If You Like Learning The Bizarre Facts From History, Here Are 45 Really Unexpected Ones
If someone told you it rained fish once upon a time, would you believe them? You'd be forgiven if you said "no." But get this: not only has it rained fish, it's rained many different other animals, in several parts of the world... Frogs, rats, spiders, birds, jellyfish, and even snakes. It turns out that sometimes, fact is indeed stranger than fiction.
Someone recently asked, "What is a historical fact that sounds like fiction but is 100% true?" and some of the answers might surprise you. From a bear that served in the Polish army during WW2, to the fact that there are golf balls on the moon, it seems history is truly filled with the most bizarre and intriguing tidbits.
Bored Panda has put together our favorite answers from the thread for you to familiarize yourself with, so that you have something interesting to talk about at the Christmas table. Don't forget to upvote the ones you love best.
And if you're wondering how it could possibly rain fish, frogs or other creatures, you'll find that info between the images.
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_Cap Trafalgar_ was a German ocean liner.
In WWI, the Germans converted it into a warship, while also modifying it to look like the British ocean liner RMS _Carmania_. The idea was to cruise around in disguise, ambushing British shipping.
On its first such cruise, it ran into the real RMS _Carmania_ - which the British had secretly converted into a warship, with the idea of cruising around ambushing German shipping.
In the ensuing battle, the real _Carmania_ sank the fake one.
The odds of that happening... Obviously the DM didnt plan the session too well.
People have been claiming to see animals raining from the sky since the days of early civilization. There have been reports of showers of rats, fish, jellyfish, even snakes. While they aren't entirely incorrect, meteorologists and climatologists say it's a bit more complicated than the sky literally "raining" creatures.
It doesn’t “rain” frogs or fish in the sense that it rains water, explains the Library of Congress (LOC) site. What the experts mean is that frogs and fish don't vaporize into the air before a rainfall.
"However, strong winds, such as those in a tornado or hurricane, are powerful enough to lift animals, people, trees, and houses," the site adds. "It is possible that they could suck up a school of fish or frogs and 'rain' them elsewhere."
Everything about Staff Sgt. Reckless sounds like fiction. She was a mongolian race horse who was purchased from a Korean stable boy so that he could buy a prosthetic leg for his sister who had stepped on a land mine. The United States Marine Corps trained her to be a pack horse carrying Recoilless Rifles for the 5th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division. Recoilless Rifles were affectionately known as "Reckless Rifles" due to their backblast, hence her name. She was known to sleep with Marines in their tents on cold nights and would eat nearly anything that she was given, including scrambled eggs, beer, Coca Cola, and approximately $30 worth of poker chips once. She learned supply routes and carried supplies and wounded troops without a handler. During the battle for Outpost Vegas she made 51 supply trips and was critical in defending the area. It's not a stretch to say that she was instrumental in holding the front line and the modern Korean border might look very different if not for her efforts. She was wounded twice in combat which earned her 2 Purple Hearts in addition to a Marine Corps Good Conduct Medal, Presidential unit Citations from South Korea and the United States, and other minor honors. She was essentially smuggled back to Texas, partied at a USMC Birthday Ball, featured in LIFE Magazine and The Saturday Evening Post, and listed as one of the top 100 US war heroes of all time. She gave birth to 4 foals: Fearless, Dauntless, Chesty, and one that died nameless.
On July 26th 2013, one day before the 60th anniversary of the Korean War a statue of Sgt. Reckless was unveiled at the National Museum of the Marine Corps along with a lock of her tail hair at the base of the statue. The statue's plaque includes a quote from Sergeant Harold Wadley, who served in battle alongside Sergeant Reckless: "The spirit of her loneliness and her loyalty, in spite of the danger, was something else to behold. Hurting. Determined. And alone. That's the image I have imprinted in my head and heart forever." In addition, there are 5 other monuments to Sgt. Reckless around the US as well as another at Yeoncheon Gorangpogu History Park near the Outpost Vegas battlefield.
And eat scrambled eggs, washed down with Coke a cola.
Load More Replies...I own three mares who are allowed to make a lot of decisions on their own - only limitation is the safety of us all. Two of them are from a rescue. They are opinionated, reliable, safe to deal with, cooperative and careful when dealing with humans. From that experience I am convinced that if you put trust and confidence in a social animal like horses and dogs, they pay you back likewise. Sgt Reckless seems to have been treated well by her carers.
I just finished reading the book "Sergeant Reckless" and it tells a lot more.
The whole story about Juan Pujol Garcia, aka Garbo, aka Alaric, aka the guy who ran the most valuable spy network for Germany in Britain during WW2. Except he was a double agent and the network with all its spies didn't even exist, he just made up the most plausible-sounding nonsense he could think of and sent it to the Germans who ate it all up.
The best thing? He was just a private citizen in Spain, who started the whole fraudulent spy business entirely on his own initiative.
He had, all on his own without any help, German U-boats chasing non-existent allied convoys in the Atlantic. Later, the British found him and he worked for them to successfully obfuscate the D-Day landings.
David Paterson: the British didn't "find" him - he repeatedly contacted the British, initially being dismissed, until the British finally realised he was exceptionally talented, highly effective, and passionately anti-Näzi (British codebreaking meant they knew what was going on, and - well, oh, it's YOU, is it? Come on in!). For more information, search on-line for "Double Cross Second World War". One thing - he put in expenses claims for his network of spies in Britain, including reimbursement for train tickets. He had a full set of train timetables with prices. What he didn't have was a working knowledge of £-s-d (British currency at the time) and couldn't add up the money - so left that for the Germans. 😁
Load More Replies...This was the inspiration for Graham Greene's novel "Our Man in Havana". Garbo was the original Wormold character.
Greene was Garbo's contact in British intelligence during the war.
Load More Replies...He created a whole network of fictional agents and the Germans gave him money for their expenses. So there's that. He also got medals from both sides – the Iron Cross 2nd Class from Germany Member of the Order of the British Empire from the British.
Load More Replies...“I’ve seen small ponds literally emptied of their water by a passing tornado. So, it wouldn’t be unreasonable for frogs (or other living things) to ‘rain’ from the skies,” says Professor Ernest Agee from Purdue University.
Instead of actual rain, many scientists believe that something called tornadic waterspouts may be responsible for frog and fish rainfalls. A tornadic waterspout is basically a tornado that forms over land and travels over the water. They aren't as strong as land-based tornadoes, which can reach up to 310 miles per hour.
But tornadic waterspouts can pack quite a punch, reaching up to 100 miles per hour.
There were archaeologists in ancient Egypt digging up stuff from what they considered to be ancient Egypt.
Were they selling it to the British Museum at that time or did that come later?
Egypt very old culture. Living in 2000 BC means you can dig up stuff from 6000 BC.
Load More Replies... In 1927, the Nobel Prize for Medicine and Physiology was awarded to Julius Wagner-Jauregg for using malaria to cure syphilis.
At the time, syphilis was incurable and horrific. Syphilis takes a long time to destroy the patient, and it ravages their body and mind along the way, while also making them a vector to infect others. It had been known for some time that a high fever could cure syphilis if it came at the right time. But how do you summon a high fever on demand? Wagner-Jauregg did it by intentionally infecting the patient with malaria.
Malaria was incurable, but could be treated with quinine for minimal side effects. Even if the malaria fever ended the patient, losing one's lifeI over a single night was far more humane than the years-long degradation of the Black Lion.
Wagner-Jauregg's treatment became a historical oddity before long, when penicillin was discovered to be a much less invasive cure for syphilis.
Salvarsan 606. I paid to learn that and have been waiting almost 50 years to use it.
good to know that your need wasn't urgent, then ;-)
Load More Replies...Didn't they also try to cure Syphillis with arsenic and sometimes it worked?
Thst is salvarsan what uncle panda mentioned above, before it was mercury wich worked too but was not exactly good for your liver among other nasty sideffects
Load More Replies...... you're welcome ... might not get too many groupies, though ...
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Before invading Spain, napoleon sent a formal letter to the crown along the lines of 'don't worry about my armies crossing the border, we are just on our way to Portugal!'. No one suspected anything until he was literally knocking on the gates of our capital.
Well, wheeling a big statue of a horse to the gates of Madrid seemed too obvious.
Clever tactic and all that, profiteering off neighbourly squabbles. I can't help but feel indignant on behalf of the betrayed Portuguese. I'm also getting some distinct face-eating-leopards vibes. Like "duh, who'd have guessed the land robber wouldn't stick to his word of just taking your neighbours' lands".
Thus starting a meme that would recur in a million games of "Diplomacy"
The LOC site explains that like a tornado, a mature waterspout consists of a low-pressure central vortex surrounded by a rotating funnel of updrafts.
"The vortex at the center of these storms is strong enough to 'suck up' surrounding air, water, and small objects like a vacuum. These accumulated objects are deposited back to earth as 'rain' when the waterspout loses its energy," the site further states. "Most of the water seen in the funnel of a waterspout is actually condensate — moisture in the air resulting from the condensation of water vapor."
Corporal Wojtek, of the 22nd Artillery Supply Company, 2nd Polish Corps... who was a Syrian Brown Bear. This was during WW2.
Adopted as a cub, he was trained to carry ammo crates, as he could carry much more than a man could. The men liked to wrestle with him, and he was even taught to salute. He like to drink beer, smoke... or eat cigarettes, and drink coffee.
Imagine being a new recruit and your superior officer is a bear.
Animals in the armed forces have to be a higher rank than their handlers, in order to keep respect.
There is a very nice statue of him in Edinburgh (Princes Garden, in view of the Castle).
Princes Street gardens. Try the Edinburgh zoo , as well , if my memory serves
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Gladiators were a lot like professional athletes today. They’d have billboards and do product sponsorships in Ancient Rome.
Also - gladiators were fat! When the opponent cuts into a chubby belly, it heals better than those chiseled muscles. Also the gladiatrix - gladiator women - weren't that uncommon.
Fights till death were also very rare since training, housing and provisioning them was quite an investment
Load More Replies...But were any of them as lovable as Titus Pullus? RIP, Ray Stevenson.
The War of the Bucket (1325)
Basically, two Italian city-states, Modena and Bologna, were already bitter political rivals (Ghibellines vs. Guelphs). Their tensions were high, and then Modenese soldiers stole a wooden bucket from a well in Bologna’s public square.
Bologna demanded the bucket back. Modena said no.
A war broke out.
There was a young man from Nantucket, who went to war over a bucket. The fighting was brutal, but turned out to be futile, so he gave the thing back and said "fúck it"
That's not what I heard about the young man from Nantucket...
Load More Replies...That is as heinous as nicking someone's flip flop in Queensland, mate!
Though the war didn't happen because of the bucket. The Modenese attacked the Bolognese, defeated them and took the bucket as a symbolic humiliation.
Modena won. The bucket is now in the Cathedral Belltower. In 2015 a group of students from the University of Bologna style it again. Indignation was palpable and spirits were rising.
hold down the right hand "Alt" key when you type the vowels. Gives a foreign letter which prints as an "u" but confuses BP's automatic censor.
Load More Replies...While animal rainfalls are largely attributed to waterspouts, at least one expert believes the sometimes a strong gust of updraft wind could also do the trick.
According to Doc Horsley from Southern Illinois University, any unusually powerful updraft could lift small organisms or organic material into the sky during a storm. And what goes up must come down...
"An updraft is a wind current caused by warm air from high pressure areas near the earth rising into cooler, low-pressure areas in the atmosphere. Because the cooling causes water in the air to condense, updrafts play an important role in cloud formation and storm development," explains the LOC site.
One of my fav weird ones is that the australian army actually went to war with emus in 1932… and lost. like real soldiers, real machine guns, vs big dumb birds… and the birds just kinda outplayed everyone
sounds like a meme but it’s an actual chapter in history and somehow no one ever lets australia forget it.
Look, it's not over yet. We're negotiating a coalition with the cassowaries!
I would rather a emu to a cassowary. It's like a beautiful raptor.
Load More Replies...After the success of the first Emu War, they did it again - and lost again.
It was just 3 soldiers and 2 machine guns. Not the entire army.
And the reason they retreated was because they ran out of bullets without making an impact on the problem
Load More Replies...Then the emus decided forget it, everything else will k**l them lol. Seriously I think someone who created us, if there is such a thing, keeps randomly going, Hey ohil, look I made their spiders fly. Good one, look I made spiders that eat birds. Nice Ooo what about poison sand?
"On December 24, 1971, 17-year-old Juliane Koepcke became the sole survivor of LANSA Flight 508, which broke apart mid-air after being struck by lightning over the Peruvian Amazon. Still strapped to her seat, she fell nearly **10,000 feet** and miraculously survived the impact with a broken collarbone and other injuries. Koepcke then **survived for 11 days in the jungle**, following a creek and using survival skills taught by her zoologist parents, before being rescued by loggers.".
The cool thing about falling from great heights, is once you hit terminal velocity, there really is not much difference between 450 meters (1,500 feet) and anything greater than that. The real difficulty lies with the cold and low air pressure/oxygen at those heights. It is not the fall that is the issue - it is the sudden stop at the end, lol
Yeah, having a impact with "Cumulus Granite" does have that tendency to mess things up.
Load More Replies...Look it up-it is one doozy of a story. Example: A cut she received on her arm developed a maggot infestation, so as she was walking by the river, she spotted a deserted camp that had a can of kerosene left behind. She poured it on her wound, cleaning and flushing out the maggots. Kept her from sepsis.
If her parants were zoologist she would know that maggots are a good thing in wounds.. She would deffently not have gotten sepsis from them Maggots in wounds can refer to a legitimate medical treatment called maggot debridement therapy (MDT), where sterile maggots clean dead tissue and fight infection in chronic wounds, or an unintentional infestation, myiasis, often in tropical areas with poor hygiene.
Load More Replies...In a party dress too. She was not dressed for the jungle and got fortunate it was reasonable climate, but got eaten alive by bugs.
People used to be jailed for having a visible disability and being out in public. Just learned this today and could not believe what I was reading.
As stated in the OP, a gross oversimplification (pun intended). These were really anti-panhandling laws that used physical deformities as a pretext.
Yeah, its the reason we still have a generation of people who will say things like "go home, you're ugly" and actually mean it. The ADA laws in the US forced states and cities to rethink those laws but didnt require their removal and some are still on the books today in random small towns.
Google current us policy. Make sure you are white. Sickening
Load More Replies...Workhouses or asylums rather than jails or prisons, this was one of many reasons people in Britain and Ireland could be locked up for.
It once rained frogs in Kansas City in 1873. And it hailed frogs in Dubuque, Iowa on June 16, 1882. Scientists back then concluded the Kansas incident must have been caused by a tornado or other land-based storm. And the Iowa one by a powerful updraft, which made the frogs freeze before releasing them.
While there've been no confirmed reports of it ever raining cats and dogs anywhere, it does seem plausible that animals can indeed fall from the sky.
In 1920, a cat officially ran for mayor in a small town in Minnesota.
Did he win? Running a town from the cat's point of view would have been interesting.
This fact always stuck with me: There was a Roman emperor - Gaius Caligula - who once declared war on the god of the sea, marched his army to the shore... and ordered them to attack the ocean.
Then he made the soldiers collect seashells as "war trophies" to bring back to Rome.
highwaycrossingfrog: all the stories about the emperor Gaius doing mad things were written by his political opponents. They're probably not true at all. "Caliguila" was his childhood nickname - it means "Little Boots", from when his mum liked dressing him up as a little soldier.
Load More Replies...Caligula drank a lot. The one he reminds you of behaves that way, or worse, without the benefit of alcohol.
Load More Replies...Nor for Colonel Mustard in the drawing-room.
Load More Replies...Not sure Caligula was that hereditary, I thought he was 'appointed' by his soldiers
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It took about 30 million years after the evolution of trees for a fungus to evolve with the ability to break down lignin. Before that, trees just kind of lay there where they fell, weathering but not decomposing.
Dead plant life nearly choked the ground, almost causing life to d i.e. off. Mushrooms saved the planet.
Our eternal coal fire is in Centralia PA. You have one too
Load More Replies...There must have some skookum fires back then. Long dry summer, one good lightning strike and whoosh!
Fires are natural land clearers. All that material builds up, and it's only a matter of time before lightning, or something else, catches set it burning.
Before Columbus arrived, indigenous people along Haida Gwaii used marine engineering to make sustainable aquaculture farms. To this day, you can still find "Clam gardens" along that coast.
Indigenous people pretty much everywhere manipulated their environment. It is called survival
You know Columbus never went near British Columbia, he was in the Caribbean? The North West Pacific is a very very different area.
Lots of geography in North America and Central America and South America are named after Columbus, something I don't understand. There's a big a*5 river here in Washington state, it borders with Oregon and Idaho, then runs west to the Pacific Ocean, it's called the Columbia River. First Europeans to travel here were Spaniards, not sure what years, but a lot of things were given names by them.
Load More Replies...Not just on Haida Gwaii. Clam gardens can be found all along the coast down to southern Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands. There are clam gardens in Stanley Park in Vancouver too.
Saddam Hussein was awarded the key to the city of Detroit in 1980.
never by the CIA, the US DoD openly sold weapons to Saddam bc he was fighting Iran, our enemy. Then when he went after Kuwait, a US ally, we turned on him quick. We had mutual goals at the time
Load More Replies...For decades, US foreign policy was based on what foreign leaders did for us, regardless of what they did to their own people.
um, so did the UK, Russia, China, France, Germany, Argentina, Brazil, etc. Literally this is how diplomatic relations work. Everyone does it, and that literally was all Cold War diplomacy.
Load More Replies...The U.S. knew Saddam had biological weapons? Off course, they sold them to him!!!
And he was best friends with several presidents and graduated college alongside US political and business leaders. He was a favored friend, until he became the #1 enemy for not doing exactly what the US demanded in his own land of origin, and betrayed his partners by wanting what they had, conplete autonomy over his own realm that they promised him. History shows how propaganda makes enemies out of friends real fast.
This kind of thing happened often enough that it has its own name: "blowback".
Russia once sent its Baltic fleet to attack Japan.
If you’re unsure why this is unusual, check where Baltics is.
The whole story is filled with hilarious details demonstrating how bad Russia’s army was.
We must admire the Japanese people, who WITHIN 50-60 YEARS, managed to transform their country from feudal to fully modernized/industrialized and face on equal terms other contemporary Powers.
We certainly can deplore what they did with it.
Load More Replies...Europeans were, the US predicted Japan would win, and TR planned for that in advance
Load More Replies...They were so paranoid that they thought a fleet of British fishing vessels was the Japanese navy. Off the coast of Britain. They opened fire. They also thought that they were being followed for pretty much the entire journey to Japanese waters. From the Baltic, through the North Sea, Bay of Biscay, the entire African continental coastline, the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea, to the Pacific regions.
The head of the Admiralty at the time, reportedly suggested that Britain should only go to war with half its fleet... to make it a fair fight. Keeping in mind, most of the ships in the Russian fleet, were clapped out cruisers and early battleships, and nothing like what the British Navy had at the time.
Load More Replies...the japanese had severely damaged/sunk the russian pacific fleet in harbor at vladivostok. that replacement squadron was engaged in the battle of tsushima strait. the japanese sank/captured almost the entire fleet. a couple of small russian ships did manage to make it to vladivostok.
Once? Like 20 years ago, 100, 250 years ago? The year is a bit of importance here.
My great uncle was a "scribe" for Russia in the Ruso-Japanese war
Stupid ship designs copied from the french at that time and a tsar that had no clue about warfare were a huge factor in their defeat
The original "War on Christmas" was waged by early Protestants (Puritans) in England and America during the 16th and 17th centuries. They succeeded in actually banning it for several decades.
They're welcome to try again if they can promise I won't have to listen to the screeching sounds of Mariah Carey...
I've made it to the 24th without hearing that dreadful Little Drummer boy. I think everyone has a despised xmas song.
Load More Replies...Even until the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, Xmas in New England was a subdued affair. Source: my grandparents and great grandparents
It was banned for 13 years in England and brought back when King Charles II took the throne. Hence why he's known as the Merry Monarch, because he was the king who brought back partying. 🎵
Yup. You went to church, came home, and ate dinner. That was Christmas.
I have (I think) a Horrible Histories book of Christmas and it had two double pages on this period
Maren Villadsen: Christmas celebrations were banned because the whole thing was basically drunken hooliganism - a tradition predating Christianity, going back at least to the Roman Saturnalia.
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Minnesota still holds a captured flag taken from Virginia during the Civil War.
Virginia has asked for it back many times.
...as long as it does not come to the "bucket" incident like in Italy and mentioned here, too.
The ancient Greeks forgot how to read their own writings.
They slipped into the dark ages with the collapse of civilization around the Mediterranean in the 10th century bce and forgot how to read their own script. They were illiterates for a few centuries before recovering sometime after Homer and then learned to read and write again. Plato and Aristotle and basically the time from the 5th to the 3rd century in Ancient Greece are really the equivalent of the Italian Renaissance as far as culture and thought for the Greeks.
And now there are people who can’t read script handwriting because they never learned to write it.
Be fair, some script handwriting *is* rather twiddly !
Load More Replies...Bcr is made up wokery puke. BC: before CHRIST. CHRIST, CHRIST, CHRIST. Did I mention CHRIST? SUCK IT LEFTIES.
There are churches in Europe still in use that were built before those Easter island heads were carved, and before both Hawaii and New Zealand were populated. .
I was going to say something about St. Peter's in Utrecht - consecrated in 1048 - but I'm going to be quiet now.
Load More Replies...My house was built 1792. It’s not uncommon to find homes and building much older than mine in Britain. We have pubs older than America!
I owned a 400yo cottage in England. Now live in California which is 175 years old
Load More Replies...Weird comparison. There are plenty of churches over a thousand years old, some in England (and I'm sure other countries, I just don't know about them so much) nearly 1500 years. Why would anyone think there was anything odd or unbelievable about it?
Hagia Sophia in Istanbul was a church for a thousand years before it became a mosque...500 years ago
My town has been around since the Vikings settled here and is named after 'wide nose' in Danish, referring to the river mouth.
I guess this maybe sounds odd to Americans but is perfectly normal to Europeans.
American here - growing up, I lived in both South Carolina (one the 13 Original Colonies) and New Orleans (early seaport) for a bit, and it was amazing the difference that just 100 yrs of additional history made in culture, architecture, etc. I can't imagine an extra 1000-plus years!
Until 1901 Western zoology did not recognize the okapi as a real animal and assumed the African tribes who lived in the Congo for thousands of years were just making it up.
I do like the idea of making up strange animals to wind up foreign zoologists though
Like wolpertingers, Nessie, platypuses, and bigfoot? 😏
Load More Replies...Not true. West Africa had not been explored by scientists until that point. It wasn't that no one refused to believe the natives, it was that no one knew to even ask about the animal, until someone saw a striped section of coat on a chief's cloak. It was initially thought it was from a forest dwelling zebra.
Obviously old white men in London know better than indigenous people living in their own land....
You're missing the context here. The zoologists, who would go down to those places to search for the animal... could never find the thing. It didn't help matters that there were bounties paid by the zoologists for new animal types. So there was something of a kind of con going on where people would claim to find this new species or animal, in the hopes of being paid out, when they were lying through their teeth.
Load More Replies...wonder what they thought of aardvark and anteaters in the South America's?
The Titanic’s sister ship Olympic was known for hitting ships. She sank a U-Boat during WW1 by running it over and then did it again to the Nantucket Lightship though on accident that time. She also rammed the HMS Hawke which is where the unsinkable thing came from. She was also the only ship of the three to serve a full career and was noted to be in immaculate condition for her age. It’s sad the two others never finished a single civilian crossing. Titanic sank on her maiden voyage and Britannic never even made it to civilian service before being sunk my a sea mine.
britannic was being used as a hospital ship in the mediterranean. she struck a mine near greece and sank in 300 feet of water. roughly 40 people died.
And her fittings and interior are still visible in a hotel and restaurant near York.
I just saw this in a movie I watched today. It rained fish in Denmark about 50 years ago. There is more than one theory as to how that happened.
If you research how hail is made, even baseball sized chunks, you will understand the atmospheric forces involved are way beyond what you probably imagine.
Waterspout is one of the theories. Was in a book called The Unexplained that I had when I was a kid.
We don't have waterspouts big enough to do that here in Denmark. It has happend else where, but never in Denmark
Load More Replies...😆😆😆 Dane here this is So false It has never ever rained fish in Denmark People post so much bulls-hit.
The 100-year war. That lasted for 116 years, actually.
When you hear about 100-year war that happened in human history, you imagine it was probably exaggeration, and it lasted at most like 55 years or something... But no, it actually lasted LONGER!
So, to be clear. It wasn't one long war that lasted for 116 years. It's three wars that are grouped together. The Edwardian War (1337–1360), The Caroline War (1369–1389), and The Lancastrian War (1415–1453).
Just read about the Reconquista. It went on for 781 years (711 to 1492). Talk about holding a grudge.
🎶Edward Third was a chivalry nerd, began the Hundred Years War!🎶
30% of Americans supported the British in the Revolution.
I heard something like that, basically a third supported Britain, a third supported independence, and the other third did not care one way or the other.
The Peasant's Lament - New King, different day, same shitt.
Load More Replies...They weren't yet Americans, they were (mostly) British. Including George Washington.
That was John Adam's estimate. Historical estimates are that it was about 20%. 40% supported independence and the other 40% were neutral or undecided. Those numbers changed over time. Thomas Paine's "Common Sense" did a lot to increase support for the revolution and some historians believe the revolution would never have been successful without it.
One branch of my family got kicked out of Brooklyn for being loyalists. They came back later, after years in Canada
Today, every election, about 1/3 always vote Democrat, about 1/3 always vote Republican, and about 1/3 never vote. The election is decided by a statistically insignificant majority or the Electoral College. Tradition!
There are golf balls still on the moon.
Where else would they be? None of the major countries pick up their trash.
People who've watched me tee off would have no trouble believing this!!!!!!!
And the Hop Skip and Jump! (I actually saw it, 'live')
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Africans have ~20% of their DNA belonging to a ‘ghost’ hominin.
I.e another species of early human that is extinct and we don’t know anything about. A bit like how Europeans and Asians have ~2% Neanderthal DNA.
That can't be right. I think it's better to say that H.sapiens lost 20% of its DNA diversity when leaving Africa.
It’s actually confirmed, although the high percentages are in West Africa. I’d link to it, but BP would hide me. Do a search on it.
Load More Replies...It seems that our evolution has repeatedly included hybridization with our cousins. We're just friendly like that.
Alfred Dreyfus, a French Jewish Army Officer was accused of spying for Germany at the end of the 19th century. This lead to a very famous polemics between his supporters and his detractors that lasted a few years, even after the army learnt that he wasn't actually guilty and knew the name of the real spy. Despite this, he remained faithful to the Army and was rehabilitated.
A few years after, at the start of WW1, he was the very officer that learnt from a scouting plane crew that the Germans were deviating from their route, realized the importance of this information and transmitted it with the highest priority, allowing the French High Command and the British Expeditionnary Force to launch a successful offensive on the Marne.
The man that was wrongly accused and recognized guilty of one of the worst crimes by his country's army was the one that saved it from its worst military defeat 20 years after.
It was antisemitism. French novelist Émile Zola, whose work inspired the RPG Disco Elysium as I learned recently, came to his defense.
He still spent more than 4 years in the worst penal colony the French had, Devil's Island. Even when he was officially pardoned, but it took another 8 years before he was eventually acquitted of treason - yes, even though everyone knew it had been an antisemitic conspiracy he still remained officially guilty for all that time and was unable to serve in the Army until that time.
The Dreyfus Affair is what was publicized through pamphlets (cheap to produce and easy to distribute, much like today's FB post or X tweet). Thousands of neo-N@zis and similar believe this still. Some old-school conspiracy theorists there
Julius Caesar was kidnapped and ransomed by pirates. He told them to ask for a higher ransom and that he would find them and crucify them if they let him go. They took the ransom and let him go. He hunted them down and crucified them.
What? So they let him go and then he kílled them for not kílling him, and if they didn't let him go he would have been kílled by the people who were actually kílled for not kílling him? That's kinda confusing.
He hunted them down for the insult of asking too small a ransom.
Load More Replies...That a T-Rex is closer in time to us then it is to a Stegosaurus .
That would really ameliorate the pain of your existence?
Load More Replies...The first powered flight (1903) and the moon landing (1968) were 66 years apart. A not insignificant number of people were alive and remember both events.
And that tells us how much to trust these facts.. 🤔🙃
Load More Replies...I've seen claims of first powered flight as early as 1897 (Clément Ader)
I know several people who went from ploughing with horses to using Autosteer.
It was broadcast live on TV - I watched it live lying on my livinig room floor. They landed about about 3pm (EST) and the first step was about 10pm that night, July 20th 1969,
Load More Replies...It says WERE alive, as in "many people who witnessed the second great accomplishment of powered flight remembered when the first was obtained. "
Load More Replies...Mexico once had a president who ruled for a whopping 45 minutes.
John Tyler was born in 1790, and was President from 1841 -1845. His last surviving grandchild, Harrison Ruffin Tyler, was alive earlier this year.
He later was elected to the Confederate congress. Imagine a president being party to a white supremist insurrection because their side had lost the election.
His son had children at the age of 71 and 75. That is how this is posible.
More people have been to space then to the bottom of the ocean.
I've been to the bottom of the ocean every time I've been to the beach, mate!
Oh, come on! Lots of people have been to rhe ocean floor! Of course, they never returned, but still...
please define "bottom of the ocean" - anyone at the beach, in the water, is at the "bottom of the ocean"... Perhaps you mean the deepest part?
Thousands and thousands of people went to the bottom of the ocean just in World War 2. Maybe say "have come back from"
Not true! More people have returned from space than the bottom of the ocean.
I don't know when exactly it was "discovered", but VERY recently (like past few devades), it was discovered that infants feel pain. So yeah, they used.to perform surgery on infants without anesthesia. In RECENT times. Like in the 80s and maybe 90s even.
.
On a side note, most people think animals don't feel pain or are incapable of any kind of sentience and sapience. I believe all life outside of fungi and plants can feel pain. It'd genuinely shock me of mushrooms and grass could feel pain. But yeah, why people dont realize mice or lizards or bats or turtles can feel pain is beyond me. And... no way to prove this (my handwashing moment), but I believe mammals and maybe "lesser" animals can feel dread and despair and such. Develope depression, get traumatized and developed PTSD, etc. I think mammals are much more human than other humans give them recognition for. I also believe that if an animal looks at his or her food bowl and looks away and walks away, that's it considering whether it should eat for pleasure or for hunger. And thus shows decision making.
Besides, we've proven that crows and ravens (birds) are pretty intelligent.
The part about not knowing infants felt pain is a myth, one of the main reasons they didn’t anaesthetise infants was because they were not sure how to do it without accidentally k*****g them by giving the wrong dose
And why they never numbed the area before circumscising them
Load More Replies..."most people think animals don't feel pain or are incapable of any kind of sentience and sapience." Really? I've never met anyone who believed that. Apes, elephants and dolphins have all been shown to pass some version of the "Mirror Test" which has been acknowledged for decades to be a sign of sentience. Several species of mammals have been shown to use tools. And several species of mammals have been shown to demonstrate recognition of others even after a long absence. Recently an experiment was done with an elephant pack where they played an old recording of an elephant who had since died. The whole group started trumpeting and searching for her. They became so distressed that experiment was terminated immediately. Even animals of two different species can show concern and give help to each other. There are lots of books on animal behavior and I suggest this person should read some.
Almost everyone that fishes for sport seems to believe fish don't feel the pain of the fish hook. Only a few I've met are callus enough to just not care that the fish feels the horrific pain of the hook being ripped out of their face.
Load More Replies...Plants absolutely do feel pain of a sorts. The "fresh cut grass smell" isn't just pleasant; it's a plant's chemical distress signal, called Green Leaf Volatiles (GLVs), released as a defense mechanism when damaged by a mower or insects, attracting predators and signaling danger to other plants
I saw a documentary decades ago which had some sort of special film or filter in use while ripping a cabbage out of the ground. The filter flared, suggesting the cabbage screamed.
Load More Replies...Not sure why this is in 'historical facts'. The first part is a fallacy and the second part is just ' I reckon...'
Corvids have been seen to use tools, which isn't exactly brainless.
Load More Replies...I think most people are aware that animals feel pain, and have richer emotional lives than some are willing to admit.
I think you're being very, very optimistic about "most people".
Load More Replies...I was very ignorant about this type of thing with my older two kids (both boys), but doing more research as I got older, and learning more about it all, is what lead me to forgo the snip with my youngest. I wish I would’ve done the same with my older two. I was 18 and 20 though, and that’s just “what you do with a boy”
It has been scientifically proven that most every mammal has the same base chemicals for emotion, and many non mammals have the EXACT SAME chemicals for some of the same, though not as conplex depending on the kind.
The dancing plague of 1518, or dance epidemic of 1518 (French: Épidémie dansante de 1518; German: Straßburger Tanzwut), was a case of dancing mania that occurred in Strasbourg, Alsace (modern-day France), in the Holy Roman Empire from July 1518 to September 1518. Somewhere between 50 and 400 people took to dancing for weeks. There are many theories behind the phenomenon, the most popular being stress-induced mass hysteria, suggested by John Waller.[1][2] Other theories include ergot poisoning. There is controversy concerning the number of deaths.[3]
Tbh I just can’t believe such an insane party went down, stress induced doesn’t sound correct to me (I’m not the smartest though so eh). This sounds like burning man to the max. Maybe some crazy fermented wine or something.
Ergot. Mouldy grain rather than mouldy bread. Mouldy bread is more likely to be penicillin.
Load More Replies...If you'd ever seen me dance, you'd be hard-pressed to tell the difference, I'm afraid.
Load More Replies...It was caused by some sort of fungi in bread , i think that’s the general consensus
Czech Republic/ former Czechoslovakia as a landlocked country without ever having a navy still has a naval Victory, that didn’t even happen in Europe .
If you ever feel stupid, just remember that Mongolia has a navy. Yeah, the Mongolia that is completely surrounded by land and is over 400 miles from the nearest sea.
Many landlocked countries have some form of a Brown Water Navy, operating on lakes and rivers.
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For centuries in western culture, reading silently was considered everything from strange to immoral and potentially dangerous into the 18th century. The danger comes from when people started reading in bed by candle light and there was a chance of the fire spreading by someone who had fallen asleep reading.
Where are you getting this from. I'd like to see some sources for this too.
James Burke mentions this in his book and in his series "The Day the Universe Changed" back in the 80s. That's where I learned it from. The word 'audit' comes from 'auditory'. When they did audits back in the Dark Ages, they did them aloud because people didn't read to themselves then. That's why they were called 'audits' in the first place.
Load More Replies...Silent reading wasn't inherently bad, but its rise marked a significant cultural shift from communal performance to individual reflection, changing how people engaged with texts and ideas.
Probably very few people COULD read in the time this post refers to. The one who could would be priests, who read out loud in church, and nobility, who nobody could stop them reading however they wanted to read, and anyway they had servants to snuff out the candle or lamp
Google with: "reading silently was considered everything from strange to immoral and potentially dangerous into the 18th century". AI says: That is incorrect. The ability to read silently was widely known and practiced long before the 18th century. Historical accounts indicate that silent reading was practiced in antiquity, notably by St. Augustine of Hippo in the 4th century CE, who described his mentor St. Ambrose reading without moving his lips in his Confessions. While silent reading was common among highly educated individuals and monks throughout the Middle Ages, the dominant mode of reading was often oral or "sub-vocal" (muttering quietly to oneself), primarily because texts were expensive, literacy rates were low, and reading out loud was necessary for shared learning and memory.
"AI says". Oh , well, problem sorted, then, innit ?
Load More Replies...Silent reading was impossible for a long time, as originally no blanks and nearly no punctuation were used and spelling was variable. So the only way to read a text, was to read it aloud. (see "punctuation" in wikipedia).
Ummm, people could read in their heads, the same way you use your inner monologue now. Verbalizing made it easier but not impossible at all.
Load More Replies...Ketchup was sold as medicine in the 1800s.
Funny thing, ketchup is a type of sauce and not exclusive for being made out of tomatoes. Way back then the most common ketchup was made out of mushrooms
There are recipes for Ketchups that go backt to the 1700s. "Ketchup" is any savory sauce used to enhance your food... there are mushroom ketchups and other plants as well beside the tomato ketchup popular today.
Pope Leo the first begged its life from the Turkic commander Attila the Hun, in 452 AD. It was because Attila caused great harm to whole Europe and Western Rome, and was on way to attack and end the Western Rome. Surprisingly he accepted and did not attack.
I wish people would proofread before they post something, what is ‘ it’s’
It's a bit optimistic to speak of Attila the Turk everywhere in the year 400.
Most writing systems in the world descend from Egyptian Hieroglyphics (Chinese doesn't, but Mongolian, Manchurian and Tibetan do).
They say "most" and then name three that have no roots with the Romanic languages which are the basis of most written languages today, including languages that were unwritten before Western influences (English, French, German, Spanish, almost all written North American Native languages, many written African languages).
In Chinese history class, I learned that the written Chinese language was developed from scratches on bones used to record counts of animals and crops. There was a need to expand to messages or details using symbols.
Not my native languages, they all derive from the script used by the Harappans and maybe some semitic languages had influence on some scripts
Partly wrong: Tibetan, Mongolian, and Manchu scripts all stem from Indian Brahmi scripts, with Tibetan created in the 7th century from Gupta script for Buddhist texts; Mongolian, adapted from Old Uyghur (itself Turkic/Sogdian/Aramaic roots) around 1204, serves as the direct ancestor for Manchu; and Manchu, developed in 1599 by Nurhaci's order, adapted the vertical Mongolian script, adding features for Chinese loanwords, creating a unique family of writing systems deeply tied to Buddhist transmission and imperial administration
???? Not true....it's true that many writing systems of the world had roots in ideograms and hieroglyphs and syllabaries and alphabets developed from that independently. It's hard to imagine that the Mayan hieroglyphs descended from the Egyptian hieroglyphs or pictograms Oceans away and the Rongo-rongo script of Easter Island.
During the greek-italian war greek soldiers captured so many vehicles to form the 1st tank unit and almost caused the 2nd line of defences to surrender because they believed a breakthrough happened.
This makes little sense, and I can't find anything online resembling it
The US occupied the Philippines after the Spanish American war to sell more pants.
The McKinley administration in the 1890s was very concerned about the fact that supply growth was outstripping demand growth domestically, and causing financial panics and a potential recession.
Garments were a key US industry but we were making ever more pants etc but not seeing a corresponding increase in Americans who needed to buy pants. Seizing colonies, and monopolizing their markets, was seen as a solution to this. So one thing leads to another and the US ends up occupying the Philippines to, in fact, sell pants
This is false, the US didnt even began to sell anything there until years later. The McKinley didnt even want the Philippines, but aftet the war when the British and Germans made moves to occupy it, he changed his mind to keep it. There are also no sources that support any claims about American Colonialism to sell anything. US colonialism began by accident and continued as a way to protect US trade routes, nothing more
Americans colonised somewhere else, along with all of western Europe...yet everyone's focus is on Britain.
IKR? But, to be fair, we did have the largest and most successful empire ever, so there's that. Also the most benign, despite what people like to imagine.
Load More Replies...AI says: The claim that the U.S. occupied the Philippines just to sell pants is a simplification; the reality involved complex motives like strategic naval bases, commercial interests (including access to Asian markets for goods like sugar and hemp), Manifest Destiny, and preventing other powers (like Germany or Japan) from taking control after Spain's defeat, with sugar tariffs being a key business driver.
Love those articles but please include independent sources, not just 'the dude on reddit that posted this'
If only there was the teeniest mite of fact-checking before regurgitating such obvious rubbish as "infants don't feel pain". 🤦
I hate to say it, but that was the prevailing theory at the time. I did fact check it ages ago, and was horrified to learn that what id read was correct.
Load More Replies...1914 "battle" of lake malawi in africa. when the war horns were sounded, all forces were to attack the enemy. on lake malawi in africa, one side was british, the other, german. both had an armed "ship" on this large lake. the ships' had been friends and drinking buddies for a few years and war was not going to stop that. both agreed the german vessel was inferior so the word was sent to both countries that the german boat was sunk. the british admiralty FINALLY found out about the ruse in 1917 and ORDERED their ship to sink the german for real this time. the skipper allowed the german skipper to remove anything they wanted and abandon it to be sunk.
It was really interesting learning about these historical facts. More of this BP, less of non-stop political/celeb articles.
My favorite is still that the American Civil War started in a guy's meadow and ended in the same guy's parlor at a different location.
Quite a few if these I read before. It would be nice to read new ones instead of people reposting what I would assume people just copying what they read before.
Brian. You're still not quite with it are you. They copy posts from Reddit. They couldn't care less if they're repeats. There is nobody posting stuff here for these 'articles'. It's literally clickbait designed to get eyeballs on ads.
Load More Replies...Love those articles but please include independent sources, not just 'the dude on reddit that posted this'
If only there was the teeniest mite of fact-checking before regurgitating such obvious rubbish as "infants don't feel pain". 🤦
I hate to say it, but that was the prevailing theory at the time. I did fact check it ages ago, and was horrified to learn that what id read was correct.
Load More Replies...1914 "battle" of lake malawi in africa. when the war horns were sounded, all forces were to attack the enemy. on lake malawi in africa, one side was british, the other, german. both had an armed "ship" on this large lake. the ships' had been friends and drinking buddies for a few years and war was not going to stop that. both agreed the german vessel was inferior so the word was sent to both countries that the german boat was sunk. the british admiralty FINALLY found out about the ruse in 1917 and ORDERED their ship to sink the german for real this time. the skipper allowed the german skipper to remove anything they wanted and abandon it to be sunk.
It was really interesting learning about these historical facts. More of this BP, less of non-stop political/celeb articles.
My favorite is still that the American Civil War started in a guy's meadow and ended in the same guy's parlor at a different location.
Quite a few if these I read before. It would be nice to read new ones instead of people reposting what I would assume people just copying what they read before.
Brian. You're still not quite with it are you. They copy posts from Reddit. They couldn't care less if they're repeats. There is nobody posting stuff here for these 'articles'. It's literally clickbait designed to get eyeballs on ads.
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