SortStack #514 — 2027-11-05

By price · Order from cheapest to most expensive.

1. A single supermarket tea bag $0.05

   Tea bags were popularized by accident: a New York merchant shipped samples in silk pouches, and customers dunked the whole pouch.

2. One month of Netflix's standard ad-free plan $18

   Netflix began in 1998 mailing DVDs in red envelopes — it shipped its final disc in 2023 after posting over five billion of them.

3. The record bluefin tuna sold at Tokyo's New Year fish auction $3.1M

   The 278 kg fish was bought in 2019 by a sushi chain owner known as the 'Tuna King' — the first auction of the year is partly a publicity ritual.

4. The Mona Lisa's insurance valuation for its world tour in the Sixties $100M

   It was the highest insurance valuation in history at the time — but the Louvre skipped the premium and spent the money on security instead.

5. Constructing the Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest building $1.5B

   It was renamed at the last minute for the president of Abu Dhabi, whose emirate bailed out Dubai during the 2009 debt crisis — it was to be called Burj Dubai.

6. Activision Blizzard, when Microsoft bought it $68.7B

   The biggest gaming acquisition ever took nearly two years to close as regulators on three continents scrutinized it — the UK initially blocked it outright.

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