Year unknown:
According to tradition, Sarah was brought to the house of Pharaoh (Genesis 12:15).
2018 (1743 BCE):
According to tradition, God made a covenant with Avram in which the Land of Israel was bequeathed to his descendants as their eternal heritage, but only after they experience exile and persecution. "And He said to Avram: 'Know surely that your descendants shall be strangers in a land that is not theirs, and they will be enslaved to them, and they will afflict them four hundred years... and afterwards they shall come out with great wealth.' On that day G-d made a covenant with Avram, saying: 'To your seed I have given these lands, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the River Euphrates'" (Genesis 15:13-18).
2047 (1713 BCE):
According to Seder Olam 5, on the 3rd day following his circumcision at age 99, angels appeared to inform Avraham that a son would be born to Sarah in exactly a year (Genesis 18:10)—and Sarah became the first person in history recorded as laughing.
2048 (1712 BCE):
Birth of Yitzchak (Isaac), son of Avraham and Sarah, the second of the 3 Patriarchs and the only Patriarch to live his entire life in Israel (Genesis 21:1-6, Rosh Ha-Shanah 10b).
Year unknown:
According to tradition, Yitzchak summoned Esav and requested that he prepare a tasty meal for him and receive his blessing (Genesis 27:4).
2204 (1556 BCE):
On the eve of returning to Israel, Yaakov (Jacob) was left alone on the bank of a river, and wrestled with an angel until the break of dawn, at which time he blessed Yaakov and changed his name to Yisrael (Israel) "for you have contended with G-d and with men, and have prevailed'" (Genesis 32:25-29).
2447 (1314 BCE):
Exactly one year before the Exodus, Moshe (Moses) was shepherding the flocks of his father-in-law, Jethro, at the foot of Mount Sinai, when G-d appeared to him in a "thorn bush that burned with fire, but was not consumed" (Exodus 3:2). After arguing for seven days, Moshe finally accepted his mission to return to Egypt to redeem the people of Israel and bring them to Sinai.
2448 (1313 BCE):
The Egyptian first-born were slain in the 10th and final plague (Exodus 12:29), and Pharaoh finally acceded to Moshe’s request to "Let my people go." The next morning, 3 million Jews left in the Exodus from Egypt, in what is known as the "birth" of the Jewish nation, which has been commemorated each year since on this Passover day.
3059 (701 BCE):
The Assyrian army of Senncharib, which had threatened Jerusalem, was destroyed (2 Kings 19:35, 2 Chronicles 32:21).
3388 (372 BCE):
According to tradition, Daniel, a "wise and righteous" man living in exile in Babylonia,was cast into a lions' den by Darius I of Persia for violating a royal edict that no man may pray to any god save the king. Miraculously, the lions did not touch him, and he emerged from the den unscathed (Daniel 6:5-29).
3394 (366 BCE):
On the seventh day of his royal feast, King Achashverosh demanded that Queen Vashti appear unclothed to display her beauty before all the attending guests. When Vashti refused the king had her executed, paving the way for Esther to replace her (Esther 1:21).
3833 (73 C.E):
The defenders of Masada committed suicide, ending the last resistance to the Roman conquest of Israel (Josephus, Wars 7:9).
1556:
Portuguese conversos who had reverted to Judaism were burned in Ancona, Italy by order of the Pope. This atrocity led Dona Gracia of the House of Nasi to spearhead a boycott against the port of Ancona as a countermeasure to the Pope’s repressive policies. This marked the first concerted drive by the free Jewish communities of the world since the beginning of the Diaspora to hit back at their enemies.
1615:
Louis XIII decreed that all Jews must leave the country within one month or be put to death. This decree became the basis for the infamous Code Noir (the Black Code), which forbade Jews from living in French colonies in the New World.
1923:
Birthday of Shlomo Hillel, Baghdad-born Israeli who returned to Iraq as a Mossad agent in 1950 to facilitate the mass airlift of 120,000 Iraqi Jews to Israel, known as Operation Ezra and Nehemiah. Later he served as a member of Knesset, a Minister and the Knesset speaker, as well as the Israeli ambassador to several African countries.
1982:
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) forcibly evacuated the Jewish settlement of Yamit per the terms of the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty, painfully actualizing the concept of "land for peace."