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History is probably my favorite subject if not a close second. It just has so much in it including the fair share of obscure weird stories, so this is what this thread is for. The more obscure your stories are, the better.

- Aaron Burr, a presidential hopeful and former VP during the US's first years (most famous for shooting a founding father dead) tried to form his own country and was caught. I always laugh at the concept of it. It's so ridiculous. After this he lived in de facto banishment.
- Thomas Jefferson, another founding father of the US, wrote his college thesis on why black people were scientifically more ape-like than white people. No fucking joke. Jefferson wasn't a very good guy.
- More founding father stuff, John Adams and Tommy Jefferson both died on the 4th of july within like the same 2 hour interval on the 50th anniversary of the US. Glorious. They also happened to have like a sort of bromance between each other.

I could probably find or think of a zillion more, but you guys' turn now.

The man who wrote the documents of surrender signed by Confederate general Robert E. Lee at Appomattox Courthouse on this day in 1865 was a Seneca Indian named Ely Parker (born Hasanoanda). Upon meeting him Lee extended his hand and said, “I am glad to see one real American here.”

Speaking of Lee, he did not own slaves while General Grant did. The Union also allowed the slave trade while the Confederacy's constitution banned it.

-William Jennings Bryan ran around 3-4 times for the presidency (if not more) back at the end of the 19th century. If I remember correctly, he ran all of his tickets for the Democratic Party, save his last one, which he ran on the Populist Party
-It was strategically stupid for the Southerners to secede from the Union. Even though Abraham Lincoln was elected President, Southern representatives made up a huge bulk of the members of Congress, and a majority of the justices within the Supreme Court held pro-Southern sentiments ("they had control of the Senate and the Courts!") The Southern states could have just as easily remained in the Union and Lincoln probably couldn't have really done anything about slavery (not that he explicitly wanted to abolish it at the time).
-The Emancipation Proclamation actually didn't free a single slave. It applied only to the states in rebellion, who of course didn't comply to Lincoln's words. Though there were states within the Union who still owned slaves (the Border States), they were excluded from the Proclamation because Lincoln feared that he would lose their support if he included them, which would result in a much larger Confederacy to try to deal with.
-Might as well keep posting Civil War: Great Britain came pretty close to declaring war on the United States. A British ship had been carrying Confederate officers (or diplomats; I can't remember which). The ship was stopped by Union officers and searched, and the Confederate officers were removed. This ticked off Britain, who at the time, was the most powerful country in the world. They even sent redcoats to Canada in preparation of fighting the Union. It was ultimately slow communications which allowed both sides time to cool off. The officers were released, and war between the US and Great Britain was averted.
-During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus, meaning people who spoke out against fighting the South could be arrested for treason.

That focused a lot more on the Civil War than I had intended.

This Happened.

I think this might be better

-Abraham Lincoln actually kept mail in his hat.

-There was a huge flip-flop in the 1960s that resulted in the two major US parties pretty much completely switching names. Which doesn't explain Lyndon B. Johnson being a Democrat at all.

-Not really historical, but I guess it counts: since Switzerland has basically no army, every adult male must own a gun and learn to shoot it. However, they pretty much can't use it aside from combat and training.

Switzerland accidentaly invaded Liechtenstein in 2007.

During the crusades the crusaders cannibalized a city in what was called the The Siege of Maarat.

Liechtenstein's last military engagement occurred in 1866. It sent 80 solders to fight, 81 returned.

The Ḥashshāshīn order was called that because they smoked weed.
THAT'S the part Assassins Creed forgot about.

Marathons are named after the Battle of Marathon. After the victory, the Greek army sent a messenger to relay the news, Pheidippides. He ran 25 miles to the royal palace and after he told them of the victory, he collapsed on the floor and died.

facts about Teddy Roosevelt:

• Read a book a day, even during his presidency
• Wrote 35 books and 150,000 letters
• Had a pet badger named Josiah
• was shot in the chest on the way to deliver a speech, he still gave the 90 minute speech before seeing a doctor
• His mother and his wife died on the same day
• Created the first national park
• First president to receive a Nobel prize
• Blind in one eye due to a boxing accident
• At 58, he volunteered to fight in WWI
• received letters from army cavalrymen complaining about having to ride 25 miles a day for training and, in response, Teddy rode horseback for 100 miles, from sunrise to sunset, at 51 years old
• after he died, it was said: "Death had to take him sleeping, for if Roosevelt had been awake there would have been a fight."
• He was a cattle rancher, a deputy sheriff, an explorer, a police commissioner, the assistant Secretary of the Navy, the governor of New York, and a war hero.
• Black-belt in Jiu Jitsu

Charles VI of France also known as charles the mad
was an insane king WHO was sat on the throne at the age of eleven and was in charge of france under the 100 year war with England
he sometimes forgot names, even his own and at times he would run around beliving himself to be a wolf and other times he would believe he was made out of glass and therefore kept away from other people out of fear that they could shatter him

after the British took over the Danish fleet doing the time of napolion the country was left without any form of navy to fix the issue the Crown had almost all the forests in denmark chopped Down and new ones planted
200+ years and you can still see the effect of human planted woods

-Once a nazi BF-109 figher escorted a limping allied B-17 bomber to base.

My personal favourite, the Roman Emperor Gaius made his favourite horse a Senator

- Roman emperor Caligula once tried to launch an invasion on Britain and forgot to tell his garrisons, so most of his army didn't arrive, he then declared war on Neptune and ordered his soldiers to stab the sea and collect sea shells as trophies so he didn't look stupid

- Spartan General Pausanius planned to betray Sparta by sending a messenger to Xerxes asking for an alliance against Sparta. Noticing that messengers sent to Xerxes never came back alive, the messenger read the letter detailing Pausanius plans and at the end it said kill the messenger. He then turned around and took the note the Spartan elders. Pausanius then hid in the temple of Athena because no one was allowed to spill blood there. So then the Spartan officer ordered his soldiers to brick up the entrance and Pausanius starved to death

- King Henry II promoted Thomas Beckett to Archbishop of Canterbury. Eventually he argued and became annoyed with Beckett so he made the flippant remark "Who will rid me of this troublesome priest?" his knights then took this an order to kill Beckett and they beat him to death on the altar of the Canterbury Cathedral, the holiest place in England at the time. For his penance he had to be whipped by monks and walk to Canterbury bear-footed.

Pausanias was inept and needlessly cruel, like most of the Spartans. Their founder Lycurgus basically created the first eugenics program: in Sparta, "inferior" babies were killed at birth. Contrast that to Athens, where the Constitution of the Athenians attributed to Aristotle says that physically handicapped people could appeal to the Assembly to get a daily stipend so they could survive. The Spartan system was built on fear and eavesdropping: all the Spartiates would spend their time looking for faults in each other so they could sell each other out to increase their own social standing. Then there's the fact that their entire workforce, the Helots, were enslaved Greeks whom the Spartan boys were allowed to murder with impunity every year. By the time of the Persian Wars they were cowardly and inept in warfare too. At the decisive Battle of Plataea, the Spartans were lined up to fight the elite Persian Immortals but pussied out and switched positions with the Athenians multiple times and then only got pitched against the immortals by mistake. Despite that an Athenian general coordinated the Greek coalition forces and commanded them at the battle, the Spartans were still called the main winners of the battle for some insulting reason. Sparta was a shit culture all around.

On a lighter note, a medieval scribe apparently left an inkwell too close to his manuscript and somehow a cat managed to get into both. Rather than starting over, he merely wrote a note about the paw prints and moved on.

Adolf Hitler has only one ball
-Allied-side guy

Adolf Hitler Means Noble wolf small holder
Adolf =noble wolf
Hitler = small holder

Hitlers parents were second cousins

hitler was the 4th of 6 children in total only he and his sister, Paula lived into adulthood

Hitlers had lost both his parents before the age of 19 his father died when he was 14 and his

mother died of breast cancer when he was 18

Dr. Bloch, the Jewish physician who cared for Hitler’s mother, noted that in nearly 50 years of his career as a doctor, he had never seen a young man as broken with grief as Adolf Hitler

hitler would carry a Picture of his mother from the day she died til his last days in the bunker

Hitler created a new medal for foreign friends of the Reich called The Cross of the German Eagle Order. The first recipient was American Henry Ford, because Ford hated jews

it is believed hitler was a vegetarian, because of his half-niece and ex-girlfriend shot herself in the Heart.

Hitler plotted to kill Sir Winston Churchill with exploding chocolate. Hitler’s bomb makers covered explosive devices with a thin layer of dark chocolate and wrapped it in black and gold paper. British agents foiled the plot

it is believed hitler may have had a son with a franch girl when he served as a soldier in WW1 he met a Young girl age 16 their son Jean-Marie Loret died in 1985 at the age of 65, he never met his father but he did fight the nazis

hitler was almost killed at least 5 times, once when he was four years old, Little hitler was saved from a Cold death in an icy river by a priest who later would deeply regret his act of mercy, another story was when a soldier had a clear shot at a Young hitler in WW1 but allowed him to live, hitler had a panting of this man in his office, the soldier also came to deeply regret his act of mercy, doing WW1 hitler was both hit by a frag which could have taken his leg, he even survived a gas attack, the only other attmpte at his life i can recall was done by some of his high up generals who planted a bomb among some wine bottles given as a present to hitler before he departed by air back to Berlin (if i remember) sadly the bomb did not go off as planned.

Haha I love Horrible Histories, I completely forgot there was a show!

Just to keep with the theme of things, if I remember correctly there was a Statue on top of a French Church that had been damaged during an artillery strike, both sides struck up a rumour that whomever knocked the statue down would lose the war. In the end, the German forces knocked it down and bada-boom you know the rest of the story. Unfortunately that's the only story I can remember from the Horrible Histories books – I have a library full of em'. I might go read em' again.

Fanta originated as a result of difficulties importing Coca-Cola syrup into Nazi Germany during World War II due to a trade embargo. To circumvent this, Max Keith, the head of Coca-Cola Deutschland during the Second World War, decided to create a new product for the German market, using only ingredients available in Germany at the time, including whey and pomace – the "leftovers of leftovers", as Keith later recalled.

King George III was mentally unwell (he was often called Mad King George) and also physically unwell. He had a urine infection that caused his urine to be purple. He had doctors and physicians that used strange Georgian methods that would often make him worse. This consisted of poking him with a hot prod so that blisters would appear on him and they would pop them, shouting at him to get better and feeding him 2 spoonfuls of arsenic (which is poisonous) a day.

That's uncomfirmed. The idea that Hashshashins used opium was from the 1837 novel Alamut. There are no historical facts to back this claim outside of fiction.
BTW, Assassin's Creed DID mention about this myth in the first game. Altair and Al- Mualim mentioned that their enemies think The Assassin's are controlled through drugs which they quickly disspelled.

"Captain of Köpenick" Willhelm Voigt

In 1906 a German shoemaker (who was a bit of a thief and culprit) procured an army captains uniform and passed himself off as the real deal. He intercepted a group of soldiers heading towards their barracks, took a train to the town of Köpenick and promptly had his soldiers arrest its bank workers and the mayor on accusations of crooked bookeeping.

He then confiscated a load of money and took off with it on a cart without any hassle.

The story is more detailed than my summary so I suggest you go check it out.

Every normal human born before 1899 is dead, and it's likely that very soon there will be no remaining people born in the 19th century left.