| DATE | TWAIN EVENTS | DATE | WORLD EVENTS |
| 1835 | Samuel Langhorne Clemens is born Nov. 30 in Florida, Mo. Two months premature, he remains in poor health for the first 10 years of his life | 1835 | Haley's comet passes earth./ Samuel Morse invents a commercially viable telegraph and, later, his code for sending messages. Andrew Jackson is America's President. |
| 1839 | The Clemenses move 25 miles (40 km) to the Mississippi River port of Hannibal, later immortalized as St. Petersburg in Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer | 1837 | The first steamship built for North Atlantic ocean travel, The Great Western, is launched. Three years later, Cunard begins regularly scheduled transatlantic sailings. |
| 1843-1844 | The family moves to the home with a whitewashed fence that will provide inspiration for a famous scene in Tom Sawyer
| 1846 | U.S.-Mexican war, which ends in 1848 with Mexico ceding about half its territory to the U.S.
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| 1848 | A year after his father's death, Clemens leaves school. Despite having just a fifth-grade education, he goes to work at his brother Orion's newspaper | 1848 | The California Gold Rush begins. Few actually strike it rich |
| 1851 | His earliest sketch, A Gallant Fireman, appears in the Saturday Evening Post | 1851 | Isaac Singer patents the sewing machine. |
| 1853 | Clemens leaves Hannibal and works as a printer in St. Louis, New York City and Philadelphia |
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| 1857 | At age 22, he boards a steamboat for New Orleans, intending to make his way to South America. Instead, he remains in the U.S. and becomes an apprentice riverboat pilot | 1859 | Charles Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species. |
| 1861 | River traffic is brought to a halt by the Civil War, and Clemens joins a group of Confederate volunteers for a couple of weeks. He then heads for Nevada to meet up with Orion | 1861 | The Civil War begins. It ends four years later, after more than 610,000 are killed and another 500,000 are wounded. |
| 1862 | Tries prospecting for silver, then becomes a newspaper reporter. |
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| 1863 | After trying out various pen names-including W.Epaminondas Adrastus Perkins-Clemens settles on Mark Twain. It's a river man's term for measuring water two fathoms (12 ft. or 3.7 m) deep. |
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| 1864 | He leaves Nevada and works for a San Francisco newspaper |
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| 1867 | Publishes his first book, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County and Other Sketches. Travels to Europe and the Holy Land, a trip he recalls in The Innocents Abroad | 1867 | The U.S. buys Alaska from Russia for $7.2 million |
| 1870 | Marries Olivia Langdon, the daughter of a wealthy businessman from Elmira, N.Y. | 1869 | Transcontinental railroad completed. 15th Amendment gives former slaves the right to vote. |
| 1872 | Twain's 18 month old son, Langdon, dies of diphtheria; Twain blames himself. | |
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| 1873 | Publishes his first novel, The Gilded Age, attacking the U.S.'s obsession with money. | |
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| 1876 | The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is published to immediate success. It has never gone out of print. | 1876 | Alexander Graham Bell receives a U.S. patent for the telephone. |
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| 1877 | Thomas Edison invents the phonograph, and two years later the light bulb. |
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| 1880 | The New York Daily Graphic publishes the first screened photograph, using the newly developed halftone process. |
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| 1881 | Former slave Booker T. Washington is selected to become principal of the new Tuskegee Institute. |
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| 1883 | Brooklyn Bridge is completed. |
| 1884 | Twain starts his own publishing house. It releases Ulysses S. Grant's memoirs, which become a best seller. |
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| 1885 | Publishes Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which he had been working on for a decade |
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| 1888 | George Eastman perfects the Kodak, a camera for amateurs. |
| 1891 | Nearly broke, the family leaves for a cheaper life in Europe | 1891 | James Naismith invents basketball |
| 1894-1898 | Twain embarks on a global lecture tour that forms the basis of Following the Equator. |
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| 1896 | Daughter Susy, age 24, dies while he is in London. | 1896 | First motion-picture shown on a public screen. |
| 1900 | Begins writing polemical essays and moralistic fiction, attempting to combat the evils of the "damn'd human race." | 1900 | Olds Co. begins mass-producing automobiles in Detroit. |
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| 1901 | Marconi sends the first transatlantic telegraph. |
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| 1903 | Wright brothers make first flight. |
| 1904 | His wife Olivia dies while they are in Florence, Italy | 1904 | US. takes over construction of the Panama Canal. |
| 1909 | Another child, Jean, dies at age 29 |
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| 1910 | Twain dies April 21 at age 74 and is buried in Elmira, N.Y. | 1910 | Haley's comet passes earth |