We learned a lot about history in high school, but there is a lot more we never learned from school. There are so many weird and wonderful facts of history that’s so wacky and unusual that could never be repeated even if someone tries to. The past is full of curious stories, and here are some facts that are fun to know about:

1. What are some of the unusual facts about world history?
Some Unusual Facts from History You Never Knew
We learned a lot about history in high school, but there is a lot more we never learned from
school. There are so many weird and wonderful facts of history that’s so wacky and unusual
that could never be repeated even if someone tries to. The past is full of curious stories, and
here are some facts that are fun to know about:
1. The shortest war lasted for 38 minutes
Wars are a big part of history, especially the World War I and World War II. A lot of them
lasted for years, but there is one that lasted for less than an hour. The Anglo-Zanzibar war of
1896 was the shortest war on record, with conflict lasting for an exhausting 38 minutes. This
was a military conflict between the United Kingdom and the Zanzibar Sultanate. Some say it
really wasn’t a war but an attack, because the Zanzibari forces had no chance to win.

2. 2. Salem “witches” weren’t actually burned at the stake
The witch trials of 1692 in Salem, Massachusetts was a dark period in American history.
Nearly 200 people were accused of practicing witchcraft, including the elderly, the homeless
and a four year old girl. Witches and other religious heretics of the time were burned at
stake for their supposed crimes but not the ones from the Salem witch trials. The popular
image of the event involves unfortunate women being burned at the stake, but they did not
suffer this cruelty. Of the 20 people who were convicted of being witches, those who were
sentenced to death were hung, not burned.
3.The government poisoned alcohol during the Prohibition

3. The Prohibition was a weird time in the country’s history, but you probably won’t expect
that one of the measures the government used was mass poisoning. Something that’s often
forgotten about the Prohibition is that the government didn’t just try to discourage drinking
through fines and imprisonment, but the actual poisoning of the industrial alcohol was
legal. People continued to consume alcohol despite the ban, so the law officials got
frustrated and tried a different kind of deterrent, which is death.
The government ordered poisoning of alcohols, which were the product regularly stolen by
bootleggers. They added iodine, chloroform and even kerosene and gasoline to make it
nauseating and deadly. By the end of the Prohibition in 1933, an estimated 10,000 people
were killed by the federal poisoning program.
4. A lot of history’s biggest disasters were caused by lack of sleep

4. Start investing more time for quality sleep, because adequate rest is so very important. So
many of history’s greatest disasters were a result of man-made error caused by lack of sleep,
including Chernobyl, Challenger explosion, Exxon Valdez oil spill, Three Mile Island and the
American Airlines Flight 1420 crash.
When the Chernobyl power plant in Ukraine exploded, the engineers involved has been
working for 13 hours or more.
The accident at the Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, the most serious nuclear incident on
US, happened because the overnight shift workers didn’t notice that the plant lost coolant,
and sleepiness is partly to blame.
The space shuttle Challenger exploded just seconds after its launch, and certain managers
involved in the launch was reported to have only slept two hours before arriving to work at
1 AM that morning.
The Exxon Valdez oil spill that spilled 258,000 barrels of crude oil in Alaska was caused by a
third mate who was sleeping at the helm, leaving him unable to turn the tanker back to the

5. shipping lanes to avoid disaster. The crew was on a 22-hour shift loading the oil before the
accident happened.
The American Airlines Flight 1420 Crash that killed 11 people including the captain was
caused by severe thunderstorms, but impaired performance resulting from fatigue was also
to blame.
5.A woman was elected to Congress before women were allowed to vote
Throughout history, women were always fighting for equal rights, and one of their most
prominent fight was for the right to vote. The 19th Amendment finally allowed American
women the right to vote in 1920, but there was a woman elected to the US Congress before

6. that. Jeannette Rankin was elected in Congress in 1916, four years before women can vote.
She was the first woman to ever hold a federal office in the US.
6.Fidel Castro was plotted to be killed more than 600 times
The Cuban dictator Fidel Castro lived for 90 years and survived more than 600 attempts to
kill him. The former director of Cuba’s intelligence service claims this, as Castro was
attempted to be killed by his political opponents, criminals, the United States and anti-
Castro Cuban exiles. Their attempts included using thallium to make his beard fall out, use
LSD to make him sound crazy when speaking in a radio broadcast, poisoning his diving suit,
having a tide-line of exploding seashells on his visit to a beach, and adding explosives to his
cigar. There was also a hired femme fatale who was tasked to seduce him, and Castro

7. claimed he uncovered her intentions. He said he offered her a pistol and told her to kill him,
but she didn’t have the nerve.
Because of the many attempts to end his life that has been made, Castro famously said, “If
surviving assassination attempts were an Olympic event, I would win the gold medal.”
NO.7.

8. 8. Spot Is Going to Represent Himself
In the Medieval Ages, animals could be put on trial, and were very commonly
sentenced to death.
9. Burned at the Stake

9. One expert suggests that as many as 600,000 people who were designated “witches” perished
during the medieval period.