10 Historical Connections That Don’t Seem Real but Are

Are you ready to have your minds blown? When we look at historical events, we generally like to group them into categories that our brains can handle. Historic happenings in one realm (like war) are often linked to those in similar realms (like politics) in a bid to show cause and effect. Similarly, events are linked geographically—things that happened in the United States are seen as having more of an impact on, say, Mexico than Papua New Guinea, right? Makes sense.

But inevitably, history has seen a million-and-one amazing connections and random links that you would never suspect until you go down the rabbit hole. So, we’re going to go through a few of those on this list. Like we said, you’re about to have your minds blown. You would have never thought that the following historical events, happenings, and circumstances were in any way strangely connected… but they were!

Related: 10 Bizarre Coincidences That Altered the Course of History

10 Cleopatra’s Selfies

Cleopatra lived a long, long time ago. How long ago she enjoyed her royal life in Ancient Egypt is almost inconceivable. But here’s the absolutely insane part of her timeline: She lived closer to the invention of the cell phone than she did to the building of the Great Pyramid. Wild, right? When you think of ancient Egypt, you think of two things: Cleopatra and the pyramids. But she lived well over two millennia after the pyramid was finished.

Based on the best available historical data, experts have surmised that the Queen of the Nile lived from about 69 BC to 39 BC. But the Great Pyramid was finished way back in (about) 2560 BC… which would put it a solid 2,500 years before (!) Cleopatra’s life. Comparatively, Motorola produced the first (very primitive) handheld mobile phone in 1973. So Cleopatra existed 500 years closer to the cell phone than the Great Pyramid. We can only assume that she would have loved taking selfies!^[1]

9 Barack’s Long-Lost Cousin

We see Barack Obama as the first Black president of the United States of America, of course. In that way, and many others, he was a pioneer. But here’s a fact that will shock you: He is (allegedly) related through marriage to one of the foremost leaders of the Confederacy back when the Civil War was being fought nearly two full centuries ago—the infamous Jefferson Davis. Isn’t that a thinker!

The source for this shocking fact is none other than former President Obama himself. In his 1995 memoir Dreams from My Father, the man who would later become America’s 44th commander-in-chief wrote: “While one of my great-great-grandfathers, Christopher Columbus Clark, had been a decorated Union soldier, his wife’s mother was rumored to have been a second cousin to Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy.” Be right back—we’ve got to go pick up our jaws off the floor.^[2]

8 In a Galaxy Far, Far Away…

The last time the guillotine was used was the year Star Wars” came out. Hard to believe, right? When you think about the guillotine, don’t you just assume that it’s something that rose to prominence (and then quickly fell out of favor again) in, like, the 18th century? But it was actually legitimately used to cut people’s heads off as recently as 1977. And yes, that was the year George Lucas’s Star Wars hit theaters and completely changed how the world perceives science fiction and fantasy.

Anyway, back to the guillotine: On September 10, 1977, France executed infamous torture-murderer Hamida Djandoubi. Born in Tunisia, Dnajdoubi tortured a woman in a home in France a few years before that and then killed her after kidnapping a few young girls. The cops eventually caught him and arrested him. In turn, when it finally came time to execute him in September of ’77, he was the last person to be beheaded by justice officials anywhere in the Western world. And certainly, the last to be done in by the guillotine.^[3]

7 An Intense Era of Innovation

There’s no question that scientific and technological innovation has moved very, very quickly in the last 150 or so years. But when it comes time to think about just how quickly that all has taken place, how about we give you a stat that’ll absolutely boggle the mind. The world went from horse-drawn carriages to cars to telegraphs to airplanes in less than twenty years. Seriously. That entire path took less than two decades to kick into high gear.

Here’s the breakdown. In 1885, the Benz Patent-Motorwagen was built and sent off the production line. Though it was primitive, it was considered the world’s first automobile propelled by an internal combustion engine. Then, nine years later, in 1894, a man named Guglielmo Marconi built the first wireless telegraph system that found commercial success. Suddenly, people could be connected from far distances in one fell swoop. And then, nine years after that, in 1903, the Wright Brothers made their first flight on the sandy beaches of North Carolina. What a whirlwind!^[4]

6 Did They Ever Cross Paths?

It’s sort of intimidating to think about, but three of the world’s foremost thinkers who ever lived all existed at more or less the same time. We’re talking about Confucius, Socrates, and Buddha here. And while they all lived so long ago that historians can’t be 100% sure whether they truly lived at the same time, we can at least offer up a pretty good guess on the matter.

According to the experts, Buddha is thought to have died in or right around 483 BC. Similarly, Confucius’ life supposedly ended in 479 BC. And then there’s Socrates, who was born back in 469 BC. Taken together, that’s 14 years’ worth of overlap for the three great thinkers. Now, we’re left to wonder whether the other two ever visited Socrates when he was just a child in Greece!^[5]

5 Guten-Fraud

You may think that Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press. And if you think that, you’re dead wrong. Although the Gutenberg Bible was the first mass-produced printed work, it was far from the first printed work ever made in the world. It wasn’t even the first work produced using a movable typeface! As it turns out, Chinese and Korean inventors had been using movable typefaces and producing printed books for several centuries (!) before Gutenberg was even born.

So, while Gutenberg took Europe by storm in 1455 when his Bible was mass-produced and sent all over that continent, he was far from the first one on the jump. Historians say the first-ever printed book was done on a series of woodblocks back in AD 868. No, we didn’t forget to add a “1” before that number. It really was the year 868. The book was the Diamond Sutra, the location was China, and the result was the first-ever printed book… nearly six hundred years before Gutenberg even existed.^[6]

4 Just the Fax, Ma’am

Sure, we don’t think very much of the fax machine nowadays. It’s a dead technology when you consider how we have text messages, emails, and social media. But way back when, the fax was at the top of the mountain. And by “way back when,” we mean 1843. Yes, we’re not kidding about that year: The fax machine was first invented back in 1843, which was about 20 years before (!) the Civil War broke out.

The first-ever fax machine was invented that year by a man named Alexander Bain. He was a Scottish man living in London at the time. Up until that point, he’d already been a decently well-known inventor. He even invented an electric clock that was produced by electrifying a pendulum to tell time as opposed to the springs and weights that were previously common at the time. He also invented a million other things, including automatic music machines, speed-control devices for ships, and improved safety control systems for railroads.

The fax machine is what we’re here for, though, and so the fax machine is what we’ll get. On May 27, 1843, Bain applied for a patent for what he called a “chemical telegram.” As part of the patent, the inventor said he would make “improvements in producing and regulating electric currents and improvements in timepieces, and in electric printing, and signal telegraphs.”

In doing so, “a copy of any other surface composed of conducting and non-conducting materials can be taken by these means.” A “copy,” or, you know, a facsimile. And to think it came two decades before the Civil War broke out… stunning!^[7]

3 It’s a Woolly World

Ask anybody, and they’ll tell you that woolly mammoths lived eons ago. In fact, so far back in time, only the very first Neanderthals had ever come into contact with them. No real human with real human emotions, development, and brainpower ever saw a woolly mammoth in person, they’ll insist. All our half-baked ancestors were barely walking upright and just starting to figure out the slow, glacial pace of evolution. Yeah… sorry… that’s totally wrong!

In reality, woolly mammoths were still alive when the Egyptian pyramids were being built. Tough to square that one in your mind, right? It’s crazy to think that primitive pre-human creatures could still roam the earth at the same time as when the Egyptians produced one of the ancient world’s foremost architectural achievements. But it’s true!

When the construction of the pyramids began about 4,500 years ago, there was still a colony of woolly mammoths living on Wrangel Island in the far northern wilds of the world. Today, archaeologists estimate that around 1,000 mammoths lived on that island until about 1650 BC.^[8]

2 Orville’s Changing World

We’ve already talked a little bit about the Wright brothers on this list and how their push to produce the first flight came during a mind-boggling time of development. But here’s an even crazier fact about one of the Wright brothers, Orville. He nearly lived to see the first space flight. While Wilbur Wright died in 1912, less than a decade after the brothers produced the world’s first flight, Orville lived on for a much longer time. He lived until 1948. But why is that year so significant?

It came just 13 years before Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human being to go up in space. Yuri was launched into the stratosphere on April 12, 1961. By then, all manner of planes and jets were high in the air, flying above Orville’s recently deceased grave. Isn’t it crazy that the man who invented flight on that fateful (and primitive!) day in Kitty Hawk nearly saw us go to space… and then the moon?!^[9]

1 Got Votes?

In France, women were given the right to vote beginning in 1945. Well, to be quite exact, they were given the right to vote on April 29, 1945. But why is that day so significant? As it turned out, Nazi Germany’s infamous leader Adolf Hitler died less than 24 hours after that political sea change occurred. The Nazi leader took his final breaths on April 30, no doubt having seen that the French decision to give women the right to vote was just one of a great many moves made that went against his highly problematic beliefs.

What a wild 24-hour period that must have been for women (well, for everyone) around Paris and throughout the rest of France. Literally, overnight, half of the French population that couldn’t previously participate in the political process was suddenly in play. And just after that, hours past the suffrage move, Hitler does himself in. And they say nothing ever happens…^[10]

+ BONUS: What a Quintet

While we’re on the subject of absolutely insane historical connections, let’s give you a bonus one to go out on. We are certain this will blow your mind because it definitely blew ours: In 1913, in the city center of Vienna, Austria, five men who would completely change the trajectory of the 20th century all lived right near each other in a single neighborhood. The men were Adolf Hitler, Joseph Tito, Sigmund Freud, Leon Trotsky, and Joseph Stalin. And though the five weren’t close pals or anything, the fact that they all lived just blocks away from each other and would go on to do all they did is a brain-busting fact. What must Vienna have been like at that time?!

Of course, Hitler turned out to be… well, Hitler. And Stalin, too, ended up being one of the most intimidating and brutal leaders of the 20th century (and, honestly, world history). Meanwhile, Trotsky was on the run for his revolutionary ideas and tried his best to avoid returning to Russia. And Tito was known then as Josip Broz, where he worked in Vienna at a Daimler automobile factory—though he’d later find fame (and infamy) as Yugoslavia’s powerful and vindictive leader. And then there was Freud. Out of all of them, he was the one most well-established. And they all lived within just a couple blocks of each other!^[11]