It's a millennial event! The creator of "The Guinness Book of World Records"--which has sold a whopping 84 million copies--has come up with another winner! This entertaining and useful mix of quirky facts and 40 years' worth of serious scholarship shows just how far humanity has come in the past two millennia. Topic by topic, Norris McWhirter uses an eye-catching and easy-to-follow array of lists, timelines, and colour photos to track the records set in prehistory; at the birth of Christ; at 1000 A.D., at the turn of the first millennium; and all the years in between. Special attention is focused on 20th- century breakthroughs, and the breadth of subjects covered in depth is simply astonishing: clothing; clocks and timekeeping; marriage and relationships; food and drink; mathematics; medicine; war, religion, astronomy, politics; sports of every type; the arts; space travel; the media; the great civilizations; and so much more. From unsung heroes to extraordinary events, Norris McWhirter gives "snapshots" of the world's progress that put flesh on the bare bones of history.