History isn't just battle dates. People have always done strange things: put animals on trial, taxed beards, ate mummies as medicine and went to war over a bucket. Here are the most surprising facts from our collection. Each one has its own page you can share, and you can open the globe to see what else was happening in the world that year.
Animals that made history
Sometimes the stars of an era weren't kings but cats, bears and pigeons.
- Legend says Persia conquered Egypt with the help of cats.
- When a cat died in an Egyptian house, everyone in it shaved off their eyebrows, Herodotus wrote in the 5th century BC. Diodorus claimed that killing a cat, even by accident, could get you lynched.
- Rats once had a lawyer.
- In 1386 a sow was tried and executed in Falaise for killing an infant.
- A brown bear served in the Polish army in World War II. Wojtek was enlisted as a private so he could board a ship in Egypt, and his company’s badge became a bear carrying an artillery shell.
- A pigeon was awarded France’s Croix de Guerre.
- The Norwegian King’s Guard knighted a penguin.
- The Ming court mistook a giraffe for the mythical qilin.
- In 1749 fashionable Parisian ladies wore their hair à la rhinocéros. The cause was Clara, a rhino whom a Dutch captain toured around Europe for 17 years, from Berlin and Vienna to Versailles and Venice.
- The first aeronauts were a sheep, a duck and a rooster.
- Alexander the Great named a city after his horse.
Food that would baffle your ancestors
Potatoes were banned, forks were sinful and ketchup was sold at the chemist's.
- Europe first saw the fork as a sin. When a Byzantine bride married into the Doge’s family around 1004 and ate with a golden fork, Saint Peter Damian denounced her decadence.
- France banned growing potatoes in 1748, believing they caused leprosy.
- Russians once rioted over potatoes.
- Before 1492 Italy had no tomatoes, Ireland no potatoes, Switzerland no cocoa, and Thailand and India no chilli peppers.
- Under US law the tomato is a vegetable.
- Cacao beans were money for the Aztecs, and they were counterfeited.
- For three centuries Europeans only drank chocolate.
- Canned food was invented nearly half a century before the can opener.
- The sandwich is named after an earl.
- Ketchup was once sold as medicine.
- Coca-Cola was invented by a pharmacist as a medicine.
- The Mayflower Pilgrims hurried ashore at Plymouth partly because of beer.
- Rome paid the Goths in pepper.
Money, taxes and strange payments
Money has been stones the size of a wheel, bricks of tea and playing cards.
- Under Peter the Great bearded men carried a token stamped “Money received”, proof of paying the beard tax. Top merchants paid 100 rubles a year; peasants paid a kopeck each time they entered a town.
- On Yap, money takes the form of stone discs up to 3.6 m across.
- In 17th-century Sweden a coin could weigh almost 20 kg. Copper plates were worth their weight in metal, so large payments went by cart.
- In 1685 soldiers in New France were paid in playing cards.
- In Siberia, Mongolia and Tibet bricks of pressed tea served as money.
- Britain taxed soap for nearly a century and a half.
- In 1795 Britain taxed hair powder at a guinea a year.
- Americans once mailed their children.
Fashion that went the other way
- High heels were made for men. Persian horsemen used them to grip their stirrups, and after Shah Abbas’s embassy to Europe in 1599 aristocrats copied the style.
- The wig craze began with a bald patch.
- Wristwatches long counted as women’s jewellery: Breguet made the first for the Queen of Naples in 1810.
Toilets, toothbrushes and other everyday feats
- In Mohenjo-daro 4,500 years ago many houses had toilets linked to a citywide sewer system.
- Roman public latrines had a sponge on a stick, the tersorium, instead of toilet paper.
- The flush toilet was invented by Elizabeth I’s godson, the poet John Harington.
- The mass-produced toothbrush was invented in prison.
- In ancient Egypt a pregnancy test used grain: a woman urinated on wheat and barley, and if they sprouted, she was pregnant.
Inventions ahead of their time
A computer in ancient Greece, a steam turbine in Alexandria and a vending machine in a temple.
- The oldest known analogue computer is over 2,000 years old. The bronze gears of the Antikythera mechanism predicted eclipses, and nothing as intricate was built again for more than a thousand years, until medieval astronomical clocks.
- A steam turbine was built in Alexandria in the 1st century, about 1,700 years before Watt's engine.
- The first vending machine sold holy water.
- The fax machine is 33 years older than the telephone.
- Artificial intelligence is older than the Space Age. The term was coined in 1955 for the Dartmouth workshop held in the summer of 1956, while the first satellite flew only in October 1957.
- Napoleon lost at chess to a 'robot' with a man inside.
Scientists who were a little odd
- The great astronomer Tycho Brahe wore a metal nose for 35 years.
- Tycho Brahe kept a tame elk that, so the story goes, was killed by beer.
- Galileo's middle finger is on display in a Florence museum.
- Saccharin was discovered by not washing up before dinner.
- Marie Curie's notebooks are still radioactive.
- For centuries Europeans ate Egyptian mummies as medicine.
- Heroin was once sold as a cough medicine.
Things that are still running
- A bulb in a Livermore fire station has been lit since 1901 and has hardly ever been off. When it was moved to a new station in 1976 it went dark for about 22 minutes; rather than unscrew it, they cut the cord.
- A bell in Oxford has been ringing since 1840, and nobody dares find out what powers it. Its dry piles have driven some 10 billion rings, and opening them would end one of the longest-running experiments ever.
- Since its discovery Neptune has gone round the Sun just once.
Dates that don't fit in your head
These are easiest to check on the globe: pick the year and look at what was happening on other continents.
- The Olympic Games are older than Rome: the first were held in 776 BC, and by tradition the city was founded only 23 years later.
- Stonehenge is older than the Great Pyramid.
- People sailed to Australia while Neanderthals still lived in Europe.
- Work on the Sagrada Família began before the Eiffel Tower.
- People reached the South Pole before the Titanic sank.
- Mark Twain came in and went out with Halley's Comet.
- Modern Singapore is younger than the Battle of Waterloo: Stamford Raffles set up the British trading post there in 1819, four years after Napoleon's defeat.
- Brazil's capital is younger than the first satellite.
For more overlaps like these, see Who lived at the same time: 20 overlaps that sound made up; the most stubborn misconceptions are in History myths almost everyone believes.
How to use these facts
All facts live in Amazing facts, sorted by era and theme. Each one can be shared: it has its own page with a preview image for messengers. On the Panchronia globe, facts appear on their own as you move the timeline, as "Did you know" cards next to the events of that year.
To see how well you can tell truth from fiction, play True or false?, where amazing facts are mixed with plausible inventions.
What are some fun history facts?
For example: France banned growing potatoes in 1748, under Peter the Great men with beards carried a token proving they had paid the beard tax, and a brown bear called Wojtek served in the Polish army in World War II. More than 60 such facts are in this article.
What are the weirdest facts in history?
Some of the weirdest: medieval courts put animals on trial (a pig was executed in Falaise in 1386), rats were assigned a lawyer in 1522, and Europeans ate Egyptian mummies as medicine for centuries.
Where can I find interesting history facts for kids or school?
In the Amazing facts section on Panchronia: facts are sorted by era, from the ancient world to the 20th century, each with dates and links to events you can open on the globe.