Chronologies:
Events and Daily Life

General Chronologies | Almanacs | Encyclopedia Yearbooks | Web Sites | Statistics

General Chronologies

This is a selected listing of chronologies located in the Reference collection in the Birnbaum Library. To locate similar titles search the library’s catalog using these subject headings:

• Calendars
• Chronology--Historical
• Chronology --Historical Charts, Diagrams, Etc.
• Chronology --Historical Tables

Or you can search for a chronology of a specific event:

• World War, 1939-1945 – Chronology

Or you can search for a chronology of a group:

• African Americans – History –Chronology

Using the keyword option in the Library’s catalog and typing in “chronology” or “chronological history” or “chronological” will also help you to locate chronologies.

Blackburn, Bonnie and Leofranc Holford-Stevens. The Oxford Companion to the Year. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. (Ref. CE11 .B58 1999)
Arranged in two parts. Part 1 is a day-by-day guide to the year listing events and people commemorated on a day. Part 2 is a study of time-reckoning and calendars.

Chronicle of the Twentieth Century. Mount Kisco, NY: Chronicle Publications, 1987. (Ref. CB425 .C45 1987)
Arranged by year and by month. Includes chronologies, photographs, statistics, and cross-references.

Chronology of World History. 4 vols. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC Clio, 1999. (Ref. D11 .M39 1999)
Contains more than 70,000 entries arranged chronologically by year, month and day. Entries are grouped in four main categories: politics, government and economics; science, technology, and medicine; arts and society; and ideas. Also includes mini chronologies of important people, topics or events. Includes indexes.

Collison, Robert, compiler. Dictionary of Dates. New York: Transatlantic Arts, 1967. (Ref. D11.5 .C6 1967)
Arranged in 2 parts. Part 1, which is arranged alphabetically, includes information on more than 10,000 people and on world events. Part 2 lists anniversaries and events for every day of the year.

The Dictionary of Dates. 2 vols. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1934. (Ref. D9 .K4)
A record of events arranged by country. Volume 1 covers Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australasia. Volume 2 covers the United States, Mexico, Canada, Central and South America, and the Artic and Antarctic regions.

Dictionary of Events: A Handbook of Universal History. New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1907. (Ref. D11 .P97 1936)
Arranged by historical period: Ancient, Mediaeval, and Modern. Includes a chronology of the Great War and indexes.

Facts on File Yearbook. New York: Facts on File, Inc., c 1941- (Ref. D410 .F3)
A weekly distillation of news and current information as reported in more than 70 major newspapers, news magazines, and other sources. Includes chronologies, maps, tables, and photographs.

Frewin, Anthony. The Book of Days. London: Collins, 1979. (Ref. D11.5 .F73 1979)
Arranged chronologically by day. Entries include information on religious feasts, civil commemorations and holidays, historical events and births and deaths.

Gordon, Lois and Alan Gordon. American Chronicle: Year by Year through the Twentieth Century. New Haven, T: Yale University Press, 1999. (Ref. E169.1 .G664 1999)
Each year is discussed in a chapter, arranged in sections including "Facts and Figures" (which includes an economic profile with statistics showing comparable data for each year) and "News," a series of headlines. Subsequent sections give information about radio, TV, movies, and music, listing programs of note, movie openings, box-office stars, top records, and hit songs. Prizewinners in major categories are listed (e.g., Nobel Prizes and Academy Awards). In art and literature, major art exhibitions are listed by city, and best-selling books as well as critics' choices in fiction and nonfiction. Milestones in sports are noted, as are major events in science and technology.

Grun, Bernard. The Timetables of History: A Horizontal Linkage of People and Events. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1963. (Ref. D11 .G78 1975)
Arranged chronologically by year. Indicates events in history and politics, philosophy, visual arts, music, science and technology that occurred concurrently.

The Harper Atlas of World History. New York: HarperCollins, 1992. (Ref. G1030 .G68513 1992)
Uses maps, text, chronologies, and illustrations to present information on trends and events in world history. Includes an index.

Historical Tables, 58 B.C. – A.D. 1978. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1979. (Ref. D11 .S83 1973)
Covers noteworthy events of world history from the advent of the Romans in Gaul and Britain to the election of Pope John Paul II in 1978. Events are arranged chronologically under broad categories.

Langer, William L., compiler and editor. Encyclopedia of World History. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1972. (Ref. D21 .L27 1972)
Arranged chronologically by year. Includes genealogical tables, maps and an index.

Layman, Richard, ed. American Decades. 10 vols. Detroit, MI: Gale Research, c 1994-1995. (Ref. E169.12 .A419)
Each volume begins with a chronology of the decade and the subject chapters concentrate on the important aspects of the period under consideration by providing biographies of prominent individuals, statistics, as well as information on arts, music, literature, government and politics, business, science and technology and more. Includes bibliographies and indexes.

Leonard, Thomas. Day by Day, the Forties. New York: Facts on File, 1977. (Ref. Oversize D427. L4)
Provides coverage of major events of the decade including world developments, U.S. affairs, culture, sports, and science.

Merritt, Jeffrey D. Day by Day, the Fifties. New York: Facts on File, 1979. (Ref. Oversize E813 .M44)
Provides coverage of major events of the decade including world developments, U.S. affairs, culture, sports, and science.

Powell, John, ed. Chronology of European History, 15,000 B.C. to 1997. 3 vols. Pasadena, CA: Salem Press, 1997. (Ref. D11 .C57 1997)
Arranged chronologically, these volumes present over 600 articles that discuss significant events in European history through 1997. Entries include brief bibliographies. Text is supplemented with photographs and maps and there is an index. Volume 3 includes a timeline.

Time Lines on File. New York: Facts on File, 1988. (Ref. CB69.2 .T56 1988)
Includes over 300 illustrated plates that cover recorded history in various fields of activity.

What Happened When: A Noted Researcher’s Almanac of Yesterdays. New York: Ives Washburn, Inc., 1966. (Ref. D11.5 .M57 1966)
Entries are arranged chronologically by days. Each entry includes a selection of facts and information on events that occurred in a given year.

Williams, Neville. Chronology of the Modern World, 1763 to the Present Time. New York: David McKay Co. Inc., 1976. (Ref. D11.5 .W5 1967)
Arranged by year. The left hand pages chronicle the political and military events under calendar dates. The corresponding right hand pages are arranged by subject areas such as law, economics, science, religion, art, music, and literature.

Almanacs

These almanacs provide listings of significant events. Coverage varies according to the library’s holdings.

Millgate, Linda. The Almanac of Dates: Events of the Past for Every Day of the Year. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1977. (Ref. D11.5 .M565)
Arranged by day and then chronologically by year.

American Forecaster Almanac. Ithaca, NY: American Demographic Books, 1994. (Ref. E838 .A52)

Information Please Almanac, Atlas and Yearbook. Boston: Information Please, LLC, (Ref. AY64 .I55) Older editions in Reference Annex.

The New York Times … Almanac. New York: Penguin Group, 1997- (Ref. AY67 .N5N49)

The Time Almanac. Boston, MA: Information Please, LLC, 1998- (Ref. AY64 .I55)

The Universal Almanac. Kansas City, MO: Andrews and McMeel, c 1989- (Ref. AY64 .U72)

The Wall Street Journal Almanac. New York: Ballantine Books, (Ref. AY67 .N5 W35)

Whitaker’s Almanack. London: J. Whitaker, c 1992- (Ref. AY754 .W5)

The World Almanac and Book of Facts. New York: Press Pub, Co., 1923- (Ref. AY67 .N5W7)

Encyclopedia Yearbooks

Encyclopedia Yearbooks provide an overview of important events that occurred in a given year and include a chronology arranged by month and date as well as more in-depth coverage on a variety of topics arranged alphabetically. The library owns three sets of Encyclopedia Yearbooks that maybe found in the Encyclopedia section of the Reference Department. Coverage varies.

The Americana Annual. New York American Corporation.

Britannica Book of the Year. Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.

Collier’s Yearbook. New York: Macmillan Educational Co.

New York Times front page coverage
To locate information about events reported on the front page of The New York Times on a particular day, use the New York Times Archive (1851-1999) database, which is available on the library’s home page from the Complete Database Listing menu.

In the search box type in the date you wish to retrieve and indicate that you want to view those stories that appeared on the front page of the newspaper that day. For example:

Pdn(12/21/1967) and dtype(front_page)

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Web Sites

You may locate websites that include chronologies or timelines by using a search engine such as www.Google.com and typing the keywords timeline or chronology and the subject you are researching. This is a selected listing of types of websites that include timelines or chronologies:

Webchron – The Web Chronology Project     http://campus.northpark.edu/history/Webchron/
This site is a gateway to a series of hyper-linked chronologies on these subjects:
Middle Eastern and West Asia, Mediterranean Basin, India and Southern Asia, Africa South of the Sahara, Western and Central Europe, China and East Asia, Central and South America, Russia and Eastern Europe, North America, The United States, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Technology, and Western Civilization.

African Timelines     http://www.cocc.edu/cagatucci/classes/hum211/timelines/htimelinetoc.htm

A Chronology of Russian History     http://www.departments.bucknell.edu/russian/chrono.html

HyperHistory Online     http://www.hyperhistory.com/online_nz/History?n2/a.html

Chronology of U.S. Historical Documents     http://www.law.ou.edu/hist/

Timeline of the Civil War     http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/cwphtml/t1186.html

100 Years of New York City     http://www.nytimes.com/specials/nyc100/

Living the Legacy: The Women’s Rights Movement, 1848-1998     http://www.legacy98.org

Chronology of the European Union     http://europa.eu.int/abc/obj/chrono/enthehome.htm

Asia Source     http://www.asiasource.org/features/timelines.cfm

The library owns a number of books that describe what it was like to live in various cities or countries or during an historical period. To locate these books you can search the library’s catalog by keyword, or by subject using one of the subject headings below:

• [name of place] – social life and customs
• [name of place] civilization
• [name of place] history

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Statistics

The library’s collection includes a range of statistical compendia that can provide long runs of statistics. Some of these sources are specialized, others contain a range of information.

General

Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System    http://www.federalreserve.gov
The Federal Reserve System serves as the central bank of the United States and consists of the seven-member Board of Governors in Washington DC and twelve reserve banks located in major cities throughout the United States. Use the Economic Research and Data link on the Board of Governors’ website to access current and historical information from various statistical releases which provide information such as foreign exchange rates or interest rates, on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly or annual basis. Statistical information is also available form the 12 regional Federal Reserve Banks. The websites for these twelve banks are accessible from the Board of Governor’s site using the “About the Fed” link. One particularly useful source of statistical information is FRED, the Federal Reserve Economic Data database from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/ which contains over 800 U.S. economic time series.

Statistical Abstract of the United States. Washing, DC: Government Printing Office, c1879- [Most recent edition available as an electronic resource: http://www.census.gov/prod/www/statistical_abstracts-us.html] Also available in print (Ref. HA202.A1)
Presents summary statistics on the social, political, and economic organization of the United States and serves as a guide to other statistical publications and sources.

Kurian, George Thomas. Datapedia of the United States, 1790-2005: America Year by Year. Lanham, MD: Bernan Press, 2001. (Ref. HA202 .K87)
Includes significant historical statistics (1776-2000) in 23 areas such as population, vital statistics and health, labor, wealth, and national income. Some projections to 2010 are included.

Wasserman, Steven R., ed. Statistics Sources…A Subject Guide to Data on Industrial, Business, Social, Educational, Financial, and Other Topics for the United States and Internationally. 2 vols. Detroit, MI: Gale Group, 2002. (Ref. Desk Z7551 .S84)
This is a guide to sources of statistical information that is arranged alphabetically by issuing organization within subject categories.

Stocks, Bonds and Commodities

In addition to providing daily high, low, and close pricing and volume of shares traded for individual stocks, these three titles include daily high, low and close figures for the S & P indexes and the Dow Jones averages as well as the daily volume of shares traded on the relevant exchange:

• Daily Stock Price Record New York Stock Exchange (Ref HG4915 .I233)
• Daily Stock Price Record American Stock Exchange (Ref. HG4915 .I222)
• Daily Stock Price Record NASDAQ (Ref. HG4915 .I234)

CRB Commodity Yearbook. New York: Wiley, c1994- (HC14 .C612)
Includes information on more than 100 domestic and international commodities such as current and historical pricing and trading patterns on a monthly and annual basis.

Economic Report of the President. Washington, DC. [Electronic Resource available via the Library’s catalog and for the years 1996-2001 at: http://w3.access.gpo.gov/eop/] Older paper editions available in Reference Annex: HC106.5 .A272.
This annual publication includes a variety of statistics such as gross domestic product, national income, unemployment rates, consumer price index, bond yields, and interest rates.

Pierce, Phyllis S., ed. The Dow Jones Averages 1885-1990. Homewood, IL: Business One Irwin, 1991. (Ref. Reserve HG4915 .D6433 1991)
Lists daily figures for the various Dow Jones averages.

Standard & Poor’s Corporation. Bond Guide. New York: Standard & Poor’s Corp. (Periodicals)
Presents information on more than 7,700 issues including domestic and foreign corporate bonds and convertible bonds. Includes S & P rating, price range, and yield to maturity.

Standard & Poor’s Corporation. Security Owner’s Stock Guide. New York: Standard & Poor’s Corp. (Periodicals)
Profiles over 7,000 stocks monthly. Includes info on dividends, financial position (assets, liabilities), capitalization, and earnings.

Standard & Poor’s Statistical Service. Security Price Index Record. New York: Standard & Poor’s. (Ref. HG4921 .S685) Latest edition is on Reserve.
Provides bond prices and yields, Dow Jones averages (monthly), stock prices indexes (monthly) NYSE volume (daily and monthly), and yield on the S & P daily stock price indexes (monthly average, annual range, weekly indexes).

Value Line Investment Survey. New York: ValueLine, Inc. (Ref. Reserve HG4501 .V26) Earlier editions are available on microfiche in Periodicals.
The Ratings and Reports section contains one-page reports on 1700 companies. Up to 17 years of data is available for some report elements. Similar information for small-capitalization firms is available in the Value Line Expanded Edition (Ref. Reserve HG4501.V262).

World Stock Exchange Fact Book, Historical Securities Data for the International Investor. Morris Plains, NJ: Electronic Commerce, Inc., 1995. (Ref. Reserve HG4501 .V262)
Arranged by country. Provides monthly stock market statistics and stock index data. Includes a CD.

Web Sites

American Stock Exchange     http://www.amex.com
This site provides some current and historical information on a number of indexes such as the AMEX composite, S & P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average. Follow these links from the AMEX homepage: Equities to Market Summary to Indexes.

NASDAQ Exchange     http://www.nasdaq.com
To retrieve statistics use the Research and Tools link. Click on Tools and then Market Data. In this section of the website you can find various statistics including share volume data.

New York Stock Exchange     http://www.nyse.com
For historical information select the Market Information link, then the data library link, then the NYSE Statistics Archive link. Here you can locate NYSE Daily Share volume as well as other statistics.

Yahoo Finance     http://finance.yahoo.com
Use the Market Summary section on this site to locate current and historical pricing information on daily, weekly, or monthly basis for the Dow Jones Industrial Average, NASDAQ Composite, S7P 500 Index, 10 Year Bond Yield. Current information is available for NYSE Volume and NASDAQ volume.

Election Results

America Votes. Washington, DC: Elections Research Center, Congressional Quarterly, (Ref. JK1967 .A8)
Arranged by state and provides election returns for governors, U.S. senator and U.S. representatives for recent elections. Also includes historical election results.

America at the Polls: A Handbook of American Presidential Election Statistics, 1920 –1965. Scammon, Richard M., compiler and editor. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1965. (Ref JK524 .G6) and America at the Polls 2: A Handbook of American Presidential Statistics, 1968-1984. Scammon, Richard M. and Alice V. McGillivray, compilers and editors. Washington, DC: Elections Research Center, Congressional Quarterly, 1988. (Ref. JK524 .G6 1988)
Presents county-by-county statistics of U.S. Presidential elections. Includes maps.

Weather

Wood, Richard A., editor. The Weather Almanac. Detroit, MI: Gale Research, c1974. (Ref. QC983 .W38)
This is a reference guide to weather, climate, and related issues in the United States and in key cities around the world. Includes an overview of various types of weather, a glossary of terms, maps, and charts. Presents statistics on precipitation and temperature for 100 U.S. cities and 170 cities around the world.

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