1400s: France's civil war, referred to as the Hundred Years' War, begins in 1407.

1800s: Napoleon I, after victorious battles across Europe, establishing a vast French Empire, is defeated at Waterloo.

2000s: President Jacques Chirac refuses to join the coalition in support of the U.S. pre-emptive military strike on Iraq.

1400s: Anti-gypsy laws are enforced throughout most of Europe, making it a crime for the Roma people to live in such countries as Britain, Holland, and Germany. Spain tries gypsies as heretics.

1800s: Gypsies come to the United States to flee European discrimination, but many are turned back at Ellis Island.

2000s: Norway's largest religious group, the Lutherans, officially apologizes for its role in past discrimination against the gypsies.

1400s: The influence of Italian Renaissance art is imposed on French gothic architecture after Charles VIII returns from his conquest of Naples.

1800s: While King...