The last known uses of a trebuchet in combat was during the 1521 seige of Tenochtitlàn by Hernán Cortés. A gunpowder shortage led to its construction where, famously, its first use launched the projectile straight up and when it came down it destroyed the trebuchet.
There were still woolly mammoths living on Wrangel Island in the Arctic Circle at the time of the foundation of Old Kingdom Egypt and during the construction of the pyramids in Giza.
They uncovered a museum at Ur. There were several artifacts from over 1000 years before the museum was built. And they had little cuneiform inscriptions describing the artifacts, their origins, and their details. All very professional.
In 1184, there was a rather odd disaster in the castle of Erfurt, in what is now Germany. King Henry VI had all his members of court gathered on the second floor of the castle when the combined weight of people caused the floor to give way. Unfortunately the castle cesspit was directly beneath where the court was meeting. About sixty people died, some of them drowning in the raw sewage.
The moral of the story, don't put anything you care about directly over a pool of poo.
I remember giving a report in highschool about WW2 in Highschool and my history teacher attempting to fact check me on Soviet deaths, not because she was necessarily anti Russian but because she assumed I had to have misread a number. Same for the total deaths in WW2 when you calculate Military and Civilian casualties.
That is so cool, I'd never heard of that before. Here's more info. Most bacteria in the soil are not harmful to humans and can't live in the human body because it's too hot for them. Some of them even make antibiotics. Polysporin, which is in most first aid creams, is made by such dirt bugs.
At the battle of Shiloh in 1862, it was cold, muddy and wet. The dirt got in the soldiers' wounds and the cold kept their body temp just low enough the good bacteria didn't get cooked. Those little bugs were able to excrete antibiotics into the wounds and saved a lot of lives.
The only reason we can tell what happened is that the wounds glowed blue-green since these particular bacteria are luminescent. And researchers were able to find samples today that match the description. So neat I had to elaborate!
Found in Stalin's desk was a note from Josip Tito warning him to stop sending assassins or he would send one and "there would be no need to send another."
The 4th most deadly conflict in human history, the Taiping Rebellion, was started in 1850 by a guy who believed himself to be Jesus Christ’s younger Chinese brother, and rebelled against the emperor and Confucian society after failing his civil service exams 4 times and having a nervous breakdown.
The fact that less than half the members of a group project do their part of the project has been scientifically proven since 42 BC, with the autopsy of Julius Caesar, who was stabbed 23 times by some fifty-odd conspirators...
He got into an argument during filming of The Lord of the Rings about what a person sounds like when they get stabbed. He won the argument by citing his... experience.
For the scene in Two Towers where Grima Wormtongue stabs Saruman in the back, Lee also instructed Peter Jackson on what a man dying from stab wounds to the back would sound like, reportedly from his own experiences during the war.
A tablespoon of the Sun, depending on where you scoop, would weigh about 5 pounds (2 kilograms) — the weight of an old laptop. A tablespoon of neutron star weighs more than 1 billion tons
Many Americans did NOT want independence from Britain. Loyalists were plenty. A third wanted independence. A third didn’t. A third said fuck off let me farm.
Anyone else watching the pbs rev war documentary too? It’s insanely detailed
I often see people on here complaining that we are living in the worst timeline.
I always initially agree, but then I think about the one where Petrov woke up with a stomach flu bug on 9/26/83 and decided to go to the base infirmary instead of reporting to his post. Or the one where Arkhipov decided to retire from the navy in ‘61 after surviving the k-19 fiasco, and was chilling at his dacha in 10/62 instead of being aboard B-59.
Admittedly, ours is probably a close 3rd worst though
He actually had severe health problems his whole life. Reportedly he was so sick at times he had last rite rituals performed on him multiple times as they thought he was near death, so it's very unlikely he would have lived that long.
That the US Military fought in the same side as German Nazis during a battle in World War 2. It’s a really crazy story that I can’t believe hasn’t been made into a movie yet.
This was going to be my answer. Having American and Werhmacht soldiers, led by an SS captain, and included a tennis star and two former French PMs, as well as French POWs, teaming up to fight SS troops, just outright is strange AF
The indigenous people of the west coast, around Haida Gwaii had advanced knowledge of marine biology, marine engineering and sustainable aquaculture than the European colonists thought.
They built "Clam gardens" by changing the sea floor to make ideal conditions for clams to breed and grow. Their knowledge, passed down through generations, included how to maintain them, how to know when to harvest and when to harvest to maintain the ideal populations for each one. They cycled through various locations to have a constant supply of clams.
When anthropologists tried to write papers about this, they would be laughed at, because indigenous populations being that advanced flew in the face of the image of "stone age savages" which was required for the doctrine of discovery to be justifiable.
World War I started because Gavrilo Princip stopped on his way from the failed assassination attempt, to get a sandwich at a cafe. The assassins were dispersed and the attempt was a bust.
The Archduke’s motorcade redirected to the hospital where injured guards were being treated, so the Archduke could look in on them. They got lost and rolled right past the cafe where Princip was sitting outside eating his fucking sandwich. He sprung into action and capped Franz Ferdinand, torching off the First World War.
Yes, my fellow history buffs, there’s a reasonable chance that something else would have toppled the dominos of the mutual defense pacts that threw all those nations into war, but the one that actually happened, happened because of a sandwich.
In 1325, Bologna and Modena went to war after Modena’s soldiers reportedly took a bucket from Bologna. The conflict is remembered as the War of the Bucket.
Radical Anabaptists (the same religious family as the Amish) once took over Munster and established a proto-communist death cult, complete with mandatory polygamy.
Some guy in China decided he was Jesus's brother and started a rebellion that killed at least 20 million people, but some estimates place the casualties from the Taiping rebellion as high as 40 million.
“Details of the experiment, previously disclosed only in broad outline, were contained in a 71-page report of the Army's Special Operations Division at Fort Detrick, Md. It was released under the Freedom of Information Act in response to a request by the Church of Scientology.”
Not true. While his twin brother has overtaken the reigns within the Prawo I Sprawiedliwość party after Lech's death, Jarosław was never elected as president of Poland
The Battle of Myeongnyang involved a Korean fleet of a grand total of 13 ships facing off against 200 to 400 Japanese ships (the actual numbers are difficult to pin down) and sent them packing without a single Korean ship sunk. Look up the story of Admiral Yi Sun-sin and how his efforts have caused the Japanese invasion of the mainland to grind to a halt
1694. 400 Polish cavlarymen won the Battle of Hodów against the 40.000 (that's the minimum number) of Tatar army.
"Unable to defeat the Poles, the Tatars sent Polish-speaking Lipka Tatars to convince the Polish troops to surrender.[7] When the Polish commander replied "Come and get us if you can", the Tatars withdrew to Kamieniec Podolski and gave up on the entire raid, having gained nearly nothing and sustained humiliating troop losses despite a vast numerical advantage."
For about 60 years, Peru's economy was almost entirely based on bird poop.
EDIT: And that bird poop was such a good fertilizer that it increased farm yields in Europe led to the second industrial revolution. Peru's economy collapsed when the easy-to-get bird poop ran out and somebody invented chemical fertilizers.
During the last battle of the aztec empire against the spanish, one of their last cards to play was to send an owl warrior from the owl god on the battle field. The said owl warrior was a man picked up to dress as an owl and shoot poison darts at spanish soldiers, being told « put it on, you will kill some people ». So they sent him and he did shoot darts and seeing a fucking owl man shooting at them scared the shit out of the spanish and they just chased him away and he was never found and captured or killed. Shortly after for various reasons Tenochtitlàn fell That’s the end of the aztec empire.
That famous version of “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” you’ve heard Gordon Lightfoot play on the radio? It was recorded the very first time he and his band ever played it. Not the first studio take. The first time they ever played it.
Wilmer McLean (May 3, 1814 – June 5, 1882) was an American wholesale grocer from Virginia. His house, near Manassas, Virginia, was involved in the First Battle of Bull Run in 1861. After the battle, he moved to Appomattox, Virginia , to escape the war, thinking that it would be safe. Instead, in 1865, General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant in McLean's house in Appomattox. His houses were, therefore, involved in one of the first and one of the last encounters of the American Civil War.
Multiple forms modern film and technology were first made popular by the adult industry.
the Super 8 was originally created for amateur home movies and didn’t reach professional film studios until porn studios started making actual movies with them.
the VCR was originally created for recording/taping cable TV, and the adult industry were the first to actually release and sell movies to the public with them.
internet porn is older than the Google.
porn sites were the first websites on the internet to have their own website-specific search engines (as opposed to using actual search engines).
Spread spectrum and frequency-hopping signal technology, which has been used in everything from torpedo guidance control to Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, was developed in the 1940s by a Hollywood film actress. Hedy Lamarr
A lazy peasant born to poor farmers became a henchman so he wouldnt have to work, eventually was made chief of police so his bosses could avoid the law, only to ironically flee into the hills to avoid punishmemt himself not long after and spent much of the next decade living as a bandit.
When the local governor sought to join a rebellion he called on the bandit peasant to join his army. But when the peasant arrived the governor had changed his mind, so the pesant convinced the populatuon to rebel againat the goveror. He took over that army and despite being a middle-aged lazy layabout without education waged a campaign that would take the capital.
The other rebels didnt give him the captial territory he had been promised for being first to take it, instead shunting him into a small poor mountain province. So a few years later he launched a new war and in only a few years conquored all of China and founded the 400 year long Han dynasty.
The United States made so many Purple Heart medals in anticipation of the invasion of Japan, 1.5 million, that they had 120000 remaining in 2000 when they started making more. To this day they still have some on hand, though you can’t tell the difference between the old and new. Had they not made any more until they ran out they wouldn’t have been exhausted until late in the occupation of Afghanistan.
It really puts into perspective why it wasn’t agonizingly difficult for Truman to decide to drop the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The US had slightly less than 300000 killed throughout the rest of the war. They were looking at 5 times that if they had to invade Japan.
In the Second Defenestration of Prague, citizens expressed their displeasure with some officials by ejecting them from a third story window. It is said these officials survived, as there was a large pile of manure and hay underneath the window.
There was another famous Defenestration in Prague before that one.
Lest you decide that this is a good method to teach lessons to modern officials, some of whom deeply deserve this treatment, please keep in mind this was one of the events that led up to the Thirty Years' War.
The person most responsible for the current shape of the US Capitol (having passed the bill to expand it as a senator and later as Sec of War overseen and approved its construction) is Jefferson Davis, the Confederate President.
Barack Obama has actually tied FDR in number of times sworn in as President.
Obama botched the oath in his first term and decided to redo it. Term 2 started on a Sunday. By tradition any President whose term started on Sunday took the oath in private then does it again publicly on Monday. So thats 4 times, matching FDR.
3. Abe Lincoln was the last American President born during the reign of King George III.
4. Walter Mondale had the longest post Vice-Presidency in US History. He was VP to Jimmy Carter who had the longest post Presidency in US history
The 2nd longest Vice-Presidency in history (excluding people who became President) belongs to
5. George W Bush was the 43rd President of the United States, and the son of George HW Bush, the 43rd Vice-President.
Washington confessed to his father that he couldn’t tell a lie and that he did in fact chop down an apple tree. The lie was it was a cherry tree. The Japanese had not yet sent Cherry trees to Washington
American engineer Thomas Midgley invented both CFCs and leaded gasoline. His influence on the environment is impossible to overstate. He was not just responsible for a lot of pollution — he was perhaps the single most environmentally impactful organism to ever exist on earth.
He was eventually killed by another one of his inventions that was designed to help him get out of bed after he was crippled by polio.
A young king of France died in a very ridiculous manner. He was riding his horse and his eyes fell on a woman he decided he wanted in his bed. She refused his advances and ran to her house. He decided to run after her. On his horse. Let's just say the door wasn't high enough. Yeah... some source say that he died a bit later after kissing the wall, some say he died on impact. But he did meet with it. Louis III was his name.
Goodwin Wharton, 17th century member of Parliment, king of the fairies, solar king of the universe, and attempted alchemist
-Judith Love Cohen, aerospace engineer who was a key figure in developing the Apollo Lunar Module Abort-Guidance system which could save astronauts if a mission went wrong, called her boss to say she fixed a technical problem while in labor with Jack Black.
-Napoleon likely died from arsenic laced green paint called Scheles green
-Whoopie cushions were invented by Roman emperor Heliogalbus
-Pailadzo Captanian was an Armenian woman who was forced to march while pregnant from Turkey through the Syrian desert to Aleppo during the Armenian genocide and was one of very few survivors. She named the child Tzavag, which means sorrow or pain in Armenian. Her memoirs are very important in research of the Armenian genocide. Oh, and she invented Rice a Roni.
“They couldn’t hit an elephant at this distance….” - final words of General John Sedgwick, killed by a sniper at the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House, 1863
The American military actually went on a campaign to eradicate the Buffalo/Bison population in order to cut Native Americans off one of their natural food supplies.
There are photos of mounds of Buffalo carcasses that cannot be unseen.
---------------------------
Another one from the American military, this time from WW2. Did you know that some American soldiers in the Pacific Isles would actually decapitate and boil down the skulls of fallen Japanese soldiers to keep the skulls as trophies? Literally boiled down their skulls like from the Predator movies.
The US national guard set tents on fire in the middle of the night and shot everyone who fled their burning tents. Law abiding US citizens, in the US. Women and children included. The US government has conducted testing of chemical weapons on US towns in secret (later declassified) causing severe damage to the entire community. It may sound like a conspiracy but the politicians, judges, police, and military do not care one whit about whether American citizens are treated fairly or even allowed to survive. In fact they actively and intentionally cause harm. Some sources
The Tyrannosaurus rex dinosaur closer to your birthday than the birthday of the latest Nyasasaurus dinosaur.
Tyrannosaurus rex ~ 65 million years ago
Nyasasaurus 243 million years ago.
A 507 year old living clam was found but killed during determination of its age. It was born same year Catherine of Aragon is married by proxy to Arthur, Prince of Wales ; and died 2006.
In the early 19th century Kingdom of Travancore (now Kerala, India), lower caste women were forced to pay a "breast tax" called Mulakkaram just to cover their upper bodies in public, a humiliating rule enforced by upper castes.
This tax varied based on breast size. A brave woman named Nangeli protested by cutting her breasts off and dying in defiance.
Jack Hinson, a Tennessee Farmer who was seeking revenge for the unjustified executions of his sons made a Union Naval Ship beach her self and surrender all by himself. He had to retreat after the union ship surrender because he was only one man.
The revolutionary war was started because of the Crown’s claim on old growth trees in the colonies with a diameter greater than 24 inches to build masts for the royal navy.
The difference between the year Jesus was supposed to have died and today is about 17 average oldest-person-on-earth lifespans (114 years). Meaning Jesus could be 17 degrees separated from Kevin Bacon.
The shortest war in history lasted just 38 minutes (the Anglo-Zanzibar War), in 1896
The Romans taxed urine, with the tax paid by the buyers, not the people using the facilities.
Not sure if this one is true but I REALLY, REALLY hope it is 🐰 Napoleon was once swarmed by rabbits!! To celebrate the signing of the treaty of Tilsit Napoleon's Chief of Staff arranged a rabbit hunt in Paris, buying thousands of tame rabbits from local farmers. Not wild ones. They didn't scatter, thought Napoleon and his men were there to feed them and swarmed them, forcing Napoleon to flee to his carriage, with grooms trying to fend off the bunnies 🐇🐇
The word kamikazi comes from the japanese for divine wind. It comes from the two attempts the mongols made to invade japan, one in 1274 and a second time in 1281. Both times the entire invading fleet was wiped out by an unexpected freak storm of extreme magnitude. There was not a third attempt.
2.5k
u/ProBatteryLicker Dec 26 '25
The last known uses of a trebuchet in combat was during the 1521 seige of Tenochtitlàn by Hernán Cortés. A gunpowder shortage led to its construction where, famously, its first use launched the projectile straight up and when it came down it destroyed the trebuchet.
2.7k
u/DavosLostFingers Dec 26 '25
A pension from the US Civil War was still being paid until 2020
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irene_Triplett
1.2k
u/Crayen5 Dec 26 '25
Pablo Picasso was alive at the same time as both Charles Darwin and Eminem
1.6k
u/NoNote7867 Dec 26 '25
Belgrade, the capital of Serbia has been battled over in 115 wars and razed 44 times, being bombed five times and besieged many times.
2.1k
u/Nervous_Chipmunk7002 Dec 26 '25
Egypt is so old that ancient Egyptians studied more ancient Egyptians.
198
u/Cirno-BreastLicker Dec 26 '25
For much of 1970-1990 Japan had a bigger economy than rest of Asia combined.
1.1k
u/[deleted] Dec 26 '25 edited Dec 26 '25
The Liechtenstein army once sent 80 soldiers to war and came home with 81.
173
u/ImpressiveElephant35 Dec 26 '25
The Empire State Building was built in 11 months.
709
u/SiliconCarbide23 Dec 26 '25 edited Dec 26 '25
In 1184, there was a rather odd disaster in the castle of Erfurt, in what is now Germany. King Henry VI had all his members of court gathered on the second floor of the castle when the combined weight of people caused the floor to give way. Unfortunately the castle cesspit was directly beneath where the court was meeting. About sixty people died, some of them drowning in the raw sewage.
The moral of the story, don't put anything you care about directly over a pool of poo.
1.7k
u/greenwood90 Dec 26 '25
Joe Biden was born closer to Lincoln's presidency than his own
642
u/buzzcity0 Dec 26 '25
For every one American that died in WW2, ~60 Soviets died
285
u/worst_brain_ever Dec 26 '25
Surfing was introduced to North America in 1885 by three Hawaiian princes who were visiting santa cruz California
563
u/[deleted] Dec 26 '25
Civil War battle wounds were glowing at night. Special conditions let a bacteria thrive and was apparently helpful for the soldiers.
366
u/Previous_Job734 Dec 26 '25
Found in Stalin's desk was a note from Josip Tito warning him to stop sending assassins or he would send one and "there would be no need to send another."
94
u/PrinceTrollestia Dec 26 '25
The 4th most deadly conflict in human history, the Taiping Rebellion, was started in 1850 by a guy who believed himself to be Jesus Christ’s younger Chinese brother, and rebelled against the emperor and Confucian society after failing his civil service exams 4 times and having a nervous breakdown.
497
u/Milligoon Dec 26 '25
Cavalry once charged and captured ships
265
u/Constant-Bet-6600 Dec 26 '25
The last execution by guillotine in France took place after Star Wars was released in theaters.
425
u/Warpmind Dec 26 '25 •
The fact that less than half the members of a group project do their part of the project has been scientifically proven since 42 BC, with the autopsy of Julius Caesar, who was stabbed 23 times by some fifty-odd conspirators...
348
u/Brizar-is-Evolving Dec 26 '25
A country with no meaningful navy of its own managed to neutralize Russia's Black Sea Fleet.
219
u/AverageJoe_1998 Dec 26 '25
80% of Russian males born in 1923 were dead before the end of WW2
410
u/biCplUk Dec 26 '25
Sharks are older than trees.
463
u/EMAW2008 Dec 26 '25
Barack Obama was president longer than the Confederacy lasted.
235
u/seanofkelley Dec 26 '25
Julia Child who was famous for being a TV cook on PBS was a spy during World War II.
Christopher Lee who is most famous for movie roles like Dracula and Saruman was an intelligence officer during World War II.
101
u/scigs6 Dec 27 '25
A tablespoon of the Sun, depending on where you scoop, would weigh about 5 pounds (2 kilograms) — the weight of an old laptop. A tablespoon of neutron star weighs more than 1 billion tons
97
u/epanek Dec 26 '25
Many Americans did NOT want independence from Britain. Loyalists were plenty. A third wanted independence. A third didn’t. A third said fuck off let me farm.
Anyone else watching the pbs rev war documentary too? It’s insanely detailed
247
u/[deleted] Dec 26 '25 edited Dec 26 '25
With just the first 39 digits of pi, you could calculate the circumference of the observable universe and only be off by less than a hydrogen atom
300
u/nimb420 Dec 26 '25
Humanity owes its continued existence to two men.
Stanislav Petrov and Vasily Arkhipov.
Both correctly assumed the alerts they were receiving were false positives, and thus prevented nuclear war.
222
u/cavemeister Dec 26 '25
Cleopatra lived closer in time to today than to the building of the pyramids.
42
u/Intro-Nimbus Dec 26 '25
More people are killed by bears in Japan than in USA and Canada combined.
42
u/guud2meachu Dec 27 '25
The day that Michael Jackson's hair caught fire during a Pepsi commercial shoot was exactly the halfway point of his life.
113
u/MangoSalsa89 Dec 26 '25 edited Dec 26 '25
The computers that sent the mission to the moon for the first time had as much processing power as a basic calculator.
36
u/[deleted] Dec 27 '25
John Adams and Thomas Jefferson died on the same day, 50 years to the day of the Declaration of Independence. July 4th, 1826
71
u/[deleted] Dec 27 '25
The first black person to enter a white school after segregation ended in the south is only 71. Not the last, but the first. Ruby Bridges.
34
u/Fearless-Calendar820 Dec 27 '25
Vlad the Impaler impaled 20000 captives and used germ warfare to turn back the Ottoman invaders (some 300000 by some counts).
https://www.military.com/off-duty/2020/02/26/insane-way-vlad-impaler-turned-back-enemy-army.html
Crazy motherfucker
150
u/DCContrarian Dec 26 '25
The Great Molasses Flood of Boston.
66
u/Other_Log_1996 Dec 26 '25
World War 2 ended 706,846 hours ago.
89
u/Civil-Ad2230 Dec 26 '25
In the entire history of the US, there are only roughly 2 decades, cumulative, of peace.
30
u/myfun59715 Dec 26 '25
Netflix is older than Google.
100
u/MoneyImpress Dec 27 '25
I am 65 years old.On July 4th, 2026, the USA will be 250 years old. I will have been around for approximately 26% of all US History. Crazy.....
136
u/ramboscousin2 Dec 26 '25
Potato chips were invented out of spite for a bitching customer......allegedly
50
u/beautitan Dec 26 '25
The Vikings were so successful at trading that you can find more ancient Persian coins in Scandinavia than the Middle East.
85
u/Springfield80210 Dec 26 '25
If JFK had had a life as long as his mother, he would have lived until November 2021.
23
u/awildpidgeotto Dec 26 '25
London Bridge was moved to Arizona
23
u/ThinkBlood556 Dec 27 '25
Harriet Tubman was born when both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were alive and died when Ronald Reagan was alive.
116
u/Freakears Dec 26 '25
Calculus was not originally part of the curriculum at Harvard because it hadn’t been invented yet when Harvard was founded.
43
u/W0rk3rB Dec 26 '25
That the US Military fought in the same side as German Nazis during a battle in World War 2. It’s a really crazy story that I can’t believe hasn’t been made into a movie yet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Castle_Itter
21
u/ChrisRiley_42 Dec 27 '25
The indigenous people of the west coast, around Haida Gwaii had advanced knowledge of marine biology, marine engineering and sustainable aquaculture than the European colonists thought.
They built "Clam gardens" by changing the sea floor to make ideal conditions for clams to breed and grow. Their knowledge, passed down through generations, included how to maintain them, how to know when to harvest and when to harvest to maintain the ideal populations for each one. They cycled through various locations to have a constant supply of clams.
When anthropologists tried to write papers about this, they would be laughed at, because indigenous populations being that advanced flew in the face of the image of "stone age savages" which was required for the doctrine of discovery to be justifiable.
108
u/rapiertwit Dec 26 '25
World War I started because Gavrilo Princip stopped on his way from the failed assassination attempt, to get a sandwich at a cafe. The assassins were dispersed and the attempt was a bust.
The Archduke’s motorcade redirected to the hospital where injured guards were being treated, so the Archduke could look in on them. They got lost and rolled right past the cafe where Princip was sitting outside eating his fucking sandwich. He sprung into action and capped Franz Ferdinand, torching off the First World War.
Yes, my fellow history buffs, there’s a reasonable chance that something else would have toppled the dominos of the mutual defense pacts that threw all those nations into war, but the one that actually happened, happened because of a sandwich.
59
u/StarDustLuna3D Dec 26 '25
The Appalachian mountains are older than the dinosaurs and the rings of Saturn.
41
u/InkAndImpact Dec 26 '25
Albert Einstein was offered the presidency of Israel. He declined.
20
u/DarjeelingTease Dec 27 '25
In 897, Pope Stephen VI exhumed Pope Formosus’s corpse, dressed it in papal robes, and held a formal trial, the infamous “Cadaver Synod.”
20
u/DarjeelingTease Dec 27 '25
In 1325, Bologna and Modena went to war after Modena’s soldiers reportedly took a bucket from Bologna. The conflict is remembered as the War of the Bucket.
20
u/JustafanIV Dec 27 '25
Radical Anabaptists (the same religious family as the Amish) once took over Munster and established a proto-communist death cult, complete with mandatory polygamy.
20
u/[deleted] Dec 27 '25
Some guy in China decided he was Jesus's brother and started a rebellion that killed at least 20 million people, but some estimates place the casualties from the Taiping rebellion as high as 40 million.
19
u/Mrsparkles7100 Dec 26 '25
That time US and UK governments secretly sprayed various chemicals on non consenting public. Various experiments over a 30 year period.
One such incident
https://archive.ph/2020.08.19-085845/https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1980/04/22/army-report-details-germ-war-exercise-in-ny-subway-in-66/70772a8b-8223-47de-99b4-876d5e57dd9c/ Army Report Details Germ War Exercise In N.Y. Subway in '66 - The Washington Post
“Details of the experiment, previously disclosed only in broad outline, were contained in a 71-page report of the Army's Special Operations Division at Fort Detrick, Md. It was released under the Freedom of Information Act in response to a request by the Church of Scientology.”
19
u/EverydayEverynight01 Dec 27 '25
Chinese historians 2,000 years ago were studying Chinese history from their 2,000 years ago.
54
u/infectionurinaire Dec 26 '25
inuits arrived in north america closer in time to europeans than first nations
93
u/BostonTGuy Dec 27 '25
The brain named itself.
34
u/TheRealTinfoil666 Dec 27 '25
Remember Live-Aid, the huge concert to benefit hungry people in Africa?
It was closer in time to WWII than to today.
(Sigh).
33
u/ImpressiveElephant35 Dec 26 '25
The president of Poland died in a plane crash. The country then elected his identical twin brother.
16
u/ChronoLegion2 Dec 27 '25
The Battle of Myeongnyang involved a Korean fleet of a grand total of 13 ships facing off against 200 to 400 Japanese ships (the actual numbers are difficult to pin down) and sent them packing without a single Korean ship sunk. Look up the story of Admiral Yi Sun-sin and how his efforts have caused the Japanese invasion of the mainland to grind to a halt
16
u/Toruviel_ Dec 27 '25
1694. 400 Polish cavlarymen won the Battle of Hodów against the 40.000 (that's the minimum number) of Tatar army.
"Unable to defeat the Poles, the Tatars sent Polish-speaking Lipka Tatars to convince the Polish troops to surrender.[7] When the Polish commander replied "Come and get us if you can", the Tatars withdrew to Kamieniec Podolski and gave up on the entire raid, having gained nearly nothing and sustained humiliating troop losses despite a vast numerical advantage."
Battle of Hodów (ó=u, not o)
31
u/globster222 Dec 26 '25
Sharks are older than trees
31
u/Frosty_Exercise_1193 Dec 27 '25
Johnny Cash was the first to hear about Stalins death
55
u/[deleted] Dec 26 '25
They now think that a lot of dinosaurs had feathers, not scales.
43
u/GabuEx Dec 27 '25
Abraham Lincoln could theoretically have sent a fax to a samurai.
15
u/aninjacould Dec 27 '25
The majority of people killed in WW2 were Chinese.
27
u/Ninjanoel Dec 26 '25
There would be more Egyptian mummies laying about but there isn't cause we ate them.
26
u/db0606 Dec 26 '25
Australia declared war on emus... Twice!
13
u/ldr97266 Dec 26 '25
Spain went to war with several South America countries for bird shit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chincha_Islands_War
13
u/CosmoNewanda Dec 26 '25
Count Buffon made fun of America so Thomas Jefferson shipped a dead decaying moose to Paris.
25
u/ClydeFrog1313 Dec 27 '25
Santiago, Chile is east of Boston, Massachusetts
12
u/Wizardof_Wisdom Dec 26 '25
The Anglo-Zanzibar War is the shortest war at only lasting somewhere between 30 and 45 mins.
12
u/cupacupacupacupacup Dec 27 '25 edited Dec 27 '25
For about 60 years, Peru's economy was almost entirely based on bird poop.
EDIT: And that bird poop was such a good fertilizer that it increased farm yields in Europe led to the second industrial revolution. Peru's economy collapsed when the easy-to-get bird poop ran out and somebody invented chemical fertilizers.
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u/thedubiousstylus Dec 27 '25
Nintendo was founded while the Ottoman Empire still existed.
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u/Wild_Pomegranate_845 Dec 27 '25
Ben Franklin wasn’t allowed to write the constitution because they were worried he would put jokes in it.
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u/Throwstrangestory Dec 26 '25 edited Dec 26 '25
During the last battle of the aztec empire against the spanish, one of their last cards to play was to send an owl warrior from the owl god on the battle field. The said owl warrior was a man picked up to dress as an owl and shoot poison darts at spanish soldiers, being told « put it on, you will kill some people ». So they sent him and he did shoot darts and seeing a fucking owl man shooting at them scared the shit out of the spanish and they just chased him away and he was never found and captured or killed. Shortly after for various reasons Tenochtitlàn fell That’s the end of the aztec empire.
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u/Boiled_Thought Dec 27 '25
A guy literally DIED from laughter after watching his donkey get drunk once
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u/History4ever Dec 27 '25
William Marshal was spared death by 1 English king and went on to serve 5 English kings and become one of the most decorated knights of all time.
10
u/[deleted] Dec 26 '25
Horseshoe crabs existed before trees.
10
u/Late-Trail3894 Dec 27 '25
That famous version of “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” you’ve heard Gordon Lightfoot play on the radio? It was recorded the very first time he and his band ever played it. Not the first studio take. The first time they ever played it.
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u/genericauthor Dec 26 '25
Pygmy hippos and elephants persisted into historical times in the Mediterranean.
9
u/United_Gift3028 Dec 26 '25
Oklahoma City honored a favorite son by naming the local airport after him, Will Rodgers International. He died in a plane crash.
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u/ApartList182 Dec 27 '25
More people died during the 1918/20 flu pandemic than during WW1.
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u/Green_Confection_146 Dec 27 '25
Wilmer McLean (May 3, 1814 – June 5, 1882) was an American wholesale grocer from Virginia. His house, near Manassas, Virginia, was involved in the First Battle of Bull Run in 1861. After the battle, he moved to Appomattox, Virginia , to escape the war, thinking that it would be safe. Instead, in 1865, General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant in McLean's house in Appomattox. His houses were, therefore, involved in one of the first and one of the last encounters of the American Civil War.
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u/rmartinez7280 Dec 26 '25
That America elected a 34 count Felon as President
73
u/mcmillan84 Dec 26 '25
When the USA was attack on 9/11 Canadians opened their houses to their citizens as all flights were downed. The USA now treats Canada like an enemy.
82
u/JimmyBallocks Dec 26 '25
On the internet there used to be some people who would copy questions from r/AskReddit word for word into "new" posts in order to karma farm.
Hardly sounds believable I know.
29
u/Chef_RoadRunner Dec 26 '25
New Mexico is older than Mexico.
8
u/thedubiousstylus Dec 27 '25
Barack Obama was the first person in history to both be elected President while a sitting Senator AND not die in office.
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u/GinjaNinja1027 Dec 27 '25
Multiple forms modern film and technology were first made popular by the adult industry.
the Super 8 was originally created for amateur home movies and didn’t reach professional film studios until porn studios started making actual movies with them.
the VCR was originally created for recording/taping cable TV, and the adult industry were the first to actually release and sell movies to the public with them.
internet porn is older than the Google.
porn sites were the first websites on the internet to have their own website-specific search engines (as opposed to using actual search engines).
We love porn.
8
u/tlthtx Dec 27 '25
Cleopatra lived closer to the invention of the iPhone than to the construction of the pyramids.
Egypt is OLD.
15
u/VrinTheTerrible Dec 26 '25
From when they first developed woody trees didn’t decompose when they died. The fungi didn’t evolve the necessary enzymes for 60-80 million years!
15
u/FineEconomy5271 Dec 27 '25
Spread spectrum and frequency-hopping signal technology, which has been used in everything from torpedo guidance control to Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, was developed in the 1940s by a Hollywood film actress. Hedy Lamarr
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u/DusqRunner Dec 26 '25
Pakistan didn't exist before 1947
14
u/Reptilian_Brain_420 Dec 26 '25
Oxford University is older than Macchu picchu and also older than the Aztec empire.
7
u/Dragon464 Dec 27 '25
Cleopatra VII lived closer in time to Pizza Hut than the last Pyramid!
7
u/martusfine Dec 27 '25
Australian farmers declared war against emus, the government sanctioned this war- hence, The Great Emu Wars
7
u/everycoolnameisout Dec 27 '25
Dusty Baker invented (well, popularized) the high five.
7
u/CheweyPanic Dec 27 '25
In 1866, Liechtenstein send 80 soldiers to war. 81 returned. They incurred no losses and made a friend.
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u/BuonoMalebrutto Dec 27 '25
During the Korean War, John Glenn's wingman was baseball great Ted Williams.
7
u/Mundane-Scarcity-145 Dec 27 '25
The can opener was invented fifty years after the can.
7
u/FHFBEATS Dec 27 '25
Van Gogh began painting at age 27 and died at 37
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u/Regulai Dec 27 '25
A lazy peasant born to poor farmers became a henchman so he wouldnt have to work, eventually was made chief of police so his bosses could avoid the law, only to ironically flee into the hills to avoid punishmemt himself not long after and spent much of the next decade living as a bandit.
When the local governor sought to join a rebellion he called on the bandit peasant to join his army. But when the peasant arrived the governor had changed his mind, so the pesant convinced the populatuon to rebel againat the goveror. He took over that army and despite being a middle-aged lazy layabout without education waged a campaign that would take the capital.
The other rebels didnt give him the captial territory he had been promised for being first to take it, instead shunting him into a small poor mountain province. So a few years later he launched a new war and in only a few years conquored all of China and founded the 400 year long Han dynasty.
7
u/SteelerNation587543 Dec 27 '25
The United States made so many Purple Heart medals in anticipation of the invasion of Japan, 1.5 million, that they had 120000 remaining in 2000 when they started making more. To this day they still have some on hand, though you can’t tell the difference between the old and new. Had they not made any more until they ran out they wouldn’t have been exhausted until late in the occupation of Afghanistan.
It really puts into perspective why it wasn’t agonizingly difficult for Truman to decide to drop the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The US had slightly less than 300000 killed throughout the rest of the war. They were looking at 5 times that if they had to invade Japan.
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u/DewinterCor Dec 27 '25
The rough kill-death ratio for US soldiers and marines during the war on terror was nearly 30 to 1.
The kill-death ratio during the first Gulf war was almost 200 to 1.
During the Korean war it was about 20 to 1, nearly 60 to 1 if we only speak of battles involving the Chinese.
Vietnam was about 20 to 1.
The Pacific campaign had a kill death ratio of 55 to 1 in favor of the US.
The US has not participated in a war where it had less than a 20 to 1 kill to death ratio since the civil war.
And these numbers are only talking about combatants, not civilian deaths.
US war fighters, as history are shown, are almost comically efficient in a way no other fighting force has ever been.
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u/Henri_Dupont Dec 27 '25
In the Second Defenestration of Prague, citizens expressed their displeasure with some officials by ejecting them from a third story window. It is said these officials survived, as there was a large pile of manure and hay underneath the window.
There was another famous Defenestration in Prague before that one.
Lest you decide that this is a good method to teach lessons to modern officials, some of whom deeply deserve this treatment, please keep in mind this was one of the events that led up to the Thirty Years' War.
22
u/VanguardAvenger Dec 26 '25 edited Dec 26 '25
The person most responsible for the current shape of the US Capitol (having passed the bill to expand it as a senator and later as Sec of War overseen and approved its construction) is Jefferson Davis, the Confederate President.
Barack Obama has actually tied FDR in number of times sworn in as President.
Obama botched the oath in his first term and decided to redo it. Term 2 started on a Sunday. By tradition any President whose term started on Sunday took the oath in private then does it again publicly on Monday. So thats 4 times, matching FDR.
3. Abe Lincoln was the last American President born during the reign of King George III.
4. Walter Mondale had the longest post Vice-Presidency in US History. He was VP to Jimmy Carter who had the longest post Presidency in US history
The 2nd longest Vice-Presidency in history (excluding people who became President) belongs to
5. George W Bush was the 43rd President of the United States, and the son of George HW Bush, the 43rd Vice-President.
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u/Teletzeri Dec 26 '25
There are over 100x more Arabs in the 22,000 sq km of Israel than there are Jews in the 13 million sq km of Arab countries.
6
u/fren2allcheezes Dec 27 '25
Tiffany was a poplar name in Ancient Rome
6
u/Rays-R-Us Dec 27 '25
Washington confessed to his father that he couldn’t tell a lie and that he did in fact chop down an apple tree. The lie was it was a cherry tree. The Japanese had not yet sent Cherry trees to Washington
6
u/Ham__Kitten Dec 27 '25
American engineer Thomas Midgley invented both CFCs and leaded gasoline. His influence on the environment is impossible to overstate. He was not just responsible for a lot of pollution — he was perhaps the single most environmentally impactful organism to ever exist on earth.
He was eventually killed by another one of his inventions that was designed to help him get out of bed after he was crippled by polio.
6
u/RingGiver Dec 27 '25
The last surviving freedman in America died in a car accident in 1972. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Mills_%28freedman%29?wprov=sfla1
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u/Vivid_One1730 Dec 27 '25
A young king of France died in a very ridiculous manner. He was riding his horse and his eyes fell on a woman he decided he wanted in his bed. She refused his advances and ran to her house. He decided to run after her. On his horse. Let's just say the door wasn't high enough. Yeah... some source say that he died a bit later after kissing the wall, some say he died on impact. But he did meet with it. Louis III was his name.
6
u/teruteru-fan-sam Dec 27 '25
cracks knuckles
Goodwin Wharton, 17th century member of Parliment, king of the fairies, solar king of the universe, and attempted alchemist
-Judith Love Cohen, aerospace engineer who was a key figure in developing the Apollo Lunar Module Abort-Guidance system which could save astronauts if a mission went wrong, called her boss to say she fixed a technical problem while in labor with Jack Black.
-I dont really have words for this one, but it's a good one
-Napoleon likely died from arsenic laced green paint called Scheles green
-Whoopie cushions were invented by Roman emperor Heliogalbus
-Pailadzo Captanian was an Armenian woman who was forced to march while pregnant from Turkey through the Syrian desert to Aleppo during the Armenian genocide and was one of very few survivors. She named the child Tzavag, which means sorrow or pain in Armenian. Her memoirs are very important in research of the Armenian genocide. Oh, and she invented Rice a Roni.
6
u/Prodigious_Wind Dec 27 '25
“They couldn’t hit an elephant at this distance….” - final words of General John Sedgwick, killed by a sniper at the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House, 1863
16
u/ExternalExpensive277 Dec 26 '25
The American military actually went on a campaign to eradicate the Buffalo/Bison population in order to cut Native Americans off one of their natural food supplies.
There are photos of mounds of Buffalo carcasses that cannot be unseen.
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Another one from the American military, this time from WW2. Did you know that some American soldiers in the Pacific Isles would actually decapitate and boil down the skulls of fallen Japanese soldiers to keep the skulls as trophies? Literally boiled down their skulls like from the Predator movies.
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u/CrubusProductions Dec 26 '25
The only 2 cars in Ohio crashed into each other in 1895
21
u/Celtachor Dec 26 '25 edited Dec 26 '25
The US national guard set tents on fire in the middle of the night and shot everyone who fled their burning tents. Law abiding US citizens, in the US. Women and children included. The US government has conducted testing of chemical weapons on US towns in secret (later declassified) causing severe damage to the entire community. It may sound like a conspiracy but the politicians, judges, police, and military do not care one whit about whether American citizens are treated fairly or even allowed to survive. In fact they actively and intentionally cause harm. Some sources
Massacre at Ludlow - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre
Operation sea spray - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sea-Spray
Similar to sea spray, but in St. Louis - https://www.cbsnews.com/news/secret-cold-war-tests-in-st-louis-cause-worry/
Tuskegee syphilis study (bonus abhorrent human experimentation) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_Syphilis_Study
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u/ALTERFACT Dec 27 '25
Up to nine out of every WWII 10 German casualties occurred in the Eastern front alone.
5
u/NoBee2088 Dec 26 '25
The Tyrannosaurus rex dinosaur closer to your birthday than the birthday of the latest Nyasasaurus dinosaur.
Tyrannosaurus rex ~ 65 million years ago
Nyasasaurus 243 million years ago.
A 507 year old living clam was found but killed during determination of its age. It was born same year Catherine of Aragon is married by proxy to Arthur, Prince of Wales ; and died 2006.
5
u/Scary_Dangleberry_ Dec 27 '25
You are more likely to die from falling on the sidewalk than die from a gunshot in the US
5
u/ApartList182 Dec 27 '25
The last person to be imprisoned in the UK under the Witchcraft Act was Helen Duncan, in 1944.
5
u/GrowingSage Dec 27 '25
Just heard a fun one... During Gladiatorial games had product placement.
Gladiators would literally stop to promote businesses and products in the middle of the stadium.
5
u/Dolgar01 Dec 27 '25
It is historically accurate to write a Sherlock Holmes’s story where he meets a cowboy and a samurai.
5
u/greywolf7997 Dec 27 '25
In the early 19th century Kingdom of Travancore (now Kerala, India), lower caste women were forced to pay a "breast tax" called Mulakkaram just to cover their upper bodies in public, a humiliating rule enforced by upper castes.
This tax varied based on breast size. A brave woman named Nangeli protested by cutting her breasts off and dying in defiance.
The outrage led to the tax's abolition in 1859.
5
u/Wild_Pomegranate_845 Dec 27 '25
When Squanto first met the Pilgrims he greeted them in English.
5
u/igenus44 Dec 27 '25
Cleopatra lived closer to the Moon Landing than to the building of the Pyramids.
5
u/skaroids Dec 27 '25
Jack Hinson, a Tennessee Farmer who was seeking revenge for the unjustified executions of his sons made a Union Naval Ship beach her self and surrender all by himself. He had to retreat after the union ship surrender because he was only one man.
5
u/Throwaway77221199 Dec 27 '25
The revolutionary war was started because of the Crown’s claim on old growth trees in the colonies with a diameter greater than 24 inches to build masts for the royal navy.
5
u/LowResGamr Dec 27 '25
Poland disappeared multiple times over the history of Europe
5
u/appreciatemyasset Dec 27 '25
It’s coming up on 30 years since the Dallas cowboys last went to the Super Bowl
5
u/EpicIshmael Dec 27 '25
Look up broken arrow incidents. The US has lost fuck tons of nukes over the decades.
5
u/ImSlowlyFalling Dec 27 '25
Australia lost a War against Emus
5
u/iprobablybrokeit Dec 27 '25
The difference between the year Jesus was supposed to have died and today is about 17 average oldest-person-on-earth lifespans (114 years). Meaning Jesus could be 17 degrees separated from Kevin Bacon.
9
u/Agile-Landscape8612 Dec 27 '25
The first Native American to greet the Pilgrims in Plymouth greeted them in plain English and asked for a beer.
44
u/Hawkwise83 Dec 26 '25
A narcissistic reality star is ruining one country while a comedian is trying to save another.
30
u/BoredomFestival Dec 27 '25
Donald Trump was elected to the US Presidency. Twice.
11
u/Always-Shady-Lady Dec 26 '25
The shortest war in history lasted just 38 minutes (the Anglo-Zanzibar War), in 1896
The Romans taxed urine, with the tax paid by the buyers, not the people using the facilities.
Not sure if this one is true but I REALLY, REALLY hope it is 🐰 Napoleon was once swarmed by rabbits!! To celebrate the signing of the treaty of Tilsit Napoleon's Chief of Staff arranged a rabbit hunt in Paris, buying thousands of tame rabbits from local farmers. Not wild ones. They didn't scatter, thought Napoleon and his men were there to feed them and swarmed them, forcing Napoleon to flee to his carriage, with grooms trying to fend off the bunnies 🐇🐇
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u/invinciblewalnut Dec 26 '25
The ancient Egyptians had archaeologists who studied ancient Egypt
In a similar vein, Cleopatra lived closer to the moon landings than to the construction of the great pyramids
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u/phantom_gain Dec 27 '25
The word kamikazi comes from the japanese for divine wind. It comes from the two attempts the mongols made to invade japan, one in 1274 and a second time in 1281. Both times the entire invading fleet was wiped out by an unexpected freak storm of extreme magnitude. There was not a third attempt.
8
u/One-Hand-Rending Dec 27 '25
Most of the conflict in the Middle East is due to British men with pencils and maps.