The Timeline
The Timeline
1307 to today. Real history alongside film canon. Filter by either, or read the full chain.
1307
Real historyKnights Templar arrests
Friday, October 13, 1307. Philip IV of France orders the simultaneous arrest of every Templar in his kingdom. The order's vast wealth — gold, relics, archives — is officially seized. Surviving Templars flee or go underground. The legend the films inherit begins here: that some portion of the treasure was carried away, generation by generation, until it surfaced in colonial America.
1722
Real historySilence Dogood letters published
Between April and October of 1722, fourteen letters from a fictitious widow named Silence Dogood appear in the New-England Courant. They are written by a sixteen-year-old apprentice named Benjamin Franklin and slipped under the print-shop door of his older brother James. The letters survive as published editions only; no original manuscript is held anywhere. In film canon, they are the key text for the Ottendorf cipher on the back of the Declaration.
1776
History + filmDeclaration of Independence signed
The Continental Congress adopts the Declaration on July 4, 1776; the signed parchment is engrossed in the weeks after by Pennsylvania State House clerk Timothy Matlack, in iron-gall ink, in Copperplate script. Eventually fifty-six men sign. In film canon, fifty-five signatures are present at the moment the cipher is composed; the back of the parchment carries an Ottendorf cipher and a partial pictographic map. Real document, invented map.
1832
Film canonCharles Carroll passes the cipher
On his deathbed, the last surviving signer Charles Carroll of Carrollton — who in real history died November 14, 1832, aged 95 — passes a single line to a young stable hand named Thomas Gates: "The secret lies with Charlotte." In real history, Carroll's final words are not preserved with that wording. The Gates family inheritance is the franchise's invention.
1865
History + filmLincoln assassinated; Booth's diary
John Wilkes Booth shoots Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre on April 14, 1865; Booth dies twelve days later in a Virginia tobacco barn. A pocket diary is taken off his body. The real diary survives at Ford's Theatre with eighteen pages razored out by an unknown hand. Book of Secrets invents a recovered page that names Thomas Gates as a co-conspirator and contains a Playfair cipher; Thomas Gates and the marginal accusation are pure franchise.
1880
Real historyHMS Resolute desk gifted to Hayes
Queen Victoria presents Rutherford B. Hayes with a desk built from the timbers of HMS Resolute, an Arctic exploration ship abandoned in 1854 and recovered by the American whaler George Henry. The desk has been in the Oval Office almost continuously since. Book of Secrets proposes a twin desk at Buckingham Palace — film canon, no historical basis.
1922-41
Real historyMount Rushmore carved
Gutzon Borglum begins carving in October 1927 (with site preparation back to 1923). Work continues through 1941 under federal funding, ending only with Borglum's death in March 1941 and the war's outbreak. Borglum was a Freemason; that fact is the seed Book of Secrets grows into a hidden Cibola access point behind the granite face.
1974
Film canonYoung Ben hears the Gates legend
The framing prologue of National Treasure (2004): a young Benjamin Franklin Gates listens to his grandfather John Adams Gates tell the family story. Charles Carroll's deathbed line. Charlotte. The Templar hoard. Patrick Gates, in the next room, asking him not to fill the boy's head with the same nonsense he was raised on. Patrick will be wrong. Ben will be right. It will take thirty years.
2004
Film canonNational Treasure (film) released
Jerry Bruckheimer / Jon Turteltaub / Disney. Nicolas Cage as Ben Gates, Justin Bartha as Riley Poole, Diane Kruger as Abigail Chase, Sean Bean as Ian Howe, Harvey Keitel as Sadusky, Christopher Plummer as John Adams Gates. Trevor Rabin scores. Worldwide box office of $347 million on a $100 million budget. The Charlotte chase canonized.
2007
Film canonNational Treasure: Book of Secrets released
Same team, returning cast plus Helen Mirren as Emily Appleton and Ed Harris as Mitch Wilkinson. Bruckheimer / Turteltaub / Disney. Worldwide box office of $459 million on a $130 million budget. The Booth diary chase canonized. Trevor Rabin scores again — the last score recorded at the Todd-AO scoring stage before its closure.
2008-present
Film canonNT3 development limbo begins
Two months after Book of Secrets, Bruckheimer confirms a third film is in development. Eighteen years of script drafts, schedule shuffles, and one Cage denial follow. As of the most recent reporting, NT3 is in active script revision under Chris Bremner with input from Ted Elliot. No green light, no production schedule, no release window. We are patient. We have had to be.
2022
Film canonNational Treasure: Edge of History (Disney+)
A Disney+ series with no Cage involvement and a separate creative team premieres in December 2022; canceled after one season. The official film side remains in development. This site treats Edge of History as out of canon.