Napoleon was not short. He was about 1.70 metres tall, average for a Frenchman of his day.
His height was recorded in French inches, which were longer than English ones, so 5 foot 2 in French units became a misleading 5 foot 2 in British newspapers. British cartoonists happily ran with the image of a tiny tyrant.
Why is this true?
His nickname, le petit caporal, was a term of affection from his soldiers, not a comment on his size. The idea has stuck so firmly that psychologists named the Napoleon complex after him.
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History keeps producing facts that ruin your sense of time. A war shorter than a lunch break, an empire that overlaps with the invention of the fax machine, a queen who lived closer to the Moon landing than to the pyramids. The entries here favour events with solid documentation, and each one explains the context that makes the surprise make sense rather than leaving it as a bare curiosity.