History
Discover facts about history. Small discoveries that change the way you see familiar things.
History
Columbus thought Earth was shaped like a pear
In his account of the 1498 voyage, Columbus imagined the world rising toward a high point where the earthly paradise lay. The pear-like shape helped him…
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OMG first appeared in a 1917 letter
Admiral John Fisher used 'O.M.G.' in a 1917 letter to Winston Churchill, spelling it out as 'Oh! My God!' in a joke about a new order of knighthood. The…
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George Washington really grew hemp
Hemp fiber supplied rope and canvas, not just an unusual entry in a president’s farming diary. Washington even recorded the tedious work of separating male…
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When samurai tested swords on strangers
Some samurai practiced tsujigiri, or “crossroads killing,” testing a new sword by attacking an unsuspecting passerby.
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A single switch prevented a nuclear disaster in 1961
When a B-52 broke apart over Goldsboro, North Carolina, in 1961, it released two hydrogen bombs. One went through several steps in its arming sequence. A…
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Adams's last words outlived the man they mentioned
John Adams reportedly said that Thomas Jefferson survived him, unaware Jefferson had died hours earlier. Both died on July 4, 1826, exactly fifty years after…
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Mozart wrote a song called Leck mich im Arsch
The title is a deliberately obscene German phrase—roughly, “lick me in the ass”—but Mozart wrote the six-part canon for friends to sing at parties. Even his…
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Why Columbus was sent home in chains
Reports of Columbus’s brutal rule in Hispaniola—including mutilations for minor offenses—led the Spanish crown to send an investigator. In 1500, the…
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Queen Victoria reportedly handed out cocaine gum
Queen Victoria reportedly enjoyed cocaine-laced Mariani wine and handed out cocaine-infused chewing gum to guests, including young Winston Churchill.
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Why Romans thought trousers were barbaric
To Romans, trousers marked a person as foreign and uncivilized; the toga was the respectable choice. Some emperors even banned pants in the city, treating a…
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Ford kept a tube from Edison's deathbed room
After Thomas Edison died in 1931, his son Charles noticed open test tubes in the bedroom and had the attending physician seal them. He later sent one to Henry…
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The Bulgarian ruler who drank from an emperor's skull
After defeating Byzantine forces in 811, Krum had Emperor Nikephoros I's skull hollowed out and lined with silver for use as a drinking cup.
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Rome’s calendar had a legendary winter-sized gap
Roman tradition credited Romulus with a ten-month calendar beginning in March, followed by winter days outside the named months. Later reforms added January…
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Franklin joked that Paris should rediscover sunrise
His 1784 satire calculated the candles Parisians could save by getting up earlier. He even proposed bells and restrictions on shutters to encourage the…
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The year ten days vanished from the calendar
The Julian calendar had drifted about ten days out of sync with the seasons, so the Gregorian reform corrected the date. In countries adopting it in October…
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When mummies traveled as ordinary train cargo
Egyptomania created a market for mummies, not special shipping arrangements. Rail companies treated them as freight and loaded them into ordinary cargo cars.
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Prague's window-throwing crisis helped ignite a European war
In 1618, Protestant nobles threw two royal governors and a secretary from a window of Prague Castle. They survived, but the political confrontation escalated…
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The Declaration of Independence was signed in August
Congress approved the text on July 4; most delegates signed the document on August 2. The holiday marks the approval, while most of the signatures came later.
Discover moreRudolf Nureyev singlehandedly shattered Soviet cultural prestige when he dramatically evaded his KGB handlers at Le Bourget airport in Paris, seeking immediate asylum and…
During the Cold War, ballet was actually considered serious geopolitical ammunition, and the Soviet Union truly believed their classical dancers proved the…
Discover moreEmperor Babur aggressively terraformed the dusty plains of Agra into the geometrically flawless Ram Bagh pleasure gardens, using sophisticated Persian water hydraulics to…
When Emperor Babur arrived in India, he was absolutely appalled by the blistering heat and the dust, basically leaving a one-star Yelp review of the local…
Discover moreOtto Schmidt miraculously transformed the catastrophic sinking of the SS Chelyuskin icebreaker into a spectacular geopolitical triumph, using dramatic airborne rescues to…
Leave it to Stalin’s relentless propaganda machine to spin a catastrophic maritime disaster into a dazzling display of socialist superiority. When the SS…
Discover moreAshurbanipal projected absolute divine authority by publicly slaughtering captive Asiatic lions inside heavily guarded Nineveh arenas, commissioning hyper-realistic palace…
Why bother fighting a costly foreign war when you can just violently slaughter captive zoo animals to prove a geopolitical point? King Ashurbanipal of Assyria…
Discover moreMing emperors intentionally burned their world-class Treasure Fleet and enacted the draconian Haijin policy making it an absolute capital offense to build ships with more than…
Imagine having the most advanced navy on Earth and deciding to burn it for border security. After the legendary, massive voyages of Admiral Zheng He, paranoia…
Discover moreHighly trained Incan accountants known as quipucamayocs managed an entire continent-spanning empire without a written language by tying intricate knots into colored alpaca wool…
Running an empire of ten million people without a single written word sounds mathematically impossible until you look at the quipu. The Incas used a highly…
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