I used to work at Fort Mackinac, in Michigan. It's a historic fort part of the state historic parks up there, and we did daily costumed interpretation of the 1880s, when Mackinac was a national park and the garrison there had park-related duties. The fort had its own small archive and a lot of documents from the period, and occasionally I was able to go and do some primary research for fun or for adding detail to our daily demonstrations.

One of our daily demos was a court-martial reenactment. We had the records in the archives and so could go into some detail about certain cases. We steered away from any of the serious ones (though there was at least one murder and one mutiny at the fort, but way before our interpretive period), and used examples of disgruntled soldiers who got drunk or deserted into the village overnight or had some mild insubordination.

One of the guys we zeroed in on was named Amos Wilkie, who was a notorious troublemaker. He was stationed at mackinac from 1886 until his company left the fort in 91, and in that time was court martialed a total of seven times. Though most of it was for being in the village after lights out, a few of them were for direct and hilarious insubordination. We did two Wilkie courts martial: one was for accosting an officer on his porch and refusing to leave after being ordered away, and the second was for being found in the barracks after leaving a job without permission.

We reenacted both in varying degrees of seriousness, but I was always interested in getting it as accurately as possible (given our inherently limited scope during demos), and furthermore, I just found Wilkie personally interesting. I felt like he and I shared a lot of personality traits, and whenever it was my turn to be "the accused" at a court martial I'd usually pick a Wilkie case.

Anyway. I went to the archives once, and began thumbing through the court martial records. The entries were usually very brief, they listed the date, the officers who convened and judged the offender, the offender and the article of war he was accused of violating, the plea, the vote, and the result. Not many went into much detail.

But I did find one, from February 1887, about Pvt. Amos Wilkie. It was his very first court martial, but it went into very specific detail about what exactly his crimes were.

Wilkie was part of a work detail looking to the company's livestock, and was ordered by corporal William Williams to shovel snow out of the pig pen. He refused, and Williams repeated the order, and was refused again. Finally, Wilkie replied: "I won't do it for you or any other man, Williams!"

Williams then went to fetch the detail's sergeant, Thomas Hennesey, who warned Wilkie that if he didn't do as he was told, he'd be arrested. Wilkie snapped back: "I won't shovel out the pig pen, and you can do as you please." I always imagined him flinging the snow shovel down into the snow, spraying gray-down slush onto the sergeant's trousers while Wilkie crossed his arms.

So he was arrested. After cooling his heels a few days in the guard house he was court martialed, and his sentence was the maximum legal limit: a full month's pay in fines and a full month of hard labor while confined to the guard house in off hours. The CO commuted the sentence to half of that in each particular due to Wilkie's inexperience (this is about the 6 month mark of his enlistment) and recommendations from Wilkie's company commander.

We of course speculated a whole lot about why Wilkie had such a strong reaction to cleaning out the pig pen, and my personal theory boils down to basic personality issues (Wilkie's other courts mortail all showed a strong anti-authoritarian streak. If the man was a miner he'd have been a union organizer, in my opinion) and unfulfilled promises. He was recruited in New York city, and his profession was listed as "painter" prior to his enlistment. I expect that the recruiting officer made promises about the ease of life at the Mackinac post, Wilkie's experience as a painter would get him posted to sweet, easy gigs involving repainting the old buildings at the fort, the wonderful view and climate etc.

So here comes 22 year old Amos Wilkie suffering his first Michigan winter - they are nasty on Mackinac island - ordered around by a corporal who'd been promoted just a week or so before after having been busted from sergeant because of a poker game (another court martial we know a great deal about), ordering Wilkie, alone, to do a job that should take three or four men. He thinks it's unfair, that he's being singled out, that there's a better way to do it. But obstinate Williams, with the stitches fresh on his stripes, is letting power corrupt, so Wilkie of course refuses.

By the time Hennesey gets there, Wilkie's dug in, Williams is obstinate, and there's no way it'll go down easy.

Obviously there's no way to know exactly what Wilkie's personality was like without letters or a journal or testament from the same by others, but I always liked Wilkie - or at least the semiotic construction of Wilkie I have in my head - and always liked relating his various acts of indiscipline to whoever would listen.

My favorite is how Nevada became a state:

The Republican Party was worried President Lincoln would lose the 1864 election (a note in Lincoln's handwriting from the time predicted the election would be won or lost by a few electoral votes). So the party looked for pro-Republican territories they could turn into a state before the election for an extra few electoral votes.

A Republican-dominated Congress voted for enabling acts for Colorado, Nebraska, and Nevada. Colorado and Nebraska both said thanks, but no thanks, leaving only Nevada. Nevada's legislature drafted a constitution and sent it by overland mail and clipper ship. Neither copy arrived in a timely fashion, so with time running out and President Lincoln and Secretary Seward getting anxious, Nevada Governor Nye decided to send the whole thing via telegraph.

The telegraph was the longest ever sent up until that point (16,000 words) and took two of the best telegraphers tag-teaming it for 12 hours. There was no direct link between Carson City and Washington D.C., so it had to be transcribed and re-sent in Salt Lake City, Chicago, and Philadelphia before it reached the Office of US Military Telegraph in DC. The telegraph cost $62,000 in 2012 dollars. It would hold the record as longest telegraph for 17 years until a copy of the New Testament was telegraphed via the Atlantic cable from England to Chicago in 1881.

Then they let soldiers vote from the field and Lincoln won in a landslide 212-21. Nevada's 2 electoral votes turned out to be unneeded.

The original formula for admitting a state to the Union was that they had to have a population equal to one Congressional district. If Congress had waited until Nevada had enough people to be a state it wouldn't have happened until the 70s. Wyoming still wouldn't be a state.

Shoutout to Professor Eric Rauchway at the University of California Davis for originally telling this story.

A source: http://nsla.nv.gov/MakingNVConst/

John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester was an poet and courtier in King Charles II's Restoration court. Indeed, he was so close to Charles II that he spent a great deal of time in his bedroom Gentleman of the Bedchamber (formerly known as the Groom of the Stool) and out on the streets pimping for him. He had a rather privileged background, but an incredibly strict and puritan one due to his mother, which is something he would react violently against later in his life.

He went to Oxford and was initiated into many of the sex clubs there just as Charles II was restored to the throne of England. The Restoration reacted against the strictness of the Puritan era and Rochester was the embodiment of the new era, and he is as well known for his insane lifestyle and poetry. He quickly became a favorite at court, as his Father had been the one to help Charles II get out of the country alive so Charles II took a liking to him and adopted him as his “son”.

In his Grand Tour of Europe after his graduation, he visited Italy and was instantly taken by it and the works of Pietro Aretino, the father and founder of literate pornography, and he quickly began to copy him in the way he knew how, lewd & ribald poetry. He returned to England and was arrested for trying to kidnap and elope with his future wife, a rich heiress and he agreed to go into the Navy in an attempt to repair his image. He returned a war hero and was rewarded by Charles II by being initiated as a Gentleman of the Bedchamber. This mostly required that he sleep at the foot of the Kings Bed while the king was with his mistresses, and in Rochester’s case meant that he was responsible for seducing beautiful women, most notably Nell Gywnn, and teaching them to be the perfect mistress for the king.

According to a biography of Rochester, his duties also included sexual escapades alongside the King:

On December 2, Pepys heard Charles's "silly discourse" about Rochester having his clothes and gold stolen by one wench while he was abed with another. The Earl's clothes turned up later, stuffed in a feather bed, but the gold was "all gone." Rochester turned the tables, according to another story, by accompanying the King in disguise to a brothel and sneaking off his clothes and money while Charles made sport. Trapped, the embarrassed monarch offered to pay for his pleasure with a ring, which was recognized––as was its royal owner. Such farcical doings were widely talked about.

This is the story of Matthew Hopkins, Witch-Finder General.

It started in Denmark, of all places, because a ship bearing the Queen of England had hit some pretty bad weather and nearly sunk. The King of England, known as both James VI of Scotland and James I of England, was understandably upset about this. To make matters worse, members of the Danish court brought him some woman who was claiming to have been a witch, part of a coven, that had cast a spell to intentionally kill his wife on the orders of the devil.

That story itself is a great one, but suffice it to say James was skeptical at first, but ultimately convinced that witches were real and a serious threat. However, being a somewhat rational-minded individual, he began to lay down some rules requiring all accused witches have material evidence against them before they could be condemned in English courts, and that you couldn't torture people to get a confession out of them.

Enter Matthew Hopkins.

It's 1644, and some women in Chelmsford were accused of Witchcraft. Hopkins was appointed by the court to investigate the women and determine whether they were genuinely witches. Now, based on the rules of James set out, you had to have material evidence, and you couldn't torture people. Hopkins understood that to mean that it was perfectly alright to physically force the women accused to stand and walk around the room every few hours over the course of days, depriving them of sleep. He also took "material evidence" to mean that the girls could be stripped naked and their bodies searched (by an older woman, because apparently he had some concern for their modesty) for any kind of physical imperfection. A mole, a freckle, a birthmark. These marks, Hopkins claimed, were seals marking their deal with the devil, proof they were witches.

He also would tie people to chairs and throw them into lakes, arguing that if they were witches, they would float. The reasoning goes that witches had rejected their baptism, and therefore the waters would reject them in turn. Hopkins actually got warnings from local authorities that this was super illegal, and he agreed to stop doing it "without getting permission from the victim first." He also liked to take blunt knives and try to cut the skin, and if they didn't bleed they were witches. All of this, Hopkins reasoned, wasn't torture.

Surprisingly, his methods did get some convictions, and so he was considered effective. With his first few successes under his belt, he began to travel throughout East Anglia and proclaiming himself Parliament's Witch-Finder General, a title that Parliament did not ever bestow.

The most shocking part about this is that he would go into towns, and charge the town exorbitant fees to "find witches," which he would then prosecute by the above mentioned means, and then take off to the next one. He apparently made a tidy little sum doing this. He even wrote a book detailing his experiences.

A book which managed to make it's way to New England.

A book which just so happened to be influential in the trial of Margaret Jones, the first woman executed in the infamous series of witch hunts in New England during the late 17th Century.

All because of Matthew Hopkins, Witch-Finder General.

EDIT: Clarifying that James was king of England, and it was his wife that nearly died during the rough sea voyage.

EDIT2: James VI, not James IV,

I've told the story of Operation Sealion a couple of times before, and it still amazes me how ill-thought the entire affair was.

With only a couple of months of lead up time, Hitler directed an understaffed OKW to draw up an entire plan for the seaborne invasion of Great Britain. The absolute paucity of their preparations can only be compared to the depths of thought and planning that were necessary to carry out the Allied powers' own invasion on D-Day.

Of course, the Nazis never attempted the invasion, and looking at some of the details of their plan I'm left wondering if the people tasked to creating it even took the job seriously.

For one, the German military did not have any type of specialized landing craft, and no plan to create any, nor did they have sufficient troop ships to carry soldiers across the English channel. Already during the much smaller invasion of Norway, the Nazis had lost thousands of soldiers and tens of ships just trying to cross the straight from Denmark.

Rather than learning the lesson and developing specialized tools and doctrines for amphibious operations, the planners for Sealion intended to use cargo barges that were designed for river travel to cross the choppy North Sea.

Their freeboard was so low that if an unexpected storm had brewed up substantial portions of the invasion fleet would have sunk without any enemy intervention at all. The appearance of a single British cruiser sailing past at high speed could have put paid to the invasion without even firing its guns. All it would have to do is sail quickly past and let its wake swamp wallowing barges packed with men and panicked horses.

Which brings us to the point that the Germans had no ability nor plan to land armor with the first wave of soldiers. The poor infantry would have been expected to take out strongpoints on the beach without the benefit of tanks or artillery. Or, even substantial shore bombardment, because the German fleet would have been totally committed to trying to fend off the Royal Navy.

Those landed soldiers would then be further hampered by the fact that the Germany army did not have enough life vests for everyone, nor plans to produce enough. Therefore, once struggling out of the rowboats that were ferrying them from the barge to shore, they were to be expected to take off all their gear, remove their life vest, and then put it back into the boat so that the next wave could use it. All this while wading across a beach that would be under constant artillery bombardment, if not also subjected to chemical weapon attacks.

Even then, all this supposes that the barges would even make it to the beach. Besides their questionable seaworthiness, not every barge was even equipped with a motor. In their normal operation, they would be towed by tugboats along the Rhine river, or sometimes locomotives along canals. Presumably, when a barge with a motor sunk, the next barge following in line would have been expected to retrieve it and motor forward themselves. Or row, or something.

The plan also involved these many barges to coalesce in clean lines of travel so that they could be (somewhat) protected by the German Navy and Airforce, and they were to travel at night. They would have no opportunity to practice. Then, still at night, as they approached the beach they were to turn parallel to the shore in a coordinated movement without any signalling lights that might give away their position before beginning preparation for landing in complete darkness.

Given that the Allied powers lost thousands of soldiers during their own preparations for landing, and that no small number of the dead were due to pure accident, it's unlikely that Germany would have actually made it to the beach in any semblance of order.

All this as well is assuming a perfect scenario where neither the RAF or Royal Navy exist. In actuality, the largest fleet in the Atlantic would have been mixing it up among the frankly helpless German troop transports.

The plan was so mind-mindbogglingly stupid that, even if everything went exactly as expected, a necessary byproduct would have been crippling German industry because the barges that were necessary for transporting soldiers were already necessary for transporting coal and other raw materials within Germany itself. They couldn't do both!

One of my favourites is the story of the Christianisation of the Rus’. The story itself is likely apocryphal, but since it comes directly form the Primary Chronicle it’s at least contemporary apocrypha.

The Chronical says that Prince Vladimir the Great of Kiev was visited by representatives of the major Abrahamic religions who wanted him to convert his pagan country. The first were Muslims from Volga Bulgaria who promised him that all his carnal desires would fulfilled in the afterlife and that, amongst other things, he would be given a selection of 70 gorgeous women to pick from as his new wife. Vladimir, who was a bit of a ladies’ man, was sorely tempted, but was put off by several of the requirements: firstly circumcision, secondly the prohibition of pork, and finally the prohibition of alcohol, about which he said, “Drink is the joy of the Rus’. We cannot exist without that pleasure.”

Second came Roman Christians from the Pope who preached the Gospel, which spoke to Vladimir, but when asked about their teachings mentioned that fasting was expected from Roman Catholics. Vladimir disliked this and sent them away.

Thirdly were Jews from Khazaria who were asked where their homeland was and was told that God was angry with them, their city was destroyed, and the Jews were scattered to the winds. Vladimir saw this as a sign of God’s displeasure with the Jews and sent them away.

Finally came representatives from Byzantium, preaching the Eastern Orthodox faith. These representatives said that they preached much the same as the Romans, but that they used bread, not wafers during communion (There is also the conspicuous absence of fasting in this passage). This argument seems to won Vladimir out (combined with a long, arduous passage explaining the fall of man and sacrifice of Jesus, which on would assume the Romans told him as well (although it’s not mentioned for inexplicable reasons)).

Vladimir then decided to end envoys out to see what the places of worship of the Romans, Greeks and Bulgars were like. The Bulgars were too sad (they also apparently stank), the Catholics were too solemn, but the Greek churches were very rich and beautiful, and thus god must live there. As the final nail in converting Vladimir, his nobles reminded him that his awesome grannie was a Greek Christian and therefore it was the correct faith.

Thus swayed, Vladimir was baptised, then baptised the whole kingdom.

TL;DR Because of Booze, Bread and, Beauty Russia celebrates Christmas on January 7.

I don't drink, but I still have a few stories I like to tell over cheese curds with friends at a bar.

One is more a flurry of anecdotes about how damn homoerotic the Confederate high command in the East could be. In one story, JEB Stuart cuddled up to Stonewall Jackson in his sleep, and Jackson complained the next morning that Stuart had 'ridden him like a damn horse!' In his memoirs, Confederate artillerist Edward Porter Alexander described future general James McPherson as beautiful, possessed of an almost feminine grace; one of those men you might love almost like a woman. Longstreet was known for having a relaxed and convivial headquarters; at least once, they got drunk enough that Longstreet got on all fours and gave some of his lieutenants rides around the tent. For a while I joked that Lee was the Token Straight of the Confederacy, but then I remembered how he called Jubal Early 'my Bad Old Man', and I was like damn, not even Lee...

Also the story of Frederick Townsend Ward and the Ever Victorious Army. Basically there's a civil war in China, and Ward is a former filibuster from the U.S. looking to make some money as a mercenary in Shanghai. His 'army' was mostly scraped together from drunkards and deserters from the British and French stationed in Shanghai, and mostly funded by the local bankers. His first battle was an attempted storming of the town of Songjian, near Shanghai, but his men got so drunk that their racket bringing up the ladders woke up the sleeping sentries, who shot them to pieces. Another time, his army's artillery broke down the gate, only to find another gate at an angle the cannon couldn't hit, so they carried explosives up to get through. The hole in the gate was only big enough for one man to fit through, though, and while they did drive off the defenders, his 'army' was almost wiped out; he had something like thirty men left. At one point, the British admiral Hope detained Ward, but was frustrated by the fact that not only was Ward American, but he claimed to have renounced even his American citizenship; he was now a subject of the Emperor, according to his certificate of marriage to a local banker's daughter, dated several days in the future. The British had exercised strict neutrality in the war up to that point, and Ward's band of deserters and drunkards were an embarrassment to the foreign community in Shanghai, and at this point, they were doing damage control. But, Ward managed to slip away through an open porthole in the ship, slinking back off into the Shanghai underworld in a waiting Sampan.

Zhukov, SunAgainstGold, and Kiezlowskifan walk into a bar. I don't remember the punchline but it's lengthy, detailed and well sourced.

Always found this story from Stephen J Gould to be interesting, also alcohol consumption makes for better Teddy Roosevelt impersonations.

Abbott Thayer was a painter who spent most of his time in New England, and by the end of the 19th century, had become quite respected. Watching birds on his farm in New Hampshire, he developed the concept of countershading, which he published in "The Law which underlies Protective Coloration" in The Auk in 1896. It was well received by ornithologists and he published several more articles about camouflage in scientific publication, including an early description of disruptive camouflage in 1903. He attributed his discoveries to being a professional artist and thus, in finding and using color for a living, and in being very familiar with it. Within a few years, he had expanded his theories to say that all coloration in animals is for concealment and that any color pattern found in animals could have some purpose in camouflage. The book he intended to be his magnum opus, Concealing Coloration in the Animal Kingdom was published in 1909 to considerable criticism from the scientific community. His most egregious - and famous - example was his painting of a flock of flamingos disappearing into the sunset, blending in by virtue of being reddish. Coming from an artist, it was a bit odd to ignore that these birds would mostly just be silhouetted, and defeat the purpose entirely. This was one of many examples of color he claimed were for concealment, such as the showy tail of a peacock, and the blue rump of a baboon. Of all the critical articles published in response, the most scathing came in a 1911 piece titled "Revealing and Concealing Coloration in Birds and Mammals", running to over a hundred pages and authored by Theodore Roosevelt.

Among all the absurdities to which Mr Thayer has committed himself, probably the wildest is his theory that flamingos are concealingly colored because their foes mistake them for sunsets. He has never studied flamingos in their haunts, he knows nothing personally of their habits or their enemies... and certainly has never read anything to justify his suppositions; these suppositions are nothing but pure guesswork, and even to call them guesswork is a little over-conservative, for they come nearer to then obscure mental processes which are responsible for dreams.

A friend of Roosevelt's felt compelled to state

Even if we don't agree with him, it is not necessary either to cut him into little pieces or to break every bone in his body with the 'big stick'.

after the article and later, a letter to Thayer from Roosevelt trying to convince him of his error, in which Teddy states the flamingos are equivalent to putting a raven in a coal scuttle and pronouncing it concealed. A few legitimate and actually prescient principles of bird coloration were applied a bit too broadly and ruffled a few feathers, which unfortunately for Thayer, included the belligerently naturalist ex President. Those principles came in very handy in WWI, when the Royal Navy put them to good use.

Have you heard about the last time Great Britain was invaded... in 1797... by an Irish army, led by an American, and carrying French colors?

In retaliation (possibly) for the British support for counter-revolutionary rebellion in the Vendee, the very general who has crushed that uprising drew up a plan to foment revolt in Ireland. Rather confusingly, the plan also involved landing troops in Wales as a diversion, and whereupon the Welsh would naturally rise up against oppression by the English, and support landings of Irish armies who would sweep across the mainland and carry revolutionary ideals to every corner of the sceptered isle.

In a stunning piece of military logic, a plan was devised to land three forces in Ireland, Wales and eastern England in a simultaneous and coordinated attack. In February. In the Atlantic. From sailing ships.

Two of the forces abandoned plans - weather prevented the Irish force from approaching the coast, and the England force similarly fought the weather, mutinied, and went to the Netherlands instead. The Wales landings went ahead, but...

The third force, 1400 men embarked upon four ships, was made up of Irish exiles, French penal soldiers, and apparently some British prisoners-of-war. They were grandly named La Legion Noire because of their uniforms, which were dark because they were in fact overdyed British uniforms captured at Quiberon. They were led by Colonel William Tate, an American exile (who spoke no French) who was a veteran of the war of independence.

The objective of this force was the protected anchorage of the little town of Fishguard. This is a walled harbor town, whose main economy at the time was, maybe unsurprisingly, fishing. The invading force landed a couple of miles away - unopposed, of course - and marched to their primary objective.

Now, here's where legend comes in. Drawn by the sight of French warships going up and down the coast, the ladies of Fishguard lined the harbor walls to look at what was going on. Side bar, they were dressed like this. Yes, traditional country costume for Welsh ladies at the time was a red coat and a black shako. Sabretache, musket and a-whole-band-o'-music-going-afore-ye, optional.

This gave the invasion force, shall we say, pause. There was enough indecision to cause a mutiny in the ranks, and Tate found that half his force had vanished. He set up HQ in a nearby farmhouse, and his remaining force began foraging the countryside (ie. looting).

Despite west Wales being far outside the fortification zone of south-eastern England, the local militia were organized enough (because, weirdly, they were all in one place to attend a funeral) to assemble 750 men by the next day, February 23. They probed towards Fishguard from their assembly point some distance away, and were reinforced by, god bless 'em, His Majesty's Revenue, who had some 150 brawny thugs assisting local drunks to volunteer for the Navy around the area.

Tate's first instinct (having lost half his army, hearing of the militia response, and still apparently being watched by an entire regiment of line infantry in Fishguard) was to make for his ships - but they had been under orders to rendezvous with the Irish force, and were nowhere to be found. So his next option was obviously surrender, which he did by writing a letter to the officer commanding the British Army in Fishguard. Who, of course, did not exist. In a shocking turn of events, the militia commander (one Lord Cawdor - yes, that Cawdor) showed up just in time to negotiate an unconditional surrender.

Initially the captured soldiers were dispositioned around various barns, sheds and churches (the local jail being too small to hold them), but were sent back to France by early 1798 in prisoner exchanges.

So late to this thread, but I don't care:

During the course of the First World War, the English Lt. Col. Percy Fawcett was given command of an artillery battery that had been achieving great success. They had been doing as much because of their previous commander's willingness to use novel and unorthodox methods for finding corresponding artillery targets -- the flashes of battery fire against cloud cover, the angular calculation of echoes, the reverberation of such fire through the earth, etc. All of this may sound very unusual indeed, but it was quite sound and quite successful during the war.

Lt. Col. Fawcett, however, would have none of it. In his ironclad, brute-facts wisdom, he told his newly-acquired battery that they were to stop these ridiculous modern affectations at once. Instead -- and here we descend into hell itself -- his batteries were only to fire on targets they could literally see with their eyes or which had been vouchsafed to them by Lt. Col. Fawcett's OUIJA board. This did not work very well at all, as you may imagine.

In 1925, Fawcett would disappear -- presumed dead -- while searching for the "Lost City of Z" in Brazil. No trace of him was ever found.

How to choose... there are so many! Over a beer, I try to choose stories that I guess the other party can appreciate, preferable combined with an enlightening "oh, that make sense" moment. But maybe my favorite obscure history tidbit to tell, even though it's a bit hazy on details and factuality, is how Benedict XIV became pope (well... antipope, but, details!) by one vote... literally.

This story really tells it more from the "over a pint" perspective than from a serious scientific one. But I guess for this topic such an exception from the serious and well-founded-in-sources-approach might be acceptable. Just apply your salt shaker in whichever degree you think might be needed.

So, many of you might know how the Papacy in the late middle ages wasn't exactly at its high point. After trying to grab supremacy over the European kings and even the emperor, and failing, they ended up being more and more dependent on the most powerful ruler, the French king. Clement V didn't even bother to move to Rome after his election and just settled down in Avignon. His successors (unsurprisingly, all French), decided that Avignon was good enough for them; after all, it had a fancy palace and fewer pesky local nobles and all that. So Avignon it was. This made a lot of people very angry and was widely seen as a bad move. Not the least among them Catherine of Siena, who nagged one of Clement V's successors, Gregory XI, until he finally gave up and moved back to Rome.

Well, that made a different lot of people very angry and was also widely seen as a bad move. So after Gregory XI died, there was a lot of infighting between Romans and Avignonese. The Romans won, but the Avignonese weren't so easily defeated. They did what, of course, everybody likes to do when the papal election doesn't turn out their way: elect an antipope for themselves. And thus the Great Western Schism started, which dragged on for the better part of a generation, with each side electing successors to their respective popes when needed.

Now, having two popes is not a thing that works so great in the Catholic Church. It's much better off with a single one, because it gets all very messy if you have two vicars of Christ and they claim different things. Who are you going to follow on your way to eternal salvation? So the the Council of Pisa was set up to elect a third pope in 1409, and to depose the other two. Which... didn't work out as expected, because the other two didn't agree, and everybody ended up worse than before, with a third pope.

Not to give up so easily, the bishops tried again a few years later in Constance. Surprisingly, it worked that time: the church ended up with a new pope (the fourth concurrent, if you're keeping track), Martin V., people (ok, rulers, but they decided what the people were to believe, right?) were happy, job well done, right?

Well, of course not quite. Getting the agreement of the rulers was the most important part (a guy that calls himself pope without followers is just a guy who's a bit funny in the head and happens to have fancy robes, after all), and two of the other popes actually yielded (eventually), but Benedict XIII, antipope in Avignon, wasn't that easy to discourage. This was about the true faith and eternal salvation, after all! Sadly, even his own country didn't follow him any more, so he fled to Aragon. When he felt near death, he realized he had to secure his line, so he created several cardinals - four, to be exact - before he kicked the bucket.

However, the problem with schismastic organizations is that they tend to put principles above practicality, and end up fracturing more and more (remember the People's Front of Judea and the Judean People's Front?) So, naturally, the four cardinals couldn't really come up with a unanimous choice. Three of them decided in the end to elect a Spaniard as antipope Clement VIII.

The fourth cardinal, however, happened to be absent during the conclave and decided that his brothers' choice was completely unacceptable; so he formed his own one-man conclave. After what we assume must have been endless rounds of fruitless elections, he came up with a Frenchman, who henceforth would rule (if you may call it so) as Benedict XIV, and, thus, became the only pope in history who was literally elected by a single vote.

What can we learn from this?

• Knowing the right people is half the battle: even a single cardinal buddy may be enough to become vicar of Christ.
• Don't sweat it if you're not famous by age 30: you might suddenly be elected pope in your 50ies.
• Just because you're a pope doesn't mean you'll be famous: we know almost nothing about Benedict XIV, neither from before his election, nor after, because almost nobody cared about it and him.

Shakespeare wasn't just bawdy and clever in his writings, but in his life as well (as we might as well expect from Early Modern actors):

The story goes that William Shakespeare overheard his fellow actor Richard Burbage planning on a rendezvous with a lady after a performance of Richard III. Shakespeare then took it upon himself to meet with the lady himself. When Burbage arrived for his meeting, he found that his lady was not there to meet him, but rather a note from his dear friend Shakespeare reading: “William the Conqueror was before Richard III.”

Source: http://shakespearedocumented.org/exhibition/document/john-manninghams-diary-earliest-mention-twelfth-night-and-shakespeare-anecdote

Galvarino. It's always Galvarino. Galvarino was a Mapuche captured by the Spanish Conquistadors who had his hands chopped off by the Spanish. He went back to his lonco, protested the act, tied two swords to what remained of his arms and fought the Spanish again.

The Effie Afton was a steam boat located on the Mississippi River. The Effie Afton was primarily used to ferry customers from Rock Island, Illinois to Davenport, Iowa. In April of 1856 the first rail road bridge over the Mississippi was completed and put into use. Well this new technology greatly affected the steamboats usefulness and they were not going to sit by and watch their livelihood disappear without putting up a fight so they hatched a plan. From WIKI “The story goes like this. As darkness fell on the evening of May 6, the steamer Effie Afton moved slowly upriver toward the newly completed bridge. The vessel blew her whistle signaling that she was moving through the draw. The draw slowly opened and the steamboat moved through. Some two hundred feet after the Effie Afton cleared the draw, she heeled hard to the right. Her starboard engine stopped, the port power seemingly increased. She struck the span next to the opened draw. The impact caused a great deal of damage to both the bridge and the boat. Then a stove in one of the cabins was knocked over and its fire spread rapidly to the deck and then to the bridge timbers. The vessel burned to cinders within five minutes. One span was completely destroyed, and there was some pier damage as well as minor damage to the rest of the bridge. By the following day, the rest of the bridge caught fire and was completely destroyed. Steamboats up and down the river celebrated, blowing whistles and ringing bells.”

The railroad company knew this act was not an accident so they sued the steamboat owners. This railroad company hired one of the most well-known and well liked lawyers in the state at the time, Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln won the case, the steamboat company was forced to pay for the re-construction and Lincoln went on to have a fairly successful life.

Not specific History, but historical anecdote (sort of), to put things in perspective:

History, like distance, tends to "telescope" things; things get stacked on top of each other in our perception, even if they are far apart. For example, consider Ancient Egypt: Cleopatra, mummies, the Pyramids, etc. Most people are stunned to find out that Cleopatra (~50 BCE) is closer in time to us than to the Pyramids (~2500 BCE)! The past is a big place.

My favorite random historical tidbit is how Edwin Booth (John Wilkes' brother) saved the life of Lincoln's son on a train platform.

And then there's also how Lincoln's bodyguard, depicted in the famous image of the assassination at Ford's theater, ended up murdering his entire family, possibly as a result of guilt over not being able to save Abe.

The Neronian Persecution. There's a lot to talk about, most people know about Nero from Bugs Bunny, and it's violent enough to usually capture people's interest.

Julius Caesar humiliating Cato, in response to a letter Caesar received in the Senate during the Catelline Conspiracy.

Hitler had a half brother called Alois who lived for a short time before ww1 in Ireland and the UK. He married an Irish girl and lived at a house on Upper Stanhope Street in my city (Liverpool).

Liverpool was heavily bombed during ww2, by some reckoning the most heavily bombed UK city outside of London. Upper Stanhope street is fairly close to the city centre but escaped the ravages of the raids for the most part.

Until the 10th January 1942 when one of the last bombs to fall on the city, in the final raid on the city obliterated the house Alois once lived in.

Alois had a son born in Liverpool who later moved to the States and served in the Navy during ww2

My go to when it comes to "Drunk History" is either the reason and rationale behind the Protestant Reformation, or the outbreak of the American Civil War. Staples in my household.

i now realize i need to have a drunk history on hand to tell.... anyone have suggestions? i'm a lewis carroll, madame blavatsky, hermes trismegistus, ancient egypt type.

The story of the Gracchi is pretty good. People are always surprised by the relevance of something over 2000 years old.