Famous Historical Dates: What Year Did It Happen?

This page lists the exact dates of 24 famous moments in history, grouped by era, along with the dates people most often get wrong. The one people look up most: Apollo 11 landed on the Moon on July 20, 1969 (NASA).

Famous dates at a glance

The Middle Ages

Event	Date	Source
Battle of Hastings: William of Normandy defeats King Harold	October 14, 1066	English Heritage
King John seals Magna Carta at Runnymede	June 15, 1215	National Archives

Exploration and Reformation

Event	Date	Source
Columbus’s first voyage: the Niña, Pinta and Santa María leave Palos, Spain, and first sight land at dawn on October 12	August 3 to October 12, 1492	Smithsonian National Postal Museum
Martin Luther’s 95 Theses appear in Wittenberg	October 31, 1517	Harvard Gazette
The Pilgrims sight Cape Cod and sign the Mayflower Compact	November 11, 1620 (Old Style)	National Park Service

The age of revolutions

Event	Date	Source
Continental Congress adopts the Declaration of Independence	July 4, 1776	National Archives
U.S. Constitution signed	September 17, 1787	National Archives
Battle of Waterloo: Napoleon’s army against a coalition led by Wellington and Blücher	June 18, 1815	National Army Museum

The 1800s

Event	Date	Source
Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation	January 1, 1863	National Archives
Lee surrenders to Grant at the McLean House, Appomattox Court House	April 9, 1865	National Park Service

The early 1900s

Event	Date	Source
Wright brothers’ first flight: Orville flies about 120 feet	December 17, 1903	National Park Service
Titanic sinks	April 15, 1912	Royal Museums Greenwich
World War I armistice takes effect	11 a.m., November 11, 1918	National Archives
Wall Street crash: Black Monday and Black Tuesday	October 28 and 29, 1929	Federal Reserve History

World War II

Event	Date	Source
Japan attacks Pearl Harbor	December 7, 1941 (Hawaii time)	National Park Service
D-Day landings in Normandy	June 6, 1944	Eisenhower Presidential Library
V-E Day: the war in Europe ends	May 8, 1945	U.S. Army
Japan signs the instrument of surrender aboard USS Missouri	September 2, 1945	National Archives

The Cold War and the space age

Event	Date	Source
The Soviet Union launches Sputnik	October 4, 1957	NASA
President Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas	November 22, 1963	JFK Library
Apollo 11 lands on the Moon	July 20, 1969	NASA
The Berlin Wall comes down	November 9, 1989	Office of the Historian

The digital age

Event	Date	Source
The World Wide Web: Tim Berners-Lee’s first proposal, then CERN makes the software royalty-free	March 1989; April 30, 1993	CERN
The first iPhone: announced at Macworld, then on sale in the U.S.	January 9, 2007; June 29, 2007	Apple Newsroom, Apple Newsroom

Dates people often mix up

The Declaration wasn’t signed on July 4

On July 2, 1776, Congress passed the Lee Resolution for independence, adopted by 12 of the 13 colonies, with New York not voting. The Declaration itself was adopted on July 4. The engrossed copy was signed on August 2, and not all of the delegates were there that day. The National Archives calls the idea that everyone signed on July 4 a misconception (National Archives).

World War II ended more than once

Germany’s military surrender was signed at Reims, France, on May 7, 1945, and in Berlin on May 8, which is V-E Day (U.S. Army). The war with Japan went on. On August 14, 1945, President Truman told reporters he considered Japan’s reply a full acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration, and said V-J Day would have to wait for the formal signing (Truman Library). That signing happened aboard USS Missouri on September 2, 1945 (National Archives).

Was the Moon landing on July 20 or July 21?

That depends on where you were. The lunar module landed at 4:17 p.m. EDT on July 20, 1969 (NASA). Neil Armstrong stepped onto the surface at 10:56 p.m. EDT on July 20, which was 02:56 UT on July 21 (NASA NSSDCA). In Europe, the first step happened on the 21st.

Titanic: April 14 or April 15?

Both. Titanic hit the iceberg at 11:40 p.m. on April 14, 1912 and sank at 2:20 a.m. on April 15 (Royal Museums Greenwich).

The Berlin Wall fell in 1989, but Germany reunified in 1990

The wall came down on November 9, 1989 (Office of the Historian). Reunification, when East Germany joined West Germany, came in 1990, and Germany now marks it every October 3 as the Day of German Unity (Berlin.de).

The iPhone was announced in January and sold in June

Apple unveiled the iPhone at Macworld San Francisco on January 9, 2007 (Apple Newsroom). It went on sale in the U.S. on June 29, 2007, at 6:00 p.m. local time (Apple Newsroom). Both dates fall in 2007.

The web isn’t the internet

Tim Berners-Lee wrote the first proposal for the World Wide Web in March 1989, and CERN released the web’s source code royalty-free on April 30, 1993. In those early days, CERN says, the web made up about 1% of internet traffic. The rest was remote access, email and file transfer, all running on an internet that already existed (CERN).

Why some old dates have two versions

Before 1752, Britain and its colonies used the Julian calendar. George Washington was born on February 11, 1731, by that calendar. When Britain switched to the Gregorian calendar in 1752, his birthday moved to February 22, 1732. The year changed as well as the day, because New Year’s Day moved from March 25 to January 1 (National Archives). To make the switch, people went to bed on September 2, 1752, and woke up on September 14 (National Park Service).

That’s why the table labels the Mayflower Compact’s November 11, 1620, as Old Style. It’s the date the Pilgrims wrote on the document itself (“at Cape Cod the 11th of November”), and the date the National Park Service uses (National Park Service). If two sources give an early English or colonial date that differs by about 10 or 11 days, check whether one has converted it.

Tricks for remembering dates

Two study techniques have strong research behind them.

• Quiz yourself instead of rereading. In a 2006 study, students who took recall tests on what they’d studied remembered much more two days and a week later than students who spent the same time rereading. The rereaders felt more confident anyway (Roediger and Karpicke, Washington University in St. Louis).
• Spread your practice out. A 2013 review of 10 study techniques gave its top rating to just two: practice testing and distributed practice, meaning practice spread over time. Rereading, highlighting and summarizing were rated low (Association for Psychological Science).

The rest are our own tips, not research findings:

• Get the century first, then the decade. Even if you can’t remember the exact year, knowing that the Wright brothers flew in the 1900s and Waterloo was in the 1810s cuts out most wrong answers.
• Pair dates up. Titanic sank less than nine years after the first powered flight. Apollo 11 landed less than 12 years after Sputnik.
• Use an old rhyme. “In fourteen hundred ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue” still works.
• Learn the mix-ups as pairs. July 4 and August 2 for the Declaration, May 8 and September 2 for the end of World War II, 1989 and 1990 for Berlin.