SortStack #1423 — 2030-05-02

By year · Order from earliest to most recent.

1. Humans fly for the first time aboard a Montgolfier hot-air balloon 1783

   The first balloon passengers, weeks earlier, were a sheep, a duck, and a rooster — sent up before King Louis XVI to test whether the air aloft was breathable.

2. Charles Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species 1859

   The entire first print run sold out to booksellers on the first day. Darwin had sat on the theory for some twenty years before a rival's letter forced his hand.

3. The Wall Street Crash wipes out the stock market boom 1929

   The market didn't permanently regain its pre-crash peak until 1954, a quarter of a century later.

4. IBM's Deep Blue defeats world chess champion Garry Kasparov 1997

   Kasparov was reportedly unnerved by one inexplicable move — which some engineers later suggested may have been the result of a software bug.

5. 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.'

6. Nations adopt the Paris Agreement on climate change 2015

   Negotiators from 196 parties agreed to pursue limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius — the gavel came down to a standing ovation in a Paris suburb.

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