SortStack #338 — 2027-05-13

By year · Order from earliest to most recent.

1. Mount Vesuvius erupts and buries the Roman city of Pompeii 79

   The famous 'bodies' of Pompeii are plaster casts: excavators poured plaster into hollows left in the ash where victims' bodies had decayed.

2. Charlemagne is crowned Emperor of the Romans in St. Peter's Basilica 800

   Pope Leo III crowned him on Christmas Day, reportedly taking Charlemagne by surprise — reviving the idea of a Roman emperor in the west after three centuries.

3. Joan of Arc is burned at the stake in Rouen 1431

   She was about nineteen years old. A retrial cleared her name 25 years later, and she was made a saint nearly five centuries after her death.

4. Richard Nixon becomes the first US president to resign 1974

   A month after he left office, his successor Gerald Ford granted him a full pardon — a decision many believe cost Ford the next election.

5. Mark Zuckerberg launches Facebook from his Harvard dorm room 2004

   It launched as 'TheFacebook,' restricted to Harvard students. The general public couldn't join for another two years.

6. Queen Elizabeth II dies after seventy years on the throne 2022

   She appointed her fifteenth prime minister, Liz Truss, just two days before her death — having started with Winston Churchill.

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