100 Documents that Changed the World

100 Documents That Changed the World brings together the most important written agreements, declarations and statements in history.

100 Documents That Changed the World brings together the most important written agreements, declarations and statements in history. The documents included here have changed the course of history by rewriting laws, granting freedoms and laying out constitutions. But as well as official charters and presidential proclamations, there are also the hand-written documents that have gone on to shape the way we think, the scrawled notes that mark breakthroughs in the worlds of science and technology, and the annotated manuscripts that have become literary landmarks.

Documents include: Magna Carta (1215); Shakespeare's First Folio (1623); Machine gun patent (1718); Declaration of independence (1776); First slave trade petition (1783); Constitution of the United States (1787); Inaugural Address of Thomas Jefferson (1801); Louisiana Purchase (1803); Darwin's Evolutionary Tree (1837); Gettysburg Address (1863); First Geneva Convention (1864); Telephone patent (1876); Treaty of Versailles (1919); Japanese Surrender (1945); Martin Luther King, Jr's "I Have A Dream" speech (1963); World Wide Web (1989); Civil Rights Act (1991); Inaugural Address of Barack Obama (2009).