17 Time-Twisting Facts That Will Change How You See History

From ancient creatures that roamed the Earth closer to our era than you’d imagine to the guillotine’s use extending well past the French Revolution, these fascinating tidbits—taken from an episode of The List Show on YouTube—will completely reshape your view of time.

1. The fax machine dates back to the era of A Christmas Carol …

While many assume the fax machine emerged in the 1980s, its origins trace back to 1843 when Scottish inventor Alexander Bain patented the “electric printing telegraph.” Around the same time, Charles Dickens was releasing his timeless classic, A Christmas Carol. It’s ironic that Scrooge’s tale endures while the fax machine has nearly faded into obscurity. 

2. … And Italy, as a unified nation, is more recent than both. 

The modern state of Italy came into existence in 1861, making it younger than you might think.

3. The renowned artists Salvador Dalí and Willem de Kooning passed away not too long ago.

Art history classes would be incomplete without discussing Salvador Dalí’s iconic The Persistence of Memory or Willem de Kooning’s groundbreaking Woman series. These artists often feel like distant historical figures, but it might shock you to learn that Dalí died in 1989—the same year Weekend at Bernie’s debuted—and de Kooning lived until 1997. While you might wonder if the abstract expressionist had thoughts about Jack fitting on the door in Titanic, he never saw the film. De Kooning passed away in March, and Titanic wasn’t released until December of that year.

4. Nintendo has been around as long as the Eiffel Tower.

If you assumed Nintendo emerged in the 1980s to revolutionize gaming, you’re only partially correct. The company actually dates back to 1889, when Fusajirō Yamauchi founded it in Kyoto to sell hanafuda playing cards. This means Nintendo is as old as the Eiffel Tower, which opened during the World’s Fair in the same year.

5. The Ottoman Empire was still in existence when Walt Disney debuted his first cartoons.

We’ve explored things that began earlier than expected; now, let’s look at two that endured far longer than many realize. First up: The Ottoman Empire. 

While Osman I founded the empire around 1299, its golden age arrived during the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent in the mid-16th century. The Ottoman Empire is also famously linked to 1453, the year its forces seized Constantinople, marking the end of the Byzantine Empire.  

Contrary to popular belief, the Ottoman Empire didn’t collapse in the 1600s, 1700s, or even 1800s. It persisted until Walt Disney introduced his first animated cartoons in 1920.

During World War I, the Ottoman army aligned with the Central Powers, endured devastating defeats, and relinquished much of its territory to the Allied Powers. The empire’s official end date is generally recognized as 1922, when Turkish leaders abolished the sultanate permanently.

6. France was still using the guillotine as its official method of execution when Star Wars first hit theaters.

France’s final state-approved guillotine execution didn’t occur during the Reign of Terror in the late 18th century. Instead, it took place in 1977—the same year audiences flocked to theaters to watch a groundbreaking sci-fi film titled Star Wars. Remarkably, the guillotine remained France’s official execution method from the French Revolution until the abolition of the death penalty in 1981.

7. Certain Greenland sharks swimming today might have been alive before Henry VIII ascended to the English throne.

A 2016 study used radiocarbon dating on the eye tissue of Greenland sharks to estimate their ages. The oldest shark, a female measuring nearly 16.5 feet long, was calculated to be around 392 years old, with a margin of error of 120 years.

Assuming the shark’s age is on the lower end of the spectrum—a youthful 272 years—it would have been born around 1744, making it older than some U.S. Founding Fathers. On the higher end, at 512 years old, its birth would date back to 1504, five years before Henry VIII became king of England. It’s entirely possible that some of these ancient sharks still roam the oceans today, predating not only the United States but every modern nation in the Americas.

8. Bowhead whales are also known for their impressively long lifespans.

While bowhead whales don’t quite match the age of Greenland sharks, studies of their eye tissue revealed that one individual lived to be 211 years old. This means some bowheads that survived the mid-19th-century “Golden Age” of American whaling might still be alive today. 

9. Certain woolly mammoths were still roaming the Earth during the construction of the Giza pyramids.

If your understanding of woolly mammoths is shaped by the Ice Age movies, you might think they roamed a world untouched by human civilization. It’s easy to assume these tusked giants vanished long before societies were advanced enough to construct marvels like the Pyramids.

Time to rethink that image. The three main pyramids of Giza in Egypt were constructed between approximately 2550 and 2490 BCE. While most woolly mammoths had died out around 10,000 years ago, bones discovered on Siberia’s Wrangel Island were estimated to be just 3700 years old. This means some woolly mammoths were still alive in the 1600s BCE—nearly a millennium after the Egyptians began building the Pyramids.

10. Cleopatra lived closer to the invention of the iPhone than to the construction of the Giza pyramids.

Even if there had been a groundbreaking ceremony for the pyramids in 2550 BCE, Cleopatra certainly wasn’t there. Egypt’s most famous queen wouldn’t be born until 69 or 70 BCE—nearly 2480 years later. In fact, she’s closer to our modern era by about 400 years than she was to witnessing the construction of the Pyramids. 

To put it another way, the Pyramids were as ancient to Cleopatra as Socrates is to us today. Additionally, she was closer in time to the invention of the iPhone than to seeing the Giza pyramids being built. 

11. The entire span of human history (and more) fits between the eras when the Stegosaurus and T. Rex roamed the Earth.

Our habit of grouping vast stretches of history is especially evident when it comes to dinosaurs. Many assume that all iconic prehistoric creatures coexisted until a single catastrophic meteor strike ended their reign. However, that’s far from the truth. 

For instance, the Stegosaurus thrived during the Late Jurassic Period, approximately 159 to 144 million years ago. In contrast, the T. rex didn’t emerge until the Late Cretaceous Period, around 68 million years ago. 

The time gap between these two dinosaurs is so vast that you could fit the entirety of human history—including the millions of years of early human ancestors—about 12 times over. This makes depictions of a T. rex chasing a Stegosaurus wildly inaccurate—more so than one showing a T. rex holding a Tamagotchi in its small claws. 

12. On the Cosmic Calendar, which begins with the Big Bang, Homo sapiens don’t appear until December 31.

In his 1977 book The Dragons of Eden, Carl Sagan introduced the “Cosmic Calendar,” a brilliant way to visualize the universe’s history compressed into a single year. This concept helps us grasp our minuscule place in the grand timeline of existence. 

If the Big Bang occurred at the stroke of midnight on January 1—representing roughly 13.8 billion years ago—humans didn’t emerge until December 31, and not even in the early hours.

According to astrophysicist Ethan Siegel, life on Earth first appeared in late September on the Cosmic Calendar. The first sexually reproducing organism, a single-celled eukaryote, arrived on December 2. Dinosaurs (excluding birds) vanished on December 17. Homo sapiens finally entered the scene at around 11:48 p.m. on December 31, with the wheel and writing invented just 12 seconds before the year ended. 

13. The widow of a Civil War veteran passed away in 2020.

On the Cosmic Calendar, events like the American Civil War feel surprisingly recent. Helen Viola Jackson, the last known widow of a Civil War veteran, experienced this firsthand, passing away in 2020.

At 101 years old, Jackson had married her husband when he was in his nineties. As a teenager in 1930s Missouri, her father asked her to assist James Bolin, a widowed Union private from the Missouri Cavalry’s 14th Regiment, with household chores on her way home from school. 

Bolin, uncomfortable with accepting charity, eventually presented Jackson with a practical offer: marry him, and she would receive his military pension after his death. Jackson later recounted to historian Hamilton C. Clark, “It was during the depression, and times were tough. He said it might be my only chance to leave the farm.”

The couple married on September 4, 1936, when Bolin was 93 and Jackson was 17. She retained her last name, continued living at home, and kept the marriage secret to avoid scandal due to their age difference. In 2018, she explained, “I had great respect for Mr. Bolin and didn’t want him hurt by gossip.”

Fear of public judgment also stopped Jackson from claiming Bolin’s pension after his death in 1939. She revealed that one of Bolin’s daughters had threatened to tarnish her reputation, and she didn’t want to be seen as a gold-digger. 

14. Betty White entered the world before sliced bread became a grocery store staple.

The saying that sliced bread was the greatest thing since Betty White isn’t far off. Sliced bread first appeared in stores in 1928, while the beloved Golden Girl was born in 1922. 

15. Canned beer is a more recent invention than some currently serving U.S. Senators.

When Dianne Feinstein, the future Democratic Senator from California, was born, her parents couldn’t celebrate with a can of beer. This was partly due to Prohibition, which was still in effect. Feinstein was born in June 1933, and the 21st Amendment, which ended Prohibition, wasn’t ratified until December of that year. Additionally, the first commercially successful canned beer didn’t hit the market until January 1935, just as the future Senator was entering her toddler years.

16. Pluto the cartoon dog has been part of our lives for nearly as long as Pluto the dwarf planet has been known to science.

The dwarf planet was discovered in February 1930. Shortly after, the cartoon dog made his debut in Disney’s The Chain Gang. Initially unnamed, he appeared again in The Picnic later that year, where he was referred to as Rover. 

The character Rover was renamed Pluto in the 1931 short The Moosehunt. While many assume the dwarf planet inspired the name, there’s no definitive proof. As Disney director Ben Sharpsteen explained in Walter Brasch’s Cartoon Monickers: An Insight Into the Animation Industry, “We felt [Rover] was too generic, so we searched for something different. … We settled on Pluto the Pup, though I can’t recall the exact reason.”

17. Your childhood is likely further in the past than you realize.

Here’s a sobering thought: 1982 was over four decades ago.

Imagine you were born in 1972. In 2022, while reminiscing with a 10-year-old about 1982—watching E.T. in theaters or hearing “Eye of the Tiger” on the radio—it’s akin to a 50-year-old in 1982 telling you, at age 10, about 1942: Casablanca, Glenn Miller, and World War II. Does that make you feel old?