21 Historical Events That Sound Made Up

By:
21 Historical Events That Sound Made Up

Movies that are based on true stories nevertheless tend to take liberties with the facts. This may shock you, but Marie Antoinette never wore Converses, no whirlwind star-crossed romances were known to have taken place aboard the Titanic and the cocaine bear just ate a bunch of cocaine and promptly died.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. There are plenty of historical events that are so strange that they require no embellishment to be entertaining. “For example: Immediately after being shot, Theodore Roosevelt continued by giving a 90-minute speech before going to the hospital,” user Aquatax recently told r/AskReddit. (Technically, he spoke for 50 minutes after being shot, and the bullet was slowed so significantly by the steel glasses case and 50-page speech in his jacket pocket that it barely penetrated muscle, but you don’t see us working through gunshot wounds.)

They then asked, “What historical events are so absurd that they would be too strange for a fiction story or a movie?” and honestly, we’d totally watch these.

Tsquare43 . 2y ago Hitler, Tito, Stalin, Trotsky, and Freud were living in the same Vienna neighborhood in 1913

crcgirl 2y ago The Molasses flood in Boston in 1919. It sounds ridiculous but people died.

wizardvictor 2y ago John Adams and Thomas Jefferson both died on the same day. The day? The 50th anniversary of the Fourth of July. Adams's last words were, Thomas Jefferson still survives.

2y ago I find it pretty crazy that there was a time and a place on earth where there were big battles on mounted armored elephants. And where the enemy would use burning pigs to scare the elephants and trigger a stampede. Basically total chaos as you release your burning pigs.

Gadget100 2y ago The Anglo-Zanzibar War, fought between the UK and Zanzibar in 1896. It lasted 38 minutes.

-eDgAR- 2y ago During the siege of Tenochtitlán in 1521, Cortes had a trebuchet built to save on gunpowder. However, the first projectile fired went straight up in the air and landed on it, completely destroying it. It's one of the last recorded military uses of a trebuchet.

drop-in-the-dessert 2y ago The Spanish conquistadors found platinum during their search for gold, and dumped all of it in the sea, because they thought platinum was inferior to silver.

WasteNet2532 2y ago The last known kill by bow and arrow in combat was actually during the battle of Dunkirk, 1940. Jack Churchill landed a well placed arrow into a german soldier's chest Не also chose to carry bagpipes, and a scottish longsword

2y ago My personal favorite: The Cadaver Synod in which the dead body of a former pope was disinterred, propped up on the throne, and then formally tried by The Church to have his papacy retroactively annulled. Predictably, he was found guilty. Then they chucked his corpse in the Tiber.

Supraspinator 2y ago The latrine disaster of Erfurt. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erfurt_latrine_disaster In 1184, the King of Germany Heinrich VI, held court in the Petersberg Citadel in Erfurt. On the morning of 26 July, the weight of the assembled nobles caused the wooden second story floor of the Peterskirche to collapse. Most of them fell through into the latrine cesspit below the ground floor and about 60 of them drowned in liquid excrement.

LincBtG 2y ago Winston Churchill orchestrated a spy organization known as the Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare during WW2, whose mission statement was to set Europe ablaze. Members included lan Fleming, Christopher Lee, and Roald Dahl.

Bedlamcitylimit 2y ago British Secret service created a sabotage device consisting of a dead rat with explosives shoved up it's arse. Back then for safety if you saw a dead rat, you scooped it up with a spade and chucked it into the furnace. This would ignite the explosives and blow up the building enough that the Nazi's would call in their bomb squad for every dead rat.

Sebillian 2y ago Juan Pujol García. WWII spy who won both the German Iron Cross and Order of the British Empire for spying. Не initially approached British Intelligence and offered his services, and was refused. Undeterred, he created the persona of a loyal Nazi supporter, became a German agent, gathered a payroll of fake sub-agents (all bankrolled by Germany), persuaded the German Navy to chase a fake convoy, then finally got recruited by the Allies. Не finally fed misleading info to the Axis about the D-Day landings, causing them to deploy forces to the wrong locations, even after the invasion

galendiettinger 2y ago Yang Kyoungjong was a Korean soldier who was drafted into the Japanese army, captured by the Russians, drafted into the Red Army, captured by the Germans, drafted into the Wehrmaht, then finally captured by the Americans. Oddly, the Americans didn't draft him into the US Army. They sent him to a POW camp in the USA, where he stayed. Не eventually died peacefully in 1992, in Illinois. Не was the only soldier in history known to have fought on 3 opposing sides of the same war.

Rixae 2y ago The Ghost Army. The 1100-man unit was given a unique mission within the Allied Army: to impersonate other Allied Army units to deceive the enemy. From a few months after D-Day, when they landed in France, until the end of the war, they put on a traveling road show utilizing inflatable tanks, sound trucks, fake radio transmissions, scripts and pretense. They staged more than 20 battlefield deceptions, often operating very close to the front lines.

Hyval_the_Emolga 2y ago Battle of Karansebes That time in the 1700s when the Austrian army got confused, waged a huge battle against itself within its own lines, and lost an estimated several hundred to few thousand men (and a lot of equipment and money) in the process. They then retreated. The Ottomans, whom they were originally intending to fight, showed up two days later.

2y ago Benjamin F Wilson was already a WWII veteran when he enlisted in the Korean War. Не had to take a demotion from Lieutenant to private to do so, but he quickly rose back through the ranks. In 1951 he was put in charge of protecting a place that they called Hell Hill, and he knew that an attack was coming, but he remained with his men. Не took a bullet to the leg and then went into a one-man charge to kill 7 and wound 2 Chinese soldiers alone. His men tried to take him for medical

Skorj 2y ago Teddy Roosevelt once had his boat stolen. so he made a new boat from a tree, then went after them. Held them at gunpoint, (he was a deputy) and then took them in to justice. he caught people who stole his boat, by building a new boat then giving chase.

Silver_Alpha 2y ago Edited 2y ago Wojtek, the soldier bear! Не served in the Polish army in WWII, helping his fellow soldiers by carrying heavy creates of ammunition into battle, saving precious time during combat. Не had been recruited as a soldier when his division had to board an English ship which didn't allow animals on board. Outraged, the Polish then made him a soldier and he lived through the war to die of old age in a zoo in 1963.

splitdipless 2y ago Edited 2y ago The Toronto Circus Riot of 1855. The Fire Department and some clowns get into a disagreement at a whorehouse, and get into a punch-up. The clowns win, but the firemen return to the circus later and start attacking in revenge. The firemen win the day but violence is stopped when the militia come in. The police do nothing, so the city fires all the police (and I mean everyone) and starts a new police force.

SugoiBakaMatt . 2y ago May have been said already, but when Napoleon returned to France from his exile, a Regiment of French soldiers were sent by the Coalition Powers to intercept him. Upon seeing them, Napoleon approached and simply said, If you wish to kill your Emperor, here I am. The Commander of the Regiment ordered his men to open fire. Out of the 2,000 soldiers present, not a single one obeyed the order. They all joined Napoleon and marched to Paris with him. Truly a real life Mary-Sue. At least until he was thoroughly beaten and exiled again, permanently

Tags

Scroll down for the next article

Must Read

MUST READ

Forgot Password?