Ask Lemmy

Slavery being legal in the US.

Ooops, sorry, I forgot that it's still perfectly legal in the US.

Slavery. People always talk about slavery like it's something that only existed in 19th century America as if it wasn't happening right now everywhere.

Rosa Parks lived until 2005

(Legal) Segregation in America was until pretty damn recently. Though loophole segregation is arguably still going on.

The last American Civil War pension recipient died in 2020.

Many state legislatures in the Southern US (e.g. Alabama) had Democratic majorities until 2010.

Salvador Dalí (1904-1989)

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)

People seem to think they lived mostly or entirely in the 1800’s. The fact that Rick Wakeman of the rock bands Yes and The Strawbs had once pushed Dalí offstage in 1970 is such a weird overlap of eras.

France used the guillotine for the last time in 1977.

There is still one Blockbuster store open, located in Bend, Oregon.

The ottoman empire

It can be argued that the Roman empire didn't truly end until WWI in 1918, 106 years ago.

The fall of the Byzantine Empire (aka the Eastern Roman Empire) resulted in a number of subdivided but diplomatically aligned states. By the end of the 19th century a number of European powers were still vying for some claim to the lineage of the Roman Empire (and the Emperor title). But as consequence of the war, the German/Prussian, Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires we're all dismantled (and France was out or the running because of the revolution) so every entity with a claim was dead or out of power for the first time since the 11th century.

Nixie tubes - those vacuum tubes that display a single digit or character on glowing wires - were commonplace in the 1950s and 60s but were superseded by LEDs. They're still made in the Czech Republic, bought mostly by hobbyists to build retro gadgets. I have a few myself that I haven't gotten around to using.

The iPod was discontinued in 2022. I'm guessing there's already a lot of kids who have no idea where the term "podcast" comes from.

The Famicom Disk System, which uses a kind of floppy disk for the Japanese market NES, had kiosks where you could copy games onto disks. The last of those kiosks were removed in 2003 It overlapped the Game Cube.

The human race went extinct about 17 years ago. We're all secretly something else, but we don't tell you about it until you're 45.

Audio CDs are still around. While they're surely not the medium people listen music from, they will most likely be on the merch table at the next concert you go to.

Some women in Swiss were only allowed to vote in 1984.

Cleopatra is closer to us than she was from the great pyramid construction.

A mainframe computer is probably still processing your paycheck in either your company or the bank.

Juno is still around and still offers dialup internet plans. Earthlink was still offering dialup until last year.

Leaded fuel. Avgas is 100-octane leaded gasoline that is still being used by most small aircraft piston engines. Lead-free alternatives exist, but production and supply infrastructure is nonexistent.

Lexus sold cars with cassette players until 2010

Despite anti-miscegenation laws being banned as a result of Loving v Virginia in 1967, support for interracial marriages only passed 50% in the mid 90's.

Ruby Bridges is alive and well.

Continuing off OP's list, the last PS3 game was released in 2020

Jim Crow.

The south still has similar voting restrictions, it's just the supreme court stopped caring and said 'sure, whatevs'.

The last cathode-ray tube televisions were made in 2015.

Women's suffrage was ratified in US constitution 1920. But probably not for much longer.

Polaroids are still going strong.

Up until 1997 rape within a marriage wasn't defined as a crime in Germany. Because it was specifically defined as an act outside of marriage. Our (probably) next chancellor Friedrich Merz voted against the bill that finally made it a crime!

Democracy