Short answers, pulled from the story.
Historians mark the year 1500 as a rough starting point for the modern era, though exact boundaries remain debated. Some scholars distinguish the early modern period from the later modern period which begins after the 18th century.
The Renaissance began in Italy around 1420 and lasted until about 1630 while Nicolaus Copernicus published De revolutionibus orbium coelestium on the 23rd of February 1543. This publication launched the Scientific Revolution alongside foundational political works by Niccolò Machiavelli written circa 1513.
World War I lasted from July 1914 until the Armistice on the 11th of November 1918 with more than nine million soldiers dying on battlefields. The influenza outbreak killed more people worldwide than actual hostilities did during this global conflict.
World War II began on the 1st of September 1939 when Nazi Germany invaded Poland and ended as history's deadliest war with sixty-two million deaths. About sixty percent of all casualties were civilians who died from disease, starvation, or systematic murder like the Holocaust.
The Cold War dominated politics from 1945 until Soviet Union collapse in 1991 while Western nations formed NATO and Eastern European countries aligned under the Warsaw Pact. Conflicts such as the Korean War, Vietnam War, and Soviet-Afghan War impacted political life throughout these decades.