As the old saying goes, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." But sometimes the past is so hard to wrap your head around that you can't fully integrate it into your understanding of reality. As they often say, truth is stranger than fiction. Nobody knows that better than historians. The fact that always gets me is that Martin Luther King Jr. and Anne Frank were born in the same year. That one is always a shock to the system.
But it's important to remember these moments because they help us understand our place in space and time. No, we did not fall out of a coconut tree… we exist in the context of everything that came before us and will come after us. So here is a collection of surprising historical odds and ends that will remind you of that. And you can use them at your next dinner party.