History’s Odd Moments
Little-known stories, not dates
The necklace scandal that entangled Marie Antoinette and unraveled royal credibility in pre-Revolution Paris
It’s hard to picture a whole monarchy wobbling because of a piece of jewelry, but that’s basically what happened in Paris in 1785.
The Renaissance codex that baffled royal libraries — the Voynich Manuscript’s mysterious path
A book that refuses to behave like a book People rarely ask what a “library treasure” looks like when it can’t be read.
The night massive brewery vats burst and flooded a Victorian London neighborhood with beer
How a brewery can turn into a flood People think of a brewery as pipes, steam, and a warm smell. Not as something that can burst like a dam.
Victorian resurrectionists who dug up graves to keep London’s anatomy theatres supplied
If you walk past an old London churchyard today, it can feel calm and finished. In the 1820s it often wasn’t.
When soldiers and farmers clashed with emus in 1932 Western Australia and the birds won
A war that started as pest control It’s odd how quickly a normal job can turn into a story that sounds made up.
The Boston molasses tsunami of 1919 that swept trains and toppled buildings
How molasses turns dangerous so fast People think of molasses as slow.
How a Habsburg envoy went out a window and sparked Prague’s uprising
A thrown body as a political signal People think of a riot as something that starts with shouting in a street.
When Victorian Parliament fled as the Thames reeked across London
Why a river can shut down a government People think of bad smells as a private problem.
A corpse, a forged identity and the ruse that duped WWII intelligence
How a dead body became a weapon People rarely ask how you “prove” a lie in wartime when nobody can check the facts.
The 9th-century pope who put a rival corpse on trial in the Cadaver Synod
People assume a trial needs a living defendant. In Rome in 897, that assumption broke in a way that still sounds like a rumor.
