What is a historical fact everyone should know?

1. In pretty much every region that Alexander the Great conquered, "Alexander" became a popular name. It's one thing to kick someone's ass, it's quite another to beat them so bad they name their kids after you.
   — andrea893


2. The last American Civil War veteran lived until 1956. From muskets and cavalry to jets and tanks. Can't wrap my mind around it.
   — bartekjez


3. The Ottoman Empire's Sultan Ibrahim I had 280 of his concubines drowned in the ocean after one of them slept with another man. Talk about jealousy and insecurity.
   — Typhens






4. The earliest known use of the word "fuck" is allegedly in an English administrative record from 1278 which shows someone named "John le Fucker of Tythinge" in prison for a double murder and seeking bail. Similarly, a court record from 1311 shows someone named "Roger Fuckebythenavele" was ordered to appear before the court in Cheshire.
   — LaunchOurRocket


5. By the time European settlers got to what's now the US and Canada, 90% of the native population had already died off due to Spanish-borne diseases that migrated up from Central America. Basically they showed up in the middle of an apocalypse.
   — murderousbudgie


6. Pu Yi, the last emperor of China, started his life as an emperor and ended his life as a street sweeper after the communists took over. Good film about him: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4cH6g1wD5g
   — LadyOfAvalon83






7. The rise of Russia as a world superpower would have been prevented if Sweden had won the Great Northern War (1700-1721), in which Sweden nearly defeated Denmark-Norway, Poland-Lithuania, Prussia, and Russia *combined* in a twenty year war before finally being defeated.
   — Byzantine555


8. That most of history isn't facts, but our best guess at interpreting vague and often contradictory sources.
   — BZH_JJM


9. A sense of historical scale is always useful. For example, [Harvard University](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_University#History) didn't teach calculus for the first fifty or so years it existed. The university is old enough that calculus [hadn't actually been discovered and formalised until then](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottfried_Wilhelm_Leibniz#Calculus).
   — Portarossa






10. When the polio vaccine was released, parents lined the street and stood in line for hours to get their children, and themselves, vaccinations. Why? Because they wanted to protect their children from the disease that had killed so many people that they knew and they watched the horror of the disease first hand.
    — Smtxflhi


11. That the Aztec Empire raised Chihuahuas for food. Oh and they also had a rituals where they'd cook and eat someone. Because why not
    — QuickHidetheMuffins