SortStack #3460 — 2035-11-29

By year · Order from earliest to most recent.

1. Parisians storm the Bastille fortress, igniting the French Revolution 1789

   The dreaded fortress held just seven prisoners that day — including two men deemed insane. Its demolition stones were sold as souvenirs.

2. The Suez Canal opens, linking the Mediterranean and Red Seas 1869

   The canal cut the sea voyage from Europe to India by roughly 7,000 km, ending the age of sailing around the entire African continent.

3. 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.

4. The Channel Tunnel opens between England and France 1994

   Its undersea section is the longest of any tunnel in the world. British and French digging crews met beneath the seabed and shook hands through the breakthrough hole.

5. 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.

6. The World Health Organization declares COVID a global pandemic 2020

   Within weeks, roughly half of humanity was living under some form of lockdown — the largest coordinated shutdown of public life in history.

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