SortStack #198 — 2026-12-24

By year · Order from earliest to most recent.

1. Julius Caesar is stabbed to death in the Roman Senate 44 BCE

   He was stabbed 23 times on the Ides of March. A comet appeared months later, which Romans took as proof his soul had ascended to the gods.

2. The Aztecs found Tenochtitlan on an island in a lake 1325

   Legend says they built where an eagle perched on a cactus eating a snake — the image now at the center of Mexico's flag. Mexico City stands on the drained lakebed.

3. The Live Aid concerts are broadcast from London and Philadelphia 1985

   Phil Collins played both venues in one day, crossing the Atlantic by Concorde. Queen's twenty-minute set is widely ranked the greatest live performance ever.

4. Larry Page and Sergey Brin found Google 1998

   The company started in Susan Wojcicki's garage, and its name is a misspelling of 'googol' — the number one followed by a hundred zeros.

5. NASA's Curiosity rover lands on Mars 2012

   It was lowered to the surface on cables by a hovering rocket-powered 'sky crane' — a landing sequence engineers nicknamed the 'seven minutes of terror.'

6. The World Health Organization declares COVID a global pandemic 2020

   Within weeks, roughly half of humanity was living under some form of lockdown — the largest coordinated shutdown of public life in history.

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