27 Random But Fascinating Historical Facts That You Probably Didn’t Know

Random facts that will change your perspective

Everyone loves a good fact, here are a mixture of 27 random ones about history, some trivia, some that will make you think, some that will change your perspective.

Walt Disney may have come up with the idea of Mickey Mouse and may have provided the voice for Mickey Mouse. However, the imagery was created by animator Ub Iwerks. He came up with all the iconic features.

In ancient Egypt, the average age that men lived to was 23 to 25, whereas the average age for women was 35 to 37. The extremely low male rate is skewed by the fact that many men died through war and through the hard labour jobs they worked. Also, because the child mortality rate was crazy high, most children not making it past the age of five, both numbers are skewed heavily. Despite this, most Egyptians did not make it past the age of 40, and only those who made it past the age of 20 had a decent chance of making it to 40.

Approximately 43 percent of children born prior to 1800 died before the age of 5, most before the age of 1, and between 60 and 70 percent died before the age of 15. The high mortality rate is one of the reasons why women were primary carers for children, and men were the primary breadwinners, the men would do all they could to provide as many resources as possible, as well as providing protection, the women would use those resources and the security of the protection to first have as many children as possible and to second do everything they could to try to keep the children alive.

Thanks to the unprecedented and explosive population growth of the last two hundred years, which has been brought about largely through the immense advances in healthcare — which has stopped children dying in such enormous numbers — between 7 and 9 percent of all humans who have ever existed are alive today.

Unlike popular belief, it was not Coca-Cola that turned Santa Claus red, they were just the first to create a famous commercial advert using him. It was an American cartoonist named Thomas Nast who actually turned Santa Claus red. In the 1870s, Nast produced numerous drawings of Santa for Harper’s Weekly, depicting him in first the Stars & Stripes and then in green. Eventually, he ended up with the Santa as we know it with his 1881 image of Santa becoming tantamount to the first official portrait of him. Before Nast, Santa Claus didn’t really have a colour as most images were in black and white.

Coca-Cola was originally sold as a medicinal drink, and it was advertised as a “patent medicine.” John Pemberton, who created the drink in his backyard, claimed that it could cure headaches, upset stomachs and fatigue. Back in 1885 when the drink was invented, it was legal to use cocaine for medicinal purposes, and as there were no regulators around back then there was no one to dispute the claims that there was a benefit. Hence, an extract from the coca leaf was used in Coca-Cola, hence, the coca part of its name. The cola part came from the kola nut — which contains caffeine. Coke was removed from Coca-Cola in 1929, after which point it became a very popular soft drink.

In the 1830s tomato ketchup was actually sold as a medicine, and it was a popular medicine at that. It was reported that it was a great cure for indigestion and was not popularised as a condiment until the late nineteenth century.

Ever wondered why the citrus soda 7-Up is called 7-Up? When it was created back in 1929, the “7” was selected after the original 7-ounce containers and the “Up” was selected because that was the direction of the bubbles.

The microwave oven was invented by accident. In 1945, Percy Spencer noticed that microwaves from an active radar set he was working on started to melt a chocolate bar he had in his pocket. From this, he realised the power of microwaves as a means of heating things up.

Paul Revere is famous for being the man who alerted the American Revolutionary forces back in April 1775 that the British were coming. On his famous Midnight Ride, he is reported to have shouted as he passed through town after town that “the British are coming.” Except he didn’t. It was fabricated. Firstly, Americans did not exist at this point, at least not in the way we think of them. The colonial Americans still considered themselves British. Secondly, the operation was a quiet and stealthy operation and so shouting the British are coming would have ruined it. The fabrication is a result of propaganda.

In early Rome, a father had the legal right to kill anyone in his family. Yep, it was wise not to get on the wrong side of your father in Rome.

Because the Romans built the roads, the foundations for our entire land-based transport networks are built around the Roman road-building philosophy. This is to make the roads wide enough for two Roman carts — so they can pass each other. Though the size of Roman carts varied — there was no standardisation back then —they were typically no more than two horse-widths wide, and so the widths of the two-way roads were typically a little over 6 metres — approximately four horse-widths wide. Today, despite most roads being widened over the last century or so, the average two-way road measures only a little over 7 metres wide. Not much more than four horse-widths wide in total, two horse-widths for each lane. That means cars, trucks, buses, everything built for a road, the width of it is restricted by the size of a Roman cart, which was typically two horse-widths wide. The thing is though, Roman carts were not the first carts, horse-drawn carts were first invented by the Mesopotamians in about 3000 BC. They were used in royal funeral processions. It is likely they were around even before that. Meaning our road systems and our road-going vehicles, the thing that largely defined the width of them lies in something thousands of years old. The horse-drawn cart, which the majority of the road systems were built to accommodate.

Julius Caesar was the first-ever Roman to invade Britain. He did it twice in the years 55 and 54 BC. However, prior to that, the majority of Romans didn’t believe that Britain existed. Meaning Britain was once discovered just like the New World, meaning Britain was once the New World — at least to the Romans.

Everybody talks about gladiators from Rome, they are legendary. But what is not well known is that there were not just male gladiators, there were female Gladiators! A female gladiator was called a Gladiatrix, or Gladiatrices. They were extremely rare, unlike their male counterparts, and as such nobody really knows much about them other than the fact that they used to fight each other and wild animals for entertainment. Just like the men, they were reportedly kick ass.

The transatlantic slave trade saw over twelve million Africans sold to the Americas during the 16th and 19th centuries. However, that was not the only large scale slave trade in operation during that period. The Ottoman Eastern Mediterranean was the scene of intense piracy. As part of this, Barbary pirates captured over one million Europeans and sold them as slaves in North Africa. Despite the barbaric nature of the slave trades — both the transatlantic, Barbery and others — of this period, and despite slavery now being universally banned, there are more people trapped in slavery today than ever before in human history.

During the 16th and 19th centuries, mainly off the back of the slave trade, a number of African kingdoms became extremely rich. However, because these kingdoms sold so many of the continent's people — especially the men — into slavery, and because slavery was ended by European nations, the kingdoms collapsed. The ramifications of these collapses along with the loss of so many African men into slavery are still felt to this day.

Cleopatra, the last Queen of Egypt, despite being born in Alexandria, was not actually believed to have been a native Egyptian. Historians believe that she was actually of Greek Macedonian blood and a descendant of Alexander the Great’s Macedonian general Ptolemy. After the death of Alexander the Great, Ptolemy reigned over Egypt and as a result, his descendants — all of which were believed to be Greek speakers — ruled over Egypt for nearly three centuries. Cleopatra was one of those descendents.

The Ancient Egyptians used slabs of stone as pillows. Yep, Egyptian pillows were made out of stone, though that stone at least had a curve in it that matched the shape of the human head and neck.

In the late 18th and early 19th-century, when dentistry was in its infancy, if you were a soldier and you died, then what you had to look forward to was your teeth being pulled out by fellow soldiers and looters and being sold to dentists who would use them to create dentures. No jokes, dentists commonly made dentures using teeth pulled from the mouths of dead soldiers — the poor as well. So many were stolen after the battle of Waterloo, in which tens of thousands of soldiers lost their lives, the fake teeth have since been called Waterloo Teeth.

The iron maiden, the most horrific of torture devices, did not actually exist. Though the idea of it has been around for a few thousand years, the idea that they were made and used in the middle ages was in fact a myth that started in the 18th-century. 18th-century perceptions were that the middle ages were a widely uncivilised era of violence and mayhem. They were. But they were not that bad that they created the iron maiden and put people inside it. The consensus is the mistruth about their use potentially originated as a result of capitalism, museums and the like built them and used them as an attraction to draw in visitors.

Napoleon Bonaparte is famous for many things, he is purported to be one of the greatest generals in history, he created an empire, he has a love story for the ages, so much more. However, one thing that he would perhaps wish not to be famous for is as a guy who was once attacked by a horde of bunny rabbits. Yep, no jokes. That happened. He had requested a rabbit hunt be arranged for himself and his men. However, when the rabbits were released from their cages, the bunnies charged toward him and his men and ravaged them.

Women’s fight for the right to vote is well documented, but what is rarely documented is men’s, who faced an equally as tough battle. For example, in the United Kingdom, the first men to get the right to vote did not get that right until 1864 when men who owned property in the city were given the right. In 1884 it was expanded to men who owned property in the countryside. That gave forty percent of men in total the right to vote. It wasn’t until 1918 that the rest of men got the right to vote, women got the right to vote at the same time. It was the trenches of World War I that finally got the majority of men their vote along with the factories of war for women. The majority of the men who fought in the trenches had no right to vote, and none of the women who worked in the factories did. The war forced a change of the status quo.

Paraguay for a period was the only nation on the earth where by all accounts it was men and children first, not women and children. The Paraguayan War, known as the War of the Triple Alliance, despite being seldom talked about, is one of the most deadly in recent history. Paraguay suffered massive casualties which are felt even to this day — mainly because of the enormous male death toll. One consensus taken in 1871 showed that as a result of the war, 90 percent of the male population had been killed. However, these numbers are disputed but as a whole, it is believed that as many as 60 to 70 percent of the entire population died in this six-year-long war, the vast majority male. As a result, after the war, the woman to man ratio was believed to be 4 to 1, and as high as 20 to 1 in the worst hit places. The war only ended upon the death of the president, Francisco Solano López. Though population numbers have now returned to normality, with slightly more men than women, Paraguay still suffers from the men and children first women second philosophy that the war inflicted upon them.

The Mad Queen of Madagascar, Ranavalona I, is a tyrant and genocidal mass murderer with few rivals. Her harsh punishments and just straight-up cruelty, which in one case saw her go on a hunting trip to nowhere through a jungle which led to hundreds if not thousands of deaths, led to the death of over half the population. By her decree, if a person was accused of any crime, they had to drink poison, if they survived they were innocent. She is controversial because of some of the statements she made about being a woman. She often talked about how it is more difficult for female leaders when compared to male, which has made her — despite her genocidal leadership —to some groups a form of feminist icon.

Cowboys from the old west did not wear cowboy hats, at least not until the 1870s. Yep. Those big Stetsons that the likes of John Wayne and Clint Eastwood made famous were exactly that, made famous by them not cowboys. The original hat of choice for the cowboy — so those living in the west from the 1600s up until the 1870s — was actually a bowler hat along with a Mexican Sombrero. The Stetson only became popular due to its use by the Union Cavalry as an alternative to the regulation wear. But because the Wild West was during the 1860s to 1890s, and because that period has been mythologised by Hollywood, everyone assumes cowboys always wore Stetsons.

Fire stations have spiralling stairways for a very specific reason. Back in the old days when the fire engines were pulled by horses, the horses worked out how to walk up straight staircases. So the spiralling stairways are to stop the horses from getting upstairs. Even though we no longer use horses to pull the engines, we kept the spiralling stairways anyway because they became synonymous with fire stations.

In one of the ultimate ironies, nobody knows who invented the first fire hydrant. The reason is that the patent was believed to be burned in a fire at the Patent Office in 1836, destroying all records of it.

That’s all from me, thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this post, you may also enjoy the following:

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