If you start to delve into events, one can often find that certain things end up being covered or “simplified” to perhaps not make some folks uncomfortable. But history is history, it can be fascinating, cruel, dull and often a lot stranger than fiction.
Someone asked “What's one historical fact that they won't teach you in school?” and people shared their examples, ranging from “I didn’t pay attention” to some things that are truly obscure. So get comfortable as you read through, upvote your favorites and be sure to share your own thoughts in the comments below.
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The guys defending the Alamo were the bad guys.
Texas was Mexico at the time. To attract settlers to the land, Mexico allowed American farmers to move there and bring their enslaved workers with them. Slavery was not something Mexico was crazy about and soon banned slavery in the entire country except for Texas. A few years later, they tried to ban it in Texas. That's when the Texas Revolution started. The Texans were fighting to keep slavery, not for freedom from an oppressive government.
Not everyone at the Alamo died. The enslaved workers were spared and are largely the reason we know what happened. If you visit the Alamo today (or at least when I did in 2022) most of the information is left out of the booklet and signage. It does mention the enslaved workers by name, but that's about it. Fighting to preserve slavery isn't the narrative they want to display today. I remember learning about the Alamo in school and slavery wasn't mentioned. And then how absent it was from the actual site.
What with book bans, outlawing any education about repressive American history, and propaganda of right wing news media, we probably will never learn about the destruction that Trump and Musk end up doing.
Load More Replies...Growing up in Texas in the 90s, we basically worshiped the Alamo. "Remember the Alamo!" Replica flags from the Alamo were on display at my university at Texas A&M. The Mexican General, Santa Anna, was depicted as a heartless, sadistic monster. Davy Crockett was the famous martyr. Slavery was never mentioned, nor were survivors. I'm glad we're starting to expand that story.
The key phrase might be "Remember the truth about the Alamo".
Load More Replies...After TX was made a US territory and granted statehood; one of its first major acts was to secede. It was the next to last state to rejoin (GA was last as it was booted out for kicking out Black legislators) and the last state to free slaves
We also don't mention that slavery was a major reason for white Southerners to support independence in the American Revolution. They could see the British prohibition of slavery coming. (No one asked black Southerners their opinion for some reason.)
I lived in Texas from 11y/o to 17y/o. I disliked most everything about it. So much so, that at I joined the United States Army to get out of there. After my ASVAB, I was offered any enlisted MOS in Nuclear, Chemical, or Medical, all of which had a 6 month wait. I chose Infantry, which only had a 6 week wait. Just so I could get the hell out there faster. And, I never looked or went back.
I visited the Alamo and was disappointed because they would let me see the basement.
To be fair the guys defending it were not neccessarily the bad guys themselves (exceptions are of course possible) but still were on the "bad" side; an important distinction relevant in many military conflicts. Some of their families had lived there for many generations - remember that there were Tejano soldiers serving on the Texan side, too.
60% of the fighters at the Alamo were Tejano, the Tejano's were 40% of Texas forces and 45% of the rebel Texas govt. The Tejanos viewed Mexico as an occupier, and played a cricial role. Further slavery was a very very minor point in Texas independence, as there were many factors, including corruption and abuse from Mexico. But people forget the Native Tejanos there, and their role in the war.
interesting how different historical sites treat history, especially when views change over time. if the alamo was in a less conservative state we might see a different narrative but texas hides their shame. for example, i've been to thomas jefferson's house, monticello, 5 times between 1985 and 2019. first time i went was all about the great president, statesman, inventor. in 2008-2009 they had started opening up the second and third floors, the family floors, but they weren't finished yet. there was a lot more about the family, the role the house played with enslaved people, and they had started to open up the slave quarters for tours. in 2019 you could see a whole exhibit on the hemmings (enslaved) family, sally hemmings' (enslaved mistress) room had been restored, and the narrative is on education, the role slavery played in the founding of the country, the contributions of the hemmings family, etc. they are making an effort to drag the facts into the light and teach the truth.
Treaties between Indigenous Tribes and America are still broken to this day! (My tribe was directly attacked in 2020) We still fight for the Earth and our place in this terribly poisoned and loveless society.
I don't remember the exact number, but over 300 treaties between the US government and Indigenous Tribes have been broken by the US government.
"We fight for the earth"? Indigenous people were stone age hunter gatherers with no written language and hadn't invented the wheel yet.
The actual "pilgrims" were not the good guys in any New England history. Religious bigots to be honest.
It's being taught again among the conservative schools and churches.
Load More Replies...Yes, it's worth remembering that they were leaving Britain not because they wanted to be free to practice their religion, but because they wanted to be able to force it onto everybody else. These guys were like the IS of their time.
They went to Holland for a while but left because they resented people of other faiths having religious freedom there.
Load More Replies..."Freedom" is screamed by many people. But their concept of freedom is just the ability to be nasty humans.
Most everyone was a religious bigot back then. They were definitely a mixed bag of Levelers, religious fanatics, idealists, indigenous slayers, free thinkers, freedom advocates, education advocates, bigots, etc.
But most people didn't hang you for being of another religion, as the Pilgrims did.
Load More Replies...They also weren't pilgrims of any kind and about half of the colony weren't even Puritans, just people heading to Virginia on the same ship. And they got list, that's why they ended up in Massachusetts.
About 1/3 of the working cowboys in the Old West were black men.
Up to 1/3 between 15-35%. About 50% White, and the rest a mix of others. The number of Black cowboys is an unclear number, but historians put that estimate as low as 15% and as high as 35%. It is somewhere in that range.
And the 'Hollywood Old West' movies were toxic, racist, white superiority garbage. Also, those who usually survived a gunfight, were those who took the time to aim. None of this, fire from the hip, type of shtkao.
A portion of black men were also plantation owners yes black men also owned slaves ...
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How Hawaii came to be a part of the US. Basically, a bunch of white guys living on the islands didn’t like to be ruled by a monarchy of natives, so they grabbed some guns and started a revolt. When it was clear they weren’t going to win, they called US for help, and the US Government sent in the marines to occupy the islands and eventually annex them. It’s only recently that the government has finally admitted it was in the wrong to do so.
A large part of it was also because the sugar companies located in Hawaii didn't want to pay tariffs on shipping sugar to the mainland.
It was wrong to take the continents of the Americas from the indigenous inhabitants.
What's next - Greenland? To teach a country how to exploit their land, poison it, but get rich? Nevermind they actively decided to NOT do just that. Trump that one. 🤮
The people of Greenland think they will get the sweet end of the deal. After Trump Jr.s visit there has been "influencers". Giving out dollars and maga hats to kids and everyone who would take it. Filming how happy they would be as Americans. 🙄 Banks noticed a sudden surge in the exchange of dollars. The people of Greenland are already being treated as something to buy, not equals.
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Japanese WW2 war crimes are seldom discussed in detail.
We got taught about comfort women and got brief mention of the Rape of Nanjing, but Manchukuo and Unit 731 I learned about later - even at university level Chinese history, Manchukuo is something that I had to direct myself to, even though Manchukuo came up on an exam.
This was actually something I learned about in quite a lot of detail in history class. It was hard to stomach.
the Nazi “scientists” refused to cooperate with unit 731. i think that says everything you need to know about it
Load More Replies...Excellent book but a difficult read due to the inhumanity of the Japanese.
Load More Replies...There’s an anniversary every year in the Northeast of China. The day that the Japanese invaded and the day of the Nanking Massacre. They play air raid sirens and there’s a one minute silence. Although, Chinese do business with Japan, they will never forgive, and they will never forget.
Really? As a german i seem to never hear the end of it
Load More Replies...I’ve read that the USA wanted the valuable research findings composed by the monsters who experimented and did unspeakable things to adults, children and even infants. These findings were helpful in knowing what conditions were survivable for soldiers and to make medical advancements. They helped cover up and protected the higher up Japanese military officers as part of the deal. So very shameful.
Texas and MacMillan Books removed important Native American history like ‘Trail of Tears’ from their textbooks .
White men on the boards of education decide what goes into history books, and the companies that print the books don't want to offend them, so eliminate the truth and raise the next generation to be more stupid and more racist than the last. (And then listen to them complain that their 30 year old child still lives at home and can't keep a job.)
Not just in America, all over the world, Russia, China, and even for a long time some German counties, Spain, I think it happens everywhere. True facts are hard to come by. So Zuckerberg decides that factchecking is no longer necessary :).
Load More Replies...The fact that textbooks are printed in Texas is a very serious problem. This isn't the first time textbooks have been whitewashed because of conservatives in Texas wanting to delete some unsavory truths about the US. Personally, if Texans want to be ignorant, I couldn't care less, but these textbooks are sold and used all across the US. And sometimes they end up in schools that really don't know the difference.
Getting elected to a local school board is a great way to start improving - or sh**canning - society.
History is always written by the winners, be they good or evil. But they will always make themselves out to be the 'good guys'. Which is why we are always doomed to repeat history rather than learning from it.
Texas is home to only 3 federally recognized Native American tribes. Oklahoma is home to 39 federally recognized tribes and we're called Native America for a reason. NA is celebrated in my state and if you try that s**t here then it won't just be tribes you p**s off. Oklahoma might be a*s backwards on some things, but at least that isn't one of them.
Texas had a habit of killing off all the NA tribes that they could.
Load More Replies...I'm sure no one would be surprised that VERY few whites are aware of Greenwood Fl and Tulsa Ok mass murders. When someone scoffs about 'woke ideology' I relate these 2 incidents and say; "You are now woke".
I went to 4th and 5th grades in rural SE Oklahoma not far from the Texas border. Both years we had units on the Trail of Tears and other horrors of the villanies of settler/Native-American relationships. That this is being removed is a crime against society.
Last year I learned about the Trail of Tears because of an episode of Dark History by Bailey Sarian; and I swear. This one f****d me up for a long time!
That would be a radical "woke" action to admit anyone other than white men had any history. ( I love the word "woke".)
Women needed husbands' permission to have a credit card in their own name until mid 70s.
1974 - the Equal Credit Opportunity Act: It was not only credit cards.
Most everything financial. Cars, houses, investments, etc
Load More Replies...This was in the USA, interestingly in the UK credit cards were actually the more progressive form of credit. When Barclays launched the first one in in 66 it was one of the few forms of credit a woman could have that did not require a male guarantor on the account, and by the early 70s they were actively advertising the cards to women.
But landlords could still legally refuse to rent to a single mother.
According to my grandparents, they refused to rent to parents, married or not!
Load More Replies...This is false, and a common myth. There were never any laws in any 50 states or federally that had any such restrictions. What is was, that most companies had policies that didnt allow women to get their own cards or accounts without permission. But those were corporate policies, not laws. In 1974 the govt banned such policies as discrimination. There was never a law with such restrictions, it was private corporate policies that discriminated against women. And the govt rightfully passed legislation to overturn it. My grandmother had her own bank account in the 40s and her own credit card (under her name, and without husbands permission, etc) in 1961. She was not the only woman she knew who did so. You had to know which banks, and which officers at the banks gave it. It wasnt easy, but it wasnt illegal. And in 1974 the govt rightfully addressed this injustice of discriminatory corporate policy
One of the things Republican SCOTUS members will be repealing, along with gay marriage. Thomas mentioned it in 2022.
Load More Replies...In Germany they even needed their husband's permission to take a job.
Along with "Help Wanted Men", "Help Wanted Women", I remember this very well.
this true. Was denied credit card in 1975 as a newly woman. JCPenney gave me one and on that card today it says "member since 1975"
That Helen Keller (that we all learned about in school) led a Children's March to Washington DC to push for a REDUCTION in the hours children were made to work, all so they could attend school. source: People's History of the United States.
They need those kids to replace all the immigrants Trump is going to succeed in deporting.
Load More Replies...People's History of the United States should be required reading in American high schools
There's really nothing wrong with socialism. The US has umpteen forms of socialism already. Taxes, for one. We take people's taxes and use them to fund projects all over the country. Public school is socialism if the parents aren't paying for it. And God knows, we could sure use some of that socialism for health needs in the US. A little less private insurance, a little less greediness and capitalism making some health company CEOs rich while allowing them to deny others basic care would go a long way to helping people out.
Load More Replies...I used to see social media comments along the line of "Helen Keller, so brave" in referring to her being deaf-blind. I found that patronizing, so I would respond with a link to her activism. She wrote about her privilege (or advantage) in having a family that could afford to get her a private educator, Annie Sullivan.
Load More Replies...Poking fun at a blind human rights activist ain't gonna win you any upvotes, pal
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That Stalin was a real piece of work. 9 million + people died as a direct result of Stalin’s policies. He doesn’t get the same demonization as a certain Austrian that tried to take over Europe because the Soviets were on the winning side of WWII.
if you count people who died from the Soviet famine in Ukraine, add 4 million. This was deliberately done by Stalin to stop Ukranian independence.
It was more than that: "In 2011, after assessing twenty years of historical research in Eastern European archives, American historian Timothy D. Snyder stated that Stalin deliberately killed about 6 million, which rise to 9 million if foreseeable deaths arising from policies are taken into account."
Load More Replies...Not news to me. And I went to some rather middling schools during the cold war.
Stalin killed people out of cold calculation. Hitler killed people out mad bigotry. Take your pick.
Stalin killed people in fear of treason against him, Hitler killed out of fear against treason against the "aryan race" and both especially hated the jews - not much difference besides their priority
Load More Replies...We were definitely taught this in school, but I have a feeling that most of these posts mainly reflect the abhorrent state of the US education system.
Hitler—bad. Stalin—bad. Two things can be true at the same time. The world would have been better off if neither of them had ever been born.
At least Hitler was nuts. He might have won if he'd been sane.
Load More Replies...Estimations go from 10 - 20 millions in terms of politically motivated executions, to put that into perspective - that's the number of war casualities on the eastern front for WW2 in the USSR on top. They also usually don't get blamed for kicking off WW2 alongside Germany or invading the Baltic countries + Finnland
And many former USSR countries are still suffering the repercussions of his meddling in the drawing of boundary lines and mixing of ethnicities in order to consolidate his power, especially in the Caucasus. It's highly likely that a second Armenian genocide will happen (fourth if you count 1989 and 2020), since Putin, Erdogan, and Aliev and teaming up as we speak.
Possibly Americans weren't taught this, but I'm in my 70's and covered it at school in 'modern European history'.
We WERE taught about this. But it's a sport to bash America here.
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All throughout school they told us the buffalo died from natural causes. I only just learned a couple months ago that they died out because the American settlers k**led them out for sport to cut off the native Americans food supply.
Wasn't settlers. The US government had an agenda and had an unofficial mandate to exterminate all the buffalo. They were trying to force the Native Americans onto reservations and turn them into farmers. The government felt this would be much easier to do if their main natural resource (buffalo) was no longer there.
American federal government allowed wholesale slaughter of bison. Railroads attracted "hunters" who shot bison from the comfort of trains. Choice trophies were collected and the rest was left to rot, while First Americans were forced to starve on reservations and endure having their children forcibly sent to boarding schools. It was government sanctioned annihilation and murder.
Was taught in the 80s in former Cherokee lands in Georgia that the Native Americans hunted them into extinction. And we all fell for it b/c why would our teachers lie? So glad I read books, books, and more books, and got out.
Load More Replies...And on Indian scalps. They're the ones who started scalping first.
Load More Replies...Wait, in US You are told they died for natural causes? Lol. I was always taught that the US government did it on purpose to deprive native Americans of food source. Thought it's pretty common knowledge.
I've never heard that one before - as I kid I was taught the settlers killed them all. Must be coming from a Red (conservative) state.
Load More Replies...Who told you they died of natural causes? We learned this in the 80's...
This is so sad. I remember reading about the Plains Indians in 5th grade (a LONG time ago). The "white man" would hunt the buffalo for sport more than to survive. They would take the head and the skin, but leave the carcass to rot. The Native American s utilized every single part of a buffalo, and they NEVER took more than they could use.
The Ottoman Empire systematically k**led over 1mil Armenians during WW1 via camps and it remains largely unacknowledged by Americans because the US wants to keep positive relations with Turkey who oscillate between denying it ever happened and saying they were justified because they were fomenting armed rebellion.
Never seen it in any American textbook or course. I, like many others in the US, have only learned about it because of the advocacy of the band System of a Down.
My so'n's school, part of the L.A. Unified School District has a holiday called Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day.
Yes in LA this is widely known. One of the many reasons I’m grateful I live and raise my children in cosmopolitan cities.
Load More Replies..."As of 2023, the governments and parliaments of 34 countries, including Argentina, Austria, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Mexico, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Sweden, the United States and Uruguay, have formally recognized the Armenian genocide, with the latter being the first country to do so.[5] Three countries — Azerbaijan, Turkey, and Pakistan — deny that there was an Armenian genocide." From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_genocide_recognition#:~:text=As%20of%202023%2C%20the%20governments,being%20the%20first%20country%20to
I got a good grade on my history paper about this, since my teacher had never heard of it before. I only knew because my parents had Armenian friends.
It's a little sad that your teacher didn't know about this, but very good job on your paper!
Load More Replies...There's a great fiction novel about this (based on a true story). It's called The Sandcastle Girls.
A much better one, a classic, is "40 Days of Musa Dagh" by Franz Werfel. Worthwhile reading! A good fictional rendering of the genocide.
Load More Replies...I'm glad that our government here in Germany officially aknowledged it as genocide a few years ago
The genocidal regime in tel aviv openly said "there was no Armenian genocide" (to get Turkiye's support for its actions) while openly perpetrating one.
Given the population demographic in Palestine regions they not seem to be very successful. And so far there is only one side calling for genocide and that comes from the Iran and their allies like Hamas
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Every major change in the last 150 years that benefited the average American had to be bought with blood and violence - from the American labor movement, to Women's Suffrage, to Civil Rights.
They don't teach it in schools because if you knew what it took to fix the problems in society you might actually start planning a way to make it happen.
My mother said to me that once I was old enough I should vote in every election - even if to 'spoil' my vote (she died before I got the vote) because so many women had died and fought so hard to get it that I would be mocking my ancestors if I didn't use it. Her mother was a suffragist, born in the 1880's.
This past US election my husband was stuck in the hospital, waiting for a heart match so he could get a transplant. His medical team thought it was so important he voted, he was given a few hours out of the hospital without losing inpatient status to vote. (He had a LVAD so not stuck on non-portable machines.) (He got his new heart Dec. 11!)
Load More Replies...Most major change in the last 150 years that hurt the average American had to be bought with blood and violence too.
Thomas already said he wanted to roll back birth control and gay marriage laws.😠
Load More Replies...I worked the last primary and election after I retired. I told the township clerk, instead of 'I voted' stickers, I wanted a series saying 'I cancelled your vote'.
Military terrorists (aka "soldiers") have NEVER won you your freedoms. It was ALWAYS the protesters, the people who refused to accept injustice who actually change things. As for violence, the IRA won its war against English oppression, John Major finally admitting the only way to people was negotiation without conditions, NOT the "disarm first" and "we don't negotiate with terrorists" idiocy of reagan and thatcher.
The pilgrims weren't seeking religious freedom. They practiced religious repression and executed people for the crime of being Quakers.
From Boston Martyrs: Yes, the Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony executed Quakers for their religious beliefs: Mary Dyer: In 1660, Mary Dyer was hanged in Boston for repeatedly defying a Puritan law that banned Quakers from the colony. Dyer is considered one of the four Boston martyrs, who were executed for their religious beliefs. William Leddra: William Leddra was executed in 1661. Marmaduke Stephenson: Marmaduke Stephenson was executed in 1659. William Robinson: William Robinson was executed in 1659. The Puritans feared Quakers and persecuted them for dissent, heresy, and working for the devil. Quakers were also beaten, fined, whipped, imprisoned, and mutilated. Some Quakers were banished from the colony, but returned to protest. In 1661, King Charles II forbade Massachusetts from executing Quakers. This was followed by a new charter from England that forced the Boston Puritans to protect all Christian sects except Catholics Note the last part - Catholics were fair game.
Most religious people hundreds of years ago (and some even nowadays) : If you don't believe in OUR God OUR way, we will have to kill you.
No. This is really only true of Christians and Muslims. There are dozens of other religions, but these are the only two that: 1. maintain that God only rewards members of their religion and 2. believe that all of humanity must be converted to ther religion. There are no other religions in history or in the present that have these notions that I have ever come across. (Dr. Lyone Fein, PhD Comparative Religion)
Load More Replies...I don;t think they targetted Quakers especially, they just wanted to enforce their own religious lunacy on everybody else, whereas the Quakers who'd come to the colonies were genuinely seeking to live in freedom from any such rules.
Rhode Island was founded because they banished a Baptist
Load More Replies...I'm pretty sure they seeked religious freedom to practice their religious repression...
The smell. Most times in history smelled awful.
But, everybody smelled awful so I would think that you would be sort of nose-blind, unless it was something horrendous.
There are still cultures today who have a very specific smell, often due to their diet, that they simply do not notice. Apparently westerners smell cheesy to some Asian peoples who don't eat dairy, for example.
Load More Replies...The Jorvik centre (Viking museum) uses smells as part of the 'experience' of 10th C York.
I highly doubt the ancient Greeks, Romans and Egyptians did. Their highly advanced baths and bathrooms - water flowing constantly beneath the latrines as well as in front to wash themselves with a stick and cloth all seems highly sanitary and indicates an advanced understanding for hygiene. It’s the dark ages and Christianity that reset everything
This is commonly spoken of, and historians say it is less true than most people think. They may not have showered daily, but they did wash.
I was in marine biology in school, and after awhile you didn't smell the fish.
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Federal highways were purposely built through affluent black neighborhoods. Looking at you, Oklahoma.
Unfortunately, that's not just an "Oklahoma" thing and goes on across the nation.
In Indianapolis they put I-69 through poor black neighborhoods. After the route had been decided, local banks red-lined those neighborhoods, granting no loans for repairs or improvements. Consequently the properties could be bought up cheap when the interstate was to be built.
Load More Replies...Most every state in US. Philadelphia is doing it right now just for a basketball team
You didn't hear the news? That project is dead. Not sure if it fits for this type of thing, though.
Load More Replies...Good luck getting rich whites to care because entitled white drivers demand fast roads, and don't care how many poor and Black pedestrians are murdered by them. "It was a car, so it's not murder!!!"
Highways - both state and federal - were deliberately built where land was cheapest
I didn’t know much about the Byzantine Empire and the Islamic Golden Age until I was in college. I really feel like a lot of history classes seem to gloss over the so-called Dark Ages.
University will also tell you that the "Dark Ages" are bs, even in Europe.
If they say that, they don't know their European history. See my post below about how it was both literally and metaphorically dark for Europe.
Load More Replies...In a way the term applies if you think "dark = unknown", as in we have a blind spot in the way we teach our history. Also, stretching the metaphor, maybe the dudes from Renaissance wanted to cast the period right after them in a "dark" way so they themselves would look better :-)
"Dark Ages" is a reference mostly to Europe, in which it was both literally dark, and metaphorical in terms of progress both technological and cultural. In 536 AD, a volcano in Iceland erupted so hard that it covered most of the northern hemisphere in an ash cloud and drastically changed weather patterns for a few centuries. We're talking the infamous summer snow of China, and the summer high temperature dropping by 30F. The immediate effects of ash & permanent daytime fog lasted for 18 months with reports that the sun was obscured so much that there were no shadows for a good chunk of the year. It choked out Eurasia so bad that almost all of the crops for that 18 months completely failed, leading to mass starvation across the entire NE hemisphere. Which was one of the major contributing factors to how bubonic was able to spread so much. It also led to the "Little Ice Age" that lasted until the late 600s. It's widely considered the worst period in modern human history to be alive, WW1 & 2 included. It took centuries to recover.
I felt like we started at the same place every year and never got past a certain point every year.
Dark Ages didn’t really exist in nations that valued cats - they killed the rodent-carrying black plague amongst other things.
Disputing bs with different bs helps no one. The "living in filth" c**p is as muh bollox as the entire concept of the "dark ages".
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The fact that African tribes sold their own people.
I was taught about this from junior high on through college. This isn't a secret. It's also known some of them didn't know the kind of slavery they were selling their own people into.
They knew, because those same tribes sold them to the Islamic world which had a 70% death rate for slaves from Africa, (and the men were castrated as well). They very well knew. Also they werent selling their own people. They sold rival tribes members, rivals they defeated in war. Some of the African kingdoms became rich, and even hired lobbyists in the 1800s to stop the British from ending the slave trade. Ironically, it was the end of the slave trade that led to the collapse of most of the African powers, that made it easy a few decades later for the Brits and French to colonize
Load More Replies...I don't think that's news to anyone. Nor is the fact that it's often trotted out by white supremacists in a pitiful attempt to excuse white people's part in American slavery.
Yupp. Like "Oh, but if their own people sold these humans to me, *I* am not at fault for using them as unpaid labor and deny them human rights"
Load More Replies...Conservative "patriots" use this to excuse Eurpoean participation in the slave trade. After all, if I burglarize your house, it isn't really burglary if your next door neighbor lent me the ladder to get in you second story window. If I had local help, then it's ok.
No excuse, but it's usally only the european participation that gets pointed at while every african gets depicted as innocent victim in the whole situation
Load More Replies...Sold to Arab traders from Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria who were all part of the Trans-Saharan slave trade
Why are you being downvoted for this factual statement. It was no different than what Bible taught. Conquer other areas and take them as your slaves. Selling your own tribe wouldn't make sense unless it was the criminal element.
Load More Replies...The guilt belongs to both the sellers and the buyers - the fact there were African sellers does not absolve European and American and Arab buyers. If no one bought, there would be no sales. If no one sold, I am not convinced that would have ended things, but it would probably have slowed it down at least. And yes, usually it wasn't their own people, but members of hostile groups.
Not all African tribes --- "some" African tribes maybe - you know the same kind of collaborating opportunists that exist in most historical events. The extent of involvement is exaggerated. And who knows if this latest 'truth' is not a direct result of conservatives looking to suppress critical race theory to fit the new agenda. My opinion.
Amen! One can lie a lot by telling only a selected part of the truth.
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The circumstances surrounding the death of Meriwether Lewis (of Lewis and Clark) are shrouded in conspiracy. In the months leading up to his death many people reported that Lewis had become paranoid, claiming that he was being followed and that his life was in danger. In a desperate attempt for help, he sent a letter to his close friend, and then president Thomas Jefferson to request an audience. While traveling along the Natchez Trace, he stayed a night at an inn. During the night, the owner reported hearing multiple gunshots but never went out to check on the source. In the morning, Lewis was found dead in his cabin, sitting against the wall looking at the door, rifle in hand and shot in the back. In addition, while the room was ransacked, the only missing objects of note were Lewis’ riding back and personal documents.
After an official investigation, his death was ruled a s***ide and all further inquiry into the instance have been barred by the Us government. While Lewis himself did not have any immediate descendants, his extended family have submitted requests every year to have his body exhumed in order to confirm the cause of death. To this day their requests have unanimously been denied.
Wow that is so mysterious and interesting. I would like to learn more about it
And you just read pretty much everything that is known
Load More Replies...How do you shoot yourself in the back??? Gee that's not suspicious at all. /s
Syphilis...he and Clark slept with as many native women as they could. He had syphilis people
And a well known cause of syphilis is being shot in the back
Load More Replies...Lewis and Clark basically "effed" their way west serially abusing native american girls.
The CIA deposed or destabilized many democratically elected leaders to install leaders who were more friendly to us (read: us business) policies, causing enormous loss of life and suffering all over the world.
And those who pretended to be friendly to the US were installed, and regretted later when it became obvious it was a ruse.
The migration crisis from Central America to the US is largely due to that.
And Harris going to those countries to get at the root of the problem was a good thing dumb Republicans made fun of. I should have just wrote the word Republican, dumb is always implied.
Load More Replies...And before there was even a CIA, the United Fruit Co. created "banana republics." A lot of the instability that sends refugees to the US border has its roots in US foreign policy
Also a lot of the dr+g-problems of the world.
Load More Replies...I love to point this out to anyone who erroneously claims the US loves democracy.
One of the more entertaining stories came from Gordon Sumner's (Sting ) dad's interview with Rolling Stone. He related of someone treating a speech President Suharto (Indonesia)was giving with psychedelics. "He gave one of the most coherent, electrifying speeches of his career".
I was 28 when I learned about the Tulsa massacre.
I learned it on PBS a few years ago. Very few people know about it when I mention it.
Load More Replies...I'd heard of the Tulsa Race Riots, but that sounds like broken windows and a few bones. It wasn't until recently that I learned the depth of what happened. It's haunting.
"Race Riots" is a white supremacist euphemism for "Massacre."
Load More Replies...I learned in 2014 loosening to a history podcast. I was 53.
Load More Replies...I am 64 and just learned of it in the last couple of years. And I grew up in Texas!
I was probably at least 40. There's a memorial Park in Tulsa that's worth a visit
Literally never heard of it until seeing The Watchmen. I am 52, lived in the US my whole life.
The mass deportation of Mexicans, yep the US tried it before under Hoover. Many were US citizens.
And Cheetolini plans to do the same thing, deport people whose parents, grandparents, greatgrandparents were yank citizens. Anyone not white will be forced out.
No one in the Trump crowd has thought it through. It will be enormously expensive to build detention/processing centers for holding so many immigrants. The cost of determining who to deport and the police resources needed for immigrant hunting will cost billions. Then those police resources being diverted from other crime will cause the crime rate to explode. Even though all the data shows only 20 people were killed by illegal immigrants last year. Most of the crime is done by white people!
Load More Replies...It also happened under Eisenhauer. Operation Wetback (The American government wasn't shy about its racism back then.) was in 1954 and deported between 300,000 and 2 million people. 40% - 60% were American citizens, mostly children. But it was their own fault for having brown skin.
Listen to the song "Deportees" by Arlo Guthrie that his father, Woody Guthrie, wrote.
I was just thinking of that song when I read this entry!
Load More Replies...FDR put all American citizens of japanese ancestry in concentration camps during WW2
Went to a British school in Asia. They glossed over the opium wars.
Apparently so did the US cause I've never ever heard of the opium wars.
Get the people you want to oppress addicted to something. Makes them easier to control. Kind of like our current addiction to smart phones and social media.
Load More Replies...The l_meys took Afghanistan opium to China and deliberately addicted people to destablize their society. In the exact same way they took alcohol to North America and addicted First Nations people.
But they had a reason to destabilize China. It was the only place they could get tea. They wanted to establish trade for the tea and the Chinese didn't want anything the British had, so the Brits introduced opium.
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When I went to school, we were taught that the American Revolution came about because King George III arbitrarily imposed taxes on the American colonists.
Many years later, talking to a historian of the 18th century, I learned that the colonists had begged England for aid during the earlier French and Indian War, promising to repay it all, but then once the war was over, reneged on that promise. After repeated (and repeatedly rebuffed) requests for repayment, and after fair warning, Parliament imposed taxes on the Colonies (which were still lower than the taxes British subjects actually living in England were paying) in order to recoup those costs.
Bonus fact: I also learned that, contrary to what I was taught in school, it was the colonists who drew first blood in the Revolution (the H.M.S. *Gaspee* incident, which oddly none of my history teachers had mentioned).
that is why we expelled those ungrateful colonists from the safety of the empire
I have never seen or heard of it being taught as arbitrary taxes by the king of England. But what we were taught and is still taught is that it was mostly due to "taxation without representation" which is correct.
1) No the colonists did not promise to repay it. 2) The British on their own sent troops to protect their holdings during the American front of the 7 years war. 3) The British violated 3 treaties with the colonies regarding taxes. 4) First blood is debated, as there were incidents before the Gaspee. Read the excellent book "Origin of the American Revolution: 1759-1766, by Bernhard Knollenberg, originally published in 1960 (he was the head of Archives, and head librarian at Yale for many years, and a renown academic)
The U.S. “Founding Fathers” suckered the lower classes into fighting the British, because the FF were peeved that rich white guys in Britain were in charge, instead of rich white guys here. It had nothing to do with “freedom” or “democracy.” The FF kept slavery, invented the electoral college, and denied women the right to vote. “Freedom” for whom, exactly?
The Gaspee was burned nearly three years before what's considered the start of the Revolution. And about 2.5 years after the "Boston Massacre." Part of escalating tensions.
The poetry written by Chinese Warlord, Zhang Zongchang.
"You tell me to do this.
He tells me to do that.
You're all bastards.
Go f**k your mother".
When the United States detonated the first hydrogen bomb, Castle Bravo, on Enewatak Atoll in the Marshall Islands in 1958, it was many times more powerful than calculated. The residents of Enewatak and Bikini Atolls had previously been forcibly relocated to Rongelap Atoll. Rongelap was downwind from the Castle Bravo radiation cloud. The US did not evacuate them for two days, and allowed them to return only a week later, even though the radiation levels were highly unsafe as we understand now. From 1958 to 1984, the US repeatedly refused to evacuate the Rongelap residents even as the birth defects and cancer rates continued. It was finally Greenpeace in 1984 who assisted in moving many of them to Mejatto island in kwajalein atoll. If you go to Mejatto today, the signs on the church and school still say Rongelap. There is evidence that this refusal to evacuate was a calculated decision to study the long term effects of radiation exposure in humans.
Edit: corrected Castle Bravo to 1958.
It wasn't so much that the bomb was more powerful than expected, but that they didn't really understand (or much care about?) the extent and the effects of the fallout it would generate.
They knew very well about fallout in 1958. The US had studied its effects in Japan immediately after the war.
Load More Replies...Well considering the US history of experimenting on people, this seems plausible.
Practice bombs were detonated near a movie set in the desert. Almost all the stars of the movie died of cancer later...Susan Hayward, John Wayne among them.
Parts of Nevada are still uninhabitable. Peoplevwerent moved far enough back.
Castle Bravo was March 1st 1954. It was the first of the Operation Castle set, and the largest the US ever dropped, but not the first thermonuclear bomb. The Operation Greenhouse tests worked out the principles on a small scale. The first full scale thermonuclear bomb was Ivy Mike, November 1st 1952. Part of Operation Ivy.
Let's just say, George Washington's teeth weren't made of wood.
Most of them were hippo ivory. One pair was slave's teeth, the slaves were paid for the teeth.
Oh gosh I'm having horrific images. I bet many were not paid for their teeth
Load More Replies...I saw a set of George Washington's teeth on display at the Henry Ford Museum.
The Dutch ate their prime minister. As in an angry mob lynched him and actually consumed his flesh.
Human flesh tastes a lot like pork so I hope he was served with roast potatoes and a nice apple sauce.
Johan de Witt and brother Cornelis de Witt, 1672.
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That modern money came into existence by people storing their gold in banks and getting notes as proof that their gold was there.
Banks found out they could write more notes of gold than there was actual gold being stored there.
Of course all of that depends on everyone agreeing that gold has value. It's kinda rare, but it has no value above "shiny" and "pretty".
Oh, no. It's an extremely useful substance in everything from dentistry to electronics.
Load More Replies...That was called 'the gold standard' and you could only issue currency to the value of the gold you held in your reserves. Britain 'left' the gold standard in 1931, and the US in 1971.
So you were never taught about the Templiers? Were you at least taught the crusades?
Well, they were never taught the truth about the Crusades. Like the fact that the pope excommunicated everyone on the Fourth Crusade because they were just a pack of murdering thieves.
Load More Replies...Before 1862 in the US, any bank could print its own banknotes for use as currency.
Load More Replies...Gold mining companies are allowed to sell notes based on future mining. There is more "paper gold" than gold in the Earth. The entire market would collapse if everyone tried to get their physical gold at the same time.
Peoplevm trusted banknotes more than some copper or bronze coin with a kings profile. Kings were usually in debt.
The Great War of Africa like, *just* happened, historically speaking. And over five million people died. As far as I’m aware, it’s not being taught in schools.
I just read a memoir about a family that fled Liberia and went through horrific atrocities and couldn't believe that was happening as I went through elementary school and I never learned about any of it. But they announced "OJ Simpson is innocent!!" Over the school loudspeaker
I spent a lot of time in all these areas and I never heard of it either.
Did you ever hear of people talking about the Tutsis and the Hutus? If you did, it's the same war.
Load More Replies...Which war should that be? Serious question. I'm not sure what is referred to here, a single conflict, something usually seen as multiple conflicts, something ongoing .... so many horrible wars to choose.
Following the Rwandan genocide of 1994, there was about 8-9 years of continuing conflict in the Great Lakes region of eastern Zaire. I think it's now devolved into ongoing low-intensity fighting between local warlords with intervention by Rwanda.
Load More Replies...And every night, the Russian invasion is rightfully on the news. But This is never mentioned
in this day and age of genetic research, maybe it is time to find your families who have been so brutally divided up by whites in Africa and start helping them by sending them food parcels? I've heard of such studies that focus on finding affinities between African-Americans and Africans, so what are you waiting for? It would certainly delay any African wars if people stopped starving, don't you think? Help your relatives in Africa !
Why should it be the descendants of victims to right the wrongs. Make the descendants of the oppressor make it right!!
Load More Replies...Depends on where you live. In large parts of Japan they are not taught about their war crimes.
Not just that, but my wife said they were only taught about the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima and a little about the Nazis and that was the end of WWII for them.
Unlike Germany which has tried very hard to admit to, apologise for and educate about their WW2 conduct, Japan simply hasn’t done so. There’s a bit of focus on the atomic bombings, as there should be, the firebombing of Tokyo, and the fact that they fought a war and lost it, but that’s about it. Their conduct in China, especially in Nanking, Unit 731, treatment of POWs and use of Korean and Chinese ‘comfort women’ is simply not taught. My wife is Japanese, she knew nothing about any of this and I have many Japanese friends and they say the same. And any attempts to present a more honest picture are still heavily curbed by the government. No country is perfect in war, of course, but Japan let themselves down badly in WW2
I grew up in the U.S., and went to 3 different schools, all which id consider to be decent school systems. Every time we learned about "democracy" as a concept, it was heavily focused on Ancient Greek and Roman democracy, which makes sense given that it is a basis for a lot of the foundation of democracy in the U.S.. But that was the extent of what we learned about democracy. The way it was taught made it seem like democracy was extremely rare and only existant in prominent and advanced "western" civilizations like the Greeks and Romans. It failed to cover that democratic systems are more common historically than that, and often relatively short lived because they are fragile. With this in mind, it failed to stress the importance of handling an individuals capacity to vote with great care because of how easily that can slip away. It also failed to teach about any sort of alternate voting systems or perspectives in democracy. A good portion of the reason that the electoral system in the U.S. is as broken as it is, is because probably 80+% of the populace is functionally in a cave where they know nothing different, and know of no other options to be explored. Or at least thats my perspective.
The history of voting in the US is nuts. They didn't want a democracy despite what American history tells you. They only used the appearance of democracy to appeal to the average man because they couldn't raise an army by promising a different king closer to hope. This country was formed by rich landed aristocrats that built a system to make sure they stayed in power, all wrapped up in a quasi democratic system that allows those in power to do whatever they want once elected. How do you get elected? By already being rich and powerful.
The US is not a democracy, it's a constitutional Republic
Load More Replies...In the Australian voting system it is compulsory to vote in both state and federal elections. (Well, truth be told, it’s compulsory only to turn up, have your name crossed off and receive a ballot paper. What you do after that, before you place it in the box, is up to you.) Interestingly, also, we are asked our names and addresses and they are marked off, but no actual ID is requested at the time of voting. I admit to being unclear on how the identification system works in the USA. And I am talking only about personal voting, not postal or early voting.
The U.S. identification system? It depends; if you are talking about white republicans, just turn up and vote. For everybody else there's a whole series of hoops to jump through.
Load More Replies...The Roman system was not that democratic. The primary ruling body under the republic, the Senate, was not elected, its members being aristocrats appointed by other aristocrats. After Augustus, it was of course just a rubber-stamp for the emperor.
Quote: "I grew up in the U.S., and went to 3 different schools, all which id consider to be decent school systems." Not that decent if they didn't teach basic grammar.
As a teacher, I can verify that what a school teaches and what a graduate uses can be very different.
Load More Replies...I find it funny I went to private Catholic high school. Senior year we learned of "world religions" but we never learned of "world government". Just US Government and US history.
Having been raised in and taught in private Catholic schools, I'm astonished there was even a class in world religions.
Load More Replies...Also, Greeks and Romans were threated with a club to the head if they didn't vote for the most popular candidate. Some democracy!
Much about Welsh history at all really beyond a few bullet points. Welsh history is fabulously rich and storied.
Welsh history is great, having a Welsh historian as a FiL is a treasure I love. The thing is, and it's not just something said by English historians so get that c**p out of your head first, a lot of honest to god Welsh people believe that the Romans never went further west than Cardiff (despite the bloody Roman forts in Carmarthen and Caernarfon, hence their names, the Romans went right to the western coast) because Wales was a barbaric wilderness of barbaric people that took the combined efforts of the Saxons, Normans, and mediaeval English to tame and civilise. This is actual common thought in this very day and age, in ordinary people to universities, it's atrocious.
Well, first you need a language others can read. (This is a joke btw)
Every single History teacher at my (English) Grammar school was Welsh, and they made even mundane stuff interesting.
The papacy (Steven IV) once dis-interred a pope who had been dead for 7 months (Formosus} just to put him on trial for a bunch of more or less trumped up charges. They ended up declaring his papacy illegal, null, and void. They threw his body in the Tiber when they were done. It was called the Cadaver Synod
The trial and Formosus' body washing up turned public opinion against Steven IV pretty quickly, and he was thrown in jail, then strangled to death.
They then had another meeting to annul the "Cadaver Synod" and reinstate Formosus. They recovered his now long dead, beaten up, waterlogged corpse, dressed it in vestments, and had him buried in St. Peters.
They also made it illegal to ever try a corpse again, thankfully. This is one of my more favorite obscure history bits lol, the Catholics are wild.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadaver_Synod.
If I remember correctly, Steven IV was named a Cardinal by Formosus. By removing his papacy, Steven removed himself from the office of Cardinal.
When we learned about prohibition, it was presented as kind of this silly historical mistake. It was years later when I learned that in the 19th Century people were drunk basically all the time in part because very few people had access to clean drinking water and would drink booze instead which was often cleaner/safer to drink. So a big part of the anti-booze movement was providing safe drinking water and we owe alot of our drinking water infrastructure (like available public drinking fountains) to teetotalers.
That's kind of an oversimplification. If it were absolutely true, people would have begun dying wholesale as soon as the booze dried up and that obviously wasn't the case. Saloons used to be one of the first stops that working people made on receipt of their wages. People being people they parted with a lot of that money before eventually finding their way home to a very upset spouse because a great deal of the wages were left in the care of a bar and that left precious little for those pesky bills like rent, food, etc. I would think that there would have also been an uptick in instances of DV with the guys coming home hammered and nearly broke.
There was rampant DV and drunkenness. Much of it was hushed up. Hard spirits were just too easily procured, and like Mike F stated, bars fleeced many working men who had families to support. Many taverns were hubs of political tyranny, run by local bosses. Temperance unions were just about everywhere. The problem was they were primarily led by women, who were only heard when they received the vote. There's no coincidence that this was ratified shortly before the enacting of Prohibition. Yes, Prohibition was repealed, but alcoholism finally began to be taken seriously by politicians, the medical professions, and the military. Alcohol abuse will probably never stop, but it's not at the 19th century level - for now.
Load More Replies...The daily beer that was drunk instead of water, also known as 'small ale', was very weak, almost impossible to get drunk on, and indeed would not have been affected by prohibition, even if it had still been common at that time, which it was not. So no, most people in that era were not drunk all the time, it's just some modern people thinking that having beer for breakfast must make someone an alcoholic.
In the middle ages, water wasn't safe to drink, so everyone drank 'small beer' even babies (probably only 0.5 - 2.5% ABV) However, when genever (gin) became cheap and widely available at 35% ABV, that's when 'drinking' became an issue and the Temperance movement was formed. Mostly these were religion based, but in some cases (like Prohibition) there seems to have been an element of 'Control' of the populace as much as letting housewives get their hands on the wages.
One thing new in the 20th century that underlined the danger of alcohol was the wide-spread access to automobiles.
The harrying of the north. William the bastard burning whole villages to the ground in the north of England to cement his rule over the country. In school, it's usually "1066, Hastings and bam. William the conqueror. Here's the Tudors...".
I'm more fascinated about the fact that John without land was way more beloved by the English people than Richard lionsheart who was a real d*ck to everyone besides his mother...
In a 10 year reign, Richard only spent about nine months in England. The rest of the time he was in his family’s land in France, being caught in bed with an Austrian Prince or fighting in the Crusades,
Load More Replies...To be fair, the people that WIlliam conquered, the Saxons, had already done this in turn to the people already living in Britain when THEY came through, plundering, raping, and killing 500 years earlier.
Actually, his official title was William the Bastard even before he became the Conqueror. Capitals make the difference.
In the Middle Ages, they actually used to smear swords in poo, in order to try and poison the opponent with bacteria.
Medieval hand-to-hand combat really did require intestinal fortitude
Well, the Geneva Convention is relativley new to be fair (Useage of poisoned ammunition and weaponry is prohibited)
The banana massacre occurred on 6 December 1928 in Ciénaga, Magdalena, Colombia. Workers of the United Fruit Company (now known as Chiquita Brands International) were on strike demanding better working conditions, such as shorter hours and fair pay. The Colombian government, under pressure from the United States and fearing that the conflict would affect the company's interests, sent in the army. Troops fired on the strikers, killing an undetermined number of people, varying according to sources from 47 (official) to more than 1,000 (according to witnesses).
The United Fruit Company, founded in the United States in 1899, had a significant impact on Latin America, influencing governments and economies, earning the nickname "the octopus" for its reach and control. In 1970, the company was restructured and renamed Chiquita Brands International. Today, it remains one of the largest distributors of tropical fruits in the world, but has faced criticism for its history of labour exploitation, corruption, and environmental impact.
In 2025, Chiquita Brands continues to operate globally as business as usual.
It's really obscure but American Chestnut trees were all over the east coast of the US up until around 1900. Then they all got infected with a fungus and now they're critically endangered.
And we started to lose the Elms in the 1950's from Dutch Elm Disease.
They're back! Nowadays there is a resistent variant being planted. (Source: I work in dutch forestry :) )
Load More Replies...All the dead trees in my woods look like they are coming up (in small branches) and braiding themselves around the living trees. It's freaking me out.
There are some copses in the Smoky Mountains and Cherokee Forest. Naturally their locations are kept secret, but I've found a couple stands of them hiking.
The middle Eastern and north African slave trade was larger, and somehow more brutal, then the trans Atlantic one.
Almost every race/empire has practiced slavery in some form. Usually with no racial component (the slave trade of early American history is one of the few I'm aware of with a racial component). Not saying this is good or bad, merely that it is...
in the arab world, racial component did exist, and documented as far back as the 1500s. Europeans did not invent the concept, it seems to have been existing in the 1400s all around the med region
Load More Replies...Edit: moved to be a response to HarrySachs' virtue signaling comment
This is mentioned less in the Western world because the middle Eastern and north African slave trade had much less effect on Western history than the trans Atlantic trade did.
Saying "Look, the neighbor beats his wife worse than I beat mine" doesn't make me wrong for calling you out about your behavior, nor minimize your responsibility for it.
Load More Replies...Here in Mexico, las 'Guerras Indias', the indian wars. Throught the history of the Spanish colony to Independent Mexico, the goverment have been hunting and displacing the indigenous people from the north (Sonora, Chihuahua, Coahuila) and the south (Yucatan, the Mayans). There were many massacres, incluiding some of the most obscure battles in both la Guerra de Independencia (Independence war) and La Revolución Mexicana (the Mexican Revolution). Yet, this acts were never printed in the mexican public history books, and even today when a great renaissance of indigenous culture is happening the country still neglects that this wars happened.
None of the nations of North America have particularly good histories when dealing with the indigenous people.
Thousands of soldiers from the south fought for the Union in the Civil War and there were business leaders in southern cities who didn't want secession.
For anybody interested in a thorough, unbiased account of the U.S. Civil War I highly recommend the book, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era, by James M. McPherson. It's a lengthy volume but it covers all aspects: social, political and military.
I didn't know this until I moved to the South. The local cemetery has a section for Confederate soldiers and a section for Union soldiers. I did some of my husband's geneology, and discovered that the wealthy Protestant enslavers in his line fought for the Union and the poor white Catholic schmucks in his line fought for the Confederacy. 🤯
Two of the Unions greatest Admirals were southerners, David Farragut (born in Tennessee and raised on New Orleans, which he captured) who when war broke out, he and his family fled from Virginia to NY. And Admiral Samuel P Lee, Virginia Born cousin to Robert E Lee, he led for 2 years the entire Atlantic Coast blockade of the Confederacy. His nickname as the time was "Lincoln's Lee". Ironically the only Admiral in the Confederacy was a Northerner who came from an abolitionist family, but later in life became a slave owner and supporter, who defected to the south, and commanded the CSS Virginia at Hampton Roads.
Thousands of soldiers from the north fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War unfortunately.
And the first unit of black freeman fought for the Confederacy. Almost like there's more to the story than we get told, no?
The first unit of black free men to fight did so for the union. They were from Massachusetts. Edit: clarity
Load More Replies...The Great Wall of China wasn’t built all at once it’s a patchwork of different walls from different dynasties.
Really? And here I thought that a more than 21.000 km long wall was built in a month or so.
Please give me the name of your builder - I've a few small jobs that'll only take him 5 minutes.
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During the prohibition, the US government once poisoned alcohol by adding more benzine and methanol to stop the growing number of people who were drinking it to side step prohibition.
Wait, people were drinking alcohol to sidestep being prohibited from drinking alcohol?
(Note: I'm guessing they were drinking alcohol not meant for human consumption, just wanting to highlight the necessity of properly qualifying statements with necessary detail
Load More Replies... Back in the 19th century, small opposition newspapers in the Netherlands were called "Lilliputters" (= "midgets") because of their small size, which was a way to avoid having to pay for the newspaper stamp. The best example of this are the papers published by the fanatical republican Eillert Meeter, who received imprisonment for lèse-majeste, before being invited to meet king William II in person, who offered him an allowance if he ceased publicising. Meeter later went back to publishing anyway, but admitted in his writings that he found the king a kind and friendly person - he was just opposed to having a king.
Okay, you simply do not learn this in school because it is obscure and relatively unimportant. But still.
Obscure and relatively unimportant...sounds like it definitely should be included.
I was quite surprised about how either my teacher nor my history book mentioned that Sweden started colonization in north America during the XVII century.
It was covered in my school. But that might have been because we lived in that small part of America that had been colonized by Sweden
Peaceful and neutral Sweden always makes me laugh. Especially when I’m reading books on 17th and 18th Century history.
The Zoot suit riot in Los Angeles, during the times of ww2 white service men would target Mexican Americans wearing zoot suits because of how they consider the outfits to be unpatriotic.
While not as exciting as other answers: Communism has killed the most people in modern history.
Edit: To be clear, it has killed the most people while promising utopia.
Probably more accurate to state "Authoritarian" governments have killed the most people. What is called communist governments these days were never true communism as Marx and Engels envisioned. The USSR, Cuba, China, North Korea, all are totalitarian states where the people who controlled their revolutions used "communism" as the counter economic system to the excesses of capitalism. But instead of democratic socialist governments, they became totalitarians states. The rebels against the capitalists became the new oppressors of the workers once they got in power.
Yes. Right wing totalitarian governments and left wing totalitarian governments are basically the same, except for the vocabulary and trappings. The political spectrum is a circle.
Load More Replies...Most communist governments have been corrupted and distorted by authoritarian rulers. Power corrupts.
The Communists had more opportunities than, say, the Nazis, who were only in power for thirteen years as opposed the Communism's 108 years. I suspect that on a per-year basis, the Nazis were worse.
I always thought Christianity did that while promising the same thing (after death, though).
The history of the Islam is probably a bit bloodier given that it spread through military conquest over Africa,the Middle East and Europe throughout history. (Since we talk about religion)
Load More Replies...Reading the general consensus of most comments, one could be forgiven for thinking Trump has killed the most people in modern history.
In 1914, the Serbian government and military *did* conspire and organize the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand with nationalist terrorists, and that was already known back then. WWI wasn't just Austria-Hungary and Germany looking for excuses to go to war and blaming Serbia for something one serbian guy did.
Btw, Austria-Hungary sent an ultimatum to Serbia, that basically said "forbid nationalist propaganda against us, punish the military officials that we 100% know are implied in the affair and let us investigate on your soil", with the last part being what they refused.
Germany also was kinda tricked into entering because the austrian embassador they sent manipulated the negotiations, claiming assistance that wasn't covered by any treaty
This assumes a Serbian government with a single direction and central control. The reality is that Serbia had just recently seen the forcible replacement of its ruling dynasty and had a secret society through much of its military intelligence organization. Its members were the ones who armed the assassins.
The existence of Sundown Towns. I never heard of them until I watched HBO's Lovecraft.
I had never ever heard the term before...I had to look it up. How embarrassing.
Don't be embarrassed by ignorance. Only by the refusal to remove ignorance.
Load More Replies...Yep...that law is (unbelievably) still on the books in many southern states today, in 2025 but, are, supposedly, not enforced now days.
In Kentucky, minorities still know which towns they shouldn't stop in after dark.
Load More Replies... A lot of people are taught that England's flag (White background, red cross) comes from St. George's banner.
But its often left out that George actually got his banner during his veneration as a warrior-saint by the Templars in the Crusades. A lot of the Templar banners were based on the flags of The Knights of The Round Table from Arthurian Legend.
So George actually got his banner from Sir Galahad, The Knight who found the Holy Grail, according to the legend.
There's a post I found with all the Knight's banners included. Its fun to look at as you can see the origins of a few famous flags in the banners.
https://www.reddit.com/r/vexillology/s/iKLBL7vbxd.
I find it really interesting these different parts of history I myself have never heard of but others find fascinating.
This is completely unrelated but when my sister was pregnant with her son, we joked with our dad that she was going to name him "Galahad". We had him going for a good couple of weeks (with much blustering and gesticulating from him) before we said we were joking.
Most of Britain’s colonial history.
We were taught about British colonialism in China, India, America, and Egypt, along with the Anglo-Zulu War. That is about it.
Briefly you might cover Australia as a penalty colony or Canada due to modern links , but the whole rest of the empie is ignored
Load More Replies...Britain's colonial history is what is taught in US schools (or a slightly altered version of it) and what US says most of the world believes.
Mustafa Kemal Pasha (Atatürk) was the main reason why Ottomans lost 500 km of Levantian land from Palestina to Aleppo in 1 month. Even British general Allenby was impressed how he was able to win such amount of land in such a short time.
Before he died, MLK Jr was hated by liberals for opposing the Vietnam war. His convicted murderer said he didn't kill MLK. The King Family sued the US government for $1 to prove the government were part of the conspiracy to kill MLK and won.
The first sentence is so bizarrely false that Donald Trump would be embarrassed (well, almost) for saying it. It was the liberals who opposed the war in Vietnam. King's article in Ramparts magazine "Declaration of Independence from the War in Vietnam" marked his public break with Lyndon Johnson, the president liberals were trying to drive from office. It greatly enhanced his already towering position in the progressive movement of the time.
One piece swim suits became bikinis in the second world War not because of a song but because it was "more patriotic" to wear them due to more fabric being used for the front lines.
it was after the end of the war. 1st Bikini credited as being created July 5th 1946
Bored Panda, please fact check this kind of posts! Many of them have the source of "Trust me bro"
A teenager interested in history though, regardless of factual accuracy those teenagers are very welcome (otherwise we'd soon run out of historians). But yes, some fact-checking on BPs side would be rather nice.
Load More Replies...British North America had slavery at the same time as everywhere else in the British Empire. A part of it (Upper Canada) restricted slavery earlier than anywhere else in the Empire (1793), thanks to Lieutenant Governor Simcoe.
Load More Replies...I think people forget how relatively little time kids study history in school. A lot of these are college-level history lessons.
Maybe today they're considered college level, but I remember being taught similar things (Magellan's voyages, American Revolutionary & Civil War battles, etc) in fourth grade in the 60s. Our education system has been dumbed down continuously since the mid 20th century.
Load More Replies...Maybe the fact that the Swiss weren't 100% neutral during WWII is a fun fact. They were quite willing to store things in their very secure banks for the Nazis. The Swedish were actually the truly neutral party
They also shot down planes from both sides and got apologies for it.
Load More Replies...Is US education system really this bad? Most of those are common knowledge.
There are 50 states, plus 5 territories, each of which has its own standards for what should be taught. There are no Federal standards for curriculum. And there are local school districts in each state that decides how they will meet the state standards. The county i lived in during the 70s had 5 public school districts & 1 private school, all separate, for a population of about 12,000. The LA County School District has 183 high schools, in one district. The US doesn't have an education system, it has 13,000 of them, plus the private & charter schools fled home schooling.
Load More Replies...I've learned most of these in school (although I also took additional history courses in high school because I found it interesting). It's scary and weird to realise how much more sensured everything is in some other parts of the world. I've taken free knowlwdge as a basic human right and it's still chilling to realise it isn't.
Bored Panda, please fact check this kind of posts! Many of them have the source of "Trust me bro"
A teenager interested in history though, regardless of factual accuracy those teenagers are very welcome (otherwise we'd soon run out of historians). But yes, some fact-checking on BPs side would be rather nice.
Load More Replies...British North America had slavery at the same time as everywhere else in the British Empire. A part of it (Upper Canada) restricted slavery earlier than anywhere else in the Empire (1793), thanks to Lieutenant Governor Simcoe.
Load More Replies...I think people forget how relatively little time kids study history in school. A lot of these are college-level history lessons.
Maybe today they're considered college level, but I remember being taught similar things (Magellan's voyages, American Revolutionary & Civil War battles, etc) in fourth grade in the 60s. Our education system has been dumbed down continuously since the mid 20th century.
Load More Replies...Maybe the fact that the Swiss weren't 100% neutral during WWII is a fun fact. They were quite willing to store things in their very secure banks for the Nazis. The Swedish were actually the truly neutral party
They also shot down planes from both sides and got apologies for it.
Load More Replies...Is US education system really this bad? Most of those are common knowledge.
There are 50 states, plus 5 territories, each of which has its own standards for what should be taught. There are no Federal standards for curriculum. And there are local school districts in each state that decides how they will meet the state standards. The county i lived in during the 70s had 5 public school districts & 1 private school, all separate, for a population of about 12,000. The LA County School District has 183 high schools, in one district. The US doesn't have an education system, it has 13,000 of them, plus the private & charter schools fled home schooling.
Load More Replies...I've learned most of these in school (although I also took additional history courses in high school because I found it interesting). It's scary and weird to realise how much more sensured everything is in some other parts of the world. I've taken free knowlwdge as a basic human right and it's still chilling to realise it isn't.
