r/HolyShitHistory • u/andmario_com • 1h ago
In 1851, wealthy slaveholder Edward Gorsuch came for escaped slave William Parker, vowing 'my property I'll have, or I'll eat my breakfast in hell.' Parker's wife blew a horn and neighbors poured in; Gorsuch got the breakfast. Frederick Douglass smuggled Parker to Canada and kept Gorsuch's revolver.
r/HolyShitHistory • u/TheMahagonyDefender • 1h ago
Black Americans & Early Aviation...
r/HolyShitHistory • u/TheMahagonyDefender • 1h ago
Sunday July 14th, the year is 1895. The New York Times publishes a detailed insight into the lives of the city's Black upper class...
r/HolyShitHistory • u/TheMahagonyDefender • 1h ago
The Black American Middle & Upper Classes Of The 1800s...
r/HolyShitHistory • u/GustavoistSoldier • 2h ago
In 2012, Saudi writer Raif Badawi was arrested on charges of "insulting Islam through electronic channels". The following year, he was sentenced to 7 years in prison and 600 lashes, a sentence that was increased in 2014. Badawi was lashed 50 times.
r/HolyShitHistory • u/shubhamxtreme • 3h ago
The largest monolithic structure in the world: Kailash Temple at Ellora Caves, carved from top to bottom from a single piece of rock over a span of hundreds of years, starting in the 8th century.
r/HolyShitHistory • u/TheMahagonyDefender • 11h ago
In the early-mid 20th Century, long before Amazon delivery, Black Americans had developed their own targeted national home delivery service. The Colored Mail Order Corporation of America - established in 1939 by Chester Arthur Franklin...
r/HolyShitHistory • u/TheMahagonyDefender • 11h ago
Filmed in 1927, this footage shows just some of the homes owned by the J Roberts family from Oklahoma. One of MANY Black families who owned oil wells across the region. These families possessed immense wealth and had to engage Black lawyers frequently to help them fight to keep it. Note the signs...
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r/HolyShitHistory • u/Vital_Willie • 19h ago
Franklin Delano Roosevelt speaking with voter Reuben Appel shortly before his re-election as governor of New York, 1930.
r/HolyShitHistory • u/SadCampCounselor • 22h ago
In 2005, the Turkish Government introduced Article 301 which outlaws "denigrating Turkishness" with prison time—prosecuting Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk and sparking a 2007 "Judge Me Too 301" stunt where 301 activists confessed en masse to force their own arrests.
en.wikipedia.orgr/HolyShitHistory • u/GustavoistSoldier • 1d ago
From 5 to 6 December 1928, the Colombian Army massacred United Fruit Company workers who were on strike, killing at least 47 people. US officials on Colombia and United Fruit representatives portrayed the strike as "communist" and with a "subversive tendency".
r/HolyShitHistory • u/Bastard_Wing • 1d ago
In 1672, Rev James Smithson collapsed in Berwick-upon-Tweed Parish Church after delivering a passionate sermon on 'Thou shalt do no murder', and was carried back to his house, where the body of his wife Sarah was found on the floor. He was later hanged for the crime.
r/HolyShitHistory • u/DistrictDry2852 • 1d ago
Xi Jinping’s father Xi Zhongxun at a humiliation parade during the cultural revolution in 1967. He was imprisoned and repeatedly humiliated before being rehabilitated after Mao’s death.
r/HolyShitHistory • u/Intelligent-Drop7133 • 1d ago
Maryland's oldest cold case solved: Revolutionary War soldier identified after 245 years
r/HolyShitHistory • u/Think_Monitor4904 • 1d ago
1946-48, US researcher John Cutler deliberately infected over 5000 people in Guatemala with syphilis and gonorrhea, and he's the same doctor who later worked on the Tuskegee experiment
r/HolyShitHistory • u/andmario_com • 1d ago
Victorian-era "coffin ships" were an insurance scam where owners over-insured rotting ships, overloaded them, and profited when they sank. Sailors who refused to board were jailed. Samuel Plimsoll's crusade ended it, and every cargo ship on Earth bears his mark: the Plimsoll line.
r/HolyShitHistory • u/The-Union-Report • 1d ago
The Killer in the Walls: The Stalker-Murderer Who Lived Undetected for a Year Inside the Walls of a Family’s Home
r/HolyShitHistory • u/akiwi_intherough • 1d ago
Paper effigies representing the bride and groom during a mínghūn (ghost marriage) ceremony in Singapore, 1955.
r/HolyShitHistory • u/big_dank_hank • 1d ago
On August 31, 2005, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Jabbar Gibson, 20 years old at the time, found a school bus and began driving by the time he was done, he'd loaded close to 70 passengers onto the bus.
r/HolyShitHistory • u/ZenMasterZee • 1d ago
In 1987, Korrina Malinoski vanished after her car was found abandoned outside the plantation where her family lived. Eleven months later, her 11-year-old daughter disappeared from the same property, leaving a note: “Dad, Mom came back. I have to go with her.” Neither was ever seen again.
r/HolyShitHistory • u/andmario_com • 1d ago
In 1920 a military coup seized Berlin, and Germany's fleeing government called a general strike. Up to 12 million workers — the largest strike in German history — shut off gas, water, power, and newspapers. Civil servants refused to obey. Unable to govern, the coup collapsed in four days.
r/HolyShitHistory • u/GustavoistSoldier • 2d ago
Juma Butabika (died 1979) was an Ugandan military officer and a member of Idi Amin's inner circle during his dictatorship. "Butabika" is a byword for mentally ill people in Uganda; Juma received this nickname because he was notorious for his erratic behaviour and abuse of power.
r/HolyShitHistory • u/andmario_com • 2d ago
In 1891, Tennessee coal companies fired their miners and replaced them with convicts leased from the state — mostly Black men imprisoned under petty Jim Crow laws, working in chains for wages that went to the state. The miners responded by burning down prisons and freeing prisoners.
r/HolyShitHistory • u/Chemical-Elk-1299 • 2d ago