What's your favorite obscure history fact?

Wellington’s funeral carriage is one of the world’s most terrifying objects. Made from 18 tonnes of melted down French cannon, adorned with captured flags and originally pulled by nine black dray horses, it proved too heavy for Victorian roads and actually broke Pall Mall, causing Wellington to be uncharacteristically late for his own funeral. Dickens described it thus: “For form of ugliness, horrible combination of colour, hideous motion, and general failure, there was never such a work achieved…”

there was a king nicknamed "john the one-eyed" because a court jester threw a chicken bone at him and it resulted him in losing the sight in one of his eyes.

25 year rule, asshole.

Charlemagne was always bitching that the tunics he imported from England were too short to keep his ass warm when he sat down to shit.

The Spartans had an annual holiday for killing helots. This was done to help curb the population size of their slaves.

LBJ had huge balls. He needed custom pants so that they weren't squished.
youtube.com/watch?v=S3GT9UN7nDo

The first quran in the western hemisphere was brought there by a Dutch guy who converted to islam and made a career out of capturing people off the barbary coast. His settling in New Amsterdam caused quite a stir.

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Its not my favorite but I find it interesting that Europeans/white people converted to Buddhism en masse before any Asians outside of the Indian sub-continent did.

In the few hundred years after Buddha his teachings were brought west to modern day Pakistan/Afghanistan/Iran and the smaller countries to the north of them. In those areas there were huge amounts of Greeks from Alexanders armies as well as Caucasians from the north and many of them converted to Buddhism and the religion spent some time there before being spread east by monks to China. Some scholars believe some of the major doctrinal differences between Theravada and Mahayana emerged while Buddhism was before propagated and studied in this region.

>tfw the middle east could have been filled with peaceful and chill Buddhists instead of Wahhabists but it didn't work out.

Can you hear the people sing?

The role of pants in the spread of western culture has been wrongly sidelined, according to medieval historians, who are starting to rank the underwear factor alongside the invention of printing.
Rags from discarded pants and knickers led to a 13th century breakthrough in the making of cheap paper, undercutting expensive parchment.

The Swedes also hired Irish mercenaries, but they swapped sides over to the Polish upon realising the Swedes were Protestant and were promptly massacred

Isn't this the same dude that led the Ottoman expedition to Iceland?

I believe that was Simon the Dancer or that was the guy who raided Baltimore.

The so-called Holy Roman Empire actually wasn't holy, Roman, or even an empire.

DELETE THIS

On September 10, 2001 $4 trillion was discovered missing from the US DoD budget.

It hasn't been found since.

The British East India Company sort of accidentally conquered India at first, they helped a local governor in a war against another governor and in return they were given tax jurisdiction over a large area for the payment of their services, and then they said 'oh shit we actually need to govern this to properly extract taxes' and so they formed an administration for the sole purpose of extracting taxes, one thing led to another and more and more ministries and services got added on, more land conquered to get more tax for the crown and then boom, British India.

After Russia conquered Siberia, it was common for people and sometimes entire villages to disappear overnight and pop up somewhere in Siberia when a local aristocrat tried to increase their tax burdens. Sometimes towns of hundreds of people would literally disappear overnight only to appear several months later in Tomsk for example.

And then they ruined the economy.

The turning point in Sino-European relations began in 1804 with a pirate state being set up in Guangdong. Europeans from this point forward acknowledged Qing weakness and continued to push their issues which culminated into the Opium War and resulting Scramble for Concessions.

Cast iron cannons were literally named 'Red Haired Barbarian Cannons'.

I presume the Dutch had a hand in this.

no one knows who fired the first shot at Lexington (opening battle of US War for Independence)

>accidentally conquered India
So does Dutch East India Company in their Indies.

Also, while modern-day Kyrgyz people are today extremely "Turkic" in appearance in the sense that they have brown hair, brown eyes and look like a cross between Mongols and something else, early records of their appearances are extremely different from their contemporary looks. According to Tang Dynasty records, Kyrgyz (specifically the Yenisei Kyrgyz) were described as tall and pale with red hair and green eyes; oddly enough, red hair is actually extremely common in some places in Siberia among indigenous peoples, even moreso than the Irish.

Speaking of the Turkic region, after Alexander the Great's empire collapsed his Greek subjects still remained in Central Asia and Afghanistan. This led to a LOT of really really funky shit, for example the appearance of "Greco-Buddhism" and Buddhas being sculpted in the Greek style.

Peshawar (part of modern day Pakistan) was originally a city of Pashtuns and part of Afghanistan, however it was ceded to the Sikh Empire thanks to our good friends the Eternal Anglo because the UK was afraid that Afghanistan would become a Russian puppet.

>Speaking of the Turkic region, after Alexander the Great's empire collapsed his Greek subjects still remained in Central Asia and Afghanistan. This led to a LOT of really really funky shit, for example the appearance of "Greco-Buddhism" and Buddhas being sculpted in the Greek style.
There's still a minor Greek diaspora in the subcontinent.

The Irish Catholic Confederation was not Irish, nor Catholic, nor a Confederation

>There's still a minor Greek diaspora in the subcontinent.

Seriously?

I wonder what the food's like

In 1993 the US Government spent $277,000 on Pickle Research

>inb4 25 years

That napolean would have probably won Waterloo, had his soldiers had about a handful of nails, to disable artillery.

Seriously. There's even a decent book about it.

elinepa.org/2003/01/30/a-chronicle-of-the-greeks-in-india-1750-1950/?lang=en

Every source I can find says 2.3 tetrabucks, and a lot fo them say it's just bad accounting.

>oddly enough, red hair is actually extremely common in some places in Siberia among indigenous peoples, even moreso than the Irish.
Completely different gene too, iirc.

Andrew Jackson didn't like George Washington

Personally, or as a figure?

>Obscure
Well, maybe not to the average Veeky Forumsfag, but absolutely to the common fucker here in NI.

>The Red Hand of Ulster comes from old Gaelic myths, and isn't some symbol of defiance against Ireland

Anyone who knows naything about anything knows this, and yet here in Ulster if you tell them The Red Hand of Ulster is not British they'll never believe you.

Personally.

everyone knows that

Despite their similarity, the words "Gaul" and "Gallia" are not, in fact, related.

So... Was anything of note found?

They're delicious AND nutritious!

I'm afraid that classified.

The vans will arrive in five minutes. Do not resist.

everyone knows that the most famous picture of Henry VIII is the one where he is holding a turkey leg, except for the fact that no such picture ever existed

A kosher dill pickle that was lower in salt. The Department of Agriculture spent a year trying to figure it out. It was called the Carolina Pickle Project

holy shit pls explain

Holocaust didn't happen. It's all a big socialist propaganda ploy to kill off nationalism in Europe since the socialist leaders feared it.

As expected country grown vegetables.

During WWII, after Germany 'accidentally' bombed Dublin, Hitler paid money as an apology to Ireland. Some of the money was used to build a new synagogue after the old one was destroyed.

Texas maintained embassies in London and Paris while independent. The former site of the London embassy is now a Texan-themed restaurant and grill.

The French ambassador to Texas was once complained of almost being killed by a stray arrow fired by a Comanche Indian in a raid while leaving the ambassador's residence in Austin.

Before the Battle of Drepana, the Roman naval commander Publius Claudius Pulcher (not the more famous contemporary of Julius Caesar) followed the tradition of consulting the sacred chickens. He fed them grain, which they refused to eat, a very bad omen. Angry at the chickens, Claudius loudly proclaimed "Let them drink, since they don't wish to eat," and threw them overboard.

He then proceeded to get nearly the entire Roman fleet destroyed.

The Carthaginians didn't lose a single ship.

articles.chicagotribune.com/1995-12-01/news/9512010178_1_kosher-rabbis-dill
here's a story about it

Roman Emperor Galba crucified a man for poisoning his ward to inherit property. The man smugly stated that he was Roman citizen, and thus above the punishment of crucifixion. In response, Galba ordered that his cross was to be set much higher than the rest and to be painted white.

every source I'm reading says that both words come from Latin ''Gallus''

where are you getting this ''fact''?

wouldn't have changed shit senpai

they should have fucking glassed those limey niggers

Pickles are nasty.

YOU TAKE THAT BACK RIGHT FUCKING NOW.

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One of the Holy Roman Emperors was called the "Imperial Sleepyhead."

the third reich was the second biggest market of coca cola during it's existence

Fanta was created in Nazi Germany

Going off of this, Fanta was created in Nazi Germany during World War II when they ran out of ingredients for coke.

Plato had a brother.

Plato's brother was a mere shadow of Plato's form

Adidas and Puma were also formed around WW2. They started as Gebrüder Dassler Schuhfabrik, which became Ruda (later Puma) and Adidas AG.

Ruda was named after Rudolf Dassler, Adidas was named after Adi Dassler.

>During the war, a growing rift between the pair reached breaking point after an Allied bomb attack in 1943, when Adi and his wife ran into a bomb shelter that Rudolf and his family were already in: "The bastards are back again", Adi said, referring to the Allied war planes, but Rudolf was utterly convinced that his brother had been referring to him and his family.

you can't make this shit up. history is hilarous

they used leftovers from cheese and fruit

This isn't exactly accurate. On Sept. 10, Rumsfeld gave a speech addressing wasteful spending by the Pentagon, and claimed that there were $2.3 trillion worth of unaccounted for transactions over the years. I've read that it's up to $8.5 trillion now.

and the name comes from one of the german scientists saying "Das ist Fantastich" meaning this is amazing...

Napoleon was friends with a little girl while imprisoned on St Helena.

The fact that Modena still has the bucket they took from Bologna in the 13th century on a fucking display

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Bucket

Shit like this and the kettle war make me smile uncontrollably

Pyyrhus of Epirus, one of the great generals of classical antiquity and a successor to the legacy of Alexander the Great, managed to avoid dying in the numerous Roman defeats inflicted upon him, only to be killed when an old lady threw a roof tile at his head

The Han Chinese sent ambassadors to Rome, but reports vary whether they made it to the capital itself to visit Augustus, or simply reached the Syrian border and didn't bother the rest of the way. They called the Romans "Dai-Qin"

Supposedly archaeologists know the location and remains of the famous bridges that Caesar built in his Gallic campaigns, where he constructed bridges across the Rhine River in record speed and precision that the Germanic tribes were freaked out and decided not to attack. Caesar ordered te bridges cut, but the supports are still present in the riverbed today

Probably a stupid question but why paint it white?

Medieval Europe, why you so crazy?

>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Bucket

>Casualties and Losses
>Town bucket

I can't stop laughing

>everyone knows that the most famous picture of Henry VIII is the one where he is holding a turkey leg

Ignoring the fact that it doesn't exist it isn't even what first comes to mind when thinking of pictures of him. Must be some dumb amerifat propaganda thing.

They both look so damn pissed off.

>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Bucket
>4000 people actually died over this

I'm American and I've never even heard of this. I definitely don't picture him with a turkey leg

To make it shiny and special, befitting his status as a citizen

Hitler was the commander of the Third Reich.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_Jenkins'_Ear

Early modern conflicts did this sort of thing too.

>Kyrgyz (specifically the Yenisei Kyrgyz) were described as tall and pale with red hair and green eyes; oddly enough, red hair is actually extremely common in some places in Siberia among indigenous peoples, even moreso than the Irish.
Tocharians?

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The US government refused to release their findings.

Can you give me a source on this. I believe you, I just want to extract more keks from this.

hahahah, suprised i got as many replies that i did

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