What happened on 31 December?

10 events from the Ever-When timeline, ranked by how much they mattered.

1. 1600 British East India Company chartered Royal charter grants English merchants a monopoly on East Indies trade.
2. 1999 Putin's rule of Russia President, then prime minister through Medvedev's term, then president again: recentralised power, Crimea and the invasion of Ukraine.
3. 1840 Industrial Revolution ends Conventional end of Industrial Revolution.
4. 2022 Death of Pope Benedict XVI First papal funeral attended by a reigning successor pope since 1802.
5. 1999 Putin comes to power Yeltsin resigns and names Vladimir Putin acting president, beginning Russia's defining political era of the 21st century.
6. 2020 UK leaves the EU customs union/single market End of UK-EU transition period.
7. 1860 Highland Clearances ends Conventional end of Highland Clearances.
8. 1801 Gauss finds the lost planet Ceres Using only a few weeks of observations and his new method of least squares, the 24-year-old Gauss predicts where the vanished asteroid will reappear — and it does.
9. 1857 Chartism / People's Charter ends Conventional end of Chartism / People's Charter.
10. 1502 Cesare Borgia's massacre at Senigallia Feigning reconciliation with the condottieri who had plotted against him, Cesare seizes them at Senigallia and has them strangled — a stroke Machiavelli, watching as Florence's env