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.
February 1 Electric vehicles crossed a quiet but enormous threshold in 2022, making up one in every ten new cars sold worldwide for the first time. Roughly 7.8 million fully electric vehicles found buyers that year, even as overall car sales slipped. China led the charge, with EVs accounting for nearly a fifth of new cars sold there, while Europe wasn't far behind at 11%. Behind the numbers is a deeper shift: battery prices have fallen...
2023 C.E.
February 1 Starting in early March, store employees will make between $14 and $19 an hour. About 340,000 store employees will get a raise because of the move.
2023 C.E.
January 31 The iron and steel industry is a major cause of greenhouse gasses, accounting for 9% of global emissions.
January 31 Alaska's Tongass National Forest is once again off-limits to logging and new road construction, after the USDA restored protections across the 17-million-acre rainforest — a landscape slightly larger than West Virginia that holds nearly half of all carbon stored in U.S. national forests. Tribal Nations in Southeast Alaska, including the Organized Village of Kake, led the years-long push to bring the safeguards back. For communities who have hunted, fished, and lived among the 800-year-old...
2023 C.E.
January 30 Morocco's research foundation has developed cancer diagnostic tests made entirely in Africa—a breakthrough that promises to slash waiting times from weeks or months down to hours, and potentially cut costs in half. The leukemia test, already used on 400 patients, sidesteps the costly delays of importing kits from Europe or North America. Because results no longer need to travel abroad for interpretation, patients can receive treatment sooner when it matters most. This success builds...
2023 C.E.
January 30 Finland's wind power surge represents one of the most striking clean energy pivots in recent European history, with turbines potentially covering more than a quarter of national electricity needs by 2025. The economics are compelling — no other power source can currently be built as quickly or cheaply in Finland — though much of this momentum stems from disrupted European gas supplies, meaning the driver behind this win is itself a hardship. How fast...
2023 C.E.
January 27 Cape Verde, a former Portuguese colony, owes 140 million euros to the Portugal. Under the new agreement, Portugal will redirect debt payments owed to a fund that will help the island nation tackle climate change.
2023 C.E.
January 27 Clean energy investment hit $1.1 trillion globally in 2022, matching every dollar spent on fossil fuels for the first time ever. Electric vehicles led the charge, with spending jumping 54 percent in a single year to $466 billion. Wind, solar, batteries, and heat pumps all set records too — this wasn't a fluke driven by one hot sector, but money moving across the whole clean economy. China poured in nearly half the total, sparking...
2023 C.E.
January 26 mRNA vaccine technology is proving it can tackle diseases that stumped researchers for decades. Moderna's RSV candidate — protecting against the respiratory virus that hospitalizes hundreds of thousands of older adults each winter — posted 83.7% efficacy in a 37,000-person global trial, outpacing protein-based rivals. That speed advantage matters, since mRNA sequences can be redesigned far faster than traditional manufacturing allows. Still, real-world effectiveness won't be clear until post-approval data accumulates, and protecting infants...
2023 C.E.
January 26 Crystalyne Curley's election as speaker of the Navajo Nation Council signals something bigger than a single milestone — it reflects a generation of Indigenous women stepping into the highest levels of formal governance. Curley, 37, described her priorities as rooted in lived experience: motherhood, community, and personal hardship. Her election arrived the same day the Nation's first female vice president and youngest-ever president visited the Council Chamber to celebrate alongside her. Formal structures in...
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