Redditor SkunkytheSkunk7 asked everyone to share what wild things they knew to be true:
"What sounds like fiction but is actually a real historical event?"
I really wish history classes in school would get into more of the soap opera of it all.
People would stay awake for this stuff.
Plugged
Streaming Rabbit Hole GIF by Feliks Tomasz KonczakowskiGiphy"In 1980 Lake Peigneur in Louisiana drained like a bathtub with the plug removed. Oil Drillers on a rig in the lake had hit a mine shaft below. The rig, barges, a tugboat and part of a nearby island got sucked into the largest man-made whirlpool ever."
FrankieMint
Dumped in the Ocean
"Operation Mincemeat. The allies planted a dead body with fake battle plans to trick the Germans into thinking that the allies were going to attack Sardinia when they were in fact going to attack Sicily."
"They built an entire life for this dead, fake, military man, dumped him in the ocean, and successfully distracted the Germans."
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mincemeat"
xubax
Legend...
"In 1971, a teenage girl named Juliane Koepcke was on a plane that was struck by lightning and disintegrated in the air. She plummeted 3,000 meters strapped to her seat, and landed in the Amazon rainforest."
"Her mom had been on the flight with her, and Juliane searched in vain for her mom, but Juliane was the sole survivor of the crash."
"She survived 11 days alone, treating her maggot-infested wounds with fuel and using tracking techniques her father had taught her, before she found a boat that she used to make her way back to civilization."
"What an absolute legend."
echoskybound
Sitting Around
"Due to a military stand off that took years, 15 ships became stranded in an inland sea, and over 8 years formed a multi-national ship-based society that even included it's own currency. Google the Yellow Fleet. The yellow was because of blowing sand that gradually just accumulated on the ships."
mikepictor
"Suez Canal. The Great Sand Fleet I think the ships were nicknamed. The Swedish ship had a swimming pool, so they hosted pool parties. Another ship hosted movie nights."
"The ships were American, British, German, Bulgarian, Swedish (did I leave anyone out?) Since it was soooo boring to just sit on the ships, crews were rotated every 6 months. By the time the ships could finally leave, only 1, the German boat, could move under it's own power. It got a hero's welcome when it finally sailed into Germany."
aethelwulfTO
Richard Parker
Altered Carbon Dust GIF by NETFLIXGiphy"Edgar Allen Poe wrote a novel in 1838 in which 4 shipwrecked survivors, at the point of starvation, choose to resort to cannibalism. So they kill the young cabin boy, Richard Parker, and eat him."
"In 1884, a ship called the Mignonette sank. 4 crew members survived. At the point of starvation, they killed and ate the youngest of them: Richard Parker."
Poe was really brilliant. He could see a story a mile away.
Hungry
Hungry Ren And Stimpy GIF by NickRewindGiphy"The Soviet scientists starving to death saving the seed bank of Leningrad during Hitler's invasion in the winter of 1941-42 despite it being full of corn, wheat and potatoes."
scruffy932
"They ran out of food but couldn’t eat anything from the seed bank since they needed to preserve its stocks."
suavebirch
Elephant Island
"The escape from Antarctica by the members of the Antarctic expedition led by Ernest Shackleton. The stuff they went through was unbelievable. Their boat, the Endurance was crushed by ice floes. They were stranded on the floes for over a year in temperatures well below freezing."
"They then took to three boats around 22 feet in length across the antarctic ocean looking for land. There were about 10 men in each boat. They missed reaching land by just a few miles at times. Two thirds of them got stranded on Elephant Island surrounded by ice while one of the boats went out in search of rescue."
"That boat made it through the Drake Passage, one of the deadliest places in the ocean. All but three of them got stranded with little food and water while the three men who left became the first people the cross South Georgia on foot. They found civilization. Rescued the men who came through the Drake Passage."
"Waited months until they could rescue those on Elephant Island. Every single person who came on the initial voyage survived with the worst lasting consequence being a single foot amputation."
LordofHopeHomestuck
Shipwrecked
"An English king named Ethelred, later called the Unready, took some troops to defend against a Viking invasion. The weather was bad, so a lot of the Vikings’ ships crashed as they were landing. Ethelred thought that it would be dishonourable to attack them as they were stumbling onto shore."
"So he kept his troops back until the Vikings had a chance to get together and form proper battle lines before he attacked them. The better prepared Vikings then won the fight and slaughtered a bunch of Ethelred’s men and he and the rest were forced to run away while the Vikings went around pillaging."
TheBestPeter
A Stench
"The 'Great Stink' was an event in central London in 1858."
"The hot weather exacerbated the smell of untreated human waste and industrial effluent that was present on the banks of the River Thames."
Back2Bach
Hero Bear
Greetings Hello GIFGiphy"Wojtek was a bear who fought Nazis in return for cigarettes and beer. He didn’t die until 20 years after WW2."
ThePumpk1nMaster
"My favorite part about that story is that after the war he lived in a zoo. It was common for soldiers from the bear's company to come visit and simply jump into the enclosure to play with him, much to the zoo keepers' annoyance."
Not_Chrus
Truth really is stranger than fiction.
Do you have any strange historical stories to share? Let us know in the comments below!
Redditor lowtack wanted to know what parts of the past need to be captured in cinematic glory.
What historical event has not, but should be, made into a movie?"
I don't know much about history. So teach me...
Capsules
"The Goianas incident, dad stole a radiotherapy capsule from an abandoned hospital, didn't know what it was and opened it."
Shep9882
chemistry atom GIF by funkGiphyApollo 8
"Apollo 8. Basically the mission was originally only supposed to be a test of the lunar module in earth orbit, but rumours were circulating that the Soviet Union were going to attempt to send a man into lunar orbit (spoiler: this was not happening). As a result Apollo 8 was switched to being the first mission to the moon, not to land but to orbit."
"And this decision was made only 6 months before the scheduled launch date, so it was a race to get everything ready before the flight. It's a historic mission that is almost never talked about, compared with Apollo 11 which is much more well known."
Therailfan
"The Long Way Home"
"The story of the Pan Am flight that got caught in New Zealand at the start of WWII and couldn't fly back home by going east because it was too dangerous. So instead they took their flying boat and flew west on routes they had to figure out from maps pulled from borrowed encyclopedias, dodging the Japanese, and trying to find enough fuel to keep the plane going."
"The whole thing took months culminating in taking off from a river in the Congo and having to skim along through a canyon to build up speed since they were too heavy in order to even have a chance of crossing the Atlantic. The whole thing is tailor made for TV or a Film. There's a fantastic book written about the whole story called 'The Long Way Home' and was written with the Captain of the flight."
bigred49342
Enemy Within...
"The Niihau Incident. During the attack on Pearl Harbor, a Japanese Zero was damaged by anti-aircraft fire and crash landed on the remote Hawaiian island of Niihau. The Hawaiians, initially unaware of the attack on Pearl Harbor, treated the pilot with generosity and respect."
"After news of the attack came out, the pilot was placed under guard. With the help of some sympathetic locals, the pilot broke out and took two hostages: Ben Kanahele and his wife Ella. Later that night, Ben and Ella decided to fight their way out. Ben was shot three times, but still had enough strength to lift the pilot over his head and throw him into a brick wall."
"Ella, thinking her husband had been mortally wounded, killed the pilot by bashing his head in with a rock. Both Ben and Ella survived the incident and Ben was awarded two medals for his actions. Ella, who actually killed the enemy combatant, received no formal recognition. Oops: This was made into a movie: Enemy Within 2019."
DangleAteMyBaby
Brittany
"The Lioness of Brittany - medieval woman who led brutal attacks by land and sea against the French king in vengeance for the execution of her husband https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_de_Clisson."
LizHylton
How have we never heard these stories?
Aloha
"It's been batted around a few times in Hollywood but the history of how the ancient Hawaiian Islands were united under one man to form the Hawaiian kingdom is epic."
shaka_sulu
Happy Dance GIF by PLAYMOBILGiphy1943
"Syndrome K. In 1943, a hospital in Rome located next to a Jewish ghetto, let Jews fleeing Nazi raids hide there. The professors in charge admitted Jews under the fake diagnosis of 'Syndrome K,' described as a highly contagious and dangerous disease. This successfully kept the Nazis out of the quarantine wards and the Jews safe for the duration of the war."
Grey_Gryphon
Invasion
"The Spanish Invasion of The Aztec Empire by Cortés. There are so many unbelievable events that led up to the fall of Tenonchtitlan and Monteczuma II reign."
neildegraciadyson
"A really good one is Hernán, it has a great production value and portrays it quite accurately from many perspectives, from the Spanish, Aztec, Malinche and from the Tlaxcaltec - I highly recommend it. https://m.imdb.com/title/tt9645942"
throwiesthro
Hey Girl
"Unless it's been done already, the life story of Ching Shih. She was a Chinese prostitute that was also deadliest pirate of all time. At the height of her power, she commanded over 800 large ships, 1000 smaller vessels, and over 70,000 pirate crew, comprised of both men and women."
randomguy987654321
"She was referenced in Pirates of the Caribbean: At Worlds End. She's in the cast list as Mistress Ching... it would be so cool to see this."
mistymountaintimes
shenanigans...
"The time John Adams and Benjamin Franklin were in France trying to gather support for the revolution and all the shenanigans they got up to."
marble8888
Season 5 Drinking GIF by Broad CityGiphy"I need a Coen brothers movie of the 1904 Olympic marathon."
"Every sentence just keeps getting more bonkers."
Hititwitharock
Go Vin
"A biopic on Hannibal would be really good. The visuals of crossing the Alps with elephants would be stunning."
Mattiebfc
"Vin Diesel has been trying to make a movie about this for years. It’s his passion project. Whether or not he could do justice to the story is another matter."
ihaveashrinkray
"The Battle of Cannae and its aftermath would be insane to see on screen."
gentlybeepingheart
Hey Smalls
"I tell my students every year when we do my Robert Smalls lesson that there needs to be a Robert Smalls movie. Born into slavery, sent to Charleston at the age of 12 to work, gets a job on a boat, when the Civil War starts he steals the boat and snuggles his family and the family of the other slaves past Fort Sumter and out to the north blockade, becomes a folk hero and meets with Lincoln and Edward Stanton to convince them to allow blacks to join the army."
"He personally recruits thousands of blacks to fight, becomes the first captain of a ship in the navy, wins numerous engagements during his service, wins a seat in the SC house and then the US house, fights against racist groups like the Red Shirts, overcomes false accusations and earns his seat back.... Dude is amazing"
USCplaya
12 Days
"Unless it's covered in the various movies about Lincoln, John Wilkes Booth's 12 days on the run are really damn interesting in my opinion."
bermuda__
"Apple is making a limited series. No kidding."
Laura9624
abraham lincoln vintage GIF by US National ArchivesGiphyThe Massive Battle
"Battle of Jutland could use a modern movie depiction. Massive battle, day and night, high drama, tension, massive explosions. What more could you ask for?"
notquiteright2
"I've tried to imagine the truly awesome sight it would be of seeing a cinematic rendering of the Grand Fleet crossing the T of the High Seas Fleet, there is a painting of it and references it as the single largest concentration of naval gunfire in history. Hundreds of battleship-grade guns slugging it out on the heaving North Sea."
ArguingPizza
Wild Times
"Besides the Napoleonic era, I feel 19th century France has a lot of potential for historical movies, due to how much stuff happens during that time period. If I had to pick one event in particular, it'd be between the birth of the 2nd republic to the 2nd empire."
Luxray209
"Even better: the Haitian Revolution. I'm particular Touusaint And it's tied directly to the various revolutionary and counter-revolutionary politics in France. Some of it wild."
seeasea
The Great Student
"Xenophon. He was a student of Socrates that was commander of a Greek mercenary company under Cyrus that nearly captured Babylon then had to retreat to Greece. Philosopher, historian, and military commander. Peloponnese War would be awesome too with Alcibiades and Pericles."
BrodyTuck
"While we wait for a historically accurate movie we can watch 'The Warriors', which is based on the retreat to Greece."
oily_fish
Best of History
"The battle of Castle Itter. One of the final battles of WWII which involves a US tank division teaming up with Austrian resistance fighters, a German Army Major and a high ranking member of the SS to protect an free high ranking French prisoners from loyal Nazis in a medieval Austrian Castle. Seriously it sounds like a random alt history DLC from a Call of Duty game but it actually happened. I know we have like 8 million WW2 movies but how this hasn’t been made yet still boggles my mind."
Ven18
war battle GIF by HISTORY UKGiphyAre you listening Hollywood? There is money here.