Historical “dark humor”: crazy facts that look like a cruel joke (9 photos)
History is full of amazing and sometimes even crazy facts that will never make it into school textbooks. Some of them are hard to believe, because they look more like “dark humor,” but all this really happened. 
It's no secret that domestic violence has become a serious problem in modern society. It also existed in the Middle Ages, although marital disputes were then resolved in a very original way. In the book “Fechtbook” by Hans Talhoffer, dedicated, as you might guess, to fencing, there is a section that describes the rules for conducting fights between husband and wife. 
And they look very harsh: a man, armed with a club, must be waist-deep in a hole, while a woman fights him full-length with a bag of 2-kilogram stones. In such conditions, any techniques were allowed - from blows to the head and strangulation to twisting the male genitals. Of course, the winner was determined by the judge. 
Judicial practice is full of amazing stories. For example, in 1545, in the French city of Saint-Jean-de-Moliens, a lawyer defended the rights of locusts. True, the verdict was pronounced only 42 years later, when the insects returned. The court decided to allocate pasture for them outside the vineyards, however, two months later the lawyer filed a complaint because the area turned out to be barren and there was nothing for the locusts to eat there. The matter was again postponed due to the onset of winter until the next return of the insects... 
The locust was clearly much luckier than the rooster from Basel, Switzerland in 1474. It is not clear how, but he laid eggs, for which he was accused of witchcraft and burned at the stake along with this very egg. 
Few people know that Canada and Denmark have been at war over Hans Island for 38 years, and it all looks very intelligent. Once every six months, Canadian soldiers arrive there, plant their flag and drink the whiskey left by the Danes. And six months later, Danish soldiers do the same, and so on in a circle. 
But the conflict between the United States and Great Britain, which had long divided the island of San Juan, almost ended in massacre. Since 1846, both countries considered it their territory, so the British raised cattle there while the Americans planted potatoes. Everyone would have gone about their business if it weren’t for a British pig who got into the habit of climbing into the garden of an American farmer, who at one point got tired of it and shot the animal. 
The farmers failed to resolve the conflict, so 2,140 British soldiers and 461 American soldiers took over. It was lucky that the commanders learned about the causes of the conflicts in time and decided not to start hostilities, limiting themselves to shouting offensive insults from the trenches for several days. As a result, one British pig became a victim of this war.
Even before our era, the program of the Olympic Games included chariot racing. However, only once was it won...by a horse named Aura, who threw off the rider just before the start and successfully reached the finish line first. After much debate, the judges finally decided to award the prize to the animal and even erected a monument at the site of her burial. 
Well, let's end with a spy story that happened at the beginning of the last century. Alfred Redl was the chief of counterintelligence of Austria-Hungary and was responsible for the destruction of traitors and spies. True, there was one moment that could ruin his career: he was gay, which was dangerous then. 
Intelligence, having learned about this, began to blackmail Redl, collecting evidence about his homosexuality, so he agreed to cooperate, passing on Austro-Hungarian military plans. The government learned about the leak and ordered Redl to find the traitor. To avoid problems, he betrayed small fry from the Austro-Hungarian intelligence service. However, in 1912, he was exposed when he received another envelope with money for information. As a result, the traitor to his homeland committed suicide.
