19 of the Most Unbelievable Things About Human History

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Eric Lund
Aug 3, 2018 2:00 PM EDT

It can seem like the world only began when we were born, but in reality our whole lives are just minuscule dots in history. There have been countless humans before us, and a lot of them did some pretty amazing things. Thinking about the past really puts things into perspective, and I think everyone needs a little wake up call now and then to remember that some pretty crazy stuff went down before we were around. Here's 19 stories from AskReddit about some very cool things humanity has achieved so far. Inspiring. 

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  • 01
    Text A dude named Tsutomu Yamaguchi survives the Hiroshima bomb despite being very near ground zero, then already being heavily injured travels to Nagasaki and reports for work already being bandaged. Once again he survives despite being around 3 km from ground zero. And then lives until 2009
    via AskReddit
  • 02
    Text The explosion of the Krakatoa volcano in 1883. Basically everyone within 40 miles had their eardrums ruptured and the sound travelled around the earth 4 times. It was also clearly heard for 3,000 miles, that's farther than NYC is from LA.
    via AskReddit
  • 03
    Text Voyager leaving our solar system. Those probes may outlive humankind.
    via AskReddit
  • 04
    Text the moon we landed. on the moon. THE MOON only 50 years after we built the airplane, MOON we went to the
    via AskReddit
  • 05
    Text Maybe the Mongolian invasion of Japan- which was blighted not once but twice by sheer luck as typhoons (which only strike two or three times a year) wiped out their entire ship fleet. The Mongolians took it as an omen and didn't invade again, a victory which would have been quite easy for them
    via AskReddit
  • 06
    Text That the Mongolian civilization in the 13th century, armed only with horses, arrows, and steel, managed to sweep through and completely conquer the vast majority of the entire Eurasian landmass in only about 10 years, forming the largest contiguous land empire in history. There were over 12 million casualties, a record only surpassed 700 years later in World War II
    via AskReddit
  • 07
    Text That guy who died for 14 minutes and then went on to win the jackpot on a scratch card twice, one of the times live on TV when he was recreating the moment he done it.
    via AskReddit
  • 08
    Text We figured out that turning millions/billions of electronic switches on and off could create a relatively accurate representation of the universe. Like, go ahead. Try explaining a personal computer of any capacity to someone from 80 years ago.
    via AskReddit
  • 09
    Text The solar storm of 1859. Given its relative recentness, it's probably not even the worst that could happen - and if it were to happen today, the damage would be devastating.
    via AskReddit
  • 10
    Text Anything involving Rasputin, the magic Russian hobo.
    via AskReddit
  • 11
    Text Its fairly believable but still surprises me that in 1942 "The Battle of Los Angeles" occured. Basically from a mix of a false report and paranoia the US military fired artillery rounds in the night sky over LA for hours at imaginary targets thinking there were japanese bombers overhead. Wasn't until it started getting light out that they realized there were no enemy planes and they didn't in fact shoot anything down. Some 5 people died
    via AskReddit
  • 12
    Text The man who tried to assassinate Andrew Jackson had two different pistols jam. If there are alternate realities, we live in one that had a 1 in 100,000 chance of existing.
    via AskReddit
  • 13
    Text George Washington peacefully transferring power was (almost) unprecedented.
    via AskReddit
  • 14
    Text The start of World War 1. A group of Serbian kids(called the Black Hand) were pissed that their countnry was colony of Austria(to state it very, very simply). They decide to kill the heir to the throne of the Austro- Hungarian Empire, a mega power, controlling a huge chunk of Europe. His name was Franz Ferdinand. Dude's in town, essentially as a P.R. stunt, and he's doing this JFK style motorcade parade. They decide to kill him
    via AskReddit
  • 15
    Text - Back to our speeding caravan.Franz Ferdinand tells everybody, "Hey, we can spin this into some good PR.We need to go support these innocents who are hurt from this bomb." He tells the driver to take him and his wife to the hospita..The driver agrees but tells Franz that it is the opposite direction. They pull down a side street that is dead-ended. The driver begins to make a U-turn...Ironically, at the end of the street is the cafe, with Gavrillo sitting, open jawed, at his target making
    via AskReddit
  • 16
    Text During the Cuban Missile Crisis a Soviet nuclear submarine was about to launch a missile at a US ship Two of the three officers on the ship approved but because of the one, they couldn't launch. Had this one man not have disagreed there probably would have been a nuclear holocaust. Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov
    via AskReddit
  • 17
    Text Humanity almost went extinct 72,000 years ago due to the Mt. Toba eruption. Researches estimate there were only 4000 survivors in Africa.
    via AskReddit
  • 18
    Text Given the pick up line my dad supposedly used, my birth Edit: since you guys asked, the line was "so when we goin' out." You've got to admit, it's ballsy.
    via AskReddit
  • 19
    Text You have more navigational power in your pocket than any ship to traverse the oceans until about 30 years ago or so
    via AskReddit
  • 20
    Text ersinia Pestis, more commonly known as the Black Death, killed something north of 75 million people in the mid-14th century. This was something like one quarter and one half of the entire human race at the time. Like all cataclysms, it disproportionally affected the poor, resulting in a famine in following years because there was no one to work the fields. Furthermore, the demand for labour meant that skilled peasants had more access to money and educatio
    via AskReddit

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computers war history technology extinction Japan amazing science stories Reddit lucky
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