It was probably easier being present in the past, seeing as how there were no phones in sight and no internet to distract people from living in the moment. But it can be harder to make the past feel present or simply to feel like history actually happened. That people really cared, fought, farmed and worked the way books tell us they did.

Thankfully, there are more resources than just books for learning about the past: in the modern day, history memes offer a new medium for making the past come alive.

Warriors in medieval times and legionnaires in the Roman Empire can't have known that centuries later, their exploits would be learned about on illuminated bits of glass and metal held in the palm, and electronic transmissions through wires and across air would spread the word of their deeds and ideas in the form of some memes that made people chuckle.