The 6 Stupidest Things Ever Done With Historic Treasures

6 Stonehenge Used as Construction Material

Imagine you went to a buddy's house and saw the he had an old rusty car in the front yard, up on blocks. But then you notice that under one wheel, instead of cinder blocks, he's using the Lost Ark of the Covenant.

Well, a part of Stonehenge is missing, and what it got used for is no less ridiculous.

Debate has raged for centuries over what exactly Stonehenge was, with theories ranging from a religious temple to a bitchin' magic trick by Merlin and some giants.

Either way, archaeologists think it was erected between 3000 and 2500 BCE, making it one of the oldest man-made structures still in existence. It's definitely one of the most famous.

What most people don't realize is that the most important part of Stonehenge appears to be missing. Drawings of the site from just a few centuries ago show a stone altar (which by the way would confirm it was originally a temple) but it's sure not there now. Experts have been obsessed with finding it, as it may very well be the most important rock in the formation and would finally solve the mystery of the 'henge.

Now, archeologists think they have found it. Was it moved to some other religious site by cultists? Did a UFO come back to claim it?

No, it appears somebody a few centuries ago just dragged it away because they were short of rocks for their construction project. The altar has apparently been found, in two pieces, as part of a small bridge a few miles down the road.

What were they thinking?

Well, nobody really knows. There's not exactly a shortage of rocks in England.

For some reason, the English seem to just enjoy building mundane shit out of important historical artifacts, like they did with Hadrian's Wall. That's a 2,000 year-old wall across Northern England originally built by the Romans, the bricks of which now can now be seen in nearby houses and churches.

But some old brick wall is one thing; Stonehenge has stood unmolested for nearly 5000 years, and even in the 1600s people knew how important it was. It takes a lot of English balls to steal a huge rock from a mystical ancient site just because you can't be assed to cut a couple more stones for your little bridge.

5 Mummies Used as Firewood

There are massive projects underway to try to find and preserve ancient Egyptian tombs and the remains inside them. The mummified bodies of people thousands of years old provide a wealth of information to researchers and an invaluable link to the past, one continually threatened by tourists and Brendan Fraser-esque treasure hunters.

But despite the obsessive preservation process the mummified bodies were put through, there aren't many left today. Why?

Well, mostly because they were burned for firewood.

What were they thinking?

We typically think of mummies as dead Pharaohs, but just about anybody could buy a mummification option with their funeral plan back then. In fact, many would save up for their entire lives, foregoing less important things like, you know, food. Even those who couldn't afford it still faced the possibility of ending up as a mummy--the conditions in the desert are such that a dead body can become naturally mummified by the sand and dry heat. Ancient Egypt was a virtual mummypalooza. Was.

By the time they stopped making mummies in Egypt, they had literally millions of them. By the 1800s, people were tripping over mummies in the street. In fact, they had more mummies in Egypt than they had trees. So, when things started to get a bit chilly in the winter and they didn't have any wood to burn, someone looked at that pile of bone-dry corpses and had a bright idea.

So, they were tossing mummies on the fire left and right, the family gathered around the crackling hearth, drinking some cocoa and watching flames lick through the eye holes of half a dozens grinning skulls.

This didn't seem like much of a tragedy when mummified remains were plentiful, but after a while they whittled down their supply to a minute number. Did this convince them to treat these cultural artifacts with a little more respect? Oh, hell no.

Not only did they continue using mummies as firewood, they ground them up into medicines, and sold their wrappings to Western paper companies who then made wrapping paper out of them (this stopped when the wrapping paper gave people cholera, and they died). For a while, locomotives in Egypt were fuelled not with coal, but with mummies. During the Victorian era they were even selling them to rich people in England who would have "unwrapping parties" which, unfortunately, were exactly what they sound like.

4 Medieval Choir Books Used as Lampshades

Once upon a time, paper was more expensive than a lot of precious metals. As a result there weren't nearly as many books around back in the day and of those, not many have survived. These precious artifacts suffer the ravages of time (as well as air and moisture) despite efforts to preserve them. Oh, and also we make some into cheesy souvenirs.

For instance, people who sang in choirs at church back in medieval times didn't each have their own book, they were too precious. The monks got around this by making a few huge books that everyone in the choir could see. This was incredibly time consuming work, from stretching and preparing the vellum (paper made from baby cow skin), to copying out the notes and lyrics by hand. The results were beautiful examples of medieval art. Today, museums spend years preparing special exhibitions of these masterpieces so that people can enjoy them.

But let's say you are a regular dude who somehow gets his hands on one of these priceless books. What better way to preserve their splendor than by tearing out pages, cutting them up, and making lampshades out of them?

What were they thinking?

Well, they do make pretty cool lampshades.

This was the personal hobby of William Randolph Hearst, and many examples can be found at his "ranch house," Hearst Castle, in California.

Maybe it was just a combination of being rich and bored. It wasn't just choir books either--obviously wanting to throw a bit of variety into his interior design aesthetic based around desecrated historical artifacts, Hearst also made lamps out of ancient Xian dynasty Chinese vases, as well as original documents issued by the Catholic Church in the 1500s. We imagine he was barred from visiting most museums.

3 The Parthenon Used as a Warehouse

The Parthenon is one of the most recognizable ruins in the world. Located on the Acropolis in Athens, this huge building has a rich history dating back to 447 BCE. Like your average college graduate, the Parthenon took a while to really "find itself". It started out as the temple to the goddess Athena, while moonlighting as a treasury. When Christianity became the "it" religion, it was converted to a Catholic church. It was still standing strong when the Ottomans took over in the 1460s.

One thing that never changed was its attraction to tourists. There are records from European travelers up until the late 1600s describing how formidable and awe-inspiring the Parthenon was. So how did the Ottoman Empire make use this incredible, beautiful piece of ancient architecture?

By converting it into a munitions warehouse, of course. They filled the ancient wonder of architecture with gunpowder.

Can you guess how this ends?

What were they thinking?

The Ottomans and Venetians were at war in 1687. The Turks learned after minutes of research that a popular war strategy of the Ancient Greeks had been to fortify the Acropolis. The fact that this technique hadn't been used for a millennium never really crossed their minds, so they made the completely logical decision to store all their gunpowder inside the 2000 year old Parthenon.

Of course, as soon as the Venetians started lobbing explosives into Greece, the first bomb that hit the Parthenon ignited the weaponry inside, blowing the entire thing right the fuck up. Because up yours, history.

2 Priceless White House Objects Sold at a Garage Sale

The home of the American president isn't nearly as historically significant as the Parthenon, but Americans rightfully have a soft spot for this august building. It's an important symbol for democracy and liberty in the Western world, and countless important historical figures have passed through its halls. It has been the scene of some of the most pivotal decisions in modern history.

But just imagine actually having to live there. Just look at all that junk lying around. How is a newly elected president supposed to make room for his Xbox and plasma television after dozens of presidents have left all their shit lying around the house? If you're Chester A. Arthur, the obvious answer is to auction it all off at low, low prices!

What were they thinking?

Now, let's make it clear. This was not some high-end Christie's or Sotheby's auction, where rare keepsakes were going for millions of dollars to be displayed in museums. No, this was a "get rid of this crap before I burn it in the Rose Garden" auction.

The thing was, President Arthur was one fashionable man.

He couldn't suffer all this out of style furniture cluttering up the Executive Mansion. This was 1881 after all, and well time for the American Government to become more relevant to the youth demographic. Some of the old tat had been around since John Adams was president, over 80 years prior.

So Arthur did the only logical thing: he carted away tons of furniture, barrels of china, and even some of Abraham Lincoln's old clothes, and sold that shit to strangers for whatever he could get out of it. Most of what was sold has never been recovered and would now be considered priceless. The good news is: you might have Abraham Lincoln's underwear in your attic. The bad news is: you'll have a hell of a time proving it.

1 Louis XIV's Heart Used as Food

Louis XIV was king of France for over seventy-two years, the longest reign in European history. He ushered in a new era of power and prosperity for the county and defined the term Absolute Monarch.

For some reason, during the French Revolution, peasants broke into the Royal Crypt and stole Louis' mummified heart. We don't know their motives--they're French. Somehow, despite all the rioting and pitchforks and cheese-eating, the heart survived intact and made its way to England.

Eventually it ended up in the hands of the Reverend William Buckland. Of course, Buckland recognized what a rare and precious piece of history he possessed, and donated it to the Museum of-

-Oh wait, no, actually he ate it.

What were they thinking?

Buckland had a thing for eating really exotic cuisine. Among the more interesting things he had dined on were elephant trunk and roast giraffe. By the time the French king's heart came into his possession his palate was pretty jaded. What better to revive the taste buds than some cannibalism?

Oh and it seemed the Reverend had become concerned there might not actually be an afterlife after all, and decided eating a long dead king's heart would help him become immortal. For some fucking reason.

Buckland had the heart prepared for his Christmas dinner. We know he had it slow roasted with a side of beans, but the there is no record of the wine he washed it down with. We're going to assume Chianti.

More of Kathy's stuff can be found at weirdworm.com.

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For more on interesting artifacts, check out 5 Pieces of Junk That Turned Out to be Invaluable Artifacts and 6 Insane Discoveries That Science Can't Explain.

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