SortStack #2872 — 2034-04-20

By year · Order from earliest to most recent.

1. 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.

2. The Taj Mahal is completed in Agra 1653

   Emperor Shah Jahan built it as a tomb for his wife Mumtaz Mahal, employing some 20,000 workers — and was later imprisoned by his own son within sight of it.

3. Alexander Fleming discovers penicillin in a moldy petri dish 1928

   Fleming found the mold after returning from holiday to his messy lab. He later said he hadn't planned to revolutionize medicine — 'but I suppose that was exactly what I did.'

4. 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.

5. Reactor four explodes at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant 1986

   The Soviet Union stayed silent until radiation set off alarms at a Swedish plant over 1,000 km away — workers' shoes triggered the detectors.

6. The Bitcoin network launches with its first block 2009

   Satoshi Nakamoto embedded a newspaper headline about bank bailouts into the very first block — a permanent timestamp and a pointed message.

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