🤯 #DidYouKnow #HistoryBuff #MindBlown
Hey there history enthusiasts! 📚 Have you ever stumbled upon a historical fact that left you absolutely stunned? Well, I’ve got a question for you today that might just blow your mind! 🤯
What’s a historical fact that would shock most people to find out? Can you imagine the look on someone’s face when they learn this surprising tidbit from the past? 😱
I’m asking because I recently discovered a mind-boggling fact about the Mayans that made me rethink everything I knew about ancient civilizations. 🌎 The level of advancement and knowledge they possessed way back when is truly unparalleled. 🤯
So, I want to hear from you all! Share your jaw-dropping historical facts in the comments below and let’s uncover some hidden gems together. Who knows, maybe we’ll all learn something new today! 🤓💭
Don’t be shy, join the conversation and let’s dive into the fascinating world of history together. Your input is valuable and who knows, you might just surprise yourself with what you uncover. Can’t wait to hear your thoughts! 🗣💡 #Engage #Curiosity #HistoryNerd
It took about 4 times longer to get from copper swords to steel swords, than it took from steel swords to atomic bombs.
We are closer to the time of the T-Rex than the T-Rex is to the time of the Stegosaurus
That there were no airfields during the Revolutionary War. (in the States)
Can you guess the reference? 🙂
The 1796 Treaty of Tripoli, ratified by US Congress and made public with essentially no documented debate, states that the US “is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.”
Hitting children in school was still legal when I was there and I’m only 43.
The year 536 was deemed the worst year to be alive. Volcanic eruptions caused prolonged dark sky for up to 18 months. This then caused a mini ice age, crop failures and plague over the next 10 years killing millions
Also the name Tiffany has been in use since the 1600s
Sharpshooter Annie Oakley had a stage act where she would shoot a cigarette out of someone’s mouth. While she was touring Europe, Kaiser Wilhelm Il of Germany surprised everyone on a whim and insisted on holding the cigarette.
Ever the professional, Oakley shot the cigarette without harming the Kaiser.
Several years later WWI is underway and the US goes to war against Germany.
Oakley wrote a letter to Kaiser Wilhelm asking if she could have another try at that shot.
He didn’t reply.
Hitler was not German
The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. An angry mob of white people used a flimsy pretext to justify burning down a thriving Black community in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
As far as we know, John Adams is the only “Founding Father” of the United States that never enslaved anyone.
The 2 atomic bombs dropped on Japan killed around 200.000 people. Before that, imperial Japan killed 30 million in east and south east Asia. And those are only the statistics of war crimes. Not so kawaii of them.
Woodrow Wilson was mentally and emotionally incapacitated by a massive stroke in October 1919, and his wife and doctors essentially ran the country until Harding took office in 1921. Some historians refer to Edith Wilson as “the first female president.”
Abraham Lincoln had fewer Instagram followers than Ariana Grande
George Washington’s dentures were not wooden, but were crafted from various materials, animal teeth, and the teeth of enslaved people.
Buzzfeed used to write their own content.
Cleopatra lived closer to the time of the moon landing than she did to the time the pyramids were built.
Perdue Pharma is responsible for the fentanyl crisis in America.
After World War II, the British government argued for summary executions for Nazi leadership while the Soviet Union wanted a show trial with a predetermined verdict. We only got the Nuremberg Trials as they were after a shitload of debate between the US, UK, France, and USSR.
FDR was on coke when he gave the Date Which Will Live In Infamy speech.
Door knobs were invented in 1848.
The United States government intentionally poisoned 10,000 people by spiking the alcohol they drank during prohibition.
Cleopatra VII, the last active ruler of the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt, lived closer in time to the moon landing in 1969 than to the construction of the Great Pyramid of Giza.
That on Feb 20, 1939, 20,000 Americans attended a [Nazi rally in Madison Square Garden](https://i.redd.it/35gygozjzah91.jpg).
Short (7 min) documentary with footage: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NC1MNGFHR58](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NC1MNGFHR58)
Generals Grant and Lee did not meet at a courthouse in Appomattox to sign a treaty to end the American Civil War in 1865. They met in a private farmer’s house at place called Appomattox Courthouse.
We are closer in time to Cleopatra’s rule than Cleopatra was in time to the construction of the Great Pyramids of Giza. In fact, we have historical records of Cleopatra having *ancient Egyptian archeologists* trying to figure out what they were and how they were built. She was just as clueless, or even more clueless, as we are about the origin of those pyramids.
During World War II, the United States military developed a plan to use bats as bombs. The idea was to attach small incendiary devices to bats and release them over Japanese cities at night. The bats would then roost in buildings, and when the devices detonated, they would start fires, causing chaos and destruction. While the project, known as “Project X-Ray,” never saw combat, it’s a bizarre example of the lengths to which military strategists were willing to go during the war.
Irish-American ex-soldiers invaded Canada after the Civil War.
There are more planes on the bottom of the ocean than there are submarines in the sky.
The History Channel aired programs about history
The Second Congo War, also known as Africa’s World War was the deadliest conflict since World War 2 with over 5 million people killed.
Most people have never heard of it despite it ending in 2003.
Hitler, Stalin, Tito, Freud and Trotsky were all in Vienna, 1913.
Many people know about the Suffragettes who won the vote for some UK women in 1918. Many people don’t know that prior to 1918 men did not have universal suffrage. 1918 is also the date which non landowning men got the vote. Prior to that the vote had been only for wealthy landowning lords, just 5% of the population. Over a period of the preceding 80 years concessions were slowly made to allow more men, and then some women to vote.
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/content/uploads/2018/02/Image1.png
Siaka Stevens was technically both the shortest and longest serving leader of Sierra Leone.
He was an opposition leader that won an extremely close election, and the ruling party that had been ruling the country since independence didn’t want to lose their power, so they planned to arrest him just before he could take the oath of office, but things didn’t go exactly to plan and he ended up being removed from office a little while after taking the oath of office, meaning he was technically president for a little less than an hour before being removed from office.
However, there was a counter coup a few months later and Siaka Stevens was brought back into power. During his time in office, Stevens became increasingly authoritarian and eventually established a one party state, ruling the country for 17 years.
Before the Civil War and the 14th amendment, the Bill of Rights had no power over the states. Some states had the equivalent rights in their own constitutions, some states had laws requiring office holders to be merely religious, at least one only allowed Protestants.
Sharks are older than the rings on Saturn
**The Great Papago Escape.** The Allies had POW camps for German soldiers. One of those camps was in Arizona. On the night of December 23, 1944, twenty-five [Germans](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_Germany) tunneled out of [Camp Papago Park](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Papago_Park), near [Phoenix](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix,_Arizona), [Arizona](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arizona), and fled into the surrounding desert. The German plan was to escape by rafts on a nearby river. They dragged their rafts with them and escaped into the desert only to find the map was showing waterways that only existed during the monsoons. They had to walk back to the camp to avoid dying in the desert. Today Papago Park is a popular tourist attraction but there is no sign of the camp or tunnels.
America-centric: The first person to attend an integrated school only qualified for full Social Security benefits two years ago.
People think about the legacy of Jim Crow and American racism as if it were the relic of a bygone era. It’s not. The people who were throwing rotten fruit and rocks at Ruby Bridges- the younger ones- are still alive. Many of them are still running the country. The older ones died recently and absolutely passed on their values to their children, who are probably even younger than Ruby.
American racism is not “my ancestors”. It’s “my grandma”.
This one is not 100% conclusive, but there’s a lot of anecdotal evidence it actually happened at least once…
During World War II, Germany built fake airfields out of wood to trick Allied pilots. Upon realizing this, Allied planes cheekily dropped some fake wooden bombs (which were usually used for training purposes) on the fake airfields. They also supposedly wrote the words “Wood for Wood” on the sides of the wooden bombs.
Britain executed men as cowards during WWI if they had “shell shock” which is what we call PTSD today if they could not or would not fight as a result
A military plane carrying two nuclear warheads broke apart and crashed in North Carolina. The state would have gotten nuked if it weren’t for a single safety switch preventing detonation. These nukes were bigger than the ones we used in Japan.
Read up on the 1961 Goldsboro B-52 crash.
Within a single person’s lifetime, we went from all transportation being by horses, ships, and trains, to landing a man on the moon.
Napoleon was actually 5 foot 7 inches not 5’2
Approximately 8% of Canadians were enlisted in the Canadian Expeditionary Force during World War I.
That isn’t 8% of eligible Canadians, or 8% of Canadian men; that’s 8% of the entire population of Canada. If a similar proportion enlisted in the United States today, there would be 26 million people serving in the US Armed Forces.
All of the New Testament was written by people that never personally knew or even met Jesus. And no the gospels were not written by the disciples Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The only writings from an eye witness we do have are some of Paul’s letters and Paul describes his conversion as a vision/revelation.