Ever heard of the Great Emu War of 1932?
Well, if you haven't, now you have. It's a very real event, believe it or not.
It was fought between the Australian Army and emus that were destroying crops. The Australians lost and the emus continued to wreak havoc.
Emus: 1 Humans: 0
If that sounds too weird to be true, then just know that the Great Emu War has some competition. People shared their favorite odd but true historical events after Redditor AquaTax asked the online community,
"What historical events are so absurd that they would be too strange for a fiction story or a movie?"
"She screamed and tried to fight him off..."
"Gary Ridgeway, the Green River Killer, once snuck up on his own wife, Marcia Winslow, as they were getting out of their car after a party and began to strangle her."
"She screamed and tried to fight him off until she realized it was him, at which point he stopped and tried to convince her that it wasn't him strangling her, it must have been someone else."
"She stayed with him for several years after that incident."
Ummm... has anyone checked on Marcia? How's she doing?
"They were displaced from their normal hunting grounds..."
"The Germans and Russians once called a temporary (unofficial) ceasefire in World War I because of wolves invading the battlefield."
"They were displaced from their normal hunting grounds and looking for something to eat, which turned out to be local livestock, corpses, children, and unwary or incapacitated soldiers."
"It got so bad that everyone stopped shooting at each other for a while so they could hunt them down, proving once more that the threat of being eaten is stronger than any political ideal."
The wolves were trying to teach them a lesson, weren't they?
This sounds like a prequel to The Grey.
"In Anne Frank's original diary..."
"In Anne Frank's original diary, she openly talked about her changing body, periods, and her questions about sex but they were edited out of the final print."
The day I learned this blew my mind.
These Actors Were Perfectly Cast In Their Roles | George Takei’s Oh Myyy
Sometimes an actor comes along that is able to reach the audience on a deeper level. The actor that immediately comes to mind is Robin Williams. Although it ...Yep! He's in his 90s, and still kicking. John Tyler, you rascal.
"It was just a coincidence..."
"Thomas Crapper actually did invent the first reliable modern toilet. (The kind with a raised cistern.) But the word crap/crapper was already a very old slang term by that point."
"It was just a coincidence. Or maybe he felt like he had no choice. But crap and crapper have nothing to do with Thomas Crapper."
Okay, but this is perfect. We hope Crapper just rolled with it.
"John Adams..."
"John Adams and Thomas Jefferson both died on the same day. The day? The 50th anniversary of the Fourth of July. Adams's last words were, 'Thomas Jefferson still survives.'"
wizardvictor
Oh, the irony.
John, someone's gotta tell you...
"The Fire Department and some clowns..."
"The Toronto Circus Riot of 1855."
"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."
splitdipless
This paragraph just grew more and more absurd the more I continued reading.
"That time in the 1700s..."
"Battle of Karansebes."
"That time in the 1700s when the Austrian army got confused, waged a huge battle against itself within its own lines, and lost an estimated several hundred to few thousand men (and a lot of equipment and money) in the process. They then retreated."
"The Ottomans, whom they were originally intending to fight, showed up two days later."
HyvalTheEmolga
What?
How?
Huh?
Explain yourselves, Austria
"The last known kill..."
"The last known kill by bow and arrow in combat was actually during the battle of Dunkirk, 1940. Jack Churchill landed a well-placed arrow into a German soldier's chest."
"He also chose to carry bagpipes and a Scottish longsword."
WasteNot2532
This led a crazy life. Just check out his Wikipedia page.
He was known for the motto: "Any officer who goes into action without his sword is improperly dressed."
"In 1184..."
The latrine disaster of Erfurt.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erfurt_latrine_disaster
"In 1184, the King of Germany Heinrich VI held court in the Petersberg Citadel in Erfurt. On the morning of 26 July, the weight of the assembled nobles caused the wooden second-story floor of the Peterskirche to collapse."
"Most of them fell through into the latrine cesspit below the ground floor and about 60 of them drowned in liquid excrement."
Supraspinster
Oh, there's a joke here.
It'd be so bad of me to make it....
History is fascinating–and full of odd incidents like these, because life is crazy.
Just think: You'll be the star of your next dinner party as soon as you whip these facts out.
Have some historical facts of your own to share? Feel free to tell us more in the comments below!
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