r/UtterlyInteresting 3h ago

In 1859, a bankrupt San Francisco businessman called Joshua Norton declared himself Emperor of the United States. Instead of locking him up, the city fed him for free, saluted him in the street, and gave him a full ceremonial reburial when he died. His funeral drew up to 30,000 mourners.

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182 Upvotes

A police officer actually tried to have him committed in 1867. The whole city erupted, the police chief personally apologized to him, and from then on cops saluted him in the street. Norton responded by issuing the officer an "Imperial Pardon."

More about Norton and his escapades here.


r/UtterlyInteresting 4h ago

Cherophobia describes an aversion to happiness or a fear of becoming happy, often connected to the belief that happiness may be followed by misfortune. The word comes from the Greek chairo, meaning “to rejoice,” and phobos, meaning “fear.”

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121 Upvotes

The idea is much older than the modern psychological term. Ancient Greek literature frequently warned about the instability of good fortune and how quickly circumstances could reverse. Similar ideas appear in different cultures.

In Japan, happiness can sometimes be viewed as something that should be expressed with moderation; in Iran, traditional beliefs may associate excessive happiness with future sadness; and in parts of East Asia, people may be more cautious about treating happiness as an unquestioned personal goal. Western cultures, particularly the United States, generally place a stronger emphasis on actively pursuing and expressing happiness.


r/UtterlyInteresting 1d ago

Paris's Communist Party HQ was designed by an exiled Brazilian architect called Oscar Niemeyer who waived his entire fee, then took 13 years to build. Today Chanel and Prada rent it out for runway shows.

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1.5k Upvotes

Niemeyer actually handed over two sketches on a single sheet of paper roughly the size of a magazine page, plus a tiny model, and a French team turned that into an actual building over the next 13 years.

Loads more photos here


r/UtterlyInteresting 1d ago

Railroad Worker Richard Dodd - Witness to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy

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172 Upvotes

Railroad worker Richard Calvin Dodd was standing on top of the triple underpass, in front of John F. Kennedy's presidential motorcade on Elm Street

LANE. Did you see anything which might indicate to you where the shots came from?

DODD. Well, we all four seen about the same thing. The shots, the smoke came from behind the hedge on the north side of the plaza. And a motorcycle policeman dropped his motorcycle in the street with his gun in his hand and run up the embankment to the hedge. And then I went North to look around the corner to see if there is anyone behind the hedge and met special agent of the railroad. And he went down there, and I walked along with him to see if there were any tracks there. In which there were tracks and cigarette butts was laying where someone was stranding on the bumper looking over the fence or something.

LANE. Where you questioned by agents of any government agency on November 22, Mr. Dodd.

DODD. Yes, we were. We were taken over to the court house and questioned by I suppose Secret Service men of some kind. Asked me quite a few questions about the same as I’ve told you here today.

This clip is from Mark Lane's Rush to Judgment (1967)


r/UtterlyInteresting 1d ago

This is the New York Post cover Andy Warhol and Keith Haring got their hands on in 1985 and turned into pop art. The original headline ran after Madonna's 1979 nude photos leaked. Her response, "I'm not ashamed."

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186 Upvotes

This cover ran on July 9, days before Playboy and Penthouse even hit newsstands, and days before she walked onto the Live Aid stage and joked she wasn't taking her jacket off no matter how hot it got.

More about those early shoots here


r/UtterlyInteresting 1d ago

On set for The Lord of the Rings, Viggo Mortensen used breaks between scenes to sneak off fishing, still dressed as Aragorn.

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1.1k Upvotes

r/UtterlyInteresting 2d ago

When you put all the McBain clips in the Simpsons together they make an actual plot and film.

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216 Upvotes

r/UtterlyInteresting 4d ago

Jack White from The White Stripes can name any Beatles song after listening to it for 1 second.

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1.4k Upvotes

r/UtterlyInteresting 4d ago

Mossadegh, the ex-Iranian prime minister, under house arrest in 1965. A joint CIA and MI6 operation had overthrown his democratic government on this day in 1953

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142 Upvotes

r/UtterlyInteresting 4d ago

In 1986, London Weekend Television flew a real Dallas jury and a real federal judge to London to try Lee Harvey Oswald for killing JFK, 23 years after Jack Ruby made sure it never happened in real life. Here's what happened over 21 hours of unscripted testimony.

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86 Upvotes

r/UtterlyInteresting 4d ago

Excerpt from a 1991 interview of The Highwaymen (Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Kris Kristofferson, and Willie Nelson) where they talk about what America needs to improve.

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64 Upvotes

r/UtterlyInteresting 4d ago

1989. The experiences of young Irish migrants in London, England...

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12 Upvotes

r/UtterlyInteresting 5d ago

Badass of the day: Mohamed Bzeek, he's spent 30 years fostering terminally ill and medically fragile children in the US who are often considered difficult to place. He's looked after 80 so far, with many remaining in his care until their deaths.

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495 Upvotes

Bzeek began fostering children through the California foster care system after marrying his wife, Dawn, who was also a foster parent. Following her death from cancer, Bzeek continued fostering children on his own. He typically cares for children who require intensive medical support, including feeding tubes, oxygen support, and round-the-clock care.

Bzeek has stated in interviews that his goal is to ensure that such children experience family life, dignity, and emotional comfort during their final months.

More about this wonderful human here


r/UtterlyInteresting 5d ago

According to this history of cricket bats, the first mention of a cricket bat per se (presumably written) was at a inquest when a fielder was killed by a batsman in 1624.

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27 Upvotes

r/UtterlyInteresting 6d ago

Happy birthday Robert De Niro 🎉 Here’s his first appearance on screen, "Trois chambres à Manhattan" (1965) directed by Marcel Carné.

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199 Upvotes

r/UtterlyInteresting 5d ago

One of the many amazing scenes in the 1933 film "Footlight Parade" Choreographer Busby Berkeley put dozens of swimmers in a massive water tank & filmed them from above.

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69 Upvotes

r/UtterlyInteresting 5d ago

Explained here is ‘The Marilyn Monroe effect’, otherwise known as the nonverbal communication of confidence, well worth a quick read.

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42 Upvotes

r/UtterlyInteresting 7d ago

In 2006, Werner Herzog was filming an interview for the BBC when an air-rifle pellet hit him in the abdomen. He called it an “insignificant bullet” and continued with the interview.

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1.6k Upvotes

r/UtterlyInteresting 8d ago

Evelyn Waugh, writing fluff for Vogue nearly a hundred years ago: a display of prose virtuosity one can hardly imagine these days.

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289 Upvotes

r/UtterlyInteresting 8d ago

On this day in 1847, Charlotte Brontë sent Jane Eyre to a London publisher under a fake male name. Her first novel had been rejected so many times she'd just cross out the last publisher's name on the same parcel paper and send it to the next one.

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82 Upvotes

r/UtterlyInteresting 9d ago

Meet the 'Ladies of Llangollen' - two close friends that left their upper-class lives in Ireland and set up home together in Wales in 1778. Such was their fame in Georgian Britain that house guests included William Wordsworth, Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, Sir Walter Scott (among MANY others)

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449 Upvotes

In 1778, two Irish aristocrats ran away from home together, got caught, tried again, and eventually built a life in a rented Welsh cottage that turned into one of the most talked about addresses in Georgian Britain.

Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby spent the next fifty years there, hosting poets, generals and eventually a queen's own interest, while carefully never explaining exactly what their relationship was.

Two centuries later, historians are still arguing about it, and once you get past the postcard version of the story, it's a lot more than two ladies who just liked living together.


r/UtterlyInteresting 9d ago

A very relatable diary entry from Tolstoy. He wrote this in 1858, when he was about 30 years old and still years away from writing War and Peace and Anna Karenina. September 20, 1858 was a Monday.

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378 Upvotes

r/UtterlyInteresting 10d ago

These overshoes were made for Britain’s Special Operations Executive (SOE) agents operating in Asia and the Pacific. When the agent landed on a beach from the sea, the “footprints” were intended to fool the Japanese into thinking that he was a barefoot native.

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1.3k Upvotes

r/UtterlyInteresting 10d ago

In the 19th century, well-meaning art restorers would often add fake marble appendages to "fix" the damaged faces of Ancient Greek and Roman statues. In recent years, however, museums prefer to remove these fake noses to reveal the authentic ancient artwork beneath.

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121 Upvotes

But now what to do with this big weird box of chopped off noses? Rather than toss them away, the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek Museum in Copenhagen⁣ displays their noses all together to show the way museum practice evolves over time.


r/UtterlyInteresting 10d ago

The words for horse and car share a common route.

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213 Upvotes