Post fun historical anecdotes

But was the story of the flood original to the Bible at all? We know that it was not. This first became apparent a century and a half ago, in a room above the secretary's office in the British Museum. It was there in 1872 that George Smith, a self-taught Assyriologist working among the thousands of ancient clay tablets brought back to Bloomsbury from Iraq, made a sensational discovery: a version of the flood story written in cuneiform. So overwhelmed was he by the implications of his find that he immediately leap to his feet, ran around the room, and started taking off his clothes.

Was it the epic of Gilgamesh or something?

Kutusov wasn’t in great health. He was 66, very fat, and had a wonky eye from having been shot in the head by the Turks in 1773. Czar Alexander found him too ugly to even look at.

Kutuzov survived being shot in the head twice. One bullet destroyed his frontal lobe in 1774 which led him to erratic behaviour and decision making. He was shot again in 1788.

However, Kutuzov still managed to guide his army to victory over Napoleon's army when the French tried to invade Russia in 1812

>even a literally half-brained retard defeats the French army
How can they be such an embarrassment?

It was just a prank bro

Kutusov's ""strategy"" :
>run
>don't fight
>burn Moscow

Wow such a great general

>winning strategy has to look fancy
I bet you would make a great general

The 16th century Irish Lord Aodh Mór Ó Néill is buried in Rome in the San Pietro in Montorio

On the anniversary of his death, the Irish community in Rome still lay wreaths on his grave

>The trip to Kimberley, Johannesburg, and Pretoria was a pleasant one. At the last-named place I met Mr. Krüger, the Transvaal president. His Excellency received me cordially enough; but my friend Judge Beyers, the gentleman who presented me, by mentioning that I was on a voyage around the world, unwittingly gave great offense to the venerable statesman, which we both regretted deeply. Mr. Krüger corrected the judge rather sharply, reminding him that the world is flat. "You don't mean round the world," said the president; "it is impossible! You mean in the world. Impossible!" he said, "impossible!" and not another word did he utter either to the judge or to me.

US President Andrew Jackson had a pet parrot that had to be removed from his funeral because it was cursing too much

presidentialpetmuseum.com/pets/andrew-jacksons-pet-parrot/

Well it bloody well worked didn't it?

Peter the Great has a bunch

>Peter the Great was a keen amateur doctor and dentist. He once saw a tooth being pulled out of a person's mouth and became obsessed with carrying out random dental checks on his subjects. His 250 courtiers were unwilling victims, having any suspect tooth whipped out at a moments notice. Sections of gum would often accompany the extracted chomper as the tsar did not know his own strength or the minimum force required to undergo such a process. He carried a small bag of the pulled teeth around with him wherever he went as proof of his 'ability'.

>a courtier came to him and asked him for his help. The courtier said that his wife had a terrible ongoing toothache, but that she was afraid of dentists. He asked the tsar to trick the woman into getting close enough to the wannabe dentist so that she could have her tooth removed. Peter the Great complied, valiantly fighting against the screaming and panicked woman, eventually getting the offensive tooth. Later it was learnt that there had been nothing wrong with the tooth at all; the courtier had been fighting with his wife and wanted to teach her a lesson.

>Peter's visits to the West impressed upon him the notion that European customs were in several respects superior to Russian traditions. He commanded all of his courtiers and officials to cut off their long beard. Boyars who sought to retain their beards were required to pay an annual beard tax of one hundred rubles.

>When Peter the Great found his wife had a lover he had the man beheaded, then forced her to keep her lover’s head in a jar of alcohol in her bedroom which stood in Catherine’s bedroom till Peter’s death.

>Peter the Great loved dwarfs and kept many around at a time. He was even known to have a naked dwarf jump out of a giant pie for his amusement.

>at his mistress Mary Hamilton’s beheading in 1719, he showed the crowd where her vertebrae, windpipe, and carotid arteries were

>During the Napoleonic Wars, a French ship of the type chasse marée was wrecked off the coast of Hartlepool. The only survivor was a monkey, allegedly wearing a French uniform to provide amusement for the crew. On finding the monkey, some locals decided to hold an impromptu trial on the beach; since the monkey was unable to answer their questions and because they had seen neither a monkey nor a Frenchman before, they concluded that the monkey was in fact a French spy.Being found guilty the animal was duly sentenced to death and hanged on the beach.

DONT TALK SHIT

Peter loved dwarves, but his contemporary King Frederich of Prussia loved giants. Whenever he was felling down he had his brigade of 7ft grenadiers march through his bedroom. When Fred joined Peter in the great Northern War, Peter sent some of Russia's tallest men to his court in gratitude. When the two kinds fell out, Peter had his giants smuggled back. Their relationship never recovered.

he went to bongland to learn how to make non-retarded boats and got kicked out of the guys house he was staying at cuz he had drunken wheelbarrow races in the garden.

...

This entire fucking thing.

hullwebs.co.uk/content/l-20c/disaster/dogger-bank/voyage-of-dammed.htm

Using the Fabian strategy is the sign of a great general, idiot.

Timothy Dexter and Viper. Sometimes I fucking love this place.

The first guy to be hung in Salem Massachusetts was a notorious animal fucker

Frontal lobe is tactics only. He can still do strategies.

Shooting at your own supposedly happened plenty to everybody during the Napoleonic wars though

the man- absolutely the man

An american classic to be honest

That cherry tree shit is fake as fuck.

My favorite Washington story is the time his army was fleeing from the British army in the night across a river, and he decided to stay until the last boatload. Towards the end the sun starts coming up and like forty guys pile into an overloaded boat panicked as hell and Washington picks up a big rock and threatens to toss it into the boat, capsizing it if some of them don't get out.

There is some speculation that this monkey was in fact a powder monkey, i.e. a small boy whose job it was to run powder to the cannon crews.

But it's more fun to hope it actually was a monkey.

Many generals have deployed similar strategies like Fabius Maximus in the second punic war to combat Hannibal in italy

How many times do you need to get caught before your buggering is 'notorious'?

Same strategy that beat Hannibal

Life of an absolute madman

Yeah that's funny as fuck but in reality that's how naval warfare was for the most of history.
Total shitshow.

the OG mad man

It was Salem, a small colony. Just do it once and the whole settlement will call you the notorious animal sodomizer.

you certainly know nothing about strategies and tactics if this is the way you think

One day in 1916, Physicist Niels Bohr and his then-assistant Hans Kramers took a break from work and went on a small hike along the Danish shore. On a beach, they found a washed up naval mine, probably from the British blockade.

The smart thing to do would have been to call for a bomb disposal and get the hell out of there. Instead, two of the leading minds of their time opted to stand about 30 meters off and throw rocks at the bomb, only leaving when nothing happened.

>that one faggot who added like 50 (dubious-discuss)

>Peter's visits to the West impressed upon him the notion that European customs were in several respects superior to Russian traditions. He commanded all of his courtiers and officials to cut off their long beard. Boyars who sought to retain their beards were required to pay an annual beard tax of one hundred rubles
this isn't an anecdote. It's an actual law that was part of his attempts in westernizing Russia. Another part of the same law forbid the wear of long sleeved shirts traditional in pre-18th century Russia

>The book contained 8,847 words and 33,864 letters, but no punctuation and its capitalization seemed random.

>In the second edition, Dexter added an extra page which consisted of 13 lines of punctuation marks with the instructions that readers could distribute them as they pleased.

In medieval Europe or some shit a guy fucked a pig and was sentenced to death as decreed by the bible. The people pitied the animal and held a trial to prove she was still virtuous, a poor victim of rape.

In 75 BCE, Julius Caesar was captured by Cilician pirates, who infested the Mediterranean sea. The Romans had never sent a navy against them, because the pirates offered the Roman senators slaves, which they needed for their plantations in Italy. As a consequence, piracy was common.

In chapter 2 of his Life of Julius Caesar, Greek author Plutarch of Chaeronea (46-c.120) describes what happened when Caesar encountered the pirates. The translation below was made by Robin Seager.

>Later it was learnt that there had been nothing wrong with the tooth at all; the courtier had been fighting with his wife and wanted to teach her a lesson.

Top tier stuff.

[2.1] First, when the pirates demanded a ransom of twenty talents, Caesar burst out laughing. They did not know, he said, who it was that they had captured, and he volunteered to pay fifty.

[2.2] Then, when he had sent his followers to the various cities in order to raise the money and was left with one friend and two servants among these Cilicians, about the most bloodthirsty people in the world, he treated them so highhandedly that, whenever he wanted to sleep, he would send to them and tell them to stop talking.

[2.3] For thirty-eight days, with the greatest unconcern, he joined in all their games and exercises, just as if he was their leader instead of their prisoner.

[2.4] He also wrote poems and speeches which he read aloud to them, and if they failed to admire his work, he would call them to their faces illiterate savages, and would often laughingly threaten to have them all hanged. They were much taken with this and attributed his freedom of speech to a kind of simplicity in his character or boyish playfulness.

[2.5] However, the ransom arrived from Miletus and, as soon as he had paid it and been set free, he immediately manned some ships and set sail from the harbor of Miletus against the pirates. He found them still there, lying at anchor off the island, and he captured nearly all of them.

[2.6] He took their property as spoils of war and put the men themselves into the prison at Pergamon. He then went in person to [Marcus] Junius, the governorof Asia, thinking it proper that he, as praetor in charge of the province, should see to the punishment of the prisoners.

[2.7] Junius, however, cast longing eyes at the money, which came to a considerable sum, and kept saying that he needed time to look into the case.Caesar paid no further attention to him. He went to Pergamon, took the pirates out of prison and crucified the lot of them, just as he had often told them he would do when he was on the island and they imagined that he was joking.

livius.org/sources/content/plutarch/plutarchs-caesar/caesar-and-the-pirates/

The Lord of The Rings got so popular with the peace and love movement, that 100's of hippies camped outside of Tolkien's house

Being rather conservative and old-school, he did not find this amysing

When Napoleon conquered Berlin, he slept a night in the royal Prussian palace Charlottenburg. The Prussian queen who was still in the palace told Napoleon to leave, but Napoleon responded with: "If you don't reply to this post your mother will die in her sleep tonight". The Queen was not pleased.

On December 17th, 1967, Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt was down from Melbourne to Port Phillip to see lone British Yachstman Alec Rose sail through Port Phillip Heads with his alleged lover and some of her family. While near Portsea, the group travelled to a beach that Holt had swum at many times called Cheviot Beach. Though the surf was quite fierce the Prime Minister was an experienced swimmer and went into the waves.

He soon disappeared from sight.

Despite a massive search operation featuring police, naval divers, helicopters and army personnel, no trace of him was ever found. Several rumours emerged about the incident, including one that the Prime Minister had been a Chinese spy and his disappearance was actually him faking his death and getting picked up by a waiting submarine.

The Australian people commemorated him by later erecting the Harold Holt Memorial Swimming Pool in his honour.

Quite interesting

>In one notable episode, Dexter faked his own death to see how people would react. About 3,000 people attended Dexter's mock wake. Dexter did not see his wife cry, and after he revealed the hoax, he caned her for not grieving enough.[6]

>Instead, two of the leading minds of their time opted to stand about 30 meters off and throw rocks at the bomb, only leaving when nothing happened.

Why? Did they think something other than a deadly explosion would happen and needed to test their hypothesis?

>The last Sui emperor, Sui Yangdi (A.D. 581-618), took the throne after murdering his father and older brother. He had a queen, two deputy queens, 6 royal consorts, 72 madames and 3,000 palace maidens but even that wasn't enough to satisfy him sexually. He had a particular thing for teenage virgins and reportedly used a "virgin wheelchair" to capture them. According to a palace historian after the girl was seated "clamps would automatically spring up to hold her arms and spread her legs apart, while the mechanized cushion would place her body in the right position to receive the royal favor."

>In one of the principal squares of french-ruled Coblentz, the Prefect had erected a monument recording the occupation of Moscow and bearing the following inscription: "To the great Napoleon, in honour of the immortal campaign of 1812."
>When the Russians reached that city, they left the monument intact, but added beneath the inscription: "Seen and approved by the Russian commander of Coblentz - 1813"

Clearly they had their own theories about what would and what would not cause a naval mine to explode. And were proven right of course.

Based

That's the machine that Quagmire has in his house.

>[Adam] Smith was described by several of his contemporaries and biographers as comically absent-minded, with peculiar habits of speech and gait, and a smile of "inexpressible benignity".He was known to talk to himself,a habit that began during his childhood when he would smile in rapt conversation with invisible companions. He also had occasional spells of imaginary illness, and he is reported to have had books and papers placed in tall stacks in his study. According to one story, Smith took Charles Townshend on a tour of a tanningfactory, and while discussingfree trade, Smith walked into a huge tanning pitfrom which he needed help to escape.He is also said to have put bread and butter into a teapot, drunk the concoction, and declared it to be the worst cup of tea he ever had. According to another account, Smith distractedly went out walking in his nightgown and ended up 15 miles (24km) outside of town, before nearby church bells brought him back to reality·

Gives a whole new meaning to "invisible hand."

>He is also said to have put bread and butter into a teapot, drunk the concoction, and declared it to be the worst cup of tea he ever had.

How do you drink something that's not liquid?

>was a keen amateur doctor and dentist
>amateur dentist
Off to a good start.

>Huhuhuhuhu..hey, Kramer. Let's throw rocks at that thing.

>Ehehehehehe. It might explode. That would be cool.

>declared it to be the worst cup of tea he ever had
lel

Butter melts, bread breaks up into tiny spongy chunks.

Ancient Egyptian bear included chunks of bread and was drunk through a thick straw.

...

ayy man whuddup

Newton also thought he could turn lead into gold and drank mercury.

>he started telling visitors that his wife had died (despite the fact that she was still alive) and that the woman who frequented the building was simply her ghost

no pls

I suspect this was just Banter on behalf of the English.

3-5 times seems like a good rule of thumb.

I think they wanted to see shit explode.

why you do this

fuck you guy

Emperor Heraclius once gathered his court in a palace and demanded that they convert to Islam, when they all refused and tried to escape he was all "I was testing you, it was just a prank, pham!"

Sultan Mehmet was able to bring down the Theodosian Walls with massive cannon built for him by a German engineer. But that engineer only went to the Sultan after first offering his services to Constantine XI, who refused because he didn't have enough money to fund the project.

For his coronation banquet, Pope Clement VI invited 3000 people who consumed 1023 sheep, 118 heads of cattle, 101 calfs, 914 goats, 60 pigs, 10.471 chickens, 1440 geese, 300 pikes, 46.856 cheeses, 50.000 tarts, and 200 barrels of wine.

And speaking of exaggerated eating:
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarrare

...

sad desu

I really feel bad for the Austrian guy. Can you imagine traveling all the way across Europe, in the 18th century, only to be turned away?

very funny

>"A bald man insulted Diogenes the Cynic and Diogenes replied, 'Far be it from me to make insults! But I do want to compliment your hair for having abandoned such a worthless head.'"

On the topic of drinking:
>For a farewell party in 1787, George Washington and 54 guests drank:
>54 bottles of Madeira
>60 bottles of claret
>22 bottles of porter
>12 bottles of beer
>8 bottles of hard cider
>8 bottles of whiskey
>7 large bowls of alcoholic punch

I think somebody worked out the amount of actual alcohol per person as basically being a 750ml bottle of pure ethanol for each guest.

>you see hans
>if you throw mine to rocks
>it will be safe
>because is if explodes or not it will not be useful anymore,so no harm

Transportation across Europe was actually surprisingly good by then.

really makes u think

Nothing on Lord Byron?
>Byron also kept a tame bear while he was a student at Trinity, out of resentment for rules forbidding pet dogs like his beloved Boatswain. There being no mention of bears in their statutes, the college authorities had no legal basis for complaining: Byron even suggested that he would apply for a college fellowship for the bear.
>Later on in life, Byron's tendencies for playing zoo keeper switched to tendencies for playing war admiral. He constructed two small stone forts on the edge of his lake and launched a fleet of toy ships, which he would spend whole days directing while crouched in his fort. At Byron's insistence his servant, Joe Murray, would lie prone on a small boat in the lake and "command the ships" which we're guessing consisted of pushing them around and making cannon noises with his mouth.

>Records concerning how much Joe Murray was paid to put up with this sort of shit are unavailable.

Not to mention all his relationships with women in general.

Honestly playing model warships sounds like a fun job.

Imagine the bitchng parties when all the off-duty servants got together.

Move over Frederick the Great, I have a new hero now.

> He was one of the MPs
> Implying there was several
Jesus christ.

You have clearly never met a physicist

Shocking! Really activates the neurons that send information to and from portions of the brain, enabling me to engage in a more introspective and sentient manner upon the subject in question.

Jokes on you, immunity cat has been protecting me since 2013

...

When VE day was announced Moscow ran out of vodka in the span of less than a day

Moscow

Ran out of vodka