History Facts Too Funny for History Books

A poet who brought a bear into his Cambridge dorm because the rules only banned dogs. A penguin that holds the rank of major general. A king who ate fourteen servings of dessert and did not survive it.

The Paint Explainer collects sixty-two of the funniest true stories in history — armies that fought themselves, wars started by a pig and a kettle, animals with government jobs, and disasters caused by beer, molasses, and one very heavy church floor. Not one of them sounds real.

1. Byron’s Bear

While studying at Cambridge University, the poet Lord Byron was told that dogs were strictly banned. To protest, he bought a tame bear, brought it to his dorm, and argued that there was no specific rule against bears. The college had to let him keep it.

2. Eric the Red’s Greenland

Viking explorer Eric the Red wanted to attract settlers to a frozen, icy wasteland, so he falsely named it Greenland. Of course, this is still its current name.

3. The Erfurt Cesspool Collapse

Dozens of nobles gathered in a church in Erfurt, Germany. The wooden floor collapsed under their combined weight, dropping them into the massive monastery cesspool below, where about 60 of them drowned in liquid excrement.

4. Aeschylus and the Tortoise

According to an old tale, the ancient Greek playwright Aeschylus supposedly died when an eagle mistook his bald head for a rock and dropped a tortoise on it to crack the shell.

5. The Swiss Spaghetti Tree

The BBC broadcast a documentary on April Fools’ Day showing a family in Switzerland harvesting spaghetti from trees. Hundreds of people called in asking how to grow their own spaghetti tree.

6. Parachuting Beavers

Idaho had a problem with overpopulation of beavers in some areas. The government’s solution was to put the beavers in specially designed wooden boxes, attach them to parachutes, and drop them out of airplanes into the wilderness.

7. The Kentucky Meat Shower

In Olympia Springs, Kentucky, chunks of red meat rained down from the sky for several minutes. Two locals tasted it and said it tasted like mutton. Unluckily for them, the likely cause was a flock of vultures projectile vomiting mid-flight.

8. Jackson’s 1,400-Pound Cheese

Andrew Jackson, the US president, was gifted a 1,400-pound wheel of cheese. It sat in the White House for two years smelling atrocious until he finally invited the public in to eat it all in one afternoon.

9. Sweden’s Submarine Problem

The Swedish military spent years tracking mysterious underwater acoustic signals they believed were Russian submarines sneaking into their waters. It turned out to be the sound of large groups of herring releasing gas at the same time.

10. The Republic of Rose Island

An Italian engineer built a 400-square-meter platform in the Adriatic Sea, declared it an independent nation, and made himself president. It was called the Republic of Rose Island. The Italian navy eventually showed up and blew it up with explosives.

11. Major General Nils Olav

A penguin living in the Edinburgh Zoo is currently the major general of the Norwegian King’s Guard. He was knighted in 2008 and inspects the troops whenever they visit Scotland.

12. The Oregon Whale Explosion

When a 45-foot dead whale washed up on a beach, Oregon officials decided the best way to dispose of it was to blow it up with a half ton of dynamite. It rained massive chunks of rotting whale blubber onto spectators and crushed a nearby car.

13. The Man They Couldn’t Hang

John Lee, an Englishman convicted of murder, was sentenced to hang. They tried to execute him three separate times, but the trapdoor mechanism jammed every single time. His sentence was reduced to life and he was eventually released.

14. The 335-Year War

A war between the Netherlands and the Isles of Scilly lasted for 335 years because they simply forgot to declare peace. There was never a single shot fired or a single casualty.

15. Pigasus for President

The Youth International Party, known as Yippies, protested the US presidential election by officially nominating a 145-pound pig named Pigasus the Immortal for president. The pig was immediately arrested by Chicago police.

16. Caligula’s War on the Sea

Allegedly, Caligula, the Roman emperor, marched his army to the beach, commanded them to attack the ocean with their swords, and had them collect seashells as the prize for their victory over the sea god.

17. The Death of William the Conqueror

When William the Conqueror died, he was too fat to fit in his stone coffin. Priests tried to force his body in, causing his swollen bowels to burst and spraying the mourners with putrid remains.

18. The Watermelon Riot

A riot broke out in Panama City after an American got drunk and refused to pay a local vendor 10 cents for a slice of watermelon. It escalated into a massive fight resulting in 17 deaths and the US military getting involved.

19. The Kettle War

There’s a war called the Kettle War — a brief war between the Holy Roman Empire and the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands. Only a single shot was fired, which managed to hit and destroy a soup kettle.

20. Castro’s Super Cow

Fidel Castro was so obsessed with milk that he spent millions trying to create a super cow. He succeeded with Ubre Blanca, a cow that produced so much milk it broke the Guinness World Record — and Castro built a marble statue of her when she died.

21. The Pepsi Navy

The Soviet Union wanted Pepsi but couldn’t pay with money, so they traded 17 submarines, a cruiser, a frigate, and a destroyer in exchange for soda. For a brief moment, Pepsi had one of the largest navies in the world.

22. The Left-Handed Whopper

On April Fools’ Day, Burger King announced a new burger designed specifically for left-handed people, where all the condiments were rotated 180 degrees. Thousands of customers actually went to stores requesting it.

23. The Treadmill’s Original Job

The treadmill wasn’t invented for fitness. It was invented by a British engineer as a brutal torture device to punish prisoners by making them walk endlessly to grind grain or pump water.

24. The Great Emu War

The Australian military deployed soldiers with machine guns to fight a massive flock of emus that were eating crops. The emus outmaneuvered the soldiers, and the birds essentially won the war.

25. Emperor Norton

Joshua Norton, a bankrupt businessman, declared himself emperor of the United States in San Francisco. Instead of arresting him, the city played along. Cops saluted him, and restaurants accepted his custom-printed currency.

26. The Battle of Karansebes

The Austrian army got drunk on schnapps, started arguing amongst themselves, hallucinated an Ottoman attack, and fought an entire battle against themselves. Many were killed or wounded before they realized the enemy wasn’t even there.

27. The Pig War

There’s a war known as the Pig War — a conflict between the US and the British Empire over the boundary of the San Juan Islands. The only casualty of the entire war was a British pig that was caught eating an American farmer’s potatoes.

28. Wojtek the Soldier Bear

The Polish army adopted an orphaned bear cub, eventually enlisting him as a private so he could travel on a British transport ship. They called him Wojtek. He drank beer, smoked cigarettes, and helped carry heavy artillery shells during the Battle of Monte Cassino.

29. The Cadaver Synod

Pope Stephen VI hated his predecessor, Pope Formosus, so much that he had Formosus’s rotting corpse dug up, dressed in papal robes, propped on a throne, and put on trial. The corpse was found guilty.

30. The CIA’s Spy Cats

The CIA spent millions surgically implanting microphones and transmitters into cats to spy on the Soviets. The first cat deployed was almost immediately run over by a taxi.

31. Xerxes Whips the Sea

When a storm destroyed the pontoon bridges King Xerxes built across the Hellespont, he ordered the sea to be whipped 300 times and had red-hot iron fetters thrown into the water to punish it.

32. Mayor Bosco

The town of Sunol, California elected a black Labrador-Rottweiler mix named Bosco as their honorary mayor. He served for 13 years, and his campaign promise was a bone in every dish.

33. Mayor Stubbs

A ginger cat named Stubbs was elected honorary mayor of Talkeetna, Alaska. He served for 20 years, mostly drinking water out of a margarita glass at the local general store.

34. The Great Stink

The River Thames in England became so overloaded with raw human sewage that the stench literally shut down Parliament. Politicians tried soaking the curtains in chloride of lime to hide the smell before finally agreeing to build a modern sewer system.

35. The Great Molasses Flood

A massive storage tank burst in Boston, releasing 2.3 million gallons of molasses in a 15-foot wave that traveled at 35 mph, destroying buildings and killing 21 people. Locals say you can still smell molasses on hot days.

36. The King Who Ate Himself to Death

The King of Sweden, King Adolf Frederick, famously ate himself to death after a massive meal of lobster, caviar, sauerkraut, and champagne. On top of it he ate 14 servings of his favorite dessert, semla, and died of severe digestive problems.

37. Tycho Brahe’s Fatal Politeness

The astronomer Tycho Brahe attended a royal banquet and held his pee for so long out of politeness that his bladder supposedly ruptured, leading to a fatal infection.

38. “They Couldn’t Hit an Elephant”

During the US Civil War, Union General Sedgwick was scolding his men for dodging Confederate sniper fire, famously saying, “They couldn’t hit an elephant at this distance.” — moments before being shot directly below the left eye.

39. The Parachute Coat

Franz Reichelt invented a wearable parachute suit. To prove it worked, he invited the press to watch him jump off the Eiffel Tower. It did not work.

40. The Taco Liberty Bell

Taco Bell took out full-page newspaper ads announcing they had purchased the Liberty Bell to help the national debt, renaming it the Taco Liberty Bell. Thousands of furious Americans called to complain before Taco Bell admitted it was an April Fools’ joke.

41. Conan Doyle’s Fairies

Two young girls used cardboard cutouts of fairies and a camera to create proof that fairies existed. The author of Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, totally fell for it and wrote articles defending the fairies’ existence.

42. The Ghost Army

The US military created a top-secret unit composed of artists, actors, and sound engineers. They used inflatable tanks, fake radio transmissions, and massive loudspeakers playing the sounds of marching troops to completely fool the German army.

43. The Anti-Tank Dogs

The Soviets trained dogs with explosives strapped to them to run under German tanks. However, because the dogs were trained on still Soviet tanks, in battle they often panicked at the noise and ran under the Soviets’ own tanks.

44. The Pigeon-Guided Bomb

B.F. Skinner developed a missile guidance system for the US military that was controlled by three pigeons sitting in the nose cone pecking at a screen to steer the bomb. It worked in testing but was deemed too weird to use.

45. The Bat Bombs

The US military attached tiny incendiary bombs to Mexican free-tailed bats. The plan was to release them over Japanese cities, where they would roost in wooden buildings and burn them down. The project was scrapped after the bats accidentally burned down the US military base they were testing them on.

46. The Fleet Captured on Ice

A French cavalry regiment managed to capture 14 Dutch warships without a naval battle because the sea had frozen solid. The cavalry literally rode their horses across the ice and surrounded the trapped ships.

47. The London Beer Flood

A giant tank of dark beer burst at a London brewery, sending out a 320,000-gallon wave that smashed two homes, flooded the streets, and killed eight people.

48. Diogenes’ Chicken

When Plato defined a human as a featherless biped, Diogenes plucked a chicken, burst into Plato’s academy, and shouted, “Behold, Plato’s man.”

49. The Cardiff Giant

A man buried a 10-foot-tall stone statue he had carved in New York and charged people to see what they thought was the petrified giant. P.T. Barnum wanted to rent it but was rejected, so he built a fake of the fake — and soon people were paying to see Barnum’s fake more than the original.

50. Walking Out with the Mona Lisa

An Italian handyman simply hid in a broom closet at the Louvre, waited for the museum to close, took the Mona Lisa off the wall, hid it under his smock, and walked out the front door.

51. The Vasa’s First and Last Voyage

The Swedish King Gustavus Adolphus wanted on his new warship a second tier of heavy cannons. As soon as it launched in front of a massive crowd, a light breeze blew it over and it sank less than a mile from the dock.

52. The Polite Invasion of Iceland

Britain invaded neutral Iceland during World War II to prevent Germany from taking it. The invasion, however, simply consisted of soldiers politely asking the local police to step aside. The police chief told the British, “Please wait, we are neutral.” They all ended up having a pleasant chat.

53. The Rabbit Birth Hoax

An Englishwoman convinced top doctors that she was giving birth to rabbits. The king’s own surgeon investigated and was fooled, before it was discovered she was manually inserting the dead rabbits into herself beforehand.

54. The Eruption That Inspired Frankenstein

A volcanic eruption in Indonesia blocked out the sun globally. A group of friends vacationing in Switzerland were stuck indoors due to the awful weather, got bored, had a ghost story contest — and Mary Shelley ended up writing Frankenstein.

55. The CIA’s Beard Plot

The CIA wanted to dust Fidel Castro’s shoes with thallium salts so his famous beard would fall out and ruin his image.

56. Cacareco the Rhino

As a protest against political corruption, students in São Paulo, Brazil campaigned for a zoo rhinoceros named Cacareco to win a city council seat. The rhino actually won with over 100,000 votes. Electoral officials didn’t accept her candidacy, so the seats went to human candidates.

57. The Monkey Selfie

A crested macaque monkey grabbed a nature photographer’s camera and took a smiling selfie. A massive legal battle ensued over who owned the copyright — the photographer or the monkey. The US Copyright Office ruled animals can’t own copyrights.

58. The Fake Paris

To protect Paris from nighttime German bombing raids, the French government secretly built a massive fake Paris on the city’s outskirts, complete with replica streets, fake trains, and lighting designed to look like a bustling city.

59. Operation Vegetarian

The British developed a plan to drop millions of linseed cakes infected with anthrax over Germany to wipe out their cattle and starve the population. They tested it on Gruinard Island, which remained so contaminated it couldn’t be visited for 50 years.

60. Stealing Chaplin’s Body

Two mechanics dug up Charlie Chaplin’s body from a Swiss cemetery and held it for ransom. Chaplin’s widow refused to pay, saying, “Charlie would have thought it rather ridiculous.” The thieves were easily caught.

61. The Nottingham Cheese Riot

In Nottingham, England, anger over the rising price of cheese led to a full-scale riot. Hundreds of people looted the market, using giant wheels of cheese as bowling balls to knock over the mayor and the police.

62. The Toledo War

The state of Ohio and the territory of Michigan went to war over a tiny strip of land called the Toledo strip. The only casualty was a Michigan sheriff who got stabbed in the leg with a penknife in a tavern brawl. Michigan lost Toledo but was given the entire Upper Peninsula as a consolation prize.

What Comes Next?

What makes this collection so strange is how ordinary the causes are. A floor that could not hold a roomful of nobles. A tank of molasses. One pig eating potatoes across a border. History’s most ridiculous entries rarely come from genius or malice — they come from schnapps, cheese prices, a light breeze, and one bridge that could not survive a storm.

The other pattern is how quickly officialdom cooperates. A city crowning an emperor it invented. An army saluting a penguin. A government dropping boxed beavers out of airplanes because the paperwork said so. When the story is absurd enough, nobody checks the rules — they just make room for the bear.

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