History was written by the victors…and comedians, apparently.
Everyone reacts to tragic news differently. It all depends on a number of factors: Who is involved, how did it happen, how close are we to those who suffered and how did we learn about the news in the first place?
In some tragic situations, people have found that responding with humor, even very dark humor, is the best way to process tough information. Moments that might seem insensitive might in fact just be a perfectly natural part of the grieving process. And as time passes, it often gets easier to make light of some of the darkest of times.
History is no exception.
Think of jokes about the Lincoln assassination. In fact, you've probably heard a million COVID jokes already and maybe even some at your own expense.
And really, no matter the stomach you have for tragic humor, it’s undeniable the internet has completely changed the way we react to historical events. Everyone is allowed a take—what’s tragic to one is comedy to another. We can’t even agree on what facts are anymore, let alone what might be funny.
However, there are certain obscure moments of the past that can elicit a universal chuckle from anyone. Had these instances happened today, they surely would have broken the internet. But as it stands, they remain untouched.
We have Reddit user u/crooked_yellow to thank for this history lesson since they asked: “Which event from history will always be funny?”
Take a scroll through some of the answers below:
King Taejong, whose claim to fame is literally trying to cover up falling off a horse
"Ancient Korea had special recording officials, whose job was to record everything. They were considered separate from the government, so the emperor of the time wasn’t allowed to give them orders or tell them not to record something.
Of course, some emperors would try anyway.
On one occasion, an emperor fell off his horse while hunting. The recorder nearby wrote it down. The emperor insisted that it be removed from the record, and even tried to have the report destroyed.
This lead to some nonsense as the emperor kept destroying their work, but the recorders kept copying it and hiding it in increasingly obscure places. And of course, recorded the whole thing as it happened.
A few hundred years later, and the only thing that emperor is famous for is trying to hide the fact he fell off his horse." —@lankymjc
Victor Lustig, the con man who sold the Eiffel Tower…twice
Okay, one might find it distasteful to marvel at a guy cheating people out of money, but the man was passionate about his hobby. He even made a list of 10 Commandments for would-be swindlers. So, you know, giving back to the community…right? And he was good at his job. Perhaps even more noteworthy than making a pretty penny off a tourist attraction is Lustig's famed Romanian Box the printed fake currency and conning Al Capone himself out of $5000.
As @bard-security astutely put it, "Victor Lustig is a freaking legend."
The French Monkey who refused to be hanged
"During the Napoleonic wars a French ship sank off the coast of Hartlepool England. The only survivor was the captain’s pet monkey, which he always dressed in a French military uniform. The locals freaked out because the law was that any French military found on British soil must be executed as a spy. So they ordered the standard punishment spies. Death by hanging.
Except instead of dying, the monkey just kept climbing up the rope. Because it was a monkey.
Hartlepool has since embraced their failure at executing a tiny primate for military espionage. Their local football team is nicknamed 'The Monkey Hangers.'" -@korar67
Xerxes, the Persian king who punished the sea for ruining his bridge
As the story goes, Xerxes tried to build a bridge across the Dardanelles to get to Greece faster. Alas, a storm destroyed the bridge. '"Infuriated with the sea," Xerxes ordered his soldiers to punish it by whipping it with chains 300 times and poking it with red-hot irons. Handcuffs were also tossed into the water to symbolize the sea’s submission to his authority.
"Literal embodiment of old man yells at clouds' energy," quipped @Excellent_Routine589·
Behold…a thaogmizer
"In 1982 cartoonist Gary Larson drew a cartoon of a caveman giving a classroom lecture, pointing to the spikes of a stegasaurus dinosaur tail and calling that the thagomizer 'after the late Thag Simmons.'
That particular arrangement of tail spikes had no name at the time, so scientists who were fans of Larson unofficially named it the thagomizer." -@doublestitch
A most successful military campaign
"In 1866 when going to war, Liechtenstein's army of 80 men came back with 81 men after making a friend from the enemies side." —@DavosLostFingers
And last but not least:
President Jimmy Carter getting attacked by a rabbit while paddling around in a rowboat.
"The president was minding his own business rowing around a small pond and fishing when a rabbit left the shore and swam deliberately towards the boat, apparently crazed. Carter splashed the rabbit with water, driving it away from the boat. According to Press Secretary Jody Powell:
'Upon closer inspection, the animal turned out to be a rabbit. Not one of your cutesy, Easter Bunny-type rabbits, but one of those big splay-footed things that we called swamp rabbits when I was growing up.
The animal was clearly in distress, or perhaps berserk. The President confessed to having had limited experience with enraged rabbits. He was unable to reach a definite conclusion about its state of mind. What was obvious, however, was that this large, wet animal, making strange hissing noises and gnashing its teeth, was intent upon climbing into the Presidential boat.'
Staff back on shore initially didn’t believe the president’s account, but a photographer managed to capture the moment:
The rabbit was waiting for the right time to strike
…Carter’s political enemies used the incident as fodder to show that he was weak and claimed that his response to the rabbit attack incited the Soviet Union to invade Afghanistan that same year." —@bookem_danno
Jonesing for more? You can find the full hilarious thread here.
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Woman gives toddler a bath Canva
An Irish woman went to the doctor for a routine eye exam. She left with bright neon green eyes.
It's not easy seeing green.
Did she get superpowers?
Going to the eye doctor can be a hassle and a pain. It's not just the routine issues and inconveniences that come along when making a doctor appointment, but sometimes the various devices being used to check your eyes' health feel invasive and uncomfortable. But at least at the end of the appointment, most of us don't look like we're turning into The Incredible Hulk. That wasn't the case for one Irish woman.
Photographer Margerita B. Wargola was just going in for a routine eye exam at the hospital but ended up leaving with her eyes a shocking, bright neon green.
At the doctor's office, the nurse practitioner was prepping Wargola for a test with a machine that Wargola had experienced before. Before the test started, Wargola presumed the nurse had dropped some saline into her eyes, as they were feeling dry. After she blinked, everything went yellow.
Wargola and the nurse initially panicked. Neither knew what was going on as Wargola suddenly had yellow vision and radioactive-looking green eyes. After the initial shock, both realized the issue: the nurse forgot to ask Wargola to remove her contact lenses before putting contrast drops in her eyes for the exam. Wargola and the nurse quickly removed the lenses from her eyes and washed them thoroughly with saline. Fortunately, Wargola's eyes were unharmed. Unfortunately, her contacts were permanently stained and she didn't bring a spare pair.
- YouTube youtube.com
Since she has poor vision, Wargola was forced to drive herself home after the eye exam wearing the neon-green contact lenses that make her look like a member of the Green Lantern Corps. She couldn't help but laugh at her predicament and recorded a video explaining it all on social media. Since then, her video has sparked a couple Reddit threads and collected a bunch of comments on Instagram:
“But the REAL question is: do you now have X-Ray vision?”
“You can just say you're a superhero.”
“I would make a few stops on the way home just to freak some people out!”
“I would have lived it up! Grab a coffee, do grocery shopping, walk around a shopping center.”
“This one would pair well with that girl who ate something with turmeric with her invisalign on and walked around Paris smiling at people with seemingly BRIGHT YELLOW TEETH.”
“I would save those for fancy special occasions! WOW!”
“Every time I'd stop I'd turn slowly and stare at the person in the car next to me.”
“Keep them. Tell people what to do. They’ll do your bidding.”
In a follow-up Instagram video, Wargola showed her followers that she was safe at home with normal eyes, showing that the damaged contact lenses were so stained that they turned the saline solution in her contacts case into a bright Gatorade yellow. She wasn't mad at the nurse and, in fact, plans on keeping the lenses to wear on St. Patrick's Day or some other special occasion.
While no harm was done and a good laugh was had, it's still best for doctors, nurses, and patients alike to double-check and ask or tell if contact lenses are being worn before each eye test. If not, there might be more than ultra-green eyes to worry about.