Thus, people live life rather precariously. They take chances, go pursue strange adventures, carry on risque and dramatic relationships. In the vacuum of a single life, that's all well enough.
But for the people generations down the line, looking back on those old biographies, an ancestor's approach can seem wild. It might even leave one feeling that if one small detail turned out differently, the whole story would have went in a different direction.
And that is of existential importance for the person looking at the history.
starman123 asked, "Reddit, what parts of your family history is interesting?"
Infamy
"Interesting, if not incredibly sad. I had a great great grandma (or aunt, can't remember) who had 13 children out of wedlock, all by different men. She was nicknamed notoriously loose Julie by her town."
"The doctor told her not to have anymore children after the 12th, but she did so, and both her and that baby died."
"The community felt she was such a stain on the town's reputation they refused to bury her in the town cemetery (back in the old days, small town)."
Life Took a Turn
"Grandfather had an affair with my grandmother's sister. He got her pregnant and when the little boy turned 7, he went to live with my grandparents...and they raised him as their own."
"The pain my grandmother must have felt is insane. I didn't learn this until this year at 36."
-- London82
Nearly There
"My Swedish ancestors arrived to Australia by boat. When they arrived one of them got crushed by a crate that fell off a crane on the docks. He made it all the way and didn't even get to set foot in Australia." -- nimernith
"Dam even just the flight from Europe to Australia is anxiety fuel, can't imagine taking a boat all the way there. I'll take my chances in Europe eating potatoes." -- Another_Human
Expand on that Takeover, Please
"My great uncle traced our family back 14 generations. We tried to take over in Wales, failed and were then banished." -- [deleted]
"Did you find this out after trying to enter wales?" -- c0ber
"Do you ever sit by a window during a cold, summer rain; looking out soulfully into the darkness? And as you slowly draw your fingers against the fogged glass; yearn for what could have been yours?" -- IronCorvus
An Empowered Line
"Women in my family have been going to college for seven generations (since the 1840s). Most of them have Master's degrees."
"Also one of these women (either my g-grandma or my g-g-grandma) was involved in the first car wreck in her city as a teenager when she stole her parent's car and drove it into a horse-drawn buggy. A legend."
Still Uncertain
"I'm related to John Wilkes Booth and Abraham Lincoln. There's a family legend that John actually survived the manhunt and lived in a family attic until he died of old age. There are also various other escape theories running about."
"When my family tried to get the bones of the body the US government claims is John Wilkes tested, a judge first denied exhumation."
"There are three vertebrae being kept by the US Army Medical Command, and they also denied permission, claiming that the test which would require less than .4 grams of bone would be too destructive."
A Very Great Grandmother
"My great grandmother was the first woman to vote in Maine." -- Jeffveilleux2
"Get that suffrage girl!!" -- Nopef***this
"Epic Gamer Moment #53" -- SSJRobbieRotten
"Hot" -- DuncansAlpha
An Alarming Discovery
"My family tree has this one branch that loops back to itself..." -- The_Blatalian
"Break out the banjo." -- steven_hawking_legs
"Are you your own grandpa?" -- Myfourcats1
"Fellow loopedy-loop tree, I see you." -- Chieftain-drake
Double Dipping
"My grandfather is an identical twin. During WW2 he joined the military and his twin took his place at his job. Grandfather got out of the army made up a new name he's been going by since." -- handsthefram
A Historical Claim
"One of my great something grandfathers was Thomas Wolsey, the cardinal over England during the reign of Henry VIII and the guy who attempted to get the pope to let Henry divorce Cathrine of Argon. Apparently I came from one of the bastard children he fathered with Joan Larke."
An Organized Crime Plot?
"There were two Tilley's on the Mayflower that I could potentially be very distant relatives to. Apparently a prostitute and a horse thief." -- cockapooch
"Elizabeth Tilley is my 14th great grandmother. No word on her profession or penchant for equine thievery." -- hedpe70
In Limbo
"I'm both Austrian and Italian, but also neither of those."
"My ancestors immigrated from a place that was technically Austria, they wrote Austria on all their paperwork. But now it's Italy. My ancestors would tell you they were Italian."
"Anyways. I should be eligible for Italian citizenship by blood, but when I applied, they essentially said, 'No, you're Austrian". So I attempted the same in Austria. Their reply? 'No, you're Italian.' "
-- [deleted]
A Succinct Description
"I probably have the factor wrong, but somewhere around my 8x great uncle was President James Buchanan: the US's only bachelor president who was most likely gay and hands-down the worst president in our history."
-- bluejer
Middle Age Success
"My family was running one of the biggest french pottery businesses during the middle age." -- julos42
"You mother is a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries." -- AlienStories
GiphyTough Act to Follow
"Up until me, every single person in my blood line got laid." -- dlordjr
"I hear it skips a generation." -- omgwhatsavailable
"Ah so you followed sex ed nice." -- Ovisers318872
A Slight, Permanent Tweak
"When my family came to America (somewhere around the late 1800s, early 1900s) we added an 'O' onto the front of our name to make it sound Irish."
"Everyone was giving low-paying jobs to the Irish and it was an easy way to get a job at the time."
-- GreekNord
A Big Reveal
"My grandparents were dating and got engaged. During this time my grandmother's mum and my grandfather's dad began having an affair. On the day of my grandparent's wedding they left their respective partners and told people they were together. So it makes them step brother and sister."
"My grandmother is still salty about it as you can imagine."
Do you have something to confess to George? Text "Secrets" or "
The first movie I personally remember being shocked by was Old Boy. It's a 2003 South Korean horror/psychological thriller. The ending is such a graphic sharp left turn that it gained instant classic status both in Korea and among horror film lovers worldwide.
I'd tell you about it but I don't have time to explain the relevant spiderweb of character relationships ... or for the amount of trigger warnings it would take.
One Reddit user asked:
What movie had the best unexpected ending?
So lets take a stroll through Hollywood history. You probably already know the twists and turns in several of these, but there might be some movies here you haven't been punched in the gut by yet.
Grab some popcorn and enjoy!
Dirty Apes
Planet of The Apes.
It was super surprising seeing the Statue of Liberty at the end. When I first saw it, my 9 year old brain just exploded. The movie doesn't really make sense up until the ending because of the reveal; but even if you saw it coming, its execution was still phenomenal.
Luke ...
GiphyMy son only recently got into Star Wars. When we got to watching Empire for the first time. The thought that he didn't know what was coming, or the impact it would have, didn't even occur to me.
I wished I'd taken a video of his reaction. He was beyond shocked, like absolutely gobsmacked. He also bombarded me with questions for about an hour straight afterwards. It blew his mind!
How To Train Your Dragon
How to Train Your Dragon.
What other kids movie would dare have the main character get maimed/disfigured during the climax?
And then the second movie was even worse cause Stoic dies! Fck, that death hit me so hard.
Major spoilers below if you haven't seen HTTYD 2:
Him and his long-lost wife had just reunited. You finally got to see the soft, loving side of him. He was finally happy. I almost cry every time I think of that song and dance he does with his wife.
Then like 10 minutes later he gets murdered in front of his reunited family. Like every time Hiccup does the brave, strong thing it costs him. The first time it was his foot, then his dad, then later on his town, and eventually his best friend.
That series is frikin dark.
- Eode11
And just to add salt to the wound, he was murdered by lovable mascot best friend Toothless while he was under the effects of mind control. That really takes it over the edge for me.
And Toothless gives that goofy grin and assumes Stoick is asleep shortly after snapping out of it.
- ddh85
Yeah and how Hiccup angrily shoos Toothless away and Toothless's hurt and confused face before running away. It absolutely murdered my feels.
No Resolution
The Birds. The movie ending is surprising in that the movie ends with the protagonists just ... driving off and leaving town with literally no resolution to the actual problem of a town overrun by murderous birds.
I love how bizarre and bleak that movie is. And that there is no "reveal" to make sense what happens.
It starts out like a cute romance. It's charming.
Then there's a few birds acting strange. And then it goes bonkers, and it's all screaming and inexplicable chaos.
So they run away. The end. What the hell just happened?!
But the movie is like, "Fck you. We don't know what happened. The birds freaked out."
- Hithigon
Let's Play A Game
The twist in Saw still ranks up there for me.
Low budget film with no expectations and, Wham, an amazing twist.
- kukulele
I tagged along with a group of friends to see Saw. Didn't know anything about it. Never saw a trailer. Didn't even know what genre it was. Just went because I had nothing else to do. Walked out of the theater two hours later completely terrified. I remember my friend didn't even turn the radio on, on the way home. We all just sat in silence.
First time I watched Saw I was alone, and thought it was fine, pretty neat horror movie. When Lawrence sawed his foot off, I figured that was it, that was the twist everyone was talking about. Kinda underwhelmed, but still all right.
And then it happened.
When I watch movies alone, I don't usually react all that much. Even to horror movies, beyond the odd shudder, I'm usually pretty calm. But this one got me to yell "WHAT?" at the screen.
Fooled By The Prestige
GiphyThe Prestige end lines.
"Now you're looking for the secret. But you won't find it because of course, you're not really looking. You don't really want to work it out. You want to be fooled."
This is the greatest line and set up, because until you get over the twist ending, or "the prestige," you don't realise the whole movies been lying to you.
It's all over the place - during "the turn", the middle of the movie, using unreliable narration of documentation created to distract the rival magicians. We know some of it is a fake diary, but we assume we can take some other information seriously when we can't.
The twist ending was great, but once rewatched you realise you're only ever watching a retelling of events, and as these two famously like to mess with each other what we are being told and shown probably isn't real. More than likely the machine didn't work and Jackman killed off his double to frame Christian bale, and the other tanks probably had dummies in.
We were so willing to be fooled we didn't use our logical thinking skills to break it all down.Well I didn't anyway, not till four or five watches later. We wanted to be fooled and forgot everything after the prestige was revealed.
Even though the movie literally tells us that's what's going to happen!
There's a great video on YouTube explaining it all.
Memento
Memento. Absolutely incredible. The ending made the beginning scene even more disturbing.
Me and a few friends watched this one night in college.
When it all comes together at the end and the black and white past meets up with the color present, I went, "gasp Oh sht." Chills ran through my body.
The movie finished, and we talked about it.
I told them, "when it went from black and white to color slowly it shook me."
They both looked at each other slowly and said, "I didnt..... I didn't even realize that happened until you said that".
We went back and watched again lol
- GibbyDat
Excellent movie, and the highest compliment I can pay it is what happened immediately after the movie on the day I saw it.
Remember, this was released in a time when mid-credits and post-credits scenes were not really a thing. As soon as the credits started rolling, no one, not one single person, got up to leave. I went to the movie alone and thus was able to sit and observe those around me. Everyone sat there, just talking with their companions about what they'd just seen (or thought they had seen). It was probably ten minutes before the first couple finally left.
I've never seen anything like that before or since.
Do you have something to confess to George? Text "Secrets" or "
" to +1 (310) 299-9390 to talk to him about it.
u/tanvirk321 asked:
What was the biggest plot twist in real history?
Here were some of the answers.
The Fate Of 20th Century USA
GiphyTheodore Roosevelt.
He was made vice president to reduce his profile, take away his power and get rid of him. Then William McKinley dies, and a man who probably couldn't have been elected president, with radical political views very different from most of hls party becomes president and shakes things up more than anyone in 2 generations.
Impostor Syndrome
Probably the time during WW1 the Germans disguised one of their ships, SMS Cap Trafalgar, as the British liner HMS Carmania, and by sheer coincidence and bad luck the first ship they came across was the real HMS Carmania, which ended up sinking them.
Moving Backwards
The 1944 Democrat vice-president nominations. Henry Wallace (very popular at the time) was replaced by Harry Truman as Roosevelt's vice-president due to efforts by party leaders because they believed that Wallace was a little too far to the left and didn't want him running once Roosevelt stopped.
Kween Of Scots
Every single thing about Mary Queen of Scots.
She was born and plot twist, her dad died and made her queen. She goes to France and marries. Plot twist, the king dies and leaves her husband as king of France. Plot twist, he dies right after.
Enjoy some drama and end with her getting captured. Plot twist, she escapes and flees the country to her cousin for help. Elizabeth jails her until killing her. Plot twist, turns out she was really coming to overthrow Elizabeth, not just seek refuge.
When Suspicion Goes Wrong
Richard Jewell. He was at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, working as a security guard. There he spotted a suspicious backpack which had 3 pipe bombs inside. He alerted the police, and helped evacuate people from the area. 2 people died, one woman was directly injured by shrapnel and a Turkish cameraman had a heart attack. But he saved around 100 people in getting them evacuated.
Things took a turn when he was considered a suspect. The FBI had him as a potential suspect and this, of course, leaked to the media. Suddenly the media turned on Jewell. They began hounding him, suggesting that he was guilty of the crime and staged it all to make himself look like a hero.
In the meantime, more bombings occurred.
Eventually it was discovered that the bomber was Eric Rudolph, who committed more bombings in the 90s. He admitted to it publicly, and Jewell's name was cleared.
Up until his death, he still, anonymously, placed a rose at the Olympic Park memorial where Alice Hawthorne died.
Stop Promoting Him
Vice-admiral William Bligh, when he was a lieutenant his crew mutinied and cast him adrift after leaving Tahiti and Bligh started making excessively worsening punishments for lacking the discipline the crew had before arriving at Tahiti and being allowed to slack off.
Not at the twist yet. 17 years later he became governor of New South Wales (at the time that's all Australia was, no other states existed yet) to try and stop rising rum trade. Learning nothing from the mutiny, he was an jerk to everyone he could and the local military rebelled and arrested him, which the British declared a mutiny. He was mutinied TWICE for the same reason, and still got promoted to rear admiral and later vice-admiral!
Мы везде
Kim Philby, one of the most senior members of the British intelligence service, MI6, turns out to be a Soviet spy.
20 years later, Oleg Gordievsky, a high-ranking colonel in the KGB and former Rezident of their London office turns out to be a British spy.
The revelation of most spies is basically a plot twist in history.
By Accident
The assassination of Archduke Ferdinand.
The group messed up the attempt, the grenade they threw didn't go off as expected and blew up the car behind the target. The assassin panicked after the failed attempt, wallowed a cyanide pill, and jumped in a nearby river. Except the cyanide pill just made him vomit, and the river was only 6 inches deep... so he was caught pretty easily
Following the failed attempt, another member of the group went to get some food at a local restaurant. Around the same time, Archduke Ferdinand told his driver to head to the hospital where he and his wife could visit those injured from the failed plot earlier. The driver got lost and tried to reverse the car; it stalled right in front of the restaurant where the assassin was finishing lunch. He walked outside, saw the Archduke standing there, and fired into his neck.
Essentially, (one of) the most revolutionary events of the 20th century was a do-over.
It Just Got Weird
I'm no Revolutionary War buff, but I distinctly remember my history professor teaching us about a time where England should've undoubtedly won the war, but it rained that day and the English general (Gentle Johnny) decided to postpone. My understanding is there were a few key moments where the colonies sidestepped crushing defeat by pure luck.
Saved By A Reputation
GiphyPrussia not losing in the Seven Years' War.
It was France, Austria, Russia and Sweden surrounding Prussia on all sides. Frederick the Great of Prussia was an amazing commander who scored legendary victories but that still wouldn't be enough to win against such overwhelming odds.
Then the Empress of Russia died and the new Tsar was basically a fanboy of Frederick so he just pulled out of the war and had Sweden do the same (while their side was winning).
This allowed Prussia to hang on against Austria and France and this stalemate on the continent which was a resource drain allowed Britain (Prussia's ally) to dominate overseas, which eventually turned into a world hegemony empire. All because of ultimately not military might but admiration.
