Rare Facts That Will Alter Your Perception Of Time

Woolly mammoths walked when the pyramids were built

The last of the woolly mammoths is thought to have existed around the Arctic Circle, in what is now Russia, 4,000 years ago. This means that even when the Great Pyramids were built in Egypt in 2550 BC, these remnants of the Ice Age still roamed the earth.

Oxford is as ancient as the Aztecs

While the Aztec Empire is actually much older, as the capital of Tenochtitlan was founded in 1325, the University of Oxford in England is even older. Oxford had become a largely college in the 1200s, but students were still learning at the school by 1096. The oldest building on the campus is St George's Tower in Oxford Castle and was finished around the year 1020.

America can only be measured in three generations

The United States may have been the first country in the Americas to win its independence from its colonial empire, but in the grand scheme of things, it is still a relatively young country. In fact, one could argue that the U.S. The history of K can be contained in at least three births, especially if you happen to be from the Tyler family tree. President John Tyler was born just a few years after the Constitutional Convention and served from 1841 to 1845. They had a son named Lyon, born in 1853, to the father of his only child, Harrison Tyler. 1928 and is still alive today.

The same turtle was owned by Darwin and Irwin

A famous tortoise known only as Harriet is believed to have been first captured by the famous scientist Charles Darwin on a trip to the Galapagos in 1835. A few years later, she was taken to Australia by a friend of Darwin's, as she was not well adapted. Calm English weather. For the better part of the next century, Harriet lived in the botanical gardens in Brisbane before eventually finding her forever home at the Australia Zoo, where Steve Irwin and his conservation-minded family took good care of her. He died in 2006 at the age of 175.

Fax machines are the same age as the Oregon Trail

It may be hard to wrap your head around it, but the Oregon Trail opened in 1843, the same year the patent for the fax machine was issued to Alexander Bain. The first commercial telefax service opened in 1865, more than a decade before the invention of the telephone by Alexander Graham Bell.

Star Wars and the Guillotine

In 1977, Star Wars may have been a futuristic leap forward for filmmaking, but the real cutting edge was to be found in France, where the terrifying guillotine was still remarkably used to kill prisoners. Hamida Jandoubi was the last to suffer this unfortunate fate on September 10, 1977, just a few months after the premiere of the famous flick.