20th Century World History

988 events, 554 lives, and 145 primary source documents you can read in full. Browse any year from 1900 to 2024, or watch the century unfold on the map.

A hundred and twenty-five years of history, organized so you can actually find your way around it.

The Twentieth Century holds 988 events, 554 biographies and 145 primary source documents - treaties, speeches, court rulings and declarations you can read in full, not in summary. More than 700,000 words of source material, alongside the events it documents, and almost all of it illustrated: 984 of the 988 events carry an archival photograph, and all 554 people have portraits. NINE PARALLEL TIMELINES

History is not one story, so it does not run as one line. Nine separate timelines run alongside each other, each browsable on its own:

The United States - 276 events, 1901-2024 Technology - 164 events, 1900-2022 Europe - 160 events, 1900-2022 World War II - 98 events, 1939-1945 Asia - 92 events, 1900-2019 Africa - 74 events, 1900-2020 The Middle East - 56 events, 1917-2018 South America - 44 events, 1901-2005 World War I - 24 events, 1914-1918 Follow one thread down, or set them side by side: 1942 in the Pacific next to 1942 in North Africa.

THE TECHNOLOGY THREAD

Invention gets its own unbroken line from 1900 to today - 164 events, from the Wright Brothers and the first message over the Pacific Cable, through the transistor, the Bell X-1 breaking the sound barrier and the 747, to Hubble and the iPhone. A century of engineering as one continuous story, not as footnotes to politics.

THE TWO WORLD WARS, IN DETAIL

Each war is its own timeline rather than a few entries in a general one. World War I runs across 24 events from 1914 to 1918; World War II across 98, from the invasion of Poland to the surrender - Auschwitz liberated, Dresden, Yalta, Iwo Jima, Remagen, Okinawa - each with photographs, and many linked to the documents and the people involved.

BROWSE BY YEAR

Every year from 1900 to 2024 has its own cross-section: what happened, where, and who was involved. A grid shows the whole century at once, one row per year and one column per timeline, shaded by how much happened - so the wars, the booms and the quiet years are visible at a glance before you read a word.

ARCHIVAL FILM

120 period films: one for 99 of the 125 years, plus films attached to individual events - Pearl Harbor, D-Day, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Kennedy assassination, Selma. Streamed on demand, so the app installs small.

READ THE ACTUAL DOCUMENTS

145 primary sources, complete: the Treaty of Versailles, Roosevelt's radio address on the fall of France, the Panama Canal Treaty, the Camp David Accords, Supreme Court rulings, Rabin's Nobel speech. Each linked to the events it shaped, with a reading-progress bar so you can put down a long treaty and come back to it. THE PEOPLE

554 biographies, from heads of state to physicists to ballplayers, each with a portrait and linked to the events they appear in - move from a person to their century and back.

ON THE MAP

982 events are placed geographically. Filter by decade or timeline and watch where the century's weight moves - Europe in the 1910s, the Pacific in the 1940s, the Middle East from the 1970s.

THE YEAR IN CULTURE

2,284 entries on what people were watching, hearing and arguing about: Academy Awards from 1927, Nobel Prizes from 1901, Pulitzers from 1918, sporting champions from 1903, Grammys, the year's top songs and films. 1939 gives you Vivien Leigh, "The Yearling", the Yankees over the Reds. 1977 gives you "Hotel California".

FOUR LANGUAGES

Fully translated into Spanish, French and German - not just the interface, but every event, biography and summary. Primary source documents stay in their original language, as they were written.

NO ACCOUNT, NO ADS, NO TRACKING

Everything is on the device. No sign-in, no advertising, nothing collected about what you read. The app works offline apart from the films.

Twentieth Century Pro is a single one-time purchase - no subscription