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Given the long history of the world, it’s natural that some stories, facts, and figures are better known than others. At the same time, certain parts of history end up swept under the rug, forgotten, and ignored when they really shouldn’t be.
A Netizen decided to ask the internet for examples of events and facts from history that don’t really get the attention they deserve. People responded with interesting tales, obscure factoids, and bits of the past that some would prefer to forget. So get comfortable as you scroll through, upvote your favorite examples, and be sure to comment your thoughts below.
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#1
I’m American, in my early 60’s, but I hadn’t heard of the 1921 Tulsa race massacre until last year. I mean, we bombed black people in our own city! Just horrible. To people who want to whitewash American history, I ask you this - how is it that we are to form a more perfect union if we don’t admit, analyze and correct our mistakes?
Mel Colley 1 year ago
Unfortunately, only the winners get talked about in history evil or not.
#2
The Vatican directly profited off its prior knowledge of the Holocaust by purchasing life insurance companies which served European Jews. After the war, the few people who tried to claim the life insurance were denied unless they could provide full proof of the death. Unsurprisingly, the Nazis did not issue death certificates for the people they murdered so the Vatican kept almost all the money.
This is thoroughly documented in "Gods Bankers".
That and the Vatican was (and likely still is) a major player in money laundering.
Bouche and Audi and Shyla, Oh My! 1 year ago
But the money laundering was done with holy water.
#3
The residential schools for Native Americans and all of the horrific atrocities. Literally no one with conscience likes talking about it.
Miss Frankfurter 1 year ago
🇨🇦It needs to be talked about. They need to be heard. We need to answer for it.
#4
One of the darker reasons the Western Slave trade gets talked about more than the Arab Slave Trade is due to the fact male African slaves were regularly castrated. They didn't breed slaves like the West did, as it was seen as a sign of opulence that you could just buy a new one. No descendants = No one around to speak of the atrocities. Horrifying.
Edit: Also just to add more horror to it, it started 700 years before the Atlantic Slave Trade and the practice still survived up until 1960. Now imagine how many victims and potential generations were wiped out over that length of time.
Ian Webling 1 year ago
A 2021 estimate claimed there were forty-six million slaves worldwide. Up five million from 2018 and more than at any time in history. While legal ownership of humans has been abolished in every country over the last two hundred years, ninety-four have no laws making it a criminal offence. In these countries, one cannot be prosecuted in a criminal court for enslaving someone. That number stood at ninety-five until 2010 when it became illegal to own a slave in the United Kingdom.
#5
How the Slave Trade was driven by black africans enslaving and selling other black africans. People are just people, and in large groups people are often utterly horrible to each other.
Pete jamail 1 year ago
Other countries complicity doesn’t excuse what our nation did, which was by many metrics the worst in the world. We also continue to cause active harm to them up to the modern day.
#6
While known about here in Ireland, a lot of British people don't seem to be aware of the atrocities that were carried out under Oliver Cromwell. Church burning, kids and women being locked up in a burning church and just genocide of Irish people. It's insane that some British people will put him up on a pedestal, regardless of the amount of evilness he had.
#7
We treated German prisoners of war better than we treated interned Japanese Americans.
Ray Ceeya (RayCeeYa) 1 year ago
Hard to pretend the USA is an enlightened democracy when you know about the real history.
#8
The Armenian genocide by the Ottoman Empire.
Miss Frankfurter 1 year ago (edited)
Never happened. Regardless of the vast amount of documentation. Are you 🤬kidding me?The photographic documentation. The personal accounts. The fact that that many human beings just “disappeared” from the face of the earth. WE KNOW THIS HORROR HAPPENED!
#9
Gandhi, Mother Theresa, and Coco Chanel were actually awful people yet them (or their brands) are still praised to this day.
#10
I feel like not a ton of people talk about Operation Paperclip, where nazi scientists were snuck into America with fake identities and employed by the US government. Every time I've brought it up, people havent known what it was.
Additionally, the long history of medical experimentation and exploitation of BIPOC in America, and just how deep that s**t goes - ex: the torture of enslaved Black women being at the foundation of the field of gynecology.
#11
That Noah’s Ark story predates Christianity by a thousand years, possible more. And that Dec 25th was a pagan holiday.
TheBlueBitterfly 1 year ago
Most Christian holidays were some kind of pagan holiday. And most stories in the Bible existed elsewhere long before they showed up in the bible.
#12
EVERY SINGLE royal family in Europe practiced incest at some point. There was so much interconnection between noble families that at a certain point every nobleman in Europe was closely related to all others. Kings and Queens were basically marrying their cousins since the gene pool was so small. No wonder in the end most nobles were deformed, mentally ill/challenged hemophiliacs. They were inbred all the way.
the sixthgirl 1 year ago
Lordy, I watched a documentary about the Hapsburgs--worst inbreeding since ancient Egypt!
#13
American support in politically destabilising countries across Latin America.
Sand Ers 1 year ago
Not just Latin America. Anywhere that the establishment of democratic governments threatened to interfere with the theft of natural resources from underdeveloped countries. Anybody who objects to the islamic dictatorship in Iran needs to know that it is the direct result of the US overthrowing a democratically elected government, and installing a repressive puppet monarchy.
#14
The US eugenics and forced sterilization program that happened until the 70s. It is also trying to make a comeback if the neo-conservative fascists in the US get power again.
Undercover 1 year ago
We don't speak about the torture that presumed or real mentaly ill people underwent in the past. Rosemary Kennedy for example was subjected to a lobotomy (as countless other people) because her father deemed her behaviour as shameful for his family. Nobody wants to talk about psychology's gruesome past. Especially nobody in the medical field.
#15
Native American tribes like the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole Nations owned black slaves and were some of the last slave owners in North America. As they were sovereign nations, the emancipation proclamation didn't affect them, and new treaties needed to be made to stop the enslavement.
Miss Frankfurter 1 year ago
When Chief Norma Mankiller was asked about this, the answer was anything but satisfactory.
#16
The Aztecs were utterly horrific people who did stuff like flay people alive and wear their skins as a form of worship in their religion. When Cortez invaded the reason he was so successful was because the local tribes wanted the Aztec gone THAT BADLY!
#17
Churchill and India are often not seen together in the best of lights and thats putting it lightly.
But when the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre happened, Churchill was the one of the only politicians who stood in defense of the victims.
General Reginald Dyer had ordered his men to fire on an unarmed protest which killed 400 Indians and injured 1000 more. There was a debate in The House of Commons as to what to do with Dyer, as British army personnel were often afforded protections from actions like this and he very nearly got off with it.
Until Churchill, who was Minster of War at the time, stood to give a speech that condemned Dyer. Stating he should have his employment and benefits of it stripped from him and he heavily implied if it was within his power to do so, his punishment would be more severe.
Basically implying he would have been happy to see Dyer hanged.
The Conservative Party was outraged at Churchill for breaking ranks and many of their number said he was a traitor and implied Churchill should be charged with treason. A penalty which carried the sentence of death.
Churchill's speech did work however and while Dyer unfortunately couldn't be charged more severly due to Army regulations blocking such actions. He was stripped of his employment and benefits that came with it. This was one of the first times an event like this had ended up with a higher up receiving accountability in The British Empire.
El Dee 1 year ago
Unusual that Churchill made this speech. He had actively encouraged shooting striking Welsh miners prior to this. The British Govt had a history of this at home and abroad, sending tanks into George Square in Glasgow and killing peaceful protestors and the Croke Road massacre. See also Bloody Sunday and how, despite an admission of guilt over shooting an unarmed protestor in the back who was running away and THEN standing over him and finishing the job, the soldier in question was allowed to walk free with no further trial being allowed. That happened within the last two years. Nothing changes..
#18
That historians are just as catty and petty as any other profession.. I'd have to dig to find it, but one of my Masters college classes was about the historian perspective over the eras and how they write history or whatever: and the text book really made historical fact become visible as this "thing" that people really have argued about for all time... fact is broken down to perspective... and personal philosophy plays more a part in history writing than you'd like to think.
Ian Webling 1 year ago
As an archaeologist, one of the first things I learned about the past is how much it changes over time according to changes in social beliefs.
#19
That there were human zoos created by the Europeans and the last one was closed in like the 80s or 90s.
#20
I'm a big fan of Franklin Roosevelt and a big World War Two history buff. I think the American accomplishments in logistics and manufacturing were the eighth wonder of the world in the 1940s, and I'm proud of what my country did in the war.
...and then someone brings up the Japanese-American internment camps and I'm like, "Oh, yeah...there was also that."
SkyBlueandBlack 1 year ago
Because history, and the people, are complicated. People keep wanting the world to be easy to describe, and that is not and never will be how it works.
#21
When the allies liberated Nazi concentration camps, the homosexuals that were 'liberated' were sent right back to the same camps as it was logistically easier than transporting them to an allied prison. This was because homosexuality was still illegal.
Colin Matthews 1 year ago (edited)
That’s a significant oversimplification. Basically the ex prisoners were so unwell and the infrastructure so damaged that some, not all, prisoners were treated at camp facilities. They were not reincarceratedfor being gay
#22
Ustashe had torture camp for children operated by the Catholic Church.
#23
The Dutch once cannibalized their Prime Minister.
#24
Unit 731. At least I don't like talking about it since it's so vile and evil
my_son_is_a_box:
Not just that it existed, but that most everyone involved walked free, and the whole thing was kept secret by the US government until the 1980s.
catonsteroids:
Definitely not for the faint of heart if you want to know what went on. It’s pure evil, animalistic, barbaric, and absolutely sick, all in the name of “research”.
#25
Canada had prison camps for German soldiers back in the WWII. They were treated so nicely and with so much trust that many of the POW were given jobs outside of the prison, and they always returned voluntary, even if it took more than one day. Some were even trusted weapons for hunting, in front of the guards. The worst punishment they could receive? When the war ended, they were obligated to return home. Imagine having such "nice life" for so long and then having to return to a home destroyed. Many years later, these former members of the German army decided to return to Canada as tourists or even buying land and starting families and businesses.
Gustav Gallifrey 1 year ago
Allied and Axis soldiers were interned in neutral Ireland during WW2, if they crash-landed, parachuted, washed up on the shore, or wandered into Ireland. They were all treated well, and friendships between Allied and Axis sprang up, with men from both sides joining in permitted expeditions to local pubs. At the war's end, more than a few from both sides decided to stay on in Ireland.
#26
I tried really hard to think of something a lot of people might not know about, and I came up with the MOVE bombing.
I live in Philadelphia; I moved here in 2007. And it wasn’t until a few years after that when I moved to west Philly that I’d ever heard of the MOVE bombing. I consider it something people don’t like to talk about, which is why many people have likely never heard of it.
From Wikipedia “Philadelphia police dropped two explosive devices from a helicopter onto the roof of a house occupied by MOVE. The Philadelphia Fire Department allowed the resulting fire to burn out of control, destroying 61 previously evacuated neighboring homes over two city blocks and leaving 250 people homeless.[3] Six adults and five children were killed in the attack,[4] with one adult and one child surviving. “
#27
Patrick B Kennedy - son of John F Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy. Born while JFK was in office and 5 weeks prematurely. He lived only 2 days and is probably one of the biggest reason modern neonatalogy really took off in the United States. Read up on him if you have a chance. It’s good to remember that everyone matters no matter the age.
David A Paterson 1 year ago
On the topic of premature babies. It's only a week since I learnt that some 12,000 babies were blinded, most of them in the USA, by the excessive amounts of oxygen pumped into neonatal care units for premature babies.
#28
The Americans don't like when I bring up that the Canadians (I guess they were technically still "British" at this point..) burned down the White House during the War of 1812.
Christian Golden 1 year ago
How do they react that it was in retaliation for the Americans' burning and looting of the Canadian capital of York sixteen months earlier?
#29
Modern postural yoga-- the type and style predominantly practiced in Western countries-- is about 100 years old. It was invented in India by Indians and is derived mostly from British calisthenics and Swedish gymnastics. It was specifically marketed to affluent Westerners by Indians as a superior form of spiritual and physical exercise. It's working as designed for its target market.
#30
European-Chinese relations in the 19th century.
The opium wars, the partition of parts of china to different European countries, the boxer rebellion, the taiping rebellion, most of the 19th century was china being utterly humiliated by Europe and fragmented which led to utter chaos in the early 20th century.
Maester_Bates:
In China they call it the century of humiliation.
#31
A lot of countries who in the modern day like to wag their finger at how other countries are doing and style themselves as "the best" by various social metrics achieved their current state through war, exploitation and destruction of the environment.
El Dee 1 year ago
Older generations would say, 'if it wasn't for us you'd all be speaking German' But they forgot that we already don't speak our native language because we were already conquered and colonised by an English speaking nation who banned our language, culture and way of dressing..
#32
The slavery practice of coverture. And the slave trade of the Ottoman Empire that continued into the 20th century.
That was predominantly done to women and children so........pfft unimportant apparently to the topic of slavery.
UpupaEpops 1 year ago
And that quite a significant portion of Ottoman slaves were white. Read up on Florence Baker for example.
#33
Brutality in Australian Aboriginal society pre colonisation
It was not some dreaming utopia, but the abuse of women, assault, murder, tribal rivalries, are all ignored and any discussion will see you labelled a racist.
For example - Paleopathologist Stephen Webb in 1995 published his analysis of 4500 individuals’ bones from mainland Australia going back 50,000 years. (Priceless bone collections at the time were being officially handed over to Aboriginal communities for re-burial, which stopped follow-up studies).[15"> Webb found highly disproportionate rates of injuries and fractures to women’s skulls, with the injuries suggesting deliberate attack and often attacks from behind, perhaps in domestic squabbles. In the tropics, for example, female head-injury frequency was about 20-33%, versus 6.5-26% for males. The most extreme results were on the south coast, from Swanport and Adelaide, with female cranial trauma rates as high as 40-44% -- two to four times the rate of male cranial trauma. In desert and south coast areas, 5-6% of female skulls had three separate head injuries, and 11-12% had two injuries. Web could not rule out women-on-women attacks but thought them less probable.
#34
There's almost no archaeological evidence for the Jewish exodus out of Egypt or their slavery therein. Likewise, there's very little contemporary evidence for the existence of a historical Jesus.
Two of the most defining cultural narratives have scant historical corroboration.
Ian Webling 1 year ago
Correction: there is NO evidence for the Exodus. One thing I find amazing that it took forty years to reach the promised land. The total distance was 240 km. A person, walking at 3 km/h for 12 hours per day could walk it that fours days. Waking at a more realistic speed for a heavily burdened person in a desert of 2 km/h for 10 hours per day would take 12 days. I calculated that a snail could make the journey in 19 years.
#35
The Philippines were colony of Spain for hundreds of year and when Filipinos were about to win thier independence on their own, Spain sold the Philippines to US then US acted like saviors.
Spaniards were pretty racist to Filipinos that they dont bother teaching them spanish for 300 years of occupation.
US troops setup education camps and thats why Filipinos speak english as a second or third language instead of spanish.
Gustav Gallifrey 1 year ago
On the other hand, there's a saying about the Philippines history under Spain and America: 'five hundred years in a convent, fifty years in a whorehouse'.
#36
On paper black American men got the vote before white women. In practice, white women got the vote before black men.
gilded panda 1 year ago
it goes like this back then, rights wise; white man, white women, black man, black women. statisticly, black women have had it the hardest, since they need black rights AND womens rights to do anything
#37
That US spy agencies hired Nazis to work as spies during the Cold War.
I learned about this reading a biography of Virginia Hall. It meant that she, as an employee of the CIA, was now working side-by-side with the same men who had tried to disrupt her operations and kill her during WWII. Ms Hall certainly wasn’t the only one put into this extremely dubious and awkward position.
#38
The British made the first large-scale concentration camps (for the second Boer war), and although they didn't deliberately try to kill the occupants they also didn't do much to alleviate the awful conditions - particularly in the camps holding coloured people, where 1 in 6 died.
The vast majority of inmates were women and children - those with male relatives still fighting were given smaller rations as an incentive for their relatives to surrender.
Ian Webling 1 year ago
This is a divisive topic in White South Africa. While it is true that the British set up concentrations and they were initially diabolical, the atrocities were the result of mismanagement compounded by corruption. After Emily Hobhouse became involved, conditions improved. By later stages of the war, the death rate in the camps was lower than that in Belfast - not in war zone. After the war, Louis Botha, a Boer leader who became Prime Minister, said, "Thank God for the concentration camps." While I am not condoning the creation of the camps - that was done in response to the "scorched earth" policy of the British, an equally odious policy - they were not an attempt - as is often claimed - to exterminate the population.
#39
The allies also committed genocide (bengal) and had concentration camps (Kenya).
sofacushionfort 1 year ago (edited)
History buffs may cite the British camps for Boer civilians, with 30K deaths (a large portion were native farm laborers) as the first concentration camps, or the Spanish camps in Cuba at the same time. But earlier in the 19th C., the US set up camps as they rounded up the Cherokee and other SE tribes in preparation for the Trail of Tears. Deaths in these camps exceeded those on the march itself.
#40
There has not been any point in American history where all men have had the enforced right to vote. At the time of the Revolution, the right to vote (and it was an enforced right) was solely afforded to white, male property owners - about 6% of the population of the Colonies, ~150,000 men. During Reconstruction, the right to vote was given to all men but, obviously, it wasn’t enforced for black men. It’s also worth noting that, in many states, a widow could vote in the name of her dead husband if he’d been eligible. Fast forward to 1920 and women get it, but it isn’t enforced for black women. In 1963, the Voting Rights Act passed, since which all women have enjoyed the enforced right to vote. However, before and after this, some states require men to be registered with Selective Service (the draft) in order to vote, making it a privilege for these men as opposed to a right.
Sky Render 1 year ago
And thanks to gerrymandering, votes count for basically nothing in quite a few US states. If you value your faith in democracy, don't read up on what North Carolina just put into law in regards to this ongoing problem of anti-democracy...
#41
One of the last known anti-Jewish pogroms in Poland took place in the summer of 1946.
El Dee 1 year ago
One of the things that the publicising of the Holocaust (because remember this was not generally known by the allies and definitely not by their populations) is that it GREATLY reduced hatred and actions like this against Jewish people. (NB 'reduced') But sadly the lesson learned by society was not that hate was wrong but merely that targeting hate to Jewish people was unacceptable. Nowadays all of the institutions that hated or were at least suspicious of Jewish people have turned this towards Muslims - with no outcry from society..
#42
Augustus lost *two whole legions* at Teutoberg. That’s about 20,000 troops, and that’s terrible
Christian Golden 1 year ago
3 legions: 17th, 18th and 19th. Plus auxiliaries and cavalry sqns. Estimates range between 15000 and 27000 dead, Thanks, Arminius!
#43
Inca empire lasted less than a century, starting in 1434 (around the same time modern printing started), they were conquerors that eliminate other natives for territory, some of this cultures were pretty much erase from history, others did survive and some of their deities and people were adopted by the Incas.
They also had a "tax system", when most of the crops went to the Inca ("The leader" that was seem as the son of the Sun, a demigod basically) and his family, the leftovers were for the population (contrary to the Aztecas, when it was the other way around).
When Spanish conquerors arrive (less than 200 men), they received the help from this other natives against the Incas, as warriors or translators.
Heck, before independence in 1821, many Peruvians were against it, they were forced to become independent from Spain with the combination of argentines, chileans, venezuelans and more.
#44
Switzerland operated a concentration camp for allied POWS during WW2 and treated them massively contradictory to the terms of the Geneva conventions.
Ace 1 year ago
Giving it that name is deliberately provocative. As a neutral country Switzerland was not really allowed, and was geographically unable, to return escaped POWs, so housed them in internment camps, as did the Irish mentioned elsewhere in this list and other neutral countries. The Geneva conventions apply to parties in a war, so are irrelevant in this context.
#45
One of the 1st - if not the 1st - cases of slavery in the US was a black man, Anthony Johnson, petitioning the court to keep his indentured servant for life.
Pete jamail 1 year ago
“Finally! A single unsourced anecdote about a black guy owning a black guy. We’re off the hook everybody, Racism is both sides now!!! - 3/4 American Congress
What do you think ?
Sky Render 1 year ago (edited)
Starting in the 1940s, the since-debunked theories of John Money have been used as a means of justifying abuse of intersex children. Intersex infants born with ambiguous genitals are regularly mutilated daily in nearly every country on the planet (to date less than a dozen nations have banned unnecessary infant genital surgery, and the US is not on that list!). More broadly, it is considered socially acceptable and expected for parents of intersex children to: hide the truth about their birth, conceal medical records, put them on hormone replacement therapy without consent or even knowledge, and deny any inquiry about their differences from other children. Intersex erasure is codified into nearly every civilization on this planet. And it's been going on for long enough that general awareness of intersex being real is now gone.
Temporary Dork 1 year ago
In the Netherlands, thanks to a well-known tv personality, intersex is now a familiar concept, but in Europe "sex-normalizing" surgeries on babies are only prohibited in Albania, Germany, Malta, Portugal and Greece.
Load More Replies...
Will Cable 1 year ago
The sad thing is that schools (not all) are not teaching these things because it may upset children. If we don't teach the past the future is likely to have the same things happening again.
Apatheist Account2 1 year ago
"Those who do not learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them".
Load More Replies...
steven 1 year ago
Holodomor - the Ukraine famine that was caused (or at least exacerbated by russia), killed millions in an attempt to stifle the push for independence. Looks like they have continued where stalin left off.
TotallyNOTaFox 1 year ago (edited)
The crimes against humanity commited by the USSR in general often get overlooked - The regime under Stalin killed 20 million people for political reasons, deported asian and jewish minorities in the country and started wars all around them. The oppression of other countries till 1990 also doesn't really make it into history class
Load More Replies...
Sky Render 1 year ago (edited)
Starting in the 1940s, the since-debunked theories of John Money have been used as a means of justifying abuse of intersex children. Intersex infants born with ambiguous genitals are regularly mutilated daily in nearly every country on the planet (to date less than a dozen nations have banned unnecessary infant genital surgery, and the US is not on that list!). More broadly, it is considered socially acceptable and expected for parents of intersex children to: hide the truth about their birth, conceal medical records, put them on hormone replacement therapy without consent or even knowledge, and deny any inquiry about their differences from other children. Intersex erasure is codified into nearly every civilization on this planet. And it's been going on for long enough that general awareness of intersex being real is now gone.
Temporary Dork 1 year ago
In the Netherlands, thanks to a well-known tv personality, intersex is now a familiar concept, but in Europe "sex-normalizing" surgeries on babies are only prohibited in Albania, Germany, Malta, Portugal and Greece.
Load More Replies... Will Cable 1 year ago
The sad thing is that schools (not all) are not teaching these things because it may upset children. If we don't teach the past the future is likely to have the same things happening again.
Apatheist Account2 1 year ago
"Those who do not learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them".
Load More Replies... steven 1 year ago
Holodomor - the Ukraine famine that was caused (or at least exacerbated by russia), killed millions in an attempt to stifle the push for independence. Looks like they have continued where stalin left off.
TotallyNOTaFox 1 year ago (edited)
The crimes against humanity commited by the USSR in general often get overlooked - The regime under Stalin killed 20 million people for political reasons, deported asian and jewish minorities in the country and started wars all around them. The oppression of other countries till 1990 also doesn't really make it into history class
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