Joe Biden was born closer to Abraham Lincoln’s inauguration than his own. That is crazy to think about.
The last execution by guillotine in France happened after the premiere of “Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope.” Adopted by Louis XIV as a humane method of execution, the guillotine remained in use for nearly two centuries, dropping for the last time on Sept. 10, 1977, nearly four months after the first “Star Wars” film hit theaters.
The Atzec Empire, which is commonly thought of as the oldest empire in the world, wasn’t established until 1430—nearly 200 years after Oxford University in the UK officially became a university.
Slavery was abolished in Mauritania, the last country on earth where it was still legal, in 2006. That’s the year of Borat, the execution of Saddam Hussein and when Pluto was downgraded as a planet. And while technically the practice is criminalized there, Mauritania is still widely regarded as slavery’s last stronghold.
Man who witnessed the assassination of President Lincoln was able to share it on a TV game show. On April 14, 1865, when Samuel J. Seymour was 5 years old, his parents took him to a production of “Our American Cousin” at Ford’s Theatre in Washington D.C.—the same night Abraham Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth. In 1956, Seymour recounted the experience on the CBS game show “I’ve Got a Secret.”
In 2004, Utah, the last state to do so, changed their death sentence laws, outlawing death by firing squad. Ronnie Lee Gardner, however, had been sentenced to death prior to the law change and still had death by firing squad as an option for his execution. He chose this route and was killed on June 18, 2010, the exact same day “Toy Story 3” premiered in theaters.
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