Happy #historyhumpday!! On this beautiful April 25th, were giving you 25 (!) interesting facts that you probably didn’t learn in school.
General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna ordered a full military funeral in 1838 for the leg that he lost by canon fire. To be fair, I would do the same thing.
In his college dorm, Lord Byron kept a pet bear. Yet, I'm not allowed to have a dog in my room - seems unfair? I digress.
The first bomb that fell on Berlin from the Allies in WWII killed the one and only elephant of the Berlin zoo.
In 1929, scientists in Princeton literally turned a live cat into a fully functional telephone.
The longest war in history is between the Netherlands and the Isles of Scilly. It lasted from 1651 to 1986, but, never fear. There were no casualties.
Warner Brothers Entertainment Company was founded a few months before the fall of the Ottoman Empire. Time is a construct!!!!
In 14th century, Su Hui wrote a poem in a 29 x 29 grid. Each line could be read from right to left or from left to right, in both diagonal Xs and in both vertical directions. That means there are 2,848 different ways to read it.
Julius Caesar was kidnapped by pirates who demanded a ransom of 25 pieces of gold for his release. He became mad on the price and said that he was worth no less than 50. We support a person who knows their worth!
Ice age Britons used skulls of the dead as cups.
In ancient Egypt, servants were smeared with honey in order to attract flies away from the pharaoh.
People were buried alive so often in the 19th century that inventors patented "safe coffins" that would give the "dead" the ability to alert those above ground if they were still alive.
In the 15th century Romanian ruler Vlad the Impaler impaled 20,000 Ottoman Turks on long, sharp poles on the banks of the Danube. He also dipped bread in blood and enjoyed eating it. Oh yeah, and he's the inspiration for Dracula.
After finding a 36,000 year old steppe bison preserved in the ice, Alaskan zoology professor R. Dale Guthrie and his team ate some of its flesh. The team said "the meat was well aged but still a little tough.”
Prior to the 1960's, tobacco companies were supported by doctors - they even ran physician-endorsed ads that suggested smoking had health benefits.
Albert Einstein was offered the role of Israel’s second President in 1952, but declined.
Napoleon was once attacked by rabbits.
Poe would write with his cat chilling on his shoulder.
When the Russian Bolsheviks overthrew the provisional government and stormed the Winter Palace in 1917, their revolution was halted for a few days because the Bolsheviks got ridiculously drunk in the Winter Palace after finding the wine stores.
During the American Civil War, a man named W.V Meadows was shot in the eye during the Battle of Vicksburg. Not only did he survive, but he coughed the bullet out of his mouth 58 years later.
King Goujian of Yue placed a row of convicted criminals at the front of his army. Before the battle, the criminals would cut off their own heads to scare his enemy’s army.
The FBI ignored strong evidence of the attack on Pearl Harbor because Hoover didn’t trust the Serbian double agent Dusan Popov, who was apparently a gambling drunk. His nickname was tricycle because of his love of threesomes. He was one of the inspirations for Fleming’s Bond.
A Byzantine emperor, Basil, captured 15,000 Bulgarians in battle and blinded 99 of every 100, leaving the 100th guy with one eye. He then sent them all home.
The mathematician Pythagoras, who discovered the Pythagorean theorem, killed people who didn’t agree with him or disproved him. He convinced people that facing the sun when you urinate is a punishable sin. He also didn’t believe in fractions, or decimals.
Julie D’Aubigny was a famous 17th century French opera singer who once took the holy vows to enter a convent just so she could have sex with a nun. She also had a habit of seducing women at parties, which would lead their husbands to challenge her to a duel. She was an expert duelist and killed 10 men like this.
When Charles Darwin first discovered Galapagos Turtles, he tried to ride them. Apparently, he thought it was too difficult to keep his balance.