On November 19, 1863, Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address to a crowd of 15,000 at the Soldiers’ National Cemetery. Mind you, this was before cell phones, so Lincoln didn’t have to improvise any jokes when someone’s device in the crowd inevitably went off. And those in attendance weren’t able to record long videos of the speech that they’d end up trying to show disinterested friends and then deleting later.

The Magna Carta was signed in 1215—a momentous event that is viewed as being one of the first steps toward the thriving democracy we have today. Mind you, this was before cell phones, so King John couldn’t Docusign from home while wearing his best pair of sweats.

The Wright Brothers were the first ever to take flight on December 17, 1903. Mind you, this was before cell phones, so they were both pretty locked in on the whole inventing flying thing, instead of forming a brotherly duo named the “Wright Bros” who wore tank tops and created short-form airplane gag videos.

Between 1519 and 1522, Ferdinand Magellan led an expedition that was the first to circumnavigate the globe. Mind you, this was before cell phones, so Magellan wasn’t able to do that thing you do when you don’t have cell service where you just scroll aimlessly through your photos. Sadly, he died in the Philippines and wasn’t able to finish the expedition, but again this is pre-cell phone, so the crew of the ship wouldn’t have been able to post flattering photos of themselves with Magellan alongside captions like “RIP Legend” and “Miss you, Cap.”

The agricultural revolution occurred sometime around 10,000 BCE—resulting in a shift from hunting and gathering to settling farmland and creating communities. Mind you, this was before cell phones, so the settlers couldn’t just listen to fun true-crime podcasts while they toiled in the fields. And after they harvested the wheat, they didn’t have immediate access to a great scone recipe from Sally’s Baking Addiction.

The Boston Tea Party was a political protest that took place the night of December 16, 1773, when a revolutionary group disguised themselves as Native Americans, smashing and dumping more than 90,000 pounds of tea into Boston Harbor. Mind you, this was before cell phones, so they didn’t livestream their event, creating a hashtag #WeSpilledTheTea that mobilized an entire online movement. And because they didn’t create that hashtag, there wasn’t an eventual backlash against the whole Native American thing, prompting two clear sides to emerge and battle each other in every possible online forum for years to come—creating greater division than existed before the tea was dumped.

The great pyramid of Giza was built over a span of 20+ years, spanning from roughly 2580 to 2560 BCE. The pyramids were built using 2.3 million stone blocks, put in place by 20,000 to 30,000 skilled laborers. Mind you, this was before cell phones, so there weren’t group chats where workers could have inside jokes or make fun of their boss. And because there were no cell phones, there wasn’t a second group chat for everyone except the one artisan who was a little too into pyramids.

In 1440, Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press, which helped make books affordable for the masses. Mind you, this was before cell phones, so people read books.