Archive of Human Genius
The world’s largest database of social change milestones, from the first fire to today’s good news.
A Timeline of Human History
We are building the world’s largest database of social change milestones, from the first fire to today’s good news. Change is not only possible, it has happened consistently throughout human history.
Filter by era, country, topic, actor, source, and more.
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2023 C.E.
November 20 According to HSI, the African elephant population has declined by 96% over the last century, and poachers in Africa kill as many as 25,000 elephants and 1,300 rhinos every year. Poaching is the most significant threat to these species, experts say.
2023 C.E.
November 17 “The EU will finally assume responsibility for its plastic waste by banning its export to non-OECD countries,” said Pernille Weiss, a Danish member of the European parliament. “Once again, we follow our vision that waste is a resource when it is properly managed, but should not in any case be causing harm to the environment or human health.”
2023 C.E.
November 17 The world's largest single-site solar plant just came online in the UAE, and it's powering nearly 200,000 homes from a stretch of desert outside Abu Dhabi. Al Dhafra generates 2 gigawatts of clean electricity and is expected to cut 2.4 million tonnes of carbon emissions each year — roughly the equivalent of taking 470,000 cars off the road. What makes it really remarkable, though, is the price: the project locked in one of the...
2023 C.E.
November 16 Prison education just crossed a remarkable threshold: sixteen men at Stateville Correctional Center in Illinois became the first incarcerated students in the U.S. to earn bachelor's degrees from a top-ten ranked university. Northwestern's program now enrolls around 100 students across two facilities, including a women's prison, with graduates already planning law school and youth-focused nonprofits. One graduate's mother, who hadn't seen her son in nearly two decades, watched him walk across the stage in...
2023 C.E.
November 15 Direct air capture has gone commercial in the United States for the first time, with Heirloom Carbon Technologies opening a plant in Tracy, California that can pull 1,000 metric tons of CO2 straight from the sky each year. The company speeds up a natural process: heating limestone, then letting the mineral soak up atmospheric carbon on open-air trays in days rather than years. The captured CO2 is locked into concrete and stored underground, with...
2023 C.E.
November 15 Whole-eye transplant surgery has been performed successfully for the first time, with a team at NYU Langone Health spending more than 20 hours combining a donor eyeball, a partial face transplant, and a stem cell infusion into the optic nerve. The patient, Aaron James, lost much of his face in a 2021 electrical accident, and surgeons had carefully preserved his optic nerve in anticipation of exactly this kind of operation. Doctors say the transplanted...
2023 C.E.
November 14 Ocean thermal energy conversion just crossed a threshold that has eluded engineers for nearly 140 years. UK-based Global OTEC Resources received independent certification for the cold-water riser pipe at the heart of its floating platform — the very component that has sunk previous attempts to turn ocean temperature gradients into electricity. The flagship vessel, Dominique, is a 1.5-MW system planned for deployment off São Tomé and Príncipe, an island nation of about 220,000 people...
2023 C.E.
November 14 Dominica's new sperm whale reserve will safeguard roughly 200 whales living year-round in an 800-square-kilometer stretch of ocean off the island's western coast — the first protected area in the world designed specifically for this species. Commercial fishing and large ships will be kept out, while local artisanal fishers can keep working the waters they've always known. Scientists have found that these whales pass down distinct cultural traditions across generations, a kind of learning...
2023 C.E.
November 13 Lipoprotein(a) has long been cardiovascular medicine's blind spot — a genetically inherited cholesterol that diet, exercise, and every existing drug leave completely untouched. A single injection of lepodisiran drove Lp(a) to undetectable levels for more than nine months in early human trials, suggesting a once-yearly shot could replace daily medication regimens for the roughly one in five people worldwide carrying elevated levels. The drug silences the liver gene responsible for producing Lp(a). Critically, Phase...
2023 C.E.
November 13 Nature restoration in Europe is moving from passive protection to active repair — a meaningful shift for a continent where more than 80 percent of habitats are in poor condition. The new Nature Restoration Law sets binding targets to heal degraded lands, rewet carbon-storing peatlands, free rivers, and recover pollinator populations. One honest tension remains: rewetting on private farmland is voluntary, and an emergency brake allows agricultural targets to be suspended if food production...
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