Referat 20 Th Century

The twentieth century saw a remarkable shift in the way that vast numbers of people lived, as a result of technological, medical, social, ideological, and political innovations. Terms like ideology, world war, genocide, and nuclear war entered common usage and became an influence on the lives of everyday people.

War reached an unprecedented scale and level of sophistication; in the Second World War (1939-1945) alone, approximately 57 million people died, mainly due to massive improvements in weaponry. The trends of mechanization of goods and services and networks of global communication, which were begun in the 19th century, continued at an ever-increasing pace in the 20th. In spite of the terror and chaos, the 20th century saw many attempts at world peace. As the 35th President of the United States John F. Kennedy said: What kind of peace do we seek? I am talking about a genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living. Not merely peace in our time, but peace in all time.

Our problems are man-made, therefore they can be solved by man. For in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, we all breathe the same air, we all cherish our childrens future, and we are all mortal.

Virtually every aspect of life in virtually every human society changed in some fundamental way or another during the twentieth century and for the first time, any individual could influence the course of history no matter their background. Arguably, the 20th century re-shaped the face of the planet in more ways than any previous century.

Maternal death rates Battles Scientific discoveries such as relativity and quantum physics radically changed the worldview of scientists, causing them to realize that the universe was much more complex than they had previously believed, and dashing the hopes at the end of the preceding century that the last few details of knowledge were about to be filled in.

The 20th century has sometimes been called, both within and outside the United States, the American Century, though this is a controversial term.

For a more coherent overview of the historical events of the century, see The 20th century in review.

Timeline of the Twentieth Century 1900-1909 - Model-T, First Flight, San Francisco Earthquake, Einsteins Theory of Relativity, Boxer Rebellion, First Silent Movie; 1910-1919 - World War I, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, the Titanic, Russian Revolution, Mata Hari, Prohibiton; 1920-1929 - Womens Suffrage, King Tuts Tomb, Mussolini, J. Edgar Hoover, Mein Kampf, Monkey Trial, Charles Lindbergh; 1930-1939 - Great Depression, Mohandas Gandhi, Empire State Building, Amelia Earhardt, Nazis, Monopoly, the Hindenburg; 1940-1949 - World War II, Adolf Hitler, Pearl Harbor, Manhattan Project, Chuck Yeager, Berlin Airlift, Apartheid, Communist China; 1950-1959 - Hydrogen Bomb, McCarthyism, Korean War, Color TV, Polio Vaccine, Mt. ...