While the vast majority of history may consist of stoic tales of war, treaties, and tragedy, sometimes our ancestors got a little weird with it. Enter the Great Molasses flood, Benjamin Franklin's rumored ban from writing the Declaration of Independence, and Lewis and Clark's apparent worry about woolly mammoths.
From duking it out with Australian emus to the bizarre history of potatoes as we know and love them, here are 18 insanely goofy facts from history..
1
“Notorious Pirate/Pirate hunter Benjamin Hornigold Once attacked a ship just to steal all of the crew member's hats. His men had gotten drunk and lost their hats during a party the night before and decided to board a ship to get replacements.”
2
“Once FDR died, Truman didn’t know about the Manhattan Project, but when he found out he subtly tried to tell Stalin they were working on something big. Stalin was like ‘yeah dude, I knew before you did.’ Since he had so many spies in America.”
3
“Ancient women would use rabbit furs snd other soft furs as women hygiene products.”
4
“The first bomb dropped on Berlin by the British during WW2 claimed no human casualties. But it did kill an elephant.”
5
“Lewis and Clark were briefed about and expected to find Wooly Mammoths on their expedition.”
6
“Herostratus is the guy who burned down the Temple of Artemis. The only reason he did it was to have his name written down in history.”
7
“In 1847, Robert Liston performed an amputation in 25 seconds, operating so quickly that he accidentally amputated his assistant's fingers as well. Both patient and assistant later died of sepsis, and a spectator reportedly died of shock, resulting in the only known surgical procedure with a 300% mortality rate.”
8
“In the 1970's, a chimp named Nim Chimpsky was raised by a human family and taught sign language to challenge Noam Chomsky's theory that only humans have language. Nim's longest sentence: ‘Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you.’”
9
“The founding fathers wouldn't let Benjamin Franklin work on the Declaration Of Independence because they were afraid he would slip a joke into it.”
10
“Abraham Lincoln's son (Robert Todd Lincoln) was present [or nearby] at three different presidential assassinations. After McKinley, he decided not to accept any more invitations.”
11
“In 1967 Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt disappeared while swimming in the ocean. He was presumed drowned, so naturally that year we named a swim centre after him in memoriam.”
12
“Former US President Andrew Jackson was approached by a man who pulled a gun on him.(smaller history fact this was the first assassination attempt on a US President) The man pulled the trigger and the cap went off but the gunpowder failed to light. The man pulled a second gun and fired, but the gunpowder again failed to light. The assassin tried to get away, but not before Andrew Jackson got him and beat the s—t out of him with a cane.”
13
“Montenegro technically was in war with Japan for 101 years and they signed a peace treaty in 2006. Montenegro was aligned with Russia in Russo-Japanese War and they declared war on Japan but they forgot to peace.”
14
“[The] Great Emu War, [was] in which Australia deployed soldiers armed with machine guns to fight against a horde of 20,000 Emus that were terrorizing the countryside; it was largely unsuccessful.”
15
“Potatoes were not very popular as a food in France. Like they were seen as fit only for animals. Not only that but they were considered generally not digestible by humans. So a pharmacist named Parmentier knew they were good food and wanted to popularize them among the working class. So he got a 2 acre farm to grow potatoes and placed armed guards around it at all times. People assumed armed guards meant something very valuable was growing there so they began to steal the potatoes. That's how potatoes became popular in France's working class.”
16
“When Alexander the Great was a child he was reprimanded by a teacher for wastefully throwing two whole fistfuls of rare incense into a sacrificial fire. When he was an adult and captured Gaza, which happened to be the prime agricultural source of the incense he wasted, he sent home 18 tons of it home to the same teacher as a gift.”
17
“The entire country of Malta was awarded the George Cross for its efforts in WWII. It's still on their flag.”
18
“[In 1919] a massive tank of mollases burst open in Boston, causing a sticky wave that killed 21 people and injured well over 100. The great mollasses flood spread at about 35 MPH.”
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