Kingdom of Belgium

State · 1830–2026 CE · at its largest around 1885 CE

A constitutional monarchy that broke away from the United Kingdom of the Netherlands in the 1830 revolution, with Leopold I as its first king.

On its lands while it lasted

Oyo Empire (c. 1600–1836 CE): Yoruba state that rose to dominate much of present-day western Nigeria and Benin from the 17th century using cavalry, before collapsing in the 1830s.
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 CE – 1900 CE): German philosopher and classical philologist whose works, including Thus Spoke Zarathustra and Beyond Good and Evil, attacked traditional morality and religion and introduced ideas such as the will to power.
Proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy (1861 CE): The first Italian parliament in Turin proclaimed Victor Emmanuel II King of Italy in March 1861. Unification was completed with Venice in 1866 and Rome in 1870.
Congo Free State (1885–1908 CE): Colony privately ruled by King Leopold II of Belgium, where forced labour for rubber collection caused mass deaths; international outcry led Belgium to annex it in 1908.
Benz Patent-Motorwagen (1886 CE): Karl Benz of Mannheim patented his three-wheeled vehicle powered by a petrol engine in 1886. It is widely regarded as the first practical automobile.
Van Gogh, The Starry Night (1889 CE): From the asylum at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence Vincent van Gogh painted a swirling night sky over a sleeping village and a flame-like cypress. It has become one of the most famous paintings in the world.
Einstein's special relativity (1905 CE): In 1905, while working at the patent office in Bern, Albert Einstein published his theory of special relativity and, in a follow-up paper, E = mc². It transformed ideas of space and time.
World War I (1914–1918 CE): A global war from 1914 to 1918 between the Allies and the Central Powers, fought largely in trenches on Europe's Western and Eastern Fronts. Around 9 million soldiers died, and four empires collapsed.
Battle of Verdun (1916 CE): The longest battle of World War I, fought between the French and German armies around Verdun from February to December 1916, with some 700,000 casualties.
Tim Berners-Lee (born 1955 CE): English computer scientist who invented the World Wide Web at CERN near Geneva in 1989 and in 1994 founded the World Wide Web Consortium at MIT.
Treaty of Rome (1957 CE): Signed in Rome in March 1957 by Belgium, France, West Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, the treaty created the European Economic Community.
Nigerian Civil War (1967–1970 CE): War between Nigeria and the secessionist state of Biafra; a blockade caused a famine, and an estimated 500,000 to two million civilians died.
World Wide Web (1989 CE): Tim Berners-Lee proposed the World Wide Web at CERN near Geneva in 1989 and built the first web server and browser in 1990.
World Wide Web opens to the public (1991 CE): Tim Berners-Lee’s World Wide Web, developed at CERN, was made publicly available on the internet in 1991; CERN placed the software in the public domain in 1993, and the web spread rapidly worldwide.
Arab Spring (2010–2012 CE): A wave of protests and uprisings that spread from Tunisia across the Arab world, toppling rulers in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen and leading to civil wars in Syria and Libya.