The Chinese and Europeans both invented gunpowder independently.
The Chinese did it first, the Europeans didn't know about the Chinese when they discovered it on their own.

The Chinese invented gunpowder around 1040CE, Marco Polo returned from China around 1295 CE, and gunpowder was first used in 1346 CE at the Battle of Crecy. They could have independently discovered gp but...

Marco Polo may have seen it, but he wouldn't have gotten instructions on how to make it.

For all you older folks that's 1040AD, 1295 AD and 1346 AD. The term CE is not generally accepted anywhere in the world, only by college activists and athesists. Sorry, but we still use the Gregorian calendar.

Aren't you glad we don't use absolute years starting at the big bang or the creation of Adam.

Rather than enumerate I will just note that Jews don't accept JC but find it convenient to use the Gregorian calendar so they use Common Era (or sometimes Christian Era); Jehova's Witnesses use CE/BCE exclusively in their publications.
I offer this quote:

The English phrase "common Era" appears at least as early as 1715 in a book on astronomy, used synonymously with Christian Era and Vulgar Era. A 1759 history book uses common æra in a generic sense, to refer to the common era of the Jews. Common era and vulgar era are used as synonyms in 1770, in a translation of a book originally written in German. The 1797 edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica uses the terms vulgar era and common era synonymously. In 1835, in his book Living Oracles, Alexander Campbell, wrote: "The vulgar Era, or Anno Domini; the fourth year of Jesus Christ, the first of which was but eight days", and also refers to the common era as a synonym for vulgar era with "the fact that our Lord was born on the 4th year before the vulgar era, called Anno Domini, thus making (for example) the 42d year from his birth to correspond with the 38th of the common era..." The Catholic Encyclopedia uses the sentence: "Foremost among these [various eras] is that which is now adopted by all civilized peoples and known as the Christian, Vulgar or Common Era, in the twentieth century of which we are now living." During the 19th century, "Vulgar Era" came to be contrasted with "Christian Era", and "vulgar" came to mean "crudely indecent", thus no longer a synonym for "common".

It is not necessary to apologize, no one has suggested that we use other than the Gregorian calendar - that was just a misapprehension on your part.

To quote the last paragraph of the article you cited:The widespread use of the Gregorian calendar and the use of BC and AD throughout the world came about thanks to the colonization practices of Europe and economic pressures of a world-wide economy led by Europe and the United States. This is gradually changing as more and more academic writers prefer the use of CE rather than AD.

Is Anno Domini(AD) .
Witch language is that ?

Latin

CE is the official terminology over here, but most people say BC or AD. Like anything really, e.g metric is the standard but 90% of people know thier height in feet + inches only


we owe a lot to world war two. jet engine, nuclear stuff, the computer... too many to name

Oh?!