SortStack #3124 — 2034-12-28

By year · Order from earliest to most recent.

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.
Constantinople falls to the Ottoman army of Mehmed the Conqueror 1453

The Ottomans breached walls that had stood for a thousand years using enormous cannons — built by Orban, a Hungarian engineer who had first offered his services to the Byzantines.
The Great Fire destroys most of the City of London 1666

It consumed over 13,000 houses and St. Paul's Cathedral, yet the official death toll recorded only a handful of victims — almost certainly an undercount.
The Soviet Union launches Sputnik, the first artificial satellite 1957

The beach-ball-sized satellite weighed 83 kg and beeped for three weeks. Anyone with a shortwave radio could hear it pass overhead.
The Live Aid concerts are broadcast from London and Philadelphia 1985

Phil Collins played both venues in one day, crossing the Atlantic by Concorde. Queen's twenty-minute set is widely ranked the greatest live performance ever.
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.