32 Bits of History That Will Always Be Hilarious

‘The con man who sold the Eiffel Tower twice and got away with it’
32 Bits of History That Will Always Be Hilarious
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Between all the plagues, wars and other cullings of various populations, history is in dire need of some comic relief. Luckily, that too is available, thanks to the mishaps of our ancestors. After all, idiots exist in every time.

To prove this, Redditors volunteered the bits of history that never fail to make them laugh. The resulting thread is a timeline of slapstick happenings from human history. The people involved might wish they didn’t make it into the record book, but if you lose a war to a bunch of emus, everyone remembers.

lankymjc 2y ago Edited 2y ago Ancient Korea had special recording officials, whose job was to record everything. They were considered separate from the government, so the emperor of the time wasn't allowed to give them orders or tell them not to record something. Of course, some emperors would try anyway. On one occasion, King Taejong (15th century) fell off his horse while hunting. The recorder nearby wrote it down. The emperor insisted that it be removed from the record, and even tried to have the report destroyed. This lead to some nonsense as the emperor kept destroying their work,
drunk_haile_selassie . 2y ago The con man who sold the Eiffel Tower twice and got away with it.
korar67 2y ago During the Napoleonic wars a French ship sank off the coast of Hartlepool England. The only survivor was the captain's pet monkey, which he always dressed in a French military uniform. The locals freaked out because the law was that any French military found on British soil must be executed as a spy. So they ordered the standard punishment spies. Death by hanging. Except instead of dying, the monkey just kept climbing up the rope. Because it was a monkey. Hartlepool has since embraced their failure at executing a tiny primate for military espionage. Their local football
_Norman_Bates 2y ago Edited 2y ago When Persian king Xerxes punished the sea for ruining his bridge. Не tried to build a bridge across the Dardanelles to get to Greece faster but storm destroyed the bridge. Infuriated with the sea, Xerxes ordered his soldiers to punish it by whipping it with chains 300 times and poking it with red-hot irons. Handcuffs were also tossed into the water to symbolize the sea's submission to his authority
DisThrowaway5768 . 2y ago Andrew Jackson taught a parrot how to swear and it had to be removed from his funeral because it upset the attendees.
SayNoToStim 2y ago In 1945 the Americans were pushing through Germany. General Eisenhower sent General Patton a message, instructing him not to take the city of Trier because it would require 4 divisions to seize the city. Patton sent a message back saying Have taken Trier with two divisions... what do you want me to do, give it back?
doublestitch 2y ago Edited 2y ago In 1982 cartoonist Gary Larson drew a cartoon of a caveman giving a classroom lecture, pointing to the spikes of a stegasaurus dinosaur tail and calling that the thagomizer after the late Thag Simmons. That particular arrangement of tail spikes had no name at the time, so scientists who were fans of Larson unofficially named it the thagomizer. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thagomizer
DavosLostFingers . 2y ago In 1866 when going to war, Liechtenstein's army of 80 men came back with 81 men after making a friend from the enemies side
Brookee79 . 2y ago Dennis radar asking the police if they could track him through a floppy disk and them replying no so he sends the floppy disk. Dumbass
AlwaysHappy4Kitties 2y ago The Kettle war. it was the 8th of october 1784.the Dutch kingdom and then Holy Roman Empire had a short naval battle and the only casulty was a kettle full of soup that got hit by a cannonball and that was the only shot that was fired
spacewulf28 2y ago In the 1950s, two guys ended up controlling 98% of the onion market in the US, which was done by convincing the farmers that grew them to sell to them otherwise they would flood the market with onions. A little bit later, they flooded the market with onions to the point where a 50lb bag of onions went for 10 cents, which was less than the bag containing them. These guys ended up making millions off of this, and because of them, trading onion futures in the US is now banned.
Skylair13 . 2y ago Qin Shi Huang managing to back away from Jing Ke's assassination attempt and managing to outrun him by running down the hallway and circling a pillar until his retainers arrived. Yakety Sax worthy moment.
Maso_TGN . 2y ago In the Spanish Civil War, some Nationalist pilots attached live turkeys to supply drops intended for a garrison under siege, so it would slow the fall when they flapped their wings. And we all know that turkey is also delicious.
Sys32768 . 2y ago Rudy Giuliani at the Four Seasons Total Landscaping
SuvenPan 2y ago Edited 2y ago Potatoes were not very popular as a food in France. Like they were seen as fit only for animals. A pharmacist named Parmentier knew they were good food and wanted to popularize them among the working class. Не got a 2 acre farm to grow potatoes and placed armed guards around it. People assumed armed guards meant something very valuable was growing there so they began to steal the potatoes. That's how potatoes became popular in france's working class.
ExquitsiteLibertaria . 2y ago Edited 2y ago The Erfurt latrine disaster Nobles of the Holy Roman empire congrugate to discuss the burial of a deceased noble but end up breaking the floor due to their weight and drown in a latrine cesspit.
ACNOLAN WS WiseScholar07 2y ago The experimental bat bomb of WWII comes to mind. Briefly, it was a canister/bomb filled with hundreds of bats carrying small timed incendiary devices. The bombwas to be dropped over Japanese cities at night. A parachute would deploy and the bomb would release the bats. At sunrise the bats would seek shelter, lodging in the eaves of wooden structures. The resulting widespread fires would cause havoc and destruction. The bat bomb was developed and tested (at a cost of $2 million) but was never actually used against Japan. I think it was a pretty funny
Saythatfivetimesfast . 2y ago During the Salem trials a farmer sued a snail because it was loitering on his land, on Sunday when the snail did not show up it was marked as absent and guilty
fly1away . 2y ago In WWII the Germans built a fake airfield (with wooden fake planes) as a decoy in Holland. When they'd finally finished it, the British dropped a wooden bomb on it.
ContactHonest2406 . 2y ago That time Fabio got hit in the face by a goose on a rollercoaster.
UsernamesSpusernames 2y ago Everyone mentioning the Emu Wars - not even Australia's funniest moment in history. Harold Holt was the country's Prime Minister in 1967 when he went for a swim in the ocean and went missing, presumed drowned ... 2 years later they named the Harold Holt Memorial Swimming Pool.
Valuable-Banana96 2y ago During the Song dynasty, there was a poet and government official named Su Dongpo. One day he sent to his friend Chan Master Foyin, a Daoist priest on the other side of the lake he lived near, this poem: Bowing, Heaven within Heaven, I am the light that illuminates the boundless universe. The eight winds cannot move me, who am seated mindfully upon the purple golden lotus. Foyin sent a response message: FART
GeneralMyGeneral 2y ago In British India there was a little problem with cobras. The obvious solution was to put a bounty on them. The only problem was that the price for each cobra the British were offering was greater than the cost of breeding and raising a cobra. The result was people breeding tons of snakes to claim the bounty. When the government realized what was happening they scrapped the whole program. People raising the now worthless cobras set them loose. The end result was a big cobra problem.
korar67 . 2y ago Edited 2y ago During the Mexican American war there was one particular battle where both sides had cannons and gunpowder, but due to a logistical fuck up only one cannon ball between them. So they spent the entire battle firing the same cannon ball back and forth at each other.
Freakoffreaks 2y ago The Austrian army attacking itself in 1788, also known as the Battle of Karánsebes. It basically started out as a fight over schnapps between different units of the (multi-lingual) army which escalated into a full scale skirmish. Soldiers calling each other Turci (used as a slur as the Austrians were fighting the Ottomans at the time), as well as calls to stop the fight (Halt! Halt) being understood as Allah! Allah! didn't help.things either. The casualties of the battle are said to be up to 10,000 dead, depending on which account you believe.
2y ago The assassination of President James Garfield. Look it up it would make a great movie. The guy who shot him told him he would do it. For years. Even watched the President as he slept. The assassin's wife divorced him because it was all he would talk about and he even built small models of places he was going to commit the crime at. She actually told him that he as all talk and that he was never going to do it. At his trial he represented himself, and cross examined himself and witnesses. Even going so
Anarchaeologist . 2y ago Napoleon was forced to flee from an army_of rabbits
PerPuroCaso 2y ago That one guy in Pompeii that survived the outbreak of the Vesuvius just to be crushed by this huge boulder hurtling through the air. It's the 79AD version of being crushed by a falling piano.
tanksandthefunkybun 2y ago The small German town of Rothenburg has wheels heavily featured on its coat of arms. In the 17th century it was under attack and faced almost certain destruction. Before the invading army decimated the town the general took a tour through their famously beautiful cathedral. The main hall of this cathedral was covered in the town coat of arms. The general looked around and said something to the effect of I wish I could take the cathedral back home with me and without missing a beat the priest said you can, it has wheels! The general laughed
UnabashedPerson43 . 2y ago Cold War era Russian swimmers injecting air into their asses before a race and farting it out during the race in an attempt to gain an advantage.
UnzippedButton 2y ago They couldn't hit an elephant at this distance. Last words of Union Gen. John Sedgwick just before being killed instantly by a headshot from a Confederate sharpshooter
No Ride 9358 2y ago When potatoes first arrived in Russia and Peter I ordered people to grow them and eat them. They ended up eating the flowers and many people died because of food poisoning. They began anti-potato protests which really confused the government. After a while Peter I realized what the problem was and then had to send people with instructions on how to eat potatoes.

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