History Facts That Will Amaze You

Everyone studied history at school, but did anyone else feel like they were always learning the same old stuff? There’s plenty of interesting things the history books left out. Like what happened to the bodies after big wars, why Queen Elizabeth really wore all that clown makeup or some of the truly bizarre ways people tried to cure the plague. Let's explore some mind-blowing historical facts!

What Was The Great Stink Of 1858?

In the summer of 1858, an unbearable stench later known as "The Great Stink" bought the city of London to its knees. As people locked themselves indoors, they demanded that the government, which was barely functioning tackled the increasingly smelly problem. But where was that horrendous stench coming from?

For centuries, England’s most famous river the Thames had been a dumping ground for all of London’s various wastes: human, animal and industrial. The problem, of course, is that, as London gradually grew from a tiny Roman fort into a large metropolitan city the amount of waste it produced also grew.

People first speculated that using the Thames as one big rubbish bin probably wasn’t such a good idea way back in the 1600s, but they had no idea how to fix the emerging problem, so business continued as usual. That is, until the turn of the 19th century, when the great stink could no longer be ignored.

The summer of 1858 was a particularly hot one, and the streets were now filled with the wafts of centuries old sewage that was cooking in the scorching sun. There were accounts of people being struck down in the street by the sheer stench, or by a plethora of alleged fatal diseases springing from the Thames.

Members of parliament similarly suffered because their buildings overlooked the river itself. Their first course of action was to douse the curtains in a mixture of chloride and lime. When that didn’t eliminate the smell, they considered relocating from the Westminster area altogether, despite having only recently had their buildings constructed there.

Eventually, English chemist and physicist Michael Faraday penned a letter to The Times Newspaper titled "Observations on the Filth of the Thames" that pressured the government into taking proper action. Faraday claimed that he’d tossed pieces of paper into the river which immediately disappeared, proving that “the whole of the river was an opaque brown fluid”.

In a record breaking 18 days, a bill was created, passed and signed that would refurbish the entirety of the River Thames by implementing a new sewage system and constructing embankments along its sides. Finally, the people of London could breathe a huge sigh of relief; thank god for Michael Faraday!

Why Do Babies In Medieval Art Look Like Ugly Old Men?

You may have laughed at the flat faced horror that is cats in medieval art but please allow me to raise you something even more heinous: medieval babies. Those so called infants look more like dwarfish old men whose sole purpose in life is to tend to their allotments and polish their golf clubs.

Were medieval artists just really bad at drawing, or is there something deeper going on? You’ll be surprised to learn that those scary man-babies were actually intentional. In fact, those depictions can be interpreted as a way of distinguishing between the medieval era, which began in the 5th century and the Renaissance era which came afterwards, likely around the 14th century.

In each of those eras, children were thought of in a fundamentally different light which, in turn, affected the way they were portrayed in art and pop culture. The thing is, most of those medieval babies were actually depictions of Jesus that had been commissioned by churches.

And medieval concepts of Jesus were heavily influenced by the idea of the "homunculus" literally meaning little man, which imagined that Jesus was perfectly formed and unchanged. And so, that homuncular, half adult half child version of Jesus became a standard for painting all children.

What’s more, artists of the medieval era were less interested in realism or idealized forms than Renaissance artists were. But when non religious art flourished, people were able to afford paintings of their own babies. Unsurprisingly, they wanted their babies to look more like innocent cherubs than disgruntled pensioners.

At the same time, children were increasingly thought of as fundamentally ‘innocent’ and born without sin. And so, artistic depictions of infants changed for the better: from faces only a mother could love to the little butter wouldn’t melt dough balls we know today!

How a 19th Century Disease Created Vampires

Nowadays, vampires can be found all over pop culture. Whether they’re shacked up in coffins in Transylvania or sparkling in the sunlight like glorified pretty boys, it’s hard to imagine life without those fanged freaks.

Most modern vampires can be traced back to the publication of Bram Stokers Dracula in 1897, but the origins of the vampire as a concept run much deeper and it’s all thanks to a disease that ravaged North America and Europe.

In the 18th and most of the 19th centuries, a tuberculosis epidemic gripped New England, ultimately wiping out 2% of the population and making it one of the deadliest outbreaks in human history.

At the time, there was no vaccine or antibiotic to treat that highly infectious bacterial disease. The only ‘cure’ was to send a patient to a sanitorium, which few could afford. Understandably, people were terrified of the disease, but not quite as terrified as they were of tuberculosis patients.

One 18th century doctor wrote “the emaciated figure strikes one with terror. The forehead covered with drops of sweat. The cheeks a livid crimson. The eyes sunk the breath offensive, quick and laborious.”

Victims also suffered fatigue, appetite loss and weight loss as if something were sucking the life out of them. Tuberculosis even became known as "the white plague" because patients would grow increasingly pale. So, it’s easy to see how such symptoms would eventually become characteristics of modern day vampires.

What’s more, tuberculosis was spread easily among family members; and it might take days for the infected to show symptoms, sometimes even after the original carrier had died. That led to blind panic that people were rising from their graves to suck the life out of their surviving relatives.

Desperate townspeople responded by digging up graves and ritualistically mutilating their dead to stop them from bothering the living. Sometimes, the cadaver would simply be exhumed, flipped over and reburied.

In more extreme cases the heart was removed and burned while the family members inhaled the smoke on the hope that it would prevent further spread of the disease. Those New Englanders really weren’t taking any chances!

Was Elizabeth I Poisoned by Her Own Makeup?

Queen Elizabeth I is as famous for her clown faced makeup as she is for ordering the execution of her own cousin, Mary Queen of Scots. Her unusual cosmetic appearance has been long been represented in movies, but what’s the story behind it?

Back in 1562 when she was 29 years old Elizabeth was struck down with what she thought was a violent fever. She was ordered to remain in bed at Hampton Court Palace, but her worst fears soon came true: she had the dreaded smallpox.

That deadly viral disease had no cure and was highly contagious. It began as an illness that led to a rash which then developed in small blisters or pustules that would split before drying and forming scabs that left scars in short, it wasn’t very pleasant.

At first, the Queen refused to believe she had contracted the pox, but she quickly became so ill that she could barely speak and just seven days into her illness, it was almost certain that she’d die. After all, around 30% of those with smallpox did not survive.

But then, Elizabeth miraculously recovered. As soon as she was fit enough to rise from her sick bed, she set about restoring her former beauty. She may have escaped the illness, but she was left with a permanent reminder of the disease in the form of terrible scarring from the skin lesions on her face.

So, she started covering her pockmarks with a white makeup known as the “venetian ceruse” a mixture of vinegar and lead. Women at the time strived for a paler face because it symbolized youth and fertility.

The problem is that ladies left usually ceruse on their face for at least a week, which would inevitably result in lead poisoning. At the same time, ingredients in common facial cleansers included rosewater, honey, eggshells and mercury another mixture with the potential to kill.

The cherry on that deadly cake was the bright red pigments Elizabeth used on her lips, which contained additional heavy metals, as well as eyeliner using black kohl and special dilating eyedrops known as “belladonna”. As she aged, Elizabeth applied more and more layers of makeup to her face to keep her youth from slipping away right up until her death on March 24th, 1603.

While the exact cause of Elizabeth’s death is unknown, some suggest blood poisoning, pneumonia or cancer she was said to be suffering from fatigue, memory loss and digestive problems, as well as significant hair loss. These are all symptoms of lead poisoning.

Who Was Typhoid Mary, the Original Super-Spreader?

Before the likes of COVID-19 and the Spanish Flu, there was the twisty tale of Typhoid Mary. In 1869, Mary Mallon was born in Cookstown in County Tyrone, Ireland. She left Ireland behind as a teenager, and by the 1900s she was working as a cook in rich households in New York.

She enjoyed her position managing the kitchen staff in the houses of wealthy families in Manhattan, and her signature dish was peach ice cream. But things weren’t so peachy. Between 1900 and 1907, Mary cooked in the homes of seven families.

In every single one, people fell sick or died. Yet each time Mary had escaped undetected to take up new work elsewhere. Was she some secret axe murderer, or poison loving psychopath? Not quite.

Mary was an asymptomatic carrier of Typhoid fever, a fatal bacterial infection she just didn’t know it yet. When a researcher called George Soper, who’d been hired by the family of one of the victims identified Mary as a typhoid carrier, he tracked her down.

Instead of holding her hands up, Mary chased Soper out of her kitchen with a carving fork, refusing to believe his claims. But the New York authorities were desperate to halt her trail of death, so in 1907 they exiled her to the isolation facility on North Brother island on the river outside New York.

It seems pretty brutal, but before the invention of antibiotics that was the safest way to contain contagious diseases. And so, Mary Mallon was held in solitary confinement. But she had not given up. She planned legal action, garnered a newspaper campaign and was eventually granted freedom, if she promised to never work as a cook again.

At first, she worked as a laundry maid but it wasn’t long until she returned to cooking under a string of aliases. At one point, she even took a job in the kitchens of a hospital!

It’s impossible to tell how many deaths Typhoid Mary was responsible for in the end, but some accounts suggest there might be as many as 50. When authorities managed to track her down again in 1915, she was sent straight back to isolation, where she lived in confinement for 23 years until her death in 1938.

The real sting in that tale is that the typhoid bacterium can live in cold food but is destroyed by cooking. So, if Typhoid Mary’s signature dish had not been peach ice cream, she may not have become one of history’s most notorious super spreaders.

Did People in Medieval Times Really Not Bathe?

When you imagine a medieval person, you probably picture a stinky peasant in grubby clothing. In fact, the popular opinion seems to be that no one of that era ever bathed, but is that really true?

It seems that most medieval people were actually very aware of basic personal hygiene. Health manuals from the Middle Ages stated that washing hands and cleaning the entire body was essential for removing dirt and grime. Kings and noblemen could afford the luxury of bathing in a private wooden tub that would be filled by servants using jugs and would often entertain guests in the same way.

Meanwhile, some wealthy monasteries could also pipe in water and take baths. The Monks of Westminster Abbey were even required to take four baths a year at Christmas, Easter, the end of June and the end of September, although whether those rules were followed is hard to know.

For most people, though, public bathhouses which were popular throughout Europe, were the only option. Evens the smallest of towns could have a bathhouse connected to the local bakery, because they could make use of the heat coming from the ovens.

By the fifteenth century, feasting in town bathhouses had become as popular as going out to a restaurant was some four centuries later, just imagine tucking into dinner in a bath full of naked strangers! Although public bathhouses were wildly popular, they gradually fell out of favor because of their potential to encourage illicit relations.

By the sixteenth century, bathhouses were in rapid decline as people also started to avoid them over fears of diseases like the Black Death and syphilis. So, Medieval people may not have been hygiene experts, but they certainly knew a thing or two about taking baths.

Why Did Women Faint So Much in the 19th Century?

If 19th century literature is to be believed, most women had trouble staying on their feet throughout the Victorian period. Instead, they spent most of their time inexplicably fainting at even the slightest emotional or physical shock.

There are actually a couple of theories about why that so called “swooning” was so common. Firstly, women wore corsets known as “tight lacers” from a young age to accentuate the natural curves of the body.

The problem was that those were held together by a system of extreme lacing that wreaked havoc on their bodies. Ribs were displaced, lungs were squashed, and other organs were compressed or re-arranged in a way that made it hard to pump blood, digest food or even breathe.

And if it wasn’t their torturous corsets that caused them to faint into their couches, it was the ludicrous layers of clothing. Even in the summer months, a lady wore a corset, underwear, a bustle pad, a full skirt, petticoats lined with steel hoops and a bonnet. As a result, many women overheated, while some simply fainted under the sheer weight of the garments.

Another more sinister explanation for all the swooning is chronic poisoning. Arsenic was used in pretty much everything in the Victorian period, even though they knew it was dangerous. About 80% of all wallpaper contained the stuff, while it also appeared in fabrics, confections, pigments, paints and more.

What’s more, other toxic substances like mercury and lead were commonly found in make up. Given that basically everything women came into contact with gave off toxic fumes, it’s no wonder they exhibited the effects of poisoning by fainting.

However, some have also pointed out that “swooning” was often feigned by women because it became associated with femininity and made a woman seem delicate to potential suitors. But there was perhaps an even racier reason why a woman might faint on purpose: the so called “fainting room”.

That was a room where a woman would be sent to a fainting spell or other forms of hysteria, and it came with a particular perk. Besides being able to relax in peace, women were also treated by a vigorous pelvic massage, from a doctor or even their own husbands!

People Tried To Cure The Black Death By Rubbing Chicken Butts On Their Wounds

Between 1328 and 1351, the Black Death is thought to have wiped out one third of Europe’s population. Victims of the plague would usually die within a few days, but not before the illness’ multitude of nasty symptoms including fever, severe vomiting, bleeding from the lungs gruesome boils all over the body made those final days hell on Earth.

The disease was so terrifying and fatal that people were unsurprisingly desperate to find a cure. Although doctors were simply unable to prevent or successfully cure the plague during that outbreak, they did come up with some pretty wacky ideas that many were willing to try.

One of the most bizarre was the Vicary Method, named after English Doctor Thomas Vicary, its inventor. To try it out, you’d have to get hold of a live hen, shave its butt and then strap it to your swollen lymph nodes.

When the chicken inevitably got sick and was, therefore, drawing the illness from the person, it would be washed and re-attached until only the chicken or the victim survived. Surprisingly, the Vicary Method was one of the most popular widespread “cures” for the plague, despite officially “curing” absolutely no one.

Another similar hair brained cure involved finding and killing a snake, chopping it into pieces and rubbing the various parts over swollen buboes. That is because the snake was synonymous with Satan throughout Europe, so people believed that evil could be used to draw evil that is, the disease from the body.

What Happened To All The Bodies After Big Battles In History?

Throughout history, humans have buried their dead. But what happens when lives are lost at unprecedented rates on the battlefield? Well, it differs throughout history, so let’s focus on the practices of different groups from various significant periods.

The ancient Greeks were known to collect and bury their dead in keeping with the religious customs of the time. Plus, they didn’t want to risk annoying the gods. For the sake of practicality, mass graves or cenotaphs were sometimes created near cities so that the fallen could be buried near the place where they were born.

The Spartans, on the other hand, buried their dead on the battlefield alongside their weapons and armor, and with a tombstone that read “In War”. That practice was actually considered a special honor because those who died outside of battle were buried in unmarked graves.

But by the Middle Ages, all that had changed. Instead of respecting and honoring the dead, there seemed to be a wanton disregard for what happened to a soldier after he was slain. After battles like the Battle of Hastings in 1066, corpses were either left on the field to rot or were piled in mighty heaps, but not before they had been stripped of their valuables.

Shortly afterwards, they’d be promptly buried in mass graves or were even, sometimes, mass cremated. And yet, medieval mass graves are notoriously elusive, and only a handful have been examined by archaeologists in Western Europe after being discovered by chance.

Moving swiftly on, things looked even worse for those who died during the Napoleonic wars. During that period, the looting of fallen soldiers either by locals or even their own comrades was disturbingly common. There have even been accounts of wounded soldiers miraculously surviving their injuries only to wake up stark naked on the battlefield, talk about waiting until the body is cold!

If that wasn’t bad enough, it seems that the bodies themselves were sometimes just as valuable. In fact, human scavengers would scour the battlefields for the bodies of healthy young men and would rob them of their teeth for use as dentures. That gruesome practice was so common during the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 that dentures were known as “Waterloo Teeth” for a decade after it ended!

Some sources even suggest that parts of soldiers like a severed thumb were sometimes taken from the battlefield as grim souvenirs. While another stomach churning act saw the bones of the dead collected, ground up into fertilizer and then sold across Europe.

Thankfully, those heinous practices soon fell out of favor. During both WW1 and WW2, individual units were responsible for the disposal of their own dead, according to individual rules about how things like mass graves should be constructed.

There were even some units, like the United States Quartermaster Graves Registration Service that were tasked with finding and burying every slain soldier. Thanks to the GRS, many fallen soldiers, civilians and allies were buried with the care, attention and respect they deserved, and had their locations passed on to the relevant authorities.

Did Medieval People Really Throw Poop out the Window?

It seems like Medieval people have got a bad rep when it comes to all things hygiene related. One of the grossest things they’re most remembered for is chucking their own excrement out of the window long before toilets existed, but it turns out that practice wasn’t nearly as common as history class would have you believe.

First and foremost, Medieval people were well aware that human waste could spread disease they just didn’t know how yet. Plus, most buildings were one-story, so throwing your own poop out the window would only mean you’d end up smelling it every time you wanted to get some fresh air.

In medieval London, people were responsible for the upkeep and cleanliness of the street outside their own houses. And dumping waste human or just plain trash, was actually illegal in most major cities in England.

Anyone caught out could incur hefty fines, and if the perpetrator could not be identified then the whole street would be charged instead. There’s even one account of a man being kicked to death by his neighbors for chucking smoked fish skin onto the street.

For all those reasons, people weren’t carelessly throwing poop buckets onto the street below. There were even such things as "street rakers" whose job it was to survey the pavement and ensure that the streets stayed relatively clean and free of waste.

So where did medieval people poop? In most houses with no indoor plumbing, a chamber pot, which would be dumped into a nearby river was the most popular option. Meanwhile larger, wealthier homes would have enclosed ‘latrines’ a type of rudimentary toilet that led to a deep, communal cesspit.

I hope you were amazed at these mind-blowing historical facts! Thanks for reading.