SortStack #954 — 2029-01-18

By year · Order from earliest to most recent.

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. 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.

6. Dolly the sheep becomes the first cloned mammal 1996

   She was cloned from a mammary gland cell, so the scientists named her after Dolly Parton.

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