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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.
keyboardtek 4 days ago
What with book bans, outlawing any education about repressive American history, and propaganda of right wing news media, we probably will never learn about the destruction that Trump and Musk end up doing.
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Cosmos in your eyes 4 days ago
Growing up in Texas in the 90s, we basically worshiped the Alamo. "Remember the Alamo!" Replica flags from the Alamo were on display at my university at Texas A&M. The Mexican General, Santa Anna, was depicted as a heartless, sadistic monster. Davy Crockett was the famous martyr. Slavery was never mentioned, nor were survivors. I'm glad we're starting to expand that story.
Michael Largey 4 days ago (edited)
The key phrase might be "Remember the truth about the Alamo".
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Nils Skirnir 4 days ago
After TX was made a US territory and granted statehood; one of its first major acts was to secede. It was the next to last state to rejoin (GA was last as it was booted out for kicking out Black legislators) and the last state to free slaves
Michael Largey 4 days ago (edited)
We also don't mention that slavery was a major reason for white Southerners to support independence in the American Revolution. They could see the British prohibition of slavery coming. (No one asked black Southerners their opinion for some reason.)
Cpt. Christan "Panda Bombero" 4 days ago
I lived in Texas from 11y/o to 17y/o. I disliked most everything about it. So much so, that at I joined the United States Army to get out of there. After my ASVAB, I was offered any enlisted MOS in Nuclear, Chemical, or Medical, all of which had a 6 month wait. I chose Infantry, which only had a 6 week wait. Just so I could get the hell out there faster. And, I never looked or went back.
Bernd Herbert 4 days ago
I would like to read a history book of an alternative reality in which Texas remained a part of Mexico
Fred L. 4 days ago
To be fair the guys defending it were not neccessarily the bad guys themselves (exceptions are of course possible) but still were on the "bad" side; an important distinction relevant in many military conflicts. Some of their families had lived there for many generations - remember that there were Tejano soldiers serving on the Texan side, too.
David 4 days ago
60% of the fighters at the Alamo were Tejano, the Tejano's were 40% of Texas forces and 45% of the rebel Texas govt. The Tejanos viewed Mexico as an occupier, and played a cricial role. Further slavery was a very very minor point in Texas independence, as there were many factors, including corruption and abuse from Mexico. But people forget the Native Tejanos there, and their role in the war.
Rich Black 3 days ago
It's a good thing mexico didn't win at the Alamo. Texas would be overrun with cartels
catastrophegirl 4 days ago
interesting how different historical sites treat history, especially when views change over time. if the alamo was in a less conservative state we might see a different narrative but texas hides their shame. for example, i've been to thomas jefferson's house, monticello, 5 times between 1985 and 2019. first time i went was all about the great president, statesman, inventor. in 2008-2009 they had started opening up the second and third floors, the family floors, but they weren't finished yet. there was a lot more about the family, the role the house played with enslaved people, and they had started to open up the slave quarters for tours. in 2019 you could see a whole exhibit on the hemmings (enslaved) family, sally hemmings' (enslaved mistress) room had been restored, and the narrative is on education, the role slavery played in the founding of the country, the contributions of the hemmings family, etc. they are making an effort to drag the facts into the light and teach the truth.
chicken soup 4 days ago (edited)
And when Mexico tried to stop the Americans from entering Texas afterwards, they came in the thousands...illegally. Crazy gringos
April Pickett 4 days ago
Oh my, you are a "woke" person. Don't you know that all cowboys were white and Davy Crockett is a hero for dying at the Alamo protecting Texans from the evil Mexicans?
Warren Peece 4 days ago
I visited the Alamo and was disappointed because they would let me see the basement.
RELATED:
#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 5 days 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
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.
#6
Japanese WW2 war crimes are seldom discussed in detail.
#7
Texas and MacMillan Books removed important Native American history like ‘Trail of Tears’ from their textbooks .
Anxious&Bored Bear 4 days 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.)
#8
Women needed husbands' permission to have a credit card in their own name until mid 70s.
Dahamada Jamawas 5 days ago
1974 - the Equal Credit Opportunity Act: It was not only credit cards.
#9
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.
#10
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 5 days 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.
#11
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 5 days ago (edited)
My so'n's school, part of the L.A. Unified School District has a holiday called Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day.
#12
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 4 days 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.
#14
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 5 days 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.
#15
Federal highways were purposely built through affluent black neighborhoods. Looking at you, Oklahoma.
#16
The pilgrims weren't seeking religious freedom. They practiced religious repression and executed people for the crime of being Quakers.
Nils Skirnir 4 days 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.
#17
The fact that African tribes sold their own people.
Just stopping by 5 days 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.
#18
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.
#19
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 5 days ago
Wow that is so mysterious and interesting. I would like to learn more about it
#20
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 4 days ago
And those who pretended to be friendly to the US were installed, and regretted later when it became obvious it was a ruse.
#21
I was 28 when I learned about the Tulsa massacre.
#22
The mass deportation of Mexicans, yep the US tried it before under Hoover. Many were US citizens.
Guess Undheit 4 days 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.
#23
Went to a British school in Asia. They glossed over the opium wars.
Nice Beast Ludo 5 days ago
Apparently so did the US cause I've never ever heard of the opium wars.
#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
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 4 days ago
that is why we expelled those ungrateful colonists from the safety of the empire
#26
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.
#27
The Dutch ate their prime minister. As in an angry mob lynched him and actually consumed his flesh.
UncleJohn3000 5 days ago
Why did the dog lick his butt after biting a politician? He was trying to get the taste out his mouth.
#28
Let's just say, George Washington's teeth weren't made of wood.
#29
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.
#30
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.
What do you think ?
Shary Bobbings 5 days ago
Bored Panda, please fact check this kind of posts! Many of them have the source of "Trust me bro"
Fred L. 4 days ago
A teenager interested in history though, regardless of factual accuracy those teenagers are very welcome (otherwise we'd soon run out of historians). But yes, some fact-checking on BPs side would be rather nice.
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Michael MacKinnon 4 days ago
British North America had slavery at the same time as everywhere else in the British Empire. A part of it (Upper Canada) restricted slavery earlier than anywhere else in the Empire (1793), thanks to Lieutenant Governor Simcoe.
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Schmebulock 4 days ago
I think people forget how relatively little time kids study history in school. A lot of these are college-level history lessons.
Roz H 4 days ago
Maybe the fact that the Swiss weren't 100% neutral during WWII is a fun fact. They were quite willing to store things in their very secure banks for the Nazis. The Swedish were actually the truly neutral party
Nonna_SoF 3 days ago
They also shot down planes from both sides and got apologies for it.
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quentariel 5 days ago
I've learned most of these in school (although I also took additional history courses in high school because I found it interesting). It's scary and weird to realise how much more sensured everything is in some other parts of the world. I've taken free knowlwdge as a basic human right and it's still chilling to realise it isn't.
Lyone Fein 1 day ago
Reading this list makes me wonder about how bad people's schools are. I graduated from a public high school in Maine in 1981, and I can say that I was definitely taught about a lot of these things.
Krzysztof Gajda 4 days ago
Is US education system really this bad? Most of those are common knowledge.
Tom Brincefield 4 days ago
There are 50 states, plus 5 territories, each of which has its own standards for what should be taught. There are no Federal standards for curriculum. And there are local school districts in each state that decides how they will meet the state standards. The county i lived in during the 70s had 5 public school districts & 1 private school, all separate, for a population of about 12,000. The LA County School District has 183 high schools, in one district. The US doesn't have an education system, it has 13,000 of them, plus the private & charter schools fled home schooling.
Load More Replies... Shary Bobbings 5 days ago
Bored Panda, please fact check this kind of posts! Many of them have the source of "Trust me bro"
Fred L. 4 days ago
A teenager interested in history though, regardless of factual accuracy those teenagers are very welcome (otherwise we'd soon run out of historians). But yes, some fact-checking on BPs side would be rather nice.
Load More Replies... Michael MacKinnon 4 days ago
British North America had slavery at the same time as everywhere else in the British Empire. A part of it (Upper Canada) restricted slavery earlier than anywhere else in the Empire (1793), thanks to Lieutenant Governor Simcoe.
Load More Replies... Schmebulock 4 days ago
I think people forget how relatively little time kids study history in school. A lot of these are college-level history lessons.
Roz H 4 days ago
Maybe the fact that the Swiss weren't 100% neutral during WWII is a fun fact. They were quite willing to store things in their very secure banks for the Nazis. The Swedish were actually the truly neutral party
Nonna_SoF 3 days ago
They also shot down planes from both sides and got apologies for it.
Load More Replies... quentariel 5 days ago
I've learned most of these in school (although I also took additional history courses in high school because I found it interesting). It's scary and weird to realise how much more sensured everything is in some other parts of the world. I've taken free knowlwdge as a basic human right and it's still chilling to realise it isn't.
Lyone Fein 1 day ago
Reading this list makes me wonder about how bad people's schools are. I graduated from a public high school in Maine in 1981, and I can say that I was definitely taught about a lot of these things.
Krzysztof Gajda 4 days ago
Is US education system really this bad? Most of those are common knowledge.
Tom Brincefield 4 days ago
There are 50 states, plus 5 territories, each of which has its own standards for what should be taught. There are no Federal standards for curriculum. And there are local school districts in each state that decides how they will meet the state standards. The county i lived in during the 70s had 5 public school districts & 1 private school, all separate, for a population of about 12,000. The LA County School District has 183 high schools, in one district. The US doesn't have an education system, it has 13,000 of them, plus the private & charter schools fled home schooling.
Load More Replies... You May Like 50 ‘Weird History’ Pics That May Rewrite The Narrative Of How You Think The Past Went (Best Of All Time) 50 Fascinating History Stories Shared Online That Might Surprise You Best Of All Time: 50 Timeless Jokes That Bring The Past To Life
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