75 Amazing Facts You may not know About Kings & Queens | Amazing Facts 4U
- Alexander the Great was in fact an epileptic.
- Amazingly Alexander the Great & Napoleon were terrified of cats.
- Bananas were discovered by Alexander the Great in 327 B.C. when he conquered India.
- An amazing fact was a Byzantine emperor, Basil captured 15,000 Bulgarians in battle, and blinded 99 of every 100, leaving the 100th guy with one eye and then send them all home.
- Sir Hassanal Bolkiah has been Brunei’s sultan and prime minister since 1967. He appoints virtually all of Brunei’s ruling bodies.
- Brunei’s amazing 1,800-room palace is considered the world’s largest private residence.
- Queen Supayalat of Burma (Myanmar) amazingly ordered about 100 of her husband’s relatives clubbed to death to ensure the throne to her husband.
- Cleopatra was the queen of Egypt for around 22 years. Contrary to popular belief, Cleopatra was actually Greek, not Egyptian or African.
- Cleopatra’s real name was Auletes!
- In 1391, China began producing toilet paper for use by its Emperors.
- Ancient Chinese nobility committed suicide by large amount of salt. Fact was Chinese nobility were often the only people who could afford large amounts of salt.
- Emperor Shih Huang-Ti built an amazing network of 270 palaces, and slept in a different palace every night, because of the fear of being killed.
- In order to deter flies from landing on him, Pepi II of Egypt amazingly kept several naked slaves nearby whose bodies were smeared with honey.
- Ramses II, a pharaoh of Egypt died in 1225 B.C. At the time of his death, amazingly he had fathered 96 sons and 60 daughters.
- The known tombs of Egyptian kings were all raided by robbers with one exception, the tomb of Tutankhamen (reigned 1334-1324 B.C.). It was discovered in 1922 and was full of priceless materials and beautiful workmanship.
- Amazing fact is a Pharaoh (or King) would never let his hair be seen, he would always wear a crown or a headdress.
- King Tut’s tomb contained four coffins. The third coffin was made from 2,500 pounds of gold worth about $ 5,000,000.
- Amazingly Tutankhamun, the most famous of all Egyptian pharaohs, was born of parents who were brother and sister.
- It’s amazing that all 17 children of Queen Anne died before she did.
- Henry the VIII amazingly beheaded himself to get out of his marriage to Anne Bolein.
- When Queen Elizabeth I of England died she owned an amazing 3000 gowns.
- In 1917 anti-German sentiment forced George V to change the British Royal Family’s name from Saxe–Coburg and Gotha to Windsor , the name of their castle. Many road names in Britain were changed too.
- It’s amazing that king John of England died in 1216 of over-eating.
- King George I of England amazingly didn’t speak English. However he knew French , German , Italian & Dutch Languages.
- King Henry the eighth wanted to divorce his first wife but the church would not allow it. He chose to declare himself the head of the church in England refusing to allow the pope in Rome to have any control over it. He then allowed himself the divorce he desired.
- Queen Victoria had a longest rein of 64 years in England ( 1837-1901 ).
- Queen Elizabeth and her husband are both great Grand children of Queen Victoria.
- Amazing fact is that when dining with British Royalty, it is customary to stop eating when they have finished whether you have finished or not.
- Mary Stuart became Queen of Scotland when she was only six days old. Her father had no male heirs and he died six days after she was born.
- Amazing fact is that Queen Elizabeth II is still Queen of sixteen different countries.
- Fact is the Queen does not need a passport since all passports are issued in her name but royal family members do require it.
- Amazing fact is that having the royal family actually saves the Brits taxes in the UK ! King George III offered Parliament a deal that he’d give all the profit of his land in exchange for getting a fixed annual salary and removing all his debt which was incurred through US operation . The parliament now pays the royal family 40 million pounds a year and they receive 200 million pounds a year of profit from the royal lands. That means the UK gains 160 million pounds a year on the deal!
- Amazing Fact is Queen Elizabeth has already met 12 US presidents.
- Queen Elizabeth II served as a mechanic & driver in World War II.
- Amazingly Louis XIV had forty personal wig makers and almost 1000 wigs.
- King Louis XIV was so afraid of weapons that he ruled all pointed knives at dinner tables illegal.
- The French King, Lois XIV amazingly owned a collection of 413 beds in several places all over France, so that he could sleep on his own bed, no matter where he traveled !
- A clock at the palace of King Louis XIV stopped at 7:45am, the time of his death. The clock has not been fixed since that day, and to this day still reads a quarter to eight.
- Amazingly King Louis XIX ruled France for just 15 Minutes.
- When going to battle Indian kings would make their horses wear trunks. The other side’s elephants would refuse to attack the horses thinking that the horses were baby elephants.
- Salim (1569-1627), heir to the throne of India, had 4 wives when he was only 8 years of age.
- Jahangir, a 17th-century Indian Mughal ruler, had 5,000 women in his harem and 1,000 young boys. He also owned 12,000 elephants.
- Queen Isabella of Castile (1451-1504) , who dispatched Christopher Columbus to find the Americas amazingly had only two baths in her life , at her birth and before she got married.
- Japan’s Yamato dynasty traces its origins back to 660, making it the oldest continuous hereditary monarchy in the world. The 79-year-old Emperor Akihito of Japan has reigned since 1989 and is the 125th emperor in his line.
- Ghengis Khan who founded the Mongol empire was extremely cruel king . He killed amazing 11% of the world’s population! It is estimated that his campaigns resulted in the death of more than 40 million people!
- In just two decades the Ghengis Khan empire spanned 6,000 miles and covered over 12,700,000 square miles, stretching from southeast Asia all the way to Eastern Europe and the Middle East , that’s 22% of the Earth’s total land area!
- Amazing fact is that everyone of the 2000 people who attended Genghis khan’s funeral was reportedly massacred by 800 soldiers who in turn were killed to make sure that his grave was never found.
- In 1221 Genghis khan amazingly killed 17,48,000 people in a single day at Nishapur , Persian city now in Iran as a revenge to killing of his favorite Son in law. Nobody from the city was spared from the whole city including infants , dogs & cats. This represented 75 % of the Iran’s population then. This population didn’t recover back to its pre massacre levels until the 1950’s i.e. about 700 years.
- Abdul Kassam Ismael, Grand Vizier of Persia in the tenth century, carried his library with him wherever he went. Amazing fact was that four hundred camels carried the 117,000 volumes of the library.
- Amazingly Napoleon constructed his battle plans in a sandbox.
- Amazingly when Napoleon wore black silk handkerchiefs around his neck during a battle, he always won. Fact was at Waterloo, he wore it white and lost the battle and his kingdom.
- Napoleon, the famous French general was not born in France but on the Mediterranean island of Corsica of Italian parents.
- Napoleon always wore poison around his neck in case he got defeated! When he finally went to use it in 1814, it had lost it’s potency and only succeeded in making him violently ill.
- Napoleon was not unusually short. The French inch was longer than the British inch, so while he was thought to be 5’2” by most of the world, in reality he was closer to 5’7”, an average height for a Frenchman.
- Amazing fact is that the national flag of Italy was designed by Napoleon Bonaparte !
- The fact was that the Mona Lisa used to hang on the wall in Napoleon’s bedroom.
- Ines de Castro became queen of Portugal after she died. Amazingly King Pedro of Portugal dug up her body and crowned her as his queen.
- After the great fire of Rome in A.D. 64, the emperor Nero ostensibly decided to lay the blame on Christians residing in the city of Rome. He gathered them, crucified them , covered them in pitch (tar), and burnt them alive. He walked around his gardens admiring the view.
- The Roman emperor Commodos collected all the dwarfs, cripples, and freaks he could find in the city of Rome and had them brought to the Coliseum, where they were ordered to fight each other to the death.
- The Roman Emperor Caligula tried to wage war on the god of the ocean, Neptune. He had his soldiers run up and stab the water.
- When Elizabeth I of Russia died in 1762, 15,000 dresses were found in her closets. She used to change what she was wearing two and even three times an evening.
- There are 47 czars buried within the Kremlin ,Russia.
- Czar Paul I banished soldiers to Siberia for marching out of step.
- Peter the Great was the Czar of Russia in the 18th century. Seeing how backwards Russia was, he decided to tour Western Europe in order to find ways to modernize his country taking the guise of an average merchant and came back to Russia with many ways to improve the empire. He set up new schools, created the mighty port of St. Petersburg.
- Peter the great , the Russian King imposed a tax on beards. Noblemen paid 100 rubles a year for a medallion that served as a beard license and carried the inscription: “The beard is a useless burden.”
- Amazingly since 1825 when Nicholas I was made the king , Russian leaders have alternated between bald and hairy without exception ! Currently, Vladimir Putin (bald) was succeeded by Dmitri Medvedev (hairy) and then again by Putin.
- Saudi Prince Alwaleed owns a Diamond encrusted $48 million Mercedes and he charges $1000 just to touch it!
- The royal house of Saudi Arabia has close to 10000 princes and princesses.
- Sheikh Hamadan bin Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, who is the wealthy son of the ruler of Dubai, bought in 2008 supposedly the best camel in the country. The price , amazing $2.7 millions.
- The record for the most weddings is held by King Mogul of Siam, who married with 9000 wives.
- King Solomon had about 700 wives and 0ver 200 concubines.
- The 16th century Escorial palace of King Phillip II of Spain had 1,200 doors.
- Sobhuza II, king of Swaziland, had the longest monarchial reign documented lasting 82 years and 9 months! He became king when he was only a few months old in 1899. He married 70 wives in all, had 210 children, and between 1920 and 1970 grandchildren. Swaziland gained independence from Britain in 1968. At his death in 1982 , he already had 1000 surviving grandchildren.
- King Charles VII, who was assassinated in 1167, was the first Swedish king with the name of Charles. Charles I, II, III, IV, V, never existed. No one knows why. To add to the mystery, almost 300 years went by before there was a Charles VIII (1448-57).
- In 1880 the Queen of Thailand drowned while her subjects watched because they were forbidden to touch her.
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