When Mr. X (or was it Mr. Y) drove his new, fully-loaded, blue Acura circa 2012, he always monitored the mileage gauge as it rose, from the initial 12 kilometres displayed at the time that he had leased it to significant numbers representing historical years, at least for him.
1066 km: The Norman conquest of England
1346 km: The Black Death
1492 km: The expulsion of the Jews from Spain, the so-called discovery of America, and the beginning of the decimation of the American Natives
1564 km: The birth of Shakespeare
1616 km: The death of Shakespeare
1756 km: The birth of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
1770 km: The birth of Ludwig van Beethoven
1791 km: The death of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
1827 km: The death of Ludwig van Beethoven
1844 km: The birth of Friedrich Nietzsche
1856 km: The birth of Sigmund Freud
1865 km: The assassination of Abraham Lincoln, and the official abolition of slavery in the USA
1879 km: The birth of Albert Einstein
1889 km: The birth of Charlie Chaplin
1894 km: The Dreyfus affair
1900 km: The death of Friedrich Nietzsche
1914 km: The beginning of World War I
1915 km: The Armenian genocide
1918 km: The end of World War I
1939 km: The beginning of World War II, and the death of Sigmund Freud
1942 km: The ratification of the Final Solution
1944 km: The Normandy landings (D-Day)
1945 km: The end of World War II, the beginning of the Nuremberg trials, and the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
1948 km: The Israeli (Jewish) Declaration of Independence
1949 km: The birth of Christopher Hitchens
1955 km: The death of Albert Einstein
1961 km: The Eichmann trial
1963 km: The assassination of John F. Kennedy
1967 km: The Six-Day War
1969 km: The first Moon landing
1973 km: The Yom Kippur War
1977 km: The death of Charlie Chaplin, and Elvis Presley
1980 km: The assassination of John Lennon
1981 km: The assassination of Anwar Sadat
1994 km: The Rwandan genocide
1995 km: The assassination of Yitzhak Rabin
2000 km: The end of the 20th century
2001 km: The start of the 21st century, and the September 11 attacks
2004 km: The Indian Ocean Tsunami
2005 km: Hurricane Katrina
2011 km: Osama bin Laden is captured and killed
2012 km: The present