40 Hilarious But Accurate History Memes That May Satisfy Your Inner Historian (New Pics)
History gets a bad reputation, mostly due to stuffy teachers and dense, bland textbooks. In reality, no pun intended, it’s a gold mine of interesting facts, fascinating personalities, and stories that can rival Hollywood. Screenwriters have tapped into real events for a long time, so it’s no surprise that meme creators have started to do the same.
Memes are a great way to share stories from our history and present them in an approachable and relatable way. So get comfortable, scroll down, and upvote your favorites. Should you feel like you want to see some more, Bored Panda has you covered, with other collections of history memes here, here, and here.
This post may include affiliate links.
The One War I Don't Think Sabaton Ever Has Or Ever Will Write A Song About
Book Sais A Thing
Vietnam Was A Wild Time
Besides often being hilarious, memes also help tie us closer to other people. After all, they use some shared piece of information or context to communicate the idea or punchline. It is actually quite beautiful that we as humans have so much shared experience, or history, as some might call it, that groups of people can all enjoy the same images overlaid with text.
Most of the images here rely on two things, the reader understanding the frame of reference for the image, which are from general meme templates and media, while also understanding the text, which references some historical event or fact. Educators should pay attention since this mechanism actually promotes learning by connecting something new with something more familiar. At the very least, students won’t be falling asleep in class.
Progressive May Be Relative But Still
Window Tax
Mysterious Copper Object Goes Brr
In their defense, history teachers and professors have their work cut out for them. They need to convey huge amounts of facts and context to people who often don’t understand the point of the entire exercise. “Those who don't learn history are doomed to repeat it,” goes the adage by writer and philosopher George Santayana. This perfectly illustrates the issue of history, as the actual quote goes:” Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” But most people don’t always even learn from their own life experiences, so it’s a pretty tall order.
No One Attacks Our Buddy And Gets Away With It!!!! It's Go Time Motherf****r!!
Ofc It Takes Skilled Labor To Construct Complex Monuments
The "poor" pyramid workers as well as the later tomb architects had communal housing, free food and entertainment, socialised healthcare... What they did NOT have is money, as Egypt did not introduce money until the arrival of the Greeks. Before that, they had some kind of standardised barter economy with partly fixed exchange rates, like "three loafs of bread equal one pair of sandals" and so on - quite an interesting system, actually. They were mostly paid in bread and beer. The former could be exchanged against other goods and services.
A Surprise To Be Sure But A Welcome One!
We can think of history as trying to put together multiple jigsaw puzzles, with an unknown number of missing pieces and boxes that may or may not be lying about what the actual image looks like. Anything older than a few decades has already lost its primary sources and older history might cover periods where the language has died out or perhaps writing didn’t exist yet. Some historians go as far as to say that our history really is just a history of civilizations that developed writing.
You Guys Know You Lost Right?
How Screwed Would You Be If You Had To Live In Your Favorite Time Period As A Common Woman
Sadly being a woman still means you're screwed in most non-western societies. Even in western ones you're worse off being female...
How Are You Supposed To Answer This One..?
Which Roman Empire? These are technically all correct: 1943 was the surrender of Italy in WW2 followed by Rome's occupation by Nazi Germany, 476 was the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, 1806 was the Dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire, 1453 was the Fall of Constantinople and fall of the Byzantine Empire.
B. The key words are 'Roman Empire'. After, there was the Byzantine empire, and that collapsed in 1453 (Answer 'D'). Answer 'C' was the dissolution of the 'HOLY Roman empire', which was a Frankish empire. And Answer 'A' was the bombing of the city Rome in WWII, when it was not an empire.
The Byzantine empire was just the Eastern Roman Empire rebranded.
Load More Replies...
B. The answer is B. And I think the Byzantine era came afterwards, right pandas ?
You have to be pretty damn ignorant to find this confusing. This is very basic stuff. A: seriously? C: This is irrelevant because the Roman empire had collapsed centuries earlier. D: This refers to the Eastern Roman empire, or the Byzantine empire. "The Roman empire means the empire based in Rome that collapsed in 476 AD. Anyone who took even one history class in elementary school will know that.
All of them are correct except A. Idk what Mussolini was doing, but it wasn’t anywhere near the Roman Empire lol
Right then, he doesn't care about the Roman empire. The poor man sees a black widow spider coming towards him.
how does his head look like one of those elongated skulls found in South America?
Uhh! Which one, need to be more specific? The holy Roman Empire collapsed in 1806.... for instance.
Funny thing is, the answer is 1918, sort of. WWI was the war to defeat the Holy Roman Empire. France didn't like how powerful the Holy Roman/Austro-Hungarian Empire had become, and when Germany and the HRE joined up to fight the Russian Empire, France and the UK had a pretense to attack. France had found they had no obligation to side with Russia, and the UK had found they had no obligation to side with France/Belgium.
Das Heilige Römische Reich Deutscher Nation - weder römisch, noch heilig, noch reich :-)
Load More Replies...Even worse, people have short memories, and certain ideas and facts often just lose their relevance. The term “ash heap of history” or “dustbin of history” reflects the reality that as ideas and artifacts lose their importance, they end up forgotten, to the detriment of future historians. The same can be said of language and texts, particularly for works that have yet to be digitalized. In his arguably most famous work, The Master and Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov, said “manuscripts don’t burn.” While that may be true, they can still be simply forgotten.
The More You Know
Yeah, and that's 2 kind of slavery completely different. It's like comparing the roman slavery to the viking one. They are both horrible but it's stupid to try and compare them to say "this one is better".
Turns Out A Lot Of Historical Figures Who Dreamed Of World Domination Were A Bit Freaked Out By Cats
Ah Yes Christianity
So historians have the thankless task of trying to find those bits of data and information that have been left buried in some archive, tomb, or museum basement. The first historian, at least to our knowledge would be Herodotus, who lived around 450 BC and is sometimes called the “father of history.” Though due to his habit of covering folk tales alongside real events, modern critics sometimes label him the “father of lies.” Historians can be a hard crowd to please.
Memento Mori -Domitian, Probably
Tragic Realization Oc
Speaking As An Austrian
Jokes on you, I’m from a European country where the only colonial history we have is being colonized and genocide! Therefore I’m perfectly entitled to looking like this. (Second sentence was a joke jtc) (edit; It’s Ireland)
Fight Me Idc
My Answer:atlest Establish A Base Off The Beach
Franz Ferdinand
High Iq Meme
Well, Any Contradictions?
At Least One
The Siege Of Jadotville Is One Of The Un Peacekeepers' Finest Moments, But Is Barely Talked About
It’s awful that they’re only just now getting recognition after years. Heart breaking the treatment they received when they returned home
The Dutch Called Oranges "Chinese Apples", So
The First Four Caliphs Kinda Have Chad Energy About Them
For some reason yo are missing the middle of the speech "Sincere regard for truth is loyalty and disregard for truth is treachery. The weak amongst you shall be strong with me until I have secured his rights, if God wills; and the strong amongst you shall be weak with me until I have wrested from him the rights of others, if God wills." He was in power for 2 years and had multiple uprising and rebellions, plus started multiple wars.
Daily Reminder That The Protestants Mainly Did Witch Hunts And The Church Outright Made It Illegal To Do Them
While in the 1500s the Church formally stopped prosecuting witchcraft, the just changed the name swapping "withcraft" for "demon possession" or "heretic". Nevertheless the Catholic church did plenty of prosecuting of free thinkers, ill or generally innocent people in the thousands.
It's Our Territory
In fairness, the Falklands held a sovereignty referendum in 2013 and 98% voted to stay with Britain PLUS Argentina was a rainforest when the Brits first occupied it so they really have zero claim simply because it's closer to them than us.
What Are Everyone’s Plans For The 12/25 Holiday?
More Accurately
Did You Know David Attenborough Owns A First Edition Of The Origin Of Species?
Ik this not related but like the square eyebrows on society 😂
The Forgotten Squabblers
I’m Part Of This
Romans Like Their Walls Way Too Much
If building walls is the key to success I'll start right now *builds a wall around my home*
When The
They all should have been locked in a concrete tomb and dropped into the Mariana Trench. And even then, they would still have polluted the waters.
I Did It, I Beat Rule 12
If they were anything like my Sims they wouldn't even have needed sticks or stones... 🔥
Ksayarsa, Haksamanish
"Don't Worry Boys, We Got It Covered" -Omar Bradley, Probably
Note: this post originally had 79 images. It’s been shortened to the top 40 images based on user votes.
Some funny, some sad, some informative, and some disrespectful. A fine assortment.
I think I am not alone in saying, I didn't get a lot of these references....
Me neither even when people explained it in the comments I still didn't understand a lot of it!
Load More Replies...
Yeah, well, these so-called "funny" "historians" don't know much about history.
😑 Came for the history, left because of al the war related stuff (this is the BP airport right?!)
What exactly do you think most history is? Happy stuff?
Load More Replies... Some funny, some sad, some informative, and some disrespectful. A fine assortment.
I think I am not alone in saying, I didn't get a lot of these references....
Me neither even when people explained it in the comments I still didn't understand a lot of it!
Load More Replies... Yeah, well, these so-called "funny" "historians" don't know much about history.
😑 Came for the history, left because of al the war related stuff (this is the BP airport right?!)
What exactly do you think most history is? Happy stuff?
Load More Replies...