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Probably one of the best things about education in the digital age is just how accessible it is. One click away and you get some of the best bits of knowledge you otherwise would have gone all the way to the library for, hoping to find what you were looking for. The problem with that is that you always have to know what you’re interested in in the first place.

Unlike the Weird History Twitter page that offers some of the most entertaining facts from all kinds of areas: it's pure entertainment in its educational form. Created by Andrew Rader more than a decade ago, in September 2011, Weird History has gained a following of 182.3K and counting adoring fans who never miss a new fact, bit of trivia, and piece of history to add to their memory.

Below the newest Weird History batch awaits you, so upvote your favorite posts! And after you’re done, be sure to check out Bored Panda’s previous features from the page here and here.

More info: Twitter (Weird History) | Twitter (Andrew) | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Andrew-Rader.com

The MIT scientist Andrew, the founder and curator of Weird History, is a real Renaissance man. Originally from Ottawa in Canada, he is a SpaceX Mission Manager, book author, game designer, and podcast host currently living in Los Angeles in California. Since Andrew launched the Weird History page on Twitter more than a decade ago in 2011, he has amassed 182.3K followers and counting! Simultaneously, Andrew’s personal Twitter account which he created in 2013, 2 years after the Weird History page, has an audience of 897.7k followers.

In 2013, he won the Discovery Channel’s competitive television series Canada’s Greatest Know-It-All. He's the author of Beyond the Known, a history of exploration from the beginning of humanity to our spacefaring future, and of three books in the Epic Space Adventure series (Epic Space Adventure, Mars Rover Rescue, Europa Excursion) and the children's book Rocket Science.

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According to Andrew, we tend to think of exploration as escape, but it’s actually about forging connections. “On a personal level, we travel to connect with our roots, connect with nature, connect with fellow travelers, or connect with new lands and people. At the level of civilizations, connections precipitated the circulation of people, ideas, technologies, and resources,” he wrote in his blog.

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Caro Caro
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I was once an operator for a IBM mainframe in 1988, Those things were huge even then.

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Shelp
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

And also: Denmark was a neutral country minding its own business, and the Brits attacked it anyways, shelling Copenhagen and sunking all its ships "for safety reasons". Napoleon is not the only bad guy from that time.

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Nathaniel
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Remember the old days of the internet? When you had to put your memes in an envelope? And people were employed to physically deliver your e-mails?

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Vorknkx
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2 years ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Back in the days when losing means you lost, not "go start an insurrection."

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Andrew argues that more connections meant more people working collaboratively to solve problems, like the historical version of the internet. “Most technologies are not invented from scratch, but modified from ideas spread by others. Writing has only been invented on our planet very few times—possibly only twice—but spread to evolve into almost four thousand written languages. As Isaac Newton famously expressed, progress begins with ‘standing on the shoulders of giants’, where one discovery forms the foundation upon which the next is based.” Therefore Andrew believes that the more ideas exchanged, the more shoulders there are to stand on, and the more people standing on top of them.

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AzKhaleesi
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

They sure don't make em' like that anymore. Must be a Timex. (For you youngn's in the back, Timex is a brand of watch. The slogan used to be "It takes a lickin and keeps on tickin. *Note Lickin' used to be slang for a beating.* )

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Baby Jenks
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2 years ago

This is true, he was pretty cool, but this post is a bit misleading. He was not the last royal ruler of independent Hawaii. Their only queen was their last ruler & she deserves credit as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liliʻuokalani

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oktopus
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

FYI Mimi Reinhard, who typed up the list, passed away only a couple of days ago. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mimi-reinhard-dies-schindlers-list-typist-dead-age-107/

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May
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Even the bottom middle ones? Why does one of them look like a d**k?

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Miss Frankfurter
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Here's the thing, and I may get down voted to the point of getting kicked off, but so be it. These women were bada$$. They were called a Ferry Squadron because they flew the planes to the places necessary for us to establish air superiority. And they get comments about their looks.

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Caro Caro
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

We should do that today with billionaires not paying their taxes. I would watch ...

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BasedWang12
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2 years ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

This is not only a well, but a place to hangout away from the brutal heat as the lower you get the more the temp drops. Also used as irrigation ponds/tanks. Called a stepwell, this one looks like it might be Chand Baori.

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MarmotArchivist
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2 years ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

One of his ancestors, Peter, absolutely trashed this mansion in England where he lived. He was fascinated by wheelbarrows and would use them to burst through the hedges. It's sounds crazy, but look it up.

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Hayley Futter
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I read in horrible histories he grew it because a young girl wrote to him that he would good with a beard or something??

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XenoMurph
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2 years ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

It's worth going to have a look at the spire. Popular Russian tourist spot. Apparently...

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AzKhaleesi
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I just watched Capone on Amazon Prime Video .... not the worst movie I've seen. Pretty interesting. It shows you his decline mentally in the last year of his life. Pretty sad. But I also have an affinity for old school gangsters. Back when respect was a thing. Yea they did bad s**t but never hurt an innocent. Not the TRUE mobsters anyway. Something all these idiot gang bangers these days could learn from. Plus my Great grandparents were one of the last civilians to see him alive. He came to their restaraunt and cleared out the place so he could have dinner and my GGrandma cooked for him and my Ggrandpa played poker with him... he won (my ggrandpa) Capone told him usually I don't lose. They said he was a pretty "neat guy" He got arrested a very short time later (no they didn't turn him in)

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Nathaniel
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2 years ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

"The fence you erected is two inches over the property line"

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Fred L.
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

The castle in the picture is Krak de Chevaliers, today in Syria.

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Batwench
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

That was baaabaric of them. Certainly pulled the wool over the invaders eyes.

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Sterling Hill
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Look up Persian Donkeys: “ Another instance of Darius's use of donkeys comes when he decides to give up his invasion of Scythia, but he needed to protect his flank while retreating. He and his army sneaked away under the cover of night, leaving all the donkeys behind. The hee-hawing ruckus tricked the nomads into thinking the Persians were still in camp. This trick of using to make sounds to fool, stall or misdirect the enemy is called a "Persian Donkey."”

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Maisey Myles
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I googled and you're right! Such a cool story - some believe it to be a fable derived from the Trojan Horse

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I am not a virtue signaller
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Nah, I don't believe they were used as a decoy. It what sense could an ovine be confused with a human? I suspect the reality is more mundane. Castles are usually a place of refuge during seige. When not under seige, they will naturally become home to sheep who will move uphill when stressed, and into a place of shelter in bad weather. Which is very handy when there's a conflict brewing because when you've nipped up to your place of safety and closed the doors behind, your food source for the duration of the seige is awaiting you. Of course, that "place of safety" concept only works if you can get to it in time. They probably didn't, leaving a castle full of sheep.

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Dillon
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Who won? I’m pretty sure god would side with innocent creatures…

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K- THULU
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

The idiots probably lost, lots of them couldn't even find the holy land..." Let's go sack constantinople instead"

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Note: this post originally had 130 images. It’s been shortened to the top 50 images based on user votes.