10 Historical Events That Are So Crazy That They Should Be Adapted Into Hollywood

You can see lots of gunslingers, cowboys, and outlaws in every film about “the wild west”. But the concept of the “wild west” was completely fiction and this image emerged because of a town in Nevada called Palisade. The town started some rumors during the 1870s to get more tourism revenue. They staged bank robberies and gunfights whereas the town was actually quite peaceful with a really low crime rate, and they didn’t even have a sheriff. This hoax continued for roughly 30 years.

The Hmong are a native tribe of Asia that once belonged to one of the French colonial territories in Southeast Asia. When the French started to impose heavy taxes on them, they revolted against them in 1918, using their own guns and gunpowder. This incident is known as the “War of the Insane”. The natives managed to win the majority of their rebellion. The French were too scared when they heard some rumors about the Hmong soldiers using black magic. The rebellion ended in 1921 when the French gave the tribe a special status.

The men’s marathon in the 1904 Olympic Games was surely an unbelievable event. Except for a few of them, no runners had previous running experience or were even sportsmen. The winner of the race, an American named Fred Lorz, hitchhiked in a car after running only nine miles. When this was found out, he got banned from the competition for life.

The runner who took the second place, Thomas Hicks, actually didn’t want to continue ten miles before the finishing line, but his trainers forced him to finish. He was even given a common rat poison to help him finish the race. He managed to get the gold medal that year, but he never managed to pursue a career in running. Andarin Carvajal who was a Cuban postman ran the race in his usual clothes. He got hungry during the race and took a break to eat when he saw some apple trees. Shortly after, he started to suffer from stomach ache as he ate some rotten apples but he still managed to finish the race in fourth place!

Wojtek was a bear who got adopted by the Polish soldiers after the invasion of Poland by the Soviets in 1939. Soldiers taught him to smoke cigarettes (which he sometimes ended up eating) and drink alcohol just like them.

He became their unofficial mascot and soldiers took him with them wherever they went. According to the rumors, he even helped them carry some really heavy crates of artillery shells during the Battle of Monte Cassino.

After WWII, the CIA became increasingly involved in the assassinations of many political figures and especially foreign leaders. One of their targets was the Cuban revolutionary and politician Fidel Castro who was both the president and the Prime Minister of Cuba. The CIA attempted to kill Castro a whopping 638 times and each time they failed miserably. Their last attempt was in the year 2000 when they placed 90 kgs of explosives under a stage Castro was supposed to give a speech on.

Batavia was a Dutch East India Company ship that set sail on her first voyage on October 27, 1628. Since the ship was carrying a lot of gold and silver, the ship commander Francisco Pelsaert and the captain Ariaen Jacobsz made a plan to take over the ship and escape somewhere to start a new life. When they molested a high-ranking female passenger on the ship, their plan was to stir up some turmoil in the ship. According to what they thought, Pelsaert was going to take strong actions against molestation on the ship. Then Jacobsz, and a merchant on the ship named Jeronimus Cornelisz who was also their ally were going to talk to the men who would be fed up by Pelsaert’s strict regulations, into joining their team. Their plan failed when the female passenger was able to identify her molesters, however.

The ship was wrecked when it hit a reef on June 4, 1629. Some men drowned, but the remained survivors made it to a nearby island. But they were unable to find any fresh water on the island. Jacobsz and Pelsaert went to find fresh water along with a couple of survivors. When the search party finally arrived in Batavia (now central Jakarta), Jakobsz got arrested due to negligence. Pelsaert was requested to go back, rescue the remaining survivors, and bring back whatever he can find from the destroyed ship. When he went back, he realized the survivors killed each other. Cornelisz was in charge of the group of remaining survivors. As he was still planning to get the gold and silver from the wrecked ship, he gathered a group of very devoted men around him and he made them kill other survivors, accusing them of something they didn’t commit. He also left a group of soldiers on another island promising them to find fresh water and food. His plan was to reduce the number of survivors to 45 so, the supplies would last longer.

The soldiers that were left to die managed to find water and food on their own, and realized they were tricked. They then defeated Cornelisz and took him captive. Eventually, they hanged Cornelisz along with some of his men. In the end, only 68 people that were on Batavia managed to stay alive out of 341.

Did you know two great paleontologists Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh were once fighting fiercely over fossil bones? This incident is known as the “Bone Wars”. They used to be close friends when they first met and even named species after each other as a gesture. But perhaps because of their scientific differences, their relationship went south after a while, and they ended up turning against one another. They became fierce rivals and did many unbelievable things to lay their hands on the fossil bones before the other. Between the years 1877 and 1892, both paleontologists spent a ton of their own money to purchase dinosaur bones from the fossil hunters. While their rivalry led to many discoveries of various dinosaur species, they ended up completely ruining themselves.

Hiroo Onoda was a Japanese man who had samurai ancestors. He enrolled in the Imperial Japanese Army Infantry at the age of 18. He was sent to Lubang Island in the Philippines on December 26, 1944, to stop all the enemy attacks on the island. His instructions clearly stated that he wasn’t allowed to surrender or commit suicide no matter the circumstances. When he arrived on the islands, the were already some soldiers. They didn’t let him carry out his orders. Eventually, the island was taken over by the United States and Philippine Commonwealth forces on February 28, 1945. Onoda and three other soldiers managed to survive. They went to the hills and started to live there as Japanese holdouts. They had a few shootings with the police and participated in some guerilla activities. Onoda saw some pamphlets about the end of the war but didn’t believe them thinking the enemy was trying to trick him into coming out. It was February 20, 1974, when a Japanese traveler named Norio Suzuki met Onoda in the forest and the two became friends. However, Onoda was still reluctant to go out as he was waiting for orders from his senior officer. Upon hearing Suzuki’s story, the Japanese government tracked down Onoda’s senior officer. Finally, in 1974, Onoda was convinced the war was over when his senior officer told him the news in person.

In the late 1960s and 1970s, the government sterilized the unaware Native American women throughout the entire United States. Between 1973 and 1976, 3,406 American Indian women in total were surgically sterilized without their consent. They were told that they were going to get check-ups and abortions.

Lewis Williams was a slave who was born in Kentucky. He managed to escape from slavery and then was able to start a new life in Cincinnati when he was just a little kid. However, he fell in love with a girl when he became a young man. He once asked a fortune teller if the girl also loved him back. When the fortune teller asked him about his past, the naive man told her his entire story. When the woman sent word to his slave master, he had Williams arrested. With the help of Rev. William Troy, Williams made an escape plan. Since the reverend was working with the people of color in the city, he easily managed to find him a body double. They managed to swap the two men in the middle of a courthouse without alerting the authorities. When the police realized the situation, they began a manhunt. William’s was hiding in Troy’s house. Even though he knew about the risks involved, Troy kept on helping Williams. Since the police were relentlessly searching for him, Williams had to leave as soon as possible. Troy made him practice walking like a woman and then put him in disguise to send him off to Canada. Williams managed this hard task and eventually escaped.