On June 30, 1974, Alberta King, MLK Jr.’s mother, was assassinated while playing the organ at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. The shooter, Marcus Wayne Chenault Jr., a 23-year-old Black man, fired on her, killing her and a deacon. Chenault, influenced by Black Hebrew Israelite rhetoric, claimed he targeted Black Christian leaders, believing they misled Black people. He initially aimed for MLK Sr. but shot Alberta as she was closer.
On March 3, 1876, chunks of red meat fell from a clear sky near Olympia Springs, KY, covering a 100×50-yard area. Witnessed by Mrs. Crouch, the “Kentucky Meat Shower” baffled locals. Theories range from vulture vomit to alien origins. A preserved sample, identified as animal lung tissue, is displayed at the Bath County History Museum.
In the early 1950s the CIA bought the entire world’s supply of LSD and spent the next twenty years just sort of randomly dosing people without their knowledge or consent. Including their own office coffee supply, which explains some of the shit they got up to during the ’60s.
When Amelia Earhart landed in Ireland, it was in my grandfathers neighbors field. He ran over to see what was going on (likely never saw an airplane before) and met her
The Outerbridge Crossing, in spite of being the bridge furthest south that connects NYC to the American mainland, is actually named after a former chairman of the NY Port Authority – Eugenius Outerbridge.
When the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, they were met by a Wampanoag Indian who spoke English and had been to England.
His name was Tisquantum (popularly known as Squanto), and he had been kidnapped and sold into slavery in Spain years earlier, in 1614. From there he was ransomed to freedom by Franciscan priests, eventually making his way to England and then back to Massachusetts in 1619 — before the Pilgrims arrived in 1620.
In 1838, the Missouri governor issued an executive order directing the extermination of all Mormons in the state. The order wasn’t rescinded until 1976.
A little boy once won an olympic gold medal when he was recruited as a last-minute ringer for a rowing team (they were over the weight limit). He disappeared before they could award it to him. He never came forward and nobody knows who he was.
In 1866 in the Austro- Prussian war, the Bavarians invaded parts of what is now Thuringia. A Bavarian unit occupied the town of Schleusingen, only to get absolutely drunk and march home shortly afterwards, when the Prussians invaded Bavaria.
The episode is completely unknown in Germany today, but the Finnish writer Alexis Kivi wrote a play about it, called “Olviretki Schleusingenissa” or something like “Beer journey to Schleusingen”.
“D. D. Palmer founded chiropractic in the 1890s, claiming that he had received it from “the other world”. Palmer maintained that the tenets of chiropractic were passed along to him by a doctor who had died 50 years previously.”
In the 1970s and 80s, the East German government gave steroids to children — without consent from their parents.
Under a secret state-sponsored doping program known as “State Plan 14.25,” the East German regime drugged thousands of athletes — many of them teenagers or even younger — with anabolic steroids like Oral-Turinabol, often disguised as “vitamins.”
The goal? Win as many Olympic medals as possible to show the world that socialism was superior.
Some of the most decorated athletes of the era were effectively lab rats — coached, controlled, and chemically enhanced by the state. Many later suffered serious health consequences, including infertility, depression, and organ damage.
Some coaches and doctors were even awarded medals by the East German state for their “scientific contributions.”
The full extent didn’t come to light until after reunification, when files were opened and victims began to speak out.
It’s one of the darkest but real chapters of modern German history: Olympic glory at the cost of innocent lives.
A Chinese guy who claims to be the brother of Jesus christ established a classless state socialist gender segregationist kingdom against the Qing dynasty which caused deaths of between 1-2 times of that of world war one and roughly 30-40 times of that of the roughly concurrent US civil war
The American and Scottish versions of Dennis the Menace debuted on the same day. The two are not related and change their names subtly in each other’s respective countries of origin to avoid confusion
For some time, wealthy Romans used asbestos napkins, because they could be cleaned by putting them into the fire, incinerating the dirt, but leaving the asbestos.
HR 23261 aka the American Hippopotamus Bill in 1910 proposed to import hippos into the southern US, specifically Louisiana but good luck enforcing state boundaries for hippos, as a new source of meat and to eat invasive water hyacinths. This obviously was not passed.
Not to mention the approx 120 hippos living wild in Colombia thanks to Pablo Escobar that were just kind of left there because removing them is too dangerous.
The first words uttered by a European on Columbus’ expedition to the Native Americans was in Arabic ! Columbus had brought an Arabic speaking Spanish Jew with him to act as a translator with the Indians.
In 1866, Liechtenstein sent a small group of soldiers to fight in the Prussian war. 80 soldiers marched out to guard a pass between Austria and Italy. 81 returned, as they suffered no casualties and another soldier joined up along the way.
Students seized a medieval castle that was then besieged by firemen and police officers trying to get them back out. The cause off course was rising beer prices. (Or the cops switching to more inconspicuous hats so they’d be harder to notice patrolling at night, depending on who you ask). The students surrendered once the beer ran out.
Wilmer McLean, a Virginia merchant, is notable for his homes being the site of the beginning and the end of the American Civil War. His first home, near Manassas, was where the First Battle of Bull Run (First Manassas) broke out in 1861, with the house serving as General Beauregard’s headquarters. To escape the war, McLean moved his family over 100 miles south to Appomattox Court House. Ironically, it was in his new home that General Lee surrendered to General Grant in 1865, effectively ending the war.
In 1862 while visiting General George McClellan and the Army of the Potomac during the Peninsula Campaign, Abraham Lincoln personally led a small (unofficial) expedition that saw the Union take control of the Norfolk Naval Yard, and led the Confederates to have to burn their best ship, the Merrimack (also known as the Virginia).
In the 1950s, the Vostok research station in Antarctica was the scene of a fight between two scientists over a game of chess. When one of them lost the game, they became so angry that he attacked the other with an axe and even killed him.
As a result, chess games were banned at all other Soviet Antarctic stations. ^(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vostok_Station#:~:text=In%201959%2C%20the%20Vostok%20station,9%5D%5B11%5D)
Mansa Musa, the richest man in history. On his way to a pilgrimage in Mecca, he gave away so much gold that it ruined the economies of multiple countries for years.
>Musa’s pilgrimage caravan included 60,000 companions, 12,000 slaves carrying 4 pounds of gold each, and 80 camels laden with 50 to 300 pounds of gold each. Five hundred of Musa’s servants also rode before him each carrying a 10.5-pound gold staff. Though Musa had more gold than he could have possibly spent on his journey, that didn’t stop him from making an effort.
>He gave beggars huge ingots, overpaid at bazaars and tipped with fistfuls of gold dust. Musa also reportedly ordered a new mosque built for him to pray at every Friday. In addition, he made formal charitable donations of 20,000 ounces of gold – 1,250 pounds – each at Cairo, Mecca, and Medina.
>The instantaneous and incalculable influx of gold into Cairo, Mecca, and Medina caused hyperinflation the likes of which had never been seen before or since, and nearly impoverished all three great cities for over ten years. Assuming a roughly equal distribution of the total gold load across all those aforementioned camels, Musa made at least 71,000 pounds of gold basically worthless by just plumb giving it away into climates that considered it scarce and valuable. This means in terms of gold devaluation alone the damage Musa’s pilgrimage caused amounted to $1.5 billion in modern money.
Israels elaborate scam to steal hundreds of barrels of yellow powder uranium in 1968 after the French cut them off. This stolen uranium became the entire basis for their modern nuclear program.
Edit; another totally unrelated historical incident I’d like to add.
Back in the 1860s, a group of Irish immigrants called the Fenians fled Ireland during the UK occupation and came to the USA. After the American Civil War, they came up with the absolutely insane idea to invade Canada in order to trade it back to the British in exchange for Irish independence. They attempted two invasions, and both failed miserably.
A British sailor survived three ship sinkings in ONE DAY during WWI. TBH, it was three ship sinkings in a single morning.
On September 22nd, 1914, Wenman “Kit” Wykeham-Musgrave started the day aboard the British Royal Navy cruiser HMS Aboukir, which was on patrol off the Dutch coast.
The Aboukir was torpedoed by the German U-boat SM U-9. It was mistakenly thought that the Aboukir hit a mine and the HMS Cressy and HMS Hogue approached to rescue sailors who had jumped into the sea, including Wykeham-Musgrave. As he swam to and was getting on board the Hogue, it was torpedoed by the SM U-9. Into the water again, Wykeham-Musgrave then swam to the Cressy and it, too, was torpedoed by the SM U-9. He was eventually found on a bit of driftwood, became unconscious and was eventually picked up by a Dutch trawler.
Nearly 1,400 British sailors died in the three sinkings.
Musgrave survived WWI and re-joined the Royal Navy in 1939, survived WWII and lived to the age of 90.
They released moose into the fjordland wilderness in New Zealand in 1910 and now there are urban myths about seeing moose even as recently as last year by some Canadians. Although they are probably pulling our legs.
In the 1970s, West Germany had a state run program that placed foster children with known pedophiles. The results were as expected, with pretty much all of the (mostly) boys being sexually molested and raped by their “guardians”.
ETA: Full New Yorker Magazine story for those interested:
In 1875, a fire broke out in warehouse storing whiskey barrels in Dublin. The heat and fire caused the barrels to burst, creating a river of whiskey that flooded the streets. When the fire was finally put out and the whiskey river subsided, there was a total of 13 fatalities as a direct result of the event.
The cause of all 13 deaths was alcohol poisoning from excessive consumption.
Russia, under Peter The Great, sent an expeditionary force from Russian controlled Alaska to American with the intent of exploring possible areas of colonisation. The Russians made it as far as California before turning back.
Ancient roman war galleys mounted giant flame throwers that should shoot long distances and light other ships on fire and which used elaborate pumps and heating systems to shoot the fuel.
The largest civil war in human history happened in the mid 1800s in China after a man failed the civil service exam, got sick, had a mental breakdown while reading a poorly translated copy of the Gospels and came to the conclusion that he was Jesus’s Chinese brother.
A volcano eruption that happened in Indonesia in 1815 was what ultimately led the then 18yo Mary Shelley to write Frankenstein when challenged by Lord Byron (about 30 years older) during a trip to Switzerland. (Edit: geography oops)
that an invading army coming from africa to attack rome brought with them a bunch of huge war battle elephants and they marched them over mountain ranges
The absolute shitshow that was Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s assassination. The incompetent morons did it, though, and set in motion every major event up to the present day by sparking the fuse for World War One.
In 897, Pope Steven VI put a previous Pope- Pope Formosus on trial for perjury. They physically removed him from his tomb after being dead for some 7 months, and sat his corpse on public view in the papal courtroom.
People in the Middle Ages took honey mustard VERY SERIOUSLY. Like, there was clergy involved in the mixing process. But then one guy was just like “Hey maybe we can just make honey mustard whenever we want? We don’t have to have a ceremony and a priest. I mean, it’s good, but I don’t think it needs all that pomp.” And then the rest of the town was like “YOU ARE WRONG AND NOW YOU HAVE TO DIE.” And yeah, they totally beheaded him.
WW1 started because of an assassination, but it was actually a failed assassinaation at first.
As Franz is driving through the city, he’s on a planned route and his killers are waiting for him, they know where he’s going to be.
The first two guys chickened out, the third guy threw a bomb and it bounced off the car and hit the one behind them. He freaked out and took a cyanide pill, then jumped into the nearby river.
The cyanide was too weak and just made him sick, it wasn’t deadly. The river was like 2 feet deep at that time, it wasn’t deadly. He was captured alive.
So Franz gets to his destination and gives his speech, makes jokes about the would-be assassins. Then he talks to his security about getting him the fuck out of town safely. They say they have an alternate route planned, no worries.
They get in the cars and take off, but nobody told the drivers the new plan! The drivers continue the old route until someone in charge says, “Hey turn around, you’re going the wrong way.”
The driver stops right away to turn around, literally right in front of the last assassin who was sitting at a coffee shop. Blam! WW1
Aimo Koivunen, a Finnish soldier who took a whole week’s worth of meth and went on a one-man, drug fueled rampage against the Soviet forces during with he got injured by a land mine, hunted and ate birds raw, and travelled several hundred miles– on skis.
A fellow named Alfred Ely Beech secretly and without government approval built a ‘demonstration’ subway based on pneumatic tube technology – in 1870. Beech claimed he was just making pneumatic tubes for messages, not humans.
This caused a public sensation when it was unveiled, and people flocked to ride it – even though it only had one station, but due to various reasons, it was never pursued. Eventually it was sealed up and forgotten about.
However, when New York actually started to build a subway system in 1911, the workers digging the tunnel broke in to the tunnel created by Alfred Beech … and found everything just as it was left: a subway car, the tunnel – even the piano used to play music for passengers in the station, frescos, fancy lamps, etc.
They were allegedly dumbfounded. Imagine digging the first subway, only to dig into another much older subway you didn’t know about!
Judy Cohen was one of the first female aerospace engineers, with her career beginning in the 50’s. She worked on the Hubble Space Telescope and the tracking and data relay satellite on the Minuteman Missle. She was pregnant and working for the Apollo Space Program when she went into labor.
Before heading to the hospital, she picked up some documents for the problem she was working on. The problem was with the Abort-Guidance System, a crucial component for mission safety which ultimately played a major role in successfully returning the crew of Apollo 13. She worked on it while in labor at the hospital, solved the problem, and promptly gave birth…to Jack Black.
I sincerely hope this gets attention and isn’t buried in the thread because it’s a damn good one:
The year is 1754 if memory serves. When George Washington was a young lieutenant serving the Crown in a Virginian militia, he very literally started the French & Indian War by, in a case of mistaken identity, ordering his men to open fire on a band of unarmed French emissaries in the Ohio River Valley. This also led to him leaving military life, essentially after being told by his commanders that he was a failure and would never advance.
Meanwhile, the French & Indian, also known as the Seven Years War, rages for 7 years and involves multiple global forces. As a result of this war, England is broke and needs to replenish their coffers desperately. They do this by taxing the American colonies heavily.
This leads to the colonies rising up and beginning the American Revolution, where a now older George Washington ends up being called to lead the Revolutionary forces as their general. Note: it has been two decades since that day he ordered his men to ambush those French emissaries.
America, with the help of France, wins that war and becomes an independent nation. George Washington is almost unanimously elected as the leader of this new nation.
So, to summarize: A young George Washington made a career-ending mistake of ordering an ambush which kicked off the Seven Years War, which led to England being broke, which led to them taxing the colonies, which led to the American Revolution, which led to him returning to military service as the leader of the army, which led to America winning, and then his election to the first presidency, becoming the leader of a new nation.
It is the greatest story of “failing upwards” in history that I can think of. It’s absolutely insane, and completely true.
Comments
For a few brief moments in the early 70s, the most commercially successful solo member of the Beatles was actually Ringo Starr.
In the 1930s, Australia declared war on Emus. The emus actually won.
Humans invented dildo before they invented wheels
The Boston Molasses Flood of 1919
That one (British?) soldier who captured a tank by poking the driver in the eye with his umbrella.
On June 30, 1974, Alberta King, MLK Jr.’s mother, was assassinated while playing the organ at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. The shooter, Marcus Wayne Chenault Jr., a 23-year-old Black man, fired on her, killing her and a deacon. Chenault, influenced by Black Hebrew Israelite rhetoric, claimed he targeted Black Christian leaders, believing they misled Black people. He initially aimed for MLK Sr. but shot Alberta as she was closer.
On March 3, 1876, chunks of red meat fell from a clear sky near Olympia Springs, KY, covering a 100×50-yard area. Witnessed by Mrs. Crouch, the “Kentucky Meat Shower” baffled locals. Theories range from vulture vomit to alien origins. A preserved sample, identified as animal lung tissue, is displayed at the Bath County History Museum.
In the early 1950s the CIA bought the entire world’s supply of LSD and spent the next twenty years just sort of randomly dosing people without their knowledge or consent. Including their own office coffee supply, which explains some of the shit they got up to during the ’60s.
One time a bunch of German nobles had a party so big the floor collapsed and dropped them into a big pit of shit.
Edit: I wrote this in a few seconds to catch people’s interest so they could look it up. I get it wasn’t party but that is faster to type.
John Adams and Thomas Jefferson both dying on July 4th
When Amelia Earhart landed in Ireland, it was in my grandfathers neighbors field. He ran over to see what was going on (likely never saw an airplane before) and met her
The Outerbridge Crossing, in spite of being the bridge furthest south that connects NYC to the American mainland, is actually named after a former chairman of the NY Port Authority – Eugenius Outerbridge.
When the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, they were met by a Wampanoag Indian who spoke English and had been to England.
His name was Tisquantum (popularly known as Squanto), and he had been kidnapped and sold into slavery in Spain years earlier, in 1614. From there he was ransomed to freedom by Franciscan priests, eventually making his way to England and then back to Massachusetts in 1619 — before the Pilgrims arrived in 1620.
The last execution by guillotine in Paris happened while Star Wars was playing in the movie theater down the street.
In 1838, the Missouri governor issued an executive order directing the extermination of all Mormons in the state. The order wasn’t rescinded until 1976.
It sounds absolutely impossible but there were Sharks on Earth before there were trees.
A little boy once won an olympic gold medal when he was recruited as a last-minute ringer for a rowing team (they were over the weight limit). He disappeared before they could award it to him. He never came forward and nobody knows who he was.
In 1866 in the Austro- Prussian war, the Bavarians invaded parts of what is now Thuringia. A Bavarian unit occupied the town of Schleusingen, only to get absolutely drunk and march home shortly afterwards, when the Prussians invaded Bavaria.
The episode is completely unknown in Germany today, but the Finnish writer Alexis Kivi wrote a play about it, called “Olviretki Schleusingenissa” or something like “Beer journey to Schleusingen”.
Chiropractors are in almost every city in the world at this point. The practice was supposedly imparted to the founder by a ghost. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiropractic?wprov=sfti1#
“D. D. Palmer founded chiropractic in the 1890s, claiming that he had received it from “the other world”. Palmer maintained that the tenets of chiropractic were passed along to him by a doctor who had died 50 years previously.”
Also, the 10th US President, John Tyler (b 1790) had a living grandson until just one month ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Ruffin_Tyler
Aeschylus, a philosopher and the father of Greek tragedy, died when an eagle dropped a turtle on his head
In WWII the U.S. Navy had a submarine sink a train. USS Barb for those interested.
In the 1970s and 80s, the East German government gave steroids to children — without consent from their parents.
Under a secret state-sponsored doping program known as “State Plan 14.25,” the East German regime drugged thousands of athletes — many of them teenagers or even younger — with anabolic steroids like Oral-Turinabol, often disguised as “vitamins.”
The goal? Win as many Olympic medals as possible to show the world that socialism was superior.
Some of the most decorated athletes of the era were effectively lab rats — coached, controlled, and chemically enhanced by the state. Many later suffered serious health consequences, including infertility, depression, and organ damage.
Some coaches and doctors were even awarded medals by the East German state for their “scientific contributions.”
The full extent didn’t come to light until after reunification, when files were opened and victims began to speak out.
It’s one of the darkest but real chapters of modern German history: Olympic glory at the cost of innocent lives.
When the British army and German army played football on Christmas during WWI
Doritos were invented at Disneyland
A Chinese guy who claims to be the brother of Jesus christ established a classless state socialist gender segregationist kingdom against the Qing dynasty which caused deaths of between 1-2 times of that of world war one and roughly 30-40 times of that of the roughly concurrent US civil war
The American and Scottish versions of Dennis the Menace debuted on the same day. The two are not related and change their names subtly in each other’s respective countries of origin to avoid confusion
For some time, wealthy Romans used asbestos napkins, because they could be cleaned by putting them into the fire, incinerating the dirt, but leaving the asbestos.
HR 23261 aka the American Hippopotamus Bill in 1910 proposed to import hippos into the southern US, specifically Louisiana but good luck enforcing state boundaries for hippos, as a new source of meat and to eat invasive water hyacinths. This obviously was not passed.
Not to mention the approx 120 hippos living wild in Colombia thanks to Pablo Escobar that were just kind of left there because removing them is too dangerous.
The man who killed John Wilkes Booth is an insane story. Lived through the civil war, self castration, etc. He’s a character.
The first words uttered by a European on Columbus’ expedition to the Native Americans was in Arabic ! Columbus had brought an Arabic speaking Spanish Jew with him to act as a translator with the Indians.
Davy Crockett wrote in his journals about his encounter with a bigfoot while rallying troops for the texas revolutionary war against Mexico.
The creature warned him of his impending doom. He died at the alamo 6 months later.
The Dutch eating their prime minister
Canadians are the reason the Geneva convention exists.
In 1866, Liechtenstein sent a small group of soldiers to fight in the Prussian war. 80 soldiers marched out to guard a pass between Austria and Italy. 81 returned, as they suffered no casualties and another soldier joined up along the way.
Small piece of local history of my hometown:
Students seized a medieval castle that was then besieged by firemen and police officers trying to get them back out. The cause off course was rising beer prices. (Or the cops switching to more inconspicuous hats so they’d be harder to notice patrolling at night, depending on who you ask). The students surrendered once the beer ran out.
Wilmer McLean, a Virginia merchant, is notable for his homes being the site of the beginning and the end of the American Civil War. His first home, near Manassas, was where the First Battle of Bull Run (First Manassas) broke out in 1861, with the house serving as General Beauregard’s headquarters. To escape the war, McLean moved his family over 100 miles south to Appomattox Court House. Ironically, it was in his new home that General Lee surrendered to General Grant in 1865, effectively ending the war.
In 1862 while visiting General George McClellan and the Army of the Potomac during the Peninsula Campaign, Abraham Lincoln personally led a small (unofficial) expedition that saw the Union take control of the Norfolk Naval Yard, and led the Confederates to have to burn their best ship, the Merrimack (also known as the Virginia).
In the 1950s, the Vostok research station in Antarctica was the scene of a fight between two scientists over a game of chess. When one of them lost the game, they became so angry that he attacked the other with an axe and even killed him.
As a result, chess games were banned at all other Soviet Antarctic stations.
^(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vostok_Station#:~:text=In%201959%2C%20the%20Vostok%20station,9%5D%5B11%5D)
Mansa Musa, the richest man in history. On his way to a pilgrimage in Mecca, he gave away so much gold that it ruined the economies of multiple countries for years.
More info
>Musa’s pilgrimage caravan included 60,000 companions, 12,000 slaves carrying 4 pounds of gold each, and 80 camels laden with 50 to 300 pounds of gold each. Five hundred of Musa’s servants also rode before him each carrying a 10.5-pound gold staff. Though Musa had more gold than he could have possibly spent on his journey, that didn’t stop him from making an effort.
>He gave beggars huge ingots, overpaid at bazaars and tipped with fistfuls of gold dust. Musa also reportedly ordered a new mosque built for him to pray at every Friday. In addition, he made formal charitable donations of 20,000 ounces of gold – 1,250 pounds – each at Cairo, Mecca, and Medina.
>The instantaneous and incalculable influx of gold into Cairo, Mecca, and Medina caused hyperinflation the likes of which had never been seen before or since, and nearly impoverished all three great cities for over ten years. Assuming a roughly equal distribution of the total gold load across all those aforementioned camels, Musa made at least 71,000 pounds of gold basically worthless by just plumb giving it away into climates that considered it scarce and valuable. This means in terms of gold devaluation alone the damage Musa’s pilgrimage caused amounted to $1.5 billion in modern money.
Operation Plumbbat.
Israels elaborate scam to steal hundreds of barrels of yellow powder uranium in 1968 after the French cut them off. This stolen uranium became the entire basis for their modern nuclear program.
Edit; another totally unrelated historical incident I’d like to add.
Back in the 1860s, a group of Irish immigrants called the Fenians fled Ireland during the UK occupation and came to the USA. After the American Civil War, they came up with the absolutely insane idea to invade Canada in order to trade it back to the British in exchange for Irish independence. They attempted two invasions, and both failed miserably.
The name Tiffany originates sometime around the 1100’s even though it’s considered a Modern name by a lot of people
Project Habakkuk: a plan by the British in WW2 to create a massive aircraft carrier made of ice.
A British sailor survived three ship sinkings in ONE DAY during WWI. TBH, it was three ship sinkings in a single morning.
On September 22nd, 1914, Wenman “Kit” Wykeham-Musgrave started the day aboard the British Royal Navy cruiser HMS Aboukir, which was on patrol off the Dutch coast.
The Aboukir was torpedoed by the German U-boat SM U-9. It was mistakenly thought that the Aboukir hit a mine and the HMS Cressy and HMS Hogue approached to rescue sailors who had jumped into the sea, including Wykeham-Musgrave. As he swam to and was getting on board the Hogue, it was torpedoed by the SM U-9. Into the water again, Wykeham-Musgrave then swam to the Cressy and it, too, was torpedoed by the SM U-9. He was eventually found on a bit of driftwood, became unconscious and was eventually picked up by a Dutch trawler.
Nearly 1,400 British sailors died in the three sinkings.
Musgrave survived WWI and re-joined the Royal Navy in 1939, survived WWII and lived to the age of 90.
The Aztec Empire lasted less than a century, and Oxford University was 332 years old when it was created.
They released moose into the fjordland wilderness in New Zealand in 1910 and now there are urban myths about seeing moose even as recently as last year by some Canadians. Although they are probably pulling our legs.
In the 1970s, West Germany had a state run program that placed foster children with known pedophiles. The results were as expected, with pretty much all of the (mostly) boys being sexually molested and raped by their “guardians”.
ETA: Full New Yorker Magazine story for those interested:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/07/26/the-german-experiment-that-placed-foster-children-with-pedophiles
Ahem – Mississippi was the last state to outlaw slavery after the ratification of the 13th Amendment…in 2013.
In 1875, a fire broke out in warehouse storing whiskey barrels in Dublin. The heat and fire caused the barrels to burst, creating a river of whiskey that flooded the streets. When the fire was finally put out and the whiskey river subsided, there was a total of 13 fatalities as a direct result of the event.
The cause of all 13 deaths was alcohol poisoning from excessive consumption.
(Edited for better word choice)
Russia, under Peter The Great, sent an expeditionary force from Russian controlled Alaska to American with the intent of exploring possible areas of colonisation. The Russians made it as far as California before turning back.
The second highest nazi official stole an airplane and crash landed in the UK where he was promptly captured.
Ancient roman war galleys mounted giant flame throwers that should shoot long distances and light other ships on fire and which used elaborate pumps and heating systems to shoot the fuel.
There was a dog during WW2 that won the blue cross medal cuz she peed on a bomb and diffused it that way.
Probably the OSS painting foxes with full body glow in the dark paint to fuck with the Japanese in WW2.
As a species, magnolia trees are so old that they’re pollinated by beetles because they evolved before bees existed.
The largest civil war in human history happened in the mid 1800s in China after a man failed the civil service exam, got sick, had a mental breakdown while reading a poorly translated copy of the Gospels and came to the conclusion that he was Jesus’s Chinese brother.
A volcano eruption that happened in Indonesia in 1815 was what ultimately led the then 18yo Mary Shelley to write Frankenstein when challenged by Lord Byron (about 30 years older) during a trip to Switzerland. (Edit: geography oops)
Tsutomu Yamaguchi, a Japanese man who was on a business trip at Hiroshima on August 6 1945
He was working just 3 km away from the blast. He was thrown off by the wave, but survived with minor injuries and no radiation exposure.
Obviously shaken, he decided to end the business trip and return home
His home in Nagasaki
His home was again 3 km away from the blast, which again thrashed him, but again he survived although this time with some radiation exposure.
He died in 2010, at 93 years of age
The wheeled suitcase was patented in 1972.
In other words, we put a man on the moon before we thought to roll our luggage
that an invading army coming from africa to attack rome brought with them a bunch of huge war battle elephants and they marched them over mountain ranges
thats incredible to me
The absolute shitshow that was Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s assassination. The incompetent morons did it, though, and set in motion every major event up to the present day by sparking the fuse for World War One.
The Cadaver Synod
In 897, Pope Steven VI put a previous Pope- Pope Formosus on trial for perjury. They physically removed him from his tomb after being dead for some 7 months, and sat his corpse on public view in the papal courtroom.
People in the Middle Ages took honey mustard VERY SERIOUSLY. Like, there was clergy involved in the mixing process. But then one guy was just like “Hey maybe we can just make honey mustard whenever we want? We don’t have to have a ceremony and a priest. I mean, it’s good, but I don’t think it needs all that pomp.” And then the rest of the town was like “YOU ARE WRONG AND NOW YOU HAVE TO DIE.” And yeah, they totally beheaded him.
On Nov. 26/2012 there was no violent crimes reported in NYC. This is the only time in recorded history it’s happened.
WW1 started because of an assassination, but it was actually a failed assassinaation at first.
As Franz is driving through the city, he’s on a planned route and his killers are waiting for him, they know where he’s going to be.
The first two guys chickened out, the third guy threw a bomb and it bounced off the car and hit the one behind them. He freaked out and took a cyanide pill, then jumped into the nearby river.
The cyanide was too weak and just made him sick, it wasn’t deadly. The river was like 2 feet deep at that time, it wasn’t deadly. He was captured alive.
So Franz gets to his destination and gives his speech, makes jokes about the would-be assassins. Then he talks to his security about getting him the fuck out of town safely. They say they have an alternate route planned, no worries.
They get in the cars and take off, but nobody told the drivers the new plan! The drivers continue the old route until someone in charge says, “Hey turn around, you’re going the wrong way.”
The driver stops right away to turn around, literally right in front of the last assassin who was sitting at a coffee shop. Blam! WW1
Aimo Koivunen, a Finnish soldier who took a whole week’s worth of meth and went on a one-man, drug fueled rampage against the Soviet forces during with he got injured by a land mine, hunted and ate birds raw, and travelled several hundred miles– on skis.
And the crazy part is that he survived all this.
A fellow named Alfred Ely Beech secretly and without government approval built a ‘demonstration’ subway based on pneumatic tube technology – in 1870. Beech claimed he was just making pneumatic tubes for messages, not humans.
This caused a public sensation when it was unveiled, and people flocked to ride it – even though it only had one station, but due to various reasons, it was never pursued. Eventually it was sealed up and forgotten about.
However, when New York actually started to build a subway system in 1911, the workers digging the tunnel broke in to the tunnel created by Alfred Beech … and found everything just as it was left: a subway car, the tunnel – even the piano used to play music for passengers in the station, frescos, fancy lamps, etc.
They were allegedly dumbfounded. Imagine digging the first subway, only to dig into another much older subway you didn’t know about!
A press conference held at Four Seasons Total Landscaping.
Judy Cohen was one of the first female aerospace engineers, with her career beginning in the 50’s. She worked on the Hubble Space Telescope and the tracking and data relay satellite on the Minuteman Missle. She was pregnant and working for the Apollo Space Program when she went into labor.
Before heading to the hospital, she picked up some documents for the problem she was working on. The problem was with the Abort-Guidance System, a crucial component for mission safety which ultimately played a major role in successfully returning the crew of Apollo 13. She worked on it while in labor at the hospital, solved the problem, and promptly gave birth…to Jack Black.
I sincerely hope this gets attention and isn’t buried in the thread because it’s a damn good one:
The year is 1754 if memory serves. When George Washington was a young lieutenant serving the Crown in a Virginian militia, he very literally started the French & Indian War by, in a case of mistaken identity, ordering his men to open fire on a band of unarmed French emissaries in the Ohio River Valley. This also led to him leaving military life, essentially after being told by his commanders that he was a failure and would never advance.
Meanwhile, the French & Indian, also known as the Seven Years War, rages for 7 years and involves multiple global forces. As a result of this war, England is broke and needs to replenish their coffers desperately. They do this by taxing the American colonies heavily.
This leads to the colonies rising up and beginning the American Revolution, where a now older George Washington ends up being called to lead the Revolutionary forces as their general. Note: it has been two decades since that day he ordered his men to ambush those French emissaries.
America, with the help of France, wins that war and becomes an independent nation. George Washington is almost unanimously elected as the leader of this new nation.
So, to summarize: A young George Washington made a career-ending mistake of ordering an ambush which kicked off the Seven Years War, which led to England being broke, which led to them taxing the colonies, which led to the American Revolution, which led to him returning to military service as the leader of the army, which led to America winning, and then his election to the first presidency, becoming the leader of a new nation.
It is the greatest story of “failing upwards” in history that I can think of. It’s absolutely insane, and completely true.