SortStack #2641 — 2033-09-01

By year · Order from earliest to most recent.

1. An armistice ends the fighting of the First World War 1918

   It took effect at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. The last soldier killed, Henry Gunther, died one minute before it began.

2. The Empire State Building opens in New York 1931

   It went up in just 410 days, ahead of schedule and under budget — then sat so vacant during the Depression that locals dubbed it the 'Empty State Building.'

3. The Second World War ends with the surrender of Japan 1945

   The same year saw the first atomic bombs, the founding of the United Nations, and the deaths of Roosevelt, Hitler, and Mussolini within three weeks of each other.

4. Larry Page and Sergey Brin found Google 1998

   The company started in Susan Wojcicki's garage, and its name is a misspelling of 'googol' — the number one followed by a hundred zeros.

5. Steve Jobs unveils the first iPhone 2007

   The demo units were so buggy that engineers mapped a single 'golden path' of actions for Jobs to follow on stage — deviating risked a crash.

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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