Most Significant Year In Human History

When it comes to thinking big, it doesn’t get much bigger than determining the most significant year in human history. The Economist had a poll asking visitors to judge what was the most important year and the winner was 1439, the year Gutenberg invented the printing press.
Now the printing press was very important as it spread ideas and knowledge and increased literacy but it is a big claim to be the most significant as other revolutionary inventions which changed society include the steam engine, irrigation, telephones, cameras, refrigeration, television, computers and the Internet, aeroplanes, electricity, light bulbs, cars, radio and paper.
The big discoveries would be the wheel and fire but it would be impossible to date them but i would throw in a few dates and people which changed everything.

1543 On the Revolutions published by Copernicus which stated the Sun and not the Earth was the centre of the Solar System, upending centuries of religious dogma.
1608 and the invention of the telescope by Hans Lippershey
1796 and the first successful vaccine by Dr Edward Jenner which eradicated diseases such as smallpox and protected humans from diseases.
1848 and Karl Marx published the Communist manifesto which changed the World for half of the Global population
1859 Darwin published On the Origin of Species which explained how humans had got here
1881 and inventor Charles Fritts develops the first Solar Panel which created electricity from light.
1928 which was the year Alexander Fleming developed Penicillin which marks a true turning point in human history as it has saved untold hundreds of millions lives by curing once fatal  infectious diseases
1960 with the first birth control pill which allowed women to have control over pregnancy.

My personal choice for the most important and significant years would be 1969 and the Moon landings which was a culmination of 1944 (first man made rocket flight), 1957 (first made man object in space) 1961 (first human in space) which all came together in 1969 when Neil Armstrong made that 'One giant leap for mankind'.
It was also the year i was born so pretty significant for me personally but i guess you could make a good case for plenty of other things also during the  300,000 years of human history.