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If you start to delve into events, one can often find that certain things end up being covered or “simplified” to perhaps not make some folks uncomfortable. But history is history, it can be fascinating, cruel, dull and often a lot stranger than fiction.
Someone asked “What's one historical fact that they won't teach you in school?” and people shared their examples, ranging from “I didn’t pay attention” to some things that are truly obscure. So get comfortable as you read through, upvote your favorites and be sure to share your own thoughts in the comments below.
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#1
The guys defending the Alamo were the bad guys.
Texas was Mexico at the time. To attract settlers to the land, Mexico allowed American farmers to move there and bring their enslaved workers with them. Slavery was not something Mexico was crazy about and soon banned slavery in the entire country except for Texas. A few years later, they tried to ban it in Texas. That's when the Texas Revolution started. The Texans were fighting to keep slavery, not for freedom from an oppressive government.
Not everyone at the Alamo died. The enslaved workers were spared and are largely the reason we know what happened. If you visit the Alamo today (or at least when I did in 2022) most of the information is left out of the booklet and signage. It does mention the enslaved workers by name, but that's about it. Fighting to preserve slavery isn't the narrative they want to display today. I remember learning about the Alamo in school and slavery wasn't mentioned. And then how absent it was from the actual site.
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#2
Treaties between Indigenous Tribes and America are still broken to this day! (My tribe was directly attacked in 2020) We still fight for the Earth and our place in this terribly poisoned and loveless society.
Anxious&Bored Bear 12 hours ago
I don't remember the exact number, but over 300 treaties between the US government and Indigenous Tribes have been broken by the US government.
#3
The actual "pilgrims" were not the good guys in any New England history. Religious bigots to be honest.
#4
About 1/3 of the working cowboys in the Old West were black men.
#5
Texas and MacMillan Books removed important Native American history like ‘Trail of Tears’ from their textbooks .
Anxious&Bored Bear 12 hours ago
White men on the boards of education decide what goes into history books, and the companies that print the books don't want to offend them, so eliminate the truth and raise the next generation to be more stupid and more racist than the last. (And then listen to them complain that their 30 year old child still lives at home and can't keep a job.)
#6
How Hawaii came to be a part of the US. Basically, a bunch of white guys living on the islands didn’t like to be ruled by a monarchy of natives, so they grabbed some guns and started a revolt. When it was clear they weren’t going to win, they called US for help, and the US Government sent in the marines to occupy the islands and eventually annex them. It’s only recently that the government has finally admitted it was in the wrong to do so.
#7
Women needed husbands' permission to have a credit card in their own name until mid 70s.
Dahamada Jamawas 14 hours ago
1974 - the Equal Credit Opportunity Act: It was not only credit cards.
#8
That Helen Keller (that we all learned about in school) led a Children's March to Washington DC to push for a REDUCTION in the hours children were made to work, all so they could attend school. source: People's History of the United States.
#9
Japanese WW2 war crimes are seldom discussed in detail.
#10
Federal highways were purposely built through affluent black neighborhoods. Looking at you, Oklahoma.
#12
All throughout school they told us the buffalo died from natural causes. I only just learned a couple months ago that they died out because the American settlers k**led them out for sport to cut off the native Americans food supply.
David Houde 14 hours ago
Wasn't settlers. The US government had an agenda and had an unofficial mandate to exterminate all the buffalo. They were trying to force the Native Americans onto reservations and turn them into farmers. The government felt this would be much easier to do if their main natural resource (buffalo) was no longer there.
#13
The circumstances surrounding the death of Meriwether Lewis (of Lewis and Clark) are shrouded in conspiracy. In the months leading up to his death many people reported that Lewis had become paranoid, claiming that he was being followed and that his life was in danger. In a desperate attempt for help, he sent a letter to his close friend, and then president Thomas Jefferson to request an audience. While traveling along the Natchez Trace, he stayed a night at an inn. During the night, the owner reported hearing multiple gunshots but never went out to check on the source. In the morning, Lewis was found dead in his cabin, sitting against the wall looking at the door, rifle in hand and shot in the back. In addition, while the room was ransacked, the only missing objects of note were Lewis’ riding back and personal documents.
After an official investigation, his death was ruled a s***ide and all further inquiry into the instance have been barred by the Us government. While Lewis himself did not have any immediate descendants, his extended family have submitted requests every year to have his body exhumed in order to confirm the cause of death. To this day their requests have unanimously been denied.
Nice Beast Ludo 14 hours ago
Wow that is so mysterious and interesting. I would like to learn more about it
#14
The fact that African tribes sold their own people.
Just stopping by 14 hours ago
I was taught about this from junior high on through college. This isn't a secret. It's also known some of them didn't know the kind of slavery they were selling their own people into.
#15
I didn’t know much about the Byzantine Empire and the Islamic Golden Age until I was in college. I really feel like a lot of history classes seem to gloss over the so-called Dark Ages.
#16
The Ottoman Empire systematically k**led over 1mil Armenians during WW1 via camps and it remains largely unacknowledged by Americans because the US wants to keep positive relations with Turkey who oscillate between denying it ever happened and saying they were justified because they were fomenting armed rebellion.
Never seen it in any American textbook or course. I, like many others in the US, have only learned about it because of the advocacy of the band System of a Down.
Der Kommissar 14 hours ago (edited)
My so'n's school, part of the L.A. Unified School District has a holiday called Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day.
#17
The Dutch ate their prime minister. As in an angry mob lynched him and actually consumed his flesh.
UncleJohn3000 14 hours ago
Why did the dog lick his butt after biting a politician? He was trying to get the taste out his mouth.
#18
Went to a British school in Asia. They glossed over the opium wars.
Nice Beast Ludo 14 hours ago
Apparently so did the US cause I've never ever heard of the opium wars.
#19
I was 28 when I learned about the Tulsa massacre.
#20
The pilgrims weren't seeking religious freedom. They practiced religious repression and executed people for the crime of being Quakers.
Nils Skirnir 10 hours ago
From Boston Martyrs: Yes, the Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony executed Quakers for their religious beliefs: Mary Dyer: In 1660, Mary Dyer was hanged in Boston for repeatedly defying a Puritan law that banned Quakers from the colony. Dyer is considered one of the four Boston martyrs, who were executed for their religious beliefs. William Leddra: William Leddra was executed in 1661. Marmaduke Stephenson: Marmaduke Stephenson was executed in 1659. William Robinson: William Robinson was executed in 1659. The Puritans feared Quakers and persecuted them for dissent, heresy, and working for the devil. Quakers were also beaten, fined, whipped, imprisoned, and mutilated. Some Quakers were banished from the colony, but returned to protest. In 1661, King Charles II forbade Massachusetts from executing Quakers. This was followed by a new charter from England that forced the Boston Puritans to protect all Christian sects except Catholics Note the last part - Catholics were fair game.
#21
That Stalin was a real piece of work. 9 million + people died as a direct result of Stalin’s policies. He doesn’t get the same demonization as a certain Austrian that tried to take over Europe because the Soviets were on the winning side of WWII.
Der Kommissar 14 hours ago
if you count people who died from the Soviet famine in Ukraine, add 4 million. This was deliberately done by Stalin to stop Ukranian independence.
#22
The CIA deposed or destabilized many democratically elected leaders to install leaders who were more friendly to us (read: us business) policies, causing enormous loss of life and suffering all over the world.
Anxious&Bored Bear 12 hours ago
And those who pretended to be friendly to the US were installed, and regretted later when it became obvious it was a ruse.
#23
Every major change in the last 150 years that benefited the average American had to be bought with blood and violence - from the American labor movement, to Women's Suffrage, to Civil Rights.
They don't teach it in schools because if you knew what it took to fix the problems in society you might actually start planning a way to make it happen.
Debby Keir 2 hours ago
My mother said to me that once I was old enough I should vote in every election - even if to 'spoil' my vote (she died before I got the vote) because so many women had died and fought so hard to get it that I would be mocking my ancestors if I didn't use it. Her mother was a suffragist, born in the 1880's.
#24
The poetry written by Chinese Warlord, Zhang Zongchang.
"You tell me to do this.
He tells me to do that.
You're all bastards.
Go f**k your mother".
#25
That modern money came into existence by people storing their gold in banks and getting notes as proof that their gold was there.
Banks found out they could write more notes of gold than there was actual gold being stored there.
#26
When I went to school, we were taught that the American Revolution came about because King George III arbitrarily imposed taxes on the American colonists.
Many years later, talking to a historian of the 18th century, I learned that the colonists had begged England for aid during the earlier French and Indian War, promising to repay it all, but then once the war was over, reneged on that promise. After repeated (and repeatedly rebuffed) requests for repayment, and after fair warning, Parliament imposed taxes on the Colonies (which were still lower than the taxes British subjects actually living in England were paying) in order to recoup those costs.
Bonus fact: I also learned that, contrary to what I was taught in school, it was the colonists who drew first blood in the Revolution (the H.M.S. *Gaspee* incident, which oddly none of my history teachers had mentioned).
Tobias Reaper 11 hours ago
that is why we expelled those ungrateful colonists from the safety of the empire
#27
The Great War of Africa like, *just* happened, historically speaking. And over five million people died. As far as I’m aware, it’s not being taught in schools.
Nice Beast Ludo 15 hours ago
I just read a memoir about a family that fled Liberia and went through horrific atrocities and couldn't believe that was happening as I went through elementary school and I never learned about any of it. But they announced "OJ Simpson is innocent!!" Over the school loudspeaker
#28
The mass deportation of Mexicans, yep the US tried it before under Hoover. Many were US citizens.
Guess Undheit 12 hours ago
And Cheetolini plans to do the same thing, deport people whose parents, grandparents, greatgrandparents were yank citizens. Anyone not white will be forced out.
#29
The harrying of the north. William the bastard burning whole villages to the ground in the north of England to cement his rule over the country. In school, it's usually "1066, Hastings and bam. William the conqueror. Here's the Tudors...".
#30
Much about Welsh history at all really beyond a few bullet points. Welsh history is fabulously rich and storied.
Kira Okah 14 hours ago
Welsh history is great, having a Welsh historian as a FiL is a treasure I love. The thing is, and it's not just something said by English historians so get that c**p out of your head first, a lot of honest to god Welsh people believe that the Romans never went further west than Cardiff (despite the bloody Roman forts in Carmarthen and Caernarfon, hence their names, the Romans went right to the western coast) because Wales was a barbaric wilderness of barbaric people that took the combined efforts of the Saxons, Normans, and mediaeval English to tame and civilise. This is actual common thought in this very day and age, in ordinary people to universities, it's atrocious.
#31
I grew up in the U.S., and went to 3 different schools, all which id consider to be decent school systems. Every time we learned about "democracy" as a concept, it was heavily focused on Ancient Greek and Roman democracy, which makes sense given that it is a basis for a lot of the foundation of democracy in the U.S.. But that was the extent of what we learned about democracy. The way it was taught made it seem like democracy was extremely rare and only existant in prominent and advanced "western" civilizations like the Greeks and Romans. It failed to cover that democratic systems are more common historically than that, and often relatively short lived because they are fragile. With this in mind, it failed to stress the importance of handling an individuals capacity to vote with great care because of how easily that can slip away. It also failed to teach about any sort of alternate voting systems or perspectives in democracy. A good portion of the reason that the electoral system in the U.S. is as broken as it is, is because probably 80+% of the populace is functionally in a cave where they know nothing different, and know of no other options to be explored. Or at least thats my perspective.
Lew k 15 hours ago
The history of voting in the US is nuts. They didn't want a democracy despite what American history tells you. They only used the appearance of democracy to appeal to the average man because they couldn't raise an army by promising a different king closer to hope. This country was formed by rich landed aristocrats that built a system to make sure they stayed in power, all wrapped up in a quasi democratic system that allows those in power to do whatever they want once elected. How do you get elected? By already being rich and powerful.
#32
When the United States detonated the first hydrogen bomb, Castle Bravo, on Enewatak Atoll in the Marshall Islands in 1958, it was many times more powerful than calculated. The residents of Enewatak and Bikini Atolls had previously been forcibly relocated to Rongelap Atoll. Rongelap was downwind from the Castle Bravo radiation cloud. The US did not evacuate them for two days, and allowed them to return only a week later, even though the radiation levels were highly unsafe as we understand now. From 1958 to 1984, the US repeatedly refused to evacuate the Rongelap residents even as the birth defects and cancer rates continued. It was finally Greenpeace in 1984 who assisted in moving many of them to Mejatto island in kwajalein atoll. If you go to Mejatto today, the signs on the church and school still say Rongelap. There is evidence that this refusal to evacuate was a calculated decision to study the long term effects of radiation exposure in humans.
Edit: corrected Castle Bravo to 1958.
#33
Depends on where you live. In large parts of Japan they are not taught about their war crimes.
Lost Panda 15 hours ago
Not just that, but my wife said they were only taught about the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima and a little about the Nazis and that was the end of WWII for them.
#34
Let's just say, George Washington's teeth weren't made of wood.
#35
The banana massacre occurred on 6 December 1928 in Ciénaga, Magdalena, Colombia. Workers of the United Fruit Company (now known as Chiquita Brands International) were on strike demanding better working conditions, such as shorter hours and fair pay. The Colombian government, under pressure from the United States and fearing that the conflict would affect the company's interests, sent in the army. Troops fired on the strikers, killing an undetermined number of people, varying according to sources from 47 (official) to more than 1,000 (according to witnesses).
The United Fruit Company, founded in the United States in 1899, had a significant impact on Latin America, influencing governments and economies, earning the nickname "the octopus" for its reach and control. In 1970, the company was restructured and renamed Chiquita Brands International. Today, it remains one of the largest distributors of tropical fruits in the world, but has faced criticism for its history of labour exploitation, corruption, and environmental impact.
In 2025, Chiquita Brands continues to operate globally as business as usual.
#36
The papacy (Steven IV) once dis-interred a pope who had been dead for 7 months (Formosus} just to put him on trial for a bunch of more or less trumped up charges. They ended up declaring his papacy illegal, null, and void. They threw his body in the Tiber when they were done. It was called the Cadaver Synod
The trial and Formosus' body washing up turned public opinion against Steven IV pretty quickly, and he was thrown in jail, then strangled to death.
They then had another meeting to annul the "Cadaver Synod" and reinstate Formosus. They recovered his now long dead, beaten up, waterlogged corpse, dressed it in vestments, and had him buried in St. Peters.
They also made it illegal to ever try a corpse again, thankfully. This is one of my more favorite obscure history bits lol, the Catholics are wild.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadaver_Synod.
Tom Brincefield 57 minutes ago
If I remember correctly, Steven IV was named a Cardinal by Formosus. By removing his papacy, Steven removed himself from the office of Cardinal.
#37
It's really obscure but American Chestnut trees were all over the east coast of the US up until around 1900. Then they all got infected with a fungus and now they're critically endangered.
Lee Gilliland 14 hours ago
And we started to lose the Elms in the 1950's from Dutch Elm Disease.
#38
The middle Eastern and north African slave trade was larger, and somehow more brutal, then the trans Atlantic one.
#39
In the Middle Ages, they actually used to smear swords in poo, in order to try and poison the opponent with bacteria.
#40
When we learned about prohibition, it was presented as kind of this silly historical mistake. It was years later when I learned that in the 19th Century people were drunk basically all the time in part because very few people had access to clean drinking water and would drink booze instead which was often cleaner/safer to drink. So a big part of the anti-booze movement was providing safe drinking water and we owe alot of our drinking water infrastructure (like available public drinking fountains) to teetotalers.
Mike F 15 hours ago
That's kind of an oversimplification. If it were absolutely true, people would have begun dying wholesale as soon as the booze dried up and that obviously wasn't the case. Saloons used to be one of the first stops that working people made on receipt of their wages. People being people they parted with a lot of that money before eventually finding their way home to a very upset spouse because a great deal of the wages were left in the care of a bar and that left precious little for those pesky bills like rent, food, etc. I would think that there would have also been an uptick in instances of DV with the guys coming home hammered and nearly broke.
#41
Thousands of soldiers from the south fought for the Union in the Civil War and there were business leaders in southern cities who didn't want secession.
#42
During the prohibition, the US government once poisoned alcohol by adding more benzine and methanol to stop the growing number of people who were drinking it to side step prohibition.
Green Tree 12 hours ago
Not exactly. The US government encouraged makers of industrial alcohol to add chemicals to make it unfit for human consumption. This was done before prohibition in the US and is still a common practice around the world today (it's called denaturing). During prohibition more industrial alcohol was making it into the illegal trade so more people were dying from that cause but even before prohibition it was a thing. The government never purposefully poisoned alcohol meant for human consumption
#43
Back in the 19th century, small opposition newspapers in the Netherlands were called "Lilliputters" (= "midgets") because of their small size, which was a way to avoid having to pay for the newspaper stamp. The best example of this are the papers published by the fanatical republican Eillert Meeter, who received imprisonment for lèse-majeste, before being invited to meet king William II in person, who offered him an allowance if he ceased publicising. Meeter later went back to publishing anyway, but admitted in his writings that he found the king a kind and friendly person - he was just opposed to having a king.
Okay, you simply do not learn this in school because it is obscure and relatively unimportant. But still.
Nice Beast Ludo 14 hours ago
Obscure and relatively unimportant...sounds like it definitely should be included.
#44
Here in Mexico, las 'Guerras Indias', the indian wars. Throught the history of the Spanish colony to Independent Mexico, the goverment have been hunting and displacing the indigenous people from the north (Sonora, Chihuahua, Coahuila) and the south (Yucatan, the Mayans). There were many massacres, incluiding some of the most obscure battles in both la Guerra de Independencia (Independence war) and La Revolución Mexicana (the Mexican Revolution). Yet, this acts were never printed in the mexican public history books, and even today when a great renaissance of indigenous culture is happening the country still neglects that this wars happened.
Tom Brincefield 51 minutes ago
None of the nations of North America have particularly good histories when dealing with the indigenous people.
#45
The Great Wall of China wasn’t built all at once it’s a patchwork of different walls from different dynasties.
#46
I was quite surprised about how either my teacher nor my history book mentioned that Sweden started colonization in north America during the XVII century.
Michael Largey 1 hour ago
It was covered in my school. But that might have been because we lived in that small part of America that had been colonized by Sweden
#47
A lot of people are taught that England's flag (White background, red cross) comes from St. George's banner.
But its often left out that George actually got his banner during his veneration as a warrior-saint by the Templars in the Crusades. A lot of the Templar banners were based on the flags of The Knights of The Round Table from Arthurian Legend.
So George actually got his banner from Sir Galahad, The Knight who found the Holy Grail, according to the legend.
There's a post I found with all the Knight's banners included. Its fun to look at as you can see the origins of a few famous flags in the banners.
https://www.reddit.com/r/vexillology/s/iKLBL7vbxd.
#48
In 1914, the Serbian government and military *did* conspire and organize the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand with nationalist terrorists, and that was already known back then. WWI wasn't just Austria-Hungary and Germany looking for excuses to go to war and blaming Serbia for something one serbian guy did.
Btw, Austria-Hungary sent an ultimatum to Serbia, that basically said "forbid nationalist propaganda against us, punish the military officials that we 100% know are implied in the affair and let us investigate on your soil", with the last part being what they refused.
#50
The Zoot suit riot in Los Angeles, during the times of ww2 white service men would target Mexican Americans wearing zoot suits because of how they consider the outfits to be unpatriotic.
#51
While not as exciting as other answers: Communism has killed the most people in modern history.
Edit: To be clear, it has killed the most people while promising utopia.
keyboardtek 4 hours ago
Probably more accurate to state "Authoritarian" governments have killed the most people. What is called communist governments these days were never true communism as Marx and Engels envisioned. The USSR, Cuba, China, North Korea, all are totalitarian states where the people who controlled their revolutions used "communism" as the counter economic system to the excesses of capitalism. But instead of democratic socialist governments, they became totalitarians states. The rebels against the capitalists became the new oppressors of the workers once they got in power.
#52
The existence of Sundown Towns. I never heard of them until I watched HBO's Lovecraft.
Limey Cheesehead 5 hours ago
I had never ever heard the term before...I had to look it up. How embarrassing.
#53
Before he died, MLK Jr was hated by liberals for opposing the Vietnam war. His convicted murderer said he didn't kill MLK. The King Family sued the US government for $1 to prove the government were part of the conspiracy to kill MLK and won.
Michael Largey 1 hour ago
The first sentence is so bizarrely false that Donald Trump would be embarrassed (well, almost) for saying it. It was the liberals who opposed the war in Vietnam. King's article in Ramparts magazine "Declaration of Independence from the War in Vietnam" marked his public break with Lyndon Johnson, the president liberals were trying to drive from office. It greatly enhanced his already towering position in the progressive movement of the time.
#54
Mustafa Kemal Pasha (Atatürk) was the main reason why Ottomans lost 500 km of Levantian land from Palestina to Aleppo in 1 month. Even British general Allenby was impressed how he was able to win such amount of land in such a short time.
#55
One piece swim suits became bikinis in the second world War not because of a song but because it was "more patriotic" to wear them due to more fabric being used for the front lines.
Eddie Fawcett 15 hours ago
it was after the end of the war. 1st Bikini credited as being created July 5th 1946
What do you think ?
Shary Bobbings 14 hours ago
Bored Panda, please fact check this kind of posts! Many of them have the source of "Trust me bro"
Shary Bobbings 14 hours ago
Bored Panda, please fact check this kind of posts! Many of them have the source of "Trust me bro"
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