19 Surreal Historical Events That Actually Happened
Sometimes history is stranger than fiction.
Published 11 months ago in Wow
Though it may often be confined to textbooks and the pages of old newspapers, sometimes historical events can be stranger than fiction. For instance, did you know that the U.S. military allegedly staged several vampire attacks throughout Asia? Or that a circus once launched a massive riot in Toronto?
From a massive molasses flood to the Dave Matthews Band now-infamous Chicago River ordeal, here are 19 of the most surreal historical events to have ever happened.
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“There were some Philippine rebels who needed getting rid of and the CIA discovered local folk lore about vampires so they started grabbing rebels at night, draining their blood and leaving them out to be found, wether you believed in vampires or not it would still be scary They also did a similar thing in Vietnam where they blasted ghostly music and voices to scare the enemy”9
‘The Night the Stars Fell, 1833. A meteor shower so intense fell over the southern United States that people thought the world was ending. Slave owners reportedly repented at the feet of their slaves, begging forgiveness for enslaving them. And then the next day, I suppose, went right back to normal. But the even was so memorable that it was used as a touchstone moment that slaves could use to estimate their age for decades. Up until the 1920, people could say “I musta been 8 years old the night the stars fell,” and thus historians could approximate their birth year.”10
On August 8, 2004, roughly 800 pounds of sewage and human waste were dumped into the Chicago River by a Dave Matthews Band tour bus. The sewage fell through the grate of the Kinzie Street Bridge in Chicago, Illinois, hitting the top of an open-top architecture tour boat that happened to be passing underneath the bridge at that exact moment.11
“WWII spy who won both the German Iron Cross and Order of the British Empire for spying. He initially approached British Intelligence and offered his services, and was refused. Undeterred, he created the persona of a loyal N—i supporter, became a German agent, gathered a payroll of fake sub-agents (all bankrolled by Germany), persuaded the German Navy to chase a fake convoy, then finally got recruited by the Allies. He finally fed misleading info to the Axis about the D-Day landings, causing them to deploy forces to the wrong locations, even after the invasion had begun.”13
“The Fire Department and some clowns get into a disagreement at a whorehouse, and get into a punch-up. The clowns win, but the firemen return to the circus later and start attacking in revenge. The firemen win the day but violence is stopped when the militia come in. The police do nothing, so the city fires all the police (and I mean everyone) and starts a new police force.”16
“Wojtek, the soldier bear! He served in the Polish army in WWII, helping his fellow soldiers by carrying heavy creates of ammunition into battle, saving precious time during combat. He had been recruited as a soldier when his division had to board an English ship which didn't allow animals on board. Outraged, the Polish then made him a soldier and he lived through the war to die of old age in a zoo in 1963.”18
On November 7 2020, then-president Donald Trump’s attorney, Rudy Giuliani, hosted a press conference outside of Four Seasons Total Landscaping in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania four days after the 2020 Presidential election. While it’s largely believed that the Trump Campaign meant to hold the press conference at the nearby Four Seasons Hotel Philadelphia, they decided to stay at the landscaping company, one located next to an adult store and a crematorium.19
“Operation Acoustic Kitty. In the 60’s the CIA spent months and tens of millions of dollars to surgically bug and then train a cat to sit near foreign officials in order to transmit their private conversations to CIA operatives. The day of the first official test run they release the cat, it wanders into the street and is promptly hit by a taxi.”20
“My personal favorite: The Cadaver Synod in which the dead body of a former pope was disinterred, propped up on the throne, and then formally tried by The Church to have his papacy retroactively annulled. Predictably, he was found guilty. Then they chucked his corpse in the Tiber.People are funny animals.”22
“The surgeon [Robert Liston] performed a surgery that had a 300% mortality rate. he was performing a surgery in 1851, wherein he was removing a patients leg. as he was cutting, he sliced the fingers off one of his assistants, and the assistant and patient both later died of gangrene, as well as one of the spectators in the surgical theater dying of fright.”