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History is fun, y’all! And if you need proof, these random and totally crazy facts will surely do the trick! I mean, it was definitely a good time when the following 15 Reddit users talked about their favorite moments in history, so…
#15. Hard to imagine the terror.
“That the Black Death killed between 30 and 50 percent of Europe’s population within four years. Hard to imagine how terrifying that must have been.”
#14. It would have blown da Vinci’s mind.
“That more people have seen the Mona Lisa than existed in the world when Leonardo da Vinci painted it.
I wonder if that would have blown da Vinci’s mind if you could have told him at the time?”
#13. Apologies to horses.
“When Cortez was conquistadoring around South America, his horse injured its ankle when leaving an Itza city. He left the horse with the Itza. They began to worship the horse as a god. Not knowing what to feed it, they decided to feed it things that they associated with the gods, primarily colorful birds and flowers, so of course the horse starved to death. Fearing the gods would punish them for killing the godly horse they decided to build a statue of the horse in the middle of the city as an apology.”
#12. He never knew.
“The fact that George Washington never knew that dinosaurs existed cause the first fossils were found years after he died.”
#11. A hell of a coincidence.
“In March 1951, when the first Dennis The Menace strip was published in the US, another strip called Dennis The Menace starring a kid in a striped shirt with a dog was published in the UK. It’s well established that neither plagiarized the other. It’s a hell of a coincidence but it appears to be.”
#10. Harriet.
“Until her death in 2006, there was a Galapagos Tortoise named Harriet that had been owned by both Steve Irwin and Charles Darwin.”
#9. Wow.
“The discovery of the planet of Uranus (1781) predates the discovery of Antarctica (1821).”
#8. Dark ages, indeed.
“The Romans had flush toilets, and after the fall of their empire that technology fell into disuse for 1000 years.”
#7. An embattled Caesar.
“Caesar’s battle of Alesia, where he built two ~10 mile long walls, one around a fortified settlement he was besieging and the other around the first one so he could keep enemy reinforcements at bay.”
#6. It used to be an island.
“Tyre a small city in Lebanon with nice ancient ruins used to be an island.
But then Alexander the great builds a bridge connecting it to the mainland blocking water flow around it. and 2000 years of sediment later it’s no longer an island.”
#5. They crossed paths.
“Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Josip Tito, Leon Trotsky and Sigmund Freud all lived in the same area in Vienna in 1913.
Just think about how likely it was that they crossed paths without even knowing it.”
#4. Not surprised.
“All British tanks since 1945 have included equipment to make tea.”
#3. A single man’s decision.
“This is somewhat well known at this point, but the fact that a single man’s decision to disobey orders during the cold war saved the entire world from nuclear Armageddon always blows my mind. Stanislav Petrov received an alarm that the US had launched a nuclear missile, but decided not to follow through on launching missiles on the US and nato allies back, as he judged that it was likely a false alarm.”
#2. A fascist dictatorship.
“When Microsoft was founded, Spain was still a fascist dictatorship.”
#1. A joke from the grave.
“Andrew Jackson’s pet parrot was ejected from his funeral because it wouldn’t stop cussing.”
If you’re not convinced now, well, there’s just no hope for you.
