I've created a number of templates useful for writing entries about specific years, decades, and centuries - you can choose them instead of the standard templates when writing an entry. I've also created entries for the years 1631 and 1810 to test the templates. Feel free to add more entries for other years.
I've also decided to differentiate between different types of entries that might show up within a specific year. Events are reserved for, well, specific events that happen at a specific time. News items refer to news articles that were published on the specified date and which can serve as useful adventure fodder (in such cases, you should create a separate entry for the news article and elaborate why the article is relevant to the wiki). Fiction items refer to events that only happened in fiction - alternate history novels, older science fiction stories which have been overtaken by reality, and so forth. In such cases, provide a link to an entry about the novel or story in question.
The Spambot Death Wall
Arcana Wiki - Distilling the Real World for Gaming
Urbis - A World of Cities - an urban fantasy setting of industrial magic
LiveJournal