SortStack #1871 — 2031-07-24

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. Mount Vesuvius erupts and buries the Roman city of Pompeii 79

   The famous 'bodies' of Pompeii are plaster casts: excavators poured plaster into hollows left in the ash where victims' bodies had decayed.

3. Magellan's expedition sets sail to circle the globe 1519

   Five ships and about 270 men left Spain; one ship and 18 men returned three years later. Magellan himself was killed in the Philippines along the way.

4. 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.

5. Germany invades Poland, beginning the Second World War 1939

   Britain and France declared war two days later — then months of eerie quiet followed on the Western Front, a period nicknamed the 'Phoney War.'

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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