1259 Kings Louis IX of France and Henry III of England agree to the Treaty of Paris, in which Henry renounces his claims to French-controlled territory on continental Europe (including Normandy) in exchange for Louis withdrawing his support for English rebels.
1488 Bartolomeu Dias of Portugal lands in Mossel Bay after rounding the Cape of Good Hope, becoming the first known European to travel so far south.
1492 Christopher Columbus becomes the first European to set foot on the island of Hispaniola, now Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
1500 Vicente Yáñez Pinzón becomes the first European to set foot on Brazil.
1500 Portuguese navigator Pedro Álvares Cabral becomes the first European to sight Brazil.
1513 Juan Ponce de Leon sets foot on Florida, becoming the first European known to do so.
1520 After navigating through the South American strait, three ships under the command of Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan reach the Pacific Ocean, becoming the first Europeans to sail from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific.
1534 Jacques Cartier is the first European to discover the Saint Lawrence River.
1534 European colonization of the Americas: first known exchange between Europeans and natives of the Gulf of St. Lawrence in New Brunswick.
1602 Bartholomew Gosnold becomes the first European to see Cape Cod.
1642 Abel Tasman becomes first European to land in New Zealand.
1661 The first banknotes in Europe are issued by the Swedish bank Stockholms Banco.
1715 King Louis XIV of France dies after a reign of 72 years — the longest of any major European monarch.
1767 Samuel Wallis, an English sea captain, sights Tahiti and is considered the first European to reach the island.
1778 In the Hawaiian Islands, Captain James Cook becomes the first European to visit Maui.
1791 The Constitution of May 3 (the first modern constitution in Europe) is proclaimed by the Sejm of Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.
1814 Opening of the Congress of Vienna, intended to redraw Europe's political map after the defeat of Napoléon the previous spring.
1815 End of the Congress of Vienna: the new European political situation is set.
1816 The Teatro di San Carlo, the oldest working opera house in Europe, is destroyed by fire.
1851 First reported sighting of the Yosemite Valley by Europeans.
1871 Opening of the first rack railway in Europe, the Rigi-Bahnen on Mount Rigi.
1878 Treaty of Berlin: the European powers redraw the map of the Balkans. Serbia, Montenegro and Romania become completely independent of the Ottoman empire.
1906 The Courrières mine disaster, Europe's worst ever, kills 1099 miners in Northern France.
1906 First flight of a fixed-wing aircraft in Europe.
1906 Alberto Santos-Dumont flies an airplane in the first heavier-than-air flight in Europe at Champs de Bagatelle, Paris, France.
1917 World War I: President Woodrow Wilson of the still-neutral United States calls for "peace without victory" in Europe.
1918 U.S. President Woodrow Wilson sails for the World War I peace talks in Versailles, becoming the first US president to travel to Europe while in office.
1933 After successfully crossing the Atlantic Ocean, the Lithuanian research aircraft Lituanica crashes in Europe under mysterious circumstances.
1939 Holocaust: The {{MS|St. Louis}}, a ship carrying 963 Jewish refugees, is denied permission to land in Florida, United States, after already being turned away from Cuba. Forced to return to Europe, more than 200 of its passengers later die in Nazi concentration camps.
1941 World War II: The Axis Powers in Europe establish the Independent State of Croatia from occupied Yugoslavia with Ante Pavelić's Ustaše fascist insurgents in power.
1942 World War II: The first United States forces arrive in Europe landing in Northern Ireland.
1943 World War II: General Dwight Eisenhower is selected to command the allied armies in Europe.
1944 World War II: Operation Carpetbagger, involving the dropping of arms and supplies to resistance fighters in Europe, begins.
1945 World War II: The final skirmish in Europe is fought near Prevalje, Slovenia.
1946 The first in Europe artificial, self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction was initiated within Soviet nuclear reactor F-1.
1947 Marshall Plan: In a speech at Harvard University, United States Secretary of State George Marshall calls for economic aid to war-torn Europe.
1949 The Treaty of London establishes the Council of Europe in Strasbourg as the first European institution working for European integration.
1950 Robert Schuman presents his proposal on the creation of an organized Europe, indispensable to the maintenance of peaceful relations. This proposal, known as the "Schuman declaration", is considered by some people to be the beginning of the creation of what is now the European Union.
1950 Forest fires black out the sun over portions of Canada and New England. A blue moon (in the astronomical sense) is seen as far away as Europe.
1951 The Marshall Plan expires after distributing more than $13.3 billion USD in foreign aid to rebuild Europe.
1959 General Charles de Gaulle, President of France, declares in a speech in Strasbourg his vision for a "Europe, "from the Atlantic to the Urals."
1970 Two passenger jets bound from Europe to New York are simultaneously hijacked by Palestinian terrorist members of PFLP and taken to Dawson's Field in Jordan.
1973 The Bosporus Bridge in Istanbul, Turkey is completed, connecting the continents of Europe and Asia over the Bosporus for the first time.
1974 Oil embargo crisis: Most OPEC nations end a five-month oil embargo against the United States, Europe and Japan.
1977 The 1977 Bucharest Earthquake in southern and eastern Europe kills more than 1,500.
1981 Cold War: In Geneva, representatives from the United States and the Soviet Union begin to negotiate intermediate-range nuclear weapon reductions in Europe (the meetings ended inconclusively on December 17).
1983 The Sri Lankan Civil War begins with the killing of 13 Sri Lanka Army soldiers by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam Terrorist group. In the subsequent riots of Black July, about 1,000 Tamils are slaughtered, some 400,000 Tamils flee to neighbouring Tamil Nadu, India and many find refuge in Europe and Canada.
1985 Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev declares a moratorium on the deployment of middle-range missiles in Europe.
1986 Cold War: U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev meet in Reykjavík, Iceland, in an effort to continue discussions about scaling back their intermediate missile arsenals in Europe.
1988 The Fatih Sultan Mehmet Bridge in Istanbul, Turkey is completed, providing the second connection between the continents of Europe and Asia over the Bosporus.
1998 Nineteen European nations agree to forbid human cloning.
1999 Across Europe, Kurdish rebels take over embassies and hold hostages after Turkey arrests one of their rebel leaders, Abdullah Öcalan.
1999 Legoland California, the only Legoland outside of Europe, opens in Carlsbad, California.
1999 British Aerospace and Marconi Electronic Systems merge to form BAE Systems, Europe's largest defense contractor and the fourth largest aerospace firm in the world.
2003 Europe launches its first voyage to another planet, Mars. The European Space Agency's Mars Express probe launches from the Baikonur space centre in Kazakhstan.
2003 NATO takes over command of the peacekeeping force in Afghanistan, marking its first major operation outside Europe in its 54-year-history.
2004 {{HMS|Scylla|F71}}, a decommissioned Leander class frigate, is sunk as an artificial reef off Cornwall, the first of its kind in Europe.
2006 Prime ministers of several northern European nations participate in a ceremonial "laying of the first stone" at the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Spitsbergen, Norway.
2010 Volcanic ash from the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland leads to the closure of airspace over most of Europe.