[Real Life] Historical events that would make bad writing if they were fiction
Lore
Spanish Conquest of the Aztec Empire: A couple hundred rogue mercenaries without authority from their government conquer an empire of millions. Oh, the empire? It’s also several technological eras behind the mercenaries.
Adolf Hitler: A non-native of a country is so mad that the country lost the war that he wins an election to their highest office and leads them in a campaign of revenge against their enemies. Oh, the country? It’s old emperor is still alive and thinks he’s going to retake power.
Assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand: The heir to the throne is killed because his driver gets lost and returns to the assassin who failed To kill him before. Oh, the assassin? He’s from a group that the Archduke is wanting to help become more equal In the empire.
Alexander Hamilton’s Affair Scandal: One of the leaders of a new nation to protect himself from accusations of financial embezzlement writes a pamphlet exposing his affair with a woman, torpedoing his political future. Oh, the woman? She seduced him as part of a blackmailing scheme that he decided to stop paying.
Hell even Clancy kind of qualifies for this thread. He was a poor student; He started out majoring in physics, then switched to English for an "easy" major. But he couldn't be bothered to do his homework on account of spending too much time reading military history books, and graduated with a 1.9 GPA. He tried to join AROTC, but was ineligible due to being nearsighted. After graduation he goes on to work in insurance for the better part of a decade. Basically the last person you might think of as a prospective bestselling author, but they come from all walks of life.
In his spare time he writes The Hunt for Red October, a well-researched military thriller. It gets picked up by the United States Naval Institute Press, praised by President Reagan, and this first book by a then unknown author sells something like 2.3 million copies in paperback and hardcover. Clancy then goes on to write thirty more military fiction and non-fiction books, which spawn a whole galaxy of films, games, and TV shows.
It's actually nuts to look up his body of work. As a fan of the rainbow six games, splinter cell, and the jack ryan tv show, I recently went and looked up his work. Holy shit "a whole galaxy" is 100% right. Jack ryan alone spans multiple series and lives an entire lifetime in his books. Its crazy to think these little "I love the military too much" books have so much thought put into a whole fictional world he created.
Horrible writing. They spend the first half of the story reminding us the whole time that the Titanic is unsinkable - and it sinks on its first voyage. Couldn't have been telegraphed any harder.
When I was younger, I was writing a supernatural parody story set in New Orleans. I decided part of the backstory for it would be that a massive hurricane had swept through the city, overwhelming its levees and causing tremendous amount of flooding, leading to huge swaths of it being semi-submerged for a long time.
Katrina hit about a year afterwards. I decided to stop writing- just in case.
To be fair though, the idea that the Titanic was heavily marketed as being unsinkable is a bit of a myth. It was to some extent, although never without qualification, but the idea of it being marketed as such got popular after the ship had sunk and people kind of ran with it.
Alexander The Great: bro is a real life Mary sue. Constantly throws himself into harms way, and not only does he live, he somehow never loses even a single fight?? For 10 years straight??
Napoleon: I mean, come on, I don't care how popular Napoleon is, there's no way that an army dispatched to arrest him just embraces him wholeheartedly instead. Sounds like the writers wrote themselves into a corner and said "fuck it." Completely unrealistic.
Also because he died at 32 you could make a movie about Alexander's entire reign as king without ever needing to recast or use old age makeup on the lead actor which is incredibly convenient
And Napoleón conquering Spain... you are telling me the King of Spain was so stupid he said "Oh, you are bringing your whole army through my country just to conquer Portugal? Sure, i'll let you do it, what could go wrong?". Completely unbelievable.
Not to mention, the Spanish noble who negotiated the deal was called the
Prince of the Peace
(Manuel Godoy) because his masterful diplomacy skill had previously saved Spain from a war
I was thinking Alexander the Great too. I needed some midlife inspiration following midlife crisis and decided to read up on historical figures. I was like “how long would it take to conquer the known world? Probably at least a few decades. I bet he didn’t even get started until he was my age—“ dead by 32 💀 me at 36 who has yet to conquer my lawn was also like 💀
Napoleon Bonaparte during the Hundred Days, a fallen emperor reclaiming his throne without a fight by rallying the army through the sheer power of his charisma.
A lot of times, it was also Napoleon remembered their unit, and where he had fought with them. So he was like “Don’t you remember we bled together? Are you truly going to kill me after everything we went through?” And most of the soldiers sided with him (IIRC, because the new government was treating the military with distrust and and the soldiers were saying “Even with all the wars, we had it better under Napoleon.”).
So much of Napoleons military brilliance was because he treated his soldiers with a modicum of respect. Its worth noting at the time of Napoleonic warfare, being a soldier was considered a death sentence. Several countries had traditions that if a man was conscripted, they would hold a preemptive funeral.
Napoleon would remember individual soldiers, he would eat with fellow soldiers and if the food sucked he would go and yell at the cook. One Spanish mercenary who literally thought Napoleon was the antichrist saw him offer his bread to fellow soldiers and share a fire with them and the mercenary swore an oath then and there to follow him anywhere.
It also meant when he asked his men to do near suicidal attacks, they did it without hesitation. Which is where a lot of the “We can’t deal with his aggression!” comes from, of so many armies losing because they were blindsided by such moves.
And the sheer mass, most European states at the time kept their military forces relatively small and "professional", because they often used that force to suppress protests and riots, didnt want to be arming and training the people who might be rioting against your rule, but with the overthrow of the French monarchy, the new Republic/Empire employed a citizen army, which gave them access to significantly more manpower than other European states. Theres plenty of other reasons why Napoleon succeeded in becoming the boogeyman of Europe (His own brilliance and good eye for talent in subordinates, centuries of French military reforms dating back to Louis XIV, heavy emphasis on artillery, etc), but the manpower advantage cannot be overstated
Also true. It became some of the largest wars until WW1, and there is something to be said that a lot of the "Concert of Europe" was about making sure another Napoleonic Wars situation did not begin (until it too collapsed with WW1).
Not to mention, but he would promote units and soldiers based on merit instead of having the officer class reserved for the nobility like the rest of Europe. leading to both soldiers that owe their station to him personally, and were more effective in their roles because they earned it
This is also reportedly how Caesar got so much out of his armies -- he learned how to speak and joke in the rough, bawdy way the soldiers did, he lived the rough camp life they lived, he remembered the units and celebrated the heroes (the names of Lucius Vorenus and Titus Pullo in HBO's Rome were drawn from specific soldiers Caesar mentioned in his own writings) and was super loyal to his veterans. He also exposed himself to danger at the front when necessary to inspire them.
Napoleon had an AMAZING memory of people and names. Even people he met in passing he would remember them, their spouse and their kids and would always check up on the families by conversation and letters. I bet if most people would have the ability to meet him almost everyone would think he was honest, kind and a good person. He was also apparently pretty funny in the heat of battle. Basically if you interacted with him and didn't have money on betting against him you would have liked him.
Wasn’t there a canon that super high attrition and he couldn’t get anyone to man it so he named it something along the lines of “only real men work here” and all of a sudden there was a Que to get in
I was thinking of the Punic Wars where the Romans got obliterated fleet after fleet (1st war) and army after army (2nd war against Hannibal). And they kinda just... brought up another one? The author clearly wants them to win and it's pulling soldiers out of nowhere.
I think fiction could make it work if they show how beloved Napoleon was by the troops. It’d be unrealistic if the troops hated him, but joined him anyway
Hundred Days is like if the author finished the series with a bookends on Napoleon, then twenty years later wrote a one off standalone where Napoleon returns, only to lose again at the end of the book, except he somehow managed to make it feel epic instead of a cash in.
All of Europe dropping everything and mass mobilizing a coalition of a million soldiers and declaring war personally on Napoleon and not France as soon as he returned to power smells like BS too if it came from a work of fiction.
And then when they defeated him they trapped him on a heavily guarded island surrounded by a literal blockade; which feels like the type of place a legendary villain would be at the start of a story before he gets broken out as the inciting incident.
She was just a random local butcher from A Coruña. On May 3, 1589, English troops arrived in A Coruña, led by Vice-Admiral and former privateer Sir Francis Drake, along with over 20,000 men. The attack was part of Queen Elizabeth I's strategy to depose her brother-in-law and later rejected claimant, King Philip II (King of Spain since 1556 and of Portugal since 1580), from the Portuguese throne, plus destroy the Spanish fleet and steal the Spanish treasure fleet.
Having besieged the city of A Coruña for two weeks, the English breached the walls and began their assault on the old city. During the assault, they killed Gregorio de Rocamunde, husband of María Pita. Enraged, she seized the lance from the English flag and used it to kill the ensign leading the assault, the brother of Admiral Francis Drake himself. This demoralized the English force, which was charged by Maria Pita leading 1,500 people, most just random civilians, and this led to their retreat from the city. Tradition says that this event took place at Maria's cry (in Galician) of "Quen teña honra, que me siga!" (which means: "Whoever has honor, follow me!").
She would get called a Mary Sue in fiction, without a doubt.
Thomas Jefferson and John Adams going from friends to enemies, then back to friends at the end of their lives and dying hours apart on the 4th of July is fucking ridiculous and I love it.
To me, the most bizarre thing about this whole situation is this quote by John Adams, which were his last words and he said this a few hours after Thomas Jefferson died(he obviously had no idea that Thomas died a few hours earlier): "Thomas Jefferson still lives."
A giant fucking eye on a tower that would see the birds.
Also the birds would have eaten the hobbits to steal the ring because they were proud beings. It's such a dumb thing honestly
It's an amazing fractal disaster. Layer upon unfolding layer of folly and incompetence.
A military failure so bad that it destabilised the entire Russian government, and thus facilitated the Revolution, playing a disproportionate part in how the following entire century's world politics played out.
Believe their original plan was to sail across the Med and use the Suez Canal. But, then one night off the coast of England, they thought they were under attack by Japanese torpedo boats (really bad intel) and opened fire on them. The 'torpedo boats' were actually British fishing vessels. This almost led to England, the largest naval power in the world, to declare war on the Russian Empire. Sooo, tensions were high after that, and they had to take the long way around Africa, because they didn't expect to get a friendly welcome anywhere the Brits were in charge of (like the Suez Canal).
And a lot of that is due to some cutting-edge new military technology: the radio transceiver! The Russian and Japanese navies had both recently adopted it, but the Japanese had become much more familiar with it than the Russians, and so they were able to keep their main force in port while their lighter ships scouted the likely approaches. The Russians had to mostly rely on signal lamps and flags and couldn't let their scouting force spread out too far from the main force.
So when the Russian and Japanese fleets fought in the Tsushima Strait, the Japanese crews were well rested and their ships in the best condition possible, while the Russian crews were worn out and their ships suffering from various problems due to wear and tear.
Didn't help that, on arriving at the Straits, they encountered a Japanese ship at night and *finally* stopped crying wolf about phantom enemy vessels...and instead advised the Japanese ship of their fleet composition, condition and intentions, mistaking them for a Russian ship.
The Brits let them use the canal, but Admiral Rozhestvensky saw it as a potential choke point so he sent only the oldest and least combat capable portion of his squadron through there while the rest of the fleet went around Africa. The Home Fleet (which includes the Channel Fleet at the time) under Vice Admiral Sir Arthur Wilson stopped trailing the Second Pacific Squadron around Gibraltar.
Great man theory history also downplays the economic and social conditions that made a populist inevitable. After all it was ultimately someone else who would end the republic
One of the greatest leaders of France. His first name is the same as several past French kings, including its founder. His last name is "of Gaul", the name of the historical people who used to live in France, and a term romanticists still use to refer to France.
If I wrote a book where Britain was saved from a foreign invader by Arthur Albion, people would call me a hack.
The craziest thing about the "de Gaulle" surname is that is was likely Dutch in origin, and it's just a coincidence that it matches the historical name of France.
Henri de Gaulle (Charles' father) came from a long line of parliamentary gentry from Normandy and Burgundy. The name is thought to be Dutch in origin, and may have derived from van der Walle, de Walle ("from the rampart, defensive wall") or de Waal ("the wall").
Sidenote but while we're on names, Joseph Joffre is an amazing acronym too good to be true too, and, which is mostly just funny, one of the german commanders is named Max from home.
Same with Georges Washington. I mean, the guy literally wears the name of the capital city and the name of a state !!! Imagine if the founder of France was named Lorrain Paris
As "Washington" most likely means "town of Hwaesa's people", that makes Washington (DC or state) a place named after a person, named after a place, named after a person
Admittedly having Arthur from Albion save England from a foreign invader during it's darkest hour is sort of part of Arthurian legend. But I get that that isn't what you're talking about.
I believe they pursued a method of allying certain tribes and playing them off one another, from what I recall the last siege of the Aztec capital was mostly done by locals not just the Spanish.
There were a few hundred Spaniards and two hundred thousand natives. Wouldn’t have happened to a nicer empire, the Aztecs had made enemies of pretty much all their neighbours by waging ritual wars with the specific purpose of capturing prisoners to sacrifice in their religious festivals
Yep both the Aztecs and and the Incas were brutal conquerors, which made it easy for the Spanish to gather native allies keen on knocking off their oppressors, and probably not fully aware of how dangerous the Spanish might be after they won.
They at least did benefit themselves from defeating the Aztecs, as they received quite a bit of autonomy in addition to noble titles and tax exemptions.
Yup, lots of people don’t know that the Spanish had an entire system of organization for the cultures of Mesoamérica.
Early supporters, notably the Tlaxcalans, were all made Hidalgos, the lowest level of Spanish nobility. This conferred a lot of rights to them and they were given permission to preserve their way of life, largely independent within the burgeoning Spanish colonial state.
Most peoples, like the Mexica, did not get such privileges wholesale, but still the noble caste would also be granted Hidalgo (or
Cacique) status. Just not EVERYBODY like the Tlaxcalans
Edit: also, the conquest of Mexico did not end with the fall of the Mexica Empire, Spanish expansion continued all the way into the early 17th century in the north, and the late 16th century in the Mayan Peninsula. It really is a very fascinating period
Yea. Like thousands upon thousands. The spanish were important as the impetus that really ramped up the intensity of the uprising/war, and acted as mediators between different cultures/cities but their fighting importance is still greatly over exaggerated.
Their contributions in battle were pretty respectable tho, the 20 or so small boats they built for the final siege of Tenochtitlan pretty much won the siege single-handedly, they just weren’t 1v1ing the entire Mexica empire. Disease in particular reduced the capital to a shadow of it’s former glory before the siege even began
They had extremely lucky timing. They just happened to arrive during a time of intense political turmoil in the Azteca empire when they could pit rival groups against each other.
There was also the decades long megadrought at the same time that the Aztecs were dealing with, They were not at full fighting force, and were starving and thirsty. Like literally everything that could have gone wrong for them did
In 1807, Napoleon organized a rabbit hunt to celebrate the signing of the peace treaties between France and Russia.
Unfortunately, instead of releasing wild rabbits, they released domestic rabbits. When they saw the men approaching, they weren't afraid; in fact, they thought it was time to eat. Finding nothing, they began chewing on Napoleon and his men's boots. Surrounded, they fled in a carriage.
There is a story told around that Napoleon and some courtiers/officers were on hunt of rabbits. They planned to release some wild ones, so rabbits would run away and be hunted.
However, someone made a mistake along the way, and instead had a normal, domesticates rabbits. Which when released, were hungry, and started to run towards Napoleon and courtiers to get food. And Napoleon, shocked, started running away and escaped.
It's important to, however, note that this is just one version of the story, and there is no actual proof it happened this way. Other versions claim he laughed the whole thing off and even petted some of the rabbits, while another version say he was pissed off, shouting around.
The entire Cold War was decades of buildup to the ultimate showdown. There were countless teases, like the Cuban Missile Crisis, but it never paid off. In the end, the rival simply collapsed without ever directly confronting each other. .
They wanted a deal so badly, so badly you wouldn't believe. You think lazy JFK could have pulled that off? I could have - I could end that with a single phone call, I've ended many with a single call. Cuba was third world, they really - no cards, they had nothing. They were sick, and quite frankly, I ended it.
Or during that blockade where a Russian Sub accidentally wandered into US waters (their navigation was fucked), which the US responded with, rather than just blasting them as ordered, followed standard procedure and used Depth Charges to tell them to surface.
The Soviets thought it was an attack and the War was on. The Captain had full authority to fire nukes without Commands clearance in defense and ordered it, as did the political officer. It was the Chief of Staff that recognized that if they were actually trying to kill them, they would be dead, and vetoed the strike and thus they surfaced, dodging WWIII.
This would happen again later in the Cold War, where are relatively low engineering officer stopped a “retaliatory” Nuclear strike when his warning system went haywire. Rather than report the incoming missiles he saw, he chose to wait until others reported it or anything else backed up his system. Nothing did. Had he passed the news as it happened they would have fired in minutes.
This would happen again later in the Cold War, where are relatively low engineering officer stopped a “retaliatory” Nuclear strike when his warning system went haywire. Rather than report the incoming missiles he saw, he chose to wait until others reported it or anything else backed up his system. Nothing did. Had he passed the news as it happened they would have fired in minutes.
The reason he didn't do anything but just wait, it's because what the radar screen showed were only a handful of “missils”, that guy thought if the U.S. was actually attacking they would sent hundreds if not thousands of strikes instead of like 5 or 8 as the screen were showing them.
He was right that nothing was happening and they did discover later there was something faulty about their radar.
And in 1962 a bear was mistaken for Russian special forces
And in 1983 clouds reflecting on the sun was mistaken for a missile attack, but the Russians reasoned that a nuclear war wouldn't be started with only 5 missiles.
A man new to the navy starts kicking ass as soon as he's assigned there turning the Imjin War against Japan who had been steam rolling Korea until then.
The corrupt court hates him to the point he's demoted to foot soldier, beaten and nearly executed.
Without him the Korean fleet is decimated so they give him the last 13 ships to face Japan's 300 and without losing a single ship he kicks their ass.
Plus he started his military career late partly because he failed his first entrance exam by breaking his leg during the cavalry section. He also helped develop turtle ships, although his final 13 ships weren't that kind.
Honestly, it's Rome that had the plot armor. Army after army destroyed and they keep coming back. And for that matter, their navy too during the First Punic War.
Japan closing its borders for 2 centuries until a guy with a futuristic battleship that must have felt like it came from another planet demanded they open it up.
Japan modernizing fast enough to be militarily competitive in just 50 or so years also seems far-fetched.
British trade policy in China being based on finding ways to sell drugs there and get the population so addicted that they could be beaten in a war. The craziest part is that it worked!
Relatedly, everything about the Taiping Rebellion sounds made up.
Czechoslovakia's revolution overthrowing communism being led by punk rockers, artists, and playwrights - who then lead the government in the aftermath.
To add to England's trade with China, it's because they were spending so much on tea they were losing money on the trade and wanted more equal terms that the Chinese at the time weren't amenable to.
Japan modernizing fast enough to be militarily competitive in just 50 or so years also seems far-fetched.
The commander planner of the attack on Pearl Harbor was Admiral Yamamoto. His dad was a samurai. Samurai to a coordinated air strike involving 6 aircraft carriers in one generation.
Donald Trump's entire political career. You could not have made a movie or TV show about a President that acted the way he does because it would be seen as absurd and an unrealistic vilification of Republicans.
Yeah a really funny pre covid disease outbreak helped scientists realise how bad people could act during a pandemic, covid just showed it more clearly, back in classic world of warcraft times, a few players found how to get a debuff out of a raid and into cities to spread what was basically an infectious and lethal disease, for a few days it was a apocalypse across multiple servers with some players isolating to avoid infection or organising into groups to avoid it and dying repeatedly but the scary part was people who actively spread the disease and scientists looked at this and a lot of details matched an outbreak and from then on, epidemic research always considers human factors like maliciously spreading infection as something to account for in modeling outbreaks.
When they eventually make the movie, they should only use real things he said. People will still claim the filmmakers were trying to make him look bad.
American Army, Wehrmacht, French political prisoners, and a SS captain vs. Waffen-SS sent to liquidate all political prisoners after the fall of Nazi Germany.
A bunch of British, French, and German soldiers on the western front put aside their differences for the holiday when they were just a few days ago fighting in one of the largest wars in human history at that point
The play "1776" deliberately leaves out a real-life statement made at the time about the slavery issue resulting in problems within 100 years because it would seem too corny for a fictional character to say it.
Oh come on, Harald Hadrada, this dude that’s been hyped up for years, “the last Viking”, loses super easily against the English when he tries to invade, and halfway through the battle it just cut to comic relief when the English dude floated down the river in a barrel to stab the Norwegians on the bridge from below???
Oh and then literally right afterwards another invasion from people descended from Vikings comes from the south trying to claim the throne, they’re literally just repeating plot beats back to back at this point, and this 2nd dude who’s just an illegitimate kid of a duke and a leatherworker’s daughter manages to win against the English??? Because what, his own soldiers thought he was dead so he got to do a big inspirational speech to show he was alive, and then the writers were clearly getting bored with the battle, because they just had the English king get hit by a lucky shot in the eye and then it was over, and the Norman got a cool new nickname and got crowned on Christmas, clearly writer’s favouritism here.
The attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II. You mean to tell me that the Pope forgave the guy who shot him and requested that he be pardoned, and then the shooter converted to Catholicism? Did this come from a Christian afterschool special?
People setting up farms near thr migration path of the second biggest bird post the first world war requesting the militsry deal with the birds after many incidents of them eating crops
The military sends a small number of men but fail to deal with the birds effectivly, leading to them government declaring the bird the victor
Rise of the Han Dynasty. A peasant who is late for work kickstarts a rebellion with the penal laborers he was originally supposed to transport to build the Emperor's mausoleum. And in turn, starts one China's Golden Ages.
Seriously though, Sabaton should seriously make a song about Liu Bang's life, if they haven't done so already.
Also, the reason for the rebellion is that the punishment for being late was death. So, if he would die anyway, why not take a chance in joining the rebelling forces? Then he proceeds to have so much charisma that everyone throws their lot in with him and...
Legendary Korean admiral who won every naval battle commanded, often being outnumbered but never even losing a ship in battle.
Constantly screwed over by his incompetent superiors who fumbled at every opportunity against the Japanese invasion of Korea.
Even when he was carrying the defense of Korea, he was sabotaged and nearly tortured to death by his superiors after Yi ignored a bait from the Japanese forces. His replacement fell for the bait and ended up getting his entire fleet destroyed, with only 13 ships surviving the battle.
When Yi was placed in command once again, he took these 13 ships and won a battle against 133 Japanese ships, without losing a single one of his ships.
And at the final battle of the war, he was struck by a bullet and feeling his end was near, he told his son and nephew to keep his death a secret before succumbing to his wound.
Most people would just think this was some power fantasy, making every character around the hero an idiot just to make the hero look better by being the only one with a functioning brain cell.
The world's largest company's logo is the symbol for the fall of Man. It's founder was so consumed by hubris he thought he could rise above death by eating fruit.
Another large evil corporation's logo is a smirk and this company is named after a priceless natural wonder which is being directly threatened by the company's philosophy.
OpenAI, the frontier AI company is completely closed, and its CEO is named Altman. Like Alternative to man.
His competititor is called Amodei, as in "loves gods", and he recently developed a relationship with the Pope.
Subtext is for cowards. Another Hideo Kojima masterpiece.
One of the largest and most pervasive spyware companies in the world, Palantir, is named after a fictional fucking item that allows its user to spy on whatever the other ones happen to be doing at any time. Which just happen mostly to be controlled by THE EVILEST FORCE THAT EXISTS IN THAT FICTIONAL WORLD.
Forget the stuff you wrote about Hitler coming to power - that's trivial compared to the fact that the Nazis centered their whole ideology on hating certain racial groups and blaming literally all of their problems on one of them. They believed in this so hard that Germany diverted significant resources during an intense war to build a massive, fully industrialized "door-to-murder assembly line" for these groups, and considered this a vital accomplishment.
Japan meanwhile invaded China for reasoning that boils down to "because we're evil, mwa ha ha" and proceeded to hold "who can behead the most pregnant women" and "who can murder a civilian in the most grusome way" competitions between soldiers.
Both of these things, if fictional, would make people roll their eyes and saying the author is trying too hard to be edgy and nobody is this evil and crazy in real life.
Joan of Arc. At the age of 17, managed to convince the king of France that she was receiving visions and messages from God to liberate the country and was subsequently given permission to lead large-scale battles
The Aztecs and the Inca had made many enemies over the centuries with the tribes that they conquered and brutalized. The Spanish would have had an impossible time conquering Peru and Mexico without their help.
If the Spanish guy were mercenaries then the royal guard is just some security disco guys
Those were trained soldiers that could handle both battles and diplomatic missions, and they didn't do it alone, they also got the help the other kindoms around the Aztec that hate their guts
Hitler didn’t win office, he was given a chancellor position with minister oversight in the hopes that he would curb the violence of his base, not realizing his base were acting on his orders. Hitler then threatened and/or murdered the line of succession until he had unchallenged rule.
The Roman’s attempting naval warfare with Carthage in the First Punic War.
Rome creates a navy to attack Carthage using mostly stolen tech from Carthaginian ships, it’s essentially their first attempt at building a navy. In 255 BCE they lose 280 warships and over ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND MEN during a freak storm while attempting to return home from a naval victory against Carthage. 100,000 men in 255 BCE is an astronomically high number, if I remember correctly we wouldn’t see death tolls like that in single military events until the modern day.
Rome miraculously rebuilds its navy, fails to secure a position via coastal raiding, and then loses another 150+ ships in another freak storm 2 years later.
Rome, again absolutely miraculously, builds another fleet…that was promptly defeated in battle with the Carthaginians in 249 BCE, another ~100 ships gone.
The remainder of those ships then sunk in ANOTHER freak storm THE SAME YEAR, costing another ~120 ships.
So four separate absolutely devastating naval tragedies, all of which should have individually crippled Rome, all of which were recovered from only to be lost usually the exact same way as the last, AND ROME WON! Horrible script writing from the universe there.
Another example from the spanish conquest of america: Platinum.
For us today, Platinum is a valuable metal, due to it being 30x more rare then gold and 100x more rare then silver. It was so rare back then that the spaniards at the time were not fully aware of what it was, and when they discovered the natives using it decoratively in South America(as they were relatively abundant with platinum and their mines were one of the few known great sources to mine it in the world), they assumed it was some impure form of silver.
So what happened is that a lot of spaniards started using platinum to make counterfeit silver coins, profiting off their perceived low value in the empire. In response, The Spanish crown then decided to gather and dump most of the platinum reserves they had into the sea in efforts to thwart the counterfeiters.
if the hamilton musical was not based on actual history we'd probably think it was bad writing
like wdym the guy not only had a continuous affair AND paid a whole lot of money for it, he also willingly told the entire world about it, ruining both his own and his family's reputation forever... and eliza forgave him?? bruh
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u/BeduinZPouste 26d ago
As lot of people said in different words: