Comical Historical Events

[Big Bad Blue]

President Taft. Big guy, good sense of humor

In addition to these “firsts,” Taft was also the largest president at 6 feet 2 inches and approximately 325 pounds. He apparently was very good natured about his size. Before becoming president, he once visited a small town on legal business. After his meeting, he learned that the next train would not arrive for several hours, although a fast train would run through in an hour. He therefore wired the railroad superintendent to ask if the fast train would stop for a “large party.” The superintendent agreed. When Taft boarded the train, he remarked to the bewildered conductor, “You can go ahead; I am the large party.”

https://ourwhitehouse.org/william-howar ... 1909-1913/

In addition to being the nation's largest President, Taft also famously used to piss out his law office window.

[Big Bad Blue]

american presidential medicine really just
sucked for most of history

it was impossible to understand John Adams because his teeth were rotten through due to him using the unique treatment of...throwing up a lot to try and cure everything
James Garfield died not because of the assassination-but because the surgeons didn't wash their tools or hands before operating (the wound got infected and died)
Calvin Coolidge huffed chlorine gas for 45 minutes straight to treat a cold

George Washington's physicians treated his (eventually terminal) difficulty breathing by extracting at least 40 ounces of his blood, giving him an enema and making him vomit.

https://www.mountvernon.org/library/dig ... ashington/

[Big Bad Blue]

Davy Crockett ended his farewell Adresses to congress with "You can all go to hell, I'll go to Texas!"

iirc it was Sam Houston who said if he owned Hell and Texas he would live in Hell and rent out Texas.

[Radiatia]

I'm not whether or not this has already been posted, but I'm always amused by the time former President Ulysses S. Grant was arrested for speeding... in a horse and cart.

[Chan Island]

A good one for a nice day; the last witch trial in England was in 1944.

Basically here was this medium who spoke to the dead... including dead sailors from a ship the government didn't want to acknowledge had sunk. They first reckoned she was spreading military secrets, but that couldn't stick, or that she was a spy, but that was implausible. So dig into the archives, witchcraft is still in the house of commons library, and hey presto! The last witch trial in England. In 1944.

[Christian Confederation]

Stonewall Jackson was killed by Friendly fire whall scouting ahead of his Army in the pitch black night.

[Ethel mermania]

Stonewall Jackson was killed by Friendly fire whall scouting ahead of his Army in the pitch black night.

How the fuck is that funny.

[The Archregimancy]

Stonewall Jackson was killed by Friendly fire whall scouting ahead of his Army in the pitch black night.

You're borderline spamming this thread at this point; maybe give it a rest?

[Chan Island]

Stonewall Jackson was killed by Friendly fire whall scouting ahead of his Army in the pitch black night.

How the fuck is that funny.

It rather looks like CC is one with an odd sense of humour.

[Rusozak]

That time the kings of England and France wrestled each other in front of their subjects, though looking into it I guess it's disputed if it actually happened?

[The French Army]

Davy Crockett ended his farewell Adresses to congress with "You can all go to hell, I'll go to Texas!"

iirc it was Sam Houston who said if he owned Hell and Texas he would live in Hell and rent out Texas.

I thought that was Lil Phil Sheridan.

[Big Bad Blue]

That time the kings of England and France wrestled each other in front of their subjects, though looking into it I guess it's disputed if it actually happened?

If Hollywood is to be believed at least one king of France and future king of England were fond of wrestling...

[Christian Confederation]

That time India lost a $2.9 Billion USD Nuclear Submarine because someone left a Hatch Open, putting their new Sub out of commission for a year.

[Kasantia]

In an attempt to lighten the mood a bit...

This thread invites you to share your favourite comical historical event. Note that the intent is that these should be relatively light-hearted historical events (conceding that they likely weren't always comical or light-hearted for the people involved) rather than snarky commentary on present events. So "isn't it funny how the Austrian army defeated itself at the [possibly apocryphal] Battle of Karánsebes" is in the spirit of the thread; "isn't it funny how the Russian army seems to have miscalculated logistics for its advance on Kiev" is not.


To get you started, and to give you a pointer on the type of historical event we're looking for, I give you the Erfurt Latrine Disaster.

In July 1184, Henry VI, King of Germany (later Holy Roman Emperor), held court at a Hoftag in the Petersberg Citadel in Erfurt. On the morning of 26 July, the combined weight of the assembled nobles caused the wooden second story floor of the building to collapse and most of them fell through into the latrine cesspit below the ground floor, where about 60 of them drowned in liquid excrement. This event is called Erfurter Latrinensturz (lit. 'Erfurt latrine fall') in several German sources.

A feud between Landgrave Louis III of Thuringia and Archbishop Conrad of Mainz which had existed since the defeat of Henry the Lion intensified to the point that King Henry VI was forced to intervene while he was traveling through the region during a military campaign against Poland. Henry decided to call a diet in Erfurt, where he was staying, to mediate the situation between the two and invited a number of other figures to the negotiations.

Nobles across the Holy Roman Empire were invited to the meeting, and many arrived on 25 July to attend. Just as the assembly began, the wooden floor of the deanery, in which the nobles were sitting, broke under the stress, and people fell down through the first floor into the latrine in the cellar. About 60 people died, including Count Gozmar III of Ziegenhain, Count Friedrich I of Abenberg, Burgrave Friedrich I of Kirchberg, Count Heinrich I of Schwarzburg, Burgrave Burchard of Wartburg and Beringer of Meldingen. King Henry was said to have survived only because he sat in an alcove with a stone floor.

The entire Greek Schism of 1915-1922 was a comical historical event.

[The Blaatschapen]

That time India lost a $2.9 Billion USD Nuclear Submarine because someone left a Hatch Open, putting their new Sub out of commission for a year.

Finally something somewhat comically

[The Selkie]

That time India lost a $2.9 Billion USD Nuclear Submarine because someone left a Hatch Open, putting their new Sub out of commission for a year.

Finally something somewhat comically

I hope, that I can continue the trend: Naked people are funny.
People complaining about naked people are funny, especially when these naked people are of marble.
Popes complaining about naked marble people (and naked people on frescoes, but same difference) is also funny, especially when said Popes then go ahead and alter the statues and frescoes, especially a certain male part. Drapery, branches or fig leaves were used to cover said pieces up, the latter especially with free standing statues.
Cast plaster leaves were replaced by cast bronze leaves by Innocent X., later mass produced under Clement XIII.. I believe, that they were just jealous.
(And yes, a few statues were also destroyed by Pius IX., which is not as funny until you remember, that they were destroyed because they still had their pieces.)

Funnily enough, in Christian Iconography, the fig leave has two meanings: For one thing, it symbolizes the fall from grace (Adam, Eve, Eden, apple, you know the story), on the other hand, "clothing" these statues in fig leaves made the people represented "saved", as in Christian iconography, the damned were naked.

[Ethel mermania]

That time former-slave Robert Smalls just casually nabbed a Confederate warship, and sailed it, himself, several other enslaved men, and their families to freedom. Duping Confederate officials repeatedly both before and during the escape.

Honestly the guy's whole life is amazing. But that's hard to top.

Today may 12th is the 160th anniversary of the event.

Man was a badass

[Ethel mermania]

Stonewall Jackson was killed by Friendly fire whall scouting ahead of his Army in the pitch black night.

You're borderline spamming this thread at this point; maybe give it a rest?

And if you were going to talk about weirdness in Jackson's death, it would be his arm.

[Christian Confederation]

You're borderline spamming this thread at this point; maybe give it a rest?

And if you were going to talk about weirdness in Jackson's death, it would be his arm.

What happened to his arm?

[Farnhamia]

And if you were going to talk about weirdness in Jackson's death, it would be his arm.

What happened to his arm?

Yeah. I know that Stonewall Jackson's arm was buried separately from the rest of him but never heard anything about President Jackson's arm.

[The Two Jerseys]

During a test dive in 1920, the submarine USS S-20 sank in 180 feet of water after the forward torpedo room flooded. The crew determined that there was enough buoyancy in the rest of the boat to allow the stern to reach the surface so they could cut their way out of the hull, so they blew the ballast tanks, which resulted in the submarine coming to rest with her bow pointing straight down into the seabed and her stern sticking 17 feet up above the surface. After 36 hours, the crew was able to cut a small hole in the hull.

By this time, a passing ship spotted the stern of the submarine sticking out of the water and came to investigate what it was. Following maritime protocol, the two vessels exchanged the following messages:

"What ship?"
"S-5."
"What nationality?"
"American."
"Where bound?"
"Hell by compass."

After several more hours of cutting, all hands aboard S-5 were successfully rescued.

[The North Polish Union]

So I have a fun story about carrots, though I'm not sure its its really comical.

The carrot is originally from the Iran/Afghanistan region in Asia. The original carrots, as well as many found in Asia today, is usually yellow or purple. Even in medieval Europe agricultural texts refer to carrots as yellow. But today the most common is orange, why is this? As in many cases, it is the fault of the Dutch.

In the XVII century the Dutch developed an orange carrot in a spirit of patriotism, as orange is the Netherlands' national color. It apparently then spread across Europe and to the America's, becoming the dominant variety in most places.

However, this Dutch patriotism doesn't explain why the orange carrot became globally popular rather than remaining a local novelty. There must have been some kind of competitive advantage over other varieties, perhaps almost as an accident. Perhaps it is more flavorful, provides markedly better nutrition in some way, or is more disease-resistant.

My personal theory is that a variety specifically bred in the Netherlands would naturally have an adaptation to European climates, while purple or yellow carrots may have still been more suited for the Central Asian climate from which they originally came. This would mean that the orange carrot was easier to grow for European farmers than other carrots, making it dominant; and then European colonization of other parts of the world spread their orange carrot there.

[Reploid Productions]

Finally something somewhat comically

I hope, that I can continue the trend: Naked people are funny.
People complaining about naked people are funny, especially when these naked people are of marble.
Popes complaining about naked marble people (and naked people on frescoes, but same difference) is also funny, especially when said Popes then go ahead and alter the statues and frescoes, especially a certain male part. Drapery, branches or fig leaves were used to cover said pieces up, the latter especially with free standing statues.
Cast plaster leaves were replaced by cast bronze leaves by Innocent X., later mass produced under Clement XIII.. I believe, that they were just jealous.
(And yes, a few statues were also destroyed by Pius IX., which is not as funny until you remember, that they were destroyed because they still had their pieces.)

Funnily enough, in Christian Iconography, the fig leave has two meanings: For one thing, it symbolizes the fall from grace (Adam, Eve, Eden, apple, you know the story), on the other hand, "clothing" these statues in fig leaves made the people represented "saved", as in Christian iconography, the damned were naked.

If memory serves me correctly, the Vatican to this day still has all those stone penises locked up in a storage room somewhere, supposedly they didn't throw them away or destroy them, they just removed them and hid them.

[Farnhamia]

I hope, that I can continue the trend: Naked people are funny.
People complaining about naked people are funny, especially when these naked people are of marble.
Popes complaining about naked marble people (and naked people on frescoes, but same difference) is also funny, especially when said Popes then go ahead and alter the statues and frescoes, especially a certain male part. Drapery, branches or fig leaves were used to cover said pieces up, the latter especially with free standing statues.
Cast plaster leaves were replaced by cast bronze leaves by Innocent X., later mass produced under Clement XIII.. I believe, that they were just jealous.
(And yes, a few statues were also destroyed by Pius IX., which is not as funny until you remember, that they were destroyed because they still had their pieces.)

Funnily enough, in Christian Iconography, the fig leave has two meanings: For one thing, it symbolizes the fall from grace (Adam, Eve, Eden, apple, you know the story), on the other hand, "clothing" these statues in fig leaves made the people represented "saved", as in Christian iconography, the damned were naked.

If memory serves me correctly, the Vatican to this day still has all those stone penises locked up in a storage room somewhere, supposedly they didn't throw them away or destroy them, they just removed them and hid them.

Waste not, want not.

[Ethel mermania]

What happened to his arm?

Yeah. I know that Stonewall Jackson's arm was buried separately from the rest of him but never heard anything about President Jackson's arm.

He whipped the British with it and about 150 years later it became a top 40 song.