Bizarre Historical Facts They Never Taught Us In School D
After accusing his wife Queen Mariamne of adultery and having her executed, King Herod preserved her in honey and continued to perform disturbing acts with the corpse for years afterward. He eventually died of a mysterious affliction. Considering what Herod had done with his wife’s body, the symptoms of his illness were both extremely gruesome and incredibly fitting.
The full freaky story is coming up. We can’t learn everything in school, and maybe that’s a good thing—because some historical facts are too weird for a textbook. Like Abraham Lincoln’s other assassination, Thomas Edison’s little-known dark side, or Mary Shelley’s romantic but morbid secret…and that’s just naming a few.
Strap in for this VERY strange ride, as we explore some of history’s most bizarre facts. Queen Olympias was Alexander the Great’s mother, and she was even more ruthless than her son. On one occasion, she sent a captive enemy queen a cup of poison, a noose, and a sword…then told her to choose how she wanted to die.
According to history, the woman chose to hang herself, though she cursed Olympias to the very end of her life. King Tutankhamun passed at the tender age of 18. Some researchers believe he died from a genetic disease, due to the fact his parents were brother and sister. Makes sense. The reason why the Spartans were able to be so focused on war was because of massive slavery.
Every single Spartan male was a soldier. Every other job was done by slaves. The Emperor Caligula had a malevolent sense of humor. Once at a dinner party, he reportedly burst into laughter. When asked to explain the reason for his mirth, he replied, “I’ve just thought that I’ve only to give the word and you’ll all have your throats cut.
” Hilarious, right? In Ancient Rome, the punishment for killing your father was the death penalty. But, not just any death penalty. Your prosecutors would sew you up in a sack along with a monkey, a viper, a dog, and a rooster. The punishment varied slightly depending on the ruling emperor; some rulers preferred more snakes and others more dogs. The Romans took entertainment to a truly unbelievable level.
In the 1st century AD, polar bears fought seals in Roman amphitheaters flooded with water. According to one ancient historian, the mad Emperor Nero tried and failed several times to kill his mother Agrippina the Younger, each time trying to up the ante. First, he tried to poison her on several occasions, but she always took an antidote on time.
Then, he constructed a machine that would collapse her bedroom ceiling on her while she slept, but she caught wind of the plot and escaped. Finally, he actually invented a collapsible boat that would drown her while she was on a pleasure cruise. And SHE STILL SURVIVED. Maybe she should have been known as Agrippina the immortal.
Inhabitants of the Chinese town of Liqian have blond hair and white skin. Historians have speculated they are the descendants of a lost Roman settlement. Cleopatra wasn’t just a powerful and famously charismatic queen; she was also a party girl. She created a drinking club with her husband Marc Antony.
The club members would feast and drink heavily and then go out to play pranks on unsuspecting citizens. King Herod, the tyrant king of Judea, had his wife, Mariamne I, preserved in honey after her death. Herod ordered her execution, but found her too beautiful to bury and so kept and preserved her body for seven years. Some even claimed Herod had er, relations, with the body.
Herod suffered from paranoid delusions, rage, and arteriosclerosis, but his death in 4 BCE came at the hands of a mysterious and agonizing illness which modern doctors are still not able to identify. At one point, the pain was so excruciating, the king attempted to take his own life. The illness came to be known, among the Judean people, as “Herod’s Evil.
” Medieval doctors kept their patients in check with drinkable byproducts of human blood and flesh. “Mummy powder” was a commonplace fixture of 12th-century apothecaries, and these practices even had a name: “corpse medicine.” In an effort to accentuate facial length and forehead size, trendy women in the Middle Ages removed annoying distractors—such as eyebrow hair.
If the forehead still wasn’t prominent enough, hairlines were fair game for plucking as well. Gorgeous. The infamous King Henry VIII employed four Grooms of the Stool, men whose job it was to wipe the royal bottom and attend to his other private needs. It was a position of great honor, but also—as one Groom soon discovered—incredibly grave danger.
Henry VIII executed one of his bathroom staff, Sir Henry Norris, on trumped-up charges that he was sleeping with Henry’s second wife Anne Boleyn. Truly, no one was safe around this guy. Speaking of Henry VIII wives, Catherine of Aragon’s demise was utterly mysterious in its time.
While preparing her body for burial, her embalmer noticed the corpse was in perfect health—save for her heart, which had turned black. The ghastly condition, coupled with Catherine’s chilling premonitions of her own demise, led people to some dark rumors about her end. After witnessing her strange condition, those loyal to Catherine and disloyal to Henry and his new wife Anne Boleyn started whispering that the newly married Royal Couple had poisoned Catherine in a chilling act of self-service, leading the “Dowager” to die poetically of a broken heart. Modern historians, however, believe a very different story. Most experts today believe that rather than foul play, Catherine passed of heart cancer, which can sometimes turn the heart black. Nevertheless, it’s still tragically poetic given the circumstances of Catherine’s life and her heartbreaking queenship. Although dental hygiene was not necessarily at its peak in Tudor England, Queen Elizabeth
I’s fondness for sweets gave her pearly whites a dramatically darker tone…in fact, her chompers were probably very black. More than that, since sugar was a luxury, some women then blackened their own teeth both to emulate their queen and show off their wealth. One day, the 17th Earl of Oxford came to Queen Elizabeth’s court, bowed to her—and let out an enormous toot. The man was completely mortified.
So mortified, in fact, that he went into self-imposed exile for seven years. When he returned, Elizabeth’s first reply was, “My lord, I had forgot the fart.” Shortly after her beloved husband’s passing, Queen Joanna of Castile ordered his body exhumed, had the casket opened, jumped to his side once again, and kissed his dearly departed feet. She then carried his casket everywhere with her.
Ibrahim I became Sultan of the Ottoman Empire even though he was very clearly mentally unstable. He drowned his entire harem and imposed new taxes to fund his lavish lifestyle. His people deposed him, and then 10 days later, they strangled him. Drowning women is one thing. But new taxes? Unacceptable.
Anna, the “Mad Tsarina” of Russia, once tormented one of her hated courtiers by locking him up in an ice palace for the night. Before that, she made him pretend to be a chicken, sit in her ante-chamber and “lay” eggs. Back in the late 16th century, wealthy males became troubled by an outbreak of balding heads from the venereal disease syphilis.
In an ingenious move to kill two birds with one stone, elaborate powdered and scented wigs became all the rage in an effort to hide hair loss as well as the unpleasant odors associated with the illness. According to several historical records, in order to become a lover of Catherine the Great, there was an intimate test.
Before jumping into Catherine’s bed, prospective suitors had to first satisfy one of Catherine’s ladies-in-waiting. Foot tickling was used in the Muscovite palaces and courts for centuries as a means of arousal. Many of the Czarinas (Catherine the Great, Anna Ivanovna, and others) loved it. It was so popular that eunuchs and women were employed as full-time foot ticklers.
Philippe, Duke of Orleans was the brother of King Louis XIV. To prevent Philippe from threatening his famous brother, Philippe’s mother Queen Anne of Austria raised him to be very feminine, calling him “my little girl” and even urging him to dress up in frilly, feminine clothing as a child. Elizabeth Bathory lived in Hungary in the 16th century.
We now call her “The Blood Countess,” for reasons straight out of a horror story. Partly thanks to a terrible childhood, Bathory loved hurting young servants and peasant girls. Her husband built her a customized chamber for this, and some stories claim she used to drink the blood of the girls as well as bathe in it. Truly disturbing.
Napoleon Bonaparte famously adored his wife Josephine, but few people remember the dark end of their love affair. Tragically, Josephine couldn’t have children, so Napoleon made a hard choice: He divorced Josephine and took up with Marie-Louise of Austria. Napoleon reportedly told his blushing bride straight off, “It is a womb that I am marrying.” How romantic. 
While renovating his home into a museum, researchers made a horrific discovery at Ben Franklin’s house. They found 10 bodies in the founding father’s basement. This led to speculation he may have been an actual serial killer. However, the bodies were more likely cadavers used for the anatomical studies of one of Franklin’s friends.
Abraham Lincoln was almost killed two years before he was assassinated. Late one August evening in 1863, Lincoln rode alone on horseback to his family’s summer residence. A private at the gate heard a shot ring out and, moments later, a bareheaded Lincoln clinging to his steed galloped into the yard.
Lincoln explained that gunfire at the foot of the hill had sent his horse into a frenzied gallop, running so fast that it knocked his hat off. The two men retrieved Lincoln’s hat, which had a bullet hole in it. Lincoln asked the guards to keep the incident quiet because he didn’t want to worry his wife… During the American Civil War, men from both sides began reporting glow-in-the-dark wounds after the Battle of Shiloh. Of the wounded, those with glowing wounds seemed to heal faster.
Later research revealed that the area was likely a breeding ground for P. luminescens, a luminescent bacterium that produces a natural antibiotic. In the 1800s, people needed dentures just like they do today—but they didn’t have access to our modern dental technologies. Instead, people made dentures at the time out of the teeth of dead people, usually soldiers.
It was common in the Victorian age to have photographs of loved ones taken after they passed. Families in Victorian Britain would even pose with the dead, with tykes “sleeping” and young ladies “reclining.” I guess that’s one way to keep the memory of a loved one “alive”. Frankenstein author Mary Shelley had a pretty gross secret hidden away in her desk: her dead husband’s heart.
When her husband, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, drowned in a boating accident, he was cremated, but his heart remained intact. Mary eventually took possession of it, and researchers discovered it in her desk when she passed a few years later. The famous inventor Thomas Edison had a huge dark side not many people know about. For example, he used electricity to publicly kill animals.
He wanted to show how alternating current was more dangerous than the “direct” current that he used. On one occasion, he used A/C to execute a rogue circus elephant named “Topsy” in front of thousands of people. Nikola Tesla had a bizarre obsession with pigeons. Describing one of his favorite pigeons, Tesla once proudly proclaimed, “I loved that pigeon as a man loves a woman, and she loved me. As long as I had her, there was a purpose to my life.” How sweet.
Marie Curie, the chemist who conducted pioneering research on radioactivity, was completely in the dark when it came to the dangers of radioactive materials. Though she and her husband both suffered from chronic pain, neither considered that it was their radioactive substance-handling that was the cause. It was.
Some of their original lab equipment is so radioactive that we still cannot safely view or study it. Andrew Jackson was apparently involved in over one hundred duels, most of which he fought to defend his wife’s honor. Why her honor was constantly besmirched is another story. The mystic monk Rasputin went for incredibly long periods of time without touching himself or washing.
He once bragged about not changing his underwear for over six months, and food would often rot in his beard. When the Bolsheviks stormed the Winter Palace in 1917, their revolution was halted for a few days because they got ridiculously wasted after finding the palace wine stores. Today we see Gandhi as a figure of peaceful protest and understanding.
But there’s a side of him few know about. At the age of 36, while married, Gandhi became more and more obsessed with lust. In order to train and “perfect” his control over his desires, Gandhi would sleep undressed with young women. But one night, he committed an act so heinous that it made his own staff member quit on him right then and there.
Gandhi had performed this sleeping act with his own grand-niece named Manu. This made his stenographer leave in disgust, never to return. Albert Einstein’s marriage contract with his wife included these conditions: “You will make sure that my clothes and laundry are kept in good order; that I will receive my three meals regularly in my room; that my bedroom and study are kept neat, and especially that my desk is left for my use only.
” Einstein’s wife agreed to these terms, which is pretty shocking. His wife wasn’t the only woman the famous scientist relied on. Albert Einstein’s secretary once got an anonymous call asking for Einstein’s address. The secretary obviously declined to provide it. The caller then admitted he was Einstein himself, and that he had forgotten his own address.
Actress Sarah Bernhardt had a peculiar obsession with death, and from the tender age of 15 onward, she sometimes slept in a custom-made, satin-lined rosewood coffin. Every member of Teddy Roosevelt’s family owned a pair of stilts. They often walked around the White House on them just for fun.
When Al Capone was put in Alcatraz for tax evasion, doctors discovered he had syphilis, but Capone refused treatment because he was afraid of needles. After 11 years in Alcatraz, the disease had eaten away at his brain so much that he could no longer resume his gangster lifestyle. Before his passing, people often spotted him casting a fishing rod into his swimming pool.
In 1954, the macho writer Ernest Hemingway got into a plane crash. He miraculously survived, but that was just the start of the nightmare. When he tried to take another plane to get medical help, that plane exploded upon taking off. Hemingway managed to survive again. Talk about bad luck. Or wait a minute…actually, is that good luck? During his second run for president, Teddy Roosevelt was shot in a failed assassination attempt.
However, instead of going to the hospital, he insisted on giving a speech with the bullet still lodged in his chest. The thick papers that Roosevelt had written his speech on and put in his pocket were actually what slowed the bullet down. Dracula actor Bela Lugosi once had an affair with starlet Clara Bow, and commissioned a nude portrait of the actress.
He then displayed the large painting prominently in all of his homes from 1929 until his passing—including in the houses he shared with his last two wives. Howard Hughes was one of the most successful men of his time, producing many famous movies and dating Hollywood’s most beautiful women. However, later in life, he became a complete hermit. Hughes spent his days in hotels, refusing to make eye contact with his aides.
He also stopped bathing completely. Even more gross? He only cut his hair and nails once a year. In Citizen Kane’s famous ending, we finally see that Kane’s darling “Rosebud” is actually a childhood sled. However, the real meaning of “Rosebud” may be much more scandalous. Citizen Kane was based on the life of William Randolph Hearst, whose mistress was actress Marion Davies.
According to one source, in real life, “Rosebud” was Hearst’s nickname for Davies’, er, private nether regions. Grace Kelly has a pristine, princess-like reputation in Hollywood, but that’s not exactly the truth. She had affairs with, and I quote, “everybody.” She fell for so many of her older male co-stars that multiple biographers have wondered if Kelly had some serious daddy issues.
There was Gary Cooper, Clark Gable, and Ray Milland, just to name a few. Milland’s wife even called Kelly a “home-wrecker.” Not the most flattering title. Jimmy Carter was the first president to go on record as having seen a UFO. I wonder if he took a picture. After George Bush Sr.
vomited on the Japanese Prime Minister, the Japanese invented a new word: Bushusuru. This means to “do the Bush thing” or to “publicly vomit.” Very presidential. Clearly the past was full of comical, strange, and downright eerie moments that often get left out of history class. These troubling tales remind us how bizarre human history can be. So, the next time you think modern life is strange, just remember—it’s nothing compared to what came before. Thank you for watching this video.
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