SortStack #1388 — 2030-03-28

By year · Order from earliest to most recent.

1. Qin Shi Huang unifies China and declares himself its first emperor 221 BCE

   He standardized writing, currency, and axle widths — and was buried with an estimated 8,000 life-sized terracotta soldiers, no two faces alike.

2. Charlemagne is crowned Emperor of the Romans in St. Peter's Basilica 800

   Pope Leo III crowned him on Christmas Day, reportedly taking Charlemagne by surprise — reviving the idea of a Roman emperor in the west after three centuries.

3. Alexander Graham Bell patents the telephone 1876

   Bell's lawyer filed at the patent office mere hours before rival Elisha Gray filed a notice for a similar device — one of history's closest patent races.

4. The Empire State Building opens in New York 1931

   It went up in just 410 days, ahead of schedule and under budget — then sat so vacant during the Depression that locals dubbed it the 'Empty State Building.'

5. Reactor four explodes at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant 1986

   The Soviet Union stayed silent until radiation set off alarms at a Swedish plant over 1,000 km away — workers' shoes triggered the detectors.

6. Lehman Brothers collapses, deepening the global financial crisis 2008

   With over $600 billion in assets, it remains the largest bankruptcy filing in American history.

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