The Five-Year Rule was put in place several years ago because people kept posting too many titles that were related to news and current events. That sort of defeats the purpose of this being a history sub, so we decided to implement a rule similar to the 20-year rule on /r/historymemes. We put the exact number to a user poll, and the winner was 5 years. From the sidebar:

Rule 5: The five-year rule.

• No posts whose titles concern events within the last five calendar years (2021-2025).
• Post titles clearly referencing events happening within the last five years but with a complaint date (e.g., "Donald Trump beats Kamala Harris, 2004") will still be removed. See the "think you've found a clever way around this" clause in Rule 1.
• Posts about events within the last five years can be posted on /r/fakehistorymemes.
• The date will roll over at the start of the new year. (as of January 1st, 2026, posts from all of 2021 will be allowed).

Note how it talks about post titles. The image itself can be from whenever. Heck, the whole point of the original memes was that they had captions talking about historical events, plus unrelated images that had a funny thematic parallel to the historical event.

For example, this would be allowed under the Five-Year Rule:

Richard Nixon is inaugurated for a second term, January 20, 1973

This would not be allowed under the Five-Year Rule:

Donald Trump does the YMCA dance at a campaign speech, 2024

If you really really really wanna make a post with a title referencing current events, you can do so at /r/fakehistorymemes.