01 Cleopatra lived closer to the building of Pizza Hut than the pyramids.
While Cleopatra lived around 30 BC, the Great Pyramid was built circa 2560 BC. The first Pizza Hut opened in 1958, which is about 500 years closer.
02 Every two minutes, we take as many photos as all of humanity took during the 1800s.
The left photograph is the first photo ever taken (1826), View from the Window at Le Gras by French inventor Joseph Nicéphore Niépce. The right photo is a cat who accidentally took a picture of itself (2013). According to the estimations humans will take 880 billion photos (not including cats) in 2014. And 10% of all the photos ever taken were taken in the past 12 months.
03 Oxford University is older than the Aztecs.
In 1096, teaching was started in Oxford and the University was officially founded by 1249. In 1325, the Aztec civilization began with the founding of Tenochtitlán.
04 Will Smith is now older than Uncle Phil was at the beginning of “The Fresh Prince.”
James Avery was 45-years-old when (Uncle Phil) started on The Fresh Prince. Today, Will Smith is a slightly older 45.
05 In the span of 66 years, we went from taking a flight to landing on the moon.
Wright brothers flew a plane for a whopping 59 seconds successfully in 1903. After 38 years, the Japanese used a flight to bomb Pearl Harbor in 1941. And then Apollo 11 landed on the moon in 1969, 28 years later.
06 There is more processing power in a TI-83 calculator than in the computer that landed Apollo 11 on the moon.
The guidance computer from the Apollo 11 mission ran at 1.024 MHz, about 1/6th of the processing power of a TI-83 calculator. One is used by students to play Tetris, the other took humans to the moon.
07 The oldest living person’s birth is closer to the signing of the Constitution than present day.
Misao Okawa was born in 116 years ago in 1898. The Constitution was signed in 1787. So, her life is 4 years closer to the historic Philadelphia convention than to today.
08 John Tyler, America’s 10th President, has two living grandchildren.
John Tyler served full 20 years before Abraham Lincoln from 1841 to 1845. He had a son, Lyon, at age 63. Lyon would have Lyon Jr. and Harrison at 71 and 75, respectively. Both are still alive today and in their 80’s.
09 The first pyramids were built while the woolly mammoth was still alive.
A small population of mammoths survived until 1650 BC even though many mammoths died out long before civilizations arose. Egypt was halfway through its empire in that time, and the Giza Pyramids were already 1000 years old.
10 The fax machine was invented the same year people were traveling the Oregon Trail.
In 1843, Alexander Bain developed the first fax machine and that time the Great Migration began across America.
11 France was still executing people by guillotine when Star Wars came out.
In May 1977, Star Wars premiered in theaters. And in September 10th in the same year, the last execution by guillotine took place.
12 Betty White is older than sliced bread.
In 1928, Otto Frederick Rohwedder invented sliced bread while Betty White was born in 1922. The bread had existed prior, just not in the pre-sliced form.
13 This is what the difference in Olympic Gold looks like across 56 years of women’s vault.
Larisa Latynina is on the left, wins gold for the USSR in 1956. McKayla Maroney wins gold for the US in 2012 on the right.
14 Everything in this 1991 RadioShack ad exists in a single smartphone.
The co-founder of Intel, Gordon Moore, said that the number of transistors on circuits doubles approximately every two year over the history of computing. Over 40 years, Moore’s Law has held true, he also has predicted our incredible advancement in mobile technology.
15 When Warner Brothers formed, the Ottoman Empire was still alive.
In 1903, the Cascade, in New Castle, Pennsylvania was opened by Harry, Albert, Sam, and Jack Warner. When Turkey became an independent nation, the Ottoman Empire spanned from 1299 to 1923,.
16 Harvard University was founded before calculus was derived.
Harvard was founded in 1636 and it’s the oldest higher education institution in the US. Calculus wasn’t derived until later in the 17th century, with the work of Gottfried Leibniz and Isaac Newton.
17 The last time the Chicago Cubs won a World Series, women were not allowed to vote.
The infamous cold streak by the Chicago Cubs baseball team extends back to 1908 when they won their second World Series. And in 1920, Women in the US acquired the vote.
18 Humans never fully experience the “present” – we’re always living in the past.
Each and every person is living at least 80 milliseconds in the past. According to David Eagleman, our consciousness lags behind actual events and it has already happened before your brain has a chance to create a cohesive picture of the world when you think an event occurs.
19 There was more time between the Stegosaurus and the Tyrannosaurus Rex than between the Tyrannosaurus Rex and you.
While the T-Rex lived the only ~65 million years ago, the Stegosaurus lived ~150 million years ago.
20 If you’re over 45, the world population has doubled in your lifetime.
The world population was 3,557,000,000 in 1968. Now, the world population is 7,217,000,000 and it grows by over 200,000 daily.
21 There are whales alive today who were born before Moby Dick was written.
There are some bowheads whales living off the coast of Alaska over 200 years old. And they were born well before Moby Dick was written in 1851.
22 If the history of Earth were compressed to a single year, modern humans would appear on December 31st at about 11:58 pm.
The human race has lived on Earth for only 0.004% of the planet’s history.
23 If that’s not enough, this is what’s happening in the world at this very moment.
Frequency is this brilliant comic by artist XKCD. You can talk about time and also you can feel it.