37 Truly Odd Historical Facts You’ll Have Hard Time Believing

26Smiling in Photos

Smiling in Photos

For most of history, smiling in a painting or photo was considered radical, and even Mark Twain once wrote, "A photograph is a most important document, and there is nothing more damning to go down to posterity than a silly, foolish smile caught and fixed forever"


27. Isaac Newton studied alchemy, tried to put all the world's religious histories together into one timeline, thought Atlantis was real, associated with secret societies like the Freemasons, and predicted the end of the world in 2060.


28. Subotai was the primary General of Genghis Khan during the Mongolian conquest of Asia. He directed more than twenty campaigns in which he conquered 32 nations and won 65 pitched battles, during which he conquered or overran more territory than any other commander in history.


29. The only coup in US history occurred in North Carolina in 1898. A mob of white supremacists armed with rifles and pistols marched on City Hall in Wilmington and overthrew the local government, forcing both black and white officials to resign. The leader of the mob was later elected as mayor.


30. On January 23, 1902, 210 Japanese soldiers got caught in a blizzard on the Hakkoda Mountains in Aomori prefecture. A total of 199 of them died during the ascent making it the most lethal disaster in the history of mountaineering.