History — Page 5
Surprising historical events
221 facts
The warship Vasa sank on its maiden voyage.
The Vasa, a Swedish warship, sank on 10 August 1628, minutes after setting sail, due to instability and a gust of…
In 1919, a molasses wave flooded streets of Boston.
On 15 January 1919, a tank of 8.7 million litres of molasses burst in Boston harbour. The molasses wave reached…
The astronomer Tycho Brahe wore a metal prosthetic nose.
Tycho Brahe lost part of his nose in a duel in 1566 and had a prosthetic nose made of silver and gold. He was one of…
The Altamira cave in Spain has cave paintings over 14,000 years old.
The Altamira paintings, discovered in 1879, include bison, horses and human handprints painted on the walls. They are…
The first Olympic Games were held in 776 BC.
The first ancient Olympic Games were held in Olympia, Greece, in 776 BC, in honour of Zeus. The games were held every…
Maya blue is a pigment so unstable that it disappeared within a few years.
Maya blue is made from vegetable indigo mixed with palygorskite clay. The hybrid molecular structure makes it…
The terracotta army was built to protect the tomb of the first emperor of China.
The terracotta army was built to protect the tomb of Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China, who died in 210 BC…
Roman concrete is more durable than modern concrete.
Roman concrete, made with volcanic ash, withstands time better than modern concrete. Buildings such as the Pantheon…
Mansa Musa, emperor of Mali, is considered the richest man in history.
Mansa Musa ruled the Mali Empire in the 14th century and his fortune is estimated at hundreds of billions of dollars…
Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital, was built on a mountain.
Tenochtitlan, today Mexico City, was built on an island in the middle of Lake Texcoco. The Aztecs created artificial…
Ancient Roman concrete had a self-healing ability.
Roman concrete contained lumps of lime that, on contact with water, dissolved and recrystallised, filling cracks…
The emperor Nero played the violin while Rome burned.
Nero was not in Rome when the great fire of 64 AD began. He was at his villa in Antium, about 50 kilometres away, and…
Albert Einstein was invited to be president of Israel.
In 1952, after the death of Israel's first president, Chaim Weizmann, Albert Einstein was invited to assume the…
Albert Einstein's brain was donated to science by Einstein himself.
Einstein's brain was removed without permission by pathologist Thomas Harvey during the autopsy in 1955. Harvey kept…
The last meal served on the Titanic had 11 courses.
The last first-class meal on the Titanic, served on the night of 14 April 1912, had 11 courses, including oysters…
The Antikythera mechanism is considered the first analog computer.
The Antikythera mechanism, found in a Greek shipwreck in 1901, is a bronze device with more than 30 gears. It was…
Carbonised loaves of bread were found in the ruins of Pompeii.
In the bakeries of Pompeia were found loaves of bread carbonised by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD. Some still had…
The inhabitants of Pompeii covered the city walls with graffiti.
The inhabitants of Pompeii wrote on the walls political messages, declarations of love, insults and even…
Machu Picchu was built without mortar.
The stones of Machu Picchu were fitted so precisely that no mortar was used to join them. The Incas carved each block…
The stones of Stonehenge all came from England.
The bluestones of Stonehenge came from the Preseli mountains in Wales, about 250 kilometres away. The larger stones…
The Aztec Sun Stone is not a calendar.
The Aztec Sun Stone, often called the Aztec calendar, is actually a ceremonial monument representing Aztec cosmology…
Napoleon escaped from the island of Elba where he was exiled.
Napoleon was exiled to the island of Elba in 1814, after his abdication. In February 1815, he escaped from the island…
Machu Picchu was abandoned by the Incas.
Machu Picchu was built around 1450 and abandoned about 100 years later, during the fall of the Inca Empire. The city…
There is a runestone in the United States attributed to the Vikings.
The Kensington Runestone, found in Minnesota in 1898, contains a runic inscription that recounts a Viking expedition…