Updated: November 14, 2026
History is full of stories that sound like someone made them up after three cups of coffee. An army that lost a war to birds. A whole city that could not stop dancing. Ketchup in the medicine cabinet. This episode has ten weird history facts, and every single one is real.
1. The Emu War
In 1932, Australia sent soldiers with machine guns to fight emus, and the emus won. About 20,000 emus were trampling wheat farms around Campion, in Western Australia. The emus split into small groups and sprinted out of range, zigzagging too fast to hit. By December 10 it was over. The name stuck.
2. The dancing plague of 1518
In July 1518, a woman in Strasbourg started dancing in the street and could not stop. Frau Troffea danced for days. Within a week, dozens of her neighbours had joined her. Within a month, one chronicle says 400 people were dancing. The leading theory is stress-induced mass hysteria after years of famine and disease.
3. Ketchup as medicine
In the 1830s, your doctor might have prescribed ketchup. An Ohio physician named Dr. John Cook Bennett started promoting tomatoes as medicine in 1834. He claimed tomatoes could treat diarrhea, indigestion, jaundice, and liver trouble, By 1837, Archibald Miles was selling Dr. Miles Compound Extract of Tomato. Then the copycats arrived, claiming their pills could cure cholera, syphilis, and even broken bones. None of it was true.
4. Cleopatra and the moon landing
Cleopatra lived closer in time to the moon landing than to the building of the pyramids. The Great Pyramid was finished around 2560 BCE. Cleopatra died in 30 BCE, about 2,500 years later. Apollo 11 landed on the moon on July 20, 1969, about 2,000 years after her death. The gap between Cleopatra and the astronauts is about 500 years shorter than the gap between Cleopatra and the pyramid builders.
5. Caligula and his horse
Caligula loved his horse so much that ancient writers say he planned to make it a consul. Suetonius, writing 80 years later, says Incitatus lived in a marble stall with an ivory manger, purple blankets, and a jeweled collar. Suetonius writes that it is also reported Caligula planned to make the horse a consul. No source says the horse ever became a consul.
6. The Great Molasses Flood
On January 15, 1919, a wave of molasses flooded the streets of Boston and killed 21 people. A steel tank at the Purity Distilling Company held 2.3 million gallons of molasses. The tank stood 50 feet tall and 90 feet across, Just after midday, the tank burst open. A wave between 8 and 25 feet high rushed through the streets at about 35 miles per hour. Twenty-one people died, and about 150 were injured.
7. Napoleon and the rabbits
Napoleon Bonaparte was once chased off a field by rabbits. In July 1807, just after he signed the Treaties of Tilsit with Russia, his chief of staff, Alexandre Berthier, organised a rabbit hunt. Berthier ordered about a thousand rabbits released for the hunt. But his men had bought tame rabbits from farm hutches, not wild rabbits. The tame rabbits were hungry, because they had not been fed that day. When the cages opened, the rabbits charged, looking for dinner. Napoleon retreated to his carriage, and the rabbits followed. One warning: this story comes from one source, General Paul Thiebault's memoirs, published decades later.
8. The first computer bug
The first computer bug was a real bug, a moth. On September 9, 1947, the team running the Harvard Mark Two found it misbehaving. They traced the fault to Relay 70, Panel F, where a moth was wedged between the contacts. They pulled it out and taped it into the logbook beside the note, first actual case of bug being found. The moth did not invent the word bug. Engineers had used bug for a machine fault since at least 1878, when Thomas Edison used it in a letter. Grace Hopper probably did not find the moth. She told the story so well it became hers anyway.
9. Oxford is older than the Aztec Empire
Oxford University is older than the Aztec Empire. Teaching in Oxford was already happening by 1096, and Oxford has no single founding date. The Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan, was founded in 1325, a full 229 years later. The Triple Alliance did not take shape until 1428. By then, Oxford had been teaching for 332 years. Spanish forces captured Tenochtitlan in 1521, only 93 years after the alliance began.
10. The Anglo-Zanzibar War, the shortest war in history
The shortest war in recorded history lasted about 38 minutes. On August 27, 1896, Britain fought the Sultanate of Zanzibar. The pro-British sultan had died two days earlier, and his nephew, Khalid bin Barghash, seized the palace without British approval. Britain gave him an ultimatum: leave the palace by 9 in the morning, or face bombardment. At 9:02, the Royal Navy opened fire. By 9:40 the firing had stopped and Khalid had fled. Around 500 Zanzibari defenders and civilians were killed. Only one British sailor was injured.
Sources and further reading
The facts behind this episode, from the sources that tell the story best.
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