Weird history facts all gathered right here under our history category. Once you have had your fill of history facts head over to our random fact generator to learn more random factoids!
In medieval games of chess, pawns that had been promoted to a queen would be given the title of “advisor,” so as to not imply that the king had more than one queen or was unfaithful. – WTF Fun Facts
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_(chess)
The Incas used colorful knotted cords called Quipu to record numbers and archives such as census data, tax obligations, and storehouse records. They had up to a thousand unique strands. – WTF Fun Facts
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quipu
During the California gold rush, a slice of bread cost $1 or $2 if you wanted it buttered. That’s the equivalent of over $28 and $56 today. – WTF Fun Facts
Source: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/gold-rush-california-was-much-more-expensive-todays-dot-com-boom-california-180956788/?no-ist
In 1960, Col. Joseph Kittinger set the then world record for the highest skydive at just over 19 miles. During free fall, he reached a speed of 614 mph, nearly the speed of sound. His record was finally broken by his mentee in 2012 – WTF Fun Facts
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Kittinger
The first woman appearing on a US postage stamp was Queen Isabella of Spain, honoring her patronage of Christopher Columbus’s voyage to the Americas. – WTF Fun Facts
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_on_US_stamps
When morphine was first isolated from opium in 1805, one of its early uses was as a “non-addictive” drug to treat people with an addiction to the relatively less addictive opium. – WTF Fun Facts
Source: https://methoide.fcm.arizona.edu/infocenter/index.cfm?stid=174
In 1936, Cleveland lost the largest book in the world. The Golden Book of Cleveland was 7 feet by 5 feet and 3 feet thick, with 6,000 pages – about the size of a queen-size bed. It weighed ~2 1/2 tons. – WTF Fun Facts
Source: https://clevelandmagazine.com/in-the-cle/the-read/articles/the-golden-book-of-cleveland
Until 1937, it was illegal for men to be topless in the US – even on beaches. The fine was $1 if caught in New York City or its municipal beaches. – WTF Fun Facts
Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2019/01/05/men-were-once-arrested-baring-their-chests-beach/
Venetian 17th century scientist Michiel Angelo Salamon came up with an idea to distill the essence of the bubonic plague and paint it onto Albanian fezzes which the besieging Turks would acquire. – WTF Fun Facts
Source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22830494-400-17th-century-plot-to-use-plague-hats-as-bioweapons-revealed/
The drunkard’s cloak was a barrel with holes for one’s head and arms that was put on drunk people to publicly shame them while they were paraded through their town. Historical records show the punishment was used in the UK, USA, Netherlands and Denmark. – WTF Fun Facts
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drunkard%27s_cloak
At one point in the 1990’s, 50% of all Compact Discs production in the world was dedicated solely to creating AOL install/sign-up discs. They spent over $300 million on discs and acquired a new subscriber every six seconds. – WTF Fun Facts
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2010/12/27/aol-discs-90s/
On NASA’s Gemini XII flight, the computer docking system failed and Buzz Aldrin (who did his doctoral thesis at MIT on line-of-sight orbital mechanics) successfully calculated the docking trajectory using a sextant and a slide rule. – WTF Fun Facts
Source: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/gemini-xii-crew-masters-the-challenges-of-spacewalks
Francis Pegahmagabow was a Canadian indigenous man who fought in WWI. He killed 378 enemies with his Ross rifle and captured another 300, making him one of the most successful marksmen in WWI. – WTF Fun Facts
Source: https://www.cbc.ca/news/aboriginal/legendary-ojibwa-sniper-unsung-hero-of-ww-i-1.2725241
Walt Disney World once had it’s own airport with a singing runway (Lake Buena Vista STOLPort runway). Grooves in the tarmac were spaced so the lines played the opening notes of “When You Wish Upon a Star”. The airport closed in 1972. – WTF Fun Facts
Source: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/singing-runway-at-the-abandoned-disney-world-airport
During the US prohibition era, moonshiners would wear cow shoes. The fancy footwear left hoofprints instead of footprints, helping distillers and smugglers evade police. – WTF Fun Facts
Source: https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/cow-shoes-prohibition-1924/
In 1821, an African American business owner named Thomas Jennings invented the dry cleaning process and was one of the first African Americans to be granted a patent. He used the proceeds from his invention to buy his wife and children out of slavery. – WTF Fun Facts
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_L._Jennings
On March 14, 1942, Anne Miller, diagnosed with blood poisoning, was given a tablespoon of penicillin, one half of the entire stockpile of the antibiotic in the whole United States. – WTF Fun Facts
Source: https://time.com/4250235/penicillin-1942-history/
In 1947, Thor Heyerdahl, a Norwegian adventurer and scientist, sailed 5,000 miles across the Pacific in a handbuilt raft (known as the Kon-Tiki Expedition to prove the ancients could’ve accomplished this too. – WTF Fun Facts
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thor_Heyerdahl