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15 Votes
Just before George Washington died in 1799, he allegedly said he would never set foot on English soil ever again”. So, when they erected his statue in London, they had to put US soil under his foot to honour that claim.
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15 Votes
During the coronation of Napoleon in 1804, he went against the tradition and crowned himself instead of having the Pope put the crown on his head. He wanted to symbolise he is becoming the emperor on his own merits and not by the will of God.
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15 Votes
Justinian II of Byzantine Emperor was called “the slit nosed”. His nose was cut off in 695 to stop him from seeking the throne as tradition prevented mutilated people from imperial rule. He replaced his nose with solid gold prosthesis and retook the throne in 705.
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15 Votes
The oldest continuously run business in the world is a hot spring hotel in Japan that’s been in operation since 705 A.D!
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118 Views29 Votes
German theoretical physicist Max Planck was told by his professor not to go into Physics as “almost everything is discovered already”. So Planck said he did not want to discover anything & just wanted to learn the fundamentals. He went on to originate Quantum theory & won a Nobel Prize.
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29 Votes
Imperial China had strict laws on how one depicts the dragon in the artwork. Commoners can only draw three claws. Nobility and high officials can use four and only the Emporer could use five. He could execute you for treason if you get caught using five claws.
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30 Votes
In 1925, Victor Lustig, a conman in France, impersonated a government official and managed to sell the Eiffel Tower twice.
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30 Votes
High-class women from Tudor time isolated themselves in the dark for a period of time before they give birth. They called this period “Lying in”. No men were allowed in their rooms. They believed being exposed to light could harm the eyes of the mother.
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246 Views44 Votes
When Christoper Columbus returned to Spain, he was jailed for mistreating the native population of Hispaniola.
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210 Views43 Votes
Swedish King Gustav III disliked coffee. He believed it was unhealthy. To prove this, he hired identical twins and made one drink coffee every day and the other tea for the rest of their lives. The twins outlived both the doctors and the king himself.
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156 Views43 Votes
King Jadwiga of Poland was the first female monarch in Poland. She was crowned as a king because, in Poland, queens weren’t allowed to rule the country. However, the rule did not specify whether the king had to be a male.
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134 Views43 Votes
Jimmy Carter was the first US president ever to be born in a hospital and the first to graduate from high school in his family.
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231 Views50 Votes
During WWII John F. Kennedy was stranded on a desert island. He carved a distress message into a coconut and managed to have him rescued. He later displayed this coconut in the Oval Office
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138 Views50 Votes
Emperor Henry IV trekked barefoot through the Alps in winter to meet Pope Gregory VII to have his ex-communication lifted.
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164 Views50 Votes
Prince William and Prince Harry pulled a prank on Queen Elizabeth II. They changed her answering machine to say “Hey Wassup?! This is Liz. Sorry, I am away from the throne. For a hotline to Philip, press one. For Charles, press two. For the Corgis, press three.”
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189 Views50 Votes
British spies of World War I used semen as invisible ink. Sir Mansfield Cumming invented this method.
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179 Views57 Votes
“Duckies” was a medieval slang term in English used to describe a woman’s breasts. Henry VIII used “duckies” in his letters to Anne Boleyn.
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229 Views57 Votes
Anne Boleyn’s detached head reportedly tried to talk after her beheading. Called scientific depolarisation, the human brain continues emitting brain waves after the heart stops for several minutes.
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245 Views57 Votes
In 1958, David Isom, a 19 year old broke the colour line in a segregated pool in Florida. Isom said he was treated like “any other citizen” at the pool. However Officials closed the pool shortly after he left “because a n**** has used the facilities”.
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198 Views57 Votes
Carrie Fisher once sent a cow tongue in a Tiffany box to an unnamed predatory producer who assaulted her friend Heather Ross. The box read “ The next delivery will be something of yours in a much smaller box.”
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155 Views58 Votes
Pope Pius II’s “the tale of two lovers”, an erotic novel, was the 15th century’s most popular book.
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558 Views130 Votes
When Yuri Gagarin visited Manchester in 1961, it was pouring down. But he insisted on keeping the roof of the convertible open. He said “ If all these people have turned out to welcome me and can stand in the rain, so can I”
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426 Views134 Votes
CIA planned a false flag attack called Operation Northwood to justify war with Cuba. They called it “Justification for U.S. Military Intervention in Cuba” John F.Kennedy rejected the proposal.
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500 Views156 Votes
Lady Margaret Beaufort was married off to Tudor at the age of 12. She gave birth to Henry VII at just 13. She was used as a political pawn during the Wars of the Roses and her first marriage was at just 3! However, she made sure none of her grandkids married young.
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599 Views155 Votes
For Rome’s Emperor Caligula, killing was fun. He killed men when he felt like it and had affairs with their wives. At one occasion he was to make a sacrifice by killing a bull with a mallet. Instead, he aimed for the priest and laughed as he bled to death.
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643 Views157 Votes
A peace-loving Persian shah called Yazdegerd I disliked war and had cordial relationships with Jews, Christians and the Church of East. He also loved the Romans. He even became the guardian of Theodosius the young Roman Emperor.
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449 Views155 Votes
There is a painting that depicts the moment Cossacks replied to the Ottoman Sultans order of surrender called “Zaporozhian Cossacks”. Cossacks wrote back telling the Ottoman Sultan to “Fuck thy mother”
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61 Votes
Psychologist Henry H. Goddard coined the word “moron” to classify someone with an IQ of 51-70. He said “imbeciles” were between 26-50 and “idiots” were 0-25
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792 Views154 Votes
In Ancient Anatolia, Gyges was the bodyguard of King Candaules. King offered to let Gyges sneak into the bedroom to see the Queen naked. But Queen spotted Gyges and gave him a choice of either kill the king or die. He killed the king and seized the throne.
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557 Views153 Votes
Abraham Lincoln’s son Willie and three other US presidents died due to contaminated water supply to the white house. There wasn’t a sewage system until 1850 and it’s believed the deaths occurred due to parasite from human excrement entered the water supply.
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474 Views153 Votes
John F. Kennedy claimed he did not know about the Great depression and only learnt about it in textbooks while attending Harvard. Kennedy had a privileged upbringing and went to elite schools and was brought up with servants. So he was never affected by the Great Depression.
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1 Shares401 Views155 Votes
Syphilis had many historical names over the years. Turks called it the “Christian Disease”. French called it the “Italian Disease”. German called it the “French Disease” Dutch called it the “Spanish Disease” and in Russia it was the “Polish Disease”.
