"In 2019 a convicted murderer on day release bravely fought off a terrorist at London Bridge with a narwhal tusk."
"In 1908 Russia showed up 12 days late to the Olympics because the world switched calendars while they did not."
"Halley’s Comet appeared in the sky when Mark Twain was born in 1835. The comet moves in a seventy-five or seventy-six-year orbit, and, as it neared Earth once again, Twain said “I came in with Halley’s Comet and I expect to go out with it.” Sure enough, he died on April 21, 1910, just as the comet made its next pass within sight of Earth."
"Theodore Roosevelt found his boat was stolen. So he built a new boat, tracked the thieves down and arrested them. He then proceeded to walk them multiple days, without sleeping, so they could receive a trial instead of just shooting them on the spot. It was in the middle of a harsh winter so he didn’t handcuff them (for fear they’d get frostbite) so instead he just kept himself awake by reading Tolstoy with a gun trained on them the whole trek."
"The Battle of Halys. In roughly 6th century BC, the Medes and the Lydians were at war. The war had lasted for six years and climaxed at the Battle of Halys. During the battle, a solar eclipse began. Both sides believed that the Gods were angry at their long and bloody war, and were taking the sun away from them. They declared peace that day, and the sun was returned."
"When Randy Johnson killed a bird with a fastball in the middle of an MLB game."
"Nicholas Alkemade fell 18,000 feet without a parachute from a burning plane in 1944 and suffered no serious injury."
"Christmas day 1914. The truce on the WW1 battlefields. Shows the humanity inside everyone, but they were able to wake up the next day and go straight back to war, kill the men that they’d spent a sincere day with."
"My colleague was on the plane to Hawaii where the entire top of the plane ripped off. They flew the rest of the way without any overhead…landed and everyone walked off. Absolutely insane to see the pictures. Talk about being given a 2nd chance."
"I still find it totally insane that we were able to put men on the moon with the technology of the time. It blows my mind. Probably the greatest of all human achievement."
"Juliana Koepcke became famous at the age of 17 as the sole survivor of the 1971 LANSA Flight 508 plane crash; after falling 3,000 m (10,000 ft) while strapped to her seat and suffering numerous injuries, she survived 11 days alone in the Amazon rainforest until local fishermen rescued her."
"Mao Zedong, in his infinite hubris, thought that there would be no repercussions from an attempt to completely eliminate rats, flies, mosquitos, and sparrows. Plot twist: there were repercussions.
Millions of people organized into groups, and hit noisy pots and pans to prevent sparrows from resting in their nests, with the goal of causing them to drop dead from exhaustion.
Sparrows were replaced with bed bugs, as the extermination of sparrows had upset the ecological balance, which subsequently resulted in surging locust and insect populations that destroyed crops due to a lack of a natural predator. The ecological disruption was one of several factors that led to a famine that killed 45 million people."
"Elevator operator Betty Lou Oliver survived a fall of 75 stories while in an elevator in 1945."
"Roman emperor Caligula declared war on Neptune, god of the sea, and had the waves whipped and stabbed. His soldiers were ordered to collect seashells as prizes of war."
"The Kentucky Meat Shower. Bunch of mystery meat fell out of the sky and no one had a clue what it was but they still ate it as they saw it as a blessing from god."
"Ocean liner stewardess/nurse Violet Jessop survived the sinking of the Titanic in 1912 & the Britannic in 1916 and was onboard the Olympic when it collided with another ship in 1911."
"On December 5th, 1664, a man named Hugh Williams was the only survivor of a shipwreck.
On December 5th, 1785, a man named Hugh Williams was the only survivor of a shipwreck.
On December 5th, 1820, a man named Hugh Williams was the only survivor of a shipwreck."
"Australia’s Emu War. Not only is it hilarious that they went to war with a bird, but the fact that they lost to the birds is the cherry on top."
"The host of “Candid Camera” was Allen Funt. He was one of the most famous people in the world. His TV show revolved around having hidden cameras and tricking people and putting them into crazy fake scenarios.
He was on a an airplane once that got hijacked. But not as part of the show, it really got hijacked! Halfway through the ordeal, passengers started to recognize him, and started saying things like, “Oh thank God this isn’t real. We’re on Candid Camera”. He tried hard to convince people that this was a real hijacking, which it was.
When the whole thing was over and people were getting off the plane (in Cuba) they yelled at Funt and generally expressed anger towards him.
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Are we really sure it wasn't the same person each time? Like isn't that the basic plot of Ghost Ship, an immoral being collecting souls from ships....
what til you look up newspaper stories from the last 200 years that always say "6 million people died from so and so" exactly like the holocaust story many years later
Well, only in the U.S. Never heard of him in Europe...