8 Mildly Impressive Facts You Won’t Believe Were Discovered on Reddit – How Many Will You Bother To Remember? (2 of 5)

Cleopatra lived closer in time to today than the Great Pyramid’s construction

It’s really difficult to wrap our heads around the vastness of human history, as anything that took place before the original Star Wars trilogy came out in theaters is of no consequence if we’re being honest with ourselves. But it’s still worth pondering this nugget: the birth of Cleopatra, the last Pharaoh of Ancient Egypt and winner of an Elizabeth Taylor look-alike contest, took place around 2,060 years ago. Meanwhile, the construction of the Great Pyramid of Giza was completed approximately 2,530 years before she was born. In other words, the Pyramids were more regarded as ancient history back in her time than her existence is to us. If that doesn’t cause your brain to twist and turn, sorry but that’s all we’ve got.

The sound of the TIE fighters in Star Wars is a mix of screaming elephants and a car driving on wet pavement

Speaking of Star Wars, what makes the franchise so memorable aside from, well, the iconic characters, and we suppose the story itself, is all of the distinct sounds. Think of the distinct hum of the lightsabers or the silly, high-pitched “teedee” from those Jawa thingies. But as Reddit users have pointed out, the sound generated by the TIE fighters involved some real outside-the-box thinking. More specifically, sound designer Ben Burtt surmised that when one of those flying vehicles whizzed by, the sound generated probably resembled that of an elephant’s yell combined with a car driving on wet pavement. So that’s what he went with, and the rest is history.