13.4 billion years - Universe formed with hydrogen and helium: the basic elements of the sun
12.5 billion years - Formation of Milky Way nearly completed: Heavy elements created
4.58 billion years - Most consistent age for formation of sun
4.54 billion years - Age of Earth
4.4 billion years - Sun stabalizes as a star with only 70% current brightness
3.5 billion years - Earth day is 15 hours long
3.0 billion years - Oldest 'fossil' record of Earth's magnetic field
3.0 billion years - Sun grows in brightness to 80% of current level.
900 million years - Length of day is now 18 hours long.
500 million years - Solar luminosity only 6% less than today.
300 million years - Solar luminosity only 3% less than today.
100 million years -Earth's magnetic field three times stronger than today
780,000 years - End of last magnetic reversal : The Brunhes Isochron.
2,134 BC - Two Chinese astrologers beheaded because they failed to predict a solar eclipse
2,000 BC - Chinese report aurora sightings
1,600 BC - Sun disk and star map created in Germany
1,375 BC - First solar eclipse recorded in Babylon.
1,111 BC - First naked-eye solar flares possibly sighted by Chinese
800 BC - First sunspots sighted by Chinese
763 BC - Solar eclipse mentioned in Old Testament
467 BC - Anaxagoras possibly sees a sunspot.
37 AD - Julius Caesar sends troops to persue an 'aurora' seen in the north.
93 AD - Description of aurora as 'meteors' in Scotland
500 AD - First report of naked-eye sunspot by Chinese
513 AD - Report of naked-eye sunspot by Chinese
786 AD - Report of naked-eye sunspot by Chinese
807 AD - Report of naked-eye sunspot by Chinese
887 AD - Report of naked-eye sunspot by Chinese
925 AD - Report of naked-eye sunspot by Chinese
968 AD - First report of solar corona seen during total solar eclipse
1118 AD - Report of naked-eye sunspot by Chinese
1128 AD - First sketch of sunspot sighted in England
1138 AD - Report of naked-eye sunspot by Chinese
1185 AD - First sighting of solar prominence by Russian observers
1235 AD - North England auroral sighting mentioned in Holinshed's Chronicle
1250 AD - Mention of aurora in Norse chronicle 'Kings Mirror'
1290 AD - Wolf Sunspot minimum and vanishing of aurora
1381 AD - Report of naked-eye sunspot by Chinese
1436 AD - Report of naked-eye sunspot by Chinese
1440 AD - Sporer Sunspot Minimum
1600 AD - William Gilbert describes earth magnetism in 'De Magnete'
1609 AD - Galileo uses telescope to study solar surface and sees sunspots.
1619 AD - Report of naked-eye sunspot by Chinese
1621 AD - Pierre Gassendi first uses the term 'Aurora Borealis'
1624 AD - Report of naked-eye sunspot by Chinese
1638 AD - Report of naked-eye sunspot by Chinese
1645 AD - Maunder Sunspot Minimum starts
1715 AD - Earliest sketch of solar corona
1716 AD - Dramatic aurora seen in England
1722 AD - George Graham discovers that compass needle always in motion.
1726 AD - De Mairan is first to measure auroral heights.
1740 AD - Anders Celcius and Olof Hoiter discover magnetic storms
1770 AD - J. Wilcke discovers that aurora aligned with magnetic field of Earth,
1777 AD - Mairan proposes aurora caused by earth entering Zodiacal light
1833 AD- John Ross proposes aurora are light reflected from polar ice and snow
1848 AD - Auroral 'earth currents' disrupt telegraph lines worldwide
1851 AD - Heinreich Schwabe discovers the 11-year sunspot cycle
1856 AD - Edward Sabine discovers aurora connected to sunspot cycle
1856 AD -Dennison Olmstead concludes that aurora are caused by events external to earth.
1859 AD- Visible solar flare sighted by Carrington and Hodgson.
1860 AD - Elias Loomis maps out the auroral oval zone on earth.
1860 AD - Coronal Mass Ejection first spotted during a total solar eclipse
1867 AD - Anders Angstrom uses spectroscope to study aurora
1872 AD - Great Aurora seen in India, Cuba, Paris..
1879 AD - George Ellis offers first space weather forecast
1881 AD - Prof. De La Rue creates artificial aurora in a vacuum tube.
1882 AD - Henry Draper studies with spectroscope. Reveals line spectrum, not incandescent gas.
1882 AD - Balfour Stewart proposes that upper atmosphere is location for auroral currents.
1885 AD - Sophus Tromhole first to photograph aurora
1889 AD - Veeder discovers that major aurora can reoccur every 27-days
1892 AD - George Ellery Hale invents the spectroheliograph to study solar flares.
18xx AD - Stormer photographs aurora and determines heights of 12,000.
1894 AD - Great Aurora
1898 AD - Kristian Berkelund proposes electrical rays from sun cause aurora
1902 AD - Kennelly and Heavyside propose 'ionosphere' layer
1908 AD- George Ellery Hale detects intense magnetic fields near sunspots
1908 AD - Great Aurora
1909 AD - Birkeland creates a Terella to mimic aurora
1915 AD - Wireless outage in Northern Europe influences World War I
1918 AD - Sydney Chapman describe magnetic field of sun and earth as a system.
1919 AD - Whistlers heard for first time in World War I.
1920 AD - Great Aurora
1921 AD - Major aurora seen world-wide.
1923 AD - Babcock and McLennan identify auroral 'green' light as an oxygen line.
1925 AD - Beginning of studies of short-wave disruptions
1925 AD - Appleton and Barnett detect the ionosphere layer
1926 AD - Great Aurora
1934 AD - Hale publishes detailed study of solar flares and magnetic disturbances
1937 AD - The term 'solar flare' appears for the first time in Washington Post newspaper.
1938 AD - Great Aurora
193x AD - Bartels devises a method for cataloging magnetic storms.
1939 AD - J. Dellenger describes how solar flares cause short-wave radio outages.
1939 AD - Proton aurora discovered.
1940 AD - Easter Day shortwave disruption affects millions of phone calls.
1941 AD - Major shortwave disruptions during World War II activities.
1943 AD - Sunspots hamper radio transmission of Allied invasion of Italy on September 3.
1942 AD - S.E. Forbush detects 'GLE' radiation burst from a solar flare.
1947 AD - World-wide radio blackout. Airlines affected in Ireland
1947 AD - Giovanelli proposes that solar flares related to solar magnetic changes.
1949 AD - Reber detects radio burst before flare is detected by telescopes.
1951 AD - L. Biermann discovers solar wind using comet tails
1953 AD - Dungey proposes that flares caused by opposing magnetic fields on the sun.
1956 AD - P. A. Sweet proposes flares originate in magnetic activity above sunspots.
1957 AD - Waldmeier discovers coronal holes
1957 AD - Hannes Alfven proposes that the solar wind was magnetized.
1957 AD - World-wide radio fadeout lasts several hours on April 16th.
1958 AD - Van Allen Belts discovered by Explorer I satellite.
1958 AD - Severny proposes magnetic shock wave theory of flares.
1958 AD - AD Eugene Parker predicts solar wind should exist
1959 AD - Shortwave blackout over North Atlantic on March 29th.
1959 AD - Mariner 2 spacecraft detects the solar wind
1960 AD - Gold and Hoyle: energy released in a flare previously stored in magnetic field.
1960 AD - Moreton observes flare explosion produces waves in the solar atmosphere.
1961 AD - Magnetopause boundary detected by Explorer 10 spacecraft.
1962 AD - Warwick discovers Polar Cap Absorption related to 10 million-Volt particles.
1963 AD - Eugene Parker calculates how magnetic reconnection might work in a solar flare.
1963 AD - Type IV radio flares are found to be related to proton acceleration.
1963 AD - Furth proposes a new process that leads to solar flares.
1964 AD - Petscheck concludes reconnection easily happens as fast as actual flare events.
1965 AD - AMPTE satellite detects the ring current
1966 AD - Fairfield and Cahill show magnetic activity determined by polarity of solar wind.
1967 AD - Alfven and Carlquist propose 'current disruption' process that act quickly.
1968 AD - OGO-5 satellite detects magnetic activity in the geotail region
1968 AD - Akasofu proposes that 'magnetic substorm' describe auroral changes
1968 AD - Bumba shows flares are common where two sunspot groups are merging.
1968 AD - Axford proposes a polar wind to replenish the plasmasphere
1968 AD - David Rust confirms that explosions occur in magnetic fields of sunspots.
1971 AD - Najita proposes hite light flares caused by bombardment of upper photosphere.
1971 AD - Lin and Hudson propose hard X-ray burst evidence for 100,000 volt electron beams.
1971 AD - Brown proposes flare model where electrical current flow down a magnetic loop.
1971 AD - OSO-7 satellite discovers 'Coronal transients'
1972 AD - August 4 - Apollo 17 major flare. Could have been lethal if astronauts in space.
1974 AD - Altschuler shows coronal magnetic field changes drastically around a flare region.
1989 AD - March 8-13 Major solar flare, X15 - Quebec Electrical Blackout
2001 AD - April 2 - Solar flare X20 - major flare
2003 AD - November 4 - Major X28 flare ends major solar storm episode lasting 15 days
2003 AD - November 11 Solar flare reproduced under laboratory conditions.