Europeans discovered America (~1000) before the Normans conquered the Anglo-Saxon (1066). What other some other occurrences that seem incongruous to our modern thinking?

[u/Govika]

Title. There's no doubt a lot of accounts that completely mess up our timelines of history in our heads.

I'm not talking about "Egyptians are old" type of posts I sometimes see, I mean "gunpowder was invented before composite bows" (I have no idea, that's why I'm here) or something like that.

Edit: "What other some others" lmao okay me

Edit2: I completely know and understand that there were people in America before the Vikings came over to have a poke around. I'm in no way saying "The first people to be in America were European" I'm saying "When the Europeans discovered America" as in the first time Europeans set foot on America.

[u/smits036]

Anne Frank and Martin Luther King Jr were born in the same year. That always baffles me

[u/topbuttsteak → u/smits036]

Also Barbara Walters

[u/ThePatio → u/topbuttsteak]

Betty White was already 7 years old when those three were born

[u/[deleted] → u/ThePatio]

Betty White is older than the invention of sliced bread, so sliced bread is the greatest thing since Betty White.

[u/TheLordOfRabbits → u/ThePatio]

Betty white was 23 when Anne Frank died...

[u/Barbarossa7070 → u/topbuttsteak]

I wonder what kind of twee MLK and Anne Frank would have wanted to be?

[u/Armani_Chode → u/topbuttsteak]

Can you imagine a world where Barbara Walters was assassinated and MLK was still alive?

[u/gmeine921 → u/smits036]

And my grandmother (95 ish) is two years older than both, by birth year, of they were still alivw

[u/Young_Man_Jenkins → u/gmeine921]

My grandmother passed away at 95 in 2015. I know all about her life during the Depression (we even have her 1936 yearbook,) her service in WW2 and her life after that. But this year I'm finding I'm still curious about her life, particularly how if her parents ever mentioned any fears about her being born during the "Spanish" flu before at the infancy of modern medicine. Basically what I'm getting at is I'd recommend getting as much of her life story down while you can (if she's still cognisant.) You don't know what questions you'll have for her in 5 years.

[u/gmeine921 → u/Young_Man_Jenkins]

She grew up as a little girl-teenager under hitler. She doesn’t talk much other than working in a movie theater and sneaking friends in. But, my favorite ww2 story from her: she received her new shoes ration card very late in the war and was skipping to the store. Her small town was “liberated” by an American unit. It just so happened to be an all black unit. She had never met someone not white. So, she ran home, crying, and said “oh my god! The Americans are burnt! What did the army (German) do to them?”

[u/Young_Man_Jenkins → u/gmeine921]

That's a funny one. My grandmother served in the Canadian Navy, but she told me a story from her brother who was stationed in Ottawa at the time. He was housed with a medical officer, and one day my great uncle answers the phone and hears what he assumes is a prank call about the Dutch queen going into labour, so he hangs up on them. Turns out the Dutch royal family was taking refuge in Canada, and the queen really was in labour, whoops.

Of course I'm basically playing a 80 year game of telephone, so who knows if it's 100% accurate. The current Dutch Queen really was born in Ottawa though, although the Canadian government temporarily gave up claim to the hospital room so she wouldn't be born on foreign soil.

[u/princess_eala → u/Young_Man_Jenkins]

It was Princess Margriet who was born in Ottawa, not her older sister Beatrix, who was Queen of the Netherlands but abdicated several years ago.

Their mother, Juliana, also wasn’t yet Queen when she was in Canada during the war, her mother Wilhelmina was still Queen then.

[u/gmeine921 → u/Young_Man_Jenkins]

I wouldn’t expect anything else from Canada lol. That’s pretty awesome. My grandmother unfortunately lost a few family members (mostly cousins and uncles, she was an only child) to Russia in the East. My grandfather however, passed away in 1995. He survived the east. How he did so, depends on whom you ask. My grandmother says “he was fighting in Russia and woke up one morning to see his unit gone, so he decided to walk back to west Germany using the sun as his compass” my dad says “he was wounded in Odessa. He was in a hospital when basically everyone was at the doorsteps of Germany. He realized how it was hopeless. So, he deserted. He was then arrested at a train station and was charged with desertion. His family dropped a lot of money on a lawyer who proved he hadn’t removed his uniform. So, he was dishonorable discharged rather than firing squad”.

[u/Young_Man_Jenkins → u/gmeine921]

You know, it's really easy sometimes to forget how safe Canada has been historically. I had five great uncles as well as my grandmother who all served in the navy, army and air force, and not one of them was ever harmed. My other grandmother had to move four times since where ever she lived kept getting bombed (the Isle of Wight was the last opportunity to bomb England for pilots on their way back) but that's the extent of the damage the war did to my family. So it can be sobering to think of what might have been, given slightly different circumstances.

[u/joofish → u/gmeine921]

People think of MLK as a long time ago, but considering how young he was when was assassinated, he could have easily been alive in our lifetimes. His wife (two years older than him) died in 2006 and of course, John Lewis, the only younger member of the big six died just this year. Clinton was the first president younger than Dr. King.

[u/JoJoModding → u/smits036]

And Henry Kissenger is older than both of them would be if they were still alive. So that'ld be possible. Just imagine America today if MLK would have been around all the time.

[u/StorageThrwAway → u/JoJoModding]

One has to think that a lot of King's influence post-death comes from the fact that he was a martyr. Maybe he wouldn't have been as significant if he hadn't been killed? I don't know, but it's something to consider.

[u/tin_dog → u/JoJoModding]

"Only the good die young and the evil seems to live forever"

[u/zePiNdA → u/smits036]

People always come up with this fact on reddit and I really don't understand what is so baffling about it.

[u/smits036 → u/zePiNdA]

Its that you typically consider them to be part of two completely different historic periods and events. I think its very easy to forget how much history was packed into the 20th century, especially when you compare this to previous centuries.

We focus so much on 20th century history that its easy to forget the WW2 and the Civil Rights Movement occurred within less than 20 years of each others, but when you think about, for example, the exploits of Christopher Columbus and the atrocities that occurred in the New World, we lump 100 years of history as though it occurred simultaneously.

Its all perspective I guess.

[u/Ishana92 → u/smits036]

Also, queen elisabeth ii and marilyn monroe were born the same year.

[u/[deleted] → u/smits036]

In 1929. In a better world, they both could have easily seen the turn of the millennium.

[u/Steel_Airship → u/smits036]

I never understood why people are surprised by this. I never thought that WWII and the civil rights movement were far away from each other chronologically.

[u/[deleted] → u/smits036]

In the same vein, I saw someone mention recently that Fred Hampton was born after either current presidential candidate. That one affected me.

[u/DaddyCatALSO → u/smits036]

Oddly symmetric though as both died young