History is vast. So vast, it’s often easier to see it in broad outlines. But the story of history can also be told in small, extraordinary vignettes. Here are some surprising, inspiring and bizarre tales from the past that 25 historians think you should know.

For millennia, the dynastic states of pre-modern China all suffered the same vexing problem: They couldn’t breed healthy horses. The animals always turned out weak, stunted, sickly and short-lived, forcing governments to purchase huge numbers of strong horses from the steppe people of the north and west. This had a significant impact on Chinese history, constantly draining government coffers and leaving military forces with a relatively weak cavalry. When China lost major wars and, on two occasions, the entire country to foreign powers (Mongolians in the 13th century, Manchurians in the 17th), it was often to people renowned for the prowess of their mounted warriors.

The reason for this situation turned out to be something the Chinese couldn’t know until the advent of modern science. Turns out, soil in the Chinese heartland around the Yellow and Yangtze rivers is severely deficient in the mineral Selenium, which is essential to the health of horses and other animals. And it was from the want of this one mineral that multiple empires fell. 

Ed Dwight, who trained as an engineer and Air Force test pilot, was the first African American officer selected for the Air Force astronaut training program in 1961. Yet despite his achievements at the Aerospace Research Pilot School, racial barriers of the 1960s blocked his entry into NASA’s Astronaut Corps. So he pivoted back to his first love: making art. Today, Dwight has gained acclaim for his bronze sculptures inspired by Black history. His work has been collected by museums nationwide, and he has been commissioned for more than 125 large-scale public monuments. His art addresses themes ranging from slavery and civil rights to historical and cultural figures like Frederick Douglass, Dizzy Gillespie and Barack Obama.

In 2020, Dwight became an honorary member of the U.S. Space Force, and on May 19, 2024, he made history again by becoming the oldest person to fly into space as part of Blue Origin’s NS-25 mission. He was 90 years old.

In the mid 1840s, the German Egyptologist Karl Richard Lepsius was studying hieroglyphic inscriptions along the Nile River when he had an idea. Looking for a way to reproduce the characters for sedentary linguists who couldn’t travel to the archaeological sites, Lepsius pressed thick wet filter paper on the inscriptions, waited for it to dry and then peeled it off the stone. These papier-mâché “squeezes” produced images with perfect fidelity—albeit in reverse.

Soon the soldier-diplomat Henry Rawlinson used the technique to capture thousands of 6th-century B.C.E. signs carved into a cliff in northwest Persia, allowing him to crack the code of Assyro-Babylonian cuneiform. Archaeologists continued using squeezes to reproduce everything from ancient graffiti to Pharaonic decrees, filling galleries at the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford and other institutions until the early 1900s, when improvements in photography made them obsolete. Seldom has a low-tech invention had such a high impact on world knowledge. 

What people might not know about Julius Caesar is how his wide-ranging sexual adventures impacted both his quest for power—and his death. Well known for his controversial relationship with Egypt's queen Cleopatra, he also had affairs with the wives of both of his closest allies, Pompey and Crassus. Then, he was rumored to be the lover of Nicodemus, the king of Bithynia—so much so that his opponents nicknamed him the “Queen of Bithynia.” When Caesar tried to speak in the king’s defense in front of the Roman Senate, the respected poet, philosopher and statesman Cicero shut him down: “Forget it, because no one is ignorant of what he has given to you, and what you have given to him.”  

At the time of the Catiline conspiracy, an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the Roman republic, the conservative statesman Cato tried to incriminate Caesar by having one of his letters read publicly. But instead of reading what he thought was a conspiratorial missive from Catiline, Cato read a steamy love letter to Caesar from his own sister, Servilia, said by the Roman historian Suetonius to be Caesar's favorite mistress for some two decades. Servilia's son Brutus most likely wasn’t his, but Caesar always showed him particular favor. Which is why, upon seeing Brutus amongst his assassins, Caesar stopped defending himself and, as Suetonius tells us, just uttered: You too, my son?

Throughout its history, as America expanded westward, territories formed, with some becoming new states. Proposed states had names like Franklin, Jefferson, Deseret and Westylvania. North Dakota and the lower third of Texas both tried to become states called Lincoln. Among the new proposals, at least a half-dozen bills and treaties put forth the idea of forming an Indian state. The proposed State of Sequoyah, for one, held a constitutional convention in August 1905 in Muskogee, Indian Territory. The would-be state covered much of the eastern half of today’s Oklahoma, including land Native Americans had already been granted through various relocation treaties with the U.S. government.  

In 1905, having been sovereign over the territory for several decades, a coalition of tribal nations presented a memorial document to Congress, including a full state constitution. The Republican-led Congress refused to consider the proposal, and President Theodore Roosevelt, who didn’t want two possible Democratic states coming in at the same time, signed a proclamation in 1907 that merged Indian Territory back with Oklahoma Territory, creating what we now know as the state of Oklahoma.  

Colonel Patrick “Patty” O'Rorke is one of the little-known heroes of Gettysburg. An Irish immigrant of humble origins, he graduated West Point at 21—considered old then—ranked first in his June 1861 class. On July 2, 1863, one of the bloodiest days in U.S. history, he commanded the 140th New York infantry regiment at Gettysburg, with orders to move with his brigade to reinforce Union troops in the Wheatfield. 

Around 5 P.M., his former commander, Brigadier General Gouverneur K. Warren, having seen the Confederates advancing toward the strategic hill of Little Round Top, intercepted the 140th, imploring, “Paddy, give me a regiment.” O'Rorke initially hesitated, as he was expected to follow his brigade commander, not some staff officer. But Warren pushed: “Never mind that, bring your regiment up here!” O'Rorke led the 140th New York up Little Round Top's rugged, steep backside. 

Cresting the hill, he saw the chaos below. Drawing his sword, he yelled to his men, “Down this way, boys.” Moments later, he was shot in the neck and bled to death as his troops slammed into the advancing Confederates. O’Rorke and the 140th became unsung heroes in the defense of Little Round Top, which many historians cite as key to the Union victory at Gettysburg. Today, the 140th's monument features O'Rorke's face and the values with which he led his men: Valor, Fraternity, Patriotism and Duty. 

When most people think about the Montgomery Bus Boycott, they conjure images of a brave, yet weary Rosa Parks, who ignited the 1955 boycott by refusing to yield her seat on a segregated city bus in Alabama. Or they imagine a young Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who rose to prominence during the protest campaign because of his fiery oratory and decisive leadership. Another lesser known, yet vitally important figure during the boycott was a cook named Georgia Gilmore. Gilmore had experienced discrimination on the buses, and her son had once been arrested on a Montgomery bus on false charges.  

An ardent supporter of the struggle to desegregate public buses, Gilmore assembled a secret club of Black women named The Club from Nowhere to contribute to the costly, 13-month demonstration of consumer power, which included subsidizing carpools and Black taxi trips at the same cost as a 10-cent bus ride. The Club prepared Southern specialties, from fried chicken to pound cake, and sold these delights in order to fund and feed the boycotters, who refused to be deterred by intimidation, arrests and even bombings. Like many boycott participants, Gilmore lost her job because she testified in the court case that emerged from the struggle. Later, she used her talents to open a lunch counter, where guests included Lyndon B. Johnson and Robert F. Kennedy.  

In researching the U.S. Air Army Forces' epic airlift to China over "the Hump" of the Himalayas during World War II, I was constantly stumbling upon surprising, even amazing, facts of the war’s little-known China Burma India theater. (China, in particular, was strategically important to the Allies in slowing down Japanese territorial aggression in the Pacific.) Perhaps most startling among the revelations involved U.S. General "Vinegar" Joe Stilwell. Stilwell’s aide, Lieutenant Colonel Frank Dorn, revealed in his memoir that in 1943, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt told Stilwell to prepare a plan to assassinate Chinese military and political leader Chiang Kai-Shek, a once-esteemed ally who had deeply frustrated and disappointed FDR with his minimal efforts to stop the Japanese. Obedient to orders, Stilwell and his aide prepared a plan in which the Generalissimo would be flown over "the Hump" by U.S. pilots who would be given sealed orders as they took off to crash the plane. While everyone else would jump to safety, Chiang Kai-Shek's parachutes would be fixed so that he would "drop like a plumb bob." Needless to say, the plan was never put into action.  

Did you know the first woman to deliver a political speech to a joint session of Congress was only 21 years old? On January 16, 1864, Anna Dickinson spoke before a crowded House chamber with Abraham Lincoln in attendance. Like all women in that era, Dickinson could not vote, but she had become a Civil War celebrity through her patriotic speeches. In 1863, her oratory helped elect Unionist candidates in various state and congressional elections. Now, official Washington was waiting to hear her thoughts on the upcoming presidential contest, which had the incumbent Lincoln competing for his party's nomination against a member of his own cabinet—Secretary of Treasury Salmon Chase, a leading radical.  

Dickinson, herself radical about slavery, supported its total abolition. Lincoln hated slavery too but often acted cautiously as he worked to manage the fragile Union coalition, which included some slave states. Speaking on "The Perils of the Hour," Dickinson argued that their war was fundamentally about "liberty," but conceded that despite her impatience over past "compromises,” she was finally ready to back a true "man of the people" for a second term. Lincoln's top aide reported the audience erupted in "repeated rounds of applause."   

In the summer of 1939, as war loomed in Europe, Sigrid Schultz, the Chicago Tribune’s Berlin bureau chief, was engaged in the seemingly frivolous task of consulting with Adolf Hitler’s favorite astrologers. The results of Schultz’s investigations into Hitler’s obsession with astrology appeared in a front-page article in the Tribune, titled “Hitler Gazes at Stars to Guide His Decisions.” But producing a quirky human-interest story wasn’t the main purpose for her astrological inquiries. Those visits were part of a series of leads she was following for what would be the biggest scoop of her career: uncovering Germany’s nonaggression pact with the Soviet Union.  

The astrologers told her the same story she was getting from sources in the Nazis’ inner circle: Germany and Russia would soon be allies. Schultz forecast the signing of the German-Soviet pact in July, five weeks before Baron von Ribbentrop flew to Russia to negotiate the details, telling her readers that Hitler’s closest aides were now toasting their new ally. With the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact on August 24—and the assurance of Hitler’s astrologers that his horoscope looked good for September—Poland’s fate was sealed. On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland.  

In 1818, an English brewer and amateur botanist named William Hooker opened a packing case sent by a friend from Brazil. In it, he found an odd-looking root—which presently grew into a dazzling purple-and-crimson orchid. Hooker sent an offset, or new growth, to a collector in London, where it provoked amazement and awe. “There is certainly no plant,” wrote one observer, “of which I have any knowledge that can be said to stand forth with an equal radiance of and beauty.” So began a cultural obsession with exotic orchids in Europe and North America, a phenomenon known as orchidomania or orchidelirium, that soon swept up a new middle class keen to signal its leisure and spending power.  

But where did the packing case orchid come from, exactly? Could more be found? As the decades passed, collectors became frenzied in their efforts to recover it, searching all over Brazil, without success. A few descendants of the “lost orchid” periodically came up for sale at auction, while collectors recovered similar plants all over South America. But these finds only sharpened the growing appetite for the “vera” or “true” orchid—even as early environmentalists began to warn it might have vanished forever, due to deforestation. By the 1890s, at least three major companies sent hunters to find it at all costs, but also to sabotage their rivals—by highjacking crates, destroying plants, intercepting telegrams, bribing officials and more. When it was finally found, the dirty tricks only continued in a war of words and “fake news” that played out in the media for months.  

In pre-Revolutionary Paris, the art of non-lethal dueling, once a gentlemen’s pastime, became a sport for athletes from all ranks of society—including enslaved and formerly enslaved people. The monarchy struggled, unsuccessfully, to keep swords out of the hands of the lower classes. A decree from the 1780s even banned “negroes” (together with other domestic servants) from carrying arms in Paris. To suppress the new dueling trend, the police conducted frequent busts of unlicensed gyms.  

Paris was then home to only a few hundred people of color—of whom most were servants. Nonetheless, Black men numbered among the town’s leading swordsmen. The most famous fencer of the age was the Chevalier de Saint-Georges, illegitimate son of a French plantation owner in Guadeloupe and an African-born enslaved woman. Family wealth would enable Saint-Georges—also renowned for his prodigious talents as a violinist and composer—to train with the city's most elite fencing instructor. Yet there were other Black swashbucklers of humbler means, some born in Africa and others in the colonies, who flourished on the illegal recreational dueling scene and even ran their own gyms. These early and unheralded Black masters of arms helped popularize a sport later immortalized by the writer Alexandre Dumas—son of a Black Revolutionary general—in his novels The Fencing Master (1840) and The Three Musketeers (1844). 

Everyone knows the American Civil War ended on April 9, 1865, when Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox. Except—it didn't end then. Major Confederate armies remained in the field. For months after Appomattox, the U.S. government declared that the war continued, which allowed it to use “war powers” to justify the presence of thousands of U.S. troops in the South. So, when did the Civil War really conclude? It’s tough to say, but one little-known fact is that its legal end came on August 20, 1866, the day—more than 16 months after the Appomattox surrender—when President Andrew Johnson declared the war over. The U.S. Supreme Court ultimately upheld that date as the war’s official end.  

Many are aware that the U.S. government incarcerated some 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II. Fewer know that, at the same time, nearly 6,000 Japanese Americans—many of whose families languished in the camps—served in the U.S. Military Intelligence Service (MIS) as trained linguists, playing a decisive role in America’s victory over Japan in the Pacific. With their work translating sensitive documents, helping interrogate prisoners, communicating with civilians and more, these Nisei (or second-generation Japanese) “shortened the Pacific war by two years,” according to Major General Charles Willoughby, intelligence chief for General Douglas MacArthur. After the war, many served in important positions during America’s occupation of Japan, proving instrumental in bridging the cultural and linguistic differences that separated the two nations, helping them evolve from wartime enemies to peacetime allies.  

William Parker (1821-1891) was a self-emancipated abolitionist dedicated to helping others escape slavery. In Christiana, Pennsylvania, he organized the Black community and White allies into a sophisticated mutual protection network to warn neighbors of fugitive slave catchers roaming the area. He became known for fearlessly fighting them off and leading armed rescues to free those captured.  

On September 11, 1851, Parker took an audacious stand against a posse led by enslaver Edward Gorsuch and a federal marshal. Allegedly, four of Gorsuch’s enslaved workers had escaped and were sheltering in Parker’s home. Parker refused to turn them over and signaled his allies, who arrived en masse. The ensuing melee, now known as the Christiana riot, resulted in Gorsuch’s death. With U.S. Marines in pursuit, Parker escaped to Canada with the help of fellow abolitionist Frederick Douglass. The U.S. sought Parker’s extradition, but Canada refused. Meanwhile, over 50 men—mostly Black—were arrested. Parker and his white allies were charged with treason for defying the Fugitive Slave Act of 1851. When they were acquitted, their stand inspired similar acts of resistance throughout the North, further enraging Southern enslavers. Parker continued aiding freedom-seekers until the end of the American Civil War.  

Anne Davidow was a trailblazing attorney in Detroit. But few Americans know the story of this suffragist who obtained her law degree in 1920, the same year the 19th Amendment prohibited sex-based denials of the vote. Decades later, Davidow represented four women who sued to block a 1945 Michigan law that prohibited women from bartending in cities with 50,000 or more people—unless the woman was “the wife or daughter of the male owner” of the bar. The Michigan statute joined a wave of “anti-barmaid” legislation that the male-only bartenders’ union helped push through statehouses after Prohibition ended in 1933.  

Challenging the constitutionality of Michigan’s law was always going to be an uphill battle. Generations of judges had upheld many other restrictions on women’s work. Yet Davidow, undaunted, appealed Goesaert v. Cleary (1948) all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Justice Felix Frankfurter heckled her from the bench while informing her that “the days of chivalry aren’t over.” Presumably, Frankfurter either failed to recognize the irony or felt that Davidow’s effrontery in bringing this suit excused him from any obligation to act like a gentleman. Frankfurter wrote an opinion for the Supreme Court that dismissed Davidow’s arguments in less than three pages. Eventually, though, she had the last laugh. The Supreme Court overruled Frankfurter’s opinion in 1976. 

Cochineal, a tiny insect found on cactus, was used as a dye by Indigenous peoples in Mesoamerica as early as the second century B.C.E. When the Spanish invaded in the 1500s and saw the incredible red of the cochineal dye, they brought it back to Europe—but kept the source a secret for the next 250 years. This dye was treasured as the royal red and used to color British officers' red coats, the red pigment of painters like Vermeer, clothing for the French aristocracy and the red stripes of the first U.S. flag. Cochineal, which became as valuable as gold and silver, helped the Spanish build their empire.

In 1776, in one of the earliest acts of bio-piracy, a French botanist and adventurer named Thiérry de Menonville attempted to find the source of the dyestuff. He managed to sneak into New Spain (Mexico) and walk 600 miles to the region where they were cultivated. Had he been caught, he would have been executed. But he succeeded in eluding authorities and smuggled the cochineal to Haiti, a French colony then called Saint-Domingue. Unfortunately for de Menonville, he contracted malaria and died before he could deliver the treasured bug back to France. 

Primarily remembered for his involvement in the Watergate scandal and his subsequent resignation, Richard Nixon is far less well known for his pivotal role in advancing the sovereignty and self-determination of American Indians. As president, he reversed the U.S. government’s policy of tribal termination, which for decades had aimed to strip Indian tribes’ status as self-governing nations. He worked to pass the Indian Education Act of 1972, which authorized a higher level of funding for Indian education and gave Indian communities a forum to provide input on education priorities. He also pushed for a federal policy shift recognizing Indian self-determination, leading to later passage in 1975 of the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act.  

Nixon credited his support for Indian people with a personal relationship with Wallace Newman, his football coach at Whittier College. A citizen of the La Jolla Band of Luiseño Indians, Wallace grew into a father figure for Nixon, who said of his coach, “He gave me an understanding that what really matters is not a man’s background, his color, his race, or his religion but only his character.” 

What toppled the 300-year Romanov dynasty? It was not revolutionaries, but monarchists—Czar Nicholas II’s own relatives, Russia’s legislative Duma politicians and its High Command generals—that ultimately slayed the Russian monarchy.   

Nicholas himself made grave mistakes. As soldiers began to join rioters in the streets of Petrograd, Nicholas chose to travel from the war front to join his family outside Petrograd—only to get stranded in Pskov when revolutionaries diverted the royal train. Far from either the capital or his military headquarters, he remained detached and isolated, as the Duma stepped in to quell the rioting and called for his abdication. Meanwhile, the generals, fearing the spread of their troops’ increasingly mutinous discontent, wrote telegrams to Nicholas, also urging him to step down.

Stuck in his train without support, and worried for the safety of his family, Nicholas caved to the pressure. He made a last-ditch—and illegal—move in his abdication decree to salvage the monarchy by transferring the throne to his brother, Mikhail. Under pressure from Duma politicians, Mikhail refused it, effectively ending the Russian monarchy. Ultimately, all players acted out of their own interest without coordination, cascading to the fall of the Romanov dynasty. 

In 1948, reporter Alice Dunnigan became the first Black woman to be admitted to the Capitol and White House Press Corps. As the Washington bureau chief of the Associated Negro Press—a news service that provided stories, columns and reviews to most Black newspapers across the United States—Dunnigan fought hard for the credentials that allowed her to not only report on the White House, the House of Representatives and the Senate, but also the Supreme Court and the State Department. She also covered President Harry Truman’s 1948 campaign, making her the first Black journalist to accompany a president on a cross-country tour. But it was Dunnigan’s dogged reporting on employment and housing discrimination and other civil rights issues that gave African Americans vital information the mainstream media didn’t cover. Dunnigan, a Kentucky-born daughter of a sharecropper and laundress, also became the first Black woman elected to the Women’s National Press Club. She served as ANP’s Washington bureau from 1947 to 1961.  

In the summer of 1862, President Abraham Lincoln wanted two things: to emancipate the enslaved people who might help Confederate forces fight the Civil War—and a decisive military victory so emancipation would not appear a desperate measure after high-profile battlefield defeats. As Confederate forces moved northward under General Robert E. Lee, Union commander General George McClellan and his army followed. In Frederick, Maryland, a few of his soldiers lucked into an amazing find. Amid the debris from Lee’s just-departed forces—bullets, buttons, newspapers and plenty of horse dung—they found three cigars wrapped inside some papers.  

Good Southern tobacco was enough to excite any soldier, but the papers proved considerably more valuable. They had found Lee’s Special Orders No. 191, which detailed how the Confederate general was spreading his forces out. This intel gave McClellan the chance to pounce, resulting directly in the bloodiest day in American history at Antietam a few days later. Antietam proved enough of a Union victory for Lincoln, who soon issued his now-famous "Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation.” Had these soldiers not discovered the so-called Lost Orders, or just kept the cigars and not passed the papers up the chain, who knows if or when Antietam—or emancipation—might have occurred? 

The bodies of enslaved people were valued at every stage of their lives—from before they were born to after they passed away. I recall finding this out through archival research, learning about men such as Grandison Harris and Chris Baker, two 19th-century grave robbers who worked, respectively, for the Medical Colleges of Georgia and Virginia, supplying "subjects for dissection." Because of their unusual labor providing cadavers, especially Black bodies, to researchers, the study of human anatomy grew. When the infamous Nat Turner, a ringleader in the 1831 Southampton Rebellion, was captured and hung, he was also decapitated and local medical students fought over his remains. His skull was later transferred to various medical schools in the South, North and Midwest before being given to his descendants in 2016. 

I’m fascinated by the so-called Affair of the Diamond Necklace, a little-known scheme that fueled the fires of revolution in France. Cardinal de Rohan, son of a prominent French family, had fallen out of favor with French queen Marie Antoinette for having gossiped behind her back and insulted her mother. In 1783, a woman named Jeanne de Valois-Saint-Rémy became the cardinal’s mistress and promised to help him re-enter Marie Antoinette’s good graces. Jeanne enabled a correspondence between the queen and the cardinal, letters that eventually evolved into an intimate friendship.

But it was all a scam: Jeanne was forging the queen’s letters. And when “Marie Antoinette” asked the cardinal to act as go-between to help her purchase a diamond necklace worth 2,000,000 livres (about $15 million today), of course he obliged. Jeanne absconded with the necklace, and when the jewelers weren’t paid, they complained to the real Marie Antoinette, who was ignorant of the whole affair. The cardinal was arrested, and though eventually the true story emerged, public opinion had risen fervently against Marie Antoinette, who was painted as manipulative, frivolous and villainous. Her reputation never recovered. 

Many people recognize the 1967 Supreme Court Loving v. Virginia decision as the pivotal moment when interracial marriage became legal in the South. But miscegenist laws were not limited to the Jim Crow South, and many southern state legislatures had legalized interracial marriage in the years following the Civil War. Mixed-race marriage was legal in Mississippi during the 1870s. Louisiana did not outlaw interracial marriage until 1894. Many mixed-race couples married during the years in which their unions were legal, and laws making interracial marriage illegal did not always force these couples to part ways. 

Developed in the 1840s, “Pitman shorthand” used phonetic symbols in place of traditional letters, allowing for quicker and more efficient writing. The first professionals to utilize Pitman shorthand were stenographers—clerks and secretaries transcribing legal proceedings, business meetings and other workplace communiqués. When men vacated their secretarial jobs to fight in the Civil War, women began flowing into the field. Gradually, stenography transformed from a majority male occupation to an almost exclusively female one, aided by a flourishing of women’s shorthand schools and a changing attitude toward women joining the workforce.  

Some of these women’s schools doubled as meeting spots for suffragists, who gathered after hours to recruit supporters, hold fundraisers and print suffrage literature. Naturally, the groups commingled: Suffragists learned the art of shorthand and stenographers joined the feminist fight, thus linking suffrage and shorthand in the struggle for women’s rights. Pitman shorthand, like the Bloomer dress, came to symbolize female empowerment. If the Bloomer liberated women from their sartorial constraints—long skirts, tight waists, organ-squeezing corsets—then shorthand unshackled their orthographic cuffs, quickening their transcription rates and increasing their job efficiency. Women often referred to the Bloomer as their “freedom dress.” They might rightly have called shorthand their “freedom spelling.”