A good historical fact is one that sounds too good or strange to be true. For example, did you know that we put a man on the moon before wheels on suitcases?
Or that the man who invented the tram was named Mr. Train? Well, it's true and we can't fault you for being skeptical, their facts that sounds too good to be true.
Well, history is full of these sorts of facts. Facts that our teachers thought it best to overlook for the sake of believability. Because there is no way people would get X-Rays of their feet when buying new shoes.
1
Sharpshooter Annie Oakley had a stage act where she would shoot a cigarette out of someone's mouth. While she was touring Europe, Kaiser Wilhelm Il of Germany surprised everyone on a whim and insisted on holding the cigarette. Ever the professional, Oakley shot the cigarette without harming the Kaiser. Several years later WWI is underway and the US goes to war against Germany. Oakley wrote a letter to Kaiser Wilhelm asking if she could have another try at that shot. He didn't reply.
2
The ancient Greeks, inventors of democracy, would elect their officials to one year terms. Each officials' finances were audited at the beginning and end of their term. If anything was amiss, they would be tried and executed.
3
The world’s first programmer was Ada Lovelace in the 1840s. She was the daughter of the poet Lord Byron. Two programming languages were named after her.
4
When the colosseum was used for fighting they used to line the stage with sand to soak up the blood. The Latin name for sand is harena, which means "sand" or "sandy space"...so that's why we call modern concert/show spaces arenas.
5
Woodrow Wilson was mentally and emotionally incapacitated by a massive stroke in October 1919, and his wife and doctors essentially ran the country until Harding took office in 1921. Some historians refer to Edith Wilson as "the first female president.".
6
The Second Congo War, also known as Africa's World War was the deadliest conflict since World War 2 with over 5 million people killed. Most people have never heard of it despite it ending in 2003.
7
Some Greenland sharks have been alive since before the U.S. became a country.
8
Europeans are able to tolerate lactose better than most ethnic groups because our ancestors kept drinking milk even tough it would make them s**t their pants. Just too good to let a bit of shotgun s**t ruin it.
9
The US secretly injecting people (typically poor / minorities, including children and pregnant women) with plutonium and other radioactive materials, and then studying them for decades. When they finally admitted it, the report was released at the same time of the OJ verdict to bury the story.
10
Sharks are older than the rings on Saturn.
11
When the SS Britannia went down in the South Atlantic, a raft of survivors managed to get away. According to the men on the raft, there was one more survivor on the raft with them. But he was unfortunately pulled under by a **Giant Squid** which then returned and attacked their Lieutenant named C*x, who they managed to save before scaring the beast away. Their claims were called out as preposterous and made up when they returned home...until Lieutenant C*x got sick of being accused of such and went to see a local marine biologist at a college. The biologist validated C*x's claims as he had scars 1-1/4 inches in size, which definitely belonged to a 23-feet long squid. It is believed that this story is the only known substantiated report of death by Giant Squid.
12
That in 2006 the earth was hit by a gamma ray burst from a distant supernova that stripped away about 6% of our top atmosphere (its fine now). If it had been bigger it would've wiped everything on earth out (and by bigger I mean if it was 20-25%).
13
The year 536 was deemed the worst year to be alive. Volcanic eruptions caused prolonged dark sky for up to 18 months. This then caused a mini ice age, crop failures and plague over the next 10 years killing millions
14
It took about 4 times longer to get from copper swords to steel swords, than it took from steel swords to atomic bombs.
15
Britain executed men as cowards during WWI if they had “shell shock” which is what we call PTSD today if they could not or would not fight as a result .
16
Many people know about the Suffragettes who won the vote for some UK women in 1918. Many people don't know that prior to 1918 men did not have universal suffrage. 1918 is also the date which non landowning men got the vote. Prior to that the vote had been only for wealthy landowning lords, just 5% of the population. Over a period of the preceding 80 years concessions were slowly made to allow more men, and then some women to vote.
17
Napoleon was actually 5 foot 7 inches not 5'2.
18
We are closer to the time of the T-Rex than the T-Rex is to the time of the Stegosaurus.
19
George Washington’s dentures were not wooden, but were crafted from various materials, animal teeth, and the teeth of enslaved people.
20
People used to get their feet X-rayed at the shoe store to check their shoe fit.
21
A military plane carrying two nuclear warheads broke apart and crashed in North Carolina. The state would have gotten nuked if it weren't for a single safety switch preventing detonation. These nukes were bigger than the ones we used in Japan. Read up on the 1961 Goldsboro B-52 crash.
22
Picasso, Bruce Lee and JRR Tolkien all died the same year.
23
Hitting children in school was still legal when I was there and I'm only 43.
24
The tram was invented by a Mr. Train
25
We put man on the moon before wheels on suitcases.
26
Within a single person's lifetime, we went from all transportation being by horses, ships, and trains, to landing a man on the moon.
27
Approximately 8% of Canadians were enlisted in the Canadian Expeditionary Force during World War I. That isn't 8% of eligible Canadians, or 8% of Canadian men; that's 8% of the entire population of Canada. If a similar proportion enlisted in the United States today, there would be 26 million people serving in the US Armed Forces.
28
There was only one monogamous emperor in Chinese history, the Hongzhi emperor of the Ming Dynasty. He apparently invented the toothbrush to impress his wife.
29
Siaka Stevens was technically both the shortest and longest serving leader of Sierra Leone.
30
During World War II, the United States military developed a plan to use bats as bombs. The idea was to attach small incendiary devices to bats and release them over Japanese cities at night. The bats would then roost in buildings, and when the devices detonated, they would start fires, causing chaos and destruction. While the project, known as "Project X-Ray," never saw combat, it's a bizarre example of the lengths to which military strategists were willing to go during the war.
