10 historical dates that turned out to be much closer than you think (11 photos)

It often seems to us that the benefits of civilization that we use every day have existed since time immemorial. We sometimes forget that for our grandparents, television and telephones were once technological wonders. And much of the knowledge about the world that we take for granted has only recently been acquired by humanity.





Scientists discovered why the ocean is salty only in 1979



Until 1979, scientists did not know why the ocean was salty. At first they thought that it was the rivers that carried salt along with garbage into the oceans. It wasn't until 1977 that researchers first discovered hydrothermal vents spewing chemicals deep below the Earth's surface. In 1979, high-temperature hydrothermal vents were discovered. They are also called "black smokers" because their emissions resemble black smoke. They are the ones who deposit microcrystals of minerals into the sea.

The first college football game in the United States took place four years after the Civil War.





The first college football game took place on November 6, 1869, between New Jersey (now Princeton University) and Rutgers College. The game was played in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and Rutgers beat New Jersey 6 to 4. Meanwhile, the Civil War did not end until April 1865. Four years after the war, people have already moved on to fighting each other on the football field.

The Heimlich maneuver was invented in 1974.



People have been choking for thousands of years, so why was the Heimlich maneuver invented as recently as 1974? The fact is that in 1972, the New York Times published statistics according to which more than 3,000 people in the United States suffocated in the previous year alone. If someone choked, the people around them could only hit the choking person on the back in the hope of dislodging the object stuck in the throat.

This article inspired Dr. Henry J. Heimlich to find a better way to help people who are choking. In June 1974, he published his findings in a medical journal. The method he outlined in this article is now commonly known as the Heimlich maneuver. The inventor of the technique himself has lived almost to this day and died in 2016.

George Washington died 25 years before the discovery of dinosaurs



On December 14, 1799, the first US President, George Washington, died. Interestingly, Washington died 25 years before William Buckland gave the scientific name to the first dinosaur, Megalosaurus, in 1824.

People have been finding dinosaur fossils for thousands of years, but for a long time no one knew what they were. The giant bones were originally thought to be from giant humans or large reptiles. It wasn't until 1824 that the first dinosaur was scientifically described: that is, George Washington died without knowing about them.

It wasn't until 1991 that we learned that a meteorite killed the dinosaurs.



By the way, about dinosaurs: only in 1991, scientists discovered that these giants died due to a meteorite fall. In other words, 167 years passed between the official discovery of the first dinosaurs and the discovery of how dinosaurs went extinct.

In 1991, scientists discovered tiny particles of glass in Haiti that provided vital evidence that an asteroid hit the Earth and killed the dinosaurs. Before this discovery, scientists believed that volcanic activity and climate change were to blame for the extinction of dinosaurs. To put this discovery into historical perspective, imagine the movie Home Alone before people knew why the dinosaurs died.

Pablo Picasso died later than Jimi Hendrix



Pablo Picasso, one of the most prominent artists of the 20th century, was alive quite recently, and on the historical scale he is closer to us than the rock and roll legend Jimi Hendrix. Picasso was born in 1881 and died in 1973, and Hendrix was born in 1942 and died in 1970.

Scientists understood how anesthesia works only in 2020



Despite the fact that people have been operated on under general anesthesia for 170 years, scientists only learned how anesthesia actually works in 2020. In fact, scientists put the first patient under general anesthesia in 1846 without truly knowing how the drug worked, and didn't find out until 170 years later.

It wasn't until 1987 that it was proven that babies feel pain.



For decades, young children were considered primitive organisms that did not feel pain. As a result, the doctors who operated on the babies gave them virtually no anesthesia.

It was not until 1987 that the American Academy of Pediatrics officially declared that it was unethical to operate on newborns without anesthetics. Before this statement, infants often received only muscle relaxants before surgery.

The last widow of a US Civil War veteran died in 2020.



The last widow of a Civil War veteran died in 2020. Helen Viola Jackson, who died on December 16, 2020 at the age of 101, was married to Northern Army veteran James Bolin. 17-year-old Helen Viola married her 93-year-old neighbor Bolin in September 1936. It's not a fact that it was a love match, but Bolin sincerely wanted to take care of Jackson and her future. After Bolin's death in 1939, Jackson kept the marriage a secret.

The wheeled suitcase was invented in the 1970s.



Rolling luggage has made life easier for travelers around the world, but this seemingly simple device wasn't invented until 1970. That year, Bernard Sadow was traveling through Puerto Rico with his family and was tired of carrying two heavy suitcases. He saw a porter using a rolling luggage cart, which gave Sadow an idea. Returning home, he attached wheels to his suitcases: the suitcase on wheels was invented.