Hey YouTube, Jim here!
Welcome to Top10 Archive!
History has always been a topic that’s fascinated me.
It’s interesting to learn about our ancestors, how our infrastructure was built, and where
our cultures came from.
What I love the most, though, is learning all about the wackiness that happened in days
gone by.
Which is what brings us to today's topic: The Top 10 Weird Stories From History.
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10.
Private Wojtek Wojtek was a Syrian brown bear who was bought
by polish soldiers who had been evacuated to Iran from the Soviet Union.
The bear was a young cub at the time of his sale in 1942, and with him being so young
and, well, a bear, he wasn’t able to pay for his own rations and transportation.
To get around this tricky issue, he was officially enlisted as a soldier in the Polish Land Forces.
Wojket accompanied Polish troops to Italy where he served with the 22nd Artillery Supply
Company.
During the Battle of Monte Cassino in 1944, Wojket helped move crates of ammunition and
he did so well that he was promoted to corporal.
The bear soldier quickly became famous for his antics, and he was said to enjoy marching,
wrestling, drinking celebratory beers with his fellow soldiers, and even smoking the
occasional cigarette.
After the war was over Wojket traveled to Scotland with the rest of his company and
was eventually given to Edinburgh Zoo where he spent the rest of his life.
9.
Fidel Castro’s Nine Lives Well actually, Castro had many more lives
than nine – it was more like 600.
The former dictator of Cuba’s intelligence service is said to have claimed that more
than 600 attempts were made to kill or destabilize the dictator.
The ways in which Castro nearly met his end are like something out of an action movie.
They include trying to spike him with LSD to make him sound crazy during a radio interview,
giving him thallium to make his famous beard fall out, poisoning his diving suit, giving
him an exploding cigar, and even employing a femme fatale to try and seduce him.
Speaking after this particular attempt, Castor claimed to have uncovered the woman’s intentions
and handed her a pistol and told her to kill him, but she didn’t have the nerve to go
through with it.
The United States is said to be behind many of the attacks, using Cuban exiles and gangsters
to carry out their dirty deeds.
Castro finally died in 2016 of natural causes.
8.
Boston Toffee Apple Tsunami 100 years ago a catastrophe hit Boston, the
likes of which the world had never before witnessed.
That catastrophe was a toffee-apple tsunami.
Yep, you heard me right, folks.
In 1919, tragedy struck when tonnes of the sticky substance poured out onto the streets
of Boston, killing 21 people and injuring more 150 others.
The incident was caused when an iron container exploded as the molasses was being heated
to make it easier to refine.
When the tank exploded it caused a wave over four meters or 15 feet high to speed through
the streets at a terrifying 35 miles per hour.
It flattened everything in its path, including buildings, and caused people to become stuck
in the goo and ultimately drown.
7.
Emu War Wars are rarely laughing matters, but there’s
one tale from the history books that I find pretty amusing.
The Great Emu War of 1932 took place in Australia and lasted just over a month.
The battle was due to public concern over the thousands of emus running wild in Western
Australia.
To tackle the issue of the giant flightless birds, soldiers were employed to kill them.
They were armed with Lewis guns and sent to take the pesky emus down by any means necessary.
And, sadly for the emus, the soldiers did manage to kill a number of them.
But they weren’t going down without a fight and the emu population rose up to claim victory
against their human attackers.
They continued destroying crops and generally being nuisances, despite almost 10,000 rounds
of ammunition having been fired in an attempt to wipe them out.
6.
Pirate Hat Raid Benjamin Hornigold was a notorious 18th century
English pirate and pirate hunter.
His second-in-command was the infamous Blackbeard, which gives you a good idea of how well-known
Hornigold was in his day.
But, despite all his nautical success, my favorite story about him is by far the tale
of when he attacked a ship just to steal all of their hats.
According to historian Peter Earle, Hornigold and his crew got particularly drunk one evening
and decided to toss their hats in the sea.
We’ve all been there, am I right??
According to one of the captured passengers on the commandeered ship, Hornigold and his
men caused no injury to the occupants of the captured ship and simply took their hats to
replace the ones they’d lost the night before.
5.
Portuguese King Crowns Corpse True love makes people do crazy things, but
Peter I of Portugal aka, Don Pedro’s marriage, was forbidden and it set off a bizarre sequence
of events.
Don Pedro’s father, King Alfonso IV of Portugal, was a tough ruler and he didn’t like to
compromise.
So, when his wayward son fell in love with Inês Piras de Castro, he wasn’t happy at
all because she was illegitimate.
King Alfonso refused to let his son get married to his true love, but Don Pedro continued
the relationship and later claimed that they had secretly become man and wife.
When King Alfonso failed to split the couple up, he took stronger action and confined Inês
to a monastery.
It was there, in 1355, that three of the king’s henchmen murdered Inês, which obviously made
Don Pedro furious.
When King Alfonso died two years later and Pedro took the throne, his first mission was
to catch his wife’s killers.
He successfully tracked two of them down and had their hearts ripped out.
Legend has it that King Pedro then had his beloved exhumed and her corpse dressed in
regal attire, including a crown.
He then sat her on a throne next to his and had Portugal’s most noble people file past
and kiss her hand as he raised it up for her.
4.
Albert Einstein, President of Israel Albert Einstein is renowned for being one
of the most important figures in the history of science.
He developed the most famous formula of all time - E = mc2 - and won the Nobel Prize in
Physics in 1921.
What most people don’t know though, is that in 1952 he was asked to be the president of
Israel.
Despite being from Germany and not Israel, and not actually working in politics, they
still wanted Einstein to head up the country.
Albert turned down the generous offer, stating that he was deeply moved and saddened and
ashamed that he couldn’t accept it.
His reason was that he was used to dealing with objective matters and wasn’t equipped
to deal with people.
I know how you feel, Albert!
3.
The Mercy Brown Vampire Incident The Twilight movies did a great job of romanticizing
vampires, but back in the late 1800s there was an outbreak of vampire terror that was
nothing like Bella and Edward would have you believe.
At the time, various parts of the US were suffering from outbreaks of tuberculosis,
or consumptions as it was known at the time.
The cause of the disease was unknown but what people did know is that once someone close
to you got it, it was likely that you would suffer the same fate.
Sure enough, people jumped to the conclusion that vampires were to blame for the deaths,
and rumors circulated that the original infected person was sucking the life force from those
around them in order to stay alive.
It was thought that Mercy Brown, a victim of consumption, had done exactly that because
her brother had also fallen sick.
So, after she was dead and buried, the townspeople decided to dig her up to see if she was, in
fact, a vampire.
On her body were signs of fresh blood and her body had apparently turned itself in the
grave.
There was only one thing for it: they burned her body and mixed the ash from her heart
with water, forcing her brother to drink it as a cure.
Obviously, it didn’t work, and Mercy’s brother died two months later.
2.
The Mary Celeste Ghost Ship In 1872, a seemingly abandoned ship was found
drifting through the Atlantic Ocean.
Upon inspection, everything on the ship seemed to be in full working order and the only sign
that anything was wrong was the total lack of crew, a disassembled pump, and a missing
lifeboat.
Despite having battled rough seas for two weeks before the crew’s disappearance, the
ship was perfectly seaworthy and there was plenty of food onboard.
There have been wild speculations about what happened to the crew: from theories of ocean
monsters to fears that pirates were behind the mystery.
But there was no evidence for these or any other theories.
Except one.
In 2002, a documentary filmmaker named Anne MacGregor investigated the mystery and concluded
that the Mary Celeste had a faulty chronometer and was 120 miles off course.
She also concluded that the pumps had become clogged and that water was making its way
into the ship, which is probably why the pump was found disassembled.
The captain may have thought they were near enough to land to abandon the water-logged
ship.
But what happened to him, his seven crew, and his wife and daughter that were traveling
with him remains the mystery.
1.
Tycho Brahe’s Lost Nose Tycho Brahe was a wealthy and well-known Danish
astronomer who had his nose partially removed off in a duel.
No, really.
Despite his solid work observing the sky, this guy is best known for his odd antics
that easily make him the wackiest character in the history of astronomy.
It was 1566 when 20-year-old Brahe had a fight with a fellow Danish nobleman over a mathematical
formula.
During the duel, he sustained great damage to his nose and was forced to wear a metal
prosthetic for the rest of his life.
This isn’t the only weird thing about this guy.
He also had a pet moose who died when it drank too much beer and fell down the stairs.
Brahe met his end in an equally odd way in 1601 when he, for some unknown reason, held
his bladder for so long that it ruptured and
he died.