Author Topic: Historical Oddities (Read 1501 times)

_noXiouS_ · « **on:** January 15, 2011, 03:24:57 PM »

1. Charles Darwin married his first cousin.

2. John F. Kennedy, Anthony Burgess, Aldous Huxley, and C.S. Lewis all died on the same day.

3. Officially, the longest war in history was between the Netherlands and the Isles of Scilly, which lasted from 1651 to 1986. There were no casualties.

4. Gay marriage was legally recognized in Rome, and Nero himself married at least two gay couples.

5. Adolf Hitler’s nephew, William Hitler, immigrated to the United States in 1939 and fought against his uncle.

6. Thomas Paine was elected to the first post-revolution French parliament, despite not speaking a word of the language.

7. William Howard Taft is the only US President to come third in his campaign for re-election, losing to eventual winner Woodrow Wilson and fellow Republican Theodore Roosevelt.

8. Technically, Henry VIII had only two wives. Four of his marriages were annulled.

9. King Richard II invented the handkerchief.

10. The Parliament of Iceland is the oldest still acting parliament in the world. It was established in 930.

11. The people who founded the Futurism art movement also founded the first Italian Fascist party in 1918.

12. Albert Einstein was offered the role of Israel’s second President in 1952, but declined.

13. New Zealand was the first country to enfranchise women. It gave them the vote in 1895.

14. The 27th amendment to the US constitution took 202 years to ratify, having been proposed in 1789 and finally ratified in 1992.

15. Until April 2008, the island of Sark remained the last feudal state in Europe.

16. Tomatoes were considered poisonous for many years in Europe and they were grown for ornamental reasons only. In fact, the leaves and stems of tomatoes are poisonous (but they can be used in moderation for food flavoring).

17. Soon after building started in 1173, the foundation of the Pisa tower settled unevenly. Construction was stopped, and was continued only a 100 years later. Therefore, the leaning tower was never straight.

18. Ancient Egyptians used slabs of stones as pillows.

19. People have been wearing glasses for about 700 years.

20. King Charles the Second often rubbed dust from the mummies of pharaohs so he could “absorb their ancient greatness.

Other 20....

1. Before the Boston Tea Party, the British actually lowered tea taxes, not raised them.

2. England’s King George I was actually German.

3. Abel Tasman “discovered” Tasmania, New Zeeland and Fiji, on his first voyage, but managed to completely miss mainland Australia!

4. Ethnic Irishman Bernardo O’Higgins was the first president of the Republic of Chile.

5. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams both died on the same day – the 50th anniversary of the U.S. Declaration of Independence.

6. When the American Civil War started, Confederate Robert E. Lee owned no slaves. Union general U.S. Grant did.

7. Kaiser Wilhelm II, Tsar Nicholas II and George V were all grandchildren of Queen Victoria.

8. Karl Marx was once a correspondent for the New York Daily Tribune.

9. Josef Stalin once studied to be a priest.

10. Henry Kissinger and Yasser Arafat won the Nobel Peace Prize. Gandhi never did.

11. The Constitution of the Confederate States of America banned the slave trade.

12. The Finnish capital of Helsinki was founded by a Swedish king in 1550.

13. The “D” in D-Day stands for “Day” – “Day-Day”

14. There was a New Australia in Paraguay in the 1890s.

15. A New Orleans man hired a pirate to rescue Napoleon from his prison on St. Helena.

16. Like Dracula (Vlad Tepes), there really was a King Macbeth. He ruled Scotland from 1040 to 1057.

17. In 1839, the U.S. and Canada fought the bloodless “War of Pork and Beans”.

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18. Despite the reputation, Mussolini never made the trains run on time.

19. The world powers officially outlawed war under the 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact.

20. Ancient Egypt produced at least six types of beer

Author Topic: Historical Oddities (Read 1501 times)

_noXiouS_

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