Iceland's parliament, the Althing, was founded in the year 930 and still meets today.
For centuries the Althing gathered outdoors every summer at Thingvellir, where chieftains made laws and settled disputes. It is one of the oldest parliamentary institutions in the world.
Why is this true?
Iceland had no king, so free farmers had to organise themselves. The assembly was suspended for a few decades in the 1800s under Danish rule and re-established in Reykjavik in 1845.
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History keeps producing facts that ruin your sense of time. A war shorter than a lunch break, an empire that overlaps with the invention of the fax machine, a queen who lived closer to the Moon landing than to the pyramids. The entries here favour events with solid documentation, and each one explains the context that makes the surprise make sense rather than leaving it as a bare curiosity.