Welcome to our roundup of 10 iniquitous facts that history textbooks often sweep under the rug. We love to shine a flashlight on the bizarre, obscene, and downright depraved moments that teachers rarely mention. These scandalous snippets are exactly what makes the past so fascinating—and endlessly entertaining.
10 Iniquitous Facts Hidden In History’s Dark Corners
The Office of Chief Medical Examiner of the City of New York (OCME) today boasts some of the nation’s most skilled pathologists, but its origins are steeped in corruption and chaos. In the mid‑ to late‑19th century, New York maintained a hodgepodge of independent coroners whose numbers swelled alongside the city’s explosive growth.
The system suffered from two fatal flaws. First, the coroner’s seat was an elected post, yet the elections were routinely bought, handing the job to individuals with zero medical training. Second, the office paid officials by the number of bodies they examined, a policy that turned many coroners into literal body snatchers, willing to go to grotesque lengths for a quick buck.
Coroners often clashed in public, each trying to claim a corpse for their own profit. Some staged impromptu autopsies in front of grieving families, just to pad the state’s bill. Families who protested faced threats of inquests, arrests, and even intimidation by juries hand‑picked by the very coroners they were suing. Insurance firms also colluded, rewarding coroners for ruling deaths as suicides so policies wouldn’t have to pay out.
The corruption persisted until reform‑minded Mayor John Purroy Mitchel took office in 1914. He commissioned a scathing investigation that revealed none of the 65 coroners who had served since the city’s consolidation possessed proper qualifications; only 19 had any medical background. The rest were a motley crew of politicians, undertakers, real‑estate dealers, and even a plumber, a woodcarver, a musician, and a milkman.
9 Where Hickok Got His Bill
The McCanles Massacre remains one of the Old West’s most puzzling episodes. Three men fell dead that day, and “Wild Bill” Hickok fired the majority of the shots. Some historians argue the victims—David McCanles and his two companions—were a criminal gang intent on murder; others contend they were unarmed and met an unprovoked, brutal end.
This shoot‑out is widely regarded as Hickok’s first gunfight, and it also sparked the nickname that would later define him. Prior to the clash, he was simply known as “Bill.” However, McCanles taunted him with the moniker “Duck Bill,” a jibe aimed at Hickok’s protruding lips and elongated nose.
Hickok despised the mockery. In retaliation, he grew out a thick mustache to conceal his upper lip and began calling himself “Wild Bill.” For a period he reverted to his birth name, James Hickok, and official records sometimes misspelled his surname as “Haycock” or “Hitchcock.”
8 Charles Babbage Almost Drowned Himself
Charles Babbage is celebrated today as the “father of the computer,” thanks to his groundbreaking designs of the Difference Engine and the Analytical Engine—early mechanical computers that paved the way for modern computing.
Yet, at the tender age of sixteen, Babbage’s inventive spirit nearly cost him his life. Inspired by the flamboyant experiments of his contemporaries, he decided to test a fanciful idea: walking on water. While swimming in the River Dart near his family home, he fashioned a pair of wooden boards hinged to the soles of his shoes, hoping the contraption would keep his feet level and provide extra thrust against the water.
The concept was simple yet daring. The hinged boards were meant to stay flat when his foot pressed down, giving him a larger surface area to push against the current. When he lifted his foot, the hinges would fold the boards inward, preventing any drag. Initially, the device worked, allowing Babbage to remain upright with only modest effort.
Disaster struck when one hinge failed. Babbage spun out of control, swimming in circles as the current carried him downstream. Exhausted and disoriented, he finally felt the riverbed beneath his feet, trudged to shore, and collapsed in a state of utter fatigue.
7 Why There Are Two Heads In Haydn’s Tomb
Body parts have a knack for wandering far from their original owners, but few stories are as quirky as the saga of Austrian composer Joseph Haydn’s missing skull. After a successful career at the Esterházy court, Haydn died in 1809 amidst the turmoil of Napoleon’s invasion of Vienna, receiving only a modest funeral.
Two devoted admirers—Rosenbaum and Peter—exploited the chaotic wartime atmosphere to bribe a local undertaker, securing Haydn’s head for their own phrenological curiosities. Phrenology, the pseudo‑science of reading personality traits from skull shapes, was all the rage, and they cherished the cranium as a prized trophy.
When Prince Nikolaus Esterházy later commissioned a grand tomb for his famed musician, workers uncovered a body lacking its skull. The prince tracked down Rosenbaum, who slyly produced a different skull while keeping the original hidden. After Rosenbaum’s death, the genuine head passed through several hands before landing with the Society of Friends of Music in Vienna, which ultimately handed it over to Prince Paul Esterházy.
In 1954, the long‑lost skull was finally reunited with Haydn’s remains, resulting in a tomb that now contains two heads—one original, one substitute—standing as a testament to the bizarre twists of post‑mortem intrigue.
6 Shakespeare’s Naughty Joke
William Shakespeare may be revered as a literary titan, but he was far from the prim, proper gentleman some schoolbooks paint him to be. His plays are peppered with bawdy jokes, and on one occasion he slipped a vulgar word into the script to mock the puritanical critics of his day.
In Twelfth Night, the pompous steward Malvolio falls for a fabricated love letter meant to humiliate him. The letter reads, “By my life, this is my lady’s hand. These be her very C’s, her U’s, and her T’s, and thus makes she great P’s. It is, in contempt of question, her hand.” When spoken aloud, the phrase “C’s … and her T’s” sounds like “CUT,” and the “and” morphs into an “N,” turning the innocent word into a crude expletive.
Thus, the audience hears a hidden profanity that would have scandalized the era’s moral guardians, showcasing Shakespeare’s mischievous side and his willingness to poke fun at the very critics who condemned his work.
5 A Bloody Day At The Circus
Circus disasters are an unfortunate staple of entertainment history, yet few are as gruesome as the 1870 tragedy that claimed the lives of an entire marching band. The James Robinson Circus’s manager devised a daring stunt: the band would perform atop a stage perched on the lid of a cage housing ferocious Barbary lions during the parade.
Despite repeated warnings that the rig was dangerously unstable, the spectacle proved a crowd‑pleaser—until the day the procession reached Middletown, Kansas. While navigating a tight turn, the leading carriages tangled, causing the driver steering the lion‑cage carriage to lose control and crash into a rock.
The impact shattered the supporting braces, sending the entire stage crashing down into the lion’s den. The musicians were thrust into the jaws of the hungry beasts, and a frantic rescue effort ensued as locals raided a nearby hardware store for tools and weapons to breach the cage.
Out of the ten band members, three were torn apart on the spot, while four more succumbed to their injuries later. Even the alpha lion, Old Nero, had to be put down after he turned on his keeper during the chaotic rescue.
4 A Night To Remember For Cesare Borgia
The Borgia dynasty epitomizes Renaissance intrigue, wealth, and scandal. While Pope Alexander VI (Rodrigo Borgia) often dominates the conversation, his son Cesare was equally notorious, earning a reputation for ruthless ambition and decadent excess.
Beyond the infamous Banquet of Chestnuts, Cesare’s personal life held its own embarrassments. In 1499 he wed the French noblewoman Charlotte of Albret, and after the lavish festivities he proudly reported to his father that he had consummated the marriage eight times that very night.
The triumph was short‑lived. Cesare had procured a batch of “virility pills” from an apothecary, but the pharmacist mistakenly gave him laxatives. The result? A night spent sprinting to the privy, unable to fulfill any of his boastful claims.
3 Robert Liston Sets An Infelicitous Record
In the early 19th century, Scottish surgeon Robert Liston earned fame for his lightning‑fast amputations, a vital skill when every second could mean the difference between life and death in a world without anesthesia.
Unfortunately, his speed sometimes bordered on recklessness. On one occasion Liston sliced off a patient’s leg in just two and a half minutes—only to also amputate the man’s testicles in the same flurry. In another case, his assistant, who was holding the patient down, lost two fingers, and a gentleman spectator watching the operation lost a few coattail stitches as Liston’s blade whizzed past.
Both the patient and his assistant later died of gangrene, and the shocked onlooker reportedly succumbed to a fatal heart attack, believing the surgeon’s knife had actually cut him.
2 Mary’s Bad Hair Day
Legend has it that on the day of her execution, Mary, Queen of Scots, suffered an extra humiliation: the executioner lifted her head, declared “God Save the Queen,” and the crown’s regal wig slipped away, exposing her bald scalp to the shocked crowd.
Eyewitness Robert Wynkfielde corroborated the tale, noting that while Mary indeed wore a wig, she also had short, grey hair befitting a woman of “threescore and ten” years. The execution, however, was far from swift—three blows were required. The first strike missed the neck, the second grazed her head, and the final swing finally severed her head.
Adding a bizarre footnote, one of the executioners discovered that Mary’s beloved little dog had hidden beneath her petticoat, refusing to leave its mistress’s side even after the tragic event.
1 The Perversions Of Tiberius
While Nero and Caligula dominate popular imagination as Rome’s most depraved emperors, their predecessor Tiberius may have been even more sinister, allegedly indulging in rampant pedophilia and other unspeakable acts.
The primary source for these lurid claims is Suetonius’s The Twelve Caesars, a work rife with gossip, rumor, and the author’s own biases, written a full century after Tiberius’s reign. Nevertheless, the Roman historian Tacitus, in his Annals, also accused Tiberius of “every wickedness and disgrace” once he cast off fear and shame.
After the death of his son Drusus in AD 23, Tiberius retreated to the island of Capri, delegating power to the Praetorian Prefect Sejanus. There, he allegedly filled his private chambers with pornographic paintings, erotic sculptures, and a library of lewd literature, while presiding over orgies and encouraging youths to dress as Pan and nymphs and roam the island’s woods.
Suetonius goes further, describing how boys would “tease him with their licks and nibbles” while swimming, and, most horrifyingly, how “unweaned babies he would put to his organ as though to the breast.” Whether fact or sensationalized rumor, these accusations underscore a legacy of moral corruption that still intrigues scholars.