20 Wacky Historical Events That Are Hard to Believe

1.

Halley's Comet appeared in the sky when Mark Twain was born in 1835. The comet moves in a seventy-five or seventy-six-year orbit, and, as it neared Earth once again, Twain said “I came in with Halley’s Comet and I expect to go out with it.” Sure enough, he died on April 21, 1910, just as the comet made its next pass within sight of Earth. u/SuvenPan

2.

In 2014, Pope Francis released doves in the Vatican to symbolize his hopes for peace in the world. As soon as the doves began to fly, a seagull and a crow swooped down and attacked them in front of everyone. u/medievalistbooknerd

3.

In 1908 Russia showed up 12 days late to the Olympics because the world switched calenders while they did not. u/drailCA

4.

My colleague was on the plane to Hawaii where the entire top of the plane ripped off… they flew the rest of the way without any overhead.. landed and everyone walked off. Absolutely insane to see the pictures. Talk about being given a 2nd chance. u/SkydivingSquid

5.

Some guy built a submarine that safety experts said would implode. He said they were hating on him and went ahead into the sea anyway and it imploded. u/mrree55

6.

The fact that we landed on the moon. WHEN we did is BY FAR one of, if not the most insanely impressive achievements of human beings….. ever. And will likely never really be duplicated. In the the span of a handful of years, when the technology was unfathomably infantile, we launched a rocket to outer space with people on board, traveled to the moon, landed on it, walked around, came back inside, launched back up, returned to earth, plummeted to the surface on fire, and lived. It was a global achievement. It was maybe the most pure human moment that everyone on planet earth experienced TOGETHER, as a species. All with the computation of basically a calculator. u/Jibber_Fight

7.

Nicholas Alkemade fell 18,000 feet without a parachute from a burning plane in 1944 and suffered no serious injury. u/hazps

8.

The Battle of Bull Run, one of the first battles of the US Civil War, occurred on and around Wilmer McClean's farm in Northern Virginia. Not wanting to live surrounded by war, McClean and his family moved to Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia. The Battle of Appomattox Courthouse was the last significant battle between Union and Confederate forces. The Confederates signed the surrender order in Wilmer's sitting room. It is said that the Civil War started on Wilmer's farm and ended in his sitting room. u/csudebate

9.

Michael Malloy AKA Mike the Durable AKA Iron Mike. During the Great Depression, five men took out a life insurance policy on a homeless alcoholic that they were sure was going to drink himself to death. The owner of a bar allowed him to drink for free, but he kept drinking and didn’t die. So they tried to poison him with antifreeze. Didn’t work. The turpentine, horse liniment, rat poison, methanol….still didn’t work. A sandwich made with rotten sardines and tacks. Still no luck. Then they took his drunk body out in the cold and poured water on him. He lived. Then they ran him over with a car. He was in the hospital for three weeks, but survived. Then they poisoned him with carbon monoxide, and he finally died. They were all convicted of murder. u/DoobieBrotherhood

10.

The Battle of Halys In roughly 6th century BC, the Medes and the Lydians were at war. The war had lasted for six years and climaxed at the Battle of Halys. During the battle, a solar eclipse began. Both sides believed that the Gods were angry at their long and bloody war, and were taking the sun away from them. They declared peace that day, and the sun was returned. u/TheRogueBear

11.

John the Blind King of Bohemia insisted on fighting in battle and had his aides tie their horses together so they were not separated. He asked to be taken to where the battle was the loudest. The next day they were all found dead with their horses still tied together. u/Ralphroberts603

12.

John O'Neill, the FBI agent in charge of investigating Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden in the 1990s, grew frustrated with the bureacratic politics within the FBI and between the FBI and CIA that he felt hampered his mission. He decided to take to leave the FBI and take a higher paying job in the private sector. In August 23, 2001 he became the Chief of Security at the World Trade Center. He was killed in the attacks just a few weeks later. u/Darmok47

13.

Edwin booth brother of john Wilkes booth saved the life of Robert the son of president Abraham Lincoln. u/lundewoodworking

14.

Christmas day 1914. The truce on the WW1 battlefields. Shows the humanity inside everyone, but they were able to wake up the next day and go straight back to war, kill the men that they’d spent a sincere day with. u/PotterWhoLock01

15.

In 1903, The New York Times published an article about flying machines. They stated that it would take the combined efforts of all Mathematicians and mechanics 1-to-10 million years for powered flight to be achieved. Anyway, about 9 weeks later, the Wright brothers achieved powered flight for the first time. They were also overly cynical afterwards, In 1910 they said that flight would only ever be for billionaires, of course we had commercial flights by around the 60s achievable for many. u/Joe_PM2804

16.

Theodore Roosevelt found his boat was stolen. So he built a new boat, tracked the thieves down and arrested them. He then proceeded to watch them multiple days, without sleeping, so they could receive a trial instead of just shooting them on the spot. It was in the middle of a harsh winter so he didn’t handcuff them (for fear they’d get frostbite) so instead he just kept himself awake by reading Tolstoy with a gun trained on them the whole trek. u/Another_Road

17.

The Nutmeg Wars. The Dutch and the English went to war THREE times over nutmeg, which at the time was only known to grow on one South Pacific island. u/missoularedhead

18.

There would have been a third, and a nuclear, world war and possibly the end of the world if Stanislaw Petrow didn't react like he did on the 25th of September 1983. In short: he was the only one that questioned the readings on the russian missle alert system and refused to launch nuclear counter-missiles. u/LW33

19.

That cigarettes with 70 cancer-causing substances are allowed for sale. In Germany it causes 100 billion € damage to economy EVERY year and 120000 deaths and millions of people with cancer. It is unbelievable this poison is allowed for sale. u/akimann75

20.

The Four Pests Campaign. Mao Zedong, in his infinite hubris, thought that there would be no repercussions from an attempt to completely eliminate rats, flies, mosquitos, and sparrows. Plot twist: there were repercussions. Millions of people organized into groups, and hit noisy pots and pans to prevent sparrows from resting in their nests, with the goal of causing them to drop dead from exhaustion. Sparrows were replaced with bed bugs, as the extermination of sparrows had upset the ecological balance, which subsequently resulted in surging locust and insect populations that destroyed crops due to a lack of a natural predator. The ecological disruption was one of several factors that led to a famine that killed 45 million people.