Skip To Content
  • Viral badge
  • OMG badge

23 Facts That Will Totally Fuck With Your Perception Of Time

Um, so, Oxford University is older than the Aztecs. THE AZTECS.

1. Cleopatra lived closer in time to the invention of Snapchat than to the construction of the Great Pyramid at Giza.

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

3. Oh, and the Stegosaurus was older to the Tyrannosaurus rex than the T. rex is to us.

4. The oldest living person was born closer to the signing of the US Constitution than to today.

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

6. Oxford University is older than the Aztec civilization.

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.

7. Harvard University was founded before Isaac Newton published his laws of motion and gravity.

While not nearly as old as Oxford, Harvard is still an old university. It was founded in 1636, almost 50 years before Isaac Newton published his Principia Mathematica in 1687, which outlined his laws of motion and law of universal gravitation.

8. We made it to the moon only 66 years after the Wright brothers invented human flight.

The Wright brothers' first flight was in 1903, and the Apollo 11 moon landing was in 1969. There's so much Americans can accomplish when we get in a pissing contest with Russia.

9. Woolly mammoths were still alive when the Great Pyramid at Giza was built.

In fact, the pyramid was roughly 1,000 years old when the mammoths went extinct completely, which wasn't until about 1560 BCE.

10. When the first Star Wars movie came out, France was still executing people by guillotine.

The final execution by guillotine in France occurred in 1977, when a man by the name of Hamida Djandoubi was executed for torturing and killing his girlfriend. That was the same year the first Star Wars movie hit theaters.

11. When the fax machine was invented, people were still traveling the Oregon Trail.

The first major wagon train hit the Oregon Trail in 1841. Just two years later, Scottish inventor Alexander Bain created a preliminary version of the modern fax machine.

12. The Ottoman Empire still existed when Paramount Studios was founded.

The Ottoman Empire was founded around the year 1300, but it lasted all the way until 1922. Paramount was founded 10 years earlier in 1912.

13. Betty White is older than sliced bread.

Speaking of 1922, that's the year Betty White was born. By contrast, the first commercially produced, automatically sliced loaves of bread weren't made until 1928.

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

15. If they made a That '90s Show and waited the same amount of time after the decade as That '70s Show waited after the '70s, the show would be made in 2017.

16. The Eiffel Tower was inaugurated the same year Nintendo was founded.

Most people know that the Eiffel Tower was inaugurated for the 1889 World's Fair. What you might not know is that Nintendo started out as a playing card company, and was founded in the same year.

17. Anne Frank, Martin Luther King Jr., and Barbara Walters were all born in the same year.

Though they're often thought of as having lived in very different times, Anne Frank, Barbara Walters, and MLK Jr. were all born in 1929.

18. Some of the world's whales that are alive today were born before Moby-Dick was written.

Some bowhead whales are believed to have a lifespan of more than 200 years. Since Moby Dick was published in 1851, that means there may be whales out there who are nearly 50 years older than the book.

19. Pluto didn't even get to complete one orbit around the sun between the time it was discovered and the time it was declassified as a planet.

20. 9/11 happened closer to the fall of the Berlin Wall than to today.

21. If the history of the universe were placed on a calendar year, humans would only exist starting around 11:59 p.m. on Dec. 31.

22. More than 6% of all humans who have ever lived are alive today.

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