History
Discover facts about history. Small discoveries that change the way you see familiar things.
History
Cézanne's wife fell asleep while posing for him
Posing for Paul Cezanne was practically a medieval endurance torture test. The post-impressionist painter was so agonizingly slow that he demanded his…
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Medieval soccer was a brutal fight over a pig's bladder
Forget multi-million dollar contracts; early sports were just an excuse to legally beat up your neighbors. Mob football involved entire villages fighting over…
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Japanese professionals still use wooden stamp seals
Despite living in a high-tech society, signing a document with a pen just doesn't carry the proper gravitas. The Hanko is a carved personal seal dipped in red…
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Peter the Great forced nobles into days-long benders
Peter the Great formed the "All-Joking, All-Drunken Synod of Fools and Jesters," a mandatory club for his elite. Attendance was compulsory, sobriety was…
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Chinese spinning toy hums loudly on a thin string
Standard yo-yos are entirely too quiet and boring. The Diabolo involves balancing an hourglass-shaped spool on a string tied between two sticks, whipping it…
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Röntgen's wife was the first to see X-rayed bones
Discovering groundbreaking medical imaging is cool, but subjecting your spouse to it is legendary. When Wilhelm Röntgen discovered X-rays in 1895, he tested…
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Victorians spent Christmas telling ghost stories
Long before festive cheer and jolly consumerism took over, the holiday season was heavily dedicated to terrifying children with grim tales of the undead…
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Early mechanical clocks used heavy hanging weights
Forget sleek gears and microchips; early timekeeping was just controlled gravity. The very first mechanical clocks relied on massive stone or metal weights…
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Ancient Olympic cheats had to fund statues naming them
If you think modern doping scandals are bad, the ancient Greeks had a much more permanent form of public humiliation. Athletes caught cheating, bribing…
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Croquet was once an Olympic sport
Because watching people lightly tap wooden balls across a manicured lawn is undeniably thrilling. It was the first event to allow female competitors, but…
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Peter the Great made nobles serve in a court of fools
The ultimate royal troll. The Tsar set up an elaborate shadow government consisting purely of jesters and drunks, forcing his terrified actual nobles to…
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Thatch roofs were criminalized to prevent mass fires
After realizing that tightly packing houses topped with highly flammable dried grass was a spectacularly bad idea, authorities finally started banning thatch…
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Commoners believed looking at the emperor blinded
To maintain an aura of literal divinity, some rulers forced subjects to stare directly at the ground, claiming that establishing eye contact was magically…
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The doll craze that sparked violent shopping riots
Because nothing says 'holiday spirit' quite like trampling your neighbors for a weirdly squishy doll. In 1983, adults completely lost their minds, engaging in…
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Why one Bunraku puppet needs three puppeteers
Taking micromanagement to an entirely new level, Bunraku puppet theater refuses to let one person handle a prop. It takes three highly trained adults dressed…
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Early microprocessors contained very few transistors
The absolute pinnacle of human computing power in the seventies was practically empty by modern standards. While your current smartphone boasts tens of…
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European royals regularly suffered from severe gout attacks
Eating absolutely massive quantities of incredibly rich red meat has a very aggressive physical toll. Known strictly as the 'disease of kings', gout violently…
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Anglo-Portuguese treaty is the oldest active military pact
While other nations constantly backstabbed their closest allies on a weekly basis, these two strictly maritime powers signed a pact in the late 1300s and…
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Garlic bulbs originated across Central Asian regions
Ancient foragers in Central Asia found a wildly pungent bulb hidden in the dirt and decided it was exactly what their bland meals needed. They proceeded to…
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Monasteries held absolute monopolies on written knowledge
For centuries, the only places possessing the time, wealth, and literacy required to produce books were isolated religious monasteries. This allowed them to…
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Semicolons once marked abbreviated words
The punctuation mark that currently haunts college essays had a completely different day job. It originally functioned purely as a marker to show that a…
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Han dynasty stargazers casually tracked a major comet
Centuries before modern telescopes, meticulous Han dynasty scholars meticulously charted a massive glowing streak across the sky in 240 BC. Rather than…
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Fire hydrants began as holes in wooden pipes
Before the metal hydrants that ruin your street parking existed, water mains were made of entirely hollowed-out tree trunks. When a fire broke out, emergency…
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Genghis Khan slept with so many women that approximately one in two hundred men share his exact DNA
The ultimate conqueror didn't just leave a legacy of ruined cities and massive empires; he aggressively diversified his portfolio in the human gene pool. By…
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