100 BC-250 AD - Explicit artwork and frescos are openly displayed in Roman homes

100-800 - Sex acts are depicted in the pottery of South America's Moche civilization

180-193 - Cerne Abbas Giant hillfigure with phallus is created in Dorset, England

1195-1255 - Sexual images are incorporated into the stonework of Bourges Cathedral in France

1200 - European prayer books begin featuring marginalia that is farcical and lewd

1527 - I modi is published featuring sonnets by Pietro Aretino and erotic drawings by Giulio Romano

1541 - Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel fresco The Last Judgment is unveiled and condemned as obscene

1559 - Pope Paul IV issues the first "Index of Prohibited Books"

1655 - The erotic novel L'école des Filles is published in France

1748 - Discovery of Pompeii reveals an untouched record of Roman life and sexuality

1749 - The erotic novel Fanny Hill by John Cleland is published in London

1791 - The Marquis de Sade's infamous novel Justine is published

1819 - Artifacts from Pompeii are hidden from public view in Naples' Secret Museum

1839 - The daguerreotype photographic process is introduced to the world

1845 - Bawdy caricatures by Thomas Rowlandson are posthumously collected in Pretty Little Games for Young Ladies and Gentlemen

1857 - The word "pornography" first appears in an English medical dictionary

1857 - Parliament passes the Obscene Publications Act

1865 - British Museum establishes the Secretum to house the erotic collections of George Witt

1880 - Half-tone printing allows photographs to be reproduced in newspapers and magazines for the first time

1887 - Eadweard Muybridge publishes Animal Locomotion including the photographic motion study of nudes

1895 - The Lumiere brothers hold their first public exhibition of projected film in Paris

1930 - Hollywood adopts the Hays Code as a means of self-regulating motion picture decency standards

1951 - Bob Mizer begins publishing Physique Pictorial, a magazine created especially for a gay audience

1965 - Bob Guccione launches the London-based magazine Penthouse

1972 - Gerard Damiano's Deep Throat starring Linda Lovelace is released theatrically

1972 - Artie and Jim Mitchell's Behind the Green Door starring Marilyn Chambers is released theatrically

1973 - Gerard Damiano's The Devil in Miss Jones starring Georgina Spelvin is released theatrically

1974 - Lassie Braun shows his hard-core movie French Blue (Penetration) at the Cannes Film Festival

1976 - VHS video format becomes available to consumers

1983 - Sony introduces the first camcorder

1989 - Porn sites begin to appear on the internet

1993 - CD-ROM release of The Interactive Adventures of Seymore Butts

1995 - Metro Video release of The World Biggest Gang Bang starring Annabel Chong

1997 - First DVD players and discs are made available in the United States

1998 - Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee's homemade sex video is made public