Category Archives: 19th Century Factoids

What was life like in the 1800s? Well, pretty shitty for about 99.99% of Americans. But we still managed to find ways to make it interesting at the very least.

AFFotD Presents: Dunking on Old Timey Pictures of Civil War Generals

Posted on September 10, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Lol this is the dumbest thing we’ve ever written that’ll randomly make very uninteresting people very mad.”

~Our Lawyers

Image of Civil War battle

The Civil War is, apparently, a very complex and complicated subject, which is weird because it kind of seems that the two sides were “America” and “a group of people who wanted to not be part of America and lost, and wanted slaves” but maybe that’s just our silly American tendency to root for winners.

Anyway, if you’re here to examine the nuance of the Civil War’s socioeconomic impact on this country, or even hear a semi-coherent history of the war, we have terrible news. This article isn’t that.

But if you are here to see us post pictures of a bunch of Union and Confederate Generals and just roast them mercilessly because every Civil War General looked like a fucking Muppet, well, you’re in luck. Because we are here to prove that…

Every Picture of Every Civil War General Is Low-Key Hilarious

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6 of the Goofiest American Names From the 19th Century

Posted on June 7, 2020 | 1 comment

“It’s like an entire century decided to find a name funnier than Seymour Butts.”

~American Historians Looking at Goofy American Names

pete la cock

In the past, when we spent time looking into baseball players of the 19th century to find some really goofy names, it was primarily to talk about how silly, yet delightful, the Wild Wild West days of early Major League Baseball truly was.

But the more we thought about it, the more we wondered—what if it wasn’t just baseball players that had strange, laughable names back then? What if the era was responsible for ridiculous names more than just the sport of baseball?

It seemed plausible, and so we did a little digging (read as—we found a list on tumblr and did some googling to make sure the names weren’t just made up). And because very little gives us more joy in life than making fun of people whose parents really should not have tried to get “creative” coming up with a word to describe a human for their whole fucking life, we’re going to make fun of some names that are goofier than your name.

Except for you, Brandalynn. Your name is white trash garbage.

6 of the Goofiest American Names From the 19th Century

fucking brandalynn

Oh for fuck’s sake, it’s a gender neutral name too?

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Posted in 19th Century Factoids, America Fun Fact of the Day, Obscure American History, Strange America

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Teddy Roosevelt Wanted To Hunt the Snallygaster, America’s Mythical Dragon-Bird

Posted on August 28, 2019 | Leave a comment

“What’s that? A new animal I can kill? I’m IN!”

~Teddy Roosevelt

snallygaster

Compared to other, older nations, America doesn’t really have a lot in the way of monsters in our folklore. Sure, we’ve got Bigfoot, and we guess there’s the jackalope, but compared to the sheer volume of mythical creatures in stories around the world, America’s got relatively few entries in that particular genre.

This isn’t too surprising—outside of Native Americans, most Americans haven’t been on this continent long enough to really nurture any good folklore. Hell, the first reported sighting of the Loch Ness Monster was 1500 years ago—considering that, it makes sense that we’ve only got a handful of random monster sightings in our history.

While the relative scarcity of American “strange monsters” doesn’t really shock us, the relative obscurity of the Snallygaster does. Because with so few things going bump in the night in America, how is everyone focusing their attention on finding some big hairy forest ape when there’s supposedly a dragon-like beast hanging around Maryland and Washington D.C.? Well Teddy Roosevelt apparently asked that very question.

Let’s talk about America’s least-talked about mythical monster then, shall we?

Teddy Roosevelt Wanted To Hunt the Snallygaster, America’s Mythical Dragon-Bird

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Posted in 19th Century Factoids, 20th Century Insanity, America Fun Fact of the Day, Obscure American History, Strange America

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8 Craziest Detective Novels (Featuring Celebrity Sleuths)

Posted on June 12, 2019 | Leave a comment

“So anyway, after my divorce, everyone said I should have a hobby. Until I told them that I was planning to write a mystery novel where Alf solves crimes.”

~Some of These Writers, Basically

detectives

Mystery novels serve many important functions in American society. They’re read on our sandy beaches, they’re packed and probably not read on our family vacations, and they’re an easy way for lazy screenwriters to fast track a screenplay in Hollywood. We, as a nation, love a good mystery, be it the deductive sleuthing of Sherlock Holmes, or trying to figure out why there are used condoms in the bathroom garbage can when you and your wife have been trying for kids the last three months. If that sentence took a shocking turn, that wasn’t this feature’s writer oversharing about his debilitating divorce, it was a twist that you didn’t see coming!

Americans love mystery novels because they’re light, easy to read, enjoyable, and there’s something genuinely exciting about finding yourself shocked by an outcome you never saw coming. Which is why it is such a popular genre for not only American readers, but for American writers. We don’t have the numbers to back this up, because it’s not like we make enough money on this site to hire an actual research team, but every year roughly 900,000 mystery novels are written by recently retired business men and women who have not yet decided to take up fishing.

And sure, every once and a while we’ll get a Gone Girl out of this slurry of mid-life crises, but more often than not we’ll get someone that just goes, “Okay so it’s a mystery, but like, what if the detective was David Duchovny?”

Which, duh, if Duchovny was the detective it would have to feature aliens. Actually, there’s some nuggets there, we could make that work. So while we work on our masterpiece Murder on the X-Files Set, here’s a list of eight detective novels that have actually been published where the detectives are fictionalized versions of real-life people.

8 Craziest Detective Novels (Featuring Celebrity Sleuths)

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The Ipswich Witchcraft Trial, a.k.a. Holy Shit, We Had a Witchcraft Trial 141 Years Ago?

Posted on May 29, 2019 | Leave a comment

“Listen, we know we’re still backwards as shit right now, but we’re not ‘Witch Trials Are a Normal Thing’ Backwards, Yeesh.”

~The Year 1878

witch trial

The Salem witch trials hold a place of particular infamy in American history, a stark reminder of both the complications of our Puritan foundation as well as the sins of our hysterical forbearers. From 1692 to 1693, over 200 people were accused of witchcraft crimes, leading to the death of 25 innocent people whose only crime was “did something to piss off an asshole at some point.”

But we still try to separate ourselves from these events. It was before America was America, we rationalize. It was over three hundred years ago, we say. But while the trials of Salem remain in the forefront of the American zeitgeist, we forget that there were dozens of other similar, though less widespread, witchcraft trials throughout the years. And they went on much longer than you’d think.

How late? Try the late 1800s.

Here’s the story of America’s (hopefully, but who knows the way things are going nowadays) last witchcraft trial.

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Chang and Eng Bunker Were America’s Original Siamese Twins

Posted on January 31, 2018 | Leave a comment

“But how did they…you know…”

Trust Us, We’ve Been Wondering the Same Thing, All We’ve Got Are Theories at This Point

chang and eng

We as a species have been making humans for long enough that we’ve mostly got the kinks worked out. Two people get sweaty together, nine months later a new person comes out, and typically that person has a set number of fingers, toes and, like, bones.  Listen we’re not biologists or whatever, but you get the point.

However, sometimes that whole process doesn’t exactly work out as intended, which is what happened to Chang and Eng Bunker, two Thai-Americans born in the early 19th century.  Specifically, their number of fingers, toes and, like, bones…well, sort of doubled. Yes, as you’ve probably figured out from the picture just above this inelegant paragraph, Chang and Eng Bunker were conjoined twins.

Actually, they’re kind of the reason why conjoined twins are called Siamese twins, and will be about 75% of the time no matter how angry you get about it online. Despite being born in a time and place with the odds stacked against them in the most impressive way possible, they actually ended up living a full and American life.  They pretty much represented the American Dream (okay but with more slave owning, *cringe*).

Here’s their story.

Chang and Eng Bunker Were America’s Original Siamese Twins

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Victoria Woodhull, the First-Ever Woman Presidential Nominee, Was Kind of Badass

Posted on November 14, 2017 | 1 comment

“Sure, this thing says I can’t vote, but where does it say I can’t just be president, then, huh?”

~Victoria Woodhull

victora woodhall

There are two kinds of historical figures in America; the ones we learn about at an early age in school, and the equally badass ones who just sort of linger in obscurity for a while until someone decides to write a movie about them. The latest figure in that latter category, based on the fact that Brie Larson is signed on to play her in a currently under-development movie from Amazon Studios, is Victoria Woodhull, the first woman to run for president of the United States of America.

Oh, no, she didn’t come close to winning, obviously, but she still stands as an impressive, and pretty quirky, American hero that might as well be saluted in these hallowed, beer-splattered halls. So here we go.

Victoria Woodhull, the First-Ever Woman Presidential Nominee, Was Kind of Badass

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Posted in 19th Century Factoids, America Fun Fact of the Day, American Heroes, The Best of the Rest

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The Crash at Crush: That One Time We Established a City So We Could Smash Two Trains Together

Posted on July 19, 2017 | Leave a comment

“Smashy Smashy”

~William George Crush

crush

The only person who loves staging a pointless, violent spectacle out of sheer boredom more than an American is an American in the 19th century.

We’re talking about a population that actually gathered around to look at re-assembled trees for entertainment. They probably needed the Internet more than any other population in American history. You know how bad it was back then?  Someone said, “Let’s set up a fake city just so we can crash to trains into each other really fast and invite everyone to watch it” and 40,000 people said, “That is badass!”

Actually, come to think of it, that is pretty badass. Well, until everything exploded.  We’ll get to that in a bit.

The Crash At Crush:

That One Time We Established a City So We Could Smash Two Trains Together

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The Great Moon Hoax of 1835

Posted on September 17, 2015 | Leave a comment

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Posted in 19th Century Factoids, Miscellaneous America, Strange America

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The Eggnog Riot Happened, And Was Absurd

Posted on September 1, 2015 | Leave a comment

“Ain’t no party like a West Point party ‘cause a West Point party’s got drunks.”

~Jefferson Davis

eggnog riot

As long as there has been Christmas, there have been Christmas parties.  And as long as there have been Christmas parties, there have been Christmas parties where you wake up the next morning thinking ugh, what have I done?  But we can say with relative certainty that even your worst drunken office shenanigans paled in comparison to what happened at the United States military Academy in West Point on 1826 because, as much as you shouldn’t have made out with your office’s married secretary, at least you never had a Christmas party go so bad it caused a fucking mutinous riot.  Let’s talk history, people.

The Eggnog Riot Happened, And Was Absurd

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Posted in 19th Century Factoids, Alcohol, Giver of Life, Strange America

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