Best Historical Anecdote Quotes

"Throughout England, everybody was talking about being saved by grace. If you stopped anybody and said, 'Are you saved by grace?' they would say, 'No, I wasn't on the boat.'"

"Thomas was given the nickname 'the dumb Ox of Sicily'."

"Queen Victoria never actually went to India, instead she had India brought to England."

"That's wild, I mean a physicist that did all these experiments literally burned all of his work before he died."

"My father had a button on the desk that he could summon Hoover, and one day we were mischievously pressing that button."

"He looked corn pop in the eyes and said 'I'm sorry I called you Esther' and then corn pop put away a straight razor and then Biden breathed a sigh of relief. That's kind of leadership."

"So what did Mansa Musa do? He built a friggin' swimming pool in the middle of the Sahara."

"For his naughty behavior, the other bishops stripped Nicholas of his bishop clothes and tossed him in the clink."

"One story told by a former servant of the Caliph relates that just before al-Mansour died, he gave keys to his storerooms to his daughter-in-law with strict instructions only to open one of them when she was sure of his death."

"At the height of his fame, Elvis Presley was a man who could get away with pretty much anything."

"He walked into the President of the United States office and handed him a gun."

"With his last breaths, Vespasian asked his attendants to hold him up because 'an emperor ought to die standing.'"

"At first, nobody was safe from the razor except for priests and peasants."

"The two reportedly drank so frequently at one pub in London that the landlord renamed it to the 'Czar of Muscovy.'"

"The story of Gil Perez might just be what changes your mind about teleportation."

"Howard Phillips Lovecraft started a flame war in the comments section of the 1914 equivalent to a YouTube video."

"Henry could write music, sing a lovely tenor, and could even sight read."

"It's still talked about and still written about. He put his men who were sick because they were eating from the King's table on vegetables and water and then he reassessed them in 10 days and found that they were healthier."

"A shaker woman right here in Harvard, Massachusetts next door, her name is Tabitha Babbitt. She saw two men struggling with a pit saw and decided to come up with a better option."

"A form of democracy was actually practiced on board pirate vessels."

"Richtofen insisted on entertaining captured Allied pilots with dinner and drinks before they were sent to prisoner of war camps."

"When asked by a nearby priest how he intended to reply to the Mongol invasion, Tokimune shrieked 'Katsu!' - Victory."

"The king of Alwar in northeast India was insulted by a Rolls-Royce salesman and ordered a whole fleet of Rolls-Royce cars."

"Churchill complained, 'I thought we'd flung a wildcat into the Alban Hills, but instead we got a whale floundering on the beach.'"

"Allegedly, he was walking through the lobby one day and asked the general manager of Hotel Hershey how many room nights had been reserved the night before, and the manager reluctantly said, Mr. Hershey, 12 rooms."

"When missionaries like Samuel Moffat arrived in Korea 2 decades later, they heard the story of the man who had thrown Bibles down from a burning ship."

"Most people rejected his message. They hated Jesus because he told them the truth."

"Pink is the manliest color there is. Ernest Hemmingway and Teddy Roosevelt both wore pink dresses as a kid."

"It's not the oldest in our puddings, you know. I think traditional Christmas pudding, plum pudding, it was another. George the First, his first Christmas as King of England in 1714, he ordered up plum pudding."

"Nixon told him, 'Jackie, if you could arrange to arrive at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa sometime over the next few days, I'll arrange to have you shown some things that may help answer some of your questions.'"

"You probably know of Vincent van Gogh. His ear-cutting antics are almost as famous as his paintings."

"One thing these mighty men did is they heard that King David was thirsty and all he longed for this well behind actually happened to be behind the enemy lines he just longed to taste that water."

"Private Leslie Friston's miraculous survival with a Bible shielding him is a powerful testament to faith."

"A tribe approached Hannibal and said, 'Hey man, jeez that's some nice armor, what is that man? I really like that armor.'"

"Thomas Jefferson story time: Americans used to think tomatoes were poisonous, but Tommy J knew better. So one day at a dinner party, he just whipped out a tomato and straight up ate it like an apple."

"Eleanor Roosevelt once snuck out of a White House event with Amelia Earhart."

"There's a wonderful little piece in a 14th century school book by a very young boy where at the end of Lent at the end of eating nothing but fish he writes in his margin th will not believe how weary I am of fish."

"The Pope once declared war on cats."

"Caligula made his horse a priest."

"May kiss the bride, that's exactly what happened to Margie Elizabeth Hamilton in May of 1932."

"The last time a President was told to shut up was when someone told Abraham Lincoln to stop screaming in the middle of the play."

"And here comes this young Union officer saying, 'Sir, I really don't know what I ought to do, I don't know if I should surrender or not.'"

"Why didn't George Washington's father punish George after he chopped down the cherry tree? Because George was still holding the ax."

"Henry's ego was wounded when Anne of Cleves didn't recognize him."

"Late one evening in Tehran, Churchill told Stalin, 'I believe that God is on our side,' to which Stalin grinned and replied, 'And the devil is on my side because, of course, everyone knows the devil is a communist and God no doubt is a good conservative.'"

"Her last words were allegedly 'Pardon me, sir, I meant not to do it' when she accidentally stepped on the executioner's toes."

"Legend has it that after the British set fire to the house during the war of 1812, it was painted white to cover up the burn marks."

"Which king of England demonstrated to his courtiers that the sea would not retreat at his command?"

"King Jai Singh of Alwar snubbed Rolls Royce in the best possible way."

"Martha Washington named her feral tomcat after him."

"In the 1860s, somebody was actually fined for parking a horse and cart in the main street."

"Caligula made his horse a senator."

"Marilyn Monroe sneaked through the kitchen to meet her husband DiMaggio."

"To turn a blind eye derived from when Horatio Nelson wanted to ignore his senior officer's signal flag to retreat and he had a blind eye, so he took his telescope and he put it up to his blind eye so he wouldn't see the flag."