February 1st, 1931: Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin is born in the village of Butka near Sverlovsk (Yekaterinburg) in the Urals.
1955: Graduates from the Ural Polytechnic Institute with a diploma in civil engineering.
1961: Joins the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU).
1976-1985: First Secretary of the Sverdlovsk Obkom (regional committee) of the Communist Party.
1981: Awarded the Order of Lenin.
1985: Head of the construction department of the Central Committee of the CPSU, based in Moscow.
1986: Elected non-voting member of the Politburo.
1990: Resigns from the Communist Party due to slow pace of reforms.
1991:
June: Elected President of the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic-RSFSR (a constituent republic of the USSR).
August: Leads the resistance in Moscow to an attempted hardline coup d'etat.
December: Announces the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The RSFSR changes its name to the Russian Federation.
1993: Orders the shelling of the Russian parliament.
1994: Eccentric behaviour increases. Fails to emerge from plane in Shannon to meet the then Taoiseach, Mr Reynolds. Attempts to conduct a military band in Berlin. Orders unprepared Russian troops into Chechnya, where they are slaughtered.
1996: Re-elected president. Undergoes quintuple heart bypass surgery.
1997: Signs a peace treaty with Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov.
1998: Begins a series of dismissals of prime ministers by firing Viktor Chernomyrdin in March and Sergei Kiriyenko following Russia's economic collapse in August.
1999: Fires Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov. Fires Prime Minister Sergei Stepashin. Appoints Vladimir Putin as Prime Minister and nominates him as his successor. Resigns as president and hands over power to Putin.