Historian Reacts - What Are The Worst Unknown Facts Of History? (r/AskReddit)

Chris, you have to know that one huge reason (undoubtedly the biggest reason) for the civility of this community is YOUR civility. You set the tone, and everyone quickly sees that this is not a place for just flinging ad hominem and straw man fallacies around. 🙂

Fun fact about the Gladiator fact: Ridley Scott's movie Gladiator was supposed to have a scene with a gladiator endorsing a brand of olive oil, but it was cut from the movie, because the producers didn't think the audience would actually accept that things like this took place.

We can all agree to disagree on certain topics in a civil manner. No need to be mean spirited about it. We're all here for our love of history. This channel has a very collegial positive vibe to it. Let's keep it that way.

The reason Tutankhamen's tomb was undisturbed by tomb raiders is that it had not been found by them before Howard Carter found it in 1922. And that in turn came because pharaoh Horemheb worked to remove as much as possible all traces of his three predecessors Akhenaten, Tutankhamon and Ay, and as part of that he destroyed and hid the entrance to Tutankhamen's tomb - apparently doing a very good job of that.

Here's a fun historical fact: In ancient times in Athens, the richest person was responsible for paying for upkeep of the fleet. He could challenge the issue through antidosis, which meant appointing someone who they thought was richer than them, but they would have to swap estates if agreed upon.

This has easily become my favorite history channel because when you react to stuff you let it play and really take it in. At the same time, when you do pause it, its to add meaningful information on. Theres no mindless filler, and thats important because I watch this channel to learn more about these things I'm interested in. It's funny because I watched both this and the gaming channel and didn't realize it was the same person for the longest time haha.

To each, his own is what I say. That’s what I love about this channel and community. I appreciate you being so open about your beliefs as well as your personal struggles. Much respect to you brother! Aloha 🤙🏼

Here a historic fact for you; during the evacuation of Dunkirk in WWII, a man and his son overloaded their boat with over 120 soldiers, dodged a bomb, sustained no damage, and unloaded everyone off safely without injury. Decades earlier in WWI, the same man was a member of the Royal Navy, and during the war, he warded of a German zeppelin, and after being given command of his own ship, destroyed a German U-Boat. The man’s name; Charles Lightoller. He is most well known, however, for being the Second Officer of the RMS Titanic, he was the most senior-ranking Officer to survive the sinking of the famous ocean liner in 1912. This means that all his superiors died during the disaster, and he outranked the survivors.

One of my favorite weird historical bits -- made "weird" by susequent events -- is that "Lindbergh" was not the aviator's legitimate surname, as detailed in his biographical book "We'" His grandfather adopted it from a prosperous local family before emigrating. His real family name was "Manson." So, his real name was Charles Manson.

Regarding the Waffen SS and non-eth[n]ic German: in the opening scenes of "Saving Private Ryan", there are two guys who are holding up their hands and seem to surrender to the protagonists. However, they are not understood and are shot shortly after. What they are saying is something like "My jsme Češi." which means "we are Czech" in Czech. I know there were also Danes in the Waffen SS and yes, even a few of Faroese.

A Montenegrin killed a samurai in the Russo-Japanese war, that war was also forgotten about and the peace treaty between Montenegro and Japan was signed in 2006 upon the independence of Montenegro

As far as I am aware, Poles were the only group actually specifically banned from joining the SS. So I don't think there were any Poles, however, there is every chance that a Polish speaking Galician, Ukrainian, Belarussian formally part of Poland, was in the SS and then switched to Polish when they were captured and suddenly called themselves "Polish" despite probably joining the SS in order to kill Poles they considered to be occupying their home nation. They could also be German minority from Poland at that time, and the idea of what is Polish was a lot more complicated then. There were plenty of Poles who were forced into the Wehrmacht though. Love your stuff!

I know of another weird but true fact that was not named in this video. Leonid brezhnev was a rather big lover of fine automobiles, he owned over 80 cars, most of which were gifts from foreign leaders. He would often go out in the middle of the night on the deserted Moscow streets and drive insane speeds while a small security detail barely managed to keep up, one night in 1980 he was tearin up the Moscow roads in a rolls royce he had received as a gift by queen elizabeth and then proceeded to hit a truck at very high speed and manage to completely wreck the car, which currently is currently on display in a museum somewhere. He once also almost crashed a Lincoln with him and Richard nixon inside while driving high speed around camp david moments after Nixon presented the car to him

I would also like to add that King Tut's dad Akhenaten suffered a massive damnatio memoriae (long story short, he placed emphasis on what Egyptian god or god's hat, over the others, angering the priesthood), where his successors tried to erase him and his family from Egyptian history, making King Tut even more obscure than he already was.

About the comments. Tho it says a lot about us, your viewers, it also says a lot about how you handle these topics. It's not the first time that you dipped your toes into hot water and managed to take them out with actual positive feedback from your community. I think we appreciate someone who is honest and certainly not extreme, and that's also what kind of folk you mostly then attract. So yeah, it does go both ways. We are respectful towards you on these hot topics and you are respectful towards us with your way of describing and explaining things to us.

34:20 LBJ also had a convertible which he had adapted to be amphibious. He would drive guests around his Texas ranch without telling them about it, then he would pretend the brakes had failed and drive it into the lake.

I was happy to see you dive into some more modern stuff. It's typically people who understand history have a more nuanced take compared to those who don't. I would love to see a video on your take on Confederate statues in the modern day for example.

Love your videos, absolutely one of my favorite channels Looking forward to watching this one And I'm also really excited for this weekend since i'm going to see the waterloo reenactment in Belgium on Sunday. Greetings from the Netherlands

On the topic of King Tut's tomb it was left pretty much untouched because he was essentially stuffed into the tomb originally intended for one of his relatives/advisors. Potential tomb robbers would take one look at the fairly standard entrance and go look for a bigger payday.

3:00 - Worth noting though that at the Time Victoria was born George III was very ill and there was a regency going on.