The best history lesson you’ll see today.
If you're interested in wacky history, inspirational women, horrible tales, and bizarre myths, you NEED to follow this Tumblr. Below are 12 of his posts.
Mariya Oktyabrskaya: the tank princess
When her husband was killed in World War II, she sold all their belongings, bought a tank, named it Fighting Girlfriend, and started killing Nazis.
Porath writes: "On her first outing in the tank, she outmaneuvered the German soldiers, killing around thirty of them and taking out an anti-tank gun. When they shelled her tank, immobilising Fighting Girlfriend, she got out – in the middle of a firefight – and repaired the damn thing. She then got back in and proceeded to kill more Germans.
"During all this, she wrote a letter to her sister describing her time in the war. She told her, 'I’ve had my baptism by fire. I beat the bastards. Sometimes I’m so angry I can’t even breathe.'
"In the end, she was taken out by a mortar round when she got out of her tank in the middle of yet another firefight to fix Fighting Girlfriend. She was awarded the highest honour in the Soviet military and is buried in one of the nation’s most sacred cemeteries."
Wu Zetian: the poison princess
Porath writes: "Introducing Wu Zetian, the first and only female Emperor of China – seen here poisoning her infant daughter.
"That’s actually a bit of a historical inaccuracy. The generally accepted truth was that she *strangled* her young daughter, to frame the old queen and get her out of the way. It worked – both the old queen and the old queen’s mother were executed, and haunted her from that point forward."
And it gets worse from there. She kept her hold on the throne through a campaign of poisonings, assassinations, and executions that would put Game of Thrones to shame. "Early on, her method of choice was a slow-acting poison made from silkworms. As time went on and her influence grew, however, she took to engineering treason charges for her opponents, summoning them to the throne room and making them kill themselves in front of her."
Cold.
Hatshepsut
Hatchepsut – which means "foremost of noble ladies" – was the fifth pharaoh of the 18th dynasty of ancient Egypt, and lived from 1508 to 1458 BC.
Porath writes: "Thanks to a sustained campaign by her successors to erase all traces of her reign, it was not until fairly recently that she came back to historical prominence. She was rediscovered due to the fact that her time in power saw such an incredible proliferation of architecture, statues, and art that it proved impossible to scrub mention of her from *everything* ...
"Moreover, she did her own PR. In order to solidify her claim to the throne, she spread word that her parents were told by the gods that she was to be pharaoh. The official story was that, at the gods’ behest, her mother gave birth to her in a LION’S DEN. To quiet the gossip at court, she began her rule wearing men’s clothing, including the pharaoh’s false beard. Once they stopped flapping their gums, she went back to wearing whatever the hell she wanted."
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