Thread of some surprising things that are older than other things
Notre Dame predates the Maori settlement of New Zealand
Oxford is older than the Aztecs
The Great Pyramid of Giza was completed before Woolly Mammoths went extinct
The University of Bologna is quite literally older than "Time Immemorial" (1189, the beginning of the reign of King Richard I)
A bridge still in use in Trier is nearly a thousand years older than the Inca Empire
Socrates is about as old as the oldest Nazca Lines
Polynesians started settling the Hawaiian Islands about 500 years after the fall of Rome
Nintendo is older than sliced bread
The Taj Mahal is younger than Shakespeare
The Cherokee Alphabet postdates the U.S. Constitution
Alexander the Great got to India about 600 years before Bantu speakers got to South Africa
Cleopatra lived closer to the creation of the iPhone than to the construction of the Great Pyramid
Harvard is older than Hasidic Judaism
The fax machine predates the telephone
The start of the Great Wall of China predates Islam
The Sámi identity postdates Protestantism
You can probably think of a lot more than these examples. There really are so many things that feel modern, or dated to a particular era, that just aren't.
Göbekli Tepe was coextensive in time with the giant sloth
The grandson of the tenth U.S. president, John Tyler (born 1790), is still alive (born 1928).
The Last Samurai died twelve years after Abraham Lincoln
Order of these Supreme Court cases:
Katz 1967: electronic microphone placing outside a phonebooth needs a warrant
Kyllo 2001: thermograms of a residence need a warrant
Jardines 2013: dog sniffs on curtilage need a warrant
Ramos 2020: juries in criminal cases must be unanimous
The first vending machine might have been for holy water:
The Battle of Hastings occurred after the Viking settlement of Greenland and before the Inuit arrived there.
h/t @ElonBachman
@ElonBachman Correction on the Hawaii arrival date.
Apparently that happened later than I was led to believe, so they arrived closer to 800 years after the fall of Rome.
pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pn…
Share this Scrolly Tale with your friends.
A Scrolly Tale is a new way to read Twitter threads with a more visually immersive experience.
Discover more beautiful Scrolly Tales like this.