What events or figures from American history make you laugh every time?

23 comments

1. When Forrest Gump got shot in the butt and got meet jfk….

2. The word “Pennsylvania” is spelled wrong on the Liberty Bell. It’s spelled “Pensylvania.”

   Not really, though. Spelling was more fluid back then before Webster standardized it in his dictionary. Alexander Hamilton also spelled it “Pensylvania” next to Benjamin Franklin’s signature on the U.S. Constitution.

3. Ben Franklin fucking his way through the French nobility while he was *supposed* to be negotiating for their support in the war firmly cements him as my favorite founding father.

   It’d be like if instead of addressing Congress, Zelensky came over and plowed the Dallas Cowboy’s cheerleaders.

4. [Assuming the story is true](https://www.rbth.com/history/334852-us-cia-condoms-strategy-ussr).

   Saved a click: the CIA tried to demoralize the Soviets by air dropping extra large condoms on eastern bloc countries. The catch? Those extra large condoms were labeled “medium”

5. The time a schizo who thought he was the King of England tried to shoot Andrew Jackson. Both his guns jammed, and Jackson’s aides literally had to hold him back so he wouldn’t beat the guy to death.

6. I hope it counts; the 1904 Olympic marathon. The guy who placed first dropped out of the race and got picked up by a car. The car later broke down, so he just started jogging again.

7. My man [Emperor Norton](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor_Norton?wprov=sfla1)

   I too would do the same and declare myself emperor, what’s the government gonna do about it? huh??

8. Ben Franklin and John Adams rooming together when they went to the Netherlands and bickering like an old married couple, complete with Ben Franklin lecturing John Adams about how much healthier it is to sleep with an open window for so long that Adams fell asleep:

   >The Taverns were so full We could with difficulty obtain Entertainment. At Brunswick, but one bed could be procured for Dr. Franklin and me, in a Chamber little larger than the bed, without a Chimney and with only one small Window. The Window was open, and I, who was an invalid and afraid of the Air in the night blowing upon me, shut it close. Oh! says Franklin dont shut the Window. We shall be suffocated. I answered I was afraid of the Evening Air. Dr. Franklin replied, the Air within this Chamber will soon be, and indeed is now worse than that without Doors: come! open the Window and come to bed, and I will convince you: I believe you are not acquainted with my Theory of Colds. Opening the Window and leaping into Bed, I said I had read his Letters to Dr. Cooper in which he had advanced, that Nobody ever got cold by going into a cold Church, or any other cold Air: but the Theory was so little consistent with my experience, that I thought it a Paradox: However I had so much curiosity to hear his reasons, that I would run the risque of a cold. The Doctor then began an harrangue, upon Air and cold and Respiration and Perspiration, with which I was so much amused that I soon fell asleep

9. [The Pig War.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig_War_(1859) The US and the UK nearly went to war for a third time because a dispute over a pig kept escalating until…

   >By August 10, 1859, 461 Americans with 14 cannons under Colonel Silas Casey were opposed by five British warships mounting 70 guns and carrying 2,140 men.

   When D.C. and London found out they were understandably a little miffed and deescalated the situation.

10. This was near the end of the Constitutional Convention: “Lloyd discovered a summary of Washington’s tavern bill that night while digging through Independence Hall documents. According to the bill, the soon-to-be first president and 54 other guests did indeed order 54 bottles of Madeira, 60 bottles of Claret, 8 bottles of whiskey, 8 bottles of cider, 12 bottles of beer and seven “large bowls” of punch.

    That would be about two bottles of wine, several shots and a few cups of punch and beer for every guest.”

    https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2022/01/20/fact-check-george-washingtons-expensive-bar-tab-real/5947984001/

11. Gouverneur Morris, PA delegate to the Philadelphia convention, author of the preamble to the constitution, early abolitionist who sought to eliminate it during the Philadelphia convention, and NY senator.

    He had a peg leg, because he was once fooling around with a married woman back home in NY, when her husband arrived home unexpectedly. In order to avoid being caught, he jumped out the window, into the street, where his leg was run over by a carriage. He ended up with a peg leg due to the incident. Don’t know if the husband ever found out though!

    He continued to bring in the ladies literally all over the globe, even with the peg leg (which he got at age 28) *and* disfiguring burns on his right arm, to the point of being called disfigured. He is well known as a ladies man. Dude was smooth as hell, apparently.

12. Jimmy Carter once got mistranslated while giving a speech in Poland. He had said (I’m paraphrasing) that he had left the USA that morning to hear about their desires of the future.

    Unfortunately, what the interpreter translated was that the President had left the United States, was never going to go back, and that he desired polish people………. Sexually.

13. Mothman. He even has a statue in Point Pleasant, WV.

14. One of our presidents (Zachary Taylor) has an official cause of death as “eating cherries and drinking milk on a summer day.” Modern theories include cholera or arsenic poisoning, but they don’t test the body tissues right when a reexamination is asked for (they test the whole hair and whole nail, rather than the part that grew in the five days between the eating and his death, leading to diluting any remaining poison), so it’s still officially that

    The other one is NY businessmen trying to get teddy rossevelt to stop cracking down on their business practices in the state by getting him to run for president, which he won and cracked down on their practices nationwide instead

15. There is a great podcast called The Dollop. Two comedians go through absurd points of American History.

16. Washington crossing the Delaware. Mostly because of a meme that showed the painting and said “America, we will kill you in your sleep on Christmas”

17. British soldiers captured during the revolutionary war wouldn’t speak to American soldiers. They would only speak to the French. Lafayette would force the French to sing Yankee doodle to the British until they started talking to the Americans

18. They tried to make a gay bomb that turned enemy troops gay. “Lol was this the CIA in the 60s or 70s when they were trying to train people to be psychic and attack the soviets with psychic energy or something?” You might be asking. Nope, it was the military in 1994.

    Just think about that for a second. They wanted to make enemy troops turn gay for each other and start banging each other instead of fighting. I assume they were smoking angel dust or something because it doesn’t matter sense unless they were on hardcore drugs

    https://allthatsinteresting.com/gay-bomb

19. This may be too recent, but Anthony Scaramucci

20. Cap Streeter always amuses me. He was such a consummate con artist and ended up owning by swindle some of the most valuable property in Chicago.

    He also chased off police that came after him with boiling water and birdshot and was found not guilty because the jury didn’t consider bird shot and boiling water “deadly weapons.”

21. The time a US destroyer sunk a Japanese sub by thrown potatoes at it (As one of the stories goes, at least).

    The time the Willy D. fired her guns negligently, hitting a party that was going on, on shore, but somehow miraculously not killing anyone.

22. All hail Emperor Norton!

23. The CIA hiring Bing Crosby and his brother to make a fake sex tape of Sukarno to defame him.