History Lovers Share 72 Fascinating Anecdotes Mixing Humor, Tragedy And The Unexpected

Her family were traditional healers and Karuhimbi was believed to have magical powers. During the genocide she sheltered more than 100 people in her two room house. To maintain her reputation she painted herself and her house with herbs that would irritate the skin of whoever touched them. She threatened that anyone who entered her house to k**l the refugees would unleash the wrath of God upon themselves.

His captors called him “The Stupid,” but his mind was a fortress. The incredible story of Douglas Hegdahl, a young U.S. Navy sailor captured during the Vietnam War, is a powerful example of how ingenuity and an exceptional memory can become weapons in the face of impossible odds. After being blown overboard from his ship and taken prisoner in 1967, Hegdahl quickly realized that his low rank and youthful appearance gave him an opportunity. He began to feign illiteracy and a simple-minded demeanor, an act so convincing that his North Vietnamese captors deemed him a low-value prisoner.
This perception of his incompetence was a brilliant ruse. While others were subjected to brutal interrogations and t*****e, Hegdahl was given more freedom to move around the infamous "Hanoi Hilton" prison camp. He used this liberty not to escape, but to gather vital intelligence. With the help of a fellow POW, he developed a system to memorize the names, capture dates, and other personal details of over 250 American prisoners. He committed all of this information to memory by singing it to the tune of "Old MacDonald Had a Farm." He also carried out small acts of sabotage, such as putting dirt in the gas tanks of prison trucks.
When he was unexpectedly released in 1969 as a propaganda gesture, Hegdahl was initially reluctant to go, worried that his early release would be seen as a betrayal. However, senior POWs ordered him to accept the offer, recognizing the immense value of the information he carried. Upon his return, Hegdahl's detailed testimony helped the U.S. government confirm the identities of numerous prisoners previously listed as missing in action, expose the appalling conditions in the camp, and gave families of the missing desperately needed hope. His remarkable courage and cleverness turned a devastating situation into a stunning victory of human spirit and intelligence.

During the American Revolution, an enslaved man named Billy was charged with treason and sentenced to hang. Cleverly, he argued that since he was legally considered property, he was not a citizen and could not commit treason against a government to which he owed no allegiance. Billy was subsequently pardoned.

The best farming land was reserved for whites, so she was given a barren plot. Oil was discovered there, and she became one of the country's first black millionaires.

She saw him in a local bar, poured gasoline on him and set him on fire. He died. She was sentenced to 9.5 years in prison.

Triboulet, a notorious jester for Louis XII and Francis I once slapped the king on the b**t, which greatly angered him, but then was given a chance to be forgiven if he could think of something more clever. He said "I'm so sorry I mistook you for the Queen!" When he was sentenced to death for making fun of people, he was allowed to choose how he would die. So he chose to die of old age. ...
The speechless King let him go.

When the 13-year-old tried to return to school in Kokomo, Indiana, hundreds of parents and teachers petitioned to have him removed, and his family was forced to leave town after a bullet was fired at their house

"People would get up and leave so they would not have to sit anywhere near me. Even at church, people would not shake my hand." Ryan White was just 13 years old when he was diagnosed with AIDS. A hemophiliac since birth, the Indiana teen contracted HIV through a tainted blood transfusion — yet he was bullied and ostracized by his peers and the community at large for having the "gay disease." But the brave teenager persevered and helped change the negative stigma around the disease before dying at age 18.

His experiments were elaborate farces intended to protect inmates. He was the only person acquitted of war crimes at the 1947 Auschwitz trials after many inmates testified in his favour.

For Example, Ida pinned a large diamond brooch to her cheap sweater and officials assumed it was fake. They repeated this trick several times.

Both girls were born in Sunderland, Louise in 1901, Ida in 1904. By 1934 both girls, now considered spinsters, were living together in London and working civil service jobs although Ida would soon be a successful romance author under the pen name Mary Burchell (her first book was published in 1936). Ida and Louise both had a passion for opera and frequently traveled so they could see their favorite operas. That year Ida and Louise were both in Salzburg attending an opera festival. They became acquainted with a Romanian opera singer named Viorica Ursuleac and her Austrian husband, a conductor named Clemens Krauss who were both secretly involved in helping Jews escape from the N***s. The sisters were told about the plight of Jews in Austria and Germany and what they heard moved them so much that they knew they needed to act. Back in Britain the sisters contributed their own money and later donations from friends to help resettle Jews in Britain. Later they agreed to covertly transport expensive jewelry owned by Jews out of occupied territory. This was illegal as Jews weren't allowed to take any valuable items out of the country so Ida and Louise took a big risk doing this. That's when Ida had to transport the large diamond brooch and got the idea to pin it to the front of her cheap cardigan from Marks and Spencer's. It worked so well that Ida and Louise repeated the ruse several more times. On the rare occasions when they were stopped by officials they would “do the nervous British spinster act” and act so crazy that any official would back off. As an example I'll quote this anecdote from the article "When an Austrian frontier official questioned Louise’s opulent string of pearls that she was wearing along with her otherwise inexpensive outfit, she acted affronted, exclaiming, “And why not?!’ She frantically ran to a mirror and looked at herself, all the while yelling at the inspector, “What is wrong with my appearance? What were you trying to imply?” until the inspector fled Louise’s crazy act." For their heroism they were awarded "Righteous Among the Nations" from Yad Vashem in 1965.