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1901 CE

This year falls in the Age of revolutions and empire (1789–1914). Revolutions in France, Haiti and Latin America overturn old regimes, and industry, beginning in Britain, changes work, cities and war. European powers and the United States expand their reach, and by 1914 much of Africa and Asia is under colonial rule.

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Dated to 1901 CE

Country · AustraliaAustralia1901–Australia is a continent country in the southern hemisphere, the only state that covers a whole continent. Six British colonies federated in 1901. It is a federal parliamentary constitutional monarchy.
Ruler · Twentieth century · JapanHirohito1901–1989Emperor of Japan from 1926 to 1989, born in 1901, who reigned through Japan's wars and its rebirth. The military ruled in his name during the invasions of China and the Pacific War. His radio broadcast of surrender on 15 August 1945 was the first time most Japanese had heard his voice.
Era · Twentieth centuryTwentieth century1901–2000

Within fifteen years

Country · CubaCuba1902–Cuba is the largest island in the Caribbean. Spain ruled it for four centuries until the United States intervened in 1898. Fidel Castro's 1959 revolution made it a communist state, which it remains.
Philosopher · Twentieth century · AustriaKarl Popper1902–1994Austrian born British thinker who redrew the line between science and nonsense: a theory is scientific only if it can be proven wrong. His Open Society attacked historicism and totalitarian thought. He lived 1902 to 1994.
Philosopher · Twentieth century · AustriaFriedrich August von Hayek1899–1992Austrian-born British economist and political philosopher. Author of The Road to Serfdom (1944) and "The Use of Knowledge in Society" (1945). Shared the 1974 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with Gunnar Myrdal.
Country · PanamaPanama1903–Panama is the narrow isthmus joining North and South America, home to the Panama Canal. It separated from Colombia in 1903 with American backing. It is a presidential republic.
Philosopher · Twentieth century · FranceJean-Paul Sartre1905–1980French existentialist who taught that existence precedes essence: we are condemned to be free. Being and Nothingness of 1943 built the system; his plays and novels carried it to the public. He refused the Nobel Prize in 1964 and lived 1905 to 1980.
Country · NorwayNorway1905–Norway is a Scandinavian country of fjords and mountains. It was joined to Denmark and then Sweden for centuries before voting for independence in 1905. Oil found in the North Sea made it one of the richest countries in the world.
Philosopher · Twentieth century · GermanyHannah Arendt1906–1975German Jewish thinker who fled the Nazis and became America's great theorist of totalitarianism. The Origins of Totalitarianism of 1951 traced the camps to imperialism and mass society. She lived 1906 to 1975.
Country · BulgariaBulgaria1908–Bulgaria is a Balkan country on the Black Sea, heir to medieval Bulgarian empires. It won autonomy from the Ottoman Empire in 1878 and full independence in 1908. It is a parliamentary republic and a member of the European Union.
Philosopher · Twentieth century · FranceSimone de Beauvoir1908–1986French thinker whose Second Sex of 1949 founded modern feminist philosophy with the line one is not born, but becomes, a woman. Sartre's lifelong partner and his sharpest critic, she wrote ethics, novels, and memoirs. She lived 1908 to 1986.
Philosopher · Twentieth century · United StatesWillard Van Orman Quine1908–2000American logician who dominated analytic philosophy after the war. His Two Dogmas of Empiricism of 1951 attacked the analytic synthetic distinction and made philosophy continuous with science. He taught at Harvard and lived 1908 to 2000.
Ruler · Twentieth century · ChinaMao Zedong1893–1976Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party from 1943 and the central figure of the People's Republic of China, proclaimed in 1949. He held party leadership until his death in 1976. The Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution were carried out under his authority.
Country · South AfricaSouth Africa1910–South Africa is the southernmost country in Africa and its most industrialized. The Union of South Africa formed in 1910; apartheid ruled from 1948 until Nelson Mandela's election in 1994. It is a parliamentary republic.
Philosopher · Twentieth century · ItalyAntonio Gramsci1891–1937Sardinian Marxist, cofounder of the Italian Communist Party, imprisoned by the Fascist regime. The Prison Notebooks develop cultural hegemony and the war of position.
Country · AlbaniaAlbania1912–Albania is a country in the Balkans, on the Adriatic Sea. It declared independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1912. After decades of hardline communist rule under Enver Hoxha, it became a parliamentary republic in the early 1990s.
Ruler · Twentieth century · GermanyAdolf Hitler1889–1945Dictator of Germany from 1933 to 1945, born in 1889, founder of the Nazi regime and starter of World War II in Europe. His government murdered six million Jews in the Holocaust and millions of others. He killed himself in his Berlin bunker on 30 April 1945 as Soviet troops closed in.
Philosopher · Twentieth century · AlgeriaAlbert Camus1913–1960Algerian born French writer who made the absurd, the clash between our hunger for meaning and a silent world, the theme of his work. The Stranger and The Myth of Sisyphus appeared in 1942. Nobel Prize 1957; he died in a car crash in 1960.
Philosopher · Twentieth century · AustriaLudwig Wittgenstein1889–1951Austrian born thinker, heir to a steel fortune he gave away, who wrote two philosophies: the Tractatus of 1921, then the Investigations, published after his death, which undid it. He lived 1889 to 1951, teaching at Cambridge between wars.
Philosopher · Twentieth century · GermanyMartin Heidegger1889–1976German thinker whose Being and Time of 1927 remade philosophy around the question of being. He joined the Nazi Party in 1933 and served as rector of Freiburg, a fact that shadows his towering influence. He lived 1889 to 1976.
Ruler · Twentieth century · ChinaChiang Kai-shek1887–1975Leader of the Chinese Nationalist Party after Sun Yat-sen, and the Nationalist side of the war with Japan and the civil war. His government retreated to Taiwan in December 1949.