Collected by AskReddit
16.
On March 30, 1981 there was an assassination attempt on President Reagan. Jerry Parr was one of the Secret Service agents on duty, in fact he was the one that pushed President Reagan into the limousine after hearing the gunshots. While driving back to the White House (standard procedure since at the time it was believed the President was uninjured), Agent Parr noticed that the President was bleeding and ordered the limo to immediately turn around and go to George Washington Hospital. This decision no doubt saved President Reagan’s life.
Agent Parr had wanted to be in the Secret Service since a young boy, when he watched a 1939 movie called "Code of the Secret Service", with a young unknown actor playing the part of Agent Brass Bancroft. That actor made some more movies and eventually entered politics, becoming Governor of California and later….. President of the United States. Indeed, a young Ronald Reagan played a role in a movie which caused a young boy to make a career choice – and then save the actor president’s own life 42 years later.
17.
Several hundred years ago, a group of Maori set sail from New Zealand into the unknown South Pacific. Whether by luck or skill, they landed on a remote archipelago known now as the Chatham Islands, some 500 miles away. They lost all contact with their fellow tribesmen on New Zealand and formed a tight-knit, egalitarian community known as the Moriori and lived in peace for over 100 years.
Then, one day in the 1830s, a group of Maori, who had by this point established contact with English settlers, hitched a ride on a seal-hunting ship and sailed back to the same island. Seeing its potential as a settlement, the Maori, as was their custom, slaughtered or enslaved every single Moriori. The Moriori did not fight back; they had never known violence.
18.
Not exactly historical, but it’s 100% mind-f**king:
In Australia, the Aboriginal Kuuk Thaayore people use compass directions for every spatial cue, for example, "There is an ant on your southeast leg." The people’s traditional greeting is "Where are you going?", essentially requiring that each person be familiar with the cardinal directions at all times. Perhaps as a result, these people have been shown to be more skilled at dead reckoning than any other population: when asked to order a set of picture cards, they instinctively arrange them not from left to right or right to left, but from east to west, no matter what direction they are facing.
19.
Shortly before the assassination of Abraham Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth, Lincoln’s son Robert was in New Jersey at a train station when he fell off of the platform and on to the tracks. Immediately a hand reached down and grabbed his collar, pulled him back onto the platform, and saved his life. Who was the man who saved him? None other than Edwin Booth, the older brother of John Wilkes Booth.
Edit: It’s worth noting that Edwin did not recognize Robert; in fact it was the other way around. Edwin was a renowned actor and Robert immediately recognized who he was. Edwin did not find out who he had saved until much later.
20.
My genome has been twisting and folding, recombining and mutating in a continuous string of organisms traceable back to an original replicator molecule. If I don’t find someone to reproduce with, the chain will be broken after billions of years of successes.
21.
That John Tyler (10th president born 1790) has two living GRANDSONS
22.
-The Japanese attacked the mainland US multiple times, from shellings from submarines to incendiary bombs on balloons. The captain of a Japanese submarine actually attacked Santa Barbara, CA. The Japanese also captured US territory (The Aleutian Islands in Alaska) as a way to trick the US in to dispatching carriers to the islands. The Japanese wanted to trap the US carriers and sink them, but the US code breakers used ingenious techniques to figure out the plan, and in turn surprised the Japanese fleet at Midway, sinking 3 of Japan’s 4 largest carriers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attacks_on_North_America_during_World_War_II
-There are many sunken German U boats right off the coast of the US, many within easy diving distances. These are protected by international law as grave sites since many are still sealed with the bodies of the sailors.
-There were many Japanese soldiers that didn’t know of the surrender, and kept fighting on for decades. Teruo Nakamura was the last Japanese soldier to surrender in 1974.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_holdout
-The United States developed the atomic bomb in response to Germany building their own atomic bomb, and being very far along. The nazis were also developing a plane to bomb the US mainland without landing to refuel. Historians believe the Nazis wanted to drop a nuke on NYC. The Nazis were VERY close to developing the bomb first, but in a heroic mission, paratroopers destroyed a Norwegian heavy water plant, the only source of heavy water for nuclear research for the Nazis.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amerika_Bomber
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_heavy_water_sabotage
-The Luftwaffe were insanely far along in their aviation and missile designs. The reasons why we were able to get to the moon, have great jets, and our early missile technology were mainly from German scientists that were taken to the US or Russia after WWII. The MiG-15, the workhorse of the Soviet Union, was primarily of German designs. The Germans were years ahead of their time, especially with fighter jets. Check out this VTOL design:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinkel_Lerche
More plans: Luft46.com
-Bayer, the major German pharmaceutical company that made the origin aspirin, tested this drug and many others forcefully and through disgusting experiments on Jews and others in concentration camps. A good amount of medical knowledge is known today from horrifying human experimentation on live and fully aware individuals in the concentration camps.
-In 1944, Jews in Auschwitz had an uprising and destroyed one crematorium with explosives.
-If you escaped a concentration camp, if you were caught, you were most likely placed in a cell and starved to death. If you successfully escaped, they’d find your family and starve them and place them on display to deter other people ALONG with taking 10 random people from your bunk and killing them all.
If anyone wants any more cool WWII facts, let me know
23.
During 14th century Korea, Admiral Yi Sun Shin singlehandedly stopped the Japanese invasion during Japans conquest of Asia. In 26 naval battles, he didnt lose once and achieved flawless victory. Every battle, he was outnumbered, some times 100:1. There were many battles where he takes a handful of ships (13), and defeats hundreds upon hundreds. He was able to do this because he was a master tactician and used every advantage he could find whether it was wind direction, tide changes, boat formation, and natural geography. His achievements in history is unparalleled, yet not many people have heard of this man due to his birth surroundings. How he can win over 25 naval battles where he was outnumbered usually 10-1 in dominant fashion is one serious mind f**k.
24.
It dates to the 200s AD, and is from the Kushan Empire in what’s now Afghanistan and Pakistan. On it is written "BODDO" in Greek letters … around a figure readily recognizable as Buddha.
Around the same time that Christianity was taking over the Roman Empire, there was a Greek-speaking Buddhist civilization in central Asia. These were the ancestors of the folks who built those giant Buddha statues that the Taliban blew up a few years ago. They spoke the same language as classical Western civilization; they certainly traded with the Roman Empire.
There never was a hard boundary between "Eastern" and "Western" civilizations, and there are not hard boundaries between nations or cultures today. There was, and is, a constant exchange of ideas, goods, language, and people amongst adjacent human settlements throughout the world.
People are not even remotely so different from one another as they pretend to be.
25.
The events that took place between Cortes and Montezuma. The Spaniards landed in a world where people breathed fire (smoking tobacco) had hot and cold running indoor plumbing and built structures that dwarfed anything in Europe. The population of Tenochtitlan was around 150k where as London at the time was around 50k.
When asked why they needed so much gold Cortes replied, "Because we Spaniards have a disease called greed which only gold can cure".
The clash of these two cultures has always fascinated me.
26.
In October 2012, scientists working at CERN discovered that particles known as "Higgs singlets" would appear in a detector before the experiment ran that would cause them to appear. They were able to use the generation of Higgs singlets as a signalling device, and thus became able to send messages back in time.
27.
The Russo-Japanese War technically lasted over 100 years. When Russia and Japan declared war in 1904, Montenegro was allied with Russia at the time, and also declared war. However, being a tiny principality at the time, Montenegro didn’t really participate in the war other than sending a few volunteer troops. When the Treaty of Portsmouth was signed in 1905, Montenegro’s involvement was overlooked. It wasn’t until 2006 that Japan and Montenegro realized they were technically still at war, and another peace treaty was signed.
28.
Cleopatra lived closer in time to us than she did to the creation of the Pyramids.
29.
In Europe between the 14th and 17th centuries, people were occasionally afflicted with "dancing mania," in which large groups would begin to dance in the streets, as if in a trance, often until the point of passing out. The phenomenon is well documented and is largely not understood.
30.
Wilmer McLean!!
The American Civil war started in his front yard and ended in his NEW HOUSE 120 miles away. How is that not the biggest mind f**k ever??
Bonus: Would not recommend.
