Events are a way for your contract to communicate that something happened on the blockchain to your app front-end, which can be 'listening' for certain events and take action when they happen.

Example:

// declare the eventevent IntegersAdded(uint x, uint y, uint result);

function add(uint _x, uint _y) public returns (uint) {
  uint result = _x + _y;
// fire an event to let the app know the function was called:
emit IntegersAdded(_x, _y, result);
  return result;
}

Your app front-end could then listen for the event. A javascript implementation would look something like:

YourContract.IntegersAdded(function(error, result) {
// do something with result
})

pragma solidity >=0.5.0 <0.6.0;

contract ZombieFactory {

    event NewZombie(uint zombieId, string name, uint dna);

    uint dnaDigits = 16;
    uint dnaModulus = 10 ** dnaDigits;

    struct Zombie {
        string name;
        uint dna;
    }

    Zombie[] public zombies;

    function _createZombie(string memory _name, uint _dna) private {
        uint id = zombies.push(Zombie(_name, _dna)) - 1;
        emit NewZombie(id, _name, _dna);
    }

    function _generateRandomDna(string memory _str) private view returns (uint) {
        uint rand = uint(keccak256(abi.encodePacked(_str)));
        return rand % dnaModulus;
    }

    function createRandomZombie(string memory _name) public {
        uint randDna = _generateRandomDna(_name);
        _createZombie(_name, randDna);
    }

}