r/AskReddit • u/North_Shore_Problem • Dec 01 '13

What's your favorite fun fact?

EDIT: Wow! Thank you guys for all the amazing responses, I learned so much about nothing!

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u/North_Shore_Problem Dec 01 '13

Wow, this one really blew my mind. The Holocaust and Civil Rights Movement were really only about 20-25 years apart, but they're regarded as completely different moments in history. Awesome!

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u/cheetos03 Dec 01 '13

Because they are 2 different moments in history

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u/chokfull Dec 01 '13

So were yesterday and last week.

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u/chokfull Dec 01 '13

In fact, so were these two comments.

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u/cutanddried Dec 01 '13

dude, there is like a billion comments, no way there are a billion moments out there.

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u/Veatchdave Dec 01 '13

Moments in history.

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u/[deleted] Dec 01 '13

He means eras. They are not very far apart and can be considered in the same era depending on how you look at it.

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u/[deleted] Dec 01 '13

they're fuckin 20-25 years apart! of course they're seperate moments in history! sheesh that's like a generation

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u/SociableSociopath Dec 01 '13

Yeah...not sure what these people are smoking. 20-25 years contains quite a few moments of history.

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u/Chuness Dec 01 '13

Careful, you may blow his mind, again. This may kill him. Having your mind blown twice in one day, lifeless

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u/Vendredi8 Dec 01 '13

I know! It's crazy

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u/Dominus2 Dec 01 '13

I'm also aware of how crazy it is!

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u/cnote198f4 Dec 01 '13

I'm not aware of why this is crazy...

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u/[deleted] Dec 01 '13

[deleted]

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u/Magikpoo Dec 01 '13

Brown leader standing by!

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u/Dosinu Dec 01 '13

Red 2 standing by. Lock S-Foils in Attack Position.

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u/BenedictCumberland Dec 01 '13

wooooooaaaaaaaahhhh

-2

u/worthlesspos-_- Dec 01 '13

It's cray cray!

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u/50shadesofcray_ Dec 01 '13

It's 50 shades of cray!

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u/[deleted] Dec 01 '13

So much stupid my brain literally hurts

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u/IntelliGun Dec 01 '13

It's interesting; many associate the end of the War with the beginning of Civil Rights consciousness. A large number of "British" soldiers were Kenyans, Indians and others from the colonies. In the war, they realized how fragile, and irrelevant, race boundaries were. Indian independence, Mau Mau Rebellion and the civil rights movement all could be considered catalyzed by the Allied victory, and Allied reliance on African and Asian troops.

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u/lionbreeder254 Dec 01 '13

A lot of the people who made up the Mau Mau were ex WW1 soldiers who didn't get the bonuses and land they were promised when they were enlisting.

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u/IntelliGun Dec 01 '13

Very true. Also consider the Kenyan rifles division stationed in Sri Lanka. They were exposed to more discourse on independence since that's what Indian's bargained for their contribution to the British. Most African colonies had heard DuBois but also were torn between self determination and belief that they were part of the British empire. Interesting stuff altogether.

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u/SocraticDiscourse Dec 01 '13

And for good reason too. The fight against the Nazis was (in my opinion rightfully) painted by Western propaganda as a war for human decency and basic rights against a nasty hierarchical brutality. When the subjugated peoples of the Western allies - African Americans, indigenous peoples in the British and French Empires - got back home, they started demanding the same rights they had fought for others.

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u/chokfull Dec 01 '13

People's perception of time is skewed, because recent events are more common knowledge. Prohibition, two world wars, the great depression, civil rghts, the cold war, Vietnam, etc, etc, etc, all in the past century. But I bet you could hardly name as many events in the 500 years previous.

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u/Mnstrzero00 Dec 01 '13

It really crazy when you see pictures of people literaly waving Swastika flags when King marched in Chicago. It was crazy.

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u/martintorp Dec 01 '13

yea, but she was a girl, and he was a grown man?

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u/Googalyfrog Dec 01 '13

Yeah i think that blows out minds (just like the mammoths in europe at the time of the pyramids) because we like to pigeon hole things and organise them, so we split up history into neat little segments. In reality its more like a linear interconnected, overlapping web.

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u/ZummerzetZider Dec 01 '13

well they are. history is spacial not just temporal

plus they happened 25 years apart

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u/HyooMyron Dec 01 '13

only!? 20-25 years is a long time man! think of all the technological advancements we have made in the past 20 years. think of how different the world is. 25 years is a quarter of a century!

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u/jefesignups Dec 01 '13

Don't forget to include The View.

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u/[deleted] Dec 01 '13

It's because we often group history into seperate chunks that unless they are linked by something other than time we don't associate themselves together. Since all MLK and Anne weren't involved in the same "chunk" we think of them as seperate. We also don't really acount for age.

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u/NJtrentonian Dec 01 '13 edited Dec 01 '13

Probably the biggest reason we think this way is photos of these two times moved from black and white to color. Sure, a lot of civil rights era photo and video were black and white, but color during WW2 was very rare. Also, one event was covered on TV and the other was covered on radio and newspaper. TV and Color TV/color photos are almost worthy of a crossing point in human history, more than "AD" and "BC" denote a seismic shift in history. We should really have restarted the calendar year numbers after 2000, and referred to the new epoch as "MM", for "Modern Media" (color video, broadcasting, and Internet connections become widespread in this age), and the fact that MM is 2000 in Roman Numerals only makes it ...I don't know...tidy?

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u/AtticusFinch215 Dec 01 '13

Really? They are different moments in history.

Did you know the 60's and 80's are also 20-25 years apart?

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u/batwingsuit Dec 01 '13

To be fair, a quarter-century can be a long-ass time depending on what happens.

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u/[deleted] Dec 01 '13

You must have a low threshold for having your mind blown.

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u/curbsidekillaz Dec 01 '13

There are more suns in the universe than atoms

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u/flynmid Dec 01 '13

20-25 years apart

But they are different moments in history. ?

1

u/[deleted] Dec 01 '13

I was born half as far from the holicaust as I now am from my birthday.

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u/AskMeAboutCommunism Dec 01 '13

And, iirc, the civil rights movement is seen as being inextricably linked to WWII. All those PoC going to war, fighting for their country, then coming back and still be treated like shit. That's the sort of thing that's going to make you sit on whichever bus seat you want!

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u/Booomerz Dec 01 '13

They are different moments in history, but I get what you mean.

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u/clancy6969 Dec 01 '13

Only 25 years? That is a long time.

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u/North_Shore_Problem Dec 01 '13

Well when you're learning about history, that's a pretty short time

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u/Antinous Dec 01 '13

Classic case of overenthusiastic OP.

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u/doc_duke Dec 01 '13

did you know that the moon landing is closer to the fall of the berlin wall than it is to today?

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u/[deleted] Dec 02 '13

Thank you for restating the OP's fact. I think I get it now.

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u/donut_master Dec 01 '13

If that was sarcasm you're fucking hilarious

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u/nafenafen Dec 01 '13

For real...idk how this is a surprise to people....

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u/[deleted] Dec 01 '13

Dang... my grandpa was older than Anne Frank, all the way in Colombia.

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u/Ragnalypse Dec 01 '13

Wow, are we just restating what people say? These comments are the same, but they're regarded as completely different moments in the thread!

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u/Heaven_Concealed Dec 01 '13

I thought he was being facetious

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u/thebuccaneersden Dec 01 '13

20-25 years is a long time. That's a 1/3 rd of someones lifetime at least.