Hawaii became a state in 1959, the same year as the first Daytona 500 race.

Orville Wright, who is credited as building the first airplane with his brother Wilbur, died in 1948, just one year after Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier in the Bell X-1 aircraft.

Anne Frank, Barbara Walters, Martin Luther King Jr., Audrey Hepburn, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Yasser Arafat, Bob Newhart, Grace Kelly and Dick Clark were all born in 1929.

Leo Tolstoy, who wrote "War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina," died in 1910, the same year the first infrared photographs were published.

IBM introduced its MS-DOS 1.0 computer in 1981, the same year France decided the guillotine would no longer be the official method of execution.

Charlie Chaplin and Adolf Hitler were both born in 1889. Interestingly, Chaplin portrayed Hitler in the 1940 satire "The Tramp and the Dictator".

Yellowstone National Park was created in 1872, just one year after the German states unified into modern-day Germany.

Basketball was invented in 1891, a few years after Sherlock Holmes was first published.

Mississippi symbolically abolished slavery in 1995, 130 years after the rest of the nation. This was the same year Tejano star Selena was shot and killed by Yolanda Saldivar, the president of her fan club.

Coca-Cola pre-dates the Eiffel Tower in Paris by a couple of years. The tower was inaugurated in 1889 for the World's Fair, which was the same year Van Gogh's 'Starry Night' was painted.

Abraham Lincoln was assassinated on April 15, 1865, just a few months before the Secret Service was created. In fact, the legislation to create the Secret Service was on Lincoln's desk on the night he died.

Charlie Chaplin died in 1977, the same year Apple was incorporated.

Princess Diana and Mother Teresa died days apart in 1997. Princess Diana was killed in a car crash in Paris on August 31, and Mother Teresa died on September 5 after a bout of failing health.

The last known widow of a Civil War vet, Maudie Hopkins (seen here at her Lexa, Ark., home in 2004 at 89 years old), died in 2008. That's the same year Barack Obama won his first presidential election.

Spanish surrealist artist Salvador Dali died in 1989, the same year actor Daniel Radcliffe, actress Hayden Panettiere and Houston rapper Kirko Bangz were born.

Tchaikovsky's 'The Nutcracker' premiered in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1892, the same year Ellis Island in New York began taking in immigrants.

The last person to be guillotined in France was Hamida Djandoubi, just four months after the May 1977 release of 'Star Wars'.

Mark Twain, aka Samuel Clemens, was still alive the last time the Chicago Cubs won the World Series. The Cubs last saw victory in 1907 and 1908. Twain died in 1910.

The Titanic sank the same year that patents were filed for MDMA (aka: ecstacy), the term "vitamin" was coined, and Oreos were introduced in the United States.

Harvard University didn't offer calculus classes for the first few years after the school was established .... because calculus hadn't been invented yet.

Prince William and Kate Middleton were married on April 29, 2011, just a few days before Osama bin Laden was killed.

Queen Elizabeth II, left, and Marilyn Monroe, right, were both born in 1926. QEII was born April 21, and Monroe was born June 1.

The last person to be executed by firing squad in the United States happened on the same day "Toy Story 3" was released (June 18, 2010).

Artist Pablo Picasso died in 1973, the same year the Watergate scandal went to trial and Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" was released.

The fax machine was patented in 1843 while settlers were traveling along the Oregon trail. The first commercial fax was presented in Paris in 1865, more than 10 years before the telephone was invented.

William Shakespeare was alive while America was still being colonized.

The Colosseum in Rome, Italy, was unveiled in 80 A.D., around the same time the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles in the Bible were written.

The first wave of Auschwitz prisoners began to arrive in 1940, the same year McDonald's was founded.

The Brooklyn Bridge in New York (pictured) was completed in 1883, the same year as the world's first rodeo in Pecos, Texas.

Sushi was invented at around the same time as the beloved sandwich, during the late 1700s to early 1800s.

Nintendo was founded in 1889 in Japan. The company originally made playing cards for the popular game called hanafuda. This happened only a year after Jack the Ripper was wreaking havoc in London and the Washington Monument was completed.

The Port of Houston opened for business in 1914, the same year Woodrow Wilson declared Mother's Day a national holiday.

The filing cabinet was invented in 1898, the same year as the deli meat slicer. But people would have to wait another 30 years for the modern-day sandwich: pre-sliced bread wasn't invented until 1928.

The Magna Carta was signed in 1215, the same year Beijing was captured and burned by the Mongols under the direction of Genghis Khan.