Historical Facts Will Mess With Your Perception Of Time
When we try to put historical events into perspective, we often simplistically divide things into 'old days' and 'modern times,' because our brains can often struggle with the perception of time, and since most of us don't live to be centenarians, we cannot know what it really means 'a hundred years ago.'
But what happens when some of the history facts that you would consider to belong to the contemporary world are much older than we think or vice versa?
The amazing fact is that it jolts us out of our easy categorization and forces us to reassess our comfortable time perception.
Marilyn Monroe And Queen Elizabeth Were Born In The Same Year. Here They (Both 30 At The Time) Meet At A Movie Premier In London In October 1956
The two were both born in 1926 and once met each other, at the premiere of The Battle of the River Plate in London’s Leicester Square. Monroe was there to accompany her then husband Arthur Miller. You can see her here in the receiving line of guests waiting to shake the young Queen’s hand.
Woolly Mammoths Were Still Alive While Egyptians Were Building The Pyramids (2660 BCE)
Scientists have determined that wooly mammoths were still roaming the Earth until about 1650 BC, the giant creatures could be found on an island off the coast of eastern Russia at the time. Meanwhile, the oldest of the 'Great Pyramids' in Egypt, the Pyramid of Djoser was constructed between 2630 BC–2611 BC, meaning that while man was busy building some of the most incredible structures ever made, wooly mammoths were still doing their thing.
George Washington Died In 1799. The First Dinosaur Fossil Was Discovered In 1824. George Washington Never Knew Dinosaurs Existed
George Washington died peacefully at home on December 14, 1799, aged 67 years old. A soldier, farmer, and statesman, as well as the first President of the United States under the U.S. Constitution, Washington was commonly referred to as the "Father of His Country" by his compatriots. He, like anyone else at the time, didn't know that dinosaurs existed because they were not scientifically recognized as such until 1824, when British naturalist William Buckland first described Megalosaurus, now regarded to be the first dinosaur to be scientifically named.
Anne Frank And Martin Luther King Junior Were Born In The Same Year (1929)
One of the most discussed Jewish victims of the Holocaust, Anne Frank gained fame posthumously with the publication of The Diary of a Young Girl, in which she documents her life in hiding from 1942 to 1944, during the German occupation of the Netherlands in World War II. It is one of the world's most widely known books and has been the basis for several plays and films.
Martin Luther King Jr. was an American Baptist minister and activist who became the most visible spokesperson and leader in the civil rights movement from 1954 until his death in 1968. King is best known for advancing civil rights through nonviolence and civil disobedience, tactics his Christian beliefs and the nonviolent activism of Mahatma Gandhi helped inspire. Both of these symbols of resistance were born in the same year, 1929.
Prisoners Arrived At Auschwitz Just Days After Mcdonald's Was Founded (1940)
While McDonald's is traditionally associated with the good times and affluence of 1950's America, the very first restaurant was opened much earlier, on May 15th 1940. Just 5 days later, the first prisoners arrived at the Auschwitz concentration camp in what is now Poland.
Orville Wright Was Still Alive When Hiroshima And Nagasaki Were Bombed (1945)
The Wright brothers are rightly credited with inventing what we know as airplanes, and it must have been tremondously difficult for Orville Wright, whose brother Wilbur died back in 1912, to see his life's great acheivement be responsible for the greatest single act of destruction man has ever seen. In 1945 U.S. Airforce planes dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing at least 129,000 people, mainly civilians.
Orville died in 1948 and expressed sadness in an interview about the death and destruction brought about by the bombers of World War II: "We dared to hope we had invented something that would bring lasting peace to the earth. But we were wrong ... No, I don't have any regrets about my part in the invention of the airplane, though no one could deplore more than I do the destruction it has caused. I feel about the airplane much the same as I do in regard to fire. That is, I regret all the terrible damage caused by fire, but I think it is good for the human race that someone discovered how to start fires and that we have learned how to put fire to thousands of important uses."
The Brooklyn Bridge Was Being Built During The Battle Of Little Bighorn (1876)
'Custer’s Last Stand” at the Battle of Little Bighorn in 1876 took place at the same time that the world's first steel wire suspension bridge, the iconic Brooklyn Bridge, was under construction.
The battle was fought between forces of the Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho tribes and the United States Army. The defeat of US forces, led by Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer, was the most significant action of the Great Sioux War of 1876.
The Brooklyn Bridge still stands proud, having undergone major renovation works between 2011-2015, and carries roughly 150,000 vehicles, cyclists and pedestrians between Manhattan and Brooklyn each day.
Abraham Lincoln Was Assassinated On April 15, 1865, Just A Few Months Before The Secret Service Was Created
Abraham Lincoln was assassinated on April 15th, 1865, just months before the Secret Service was founded. The legislation to create the Secret Service was on Lincoln's desk on the night he died, perhaps if they were created a few months earlier they might have foiled the plot to assassinate him.
Much more at:
https://www.boredpanda.com/interesting-history-facts-events-happened-same-time/?utm_source=pinterest91&utm_medium=link&utm_campaign=rider
= new reply since forum marked as read
Love it! 
We have communication devices now that would surpass our wildest dreams when we were children. An encyclopedia in our pocket.
And we use them to send pictures of our cats to each other. 
that means we DUers are, like, three degrees of separation from Orville freaking Wright? 
and your mum sounds like she was quite the historical figure too!
