SortStack #380 — 2027-06-24

By year · Order from earliest to most recent.

1. Rome is founded, according to legend, by Romulus 753 BCE

   Romans dated their entire calendar 'ab urbe condita' — from the founding of the city — and the legend says Romulus killed his twin brother Remus over the city walls.

2. Qin Shi Huang unifies China and declares himself its first emperor 221 BCE

   He standardized writing, currency, and axle widths — and was buried with an estimated 8,000 life-sized terracotta soldiers, no two faces alike.

3. The Black Death arrives in Europe aboard Genoese trading ships 1347

   Within five years it killed somewhere between a third and half of Europe's population — the deadliest pandemic in recorded human history.

4. An armistice ends the fighting of the First World War 1918

   It took effect at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. The last soldier killed, Henry Gunther, died one minute before it began.

5. Lehman Brothers collapses, deepening the global financial crisis 2008

   With over $600 billion in assets, it remains the largest bankruptcy filing in American history.

6. The Philae probe makes the first-ever landing on a comet 2014

   Philae's harpoons failed and it bounced twice — the first bounce lasted nearly two hours in the comet's feeble gravity before it settled in a shadowy crevice.

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