Time can surprise you in ways you can never imagine. You think you know the exact time associated with events, but this article is going to take you by surprise and leave you awestruck.
1. Every two minutes, we take as many photos as all of humanity took during the 1800s.
2. Betty White is older than sliced bread.
Otto Frederick Rohwedder invented sliced bread in 1928, while Betty White was born in 1922. Bread had existed prior to that, just not in the pre-sliced form.
3. The last time the Chicago Cubs won a World Series, women were not allowed to vote.
The infamous cold streak by the Chicago Cubs baseball team extends back to 1908, when they won their second World Series. Women in the US acquired the right to vote in 1920.
4. Will Smith is now older than Uncle Phil was at the beginning of “The Fresh Prince.”
5. Cleopatra lived closer to the building of Pizza Hut than the pyramids.
The Great Pyramid was built cerca 2560 BC, while Cleopatra lived around 30 BC. The first Pizza Hut opened in 1958, which is about 500 years closer.
6. There was more time between the Stegosaurus and the Tyrannosaurus Rex than between Tyrannosaurus Rex and you.
7. This is how much listening to music has changed since 1980.
8. In the span of 63 years, we went from taking flight to landing on the moon.
9. France was still executing people by guillotine when Star Wars came out.
Star Wars premiered in theaters in May 1977. The last execution by guillotine took place September 10th of the same year.
10. The first pyramids were built while the woolly mammoth was still alive.
While most mammoths died out 10,000 years ago, a small population still survived until 1650 BC. By that point, Egypt was halfway through its empire, and the Giza Pyramids were already 1000 years old.
11. This is the difference in the Olympic Gold win across 56 years of women’s vault.
On the left, Larisa Latinya wins gold for the USSR in 1956. On the right, McKayla Maroney wins gold for the US in 2012.
12. Everything in this 1991 Radio Shack ad exists in a single smartphone.
13. Harvard University was founded before there was even calculus.
Harvard is the oldest higher education institution in the US, founded in 1636. Calculus wasn’t derived until later in the 17th century, with the work of Gottfried Leibniz and Isaac Newton.
14. When Warner Brothers formed, the Ottoman Empire was still a thing.
Harry, Albert, Sam, and Jack Warner opened their first theater, the Cascade, in New Castle, Pennsylvania in 1903. Meanwhile, the Ottoman Empire spanned from 1299 to 1923, when Turkey became an independent nation.
15. Turn your TV to a dead station, and 1% of the static is left over radiation from the Big Bang.
You are literally witnessing the aftermath of the creation of the universe.
16. Since the first episode of The Simpsons, Fox has ran and cancelled over 300 other TV shows.
17. There is more processing power in a TI-83 calculator than in the computer that landed Apollo 11 on the moon!
18. John Tyler, America’s 10th President, still has two living grandchildren.
John Tyler served from 1841 to 1845, a full 20 years before Abraham Lincoln. He had a son, Lyon, at age 63. Lyon would have Lyon Jr. and Harrison at 71 and 75, respectively. Both are still alive today and in their 80’s.
19. The jewelry company Tiffany & Co. has been around longer than Italy.
Charles Lewis Tiffany and John B. Young founded Tiffany & Young in 1837, while Italy didn’t become a country until 1861.
20. Oxford University is older than the Aztecs!
21. The oldest living person’s birth is closer to the signing of the Constitution than present day.
22. There are whales alive today who were born before Moby Dick was written.
23. The fax machine was invented the same year people were traveling the Oregon Trail.
24. Everything you experience in the present may have actually occurred in the past.
25. The galaxies we observe are millions of years in the past and could actually be dead.
26. If you’re over 45, the world population has doubled in your lifetime.
27. If the history of Earth were compressed to a single year, modern humans would appear on December 31st at about 11:00pm.
28. If that’s not enough, this is what’s happening in the world at this very moment.
This brilliant comic by artist XKCD is called Frequency. It’s one thing to talk about time…it’s another thing to feel it.
Wow! Ummm.. I’ll be right back, I’m questioning everything I know about existence. This may take a while to absorb!