History Is Glitching: Weird Moments That Sound Completely Made Up
Somewhere between “your history teacher skipped this” and “there’s no way that happened” lives a magical zone called: **Wait, is reality okay?**
Welcome to that zone.
These are the history facts your textbooks quietly ghosted, your teachers refused to explain, and your brain will now replay every time you try to sleep. Read them, share them, then aggressively send them to that one friend who always says, “source?”
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The Time Australia Accidentally Went To War With Birds
In 1932, Australia was like, “We survived World War I, what’s next?”
The answer: **angry, oversized birds.**
Farmers in Western Australia were struggling with emus wrecking their crops. Emus are big, fast, and built like feathered dinosaurs who skipped leg day never. So the government called in the military with actual machine guns to deal with them. This became known as the **Emu War**, which is a real term that real historians have to say with a straight face.
Turns out, emus are basically feathery parkour experts. They dodged bullets, scattered troops, and refused to line up politely like a movie villain army. Soldiers complained the birds were too fast, too smart, and weirdly good at tactical retreat.
Result: **humans lost**. No peace treaty was signed, but the emus definitely claimed moral victory and possibly land rights in spirit.
Some highlights:
- Emus outran trucks on rough terrain.
- Bullets jammed, emus did not.
- Newspapers roasted the government. A lot.
Australia looked at 6-foot birds and said “We’ve got guns.”
The birds said “Bet.”
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The President Who Was Saved By His Extremely Extra Speech
In 1912, Theodore Roosevelt (already ex-president, but still peak Roosevelt energy) was giving a campaign speech when someone shot him in the chest. With a gun. On purpose.
Roosevelt’s reaction? **He checked if he was coughing blood, decided he wasn’t dying fast enough, and kept giving his speech.**
The only reason he survived on the spot:
He was carrying:
- A folded 50-page speech
- A metal eyeglass case
The bullet had to rip through both before hitting him, slowing it down like it got stuck in the world’s nerdiest body armor. Roosevelt then spoke for about 80–90 minutes while bleeding, casually telling the crowd:
> “It takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose.”
He finally went to the hospital—*after* finishing his speech, because priorities. Imagine trying to cancel your meeting because you have a cold, and then remembering this man did a TED Talk with a bullet in his ribs.
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The Night The Eiffel Tower’s Light Keeper Stole The Sky
The Eiffel Tower has been a drama queen since 1889, but in 1901 it had a particularly “main character” moment, starring its light keeper: **Pierre Petit**.
Back when wireless communication was brand new, inventors were trying to send signals through the air using giant antennas. The Eiffel Tower, being tall and extra, was the perfect test subject. Petit, who was in charge of its powerful searchlights, liked to point beams across Paris for weather observations and general “I work on the Eiffel Tower” flexing.
On one very experimental night, early radio tests were underway, and people realized something weird:
The tower’s lights could **disrupt** wireless signals.
That meant:
- The beam wasn’t just for vibes
- It could literally interfere with the early internet of its time
- The light keeper technically had the power to “turn off” the sky’s messages
Newspapers reported on growing excitement (and mild panic) about what that meant for communication and warfare. Paris had accidentally built a structure that could mess with distant signals… and put it in the hands of a guy whose job description was basically “turn the big light on.”
Imagine one person having the off-switch for all Wi-Fi in your city. That was this dude. With a lamp.
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The Corpse That Went On A World Tour (And Still Has Better Attendance Than You)
Jeremy Bentham, an English philosopher from the 1700–1800s, looked at death and said, “Actually, this is a branding opportunity.”
He left instructions in his will to have his body preserved and displayed as an **“auto-icon”**—basically, “stuff me and put me in public like a permanent selfie.” His preserved body, dressed in his actual clothes, still sits at University College London in a wooden cabinet.
Some surreal details:
- His real skeleton is inside, but the original head was… not display-ready
- They replaced it with a wax head and stored the real one separately
- Students used to prank each other with the real head (academia has always been unwell)
Even wilder: Bentham’s auto-icon has been **wheeled out to attend college meetings**. Officially. As in, “Present: Professor X, Dr. Y, Jeremy (dead but still on brand).”
His attendance has sometimes been recorded in the minutes as “present but not voting,” which is honestly a mood.
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The Island That Existed, Didn’t Exist, Then Got Quietly Deleted
For over a century, maps showed an island in the South Pacific called **Sandy Island**, located between Australia and New Caledonia. Scientists, ship captains, and atlases all agreed: yup, there’s a chunk of land right there. Everyone just accepted it like a group chat rumor no one fact-checked.
Then in 2012, a research team went to study it.
They sailed straight to the coordinates and discovered… **water**. Just ocean. No island. No sand. Zero land.
Awkward.
What likely happened:
- Old navigational charts recorded floating pumice or error as “island”
- The mistake got copied into more maps for decades
- Digital maps, including Google Maps, repeated it
- Reality finally stepped in and said “you made that up”
Cartographers ended up **removing an island from the world**, which is such a powerful “control + Z” move. For years, Sandy Island was Schrödinger’s Vacation Spot: existed on paper, not in reality.
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Conclusion
History isn’t just kings, wars, and that one chapter your teacher always rushed through. It’s:
- A country losing a war to birds
- A man treating “shot in the chest” like a minor PowerPoint delay
- A tower light messing with early Wi-Fi
- A philosopher attending his own posthumous meetings
- An island that ghosted the entire world
Save this for later. Send it to a friend. Start a group chat called “Are We Sure History Is Real?”
Because somewhere out there, a future historian is going to write about *our* timeline… and honestly, they’re going to think we made it up too.
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Sources
- [Australian Government: National Museum of Australia – The Emu War](https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/emu-war) – Background and details on the 1932 “Emu War” in Western Australia
- [Theodore Roosevelt Center – Roosevelt’s 1912 Assassination Attempt](https://www.theodorerooseveltcenter.org/Learn-About-TR/TR-Timeline/Assassination-Attempt) – Account of Roosevelt being shot and continuing his campaign speech
- [University College London – Jeremy Bentham’s Auto-Icon](https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bentham-project/who-was-jeremy-bentham/auto-icon-jeremy-bentham) – Official information on Bentham’s preserved body and its use at UCL
- [National Library of Australia – The Disappearing Sandy Island](https://www.nla.gov.au/stories/blog/maps/2012/11/29/the-mystery-of-sandy-island) – Explanation of the “phantom island” and why it appeared on maps
- [UNESCO – Eiffel Tower and Early Wireless Experiments](https://en.unesco.org/courier/2018-3/eiffel-tower-and-radio-waves) – Historical context on the Eiffel Tower’s role in early radio and signal experiments