10 Random, Fascinating Historical Facts That Everyone Should Know About, But Almost No One Does

No matter who you are, or which period of history is your favorite, I know there are always more tidbits of history to learn. So, here are 10 interesting historical facts I learned recently that I think are cool enough to share. enjoy!

1. The recently deceased Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, husband of the late Queen Elizabeth II, was not the only male consort in England’s history. In 1554, King Philip II of Spain married Queen Mary I of England and became King and Queen. Mary was a devout Catholic who was eager to undo many of the Protestant changes and damage her father, Henry VIII, had inflicted on England. (She was unsuccessful.) After Mary’s death, English law ensured that her half-sister Elizabeth, rather than Philip, became the British monarch.

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After Mary’s death and Elizabeth’s accession to the throne, Philip also had the goal of marrying Elizabeth. Spain’s interest was in returning England to Catholicism, which was his main motivation for marrying Mary. But Elizabeth was shrewd: she led him forward while supporting other Protestant nations.

In 1588, Philip sent a fleet of nearly 130 ships to invade England and depose the Protestant queen. The British had to fight off the Spanish in the English Channel. At midnight one night, the British sent eight ghost ships loaded with flammable materials into the Armada.

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The Spanish cut the cable and put to sea, and with the formation broken they had no choice but to sail north, towards Scotland, and got caught in one of the “worst storms to hit that coast for many years.” According to Historic Britain, “When the tattered Armada finally returned to Spain, it had lost half its ships and three-quarters of its men.” Philip never truly gained control of England, and the country’s luck in defeating his formidable Armada was seen as a holy blessing to the Protestant nation.

2. On December 12, 1952, a nuclear reactor in the laboratory exploded. Long before he became president of the United States, Jimmy Carter, a 28-year-old Navy lieutenant and nuclear engineer, volunteered to help dismantle a Canadian nuclear reactor that had begun to melt down. Carter is part of a team of scientists who each take a 90-second shift inside the radioactive core, carefully deconstructing it.

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3. In Japan during the Heian and Kamakura periods, there existed a custom called “uwanari-uchi,” which literally means “beating the second wife.” According to author Chieko Irie Mulhern, uwanari-uchi is “the legal right of a first wife against a subsequent wife” – basically, a first wife has the right to attack another woman if her husband decides to abscond with his second wife, either out of revenge or to protect her property and investments in her husband.

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4. The massive eruption of Mount Tambora (a volcano in present-day Indonesia) in 1815 triggered a global volcanic winter event that we now call the “year without a summer.” Smith College said the eruption was “the most destructive explosion on Earth in the past 10,000 years” and “10,000 people were killed on the island.” This eruption affected the entire planet. In New England, for example, frost kills crops, snows fall heavily in June, and lakes and rivers freeze into July. Summer never came.

5. In 1846, a young Abraham Lincoln might have considered joining the ill-fated Donner Party. Lincoln was friends with James F. Reed, an organizing member of the pioneer group, and Reed wanted him to come along. Mary Todd, who had already had a child with Lincoln and was pregnant for the second time, objected to Lincoln’s participation in the expedition. Ultimately, Lincoln decided to stay in Illinois, where he developed his political career.

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6. Luca Pacioli was a 15th-century Franciscan friar, mathematician, and friend of Leonardo da Vinci, known as the “Father of Accounting.” He formally wrote and published a book on double-entry accounting, which is still the system required by most businesses today.

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7. In 1579, English explorer and privateer Sir Francis Drake sailed to California to find new trade routes for England. Like explorer Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo before him, Drake failed to “discover” San Francisco Bay despite sailing along the California coastline. Because the bay (and the land surrounding it) was desolate and shrouded in fog, Drake (and Cabrillo before him) completely missed its presence and instead sailed north to what is likely today’s Drakes Bay.

There he made (supposedly peaceful) contact with the Miwok people of the coast, nearly thirty years before the founding of the colony of Jamestown, Virginia.

8. Lucrezia Borgia had three husbands in her life. The first was Giovanni Sforza, who was married when she was 13 and he was 26, and her family tried to kill him the year after their marriage.

Politically, this became a problem when in 1494 Giovanni was forced to choose between his loyalty to his uncle Ludovico Sforza and his loyalty to Lucrezia’s brothers Juan and Cesare.

Juan and Cesare told Lucrezia of their plans to murder Giovanni, and she allegedly gave him advance warning. He disguised himself and fled to Milan. Her family has since sought an annulment, claiming that the marriage was never consummated due to Giovanni’s impotence. oops. Eventually, when Lucrezia’s father, Pope Alexander VI, said he could keep her dowry, Giovanni agreed to annul the marriage (including admitting to a lie).

9. Genghis Khan was the first Khan of the Mongol Empire and is estimated to have killed as many as 40 million people, or 11% of the world’s population. The sheer number of people he killed led to massive reforestation of the affected areas, which ecologists said may have been “the first-ever successful case of man-made global cooling.” Reforestation of areas as a result of Khan’s genocide resulted in “an estimated 700 million tons of carbon” being absorbed from the atmosphere.

According to History.com, Genghis Khan likely killed “three-quarters of the population of modern Iran” in his war with the Khwarezm Empire, while during his lifetime “China’s population plummeted by tens of millions.”

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10. Finally, a wholesome story: Bobby the Wonder Dog was a beloved Oregonian who surprised his owner by showing up on his front door. The almost miraculous part? Bobby got lost on his trip to Indiana, but his owner lives in Silverton, Oregon! According to the Oregon Encyclopedia, a survey sponsored by the Oregon Humane Society “[confirmed] Bobby literally traveled 2,800 miles in the middle of winter to get home. “Scrappy and scrawny,” Bobbie, a much-lauded dog, received a medal, a key to the city and a jewel-encrusted harness and collar. “

If you like any dramatic, funny, or just plain cool facts about history, be sure to drop a note in the comments! I always enjoy learning more historical information and I’m sure others do too. Or, if you’d like to share anonymously, fill out the form below!

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