History Facts that are SO Stupid but are Real!

 These are amazing. I never heard of any of these and wanted to share.

1. Benjamin Hornigold was a pirate in the late 16 and early 1700s who once robbed a merchant vessel purely for the crews hats because he and his crew got so drunk the night before that they all threw their own hats overboard for no good reason.

2. In 1184, a number of nobles from across the Holy Roman Empire were meeting in a room at the Church of St. Peter, when their combined weight caused the floor to collapse into the latrine beneath the cellar and led to dozens of nobles drowning in liquid excrement.

It is referred to as the Erfurt latrine disaster   

3. How the Berlin Wall fell. In order to calm mounting protests GDR officials decided on loosening travel restrictions between East and West, not open the border completely.

Notes of the new rules had been handed to a spokesman who hadn't had time to read them before the press conference. "Private travel outside the country can now be applied for without prerequisites," he said. Surprised journalists clamored for more details. Shuffling through his notes, he said that as far as he was aware, it was effective immediately. In fact it had been planned to start the next day, with details on applying for a visa. But the news was all over television - and East Germans flocked to the border in huge numbers. As the border became inundated with East Berliners wishing to reunite with family and/or escape the GDR, border guards became overwhelmed and with no orders to either shoot upon the crowd or open the gate, only a handful of guards facing hundreds and thousands of citizens, rather than fire and create a stampede and potentially kill hundreds the head of the guards decided to give the order "Open the barrier!" What came next was a spontaneous chain reaction with Berliners on both sides arriving at Checkpoint Charlie to celebrate this momentous event and to demolish the wall.

So basically an ill prepared functionary made a flippant remark and a border guard captain unable to get orders on how to proceed led to one of the most defining moments of the late 20th Century in Europe.

4.The Great Pig War (aka the San Juan Boundary Dispute) between the US and UK/Canada lasted seven whole years and at its max involved 2,600 combatants and nearly a hundred cannons.

But the opposing forces never actually got around to doing much combatting. In fact, the only recorded injury was a Royal Marine who got hit in the eye by a rock blindly thrown from the American trenches. He was shipped to hospital, recuperated, and rejoined his unit.

Most of the troops' time was spent sneaking into each other's camps to play cards, and to trade tobacco and fresh food for navy rum swiped from the quartermaster's stores. Generally known as The Best War Ever.

The inciting factor was a pig from the British camp getting into the American camp's garden, upon which it was shot. Hence, 'the Pig War.'

5. In WW2 the Russians trained dogs to run under tanks with time bombs on their backs. "Anti-tank dogs". But, the Russians trained the dogs on Russian tanks so when they set them free on the battlefield they truned around and started blowing up the Russian tanks instead of the opposition's tanks. So insane that no one thought about using German tanks for the training.

This must have taken MONTHS and at least dozens of people and no one realized. Specifically they were tracking the smell. Soviets used diesel for their armor while the Nazis used gasoline