SortStack #1801 — 2031-05-15

By year · Order from earliest to most recent.

1. 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.

2. The Suez Canal opens, linking the Mediterranean and Red Seas 1869

   The canal cut the sea voyage from Europe to India by roughly 7,000 km, ending the age of sailing around the entire African continent.

3. The Wright brothers achieve the first powered airplane flight 1903

   The first flight lasted twelve seconds and covered about 37 meters — shorter than the wingspan of a modern jumbo jet.

4. The Beatles make their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show 1964

   An estimated 73 million Americans watched — roughly forty percent of the US population — launching the British Invasion overnight.

5. The Live Aid concerts are broadcast from London and Philadelphia 1985

   Phil Collins played both venues in one day, crossing the Atlantic by Concorde. Queen's twenty-minute set is widely ranked the greatest live performance ever.

6. 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.

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