You know the name. When it comes the Renaissance, his is probably the first one that comes to mind, conjuring up a sense of ingenuity and enigmatic, creative prowess. For most people, Leo might as well be the only guy who did anything during the Renaissance. But when you examine the evidence, the story of Leonardo da Vinci as an historical icon is bunk in practically every aspect of his legend.

The man had lots of ideas, including some interesting ones. But the truth is a bit of a letdown. Though he was surely more talented than most of us, there were far superior practitioners in every single field Leonardo dabbled in. The era was so crowded with geniuses that if you walked down any street in 16th-century Italy, you would were bound to brush past one or two that accomplished feats of more lasting significance than he did. When you compare his legacy to other enlightened minds of his era, his work does not stack up very well.

10His Painting Skills Were Surprisingly Dodgy

Even if you accept that the Mona Lisa is the greatest painting of all time because that is what we have always been told, it is pretty much like every other run-of-the-mill portrait commissioned back then, except that her eyebrows wore off.

Most of Leonardo’s paintings are standard portraits and religious scenes, not exactly earth-shattering, and they are so boring that you could not pick out any of them out of a line-up. In a few decades, men like Titian and Raphael would produce works easily beyond Leonardo. And nobody who looks at the work of Caravaggio, who painted many of the same biblical themes and subjects and worked within a century of da Vinci, could disagree that he makes Leonardo’s best pieces look hopelessly antiquated and conventional.

Composition-wise, The Last Supper isn’t anything special either, and regardless of style, there is actually a major flaw hidden within the work that most people do not even know about. Any master artist can tell you that The Last Supper is a technical disaster. The fresco began to fall apart within Leonardo’s own lifetime due to his own lack of knowledge of how to correctly apply the special egg-tempera paint he prepared. That leads to our next point . . . 

9In A Head-To-Head Contest With Michelangelo, He Lost—Badly

Lest The Last Supper sound like a one-time mistake, the error was repeated again. In a competition with Michelangelo to decorate opposing walls of the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, in what should been the most exciting art spectacle in history, da Vinci failed monumentally. He didn’t know enough about his craft to execute the project.

He mistakenly tried to apply oil paint to an unprepared wall. The colors of his painting, The Battle of Anghiari, ran in the humid air, a blunder he never recovered from. Leonardo walked away in frustration. The painting competition was over before it even got interesting. Michelangelo emerged triumphant with his Battle of Cascina fresco in the battle of geniuses.

As fate would have it, Michelangelo got snatched up by the very impressed Pope, leaving his uncompleted wall to be destroyed by envious locals who despised his talent. Leo’s Battle of Anghiari was painted over by a nobody to fix his amateurish-looking mess years later.

8His Most Famous Inventions Were Not Original

Leonardo da Vinci is known to have been an inventive mastermind of the first order. But there is a slight hitch in this preconceived notion: It is a lie.

The “helicopter” he famously designed was not a helicopter but an inclined screw. He borrowed the design verbatim from a long-known Chinese kid’s toy without grasping (or caring) that this toy did not spin upward by its own force but was intended merely to twirl down. His helicopter, as it appears to anyone who understands the most basic of physics, is not airworthy. It cannot be made to fly and it never will. Da Vinci did not really comprehend aerodynamics or the necessity of an engine for powered human flight or the physics of propulsion.

He gets credit for a lot of machinery and innovative designs, like the hang glider, to name just one. But he was not the first to design a hang glider, nor the second. The other two guys—an English monk and an Muslim polymath named Abbas ibn Firnas—who did design them test flew them with varying success despite the very dangerous realities of flinging oneself off a ledge. Any technology or modification of any existing device that is depicted anywhere in his notebooks is assumed by less stringent historians to be his, but research usually proves this to be verifiably incorrect.

7He Was A Mediocre Sculptor

If you’re looking to Leonardo’s great sculptures to redeem him, you will sadly never find them. None exist anywhere. The only existing physical statue we have to evaluate his ability is a conventional bronze equestrian model statue, complete with an awkward metal strut supporting the massive weight of the horse and rider. A side note to keep in mind: The primary advantage of bronze over marble was that you do not need struts to support bronze if you know how to balance the weight properly, which Leonardo did not, based on what is left of the model. So it is reasonable to conclude his grasp of metalworking was fairly substandard, and the myth of the artist’s genius and mastery of science evaporates in one single prototype.

Compared to someone like Gian Lorenzo Bernini, the gulf between a true artist and a dabbler becomes strikingly clear. Bernini arguably pushed the medium to its ultimate level with his The Rape of Proserpina. The marble detail is so fine that you can see skin realistically rippling under fingers, individual teardrops, and wisps of blowing hair—all beautiful enough to distract us from the unpleasant fact that we are witnessing some seriously messed up Greek mythology. Leonardo’s giant horse statue on the other hand, was commissioned by the Duke of Milan but never was constructed because Leonardo never figured out a way of casting it. The Duke, Ludovico Sforza, openly wondered if he was wasting his time with Leonardo because his approach to the project was so lax.

Leonardo da Vinci never got further than the drawing board phase on Sforza’s horse for the same reason he never completed his celebrated The Battle of Anghiari: He most likely did not understand his own craft despite what we all like to think. After Leonardo’s plodding first few steps, the Duke pulled the plug. If Leonardo had not wasted so much time, Sforza might have found a replacement soon enough, and the fabulous equestrian statue might have been erected.

6 His Real Inventions Were Junk

Da Vinci’s inventions were awesome, right? That’s a fair question to shout angrily at the screen as you read this, but his inventions were more often than not harebrained or dead ends. There is a good reason they were not constructed from his blueprints; they were not practical nor necessary. Most were abandoned in the early stages and were not workable without a lot of added parts or modifications.

Producing sketches is a large part of Leonardo’s legacy. But to call yourself an inventor, you should also produce viable prototypes and then work out the kinks. There doesn’t seem to be much proof he ever did work past the preliminary stages on the vast majority of his drawings. The robotic soldier he made was just a parlor trick that rattled around, by historians’ best estimates. The contraption only functioned when modern engineers added parts and fixed the faulty design.

His tank, when tested in real life, was painfully slow in ideally dry and flat terrain (a far cry from realistic 15th-century battlefield conditions) and would have concussed and permanently deafened the poor serfs inside who fired the canons. Self-propelled armored vehicles were, interestingly, not new. Any claim that he could have changed the face of warfare is wishful thinking.

As for the perpetual motion machine he supposedly built, physicists since at least the 18th century will remind us that 100-percent energy efficient machines cannot exist. Modern science has rejected that idea. Leonardo did not come up with that idea nor perfect it either. We can stop pretending like he was onto something there or ahead of his time. It is instances like this that indicate he was trapped firmly within the medieval mindset.

While Leonardo was inventing a parachute 400 years before anyone accidentally found a logical use for it, he gave up on a conical bullet design (i.e., the bullet used today), despite working for despots who fought wars for a living and who could have used it.

5He Copied His Legendary Notebooks From Others

Da Vinci did keep interesting notebooks, and had he kept on developing upon the ideas and refining them, he might have changed the world. But scholars today openly admit that those notebooks are probably copies . . . of copies.

Mariano Taccola was another eccentric creative type in Italy who kept notebooks, and it was from these that Leonardo got his trademark Vitruvian Man (as well as many of his fantastic blueprints). Some historians further believe that a mathematician named Giacomo Andrea actually deserves the credit.

Neither did Leonardo invent underwater demolition, another innovation posthumously assigned credit for. His optical “death ray” was borrowed from Archimedes. The flywheel was already conceived centuries before by some other guy we do not care to learn about, and though Leonardo never bothered to find anything to do with his version, the flywheel is yet another gadget he is granted the credit for dreaming up.

There has some speculation that many of his inventions might very well have originated with designs of Chinese origins, which makes a lot of sense considering the Chinese invented such staples of modern civilization as the printing press, cannons, rockets, rifles, and paper in pre-Columbian times.

4He Was Not A Respected Civil Engineer In His Time

His civil engineering track record is worse than you think for the simple reason he couldn’t secure contracts nor deliver anything he promised. Other than a proposed bridge that was not built, an insane scheme to reverse the flow of the Arno river—which failed miserably when his contingency plan featuring earthen dams collapsed in a rainstorm—and some other local projects for Venice including a dike (which was rejected as over-priced), da Vinci accomplished nothing despite the massive acclaim he gets as a skilled civil engineer. Designing grandiose projects is not the sign of a good designer, as any engineer can tell you.

Generally, his ideas were too fantastic or complicated to be practically implemented, and they were always too expensive. His plans didn’t solve problems efficiently but instead posed more. When a Norwegian team tried to actually construct one of Leonardo’s designs, more out of curiosity than for any practical use, they ran into the same problem as did the 16th-century Italian dukes. It cost too much.

3His Anatomical Work Was Not Important

Dissections of corpses was all but banned as an immoral practice by the Church authorities, therefore Leonardo’s anatomical drawings were all that much more important, many suggest. However, his contemporaries—Michelangelo, Durer, Amusco, and Vesalius—all made laborious studies of dissections as well, work more impressive not only artistically but scientifically because they actually tried to pass on their observations to others to expand the limits of human knowledge. Leonardo, again, is one in a crowded field.

Leonardo took extreme precautions to prevent anything he learned from being used by outsiders by writing his notes backward. Charles Estienne wrote an entire detailed series on the human body, depicting the internal organs, muscles, arteries, and veins for academic use, while Leo’s notes were kept secret for centuries. His arguably greatest (and sole) contribution to science is completely redundant, paling in comparison to other pioneers.

2He Left No Great Formulas, Discoveries, Theorems, Hypotheses, Philosophical Treatises Or Breakthroughs

Leonardo did not have much to say of new or lasting importance when it came to chemistry, medicine, sociology, astronomy, mathematics, or physics either, as one might think for an individual of his level of superstardom. He left no treatise or thesis and had no astounding concepts, equations, techniques, or groundbreaking theories to call his own like Newton or Francis Bacon.

His lone resonating scientific idea was his hunch that the Great Flood of the Bible probably didn’t happen based on his observations of natural rock formations, which he conveniently kept to himself instead of using to question the status quo. He was skilled in science, maintained a basic understanding of the human body, and possessed a healthy skepticism, but to call him a scientific “genius” seems unwarranted in comparison to the pantheon of ignored luminaries of the age like Gilbert, Fibonacci, Brahe, Mercator (not to mention the ancient Greeks and Medieval Muslims) who all exerted tangible, lasting influence on the sciences during the Renaissance and even today.

1He Was An All-Around Terrible Role Model

Leonardo was not a thwarted genius. A lot of great thinkers were able to realize their ideas under just as much social pressure and limitations.

Nobody was in a better position than Leonardo; he had the best teachers and patrons. Leonardo’s former overseer, Filippo Brunelleschi, was a master goldsmith who also dabbled in architecture and civil engineering like Leonardo. That is where the similarities end. Charged with completing the dome of Florence’s Duomo, arguably the most recognizable building of the period, he completed it after all the other architects had failed for decades. Brunelleschi not only connived to get his archrival off his back in a maneuver straight out of Machiavelli, he then proceeded to custom build the astoundingly modern cranes needed to complete the unprecedented construction project. His brilliant innovations genuinely changed his world and remain cultural and architectural milestones, in his spare time discovering linear perspective.

Roughly the same time da Vinci was studying his dissections, Bartolomeo Eustachi was teaching and writing books on dentistry and the inner ear and doodling his own models, creating far more demanding and anatomically accurate diagrams that still look like they could have come from modern anatomy textbooks. They even named a body part after Eustachi for his effort. Giordano Bruno was a scholar, poet, mathematician, and mystic, best remembered for accurately guessing the that stars are just other suns and that they logically should have their own planets, suggesting alien life exists like many modern astrophysicists do now. Daring to question prevailing religious dogma, he went one step beyond Copernicus and actively dismissed the tenets he thought silly and unscientific. Then he was executed as a reward.

Da Vinci, meanwhile, proposed incredible machines, which he found impossible to complete or sell to clients, and it might be surmised he simply did not care to understand them. While others were dying for their right to question power in the name of science or speak out against religious intolerance, da Vinci kowtowed to despots and power-hungry aristocrats.

Nathan Williams is a freelance writer based in Ohio. You can read some of his work at Cracked.com here.

Between 1276 and 1178 BC, a confederation of pirates known collectively as the Sea Peoples terrorized the coastal cities and civilizations of the eastern Mediterranean. For the most part, these pirates, who were the Bronze Age precursors to the Vikings of Scandinavia, preyed upon Egypt, which at that time was in its New Kingdom period.

What followed was a series of destructive raids that culminated in two major battles—the Battle of Djahy and the Battle of the Delta. The former, a land battle, was won by the army of Pharaoh Ramses III. The latter, a naval battle, not only repulsed one of the last major invasions by the Sea Peoples but may very well have saved ancient Egyptian civilization.

Despite their important role in history and the widely held notion that they were responsible for the Late Bronze Age Collapse, a near-catastrophic decline in civilization throughout the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean, the Sea Peoples remain the subject of controversy.

Although there are many areas of consensus, some historians and archaeologists continue to discover new interpretations. The following 10 theories present a spectrum of the many different theories regarding the Sea Peoples.

10 The Philistines

Depicted as the archvillains of the ancient Israelites in the Old Testament, the Philistines settled the southern coast of Israel (which today includes the Gaza Strip). After establishing settlements, the Philistines formed a confederation of city-states that included Gaza, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Gath, and Ekron.

The Philistines came into conflict with the Israelites once they started expanding their power beyond their coastal domains. Because of this conflict, the Israelites not only demonized the Philistines but made actual demons out of their gods, including the fish god Dagon. Elsewhere in the Bible, the Philistines were synthesized in the form of the giant Goliath, a proud, loutish warrior who is bested by the small and humble fighter David.

Outside of the Bible, the Philistines are mentioned in several Syrian, Phoenician, and Egyptian letters. While it is generally considered that the Philistines were a group of Sea Peoples who settled the area, not everyone agrees on their exact origins.

One of the more common theories is that the Philistines were originally from the Aegean Sea region, with many more people claiming that the Philistines were Mycenaean Greeks. Archaeological digs near the ancient Philistine city of Gath uncovered pieces of pottery that bear close similarities to ancient Greek objects. Furthermore, a red-and-black ceramic bear taken from one of the excavations almost certainly points to the influence of the Mycenaean culture.

9 The Sardinian Connection

In the Medinet Habu, a mortuary temple dedicated to Ramses III, there is carved into the stone the most famous depiction of the Sea Peoples. Showing several battles, the relief closely identifies the Sea Peoples with several different types of headwear.

The most striking group is depicted wearing horned helmets. It is commonly believed that these fighters belong to the Sherden, one of nine groups named by Egyptian records. Again, because the ancient Egyptians were mostly interested in fighting and defeating the Sea Peoples, they did not keep detailed records concerning their origins.

However, several researchers have concluded that the Sherden people were from Sardinia. Specifically, the Sherden are considered part of the island’s Nuragic civilization, a little-known civilization that left behind numerous stone sites, including towers, houses, and burial complexes. The Nuragic people (so named because of their stone structures, or “nuraghe”) also left behind statues, including Bronze Age figurines showing Sardinian warriors wearing horned helmets.

8 The Sicilian Connection

Following the age of the Sea Peoples, the island of Sicily was divided between three major tribes—the Elymians, the Sicani, and the Siculi (sometimes referred to as the Sicels). While the Sicani were indigenous to the island, the Elymians are believed to have originally come from Asia Minor and had deep connections to the Greek city-states of the Aegean Sea.

The Sicels, on the other hand, were likely an Italic tribe from the mainland. All three tribes may have connections to the Sea Peoples, but it is believed that marauders from Sicily were part of the invasions by the Sea Peoples. Specifically, these Sicilian pirates were called the Shekelesh by the Egyptians.

For their part, the later Greek conquerors of ancient Sicily believed that the Sicels had fled to Troy after being defeated by the Egyptians. From there, they traveled to southern Italy and finally to Sicily. Modern historians seem to corroborate this belief that the Sicels and the Elymians were both defeated members of the Sea Peoples confederation who found shelter in Sicily.

7 The Etruscans

Few European civilizations remain as mysterious as the Etruscans. These inhabitants of northern and central Italy left behind a still mostly indecipherable alphabet and language, thereby forcing historians to rely for further information on Roman records as well as the colorful tombs that the Etruscans built for one another. The question of Etruscan origins is far from new because the ancient Greeks pondered the issue themselves.

While some ancient Greeks believed that the Etruscans were related to the Pelasgians, an Aegean tribe who spoke a dialect of Mycenaean Greek, Dionysius of Halicarnassus claimed that the Etruscans were in fact the native inhabitants of Italy. The most often repeated assertion comes from Herodotus, however. Herodotus (and later Virgil) believed that the Etruscans came from the Anatolian region of Lydia and were led to Italy by King Tyrrhenus.

Interestingly enough, one of the Sea Peoples were the Teresh, whom some ancient historians also called the Tyrrhenians. According to this theory, the forefathers of the Etruscans were originally Greek pirates who sacked and settled Lydia before being pushed out of Anatolia by a famine. This origin might explain the similarities between Etruscan and Greek religions.

6 Connection To The Balkans

While most of the Sea Peoples came from either the Aegean or the wider Mediterranean, many historians argue that groups from the Adriatic Sea also joined the migration. Specifically, Austrian historian Fritz Schachermeyr asserted in 1982 that the Sherden and Shekelesh were originally from the Adriatic and had connections to the ancient Illyrians.

Today, little is known about the Illyrians besides the fact that they were a tribal confederation that ruled much of modern-day Croatia, Slovenia, Montenegro, Bosnia, Serbia, and Albania. Furthermore, it is also believed that certain Illyrian tribes settled the Italian peninsula and intermixed with local Italic tribes. Recently, two researchers with Vienna University dispelled another notion about the Illyrians—that their language directly influenced modern Albanian.

Although Schachermeyr’s theory is not commonly held among students of the Sea Peoples, there are those who continue to believe that a famine in the Balkans drove several tribes, including the Illyrians, to migrate over land and over water.

5 The Battle Of Troy

The Battle of Troy is the heart of The Iliad, one of the Western world’s oldest works of literature. The epic poem describes the protracted siege of Troy by several armies representing the many different tribes of Greece. Three of these tribes—the Danoi, the Teucrians, and the Achaeans—may have participated in the Sea Peoples invasions.

In the Great Karnak Inscription and the Merneptah Stele, these Greek tribes are called the Denyen, the Tjeker, and the Ekwesh, respectively. However, none of this is set in stone, even though the Aegean region certainly provided a majority of the pirates involved in the Sea Peoples confederation.

Insofar as the Trojan War is concerned, many believed that Homer’s poem was a fictional rendering of a real confrontation between a Greek confederation and the native inhabitants of Troy (who may be the ancestors of the Etruscans). Tantalizingly, the Tawagalawa letter, which was written by an unnamed Hittite king (generally believed to be Hattusili III) to the king of Ahhiyawa (an ancient Anatolia kingdom just south of Troy), speaks of an incident involving Wilusa.

Specifically, the letter tells of a recent war between the Hittites and Ahhiyawa over Wilusa. Many believe that Wilusa, which belonged to the kingdom of Arzawa, was the Hittite name for Troy while Ahhiyawa was the name the Hittites gave to the Mycenaean Greek civilization of Asia Minor. This isn’t mere speculation because archaeological evidence recovered from western Turkey certainly points to the fact that Bronze Age Greeks developed city-states not far from lands claimed by the Hittites.

4 The Minoan Connection

Although a majority of the Sea Peoples may have come from the Greek mainland, it has been speculated that the island of Crete, which was then home to the powerful Minoan civilization, also produced raiders who participated in the conquests of the Sea Peoples. At times, Crete has been connected to the Tjeker and Peleset peoples, both of whom were lumped in with the Sea Peoples confederation by ancient Egyptian authors.

Prior to the Late Bronze Age Collapse, the Minoans traded widely with the Egyptians and the civilizations of the Levant. Furthermore, in the Amarna Letters, Crete, which is called Caphtor, is included as one of the great regional powers that suffered under the constant attacks of the Sea Peoples. That being said, Minoan pirates, along with Mycenaean colonists who had settled both Crete and Cyprus, may have joined the Sea Peoples to capture livestock, booty, and slaves.

3 The Dorian Invasion

Although it has been argued that the Sea Peoples undertook their voyages for plunder, some historians have claimed that the Sea Peoples were fleeing from invasions in their own homelands.

Regarding Mycenaean Greece, Carl Blegen of the University of Cincinnati proposed the idea that the Greek people of the central coast were forced to flee their homes due to the Dorian invasion from the mountainous south. While most contend that the various Mycenaean city-states collapsed due to natural disasters, there are many who still contend that Mycenaean Greeks fled burning city-states and joined the Sea Peoples confederation to find new homes.

The entire concept of the Dorian invasion comes from ancient Greek legend, specifically the Heracleidae, or the sons of Hercules. In the story, the exiled descendants of Hercules, who had been promised all of Greece, started a war to recapture their father’s lost land.

From this, certain historians proposed a theory concerning the successful conquest of Mycenaean Greece by Greek-speaking tribes from Laconia. Accordingly, Doric Greek, which was spoken by the inhabitants of Sparta and Pylos, became the ruling language of post-Mycenaean Greece, better known as the Greek Dark Age.

There are many problems with this theory, especially considering the dearth of archaeological evidence supporting it. But it does offer an interesting answer as to why the once-powerful city-states of Mycenaean Greece collapsed.

2 A Greater Indo-European East

Considering that most of the Sea Peoples came from Europe, it has been proposed that their incursions into the eastern Mediterranean form a sort of Indo-European migration period. Although it is not certain, it is likely that most of the Sea Peoples spoke different Indo-European languages, from Mycenaean Greek to the various Italic languages of Italy and Sicily.

Similarly, the degree to which the Sea Peoples created permanent settlements in the eastern Mediterranean is in dispute, but they were likely joined by a concurrent land migration coming from both Europe and Asia Minor. Some have proposed the dubious theory that “Land Peoples” from as far north as the Carpathian Mountains joined this migration, while others have noticed that the Lukka, one of the named Sea Peoples, seem similar to the Lydians or Luwians, two Indo-European peoples from western and central Asia Minor.

Indeed, the Anatolian kingdom of Kizzuwatna, which is today located in southwestern Turkey, may have included settlers from both Phoenicia and Mycenaean Greece. Furthermore, Hittite records may point to some Indo-European migrations predating the Sea Peoples, such as the conquests of Attarsiya, a Mycenaean Greek general who not only helped to establish the Greek kingdom of Ahhiya but also invaded Cyprus and various Hittite vassal states, including Arzawa.

1 Outsized Influence On Greek Mythology

As previously mentioned, some scholars believe that The Iliad recalls an ancient war between the Mycenaean Greek state of Ahhiyawa and the Hittite Empire. Similarly, The Odyssey details the attempts of the Greek general Odysseus to return to the island of Ithaca after serving in the Trojan War. Although these are the most famous examples of Greek legends dealing with the eastern Mediterranean, other legends point to a possible Greek memory of settlement in the Near East.

For instance, the story of Zeus, the chief god of the Olympians, and his battle with the monster Typhon likely comes from Cilicia, a kingdom in southern Anatolia controlled by the Hittites. Before the collapse of Mycenae, Greeks settled Cilicia in large numbers. From there, the Greeks absorbed Hittite and Cilician legends, including the story of a sea dragon defeated by a thunder god.

The Greek story of Teucer, one of the heroes of the Trojan War, similarly showcases a familiarity with the ancient Near East. It is said that Teucer and his men settled Crete and Cyprus and then set out on many voyages that took them through Canaan and Phoenician cities such as Sidon. It is possible that the story of Teucer, as well as other stories concerning the travels of Greek heroes following the Trojan War, may be parables about Mycenaean Greek settlement in the Near East during the age of the Sea Peoples.

Benjamin Welton is a freelance writer based in Boston. His work has appeared in The Weekly Standard, The Atlantic, , Metal Injection, and other publications. He currently blogs at literarytrebuchet.blogspot.com.

History can prove hard to uncover. When delving back hundreds or even thousands of years into our past, we have to make do with whatever bits and pieces we find, hoping they can provide us with an accurate picture of a time long gone. Sometimes, we get lucky, though. Occasionally, we uncover documents that detail some of the most notable events in history.

10 The Cyrus Cylinder

In 1879, archaeologist Hormuzd Rassam was excavating in Mesopotamia when he uncovered a number of clay tablets which provided us with an unparalleled look at the ancient world. Among them was the Cyrus Cylinder, a document written in cuneiform script which, according to some, represents the oldest charter on human rights.

The cylinder was created around 538 BC, shortly after Persian King Cyrus the Great conquered Babylon. According to the cylinder, Cyrus is portrayed as a liberator. He was chosen by the Babylonian god Marduk to free the city from the reign of Nabonidus, who had perverted the cults of the gods and enslaved his own people through forced labor. Cyrus entered the city without a fight, and the Babylonian people delivered Nabonidus to him and accepted Cyrus’s kingship.

Afterward, the cylinder is written in the first person to represent Cyrus giving an edict. He abolishes the forced labor instituted by his predecessor and promises to bring back the people deported by Nabonidus and restore the religious cults and temples that were previously forbidden.

Although Iran officially recognizes the Cyrus Cylinder as a human rights charter, others claim that it was a standard proclamation made by Mesopotamian kings when taking the throne. Regardless, historians view it as the first written record of how to run a true society filled with people of different faiths and nationalities. Cyrus’s Achaemenid Empire became the largest empire of ancient history, stretching from the Indus Valley in modern-day Pakistan to the Balkans in Europe.

9 The Blood Letter

In late 14th century, the disintegrating Bulgarian Empire was eventually conquered and incorporated into the Ottoman Empire. Around the mid-1870s, a state of national awakening emerged from Bulgarians who sought to live in a sovereign state again. This led to the April Uprising of 1876 in which Bulgarian nationals revolted against the Ottoman government.

One of the main leaders of the uprising was Todor Kableshkov. After he and other revolutionaries defeated the Ottoman presence in the town of Plovdiv, Kableshkov wrote a letter to the insurrectionists in Panagyurishte, urging them to do the same. He signed it with the blood of a murdered mudur (Turkish official), and it became known as the Blood Letter, the symbol of the revolution.

The actual uprising didn’t go very well. The Ottoman government brought in groups of irregular soldiers called bashi-bazouks who crushed all opposition. Kableshkov himself was betrayed and captured by Turkish authorities. He committed suicide in prison.

The bashi-bazouks quickly developed a reputation for incredible cruelty and total lack of discipline. An American war correspondent named Januarius MacGahan described the atrocities of Turkish soldiers burning down entire settlements and killing all inhabitants.

This turned international opinion against the Ottoman Empire. Russia saw an opportunity to minimize the empire’s influence and, after a failed peace conference, declared war in 1877. With the help of several Eastern European nations, Russia won the war. After the Treaty of Berlin in 1878, Bulgaria became an autonomous state once again after almost half a millennium of Ottoman rule.

8 Ryo-no-gige And Ryo-no-shuge

For centuries, Japan was governed by a code of laws known as Ritsuryo that was inspired by Confucianism and the legal system enacted in China during the Tang dynasty. The Omi Code appeared in AD 668 under Emperor Tenji, becoming the first collection of Ritsuryo laws in Japan. It allegedly contained 22 volumes of administrative code, but there are no extant copies and its existence can only be inferred from notes in other documents.

Several years later, the Omi-ryo was refined into the Asuka Kiyomihara Code of AD 689. It offered improvements on the older code such as establishing the Daijo-kan, the Great Council of State that remained Japan’s highest governmental body until it was replaced by the Cabinet in modern times. At least, that’s what we infer as there are no surviving copies of this code, either.

In 701 came the Taiho Code, which was the first revision to contain criminal as well as administrative code. Again, there are no extant copies. Its successor, the Yoro Code, was compiled in 718 but wasn’t promulgated until 757. This time, we have some information due to a book called Ryo-no-gige (“Commentary on the Ryo”). Written by Japanese scholars and published in 833, the book contained almost all the administrative code of the Yoro-ryo.

A few centuries later, it was complemented by another book called Ryo-no-shuge which presented a comparative study between the Japanese and Chinese codes. Eventually, historians were able to use the extant Chinese Tang Code to piece together the penal side and compile an almost complete Yoro Code.

7 Deir el-Medina Papyrus

Deir el-Medina has provided us with a wealth of information on ancient Egypt. When the tombs in the Valley of the Kings were being built, this little village housed the many tradesmen, artisans, and other professionals who were employed to work on the monuments. We have already found evidence that showed the workers benefited from a primitive form of healthcare system. But Deir el-Medina was also the site of the first recorded labor strike in history.

The entire event was detailed on a papyrus by a scribe named Amennakhte. It happened around the year 1155 BC during the reign of Ramses III. Craftsmen at Deir el-Medina were complaining that 18 days had passed without receiving their rations. Therefore, they refused to work and instead sat down at the rear of the temple of Menkheperre. This also probably marks the first recorded sit-down protest in history.

The strike continued for several days as the workers urged for their complaints to be taken to the vizier. Eventually, the vizier made his way to Deir el-Medina and successfully negotiated with the strike leaders. The scribe doesn’t note the strike being anything particularly uncommon, which means that it most likely was not the first workers’ strike to occur, just the oldest one of which we have a written record.

6The Braintree Instructions

There were several events that caused the American Revolution, but one of the main issues was the taxes levied by Great Britain on the colonies without their consent—“No taxation without representation.” This concern was exacerbated in 1765 when Parliament passed the Stamp Act. It required many materials printed in the colonies to be made using stamped paper carrying a revenue stamp produced in London.

As the act was mainly an attempt to increase British revenue from the colonies, it proved massively unpopular in America and led to several protests. It also led to one of the first official protests against Parliament’s authority in North America, a document known as the Braintree Instructions.

On September 24, 1765, the town of Braintree, Massachusetts, organized a town meeting where a gathering of about 50 people unanimously signed a document destined for the Massachusetts General Court. The document decried the actions of British Parliament as a violation of the Great Charter (Magna Carta). Eventually, the Braintree Instructions were published in the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Gazette. Based on the document’s popularity, the reasoning and language used in the Braintree Instructions were adopted by dozens of cities in the state protesting the Stamp Act.

The Braintree Instructions also became notable for the man who wrote them—John Adams. His “career” as a political activist was just getting started, but he would play an important role during the revolution and later become the second president of the United States.

5 The Charter Of Privileges

In 1681, William Penn established the Frame of Government as a constitution for the Province of Pennsylvania. The original constitution was adopted on May 5, 1682. A new Frame of Government was adopted one year later and again in 1696, with the last one, known as the Charter of Privileges, ratified in 1701. This version of the constitution remained in effect until 1776. To celebrate the charter’s 50th anniversary, the Pennsylvania Assembly ordered a new bell for the state house which became one of the country’s most cherished artifacts—the Liberty Bell.

The legacy of Penn’s Frame of Government extends far beyond that, though. It is now regarded as an important step toward true democracy for the many liberties and rights that it provided for different religions. Although William Penn was a Quaker, he was an advocate of religious freedom who also negotiated peaceful deals with Native American tribes. Back in England, he was arrested numerous times for his beliefs and spent his jail time writing more pamphlets to further his cause.

When word of Penn’s new constitution reached Europe, it found support among those who shared his convictions. French philosopher Voltaire said that William Penn “brought down upon Earth a Golden Age” unlike any that has been before.

4 ‘To My Peoples’

On July 29, 1914, a manifesto titled “To my peoples” was widely distributed throughout the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Signed by Emperor Franz Joseph I one day earlier, the manifesto officially announced a declaration of war on Serbia, signaling the start of World War I. In the document, the emperor portrays himself as a man of peace, forced into war by “incessant provocations” from the Kingdom of Serbia to defend the honor and position of his monarchy.

The title “To my people” was a common headline for war manifestos. Franz Joseph used the plural “peoples” to signify that the Austro-Hungarian Empire was a multiethnic empire consisting of two equal monarchies plus the autonomous Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia. Within days, the document had been translated into all languages of the empire and distributed as pamphlets and propaganda posters. It was also published in all the newspapers.

The document was seen as the culmination of the July Crisis. Following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, many people realized that war between Serbia and Austria-Hungary was inevitable. The latter made an “attempt” at a peaceful reconciliation by issuing an ultimatum to Serbia that contained unacceptable terms, including Austro-Hungarian government representatives in Serbia, Austro-Hungarian police in Serbia, and the removal from the Serbian government of all military and civil administrators named by Austria-Hungary.

Suffice it to say that the war didn’t go as planned for Austria-Hungary. The end of the Great War brought the demise of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the fall of the Habsburg monarchy.

3 Pope Urban II’s Letter Of Instruction

Around AD 1095, Byzantine Emperor Alexius I Comnenus sent a request to Pope Urban II asking for military assistance against Seljuk Turks attacking his lands in Asia Minor. In response, the pope organized the Council at Clermont consisting of hundreds of clerics and nobles. There, Pope Urban gave one of the most significant speeches in history, triggering an event that would have a profound effect on Europe for centuries to come—the Crusades.

The council lasted from November 18 to November 28. Urban gave his speech on November 27, which is now regarded as the starting point for the First Crusade. The pope argued that it was time for Eastern and Western Christianity to unite against the Muslims. The following year, tens of thousands of soldiers marched east. The crusade culminated with the recapture of Jerusalem in 1099, although Pope Urban died a few weeks before word reached Western Europe.

We have six sources of information regarding the Pope’s speech at the Council of Clermont. The reliability of five of them is a matter of debate. They offered varying details on certain issues such as what kind of pardons would be granted to crusaders and whether the primary goal was helping the Byzantine Empire or retaking the Holy Land.

The sixth source is a letter of instruction written by the Pope himself in December 1095 to crusaders rallying in Flanders. It covers the Council of Clermont and remains the best source for one of the most important events in the history of medieval Europe.

2 The Mayflower Compact

Plymouth was one of the most notable early English colonies in North America. Some of its aspects are now deeply ingrained in American culture, particularly the Pilgrims and the Thanksgiving celebration. Back then, Pilgrims were typically referred to as Separatists—devout people who had fled England for a new place where they could practice their religion as they saw fit. Their iconic 1620 trip aboard the Mayflower is another essential tale of America folklore.

What’s usually forgotten is that the Pilgrims were actually a minority aboard the Mayflower. Over half of the more than 100 passengers plus the 25 crew members were “strangers” or non-Separatists. Originally headed for Virginia, the Mayflower had to settle for new land due to dangerous storms and a shortage of supplies. Worryingly, the Separatist leaders realized that most strangers had no interest in following Pilgrim rules once a settlement was established. In the words of a stranger, they were free to “use their own liberty.”

This resulted in the drafting of the Mayflower Compact, the first frame of government written and enacted in the United States. All men had to sign it before going ashore. The document granted authority to a “Civil Body Politic” to enact just and equal laws, but as the governing body consisted mostly of Separatists, it ensured that they stayed in power. Although the Mayflower Compact was not a constitution, it formed the basis for Plymouth’s government and remained in force until 1691 when the whole colony was absorbed into Massachusetts Bay Colony.

1 De Lome Letter

On April 25, 1898, war broke out between the United States and Spain, lasting for over three months and ending with an American victory. It was followed by the Treaty of Paris, which was heavily in America’s favor. Spain was forced to relinquish Cuba, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines, thus losing all of its overseas territories except for a few in Northern Africa. Many see this as the end of the Spanish Empire, once known as the “empire on which the Sun never sets.”

Before the war, people in America were divided on the issue. Yellow journalism pioneers William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer were in favor of war and were accused of using the media to incite the public. In this regard, Hearst hit pay dirt in February 1898 when he acquired the De Lome letter.

Enrique Dupuy De Lome was the Spanish ambassador to the United States. He wrote an unflattering letter to Spain’s foreign minister about America’s involvement in Cuba. It described McKinley as weak and a low politician. However, Cuban revolutionaries intercepted the letter. Eventually, Hearst found out and published it in the New York Journal with the headline “The Worst Insult to the United States in Its History.” The scandal outraged the American public, and they demanded action. Two months later, they got their wish.

On the Spanish side, the war cost Spain international power and prestige, but the country did experience an intellectual rebirth due to a new wave of writers, poets, and philosophers known as the Generation of ’98.

Radu is into science and weird history. Share the knowledge on Twitter, or check out his website.

Underdogs have a special place in the hearts of many, whether it’s the upstart Celtic Iceni tribe led by Boudicca revolting against the Romans or the ice-veined Spartans fighting in one of history’s greatest last stands against the Persians at Thermopylae. Either through superior tactics or more technologically advanced weaponry, the outnumbered often achieve some form of victory, whether moral or outright. Here are 10 such examples of great historical underdogs.

10British East India Company
Battle Of Assaye

Arthur Wellesley, the major general of the British forces and future first Duke of Wellington, said this of the battle: It was “the bloodiest for the number that I ever saw.” One of the major battles of the Second Anglo-Maratha War, a conflict between the British East India Company and the Maratha Empire, the Battle of Assaye saw between 6,500–10,000 British soldiers face off against a 40,000–50,000 strong Maratha army.

Unfortunately for the British, their intelligence about the strength and location of their enemy was flawed. Not only were they in the wrong location, but they were much stronger than expected, having recently swelled by several divisions. Luckily for Wellesley, he was a better battlefield general than he was a strategist, as he quickly devised a plan to strike quickly, rather than wait for the reinforcements coming along under the command of Colonel Stevenson. (He had divided his army based on the faulty intelligence he had received, and the rest of his forces were miles away.)

However, the main reason for the British victory was the Maratha army simply didn’t believe that Wellesley would attack while being outnumbered so badly. This surprise led to a rout, one in which 5,000–6,500 soldiers of the Maratha army fell in battle. (The British lost about 1,500.) Later in his life, the Duke of Wellington reminisced about his many military triumphs and concluded that his victory at Assaye was the greatest of them all.

9King David IV And The Georgian Army
Battle Of Didgori

Otherwise known as David the Builder for his role as the architect of the Georgian Golden Age, King David IV of Georgia (the country, not the state) was faced with a problem that had plagued his country for years. The Seljuq Turks, Muslims from present-day Kazakhstan, had control over most of the Georgian state. (Various internal wars and earthquakes also helped to weaken the country’s resolve.) Ascending to the throne at the tender age of 16, David IV gathered together the various feudal lords in the area, formed an army, and began repelling the Seljuq occupiers, refusing to pay them any tribute.

Invigorated by the First Crusade’s success against Muslim armies, David IV initiated his plan to take Tbilisi, a great Georgian city and future capital of the country, which had been under Muslim control for nearly 500 years. So around 56,000 men began marching toward the city, camping at Mount Didgori, some 40 milometers (25 mi) from Tbilisi. Though contemporary records exaggerate the amount of forces facing the Georgians, conservative estimates put it at 100,000–250,000 men.

In a similar vein to Stalin and his infamous Order No. 227 (the “Not one step back!” order), David IV declared that retreat was not an option, barricading the route behind his men with trees and boulders. Then, in an act of treachery, he sent 200 heavily armed cavalrymen to the Seljuq leaders under the pretense that they were deserters. When they arrived, the Georgians attacked, killing the leaders and demoralizing the Muslim army. The Battle of Didgori was on, and it only lasted three hours, with the Seljuq Turks taking heavy losses, both as dead and captured, while the Georgians got off relatively light. (Actual casualty counts are hard to come by.) Tbilisi soon fell, and Georgia had its capital once again.

8Mexican Army
Battle Of Puebla

Picture it: Puebla, Mexico, 1862. The liberal Benito Juarez had been elected as president during the prior year, as the country began to fall into financial ruin, thanks to the enormous foreign debt they had accumulated over the years. Britain, France, and Spain each sent their own navies to Veracruz, demanding payment from the Mexican government. Deals were reached with Britain and Spain, who departed shortly afterward, but Napoleon III, nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, saw an opportunity to establish a Mexican empire and refused to negotiate, landing an invading army instead.

Veracruz was stormed first, quite successfully, and the ease of the fighting convinced the French leaders that victory would come quickly throughout the country. Mexico City, the capital of the country, was the target, but a well-fortified city lay in the direct path the French decided to take: the city of Puebla. 6,000 French troops marched on the city, determined to wrest it from the hands of its ragtag band of 2,000 men. (As any military historian would tell you, a ratio of at least 3:1 is necessary for any sieging army.)

However, even with their superior numbers and artillery, the French were rebuffed in their assault. Starting at daybreak on May 5, the fighting lasted until early evening, with the French suffering five times as many casualties as the Mexicans. (Admittedly, the French only lost 500 people.) It was not strategically important—not only did the French ultimately take over the country for a short period, they even took the city itself a year later. But the victory served as a morale boost for the Mexican army, as well as the people of Mexico, who later created a holiday to celebrate the battle: Cinco de Mayo. (However, it is much more widely celebrated in the United States today than anywhere in Mexico, often under the misnomer of Mexican Independence Day.)

7Croatian National Guard
Battle Of Vukovar

When the president of Yugoslavia, Josip Tito, died in 1980, he left behind a fractured country, one cobbled together from formerly different states. (The six socialist republics were Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Slovenia, and Serbia.) Serbian nationalists seized the opportunity and tried to centralize control of the country in their capital city of Belgrade. However, most of the other states wanted to break loose, with Croatia being one of them.

On June 25, 1991, the Croatians declared independence, though sporadic fighting between nationalist groups and police had been taking place since the end of March. Two months later, Serbian forces marched on Vukovar with about 36,000 men, determined to take the city, an important regional center on the eastern border of Croatia. Unfortunately for the Croats, the defending force was only 1,800 strong, with some of the Croatian citizens of the city doing what they could to support the troops.

For 86 days, the defenders held off the Serbians, before they finally surrendered, having ran out of ammo. (Reinforcements from other parts of the country never came.) Casualties on both sides were high, with the Serbian forces losing nearly twice as many men; the Croatian defenders lost nearly all of their men to death or injury. The aftermath of the battle was even worse for the inhabitants of the city, as the Serbs butchered 200 Croats who had taken refuge in the city’s hospital and had been promised safe passage out of the city. Widespread executions by Serbian forces were reported throughout the city as well, as ethnic cleansing began to rear its ugly head.

6English Troops
Battle Of Crecy

Though not as well known or devastating to the French as the Battle of Agincourt some 70 years later, the Battle of Crecy was arguably the most important battle in the entirety of the Hundred Years War. Relatively little attention was paid to the English longbow in the country, a weapon widely seen as one of the most devastating weapons in medieval times. That all changed in 1332 under the instruction of Edward III; he realized a large mass of longbows, fired in unison, could defeat much larger armies.

For 14 years, he built up his army of longbowmen, training and equipping them at a much lower cost than the traditional aristocratic knights who had previously made up his army. In July 1346, somewhere around 10,000 men landed on the French coast, outnumbered by nearly three to one. In fact, the French king at the time, Phillip VI, was so confident in his numerical superiority that he made a list of English knights he planned to take prisoner once they had won. Unlike Agincourt, in which the terrain played a large role in determining the outcome of the battle, Crecy was won simply because no one had really seen the longbow in action, and its novelty proved to be the deciding factor.

The French, as well as many other countries, had often looked at archers as defensive troops, with the crossbow seen as the most superior ranged weapon. However, the English longbowmen could fire six to seven times more arrows per minute, contributing to them killing the French crossbowmen very quickly. Any who retreated were cut down by advancing French horsemen, who took it as a sign of cowardice. In the end, confusion and fear (as well as longbowmen) ravaged the French forces, and at least 10,000 of them met their demise. (An argument could be made this isn’t an underdog victory, as the English enjoyed such a strategic advantage, but it shocked all of Christendom nevertheless.)

5Irish UN Troops
Siege Of Jadotville

The year was 1961. Ireland had only been recently admitted to the UN, as the Soviet Union had vetoed them relentlessly due to their neutrality during World War II, and this was their first peacekeeping operation. Though they weren’t exclusively made up of Irish soldiers (there were Swedish and Indian men as well), the UN troops in the state of Katanga in the Congo numbered only 158 and were very lightly armed. Stationed at the wealthy mining town of Jadotville, the troops were ordered to defend the locals from Katangan militia and Belgian mercenaries.

Having dug trenches, the Irish forces used accurate shooting and timely mortar attacks to repel the 3,000–5,000 strong force trying to storm the town. Somehow, by the end of the fighting, 1,300 of the enemies were either wounded or killed, with only five of the Irish wounded. UN forces tried to make it to the city to provide relief, but they were unable to break through the enemy lines. Out of ammunition, the commander of the Irish forces, Pat Quinlan, was forced to broker a ceasefire. (Or surrender, depending on your opinion.) Much of the Irish population felt they had surrendered, ignoring them on their return and denigrating the memory of anyone who served in Jadotville. However, thanks to the efforts of one of the men, John Gorman, their reputation has since been revived.

Perhaps the most famous quote to come from the conflict was made by Pat Quinlan, the Irish commander of the troops: “We will fight to the last man. Could do with some whiskey.” (Unfortunately, Irish nationalism changed that quote; he had actually requested water.)

4Swedish Soldiers
Battle Of Fraustadt

Though not as decisive nor impressive a victory as the Battle of Narva, a fight in which King Charles XII led a force of Swedes to victory over a Russian army nearly four times its size, the Battle of Fraustadt and the subsequent Swedish victory was one of their best and last in the Great Northern War. Besieged by three separate countries (Russia, Denmark-Norway, and Saxony-Poland), whose leaders sensed weakness in Sweden’s young king, the Swedish army enjoyed several initial successes.

One of those successes took place in 1706 near Fraustadt, a town in western Poland. 18,000 Saxons, Russians, and their mercenaries entrenched themselves a short distance from the outskirts of the town, and 9,000 Swedes did the same. The Swedish general recognized he had a numerical edge in cavalry, nearly three to one, and used that to his advantage. Using a pincer motion and the classic aggression of Swedish generals, he sent his horseman around the enemy’s flanks until they reached the center rear of their main line of defense.

The Saxon and Russian army collapsed at this point, leading to a rout in which only about 1,000 Swedes were either killed or captured and almost 16,000 of the enemy met the same fate. In addition, about 500 Russians who were taken prisoner during the battle were executed as revenge for atrocities the Russian forces were said to have committed in the city of Courland.

3Eastern Jin Soldiers
Battle Of Fei River

Widely considered one of the most important battles in Chinese history, the Battle of Fei River pitted the Eastern Jin dynasty of southern China against the barbarous inhabitants of the Former Qin dynasty of northern China. While the numbers might be exaggerated (a claim you could make against virtually every battle in human history), traditional historical sources say 800,000 soldiers marched from the north to face only 80,000 Eastern Jin Soldiers.

However, the Qin army was mostly made up of random conscripted soldiers, many of whom felt no loyalty toward their commanders or even outright hatred. In addition, they were poorly equipped and even more poorly trained. Fu Jian, the leader of the Qin dynasty, had conquered nearly all of the northern kingdoms of China, with those in the south squarely in his sights. So his men marched toward the lands of the Eastern Jin, successfully capturing many of the border cities.

In 382, Eastern Jin forces, led by the general Xie Xuan, decided to make their final stand at the Fei River, a waterway that is now dried up. The Eastern Jin forces were on one side of the river, and the Qin army was on the other. Xie Xuan sent word to his enemies, asking them to retreat slightly to the west so as to allow his forces to cross the river and commence the battle. When Fu Jin, the emperor of the Qin dynasty, agreed, many of his soldiers believed they had been defeated and panicked. Seizing this opportunity, Xie Xuan struck, killing nearly all of his enemies. By the end of the fighting, there was so much death that one account says: “The dead were so many that they were making a pillow for each other on the ground.” Shortly afterward, the Qin dynasty, devastated by the loss, plunged into civil war.

2Polish Infantry
Battle Of Wizna

Often described as the Polish Thermopylae, the Battle of Wizna saw an extremely outnumbered Polish force defend the city of Wizna against the onslaught of the German army. Though this is commonly seen as the beginning of the German blitzkrieg, the invasion of Poland was conducted through more traditional military means. Nevertheless, the difference in strength was overwhelming: 700 Poles were in the city, facing off against 40,000 Germans. (In fact more recent historians have claimed there may have only been about 360 Poles in the city.)

The fighting broke out on September 7, 1939, and lasted for two and a half days. To boost morale, as the Poles had heard of the vast army which was bearing down on them, the commander of the Polish forces, a man named Wladyslaw Raginis, vowed to not leave any defended position alive. However, the Polish forces quickly found themselves out of ammo, with no hope of reinforcements. In addition, the German commander, Heinz Guderian, threatened to execute every one of the Polish POWs if they didn’t surrender. In the end, Raginis agreed, sending his troops out of the bunker. One of them, Seweryn Bieganski, recalled later: “The captain looked at me warmly and softly urged me to leave. When I was at the exit, I was hit on my back with strong gust, and I heard an explosion.”

While they were unsuccessful in keeping Wizna out of German hands, the defenders did allow Polish leadership and many other soldiers to escape to Western Europe, where they continued the fight against the Nazis.

1Korean Navy
Battle Of Myeongnyang

Originally an army commander, Yi Sun-Sin began his military career fighting the Manchu nomads who roamed Korea’s northern border. A short while later, he was made commander of the Cholla naval district and defeated the Japanese fleet in several battles, thanks in no small part to his kobukson, the famed “turtle ships” of the Joseon dynasty. Due to a plot by a Japanese double agent, Sun-Sin was arrested and tortured for refusing orders that he deemed to be too dangerous. (Which they were, as the double agent wished to destroy the Korean fleet.)

Spared the death penalty but demoted to a lowly rank, Sun-Sin bided his time until the Korean leadership called on him again. The Japanese had mounted another attack and seemed to have turned the tide. Thanks to the many defeats of the general who preceded him, Sun-Sin only had 12 ships left to defend the country with, and he decided to make a last stand in the Myeongnyang Strait, just off the southwest coast of Korea. Though sources differ, the vast agree that at least 133 Japanese ships met him there, determined to end the war once and for all.

Using his knowledge of the ocean around him, as well as the strength of his ships, Sun-Sin routed the Japanese, destroying 31 of their ships while losing none of his own. Part of the massive victory was because the Japanese tended to try and win naval battles in the same vein of the Romans when they faced off against the Carthaginians: They tried to board the enemy ships rather than ram them. This proved fruitless against the kobukson, and Korea was victorious.

Magic and superstition have been present in human societies since the dawn of our species, and ancient Rome was no exception. Some of us would like to believe that the advancement of education and scientific knowledge should be enough to keep superstitious beliefs in check, but many signs around us tell us that superstition is here to stay. Fortune-tellers, cult leaders, horoscope writers, and casino owners (to name a few) know this very well.

This list is about the powerful effect that magic and superstition had on some of the beliefs of ancient Roman society.

10 Magic, Superstition, And Medicine

Some of the medical knowledge in ancient Rome was strongly linked to magic and superstition. Pliny the Elder records a number of health tips that few of us would take seriously. Here are some examples. Do not try this at home without medical supervision. We take no responsibility for the outcome of the following recipes:

Drinking fresh human blood was believed by some to be an effective treatment for epilepsy:

“It is an appalling sight to see wild animals drink the blood of gladiators in the arena, and yet those who suffer from epilepsy think it is the most effective cure for their disease, to absorb a person’s warm blood while he is still breathing and to draw out his actual living soul.” (Natural History, 28.4)

For treating bruises and strains:

“Strains and bruises are treated with wild boar’s dung gathered in spring and dried. This treatment is used for those who have been dragged by a chariot or mangled by its wheels or bruised in any way. Fresh dung also may be smeared on.” (Natural History, 28.237)

If you want to enhance or suppress sexual performance:

“A man’s urine in which a lizard has been drowned is an antaphrodisiac potion; so also are snails and pigeons’ droppings drunk with olive oil and wine. The right section of a vulture’s lung worn as an amulet in a crane’s skin is a powerful aphrodisiac, as is consuming the yolk of five dove eggs mixed with a denarius of pig fat and honey, sparrows or their eggs, or wearing as an amulet a rooster’s right testicle wrapped in ram’s skin.” (30.141)

9 Magic, Superstition, And Pregnancy

Pregnancy in ancient Rome was the cause of considerable anxiety. It is estimated that the number of women who died as a result of childbirth was higher to the number of men who died at war. As a result, a deficit of women suitable for marriage was always an issue in Rome. It is therefore not surprising that there were a few tips on pregnancy circulating around Roman society. Pliny the Elder tells us that:

“[ . . . ] if someone takes a stone or some other missile that has slain three living creatures (a human being, a wild boar, and a bear) at three blows, and throws it over the roof of a house in which there is a pregnant woman, she will immediately give birth, however difficult her labor may be.” (Natural History 28.33)

“If one wishes a child to be born with black eyes, the mother should eat a shrew during the pregnancy.” (Natural History 30.134)

8 Shapeshifters

Many stories circulated among ancient Romans about people changing their shape into animals and other beings. Here is one of these tales. If you think the werewolf legend is relatively new, think again:

“We came to the tombs, and my friend went to do his business among the gravestones, while I moved off singing and counting the stars. Then, when I looked back at my companion, he had taken off all his clothes and laid them at the roadside. My heart was in my mouth; I stood there practically dead. He pissed in a circle around his clothes, and suddenly turned into a wolf. Don’t think I am joking: nothing could induce me to tell lies about this. [ . . . ] He began to howl and ran off into the woods. [ . . . ] then I went to pick up his clothes, but they had all turned to stone.” (Petronius Satyricon 62)

It would not be surprising if at least some people in Rome believed stories like this one.

7 Witchcraft

Long before medieval times, witchcraft was known to the Romans. There is a famous passage in Roman literature describing a grotesque ritual performed by witches who were looking to brew a love potion. They intended to use the potion to gain the heart of a man named Varus, who had resisted the love spells cast by the witches so far.

The details of this ritual are described by the Roman poet, Horace (Epodes 5), who lived during the first century BC: A boy of high birth was kidnapped by a clique of witches. They buried the boy in the ground up to his chin, and they placed some food in the ground close to him, but he was unable to reach it. The witches hoped to starve the boy to death and make his liver grow as a result of the hunger. The boy’s liver was a key ingredient to brew the love potion.

This account is fictional, but it shows the place that witches and their dark arts had in the imagination of some Romans.

6 Interpretation Of Dreams

Like almost all other cultures, some Romans firmly believed in the idea that dreams could forecast the future. In the second century AD, Artemidorus of Daldis wrote a work named The Interpretation of Dreams, compiled in five books. Some of the ways in which he interpreted the meaning of dreams are both specific and curious:

“Dreaming about turnips, rutabagas, and pumpkins presages disappointed hopes, since they are massive [vegetables] but lack nutritional value. They signify surgery and wounding with iron implements for sick people and travelers, respectively, since these vegetables are cut into slices.” (1.67)

“Dreaming that one is eating books foretells advantage to teachers, lecturers, and anyone who earns his livelihood from books, but for everyone else it means sudden death.” (2.45)

5 Reading Animal Entrails

Hundreds of techniques to foretell the future are recorded in ancient Roman documents. We know, for example, that sacrificing animals and trying to read the future by interpreting their entrails was practiced not only in ancient Rome, but also in many other cultures. This magical art was known to the Romans as haruspicy, and a person trained in this art was a haruspex.

Cicero (On Divination: 2.52) claims that Hannibal, the renowned Carthaginian commander who defied Rome in the Second Punic War, was an expert in this technique. While he was still a military advisor (before he became commander), he used to give advice to his superiors based on the messages he could read on the organs of sacrificed animals.

4 Astrology

Trying to predict events based on the position of the celestial bodies was also widely practiced in the Roman world. Some Roman emperors, including Tiberius, Domitian, and Hadrian, believed in divination and astrology and even had some degree of training in these arts. Cassius Dio (Roman History 57.15) claims that Tiberius had a man executed after he had a dream in which he was giving money to that same man. Tiberius believed that he had that dream under the influence of some sort of enchantment.

However, there is evidence that not everyone was persuaded by the astrologer’s claims:

“I am amazed that anyone could continue to put their trust in such people, when the falseness of their predictions is every day made clear by what actually happens.” (Cicero, On Divination: 2.99)

The love-hate relationship that Rome had with astrologers was expressed by Tacitus with his typical directness:

“Astrologers are treacherous to the powerful and unreliable to the merely hopeful; they will always be banned from our state, and yet always retained.” (Histories 1.22)

3 The Shield Of Mars

The Romans believed that the god Jupiter gave the very shield of the god Mars to Nula Pompilius (the second king of Rome). This relic was known as the Ancile. It was believed that if the Ancile was harmed in any way, so would the nation of Rome. In other words, the prosperity of Rome was dependent on the integrity of the Ancile. Therefore, it was decided that the safest place to keep this relic was the Temple of Mars.

The nymph Egeria advised the king of Rome to create eleven identical copies of the shield in order to confuse potential thieves and keep the shield safe. A body of priests known as the Salii were responsible for protecting the Ancile and, ultimately, the prosperity of Rome.

2 The King Of The Wood

A shocking ritual was recorded at the grove of the goddess Diana at Aricia, south of Rome along the Via Appia (the road connecting Rome with Capua), by the shores of Lake Nemi. The grove of Diana had a priest, known as Rex Nemorensis. Those who held the position were always fugitive slaves who became priests by murdering the acting priest. This was the accepted norm of succession for the priesthood of Diana. As a result, the Rex Nemorensis was always on alert, carrying a sword, waiting for the next candidate to challenge him, and fearing for his life. (Strabo, Geography 5.3). This practice is summed up by T. Macaulay:

“From the still glassy lake that sleeps
Beneath Aricia’s trees—
Those trees in whose dim shadow
The ghastly priest doth reign,
The priest who slew the slayer,
And shall himself be slain”

The exact justification for this succession rule is not fully understood, and it has sparked the imagination of many historians and writers. Nobody has explored this issue in more depth than Sir James George Frazer, who used the institution of the Rex Nemorensis as a starting point of his colossal anthropological work The Golden Bough: a Study in Magic and Religion, published in 1890.

1 Imaginary Beasts

Ancient Roman writers left a number of accounts describing several imaginary animals. Interestingly, most these beasts were exotic, coming from remote locations.

Pliny (Natural History 8.75) describes a half-human, half-horse animal named the hippocentaur. According to his doubtful account, he personally saw one of these beasts shipped from Egypt to the emperor Claudius, preserved inside a container filled with honey.

Aelian also describes some peculiar species of one-horned donkeys and horses found in India. Drinking vessels made out their horns had a unique property: If poison was poured into them, the horns would cancel the effect of the poison, acting as an antidote. (On Animals 3.41).

Aelian (On Animals 9.23) reports the existence of the amphisbaena, a snake with one head at both ends:

“When it is going forward, it uses one head as a tail, the other as a head, and when it is going backward, it uses its heads in the opposite manner.”

Aelian fails to explain what relevance the terms “forward” and “backward” may have when applied to a being with a head at both ends, but we get his point.

It seems we’re obsessed with the end of the world some days. Zombies, massive meteors, or nuclear annihilation—we run the gamut in our fiction and in our fears. But what if we’ve already been through the end of the world? What if we’ve already survived not one, not two, but 10 different doomsday scenarios? Humans are nothing if not resilient and tenacious.

10 The Dust Bowl

Lasting eight years, the Dust Bowl was a severe drought in the 1930s, the roughest time of the Great Depression. It affected parts of Texas, Colorado, Nebraska, and Oklahoma, driving thousands from their states to seek a better life elsewhere.

The combination of over-farming, reliance on a small number of crops, and lack of rainfall led to soil depletion, which turned normally fertile topsoil into fine-particle dust. The storms kicked up by the prevailing west-to-east winds of the Great Plains caused dust clouds to bury entire towns in suffocating grit.

But lest you think it was confined to the Midwest, on April 14, 1935, the dust storms were so massive that they blotted out the Sun in several states (as well as Washington, DC) and ships in the Atlantic Ocean reported dust falling upon their decks. Ironically, a member of Franklin Roosevelt’s cabinet was testifying before Congress on the need for soil conservation when the storm hit. He reportedly pointed out the window and stated, “This, gentlemen, is what I’ve been talking about.”

A combination of soil conservation laws and programs as well as rain finally returning to the Plains states in 1939 brought a close to what must have seemed like the end of days to many.

9 The Mongol Conquests

Ruthless and dispassionate, the Mongol hordes descended upon the societies of Asia and Europe like a force of nature. During the 13th century, Genghis Khan forged the many tribes and clans of the central Asian steppes into an effective and devastating war machine, conquering China, the Middle East, Russia, and parts of Europe.

That the Mongols killed many is not in doubt, but the exact number can be hard to pin down. Some regions such as China had excellent census figures, but other places did not (or their records didn’t survive). While we may not know exactly how many people perished as the hordes swept through Eurasia, we do know that there was a sudden drop-off in the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere—a drop-off that cannot be explained except by the deaths of millions of living, breathing animals.

The Mongols, though, eventually lost momentum and fragmented. Their massive empire eventually fractured and dissolved, a mere 100 years after they started.

8 The Black Plague

Most people are aware of the massive, devastating plague known as the Black Death, which swept through Europe in the 14th century. It is reported to have killed around 50 percent of the European population.

But what many people don’t know is that the Black Death didn’t just affect Europe but Africa, the Middle East, and Asia as well. The plague, caused mainly by the microbe yersenia pestis, was phenomenally virulent.

It spawned not just the plague itself but widespread panic and the rise of crazy superstitions, such as that the disease was caused by God’s displeasure. The disease struck down the rich, poor, weak, powerful, pious, and heretical alike and led to massive social upheavals.

The plague returned periodically afterward but lacked the impact of the 14th-century outburst. Yet it still remains in our collective memory, albeit in the form of a poetic misconception: “Ring Around the Rosie”, which most people believe chronicles the stages (and attempts to prevent) the Black Death. On the contrary this famous nursery rhyme appears to have no connection to the plague—nor, indeed, any sinister origins at all.

7 Potato Famine

In the mid-19th century, the reliance of many working poor upon a single crop (potatoes) led to millions of deaths. Most people associate this disaster with Ireland, and they’re partly right. Ireland did indeed have the most visible manifestation of the “blight.”

But it was definitely not the only country to suffer. The blight actually struck most of northern and central Europe, including Scotland, where it was known as the “Highland Blight” or “Highland Famine.” The blight also affected Belgium and was devastating to the German economies, leading to near total societal collapse as starving workers died in the streets of Europe.

The tragedy was made worse by the fact that in many regions, such as in Ireland, there was more than enough food produced, but governments and merchants alike favored the profits made by selling grain and food overseas.

6 The Thirty Years’ War

Arguably the most famous of the “religious” wars of Europe, the Thirty Years’ War was a series of conflicts pitting one nation against another in an attempt to resolve several matters, including the primacy of Catholicism or Protestantism. Nearly every country in Europe participated in the wars, but the most devastating battles took place in the Holy Roman Empire of Central Europe.

The very nature of the war, which combined political greed with religious obsession, meant that no side was willing to be merciful to the other. The result devastated Germanic cities and states, leaving many municipalities as ghost towns and harvests of staple grains reduced by up to 75 percent.

5 World War II

The last great world conflagration is etched indelibly in history. Every corner of the globe, with the possible exception of the Antarctic, saw combat between the Allied and Axis forces. The result was an utterly devastated Europe and Asia.

During the war, 80 million people died in combat, through pogroms (including the Holocaust), and by starvation. By the end of the war, starvation and deprivation were commonplace as people tried to eke out a living amid the destroyed ruins of once-great cities. No running water, no electricity, no food, and barely any government in Europe, China, and Japan left innocent civilians perched upon the knife’s edge of chaos or death.

To illustrate how devastated the world economy and society was, the United States was producing one of every two products made from 1945 to 1946. The destruction was so complete that the normally isolationist United States Congress was motivated to embark upon an ambitious pair of spending projects to jump-start the world economy and prevent a return to the Great Depression. The Marshall Plan and a similar plan launched in Japan and China spent tens of billions of dollars in reconstruction aid.

4 Smallpox In The Western Hemisphere

Contact with Europeans, even if it had been completely peaceful, would not have been benign for people living in the Americas or the islands of the Pacific. Unknown to the Europeans, a nearly invisible hitchhiker had come along on their 15th- and 16th-century voyages of exploration: smallpox.

Along with other diseases that Europeans had built up a resistance to over the centuries, smallpox devastated native populations in North America, the Caribbean, South America, and Oceania. Over the centuries, conservative estimates of the death toll from the disease put the number at 60–70 percent of native populations. Powerless to stop the disease and seeking refuge from the high fevers and horrible pain, natives prayed to their gods or committed suicide to ease their suffering.

3 The Fall Of Western Rome

Often lamented in medieval literature and bemoaned in Enlightenment writings, the contraction and eventual collapse of the Western half of the Roman Empire in the fifth century AD must have seemed like the end of everything. Lasting nearly 1,000 years, Rome had a profound impact upon Mediterranean and European cultures.

Many successor states tried to emulate the pattern of Rome with varying success. However, unlike some of the other apocalypses on this list, the collapse of Western Rome was a drawn-out affair rife with invasions, governmental collapse, and starvation.

Roman Britain, for example, was left to its own devices as the legions withdrew and the Germanic Jutes, Angles, and Saxons invaded, reshaping Britain through conquest. Similarly, Germanic tribes filled the void in Iberia, Gaul, and even the Italian peninsula. Goths, Visigoths, and the infamous Vandals—their names and reputations for brutality persist to this day.

These tribes warred with the people who remained, with each other, and with the Eastern Roman Empire which sought (and failed) to recapture the lost Western Empire. It wasn’t until the eighth century that things began to settle down (sort of) in Western Europe.

2 The Fall Of The Qing Dynasty

China is—and always has been—the most populous place on Earth. Its governments are in charge of the lion’s share of the Earth’s people. Thus, it is no surprise that when one of their governments collapse, it is devastating to the world’s population.

No collapse—and attendant famine—was more pronounced than the end of the Qing dynasty. By the mid-19th century, the Qing dynasty’s fortunes had waned dramatically. Inflation had put even basic foodstuffs out of the reach of ordinary people, greedy bureaucrats and the rich had forced people off their land, and there was a massive influx of the addictive drug opium.

By the mid-18th century, the Chinese had ballooned to nearly 500 million people. So when the economy did collapse in 1876, millions of people starved to death every single year. Add to that the devastation of the First and Second Opium Wars, and the Qing dynasty’s eventual collapse was all but assured. The chaos which ensued led to tens of millions more deaths due to rioting, starvation, war, and disease.

1 Megiddo

The city of Megiddo (aka Tel Megiddo) was an important hub of trade, culture, and power in the ancient world. It was prized by the two major powers of the time—the Assyrians and the Egyptians—so much so that the town was conquered dozens of times in the ancient period.

What’s remarkable about the town is not its conquest but that the memory of those massive, bloody conflicts have worked their way into popular consciousness, mythology, and the three major Abrahamic religions. The battles which raged between Assyria and Egypt, particularly under Thutmose III, were so horrifying and devastating that the later Greek word for the city became synonymous with the end of the world: Armageddon.

It is believed by many devout followers of Abrahamic religions, such as Christianity, that the last battle of all time between the forces of good and evil will occur there. Interestingly, since that cataclysmic battle in the 15th century BC, there have been dozens of battles, big and small, fought in or near Tel Megiddo, including a major battle in World War I between the British and the Ottoman forces.

Michael is a lecturer at two Midwestern universities and loves to work in the creepy, odd, cool, and strange tidbits into his lectures to illustrate just how cool history is.

Considering the Vietnam War was one of the most controversial conflicts in recent history, there is a lot we don’t know about the war. Many of us have heard either only the basics of the war, or we have heard misconceptions about the war. There really is more than meets the eye. In fact, the Vietnam War was filled with many little-known details that never truly reached the public eye, with many details either hidden or distorted by the myths that arose during this time.

10CIA Abandonment Of The Hmong During The ‘Secret War’

In 1965, the CIA began fighting what would later be known as the “Secret War” under the airline Air America, which was owned secretly. By 1961, 9,000 Hmong guerrillas had been recruited to help the airline with its goals. Laos, where these Hmong men were from, claimed to be neutral during the war, but the NVA (North Vietnamese Army) had influence in the country. In 1965, the number of Hmong guerrillas had increased to 20,000, and the true reason for the “Secret War” was fully put into place.

The Hmong were to destroy NVA supply depots, ambush trucks, disrupt supply lines, and generally harass the NVA. When America began to leave Vietnam, Air America was forced to leave Laos, and on June 3, 1974, the last Air America aircraft left Laos, but the Hmong guerrillas were abandoned. Shortly after, the Laos government began to charge the Hmong guerrillas for fighting alongside the CIA, and many fled to the jungle where they have lived since the end of the Vietnam War. Many of these Hmong guerrillas claim that they are still hopeful that the US will one day come rescue them from the jungle, but many still remain in hiding to this day.

9Most Men Volunteered For Service

We often hear stories of men resisting the draft, and even fleeing the country to avoid being drafted. While the draft certainly was a real issue, it was nowhere near what the media and stories from the time make it seem. Three-quarters of all American soldiers had volunteered to be enlisted. More specifically, 9,087,000 military personnel served during the entire war, but only 1,728,344 men were drafted. This was a very low number of draftees compared to other wars.

In fact, in World War II alone, 8,895,135 men were drafted. This made up two-thirds of the entire American World War II military personnel, which is considerably larger than the amount of Vietnam War draftees. So, while the draft was fought and there was a large number of draftees, it was nowhere near as bad as the media and stories from this time make it seem. It’s just one more thing your grandparents exaggerated about.

8Draft Inequality

One of the other issues that was blamed on the draft was social inequality. Most of us have likely heard of this inequality, hearing that the draft was unfair to certain races or certain social classes. Despite this misconception, the draft was completely randomized. Men were chosen based on 366 blue capsules, each containing a day of the year. The very first capsule drawn had the date September 14 inside, so men born on September 14 in the years 1944 to 1950 were all assigned the number one in the lottery, meaning that the draft was fully randomized. Despite this method of drawing, many still believe that the draft was skewed.

This simply wasn’t the case, as 88.4 percent of men who served in the Vietnam War were Caucasian. Additionally, 86.3 percent of the men who died were Caucasian, meaning that the myth of minorities being “cannon fodder” simply isn’t true. Seventy-nine percent of men also had high school diplomas, higher than any other war, and three-quarters of all men were above the poverty line, disproving this social inequality. If anything, it was said that the men who came from wealthier backgrounds were much more likely to die, as they were trained for the most dangerous jobs.

7Payment Of Spies

South Vietnamese spies were important to the United States, but their work was dangerous. The challenge in recruiting these spies was that many came from barter societies, where money did not exist. This led to the use of rice and other commodities as payment, which worked for a while. However, the spies themselves were not getting all of the rice, and there was no need for some of the other commodities. There was a need for a new form of payment.

The solution? Let potential spies browse through the Sears catalog and pick what they wanted. The first order was six red velvet blazer vests with brass buttons, each in exchange for a 20-day mission. The spies would go on to order other garments, such as a large bra used to harvest fruit, and the program only came to a stop when the work became too dangerous.

6Not All Men Were Young

While the Vietnam War was unpopular for many reasons, one of the main criticisms was that it was sending young men to die. While it is true that many men were young when they enlisted, many older men enlisted as well. In fact, the oldest man known to have died in Vietnam was Kenna Clyde Taylor, who was 63 years old at the time of his death. There were also many pairs of father and son who fought in the war, with three of these pairs on the Vietnam Memorial Wall.

Additionally, there wasn’t an enlisted grade with an average age under 20, and the average soldier was 22 years old. Other categories of military personnel held higher averages. For example, the average age of an officer was 28 years old. While some of these men were certainly very young to be enlisted, they weren’t nearly as young as many of us may believe.

5Super Glue

Most of us have heard of the horrible injuries that occur on the battlefield. For the medics tending these wounds, quick thinking was often all that could save a life, as many of these wounds would result in a soldier bleeding out if not treated immediately. So, what did doctors turn to in these situations? Super glue.

The glue was accredited to saving many lives during the Vietnam War, as it was able to quickly stem bleeding as soldiers awaited surgery. While super glue isn’t recommended for quick fixes anymore, unless it’s an emergency, this shows contrast to the advancements made during this time. Essentially, the military had numerous advancements, but was unable to come up with a better quick fix than super glue. It was certainly effective considering the lives it was able to save, and some of us can probably thank super glue for our parents or grandparents being around today.

4Life After The War

There is a common misconception that Vietnam Veterans were treated poorly upon returning home. We’ve all heard the stories of protesters greeting them at the airport to throw garbage or spit on the veterans as they went to greet their families. While this seems way too outrageous to be real, rest assured, it isn’t. However, this wasn’t the case for the overwhelming majority. Some veterans simply stopped mentioning the war, as there was very little reaction to the veterans returning home, making it no different than any other military deployment.

Those who were greeted with a large reaction typically did not find a negative one. In fact, 87 percent of all Americans hold these veterans in high esteem, and many Veterans went on to live successful lives despite the misconception that many resented them. At least 85 percent of all of these veterans successfully transitioned back to civilian life, and are both less likely to be unemployed and have an 18 percent higher personal income compared to non-veterans. They’re also less likely to be imprisoned. In fact, only around .5 percent of all Vietnam veterans have served jail time.

3Cloud Seeding

When we think of the fighting itself, sabotage isn’t our first thought. However, this was something that the United States Army used to its advantage. One of the biggest ways they hoped to sabotage the NVA was through the practice of cloud seeding. The cloud seeding was first practiced in Project Popeye, where over 50 of these experiments took place, and the project had an 82 percent success rate. The cloud seeding would cause additional heavy rains and would effectively stop military movement in the affected areas.

It was also intended to flood specific areas, damage crops, and, in some areas, drastically change the weather. This was also seen as an alternative to bombing, as both would have the same effect on military movement, as the rain would simply make certain roads unusable. However, this project tended to kill fewer people, so it was used in place of bombings.

2The United States Was Not Alone

When we hear of the Vietnam War, we mainly hear of American involvement. While the United States had the highest number of soldiers in Vietnam, troops had backup from South Korea, the Philippines, Thailand, Australia, and New Zealand. South Korea alone sent 312,853 soldiers to Vietnam between September 1963 and April 1975.

South Korea was also among the deadliest of these “backup” forces, killing 41,000 North Vietnamese soldiers and causing 5,000 civilian casualties. Only 4,687 South Koreans were killed during the war, with estimates of more than 5,000 wounded. The South Koreans had an overall kill ratio of 11 to 1. While South Korea sent the most troops, second only to the US, a large amount of troops came from other countries, such as the 60,000 military personnel from Australia, or the 3,000 from New Zealand during the conflict. It’s too bad the United States keeps hogging the spotlight.

1The Death Card

It’s likely we’ve all seen the ace of spades in the context of the Vietnam War. While Hollywood has taught us a thing or two about how these cards were used, many of us have no idea as to the true story behind this famous symbol. The ace of spades was left on dead Viet Cong soldiers as a warning. The Vietnamese are very superstitious people, and when American troops found out that they were scared of the card, it became widespread.

The only flaw was that it had little to no effect on the Vietnamese. In fact, this psychological warfare was only seen as a campaign by the soldiers: There were no headquarters, intelligence, or Psychological Operation experts behind this campaign. It was actually three lieutenants that asked for the first “Bicycle Secret Weapons,” while none of them had any psychological operation authority. The cards only spread in popularity due to their use as calling cards, which made fellow soldiers want them. So, while it was said that the cards would cause other Viet Cong soldiers to leave, the fear was more likely linked to fear of nearby Americans than of the cards themselves.

We’re all prone to acts of laziness. Maybe we should be washing the dishes, but we’ve instead elected to get drunk and play foosball. Maybe we’re supposed to be writing another article for the list-based website we work at but have instead fallen asleep face-down in a plate of nachos. Whatever. The point is, every single one of us occasionally indulges our lazy side.

But there’s indulging your lazy side, and then there’s dedicating your life to extreme acts of procrastination. The following people all have one thing in common: They took one look at your average lazy person and decided, “I can do better . . . as soon as I can be bothered.”

10 The Oxford English Dictionary Outdated Itself Before Release

Compiling the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) was always going to be a monumental task. The last word on British English, the complete OED contains around 228,130 words spread over 20 volumes. When it first received a publishing contract in 1879, it was expected to take 10 whole years to compile. But those stumping up the money hadn’t counted on one fatal problem—the ability of academics to procrastinate like a total boss.

Five years into writing the OED’s first complete edition, the compilers had only gotten as far as the word “ant.” This should have been the wake-up call everyone needed to get them working harder. It wasn’t. Instead, 1889 came and went, and those involved were nowhere near the letter “z.” After 10 years, they’d barely edged out the start of the alphabet.

By the time someone finally sat down and wrote the entry for “Zzz,” the 19th century had ended, Queen Victoria had died, World War I had come and gone, jazz had stepped into existence, and the Wall Street Crash was about to hit. It was 1928, and the newly published complete OED was already out of date. Thanks to their epic bout of procrastination, the editors were forced to immediately get started on the second edition.

9 Jamestown’s Colonists Were Too Busy Partying For Executions

One of the guys who helped establish the colony at Jamestown, Virginia, John Smith was also the Englishman who first met Pocahontas, thereby ensuring Disney immortality for himself. He was also extremely unpopular. Twice during his time at Jamestown, his fellow colonists decided to execute him. Twice, they failed.

The first time, Smith escaped when his name was drawn from a locked box that had been sealed before setting sail from England. Those named were the colony’s new governors, and it was thought better to keep him alive. The second time, the lucky Brit escaped not through the divine machinations of fate or thanks to his own quick wits. He escaped because his executioners were too busy partying.

The only survivor of a Powhatan attack, Smith had been blamed and sentenced to hang. At the time, Jamestown was struggling to fend off mass starvation, and the idea of one less extra mouth to feed must’ve seemed pretty tempting. The night of the execution, the whole town gathered . . . only for 100 new settlers to suddenly arrive with much-needed supplies.

In the wild celebrations that followed, the colonists decided to defer Smith’s execution. Only, they never got round to carrying it out. Thanks to their party-hard tendencies, Smith survived to map 4,000 kilometers (2,500 mi) of territory, shaping future explorations of the New World.

8 Richard Sheridan Redefines Missing Deadlines

In the second half of the 18th century, Richard Sheridan was the toast of London. An Anglo-Irish playwright, Sheridan made his name with light comedies such as School for Scandal. He was almost as famous for his procrastination. Sheridan turned missing deadlines into a kind of extreme sport.

We don’t just mean he handed his manuscripts in late. We don’t even mean he handed his manuscripts in at the last possible second. We mean he handed his finished play to the actors for the first time while it was in the middle of being performed on opening night.

Sheridan had already finished the first two acts of School for Scandal and kept promising the actors that they’d get the rest. He kept promising even as he procrastinated, right up until opening night. When it was time to raise the curtain, and it became apparent that Sheridan really hadn’t finished the play, a borderline crazy plan was devised. Sheridan would keep writing as the play went on, rushing lines down to the actors waiting in the wings. So long as he could keep ahead of the performance, the audience would never know.

Incredibly, this ridiculous non-plan worked. School for Scandal became a massive hit, eventually inspiring the plays of Oscar Wilde.

7 The Crematorium Owner Who Made Laziness Terrifying

Imagine, for a moment, that you are a crematorium owner. Now also imagine that your crematorium has just broken. What do you do?

If you said, “Pay to have it fixed,” congratulations—you’re a sane human being. Ray Brent Marsh was evidently neither of those things. When the oven of his Georgia crematorium gave up the ghost in the late 1990s, Marsh decided that it’d be less of a hassle to just secretly bury the corpses in his backyard and give the families urns full of concrete dust so they wouldn’t notice.

That’s right: Marsh was so lazy that he preferred to do the much harder job of digging a pit and burying bodies than the much easier one of picking up the phone and ringing for a crematorium repair guy. He just didn’t just do this once or twice, either. When police finally raided the premises, they found over 320 sets of human remains that had essentially been left to rot. For his epic display of laziness, Marsh was sentenced to 12 years in prison. He’s expected to be released sometime in 2016.

6 Britain’s Laziest Prime Minister

In Britain, class is everything. It’s often said that you can be a talentless no-good, but if you’re born in the aristocracy, you’ll still do well. The case of 19th century prime minister Lord Melbourne proves this. Possibly the laziest man in history, Melbourne became PM by accident and then slept his way through seven years of British history.

In all his long life, Melbourne failed to do pretty much anything. Before becoming prime minister, he’d married the nightmarish Lady Caroline Ponsonby and stayed with her out of sheer lethargy. As he lazed around the house, Lady Caroline went out and had public affairs with men like Lord Byron and then wrote scandalous “tell-all” books about the sex they’d had right under her stupid husband’s nose. It took Lord Melbourne 20 years to get around to divorcing her.

His ascension to the highest office in Britain was no less auspicious. Lord Grey had turned down the post, and Lord Melbourne was the only man the House of Commons’s warring factions could agree on, precisely because he never did anything. In the post, Lord Melbourne spent every single meeting, debate, gathering, and sermon sleeping, usually snoring so loudly that others couldn’t hear themselves speak. Benjamin Disraeli said that he would “lounge away an Empire.” The only reason the lazy PM stayed in office so long was because he had the hots for Queen Victoria, and his post meant that she was obliged to frequently meet him. He was finally replaced in 1841, to the relief of the entire country.

5 The ISIS Jihadi Who Was Too Lazy to Fight

Members of ISIS are many despicable things (callous, cruel, genocidal, anti-Semitic, homophobic), but one thing they’re not is lazy. At least, most of them aren’t. In January 2015, middle-aged Abu Ali crossed from Turkey into Syria to join the death cult. Recruited as a potential jihadist, Ali turned out to be so lazy that he wound up costing the Islamic State money.

There’s a passage in the Quran where Muhammad quite clearly says that if a Muslim doesn’t want to fight, no one can make them. Ali had evidently taken this to heart. When ISIS accepted him into their ranks, Ali demanded a desk job. When they told him to shut up and wage some jihad, he waved the Quran verse at them. Suddenly, ISIS were stuck with a fat, middle-aged idiot whom their own interpretation of Islam forced them to care for.

Over the next few months, Ali chilled out in Syria, watching Rambo on TV and getting fat off the ISIS teat. As carnage unfolded around him, this terminally lazy oddball spent his time downloading music videos and chatting with the jihadists around him. When ISIS finally forced him to go to the front, he invented a medical condition. Eventually, Ali found himself being shunted around from commander to commander, draining resources and driving the terrorists insane with his dedication to living like the Islamic State’s own personal welfare queen.

Finally, those in charge got so fed up with Ali that he began to fear for his safety. He escaped back to Turkey and immediately took up his old life again, having spent four months draining ISIS funds. We can’t tell if he’s genuinely an idiot or a clever undercover plant sent by the CIA to drive some jihadists up the wall.

4 Douglas Adams Procrastinates Right Into Productivity

Douglas Adams is one of the greatest and laziest writers to have ever lived. His Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is a seminal book in both sci-fi and British literature. But Adams was famously prone to procrastination. At one point, he gave a Hitchhiker’s book a cliff-hanger ending purely because he couldn’t be bothered to keep typing to the end of the paragraph.

But his greatest act of procrastination undoubtedly came in the mid-1990s. Contracted to do a book called the Starship Titanic, Adams kept putting it off for years on end. Eventually, his procrastination grew so extreme that, according to Terry Jones, he created an entire computer game just to avoid doing work on his novel.

Bear in mind this was the 1990s, when creating a playable computer game in your bedroom was something that maybe only six and a half people could do. Yet Adams still wound up creating a sprawling point-and-click adventure which he triumphantly dumped in front of his publishers as an alternative to writing. His publishers took one look, agreed to release it, and then said that they’d still need the novel. With only five weeks to go, Adams called up Monty Python member Terry Jones and begged him to write it instead. Jones obliged, claiming later that he wrote the whole thing in the nude. (Because why not?)

3 George Akerlof Turns Procrastination Into An Academic Field

Any man can put off doing something for as long as feasibly possible, but it takes a special kind of man to be curious enough about their own laziness to write an academic paper on it. Meet George Akerlof. A respected economist, Akerlof managed to turn his own procrastination into a Nobel Prize–winning career.

The setting is India, and the date is the early 1990s. Akerlof was living on the subcontinent at the time when his friend Joseph Stiglitz came to visit. When his vacation ended, Stiglitz left but forgot to pack some shirts. He asked Akerlof to mail them over to him. Akerlof agreed, only to keep putting it off. He put off mailing the box for eight whole months and finally came to two conclusions: Stiglitz probably no longer wanted to be his friend, and procrastination was something worth rigorous academic study.

The thing was, Akerlof had the best of intentions. He really did mean to send the box, yet he didn’t. His breakthrough was to realize that this strange, irrational action could be applied to behavioral economics. In a 1991 paper called “Procrastination and Obedience,” Akerlof used his own tardiness to make assumptions about how populations might act in certain situations. The academic world went wild.

In the years since, procrastination has become a vast field of study, both within the realm of economics and without. Akerlof went on to win the Nobel Prize in 2001 for his contributions. And Stiglitz, you’ll be happy to know, eventually got his shirts back.

2 Buddha’s Disciple Can’t Be Bothered To Ask Vital Questions

Born before Christ was even a twinkle in Joseph’s eye, Siddhartha Gautama (aka the Buddha) created a global religion, with some 500 million people worldwide adhering to his every utterance. With his words at such a premium, you might expect his disciples to have asked him about everything in minute detail. You’d be wrong. Thanks to the laziness of a guy named Ananda, there are still super-important things that we don’t know about Buddhist vows to this very day.

Toward the end of his life, the Buddha dropped a theological bomb on his disciple Ananda: From then on, the minor vows wouldn’t be needed in ordination, just the major ones. This is kinda like St Peter calling the future pope over and saying, “Know those Hail Marys? I’ve chatted with the big G, and we’ve decided to drop them.” The only problem was, Ananda didn’t know which were the major vows and which were the minor. He deciding that asking could wait for later. He kept on thinking that right until the Buddha died, taking the answer with him.

As a result of this one lazy disciple, no one in the past 2,500 years of Buddhism has had any idea if they’re saying the right vows or not. No one wants to accidentally skip a major one, so they just say the whole lot, painfully aware that a good chunk of it is totally unnecessary.

1 Da Vinci Turns Procrastination into Genius

The Mona Lisa is one of the greatest portraits in history. It’s so iconic that we don’t even have to show you a picture; you can imagine it already. It’s also kind of small: The canvas measures only 76 centimeters (30 in) by 53 centimeters (21 in), about the size of a smallish TV. But given that it’s a masterpiece, you’d probably expect it to have taken a while to paint. How long do you think? Six months? A year?

Try 15 years. For a decade and a half, da Vinci failed to finish his iconic portrait, not because it was so difficult, but because he was so lazy. That’s not us being judgmental. On his deathbed, the great man himself even admitted to his chronic procrastination when he apologized “to God and Man for leaving so much undone.” For comparison, it took Michelangelo a mere four years to paint the entire Sistine Chapel. The area his masterpieces covered? Around 1,100 square meters (12,000 ft²).

But a lazy genius is still a genius, and da Vinci was probably the biggest genius of them all. Although it took him forever to finish artworks (the Virgin of the Rocks took 25 years to finish, from a seven-month commission), he put his procrastination to great use. It was in his downtime that he filled his notebooks with doodles and ideas. Some of those doodles would later turn out to be inventions that could have changed the course of history.

You’ve probably heard that da Vinci invented the helicopter, tank, scuba gear, and parachute. Well, this was when he did it—when he should have been working. Some of the greatest examples of human ingenuity only came about because da Vinci was too lazy to stick with his painting. Remember to tell your boss that next time he catches you binge-watching Game of Thrones when you should be working.

Today, the idea that prophecies can reveal the future is the stuff of tabloids. In the ancient world, though, the prophetic visions and advice of the oracles were thought to be guidance from the gods. While many of the people who sought the advice of ancient priestesses were undoubtedly looking for help with everyday life, there are some prophecies that shaped the entire world.

10 Julian The Apostate And The Rise Of Christianity

Julian the Apostate was a Roman emperor who rose to power in 361. Even though Christianity was gaining considerable momentum, Julian not only renounced the Christian faith but waged a sort of nonviolent war against it.

He wrote volumes on Hellenistic culture and religion, considered himself the head of paganism, performed animal sacrifices, and appointed his officials based on their pagan beliefs. He even funded the rebuilding of Jewish temples in Jerusalem—not because he particularly liked the Jews but because he hated the Christians.

He also tried to usher in a period of rebirth for the Oracle at Delphi, not only declaring them free from taxation but also sending them regular tributes and issuing orders that the ailing area was under his protection. He also sent one of his doctors, a man named Oribasius, to supervise their finances and consult with Delphi’s Pythian priestess.

In spite of all Julian’s efforts, the prophecy would be the last one the oracle ever gave. It foresaw her own downfall and the end of not just the oracle but the influence of the old gods.

A version of the prophecy reads: “Tell the king the fair wrought hall is fallen to the ground. No longer has Phoebus (Apollo) a hut, nor a prophetic laurel, nor a spring that speaks. The water of speech even is quenched.”

Julian died after ruling for only 20 months. He was killed while fleeing a battlefield in what is now the area near Baghdad. No one knows who threw the spear that killed him, and his attempts at reinstating the old gods had no lasting impact.

9 Solon’s Democracy

After the Athenians labored under the laws of Draco—and courted death for any offense imaginable—they turned to Solon for a rewrite of the laws in 594. What he established was the basis for democracy.

Although it is not in the same form that we are more familiar with today, his rules set a precedent. He got rid of the practice of selling citizens into slavery if they defaulted on loans and introduced the ideas of a trial before a jury and a ruling council.

That was a huge change from what the Athenians were accustomed to, and Plutarch writes that the idea for this type of government came from an oracle. When Solon was chosen to try to fix everything that was wrong with Athens, he appealed to the Oracle at Delphi for guidance. The priestess there told him, “Sit in the middle of the ship, guiding straight the helmsman’s task. Many of the Athenians will be your helpers.”

Solon went on to turn a government that had drawn officers from the nobility to one that was designed to protect every person and one with officers selected from among those with material success rather than a pedigree. He also included laws that stated if officers broke the oaths they took, they needed to pay recompense to the oracle. The Pythia herself was given an official post as an interpreter of religious rituals and sacred law, where she continued to help guide the development of democracy from within.

8 Philip Of Macedon’s Silver Spears

Precious metals like gold and silver have been highly valued for a long time, and it was not until the Greeks that precious metals were melted down into easy-to-carry coins that could be handed out as payment. Among the first to use coins was the Greek military, who needed a way to reimburse the massive armies they were calling to arms. These early coins were developed to be used anywhere, and it was Philip II of Macedonia—Alexander the Great’s father—who developed the idea of coins as we know them today.

When Philip rose to power, it was to the top of an ailing country. Macedonia was thought to be a barbaric neighbor to the more cultured Greece, and Philip’s first obstacle was proving that he and his people were worthy of being called Greek. In 359, Philip visited the Oracle at Delphi and was told that “with silver spears you may conquer the world.”

Many of the oracle’s prophecies needed some interpretation, and Philip read the words as not referring to military might but economic power. Turning his eye toward nearby silver mines, he made a push for conquering them and using the newly acquired silver to issue bribes and payments wherever it was necessary.

He then went on to create a series of coins that weren’t just valuable for their precious metal content but for the message they spread. Philip’s coins were struck with designs that were pure propaganda, with images not unlike the ones found on coins today.

One of the finest was a coin that had Zeus’s head on one side (a version of the god that bore a striking similarity to Philip himself) and a horse on the other. It was a clear reminder of Philip’s entrance into the Olympics and his bid to make Macedonia recognized as on par with Greece. The coins were circulated all over the empire and had their descendants in the imagery of modern money.

7 The Tiburtine Sibyl And The Apocalypse

The Prophecy of the Tenth Sibyl is a manuscript that dates back to the 11th century. Nearly as popular as the Bible, it was so popular that dozens of copies still survive in languages including Greek, Latin, Arabic, Slavonic, and Ethiopic. Considered a late ancient apocryphal text originating from the fourth century, the work tells the story of a coming apocalypse and shaped belief in the End Times for medieval Christians.

The original text references the time of a Trojan emperor and tells the story of how the prophetic abilities of the sibyl reached the leaders of Rome. She was summoned to the city, and when she got there, 100 senators had the same dream on the same night.

Each one dreamed of nine different suns with nine different qualities, and when they appealed to the sibyl to find out what the dream meant, the interpretation was a dark one. The sibyl told them that the nine suns—and their different characteristics—represented mankind’s future generations and the changes they would undergo.

The first two generations were peaceful, the third would be a time of turmoil for Rome, the fourth would witness the birth of Christ, and the fifth would spread the gospel. War and upheaval would return for the sixth, seventh, and eighth. In the ninth, there would be a series of four kings. The fifth king would rule for 30 years, build a temple, and see God’s will done.

Then a last emperor, handsome and shining, would rise to rule for another 112 years, converting all the nonbelievers to the will of God. After him would be the Antichrist to challenge him, but he was destined to be defeated by this last emperor as he turns the proverbial keys to the kingdom over to God and Christ.

The prophecy is the first mention of a divine ruler appointed by God who is responsible for subduing the Antichrist. With this original appearance in the fourth century, it marks a shift not only in religious beliefs but in political beliefs as well. Emperors—and later medieval kings—were increasingly viewed as divine creatures who were, first and foremost, concerned with defeating the evils that walked the world and preparing their people for the Second Coming.

6 Tages Founds A Religion

Pre-Roman Etruscan culture relied heavily on the art of divination, and their seers and soothsayers had written entire texts on how to interpret the signs that were sent from the gods. They saw omens in everything from lightning to the organs of sacrificed animals and believed the future was written in the world around them. All they needed to do was know how to read it, and they did. Their divination knowledge was well-known across Italy, and it was a Tuscan family that was even credited as birthing the sage that predicted Caesar’s troubles on the Ides of March.

By the time Christianity came stomping through the old ways, Etruscan diviners became the stuff of the dark side. Even though the old diviners and the new Christians didn’t get along, the practitioners of the old Etruscan religion managed to hold their power for a surprisingly long time—long enough to guide Rome on the path to becoming a major empire.

And it was all based on the prophecies of a man named Tages. The legends say that Tages was child-sized when he was birthed from a furrow being plowed in the fields and that when a crowd gathered to see this miracle, his first words were written down to ultimately become the first sacred book of the Etruscans.

Another part of the story of Tages suggests that he went on to teach haruspication (divination by reading animal entrails) to a group known as the Twelve People of the Etruscans. They were usually interpreted as a group of people from each of the city-states who met regularly to discuss matters of national importance, blending religious beliefs with political rule.

5 Lycurgus And The Establishment Of Sparta

Lycurgus is one of those historical figures who has had the story of his life told so many times that no one is quite sure which parts are true. Historians are not even sure when he actually lived: Aristotle puts his life at around 884 BC, while Xenophon’s records suggest that he lived around 200 years earlier. Details aside, Lycurgus is associated with the development of Spartan culture as we think of it, and he did it with the guidance of the Oracle at Delphi.

According to Plutarch, Lycurgus first gained power as the regent of another. During his first visit to the oracle, she called him “beloved of the gods, and rather god than man” and promised him that he had the ability to establish a set of laws that would lead his people to prosperity.

He pitched his ideas to a small group of supporters first, but that small group quickly grew. During another visit to the oracle, Lycurgus received even more prophetic wisdom in the form of the Rhetra. The Rhetra defined how to divide the people into different groups, how to set up the Senate, and how to distribute power. With Lycurgus and his followers embracing this new method, motions put forward by senators and kings were approved or dismissed by the people.

The Spartan government went through a whole series of changes, not surprisingly, but it was Lycurgus—with guidance from the oracle—who established the heart of Spartan culture.

4 Grinus And The Founding Of Cyrene

Cyrene was one of the most important cities in the Hellenic era and throughout Roman occupation. Established in 631 BC, it was a major hub of commercial trade, religion, and culture for more than 1,000 years. Even today, archaeologists are scrambling to save it.

And it was founded because of the bidding of the Oracle at Delphi.

When Herodotus wrote about the founding of the city, he told the story of Grinus, son of Aesanius and king of Thera. When the king consulted with the oracle, he was told that he needed to found a city in Libya. The king ignored the order, not out of any outright rebellion but simply because no one knew where Libya was.

Over the course of the next seven years, the rain stopped and hardship seized the people. When the king appealed to the oracle again to find out what he could do to save his people, he was reminded of the prophecy. Messengers were sent out to find someone who knew where Libya was, and finally, they found a dye merchant named Corobius.

He had been to Libya—quite by accident—and was able to escort a small party across the sea and to the new land. Leaving him there, the Therans returned to assemble a group of settlers from each of their nation’s districts and head out to found the city that they hoped would save their own.

They ended up settling on an island off the coast, but the bad luck still haunted Thera. The oracle was consulted and replied that they needed to found their city on the continent, not on an island. Moving to the mainland, the native peoples guided them to the final location that would become Cyrene and helped them settle around a spring that would be dedicated to Apollo.

3 The Sibylline Books

The Sibylline Books are a set of mysterious texts written somewhere around the sixth century BC by the ancient priestesses thought to have been blessed with the gift of prophecy. Since the books were kept under close guard by those who possessed them, we really have no clue what the books actually said. We do know that they were partially destroyed in 83 BC and then burned in their entirety around 400 by the order of a Roman general.

The story of how a sibyl burned some of the books rather than compromise on the price is a famous one, and after the sale was finished, the remaining books were kept in a stone chest beneath the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus.

They could only be read by order of the Senate, and it was only during a major crisis or times of great need that the chest was opened and the books were read by those assigned to keep them safe. Sharing any knowledge of what was seen in the books was a crime punishable by death, so we are not even sure if the books contained rules and rituals to appeal to the gods for help in setting things straight or actual predictions.

It’s suggested that many of the temples that dotted the ancient world were built after consultation with the books and that countless cults, rituals, and observations also have their roots in the books. Cicero and Livy both record some of the omens and portents that caused the Roman Senate to order the books unsealed, including astronomical phenomena like the appearance of the Sun at night and more earthly omens like lightning striking a temple or religious statue.

Livy records one specific occurrence where the books were consulted. After two cows climbed some stairs and entered a building, a rain of stones fell in several towns. At the same time, lightning hit a temple to Jupiter in Minturnae and several ships in Vulturnum were also struck and destroyed. After consulting the books, a period of fasting was observed and then repeated every five years.

With the rise of Christianity, consulting the books gradually fell out of fashion. But it is likely that they had already shaped a good portion of early Roman religion, holidays, observances, and rituals.

2 Flavius Josephus Predicts The Rise Of Vespasian

Josephus was a Jewish priest and historian who wrote extensively on early Jewish history, and he is credited with giving us an authoritative, accurate history of his religion during Roman rule. Born in 37, he first traveled to Rome from Jerusalem on a mission to free some of his countrymen from a Roman prison. When he returned to Jerusalem, it was to rebel against Rome, setting him right in the middle of a war that he survived because of a prophecy.

When Rome stormed into Galilee, Josephus and his companions holed up in the fortress of Jotapata. After spending 47 days there, Roman forces broke through and the rebels were driven back to a cave. Rather than surrender, the men decided to commit suicide—a major sin.

Josephus convinced them not to condemn themselves by suicide. Instead, he proposed that each man should kill the man at his side. They drew lots for the one who would survive at the end to surrender, and that was Josephus. Josephus—along with the man he was supposed to kill—surrendered to the Romans, and they were taken to the commander, Vespasian.

Facing crucifixion, Josephus told Vespasian of the prophecy of an oracle—a prophecy that he suggested referred to his captor. The prophecy was that “a star shall come out of Jacob, and a scepter shall rise out of Israel; it shall crush the forehead of Moab and break down all the sons of Sheth.” For the Jews, the prophecy was referring to the Messiah, but Vespasian was intrigued enough by the prospect that it was talking about him that he spared Josephus from death.

After Nero’s suicide in 68, Galba’s hanging in 69, and failed bids for power by two others, Vespasian was made emperor in what seemingly fulfilled the prophecy the Jewish prisoner had told him. Josephus was released, made a Roman citizen, given the name Titus Flavius Josephus, and installed as an adviser.

Even though he absolutely was not trusted by his former Jewish allies, he saw an end to the siege and the destruction of Jerusalem. He went on to write, leaving us with a glimpse into that particular pocket of history.

1 Onomacritus And His Forgeries

The ancient world was shaped by the wars led by men like Alexander the Great and Xerxes, ultimately allowing for everything from cultural exchanges to the development and trade of goods and knowledge. If it weren’t for the rather dubious prophecies assembled—and often written—by Onomacritus, the world might have looked considerably different.

Herodotus says that he was employed mainly in the collection, preservation, and presentation of ancient oracles. He was a scholar, a historian, and an interpreter who was banished from Greece when it was discovered that the information he was presenting from oracles and prophecies wasn’t authentic, per se, as much as they were slightly doctored by him. Once he was banished from Athens, he made his way into Persia where he appealed to Xerxes for employment in his court.

At the time, the counselors of Xerxes were trying their best to get him to renew aggressions against the Greeks, and Onomacritus saw his opportunity. Presenting himself as the keeper and collector of ancient Greek knowledge and prophecy, he gave Xerxes a series of oracles that clearly predicted a win for the Persians. What he conveniently left out were any predictions, prophecies, and texts that said otherwise. Ultimately, Xerxes was persuaded to head out to war.

In addition to starting a war based on selective telling of the truth, Onomacritus has also successfully presented us with a major literary problem even today. Orpheus is one of the great writers of ancient Greek ritual and wisdom, half mythical and mentioned alongside writers like Homer and Hesiod. While we know there are a number of works that are attributed to him, we do not know what he actually wrote. Onomacritus forged an unknown number of Orphic works and changed countless more before cementing those in history and brushing aside the real thing.

We’re always amazed when archaeologists come upon extraordinary and magnificent discoveries. Sometimes, the discoveries are rather small and maybe insignificant (such as a single coin from centuries ago), and sometimes, they’re bigger and incredibly important (such as a forgotten ancient city). While some important discoveries are made as part of well-planned expeditions and aren’t especially surprising, incredible archaeological discoveries are sometimes made by pure chance. Below is a list of 10 important archaeological discoveries that were uncovered completely by accident.

10 19th-Century Brothel

In 1997, the Smithsonian Institution commissioned an archaeological study of the site upon which the National Museum of the American Indian was to be built and found artifacts, buried and untouched for more than a century, that could have only been from a wealthy household. These high-quality, expensive items were an unusual find in an area that was known to previously have been working-class neighborhood, and as a result, old maps and real estate records were consulted. It was then confirmed that the artifacts were what remained of a 19th-century brothel which was run by Mary Ann Hall, a mysterious, successful entrepreneur.

Prior to the dig, archaeologists didn’t know exactly what they were going to find, although they did have their suspicions. Archival research done before the archaeological excavations revealed that the house was occupied by a rather large number of females, a fact which the researchers and archaeologists found rather odd. However, it was the artifacts that pointed to the actual, slightly scandalous nature of the establishment. Hundreds of champagne corks and broken bottles, shards of expensive porcelain, seeds from exotic fruits, and women’s grooming items made it obvious that the house was indeed a brothel. It was no ordinary brothel, however. It stood in close proximity to Capitol Hill and was visited by elite clientele.

Today, many of the artifacts remaining from Mary Ann Hall’s brothel are kept at the Historical Society of Washington, DC, and can be viewed with an appointment.

9 Herculaneum

Most people are familiar with the destruction of Pompeii, which occurred in AD 79. After all, it’s now one of the biggest tourist attractions in Italy and draws thousands of tourists each year. However, a significantly smaller number of people are aware that the day Mount Vesuvius erupted, it also destroyed another Roman city called Herculaneum.

On the day of the eruption, Pompeii was downwind from the volcano and was thus quickly buried under a covering of ash. Herculaneum, on the other hand, was upwind and was destroyed more than 12 hours later when it was hit by a blast of scorching ash, rock, and volcanic gas. The blast was of such high temperature that it instantly carbonized everything in the city, leaving Herculaneum extremely well-preserved (more so than Pompeii, in fact).

While the city of Herculaneum was never quite lost or forgotten, it nevertheless wasn’t until the 18th century that it was “rediscovered”—completely by accident. In 1709, a farmer was digging a well and found some elaborate marble stonework. It was later realized that he had actually discovered the remains of the magnificent Roman theater of Herculaneum, which had been lying undisturbed beneath his fields for over a 1,000 years.

After the initial accidental discovery, a series of “robber” shafts and tunnels were dug to strip the site of any valuable items. Not long after, however, Herculaneum was explored on a more scientific basis for King Charles of Bourbon. In the 20th century, archaeological excavations recommenced on a far more modern and scientific basis, which resulted in the discovery of more interesting Roman artifacts.

8 The Edinburgh Vaults

In 1785, the construction of the Edinburgh Vaults commenced under the South Bridge in Edinburgh, Scotland, and was completed and opened in 1788. The South Bridge’s surface was thus dotted with numerous booming businesses with their workshops located underneath them, while still below this, living quarters existed. The lower you were under the bridge, the lower your social status was.

Life under the bridge was in constant motion and development. Criminals moved illegal materials through the tunnels in a black market, a red-light district with gambling venues cropped up, pubs and brothels were established, and crime and murder prospered. It is even said that at one point, serial killers were able to murder over a dozen victims and store the bodies in the vaults without being detected or stopped.

However, the conditions in the vaults were so bad that even the poorest citizens were leaving their underground slums between 1835 and 1875. The vaults were eventually shut down and forgotten.

In the 1980s, a rugby player and bar owner named Norrie Rowan tried to help his Romanian colleague Cristian Raducanu (who had defected to the UK) escape the Romanian secret police and discovered a tunnel underneath his bar that led to the Edinburgh Vaults. The find led to Raducanu’s successful escape as well as the vaults’ revival. The tunnels and chambers were excavated and restored. When children’s toys, medicine, and other household items were discovered, it was realized that the Edinburgh Vaults were home to many unfortunates. Today, the vaults are a major tourist attraction for those seeking the thrill of ghost tours.

7 The Venus De Milo

The famous sculpture of Venus de Milo was discovered in 1820 by a farmer named Georgios (or Yourgos) Kentrotas on the Aegean Island of Melos (aka Milos or Milo). Kentrotas was in the process of plowing a field when he came upon a cave which contained within it half of a statue of the goddess Aphrodite.

The events that followed are not quite clear, and different sources provide slightly different accounts of what happened next: Some sources claim that Kentrotas hid the statue in a barn, wishing to keep it for himself, but the statue was eventually discovered and confiscated by Turkish authorities. Shortly after, the French ambassador to Turkey bought it and (after some repair work) presented it to King Louis XVIII of France, who placed it in the Louvre, where it remains to this day.

Other sources claim that a French officer named Olivier Voutier was visiting Melos at the time when Kentrotas found the statue and urged him to look for the other half of it. Kentrotas obliged and soon discovered the other half, along with a sixth-century BC statue of young Hermes and Hercules as an old man. Voutier made a sketch of the statue of Aphrodite and sent it to Louis Brest, the French vice-consul for Melos, who in turn sent it to the French consul in Constantinople. The latter decided to obtain the statue of Aphrodite for France and sent an envoy to Melos. In the meantime, however, Kentrotas sold the statue to another man on behalf of the prince of Moldavia. The statue was ready to be placed aboard a ship for Romania when the French ship sailed in. After some bargaining, the envoy and Louis Brest bought the statue as a gift for Louis XVIII. Venus de Milo then appeared in the Louvre on March 1, 1821.

It’s interesting to note that a pedestal, a piece of an upper left arm, and a left hand holding an apple were found along with the statue. However, it’s not clear whether these fragments belonged to the Venus de Milo, and while attempts to create a design to replace the missing arms were made, it was eventually decided to leave the statue in the state it was in when it was accidentally found by the Greek farmer.

6 Chinese Mummy

In 2011 in Taizhou, a city located on the eastern coast of China’s Jiangsu province, road workers were in the process of widening a road, which involved clearing the way by digging several feet into the ground. When the workers were digging about 2 meters (6 ft) below the surface, they struck a large, solid object. Realizing that the object they’d accidentally found might be of significant value, they contacted a team of archaeologists to excavate the area.

The archaeologists then determined that the object was actually a tomb with a three-layered coffin inside it. When the main coffin was opened, layers of silk and linen covered in brown liquid were noticed, but the biggest surprise still awaited: Beneath the linens and silks, they discovered the remains of a female body. The remains were so well-preserved that the eyebrows, hair, and skin of the woman were still intact after more than 600 years.

5 Palatial Roman Villa

When the designer Luke Irwin and his wife decided to convert an old barn on their newly acquired property in England into a room for table tennis, they came upon a most extraordinary find—a palatial Roman villa just 18 meters (60 ft) from their front door.

In an effort to put their table tennis room together, the Irwins hired electricians to lay cables for lights. The spectacular discovery almost wasn’t made at all: The electricians initially suggested stringing up an overhead cable from the Irwins’ house in order to supply the power to the barn, but thankfully, Irwin insisted on an underground cable being laid instead. The electricians gave in, and soon, the drilling process began. Just 46 centimeters (18 in) below the surface, they hit a strange, hard layer. The layer consisted of pieces of mosaics.

Irwin quickly sent a photograph of the mosaic to the council, and shortly after, archaeologists arrived at their house, ready to excavate the site. They found that the mosaic formed part of the floor of an elaborate and extremely well-preserved villa, which dates back from between AD 175 and 220. The dig also unearthed hundreds of oyster shells, high-status pottery, brooches, coins, and the bones of wild animals. Other finds included a Roman well and the stone coffin of a Roman child, which had been previously used as a flower bed. The site hadn’t been touched since the villa collapsed more than 1,400 years ago. As a consequence, it has been unsurprisingly been declared extremely important.

4 The Lyceum

Plato was the founder of the first university in the Western World, called the Academy. Aristotle was a star pupil of the Academy, and in 335 BC, he went on to start his own school, called the Lyceum, in Athens. Over time, however, the Lyceum was lost, and efforts made by archaeologists to find the famous school were fruitless for over more than 100 years.

Nonetheless, in 1997, the Lyceum was accidentally discovered by workers working on a construction site for the projected Museum of Modern Art. Imagine the surprise when excavations carried out by the workers on an unpaved parking lot revealed an ancient complex with a central courtyard and a wrestling area (known as palaestra)! Archaeologists later confirmed that the magnificent discovery was part of the Lyceum. Of course, the spectacular discovery of the ancient school meant that an alternative site would have to be chosen for the art museum, since the remains of the Lyceum have been turned into an outdoor museum.

3 The Banwell Caves

The Banwell Caves consist of the “Stalactite Cave” and the “Bone Cave.” The Stalactite Cave was discovered by chance by local miners in 1757 but was left untouched until 1824, when it reopened with the goal of attracting paying visitors and raising money for a parochial school. However, access to the cave was difficult, and thus, an attempt was made to create a more convenient entrance. The attempt failed, but it led to the accidental discovery of the Bone Cave. The Bone Cave is so named because upon its discovery, it was filled with mud containing bones of animals that were up to 80,000 years old and no longer native to England.

The site where the discovery occurred was owned by the bishop of Bath and Wells, George Henry Law. A cottage was built on the side of the hill and was gradually enlarged. Various ornamental buildings were also built. The best bones from the Bone Cave were displayed in one such building. It’s interesting to note that the bishop firmly believed that the discovery of animal bones was proof of Noah’s flood. The caves continued to operate for some time after the bishop’s death but eventually closed to the public in 1865.

2 The Ruins Of Serdica

In 2012, engineers excavating a new line for the metro in the Bulgarian capital of Sofia came upon the remains of the cosmopolitan city of Serdica, where Constantine the Great, the first Christian Roman emperor, lived for a year while looking for a new capital for his empire. Serdica was a major metropolis and contains physical traces of Greek, Roman, and Byzantine cultures.

The ruins discovered are mostly from the time when Serdica was the capital of the Roman province of Inner Dacia—the time when the city was at its largest and most flourishing. Archaeological excavations of the site unearthed floor mosaics containing symbolic Roman vine leaves, early sewage systems, a wheel of fortune (which was probably used for bringing good fortune to the inhabitants), and private bath houses of ancient Romans who lived there.

Today, the site where the ruins of the ancient city of Serdica were found has been transformed into an open-air museum.

1 The Artwork Of Lascaux Cave

In 1940, a group of teenagers accidentally discovered the ancient artwork in Lascaux Cave near Montignac, France, after following their dog into a cavern. Shortly after, archaeologists were notified of the find and called in to investigate.

The Lascaux Cave is decorated with around 600 painted drawings of animals and symbols as well as almost 1,500 engravings. The drawings are mostly of animals, including horses, rhinos, deer, stags, and mythical creatures. Only one human figure has been drawn inside the cave—a bird-headed man with an erect penis. The paintings found in the cave are considered to be the finest examples of art from the Upper Paleolithic Period. Archaeologists believe that the cave was a center for hunting and religious rites.

The Lascaux Cave was opened to public in 1948 but was closed in 1963 because the artificial lights and carbon dioxide had caused damage to the delicate artwork. A replica of the cave was opened in 1983 and receives thousands of visitors each year.

A student from Ireland in love with books, writing, coffee, and cats.