History is the best story ever told. It’s full of drama, intrigue, mystery, comedy and plot twists that will leave your jaw on the floor. Today’s HBO writers only wish they could come up with tales as wild as what’s actually taken place in the past. And if you need some reminders that truth really is stranger than fiction, you’ve come to the right place, pandas.
Redditors have been sharing stories from the past that sound fictional yet are somehow true, so we’ve gathered the juiciest ones below. From amazing victories to devastating tragedies, all of these tales sound like they came straight out of a creative novelist’s mind. So enjoy making your way through the history lesson below, and be sure to upvote the stories that you wish you had been taught in school!
#1
During WW1 The German navy built a ship and painted it to make it look like a British ship called the RMS Carmania in order to infiltrate and destroy British convoys. On the ships first outing, the first enemy it encountered was the real RMS Carmania, which promptly sunk it.
Image credits: anon
#2
President Andrew Jackson’s funeral in 1845, his pet parrot had to be removed because it was swearing loudly.
Image credits: ingloriousmongo
#3
Apparently, death from laughter is an incredibly rare but a completely legit cause of death.
In the third century BCE, Chrysippus, a Greek Stoic philosopher, died of laughter after he saw a donkey eating his figs.
And Chrysippus’ is not the only isolated case. Among the few other cases, a fifth-century BCE Greek painter, Zeuxis, is said to have died laughing at his painting of the goddess Aphrodite for which an old woman (who had commissioned the painting) had insisted on modelling. Also, Cleopatra, the ruler of Egypt in the first century BCE, claimed that her retainer died laughing at her husband’s death.
According to the linked Wikipedia article, the most recent case is that of Ole Bentzen, a Danish audiologist, who saw a funny scene in a comedy film and laughed so hard that his heart rate rose to a point where he had a fatal heart attack, in 1989.
From what I understood from reading up on this topic, it’s not the act of laughing itself but rather a fatal repercussion from a fit of laughter, such as cardiac arrest, asphyxiation or aneurysm, which causes death. For instance, Ole Bentzen suffered a heart attack as a consequence of the terrible fit of laughter he had. It’s possible that such was the case of Chrysippus (and others) as well.
(I always thought of ‘I’m gonna die laughing!’ as a hyperbole, and I myself use it quite liberally. But I guess every hyperbole has a grain of truth to it.).
Image credits: Villeneuve_
#4
In 2007 a paraglider got trapped in the updraft of two joining thunderstorms and was lifted to an altitude of 33,000 feet. She landed over three hours later about sixty kilometers north of her starting position having survived extreme cold, lightning and lack of oxygen.
Image credits: _iPood_
#5
The great molasses flood of 1919, a tank filled with 2m gallons of molasses burst and sent a tidal wave of molasses through the streets of Boston, 21 people were k**led.
Image credits: bexticles
#6
Timothy Dexter was frequently given terrible business advice that would somehow through a stroke of luck pay off. He sold coal to Newcastle and made a profit.
He became insanely wealthy, dressed in a strange manner, and acted weird in the company of the incredibly wealthy elite he had accidentally stumbled into.
He spent a lot of time basically gaslighting his own wife for his own amusement. For quite some time he acted as if she had died and was a ghost, even introducing her to other people as his “wife’s ghost”. He at one point even faked his own death so he could see how people would react at his funeral.
He also wrote a book that was a long winded rant about everything that upset him. The book included no punctuation. He made a second edition with several pages of punctuation attached to the end that the reader could “distribute as they saw fit”.
Basically a real life s**tpost.
Image credits: Zacoftheaxes
#7
The escape from Antarctica by the members of the Antarctic expedition led by Ernest Shackleton. The stuff they went through was unbelievable. Their boat, the Endurance was crushed by ice floes. They were stranded on the floes for over a year in temperatures well below freezing. They then took to three boats around 22 feet in length across the antarctic ocean looking for land. There were about 10 men in each boat. They missed reaching land by just a few miles at times. Two thirds of them got stranded on Elephant Island surrounded by ice while one of the boats went out in search of rescue. That boat made it through the Drake Passage, one of the deadliest places in the ocean. All but three of them got stranded with little food and water while the three men who left became the first people the cross South Georgia on foot. They found civilization. Rescued the men who came through the Drake Passage. Waited months until they could rescue those on Elephant Island. Every single person who came on the initial voyage survived with the worst lasting consequence being a single foot amputation.
Image credits: LordofHopeHomestuck
#8
Edgar Allen Poe wrote a novel in 1838 in which 4 shipwrecked survivors, at the point of starvation, choose to resort to cannibalism. So they k**l the young cabin boy, Richard Parker, and eat him.
In 1884, a ship called the Mignonette sank. 4 crewmembers survived. At the point of starvation, they k**led and ate the youngest of them: Richard Parker.
Image credits: anon
#9
Jack. A Baboon who was employed to change rail signals.
“After initial skepticism, the railway decided to officially employ Jack once his job competency was verified. The baboon was paid twenty cents a day, and a half-bottle of beer each week. It is widely reported that in his nine years of employment with the railroad, Jack never made a mistake.”
Image credits: Naweezy
#10
Mad Jack Churchill, the man with the only confirmed longbow k**l in WWII. Guy and his squad did a death march towards the germans whole playing bagpipes, got captured and sent to a concentration camp. He then escaped, got caught again, and then escaped a different concentration camp. Also he always carried a scottish longsword with him.
Theres so much other weird s**t he did after the war, and its amazing to me that hes entirely real.
Image credits: TurretX
#11
Louis the 19th was King of France for 20 minutes.
The shortest war ever recorded was around 40 minutes long.
During the Salem Witch Trials, dogs were also accused of witchcraft. 2 dogs were executed because of it.
Image credits: 6lesbian9
#12
The CIA was researching psychic abilities for 30 years as a way to spy on the USSR. After 30 years, the program was terminated, and their conclusion was that psychic powers probably don’t exist.
Edit: the actual conclusion was that the evidence for remote viewing was un-falsifiable (and therefore un-provable). Many of the more promising results were believed to be caused by information leakage, meaning that test subjects had prior knowledge about the subject they were asked about. They were unable to verify any of their results because of this, and even if the psychic abilities were real, they were unreliable at best.
Edit 2: The codename fro the project was “stargate” you can find the documents on the CIA website here.
Image credits: cameronh0110
#13
Not exactly historical but: A poodle named Cachy, in Caballito, Buenos Aires, fell from 13 floors and fatally hit 75-year-old Marta Espina, k**ling both instantly. In the course of the events, 46-year-old Edith Sola, who came to see the incident, was fatally hit by a bus. An unidentified man, who witnessed Edith’s death, had an heart attack and also died, on his way to the hospital.
Image credits: AKReddits
#14
Wojtek was a bear who fought N**s in return for cigarettes and beer. He didn’t die until 20 years after WW2.
Image credits: ThePumpk1nMaster
#15
Sergeant Stubby. During world War 1, a soldier found a stray dog when training on the Yale University campus, and took a liking to him. The soldier snuck the dog onto the ship when he had to leave campus and when the dog was found by the commanding officer, he was allowed to stay because he had learned how to salute.
Stubby was injured a few times during the war, but he was useful with alerting his squad of surprise mustard gas attacks and gunshots before the human ear could detect the sound. He also found and comforted wounded soldiers and caught a German soldier by the leg of his pants until American soldiers got to him.
AKA. The bestest boi to ever live.
Image credits: shipping_addict
#16
Joshua Norton was just this random crazy guy from San Francisco who hated all this political nonsense that was going on at the time and figured he could do the job better at it himself, and thus “The Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico” was born. While he held no real power, the people liked him so much that they treated him like royalty anyways.
Any currency issued under his name was treated like real money at many establishments.
One day, he was arrested by a private security force because of his mental health, which enrage practically all of San Francisco. The Police Chief let him go because he had committed no crime, and Norton gave an Imperial Pardon to the guy who arrested him. After this incident, any police officer Norton passed would salute him.
Another time, when a riot had formed and was getting pretty violent, Norton simply stood in front of the mob and calmly prayed, which manged to disperse the mob.
And that’s not even a fraction of the crazy stuff that he did.
Image credits: Radioactive_Requiem
#17
21 sikh soldiers fought against 10,000 afghan Intruders and won. It is known as the ‘War of Saragarhi’.
Image credits: guccicop1
#18
In 1971, a teenage girl named Juliane Koepcke was on a plane that was struck by lightning and disintegrated in the air. She plummeted 3,000 meters strapped to her seat, and landed in the Amazon rainforest.
Her mom had been on the flight with her, and Juliane searched in vain for her mom, but Juliane was the sole survivor of the crash. She survived 11 days alone, treating her maggot-infested wounds with fuel and using tracking techniqies her father had taught her, before she found a boat that she used to make her way back to civilization.
What an absolute legend.
Image credits: echoskybound
#19
In the Middle Ages gays and lesbians would become nuns and monks to avoid persecution, and since religion was a heavy influence in those days it was seen as noble that they were dedicating themselves to god, they would have “special friends” and since no one could get pregnant it wasn’t that big of an issue.
Image credits: anon
#20
It was like 20 years ago, in my town there was a shooting accident that was pretty crazy.
This woman was practicing with her husbands rifle out in the field, or something and she got a shot off which made it’s way to the highway and struck a motorist in the head k**ling them.
The driver was the shooters twin sister, who was separated at birth. She lived like 300 miles away and was literally just passing though town to go some place else, when she was k**led by a stray bullet from the sister she never knew she had. That’s still like the craziest coincidence I’ve ever heard of.
Image credits: user1444
#21
In 1980 Lake Peigneur in Louisiana drained like a bathtub with the plug removed. Oil Drillers on a rig in the lake had hit a mine shaft below. The rig, barges, a tugboat and part of a nearby island got sucked into the largest man-made whirlpool ever.
Image credits: FrankieMint
#22
9 Italian geologist being charged with manslaughter for not predicting an earthquake.
Edit: Alright good news I was wrong. They were charged because they didn’t properly warn people not because they didn’t predict it.
Image credits: CYBER_DIVER
#23
In 1993 a man taught geese to follow his ultralight aircraft glider. They didn’t know how to migrate, so he flew all the way to an area where geese generally migrate to with his geese following.
Image credits: TatterCatYT
#24
The Bone Wars! Two rival paleontologists, Othneil Charles Marsh and Edward Drinker Cope, were in a race for academic clout, so they both took off to places like the fossil beds of Montana and Utah to try and dig up as many dinosaurs as possible before the other guy. But they didn’t stop there, and hired spies and sabateurs to impede the other’s work, as well as trying to pass off sloppy or fake skeletons sometimes. The overwhelming majority of iconic dinosaur genre that we know were either first discovered or simply got a lot of new samples to work with, and were made iconic by the amount of publicity they received. This includes Triceratops, Stegosaurus, some remains of Tyrannosaurus, Apatosaurus, and many, many more.
This is also where the Brontosaurus confusion comes from. One of the scientists (I forget who) had already discovered Apatosaurus. The other then discovered a new skeleton of the same dinosaur, but intentionally put a skull from a different species, Camarosaurus, onto that skeleton and tried to pass it off as a new species entirely, Brontosaurus. The fake was unveiled pretty quickly but the name stuck. More recently, however, we have a lot more tools to distinguish smaller features from bones, and it was found that the skeleton that was originally passed off as Brontosaurus is actually barely different enough to receive its own genus, and the name Brontosaurus was revived.
I’ve always thought that this could make a fantastic show, especially if it includes dramatized “flashbacks” to how the dinosaurs in the skeletons died.
Edit: the Wikipedia page’s intro describes it very nicely as well:
>The Bone Wars, also known as the Great Dinosaur Rush, was a period of intense and ruthlessly competitive fossil hunting and discovery during the Gilded Age of American history, marked by a heated rivalry between Edward Drinker Cope (of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia) and Othniel Charles Marsh (of the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale). Each of the two paleontologists used underhanded methods to try to outdo the other in the field, resorting to bribery, theft, and the destruction of bones. Each scientist also sought to ruin his rival’s reputation and cut off his funding, using attacks in scientific publications.
Edit: Its worth noting that the bone wars have had a massive positive legacy on paleontology as a field, but left both scientists financially and socially ruined. An excellent bittersweet ending.
Image credits: kosmoceratops1138
#25
Dr Robert Liston performed a operation that ended up with a 300% mortality rate. He was amputating a leg of a patient, during this he sliced off the fingers of a assistant, they both died of infection. He also slashed the coat tails of a spectator, who was so terrified that the knife pierced his vital organs that he died from fright.
Image credits: Cosmicsam86
#26
Brazil going to assist on war with boats, panicking when seeing bubbles and ended up k**ling a rare species of dwarf whale, that they thought were German submarines attacking.
Image credits: MesoDog
#27
The Carrington Event.
In 1859 the Earth was hit by a geomagnetic storm from the sun. It caused auroras as far south as Rome. Telegraph wires caught fire and in general it was chaos.
If this happened today it would likely cause massive blackouts for weeks or even months and cause trillions in damage.
Image credits: Florgio
#28
4 Auschwitz prisioners stole n**i uniforms, and a car. Only one of them was speaking german so he was wearing the highest rank uniform. When they left the camp they’ve encoutered 2 patrols. 1st patrol (with some high ranked guy) just hailed to them. 2nd patrol with 2 low rank soliders told them they can’t leave becouse orders etc. Guy speaking german started screaming at them so loud and so realisticly they just said “we’re sorry, go ahead”.
Image credits: NieDrogg
#29
An English king named Ethelred, later called the Unready, took some troops to defend against a Viking invasion.
The weather was bad, so a lot of the Vikings’ ships crashed as they were landing. Ethelred thought that it would be dishonourable to attack them as they were stumbling onto shore, so he kept his troops back until the Vikings had a chance to get together and form proper battle lines before he attacked them. The better prepared Vikings then won the fight and slaughtered a bunch of Ethelred’s men and he and the rest were forced to run away while the Vikings went around pillaging.
Image credits: TheBestPeter
#30
Unsinkable Sam. A cat that survived the sinking of three different ship during WWII.
Image credits: Catlenfell
#31
The life of Harriet Tubman, one of the rare examples of someone who is a household name for being a bada*s who was actually about ten times more bada*s than people know about.
Things she did other than the Underground Railroad:
1) She financed and recruited for John Brown’s Harper’s Ferry slabe revolt raid, and the only reason she didn’t fight in person was she was bedridden with malaria
2) During the Civil War, she joined the Union Army as a cook/nurse
3) She somehow class shifted into a spy/scout and helped Union leaders plan raids into Confederste territory, and she assassinated several Confederates
4) She rose in the ranks until she commanded a small raiding force of 300 Union troops from the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment, the second black US Army unit ever.
5) Her command, Company C, 54th, raided southern plantations, slaughtered slave drivers, and freed captive slaves
6) In the Combahee Ferry raid, where the 54th freed 700 slaves, she was also in command of three Union frigates, and when a Confederate division was advancing on them she fired broadsides from the three naval warships directly into the enemy troops.
7) She survived the war, and immediately turned around and started fighting for women’s suffrage.
Image credits: BlatantConservative
#32
The London Beer Flood of 1814: a 22-foot-tall beer vat blew out and at least 100,000 to as much as 323,000 imperial gallons give or take flooded slum-dwellings, killing 8 people. Five of those people k**led were at the time at a celebration of life service for someone else
Image credits: timmyboyoyo
#33
A Russian tsar had a bomb thrown at him, avoided it, and thought it was a good idea to stay there to look at the damage. Enter second guy with bomb.
Image credits: Headjarbear
#34
Spartan weddings. Basically, young Spartans would train for years in camps, surrounded only by men. So, when the time came for marriage, the women would shave their heads and dress in men’s clothing, since the idea of having s*x with anyone other than a man weirded out the grooms.
Image credits: EquivalentInflation
#35
The allies planted a dead body with fake battle plans to trick the Germans into thinking that the allies were going to attack Sardinia when they were in fact going to attack Sicily.
They built an entire life for this dead, fake, military man, dumped him in the ocean, and successfully distracted the Germans.
Image credits: xubax
#36
In 1985 Philadelphia police bombed a residential neighborhood. The resulting explosion destroyed two city blocks, k**ling 5 children and 6 adults.
Image credits: anon
#37
There are three separate Defenestrations of Prague.
Image credits: aliveinjoburg2
#38
The East German balloon escape.
In 1979, two families escaped East Germany to West Germany by a homemade hot air balloon.
Image credits: MakingWickedBacon
#39
A couple tried to commit insurance fraud and blew up an entire neighborhood in Indianapolis several years ago, k**ling two, injuring several, and destroying over thirty houses.
#40
The “Tamam Shud case“. Shortly after WW2, a well-groomed, athletic man was found dead on an australian beach. There’s no apparent cause of death. It is impossible to identify the man. Some mysterious clues are found. Among them, a book with a cryptic message written into it. Later, they bury his corpse compassionately. Even later, it turns out that he might have been searching for a child he possibly fathered some years ago. And that the mother possibly had been a spy, who had fallen in love with a spy from abroad – the unidentified man, who might have fathered said child with her, back then. As he realized that the mother wouldn’t be meeting him anymore, he would have poisoned himself on the beach. And since he was a spy, he used a poison that doesn’t leave a trace.
#41
The guy from 4chan that said he was going to k**l bin laden with a sword. Got found in the desert in the Middle East with his sword
Edit: got the link from a reply to my comment.
#42
The entire life of Julie d’ aubigny. Bisexual swordmaster, heartthrob turned opera singer who lived her life entirely for the lolz. Beat the s**t out of dudes in sword duels, and doing it topless whenever anyone doubted she was a lady. Got in trouble for making out with ladies at royal balls. Once became a nun to f**k a nun and then set fire to the convent.
S**t is so wild, it’s insane there’s not a blockbuster movie about her.
#43
In July 1518, residents of the city of Strasbourg (then part of the Holy Roman Empire) were struck by a sudden and seemingly uncontrollable urge to dance.
The hysteria kicked off when a woman known as Frau Troffea stepped into the street and began to silently twist, twirl and shake. She kept up her solo dance-a-thon for nearly a week, and before long, some three-dozen other Strasbourgeois had joined in. By August, the dancing epidemic had claimed as many as 400 victims.
The strange episode didn’t end until September, when the dancers were whisked away to a mountaintop shrine to pray for absolution.
The funny thing is that there is not really an explanation for what happened. Explanations range from a medical issues known as “hot blood”, to curses being place on people.
#44
Jeanne de Clisson (1300-1359) was married to a French nobleman who was beheaded for treason by the French King. Enraged, she sold their estate and purchased three black warships with red sails, and became a pirate queen of the English Channel who targeted French ships. She became known as “The Lioness of Brittany” and in her 13 years of piracy she would slaughter every member of a ship’s crew except for one so that last survivor could go back and tell the French king what had happened.
#45
The [Battle for Castle Itter](https://ift.tt/56spi3A) near the end of WWII saw US soldiers, French POWs, and the *German* army fighting on the same side to hold the castle against an SS tank division.
To make it even weirder, the French prisoners included several prime ministers and a tennis star.
#46
The death of Ken Rex McElroy.
He terrorized Skidmore, Missouri for decades. Stalking, assaulting, murdering and r***d two 14 year olds who were his “wives.” He had an expensive attorney so he was never charged. The law never helped the poor town.
One day, the town gathered for a meeting on how to deal with McElroy. Details get a little vague here, but apparently someone alerted the room that McElroy was in the bar up the street. Quietly and calmly, everyone got up and walked over to the bar. As McElroy got into his truck, someone shot him in the back of the head. The town just went back to their business.
When the witnesses (like the entire town) were questioned, everyone claimed they didn’t see anything. No one as ever been arrested.
#47
The Roman emperor Caligula once declared war against Neptune, god of the ocean. He led his soldiers to a beach and instructed them to stab the water.
#48
Due to a military stand off that took years, 15 ships became stranded in an inland sea, and over 8 years formed a multi-national ship-based society that even included it’s own currency.
#49
Start of world war 1
Doomsday cult assassination gone wrong until the driver takes a wrong turn allowing it to go right again
Sets of armed conflict between two countries but those two countries have allies, and those allies have allies, and soon Europe is engulfed in war with countries from around the world participating in what was called at the time, “The Great War,” or “The war to end all wars.” But in reality it was only an appetizer to the all out destruction and human brutality of World War 2.
#50
Harold Holt, the PM of Australia, went for a swim in the ocean in 1967 and was never seen again.
#51
The fact that Ohio and Michigan had a Civil war.
#52
All of the assasination attempts on Castro, only 7 are confirmed, but there are 638 supposed ones. Basically they read like a comedy sketch. The CIA once places a cool sea shell rugged with explosives in a place where they thought Castro would see it, go “oooh cool shell” and pick it up. Despite this genius he died of natural causes.
#53
The Great Locust swarm of 1875. At one point the swarm was measured to be 100,000sq miles and the locust would eat everything in their path, even each other. The swarm was so thick that whenever it passed over an area it would block out the sun.
#54
The 2020 Covid-19 pandemic. The beginning felt like a movie.
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