20 Lesser Known History Facts That Captured Attention

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20 Lesser Known History Facts That Captured Attention

Khalid Elhassan - June 24, 2019
   
History is composed in the main of broad outlines and major

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stories known by many, and smaller stories and details known to a
relative few beyond the circle of history buffs and aficionados.
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Following are twenty lesser known but fascinating historical facts

that will make you a hit at the next party (or a bore – your mileage A11
may vary,HISTORY PEOPLE
so check the audience)HISTORY HOLLYWOOD ARCHAEOLOGY WATCH 
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Royal Scots Greys and 92nd Gordon Highlanders at the Battle of Waterloo. British Battles
20. The Dead of Waterloo Were Sold as Fertilizer

Store info Dire
The Battle of Waterloo, 1815, ended decades of the French
Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, and established the broad -ADVERTISMENT-
outlines of European geopolitics for nearly a century. Today, we are

used to the notion of honoring those killed in war, as can be seen in
the solemnity surrounding Unknown Soldier memorials around the
world, or the reverence and care attendant upon the upkeep of war
cemeteries. However, it was not always so.
Back then, those killed in action were usually stripped of valuables.

Those “valuables” included their very corpses. The dead of Waterloo
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had their teeth pulled out, to get fashioned into dentures. Waterloo
was such a bonanza for Britain’s denture industry, that sets made of
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human teeth were known as “Waterloo dentures” for years

afterwards. Their bones – like the bones of those killed in other
Napoleonic battles such as Austerlitz and Leipzig – were shipped to A11
Britain, and PEOPLE
ground into fertilizer. As a correspondent HOLLYWOOD
wrote in The ARCHAEOLOGY WATCH 
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Observer in 1822: “the good farmers of Yorkshire are, in a great measure,
indebted to the bones of their children for their daily bread“.
Salt Lake City, circa 1800. Deseret News Archive
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19. Why Salt Lake City Has America’s Longest Blocks and Widest Streets
It probably takes longer to walk a block in Salt Lake City than in any A11
other American PEOPLE
city. That often comes as a surprise HOLLYWOOD ARCHAEOLOGY WATCH 
HISTORY HISTORY AGES to visitors
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staying in SLC’s downtown, who ask for directions, are told that it
is “four or five blocks away“, and end up discovering that it is a fifteen
or twenty minute hike. While similar sized cities such as Little Rock
or Austin have downtown blocks measuring 300 x 300 feet, or 200 x
200 feet in the case of Portland, SLC’s downtown blocks are a
whopping 660 x 660 feet.
Downtown SLC’s streets are similarly wide: at 130 feet, they are
double the width of Manhattan’s. That is because the Mormon
faith’s founder, Joseph Smith, thought cities should have large
blocks, to allow for small farming plots. When the Mormons
reached Utah in 1847, church president Brigham Young added wide
streets to the plan, in order to allow ample room for farmers to turn
their cattle around, without “resorting to profanity“.
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Nineteenth century illustration of a Lincoln wrestling match. Putnam’s
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18. Abraham Lincoln Was a Badass Who Kicked Butts and Took Names in
His Youth
With his craggy features, lanky frame, and stovepipe hat, Abraham
Lincoln is perhaps America’s most recognizable historic president,
well known for many things. As The Great Emancipator; as the
president who successfully navigated the United States through the
Civil War; and as the author of the Gettysburg Address, recited by
kids on school stages to this day. Less known is that in his youth,
Lincoln was a lean, mean, wrestling machine, who performed feats
of strength that became part of local legend and frontier lore.
His most famous fight took place shortly after Lincoln, in his early
20s, moved to Salem, Illinois, and was challenged by a local bully
named Jack Armstrong. The bout was inconclusive for some time,
but when Armstrong resorted to dirty tricks, an enraged Lincoln
grabbed him by the neck, and extending his arms, “shook him like a
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rag doll“, before tossing him to the ground. Standing over his rival,
Lincoln then challenged Armstrong’s followers: “I’m the big buck of
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this lick. If any of you want to try it, come and whet your horns!”
Armstrong admitted he’d been fairly beaten, and proclaimed
Lincoln “the best feller that ever broke into this settlement“. The duo shook A11
hands, andHISTORY PEOPLE
became friends. HOLLYWOOD ARCHAEOLOGY WATCH 
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The flash from Starfish Prime’s 1.4 megaton explosion, as seen from Honolulu, nearly a
thousand miles away. Wikimedia
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17. Britain’s First Satellite Was Wrecked by an American Nuke
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On April 26th, 1962, as part of its Ariel Program, Britain launched
the Ariel-1 into space, becoming the third country, after the Soviet
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and Union and the United States, to have its own satellite.
Understandably, it became a source of national pride, and a
reminder that although Britain might ceded global leadership to the A11
US and USSR, PEOPLEwas still a power to be reckoned
the country HOLLYWOOD
with. A ARCHAEOLOGY WATCH 
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few weeks later, Ariel-1 was nuked by America.
It came about as a result of Starfish Prime, a high altitude nuclear

test conducted by the United States on July 9th, 1962. A Thor rocket,
carrying a thermonuclear warhead, was launched from Johnston
Island in the Pacific, climbed to a height of 250 miles above earth,
and produced a 1.4 megaton explosion. The result was an
electromagnetic pulse (EMP) far greater than expected, that caused
electric damage in Hawaii, nearly a thousand miles away, knocking
out hundreds of street lights, setting off burglar alarms, and
wreaked havoc on the telephone system. It also produced debris
and a radiation belt that destroyed or damaged a number of
satellites, including Ariel-1.
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Karl Marx. Nova Democracia

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16. Karl Marx Disdained Last Words
German philosopher Karl Marx (1818 – 1883) is well known for

writing The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital, which formed the
bases of Marxism, and revolutionized the world for better and for
worse. Born in Prussia, he experimented with sociopolitical
theories in university, and by the 1840s had become a radical
journalist. His writings were viewed as dangerous by the
authorities, and in the span of a few years he was expelled from
Germany, France, Belgium, then Germany again, before finding
refuge in London.
One thing Marx was not was a sentimentalist. He was not a fan of
gestures that he judged to be romantic bourgeoisie affectations,
and he carried that with him to his dying breath. Literally. On his
deathbed in 1883, as he lay expiring from pleurisy, he was solicited
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for final words. His reply, before breathing his last, was to wheeze
out: “Go on! Get Out! Last words are for fools who haven’t said enough!”
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Marcus Licinius Crassus. The Famous People
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15. The Roman Republic’s Richest Man Died Choking on Gold
Marcus Licinius Crassus (115 – 53 BC) was a leading figure of the late
Roman Republic, and its wealthiest citizen. He sponsored
politicians, including Julius Caesar, whose political rise he
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bankrolled, and amassed considerable power. He eventually
partnered up with Caesar and Pompey to divvy up Rome amongst
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themselves, in what came to be known as the First Triumvirate.

However, the one thing that Crassus lacked, and which his fellow
Triumvirs had in abundance, was military glory. He tried to get A11
it ended in PEOPLE
some, butHISTORY catastrophe.
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In 53 BC, Crassus marched off to conquer Parthia, leading an army

of 50,000 men. After a gruelling march through arid lands, Crassus
encountered 9000 Parthian horse archers, and 1000 armored heavy
cavalry, near the town of Carrhae, in modern Turkey. Although they
outnumbered the Parthians 5:1, the Romans were demoralized by
the march, and by Crassus’ uninspiring leadership. The Romans
were slaughtered, and Crassus was captured. To mock his greed,
the Parthians executed him by pouring molten gold down his
throat.
Douglas MacArthur and Harry S. Truman. Harry S. Truman Library
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14. Douglas MacArthur Wanted to Drop 50 Nukes on China
Douglas MacArthur’s successful Inchon landings in September,

1950, led to the collapse of the North Korean invasion during the
Korean War. MacArthur then vigorously pursued the routed enemy
up the Korean Peninsula, and blithely dismissed warnings that
China would intervene if his forces approached the Sino-Korean
border, insisting that the Chinese would do nothing. MacArthur
was wrong. Soon after reaching the Chinese border, the Chinese
struck, caught MacArthur’s forces by surprise, and chased them
back down the Korean Peninsula.
The humiliated MacArthur reacted with histrionics, and insisted

that up to 50 atomic bombs be dropped on China. His plan was to
nuke Chinese cities in Manchuria, military concentrations, and
communication centers, and create a radioactive belt stretching
from the Yellow Sea to the Sea of Japan, to seal off the Korean
Peninsula from China. Fortunately, president Truman balked, and
declined to accept the general’s assurances that the Soviets would
do nothing if America dropped dozens of nukes on their Chinese
ally. When MacArthur bucked and defied Truman, the president
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fired him.
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Bust of Edward Gibbon Wakefield. Wikimedia
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13. The Founder of New Zealand Spent Years in Jail For Kidnapping and
Marrying a 15 Year Old
British politician Edward Gibbon Wakefield (1796 – 1862) is

considered by many to be the founder of New Zealand. Before that,
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however, he spent years in prison for abducting and marrying a 15
year old heiress. She was Ellen Turner, the only daughter of a
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wealthy textile manufacturer, and Wakefield wanted her father’s

money to bankroll his political career. Realizing that her father
would never consent, he sent a carriage to Ellen’s boarding school, A11
with a message PEOPLE
that Ellen’s mother was dying,AGES HOLLYWOOD
and wished to see her ARCHAEOLOGY WATCH 
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daughter immediately.
She was taken to a hotel, where Wakefield told her that her father’s
business had collapsed, and that her dad was now a fugitive, on the
run from creditors. He then convinced Ellen that his banker uncle
had agreed to release some funds that would save her father, but
only on condition that she wed Wakefield, and that her father had
consented to the marriage. Ellen agreed, they were married, and
Wakefield took her to France. However, Ellen’s father called in
favors from the British Foreign Office, who sent a lawyer and a
policeman to France, where they found Ellen and Wakefield in a
Calais hotel. She was returned to her father, and Wakefield ended
up doing three years behind bars. The marriage was eventually
annulled by Parliament.
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Death of Pope John XII. History Stack
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12. Pope John XII Turned His Palace Into a Brothel
Pope John XII (937 – 964) was history’s youngest Holy Father, having
gotten elevated to the Holy See in 955, at age 18. Unsurprisingly,
making a teenager pope ended badly. His years as Holy Father were
as farcical and venal as one could expect from a person thrust into a
position of power and influence for which he was clearly
unprepared and unqualified. He showed little interest in his
spiritual duties and papal obligations, and dove headfirst into a life
of depravity. Devoting himself to hunting, gambling, wine, and
women, he was given to invoking pagan gods while playing dice. He
was also a violent psychopath, who reportedly castrated a deacon
before killing him, and when his own confessor angered him, he
blinded, then killed him.
As to licentiousness, contemporaries described him as having

turned the Lateran Palace into a brothel. He got a particular kick
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out of defiling holy sites by having sex in them. He had sex with
women and men in the papal palace, and if visitors refused his
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advances, he raped them. After nine years on the papal throne, he

died while having sex. There are two accounts of John XII’s death.
One has him dying after suffering a massive stroke mid coitus, A11
while another PEOPLE
involves sex with aHISTORY
married woman, HOLLYWOOD ARCHAEOLOGY WATCH 
HISTORY AGES that ended with
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the enraged cuckolded husband bursting in on the couple, and
killing the Holy Father.
Brian Poole and the Tremeloes. Pintrest
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11. The Record Company That Passed on the Beatles to Sign Brian Poole and
the Tremeloes
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On New Year’s Day, 1962, the Beatles performed about 15 songs A11
before Dick PEOPLEexecutive with Decca Records,
Rowe, a senior HOLLYWOOD
and the ARCHAEOLOGY WATCH 
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label’s chief talent spotter. After the audition, Mr. Rowe passed,
telling the Beatles manager: “Guitar groups are on the way out“. The
Beatles were understandably dejected at starting the new year with
a rejection. By contrast, Dick Rowe thought his new year had
started great. That same day, he had listened to another auditioning
band and liking what he heard, he signed up Brian Poole and the
Tremeloes.
The Tremeloes went on to have some success in the United

Kingdom. In 1963, they entered the UK charts with a cover of the
Isley Brothers’ Twist and Shout, and followed it up with a UK chart-
topping cover of the Contours’ Do You Love Me. A year later, they did
a cover of Roy Orbison’s Candy Man that pleased the Brits, and a
cover of the Crickets’ Someone, Someone, which made it to number 2
on the UK charts. Nonetheless, it was nowhere close to the Beatles’
success. Passing on the Beatles made Dick Rowe and Decca Records
synonymous with bad decisions.
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From left to right, Hitler touring a BMW factory, Gunther Quandt, and BMW cars produced
for the German military during WWII. Daily Mail
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10. Hitler Was BFF With BMW’s Owners
BMW, have always been known for their high quality cars, and until
1945, for their aircraft engines. The company, which today produces
luxury automobiles and motorcycles, is a multinationalSearch...
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in Germany, America, the UK, China, India, Brazil, and South
Africa. Less known is that its major shareholders, the Quandt
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family, were Hitler’s close friends. After a 2007 TV documentary

aired unpleasant revelations about the company’s activities during A11
the Third Reich, PEOPLE
the Quandt family launched an HOLLYWOOD
investigation, ARCHAEOLOGY WATCH 
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which reached troubling conclusions. In a nutshell, the Quandt
family patriarch, Gunther Quandt, and his son Herbert, were in
deep with the Nazis.
To their credit, the current generation of Quandts, unlike many

others with a history of Nazi ties, did not duck the issue or
sugarcoat things, but came clean. They commissioned a respected
German historian to research the company’s past, and set him loose
on BMW’s and the Quandt family’s archives and files. The result
was a 1200 page report, which concluded that “[t]he Quandts were
linked inseparably with the crimes of the Nazis … The family patriarch was
part of the regime“.
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‘The Death of Pietro Aretino’, by Anselm Feuerbach. Wikimedia SEARCH
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9. The Creator Of Modern Erotic Fiction Died From Laughter
Pietro Aretino (1492 – 1556) was an Italian writer, satirist, poet,

playwright, and blackmailer. He also created modern literary
pornography – erotic literature, with graphic sexual details,
intended to arouse. Nowadays, as it has been for centuries, erotic
fiction is a steady (if often downplayed) moneymaker for publishers.
Seeing as how Aretino’s whole life seems to have been one long and
seedy adventure, it was somehow fitting that he died laughing at a
dirty joke.
It came about as a party was winding down on October 21st, 1556,

and his sister shared a risque joke. Pietro Aretino laughed so hard
that he fell off his chair, and kicked the bucket right then and there.
Another version has it that died from a fit of apoplectic laughter
after hearing the joke, while yet another variant has it that his death
was caused by suffocation from laughing so hard. Whichever
version it was, all accounts agree that it was laughter that killed
him. Unfortunately, the deadly joke has not survived.
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George Washington at Mount Vernon. PBS
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8. George Washington’s Slave Who Fought For the British
Harry Washington was born in Gambia, circa 1740. Enslaved and

transported across the Atlantic, he ended up getting purchased by
George Washington, who put him to work draining swamps in
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southeast Virginia. After years of toil in appalling conditions, Harry
was taken to Washington’s plantation, Mount Vernon, and tasked
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with looking after the horses. He escaped in 1771, but was

recaptured a few weeks later. When the Revolutionary War started
in 1775, Virginia’s governor offered slaves their freedom if they A11
the British.PEOPLE
fought forHISTORY HISTORY AGES
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Mount Vernon’s manager assembled the plantation’s slaves, and

urged them to trust the benevolence of slavery’s paternalism over
the precarious dangers of freedom. Harry preferred the dangers of
freedom over the benevolence of slavery, and risking savage
penalties if caught, he fled, and enlisted with the British. He rose to
the rank of corporal, and participated in the British invasion of
South Carolina. There, corporal Harry Washington was placed in
charge of a pioneer unit in Charleston, in 1781. After the war, he was
evacuated to Nova Scotia, and later joined the first group of colonial
black migrants who were returned to Africa, settling in Sierra
Leone.
Civil War child soldiers. Vintage News Search... SEARCH
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7. Child Soldiers Were Everywhere You Looked During the Civil War
Roughly a fifth of American Civil War military personnel were

under 18. The Union Army had over 100,000 soldiers under 15. There
were even children as young as eight in uniform. On land, they were
usually used in non-combatant positions, but were often just as
exposed to fire as adults on the front line. At sea, children in the US
Navy served as “powder monkeys”. Tasked during combat with
rushing gunpowder from magazines to canons, they were just as
exposed to danger as everybody else aboard ship.
There were age restrictions – in the Union, enlistees had to be over

16 – but they were frequently ignored. Many under-aged Northern
boys, for example, had little trouble finding recruiters willing to
sign them up, provided they swore that they were “over 16”. Some
reconciled their consciences with the lie by writing the number “16”
on a piece of paper and sticking it to the bottom of a shoe, so they
could honestly swear that they were “over 16”.
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Gavrilo Princip. All That Is Interesting
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6. The Assassin Who Kicked Off WWI Lived Until 1918
Gavrilo Princep (1894 – 1918) was a Serb from Bosnia-Herzegovina,

then a territory ruled by the Austro-Hungarian Empire. As a
teenager, he was radicalized by Serbian nationalists who called for a
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country unifying all southern Slavs (“Yugoslavia”), and Search...
joined an
organization dedicated to freeing Slavs from Austria-Hungary’s
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control. Violent activism got him expelled from school in 1912, so he

walked 170 miles to the Serbian capital, Belgrade, and joined
guerrillas who raided across the border into Austro-Hungarian A11
territory PEOPLE HOLLYWOOD ARCHAEOLOGY WATCH 
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He was soon recruited by the Serbian Black Hand, who equipped

and trained Princep and other terrorists, then sent them to
assassinate Austria’s Archduke Franz Ferdinand in June of 1914.
Princep fired the fatal shots, then swallowed a cyanide pill
immediately after. However, it had expired, and he was captured.
He was tried and convicted, but was only nineteen years old at the
time – twenty seven days short of the twenty year old minimum age
under Austro-Hungarian law for the death penalty. So he received
the maximum sentence of 20 years’ imprisonment. He contracted
tuberculosis in prison, and died on April 28th, 1918, three years and
ten months after sparking the war.
The mutilation of the De Witt brothers. Wikimedia Search... SEARCH
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5. That Time The Dutch Lynched and Ate Their Prime Minister
Dutch Prime Minister Johan de Witt (1625 – 1672) sought to

decentralize and shift power from the national government to local
ones. He focused so much on his decentralization agenda, however,
that he ended up neglecting the Dutch army and navy. When the
Third Anglo-Dutch War erupted, the result was a series of military
disasters in 1672, so bad that 1672 is known to this day in Dutch
history as rampjaar – “the disaster year”.
On August 20th of that year, de Witt, who by then had dominated

Dutch politics for twenty years, went to visit his brother Cornelis,
who had recently been sentenced to exile. Out of the blue, the
brothers were attacked by members of the Hague city militia, who
shot them and left them on the street to the tender mercies of a
Dutch mob. The mob was neither tender nor merciful. If the de
Witts had not already been dead from the soldiers’ bullets, they
were quite dead by the time the mob was done stabbing and beating
them. The mob then strung up the corpses upside down from a
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gibbet, disemboweled them, ripped off their genitalia, and roasted
and ate chunks of them in a cannibalistic frenzy.
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Chairman Mao. RetroGraphik
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4. Chairman Mao Was a Poet
Mao Zedong (1893 – 1976) was a guerrilla fighter, soldier, and

statesman, who played the key role in his country’s communist
revolution. He led the Chinese Communist Party from 1935 until his
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death, and after the communists won control in 1949, he ruled
China until his demise. During his years in power, he was
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responsible for the deaths of tens of millions Chinese, killed

outright by his followers, or starved to death because of his
disastrous economic policies. In his free time, he indulged his A11
fondness for PEOPLE
classical Chinese poetry and literature, HOLLYWOOD ARCHAEOLOGY WATCH 
HISTORY HISTORY AGES and was a
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prolific writer and poet.
Incongruously, he liked to compose and pen verses in classical

Chinese forms. Mao’s education, like that of most intellectuals of
his era, was based on a foundation of classical Chinese literature.
However, while most of Mao’s contemporaries moved on to modern
styles and themes, he stuck with the old. Since his youth, he
composed poetry in the classical style, and his image as a poet
played a significant role in shaping his public persona. He was
actually considered a good poet. Not just by critics in China, who
would have been foolhardy to pan his poetry, but also by literary
critics who were outside China, and thus beyond his clutches.
A Red Army armored column. Alchetron Search... SEARCH
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3. The Tank Raid That Sealed the Fate of the Germans in Stalingrad
The Tatsinskaya Raid – also known as the “Christmas Raid” – was a

Soviet armored raid on December 24th, 1942, at the height of the
Battle of Stalingrad. It sought sought to destroy the Tatsinskaya
airfield, from which the Germans were frantically airlifting supplies
to their besieged 6th Army. The airfield and its planes were the
surrounded Germans’ sole lifeline, thus the need to destroy it and
its irreplaceable Ju 52 transport planes. The Red Army’s 24th Tank
Corps hit the airfield from three sides and caught the Germans by
surprise.
T-34 tanks clattered down the tarmac, machine gunning and

shelling buildings and equipment, and destroying precious planes
– some still in crates on railway cars. When the tanks ran low on
ammunition, they simply rammed the airplanes, smashing through
their aluminum frames and crushing them and their engines
beneath tons of armor. German pilots and crews were gunned down
or run down and mangled beneath the T-34s’ treads. The raiders
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were eventually encircled, and sustained heavy losses. It was still a
Soviet strategic victory: the attackers claimed 300 planes destroyed,
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while the Germans admitted to losing 72 irreplaceable Ju 52

transports. Whatever the number, the destruction of the airfield
and the loss of the transport planes and their trained pilots, crews, A11
and maintenance PEOPLE HOLLYWOOD ARCHAEOLOGY WATCH 
HISTORY personnel, doomed the 6thAGES
HISTORY Army in Stalingrad.
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Draco. Medium
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2. The Legislator Who Was Applauded to Death
Draco the Lawgiver (flourished 7th century BC) was an Ancient

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Athenian aristocrat, tasked with creating a legal system to replace a

private justice system, in which rights were enforced by citizens
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and their relatives. Draco put Athens’ laws in writing and had them
published, thus reducing the pitfalls of traditional oral laws that A11
were known PEOPLE
to only a select few,HISTORY
and were arbitrarily HOLLYWOOD ARCHAEOLOGY WATCH 
HISTORY AGES interpreted
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and applied. It was a huge step towards equality under the law, but
Draco made the laws insanely severe, and highly favorable to
creditors and the propertied classes. Defaulting debtors were liable
to be sold into slavery, and those guilty of petty property crimes,
such as stealing a cabbage, were liable to the death penalty.
When asked why he legislated death for most offenses, Draco

replied that he considered the petty crimes worthy of death, and he
could not think of a greater penalty for the greater offenses.
Whatever the poor and indebted might have thought, wealthy
Greeks apparently liked Draco’s laws so much that they reportedly
killed him with applause. Literally. Ancient Greeks showed their
approval by throwing hats and items of clothing at the subject of
adoration, and during a visit to Aegina, its citizens showered him
with so many hats and shirts and cloaks that he suffocated to death
under the barrage.
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Mary Seacole. National Geographic Society
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HISTORY HISTORY
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1. Mary Seacole Used to Be As Famous as Florence Nightingale
Mary Seacole (1805 – 1881), a businesswoman and adventurer, set

up a convalescence home for British officers during the Crimean
War, that came to be known as the “British Hotel”, and cared for
wounded soldiers on the battlefield. A black woman from Kingston,
Jamaica, Seacole learned about African and Caribbean herbal
remedies from her mother, who ran ran a boarding house for
invalid soldiers. The guests’ precarious health gave Seacole
firsthand knowledge of dealing with ailments and physical crises.
She was in Britain during the Crimean War, and approached the
War Office, asking to be sent as a nurse to Crimea, where medical
facilities were scandalously abysmal. Her request was rejected.
Undaunted, Seacole funded her own way to Crimea, where she
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established the “British Hotel” near Balaclava to provide “A mess table
and comfortable quarters for sick and convalescent officers “. She also
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trekked to the battlefields, sometimes under fire, to nurse the

wounded. Her courage in the face of mortal danger earned her the A11
affectionate PEOPLE
nickname “Mother Seacole” HOLLYWOOD ARCHAEOLOGY WATCH 
HISTORY HISTORY fromAGES
soldiers. History
HOMAGE
records Florence Nightingale as the Crimean War’s foremost nurse,
but during the conflict, and especially among the soldiers on the
ground, Seacole’s fame rivaled that of Nightingale.
_________________
Where Did We Find This Stuff? Some Sources and Further Reading
Air & Space Magazine, July, 2015 – How the Korean War Almost Went
Nuclear
All That’s Interesting – Gavrilo Princip: The Serbian Nationalist Who

Assassinated Franz Ferdinand
Ancient History Encyclopedia – Draco‘s Law Code
AV Club – The Young Pope John XII Dies as He Lived: Fornicating
Battles of the Ancients – Why Did Marcus Crassus Lose the Battle of
Carrhae?
Cracked – These 47 Facts Will Make You a Walking History Channel
Encyclopedia Britannica – Johan De Witt
Forczyk, Robert – Red Christmas: The Tatsinskaya AirfieldSearch...

Raid, 1942 SEARCH
(2012)
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Governing – Why Are Salt Lake City‘s Blocks So Long?

History Extra, November 1st, 2013 – Where the Pulverized Bones of A11
Soldiers and PEOPLE
Horses Who Died at theHISTORY
Battle of Waterloo HOLLYWOOD ARCHAEOLOGY WATCH 
HISTORY AGESSold as Soil
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Fertilizer?
Marxists Internet Archive – Poems of Mao Zedong
Mid Sussex Times, November 27th, 2014 – Brian Poole’s Still Proud of
Beating the Beatles
National Geographic Society – Mary Seacole
New York Post, March 7th, 2016 – BMW Admits ‘Regret’ Over Using
Nazi Slave Labor During WWII
PBS Learning Media – The African Americans: Harry Washington
ThoughtCo. – Was Abraham Lincoln Really a Wrestler?
Vintage News – Child Soldiers of the Civil War
Wikipedia – Ariel-1
Wikipedia – Pietro Aretino
Wikipedia – Shrigley Abduction
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20 Lesser Known History Facts That Captured Attention

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20 Lesser Known History Facts That Captured Attention

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A11

ANCIENT AMERICAN MIDDLE

American History Ancient History Civil War

20 Lesser Known History Facts That Captured Attention

History is composed in the main of broad outlines and major

Following are twenty lesser known but fascinating historical facts

20. The Dead of Waterloo Were Sold as Fertilizer

outlines of European geopolitics for nearly a century. Today, we are

Back then, those killed in action were usually stripped of valuables.

human teeth were known as “Waterloo dentures” for years

Salt Lake City, circa 1800. Deseret News Archive

17. Britain’s First Satellite Was Wrecked by an American Nuke

It came about as a result of Starfish Prime, a high altitude nuclear

Karl Marx. Nova Democracia

16. Karl Marx Disdained Last Words

German philosopher Karl Marx (1818 – 1883) is well known for

Marcus Licinius Crassus. The Famous People

15. The Roman Republic’s Richest Man Died Choking on Gold

themselves, in what came to be known as the First Triumvirate.

In 53 BC, Crassus marched off to conquer Parthia, leading an army

Douglas MacArthur and Harry S. Truman. Harry S. Truman Library

14. Douglas MacArthur Wanted to Drop 50 Nukes on China

Douglas MacArthur’s successful Inchon landings in September,

The humiliated MacArthur reacted with histrionics, and insisted

Bust of Edward Gibbon Wakefield. Wikimedia

British politician Edward Gibbon Wakefield (1796 – 1862) is

wealthy textile manufacturer, and Wakefield wanted her father’s

12. Pope John XII Turned His Palace Into a Brothel

As to licentiousness, contemporaries described him as having

advances, he raped them. After nine years on the papal throne, he

Brian Poole and the Tremeloes. Pintrest

The Tremeloes went on to have some success in the United

10. Hitler Was BFF With BMW’s Owners

family, were Hitler’s close friends. After a 2007 TV documentary

To their credit, the current generation of Quandts, unlike many

9. The Creator Of Modern Erotic Fiction Died From Laughter

Pietro Aretino (1492 – 1556) was an Italian writer, satirist, poet,

It came about as a party was winding down on October 21st, 1556,

George Washington at Mount Vernon. PBS

8. George Washington’s Slave Who Fought For the British

Harry Washington was born in Gambia, circa 1740. Enslaved and

with looking after the horses. He escaped in 1771, but was

Mount Vernon’s manager assembled the plantation’s slaves, and

Civil War child soldiers. Vintage News Search... SEARCH

Roughly a fifth of American Civil War military personnel were

There were age restrictions – in the Union, enlistees had to be over

Gavrilo Princip. All That Is Interesting

6. The Assassin Who Kicked Off WWI Lived Until 1918

Gavrilo Princep (1894 – 1918) was a Serb from Bosnia-Herzegovina,

control. Violent activism got him expelled from school in 1912, so he

He was soon recruited by the Serbian Black Hand, who equipped

The mutilation of the De Witt brothers. Wikimedia Search... SEARCH

Dutch Prime Minister Johan de Witt (1625 – 1672) sought to

On August 20th of that year, de Witt, who by then had dominated

Chairman Mao. RetroGraphik

4. Chairman Mao Was a Poet

Mao Zedong (1893 – 1976) was a guerrilla fighter, soldier, and

responsible for the deaths of tens of millions Chinese, killed

Incongruously, he liked to compose and pen verses in classical

A Red Army armored column. Alchetron Search... SEARCH

The Tatsinskaya Raid – also known as the “Christmas Raid” – was a

T-34 tanks clattered down the tarmac, machine gunning and

while the Germans admitted to losing 72 irreplaceable Ju 52

2. The Legislator Who Was Applauded to Death