fact
Ray Bradbury wrote the first draft of Fahrenheit 451 on a typewriter in UCLA Library’s basement that cost 10 cents for 30 minutes. 9 days and $9.80 later he had a short story titled ‘ The Fireman’ that was later expanded into Fahrenheit 451.
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During WW II, Allies suspected that the Germans were using the Leaning Tower of Pisa as an observation post. Leon Weckstein, a U.S. Army sergeant sent to confirm this. But he was impressed by the beauty of Tower and thus refrained from ordering an artillery strike, sparing it from destruction.
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GM recalled 800k cars in 2014 for faulty ignitions. The cars would shut off while being driven which meant drivers lost power steering/brakes, and the airbags wouldn’t deploy. They knew about the problem since 2005 but never fixed it because it would be ‘too expensive’. 124 people died.
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During the Great Depression, banker Mark Welch Munroe convinced struggling families in Quincy, Florida to buy Coca-Cola shares that traded at 19 dollars. Later, the town became the single richest town per capita in the US with at least 67 millionaires.
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Environmental activist Julia “Butterfly” Hill lived in a 1500 year old California redwood tree (known as Luna) 180 feet (55 mm) off the ground for 738 days in order to prevent it from being chopped down by Pacific Lumber Company. She successfully saved the tree.
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People with dementia think that stuff like a black doormat isn’t a doormat, but a deep hole in the floor. Due to these visual perception problems, people with dementia avoid stepping the doormat, and this is sometimes used to keep them from leaving their care facilites.
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I love history.
It’s a lifelong soap opera because history is actually riddled with drama and crazy.
But most of it is hidden from us.
Why is that? Don’t educators realize that the more salacious it is the more everyone will pay attention?
I’ve learned things about the past out of school that would’ve gotten me an “A” in class, because my attention would’ve been peaked.
An unknown Redditor wanted to get into some scandalous information we missed out on when we were younger.
“Knowledgable Redditors, what are some R-rated facts about history that usually get left out of the average middle/high school classroom?”
Let’s get to learning.
“JFK was the first US President to be circumcised. He was 22 at the time.” ~ otis_the_drunk
“Ancient Romans drew penises on everything.” ~ CorporalThornberry
“They also wore necklaces with winged cocks on them.”
“It was replicated recently by a jewelry company and turned out to look like a cock-cross so the Catholics all said nay nay and they cancelled it.”
“Source: https://www.google.com/amp/amp.kansascity.com/entertainment/ent-columns-blogs/stargazing/article4447208.html“. ~ rezlang
“Powdered wigs became popular because they hid the baldness caused by syphilis, which was rampant in Europe during the 17th century.” ~ Reddit
“Another crazy fact about these wigs, right before the French revolution.”
“The wigs the French aristocracy wore at the time were massive. To keep them from losing shape, they starched them.”
“Meaning they used edible grain to create wig starching powder. While the population couldn’t afford to eat because a loaf of bread became more expensive than a week’s wage.”
“It’s no wonder the revolution started and ended the way it did. French aristocracy was literally using foodstuffs to make their giant wigs stay up.” ~ Mister_Dink
“History is really, really kinky.”
“Some ancient temples and holy places, especially in India, depict acts that range from orgies to bestiality.”
“Temple prostitute is one of the oldest professions and were widely accepted in early history, showing up as early as the Epic of Gilgamesh, which coincidentally also featured bestiality.” ~ xenomorphs_at_disney
“Considering the number of ancient cultures that had ‘God have sex with animal’ as a prominent story it amazes me that people don’t realize how prevalent it has been throughout history.”
“I mean, there’s a whole story about Loki turning into a horse and doing it and birthing a superhorse, not to mention all the Roman/Greek deities gettin’ crazy.” ~ losian
“The diary of Anne Frank also included detailed accounts of her exploring her sexuality/ masturbation which was quickly edited out before it was published.” ~ bttrflyr
“That was brave when she was living in a small space with several other people. I mean the masturbation is one thing, but writing about it in front of people with little to do? Damn.” ~ Merle8888
“Infanticide happened through ‘almost’ every culture, on every continent, throughout history, to a significant degree.”
“Sometimes gender was a factor, sometimes it wasn’t. Ancient Egypt was the exception, but unwanted kids usually became slaves instead.” ~ TimelyKaleidoscope
“The biggest reason in Christian Europe was birth defects.”
“A daughter could still pull her weight on the farm but a child with spina bifida or Downs or missing limbs couldn’t.”
“This was even worse than it seems because the rural poor, who made up over 90% of the population, were so inbred that up to one in eight children were born with an identifiable defect.” ~ Reddit
“Pretty much. And there were myths that grew around these things to justify them, such as human beings being switched with troll babies, identifiable because the switched baby seemed sick and wasn’t thriving.”
“They were supposed to basically torture it until their ‘real’ child was returned.” ~ TimelyKaleidoscope
“The were able to follow the trail of Lewis and Clark by finding mercury. Which they were taking to combat syphilis.” ~ Klaxon722
“York, Clark’s slave who accompanied the Corps, had a lot of sex because of his curiosity as a Black man.”
“Few Whites were ever in the area at all and no Black person ever made it that far up. It was mostly French trappers and Russian or Spanish explorers.” ~ AudibleNod
“Twins were a scourge and were left in the wilderness. What a burden to a family.”
“I think we don’t appreciate how besieged by death and illness everyone was. A family could have 20 children and see 5 raised to adulthood.”
They weren’t inured to it or callus, they loved and grieved their children the same as we do.”
“They had God, family, friends, and untreated depression, alcohol, and suicide to get through it. And a lot of hard work.”
“So killing an infant they can’t care for was a mercy for the children they already had.”
“If you have 5 mouths and money barely to feed the 7 of you, it is cruel to all of you to bring in another 1 or 2 and make the lot of you starve.”
“Even more so if that child is born with a mark on them that shows it won’t make it past a few months or a few years.”
“Why starve 2 children when you can kill only 1? They didn’t do this cheerfully.”
“They did it to survive.” ~NotMyHersheyBar
“Not R rated on its own, but have you ever considered how smelly history would be?”
“Imagine the signing of the declaration of independence.”
“A reportedly hot day, during a time when people didn’t bath often, people wore a bunch of layers, and you have a bunch of dudes packed into a room for hours.”
“The R rated part, all of these people had sex. And it would smell so bad.” ~ jpterodactyl
“The Aztecs would wear someone’s skin for days until it peeled off as a ritual sacrifice to the maize goddess during the new harvest season, the skin was supposed to represent the husk of corn and how it would dry up and peel off the cob, also around this time they would have priests wear penis hats to represent fertility.” ~ lizardlord217
“Let’s be honest, it’s the Aztecs we’re taking about.”
“A literal society based around human sacrifice, whose founding myth involves the revelation that the gods wanted human sacrifices “‘ike tortillas fresh off the griddle.’ (I.e., early and often).”
“What do you think the answer is?” ~ DowncastAcorn
Now that is fun.
We really should scatter the fun with the just OK parts of history.
Scandal is the bedrock of every nation.
Just let the freak flag fly!
A lot of us enjoy discovering unusual and wild facts, but honestly, sometimes the facts we discover are so out there, we struggle to believe they are true.
Some of us even become angry when we discover something is true, because it’s so hard to believe!
“What’s a terrifying fact that keeps you up at night?”
“Here is the etymology of the days of the week in English:”
“Sun’s Day”
“Moon’s Day”
“Tir (Tew)’s day”
“Odin (Wodin)’s day”
“Thor’s Day”
“Freya’s Day”
“Saturn’s Day”
“Two celestial bodies, four Norse gods, and suddenly one asshole from the Roman pantheon for no godd**ned reason. What the f**k is Saturn doing there?” – IronOhki
“I like how they’re called in Serbian:”
“• Utorak (Tuesday) – Taken from old Slavic and means ‘second.’”
“• Sreda (Wednesday) – Means ‘middle.’”
“• Četvrtak (Thursday) – Means ‘fourth.’”
“• Petak (Friday) – Means ‘fifth.’”
“• Subota (Saturday) – Derived from the word ‘sabbath.’”
“• Nedelja (Sunday) – Means ‘not to work,’ or ‘the day when you don’t work.’”
“• Ponedeljak (Monday) – Literally means ‘after Nedelja,’ or ‘the day after the day when you don’t work,’ because laziness is on a whole other level here apparently.’” – TheCosmicSound
“There are more privately owned tigers in Texas than there are wild tigers on the rest of the planet combined.” – j_flameIV
“Crocodiles can climb trees.” – MoravianPrince
“A flock of crows is called a murder. But a flock of ravens is called an unkindness or a conspiracy. Who even comes up with this s**t?” – thweet_jethuth
“Pretty much anything to do with naked mole rats. They are neither related to moles nor rats, they can use their teeth like chopsticks, they have the social hierarchy of bees, and oh yeah, THEY ARE COLD-BLOODED.” – JustAProxyForLurking
“In the cat family, cats can either roar or purr, but can’t do both. It’s to do with the structure of the throat.”
“Cheetahs can’t roar, but I hope you find some solace in the thought of them purring happily.”
“Incidentally, cheetahs are different from other big cats in another way too – they can’t retract their claws completely.” – Lenaandcats
“English Bulldogs can’t mate naturally. The males are literally physically incapable of mounting the females, so they either have to be helped to do so, or the females are artificially inseminated.”
“The puppies are always delivered via cesarean section since their skulls would not fit through the birth canal. They will then live their entire lives with compromised breathing.”
“But you know, they’re so cute! With their little squished in faces and their adorable snorting!”
“Sorry… I get angry when it comes to purposefully breeding broken animals.” – kabjl
“Persian cats often have breathing problems and blocked tear ducts.”
“Breed two polydactyl (double pawed) cats together and you get kittens with eyes set very far apart and crooked front legs.”
“Intentionally breeding animals to create features people consider cute or fascinating at the expense of the animal’s health should be treated as animal cruelty.” – useatyourownrisk
“Bananas are berries but strawberries are not berries.” – NikiF**kingLauda
“Raspberries, blackberries, and boysenberries are also not berries.”
“Wanna know what else is a berry? A watermelon.” – Grayseff
“Cannoli is already in plural form. The singular form is Cannolo.” – JimDumb22
“Coolth is an actual word and it’s the opposite of warmth. I love using it but my girlfriend fucking hates it.” – mackenzicles
“The terms ‘hardwood’ and ‘softwood’ have nothing to do with the actual hardness of the wood, but what kind of seeds the tree produces.” – Penguin_Out_Of_A_Zoo
“Inflammable and flammable mean the same thing. ‘Flammable’ is not considered a scientifically acceptable term for things-that-catch-fire-easily. ‘Inflammable’ is the proper term and comes from the word inflame.”
“But flammable caught on because inflammable sounds too much like resistant-to-being-caught-on-fire, which is potentially quite a dangerous misunderstanding.” – Guinefort1
“The word ‘Helicopter’ is not made up of the words ‘Heli’ and ‘Copter,’ but rather ‘Helico’ and ‘Pter,’ which are Greek for ‘Spiral’ and ‘Wing.’” – Zaptagious
“That ‘unlockable’ means both: Able to be unlocked AND Unable to be locked.”
“My 11-year-old pointed this out, and I had nothing for her other than a blank stare and then thinking, ‘Well, s**t. Good job.’” – jenfers
“The fact that this sentence is grammatically correct: ‘All the faith he had had had had no effect.’” – WoodyPoleSmoker
“Get ready:”
“‘James, where John had had ‘had,’ had had ‘had had;’ ‘had had’ had had a better effect on the teacher.’ is correct.” – halatian6
“All crisps (chips for any Americans) in the UK go out of date on a Saturday. It annoys me because a smug friend pointed it out and i have been unsuccessful in proving him wrong.” – Rossco1874
“I had to Google this and found this from Walkers…”
“In the manufacturing sites, we work on production weeks which start on a Sunday. All product produced in that week will have the same Best Before date. As the week ends on Saturday, the Best Before date will always end on a Saturday.” – IsItMeYourLooking49
“If you mix water and sawdust and freeze it, the resulting ‘ice’ melts extremely slowly. like, ‘weeks at room temperature’ slowly.” – btaylos
“The fact that in an electric circuit, even though the electric current is electrons moving from negative pole to positive pole, the definition of a current flow is that it moves from positive to negative.”
“And similar misses in definitions in physics/science that was just decided to stay because changing definitions would be confusing at first.” – Versalis_A
Though some of the Redditors struggled to believe these facts were true, there was no arguing these facts were fascinating.
It’s an amazing reminder there is something new and fun to learn lurking around every corner.
Boris Mikhailov, captain of the USSR hockey team, was offered a $1 million contract to leave Russia in 1980 after the Miracle on Ice. However, he declined as the KGB was standing next to him when the offer was made.
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In Milwaukee, it is a Christmas tradition to eat raw ground beef and onions on rye bread.
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