SortStack #1080 — 2029-05-24

By year · Order from earliest to most recent.

1. Socrates is condemned to death and drinks hemlock in Athens 399 BCE

   Convicted of corrupting the youth, he refused friends' escape plans. He never wrote anything down — everything we know comes via Plato and others.

2. Hannibal marches his army and war elephants across the Alps 218 BCE

   He set out with around 37 elephants; nearly all died in the crossing or soon after, yet he rampaged through Italy for fifteen years.

3. Galileo points a telescope at the night sky for the first time 1609

   With a telescope magnifying about twenty times, he saw mountains on the Moon and four moons of Jupiter — direct evidence that not everything orbits Earth.

4. India and Pakistan gain independence from Britain 1947

   Independence came at midnight, and the hastily drawn border triggered one of history's largest migrations — some fifteen million people crossed in both directions.

5. Disneyland opens its gates in Anaheim, California 1955

   Opening day was a fiasco insiders called 'Black Sunday': heat melted the fresh asphalt, fountains failed, and thousands entered with counterfeit tickets.

6. Hijacked airliners destroy the Twin Towers in New York 2001

   The attacks grounded all civilian flights over the US for days — the first time in aviation history American skies were essentially emptied.

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