Slow-burning change over time is the nitty gritty of history. Sometimes these changes also only become visible slowly over time, such as the vaguely downward meander of Roman bureaucracy.
And sometimes they dump on your head like a bag of lead, such as 2016.
So tell me, AskHistorians. What years in human history stack up to 2016 in surprise, in devastation, in utter freaking weirdness?
Feel free to cast your scope as narrowly or broadly as possible, from a single country's craziest annus horribilis to globe-spanning apocalypse.
407 and 2016 make nice bookends.
407: Honorius tells Britain to GTFO.
2016: Britain gets the message.
I wonder what kind of surprise there was for people in both Britain and in the Roman Empire to hear a province was being abandoned. That had happened before (Dacia) but never I think in a territory that had been involved in Roman politics for so long, even producing Constantine. I know when Rome was sacked three years later there was a lot of concern from e.g. Jerome. I don't know about the rescript of Honorius though.