10 Weird Things That Warp Your Sense of Time
Ten More Extremely Unexpected U.S. State “Firsts”
10 Ideas That Scare People to Death
The Cursed Decade: 10 Classic Rock Stars Who Had Low Periods in the 1980s
10 Crazy Ways Sleep Deprivation Can Affect You
10 Enthralling Facts about the Field of Cloth of Gold
The Ten Greatest Engineers in Science Fiction History
Ten Journalists Who Got Caught Faking the News
10 Best Hiking Trails in America with Breathtaking Views
Ten Animals That Produce and Store Toxins in Unlikely Places
10 Weird Things That Warp Your Sense of Time
Ten More Extremely Unexpected U.S. State “Firsts”
Who's Behind Listverse?
Jamie Frater
Head Editor
Jamie founded Listverse due to an insatiable desire to share fascinating, obscure, and bizarre facts. He has been a guest speaker on numerous national radio and television stations and is a five time published author.
More About Us10 Ideas That Scare People to Death
The Cursed Decade: 10 Classic Rock Stars Who Had Low Periods in the 1980s
10 Crazy Ways Sleep Deprivation Can Affect You
10 Enthralling Facts about the Field of Cloth of Gold
The Ten Greatest Engineers in Science Fiction History
Ten Journalists Who Got Caught Faking the News
10 Best Hiking Trails in America with Breathtaking Views
20 Historical Oddities You Probably Don’t Know
I love these little lists of oddities and was thrilled when this one was sent in to me. I have to confess that I didn’t know most of the things on this list. The ones that seem the strangest or most unlikely to me, I verified and found they are, indeed, true! So, onwards, let’s learn some odd facts we didn’t already know.
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 Zealand 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 Yassir 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”.
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. [See them drinking their lovely beer in the picture above.]
Contributor: Tequila Mockingbird