10 Historic Facts That Will Keep You Up at Night
History has its way of creeping into our thoughts, especially during those quiet nights when the world seems to be sleeping, and your mind is wide awake, ruminating over the vast tapestry of the past. Sometimes it’s the epic tales of empires rising and falling, innovations that flipped the script on life as we know it, or the tiny chance happenings that shaped the future forever.
Someone on Reddit threw out a question asking users about historical facts that have them tossing and turning, and the responses were nothing short of intriguing. Let’s dive into some of these insomnia-inducing historical tidbits that reaffirm just how bizarre, dynamic, and truly incredible our collective story is. Remember, these aren’t just random facts; these are events that shook the core of Reddit users and might just ripple through your mind tonight!
The Incredibly Swift Human Progress in Flight
“Man went from the first flight in 1903 to landing on the moon – Apollo 11 in 1969. That was a period of 66 years.
That was 54 years ago.“
A Personal Connection to a Century of Aviation
“My grandma was born in 1899 and died in 2001. She was 4 when the Wright Brothers did their Kitty Hawk thing and was 70 when there was a giant leap for mankind. Still blows my mind.“
The Mysterious Bronze Age Collapse
“The Bronze age collapse. Around 3200 years ago nearly all ancient civilizations in the eastern mediterranean and Near East region were wiped out in a widespread event/societal collapse that was likely sudden and violent and followed by the Greek Dark Ages and nobody really knows what happened. It just blows my mind.“
The Fire That Erased Swedish History
“The fire that destroyed the former royal castle Tre Kronor in Stockholm in 1697. The fire destroyed the state archives, wiping out about half a millennium of written sources on Swedish history.“
Dinosaurs Predating Flowering Plants
“Dinosaurs evolved millions of years before flowering plants. Blows my mind.“
Our Prehistoric Ancestor’s Stroke of Luck
“All of us are alive because some prehistoric person somehow survived impossible odds.“
The Mind-Bending Capabilities of the Webb Telescope
“The Webb telescope has the power to see up to 13.5 billion light years away. The earth is about 4.5 billion years old. That means the Webb telescope is taking pictures of things that happened 9 billion years before the earth even existed.“
The Evolution of Transatlantic Travel
“Four hundred years ago a trip from Europe to America took two months. Now it takes between seven to thirteen hours.“
The Silent Fall of an Empire
“The people who lived when the Roman Empire fell didn’t know that the Roman Empire was falling. Such a thing could only be seen in hindsight.
We never know if we live in such times“
The Vast Unrecorded Human Past
“How little of human history was recorded or survived the ages. Modern humans have been around 300,000 years. Recorded history only goes back to the 4th-5th millenium BCE.
Uncounted humans lived, loved, suffered, created, and died for 60-70x the time of all recorded history“
There you have it – ten startling jumps back into the annals of history, thanks to the collective minds of some sleepless Redditors. It’s amazing how certain events from our past can resonate so deeply with us. Tonight, as you lay your head down, just think of the incredible and mystifying journey humanity has been on – it might just keep you up, pondering the sheer scale of time, the depth of our ancestry, and the ripples left in history’s vast ocean. Sweet dreams, or perhaps, a thoughtful bout of insomnia?
