1868 – Nikolai Alexandrovich Romanov is born on May 18th in Alexander Palace, south of Saint Petersburg. He is the eldest child of heir apparent Alexander Alexandrovich Romanov and grandson of Tsar Alexander II.

1873 – Sergei Vasilyevich Rachmaninoff is born in Semyonovo, 140 miles south of Saint Petersburg.

1877 – Rachmaninoff begins playing piano at the age of four.

1881 – Alexander II is assassinated on March 13th on the streets of Saint Petersburg by socialist revolutionaries. Nicholas's father becomes Tsar Alexander III and the 12-year old becomes heir apparent.

1883 – Rachmaninoff is enrolled in the Saint Petersburg Conservatory to study music.

1884 – Nicholas meets Princess Alix of Hesse at a wedding in Saint Petersburg.

1885 – Rachmaninoff transfers to the Moscow Conservatory and lives with his tutor, Nikolai Zverev. He begins composing his own works while a student.

1889 – Rachmaninoff begins living with his relatives the Satins and spends the summers at their country estate Ivanovka, 300 miles southeast of Moscow.

1892 – Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 1 premieres in March and in May he graduates from the Conservatory at age 19, achieving highest honors in both composition and piano. He makes his public debut as a pianist in September with his Prelude in C-sharp minor.

1894 – Nicholas and Princess Alix of Hesse become engaged in April. Alexander III's health rapidly declines and he dies on November 1st at the age of 49. 26-year-old Nicholas becomes Tsar and marries Alix later that month, who is rechristened Alexandra after converting to the Russian Orthodox Church.

1894-1900 – Rachmaninoff struggles with depression and writers' block, and his composition output slows. He begins teaching piano lessons and touring as a performer to support himself.

1897 – Rachmaninoff's Symphony No. 1 has a disastrous premiere. He accepts a job as deputy to the principal conductor of the Moscow Private Russian Opera Company for two seasons.

1901 – Rachmaninoff begins to successfully compose again, finishing one of his most beloved pieces, Piano Concerto No. 2.

1902 – Rachmaninoff marries his first cousin Natalia Satina after a three-year engagement.

1904 – War breaks out between Russia and Japan. Nicholas II and Alexandra welcome their first son, Alexei, who is afflicted with hemophilia his entire life. Rachmaninoff becomes conductor of the Bolshoi Theatre for two seasons.

1905 – Protesters attempting to deliver a petition to the Tsar for better working conditions and universal suffrage are fired on by guards outside the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg. 92 protesters are killed and hundreds wounded. The tragedy becomes known as Bloody Sunday and leads to strikes and protests across Russia for months. The uprising, combined with Russia's embarrassing defeat to the Japanese, forces Nicholas II to issue the October Manifesto, proposing a legislative assembly and an expansion of voting rights.

1906 – The new Russian Constitution comes into effect in May, establishing the first State Duma, which is given the power to approve new laws. Rachmaninoff resigns his conducting post and relocates his family to Dresden, Germany.

1909 – Rachmaninoff tours the United States as a performer for the first time. He returns to Russia with his family the following year.

1912 – Alexei, the heir apparent of Nicholas II, almost dies from an injury. His parents credit his recovery to the efforts of the monk Rasputin. Rachmaninoff travels to Switzerland and Italy with his family, seeking time to recuperate and compose.

1914 – World War I begins. Russia comes to the defense of its ally Serbia, and is drawn into war against both Austria-Hungary and Germany. Nicholas II renames Saint Petersburg to Petrograd, removing the German influence from its name. Rachmaninoff's position as a music teacher at a school qualifies him as a government employee and therefore he does not need to enlist in the army.

1915 – Russian forces retreat from Poland. Nicholas unwisely takes personal command of the army. Military losses became the Tsar's fault and while away at the front, Nicholas leaves his unpopular German-born wife and her confidant Rasputin in control of domestic affairs.

February 1917 – Discontent in Russia with the monarchy, the war, food rationing, and economic malaise erupts into the February Revolution. A provisional government seizes control of Petrograd by the end of the month.

March 1917 – Nicholas II abdicates the throne on March 2nd. He suggests his brother Michael succeed him, but Michael declines the role. This ends three-hundred years of rule by the Romanov family. Nicholas II and his family is placed under house arrest in the Alexander Palace.

August 1917 – Rachmaninoff relocates his family to Crimea, amidst the process of trying to find a way to leave the country. The Romanovs are relocated to Tobolsk in Western Siberia.

November 1917 – The Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, seize power in Petrograd from the unpopular provisional government of the Russian Republic. Having returned to Moscow the previous month, Rachmaninoff keeps his family inside their home as fighting commences.

December 1917 – Rachmaninoff is invited to perform concerts in Scandinavia and he acquires visas for himself and his family to leave Russia. They leave Saint Petersburg on December 22nd and travel by train through Finland, arriving in Stockholm, Sweden on Christmas Eve. An armistice is reached with the Central Powers, removing Russia from World War I.

January 1918 – The Rachmaninoffs relocate to Copenhagen, Denmark. The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic is declared.

April 1918 – Civil War between the Bolsheviks (the Red Army) and anti-Bolshevik forces (the White Army) breaks out the following month. Amid much discussion of their fates, the Romanovs are moved to Yekaterinburg to keep them within the Bolsheviks' sphere of influence.

July 1918 – Soviet authorities in Yekaterinburg, fearing the approaching White Army, decide to execute the former Tsar and his family. The Romanovs are awoken after midnight on July 17th, brought to a basement room of their house, and shot to death. The bodies are then dumped in an abandoned mineshaft and disfigured with sulphuric acid. Alexei and one of his sisters are buried separately from the rest of the family. Two days later, the Bolsheviks announce the death of Nicholas but evade commenting with certainty on the fates of the rest of the Romanov family for years.

November 1918 – Rachmaninoff accepts offers to conduct and perform in the United States, and the family sails from Oslo to New York. The Ottoman Empire, Austria-Hungary and Germany all agree to an armistice with the Allied Powers, ending World War I.

1920 – An unidentified woman is admitted to a mental hospital in Berlin after a suicide attempt. She refuses to identify herself and is called Fraulein Unbekkant ("Miss Unknown").

1922 – Rachmaninoff visits Europe for the first time since emigrating to America four years earlier. Rumors spread that the unknown woman in the German mental hospital is Grand Duchess Anastasia, one of Tsar Nicholas II's daughters. The woman begins going by the name Anna Tchaikovsky. Anna leaves the hospital and begins living with Russian emigrés and other supporters who believe her to be Anastasia.

1926 – Soviet authorities admit that the entire Romanov family was executed in 1918, but media speculation and rumors of Anastasia's escape persist. Relatives of the Grand Duchess hire a private investigator who concludes that Anna Tchaikovsky is actually a polish factory worker named Franziska Schanzkowska who suffered a head injury in 1916. Some still believe Anna to be Anastasia, however, and continue supporting her.

1928 – Gleb Botkin, the son of the Romanovs' doctor who was murdered along with the royal family, writes articles in support of Anna Tchaikovsky and helps arrange for her travel to New York. Rachmaninoff contacts Botkin. Although the composer is not convinced Anna is Anastasia, he offers to help get her into the country, and meets with Anna once after she arrives in February. When Anna is in need of a place to stay later that summer, Rachmaninoff rents her a cottage on Long Island until she could make other arrangements. Anna begins using the last name Anderson to keep a lower profile.

1929 – Rachmaninoff begins summering in France.

1930 – Anderson is committed to a mental hospital in New York and returns to Germany the following year.

1932 – Rachmaninoff buys land on Lake Lucerne in Switzerland to build his Villa Senar home where he hopes to compose more. He spends every summer here until 1939 and completes several new compositions, including Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.

1939 – Rachmaninoff plays his final European concert in August and returns to the United States.

1942 – Due to his failing health, Rachmaninoff and his wife move to Beverly Hills, California in May.

1943 – The Rachmaninoffs become naturalized citizens on February 1st. The pianist plays his final concerto solo on February 12th in Chicago and his final recital on February 17th in Knoxville, Tennessee. On March 28th, he dies at the age of 69.

1956 – Anastasia, a film inspired by Anderson's story, is released, starring Ingrid Bergman (in an Oscar-winning performance), Yul Brynner and Helen Hayes.

1968 – Botkin offers to bring Anderson back to the United States and she joins him in Charlottesville, Virginia. She meets and marries a history professor John Manahan in December. Botkin dies the following year.

1984 – Anderson dies and her body is cremated.

1991 – The Soviet Union collapses. The bodies of Nicholas II, his wife and three of their daughters are found in the mineshaft outside Yekaterinburg. DNA testing confirms the bodies to be those of the royal family.

1994 – DNA testing on tissue of Anderson's preserved from a biopsy does not match that of the Romanovs. Further testing indicates she is most likely Franziska Schanzkowska after all.

1997 – Anastasia, an animated film telling a fantastical version of the Grand Duchess's life, is released.

1998 – The remains of the Romanovs are buried in Peter and Paul Cathedral in Saint Petersburg, the resting place of many of the Russian monarchs since Peter the Great.

2007 – The bodies of Alexei and the fourth Romanov daughter are discovered near the gravesite of the other Romanovs, confirming once and for all that the seven family members were killed together in 1918.