“The Largest Man-Made Whirlpool Ever”: 41 Shocking Stories From History That Are Somehow True

During WW1 The German navy built a ship and painted it to make it look like a British ship called the RMS Carmania in order to infiltrate and destroy British convoys. On the ships first outing, the first enemy it encountered was the real RMS Carmania, which promptly sunk it.

The life of Harriet Tubman, one of the rare examples of someone who is a household name for being a bada*s who was actually about ten times more bada*s than people know about.

Things she did other than the Underground Railroad:

1) She financed and recruited for John Brown's Harper's Ferry slabe revolt raid, and the only reason she didn't fight in person was she was bedridden with malaria

2) During the Civil War, she joined the Union Army as a cook/nurse

3) She somehow class shifted into a spy/scout and helped Union leaders plan raids into Confederste territory, and she assassinated several Confederates

4) She rose in the ranks until she commanded a small raiding force of 300 Union troops from the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment, the second black US Army unit ever.

5) Her command, Company C, 54th, raided southern plantations, slaughtered slave drivers, and freed captive slaves

6) In the Combahee Ferry raid, where the 54th freed 700 slaves, she was also in command of three Union frigates, and when a Confederate division was advancing on them she fired broadsides from the three naval warships directly into the enemy troops.

7) She survived the war, and immediately turned around and started fighting for women's suffrage.

Joshua Norton was just this random crazy guy from San Francisco who hated all this political nonsense that was going on at the time and figured he could do the job better at it himself, and thus "The Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico" was born. While he held no real power, the people liked him so much that they treated him like royalty anyways.

Any currency issued under his name was treated like real money at many establishments.

One day, he was arrested by a private security force because of his mental health, which enrage practically all of San Francisco. The Police Chief let him go because he had committed no crime, and Norton gave an Imperial Pardon to the guy who arrested him. After this incident, any police officer Norton passed would salute him.

Another time, when a riot had formed and was getting pretty violent, Norton simply stood in front of the mob and calmly prayed, which manged to disperse the mob.

And that's not even a fraction of the crazy stuff that he did.

4 Auschwitz prisioners stole n**i uniforms, and a car. Only one of them was speaking german so he was wearing the highest rank uniform. When they left the camp they've encoutered 2 patrols. 1st patrol (with some high ranked guy) just hailed to them. 2nd patrol with 2 low rank soliders told them they can't leave becouse orders etc. Guy speaking german started screaming at them so loud and so realisticly they just said "we're sorry, go ahead".

Sergeant Stubby. During world War 1, a soldier found a stray dog when training on the Yale University campus, and took a liking to him. The soldier snuck the dog onto the ship when he had to leave campus and when the dog was found by the commanding officer, he was allowed to stay because he had learned how to salute.

Stubby was injured a few times during the war, but he was useful with alerting his squad of surprise mustard gas attacks and gunshots before the human ear could detect the sound. He also found and comforted wounded soldiers and caught a German soldier by the leg of his pants until American soldiers got to him.

AKA. The bestest boi to ever live.

In 1993 a man taught geese to follow his ultralight aircraft glider. They didn't know how to migrate, so he flew all the way to an area where geese generally migrate to with his geese following.

The death of Ken Rex McElroy.
He terrorized Skidmore, Missouri for decades. Stalking, assaulting, murdering and r***d two 14 year olds who were his “wives.” He had an expensive attorney so he was never charged. The law never helped the poor town.
One day, the town gathered for a meeting on how to deal with McElroy. Details get a little vague here, but apparently someone alerted the room that McElroy was in the bar up the street. Quietly and calmly, everyone got up and walked over to the bar. As McElroy got into his truck, someone shot him in the back of the head. The town just went back to their business.
When the witnesses (like the entire town) were questioned, everyone claimed they didn’t see anything. No one as ever been arrested.

In 1971, a teenage girl named Juliane Koepcke was on a plane that was struck by lightning and disintegrated in the air. She plummeted 3,000 meters strapped to her seat, and landed in the Amazon rainforest.

Her mom had been on the flight with her, and Juliane searched in vain for her mom, but Juliane was the sole survivor of the crash. She survived 11 days alone, treating her maggot-infested wounds with fuel and using tracking techniqies her father had taught her, before she found a boat that she used to make her way back to civilization.

What an absolute legend.

Jeanne de Clisson (1300-1359) was married to a French nobleman who was beheaded for treason by the French King. Enraged, she sold their estate and purchased three black warships with red sails, and became a pirate queen of the English Channel who targeted French ships. She became known as “The Lioness of Brittany” and in her 13 years of piracy she would slaughter every member of a ship’s crew except for one so that last survivor could go back and tell the French king what had happened.

Jack. A Baboon who was employed to change rail signals.

“After initial skepticism, the railway decided to officially employ Jack once his job competency was verified. The baboon was paid twenty cents a day, and a half-bottle of beer each week. It is widely reported that in his nine years of employment with the railroad, Jack never made a mistake.”

The escape from Antarctica by the members of the Antarctic expedition led by Ernest Shackleton. The stuff they went through was unbelievable. Their boat, the Endurance was crushed by ice floes. They were stranded on the floes for over a year in temperatures well below freezing. They then took to three boats around 22 feet in length across the antarctic ocean looking for land. There were about 10 men in each boat. They missed reaching land by just a few miles at times. Two thirds of them got stranded on Elephant Island surrounded by ice while one of the boats went out in search of rescue. That boat made it through the Drake Passage, one of the deadliest places in the ocean. All but three of them got stranded with little food and water while the three men who left became the first people the cross South Georgia on foot. They found civilization. Rescued the men who came through the Drake Passage. Waited months until they could rescue those on Elephant Island. Every single person who came on the initial voyage survived with the worst lasting consequence being a single foot amputation.

Timothy Dexter was frequently given terrible business advice that would somehow through a stroke of luck pay off. He sold coal to Newcastle and made a profit.

He became insanely wealthy, dressed in a strange manner, and acted weird in the company of the incredibly wealthy elite he had accidentally stumbled into.

He spent a lot of time basically gaslighting his own wife for his own amusement. For quite some time he acted as if she had died and was a ghost, even introducing her to other people as his "wife's ghost". He at one point even faked his own death so he could see how people would react at his funeral.

He also wrote a book that was a long winded rant about everything that upset him. The book included no punctuation. He made a second edition with several pages of punctuation attached to the end that the reader could "distribute as they saw fit".

Basically a real life s**tpost.

In the Middle Ages gays and lesbians would become nuns and monks to avoid persecution, and since religion was a heavy influence in those days it was seen as noble that they were dedicating themselves to god, they would have “special friends” and since no one could get pregnant it wasn’t that big of an issue.

Unsinkable Sam. A cat that survived the sinking of three different ship during WWII.

In 2007 a paraglider got trapped in the updraft of two joining thunderstorms and was lifted to an altitude of 33,000 feet. She landed over three hours later about sixty kilometers north of her starting position having survived extreme cold, lightning and lack of oxygen.

The entire life of Julie d' aubigny. Bisexual swordmaster, heartthrob turned opera singer who lived her life entirely for the lolz. Beat the s**t out of dudes in sword duels, and doing it topless whenever anyone doubted she was a lady. Got in trouble for making out with ladies at royal balls. Once became a nun to f**k a nun and then set fire to the convent.

S**t is so wild, it's insane there's not a blockbuster movie about her.

The great molasses flood of 1919, a tank filled with 2m gallons of molasses burst and sent a tidal wave of molasses through the streets of Boston, 21 people were k**led.

The Carrington Event.

In 1859 the Earth was hit by a geomagnetic storm from the sun. It caused auroras as far south as Rome. Telegraph wires caught fire and in general it was chaos.

If this happened today it would likely cause massive blackouts for weeks or even months and cause trillions in damage.

President Andrew Jackson's funeral in 1845, his pet parrot had to be removed because it was swearing loudly.

The East German balloon escape.

In 1979, two families escaped East Germany to West Germany by a homemade hot air balloon.