SortStack #1906 — 2031-08-28

By year · Order from earliest to most recent.

1. Temujin unites the Mongol tribes and takes the name Genghis Khan 1206

   His empire became the largest contiguous land empire in history, and genetic studies suggest millions of men today descend from his male line.

2. Tokugawa Ieyasu becomes shogun, beginning Japan's Edo period 1603

   The Tokugawa shogunate brought over 250 years of internal peace and isolation — and its capital Edo, later renamed Tokyo, grew into one of the world's largest cities.

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. Christiaan Barnard performs the first human heart transplant in Cape Town 1967

   The first patient lived eighteen days. Barnard's second transplant patient lived more than eighteen months, proving the operation could work.

5. Nelson Mandela walks free after twenty-seven years in prison 1990

   Four years after his release he was elected South Africa's president — and he later joked that he was 'a pensioner taking up a new job' at age 75.

6. The World Health Organization declares COVID a global pandemic 2020

   Within weeks, roughly half of humanity was living under some form of lockdown — the largest coordinated shutdown of public life in history.

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