10 absolutely amazing historical facts

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1. While the turkey is currently America's favourite part of the Thanksgiving meal, in 300 B.C., these big birds were worshipped by the Mayan people.

2. Napoleon was once attacked by a horde of bunnies.

3. Forks were once seen as blasphemous. These spiked spaghetti-twirling instruments were seen as an offense to God  because they were "artificial hands" and as such was considered to be sacrilegious (what the fork?!)

4. The Titanic's owners never said the ship was "unsinkable"

5.  As best as historians can tell, Cleopatra was Greek, and not Egyptian. She was a descendant of Alexander the Great's Macedonian general Ptolemy.

6. Pope Gregory IV declared war on cats in the 13th Century. He said that black cats were instruments of Satan. Because of this belief, he ordered the extermination of these felines throughout Europe. However, this plan backfired, as it resulted in an increase in the population of plague-carrying rats.

7. July 4th is not the real American Independence Day. It is actually July 2nd because this is when the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia actually voted to approve a resolution of independence. July 4th, though, is when the Congress adopted the official Declaration of Independence, and most didn't even sign that until August.

8. The majority of the 1,093 patents that Thomas Edison were not of his own invention. He stole most of them. While he did land the patent for the light bulb in 1880, the real inventor was actually Warren de la Rue, a British astronomer and chemist, who actually created the very first light bulb forty years before Edison.

9. On July 4th 1826, both U.S. presidents John Adams and Thomas Jefferson passed away—within five hours of each other.

10. Cowboys didn't actually wear cowboy hats. In fact, the hat of choice for the 19th century cowboys was actually a bowler hat.

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How many of these shocking historical facts did you already know? Comment!

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