  As an illustration of the value of historical measures we present some
examples of the dynamical evolution of multiple systems resembling the Orion
Trapezium. We constructed models by combining carefully selected historical
measures of the separations among components of young massive stellar systems
with modern observations. By computing large numbers of fictitious systems
resembling real trapezia we were able to simulate the dynamical evolution of
such systems. Our results on the dynamical fate of the Orion Trapezium and of
ten additional young clusters resembling the Orion Trapezium show extremely
short dynamical lifetimes for these systems.
