Craziest stories from history

The Empress Dowager went on to rule as empress?

R1 Her son was technically in charge, but he all but abdicated power to her.

Pretty much like Cixi. Technically Empress Dowager but very much in charge.

I’m surprised that the concubine didn’t die from quadruple amputation. I guess they had surgical capabilities we didn’t credit them with.

What about poor Lady Jane Grey?

If you want to feel deeply disturbed, read the details of the execution of Robert-François Damiens in 1757.

The first governor of New York was a cross dresser.

[quote]Lord Cornbury was infamously alleged to have opened the 1702 New York Assembly in drag. He wore a "hooped gown and elaborate headdress and carrying a fan, much in the style of the fashionable Queen Anne."[62] A 2018 editorial in The New York Times on gender issues suggested that Cornbury was transgender.[63] Ross, writing in 1988, called him a "transvestite" and takes his cross-dressing as fact.[59] However, Bonomi (1998) concluded that he was not a crossdresser, as a royal governor could not have publicly cross-dressed without severe censure.[64] Bonomi further stated "there is no evidence to indicate that Cornbury was a homosexual",[65] but that it was difficult to conclude whether or not he was transgender.[1] She notes that Cornbury's preoccupation with "military matters and manly honour" could be evidence of trying to compensate for gender dysphoria, or that the death of his wife in 1706 may have "emboldened him to attempt to "pass" in public as a woman."[66] Bonomi ultimately concludes that Lord Cornbury's crossdressing was invented by his political enemies[page needed] in order to "assassinate" Cornbury's character.[67]

The Hagia Sophia has Viking graffiti.

In the Margaret Mitchell museum in Atlanta, there is a photograph from the premiere of Gone With the Wind, for which the city of Atlanta, or maybe MGM, arranged to have a number of local citizens dress up in costume to reenact the film’s Civil War setting. One of the groups asked to participate was a local church congregation of children and adults who dressed as slaves, including the pastor’s son—Martin Luther King, Jr., age 10, visible in the picture.

Looking at the photo I felt furious (what would his life had been if he was born decades earlier?) (MARY!), mixed with curiosity about whether that night charged him with purpose in some sense. A strange crossroads of history.

Martha Graham is about 64 dancing the role of the bride in her masterpiece Appalachian Spring in this televised performance from 1958. She would live until she was 96.

OP, nothing has ever changed in Chinese history.

Just watch.

R4, they had cauterization, which can be life-saving but adds to the horrible torture exquisitely.

After centuries, they knew the difference between torture with death in life and execution. And we had centuries more to further perfect the work.

Such a loss, with the filthy, greedy rabble defecating in my palaces.

I'd suggest the life of Jesus Christ but that had nothing to do with fact, much less history.

R10, What an interesting recording--not just Graham, but a Black woman as the second female lead and a Japanese dancer in the quartet--all back in 1958.

China originated death by 1000 cuts. Mean MFs.

Here’s an all-time Romanian delight!

Oh well, you might just look them all up.

Let's not forget Unit 731! Not very long ago.