What are some events in recorded history that are extremely hard to believe, but without a doubt actually happened?

I've watched the Oversimplified Video and there was a bit about Wilmer McClean.

And the best part is, it was actually true!

Here let me copy and paste something from the internet

"The Battle of Bull Run, one of the first battles of the US Civil War, occurred on and around Wilmer McClean's farm in Northern Virginia. Not wanting to live surrounded by war, McClean and his family moved to Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia. The Battle of Appomattox Courthouse was the last significant battle between Union and Confederate forces. The Confederates signed the surrender order in Wilmer's sitting room. It is said that the Civil War started on Wilmer's farm and ended in his sitting room."

Whirlgirl9,
Whirlgirl9 avatar

The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre

The 1921 Attack on Greenwood was one of the most significant events in Tulsa’s history. Following World War I, Tulsa was recognized nationally for its affluent African American community known as the Greenwood District. This thriving business district and surrounding residential area was referred to as “Black Wall Street.” In June 1921, a series of events nearly destroyed the entire Greenwood area.

BossDj,

Considered "The deadliest race massacre in American history". There are so many parts of the story that are unbelievably insane.

  1. It was reported (by the attackers and the victims) that at least one plane was flying low over the town shooting at people and dropping explosives during the massacre.

  2. The massacre began with a white mob gathering to lynch a black teenager who allegedly assaulted a white woman. In the end, the woman did not persue the case, and the teen was released. The sheriff snuck him out of the city for his safety. (This story alone is fascinating and worth the deep-dive)

  3. The mob gathered after a sensationalized news article that described a brutal attack by a black man on an innocent white girl. This was all factually inaccurate, and it's unclear where this story originated (the author? The police?) The paper later apologized for the story.

IllegallyBlonde,

There's always the remarkable story of Rasputin's death. He was an advisor to Nicholas II of Russia, and refused to die after being poisoned, shot, and beat.

"The would-be killers first gave the monk food and wine laced with cyanide, however, when Rasputin seemingly failed to respond to the poison, they shot him at close range and left him for dead. In spite of these murderous measures, Rasputin revived shortly thereafter and made an attempt to flee the palace grounds, only to be intercepted by his assailants who shot him again and viciously beat him. They then bound Rasputin, who was remarkably still alive, and threw him into the freezing Neva River. His battered body was found several days later and it was reported that there was water in his lungs, indicating that he finally died by drowning."

https://blogs.loc.gov/headlinesandheroes/2020/10/the-murder-of-rasputin/#:~:text=On%20the%20night%20of%20December,and%20left%20him%20for%20dead.

I will also add, it's pretty neat that Ernest Shackleton's famed lost ship, the Endurance, was found 100 years to the day that Ernest was buried.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12236603/amp/The-wreck-Sir-Ernest-Shackletons-ship-Endurance-discovered-100-years-day.html

cruspies,
cruspies avatar

Shackleton's journey by open lifeboat from Elephant Island to South Georgia was in itself pretty astonishing. Captain Frank Worsley navigated using iirc a couple of pencils and a rubber band, and only caught a few glimpses of the sun to help his calculations. They landed on the wrong side of the island and had to climb a mountain pass to get to the whaling station. At the top of the pass they decided, what the hell, and slid down on their backsides. This didn't kill them, phew, but it did shred their trousers, so at the bottom they carefully safety-pinned the bits together, "in case there are ladies".

vudu,

Not just astonishing but arguably "the greatest small-boat journey ever completed." A truly fascinating voyage…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyage_of_the_James_Caird

ivanafterall,
ivanafterall avatar

I recently became fascinated by the Shackleton story--it's really amazing. I can't add much, besides "yes, read up on it!", but here is a cool, relevant song with beautiful lyrics that captures the adventure aspect really well.

The Punch Brothers - Another New World

Jon-H558,

comes between that and William Bligh of the bounty. following mutiny his small crew was cast adrift 35 miles to the south of Tofua near the Kingdom of Tonga in a 23ft open keel-less boat. They were able to safely navigate across 4000 miles of open ocean to Kupang, Timor

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutiny_on_the_Bounty#Bligh's_open-boat_voyage

Tigbitties,
Tigbitties avatar

I read that the rasputin thing was probably made up by the people that killed him to convince the Tzar that he was a demon. He was fucking all their wives and embarrassing them. Unfortunately, the tzar and his wife were convinced he was curing their son with some kind weird ass spirituality nonsense. Truth is, what was keeping the kid alive was not letting him go to the horrible doctors of the time.

Nougat,

With regard to Rasputin, the story of his death may have been exaggerated by the people who did it, in an attempt to convince the Czar that Rasputin was some kind of supernatural evil. The Czar really liked Rasputin, and the people who killed him (people whose wives Rasputin had likely bedded) wanted to avoid repercussions.

Xariphon,

You mean to tell me Rasputin wasn't a lich?

Kichae,

They just knew the story would make a great disco song 60 years later.

tonamel,

Phineas Gage. He was a railroad worker who, in a freak accident, had a large iron rod driven completely through his head, destroying a chunk of his brain. He survived, but his personality had completely changed. It led to a lot of rethinking on what the brain actually does.

briefingWizard936,

• You'd think no one would creep out Stalin, the second most evil person in human history after Mao...Well Stalin's daughter found herself alone with Beria. Stalin called to tell her to leave immediately.

• US Space program is founded on Nazi tech. See von Braun.

NeatoBurrito,
NeatoBurrito avatar

The US basically took all the engineers they captured in Germany, the V2 rocket is pretty much what they used to get us into space.

briefingWizard936,

They would have gone to waste in Russia anyway...

niktemadur,
niktemadur avatar

Project Paperclip.
And wouldn't you know it, the post immediately below this subthread is authored by a user called... paper_clip. What are the odds?

paper_clip,
paper_clip avatar

"And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning, because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it’d be interesting to check that, so that you’re going to have to use medical doctors with, but it sounds interesting to me. So, we’ll see, but the whole concept of the light, the way it kills it in one minute. That’s pretty powerful."

comedy,
comedy avatar

Ugh. You’ve activated my PTSD.

paper_clip,
paper_clip avatar

Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV.

Really, there are so many moments from TFG that fit into the topic of this thread.

comedy,
comedy avatar

Teddy Roosevelt was shot, and then gave a speech shortly thereafter:

"Friends, I shall ask you to be as quiet as possible. I don't know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot—but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose."

chaos_rat, (edited )

Legend. I’m not a fan of presidents of any kind, but this man had humongous fucking balls and I appriciate that.

Drusas,

He was also a great conservationist, founding multiple national parks and monuments.

Atomic_Merp,

Women had to protest for the right to smoke.

It was viewed in in America and Europe that smoking was unfeminine in nature and the only types of women that would do that must have loose morals and partake in "dubious sexual behavior". Edward Bernays (PR guru) started the "Torches of Freedom!" campaign back in 1928 with the idea of driving profits for American tobacco companies and removing the social taboo around it. Women took to the streets marching with signs and smoking cigs to make this happen.

So right after getting the right to vote, women went on to fight for the right to smoke in public.

Source: https://biblio.uottawa.ca/omeka2/jmccutcheon/exhibits/show/american-women-in-tobacco-adve/torches-of-freedom-campaign

LollerCorleone,
LollerCorleone avatar

The Great Emu War.

HeterogeneousCluster,
HeterogeneousCluster avatar

?

LollerCorleone,
LollerCorleone avatar

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emu_War

comedy,
comedy avatar

We lost a lot of good men - and Emus - in that war.

SustainedChaos, (edited )

The Tunguska event. If a something similar happened today the first thought would be an above-ground nuclear detonation.

chaos_rat, (edited )

For me it’s probably the murder of arch duke Ferdinand, that started the WWI. It’s so fucking dumb all along, so much shit went south and yet here we are. It truly shows history is very stupid sometimes even if events in question have cathastrophic consequences - especially since that particular event shaped the modern history a lot.

ivanafterall,
ivanafterall avatar

The motorcade passed the first assassin before he could do anything. The second...also fucked up and didn't do anything. The third threw a bomb at the cars, which bounced off the convertible top of the car, under the next car. The guy who threw the bomb at the motorcade then took a cyanide pill and jumped in the river. But he failed his suicide attempt. Only because the motorcade driver took a wrong turn did they succeed:

After learning that the first assassination attempt had been unsuccessful, Princip thought about a position to assassinate the Archduke on his return journey, and decided to move to a position in front of a nearby food shop (Schiller's delicatessen), near the Latin Bridge.[93] At this point, the first and second cars of the Archduke's motorcade suddenly turned right into a side street, leaving the Appel Quay.[89] When the Archduke's driver followed their route, Governor Potiorek, who was sharing the third vehicle with the Imperial couple, called out to the driver to stop as he was going the wrong way.[94] The driver applied the brakes, and when he attempted to put the car into reverse gear he accidentally stalled the engine close to where Princip was standing.[95] The assassin stepped up to the footboard of the car, and shot Franz Ferdinand and Sophie at point‐blank range[94] using a Belgian-made Fabrique Nationale model 1910 .380 caliber pistol.[96]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Archduke_Franz_Ferdinand

chaos_rat,

I dunno, man. It’s such a weird coincidence to happen. I think the driver just fucked up and wasn’t on. But perhaps he was.

Either way, Franz is dead.

mPony,

Bill Barilko disappeared that summer in nineteen fifty one
He was on a fishing trip, in a plane
The last goal he ever scored, in over time
Won the Leafs the cup
They didn't win another till nineteen sixty two
The year he was discovered

Prej,
Prej avatar

On the 27th of November 1990, the canton of Appenzell Innerhoden would be the last to introduce voting rights for women in Switzerland.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appenzell_Innerrhoden#Modern_history

minimar,

FYI Oversimplified has been known to be full of factual errors. I'd link the posts from askhistorians, but they're not exactly accessable at the moment.

Xariphon,

For me there's two:

One is that time a mob of angry Dutchmen killed and ate their prime minister.

The other is... the entire goddamn clown show that was The War of 1812. Wherein the most famous battle of the war -- the Battle of New Orleans -- happened something like six weeks after the war ended because nobody involved got the memo.

ivanafterall,
ivanafterall avatar

Sounds more like a mob of hangry Dutchmen.

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • AskKbin
  • ngwrru68w68
  • DreamBathrooms
  • thenastyranch
  • magazineikmin
  • InstantRegret
  • GTA5RPClips
  • Youngstown
  • everett
  • slotface
  • rosin
  • osvaldo12
  • mdbf
  • kavyap
  • cubers
  • JUstTest
  • modclub
  • normalnudes
  • tester
  • khanakhh
  • Durango
  • ethstaker
  • tacticalgear
  • Leos
  • provamag3
  • anitta
  • cisconetworking
  • megavids
  • lostlight
  • All magazines
    •