King George III, born in 1738, lived until 1820.
Queen Victoria, born in 1819, the last full year of the reign of George III, lived until 1901.
Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, born in 1900, the last full year of the reign of Victoria, lived until 2002.
Three lives lived in four centuries. Or, to put it another way, until the death of the Queen Mum, we were only three degrees of separation from the world as it existed almost four decades before the Declaration of Independence.