1. Coca-Cola is only 25 years younger than the country of Italy.
See, the earliest version of Coca-Cola was patented in 1885, and debuted in 1886. Meanwhile, Italy became a unified country in 1861. Before that point, the country had either been a collection of states or part of various empires. Most recently before reunification, parts of Italy had been under the rule of Napoleon's French Empire. The 1861 reunification made Italy a kingdom, and it became a republic in 1946 following WWII. Its current constitution was adopted in 1948.
2. That also means that Vincent van Gogh could've enjoyed a Coke.
Van Gogh died in 1890 at age 37, and many of his most famous paintings were completed in his final two years. So it would've been possible that he could've sipped on a Coke while painting "Starry Night."
3. Speaking of "Starry Night": Nintendo, the company, is as old as the painting.
Nintendo was founded all the way back in 1889! It was originally a playing card company and made various kinds of playing card decks until the early 1960s when they started making games as well. "Starry Night" was painted in 1889, one year before Vincent van Gogh's death.
4. That also means that the Eiffel Tower was inaugurated the same year that Nintendo was founded.
The Eiffel Tower was inaugurated for the 1889 World's Fair! So it's only about as old as Coca-Cola and Nintendo, even though it feels like it's been there forever.
5. Salvador Dalí was alive when Michael Jackson released Bad.
Jackson's Bad was released in 1987. While we mostly think of Dalí as an artist from the 1930s and 1940s — when he created many of his most famous works — he lived a fairly long life and died at the age of 84 in 1989. So it's entirely possible that Dalí heard "Smooth Criminal" before he died.
6. A samurai could have theoretically sent a fax to Abraham Lincoln.
The above text message pretty much explains everything, but basically, samurai were around much later than you think, and fax machines are much older than you think. Of course, the printing telegraph is pretty different from modern fax machines (in fact, it used piano keys to type out messages), but the idea is more or less the same. However, these machines were generally slower and more cumbersome than just using Morse code, which is why we didn't see fax machines in popular use until the late 20th century.
7. Marilyn Monroe and Queen Elizabeth II were born the same year.
Monroe — aka Norma Jeane Mortenson — was born on June 1, 1926. Queen Elizabeth was born on April 21, 1926. You might think of them as being from different eras, though, since Monroe died so tragically young.
8. Spain was still a fascist dictatorship the year Microsoft was founded.
Many Americans tend to think of the end of WWII as the end of fascism in Europe (most likely because of our geographic separation), but Spain remained under the Francoist regime until 1975 (the year Microsoft was founded) when it transitioned to democracy. The FET y de las JONS would later attempt to distance itself from fascism after 1945, but many elements of a fascist regime remained for the three decades following.
9. Cleopatra lived closer in time to the invention of TikTok than to the construction of the Great Pyramid at Giza.
10. Also, the Great Pyramid was older to the Romans than the Romans are to us.
The Roman Empire was established around 27 BCE, which means that the imperial Romans looked at the pyramids the same way we look back at their empire: as something from ancient times.
11. Oh, and the Stegosaurus was older to the Tyrannosaurus rex than the T. rex is to us.
Depending on your dinosaur knowledge, you might already know that the T. rex and the Stegosaurus did not exist at the same time. But it's mind-blowing when you realize just how far apart they were: The T. rex (which lived 85 to 65 million years ago) became a species about 74 million years after the Stegosaurus died out!
12. The oldest living person is born closer to the signing of the US Constitution than to today.
Lucile Randon, the oldest (verified) living person today at age 118, was born in 1904. That's 117 years after the signing of the Constitution, which was signed in 1787.
13. The 10th president of the United States has a grandson who is alive today.
John Tyler — the 10th POTUS, had a son, Lyon Tyler, at age 63. Lyon went on to have children late in life as well, including Harrison Tyler, who is alive today. Harrison is currently 93 years old.
14. Oxford University is older than the Aztec civilization.
Oxford is OLD. The school 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.
15. 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.
Newton additionally outlined his idea of calculus around the same time, which means that Harvard wouldn't have taught calculus for many years after its founding...because it hadn't been discovered yet.
16. We made it to the moon only 66 years after the Wright brothers successfully performed a controlled human flight.
The Wright brothers' first flight was in 1903, and the Apollo 11 moon landing was in 1969. Of course, the Cold War with the Soviet Union accelerated the US's plans for space exploration, but it's still kind of incredible how fast it all happened.
17. Woolly mammoths were still alive when the Sphinx in Egypt was built and carved.
In fact, the Sphinx was likely about 1,000 years old when the mammoths went extinct completely, which wasn't until about 1560 BCE.
18. 1980 and 2022 are as far apart as 1980 and 1938.
So just to further illustrate that point: A person right now thinking back on the year 1980 would be like a person in 1980 thinking back on the year before WWII started. Or, the distance between us and The Empire Strikes Back would be the same for a person in 1980 and the first appearance of Superman.
19. 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.
20. 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.
21. That '90s Show, a sequel series to That '70s Show, has just been announced. The time gap between That '70s Show and the actual 1970s is the same as the gap between the '90s and now.
It might seem like That '70s Show was made way after the end of the '70s, but the show premiered in 1998, and was set in 1976 in the first season... That's a gap of only 22 years. Assuming That '90s Show is set in the mid/late '90s, it'll be set about 20–25 years ago.
22. Some of the world's whales that are alive today may have been 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 30 years older than the book.
23. 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.
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.
24. 9/11 happened closer to the fall of the Berlin Wall than to today.
The Berlin Wall fell in 1989, only 12 years before 9/11, the 20th anniversary of which just passed last year.
25. And finally: 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.
This was famously outlined by Carl Sagan in Cosmos. If you compressed the entire history of everything, going back to the Big Bang, into a calendar year, all of human history would only take up just a little more than the last minute of the last hour of the last day of the year.
Here's Sagan illustrating that idea in depth, I highly recommend watching it before you leave this page:
