History Facts

Fun facts about History for Kids. Interesting factoids, information and answers. So let’s have some fun and why not learn something new.

• In Ancient Greece, if a woman watched even one Olympic event, she was executed.

• Attila the Hun bled to death from a nosebleed on his wedding night.

• The flu killed over 20 million people in Spain from 1918 to 1919.

• Julius Caesar wore a laurel wreath to cover the onset of baldness.

• When Albert Einstein died, his last words died with him. The nurse close to him did not understand German.
  

  The United States Civil War was fought from 1861 to 1865. The North and the South fought for four years over several issues but most believe that the main issue was slavery.

• The shortest war in history was between Zanzibar and England in 1896. Zanzibar surrendered after 38 minutes.

• Abraham Lincoln was shot with a Derringer.

• The White House, in Washington DC, was originally gray, the color of the sandstone it was built out of.

• The US federal income tax was first enacted in 1862 to support the Union’s Civil War effort.

• The dollar was established as the official currency of the US in 1785.

• The total number of Americans killed in the Civil War is greater than the combined total of Americans killed in all other wars.

• The very first bomb dropped by the Allies on Berlin during World War II killed the only elephant in the Berlin Zoo.

• On August sixth, 1945, during World War Two, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, killing an estimated 140,000 people in the first use of a nuclear weapon in warfare.

• During the First World War, the punishment for homosexuality in the French army was execution.

• The peace symbol was created in 1958 as a nuclear disarmament symbol by the Direct Action Committee, and was first shown that year at peace marches in England.

• Only two people signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4th, John Hancock and Charles Thomson.

• The house in which the Declaration of Independence was written was replaced with a hamburger restaurant.

• Fourth of July fireworks have a long and honorable tradition. They were first used in July 1776 and may have been meant as a mockery of the tradition of fireworks for British royalty.

• Harry S. Truman was the last U.S. President with no college degree.

• William H. Taft was the first president to submit a national budget.

• The model for Uncle Sam on the famous 1917 post “I want you” is the face of the painter, James Montgomery Flagg.

• There is no such thing as the Congressional Medal of Honor.

• Like the Democratic donkey, the Republican party symbol was born out of mockery.

• Although the Red Cross isn’t a government agency, it does have a Congressional charter.