Random Historical Events You Won't Believe Happened at the Same Time (16 items)

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  (#11) Microsoft Was Founded While Spain Was Still A Fascist Dictatorship (1975)

  Reddit user ampellang drew an odd parallel: when Microsoft was founded by Paul Allen and Bill Gates in April 1975, Spain was still ruled by fascist dictator Francisco Franco, who “presided over a regime of state terror and national brainwashing through the controlled media and the state education system,” according to the BBC.

  Unlike Germany or Italy, Spain did not go through a “denazification process” following WWII, meaning fascist politics reigned right up until the early years of home computing.
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  (#7) Nintendo Was Founded When Jack the Ripper Was Still On The Loose (1889)

  Japanese gaming giant Nintendo was founded on September 23, 1889, originally producing handmade playing cards called hanafuda. This means the company behind Mario, Donkey Kong, Samus, Kirby, and that copy of Wii Sports gathering dust in your parent’s basement was actually contemporaneous with the legendary London serial killer Jack the Ripper. Though all the murders we now attribute to the killer were committed in 1888, in September 1889, Londoners still thought Jack was on the loose: he was a suspect in the murder of unidentified woman – called “The Pinchin Street Torso” because all they found was her torso – just a few weeks before Nintendo was founded.

  The identity of Jack the Ripper is still unknown. Reddit user nliausacmmv made this connection with an assist from thundernewt.
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  (#9) Star Wars Came Out The Same Year As The Last Guillotine Execution In France (1977)

  Hamida "Pimp Killer" Djandoubi was beheaded via guillotine in France on September 10, 1977, for the torture and murder of a 21-year-old woman. It was the last time France executed anybody using any method – François Mitterrand abolished the practice in 1981. This means that, as Redditor LastKill highlights, in the same year a man in a First World country was getting his head chopped off by the state, kids across the globe were lining up to see Star Wars, which debuted in the U.S. on May 25, 1977, and in the UK on December 27, 1977.
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  (#8) By The Time The Pilgrims Made It To Plymouth Rock, There Was A 'Palace of the Governors' In New Mexico

  In the basic narrative of the formation of the United States that you get in school, the story begins with the hardy, faithful Pilgrims boarding their ships in England and sailing until they hit Plymouth Rock, MA. While the Pilgrims were a pretty early group of settlers to New England (they landed in 1620), they were in no way the first group to set up shop in the would-be US of A. In fact, Spanish explorers and conquistadors had been establishing themselves in the Southwest for a century before the Pilgrims arrived, and, by 1610, they had built the Palace of the Governors in Santa Fe where they had a full-on settlement.

  So all those stories of harsh winters, Native American raids, and barely surviving up North? They should've gone on down to old Santa Fe.
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  (#4) You Could Take The London Underground To The Last Public Hanging In The UK (1868)

  Two Redditors (TheFairyGuineaPig and Iamreeve) drew readers' attention to this startling fact: the last public hanging in the UK took place on May 26, 1868, when Michael Barrett was executed in front of a crowd of two thousand people outside the walls of Newgate Prison in London.

  The Barbican London Underground station was built in 1865 (as Aldersgate Street) and is only a 10-minute walk from Newgate Prison (now the Central Criminal Court), according to Google Maps. This means it was entirely possible that Londoners took the tube to watch a hanging. 
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  (#15) Oxford University Existed For Hundreds Of Years Before The Aztec Empire Was Founded (1428)

  Historians consider 1428 to be the first year of the Aztec Empire, which ruled the Valley of Mexico until 1521. Oxford University in England, believe it or not, is actually hundreds of years older than the Aztecs, as Redditor LastKill brought to light. According to Oxford’s website, “teaching existed at Oxford in some form in 1096 and developed rapidly from 1167, when Henry II banned English students from attending the University of Paris.”

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