31 Wildly Surreal Events from History

‘Harriet the Tortoise saw both Charles Darwin and Steve Irwin in person’
31 Wildly Surreal Events from History
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History is a series of causes and effects. That doesn’t mean, however, that everything always makes perfect sense. Mixed in among the events that make perfect sense are some truly odd happenings.

To that point, Redditors shared a collection of things that happened in history that raise the eyebrows of people both then and now. From borderline ghost stories to warring nations suddenly dropping their arms in favor of watching football, it’s a reminder that we’re a pretty strange species.

Durumbuzafeju . 1y ago The last prisoner of war from WWII returned home in 2000, nearly sixty years after the fighting ended.
BeRad_NZ . 1y ago The Battle of the Eclipse, also known as the Battle of Halys, it took place in the early 6th century BC in Anatolia (present-day Turkey). It involved the Medes and the Lydians. The sudden darkness led both parties to halt the fighting and negotiate a peace agreement, ending a six-year war.
HelicopterNatural . 1y ago Napoleon landing with 1000 men in France and taking back control of the country in 3 weeks without a shot being fired
BorkDoo . 1y ago A Serbian man sticking a bottle up his ass was a major contributing factor to the collapse of Yugoslavia and the subsequent years of war and genocide. Specifically, his blaming it on an attack by a gang of Albanians was a tipping point in allowing pent up nationalist feelings in Yugoslavia to boil over and subsequently explode.
Melenduwir 1y ago The Christmas Truce of 1914, in which soldiers came across the battle lines to sing and play football against each other. Or, more precisely, the way soldiers on both sides went back to fighting when Christmas was over.
DryTown 1y ago The Night the Stars Fell, 1833. A meteor shower so intense fell over the southern United States that people thought the world was ending. Slave owners reportedly repented at the feet of their slaves, begging forgiveness for enslaving them. And then the next day, I suppose, went right back to normal.
mom_with_an_attitude . 1y ago The Great Molasses Flood in Boston in 1919. An enormous storage tank of molasses burst. 21 people were killed and 150 were injured.
Best Lengthiness3137 - . 1y ago There was a battle in WW2 where the Germans fought alongside allied forces against the SS and freed a famous tennis player. The Battle of Castle Itter. lirc the Nazis had surrendered at this point, but there were some SS forces that were still fighting, so the Nazis anericans and Australians teamed up against the SS.
. 1y ago The dancing plague of 1518 is up there
surfer808 1y ago Hard to pinpoint one event but I would say a candidate could be the Tunguska Event of 1908. This incident involved a massive explosion in Siberia, believed to be caused by the airburst of a comet or meteoroid. It flattened an estimated 80 million trees over 2,150 square kilometers, yet incredibly, it caused no confirmed human fatalities. The event's cause remained mysterious for decades, fueling various scientific and fantastical theories, making it a prime candidate for one of the most surreal events in human history due to its scale, mystery, and the dramatic visuals it must have
Fyrrys 1y ago It's two things for me. The fact that there is more time between the first bronze weapons and the first steel weapons that there is between the first steel weapons and nuclear weapons, and that it took us thousands of years to figure out how to fly but less than a hundred more to put a man on the moon.
nugeythefloozey . 1y ago We landed on the Moon, that's pretty surreal to me
Goblindeez_ . 1y ago . Edited 1y ago The US faked vampire attacks in Asia
itsthatmattguy y y y ago Four seasons landscaping
aloe_veracity 1y ago The Dave Matthews Band Chicago River incident. On August 8, 2004, a tour bus belonging to the Dave Matthews Band dumped an estimated 800 pounds (360 kg) of human waste from the bus's blackwater tank through the Kinzie Street Bridge in Chicago onto an open top passenger sightseeing boat sailing in the Chicago River below.
paraworldblue 9 1y ago This may be stretching the definition of an event a bit, but the Cambrian Explosion. It's the period where evolution was just kinda tryin shit out and seeing what happened. The optimal numbers and configurations of limbs, sensory organs, and random appendages hadn't been worked out yet.
fidepus . 1y ago There is some debate if it happened the way it is described, but the Banquet of Chestnuts is a wild story.
. 1y ago The fact that we're able to comprehend abstract things. These ape people can paint or write. Think about love.
Redmudgirl . 1y ago For me, watching the airplanes hit the World Trade Centre seemed surreal.
markth_wi . 1y ago I think the events regarding the 1561 sky battle of Nuremburg really could be mass ergot concern, or amazing as UFO sightings go.
theWunderknabe . 1y ago Perhaps that blinding flash coming out of nowhere the citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki witnessed before their cities got destroyed by it an instant later. No one knew what an atom bomb was back then. It must have seem like the wrath of the gods.
juicy colf . 1y ago Harriet the Tortoise saw both Charles Darwin and Steve Irwin in person.
Tomatoflee . 1y ago The Children's Crusade arriving at the Genoese coast fervently expecting god to part the Mediterranean so they can walk to the holy land must have been pretty surreal. Would have been so interesting to see how they came to terms with the waters not parting. I wonder how long they waited and how their conversations went in that time.
darkaddress 1y ago The Berlin Wall gets more surreal the more I think about it. Sure, let's divide a major metropolitan city with a wall one night. Divide the metro. Build watchtowers. Have dramatically different economical and political systems operating within spitting distance of one another, for more than a generation.
ThePieWizard 1y ago A meteor halting a battle during the 3rd Mithridatic War between Roman Republic and Kingdom of Pontus. According to Plutarch, who was present at the battle: But presently, as they were on the point of joining battle, with no apparent change of weather, but all on a sudden, the sky burst asunder, and a huge, flame-like body was seen to fall between the two armies. In shape, it was most like a wine-jar (pithos), and in colour, like molten silver. Both sides were astonished at the sight, and separated. This marvel, as they say, occurred in Phrygia,
Abuse-survivor 1y ago Joshua Slocum, the first recorded lone circumnavigator, sailed over a place in the ocean, where the water was actually boiling (probably not at the surface, as that would soften up the caulking too muc, I'd guess, but bubbles from deeper down) After he had passed, the Krakatoa detonated, which was actually a global event and caused snow in summer in many regions of the planet. It literally eclipsed the entire planet in darkenss from ash for a certain amount of time. Virtually forgotten now.
No_Pollution_8163 . 1y ago Cadaver Synod 897 AD, they dug out deceased Pope and put his body to trial.
SpidermanBread 1y ago Covid was pretty surreal. The panic, the hoarding, The rejection of totally proven science by a significant amount of people. I think 9/11 and the financial crisis of 07' were the tipping point but covid was the confirmation we're past peak humanity
MajOr-DeCoverley 1y ago The shift to Gregorian calendar, decided in February 1582, but applied at various times in different places. Imagine suddenly skipping a dozen of days; or having a 21 days month, while your neighbors don't; imagine being born during that period, and nobody is quite sure about your birthday.
CatacombsRave . 1y ago In 2006, soldiers on opposite sides of the Ivorian Civil War temporarily stopped fighting to watch their country in the World Cup together. That was said to be instrumental in brokering a peace treaty.
Kieran501 1y ago Edited 1y ago So In the UK there was an highly televised armed standoff with a dangerous fugitive called Raoul Moat. At some point during the standoff retired England football legend Paul Gascoigne turned up very drunk with a fishing rod and some KFC offering to help. He'd never met Moat before but claimed to be an old friend. Gascoigne claims he woke up the next morning with the nagging sense he'd done something stupid but couldn't remember what. As this whole incident unfolded I became convinced the simulation had malfunctioned.

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