timeline datatype

i have a big list of events (from little yearly diary planners). the fields are pretty much: date, what is it, is this an ending date, a beginning date or just a point? (ex- [3/15/93, stopped smoking], [12/19/00, flew to paris], [1/6/00, returned from paris], [4/12/91, hernioplasty])

i was hoping, since they are all in excel, that i could just snort them into ms-project and that i could "see" my life on a timeline (bars are drawn for time periods, and points drawn for events. obviously many nifty ways to use color coding). the more i think about it, the more interesting i suspect it might be. there could be long gaps of "nothing" in my history to which i am currently oblivious. what did i do then? periods in my life which have contributed to my self-identity (which i consider important or take pride in) might be shown to be much shorter than other periods just as important.

but- i could not get ms-project to do this. i suspected some software would be out there which could render visible timelines from text data, but i could find nothing.

i imagine this being so useful, that it must already be a datatype. yahoo lets people import events, share calendars, and overlay different calendar data (on the 2D calendar interface) taking care of nested periods and overlapping periods. but i want it rendered on a 1D timeline with automatic scaling. isnt this useful and interesting? calendars are not at all better than a laundry list of dates when you're talking about digesting large time periods.

if this isnt gelling- see link.