History Facts That Hurt Our Heads

Eratosthenes was an ancient Greek polymath: a scholar who excelled in math, geography, astronomy, philosophy, poetry, and music. Around 245 BCE, he was working as a librarian in the famed Library of Alexandria in Egypt when he came across a surprising annual event. When the scholar read about a well in Syene (modern-day Aswan) that cast no shadow for a moment in time every summer solstice, Eratosthenes devised a plan that allowed him to use the rare event to calculate the shape and size of Earth. By sticking a pole in a local well when the sun aligned with the structure, he found that while the well didn't create a shadow, the pole did. From there, the young scholar used basic algebra to determine Earth was both round and about 40,000 kilometers in circumference. Eratosthenes was astonishingly accurate: Modern technology estimates Earth is 40,008 kilometers from pole to pole!

Though the 13th Amendment constitutionally abolished slavery in the United States in December 1865, it only passed among three-fourths of the states. Mississippi voted against the amendment at the time, arguing enslavers had not yet received financial compensation for their loss of human property. Astonishingly, the problem wasn't resolved when the state finally voted to ratify the amendment in 1995, as lawmakers neglected to inform the US archivist. The oversight came to light only after a curious Mississippi resident - inspired by Steven Spielberg's movie Lincoln - began researching the state's postbellum history in 2013. After finding the bill was never submitted, he contacted the Mississippi secretary of state, and the amendment was finally ratified on February 7, 2013.

Both the Tyrannosaurus rex and stegosaurus roamed North America, but did so during two completely different time periods. While the stegosaurus trekked the continent during the late Jurassic Period over 150 million years ago, the T. rex didn't dominate the land until the late Cretaceous Period, which ended roughly 66 million years ago. So the two well-known dinosaurs, often categorized into the same era of prehistoric history, actually lived about 83 million years apart. Since mammals evolved 66 million years ago, the T. rex actually existed closer in time to humans than to the stegosaurus.

The Confederate Army used Wilmer McLean's Virginia family home as their headquarters during the First Battle of Bull Run in July 1861. After the home suffered significant damage from Union Army shells, McLean was determined to keep his family as far away from the conflict as possible. He chose a location over 100 miles south, where he continued his occupation as a wholesale grocer and supplier of sugar for the Confederate forces. Still, his efforts proved futile. On April 9, 1965, General Robert E. Lee surrendered to the Union Army in the front parlor of McLean's new home in Appomattox. This huge coincidence placed McLean and his family home at the beginning and end of the Civil War, despite his attempt to escape it.

Almon F. Rockwell's newly resurfaced journals provide his eyewitness accounts of the demise of Abraham Lincoln and James Garfield. The Civil War Army lieutenant colonel and longtime friend of Garfield was also a licensed physician. Rockwell was called to Lincoln's bedside the night the president was shot at Ford's Theatre and didn't leave until Lincoln's cadaver was escorted to the White House the next day. Sixteen years later, President Garfield appointed his close friend Rockwell as superintendent of public buildings in Washington, DC, after his election in 1880. Among his other duties, the position required the lieutenant colonel to be close to the presidential family during public appearances. Rockwell not only attended to Garfield moments after he was shot at the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station in 1888, but he also stayed by his friend's side until his passing 79 days later. He is the only person to witness the demise of two American presidents.

Canada and the United States have a surprising history of stifled hostility. Major territorial disputes between the two countries date back to the War of 1812, when President Thomas Jefferson believed American troops could easily take over Canadian forts along the country's ill-defined borders. The attempts to conquer the Canadian borderlands ended up being unsuccessful, and ultimately, the conflict came to a close. Tensions mounted again in 1839 when the state of Maine sent a voluntary militia into Canada to stop their lumberjacks from cutting down trees along the border. Though no shots were fired and the conflict ended peacefully, the US had sent 50,000 men and $10 million to aid Maine's pursuits. While Americans brought about most of the skirmishes and plans for territorial domination, Canada flipped the script in 1921 by formulating a strategy to invade the US. Inspired by the tensions between the US and Great Britain over wartime debt, Canadian Lieutenant Colonel James Brown drew up a secret plan to overrun major cities among the Canadian-American border. Taking the imagined invasion seriously, Brown even sent spies into New England towns and devised a method for sneak attacks on weakened infrastructures like railroads and bridges. But ultimately, the plan never came to pass.

When he was 9, Jerry Parr went with his father to see the movie Code of the Secret Service. The 1939 film, starring a young Ronald Reagan, fueled the young Parr's dreams of becoming a Secret Service agent, leading him to pursue a career in protecting American presidents from harm. Parr and Reagan's fates collided when on March 30, 1981, Secret Service Agent Parr saved then-President Reagan's life. Parr was serving detail for the president when Reagan was shot outside of the Washington Hilton Hotel. As soon as the agent heard shots fired, he grabbed Reagan by the belt and threw him into his limousine. Despite Reagan's insistence he didn't require medical attention, Parr persuaded Reagan's driver to take them to George Washington University Hospital. Nancy Reagan later recalled Parr's actions saved her husband from assassination.

The Great Pyramid of Giza was built by King Snefru's son Khufu sometime during the fourth dynasty (2680-2560 BCE). Originally standing 481 feet high and covering over 13 acres of ground, the pyramid was built by hired laborers who quarried most of the pyramid's stone from the Giza plateau. Cleopatra, meanwhile, wasn't born until 69 BCE and didn't become the queen of Egypt until her father passed in 51 BCE. Though notions of the Great Pyramid of Giza and Cleopatra both shape modern ideas of ancient Egypt, the famous queen's reign sits closer on the historical timeline to the invention of computers than the construction of the pyramid.

As Alexander the Great laid waste on every major landlocked city from Persia to Egypt in 332 BCE, the small island of Tyre refused to surrender. So, the ruler and warlord devised a plan to manipulate the island's unique geographical features to ensure success in his conquest. The rising sea levels at the time covered 2 kilometers of the island, creating a sandbar that served as a shallow passageway with minimal interference from the waves. During the seven-month siege, Alexander the Great's engineers constructed a kilometer-long raised road on the sandbar that connected the island to the mainland of present-day Lebanon. The king of ancient Macedon used it to conquer the island, then continued to reinforce the searoad with leftover rubble and debris from Tyre's militant destruction.

Even though Russia and Japan signed a peace treaty after only one year of fighting in 1905, the war didn't technically end until 2006. Despite its significant distance from Japan, the Principality of Montenegro declared war on the country in symbolic support of Russia in 1904. But because Montenegro and Japan never engaged in combat operations against one another, the declaration was forgotten when Russian and Japanese officials gathered to reach a peaceful agreement. It wasn't until 2006 when Montenegro seceded from Serbia and became an independent country that Japan declared the war's end between the nations.

In 2003, scientists discovered a 3-foot-6 female fossil in a cave in Flores, Indonesia. Noted scientifically as H. floresiensis and nicknamed "the Hobbit" after J.R.R. Tolkien's famous fictional species, scientists believe the woman's skeletal remains (along with eight others found near the original dig site) are between 95,000 and 12,000 years old. The extinct species possibly evolved from Homo erectus, the first variety of mammals with body proportions similar to Homo sapiens. The "hobbits" weighed between 35 and 79 pounds, and had both primitive and evolved physical traits. Despite having an estimated brain size of a little over one-third compared to that of a modern human, they demonstrated an evolved level of critical thinking skills. Tools and animal bones found near the fossilized bodies suggest the species butchered small animals before roasting them over fires for food.

According to biblical and historical scholars, the only certainty regarding Jesus Christ's birthdate is it remains a mystery. Though modern calendars use the birth of Jesus as a crucial divide in history (BC stands for "before Christ," and AD is short for anno Domini, or "in the year of our Lord"), many believe the calculation of his birth is inaccurate. Scholars base this claim on the biblical story of Herod the Great, the ruler who ordered all infants under the age of 2 in Bethlehem be slain in an attempt to kill Jesus. The catch? Herod passed in 4 BCE. The discrepancy most likely occurred when Dionysius Exiguus, a fifth century monk, calculated the Roman consul at the time was elected 525 years after Jesus's birth. This fateful estimation set the stage for modern time measurement, even though it wasn't fully adopted until the eighth century. The exact birthdate of Jesus also remains a mystery. While scholars debate whether the Star of Bethlehem appeared in the night skies in June of 2 BCE or October of 7 BCE (dates of known planetary alignments that could cause such a phenomenon), most agree the date December 25 was chosen to divert from pagan winter solstice celebrations.