It isn’t possible to remember every significant date in history but sometimes, coincidences and unique moments in history correspond with each other making such dates even more memorable and food for thought. Here are 15 amazing date comparisons that will really change your perception of time.
Guess who owned Darwin’s pet tortoise, Harriet? It was none other than Steve Irwin who owned it from 1987 after he got her from the Queensland reptile and fauna park. Darwin found Harriet in the Galapagos Islands when she was the size of a dinner plate. She was taken to Australia by his friend John Wickham.
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The battle of the Somme was part of WWI and fought between July 1 and November 18 in 1916. Ironically, Adolf Hitler and Otto Frank found themselves fighting side by side on the German side. J.R.Tolkien, author of the Lord of the Rings fought on the opposite side as an officer with the British 11th Battalion, Lancashire Fusiliers.
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1972 -73 was an interesting year in history. It was the time when Pink Floyd recorded their iconic album, The Dark Side of the Moon in 1973. In the same year, Pablo Picasso at 92 died just one month and seven days later. Just a year earlier on 17th October 1972, the white rapper Eminem now almost a legend was born.
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Saturn discovered in the sixties was formed 4.5 billion years ago. Scientific research found that Saturn’s rings and moon s were formed just 100 million years ago. This means that Saturn’s rings and moons are younger than the dinosaurs which inhabited earth 230 to 66 million years ago.
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Galileo Galilei, one of the most famous personalities in history was an astronomer, engineer, physicist, philosopher, and mathematician. Known as the Father of science, he died on 8th January 1942. Just 11 months later, another eminent personality and scientists Sir Isaac Newton was born. Newton, of course, was famous for his discovery of gravity.
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That’s right! Just when Americans had reason to be happy with the start of McDonald's, in another part of the world a tragedy of mammoth proportions was unfolding. McDonald's was started as a barbecue restaurant by Richard and Maurice McDonald at 1398 North E Street San Bernardino, California in 1940. In the same year in April, the first prisoners began arriving at Auschwitz which started functioning as one of the most notorious concentration camps of World War II.
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A big coincidence, where all of these three personalities died on 22nd November 1963. Kennedy needs no introduction as the 325th President of the United States. Clive Lewis Staples was a British Novelist poet and academic and the author of “The chronicles of Narnia, Aldous Leonard Huxley was also an English writer and novelist known for works such as Brave New World and Doors of Perception. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in literature seven times.
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Harvard was established in the United States in 1636 the same year the Quing Dynasty was established in China by the Manchus in Manchuria in the northeast of China.
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This goes to show the speed of progress. Orville and Wilbur Wright experimented with their first manned flight on December 17th, 1903. Their aircraft flew for 12 seconds covering 120 feet. 66 years later on July 20, 1969, a mankind went from no flight technology to sending a manned spacecraft to the moon. Neil Armstrong became the first man to step on the moon.
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We use it so often yet we never ever wonder on its inception. The equal = sign was used first by a Welshman Robert Recorde who also introduced algebra to England. While writing his book, The Whetstone of Witte, He became so fed up of having to write “equals to” that he invented a sign and the equal symbol was born. 7 years later the most famous personality in the history of science Galileo Galilei was born on 15th February 1564.
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An unusual date comparison happened In January 1913, Sigmund Freud was an established psychoanalyst who was living and practicing on the city’s Berggasse. Simultaneously Marshal Tito was working at the Daimler automobile factory in Wiener Neustadt a town in Vienna. Stalin and Trotsky were on the run and sought refuge in Vienna. Adolf Hitler at the time was living in a doss-house in Meldermannstrasse near the Danube after being twice rejected by the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts where he wanted to study painting.
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Machu Pichu is a 15th century Inca citadel located 7,790 feet above sea level on a mountain ridge in Peru. But, regardless of how old it is, Oxford University is older than that having been established in 1096 and is the oldest university in operation.
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Ancient history is synonymous with the pyramids of Egypt. When you think old you think of Pharaohs with goatees and the Sphinx but what’s even older than these is a prehistoric burial site in Ireland. The pyramids of Djoser were constructed between 2630 and 2611 BC. The Irish Neolithic burial site at Newgrange was built around 3200 BC at the time of the Neolithic age.
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Among date comparisons this is weird? Even as the world celebrated one of its most iconic movies suggestive of how much technology has advanced in movie making, France was still using a contraption of the dark ages, The Guillotine. Star Wars was released in 1977. During that time the Guillotine was still the method of execution in France but what’s interesting is the fact that it was on the day Star Wars Episode IV, A New Hope premiered in France that the country put an end to the bizarre practice.
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