The history you’re taught in school growing up is going to be biased depending on what country you’re from.
Heck, it’s even different depending on what STATE you’re from in America, if we’re being honest about it.
But the point is that we miss out on a lot of true things that happened before our time because school boards and teachers decided it wasn’t appropriate for one reason or another.
But we’re here to share some fascinating historical information you might not about!
Let’s get some history lessons from folks on AskReddit.
1. I challenge you to a duel.
“Andrew Jackson used to participated in duels. He would usually let his opponent shoot first so he had time to line up his shot. In one particular duel his opponent shot him and the bullet got lodged in his rib cage and he survived.
Jackson ended up shooting his opponent in the balls and killed him.”
2. A very strange figure.
“Rasputin, the legendary man from Russia in the early 20th century, was a womanizer that had orgies repeatedly with his cult of followers repeatedly.
Some accounts say he also had an affair with the the emperor’s wife at the time as well. His 13 inch penis is on display in a museum of erotica somewhere.”
3. Have you ever heard this?
“Walt Whitman and Oscar Wilde dated! T
hey exchanged romantic letters and Whitman was once quoted saying “I have the kiss of Oscar Wilde on my lips”.”
4. Defiance.
“Michelangelo loathed the Church, so when he was forced to paint the Sistine Chapel, he didn’t exactly respect their wishes.
He put in several hidden symbolism and objects as defiance, such as a baby basically going “f*ck off” to the pope, Hell’s gates behind the seat of the pope, and some say he made men naked not as some purity thing or whatever, but as a reference to homos*xuality and basically going “lol have fun looking at dudes d*cks in awe (: “”
5. Jumbo LBJ.
“Lyndon B Johnson had a huge d*ck and frequently whipped it out around various people.
He even named it Jumbo. He used it to intimidate people and would have conversations in the bathroom while peeing.”
6. Gettin’ freaky.
“Nixon’a wife, Pat, was a freak in bed apparently.
She was also extremely flexible. I think somewhere in the museum I work at we have pictures of her naked with both he legs behind her head.
They apparently gave the pictures to a friend and were later discovered behind a picture in a frame.”
7. von Steuben.
“Baron von Steuben was a Prussian and then an American General who served as George Washington’s head of staff during the later years of the Revolutionary War. He was in charge of bringing order and discipline to the American armies, which at the time were a ragtag bunch, ill dressed, and unorderly.
He brought the tradition of military marching to the US, and even at today’s military graduations, is acknowledged for introducing the foundations of it to the US military.
It was an open secret that Baron von Stueben was a homos*xual – he was kicked out of the Prussian army for it. He came to American with his ‘Secretary’, had ‘intense emotional relationships’ with fellow officers and generals, and was said to have all-nude parties with his favorite junior officers.
It cracks me up that one of the most honored traditions in the US military was introduced by someone who was gay af.”
8. A saint?
“Mother Teresa not being a saint at all. This article about a french paper about her goes into detail about it all. From funneling money away to the Vatican to poor medical conditions at her facilities and bff relationships she kept with known dictators.”
https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/03/18/the-dark-side-of-mother-teresa/
9. A matter of debate…
“Lawrence of Arabia was a tremendous masochist and once payed a junior officer to whip him.
His s*xuality is actually a matter of a lot of debate in historical discourse.”
10. A fascinating figure.
“John. F*cking. Brown.
For some reason we never learned about this crazy sumb*tch in my history class and I actually only heard about him at all because he was an answer on Jeopardy. But I ended up doing some research into this dude and boy howdy.
This dude was the OG abolitionist who was not here to give f*cks. If you owned a slave, he wanted your head on a spike and would let you know point blank the many vicious ways he fantasized about murdering you.
He and his friends and family instigated more than a few riots and skirmishes in the years preceding the civil war, including a full-blown massacre of slavers in Pottawatomie.
His last big hooplah was trying to incite a massive slave rebellion in West Virginia. He didn’t get the numbers he was hoping for, but with a small militia of wounded men and runaway slaves kept a regiment of the Union army led by Robert Lee himself at bay for over a day before they were overrun.
Not entirely sure why we were never taught about him, but my guess would be that Brown was so insanely bloodthirsty and dedicated to abolitionism that it didn’t fit with the sanitized, straightforward narrative of the Civil War era we were taught.”
11. Not a nice story.
“Thomas Jefferson’s relationship with his slave Sally Hemmings is often portrayed as consensual or even romantic.
In reality, he started r*ping her at 14, and forced her to bear his children. She was freed after his death, then had to negotiate their children’s release from the Jefferson family.”
12. People don’t talk about this much.
“MLK was a known philanderer. The FBI and CIA both have files on his s*xual exploits. The FBI, particularly J Edgar Hoover had files on all this.
The one thing I read not too long ago, and this is available on the CIA website, is that when MLK won the Noble Prize for Peace he and his crew got to Stockholm early and f*cked a bunch of pr*stitutes.
There is a record of them running around the hotel naked, swapping between rooms and women. Just having a great time.”
13. American hero?
“James “Jim” Bowie, a name everyone who went to school in Texas should know, was a raging *sshole by today’s standards.
He was not only pro-slavery, but was a slaver himself, and was such a big slaver that he was trafficking slaves from Africa even after it was illegal to do so.
He’d start fights and kill people like it was nobody’s business, and the legendary fight that got his name associated with a kind of knife only happened because he was a raging *sshole. He also murdered a Louisiana sheriff during that fight.
When he wasn’t enslaving people, fighting people or murdering people in drunken bar fights, he was ripping them off by selling them land he didn’t actually own.
Anyone who can trace their lineages back 200 years in Texas or Louisiana probably have an ancestor that he screwed over.”
14. What a way to go.
“President Warren G. Harding died while climaxing with his secretary, whom he was having a torrid affair with.
Harding died hard.”
15. A gay President.
“James Buchanan, the 15th American president, was very gay.
He literally had a gay lover and when his lover went to France for ambassador-based duties, Buchanan was sad but tried to stay strong and was in the closet by trying to finding a replacement, but nothing could replace his Rufus King.
The thing is that it comes from his journal where he was actually pretty vague on their relationship other than they were very close “friends”.”
Now we want to hear from you!
In the comments, please share some mature historical info.
We can’t wait to see what you have you have to say!
