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== Live Action TV ==
* ''[[MASH]]'' and ''Young Riders'' both were on the air longer than the historical events they portrayed - the Korean War and the Pony Express, respectively. The latter was obsolete a ''month'' after it was founded due to the telegraph, and only lasted eighteen months.
** Also ''[[Dad's Army (TV)|Dad's Army]]'' which lasted nine years (which is three years longer than the real [[World War 2]] lasted).
* The classic ''[[Batman (TV series)|Batman]]'' TV series lasted from 1966 to 1968 -- somehow, it ended up forming everyone's opinion of the caped crusader (active from 1939 to present).
* ''[[Star Trek: theThe Original Series (TV)|Star Trek the Original Series]]'' is the best-known ''[[Star Trek (Franchise)|Star Trek]]'' series, but it was the shortest-lived of the five live-action ''Trek'' series.
* Chevy Chase was a cast member on ''[[Saturday Night Live]]'' for just over a year.
* Pointed out in an episode of ''[[Horrible Histories (TV series)|Horrible Histories]]'', where the cowboys sing about how they "only ruled the range for 20 years."
 
 
== Music ==
* Almost all of the musical works [[Kurt Weill]] wrote in collaboration with [[Bertolt Brecht (Creator)|Bertolt Brecht]] were created between 1927 and 1930. ''The Seven Deadly Sins'' (1933) is the only significant exception.
* [[The Sex Pistols]], credited with starting the [[Punk Rock]] movement, were together initially for only 2 1/2 years, produced four singles and one album.
** Even more notably, Sid Vicious, practically the [[Face of the Band]], was with the band for such a short time that they only recorded about 3 songs with him.
* [[Buddy Holly (Music)|Buddy Holly's]] music career lasted a year and a half until his death in a plane crash.
* Nirvana's mainstream popularity lasted about 3 years before Kurt Cobain's suicide ended the band. These days they are probably the most popular band after The Beatles - their posthumous releases easily outnumber the releases they made when he was alive.
* Guns N Roses released three original albums, one covers album and a compilation before the band was effectively over, yet similar to the Nirvana example they have been treated like they went on for years.
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== Real Life ==
* The "Antebellum" [[Deep South]]: While technically, perhaps, the term ''antebellum'' could mean all of U.S. history before 1860, what most people think of as The Old South, with a cotton-based economy and big white-columned plantations everywhere, was mostly from about 1830 until the Civil War. 31 years. Less than one person's lifetime. Outside the "tidewater" coastal areas, much of the South was not even settled by whites until after the War of 1812. For example, the [[Atlanta]] that burned in ''[[Gone Withwith the Wind]]'' had not existed in any form at all before 1836, had been called that only since 1847, became a city of any importance only a few years before the war started, and ''wasn't even Georgia's capital'' until a few years after the war ended (Georgia has had more places serve as capital than most other states; immediately prior to the Civil War, the capital was in the tiny town of Millidgeville, and Macon briefly served as the capital in between the two).
** This was only [[Truth in Television]] on the Atlantic Coast - particularly Virginia - and the Gulf Coast (and a few waystations along the major rivers), which is probably where the idea of associating it with the entire South came from. Even in the coastal areas, it was perfectly possible for a person to live from the time cotton began to be grown widely (a little after the cotton gin was invented in 1793) all the way to the time of the Civil War. This is, admittedly, a little misleading; before cotton was king, tobacco was tops.
*** Robert E. Lee's ''father'' had fought in the Revolutionary War (Robert was a child of his old age).
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** Somewhat relatedly, and on a smaller scale, the gunfight at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone lasted about 30 seconds or so in real life. Most depictions of it stretch it out to several minutes because of its legendary status.
* The "High Middle Ages" (roughly 1000-1300), the era on which most "medieval" tropes are based, was only one period of the Middle Ages, and not even the longest one. Not to mention it wasn't as static as usually depicted, but that's its [[Medieval Stasis|own trope]].
* Classical Greece: While Greece has a history of thousands of years, almost all of the non-mythical people and events that the average person can name are from 500 to 300 B.C. This includes the rise of Athenian "democracy", the Persian wars (when ''[[300 (Film)|Three Hundred]]'' is set), and the rise of Alexander the Great. Most of the ancient writers whose texts have survived to the present day (excluding, of course, [[Homer]]) had overlapping lifespans. The United States has already been a republic for longer than Athens was a democracy. This might be from a tendency by the average person to [[Ancient Grome|conflate Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome]] (the latter of which ''did'' go on for quite some time).
* Rome is not free of this either. For example, almost every Roman soldier in fiction will wear ''[http://www.aurorahistoryboutique.com/products/A000027_L.jpg Lorica Segmentata]'', a type of armor that was on production from roughly 20 to 300 AD. Compare it with what legionaries wore in the [http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/0005cimbri.jpg Samnite Wars] (4th century BC), [http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/0006cimbri.jpg Punic Wars] (264-146 BC) and the [http://ejercito-romano.losforos.es/board/ilustraciones-generales-soldados-romanos-del-bajo-imperio-t436.html late empire] (300-450 AD). The late Roman Army was in fact very "Medieval" looking, with a lot more reliance on cavalry hailing from stone fortresses than on the famed legions of earlier periods.
** In general, fictional depictions of Rome tend to be concentrated on the very late Republic or the early Empire. Most Roman Epics were set between about 70 BC (''[[Spartacus]]'') and about 50 AD (''[[I Claudius|I, Claudius]]''). A very brief period considering the whole history from the founding of the Republic to the fall of the Empire in the West (and even longer if you count the Eastern Empire, which continued for another ''millennium'').
* The zenith of European colonial empires only lasted two or three generations. An very elderly man in early 1960's Africa might have lived to see everything from the coming of the British or French to independence. This was obvious at the time because it was called the ''Scramble'' For Africa. In 1870, only 10% of Africa was European. by 1900, only Liberia and Ethiopia were left free (and the Italians invaded Ethiopia later, while Liberia had ''begun'' as a colony). However, it also lasted a lot longer than you might think. France and Britain still owned most of Africa as late as 1960. Portugal never gave up its colonies right through the 1970s until an anti-fascist revolution in Portugal itself (the leftists who won immediately gave up all of Portugal's remaining colonies except Macau). Mind you, the coming of the Empires did end the sale of Africans to European and Arabic merchants for good - which had been going on for many centuries by that point (though less than 300 for the Americas trade).
** Strangely enough, the Apartheid system of white minority rule that existed in South Africa, Namibia, and Rhodesia (the southern district of which constitutes modern Zimbabwe) can qualify. Although life for local black Africans in these areas was far from pleasant during the colonial era, most of South Africa (settled by Europeans long before the other two) was in local hands (some black, some white) for much of the 19th Century. The whole of South Africa was conquered by Britain by 1902, and given independence as the Union of South Africa in 1910. Sure, the rulers were white, but "Empire" =/= "rule by white people".
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