10 Mind-Blowing Facts from History That Don’t Seem Real

There are a million facts from history, and every year, we seem to learn more of them. With as long as civilization has existed on this planet, there is simply no way that any one human could know everything about the world. That makes it kind of fun, though, doesn’t it? If you’re a history buff, you can rest assured knowing that there is something new to find out pretty much every single day.

That’s what this list is all about, in fact! With these ten tidbits, we’ll be sharing with you a grab bag of facts from history that we didn’t know before writing this up. And if we didn’t know all this, we’re sure you probably didn’t know these facts, either. They are surprising, amusing, and definitely a little bit unexpected. Buckled up for this cool and informative list of ten historical facts you never knew before—and that are so wild, they don’t seem like they could actually be real. But they are!

Related: 10 Ways That Tuberculosis Shaped Victorian Society

10 Stop Sinning!

Roller coasters may provide you with a wonderful adrenaline rush amid the enjoyment of a day at the amusement park, but do you know their original purpose? They were created in order to keep Americans away from sin! Way back in the 1880s, a hosiery businessman named LaMarcus Thompson was fed up with how Americans seemed to enjoy partaking in so many sinful activities. Hedonistic places like saloons and brothels were at the top of his worry list. He didn’t know how to stop the seemingly endless surge of dens of iniquity such as those. But then he got an idea: build something that’ll give people a rush without the accompanying dose of sin!

So Thompson came up with the idea for a roller coaster. And not only that, but he went out to Coney Island in New York City and built America’s first roller coaster there. At the time, Coney Island was a true hot spot for sinners. Brothels and saloons alike covered the place, and it made the area seedy, dangerous, and unappealing. By bringing his roller coaster idea out there, Thompson wanted to give Americans something to do that didn’t involve drinking or cavorting. Looking around now, we’re not sure whether Thompson really succeeded with that goal. But he definitely made roller coasters a common attraction worldwide!^[1]

9 Genius Dunces!

For centuries, dunce caps were actually thought to be used as a way to foster and encourage intelligence. Way back in the thirteenth century, there lived a Scottish priest and philosopher named John Duns Scotus. For some reason, he believed that by making students wear a pointed cap, they could somehow increase the spread of knowledge from the tip of the cap all the way down into the brain.

We’re not really sure how that would work or why anyone would go along with it, but boy, did they ever. For centuries, these so-called “dunce caps” named after their founder became something that only smart people (or people who were hoping to magically become smart) would wear while studying. Scotus’ followers and adherents became known as “Dunsmen,” and they proudly wore his pointy-tipped dunce caps as a badge of honor.

Thankfully, by the 1500s, reason more or less won out on this ridiculous custom. Scotus’ ideas began to be taken less seriously in that century, and the “duns cap,” as it was called at the time, became a pretty big joke. But still, his theories were in vogue for three centuries! That’s a lot of people wearing a lot of dunce caps that didn’t actually do anything for the brain or their ability to reason and think. Today, Scotus’ dunce cap theory is such a joke that the dunce cap is seen as a sign of low intelligence. That’s quite the turnaround from the 1200s, isn’t it?^[2]

8 Hitler’s Honors

In 1939, Adolf Hitler was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. Yes, you read that correctly! A Swedish politician very willingly and knowingly nominated the ruler of the Nazi Party and the most powerful and dangerous man in Nazi Germany. But the Swede didn’t do it wholeheartedly. See, by nominating Hitler, he actually meant for the honor to come ironically. The Swedish politician who nominated Hitler was doing so as a protest that somebody else had nominated Neville Chamberlain. He saw Chamberlain as a man fully undeserving of the Nobel Peace Prize, so he nominated Hitler to receive the prize as a not-so-subtle rebuke of those who would try to honor Chamberlain in that way.

Now, we should clear up a few things. First, the Swedish politician who did the nominating eventually withdrew Hitler’s name from the ring after he was criticized. Second, being a “Nobel Peace Prize Nominee” is not an official designation and has no official standing. Any one of the thousands of eligible nominators could nominate one of their friends to win the Nobel Peace Prize! They won’t necessarily win, of course. But forever after, the nominee could brag about the supposed distinction.

Even more ironically, Hitler actually banned German people from accepting the Nobel Peace Prize or any related awards four years before that, in 1935. So he couldn’t have won, anyway, according to his own rules. But it is pretty darkly funny and mildly disturbing to think about him possibly winning the Nobel Peace Prize while running roughshod over Europe and causing mass death throughout the continent.^[3]

7 Say Prunes!

Back in the day, people used to say “prunes” instead of “cheese” when it came to getting their pictures taken. Now, when we say “back in the day,” we’re talking about nearly two centuries ago. See, beginning in about the 1840s and leading well past the invention and mass production of the camera, showing off a big smile was seen as childish. Children were expected to behave like little adults during the Victorian era, and adults were certainly expected to act their age. So, in everyday life and in pictures alike, smiling too widely and showing off for the camera was a major faux pas.

When photography came into popular culture, and it started to become a thing to get one’s picture taken, prunes ruled the day. Families would come into photography studios in London and other cities for portraits, and they were admonished if they tried to smile. The push to avoid grinning was so severe that one London photographer told people to say “prunes” right before they were having their pictures taken.

Obviously, this prevented people from saying “cheese,” which would have widened the mouth and spread the lips into a smile. Instead, saying “prunes” allowed them to keep their mouths taut and their cheeks in a slim and appealing structure. Think of it like modern-day “fish face” selfies that tighten the cheeks but from the Victorian era. Other photographers like the results so much that “prunes” caught on everywhere, and for a long time, that was the thing to say while getting one’s picture taken!^[4]

6 Lit by Lady Liberty

The Statue of Liberty may represent many of the greatest things about the United States of America. Of course, Ellis Island is seen as the ultimate destination point for so many immigrants coming to the USA and hoping to improve their lives and take a chance on the freedoms we are given here. As a symbolic representation of America, the Statue of Liberty is right up there with the flag, the bald eagle, and a few other supremely patriotic things. But did you know that the Statue of Liberty actually had a very specific (and very important) purpose after it was first dedicated?

About a month after its 1886 dedication out on Ellis Island, New York officials flipped the proverbial switch and began using the statue’s torch as a super-powered lighthouse. For the next 16 years, right up through the end of 1901, the Statue of Liberty was not just a gift from France; it was also a working lighthouse that provided a key reference point for ships out in the water. Its torch was remarkably powerful, too; on clear days and nights, the statue’s light could be seen by ships as far as 24 miles away down the waterway south of Manhattan and out into Raritan Bay off the coast of New Jersey.

Unfortunately, the lighthouse shut down after operational costs became too great. However, for a very long time after it was first gifted to the Americans, the Statue of Liberty had a critical working purpose, even far beyond both the immigration point in which it functioned and the symbolic meaning it still holds today.^[5]

5 That’s a Big Bill

During one of the toughest times in American history, the United States Treasury actually printed up $100,000 bills. Between December 18, 1934, and January 9, 1935, the legal tender was printed and issued only to the nation’s Federal Reserve banks as a means to alter monetary policy in the middle of some of the darkest days of the Great Depression. The bills were legal tender and could be used for any purchase. However, they were never issued to the public, and to this day, there are none of these bills in circulation among American citizens or businesses.

In case you are wondering, the bills have the face of former President Woodrow Wilson on them. But again, that matters little since the public never got a chance to come into contact with them. They were only issued for such a short time to try to inject cash into the Federal Reserve system amid the tumultuous 1930s. In that way, the bills had some success as being conduits to transfer funds between banks. It’s probably good that they weren’t sent out in circulation, though. We know we get mad when we lose a $10 bill. Could you imagine losing a $100,000 bill?!^[6]

4 That’s Not OK!

There are a lot of theories about where the term “OK” originated, but it most likely appears as though it was an amalgamation of fake words that turned into something long-lasting. In the modern era, we recognize things like this all the time. It seems as though there is a new meme every week online. Just following all of them is a nearly impossible task. Things that are mostly nonsense flutter into the public consciousness after going viral on social media. Some stick around forever, some depart just as quickly as they arrive, and the masses refresh their feeds and scroll on their phones to hop on the next trend. (Remember the Ice Bucket Challenge? What about planking? Yeah…)

Go back two centuries, and that’s basically how “OK” came into use, too! In the 1830s, people would jokingly misspell things that had become common abbreviations. One of the most common at the time was “all correct,” which meant that things were, uh, all correct. (Duh!) That phrase was used so often that people started to get goofy about it. Some began to misspell the words as “orl korrekt” and other variants like that. The goofy misspellings turned into “OK,” which was initially meant as a tongue-in-cheek joke among those in the know. But somehow, it caught on!

Historians have been somewhat at a loss for exactly why it stuck around, but the prevailing theory has to do with President Martin Van Buren. He was known to his supporters as “Old Kinderhook,” the nickname taken from the town in New York in which he lived. The supporters loved the nickname so much that they began to call themselves the “OK Club” while Van Buren was campaigning for re-election in 1841. Unfortunately for “Old Kinderhook,” he wasn’t re-elected. However, the club found enough staying power that “OK” became part of the public consciousness. And now here we are!^[7]

3 Tower Troubles

The Eiffel Tower was originally supposed to be intended for the city of Barcelona, Spain. However, as the story goes, the Spanish city thought the tower’s planned design was simply too ugly for their lovely metro area, so they rejected it. Barcelona had been designated as the host city of the 1888 Universal Exposition, and so tower architect Gustave Eiffel wanted to build and display the tower there as part of the show. But Barcelona city officials balked at the look of the thing and told him to go elsewhere with it.

Unperturbed, Eiffel transitioned his focus to Paris, which was hosting its own 1889 International Exposition. At the time, French critics didn’t like it, either. Just like their counterparts in Barcelona, French officials and citizens alike believed the tower to be just plain ugly and useless. Of course, over the decades since then, the Eiffel Tower has become one of the most recognizable things on the entire planet. So it turns out everybody was wrong about that one—in both Paris and Barcelona.

Or were they? In recent decades, Spanish historians and Barcelona city officials have combed through old city records to see whether the longstanding claim of Eiffel offering the tower to their city first was really true. The Spanish investigators now claim no such offer was ever made. (At least not in writing.) But is that really true? Could the Barcelona plan be a myth? Or are Spaniards simply angry over the fact that Paris got the Eiffel Tower and the endless heaps of tourist money to match it?^[8]

2 A Pioneering Woman

Women’s suffrage in the United States occurred in 1920, and half the American populace was finally given the long-awaited right to vote. But as it turns out, the fairer sex had representation in Congress even before that! Yes, it’s hard to believe, but a woman was actually elected to the United States Congress before women’s suffrage was enacted across America.

That woman’s name was Jeanette Rankin, and she was quite a capable politician. Born in 1880, she was elected to the US House of Representatives for one term from her home state of Montana in 1916. She served two years there but then wasn’t re-elected in 1918. She kept at it, though, and in addition to a long career in public and civil service, she was actually re-elected to Congress as a 60-year-old woman in 1940.

It’s crazy to think about how a woman was elected to Congress before women were granted the right to vote, though. After all, if only men were voting, clearly enough men saw something in giving a woman a shot at a position of power to pull the lever in her favor. Credit goes to Montana for taking a stand and pioneering the move to push Rankin into history! That it came before women’s suffrage remains one of the political world’s greatest ironies, though.^[9]

1 Bad Luck Charm!

President William McKinley was assassinated by a shooter just moments after giving away his good luck charm to a little girl. As American history buffs no doubt know, President McKinley was shot and killed on September 6, 1901, in Buffalo, New York. He had been on the grounds of the Pan-American Exposition on that day, and he was busy shaking hands with supporters who had voted to carry him to re-election the previous fall. As he went around shaking hands and conversing with people who supported his run as America’s Commander-in-Chief, an anarchist named Leon Czolgosz walked up, produced a small handgun, and shot him. McKinley lingered for a while after that before he eventually died on September 14 from an infection and massive bleeding caused by the wounds.

But the real story here is how President McKinley gave away his good luck charm as a memento to a little girl in the crowd just moments before he was shot. As the story goes, he saw a 12-year-old girl named Myrtle while he was glad-handing through the throng of people. He always wore a red carnation bloom on his lapel as a way to curry favor and good luck for himself. But when he saw Myrtle standing there, he said to an aide, “I must give this little flower to another little flower.” Just moments after he took the carnation off his lapel and handed it to Myrtle, he was shot. There’s a lesson there: don’t relinquish your good luck charm to anyone—even a cute and innocent little girl.^[10]