History — Page 8
Surprising historical events
221 facts
Napoleon Bonaparte was of average or slightly above-average height for his time, due to the difference between French and British inches.
Napoleon's height was recorded as five feet two inches in French measurements, which equals about 169 centimeters. At…
The University of Al Quaraouiyine in Morocco, founded in 859 AD, is the oldest existing and continually operating educational institution in the world.
Founded by Fatima al-Fihri, this institution began as a mosque and evolved into one of the leading spiritual and…
The Library of Alexandria was not destroyed in a single catastrophic fire, but declined over centuries due to multiple events, including budget cuts.
Contrary to popular myth, there was no single event that destroyed the library. Its decline was gradual, resulting…
Cleopatra lived closer in time to the invention of the iPhone than to the construction of the Great Pyramid of Giza.
The Great Pyramid was built around 2560 BC. Cleopatra lived between 69 and 30 BC, about 2,500 years later. The first…
Napoleon Bonaparte was once attacked by a horde of domestic rabbits.
To celebrate the Treaties of Tilsit, his chief of staff organized a hunt. Instead of wild hares, they bought domestic…
The shortest commercial flight in the world lasts about fifty-seven seconds.
The route connects the islands of Westray and Papa Westray in Scotland. The distance is only two point seven…
Cleopatra lived closer in time to the Moon landing than to the building of the Great Pyramids.
The Great Pyramid of Giza was completed around twenty-five sixty BC. Cleopatra lived around thirty BC, placing her…
Woolly mammoths were still alive when the Great Pyramids of Egypt were being built.
A small population of mammoths survived on Wrangel Island until sixteen fifty BC, long after most had died out and…
Ancient Romans used human urine to whiten their teeth and wash their clothes.
The urea in urine decomposes into ammonia, which is an excellent cleaning and bleaching agent. The Roman government…
Heroin was originally marketed as a cough syrup intended for children.
The Bayer company launched diacetylmorphine in the late nineteenth century as a non-addictive cough suppressant and…
The Australian military officially lost a war against a population of emus.
In nineteen thirty-two, soldiers armed with machine guns tried to control an emu migration that was destroying crops…
The oldest known writing comes from Mesopotamia and is five thousand years old.
The Sumerians developed cuneiform writing around 3400 BC to record commercial transactions and administer cities.
The British Empire was the largest empire in history.
At its peak in 1920, it controlled about a quarter of the Earth's surface and world population.
The shortest war in history lasted thirty-eight minutes.
The Anglo-Zanzibar war of 1896 ended with a ceasefire after the sultan's palace was bombarded by the British.
The oldest university in the world still operating is in Morocco.
The University of al-Qarawiyyin, founded in 859, is recognized by UNESCO as the oldest higher education institution…
The shortest reign in history lasted only twenty minutes.
Louis XIX of France was technically king in 1830 between the time his father abdicated and the time he himself signed…
The Great Wall of China is not a continuous structure.
It is actually a network of walls, trenches, and natural barriers built over several centuries by different…
Albert Einstein was offered the presidency of Israel.
In 1952, the Israeli government invited the physicist to assume the country's presidency, but he politely declined…
The first person killed by a robot was in 1979.
Robert Williams, a Ford factory worker, was struck by a one-ton robotic arm in a Michigan plant, becoming the first…
The first photograph in history took eight hours to take.
In 1826, Joseph Nicéphore Niépce used a camera obscura and a pewter plate coated with bitumen, requiring a prolonged…
Cleopatra lived in an era closer to the Moon landing than to the building of the Great Pyramid.
The Great Pyramid was built around twenty-five hundred BC, Cleopatra lived near thirty BC, and the Moon was landed on…
Mammoths still roamed the Earth when the pyramids of Egypt were built.
While the Great Pyramid of Giza was being erected about four thousand five hundred years ago, a small isolated…
Harvard University was founded before calculus was invented.
Harvard opened its doors in sixteen thirty-six, while the principles of mathematical calculus were only formalised by…
Cleopatra was not ethnically Egyptian, but of Greek origin.
She belonged to the Ptolemaic dynasty, a family of Macedonian origin that ruled Egypt after the death of Alexander…