| 1841 | UK | Henry Mayhew launches the weekly comic magazine Punch, in London, England, with Mark Lemon as editor and John Leech as chief illustrator. |
| 1852 | UK | British publisher Samuel Orchart Beeton launches the first mass-market women's magazine, the Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine. Its popularity is partly due to the contributions of his wife, Isabella Beeton, on domestic management. |
| 1855 | UK | British publisher Samuel Orchart Beeton launches the Boy's Own Magazine. The first children's magazine to be concerned with entertainment rather than education, its main subjects are adventure stories and sports, and it is very successful. |
| October 1888 | USA | The magazine National Geographic is launched in the USA. |
| July 1913 | USA | Billboard magazine is the first publication in the USA to print a weekly chart of best-selling popular songs. |
| 5 February 1922 | USA | US publishers DeWitt Wallace and his wife Lila Acheson Wallace publish the first issue of the Reader's Digest magazine in Greenwich Village, New York City. |
| 1923 | United Kingdom | The Radio Times, a listeners' guide to radio programmes, is launched in Britain. |
| 3 March 1923 | USA | US editor Henry A Luce and US publisher Briton Hadden found the weekly news magazine Time in New York City. |
| 21 February 1925 | USA | The first issue of the magazine New Yorker, featuring fiction, humor, and cartoons, appears in the USA, edited by Harold Ross. |
| 1933 | USA | The US magazine Good Housekeeping is the first such publication to accept advertisements for sanitary towels. |
| 1949 | France | Paris-Match, an illustrated news magazine, begins publication in France. |
| December 1953 | USA | Hugh Hefner publishes the soft porn magazine Playboy in the USA. Its mixture of serious journalism, erotic fiction, and the nude feature ‘Playmate of the Month’ proves successful. |
| 1962 | USA | Helen Gurley Brown publishes her best-selling Sex and the Single Girl, a celebration of the opportunities outside marriage now available to young women. She will go on to become the editor of Cosmopolitan magazine. |
| February 1962 | UK | The satirical magazine Private Eye is launched in Britain. In April, it has to be saved from financial difficulties by comedian Peter Cook. |
| November 1967 | USA | The first national US rock music magazine, Rolling Stone, is published by Jann Wenner in San Francisco, California. |
