“The Erfurt Latrine Disaster of 1184 where a bunch of nobles met in a church, where it turned out the wooden floor couldn’t hold their weight, so it broke and they tumbled into the latrine in the cellar, and about 60 people drowned in poop.”

“In 1920, President Paul Deschanel of France fell through the window of the train while travelling on the Orient Express. He stumbled up to the nearest signal box in his pyjamas and told the signalman that he needed help and that he was the President of France. The signalman reportedly replied ‘And I’m Napoleon Bonaparte.”

“The Cadaver Synod – In AD 897, Pope Stephen VI had his dead rival Pope Formosus exhumed and put on trial. Stephen had a deacon speak on the dead pope’s behalf. Naturally, Formosus was found guilty. Stephen ordered that two fingers Formosus used for blessing people cut off and his corpse thrown in the Tiber river.”

“Good old Operation Mincemeat. Basically, during WWII, the British find some dead body of some poor guy, dress it up like a British officer, attach some fake intel onto him, then throw him into the ocean, hoping he floats to enemy territory to mislead them. It worked.”

“The astronomer Tycho Brahe had a pet moose that he used to get drunk with. One time he brought it to a dinner party at a friend’s house. But sadly the moose did not survive the night. Once again the poor moose got drunk on beer and died from a nasty fall down a set of stairs. Tyco Brahe also lost his nose in a duel, so he wore a prosthetic nose made out of metal. Some sources say brass, others say it was a gold/silver alloy. He was also employing a small court jester named Jepp that he believed to be clairvoyant.

“Battle of Tsushima in 1905. Russian Baltic fleet sails the long way (16k miles and 7 months) started by them opening fire on British fishing boats mistaken for Japanese vessels in the North sea…. sank their own ships while conducting target practice, then were destroyed by the Japanese fleet upon arrival (they mistook the Japanese ships for Russian and signaled them instead of firing).”

“The Halifax Explosion. 100 years ago two ships did a shit job of passing each other while entering / leaving Halifax Harbour, in Nova Scotia. One of them was LOADED with explosives destined for WW1. They collided and one of them burned for a while, then exploded. The blast was a ~2/3 again larger than the one we saw in Beirut last year.”

“Alexander the Great named (or renamed) 70 cities after himself. Some still have the name or derivatives of it – Alexandria in Egypt being the most obvious, but also Iskandariya in Iraq and Kandahar in Afghanistan.”

“During the siege of Tenochtitlan, the conquistadors built a trebuchet. However, the conquistadors, being an exploratory expedition, had not brought any military engineers with them. So they winged it. Surprisingly, they did build a trebuchet, which fired exactly one shot, directly upwards, which promptly came down and smashed the trebuchet. This event is chronicled in both the journals of the conquistadors present as well as the Aztec records.”

“The time when Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte escaped from the island where he was imprisoned on after his army was defeated, he snuck back into France under the nose of King Louis XVIII and literally every royal guard and roadblock from Marseille to Paris. When he was actually caught just outside Paris, he managed to persuade the soldiers (who just so happened to be former Bonapartists) to escort him into Paris where he managed to successfully cause the king to flee, on top of raising a FULL ARMY to wage war against Europe AGAIN. The only time in history an emperor took back an entire country just by waving his hat.”

“Todd Lincoln (Abe Lincoln’s son) being saved by Edwin Booth (John’s Brother) at a train station.”

“Carausius. Everything about him is boss. A Gallo-Belgic peasant who rose up the military ranks to become a Roman general. Successfully fought actual pirates after waiting for them to raid their targets and so became insanely wealthy. When he found out Emperor Maximian had caught wind of this and had ordered his execution he flipped him the bird, sailed into what is now Great Britain, bribed around four entire legions to join him with the money he’d nabbed, and set himself up in London as the Real Legitimate Emperor.”

“Operation Acoustic Kitty! The CIA was rigging up a cat with cameras and microphones to spy on the Soviet Union during the 1960s. It cost about $20 million. When they sent it out in DC to “test it out” it was immediately hit and killed by a taxi.”

“Mexico and France went to war over a pastry shop.”

“The Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand (catalyst for WWI). Conspirators throw bombs at motorcade which miss but injury others. An hour later, Ferdinand was going to visit the injured at a hospital and his driver made a wrong turn and stalled the engine right in front of a deli. A deli one of the conspirators had gone to to eat and lay low. He came out and shot the Archduke and his wife, sparking an international crisis and WWI.”