Get Premium
Dark mode theme is available exclusively for premium users. Learn more about the benefits of subscribing.
Dark Mode 
No fees, cancel anytime 
If you've been reading Bored Panda, you know we have a soft spot for our past. I mean, just check out our pieces on history memes and rarely seen old photos; we appreciate it in all forms!
Apparently, so does Redditor Aquatax. Last month, they made a post, asking other users: "What historical events are so absurd that they would be too strange for a fiction story or a movie?" And their call was answered.
People started sending in their submissions one after the other and the comment section quickly transformed into one of the most interesting archives of hard-to-believe trivia that you can find online.
From the Toronto circus riot to anti-tank WW2 dogs, continue scrolling and check out what it has to offer.
This post may include affiliate links.
#1
Back in the 1780’s, after being elected President, George Washington decided to send a letter to Congress that basically said, “Hey, looking forward to working with y’all, this will be exciting!”
However, George wasn’t very eloquent, and was generally busy and stressed, so he asked his friend James Madison to compose the letter to Congress, which James did.
When Congress received the letter, they decided to respond in kind, not wanting to slight the new president. They wanted to send back a letter that essentially said, “We’re glad you’re excited, so are we!” They decided there was no one better in Congress to write the letter than their very own…James Madison.
So, James writes a response to the letter he wrote in the first place, and Congress sends it to George. George decided to respond with something along the lines of, “Oh, good, I’m excited that you’re excited, too!” — and since his buddy James did such an excellent job with the first letter, George again went to him and had him compose the response.
Congress received the letter and again not wanting to be awkward and ignore the PRESIDENT, decided to reply with yet another letter that basically said, “Hey, we’re excited that you’re excited that we’re excited!” …and once again, they had James Madison compose the response.
So James Madison, future 4th president of the United States, wound up writing himself 4 letters back and forth between “George Washington” and “Congress”, and was too embarrassed to tell anyone about it while it was going on.
The idea for the post had been sitting in Aquatax's head for some time and when the Redditor finally sat down to submit it, it didn't materialize itself in a heartbeat, either.
"It took me half an hour to think of how to word it," Aquatax told Bored Panda. "The other thing I was thinking of was some event in history ... (it was most likely Teddy Roosevelt, who has his own share of stories), and I had recently began trying to share with others some strange stories, and thought the worldwideweb might know a thing or two."
After going through the comments, Aquatax thinks that people were mostly interested in stuff that has happened in the past two hundred years or so.
#2
In 1939, some American Nazis hung up a "No Jews Allowed" sign outside a store. A 5'4'' Jew passed by and, naturally not appreciative of their business policy, tore up the signs. The Nazis gladly took this excuse to go out and beat him up... only to learn that Joseph Greenstein was known as The Mighty Atom, one of the most accomplished strongmen in American history. The type of dude who bends horseshoes and pushes nails through metal sheets with his palm for his job. Needless the say, the Nazis ended up in about the same state Germany would be in a couple of years.
However, history as a subject is having a major(s) problem. The number of students earning degrees in the field fell precipitously after the Great Recession of 2008, and while the decline became a bit more gradual before the pandemic (especially when including double majors), the situation has continued to get worse.
New US Department of Education data for the 2018–19 academic year shows the annual number of bachelor's degrees awarded in history, history teacher education, and historic preservation and conservation fell to 23,923—down more than a third from 2012 and the smallest number awarded since the late 1980s.
And these numbers carry a lot of weight; they not only offer a key measure of the health of the discipline in academia, but can also have a more tangible effect at many institutions, as administrators often use majors to allocate resources and faculty lines.
#3
One of eleven children born to Charles and Maria Sax, Adolphe was an extremely accident prone youth who barely made it to adulthood. At three he fell three floors down bashing his head on the stone floor at the bottom. He drank a bowl of acidic water believing it was milk. He swallowed and subsequently passed a large needle. He flew across his fathers workshop and was burned badly when a barrel of gunpowder exploded. He fell upon a hot cast-iron pan on a stove burning his side. He frequently slept in a room where varnished furniture was drying, somehow avoiding poisoning and asphyxiation. He was hit in the head with a slate roof tile while walking down the street. He fell in a river and nearly drowned.
Then this same child, who some force was failing miserably to unalive, grew up and had the audacity to invent the saxophone.
"Unfortunately, many don’t find history that enjoyable, and I mean, I don't know the kings and queens of Russia or the accomplishments of each and every president of the US, but many feel that is what history is taught as in school and in my opinion in sours the subject," Aquatax said.
As simple as it sounds, maybe it's more posts like this (and media's attention to history as a whole) that can revive it?
"There is the phrase that truth is stranger than fiction, which is what I based my comment on. The bad guy always loses, or if someone is shot, they immediately die, but in both cases, that's not fully true. In my opinion, a lot of the Cold War info was from Germany, and presidents have been shot and survived, like Teddy. The Spanish took out a major empire with 600 men, while in Central America businessmen regularly overthrew national governments and then fought each other. (Also, apparently, it is illegal for American citizens to overthrow allied governments, that’s a real law.) Then there was that one comment that mentioned Napoleon being overrun by rabbits, that was hilarious."
"Theodore Roosevelt... He's fantastic," the Redditor added. "He is the definition of a Mary Sue but real life. If the late 19th and early 20th century United States was a story, he would be the main protagonist!"
#4
The Allies in Italy during WW2 were blocked at one point by an old castle that defended a critical valley they needed to move through.
The Nazis had taken it over and heavily fortified it with machine guns and artillery. Had a long ramp to the main gates that left the attackers open to mg fire. Back of the castle opened onto a sheer cliff. Destroying the castle wasn't an option.
The British tried taking from the front and failed. The Americans tried the same thing with more men and also failed.
Enter the Canadian Army, who decided to scale the cliff at night, with all their gear, in complete silence and take the fort.
And they did it.
#5
From the last time this was asked:
The Marathon at the 1904 Olympics in St. Louis.
The first place finisher did most of the race in a car. He had intended to drop out, and got a car back to the stadium to get his change of clothes, and just kind of started jogging when he heard the fanfare.
The second place finisher was carried across the finish line, legs technically twitching, by his trainers. They had been refusing him water, and giving him a mixture of Brandy and Rat Poison for the entire race. Doping wasn't illegal yet (and this was a terrible attempt at it), so he got the gold when the First guy was revealed.
Third finisher was unremarkable, somehow.
Fourth finisher was a Cuban Mailman, who had raised the funds to attend the olympics by running non-stop around his entire country. He landed in New Orleans, and promptly lost all of the travelling money on a riverboat casino. He ran the race in dress shoes and long trousers (cut off at the knee by a fellow competitor with a knife). He probably would have come in first (well, second, behind the car) had it not been for the hour nap he took on the side of the track after eating rotten apples he found on the side of the race.
9th and 12th finishers were from South Africa, and ran barefoot. South Africa didn't actually send a delegation - these were students who just happened to be in town and thought it sounded fun. 9th was chased a mile off course by angry dogs. Note: These are the first Africans to compete in any modern Olympic event.
Half the participants had never raced competatively before. Some died.
St. Louis only had one water stop on the entire run. This, coupled with the dusty road, and exacerbated by the cars kicking up dust, lead to the above fatalities. And yet, somehow, Rat Poison guy survived to get the Gold.
The Russian delegation arrived a week late, because they were still using the Julian calendar. In 1904.
#6
A guy broke into the Prime Minster of Canada's house with a knife, intent to kill the Prime Minster.
The Prime Minster's wife hears someone walking around downstairs and tries to wake her husband. The PM just tells her its nothing, go back to sleep.
She gets up and investigates - finding the knife wielding assassin. She grabs an Inuit statue of a loon and beats the s**t out of the guy. Our PM then runs into the hall and helps his wife take down the assassin. These are two people in their 60's just kicking the s**t out of some dude in his late 20's.
She calls the local police who arrive, only to realize they forgot the f***ing key to the front gate, so they send someone back to the station get it.
The assassin was later confirmed to have major mental health issues. Less than 5 years later, he was successfully treated for his schizophrenia, released from his treatment facility and formally apologized to the couple.
#7
Benjamin F Wilson was already a WWII veteran when he enlisted in the Korean War. He had to take a demotion from Lieutenant to private to do so, but he quickly rose back through the ranks. In 1951 he was put in charge of protecting a place that they called Hell Hill, and he knew that an attack was coming, but he remained with his men. He took a bullet to the leg and then went into a one-man charge to kill 7 and wound 2 Chinese soldiers alone. His men tried to take him for medical treatment, but when his stretcher was put down, he got up and limped back up the hill… just as everyone else was retreating. He charged alone with his rifle, killing 3 enemies. Then they took his rifle, so he killed 4 more with his entrenching shovel. The Chinese retreated, for a while. The next day Wilson went on a one-man assault again to take down 33 more enemy soldiers, despite his existing wounds. This was a guy that just wouldn’t be held down.
Literally this guy is too John Wick for John Wick, wouldn't even pass as realistic.
#8
The fact that Stalin could’ve survived a heart attack he had if he hadn’t executed all the good doctors in the USSR. That’s karma
#9
Chinese revolutionaries blaming the sparrows for famine, which lead to killing the population of sparrows and... more famine, because they broke the ecosystem and the locust could spread.
Ryan Deschanel 2 years ago
Of course. Communist dictators don't admit they are wrong, they just make up new scapegoats and kill more people.
#10
Roman empire declaring war on Neptune the god of water... they just went and stabbed the water
#11
Honey Trap Fail
An attempt by Russian security forces to blackmail Indonesian leader Sukarno by filming him having sex with a group of flight attendants resulted in him requesting copies of the tapes to send to his friends.
#12
Immediately after being shot, Theodore Roosevelt continued by giving a 90 minute speech before going to the hospital.
Actually all of Teddy’s life is fairly absurd now I think about it
#13
There was that time when a Bolivian water company tried to quadruple the price of water and that was so comically over-the-top evil that James Bond Quantum Of Solace had to tone it down so that their fictional version were only trying to double the price of water. The real life company were too proposterously wicked to be believable as a Bond villain. Let that sink in.
#14
The Toronto Circus Riot of 1855.
The Fire Department and some clowns get into a disagreement at a whorehouse, and get into a punch-up. The clowns win, but the firemen return to the circus later and start attacking in revenge. The firemen win the day but violence is stopped when the militia come in. The police do nothing, so the city fires all the police (and I mean everyone) and starts a new police force.
Hannah Edwards 2 years ago
Wow, you couldn’t make it up. I wonder what the original fight was over.
#15
Douglas Bader.
RAF flying ace - 23 kills - though he had previously lost both his legs in (separate) flying accidents. He wore a pair of clunky tin legs.
He was shot down over France in 1941. The Luftwaffe were so pleased to have captured him they arranged for the RAF to drop a pair of his legs at a designated time and place, and cleared the sky for the drop to proceed.
The RAF did indeed drop the legs as arranged but since all German fighters and ack-ack had been stood down as arranged, it seemed a waste not to bomb a nearby enemy airfield.
Meanwhile, Bader stumping about on his tin legs, was a great hit with his Nazi captors. At a great party held by the Luftwaffe in his honour, he drank them under the table, excused himself to a third floor bathroom, shinned down a drainpipe and stumped off into the darkness.
He was only recaptured by a German spy in the resistance. For the next four years he continually escaped and was recaptured until he was finally sent to Colditz.
After the war, there was a great spirit of reconciliation and togetherness between the air forces on both sides. Bader was not convinced. He was invited to address a crowd of assembled now ex-Luftwaffe pilots and began his speech with the words: "Seeing so many of you here today, I am struck by the single thought: I didn't kill enough of you bastards".
#16
Tsquare43:
Hitler, Tito, Stalin, Trotsky, and Freud were living in the same Vienna neighborhood in 1913
nashamagirl99:
The best sitcom setup
#17
The last known kill by bow and arrow in combat was actually during the battle of Dunkirk, 1940. Jack Churchill landed a well placed arrow into a german soldier's chest
He also chose to carry bagpipes, and a scottish longsword
#18
Napoleon getting attacked by a horde of rabbits.
Basically, the story goes that a rabbit hunt was set up to celebrate the Treaties of Tilsit and they ended up amassing somewhere between hundreds and thousands of rabbits (accounts vary). Anyway, the day of the hunt they set the rabbits in cages surrounding the area that they would be hunting in.
They released them once everyone was set, but instead of being scared the bunnies swarmed the hunting party. At first they thought it was funny, but then it got overwhelming and Napoleon and the others had to flee from the bunnies in a coach.
#19
Battle of Karansebes
That time in the 1700s when the Austrian army got confused, waged a huge battle against itself within its own lines, and lost an estimated several hundred to few thousand men (and a lot of equipment and money) in the process. They then retreated.
The Ottomans, whom they were originally intending to fight, showed up two days later.
#20
Wojtek, the soldier bear! He served in the Polish army in WWII, helping his fellow soldiers by carrying heavy creates of ammunition into battle, saving precious time during combat.
He had been recruited as a soldier when his division had to board an English ship which didn't allow animals on board. Outraged, the Polish then made him a soldier and he lived through the war to die of old age in a zoo in 1963.
#21
British Secret service created a sabotage device consisting of a dead rat with explosives shoved up it's arse. Back then for safety if you saw a dead rat, you scooped it up with a spade and chucked it into the furnace. This would ignite the explosives and blow up the building enough that the Nazi's would call in their bomb squad for every dead rat.
#22
In WW2, British commandos filled a ship with explosives, tried to sail incognito into Germany's largest dry dock but was discovered and fired upon by all the shore batteries, the ship started getting hit again and again (and any single hit could detonate the explosives) they some how managed to sail the ship at full speed straight into the gate of the dry dock propelling the ship halfway out of the water and getting it stuck on the gate making it impossible to tow it away. A small taskforce then attacked the dock facilities before retreating back but sadly the ship didn't explode as the timer had failed.
The next day a bunch of German officers and officials came to examine the British ship meanwhile half a mile away captured commandos were being tortured for information. To them their mission had failed and now they were facing some brutal treatment.
The explosives on the ship suddenly detonated, the explosion was massive, it destroyed the dock, hundreds of soldiers that were sent to secure the dock and killed all the German officers and officials that had come to inspect it.
Those being tortured heard the explosion and got to have the last laugh.
I've always wondered why it was never made into a film there's so many twists and turns and when you think it's all over there's one more big twist.
#23
The Spanish conquistadors found platinum during their search for gold, and dumped all of it in the sea, because they thought platinum was inferior to silver.
#24
Between 1933 and 1941, the Chinese city of Shanghai under Japanese occupation, accepted unconditionally over 18,000 Jewish refugees escaping the Holocaust in Europe, a number greater than those taken in by Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and British India combined during World War II
Oopsydaisy 2 years ago
Strange how this list misses out the US, which sent back many Jewish refugees to their death.
#25
Operation Acoustic Kitty. In the 60’s the CIA spent months and tens of millions of dollars to surgically bug and then train a cat to sit near foreign officials in order to transmit their private conversations to CIA operatives. The day of the first official test run they release the cat, it wanders into the street and is promptly hit by a taxi.
#26
May have been said already, but when Napoleon returned to France from his exile, a Regiment of French soldiers were sent by the Coalition Powers to intercept him. Upon seeing them, Napoleon approached and simply said, "If you wish to kill your Emperor, here I am." The Commander of the Regiment ordered his men to open fire. Out of the 2,000 soldiers present, not a single one obeyed the order. They all joined Napoleon and marched to Paris with him. Truly a real life Mary-Sue. At least until he was thoroughly beaten and exiled again, permanently this time.
#27
The time Julius Caesar was captured by pirates.
"In 75 BCE a band of Cilician pirates in the Aegean Sea captured a 25-year-old Roman nobleman named Julius Caesar, who had been on his way to study oratory in Rhodes. As the story is related in Plutarch’s Parallel Lives, the capture was a minor inconvenience for Caesar but very bad luck for the pirates.
From the start, Caesar simply refused to behave like a captive. When the pirates told him that they had set his ransom at the sum of 20 talents, he laughed at them for not knowing who it was they had captured and suggested that 50 talents would be a more appropriate amount. He then sent his entourage out to gather the money and settled in for a period of captivity. The pirates must have been dumbfounded. It’s not every day that a hostage negotiates his ransom up.
Caesar made himself at home among the pirates, bossing them around and shushing them when he wanted to sleep. He made them listen to the speeches and poems that he was composing in his unanticipated downtime and berated them as illiterates if they weren’t sufficiently impressed. He would participate in the pirates’ games and exercises, but he always addressed them as if he were the commander and they were his subordinates. From time to time he would threaten to have them all crucified. They took it as a joke from their overconfident, slightly nutty captive.
It wasn’t a joke. After 38 days, the ransom was delivered and Caesar went free. Astonishingly, Caesar managed to raise a naval force in Miletus—despite holding no public or military office—and he set out in pursuit of the pirates. He found them still camped at the island where he had been held, and he brought them back as his captives. When the governor of Asia seemed to vacillate about punishing them, Caesar went to the prison where they were being held and had them all crucified."
#28
Maybe not an event, but pretty absurd.
In an attempt to claim control of the former Spanish Empire's territories in the Americas, the French ruler, Napoleon III, created the term "Latin America." Because if the territories were Spanish (or formerly), then the French had no right to them, but if he got the world to call it Latin, which the French were considered a branch of, then Napoleon III could attempt to take them for a new, glorious, French Empire. This would also reassure the British, US, and Dutch that he was not going after their American territories, since they were not "Latin" countries.
In other words, we call Hispanics of the Americas Latin because it was French propaganda used to legitimize their rule over South and Central America.
Mazer 2 years ago
Much like the origins of the term “Spanish flu”. Spain was one of only a few major European countries to remain neutral during World War I. Unlike in the Allied and Central Powers nations, where wartime censors suppressed news of the flu to avoid affecting morale, the Spanish media was free to report on it in gory detail. News of the sickness first made headlines in Madrid in late-May 1918, and coverage only increased after the Spanish King Alfonso XIII came down with a nasty case a week later. Since nations undergoing a media blackout could only read in depth accounts from Spanish news sources, they naturally assumed that the country was the pandemic’s ground zero. The Spanish, meanwhile, believed the virus had spread to them from France, so they took to calling it the “French Flu.”
#29
The Texel battle the 23rd of January 1795 between french cavalry and dutch fleet. The only time a cavalry charged over boats and won. The Dutch fleet was trapped by ice on Den Helder. The french hussars put fabric on the horse's feet and went on the ice, launching the attack and scaring the fuck out of the Dutch. They then escalated the ships with their swords between their teeths. They took 14 warships and managed to overtake a british vessel that was trying to flee through the ice. A woman in charge of the canteens said that they probably wouldn't have dared to do that if she hadn't distributed so many wine.
So drunk French cavalry made one of the biggest capture of ships of modern history (for instance, trafalgar is 23 boats sunk or taken). on horses. on the frozen sea.
#30
Mansa Musa's pilgrimage from West Africa to Mecca
Stops by Egypt ruined their economy because he was so rich he made the value of gold plummet.
Building a pool in the middle of the desert so that his 1st wife could swim.
Making it to Mecca with an entourage like Aladdins after the genie.
Heading back says sorry I f***ed up the economy I will buy my gold back and heads back to his country like no biggie.
Actually, no this should be a movie I would pay to watch it twice.
Henry Cheves 2 years ago
He was the richest man in the world, and the only one to control the a majority of the world's gold market. He could make the price rise or fall on a whim. Every Friday(the Muslim holy day) on his pilgrimage, he ordered a mosque be built where he was camping.
#31
The Korean axe murder incident.
Basically, a tree was kinda blocking line of sight near the Bridge of No Return on the North Korea/South Korea border. A pair of Americans, escorted by South Korean troops, went to trim the tree. North Korean troops took exception to this and came out and told them to stop. They didn't. NK troops called for backup, which showed up with clubs and crowbars and the North Koreans proceeded to attack the South Koreans and Americans. The two Americans were killed (one bludgeoned to death, the other injured with an axe and died of his injuries on the way back to a hospital). North Korea, being North Korea, claimed they were acting in "self defense".
A few days later, Operation Paul Bunyan was launched in what was possibly the largest tree-pruning operation in human history, with over 800 infantry (including South Korean troops with Claymore mines strapped to their chests and remote detonators in their hands, taunting the North Koreans to cross the bridge), 27 helicopters, B-52 Stratofortresses, F-4 Phantom IIs, F-5 and F-86 fighters, F-4Es, F-111 bombers, and F-4C and F-4D Phantoms in attendance (also the USS Midway carrier was moved to a station offshore). The entire Second Battalion artillery was pointed at the DMZ, along with the 71st Air Defense Regiment. Local DEFCON was elevated. 12k more troops were ordered to Korea. Nuclear-capable bombers were deployed. A dozen C-130s were lined up, "nose to tail" at Yokota Air Base in Japan, on standby in case they were needed.
Literally 5 minutes into the operation was when the UNC let North Korea know that a UN work party was there "in order to peacefully finish the work left unfinished". The tree was successfully pruned to the point of being a stump, which was later replaced with a monument in 1987.
#32
During the siege of Tenochtitlán in 1521, Cortes had a trebuchet built to save on gunpowder. However, the first projectile fired went straight up in the air and landed on it, completely destroying it. It's one of the last recorded military uses of a trebuchet.
When I was watching Eternals yesterday part of me was kind of hoping they would show this when they showed that part of human history, but it's just so ridiculous that it would even be too much for a Marvel movie.
#33
Operation Mincemeat.
The Allies wanted to trick the Axis into thinking that they weren’t going to invade Sicily so they obtained the body of a recently deceased homeless person in London, dressed him up in a British officer’s uniform and added a satchel full of “top secret” battle plans that gave phony invasion plans somewhere other than Sicily. Then the arranged for the body to wash up on shore in Spain, knowing that the Franco regime would open the documents and pass word on to Berlin and Rome. Try tried to make it look like they hadn’t opened the documents and returned them (and the body) to Britain but British spies were able to confirm that Spain had opened the documents and taken the bait.
#34
The events surrounding the death of Rasputin. Man just would not die.
What do you think ?
TrickQuestion 2 years ago
My favorite is Sir Adrian Carton de Wiart. From the Wiki: "He was shot in the face, head, stomach, ankle, leg, hip, and ear; was blinded in his left eye; survived two plane crashes; tunnelled out of a prisoner-of-war camp; and tore off his own fingers when a doctor declined to amputate them. Describing his experiences in the First World War, he wrote, "Frankly I had enjoyed the war."[4]" He's a LOT more impressive than that small description implies.
Stephanie IV 2 years ago (edited)
And here's me, mewling about unsuitable loo paper at boarding school.
Load More Replies...
Kristin Ingersoll 2 years ago
My god, this was, perhaps, the most boring list of strange facts ever posted on BP. Repeats of every other BP list. Repeats within repeats. Terrible writing. Incomprehensible, wrong, misleading. We need to remember ANYONE can write for BP. This list was bunk. Zzzzzzzzzzz....
TrickQuestion 2 years ago
My favorite is Sir Adrian Carton de Wiart. From the Wiki: "He was shot in the face, head, stomach, ankle, leg, hip, and ear; was blinded in his left eye; survived two plane crashes; tunnelled out of a prisoner-of-war camp; and tore off his own fingers when a doctor declined to amputate them. Describing his experiences in the First World War, he wrote, "Frankly I had enjoyed the war."[4]" He's a LOT more impressive than that small description implies.
Stephanie IV 2 years ago (edited)
And here's me, mewling about unsuitable loo paper at boarding school.
Load More Replies... Kristin Ingersoll 2 years ago
My god, this was, perhaps, the most boring list of strange facts ever posted on BP. Repeats of every other BP list. Repeats within repeats. Terrible writing. Incomprehensible, wrong, misleading. We need to remember ANYONE can write for BP. This list was bunk. Zzzzzzzzzzz....
You May Like 50 Interesting Historical Pics From “That’s History” That May Change Your Perspective On Things 50 Of The Funniest Memes That Explain History In A Way That Books Probably Never Will 50 Photos That Shine A Light On Some Of The Darkest Parts Of History
Mindaugas Balčiauskas
Viktorija Ošikaitė
Audrius P.
Related on Bored Panda
