Maybe it’s a surprising fact that makes you rethink conventional wisdom, or perhaps it’s a wild anecdote that seems too crazy to be true. Whatever the case these tiny startling bits of HISTORY will wrap up your sense of time and the way you perceive history.

As a wise man once said:

“Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.“

— George Santayana

Here are our picks for the 51 Startling Historical Facts You Never Heard Before…..

1. Cleopatra Married Both of her Brothers.

The famed queen of Egypt is well known for several absurd things, including bathing in milk, being unrolled from carpets, and using a snake to kill herself.

But you might not know that she married both of her brothers in keeping with custom. Eventually, they both got killed, one drowned due to golden armour, and the other was probably Poisoned on her instructions.

A 1963 movie based on her was one of the most expensive movies.

Cleopatra bathed in milk to encourage parasites out of her body. It was a successful remedy of its time. Thank You,Sharon Visser for pointing it out in the comments

2. The Great Wall of China is Sadly Called the Longest Cemetery in the World

The Great Wall of China is a graveyard with lakhs of men Buried inside it. It is estimated that more than 400,000 workers died; some are said to be buried in the long wall. That gives the dreadful saying of the ‘longest cemetery’.

3. Rasputin survived being stabbed, poisoned and shot with guns.

Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin was a Russian mystic and self-proclaimed holy man. He was stabbed in the stomach, shot in the chest, Poisoned beat, and finally murdered on December 16th, 1916. When the shooting failed to kill Rasputin, so they beat him, tied up his body, and threw it into the freezing waters of the Neva River but still survived for 5 hours before giving up.

4. Turkeys were once worshipped as Gods.

During 300 BC Mayan culture was at its height and it was their tradition to worship Turkeys and it was part of most sacred rituals.

5. The shortest war being fought lasted for only 38 minutes.

The Anglo-Zanzibar War was fought between Zanzibar Sultanate and Great Britain on 27 August 1896. The military conflict lasted between 38 to 45 minutes, marking it as the shortest recorded war ever fought.

6. In Victorian England, people used to take pictures of their dead relatives in lifelike positions to keep as Mementos.

This historic tradition is what they used to call Post-mortem photography. Although Various cultures have followed this tradition but were mostly practised in Europe and America.

7.Alexander the Great was Buried Alive.

Well, it will surprise you to know that uptill today, there is absolutely no archaeological evidence to prove that Alexendra the great ever existed. But Still, let’s continue:

Alexander the great suffered a rare disease that left him paralyzed for six days. His muscles were so paralyzed that the doctors couldn’t figure breathing and announced him dead. So there is a very strong possibility of him being buried alive, accidentally.

8. Researchers once turned a living cat completely into a working Telephone.

It was 1922 when Professor Ernest Glen Wever and his research assistant Charles William Bray at Princeton University turned a living but unconscious cat into a working telephone. The purpose of the experiment was to test how sound is perceived by the auditory nerve.

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