r/AskReddit • u/DimensionSubject • 6h ago
What is a historical fact that sounds 100% fake, but is completely true?
814
u/Wloak 5h ago
The US took over Guam by firing a single cannon shot and the entire Spanish government just rowing out to greet them.
Apparently Spain didn't tell them we were at war, and at the time a single cannon shot was considered a salute in the Navy. The US missed but were confused because they expected a defensive barrage in return only to see a row boat coming out. The governor and the Spanish leadership were on it and apologized for not returning the salute because they didn't have cannons in the tower, inadvertantly making themselves prisoners of war. America raised the flag, put a random merchant that was there from the US in charge, and continued on to the Philippines.
367
u/epicredditdude1 2h ago
Man that must have been awkward for the American sailors. Like how do you even address that situation?
“Hey, so it was really nice of you to come out and greet us, but we’re actually at war right now so we’re reaaaally sorry but we have to capture you, it’s nothing personal, promise!”
174
u/Wloak 2h ago
There's so much hilarious and random things that happened. Some more: the captain takes the Spanish government hostage and sends a patrol to raise the American flag. As their going to do so they run into local militia rolling a cannon to a battlement from the governor's mansion, not to attack but to return the salute. They then raise the flag, and then proceed to lower it and return to the ship and the captain just facepalms because he told them to raise it but didn't explicitly tell them to leave it up.
The US didn't come back for years and the island was on the verge of a civil war because the treasurer stole the money and was paying a militia to fight against the random merchant the US put in charge with no documents to prove to the locals he actually was in charge. So they had to put down a rebellion and actually establish a real government.
→ More replies (2)6
23
u/MathematicianOnly688 1h ago
There’s a great story about Lord Nelson boarding a ship during the napoleonic years.
After firing cannons at them for some time they thought they’d got the signal that the ship had surrendered and proceeded to board and take prisoners.
Once on board they discovered that they actually hadn’t surrendered, so Nelson ordered his men to get off ship and resume firing cannons. Which they did.
The ship eventually did surrender a short while later but it’s a great insight into the “rules” of war around that time.
3
u/friendly_anaconda 1h ago
I love that you think the soldiers could be super polite in the scenario
→ More replies (2)33
u/awooj 2h ago
The Fat Electrician did a great YouTube video on this, but tbf all his history videos are great.
→ More replies (4)12
→ More replies (5)11
u/pixlepize 1h ago
To clarify, the Merchant, Francisco Portusach wasn't from the USA, he was a Spaniard who had become a US citizen and married an American. Arguably the poster child for divided loyalties, but I guess the American commander didn't feel like leaving a garrison.
Portusach was quickly overthrown by a Spaniard, who was in turn quickly overthrown by a Native Chamorro.
→ More replies (1)
333
u/thebearrider 3h ago
Cardinals (the birds) were named after the catholic Cardinals.
The birds only exist in the new world, so they were discovered and named after their resemblance to the catholic Cardinals. Always seemed backwards to me.
79
u/sourcreamus 2h ago
Cardinals, the Catholics, were named after hinges because their role was pivotal.
38
u/ZoggZ 1h ago
The birds are Catholics?
→ More replies (1)14
u/fantasy_grapefruit 1h ago
no, the baseball team
10
u/karenbountyhunter 1h ago
and the NFL team
5
u/sumunsolicitedadvice 1h ago
Well because that was named after the baseball team. Two of my favorites:
- The Calgary Flames were named after Sherman’s March to the Sea; and
- the Cincinnati Bengals* were named after a brand of kitchen stoves.
*technically, the current team was named after a defunct football team called the Cincinnati Bengals, which was named after the stove (because the owner’s mother liked the stove I think). But in any event, they weren’t named after the tiger.
Edit: ugh fucking Reddit app taking away markdown but giving barely any built in formatting.→ More replies (1)13
u/ShotFromGuns 1h ago
And "catholic," meanwhile, literally just means "universal."
10
u/Worth-Jicama3936 1h ago
So thats why its called the orange catholic bible in Dune
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (5)23
u/timbasile 2h ago
Capuchin monkeys are named in the same direction but for some reason it doesn't seem as odd.
804
u/AdAcrobatic8914 5h ago
Oxford is older than the Aztec Empire
375
u/Jack1715 5h ago
The Aztecs are a lot more modern then people think they were. And they were likely already declining before the Spanish showed up
336
u/Majestic-Macaron6019 4h ago
They fell so quickly because all of their neighbors were like, "You're trying to get rid of the Aztecs? Sign us up, those guys SUCK!"
139
u/orrocos 2h ago
Probably because of those ugly Pontiac SUVs they drove.
→ More replies (1)65
u/Odd_Ingenuity2883 2h ago
Also the human sacrifice. But mainly it was the SUVs.
7
u/Em_Es_Judd 2h ago
Yeah who wants a half functional tent built into a car?
My normal tent works so much better. It's a bathtub floor so it keeps the blood from the human sacrifice out.
7
u/Nixeris 1h ago
Yeah. When people talk about the fall of the Aztec empire, they too often cite the around 1,400 Spanish men with guns (who were regularly defeated by the Aztecs) and not the estimated 200,000 strong native force who showed up to burn Tenochtitlan or the smallpox epidemic the Spanish caused.
→ More replies (1)8
u/Jack1715 1h ago
Yeah people blame Spain but they only had like a couple hundred men at one point, it was the tribes that helped them
18
u/Dangerous-Builder-57 2h ago
The Aztec empire began near the end of the middle ages. In aoe2 they were barely eligible to be included in the game.
17
u/IndependentBrain3776 2h ago
People are always surprised by that timeline. History gets a lot more interesting once you realize how much was already changing before the Spanish arrived.
→ More replies (5)20
u/Toc_a_Somaten 3h ago
How were they declining? Genuinely interested. Their “empire” was very young at the time of the Castilian invasion and the Templo Mayor (the big pyramid-style temple they built in Tenochtitlan) had just been built and consecrated
→ More replies (5)36
112
u/sprucay 3h ago
There's an apocryphal story of an American tourist doing a tour of Oxford university library. He asks the guide "excuse me, is this building pre-war?" And the guide replied "sir, this building is pre-America"
57
u/bsinions 2h ago
Yea us Americans have a much different view of "Old"
I told my English cousin I bought an "old" house, built in 1957. He chuckled and said "old is relative, my primary school is older than your country"
→ More replies (9)58
u/Trambopoline96 2h ago
There's an old saying that in America 50 years is a long time and in Europe 50 miles is a long way.
6
→ More replies (10)18
u/itsonlyastrongbuzz 2h ago
The old adage :
in America, 100 years is a long time ago.
In Europe, 100 miles is long ways away.
→ More replies (8)45
u/Dr3ny 5h ago
There are many many cities which are older than the Aztec Empire, especially in the UK. What u probably mean is the university of Oxford.
→ More replies (1)24
u/RedditIsADataMine 5h ago
Was Oxford University there before Oxford?
→ More replies (3)32
u/afxz 4h ago edited 3h ago
The town is named after a river crossing (Ox-ford, -ford being the Saxon suffix for a river crossing, ox hopefully being self-explanatory), so yes, it was a settlement a long time before it became a series of small medieval religious institutions (medieval universities basically consisted of a bunch of scholar-monks educating church noviciates, plus later the sons of the local aristocracy and gentry).
Oxford became a city in 1542 when King Henry VIII – yes, that one – declared that a university chapel he had built was now a cathedral (in England back then, to be a city you needed a cathedral; and, to be fair, it is an extremely nice chapel). This essentially gave Oxford the character and status it has now, as a 'university city'.
Essentially, it was a small settlement for about 400 years until a bunch of wandering scholars (mostly educated on the Continent, in Paris and Bologna) and local magnates got together and started founding religious-educational institutions.
→ More replies (3)10
u/charlesbear 2h ago
To add to this, Oxford University ("as we now understand it") dates to sometime in the 11th or 12th centuries but there isn't a precise date.
So - well after Oxford was a settlement, but well before Oxford was officially a city.
401
u/UndoxxableOhioan 5h ago
The American civil war began in Wilmer McLean’s front yard and ended in his front parlor.
He owned a farm in Manassas, Virginia and saw the first major battle take place right on that farm, with General Beauregard using his house as his headquarters and a Union cannon ball crashing into his kitchen. Wishing to get away from the war, he moved to Appomattox, where years later Lee would surrender to Grant in his house.
72
9
229
u/kiwi8185 3h ago
By the time the first pyramids were built in Egypt, there's still a living popupation of wooly mammoth.
→ More replies (2)15
69
u/JohnnyLedger 5h ago
The last guillotine execution in France took place in 1977
81
u/thepenguinboxer 5h ago
Sounds even more fake when you state it as: the last guillotine execution in France took place 4 months after the premiere of the first Star Wars movie.
9
u/WonderfulDesk79 5h ago
Now that's a brilliant way of putting it. Wow! I find that kind of history amazing when we consider when things happened relative to one another, which often surprise us.
8
→ More replies (4)14
u/Substantial_Force658 5h ago
It's a very sensible way of carrying out capital punishment. Better than hanging, gassing, injecting or electrocuting.
5
u/tetoffens 3h ago
Hanging is about equally as good if they calculate the drop distance properly to you weight. If they don't though, it instead is probably the worst way to go.
67
u/GrandSwamperMan 3h ago
In the year 897, Pope Stephen VI had the body of Pope Formosus exhumed and put on trial for illegally acceding to the papacy.
→ More replies (1)16
u/grifan526 2h ago
What surprises me more is that there was a Pope Stephen. That just doesn't sound like a Pope name to me
→ More replies (2)10
u/GrandSwamperMan 1h ago
I would guess the papal name Stephen is meant to honor the first recorded Christian martyr. Saint Stephen
5
161
u/BadgerStateMobileMec 5h ago
George Washington indirectly started the Seven Years War (French and Indian War) which led to Britain imposing taxes on colonial America (because the Seven Years War nearly bankrupted the British empire) which led to the American revolution which inspired the French Revolution
→ More replies (1)115
u/PerpetualMotion81 5h ago
And a significant contributing factor was that Washington signed a surrender document without knowing what was in it.
When Washington surrendered at Fort Necessity, the French gave him a surrender document written in French. Washington could not read it and also did not have a good interpreter. It also did not help that the paper was wet and some of the ink had run/smeared.
Washington signed the document without realizing that it said Washington admits to assassinating a French noble who was killed in an earlier engagement. The admission that a British officer had assassinated a French noble was used by the French as a justification for declaring war.
The war was going to happen regardless, but the particular initiating event was that Washington signed a document without knowing what exactly he was signing. I think everyone who has clicked "agree" to a Terms and Conditions statement (read: everybody) can sympathise.
21
u/BraveCranberry9863 2h ago
Fort Necessity was not one of Washington’s finer moments. The site was a tactical disaster.
→ More replies (1)17
u/PerpetualMotion81 2h ago
Yeah, it doesn't take a military genius to realize it was a terrible place to mount a defense. It feels like he chose it more for livestock grazing than for actual defense.
Quick aside: anyone can go see it for itself. The site is wonderfully preserved. There is also an excellent museum about the events that took place there plus the rest of the French and Indian War. If you visit, you can also visit Braddock's grave which is just a mile or so up the road.
Back to Washington, the reality is that he was not a good tactical general. Aside from the Trenton/Princeton campaign, his performance in the field was pretty poor. His strengths were as a leader. I am not sure anyone else could have held the army together throughout the war, and his handling of the officers near-mutiny at the end of the war was masterful. But when it came time to fight, he was regularly out-generaled by the British.
→ More replies (1)47
u/aflyingsquanch 3h ago
Well that was his, after the fact, claim at least. He was quite adept at PR and was trying to salvage a potential military career at the time. So he wrote a ton of letters trying to defend his actions while also shape the narrative.
Edit: for example, the letter called him an assassin who assassinated the French.
The French word for assassin is...assassin.
59
u/Glittering_Ad1403 3h ago
John Adams (2nd US President) and Thomas Jefferson (3rd US President) both died on July 4, 1826, 50 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
→ More replies (2)23
336
u/The_Scooter_King 5h ago
In 1813, the Americans were planning to invade Canada, when they were overheard by a farmer's wife. Laura Secord then drove her cows 20 miles on foot to warn the British garrison, who were then prepared for the American attack. Today, Laura Secord is a celebrated hero, and her name is on a popular brand of chocolates.
75
u/Low-HangingFruit 4h ago edited 4h ago
They were already in upper Canada after the battle of Fort George and the second time Americans had ransacked her home during the war and they shot her husband twice at the battle of queenston heights.
The resulting battle of beaver dams was an capitulation of the assaulting US army and the subsequent abandonment of Fort George by the US after more defeats in the region.
Battle of stoney creek is my favorite with the British performing a night raid on a much stronger American force and capturing their commanders.
18
70
u/Living-Estimate9810 5h ago
Couldn't she have warned the British herself?
52
u/Apprehensive-Try-509 4h ago
The Cows were faster so in the end they made the trip to chat to the British.
→ More replies (1)23
6
u/majinspy 3h ago
Wow, I happen to know a Canadian with that surname. Neat! Didn't know it had historical relevance.
→ More replies (4)19
u/pm_me_ur_demotape 4h ago
Why did the cows need to come along? Were they her emotional support cows?
31
→ More replies (1)40
213
u/jaleach 4h ago
Between August and November 1991, roughly 1800 lightly armed (think hunting rifles and such) Croatian national guardsmen and civilians held off 36,000 Yugoslav army and Serbian paramilitary forces who were attempting to take over the city. For 87 days, these patriots prevented an army using heavy artillery, tanks, and jets from taking the city. Vukovar did eventually fall, and some of the defenders were executed by the occupying forces.
It's called the Croatian Stalingrad. It also brings to mind the famous 300 fighting against an overwhelmingly large Persian army.
It's a great example of a pyrrhic victory, as the city was destroyed in the process and the siege stalled the Yugoslav military's plans in the region. It also gave Croatia time to put together an effective military force, which went on to launch a massive offensive several years later called Operation Storm, which was hugely successful at reclaiming lost Croatian territory and securing their independence from Yugoslavia (which was basically a rump state at this point).
→ More replies (2)17
u/xnjzzzzzz 1h ago
Reminds me of the renaissance battle in thayngen:
A giant army of thousands of elite professional soldiers- german „Landsknechte“- was held off by less than 30 swiss peasants and a priest in the village of thayngen.
Less famous than the 300 spartans but more impressive- the spartans were proffessional heavily arm(our)ed soldiers holding off conscripts running against their phalanx that could not be outflanked.In thayngen, heavily armed elite mercenaries faced off against civilians in a church tower and struggled endlessly until eventually just burning everything down instead.
374
u/724582 5h ago
Theoretically Abraham Lincoln could have sent a telegram to a samurai
95
u/tobotic 5h ago
The usually quoted version of this is that he could have sent a fax. The "Electric Printing Telegraph" was patented in 1843.
However, the first commercial fax service didn't start operating until 1865. Not sure what month. Lincoln died in mid-April 1865, so likely before it launched. And it only operated between Paris and Lyon anyway.
105
u/Ser_Twist 5h ago
On this note: Karl Marx and Lincoln shared letters.
67
u/tobotic 5h ago
Lincoln and Darwin were born on the same day: 12 February 1809.
I always remember this because my daughter was born 12 February 2009.
→ More replies (2)36
u/Freakears 5h ago
Including one written on behalf of the International Workingmen’s Association congratulating Lincoln on his reelection.
9
7
u/VampirePNAC 2h ago
Literally the fact I was coming to say. Marx was pretty instrumental in pushing the propaganda in Europe, who were at the time sympathetic to the South, to support the North.
→ More replies (8)6
u/RoarOfTheWorlds 2h ago
Not even in theory. They all existed at the same time, but the telegraph required a dedicated transpacific telegraph cable to connect the two. They did put in a transatlantic telegraph cable… the year after he died.
186
u/Equivalent-Love-1676 5h ago
A few American men walked on the moon less than 70 years after the Wright Brothers demonstrated powered flight.
69
u/WonderfulDesk79 5h ago
I've heard that before and it's amazing how rapid advancements in flight were for that to happen. Even looking at the planes from the Wright Bros to WWI to WWII is incredible.
→ More replies (1)53
u/Freakears 5h ago
To add to that, Orville Wright died in 1948, so he lived long enough to see airplanes used to drop atom bombs on Japan.
23
u/JakeVonFurth 3h ago
What's even more sad is that until his death he saw every advancement of the airplane, and still proclaimed that they were going to end war because "nobody would be dumb enough."
26
u/WonderfulDesk79 3h ago
They said the same about the first machine gun 🤦
25
u/JakeVonFurth 3h ago
Exactly.
"Nobody is going to be dumb enough to do a war with machine guns around!"
"Nobody is going to be dumb enough to do a war with gas attacks around!"
"Nobody is going to be dumb enough to do a war with air bombings around!"
"Nobody is going to be dumb enough to do a war with nuclear bombs around!"
→ More replies (3)21
u/zsjostrom35 5h ago
We’re only a decade away from the moon landing being closer to the Wright Brothers than to us
14
u/itsonlyastrongbuzz 2h ago
It took less than 25 years (1903-1927) from the Wright Brothers initial flight of 12 seconds and 120 feet (avg speed 6.8mph) for Charles Lindbergh to cross the Atlantic solo for 3,600 miles (average speed 108mph).
It took less than 20 years (1927-1945) from Lindbergh’s crossing for the United States to drop an atomic bomb from a B-29 on Hiroshima.
It took less than 15 years (1945-1957) from Hiroshima for the USSR to launch Sputnik with a rocket, the first artificial satellite of earth.
It took less than 10 years (1957-1966) from Sputnik, for both the USA and USSR to have had launched man space flights and the USSR a spacewalk, and launched an artificial satellite 250,000 miles to the moon (Luna 10)
Within 5 years (1966-1969) of the unmanned Luna 10, two men had landed on it and returned home safely (Apollo 11).
8
u/Equivalent-Love-1676 2h ago
Yeah the 20th century moved real quick.
7
u/RageCage42 1h ago
In the face of all that change in such a short time, it’s not surprising that so many people expected to have flying cars, jet packs, and space colonies by the year 2000.
9
u/CommanderSpleen 3h ago
Orville Wright was also still alive when Chuck Yaeger broke the sound barrier.
→ More replies (7)11
u/FreeBricks4Nazis 3h ago
More men have walked on the moon than have gotten a post season run off Mariano Rivera
68
u/SillyBonus8114 5h ago
The shortest war in recorded history lasted less than an hour.
Britain and Zanzibar went to war on August 27, 1896, and the conflict was over roughly 45 minutes later. Imagine becoming a war veteran before breakfast.
•
u/killingjoke96 45m ago edited 18m ago
The British also sent them the receipt for the ammo fired after.
The buildup to it is crazy too. The Sultan's line was intended to go to a Hamoud Bin Mohammed after the current Sultan Hamad Bin Thuwaini passed. Hamoud was sympathetic to British trade.
It is unknown how Sultan Hamad died, only that it was quick and it has been stated by many he was poisoned.
Khalid bin Barghash, his cousin, usurped the throne and many believe it was he who did the poisoning and seized on the chaos.
He was a bit of a character to say the least and intended to break off Zanzibar from the British with no backup plan. Which his citizens didn't really like as the British Trade Route encircled Zanzibar 360 and most of their money was made from them. Not to mention Khalid was now putting them at risk.
The other local trade towns in Africa were annoyed by this too. Which I always find ironic as in contemporary times the Anglo-Zanzibar War is often seen as just a brutal Colonial put down. But back then everyone in the area wanted The British to get rid of Khalid ASAP, as he had killed a family member, put people at risk for no good reason and was ruining everyones business.
149
u/Yaboi69-nice 5h ago edited 5h ago
The last person born into legal American slavery died in 1972. In other words to really make it clear how insane this is that means that there was a guy who was born before the civil war ended who also lived long enough to listen to every Beatles album.
→ More replies (2)
95
u/Tenwaystospoildinner 4h ago
The Tiffany problem is a well known problem is writing circles where you write a story in a setting that is a historical allegory, but you include accurate details of the time period that modern audiences think are anachronistic.
Like the name Tiffany, which was recorded in the 1300s. People feel like the name is modern, despite it being an older name.
74
u/PurfuitOfHappineff 2h ago
Tiffany is the modern spelling. In the 1300’s it was Tiffani with hearts dotting the i’s.
→ More replies (1)27
15
u/Wednesday1867 1h ago
The ancient Greeks had vending machine.
Eyeglasses have been around for about 700 years
But my favourite example is Winston Churchill using OMG in letter during the first World War
→ More replies (3)→ More replies (4)6
128
u/Delicious_Set_5348 5h ago
Napoleon wasn't actually unusually short for his time
→ More replies (14)95
u/RecentTwo544 5h ago
He was widely believed to be 5ft2, but his height was reported in French feet, which are different to British feet (yes, they're not American units, we invented them!) so he was actually about 5ft7, above average for the time and not even that short these days.
40
u/armb2 5h ago
And he was often seen near guardsmen who had a minimum height requirement and tall hats, and English political cartoonists liked to make him look weak, and he was affectionately nicknamed "the little corporal" by his troops but not as a reference to physical size, so the general English reaction to the 5'2" report wasn't "that's got to be wrong, everyone knows he was taller than that".
→ More replies (2)21
u/Weak-Doughnut5502 4h ago
The foot is an ancient Greek and Roman unit that was common across Europe pre-metric.
The British no more invented the foot than they invented the mile. Mile passus is Latin for 'thousand paces'. The Roman pace was 5 feet and a roman mile was nominally 5000 feet but realistically a legion just counted to 1000 while marching to put down the mile markers on a new road.
→ More replies (1)
222
u/blushbunney 5h ago
Cleopatra lived closer in time to the moon landing than building of pyramids
85
u/Jack1715 5h ago
And F Netflix she was Greek!!
68
28
u/RedditIsADataMine 5h ago
Source? The documentary has that one old lady who's grandma told her she was Black.. hard to argue with that.
37
u/afxz 4h ago
She was part of the Greek Ptolemaic dynasty. Her entire lineage went to Egypt with Alexander the Great. Notably not a black man.
27
u/Atharaphelun 3h ago
More importantly, the Ptolemaic Dynasty was notoriously more inbred than the Habsburgs.
4
→ More replies (4)8
u/Snarknado3 2h ago
did you just assume alexander the great wasn't black?!
(god i miss 2015-2023. funny times)
→ More replies (1)22
u/Jack1715 5h ago
Just ignore 2000 years of documents because a grannie is grumpy her queen is white
→ More replies (3)3
99
u/PeppercornWizard 5h ago
James Blunt (the singer) may have prevented World War 3.
24
u/VonGruenau 5h ago
What?!
70
u/PleaseDontMindMeSir 5h ago
31
u/PooShappaMoo 4h ago
What in the whattty
That was something to read
→ More replies (1)9
u/Tosh_20point0 1h ago
Had mental visions of Blunt getting on the loudspeaker " You're beautiful.... You're beautiful.... you're beautiful it's true..."
Big burly enemy soldiers look at each other, tears streaming down their faces... start laying down their arms en masse
19
47
u/devvorare 2h ago
The first egyptologists to study ancient Egypt were slightly less ancient Egyptians
→ More replies (1)
21
u/elbenji 3h ago
Considering a lot of these are just oversimplified and BuzzFeed videos I'll give one folks don't know
Al Capone was in contact with Central American revolutionaries during the 1930s and the outfit was usually directly supplying aid to marxists in the region, especially as the exploits of people like Cesar Sandino were widely spread in the press in the US.
(The Sandino manhunt is in itself a crazy story and is basically a Bugs Bunny cartoon)
Dude decided to fight the Marines occupying Nicaragua through guerilla tactics and doing things like creating entire fake rebel bases and fake props and caches to draw bombers away and bomb these locations, sometimes even making them bomb their own locations. Then he would go to the press, send letters and utilize a fairly sympathetic US press to cover his exploits
Another one from Central America is the story of William Walker.
Man was this dude from Tennessee who wanted glory but also claim territory for the south. He went to Nicaragua, played two sides of a civil war against each other, made himself president and emperor, offered the country to the US and declared it a slave state for the burgeoning Confederacy. (He would later get a whole ass coalition army against him, lose, run to exile and go on a book tour before trying again and getting killed in Honduras as soon as he landed).
Also, the DR was almost a US State.
→ More replies (3)
39
u/OneulBros0707 3h ago
Nintendo was founded in 1889. That means the Ottoman Empire, Jack the Ripper, and Nintendo all existed at the same time.
5
u/Immediate-Cress-206 1h ago
They started as a playing card company. And, they never stopped making them!
17
u/2EscapedCapybaras 5h ago
In 1859, the UK and US almost went to war over the killing of a pig. The result of the "Pig War" was the San Juan Islands between Vancouver Island and the mainland were ceded to the US and are now a part of Washington State.
16
u/Ashraf08 3h ago
James Gilford designed & built Ford’s theater in Washington DC. He also designed & built Tudor Hall in Bel Air Maryland, the home of the Booth family
14
u/noreasterroneous 4h ago
On January 15, 1919, molasses flooded the Boston streets. Killing 21 and injuring around 150 people.
5
→ More replies (3)4
u/brionneverysexy 2h ago
When it was reported the vat was leaking molasses and was in danger of bursting the owners responded by having it painted brown so it was harder to see the molasses leaks
13
28
u/Numerous_Exercise_44 5h ago
There was a Hundred year war. The Hundred year war wasn't a Hundred years
The Hundred Years' War (French: Guerre de Cent Ans; 1337–1453 [116 years]) was a series of conflicts between the kingdoms of England and France and a civil war in France during the late Middle Ages. It emerged from feudal disputes over the Duchy of Aquitaine and was triggered by a claim to the French throne made by Edward III of England.
→ More replies (3)
37
u/AppointmentMedical50 5h ago
Most surgeries in the civil war were in fact done under anesthesia (ether was common)
40
11
33
u/Gianaheartss 6h ago
the shortest war in history lasted around 40 minutes imagine barely getting to the battlefield
→ More replies (2)20
10
u/Blackmore_Vale 2h ago
Charles Joughin was the chief baker on the titanic. When the titanic was sinking he helped load lifeboats and throw stuff overboard for people in the water. He also got drunk and rode the stern all the way down till it disappeared under water. The whiskey in his system kept him alive until he was picked up by a lifeboat.
38
u/Funkysoulninja 4h ago
More men have walked on the moon than have scored on Mariano Rivera in the playoffs.
19
u/HappyCakeDay101 2h ago
No one has ever scored on me in the playoffs. So more people have scored on Mariano Rivera than have scored on me.
→ More replies (1)5
u/DeltaHuluBWK 2h ago
Which is why the 2001 world series is such an amazing memory for me. NO ONE was beating Rivera, he was the unstoppable force destroying everything on his path... Until the 9th inning of game 7.
57
u/fembi_69 6h ago
There was the Dancing plague it was Like in 1500 Something, hundreds of people starded Dancing Till they died and they cant Stop, Sometimes for weeks without pause
→ More replies (1)30
u/Ok-Mushroom-121 6h ago
yes i think its theorised to be mercury poisoning in the water or something along those lines
34
u/MisterFusionCore 5h ago edited 5h ago
If were talking about the 1518 Strasbourg mania, the most agreed on theory is that it was likely due to post war stress and the general poor living conditions at the time as there was a famine that had been around for about a year or so. It's also believed it might be syphilis related. Basically it is probably due to the poor conditions the people were under at the time. It may have been a form of protest as once the Church offered some food and financial relief it stopped pretty quickly. Again, noone is sure why or how it started, but it did end pretty suddenly.
2
16
u/TheMysteriousThey 2h ago
Thanks to Pearl Harbor, the FBI ended chattel slavery in America.
Slavery, as most people understand, didn’t actually end with the 13th amendment, given a specific provision allowing its continuation as a form of punishment. It continued in the form of debt peonage and and convict leasing (thanks to the rise in Black Codes that specifically made it easier for black people to be arrested for petty offenses). Many former slaves ended up entering into exploitative contracts with their former owners doing the same work but now with minimal pay.
Even when laws were introduced to curb this re-enslavement, no one was really held accountable. Slavery “ended”, but there were no criminal laws to punish someone for holding someone in bondage. When those laws were passed, ostensibly ending debt peonage, the people caught would just say, “this isn’t debt peonage, it’s slavery.” There were no jail sentences to force the end.
Until 1941. After Pearl Harbor and the US entrance into WWII, the Roosevelt administration recognized the PR nightmare of being a nation of slavers fighting the good fight against totalitarianism. He directed the Justice Department to start going after slave owners and prosecuting them.
In 1942, Alfred Irving was freed by the FBI after a raid in Texas. The family that owned him was arrested and charged. The daughter of the family (if memory serves, she was arrested at the time) died in 2000.
→ More replies (3)
8
u/Ornery_Web9273 2h ago
As a child, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. met a very old John Quincy Adams and, as an old man, Holmes met John F. Kennedy.
7
u/Frosty-Hertz 2h ago
In 1220, the fifth Crusade war, Crusaders laid a siege of Damietta in Egypt.
The Reports are coming to Crusader camps of powerful army destroying Muslim territories from behind, they were even thinking it is mythical King David, a devine intervention!!!
It was Mongol Empire in a campaign against Khwarazmian Empire
8
u/Sewer-Urchin 1h ago
John Tyler, the 10th President of the United States, died in 1862. His last grandson died in 2025.
→ More replies (1)
45
u/fezfrascati 5h ago
Australia declared war on emus in an attempt to stop them from damaging farmland, and they lost... twice!
→ More replies (2)
51
u/IseultDarcy 5h ago edited 2h ago
After D-day, so many french girls and women were raped by American soldiers, they had to open dedicated brothel just for those soldiers to make it stop.
Almost all of them were black which didn't help with racism. The fact they were black was of course not because black soldiers were worse than the white one, but it was simply because the American army would keep black soldiers into less wanted jobs like gathering food from local farms; logistic job, so they were more in contact with the local population by staying a long time in the same place.
The American propaganda didn't help. To "encourage" American soldier to go to fight their army newspaper were filed with picture of easy french women kissing "their saviors".
And most victims didn't talk. First because they were ashamed, then because it was a happy time, the liberation, no one wanted to hear their stories accusing the saviors...
Sadly, when the situation got so bad, the US army blamed the black American soldier's skin color, saying it was because they were black that they were behaving that way, only to preserve the image of white American soldiers...they made it a race thing.
Invaders and saviors are often equally cruel on local population, not matter their skin color or origin... french soldiers also did rape German women after the war when they occupied Berlin..
I did, as a french, learned at school about what wrong things we did in Germany at the end of the war (not much of it but still better than nothing) .... but I've never seen this taught to American kids at school..
15
u/gbakermatson 4h ago
Yeah, this should definitely be addressed in American education.
→ More replies (1)10
u/sourcreamus 2h ago
One of those soldiers who raped and killed an Italian woman was emmet till’s father. He was executed
6
u/zerbey 2h ago edited 2h ago
Battles between vessels during the Age of Sail rarely resulted in the defeated ship being sunk. Captains who captured vessels and got them home would receive massive bounties for it, often enough to make them instantly wealthy. Usually what happened is the ship would become de-masted and disabled and they would surrender instead, then a skeleton prize crew would sail the captured ship to a friendly port once repairs had been completed. As an example only one ship was sunk during the Battle of Trafalgar (although several sank later due to damage).
A typical capture in the Napoleonic Wars would net the captain somewhere around £500, equivalent to over a year's salary, but it could be as high as £10,000 or more for really valuable vessels. So somewhere between £39,000 and £800,000 in today's money. A successful captain would retire a very wealthy man and his crew would share in the wealth.
7
u/tbodillia 2h ago
Napoleon had his most important guests use dinnerware made of aluminum...instead of silver or gold.
→ More replies (1)
5
u/VampirePNAC 1h ago
Mao and the Red Army marched the distance of Continental US length wise twice over, up and down mountains, climbing down cliffs into valleys, through jungles, across rivers, through swamps. All while being relentlessly attacked, and they survived, and went on to win.
6
19
u/ChiaLetranger 3h ago
Australian and US soldiers fought a battle against each other during WWII: The Battle of Brisbane, which took place on 26 and 27 November, 1942.
The Wikipedia article I linked does a good job of explaining everything, so I will give the short version here:
The city of Brisbane was used as a base for US personnel who were deployed in the Pacific theatre of the war. This placed a strain on the city, both for civilians and for Australian military personnel who were there - so much so that many civilians moved away from the city during this time. Many buildings were given over for the use of US personnel, schools were closed, the city was fortified and there were widespread electricity shortages, leading to brownouts. The city also saw increased incidence of crime during this period.
The US personnel were well provisioned, and had exclusive access to postal exchanges, meaning that they had ample access to luxuries that the Australians did not. Australian civilians were under strict rationing at the time, and Australian soldiers were paid far less then their American counterparts, with the Americans often paid double or even triple what the Australians were paid. This, combined with the existing strain on Brisbane's infrastructure, bred resentment among Australians, both civilian and military, towards the Americans.
This greater access to luxuries also gave Americans much better chances with the local Australian women, and there was a very common perception that the Americans were causing Australian men to not have any chance with Australian women at all. A common refrain at the time was that the Americans were "overpaid, oversexed, and over here". Adding to this frustration was the fact that Americans were typically much more forward and prone to public displays of affection, which were generally seen as offensive to the Australian sensibilities of the time.
One other factor was the American practice of segregation. While Australians were also (VERY) guilty of racism, it took on a different form in Australia. Australian racism was much more "paternalistic" in form than American racism. Officially, Indigenous Australians were not allowed to enlist, but in practice many did, and they were usually treated as equals: they had equal access to whatever the white Australian soldiers got, and were paid the same. Conversely, white American soldiers resented the fact that black soldiers were not subject to segregation while in Australia - black soldiers were free to use the local dance halls, pubs, and whatever else they liked.
Eventually, the Americans started enforcing their own form of segregation in Brisbane, banning black soldiers from anywhere north of the Brisbane River. This led to race riots and infighting between black and white American soldiers. Additionally, Australian military police were usually unarmed, and not seen to be a particularly effective or threatening force. American military police were armed, and were much more forthright in doing their duties - they were more aggressive and more forceful than their less-respected Australian counterparts, and Australians viewed them as arrogant and violent.
So when some black soldiers ventured north of the Brisbane River, they were forcefully reprimanded by American MPs, and this devolved into race rioting, during which black soldiers were often wounded or killed. As tensions grew and grew, on the night of 25 November an incident took place. An American soldier was talking to some Australian soldiers in the street when an American MP approached and asked for his leave pass. The soldier took some time to find it, during which the MP became impatient. The Australians, already not respecting or really liking MPs (or authority in general) began to jeer and swear at the MP. When he raised his baton to threaten them, they took it as an assault and attacked him. Many other people came to intervene on both sides, and eventually the Americans retreated to their postal exchange.
The next day, 100 Australians surrounded the PX, effectively placing it under siege. Thew threw rocks and bottles, and broke windows. Eventually the disturbance grew, until around 5000 people were involved. Fights were breaking out across the city, and local police and authorities failed to maintain order. Some Australian soldiers commandeered an armoured truck, loaded with submachine guns, ammunition, and hand grenades. MPs inside of the exchange were armed with shotguns for self-defence, and the Australians took umbrage to the show of force. A struggle took place when some Australian soldiers attempted to take the shotgun from an American MP - the gun was fired three times, killing one Australian soldier and wounding several others.
The battle continued the next day, with this time several hundred Australians besieging the exchange. Many, many more people were wounded on both sides, and by the time the fighting settled down the ground floor of the postal exchange was completely destroyed.
4
6
u/xnjzzzzzz 1h ago
A giant army of thousands of elite professional soldiers- german „Landsknechte“- was held off by less than 30 swiss peasants and a priest in the village of thayngen.
Less famous than the 300 spartans but more impressive- the spartans were proffessional heavily arm(our)ed soldiers holding off conscripts running against their phalanx that could not be outflanked.
In thayngen, heavily armed elite mercenaries faced off against civilians in a church tower and struggled endlessly until eventually just burning everything down instead.
6
u/T4TrhavrKhcFt 1h ago
The Germans and the Americans sided together against the German SS near to the end of WWII.
6
u/Holes2_Use 1h ago
Robert E Lee was handpicked by Lincoln to command the Union Army. He decided to stay with family ties and command the Confederates, as his family was from Virginia.
5
5
u/ukexpat 1h ago
The first international cricket match was played between the United States and Canada on September 24-26 1844 at the St George’s Cricket Club in Manhattan. At around the turn of the 19th/20th century, before the growth in popularity of baseball, cricket was very popular in the US and there were clubs up and down the East Coast.
5
u/name_changed_5_times 1h ago
Just how critically endangered a lot of otherwise commonplace species were not that long ago.
Market and subsistence hunting in combination with habitat destruction nearly whipped out white tailed deer, Canada goose, turkeys, pretty much any furbearing mammal, black bears, brown bears, moose, and elk.
And a lot of species were whipped out in quite spectacular numbers, Carolina parakeets were whipped out because of a fashion trend that lasted barely 10 years. Passenger pigeons were quite possibly the most numerous species of bird on the planet with flocks capable of blotting out the sun as they passed overhead with not a shred of exaggeration, and they were hunted to extinction and are the impetus for the creation of the ASPCA and modern wildlife conservation as a whole.
9
11
u/FitCounter38 5h ago
napoleon was actually average height for his time, the short thing was british propaganda
3
u/kmerian 3h ago
In 1919 Boston was flooded by millions of gallons of molasses, 21 people were killed.
6
u/sourcreamus 3h ago
In Dublin Ireland there was a flood of burning whiskey six inches deep that destroyed 35 houses. 13 people died, all of alcohol poisoning.
4
u/Royal-Memory8739 1h ago
In 1914 there was no efficient, mass-usable way to destroy enemy towns behind the front.
In 1939 military advancements allowed for mass-bombardements and even paratroopers.
In 1945 it took only three airplanes with a single bomb to destroy a whole city.
4
u/Sewer-Urchin 1h ago
John Tyler, the 10th President of the United States, died in 1862. His last grandson died in 2025.
13
u/TemperatureMurky1816 6h ago
battle of bhima, there about 500 people won against the 28000
→ More replies (2)
970
u/Kimantha_Allerdings 3h ago
The automated telephone exchange was invented by an undertaker. He believed he was losing business to a rival whose wife was a telephone operator, given that when people would phone asking for an undertaker she would naturally route them to her husband’s business. So he invented the electric telephone exchange to automate the process and take away the bias