Dossier №171

2,007 AD

Apple unveils the first iPhone, combining a phone, music player, and web browser.

The multi-touch screen helped redefine what a personal computer could be.

Steve Jobs introduced the device in January, and it went on sale in June. The iPhone’s software-centered design accelerated the shift toward app ecosystems, touch interfaces, and always-connected mobile computing.

1,517 AD

Martin Luther circulates arguments against the sale of indulgences.

A university dispute became a fracture in western Christianity.

Luther’s Ninety-five Theses challenged church practices and spread quickly through print. The resulting controversy contributed to the Protestant Reformation, religious wars, and lasting changes in European politics and education.

1,799 AD

French soldiers uncover the Rosetta Stone during work near the Nile Delta.

The same decree in three scripts became a key to ancient Egyptian writing.

The stone carries a priestly decree in hieroglyphic, Demotic, and ancient Greek scripts. Comparing the texts helped scholars, especially Jean-François Champollion, decipher Egyptian hieroglyphs in the following decades.

79 AD

Mount Vesuvius erupts and buries Pompeii and neighboring Roman communities.

A catastrophe preserved an extraordinary record of ordinary urban life.

Ash, pumice, and fast-moving hot flows overwhelmed towns around the volcano. Excavations centuries later revealed houses, shops, inscriptions, food, art, and human remains with exceptional detail.

1,274 BC

Egyptian and Hittite armies clash near Kadesh in a vast chariot battle.

Both sides claimed success, and diplomacy eventually outlasted the battlefield.

Ramesses II’s forces fought the army of the Hittite king Muwatalli II in Syria. Egyptian monuments celebrated a heroic victory, while the strategic result was inconclusive and later relations produced a famous peace treaty.