History is about who gets to the pen first. After all, it's written by the winners after all, but typically those in charge get the first shot at the books to make it all about them. Sometimes things get made up, sometimes things get lost, and nothing is ever set in stone, especially when you find major plot holes in the way events played out.


Reddit user, u/Anti_Karen_League, wanted to hear about:

What's a plot hole in history?

A Perfect Way To Stop The Horde

Maybe more deus ex machina, but the Mongol Horde was staged on the Hungarian Plain and about to conquer Central and Western Europe when they mysteriously withdrew back towards Central Asia.

The conventional theory is that everyone ran back to deal with the ascension upon the sudden death of the Khan.

PenguinEmpireStrikes

So Obvious It Just Might Work

The Battle of Midway went towards the Allies because of a simple ploy. Midway was ordered to broadcast, unencrypted, that their condensers had broken and they were running short of water. Pearl Harbor sent a reply, also unencrypted, that a water barge was en route. Japanese forces sent a message that "AF" was running short of water, which was picked up by Allied listening stations - thereby answering a long-held question as to what "AF" represented in their code and allowing the Allies to prepare for attack.

How did it not occur to any of the Japanese radio operators that sending an important message like that in the clear could be a trap?

ManCalledTrue

Yeah, Where Did It Go?

We still haven't found hitlers body

always_doing_nothing

It's theorized the Soviets actually did find his body, but instead of revealing it, just destroyed it and put the remains somewhere that they'd never be found, so that remaining Nazi sympathizers wouldn't try to make a gravesite memorial, like what the Spanish did with Franco Francisco's body when he died a few decades later. A similar thing happened with Hernando DeSoto: he had convinced the native Americans he was a literal god, so when he died his men knew they'd be f-cked if the natives found out he had died. So they burned his body and threw the ashes in the Mississippi River.

XxsquirrelxX

How Did We All Come Here?

glow homer simpson GIFGiphy

How non-living matter came to life

Sambezboy

To paraphrase the formation of amino acids as described in A Short History Of Nearly Everything - It's like a tornado going through a junk yard and accidentally assembling a fully functional jumbo jet.

CookinFrenchToast4ya

If Only They Knew

I'd say it's that Hitler basically got a slap on the wrist for committing high treason. Seriously, the guy tried to overthrow the German government, and only got five years in prison. Even after that, he and the Nazis were still allowed to run for election. That's plot hole if I've ever seen one.

some-enclave-soldier

Here Then Gone In A Flash

Killer bees in 2020. Completely went no where.

K1nd4Weird

You mean murder hornets, but you're right about them going no where.

moki_likes_cuddles

...Where DID It Go?

Where did Jesus body go? But like irl.

Kikimelon42

The earliest writings have his body buried in a mass grave, which would fit with what would be expected of a criminal at the time, and makes perfect historical sense.

However this makes the whole story less dramatic, which might be why later writings have a funky story about some made up rich person gifting his own tomb for the burial, even though none of the facts described in this version of events fits with anything even slightly sensible

So, if there was a Jesus, it's probably the case his body was buried in criminal's grave and stayed there

dontbeadentist

Don't Like The Rules? Change The Game?

Henry VIII had a bastard son, Henry Fitzroy, but instead of changing the rules to make a bastard able to inherit the throne, he changed the rules so that he could get a divorce on the off-chance that his new wife would give him a legitimate son.

jetsam_honking

Historians Will Unpack This For Decades To Come

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How did it come down to Trump vs Hillary in 2016? How, by any stretch of the imagination, was that the best we could come up with?

Fflewddur_Fflam_

That's less of a plot hole and more of a jumping the shark moment.

Quirderph

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And She Continued To Sell More Books

the simpsons GIFGiphy

Agatha Christie vanished for 11 days and returned with no memory of where she had been or what she had been doing.

Iseeasong