These “Strange Timeline” TikTok Videos Might Blow Your Mind

Did you know that woolly mammoths were still roaming the Earth as the pyramids were being built? Or that civil rights activist Rosa Parks could have seen the first two Shrek movies in theaters before she died in 2005? Yup, it’s true. Pretty wild to think about, right? Believe it or not, there are many more strange timeline overlaps like this going viral on TikTok, and each one is more mind-blowing than the last.

It feels like you learn something new every day on TikTok, and the latest trend to take over the FYP is no exception. Users have been sharing these interesting (and lowkey spooky) facts about two seemingly unrelated events that occurred at the same time, to demonstrate how messed up our understanding of history actually is. Unsurprisingly, these videos are making people rethink everything they know. For example, when you think of surrealist artist Salvador Dalí, you probably imagine him living over one hundred years ago. It makes sense why you’d think that — the Spanish artist was born in 1904, after all — but according to a strange timeline TikTok from @heartstartspounding, Dalí actually died the same year Harry Potter actor Daniel Radcliffe was born. Or even Taylor Swift, for that matter, who was also famously born in 1989. Doesn’t that completely change your perspective on time?

Another freaky timeline fact the creator shared is that Cleopatra — yup, that Cleopatra — was born “closer to the invention of the iPhone than to the actual pyramids being built.” Let that sink in.

The TikToker revealed even more shocking facts in a follow-up video, like how Oxford University pre-dated the Aztec Empire by about 200 years. But probably the most staggering fact of them all is how a man named Samuel J. Seymour, who witnessed the assassination of Abraham Lincoln in person, lived to talk about it on a CBS game show called “I’ve Got A Secret.” Lincoln was killed in 1865, and the episode aired in 1956. Seymour was five years old at the time of Lincoln’s death.

Think you can handle even more mind-boggling weird timeline facts? User @blackcherryheart has plenty. For starters, did you know Nintendo was founded in 1889, aka the same year that Vincent Van Gogh painted Starry Night? It feels like these are facts we’re not supposed to know, but they’re totally true.

OK, if that didn’t get you shook, these facts from @insxne31 definitely will. Not only were Anne Frank and Martin Luther King, Jr. born in 1929, but Queen Elizabeth II and Marilyn Monroe were both born three years earlier in 1926. Make it make sense.

Clearly, these timeline contradictions are much more common than we think, but that doesn’t make them any less shocking. Someone needs to create a “strange timeline” history class ASAP, so we can finally get our timelines straight once and for all.