When you are "zoomed out" do you get clumped eras like "Victorian" or "Age of Enlightenment"? Or since those are region-specific, does it just give you the regular spacing and boringness of "centuries"? Perhaps region does need to figure into the timeline so for the European belt you could still go with "Industrial Revolution" or "Edwardian" — that would overlap in areas with "Meiji" for Japan.
It also occurs to me that art had its own "eras" as well. Perhaps banding by geophysical location alone is rather limiting.
You ought to be able to zoom in of course and Wikipedia links to major wars (for example) appear — zoom in further and Wikipedia links to specific battles...
But then there are people as well: scientists, monarchs, explorers, artists....
The whole scale of the thing makes my head hurt. But if done "right" it would be, to me, the perfect interface to Wikipedia.