12 Fascinating World History Facts for Students

History is more than dates and facts, it’s about the unbelievable stories, surprising moments and unusual events that shaped our world. From early civilizations to current breakthroughs, the past is strewn with facts that somehow sound too crazed to be true. Whether you’re cramming for a test or have just worked up an appetite enjoying the fruits of human history, these historical tidbits might help change the way you experience the world around you.

So we round up 12 of the most mind-blowing facts about our history that remind us everyone in the past is keeping well ahead with cool, even for these present times.

The Great Wall of China Is Not Actually Visible from Space (But It Has Plenty of Other Superpowers)

For years, people have long thought that astronauts could see the Great Wall of China from space with the naked eye. Spoiler alert: they can’t. It’s a popular myth that actual astronauts, including China’s homegrown space explorers, have debunked. The wall is too thin for the wide extent of Earth as seen from space.

But this is what’s most remarkable about the Great Wall: Once you add together its branches and sections, it clocks in at over 13,000 miles. It was begun in the 7th century B.C. and various dynasties continued to contribute for nearly 2,000 years. Most of what few tourists see today was built by the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644 AD).

Workers used some unexpected materials to erect it — not just stone and brick, but also sticky rice! Ancient architects blended rice flour with the mortar for a super-strong fast-drying cement that’s been keeping the rammed earth walls standing for 1,000 years. At parts of the wall, five horses can walk abreast. Workers, soldiers and prisoners who were killed during the construction were in some cases interred within the wall itself, giving it notorious acclaim as one of history’s largest cemeteries.

Cleopatra Lived Closer to the iPhone Than to the Pyramids

This is a fact that completely blows most people’s minds: Cleopatra, the well-known and admired queen of Egypt — who was nowhere near as impressive or powerful as history seems to want us think she was — lived closer in time to the invention of the iPhone than she did to the construction of one of Giza’s giant pyramids. The Great Pyramid was built in 2560 BC. She was born in 69 B.C.; that’s about a couple of millennia after the pyramids went up. The iPhone was introduced in 2007 — oh, in about 2,000 AD — not long after the death of Cleopatra (who died in 30 BC).

This timeline indicates to just how ancient the pyramids truly are. By the time Cleopatra walked past them, they were ancient monuments covered with graffiti by Greek and Roman tourists. She likely viewed them the way we gaze upon medieval castles — as remnants of some long-lost world.

Cleopatra herself was a Greek, not of Egyptian blood. She was a member of the Ptolemaic dynasty, which was founded after Alexander the Great’s conquest of Egypt. She was the only one in her entire family who ever bothered to learn Egyptian, though they had been ruling Egypt for 300 years. She spoke at a minimum nine languages and was an accomplished mathematician and philosopher. Hollywood may depict her as little more than a beautiful seductress, but she was in fact one of the most learned and politically cunning rulers of the ancient world.

Napoleon Wasn’t Actually Short

You’ve heard the jokes before: Napoleon was actually a small angry man with a “short guy complex.” The truth? He was of medium height for his day. Napoleon was about 1.7 meters (5 feet 7 inches), just slightly taller than the average Frenchman of his time.

So how did this myth begin? Massive British propaganda, was how he put it. Britain and France have been bitter enemies at the time of Napoleon, and British cartoonists had a passion for drawing him as an absurd little figure. The confusion also arose from the discrepancy between French and British measuring systems — where a French inch was longer than a British one, so that when he was measured 5 foot 2 inches of France, they thought his height suggested he had been unusually stunted.

Napoleon’s guards were all big men, and so he seemed small in comparison. That elite safety force was known as the Imperial Guard and required a minimum height of 5 feet 10 inches — which in those days was quite tall. The effect upon the people, when these giants stood and walked about with Napoleon, was most marvelous.

Oxford University Is Now Older Than the Aztec Empire

Oxford University has been educating students since around 1096 AD – that’s over 900 years old! The Aztec capital city of Tenochtitlan was not established until 1325 A.D.—over two centuries later. When Aztecs were busy building an empire in Mexico, Oxford had been teaching students for generations.

The overlap is a reminder that history isn’t a tidy straight line. As the Aztecs were inventing their complex calendar and constructing colossal pyramids in the Americas, European scholars spent less time debating philosophy than translating ancient Greek texts in Oxford’s halls.

The first Oxford students were extremely young by modern standards — some beginning as young as 13 or 14. They learned grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry music and astronomy. The classes were taught exclusively in Latin, and students would be hit for speaking English on campus.

The Shortest War in History Lasted 38 Minutes

On August 27, 1896, the shortest recorded war in history took place with the Anglo-Zanzibar War, which lasted between 38 to 45 minutes depending on who you hear it from. The belligerents were the United Kingdom, and the Zanzibar Sultanate (now part of Tanzania).

Here’s what happened: Upon the death of the pro-British Sultan of Zanzibar, his nephew Khalid bin Bargash took over without permission from British authorities. The British didn’t like it one bit—they had their own candidate in mind. They issued Khalid an ultimatum: resign by 9 AM August 27, or else there would be war.

Khalid refused to back down. Around 2800 men rallied to his side, and he barricaded himself in the palace. The British brought 5 warships into the bay and at precisely 9:02 AM, opened fire. The palace was besieged, Khalid’s minor navy was sunk and his horde of raider-outcasts scattered. By 9:40 AM, it was all over. Khalid fled to the German embassy and the British placed their suit sultan.

Approximately 500 Zanzibaris were killed or wounded compared to one British seaman. It left the palace in ruins — you can still find old photos of it, pockmarked and with walls collapsed. The British even presented Zanzibar with a bill for the shells they had used during the shelling.

Medieval Europe Had a Worse Mail System Than the Early Roman Empire

The Romans created a very organized mail service called the cursus publicus. Government couriers rode horseback for up to 50 miles per day, changing horses at stations spaced every 10-15 miles on principal highways. Urgent messages could travel faster still — as much as 170 miles in a day if relay teams were employed.

The Romans constructed some 250,000 miles of roads in their Empire, including 50,000 miles of paved highways. They were of such high quality that some parts are still in use, more than 2,000 years later. It was no metaphor: road markers throughout the empire displayed the distance to Rome, too vast in extent (by 200 B.C. it took a courier three days on horseback to get from Carthage to Rome) and so pervasive an enterprise had the Roman government become, whether motivated by good or evil purposes.

This arrangement fell apart when Rome itself fell in 476 AD. Medieval Europe was an infrastructure shell. The roads crumbled, long-distance communication was dangerous and unreliable. Eventually, it would take the continent more than a millennium to engineer a postal network as efficient as Rome’s had been.

The Roman Empire Survived Until 1453 (More or Less)

Most individuals believe the fall of the Roman Empire was on September 4th, 476 AD when Romulus Augustulus, the last Western Roman Emperor was overthrown. But the Eastern Roman Empire, or the Byzantine Empire, continued on for nearly another millennium. Its capital was Constantinople (modern Istanbul); its laws and culture were Roman throughout the Middle Ages.

The Byzantine Empire eventually fell when Constantinople was invaded on May 29, 1453 by the Ottoman Turks following a 53-day siege. This makes the Roman Empire, technically, a 2,200-year-old state if you count from the traditional founding of Rome until the fall of Constantinople.

The Byzantines referred to themselves as Romans and spoke Greek. They preserved old Greek and Roman knowledge that might have been lost in Europe’s Dark Ages. After the fall of Constantinople, Byzantine scholars fled to Western Europe with ancient texts that helped trigger the Renaissance.

Vikings Were in the New World 500 Years Before Columbus

Christopher Columbus is credited with “discovering” America in 1492, but Viking explorer Leif Erikson pre-dates him by some 500 years. Late in the first millennium, Erikson and his shipmates made a crossing from Greenland and founded a settlement in what is now Newfoundland, Canada. They called this land “Vinland.”

That used to be only a legend from Norse sagas — ancient Viking tales. However, in the 1960s, archaeologists unearthed the remnants of a Viking settlement at L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland. They uncovered the remains of eight buildings and various artifacts including a bronze pin, iron nails and a stone lamp.

The Vikings didn’t leave a lasting settlement in North America. Disputes with native peoples and the settlement’s isolation from Greenland and Iceland made it impossible to sustain. Vinland would be abandoned within a few years. But archaeological evidence shows that Europeans made their way to the Americas long before Columbus’s famous voyage.

Of course, we should bear in mind that Columbus and the Vikings never “discovered” anything — millions of natives were already living throughout the Americas for thousands of years. But as far as European influence on the Americas goes, the Vikings were here before anyone else.

Moldy Bread Was Prescribed to Ancient Egyptians for Medical Treatments

Many centuries before Alexander Fleming, for example, discovered penicillin in 1928, ancient Egyptians used moldy bread to treat infections. They would use it on injuries and lacerations, and it actually healed! Why? That’s because some molds generate natural antibiotics that can be lethal to bacteria.

The ancient Egyptians didn’t know anything about the science of antibiotics — they had no idea that bacteria existed, or what antibiotics are. But by trial and error, they discovered that this strange remedy sped up the healing of wounds and stopped them from becoming infected.

Other early cultures discovered antibiotic treatments as well. Even the ancient Chinese knew to use moldy soybean curd to combat infection. In Europe, a tradition was to put moldy cheese on wounds. These are ancient treatments that sound repulsive to modern ears, but they were actually rooted in real medical science — the people using them just didn’t know why they worked back then.

The Ancient Olympics Once Included Combative Blood Sports

The ancient Olympic Games, which originated in Greece from 776 B.C., were not exactly the friendly international competition we know today. And yes, they had running races and javelin throws, but they also included pankration — a violent combat sport with few rules.

Pankration combined wrestling and boxing. Punching? Kicking? Strangling? Joint locks? And a dozen other things as well. What was disallowed is only biting and eye gouging, although these regulations were also breached regularly. Bouts would last until one player raised his hand in surrender or was simply knocked out. Deaths weren’t uncommon.

The athletes ran their races stark naked, oiled from head to toe with olive oil. Women were banned from either viewing or participating — save for the priestess of Demeter, who had her own special place. Married women found watching the games faced punishment as severe — being thrown off a cliff — though accounts differ as to whether this was ever strictly enforced.

The ancient Olympics were a religious festival for the honor of Zeus. Athletes offered sacrifices to the gods and victories were regarded as divinely blessed. The winners were not awarded gold medals, but olive wreaths, although they returned home to be celebrated as heroes in their home cities. Some cities would compensate Olympic champions for life, or offer them free meals in perpetuity.

Abraham Lincoln Signed the Secret Service Into Law the Same Day He Was Assassinated

And one of the most tragic ironies in history: President Abraham Lincoln signed the Secret Service into legislation on April 14, 1865—John Wilkes Booth murdered him later that evening at Ford’s Theatre.

Even more ironic? The Secret Service was never designed to guard the president. Its initial intent was to fight counterfeiting, which had become rampant during the Civil War. An estimated third of the currency in circulation was counterfeit, crippling both the economy and war effort. The Secret Service was created to chase counterfeiters and safeguard the nation’s money.

It wasn’t until 1901, after President William McKinley was assassinated by a man claiming to be an anarchist, that the Secret Service began guarding presidents full-time. Had Lincoln created his presidential security rather than counterfeiting, he could have been saved that fatal night.

The killing of Lincoln was the result of a wider-spread conspiracy. Booth also planned assassinating the president, vice president and secretary of state on the same night to decapitate the government of Union. His assault on Secretary of State William Seward was serious but Seward lived. His would-be assassin, one of the conspirators assigned to kill Vice President Andrew Johnson, got cold feet and failed to pull the trigger.

The Pyramids Were Built by Ancient Egyptian Paid Laborers, Not Slaves

The belief that slaves built the pyramids is one of the most enduring myths about ancient Egypt. The archaeological record, however, paints a very different picture: the pyramids were built by paid laborers who were well-fed and provided with medical care.

Archaeologists have uncovered workers’ villages near the pyramids, complete with bakeries, breweries and hospitals. Analysis of the skeletons of workers indicates that they were treated for their injuries, with broken bones immobilized correctly and given time to heal. The laborers dined regularly on meat — a costly food that revealed how indispensable they were.

Some graffiti left by work gangs suggests pride and competition. Teams gave themselves names such as “Friends of Khufu” or “Drunkards of Menkaure,” and competed to see which group could install more stone blocks. This is a matter of national pride in the project, not slave work.

The laborers likely would have been farmers who worked on the pyramids during the flood season of the Nile, when their fields were flooded and they had nothing to do. The pharaoh’s government arranged the manpower for this giant work force, providing food for tens of thousands. Constructing a pyramid as a means of serving the god-king pharaoh to guarantee you and your family eternity in the Afterlife.

According to modern estimates, it was constructed by some 20,000-30,000 workers over a period of around 20 years. Which is still an astonishing accomplishment, to move and put in place 2.3 million stone blocks, some weighing more than two tons apiece, using rudimentary tools and brute human strength.

• You may also like: Explore 7 Wonders That Defined Ancient Civilizations

Historical Timeline Comparison

To help put these various civilizations and events in context, here is a comparative timeline:

What These Facts Mean for Students Today

Knowing that history does you more than just get a good grade — it alters your perspective on the world. These stories show that:

History isn’t linear or simple. Various civilizations were at different stages of development, all at the same time. Some civilizations built universities, others built empires. He focused on exploration, but others mastered the arts and sciences.

Myths often overshadow reality. Napoleon wasn’t short, slaves didn’t build the pyramids and the Great Wall isn’t visible from space. Critical thinking is about the ability to ask questions, don’t accept what “everyone knows” and search for evidence.

Technology and momentum can slip by. The infrastructure of Rome and its postal system vanished with the fall of the empire. Progress is not guaranteed — it takes work to keep and grow.

Connections span the globe. There were Vikings in America hundreds of years before Columbus. Antimicrobial medicine of the past What was at stake in an earlier epoch, when antimicrobials had yet to be discovered? Humans have always joined swarming of curiosity and innovation across borders.

Context matters. Cleopatra to the pyramids, the age of Oxford compared with the Aztec Empire — these relationships give us a feel for just how sprawling human history is.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the most popular history myth that students believe?

The myth that people of Columbus’s day actually believed in a flat Earth is perhaps the most pervasive. The earth is round, educated people knew in the 1400s — ancient Greeks had proved it thousands of years before. Columbus’s skeptics were not the ones who thought he would fall off the edge; in fact, they correctly claimed that Asia was too far away for his ships to make it (they did not know about the Americas in between).

Why is it important to learn about world history, and not just your own country?

World history demonstrates just how interdependent humanity has always been. Ideas, technologies, diseases and people have long flowed across national borders. Global history enables you to see trends and learn about other cultures, and it tells us that no one country can exist in a vacuum. The history of your nation is but one thread in a tapestry much larger.

How can historians be so sure that it’s true?

Historians have a variety of sources they can draw on: written records, artifacts, scientific dating techniques, art and architecture and so on. They weigh the superiority of different accounts, test for bias and ever more narrowly update what they know as new evidence suggests better. A good history is built on evidence, not speculation or myth.

Were or are there any other female leaders in ancient times besides Cleopatra?

Absolutely! Hatshepsut was pharaoh (not just queen) of Egypt from about 1478 B.C. In Britain alone, Queen Boudica led a huge rebellion against Rome. Wu Zetian, who became China’s only empress became its sole female emperor. Theodora was the ever-supportive Empress of the Byzantine Empire alongside her husband, Justinian. History is full of strong women leaders, but textbooks often fail to mention them.

What is the oldest continuously functioning institution in the world?

The University of al-Qarawiyyin in Fez, Morocco is sometimes considered to be the world’s oldest existing and continually operating university. The institutional structure of the Catholic Church in the 1st century served as the prototype for subsequent successive organizations, including secular and other religious institutions through history. Construction firm Kongō Gumi, established in 578 AD in Japan, was once the world’s oldest continuously operating family business. Such ancient organizations have proved to be phenomenally enduring, outlasting entire millenniums.

How true to life are historical movies and TV shows?

Hollywood prioritizes entertainment over accuracy. Most historical movies take liberties with the facts, blending reality with invented drama, compressing timelines and simplifying complex events. They’re points of departure for interest, not trustworthy sources. Do real history behind any movie or show. Typically, you will find that the truth is far more interesting than the dramatized version.

Closing: History Is a Great Repository of Surprises

These are just a dozen of the thousands upon thousand unbelievable stories throughout history. Each civilization, each period in time, and every region of the world has written remarkable pages in the story of humankind. The pyramids that impressed Cleopatra, the roads that linked the Roman Empire, the Viking ships that found America, the workers who built wonders — each tells us something about how people in previous centuries were as intelligent, creative and capable as we are today.

Folks, next time you practice history, remember that you are not simply here to memorize things for a test. You’re connecting with billions of people who loved and lived and struggled and did really cool things before you were even around. How they told their stories shaped the world you inhabit today, and understanding them helps you understand the present time and imagine the future.

History is not dead; it is the living, breathing foundation that underscores everything we do. Keep questioning, keep exploring, and keep uncovering new and astonishing truths that make our collective human story ever so intriguing.