An example of d3.layout.timeline that shows wars the United States has been involved in during its first 100 years (from Wikipedia). Entries are formatted like:
name,start,end,sphere
"Second Sumatran expedition","01-01-1838","12-31-1838","Colonial"
"Mexican–American War","01-01-1846","12-31-1848","Latin America"
"Cayuse War","01-01-1847","12-31-1855","Native"
"Taiping Rebellion","01-01-1850","12-31-1864","Colonial"
"Apache Wars","01-01-1851","12-31-1900","Native"By default, d3.layout.timeline expects dates and start and end as the notation for the location of the start and end data, so you can see there aren’t many settings for the layout.