It is now accepted that the universe began with a Big Bang.  The Big Bang model, implicit in the Hubble expansion observed in the 1930s and firmly established with the discovery of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) in 1964, is now part of the classical canon.  Some astonishing  advances have been made in precision cosmology in recent years: age of the universe to (nearly) 4 significant figures; acceleration of cosmological expansion and gravitational repulsion at large distances; new forms of matter and energy, previously unknown, accounting for 96% of the universe; and firm knowledge of the history of the universe back to very early times.  One theme will be the displacement of speculation by accurate measurements and the emergence of cosmology as a precision observational science.