There is so much historical info we should know.
Like the kind of 411 that would keep our eyes open during class.
There is backstabbing, mayhem and murder.
Why is that not on the SAT?
People were all about revenge back in the day.
Redditor Eslayer12 started a conversation about the past by asking everyone:
"Historians of reddit, what is the biggest 'f**k you' moment in history?"
There is so much more history to know. Tell us...
Gotcha
jack sparrow GIFGiphy"A pirate known as Jean Lefitte had a bounty of $500 put on him by a governor. So he put a $5,000 bounty on the Governor."
The-big-ouch
Otto
"When Otto von Bismarck was about 50, he was walking down a street when a man ran up to him and shot him five times. Otto then turned around and began to beat the absolute sh*t out of him until some armed guards come to help him. When they inspected Otto for wounds, they found that all 5 hit, but they all either just grazed him or bounced off his ribs. Literally the iron chancellor."
BrittleBandit
Toleration
"Morocco was the first country to recognize the independence of the United States, which was very nice of them, but the reason they did it was that they had a treaty with England which prevented them from tolerating or engaging in piracy against English ships. No such prohibition on American shipping."
CardboardSoyuz
Nothing
"Napoleon invited his brother in law to speak with him before his coronation as Emperor to remind the brother in law that he objected to Napoleon marrying Josephine because Napoleon would 'amount to nothing.'"
InFin0819
"My SIL 'joked' at our wedding that she'd 'give it two years.' We're three years in now and she's allegedly getting married to her current partner (much to her entire family's dismay, everyone hates him, including her son). Not sure if I want to make the same joke at her wedding or pull something like this and invite her to every subsequent anniversary party."
schneeblefish
Overkill
Disgusted Season 6 GIF by Brooklyn Nine-NineGiphy"After the Restoration, the English dug up the body of Oliver Cromwell and hung, drawn and quartered the body, sticking the head on London Bridge."
_Happy_Camper
People are ruthless. Lord.
Call Me
dogs looking GIFGiphy"The first cell phone. The first call ever made from a cell phone was to a competitor's landline."
-Solarsoul-
SUP
"So when France exiles Napoleon Bonaparte (the first time), they didn’t think to change out military personnel. So he basically rolls up to the first French outpost he gets to, says 'sup' and begins reassembling an army. By the time he gets to Paris, he’s got enough forces that France is like 'Well. Welcome back.'"
Mr_Henslee
The 70's
"In the 1970s the small town of Vulcan, West Virginia asked for state funding to replace a bridge into town. The state legislature refused to grant Vulcan the funding they needed. Instead the town appealed to the Soviet Union for aid. After hearing about the request, the state legislature immediately granted over $1 million for the town to build a new bridge."
"If a small town in WV asking for soviet funding in the middle of the Cold War isn’t a big middle finger to the state government, then I don’t know what is."
NuggetBiscuits69
Against the Spanish...
"This is already one of my favorite threads in reddit history..."
"Galvarino: Chilean warrior who had both his hands cut off by the conquistadors for raising arms against the Spanish. Instead of letting himself serve as a message of helplessness in the face of the invaders the crazy b**tard strapped swords to his stumps and went on the warpath."
-Inaros
Mephisto
"I’m not an historian, but i know this WW1 fact: in 1918 during the battle of Villers-Bretonneux, major James Robertson made a plan to steal a german tank stuck in no man’s land. There was no point in getting it, because it was dangerous going out there and the tank wasn’t a threat to anyone."
"Not giving f**k about that he grouped with 12 other men to retrieve that tank, under machine gun fire and inside mustard gas, just to say to the german army 'Forget you, look what we got here.' Thanks to him and the other men, today that tank is the only original WW1 tank we have and it’s called 'Mephisto.'"
BootFromUsb
Friends
Fuck You Season 4 GIF by FriendsGiphy"Julius Caesar's death. At least he died surrounded by friends."
Dankestcat69
I remember none of this from school. Good to know.
Do you have any to add to the list? Let us know below.
It's a shame that so many people think history is boring.
If they think that, it's probably because they had to spend so much time memorizing names and dates, and no one actually likes that, do they?
No, history is best understood in context. It's important to remember that historical figures were people just like us – and that some of them had sordid lives.
Whether it has to do with sex, murder, or even urine, people showed us their stuff after Redditor Distinct_Bluejay_738 asked the online community,
"Historians of Reddit, what is the most NSFW thing in history you have ever heard about?"
"In the 1700s..."
"In the 1700s, a poet and a pimp got together to write a catalogue of all the sex workers in London so that you could find any sex workers address, age etc and it would rate their performance and describe their appearance. It was called Harris’s Lists and they ran it annually for decades."
prettyaspoison
This is true! A whole index was available... you might call it the Yellow Pages for sex workers.
"Herodotus surmised that the reason..."
"Herodotus surmised that the reason female mummies were more decomposed than male mummies was because they were kept at home longer before being sent to the embalmers to avoid necrophilia."
crosstitchwizard
Oh, dear.
What is wrong with men??
"In the 1960s..."
"In the 1960s, the KGB tried to blackmail the Indonesian PM Sukarno with tapes of him having sex with a Russian flight attendant. Sukarno not only disregarded their blackmail, but asked them to bring more footage of the video to show his countrymen."
kevirtual
Now this is what I call a total power move. A legend.
"Pope Alexander VI..."
"Pope Alexander the VI liked watching horses have sex because he thought it was hilarious."
A-Fellow-Gamer-96
Ummm... I don't see why, to be honest. Someone explain his thought process to me.
"There is a Roman poem..."
"There is a Roman poem considered so dirty it's translation was not published for centuries. Turns out it is shockingly dirty: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catullus_16"
waynequest
Well, this is a first for me.
I think I need to take some Latin.
"Urine..."
"Urine from public urinals was a valuable commodity in ancient Rome and was used as a stain remover in laundries."
p38-lightning
Don't think that just your urine will do. Businesses needed urine en masse!
"After..."
"After Anton Van Leeuwenhoek invented the microscope the first thing he did was ejaculate into a slide to see it under the microscope to see 'tiny men.'"
Hot-Low1910
Men and their obsession with their penises (and their semen) is something that has affected history for millenia.
"He is perhaps best known..."
"The death of Pope John XII. Pope John XII was one of the more promiscuous popes of the Catholic Church, reigning from 955 to 964."
"He is perhaps best known for the circumstances surrounding his death, which occurred in the middle of an adulterous sexual encounter. The most popular story goes that the husband walked in on the two lovers, and proceeded to defenestrate the Pope in a fit of anger."
Redskulzzzz
+1 for use of the word "defenestrate."
Needs to be used more often.
"He had to go through several wives..."
"Ferdinand VII had such an enormous penis that he had to penetrate his wife using a pillow with a hole in it. He had to go through several wives until he found one who could handle him. His doctor wrote in his diary in a very graphic way how big and malformed his penis was."
aversimouro
So what you're telling me is that this man actually needed a silencer for his penis.
"Apparently..."
"Not a historian, but a close friend of mine is. Apparently, if something is named as 'a device in a fertility ritual,' or something along those lines, 90% of the time it’s just a sex toy"
BetaTheOmega
And you thought history was boring, didn't you?
It's really not. It's full of fun (and sometimes disturbing) facts like these.
Show off at your next dinner party – people will love you for it.
Have some facts of your own to share? Feel free to tell us more in the comments below!
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Sign up for the Knowable newsletter here.
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Historians Break Down The Most Devastating Historical Events No One Ever Talks About
With a few thousand years of existence under our belts, human beings have endured plenty of crazy stuff by now. Truly, we've had the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Today, we talk about the ugly.
We're all familiar with the big wars, despots, and ideological movements throughout our time. Wikipedia power users may even have some military history or archaeological know-how under their belts.
But a recent Reddit thread gathered people to share some very niche events and incidents from a time.
The kicker? People were prompted to share the most devastating, often unmentioned moments of our time. Strap in for a close look at us at our worst.
Barfy_Bag asked, "Historians of Reddit, what’s a devastating event that no one talks about?"
For many, the intense, overwhelming power of mother nature was the driving force of the event. Simply put, human beings don't stand a chance against the undulating forces of our planet.
A Light From Space
"In 1859, solar flares hit the earth causing an aurora borealis effect to be seen all over the world. It lasted for several days, during which time it was reportedly bright enough to read by at midnight."
"Telegraph operators reported receiving shocks and burns from the devices, and in some cases removed the batteries powering the telegraphs, as signals were being disrupted by the geomagnetic storm. After removing the batteries, the telegraphs still operated, in some cases better than they had when powered."
"It wasn't particularly devastating at the time, but it's estimated that if a similar storm were to hit us today, it would cripple the entire planet for potentially decades. The estimated repair cost in the US alone is measured in the trillions."
"In 2012, a similar storm missed the earth by nine days."
-- Dyne4R
Layered Calamities
"I'm not really a proper historian but I feel the need to mention the Bronze Age collapse. It's not as though nobody talks about it at all but considering how catastrophic it was, it doesn't get nearly enough attention."
"At this time civilisations were still pretty scarce but the eastern Mediterranean was full of them. We can't pinpoint an exact reason but at some point it all fell apart."
"The Myceneans? Gone!"
"The Hittites? Gone!"
"The Minoans? Gone!"
"The Egyptians? Barely clinging on and having serious problems."
"There are many things that happened around that time in that general area that could be the culprit: Volcanoes, earthquakes, drought, famine, war and invasions from 'foreigners that came by boat' that historians have named the Sea People because we have basically no idea where they came from. In reality, it was probably a combination of some or even all of them."
"Again, I'm not a proper historian by any means but this is what I heard. Actual historians, feel free to correct any mistakes or mention something I missed."
-- tiffinstorm
Of Course, Man Plays a Part
"The Johnstown Flood of 1889. The deadliest civil engineering disaster on US soil, it killed 2209 people. After a dam collapsed it swept up rail cars, passengers, trees, an entire town of 10,000, then swirled it around and ejected the debris downriver into a bridge where it all caught fire."
"Destruction beyond belief, and all so that some rich steel magnates up the mountain didn't maintain the dam they used to keep their fishing reservoir."
-- Ludendorff
Set Back Years
"Galveston, Texas was once considered to be one of the most important commercial ports in the United States and was referred to by several fantastical names such as the 'Queen City of the Gulf' and the 'Wall Street of the West.' "
"All that changed when it suffered a near-direct hit from a devastating Category 4 Hurricane in 1900, the deadliest natural disaster in American history. Pretty much the entire city was destroyed by a storm surge and anywhere from 8,000 to 12,000 people died."
"Galveston was rebuilt but it never truly regained its status; Houston became the state's commercial center in the storm's wake, in addition to other factors."
Other people noted the terrible things human beings do to one another. Genocide and war, unfortunately, have been around for as long as we have.
A Ceaseless Slaughter
"Cambodian Genocide. They killed so many kids that the life expectancy was 18" -- SoLongFarewell2019
"I visited the school converted to a prison and the killing fields when I went to Cambodia and it was horrifying. Besides the killing tree, the most heartbreaking thing was at the school they had pictures of all the people killed."
"There was one little boy who looked so terrified but you could tell he was trying to be so brave. It is astonishing how cruel people can be." -- sensualoctopus
The Living Dead
"Leprosy colonies of Hawaii. People who were diagnosed with leprosy were forcibly banished to Kalaupapa to live out the rest of their lives - they were dug graves, had to stand in them, while their families and friends basically had a 'living funeral' for them where they had the dirt thrown on them; they were then pronounced dead to the world and no longer part of the community."
"This continued through 1969 even after Hawaii officially became a state."
TEN MILLION +
"Taiping Heavenly Kingdom of Hong Xiuquan."
"Put simply, it was an upsurp Kingdom in 1850's China that directly and indirectly led to the deaths of millions (maybe ten million+) of people through massacre and famine."
"Hong Xiuquan believed he was the younger brother of Jesus Christ and pursuaded enough people to follow along and start a civil war."
"Check out Gods Chinese Son by Jonathan Spence."
-- oswan
Cleared Out
"The Highland Clearances. Over a period of about 150 years between the 18th and 19th centuries, English and Lowland Scottish landlords evicted thousands upon thousands of highland Scots from their ancestral homelands and replaced them with sheep."
"It's hard to classify as a historical event because it went on for so long and is usually interpreted as an ambiguous series of largely isolated incidents. There were attacks on villages in which the landlords would burn their tenant's houses to the ground to get them to leave, and burned their land so that nothing could grow. Multiple people were caught in the fires and died."
"During the Glencoe massacre, 30 members of Clan MacDonald were murdered by Scottish government forces for supporting the Jacobite uprising. The Irish potato famine also affected the highland scots who grew potatoes, and many people starved or were forced to leave as well."
"As a result, there was a series of mass migration in which scots travelled to Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the U.S., and largely lost their language and culture. It's very sad, and all that is basically why highland culture and language has largely been lost."
Silent Killer
"The disease outbreaks that hit the Americas with the arrival of the Europeans."
"You hear about a 90% death rate and it sounds made up, but whatever the actual number was, entire civilizations were literally wiped out. Cultures that had existed for thousands of years are just gone, with barely a record left. You have stories of people coming across whole villages of corpses."
"These people died never even having seen the Europeans, never knowing what was killing them and their loved ones and totally helpless to do anything about it."
-- Vic_Hedges
Shipped Out
"BHC = British Home Children"
"Poor British children were taken from their families and sold to Canada as indentured servants/farmhands. Many of these children were never checked on, were not paid, educated, fed, or clothed properly, and endured cruel and unusual treatment. Some died, but most ran away."
-- inkling66
Unjust Payback
"The assassination of James Garfield. He was a known advocate for racial equality. He appointed black men into his cabinet and tried expanding public education into the south to get more African-Americans an education."
"He tried to fight for racial equality but died four months into his presidency which fu**ed it up."
Bystanders
"Asked my history studying friend about this, she said there's A LOT of events that people don't talk about. For example, there was a lot of countries involved in the Balkan conflict who knew about the massacre of Srebrenica but still allowed it to happen."
"So many historical events are just so grim and depressing when you read about it, we knew bad things were happening but didn't stop until it was too late for many people."
-- ThiccNya
A Recent Case
"The Rwandan genocide has got to be one of these events. I watched Shake Hands with the Devil here awhile ago and highly recommend it. Unspeakable acts of brutality inflicted. Still gives me chills." -- GartSnart52
"One of the worst parts to me is how easily it could have been prevented. Roméo Dallaire, the general in charge of the UN forces on the ground said at the time that with a few thousand peacekeepers the genocide could have been prevented. UN analysis after the fact agreed with his assessment. Can you imagine if 3,000 soldiers could have prevented the holocaust, but the international community didn't want to spare the troops?" -- MichaelMyersResple
Finally, some people opted to share the bizarre. They outlined those freak accidents or wild tragedies that seemed to come out of nowhere.
They Just Wanted Toys
"The Victoria hall disaster. All because kids were being kids in a death trap:"
" 'The disaster started when about 1,000 children in the audience of a variety show were told they could get free toys. Kids began pouring down the aisles to get the toys, blocking the exits and piling on top of one another. In the end, 183 of them were crushed to death.' "
Ill-Equipped
"Vietnamese boat people. Absolutely crazy and literally can't believe this happened. And nobody fu**ing ever talks about it."
"Think about this, it's the Vietnam war, and you are Vietnamese and obviously want nothing to do with it. Many saw their only way out was by sea, due to tensions with neighboring countries. So hordes of people tried to escape the country in little boats."
"Now here's the kicker, it's estimated that up to 400,000 of them drowned. Everything got stolen. People got sick and starved. Pirates kidnapped people."
"Absolutely horrible. That wiki page makes me feel bad for ever having complained about anything"
Pandemonium
"The Khodynka tragedy. Was supposed to be a celebration of the crowning of Nicholas II as emperor. Around 500,000 people gathered in a field where they would receive free food."
"Rumors spread that there wouldn't be enough food for everyone leading to a panic and everyone rushing the field. 1,389 people were trampled to death."
"Nicholas II responded by going to a party that night."
-- CrustyTowel
The worst thing? There are probably countless examples out there that weren't even mentioned in this list. Perhaps you even know a few.
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Historians Share The Best Times Humanity Came Together For Common Good
It's easy to get caught up in the negative. A quick glance at social media would have you believe all of humanity is at each other's throats, angry over a grocery line or losing a parking spot to someone. This isn't every day, and sometimes the best thing for your mental health is to look at the positive bits of humanity. Remind yourself we're capable of great things.
Reddit user, u/badlungsmckgee, wanted to brighten your day when they asked:
[Serious] History is full of well-documented human atrocities, but what are the stories about when large groups of people or societies did incredibly nice things?
Are you a historian with knowledge of a wonderful act of humanity? Share it with us!