20 Historical Lasts You Probably Won’t Believe Happened So Recently

As you’ll remember from history class, the American Civil War ended in 1865. Surely, then, no one with a personal link to it could possibly have survived the 20th century, right? And the idea that anyone with a connection to the conflict could have lived into the 21st century just seems absurd. Yet exactly that did happen. Here’s how this apparent anomaly came to pass.

In 1936 then-17-year-old Helen Viola Jackson of Missouri married James Bolin. The groom was 93 and had been with U.S. Army outfit the 14th Missouri Cavalry during the Civil War. According to an account in Smithsonianmag.com, it was a marriage of convenience. Bolin needed a carer, and his young bride was a charitable soul. Bolin died in 1939, but his widow lived on until 2020 – reaching the age of 101. Incredibly, Jackson apparently never remarried nor claimed the widow’s pension she was entitled to!

When you think of the Tower of London, it’s quite likely images of medieval monarchs sending their enemies there for torture or execution spring to mind. The Tower is actually an impressively fortified castle – standing on the banks of the Thames – ready to defend London from invaders. It’s also one of the most powerful symbols of British identity. 

But, notoriously, the Tower includes dungeon cells which were often used through history for those accused of treachery. Guy Fawkes, for example, was consigned to the Tower and tortured there after attempting to blow up Parliament in 1605. To be sure, that’s all a very long time ago. Yet the last prisoners at the Tower were infamous London gangster twins Ronnie and Reggie Kray. And that was as recently as 1952. Their crime? Draft-dodging. 

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” proclaim the famous lines from Emma Lazarus’ 1883 poem The New Colossus. The compassionate verse is inscribed on a plaque set in the base of the Statue of Liberty on Ellis Island. Generations of new arrivals to America passed through that spot of land in Upper New York Bay – just a mile or so from Manhattan’s shores.

The immigration station there processed over 12 million hopeful people, according to the Statue of Liberty website. You’d think that this great story of newcomers chasing the American dream would be one from the distant past. But in fact, Ellis Island’s role as a staging post for immigrants continued right into the 1950s. The very last immigrant to pass through Ellis Island was a Norwegian called Arne Petersen, and that was in November 1954. 

It was in 1934 that the prison on Alcatraz Island transferred from military to civilian use and became one of the most feared federal penitentiaries in the U.S. Surrounded by the waters of San Francisco Bay, the jail was widely regarded as completely escape proof. Some made it over the prison walls, but there are no definite records of anyone making it off the island alive.

Famous inmates at the island prison included everyone from Al Capone to Robert Stroud – the Birdman of Alcatraz. Federal authorities decided to close the jail in 1963 and its criminal population was gradually decreased. But somebody had to be the last felon to leave and that honor fell to Prisoner AZ-1576 – Frank Weatherman who departed the island on March 21, 1963. In a 2013 article, The Mercury News quoted Weatherman’s heartfelt words as he left, “Alcatraz was never no good for nobody.”

E-mails, texts, any number of instant-messaging apps, we’re spoiled for choice nowadays with easy ways to communicate. Though it wasn’t always so. Back in the 19th century, letters were the only way to keep in touch with others. And they could take days, weeks or even months to reach their destinations. The speediest way of getting a message delivered across America was the acclaimed Pony Express with its relays of fast horses.

That was back in the mid-19th century, and considering the fame of the Pony Express, its heyday was surprisingly short. In fact, having started up in April 1860, the equine delivery service wound up just 19 months later. Why? It was because Western Union completed its transcontinental telegram line on October 24, 1861. And the impact was immediate; the Last Pony Express letter was sent just a couple of days later.

You probably don’t need us to remind you that the Japanese formally surrendered on September 2, 1945 – bringing WWII to an end. But we’ve done it anyway. Normally, a full surrender means that all military activity between the former antagonists ceases. Though in the case of the Japanese at the end of WWII, some troops on Pacific islands either refused to heed or to believe the news of defeat.

Some thousands of Japanese soldiers fought on, although the vast majority laid down their arms within just a few months. Yet there were those who continued their futile resistance from jungle depths for years and even decades. One of those was an intelligence officer called Hiroo Onoda. He finally gave himself up from his hideout on the Philippines island of Lubang in 1974 – nearly 30 years after the war had actually ended. Apparently, Onoda was the last recorded hold-out.

Manx was the language of people who lived on the Isle of Man. It’s a small British island set in the Irish Sea, which is a little more than 40 miles from England’s east coast. Manx is part of the Celtic group of languages – varieties of which are still spoken in Scotland, Wales and Ireland. But the Isle of Man ran out of native Manx speakers altogether. 

The last person to speak the language as a native was one Ned Maddrell. During his childhood he was brought up for a time by an aunt in the Isle of Man village of Cregneash. Rather than English, his aunt spoke only Manx, so the young boy was fluent in the language. Sadly he died in 1974 aged 97. The Isle of Man’s iMuseum website quotes Maddrell’s words as he remembered the days “when they were speaking Manx in every house almost in the place.”

Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, the Clanton-McLaury gang – those names are central ones in the Wild West legend because of the O.K. Corral gunfight in 1881. Cowboys Tom McLaury and Ike Clanton arrived in Tombstone, Arizona, on the morning of October 25. Later joined by others from their gang, they were apparently spoiling for a fight. Wyatt Earp, his brothers Morgan and Virgil plus Doc Holiday were happy to oblige.

And so the scene was set for the famous gun battle. It lasted only 30 seconds but resulted in the deaths of Clanton and two McLaury brothers. Meanwhile, Doc Holliday and Wyatt Earp’s two brothers were wounded. And the brief but deadly confrontation entered the pages of Wild West folklore. As the years went by, the participants died off. But the last one alive was Wyatt Earp. He died at home in 1929 – perhaps surprised even himself to have reached the grand old age of 80. 

The first episode of U.S. soap opera Guiding Light was broadcast in 1937. In its early years – long before there was a TV in every home – it was a CBS radio show. But the small screen began to elbow radio aside and Guiding Light made the switch to television in 1952. In classic soap style, the show’s storyline revolved around three families living in the fictional city of Springfield. 

That’s strange; we could have sworn that the Simpsons live in Springfield. Coincidence? Anyways, Guiding Light ran for a grueling 15,000 episodes until the plug was finally pulled. The sad day came on September 18, 2009. Speaking to The Guardian at the time, then-36-year-old Lynn Rydzik nailed the appeal of the show, “They were more consistent than pretty much anything else in my life.” Come to think of it, perhaps that’s the secret of all successful soaps. 

Ah, the joys of VHS. Remember kids stuffing cookies into the player’s slot? All great fun, but of course it all came to an end with DVDs – the little silver discs that could double up as mini-Frisbees or bird scarers. And even they are now well on the way out with the advent of streaming.

Surprisingly, not everyone was entirely keen to see the back of VHS tapes. There was a small movement of retro-style film-makers who continued to release their works on VHS. Though not the major studios – except one. Maverick film auteur David Cronenberg – it had to be him – released A History of Violence on VHS in 2006. Garnering two Oscar nominations, it was the last mainstream film to make it onto tape. 

In 1807 Congress passed a law that “[prohibited] the importation of slaves into any port or place within the jurisdiction of the United States… from any foreign kingdom, place, or country.” At best, it was a long-overdue step in the right direction. Though it would take another 60 years and a full-blooded civil war to finally end slavery.

Yet there were those who thought themselves above the law. One such person was plantation owner Timothy Meaher, who apparently decided to force Africans into slavery to win a bet. Using his own schooner the Clotilda, he ran an illegal slaving voyage from the West African Kingdom of Dahomey to Alabama’s Mobile River. This last cruel human cargo was transported in 1860. 

Although the main violent burst of geological activity lasted no more than 60 seconds, the 1906 San Francisco earthquake claimed more than 3,000 lives, according to Encyclopedia Britannica. Much of the city’s infrastructure was destroyed, and around 250,000 people had lost their homes. It was certainly one the most devastating natural disasters America has ever seen. 

Despite the magnitude of the catastrophe, most people did, of course, survive. One of those was William “Bill” Del Monte, who AP notes was just three months old when the quake struck at 5:12 a.m. on April 18, 1906. His family escaped the burning ruins in a horse-drawn buggy – leaving behind his father’s utterly destroyed restaurant. After his lucky escape, Del Monte lived on until he died at the age of 109 in 2016 and became the last survivor of San Francisco’s calamitous earthquake. 

It was Christmas Day 1991 when the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics – that great power bloc centered on Communist Russia – saw its final day. President Mikhail Gorbachev announced that it was all over, with words quoted by the History website, “We’re now living in a different world.” So on December 26 the peoples of Russia and other USSR nations woke up and were no longer Soviet citizens.

One unlucky victim of the Soviet Union’s disintegration was a Russian cosmonaut called Sergei Krikalev. He was blasted into space in May 1991, when the Soviet Union was still a thing. But when it unraveled, Krikalev was effectively stranded aboard the Mir station. He was still there when the USSR collapsed, and for nearly three months afterwards. By the time he returned, he was now the citizen of a new nation simply called Russia. 

You might think that the topography of the world was a fairly settled matter – at least in the recent past. Though in fact, the land masses of the Earth change a surprising amount over relatively short periods of time. One striking example of this is the appearance of entirely new islands. And one of those emerged from the ocean as recently as 2014.

In December 2014 an underwater volcano erupted in a part of the Pacific that belongs to the island kingdom of Tonga, which lies some 2,000 miles east of the Australian coast. The torrent of lava and rocks hardened and became the new island of Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai. When scientists visited the volcanic outcrop in 2019, they found that it already supported vegetation and birdlife – including nesting sooty terns and a visiting barn owl.

Fighting over a matter of honor with swords is surely a thing of the distant past – long consigned to the history books. But it turns out that on one occasion protagonists fought a traditional duel as recently as the 1960s. The two participants were Rene Ribière and Gaston Defferre – both somewhat hotheaded French politicians. For reference, the confrontation took place on April 20, 1967.

According to MailOnline, the grudge was sparked by Defferre shouting, “Shut up, stupid” at Ribière during a session of France’s National Assembly. The latter demanded an apology, and the former refused. The two men fought with fencing swords called épées. In the end, the duel was a bit of a damp squib. Acting as referee, Jean de Lipkowskiin stopped the fight after Defferre had touched Ribière’s arm a couple of times with his weapon.

The Mars rover Opportunity touched down on the surface of the Red Planet on January 3, 2004, for what was originally planned to be a mission lasting 90 days. But it seems that three months was not long enough for this plucky vehicle. It went on to vastly exceed its programmed life-span – continuing to broadcast images from Mars for not far short of 15 years.

Sadly, the longevity of Opportunity was not unlimited. Finally, on June 10, 2018, it took a last image with its panoramic camera of Perseverance Valley which lies at the edge of Mars’ Endeavour Crater. A ferocious dust storm broke over the rover – causing its demise. This was so dense that it blocked out the sun so Opportunity’s solar panels could no longer charge its batteries. 

Although we celebrate Independence Day on July 4, the Declaration itself was formally signed a few weeks later on August 2, 1776. Some delegates were absent when the signing took place at the Pennsylvania State House, but eventually a total of 56 signed the document. One of those – perhaps not the best known – was Charles Carroll.

Carroll was born in 1737 in Annapolis, Maryland, and so was 38 when he put his name to the momentous declaration. Carroll had studied law in France and England before playing an important part in the American Revolution. Though what really distinguishes the man is that when Carroll died in 1832 aged 96, he was the last surviving Declaration of Independence signatory. 

In its day, the telegram was the nearest thing to the instant communication that we now take for granted. Western Union’s transcontinental telegraph line opened for business in 1861, which meant that a telegram message could be sent from one side of America to the other. This could now happen at the blistering speed of less than a day.

According to Guinness World Records, it was one Ray Tomlinson who sent the first email back in 1971. It would be some years before we were all merrily pinging off emails, but that first one was certainly a death knell for the telegram. In 1929 over 200 million telegrams went out worldwide, but by 2005 that had shrunk to fewer than 21,000. The end came on January 27, 2006, when Western Union transmitted its very last telegram. 

Two supersonic passenger jets have flown the skies. There was Concorde – built by a French-British partnership. Its first commercial flight came in January 1976. Then there was the Soviet’s TU-144, which was developed as a direct competitor to the Franco-British plane. Dogged by technical problems, the BBC notes that it only ever made 102 commercial flights until it was permanently withdrawn from service in 1978.

Concorde, on the other hand, continued to fly around the world for 27 years. But tragedy struck in July 2000 when an Air France Concorde crashed just after taking off from Paris for a flight to New York. Sadly, all of the 109 passengers and crew lost their lives. The supersonic jet limped on for a time but the final scheduled commercial flight came in October 2003. 

A military pilot achieves the status of “ace” by destroying five enemy planes in air combat. During the Battle of Britain in 1940 – when the British defied Germany’s Luftwaffe – many Royal Air Force pilots earned the right to call themselves aces. One of those was Wing Commander Paul Farnes, who piloted a Hurricane fighter plane. 

A then-21-year-old Farnes had his first taste of combat in 1940 during the unsuccessful defense of France against the invading Germans. Based back in southern England when the Battle of Britain broke out in July 1940 Farnes was soon in action. According to The Guardian, he brought down three Junkers Stukas, a Dornier bomber and a Messerschmitt fighter in August. And this gave him the five kills necessary to gain the ace title. Before his death at the age of 101 in 2020, he had been the last surviving Battle of Britain ace.