SortStack #3068 — 2034-11-02

By year · Order from earliest to most recent.

1. Marco Polo sets out from Venice on his journey to Asia 1271

   He was away 24 years. His famous book was dictated to a romance writer while both were prisoners of war in a Genoese jail.

2. Archduke Franz Ferdinand is assassinated in Sarajevo, triggering the First World War 1914

   The archduke's driver took a wrong turn and stalled directly in front of Gavrilo Princip, handing the assassin a second chance after the morning's bomb attempt failed.

3. Howard Carter discovers the tomb of Tutankhamun 1922

   Peering through a small hole by candlelight, Carter was asked if he could see anything. His reply: 'Yes, wonderful things.'

4. Disneyland opens its gates in Anaheim, California 1955

   Opening day was a fiasco insiders called 'Black Sunday': heat melted the fresh asphalt, fountains failed, and thousands entered with counterfeit tickets.

5. Lehman Brothers collapses, deepening the global financial crisis 2008

   With over $600 billion in assets, it remains the largest bankruptcy filing in American history.

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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