SortStack #625 — 2028-02-24

By year · Order from earliest to most recent.

1. 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.

2. Humans fly for the first time aboard a Montgolfier hot-air balloon 1783

   The first balloon passengers, weeks earlier, were a sheep, a duck, and a rooster — sent up before King Louis XVI to test whether the air aloft was breathable.

3. Napoleon Bonaparte is crowned Emperor of the French 1804

   At the ceremony in Notre-Dame, Napoleon took the crown from Pope Pius VII and placed it on his own head — a move planned in advance, not an impulsive snub.

4. Alexander Fleming discovers penicillin in a moldy petri dish 1928

   Fleming found the mold after returning from holiday to his messy lab. He later said he hadn't planned to revolutionize medicine — 'but I suppose that was exactly what I did.'

5. Germany invades Poland, beginning the Second World War 1939

   Britain and France declared war two days later — then months of eerie quiet followed on the Western Front, a period nicknamed the 'Phoney War.'

6. The Berlin Wall falls 1989

   A flustered official misread new travel rules at a press conference, saying they took effect 'immediately.' Crowds swamped the checkpoints within hours.

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