It's a shame that so many people think history is boring.
If they think that, it's probably because they had to spend so much time memorizing names and dates, and no one actually likes that, do they?
No, history is best understood in context. It's important to remember that historical figures were people just like us – and that some of them had sordid lives.
Whether it has to do with sex, murder, or even urine, people showed us their stuff after Redditor Distinct_Bluejay_738 asked the online community,
"Historians of Reddit, what is the most NSFW thing in history you have ever heard about?"
"In the 1700s..."
"In the 1700s, a poet and a pimp got together to write a catalogue of all the sex workers in London so that you could find any sex workers address, age etc and it would rate their performance and describe their appearance. It was called Harris’s Lists and they ran it annually for decades."
prettyaspoison
This is true! A whole index was available... you might call it the Yellow Pages for sex workers.
"Herodotus surmised that the reason..."
"Herodotus surmised that the reason female mummies were more decomposed than male mummies was because they were kept at home longer before being sent to the embalmers to avoid necrophilia."
crosstitchwizard
Oh, dear.
What is wrong with men??
"In the 1960s..."
"In the 1960s, the KGB tried to blackmail the Indonesian PM Sukarno with tapes of him having sex with a Russian flight attendant. Sukarno not only disregarded their blackmail, but asked them to bring more footage of the video to show his countrymen."
kevirtual
Now this is what I call a total power move. A legend.
"Pope Alexander VI..."
"Pope Alexander the VI liked watching horses have sex because he thought it was hilarious."
A-Fellow-Gamer-96
Ummm... I don't see why, to be honest. Someone explain his thought process to me.
"There is a Roman poem..."
"There is a Roman poem considered so dirty it's translation was not published for centuries. Turns out it is shockingly dirty: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catullus_16"
waynequest
Well, this is a first for me.
I think I need to take some Latin.
"Urine..."
"Urine from public urinals was a valuable commodity in ancient Rome and was used as a stain remover in laundries."
p38-lightning
Don't think that just your urine will do. Businesses needed urine en masse!
"After..."
"After Anton Van Leeuwenhoek invented the microscope the first thing he did was ejaculate into a slide to see it under the microscope to see 'tiny men.'"
Hot-Low1910
Men and their obsession with their penises (and their semen) is something that has affected history for millenia.
"He is perhaps best known..."
"The death of Pope John XII. Pope John XII was one of the more promiscuous popes of the Catholic Church, reigning from 955 to 964."
"He is perhaps best known for the circumstances surrounding his death, which occurred in the middle of an adulterous sexual encounter. The most popular story goes that the husband walked in on the two lovers, and proceeded to defenestrate the Pope in a fit of anger."
Redskulzzzz
+1 for use of the word "defenestrate."
Needs to be used more often.
"He had to go through several wives..."
"Ferdinand VII had such an enormous penis that he had to penetrate his wife using a pillow with a hole in it. He had to go through several wives until he found one who could handle him. His doctor wrote in his diary in a very graphic way how big and malformed his penis was."
aversimouro
So what you're telling me is that this man actually needed a silencer for his penis.
"Apparently..."
"Not a historian, but a close friend of mine is. Apparently, if something is named as 'a device in a fertility ritual,' or something along those lines, 90% of the time it’s just a sex toy"
BetaTheOmega
And you thought history was boring, didn't you?
It's really not. It's full of fun (and sometimes disturbing) facts like these.
Show off at your next dinner party – people will love you for it.
Have some facts of your own to share? Feel free to tell us more in the comments below!
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