History is not just about glory on the throne and the battlefield—it’s also full of examples of the silly, the wacky, and the just plain weird. History is definitely written by the victors, and after reading this it’s easy to see why! Here are some of the funniest historical facts that people were able to share.
14. Old Time Fun and Games
In ancient China, there was a board game called liubo. The rules haven't survived to the modern day, but archaeologists have found the stone boards and playing pieces in tombs, and it's mentioned quite a bit in historical texts.
Most notably, not one but two separate imperial princes from different dynasties are recorded as having killed a relative by smashing them over the head with a liubo board.
13. That Took Some Serious Guts
Stalin kept trying to assassinate Josip Broz Tito. Tito sent this letter to Stalin:
"Stop sending people to kill me! We've already captured five of them, one of them with a bomb and another with a rifle... If you don't stop sending killers, I'll send a very fast working one to Moscow and I certainly won't have to send another.”
12. One Man Had His Own War-Time Strategy
During the time of Nazi-occupied France, a French train conductor learned that a train full of German soldiers had derailed. Instead of fixing it, he sent more trains full of soldiers at the wreck until the Nazis caught on and had him removed.
11. The Long-Awaited Coffee Versus Tea Showdown
King Gustav III of Sweden was convinced that coffee was poisonous and dangerous to public health. He levied heavy taxes on coffee and even passed a royal edict banning it, however, its consumption became ever more popular.
Determined to prove its danger, he ordered an experiment carried out: two identical twins had their death sentences commuted to life imprisonment, on the condition one drank three pots of coffee a day, and the other three pots of tea. Physicians would monitor the effects and report their eventual demise to the King.
Both of these physicians died of natural causes before this happened, however. Even King Gustav was assassinated in 1792 before either of the twins had met their end. Eventually, the tea drinker was the first to die, at 83 years of age. His brother’s age at death is not known.
Institute of Classical Architecture
10. This Guy Needs a New Hobby
The story of William Walker.
William Walker was a child prodigy. By the age of 16, he graduated college and soon after he became a semi-successful lawyer. Everything was looking awesome for him.
However, Walker had a crazy dream—he wanted to be a leader of his own nation. So one day he and 40 of his friends invaded Mexico in the area that is now known as Baja California and took over its capital, declaring it its own nation. It took a few months but eventually, the Mexican army chased him off.
So Walker came back to America, but not for long! He got some rich people to back him up and invaded Nicaragua with 80 men. He took its capital and since it was going through a civil war at the time, he managed to take and hold the country for about a year. During that year he did a whole bunch of crazy stuff like legalizing slavery as an attempt of allying himself with the Confederate States of America. Luckily, the neighboring nations realized he was a nut and invaded, chasing him off.
However, this still did not deter him. He once again got an army together and invaded Honduras. This was a huge failure and he was caught almost instantly. By this time everyone was tired of his shenanigans so he was executed.
9. Gotta Read This to Believe It
This is too good not to share:
Once upon a time, there was a dude in Spain named Juan Pujol Garcia. Pujol was a chicken farmer. Pujol hated him some darn fascists.
See, Spain had recently ended its civil war, with the fascists taking power. So when WWII broke out in Europe, Spain technically remained neutral but in practice was buddy-buddy with the Nazis. Juan Pujol Garcia thought this was pretty BS.
So soon after war breaks out, Pujol travels to his local British embassy and goes “Hey, I wanna spy on the Nazis for you.” “Who the heck are you?” say the British, and kick him out.
But Pujol is not deterred! He still wants to dunk on some fascists, so now he goes to his local German embassy instead. “Hey,” he says, “I wanna spy on the British for you, I sure do hate them.”
“Yeah okay,” say the Germans “that seems pretty legit.”
Just like that, Pujol now officially works for German intelligence. They hand him some spy gear (invisible ink and such) and instruct him to travel to Lisbon, and from there make his way into the UK. So Pujol heads to Lisbon, and a little while later writes to his German handlers telling them he’s made it to England.
But Pujol had not made it to England. He had, in fact, made it to the Lisbon public library, where he checked out a number of English guidebooks and set about just wholesale making stuff up.
This was slightly complicated by the fact that, for example, he completely did not understand British currency and all his expense reports were basically gibberish. He also reported things like bribing Scotsmen, because the people of Glasgow would “do anything for a liter of wine” (an actual quote) because, hey, people in Spain like wine so that’s probably the same right?
Here is where it starts to get really crazy because the Germans love this. “Wow, this dude is a great spy,” they say because apparently none of them had ever been to England either. In fact, they are so pumped about this new awesome spy that the British start to get worried.
You see, by this time the British had cracked German’s supposedly unbreakable Enigma code and were totally dunking on the Nazis by reading basically all of their super top secret radio transmissions. And, crucially, they’d become so good at breaking and reading traffic that there were literally no German spies in England. The Germans would set up a spy drop (usually dropping dudes in by parachute in the middle of the night), the British would intercept the message and then just scoop the dudes up as soon as they landed in a move that must have been SUPER embarrassing to the spies.
So there are no German spies in the UK because they’re all sitting in a prison run by MI5 (although some are being run under supervision as double agents, feeding Germany things). But suddenly MI5 is picking up all this traffic from the Germans talking about their super great spy—a spy the British do not have in their jail.
“Oh no,” says MI5, and starts rereading all the transmissions they have to and from this mysterious super spy.
“Hey wait,” says MI5, upon actually reading the nonsense the spy was sending. “Someone is playing, silly buggers, pip pip cheerio.”
At this point, Pujol, still in Lisbon, had actually been approaching the British embassy again, repeatedly, but apparently “I am literally an Abwehr (German military intelligence) agent and would like to offer you my services” wasn’t interesting enough, because he was repeatedly turned away, again. It wasn’t until MI5 started asking around that one of the embassy staff was like “Oh yeah, we know that guy.”
So in 1942, the British finally make contact with Pujol and he officially becomes a spy for MI5. They move him to London and assign him a case officer so he can start making up even better nonsense.
And he does. Once actually in London, Pujol reports to the Abwehr that he’d recruited a whole slew of informants, from a bunch of Welsh Aryans to disaffected army officers. He ends up with a network of 20+ sub-spies, all feeding him information from around the UK.
None of these people actually exist.
Pujol just straight up invented like 20 people, keeping careful track of their fake personalities, names, and activities. With the help of MI5, the information he sends becomes even better: a mix of true but ultimately useless facts and actually important intel timed to arrive in Germany just slightly too late to be of any use. He and his “spy network” become the Abwehr’s most trusted agent.
Pujol, now codenamed Agent Garbo (for his acting skills), ends up playing a huge role in the run-up to D-Day, where the Allies mounted a huge intelligence campaign to convince Hitler that the planned site of attack was going to be Calais and not Normandy (this was Operation Fortitude and you should absolutely look it up for more wacky WWII Adventures). Obviously, you know how this ended.
Crazily enough, the Abwehr never figured out that Pujol was a double agent. After the war, he received both the Iron Cross Second Class (which required personal authorization from Hitler) and a Member of the Order of the British Empire (from King George VI).
Unable to resist being totally freaking ridiculous, Pujol turned down MI5’s post-war offer to continue spying, but this time against the USSR. “No,” he said, “just help me fake my own death and then I’m moving to Venezuela.” And that’s exactly what he did. Juan Pujol Garcia died in 1988, at the age of 76.
8. Now That is Definitely NOT What Was Supposed to Happen
The British government wanted to get rid of the cobras in India, so they started offering money for dead cobras. To take advantage of this, many people started breeding cobras to kill for the money, so they stopped buying dead cobras once they realized it was going on. All of the cobra breeders released the snakes and there ended up being even more cobras than there had been in the first place.
7. Good Luck Trying to Explain This One...
I know I’m late, but there’s an indigenous account from the siege of Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital, in which the conquistadors were trying to get the Aztecs to surrender the city (duh).
One day, the conquistadors got pretty close to the city walls and started building something out of wood. Aztecs look on with interest, unable to hear the conversation. Spanish seem to argue among themselves a bit with one guy throwing his weight around and pointing, then keep building, with a few more arguments.
Many hours later, construction is complete—turns out they’ve been building a trebuchet. The Spanish finally start getting ready to fling some big rocks at the Aztecs. Aztecs watch as the Spanish fire the trebuchet and manage to fling a boulder about 20 feet into the lake that surrounds the city.
More arguing. They try again and manage to smash a hole in a wall of the marketplace, but the thing takes so long to aim that by the time it hits the Aztecs have cleared all their stuff out of the way. Spanish argue more, then wheel the trebuchet away in shame. It is never seen or heard from again.
There are accounts of this incident in Miguel Leon-Portilla's 'The Broken Spears' and Bernal Diaz's 'The Conquest of New Spain' (sourced from both sides—this thing happened!)
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6. Taking a Little Extra Precaution
King Charles VI of France was prone to delusions, and at one point believed he was made of glass. He had his clothes specially reinforced so that he wouldn't break.
5. A Lot of Risk for an Interesting Twist
In 1920, Yuan Shikai was defeated and Pu Yi was made the symbolic head of China, although he was confined to the Imperial Palace at all times and had basically no power. When he was about 14 years old, he discovers what a phone is, and wants one installed in his palace.
But the Eunuchs are really hesitant. What if Pu Yi used his phone to build powerful contacts outside the palace? What if Pu Yi heard about this new ideology all the cool kids are doing, communism? How would this affect the people of China and the people in charge? What if Pu Yi posed a threat? They would have to raze the Imperial palace and wipe out the imperial lineage once and for all! No way. Pu Yi will NOT get his phone.
But the little hooligan keeps persisting, demanding to get his phone. Even threatening some people. Finally, they relent. Pu Yi will get his phone.
He is overjoyed and demands he be left alone with his new weapon of information.
He then spent all afternoon prank calling restaurants and famous authors.
4. No, YOU’RE Excommunicated!
At one point there were three Popes and they all excommunicated each other.
3. Some Serious One-Upping Efforts
During the Byzantine-Sassanian wars in the early 6th century, Khosrau I of Persia destroyed Antioch and captured its civilians.
However, rather than enslaving them or killing them, Khosrau brought them back to Persia and rebuilt them an almost exact replica of Antioch, down to the layout of the city and rooms in the houses. The citizens were freed and made into full Persian citizens.
The city was named "Weh Antiok Khosrau"—that’s "Khosrau's better Antioch".
2. Kings Are (Bad) People Too
Charles XII of Sweden was a proper party king in his youth and at one of his many parties he got a bear so drunk it fell out of a castle window and died.
He is also reported to have run amuck in the city together with his pal the Duke of Holstein—stealing wigs and hats from people and breaking windows while drunk.
Imagine a bratty drunk teen full of mischief who also happens to be the absolute ruler of the country and therefore held above law. That’s Charles XII as a teenager.
1. Well That's One Way to Settle an Issue
In 1892, the Princess of Liechtenstein got so pissed at a Countess criticizing her flower choices at a party, that she challenged her to a topless, all-female sword duel.
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