SortStack #2795 — 2034-02-02

By year · Order from earliest to most recent.

1. Christopher Columbus makes landfall in the Americas 1492

   Columbus never set foot on the North American mainland and insisted until his death that he had reached the edge of Asia.

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. Germany invades Poland, beginning the Second World War 1939

   Britain and France declared war two days later — then months of eerie quiet followed on the Western Front, a period nicknamed the 'Phoney War.'

4. The Sydney Opera House officially opens 1973

   It opened ten years late and roughly fourteen times over budget. Architect Jorn Utzon resigned mid-project and never returned to see it finished.

5. The first video is uploaded to YouTube 2005

   'Me at the zoo' is nineteen seconds of co-founder Jawed Karim standing in front of elephants in San Diego, noting they have 'really, really long trunks.'

6. The Philae probe makes the first-ever landing on a comet 2014

   Philae's harpoons failed and it bounced twice — the first bounce lasted nearly two hours in the comet's feeble gravity before it settled in a shadowy crevice.

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