Certain places are bound to go down in history. For instance, the Berlin Wall, Independence Hall, Reddit. The internet has changed the way we understand the past: any question, any curiosity, any doubt at all can be addressed through a Google search bar, a Wikipedia page, or even an easily-accessible primary source. Or, if that's a little too dry for you, there are memes.

To learn about and narrate history, people no longer need to be physically present at some archive or great library: our ancestors live in the cloud, and through our screens we are nearer to the past than at any other time in history. These memes, which range from Rage Comics about the Roman Empire through to Wojaks dissecting the intricacies of Cold War-era international relations, mark an era when people had more to say and more to read about what happened long ago than at any other time. These history memes are, in themselves, historic.