Twitter Users Ponder What Bits Of Historical Perspective Freak Them Out

By Petr Knava | Social Media | November 12, 2021 |

I really can’t get enough of these things. Near the start of the year, I wrote up a piece that consisted of some facts that make my brain hurt. Things like, ‘If a show was made today looking as far back as That ’70s Show was looking at the time of its showing, that show would be looking back at 1998.’ It’s always a fun—and deeply disturbing—exercise to think up those comparisons. Twitter users had fun with these the other day, when they responded to a prompt by The Hill writer Zack Budryk:

What bit of historical perspective gives you an existential crisis? Mine is that Harriet Tubman was born in Thomas Jefferson's lifetime and died in Reagan's.
— Zack Budryk (@BudrykZack) November 10, 2021

These are some of the best answers:

Coming back to this to add that Tupac's debut was longer ago than the entirety of his lifespan
— Zack Budryk (@BudrykZack) November 10, 2021

https://t.co/qC4Rar8zJO pic.twitter.com/2vCOHAVmkp
— Social Justice Cleric (@noaheasterly) November 11, 2021

I saw this on Tumblr (via Instagram) just a few days ago pic.twitter.com/NO4jmSifuu
— State Song Threader (@sayer_of_stuff) November 11, 2021

There are caves in the Appalachian Mountains that predate the existence of land animals with bones. Not dinosaurs. Bones.
— Andrew, But Slightly More Festive (@andrewgutin) November 11, 2021

On a similar note, Dracula was written in 1897. Due to the year it takes place, Count Dracula could’ve theoretically worn Levi’s jeans, consumed coca-cola, and owned a Nintendo product.
— dick genital 🇵🇸 (@dick_genital) November 11, 2021

This pic.twitter.com/dkfLd8f8pD
— Liz "The Mask Goes Over Your Nose AND Mouth" Ditz (@lizditz) November 11, 2021

Speaking of Universities, for the first few years after Harvard was founded, it didn't teach calculus because calculus hadn't been invented yet.
— State Song Threader (@sayer_of_stuff) November 11, 2021

And Betty White was born seven years earlier.
— Matt (@MatthewIgnatius) November 10, 2021

The Viking settlement of North America (which ultimately failed, of course) nonetheless lasted longer than the English settlement of North America, so far. https://t.co/W8YiR3pXup
— Phil Obbard 🎃🍂 (@PObbard) November 11, 2021

John Tyler's grandson still being alive genuinely fucks with my head and general concept of time.
— Le Courvoisier (@Ben__Jamon) November 10, 2021

Portuguese filmmaker Manoel de Oliveira died in 2015 at the age of 106. His first film was silent and his last was shot on digital video.
— Rock☭n☭Roll Wolf (@Titi_Suru) November 11, 2021

I used to drive the church van on Sundays for our senior members who did not drive. My “co-pilot” was a retired barber who was born in 1891 & lived to be 105. It was 😳🤯 when I realized that when Pearl Harbor was bombed in 1941, he was already 50 and too old to enlist.
— Armen Devejian (@daddykool) November 11, 2021

Salvador Dali died the same year Daniel Radcliffe was born (1989), and Marilyn Monroe shares a birth year with Queen Elizabeth (1926)
— opaleye (@opaleyedragon) November 10, 2021

And today, there are still people alive that are the children of previously enslaved parents. https://t.co/kZfBRd0ujv
— Steve Elardo (@DrSteveElardo) November 11, 2021

Yes, this is remarkable. “I’ve Got A Secret” episode from 1956.https://t.co/OW1PEiY8mr
— Elizabeth J. Brown (@ECJBrownILM) November 11, 2021

Rosa Parks could have seen Shrek 2
— micha frazer-carroll (@micha_frazer) November 11, 2021

Spain was a poor dictatorship until 1977, then it became Democratic. It now offers universal healthcare,free college,high speed rail, and will soon have the longest life expectancy @ 85.8 yrs. America has none of that, and life expectancy went down to 77.3 yrs. Sad
— Robert Kistler (@RobertKistler7) November 11, 2021

The dinosaurs all died 10 million years before grass even existed pic.twitter.com/jf5A37RNZM
— Tim Doran (@tuggyt) November 11, 2021

My parents were born before segregation ended but aren't yet old enough to retire.
— CeeDee Snuts (@HowBoutDemOsHon) November 10, 2021

We're separated by about 65.5 million years from T Rex. The separation between T Rex and Jurassic-period Stegosaurus was 80-90 million years🤯
— Clara Bosonetto (@AirfaresToGo) November 11, 2021

We had Aqua Teen Hunger Force on the air for longer than the Confederacy, too.
— Gena ✨🤍💫 (@nijireiki) November 11, 2021

Lauren Bacall was married to/costarred with Humphrey Bogart (born 1899) and also was in the same episode of Family Guy as Ariana Grande
— Andrew Levine (@andrewlevine) November 11, 2021

That the time from when humans were basically biologically modern until now is about 20x longer than the time from ancient Sumer to now
— Andy JB (@andrewbloomberg) November 10, 2021

The Great Pyramids were completed before woolly mammoths went extinct
— Classy Warfare (@classywarfare) November 10, 2021

The @NewYorker article “the youthful universe” really messed me up. In particular a section in space about the area the size of a sesame seed that scientists thought was empty was filled with galaxies pic.twitter.com/5tRvWusjfY
— sDub (@seancdub) November 11, 2021

Somewhat germane — I recently saw a sweet, short film dramatizing the hypothesis that St. Francis of Assisi had met & meaningfully conversed with Shams of Tabriz.
— 𝙳𝚊𝚟𝚒𝚍 𝚁𝚊𝚙𝚑𝚊𝚎𝚕 𝙸𝚜𝚛𝚊𝚎𝚕 (@raagatodi) November 12, 2021

That World War 2 featured both a horse cavalry charge at its start and the atomic bomb at its close.
— Brian Crowley (@BrianCrowley75) November 11, 2021

That Indigenous Americans have been here for at least 15,000 years, while we've only been here for 528 years. But they've only been considered citizens for 97 years, have only been able to vote for 59 years, and the last residential school wasn't closed until 38 years ago.
— Sarah McGonagall (@gothspiderbitch) November 11, 2021

If the movie Back to the Future had taken place today, Marty would have traveled back in time to … 1991.
— Leslie Clark Dagg (@lcdagg) November 11, 2021

If Bryan Adams released “Summer of '69” this year it would be about the summer of 2005
— 𝗠𝗮𝗿𝗸𝘀 𝗻’𝘼𝙣𝙜𝙡𝙚𝙨 (@JDakotaBrown) November 11, 2021

There’s a book called “Timetables of History” which I was introduced to back in college in the 90s. It’s still around & updated. It puts major world events, arts, everything, into an easy-to-read timeline, so you can see what was happening simultaneously. It’s amazing.
— Candice Kraus (@candicekraus) November 11, 2021

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