Throughout history, thousands of the most incredible facts have been installed in popular memory, making them public knowledge. However, from the most ancient times to the modern era, the most dreadful, bizarre, strange, and even unexpected events have plagued human history pages. The problem is, these stories are rarely common public knowledge.
Learning centers around the world usually teach with a pre-approved syllabus. These books typically give only a very general idea about how events in history used to occur. What is worse, they usually sweeten the narratives' details to hide the goriest and gratuitous details to give a new air of magnificence and glory to events that were not so.
This way of teaching history can be considered a very wrong fact since the dates and names of those involved are sometimes simply not enough. Sometimes it is necessary to know all of the crazy, bloody, brutal, and downright disturbing details to better understand situations. No one can deny that those who do not understand history are condemned to repeat it.
Often the truth far exceeds the fiction, and it can be stranger as well. This sentiment can be seen in historical records, with events ranging from two opposing forces that come together to defend tennis players to how a company that manufactures soft drinks can become a threat to world peace.
Now it's the perfect time to learn about 10 Disturbing History Facts They Don't Teach You In School:
10. The infamous Victorian Pictures Of The Dead
With all the current era advancements in science, technology, and medicine, it is very difficult to think about how death was an extremely common event for families until the 1940s.
Mourning is a feeling that can manifest itself in different ways because people do their best to try to remember what their loved ones were like when they were alive. Now, what do you think could happen if you mix this tragic feeling with the increasingly common adoption of photography?
The answer lies in the gloomy world of Victorian Corpse Photography.
This practice - quite disturbing if you think about it - used to place the bodies of recently deceased relatives in bodily postures. It was even worse; they try to mimic the facial expressions they used to have when they were alive, somewhere between rigor mortis and decomposition. Once this was done, several photographs were taken. They could even include other family members posing next to the person who had passed away.
One of the saddest realities of this practice was that these photographs were often taken of children, as infant mortality was terribly high in the Victorian era. In these cases, it was often perceived as disrespectful to put the body in various poses and even use glue to keep the eyes open. Therefore, they were usually positioned in such a way that they gave the impression of being sleeping peacefully.
Additionally, when this practice began to be carried out at the time in history, photography was becoming more accessible to people, so these disturbing images were often the first and only time that families could have a picture of them. Therefore, these photographers gave these people the opportunity to have a permanent memory of their deceased relative's appearance.
As infant mortality rates fell and people had much more access to home family photographs, this practice declined until it completely disappeared.
9. The nearly-40-minutes War
When you think of war, it is impossible not to assume that conflicts spanned long historical periods. But, where are the wars that felt on the shorter side like the one that lasted about 38 minutes?
No, we are actually not exaggerating. We are really talking to you about the incredibly short Anglo-Zanzibar War that occurred at the end of august in 1896, between Great Britain and, of course, Zanzibar. The details of this curious war, despite its particularly short duration, actually are quite fascinating.
somewhere around 1890, Great Britain decided that Zanzibar would now be under their command without consulting this country's opinion. By 1893, Britain imposed a puppet Sultan named Hamad bin Thuwaini to rule Zanzibar. All went well for three years when he suddenly died.
This made everyone wonder who would now rule. The answer: Khalid bin Bargash. This new leader moved into the palace, but there were strong suspicions that he had poisoned Thuwaini.
However, the main problem was not this, but Britain discovered that Bargash supported the entire national sentiment against Great Britain. After he was warned many times about an imminent war if he did not resign, the British diplomats decided to make a massive display of their power and strength to change things.
However, Khalid secured the palace using all the armaments and ships granted by Great Britain, along with some 3,000 men. However, this did not represent competition for HMS Philomel and HMS Rush, which were already close. Of the place. The next day, these ships were joined by two additional warships.
Finally, on the morning of August 27, 1896, orders arrived for an attack to begin. Britain destroyed almost all of Khalid's loyal forces within the first two minutes, and the palace was reduced to rubble. The attack lasted for an additional 36 minutes, even though Khalid had withdrawn by the time he had started it all, leaving the loyalists fighting without any support, which ended with 500 kills on his side. Meanwhile, the British forces had only one seriously wounded man.
In the final minutes, the Sultan's flag was lowered, causing the bombardment to cease. Britain regained Zanzibar's possession, while Khalid fled to Germany, where he was captured again in 1916 during WWI. When he was arrested, he was tried and exiled to St-Helena. Over the years, he was allowed to enter East Africa again, where he remained until his death in 1927.
8. Do you want to attract flies? Egyptian slaves can help you
Maybe nobody likes flies, as they are annoying. It is no secret to anyone that Pharaoh Pepi II (2284 BC c.2216 BC) hated them more than anyone. So he had to solve this problem, and he found a particular solution for it.
The only resource that was not scarce was slaves. Then Pepi II gave the order that several slaves should remain near him, completely naked and, the cherry of the ice cream: covered in honey and sweat. His intention was for the flies to be attracted to the slaves and to stay away from him.
At the end of each "shift," the slaves ended up covered in thousands of sores, bites and boils caused by the large number of different insects that attacked them daily. Meanwhile, the pharaoh remained practically intact.
Anyone can also assume that many of these slaves ended up dying due to diseases transmitted by insects through each bite, such as malaria. Not to mention how exasperating all the bites must have been.
In the end, this was just one more way to turn slavery into something much more horrifying than before.
7. The 6th Largest Military Force around the world belonged to Pepsi
Although it seems a bit strange to associate the military industry with a soft drink. The truth is that at one point in history, Pepsi had the 6th largest fleet of submarines and warships in the entire world, but how did this happen?
To answer this, we must turn to the time of the cold war. In 1959, Pepsi arrived in the Soviet Union, and citizens were able to taste it for the first time during the American National Exhibition. A few years later, the USSR made a deal with Pepsi, exchanging this delicious drink for vodka because its currency was not accepted around the world.
Everything was going great with this deal, until it was time to renew the contract for the 1980s, and the vodka was simply no longer serving as payment. This was because the US was rejecting products of Russian origin in its market. As the USSR was desperate for Pepsi, they made a new deal: they would pay them with 17 submarines, a destroyer, a frigate, and a cruiser.
The jokes were not long in coming: Pepsi, single-handed, was taking care of disarming a collapsing USSR faster than anyone before. Eventually, Pepsi sold its entire military fleet for scrap to reinvest this money in their own company.
6. Rabbits once humiliated Napoleon
Although you could claim that Napoleon's greatest defeat was at Waterloo, you would be partially correct, as, in this battle, Napoleon had to face the joint forces of various countries. This defeat, although it was devastating, it was not so humiliating, but if we changed all those enemies for rabbits, it would be, and that is what really happened.
In mid-July 1807, after signing some treaties to end the conflict between France and Russia, Napoleon thought that it would be a good idea to organize a rabbit hunt as a celebration. He gave the order to his Chief of Staff. For this reason, about 3000 rabbits were collected and caged to be later released.
Napoleon and other high-ranking military men prepared for the hunt, so they took the field where the rabbits were caged, and the rabbits were released.
As the military strategist that he was, Napoleon was prepared for the rabbits to quickly run in all directions to escape the hunt. However, these little furry creatures decided to attack en masse the leader of the most powerful empire of that time.
Everyone scoffed as Napoleon desperately fled from the horde of rabbits until they noticed that the emperor was in serious trouble, so they tried to help with little success. Finally, Napoleon managed to escape by entering his carriage with some rabbits still hanging from his clothes, which he rode off at that very moment.
This did not stop the rabbits, who continued the chase until the carriage became faster than the rabbits. Although this event was hilarious for anyone other than Napoleon, anyone would wonder why the rabbits decided to do this.
The explanation is quite simple: The Chief of Staff decided that hunting and catching that many rabbits in that short amount of time was a very complicated task, so he opted to buy domesticated rabbits. By chance of fate, Napoleon resembled the man who used to feed him, so the rabbits only chased this leader to be fed after starving in cages all day.
5. Some people collected their Civil War pensions in June 2020
The US Civil War was a historical event that occurred between 1861 and 1865. And although it seems like a very distant time from modern times, more than one person would raise their eyebrows if they discovered that the last person who participated in this battle died in 1953.
Civil War pensions were not only paid to veterans but also to their immediate families. While the last widow left this world in 2009, the only people who could receive this payment were veterans' children.
Irene Triplett was one of these. She was the daughter of a man who fought for both the Union and the Confederate States, which left him socially excluded from both fronts. Triplett received this pension until June 3, 2020, after losing her life at 90 due to complications originated from a badly broken hip.
If you are one of those who enjoy doing accounts, this would mean that she was born in 1930, so what was her father's age when she was born? Well, it turns out that her dad was 83 years old and, during the great depression, he had married his second wife, and she was 34 years old. These types of marriages were actually pretty common since this type of pension really offered significant security in finances.
Irene's father passed away in 1938, and her mother in 1967, which left her the pension entirely. What is even more curious is that Irene Triplett was barely getting just $73.13 for this pension at the time of her death.
4. The Lake Peigneur disaster
In Southern Louisiana, there was a small lake called Lake Peigneur, which also had a small channel that connected it to the Gulf of Mexico. Still, people only used it for fishing for trout.
However, under this lake was a large salt mine, which was active. These types of mines are created under similar conditions as oil reserves, which aroused the interest of Texaco.
In the late 1980s, this company was doing some drilling to find out if they would find oil and when they could extract it. Still, they made a mistake by not correctly calculating the location of the salt mine. In an instant, the drill pierced the mine, and the water rushed in, dissolving the salt completely and making the hole even larger than before, causing much more water to enter, dissolving more salt in an endless loop.
Suddenly, a chain reaction occurred without anyone being able to stop it. The speed at which all this was happening caused the rig to collapse inside the lake. The workers managed to escape at the last second before a tragedy struck.
The force of the water constantly increased the size of this hole. At the time of this accident, the mine was full of workers stacked at about 4.5 km below the ground, and they had no idea what was happening. Still, when they noticed that there was a large amount of water falling from the roof, they managed to evacuate at the exact moment.
However, the giant whirlpool had now swept away all areas near the lake, uprooting vegetation, causing landslides, and several boats were swept away as well. The city that was near the lake also collapsed, affecting not only the homes but also the botanical gardens of the city.
At this point, 64 acres had been washed into the lake. The channel began to flow in the opposite direction, filling the lake and creating a new waterfall. This chaos lasted for a week until everything calmed down. The mine reopened after several months but eventually had to be closed due to its damage. Texaco then had to pay more than $ 30 million to the mine owner and almost $ 14 million to the botanical gardens.
Although no humans were physically harmed in this accident, the lake's fauna had a tragic fate.
3. The Opium Rise
During the 18th and 19th centuries, diarrhea was an everyday problem for many people, and a variety of different illnesses caused it. At that time, a very particular way of solving this significant problem emerged: opium.
It turns out that opium caused constipation among those who used it, and this became the perfect aid to solve the problems below. When this solution became popular, people were demanding more and more opium. Everyone in the family consumed their dose of opium, from the very young to the elderly.
This caused opium to become very profitable quickly and caused many people to become addicted to it. Although diarrhea is often treated as a joke today, it has killed millions of people in the past. It even continues to do so in some countries today.
However, addiction was a major side effect of this treatment. This is quite similar to what happened when children were given alcoholic beverages, such as ales, at too young an age in the past, as they became alcoholic. The medical benefits (such as removing germs from the water) were more important than the short-term health consequences.
As a bonus, many of the current diarrhea treatments contain opiates because they are still manufactured on the principle of causing constipation.
2. The Bizarre Attack Of The Dead Men
During the First World War, in 1915, the Russian army was defending the Osowiec Fortress, but the German army was under siege. The Germans decided to make a quick maneuver. They attacked this fortress with a large number of projectiles in order to move away or eliminate the Russian forces to take this position. However, they failed in the attempt.
Seeing this, the Germans tried to do it again with much more powerful and larger weapons, which should have assured them a clean victory. However, the Russians were still in their defensive position. The Germans could not believe it, so they decided to give it one more try, launching canisters loaded with chlorine gas simultaneously as they launched projectiles since they knew that the Russians did not have gas masks in this fortress in order to protect themselves.
The Germans were satisfied after hearing a lot of screaming. Then nothing except absolute silence, so they began to advance. The problem was that, in doing so, they were attacked by a large number of "Zombiefied" men, who definitely could not have survived. These were covered in chemical burns, their eyes were completely red from the gas, and they were coughing up significant amounts of blood. Yet, the Russian forces managed to make their attackers fully retreat.
While the Germans withdrew from the fortress, completely terrified by the Russian soldiers' appearance and resistance, the latter kept defending the fortress for two more weeks after they finally abandoned the place.
1. The improbable union of the Americans, Germans, and French during WWII
This is probably one of the strangest facts in history. It seems impossible that at some point both the Axis and the Allied forces fought together, hand in hand, with two former French Prime ministers, a renowned tennis player, and the sister of Charles de Gaulle. Well, prepare to be surprised.
In Austria, they used to hold high-profile POWs in a castle called Schloss-Itter. At the beginning of May 1945, a secret member of the resistance warned the allied forces about what was happening in this castle.
For their part, the American troops who received this message made it known to the chain of command's senior members. Thus, a heavily armed division arrived to help rescue the prisoners the next day. However, they encountered heavy resistance, so they had to stop.
The SS forces, who until then had control of the castle, decided to abandon their posts after discovering the invasion of the army. For their part, the prisoners took over since they were unaware of the rescue attempts and took the weapons they found. After this, they decided to send the cook to ask for help from Austria. The cook was successful and managed to establish contact with some soldiers of the Wehrmacht,
These soldiers had been fighting for Germany but had recently made the decision to join the Austrian resistance, so they ended up joining forces with American troops near the site.
Subsequently, the Austrian soldiers made their way to the castle, in the process facing the SS troops. At the same time, the prisoners of war found themselves increasing the defenses within the castle.
However, these prisoners were disappointed because the rescue force was very small. Although they were grateful, in the end, most of the vehicles that would help them get out of there did not make it to the place, so they turned around.
The day after this rescue attempt, some 150 Waffen-SS troops decided to attack the castle. The problem is that the prisoners and the soldiers who defended them faced significant difficulties. Although they tried to contact more resistance groups in the area to receive more support, they could only facilitate two infantrymen with minimal experience and preparation.
The Americans managed to contain much of the attack by placing a tank at the castle entrance. Still, it was only for a time as it was eventually destroyed. It is then that Jean Borotra, the tennis star, was sent to jump the walls in order to get a message to all the American military forces that were in the area.
In the middle of that afternoon, aid forces arrived, managing to take about 100 SS soldiers as prisoners. The best part was yet to come, as two days after this infamous battle, Germany ended up signing its official surrender, ending this war in Europe.
