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.
- The weird, secret history of the electric car and why it disappeared. ›
- This blooper from 'The Carol Burnett Show' is still one of the funniest outtakes in TV history ›
- Teacher's funny lesson explaining Gen Z terms turned into a brilliant history lesson ›
- Girl thinks she turns the lights on the Eiffel Tower - Upworthy ›
A woman is getting angry at her coworker.via 
A man with tape over his mouth.via 
A husband is angry with his wife. via 
a man sitting at a desk with his head on his arms Photo by 
Can a warm cup of tea help you sleep better? If you believe it, then yes. Photo by 
Three women sit on a blanket in the park. 
Two women engaging in a pleasant conversation inside a coffee shop
Two men engaging in a peaceful disagreement.
Resurfaced video of French skier's groin incident has people giving the announcer a gold medal
"The boys took a beating on that one."
Downhill skiing is a sport rife with injuries, but not usually this kind.
A good commentator can make all the difference when watching sports, even when an event goes smoothly. But it's when something goes wrong that great announcers rise to the top. There's no better example of a great announcer in a surprise moment than when French skier Yannick Bertrand took a gate to the groin in a 2007 super-G race.
Competitive skiers fly down runs at incredible speeds, often exceeding 60 mph. Hitting something hard at that speed would definitely hurt, but hitting something hard with a particularly sensitive part of your body would be excruciating. So when Bertrand slammed right into a gate family-jewels-first, his high-pitched scream was unsurprising. What was surprising was the perfect commentary that immediately followed.
This is a clip you really just have to see and hear to fully appreciate:
- YouTube youtu.be
It's unclear who the announcer is, even after multiple Google inquiries, which is unfortunate because that gentleman deserves a medal. The commentary gets better with each repeated viewing, with highlights like:
"The gate the groin for Yannick Bertrand, and you could hear it. And if you're a man, you could feel it."
"Oh, the Frenchman. Oh-ho, monsieurrrrrr."
"The boys took a beating on that one."
"That guy needs a hug."
"Those are the moments that change your life if you're a man, I tell you what."
"When you crash through a gate, when you do it at high rate of speed, it's gonna hurt and it's going to leave a mark in most cases. And in this particular case, not the area where you want to leave a mark."
Imagine watching a man take a hit to the privates at 60 mph and having to make impromptu commentary straddling the line between professionalism and acknowledging the universal reality of what just happened. There are certain things you can't say on network television that you might feel compelled to say. There's a visceral element to this scenario that could easily be taken too far in the commentary, and the inherent humor element could be seen as insensitive and offensive if not handled just right.
The announcer nailed it. 10/10. No notes.
The clip frequently resurfaces during the Winter Olympic Games, though the incident didn't happen during an Olympic event. Yannick Bertrand was competing at the FIS World Cup super-G race in Kvitfjell, Norway in 2007, when the unfortunate accident occurred. Bertrand had competed at the Turin Olympics the year before, however, coming in 24th in the downhill and super-G events.
As painful as the gate to the groin clearly as, Bertrand did not appear to suffer any damage that kept him from the sport. In fact, he continued competing in international downhill and super-G races until 2014.
According to a 2018 study, Alpine skiing is a notoriously dangerous sport with a reported injury rate of 36.7 per 100 World Cup athletes per season. Of course, it's the knees and not the coin purse that are the most common casualty of ski racing, which we saw clearly in U.S. skier Lindsey Vonn's harrowing experiences at the 2026 Olympics. Vonn was competing with a torn ACL and ended up being helicoptered off of the mountain after an ugly crash that did additional damage to her legs, requiring multiple surgeries (though what caused the crash was reportedly unrelated to her ACL tear). Still, she says she has no regrets.
As Bertrand's return to the slopes shows, the risk of injury doesn't stop those who live for the thrill of victory, even when the agony of defeat hits them right in the rocks.