1. Assassination of JFK
   Assassination of Julius Caesar
2. Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand

Julius Caesar was the (sometimes brutal) dictator of the Roman Empire. He was assassinated in 44 B.C.

1. Indonesian Tsunami
   Chernobyl nuclear disaster
2. American Civil War

The Civil War ripped America to shreds in the 1860s. Chernobyl happened in 1986, and the tsunami? That was 2004.

1. Treaty of Versailles
   Fall of the Berlin Wall
2. Invention of the World Wide Web

The Treaty of Versailles signaled the end of World War I. Sadly, many people knew it was simply a stopgap solution and that a new world war was virtually inevitable. They were right.

1. World War I
   World War II
2. Vietnam War

Clearly, World War I preceded World War II. The Great War devastated Europe. It started in 1914 and ended in 1918.

1. Eruption of Mount Vesuvius
   Eruption of Mount St. Helen's
2. 1931 China floods

The 79 A.D. eruption of Mount Vesuvius still ranks as one of the most epic natural disasters in human history. It completely wiped out two cities, Pompeii and Herculaneum.

1. Panic of 1901
   Great Depression
2. Enron Scandal

If you guessed the Panic of 1901, you're right. This was the very first stock market crash on the New York Stock Exchange, and it wiped out many investors' life savings.

1. The first Super Bowl
   The Space Race
2. The first British Open golf tournament

The British Open is an incredibly old event, first played in 1860. It was played on Prestwicks' 12-hole golf course, and the few people who participated played the course three times.

1. The Holocaust
   The Cold War
2. Persian Gulf War

The Holocaust, Hitler's systematic killing of civilians, occurred during World War II. The Cold War began at the conclusion of that war.

1. American Revolution
   Korean War
2. Spanish-American War

There was no America at all until the American Revolution, so this one came first. It ended in 1783. The Spanish-American War didn't happen for another century.

1. Cassini-Huygens probe
   Apollo 11 moon landing
2. Spirit and Opportunity Mars rover mission

The Apollo 11 mission, the one that landed the first men on the moon, happened in 1969. The Cassini-Huygens probe wasn't launched until 2004. Spirit and Opportunity also landed on Mars in 2004.

1. The birth of L.L. Cool J
   The Reformation
2. The First World Fair

The Reformation transformed Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries. Before this event, the Catholic Church had a stranglehold on society. Reformation helped to bring the church back to a more Christian way of life.

1. Industrial Revolution
   Hippie Counterculture
2. Black Plague

The Black Plague ravaged humankind in the 14th century, killing perhaps 200 million people. The Industrial Revolution didn't take hold until the 18th and 19th centuries.

1. Rwandan genocide
   Attack on Pearl Harbor
2. Vietnam War

The attack on Pearl Harbor happened on a date that will live infamy -- December 7, 1941. The Vietnam War consumed the late 60s and the Rwandan genocide happened in the 90s.

1. Martin Luther King, Jr.
   George Washington
2. Jesus Christ

Jesus died in around 33 A.D., long before either of those other famous men. He was famously crucified due to an order by ruler Pontius Pilate.

1. Battle of the Bulge
   Battle of Waterloo
2. Battle of Thermopylae

The Battle of Thermopylae happened in 480 B.C., when a small group of Spartan warriors repeatedly repelled much larger Persian forces. It's the battle featured in the movie "300."

1. Spanish Civil War
   American Civil War
2. Sesame Street Civil War

As much as we'd like to see Big Bird throw down on Elmo, there was no Sesame Street Civil War. The American Civil War happened in the 1860s, decades before the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s.

1. Wall Street Crash of 1987
   Hurricane Katrina
2. The 9/11 attacks

The 9/11 attacks happened in 2001. Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005, exposing many flaws in America's disaster response systems. So the Crash of 1987 came first.

1. Battle of The Little Bighorn
   Nanking Massacre
2. Massacre of Thessalonica

As you can probably guess from the name, the Massacre of Thessalonica happened in antiquity, back in 390 A.D. The Nanking Massacre was one of the ugliest events of the 1930s. And the Battle of the Little Bighorn happened in 1876.

1. Joan of Arc
   Mary Magdalene
2. Eleanor Roosevelt

Mary Magdalene was supposedly one of Jesus' most passionate followers, so she lived until around 40 AD. According to the Bible, she witnessed his execution and was reportedly the first to see Jesus when he rose from the dead.

1. London Killer Fog
   Kuwaiti Oil Fires
2. The Exxon Valdez Oil Spill

In 1952, a combination of cold weather and coal-burning pollution caused a killer smog to smother London. More than 10,000 people died as a result of the awful smog.

1. Invasion of Kuwait
   Invasion of Normandy
2. Invasion of Poland

In 1939, the Nazis invaded Poland, in effect triggering World War II. The invasion of Normandy came in 1944, as the Allies tried to retake ground from the German aggressors.

1. Three-Mile Island Nuclear Disaster
   Great Fire of London
2. First Sudanese Civil War

In 1666, an enormous fire enveloped London. Few people died, but more than 10,000 buildings burned, gutting much of the city's ancient core.

1. Renaissance
   Cold War
2. American Revolution

The Renaissance started in the 1300s, heralding a new age for humankind, one in which people generated new ideas and art at a stunning pace.

1. Wars of the Three Kingdoms
   First Congo War
2. Chinese Civil War

The Wars of the Three Kingdoms are also known as the British Civil Wars. In the 17th century, these wars found England, Scotland and Ireland often at violent odds with one another.

1. B.B. King
   Princess Diana
2. President Nixon

This is one of our tougher ones due to the close timeline. Princess Diana died in a terrible 1997 car wreck. But Nixon died three years earlier. B.B. King passed much later, in 2015.

1. Great Leap Forward
   French Revolution
2. Watergate

The French Revolution ended all the way back in 1799. The Chinese Great Leap Forward ended in 1962, and, instead of improving the country, it probably caused a huge famine.

1. Printing press
   Railroads
2. The Internet

The Gutenberg printing press was invented in around 1440. This fantastic invention changed the way human beings shared and documented information of all kinds.

1. Sinking of the Titanic
   Hindenburg Disaster
2. Challenger explosion

The great ship Titanic sank in the North Atlantic Ocean in 1912. The Hindenburg airship disaster happened in 1937. More than 1,500 people died after the Titanic went down.

1. Pope Pius IX
   Muhammad
2. Mother Teresa

Muhammad lived until about 630 A.D., long before Pope Pius IX, who served in the 19th century. Mother Teresa, of course, is a 20th-century icon.

1. First drone strike
   U-2 spy plane incident
2. Roswell Incident

The Roswell Incident happened in 1947 and became the world's most famous UFO incident. In 1960, an American U-2 spy plane was shot down inside Soviet airspace, creating an international scandal of sorts.