32 Bizarre Historical Facts.
They may be too hard to believe, but they are true.
Published 2 years ago
4
Read about this a few years ago: In 1943 a group of German sailors on a U-Boat emplaced a weather station on the Canadian coast (Labrador) so the Germans could more accurately predict the weather for military operations (since weather in the Northern hemisphere generally moves west-to-east.) The weather station was marked with fake signs indicating that it was a Canadian military facility and for unauthorized personnel to keep out. The weather station was eventually discovered by the Canadians.... ...In 1977.
10
King George III known as the ‘Mad King’ apparently suffered severe mental illness the majority of his life. He was tied to chairs, gagged, bled, left in freezing rooms to try and ‘treat’ him. In 2005, DNA testing on his hair found extremely high levels of lead and arsenic. Medications he was being given for other ailments sent him insane for a slow likely painful death
11
The first 200 000 years or so of being highly sentient human beings are lost in history. We only know the last circa 2000-4000 years from texts. The first recorded joke - a fart joke that is 4000 years old - uses the term "since time immemorial" (or the sumerian version). Even though one should not take that literally, it suggests that you could travel back in time to find people consider their civilization ancient already. And it was. When that joke was written down in cuneiform, the pyramid of Djoser had already been standing for 700 years. And when **that** pyramid was built, the city of Catal Höyuk was 3000-5000 years old! And still, that was built during *the latest 2.5% of human history*. We have lost so goddam much that it hurts to think of it.
12
Between the 16th and 18th century, slave ships from Africa raided the Mediterranean and enslaved up to a million people. Sometimes entire islands were captured and taken away. Raids were made on seaside towns of Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, England, the Netherlands and as far away as Iceland, capturing men, women and children. It was so bad that people stopped living on long stretches of coast in Spain and Italy.
15
In 90 years from 1841 to 1930 Ireland's population halved, from 8.4 million to about 4 million. The Famine started the decline, but emigration sustained it - Ireland's population didn't start growing again until the 1960s, and there are still about 2 million fewer people living there (Eire and NI) than in 1841.
20
The last known pneumonic plague outbreak in the United States happened in 1924 in Los Angeles. It was limited to a small area, hence why it was classed as an outbreak. It was thought to be either an STI, due to the patient zero complaining about a fever and a sore groin. What happened was patient zero was cleaning out his house and found a dead rat. He dispose of it, not knowing it was infected with pneumonic plague. However, officials soon discovered a strange increase rate of an unusual form of pneumonia. Given the field of Pathology was around, they requested blood samples and discovered the cause was Yersinia pestis. With the information provided, measures were finally taken to deal with the outbreak, such as Rat extermination including allowing stray cats and dogs to hunt down any rat. In today's money, the cost would be around 5 to 9 million. There was also mass burning, common to control a disease outbreak.
26
The Universe is unfathomably young at 13.8 billion years old. Humanity is actually very early to the party and there is a good chance we may be one of the first intelligent life forms in the universe if not the first. This chance increases if we find Red Dwarves with habitable planets because unlike Sol, Red Dwarves will last up to 10 trillion years. On a Universal scale we are right at the birth of our Universe and it could be why we have yet to find evidence of other intelligent life, outside of just sheer size.
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