2nd millennium

From top left, clockwise: in 1492, Christopher Columbus reaches the New World, opening the European colonization of the Americas; the American Revolution, one of the late 1700s Enlightenment-inspired Atlantic Revolutions; the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople; the Atomic Bomb from World War II; an alternate source of light, the light bulb; for the first time, a human being sets foot on the Moon in 1969 during the Apollo 11 Moon mission; airplanes enable widespread air travel; Napoleon Bonaparte, in the early 19th century, affects France and Europe with expansionism, modernization, and nationalism; Alexander Graham Bell's telephone; in 1348, the Black Death kills in just two years over 100 million people worldwide, and over half of Europe. (Background: An excerpt from the Gutenberg Bible, the first major book printed in the West using movable type, in the 1450s)

The second millennium of the Anno Domini or Common Era began on January 1, 1001 (MI) and ended on December 31, 2000 (MM), (11th to 20th centuries; in astronomy: JD 2086667.5 – 2451909.5).