worldtimeline

worldtimeline is a collaborative online reference that compiles and presents major events from world history in a single, navigable timeline. It is designed to be neutral, encyclopedic in tone, and usable by students, educators, researchers, and general readers. The collection covers political revolutions, wars, scientific breakthroughs, cultural movements, migrations, economic shifts, disasters, and other events across regions and eras, from antiquity to the present day. Entries are annotated with concise descriptions, dates, geographic locations, and categorization tags.

The site presents the data as an interactive timeline with multiple zoom levels and branching views. Users can filter by region, category, or timespan, search keywords, and view related events. Each event includes sources and citations, and the timeline supports exporting data and linking to external references. The platform supports multilingual display and community translation.

worldtimeline relies on crowd-sourced contributions reviewed by editors. It employs a citation-based approach to ensure reliability, with sources ranging from academic publications to reputable encyclopedias and primary documents. The project adopts an open license for content and a clear editorial guideline to handle edits, disputes, and ambiguous dating. It maintains a version history and change log.

The resource is used in classrooms and research to provide a quick, comparative overview of world events. Challenges include biases in source selection, uneven regional coverage, and ambiguities in dating. Ongoing efforts focus on expanding regional coverage, improving sourcing, and providing context notes to avoid oversimplification.