Showing posts with label strange history. Show all posts
Showing posts with label strange history. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 22, 2026

Canada and Denmark Fought a War Over an Uninhabited Island Using Whisky and Schnapps

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 Roughly halfway between Canada and Greenland in the narrow channel called Nares Strait sits a small uninhabited island called Hans Island. ...

The Waterloo Teeth Were Real and Battlefield Scavengers Pulled Them From Dead Soldiers

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 After the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 roughly 50,000 men lay dead or wounded on a Belgian field. Before the bodies were buried scavengers mo...
Monday, April 20, 2026

The Polish Army Had an Actual Bear That Carried Artillery Shells and Held Military Rank

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 In 1943 Polish soldiers stationed in Iran came across a young Syrian brown bear cub that had been found wandering alone after hunters had k...

Los Angeles Shot at Ghosts in 1942 and Called It a Japanese Air Raid

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 On the night of February 24 and 25, 1942, just two and a half months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the city of Los Angeles went to war ...

The Oxford English Dictionary Was Partly Written by a Murderer in an Insane Asylum

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 The Oxford English Dictionary is one of the most ambitious intellectual projects in human history. The project began in 1857. The goal was ...
Saturday, April 18, 2026

The CIA Spent Millions Training a Cat to Spy on the Soviets and It Got Hit by a Taxi

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 During the Cold War the CIA ran some of the most creative and strange intelligence programs in American history. MK Ultra tested mind contr...
Friday, April 17, 2026

London Was Once Flooded With 300000 Gallons of Beer and Eight People Drowned in It

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 On October 17, 1814, a wooden fermentation vat at the Meux and Company Brewery on Tottenham Court Road in London began to fail. The vat con...

The Surgeon Who Had a 300 Percent Mortality Rate in One Operation and It Was Not His Fault

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 Before anesthesia existed surgery was something different from what it is today. Patients were awake. The pain was unimaginable. The only m...
Monday, April 13, 2026

In 1788 an Army Fought Itself in the Dark and Hundreds of Its Own Soldiers Died

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 On the night of September 21 and 22 in 1788 the Austrian army suffered one of its worst defeats of the Austro-Turkish War. The Turks were n...

Australia Declared War on Emus in 1932 and the Emus Won

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 In 1932 the Australian government declared war on emus. This is not a joke. It is documented military history. And the emus won. What Happe...
Thursday, April 9, 2026

The Voynich Manuscript Has Never Been Decoded and Nobody Knows What It Says

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 Somewhere in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University sits one of the most puzzling objects in human history. It is...

The Shortest War in History Lasted 38 Minutes and Britain Won Before Lunch

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 On the morning of August 27, 1896, Britain declared war on Zanzibar. By 9:38 that same morning the war was over. It lasted 38 minutes. It i...
Wednesday, April 8, 2026

The Great Molasses Flood of 1919 Was Real and It Killed 21 People in Boston

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 On January 15, 1919, a massive steel storage tank in the North End of Boston burst open without warning. Inside that tank was nearly two an...