- In 1861, the United Romanian Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia was created.
- At the National History Museum, we saw a special exhibition to mark the centenary of the peace of Bucharest in 1913. Apparently this treaty ended the Second Balkan War. The First Balkan War of 1912-13 involved the Balkan League of Greece, Serbia, Montenegro and Bulgaria expelling the Ottoman Empire from its European territories, while the Second Balkan War of 1913 saw Bulgaria attacking its neighbours Serbia and Greece because it was dissatisfied with the territorial allocation from the previous war.
- In the First World War, Romania fought with the Entente against the Hungarians and Germans. The resultant Romanian state was almost twice the size of what is currently Romania. In the 1930 census of Greater Romania, 757,000 (4.2%) were classified as Jews.
- In the Second World War, most of Transylvania was awarded to Hungary under the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact while the rest of the country became a quasi-German protectorate.
- During the war, in the territories administered by the Romanian dictator Ion Antonescu, over 280,000 Romanian and Ukrainian Jews were exterminated
- Towards the end of the war, the Soviet Union occupied Romania and it became a communist state.
- The revolution that overthrew communism in Romania came later and was bloodier than the other revolutions in Central and Eastern Europe in 1989. The rising occurred in December, some 1100 died, and on Christmas Day the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife were both executed by firing squad.
- In the first six years after the revolution, the political system in Romania was dominated by former communist turned nationalist Ion Iliescu.
- In 2007, Romania joined the European Union (at the same time as Bulgaria).
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