What was the first city to reach a population of one million?
Historians think that the first city ever to reach a population of one million was likely Rome, about 2000 years ago.
How many times has a U.S. President been impeached?
Only two Presidents have been impeached: Bill Clinton and Andrew Johnson.
A common medical diagnosis for “misbehaving” women in the Victorian era was called…
The vibrator was created to treat Hysteria. Why? Doctors were taking too long to manually stimulate women. Shortly after it’s invention, the vibrator became the largest selling household appliance.
Romans used the plant silphium so much it went extinct. What were they using it for?
Ancient Romans had an effective natural contraceptive: a plant called silphium. And you could say it was... relatively popular. The Romans harvested so much silphium it went extinct. That's right: the Romans literally loved a plant to death. They so obliterated the population, today we’re not even sure exactly what type of plant it was.
Ilya Ivanovich Ivanov was a Russian scientist, famous for trying to create a hybrid of which two species?
Ilya Ivanovich Ivanov, a Russian scientist in the 1920s, conducted experiments where he tried to make a human-chimpanzee hybrid. Before you get any naughty ideas, he attempted to make this “humanzee” with artificial insemination.
Anne Frank’s diary was edited after her death. Who did it?
The Diary of Anne Frank was edited by her father because, quite rightfully, he didn’t want some of the stuff she wrote published. He edited out writing about her period, discovering herself, learning about boys from a guy that was staying with them, and her father’s infatuation with fart jokes.
In order to prove that his rival, Nikola Tesla, was using an unsafe form of electricity, Thomas Edison publically electrocuted…
Thomas Edison electrocuted a lady circus elephant to death. The elephant had killed three men over the years, including an abusive trainer. Over a thousand people came to watch her die, and Edison recorded it on video.
What was the name of the infamous Nazi scientist who conducted strange and twisted experiments on innocent Jewish prisoners during WW2?
Josef Rudolf Mengele, known as “The angel of death,” took Jewish kids and did experiments on them. He had two twins sewn together by the length of their spines, and the mother later killed them because they were in constant agony. He even took a baseball bat to a child’s leg, and right when the broken bone was about to heal, he broke it again. He did this repeatedly until the leg gave up on healing.
When Al Capone was finally arrested (for tax evasion, of all things) he was found to be suffering from...
When Al Capone was arrested for tax evasion, he was found to have syphilis. Capone refused treatment because he was afraid of needles. After 11 years in Alcatraz, the disease had eaten away at his brain so much that he could no longer resume his life of crime. Before his death, he was often spotted casting a fishing rod into his swimming pool.
What was the name of the infamous Eastern-European ruler known for driving a stake through their enemies and leaving them as a warning to future attackers?
Vlad earned his name by impaling his enemies through the torso with large stakes and erecting these stakes in the ground. Sometimes thousands of prisoners would be impaled at the same time, and many victims lived in agony for days.
This European explorer is famous for his exploits… despite the atrocities he committed against the native people of the Americas, including the prostitution of young girls.
Christopher Columbus prostituted pre-pubescent native American girls.
Which American founding-father allegedly visited a brothel nearly every night?
Ben Franklin visited brothels almost every night. Also, in 1998, while renovating his home into a museum, ten bodies were discovered in the basement. This led to speculation the Ben Franklin may have been a serial killer, but further analysis has revealed this is likely not the case: the bodies were more likely cadavers used for the anatomical studies of William Hewson, one of Franklin’s friends.
During WW2, a secret military lab undertook brutal and unscientific experiments on members of the Chinese public. What country was responsible for running and funding that lab?
There was a biological and chemical warfare research facility called Unit 731 that undertook lethal human experimentation during the occupation of China. They specialized in vivisection, germ warfare, and weapons testing on prisoners. The researchers didn’t even refer to the Chinese people as humans: they called them “logs” and often bragged about how many logs they had cut that day. After WW2, the leaders of the unit gave the United States their research data in return for amnesty. Many of previous members of Unit 731 became part of post-war politics, academia, business, and medicine.
This famous composer had a pretty juvenile sense of humor. He was also apparently fascinated by feces.
Mozart was surprisingly obsessed with feces and bathroom humor. Two of his songs actually talk about anlingus. He also wrote letters to his family members where he described his farts in great detail.
Which famous revolution was allegedly “paused” after the primary leaders threw a party and got too drunk to continue?
When the Russian Bolsheviks overthrew the provisional government and stormed the Winter Palace in 1917, their revolution was halted for a few days because the Bolsheviks got ridiculously drunk in the Winter Palace after finding the wine stores.
True or False: Franklin Delano Roosevelt was known for keeping many mistresses.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt kept multiple mistresses, including his wife’s social secretary.
During WW2, which country trained dogs to run under tanks with bombs?
During WWII, the Russians trained dogs to run under German tanks with bombs strapped to their backs. Unfortunately, the tanks the dogs were trained to run under were Russian, so they ended up running under the Russian tanks and blowing them up instead.
Which of these people was famously complicit in Julius Caesar’s assassination?
Brutus the Younger was made more famous by Shakespeare’s play, Julius Caesar, in which Caesar utters the line “Et tu, Brute?”
The American politician Anthony Comstock made a name for himself by confiscating sex toys and other objects he deemed immoral, from otherwise law-abiding US citizens. What was his official position?
In the 1880s, US Postal Inspector Anthony Comstock started confiscating people’s dildos and other sex toys in the United States. He referred to them as “immoral rubber goods,” and in 1882, he confiscated 64,836 pounds of illicit material.
During World War I, the Muslim Ottoman government committed organized genocide against which group of people?
During World War I, the Muslim Ottoman government systematically killed of 1.5 million Armenian Christians in the Ottoman Empire and its successor state, the Republic of Turkey.
Which American civil rights hero was originally named Malcolm Little?
The small pink tissue in the corner of the eye is leftover from a third eyelid, similar to those found in a bird or reptile. It helps to protect our eyes by keeping them moist.
Which of these was NOT the name of an Ancient Egyptian god?
Atum, Isis, and Osiris were all major figures in Egyptian mythology. Demeter was a mythological figure in Ancient Greece.
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Humans have a natural predisposition to be fascinated by the shocking and the bizarre. Psychologists have likened the phenomenon to the appeal of scary movies: we get a kick out of experiencing things that could harm us (physically or otherwise), without actually putting ourselves in danger. But how much do you know about history’s strangest and most bizarre events? Time to test your knowledge...
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