History Main / BrieferThanTheyThink

* It's easy to imagine the American Revolution and the American Civil War as eras separated by a gulf of time (indeed, they were nearly a century apart), but [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gray_(American_Revolutionary_War_soldier) the last confirmed veteran]] of the Revolutionary War died three years ''after'' the end of the Civil War; UsefulNotes/RobertELee's ''father'' had fought in UsefulNotes/TheAmericanRevolution, and UsefulNotes/ThomasJefferson was still president when UsefulNotes/AbrahamLincoln was born.

* "Blockbuster" movies have not been particularly "cool" (as opposed to [[LowestCommonDenominator "popular", which is not quite the same thing]]) for a long time now. Among some circles, they are still not cool. That said, if you were to believe some people's memories the entire quarter-century between ''Film/{{Jaws}}'' (1975) and [[UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror 9/11]] was one long carnival of Hollywood hoopla and goofiness. In truth, the blockbuster mentality reigned unchallenged in Tinseltown for only about a decade or so after ''Jaws'' and ''Franchise/{{Star|Wars}} [[Film/ANewHope Wars]]'' (1977). Blockbuster mania only really swept in around 1984, which saw the beginning of several boffo franchises: ''Film/{{Ghostbusters|1984}}'', ''Film/BeverlyHillsCop'', ''Film/{{A Nightmare on Elm Street|1984}}'', ''Film/TheTerminator'', ''Film/{{Gremlins|1984}}'', ''Film/{{The Karate Kid|1984}}'', ''Film/PoliceAcademy'', and ''Film/TheNeverendingStory'' alongside the continuing ''Film/{{Indiana Jones|AndTheTempleOfDoom}}'', ''Film/{{Star Trek|IIITheSearchForSpock}}'', and ''Film/{{Friday the 13th|TheFinalChapter}}'' franchises, or the semi-successful attempt to continue the ''[[Film/ConanTheBarbarian1982 Conan]]'' franchise with ''Film/ConanTheDestroyer''. It was during the mid-to-late 1980s that {{Sequelitis}} and TheMerch became cultural jokes, and the stock complaint that [[ItsTheSameNowItSucks "everything in the movies now is a sequel or a remake or an adaptation of something"]] began to be heard. This "first" blockbuster era began to fade in 1994, with an interim period of "indie" films like ''Film/PulpFiction'' and ''Film/{{Clerks}}''. The second blockbuster era erupted in TheOughties, ushered in by films like ''Film/BatmanBegins'', ''Film/CasinoRoyale2006'' and ''Film/Transformers2007''. These so-called "gritty reboots" of popular franchises were characterized by a distinctive aesthetic and thematic profile (JitterCam, ColorWash, Post911TerrorismMovie, etc.), and the trend persisted until the mid-[[TheNew10s New Tens]]. Around 2016 or so, [[OnceOriginalNowCommon the "gritty reboot" became an overused cliché in itself]], and blockbusters became more colorful and light-hearted (perhaps best exemplified by the Franchise/MarvelCinematicUniverse).

Compare FrozenInTime, MedievalStasis, and OddlySmallOrganization. For works of serial media, see ShortRunners. See also ExtremelyShortTimespan. [[JustForFun/IThoughtItMeant Not to be confused]] with SmallRoleBigImpact, which is about onscreen performances. Given SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale, [[SciFiWritersHave/NoSenseOfTime some timespans]] are treated like this no matter how illogical.

* The idea of Goku and Vegeta [[EnemyMine working as a duo to battle a stronger foe]] is pretty iconic to ''Franchise/DragonBall'' as a whole, being nigh-on ubiquitous in post-''Z'' projects like ''Anime/DragonBallGT'', ''Anime/DragonBallSuper'', and many different video games, and proving the impetus for two different FusionDance creations in Gogeta and Vegeto. This can make it surprising that it only happened once in the entire run of the original manga, in the fight against Kid Buu--effectively, the last serious fight in the manga's run. In fact, the very much non-canon NonSerialMovie ''Anime/DragonBallZTheReturnOfCooler'' was the first official product to experiment with the idea. The movies probably made this idea stick in fans' minds more than the main series ever did as it was pretty common there, with Goku and Vegeta fighting alongside each other (by themselves or as part of a group) against Cooler, Super Android 13, Broly, Janemba, and Hildegarn.

* The "Wrestling/AttitudeEra" was relatively brief, lasting almost exactly five years. It's often cited as the phenomenon that epitomized Wrestling/{{WWE}} in The90s, although the first stirrings of the Attitude Era didn't occur until the decade was more than half over. The Attitude Era officially began when Wrestling/StoneColdSteveAustin delivered his "Austin 3:16" promo after winning King Of The Ring in 1996, and ended abruptly when Wrestling/{{WCW}} and Wrestling/{{ECW}} were purchased by WWE, and Austin shockingly joined forces with Vince [=McMahon=] and Wrestling/TripleH at ''[=WrestleMania=] X-Seven'', both of which happened in March 2001.

* Music/{{NSYNC}} was once the most famous pop group in the world, but the were only active for seven years--five if you start counting from the release of their self-titled debut in 1997--before disbanding in 2002 after only releasing four studio albums. Meanwhile, their main rivals the Music/BackstreetBoys are still touring and releasing music to this day.

** The classic "studio system" era lasted from 1929-1947. A antitrust decision handed down by the Supreme Court in 1948 stripped the studios of much of their influence and the Hollywood of The50s was a very different decade. This was the decade of Brando and James Dean, when actors, directors and local distributors were no longer held in control by the major studios, where you had such cynical and cold films as ''Film/SweetSmellOfSuccess'' and other censorship pushing GenreBusting directors like Creator/SamuelFuller, Creator/NicholasRay and Creator/AnthonyMann who J. Hoberman noted [[http://www.villagevoice.com/film/bogarts-in-a-lonely-place-at-film-forum-6391388 were the unrecognized New Wave]] who actually inspired UsefulNotes/TheAuteurTheory.

* Music/{{NSYNC}} was once the most famous pop group in the world, but their heyday only lasted five years with four studio albums before disbanding in 2002, compared to their contemporaries the Music/BackstreetBoys, Music/ChristinaAguilera, and Music/{{Pink}} who are still touring and releasing music to this day.

* The {{WebVideo/DreamSMP}}: As popular (and notorious) it and its creators were (and still are), it lasted only about 3 years, and the story arc was even shorter. The server was created in April 2020, and the story arc didn't start until July. The story arc practically concluded in November 2022 (just over two years after it began), and the server itself was closed in September 2023. This is a somewhat justified example, as it was often [[OvershadowedByControversy overshadowed by the endless dramas and scandals]] of its creators (especially its [[LetsPlay/Dream namesake]]). More recent allegations against [[LetsPlay/GeorgeNotFound George]] and [[Music/WilburSoot Wilbur]] have likely cemented its death.
** Dream's own popularity can also count for this. He exploded in popularity in 2019, yet by 2021 he was getting [[OvershadowedByControversy constantly bombarded]] with controversy after controversy (including his speedrun cheating scandal), which caused his subscriber count to begin stalling by the end up the year. His last peak in fame was in 2022 with his notorious face reveal, but that was quickly followed by sexting allegations that cause much of the remaining respect for him to evaporate. By 2023, his subscriber count was stagnant/in decline, and as of 2024, Dream has largely been reduced to a creepy has-been in the eyes of many, including ''many'' of his former fans/"stans".

** [[LetsPlay/Dream Dream's own popularity]] can also count for this. He exploded in popularity in 2019, yet by 2021 he was getting [[OvershadowedByControversy constantly bombarded]] with controversy after controversy (including his speedrun cheating scandal), which caused his subscriber count to begin stalling by the end up the year. His last peak in fame was in 2022 with his notorious face reveal, but that was quickly followed by sexting allegations. As of 2024, Dream has largely been reduced to a creepy has-been in the eyes of many, including ''many'' of his former fans/"stans".

* The 2000s are often considered the "worst decade" of hip hop due to the prominence of snap, better known as "ringtone rap". However, the actual era of ringtone rap's prominence started in 2005 with the rise of downloading music as ringtones, but didn't achieve dominance until 2006 when "Lean wit It, Rock wit It" by Dem-Franchize Boyz hit the top-10, and peaked in 2007 with "Crank That" by {{Music/SouljaBoy}}. By 2009, it was ''well'' on its way out, as the downloads of ringtones in general began to decline (as pointed out by {{WebVideo/ToddInTheShadows}} in his One-Hit Wonderland video about "This Is Why I'm Hot" by Mims).

* The 1967 "Summer of Love" was aptly named. The authentic San Francisco/Haight-Ashbury [[NewAgeRetroHippie hippie scene]] only lasted about a year, and the overall psychedelic period lasted much shorter than pop culture often depicts. Things typically associated with this period (shoulder-length hair on men, bandanas, tie-dye clothing, etc.) coalesced by 1965 and were already on their way out by 1969, and in 1970 were all but dead due to (among other things) the Altamont Speedway massacre, the War on Drugs, and HeavyMetal and PunkRock already beginning to supplant the "acid" aesthetic.

* Many people associate things which existed only in TheLateMiddleAges with the ''entire'' Medieval period, a span lasting 1000 years. For example, the height of the classic fully-armored knight only lasted from the late 15th to the early 16th centuries -- a period of about 100 years, and was actually at the very ''end'' of the Middle Ages. This means that the height of plate armor also coincided with the Spanish conquests of the Americas; a period of history typically not associated with the Medieval era. Even worse, some things associated with the Middle Ages are actually from UsefulNotes/TheRenaissance. For instance, European witch-hunting started during the Renaissance, and hit its peak in the 16th and 17th centuries, but was quite rare in the Middle Ages.

* Between UsefulNotes/TheGoldenAgeOfComicBooks and [[UsefulNotes/TheSilverAgeOfComicBooks the Silver Age]] was UsefulNotes/TheInterregnum, often thought of as a lengthy dark drought in the superhero genre.[[note]]Of course, to the original comic book historians, who were children at this time, it was.[[/note]] If one measures it from the last appearance of the GA Flash (1951, ''All-Star Comics'') to the first appearance of the SA Flash (1956, ''Showcase''), it was only five years long. Given that DC Comics considers Superboy an Earth-1 (i.e., Silver Age) character, and Superboy debuted in ''1945,'' it could even be argued that the Golden Age and Silver Age ''overlapped,'' and the Interregnum thus had ''negative'' length!

* UsefulNotes/TheDarkAgeOfComicBooks is usually associated with the entirety of the late 80s and the 90s, but its actual heyday was a fair bit shorter. Though ''ComicBook/{{Watchmen}}'' is the most commonly given start date, it took a while for it to leak into general comics, as ''Watchmen'' [[SleeperHit wasn't initially a chart-topper in sales]]. The late 80s were still largely a continuation of UsefulNotes/TheBronzeAgeOfComicBooks, with much of DC's work deliberately emulating Marvel's earlier output and Marvel under Creator/JimShooter mostly continuing what it did best. Most events from the era were straightforward big battles like ''ComicBook/ActsOfVengeance'' or ''ComicBook/{{Legends|DCComics}}'', with darker storylines confined to imprints like Creator/VertigoComics. The era's signature artstyle didn't start to dominate until Creator/RobLiefeld's 1990 work on ''ComicBook/NewMutants'', and gimmick covers showed up at around the same time (and Liefeld's work bore little resemblance to anything Moore was doing by that point). Most of the iconic stories and events of the era, including the creation of Wizard Magazine, ''ComicBook/TheCloneSaga'', ''ComicBook/TheDeathOfSuperman'', the foundation of Creator/ImageComics, Jim Lee's ''ComicBook/XMen'' and Creator/ChrisClaremont's departure, and a number of major {{Audience Alienating Era}}s, happened during this period, which lasted about five years. After UsefulNotes/TheGreatComicsCrashOf1996, the Dark Age was mostly dead on its feet, with ''ComicBook/HeroesReborn'' underperforming and being widely mocked, and the explosive success of Creator/GrantMorrison and Howard Porter's ''[[ComicBook/JusticeLeagueOfAmerica JLA]]'' (which was very much a throwback to the bombastic, optimistic style of superhero tales from the Silver and Bronze Ages, albeit with a modern edge) the following year more or less sealed the deal.

* It's a topic of debate among historians about when the real start and end of UsefulNotes/TheGoldenAgeOfHollywood really is, especially [[SmallReferencePools the era as it is imagined and come to be remembered]]. As film historians have long noted, what is called the Golden Age is just an umbrella term for a very diverse three decade era (1930-1960)[[note]]That appears continuous on the surface because of UsefulNotes/TheHaysCode, the standardized technology available at the time (big bulky cameras, lighting equipment and sound recording systems that more or less tethered everyone to shoot in the studio) and the long-careers of certain actors under contract to a particular studio.[[/note]].

* "Blockbuster" movies have not been particularly "cool" (as opposed to [[LowestCommonDenominator "popular", which is not quite the same thing]]) for a long time now. Among some circles, they are still not cool. That said, if you were to believe some people's memories the entire quarter-century between ''Film/{{Jaws}}'' (1975) and [[UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror 9/11]] was one long carnival of Hollywood hoopla and goofiness. In truth, the blockbuster mentality reigned unchallenged in Tinseltown for only about a decade or so after ''Jaws'' and ''Franchise/{{Star|Wars}} [[Film/ANewHope Wars]]'' (1977). Blockbuster mania only really swept in around 1984, which saw the beginning of several boffo franchises: ''Film/{{Ghostbusters|1984}}'', ''Film/BeverlyHillsCop'', ''Film/{{A Nightmare on Elm Street|1984}}'', ''Film/TheTerminator'', ''Film/{{Gremlins|1984}}'', ''Film/{{The Karate Kid|1984}}'', ''Film/PoliceAcademy'', and ''Film/TheNeverendingStory'' alongside the continuing ''Film/{{Indiana Jones|AndTheTempleOfDoom}}'', ''Film/{{Star Trek|IIITheSearchForSpock}}'', and ''Film/{{Friday the 13th|TheFinalChapter}}'' franchises, or the semi-successful attempt to continue the ''[[Film/ConanTheBarbarian1982 Conan]]'' franchise with ''Film/ConanTheDestroyer''. It was during the mid-to-late 1980s that {{Sequelitis}} and TheMerch became cultural jokes, and the stock complaint that [[ItsTheSameNowItSucks "everything in the movies now is a sequel or a remake or an adaptation of something"]] began to be heard. This "first" blockbuster era began to fade in 1994, with an interim period of "indie" films like ''Film/PulpFiction'' and ''Film/{{Clerks}}''.
** The second blockbuster era erupted in TheOughties, ushered in by films like ''Film/BatmanBegins'', ''Film/CasinoRoyale2006'' and ''Film/Transformers2007''. These so-called "gritty reboots" of popular franchises were characterized by a distinctive aesthetic and thematic profile (JitterCam, ColorWash, Post911TerrorismMovie, etc.), and the trend persisted until the mid-[[TheNew10s New Tens]]. Around 2016 or so, [[OnceOriginalNowCommon the "gritty reboot" became an overused cliché in itself]], and blockbusters became more colorful and light-hearted (perhaps best exemplified by the Franchise/MarvelCinematicUniverse).

* The "Seven Wonders of the Ancient World" were simultaneously intact for 21 years, from 247 BC to 226 BC. The Colossus of Rhodes in particular was an intact statue for 66 years and a pile of rubble for 880 years.

* After the 250-year long Edo Period, Japan was forcibly opened to outside influence by the American Perry Expedition. From the arrival of the Americans through the downfall of the Shogunate and the Boshin War up to the UsefulNotes/MeijiRestoration was 1854 to 1869 -- barely 15 years. It was very possible for a Japanese citizen born during the reign of the last Shogun to live through the Meiji Restoration, Japan's rapid industralization, its brutal conquest of Asia and the Pacific, its defeat in WWII and the Atomic Bombs, and die in a democratic country.

* The famed {{Pony Express|Rider}}, glorified by so many westerns, lasted about a year and a half between its launch in 1860 and its being rendered obsolete by [[WesternUnionMan the telegraph]] in 1861.

* While the "Age of the Dinosaurs" is commonly taught to have lasted hundreds of millions of years throughout the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous periods of the Mezosoic era, the large, impressive animals that most people think of as "dinosaurs" didn't become more commonplace until the mid-Jurassic (closer to 150 million years ago), and many of the most iconic lineages, like ''[[UsefulNotes/TyrannosaurusRex T. rex]]'', ''Spinosaurus'', ''Velociraptor'', and ''Triceratops'', all lived within a comparatively brief period of about 30 million years at the end of the Cretaceous period. Even then, many of them did not exist at the same time, but [[EvolutionaryStasis lived several million years apart from each other]].

* Classical Greece. Again, one would suppose that Ancient Greece lasted for centuries. While it is indeed true that Greece has a history of thousands of years, almost all of the non-mythical people and events that the average person associates with ''Classical'' Greece are from 492 BC to 323 BC, a period of about 170 years, from the [[UsefulNotes/GrecoPersianWars first Persian War]], through UsefulNotes/ThePeloponnesianWar, and ending with the death of UsefulNotes/AlexanderTheGreat -- about two lifetimes. The United States has already been a republic for longer than Athens was an independent democracy.
** One factor in this is that the Ancient Greeks told many stories which were ''set'' centuries in the past, during the so-called Heroic Age of Myth/ClassicalMythology, when the stories of Perseus, Heracles, the Trojan War, etc. were believed to have occurred. This setting seems to correspond to the Late Bronze Age/Early Iron Age, but since the stories were told centuries later, most portrayals of them anachronistically depict the characters as if they lived in the Classical period (e.g. the combatants of the Trojan War dressed in hoplite armor, or Heracles as a contemporary of the Parthenon, etc.)
* Like Greece, while the history of Rome is very lengthy, the Roman Empire itself was briefer than they think. The Roman Empire's conquests or Pax Romana may seem to have lasted centuries, but neither did. The golden age of the Five Good Emperors lasted from AD 96 to 180, just 84 years. The time of Rome being ruled by an Emperor while expanding lasted from 27 BC, when Augustus was declared by the Senate principes, until 117 AD, when Rome was at its greatest extent, a span of just 144 years.
* The "Seven Wonders of the Ancient World" were simultaneously intact for 21 years, from 247 BC to 226 BC. The Colossus of Rhodes in particular was an intact statue for 66 years and a pile of rubble for 880 years. Only three of the seven wonders stood for 1,000 years and the only one to last for at least 2,000 years -- the Great Pyramid of Giza -- had already been standing for that long when the first of the other six was constructed (circa 600 BC).
* A lot of people get the wrong impression that Muslim Spain was only the Caliphate of Córdoba (or even worse, the Kingdom of Granada) and as a result think that it was a splendid, unified, and tolerant state during the whole period of 800 years between Tariq ibn Ziyah's invasion and the Christian conquest of Granada. In reality, the Caliphate itself only existed between 929 and 1031, and it was downright decadent from 976. Before 929 it was an emirate, not as powerful or splendorous for most of its existence as in the Caliphal period (and quite a bit chaotic during its first decades of existence, by the way), and after 1031 it dissolved into petty statelets that were controlled from time to time by their Christian or (North African) Muslim neighbours and life could be quite nasty there sometimes.
* Most laypeople will assume that China's [[UsefulNotes/ThreeKingdomsShuWeiWu "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" era]] lasted for several generations. If going by the academic starting point of the founding of Wei in 220, and ending with the fall of Wu in 280, then it only lasted merely 60 years, and even extending the start to the Yellow Turban Rebellion in 184 only increases its duration to 96 years -- still less than a century.
* The Mongol Empire, the greatest land empire the world has ever seen, didn't last very long. It started from the coronation of Temüjin as UsefulNotes/GenghisKhan in 1206 (died 1227), reached its high-water mark in 1254 under Möngke, and began to disintegrate after his death in 1259. After the death of Kublai, the last accepted Great Khan, in 1294, the Mongol empire was no more, in the end lasting less than a century. Its successor states, however, would remain influential for centuries. It consisted of reigns of only five Great Khans: Genghis, Ögödei, Güyük, Möngke and Kublai. Kublai was grandson of Genghis, having been born in 1215.
** Genghis Khan himself led the Mongols only for about 20 years, and many key wars of the Mongols (the conquest of Southern China, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East) occurred after his death.
** Güyük was the Great Khan only for two years (1246 to 1248) when he [[TheAlcoholic drank himself to death]]. His successor, Möngke, lasted for 11 years before he was killed in a battle.
* Many people associate things which existed only in TheLateMiddleAges with the ''entire'' Medieval period, a span lasting 1000 years. For example, the height of the classic fully-armored knight only lasted from the late 15th to the early 16th centuries -- a period of about 100 years, and was actually at the very ''end'' of the Middle Ages. This means that the height of plate armor also coincided with the Spanish conquests of the Americas; a period of history typically not associated with the Medieval era. Even worse, some things associated with the Middle Ages are actually from UsefulNotes/TheRenaissance and TheCavalierYears. For instance, European witch-hunting started during the Renaissance, and hit its peak in the 16th and 17th centuries, but was quite rare in the Middle Ages.
* The Aztecs often seem to be an ancient, almost primeval empire, but by the arrival of the Spaniards they had, in fact, barely gotten started. They were vassals of other Nahua cities up to [[NewerThanTheyThink 1428 and only began to expand in the 1440s]]. Thus, when the Spaniards showed up in 1519, the Aztec Empire was less than 100 years old and many of its provinces had been held for less than 20 years. Many natives who fought with Cortés were recently conquered by the Aztecs and were looking for a rematch.

* The Republic of England, "Commonwealth" under UsefulNotes/OliverCromwell lasted only for nine years, from 1649 to 1658. After his death, England became a kingdom again.

* It's easy to imagine the American Revolution and the American Civil War as eras separated by a gulf of time (indeed, they were nearly a century apart), but [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gray_(American_Revolutionary_War_soldier) the last confirmed veteran]] of the Revolutionary War died three years ''after'' the end of the Civil War; UsefulNotes/RobertELee's ''father'' had fought in UsefulNotes/TheAmericanRevolution, and UsefulNotes/ThomasJefferson was still president when UsefulNotes/AbrahamLincoln was born. By a similar token: it's easy to imagine the American Revolution as having happened eons after the heyday of Puritan New England, but the Declaration of Independence was signed less than a century after the Massachusetts Bay Colony was officially reorganized into the Province of Massachusetts Bay--and Creator/BenjaminFranklin lived in UsefulNotes/{{Boston}} at the same time as [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton_Mather one of the ministers]] who presided over the Salem Witch Trials.
** Similarly, if you were born in the 2010's or earlier, odds are that your grandparents were kids or even young adults when the last Civil War veterans died. The end of the American Civil War and the end of the Second World War was an 80 years difference, with [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Woolson the last verified veteran of the former]] dying in the ''mid-1950's''.
* UsefulNotes/TheFrenchRevolution on the whole lasted for ten years (1789-1799), but the most famous (and infamous) phase of the revolution, centered on the ReignOfTerror, lasted only a single year (1793-1794). UsefulNotes/MaximilienRobespierre, despite being one of the most controversial and notorious figures in history, only held direct power for 11 months. Before this was a period of dramatic but not nearly as extreme cultural and political shifts and changes. UsefulNotes/{{Napoleon|Bonaparte}} would rule France as a dictator for longer than the "republic" would exist.
* The "Antebellum" DeepSouth: While technically, perhaps, the term ''antebellum'' could mean all of U.S. history before 1860, what most people think of as The Old South, with a cotton-based economy, big plantations, white-columned mansions etc., existed mostly from about 1830 until UsefulNotes/TheAmericanCivilWar -- 31 years, barely half a lifetime. Outside the "tidewater" coastal areas, much of the South was not even settled by whites until after the UsefulNotes/WarOf1812. For example, the UsefulNotes/{{Atlanta}} that burned in ''Film/GoneWithTheWind'' had not existed in any form at all before 1836, had been called that only since 1847, became a city of any importance only a few years before the war started, and ''wasn't even Georgia's capital'' until a few years after the war ended.
* TheWildWest: The majority of [[TheWestern Westerns]] take place between the end of the [[UsefulNotes/TheAmericanCivilWar Civil War]] in 1865 and 1890, the year the US Census Bureau declared the frontier "closed" -- 25 years. Even more extreme dates, like the end of the UsefulNotes/MexicanAmericanWar in 1848 and the end of the UsefulNotes/TheMexicanRevolution in 1920, leaves a solid but still rather short 72 years. Western-themed TV series like ''Series/{{Gunsmoke}}'' ran for so long that their depiction of this period borders on MedievalStasis, which is ironic considering that the whole reason this era was an exciting fictional setting in the first place was that it was a time of great ''change''.
* After the 250-year long Edo Period, Japan was forcibly opened to outside influence by the American Perry Expedition. From the arrival of the Americans through the downfall of the Shogunate and the Boshin War up to the UsefulNotes/MeijiRestoration was 1854 to 1869 -- barely 15 years.
** Japan's status as a military empire was also brief. From the start of the Meiji Restoration to the end of World War II is a period of less than 80 years - 1868 to 1945. It was very much possible for a Japanese citizen born during the reign of the last Shogun to have grown up seeing Japan's transition from a feudal society ruled by Samurai to a military and industrial powerhouse rivaling even some European great powers. Then live to see Japan's brutal conquest of Asia and the Pacific, hear about (or even witness) the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, live through the Allied occupation (1945-1952), and die in a liberal democratic Japan going through another economic boom.
** UsefulNotes/TheShinsengumi never numbered more than 300, and only existed for just under six years. You wouldn't know it, based on their immense impact on pop culture.
* The famed {{Pony Express|Rider}}, glorified by so many westerns, lasted about a year and a half between its launch in 1860 and its being rendered obsolete by [[WesternUnionMan the telegraph]] in 1861. It also was never profitable.

* European colonial rule in Africa didn't really start taking off until 1884, and decolonization began following the Second World War in the 1950s -- a period of around 70 years. A hypothetical African born in the 1880's and lived into their 80's or 90's would have remembered their childhood before the Europeans arrived, lived through the entire colonial period, and die in an independent country. However, in another sense, it also lasted a lot longer than you might think. We don't typically imagine the age of colonial empires being contemporaneous with hippies and the Beatles, but France and Britain still held territory in mainland Africa well into the 1960's [[note]]and as late as ''1980'', if one counts Rhodesia as a colony[[/note]], and Spain and Portugal did not give up on all of their colonies until 1975.

* America only officially participated in UsefulNotes/WorldWarI for about a year and a half, from April, 1917 to November, 1918, and only engaged in combat for about six months -- from the Battle of Cantigny on May 28 to the armistice on November 18.
* From UsefulNotes/RedOctober to UsefulNotes/MikhailGorbachev was 74 years -- November 1917 to [[UsefulNotes/HoleInFlag December 1991]], and the actual UsefulNotes/SovietUnion lasted for only 69 years, since it wasn't founded until 1922 after the end of the Russian Civil War. For comparison, the imperial [[UsefulNotes/TsaristRussia Romanov dynasty]] which the Soviets had replaced lasted over ''300'' years (1613–1917). It was possible for an individual born under the last Tsar to live to see the breakup of the Soviet Union, and there were in fact many such cases. Gorbachev was the ''only'' Soviet leader to be born in the actual Soviet Union. All his predecessors were born in the Russian Empire.
* The Empire State Building was only the world's tallest building for 39 years, from 1931 when it surpassed the Chrysler Building to 1970 when the main towers of the World Trade Center were built. Still, forty years is actually a good long time when you consider that the title of "world's tallest building" moved around every few years before its construction, and moves around every few years now in the 21st century.
** On the subject of the original World Trade Center; it's worth pointing out that, for [[UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror obvious and tragic reasons]], the Empire State Building was the world's tallest building for longer than the former's entire existence. As a whole, the WTC lasted just short of 31 years, with the first tower opening on December 15, 1970. And addition to the completion of the other towers, extra buildings would be added to the complex over the years. The most recent of these being "7 World Trade Center", which opened to the public in just 14 years before the September 11 attacks took place.

* As a consequence of the above collapse of the Soviet Union, the Cold War was only 46 years long at the maximum measure of the time between the end of WWII and the fall of the USSR. Some start and end dates like the rise of Red China or the Fall of the Berlin Wall (see below) are even less. Many discussions about the current state of geopolitcal affairs talk about the Cold War almost as if it was an entire era of human history such as the Middle Ages.
** The UsefulNotes/BerlinWall has become a symbol of the entire Cold War and a physical representation of the UsefulNotes/IronCurtain, but itself was built almost halfway into the Cold War and stood for only 28 years –- August 13, 1961 to November 9, 1989. It also wasn't built along the main iron curtain as Berlin was physically within East Germany and divided with half of it being a West German exclave.
** The Space Race truly was a race. It was relatively brief and occupied only a comparatively small slice of the Cold War. From the Soviet launch of Sputnik (the first man-made object to orbit the Earth) in 1957 to the first humans to walk on the Moon by the Americans in 1969 was 12 years. Just goes to show what a period of swift technological advancement it was.
*** Some consider the Space Race to be over at the 1975 Apollo-Soyuz mission, giving us a few months shy of 18 years. Other still consider the Space Race to have truly ended with the fall of the Soviet Union (34 years). Still, even using this maximum measure, the "post Space Race rut," defined as the time since the conclusion of the Space Race and mankind returning to the Moon, is projected to take longer than the actual Space Race at this point.
* The 1967 "Summer of Love" was aptly named. The authentic San Francisco/Haight-Ashbury [[NewAgeRetroHippie hippie scene]] only lasted about a year, and the overall psychedelic period lasted much shorter than pop culture often depicts. Things typically associated with this period (shoulder-length hair on men, bandanas, tie-dye clothing, etc.) coalesced by 1965, solidified by 1966, penetrated the mainstream by 1967, reached their peak by 1968, and were already on their way out by 1969, and in 1970 were all but dead due to (among other things) the Altamont Speedway massacre, the War on Drugs being launched, and the genres that would eventually coalesce into HeavyMetal and PunkRock already beginning to supplant the "acid" aesthetic.
* By now RedChina has had a [[UsefulNotes/ToGetRichIsGlorious market economy]] (1979-present, over 40 years) far longer than it had a centrally-planned economy (1949-1976, about 25 years). For comparison, UsefulNotes/QingDynasty which the Chinese Communist Party replaced, lasted over '''250 years''' (1644 - 1912). It's not impossible for someone to be born in China during the regency of Empress Dowager Cixi, grow up hearing or seeing the overthrow of the monarchy and the Chinese Civil War, spend most of their adult life under Mao Zedong, and die under Deng Xiaoping or one of his successor. Xi Jingping is the first leader of the Chinese Communist Party to be born under Communist China. All of his predecessors either grew up in the Qing Dynasty, the provisional government of the Republic of China, or during the Chinese Civil War.
** Ditto for UsefulNotes/{{Vietnam}}, which had a planned economy for all of 10 years after unification (1976-1986) before the Đổi Mới reforms which progressively transformed it into an (arguably) capitalist market economy similar to that of post-Mao China.
* [[ZigZaggedTrope Zigzagged]] with the MedicineShow, while its heyday was indeed briefer than people think (a mere 26 years, from about 1880 until 1906 when the passing of new guidelines for medicine made them functionally obsolete), they existed in some form in the east in the 18th century and continued after 1906 as a form of entertainment for almost another century, with the last medicine show's performances being in 1990 and the founder lived long enough to put archives of televised broadcasts of his medicine show (and live performances captured on camera) on Website/YouTube, you can even [[https://www.youtube.com/@ramblindoctommyscott3626 watch here]].

** The second blockbuster era erupted in TheOughties, ushered in by films like ''Film/BatmanBegins'', ''Film/CasinoRoyale2006'' and ''Film/Transformers2007''. These so-called "gritty reboots" of popular franchises were characterized by a distinctive aesthetic and thematic profile (JitterCam, ColorWash, Post911TerrorismMovie, etc.), and the trend persisted until the mid-[[TheNew10s New Tens]]. Around 2016 or so, [[OnceOriginalNowOverdone the "gritty reboot" became an overused cliché in itself]], and blockbusters became more colorful and light-hearted (perhaps best exemplified by the Franchise/MarvelCinematicUniverse).

** One factor in this is that the Ancient Greeks told many stories which were ''set'' centuries in the past, during the so-called Heroic Age of Myth/ClassicalMythology, when the stories of Perseus, Heracles, the Trojan War, etc. were believed to have occurred. This setting seems to correspond to the Late Bronze Age, but since the stories were told centuries later, most portrayals of them anachronistically depict the characters as if they lived in the Classical period (e.g. the combatants of the Trojan War dressed in hoplite armor, or Heracles as a contemporary of the Parthenon, etc.)

** The original Disney GoldenAge was even shorter, lasting just five years and five films from ''WesternAnimation/SnowWhiteAndTheSevenDwarfs'' to ''WesternAnimation/{{Bambi}}''. After that UsefulNotes/WorldWarII meant the market could no longer support the high budgets and a series of much cheaper films would be made for the rest of the decade. It wasn't until the highly successful ''WesternAnimation/{{Cinderella}}'' in 1950 that Disney would get around to making blockbusters again.

* ''ComicBook/XForce'' is known for being the comic that launched the infamous Creator/RobLiefeld's career into the stratosphere, and it's often held as being the type of shallow DarkerAndEdgier fare that his other works are known for. Thing is, Liefeld's entire run of ''X-Force'' lasted a whole ''nine'' issues. After that, he left Marvel to form Creator/ImageComics alongside the other artists who quit, and began working on the series' even more infamous SpiritualSuccessor ''ComicBook/{{Youngblood}}''. ''X-Force'' co-creator Fabian Nicieza would salvage the team by having ComicBook/{{Cable}} leave while bringing back more ComicBook/NewMutants members, shift the series to a LighterAndSofter tone with more emphasis on CharacterDevelopment, and when Cable returned, was retooled into the grumpy but likable father figure type he's known as today. Many other writers would take a crack at the X-Force team, with Rick Remender's ''ComicBook/UncannyXForce'' in particular being acclaimed as one of the best X-books of ''any'' title, which is in stark contrast to the perception of the series being nothing more than dark age excess.

** Furthermore, his four-year run on Swamp Thing was really the only pre-existing DC property Moore spent any substantial time on. Apart from his own original creations in ''Watchmen'' and ''V for Vendetta'', Moore never wrote more than three issues of any other DC character.

* Though the console is incredibly iconic and stayed in production for an impressive-by-any-stretch fourteen years, the actual heyday of the UsefulNotes/Atari2600 was pretty short. Its initial release in 1977 had it selling somewhat slowly, and it actually underperformed badly in 1978. The console didn't really explode in popularity until 1980, when it got its KillerApp of ''VideoGame/SpaceInvaders''. By late 1983, the Crash was in full swing, Atari was losing money hand over fist, and the 2600 spent the rest of its lifetime as a shadow of its former self. Outside of its launch lineup, the vast majority of classic 2600 games came out between 1980 and 1983, a four-year period.
* UsefulNotes/TheGreatVideoGameCrashOf1983 is often thought of as having brought the North American video game industry to the brink of extinction, but its classic definition wasn't as long as you might think. If one puts the start of the crash at the release of ''VideoGame/ETTheExtraterrestrial'' and the end of the crash at the wide release of the UsefulNotes/NintendoEntertainmentSystem, then you get a period of around two and a half years--December of 1982 to August of 1985. Even that's arguable, as it didn't become truly evident that the industry was in a death spiral until late 1983 and it didn't start significantly contracting until 1984 (albeit with most sales coming from shovelware). On the other hand, this is actually somewhat inverted in terms of how long the industry took to bounce back. Many people think of it as an immediate renaissance, but sales of home videogames actually hit their lowest point in 1986, due to the NES being the only real competitor, and didn't hit pre-crash levels until 1989.
* The classic "Creator/{{Sega}} vs. Creator/{{Nintendo}}" war only really lasted for about five years. While one could argue that the first strike was the "Sega Does What Nintendon't" campaign in 1990, the UsefulNotes/SegaGenesis was still toiling in MainstreamObscurity until the release of ''VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehog1'' in June of 1991. And the actual "war" didn't start until the launch of the UsefulNotes/SuperNintendoEntertainmentSystem in the United States in September of that year. The war began to subside as early as 1994 and was pretty much over by 1996, with the UsefulNotes/SegaSaturn doing poorly in the market and the release of the UsefulNotes/PlayStation in 1995.
* Sega as a video game company with its own console is also briefer than you'd suspect. The UsefulNotes/SegaMasterSystem was released in Japan in October 1985 (as the Sega Mark III; the Master System wasn't released in the US until 1986, and in turn Sega redesigned the Mark III as the Master System for Japan in 1987) and they announced the end of the Dreamcast in early 2001. [[note]]Sega did have an earlier console than the Master System, the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SG-1000 SG-1000]] SG-what? [[AppealToObscurity Exactly]]. [[/note]] [[TimeMarchesOn Sega has now been out of the market]] for consoles longer than they were a major player in it. Its time as a major frontrunner and competitor is even shorter. The Genesis/Mega Drive (1989-1994ish) might be the only period in which Sega was a clearly dominant player in the American industry. Before and after then, it was basically fighting for scraps as a distant second or third (first with Creator/{{Atari}} over Nintendo's scraps, then with Nintendo over Creator/{{Sony}}'s scraps).

* Many people associate things which existed only in TheLateMiddleAges with the ''entire'' Medieval period, a span lasting 1000 years. For example, the height of the classic fully-armored knight only lasted from the late 15th to the early 16th centuries -- a period of about 100 years, and was actually at the very ''end'' of the Middle Ages. This means that the height of plate armor also coincided with the Spanish conquests of the Americas; a period of history typically not associated with the Medieval era. Even worse, some things associated with the Middle Ages are actually from UsefulNotes/TheRenaissance and UsefulNotes/TheCavalierYears. For instance, European witch-hunting started during the Renaissance, and hit its peak in the 16th and 17th centuries, but was quite rare in the Middle Ages.