12 Absolutely Unhinged Facts from the Ancient World (All True)

October 22, 2026

Ancient Civilizations Were Absolutely Unhinged — Book 1 cover

If you think the ancient world was simple, primitive, or boring, hold onto your toga. The real history is stranger than any legend, and every one of the facts below is true. They all come from The Absolutely Unhinged Series, a set of fun, fact-packed history books where every claim is checked, every myth is labeled a myth, and there are absolutely no aliens.

1. The Romans had fast food.

Pompeii alone had dozens of street-front food counters, called thermopolia, with clay pots sunk into stone counters to keep the food hot. Some were painted with pictures of what was on offer. (From They Had THAT?!.)

2. Roman concrete gets stronger in seawater.

Roman harbor walls are still standing two thousand years later. Modern scientists found that seawater seeping into the concrete grows new mineral crystals that make it tougher over time. Most modern concrete does the opposite. (From Ancient Civilizations Were Absolutely Unhinged.)

3. The Greeks built a computer.

The Antikythera mechanism, pulled from a shipwreck in 1901, is a hand-cranked box of bronze gears more than two thousand years old. It predicted eclipses and tracked the sun and the moon, and scholars believe it showed the planets too. (From Ancient Civilizations Were Absolutely Unhinged.)

4. Inca surgeons beat Civil War doctors.

Inca skull surgery had a survival rate of roughly three in four patients. Union and Confederate surgeons doing similar operations in the 1860s lost about half of theirs. (From They Had THAT?!.)

5. The Vikings got to America first.

Around the year 1000, Norse sailors built a settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland, nearly five hundred years before Columbus. (From Ancient Civilizations Were Absolutely Unhinged.)

6. Egyptian mummies came in three price tiers.

According to the Greek historian Herodotus, embalmers showed families wooden models of the deluxe, the mid-range, and the budget job. You got what you paid for. (From Ancient Death Was Absolutely Unhinged.)

7. Cat mummies were sold as fertilizer.

In 1890 a shipment of around nineteen tons of mummified Egyptian cats arrived in Liverpool, England, where most of it was ground up and spread on farm fields. (From Ancient Death Was Absolutely Unhinged.)

8. Europeans ate mummies as medicine.

For centuries, ground-up mummy, sold as "mumia," was a real item in European apothecary shops, swallowed to treat everything from bruises to stomach complaints. (From Ancient Death Was Absolutely Unhinged.)

9. Hammurabi's code isn't the oldest.

The law code of Ur-Nammu, from the city of Ur, is roughly three hundred years older than Hammurabi's famous stone. (From Ancient Justice Was Absolutely Unhinged.)

10. Athens used 501 jurors and a water clock.

Big Athenian trials could have juries of 501 citizens, who voted with bronze discs. Each side's speeches were timed by water dripping out of a jar. (From Ancient Justice Was Absolutely Unhinged.)

11. Rome's punishment for killing your father involved a monkey.

Under Roman law, a person convicted of killing a parent could be sewn into a leather sack with a dog, a rooster, a viper, and a monkey, and thrown into the water. (From Ancient Justice Was Absolutely Unhinged.)

12. A Persian judge became his own son's chair.

Herodotus reports that King Cambyses had a bribe-taking judge named Sisamnes skinned, used the hide to upholster the judge's seat, and then appointed the dead man's son to sit in it. (From Ancient Justice Was Absolutely Unhinged.)

Want More? There Are Thousands.

Each book in The Absolutely Unhinged Series takes one side of the ancient world and turns it inside out. You don't have to read them in order. Pick the one that sounds the most fun and dive in.