John Paul I's 33-day papacy

1978NotableContested

Albino Luciani is elected on 26 August 1978 and dies on the night of 28 September. His sudden death made 1978 the year of three popes and spawned conspiracy theories.

Longest chain: The Big Bang → First stars ignite → Supernovae seed heavy elements → The Sun forms → Earth forms → First oceans → First life → Photosynthesis evolves → Great Oxidation Event → Complex cells (eukaryotes) → Multicellular life → First animals → Cambrian Explosion → First vertebrates → Jawed fish → Fish walk onto land → The amniotic egg → The Great Dying → Dinosaurs appear → Asteroid ends the dinosaurs → Early primates → Apes split from monkeys → Human line splits from chimpanzees → Walking upright → First stone tools → Genus Homo appears → Homo erectus → Control of fire → Habitual fire and cooking → Homo sapiens appears → Complex language → Natufian villages → Oldest known bread → Agriculture begins → Irrigation → Uruk and the first cities → Cylinder seals → Writing (cuneiform) → Babylonian mathematics → Babylonian astronomical diaries → Thales and natural philosophy → Trial and death of Socrates → Plato's Academy → Aristotle's Lyceum → Alexander's conquests → Death of Alexander and the Hellenistic kingdoms → Seleucid Empire founded → Parthian Empire founded → Sasanian Empire → Birth of Muhammad → Muhammad's first revelations → The Hijra → Conquest of Mecca → Death of Muhammad and the Rashidun caliphate → Arab conquests → Abbasid Caliphate → Battle of Talas → Paper reaches the Islamic world → House of Wisdom → Al-Khwarizmi and algebra → Fibonacci's Liber Abaci → Bills of exchange → Medici Bank → Double-entry bookkeeping → Muscovy Company → English East India Company → Seven Years' War → Stamp Act → Boston Tea Party → American Revolution → Declaration of Independence → Articles of Confederation ratified → Shays' Rebellion → U.S. Constitution → Louisiana Purchase → Austin's colony in Mexican Texas → Texas Revolution → United States annexes Texas → Mexican-American War → Compromise of 1850 → Kansas-Nebraska Act → Lincoln elected president → Fort Sumter → U.S. Civil War → National Banking Act → Federal Reserve → Great Depression → Nazis take power → Reichskonkordat with Nazi Germany → Pius XII elected → John XXIII elected → Second Vatican Council → John Paul I's 33-day papacy

Contested history

Consensus: John Paul I died suddenly in his bed on the night of 28 September 1978; no autopsy was performed, and the Vatican's initial accounts of how he was found were inaccurate.

Death from natural causes, most likely heart failure or a blood clotEstablished

Investigations by John Cornwell (1989) and medical records published by Stefania Falasca (2017) point to a natural death in a man with known health problems.

He was poisoned to stop reforms at the Vatican BankUnsupported

David Yallop's 1984 book In God's Name proposed this, but no physical or documentary evidence has supported it.