Helpful points in history

I often find when considering a historical event it’s hard to understand the state of society in that particular time period. To aid, I’m keeping a growing list of important societal moments to act as a handy reference.

I was reminded of this when reading “Pale Rider : The Spanish Flu of 1918 and how it changed the World”, hence to start with most are health related.

2000’s

2019/20 : COVID-19 Pandemic

1900’s

1980 : Air travel starts to become affordable for the masses.

1960 : World Life expectancy exceeds 50

1953 : Structure of DNA discovered.

1920 : The decade in which cars start to become more common.

1918 : Spanish Flu Pandemic

1907 : Life expectancy in UK exceeds 50

1903 : Aeroplane invented by Wright Brothers.

1800’s

1886 : Birth year of modern cars with Karl Benz patenting his Benz Patent-Motorwagen.

1870 : Joseph Lister develops sanitation practices in the form of antiseptics for medical procedures.

1855 : Cholera was proved to be a waterborne disease by linking an outbreak of illness in London to a public well that was contaminated by sewage.

1850 : Germ theory of diseases started to gain momentum with Louis Pasteur in 1850s, followed by Robert Koch in 1880s.

1700’s

400 BC

412BC : Hippocrates provides first written description - probably - of influenza, ‘Cough of Perinthus’.

460BC : Hippocrates ‘The Father of Western Medicine’ was born, spending his life documenting disease symptoms and arguing the causes were physical not spiritual. He introduced a system for classifying diseases.