rSlash - r/Askreddit What Are The CRAZIEST Moments from History?

Episode Date: December 11, 2021

r/Askreddit Have you ever heard the phrase that truth is stranger than fiction? That's never been truer than today's Ask Reddit post, where users recount some of the most absolutely bizarre moments from history. I wasn't going to read this post, but honestly these stories are so crazy that I pretty much had to, like the one about the clown vs firefighter gang war. WTF? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to our Slash Ascreddit where we answer the question, what historical events are so absurd that they would be too strange for a fiction story or a movie? And I'll be honest, I didn't think that I was gonna cover this post because I'm not much of a history buff, but these stories are so good I had to cover it. Our first reply from Ero, the marathon at the 1904 Olympics in St. Louis. The first place finisher did most of the race in a car. He had intended to drop out and got a car back to the stadium to get his change of clothes, and just kind of started jogging when he heard the fanfare. The second place finisher was carried across the finish line, legs twitching by his trainers.

They had been refusing him water, instead giving him a mixture of brandy and rat poison for the entire race. Doping wasn't illegal yet, and this was a terrible attempt at it. So he got the gold when the first guy was revealed. The third place finisher was unremarkable somehow. The fourth finisher was a Cuban mailman who had raised the funds to attend the Olympics by running non-stop around his entire country. He landed in New Orleans and promptly lost

all of his traveling money on a riverboat casino. He ran the race in dress shoes and long trousers. He probably would have come in first. Well, second behind the car. Had it not been for the hour-long nap that he took on the side of the track after eating rotten apples that he found on the side of the race. What? The 9th and 12th place finishers were from South Africa, and they ran barefoot. South Africa didn't actually send athletes. These were students who just happened to be in town and thought it sounded fun. The 9th place finisher was chased a mile off course by angry dogs. I should note that these are the first Africans to compete in any modern Olympic event.

Half the participants had never race competitively before. Some died. St. Louis only had one water stop on the entire run. This coupled with the dusty road and exacerbated by the cars kicking up dust led to the above fatalities. And yet somehow, rat poison guys survived to get the gold. The Russian athletes arrived a week late because they were still using the Julian calendar in 1904. Beneath that duck on quack adds, it gets crazier. Uniglected to mention that the one water stop was an intentional design choice and not simply lack of oversight. The director wanted to test his theory on purposeful dehydration during a marathon, on unpaid roads while it was over 90 degrees Fahrenheit outside.

Truly next-level incompetence. Why does this feel like the plot of some 80s comedy in the same vein as like Caddy Shack or Groundhog's Day? Our next reply is from Split Diplos, the Toronto Circus Ride of 1855. The F- The Fire Department and some clowns got into a disagreement at a whorehouse and got into a punch-up. The clowns won, but the fireman returned to the circus later and started attacking in revenge. The fireman won the day, but the violence was stopped when the militia came in.

The police did nothing, so the city fired all the cops, and I mean everyone and started a new police force. I'm imagining getting into a fight with a clown, and every time you punch him it goes like, Hunkunk! Because he's got the nose, right? The nose on his face, so you punch him, Hunkunk! Our next reply is from Happy Becks. Back in the 1780s, after being elected president, George Washington sent a letter to Congress that basically said, Hey, looking forward to working with y'all, this will be exciting. However, George wasn't very eloquent and was generally busy and stressed. So he asked his friend,

James Madison, to compose a letter to Congress, which James did. When Congress received the letter, they decided to respond in kind, not wanting to cite the new president. They wanted to send back a letter that essentially said, we're glad you're excited, so are we! So they decided there was no one better in Congress to write the letter than their very own James Madison. So James writes a response to the letter that he wrote in the first place and Congress sent it to George. George decided to respond with something along the lines of,

oh, good, I'm excited that you're excited too. And... And since his buddy James did such an excellent job with the first letter, George again went to him and had him... and had him compose the response. Congress received the letter. And again, not wanting to be awkward and ignore the president decided to reply with yet another letter that basically said, Hey, we're excited that

you're excited that we're excited. And once again, they had James Madison compose the response. So James Madison, future fourth president of the United States wound up writing himself four letters back and forth between George Washington and Congress. And he was just too embarrassed to tell anyone about it while this was going on. Our next reply is from civilian. Juan Pujo Garcia. He was a World War II spy who won both the German Iron Cross and the Order of the British Empire for spying.

He initially approached British intelligence and offered his services and was refused. Undeterred, he created the persona of a loyal in-group supporter, became a German agent, gathered a payroll of fake sub-agents, all bankrolled by Germany. Persuaded the German Navy to chase a fake convoy, then finally got recruited by the Allies. He finally fed misleading info to the Axis about the D-Day landings, causing them to deploy forces to the wrong locations, even after the invasion had begun. Beneath that, Leon Zero adds, on occasion, he had to invent reasons why his agents had failed to report easily available information that the Germans would eventually know about. For example, he reported that his made up Liverpool agent had fallen ill just before a major fleet movement from that port, and so he was unable to report the events. To support this story, Garcia said that his made-up agent eventually died, and an obituary was placed in the local newspaper as further

evidence to convince the Germans. The Germans were also persuaded to pay a pension to the agent's widow. Wait, wait, what? This guy made up a fake spy in England, and then he killed the fake spy, and then he convinced the Germans to pay money to the fake spy in England and then he killed the fake spy and then he convinced the Germans to pay money to the fake spy's widow. So who got that money? Was it Garcia? Apparently, the Germans paid Garcia $340,000 to support his network of agents, which at one point totaled 27 made up characters.

So looking into this, apparently Garcia created different personalities for each of his made up characters and even unique handwriting for each of the 27 characters as well. And throughout all of this, even though he was speeding information from the Germans to the Brits, they gave him a medal for it. Wow, what a spy! This guy puts James Bond to shame. Our next reply is from Sugoi Baka Mat. When Napoleon returned to France from his exile, a regiment of French soldiers were sent by the coalition powers to intercept him. Upon seeing them, Napoleon approached and simply said, if you wish to kill your emperor, here I am.

The commander of the regiment ordered his men to open fire. Out of the 2000 soldiers present, not a single one obeyed the order. They all joined Napoleon and marched to Paris with him. He was truly a real life Mary Sue, at least until he was thoroughly beaten and exiled again permanently this time. Our next replacement, Gengalbot. A guy broke into the Prime Minister of Canada's house with a knife, intent to kill the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister's wife hears someone walking around downstairs and tries to wake her husband.

The Prime Minister tells her that it's nothing and to go back to sleep. She gets up to investigate and finds the knife-wielding assassin. She grabs an inuid statue of a loon and beats the stuffing out of the guy. The Prime Minister then runs into the hall and helps his wife take down the assassin. These are two people in their 60s just kicking the shit out of some dude in his late 20s. She calls the local police who arrive only to realize they forgot the effing key to the front gate so they send someone back to the station to get it. The assassin was later confirmed to have major mental health issues. Less than five years later, he was successfully treated for his schizophrenia, released from his treatment facility, and formally apologized to the couple. And then, beneath that, we have this contribution from C to C. Imagine being his family and getting

that call. Miss, I'm so sorry to wake you, but your son's been arrested. He tried to kill the Prime Minister and his wife. My God, are they okay? The Prime Minister, yeah, they're completely fine. Your son, however, sustained multiple injuries and is currently being treated at the hospital. Oh dear, I suppose the police did what they had to do to stop him. The police? No, no, no.

They accidentally locked themselves out of the gate. It was actually the Prime Minister who stopped your son. Well, technically his wife. The prime minister showed up after she had already subdued the would-be assassin. The prime minister's wife? Isn't she pinching her age? Yeah, however, apparently she's so quite formidable in a brawl as your son soon discovered. Beat the stuffing out of him.

Blood everywhere. A real badger that one. Wouldn't want to find her in a dark alley if you know what I mean. Oh yeah, your son, sorry about that. It would be almost likely being the ICU for a day or two with a skull fracture and broken ribs. And OP includes a picture of their prime minister and his wife. And yeah, these two people look old like grandparents age. So imagine having a knife and getting your ass handed to you by a grandma and a grandpa essentially. Our next reply from Victorus Ball.

When Ivan the Terrible died, he had two sons. He had clubbed the third one to death. The older son, Fiator, who was most likely mentally disabled, became the puppet of his region Boris Gudenov. The younger son, Demetri, was sent into exile in Uglic. The accepted historical narrative is that Gudenov had Demetri murdered in Uglic so that when Fyodor died he could usurp the throne. However, after Fyodor died, no less than three different people claiming to be Demetri

tried to take power. These false Demetri's provided Poland with enough calls for war to invade Russia, starting a war that killed nearly half the Russian population. The first false demitry forced himself on Gudanov's daughter and massacred his family. He ended up almost converting Russia to Catholicism and was subsequently beaten to death by a mob, and his remains fired out of a cannon in the direction of Poland. The second false demitry was possibly a converted Jew. Very little is known about the third false demetry to the point that there may have been a fourth false demetry or

possibly a fifth false demetry. And as some others have pointed out, I forgot to mention a bizarre twist. False demetry number two actually claimed to be false demetry number one. The guy that got fired out of the cannon. I'm surprised Bore's good nod didn't take the throne. I guess they didn't think that he was good enough? Our next reply is from infernal contraption the RMS Carmania in 1914 just after the outbreak of the First World War Germany had a cunning idea They needed to ensure naval superiority in the Atlantic, but there was no way they could manufacture enough new battleships to compete with Britain. So they took the SMS Cap Trafflegar.

An 18,000 ton luxury ocean liner and retrofitted it with 2.1-inch guns and 6 1-pound pom-pom auto-canons. They also had one of its funnels removed so that this colossal Frankenstein's monster of a ship would appear for all intents and purposes to be a cruiser under the command of the British merchant navy. The ruse complete, it would prowl the South Atlantic under false flags, dressed up as a British ship. It could approach the British supply line and, at the last minute, fly the German colors before wreaking havoc and undermining the nearly unimpeachable British Navy. They even renamed it the RMS Carmania. RMS standing for the Royal Mailship, a type of fast emery used to carry international posts, to complete the illusion and ensure that it would never

be recognized as being formally a German passenger cargo ship until it was far too late. Military historians generally agree that this was a bold but brilliant plan. At a fraction of the time and cost of a new custom-built battleship, the newly christened RMS Karmaniya should cost the British fleets thousands of lives and millions of tons of law ship before it could be reliably identified, except for one tiny problem. On the 14th of September 1914, after a fruitless first voyage ending with no sightings of any targets and being forced to refuel empty handed, the German RMS Kermania met its first ever opponent just off the coast of Trinidad. It was the real RMS Kermania.

A 19,000 ton ocean liner retrofitted with 8.4.7 inch guns and deployed as a cruiser by the real British merchant navy. Four miles away, the crew of the real RMS realized the ship they were looking at was not in fact the ship they were standing on and opened fire. It took two hours of vicious broadsides, but eventually the German doppelganger was sunk with the maimed victor limping away under escorts to Brazil for repairs. Bonus fact. Towards the end of the fight, the first ship to arrive was a German ship called the SS Cronprin's Wilhelm. At this point, the British ship was barely afloat, damaged beneath the water line, and likely to be finished off by a stiff breeze.

But the Cronprin's Wilhelm just turned and left without getting involved. Turns out the Cron Prince had been listening to SOS calls from both ships, and they knew the RMS Carmania had sunk, but they weren't sure which ship was which. Rather than investigate and likely get caught by other British ships answering the same calls, they decided it might be a trap and left them to it. Because of this, the Karmania was rescued and went on to sail for another 18 years. Our next reply is from Zach Pinsle. The assassination of US President James Garfield.

Basically, this guy named Charles wrote some essays campaigning for Ulysses S. Grants failed 1880 nomination. And when Garfield ran for president, Charles controlled F the other politicians name and replaced it with Garfield's name. When Garfield won, Charles marched up to the White House claiming to be owed some credit for that and wanted to be rewarded for his efforts by being made a console to Vienna or Paris. He was told to scram and he was so mad that he decided then and there that he

teach them a lesson by killing Garfield. So he went to a store and chose to spend a little extra cash on an ivory handled pistol because he thought that it would look better in a museum as the gun that killed the president. He was short by $1 so the shopkeepers lowered the price. Charles then set about making plans for his eventual arrest, such as trying to tour the prison where he assumed that he would be jailed. His first opportunity to kill Garfield came as the president was seeing his wife off at a train station, but Charles felt that it would be cruel to kill a man in front of his sick wife so he opted to wait. His next chance popped up as Garfield was hanging out with Robert Todd Lincoln, who had a

knack for being close with presidents who got killed. Charles walks up, fires his gun, and was immediately arrested. Thankfully, Charles wasn't all bad, and as he was being loaded up, he handed the cop his gun, which the cop had forgotten to grab from him. Garfield was taken back home, and doctors dug around inside him with dirty fingers looking for the bullet. We'll come back to that. To Navy rigged up a makeshift air conditioner for Garfield to help with his fever, and they even called in a cameo from Alexander Graham Bell to make a metal detector to find

the bullet. But they didn't account for Garfield being on a metal frame bid or bother to check the side of the body where the bullet was lodged. Not getting any better, they sent Garfield by train to a cottage on the beach where volunteers even helped build a rail line to the cottage to make it easier. Remember how they kept digging in the wound with dirty fingers and tools? Yeah, that got infected and after nearly 80 days of misery Garfield died. Modern doctors and historians believe he would have likely been fine if they had just treated the wound

and not worried about digging out the bullets. Or, at the very least, it's been smarter about getting the bullet out. Charles sat in jail until his trial where he insulted his lawyers, gave his testimony in the form of poetry, and passed notes to people in the audience asking for legal advice. He sang, he put out ads in the paper looking for a wife, and he had plans to go on a speaking tour once he was found innocent. He wasn't. Charles was sentenced to death by hanging. He danced his way up to the rope and sang a song that he wrote. The orchestra he requested was denied. He was hanged, and

now part of his brain is on display in Philadelphia. That was our slash ascreddit, and if you like this content be sure to follow my podcast because I put out new Reddit podcast episodes every single day. podcast episodes every single day.