SortStack #555 — 2027-12-16

By year · Order from earliest to most recent.

1. The first ancient Olympic Games are held at Olympia 776 BCE

   The only event was a single sprint of about 190 meters, and the first recorded champion was Coroebus of Elis — a cook.

2. Britain passes the act abolishing slavery across most of its empire 1833

   The government borrowed a colossal sum to compensate slave owners — not the enslaved. The loan was so large it was only fully paid off in 2015.

3. Archduke Franz Ferdinand is assassinated in Sarajevo, triggering the First World War 1914

   The archduke's driver took a wrong turn and stalled directly in front of Gavrilo Princip, handing the assassin a second chance after the morning's bomb attempt failed.

4. Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay become the first to summit Everest 1953

   News of the climb reached London on the morning of Queen Elizabeth II's coronation — billed by the press as a double celebration.

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. 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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