Link to Part One
89. "Across the Sahara, 1324."
In 1324, Emperor Mansa Musa of Mali undertook a pilgrimage to Mecca that has since become the stuff of legend.
He departed from Mali with "60,000 men, including 12,000 slaves...80 camels, each loaded with 300 pounds of gold, which he gave away so freely in Cairo that it took years for the price of gold to recover."
Yes, he spent it all, but he returned with architects, engineers, philosophers, scribes, and poets. In this way, he put Mali and its capital, Timbuktu, on the map, for better and for worse. After he reinvented his kingdom, Europe set its eyes on Africa...but that is a story for another day.
88. "Modern Art, 1880."
Up until the end of the 19th Century, artists strove to put their subjects on canvas as realistically as possible. That changed when Paul Cezanne painted Mont Sainte-Victoire in 1880 (the first of over sixty different impressions). Instead of trying to capture every little detail--every house, every crevice in the limestone rock face--Cezanne reshaped the landscape into a whirling array of colors, shades, and contrasts.
No longer was the canvas a representation of reality; in Cezanne's hands, the canvas became "a reality unto itself, one he saw as both classic and transcendent...As Pablo Picasso later observed, he was 'the father of us all.'"
87. "Japan Opens Its Doors, 1868."
In 1868, Emperor Mutsushito of Japan initiated the Meiji Restoration, effectively opening Japan's doors to Europe and the still relatively young United States. From then on, Japan waged imperial war with China (1894) and Russia (1905--a naval battle), annexed Korea (1910), and helped fight against Germany in World War I (1914).
After Japan's imperial might ceased in the aftermath of World War II, the nation still expanded; this time with business savvy and innumerable pop-culture exports, the biggest of which is Japanese animation, or anime.
86. "India's Independence, 1947."
The most important thing to remember about India is that Britain had considered it "the jewel in the crown" of the British Empire since 1857. In that year, "Indian soldiers led an unsuccessful revolt against the British East India Company, which had effectively controlled the country."
Things remained more or less constant until Gandhi and thousands of his followers walked 200 miles to the sea and "made salt in defiance of British tax laws." Gandhi's movement gradually gained momentum, but it took World War II to finally do the British Empire in as a world power and as an idea. In 1947, Britain relinquished control of India; so followed Palestine in 1948; Ghana, in 1957; and Hong Kong in 1997.
85. "Saving Aristotle, 1169."
I'm surprised this one is placed so early on! One would think that
In the 12th Century, a man by the name of Ibn Rushd lived in Cordoba, Spain. He was very much the Leonardo daVinci of the Muslim world. Scholar, philosopher, translator, polymath, scientist; he preserved most of Aristotle's work by translating it from Greek into Arabic and retaining it in Cordoba's vast library, which "contained 400,000 works--more, it is said, than all the other libraries of Europe combined."
Eventually, Rushd's translations received a further translation, this time into Latin, and Europe's scholars and intellectuals were able to appraise Aristotle for themselves.
84. "Checking Accounts, 1407."
In the bleak, bleak days before the Fifteenth Century, merchants usually plied their trade at fairs with what were basically IOUs, and wealthy families owned private banks that offered loans to kings. (If kings didn't pay off their loans, those families would be destitute--it was, after all, their own money.)
In 1407, the Casa di San Giorgio--the world's first "public" bank--opened for business.
San Giorgio closed down less than forty years later, but it served as a template for everything from personal savings and checking accounts to credit cards. Gone were the IOUs of old; with a more centralized bank, accounts could be more readily maintained.
83. "The First Novel, 1008."
In Part One, I declared that Don Quixote de la Mancha was "the first modern novel of the Western world." This entry is the payoff: A much earlier work, Lady Murasaki Shikibu's The Tale of Genji has the distinction of being the first novel, period. I myself had to read it for a research paper when I went to Moraine Valley, and while it wasn't the most gripping read, it was good to transcend my boundaries and read something from an entirely different culture and time period.
The story concerns a handsome young prince named, obviously, Prince Genji, and the people he encounters throughout. It's a Heian-era political drama as well as a romance novel, and I'd venture to say that Lady Murasaki accidentally created the structure of the modern soap opera with The Tale of Genji.
"The novel's complex plot, its sympathy with the plight of women at court, its subtlety of language and its penetrating psychological insights--all were unprecedented...Any serious discussion of the structures, forms, and intentions of the novel--the most significant new literary genre of the millennium--must take into account Murasaki's stunning achievement."
82. "Selling the World a Coke, 1886."
In 1886, a pharmacist named John Pemberton created a tonic that would eventually be known as Coca-Cola, but the stuff itself is not as important as its impact on advertising and marketing. See, he advertised his alcohol-free drink as "The Great National Temperance Drink," and most people found that they liked how it tasted.
Then, a little bit later, a man named Asa Candler bought Pemberton's company and focused much of its revenue on marketing and advertising. Later on, in 1926, Robert Woodruff took over and set up a foreign branch. During World War II, "the U.S. military footed much of the bill for the company's bottling plants at the front lines," and this is how Coke became an international entity.
Just think of how many signifiers Coke carries: There's the famous "contour bottle," the unique "Coca-Cola" logo, the "polar bears," the modern depiction of Santa Claus in a red suit, the song "I'd Like To Buy the World a Coke" (a refit of "I'd Like to Teach the World To Sing"), slogans such as "It's the Real Thing"...I could go on for hours, and that's a testament to Coke's influence.
81. "Silver Fever, 1545."
A bit more than three hundred years before the Gold Rush sent hundreds packing to California and Alaska, someone discovered silver in the Andes Mountains. Almost immediately, Spanish entrepreneurs with dreams of vast wealth flocked to Peru and conscripted [read: enslaved] the natives to mine this valuable metal so that they could sell it to China for a huge profit.
Of course, the price of silver in China fell in the 1600s; as that fell, so too did the Ming dynasty and the Spanish Empire (the defeat of the Spanish Armada certainly didn't help).
80. "The Suez Canal, 1869."
Upon its completion, the Suez Canal allowed ships to go directly from England to India without having to sail around Africa. It shaved 6,000 miles--12,000 round-trip--from the average journey, and in the days before modern commerce, every mile counted.
This architectural marvel required ten years and over one million workers to complete, and it was called "The Eighth Wonder of the World" when it finally opened. ========================================================================
SOURCE: Time, Inc. The Life Millennium: The 100 Most Important People and Events of the Last 1,000 Years. New York: 1998, Time, Inc., Book.
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