There is no shortage of mythical, alleged, bizarre, and unbelievable tidbits from history crawling around the Internet. Some of them are just facts of life, some are misconceptions that have grown larger than the truth, and some are just too good to ignore.
These are some of the best and interesting you'll find.
The longest war and shortest war are definitely not two you've learned in your typical history class. You might think the United States has gone pretty deep with their war in Iraq, but you'd be wrong.
The longest to this point occurred between the Isles Of Scilly and the Netherland from 1651 to 1986 -- better known as the Three Hundred and Thirty-Five Years' War.
The shortest? The Anglo-Zanzibar War that lasted for a little over 30 minutes.
While Karl Marx is mostly known for his part in Marxism and socialism, he was also a correspondent for the New York Daily Tribune from 1852-1861. Just your typical revolutionary mind writing up typical news reports for the day.
But he wasn't the only world figure to show off his writing skills. Kim Jong Il reportedly wrote six different operas in his life, taking after his father's work with Sea Of Blood. From The Telegraph:
Kim wrote six full operas in two years, "all of which are better than any in the history of music," according to his official biography.
This might not be true.
Two different reasons for flies to be buzzing around here. First comes from Ancient Egypt, where Pharoah Pepi II would slather naked slaves and servants with honey to draw the flies away from him. He allegedly hated flies, so this was his solution.
Meanwhile, there is the death of Elvis in the bathroom. He died on a toilet from reported cardiac arrest, but it hasn't stopped many from saying he died from a drug overdose -- probably true or at least close to the truth -- or that he died from being extremely constipated from "megacolon."
He also might've gone back to his home planet. That's possible too.
Abe Lincoln was a wrestler in his younger days. Not the type you'd see trouncing around WWE rings and telling kids to take their vitamins, say their prayers, and always sit in the back row of the theater. Instead, he was a frontier wrestler, which was a bit rougher and grimier than the professional type today. He's even in the National Wrestling Hall of Fame.
Another sports history factoid comes from Belmont Park and a 1923 steeplechase race that ended with jockey Frank Hayes dying before the race was over. His horse still won and Hayes became the first deceased jockey to ever win a race. Nobody knew until they came to celebrate his win.
People who remember the experiences after 9/11 can relate to this. In the months that followed Pearl Harbor and the entrance of the U.S. into World War II, threats of Japanese attacks on the mainland were in everybody's mind. That's where the phantom Battle of Los Angeles comes into play, with soldiers blasting the skies with anti-aircraft fire because they believed they were under Japanese attack. Several buildings were damaged and five people died from the shelling.
It also sparked plenty of UFO talk, which is another story.
Another case of mistaken identity came in 1493 when Christopher Columbus thought he'd met mermaids, confusing the mythical creatures with manatees. He famously says the animals are “not half as beautiful as they are painted.”
Thomas Edison is famously a bit of d*ckhead. He goes down as the mind behind plenty of inventions, but he allegedly stole a bunch of them too. But he did NOT electrocute an elephant -- though he did electrocute a bunch of other animals during his war with Nikola Tesla. Instead, it was Topsy's handlers in an attempt to gain publicity that did it, along with strangling and poisoning the animal. Edison's film company filmed it, which survives today and is his connection to the event.
Topsy didn't get much retribution, but some rabbits did their best to get Napoleon 8 years before his defeat at Waterloo. The French leader was attacked by a horde of rabbits during a hunt. He lived, but it is a funny thought.
