Fifteen spicy moments in history that textbooks usually skip

Aktualizované 17.09.2026

History is not just a sequence of years and battles: tucked away in chroniclers’ notes are spicy details, legends and scientifically documented curiosities that turn the textbook view of the past into a far more vivid story. The following fifteen examples show just how different reality—or at least what people once believed—can be from dry dates.

1. St Bernard’s milk vision
The medieval mystic Bernard of Clairvaux described an ecstatic scene in which the Virgin Mary sprayed a stream of milk onto his lips during prayer. In iconography, this unusual motif became established as a symbol of the “pouring forth of divine wisdom,” and was depicted, for example, by the Baroque painter Gioacchino Assereto at the Roman monastery of Santa Maria della Vittoria.

2. Cleopatra and the bee vibrator
The legend that the Egyptian queen placed live bees in hollow gourds so that their vibrations could replace modern-day devices appears in the anonymous Greco-Roman work De rerum venereis. No Egyptian papyri directly confirm it, but ancient texts do describe the use of insects for cosmetic or medicinal purposes.

3. The future pope’s erotic bestseller
In 1444, the humanist Enea Silvio Piccolomini, later Pope Pius II, published the novella Historia de duobus amantibus. The story of passionate lovers became a hit with Italian printers—and after his election to the papal throne, its author unsuccessfully tried to withdraw it from circulation.

4. Syphilis in Napoleon’s Egyptian army
From the port of Alexandria, the infection spread so quickly that the surgeon Dominique-Jean Larrey had to set up the first field medical tents, strictly isolate the sick and introduce the disinfection of instruments. On their return to Europe, soldiers brought the disease to other garrisons.

5. Queen Victoria’s laudanum
The British monarch was regularly prescribed an alcoholic tincture of opium for menstrual cramps and postpartum anxiety. In the 19th century, it was a completely legal medicine sold over the counter in pharmacies.

6. The journey of Napoleon’s penis
During the autopsy on St Helena, chaplain Vignali allegedly cut off the emperor’s genitals. The relic passed through several collectors before reaching the American urologist John J. Lattimer, where it was examined by reporters from Time magazine shortly after 1977.

7. Vikings as bleached blonds
Analyses of hair remains from graves in Birka confirmed traces of calcium hydroxide. The alkaline paste bleached beards white, helped ward off lice and gave warriors a more sinister appearance.

8. Maya “comics”
The Dresden Codex contains pictorial sequences in which a zoomorphic rabbit steals a person’s clothing and sarcastically admonishes them. Anthropologists describe it as a forebear of the modern comic-book panel.

9. Leeuwenhoek and microscopic “animalcules”
In 1677, the Dutch cloth merchant sent a letter to the Royal Society describing “animalcules” swimming in his own ejaculate. It was the first scientific record of sperm cells and opened the way for microbiology.

10. Invisible ink made from ejaculate
During the First World War, British intelligence chief Mansfield Cumming tested human semen as invisible ink; after heating with iodine vapour, the liquid’s pH produced brown stains. The project was halted because of its impractical smell.

11. Joséphine de Beauharnais’s mysterious “zigzag”
The memoirs of the Marquise de Rémusat suggest that the empress preferred a lovemaking manoeuvre involving rapid changes in the direction of movement to keep Napoleon engaged—a detail that also inspired 19th-century French erotic literature.

12. President Félix Faure and the “orgasm of the republic”
The French president collapsed in 1899 during oral sex with Marguerite Steinheil, right in the Élysée Palace. The press at the time said he had died “in the arms of beauty,” while the opposition could not resist political jokes about a “minor state incident.”

13. The dispute over Jesus’ foreskin
Medieval churches from Tuscany to Chartres claimed to possess the sanctum praeputium. Chroniclers counted the greatest number of such relics in the 14th century—as many as eighteen. In 1900, the Vatican ordered that these objects not be displayed publicly, and in 1983 removed them from the list of recognised remains.

14. Piercing as a Victorian fashion shock
The journal The Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine reported in 1894 on “bosom rings”: London ladies of high society had their nipples pierced with platinum jewellery from Tiffany & Co., supposedly to help keep their breasts firm beneath a corset.

15. Peter I and the executions of courtier-lovers
The Russian tsar was known for swift punishment for “insulting the majesty.” The chronicler Alexander Nevsky recorded that Prince Matvey Golitsyn was beheaded for his alleged intimacy with Empress Catherine. Peter often demonstratively attended executions to intimidate the nobility.

Some stories are based on contemporary reports and documented by archival material (Napoleon, Leeuwenhoek), while others survive chiefly as legends (Cleopatra’s bees, the foreskin in reliquaries). In every case, they show that human curiosity, desire and the clergy’s marketing shaped history just as powerfully as military campaigns.

Verified links

• Smithsonian Magazine: “The Strange Journey of Napoleon’s Penis” – https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/strange-journey-napoleons-penis-84398024/
• Microbiology Society Blog: “Antonie van Leeuwenhoek and the discovery of spermatozoa” – https://microbiologysociety.org/blog/antonie-van-leeuwenhoek-and-the-discovery-of-sperm.html
• BBC History Extra: “The spy chief who wrote in invisible ink” – https://www.historyextra.com/period/20th-century/first-world-war-spies-invisible-ink-semen-mansfield-cumming/