SortStack #457 — 2027-09-09

By year · Order from earliest to most recent.

1. England defeats the Spanish Armada 1588

   Storms did more damage than English guns — far more Spanish ships wrecked on the coasts of Scotland and Ireland than were sunk in battle.

2. The Taj Mahal is completed in Agra 1653

   Emperor Shah Jahan built it as a tomb for his wife Mumtaz Mahal, employing some 20,000 workers — and was later imprisoned by his own son within sight of it.

3. The Second World War ends with the surrender of Japan 1945

   The same year saw the first atomic bombs, the founding of the United Nations, and the deaths of Roosevelt, Hitler, and Mussolini within three weeks of each other.

4. The Channel Tunnel opens between England and France 1994

   Its undersea section is the longest of any tunnel in the world. British and French digging crews met beneath the seabed and shook hands through the breakthrough hole.

5. 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.

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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