50 Funniest Real Events From History Too Hard to Believe

The only war fought between humans and animals was the Australian military vs Emus. In 1932, the Australian military started “The Great Emu War” where they tried to cull emus with machine guns. Six days after the first engagement, 2,500 rounds of ammunition had been fired and no emu was killed. The end result was a forced retreat of Australian troops when they realized they could not kill the Emus cost-effectively due to the birds' positioning tactics.

In the entire state of Ohio in 1895, there were only two cars on the road, and the drivers of these two cars crashed into each other.

In the late 1700s, a letter appeared in major London newspaper complaining that England was being forced to take deported Prussian prisoners. The British were furious and wanted it stopped. The Prussians became upset because the uproar implied that England was too good for Prussian prisoners. Both governments became involved, and they were on the brink of war before it all unraveled as a hoax. The original letter, it was learned years later, had been written by Benjamin Franklin, who was spending six months in England as an ambassador and was simply bored, just stirring up trouble and sitting back and watching.

The first “Mooning” in recorded history was 66 A.D., where a Roman soldier mooned Jewish pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem. This caused a riot, an over-response by the Roman military, and the death of thousands.

In 1821, Greece was under the control by the Turks. In Greece's fight for independence, a Turkish garrison was besieged by Greek fighters on the Acropolis. When the Turks were running short on bullets, they began to dismantle the marble columns to use the lead within as bullets. The Greeks sent them ammunition with the message: “Here are bullets, don't touch the columns.”

Early in the Spanish Civil War, there was a Nationalist garrison under siege. Having local air superiority, Nationalists decided to airdrop supplies. The humor comes from their chosen method of making sure the packages got to the ground without being damaged. They didn't use a parachute, but instead, they strapped a turkey to each package. It couldn’t carry the load, but it could slow it a bit on the way down and unlike a parachute, you can eat a turkey.

During Liechtenstein’s last military engagement in 1886, none of the 80 soldiers sent were injured, and 81 returned, including a new Italian 'friend' they made along the way.

When members of the Third Estate stormed the Bastille and kick-started the French Revolution, the infamous fortress and prison held just 7 old men captive, none of them political prisoners. They were the only ones in there at the time and one of them was a drunk, lunatic Irish guy named Whyte de Malleville who had no idea what was going on.

During the opium war, the Chinese set monkeys on fire and launched them at British ships in an attempt to cause chaos.

In the time it took between the announcement of Germany’s surrender during World War 2 on the radio to Joseph Stalin addressing the nation 22 hours later, Russians partied so hard that Moscow literally ran out of vodka.