When you are in school, history classes are never fun. Most of the history books are filled with boring stories and never contain some of the spiciest historical facts and events that history had to offer. Maybe these topics might have piqued our interest in history. So here are 10 R-rated Historical Facts you Weren’t Taught in School.
1John F. Kennedy’s Sex Tape
John F. Kennedy was dating Danish journalist Inga Arvad in the 1940’s. When they stayed at Sumter House in Charleston, the FBI bugged their room because they thought she may be a Nazi spy. Their reason for suspicion was because she was Adolf Hitler’s companion during the 1936 Summer Olympics. It turns out they didn’t hear a lot of conversation but instead recorded the good time they were having. Tapes are in the Library of Congress for those interested.
JFK cheated on his wife and was a known sex addict. He had affairs with a lot of women. He even went on record saying, “If I don’t have sex every day, I get a headache”.
2French President’s death
Félix François Faure was President of France from 1895 until his death in 1899. Faure died suddenly from a stroke in 1899, while engaged in sexual activities in his office with 30-year-old Marguerite Steinheil. It has been widely reported that Felix Faure had his fatal seizure while Steinheil was fellating him. The mistress was nicknamed “La pompe funèbre” (“pompes funèbres” means “death care business” and “pompe funèbre” could be translated, literally, as “funeral pump”).
3Oskar Dirlewanger
Oskar Dirlewanger was the leader of the infamous 36th Waffen Grenadier Division of the Nazi SS. This unit comprised of a lot of criminals. Oskar and his men were so vile and evil that even the SS commanders were horrified of them and had an ongoing investigation on the group. They raped children, burned them alive, or fed them still alive to starved dogs. He was involved in a massacre of 500 school children. This is an account of that event.
“After the door of the building was blown off we saw a daycare full of small children, around 500; all with small hands in the air. Even Dirlewanger’s own people called him a butcher; he ordered to kill them all. The shots were fired, but he requested his men to save the ammo and finish them off by rifle butts and bayonets. Blood and brain matter flowed in streams down the stairs.”
4The Lewis and Clark Poop Trail
When the Corps of Discovery left the East Coast, Lewis and Clark brought with them several pounds of mercury chloride, which is a heavy metal laxative. These pills were almost 50 percent mercury chloride and they were big pills, at least four times the size of an aspirin tablet.
The Corps of Discovery only ate meat and had incredible constipation. The laxatives which they nicknamed “Thunder Clappers” were extraordinarily effective. It made them purge everything immediately. Once in the earth, mercury chloride lasts virtually forever without dissolving or breaking down. So as they made their way across the continent, they were unknowingly depositing a trail of heavy metals along the way, a trail that historians and scientists have been able to detect and use to document almost their every movement. You can indeed trace their path with a metal detector.
5Thomas Granger
Thomas Graunger (1625 – September 8, 1642) was one of the first people hanged in the Plymouth Colony and the first known juvenile to be executed in what would become the USA. At the age of 16 or 17, was convicted of “buggery (anal intercourse) with a mare, a cow, two goats, divers sheepe, two calves, and a turkey”.
6The Origins of Oneida Silverware
The Oneida community (the utopian Christian sect in the early Americas that started the silverware company by the same name) practiced “complex marriage,” where any member was free to have sex with any other who consented. They believed that natural outcome of intercourse was pregnancy and raising children should be a communal responsibility. Women over the age of 40 were to act as sexual “mentors” to adolescent boys, as these relationships had minimal chance of conceiving. Older men often introduced young women to sex. In 1993, the archives of the community were made available to scholars for the first time.
7Benjamin Franklin’s Naughty side
In 1781, while Benjamin Franklin was the US Ambassador to France, he published an essay entitled “Fart Proudly”, a tongue-in-cheek treatise promoting the health benefits of farting, and how to make farts smell better.
Also, it was no secret that Benjamin Franklin was fond of women, and in France, his most favorite Madams were Madame Brillon and Madame Helvétius. Madame Brillon was a married woman, whom Franklin limited to sending love letters. Madame Helvétius was a widow and Franklin actually proposed to her.
“Advice to a Friend on Choosing a Mistress” is a letter by Benjamin Franklin counseling a young man about channeling sexual urges. In it, Franklin lists seven reasons why an older mistress is preferable to a young one. Advantages include better conversation, less risk of unwanted pregnancy, and greater prudence in conducting an intrigue. In his words:
“The Face first grows lank and wrinkled; then the Neck; then the Breast and Arms; the lower Parts continuing to the last as plump as ever: So that covering all above with a Basket, and regarding only what is below the Girdle, it is impossible of two Women to know an old from a young one. And as in the dark, all Cats are gray, the Pleasure of corporal Enjoyment with an old Woman is at least equal, and frequently superior, every Knack being by Practice capable of Improvement.”
8Why Johnny Appleseed planted his trees
John Chapman, better known as Johnny Appleseed, born in 1774 in Massachusetts was an eccentric frontier nurseryman who established orchards throughout the American Midwest. While the legend of Johnny Appleseed suggests that his planting was random, there was actually a firm economic basis for Chapman’s behavior. He established nurseries and returned, after several years, to sell off the orchard and the surrounding land.
The trees that Chapman planted had multiple purposes. None of them yielded edible fruit. The small, tart apples his orchards produced were useful primarily to make hard cider and applejack. So he sold the trees to settlers and they used the apples to make booze.
Tasty apples are a mutation and apple trees used to make edible apples don’t come from seeds, they come from grafting other tasty apple trees.
9Lyndon Johnson was an exhibitionist
Lyndon Johnson was known for pulling out his pecker during meetings, which he nicknamed “Jumbo.” There are stories about Lyndon Johnson pulling out his penis and showing it to reporters and even members of congress as a sign of male dominance and aggression. He once even urinated on a secret serviceman who was shielding him from public view. He once ordered a pair of pants with extra room from his “nuts” to his “bunghole”.
He used to also call people in while he was taking horrific sh*ts and conduct meetings with them in the bathroom while he finished. If they didn’t want to face him, he’d leave the door open and sh*t while talking to them from the bathroom as they stood in another room.
So why wasn’t he sued for sexual harassment? Ironically, sexual harassment law in the United States might not exist in its present form without LBJ. Federal sexual harassment law grew out of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a law that LBJ was instrumental in passing.
10Mayan’s Crazy Beliefs
The Mayans weren’t very good at making alcohol. It tasted so bad that they would give themselves enemas of it so they wouldn’t have to drink it (source). A lot of art depicts it.
They also strung what was essentially a barbed-wire through their urethra and their foreskin because they thought it brought them closer to the Gods and this was after days of fasting and bloodletting for auto sacrifice.
