What is a history fact that is so stupid it doesn't seem real?
A man from New York missed his friends who were fighting in Vietnam.
So he traveled thousands of miles to track them down in a combat zone to personally give them beer and letters from home.
He even wrote a book about it called The Greatest Beer Run Ever
Not one but two kings of France died by smashing their heads on the top part of a door (lintel ?
Charles VIII in 1498 (the shock probably caused something else but still).
Louis III on the other hand was pursuing a fair lady (who was actually trying to escape him) on his horse on the 5th of August 882, when she passed a door.
The horse went through, not the king, who broke his skull and died instantly.
During 1774 Frederick the Great of Prussia had a free potato policy to help the people through the famine.
A lot of people initially rejected the potatoes and so he had guards feign patrol of the potato fields so they looked more valuable and people would steal them in the night.
Even though they were totally free.
EDIT: So this blew up and I want to share more dumb history stories.
During WWI's Christmas Truce, there was a cat that walked back and forth between German and French lines.
Because of this, the
French general got concerned and had the cat executed for treason.
Tyco Brahe, an astronomer, had a pet moose.
That moose later died from a fall down the stairs.
Because it was drunk.
Alright I don't remember the specifics.
But there was a king (I believe a sumerian king) who was told by an oracle that "Disaster would befall the king."
So he had a gardener crowned as king for a day, and that night the gardener would be executed, thus fulfilling the prophecy and saving the real king.
Soon after the gardener's coronation, the real king *choked on soup* and died.
The gardener ruled for 24 years
It is said that Greek tragedian died because an eagle dropped a tortoise on his bald head, mistaken for a rock, in order to break the shell of the tortoise.
More people have died from drowning in molasses than being attacked by coyotes.
How the Berlin Wall fell.
In order to calm mounting protests GDR officials decided on loosening travel restrictions between East and West, not open the border completely.
Notes of the new rules had been handed to a spokesman who hadn't had time to read them before the press conference.
"Private travel outside the country can now be applied for without prerequisites," he said.
Surprised journalists clamoured for more details.
Shuffling through his notes, he said that as far as he was aware, it was effective immediately.
In fact it had been planned to start the next day, with details on applying for a visa.
But the news was all over television - and East Germans flocked to the border in huge numbers.
As the border became inundated with East Berliners wishing to reunite with family and/or escape the GDR, border guards became overwhelmed and with no orders to either shoot upon the crowd or open the gate, only a handful of guards facing hundreds and thousands of citizens, rather than fire and create a stampede and potentially kill hundreds the head of the guards
decided to give the order "Open the barrier!"
What came next was a spontaneous chain reaction with Berliners on both sides arriving at Checkpoint Charlie to celebrate this momentous event and to demolish the wall.
So basically an ill prepared functionary made a flippant remark and a border guard captain unable to get orders on how to proceed led to one of the most defining moments of the late 20th Century in Europe.
During the Spanish American War.
The Spanish governor of Guam wasn’t told about the war.
When a US warship showed up he was happy to see them, cause he thought they where just visiting.
Boy was he wrong.
As WW2 revved up, the US realized that fast and cheap was the way to go with manufacturing ships (ex Liberty Ships).
But there was a line of escort carriers made with so little armor that some Japanese armor-piercing shells went through the hull and out the other side without exploding, a nice surprise.
Honduras and El Salvador had a 3-day war over a football game.
King George II Was so constipated while he was taking a crap his heart actually *physically burst.
A Skylab satellite's guidance system was failing and ended up crash landing in Australia.
Instead of giving the satellite back, Skylab was charged with a $500 littering fine.
After the fine was paid, the company wanted to put the satellite in a museum but was refused on the basis that since the satellite fell from space, its legally Australia's now.
So now,
Skylab pays a monthly rent to Australia to display its own satellite in a museum.
* Edited for accuracy*
Corn flakes were originally marketed as an anti masturbation cereal and the man who made them, John Harvey Kellogg, adopted all 8 of his kids and didn't even sleep in the same room as his wife
40 dudes held off the German invasion in Belgium for 18 days.
They surrendered when they ran out of ammo.
During WWI, Germany converted and armed a passenger cruise liner, the *SMS Cap Trafalgar*, into a cruiser, and sent to the Atlantic Ocean to disrupt British shipping.
Off the coast of Brazil though, when they received word that a British ship was coming to flush out German ships disrupting British shipping, the SMS Cap Trafalgar decided to disguise itself as another ocean liner-turned-cruiser, the *HMS Carmania*, so that they wouldn't be shot at.
The British ship that came to deal with the SMS Cap Trafalgar was... the HMS Carmania.
Which promptly sunk the fake one.
The 6th president had a pet alligator and Ryan Reynolds failed drama class
There was a real plan to spike hitlers food with estrogen to try to turn him into a woman and make him give up on war.
[Hitler estrogen
A quote from Winston Churchill when he was visiting the White house and the president walked in on him buck naked: "The prime minister of the UK has nothing to hide from the president of the US."
In 1956 a man named Tommy Fitzpatrick stole a small plane from New Jersey for a bet and then landed it perfectly on the narrow street in front of the bar he had been drinking at in Manhattan.
Two years later, he did it again after someone didn't believe he had done it the first time.
What's also crazy is that the punishment for the first time ended up being only a $100 fine, since the charges were dropped by the owner of the plane, and the second resulted in only 6 months in jail.
[Here is an article about
The guy that my username was named after, King Alfred, pushed back the invading Viking armies and then revolutionized the educational system, social system, legal system and like a dozen other things - there's a reason he's called Alfred the Great.
He was also very famously yelled at by an old lady because he was too busy plotting a military campaign to watch the cakes that she had in the oven.
I just find it silly that one of the greatest monarchs in English history was yelled at by an old lady for the same kinds of trivial things that people have been angry at eachother over forever - it's an odd juxtaposition.
The reason there isn't a lot of mummies around anymore, is because we ate them.
A prominent Roman politician, Publius Clodius Pulcher, dressed as a woman to infiltrate a womans-only religious ceremony in a futile effort to seduce Julius Caesar's wife.
Not surprisingly, his plan didn't work.
Charges were pressed and caused a very public legal battle for the next 2 years.
At the insistence of his wife, none other than the famous Cicero came to prosecute the case.
Despite the overwhelming evidence against him, Crassus (yes, the same Crassus of the first triumvirate and richest person in Rome at this point) bribed the jury and Pulcher was acquitted.
In the meantime, Caesar divorced his wife over the affair.
Surprisingly, though, this didn't tank Pulcher's career.
Instead, it strengthened his alliance and he became a rather prominent politician.
Once he gained more power, he was able to pass a law l, which retroactively applied to Cicero, banishing him from Rome and allowing the state to confiscate or destroy his property.
While political inemity was present, much of it was also revenge.
This isn't all.
He also employed street gangs to dobhis bidding.
Theyd gather at opposing politicians speeches and heckle them.
They'd blockade roads so politicians couldn't make it to an
important vote.
They'd rough up people they didn't like.
Another opposing politician, Milo, didn't care for this up and brought up his own street gangs.
The difference was that Milo's gangs were trained by gladiators.
General street violence erupted in the streets of Rome.
The street violence caused two delays to important elections and eventually Milo caused the death of Pulcher in scuffle.
When placed on trial, Milo had none other than Cicero, now returned from exile, be his defense lawyer.
Despite his best efforts, Milo was exiled.
Adolf Hitler had many physical ailments, many of which are known.
He had in particular severe stomach cramps and also bouts of insomnia, so his quack doctor (Theodor Morell), in his infinite wisdom, gave Hitler sleeping pills and laxative, resulting in very severe gas problems.
Fidel Castro loved milk so much that when his cow who holds the world record for most milk produced in a day died, he had her taxidermied, had a marble statue of her built and a full eulogy and obituary written for her in his state newspaper, and Cuban scientists have repeatedly tried (and failed) to clone her.
Her name was Ubre Blanca, which means White Udder.
In my country some politicians literally got yeeted out of a window and survived because they fell into some manure.
They started a war with the ones who yeeted them after.
The US and the UK scrapped plots to assassinate Hitler as they believed his poor judgement would bring an end to the war quicker.
Bill Clinton, who hasn't been president in 20 years is 4 years younger than Joe Biden
Albert Einstein was offered the presidency of Israel but turned it down.
Jack Daniels (yeah, *that* Jack Daniels) died from an infected stubbed toe caused by him kicking a safe containing money to which he had forgotten the combination.
A Greek philosopher called Chrysippus died from laughing too much at a drunken donkey eating rotting (therefore fermented) figs.
In WW2 the Russians trained dogs to run under tanks with time bombs on their backs.
"Anti-tank dogs".
But, the Russians trained the dogs on Russian tanks so when they set them free on the battlefield they truned around and started blowing up the Russian tanks instead of the oppossitions tanks.
During Captain Cook's time in Hawaii, a Hawaiian woman approached him and showed him and his crew her naked body.
This was a way to let the sailors see her tattoos, which signified that she was a mature adult and capable of doing business with outsiders.
They took it as a sexual invitation and raped her instead.
When more people began started switching to skim milk dairy farmers had tons of milk fat left over so they stored it all in some caves in Missouri.
This lead the USDA to open a department on Dairy Management to figure out what to do with it.
Want to know why almost every fast food item comes with so much cheese?
That’s why.
Michigan and Ohio [having a war over
There is at least one person, Tsutomu Yamaguchi, who survived both Atomic bombs.
I don't know if this is incredibly good luck or incredibly bad luck.
According to some sources, he was *in the middle of describing the Hiroshima bombing* when the Nagasaki bomb went off only a few KM away.
Australia lost a war against emu’s
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