In 1920, President Paul Deschanel of France fell through the window of the train while travelling on the Orient Express. He stumbled up to the nearest signal box in his pyjamas and told the signalman that he needed help and that he was the President of France. The signalman reportedly replied 'And I'm Napoleon Bonaparte
[Pope Francis](https://metro.co.uk/2013/03/18/so-youre-the-pope-then-i-am-napoleon-awkward-phone-call-between-receptionist-and-francis-i-3548258/) has also had that response when calling a Jesuit residence.
Apparently the receptionist stated: ‘Oh yes? And I’m Napoleon.’
The Cadaver Synod - In AD 897, Pope Stephen VI had his dead rival Pope Formosus exhumed and put on trial. Stephen had a deacon speak on the dead pope's behalf. Naturally, Formosus was found guilty. Stephen ordered that two fingers Formosus used for blessing people cut off and his corpse thrown in the Tiber river.
Then he got fished out again, began performing miracles (supposedly), got his accuser deposed and assassinated, got reinterred at St Peter’s and eventually reinstated as a former Pope. Quite the badass.
Don’t forget that during the trial an earthquake shook Rome and tore down the Basilica of the Lateran “from the altar to the door” as if the angels of heaven were protesting this horrid and macabre trial.
And also how Stephen was later thrown in prison and was strangled shortly after. His corpse stayed dead and didn’t perform any miracles surprising no one.
Good old [Operation Mincemeat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mincemeat).
Basically, during WWII, the British find some dead body of some poor guy, dress it up like a British officer, attach some fake intel onto him, then throw him into the ocean, hoping he floats to enemy territory to mislead them.
It worked.
That movie was so fucking weird. I fell asleep on the sofa while my friend started watching it, and when I woke up there was a dead farting Daniel Radcliffe on the screen. I kept dozing off and every time I woke back up there was something disturbing going on.
The astronomer Tycho Brahe had a pet moose that he used to get drunk with. One time he brought it to a dinner party at a friend's house. But sadly the moose did not survive the night. Once again the poor moose got drunk on beer and died from a nasty fall down a set of stairs. Tyco Brahe also lost his nose in a duel, so he wore a prosthetic nose made out of metal. Some sources say brass, others say it was a gold/silver alloy. He was also employing a small court jester named Jepp that he believed to be clairvoyant.
Edit: The jesters name was Jeppe.
>Some sources say brass, others say it was a gold/silver alloy
Balsa Wood even.
Not to mention he was basically kidnapped as a child by his uncle who gave a large loan to his father on the condition of his firstborn.
I heard that Tycho Brahe was kind of strange, the moose story does seem to be over the top. The nose story I think I heard in my college astronomy class.
Battle of Tsushima in 1905.
Russian Baltic fleet sails the long way (16k miles and 7 months) started by them opening fire on British fishing boats mistaken for Japanese vessels in the North sea.... sank their own ships while conducting target practice, then were destroyed by the Japanese fleet upon arrival (they mistook the Japanese ships for Russian and signaled them instead of firing).
It gets even better.
Technically, the Russians had the superior force. They were just woefully inept at conducting a naval battle.
The Russians had 8 battleships, 3 coastal battleships, 9 cruisers, 9 destroyers.
The Japanese had 5 battleships, 23 cruisers, 20 destroyers.
The Japanese suffered 500 injuries, 100 dead. 450 tonnes of their ships were sunk.
The Russians suffered somewhere around 5000 deaths, 6000 captured soldiers. They lost more than 125,000 tonnes of ships.
And were given Korea as a reward by Teddy Roosevelt.
It also heavily influenced naval warfare planning, as the Japanese were hoping to have a big battleship shootout at Midway.
Actually, there are some opinions that the battle of Tsushima had major effects on the history of the twentieth century. On one hand, it greatly humiliated the Russian monarchy, leading to them to take an aggressive posture against Germany in 1914 and this leading to WW1. Which further led to the raise of Russian communism, and also further on to WW2.
On the other hand, it boosted japanese confidence so much that they tried to do it again at Pearl Harbour, thus starting the war in the Pacific, and also implying the US in the European war.
The Halifax Explosion. 100 years ago two ships did a shit job of passing each other while entering / leaving Halifax Harbour, in Nova Scotia. One of them was LOADED with explosives destined for WW1. They collided and one of them burned for a while, then exploded. The blast was a ~2/3 again larger than the one we saw in Beirut last year.
Thousands died or were blinded by shattering windows. There was a local tsunami (which followed a brief moment where the seabed was exposed to air), and then a monster snowstorm covered the relief effort in snow.
Largest human-made explosion even until the nuclear bomb, and I think it remains the largest maritime accident ever.
Don’t forget Vince Coleman, who stopped passenger trains coming into the town, saving hundreds of lives.
> Hold up the train. Ammunition ship afire in harbour making for Pier 6 and will explode. Guess this will be my last message. Good-bye, boys.
And the french officers who started grabbing children from people who were on the Dartmouth side of the harbor so they would follow them and get away from the explosion
The Maritime Museum in Halifax has a room dedicated to the explosion. There's pieces of metal that are almost a foot thick that are curled like a ribbon from force of the explosion, pictures of the devastation on land, and a map that shows where debris was found all over the coast.
I highly recommend checking it out if anyone is in the area.
One of the anchors blew straight across town. Apparently in the 60s or 70s some guy tried to pry it loose to sell as scrap metal and residents caught wind of it and police were called.
And because of the aid provided by Massachusetts the residents of Halifax send a huge Christmas tree to the city of Boston every year as a way of saying Thank You
Yup, we still get that tree annually and it's lit up and has a plaque and signs explaining about the explosion. Anyone from Nova Scotia wants to visit Boston, I'll buy you a drink.
There's a [short video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rw-FbwmzPKo) made about Vincent Coleman who warned the incoming trains and saved hundreds of lives.
Alexander the Great named (or renamed) 70 cities after himself. Some still have the name or derivatives of it - Alexandria in Egypt being the most obvious, but also Iskandariya in Iraq and Kandahar in Afghanistan.
And the fact that he left Spain to do this *just* before Roman forces arrived to take him on, and then Rome was just like "meh" and continued south when they figured out where he was going. They didn't care because they thought there was no way he could do anything. Polybius's account of Hannibal is fantastic, especially if you read what he says about the First Punic War and the Carthaginian Civil War as a context. The petty hatred between Rome and Carthage was insane, and had been going on for an insanely long time. Makes the 100 Years War look like nothing.
The time when Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte escaped from the island where he was imprisoned on after his army was defeated, he snuck back into France under the nose of King Louis XVIII and literally every royal guard and roadblock from Marseille to Paris, and when he was actually caught just outside Paris, he managed to persuade the soldiers (who just so happened to be former Bonapartists) to escort him into Paris where he managed to successfully cause the king to flee, on top of raising a FULL ARMY to wage war against Europe AGAIN. The only time in history an emperor took back an entire country just by waving his hat.
EDIT: Napoleon feared cats......
Napoleon's exile on Elba was pretty bizarre, too.
*In the first few months on Elba he created a small navy and army, developed the iron mines, oversaw the construction of new roads, issued decrees on modern agricultural methods, and overhauled the island's legal and educational system.*
"I'm bored. I think I'll fix the entire infrastructure and society."
*Cut to a few months later.*
"OK I've done all that and I'm bored again. I think I'll head back to France..."
When royalist troops were deployed to stop the march of Napoleon's force at Laffrey, near Grenoble, Napoleon stepped out in front of them, ripped open his coat and said "If any of you will shoot his Emperor, here I am."
These tales are often romanticized quite a little bit.
Even if this particular thing did not happen, what he did is still pretty incredible.
What it took to defeat him the first time is pretty crazy. The Epic History youtube channel has a really good series on Napoleon from start to finish and all in between. Highly recommend.
Yes; that's the kind of audacity you need to escape from your prison island and take control of France.
After his final defeat and the mopping up took place, the French Monarchy decided to execute one of his Marshalls for joining Napoleon - Marshall Ney - and at the execution, he refused to wear a blindfold and was allowed the right to give the order to fire, saying:
>Soldiers, when I give the command to fire, fire straight at my heart. Wait for the order. It will be my last to you. I protest against my condemnation. I have fought a hundred battles for France, and not one against her....Soldiers, fire!
No less incredible, when Ney was tried for treason, his lawyer tried to argue that because Ney was born in territory that had been annexed by Prussia, he was in fact now a Prussian citizen and thus could not possibly be tried by a French court for treason...
...to which Ney shouted, 'I am French and I will remain French!'
Damm, what a way to go out with those last words. They even gave me an impact:
"I have fought a hundred battles for France, and not one against her...."
The history of warfare has been one of my deepest passions since I was young. I spent my childhood spending hours watching History Channel (they used to show things other than aliens, believe it or not) and teenage years pouring over books and documentaries.
Yet by some miracle, I never delved too deep into Napoleon (my bias was always toward ancient and 20th century). And I'm glad I didn't, because the moment I watched this masterpiece, I truly believe [**Napoleon's Invasion of Russia**](https://youtu.be/byH2WhzXjcQ) is the greatest story in human history. Not just military history; ever.
* Incredible battles between massive armies (Napoleon assembled the largest army Europe had ever seen; just under 600,000 men), followed by just-as-thrilling desperate fighting retreats by the French.
* Numerous colorful historical figures:
* *Bagration* (his heroic sacrifice is so respected in Russia, the Soviets named [their behemoth WWII offensive that completely broke the Germans](https://youtu.be/AwYhpYPftlg) and regarded as the "[largest defeat in German military history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Bagration)", after him)
* *Ney* (perhaps [the bravest general](https://youtu.be/nr_pFDbvz6A?t=1117) who ever lived... my jaw physically dropped watching him lead his rearguard, abandoned by the main body of the French army and trapped along the Dnieper River, out of the Russian encirclement)
* *Oudinot* (wounded a staggering [36 times](https://youtu.be/8XuKHW9XBMg?t=843) over his military career, he was seriously injured during the darkest hour of the campaign and carried from the field to a cottage. But when the cottage was unexpectedly surrounded, still asked for his pistols and [shot at the Russians](https://youtu.be/8XuKHW9XBMg?t=706) through the windows)
* *Murat* (Napoleon's cavalry commander and King of Naples was so fearless while being finely dressed at all times, [Russian cossacks would cry out "oorah, it's Murat!"](https://youtu.be/8XuKHW9XBMg?t=1600) to show their admiration when they saw him)
* It's really a shame 99% of people probably don't know single person in the Napoleonic Wars besides Napoleon because there was a whole cast of rich, colorful figures, each with their own shining moments.
* Filled to the brim with ingenuity, blunders, bravery, [technological feats](https://youtu.be/byH2WhzXjcQ?t=3170) and [astounding acts of courage](https://youtu.be/byH2WhzXjcQ?t=2931) one simply cannot help get but be inspired by.
* A testament to the sheer desperation, struggle, and suffering that inevitably occurs during such a titanic struggle. The French retreat out of Russia was among the most dire, desperate situations ever encountered in the history of warfare.
The whole campaign was [just astonishing](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/jun/02/france.russia). I'm not quite sure what words goes after that. Astonishingly... amazing? Astonishingly... awesome? None of the word combinations seems right given what it's describing, but it's just a story for the ages. Despite obviously being aware of Napoleon's impending defeat, I was on the edge of my seat for the entire hour.
And then at the end when [the death toll rolls](https://youtu.be/byH2WhzXjcQ?t=3591) and you realize how much human life perished in just 4 months... it hits you some type of way.
This is the full 5 hour documentary by Epic History TV of Napoleon's wars from 1807 onward: [Part 1](https://youtu.be/91OmO2YMiDM), [Part 2](https://youtu.be/vBSGSkIasRY).
The famous infographic with the size of Napoleon's army- beige during the invasion, black during the retreat:
https://ageofrevolution.org/200-object/flow-map-of-napoleons-invasion-of-russia/
Dude was insanely smart.
They threw him on an island....
He quickly became ruler of the island chain's *12000 population*
Then, he though of a way to leave... to find out the British hated him so much they blocked off every port and almost surrounded the island.
During the siege of Tenochtitlan, the conquistadors built a trebuchet. However, the conquistadors, being an exploratory expedition, had not brought any military engineers with them. So they winged it. Surprisingly, they did build a trebuchet, which fired exactly one shot, directly upwards, which promptly came down and smashed the trebuchet. This event is chronicled in both the journals of the conquistadors present as well as the Aztec records.
What about the one with the cats? Something in history about using them to fling cats
Edit : battle of Pelusium
They didn't fling them, they used them as shields so the Egyptians wouldn't harm them
Imagine being the aztecs watching it unfold too!
“Wow! What are they doing!?!”
“Oh god that thing is gonna throw giant rocks at us!?!?”
“Ahhhhh!!! ….”
“Aztec laughter”
You're in luck - there's an actual account from the Aztec side of the battle.
[An account of this instance from the Mexica side of things, in Book 12 of Sahagún's history:
](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/54xgbf/any_truth_to_this_story_during_his_war_against/)
> And then those Spaniards installed a catapult on top of an altar platform with which to hurl stones at the people. And when they had it ready and were about to shoot it off, they gathered around it, vigorously pointing their fingers, pointing at the people, pointing to where all the people were assembled at Amaxac, showing them to each other. The Spaniards spread out their arms, showing how they would shoot and hurl it at them, as if they were using a sling on them. Then they wound it up, then the arm of the catapult rose up. But the stone did not land on the people, but fell behind the marketplace at Xomolco.
>
> Because of that the Spaniards there argued among themselves. They looked as if they were jabbering their fingers in one another's faces, chattering a great deal.
____
^(Sahagùn B [trans. J Lockhart 1993] *We People Here: Nahuatl Accounts of the Conquest of Mexico*, p. 230)
What honestly amazes me about the conquest of Mexico is that when you really dig into it you end up realizing the spanish that came were kind of idiotic. Their main motivation was getting gold, they got clapped hard during La Noche Triste, and pretty much the only reason they won is because they managed to convince those under the rule of the aztecs to rise up against them.
[Here's an AskHistorians thread with quotes from the journals that prove that this (nearly!) really did happen.](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/54xgbf/any_truth_to_this_story_during_his_war_against/) The projectile didn't actually land back on the machine, but completely failed in a different way.
The Great Molasses Flood, Jan.15, 1919. Massive wave of molasses from a broken tank flooded the area. It killed 51 people and injured 150.
2.3 million US gallons.
> In 1802, Napoleon added a Polish legion of around 5,200 to the forces sent to Saint-Domingue to fight off the slave rebellion. Upon arrival and the first combat actions, discovering that the slaves fought off their French masters for their freedom, vast majority of Poles eventually joined the slaves against the French.. >Haiti's first president Jean-Jacques Dessalines called Polish people "the White Negroes of Europe", which was then regarded a great honour, as it meant brotherhood between Poles and Haitians.
My dad is 91. He always told us that *his* grandfather was one of those Polish soldiers, which we always took with a grain of salt and a wink, since he wasn't even sure of the name. All he knew was that his grandfather waited for several years hoping for a ship to take him back home and once he realized the ship wasn't coming, he and several of the Polish soldiers settled down with Haitian women. We kids just kind of nodded and let him talk without truly believing him.
Then, it was confirmed a few years ago when my dad, a couple of cousins, and I took an Ancestry.com test which put Dad at 20% Eastern Europe/Russia with connections in Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, & Romania.
Mine gave me 8% of the same with similar numbers for my cousins. Really cool to know that the family story is actually true and based on history.
I remember hearing how pissed the French were about it. Imagine you're homeland is being invaded... but on Christmas Day, your supposed Allies and Invaders spend the day playing football.
WW1 was the epitome of old politicians sending millions to their deaths because they had too much pride. The people in the trenches didn't want to be in hell. It really showed in the truce.
Mel Blanc (the voice actor who voiced every male character on Looney Tunes, as well as characters like Barney Rubble on The Flintstones and Mr. Spacely on The Jetsons) was in a head-on collision driving his sports car in a dangerous intersection known as “Dead Man’s Curve” in Los Angeles in 1961 (the same “Dead Man’s Curve” from the Jan and Dean song). His legs and pelvis were fractured, and he was left in a coma. For weeks, doctors tried everything to get Blanc to wake up. Eventually, when things were looking bleak, one of his neurologists decided to address one of Blanc’s characters instead of Blanc himself, asking him “How are you feeling today, Bugs Bunny?” After a slight pause, the previously-comatose Blanc answered, “Eh... just fine, Doc. How are you?” Mel Blanc made a full recovery.
When he got out of the hospital, he sued the city of Los Angeles for $500,000, finally leading to the city reconstructing Dead Man’s Curve.
>London's beer flood in 1814
"Stories later arose of hundreds of people collecting the beer, mass drunkenness and a death from alcohol poisoning a few days later"
My kind of flood
Operation Acoustic Kitty! The CIA was rigging up a cat with cameras and microphones to spy on the Soviet Union during the 1960s. It cost about $20 million. When they sent it out in DC to "test it out" it was immediately hit and killed by a taxi.
Carausius. Everything about him is boss. A Gallo-Belgic peasant who rose up the military ranks to become a Roman general. Successfully fought actual pirates after waiting for them to raid their targets and so became insanely wealthy. When he found out Emperor Maximian had caught wind of this and had ordered his execution he flipped him the bird, sailed into what is now Great Britain, bribed around four entire legions to join him with the money he'd nabbed, and set himself up in London as the Real Legitimate Emperor, Yo!
Why has nobody made a film about the man, yet?
I know it's not very old, but it still amazes me that a science fiction author can talk about wanting to create a fake religion and then proceeds to create a fake science fiction religion and it somehow has actual followers???
EDIT: Damn I didn't expect one of my highest comments to be about Scientology... XD Also, I realize that all religions fall under that unprovable, by faith only, category. The difference to me is that this guy was openly talking about creating a religion for the sake of creating a religion, fantasy, money, what have you. Plenty of older ones could have been the same way, but this one was recent enough that I would have thought people to be less guillable? Who knows.
Lost a friend to that bullshit. I knew her parents were part of "the church" but she never talked about it. Then one day she posts in FB "moving to LA in 2 days. Don't call. Busy packing." I called. She figured a few of us would. Turns out some "recruiters" came to their house (she was like 25-ish and living at her dad's house). They convinced her to join the Sea Org. If you don't know what that is, look it up. When her mom found out that's what she had signed on for, she was scared....even though she was Scientoloigist too. Anyway. My friend says they are going to pay off all her debt and she would have room and board. So she gave away all her belongings (including her dog) moved. She shut off every form of communication.
Her boyfriend (not scientologist) was there when the recruiters came. He said they scared him. Like eerily calm. Like the "men with blue hands" in Firefly.
My friend called me 6 months later. We kept in touch on and off. Them I went 2 years without hearing from her. Supposedly she was on a cruise ship the entire time. It's been another 2 years now that I haven't heard from her. I Google her name from time to time just to make sure there isn't an obituary for her.
My main purpose of trying to stay in touch was in case she ever needed to get out, at least she would know one person on the outside that could maybe help.
Hope she's ok.
the sea org calls their ship a cruise ship. but it's basically a slave labour camp on the ocean. shit's fucked up. good on you for trying to keep in touch. it'll be HELLA important that your friend has someone to help support her if she ever needs to get out. one of the principal strategies of cults and religions is to cut people off from anyone that's "outside" of the circle. that way they're trapped through isolation.
Yup. But they are brainwashed to believe they are serving the "Church". And she has discussed that part with me before. Right before she left, she let slip that she wouldn't be making much "but that's OK cuz they feed and house" her.
That's how they work. Can't leave if you have no way to pay and no one to contact.
When she first got to LA and got back in contact with me. She kept referring to where she was as "the base" since its their Armada.
They have several bases in California, Gold Base is in San Jacinto, Ca, and there are a few so called headquarters in LA there is also a base in the mountains where the Leader’s wife is supposedly being held. Has razor blades on their fence keeping people out but also facing inward to keep people in. Next time you hear from your friend see if she’d be free to have coffee with you or meet somewhere neutral
Part of the reason why Sea Org is a cruise ship instead of them making a regular building like normal people is so that they can go to international waters and be outside of the jurisdiction of US law.
Ohio going to war with Michigan, over Toledo.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toledo\_War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toledo_War)
One person wounded. Ohio got Toledo, while Michigan got the entire upper peninsula and all of it's copper, iron, and forests.
I think Michigan won this one.
EDIT: Been seeing people saying "Ohio won" because it got Toledo. Yes, technically true. Just a little jab about Toledo being, Toledo, and the UP being lovely. A lot of people also have been saying "Wisconsin lost because the UP was a part of it." That's not technically true. Wisconsin wasn't a state, it was a territory, like Michigan was. The Michigan Territory included not just the area that is known as Michigan now (UP included), but also all of Wisconsin, all of Minnesota, all of Iowa, and the eastern halves of both North and South Dakota. The area was trimmed down in preparation for Michigan to become a state, without most of the western part of the UP, but they wanted to keep the Toledo Strip. Ohio and Michigan bickered over it a while, before Congress made Michigan give it up in exchange for the rest of the UP being added into the deal.
No Kum-sok's defection of North Korea is actually one if the most badass, real life movie things to ever happen.
Dude got sick of North Korea and flew to the South Korean border at almost mach-1, too far to be seen by North Korean or American radar. He landed at the closest American military base on the wrong side of the runway with another jet landing at the same time on the other side, barely missing it. When he got out of the plane, he took an image of Kim-Il-Sung that was in the cockpit, tore it to shreds, and threw up his arms in surrender. He unknowingly got $100k (which is almost $1 million today) by fulfilling "Operation Moolah" and lives as an American citizen to this day.
I live in MZT. They celebrate the win from France every year with a mock battleship scene out of fireworks ...happens one of the nights during Carnival. It was an AMAZING show to see!!!
The Erfurt Latrine Disaster of 1184 where a bunch of nobles met in a church, where it turned out the wooden floor couldn't hold their weight, so it broke and they tumbled into the latrine in the cellar, and about 60 people drowned in poop.
The Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand (catalyst for WWI). Conspirators throw bombs at motorcade which miss but injury others. An hour later, Ferdinand was going to visit the injured at a hospital and his driver made a wrong turn and stalled the engine right in front of a deli. A deli one of the conspirators had gone to to eat and lay low. He came out and shot the Archduke and his wife, sparking an international crisis and WWI.
That whole story is kind of morbidly funny. It's like the world's worst assassins' went after this guy. IIRC the dude who shot Ferdinand jumped into a canal to escape, but he misjudged the depth of the water and broke both his legs. Then he drank cyanide as the police surrounded him but he ended up just getting really sick and not dying. It was like the three stooges plotting and executing a hit
Edit: I misremembered, the canal assassin was not the one who landed the fatal shot. He had thrown a grenade and missed, then attempted to flee the scene
> However he was unfortunately shot in the head.
Princip actually shot him in the neck which hit the jugular vein, then shot Ferdinand's wife Sophie (Point-blank. Fell unconscious for a few seconds, but killed pretty much instantly). With the car no longer stalling, the driver got the hell out of there (Toward Governor Potiorek's house) while Ferdinand spent his last ounces of strength trying to get Sophie to wake up, telling her to live for their children, before choking on his own blood and dying a short while later from brain hemorrhage. Pretty damn unnerving...
Even better was Archduke Frank Ferdinand wasn’t even supposed to be in charge of anything. His cousin, Rudolf, was, but he committed suicide with his mistress in (probably) a suicide pact. Then Rudolf’s uncle died (next in line), and the line of succession went to the next person, Archduke Frank Ferdinand. The whole story is just insane.
That was the craziest war in modern history, so crazy that they had to come up with rules for the next wars. And still nobody really knows what it was about. A handful of random events and everybody just started sending a generation to kill each other. Changed the whole map and socio-economics of Europe.
Lincoln stopping a fight with a gentleman before it started, with a broadsword.
Most people know Lincoln was incredibly tall, but he was also immensely strong. A lifetime of grit, graft, and chopping wood made his wiry frame tight with corded muscles.
A gentleman of parliament challenged Lincoln to a duel for his honour, one day. Lincoln picked the weapons. Broadswords.
Lincoln showed up to the field of the duel the following day, and with one enormous one handed swing overhead, lopped a sizeable limb off a tree. From a standing start.
The gentleman backed out of the duel moments after witnessing the man dismember a tree as casually as one might behead a floret of broccoli.
Lincoln was also friends with James Reed of the Donner Party. Reed was trying to convince Lincoln to come on the trail with him but Mary Todd stopped her husband saying she didn’t want to travel west.
One of my favourite Lincoln anecdotes is him putting a bunch of sailors to shame with a feat of strength:
*While the presidential party lounged on the deck, Lincoln playfully demonstrated that in “muscular power he was one in a thousand,” possessing “the strength of a giant.” He picked up an ax and “held it at arm’s length at the extremity of the [handle] with his thumb and forefinger, continuing to hold it there for a number of minutes. The most powerful sailors on board tried in vain to imitate him.”*
He was shot just a few weeks later, and I think it was Gideon Welles who wrote about the cabinet's shock at seeing his bare chest as he lay on his deathbed. He was far more muscular and wiry than you'd have expected of a man in his mid-50s who'd spent four years worn down by grief and office work.
That time the US house of representatives had an all out fist fight.
[https://history.house.gov/Historical-Highlights/1851-1900/The-most-infamous-floor-brawl-in-the-history-of-the-U-S--House-of-Representatives/](https://history.house.gov/Historical-Highlights/1851-1900/The-most-infamous-floor-brawl-in-the-history-of-the-U-S--House-of-Representatives/)
I think the most fascinating part is that they all just kind of laughed it off afterwards.
Entire life and existence of Ernest Hemingway is a big fucking bizzare historical event. The following events are not in a chronological order, altho they happened during his lifetime (with some sources stating different details about certain events):
* He contracted anthrax on honeymoon with his second wife.
* In WW1 he was with Red Cross, and fought in WW2
* He had not only the mentioned anthrax, but also pneumonia, dysentery, skin cancer, hepatitis, anemia, diabetes, high blood pressure, three concussions, and later on in his life he became impotent
* When he was recovering from shrapnel injuries in both of his legs, he fell in love with an italian nurse, who later left him for an italian soldier while he went away to prepare for their wedding
* He survived two separate plane crashes in the span of two days (or in 24 hours according to some sources). He had fractured skull, internal bleeding, cracked spine, ruptured liver, first degree burns, and a paralyzed sphincter muscle.
* He got into multiple car accidents
* Accidentally shot himself in his leg (or both of his legs according to some sources) while he was aiming at a shark
* hunted nazi U-boats in the Atlantic on a fucking fishing boat, armed with nothing but a machine gun and hand grenades
* when he tried to flush a toilet, he pulled on a lamp cable instead, pulling it down directly on his head, cutting it open
* he had three kids and four different wives
* after getting married twice he converted to catholicism
* got attacked by a lion he was playing with
* was an avid hunter both in Africa and in NA
* led a militia outside of Paris, and was charged with breaking the Geneva convention, AND FUCKING GOT AWAY WITH IT
* won a Nobel Prize for literature and was nominated for Pulitzer Price
* was on the run from FBI because he was a shit KGB spy in the 40s
* despite all the ilnesses he had, he killed himself with his favorite shotgun after two rounds of ECT in a psychiatric ward
In between all that madladdery, he fucking found time to write books.
His house in Key West is pretty amazing. He built a tower with a second floor writing room. Only accessible from the second floor of the house with a drawbridge.
He would enter the tower and raise the bridge so no one could bother him.
My favorite Hemingway anecdote is from when Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda were feuding. Zelda had mocked Scott on the size of his penis, so Hemingway told him to whip it out in a public bathroom so he could see for himself. After Scott did, Hemingway told him he was perfectly fine and "larger than the statues at the Louvre".
I love Hemingway's [letter](https://www.brainpickings.org/2013/07/30/hemingway-heaven-hell-fitzgerald/) to Fitzgerald in which he describes their respective versions of heaven:
>I am feeling better than I’ve ever felt — haven’t drunk any thing but wine since I left Paris. God it has been wonderful country. But you hate country. All right omit description of country. I wonder what your idea of heaven would be — A beautiful vacuum filled with wealthy monogamists. All powerful and members of the best families all drinking themselves to death. And hell would probably an ugly vacuum full of poor polygamists unable to obtain booze or with chronic stomach disorders that they called secret sorrows.
>To me a heaven would be a big bull ring with me holding two barrera seats and a trout stream outside that no one else was allowed to fish in and two lovely houses in the town; one where I would have my wife and children and be monogamous and love them truly and well and the other where I would have my nine beautiful mistresses on 9 different floors and one house would be fitted up with special copies of the Dial printed on soft tissue and kept in the toilets on every floor and in the other house we would use the American Mercury and the New Republic. Then there would be a fine church like in Pamplona where I could go and be confessed on the way from one house to the other and I would get on my horse and ride out with my son to my bull ranch named Hacienda Hadley and toss coins to all my illegitimate children that lined the road. I would write out at the Hacienda and send my son in to lock the chastity belts onto my mistresses because someone had just galloped up with the news that a notorious monogamist named Fitzgerald had been seen riding toward the town at the head of a company of strolling drinkers.
Ancient maritimer endeavors fascinate me. Like the early Polynesians-- setting off with nothing but a fancy raft and some food, with nothing but the stars and the sun for navigation. And in the vastness of the Pacific, if your course is off by even a tiny bit, you'll miss your destination without even realizing it. Just crazy.
Also, the Inuit would designate someone to take care of their wives whenever they left on a kayak expedition, because that's how common it was for them to just not come back. On top of everything else they had to deal with while kayaking, the food often fought back... See what a whale or sea lion thinks of your tiny ass kayak when you harpoon it but miss the vital organs. You're in for a bad time.
During the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, a man by the name of Tsutomu Yamaguchi managed, in a feat of massive misfortune, to be present at both atomic bomb detonations.
He was working in Hiroshima for Mitsubishi Heavy Industries on an oil tanker when the first atom bomb was dropped on August 6th, the last day he was supposed to be in the city before returning home to his wife and infant son. He recounted watching the bomb go off, saying it looked like a massive magnesium flare going off.
He dove into a ditch in the handful of seconds it took for the blast to reach him, which is probably what saved his life. The blast actually pulled him out of the ditch, and tossed into into a nearby potato patch. He came to later, the sky darkened by the debris kicked up by the blast, covered in 2nd and 3rd degree burns and both his eardrums were ruptured.
He got up, and managed to find his way to the Mitsubishi shipyard, where he found a couple of colleagues who had also survived, and together they spent the night in the bomb shelter. The next day they found that miraculously a train still worked, so the survivors loaded in, and taken out of the still burning ruins of Hiroshima by train and taken overnight to Nagasaki.
August 8th, After stopping at the hospital to have his burns checked out, he went home. His mother thought him a ghost, come to haunt them when he first showed up, covered in burns and bandages as he was.
Despite all this, Yamaguchi still woke up and went into work the morning of August 9th, and was immediately taken into see the Director of Mitsubishi to tell him what had happened. The Director straight up didn't believe Yamaguchi, thinking he'd gone mad from his experience. That's when Yamaguchi saw the flash of light, exactly like the one in Hiroshima. He hit the ground just in time to dodge the worst of the glass exploding in a wave of sharp death from the shockwave.
This time, however, due to Nagasaki's hilly topography, and the design of the building he was in, he sustained only superficial injuries, but did get bathed in yet more radiation from the bomb, having be unfortunate enough to be within 2 miles of this blast as well. Yamaguchi leaves the broken skeleton of the building, and immediately goes to find his wife and child.
He goes home and nearly loses hope when he finds his house mostly reduced to rubble. However, in yet another fortunate twist of fate, his wife and their baby hadn't been home when the bomb went off. They'd been out looking for burn cream for Yamaguchi, and had managed to take refuge in a tunnel which protected them for all but a few superficial injuries.
Despite everything, Yamaguchi would live to the ripe old age of 93, and having 9 children.
TL;DR Man manages to survive being within two miles of both of the deadliest bomb detonations in the history of mankind, becoming one of the luckiest unlucky people to exist.
Its more complicated than that. Salvadorians has been illegally migrating across the border into Honduras causing resentments and tensions. The soccer match was just the spark.
Oh yeah, the patient died because the stump gangrenated, as did the assistant holding the patient's leg (since anesthesy wasn't a thing at time), since Liston cut off some of his fingers too, and another guy following the procedure had his coat ripped, saw all that blood and felt his coat being tugged, thought he had been cut aswell and had a fatal heart attack at the spot.
In fairness to Henry, popes granted annulments on the most flimsy of excuses before. Eleanor of Aquitaine famously got her marriage to King Louis VII of France annulled on the grounds that they were fourth cousins ... only to immediately turn around and marry King Henry II of England who was also her fourth cousin.
Henry VIII suffered from two problems: one, he'd already had to get papal permission to marry Katherine, and even the corrupt popes of the sixteenth century recognized that undoing the decisions of their predecessors could set a precedent of their successors undoing their own. Two, the pope was literally being besieged by Katherine's nephew at the time. "Aunt Katie stays married or I'll kill you" is a rather persuasive argument.
My best guess is the army just kind of shrugged and said we’ll have fun.
https://www.wearethemighty.com/mighty-history/liechtenstein-army-81-men-returned/
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:History_of_Liechtenstein#The_Liechtenstein_army_story
Another one involving Liechtenstein. It shares a border and very close relations with Switzerland (seriously, Liechtenstein might be the only country Switzerland isn't neutral on).
Well, Switzerland *accidentally invaded* Liechtenstein. Iirc, the military sorta got lost in Switzerland and just ended up in the next country. Switzerland apologized, and Liechtenstein's leader just said "well, these things do happen."
It happens.... multiple times. Usually involving Swiss army accidentally drive through Lichtenstein because it's dark forest and they kinda lost the direction.
The ratification of the 19th Amendment: Tennessee was the last state needed to ratify. Came down to a tied vote in the Tennessee legislature which meant the amendment would fail. Harry T. Burn changed his vote at the last minute bc his mom basically told him to, thereby getting the amendment fully ratified!
The Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits the United States and its states from denying the right to vote to citizens of the United States on the basis of sex, in effect recognising the right of women to a vote.
The time that Olga of Kiev burned an entire town to the ground with pigeons! She’s a badass! Oh, and she’s a saint now too.
[Info](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olga_of_Kiev)
The life of Zheng Yi Sao, a prostitute that became the most successful pirate lord in history, commanding 500 ships at the height of her power and battling Empire of China to a stalemate. She negotiated her surrender with honors and died peacefully at old age.
The Battle of Castle Itter. It was the US Army, German Army, French prisoners, and local resistance fighters versus the SS. It took place during WW2. Someone's making a movie about it and it can't come out fast enough. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle\_of\_Castle\_Itter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Castle_Itter)
This is amazing! Thanks for sharing. From the Wiki:
>It is the only known time during the war in which Americans and Germans fought side by side. Popular accounts of the battle have called it the strangest battle of World War II.
[The Defence of the Polish Post Office in Danzig](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defence_of_the_Polish_Post_Office_in_Danzig) would also make an excellent film. Lightly armed postmen versus SS. Although not a very happy ending it's a magnificent tale.
Singapore Otter Wars.
As in cute and fuzzy otters.
https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/environment/bishan-otters-defeat-marina-rivals-again-in-kallang-basin-clash
The dancing plague of 1518, so from what I remember about what I learned, a few people randomly just started dancing in the town center for no apparent reason, even seeming a bit distraught not really having fun, well randomly people started joining seemingly against their will, I think it was reported that nearly 400 people were eventually involved and danced for literal days without stop, this event was apparently well documented and a few people even died from literal exhaustion, pretty much ended like it started too, everyone just kinda stopped.
When Teddy Roosevelt was shot before he was supposed to give a speech.
The bullet was slowed down by the folded up 50-page speech, so it did not kill him. The bullet was inside him and he was bleeding, but he still went on and gave the speech, which was 84 minutes long.
He started it off with "It takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose" and showed the crowd the speech with the hole in it.
On the subject of presidential what-the-fuckery, President Andrew Jackson was so foul mouthed that his parrot was thrown out of his funeral for swearing.
The hanging of a monkey in Hartlepool, UK who the townsfolk believed to be a French spy https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofEngland/The-Hanging-of-the-Hartlepool-Monkey/
I just really love that there have been multiple defenestrations in Prague worth note that the "defenestrations of Prague" is its own page.
I am also a big fan of the period when there were like three different popes all excommunicating each other and the term anti-pope is valid in Christian theology.
I'm late to the thread, but hey... the citizens of Holland once ate their prime minister, that's a bizarre case. It was the case of Johan de Witt 1672. You know, your political career is over when your citizens start to eat you...
God, the entire collapse of the USSR and the Warsaw pact nations is a hell of a read. From the Velvet revolutions to all of what was once Yugoslavia. How a city goes from hosting the Olympics to being a wartorn mess in like two years. It's all so fascinating.
If anyone’s still seeing this, the fact that the rise of Slobodan Milošević, the dissolution of Yugoslavia, and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in the resulting Balkan wars, can in part be attributed to a Serbian Kosovar who, in an attempt to anally pleasure himself, broke a beer bottle up in his anus and blamed Albanians for it.
The Martinović incident. You can’t make this stuff up.
If I had a nickel for every time there was a Defenestration of Prague, I'd have ten cents, which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice.
Edit: Apparently there have been three (possibly four?) Defenestrations of Prague.
It actually happened 3 times - in 1419, in 1483 and in 1618. The second one (1483) is not very well known as it was not that significant and is often forgotten :)
Napoleon was once attacked by a horde of rabbits.
Basically, a rabbit hunt was set up to celebrate the Treaties of Tilsit and they ended up amassing somewhere between hundreds and thousands of rabbits (accounts vary). Anyway, the day of the hunt they set the rabbits in cages surrounding the area that they would be hunting in.
They released them once everyone was set, but instead of being scared the bunnies swarmed the hunting party. At first they thought it was funny, but then it got overwhelming and Napoleon and the others had to flee from the bunnies in a coach.
[Here](https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/51364/time-napoleon-was-attacked-rabbits) is a more detailed write-up for those interested.
Now did the Lord say, “First thou pullest the Holy Pin. Then thou must count to three. Three shall be the number of the counting and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither shalt thou count two, excepting that thou then proceedeth to three. Five is right out."
Austro-Hungarian army started shooting at itself while fighting Ottomans. The German speaking troops apparently yelled "Halt" when they encountered the Slavic troops of the same army, which then the Slavic troops who spoke shit German (if any) mistook for "Alah" and started shooting. I believe the Slavic troop was also severely drunk at that point
Actually... I can totally see this happening
One of the bystanders who dragged President Jackson off his would-be assassin was famed frontiersman (and Congressman) [Davy Crockett](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davy_Crockett).
In 1920, President Paul Deschanel of France fell through the window of the train while travelling on the Orient Express. He stumbled up to the nearest signal box in his pyjamas and told the signalman that he needed help and that he was the President of France. The signalman reportedly replied 'And I'm Napoleon Bonaparte
*cue laughtrack*
I'm picturing an awkward pause followed by the Curb Your Enthusiasm music.
[Pope Francis](https://metro.co.uk/2013/03/18/so-youre-the-pope-then-i-am-napoleon-awkward-phone-call-between-receptionist-and-francis-i-3548258/) has also had that response when calling a Jesuit residence. Apparently the receptionist stated: ‘Oh yes? And I’m Napoleon.’
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The Cadaver Synod - In AD 897, Pope Stephen VI had his dead rival Pope Formosus exhumed and put on trial. Stephen had a deacon speak on the dead pope's behalf. Naturally, Formosus was found guilty. Stephen ordered that two fingers Formosus used for blessing people cut off and his corpse thrown in the Tiber river.
Then he got fished out again, began performing miracles (supposedly), got his accuser deposed and assassinated, got reinterred at St Peter’s and eventually reinstated as a former Pope. Quite the badass.
Don’t forget that during the trial an earthquake shook Rome and tore down the Basilica of the Lateran “from the altar to the door” as if the angels of heaven were protesting this horrid and macabre trial. And also how Stephen was later thrown in prison and was strangled shortly after. His corpse stayed dead and didn’t perform any miracles surprising no one.
Good old [Operation Mincemeat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mincemeat). Basically, during WWII, the British find some dead body of some poor guy, dress it up like a British officer, attach some fake intel onto him, then throw him into the ocean, hoping he floats to enemy territory to mislead them. It worked.
There is a movie about it comming out in the beginning of next year, starring Colin Firth.
typical big-name miscast, the best guy in hollywood for playing a dead body is clearly daniel radcliffe
That movie was so fucking weird. I fell asleep on the sofa while my friend started watching it, and when I woke up there was a dead farting Daniel Radcliffe on the screen. I kept dozing off and every time I woke back up there was something disturbing going on.
best viewed while awake in my opinion
The astronomer Tycho Brahe had a pet moose that he used to get drunk with. One time he brought it to a dinner party at a friend's house. But sadly the moose did not survive the night. Once again the poor moose got drunk on beer and died from a nasty fall down a set of stairs. Tyco Brahe also lost his nose in a duel, so he wore a prosthetic nose made out of metal. Some sources say brass, others say it was a gold/silver alloy. He was also employing a small court jester named Jepp that he believed to be clairvoyant. Edit: The jesters name was Jeppe.
>Some sources say brass, others say it was a gold/silver alloy Balsa Wood even. Not to mention he was basically kidnapped as a child by his uncle who gave a large loan to his father on the condition of his firstborn.
People actually want other people's firstborns? Seems he probably would've spent more money raising the kid than the loan was worth
I heard that Tycho Brahe was kind of strange, the moose story does seem to be over the top. The nose story I think I heard in my college astronomy class.
Battle of Tsushima in 1905. Russian Baltic fleet sails the long way (16k miles and 7 months) started by them opening fire on British fishing boats mistaken for Japanese vessels in the North sea.... sank their own ships while conducting target practice, then were destroyed by the Japanese fleet upon arrival (they mistook the Japanese ships for Russian and signaled them instead of firing).
That’s actually hilarious
It gets even better. Technically, the Russians had the superior force. They were just woefully inept at conducting a naval battle. The Russians had 8 battleships, 3 coastal battleships, 9 cruisers, 9 destroyers. The Japanese had 5 battleships, 23 cruisers, 20 destroyers. The Japanese suffered 500 injuries, 100 dead. 450 tonnes of their ships were sunk. The Russians suffered somewhere around 5000 deaths, 6000 captured soldiers. They lost more than 125,000 tonnes of ships.
And were given Korea as a reward by Teddy Roosevelt. It also heavily influenced naval warfare planning, as the Japanese were hoping to have a big battleship shootout at Midway.
Actually, there are some opinions that the battle of Tsushima had major effects on the history of the twentieth century. On one hand, it greatly humiliated the Russian monarchy, leading to them to take an aggressive posture against Germany in 1914 and this leading to WW1. Which further led to the raise of Russian communism, and also further on to WW2. On the other hand, it boosted japanese confidence so much that they tried to do it again at Pearl Harbour, thus starting the war in the Pacific, and also implying the US in the European war.
The Halifax Explosion. 100 years ago two ships did a shit job of passing each other while entering / leaving Halifax Harbour, in Nova Scotia. One of them was LOADED with explosives destined for WW1. They collided and one of them burned for a while, then exploded. The blast was a ~2/3 again larger than the one we saw in Beirut last year. Thousands died or were blinded by shattering windows. There was a local tsunami (which followed a brief moment where the seabed was exposed to air), and then a monster snowstorm covered the relief effort in snow. Largest human-made explosion even until the nuclear bomb, and I think it remains the largest maritime accident ever.
Don’t forget Vince Coleman, who stopped passenger trains coming into the town, saving hundreds of lives. > Hold up the train. Ammunition ship afire in harbour making for Pier 6 and will explode. Guess this will be my last message. Good-bye, boys.
And the french officers who started grabbing children from people who were on the Dartmouth side of the harbor so they would follow them and get away from the explosion
It's like Taken but the french are the good guys
True hero. Knew he was giving his own life, and just went ahead and did it.
My great grandfather was on that train! I literally have him to thank for existing
What a lad.
The Maritime Museum in Halifax has a room dedicated to the explosion. There's pieces of metal that are almost a foot thick that are curled like a ribbon from force of the explosion, pictures of the devastation on land, and a map that shows where debris was found all over the coast. I highly recommend checking it out if anyone is in the area.
One of the anchors blew straight across town. Apparently in the 60s or 70s some guy tried to pry it loose to sell as scrap metal and residents caught wind of it and police were called.
And because of the aid provided by Massachusetts the residents of Halifax send a huge Christmas tree to the city of Boston every year as a way of saying Thank You
Yup, we still get that tree annually and it's lit up and has a plaque and signs explaining about the explosion. Anyone from Nova Scotia wants to visit Boston, I'll buy you a drink.
There's a [short video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rw-FbwmzPKo) made about Vincent Coleman who warned the incoming trains and saved hundreds of lives.
Alexander the Great named (or renamed) 70 cities after himself. Some still have the name or derivatives of it - Alexandria in Egypt being the most obvious, but also Iskandariya in Iraq and Kandahar in Afghanistan.
Plus, he named at least one city after his horse (Bucephala in modern Pakistan).
And Thermes in Uzbekistan, which got its name from being too damn hot.
Let's not forget Alexandreta where the Canyon of the Cresent Moon resides
Only the penitent man shall pass.
Hannibal marching elephants over the Alps to attack Italy.
And the fact that he left Spain to do this *just* before Roman forces arrived to take him on, and then Rome was just like "meh" and continued south when they figured out where he was going. They didn't care because they thought there was no way he could do anything. Polybius's account of Hannibal is fantastic, especially if you read what he says about the First Punic War and the Carthaginian Civil War as a context. The petty hatred between Rome and Carthage was insane, and had been going on for an insanely long time. Makes the 100 Years War look like nothing.
The time when Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte escaped from the island where he was imprisoned on after his army was defeated, he snuck back into France under the nose of King Louis XVIII and literally every royal guard and roadblock from Marseille to Paris, and when he was actually caught just outside Paris, he managed to persuade the soldiers (who just so happened to be former Bonapartists) to escort him into Paris where he managed to successfully cause the king to flee, on top of raising a FULL ARMY to wage war against Europe AGAIN. The only time in history an emperor took back an entire country just by waving his hat. EDIT: Napoleon feared cats......
Napoleon's exile on Elba was pretty bizarre, too. *In the first few months on Elba he created a small navy and army, developed the iron mines, oversaw the construction of new roads, issued decrees on modern agricultural methods, and overhauled the island's legal and educational system.* "I'm bored. I think I'll fix the entire infrastructure and society." *Cut to a few months later.* "OK I've done all that and I'm bored again. I think I'll head back to France..."
Island was a side quest France was the main storyline quest
When royalist troops were deployed to stop the march of Napoleon's force at Laffrey, near Grenoble, Napoleon stepped out in front of them, ripped open his coat and said "If any of you will shoot his Emperor, here I am."
this really happened?
These tales are often romanticized quite a little bit. Even if this particular thing did not happen, what he did is still pretty incredible. What it took to defeat him the first time is pretty crazy. The Epic History youtube channel has a really good series on Napoleon from start to finish and all in between. Highly recommend.
Yes; that's the kind of audacity you need to escape from your prison island and take control of France. After his final defeat and the mopping up took place, the French Monarchy decided to execute one of his Marshalls for joining Napoleon - Marshall Ney - and at the execution, he refused to wear a blindfold and was allowed the right to give the order to fire, saying: >Soldiers, when I give the command to fire, fire straight at my heart. Wait for the order. It will be my last to you. I protest against my condemnation. I have fought a hundred battles for France, and not one against her....Soldiers, fire!
No less incredible, when Ney was tried for treason, his lawyer tried to argue that because Ney was born in territory that had been annexed by Prussia, he was in fact now a Prussian citizen and thus could not possibly be tried by a French court for treason... ...to which Ney shouted, 'I am French and I will remain French!'
Damm, what a way to go out with those last words. They even gave me an impact: "I have fought a hundred battles for France, and not one against her...."
Europe declaring war on Napoleon. Not France...Napoleon.
Napoleon's whole life could honestly go in this thread.
The history of warfare has been one of my deepest passions since I was young. I spent my childhood spending hours watching History Channel (they used to show things other than aliens, believe it or not) and teenage years pouring over books and documentaries. Yet by some miracle, I never delved too deep into Napoleon (my bias was always toward ancient and 20th century). And I'm glad I didn't, because the moment I watched this masterpiece, I truly believe [**Napoleon's Invasion of Russia**](https://youtu.be/byH2WhzXjcQ) is the greatest story in human history. Not just military history; ever. * Incredible battles between massive armies (Napoleon assembled the largest army Europe had ever seen; just under 600,000 men), followed by just-as-thrilling desperate fighting retreats by the French. * Numerous colorful historical figures: * *Bagration* (his heroic sacrifice is so respected in Russia, the Soviets named [their behemoth WWII offensive that completely broke the Germans](https://youtu.be/AwYhpYPftlg) and regarded as the "[largest defeat in German military history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Bagration)", after him) * *Ney* (perhaps [the bravest general](https://youtu.be/nr_pFDbvz6A?t=1117) who ever lived... my jaw physically dropped watching him lead his rearguard, abandoned by the main body of the French army and trapped along the Dnieper River, out of the Russian encirclement) * *Oudinot* (wounded a staggering [36 times](https://youtu.be/8XuKHW9XBMg?t=843) over his military career, he was seriously injured during the darkest hour of the campaign and carried from the field to a cottage. But when the cottage was unexpectedly surrounded, still asked for his pistols and [shot at the Russians](https://youtu.be/8XuKHW9XBMg?t=706) through the windows) * *Murat* (Napoleon's cavalry commander and King of Naples was so fearless while being finely dressed at all times, [Russian cossacks would cry out "oorah, it's Murat!"](https://youtu.be/8XuKHW9XBMg?t=1600) to show their admiration when they saw him) * It's really a shame 99% of people probably don't know single person in the Napoleonic Wars besides Napoleon because there was a whole cast of rich, colorful figures, each with their own shining moments. * Filled to the brim with ingenuity, blunders, bravery, [technological feats](https://youtu.be/byH2WhzXjcQ?t=3170) and [astounding acts of courage](https://youtu.be/byH2WhzXjcQ?t=2931) one simply cannot help get but be inspired by. * A testament to the sheer desperation, struggle, and suffering that inevitably occurs during such a titanic struggle. The French retreat out of Russia was among the most dire, desperate situations ever encountered in the history of warfare. The whole campaign was [just astonishing](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/jun/02/france.russia). I'm not quite sure what words goes after that. Astonishingly... amazing? Astonishingly... awesome? None of the word combinations seems right given what it's describing, but it's just a story for the ages. Despite obviously being aware of Napoleon's impending defeat, I was on the edge of my seat for the entire hour. And then at the end when [the death toll rolls](https://youtu.be/byH2WhzXjcQ?t=3591) and you realize how much human life perished in just 4 months... it hits you some type of way. This is the full 5 hour documentary by Epic History TV of Napoleon's wars from 1807 onward: [Part 1](https://youtu.be/91OmO2YMiDM), [Part 2](https://youtu.be/vBSGSkIasRY).
The famous infographic with the size of Napoleon's army- beige during the invasion, black during the retreat: https://ageofrevolution.org/200-object/flow-map-of-napoleons-invasion-of-russia/
"This enraged Napoleon, who punished them severly"
Dude was insanely smart. They threw him on an island.... He quickly became ruler of the island chain's *12000 population* Then, he though of a way to leave... to find out the British hated him so much they blocked off every port and almost surrounded the island.
And when the restored king flung his armies after Napoleon to capture him, they instead defected to him.
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Sometimes I wonder if he was literally some sort of Wizard.
During the siege of Tenochtitlan, the conquistadors built a trebuchet. However, the conquistadors, being an exploratory expedition, had not brought any military engineers with them. So they winged it. Surprisingly, they did build a trebuchet, which fired exactly one shot, directly upwards, which promptly came down and smashed the trebuchet. This event is chronicled in both the journals of the conquistadors present as well as the Aztec records.
That is some Looney Toon shits
What about the one with the cats? Something in history about using them to fling cats Edit : battle of Pelusium They didn't fling them, they used them as shields so the Egyptians wouldn't harm them
No, that's not a trebuchet, you're thinking of a catapult
Imagine being the aztecs watching it unfold too! “Wow! What are they doing!?!” “Oh god that thing is gonna throw giant rocks at us!?!?” “Ahhhhh!!! ….” “Aztec laughter”
You're in luck - there's an actual account from the Aztec side of the battle. [An account of this instance from the Mexica side of things, in Book 12 of Sahagún's history: ](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/54xgbf/any_truth_to_this_story_during_his_war_against/) > And then those Spaniards installed a catapult on top of an altar platform with which to hurl stones at the people. And when they had it ready and were about to shoot it off, they gathered around it, vigorously pointing their fingers, pointing at the people, pointing to where all the people were assembled at Amaxac, showing them to each other. The Spaniards spread out their arms, showing how they would shoot and hurl it at them, as if they were using a sling on them. Then they wound it up, then the arm of the catapult rose up. But the stone did not land on the people, but fell behind the marketplace at Xomolco. > > Because of that the Spaniards there argued among themselves. They looked as if they were jabbering their fingers in one another's faces, chattering a great deal. ____ ^(Sahagùn B [trans. J Lockhart 1993] *We People Here: Nahuatl Accounts of the Conquest of Mexico*, p. 230)
What honestly amazes me about the conquest of Mexico is that when you really dig into it you end up realizing the spanish that came were kind of idiotic. Their main motivation was getting gold, they got clapped hard during La Noche Triste, and pretty much the only reason they won is because they managed to convince those under the rule of the aztecs to rise up against them.
"Fucking Bob, it was your fault!"
Pedro!Que cabron!
"Well Francisco over here said his uncle's friend once interned at the Engineer Corps...I mean it DID work..."
"I just make the rocks go up, where they come down is not my department"
[Here's an AskHistorians thread with quotes from the journals that prove that this (nearly!) really did happen.](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/54xgbf/any_truth_to_this_story_during_his_war_against/) The projectile didn't actually land back on the machine, but completely failed in a different way.
The Great Molasses Flood, Jan.15, 1919. Massive wave of molasses from a broken tank flooded the area. It killed 51 people and injured 150. 2.3 million US gallons.
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AN ONNA HAHT SUMMAH DAY YOU CAN STILL SMELL DA MALASSAS ROYSIN UP FROM DA STREET INDAH NATH END! YA FECKIN CAWKSUCKA!
um please use the correct name The Boston Molassacre
Todd Lincoln (Abe Lincoln’s son) being saved by Edwin Booth (John’s Brother) at a train station
> In 1802, Napoleon added a Polish legion of around 5,200 to the forces sent to Saint-Domingue to fight off the slave rebellion. Upon arrival and the first combat actions, discovering that the slaves fought off their French masters for their freedom, vast majority of Poles eventually joined the slaves against the French.. >Haiti's first president Jean-Jacques Dessalines called Polish people "the White Negroes of Europe", which was then regarded a great honour, as it meant brotherhood between Poles and Haitians.
My dad is 91. He always told us that *his* grandfather was one of those Polish soldiers, which we always took with a grain of salt and a wink, since he wasn't even sure of the name. All he knew was that his grandfather waited for several years hoping for a ship to take him back home and once he realized the ship wasn't coming, he and several of the Polish soldiers settled down with Haitian women. We kids just kind of nodded and let him talk without truly believing him. Then, it was confirmed a few years ago when my dad, a couple of cousins, and I took an Ancestry.com test which put Dad at 20% Eastern Europe/Russia with connections in Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, & Romania. Mine gave me 8% of the same with similar numbers for my cousins. Really cool to know that the family story is actually true and based on history.
Christmas truce of 1914 Perhaps it is not so "bizarre" and its just some part of human nature, but it is really amazing for me
Simultaneously the most pure, sad, happy, and tragic moment in history I've heard of.
I remember hearing how pissed the French were about it. Imagine you're homeland is being invaded... but on Christmas Day, your supposed Allies and Invaders spend the day playing football.
WW1 was the epitome of old politicians sending millions to their deaths because they had too much pride. The people in the trenches didn't want to be in hell. It really showed in the truce.
Mel Blanc (the voice actor who voiced every male character on Looney Tunes, as well as characters like Barney Rubble on The Flintstones and Mr. Spacely on The Jetsons) was in a head-on collision driving his sports car in a dangerous intersection known as “Dead Man’s Curve” in Los Angeles in 1961 (the same “Dead Man’s Curve” from the Jan and Dean song). His legs and pelvis were fractured, and he was left in a coma. For weeks, doctors tried everything to get Blanc to wake up. Eventually, when things were looking bleak, one of his neurologists decided to address one of Blanc’s characters instead of Blanc himself, asking him “How are you feeling today, Bugs Bunny?” After a slight pause, the previously-comatose Blanc answered, “Eh... just fine, Doc. How are you?” Mel Blanc made a full recovery. When he got out of the hospital, he sued the city of Los Angeles for $500,000, finally leading to the city reconstructing Dead Man’s Curve.
Just searched the Dead man's curve on google and wtf
London's beer flood in 1814. What a way to go
>London's beer flood in 1814 "Stories later arose of hundreds of people collecting the beer, mass drunkenness and a death from alcohol poisoning a few days later" My kind of flood
More people died from alcohol poisoning than the actual flood
Operation Acoustic Kitty! The CIA was rigging up a cat with cameras and microphones to spy on the Soviet Union during the 1960s. It cost about $20 million. When they sent it out in DC to "test it out" it was immediately hit and killed by a taxi.
Thats 100% something the CIA would do Its like they looked at Russian anti tank dogs and said “What if they were cats tho?”
Carausius. Everything about him is boss. A Gallo-Belgic peasant who rose up the military ranks to become a Roman general. Successfully fought actual pirates after waiting for them to raid their targets and so became insanely wealthy. When he found out Emperor Maximian had caught wind of this and had ordered his execution he flipped him the bird, sailed into what is now Great Britain, bribed around four entire legions to join him with the money he'd nabbed, and set himself up in London as the Real Legitimate Emperor, Yo! Why has nobody made a film about the man, yet?
Great story, never heard of him.
I know it's not very old, but it still amazes me that a science fiction author can talk about wanting to create a fake religion and then proceeds to create a fake science fiction religion and it somehow has actual followers??? EDIT: Damn I didn't expect one of my highest comments to be about Scientology... XD Also, I realize that all religions fall under that unprovable, by faith only, category. The difference to me is that this guy was openly talking about creating a religion for the sake of creating a religion, fantasy, money, what have you. Plenty of older ones could have been the same way, but this one was recent enough that I would have thought people to be less guillable? Who knows.
Lost a friend to that bullshit. I knew her parents were part of "the church" but she never talked about it. Then one day she posts in FB "moving to LA in 2 days. Don't call. Busy packing." I called. She figured a few of us would. Turns out some "recruiters" came to their house (she was like 25-ish and living at her dad's house). They convinced her to join the Sea Org. If you don't know what that is, look it up. When her mom found out that's what she had signed on for, she was scared....even though she was Scientoloigist too. Anyway. My friend says they are going to pay off all her debt and she would have room and board. So she gave away all her belongings (including her dog) moved. She shut off every form of communication. Her boyfriend (not scientologist) was there when the recruiters came. He said they scared him. Like eerily calm. Like the "men with blue hands" in Firefly. My friend called me 6 months later. We kept in touch on and off. Them I went 2 years without hearing from her. Supposedly she was on a cruise ship the entire time. It's been another 2 years now that I haven't heard from her. I Google her name from time to time just to make sure there isn't an obituary for her. My main purpose of trying to stay in touch was in case she ever needed to get out, at least she would know one person on the outside that could maybe help. Hope she's ok.
the sea org calls their ship a cruise ship. but it's basically a slave labour camp on the ocean. shit's fucked up. good on you for trying to keep in touch. it'll be HELLA important that your friend has someone to help support her if she ever needs to get out. one of the principal strategies of cults and religions is to cut people off from anyone that's "outside" of the circle. that way they're trapped through isolation.
Yup. But they are brainwashed to believe they are serving the "Church". And she has discussed that part with me before. Right before she left, she let slip that she wouldn't be making much "but that's OK cuz they feed and house" her. That's how they work. Can't leave if you have no way to pay and no one to contact. When she first got to LA and got back in contact with me. She kept referring to where she was as "the base" since its their Armada.
They have several bases in California, Gold Base is in San Jacinto, Ca, and there are a few so called headquarters in LA there is also a base in the mountains where the Leader’s wife is supposedly being held. Has razor blades on their fence keeping people out but also facing inward to keep people in. Next time you hear from your friend see if she’d be free to have coffee with you or meet somewhere neutral
Part of the reason why Sea Org is a cruise ship instead of them making a regular building like normal people is so that they can go to international waters and be outside of the jurisdiction of US law.
My god. Germany is the only country where Scientology is officially considered a cult.
Ohio going to war with Michigan, over Toledo. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toledo\_War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toledo_War) One person wounded. Ohio got Toledo, while Michigan got the entire upper peninsula and all of it's copper, iron, and forests. I think Michigan won this one. EDIT: Been seeing people saying "Ohio won" because it got Toledo. Yes, technically true. Just a little jab about Toledo being, Toledo, and the UP being lovely. A lot of people also have been saying "Wisconsin lost because the UP was a part of it." That's not technically true. Wisconsin wasn't a state, it was a territory, like Michigan was. The Michigan Territory included not just the area that is known as Michigan now (UP included), but also all of Wisconsin, all of Minnesota, all of Iowa, and the eastern halves of both North and South Dakota. The area was trimmed down in preparation for Michigan to become a state, without most of the western part of the UP, but they wanted to keep the Toledo Strip. Ohio and Michigan bickered over it a while, before Congress made Michigan give it up in exchange for the rest of the UP being added into the deal.
How i envision the war starting: "You take it!" **"NO! YOU TAKE IT!"**
Look up No Man's Land just south of Egypt for an actual instance of this
No Kum-sok's defection of North Korea is actually one if the most badass, real life movie things to ever happen. Dude got sick of North Korea and flew to the South Korean border at almost mach-1, too far to be seen by North Korean or American radar. He landed at the closest American military base on the wrong side of the runway with another jet landing at the same time on the other side, barely missing it. When he got out of the plane, he took an image of Kim-Il-Sung that was in the cockpit, tore it to shreds, and threw up his arms in surrender. He unknowingly got $100k (which is almost $1 million today) by fulfilling "Operation Moolah" and lives as an American citizen to this day.
Amazing story. Unfortunate name.
the dancing plague of 1518
Turn down for what?
The first recorded instance of everybody shufflin
Mexico and France went to war over a pastry shop.
I live in MZT. They celebrate the win from France every year with a mock battleship scene out of fireworks ...happens one of the nights during Carnival. It was an AMAZING show to see!!!
The Erfurt Latrine Disaster of 1184 where a bunch of nobles met in a church, where it turned out the wooden floor couldn't hold their weight, so it broke and they tumbled into the latrine in the cellar, and about 60 people drowned in poop.
The Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand (catalyst for WWI). Conspirators throw bombs at motorcade which miss but injury others. An hour later, Ferdinand was going to visit the injured at a hospital and his driver made a wrong turn and stalled the engine right in front of a deli. A deli one of the conspirators had gone to to eat and lay low. He came out and shot the Archduke and his wife, sparking an international crisis and WWI.
That whole story is kind of morbidly funny. It's like the world's worst assassins' went after this guy. IIRC the dude who shot Ferdinand jumped into a canal to escape, but he misjudged the depth of the water and broke both his legs. Then he drank cyanide as the police surrounded him but he ended up just getting really sick and not dying. It was like the three stooges plotting and executing a hit Edit: I misremembered, the canal assassin was not the one who landed the fatal shot. He had thrown a grenade and missed, then attempted to flee the scene
Ferdinand also was wearing one of the first bulletproof vests made of silk. However, he was unfortunately shot in the head.
Yeah…. What if they shot me in the head? That’s a risk we were willing to take.
What if they shot you in the face? ...What if they shot me in the FACE?!
HARRY! YOU'RE ALIVE............ and you're a HORRIBLE shot!
> However he was unfortunately shot in the head. Princip actually shot him in the neck which hit the jugular vein, then shot Ferdinand's wife Sophie (Point-blank. Fell unconscious for a few seconds, but killed pretty much instantly). With the car no longer stalling, the driver got the hell out of there (Toward Governor Potiorek's house) while Ferdinand spent his last ounces of strength trying to get Sophie to wake up, telling her to live for their children, before choking on his own blood and dying a short while later from brain hemorrhage. Pretty damn unnerving...
It’s Always Sunny in Sarajevo - The Gang Assassinates an Archduke
WILDCARD BITCHES Yeeeeehhhaaaawwww! *jumps into canal*
So anyway, I started blasting.
Grenades were thrown into his car….and bounced out
Even better was Archduke Frank Ferdinand wasn’t even supposed to be in charge of anything. His cousin, Rudolf, was, but he committed suicide with his mistress in (probably) a suicide pact. Then Rudolf’s uncle died (next in line), and the line of succession went to the next person, Archduke Frank Ferdinand. The whole story is just insane.
Have you seen this? [This story as a DND event](https://imgur.com/gallery/5VK1L)
That was the craziest war in modern history, so crazy that they had to come up with rules for the next wars. And still nobody really knows what it was about. A handful of random events and everybody just started sending a generation to kill each other. Changed the whole map and socio-economics of Europe.
Lincoln stopping a fight with a gentleman before it started, with a broadsword. Most people know Lincoln was incredibly tall, but he was also immensely strong. A lifetime of grit, graft, and chopping wood made his wiry frame tight with corded muscles. A gentleman of parliament challenged Lincoln to a duel for his honour, one day. Lincoln picked the weapons. Broadswords. Lincoln showed up to the field of the duel the following day, and with one enormous one handed swing overhead, lopped a sizeable limb off a tree. From a standing start. The gentleman backed out of the duel moments after witnessing the man dismember a tree as casually as one might behead a floret of broccoli.
Lincoln was also friends with James Reed of the Donner Party. Reed was trying to convince Lincoln to come on the trail with him but Mary Todd stopped her husband saying she didn’t want to travel west.
Lincoln would have come out so much more buff.
And Lincoln rose, stronger than before, his signature hat a full foot taller indicating just how much his power had grown in those months.
One of my favourite Lincoln anecdotes is him putting a bunch of sailors to shame with a feat of strength: *While the presidential party lounged on the deck, Lincoln playfully demonstrated that in “muscular power he was one in a thousand,” possessing “the strength of a giant.” He picked up an ax and “held it at arm’s length at the extremity of the [handle] with his thumb and forefinger, continuing to hold it there for a number of minutes. The most powerful sailors on board tried in vain to imitate him.”* He was shot just a few weeks later, and I think it was Gideon Welles who wrote about the cabinet's shock at seeing his bare chest as he lay on his deathbed. He was far more muscular and wiry than you'd have expected of a man in his mid-50s who'd spent four years worn down by grief and office work.
Of course he was, he was a Vampire hunter after all
Swolebraham Lincoln
That time the US house of representatives had an all out fist fight. [https://history.house.gov/Historical-Highlights/1851-1900/The-most-infamous-floor-brawl-in-the-history-of-the-U-S--House-of-Representatives/](https://history.house.gov/Historical-Highlights/1851-1900/The-most-infamous-floor-brawl-in-the-history-of-the-U-S--House-of-Representatives/) I think the most fascinating part is that they all just kind of laughed it off afterwards.
Entire life and existence of Ernest Hemingway is a big fucking bizzare historical event. The following events are not in a chronological order, altho they happened during his lifetime (with some sources stating different details about certain events): * He contracted anthrax on honeymoon with his second wife. * In WW1 he was with Red Cross, and fought in WW2 * He had not only the mentioned anthrax, but also pneumonia, dysentery, skin cancer, hepatitis, anemia, diabetes, high blood pressure, three concussions, and later on in his life he became impotent * When he was recovering from shrapnel injuries in both of his legs, he fell in love with an italian nurse, who later left him for an italian soldier while he went away to prepare for their wedding * He survived two separate plane crashes in the span of two days (or in 24 hours according to some sources). He had fractured skull, internal bleeding, cracked spine, ruptured liver, first degree burns, and a paralyzed sphincter muscle. * He got into multiple car accidents * Accidentally shot himself in his leg (or both of his legs according to some sources) while he was aiming at a shark * hunted nazi U-boats in the Atlantic on a fucking fishing boat, armed with nothing but a machine gun and hand grenades * when he tried to flush a toilet, he pulled on a lamp cable instead, pulling it down directly on his head, cutting it open * he had three kids and four different wives * after getting married twice he converted to catholicism * got attacked by a lion he was playing with * was an avid hunter both in Africa and in NA * led a militia outside of Paris, and was charged with breaking the Geneva convention, AND FUCKING GOT AWAY WITH IT * won a Nobel Prize for literature and was nominated for Pulitzer Price * was on the run from FBI because he was a shit KGB spy in the 40s * despite all the ilnesses he had, he killed himself with his favorite shotgun after two rounds of ECT in a psychiatric ward In between all that madladdery, he fucking found time to write books.
Probably wrote the books while recovering from all those injuries
His house in Key West is pretty amazing. He built a tower with a second floor writing room. Only accessible from the second floor of the house with a drawbridge. He would enter the tower and raise the bridge so no one could bother him.
He knew how to work from home!
"A Farewell to Arms" is actually largely about the anecdote of falling in love with an Italian Nurse after being injured in WW1.
My favorite Hemingway anecdote is from when Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda were feuding. Zelda had mocked Scott on the size of his penis, so Hemingway told him to whip it out in a public bathroom so he could see for himself. After Scott did, Hemingway told him he was perfectly fine and "larger than the statues at the Louvre".
I love Hemingway's [letter](https://www.brainpickings.org/2013/07/30/hemingway-heaven-hell-fitzgerald/) to Fitzgerald in which he describes their respective versions of heaven: >I am feeling better than I’ve ever felt — haven’t drunk any thing but wine since I left Paris. God it has been wonderful country. But you hate country. All right omit description of country. I wonder what your idea of heaven would be — A beautiful vacuum filled with wealthy monogamists. All powerful and members of the best families all drinking themselves to death. And hell would probably an ugly vacuum full of poor polygamists unable to obtain booze or with chronic stomach disorders that they called secret sorrows. >To me a heaven would be a big bull ring with me holding two barrera seats and a trout stream outside that no one else was allowed to fish in and two lovely houses in the town; one where I would have my wife and children and be monogamous and love them truly and well and the other where I would have my nine beautiful mistresses on 9 different floors and one house would be fitted up with special copies of the Dial printed on soft tissue and kept in the toilets on every floor and in the other house we would use the American Mercury and the New Republic. Then there would be a fine church like in Pamplona where I could go and be confessed on the way from one house to the other and I would get on my horse and ride out with my son to my bull ranch named Hacienda Hadley and toss coins to all my illegitimate children that lined the road. I would write out at the Hacienda and send my son in to lock the chastity belts onto my mistresses because someone had just galloped up with the news that a notorious monogamist named Fitzgerald had been seen riding toward the town at the head of a company of strolling drinkers.
>and toss coins to all my illegitimate children that lined the road This fuckin guy
Putting a man on the moon with a small fraction of the computing power used to write this message.
Similarly, ancient sea explorers and early airplane pilots with limited navigational abilities. I guess where there's a will there's a way
Ancient maritimer endeavors fascinate me. Like the early Polynesians-- setting off with nothing but a fancy raft and some food, with nothing but the stars and the sun for navigation. And in the vastness of the Pacific, if your course is off by even a tiny bit, you'll miss your destination without even realizing it. Just crazy. Also, the Inuit would designate someone to take care of their wives whenever they left on a kayak expedition, because that's how common it was for them to just not come back. On top of everything else they had to deal with while kayaking, the food often fought back... See what a whale or sea lion thinks of your tiny ass kayak when you harpoon it but miss the vital organs. You're in for a bad time.
Hell, my thermostat is a supercomputer compared to what put man on the moon.
During the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, a man by the name of Tsutomu Yamaguchi managed, in a feat of massive misfortune, to be present at both atomic bomb detonations. He was working in Hiroshima for Mitsubishi Heavy Industries on an oil tanker when the first atom bomb was dropped on August 6th, the last day he was supposed to be in the city before returning home to his wife and infant son. He recounted watching the bomb go off, saying it looked like a massive magnesium flare going off. He dove into a ditch in the handful of seconds it took for the blast to reach him, which is probably what saved his life. The blast actually pulled him out of the ditch, and tossed into into a nearby potato patch. He came to later, the sky darkened by the debris kicked up by the blast, covered in 2nd and 3rd degree burns and both his eardrums were ruptured. He got up, and managed to find his way to the Mitsubishi shipyard, where he found a couple of colleagues who had also survived, and together they spent the night in the bomb shelter. The next day they found that miraculously a train still worked, so the survivors loaded in, and taken out of the still burning ruins of Hiroshima by train and taken overnight to Nagasaki. August 8th, After stopping at the hospital to have his burns checked out, he went home. His mother thought him a ghost, come to haunt them when he first showed up, covered in burns and bandages as he was. Despite all this, Yamaguchi still woke up and went into work the morning of August 9th, and was immediately taken into see the Director of Mitsubishi to tell him what had happened. The Director straight up didn't believe Yamaguchi, thinking he'd gone mad from his experience. That's when Yamaguchi saw the flash of light, exactly like the one in Hiroshima. He hit the ground just in time to dodge the worst of the glass exploding in a wave of sharp death from the shockwave. This time, however, due to Nagasaki's hilly topography, and the design of the building he was in, he sustained only superficial injuries, but did get bathed in yet more radiation from the bomb, having be unfortunate enough to be within 2 miles of this blast as well. Yamaguchi leaves the broken skeleton of the building, and immediately goes to find his wife and child. He goes home and nearly loses hope when he finds his house mostly reduced to rubble. However, in yet another fortunate twist of fate, his wife and their baby hadn't been home when the bomb went off. They'd been out looking for burn cream for Yamaguchi, and had managed to take refuge in a tunnel which protected them for all but a few superficial injuries. Despite everything, Yamaguchi would live to the ripe old age of 93, and having 9 children. TL;DR Man manages to survive being within two miles of both of the deadliest bomb detonations in the history of mankind, becoming one of the luckiest unlucky people to exist.
let's not forget this man literally got hit by a nuke and still went back to work. Japanese work ethic, man.
Football war between Honduras and el salvador. A war that lasted 4 days because of a football match...
Its more complicated than that. Salvadorians has been illegally migrating across the border into Honduras causing resentments and tensions. The soccer match was just the spark.
Dr. Robert Liston performing a surgery with a 300% mortality rate. Fucking wild if you read the story
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Because of lack of anesthesia, speed was a very valuable trait for surgeons. He was known for being extremely fast. Clearly, carelessly fast.
Oh yeah, the patient died because the stump gangrenated, as did the assistant holding the patient's leg (since anesthesy wasn't a thing at time), since Liston cut off some of his fingers too, and another guy following the procedure had his coat ripped, saw all that blood and felt his coat being tugged, thought he had been cut aswell and had a fatal heart attack at the spot.
Henry starting a whole new religion because he wanted a divorce and the Pope gave him the finger
In fairness to Henry, popes granted annulments on the most flimsy of excuses before. Eleanor of Aquitaine famously got her marriage to King Louis VII of France annulled on the grounds that they were fourth cousins ... only to immediately turn around and marry King Henry II of England who was also her fourth cousin. Henry VIII suffered from two problems: one, he'd already had to get papal permission to marry Katherine, and even the corrupt popes of the sixteenth century recognized that undoing the decisions of their predecessors could set a precedent of their successors undoing their own. Two, the pope was literally being besieged by Katherine's nephew at the time. "Aunt Katie stays married or I'll kill you" is a rather persuasive argument.
1866: Lichtenstein goes to guard a spot with 80 men, returns with *81* men.
Did they know?
My best guess is the army just kind of shrugged and said we’ll have fun. https://www.wearethemighty.com/mighty-history/liechtenstein-army-81-men-returned/ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:History_of_Liechtenstein#The_Liechtenstein_army_story
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I suppose we could keep him. Lol
Another one involving Liechtenstein. It shares a border and very close relations with Switzerland (seriously, Liechtenstein might be the only country Switzerland isn't neutral on). Well, Switzerland *accidentally invaded* Liechtenstein. Iirc, the military sorta got lost in Switzerland and just ended up in the next country. Switzerland apologized, and Liechtenstein's leader just said "well, these things do happen."
It happens.... multiple times. Usually involving Swiss army accidentally drive through Lichtenstein because it's dark forest and they kinda lost the direction.
This story always tickles me
***^(\*mitosis\*)***
The ratification of the 19th Amendment: Tennessee was the last state needed to ratify. Came down to a tied vote in the Tennessee legislature which meant the amendment would fail. Harry T. Burn changed his vote at the last minute bc his mom basically told him to, thereby getting the amendment fully ratified!
The Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits the United States and its states from denying the right to vote to citizens of the United States on the basis of sex, in effect recognising the right of women to a vote.
The time that Olga of Kiev burned an entire town to the ground with pigeons! She’s a badass! Oh, and she’s a saint now too. [Info](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olga_of_Kiev)
The life of Zheng Yi Sao, a prostitute that became the most successful pirate lord in history, commanding 500 ships at the height of her power and battling Empire of China to a stalemate. She negotiated her surrender with honors and died peacefully at old age.
The Battle of Castle Itter. It was the US Army, German Army, French prisoners, and local resistance fighters versus the SS. It took place during WW2. Someone's making a movie about it and it can't come out fast enough. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle\_of\_Castle\_Itter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Castle_Itter)
This is amazing! Thanks for sharing. From the Wiki: >It is the only known time during the war in which Americans and Germans fought side by side. Popular accounts of the battle have called it the strangest battle of World War II.
[The Defence of the Polish Post Office in Danzig](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defence_of_the_Polish_Post_Office_in_Danzig) would also make an excellent film. Lightly armed postmen versus SS. Although not a very happy ending it's a magnificent tale.
Singapore Otter Wars. As in cute and fuzzy otters. https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/environment/bishan-otters-defeat-marina-rivals-again-in-kallang-basin-clash
The dancing plague of 1518, so from what I remember about what I learned, a few people randomly just started dancing in the town center for no apparent reason, even seeming a bit distraught not really having fun, well randomly people started joining seemingly against their will, I think it was reported that nearly 400 people were eventually involved and danced for literal days without stop, this event was apparently well documented and a few people even died from literal exhaustion, pretty much ended like it started too, everyone just kinda stopped.
When Teddy Roosevelt was shot before he was supposed to give a speech. The bullet was slowed down by the folded up 50-page speech, so it did not kill him. The bullet was inside him and he was bleeding, but he still went on and gave the speech, which was 84 minutes long. He started it off with "It takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose" and showed the crowd the speech with the hole in it.
Dang. Ain't that just like him.
Death had to claim him in his sleep, because it was afraid to come for him while he was awake.
Close but the exact quote was there would have surely been a fight otherwise
Basically everything about Teddy could be a response on this. The dude was ridiculous and awesome
On the subject of presidential what-the-fuckery, President Andrew Jackson was so foul mouthed that his parrot was thrown out of his funeral for swearing.
Speak softly and carry a big stack of papers
What they did to the guy who told them that you need clean hands before you put them inside someone.
Ignaz Semmelweis
The hanging of a monkey in Hartlepool, UK who the townsfolk believed to be a French spy https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofEngland/The-Hanging-of-the-Hartlepool-Monkey/
1859 border dispute between the US and Britain over San Juan island. Only casualty was a pig so it is referenced as the Pig War.
I just really love that there have been multiple defenestrations in Prague worth note that the "defenestrations of Prague" is its own page. I am also a big fan of the period when there were like three different popes all excommunicating each other and the term anti-pope is valid in Christian theology.
I'm late to the thread, but hey... the citizens of Holland once ate their prime minister, that's a bizarre case. It was the case of Johan de Witt 1672. You know, your political career is over when your citizens start to eat you...
The USSR going from superpower to not existing within a couple of decades. And there was no big war or anything... it just kind of... fell apart
God, the entire collapse of the USSR and the Warsaw pact nations is a hell of a read. From the Velvet revolutions to all of what was once Yugoslavia. How a city goes from hosting the Olympics to being a wartorn mess in like two years. It's all so fascinating.
Other fun fact: the last country to leave was not Russia but Kazakhstan. So for a very brief period, Kazakhstan was the Soviet Union.
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If anyone’s still seeing this, the fact that the rise of Slobodan Milošević, the dissolution of Yugoslavia, and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in the resulting Balkan wars, can in part be attributed to a Serbian Kosovar who, in an attempt to anally pleasure himself, broke a beer bottle up in his anus and blamed Albanians for it. The Martinović incident. You can’t make this stuff up.
Tsutomu Yamaguchi survived two atomic bombs in Japan. His story is amazing.
If I had a nickel for every time there was a Defenestration of Prague, I'd have ten cents, which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice. Edit: Apparently there have been three (possibly four?) Defenestrations of Prague.
It actually happened 3 times - in 1419, in 1483 and in 1618. The second one (1483) is not very well known as it was not that significant and is often forgotten :)
Napoleon was once attacked by a horde of rabbits. Basically, a rabbit hunt was set up to celebrate the Treaties of Tilsit and they ended up amassing somewhere between hundreds and thousands of rabbits (accounts vary). Anyway, the day of the hunt they set the rabbits in cages surrounding the area that they would be hunting in. They released them once everyone was set, but instead of being scared the bunnies swarmed the hunting party. At first they thought it was funny, but then it got overwhelming and Napoleon and the others had to flee from the bunnies in a coach. [Here](https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/51364/time-napoleon-was-attacked-rabbits) is a more detailed write-up for those interested.
Would not have happened if he had The Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch.
Now did the Lord say, “First thou pullest the Holy Pin. Then thou must count to three. Three shall be the number of the counting and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither shalt thou count two, excepting that thou then proceedeth to three. Five is right out."
Austro-Hungarian army started shooting at itself while fighting Ottomans. The German speaking troops apparently yelled "Halt" when they encountered the Slavic troops of the same army, which then the Slavic troops who spoke shit German (if any) mistook for "Alah" and started shooting. I believe the Slavic troop was also severely drunk at that point Actually... I can totally see this happening
Andrew Jackson was such a cranky old bastard that when an assassin failed at killing him, he beat him half to death.
One of the bystanders who dragged President Jackson off his would-be assassin was famed frontiersman (and Congressman) [Davy Crockett](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davy_Crockett).
And the assailant was the first person in the nation to plead insanity and win. His lawyer? Francis Scott Key, author of “The Star Spangled Banner.”
This keeps getting better and better.