SortStack #1647 — 2030-12-12

By year · Order from earliest to most recent.

1. 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.

2. A massive earthquake and tsunami destroy Lisbon 1755

   Striking on All Saints' Day while churches were full, it killed tens of thousands and shook European philosophy — Voltaire used it to attack the idea of a perfect world.

3. Queen Victoria dies after the longest reign in British history to date 1901

   She reigned for 63 years and her children married into so many royal houses she was called 'the grandmother of Europe.'

4. 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.

5. Mark Zuckerberg launches Facebook from his Harvard dorm room 2004

   It launched as 'TheFacebook,' restricted to Harvard students. The general public couldn't join for another two years.

6. NASA's Curiosity rover lands on Mars 2012

   It was lowered to the surface on cables by a hovering rocket-powered 'sky crane' — a landing sequence engineers nicknamed the 'seven minutes of terror.'

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