Ten Historical Events That Sound Like Jokes But Really Happened
A war against birds, a flood of beer, a pope who put a corpse on trial, and a marathon won by a man in a car. All of it documented, none of it invented.
Every one of these is in the record — in newspapers, inquest reports or official papers. They are the sort of thing a quizmaster saves for the last round, because half the table refuses to believe the answer.
1. Australia declared war on emus and lost
In 1932, around 20,000 emus moved into the wheat belt of Western Australia. Farmers asked for help and got the army: Major G. P. W. Meredith and two Lewis machine guns. The birds scattered whenever the guns opened up, ran faster than the trucks and absorbed hits that should have stopped them. The operation was called off, restarted, and called off again. The emus kept the wheat belt.
2. Boston was flooded with molasses
On 15 January 1919 a steel tank in the North End of Boston burst and released around 2.3 million US gallons of molasses. The wave was reported at up to 25 feet high and moved fast enough to lift buildings off their foundations. Twenty-one people died and about 150 were injured. Locals insisted for decades afterwards that you could still smell it on a hot day.
3. London had a beer flood first
On 17 October 1814 a vat at the Horse Shoe Brewery on Tottenham Court Road gave way, and well over a hundred thousand gallons of porter went through the slum streets of St Giles. Eight people drowned or were killed by the collapsing walls. The inquest recorded the deaths as an act of God, and the brewery was excused.
4. A pope put a corpse on trial
In 897 Pope Stephen VI had the body of his predecessor Formosus dug up, dressed in papal robes and propped on a throne to answer charges. A deacon was told to speak for the defence. The corpse was found guilty, stripped, mutilated and thrown in the Tiber. It is known as the Cadaver Synod, and it did Stephen no good at all — he was strangled in prison within the year.
5. A war was fought over one pig
In 1859, on San Juan Island between the United States and British North America, an American settler shot a pig that had got into his potatoes. The pig belonged to the Hudson's Bay Company. Both sides sent soldiers, and within weeks there were around 500 Americans with 14 cannon facing five British warships. Nobody fired. The only casualty of the Pig War was the pig.
6. Napoleon was routed by rabbits
In 1807, celebrating a treaty, Napoleon's chief of staff organised a rabbit hunt and bought rabbits to stock it — tame ones, as it turned out. Released, the rabbits took the hunting party for the people who normally brought their food, and charged. Accounts have Napoleon retreating to his carriage while his staff beat them off with riding crops.
7. A town danced itself into hospital
In July 1518 a woman recorded as Frau Troffea began dancing in a street in Strasbourg and did not stop. Within a month the city's own chronicles put the number of dancers in the hundreds. Some collapsed; the sources say several died of exhaustion. The city's response was to hire musicians, on the theory that the dancers needed to dance it out.
8. A chicken lived eighteen months without its head
In September 1945 a farmer in Fruita, Colorado, beheaded a cockerel for dinner and missed most of the brain stem and one ear. Mike went on to live about eighteen months, fed with an eyedropper, and toured sideshows. The story is odd but the anatomy is not: a chicken's basic functions sit low in the brain stem.
9. A stork with a spear in its neck solved a mystery
Until the nineteenth century nobody knew where Europe's birds went in winter — Aristotle thought they hibernated, and one English theory had them flying to the Moon. In 1822 a white stork was shot near Rostock in Germany with a 30-inch Central African spear through its neck, carried all the way home. The Pfeilstorch, or "arrow stork", is still in the collection at Rostock, and it is the first hard evidence of long-distance migration.
10. An Olympic marathon was won by a man in a car
The 1904 St Louis marathon was run in dust and heat with one water stop. Fred Lorz dropped out, got a lift, and was photographed accepting the wreath before anybody noticed. The real winner, Thomas Hicks, was kept going by his handlers on a mixture of brandy and strychnine, and had to be carried off the track. A third man was chased a mile off course by farm dogs.
If you want more in this vein, try twelve animal facts that sound completely made up.