14 Facts About Time And History That'll Totally Blow Your Mind

Cleopatra was born closer to the premiere of Friends than to the construction of the Great Pyramid at Giza.

1. The Ottoman Empire still existed when Oreos were invented.

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The Ottoman Empire was founded around the year 1300, but it lasted all the way until 1922. Oreo cookies were invented by Nabisco 10 years earlier in 1912.

2. Will Smith is now older than James Avery (Uncle Phil) was when Fresh Prince of Bel-Air started.

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Not sure how it's even possible, but Will Smith is now 50 years old. The late James Avery was 45 when Fresh Prince premiered back in 1990. Smith even kinda looks like Avery these days.

3. Also, Ralph Macchio is more than six years older today than Pat Morita was while filming The Karate Kid.

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Noriyuki "Pat" Morita was born in 1932, which made him 51 years old while The Karate Kid was filming (it came out in June 1984, just about a week before his 52nd birthday). Today, Ralph Macchio — who played Daniel — is 57 years old.

4. Cleopatra was born closer in time to the TV premiere of Friends than to the construction of the Great Pyramid at Giza.

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Cleopatra died a little more than 2,000 years ago in 30 BCE, while the Great Pyramid of Giza was completed around 2560 BCE. The pyramid was standing for nearly 2,500 years before she was born!

5. Also, the Great Pyramid was older to the Romans than the Romans are to us.

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The height of the Roman Empire was around 117 CE, but even in its earlier years, it was still further removed from the construction of the Great Pyramid than they are from us.

6. Oh, and the stegosaurus was older to the Tyrannosaurus rex than the T. rex is to us.

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If you thought that whole Cleopatra/Great Pyramid thing was crazy, get this: The T. rex (which lived 85 to 65 million years ago) became a species about 74 MILLION years ~after~ the stegosaurus died out.

7. Anne Frank, Martin Luther King Jr., and Ed Asner were all born in the same year.

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Though they're often thought of as having lived in very different times, Anne Frank, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Ed Asner were all born in 1929. Also born that year: Barbara Walters, Jackie Kennedy Onassis, and Audrey Hepburn.

8. The 10th president of the United States has two grandchildren who are alive today.

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John Tyler had a son, Lyon Tyler, at age 63. Lyon went on to have children late in life as well, including Lyon Tyler Jr. and Harrison Tyler, both of whom are alive today...and are only in their eighties.

9. Oxford University was started before the beginning of the Aztec civilization.

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Although the campus we know today is much newer, Oxford began teaching in some form all the way back in the year 1096. By most accounts, the Aztecs didn't begin their civilization until the beginning of the 13th century.

10. It only took 66 years after the Wright brothers' first flight for us to land on the moon.

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We think of them happening in two very different time periods (likely because of the two World Wars in between), but the Wright brothers' first flight was in 1903, and the Apollo 11 moon landing was less than a century later in 1969.

11. Pluto didn't even orbit ONCE around the sun between the time it was discovered and the time it was declassified as a planet.

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Pluto was discovered thanks to an observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, back in 1930. It was heartbreakingly demoted in 2006. Because of its distance from the sun, Pluto takes 248 Earth-years to orbit the sun just once. That means it didn't even get halfway around during the time it was being called a planet.

12. The events of 9/11 happened closer to the release of the original Nintendo console than to now.

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The Nintendo Entertainment System was released in 1985, about 16 years before 9/11, the 17th anniversary of which passed last year.

13. Everything you see happened in the past, not the present.

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Since it takes about 50 milliseconds for visual information to process in your brain, by the time you actually "see" something, it happened in the past.

14. If you were to count to a million at a rate of one number per second, it would take you about 11.5 days. A billion would take 31 years and 251 days. A TRILLION would take more than 31,709 years.

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That should give you an idea of how much more money $1 trillion is than $1 billion.