History is fascinating; from the development of entire continents and ancient civilizations to architectural heritage and stories about events that shaped the world we live in today. There is so much to learn about it, both people who’ve never held a history book in their hands and avid history enthusiasts would find something new to learn every day.
Members of the ‘Ask Reddit’ community recently discussed happenings in the past that might have been many people’s “new thing to learn for the day”. When this redditor started a thread about historical events that are so ridiculous they sound fake, netizens shared quite a few stories, ranging from difficult to believe to plain ridiculous. Scroll down to find them on the list below and enjoy a rather amusing history lesson.
Bored Panda has reached out to the OP and they were kind enough to answer a few of our questions. You will find their thoughts in the text below.
#1
The Four Seasons Total Landscaping press conference. It would have been rejected for an episode of Veep because it was so ridiculous.
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418points
#2
For a very long time the Roman empire was able to acquire silk through trade over 'the silk road' to China, but never able to unlock the secrets of producing it domestically themselves. Until 552AD, when two monks preaching in India then travelled to China, where they witnessed the guarded methods of using the live silk worm to spin the famous thread. Knowing the importance of what they'd learned, the monks returned to Constantinople to report directly to the emperor Justinian. He personally met the monks, heard all the details of what they'd seen, then asked them to return to China and find a way of smuggling these worms back to the empire. They agreed, and prepared for the 2 year ~6,500km (4,000mi) trek back to China on foot, hoof and wheel. Once back in China they acquired either eggs or young larvae, since the adults are too delicate for transport, and tucked them into hollowed bamboo canes for the long journey straight back home. Once the monks made it back to Constantinople (modern Istanbul, Turkey), domestic silk production slowly ramped up and the need for long journeys along the 'silk road' ramped down. Over time, this allowed the same type of silk monopoly which China had enjoyed through the prior centuries to now be established in the Mediterranean, becoming one of the bedrocks of the Byzantine economy for the next 700 years.
It's crazy to think about these two guys. 1500 years before you or I were born, making their second multi-year, 6,500km trek back from China, smuggling two bamboo canes full of bugs which would fuel the economy of one of the world's largest civilizations for the next 700 years. I wonder if they knew and understood these possibilities when they went to scoop the worms from their baskets in China...Imagine the anxiety trying to keep them hidden and alive the whole way back!
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305points
#3
Operation Mincemeat.
Basically, the British dressed a random dead guy in a military uniform, put fake invasion plans in his pocket, and dropped him on the shore of Spain. The Spanish found the body (and invasion plans) and informed Germany. Germany, believing the invasion plans were real, sent an army to Greece- which is exactly what the Brits wanted, because they were actually going to invade Sicily.
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293points
“I decided to ask that question because I was watching a video about rescued animals with my boyfriend, and an emu appeared on screen and he said ‘can you believe we lost a war with these guys?’,” the OP told Bored Panda, revealing how they got curious about the hard-to-believe historical events.
“I had absolutely no idea what he was talking about, and he told me about the Great Emu War in Australia where the emus won! I thought it was so crazy and hilarious that I decided to ask Reddit about other crazy historical events.”
#4
The Immovable Ladder.
In Jerusalem there is a tiny christian church called the Church of the Holy Sepulcher that is shared by six different, very old, denominations.
There is so much animosity between the groups that they were forced into an agreement where any change to a common area had to be agreed to unanimously (the Status Quo).
During repairs sometime before 1757 a construction worker left a simple wooden ladder behind on a roof landing.
It has been over 260 years and the church leaders still refuse to agree on how to remove the ladder, so there it sits.
Fun fact: to stop the denominations from fighting over the keys to the front door, the Sultan ruling Jerusalem entrusted the keys to a muslim family that still, to this day, open and close the church.
264points
#5
When America went to war with Spain, the Spanish forgot to tell their territory, Guam. The US sent a single warship to the island where they took 13 shots at the fort. The leaders on the island rowed out to apologize they couldn't return their "salute", they had no gunpowder.
That is why Guam is a US territory.
259points
The redditor was taken aback by the response they received from the online community. “After posting, I was shocked with how many people had different events to share,” they told Bored Panda.
“The great emu war was one of the most common comments, but others like the Great Molasses Flood, Wojtek the Polish soldier bear, and the War of Jenkins’ Ear were also frequently posted and really surprised me. Most of the stuff I read I had never learned about in school so it was a really fun time going through each comment.”
#6
Stanislov Petrov literally saved the world from nuclear destruction by not calling in a missile launch when he was in command. He figured it MUST be a malfunction even though all his computers told him it was not.
It was a malfunction. Had he called it in, there would have been several billion dead.
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241points
#7
Hannibal saved his army by tying torches to the horns of 5,000 cows and driving them one direction. The Romans thought they were the enemy army and converged on them, while Hannibal quietly snuck his 10,000 man force out of the valley by another route.
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218points
“I’d also like to add that even events that were very commonly known were also posted a lot, like the moon landing, World War II, and the Manhattan Project,” the OP pointed out. “But while most people learned about these events in school and they seem like everyday historical facts, when you really process these events and rethink them, it is kind of mind-boggling that they actually happened.”
#8
Ancient Egyptians went on strike building a royal necropolis in the year 1152 BC and were the first to ever strike. And in a pleasant turn of events, the workers received higher wages and returned to the project.
To be clear, they were not slaves or anything, just the craftsmen of their time, but I still found it odd that even thousands of years ago there is documented evidence of striking being successful rather than companies attempting to squash down modern strikes.
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208points
#9
The Battle of Pelusium. In short, Persians held cats hostage, forcing an Egyptian pharaoh to declare war to save them.
200points
#10
When two perfectly working pistols failed to fire on US President Andrew Jackson who then beat his would-be-assassin so badly that the presidential security detail had to pull him off to save the man's life.
194points
The redditor with a newly found passion for somewhat bizarre historical events shared that their favorite one of them all has to be the Dancing Plague of 1518. “This one fascinates me a lot because I love mysteries and I’ve always wanted to know what caused it.”
“It was mentioned under my post a couple times, but it doesn’t seem like as many people know about it, which is crazy because it is such a bizarre occurrence. I can’t help but wonder if we’ll ever have answers to the cause.”
#11
In 1982, Larry Walters strapped a bunch of weather balloons to a lawn chair and flew 16,000 feet in the air over LA. That's about half the height of commercial airline cruising altitude. Just a guy up there in a lawn chair taking in the sights. And he landed safely.
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191points
#12
Cadaver synod. New pope digs up the old pope, puts him on trial, finds him guilty, and punished the corpse. For whatever reason they don’t teach you about that in catholic school.
187points
#13
Stephen King was so obsessed with the song "mambo no.5" that his wife threatened to divorce him.
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181points
#14
The Erfurt Latrine Disaster.
The Erfurt latrine disaster occurred on 26 July 1184, when Henry VI, King of Germany (later Holy Roman Emperor), held a Hoftag (informal assembly) in the Petersberg Citadel in Erfurt. On the morning of 26 July, the combined weight of the assembled nobles caused the wooden second story floor of the building to collapse and most of them fell through into the latrine cesspit below the ground floor, where about 60 of them drowned in liquid excrement.
177points
#15
The 1904 Olympic Marathon in St. Louis.
32 athletes took part, but only 14 were able to finish - there was only one water station in the entire 26-mile course. The “winner” was later disqualified because they found out he drove half the race in his car. The new winner (the guy who came in second) had to be carried over the finish line by his trainers because they’d been dosing him the whole time with a strange mixture of strychnine, brandy, and egg whites.
Several people almost died of internal injuries. Multiple runners stole things from passerby. Most people in the race weren’t even Olympic-level athletes, just amateur runners, many of whom didn’t even have to run a full marathon to qualify.
176points
#16
That time Denmark and Canada (I think) had a "war" over an island. Everytime a Navy vessel drove by they picked up the flag of the over nation, planted their own and left a bottle of alcohol.
I heard it stopped not that long ago.
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174points
#17
The first chancellor of modern day Germany, Konrad Adenauer, traveled to Moscow in 1955 to treat with Chruschtschow. He achieved his main goal of ~10000 POWs returning to Germany. The legend goes that this feat was made possible because he outdrank Chruschtschow because he drank a lot of olive oil before which mellowed out the effects of the vodka they were drinking.
So 10000 people got to go home because one dude knew how to handle booze
169points
