Trees are not that related to each other. Woody plants evolved multiple times over earths history. And while e.g. beeches are closely related to oaks, they are more closely related to strawberries than to e.g. ashes. Black locust tree is more closely related to beans or peas than to birches (which are again related to oaks and beeches). Apples are even more closely related to strawberries than to oaks. That broke my mind during Covid. All conifers are somewhat closely related though.
edit: typo
I like this one (not mine):
- The samurai were abolished as a caste in Japanese society during the Meiji restoration in 1867
- The first ever fax machine, the “printing telegraph”, was invented in 1843
- Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in 1865
=> There was a 22 year window in which samurais could have sent a fax to Abraham Lincoln.
And still they didn’t warn him
Historians refuse to debate the great Anti-Lincoln samurai fax conspiracy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_submarines
And they could’ve done it from french submarines.
Ooooh that’s a good one
Was there a phone line network intact enough to send a fax from Japan to the United States…?
Wouldn’t have been phone at that point, it’d be wired telegraph. Which I don’t need to elaborate did not go from Japan to the United States but there were exiled Samurai kicking around in Spanish territory for a bit even into the 1800s so possibly one of them could’ve visited the US and sent Lincoln a Fax. Also I think the king of Siam tried to give the Union war elephants during the Civil War which is much weirder.
Missed opportunity.
Here’s some wild river history for you:
The great lakes are super big, have huge flow rates, Superior is famously super deep since it’s a continental-rift lake that was widened by glacial retreat … But they only formed like 14,000 years ago when the glaciers retreated…
The river Tyne in England is 30 million years old, just when Antarctica was separating from Australia and South America.
The river Thames is 58 million years old, that’s just after the meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs.
The Rhine is at least 240 million years old … From the Triassic era if not earlier.
And then there’s 3 rivers in Appalachia that are ~ 320 million years old… The French Broad river, the Susquehanna river, and (ironically) the New river. They’ve been continuously flowing since the carboniferous period, literally when Pangea first started forming and before any bacteria or enzymes could break down trees (which eventually compacted and became all the coal in the mountains that formed alongside them).
🎵Almost Heaven, West Virginia
Blue Ridge Mountains, Shenandoah River
Life is old there, older than the trees
Younger than the mountains, growin’ like a breeze🎶
Crazy those lyrics are literal facts. Also, you win the thread.
Life is old there, older than the trees
Younger than the mountains, growin’ like a breeze
The first part is correct, but technically both the river and life in that area predate the mountains, and all of them predate the continent by hundreds of millions of years, which is wild in its own right.
Ok but he said Susquehanna River. Not Shenandoah.
Great song though.
He sings Shenandoah.
https://genius.com/John-denver-take-me-home-country-roads-lyrics
Edit: Even better source:
Sorry you’re confused. We are referencing this comment in which masterspace mentions the Susquehanna River. Not the Shenandoah River. Somehow it made shalafi excited and his brain substituted Susquehanna for Shenandoah which reminded him of the John Denver song, which yes is a lovely song, I belt it out loud every time I drive alone through West Virginia.
Artistic license
The New river also formed a beautiful gorge where we humans built an awesome bridge and some scenic overlooks. If you find yourself driving through that southern region of WV, it is worth a detour!
https://www.nps.gov/neri/planyourvisit/nrgbridge.htm
It’s a national park now too!
Funfact regarding the New River:
The Cartographers charting the river had it marked by the direction it flows, NE-W, eventually this just stuck as the name.
before any bacteria or enzymes could break down trees (which eventually compacted and became all the coal in the mountains that formed alongside them).
Building off of this, the difference between coal and oil is that coal comes from carbon that was buried before the bacteria existed to break it down, and oil after. There will eventually be more oil, but there will never be more coal
TIL I’ve shot rapids in a 320m year old body of water
A few months ago my mother was cleaning the home of grannie who died, and there it was found. An old cookbook, handwritten by grannie, the book it self had a stamp on it (as in caved in leather) that it was made in 1910. from the words of my grandfather this book was given to grandmama by grand grandma.
The mindblowing thing is that this handwriting book which survived both world wars, the fall of communism and the turmoil afterwards, still has easier to follow instructions than most recipes today I see, also no about me and my life section
Ironic that you didn’t post a recipe and only an about me and my life section.
recipe or gtfo
- Behead a large chicken.
Perfect, already done!
Arise, chicken
https://justtherecipe.com/ <-- pretty good scraper that removes all the mommy blog fluff
The one time you might have wanted a touch of personal trivia with your goulash recipe… Good grief!
Sharks are older than the North Star. (450mya vs. 70mya)
Sharks are older than trees. (450mya vs 390mya)
There was a 20 million year window, in which dead trees just piled up. Nothing could digest the lignin. This is how germany’s brown coal reserves came to be.
The sharks thing actually leads to another fun fact:
Sharks are older than some of the north star, as the noth star is actually a binary star system next to a solo star. I forget what part it’s actually older than, so here’s the source.
And just to be clear, Polaris is not actually the “North Star” all the time. North Stardom rotates around on a 26,000 year period, as the earth precesses. That’s crazy lightning fast spinning on the time scales we’re taking about.
Prior to their win in 2016, the Chicago Cubs hadn’t won a world series since before the fall of the Ottoman Empire.
That’s a good one. I should really learn more about the Ottoman Empire.
I love to put my feet up and settle in with a good book about the Ottomans
Columbus’ contact resulted in a 92% loss of population in North, Central, and South America. Mexico City area only just re-reached its pre-contact population estimate in the 1960s.
“1491” is a good read.
The sheer amount of people, knowledge, and culture lost in the Americas due to European invasion and their treatment of the native peoples makes me so sad.
It is the greatest loss of human knowledge that we know of. Certainly the largest in the last 4000 years. It puts the burning of the Library of Alexandria to shame. Entire civilizations, and the sum of all their knowledge, gone. Wiped out. Practically erased from history. The Aztecs had a full writing system and a long recorded history, all burned to ash by the Spaniards just for the hell of it; only scraps remain.
From ChatGPT:
Several Indigenous civilizations in the Americas had their written records deliberately destroyed, while others relied heavily on oral knowledge that disappeared when communities were decimated. Here’s a clear breakdown of both types:
Civilizations Whose Records Were Intentionally Destroyed
Aztec (Mexica) Empire
- Type of records: Pictorial and glyphic codices on history, astronomy, tribute, law, and religion.
- Destruction: After the conquest, Spanish authorities, most famously Bishop Juan de Zumárraga and later Diego de Landa, burned almost all Aztec codices as “idolatrous.”
- Survival: Fewer than 20 pre-conquest or early-contact codices survive.
Maya Civilization
- Type of records: Highly developed writing system; texts on astronomy, mathematics, calendars, history, and ritual.
- Destruction: Inquisition-era clerics burned “thousands” of books and idols; Diego de Landa’s auto-da-fé in 1562 is the most notorious.
- Survival: Only four confirmed pre-conquest Maya codices remain (Dresden, Madrid, Paris, Grolier).
Mixtec Civilization
- Type of records: Rich pictographic histories of dynasties, genealogies, wars, religious rituals.
- Destruction: Many codices lost to Spanish burnings and suppression of Mixtec priest-scribes.
- Survival: A few extraordinary codices remain (Codex Zouche-Nuttall, Codex Vindobonensis).
Inca Empire (Tawantinsuyu)
- Type of records: Not written in books, but quipus—complex knotted-string recording systems for census, tribute, calendrics, and possibly narrative information.
- Destruction: Colonial authorities destroyed many quipus, and forced conversion efforts suppressed quipu-keepers (khipukamayuqs).
- Survival: ~1,000 quipus remain, but most without context.
Taíno (Caribbean)
- Type of records: Primarily oral, but also ceremonial carvings (zemis), sacred objects, and chronicled songs.
- Destruction: Spanish campaigns wiped out most of the population within decades; much material culture was destroyed or lost.
Muisca (Colombia)
- Type of records: Mostly oral histories and sacred textiles and objects.
- Destruction: Spanish suppression of temples and ceremonial items erased much of their intellectual heritage.
Civilizations Whose Knowledge Faded With Their Communities
These relied heavily on oral traditions or fragile local materials. When communities were devastated by disease, enslavement, and forced assimilation, their knowledge systems could not survive intact.
Mississippian Cultures (e.g., Cahokia)
- No writing system; history was preserved orally.
- Collapse accelerated by population loss after contact, long before written ethnography could record their traditions.
Ancestral Puebloans, Hohokam, Mogollon
- Sophisticated sciences (astronomy, hydrology, architecture) maintained through oral knowledge.
- Much was lost after displacement, missionization, and cultural fragmentation.
Wari, Tiwanaku (pre-Inca Andes)
- No writing system; relied on knot-based or symbolic systems.
- Knowledge of state organization and ritual life vanished after the societies collapsed long before Spanish arrival, and then post-contact disruptions erased remaining memories.
Nahua, Zapotec, Purepecha, and many others
-
These groups had writing or semi-writing systems, but much of what we know today survives only in fragments because:
- manuscripts were burned,
- priestly classes were suppressed,
- or oral lineages were broken.
The Scale of Loss
Across the Americas, scholars estimate:
- hundreds of languages vanished, each carrying unique worldviews and knowledge systems;
- countless scientific, agricultural, ecological, and medical traditions were lost or fragmented;
- many civilizations’ histories and lineages were erased or only partially reconstructed through archaeology.
It truly was a civilizational-scale knowledge collapse—yet also a story of survival, because many Indigenous peoples continue to preserve, revive, and rebuild these traditions today.
Fuck ChatGPT.
Lol
Don’t care
Then Cortez finished the job when he explored from Florida to Texas. He also introduced wild hogs to the continent, which introduced trichinella parasites to native fauna. Truly one of the most ecologically destructive events in the past thousand years.
The weird part about that is that Columbus was the third expedition to the American continent from the European continent.
First was a single Irish/Celtic(?) monk in the 800s. Second was Leif Erikson and his crew of “Vikings” in the 1100-1200s. Neither one of those caused widespread disease in the Americas, despite the fact that the monk made it as far as The Great Lakes, and Leif Erickson’s expedition was cut quite short with them engaging in battle with the first natives they saw, resulting in the death of Leif Erikson as well as a few of his companions.
Who was the monk?
Brendan the navigator, 6th c., but the story about “Saint Brendan’s island” is not proven to be about America AFAIK. Or true. It’s a legend about a blessed island that may be a religious myth.
There’s a ton of legends of sailors finding a vanishing island, an island of plenty, the island of apples, that various theories have attached to the Canaries or Azores and such IINM. Saint Brendan is just one among those, so it’s hard to assume it’s fact.
Also, Leif Erikson was in year 1000. And there is a strong suspicion that diseases did play a big role and made it a shitshow.
follow it up with “Guns, Germs, and Steel”
That is historically not accurate.
The last American Civil War pensioner passed away in May 2020.
Her father served. He fathered her at 82, in 1930.
Possible… But unlikely in practice. Male sperm starts decreasing in quantity and quality after 30.
And the timing means they still had literal milkmen…
I pretty much ignore any of the claims in this thread that hinge on someone being really old. There’s just no way to tell if that’s really true, the older the people supposedly get the more likely it is that they faked (or just didn’t know) their real age, e.g. by using a relative’s paperwork or telling an official that they’re 40 instead of 50. BTW the “blue areas” are probably fake, too.
I once turned down a gangbang that would have been me and 6 girls because I felt a little hung over… That was 25 years ago, and Im still not over how monumentally fucking stupid that was.
Could have been six child support cases… Avoided!
Thats a good one, but I usually try to sooth myself by thinking it was a ploy to steal my kidneys… YEah, they were after my kidneys… They were after my kidneys… Im going to be crying about that one on my deathbed lol
Bro, I think they were definitely gonna steal your kidneys! Good job weasling out of it, bullet dodged!
Men’s clothing keep getting shorter and shorter in the late Middle Ages/early modern period to the point where at court, their dicks could be seen. The solution was cod pieces, some of which were elaborate, bejeweled, erect penises. This trend ended in England when Elizabeth I fully came into her role as “the virgin queen”
The way you phrased that, it’s like the queen wouldn’t fuck so dicks went out of style.
Did someone say codpiece?
And this time period was supposedly The Enlightnement, which jack shit of was taught in the school I went to as a kid. Sounds cool as fuck.
The Appalachian Mountains are older than trees, dinosaurs, the Atlantic Ocean, and Pangea
Life is old there, older than the trees
Younger than the mountains, growin’ like a breeze
country road… … take me home…
Pretty sure sharks are older than trees too
Older than bones…
And almost certainly the oldest mountains in the solar system
There are older mountain ranges on earth than the Appalachians. The oldest on earth are likely the Barberton Mountains coming in at a whopping 3.4 billion years old.
There was a day, 18th April 1930, where the BBC reported no news. It really shocks me because of how different the times are now. I can’t imagine there’s any minute that doesn’t have dozens news stories running
This would be so nice I swear.
IDK if the BBC still does this, but back when I watched, they had a habit of just cutting to some B-roll footage of whatever situation, and just shutting up for a while to let it play out and let the audience breathe a little bit, as a segueway and palate cleanser before whatever the next segment was. Absolute perfection. I cannot imagine the American news doing that (and indeed they do not) without someone losing their job.
I can’t imagine there’s any minute that doesn’t have dozens news stories running
Honestly, that’s your choice. My advice; limit your news to 2 - 3 “channels” (like RSS app, Lemmy), set them up that you have to “open them” (no by-the-side stream) and have days where you just don’t do that.
Yes, i’m easily stressed.
Oh I don’t read much for news. A local paper (which is in a language I barely know), a little on here but most in blocked, and The Onion type publications sometimes.
I still can’t imagine that a news source says “there’s not news now, have some piano” in 2025
I mean, there was still a tremendous amount of things happening in 1930, they just didn’t report on any of it.
Hey, that was my -76th Birthday!
Have you heard of the truly ancient - Stone Age, in fact - ruins of what is now called Gobekli Tepe (Potbelly Hill) in Anatolia, Turkey, near the Taurus Mountains, between rivers that converge further downstream to create the Euphrates River.
These long-gone people, hunter/gatherers and slightly later hunter/harvesters (a primitive phase of agriculture), now called Tash Tepeler (in modern Turkic), build stone urban centers on a large scale, were completely unknown before 1992, and let me put it this way, how long ago they were:
Ancient Sumeria, cradle of civilization, where writing was invented, is closer to us than it is to the time when Gobekli Tele was thriving.Gobekli Tepe is near halfway between the Lascaux and Chauvet cave paintings and us.
The basis for the human era calendar, more or less, right? We’d be on year 12025.
When archaeologists express that very same concept, they widely use 12025 BP (Before Present).
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Coca-Cola: Founded 1888
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Nintendo: Founded 1889
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Dracula, by Bram Stoker: Published 1897
It would have been historically accurate for the vampire hunters who killed Dracula to celebrate by having a Coke and playing Nintendo.
Were they still a playing card company then?
Right until 1970 when they took a hard pivot into the new-fangled tech called “Computers”
I thought they pivoted to pachinko machines before going digital
Aye, and just before that to toys
Yup!
Weren’t they involved with brothels at some point?
I’m sorry, I don’t know their history well though to answer that.
having a Coke and playing Nintendo
So playing a card game and drinking literal cocaine?
Probably something Bram Stoker did.
As one does
Don’t forget Kodak & the Dracula book were apparently contemporaries too: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/comment/22690621
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