SortStack #2648 — 2033-09-08

By year · Order from earliest to most recent.

1. Johannes Gutenberg develops his movable-type printing press 1440

   Gutenberg was a goldsmith by trade. Of the roughly 180 Bibles he printed, 49 survive — and he died broke after losing his workshop in a lawsuit.

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. President John F. Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas 1963

   Abraham Zapruder's 26-second home movie of the motorcade became one of the most studied pieces of film ever shot.

4. The Human Genome Project is declared complete 2003

   The 'complete' genome actually covered about 92% — the trickiest gaps weren't fully sequenced until nearly two decades later.

5. NASA's Curiosity rover lands on Mars 2012

   It was lowered to the surface on cables by a hovering rocket-powered 'sky crane' — a landing sequence engineers nicknamed the 'seven minutes of terror.'

6. The container ship Ever Given wedges itself across the Suez Canal 2021

   For six days it blocked an estimated $10 billion of trade per day, while a single excavator digging at its bow became a global meme.

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