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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.
Exactly. Slaves were sold by Africans to Europeans. And then onto the Americas. They sold their own people. It was wrong for it to continue as it did in Europe, America and other countries but they sold their own, so reparations? I think not. There isn't one person alive in California who was a slave...so Gov Newsome, do some research before you bankrupt your State, again!
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Slavery was just what you did when you conquered a place. Romans, Vikings, the Ottoman empire, the Chinese, Koreans, the list is endless. One thing every person on this planet has in common is that we all descend from both slaves and slave owners at some point. This is something that is missed when they talk about slavery in the US, that while it was awful it very much wasn't unique.
Yeah, most people here seem to think that slaves were only ever of African descent. The idea of white people being slaves will confuse them, since "all slaves are black" and loads of those people who still fly the losers flag from the confederacy think all blacks should be slaves.
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True enough, but does not absolve those that practiced slavery in any way.
African kings are sadly still selling off our people today, this time in different ways.
I know. Is was in Congo DRC in Lubumbashi a couple of years ago. It still makes me sad and angry.
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Oh yes. This went on for thousands of years. From the time of the Egyptian empires, on through the Greeks and Romans, until today. Yes even today especially in places like Nigeria, Africans buy and sell each other as slaves to warlords, or as disposable domestics, sexual slaves, etc. . . . And seeing how long it has continued, I am not so sure how many regretted supporting this.
The slave trade is continuing all over the world, although it's now illegal unlike centuries ago. Sex slavery, domestic slaves, children forced to work as cheap labour... Apparently it's estimated that there are more slaves now than ever, and of all races.
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Can't remember who said it, but "Absolute power corrupts absolutely," no matter the ethnicity. People with power over others will almost always do almost anything to preserve or expand upon it
Especially when, if you don't, the British canons will blast you into next week!
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All this equivocation in the comments... This post and the comments assume all of Africa was one people, so "sold their own." There were tribes and cities and nations and straight up kidnapping like anywhere else. The difference is slavery in the western trade being permanent, having zero human rights, and selling apart families. That was not custom in the majority of African cultures until white colonization. Read about Belgium and King Leopold for starters. What they took can never be replaced and that kind of devastation leads to people selling enemies and strangers.
I don’t mean to divert from the importance of the message, but I’m in love with the beauty of that picture. I’d make it my new screen-saver if I could :)
From what I know, it was more that some tribes sold their enemies into slavery. Slavery could not have existed without their cooperation, as people from Europe had a high mortality rate in Africa due to malaria and yellow fever.
That cooperation was also not optional, as the alternative was Europeans teaming up with your enemies to enslave you.
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Never posted here but as a Black America, I have always felt Africa definitely takes on a heavier burden in the concept of Black slavery and the lack of ubiquitous advancement in the continent as a whole should be evidence of the karma and lack of true learning from those actions. No excuse for anybody in this travesty but never expect those less familiar to you to treat you better than what you tell them is okay or profitable to do. Everybody involved was various levels of wicked but at least in America legal advancement on a national, continent-wide scale was made as people awakened to this was incorrect and inhumane. I feel selling of your fellow Africans definitely set the tone of all that followed, and that is my unpopular opinion.
Just because the kings advertised doesn't absolve those that took these men and women and enslaved them.
They were already enslaved. Africans enslaved these people not whites. Whites were convinced they were helping them but had to uphold customs which were actually abuse. But the whites were told this had to happen to show respect to the workers.
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Yes. Some African kings got very rich from it.
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African tribes warred with each other, raping the women, enslaving the children, and selling off the men who were healthy as slaves to other tribes, and then to the Europeans. So they are just as responsible for the massive slavery of Africans to the Americas and outlying islands as are the European slave traders.
All this equivocation in the comments... This post and the comments assume all of Africa was one people, so "sold their own." There were tribes and cities and nations and straight up kidnapping like anywhere else. The difference is slavery in the western trade being permanent, having zero human rights, and selling apart families. That was not custom in the majority of African cultures until white colonization. Read about Belgium and King Leopold for starters. What they took can never be replaced and that kind of devastation leads to people selling enemies and strangers.
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First, for how long? Second, did they sell their own, or neighboring people? Third, did they know how they were being treated? It just seems unlikely that all of the slaves pulled out of Africa were the result of this kind of commerce. They would eventually have to notice they don't have anyone to rule over.
This is the absolute worst thing about Bored Panda. Every now and then someone will publish a list of things that are just not true, then everyone will comment on it as if it is legitimate. We have seen this with the "weird facts about the body" kinds of lists where most facts are debunked by critical readers. Folks, this statement is utterly and completely rubbish. Please take it from someone who is doing their Phd in the origin of European colonisation. Some questions to ask yourself: Which African kings (what?) are being referred to? Is Africa a country? Did African kings all think the same? Did any African kings try to prevent slavery? Where were people kidnapped and sold? Then ask yourself why it was so easy to believe that statement. Please, PLEASE don't take such statements at face value. There are some, not enough, but some of us who are trying to reverse this kind of miseducation and it is JUST SO HARD to see that we're also up against a random statement on the internet :-(
Traders from Yemen walked from Djibouti to Dakar (from the east coast to the west coast of Africa) making purchase contracts and buying cheap offers on their way west. On the west coast these were sold to Europeans. On the way back east, most of the slaves were collected and taken. Of slaves stolen from Africa in all centuries, 70% went to the East. And only in the west there are descendants.
This is NOT IN AMERICAN CLASSROOMS AND IF A TEACHER GOES OFF SCRIPT THEY FACE IMMEDIATE TERMINATION FOR GOING OFF SCRIPT
In translations of the bible, anywhere you see “servant,” read that as “slave.” In a time when slavery was common and slaves could be any race or ethnicity, note that Jews appear to have had somewhat humanitarian rules about how you treated your slaves; I don’t know that this was unique in the world. Now fast forward to the Christian bible and read “slaves obey your masters” — that’s just some s**t the Romans threw in there when they realized Christianity was the perfect vehicle for maintaining social order and exploitation of the masses.
False. On the African continent Black people enslaved their enemies from other tribes after battles - just like White people did in Europe. Trading your enemies as enslaved people was normal around the globe. It was Europeans who made it about race and started a global market.
Yes, but I don't think they offered them as slaves to be brutalized. Poor and middle class are always the labor force. Look around.
ABSOLUTELY my father told me about it in the sixties. Being black when I think of it. It's still a mind blower!!
Enslaving your enemies is as old as humans, but making slavery inherited is what we have America to thank for. Previously an enslaved person could work off their time and be free. America decided a slave was a slave for life, and any children an enslaved woman had were property as well.
Mansa Musa. The Emperor of the Kingdom of Mali, also the richest man in the history of the world. How? The 3 golds, yellow, white, and black. Yellow was the metal, white was the salt he exported, and black gold was the Southern and Western Africans he sold to Northern (Arab) and Eastern Africa.
The Africans who sold other Africans into slavery, ended up being taken as slaves themselves.
Wait-you mean it wasn't the confederates???? San Francisco is giving slave descendants like $5,000,000 each-when will it end???
They spent a lot of time burning other villages & selling all those men, women, & children, they didn't kill, to slavers. Exactly who is worse? The sellers or the buyers.
So... Sort of but not really. It's was not usually their people, but an exchange for guns to go and attack other kingdoms, tribes, or cities. The slaves taken would then be sold on the coast. Oh you're an African King who doesn't want to sell slaves? That's cool, we'll just sell the guns to your enemies and they'll come enslave you. By controlling the weapons and ammunition, the French, British, Spanish, and Portuguese never really had to get their hands dirty with fighting or killing, they just set up an impossible system and then blamed it on the Africans for being "godless savages." This is one of the main mechanisms of racism, as I understand it: push people into a corner, make fun of them for being in that corner, then take the corner away from them. Tis truly a bs system.
" According to Robert Davis between 1 million and 1.25 million Europeans were captured by Barbary pirates and sold as slaves to North Africa and the Ottoman Empire between the 16th and 19th centuries."
"The coastal villages and towns of Italy, Portugal, Spain, and Mediterranean islands were frequently attacked by the pirates, and long stretches of the Italian and Spanish coasts were almost completely abandoned by their inhabitants; after 1600 Barbary pirates occasionally entered the Atlantic and struck as far north as Iceland. In 1544, Hayreddin Barbarossa captured Ischia, taking 4,000 prisoners in the process, and deported to slavery some 9,000 inhabitants of Lipari, almost the entire population. As late as 1798, the islet near Sardinia was attacked by the Tunisians and over 900 inhabitants were taken away as slaves."
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First, every tribe was giving their young and strong ppl, but as time went on they didn’t have any more ppl to give. So, the coastal tribes started invading other tribes for more people to sell. They kidnapped people and put them in a kind of jail to wait for boats to come take them away. Su!c!de was very common in these prisons.
Why are you sugarcoating the facts? African kings sold their people as slaves, into slavery. It was not a white guy's idea.
All this equivocation in the comments... This post and the comments assume all of Africa was one people, so "sold their own." There were tribes and cities and nations and straight up kidnapping like anywhere else. The difference is slavery in the western trade being permanent, having zero human rights, and selling apart families. That was not custom in the majority of African cultures until white colonization. Read about Belgium and King Leopold for starters. What they took can never be replaced and that kind of devastation leads to people selling enemies and strangers.
Load More Replies... They were not sold to chattel slavery. They were sold to work for several years. This is not this simple and reeks of racism.
Yeah, slavery used to be a matter of bad luck - you got captured in a battle or lost a war, well tough luck, you are a slave now. But the Brits introduced slavery as a racial concept with one group being considered natural slaves and the others Superior. That's a whole different concept.
To understand why the picture above is chosen for the post, read Binyavanga Wainaina's famous essay, "How to Write about Africa".
Not technically correct. There was slave labour/servitude in Africa dating back to Egptian times. But "modern" slavery was not started by African Kings. That was started by the Portuguese. The Portuguese were the first 'Western' slavers in Africa and with Papal support captured the African port of Ceuta in 1415. Slave trading of native Africans was relatively small scale during the 15th century as the Portuguese and Spanish were enslaving the native populace in central and southern America, and from there it grew to horrendous scale.
Tribes would advertise their rivals so they could take the land. Not so different than when Rome or England would go after barbarian tribes for their land and resources. And people were resources back then.
Oh no, they didn't... Africa wasn't colonised until late in the 19 century and many African rulers made great wealth on slave trade: a profitable scheme, actually. Whites (not just Europeans, Arabs too) want slaves and gold, we know where both can be found, we declare war on those places and sell the loot. We buy guns and launch an even more successful campaigns. Repeat as necessary.
I assume you meant slaves instead of work force in the post, otherwise it seems pretty innocuous, most governments advertise their labour force. But assuming you did mean slave: Why would this matter? Is it any less evil to buy humans and enslave them because some other evil person was selling them? How does this change perspective at all? The idea of kings, relies on the acceptance that some people re better than others based by birth. Once a person is comfortable with that thinking, it's not a stretch for them to accept slavery as justifiable. So not surprised Kings were acting badly. Just despicable people still subscribe to such horrific notions.
Says the white supremacists, slavery excusers and out and out racists still trying to justify their ugly prejudices based upon melanin. All forgetting that in order to sell, there needs to be a market! @Suefromengland you're an embarrassment.
The way this statement is phrased echoes white supremacist talking points. Whoever wrote this needs to read up on the ways that the slave trade from Africa was uniquely inhumane.
It still doesn't make slavery okay, or what the European colonial powers did, okay. (I'm a descendant both of a slave and of slave owners - who were not the same people - in southern Africa.)
It's sad because (IF this is true) they showed the workmanship of a people and then disgusting excuses for humans decided to steal those people to build on land they also stole. How ironic...
Whilst this is correct, many of them were also kidnapped directly by Europeans. The contents in this section also seen to miss out the horrors that made trans-atlantic slavery different in that children of slaves were also slaves which made them more of a commodity and that it was based solely on race,b which is still being felt to this day. Bit less of the victim blaming please.
Africans sold their prisoners to the Dutch. Most slaves went to the Caribbean cutting sugarcane. England didn't sell their prisoners but sent them to America and Australia.
https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-with-your-research/research-guides/british-transatlantic-slave-trade-records/
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“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.
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.
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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... 