• 19th century
    Composers like Lizst, Brahms, and Wagner start to incorporate the triangle (the instrument) into their concertos and symphonies, both as a solo instrument and as a complementary piece.
  • 1960s
    Left- and right-pointed triangles start to appear on tape decks representing "play," "rewind," and "fast forward," the start of a chain that'd lead to their appearance on pretty much anything that can play some kind of media.
  • 1973
    Pink Floyd release The Dark Side of the Moon, an album popular among your friends who like to blow smoke rings and do funky tricks after bong hits; its album art features a dope prism.
  • 1979
    Joy Division release Unknown Pleasures, a popular T-shirt design that happens to double as a post-punk record. It features a bunch of triangles, and while they're more like raggedy waves than true, strong shapes, they're too popular not to include.
  • 1996
    Jay Z, Dame Dash, and Kareem "Biggs" Burke found Roc-A-Fella Records, the label ultimately responsible for dozens of fleshy "diamonds" — they're triangles, come on — thrown into the air by celebrities grasping for an iota of street cred.
  • 2003
    After some time out of the spotlight, triangles make a huge comeback in the video for The White Stripes' "Seven Nation Army," a song you can still enjoy if you pretend Jack White had nothing to do with it.
  • 2006
    Daft Punk play a headlining set at Coachella inside a big-ass pyramid, one flanked by dozens of smaller (but still exciting) triangles. People love it! It pops up again on the cover of their live LP Alive 2007.
  • 2010
    A bunch of witch house bands — remember witch house? No? Me neither, honestly — root their aesthetics in triangles, which we can probably chalk up to their connection to the occult and a collective lack of creativity.
  • 2012
    Kesha's video for "Die Young" inspires a torrent of Illuminati conspiracy theories with its onslaught of triangles and triangle-adjacent shapes.
  • 2013
    Katy Perry releases a new album called Prism, and while it's free of triangle imagery on a track-by-track basis, her ensuing Prismatic World Tour is just as dependent on triangles as your average bridge or wind-resistant skyscraper.