History Facts
History is rich with fascinating and sometimes unbelievable things, so learn more about it with this regularly-updated list of history facts.
There was a bear called Wojtek who was adopted by Polish soldiers during WW2. It carried ammunition, wrestled with soldiers, and drank beer.
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If Earth's history was condensed into twenty-four hours, life would've appeared at around 4am, land plants at 10:24pm, dinosaur extinction at 11:41pm, and human history would’ve began at 11:58:43pm.
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A singing birthday card has more computing power than the allied forces in 1945.
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The University of Oxford (teaching since 1096) predates the Aztec empire (1428 - 1521).
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Leonardo Da Vinci made a robotic lion in 1515 that would walk, sway, open its mouth and move its tail - it even had a compartment that opened to present flowers.
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The handbook issued to US soldiers in Britain during WW2 included the line "The British don't know how to make a good cup of coffee. You don't know how to make a good cup of tea. It's an even swap."
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There are pictures of Knights fighting Snails in old Medieval manuscripts - and nobody knows why.
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In 1918, after the treaty of Versailles (end of WWI), the French Commander-in-chief said "This is not a peace. It is an Armistice for 20 years." 20 years and 65 days later, WWII happened.
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In 1542, French aristocrat Marguerite De La Rocque survived being marooned for 2 years alone on a remote island off the coast of Quebec.
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Romans used a plant called Silphium as contraception. They had so much sex that they drove it into extinction.
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Pierre Jaquet-Droz, a watchmaker, 240 years ago invented a robot that could write, and the parts could be interchanged to say whatever you want.
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During the Black Plague, it was thought that bad smells were the cause of the plague. "Plague Doctors" therefore wore masks with long beak-like noses stuffed with flowers or smoke to hide the smells.
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When Charles Darwin first discovered the Galapagos Tortoises, he tried to ride them!
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Genghis Khan exempted the poor and clergy from taxes, encouraged literacy, and established free religion, leading many peoples to join his empire before they were even conquered.
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Tickling was a form of torture used in ancient China on nobility because it left no mark and recovery was quick.
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In the 1830s, a Greek prime minister tried to spread the potato in Greece but people weren't interested so he put armed guards in front of shipments of potatoes so people would think they were important. People then started stealing these potatoes so much that the crop spread to all of Greece.
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In 2011, archaeologists discovered the skeletal remains of a Roman couple who have been holding hands for 1,500 years.
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After Germany surrendered in WW2, people in Moscow partied until the entire city actually ran out of vodka.
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During World War 1, starving wolves amassed in such great numbers that Germans and Russians had a temporary cease fire to fight off the wolf attacks.
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Queen Elizabeth II served as a mechanic and driver in World War 2.
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