1498 The Portuguese sail up to the coasts of modern Tanzania and Kenya.
1959 The first skull of Australopithecus is discovered by Louis Leakey and his wife Mary Leakey in the Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania.
1962 Tanganyika (now Tanzania) becomes a republic within the Commonwealth, with Julius Nyerere as president.
1964 Tanganyika and Zanzibar merge to form Tanzania.
1965 Tanzania and Guinea sever diplomatic relations with the United Kingdom.
1971 August 25
1972 Uganda announces that there are Tanzanian troops in its territory.
1979 Tanzanian troops take Kampala, the capital of Uganda; Idi Amin flees.
1996 The ''MV Bukoba'' sinks in Tanzanian waters in Lake Victoria, killing nearly 1,000 in one of Africa's worst maritime disasters.
1998 1998 United States embassy bombings: The bombings of the United States embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya kill 224 people and injure over 4,500; they are linked to Osama Bin Laden.
1998 1998 U.S. embassy bombings: The United States military launches cruise missile attacks against alleged Al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan and a suspected chemical plant in Sudan in retaliation for the August 7 bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum is destroyed in the attack.
1998 A court in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan declares accused terrorist Osama bin Laden "a man without a sin" in regard to the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.
2002 The Igandu train disaster in Dodoma Region, Tanzania, kills 281 people in the worst rail accident in African history.