SortStack #1178 — 2029-08-30

By year · Order from earliest to most recent.

1. Leonardo da Vinci begins painting the Mona Lisa 1503

   It was a minor celebrity until 1911, when an Italian handyman stole it from the Louvre — the theft, and the two-year hunt, made it the most famous painting on Earth.

2. Martin Luther publishes his Ninety-Five Theses, sparking the Reformation 1517

   Thanks to the new printing press, the theses spread across Germany in about two weeks — arguably history's first viral document.

3. Tokugawa Ieyasu becomes shogun, beginning Japan's Edo period 1603

   The Tokugawa shogunate brought over 250 years of internal peace and isolation — and its capital Edo, later renamed Tokyo, grew into one of the world's largest cities.

4. 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.

5. The Taj Mahal is completed in Agra 1653

   Emperor Shah Jahan built it as a tomb for his wife Mumtaz Mahal, employing some 20,000 workers — and was later imprisoned by his own son within sight of it.

6. The World Health Organization declares COVID a global pandemic 2020

   Within weeks, roughly half of humanity was living under some form of lockdown — the largest coordinated shutdown of public life in history.

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