June 30, 2017 | Leave a comment Every now and then facts present themselves, that on the face of it, seem unlikely to be true. As a writer on matters of historical interest, or not, as some may argue, I felt obliged to root out the actuality behind some of the more bizarre claims that purport to be historical facts. What follows are examples of improbable statements that turned out to be perfectly accurate observations. The Roman Empire was formally founded in 27 BCE, in place of the preexisting Roman Republic, and believe it or not, was not dissolved until 29th May 1453, when Mehmed the Conqueror captured Constantinople, causing the Roman Empire to finally collapse. The Ottoman Empire was founded in 1299 by Osman I, and was officially abolished on 1st November 1922, following the Turkish War of Independence. Most scholars agree that Jesus was actually born a few years before the date assigned to his birth by Dionysius Exiguus in the 6th century; somewhere between 6 and 4 BCE seems most probable. What we do know for sure is that American baseball star Babe Ruth was born on 6th February 1895. Thus, the statement that two empires spanned the entire gap from Jesus to Babe Ruth, is perfectly correct. Babe Ruth in Action When Microsoft was founded, on 4th April 1975, Spain was still a fascist dictatorship. Alexander Bain was granted British patent number 9745 on 27th May 1843, for his invention called the “Electric Printing Telegraph”. We know it better today as the fax machine. Five days earlier, the first major wagon train had set out west on the Oregon Trail. When the pyramids were being built, there were still woolly mammoths, is an implausible sounding claim. Indeed, we tend to associate the woolly mammoth with our cave dwelling neolithic predecessors, the former having been hunted into extinction by the latter. However, the last known population of the elephant’s cuddly ancestor, died out as recently as 1650 BCE, probably due to a lack of genetic diversity, owing to dwindling numbers. Woolly Mammoth The earliest known Egyptian pyramid, the Pyramid of Djoser, was constructed between 2630 and 2611 BCE. Not only is the statement correct, but it turns out the pointy mausoleums and shaggy mammals, coexisted for almost 1000 years! Pyramid of Djoser McDonalds was founded in 1940, as a barbecue restaurant by Richard and Maurice McDonald. A few days later, the first prisoners began to arrive at Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland. When the Pilgrim Fathers arrived in Plymouth to set up the first permanent settlement in New England in 1620, they faced a tumultuous struggle. By the end of February 1621, approximately half of them were dead, due to the cold winter weather and inadequate accommodation. By contrast, the city of Santa Fe, which had been founded by Spanish colonists in 1610, was faring rather better. It is the oldest state capital city in the United States and the oldest city in New Mexico. Santa Fe means “holy faith” in Spanish. While the Pilgrim Fathers were battling appalling weather, and succumbing to disease and malnutrition, Santa Fe could already boast a hotel and a restaurant! Unfortunately, the hospitality on offer in Santa Fe would have been of little use to the newly arrived settlers, as it is well over two thousand miles from Plymouth, Massachusetts. Nintendo was founded on 23rd September 1889, initially as a maker of hand made playing cards, less than a year after Jack the Ripper had been stalking his victims in London’s notorious East End. Jack the Ripper? When the Aztec Empire was founded in 1428, the University of Oxford had been a seat of learning for over 300 years. On 10th October 1789, Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, a French physician, proposed that capital punishment should always take the form of decapitation “by means of a simple mechanism”, as it was a less painful method of execution than had hitherto been employed. Thus the guillotine, indeed a simple mechanism for decapitation, became forever associated with the good doctor, despite the fact that he did not invent it, and was not himself in favour of the death penalty. Nevertheless, the guillotine became the favourite method for dispatching criminals and enemies of the state in France. The Guillotine During the French Revolution, thousands were guillotined, mostly during the notorious Reign of Terror, between 1793 and 1794. After the revolution, the guillotine was retained as the preferred method of administering capital punishment. Following the abolition of the death penalty in France in 1981, the guillotine was finally retired from service. However, the final execution by guillotine took place on 10th September 1977 in Marseille, when Hamida Djandoubi, who had earlier been convicted of the kidnap, torture and murder of his former girlfriend, was put to death. Djandoubi thus became the last person legally executed by beheading in the Western World, in the same year that the original Star Wars film was released. An unusual juxtaposition, I think you’ll agree! Sources: http://kottke.org/14/02/unlikely-simultaneous-historical-events http://io9.gizmodo.com/5896262/the-last-mammoths-died-out-just-3600-years-agobut-they-should-have-survived http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/a-thousand-pioneers-head-west-on-the-oregon-trail https://en.wikipedia.org