The 20th century: flight, world wars and the digital age

In 1900, few people had electricity, cars or telephones. By 2000, billions used them every day, along with television, aeroplanes, computers and mobile phones.

The century began with powered flight in 1903 and ended with spacecraft exploring the planets. In 1969, humans walked on the Moon.

It was also a century of terrible wars. The First World War, from 1914 to 1918, and the Second World War, from 1939 to 1945, killed tens of millions of people. Afterwards, nations founded the United Nations in 1945 to keep the peace.

For the Arabian Peninsula, it was a century of rebirth. In 1902, King Abdulaziz recovered Riyadh, and on 23 September 1932 he proclaimed the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Oil, discovered in commercial quantities in 1938, funded development, and the Kingdom grew into a modern state with cities, universities and a major role in world energy.

Medicine advanced dramatically. Insulin, penicillin and vaccines against polio and other diseases saved hundreds of millions of lives, and smallpox was eradicated in 1980. Average life expectancy around the world roughly doubled.

From the 1940s, electronic computers grew from room-sized machines into personal computers, and in 1989 Tim Berners-Lee proposed the World Wide Web.