As a child, Queen Victoria was isolated and emotionally a****d by her mother and her mother’s scheming friend Sir John Conroy. They hoped to make the young Victoria – the heiress presumptive – weak willed and dependent on them, so that they could control her when she became Queen and be the power behind the throne.
Obviously this didn’t work. It did exactly the opposite of working.
The sound made by the Krakatoa volcanic eruption in 1883 was so loud it ruptured eardrums of people 40 miles away, travelled around the world four times, and was clearly heard 3,000 miles away.
That’s like you standing in New York and hearing a sound from San Francisco.
It’s no secret that our world is full of surprises, and history is no different. Once you look beyond the usual kings, wars, and famous dates, you’ll find some truly bizarre stories hiding in the past. Today’s post is packed with strange historical facts and events, but we also wanted to dig a little deeper and uncover some lesser-known stories that are fascinating. Some are surprising, some are unsettling, and a few are so unusual that you might find yourself wondering how you never heard about them before.
Take Chrysippus, the ancient Greek Stoic philosopher, for example. According to the ancient biographer Diogenes Laërtius, Chrysippus died at around 73 years old during the 143rd Olympiad, around 206 BC. One account claims that he died after laughing uncontrollably at his own joke. The story goes that he saw a donkey eating his figs and jokingly suggested giving it some undiluted wine to wash them down. Apparently, the joke was so funny to him that he couldn’t stop laughing and eventually collapsed. There is, however, another less amusing account of his death, which says he became ill after drinking strong, undiluted wine at a feast. So, whether he really laughed himself to death remains a mystery—but it certainly makes for one of history’s strangest death stories.
Fidel Castro actually wanted to be allies with America, since they were only 70 miles north, a world superpower, and Cuba desperately needed economic assistance, but because of containment and strong anti communist sentiment, Eisenhower and Nixon both refused to meet him, so Castro turned to the other world superpower, the Soviet Union, for economic assistance, and Khrushchev welcomed him with open arms. And that’s how the Cuban missile crisis began.
Edit: I️ said this BEGAN the crisis, this was not the ENTIRE reason for the Cuban missile crisis.
Pope Gregory IX called for black cats to be k****d as he believed they are incarnations of Satan. The mass k*****g of cats increased the number of rats in Europe. The increased number of rats helped to spread the plague all throughout Europe.
There’s obviously a lot written about some of history’s most famous figures, and Cleopatra is a perfect example. But separating the real woman from the larger-than-life legend surrounding her can be surprisingly difficult. In Cleopatra: A Life, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Stacy Schiff takes a closer look at the Egyptian queen beyond the Hollywood image of a glamorous seductress. Schiff presents Cleopatra as a highly intelligent political strategist, skilled negotiator, and capable ruler who spoke multiple languages and understood how to navigate an incredibly dangerous political world. In other words, there was much more to Cleopatra than the dramatic love stories and elaborate costumes we usually see in movies.
The only reason King Tut is considered famous is because his tomb was one of few untouched by tomb robbers because he was that unimportant. All major pharaohs had their tomb robbed and Tut’s was the first tomb discovered during the time with everything intact.
He wasn’t an influential or all that memorable pharaoh of his time. King Tut is to King Edward VI of England, too young to rule and passed too early to be effective.
A spirtualist who believed in harnessing Orgone (as in orgasm) energy sent Einstein what is fundamentally a nonsense machine for harnessing the energy.Einstein spent an afternoon trying to analyze this thing before sending an apologetic letter explainiing that this machine was just nonsense.
And while we know quite a bit about Cleopatra, there are still some facts about her life that can seriously mess with our sense of time. For instance, Cleopatra lived closer to the launch of the first iPhone and the 1969 Moon landing than she did to the construction of the Great Pyramid of Giza. The pyramid was already more than 2,000 years old when Cleopatra was born. Suddenly, ancient Egypt feels a lot less like one continuous period of history and a lot more like several completely different eras packed together. It’s one of those facts that sounds wrong the first time you hear it, even though the timeline checks out.
Not really weird, but a fun piece of history that not many people is know about is the origin of an announcer calling a horserace.
On February 5, 1927 in Tijuana, Mexico there was a film being shot at the racetrack. A track official noticed the way a director was using a microphone and a loudspeaker to direct his crew and actors during the filming. The idea came to him that if he had a microphone set up in the Stewards booth that led to a set of speakers, he could call the positions of the horses like a director gave direction.
Later that day, he had it set up without telling any of the patrons to the track about it. When people first experienced it, they were extremely confused. Before that people would keep track of the horses themselves with binoculars and often were unable to get a great view at certain angles. After they got used to it, they loved hearing a race being called and it became an everyday thing at that small track. Now, it’s an extremely important part of modern day racing all across the world and even people that aren’t familiar with the sport know about it.
Animals have also managed to leave some surprisingly heroic footprints in history. During World War II, a Great Dane named Juliana reportedly received two Blue Cross medals for bravery. In 1941, she was credited with putting out a dropped incendiary bomb by urinating on it. A few years later, in 1944, she reportedly alerted her owners to a shop fire. Whether you expected a history lesson to include a heroic dog saving the day is another question—but Juliana certainly earned her place in some of the more unusual stories from the past. Honestly, it’s hard to imagine a more unexpected way for a dog to become a wartime hero.
The Twilight Zone was one of the first television shows to feature a nearly all-black cast on a dramatic show that was was not dealing with racial issues. This was all because of Rod Serling, who was quoted in saying, *”Television, like its big sister, the motion picture, has been guilty of a sin of omission. Hungry for talent, desperate for the so-called ‘new face,’ constantly searching for a transfusion of new blood, it has overlooked a source of wonderous talent that resides under its nose. This is the Negro actor.”*
The episode was “The Big Tall Wish,” which was part of the first season of the show and it was awarded the 1961 Unity Award for Outstanding Contributions to Better Race Relations.
Something I always like to talk about:
There once existed an alleged theoretical state of war that lasted 335 years and 19 days, and was between the Dutch and an archipelago off the coast of southwest England called the Isles of Scilly.
What’s more, there were no casualties (because the Dutch forgot that they were at war with the Isles).
It wasn’t until a Scilly historian contacted the Dutch about the “war” in 1985, and received the information that the “war” was still technically ongoing, that a peace treaty was signed in 1986.
And then there are the historical disasters that sound so ridiculous you might assume someone made them up. In 1814, a huge storage vat at a London brewery burst, releasing an estimated 323,000 gallons of beer into the surrounding streets. The resulting wave damaged nearby buildings, destroyed two houses, and tragically killed eight people. What sounds like the world’s worst brewery accident was, in fact, a very real disaster. It’s a sobering reminder that even something as ordinary as a tank used to store beer could become incredibly dangerous when something went wrong.
The Tulsa Oklahoma race riot. In 1921 what was called “the black Wall Street” was burned to the ground and whites actually used machine g*ns on black people.
You didn’t have to be ethnically Spanish to be a Conquistador. There were Conquistadors from England and Germany, but the rules to become one involved Hispanicizing your name, and converting to Catholicism if you weren’t already Catholic.
A little more than a century later, another strange liquid disaster struck the United States. In 1919, a poorly constructed storage tank in Boston ruptured, sending a massive wave of molasses through the streets. The sticky flood reportedly reached around 25 feet high in places and moved at roughly 35 mph. It killed 21 people and injured around 150 others. It’s hard to imagine something as harmless-looking as molasses becoming so deadly, but the Boston Molasses Flood remains one of the most unusual industrial disasters in American history. The incident was so bizarre that the phrase “slow as molasses” suddenly feels like a very poor description of what happened that day.
President LBJ would have highways cleared out by the secret service, get in a car with a 6 pack of beer, and g*n it down the highway downing beer after beer.
The American invasion fleet for the Philippines during World War 2 was saved from complete destruction by a small support group named Taffy 3, composed of 3 destroyers, 4 destroyer escorts (smaller, under g*nned destroyers used for anti sub work), and 6 escort carriers (smaller versions of aircraft carriers also used mainly for anti sub work). The Japanese fleet meant to destroy the invasion force was made up of 11 destroyers, 2 light cruisers, 6 heavy cruisers, and 4 battleships (including the super battleship *Yamato*). The escort carriers, which were merely converted merchants vessels, could not outrun any of the Japanese vessels. Taffy 3 did not have any g*ns larger than 5 inches, to put it in comparison, the anti aircraft g*ns of some of the larger vessels in the Japanese fleet had similar caliber g*ns. *Yamato* alone outweighed every ship in Taffy 3 combined.
The battle itself was one of the largest mismatches in naval history.
The carriers scrambled every aircraft they had onboard, which was close to 400 aircraft. The destroyers and destroyer escorts laid a smokescreen for the carriers. One of them made a headlong charge directly at the larger Japanese force to get into launching range for the torpedoes. Other vessels took their example made similar torpedo runs. One torpedo sheared off the bow of the heavy cruiser *Kumano*, another crippled the heavy cruiser *Chokai*. The aircraft repeatedly strafed, bombed, and even depth charged the fleet. Once they ran out of ammo, they continued to make dry runs at ships so as to distract the g*nners from firing on friendly vessels. There were reports of pilots flinging empty Coke bottles, charts, and clipboards at ships. One pilot pulled his .45 caliber Colt and shot at a cruiser with it.
The Japanese made several errors in the engagement including the order of a general attack, which meant each vessel could engage and maneuver freely. This made for a lot of miscommunication and confusion. They also misidentified the small escort carriers for larger ones because of the s**t ton of aircraft airborne and also mistook the small destroyers as heavy cruisers. These errors made Taffy 3 look like the outer elements of a much larger American fleet. Thinking this, the Japanese admiral regathered his forces and retreated. This gave enough time for Taffy 3 to retreat and alert the main American fleet, which had been distracted by another Japanese fleet meant to lure them away, which sailed back and bombed the s**t out of the remaining warships of the original Japanese fleet.
Read more [here](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_off_Samar), the stories of heroism and bravery onboard the American vessels are almost unbelievable. The story of the battle itself is also quite interesting, including when a single shot from the 5 inch “stinger” g*n of a carrier managed to c*****e a heavy cruiser.
TL;DR: American fleet composed of support vessels fought a Japanese task force several times larger than it and won. Saved tens of thousands of lives.
And if you thought fashion was harmless, Victorian history has another surprise waiting. During the 19th century, a vivid green pigment known as “Paris Green” became incredibly fashionable. The problem? Its beautiful color came from copper arsenite, an arsenic compound. The pigment was used in clothing, wallpaper, and other decorative products, exposing people to a highly toxic substance. Workers who handled the pigment could inhale dangerous dust, while prolonged exposure could cause serious health problems. So while the color may have looked beautiful in a drawing room or ballroom, there was a much darker story hiding behind that fashionable shade. Fashion trends really have come a long way.
Thomas Jefferson collected so many books in his lifetime that he would go into debt. After the British burned Washington, DC in the Battle of 1812 he sold most of his books to the Library of Congress to replace those that were lost in the fire. Jefferson had spent 50 years accumulating a wide variety of books in several languages and in many subjects, including philosophy, science, literature, architecture, law, religion, and mathematics. The nearly 6,500 books netted him $23,950.
26th President Theodore Roosevelt was an ardent supporter of William Howard Taft. The two were longtime friends, and Taft was Roosevelt’s most trusted cabinet member. When Roosevelt’s latter term came to a close, he successfully campaigned for Taft’s election to the presidency.
However, when Taft began enacting many policies that his predecessor found disagreeable, Roosevelt grew sour towards his friend.
He vied for the Republican presidential nomination and failed. He then literally marched his supporters out of the Republican convention hall and created a new party.
Under this new party’s banner, Roosevelt split the Republican vote and ensured Taft’s defeat.
If there’s one thing these stories remind us, it’s that history is rarely as neat and predictable as it looks in a textbook. Behind the major dates and famous names are bizarre accidents, strange customs, unexpected characters, and stories that sound almost impossible until you discover that they really happened. And sometimes, the strangest details are the ones that make a historical period feel the most real.
There was a 100 Hour War between El Salvador and Honduras in 1969, the war cause the d***h of about 3,000 people. The war was triggered by a Football (soccer) game, it has been known as the Football War.
In 1919, a molasses storage tank busted. A wave of molasses, 25 feet high, ripped through the streets of Boston, k*****g 21 people and injuring 150 others. It’s estimated that the tank contained 2.3 million gallons (8,700 m^3 ) of molasses when it collapsed.
It became known as the Great Molasses Flood.
That’s also what makes digging into history so much fun. You can start with one seemingly ordinary fact and suddenly find yourself down a rabbit hole filled with eccentric characters, unbelievable coincidences, and events you never knew happened. There’s always another strange detail hiding somewhere, waiting to completely change the way you look at the past. Which of these stories surprised you the most, Pandas? And did you know any of them already?
Salieri did not k**l Mozart. This is a legend. Mozart drank and died in poverty.
I actually have something for this.
During the evacuation at Dunkirk in WW2 in that moment of despair, desperation and overall bleakness… on the beach there was a workers strike by a group of British rail workers regarding overtime….
Very strange thing to happen in the face of events.
On the Lewis and Clark Expedition, a vote regarding what direction they should go was held on the coast of Washington amongst the party members. This vote included Sacajawea and York, Lewis’ s***e. Thus, because the Expedition was funded by the U.S. Military, this was the first time in American history where a woman and black man were allowed to participate in a vote of any kind related to government affairs.
Around the time when America was founded, it was common for the heads of the household to hold “gathering” parties where every attendant brought their own set of marbles to race against each other. Marbles had to be custom made by each household head and contain the letter of the family embedded into the glass or iron or whatever it was made from. The household whose marble came in last place had a share of his crops taken from him and placed into the slaves quarters. This practice ended when Washington became president because it was well known he was terrible at forging circles and always lost.
Mexico lost part of its territory in part due the abolishment of slavery.
When the barbarians sacked Carthage, they burned and pillaged pretty much everything but the sanctuary where St. Augustine was staying. He was on his d***h bed, and the barbarians respected him so much for his influence, even though they hated the Church, that they decided to leave him alone.
Max Tremmel, a priest on a winter walk one day in 1894, witnessed a young boy slip thru some broken ice on the River Inn and saved the boy from certain drowning.
That boy was Adolf Hitler.
Ibrahim I, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, had 280 of his concubines drowned in the ocean because *one* of them had slept with another man.
A slightly more positive fact is that, officially, the longest war in history was between the Netherlands and the Isles of Scilly. It lasted from 1651 to 1986 (335 years). There were no casualties.
That Henry Ford attempted to build an entire city in the middle of the Amazon to supply his company (and the United States) with a reliable source of rubber. Unfortunately, the entire scheme fell apart, although one can still visit the ruins on the site, complete with all the amenities 1920s Americans could want!
That a Confederate ship during the US civil war ran through the union blockade and proceeded to harass union shipping routes and whaling ships. I’m talking dozens of ships they would raid and burn. So more than a little nuisance. Never got captured, ended up surrendering in England after the war. Fun fact 2, the Confederate navy had somewhat of a base in England (Liverpool I believe) the Brits thought that a split America would benefit their interests, and thus supported the Confederates.
The CIA made a spy cat(a cat that could lurk around and record information) that they sunk several million dollars into and it promptly walked into traffic. The Soviets had anti tank dogs (dogs that they strapped explosives to) that didn’t want to run at the tanks for obvious reasons and frequently blew up their own forces.
The Roman Senate of the Roman Republic wasn’t officially supposed to be a legislative body with authority to pass laws. Officially, it could only *recommend* legislation to the magistrates, who didn’t *technically* have to obey. However, there was an extremely strong precedent to obey official advice from the Senate, so it almost always was followed during the Republican period. During the Empire, the authority of the Senate was reduced further.
It’s worth noting, however, that the Senate didn’t *only* issue advice. Outside of legislative issues, they did have other authorities and powers in addition to the immense influence they carried.
Hernando deSoto is responsible for the collapse of several North American civilizations and the d***h of untold millions of people.
He, and his band of men, were the first Europeans to make a concerted expedition into what’s now the USA. He started in Florida and eventually his men made it to Louisiana (with many detours along the way). deSoto dies along the way, but that’s unimportant.
What’s important is that they brought about 300 pigs with them for food because they breed quickly and can live off of almost anything. Unfortunately, they also serve as a host for various diseases that humans are susceptible to.
Lots of the the pigs escaped, reproduced, destroyed farmland, and spread diseases. By the time the next Europeans came to those areas the civilizations deSoto and his men saw had utterly collapsed and the population had catastrophically fallen as well.
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Similarly, the vast numbers of buffalo and passenger pigeons are though to be a result of the d***h of North American native peoples and the collapse of their civilizations, particularly the ability to maintain agricultural systems.
That’s also thought to be tied to a period of global cooling as an entire continent’s worth of people stopped using fire to control plant growth and forests expanded massively, resulting and vast amounts of CO2 being pulled from the atmosphere.
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Magellan is not the first person to circumnavigate the globe. He never made it, he died in the Philippines.
Ten minute lobotomies, Two methods were use either had to drill holes in head or the later method that was using a metal pick to was used to hammer through eye sockets. In both method a metal instrument was used to mush brain. Local anesthesia was used, the patient could go home in the same day. The doctor did a couple of thousand of these and could do multiple surgeries a day.
If you’re grandparents are over the age of 80, they will have lived 1/3 of U.S. history. If you are 30, you will have lived 1/8 of U.S. history.
It is common practice to wear the bottom button of a vest/waistcoat undone. Sometimes, vests are even cut with the bottom edge curving away so that the button is purely decorative.
The reason for this is that Edward VII of England was a f****s. He undid his bottom button for gut-comfort, and it turned into “the” style as courtiers imitated him.
During the 16th century, Nicolas Fouquet was the minister of finances of France under king Louis XIV.
He had the castle of Vaux-le-Vicomte built for a load of money, and had the most rad of parties there (16th century, they still said things like “rad” then).
He invited the king at one of those parties, and made it the radest of all rad parties (like top 3 radest in France’s history).
Looking at all the food and fireworks and fountains and all the bling, king louis14 found it suspicious. Where as the money coming from? He was also very much jealous of such splendor when his own castle was mostly empty.
So Louis14 had Fouquet arrested, emprisonned, then investigated and found guilty. In that order.
Arrested by D’artagnan, the guy who inspired alexandre dumas’ 4th musketeer.
And then he ordered the castle of Versailles to be made even more beautiful than Vaux-le-Vicomte.
Tl;Dr : Versailles’ castle was built as it is today because the king was jealous of his minister of finances (among other reasons).
There have been two kings of England to home the title The Great. Neither of them was properly English. Alfred the great was the king of Wessex, and his grandson, Aethelstan, is responsible for unifying England. The other was C**t the great, a king of Denmark. No monarch had heldthe title since 1066.
Hmm, I feel I’m going to be downvoted for this just cause of meta Reddit but the first black slaves in America where owned by black people and captured and sold by black people. They are trying to remove that from history for some reason.
