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Aztec communities used an early form of electricity generation, later adopted to power internet message boards
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The hamster was brought to Europe by Copernicus
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Easter Island was named after its large population of rabbits, which were wiped out in the 1800s, due to the introduction of the shotgun among the native population
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Jesus’s flirtation with atheism during his college years very nearly resulted in the complete destruction of all humanity and existence. Luckily his Dad slapped some sense into him at the last minute.
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Brigham Young was amazed upon arriving in the valley of the Great Salt Lake to learn that just a few days walk to the north there was a Brigham Young University. He took this as a sign from Moroni that “this is the place”, without which Donny & Marie would have been a brother sister crime syndicate in Cincinatti.
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In 1691 Puritan friends Obesity Lawrence and Flatulence Goodman, both of Salem, MA, became the first two Goth chicks to be persecuted for their beliefs and religious practices. It was the result of more than 5 years of desperately trying to persecuted for beliefs and religious practices that began with forming the “Indian-White Alliance” chapter in their high school (which got off to a good start when 60 Indians showed up at the first meeting, though ended terribly when they all died of smallpox strains on the T shirts they were given) and then plastering trees and wagons with adhesive placards stating “Meat is Murder!” and “No War For Corn!”
When arrested for witchcraft early in 1692, both Obesity and Flatulence stated “No! No! Wicca… I don’t know what I was thinking… it was… ooh, I know… it was Goody Proctor and her poppets that made me say I worshiped the Earth mother!”, thus beginning American history’s most famous withcraft hysteria.
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The “Mystery Plays” are called such because no one (in their time or this one) had a clue who was writing them, or for what purpose.
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The sun, in fact, did set on the British Empire. In response to this fact, the Empire refused to acknowledge the presence of the sun from 1878 to 1923.
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In both the German Empire and the Weimar Republic, the office of Chancellor was determined by the results of a horse race.
- However, due to errors in the wording of treaties, the sun never set on Berwick-upon-Tweed until 1991, when an appendix to the ceasefire in Iraq removed this embarassing omission.
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The Roman aqueducts are not a feat of engineering, but were carved naturally by retreating glaciers at the end of the last ice age. Really skinny glaciers.
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The Battle of Gettysburg in 1863 was actually fought by Revolutionary War recreationists who could not use their usual field because of a zoning change.
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President Franklin D. Roosevelt never had polio. The few pictures of him wearing leg braces were taken at the request of his longtime mistress, evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson, who received unusually intense sexual gratification from “healing” him.
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Until 1948, there was no actual “Electoral College.” Its function was carried out at various times by Williams, Swarthmore, Oberlin, the National Association of Letter Carriers, and the Ku Klux Klan.
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No President-elect from 1928 to 1972 was granted Secret Service protection for his inauguration until he agreed to pose for staged photos showing him in a compromising position with FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover.
It’s a testament to the Dope that there are so many history buffs here. Here a few more facts I’ve discovered in the few hours since my first post:
Obviously, Lou Gehrig’s disease was named for Lou Gehrig. But what many don’t know is that Gehrig actually created the disease while working as a Biological Warfare scientist for the Third Reich in a secret labratory beneath Yankee stadium. He was very selfless, though, as he injected himself with the disease to test its effects.
Holiday Inn hotels were named for Doc Holliday, the famous gunfighter who was famously persnickety about his lodgings.
Warren Harding was allergic to both ketchup and mustard.
Speaking of ketchup, you know how some people call it catsup? Well that’s because of young twin brothers: Emmaus and Rocco Heinz. The boys invented that sauce when they were young. A disagreement over a girl when they were 22 years old forced the brothers to part.
Ray Kroc of MacDonald’s fame was a vegan.
Clarence Birdseye of flash frozen veggies fame owned Fredericks of Hollywood.
Jesse Owens won all of his Olympic gold medals while wearing wooden Dutch shoes.
The world’s oldest known cookbook “Aye Houswyfe’s Buk” had recipes for enchiladas and tator tots.
- England’s King George III was not really mad or a sufferer of porphyria, he just liked cross-dressing with the Queen. Obviously, since he couldn’t go out in public in his dresses (and for special occasions, a Little Bo-Peep outfit, with the queen dressed as a lamb), another explanation had to be given out.
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In ancient Sumeria, bartenders were usually women.
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Ian Fleming based his character “James Bond” on the youthful Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, later the husband of Queen Victoria.
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The Recording Industry of Association of America started as a protectionist trade-lobby group. Their first major success involved lobbying for non-tariff barriers against a flood of rock music from eastern Europe in the late 1950s, which they claimed was part of a Warsaw Pact cultural offensive. This is part of the reason Elvis Presley was inducted into the US Army.
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There are three Empire State Buildings in New York City: the famous one, a nine-story structure near Wall Street (whose name is obscured by advertising signwork), and a former firehall (originally built as a private library) dating to 1850.
Stonehenge was not originally a sundial or religious site, but a kind of primitive laundromat. Clothing was rubbed or beaten against the slabs, then left to air out for extended periods.
Marco Polo negotiated royalty deals with China on spaghetti and gunpowder, but the deal collapsed due to the reluctance of Italian women to bind their feet.
Basketball was not invented by James Naismith, but was originally developed by monks as a means of spreading Catholicism through 14th-century Lithuania.
The African nation of Burkina Faso was once known as Upper Volta due to its position as the world’s largest exporter of naturally-occurring electricity. After the electricity mines began playing out in the 1980s, the country’s name had to be changed.
(77, 78, 79, 80, if anyone’s still counting.)
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Italians were building empires in the 2nd century BCE, presiding over the international papacy over the next two millennium, creating art as we know it in the 15th century and assisting in the fascist takeover of the western world by the 1930s, but it was not until 1983 that an Italian figured out how to get his arms through his overcoat sleeves.
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Between his non-consecutive terms as US president Grover Cleveland devised more than 700 new uses for navel lint. Unfortunately none had any practical value save for the Naval Lint Particle Accelerator, which came along too early to really be of use to physicists and by the time it was, it had been lost.
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The brothers of Crazy Horse, who were Seasonal Affective Disorder Horse and Codependant Horse, were the original inventors of the Ghost Dance, though they envisioned it as a rave. The wealthiest member of the family was Seasonal’s great grandson, Native American adult film star Hunglaika Horse.
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Shakespeare was the author of at least two plays for which we have records of the performances but no copies of the actual texts. One was a history play, The Tragedie of the Elf King Liutprand the Impotent and the other was a prequel to Hamlet entitled Bitch, I Knoweth Thou Didn’t!.
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Porky Pig, Yosemite Sam and Rin Tin Tin were to be called before the McCarthy Hearings the week after McCarthy was censured, which worked out well for them as all were indeed Communist agents.
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In the 1950s a law stated that couples on television series had to keep at least one foot on the floor and sleep in separate beds, which caused Ann Sothern to displace two vertebrae when performing a particularly energetic oral sex on guest star Jim Backus in the Who’s Been Sleeping in My Bed? episode of Private Secretary.
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The most famous book published in the late 15th and early 16th centuries was the Bible, though the self help book How to Avoid Paying Alimony by a pseudonymous author called “Big Harry TuDog” sold more copies.
- Countess Elizabeth Báthory had AIDS.
- The Chinese Emperor Qianlong reportedly composed more than 2000 poems, but many of them were plagiarized from the Carmina Burana.
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Washington, D.C. was built on the site of a restaurant George Washington founded and operated before he became president. The name is an abbreviation of the diner’s original name, “Washington’s Diner and Cookery.”
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Mickey Mouse was an actual person, the result of a bizarre experiment in merging a mouse with a human by a scientist named Gerhard Disney. However, Minnie Mouse was a non-existent, ether-inspired fabrication of his cousin Walt- not the animator who would later make Mickey and Minnie famous, but an unrelated German soldier. After World War I, Walt rose to fame after changing his name to Adolf Hitler (fact 92).
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South of 82 degrees south latitude, prisms made of Iceland spar split light into eight instead of seven colours. The eighth colour is believed to lie in the infrared.
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South of 88 degrees south latitude, the eighth colour can be perceived directly by the brain, without intercession of the retina. This fact has been used for unknown purposes by the NSA.
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Sidney Hadley, the only man to swim across the Pacific and survive, died, ironically, after slipping in a public wading pool and breaking his neck.
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The inventor of cheese is unknown. All known cultures have inherited cheese from previous ones; the earliest known references to cheese (among the Sumerians) speak of a time called The Ecstasy Of The Cow Gods, and ascribe the art of cheese-making to them.
- The Lusitania was in fact sunk by an explosion in the kitchen. The ship’s cook had been cooking “Floating Island”, when the oven exploded, tearing a hole in the side of the ship big enough to drive a truck through.
O.J. was in fact innocent, and the real killer of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman was…Buck Henry
Michael Jackson never molested a chld in his life. However, he was been known to lend his Neverland Ranch out for “kiddie parties” thrown by his good friend…Buck Henry. This explailns Buck’s most famous SNL sketch.
Speaking of SNL, this is actually the first show shown on NYC TV back in the 1940’s. What we see today are reruns, with the actors’ voices dubbed by Lrone Michaels to make it seem more contemporary.
Matt Groening did create “Life in Hell.” But “The Simpsons” was created by a co-worker of Matt’s father Homer, who sold the rights to 6 year old Matt for a dime and a white mouse. The co-worker was Peg Bracken, who later became famous as a cookbook writer.
the first draft of the magna carta was etched into the left thighbone of arthur of brittany, a not-so subtle hint by the barons to king john that they knew where all the bodies were buried.
the story about catherine the great and the horse isn’t true – but the one about alexander the great and the gerbil is.
War and Peace was originally named War, War, What is it Good For?