Constantinople fell in 1453 and Columbus sailed for America in 1492. That's only 39 years between the trailing edge of the Roman Empire and the leading edge of the American era. I usually think of Rome and America as being totally separated by a huge gulf of history but they actually came pretty close to overlapping.
That’s a good point. Only some 330 years between the two.
Good point. One historian remarked, about the Roman Empire, that any entity capable of unifying lowland Scotland with Arabia must have had it goin’ on. (I’m paraphrasing)
Do the Russian Tsars count as continuations of the Russians?