The Movie Timeline - be obsessive, be very obsessive
..............T H E M O V I E T I M E L I N E..............
Welcome. Yes, the coding is gleefully retro here - who knew that websites could look "so 1998". But here we focus our geekery elsewhere: on movies, and more specifically, on the chronology of all movies, pasted together in a big list. Keep your submissions coming in! You make this. The list runs on one simple premise: that everything you see in the movies is true - the real mixes with the fictitious, so long as it's reported in a movie somewhere. So do join in - the above left links should help you Submit the event from the film you'd like, although do a Search first - we may well have it already!
NEWS! We have a Twitter account. Follow @MovieTimeline. You'll then be treated to one 'event' a day from the world of movie history - some'll be real world stuff, some'll be the world of fiction.
I recently blogged about my personally handpicked journey through history in 100 movies. Do click and read. It's in 3 parts, so click on the links at the bottom after part 1.
Today in movie history...
1800: 7th January: Millard Fillmore is born. (Locke Township, New York - The Monroe Doctrine)
1901: 7th January: Alfred Packer is paroled. (Colorado - The Legend of Alfred Packer)
1911: Saturday 7th January: Mary Pickford marries Owen Moore. (Chaplin)
1924: Monday 7th January: George Gershwin completes "Rhapsody in Blue". (Rhapsody in Blue)
1931: Wednesday 7th January: A.O. Neville, Australia's Chief Protector of Aborigines, orders the removal of three half-caste girls - Molly, Daisy and Gracie - from their mother's care in Jigalong Camp to the Moore River Native Settlement, 1500 miles away. (Western Australia - Rabbit-Proof Fence)
1945: Sunday 7th January: British Gen. Bernard Montgomery gives a press conference in which he all but claims complete credit for saving the Allied cause in the Battle of the Bulge. (Patton)
1953: Wednesday 7th January: Harry S. Truman tells the world that that the United States has developed a hydrogen bomb. (Washington, D.C. - Truman)
1989: Saturday 7th January: Emperor Hirohito dies. (Solntse)
1994: Friday 7th January: Brian Madison announces that he's retiring and letting Eric Gordon take over the family hotel business. Brian's son Billy decides to go back to school to prove himself worthy of taking over the hotel chain. (Billy Madison)
2013: Monday 7th January: At 2:03 PM, a post titled, CAN U FIGHT GHOSTS??? is posted to Unexplained Forums.net (Unfriended)
2025: Tuesday 7th January: Weyland manufactures the first advanced android prototype model of its kind. He is affectionately called David, a name Sir Peter Weyland had initially reserved for his own human son. (Prometheus)
Here are a few recent films we've put in their chronological place...
Bridesmaids
Tintin
Captain America
Hugo
Moneyball
The Woman In Black
Sherlock Holmes
The King's Speech
Friends With Benefits
...as well as many others.
You can explore the dates on the left-hand bar to see discover...
When Harry Met Sally - that'll be 1977.
The Day The Bubble Burst - it was a Tuesday.
The Day The Earth Stood Still - that was a Wednesday.
Employee of the Month - that month was November 2006.
Hogwarts was founded just 61 years after King Arthur sought the Holy Grail by storming a castle with a large wooden rabbit.
Plus the coincidences, for instance...
- Gangs of New York's Amsterdam Vallon was killing Butcher Bill, down the road Abraham Lincoln was being kidnapped by Bill & Ted...
- Lucky Al Capone - he was sent to Alcatraz by Eliot Ness just in time to miss King Kong rampaging around New York...
- Andy Dufresne was wrongly sentenced to Shawshank a few short months before someone else was framed - Roger Rabbit...
Submit your own historical event from a movie (not TV - yet) by clicking here. It can be a real event (eg. the sinking of the Titanic) or a far-from-real event (eg. Marty McFly attending his parents' school dance) - so long as it's found in a film. It must be a verifiable date - whether a year subtitled at the start ("1941, France..."), a visible clue in the film (character picks up a newspaper), or some historical backdrop (From Hell's Jack The Ripper). If you know what year a movie is set in, let me know.
Thanks for linking to us and please continue to plug us on your journeys round the net. For now please ignore the crappy straightforward appearance - explore the information and trivia, have some fun with it - it really is a very simple idea. But it needs your help!
In the beginning... God created the heavens and the earth (The Bible)
Shortly after the beginning... God subcontracts the fjords to Slartibartfast, a planetary construction engineer from Magrathea (The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy)
26,000,000,000BC Los Angeles (and everywhere else) - The Earth's crust begins to harden (Adaptation)
A long time ago... Luke Skywalker and Han Solo lead a rebellion against the evil empire(Star Wars)
1 zillion BC October 9: Cavemen discover fire, and the joys of eating dinosaur egg (Caveman, 1981)
From this point on the dates get more sensible - begin the timeline...
Some other sites you may like...
The Movie Timeline twitter feed. Do follow.
Movie Banter - our podcast 'n' blog
My site as a stand-up, with gig guides, cv, etc
Ruined Endings (plots and endings of all the best films. And some bad ones.)
And unaffiliated, but friendly sites...