74 Interesting, Fascinating, And Funny Moments From History You Won’t Find In Textbooks

President Andrew Jackson beat up his would-be assassin with his cane and had to be pulled off by Davy Crockett so he wouldn't end the guy.

Im going to say European kings named Charles.

The Charleses in France had an unfortunate tendency to be labelled with less-than-complimentary epithets: Charles the fat, Charles the bald, and Charles the mad. That always tickled me.

Also King Charles II of England was a [savage]. Ever been to a pub called the Royal Oak? That is named after the tree Charles climbed to escape the roundheads when he was fleeing the civil war.

Top quotes:
'I always admired virtue but could never imitate it'

(In response to his brothers concerns about assassination attempts on Charles II) "I am sure no man in England will take away my life to make you King."

(When parliament questioned his aptitude for kingship in parliament) "I'm definitely the best king in England at the moment.".

Mark Twain and his buddies decided to join the Confederate army. It was an excuse to get away from the wives, hang out in the woods, and drink. This went on for a couple of weeks, until word came that the Union army was advancing. Shortly thereafter, all the men quit their made up unit and headed home.

During WWII, there were sightings up and down the eastern coast of U Boats. Hemingway heard there was one off of Key West and decided he should hunt it down. He and a couple buddies loaded up a boat with booze, guns, and grenades. They were unsuccessful, and returned home shortly after the booze ran out.

Marita Lorenz was a double agent hired to [unalive] Fidel Castro in one of the many (unsuccessful) assassination attempts of the CIA. She was to become his mistress, get close to him and [unalive] him. The problem was that she actually ended up falling in love with him. So one day, she dumped her poison pills and told Fidel of the CIA's plan. Then, Fidel walks up to her, hands her a pistol and says shoot me. When she couldn't, he replied saying no one can. Straight out of a James Bond movie or something.

Winston Churchill and Joeseph Stalin had a "Naughty Document" that literally carved up Europe into spheres of influence for after WW2 - people often forget how shady some of the Allies' actions were.

Michelangelo totally got his nose broken when he was sixteen for being a jerk to his contemporary. Nobody knows exactly what was said, but Pietro knocked him so hard in the face that accounts of the time say that his nose was just barely holding onto his face. Dude woke up to Medici screaming Pietro into a corner and was just like, "Bro, what?"

The Confederate battle flag as most people recognize it today was never actually the official national flag of the Confederate States of America, which went through three different official flag designs. Instead, the familiar design was primarily used as the battle flag of Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia and was also later adapted for use as a Confederate naval jack.

It is very widely speculated by historians that the main reason Robert E. Lee was defeated at Gettysburg was because he was suffering from severe diarrhea.

Lee is known as one of the most brilliant military tacticians of his time and was rarely beaten by strategy alone. Any time he was on the scene, it was an almost guaranteed victory for the South. Beyond Lee's brilliance, the North didn't have too many notable generals speak of and replaced replaced generals often, making it hard for the North to have a consistent plan. So it didn't look like there was much hope for the North at Gettysburg.

During the battle, Lee made a lot of uncharacteristic mistakes that ultimately led to a Northern Victory and turned the entire war in favor of the Union. These mistakes puzzled historians, because they were so unlike him, so they began to look at the journals of the officers who were with Lee during the battle and found that all of them described Lee leaving the tent often to relieve himself and being very sweaty and unfocused.

Fort Blunder. If you look at the Vermont and New York border with Canada, you'll notice it follows the parallel up to Lake Champlain, then bumps north a smidge.

That's because a surveyor was drunk and accidentally plotted the location of a fort to defend against Canada about a mile and a half into actual Canada.

They corrected the error with a border negotiation.

Albrecht von Wallenstein was a mercenary during the Thirty Years War. It is rumored that every time he took over a villiage, he would order all cats to be [unalived].

The Austrian Army got drunk in the late 1700s and ended up [unaliving] all of their own men because they thought the Turks already invaded so they just started fighting each other. The Turks strolled in 2 days later, pleasantly surprised and happy to take Austria with little effort. This is the short version of course.

The War of Jenkins' Ear is a particular favourite, from 1739-1748 or thereabouts. It was between Spain and the British Empire, and came from a captain called Jenkins wanting to get back at a Spanish guy who had cut his ear off - ten years before.

The best thing? It got sort of absorbed into another war - I believe the Spanish Sucession - and was technically never resolved. So Britain and Spain are still, on a vague technicality, at war.

Magellan never completed his trip around the world (the first documented circumnavigation) because he was convinced that his belief in Christianity made him invincible. He and another one or two of his crew that he'd also convinced waded on shore and took on a group of islanders in the Pacific (sorry, I forget which Islands at the moment) and they were torn to shreds so completely that there were no remains to recover, just red stained sea water.

Woolly Mammoths and the pyramids coexisted.

Andrew Jackson's inauguration party was lit. The place was packed even before Jackson showed up. Thousands of people attended, with tons of overflow to the White House. He even took a basement entrance to avoid the multitudes. The sheer amount of people led to furniture being destroyed and food being ground into the carpet. By the end of the night, the party organizers had to lure the crowd out by the promise of serving more liquor on the White House lawn. Jackson stayed at a hotel that night. Historians have since tried to downplay the ruckus, stating that it could have been exaggerated by Jackson's political opponents in order to make him look unruly. But, it could have also been down played by Jackson supporters in order to make him look less unruly...

Anyway... Later on in his presidency, a dairy farmer from New York gave Jackson a 1400 pound block of cheese. Jackson had to invite random people in to eat it. The stench of cheese persisted into the Van Buren administration. To this day, the White House celebrates "Block of Cheese" day, in which it opens lines of communication with interests groups and various everyday citizens.

There was a British spy during WW2 that pretended to be a German spy. (double-agent?) The Germans initially overshot London with their artillery, and he told them they hit it perfectly. This continued through the entire war.

The English like to pretend that their country hasn't been successfully invaded since the Normans in 1066. They are wrong. In 1688, the Dutch King William III landed an invasion force at Torbay, marched down to London, caused the king to flee in terror and jumped on the throne after barely meeting any resistance. However, due to the fact that a lot of English people supported William, this event is known as a 'revolution' (the Glorious Revolution) rather than an invasion.

After his presidency, Thomas Jefferson went back to Monticello, but people kept showing up at all hours, wanting to talk to him. He'd let them in for a chat, but it became such a burden that he built another home, Poplar Forest, to get some peace and quiet. I guess he never considered turning people away.

Wilmer McLean just wanted a quiet life. His house happened to be right in the middle of the first battle of bull run during the American Civil War. Shrapnel from one of the first artillery shells of the war actually fell down his chimney into their soul that was cooking . After the second battle he decided he wanted some peace and moved to a place called Appomattox..just to have his home commandeered (and later stripped for souvenirs) for the signing of the surrender by Robert E. Lee.
So basically, the civil war began and ended in this guys' house.

The Byzantine Empire (or the Eastern Roman Empire or whatever you would call it).

All of it.

All the stumbles, all the resurgences, not to mention all the meaningless disasters.

Any nation surviving for 1000 years from the dark ages to the start of the Renaissance has served well in its time, all things considered.