midpoint
A subject that sits closer to now than to the one it is always filed beside.
What this page collects
Every juxtaposition here trades on the same kind of surprise. Grouping them is a way to find more of the one you liked, rather than a claim that the grouping means anything in itself: the same two subjects could be put together a different way and land somewhere else entirely.
The surprise is almost always the same underneath. People judge historical distance by how much they know about a period rather than by how long it lasted, and we know far more about the recent past, so it feels longer than it was. Everything older collapses toward everything else older. Drawn to scale, that collapse is visible, and the answer stops being a matter of opinion.
Why time feels compressed goes through that properly.