The Movie Timeline - it's like a timeline, but of movies
..............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...
1807: 21st February: Martin Van Buren marries Hannah Hoes. (Catskill, New York - Amistad)
1848: 21st February: John Quincy Adams suffers a stroke. (Amistad)
1944: Monday 21st February: Hideki Tojo grabs even more power as he takes over as Japanese Army Chief of Staff, a position that gives him direct control of the Japanese military. (Tora! Tora! Tora!)
1952: Thursday 21st February: Mary Ann Boyd is born. (Halifax, Nova Scotia - Argo)
1965: Sunday 21st February: Malcolm X assassinated. (New York - Malcolm X)
1972: Monday 21st February: President Richard Nixon takes a dramatic first step toward normalizing relations with the communist People's Republic of China (PRC) by traveling to Beijing for a week of talks. (Nixon)
1975: Friday 21st February: Rachael Anne is born. (Montreal, Canada - Unknown)
1980: Thursday 21st February: Kenneth Waters comes home with scratches on his face and he is immediately arrested as a suspect in the death of Katherina Bow. (Ayer, Massachusetts - Conviction)
1983: Monday 21st February: Derek Frost is born in the "real world". (Cambry, Illinois - Source Code)
1985: Thursday 21st February: In the deleted alternative ending, Director USS sends a message to Los Angeles Field Office saying that special agents Richard Chance and John Vukovich are subjected to the Anchorage Residency Agency. (Anchorage, Alaska - To Live and Die in LA)
1988: Sunday 21st February: Anne-Claude Tremblay is born. (Illinois - Source Code)
1991: Thursday 21st February: Sun-Sentinel has John Grogan's column about Marley pulling the table. (South Florida - Marley & Me)
1993: Sunday 21st February: IRA Terrorist Frankie Maguire enters the United States under the alias Rory Devaney (Newark International Airport, New Jersey - The Devil's Own)
1994: Monday 21st February: Billy begins 4th grade. (Billy Madison)
2003: Friday 21st February: Oskar planned something for this date. (New York City - Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close)
2007: Wednesday 21st February: Annie-Claude Tremblay's driver's license is issued. (Friarstown, Illinois - Source Code)
2008: Thursday 21st February: Derek Frost is issued his driver's license in the "real world". (Cambry, Illinois - Source Code)
2009: Saturday 21st February: Christine goes to Ganush's grave and puts an envelope in her mouth. Christine's boss, Jim Jacks, leaves her a message saying that he found out Stu Rubin stole Christine's work and was fired. Before Christine and Clay are able to take a train to Clay's parents' cabin in Santa Barbara, where Clay planned to propose to her, Clay reveals that he has the envelope containing the cursed button. Christine falls onto the tracks and is dragged to Hell. (Los Angeles, California - Drag Me To Hell)
2009: Saturday 21st February: Monitored from its command center in Beijing, China, the ESD Moonbase opens as Director David Levinson presides over the ribbon cutting ceremony. Designed with both offensive and defensive weapons capabilities, the Moonbase is the first of several planetary bases designed to monitor our solar system for potential alien threats. (Independence Day: Resurgence)
2010: Sunday 21st February: Alex the lion, Marty the zebra, Gloria the hippo, and Melman the giraffe end up in Madagascar, where they meet lemurs. (Madagascar - Madagascar)
2012: Tuesday 21st February: Annie-Claude Tremblay's driver's license expires. (Illinois - Source Code)
2013: Thursday 21st February: Derek Frost driver's license expires in the "real world". (Cambry, Illinois - Source Code)
2015: Saturday 21st February: A video of a Slender Man sighting is uploaded to the internet (Mission, Oregon - Slender Man)
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...