5 Historical Facts That Sound Fake but Aren’t

Picture this: a dead pope propped up on a throne, dressed in full papal robes, while another pope shouts legal charges at his corpse in a candlelit Roman church.

It sounds like a Reddit shitpost. It was real life in 897.

History memes thrive on this kind of thing. A lot of viral jokes are built on events that sound too absurd to be true. Yet again and again, the record says: yes, that actually happened. By the end of this list, you will have five solid examples of historical facts that sound made up, plus why they mattered far beyond the meme.

1. A War Really Did Start Over a Severed Ear

What it is: In the 1730s and 1740s, Britain and Spain fought what is known as the War of Jenkins’ Ear, named after a British sea captain who claimed Spanish coast guards cut off his ear. The name sounds like satire. The war was real.

The basic story: in 1731, Spanish guarda costas (coast guard/privateers) stopped the British merchant ship Rebecca near the coast of Florida. Its captain, Robert Jenkins, later told Parliament that the Spanish captain, Juan de León Fandiño, accused him of smuggling, cut off his ear, and allegedly said something like, “Go and tell your king that I will do the same to him if he dares the same.”

Whether that exact quote was ever spoken is doubtful. What is clear is that Jenkins did lose an ear, and that British politicians dragged him, or at least his story, before Parliament in 1738 as propaganda against Spain. Some later accounts say he even produced the dried ear in a jar. That detail is hard to prove, but it stuck in public memory.

Concrete example: In October 1739, under pressure from merchants and war-hungry politicians, Britain declared war on Spain. The conflict that followed, from 1739 to about 1748, is what historians call the War of Jenkins’ Ear. It included big operations like Admiral Edward Vernon’s attack on the Spanish port of Cartagena de Indias in 1741, one of the largest amphibious assaults of the 18th century, with tens of thousands of British and colonial troops.

The British suffered a disaster there, with disease and poor planning wrecking the expedition. The war later merged into the wider War of the Austrian Succession, which pulled in much of Europe.

Why it mattered: The ear was not the sole cause of war. It was a symbol used by British hawks who wanted to break Spanish trade restrictions in the Caribbean. The war weakened Spanish imperial control but also exposed British military limits and killed thousands, mostly from disease.

The War of Jenkins’ Ear shows how a single grisly incident can be turned into a rallying cry for bigger economic and imperial ambitions. It mattered because it helped push Britain and Spain into a broader era of imperial conflict in the Americas, setting patterns of rivalry that shaped colonial trade and warfare for decades.

2. The Cadaver Synod: When a Pope Put a Dead Pope on Trial

What it is: In 897, Pope Stephen VI ordered the exhumation of his predecessor, Pope Formosus, and put the corpse on trial in what is known as the Cadaver Synod. Yes, they dug up a dead pope and held a formal church council to condemn him.

Rome in the late 9th century was a mess of feuding noble families and rival claimants to the throne of Saint Peter. Alliances shifted fast. Formosus, who had been pope from 891 to 896, had enemies. When Stephen VI came to power, backed by a different faction, he decided to erase Formosus’ legacy in the most theatrical way possible.

Concrete example: During the Cadaver Synod, held in the Basilica of St. John Lateran, Formosus’ decomposing body was dressed in papal vestments and seated on a throne. A deacon was appointed to answer for the corpse. Stephen VI shouted accusations: that Formosus had broken church law by leaving one bishopric for another, that he had schemed for the papacy, that his acts as pope were invalid.

The outcome was predetermined. The council found the dead man guilty. They stripped the corpse of its robes, cut off the three fingers of his right hand used for blessings, and declared his ordinations void. According to some sources, the body was then thrown into the Tiber River.

Why it mattered: The Cadaver Synod was not just medieval weirdness. It was a power move in a violent feud over who got to control the papacy and, through it, influence over kingdoms and land. The spectacle backfired. Public disgust and elite opposition helped trigger a revolt. Stephen VI was imprisoned and strangled later that same year.

The episode mattered because it damaged the moral authority of the papacy and became a symbol of how far church politics had fallen. Later popes had to work hard to clean up that reputation. The Cadaver Synod is a reminder that even institutions claiming divine authority can be dragged into petty, spiteful theater when power is at stake.

3. Napoleon Was Attacked by a Horde of Rabbits

What it is: After signing the Treaties of Tilsit in 1807, Napoleon Bonaparte supposedly took part in a rabbit hunt that went very wrong. Instead of fleeing, the rabbits swarmed him and his party. It sounds like a cartoon. Contemporary accounts say it happened.

By 1807 Napoleon had crushed several European coalitions. He was at the height of his power. To celebrate peace with Russia and Prussia, his chief of staff, Alexandre Berthier, organized a hunt, a standard aristocratic pastime. The problem started with logistics.

Concrete example: Rather than find wild hares, Berthier reportedly ordered several hundred, maybe even a few thousand, tame rabbits from local farmers. When they were released for the hunt, the animals did not bolt into the woods. They ran toward the nearest source of food and familiarity. That was the hunting party.

Witnesses later claimed that the rabbits swarmed Napoleon’s legs, climbed his coat, and would not scatter. His staff tried to shoo them away. The emperor retreated to his carriage as the tide of fur followed. The story circulated in memoirs and letters, and while some details may have been embellished, the basic incident is accepted by many historians as real.

Why it mattered: In military or political terms, the rabbit attack changed nothing. Napoleon went on to fight in Spain and Russia and reshape Europe. But the story mattered for another reason. It chipped away at the carefully managed image of the invincible emperor.

Napoleon cultivated a myth of control and destiny. The rabbit incident, retold by enemies and amused observers, showed him as ridiculous and human. It is a small example of how even the most powerful rulers cannot fully script how they are remembered. History is full of grand strategies undone by mud, weather, disease, or, in this case, a few hundred confused rabbits.

4. The Great Emu War: Australia vs. Big Birds

What it is: In 1932, the Australian government deployed soldiers with machine guns to reduce emu populations in Western Australia. Newspapers quickly dubbed it the “Emu War”. The emus were not officially an enemy army, but the campaign looked enough like a farce that the name stuck.

After World War I, the Australian government encouraged veterans to take up farming in marginal lands in Western Australia. By the early 1930s, many of these ex-soldiers were growing wheat. Then came two problems at once: the Great Depression crashed crop prices, and large flocks of emus, which migrate inland after breeding season, began trampling and eating the fields.

Concrete example: In late 1932, farmers asked the government for help. The Minister of Defence approved a plan to send Major G. P. W. Meredith and a small team of soldiers armed with Lewis machine guns to cull the birds. They expected an easy job. It was not.

Emus are fast, can change direction quickly, and do not politely gather in tight groups for target practice. Reports from the time describe soldiers firing hundreds of rounds with little effect. In one attempt, they mounted a gun on a truck, which bounced so much over rough ground that they could not aim properly. After several weeks, with bad press mocking the effort and limited results, the operation was called off.

Why it mattered: The “Emu War” did not change the course of global history. It did expose the gap between military image and practical reality. A modern state with machine guns could not easily solve what was, at its core, an ecological and economic problem created by land use and settlement policy.

The episode mattered because it fed a long-running Australian skepticism about authority and official competence. It also pushed the government to use bounties and fencing rather than soldiers. The Emu War is a case study in how governments sometimes reach for military tools to fix civilian problems, and how badly that can go.

5. A Single Archduke’s Assassination Helped Trigger World War I

What it is: On 28 June 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary was assassinated in Sarajevo. Within weeks, most of Europe was at war. To modern ears, it can sound absurd that one murder could help unleash a global conflict. Yet that is what happened.

Franz Ferdinand was heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne. Nationalist tensions were already high in the Balkans. Serbia backed groups that wanted Slavic independence from Habsburg rule. Europe’s great powers were tied together in alliances and arms races. The system was primed for a shock.

Concrete example: On that June morning, a group of young Bosnian Serb conspirators, supplied by elements of the Serbian Black Hand organization, lined the Archduke’s motorcade route. One attacker threw a bomb that missed. Later, as Franz Ferdinand’s driver took a wrong turn, another assassin, Gavrilo Princip, found himself face to face with the car outside a Sarajevo delicatessen. He fired two shots, killing the Archduke and his wife Sophie.

Austria-Hungary blamed Serbia and, backed by Germany, issued a harsh ultimatum. Russia moved to support Serbia. Germany activated war plans that required a quick strike on France through Belgium. Britain entered the war when Belgium was invaded. By early August 1914, the assassination had set off a chain reaction of mobilizations and declarations of war.

Why it mattered: The assassination did not cause World War I by itself. It was the spark in a room full of explosives: rival empires, nationalist movements, rigid alliances, and detailed war plans that left little room for diplomacy. Still, without that specific event, the timing and shape of the war might have been very different.

The killing of Franz Ferdinand mattered because it turned abstract tensions into a concrete crisis that leaders felt they had to answer with force. The war that followed killed millions, redrew borders, toppled empires in Russia, Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman realm, and set conditions for World War II. A single gunman on a Sarajevo street helped push the 20th century onto a far bloodier path.

History memes latch onto these stories because they sound like jokes: a war over an ear, a dead pope on trial, an emperor chased by rabbits, soldiers losing to emus, a world war kicked off by one wrong turn in a car. The punchline is that they are all real.

They matter not just because they are weird, but because each one opens a door into something larger: imperial rivalry, church corruption, propaganda, the limits of state power, and the fragility of peace. The next time a historical meme sounds too absurd to be true, treat it as a clue. Behind the joke, there is usually a very human story about power, fear, and unintended consequences.