The world was a very different place on Nov. 2, 2016, when the Chicago Cubs finally broke their 108-year World Series drought. Let’s look back at some telltale signs of just how much time has passed since the franchise’s last triumph.
Getty Images Norm Hall
The United Kingdom was still part of the EU
The British exit — or Brexit, because we loved good portmanteaus back then — from the European Union still had not happened yet, due in part to ongoing legal battles.
Getty Images Jack Taylor
America hadn’t yet torn itself apart limb from limb
Though it had threatened to do so for months before the Cubs won, the actual moment when the country imploded on itself wouldn’t come until a week later, after the results of the most contentious Presidential election in U.S. history finally sent half the nation over the edge.
AFP/Getty Images Robyn Beck
We still used gasoline for our cars
And the average national price was just $2.11. Can you imagine?
Getty Images Joe Raedle
Steven Seagal wasn’t yet a Russian citizen
Feels like forever ago, doesn’t it, that the famous action superhero/actor Steven Seagal was just a U.S. citizen. But no, he was granted Russian citizenship the day after the last time the Cubs won a World Series. Here he is holding two watermelons in Belarus.
AFP/Getty Images Stasevich Andrei Olegovich
The War on Nutella hadn’t yet started
One of our costliest and most regrettable conflicts, the debate over how much Nutella should constitute a single serving raged on for far too long.
Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images Elena Aquila
We were still struggling to accept Lindsay Lohan’s new accent
Fortunately, we’d come to grips with it in due time after we read enough explainers.
Getty Images Dave Benett
Cleveland hadn’t yet tumbled into another era of sports misery
Riding high after the NBA’s Cavaliers had won the title in June and the Indians seized a 3-1 lead in the World Series, it looked like Cleveland was about to become the new Title Town. But then the Cubs rallied to win in seven games. Cleveland hasn’t won a title since.
Getty Images Justin Merriman
The average price for a loaf of bread was … let’s say $2.50
It’s an essential metric for any “what the world was like when” list, but we admit we’re not sure on that number. It’s something like that. For the crappier kinds of bread, anyway. Artisanal 12-grain would have run you a little more. Puts it all in perspective, how cheap bread used to be.
The Washington Post/Getty Images Deb Lindsey
Colonization of Mars was still nine long years away
SpaceX founder Elon Musk’s race against the destruction of our own planet was still in its early stages the last time the Cubs won a World Series. Fun fact: Chicago’s seemingly inevitable championship — long cited as a sign of a coming apocalypse — helped motivate Musk to push his plans forward, with a goal of inhabiting by 2025 our neighbor planet so that we can eventually ruin it too.
AFP/Getty Images Hector Guerrero
Unforgivably, Meryl Streep hadn’t yet been awarded the Cecil B. DeMille Award
With the incredible, beautiful four-year run of “The Deer Hunter,” “Kramer vs. Kramer,” “The French Lieutenant’s Woman,” and “Sophie’s Choice,” it’s an injustice that the Cubs won another World Series before the Hollywood bigwigs got around to honoring this true champion of the screen and stage with a most deserved lifetime achievement award. Also, “The River Wild” was awesome.
WireImage Jun Sato
