30 History Memes That Prove the Past Is Just One Big Mistake After Another

I have a complicated history with… well, history. Back in school, it was my least favorite subject—right behind math. I found it boring, impossible to remember, and completely irrelevant to my life. How was I supposed to memorize endless dates and the names of people I had no connection to? Test after test, I failed miserably.

Then, everything changed. In high school, I got a new history teacher—one who didn't just rattle off facts and dates but told stories. Real, dramatic, world-altering stories. Suddenly, I could see how one guy deciding to shoot some Kaiser could spark a chain reaction that led to millions of deaths and the collapse of entire empires. It wasn't just a list of facts anymore—it was cause and effect, action and consequence. History finally made sense.

Years later, I realized something else: as fascinating as history had become, it was always being told through a particular lens. There's no such thing as a truly neutral version of history—every telling takes a side, and every lesson carries a bit of indoctrination. The past is never just what happened—it's how we choose to tell it.

So yeah, I have a complicated history with history. But at least these 30 history memes make it all a little funnier.