This article gives you a highlight of important features added in every major Java release. I am sure you will find it interesting.

I am talking about the versions in reverse chronological order (latest first)

Java SE 8

Java 8 was released on 18 March 2014. The code name culture is dropped with Java 8 and so no official code name going forward from Java 8.

New features in Java SE 8

Lambda Expressions
Pipelines and Streams
Date and Time API
Default Methods
Type Annotations
Nashhorn JavaScript Engine
Concurrent Accumulators
Parallel operations
PermGen Error Removed
TLS SNI

Java Version SE 7

Code named Dolphin and released on July 28, 2011.

New features in Java SE 7

Strings in switch Statement
Type Inference for Generic Instance Creation
Multiple Exception Handling
Support for Dynamic Languages
Try with Resources
Java nio Package
Binary Literals, underscore in literals
Diamond Syntax
Automatic null Handling

Java Version SE 6

Code named Mustang and released on December 11, 2006.

New features in Java SE 6

Scripting Language Support
JDBC 4.0 API
Java Compiler API
Pluggable Annotations
Native PKI, Java GSS, Kerberos and LDAP support.
Integrated Web Services.
Lot more enhancements.

J2SE Version 5.0 (One of the major releases of Java)

Code named Tiger and released on September 30, 2004.

New features in J2SE 5.0

Generics
Enhanced for Loop
Autoboxing/Unboxing
Typesafe Enums
Varargs
Static Import
Metadata (Annotations)
Instrumentation

J2SE Version 1.4

Code named Merlin and released on February 6, 2002 (first release under JCP).

New features in J2SE 1.4

XML Processing
Java Print Service
Logging API
Java Web Start
JDBC 3.0 API
Assertions
Preferences API
Chained Exception
IPv6 Support
Regular Expressions
Image I/O API

J2SE Version 1.3

Code named Kestrel and released on May 8, 2000.

New features in J2SE 1.3

Java Sound
Jar Indexing
A huge list of enhancements in almost all the java area.

J2SE Version 1.2

Code named Playground and released on December 8, 1998.

New features in J2SE 1.2

Collections framework.
Java String memory map for constants.
Just In Time (JIT) compiler.
Jar Signer for signing Java ARchive (JAR) files.
Policy Tool for granting access to system resources.
Java Foundation Classes (JFC) which consists of Swing 1.0, Drag and Drop, and Java 2D class libraries.
Java Plug-in
Scrollable result sets, BLOB, CLOB, batch update, user-defined types in JDBC.
Audio support in Applets.

JDK Version 1.1

Released on February 19, 1997

New features in JDK 1.1

JDBC (Java Database Connectivity)
Inner Classes
Java Beans
RMI (Remote Method Invocation)
Reflection (introspection only)

Java Versions, Features and History