SortStack #1220 — 2029-10-11

By year · Order from earliest to most recent.

1. The Code of Hammurabi is inscribed on a stone pillar in Babylon 1754 BCE

   Its 282 laws include the famous 'eye for an eye' principle. The original basalt stele survives and stands in the Louvre in Paris.

2. 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.

3. Alexander the Great founds the city of Alexandria in Egypt 331 BCE

   It became home to both the Great Library and the Pharos lighthouse, one of the Seven Wonders. Alexander never saw the finished city — he died eight years later.

4. Constantinople falls to the Ottoman army of Mehmed the Conqueror 1453

   The Ottomans breached walls that had stood for a thousand years using enormous cannons — built by Orban, a Hungarian engineer who had first offered his services to the Byzantines.

5. The Titanic strikes an iceberg and sinks on her maiden voyage 1912

   The lookouts had no binoculars — the key to the locker holding them left the ship with a reassigned officer in Southampton.

6. The first video is uploaded to YouTube 2005

   'Me at the zoo' is nineteen seconds of co-founder Jawed Karim standing in front of elephants in San Diego, noting they have 'really, really long trunks.'

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