5 Of The Most 'Wuh?' Facts History Class Never Covered

He had 48 sheep grazing on the White House lawn for passerby to marvel at. Wilson knew the idyllic image would be powerful. He wanted people to see him doing his part for the war effort. The idea was that the sheep would eat the lawn, thus cutting the cost of trimming it, and he could shear them to raise money for the Red Cross.

The problem was that cars in D.C. scared the sheep sick -- literally. According to reports at the time, the sheep kept getting the "dips," which was probably as gross as it sounds. Wilson didn't want a bunch of sick sheep on display, so he moved them to the back lawn, which they promptly destroyed. He then moved them back to the front lawn, but had to frantically build the fence he should've had in the first place.

Jewish support for Hitler and the Nazi party dates back to the earliest days of the movement. The most prominent group was the Association of German National Jews. They believed they could convince the Nazis that they were Germans first and Jews second, and they even agreed with the Nazi persecution of Ostjuden (Russian Jews). Contemporaries joked that at Nazi rallies, the group would shout "Down with us!" Their leader was Max Nauman, who supported the Nazis right up until he was sent to a concentration camp in 1935.

The Nazis never courted any Jewish groups as a cover to "prove" they weren't antisemitic. They never touted anyone as their Jewish friend to deny accusations. Hitler said things like "With satanic joy in his face, the black-haired Jewish youth lurks in wait for the unsuspecting girl whom he defiles with his blood." And yet the Association of German Jews somehow still thought that hey, maybe this guy isn't so bad after all.

Even Hitler's personal chauffeur, SS officer Emil Maurice, was Jewish according to the Nazi racial laws. He had to be declared an "honorary Aryan" to stay a Nazi. But none rose higher than Erhard Milch, a field marshal in the Luftwaffe. He had a Jewish father, which the Nazis lied about, claiming he was instead the product of incest. You know it's bad when "No no, he's just inbred!" is the preferred explanation.

Weirdly, the main ingredients in the witches' ointment bore some resemblance to tomatoes. There was widespread skepticism about New World crops in Europe, and people simply did not trust tomatoes. Are they a fruit? Are they a vegetable? Are they safe to eat? Does consuming them seal an unholy pact with Beelzebub? People had a lot of questions, and they thought they'd found the answer to the last one in the medical knowledge of ancient Greece.

See, an ancient physician named Galen first described a mystery plant whose name was hard to translate, but probably meant "wolf-something." His drawing resembled a tomato plant, and by 1561, Europeans decided the tomato was this wolf plant. Even after Italians and Spaniards started incorporating tomatoes into their diet, the French and English remained firmly in the "tomatoes are Satanic" camp for a stupidly long time.

American slavery was unique both because of its racial characteristics and the fact that it was hereditary. For African Americans and their descendants, slavery was a condition of their existence, because only black people could be slaves. Race, however, is an arbitrary concept, and nothing highlighted that more than the American notion that having any black ancestors made one black. There were people considered black slaves if they were as little as 1/64 "black." This meant that in racially mixed areas such as New Orleans, there were plenty of slaves who looked very white.

Abolitionists started highlighting "white" slaves in popular magazines. An 1864 issue of Harper's prominently featured a picture of white children recently freed from New Orleans.

O Arabs, do you see that the time of the Dajjal has come? Do you recognize him, the fat, curly-haired Jew who deceives and rules the whole world and who steals the land of the Arabs? ... O Arabs, do you know the servant of God? He has already appeared in the world and already turned his lance against the Dajjal and his allies ... He will kill the Dajjal, as it is written, destroy his places and cast his allies into hell.

Amazingly, Muslims didn't buy this. The whole "holy warrior rising up for a mythical battle" thing didn't really click with the toothbrush mustache.

For more, check out How One Escaped Slave Changed The American Civil War Forever:

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