31 Fascinating Little-Known History Facts

‘More people died during the production of the V2 rocket than were killed by it as a weapon’
31 Fascinating Little-Known History Facts
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Probably because of the looming shadow of standardized tests, the history most people learn in school is brain-numbingly boring. It’s all broad strokes and memorized dates, and none of the details that actually make the past interesting. It’s like if a football game was broadcast from a bird’s-eye view from a thousand feet up, and suddenly it’s just some little dots pushing each other back and forth on a slab of territory.

So, an AskReddit thread requested historians’ favorite lesser-known stories from the past. If these tales had been woven into the scantron-friendly syllabus, they would have easily cracked the glassy-eyed expression I wore through most of my history classes. 

Keep reading to probably find out you like history a little more than you thought.

Fourkoboldsinacoat . 1y ago Between 1864 and 1870 Paraguay fought a war with Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina that by some estimates killed as much as 70% of its population, with up to 90% of its adult male population dying or fleeing the country.
bbbbbthatsfivebees 1y ago A very recent historical fact that is weirdly not talked about as much as it should be -- Microsoft had accumulated such a big monopoly over the personal computer market through the 80s and 90s that in 1997 Microsoft was nearly broken apart by the US government. In an attempt to avoid an investigation, Microsoft invested nearly $150 million into a then-failing Apple Computer to give the US government less ammunition in a potential anti-trust case. This saved Apple from bankruptcy and helped them to become one of the biggest tech companies in history. Microsoft, however, profited off
jxg995 . 1y ago For people in the UK, it's that blackcurrants and blackcurrant flavour are largely unknown in the USA. in the UK, everything purple is blackcurrant flavoured not grape. The reason is blackcurrants carry a fungus that is lethal to white pine, which is one of the USA's top timber exports.
Civil-Resolution3662 . 1y ago The Pony Express lasted only a year and a half.
Genybear12 . 1y ago During the Irish famine the Choctaw Nation from the USA sent financial aid to them and while a small amount at the time it was seen as a great gesture in return during Covid many Irish people donated money to the Navajo Nation to help them. There's a statue in County Cork to commemorate it as well.
. 1y ago . Edited 1y ago More people died during the production of the V2 rocket than were killed by it as a weapon of war.
Idea_not_loading . 1y ago Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin were born on the same day.
1y ago Humans developed agriculture around 12000 years ago. By storing grain, huge numbers of rodents flourished. Cats showed up to eat the rodents, and humans learned that if they took care of the cats, the cats would control the rodents. Therefore, it was the invention of agriculture that led to the domestication of the house cat.
censorized 1y ago The Canadian-Denmark whiskey war was probably the most polite war ever. It involved a small island off the coast of Greenland. The Canadians claimed it by putting the Canadian flag and bottles of Canadian whiskey on the rock, and the Danes would replace it with schnapps and the Danish flag. Both sides reached an agreement to split the island in 2022. I'm guessing this is more well known to Canadians and Danes than some of the rest of us.
treearemadeofbark . 1y ago Mongolian invasion of Japan was stopped by a typhoon. When they tried again, they were stopped by another typhoon. To this day these were the only two typhoons recorded in that place.
redman9000 . 1y ago The Netherlands sends Canada 20,000 tulips every year for liberating them during WW2. The Netherlands also has a cemetery dedicated to Canadian fallen troops.
Cassereddit . 1y ago Edited 1y ago During prohibition, grape concentrate bricks called Vine-Glo were sold. On the packaging, it included a very specific warning: After dissolving the brick in a gallon of water, do not place the liquid in a jug away in the cupboard for twenty days, because then it would turn into wine.
realfakejames 1y ago The magician Harry Houdini hated people who claimed to be psychics and clairvoyants so much that he once testified before congress in an attempt to get fortune readings and things like that made illegal
mom_bombadill 1y ago The orchestra hit sound effect popular in 80s and 90s pop/R&B music like Janet Jackson (and more recently by Bruno Mars) is a sample from Stravinsky's piece The Firebird. So any time you hear the orchestra hit you're hearing Stravinsky
space_llama_karma . 1y ago United Fruit Company (now Chiquita) had the CIA create a successful coup d'état in 1954 against a democratically elected president who was left leaning. The operation was code named PBSuccess.
DevojkaMala . 1y ago In WW2 the soviets played tango music to trapped Germans because they thought it sounded sinister
dolly3900 1y ago William Price After cremating his son in 1884, he was arrested by those who believed cremation was illegal under English Law Не successfully argued that there was no legislation that specifically outlawed it, which paved the way for the Cremation Act 1902 and reintroduced Cremation into society as an alternative to burial.
AudibleNod . 1y ago We have historic proof of the Lewis and Clark expedition because they took with them mercury pills. The mercury passed through their digestive tract and we've run into mercury 'deposits'.
BlastLeatherwing . 1y ago The Statue of Liberty is a monument to the abolition of slavery, which is why there is a set of broken chains hidden near her feet.
NismanNoMurio . 1y ago The Chinese sparrow hunt in 1960. It was to protect crops but it allowed invasions of locusts that no longer had a predator and this caused the great Chinese famine.
Ok-disaster2022 . 1y ago Stegasaurous died out 145 million years ago, T Rex 72-65 million years ago, the Stegasaurous was as old to the T-Rex as the T-Rex is to us.
SpidermanBread a 1y ago The reason we have coal is because trees weren't biodegradable back then, so it just underwent the geological proces and formed underground under pressure and high temperatures. The fungus that breaks down trees, only evolved 40 million years ago
limbodog . 1y ago Humanity was likely nearly wiped out about 900,000 years ago when our ancestors were reduced to about 1280 breeding individuals and stayed around that many for 117,000 years.
NT° space_llama_karma . 1y ago Many people know about Neanderthals, but there were also other human species as well. Homo heidelbergensis and Denisovans the other ones that we know of that exited in the time of Homo Sapiens.
Reach-for-the-sky_15 . 1y ago In the early 1900s, the Tennessee Children's Home Society was an illegal orphanage that kidnapped babies from poor households and sold them.
greenwood90 . 1y ago Antarctica wasn't officially confirmed as a continent until 1820. Meaning that humans confirmed Uranus as a planet 40 years before Antarctica was confirmed as a continent
Vulcan_Jedi . 1y ago Thomas Jefferson created his own version of the Bible by hand that removed the whole first testament and any and all mentions and references to miracles and the supernatural. It's called a Jefferson Bible and you can still get them.
notanybodyelse 1y ago When the Waikato tribes had overextended VS Taranaki tribes the future Mãori King Potatau Te Wherowhero realised they were being lured into an ambush and tried to call his allies back. It would have turned into a rout but he took up a ko (gardening stick - he didn't even have his weapons with him) and struck down enemy chiefs in single combat repeatedly, till both sides stopped to watch, and retired for the day. No wonder they chose him to be the first King.
RickHard0 1y ago When there are talks about colonization, the countries that always come to mind are England, Spain and France. It's pretty weird for me that most people forget the Netherlands and Portugal as they both had very impactfull collonies around the world. I could understand if the case was that people would refer first to the oldest ones but, if that was the case, the Portuguese colonies should be refered as well, as they go as far back as the 1500's
TimeViking 1y ago Edited 1y ago For Americans: the Coal Wars were a series of armed conflicts from the 1890s to the 1930s in which the exploitation of mining workers led to riots and then outright battles between the workers and the armed mercenaries hired by mining companies to terrorize and kill them. It culminated in the Battle of Blair Mountain in 1921, which ended when the United States Army was deployed on domestic soil to eliminate the strikers. And then our nation collectively memory holed it because we wouldn't want other exploited workers to get ideas.
SJSUMichael T 1y ago The guy who negotiated the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo technically had no right to complete the finalized treaty. Polk was unhappy with his negotiations and recalled him, but he ignored Polk's order and continued negotiating. Polk was displeased with the result but submitted the treaty to the Senate anyway. In the end, a divided Senate approved the treaty with an odd assortment of people supporting it for very different reasons and opposing it for very different reasons.

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