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History Enthusiasts Are Sharing History Facts That Many People Would Find Shocking (50 Facts)
Interview With Expert
Even if you think you have a decent grasp on the past, chances are that you are still a little off here and there. Fortunately, through the vast resources of the internet, one can sit down and fill in the many, many gaps in their knowledge.
Someone asked “What’s a historical fact that would shock most people to find out?” and people shared their best examples. We also got in touch with archaeologist Ari Akkermans to learn more about how we see the past. So get comfortable as you scroll through, upvote your favorites and share your thoughts in the comments below.
This post may include affiliate links.
#1
The ancient Greeks, inventors of democracy, would elect their officials to one year terms. Each officials' finances were audited at the beginning and end of their term. If anything was amiss, they would be tried and executed.
#2
Sharpshooter Annie Oakley had a stage act where she would shoot a cigarette out of someone's mouth. While she was touring Europe, Kaiser Wilhelm Il of Germany surprised everyone on a whim and insisted on holding the cigarette.
Ever the professional, Oakley shot the cigarette without harming the Kaiser.
Several years later WWI is underway and the US goes to war against Germany.
Oakley wrote a letter to Kaiser Wilhelm asking if she could have another try at that shot.
He didn't reply.
#3
The world’s first programmer was Ada Lovelace in the 1840s. She was the daughter of the poet Lord Byron.
Two programming languages were named after her.
Bored Panda got in touch with archaeologist and historian Ari Akkermans and he was kind enough to share some of his thoughts. Firstly, we wanted to know what he thought many people got wrong about history. “I guess the most common misconception about the past, which can be seen especially in the way people approach archaeology and antiquity, the past isn't something that happened in a time completely separate from the present; a lot of the past is still in the present: Think of environmental pollution that happens hundreds of years ago, mass graves from the Neolithic, Roman temples or bomb shelters from World War I.”
“They all refer to events that happened a long time ago, but that survive not only as a memory, but in physical form too. Some things from the past of course have disappeared, but the entanglement between peoples, landscapes and things is so strong, that we are still living with a lot of the past, think about the wheel or agriculture. Another common misconception of course is that the past was better, and as Virginia Woolf notes, the past is always beautiful because it has time to expand.”
#4
America-centric: The first person to attend an integrated school only qualified for full Social Security benefits two years ago.
People think about the legacy of Jim Crow and American racism as if it were the relic of a bygone era. It’s not. The people who were throwing rotten fruit and rocks at Ruby Bridges- the younger ones- are still alive. Many of them are still running the country. The older ones died recently and absolutely passed on their values to their children, who are probably even younger than Ruby.
American racism is not “my ancestors”. It’s “my grandma”.
#5
Woodrow Wilson was mentally and emotionally incapacitated by a massive stroke in October 1919, and his wife and doctors essentially ran the country until Harding took office in 1921. Some historians refer to Edith Wilson as "the first female president.".
#6
When the colosseum was used for fighting they used to line the stage with sand to soak up the blood. The Latin name for sand is harena, which means "sand" or "sandy space"...so that's why we call modern concert/show spaces arenas.
“Our childhood memories are probably not realistic, and because of the temporal distance, they contain a lot of projection. But that's also not to say the past was worse... So in fact it was neither worse nor better. We also tend to speak about earlier times using adjectives such as primitive or medieval, but those were very complex worlds that cannot be dismissed so easily. At the same time, for all our 'civilization', we're living through some of the most violent and unequal times in recent history.”
“To affirm that the past was neither better nor worse doesn't mean to cancel progress, which does exist, but never in linear form. It's difficult to get a timeline of human civilization because civilization isn't a stable concept. What might have been considered civilized in the 19th century, for example, colonization, isn't today. We tend to use certain markers to define the beginnings of civilization, especially architectural ones, because we're used to thinking of civilization in terms of monumentality, but this is a bias inherited from the classical heritage of Europe.”
#7
The Second Congo War, also known as Africa's World War was the deadliest conflict since World War 2 with over 5 million people killed.
Most people have never heard of it despite it ending in 2003.
#8
When the SS Britannia went down in the South Atlantic, a raft of survivors managed to get away. According to the men on the raft, there was one more survivor on the raft with them. But he was unfortunately pulled under by a **Giant Squid** which then returned and attacked their Lieutenant named Cox, who they managed to save before scaring the beast away. Their claims were called out as preposterous and made up when they returned home...until Lieutenant Cox got sick of being accused of such and went to see a local marine biologist at a college. The biologist validated Cox's claims as he had scars 1-1/4 inches in size, which definitely belonged to a 23-feet long squid. It is believed that this story is the only known substantiated report of death by Giant Squid.
#9
The United States, under the guise of providing free healthcare, intentionally left Syphilis untreated in African Americans in order to study the effects.
This was done without their consent, and they were discouraged from going to any other doctors.
Now people will be like "Oh of course they experimented on slaves!'
No, this started under FDR in 1932, and went on until 1972.
“There are some civilizations that did not leave grand monuments, but whose achievements are perhaps equally important or even more, than those of the Near East, for example the way indigenous people arrived in Australia from the Pacific during the Ice Age, long before navigation was invented. Another point of departure for civilization has been traditionally agriculture, and therefore sedentary life,” he shared with Bored Panda.
#10
Some Greenland sharks have been alive since before the U.S. became a country.
#11
Potatoes are native to Peru, not Ireland.
Tomatoes are native to Mexico, not Italy.
Macadamia nuts are native to Australia, not Hawai'i.
Pineapples are native to Brazil, not Hawai'i.
Beef cattle are native to India, not Texas or Argentina.
Coffee beans are native to Yemen, not South America.
Kiwi fruit is native to China, not New Zealand.
Vanilla is native to Mexico, not Madagascar.
Oranges are native to China, not California or Florida.
#12
The US secretly injecting people (typically poor / minorities, including children and pregnant women) with plutonium and other radioactive materials, and then studying them for decades.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unethical_human_experimentation_in_the_United_States#Human_radiation_experiments
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_radiation_experiments
When they finally admitted it, the report was released at the same time of the OJ verdict to bury the story.
“But there were so many other possibilities, Paleolithic peoples lived in so many different arrangements, in many different political and cultural systems. The modern world is far narrower, and frankly we seem to be stuck in a system that isn't working very well for most people, so to speak of modernity as the peak of civilization is perhaps foolish.”
#13
A lot of things women take for granted are fairly recent developments. Stuff like being able to have a credit card in your name. Buying a car or a house without a male cosigner. And it used to be extremely bad to be a divorced woman. I'm not talking about the 40s. I'm talking about the 70s-80s.
Women weren't allowed to get credit cards or open bank accounts until 1974.
Women got the vote in 1920.
A lot of these vary by state. I'm sure there were states where women bought houses before 74 or had bank accounts. But it wasn't a nationally protected thing until 74.
Heck the house I grew up in was bought in 74 by my mom. Coincidence?
“I would like to think a good bar for measuring civilization as a timeline I guess would be the beginning of art, or rather, the beginning of abstraction, when the human brain cortex was developed enough to process symbols. This moment took place during the Ice Age, between 100,000 and 12,000 years ago. All the great prehistoric art we have in museums comes from this period.” You can find more of his work on Instagram or his various sites.
#16
The year 536 was deemed the worst year to be alive. Volcanic eruptions caused prolonged dark sky for up to 18 months. This then caused a mini ice age, crop failures and plague over the next 10 years killing millions
Also the name Tiffany has been in use since the 1600s.
#17
Britain executed men as cowards during WWI if they had “shell shock” which is what we call PTSD today if they could not or would not fight as a result .
#18
Columbus's contemporaries didn't criticise he because they thought he would sail off the edge of a flat earth; their criticism was that he was significantly underestimating the *size* of the earth's globe - and they were quite right, he was.
#20
Earth will never have (abundant) coal again. Coal exists because trees/plants evolved lignin but fungi did not evolve the ability to decompose lignin until millions of years later. Wood was just piling up all over the place for millenia, sometimes catching fire, sometimes getting buried & turning into coal.
#21
Many people know about the Suffragettes who won the vote for some UK women in 1918. Many people don't know that prior to 1918 men did not have universal suffrage. 1918 is also the date which non landowning men got the vote. Prior to that the vote had been only for wealthy landowning lords, just 5% of the population. Over a period of the preceding 80 years concessions were slowly made to allow more men, and then some women to vote.
#22
We are closer to the time of the T-Rex than the T-Rex is to the time of the Stegosaurus.
#23
That in 2006 the earth was hit by a gamma ray burst from a distant supernova that stripped away about 6% of our top atmosphere (its fine now). If it had been bigger it would've wiped everything on earth out (and by bigger I mean if it was 20-25%).
#24
It took about 4 times longer to get from copper swords to steel swords, than it took from steel swords to atomic bombs.
#25
Europeans are able to tolerate lactose better than most ethnic groups because our ancestors kept drinking milk even tough it would make them s**t their pants. Just too good to let a bit of shotgun s**t ruin it.
#26
The first telephones didn't ring. Owners had no way of knowing if there'd be someone on the other end when they picked it up. It took a year or two to create the noise alert.
#27
Your ancestors did not eat purer food and the preservatives we have now are a thousand times more preferable to what went on before the food safety reforms of the mid 1900s to 1910s. Even in the so-called more pastoral times had no sense of germ theory. Your food - say, a loaf of bread - would be coughed on, sweated on, possibly stomped on or chewed up at some points (esp in bread baking, they'd stomp it down), throw chalk and other adulterants like metal powders in it, and bake it in a dirty oven with unwashed hands, and placed in open fly-ridden air for display and sale.
Also, olives are only mushy and rubbery now because freshly canned olives gave so many people deathly food poisoning in the mid-50s, that they now cook 'em in the can like tuna or shredded chicken to avoid another disaster.
#28
People used to get their feet X-rayed at the shoe store to check their shoe fit.
#29
Within a single person's lifetime, we went from all transportation being by horses, ships, and trains, to landing a man on the moon.
#30
Did you know that during the 17th century, wealthy Europeans would consume parts of mummies for medicinal purposes? Yeah, they actually believed that mummy powder could cure everything from headaches to stomach ulcers. Imagine reaching for a jar of ground mummy remains instead of aspirin!
#31
Hitting children in school was still legal when I was there and I'm only 43.
#32
Approximately 8% of Canadians were enlisted in the Canadian Expeditionary Force during World War I.
That isn't 8% of eligible Canadians, or 8% of Canadian men; that's 8% of the entire population of Canada. If a similar proportion enlisted in the United States today, there would be 26 million people serving in the US Armed Forces.
#34
The tram was invented by a Mr. Train
King George III was personally *against* the Stamp Act, and in NY a statue was erected of him in thanks for his role in appealing it
Nelson Mandela was listed as a terrorist threat (and remained on the terrorist watch-list) in the USA up until 2008.
#35
A military plane carrying two nuclear warheads broke apart and crashed in North Carolina. The state would have gotten nuked if it weren't for a single safety switch preventing detonation. These nukes were bigger than the ones we used in Japan.
Read up on the 1961 Goldsboro B-52 crash.
#36
The fact that sturgeons survived the fall of the meteorite that destroyed the dinosaurs, and have not evolved in any way since then.
#37
The last use of the guillotine in France and the release of the first*Star Wars* movie occurred in the same year - 1977.
#38
The unfair taxation the US revolted against was actually very fair and only a fraction of what British in other colonies were paying.
#40
The British pet massacre. In 1939, about 400,000 cats and dogs were killed in order to prepare for World War II food shortages. This was approximately 1/4 of the pets in England.
#41
The United States government intentionally poisoned 10,000 people by spiking the alcohol they drank during prohibition.
#42
George Washington’s dentures were not wooden, but were crafted from various materials, animal teeth, and the teeth of enslaved people.
#43
Constantinople, and thus, the Roman Empire, fell in 1453.
There is a 16th Century Spanish explorer named Juan de Fuca who is credited with exploring the strait that borders Vancouver Island, Canada, and Washington, USA (now called Juan de Fuca Strait).
Juan de Fuca is a Hispanicization of the Greek name Ioannis Phokas. His grandfather fled Constantinople and his family eventually ended up Spain.
This means an actual descendent of the Roman Empire was exploring North America.
#44
The third most deadly war in history (after the 2 world wars) was in China from 1850 to 1864. It was started by a cult leader who believed he was the younger brother of Jesus. He and his followers sought to overthrow the Emperor and set up a quasi-Christian theocracy. In the end the rebellion left 10% of China's population dead.
Edit: And of course fun fact- the leader of the Imperial forces was General Tso who later got a chicken dish named after him.
#46
There is no such date as September 3, 1752. Because of the conversion from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar in England and its colonies, September 2, 1752 was followed by September 14, 1752.
There was also no such thing as any date between January 1, 1751, and March 24, 1751. Prior to 1751, the first day of the new year was March 25. Parliament changed that to January 1. As a part of that transition, March 24, 1750 was followed by March 25, 1751, but December 31, 1751 was followed by January 1, 1752.
#47
During World War II, the United States military developed a plan to use bats as bombs. The idea was to attach small incendiary devices to bats and release them over Japanese cities at night. The bats would then roost in buildings, and when the devices detonated, they would start fires, causing chaos and destruction. While the project, known as "Project X-Ray," never saw combat, it's a bizarre example of the lengths to which military strategists were willing to go during the war.
#48
There was only one monogamous emperor in Chinese history, the Hongzhi emperor of the Ming Dynasty. He apparently invented the toothbrush to impress his wife.
I think when most people think harem they think of a couple of hundred women, but ancient Chinese harems could get *crazy.* There was one emperor in the Tang dynasty who had like 40,000 concubines. A lot of lower ranking concubines never had sex with their emperor and never even saw him. I heard that Wu Zetian (only female emperor) had like 5,000 male lovers and it drove the traditional nobleman insane but I can't find any sources for that lol.
#49
Siaka Stevens was technically both the shortest and longest serving leader of Sierra Leone.
He was an opposition leader that won an extremely close election, and the ruling party that had been ruling the country since independence didn’t want to lose their power, so they planned to arrest him just before he could take the oath of office, but things didn’t go exactly to plan and he ended up being removed from office a little while after taking the oath of office, meaning he was technically president for a little less than an hour before being removed from office.
However, there was a counter coup a few months later and Siaka Stevens was brought back into power. During his time in office, Stevens became increasingly authoritarian and eventually established a one party state, ruling the country for 17 years.
What do you think ?
geezeronthehill 6 months ago
We speak of the stone age because stone tools did not rot away. It is very likely that bone and wooden tools, cordage and fiber containers played at least as important a role in the material culture of our hominid ancestors.
Lydsylou (she/her) 6 months ago
I googled every one of these and unlike usual the majority were actually true! Only slight inaccuracies! Congratulations bored panda.
killjoy 6 months ago
lilo nd stich was done just before September 11 2001 but they had to push the release date until 2002 because there was a seen where stich hijacks a plane and flies it through hawai'i crashing into some buildings but they thought it would be too sensitive so they changed it to where he hijacks a ufo and flies through the mountains
Katie Lutesinger 6 months ago
I've seen the deleted footage! As a fortunate side effect, using the spaceship also explains how Jumba and Pleakly got to Earth in the first place. I loved Jumba's line "what, you think we walked here?"
Load More Replies... geezeronthehill 6 months ago
We speak of the stone age because stone tools did not rot away. It is very likely that bone and wooden tools, cordage and fiber containers played at least as important a role in the material culture of our hominid ancestors.
Lydsylou (she/her) 6 months ago
I googled every one of these and unlike usual the majority were actually true! Only slight inaccuracies! Congratulations bored panda.
killjoy 6 months ago
lilo nd stich was done just before September 11 2001 but they had to push the release date until 2002 because there was a seen where stich hijacks a plane and flies it through hawai'i crashing into some buildings but they thought it would be too sensitive so they changed it to where he hijacks a ufo and flies through the mountains
Katie Lutesinger 6 months ago
I've seen the deleted footage! As a fortunate side effect, using the spaceship also explains how Jumba and Pleakly got to Earth in the first place. I loved Jumba's line "what, you think we walked here?"
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