Subwavelength electromagnetics is a discipline that deals with light-matter interaction at subwavelength scale and innovative technologies that control electromagnetic waves with subwavelength structures. Although the history can be dated back to almost one hundred years ago, the flourish of these researching areas have been no more than 30 years. In this paper, we gave a brief review of the history, current status and future trends of subwavelength electromagnetics. In particular, the milestones related with metamaterials, plasmonics, metasurfaces and photonic crystals are highlighted.