Constantine XI Palaiologos was the last Christian Emperor of Constantinople and the Byzantine empire. In 1453, when Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks, he was last seen fighting at the city walls, but the actual circumstances of his death have remained surrounded in myth.
Facts
The Hypogeum of Ħal Saflieni is a Neolithic…
The Hypogeum of Ħal Saflieni is a Neolithic subterranean structure dating to the Saflieni phase (3300 – 3000 BC) in Maltese prehistory, located in Paola, Malta. Accidentally discovered in 1902, the hypogeum is believed to predate the pyramids by up to 1000 years according to historians. It housed up to 7000 bodies of an unknown Neolithic civilisation who mysteriously disappeared in 2500 BC without explanation.
In 1954, Ernest Hemingway survived…
In 1954, Ernest Hemingway survived two plane crashes in two days. He was presumed dead almost 24 hours later until he was spotted coming out of the jungle carrying bananas and a bottle of gin. One of the planes was burning on the runway. The door was stuck. So Hemingway headbutted it open. He never fully recovered from the concussion and it’s theorised this may have been the starting point for his cognitive decline.
Shipwreck hunter Tommy G. Thompson…
Shipwreck hunter Tommy G. Thompson is imprisoned and fined 1,000$ per day for not revealing where he hides the gold he found and had promised to split with investors.
Henry Ford once tried to start…
Henry Ford once tried to start a colony in the middle of the Brazilian rainforest called “Fordlandia”, in which the locals were forced to live a midwestern American lifestyle until they rebelled and chased their managers into the forest.
The word ‘honeymoon’ is believed to…
The word ‘honeymoon’ is believed to originate as an ancient Babylonian practice that involved drinking mead, a honey-based alcoholic drink, for a lunar month after a marriage. The first literary reference to the word honeymoon was in 1552 in Richard Huloet’s ‘Abecedarium Anglico Latinum’.
Submission by Joseph
The Only Married Couple To Fly Together In Space
Astronauts Mark Lee and Jan Davis married in secret 9 months before their joint flight to the ISS and didn’t tell NASA until it was too late to train replacements. They are the only married couple to have ever flown in space together.
“Georgian swimming” is a swimming style…
“Georgian swimming” is a swimming style where swimmer’s hand and feet are bound together. It was re-discovered in the 60es after a swimming enthusiast decided to fact-check a legend about ancient warriors training by swimming in this manner.
H G Wells was inspired to write…
H G Wells was inspired to write War of the Worlds by the plight of the Tasmanian Aborigines.
By the time Wells wrote that book there were no Tasmanian Aboriginals left to have a plight.
The native of Tasmania were victims of one of the most complete genocides in modern history. The last male Tasmanian Aboriginals had his scrotum turned into a tobacco pouch after death and the last female died in 1876. The remains of some of the last to die were put in museums back in England whole or in parts.
More recently the population of Tasmanian Aboriginals has been revived by people who believe themselves to have some aboriginal ancestry who learned or recreated some of the old culture and languages and lobbied to have the definition of aboriginals widened to include them and anyone who self-identifies as such.
North Korea law specifies…
North Korea law specifies ‘three generations of punishment’. If you commit a crime, your children and grandchildren will also receive the full brunt of punishment, which often involves a lifetime in prison, also children born in prison are raised as prisoners because their “blood is guilty”.