Wednesday, July 22, 2020

Historical Events That Sound Too Ridiculous to Be True


There are a lot of moments from history that not only sound unbelievably coincidental, incredible and stupid, but also so contrived that if it were to happen in fiction you wouldn't be able to suspend your disbelief. There were baboon railway controllers, great molasses floods and foulmouthed parrots. Here are some more history things, like the importance of mundane people in history, the spikey insanity of the lantern shield, and crazy "I'll do it myself" moments in history.

1.

Text - xubax 7.0k points · 24 days ago Operation Mincemeat. The allies planted a dead body with fake battle plans to trick the Germans into thinking that the allies were going to attack Sardinia when they were in fact going to attack Sicily. They built an entire life for this dead, fake, military man, dumped him in the ocean, and successfully distracted the Germans.

2.

Text - ingloriousmongo 5.6k points · 24 days ago President Andrew Jackson's funeral in 1845, his pet parrot had to be removed because it was swearing loudly. Adler4290 836 points · 24 days ago And he also left a giant rotting cheese wheel to his succesor Van Buren. He had received two as a gift and he held a giant party in the White House where people could just show up and drink and eat of the first 1200 Ibs cheese wheel gift! ... But the other remained in the cellar for 2 years till Van Buren

3.

Text - eannasheridan 42.4k points · 24 days ago 3 2 During WW1 The German navy built a ship and painted it to make it look like a British ship called the RMS Carmania in order to infiltrate and destroy British convoys. On the ships first outing, the first enemy it encountered was the real RMS Carmania, which promptly sunk it.

4.

Text - _iPood_ 37.3k points · 25 days ago In 2007 a paraglider got trapped in the updraft of two joining thunderstorms and was lifted to an altitude of 33,000 feet. She landed over three hours later about sixty kilometers north of her starting position having survived extreme cold, lightning and lack of oxygen.

5.

Text - TheMarvelite 25.0k points · 24 days ago Jeanne de Clisson (1300-1359) was married to a French nobleman who was beheaded for treason by the French King. Enraged, she sold their estate and purchased three black warships with red sails, and became a pirate queen of the English Channel who targeted French ships. She became known as "The Lioness of Brittany" and in her 13 years of piracy she would slaughter every member of a ship's crew except for one so that last survivor could go back and te

6.

Text - bexticles 23.1k points · 25 days ago A The great molasses flood of 1919, a tank filled with 2m gallons of molasses burst and sent a tidal wave of molasses through the streets of Boston, 21 people were killed.

7.

Text - Zacoftheaxes 22.8k points · 24 days ago |MCAfee Timothy Dexter OSECURE was frequently given terrible business advice that would somehow through a stroke of luck pay off. He sold coal to Newcastle and made a profit. He became insanely wealthy, dressed in a strange manner, and acted weird in the company of the incredibly wealthy elite he had accidentally stumbled into. He spent a lot of time basically gaslighting his own wife for his own amusment. For quite some time he acted as if she had

8.

Text - NieDrogg 47.7k points · 25 days ago · edited 24 days ago Top Comment - 6/27/2020 Award 4 Auschwitz prisioners stole nazi uniforms, and a car. Only one of them was speaking german so he was wearing the highest rank uniform. When they left the camp they've encoutered 2 patrols. 1st patrol (with some high ranked guy) just hailed to them. 2nd patrol with 2 low rank soliders told them they can't leave becouse orders etc. Guy speaking german started screaming at them so loud and so realisticly

9.

Text - LordofHopeHomestuck 21.0k points · 25 days ago The escape from Antarctica by the members of the Antarctic expedition led by Ernest Shackleton. The stuff they went through was unbelievable. Their boat, the Endurance was crushed by ice floes. They were stranded on the floes for over a year in temperatures well below freezing. They then took to three boats around 22 feet in length across the antarctic ocean looking for land. There were about 10 men in each boat. They missed reaching land by

10.

Text - TheBestPeter 19.5k points · 24 days ago An English king named Ethelred, later called the Unready, took some troops to defend against a Viking invasion. The weather was bad, so a lot of the Vikings' ships crashed as they were landing. Ethelred thought that it would be dishonourable to attack them as they were stumbling onto shore, so he kept his troops back until the Vikings had a chance to get together and form proper battle lines before he attacked them. The better prepared Vikings then

11.

Text - thirstquenching_cum 17.7k points · 24 days ago Edgar Allen Poe wrote a novel in 1838 in which 4 shipwrecked survivors, at the point of starvation, choose to resort to cannibalism. So they kill the young cabin boy, Richard Parker, and eat him. In 1884, a ship called the Mignonette sank. 4 crewmembers survived. At the point of starvation, they killed and ate the youngest of them: Richard Parker.

12.

Text - Back2Bach 16.1k points · 25 days ago The "Great Stink" was an event in central London in 1858. The hot weather exacerbated the smell of untreated human waste and industrial effluent that was present on the banks of the River Thames.

13.

Text - TurretX 15.9k points · 25 days ago Mad Jack Churchill, the man with the only confirmed longbow kill in WWII. Guy and his squad did a death march towards the germans whole playing bagpipes, got captured and sent to a concentration camp. He then escaped, got caught again, and then escaped a different concentration camp. Also he always carried a scottish longsword with him. Theres so much other weird shit he did after the war, and its amazing to me that hes entirely real.

14.

Text - cameronh0110 11.7k points · 24 days ago · edited 24 days ago The CIA was researching psychic abilities for 30 years as a way to spy on the USSR. After 30 years, the program was terminated, and their conclusion was that psychic powers probably don't exist. Edit: the actual conclusion was that the evidence for remote viewing was un-falsifiable (and therefore un-provable). Many of the more promising results were believed to be caused by information leakage, meaning that test subjects had pri

15.

Text - Catlenfell 11.3k points · 25 days ago Unsinkable Sam. A cat that survived the sinking of three different ship during WWII.

16.

Text - scruffy932 10.6k points · 25 days ago The Soviet scientists starving to death saving the seed bank of Leningrad during Hitler's invasion in the winter of 1941-42 despite it being full of corn, wheat and potatoes. TonyDys 3.1k points · 24 days ago + What happened? suavebirch 5.3k points · 24 days ago * They ran out of food but couldn't eat anything from the seed bank since they needed to preserve its stocks

17.

Text - timmyboyoyo 10.3k points · 25 days ago The London Beer Flood of 1814: a 22-foot-tall beer vat blew out and at least 100,000 to as much as 323,000 imperial gallons give or take flooded slum-dwellings, killing 8 people. Five of those people killed were at the time at a celebration of life service for someone else –

18.

Text - EquivalentInflation 8.0k points · 24 days ago Spartan weddings. Basically, young Spartans would train for years in camps, surrounded only by men. So, when the time came for marriage, the women would shave their heads and dress in men's clothing, since the idea of having sex with anyone other than a man weirded out the grooms.

19.

Text - Naweezy 17.4k points · 25 days ago · edited 24 days ago [Jack]( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack (baboon) Baboon who was employed to change rail signals. A "After initial skepticism, the railway decided to officially employ Jack once his job competency was verified. The baboon was paid twenty cents a day, and a half-bottle of beer each week. It is widely reported that in his nine years of employment with the railroad, Jack never made a mistake."

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