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The song Black Velvet is actually a tribute to Elvis
- John Tyler, 10th president of the US (1790-1862), had a grandson, Harrison Ruffin Tyler (Nov, 1928) who just recently died in May of 2025.
- The last person born in the 1800’s was Emma Morano, born 11/29/1899 Civiasco, Italy. Died 04/15/2017 in Verbania, Italy. So most people reading this had a chance to speak to someone born in 1899.
- All of Napoleon Bonaparte’s 4 brothers lived into the age of photography (1826) and had their photo taken with a camera. His youngest brother Jérôme sat for many photo sessions. Only one of his 3 sisters, Caroline, lived into the era but never had a photo taken. Napoleon Bonaparte (08/15/1769 - 05/05/1821), didn’t live into the age of photography.
- Humans are the only animals capable of appreciating art. Yes, chimps and elephants can make their own art, but they have no interest in it after they’re done with it.
Did 1899 skip December for some reason?
Edit: Or do you mean the last surviving person, or longest-lived person, born in the 1800’s?
I’ve personally seen behavior from cats and bears that appear to contradict your last statement but only anecdotal.
The Appalachian Mountains are older than trees, dinosaurs, the Atlantic Ocean, and Pangea
And almost certainly the oldest mountains in the solar system
Hildegard von Bingen was a nun in medieval times that used nature to heal. We are still studying and rework her book on natural plants and how to heal with them. It seems like some plants dont exist anymore
There’s a bardcore artist that goes by Hildegard von Blingin. Apparently the OG von Bingen was also something of a notable musician.
Crikey I wouldn’t have thoughts plants would have gone extinct so easy! interesting fact
Have you heard about the plant Siphilim? Apparently it was fairly prevalent and very highly valued in ancient times, but was lost by the middle ages.
Never heard of it, that’s one for googling thanks
Could be that many medicinal plants are considered weeds or have very specific habitats that have been built over.
Custer’s Last Stand happened while the Brooklyn Bridge was being built.
Construction for the bridge occured between 1869-1883.
Custers last stand happened 1876.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooklyn_Bridge?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Little_Bighorn?wprov=sfla1
Some other stuff: Mamoths were still alive when the Pyramids were being built.
Isaac Newton was the Master of the Mint. Back then, issues with counterfeiting or diluting the coinage was an issue. He personally went in disguise to bars to track down these counterfeiters. Who were then executed.
Land of the free lol
Britain’s Royal Mint of course. The US didn’t exist in the 17ᵗʰ century.
He is also the inventor of all the ridges around the edge of coins, because at the time it made coins almost impossible to forge.
Europeans used to make a drink out of Egyptian mummies.
Here’s some more information on it:
https://historycanthide.substack.com/p/europeans-ate-egyptian-mummies-for
Also paint
How else do you cure a cough?
There’s a sar-cough-agus joke in here somewhere.
there actually is a reference to “Kodak pictures” in Dracula
Read it 3 times and that never clicked! Nice one.
Here’s some wild river history for you:
The great lakes are super big, have huge flow rates, Superior is famously super deep since it’s a continental-rift lake that was widened by glacial retreat … But they only formed like 14,000 years ago when the glaciers retreated…
The river Tyne in England is 30 million years old, just when Antarctica was separating from Australia and South America.
The river Thames is 58 million years old, that’s just after the meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs.
The Rhine is at least 240 million years old … From the Triassic era if not earlier.
And then there’s 3 rivers in Appalachia that are ~ 320 million years old… The French Broad river, the Susquehanna river, and (ironically) the New river. They’ve been continuously flowing since the carboniferous period, literally when Pangea first started forming and before any bacteria or enzymes could break down trees (which eventually compacted and became all the coal in the mountains that formed alongside them).
🎵Almost Heaven, West Virginia
Blue Ridge Mountains, Shenandoah River
Life is old there, older than the trees
Younger than the mountains, growin’ like a breeze🎶
Crazy those lyrics are literal facts. Also, you win the thread.
Life is old there, older than the trees
Younger than the mountains, growin’ like a breeze
The first part is correct, but technically both the river and life in that area predate the mountains, and all of them predate the continent by hundreds of millions of years, which is wild in its own right.
Ok but he said Susquehanna River. Not Shenandoah.
Great song though.
He sings Shenandoah.
https://genius.com/John-denver-take-me-home-country-roads-lyrics
Edit: Even better source:
Sorry you’re confused. We are referencing this comment in which masterspace mentions the Susquehanna River. Not the Shenandoah River. Somehow it made shalafi excited and his brain substituted Susquehanna for Shenandoah which reminded him of the John Denver song, which yes is a lovely song, I belt it out loud every time I drive alone through West Virginia.
TIL I’ve shot rapids in a 320m year old body of water
This is more of a hypothesis than a fact, but there are credible claims that Henry VIII suffered from the so-called McLeod syndrome and the associated Kell-positive blood type, which is a rare recessive genetic variant affecting the X gene and which he may have inherited from his maternal great grandmother (Jaquetta of Luxemburg) who may have carried this gene. The syndrome would explain both the high mortality among the second-born children that Henry VIII had with his many wives (and similar issues of other male relatives of Jaquetta) and whose pregnancies often ended in miscarriage and (male) children who did not survive infancy, as well as Henry VIII’s early mental decline.
Perhaps not really mind blowing, but I think it’s crazy that the historical events of that time and the “Elizabethan era” that followed might have been shaped in this way by a single occurrence of a specific genetic disorder.
That’s really interesting, thank you.
I guess when you’re seriously inbred like the royal families of Europe, the risk of recessive genetic disorders manifesting is far higher.
Should have picked up the Pure Blooded dynastic trait.
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Coca-Cola: Founded 1888
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Nintendo: Founded 1889
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Dracula, by Bram Stoker: Published 1897
It would have been historically accurate for the vampire hunters who killed Dracula to celebrate by having a Coke and playing Nintendo.
Don’t forget Kodak & the Dracula book were apparently contemporaries too: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/comment/22690621
Were they still a playing card company then?
Right until 1970 when they took a hard pivot into the new-fangled tech called “Computers”
I thought they pivoted to pachinko machines before going digital
Aye, and just before that to toys
Yup!
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There’s a village in Germany that was a neolithic cannibal slaughterhouse. They killed and ate about 20 people a year for 50 years.
Fixed it thanks. Did not we didn’t need exit characters for links! :)
Sounds like a good name for a metal band
Based on the popularity of the genre in that region, I’d be shocked if there wasn’t one already.
I’ll have to check them out and see if they’re any good
The Battle of Thermopylae where king Leonidus and his “300 spartans” (it was actually a few thousand of a coalition force) held off the Persian invasion of Greece.
The plan was to use the narrow mountain path to pit a few of tgeir well trained soldiers against a few of Persias rank and file. The idea being a few well trained soldiers could take out a lot more rank and file if they didnt have battle tactics to worry about.
What caused Leonidus to lose that battle is an alternate route through the mountains that let the Persians flank the Spartans and probably totally destroy them.
What’s mind blowing is this was hundreds year old history when Rome tried the same thing.
This one spot is famous for losing battles and ancient people loved choosing this battleground and then losing
Ah classic mistake, building up defenses on a choke point only to realize it’s not the only entrance to your base and now zerglings are eating your SCVs.
Also, phalanx v short swords just lose as soon as the formation breaks a tiny bit, there’s uneven terrain or open flanks. Up close long pikes don’t do anything and the gladius goes stabby stabby.
Should be noted that it was a few thousand initially. When they found out they were being flanked they sent away most of the other soldiers. So it was just the Spartans and one other contingent, 700 Thespians.
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Scotland’s first railway, the Cockenzie and Tranent waggonway, played a role in the Battle of Prestonpans (1745). The final piece of the line went out of use in the 1960s.
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The Last Stand by Sabaton was describing an event that happened in 1527, the year Henry VIII was trying to get an annulment. The events of The last stand played a role in the founding of the church of England.
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San Marino is so old it was founded before The Council of Nicea.
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The oldest Evidence in the archeological record we have of transgender individuals is older than the oldest archaeological evidence for gay couples.
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The first use of “OMG” was on a memo sent to Winston Churchill in 1917.
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India and Sri Lanka were connected by a land bridge until the 1500s. The remains of which are still a tourist attraction.
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The first scientific study into transgender people was published in 1896 and studies about transgender people were burnt by the Nazis. Don’t ever let people say transgender people are a recent thing.
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The Romance languages have been written down for so long that we can basically watch the evolution of multiple languages in real time through texts.
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Oxford university was founded before what would become the Maori settled in New Zealand.
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One of the last people born into (legal) Slavery in the USA died after being hit by a car in the 1970s.
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It’s possible that former Samurai lived to see the 20th century.
studies about transgender people were burnt by the Nazis.
This is still happening tbf
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The last mammoths died out at roughly the same time as the Giza pyramids were built. Albeit they being in the Arctic and being shrunk by insular dwarfism, had the Egyptians traveled to Wrangels island and captured some they could have had them as work animals while building the pyramids.
This mean that the movie 10,000 BC accurately portraited at least one thing correctly.
