People Share 30 Of The Most Unexpected Acts Of Kindness Throughout Our History

According to the Roman historian Livy, at some point in the fourth century BC, Rome was at war with the Etruscans and the consul Camillus was laying siege to the city of Falerii. In that city there was a tutor who was entrusted with some of the children of the most powerful families. Under the pretext of getting the boys some exercise, he led them outside the city walls and all the way to the Roman camp, thinking that he would be richly rewarded for bringing these valuable hostages.

But Camillus, ever the model of Roman virtue, was so appalled that he had the tutor stripped and beaten, then gave all the students sticks and flails so they could whip him all the way back to the gates. The Falerians, when they saw what was happening, were so astonished by Camillus's righteousness that they immediately surrendered, willingly and peacefully, confident that they would receive a fair treatment under Roman rule.

Queen Victoria gave many books to the Chicago Library after the Great Chicago Fire.

Didn’t the English and Welsh unions participate in the Gay Pride parades in London in the Eighties because a group of gay advocates supported a small welsh town during the labor strikes? There was a movie about it-Pride. Good flick.

King Rama IV of Siam (now Thailand) offered war elephants to Abraham Lincoln during the American civil war.

In Belgium, every new law has to be passed via the king himself. In 1990 there was a law to fully legalize abortion to be passed. The king himself, king Baudouin, was a member of the catholic church and couldn't get any children with his wife, queen Faiola.

Passing this law would be against his beliefs as a Christian and against their own child's wishes. Realizing it was the right thing to do, he stepped down as king of Belgium for a day. That way parliament could approve of the new law and he never approved it.

I’d say, Ruth Coker Burks, an AIDS awareness activist and caregiver back in the height of the AIDS epidemic. So many people had been kicked to the curb, utterly abandoned to die a horrible death alone, and she was one of the only people willing to step in and help them. It’s equally parts tragic and infuriating that she had to do any of that in the first place, but the fact that she did genuinely makes me cry every time I read about her.

A pretty famous incident is the unofficial Christmas truce during WW1. They shared presents from home like chocolate and tea, and then in other parts of the line there was no truce and they still fired on each other

Some 60 years ago, the USSR proposed to the UN to bundle international efforts to eradicate smallpox. Now almost exactly 40 years ago, humanity succeeded.

Operation Manna and Operation Chowhound. In the spring of 1945, the Netherlands was suffering from a famine. A truce was brokered between the allies and the local German occupation leaders to allow several thousand tons of food to be delivered into the occupied Netherlands.

A sort of Chivalry seems to be a fairly common thing among wartime pilots. When Manfred Von Richthofen was shot down he was given a full military funeral by the Australian Flying Corps (They were the nearest Allied Air Unit and took responsibility for the body).