People Share What Historical Events They Wouldn’t Believe Had Happened If It Weren’t Actually Documented
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.
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The fact that Donald J. Trump was elected president of the United States of America will always shock and appall me.
As you might understand, history isn't just about funny gags. While it has plenty of those, the subject can offer us much more.
"History gives us perspective," Dr. Reid told us. "It helps us to understand how our own experiences fit into a much broader pattern of human behavior; why do we go to war, why do we love, and why do we cause so much pain when we are trying to do the right thing."
"These are big questions with no easy answers, but understanding how and why our ancestors acted can help us to understand why we, as individuals and as a society, act as we do."
I can’t believe i haven’t seen the siege of Weinsberg in 1140 after so much scrolling. It was negotiated that the women would be allowed to leave unharmed with whatever they could carry on their shoulders (with the intention that the men would continue to be sieged and ultimately killed/arrested). So the women carried out the men. Conrad III wasn’t even mad, he actually applauded their deception and allowed it.
He was just like "I'm not even mad, that's impressive...fair enough" Lol
However, once you start diving deeper, you quickly realize that historians have done so much work, it's impossible for one person to become an expert in every stage of every civilization.
"Start by learning about whatever time period or topic speaks to you," Dr. Reid suggested.
"Don't try and nail down specific periods or important people because every period and every person's history is just as valid as everyone else's. Find what speaks to you and work out from there, always being open to engaging with stories, histories, and peoples that you come across whose experiences and perspectives take you out of your intellectual comfort zone."
I know it's not very old, but it still amazes me that a science fiction author can talk about wanting to create a fake religion and then proceeds to create a fake science fiction religion and it somehow has actual followers???
Following your own curiosity and intuition, you are bound to discover something you will be able to share in a similar post when it comes up. Just don't be afraid of challenges.
According to Dr. Reid, even though academic literature can be intimidating for newcomers, historians are increasingly exploring new ways of bringing their research to life for new audiences. "Many [of them] produce podcasts, for example, that provide a much more accessible gateway into a vast range of periods and peoples," he explained.
"Historians are also starting to take control of mediums that haven't always represented the past as accurately as they could have. For example, I co-directed a documentary about Charlie Chaplin and mental health called Looking for Charlie: Life and Death in the Silent Era (to be released for free - streaming in the first week in November)."
Dr. Reid suggested that works such as this are likely to become more and more popular in the near future, providing deep insights into topics, but in an accessible way that will hopefully give people the best of both worlds.
The life of Zheng Yi Sao, a prostitute that became the most successful pirate lord in history, commanding 500 ships at the height of her power and battling Empire of China to a stalemate. She negotiated her surrender with honors and died peacefully at old age.
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.
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
The Erfurt Latrine Disaster of 1184 where a bunch of nobles met in a church, where it turned out the wooden floor couldn't hold their weight, so it broke and they tumbled into the latrine in the cellar, and about 60 people drowned in poop.
Putting a man on the moon with a small fraction of the computing power used to write this message.
Because they relied on "computers" who were people. Watch the movie "Hidden Figures". These women used their own mathematical skills to calculate speeds, trajectories, targets, all the calculations that were required for safe moon landings. That's the real wow of the moon landings.
Mel Blanc (the voice actor who voiced every male character on Looney Tunes, as well as characters like Barney Rubble on The Flintstones and Mr. Spacely on The Jetsons) was in a head-on collision driving his sports car in a dangerous intersection known as “Dead Man’s Curve” in Los Angeles in 1961 (the same “Dead Man’s Curve” from the Jan and Dean song). His legs and pelvis were fractured, and he was left in a coma. For weeks, doctors tried everything to get Blanc to wake up. Eventually, when things were looking bleak, one of his neurologists decided to address one of Blanc’s characters instead of Blanc himself, asking him “How are you feeling today, Bugs Bunny?” After a slight pause, the previously-comatose Blanc answered, “Eh... just fine, Doc. How are you?” Mel Blanc made a full recovery.
When he got out of the hospital, he sued the city of Los Angeles for $500,000, finally leading to the city reconstructing Dead Man’s Curve.
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.
1866: Lichtenstein goes to guard a spot with 80 men, returns with 81 men.
This is said to have been the only time the Liechtenstein army acutally left the country. Quite an accomplishment for a country that managed to get invaded by neutral Switzerland three times - all three times by accident, though, as suisse soldiers did make some navigational errors at the unmarked border. Liechtenstein would not have been able to defend itself, though, as it completely disbanded its army as soon as 1868.
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.
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.'
Europe declaring war on Napoleon.
Not France...Napoleon.
For clarification: After Napoleon returned to Paris from exile..... "At the Congress of Vienna, the Great Powers of Europe (Austria, Great Britain, Prussia and Russia) and their allies declared Napoleon an outlaw, and with the signing of this declaration on 13 March 1815, so began the War of the Seventh Coalition." Wikipedia
Henry starting a whole new religion because he wanted a divorce and the Pope gave him the finger
The English Reformation took place in 16th-century England when the Church of England broke away from the authority of the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church. These events were, in part, associated with the wider European Protestant Reformation, a religious and political movement that affected the practice of Christianity in western and central Europe. Causes included the invention of the printing press, increased circulation of the Bible and the transmission of new knowledge and ideas among scholars, the upper and middle classes and readers in general.
When Teddy Roosevelt was shot before he was supposed to give a speech.
The bullet was slowed down by the folded up 50-page speech, so it did not kill him. The bullet was inside him and he was bleeding, but he still went on and gave the speech, which was 84 minutes long.
He started it off with "It takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose" and showed the crowd the speech with the hole in it.
The Halifax Explosion. 100 years ago two ships did a sh**t job of passing each other while entering / leaving Halifax Harbour, in Nova Scotia. One of them was LOADED with explosives destined for WW1. They collided and one of them burned for a while, then exploded. The blast was a ~2/3 again larger than the one we saw in Beirut last year.
Thousands died or were blinded by shattering windows. There was a local tsunami (which followed a brief moment where the seabed was exposed to air), and then a monster snowstorm covered the relief effort in snow.
Largest human-made explosion even until the nuclear bomb, and I think it remains the largest maritime accident ever.
Good old Operation Mincemeat.
Basically, during WWII, the British find some dead body of some poor guy, dress it up like a British officer, attach some fake intel onto him, then throw him into the ocean, hoping he floats to enemy territory to mislead them.
It worked.
They went to extraordinary lengths to give him a full back story, including a fiancee, celebrating a recent promotion etc. And they made the actual fake intel as difficult to decode as any of their real intel. It was as close to complete accuracy while being totally faked as possible. The corpse was buried with full military honours.
What they did to the guy who told them that you need clean hands before you put them inside someone. (Ignaz Semmelweis)
The father of sterilization? Just because they had a bruised ego... He saved so many lives. I heard about how they used to walk from the pathology room, hands covered in corpse fluid, and then deliver a baby. And then the mother would die days later. Awful.
Lincoln stopping a fight with a gentleman before it started, with a broadsword.
Most people know Lincoln was incredibly tall, but he was also immensely strong. A lifetime of grit, graft, and chopping wood made his wiry frame tight with corded muscles.
A gentleman of parliament challenged Lincoln to a duel for his honour, one day. Lincoln picked the weapons. Broadswords.
Lincoln showed up to the field of the duel the following day, and with one enormous one handed swing overhead, lopped a sizeable limb off a tree. From a standing start.
The gentleman backed out of the duel moments after witnessing the man dismember a tree as casually as one might behead a floret of broccoli.
In duels, the person challenged got to pick the location and weapons. So there was a duel where one guy didn't want to fight, but couldnt back out without being dishonored and forever scorned... so he chose a pitch-black unlit cellar for the location, and huge carpenters's axes that neither combatant could life for the weapons.
If I had a nickel for every time there was a Defenestration of Prague, I'd have ten cents, which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice.
The Emu-War.
Dr. Robert Liston performing a surgery with a 300% mortality rate. Wild if you read the story
His most famous (and possibly apocryphal) mishap was the operation where he was moving so fast that he took off a surgical assistant's fingers as he cut through a leg and, while switching instruments, slashed a spectator's coat. The patient and the assistant both died from infections of their wounds, and the spectator was so scared that he'd been stabbed that he died of shock. The fiasco is said to be the only known surgery in history with a 300 percent mortality rate.
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.
This sounds like it came straight out of Monty Python. Napoleon wouldn't have survived an attack by that vicious Monty Python rabbit.
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.
The citizens of Holland once ate their prime minister, that's a bizarre case. It was the case of Johan de Witt 1672. You know, your political career is over when your citizens start to eat you...
The Battle of Pelusium the persians straight up attached cats to their shields so the egyptians couldn’t attack the shields or fire arrows at them
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.
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).
Austro-Hungarian army started shooting at itself while fighting Ottomans. The German speaking troops apparently yelled "Halt" when they encountered the Slavic troops of the same army, which then the Slavic troops who spoke s**t German (if any) mistook for "Alah" and started shooting. I believe the Slavic troop was also severely drunk at that point
Actually... I can totally see this happening
Nothing worse than drunk people with weapons. LOL I am from the United States.
The Great Molasses Flood, Jan.15, 1919. Massive wave of molasses from a broken tank flooded the area. It killed 51 people and injured 150. 2.3 million US gallons.
The sweet smell of molasses lingered in parts of the North End for years after the tragedy. Legend has it that on hot summer days you still can smell it a century later, but this might be an urban legend.
Carausius. Everything about him is boss. A Gallo-Belgic peasant who rose up the military ranks to become a Roman general. Successfully fought actual pirates after waiting for them to raid their targets and so became insanely wealthy. When he found out Emperor Maximian had caught wind of this and had ordered his execution he flipped him the bird, sailed into what is now Great Britain, bribed around four entire legions to join him with the money he'd nabbed, and set himself up in London as the Real Legitimate Emperor, Yo!
Why has nobody made a film about the man, yet?
Tsutomu Yamaguchi survived two atomic bombs in Japan. His story is amazing.
The only two cars in Ohio at the time, somehow managed to run into each other and crashed.
In 1802, Napoleon added a Polish legion of around 5,200 to the forces sent to Saint-Domingue to fight off the slave rebellion. Upon arrival and the first combat actions, discovering that the slaves fought off their French masters for their freedom, vast majority of Poles eventually joined the slaves against the French.. >Haiti's first president Jean-Jacques Dessalines called Polish people "the White Negroes of Europe", which was then regarded a great honour, as it meant brotherhood between Poles and Haitians.
Polish people also brought great honour to themselves and their country during the War of Independence and the Civil War. Too few know of their bravery and honour.
In ww2 (maybe 1 I can't remember) Germany was making a fake aircraft base out of wood as a decoy but the Brits knew of it and, after completion, dropped a wooden carving of a bomb
Us memers found our ways even in war
No Kum-sok's defection of North Korea is actually one if the most badass, real life movie things to ever happen.
Dude got sick of North Korea and flew to the South Korean border at almost mach-1, too far to be seen by North Korean or American radar. He landed at the closest American military base on the wrong side of the runway with another jet landing at the same time on the other side, barely missing it. When he got out of the plane, he took an image of Kim-Il-Sung that was in the cockpit, tore it to shreds, and threw up his arms in surrender. He unknowingly got $100k (which is almost $1 million today) by fulfilling "Operation Moolah" and lives as an American citizen to this day.
The astronomer Tycho Brahe had a pet moose that he used to get drunk with. One time he brought it to a dinner party at a friend's house. But sadly the moose did not survive the night. Once again the poor moose got drunk on beer and died from a nasty fall down a set of stairs. Tyco Brahe also lost his nose in a duel, so he wore a prosthetic nose made out of metal. Some sources say brass, others say it was a gold/silver alloy. He was also employing a small court jester named Jepp that he believed to be clairvoyant.
The Cadaver Synod - In AD 897, Pope Stephen VI had his dead rival Pope Formosus exhumed and put on trial. Stephen had a deacon speak on the dead pope's behalf. Naturally, Formosus was found guilty. Stephen ordered that two fingers Formosus used for blessing people cut off and his corpse thrown in the Tiber river.
Blackbeard the infamous pirate laying siege to Charleston, South Carolina for a week to get medicine for his syphilis
Football war between Honduras and el salvador. A war that lasted 4 days because of a football match...
Oh yes, footall is very serious in Latin America...especially the further south you go, Brazil vs Argentina is always feisty.
The time when Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte escaped from the island where he was imprisoned on after his army was defeated, he snuck back into France under the nose of King Louis XVIII and literally every royal guard and roadblock from Marseille to Paris, and when he was actually caught just outside Paris, he managed to persuade the soldiers (who just so happened to be former Bonapartists) to escort him into Paris where he managed to successfully cause the king to flee, on top of raising a FULL ARMY to wage war against Europe AGAIN. The only time in history an emperor took back an entire country just by waving his hat.
The time that Olga of Kiev burned an entire town to the ground with pigeons! She’s a badass! Oh, and she’s a saint now too.
Not only did she use pigeons, but she used the townspeople's own pigeons to do it!
The Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand (catalyst for WWI). Conspirators throw bombs at motorcade which miss but injury others. An hour later, Ferdinand was going to visit the injured at a hospital and his driver made a wrong turn and stalled the engine right in front of a deli. A deli one of the conspirators had gone to eat and lay low. He came out and shot the Archduke and his wife, sparking an international crisis and WWI.
WWI was going to happen anyway. The Germans were anxious for a fight. Their expansionist nationalism would/could not have been contained. Those who think WWI was a pointless war should consider the thinking/reasoning of Germany and its Kaiser prior to the onset of hostilities.
Hannibal marching elephants over the Alps to attack Italy.
The ratification of the 19th Amendment: Tennessee was the last state needed to ratify. Came down to a tied vote in the Tennessee legislature which meant the amendment would fail. Harry T. Burn changed his vote at the last minute bc his mom basically told him to, thereby getting the amendment fully ratified!
For everyone that isn't from the USA: the 19th Amendment guarantees women the right to vote. It was ratified in 1920, but is was already drafted in 1878.
The fact that Cleopatra rolled out of a rug naked/half-naked to meet Julius Caesar.
Todd Lincoln (Abe Lincoln’s son) being saved by Edwin Booth (John’s Brother) at a train station
Edwin Booth saved Abraham Lincoln's son,[12] Robert, from serious injury or even death. The incident occurred on a train platform in Jersey City, New Jersey. The exact date of the incident is uncertain, but it is believed to have taken place in late 1864 or early 1865. Robert Lincoln recalled the incident in a 1909 letter to Richard Watson Gilder, editor of The Century Magazine. The incident occurred while a group of passengers were late at night purchasing their sleeping car places from the conductor who stood on the station platform at the entrance of the car. The platform was about the height of the car floor, and there was of course a narrow space between the platform and the car body. There was some crowding, and I happened to be pressed by it against the car body while waiting my turn. In this situation the train began to move, and by the motion I was twisted off my feet, and had dropped somewhat, with feet downward, into the open space, and was personally helpless, when my
The fact that during the War of 1812, a freak tornado ripped through D.C. which ended up killing more British than the Americans did while also putting out the White House fire and helping to lead to the war's end.
Singapore Otter Wars. As in cute and fuzzy otters.
Smoky served in the South Pacific, flew recon missions, parachuted, ran telegraph wire and became the first official therapy dog, entertaining and helping shell-shocked soldiers cope with the horrors of war.
When she finally died, she was buried in a .30 caliber ammunition box in Ohio.
Any day now, I expect to find out that Smoky somehow has a confirmed kill in the war.
The hanging of a monkey in Hartlepool, UK who the townsfolk believed to be a French spy
When the Praetorian Guard killed the Emperor and then auctioned off the position to the highest bidder.
Andrew Jackson was such a cranky old bastard that when an assassin failed at killing him, he beat him half to death.
Here's a fun fact: I am from a large native American family, the elders will not carry a $20 bill because it has Andrew Jackson's face on it. True story.
That time the US house of representatives had an all out fist fight.
I think the most fascinating part is that they all just kind of laughed it off
Remember the time a bunch of protesters took over an entire city bock in Seattle and became the Capitol Hill autonomous zone (CHAZ) for like a month.
And this dude was shot in there and they wouldn't let the ambulance in? Yep.
Sometime in 1943(WW2) a German tiger 1 tank was hit over 230 times by other tanks and anti tank weapons in 7 hours. The tank crew of the tiger only lost 1 out of its 5 members and the tiger was horrifically damaged yet it still managed to drive over 10 km back to a German outpost. Once they got to the outpost they had to cut the crew out of the tank because all of the hatches were destroyed/stuck. Total damage of the tank: Transmission was destroyed and only would work in 2nd gear. All gm ports were destroyed. The commanders cupala was destroyed. The fuel was leaking. 1 track on the right side was basically falling off. The front left drive wheel broke and was spinning freely. In the end the tiger was a monument for the Germans for a while then it was scrapped.
An amazing vehicle of war, no doubt, but ill conceived due to its complication and the fact that it was severely outproduced by the T-34 and the Sherman.
Ohio going to war with Michigan, over Toledo.
One person wounded. Ohio got Toledo, while Michigan got the entire upper peninsula and all of it's copper, iron, and forests.
I think Michigan won this one.
Oda Nobunaga, early in his career, rallied 2,000 men to defeat Imagawa Yoshimoto's 25,000. He won that fight hard.
Mark Twain was born and died when Halley’s Comet passed over
1859 border dispute between the US and Britain over San Juan island. Only casualty was a pig so it is referenced as the Pig War.
Watching as a cultural and architectural icon such as the Notre Dame cathedral went up in flames
The 2016 clown attacks.
I lived through that and I still can't believe it happened.
Well, the Prostestant reformation was kicked off by Martin Luther. A guy so obsessed by sin that he was hallucinating demons ... in the bathroom.
There was a children's crusade in which people fought a war being lead ... by a duck.
The antipopes were a kinda weird thing. For centuries there were essentially two popes each claiming to be the one true pope.
Medieval Europe was something else.
Weird cookery. Edison fried an elephant in the street to prove something about electricity…
What I learned from this is that war is stupid, it's never-ending, it's destructive to everyone involved and it is always 100 percent because of testosterone.
Maybe not 100%, it’s usually like 90% because of egos though.
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These remind me of a story I read once about a mutiny where some of a ship's crew sliced open the captain's jugular. The ship's doctor was able to grab a needle and thread and sew the vein back together with six stitches, all during a mutiny on a moving vessel in the middle of the ocean. The captain lived.
What I learned from this is that war is stupid, it's never-ending, it's destructive to everyone involved and it is always 100 percent because of testosterone.
Maybe not 100%, it’s usually like 90% because of egos though.
Load More Replies... These remind me of a story I read once about a mutiny where some of a ship's crew sliced open the captain's jugular. The ship's doctor was able to grab a needle and thread and sew the vein back together with six stitches, all during a mutiny on a moving vessel in the middle of the ocean. The captain lived.
