Throughout history people have bet on everything and anything from the mundane to the extremely important

From casino bets to bets on science and even the future of humanity

These bets can serve as vehicles to win or lose tons of money or as a way to prove a point,

and sometimes they're just done on a lark.

Either way, some bets and wagers have literally shaped history.

Learn more about some of the world's greatest wagers on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. You've probably heard the expression, Put your money where your mouth is.

It basically means if you hold an opinion,

you should make some sort of wager with real consequences to prove it.

And the corollary to this expression is, talk is cheap, meaning that there is no cost in expressing an opinion.

Making a wager is usually a good thing in that it requires both parties to clarify exactly what they mean and how any disagreement can be resolved.

With that, let's look at some of the more famous wagers in history.

One of the best known wagers from ancient history involves Mark Antony and Cleopatra. They made a wager as to who could throw the most expensive banquet. Mark

Mark Anthony threw his banquet and then Cleopatra responded in kind by taking an expensive

pearl earring off of her ear and dropping it into a cup of

vinegar. She let it dissolve and then drank it. In this story Cleopatra won the

bet but the story may be apocryphal. The reason is that while vinegar can indeed

dissolve a pearl, it isn't something that happens instantly. I actually had to go

and check this myself as I figured someone probably made a video doing exactly this and sure enough there are

videos of people dissolving pearls and vinegar. However, it takes between six and 21 days

for a pearl to fully dissolve. So either Cleopatra waited a couple weeks to win or bet or it didn't happen.

Believe it or not, one area where wagers have been extremely important is science.

Several scientific advancements were made in order to win a bet,

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