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‘Weird History’ Is An Account That Shares Interesting, Odd, And Funny Things That Happened Throughout History
Andrew Rader, PhD, is a lot of things. The man is a SpaceX mission manager, MIT-credentialed scientist, game designer, author... And he's also a history fan. In fact, he's so fascinated with the subject, he even created a Twitter account to share the weirdest and most wonderful history-related content he stumbles upon.
Appropriately called 'Weird History', the page regularly features everything from interesting facts to amusing memes you wouldn't normally find in a textbook and has accumulated over 145,000 followers since its inception in 2011. Continue scrolling and check out some of the most popular posts 'Weird History' has had!
More info: Twitter
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But why bother with history in the first place? Well, Peter N. Stearns, a professor at George Mason University, said that even though people live in the present and plan for the future, they still need to learn about the past.
"In the first place, history offers a storehouse of information about how people and societies behave," Stearns wrote. "Understanding the operations of people and societies is difficult, though a number of disciplines make the attempt. An exclusive reliance on current data would needlessly handicap our efforts. How can we evaluate war if the nation is at peace—unless we use historical materials? How can we understand genius, the influence of technological innovation, or the role that beliefs play in shaping family life, if we don't use what we know about experiences in the past?"
The professor highlighted that some social scientists attempt to formulate laws or theories about human behavior but even these recourses depend on historical information, except for in limited, often artificial cases in which experiments can be devised to determine how people act. "Major aspects of a society's operation, like mass elections, missionary activities, or military alliances, cannot be set up as precise experiments. Consequently, history must serve, however imperfectly, as our laboratory, and data from the past must serve as our most vital evidence in the unavoidable quest to figure out why our complex species behaves as it does in societal settings."
This, fundamentally, is why we can not stay away from history, Stearns said. "It offers the only extensive evidential base for the contemplation and analysis of how societies function, and people need to have some sense of how societies function simply to run their own lives."
So the next time you're browsing 'Weird History', don't think it's just random trivia; it's also broadening your worldview!
His name is Chiune Sugihara. From Wikipedia: "In 1985, the State of Israel honored Sugihara as one of the Righteous Among the Nations for his actions. He is the only Japanese national to have been so honored. The year 2020 is "The Year of Chiune Sugihara" in Lithuania. It has been estimated as many as 100,000 people alive today are the descendants of the recipients of Sugihara visas."
legal or not, slavery is still present in many countries around the world. I think I even heard that there are more slaves today than ever in the past. I think not many communities are civilized (for various reasons).
In the painting they’re depicted as father and daughter, not husband and wife as many believe. In reality the woman is the painters sister Nan and the man is their dentist Dr. Byron McKeeby. No, they didn’t get married.
Wonder what they looked like before he painted them over. *ba dum tss*
this feels like a screenshot from a video game :D what a crossover.
Living to be over 90 years old back then was quite the accomplishment. She was already 30 when the Declaration of Independence was signed!
Also lost a finger, which is why you rarely see Scotty’s right hand
That's actually Ernest Hemingway that said that. But still a good quote!
I can imagine the hipsters of theses times, stopping on the street to conspicuously consult it.
The 25th anniversary of the Fall of the Wall. In the 3rd of octobre, they let the balloons fly one by one. It was beautiful.
They didn't stop them but changed the course of the bomb away from London.
Fun fact: Zeus's Das ate his brothers and sisters but his mother gave Zeus's dad a rock instead of Zeus and apparently his dad threw up his siblings and they were all grown and dressed (as the legend says)
Wonder if the Aztecs would hang these from the backs of their pickup carts?
A Swedish friend of mine together with her Greek husband built a summerhouse roughly across the bay from Mt Olympus. She loved it. The only thing that she was not quite happy about was that there was always a dense fog over the sea in the afternoon and thus she could never enjoy seeing the sun set. They had spent a good part of their first summer there when a storm blew away the mist and she realized that there was this giant mountain across the water and that the mountain was cheating her of the sunset. I think her husband almost died laughing. The humidity hides the mountain. Sometimes there is a peak floating in the sky and sometimes, like a diva, it makes a grand appearance.
Less well known is Mount Parnassus, Greece's second highest peak. It was the home of the Goddess Diana and the women warrior priestesses who guarded her temple were the Cynthians.
it's not the 2nd but the 8th highest peak...
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well that's because they are on the 600th floor of the empire state building in New York, USA(at least in Percy Jackson lol)
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My middle name is Olympia (my dad is Greek). It's an ancient Greek name that means "from Mount Olympus"
thats awesome. it actually looks better than everest. i see why its there. (besides it being that everest is around india and china)
I'm surprised that the ancient Greeks knew that mt Olympus was a real thing and never actually tried to climb it and visit the gods lol
They did. And they still do. Enjoy: https://www.olympus-climbing.gr/
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"especially at meal times!" .... sooo a solid glass of alcohol :)
The fun fact is correct, but the sculpture is not of mr Bluetooth, but Ogier the Dane
Note: this post originally had 113 images. It’s been shortened to the top 50 images based on user votes.
It's a welcome break from the "Look how I photographed and photoshopped something into incredible art", " She did something and it went viral with 50 random people on the internet" and "Look how cute this is."
I found many of the comments in this post were just as interesting to read!
As soon as I saw this post I was on it and reading away. These were interesting
I used to foist such factoids on my students. Sometimes, years later, they would say that those were the only things that they remember. -Dr M, retired history professor
I have always loved history... not the dates and special events or whatever, but the social aspect of it.
So *many* of these are factually, historically, inaccurate. Please at least do some minimal Wikipedia-based research before posting things like this.
It's a welcome break from the "Look how I photographed and photoshopped something into incredible art", " She did something and it went viral with 50 random people on the internet" and "Look how cute this is."
I found many of the comments in this post were just as interesting to read!
As soon as I saw this post I was on it and reading away. These were interesting
I used to foist such factoids on my students. Sometimes, years later, they would say that those were the only things that they remember. -Dr M, retired history professor
I have always loved history... not the dates and special events or whatever, but the social aspect of it.
So *many* of these are factually, historically, inaccurate. Please at least do some minimal Wikipedia-based research before posting things like this.
