Unusual Historic Events That Will Make You Cringe For Days

Neither the Royal Navy, Nor Ethiopia’s Emperor, Thought this Prank Was Funny

The pranksters made it to Weymouth in their VIP carriage, and at the appointed hour, the Royal Navy welcomed the “princes” with an honor guard. No Ethiopian flag was found, and nobody knew what the Ethiopian anthem sounded like. So a Zanzibar flag was flown, while a band played Zanzibar’s national anthem. The “royals” were conducted around the battleship, and given a tour of the fleet. Throughout, they communicated amongst themselves with gibberish. To show their appreciation or amazement at impressive items, they frequently exclaimed “Bunga Bunga!” Since none of their escorts knew Ethiopian, nobody caught on. To show their appreciation, the princes tried to bestow honors upon the helpful naval officers. The intended honorees included Commander and future admiral Willie Fisher. Two of the pranksters were his cousins, but he failed to recognize them in their guise.

When the hoax came to light, the RN was mocked and ridiculed. Embarrassed, it sought to have de Vere Cole prosecuted. That went nowhere, as no laws had been broken. Eventually, officials decided to put on the best face possible, and act as if they thought it was funny. They negotiated a punishment in which the pranksters, except for Virginia Woolf, were symbolically flogged by junior officers. Of course, the blackface bit aged badly. Later that year, an actual Ethiopian royal, Emperor Menelik II, visited Britain. He did not think the prank had been funny. Children taunted him on the streets with cries of “Bunga Bunga!“, and the RN denied his request to inspect the fleet, out of fear of further embarrassment.

The Pirates Who Thought Caesar Was Joking

Julius Caesar in 75 BC was not yet famous. The scion of an ancient but not particularly powerful patrician family, his gens, the Julii, had roots that stretched back to before Rome had even been founded. That year, he sailed across the Aegean Sea to the island of Rhodes to study oratory – a common practice for ambitious young Romans who sought to enter politics. Unfortunately, a band of pirates from Cilicia – a region of southern Asia Minor notorious at the time for piracy – captured his ship and held him for ransom. That was unfortunate for Caesar, whose voyage and the start of his oratorical studies was delayed. It was even more unfortunate for the pirates.

The young Caesar differed from other captives previously encountered by the pirates. Rather than quake in fear, he became familiar with them. Not familiar enough, though, to abandon the air of superiority that was part and parcel of Roman aristocrats. When the pirates told him that they wanted a ransom of twenty silver talents – roughly 1400 pounds of silver, he scoffed at their ignorance. Instead, he suggested that fifty talents – about 3500 pounds of silver – was more appropriate for a nobleman of his pedigree. The pirates thought it was funny that their hostage negotiated for a higher ransom, and went along with it. As seen below, he continued to amaze them with his sublime confidence as they awaited the ransom.

Bad Actors Who Thought Something Was Funny, Until it Suddenly Stopped Being Funny

For weeks, the Cilician pirates thought their odd and seemingly overconfident captive was funny. Whenever they got too loud when he wanted to sleep, Julius Caesar demanded that they quiet down. He often recited speeches and poems that he had composed, and berated them as uncultured barbarians if they failed to appreciate them. He also told them that soon as he was freed, he would come back and crucify them all. They thought he was being funny. He was not. After 38 days of captivity, Caesar’s ransom arrived, and he was freed. He immediately headed to Miletus, on Asia Minor’s western coast, and although he possessed no official authority whatsoever, raised an ad hoc naval force.

Caesar ceased to be funny in his former captors’ eyes when he sailed back to the site of his captivity, surprised the pirates, and captured them all. He took them to Pergamum, further up Asia Minor’s coast, and locked them up. He then headed to Ephesus, the province’s capital, and demanded that the Roman governor do his duty and execute them. The governor however was corrupt, and schemed to set the pirates free in exchange for a hefty bribe – they had amassed plenty of booty in their years of piracy. Disgusted, Caesar returned to Pergamum, took the pirates out of prison, and on his own authority, ordered them all crucified. He showed them a bit of leniency, though, for old times’ sake. Rather than crucify them alive and leave them to die in excruciating pain, he had their throats slit first.

This Would Have Been the Nineteenth Century’s Greatest Discovery

Excitement gripped America in the summer of 1835 when a New York newspaper, The Sun, announced the discovery of life and civilization on the Moon. In a series of six articles, the newspaper described how famous astronomer Sir John Herschel had used powerful telescopes to examine the heavens. What he saw upended all human knowledge to date. The astronomer’s accomplishments were truly stunning. “By means of a telescope of immense dimensions and an entirely new principle“, Herschel had discovered planets in other solar systems, and established new and revolutionary theories.

He had also “solved or corrected nearly every problem of mathematical astronomy“. All of that was just a tip of the iceberg: Herschel had discovered life on the Moon. Per The Sun, Herschel’s telescope revealed that the Moon teemed with life. From his observatory in the Cape of Good Hope, the astronomer saw oceans, rivers, and trees. A variety of animals roamed the lunar surface, including goats, buffalos, walking beavers, and unicorns. And flying above them all, were human-like creatures with bat wings who built houses and temples. It was just a funny and silly prank, but many swallowed it hook, line, and sinker.

A Funny Hoax That Took On a Life of Its Own

As detailed by The Sun in a 17,000-word six-part-series, Herschel had travelled to the Cape in 1834 to catalog the Southern Hemisphere’s stars. However, he discovered far more when he turned his powerful telescope to the Moon. First, were hints of vegetation, a body of water, a beach, and numerous pyramids. As the focus was adjusted for sharper detail, herds of bison-like animals were seen. Next were blue goats that looked like unicorns. Yet more animals, such as walking beavers, were described in the third installment. The biggest shocker came in the fourth installment, which announced the discovery of hominids, about four feet tall, who flew with bat wings.

“We scientifically denominated them as Vespertilio-homo, or man bat; and they are doubtless innocent and happy creatures“, the article went on. That was when public excitement grew into a fever pitch. It was also when the authors discovered that they had greatly underestimated the public’s gullibility. The articles had been intended as funny satire. Instead, they were accepted as gospel truth. The authors eventually wound down the story with the telescope’s accidental destruction. It had been left exposed to the Sun, whose rays caused its lens to act as a burning glass, which started a fire that destroyed the telescope and the observatory. Needless to say, Sir John Herschel had never claimed the funny astronomical discoveries attributed to him, nor had he made any such lunar observations.

A Great Architect With a Great Sense of Humor

Filippo Brunelleschi, an influential Italian architect and designer during the Renaissance (1377 – 1446), made significant contributions to the field by rediscovering the principles of linear perspective that had been lost during the Middle Ages. Often regarded as the key figure of Renaissance architecture, Brunelleschi was not only a meticulous planner and engineer but also an accomplished prankster. His major architectural achievement was the construction of Florence’s il Duomo, the dome of the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore. However, Brunelleschi’s creativity extended beyond architecture, as evidenced by his penchant for humorous practical jokes.

One of Brunelleschi’s most famous pranks targeted a woodworker named Manetto, known as “The Fat.” Upset that Manetto had skipped a social gathering, Brunelleschi orchestrated an elaborate scheme in which he convinced Manetto that he had switched bodies with another Florentine named Matteo. The prank escalated to the point where Manetto, thoroughly bewildered, found himself arrested for debt and taken to prison. Even after his release, the confusion persisted, as Manetto was made to believe that he had spent days morphed into Matteo. Eventually, when the truth surfaced, Manetto felt so embarrassed that he left Florence and relocated to Hungary, marking the humorous but impactful consequences of Brunelleschi’s elaborate prank.

The Emperor and the Whoopee Cushion

Helioagabalus (204 – 222) was declared Roman emperor when he was barely fourteen-years-old. He had not been groomed or prepared for the job, and until he was thrust in the throne, he had been a priest of the Syrian sun god Elagabal. As might be expected, handing absolute power to an unprepared teenager did not go well. While not as vicious as some of Rome’s more monstrous rulers – he was no gratuitously cruel Caligula or Commodus – Heliogabalus did display the occasional mean streak. It often showed in his practical jokes. Jokes that, considering the fact that he was emperor of the Roman world with none above him, always meant punching down.

At the milder end of Heliogabalus thought it was funny to seat some of his more pompous dinner guests on the ancient Roman version of whoopee cushions. But One of his favorite pranks began with the teenaged emperor getting his dinner guests so drunk, that they had to crash and sleep it off in the palace. Once the marks were zonked out, Heliogabalus had his servants sneak tame lions, leopards, bears, or a mix thereof, into the bedroom. Come the morning, the emperor would bust a gut as he laughed heartily at his hungover guests’ reaction to waking up in the midst of a menagerie of man-eating predators. Unsurprisingly, not many of the emperor’s marks thought the practical jokes were particularly funny.

It Was Funny When a Rhino Ran for Office…

The voters of Jaboatao, a Brazilian industrial town eleven hundred miles north of Rio de Janeiro, were disgusted with their municipal officials in 1955. To express their disdain for the incumbents, they elected a goat named Fragrant to the city council. Four years later, in 1959, the voters of Sao Paulo, Brazil’s most populous city, did them one better. As befit their status as the country’s biggest metropolis, they elected a much bigger quadruped: a rhinoceros. Sao Paulo’s voters were fed up that year. Corruption was rampant, garbage went uncollected, sewers overflowed, inflation was on the rise, even as supplies of basic foodstuffs such as meat and beans dwindled.

Sao Paulo’s voters faced a choice of a crowded field of 540 candidates, who competed for 45 seats on the city council. Few inspired confidence, and many were corrupt or outright criminal. Faced with such dismal options, some local students thought it would be funny to nominate a five-year-old female black rhinoceros as a candidate. As they put it: “Better elect a rhinoceros than an ass“. Named Cacareco, the new politician was a local celebrity on loan from Rio de Janeiro’s zoo to the recently inaugurated one at Sao Paulo. So the students printed and distributed 200,000 ballots with her name on them. It was just a funny gesture – but she actually won.

…and Won an Election in a Landslide

On election day, Cacareco charged to first place and won in a landslide: the rhino garnered over 100,000 votes, 15% of the total cast. As The New York Times reported, Cacareco “earned one of the highest totals for a local candidate in Brazil’s recent history“. It was actually the highest ever total won by any city council candidate until then. A sore loser party leader complained bitterly: “A ridiculous vote for a ridiculous rhinoceros. Nowhere, and never before, have 100,000 literate adult voters cast their ballots for a silent, absent, and nut brained quadruped“.

The joke candidate’s victory had some real life consequences that were not so funny. One of the failed candidates was so humiliated that he lost to a beast, that he committed suicide. Cacareco’s victory caused significant concern and hand wringing in Brazil, as some worried it indicated the country was on the verge of revolt. In the meantime, the Sao Paulo zoo’s director asked the city to pay Cacareco’s City Councilman salary. However, the fix was in, and election officials nullified her ballots. Rather than sit on Sao Paulo’s City Council, Cacareco was returned to Rio de Janeiro’s zoo, and died in 1962 while on exhibition in another zoo.

Honoring a Serial Killer

Texan Tom Moore garnered plenty of accolades throughout a productive life as a District Attorney, compassionate lawyer, and reformist legislator. He practiced law into his 90s, and in Mclennan County, he received the highest honor bestowed upon any attorney: judges no longer required him to wear ties in their courtrooms. As one of them put it: “He has such vast experience and has lived so long and has seen so much. He is the only lawyer that practices in front of me that I don’t require to wear a tie. I am quite certain that is a privilege he has earned“. Another side of Tom Moore was his sense of humor.

When he served in the Texas House of Representative, Moore grew annoyed with the numerous resolutions that were passed, even though nobody had read them. So he decided to have some fun with that. On April 1^st, 1971, Moore thought it would be funny to propose a resolution to honor an esteemed American, Albert DeSalvo. It praised him for: “his dedication and devotion to his work … He has been officially recognized by the state of Massachusetts for his noted activities and unconventional techniques involving population control and applied psychology“. The honoree’s name might ring a bell for some. After the resolution passed by a unanimous vote, Moore let his colleagues know that they had just officially honored the Boston Strangler.

Was it Funny, Sad, or Funny and Sad That a Corpse Won a Race?

Horse racing has often been referred to as “the sport of kings”, even though history records precious few kings who dominated that sport. Perhaps it got the nickname because royalty liked to watch? The basic idea, to decide which of various horses is the swiftest over a set distance or specific course, has not changed in thousands of years. The sport, whose popularity has suffered a steep decline in recent decades, can be as thrilling as thrilling gets. Naturally, the horse gets the top billing in a horse race. However, the rider is a key factor in whether a horse realizes its full potential.

Jockeys need to minimize their horses’ inertial loss. They have to ride in a manner that reduces the energy expended by their steed as it bounces its rider up and down and forward and backwards with each stride. That makes it easier for a horse to carry a jockey than an equal deadweight attached to its saddle. It is hard work. So hard, that jockeys have suffered heart attacks, and even died, from the exertion. One such, as seen below, expired mid-race, but still won despite the fact that he was dead by the time he crossed the finish line.

A Literal Dead Finish

Frank Hayes was a horse trainer and stableman. One day in 1923, the then twenty-two-year-old (or thirty five – contemporary accounts differ) was asked to ride a horse in a steeplechase at the Belmont Park racetrack in New York. His horse, Sweet Kiss, was a 20:1 longshot. Between that and the fact that it was Hayes’ first race, nobody expected much of him or of his steed. He surprised everybody – on multiple levels. To make weight, Hayes had to slim down from 142 pounds to 130. He reportedly pulled it off in a day. As the Buffalo Morning Express described it: “he spent several hours on the road, jogging off surplus weight. He strove and sweated and denied himself water and when he climbed into the saddle at post time he was weak and tired“.

That was a bad place to be at the start of a race. Especially for a newbie who had never raced before. The sport is demanding of jockeys. Their arms and legs work like pistons nonstop, and their hearts can beat 180 times a minute. At some point during the race that turned out to be Hayes’ first and last, he suffered a heart attack and died instantly. However, he did not fall off his horse, but remained in the saddle and crossed the finish line in first place. It was only when officials came to congratulate him that they discovered that he was dead. Hayes became the only deceased jockey known to have won a race. As to Sweet Kiss, it never raced again. It became known forever after as the “Sweet Kiss of Death”.

That Wasn’t the First Time a Corpse Won a Competition

Pankration is the ancestor of modern Mixed Martial Arts. A Greek word that means “all force”, pankration combined wrestling and boxing. Nearly everything was permitted except for gouging and biting, or attacking an opponent’s genitals. Arrhichion of Phigalia (died 564 BC), was ancient Greece’s most famous pankratist, and champion in the 572 BC and 568 BC Olympiads. He again competed in the 564 BC Olympics, seeking a third championship. Arrhichion advanced through the early rounds and reached the title fight. There, perhaps with age catching up with him and slowing him down, he got into trouble. His opponent outmaneuvered Arrhichion, got behind him, and with legs locked around his torso and heels digging into his groin, applied a chokehold.

Arrhichion feigned loss of consciousness, to trick his opponent into relaxing a little. When he did, the wily title holder snapped back into action, and snapped his opponent’s ankle while shaking and throwing him off with a convulsive heave. The sudden excruciating pain induced his opponent into the ancient Greek equivalent of tapping out, and he made the sign of submission to the referees. However, in throwing off his opponent while the latter still had him in a powerful chokehold, Arrhichion ended up with a broken neck. His opponent having already conceded, the dead Arrhichion’s was declared the title bout’s winner. It was probably the only time in Olympics history that a corpse was crowned champion. Arrhichion thus added a wrinkle to the athletic ideal of “victory or death” by simultaneously gaining victory and death.

When Animal Trials Were a Thing

Animals that misbehaved could be criminally tried in court in Middle Ages Europe. In 1457, a sow in Savigny, France, with six piglets in tow, attacked and killed a five-year-old. Nowadays, the sow’s owner might face criminal charges for negligence. Medieval Europeans had different notions of law and justice. Savigny’s authorities charged the sow with murder, and brought charges against the piglets as accomplices. A lawyer was appointed to defend the accused, and after testimony was heard, a judge found the porcine guilty. In accordance with local custom, he sentenced her to be hanged to death by her hind legs. If it was any relief to the sow, her execution was not as painful as that of another pig convicted of homicide in Falaise, Normandy, in 1386. It was sentenced not only to hang, but to also be maimed in the head and forelegs before hanging.

Fortunately for the piglets, they did not share their mother’s fate. Although they had been found covered in blood, their participation in the murder was not proven, so they were acquitted. To criminally try animals might seem strange and funny nowadays, because we know they lack the moral agency necessary to make them culpable for crimes. We’re not medieval Europeans, though. Back then, all involved in such trials, judges, lawyers, bailiffs, and hangmen in case the animal was found guilty, took the proceedings quite seriously. The Savigny sow had been imprisoned pending the trial, and the jailer charged the same daily rate for the pig’s board as that of human prisoners. The court hired a professional hangman to carry out the sentence, and he charged the same fees as those charged for the execution of a human.

Funny Footwear History Facts

The significance of footwear varies, depending on time and place. In the ancient Middle East, shoes were symbols of authority. To place one’s foot on a defeated enemy’s neck or head demonstrated dominance. Likewise, to kiss the shoe or foot of a ruler was a ritualized display of submission to his authority. That belief in the shoe or foot as symbolic of authority eventually made it to Europe. In medieval France, for example, kings required vassals to kiss their feet as a demonstration of allegiance. In the Viking era, tired of raids by Norsemen, France’s King Charles III figured that it takes a thief to catch a thief. So he granted Normandy to Rollo the Viking, in exchange for the latter’s agreement to become Christian, become the king’s vassal, and fight off other Vikings.

To finalize the agreement, attendant bishops urged Rollo to kiss the king’s foot as a display of fealty. Rollo refused to kiss another man’s foot. Instead, he ordered one of his warriors to kiss the king’s foot on his behalf. Rather than kneel down to do so, however, the Viking remained standing, and lifted the royal foot to his mouth, causing Charles to topple over. In Islamic culture, footwear is left at mosque entrances because shoes are deemed unclean. So they are removed in the presence of God to show respect and submission. Shoe soles are seen as particularly repugnant in the Middle East. There, it is offensive to show others one’s shoe sole, and to throw footwear at or hit somebody with it is a major insult.

The Cultural Significance of Footwear

Sultana Shajar al Durr ruled Egypt starting in 1250. Her reign was cut short in 1257, when her maids beat her to death with slippers as she bathed. Al Durr’s enemies were not only pleased at her demise, but took extra satisfaction from the manner of her death, inflicted by offensive footwear. The Middle Eastern belief that shoes are ritually unclean survives. In an infamous 2008 incident, an Iraqi journalist expressed his disgust with President George W. Bush by throwing his shoes at him in a Baghdad press conference. Elsewhere in the world, however, throwing shoes at people can convey the opposite message. In contrast to the Middle Eastern cultural perspective that throwing a shoe at somebody is a mortal insult, there is a belief in other parts of the world that throwing a shoe at somebody brings good fortune.

In medieval Europe, a belief developed that shoes are good luck. Text dating back centuries references shoes thrown at newly married couples to wish them good fortune. The belief that throwing shoes at somebody brought good luck lasted into the modern era. For example, Queen Victoria threw her shoes at British soldiers in 1854 to wish them well as they headed out for the Crimean War. She also wrote in her diary that shoes were thrown into the doorway of Balmoral Castle when it was completed in 1855, for good luck. It was a continuation of another long-held belief, that shoes brought good fortune to homes. For centuries, well-worn shoes were placed in the rafters or inside the walls of homes that underwent renovations, in the belief that doing so wards off witchcraft and evil spirits.

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Where Did We Find This Stuff? Some Sources and Further Reading

Adams, Tracy – Agnes Sorel and the French Monarchy: History, Gallantry, and National Identity (2022)

Ancient Origins – Filippo Brunelleschi and His Remarkable Renaissance Prank

AV Club – Wikipedia Erected a Page to Explain Ancient Rome’s Fascination With the Phallus

Ball, Warwick – Rome in the East: The Transformation of an Empire (2000)

CNN – Frank Hayes: The Jockey Who Won a Race Despite Being Dead

Collector – Scourge of the Inner Sea: The Pirates of the Ancient Mediterranean

Cortauldian – Masculinity in Ancient Greece

Daily Beast – The Rhinoceros Who Won an Election by a Landslide

Dover, K. J. – Greek Homosexuality (1978)

Encyclopedia Britannica – The Time Julius Caesar Was Captured by Pirates

Fashion History Museum – Sole Discretion

History Collection – Victorian Spirit Photography is More Than Bad Photoshop

Jewish Quarterly Review, New Series, Vol. 6, No. 1 (Jul., 1915) – The Symbolism of the Shoe With Special Reference to Jewish Sources

Journal of Combative Sport, September, 2003 – Arrichion’s Last Fight: What Really Happened?

JSTOR Daily, September 13^th, 2017 – When Societies Put Animals on Trial

King, Ross – Brunelleschi’s Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture (2013)

National Geographic Magazine, February, 2014 – Brunelleschi’s Dome

National Public Radio – Being a Jockey Isn’t Just Horsing Around

Open Culture – Virginia Woolf and Friends Dress Up as ‘Abyssinian Princes’ and Fool the British Royal Navy

Palestine Herald Press, June 2^nd, 2009 – Waco Attorney Still Going Strong at 91

Smithsonian Magazine, July 2^nd, 2015 – The Great Moon Hoax Was Simply a Sign of Its Time

Time Magazine, October 19^th, 1959 – BRAZIL: The Rhino Vote