213 BC Books burnt in China
In the Qin dictatorship, all Confucian books are burnt (except those of any practical use) and 460 Confucian scholars are executed

70 Temple in Jerusalem destroyed
The complete destruction of the Jewish Temple follows the fall of Jerusalem to the Romans

177 Christians in Lyons tortured to death
On the order of Marcus Aurelius, Christians in Lyons are tortured to death - an instance of persecution unusual at this time

258 Cyprian martyred in Carthage
Cyprian, bishop of Carthage, is one of many Christians martyred for refusing to sacrifice to the Roman gods

303 Christians now seriously persecuted
The emperor Diocletian initiates a sustained persecution of Christians in the Roman empire

529 Philosophy schools closed in Athens
Justinian closes down the schools of Athens, famous for their tradition of pagan philosophy

845 T'ang emperor persecutes Buddhists
On the orders of the T'ang emperor, 4000 Buddhist monasteries are destroyed in China and 250,000 monks and nuns are forced into secular life

1096 Jews massacred in German cities
The German crusade begins with a massacre of Jews in many of the region's cities

1182 Roman Catholics massacred in Constantinople
Resentment of western merchants results in a massacre of Roman Catholics by fellow Christians in Constantinople

1208 Pope's man assassinated
The murder of the pope's legate to Toulouse provokes the Albigensian crusade, which aims to wipe out the Catharist heresy

1233 Inquisition begins work
Gregory IX sends Dominican friars to root out the remains of the Catharist heresy in France, thus launching the Inquisition

1244 200 heretics burnt in wooden stockade
The siege of the Catharist stronghold of Montségur ends when 200 heretics are herded into a wooden stockade and are burnt

1290 Jews expelled from England
The Jews in England are driven out of the country, soon to be followed by those in France

1302 Dante sentenced to death
Dante, a member of the White faction in Florence, is sentenced to death by the Blacks - and never returns to his native city

1310 Templars burnt at stake
Fifty-four Knights Templars are burned at the stake, during the campaign of the French king to destroy the order

1348 Jews accused of poisoning wells
Massacres of Jews, rumoured to have caused the Black Death by poisoning wells, begin in southern France and spread through much of Europe

1415 Huss burnt at stake
John Huss, invited to Constance under a promise of safe conduct, is arrested, tried and burnt at the stake as a heretic

1492 Jews expelled from Spain
Torquemada persuades Ferdinand and Isabella to expel from Spain all Jews (about 160,000) who will not convert to Christianity

1516 First ghetto - in Venice
The original ghetto is established as a district to which the Jews of Venice are confined

1520 Luther's writings burnt
Luther's writings are burnt in Rome by order of the pope

1520 Bloodbath in Stockholm
Eighty distinguished Swedish citizens are executed together on the main square, in what becomes known as the Stockholm Bloodbath

1521 Luther excommunicated
Pope Leo X excommunicates Martin Luther after he has refused to recant

1522 Luther in disguise as Junker Georg
Outlawed by the Edict of Worms, Luther lives secretly in the Wartburg as Junker Georg

1525 Muslims in Spain forced to convert
Muslims throughout Spain are ordered to convert to Christianity or to leave the kingdom

1545 Waldenses massacred
3000 Waldenses are massacred as heretics in the villages of Provence

1546 Archbishop of St Andrews murdered
David Beaton, the archbishop of St Andrews, burns a leading Protestant, George Wishart, as a heretic and is murdered in retaliation

1547 John Knox a galley slave
John Knox is captured in St Andrews and is sent to serve in the French fleet as a galley slave

1555 The original Bloody Mary
The Protestant martyrs, though few in number, ensure the reputation of Bloody Mary in English history

1567 Council of Blood in Netherlands
The duke of Alba introduces a reign of terror in the Spanish Netherlands, by means of a tribunal known as the Council of Blood

1572 Massacre on St Bartholomew's Day
A massacre of French Protestants, known as the Huguenots, begins in Paris on St Bartholomew's Day

1585 Catholic martyrs in England
Catholics are now the martyrs in England, their numbers almost matching the Protestant martyrs of the previous reign

1608 English Puritans sail to Holland
A shipload of Puritans, among them some of the future Pilgrim Fathers, sail from Boston in Lincolnshire to seek religious freedom in Holland

1628 Rights demanded for English citizens
The English parliament's Petition of Right emphasizes the right of the citizen to be protected from royal tyranny

1632 Galileo threatened with torture
The Inquisition convicts Galileo of heresy and he denies the truth of Copernicus - on being shown the instruments of torture

1632 Shah Jahan ends Mughal tradition of tolerance
Shah Jahan orders that all recently built Hindu temples shall be destroyed, ending the Mughal tradition of religious tolerance

1661 Cavalier revenge on Roundheads
The Cavalier Parliament begins to pass a series of acts, known as the Clarendon Code, containing punitive measures against Presbyterians

1662 Act of Uniformity
The Act of Uniformity demands that Anglican clergy accept all the Thirty-Nine Articles, costing many their livings

1664 Conventicle Act restricts worship
The Conventicle Act restricts worship in England to Anglican churches if more than a few people are present

1665 Five-Mile Act in England
The Five Mile Act prevents Nonconformist ministers in England from coming closer than five miles to any town where they have ministered

1672 Declaration of Indulgence in England
Charles II issues a Declaration of Indulgence, suspending the restrictions on Catholics and Nonconformists

1673 Test Act reduces religious freedoms
Parliament in England passes a Test Act excluding Catholics and Nonconformists from public office

1678 Popish Plot an invented conspiracy
The Popish Plot, an invented Jesuit conspiracy to kill Charles II, results in the execution of about thirty-five Roman Catholics

1680 Dragoons hassle Huguenots
Louis XIV persecutes the Huguenots by means of dragonnades - the billetting of unruly dragoons in the homes of villagers

1685 Persecuted Huguenots leave France
400,000 Huguenots leave France after Louis XIV deprives them of their rights by revoking the Edict of Nantes

1692 Massacre in Glencoe
Government soldiers, mainly Campbells, massacre their MacDonald hosts in Glencoe

1692 Talk of witches in Salem
The Massachusetts town of Salem is gripped by witch-hunting hysteria

1692 Salem witchcraft trials claim victims
Twenty people convicted of witchcraft are hanged in Salem, and one is pressed to death

1794 Lavoisier is guillotined
French chemist Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier is guillotined for having been involved with tax collection in the ancien régime

1819 Eleven die in Peterloo massacre
Magistrates order troops to fire on a crowd in Manchester, in what becomes known as the Peterloo massacre

1829 Cherokee assembly banned
The state government of Georgia declares that it is illegal for for the Cherokees to hold political assemblies

1831 Mamelukes suppressed in Baghdad
Mameluke power ends with their suppression in Baghdad, following a massacre in Cairo twenty years earlier

1847 Don Pacifico sues for damages
Don Pacifico's house in Athens is burnt by an anti-Semitic crowd, provoking an international incident

1849 22 dead in Astor Place riot
An anti-British mob attacks the New York theatre where William Macready is appearing as Macbeth, leaving 22 dead and many injured

1865 Black Codes restrict black freedom
The southern states pass new Black Codes, designed to limit the freedom granted to African-Americans by the victorious north

1876 Gladstone reveals Bulgarian horrors
William Gladstone's pamphlet Bulgarian Horrors, protesting at massacre by the Turks, sells 200,000 copies within a month

1881 Pogroms in Russia
The first pogroms, or officially sanctioned attacks on Jews and their property, take place in Russia

1890 Wounded Knee Creek
Hundreds of Sioux Indians are killed by US troops in a massacre at Wounded Knee Creek

1893 Gandhi thrown out of first-class compartment
Mahatma Gandhi, travelling with a first-class ticket, is forcibly ejected from the carriage at Pietermaritzburg because of his colour

1917  March 11 Another Bloody Sunday in Russia
Crowds demonstrating in Petrograd are fired on after tsar Nicholas II sanctions the use of force

1918 October 30 German fleet mutinies
A mutiny in Germany's fleet in Kiel sparks uprisings in several German cities

1919 Gulag slave camps
The Soviet system of Gulag slave labour camps is introduced, under the control of the secret service, the Cheka

1919 Mussolini's blackshirts
Mussolini's Fascist party rapidly acquires an aggressive presence, thanks to his gangs of armed thugs in their blackshirt uniforms

1921 Lenin smashes Kronstadt mutiny
With massive force, and huge casualties, Lenin puts an end to a naval mutiny at Kronstadt

1921 Concentration camps in Russia
Some 50,000 peasants are herded into Russia's first concentration camps

1921 Sacco and Vanzetti
Italian immigrant anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti are convicted of murder in a US trial flawed by prejudice

1921 Tulsa race riots
Tulsa race riots cap previous levels of violence, with more than eighty-five blacks killed

1927 Sacco and Vanzetti are executed
In spite of widespread protest and grave judicial doubt Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti are sent to the electric chair

1928 Coniston massacre
Australian police massacre Aborigines near Coniston in reprisal for a murder

1931 Russia's peasants forced into factories
25 million peasants are moved from the land to provide cheap labour in Stalin's new factories

1931 Russian peasants transported to Siberia
Six million Russian peasants die after being transported to agricultural labour camps in Siberia

1933 Sterilization in Germany
German chancellor Adolf Hitler orders the sterilization of carriers of hereditary mental diseases, in one of his government's first pieces of legislation

1933 First Nazi concentration camp
Heinrich Himmler sets up the first Nazi concentration camp, at Dachau near Munich

1933 Hitler dismisses Jewish state employees
Adolf Hitler passes a law forcing the 'retirement' of all Jews working in the civil service, schools and universities

1935 Hitler curtails sexual freedom of Jews
Adolf Hitler promulgates a law prohibiting any sexual relationship between Jews and 'Aryans'

1937 Sweeping purges in Russia
At the same time as the Moscow show trials, millions are purged from the Russian Communist party nation-wide

1937 Buchenwald set up as labour camp
Buchenwald, near Weimar, is set up as a concentration camp providing forced labour for local arms manufacturers

1938 Persecution in Nazi Austria
Left-wingers and Jews suffer immediate persecution in Nazi Austria, now part of Germany

1938 November 9 Kristallnacht in Germany
Nazi gangs smash the premises of Jews throughout Germany and Austria in a night that becomes known as Kristallnacht, the night of cut glass

1939 September Nazi murder squads
Nazi murder squads (Einsatzgruppen) kill Poland's elite

1939 November Hitler decrees 'mercy killing'
Adolf Hitler orders the 'mercy killing' of all those with specified categories of infirmity, beginning with newborn babies and young children

1941&nbIsp; May Hitler sets up murder squads
In preparation for the invasion of Russia, Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler set up Special Task Commandos (Einsatzkommando) to exterminate Communists and Jews

1941 July First steps taken in Holocaust
The systematic shooting of Russian Jews by German Einsatzgruppen is the first step in the development of the Holocaust

1941 July 31 Plans for Final Solution
Goering orders Reinhard Heydrich to prepare plans for the 'final solution of the Jewish queston'

1941 August Nazis experiment in murder by gas
Nazi experiments are carried out on Jews and Soviet prisoners of war to find effective means of murder by gas

1941 October 16 'Final solution' in use as a phrase
Adolf Eichmann, in an official letter about policy in relation to the Jews, uses the phrase 'the final solution'

1941 December 7 Germans use gas to kill Polish Jews
In three adapted vans at Chelmno, in western Poland, the Germans begin using poison gas to kill Jews

1942  January 20 Death camps planned at Wannsee
Reinhard Heydrich convenes a meeting at Wannsee to discuss the practical details of the 'final solution'

1942  March Concentration camp at Auschwitz
The Nazis build a new style of concentration camp, at Auschwitz in Poland, in which the fit will work and the unfit will be killed

1942  from March Factories move to Auschwitz
German industrial enterprises are moved from the vulnerable Ruhr valley to the slave labour facilities of Auschwitz

1942 July The Frank family goes into hiding
Anne Frank and her family go into hiding in an Amsterdam attic

1942 July Treblinka is purpose-built death camp
Treblinka is constructed, in Poland, as the Nazis' first large-scale and purpose-built death camp

1942 December 17 German genocide condemned
An international declaration condemns Germany's 'bestial policy of cold-blooded extermination'

1943 Zoot-suit riots
Zoot Suit riots, starting in Los Angeles, target young Mexican Americans

1943  April 19 Germans destroy Warsaw ghetto
Jews in Warsaw resist a fierce German onslaught for a month before their ghetto is finally destroyed

1943 July Belsen becomes concentration camp
Belsen, used as a prisoner-of-war camp since 1940, is turned into a concentration camp

1944 June 10 Massacre in Oradour
German troops massacre more than 600 civilians in the French village of Oradour

1944 August 4 Anne Frank is found
The hiding place in Amsterdam of Anne Frank and her family is discovered by the Gestapo

1944 September Wallenberg saves Jews in Hungary
Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat in Budapest, saves thousands of Jews from extermination

1945  January I7 Wallenberg vanishes in Soviet hands
After Soviet troops liberate Hungary, Raoul Wallenberg is abducted and vanishes

1945  January 27 Primo Levi survives Auschwitz
The Red Army liberates the surviving prisoners at Auschwitz, who include the Italian novelist Primo Levi

1945 Solzhenitsyn sentenced for criticizing Stalin
Alexander Solzhenitsyn is sentenced to eight years in a Soviet labour camp for critizing Stalin in a private correspondence

1945  April 5 Bonhoeffer executed
Dietrich Bonhoeffer is executed in a Nazi concentration camp just a month before the end of the war in Europe

1945  April 11 Horrors of Buchenwald revealed
American troops discover the German concentration camp at Buchenwald

1945  April 15 Belsen worse than Buchenwald
The British reach Belsen and reveal appalling Nazi atrocities, worse even than at Buchenwald

1945  April 29 Hitler marries Eva Braun
Adolf Hitler marries Eva Braun in his bunker, and holds a champagne reception with Goebbels as the principal guest

1945  April 30 Hitler and bride in suicide pact
Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun retire to their marital quarters in the Berlin bunker and commit suicide

1945 Six million Jews dead
By the end of the war the total number of Jews killed by the Nazis is around 6 million

1945 Death toll of Gypsies and mentally ill
[1939-1945] - in addition to 6 million Jews, the Nazi death camps have killed some 400,000 Gypsies and 100,000 'useless defectives'

1948 Apartheid in South Africa
Daniel Malan moves swiftly to reinforce apartheid, South Africa's already existing system of racial segregation

1956 Student protests in Hungary
Students are fired on in Budapest when protesting against repressive Communist policies

1957 Let a hundred flowers bloom
With his Hundred Flowers Campaign ('Let a hundred flowers bloom'), Mao Zedong invites criticism and then locks up the critics

1960 Sharpeville massacre
South African police fire on a crowd in Sharpeville, near Johannesburg, killing more than sixty people

1964 Papa Doc president for life
Papa Doc Duvalier, ruling through the brutal Tontons Macoutes, makes himself president of Haiti for life

1966 Liu and Deng denounced
Communist leaders Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping are attacked in China's Cultural Revolution as the biggest and worst 'capitalist roaders'

1966 Cultural Revolution in China
Mao Zedong unleashes China's teenagers as violent Red Guards to spearhead his Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution

1968 Soviet tanks roll into Prague
Soviet and Warsaw Pact troops invade Czechoslovakia to end the Prague Spring

1970 Troops sent to East Pakistan
The outgoing Pakistan government, led by Yahya Khan, rejects the election result and sends troops to East Pakistan

1971 Civil war in East Pakistan
The arrest of Mujibur Rahman, together with brutal attempts at repression, turn resistance in East Pakistan into full-scale civil war

1975 Khmer Rouge take Cambodian capital
Khmer Rouge guerrillas, led by Pol Pot, take Phnom Penh and launch a genocidal reign of terror in Cambodia

1975 Indonesia invades East Timor
The invasion of East Timor by Indonesia begins decades of guerrilla resistance and brutal repression

1977 Biko dies in police care
Steve Biko, founder of Black Consciousness, dies of head wounds received in police custody in Pretoria

1979 Saddam Hussein terrorizes Iraq
Saddam Hussein begins a reign of terror in Iraq, reading out at a meeting the names of fellow Ba'athists who are to be taken out and shot

1982 Massacres at Sabra and Shatila
Christian militiamen massacre Palestinian refugees in the Sabra and Chatila camps in Lebanon

1982 Solidarity banned
The trade union movement Solidarnośc (Solidarity) is declared illegal by the Polish government

1988 Saddam uses chemical weapons
Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein uses chemical weapons against the Kurds of northern Iraq

1989 Martial law in China
Confronted with mass popular protest, Deng Xiaoping imposes martial law in China

1989 Carnage in Tiananmen Square
More than 2000 peaceful demonstrators die after troops open fire in Beijing's Tiananmen Square

1992 Ethnic cleansing in Bosnia
Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic encourages ethnic cleansing by paramilitaries in Bosnia

1994 Genocide preached in Rwanda
The Hutu government in Rwanda preaches genocide against Tutsis

1994 Death of Rwandan president sparks genocide
The assassination of Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana sparks the outbreak of genocide

1994 Rwanda genocide
As many as 800,000 people die, most of them slashed to death with machetes, in three months of genocide in Rwanda

1995 Atrocity at Srebrenica
Bosnian Serbs massacre thousands of Bosnian Muslims after laying siege to the town of Srebrenica

1998 Ethnic cleansing in Kosovo
Brutal reprisals by Serb troops against Albanians in Kosovo include systematic ethnic cleansing

2003 Civil war in Darfur
Civil war breaks out in the Darfur region of the Sudan, resulting in large numbers of civilian deaths and accusations of government-sponsored genocide

2004 Abuses revealed at Abu Graib
Abuses in the US military prison at Abu Ghraib in Iraq are revealed on US television

2006 Israeli corporal taken hostage
Hamas militants take hostage an Israeli corporal, provoking a new Israeli military campaign against Gaza