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The Fart That Killed 10,000 People, and Other Weird Moments From History

Khalid Elhassan July 18, 2020 34 min

Wheel - Panjandrum — The Great Panjandrum. War History Online

13. The Bear Corporal

Wojtek’s exemplary services earned him a place on his unit’s official badge. Wikimedia

Wojtek the bear’s performance at Monte Cassino earned him a promotion to corporal. By then, a bear in the Polish military was no longer as weird as it had been at first. Higher-ups approved a depiction of Wojtek, carrying an artillery shell, as the official emblem of his unit. The bear corporal survived the war, then accompanied his comrades to Scotland, where they were demobilized in 1947.

93-year-old Polish veteran Wojciech Narebski in 2018, in front of a statue of wartime comrade Wotjek. Edition MV

By the time the Polish unit was demobilized, Wojtek had become popular with the locals, so he was given to the Edinburgh Zoo, where he spent the rest of his life. Corporal Wojtek was often visited by former comrades from the war and became a popular figure on BBC TV children programs. He died in 1963, at age 21.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.