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People Share What Historical Events They Wouldn’t Believe Had Happened If It Weren’t Actually Documented
Article created by: Justinas Keturka
Our history is filled with weird tales, and the best part is that some of them are true. Interested in these crazy moments, Redditor u/day-tripper96 made a post on the platform, asking other users: "What's a bizarre historical event you can't believe actually took place?" And people instantly flooded the comment section with answers.
From the CIA training a cat to spy on the Soviets to the great Emu War, continue scrolling to check out the most memorable ones together with Bored Panda's treat — an interview with Dr. Darren R. Reid, a historian who earned his Ph.D. from the University of Dundee and is now a lecturer at Coventry University.
This post may include affiliate links.
#1
During the siege of Tenochtitlan, the conquistadors built a trebuchet. However, the conquistadors, being an exploratory expedition, had not brought any military engineers with them. So they winged it. Surprisingly, they did build a trebuchet, which fired exactly one shot, directly upwards, which promptly came down and smashed the trebuchet. This event is chronicled in both the journals of the conquistadors present as well as the Aztec records.
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#2
During WW1, English and German troops stopped the fighting for one day on Christmas Eve and played a game of football, exchanged gifts, and held conversations..only to go back to killing each other the next day
#3
Putting a man on the moon with a small fraction of the computing power used to write this message.
#4
The Cobra Effect. Basically during the British rule of India, they were concerned about the number of snakes in the capital, so they ordered a bounty on Cobras. For a while their population definitely declined, but soon people started breeding snakes just to collect the bounty. When the British became aware of this, they cancelled the bounty and so the breeders/snake catchers had huge numbers of now-worthless snakes which they let go in the wild, in turn actually increasing the population of Cobras in Delhi.
#6
Alexander the Great named (or renamed) 70 cities after himself. Some still have the name or derivatives of it - Alexandria in Egypt being the most obvious, but also Iskandariya in Iraq and Kandahar in Afghanistan.
#7
Battle of Tsushima in 1905. Russian Baltic fleet sails the long way (16k miles and 7 months) started by them opening fire on British fishing boats mistaken for Japanese vessels in the North sea.... sank their own ships while conducting target practice, then were destroyed by the Japanese fleet upon arrival (they mistook the Japanese ships for Russian and signaled them instead of firing).
#8
The fact that Donald J. Trump was elected president of the United States of America will always shock and appall me.
#10
The dancing plague of 1518, so from what I remember about what I learned, a few people randomly just started dancing in the town center for no apparent reason, even seeming a bit distraught not really having fun, well randomly people started joining seemingly against their will, I think it was reported that nearly 400 people were eventually involved and danced for literal days without stop, this event was apparently well documented and a few people even died from literal exhaustion, pretty much ended like it started too, everyone just kinda stopped.
Raymond Core 7 months ago
Rye ergot naturally occurs from time to time and is like LSD and does this to people.
#11
In 1920, President Paul Deschanel of France fell through the window of the train while traveling on the Orient Express. He stumbled up to the nearest signal box in his pajamas and told the signalman that he needed help and that he was the President of France. The signalman reportedly replied 'And I'm Napoleon Bonaparte.'
#12
Henry starting a whole new religion because he wanted a divorce and the Pope gave him the finger
#14
Dr. Robert Liston performing a surgery with a 300% mortality rate. Wild if you read the story
#15
Napoleon was once attacked by a horde of rabbits. Basically, a rabbit hunt was set up to celebrate the Treaties of Tilsit and they ended up amassing somewhere between hundreds and thousands of rabbits (accounts vary). Anyway, the day of the hunt they set the rabbits in cages surrounding the area that they would be hunting in. They released them once everyone was set, but instead of being scared the bunnies swarmed the hunting party. At first they thought it was funny, but then it got overwhelming and Napoleon and the others had to flee from the bunnies in a coach.
#16
I am a big fan of the period when there were like three different popes all excommunicating each other and the term anti-pope is valid in Christian theology.
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