I love a good documentary—something that actually teaches me something new and keeps me entertained the whole way through. But after binging nearly everything on Netflix and YouTube, I’m starting to feel like the topics are stuck on repeat: geography, climate change, Egypt’s pyramids, WWII conspiracies, Cold War conspiracies… it’s all ground we’ve covered a million times. Where are the truly bizarre, unexpected, mind-blowing historical documentaries—the ones that explore stories we haven’t heard a thousand times?
Given this gap in documentaries, I set out to find the craziest, most peculiar, and strangest historical events and stories that have not received nearly enough attention in society. And, oh my, did I uncover some interesting ones. Here are 14 weird and implausible historical incidents that deserve to be made into mini-series documentaries:
Disclaimer: The following content includes mentions of death, violence, and other sensitive events. Please proceed with caution.
The situation worsened, prompting the government to come up with a solution. Members of the parliament quickly approved a bill by Benjamin Disraeli, the Leader of the House of Commons in 1858, to finance a new sewer system because they could smell the foul air coming from the Thames during that summer. The bill became law in 18 days.
3.
The Battle of Los Angeles, 1942—where a false attack alarm led to over 1,400 rounds of anti-aircraft ammunition being pumped into the sky.
Troops manned the anti-aircraft guns and began looking for an aircraft in the sky with searchlights. At 3 a.m., the shooting began. Reports of unidentified objects in the skies came to light, and troops in Santa Monica began shooting at the sky with anti-aircraft and .50 caliber gunfire.
5.
The Voynich Manuscript—a manuscript written in an entirely indecipherable language, puzzling cryptologists.
Despite all the theories and ongoing efforts to crack this medieval text, this manuscript remains a mystery.
6.
The Great Moon Hoax, 1835—when a newspaper had people believing that life existed on the Moon.
Following the release of these articles, newspaper sales increased, which made it a “penny press” newspaper that was cheaper and provided a narrative form of journalism. The problem here was that none of it was true. It was supposedly a form of satire to poke fun at earlier, serious speculations of life on the Moon. But the readers did not see it as satire and believed it to be true until the newspaper announced the article to be a hoax in September of 1835.
Oliver Cromwell, on the other hand, the King could not execute, but he exhumed his corpse. The corpse was then cut down and beheaded, with the severed head being displayed at Westminster for two decades before being stolen. It spent centuries as a tourist attraction and an object of curiosity.
10.
The Defenestration of Prague, 1618—an incident where Protestant nobles forcibly ejected two Catholic officials from a window.
Just reading about these events isn’t enough; I need a full 2-hour documentary to binge while eating pizza and sipping something nice. Honestly, I’m shocked no one has turned this into a series yet, because my curiosity is officially activated after falling down this rabbit hole. If you need me, I’ll be knee-deep on Wikipedia hunting for even more wildly intriguing historical events.
