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Explanation: Due to Rome's longevity and its wide reach, there are a number of dates that can be used as its fall - some quite, uh, interesting. For bonus points, my date of choice isn't here.
Oh, and for those curious, the most commonly accepted answers are:
476 AD (Fall of the city of Rome and the Western Empire)
1204 AD (Sack of Constantinople and the break of government continuity in the Byzantine Empire)
1453 AD (Siege of Constantinople and conquest of the Byzantine Empire by the Ottoman Turks)
27 BCE (Fall of the Republic)
395 AD (Split of the Empire into East and West)
476 AD (Fall of the city of Rome and the Western Empire)
717 AD and 867 AD (Byzie stuff? Not sure)
1204 AD (Sack of Constantinople and the break of government continuity in the Byzantine Empire)
1453 AD (Siege of Constantinople and conquest of the Byzantine Empire by the Ottoman Turks)
1806 AD (Dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire, the Germanic state which claimed legitimacy by being crowned by the Pope)
1917 AD (Fall of the Romanov dynasty which claimed dynastic continuity with the Byzantine Empire and called Russia the 'Third Rome')
717 AD (-718 AD): Siege of Constantinople by the Umayyad Caliphate
867 AD: Basil I murders Michael III, becoming emperor and establishing the Macedonian dynasty, beginning a Byzantine revival
And if you go by the last one, you can say that they sold Coca-Cola in the Roman Empire.
Man, I love unexpected comparisons like this!
Abraham Lincoln could have sent a fax to a samurai
I need some dates on this one.
Good article, thanks for the info!
Woolly mammoths walked the Earth while the pyramids were being built (well, one small corner of it).
Oxford university was teaching before the Aztec Empire began.
I think I read through an entire AskReddit thread of these. A few I came across on my own and was surprised by: Fibbonacci of the numbers fame could have met Ghengis Khan, Benjamin Franklin could have talked to Isaac Newton, and Galileo was literally the same age as Shakespeare.
And TBF there is a pretty good argument that Russia picked up where Byzantium left off, on cultural and religious fronts.
Edit: And if you accept that, maybe 1917 was just a change of dynasty, and it either never fell or fell in 1990.
Don't give Putin more ideas!
Truly, he would be a shit-tier emperor. The battle of Teutoburg forest could be blamed on an unlucky surprise, at least.
Romania and the Papal state still exist so we have one secular and one spiritual remain of Western Rome
1453 AD (Siege of Constantinople and conquest of the Byzantine Empire by the Ottoman Turks)
The petrified king will rise again!
What's your preferred?
284 AD. The ascension of Diocletian and the shift away from the city of Rome as the center of the Empire. There's still an Empire after that point - but it's only dubiously Roman.
Dominate vs. Principate. Coinage also took a steep nosedive in terms of quality and silver content at this point. I'd argue that Diocletian's argenteii were among the last really "good" coins produced before it all devolved into tiny pieces of copper (nummi). Then again, they were arguably more comemmorative than meant for circulation which is why you'll be fairly hard pressed to come across visibly worn ones.
Things got pretty chaotic in the 300s already. The battle of Adrianople or generally the Gothic War would be a classic choice, and you could even cut it off with Constantine or Valerian if you want to emphasis the transition to Christianity and the accompanying cultural shift.
I don't know why I'm guessing, PugJesus is right here...