10 Historical Facts That Will Seriously Mess With Your Perception of Time

the United States remains the young country in relation to the rest of the world its oldest historical shrines and historic places their recent stepping stones in the march of time sin Augustine Florida is the oldest continuously occupied city on the North American continent it was founded by the Spanish in 1576 that same year a Swiss physician documented an improvement over the writing sticks used since the times of the Roman Empire rather than using a lead stick to leave marks on papyrus Conrad Gesner describes the use of graphite encased in wood making the humble pencil at least as old and most likely older than the European settlements of what became the United States such overlaps of history abounds and many are opening to say the least most people today would assume that the Japanese company Nintendo is a relatively new business entity one of the many which were born of the video gaming age which developed at the end of the 20th century in truth Nintendo was created in Japan in 1889 as a playing card company the year after the murders attributed to the London serial killer known as Jack the Ripper Nintendo is thus older than the Panama Canal through which so many of its consoles and games are shipped to the United States in Europe the company was born the same year as the Wall Street Journal which today reports on its business operations and is older by months than the statehood of both Dakotas Montana and Washington it is also older by several weeks than the first coin-operated musical playback machine known colloquially today as the jukebox in the video today we're looking at some examples of the overlap of historical events which might just surprise you number ten Oxford University in England was created before the emergence of the Aztec empire in modern Mexico these tech civilizations in Mesoamerica so often referred to as ancient was about three centuries old when it was encountered by the Spanish explorers and the conquistadors in the early sixteenth century the Spanish made short work of the thriving civilization driven by the twin desires of obtaining their gold and silver riches and by converting the natives to Christianity and servitude by the 1530s the Aztec empire was all but destroyed cities and temples converted my conquest to ruins and the Spanish Empire was emerging as the world's most powerful growing Spanish power and wealth was viewed with alarm by its European rivals which rapidly began to find the means to rival the Spanish position in the new worlds England's an island nation became both a military and religious enemy of Catholic Spain English scholars were among the world's leaders of knowledge many of them having completed their education at Oxford which had been conducting classes of what was then considered to be higher learning for nearly five centuries by the time Cortes and his followers arrived in Mexico Oxford first conducted classes in 1096 only 30 years after the Battle of Hastings one of the seminal events of the history of Britain born as a rival Cambridge University existed before the Spanish conquest of Mexico as well yet neither English school is as old as Italy's University of Bologna by comparison the oldest university in the United States Harvard was started in 1635 well over five centuries after the first classes were conducted at Oxford but less than a century and a half after the conquest of the Aztec empire in Mexico a benign Tiffany and company is older than the nation of Italy Italy is in most American mines indelibly linked with the ancient world through the ruins of the Roman Empire while the image is justified most Americans are astonished to learn that Italy as a nation is younger than the United States in fact Italy is younger than one of America's own symbols of luxury and romance the iconic jeweler Tiffany & Company which is long symbolic of style taste and little blue boxes famous for their ability to grab the attention of one's beloved that's well known is that Tiffany's was founded not in New York in Connecticut and not as a jeweler but rather as a stationer and this all happens in 1837 the company moved to New York the following year and did not become firmly associated with high-end jewelry for another 15 years Italy on the other hand was a collection of rival principalities duchies patron states papal States and other entities as it had been since before the Napoleonic Wars and the subsequent Congress of Vienna Italian history is far too complicated to be described in one or two paragraphs but the basis of today's Italian Republic did not emerge until decades after the New York jeweler established its reputation as the world's final word in the profession as of 2019 Tiffany operates stores in Venice Florence Verona Milan Bologna and Rome all of which were cities in which Italian was spoken but which were under separate governments at the time the company was born in the United States number 8 the Titanic sank the same month that Boston's Fenway Park opened for business on April the 20th 1912 Boston's mayor john f fitzgerald known as honey fits around town arrived at the brand-spanking-new Fenway Park to threw out the first pitch inaugurating the park and the 1912 baseball season honey that's undoubtedly joined in the conversation which dominated the day not the prospect for the Red Sox's success that year but the shocking loss of another brand-new feat of construction just days before when RMS Titanic sank the Boston Club prevailed that day over the team from New York known as the Highlanders though the newspaper paid little heed concentrating instead on the still evolving lists of the dead and missing from the tragedy at sea the Titanic was soon relegated to history overshadowed by losses of other liners during the first world war it was a resurgence of interest after dr. Robert ballads expedition that found the wreck in 1985 that restored its myth in the public imagination Fenway Park soon developed a mythology of its own the home of a baseball team forever doomed by the curse of Babe Ruth until it managed to exercise its demons in 2004 and honey Fitz's name return to fame decades later when it was used for the presidential yacht favored by his grandson presidents of the United States John Fitzgerald Kennedy Kennedy was an experienced sailor and a former commander of the u.s. naval PT boat pt-109 which was lost to the Japanese world war 2 in 2002 dr. Ballard found the wreckage of that lost vessel as well number 7 the guillotine was still in use when Jimmy Carter was president of the United States the beheading machine known as the guillotine long the official means of state executions in France is often erroneously described as being the invention of doctor Yosef Gillett aa who was himself sent to meet his maker virus descending blade but neither is true gear told neither invented the machine nor died on it as a physician who opposed capital punishment he nonetheless reluctantly endorsed its use in executions as being the most humane means available at the time leading to his name being attached to the machine its efficiency is undoubted as demonstrated during the French Revolution when thousands died upon it often hundreds in a single day have the victim lie down drop the blade and dispose of the headless corpse by rolling it to one side over the period of its use for executions debates over whether the severed head retained consciousness for a time rage though it was never fully resolved the use of the guillotine may forever be linked to the French Revolution but it completed its purpose far more recently the death penalty in France was abolished in 1981 in 1977 the machine saw its final use for heading a child killer Hamidah Jean Dobie and Marseilles on September the 10th at the time han Solo and his compatriots were dispatching storm troopers using blasters on movie screens around the world there is only one documented instance of a guillotine being used in North America on the island of San Pierre in 1889 though as recently as 1996 it was proposed to augment the electric chair as the means of state-sponsored executions in the American state of Georgia the choice of device to use was to be left at UD condemned but the matter it was never taken up for a vote number 6 the bicycle evolved years after the steam engine revolutionized locomotion the bicycle is seemingly at least at its most basic a simple design for self-propelled travel in fact in its earliest forms it was an elongated board with wheels at each end astride of which the user moved by walking with each thrust of alternating legs sending person and carriage forward braking was by using the feet sort of how the Flintstones would stop their car it was decades before the bicycle propelled by pedals and chain evolved the actual date and invent is disputed but the system resembling the modern safety bicycle with pedals and chain for driving the rear wheel first appeared with regularity around 1860 in France safety brakes and pneumatic tires followed by the 1890s bicycling was considered a new sport among the genteel in Europe and America locomotion driven by a steam engine mechanically far more complex than bicycle propulsion predated the latter by many years the use of steam to move Road vehicles was under development as early as 1800 and its use on marine vehicles was relatively common by the 1820s the steam locomotive wasn't far behind in development and deployment steam locomotion developed long before the use of bicycles as transportation was common in truth the far more efficient steam turbine was well into development before the safety brake made bicycling relatively safe despite the late start bicycles are by far the most common means of conveyance available in the world today with well over 1 billion having been manufactured with more being added to the total daily and virtually all of the world's nation's number five the first man to achieve powered flight live to see it accomplished at speeds faster than sound in December that 1903 Orville Wright a bicycle mechanic by trade became the first human being to fly in a powered heavier-than-air craft the flight itself was over a distance of a hundred and twenty feet in Orville achieved a speed of about 35 miles per hour though due to prevailing head winces speed over the ground was only about seven miles per hour over several more flights during the course of the day Overland his brother Wilbur finally achieved distance of over 800 feet though their speed remained relatively modest their experiments of that day ended when the aircraft was wrecked by contrary and unpredictable winds with which they had contended all day just less than 44 years later Orville Wright was understandably amazed at the progress made by aviation which included the airplane being the supreme weapon of war a miracle of mass transit a device which was making the world smaller in many ways in October 1947 American Chuck Yeager used an airplane which was as much a missile as it was the former and became the first man to travel faster than the speed of sound or villain lost flown as a pilot in 1918 but his entire life was active in aviation and he was awestruck that the barrier had been broken in his lifetime as a comparison America first landed on the moon during the summer of 1969 despite the predictions offered at the time regarding humanity's future in space since the Apollo missions no one has ventured further from the earth and there is little promise that anyone will do so in the foreseeable future number four the last American pensioner from the Civil War died in the 21st century the American Civil War seems to have occurred in a distant world barely recognizable today long before cities were linked by highways and when communications were slow and unreliable in truth many of the features of modern life were present albeit in somewhat primitive forms the telegraph railroads scheduled shipping connections and other links to the present day could be found without much search still the war took place more than a century and a half ago and any links to it by the end of the 20th century were through books or museums or films or preserved battlefields faded sepia-toned photographs were thought to be as close as anyone could come to America's greatest crisis by the time George W Bush became president of the United States it is an indication of how a young the United States as a nation is that the last pensioner from the American Civil War died during President Bush's tenure in office it was 1956 when the last surviving veteran of the Civil War died but the US government and several states continued to pay pensions to the widows of Civil War veterans including those who married veterans years after the war ended in the latter half of the nineteenth century many young women married widowers whose wives had died there being a shortage of Muriel young men in America in the aftermath of the war in 2008 the last eligible widow of a Civil War veteran died pensions payable to surviving children and their spouses continued until at least 2017 meaning the United States was continuing to bear costs related to the Civil War over a hundred and fifty years after Lee surrendered at Appomattox number three the Indianapolis 500 is older than the 50 star American flag and the 48 star flag to the annual motor racing events held over the Memorial Day weekends known as the Indianapolis 500 was first run in 1911 over a racing surface paved with bricks Byronic Lee most of the power used for moving and placing the bricks which were the original race surface came from mules with more than 300 employed to complete the project numerous events took place at the track in the years before the inaugural 500-mile events including balloon races motorcycle races and automobile races of short duration when the first 500-mile race was run in 1911 fans and participants saluted the American flag before the competition was run only 46 stars graced the blue field at that time neither New Mexico nor Arizona were states in the Union they would be added the following year leading to the creation of the 48 star flag which flew over the US territory throughout the Second World War later that summer of 1912 future actress comedian and producer Lucille Ball she was born another birthday that year was John McCain Jr who would rise to the rank of Admiral in the United States Navy the son of another admiral who commanded American aviation in the Pacific during the Second World War he held major commands in the submarine actions against the Japanese which were so crucial in the victory against Japan he was the father of yes another naval officer John McCain the third a senator and candidate for president of the United States who hailed from Arizona number two wooly mammoths were still roaming the earth when the pyramids were built at Giza the ruins of Giza were already ancient when they were discovered or rather rediscovered by ancient Roman invaders historians debate the impact of the pyramids on the Romans who saw them as well as that on Roman society as a whole but there is no dispute that the overall influence was substantial there are even said no way of dating the structures nor understanding their historical or archaeological influence nor could they grasp their religious significance for the Romans the ancient Egyptians became a culture which was at once legendary mythological and of necessity mysterious similar sensations were later encountered by those who discovered evidence or in some cases the continuing existence of ancient cultures in North America Mesoamerica and in the Polynesian islands of the South Pacific one thing the Romans could not possibly have known was that at the time the oldest of the pyramids was built woolly mammoths still roamed in some places on the earth the great mammals which were the descendants of the Asian elephant coexisted with humans for several thousand years the last failing from Earth approximately four millennia ago as Wrangell island in the Arctic the date of their final demise is several centuries after the construction of the pyramids and though the Egyptians did not encounter them as they went about their work the fact that they coexisted on the planet is a matter of archaeological record number one Americans were on the moon before women in Switzerland were allowed to vote Americans first landed on the moon in July of 1969 completing a challenge thrust upon the nation by President John Kennedy in 1961 in response to Soviet progress in space the first Americans on the moon Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked about their lunar base so did Pete Conrad and Alan bean who followed on Apollo 12th not until Apollo 15 in the summer of 1971 did the American astronauts do a singularly American thing they brought a car with them and cruised about that lunar surface in what NASA named the lunar roving vehicle thus astronauts from the United States not only trod upon the lunar surface they left behind tire tracks using a vehicle which the astronauts and the public dubbed moon buggies just a few short months before Americans drove on the moon Switzerland's land of chocolate and secret bank accounts finally gave women the right to vote an election held in October of that year on Halloween was the first time Swiss women were allowed to cast a ballot in federal elections after the Americans left behind the lunar Rovers used on the last three Apollo missions several of the prototypes were given to museums for public display after the Swiss election of October 1971 women continued to expand their voting rights and their political power in Switzerland Americans have yet to return to the moon since Apollo 17 in late 1972 Swiss women though they've returned to the polls every year since 1971 so I already hope you found that video interesting if you did please do give us a thumbs up below don't forget to subscribe for brand new videos just like this every day of the week for more from me why not check out my other channel called bio graphics you're gonna find a link to that below as always thank you for watching [Music] you

Channel: TopTenz

Views: 1,325,068

Keywords: top 10, toptenz, top10, top ten, top 10 list, Oxford University in England, Tiffany & Company, The guillotine, The first man to achieve powered flight, The bicycle evolved years, The Indianapolis 500 is older than the 50 star American flag, Woolly mammoths

Id: 2hmDrJQA6Ik

Length: 16min 48sec (1008 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 20 2019