No matter who you are or what period of history may be your favorite, I know there are always more tidbits of history out there to learn. So, here are 10 fun history facts I’ve learned recently that I thought were cool enough to share. Enjoy!
1.
The recently departed 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 Consort. Mary was a devout Catholic anxious to undo much of the Protestant changes and damages her father, Henry VIII, had made to England. (She did not succeed.) When Mary died, English law made sure that her half-sister Elizabeth, not Philip, became England’s monarch.
In 1588, Philip sent an armada of almost 130 ships to invade England and depose the Protestant queen. The English had to repel the Spaniards in the Channel. At midnight one night, the English sent eight ghost ships laden with flamables adrift into the Armada.
The Spanish cut their cables and set out to sea, and with their formation broken, they had no choice but to sail north, to Scotland — and into one of the “worst storms to hit that coast in years.” According to Historic UK, “When the tattered Armada eventually returned to Spain, it had lost half its ships and three-quarters of its men.” Philip never did gain control over England, and the country’s lucky defeat of his monstrous Armada was seen as a divine blessing of the Protestant state.
2.
On December 12, 1952, a nuclear reactor at a laboratory suffered an explosion. Long before he became the President of the United States, 28-year-old Navy lieutenant and nuclear engineer Jimmy Carter volunteered to help dismantle the Canadian nuclear reactor, which had begun melting down. Carter was part of a team of scientists who each took 90-second shifts inside the radioactive core to carefully deconstruct it.
3.
In Heian- and Kamakura-era Japan, there existed a practice called uwanari-uchi, which literally translates to “beating the second wife.” According to author Chieko Irie Mulhern, uwanari-uchi is “the sanctioned right of the first wife to fight off the later wife” — basically, if her husband decided to abscond with wife #2, wife #1 had the right to attack the other woman, either for revenge or to protect her property and investment in her husband.
4.
The colossal 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora, a volcano in present-day Indonesia, caused a global volcanic winter event we now call the “Year Without a Summer.” According to Smith College, the eruption was “the most destructive explosion on Earth in the past 10,000 years,” and “10,000 people living on the island were killed.” The eruption affected the entire planet. In New England, for example, frost killed off crops, heavy snow fell in June, and lakes and rivers stayed frozen until July. Summer never came.
5.
In 1846, a young Abraham Lincoln may have considered joining the ill-fated Donner Party. Lincoln was friends with James F. Reed, an organizing member of the group of pioneers, and Reed wanted him to come along. Mary Todd, who already had one toddler with Lincoln and was pregnant for a second time, opposed Lincoln’s joining the expedition. Ultimately, Lincoln decided to stay in Illinois, where he developed his political career.
6.
Luca Pacioli was a 15th-century Franciscan friar, mathematician, and friend of Leonardo da Vinci known as the “father of accounting.” He formalized and published a book on double-entry bookkeeping, which is still the system required for most businesses today.
7.
In 1579, nearly a decade before he was to become crucial in England’s defeat of the Spanish Armada, English explorer and privateer Sir Francis Drake sailed to California seeking new trade routes for England. Much like the explorer Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo before him, and despite sailing right up the California coastline, Drake failed to “discover” the San Francisco Bay. Because the Bay (as well as the land surrounding it) was inhospitable and shrouded in fog, Drake (and Cabrillo before him) missed its existence entirely and instead sailed farther north, most likely where Drakes Bay is today.
8.
Lucrezia Borgia had a total of three husbands in her life. The first, Giovanni Sforza, she married when she was just 13, while he was 26, and the year after they were married, her family attempted to have him killed.
Juan and Cesare told Lucrezia of their plan to have Giovanni murdered, whereupon she allegedly warned him ahead of time. He fled to Milan in a beggar’s disguise. After that, her family called for an annulment, claiming that the marriage had never been consummated because Giovanni was impotent. Yikes. Eventually, Giovanni consented to the annulment (which included admitting to the lie) when Pope Alexander VI, Lucrezia’s father, said he could retain her dowry.
9.
Genghis Khan, the first khan of the Mongol Empire, is estimated to have killed as many as 40 million human beings, or 11% of the world’s population. The sheer number of people he killed led to vast reforestation of the devastated areas, leading to what ecologists say could be the “first ever case of successful manmade global cooling.” Areas reforested due to Khan’s genocides led to an “estimated 700 million tonnes of carbon” being absorbed from the atmosphere.
10.
And finally, a wholesome story: Bobbie the Wonder Dog was a beloved Oregon canine who surprised his owners by showing up on their front doorstep. The near-miraculous part? Bobbie had been lost on a trip to Indiana, but his owners lived in Silverton, Oregon! According to the Oregon Encyclopedia, an investigation launched by the Oregon Humane Society “[confirmed] that Bobbie had indeed traveled 2,800 miles in the dead of winter to return home.” Scrappy and scrawny, “a much-celebrated dog Bobbie received medals, keys to cities, and a jewel-studded harness and collar.”
If there are any dramatic, interesting, or just plain cool facts from history that you love, please, please, please drop them in the comments! I always like learning more historical info, and I’m sure other people do, too. Or, if you’d rather share anonymously, fill out the form below!
