1498 - Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama visits Tanzanian coast.
1506 - Portuguese succeed in controlling most of the East African coast.
1699 - Portuguese ousted from Zanzibar by Omani Arabs.
1884 - German Colonisation Society begins to acquire territory on the mainland.
1886 - Britain and Germany sign an agreement allowing the Germans to set up a sphere of influence over mainland Tanzania, except for a narrow piece of territory along the coast which remained the authority of the sultan of Zanzibar, while Britain enjoys a protectorate over Zanzibar.
1905-06 - Indigenous Maji Maji revolt suppressed by German troops.
1916 - British, Belgian and South African troops occupy most of German East Africa.
1919 - League of Nations gives Britain a mandate over Tanganyika - today's mainland Tanzania.
1929 - Tanganyika African Association founded.
1946 - United Nations converts British mandate over Tanganyika into a trusteeship.
1954 - Julius Nyerere and Oscar Kambona transform the Tanganyika African Association into the Tanganyika African National Union.
1961 - Tanganyika becomes independent with Julius Nyerere as prime minister.
1962 - Tanganyika becomes a republic with Nyerere as president.
1963 - Zanzibar becomes independent.
1964 - Sultanate of Zanzibar overthrown by Afro-Shirazi Party in a violent, left-wing revolution; Tanganyika and Zanzibar merge to become Tanzania, with Nyerere as president and the head of the Zanzibar government and leader of the Afro-Shirazi Party, Abeid Amani Karume, as vice-president.
1967 - Nyerere issues the Arusha Declaration, which calls for egalitarianism, socialism and self-reliance.
1977 - The Tanganyika African National Union and Zanzibar's Afro-Shirazi Party merge to become the Party of the Revolution, which is proclaimed as the only legal party.
1978 - Ugandans temporarily occupy a piece of Tanzanian territory.
1979 - Tanzanian forces invade Uganda, occupying the capital, Kampala, and help to oust President Idi Amin.
1985 - Nyerere retires and is replaced by the president of Zanzibar, Ali Mwinyi.
1992 - Constitution amended to allow multiparty politics.
1995 - Benjamin Mkapa chosen as president in Tanzania's first multiparty election.
1999 October - Julius Nyerere dies.
2000 - Mkapa elected for a second term, winning 72% of the vote.
2001 26 January - Tanzanian police shoot dead two people in Zanzibar while raiding the offices in Zanzibar town of the Civic United Front party. CUP chairman Ibrahim Lipumba charged with unlawful assembly and disturbing the peace.
2001 27-28 January - At least 31 people are killed and another 100 arrested in Zanzibar in protests against the government's banning of opposition rallies calling for fresh elections; Tanzanian government sends in troop reinforcements.
2001 March - The governing party in Tanzania, Chama Cha Mapinduzi, and the main opposition party in Zanzibar, the Civic United Front, agree to form a joint committee to restore calm to the islands, and also to encourage the return of around 2,000 refugees who have fled to Kenya.
2001 April - Tens of thousands of opposition supporters march through the commercial capital, Dar-es-Salaam, in the first major joint demonstration by opposition parties in decades.
2001 22 July - Huge new gold mine, the Bulyanhulu mine, opens near the northern town of Mwanza, making Tanzania Africa's third largest producer of gold.