34 Historical Facts We Bet Were Never In Your History Books

11Australian Bombing During WW2

Australian Bombing During WW2

Japan bombed Australia during World War 2. In the initial raid on Darwin (1942-02-19) they dropped more bombs than on Pearl Harbour, although the loss of life was far lower. They conducted ~100 raids on Northern Australia over the next 2 years.


12New Madrid fault

New Madrid fault

One of the largest fault lines in America isn't in California but in Missouri. The New Madrid fault triggered a series of earthquakes in the area in 1811-1812 that not only destroyed homes, livestock, and natural habitat but created a crater that became the Reelfoot Lake. In December 1990, residents in the New Madrid area and surrounding counties were warned about a possible earthquake happening that would destroy the area. Schools were canceled, businesses closed for the day, and some people evacuated. Nothing happened. The New Madrid fault still occasionally has minor earthquakes, and there are still studies that say there is a chance it could cause a quake that could destroy parts of Missouri and the surrounding states.


13The Suffragists Night of Terror

The Suffragists Night of Terror

The night of November 15, 1917, is known as ‘The Suffragists Night of Terror.’ 33 women fighting for the right to vote were picked up from in front of the White House and put in prison. They suffered beatings, being forced to stand/hang all night with their hands tied above their heads, being thrown around and smashed into iron furniture, and humiliation at the hands of guards. One woman was knocked out after having her head bounced off an iron bench and her cellmate became so distraught (under the impression the unconscious woman was dead) that she suffered a heart attack. She was denied medical care until the next morning. These women were picked up off the street and thrown in jails where they were abused with no access to the council, all because they dared to ask Woodrow Wilson to allow them to vote.


14Claudette Colvin

Claudette Colvin

Rosa Parks was a plant. A 16-year-old pregnant girl named Claudette Colvin refused to give up her seat months before Rosa Parks did. In fact, she knew Rosa Parks personally. The problem was that an underage pregnant girl who resisted arrest violently (she scratched one of the officers who was removing her from the bus) was a hard sell for the face of a civil rights movement. The case went to trial, and MLK and the company supported her as much as they could, but they didn't try to get it national attention. Instead, they simply recreated the scenario with Rosa Parks, a respectable member of society who was cool and calm when getting arrested.


15Warwolf Trebuchet

Warwolf Trebuchet

The construction and use of the Warwolf was supposedly the largest trebuchet ever built. When it was disassembled it would fill up 30 wagons. King Edward the first built it to siege a Scottish castle, but before it was even built, the Scottish people tried to surrender. To which Edward responded with a prompt no (in actuality he responded with “You do not deserve any grace, but must surrender to my will” in other words, I built this trebuchet over 40 days and I am most definitely going to use it) and proceeded to use the trebuchet anyways.


16Galvarino

Galvarino

Galvarino was a Chilean warrior who had both his hands cut off by the conquistadors for raising arms against the Spanish. Instead of letting himself serve as a message of helplessness in the face of the invaders, he strapped swords to his stumps and went on the warpath. One theory states that when he got defeated again, the Spanish were impressed by him and offered him to surrender, but he spit in the commander’s face so they literally fed him to their dogs.


17Dying is Illegal Here

Dying is Illegal Here

During the early 20th century, there was an outbreak of Spanish flu in the Americas which caused large amounts of suffering and death among afflicted throughout the world. Eleven victims were claimed by the flu living in the town of Longyearbyen in the North Sea. However, the very cold temperature there created a layer of permafrost at burial depth which accidentally preserved remnants of the flu. This made it illegal to die there as turning up the ground would likely re-release the disease. However, scientists studying epidemics such as the Spanish flu use samples from deceased in Longyearbyen.


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18The Picnic Battle

The Picnic Battle

The Battle of Bull Run, during the American civil war, was called “The Picnic Battle”, because so many civilians from Washington went on picnics on the sidelines and watched. But once the battle actually started, and the Union started losing, they all ran away, running over injured soldiers and dead bodies and generally disrupting the battle. Picnics like these were actually a relatively common thing during the Civil War and happened at Gettysburg too.


19Bat Bombs

Bat Bombs

A dentist friend of Eleanor Roosevelt proposed bat bombs. He said that not only were the Japanese terrified of bats, but bats could also roost in difficult to access areas of Japanese buildings. Combine this with a timed incendiary device and the wood-and-rice-paper construction of Japanese buildings would cause catastrophic damage. The Army Air Force spent six months trying to build bat bombs and achieved little aside from burning down the test range at Carlsbad Army Air Field Auxiliary Air Base when some of the bats escaped, nested under a fuel tank, and exploded 6,000 miles from the intended target. After the debacle at Carlsbad, the USAAF fobbed the project off to the Navy, who wisely passed it along to the Marines. To everyone's surprise, the Marine Corps was able to get the project to work, even carrying out a successful test at Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah. Unfortunately, the project lost out to the atomic bomb and was canceled in early 1944.


20Phantom Turd

Phantom Turd

The Apollo 10 mission was involved in several mysteries, from spooky “music” heard by the crew on the far side of the Moon, to the ongoing search for Snoopy and possible recent sightings of its long-lost S IV-b stage. However, the most fascinating mystery of Apollo 10 has to be the infamous “Rogue Turd Incident.” A mysterious piece of turd appeared out of nowhere and was spotted by Commander Tom Stafford. He was heard saying “There’s a turd floating through the air.” Within the 500-page-plus transcript of the Apollo 10 mission, pages 414-415 detail the astronaut’s encounter with a floating turd. The culprit remains a mystery to this day.

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