This is my attempt at a cheat-sheet approach to remembering key historical or periods from the Big Bang all the way up to world war 2. I will divide this into several sections :

• History of the Universe
• History of Life
• Pre-Civilisation Human History
• Ancient Civilisations (3500BC-600BC)
• Classical Civilisations (600BC-600AD)
• Medieval Civilisations (600-1500)
• Early Modern Period (1500-1800)
• Modern Period & World Wars I & II (1789-1945)
• Global Civilisation (1945-present)

Online History sources include

• A Short History of the World, HG Wells, 1922
• Encyclopedia of World History, Peter Stearns, 2001
• A short History of the Universe
• PBS Nova History of the Universe
• PBS Deep Space Timeline
• | Wikipedia History of the Universe

• 13.7 Billion Years ago - Big Bang
  • - 10^-32 second - hyper-inflation
  • 10^-32 - 10^-6second - inflation slows, gravity emerges followed by strong , weak and electromagnetic forces. Matter consists of fundamental particles including quarks, electrons, photons, and neutrinos.
  • 10^-6 - 1 second - hadrons (protons and neutrons) form
  • 3-20 minutes - deuteron, helium and lithium nuclei form. 3 times as much hydrogen than helium by mass. Only traces of other nuclei.
  • 300,000 years after big bang - expanding cloud of gas cools enough for electrons to associate with nuclei forming atoms
  • .5 - 1 billion years after big bang - earliest stars and galaxies form
  • 1 - 3 billion years after big bang - larger galaxies with black holes and quasars at their centre form
• 7 - 10 billion years ago - Milky Way galaxy forms
• 4.5-5 billion years ago - Sun and Earth form
• 3.7 billion years ago - first life on Earth
• 1.7 billion years ago - multicellular life on Earth
• ———————
• 3.3 billion years in the future - Milky Way collides with Andromeda
• 6.3 billion years in the future - Sun dies
• 100 trillion years in the future - Stars have all blown up and collapsed into black holes and neutron stars, or have withered into white dwarfs.
• 10³⁷ years in the future - After an epoch of proton decay, the only stellar-like objects remaining are evaporating black holes.
• 10¹⁰⁰ years in the future - Black holes have evaporated. Only fundamental particles remain: photons of colossal wavelength, neutrinos, electrons, and positrons.