Bizarre Historical Pastimes That Sound Like Anything But Fun Today

Have you ever wanted to hang a portrait of a loved one over your fireplace? Sure, but have you ever thought it would look great if the loved one was holding their own head in the photo? If you answered “yes,” you may need professional help, or you may just be a Victorian with an interest in the macabre! This technique of, for want of a better expression, death art was created by Oscar Gustave Rejlander and was a big deal in the 19th century. It’s the unnerving void on top of this boy’s neck that really gets us...

The World Octopus-Wrestling Championships took place in Washington’s Puget Sound in 1963. It featured 20 unsuspecting octopi, which were pulled from their caverns in the sea by divers and brought to the surface. The diver with the biggest captured octopus was the winner. Afterward, some were eaten by contestants, while the rest were returned to the water or an aquarium. Now, it goes without saying that it’s abominable to rip the poor cephalopods from their homes for no reason, but the fact 5,000 people showed up to watch proceedings is what really sends a chill up our spine. 

When Russell Crowe’s Maximus Decimus Meridius bellows, “Are you not entertained?!” in Ridley Scott’s seminal blockbuster Gladiator, he’s actually taking part in the ancient Roman game venatio. This truly despicable spectacle pitted gladiators against wild animals in a duel to the death inside the Colosseum. The animals — tigers, bears, leopards, and lions — would be starved before battle, making them ravenous for food, and female slaves would sometimes be fed to the animals. It may have made for a pulse-pounding movie, but Venatio is rightfully seen as an abomination today.

Upon researching this particular bizarre historical pastime, we struggled to believe it was real. After all, in what universe would human beings re-enact naval battles in full-size warships and actually try to sink their opponents? This would surely lead to thousands of deaths, even though these people weren’t fighting a real battle, right? Well, yes. It did. Who would be insane enough to sanction such a sport? Why, the Romans, of course! It was called naumachia and usually took place in purpose-built arenas. Once they even filled the Colosseum with water in order to do it. It boggles the mind!

On Only A Game radio, author Edward Brooke-Hitching revealed all about fox-tossing, which took place in the 1700s. He said German aristocrats would stand in a tennis court-style arena, holding a cloth between them on the ground, “And on a signal, foxes — but also badgers and wildcats — were released into this arena. They'd chase each other around and the moment that one stood on this cloth, it was the job of the ‘tossers’ to yank the cloth taut and catapult that animal up into the air as high as possible.” Hmm. Sounds cruel. No thanks, Germany!

We’ve been to house parties. We’ve been to dinner parties. Heck, we’ve even attended a Tupperware party or two. But we’ve never been to a mummy-unwrapping party, and that’s for good reason: only weirdo Victorians threw them! These rich oddballs would have ancient-Egyptian mummies sent to their homes instead of museums and would make a little spectacle of unwrapping the poor corpse for the purposes of light entertainment. Personally, it all sounds a bit ghoulish for our tastes. Okay, a lot ghoulish!

The Pharaohs in ancient Egypt didn’t have ESPN to watch, so they had to organize their own fun. Fisherman jousting was a particular favorite, in which two men would play chicken with boats on the River Nile. As their vessels met, they would use their oars to try to knock the opposing player into the river, where they were likely to drown or get eaten by the hippos and crocodiles lurking in the deep. Why do all these ancient games involve such a high likelihood of death?

A disturbingly large amount of bizarre historical pastimes were rooted in truly disgusting animal cruelty. It’s a downer, but hey, that’s humanity for you. Bear-baiting was one of the worst. It took place in England between the 12th and 19th centuries and would see a bear tethered to a post and forced to defend itself against a pack of dogs. Given how many brown bears died in this awful practice, it’s unsurprising that they are extinct in England these days. 

In 1930s America, kids didn’t have the wealth of entertainment options they enjoy today. Instead of video games and the Harry Potter movies/books, they had Little Orphan Annie on the radio and stickball, which was a street version of baseball that involved hitting a tennis ball with a broom handle. Girls didn’t have a selection of Barbies to play with, each with a host of accessories; instead, they created their own rag dolls from whatever scraps of material they could find lying around the house.

Circa 1,500 B.C. on the Greek island of Crete, men and women alike took part in a sport that demanded agility, grace, dexterity, and an iron will: bull-leaping! Yes, it amounted to people jumping over a wild bull to the general astonishment of a crowd. Some grabbed the bull by horns and sprung over, while others kicked off the bull’s back to vault themselves into the air. The game still takes place today in Spain, France, and India. Still, for us, the risk of being gored by a bull is a big no-no, so we’d “steer” clear!

Look, we’ve seen Vikings. We’ve watched The Northman. We know those Norse madmen — and women — could be insanely violent. But we were still shocked to read the words “Viking skin-pulling” during our research! This was a brutal game of tug of war in which two teams pulled a “rope” made of animal skin over an open flame. The losers would generally be yanked into the fire pit — mega-ouch — and the winners would be given free rein over whatever area the bloodthirsty group had just pillaged. Scary.

Visit the Cotswolds, a sleepy part of merry old England, and you may be lucky enough to witness the Olympick Games. Yes, that is spelled correctly — the event is an annual tradition going all the way back to 1612, and its big draw is shin-kicking. The rules are simple — two contestants grab each other by the lapels and then kick each other in the shins until one falls over. The only protection available is hay, which can be stuffed down a contestant’s trousers. No, we’re not making this up, and no, we will not be participating!

In 1970 Canadian college students began “truckin’” all over campus. According to the Winnipeg Free Press’ Youthbeat section, truckin’ was “an exaggerated let-it-all-hang-out style of walking… which emphasizes a long forward step with the body tilted backward and the arms flapping.” The bizarre trend was inspired by an underground comic by Robert Crumb, and seemed to fall out of fashion as quickly as it came into fashion. Is walking weirdly a fun way to pass the time? We’re not so sure.

Soccer fans today are unlikely to be in danger of finding themselves caught up in the match, whereupon they wind up with a snapped leg. Yet, somehow, this is exactly what happened to a spectator of the ancient Roman game of harpastum, which means “small ball game.” In fact, it’s believed the game was so dangerous that some players wore armor in a vain attempt to protect themselves. The Romans, man: they went to war, even when they played games! We’ll stick to watching football on our flatscreen TVs.

Thousands of years ago in ancient Egypt, Queen Nefertari and Tutankhamun liked nothing more than playing a rousing game of senet. The board game — which historians believe was created around 3,100 B.C. — featured two players using bones or sticks to push their pieces to the end of a 30-square board. There doesn’t seem to have been dice involved, and most of the boards came with blank squares, so we’re not entirely sure how each player decided how many squares to move with each go.

These days, man’s best friend is the loveable doggo, but back in ancient Egypt, the wealthy and influential’s best pals were cheetahs! Royalty would keep them as hunting animals and, in some cases, even as pets. That’s after they’d been successfully tamed by a trainer, of course. Call us crazy, but that’s not a job we’d be interviewing for! Fascinatingly, some royals insisted their cheetahs be buried with them, as they believed their faithful felines could help guide their soul to the afterlife. 

About 4,600 years ago, ancient Babylonian royalty played the world’s first board game: the Royal Game of Ur. It would take until the 1980s for a British Museum curator named Irving Finkel to actually translate a tablet with the rules on it, though. Amazingly, Finkel learned to read cuneiform — the world’s first ever kind of writing — in university, partly because he was obsessed with unlocking the mysteries of the game! But here’s the most important question: did we only tell you this backstory because the actual game itself sounds kind of boring? Yes. Yes, we did.

Traditionally, a celebration in the South-African Nguni culture has always involved stick-fighting. Men put on a dazzling display of the art they’ve learned since they were little boys, all while women cheer on. This was an evolution of the ancient version of combat practiced by Zulu warriors as a method of training that would leave them with welts, cuts, and bruises. Yet in 2013 five people died from a tragic incident that occurred after a stick-fighter was bested in combat, and it led to people questioning the relevance of the practice in modern times.

Personally, if we hear the word “volcano,” we’re going to do our level best to stay very far away: we ain’t messin’ with no lava! Ancient Hawaiians were much braver — or more foolish — than us, though, as they used to surf down the side of volcanoes in a wooden sled. The custom was known as papa holua, which translates as “slide into the pit.” Now, while that phrase sounds like a badass heavy-metal lyric, it’s not a combination of words that would make anyone want to actually try the sport, is it?

Have you ever been strutting your stuff on the B-ball court and thought the game was simply too easy? Us neither. But, for some reason, the ancient Mayans felt their basketball-ish game — these days known as ulama or pok-ta-pok — needed to be super-difficult, so players could only score baskets using their hips. Oh, and there’s even some belief that the game had extra significance to the team captains, because the losing captain would be decapitated as a sacrifice to the Gods. Guys, losing is no time to lose your head!

P.T. Barnum — played by Hugh Jackman in The Greatest Showman — was a pioneer of the three-ring circus. Unfortunately, he also spearheaded the “Freak Show,” an offensive practice that saw people with physical disabilities or deformities displayed for the public to gawp at. As a born showman, he would embellish the stories of his “freaks.” For example, he claimed Joice Heath was 161 years old, but when she died her autopsy revealed her to be an 80-year-old he made look considerably older. The practice would obviously never be allowed today, and with good reason.

You know how in the old radio serial it was exclaimed that Superman could leap tall buildings in a single bound? Well, maybe that aspect of the character was inspired by the real-life sport of balloon-jumping, which came to prominence in the late 1920s. A person would be hooked up to a hot-air balloon with a harness, and this would allow them to soar through the air — and hopefully not be carried away into the sky by a strong gust of wind! 

Chariot racing — as depicted in the classic 1959 motion picture Ben-Hur and the not-so-classic 2016 remake — was Ancient Rome’s NASCAR. It was arguably even more dangerous than modern-day speed racing, though, as drivers had to control four unpredictable horses as they hared around a 2,000-foot sand track at speeds of up to 40mph. Crashes happened all the time and people got badly hurt, including the poor attendants who had to disappear crash wreckage from the track while the race was still happening. We hope they got hazard pay!

The Game of the Goose board game was first given to King Philip II of Spain in the late 16th century by Duke Francesco de Medici. It’s entirely a game of chance in which you roll dice to move your counter to the board’s center in a counter-clockwise direction, but landing on certain numbers would kick you back to the start of the game or make you perform a forfeit. There’s also something about scoring 63 to win the game but, to be honest, we’re not sure how it truly worked. It all sounds a bit random!

When Joey and Chandler invented “fireball” in a hilarious episode of Friends, it was played for laughs. After all, what maniac would want to play a game involving flaming tennis and bowling balls? Well, it turns out the ancient Mexicans played pelota purepecha for years, which was effectively field hockey played with a puck that was on fire! We’d be inclined to side with Ross on this one: it doesn’t sound like fun, it sounds more like “crazy lawsuit game.”

In modern times, kids have a myriad of awesome options when it comes to toys. In ancient Egypt, though, they had to make their own fun: literally! Examples of homemade toys from the era still exist in museums today, including an ingenious pull-toy of a woman kneading dough. It has string attached to the figure, and when the string is pulled, the woman kneads back and forth. Other toys, including replica chariots and horses, would be attached to rope so the kids could pull them along at great speeds.

In the world of combat sports today, the biggest operations are UFC and WWE. If you like mixed martial artists genuinely grappling with each other, you’ll love UFC, whereas if you like the pageantry and storytelling of pro-wrestling, you’ll gravitate toward WWE. Pankration, though, was an ancient Greek practice which combined mixed martial arts and wrestling. Horrifyingly, you didn’t win by knockout or submission: you won by beating your opponent to the very brink of death, without actually applying that final killing blow. Yikes.

Playing polo on horseback is pretty dangerous, but in the early 1900s, Joshua Crane Jr. decided it simply wasn’t dangerous enough. His solution? Auto polo! He proved it was possible to play polo while driving early automobiles, and over the next three decades many truly stupid men took part in this human demolition derby. Naturally, injuries were super-common, and some players even died, but the reason the sport truly died out had nothing to do with health and wellbeing. Rather, it simply cost too much to keep replacing the wrecked vehicles. That’s capitalism for you!

The ancient Sumerians and Greeks clearly didn’t want people to feel sad at funerals, because they turned the stuffy events into the Olympics! Well, kind of. For the most important members of society, an athletic competition would be held at their funeral, and the winner would receive an olive-branch wreath as their crown. It was even believed the spirit of the departed person would bestow favor on them for winning. We’re not sure if this kind of thing would fly at a funeral in 2023 though!

Call us crazy, but we don’t think getting shot sounds like much fun. Heck, we don’t even like paintballing for that very reason! At the turn of the 20th century, though, insane French people were still wearing black robes and protective face masks to duel with wax bullets. Yes, wax bullets are less dangerous than an actual bullet, but still. Participants stood the chance of being injured, or even losing their eye, if a stray piece of wax got through their mask. We’d be not-so-politely declining a wax-bullet duel by running a mile in the other direction.