Outnumbered, cut off from any hope of rescue or support, operating secretly. The dramatic potential of troops or pilots conducting a raid has been well explored by film, television, and literature. The scenario even offers all the, for want of a better word, “fun” of being in the military without many of the responsibilities, such as looking out for the well-being of civilians or many other parts of protocol. It also offers the persons involved the potential for much more glory than most regular operations since the numbers are small enough that there’s less credit to spread around and less commotion for an individual’s contribution to be lost. 

Most raids are good primarily for wasting the enemy’s resources or extracting a specific target. Some, however, have changed the very shape of history and the courses of wars. While some are still kept under a shroud of secrecy that may never be lifted, some are so devastating in their impacts that they can’t be kept under wraps by either side. 

10. Operation Flipper

No one could say that the mission that Colonel Robert Laycock and his 59 other commandos were sent to on November 10, 1941, was unambitious. They boarded the submarines H.M.S. Torbay and Talisman intent on sneaking into Axis-controlled Tunisia, raiding Sidi Rafa. There they would kill Lt. General Erwin Rommel himself while also destroying the Italian high command in North Africa, effectively liberating the continent for the Allies. 

They didn’t even make landfall before things began to go wrong. A storm struck on November 14 and forced the Talisman aground, with only seven commandos arriving for the landfall. Despite around 50% of the personnel being knocked out without a shot being fired, Laycock decided to go ahead with the plan to assassinate Rommel and attack the Italian HQ. The weather continued to be a problem as they were bombarded with rain, but by November 17, they launched their two-pronged attack. 

While the commandos killed three German colonels and destroyed a supply dump, it turned out Rommel hadn’t even arrived, as the same weather that had given the commandos so much trouble had convinced him to stay in Rome. It turned out to be a steep price to pay as only two of the commandos returned to British lines at all, and that took them five weeks of subterfuge. A very loose and flattering film adaptation of the events called Raid on Rommel was released in 1971.  

Hopefully, this entry has gone to show that just because a raid was daring does not at all mean it was successful.

9. Raid on Boulogne 

As Napoleon Bonaparte said, if the French could be masters of the English Channel for six hours during the 1800s, they would be masters of the world. This was no idle boast to the British military, who watched the French draw together a navy with alarm. By 1804 the time had come to act, and the target was the 150 French ships in the fortified port of Boulogne. The British navy sent a flotilla of ships heavily laden with torpedoes, a brand new weapon designed by Robert Fulton. The raid actually inflicted light French casualties (about 14) and little damage on the French fleet. 

And yet it had an effect far out of proportion to material damage in one area: Morale. Spooked by the torpedo explosions, the morale of the French military sank, and the initiative to launch an invasion of the United Kingdom was replaced by panic. Ports were refortified instead of being prepared for an attack. Great Britain might have been saved by the Raid on Boulogne. Not bad for a raid that hadn’t cost the British a single casualty. 

8. The Great Raid of 1840

On March 19, 1840, leaders of Comanche and Penateka tribes in Central Texas were engaged in peace talks with Texas leaders. Owing to one freed hostage’s account, the Texan authorities threatened that unless all hostages were returned, every Native American participant could consider themselves a hostage. When the Comanche refused, a fight broke out which left more than 30 Comanche, including women and children, dead. So it was that by August 6, 1840, between 600 and 1,000 Comanche men under the command of Buffalo Hump rode into Texan territory in reprisal. 

First, they sacked the community of Victoria, killing fifteen as the rest huddled in the Southern district. The war party rode along the Guadalupe River, coming to a stop in and sacking the community of Linnville, outside San Antonio. The Comanches then retreated on August 8, but they made the mistake of carrying an oversized haul of loot and stolen horses with them, which slowed the party down enough for the Texans to organize a war party of their own. They caught up to the Comanches at Plum Creek and were estimated to have killed eighty of them in a surprise attack. As a result the Comanches never attempted anything like such a large and elaborate raid again, reverting to tried and true small-scale guerilla tactics.  

7. Morgan’s Raid

us is not an unabashed fan of Confederate raiders, considering what those under commanders like William Anderson did at Centralia.  Still, there’s no denying the daring and significance of many of their raids, especially in regards to lengthening the Civil War. Surely the one that John Hunt Morgan began on June 11, 1863, at the head of 2,400 cavalrymen was one of the boldest. He had been ordered to move from Sparta, Tennessee, and invade Kentucky to distract the Union armies, but he was not to cross the Ohio River under any circumstances. So on July 8, Morgan crossed the Ohio River with around 1,800 cavalrymen as the rest continued operations in Kentucky. While he was far from the largest Union armies, there were 100,000 Union troops against him, albeit widely scattered. 

It turned out Morgan’s orders had been much more reasonable than he would have liked, for the Union command quickly figured out where he was going. At Fayetteville, West Virginia the 23rd Ohio and 13th West Virginia Volunteers led by future president Rutherford B. Hayes ambushed Morgan on July 19th and cut his numbers in half. The Federals chased them to Salineville, Ohio, and captured Morgan and the remnants of his command on July 26. As we’ll see in a bit, that was nowhere near the worst thing to happen to the Confederate military that season.    

6. Belov’s Raids

TopTenz has written before about how the winter of 1941-1942 actually didn’t stop the Third Reich’s capture of Moscow and was quite bad for the Red Army’s counterattack. Still, one force of the Red Army came away from the largely disastrous counterattack with a massive credit under their belt. It was the 1st Cavalry Corps under General Pavel Belov. A large number of German divisions were positioned in a salient point in the Rhzev area, and Belov’s cavalry was sent behind the front in an attempt to cut the salient supply lines. 

The corps would find itself cut off, surrounded, and badly outnumbered. Yet Belov’s forces were sufficiently resourceful that they tied down seven divisions for six months, aided in no small part by the many partisans that were rallying against the Axis army as their extermination operations were making it clear they were not the heroic liberators many initially took them to be. Ultimately, Belov and roughly 2,000 under his command would break back out of the encirclement, and Belov would go on to become one of the most acclaimed Soviet commanders of the war.   

5. The Whitehaven Raid

For most of the American Revolution, it was taken for granted that all the fighting would take place in American territory as the crown had such an overwhelmingly superior army and navy. In 1778, John Paul Jones, who a year later would very famously capture the British ship Serapis after yelling “I have not yet begun to fight,” made to bring the fight to the home country by raiding the port town of Whitehaven in northwest England with its 400 merchant ships. Having sailed the Atlantic, Jones set out with thirty commandos in two boats to conquer the two forts and burn the merchant fleet to the waterline. 

For Jones’s boat, things went relatively smoothly. They landed, took their objective fort, and ruined the guns so that they could safely escape. The other boat, however, had problems that sounded like something out of Black Adder. First, the tide gave them so much trouble that they fell three hours behind schedule. Then when they belatedly made landfall, they went to the local pub and got drunk off liquor. When Jones caught up with them and understandably raged at the neglect of duty, he attempted to set fire to the town and ships, but the town’s fire brigade, bolstered as was English tradition since the 1666 London Fire, dutifully put the fires out promptly. Jones and company got away having neither suffered nor inflicted much damage, yet their exploit sent a wave of terror through the Isles that led to many sea towns being put on the alert for years afterward.    

4. The Doolittle Raid 

Anyone who’s seen Michael Bay’s 2002 film Pearl Harbor knows the Doolittle Raid was how the US Armed Forces saved face after the humiliation of four battleships being sunk and about 2,000 lives being lost during the sneak attack. On April 18, 1942, 16 B-25 Mitchells took off for Tokyo, starting more than half again over the original distance they originally intended. There would be no returning: They had to fly for China and hope they could land in airfields controlled by the Allies. 

The bombing killed 50 Japanese people, mostly civilians, and wounded about 400 others, but did little structural damage. So when the bombers were found to be too low on fuel to reach their airfield objectives and had to crash land, Commander James Doolittle’s belief that he would be court-martialed for losing 16 planes and three personnel while inflicting little damage on the enemy seems understandable. Considering the boost the attack had for US morale and the way it disrupted Japanese public sentiment to a point where it changed military strategy, it’s also understandable that he received the Medal of Honor instead. 

Initially ignored but increasingly more mentioned, the raid cost China’s population by far the most of any nation involved. Both because it revealed just how vulnerable Japan could be to air attacks from China and simply thirsty for revenge, the Japanese military launched a series of reprisals that by some accounts left hundreds of thousands of Chinese dead. If Doolittle’s men had given any sort of American gift to a Chinese person in compensation for kindness, they were very likely unknowingly giving that person a death sentence. It also seemed to influence the decision for just where to place the infamous Unit 731, as it was quite close to Chuchow, the Doolittle raiders’ intended destination. Such are the greatest sacrifices in war often overlooked.  

3. The Osel Air Raid

When the Third Reich launched Operation Barbarossa on June 22, 1941, and invaded the Soviet Union, they caught the Red military completely off guard, destroying 1,200 Soviet plans in a single day. By July they were launching bombing runs on Moscow itself. General Secretary Joseph Stalin caught wind of the effect the raids on Moscow were having on Soviet morale and so ordered air raids on Berlin itself in retaliation. 

This was no idle command, as Berlin was the best-defended city in Europe and tore through squads of Allied aircraft on the regular. So when 15 Ilushyin DB-3 bombers took off from Osel, Estonia for Berlin on July 7, 1941, the years’ obsolete planes were generally regarded as being sent on a suicide mission. Such was their condition that the crews needed to perform wing repairs on them in midair. 

Fortunately for them, Berlin’s anti-aircraft guns were pointed toward the United Kingdom and it was Reich policy to keep all peacetime lights on at night. When the DB-3s flew over the capital, they were largely misidentified as errant Luftwaffe aircraft and sent signals asking them who they were. Five bombers were able to reach their targets and put the fear of the proletariat into the Reich. Not that it had much material effect, as subsequent raids quickly found themselves running into fully alerted anti-aircraft, and as many as eighteen bombers would be lost in a night until the Wehrmacht conquered Osel in August 1941 and the raids ended. Still, the raids boosted Soviet morale at a time when any support was desperately needed. 

2. Harper’s Ferry Raid 

20 men versus the institution of slavery in the United States. That was what John Brown could bring to muster against the Virginian Harper’s Ferry Armory on October 16, 1859, with the intent of arming a slave revolt that would spread throughout the South. Brown hoped that if he seized the thousands of small arms in the armory, enough of the 18,000 slaves in surrounding counties would rise up that they could overwhelm all militias and marines sent to put them back down. Both Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman had denounced the plan, with Douglass warning Brown he was leading his insurrectionists into a “perfect trap.” 

While the raiders did seize control of the armory and took eleven hostages, one of the first people they killed was a free black porter named Hayward Shepherd, which likely contributed to the fact far fewer slaves rose up in revolt than Brown needed. Over the next two days, Brown’s men were surrounded by thousands of militia members and several attempts to negotiate their release resulted in an abolitionist being shot dead. By October 18, a force of 90 marines broke into the armory and captured the remaining raiders in less than three minutes. Brown and other captured raiders would be put to death on December 2, 1859. Only five of the original group lived to tell the tale.   

Once again, short-term failure turned out to be a long-term triumph because of how Brown conducted himself through his trial and execution. His belief that his martyrdom would provide the impetus needed to cleanse the sins of the nation with blood left him fearless in the face of the gallows. Millions throughout the nation were inspired on both ends of the political spectrum, with even many slavery supporters offering him a grudging respect. No less than John Wilkes Booth, who witnessed the execution, would despite his admiration for the Confederacy write admiringly of Brown for years after his execution and say that Lincoln wasn’t fit to follow in the footsteps of that “rugged old hero.” 

1. Grierson’s Raid

On April 17, 1863, Union soldiers under Ulysses S. Grant were in a tight spot. They had just run the guns at Vicksburg, Mississippi, and were to a significant degree cut off from their supply lines. If the Confederate troops under General John Pemberton moved swiftly, they could catch Grant with his back to the Mississippi and potentially destroy him as they almost did at Shiloh the year before. But Confederate eyes were largely turned away, following a force of 1,700 cavalrymen under the command of Benjamin Grierson. Their ride would take them from Tennessee, through Mississippi, and down to Louisiana. 

They would ultimately ride 600 miles in sixteen days while the raiders were outnumbered more than 20 to 1, inflicting hundreds of casualties while suffering less than 20 themselves. More importantly, they kept the Confederate Army too occupied to move south against Grant and thus allowed the Vicksburg victory that essentially did more than anything to doom the Confederacy. Pretty good results for a raid led by a man who before the war was a music teacher that despised horses. 

Dustin Koski cowrote the post-apocalyptic supernatural comedy Return of the Living with Jonathan “Bogleech” Wojcik. 

The internet is a great resource, but one thing that it doesn’t come with is a manual on what information you should trust, and what information you shouldn’t. The internet, especially since the days of COVID-19, has been rife with medical misinformation, and it’s spread far and wide through social media. Unfortunately, some of these misconceptions about medicine can be dangerous and are better cleared up for the safety of all. 

10. The Higher Percentage Of Rubbing Alcohol, The Better The Sanitizing Power 

When the pandemic hit, the stores were soon running out of cleaning products and disinfectants of all kinds. Among other things, rubbing alcohol became extremely hard to find, as many people wanted it to disinfect surfaces for COVID-19. While it’s good that people were taking anti-viral precautions, some observers noticed that whenever anything was remaining, it was usually a decent stock of 70% rubbing alcohol, with the higher percentages being mostly unavailable. Now, you’d think this would make sense, as it sounds like a higher percentage of alcohol would kill more viruses, but this is a common misconception. 

The truth is that for disinfecting regular surfaces you want 70% alcohol, and not the 90% or higher stuff. The reason for this is that rubbing alcohol still needs some water to spread around the surface area and have some time to kill germs before it evaporates completely. However, that doesn’t mean the higher percentages don’t still have their uses. They are often recommended for electronics, where you would rather sacrifice cleaning power, to use as little moisture as possible. 

9. Once You Get A Transplanted Organ, Your Problems Are Mostly Solved 

In movies, TV, and every other form of media on the planet, it’s a common storyline to have someone who needs a transplant for a lifesaving organ. They may be low on the list, or have some other issue holding them up. The drama of the story is usually set around getting them the organ, after which we’re led to believe they now live happily ever after. Unfortunately, while it would be great if this were true (and it may be one day), it’s currently not the case. 

The unfortunate reality is that no matter how close a match, a transplanted organ will require you to take drugs that suppress your immune system for the rest of your life. This is because your body will try to attack the new organ, thinking it’s an invader. A “match” makes it possible for drugs to hold this back, but it does not stop you from needing them. You can also get a version of diabetes called diabetes mellitus due to the drugs you have to take. 

8. You Can Get The Flu From The Flu Vaccine

It’s a matter of fact that a lot fewer people get the flu shot every year than people who get their regular booster shots and other vaccines. Some people say it’s mostly for older people, younger kids, or people with weakened immune systems. They’ll say they can handle a case of the flu just fine, and that it could even give them a small case, if anything. They don’t want that risk, so they avoid it. Some even argue the shot is mostly ineffective, and doesn’t usually work. 

However, most people’s excuses are complete bunk. For starters, you cannot get the flu, even a small case of it, from the flu vaccine. The parts of the flu that are in the shot are dead, and cannot suddenly come back to life. You can indeed get a few mild symptoms that are often associated with the flu, which may last a few hours or days, which is why people are confused. 

As for the rest of the misconceptions, we’ll take them one at a time. Everyone six months and up should get the flu shot; the lost productivity from the flu is way worse than a few vaccine side effects; and while it may not work, each year’s vaccine is targeted to hit the flu strain expected to be the biggest problem that season. 

7. You Can Suck Venom Out Of A Wound 

A popular trope in fiction is the old venomous wound, wherein someone tries to suck the venom out to save the afflicted person. This goes back to, for example, the stories of Sherlock Holmes, where it’s used for a plot with a mistaken vampire. It also probably goes back much, much further. It’s an incredibly common trope, is what we’re saying.

It’s become so prevalent in popular culture that a lot of people consider it gross and scary, but real and grimly necessary. There are even extractor devices designed to pull venom from a wound, and most would be surprised if they found such devices being sold when they don’t actually work. 

However, the truth is that the venom from most animals doesn’t work as fast as movies would have you believe, and surprisingly few people die from venomous animals each year. What you really need to do is get victims to a hospital as quickly as possible and get them anti-venom. Sucking venom from a wound will not get it out faster than the person’s body can pump it through the blood, and you could poison yourself if you have a cut in your mouth. As for those extractor pumps, scientific studies have proven that they are not effective. 

6. Stabbing Adrenaline In Someone’s Heart Is Great For An Opioid Overdose

Pulp Fiction is a classic movie, and anyone who has seen it well remembers the scene where John Travolta races to his drug dealer with an overdosed Uma Thurman, and then stabs her dramatically through the heart with an adrenaline needle. Apart from stabbing her through the heart, he also doesn’t need to push down the plunger, presumably because pushing it through the heart just gets it all done that much faster. 

Unfortunately, while the scene is fun, it’s pretty much all wrong. While sometimes an injection in the heart, known as an intracardiac injection, is necessary, there’s no reason to think it would be needed in this case. It’s also done slowly and carefully through the ribcage by a trained medical professional. If you were using an adrenaline needle, you would actually usually use the thigh. However, in this case, you would not want to use adrenaline at all, as Uma’s character was overdosing on opioids. What you would want to use is Narcan, which often comes in a nasal spray today, making delivery much easier. If you want to speed things up, you would follow up the Narcan with CPR. 

5. Glasses Are Magic Goggles That Fix All Eye Problems 

Vision problems are common around the world, and basically everyone either wears or knows someone who wears specs. For the most part, people understand what glasses can and can’t do; however, that doesn’t necessarily mean everyone understands eye problems. Some people will get confused when they meet someone who isn’t fully blind but is not wearing glasses to improve their vision. There’s a common misconception that glasses can fix all (or most) eye problems outside of blindness, and a general misunderstanding of what it means to be “legally” blind. 

Unfortunately, the truth is that a lot of people with extremely low vision have problems that glasses simply cannot do anything for, and for the most part, science can’t do much to alleviate those issues. Among these are things like age-related macular degeneration, diabetic retinopathy, sun damage, nerve damage of any kind, and many more. Scientists are trying to find ways to help these people, but most of it is very experimental. 

As for being legally blind, it’s easiest to compare it to a normal, sighted person. Someone who has normal vision can see an object that’s 200 feet away from, well… 200 feet away. Seems obvious enough, right? Well, to see that same object, a legally blind person would need to be 20 feet away.

4. Feed A Cold, Starve A Fever 

This is an old saying that can be traced back to a 1574 dictionary by John Withals. Like many folksy sayings, it has become a part of culture in some areas, where it was passed down from parent to child. Some people still take the saying seriously to this day, and most imagine, even if they don’t know medical science, that it must have some kind of reasoning behind it. After all, colds are minor bacterial infections, and the flu is a virus, so it makes sense to treat them differently, right? 

Well, perhaps in some respects, but not in this particular case. The truth is that there is absolutely no scientific rationale for starving someone who has a fever, or a virus of any kind. Whether it’s a cold, fever, broken leg, or any medical problem, keeping someone well-fed, rested, and watered is crucial. So if you are trying to remember how this phrase should go, it would be “feed a cold, feed a fever.” 

3. Going To The Hospital In An Ambulance Will Get You Seen Faster 

Some people, in the hopes of getting seen at the hospital quicker, will call the ambulance when they have other ways of getting there. While this may sound selfish, most people are not exactly thinking straight when they’re in a crisis and worried for their lives, or the lives of their loved ones. They’re just trying to get medical care in a bad situation. However, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t cause problems or isn’t a huge pet peeve with medical personnel. 

The thing is, this popular idea is completely untrue and a total misconception of how the medical system works. The purpose of an ambulance is to bring someone in who doesn’t have another way to get there or needs some kind of care to keep them alive on the way to the hospital. It does not matter how you arrive, you will be seen based on need. This is called triage. It can also cause problems for others, as it can tie up important resources that may be needed for others. The bottom line is if you can get to the hospital safely another way, and you know you can make it in time, you don’t need the ambulance. 

2. Defibrillators Are Magic Heart Restarting Paddles 

Medical dramas probably reuse this trope more than any other in their playbook. We all know the scene so well we could recite it from memory. An individual is flatlining and there’s only one thing to do: break out the defibrillator paddles. Someone yells “Clear,”  we hear the sound of rushing electricity, and the paddles are pressed against the person’s chest. This is repeated until they wake up. The doctor may throw in a couple of lines like, “damn you, you aren’t dying on me!” for added dramatic effect. 

Now, while these scenes make for great, dramatic television, they aren’t exactly based on reality. A 2014 study of dozens of resuscitation scenes from movies and television found that there were a lot of issues across the board. In general, they found that it all presented a missed opportunity to educate the public. Defibrillator paddles are commonly misunderstood for this reason, but they are not magic heart-restarting paddles. If someone’s heart rhythm is wrong they can shock it back to normal, but they do not restart a truly stopped heart. 

1. You Should Stick Stuff In The Mouth Of A Seizing Person So They Don’t Bite Their Tongue Off

Seizures are a fairly common medical trope as well and also make for great drama in your favorite doctor shows. Looking at you, E.R. and House. Sometimes people will even dramatically try to get something in between a seizing person’s teeth without getting their fingers bit off, to save the afflicted person from potentially biting off their tongue. This is a common misconception, and it’s important to know that it is not how you should do things, in case you ever do end up in a situation with a seizing person. 

If someone has a seizure, one of the most important things is that you keep their airways clear. This means you should avoid doing anything that might get in the way of their breathing, such as sticking stuff in their mouth. Also, you cannot bite off your tongue, although you can painfully bite it and cause a nasty sore, which is why people are confused. What you should actually focus on, apart from clear airways, is making sure they don’t have anything they can hurt themselves on, time their seizure, and call for medical help if necessary.

The idea of discovering a buried treasure is appealing to just about everyone. Who wouldn’t want to just dig down somewhere and find an ancient trove of gold and jewels? You’d be instantly rich.  For a very long time, this was how the world at large viewed the situation. If it’s buried underground no one really owns it, right? But that’s not really how things work. In many cases, these ancient relics that are being dug up belong to the government of the country from which they’ve been taken. The country of Egypt is perhaps most famous for suffering this fate as tomb raiders for decades now have pillaged the country of its ancient history. But they aren’t the only ones. There are many cases of ancient relics that have been purloined over the years.

10. Pompeii’s Curse

Not every ancient relic is stolen by an Indiana Jones-style archaeologist or roving gangs of miscreants. Just look at the Canadian woman identified only as Nicole. 15 years ago she visited Pompeii. At the site, famous for being destroyed by a nearby volcano in a way that nearly perfectly preserved the entire town, Nicole snatched a few mosaic tiles and pottery shards for her own personal collection. This was very much against the law, but she felt like she wanted some souvenirs from the ancient city.

Fast forward to the year 2020 and Nicole put the items in an envelope and mailed them back to the Italian government. The envelope had a Canadian stamp but no return address. There was also a note inside apologizing for being young and dumb. She also pointed out the relics which supposedly caused her 15 years of bad luck.

Nicole attributed her theft of the relics to a series of unfortunate events that plagued her and her family. From financial woes to being diagnosed with breast cancer not once but twice she felt that Pompeii had cursed her for taking the items.  All of this was detailed in the note that she included when she sent the package back to Italy. Ironically, this is not the first package the Italian government has received from someone who took items from Pompeii, nor is it the first time someone sent them back after claiming they felt they were cursed. This has apparently happened hundreds of times already and will likely continue.

9. The Rosetta Stone

The Rosetta Stone is so famous that there’s a piece of software named after it. Arguably one of the most famous exhibits in the British Museum, it was key in helping researchers learn how to read ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. Because the stone features the same decree written in three different styles of writing including hieroglyphs, ancient Greek, and demotic which was the native language of the Egyptian people, it serves as a blueprint for translating ancient languages.

The stone was discovered in 1799. Napoleon had been campaigning through Egypt at the time, the stone fell into British control after Napoleon’s defeat in 1801. Much of the ancient items the French had unearthed were taken by the British as part of the Treaty of Alexandria. By 1802 the stone was in England.

From here the story typically goes on to detail the historical significance of the stone and how it was translated, how it was used to understand ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, and how it essentially opened up Egyptology as a section of archaeology. What is most often overlooked is the fact that this was stolen from Egypt. It’s still in the British Museum and it still stands as one of the most important historical finds of all time.

Egypt has called on England to return the Rosetta Stone numerous times over the years however, it seems unlikely at this point that England will ever concede that it was stolen in the first place and give it back. But at least one archaeologist working in a museum in Egypt says that there is still an upside to an item of such historical significance being on display outside of Egypt. It’s good propaganda for Egypt and a good advertisement to get people who are interested in the subject to actually visit the country and see more of the history firsthand.

8. The Elgin Marbles

The British Museum in London houses many Greek sculptures better known as the Elgin Marbles.  These date back to the 5th century and many of them were removed from the Parthenon at Athens before being shipped to England sometime between 1799 and 1803. Thomas Bruce, the 7th Lord Elgin, was the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire during that time and that is who was occupying Greece from 1458 until the 1820s.

Greece understandably considers these artworks to be stolen property. They actually have a space open for them in the Acropolis Museum in Athens where the rest of the collection is housed. The British Museum, on the other hand, feels that nothing was stolen and the artwork was legally obtained by Lord Elgin back in the day after he agreed with the leaders of the Ottoman Empire.

 Because each side believes they own the art, there doesn’t seem to be much headway in getting them situated.  Greece does seem to have the moral high ground here since it was not any kind of Greek official who would have permitted Lord Elgin to have the art in the first place, but the British Museum doesn’t see it that way. 

7. The Bust of Nefertiti

Nefertiti was an Egyptian queen and the Great Royal wife of the Pharaoh Akhenaten. She lived from 1370 to 1330 BC. The two of them oversaw a religious shift in the country that dropped for the pantheon of multiple gods and saw the people begin to worship one single God, Aten.  It was a period of great wealth and prosperity in Egypt and it’s also believed that Nefertiti herself ruled Egypt after her husband’s death.

The bust of Nefertiti was discovered in 1912 by German archaeologist Ludwig Borchardt.  Unlike some ancient relics which were taken with misplaced authority, Borchardt knew he didn’t have the right to the bust but he stole it anyway, smuggling it out of the country in 1913.

The German government claims that the bust was not taken illegally and it was part of Borchardt’s share of what he found. Egypt has long disagreed and has wanted it back since the 1920s but has so far been unsuccessful. As recently as September of 2020 Egypt has tried to get Germany to return the bust. The country agreed to return several other artifacts, but not Nefertiti.

6. Great Zimbabwe Bird

Although geographically Zimbabwe has existed for a long time, by that name the country has only existed since 1980. Previously it was known as the country of Rhodesia, named for Cecil Rhodes who claimed the country under Imperial Rule and was responsible for colonialism in Zimbabwe.

When Zimbabwe was able to achieve independence once again the country made a special point of tracking down the Great Zimbabwe Birds. There were eight of these soapstone statues originally which come from the ruined city of Great Zimbabwe. Built by the ancestors of the Shona sometime in the 11th century, the massive city covered 1,800 acres.   Among the ruins were eight soapstone sculptures of birds. The birds themselves are about 16 inches in height and they were mounted on columns that were three feet tall.

The birds are only partially designed to look like birds. They feature some human attributes, one of them even has lips. They have human appendages and their exact purpose has never fully been determined. They may represent Kings of old or totemic animals. Regardless of their past meaning, they are unique to Zimbabwe. No one has ever found anything like them anywhere else. And for that reason, they were adopted as national symbols of Zimbabwe and are even featured on its flag. 

Unfortunately, only two of them remained in Zimbabwe. After Cecil Rhodes and others took over the country, many of the birds were displaced. Four of them ended up in South Africa and another was taken there by Cecil Rhodes himself to Cape Town. 

When Zimbabwe achieved independence,  South Africa returned the four birds that it had. In 2003, Germany returned a piece of one that they had. And as of 2020, there was only one bird at large. It was still housed in South Africa. The one from the private collection of Cecil Rhodes. After Rhodes’ death, he bequeathed his estates to the South African government. Today it’s a museum and it still houses the last bird. As to why the South African government has refused to return this final bird? No one knows.

5. Geronimo’s Skull

Geronimo was a famous Apache medicine man. He had a knack for military strategy and frequently led raids against Mexican and American forces in the late 1800s. After he was captured, Geronimo was held as a prisoner of war and he died in the year 1909 after more than 20 years in Fort Sill, Oklahoma.

Geronimo’s story should have ended there, but it did not. There’s long been a rumor that members of the Skull and Bones Society were stationed at Fort Sill. The Order of Skull and Bones is one of those secret societies that is associated with Yale University. According to the story, Skull and Bones members dug up Geronimo’s grave and stole his skull and some personal artifacts. They took these remains to New Haven, Connecticut and they were stored in the Skull and Bones Society Clubhouse in secret.

Members of the Skull and Bones Society take their secrecy pretty seriously. That said, a writer claims to have found a letter dating from 1918 that confirmed the theft of the bones and their being stashed somewhere inside the Skull and Bones Society tomb.

Descendants of Geronimo filed a lawsuit against the society as well as Yale University and members of the United States government including Barack Obama. They demanded the return of Geronimo’s remains as the man himself wanted to be buried on Apache lands in New Mexico.

 To this day there is probably far too much mystery around Geronimo’s remains to ever know for sure what happened to him. At least one native rights organization says that Geronimo’s remains have already returned to New Mexico. And of course, the Skull and Bones society would never admit that they had it even if they did. 

4. Priam’s Treasure

Few countries have suffered more from robbers and plunderers than Turkey. It’s been estimated that over 200,000 items have been stolen from dig sites in Turkey and made their way to various museums throughout Europe including prominent ones such as the Louvre in Paris as well as the Pergamon Museum in Berlin and the British Museum in London.

Because so many different cultures over the years had established civilizations in Turkey, you can find artifacts from the Assyrians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Ottomans, Hittites, Phrygians, and so on. This led to competing archaeologists from different countries essentially raiding the country to get as much as they could for their own museums.

Among the many relics that have gone missing over the years are the treasures of King Priam. This consisted of a large quantity of gold, copper, and other artifacts that were discovered by German archaeologists. Arguably the most famous piece is the gold diadems and assorted pieces known as the Jewels of Helen which consists of 8,750 gold rings, buttons, and other objects. The treasure was discovered in 1873 at the site of the ancient city of Troy. It was then smuggled into Berlin and now exists in Moscow’s Pushkin Museum where it has been on display since the Soviet troops stole it from the Germans in 1945.

Ironically, Germany has demanded the treasure back from Russia claiming they own it. But of course, Turkey is claiming the same thing since Germany stole it from them to begin with. The Russian government claims that is war reparations and that they earned it.

3. Sarah Baartman

Most of the ancient relics that have been stolen over the years have been just that, relics. But one of the saddest and most unusual cases of an ancient artifact being stolen relates to the tale of Sarah Baartman. 

Sarah Baartman was thought to have been born in South Africa back in 1789. She had been a servant in Cape Town when she signed a contract with an English ship surgeon named William Dunlop. Baartman was illiterate and likely had no idea what she was signing at the time. The contract stated that she would travel with them to England and take part in shows. Whether she realized it or not, she had just signed up to be part of a freak show.

Put on display as the Hottentot Venus,  Baartman had a condition known as steatopygia. The condition is characterized by a prominent buildup of fat in the buttocks. So, this woman was paraded around Europe as some kind of trophy that the colonists had brought back with them. It was a cruel mix of racism and exploitation and after she died, her skeleton, her brain, and even her sexual organs were on display in a Paris Museum. 

Although the British Empire had supposedly abolished the slave trade in the early 1800s, slavery itself was not something that had stopped. The people who employed Sarah Baartman were prosecuted for holding her against her will but they were not convicted. She had actually testified on their behalf. To this day no one knows for sure whether she was fully aware of her situation or not. Regardless, she died at the age of 26 from what was described as an inflammatory and eruptive disease. 

Fortunately, this story has a bit of a happier ending than some of the others. In 1994 Nelson Mandela requested the repatriation of Sarah Baartman’s remains. They were returned, along with a plaster cast that has been made of her body. In 2002 she was buried back home in South Africa.

2. The Mummy of Ramses I

Identifying ancient relics can be difficult sometimes. Especially in the case of ancient Egyptian mummies.  Identifying who is who is not always easy and occasionally leads to surprises. Such was the case when researchers in Niagara Falls discovered that they had the body of Ramses I. Not only that, he’d been sitting there since the 1860s until he was finally identified in 1999.

Ramses I was an Egyptian pharaoh and a fairly significant member of the royal line. A Canadian researcher just happened to notice that the mummy looked kind of familiar. The facial structure reminded her of some other royal mummies so they did some tests and, sure enough, he turned out to be the Pharaoh.

The Mummy had been purchased by the son of the museum’s founder when he had gone to Egypt in the early 1800s to pick up antiquities. No one involved had any idea who he was at first. Once the Canadians discovered that he was the Pharaoh, the process of having him repatriated began. Currently, the Pharaoh is back on display in the Luxor Museum in Egypt. 

1. Koh-i-Noor Diamond

One of the most famous diamonds in the world is set into the crown of Queen Elizabeth. The Koh-i-Noor diamond hails from India and became part of the British crown jewels in the mid-1880s. 

Before the 1700s, pretty much every diamond in the world came from India. Gemstones were abundant in India so much so that you could fish them out of river sand rather than go digging for them in mines. 

The first written record of the Koh-i-Noor diamond comes from 1628. Mughal ruler Shah Jahan made himself a jewel-encrusted throne inspired by King Solomon’s from the Bible. After 7 years of construction and four times as much money as was put into the Taj Mahal, there were two giant gems set into it. The Timur Ruby and the Koh-i-Noor diamond. The diamond was the crown of the throne in the head of a giant gemstone peacock.

In 1739, Nader Shah invaded Delhi and stole the Peacock Throne along with so much treasure it took 700 elephants, 4,000  camels, and 12,000 horses to take it all the way.  For the next 70 years, the diamond made its home in Afghanistan where it changed hands frequently thanks to various battles. By 1813 it was back in India again in the hands of Ranjit Singh, a Sikh ruler.

After Singh’s death, control of the diamond passed through several hands until it ended up in the control of Duleep Singh. British colonists had already taken a firm hold in India and had set their sights on the diamond years earlier. In Duleep, they saw a chance to get what they coveted so dearly and forced him to sign the diamond over along with all claims to sovereignty in an amendment to the Treaty of Lahore. How’d they do that? Duleep Singh was only 10 years old.

The diamond was sent to England and became the property of the Queen, after which it was added to the crown jewels. Locals were unimpressed because it looked like a glass bauble. So Prince Albert had it recut to look more brilliant, reducing it in size by half in the process.

Most people don’t remember much from the movie Wild, Wild West starring Will Smith except for the fact there was a giant steam-powered tarantula in it. That’s the kind of thing that makes an impression. When villains choose to express their villainy with some technological know how, it makes an impression. Not just in movies, either. Any machine that seems like they designed it for over the top, comic book level mayhem is pretty impressive.

10. Car Flamethrower

Protecting yourself and your property can take many forms. Sadly, we live in a world where sometimes this is necessary people will take what you paid money for or otherwise damage or harm you sometimes. So what can you do?

When it comes to cars and houses, most people opt for security systems. They’re usually easy to use and affordable and offer a level of protection that will keep most would-be thieves and ruffians at bay. But what happens if that’s not enough?

In the late 1990s, the Blaster was the answer to your car protection needs. A flamethrower that would cook anyone on either side of your vehicle to a cinder. 

In 1998, Charl Fourie made the BMW Blaster, a non-factory-standard security device for drivers in South Africa who wanted an added lethal level of security suitable for Dr. Doom. Fuel lines fed a pair of nozzles on either side of the car from the trunk. A foot button combined with a switch set them off, burning any would-be carjackers alive.

The device cost $650 and fired liquified petroleum gas for up to five meters, directed at the face level of anyone on the sides of the car. The device was not illegal in South Africa and in fact they sold a few hundred units. The high price tag was what kept most buyers away and the fact that various safety groups recommended against it not because they thought it was dangerously insane but because they felt it would just incite carjackers to murder people with gunfire from a safe distance. 

9. Killdozer

If a device is known by the name Killdozer, there’s no way it doesn’t have an interesting backstory. Marvin Heeymeyer’s Killdozer is one such vehicle and his story, well known enough that it had a movie made about it, is the stuff of pushed-to-the-edge legends.

Heemeyer’s story took place in Granby, Colorado, and started with a property dispute. He had sold some of his property to a concrete company. The city rezoned the land, and a factory was built, but it cut off Heemeyer’s access to his own property from his business. 

Fed up with how things were progressing, Heemeyer snapped. Using his skills as a welder, he began to manufacture an armor-plated bulldozer in his shop. The armor was homemade and incredibly effective. This was demonstrated later when he ran amok in the machine. Police gunfire proved useless against the Killdozer, and even small explosives seemed to be as effective as shooting a duck with a squirt gun.

Inside the bulldozer Heemeyer would be protected behind 3-inch bulletproof plastic and all the armor. Air conditioning kept him cool and TV monitors let him view the outside without exposing himself to danger. Several guns, including a .50 caliber rifle, were mounted outside. Police later said he had designed the Killdozer and the path of destruction he went on as a one-way ticket. Heemeyer never intended to survive.

Heemeyer literally plowed through the town, exacting revenge on everyone he felt had wronged him. The concrete factor, a judge, city hall, and numerous other homes and businesses. None could stand up to the brute force of his creation. He drove through them as though they were made of paper. 

In total he destroyed 13 buildings before getting himself stuck in a basement by accident. The governor had already authorized National Guard intervention at this point. Rather than let anything more play out, Heemeyer took his own life.

8. Euthanasia Machine

Once upon a time Dr. Jack Kevorkian was called Dr. Death in the press, and they said he had a killing machine he would bring to patients’ homes. This was actually just a portable set up to allow home euthanasia as the doctor crusaded on the belief that terminal patients deserved the right to choose when and how they would die. When it comes to an actual suicide machine, he has nothing on Philip Nitschke.

Nitschke is a doctor from the Netherlands, where euthanasia has been legal for some years. A major proponent of the practice, he was the first doctor in the country to administer a lethal dose to a patient who had requested it. And since then he has developed an honest to goodness suicide machine that is 3D printed and ready to end lives.

The device, called the Sarco, is essentially your own coffin. Hop inside and seal it so only you have control, no one could murder you with it. Liquid nitrogen, a substance readily available and legal, is pumped inside to replace oxygen. After getting a little woozy you would pass out and in several minutes death would occur. The idea is for it to be quick, painless, and easy. 

7. AI Machine Gun

In November 2020, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was shot dead. A senior official in Iran’s nuclear program, he was also a physicist and a brigadier-general in their armed forces. He was assassinated during a roadside ambush. But how the assassination was conducted raised some eyebrows.

It was machine gun fire that brought Fakhrizadeh down, but officials have said that his wife, seated next to him in a car, was amazingly unharmed. The accuracy of the gunman proved to be troubling until it was revealed there was no gunman at all.

Iran contends that the weapon was a machine gun mounted on a truck. It was fired autonomously, controlled by satellite-linked artificial intelligence. No human intervention required. 

Thirteen bullets were fired, all from the AI-controlled weapon. Four were directed at the victim’s head and his wife, less than a foot away, was not harmed at all. Initial reports said there was a gunfight with human assailants, but this was later changed.  

6. The DMZ Machine Gun Robot

The DMZ between North and South Korea is a 160 mile long stretch of land that no one is permitted to enter. The heavily guarded border has become something of a nature refuge in recent years, with many previously rare species taking up residence. But not everything there is natural.

Samsung has made the SGR-1 robots as part of DMZ security systems. These machine-gun wielding robots are autonomous security sentinels meant to keep the region empty of humans. One of the central DMZ outposts installed them in 2010 on a trial basis to see how reliable they’d be.

Using a variety of sensors like motion sensors, thermal sensors, and radar, the robots are able to detect anyone entering the zone who doesn’t belong there. Audio and video interface allow them to see who and what may be there, and deliver a warning or accept a security clearance through voice recognition. If it’s deemed necessary, the robots can then unload with 5.5mm machine guns and an automatic grenade launcher. They also make use of non-lethal deterrents like rubber bullets. 

The units are deployed now though their numbers are hard to come by. The 2010 trial run must have proved convincing, however. 

5. Lightning Gun

Some weapons just seem like they were designed to appeal to genre fans, and the lightning gun made at the Picatinny Arsenal fits the bill. Lightning, guided by a laser, traveled from the source of the laser to whatever it was targeting. Or, in layman’s terms, they made a lightning gun. 

The science was actually remarkably complex and involved the physics of light traveling through air, how plasma is produced, and how electrons can be stripped away. The big takeaway is that an enemy target, like a Jeep or a plane, is a much better conductor of electricity than the surrounding air. So you could direct lightning from the weapon to a target fairly easily. 

4.Sun Gun

At a certain point in most children’s lives, they gain access to a magnifying glass and discover what happens when you concentrate sunlight. Not only is this a simple way to burn dead leaves, it’s even been adapted to barbecue cooking with solar-powered grills. Leave it to the Nazis to have wanted to take this to a preposterous and villainous level.

Hermann Oberth, an honest to goodness rocket scientist, had a plan to assemble a giant mirror in space. This mirror would focus the rays of the sun onto the earth at whatever point the Nazis desired. Like a child killing ants, this beam would scorch the earth and any army beneath it. That was the plan, anyway. 

The plan was supposed to cost millions and take upwards of 15 years to complete. There was to be an accompanying space station with hydroponic gardens and solar generators. The plans were said to be quite detailed, though obviously nothing came of it. 

3. Bob Semple Tank

Imagine you’re tasked with trying to create a way to protect yourself from potential invaders. If some armed force were coming for you, your town and your family, what could you do? This is assuming the armed forces are either non-existent or tied up elsewhere and not able to help? If you’re New Zealand Minister of Works Bob Semple, you make a homemade tank. 

In the Second World War, New Zealand was feeling incredibly vulnerable. Japan was proving to be a force to be reckoned with and had expressed that New Zealand was a potential target. The country’s army was extremely small and with allies tied up all over the world with the war, no help would be coming if Japan invaded.  Semple set to work to find a way to defend his people.

The Bob Semple tank, as it came to be known, was a tank that he essentially slapped together Macgyver style from parts readily available. The base was a tractor, and the armor was corrugated manganese. There was no functional gun turret, and it was difficult to maneuver over uneven land. Firing on the move was all but impossible, and top speed was under 10 miles per hour.

Although history has been unkind to the tank and it was the subject of ridicule at the time, it showed what some ingenuity could come up with in a pinch. The armor was apparently quite effective, and outfitted with several machine guns they were certainly not machines anyone would have wanted to go toe to toe with. 

2. The Infernal Machine

You may not have heard of Giuseppe Marco Fieschi, but the man who attempted to assassinate King Louis-Phillipe of France back in 1835 greatly contributed to the history of utterly baffling weaponry.

Along with some co-conspirators, Fieischi, a man known to be a thief and in a relationship with his own stepdaughter, became a political radical and plotted the death of the king. To do this, Fieschi designed what he called the Infernal Machine, a gun with 25 barrels. 

They set the gun up in an apartment overlooking a street where the King was expected to make an appearance. Each barrel was loaded with numerous projectiles and primed for the assassination. When the king arrived, they deployed the weapon.

It didn’t work exactly as planned, and not every barrel fired. That said, it still proved to be nightmarishly effective. Though the king was relatively unharmed, over 400 projectiles exploded from the weapon and it killed 18 men. The king’s horse was also fatally wounded. 

1. Robot Soldiers

The Terminator has proven to be one of the most iconic sci-fi films and characters in movie history. A relentless killing machine from the future that, because it is not human, has no emotions, no reason, no fear. It can’t be stopped. The idea that robots will rise up and destroy us is a staple of the genre with examples that range from the Matrix to I, Robot and beyond. This pop culture influence has led many of us, rightly or wrongly, to cast any robot we see with a suspicious eye. And that’s why Atlas, from Boston Dynamics, is considered by many to be a creepy look at what’s to come. 

Most people know Boston Dynamics from their many videos featuring what look like robot dogs. These creations can be seen towing cars, opening doors and carrying gear for soldiers in the field. Every year it seems like the company has something slightly more advanced to offer. Something that looks smarter.

With Atlas, the company graduated to humanoid robots and that’s just an unsettling idea for many people. Whether it’s because of the uncanny valley and our brain simply not liking things that look human but obviously aren’t, or something more, the future bodes poorly for our ability to adjust to machines that can move like people but arguably can’t be killed.

Given how many humans have existed in the world and how many events and incidents, both big and small, happen every day, history is littered with examples of strange coincidences. But the ones we will be looking at today are so unusual that they strain credulity and, should they have come from the pages of a book, they would have been deemed contrived or unbelievable. 

10. Poe’s Tale of Cannibalism

In 1838, Edgar Allan Poe wrote and published The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. It wasn’t one of his better-known works and even the writer himself later dismissed it as “a very silly book.” Basically, it tells the story of the eponymous character after he becomes a stowaway on a ship called the Grampus. 

At one point, the ship wrecks during a storm and only four men survive and are washed ashore. With no food whatsoever, after a few days they resort to the most drastic solution – cannibalism. They draw straws and the unlucky one is a young man named Richard Parker who is killed and eaten.

At first, this would seem like a straightforward, albeit grisly story. But then we move forward 46 years and something strange happens. In 1884, a yacht called the Mignonette left England headed for Sydney, Australia. Carrying four men, it also shipwrecked and left the seafarers stranded with no food. As a last resort, they also cannibalized one of their own – a 17-year-old named Richard Parker. The only main difference was that the survivors saw no need to draw straws as the real-life Parker had fallen ill after drinking seawater and was considered a goner. 

Eerie coincidences aside, the case that followed after the remaining men were rescued and arrested for murder represented a landmark ruling in English law. It stated that necessity does not excuse murder, meaning you cannot kill someone else to save your own life.

9. Where the War Began and Ended

On July 21, 1861, the First Battle of Bull Run marked the first major engagement in the American Civil War. Of course, the war was horrible for many people, but it was a particularly strange inconvenience for one wholesale grocer named Wilmer McLean. He lived on a plantation near Manassas, Virginia, and the Bull Run River passed right through his land. In fact, most of the battle took place on his property and the Confederate leader, General P.G.T. Beauregard even commandeered McLean’s house to use as his headquarters.

Obviously, McLean and his family couldn’t live in the middle of a war so they relocated. A few years later, they were residing in a house near a village called Appomattox Court House. As it happens, that is where the last battle of the Civil War took place. Afterwards, Confederate General Robert E. Lee officially surrendered to Union leader Ulysses S. Grant. And he did it in the parlor of Wilmer McLean’s new home.  

The McLeans later moved back to their previous estate and simply abandoned the house in Appomattox County. They also defaulted on the loans they took out to buy it so “Surrender House”, as it came to be known, was confiscated and sold at auction. Today, it operates as a museum and it is a designated National Historical Monument. As for Wilmer McLean, he liked to say that the Civil War “began in his front yard and ended in his front parlor.”

8. The Curse of Tecumseh

Ever since 1840, American presidents have died according to a pattern which is remarkable enough that people have ascribed it to a curse. Every president who is elected in a year ending in 0 (something which happens every two decades) is fated to die in office.

First was William Henry Harrison. Elected in 1840, he died of pneumonia a month after being sworn in. Then, in 1860 came Abraham Lincoln, and we all know how that ended. In 1880, James Garfield was elected president and he was also assassinated by a man named Charles Guiteau. 

William McKinley might have escaped this alleged curse if he stuck at just one term. Alas, in 1900 he was elected president to his second term, and a year later, he was shot and killed by an anarchist. Next up was Warren G. Harding, who suffered a stroke three years after being elected in 1920. Afterwards came Franklin Roosevelt who passed away of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1945. While he did die in office, he didn’t actually die during the term which allegedly sealed his fate. And last, but not least, there was JFK, who won the 1960 election and whose assassination is all too well-known.

As you can see, seven presidents followed this extraordinary pattern. Many see it for what it probably is – a series of incredible coincidences, but others claim it is a curse placed originally on William Henry Harrison by Tecumseh, leader of the Shawnee people, for the former’s role in Tecumseh’s Rebellion. 

Ronald Reagan would have been next in line. He was elected in 1980 and, although someone did try to kill him, he survived his injuries and died of old age decades after he left office. Even if the curse was real, it appears that he broke it. 

7. The Church Explosion

At 7:25 p.m., March 1, 1950, the West Side Baptist Church in Beatrice, Nebraska, exploded due to a natural gas leak ignited by the fire from the furnace. It was a Wednesday and every Wednesday at 7:20 p.m. sharp, the church choir gathered there to practice. People were expecting the worst as they approached the smoking rubble, but it soon became apparent that nobody had been injured in the blast. Even though the choir director was very strict about tardiness, on this particular night, none of the 15 choir members arrived on time.

It wasn’t one single thing that caused the delays, either, but rather a series of minor occurrences that detained each person enough to evade the deadly blast. The reverend and his family, for example, were late because his wife had to iron a dress at the last moment. Two sisters both had car trouble. Two high school girls wanted to finish listening to a radio program, while another student was struggling with her geometry homework. The pianist fell asleep after dinner. A man was late because he wanted to finish writing a letter he kept putting off, while one woman was simply feeling lazy because it was cold outside and her home was warm and cozy. 

And so went all the other excuses. Unsurprisingly, given the nature of the circumstances, some people considered it divine intervention.

6. Right Place, Right Time

Joseph Figlock became a hero of Detroit due to a bizarre series of events that happened over the course of a year. One morning in 1937, Figlock was at his job as a street sweeper when he was struck by something that landed on his head and shoulders. That “something” was a baby girl who fell out a four-story window. Because Figlock broke her fall, the infant survived her drop that, otherwise, would have almost surely been fatal.

A year later, the street sweeper was back at his job when he was, again, hit by a falling object. And you guessed it – it was another baby. This time, it was 2-year-old David Thomas who also fell out of his window on the fourth floor. This baby did sustain some injuries but, once more, had escaped certain doom thanks to Joseph Figlock being in the right place, at the right time.

5. Miss Unsinkable

Violet Jessop was born in Argentina to Irish immigrants in 1887. When she turned 21, she found work as a ship stewardess and, in 1911, secured a position aboard the RMS Olympic, the first of the Olympic-class ocean liners built by the White Star Line at the start of the century.

At the time, these were the largest, most luxurious ships in the world. Jessop was probably thrilled with her new job but, pretty soon, she might have reconsidered her fortunes. In September 1911, Jessop was onboard the Olympic when it collided with a warship called the HMS Hawke. The collision wasn’t too bad and the ocean liner managed to make it to port without any fatalities.

This incident didn’t deter Jessop from continuing her career as a stewardess. Although she was content aboard the Olympic, her friends persuaded her that it would make for a much more exciting experience to work aboard the White Star Line’s new ocean liner. After all, this vessel was proclaimed to be “unsinkable” and its name was the Titanic. 

You already know how this went down – just four days into its maiden voyage, the Titanic hit an iceberg and sank. Jessop survived the ordeal as she was lowered down into lifeboat 16 which was later picked up by the RMS Carpathia. She later recalled that, as the boat was being lowered, an officer put a baby in her lap. Later, aboard the Carpathia, a woman leaped at her, snatched the baby and ran. Jessop always assumed that was the mother, but she never saw either one of them again.

Then World War II started and Jessop served as a nurse for the British Red Cross. She worked aboard the Britannic, which was the third and last of the Olympic-class ocean liners and had been repurposed into a hospital ship. In 1916, the vessel suffered damage from a mine explosion and sank in the Aegean Sea. For the third time in five years, Violet Jessop had survived a shipwreck, retroactively earning her the nickname “Miss Unsinkable.”

4. The Opposing Graves

Just outside the Belgian town of Mons sits the St. Symphorien Military Cemetery which serves as the final resting place for over 500 soldiers who died in the First World War.

Many of these men perished in the Battle of Mons which took place on August 23, 1914, and is considered to be the first major action of the British army in the war. One of these men, however, died a little earlier. John Parr was a private who was born in London and lied about his age so he could enlist. He served as a reconnaissance cyclist and scouted the area ahead of his battalion. However, he was gunned down by enemy fire and died on August 21, at only 17 years of age. He is generally considered to be the first British serviceman killed in action during the First World War.

His grave is at St. Symphorien and opposite of it, just a few yards away, is the grave of Private George Ellison. He died years later on November 11, 1918. This date is significant because it is, in fact, the day that Germany and the Allies signed an armistice, bringing an end to the war. George Ellison was killed just 90 minutes before peace was declared, thus giving him the unfortunate distinction of being the last British soldier killed in the war. 

These two graves face each other, although this was done completely unintentionally as nobody was aware of their “first” and “last” positions when they were buried.

3. Death at Hoover Dam

The Hoover Dam was one of the greatest, most ambitious engineering projects of its day, but it came with a heavy price as a lot of people died during construction. 

Exactly how many is a matter of debate. Officially, the death toll was 96, but historians argue that the real number would be much higher because the official version didn’t take into account workers who died off-site of construction-related injuries or illnesses. An inquiry by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation increased the number to 213 deaths between 1921 and 1935.

The first fatality was a surveyor named John Gregory Tierney who drowned in the Colorado River on December 20, 1921, after he got caught in a flash flood. Technically, another worker named Harold Connelly died first, but his demise was completely unconnected with the project as he drowned in the river when he went swimming.

Here is the truly tragic part – the last fatality registered during construction of the Hoover Dam occurred on December 20, 1935, exactly 14 years to the day after Tierney drowned, when a 25-year-old electrician’s helper plummeted 320 feet from one of the intake towers. That man was Patrick Tierney, the surveyor’s son.

2. The King and His Double

Some say that we all have a doppelganger somewhere in the world, a person who isn’t related to us in any way but they look just like us. King Umberto I of Italy found his doppelganger in 1900 when he went to eat at a little restaurant in Monza. He discovered that the proprietor looked almost exactly like him but, more than that, they had been born on the same day.

At this point, you would think this was more a case of twins separated at birth, but the coincidences did not stop there. Both men had married women named Margherita and had sons named Vittorio. Moreover, the restaurant owner had opened his establishment the day of King Umberto’s coronation.

Shocked to his core by these revelations, the king invited his doppelganger or long-lost twin to an event taking place the next day. Sadly, neither one made it. The next morning, the restaurateur was killed under unexplained conditions. Just hours later, when King Umberto found out about his demise, he was assassinated by an anarchist named Gaetano Bresci. 

1. The Writer and the Comet

The life of American writer Mark Twain has been inexorably linked to the passing of Halley’s Comet from beginning to end.

This famous comet visits us every 75 to 76 years. It will next be visible in 2061, but a noteworthy appearance happened in November 1835. Just two weeks after its perihelion (meaning the point of its orbit which is closest to the Sun), Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born in Florida, Missouri. He would go on to adopt the pen name Mark Twain and become America’s most celebrated author.

Throughout his life, Twain took a keen interest in science and he was well-aware of his connection to Halley’s Comet. In the early 20th century, the writer was getting on in years and knew that the end was near. However, he also knew that the comet was due to pass by Earth again soon, and he was convinced that he would not die before that happened. As he put it: “Now there are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.” 

He could not have been more right. Mark Twain died on April 21, 1910, just one day after Halley’s Comet reached its perihelion.