Did you know that the ancient Egyptians deliberately coated their servants with honey to distract the attention of the flies from the pharaoh? And that Alexander the Great invented the spy tricks that are still used today? And here's another:
At the time of the heyday of the Roman Empire, its dominion extended over vast territories - their total area was about 2.51 million square kilometers. However, in the list of the largest empires in history, the Roman occupies only nineteenth place.
Attempts to calculate the duration of the peaceful development of mankind have led to a sad result: out of the last three thousand years, only two hundred and forty have not been marred by any war.
A sketch of the modern Stars and Stripes flag of the United States was developed by an American high school student Robert Heft - as part of a school assignment, for which, by the way, he received a very modest grade B- (like we have four with a minus). When his drawing was chosen as a symbol of the nation, the teacher patriotically changed the grade to the highest A.
Of the ten bloodiest wars in history, eight have fought in China.
Promotional video:
The two largest Chinese wars each claimed more lives than World War I.
The Constitution of the United States of America is full of spelling and grammatical errors.
At its peak, in 480 BC, the first Persian Empire ruled 44 percent of the world's population.
This is the largest figure among all the empires that have existed in history. By comparison, the British Empire subdued only 20 percent of the world.
Mexican General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna arranged a grand funeral ceremony for the amputation of his own leg.
Until the beginning of the nineteenth century, teeth of soldiers killed in battle were used to make dentures.
During the Ice Age, the inhabitants of the British Isles used human skulls as drinking goblets.
In ancient Egypt, servants were specially smeared with honey so that they distract the attention of flies and other insects from the sacred person of the pharaoh.
During the An Shih uprising (also known as the An Lushan uprising) in China in the middle of the eighth century, about forty million people died. At that time, it accounted for one-sixth of the world's population.
Peter the Great beheaded his wife's lover and then forced her to keep her embalmed head in her chambers.
In the early nineteenth century, people were so often buried alive that some of the coffins were even equipped with a special mechanism that allowed the "revived dead" to ring the bell in the cemetery.
Mongol warriors melted fat from the bodies of slain opponents, set it on fire and used it as a weapon.
The last case of the use of cavalry in battles was recorded during the Second World War, when the Mongolian cavalry division entered the battle with the German infantry division. As a result, two thousand Mongol horsemen died, while not a single German soldier was killed.
The Greek educator Gorgias of Epirus was born in the coffin of his deceased mother. The people who carried the coffin during the funeral heard the crying of the baby and brought him out into the light.
Alexander the Great became famous for the invention of espionage techniques that are still used today. He forced his soldiers to write letters to their relatives and opened them all to the last. Those of the soldiers who could not find words for delight from the upcoming victories and did not demonstrate a high fighting spirit were executed by order of the emperor.
Goujian, who ruled the Yue kingdom in ancient China, is famous for placing a number of criminals sentenced to death ahead of his army. Before the start of the battle, they all cut off their own heads with their own hands, leading the enemy into a state of panic horror.
Ksenia Gusakova
