SortStack #2683 — 2033-10-13

By year · Order from earliest to most recent.

1. 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.

2. Emperor Hadrian orders a great wall built across northern Britain 122

   The wall ran about 117 km from coast to coast and took roughly six years to build — soldiers' letters from its forts survive, including a birthday party invitation.

3. Emperor Constantine dedicates Constantinople as the new Roman capital 330

   Built on the old Greek city of Byzantium, it remained an imperial capital for over a thousand years and is now Istanbul, Turkey's largest city.

4. Vikings raid the island monastery of Lindisfarne, shocking Europe 793

   The raid is the conventional start of the Viking Age. The scholar Alcuin wrote that 'never before has such terror appeared in Britain.'

5. Napoleon Bonaparte is crowned Emperor of the French 1804

   At the ceremony in Notre-Dame, Napoleon took the crown from Pope Pius VII and placed it on his own head — a move planned in advance, not an impulsive snub.

6. Humans walk on the Moon for the first time 1969

   The Apollo guidance computer had less processing power than a modern pocket calculator — and alarms from it nearly aborted the landing.

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