History
Discover facts about history. Small discoveries that change the way you see familiar things.
History
A Rothschild drove a zebra-drawn carriage to Buckingham Palace
Naturalist Walter Rothschild kept exotic animals at Tring and trained zebras to pull a carriage. The Natural History Museum records that he was invited to…
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Paul I was killed just 40 days after moving into his new castle
The Russian emperor took up residence in St. Petersburg's Mikhailovsky Castle in 1801. A conspiracy of officers reached him there, and he was killed in his…
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Frederick the Great demanded to be buried with his dogs
Frederick’s wish wasn’t honored right away: he was first buried in a church, away from his greyhounds. In 1991, his remains were moved to Sanssouci and laid…
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Cézanne reportedly recoiled from a friend's attempt to steady him
Émile Bernard recalled the painter angrily rejecting help after losing his footing. In Bernard's account, Cézanne linked his aversion to touch to an earlier…
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Hans Christian Andersen traveled with a fire-escape rope
He carried a thick coil of rope in his suitcase in case he needed to escape a hotel fire through a window.
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Louis XVI was obsessed with making locks
He spent hours taking intricate locks apart in his workshop, absorbed while France’s political crisis deepened outside it. The locks demanded patience; the…
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Salvador Dalí nearly suffocated in a diving suit
The vintage deep-sea helmet was meant to symbolize a descent into the subconscious; Dalí nearly passed out from lack of oxygen while the crowd thought it was…
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Alexander III ordered a dinner service that took twenty years to finish
The Raphael service, commissioned in 1883, drew on the decoration of the Vatican's Raphael Loggias. It was delivered in 1904, after Alexander's death, to the…
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A Burmese governor became famous for barely smiling
Burmese historical tradition remembers Thilawa of Yamethin as a man who smiled or laughed only three times. He also refused an offer of the throne and served…
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Louis XI didn't dress like the king you would expect
Historical descriptions emphasize his plain clothes and old felt hat rather than spectacular court dress. The ruler who helped strengthen the French monarchy…
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A jeweled tortoise dies under its owner's taste in an 1884 novel
In Huysmans's Against Nature, Des Esseintes decorates a tortoise with gold and gemstones to improve how it looks against his carpet. The animal cannot survive…
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Ibsen kept a scorpion beside him while writing Brand
In an 1870 letter, Henrik Ibsen recalled keeping the animal in a glass on his desk. He described giving it soft fruit to attack and comparing its release of…
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Astronomer Tycho Brahe kept a tame elk in his castle
The Danish astronomer kept a tame elk that wandered the halls of his estate.
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A fictional cat wrote its memoir over someone else's biography
In E.T.A. Hoffmann's novel, Tomcat Murr uses pages from a musician's biography as waste paper while writing his own life story. A supposed printing mix-up…
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This poet wore three coats in July
He feared catching a chill enough to wear three thick wool coats in July, sweating through midsummer to avoid getting cold. The precaution was less…
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Bavaria's Ludwig II turned the night into his royal daytime
He worked at night, slept during the day, and took moonlit rides through the countryside around his palaces. His ornate gala sleigh could be fitted with…
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The painter who pretended to be blind to avoid people
He claimed his eyesight was failing when he wanted to avoid conversation, then kept painting detailed works. The paintings kept giving him away.
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Boris Pasternak was terrified of the telephone
Pasternak refused to touch the receiver and would flee the room when it rang, convinced the call meant terrible news.
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Gogol asked not to be buried until his body showed decay
His published Testament explicitly requested clear signs of decomposition before burial. The writer's fear of being mistaken for dead made its way into…
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A Russian novelist punished himself with a dunce cap
When he felt he hadn’t written enough good pages, he put on a dunce cap and stood silently facing a corner.
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Ludovico Ariosto rewrote one single stanza fifty times
He kept erasing and rewriting the same four lines until the paper was nearly worn through.
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Kafka laughed while reading his bleakest stories
He found his bleak stories funny enough to giggle while reading them aloud to friends, sometimes stopping because he couldn't catch his breath.
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Jules Verne sailed through settings for his own adventures
In 1884, his steam yacht took him through the Mediterranean, stopping in North Africa, Malta and Italy. The voyage helped supply the geography of Mathias…
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Magritte made the impossible look like an office commute
René Magritte repeatedly painted anonymous men in bowler hats and dark suits. Their ordinary appearance makes the impossible scenes around them more…
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