I've always felt that timelines are the perfect way to set the stage for storytelling. They help me organize history in a visual way and they are an excellent storytelling tool.
I think most of us learned our history in piecemeal fashion: a little bit here, a little bit there. While we all can remember small bits of the lessons, most feel like history is some giant jigsaw puzzle with lots of missing pieces. Without understanding all parts of history, we often forget the things we do learn, leaving even our favorite parts of history a bit hazy in our heads.
To truly, fully understand a time period, an event, a movement, or an important historical figure, you have to put things into context and perspective. That's the beauty of a history timeline.
History is a giant collective tangle of thousands of interwoven stories involving millions of characters, countless chapters, and many, many narrators. A well researched timeline helps put everything into perspective and helps you understand things based on the historical context. I developed this Toledo Timeline with input from Jim Marshall, the former local history manager of the Toledo-Lucas County Public Library, to set the table for Toledo storytelling. This is an excellent link to bookmark so you can refer to it when you want some context on Toledo stories you read here on www.holytoledohistory.com.
I update this on an annual basis. If you see anything I've missed, let me know.