One of my favorite pastimes is history. Not just learning and writing about it, which I often do as a college history student, but discussing it too. I love being able to make history something fun and accessible to my friends because often the people I meet aren’t big fans of the subject. This is fine, of course, for most of my life I hated mathematics with a raging passion. Yet, I can’t help but think people who shy away from history are failing to look at it from the broader perspective, as I used to do with my dreaded algebra homework.

History, in its essence, is a story. It is the retelling of humanity. History can be tragic, romantic, exciting, gruesome, epic, and—my personal favorite—hilarious. Humans are odd and outrageous creatures who have done some seriously ridiculous things that we can use to entertain ourselves today. Luckily for me, I have thousands of years’ worth of stories to entertain all of you with.

One such story takes place in the lovely European city of Prague in 1618. Anyone who has taken some sort of European history course has probably heard about the Defenestration of Prague, and for good reason. This event is considered to be the catalyst for the beginning of the Thirty Years’ War in Europe. If you don’t know what that is, picture a very gruesome series of wars that raged for thirty years across Europe between the Catholics and Protestants, which decimated a sizable chunk of the population (estimates of fatalities run between 5 million and 11 million—very nasty business).

Anyway, in 1618, there was quite a bit of political turbulence taking place throughout Europe. A century earlier, pesky Martin Luther had posted his infamous 95 Thesis, which rocked the religious cruise liner that was Catholicism at the time, and the waters only became more turbulent as time went on.

Some rulers stayed resolutely loyal to the Catholic church while others embraced the new Protestant teachings. Though it may seem weird that religion was such a big deal to these people, following the “correct” path of faith was a huge deal to monarchs at the time because they believed—and more importantly, their subjects believed—that they were given the divine right to rule from God. If you ticked off the big man upstairs, then he would make sure to ruin your reign, and then all your credibility would be in the dirt. No religion or faith equated to no power.

With that said, however, the country of Bohemia (now modern-day Slovakia and the Czech Republic) had managed to gain a fair amount of religious toleration through treaties with the various rulers of the Holy Roman Empire. Specifically, in 1609, there was this fancy document called the Letter of Majesty signed by a guy with an even fancier name, Emperor Rudolf II, that safeguarded religious liberty of the Bohemian in exchange for loyalty to the crown. So, for a few years, everything was fine and dandy, with the Catholics, Protestants, and Jews all tolerating each other.

That is, until 1617, when Emperor Ferdinand II came along (cue the dramatic music). Now, Ferdinand was one of those super-duper Catholics and was not about to let his new subjects go around being all willy-nilly and Protestant or, you know, happy. As a result, the Czech aristocracy, who were not idiots and saw the big bad Catholic monster—ahem, Ferdinand—heading their way, revolted.

Unfortunately for the Protestants, this didn’t sway Ferdinand, and almost immediately upon his ascension to the throne, he began making changes to the religious institutions in Bohemia. He tried to bully the Czech people into converting by introducing laws that targeted non-Catholics. A reward system was put in place for those who converted. But, predictably, it was the Catholic noblemen who supported the throne that benefited the most with lots of financial gifts. But the last straw came when Roman Catholic officials ordered construction to halt on some Protestant chapels that the officials claimed belonged them.

The Czech nobility saw this as a direct violation of the Letter of Majesty. In May 1618, the defensors, who were basically just rich Protestants who were appointed under the Letter of Majesty, called an assembly of Protestants together in Prague to discuss their strategy and how to confront these Catholic imperial governor dudes, who were named Vilém Slavata of Chlum, Košumberk, and Jaroslav Bořita of Martinice (their names aren’t that important; I just included them because I think they’re cool). They were quite hated among the Czech nobility for always siding with the Hapsburg throne, even though they were native to Bohemia.

Apparently, this assembly lasted most of the day, and in the end, the Protestant nobles came to the rational conclusion that the Catholic nobles were guilty and needed to be thrown from the nearest window pronto.

And here we are at the climax of our story, folks! The infamous Defenestration of Prague. Defenestration is just a big fancy word referring to the act of throwing something—or, in this case, someone—out of a window. This incident is a perfect example of how refreshingly literal historical events are named. Fun fact alert: the more common Defenestration of Prague that you probably learned about in European History is not the first one to occur, but the second, with other defenestration allegedly happening as late as the 1930s. Apparently, it was somewhat of a tradition. The First Defenestration also came about due to religious conflict, so I suppose the Czech nobles figured that if it worked the first time, then maybe it would again.

The defensors met again at Prague Castle with lots more backup and made their way, angry mob style, into the Bohemian Chancellery where the unwitting imperial nobles were, well, doing imperial-like duties in peace, I imagine—at least until the very angry protestants barged in. The two imperial governors were tried and found guilty. They were thrown from the third-story window, which was 16 meters off the ground (roughly fifty-two feet). Alas, not even their scribe, Filip Fabricius, who just had such a fantastic name, was spared from the fate.

Here is a fun rendition of the event drawn from that time period to really get the image in your mind:

No worries, friends; Filip and his bosses survived the perilous fall in a miraculous twist of fate in one of history’s funniest moments. After all, if they had simply died, this story wouldn’t be nearly as entertaining for us now. And if you think there is nothing funny about surviving a fifty-two foot fall, get this—the governors’ fall was broken by a conveniently placed soft mound of cow manure. This stinky miracle allowed the men to flee the scene and foiled the Protestants’ deadly plot. After Filip fled the scene, he made his way to Vienna to inform the emperor of the event and was awarded a title for his buttkissery. We love an opportunist, folks.

Roman Catholic officials proclaimed publicly that God’s angels had saved the governors to show proof of the righteousness of the Catholic cause. Protestant pamphlets politely disagreed, pointing out how their survival likely had more to do with excrement than benevolent angels. All of this just goes to show that sass is an age-long trait in humankind.

With word of the Defenestration taken back to the Emperor, Ferdinand wasted no time in sending his Holy Roman army after Bohemia. The Czechs, who were only maintaining the uprising through their upper classes, didn’t stand a chance, and after a major Protestant defeat at the Battle of the White Mountain, Bohemia was used as an example to all of Europe. Twenty-seven noblemen were beheaded for the Defenestration of Prague, and their families’ belongings were confiscated and sold. Soon thereafter, Bohemia became an absolute Catholic monarchy.

Though this story ends in a depressing manner that leads to more depressing things once the other European countries hear about it and start to armor up for the Thirty Years’ War, it’s a classic historical moment of human ridiculousness. Sometimes, on bad days, I just think about a bunch of stuffy old Catholic dudes getting thrown out a window and onto a pile of poop, and it brightens my day a bit. At the very least, now you know what “defenestration” means. It is a fun word to throw around at cocktail parties. Ultimately, though, the moral of this story is that there is no conflict resolution to be had by throwing your problems out a window, especially if those problems are people.