Decide on the topic of your timeline. This could relate to a person, a geographical area, inventions or important discoveries. Some ideas for a timeline are: a history of medicine, American presidents or ancient Greece.
Research the information relating to your timeline's topic. Relevant data can be found in your local library, in historical books and from websites. Make a note for each piece of information, write down the date, the source of the information and the event. Number each bit of information, so that it is in chronological order, staring with the earliest date first.
Calculate the period of time that your timeline covers. For example, if you are making an ancient Greece timeline, you might want to start it at 2900 BC, when the bronze age began, and end it around 440 AD, when Greece was overrun by the Slavic peoples.
Calculate the number of segments you wish to include in your timeline. This depends on your topic: a Coldwar timeline covers six decades, so you may want to mark a segment for every 10 years of your timeline.
Draw a horizontal line onto the paper. Divide the timeline into the appropriate segments, using the ruler to achieve equal spacing.
Insert your historical information into the appropriate segments on the timeline. Either write directly onto the paper, or make a key with a corresponding piece of paper to explain the events in further detail.