18 WTF History Facts They Didn't Teach at School
1.
Urine from public urinals was a valuable commodity in ancient Rome and was used as a stain remover in laundries.
2.
"S--tposting" is hardly a nowadays thing. The Romans for example were known for chiseling walls (i.e. grafittying) with the most inappropriate or pointless stuff. There’s also some records of the exact same kind of content written in ancient Nordic runes around the Hagia Sophia, like "Halvdan wrote this" without any further input, or one inscribed on a tall and seemingly inaccessible corner of the ceiling, that mystified scholars for decades, until it was finally translated into "This is high."
3.
Pope Alexander the VI liked watching horses f--k cause he thought it was hilarious. If you’ve played "Assassin's Creed' he’s the villain of 'ACII' a.k.a. Rodrigo Borgia.
4.
There is a Roman poem considered so dirty it’s translation was not published for centuries. Turns out it is shockingly dirty.
5.
Ferdinand VII had such enormous penis he had to penetrate his wife using a pillow with a hole in it. He had to go through several wives until he found one who could handle him. His doctor wrote in his diary in a very graphic way how big and malformed his penis was.
6.
I’m sure most of you know that Victorian medicine got weird, but some of the prostate stuff they got into was really… above and beyond. From impotence to masturbation to simply being attracted to men, all sorts of sexual complaints or "deviances" were treated by - if you were lucky- just a nice everyday prostate "massage."
7.
Empress Dowager Lu (first empress of the Han dynasty) murdered her husband’s (deceased Emperor Gaozu) concubine and son. The murders were so brutal that she caused her son Emperor Hui to have a mental breakdown that led to him withdrawing from state affairs and her taking power until her death. She is possibly one of the most cruel, ruthless leaders in history.
8.
During the Middle Ages in Europe, the Catholic church was obsessed with holy relics. Yet, among the many crown of thorns copies, supposed pieces of the cross, and body parts of various saints, the Catholic church had one relic that was considered the most holy of all: Jesus’s Foreskin (aka the Holy Prepuce). St. Catherine even famously had a vision of herself marrying Jesus (a very common vision for nuns in her time) where Jesus used his own foreskin as a wedding ring and placed it upon her finger (uncommon!). Some accounts say she claimed she could still spiritually “feel” it there on her finger for the rest of her life.
9.
In the 1960s, the KGB tried to blackmail the Indonesian PM Sukarno with tapes of him having sex with a Russian flight attendant. Sukarno not only disregarded their blackmail, but asked them to bring more footage of the video to show his countrymen.
10.
Out of all the people who were supposed to be on Titanic, perhaps the most famous was JP Morgan, who not only paid for the ship and owned her, but almost single handedly saved the U.S. economy. In his day, he was portrayed as literally owning the government, such was his financial power. Morgan was supposed to occupy the ‘millionaires suite,’ a series of three cabins and a private deck that was one of the main reasons for the distinctive changes to Titanic’s upper superstructure. Luckily, shortly before Titanic was to sail, Morgan took ill and had to skip the maiden voyage of his new ship. Alas! Except Morgan wasn’t sick at all, that was simply his excuse/statement for why he wasn’t on Titanic. In reality, Morgan was in fine spirits. He simply skipped Titanic’s voyage because he was having much too great a time with his secret mistress at a resort/spa in the south of France, and decided he wanted to spend his 75th birthday with her – which was two days after the Titanic disaster. JP Morgan, one of the most powerful men in American history, avoided a tragic death because he wanted good birthday sex.
11.
Not a historian but I have heard that Mary Shelley, the author of 'Frankenstein,' lost her virginity on her mother's grave.
12.
Erfurt Latrine Disaster where essentially European nobles met up and due to the force of their weight caused the wooden floor to collapse and cause them to drown in literal s--t.
14.
Genghis Khan conquered a ginormous amount of territory and his favorite way to celebrate taking over a new place was to help himself to some of the local women. As a result, an astounding % of humanity are his descendants.
15.
Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia, was a well known sexually-charged monarch, keeping at least 22 younger men busy (EDIT:AFTER GETTING RID OF HER HUSBAND!). While that is commonly talked about, many might not know that she also kept rooms with erotic furniture and eccentric period pornography and walls covered in sexually explicit art.
16.
The charge of the dead men. Russian soldiers charged despite inhaling chlorine gas. They were coughing up pieces of the lungs as they marched. Had blood over their faces and clothes. Scared the Germans so badly, they ran backwards into their own traps.
17.
The image of Mussolini after he was executed and beaten by the public. His face is basically a sack of meat made of skin. You can almost compare to those fat zombies in every single zombie game
18.
Herodotus surmised that the reason female mummies were more decomposed than male mummies was because they were kept at home longer before being sent to the embalmers to avoid necrophilia.
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