History
100 verified facts in this category.
- The Antikythera Mechanism used precisely cut, independently rotating gears in a system known as epicyclic gearing, a technology not otherwise known to exist in the West for another 1,500 years.
- Archaeologists in Zambia found the world's oldest known wooden structure: two interlocking logs connected by a notch, dating to about 476,000 years ago.
- The marble tablet found in a New Orleans backyard was a gravestone for a Roman sailor.
- A seaside town dealt with a giant whale carcass by using dynamite, which caused blubber dents on nearby cars.
- Abo Elementary School in Artesia, New Mexico was the first public school in the United States constructed entirely underground.
- The last widow of a Civil War veteran died in 2020: Helen Viola Jackson married 93-year-old James Bolin in 1936 when she was 17.
- Cleopatra lived closer in time to the Moon landing (1969) than to the construction of the Great Pyramid of Giza by roughly 500 years.
- Mammoths still walked the Earth when the pyramids were built—woolly mammoths survived on Wrangel Island until ~2000 BCE, 500 years after Giza's construction.
- The Great Emu War of 1932 saw the Australian military deploy soldiers with machine guns against 20,000 emus—and the emus won, with the operation abandoned as ineffective.
- The guillotine was still in official use in France when Star Wars was released in 1977; the last execution by guillotine occurred in 1977, abolished in 1981.
- An obscure 1845 Florida statute allowed the state legislature to choose its own presidential electors if the state had 'failed to make a choice' for president on Election Day, and Florida Republicans relied primarily on that statute in their 2000 effort to award the state's electoral votes to George W. Bush.
- The Hawk's Nest Tunnel disaster in West Virginia in the early 1930s resulted in a death toll ranging from roughly 700 to 1,000 of the 3,000 workers employed underground.
- In 1962, children's author Roald Dahl, hydraulic engineer Stanley Wade, and paediatric neurosurgeon Kenneth Till jointly invented a shunt valve for treating hydrocephalus in children.
- In 1909, the Nebraska Supreme Court invoked Territory of New Mexico v. Yee Shun to determine whether Japanese witness Jack Naoi could be disqualified because 'Japan is a heathen country,' according to Arif Dirlik and Malcolm Yeung in Chinese on the American Frontier.
- Indian Prime Minister Morarji Desai made a statement about Operation High Altitude Test to India's Lok Sabha on April 17, 1978, confirming that the Indian government had sanctioned a joint mission with the CIA to place nuclear-monitoring devices in the Himalayas and that one device had been lost on Nanda Devi.
- The Nanda Kot device returned data for several months before failing, and a climbing team recovered it in the summer of 1968.
- In 1967, a mission installed a monitoring device near the summit of Nanda Kot, a 22,000-foot peak nine miles southeast of Nanda Devi.
- Operation High Altitude Test aimed to emplace a 123-lb plutonium-powered SNAP-19C telemetry unit on Nanda Devi mountain.
- Gen. Curtis LeMay, chief of staff of the U.S. Air Force, met National Geographic photographer and mountaineer Barry Bishop at a Washington cocktail party, where Bishop's description of the view from Mount Everest's summit inspired the idea of placing a surveillance device on a Himalayan peak.
- The vast majority of pigs eaten at late Neolithic ceremonial sites in southern England were not raised locally, but brought from different parts of Britain, including Wales and Scotland, from distances of at least 30 miles and potentially more than 350 miles.
- A nondescript lump recovered from the Antikythera wreck turned out to be a complex assembly of interlocking gears and plates, but missing parts mean the mechanism's full function remains unknown.
- The Antikythera Mechanism functioned as a computer that tracked dates according to multiple calendars, lunar movements, upcoming solar and lunar eclipses, and events such as the Olympics.
- Researchers identified about 5,000 holes across Peru's Monte Sierpe ('Serpent Mountain') and found evidence suggesting the pits once held baskets of goods and may have been linked to the knotted-string accounting system known as khipus.
- Archaeologists found the world's oldest evidence of habitual drug use in the teeth of a hunter-gatherer who lived up to 25,000 years ago, who may have regularly sucked on mind-altering betel nuts.
- The name Sextus Congenius Verus is associated with the ancient Roman gravestone discovered in New Orleans.
- New Orleans resident Daniella Santoro was involved in discovering the ancient Roman gravestone in her family's backyard.
- The Roman gravestone found in New Orleans had been missing for decades from an Italian museum.
- A family cleaning their backyard in New Orleans discovered a 1,900-year-old marble gravestone inscribed in Latin.
- The United States suspended key non-proliferation sanctions against Pakistan during the Soviet-Afghan War, and while those waivers remained in place, Pakistan became a nuclear-weapons state and A. Q. Khan laid the groundwork for supplying nuclear technology to Iran, North Korea, and Libya.
- On July 1, 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6–3 for the first time that former presidents have broad immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts.
- The 1910 U.S. Census Bureau classified South Asian immigrants under the racial category "Hindu," even though it acknowledged that pure-blood Hindus were ethnically Caucasian, and most people so classified were actually Sikhs.
- Five Vietnamese-American journalists were killed between 1981 and 1990, in violence FBI agents suspected was linked to the National United Front for the Liberation of Vietnam.
- While Abu Zubaydah was inside the large confinement box, workers constructed a plywood wall inside his cell so interrogators could slam him against it during 'walling.'
- Civilians accounted for 80 percent of all bombing casualties in Laos, and the war killed 10 percent of the country's population.
- The United States dropped more bombs on Laos than on any other country in history.
- One-third of the bombs dropped on Laos remained unexploded after the war ended in 1975, and these unexploded bombs killed 20,000 Laotians over the following three decades.
- U.S. bombing of Laos averaged one attack every eight minutes for nearly a decade.
- Between 1960 and 1965, the CIA attempted to neutralize Fidel Castro's influence eight times, using methods including botulinum-toxin-laced cigars, exploding cigars, a poisoned wetsuit, and an exploding seashell.
- CIA began its own research into psychic phenomena in the summer of 1972, investigating whether people could 'see' distant locations and objects without being physically present, a capability called 'remote viewing.'
- Construction at Göbekli Tepe began around 9000 B.C., centuries before the first domesticated grains appeared at settlements in the surrounding region.
- Göbekli Tepe's largest circular structures were dated to at least 11,000 years ago, making them the earliest known monumental structures built by humans at the time of their discovery.
- Göbekli Tepe's monumental construction began around 9000 B.C., centuries before the first domesticated grains appeared at nearby settlements.
- Göbekli Tepe's circular structures and T-shaped pillars are more than 12,000 years old, predating both agriculture and pottery.
- Natufian communities in the Levant had permanent settlements of up to several hundred people as early as 13,000 B.C. while still being foragers rather than farmers, hunting gazelles and gathering wild rye, barley, and wheat.
- Göbekli Tepe was built by hunter-gatherers, probably living there year-round, who cut, shaped and moved limestone pillars of up to about 10 tons over distances of roughly 100 to 500 meters without wheels or pack animals.
- One of the Göbekli Tepe skull fragments has a drilled hole, resembling modifications made by the Naga people of India to suspend skulls from strings.
- Archaeologists found three Neolithic human skull fragments at Göbekli Tepe carved with deep, deliberate grooves after death, a form of skull modification not previously recorded in the Neolithic of the region.
- The Shigir Idol, discovered by gold miners in Russia's Ural Mountains in 1890, has been dated to about 12,500 years ago and is the oldest known wooden sculpture in the world.
- Göbekli Tepe's carved megaliths are about 11,000 years old, roughly 6,000 years older than Stonehenge, and were made before the people who built them had developed metal tools or pottery.
- The center points of three circular enclosures at Göbekli Tepe form a near-perfect triangle whose sides each measure approximately 63 feet.
- Fritz Vincken reportedly witnessed the truce in a remote cabin near the German–Belgian border.
- Fritz Vincken reportedly witnessed the Christmas Eve truce of 1944 as a child.
- Abo Elementary School contained emergency storage facilities designed to accommodate up to 2,160 people in the event of nuclear warfare or other catastrophe.
- Abo Elementary School had a concrete slab roof that doubled as the school's playground.
- Abo Elementary School was completed in 1962.
- Abo Elementary School was designed to function as an advanced fallout shelter.
- Pre-Columbian civilizations of the Andes region identified astronomical configurations based on dark silhouettes rather than bright stars.
- The samurai class existed during the same era as cowboys—Japan's samurai era ended with the Satsuma Rebellion in 1877, overlapping the American Wild West period.
- Oxford University began teaching centuries before the Aztec Empire was founded—Oxford by 1096, Tenochtitlan established in 1325.
- Ancient Roman concrete, used in structures like the Pantheon, has proven remarkably durable, in part because lime clasts and reactions with seawater form self-healing mineral phases (Al-tobermorite and phillipsite) that reinforce the material over centuries.
- The shortest war in history lasted 38-45 minutes: the Anglo-Zanzibar War of 1896, when British forces bombarded the Sultan's palace after he refused to step down.
- The Pony Express, icon of the American West, operated for only 18 months (1860-1861) before the transcontinental telegraph made it obsolete.
- Robert Louis Stevenson honeymooned in an abandoned mine approximately 45 miles west of Winters, California.
- The CIA's 1960s Aquiline program was the Agency's first program to test the concept of unmanned aerial vehicles as intelligence-collection platforms, inspired initially by the flight characteristics of birds, but it never became operational.
- Mission Control devised a carbon-dioxide removal solution for Apollo 13 using plastic bags, cardboard, and tape to connect the command module's square lithium-hydroxide canisters to the lunar module's round openings.
- Apollo 13's lunar module Aquarius was designed to support two men for two days but had to support three men for about four days, during which the crew reduced water consumption to six ounces per person per day, one-fifth of normal intake.
- A congressional bill in 1890 proposed requiring the Census Office to issue identification cards to every enumerated Chinese person, with anyone found without a certificate subject to being deemed unlawfully present and deported; the bill passed the House but failed in the Senate.
- In U.S. v. Dotterweich (1943), the Supreme Court ruled that responsible corporate officials, as well as the corporation itself, could be prosecuted for violations even if the officials did not intend or know about them.
- Philippe la Renotiere von Ferrari's stamp collection was sold at auction between 1921 and 1925 for $2 million.
- The NSA uploaded a document titled "John Nash Letters (PDF)" on July 12, 2021, indicating its FOIA releases include correspondence associated with mathematician John Nash.
- The CIA's ZR/RIFLE project was a plan to develop an assassination capability that designated a European associate of organized crime to recruit future operatives, but the plan never advanced beyond the drawing board.
- In 1999, the FDA approved dosing instructions for children under 2 on pediatric ibuprofen products, including McNeil's Motrin, but rejected an advisory committee's recommendation to add comparable instructions to pediatric acetaminophen products.
- The modified skull fragments found at Göbekli Tepe date to approximately 10,000 to 7,000 years ago.
- Of the 264 people arrested at the 1965 Leipzig Beat demonstration, nearly 100 were sentenced to 'supervised work deployment,' which in practice meant forced labor in open-pit lignite mines.
- Cases of smallpox have been identified in the study of Egyptian mummies dating as early as 1350 BCE.
- Evidence of human occupation has been found in the Philippines, Indonesia, and Timor-Leste dating to the Paleolithic era, despite these regions never being connected to the mainland.
- Research released by Ateneo de Manila University suggests prehistoric people in the Philippines and Island Southeast Asia may have had the capability of building sophisticated seafaring boats far earlier than previously expected.
- Fifty bird bone beads, likely made from cormorant bone, and abundant red pigment were found associated with the younger child's remains.
- This finding represents the first archaeological case of a dog used as a pack animal in South America.
- CONICET researchers found archaeological remains of a dog used as a pack animal in Chubut Province, Argentina.
- In 1988, a re-examination of Robert Peary's records, commissioned by the National Geographic Society, concluded that his evidence never proved his claim to have reached the North Pole.
- Abraham Lincoln is the only U.S. president to have been granted a patent.
- Mark Twain was granted U.S. Patent No. 140,245 for a self-pasting scrapbook on June 24, 1873.
- Mark Twain was granted U.S. Patent No. 121,992 for an adjustable and detachable garment strap on December 19, 1871.
- The Valencia water tribunal was enshrined in the Spanish Constitution of 1978.
- During World War II, military bombers using the airbase near the Causby property descended to as low as 83 feet, which was 67 feet above the Causbys' house.
- The ruling in Territory of New Mexico v. Yee Shun established the precedent that Asian Americans had the right to testify in court.
- A memorandum dated June 14, 1918, written in French, reveals the formula the Germans used to produce invisible ink.
- In 2011, the CIA declassified the US Government's six oldest classified documents, dating from 1917 and 1918.
- Israel's preemptive air assault on June 5, 1967, destroyed more than 90 percent of Egypt's air force while it was still on the ground.
- Thomas Jefferson, after seeing mastodon bones from Kentucky, believed the animals might still be living in the interior of the continent and asked Lewis and Clark to search for them.
- John Marshall Harlan and his family owned slaves.
- A 2,000-year-old copper knife handle recovered from England's River Tyne was carved in the form of a gladiator who appears to be left-handed, a trait Romans considered unlucky.
- A 130,000-year-old bear bone bears precise, parallel carvings attributed to Neanderthals.
- A merchant vessel found about 5,900 feet beneath the Mediterranean Sea off Israel was identified as the oldest deep-sea shipwreck discovered to date, dating to the late Bronze Age.
- The sarcophagus of Ramses II had been reused by the high priest Menkheperre around 1000 B.C.E.
- In 2024, Egyptologist Frédéric Payraudeau identified a granite fragment discovered in Egypt's Abydos necropolis in 2009 as the long-lost sarcophagus of Ramses II.
- A Danish Viking silver treasure discovered during routine yard work contains roughly 700 items, including coins, jewelry, silver bars, and a tiny artifact shaped like Thor's hammer, believed to have been buried during the tenth century.
- Only 24 of the 1894-S Barber dimes were minted in San Francisco in June 1894, and just nine known specimens exist today, with one recently selling for more than $1.2 million.
- A Finnish metal detectorist uncovered a roughly 1,000-year-old Viking Age silver hoard weighing about 10 pounds, described as Finland's largest coin hoard of that era.