History Is Stranger Than You Were Taught
Standard history education focuses on wars, empires, and political revolutions. That's fair — but it leaves out some of the most bizarre, fascinating, and genuinely bewildering events in human history. Here are five real events that deserve far more attention.
1. The Great Molasses Flood (Boston, 1919)
On January 15, 1919, a massive storage tank holding approximately 2.3 million gallons of molasses collapsed in Boston's North End neighborhood. A wave of molasses — estimated at 25 feet high and moving at 35 mph — surged through the streets.
Buildings were demolished. The elevated railway structure was buckled. Twenty-one people died, and over 150 were injured. Cleanup took weeks, and locals reportedly claimed the area smelled of molasses on hot summer days for decades afterward.
The cause was almost certainly the tank being structurally inadequate and improperly tested. It was one of the more unusual industrial disasters in American history.
2. The Dancing Plague of 1518 (Strasbourg)
In July 1518, a woman named Frau Troffea began dancing in the streets of Strasbourg (then part of the Holy Roman Empire) and couldn't stop. Within a week, dozens of others had joined her. Within a month, somewhere between 50 and 400 people were dancing uncontrollably, day and night.
Physicians of the time concluded the cure was more dancing — and erected stages with professional musicians to keep the afflicted moving. This made things significantly worse. People danced until they collapsed from exhaustion, and some reportedly died from heart attacks or strokes.
The cause remains disputed. Theories range from mass psychogenic illness (a well-documented phenomenon) to ergot fungus poisoning. No one fully knows what happened.
3. The War of the Bucket (1325)
In 1325, soldiers from the city of Modena raided the city of Bologna and stole... a wooden bucket from a well. Bologna demanded its return. Modena refused. The two Italian city-states went to war.
The Battle of Zappolino that followed involved tens of thousands of soldiers and resulted in significant casualties. Modena won. The bucket was never returned. It is still on display in Modena's cathedral tower today.
4. The Great Emu War (Australia, 1932)
Following World War I, Australian farmers in Western Australia were struggling with a growing population of emus devastating their crops. The government deployed soldiers with machine guns to cull the emu population.
The emus won. Soldiers found the birds remarkably resilient — they split into small groups when fired upon, making mass casualties impossible. After several weeks of embarrassing results, the military withdrew. A follow-up campaign was attempted and fared only marginally better.
The emus remain. Australia has had an emu problem ever since.
5. The Pope Who Put a Dead Man on Trial (897 AD)
Pope Stephen VI had such an intense grudge against his predecessor, Pope Formosus, that he had his corpse exhumed, dressed in papal vestments, and put on trial. The decaying body was seated in a chair. A deacon was appointed to speak for the dead pope.
Formosus was found guilty. His papal vestments were torn off, the fingers used for consecration were cut from his hand, and his body was thrown into the Tiber River.
The spectacle — now known as the "Cadaver Synod" — so horrified the Roman public that Stephen VI was subsequently imprisoned and strangled. History contains multitudes.
The Takeaway
Every era believed it was living through uniquely strange times. History suggests that human beings have always been magnificently, inexplicably weird. The past isn't just a record of progress — it's a bottomless archive of the bizarre.