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50 Historical Facts That Have Completely Ruined The Way These People See The World
Learning history can be a transformative experience. It can challenge your long-held beliefs and assumptions about societies, their culture, and humanity in general.
Discovering that what you've been taught is not the (whole) truth, and that events you thought were isolated incidents are actually part of a broader pattern is jarring. But as uncomfortable as it may be, this process can liberate you, providing you with a new level of clarity and understanding.
So let's take a look at a Reddit post, created by user u/FlickTheSwitch167 that asked everyone "What historical fact have you learnt that ruined everything you ever thought you knew about this life?" And it has received a fair share of insightful replies!
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The more we find out about Native Americans, the more I realize the entire history of the United States is complete white-washed b******t.
I mean, I was pretty young when I learned about the Holocaust. I'm german, and we take this topic really seriously of course. It dawned on me then that the world wasn't as innocent as I thought it was back then. But I'm glad I learned about it at that young age. I was able to gain interest in that topic, and that's pretty important considering the latest events in the East of Europe. And it's important for my generation to really understand and grasp the horrors of the 3rd Reich to ensure that this won't happen again. Sadly it seems not all countries get educated that well in this topic. Not listing any names, there are many countries that now start to go into a rather fascist direction, which is more than concerning.
It worries me, as a Brit, that after defeating the Nazis in WWII (along with the rest of the allied forces, of course), we are now effectively being led by politicians with a very similar ideology, especially when it comes to immigration etc. The conservatives do not represent the whole of the British people.
Ghandi was a hypocritical pieces of s**t.
Mother Teresa stole loads of money and left people to die.
Thank you so much. Few people realize these 2 were really narcissistic sociopaths
I'm from Texas, born and raised.
I found out within the past few years that the Texas Revolution was mainly due to Mexico outlawing slavery and Texas... not wanting to do that.
So everyone at the Alamo essentially died to preserve slavery. Yay.
i have lived in texas my whole life and i didn't know this even though i took texas history last year-
The church began the vow of celibacy for priests, not for any Biblical reasons, but so the priest didn’t have a spouse or any offspring who could inherit his wealth. This way the Church inherited all of it.
That we domesticated pigeons thousands of years ago and then decided we didn’t want them anymore. People treat them like vermin after we relied on them for so much (food, messengers etc)
The pigeons you see in your cities are not wild, they’re abandoned.
The ending of the last sentence, ‘ abandoned.’ Pigeons are actually highly intelligent!
Old norse runes were found carved up like 20 feet in a cave- when they were translated, they just said "this is very high"
God I love people aksjsj
African kings were the ones who advertised their people as work force/labor to the world.
They died regretting those decisions.
“It says here in this history book that luckily, the good guys have won every single time. What are the odds?”
- Norm MacDonald
History books are written by the winners, I'd love to see history through the loser's pov.
When I got older and realized the countless atrocities the United States has committed. Genocide, collusion, bombing our own cities. I used to feel a sense of safety knowing that I lived with the good guys and we stood for justice. That feeling is fleeting
Not to mention overthrowing other democracies around the world. Read up on Iran.
Ancient Antarctica was actually a rainforest, a lush and verdant paradise, filled with flora and fauna.
Despite the interesting fact that there was a whole continent of animals who lived on this planet that we’ll never know about - as their remains are locked beneath miles of ice - it blew my mind that Antarctica only fully froze over about 35 million years ago, despite breaking from its supercontinent ~ 180 million years ago.
That means Antarctica supported independent life for ~ 145 million years, which ruined any sense I have for time and perspective. We really are specks on this planet.
There's a large lake somewhere under the permafrost in the middle of the continent. Who knows if there's any aquatic life still living in there or if there's any frozen over that is unique to that lake.
If you look at the history of mankind, you quickly see that nobody ever learned from our history.
Can't remember the exact quote but it went something like, If the entirety of human (Homo) history was condensed into a 500 page book, modern anatomical humans wouldn't show up until page 450, and homosapiens wouldn't build empires until page 490, the atomic bomb and the foundation of Rome would be on the final page and only a paragraph apart. And yet in all of this the vast amount of technological advancements from the discovery of the atom to the modern day would fit in the last few sentences, of the last paragraph of the last page. And people wonder why we are reckless, we're still effectively great apes, but with shiny toys.
The inventions of Nikola Tesla and what little Edison actually invented himself
The Irish famine was an opportunity the British took to commit genocide against the Irish. They were intentionally starved, while other crops were shipped off island to the British citizens.
Yes. I have a degree in Irish Studies and this was brought up early and often throughout the course of my degree. It was overwhelming at times to read the individual stories and statements.
Leopold of Belgium,treated congo as "his personal property"
And people who failed to collect enough Cocoa had thier hands/the hands of their kids cut
And france forced Haiti (one of the poorest countries ever) to take a loan from a french bank,to pay the french government "a compensation for kicking the french occupation and slave traders out"
They paid it for nearly 100 years,
I knew humans could be s**t but somehow i thought there was a limit
95% of native people before Columbus died of diseases brought by explorers. That's 19 of 20 people, for two continents.
Columbus was a pr!ck, and all he brought were disease and misery.
There was a Spanish explorer that first visited the Inca empire and saw lots of prosperous cities and a great civilisation, and told his peers about it when he returned home. But when other folks went to visit the siad cities they found nothing but jungle and thought the explorer lied about his story. The fact that blew my mind is that nowadays we discovered that his story was true and the people he encounterd died from diseases brought into the new world and the cities and civilization they build were consumed by jungle in the spam of a few years
I grew up in a conservative hometown. When I was in late college, I began to learn how the Bible is essentially a long game of telephone and one where the members playing telephone purposefully exagerrated and changed what they repeated to the next person.
The Bible was written by men who never met Jesus, who got their information about Jesus from other people, in a time period that relished mystics and it was normal to change facts, did not have any understanding of "facts" in general or reliability. The men also changed what they wrote about Jesus based on political changes at the time.
I spent a lot of time at the library in my early 20's and learned that the Old Testament isn't very old and some of the oldest stories are just copies or much older Sumerian myths. The Exodus has no real world evidence whatsoever, and the Egyptians ruled over the holy land for thousands of years without ever mentioning the Hebrew people until the Bronze Age Collapse.
And that whole baby in the Nile story was REALLY common among the "important" people.
The Japanese murdered more Chinese than the Germans did Jews. We praise Japan for their society and technological advances and despise the Germans because of Hitler. Whats worse? The Japanese boiling babies or the germans corraling jews into gas chambers? Yet the Japanese don't get much mainstream attention for all their atrocities.
We don't despise the Germans any more than we despise the Japanese. Neither Nazi Germany nor Imperial Japan survived past 1945.
It's not a f*****g competition. Plus, which generation and specifically who was responsible? Certainly not anyone alive today. When are we going to leave people alone, who had nothing to do with the atrocities of the past, just being born in a country with a dark past? That's a lot of weight to carry around for people who are just wanting to live their life and make the world better, or even just survive. We all got our own problems in the present to worry about. We all need to learn to get along and accept everyone for who we are now, and not what our ancestors did. Learn history, good. Blame people of today for history, bad. So, in this context of the Japanese today, no they're not perfect, but they have come a long way as a society and country.
That's because McArthur was the gov general, and he and his cronies totally f****d up the process of war crimes trials. There are sooooio many Japanese just as brutal to allied POWs, and so many involved in the rape of China,. There are literally thousands of Japanese that should have been executed for war crimes, but the only way crimes trials that were successful were in Europe, mainly Nuremberg, however, after all those trials ceased, the attorneys and judges concluded that there were approximately 100,000 Nazi s that should have been prosecuted but couldn't be located, thanks to the Vatican run rat lines and Odessa spiriting these men away to South America, and also, since the cold war started heating up, the allies concluded that they needed to stop the trials because they needed Germany as a buffer between the west and the Soviet union. So, the only people left to go after the Nazi war criminals were Mossad,. Then, in the worst action possible, the US rescued 150 + German scientists, including Werner and Max Von Braun, so the US could build ballistic missiles and start NASA. No one is innocent, except the people who were murdered.
i would say we praise Germany for their current society and technological advances as well
I know right, German knives, cars food and then Japan for electronics, cars and food 😆 both are awesome now
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Some of us prefer to hold “militarism” to blame, not peoples. But, as an American, where militarism is held up as a virtue, I don’t get much traction.
You know this stuff still goes on in other countries, right? But Time changes and new generations have new ideas. During WWII in germany if you didn't act like you supported hitler you would disappear. So not all germans; not all japanese. America's atrocity is valuing guns more than children
Not all Americans, though. And we won't go missing if we speak up and speak out.
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uh? Modern Japan is as far from that as modern Germany is from Hitler! Luckily societies can evolve for the better in a few decades. Sadly there are exceptions, for example if you have a dictator who still lives in the 1950s and believes his run-down country is interesting enough so "The West" wants to attack it - FCK PTN
Not a damn competition. As a Chinese person, they were BOTH atrocious. But it’s the Nazi not the Germans. There’s a difference. Also, the Japanese guys who did all these horrible stuff to us are dead now. All of them are dead. Fortunately
What's worse is that japanese don't learn about it in school. In Germany kids learn about the nazi regime early on so it never repeats again, but the japanese just completely deleted that part of history and don't mention it in their history books. Also japan has never apologized for those atrocities (in china and in korea), not even once
We could also add into this debate what the UK government and the USA government did with zero repercussions. The UK used POWs as slave labour in the UK, the USA built internment camps for Japanese US citizens, many of whom had over 100 years of US descent. Slavery has been around since humans decided that other humans were "less than", most of them were the victims of a losing side in war. Many nations' leaders chose to use their people as currency to appease a foe or to prevent colonization. Slavery is not truly about colour, it's about who dominated who thousands of years ago, before modern religion. The Roman Empire enslaved millions of people across the world from mainland Europe to North Africa to Scandinavia. The much maligned British Empire is barely 300 years old. The French, Dutch, Spanish, German and Austrian nations colonised countries around the world. History is destined to repeat for as long as humans think we are the superior species.
« We praise Japan for their society and technological advances and despise the Germans because of Hitler » Who wrote this s**t?
@Jonny: they were not forced to speak Russian but kids learned Russian in school as a second language. Same a kids in West Germany learned English in school. Source: I am German with roots in both former East and west Germany, I went to school before 1989.
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Neither does the mass murder of 10 million Congolese by King Leopold ll of Belgium, what some have called the “The Hidden or Forgotten Holocaust”.
Part of the terms for surrender were that the Japanese Royal family was immune from prosecution. They were the ones who were in charge of the Chinese atrocities so it is largely ignored. Plus the Japanese do not acknowledge they even did this.
also to the korean people. the women were scribbled on with tattoo pens
The Germans have fessed up to their crimes. That is the biggest difference between Germany and Japan in respect to WWII, and the occupation/subjugation of Korea and China, which don't get enough press. As far as the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, this was done to prevent more deaths of American GIs in the Pacific Islands, such as Saipan. Of course, the A-bombs would not have been dropped if Japan had not declared war on the USA and bombed Pearl Harbor.
No we don’t despise the Germans cos hitler., or modern day Japan for things that happened big on a century ago
I think the reasons for our ignorance are manifold. First, though the US entered WW II because of Japan and Pearl Harbor, I would venture to say more movies and TV shows on the war have been about the European Theater. So there has been little cultural arts awareness. Secondly, public schools ignore Asia in general. Asian brutality visited upon other Asian nations is not even a footnote. Thirdly, US troops did not fight the Japanese on Japan proper, as we did the Nazis in Germany. Finally, we can't teach everything in history. The US was a combatant in WW II. We were not a combatant in any other war of aggression by Japan, so why would we teach about Japan vs China, or Japan vs Korea?
I just recently found out about the history of Sakhalin Island and what the Japanese did to the Korean and native people there. The Russian half of the island wasn't a bright spot either.
What's worse is that you don't see both as atrocities that should never be deemed excused or acceptable. German youth seek to discredit the Holocaust as though someone else is worse is acceptable. Grow up. It happened and no need to deny or whitewash it.
My kid’s dad is Chinese (1st gen American). His father who grew up in a small village outside of Hong Kong absolutely despised the Japanese until he died. His son (my kid’s dad) just thought he was the stereotypical racist/old person. Nope, years after his dad’s passing we found out that a large portion of his family were murdered by the Japanese army during their invasion and occupation. When we found out the full extent of his family’s slaughter we finally understood two things. His family (at that time was super small well before Mao & the 1 child initiative) but was due to the slaughter and his dad would’ve never immigrated if WWII never happened. Go figure.
Evil is very much a contest between two or more trying out for a spot on that team.
We didn't get the Chinese coming here as displaced immigrants, nor did they head out to found their own country. So most people have never heard about this. Japan isn't going to want to talk about this, and the Chinese don't seem to want to, either.
Yes, and Japanese government does not allow such facts to be taught in their schools. I have been appalled with young Japanese I have met with so little knowledge of negative Japanese history. On the other hand, I am so disappointed with many young Americans on how little they "remember" about the US history that they should have been fought
This is a pretty ignorant statement. I've been studying war, particular the first and second World Wars, for over 40 years, and the Japanese committed some of the most horrific atrocities imaginable during WW2, against anyone not "pure" Japanese. And against living men and women, civilians and captured soldiers. There's the blatant experimentation on living being that rivaled the worst of Mengele's known experiments--vivisection was horribly common in secret labs in secret locations, and one thing not widely known (or known at all) is that captured Allied soldiers were also taken to these places and subjected to the same experimentation as persons of other nations: to this day, many Japanese consider anyone not of "pure" blood (absolutely no dilution by non-Japanese relations) to be inferior. But some of the worst stuff I came across were letters and reports referring to how Japanese soldiers and officers cut body parts off of LIVING POWs, to keep the meat fresh. So "MIA"?
Hey, right after the WWII the Germany as a nation, started to work on their way to redemption, the same as Japan (them just a few months later). It's not like people forgot what Japanese committed, Japan just rebuilt itself faster or more effectively. (Only 2 A-Bombs in comparison to whole Germany bombed and cauterized. They simply had a better new start, bastards.)
we do? -again, history education seems to vary a lot from country to country
To counter your story, being an Asian living in Asia, and in one of the country attacked by the Japanese, I believe most Asian countries is very well aware of the Japanese occupation as we studied them during history lessons in high school. On the contrary, we only learnt about the Nazi at a later stage in life through documentaries and movies. So I would say the Japanese occupation indeed is very much made known across all ASEAN countries. We just simply look forward and don't hate them as what's past is past.
The japanese never apologized to my country for killing people and raping women.
S**t happens during war times... no act is worst than the other - murder is murder. Japan didn't get much scrutiny from it since this country traded all its findings from the torture to america . You're talking about an insane amount of data which ironically was used to create medicines we use today.
Yes, the death of 6 million Jews was horrific. When Hitler's army marched through Russia, they went from town to town and killed everyone there. 8 million Russians were murdered in that way, but nobody seems to want to talk about that either.
To be clear we praise their society and technological advancements now. The same with the Germans. Nobody (except looney folk) are praising pre-WWII Germany or Japan.
Yes the Japanese commited horrific crimes and don't have to account for it same as Germans do, although I as a German don't feel despised). Still I think that your whole argumentation is off. Besides you are counting wrong: Germans killed 13 Mio people in war crimes alone (including Jews). Counting Jews against Chinese to try to make a point - what the hell!
We already blew up Japan twice, how much nore can we do. Thats a joke by the way
A Leaf in the Storm, by Ling Yutang, is a novel ambiented in that period of China's history. At a certain point in the novel Ling halts the narration and addresses the reader directly in a sort of written third wall, to give his impression of the atrocities commited by the Japanese. It's heartbreaking.
I read a very historically accurate fictional story of someone living in Korea while it was under Japanese rule, and the book opens with the Japanese taking a Korean man by force up the hill to be their guide, pushing him to his limits as he led them through the snow in rags, and then when they got back to the town in the valley, they told him to run away and they shot him as he ran for fun. Imperialist Japan was no joke, and as a country it has changed, and we should never blame new generations for the actions of their ancestors, but what we should do is be more aware that this happened in not so distant history
The reason the Japanese got a pass as far as their medical experiments on prisoners were concerned, was that the leaders of the project defected to US and USSR. With paperwork. Truman and Stalin were sufficiently impressed.
People seem to forget that, yes. "The nukes weren't necessary, they were finished!"...okay, but were they finished with China? Our nukes may have saved China.
The previous prime minister believed it was all slander. The Japanese government doesn't teach what they did in schools
I know that my uncle was taken prisoner by the Japanese during WW 2. He would never speak about what he witnessed or what treatment he received but I do know that he would never have anything Japanese in his home. Maybe its time for the war crimes the Japanese committed were made more mainstream and see if it changes anyone's impression of the Japanese.
The heart of man is inherently evil. Most of us are taught to keep a tight rein on it. Unless you are born spiritually, that heart will never change and when it is unleashed, all hell can break loose!
Read the book The Rape of Nanking. What an eye opener. But the thing is, they’ve only expressed “regret” for their actions. That is NOT an apology. Germany has issued an apology. Can you ever really apologize for that? No, but at least they said it and acknowledge all they did. They want future generations to know and understand so it is never repeated. Shinzo Abe was about white washing the history of WWII.
I knee nothing of this so googled it...the depravity and cruelty humans sink to makes me want to cry. All these Chinese people were killed yet I have never heard of it,and I have watched a lot iof documentaries on WW2 . The more you learn,the worse it gets.
Mao Zedong killed about 45 million Chinese citizens. Famine and disease killed millions through history. Leaders killed their own citizens. All of it is horrible.
I have never heard anyone praising the Japan that existed in the 1930s and 1940s.
i wonder if they ate the babies after boiling them? (plz don’t downvote me i’m just wondering not trying to be funny or anything)
Both Germany and Japan could do what they did through relentless “othering” of people. If you see people as less than human then it’s easier to systematically kill them we see the same today with regards to refugees and asylum seekers and the ignorant just lap it up.
many societies are "well developed" only in the same sense cannibals are a developed group because they use cutlery
I think when we vapourised a couple of their cities killing hundreds of thousands of civilians we probably lost the moral high ground...
This definitely has cultural differences. Back in the day you'd probably have found a lot of Australians who hated Japan with a passion because that's the main theatre of war they fought in. That and the fact it probably felt closer to home. I also suspect that because the US nuked Japan it changed their attitude as well.
As an African, probably learning about all the empires and developments on the African continent. Things that fly in the face of the claim that Africans were backward savages.
We probably know more about the empires in the northern parts of the continent but other developments like the Kingdom of Zimbabwe and Mapungubwe, the latter whose discovery was kept hush-hush because it didn't fit in with the narrative that justified continued colonization of Africans.
There's another more newly discovered civilization, named the BoKoni, that's still subject to all sorts of rumours just because it couldn't have been Africans that did that.
That even the "huts" some Africans lived in were a proactive choice because of certain advantages they held such as their ability to deal with the local climate and not simply because that's all they knew.
A bunch of little things that make history seem a lot less "black and white".
Also, Timbuktu. I took a couple of courses from a woman who became an Urban Anthropologist, in Africa. This teeny, tiny Jewish woman from Connecticut (as she described herself) received quite a few raised eyebrows when she voiced her career intentions. She spent years in Africa studying urban cultures, and of the past cities, before most people even recognize that people in Africa were capable of great civilization. The knowledge was there, but most people didn't want to hear it.
Victorian era London was a terrible place to be alive as a member of the working class. If I recall correctly. You could pay a penny to sit indoors on a bench but no sleeping! Two Pennies and you could swing your arms over a rope and sleep standing up or if you made hella money that day you could pay 4 Pennies and sleep in a coffin. The water is undrinkable and children expected working hours were 12 to 18 a day starting at 4 yrs old. By those standards a lot of us would look like royalty to them.
I once heard a saying that goes *“if you trace someone’s ‘land’ back far enough in time, it was bought in blood.”*
Prior to 1976 student loan debt could be discharged immediately after graduation by filing for bankruptcy. Then the "education amendments of 1976" stipulated that student loans could not be discharged in bankruptcy until five years of repayment, barring proof of "undue hardship." 1984 this was extended to cover private student loans as well. The "crime control act of 1990" extended the period before which bankruptcy proceedings could commence to 7 years after repayment began. And in 1991 the six year statute of limitations on collection was finally eliminated after it had been enacted in 1985. By 1998 there was a big push to eliminate any methods of discharging student loans via bankruptcy and seven years later, in the year 2005, all qualified student loans (including most private) were excepted from discharge with the passage of the "bankruptcy abuse prevention and consumer protection act."
Since then there have been a few attempts to give modern college educated people the same fighting chance that the old college educated folks had, but to little avail. Many of the same boomers that vote against helping college grads get out of exorbitant debt are the same ones who had their own college education funded by taxpayers. Still think those old folks in politics have the people's best interest in mind?
There are graffiti that got preserved in Pompei and Herculanum. Because they didn't have paper, public announcement were directly painted on the walls.
Some of those graffiti are on par with what you can find on the toilet's wall of trucker's stop. "i f****d the barmaid", "Felix f***s like a god", "Take of your clothes and show us your hairy privates"
That Oxford University is older than the Aztec empire.
Okay bored panda, I don’t really like being ‘that guy’, but… This is a photo of a Mayan architecture (temple at Chichen Itza), not Aztec.
Learning about the depth and breadth of slavery in human history was a real eye-opener. We have really detailed documents from more modern history to show WHY that idea is so heinous, but it's always been a significant part of cultures all around the world serving as anything from a social construct to the very currency of war and with autonomy ranging from that of livestock to that of a low caste. Evidence of slavery predates written records and is even included in the code of Hammurabi where it was already an established institution and we still haven't stamped it out today, April 10th 2023, where slavery affects an estimated 46 million people (that's more than the total population of California, and approximately the population of Spain). It's crazy how awful humans have always been to one another and that we still can't seem to hold each other accountable for basic human rights, despite indelible proof.
Humans and a few monkeys are the only species, I believe, who kill for reasons other than survival. Our big brains do us little favor.
No one outside of America thinks the Puritans were a bunch of sweet, oppressed, morally-pure goody-goodies.
Puritans were clearly religious fanatics. They were thrown out of 3 separate places.....England, Holland, Brazil.....before settling in New England at a time of year when it was too late to plant a crop.
When I learned that NASA had discovered over 100 billion GALAXIES and seeing the image to put into perspective that our entire solar system is only about the size of a coin compared to our galaxy which in relation would be the size of the United States.
We are so incredibly small within the universe.
Edit to add: Here’s a [photo](https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2021/hubble-gazes-at-a-galactic-menagerie) of just a snippet of the various galaxies. Keeping in mind, we haven’t even ventured outside of our solar system which is within our Milky Way galaxy, just a grain of sand in context to the universe.
That Napoleon wasn’t cartoonishly short. All those cartoons were a lie…
British rule of India caused at least 10 famines yet we almost hear nothing about it
The issue is more complex than this. Famine occurred on the Indian subcontinent in the areas ruled by English interests AND in areas ruled by Indian princes. It was also the English who first studied how to prevent famine and came up with the Indian Famine Code guidelines that were modernised by the Indian government..
It broke me the first time I learned that the library of Alexandria burnt down, and the scholars at the time still were trying to decipher parchment from even older and more ancient civilizations. I heard that and instantly realized we don't deserve our own intelligence
That, during WW2, all the other countries did not help the Jews escape from Nazi Germany, but on the contrary, closed their borders! For instance, the St. Louis was denied at a number of ports, until they finally had to return to Denmark, which was under Nazi occupation. They COULD have let those Jews on board in, say, Cuba or Florida or wherever!
That when the pyramids were being built, mammoths were walking the earth. Woolly mammoths lived there until 1700 BC. The Great Pyramid was completed around 2560 BC.
As someone who grew up going to an evangelical church at least 2 times per week, Alan Turing's story is the one that made me re-examine what I thought I knew about homosexuality being immoral/unnatural/sin. I was probably 19 or 20 at the time.
It's probably the most pivotal thing that led me to question more about my faith despite it being so vitally important to my parents.
I think the two things that convinced me religion wasn't real was original sin (ie: a baby wouldn't automatically get into heaven) and that dogs wouldn't be there either. I was pretty young at the time but it was like "you're saying this place is perfect", "Yes", "But my dog won't be there.", "No he doesn't have a soul". "Well I'm out".
More of a fun one, but lighters predate strike matches by a couple centuries. They originated from repurposed flintlock pistols that ignited tinder shoved in the barrel that were set aflame by the trigger mechanism.
That actually makes a lot of sense… kinda sad that we have more advancements from weapons than other useful items.
I always grew up thinking that something like 50-75% of all white Americans owned slaves during the 1700s/1800s, my mind was kind of blown when I learned that it was closer to 1-3% of Americans.
edit: for context since this comment has received some upvotes..
25% of white families in the south likely owned a slave. In a few southern states (Mississippi for example) that number is closer to 45-50%. However, I was speaking about all Americans and not just those in the south.
It's possible if not likely that the overall number of whites in America owning slaves were closer to 5-10% rather than 1-3%, however my point stands that I always assumed it was closer to 50-75%.
Think about it. The majority of white immigrants arrived in the US during the 19th century. Most white Americans are only 3-5 generations away from being immigrants, whereas black Americans' families had been there at least double or triple that time.
I saw this in a WWI documentary. It's not so much a "historical fact" as much as "holy s**t I never thought about that"
We are taught that during the Great War, the allies were the good guys and the central powers were the bad guys. There were no good guys. Both sides used chemical warfare, both sides experimented with new tactics, both sides tortured and killed each other.
WW1 was basically a family squabble between European royal families. Except instead of throwing plates or slamming doors, they sent millions of poor people to their deaths
That I'd been living in the same society with all of those people who hatefully protested racial segregation in the 60s. They just went into hiding when it became socially unacceptable to wear your bigotry loud and proud. I no longer wonder what makes such a person as I get to watch the actual people announce their bigotry loud and proud today. Ignorance was bliss.
As a white male growing up in the south I always wondered why if the klan was so proud of what they represented why did they hide behind the hoods? Show your faces, you cowards!
Willing to see Japanese folks to share what they learnt about the relationship between Korea. From what Japanese were taught in school, they “industrialized” Korea when they actually colonized and tortured millions of Koreans.
That the Middle East was once then center of knowledge and learning, particularly Bagdad. As well as the amazing extent and advanced civilizations in South and Central America prior to the 1500s.
Ruined in an interesting, not bad way: ancient Greek and Roman polychromy.
The Parthenon temple looked a bit like Disneyland.
Being raised in all catholic schools it was really surprising to me to learn that a lot of sections in the bible and a lot of religious practices were instated by people who basically decided so and justified it with ideas that were hammered to fit whatever they said
Like it wasn't always that priests had to be celibate. Some pope decided that they should be and that was that but really all it would take to reverse that is a pope to say otherwise and a bunch of cardinals to support it. And it doesn't really matter what religious texts say, since the chuirch basically controls the "official interpretation", they can say whetever they want
edit: to the based redpilled people out there being all "oMg dId YOu ThINk rElIgionS aRe ReAL", yeah no, the surprising part was to learn how easily the church can change any aspect of their dogma when they actually manage to agree on it. And if their own texts refute said change, they can just say "oh we looked at it again and it actually means we are right now"
Thus Martin Luther's rebellion, and the Protestant Movement...which really changed nothing, because most people still rely on other people to tell them what the Bible says and what it all means. But at least it is no longer illegal or heretical to translate it into any language, and to read it for one's self, if one is so inclined.
Not necessarily a historical fact but more of a fact of history; out of everything we know, there is so much more we don't know and simply never will know.
Even worse, the a lot of the things we believe we know are from commonly accepted theories that are held onto by elitist, ageing historians which only become refuted and debunked as they literally die off. The field of history as much as history itself is so ridiculously fascinating.
This is why I think Heaven has a giant library. So we can learn what we missed, if we want to. Hear that, God? Books! I want books in Heaven.
Not really ruined, but have you read Ben Franklin's diaries and s**t? Dude was a dirty horn dog.
Bed Franklin had an estimated 60 children out of wedlock. I think Franklin was the real Father of our Country.
That Cleopatra is closer in time to us than the construction of the pyramids.
That African Americans were "bred" once the slave trade was banned. I was so sad once I learned that. Those poor people. I cry sometimes when I think of that. No wonder there is so much hate.
95 percent of our species' history is lost forever.
Judging by much of the examples above, that may not be an altogether bad thing.
Note: this post originally had 69 images. It’s been shortened to the top 50 images based on user votes.
It is widely known that at the end of WW 2 the Russian army raped hundreds of thousands of German women and girls, the youngest victims not even 3 years old. What is not that widely known is that American,British an French soldiers also raped their way through the western part of Germany. There were 900 000 reported cases of rape committed by allied soldiers (USA, UK, France and Russia), but the numbers might be in the millions. Most women did not report the assault, because the people they had to report to were also members of the Allied Forces and they were afraid of the consequences.
Japan too. The concept of “comfort women” is horrible.
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That, by his own account, Christopher Columbus was evil. His own logs talk about selling young native girls into sexual slavery. There's more that I don't remember, but that alone is enough. I wish we could end Columbus Day in the US. It's starting to be called Indigenous People's Day, and I like that much better.
Most Spanish took Native girls and women as wife or just raped them. That's why their is now mestizo in Latin America.
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I find it concerning that some as calling out certain counties, religions, parties when in a tual fact if you look I to it every country has its dark past. We all have committed atrocities in our past. The only important thing is we choose not to repeat our ancestors and do our best to act like decent human beings.
It is important to study history in depth and form our own thoughts from it, ask questions, and research the real facts behind events, not just believe what is in our school history books. Also, no one alive now is responsible for what happened in history, and should not be held accountable. Hold people accountable for their own actions, not those of ancestors that they have no control over.
Lots of revisionist history going on here....the internet is not a quality source of information
had a great professor in college that made a statement when it came to history that is on spot: "a written history never remembers - an oral history never forgets." the people who write it down can always insert an agenda of how it is meant to be perceived. but, those who pass history by verbal rote learn it verbatim as to how it unfolded such at the griots of africa.
I wouldn't say it ruined my perspective, but it did throw me for a loop. Gruel wasn't nasty poor people food. It was literally just oatmeal or grain meal that was milled into flour instead of bits. It could be thick or thin, and it could be made with sugar and cream and spices. It could be eaten for breakfast or fed to kids, and was considered a comfort food for invalids. The reason we think bad about it now is because it always gets referred to as a 'thin gruel' in novels. We don't realize that the adjective is completely seperate. Oatmeal would also suck if it were thin. Technically speaking, storebought mashed potatoes are gruel!
To the person who downvoted me about the 7 books....are you saying it is not true???
Idk about your comment, but downvote sucks in practice, I try not read too much into it. They upvote my bad comments and downvote the good ones, I don't care anymore.
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Robespierre (of French Revolution fame) was not an evil dictator, he was framed by a group of financial fraudsters and (what would now be called) war criminals. Look up Joseph Fouche and Jean-Lambert Tallien. As for Robespierre, he didn't even sit on the tribunal that decided who went to the guillotine. He literally never sentenced a single person to death, and couldn't even issue an arrest without the approval of the rest of the committee he was part of. History really is written by the winners.
Re "yet in all of this the vast amount of technological advancements from the discovery of the atom to the modern day would fit in the last few sentences, of the last paragraph of the last page. And people wonder why we are reckless, we're still effectively great apes, but with shiny toys." Since we ARE totally reckless we are evidently NOT "great" in any humanitarian sense. At the core of homo sapiens is unwisdom (ie, madness) and so the human label of "wise" (ie, sapiens) is a complete collective self-delusion --- study the free scholarly essay “The 2 Married Pink Elephants In The Historical Room" ... https://www.rolf-hefti.com/covid-19-coronavirus.html Once you understand that humans are "invisibly" insane (pink elephant people, see cited essay) you'll UNDERSTAND (well, perhaps) why they, especially their alleged experts, perpetually come up with myths and lies about everything ... including about themselves (their nature, their intelligence, their origins, etc).
The word 'great', when used in this context, refers only to size. The people who stand out in history didn't tend to be the kind, gentle ones--those were trampled by the ones we read about. That's why homo sapiens sapiens is a misnomer, too--we're hardly thinking creatures.
Load More Replies... Largely incorrect. History is « surprisingly » not the same depending on the country where the historian comes from and where the book or study is published. And I’m not even talking about the history class books used to teach children or students. English really think they had a glorious empire to be proud of. Americans really think they’re bringing democracy to the world. Russians really think they have some rights on Ukraine or the Baltic states.
Load More Replies...
It is widely known that at the end of WW 2 the Russian army raped hundreds of thousands of German women and girls, the youngest victims not even 3 years old. What is not that widely known is that American,British an French soldiers also raped their way through the western part of Germany. There were 900 000 reported cases of rape committed by allied soldiers (USA, UK, France and Russia), but the numbers might be in the millions. Most women did not report the assault, because the people they had to report to were also members of the Allied Forces and they were afraid of the consequences.
Japan too. The concept of “comfort women” is horrible.
Load More Replies... That, by his own account, Christopher Columbus was evil. His own logs talk about selling young native girls into sexual slavery. There's more that I don't remember, but that alone is enough. I wish we could end Columbus Day in the US. It's starting to be called Indigenous People's Day, and I like that much better.
Most Spanish took Native girls and women as wife or just raped them. That's why their is now mestizo in Latin America.
Load More Replies... I find it concerning that some as calling out certain counties, religions, parties when in a tual fact if you look I to it every country has its dark past. We all have committed atrocities in our past. The only important thing is we choose not to repeat our ancestors and do our best to act like decent human beings.
It is important to study history in depth and form our own thoughts from it, ask questions, and research the real facts behind events, not just believe what is in our school history books. Also, no one alive now is responsible for what happened in history, and should not be held accountable. Hold people accountable for their own actions, not those of ancestors that they have no control over.
Lots of revisionist history going on here....the internet is not a quality source of information
had a great professor in college that made a statement when it came to history that is on spot: "a written history never remembers - an oral history never forgets." the people who write it down can always insert an agenda of how it is meant to be perceived. but, those who pass history by verbal rote learn it verbatim as to how it unfolded such at the griots of africa.
I wouldn't say it ruined my perspective, but it did throw me for a loop. Gruel wasn't nasty poor people food. It was literally just oatmeal or grain meal that was milled into flour instead of bits. It could be thick or thin, and it could be made with sugar and cream and spices. It could be eaten for breakfast or fed to kids, and was considered a comfort food for invalids. The reason we think bad about it now is because it always gets referred to as a 'thin gruel' in novels. We don't realize that the adjective is completely seperate. Oatmeal would also suck if it were thin. Technically speaking, storebought mashed potatoes are gruel!
To the person who downvoted me about the 7 books....are you saying it is not true???
Idk about your comment, but downvote sucks in practice, I try not read too much into it. They upvote my bad comments and downvote the good ones, I don't care anymore.
Load More Replies... Robespierre (of French Revolution fame) was not an evil dictator, he was framed by a group of financial fraudsters and (what would now be called) war criminals. Look up Joseph Fouche and Jean-Lambert Tallien. As for Robespierre, he didn't even sit on the tribunal that decided who went to the guillotine. He literally never sentenced a single person to death, and couldn't even issue an arrest without the approval of the rest of the committee he was part of. History really is written by the winners.
Re "yet in all of this the vast amount of technological advancements from the discovery of the atom to the modern day would fit in the last few sentences, of the last paragraph of the last page. And people wonder why we are reckless, we're still effectively great apes, but with shiny toys." Since we ARE totally reckless we are evidently NOT "great" in any humanitarian sense. At the core of homo sapiens is unwisdom (ie, madness) and so the human label of "wise" (ie, sapiens) is a complete collective self-delusion --- study the free scholarly essay “The 2 Married Pink Elephants In The Historical Room" ... https://www.rolf-hefti.com/covid-19-coronavirus.html Once you understand that humans are "invisibly" insane (pink elephant people, see cited essay) you'll UNDERSTAND (well, perhaps) why they, especially their alleged experts, perpetually come up with myths and lies about everything ... including about themselves (their nature, their intelligence, their origins, etc).
The word 'great', when used in this context, refers only to size. The people who stand out in history didn't tend to be the kind, gentle ones--those were trampled by the ones we read about. That's why homo sapiens sapiens is a misnomer, too--we're hardly thinking creatures.
Load More Replies... Largely incorrect. History is « surprisingly » not the same depending on the country where the historian comes from and where the book or study is published. And I’m not even talking about the history class books used to teach children or students. English really think they had a glorious empire to be proud of. Americans really think they’re bringing democracy to the world. Russians really think they have some rights on Ukraine or the Baltic states.
Load More Replies... 