Facts that will mess with your perception of the historical timeline
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1. George Washington never knew dinosaurs existed as he died in 1799 and the first dinosaur fossil was discovered in 1824
2. Sharks are older than trees.
Sharks are survivors, persisting through all five global mass extinctions in various forms over 450 million years.
Not even trees have lived this long as they first appeared on Earth around
380 million years ago.
3. The 10th president of the United States, John Tyler (born in 1790) has a grandson who is alive today
4. John Tyler - the 10th president, had a son, Lyon Tyler, at age 65.
Lyon went on to have children late in life as well, including Harrison Tyler, who is alive today.
Harrison is currently 94 years old
5. Woolly mammoths were still alive while Egyptians were building the Pyramids (Around 2550 BC)
6. The Oregon Trail was first used in 1843, the year when the fax machine was invented
7. The University of Oxford is older than the Aztec Empire.
The University of Oxford first opened its doors to students all the way back in 1096.
Whilst the Aztec Empire is said to have originated with the founding of the city of Tenochtitlan at Lake Texcoco by the Mexica, which occurred in the year 1325
8. The guillotine was still France's official execution method when Star Wars debuted.
France's last state sanctioned guillotine execution was in 1977 - the same year Star Wars was released
9. The Eastern Roman Empire fell only 40 years before Christopher Columbus landed in the Americas.
This means that plenty of people who considered themselves Romans heard of the discovery of the new world
10. The Great Pyramid was older to the Romans than the Romans are to us.
The Roman Empire was established around 27 BC, 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. Nintendo was founded when Jack The Ripper was still on the loose and when the Eiffel Tower was opened (1889)
12. A day on Venus is longer than a year on Venus.
It takes 243 Earth days for Venus to rotate once, but only 225 earth days to orbit the Sun
13. Humans made it to the moon only 66 years after the Wright brothers successfully performed a controlled human flight.
14. The Ottoman Empire was stil around when Walt Disney released his first cartoons.
The precise end date of the empre is typically cited as 1922 and Walt
Disney released his first animated cartoons in 1920
15. You can fit all of human history (and then some) between the periods when the Stegosaurus and T. Rex existed.
The Stegosaurus lived around 150 million years ago, the T. rex didn't appear until the last leg of the Late Cretaceous period, some 68 million years ago.
16. Cleopatra ruled Egypt closer in time to the invention of the iPhone than to the construction of the Great Pyramids at Giza.
Cleopatra was born in 69 BC and construction on the pyramids started around 2550 BC.
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