Prague solved its political disputes by throwing people out of windows — three times across two centuries. The most consequential toss started a war that killed eight million people. The victims survived by landing in manure.
The word 'defenestration' — throwing someone out a window — exists largely because of Prague. The city did it so many times that it became a recognized political act. The first occurred in 1419, when an angry Hussite mob hurled a judge and several town councilors out of the New Town Hall, triggering the Hussite Wars.
In 1618, Protestant Bohemian nobles marched into Prague Castle and confronted two Catholic royal governors — Count Slavata and Count Martinice — who had been blocking Protestant religious freedoms. After a tense confrontation, all three men (plus a secretary) were seized and thrown from a third-floor window, roughly 70 feet above the ground.
All three men survived the fall. Catholics declared it a miracle and credited the Virgin Mary. Protestants pointed out that the men had landed in a large pile of manure, softening the impact. Philip Fabricius, the secretary, was later ennobled by the Emperor — given the title 'von Hohenfall,' meaning 'of the high fall.'
The incident triggered a full-scale European conflict: the Thirty Years' War. What began as a Bohemian religious dispute cascaded into a war involving most of Europe's major powers, devastating central Europe and killing an estimated 8 million people — roughly a third of the population of the Holy Roman Empire.
The Protestant cause ultimately lost. After the Battle of White Mountain in 1620, Prague was plundered for weeks. Twenty-seven Protestant nobles were executed in the city square, and twelve of their heads were put on public display on the Old Town Bridge Tower.
Prague technically had a fourth defenestration in 1948, when Czech foreign minister Jan Masaryk was found dead below a bathroom window after the communist coup. His death was ruled a suicide but has been disputed ever since. Multiple investigations over decades have failed to reach a definitive conclusion.