.4 Gyr ago”
  • Nature, 2003, “Fragments of the earliest land plants”
  • Nature, 2004, “New light shed on the oldest insect”
  • Nature, 2017, “New fossils from Jebel Irhoud, Morocco and the pan-African origin of Homo sapiens”
  • Nature, 2022, “The oldest complete jawed vertebrates from the early Silurian of China”
  • Naturhistorisches Museum Wien, press release “Der Stein, aus dem die Venus von Willendorf ist” (2022)
  • Parco archeologico del Colosseo, “Colosseo”
  • Science Advances, 2021, “Oldest cave art found in Sulawesi”
  • Science Museum Group, “The Royal Society”
  • Science News Explores, “World's oldest pots”
  • Science News, “Serbian site may have hosted first copper makers”
  • Scientific American, “Scorched Remains Suggest Ancient Humans Were Firestarters”
  • Senato della Repubblica, “La Costituzione”
  • Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, “1903 Wright Flyer”
  • Smithsonian, Human Origins Program, “Early Stone Age Tools”
  • Smithsonian, Human Origins Program, “Homo erectus”
  • Smithsonian, Human Origins Program, “Homo habilis”
  • Smithsonian, Human Origins Program, “Homo heidelbergensis”
  • Smithsonian, Human Origins Program, “Homo neanderthalensis”
  • Smithsonian, Human Origins Program, “Qafzeh: Oldest Intentional Burial”
  • Smithsonian, Human Origins Program, “Sahelanthropus tchadensis”
  • Soprintendenza Speciale di Roma, “Terme di Caracalla”
  • South Australian Museum, “Ancient seabed fossils in SA named among top 11 museum collections globally”
  • The Corning Museum of Glass, history of ancient glass
  • The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, “Indus Valley Civilization”
  • The Nobel Prize, “Malala Yousafzai – Facts”
  • The Nobel Prize, “Marie Curie – Facts”
  • The Nobel Prize, “Martin Luther King Jr. – Facts”
  • The Nobel Prize, “Nelson Mandela – Facts”
  • The Nobel Prize, “Sir Alexander Fleming – Biographical”
  • The Nobel Prize, “The Discovery of Insulin”
  • Treccani, Dizionario Biografico, entry “Coppino, Michele”
  • Treccani, Dizionario Biografico, entry “Gentileschi, Artemisia”
  • Treccani, Dizionario Biografico, entry “Medici, Lorenzo de'”
  • Treccani, Dizionario Biografico, entry “Montessori, Maria”
  • Treccani, Enciclopedia dei ragazzi, “Età del Bronzo”
  • Treccani, entry “al-Khuwarizmi”
  • Treccani, entry “Archimede”
  • Treccani, entry “Astrattismo”
  • Treccani, entry “Augusto”
  • Treccani, entry “Benedetto da Norcia, santo”
  • Treccani, entry “Brunelleschi, Filippo”
  • Treccani, entry “Calendario”
  • Treccani, entry “Carlo Magno”
  • Treccani, entry “Çatal Hüyük”
  • Treccani, entry “Cesare, Gaio Giulio”
  • Treccani, entry “Colombo, Cristoforo”
  • Treccani, entry “Comune”
  • Treccani, entry “Copernico, Niccolò”
  • Treccani, entry “Corpus iuris civilis”
  • Treccani, entry “Costantinopoli”
  • Treccani, entry “Dante Alighieri”
  • Treccani, entry “Dodici Tavole”
  • Treccani, entry “Encyclopédie”
  • Treccani, entry “Erodoto”
  • Treccani, entry “Eschilo”
  • Treccani, entry “Età del ferro”
  • Treccani, entry “Euclide”
  • Treccani, entry “Federico I imperatore, detto il Barbarossa”
  • Treccani, entry “Fenici”
  • Treccani, entry “Fermi, Enrico”
  • Treccani, entry “Feudalesimo”
  • Treccani, entry “Fiorino”
  • Treccani, entry “Francesco d'Assisi, santo”
  • Treccani, entry “Gerico”
  • Treccani, entry “Guerra mondiale, Prima”
  • Treccani, entry “Guerra mondiale, Seconda”
  • Treccani, entry “Harvey, William”
  • Treccani, entry “Illuminismo”
  • Treccani, entry “Ippocrate”
  • Treccani, entry “Keplero, Giovanni”
  • Treccani, entry “Leonardo da Vinci”
  • Treccani, entry “Longobardi”
  • Treccani, entry “Lutero, Martin”
  • Treccani, entry “Magellano, Ferdinando”
  • Treccani, entry “Magna Grecia”
  • Treccani, entry “Maometto”
  • Treccani, entry “Milano, editto di”
  • Treccani, entry “Movimento operaio”
  • Treccani, entry “Napoleone I”
  • Treccani, entry “Natufiano”
  • Treccani, entry “Neolitico”
  • Treccani, entry “Neuma”
  • Treccani, entry “Newton, Isaac”
  • Treccani, entry “Nora”
  • Treccani, entry “Odoacre”
  • Treccani, entry “Omero”
  • Treccani, entry “Pantheon”
  • Treccani, entry “Pitagora”
  • Treccani, entry “Platone”
  • Treccani, entry “Plauto, Tito Maccio”
  • Treccani, entry “Polis”
  • Treccani, entry “Polo, Marco”
  • Treccani, entry “Pomodoro”
  • Treccani, entry “Promessi sposi, I”
  • Treccani, entry “Prospettiva”
  • Treccani, entry “Puniche, guerre”
  • Treccani, entry “Radiodiffusione”
  • Treccani, entry “Resistenza”
  • Treccani, entry “Risorgimento”
  • Treccani, entry “Rivoluzione francese”
  • Treccani, entry “Rivoluzione russa”
  • Treccani, entry “Roma”
  • Treccani, entry “Romano-barbarici, regni”
  • Treccani, entry “Saffo”
  • Treccani, entry “Salernitana, Scuola”
  • Treccani, entry “Socrate”
  • Treccani, entry “Sparta”
  • Treccani, entry “Spartaco”
  • Treccani, entry “Spedizione dei Mille”
  • Treccani, entry “Sumeri”
  • Treccani, entry “Talete”
  • Treccani, entry “Televisione”
  • Treccani, entry “Totalitarismo”
  • Treccani, entry “Trento, Concilio di”
  • Treccani, entry “Uruk”
  • Treccani, entry “Vienna, Congresso di”
  • Treccani, entry “Villanoviana, cultura”
  • Treccani, entry “Virgilio Marone, Publio”
  • Treccani, entry “Volta, Alessandro”
  • Trinity College Dublin, “The Book of Kells”
  • U.S. Geological Survey, “Age of the Earth”
  • UNESCO, “Acropolis, Athens”
  • UNESCO, “Archaeological Areas of Pompei, Herculaneum and Torre Annunziata”
  • UNESCO, “Archaeological Ruins at Moenjodaro”
  • UNESCO, “Archaeological Site of Carthage”
  • UNESCO, “Archaeological Site of Olympia”
  • UNESCO, “Archaeological Sites of Mycenae and Tiryns”
  • UNESCO, “Cathedral, Torre Civica and Piazza Grande, Modena”
  • UNESCO, “Etruscan Necropolises of Cerveteri and Tarquinia”
  • UNESCO, “Historic Areas of Istanbul”
  • UNESCO, “L'Anse aux Meadows National Historic Site”
  • UNESCO, “Memphis and its Necropolis – the Pyramid Fields from Giza to Dahshur”
  • UNESCO, “Nubian Monuments from Abu Simbel to Philae”
  • UNESCO, “Padua's fourteenth-century fresco cycles”
  • UNESCO, “Su Nuraxi di Barumini”
  • UNESCO, “Via Appia. Regina Viarum”
  • United Nations (UNFCCC), “The Paris Agreement”
  • United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, “Introduction to the Holocaust”
  • Università di Bologna, “La nostra storia”
  • University of California Museum of Paleontology, “Fossil Record of the Eukaryota”
  • University of California Museum of Paleontology, “The Carboniferous Period”
  • University of Oxford, Cabinet, “Spectacles: technology unknown to the ancients, c. 1290”
  • University of Oxford, Cabinet, “The world's earliest dated printed book: The Diamond Sutra, 868 CE”
  • University of Pennsylvania, Penn Today, “The world's first general purpose computer turns 75”
  • University of Western Australia, “People voyaged to Australia by boat more than 50,000 years ago”
  • University of Wisconsin-Madison, “Oldest bit of crust firms up idea of a cool early Earth”
  • World Health Organization (WHO), “Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic”
  • World Health Organization (WHO), “Poliomyelitis”
  • World Health Organization (WHO), “Smallpox”
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Who's behind this

Ciro Simone Irmici

I'm Ciro Simone Irmici and I build free websites for learning and playing. I built Storiascopio with artificial intelligence and I check every card and every source myself. I'm not a historian: if you find a mistake or would like one more event for your class, write to me.

More of my work: free audiobooks on YouTube · ebooks on Gumroad · Apple Books · music on Spotify and YouTube Music

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