SortStack #2109 — 2032-03-18

By year · Order from earliest to most recent.

1. The first ancient Olympic Games are held at Olympia 776 BCE

   The only event was a single sprint of about 190 meters, and the first recorded champion was Coroebus of Elis — a cook.

2. 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.

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. Yuri Gagarin becomes the first human in space 1961

   His single orbit lasted 108 minutes, and he parachuted to the ground separately from his capsule — landing in a field where a farmer and her granddaughter stared in disbelief.

5. The Space Shuttle Columbia makes the first shuttle flight 1981

   It was the first time NASA launched humans on a vehicle that had never flown an uncrewed test — commander John Young had already walked on the Moon.

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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