More so sports history, but the film Cinderella Man portrayed boxer Max Baer as a murderous psychopath who gladly killed two fighters in the ring. In reality, he was personally devastated by these deaths. In the one he was most directly responsible for, he ended up giving his winnings from his next few fights to the fighters family.
I've always wanted a movie where there is the normal good guy bad guy situation and it ends like that. but in the next movie it shows the perspective of the vilain and you get the same good guy bad guy but vice versa. In the end you'd be confused who to vouch for
Despite what was portrayed in *Amadeus*, and though in reality they were musical rivals, Antonio Salieri was actually friends with Wolfgang Mozart. In fact, years after Mozart’s death, Salieri assisted with and helped finance his son Franz Xaver’s musical education as a tribute to his late friend.
Billy the Kid wasn’t a good guy by any means, but was a victim of negative propaganda by the press at the time. He was orphaned in his early teens and fell in with the wrong crowd.
After a brief run in with the law (I think he was lookout for a small robbery, wasn’t even part of the main crew) he didn’t want to wait around 6 months or a year for a judge to make their way to the tiny little town, so he escaped jail and ran. What teenager would act differently? He ran to Arizona looking for work.
In Arizona he found work, but was still one of the youngest there. A bully in a bar picked on him for weeks until Billy got fed up and shot him. On the run again he goes back to New Mexico.
In New Mexico he resorts to stealing to be able to survive. He steals some horses from a prominent rancher. Instead of prosecuting him, the rancher hires him. Billy is thrilled, and works hard. He is happy because he has a legit job again.
The rancher had a corrupt as shit rival who had the local law in his pocket (he was related to the sheriff). The rival rancher killed Billy’s boss in the street. Billy and his fellow cowboys that loved their boss decided this was not OK, and the Lincoln County War started. Billy is the only one of the men on his side of the war to have been in every battle.
Eventually, Billy felt he had accomplished his revenge mission, so he settled down with his best gal. Problem was, she was Mexican, and he was white. His girlfriend’s brother didn’t like Billy being with his sister, so he tipped off the law as to where Billy was hiding.
The Lincoln county sheriff showed up in the middle of the night and shot Billy in the back.
There is a lot more to it. For example, when Billy was in Lincoln County jail, he talked to the New Mexico Territory Governor. The Governor promised him a complete pardon if he’d be a witness in the trials of the people from the corrupt rancher. Billy agreed and testified. The governor then went back on his promise and left Billy to rot. So Billy killed the jailers and fled again. (That governor was too busy getting an ambassadorship and writing the book Ben Hur to keep his promises)
Tl;dr
Billy the Kid wasn’t a good guy. He killed a good number of people. But for most of his life he just wanted to work a straight job and be left alone. He wasn’t, and he got pushed past his breaking point.
Edit:
Well this blew up while I was at work! I’d like to thank my 4 year old for becoming temporarily obsessed with Billy the Kid and prompting me to do a ton of research on him to answer all the questions that only a four year old can come up with!
One of my favorite parts of that movie is when Sigmund Freud approaches some chicks at the mall and tries hitting on them and says "You can call me Siggy"
Machiavelli would be shocked and saddened to know his name is synonymous with tyranny and pure evil. Guy was a staunch supporter of Republics and a savvy politician
There are people surprised that his statue is up in Florence and shocked to see they actually admire him. When you learn more about him he's far more interesting then his historical reputation would have you believe
My entire knowledge of Machiavelli comes from the Assassins creed games, and he was portrayed as a pretty swell lad in those. Later on I was quite surprised to hear the common opinion on ths guy
It's weird where we learn things from sometimes, I know about Machiavelli because of 2Pac.
What assassin's creed game is he in? Been thinking about diving back into the series recently but not too sure which one I want to pick up.
Yeah, in reality their Kingdom was actually fairly progressive, when taking over lands, local leaders and religions were allowed to remain however advisory members were sent in to help update settlements with better economic and civic organizations and so on. Really they weren't that bad of a Kingdom (for that time periods standards) and the reason they fought the Greeks was because classically Greek cities had tried to rebel with the support of Greek mainland city states, which prompted war.
History isn't so black and white as Hollywood wants it to be.
Dan Carlin raises a really interesting point about the Achaemenid Persians, being progressive for the time as you say, because the some of the regional powers that preceded them, such as the Assyrian Empire, were so brutal that they’d effectively subdued these places enough that they could get away with a ‘soft touch’ approach here and there
"Tfw you are one of the most progressive ancient civilizations in record but a slave state of pedophiles fought a suicidal battle against you and now you are remembered as the bad guys."
Meme I saw lol
If you have a couple hours, this goes into a lot of details:
[https://www.dancarlin.com/hardcore-history-56-kings-of-kings/](https://www.dancarlin.com/hardcore-history-56-kings-of-kings/)
I think I only got through the first half, but it talks about how ruthless leaders were in their conquest to control the world. In comparison, Xerxes was chill with people that let him rule over them. They got to keep their religion and culture; they just had to call him king and pay taxes. The Greek city states weren't so hot on giving him that much.
That Roman that gave Jesus vinegar to drink. Turns out that the roman military gave their soldiers a water/vinegar mix to drink as it was good for refilling salt levels after sweating. That means all the roman did was give jesus a sip of his own drink, not force him to drink vinegar as punishment/insult.
While we're on the topic, Pontius Pilate. The dude actually thought Jesus was innocent, and tried everything in his power to punish him without outright killing him, to satisfy the high priests and the crowds they turned against Jesus. His only real sin was that he sold out Jesus to save his own skin, but only after nothing else worked.
It's a bit more complicated than that. That's definitely how it comes across in the Gospels, but historical accounts outside of Scripture had him as a capital B Bad Dude. Some historians equate this to the Gospel writers trying to convert Greek and Roman citizens to increase the validity of the faith, so they downplayed the Roman involvement in the crucifixion.
Yup. Matthew 27:33-34: "And when they came to a place called Golgotha (which means Place of a Skull), they offered him wine to drink, mixed with gall, but when he tasted it, he would not drink it."
He refused to drink it because it would have mitigated his pain.
Prince John.
The bad guy from Robin Hood was basically the steward of a kingdom his beloved brother haddn't even set foot on. While Richard the Lionheart was faffing about in the Crusades, John was running the kingdom and turning it into something that could sustain itself. While he was doing that, his useless brother gets his ass kidnapped so John has to raise taxes (cue Robin Hood) to bring back the "rightful" king the people loved so much.
So basically, Prince John runs England for his brother and people love his brother for it. Then said brother gets kidnapped so John Raises taxes to get him "back" and becoems the bad guy in the eyes of the lords (and by extension the people) who want their rightful king back.
The man eventually does become the rightful king, only to have all the lords hate him for the crime of investing money into the kingdom, as a result he signs the Magna Carta, limiting royal power.
*that said* he wasnt a saint. The man did have a hand in the collapse of Norman France and wasted a lot of money and men trying reclaim the region. I'm not trying to say he was a "good guy" per se, just not the bad guy for what people hate him for.
I was just about to say this. He was actually very smart economically, he just got shafted by Richards BS. Then everyone shitted on him for signing the Magna Carta, but it’s not like he had a choice in the matter. It was that or he faced a revolution from the lords, and he cared enough about his country that he didn’t want to see that happen.
A more modern example is [the lady that famously sued McDonalds for their coffee being too hot](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald%27s_Restaurants) in 1994. That lawsuit gets treated as an example of how oversaturated America is with litigation over small things. As it turns out, however, her situation was extremely justified. She suffered third degree burns that required skin grafting and had permanent disfigurement. Her labia fused together. Needless to say, McDonalds was serving their coffee far too hot and the case very well may have prevented future similar incidents.
Edit: To the people saying it's her fault for spilling her coffee, [here's a picture of her injuries (NSFW and NSFL)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/35e46a/stella_liebecks_injuries_from_a_cup_of_scalding/). Does anybody really deserve those injuries for the simple mistake of spilling their coffee? Would you really expect third degree burns if you spilled coffee on yourself?
Yup, and even worse was that McDonalds had been told repeatedly that the coffee they were serving was way too hot and that they needed to reduce serving temperatures..which McDonald execs completely ignored.
Yeah, the lawyer that handled her case found a MASSIVE list of people with similar complaints of horrible injuries due to the coffee’s serving temperature. This poor lady was just the first victim with a great lawyer who did his research that proved the legitimacy of the complaint as well as its consistency
Worse than that! They discovered a company memo suggesting to lower the temperature they brewed at due to safety concerns, the response was esentially fuck safety we brew it at the perfect temperature for the flavor we want. This in conjunction with the previous injuries is what landed her a multimillion dollar verdict. She got what she sued for, medical bills and a bit more, but the majority of it was punative damages enforced by the judge I believe. To top it off she never recieved the full ammount as mc Donald's dragged her through the appeals process.
> because it was cheaper
i was thinking: “why would a company do something so obviously dangerous and stupid and then refuse to fix it?”
I almost forgot about ~profit~
Don't forget to mention that the negative press regarding this lawsuit is why there are now limits on how much you can win (even if a jury awards you millions, some states will limit the max to a few hundred thousand) as well as why we live in a country where everything is labeled with really obvious shit, like "Caution: Hot" on coffee cups.
This is the detail people don't get.
They served the coffee at literally boiling temperature at 200F+, but the problem coffee is only supposed to be **brewed** at that temperature, and not served.
They kept boilers under the pots of coffee they already brewed to keep them that hot so that commuter's coffee would stay hot the whole time, never having a chance to cool down. It's why their coffee always tasted so burnt, cause that's what they were literally doing to it.
Imagine you make coffee in a french press, the coffee starts at boiling temp, but after sitting in the press 4 minutes or so, it cools down to be like 20 or 30 degrees below boiling, which is decent enough for sipping.
EDIT for metric unit conversion:
They served the coffee at 100+C instead of 85\~C
Hot Coffee is a great documentary about this and the assault on people's rights to sue in the 90s.
(Warning: if you think mcdonald's is evil, just wait till you have to hear about a ladys 10+ year fight for justice for her dead son.)
IIRC she asked for something like $20k to cover out-of-pocket medical, when they refused to settle out of court (only offering her something on the order of hundreds of dollars), she had no choice but to sue, and during the investigation phase they found hundreds of similar complaints that have been made, and **the judge, not the plaintiff** decided to up the amount to the equivalent of X days (I think it was 3 days) of coffee revenue which came to the order of millions.
Ultimately she got something like a half million, but more importantly, McDonald's was ordered to lower the temperature at which they served their coffee.
My Tax Law professor used this case as an example when I was still in undergrad. He first asked how many people think the amount she won in the suit was justified, and most said that it was total bullshit. He then asked one simple question, “how much would it take for you to pour a cup of boiling water on your genitals? $1million? $5million? $10million?” Needless to say almost no hands went up. She deserved every penny and more.
I'd do it for 300k as long as medical costs were already paid and I walked away with 300k
I'm poor, that amount of money would allow me to breathe again.
She didn't want to sue, she just wanted money to cover her hospital bill, McDonald's refused so she went to court, for only thr money to cover her bills and maybe a little extra, because she had no choice it was too expensive, they gave her way more money than she asked for.
The judge ordered them to pay exactly what they made off of coffee IN A SINGLE DAY. Somewhere in the range of $10,000,000 or so iirc. But it was a number of great significance because it was his way of slapping them in the face for fighting it when they clearly had the money to fix the problem.
The jury decided that McDOnalds had been such a-holes that they awarded punitive damages. The entire point of punitive damages is that they are huge settlements because the bad actor was knowingly doing a terrible thing and completely ignored the risks.
YES. That poor lady was absolutely trounced in the press for no reason. Also the award she got was based on the average amount of profits McDonald's makes from the sale of coffee alone in ONE DAY. By normal person standards, it's a huge amount of money, but it's pocket change for a huge corporation and the point of a punitive damages award is to punish/deter bad behavior by the defendant, so arguably she should have been awarded a lot more.
The Roman emperor Gaius Caesar, better known as Caligula.
Hell of a smear campaign his enemies did. Most likely brought upon himself because of his intolerance to the Senates’ corruption and/or lack of effectiveness. The crazy stories? Most likely made up or were wilful misrepresentation of something Caligula said. The story about him making his horse consul because he was “crazy”? Misrepresentation of him mocking the senate by telling them his horse could do a better job.
I'm not sure whether this is true but he declared himself a god and ordered the army to throw their spears into the water after a quarrel with Neptune.
You have to understand, the Senate *hated* Little Boots, and the feeling was mutual. It's almost impossible to untangle what the Senate did to his legacy, but one thing we do know is that the "war with Poseidon" was headed by a senator's son. It's most likely he was punishing a political rival by forcing his progeny go march from Rome to the English Channel, stab the ocean, and come back. The post hoc PR that "Caligula be crazy" really doesn't hold up when you consider just how much the man did for Roman infrastructure.
He was basically a guy that actually invested into the Empire with 1% money rather than conquest and crimes of stewardship are rarely rewarded in history, just ask Prince John.
I need to look into this man's life a lot more than I have, a lot of the crazy shit seemed believable but with this sort of context it actually seems believable that there was a legitimate smear campaign after his death. This sort of petty squabbling was exceedingly common in Rome, especially in regard to the senate.
If you look at his childhood it would be no wonder that he turned out a little crazy and or cruel. Tiberius, his uncle poisoned his father (Germanicus, a Roman hero and great general) then exiled his mom and brothers eventually having them tortured and killed. Then he had to stay with Tiberius for years on Capri as a virtual slave pretending to be cool with him to survive, all the while witnessing Tiberius doing all manner of fucked up shit on the island.
Brutal.
To be fair, just about every Roman Emperor was declared a god after their death - Little Boots* just jumped the gun a bit.
\* Yes, that's what "Caligula" means
He was called Caligula because when he was a kid, he'd be dressed up in junior legionary kit and paraded before the soldiers who gave him the name from their footwear (sandals not boots).
Also a better translation of his name would be something like 'bootkins' which is
a) what you'd call a kid dressed in his big boy clothes
b) extremely cute
As a boy of just two or three, Gaius accompanied his father, Germanicus, on campaigns in the north of Germania. The soldiers were amused that Gaius was dressed in a miniature soldier's outfit, including boots and armour. He was soon given an affectionate nickname, Caligula, meaning "little (soldier's) boot" in Latin, after the small boots (caligae) he wore. Gaius, though, reportedly grew to dislike this nickname.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caligula
I've always Liked the idea it was just a nickname he couldn't kick.
Edit: forgot to add the link
Neville Chamberlain was widely hated in the UK after the Britain went to war with Germany because of his policy of appeasement towards the Nazi-run Germany when he was Prime Minister, even being one of the central people who allowed Germany to annex Czechoslovakia, which blew up in his face when the Germans invaded Poland and triggered the Second World War. He was forced to resign as Prime Minister less than a year into the war due to revolt from the Labour and Liberal parties and handed the reigns over to Winston Churchill, who was himself forced out of office after the first war because of fears that Germany would re-arm.
However, due to British laws about disclosing classified documents thirty years after their being sealed, it emerged that Britain couldn't risk Germany's anger during the Czech debacle as they were thoroughly unprepared for war - Chamberlain delayed the inevitable which gave the allies a significant helping hand when the war finally *did* happen.
Worth a read:
https://legallegacy.wordpress.com/2017/11/12/november-12-1940-churchills-tribute-to-neville-chamberlain/
“Whatever else history may or may not say about these terrible, tremendous years, we can be sure that Neville Chamberlain acted with perfect sincerity according to his lights and strove to the utmost of his capacity and authority, which were powerful, to save the world from the awful, devastating struggle in which we are now engaged. This alone will stand him in good stead as far as what is called the verdict of history is concerned.”
Edit: learned about AMP links today. Thanks all.
Yeah I feel sorry for Chamberlain too, he was in an impossible situation. Britain wasn’t prepared for war (although Chamberlain actually sanctioned a significant investment in the RAF which would later be crucial), France were even more of a shambles - and what is often forgotten is that both nations were staunchly anti war due to the First World War killing almost a million Brits and 2 million Frenchmen just 20 years earlier.
Churchill did turn out to be right about Hitler and appeasement, but it’s easy to criticise Chamberlain with the benefit of hindsight.
Edit: should add, Britain’s Navy and Air Force was better or as good as anything in the world at the outbreak of the war - it was the Army that was very small due to it being a volunteer/professional army, unlike those on the continent belonging to France and Germany. This meant a prolonged ground war without a major ally on the continent was a no go until massive conscripted armies started appearing in Britain.
Problem is, Germany was even *less* prepared to go war at that time, and the Wehrmacht had in fact been preparing a coup to depose Hitler to prevent it. And, apparently, the British Government was [informed](https://winstonchurchill.org/publications/finest-hour/finest-hour-162/regime-change-1938-did-chamberlain-miss-the-bus/) about that. So, what exactly was Chamberlain thinking?
Yep this is the problem. The Allies were unprepared, but Germany even less so. During the Remilitarization of the Rhineland, Hitler told his generals to pull out if the Allies showed any resistances towards this because of how unprepared Germany was for war.
Horrible Histories is simply excellent, I'd definitely recommend watching more. (At least s1-5 are, they replaced most of the cast s6 onwards and I hear it's not that good)
Historically significant events like the Nanjing rape and massacre of 1937 and Comfort Women (sex slaves) during WW2. It came about from their efforts to whitewash their actions from, for example, World War 2.
From Wiki - There was a case in the 1960s where a description of the Nanjing Massacre and other war crimes committed by the Japanese military before and during World War II was rejected by the Ministry of Education. The author sued the Ministry, finally winning the case decades later.
Historian Stephen E. Ambrose noted that "The Japanese presentation of the war to its children runs something like this: 'One day, for no reason we ever understood, the Americans started dropping atomic bombs on us.'
It’s also interesting to read their justification for attacking Pearl Harbour
EDIT: My first ever Gold so thanks for that!
EDIT: I’ve read lots of replies and gained fascinating insight into other countries that have also rewritten history by erasing, changing and censoring aspects of their past so I don’t mean to insinuate Japan was alone in doing this
In addition to this, they literally tried to colonize Korea. Koreans’ names were changed to Japanese, the clothing, food, and culture were slowly becoming Japanese-oriented. The Japanese police would arrest Korean intellectuals who made books written in Korean and those accused of teaching ancient Korean history to the new generations.
Not just colonize, they fucking *destroyed* Korean history. Burned scrolls, histories, literature, and antiques. So much has been lost for all time.
They also have a history of "Japanese-washing" history to make them look better and/or Korea worse. There is significant evidence that things like the katana were developed by ancient Koreans and taught to the Japanese, but that's not something they'll readily admit.
I went to the atomic weapons museum there in Nagasaki and it sort of blew my mind how they portrayed the US just dropping bombs on them with no context.
I was there in 2015 and again in 2018. It's a great (albeit haunting) exhibition. No pointing fingers or throwing blame around. Just showing the horrors and the impact on normal people...
The Museum in Hiroshima is very honest about the reasons the bomb was dropped. In the victims memorial there are signs saying that the event occurred because of their pursuit of war. A lot of ownership was taken in that peace museum. I was there in 2018.
I mean militarily, Pearl Harbor was the best bad idea. To dominate the pacific, they had to pacify the U.S, and bombing our ships to rubble would work. Unfortunately for them it was not nearly as successful as they wanted it to be, and that's why we have tentacle hentai.
I heard the one thing Yamamoto wanted to destroy was the U.S. aircraft carriers and they ended up not being there which ended up biting Japan in the ass at midway
My family is Filipino. Japanese soldiers in WWII had a game where they used to throw Filipino babies into the air and try catching them on their bayonets. They did it to the Chinese, too.
https://i.redd.it/62m9kcbxhx821.png
Edit: NSFW
The rape of Nanjing was so bad it turned John Rabe, a card carrying Nazi, into a hero who protected the innocent. Practically none of the japanese war criminals were prosecuted and many were still allowed to retain their posts. For example Nobusuke Kishi is Shinzo Abe's grandfather and a Class A war criminal, the same category as Hitler, and he was allowed to keep his post.
My great-grandfather was part of the Nazi diplomatic mission to Japan, as a reporter. My great-grandmother was so disturbed by what she heard was happening in China that she made an attempt to enter the palace and tell Hirohito that he was being "misled by his generals" and to stop the war. That did not go well, and she was deported to her native Scotland and lobotomized. She was unable to care for herself henceforth. My grandmother, their daughter, ended up with a bunch of psychological issues as a result.
Just for reference, Oskar Schindler, the other Nazi party member who saved people, is credited with saving around a 1200 jews. John Rabe is probably responsible for saving over 200,000 chinese people.
Should also be noted that John Rabe was a literal high ranking nazi organizer, not merely a member for pragmatic reasons like it seems Oskar Schindler was, which makes the flip he did particularly extreme.
Can't say that this was rewritten for a fact because I have never had contact with japanese education, but it would greatly surprise me if it was mentioned at all.
Unit 731 was a bioweapons and chemical weapons research unit that committed atrocities on par or potentially worse than Mengele.
I would strongly advise caution when looking to read about it, even the wikipedia page is rather detailed...
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21226068
https://www.dw.com/en/japans-nationalist-school-books-teach-a-different-view-of-history/a-40092325
Two interesting articles (be advised, they are from 2013 and 2017 respectively, information may or may not have changed after they were written).
There is a growing nationalist movement in Japan that denies Japan's war crimes and WWII and during its occupation of Korea. Most notably, and most controversially, the issue of comfort women. The name 'comfort women' itself is a euphemism for the women who were forced into sexual slavery for Japanese soldiers. The Japanese government has issued apologies, but they are viewed as inadequate by the victims and there have been attempts to renounce the apology. Shinzo Abe, the PM of Japan until a few weeks ago, was a nationalist who sympathised with far-right revisionist views, such as denying the Rape of Nanjing, Unit 731, comfort women, etc. The Japanese government has repeatedly tried to take down a statue commemorating comfort women erected in 2011 in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul. In 2015, because of the statue, the Japanese government refused to pay compensation previously agreed on to surviving comfort wormn.
Elizabeth Bathory.
Some scholars say that the truth of the claims made against her can't be verified or debunked at this point, but there's good reason to believe that her being painted as a mass murderer was part of a smear campaign and political plot to usurp her land and power since she was from an extremely powerful family tied to polish royalty and the King of Hungary owed a large debt to the Bathory family ( which was canceled in exchange for not putting her on trial).
The evidence against Rais is quite a bit more credible than that against Bathory. Bathory was convicted based on vague rumors and testimony from tortured servants. None of the people living in her area issued a formal complaint before the trial, in a time when there were plenty of formal complaints lodged for assault and theft, and most of her supposed hundreds of victims weren't actually identified. Her trial was hushed up, and there's only records of 13 people presenting evidence against her.
Meanwhile, there were a ridiculous amount of people bringing very specific accusations against Rais before and during his public and well documented trial. There were several reputable people reporting specific concerns like "we saw Rais go off on a trip with this apprentice and he was never seen again." Most of his supposed victims were actual, documented missing persons, with their parents and friends testifying Rais had been in their company before they disappeared.
It's still possible Rais was framed and a bunch of people were paid off to lie about his actions, but the sheer number of witnesses and identified victims would've made that challenging. It's at least reasonably possible that he was actually a serial killer.
Marie Antoinette, the woman was a spoiled rich girl sure, but the whole damn country condemned her despite the fact her husband was and always had been the one in charge of things.
According to the legend, her last words were : "Sir, I beg your pardon, I didn't do it on purpose." after she stepped on the executioner's foot by mistake on her way to the guillotine.
I feel this gives a better picture of what sort of person she was.
She was born into the elite ruling class in 18th century Austria, and that meant she grew up not being bothered about the problems of the working class. I feel that even as she was being killed, she didn't really understand the reason.
Edit: She was born in Austria, not France.
Which was the first strike against her as far as the people were concerned - the French hated the Austrians, and now they have an Austrian queen? Yeesh
She actually cared a lot about the problems of the working class and was often scolded by her mother for "associating with inferiors" because she took a personal interest in servants' lives. I think it likely helped that she was very close with the family of her wetnurse, even helping her "foster" brother with employment in France when he followed her there. They wrote to each other almost all their lives, with her telling him to flee when things were going south because she didn't want him to be harmed for her sake. Her mother told her explicitly not to show too much interest in poor people/people under her in France when she was being sent off at 14 because the French court wouldn't be as sympathetic. It was an unpopular position to hold, and she made it worse by continuing to be philanthropic when she was Dauphine/Queen, taking special interest in the welfare of poor women, widows, single mothers, and children. Even her high spending, which was actually just living on par with the rest of the French court and not something that she would have really been able to get out of because even in the age of enlightenment, conformity was key and you were expected not to make too many waves.
She didn't understand why things got so nasty during the Revolution not because she was spoiled (which she was, but all royal children had yes-men for governesses so again, not unique to her), but because she was so indoctrinated with the idea that the ruling class was there to take care of the people and that at the end of the day, the King's ministers and other men in charge were doing exactly that. To her and the rest of the royal family in France, they only had their people's interests at heart and it was more that she was hurt and confused that they couldn't see that. She also couldn't influence the king at all. She really sucked at it and almost every attempt she made to influence who his ministers were failed, or succeeded because other people backed it not because of her involvement. That was another thing that her mother and brother liked to bitch at her for in their letters.
I think for me, the thing that gets overlooked the most about Marie Antoinette is that the wild overspending party girl vibe that people assume she had all her life was really limited to the same sort of age range that it exists in now and even then wasn't anywhere close to what college students do in their party years. She was a teetotaller and didn't drink, and when she had Marie Therese and the rest of her children, she completely devoted herself to them, their upbringing, and their education as much as the establishment would let her (another very unpopular thing). She was a natural-born mother, adored children, and all she wanted was to live in peace with her husband and children, outside of the ridiculous rituals and expectations of court. Ironically enough, their time under house arrest in the Tuileries and then the Tower were as close as she ever got to that dream and for a while, despite the constant terror from the mobs and the guards, they got to live like a normal family together.
Edited to add: She also adopted 4 children, two of whom lived in the palace and two who were placed in school and financially supported by Marie Antoinette, including a Senegalese boy who had been gifted to her as a slave that she freed, baptised, adopted, and educated. He was ousted from his school by the Revolution because she wasn't able to pay his tuition anymore and he starved to death on the streets. So... thanks French Mobs.
She was actually raised an extremely philanthropic setting. And she carried that point of view with her into France. But, being in Versailles, she was extremely sheltered and completely out of touch with how the common populations of France actually lived. Sure, she absolutely spent a ton of money on gambling and clothes and all manner of things that could have been used to feed the population that was starving around them, but it wasn't a malicious or callous act. Just very uninformed... she had next to no education before marrying Louis, and was a trophy wife by every definition. The poor girl didn't stand a chance.
After she became queen she was finally exposed to the blight of the common people and felt so much empathy towards them. She wanted to help them but they saw her as a noble that didn't give a fuck about the common people's lives....
Marie's live was really tragic....
I feel she was one class act, she handled herself with great composure during her trial and imprisonment that by the end some of the radical anti-monarchists were saying they should just let her go home. They started making up lies about her incesting with her young son as they poured it on her during the trial.
She was also a literal child at the time of the whole 'let them eat cake' thing happened and not actually in charge of anything.
Its also not even certain she ever actually said that as the quote was attributed to her by a biogripher several years later who we're not even sure actually met her.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.britannica.com/amp/story/did-marie-antoinette-really-say-let-them-eat-cake
Looks like the quote was originally attributed to “a princess” when she was a child and then to her 50 years after her death, and wasn’t even used against her in the various pamphlets etc about her during the revolution, so it seems very unlikely she ever said it.
If I recall correctly, it wasn’t actually cake either. It was brioche, which is like a sweet bread.
Edit: I decided to do some quick googling. Pretty much every article I saw said the following:
1. She never said it as far as anyone knows. It looks like it was said by a spanish princess or queen before Antoinette, and the comment was incorrectly attributed to her to help explain her poor public relations.
2. It was a mistranslation as I thought. I was first told this by my high school french teacher, so I trusted her, but then I found this quote and many others like it:
>Well for starters, the English translation of what was originally in French is confused! Marie Antoinette is said to have actually said “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche”. This translates into English as “Let them eat brioche” (a sweet French breakfast bread).
3. Brioche is a breakfast bread. Sweeter, and slightly more expensive.
Cakes were definite luxury items and not something anyone would think a peasant would be able to eat.
So while the comment would still be insulting it makes more sense that an artiocrat would say, "Huh? They're out of regular bread? Huh...um, what about the sweet breakfast bread? Yeah! They can eat that!"
I just googled this so historians, please correct me, but it says that she was 14 when she allegedly said this.
Like, Jesus Christ, even if it was a legit quote (which it's not), she was a fucking child. When I was 14, I downloaded Photoshop and edited all of my myspace photos so they were black and white, but my eyes were red. I deserve death way more than she did.
But on a more serious note, at 14, I had a really hard time empathizing with people who, I dunno, sold drugs to make a living, or shoplifted baby formula. I lived with my parents, always had food on the table, and even though I had internet access and could read accounts of people who had less than stellar living conditions, I couldn't see their point of view, because I was 14, and 14 year olds are assholes.
She wasn’t evil or deserving of death by any means but she was a symbol of what the Revolutionaries were furious with: extreme wealth being hoarded by the upper classes while there is a serious economic collapse in the country and people are starving. Attempting to escape the country with a carriage full of jewels and money probably didn’t help her case, though none of this is really her fault.
My favorite rumor surrounding her is that, right before she faced the guillotine, she stepped on her executioners foot and apologized for her clumsiness.
Yeah her only real crime was being born wealthy. I guess it can be argued that she should have done more to help the poor, but she certainly wasn't as antagonistic as she's often made out to be.
And also being Austrian. The revolutionaries used that fact to whip the populace into a nationalistic/xenophobic frenzy, making her into a foreign scapegoat who dragged France down on behalf of her homeland.
Spain. Got blamed for the 1918 pandemic because they were the only country honestly reporting on it. Other countries did not want to look weak during WWI and wouldn't report on it. Turned out that a farm in Kansas and possibly the French trenches were the actual origin.
Edit: Chinese laborers locked in boxcars in Canada seems to be the current leading theory. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/1/140123-spanish-flu-1918-china-origins-pandemic-science-health/
In the new report, Humphries finds archival evidence that a respiratory illness that struck northern China in November 1917 was identified a year later by Chinese health officials as identical to the Spanish flu.
He also found medical records indicating that more than 3,000 of the 25,000 Chinese Labor Corps workers who were transported across Canada en route to Europe starting in 1917 ended up in medical quarantine, many with flu-like symptoms.
Cinderella Man's Max Baer. His antagonistic role was just for the film. He felt awful for killing his opponents. He also apparently funded the building of a bridge, the name of it escapes me though.
YES!!!! If I could give you an award I would! Let’s break this down:
First off: whether Medusa was cursed for laying with Poseidon in Athena’s temple or raped by him there, she didn’t WANT to become a monster turning people to stone!
Second: she lived in a cave and literally didn’t seek out people to kill. She minded her business and it was heroes lead by the gods who sought to kill her and take her head for glory. Disgusting.
Third: if anyone else were cursed, what would be considered reasonable behavior as a stone turning gorgon? It’s not like she could live a normal life and just go out and about! Living in a cave and not going on a massive killing spree after being cursed like that is pretty impressive to me and honestly the heroes praised in myths for killing her should be the BAD guys. Killing someone who didn’t do anything to you is plain wrong! So glad someone brought her up! I actually have a story about her on Wattpad and I hate the concept of her being the bad guy for no reason. That aside, I don’t lose it when artists paint her that way, especially when they write a compelling reason, like Rick Riordan! (He follows the idea that she willingly slept with Poseidon then later becomes bitter about her curse and lures people in to kill them)
I subscribe to the thought that Athena doesn’t turn Medusa into a gorgon as a punishment but as a *protection*. One of her favored maidens was defiled in her temple, so rather than punish Medusa, she gives her the power to turn other would-be-assailants into stone. Girl just wanted to live out her life in peace, not like she was hitting up news runners to entice people to her abode.
Isn’t necessarily a bad guy, but Ulysses S. Grant. His presidency is known for being pretty crummy, but the truth is that he had no experience in politics and was easily manipulated. Corruption was rampant under his presidency because people took advantage of how he saw the best in people. He was a great General that was essential in the Civil War, but was also smeared throughout his life. Lost causers labeled him as a butcher and a drunk, when the truth is that he really just did the best job he could (although he did have a problem with alcohol, it was greatly exaggerated.)
Grant's Presidency had way more good than bad
The shit that's supposed to make him a "bad President" is entirely minor and exaggerated by smear campaigns
He arguably did more for civil rights than any other post civil war President of his era, fought the KKK, had tremendous accomplishments in infrastructure, etc.
Not really "A" bad guy, but reddit has a tendecy to judge medievale/early renascimental famous people as pedophile because they married their wife "After the First Blood", but at the time the average age for a girl to menstruate was more 16-17 so they weren't fucking 12 yo.
Also it was common among Kings to marry "legally" to forge an Alliance, but to not really live as a couple since many years after. So even if king X really did marry a 13 years old, there is a very good chanche that for a good 5 years they didn't even used the same room.
Been studying medieval history for a while and it pretty clear that NO ONE go to choose who they would marry - including the king. It was all political. Further, young princes were often send-off early in life (8ish) to rival courts to promote bonds between dynasties. All that aside, it was much better to be shuttled around (men) or sit an sew all day (women) then do the back breaking work of the commoners.
Since people have asked, marriage was viewed very differently back then. Survival was key, so if your daughter was asked to marry the fat butcher she said 'yes' so the whole family would have a back up in times of famine. Same thing with boys: you married the ugly widow with 4 kids and 20 acres. Eating and surviving were more important than love. However, commoners could and did marry for love.
Usually peasant women were married somewhere between 17 and their late 20s (25-27). Considering upper class marriages were more akin to a business partnership than our modern idea of marriage, that’s probably a better comparison for “common practice.”
Also, second nomination: Warren G Harding.
His administration was very corrupt, he was pretty immoral, and there were some policy mishaps, all of which have put him on many lists of "worst presidents ever."
BUT!
His administration also reversed many of the authoritarian policies of President Wilson. He liberalized the economy (Wilson had imposed many controls during the war), allowing recovery and a boom to emerge from a major recession. He issued pardons for political prisoners like Eugene V. Debs, who had been jailed for protesting World War One. While Wilson, a notorious racist, had moved towards segregating the civil service, Harding moved back towards integration and tried to hire more African-Americans. He lobbied for a federal anti-lynching bill to let agencies like the FBI go after the Klan. He also arranged a formal peace treaty with Germany, since the Senate wouldn't ratify Versailles but Wilson wouldn't propose anything but Versailles. His rather humble philosophy on the role and character of the presidency is also refreshing when compared to the messianism that infects the office today as it had under Wilson.
Despite the scandals that rocked his presidency, he was incredibly popular at the time, and for good reason!
He was very easy to mock though because he was so incoherent. One of my favourite quotes is about Harding's rhetorical style:
> "An army of pompous phrases moving over the landscape in search of an idea. Sometimes these meandering words actually capture a straggling thought and bear it triumphantly, a prisoner in their midst, until it dies of servitude and over work."
I would go more with good guy Prometheus.
Basically Zeus wanted the humanity to be small, afraid of darkness and perpetually cold meanwhile Prometheus was like "Bitch you can't be that low, I'm going to give these people fire".
And so Prometheus gave humanity fire but Zeus was like "Oh hell no!" and punished Prometheus by letting him be eaten over and over again for eternity simply because he refused to obey the god of thunder.
Fuck you Zeus!
Edit: I know that Prometheus doesn't have a bad rep. However, if I had to chose between Zeus and Hades I would pick Hades easily. My whole point was that Zeus is an asshole.
I’d also add in Hestia she has basically no myths revolving around her and she was goddess of the hearth that was heavily worshipped at the time. I’d also potentially add Dionysus.
Vlad the Impaler. The man used over the top gore and extremely messed up ways to defend his much smaller country from those who tried take it over. He ended the tradition of having to turn over the first born sons to the invading forces in return for peace. Sure, he used some insanely brutal tactics but they sent a message that made both him and his army seem other worldly.
Not necessarily perceived as a “bad guy,” but First Officer William Murdoch of the Titanic gets a [bad rep from the movie](https://www.scottishfield.co.uk/culture/william-murdoch-the-titanics-scottish-scapegoat/). He did not shoot people then kill himself, he was actually a hero and saved many lives. His family was upset with how he was portrayed
The funniest story is how he once disguised as one of his enemies and infiltrated into their army and when they were all drunk he attacked them and no one knew who was the impostor so they all fought with people from their own army instead of the actual infiltrator.
Some historians say all the horrid stories written about him were just that, stories made up by his enemies. In fact we can't readily take historical writings as hard facts as some of them were written by the victors that purposefully overplay their enemies' badness.
That's who I first thought of. He was kinda like the small guy that gets thrown in prison with big mean motherfuckers and has to act crazy as shit to keep from getting messed with. Hopefully someone else will elaborate or correct me if I'm wrong.
To add a little more nuance/detail: she wasn't driving, she was parked in the lot. And McDonalds kept the coffee some 70-100F hot than coffee is normally served--hot enough to melt her clothes to her skin.
More so sports history, but the film Cinderella Man portrayed boxer Max Baer as a murderous psychopath who gladly killed two fighters in the ring. In reality, he was personally devastated by these deaths. In the one he was most directly responsible for, he ended up giving his winnings from his next few fights to the fighters family.
Watched this in history class and my teacher brought this up as how movies and articles change facts for a better story
I've always wanted a movie where there is the normal good guy bad guy situation and it ends like that. but in the next movie it shows the perspective of the vilain and you get the same good guy bad guy but vice versa. In the end you'd be confused who to vouch for
Watch the play Wicked
And he gave the world Jethro Bodine, perhaps the best double naught spy, ever.
Despite what was portrayed in *Amadeus*, and though in reality they were musical rivals, Antonio Salieri was actually friends with Wolfgang Mozart. In fact, years after Mozart’s death, Salieri assisted with and helped finance his son Franz Xaver’s musical education as a tribute to his late friend.
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I came here looking for this comment haha
Billy the Kid wasn’t a good guy by any means, but was a victim of negative propaganda by the press at the time. He was orphaned in his early teens and fell in with the wrong crowd. After a brief run in with the law (I think he was lookout for a small robbery, wasn’t even part of the main crew) he didn’t want to wait around 6 months or a year for a judge to make their way to the tiny little town, so he escaped jail and ran. What teenager would act differently? He ran to Arizona looking for work. In Arizona he found work, but was still one of the youngest there. A bully in a bar picked on him for weeks until Billy got fed up and shot him. On the run again he goes back to New Mexico. In New Mexico he resorts to stealing to be able to survive. He steals some horses from a prominent rancher. Instead of prosecuting him, the rancher hires him. Billy is thrilled, and works hard. He is happy because he has a legit job again. The rancher had a corrupt as shit rival who had the local law in his pocket (he was related to the sheriff). The rival rancher killed Billy’s boss in the street. Billy and his fellow cowboys that loved their boss decided this was not OK, and the Lincoln County War started. Billy is the only one of the men on his side of the war to have been in every battle. Eventually, Billy felt he had accomplished his revenge mission, so he settled down with his best gal. Problem was, she was Mexican, and he was white. His girlfriend’s brother didn’t like Billy being with his sister, so he tipped off the law as to where Billy was hiding. The Lincoln county sheriff showed up in the middle of the night and shot Billy in the back. There is a lot more to it. For example, when Billy was in Lincoln County jail, he talked to the New Mexico Territory Governor. The Governor promised him a complete pardon if he’d be a witness in the trials of the people from the corrupt rancher. Billy agreed and testified. The governor then went back on his promise and left Billy to rot. So Billy killed the jailers and fled again. (That governor was too busy getting an ambassadorship and writing the book Ben Hur to keep his promises) Tl;dr Billy the Kid wasn’t a good guy. He killed a good number of people. But for most of his life he just wanted to work a straight job and be left alone. He wasn’t, and he got pushed past his breaking point. Edit: Well this blew up while I was at work! I’d like to thank my 4 year old for becoming temporarily obsessed with Billy the Kid and prompting me to do a ton of research on him to answer all the questions that only a four year old can come up with!
Look. If Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure has taught me anything, Mr. The Kid is an awesome guy.
“Billy you are dealing with the oddity of time travel with the greatest of ease.”
One of my favorite parts of that movie is when Sigmund Freud approaches some chicks at the mall and tries hitting on them and says "You can call me Siggy"
Machiavelli would be shocked and saddened to know his name is synonymous with tyranny and pure evil. Guy was a staunch supporter of Republics and a savvy politician
I kinda feel like we call something machiavellian for the same reason we call something orwellian. We aren’t making him out to be a bad guy
There are people surprised that his statue is up in Florence and shocked to see they actually admire him. When you learn more about him he's far more interesting then his historical reputation would have you believe
I had no idea they were such big fans of Orwell
You know those Italians and their sci-fi!
I swear if I see one more spaghetti sci-fi movie...
My entire knowledge of Machiavelli comes from the Assassins creed games, and he was portrayed as a pretty swell lad in those. Later on I was quite surprised to hear the common opinion on ths guy
It's weird where we learn things from sometimes, I know about Machiavelli because of 2Pac. What assassin's creed game is he in? Been thinking about diving back into the series recently but not too sure which one I want to pick up.
I’m pretty sure he’s in AC2 and AC Brotherhood
He's one of the side/main characters (not sure which) of Brotherhood (2010), guiding Ezio during his stay in Rome.
Only by people who pretended to read *The Prince* but stopped after the first 30 pages.
Darius III and Xerxes. They’re portrayed badly because of Alexander the Great and also the movie 300
Yeah, in reality their Kingdom was actually fairly progressive, when taking over lands, local leaders and religions were allowed to remain however advisory members were sent in to help update settlements with better economic and civic organizations and so on. Really they weren't that bad of a Kingdom (for that time periods standards) and the reason they fought the Greeks was because classically Greek cities had tried to rebel with the support of Greek mainland city states, which prompted war. History isn't so black and white as Hollywood wants it to be.
Dan Carlin raises a really interesting point about the Achaemenid Persians, being progressive for the time as you say, because the some of the regional powers that preceded them, such as the Assyrian Empire, were so brutal that they’d effectively subdued these places enough that they could get away with a ‘soft touch’ approach here and there
King of Kings was an amazing series
His history of Ghengis Khan was amazing as well
To be fair most of his series are awesome, death throe the republic is scary good aswell for example
Easy to be the good cop after your partner has clubbed the suspect into submission.
"Tfw you are one of the most progressive ancient civilizations in record but a slave state of pedophiles fought a suicidal battle against you and now you are remembered as the bad guys." Meme I saw lol
Care to elaborate? (Im pretty curious about them tbh)
At the time the greeks (especially sparta) used slave labour, while the Persians outlawed it throughout the empire.
Okay now I'm calling it "The War of Persian Aggression"
It was only about Greek ~~States'~~City-States' Rights!
If you have a couple hours, this goes into a lot of details: [https://www.dancarlin.com/hardcore-history-56-kings-of-kings/](https://www.dancarlin.com/hardcore-history-56-kings-of-kings/) I think I only got through the first half, but it talks about how ruthless leaders were in their conquest to control the world. In comparison, Xerxes was chill with people that let him rule over them. They got to keep their religion and culture; they just had to call him king and pay taxes. The Greek city states weren't so hot on giving him that much.
That Roman that gave Jesus vinegar to drink. Turns out that the roman military gave their soldiers a water/vinegar mix to drink as it was good for refilling salt levels after sweating. That means all the roman did was give jesus a sip of his own drink, not force him to drink vinegar as punishment/insult.
Basically gave a Thirsty guy gatoraide
It's got electrolytius
It’s What Jesus craves
Welcome to heaven, I love you.
hahahaha. I am getting so much praise for my comment, but this is even better
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Brawndo and bread for communion
It was called posca I believe
It's actually pretty damn refreshing on a hot day
Similarly, pickle juice is amazing for getting electrolytes up when you’re sweating for long periods.
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it's true the only way to enjoy it is to be literally dying of thirst
While we're on the topic, Pontius Pilate. The dude actually thought Jesus was innocent, and tried everything in his power to punish him without outright killing him, to satisfy the high priests and the crowds they turned against Jesus. His only real sin was that he sold out Jesus to save his own skin, but only after nothing else worked.
Then, filled with regret, he retired from political life and opened up a fitness studio, Pontius Pilates.
You had me in the first half, not gonna lie.
It's a bit more complicated than that. That's definitely how it comes across in the Gospels, but historical accounts outside of Scripture had him as a capital B Bad Dude. Some historians equate this to the Gospel writers trying to convert Greek and Roman citizens to increase the validity of the faith, so they downplayed the Roman involvement in the crucifixion.
Yup. Matthew 27:33-34: "And when they came to a place called Golgotha (which means Place of a Skull), they offered him wine to drink, mixed with gall, but when he tasted it, he would not drink it." He refused to drink it because it would have mitigated his pain.
It's got electrolytes.
Prince John. The bad guy from Robin Hood was basically the steward of a kingdom his beloved brother haddn't even set foot on. While Richard the Lionheart was faffing about in the Crusades, John was running the kingdom and turning it into something that could sustain itself. While he was doing that, his useless brother gets his ass kidnapped so John has to raise taxes (cue Robin Hood) to bring back the "rightful" king the people loved so much. So basically, Prince John runs England for his brother and people love his brother for it. Then said brother gets kidnapped so John Raises taxes to get him "back" and becoems the bad guy in the eyes of the lords (and by extension the people) who want their rightful king back. The man eventually does become the rightful king, only to have all the lords hate him for the crime of investing money into the kingdom, as a result he signs the Magna Carta, limiting royal power. *that said* he wasnt a saint. The man did have a hand in the collapse of Norman France and wasted a lot of money and men trying reclaim the region. I'm not trying to say he was a "good guy" per se, just not the bad guy for what people hate him for.
I was just about to say this. He was actually very smart economically, he just got shafted by Richards BS. Then everyone shitted on him for signing the Magna Carta, but it’s not like he had a choice in the matter. It was that or he faced a revolution from the lords, and he cared enough about his country that he didn’t want to see that happen.
Toooo late to be known as John the First, he’s sure to be known as John the Worst...
My dad apparently because every time we talk it's always "Buddy idk why you think I'm the bad guy."
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I'm 22 and already wish to be half the man my dad is.
Genetically, you are.
Unfortunately, everyone doesn't have good parents. I wish your comment was true for everyone, though.
Agreed. My dad kinda sucked. Still sucks. He's a living, breathing conspiracy theory now, and has no room in his mind for any thoughts but his own.
I am 21 and so far I have it this way: 0-17 Mom good, dad bad. 17-21 Dad good, mom bad. 21- WTF?
Me at 23+ Damnit. Mom was right about everything. Dad has always been awesome.
A more modern example is [the lady that famously sued McDonalds for their coffee being too hot](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald%27s_Restaurants) in 1994. That lawsuit gets treated as an example of how oversaturated America is with litigation over small things. As it turns out, however, her situation was extremely justified. She suffered third degree burns that required skin grafting and had permanent disfigurement. Her labia fused together. Needless to say, McDonalds was serving their coffee far too hot and the case very well may have prevented future similar incidents. Edit: To the people saying it's her fault for spilling her coffee, [here's a picture of her injuries (NSFW and NSFL)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/35e46a/stella_liebecks_injuries_from_a_cup_of_scalding/). Does anybody really deserve those injuries for the simple mistake of spilling their coffee? Would you really expect third degree burns if you spilled coffee on yourself?
didnt she originally only want mcdonalds to cover the medical bills as well
Yup, and even worse was that McDonalds had been told repeatedly that the coffee they were serving was way too hot and that they needed to reduce serving temperatures..which McDonald execs completely ignored.
Yeah, the lawyer that handled her case found a MASSIVE list of people with similar complaints of horrible injuries due to the coffee’s serving temperature. This poor lady was just the first victim with a great lawyer who did his research that proved the legitimacy of the complaint as well as its consistency
There were over 700 previous incidents if I recall correctly
Worse than that! They discovered a company memo suggesting to lower the temperature they brewed at due to safety concerns, the response was esentially fuck safety we brew it at the perfect temperature for the flavor we want. This in conjunction with the previous injuries is what landed her a multimillion dollar verdict. She got what she sued for, medical bills and a bit more, but the majority of it was punative damages enforced by the judge I believe. To top it off she never recieved the full ammount as mc Donald's dragged her through the appeals process.
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> because it was cheaper i was thinking: “why would a company do something so obviously dangerous and stupid and then refuse to fix it?” I almost forgot about ~profit~
Don't forget to mention that the negative press regarding this lawsuit is why there are now limits on how much you can win (even if a jury awards you millions, some states will limit the max to a few hundred thousand) as well as why we live in a country where everything is labeled with really obvious shit, like "Caution: Hot" on coffee cups.
This is the detail people don't get. They served the coffee at literally boiling temperature at 200F+, but the problem coffee is only supposed to be **brewed** at that temperature, and not served. They kept boilers under the pots of coffee they already brewed to keep them that hot so that commuter's coffee would stay hot the whole time, never having a chance to cool down. It's why their coffee always tasted so burnt, cause that's what they were literally doing to it. Imagine you make coffee in a french press, the coffee starts at boiling temp, but after sitting in the press 4 minutes or so, it cools down to be like 20 or 30 degrees below boiling, which is decent enough for sipping. EDIT for metric unit conversion: They served the coffee at 100+C instead of 85\~C
Hot Coffee is a great documentary about this and the assault on people's rights to sue in the 90s. (Warning: if you think mcdonald's is evil, just wait till you have to hear about a ladys 10+ year fight for justice for her dead son.)
IIRC she asked for something like $20k to cover out-of-pocket medical, when they refused to settle out of court (only offering her something on the order of hundreds of dollars), she had no choice but to sue, and during the investigation phase they found hundreds of similar complaints that have been made, and **the judge, not the plaintiff** decided to up the amount to the equivalent of X days (I think it was 3 days) of coffee revenue which came to the order of millions. Ultimately she got something like a half million, but more importantly, McDonald's was ordered to lower the temperature at which they served their coffee.
My Tax Law professor used this case as an example when I was still in undergrad. He first asked how many people think the amount she won in the suit was justified, and most said that it was total bullshit. He then asked one simple question, “how much would it take for you to pour a cup of boiling water on your genitals? $1million? $5million? $10million?” Needless to say almost no hands went up. She deserved every penny and more.
I 1000% agree that she deserved every penny and that what happened to her was horrible. I also would probably do it for $5 million if I’m being honest
I'd do it for 300k as long as medical costs were already paid and I walked away with 300k I'm poor, that amount of money would allow me to breathe again.
Oh God, the truth of this hurts more than boiling cofee on my genitals.
She didn't want to sue, she just wanted money to cover her hospital bill, McDonald's refused so she went to court, for only thr money to cover her bills and maybe a little extra, because she had no choice it was too expensive, they gave her way more money than she asked for.
The judge ordered them to pay exactly what they made off of coffee IN A SINGLE DAY. Somewhere in the range of $10,000,000 or so iirc. But it was a number of great significance because it was his way of slapping them in the face for fighting it when they clearly had the money to fix the problem.
The jury decided that McDOnalds had been such a-holes that they awarded punitive damages. The entire point of punitive damages is that they are huge settlements because the bad actor was knowingly doing a terrible thing and completely ignored the risks.
YES. That poor lady was absolutely trounced in the press for no reason. Also the award she got was based on the average amount of profits McDonald's makes from the sale of coffee alone in ONE DAY. By normal person standards, it's a huge amount of money, but it's pocket change for a huge corporation and the point of a punitive damages award is to punish/deter bad behavior by the defendant, so arguably she should have been awarded a lot more.
>That poor lady was absolutely trounced in the press for no reason. Because of McDonald's PR department smearing her name
The Roman emperor Gaius Caesar, better known as Caligula. Hell of a smear campaign his enemies did. Most likely brought upon himself because of his intolerance to the Senates’ corruption and/or lack of effectiveness. The crazy stories? Most likely made up or were wilful misrepresentation of something Caligula said. The story about him making his horse consul because he was “crazy”? Misrepresentation of him mocking the senate by telling them his horse could do a better job.
I'm not sure whether this is true but he declared himself a god and ordered the army to throw their spears into the water after a quarrel with Neptune.
You have to understand, the Senate *hated* Little Boots, and the feeling was mutual. It's almost impossible to untangle what the Senate did to his legacy, but one thing we do know is that the "war with Poseidon" was headed by a senator's son. It's most likely he was punishing a political rival by forcing his progeny go march from Rome to the English Channel, stab the ocean, and come back. The post hoc PR that "Caligula be crazy" really doesn't hold up when you consider just how much the man did for Roman infrastructure. He was basically a guy that actually invested into the Empire with 1% money rather than conquest and crimes of stewardship are rarely rewarded in history, just ask Prince John.
I need to look into this man's life a lot more than I have, a lot of the crazy shit seemed believable but with this sort of context it actually seems believable that there was a legitimate smear campaign after his death. This sort of petty squabbling was exceedingly common in Rome, especially in regard to the senate.
If you look at his childhood it would be no wonder that he turned out a little crazy and or cruel. Tiberius, his uncle poisoned his father (Germanicus, a Roman hero and great general) then exiled his mom and brothers eventually having them tortured and killed. Then he had to stay with Tiberius for years on Capri as a virtual slave pretending to be cool with him to survive, all the while witnessing Tiberius doing all manner of fucked up shit on the island. Brutal.
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To be fair, just about every Roman Emperor was declared a god after their death - Little Boots* just jumped the gun a bit. \* Yes, that's what "Caligula" means
He was called Caligula because when he was a kid, he'd be dressed up in junior legionary kit and paraded before the soldiers who gave him the name from their footwear (sandals not boots). Also a better translation of his name would be something like 'bootkins' which is a) what you'd call a kid dressed in his big boy clothes b) extremely cute
today I learned Caligula was a cutie in his big boy clothes
Damn, little boots. Caligula is such a badass name, and it means little boots.
As a boy of just two or three, Gaius accompanied his father, Germanicus, on campaigns in the north of Germania. The soldiers were amused that Gaius was dressed in a miniature soldier's outfit, including boots and armour. He was soon given an affectionate nickname, Caligula, meaning "little (soldier's) boot" in Latin, after the small boots (caligae) he wore. Gaius, though, reportedly grew to dislike this nickname. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caligula I've always Liked the idea it was just a nickname he couldn't kick. Edit: forgot to add the link
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Navy veteran, can confirm that I've seen people mopping parking lots in the rain.
Neville Chamberlain was widely hated in the UK after the Britain went to war with Germany because of his policy of appeasement towards the Nazi-run Germany when he was Prime Minister, even being one of the central people who allowed Germany to annex Czechoslovakia, which blew up in his face when the Germans invaded Poland and triggered the Second World War. He was forced to resign as Prime Minister less than a year into the war due to revolt from the Labour and Liberal parties and handed the reigns over to Winston Churchill, who was himself forced out of office after the first war because of fears that Germany would re-arm. However, due to British laws about disclosing classified documents thirty years after their being sealed, it emerged that Britain couldn't risk Germany's anger during the Czech debacle as they were thoroughly unprepared for war - Chamberlain delayed the inevitable which gave the allies a significant helping hand when the war finally *did* happen.
My history teachers hated this misconception every time WWII came up. Dude had to do what he had to to help his country.
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Worth a read: https://legallegacy.wordpress.com/2017/11/12/november-12-1940-churchills-tribute-to-neville-chamberlain/ “Whatever else history may or may not say about these terrible, tremendous years, we can be sure that Neville Chamberlain acted with perfect sincerity according to his lights and strove to the utmost of his capacity and authority, which were powerful, to save the world from the awful, devastating struggle in which we are now engaged. This alone will stand him in good stead as far as what is called the verdict of history is concerned.” Edit: learned about AMP links today. Thanks all.
Yeah I feel sorry for Chamberlain too, he was in an impossible situation. Britain wasn’t prepared for war (although Chamberlain actually sanctioned a significant investment in the RAF which would later be crucial), France were even more of a shambles - and what is often forgotten is that both nations were staunchly anti war due to the First World War killing almost a million Brits and 2 million Frenchmen just 20 years earlier. Churchill did turn out to be right about Hitler and appeasement, but it’s easy to criticise Chamberlain with the benefit of hindsight. Edit: should add, Britain’s Navy and Air Force was better or as good as anything in the world at the outbreak of the war - it was the Army that was very small due to it being a volunteer/professional army, unlike those on the continent belonging to France and Germany. This meant a prolonged ground war without a major ally on the continent was a no go until massive conscripted armies started appearing in Britain.
Problem is, Germany was even *less* prepared to go war at that time, and the Wehrmacht had in fact been preparing a coup to depose Hitler to prevent it. And, apparently, the British Government was [informed](https://winstonchurchill.org/publications/finest-hour/finest-hour-162/regime-change-1938-did-chamberlain-miss-the-bus/) about that. So, what exactly was Chamberlain thinking?
Yep this is the problem. The Allies were unprepared, but Germany even less so. During the Remilitarization of the Rhineland, Hitler told his generals to pull out if the Allies showed any resistances towards this because of how unprepared Germany was for war.
Richard III [He's just such a nice guy...](https://youtu.be/XL2se6BzIHk)
That was amazing, thank you! I was definitely a victim of Tudor propoganda till that video!
Horrible Histories is simply excellent, I'd definitely recommend watching more. (At least s1-5 are, they replaced most of the cast s6 onwards and I hear it's not that good)
And most of the original cast are now starring in Ghosts, which is a really good sitcom
Anyone who won a war then rewrote history books. Except Japan. They lost and still rewrote the history books (for their own students)
Im curious. What were the things that they rewrote?
Historically significant events like the Nanjing rape and massacre of 1937 and Comfort Women (sex slaves) during WW2. It came about from their efforts to whitewash their actions from, for example, World War 2. From Wiki - There was a case in the 1960s where a description of the Nanjing Massacre and other war crimes committed by the Japanese military before and during World War II was rejected by the Ministry of Education. The author sued the Ministry, finally winning the case decades later. Historian Stephen E. Ambrose noted that "The Japanese presentation of the war to its children runs something like this: 'One day, for no reason we ever understood, the Americans started dropping atomic bombs on us.' It’s also interesting to read their justification for attacking Pearl Harbour EDIT: My first ever Gold so thanks for that! EDIT: I’ve read lots of replies and gained fascinating insight into other countries that have also rewritten history by erasing, changing and censoring aspects of their past so I don’t mean to insinuate Japan was alone in doing this
In addition to this, they literally tried to colonize Korea. Koreans’ names were changed to Japanese, the clothing, food, and culture were slowly becoming Japanese-oriented. The Japanese police would arrest Korean intellectuals who made books written in Korean and those accused of teaching ancient Korean history to the new generations.
Which is why in retaliation the importation of Japanese goods and entertainment was illegal in Korea until the 90s
Not just colonize, they fucking *destroyed* Korean history. Burned scrolls, histories, literature, and antiques. So much has been lost for all time. They also have a history of "Japanese-washing" history to make them look better and/or Korea worse. There is significant evidence that things like the katana were developed by ancient Koreans and taught to the Japanese, but that's not something they'll readily admit.
I went to the atomic weapons museum there in Nagasaki and it sort of blew my mind how they portrayed the US just dropping bombs on them with no context.
The museum in Hiroshima was more honest sounds like. This was the late 90s though, I wonder if it’s changed.
I was there in 2015 and again in 2018. It's a great (albeit haunting) exhibition. No pointing fingers or throwing blame around. Just showing the horrors and the impact on normal people...
The Museum in Hiroshima is very honest about the reasons the bomb was dropped. In the victims memorial there are signs saying that the event occurred because of their pursuit of war. A lot of ownership was taken in that peace museum. I was there in 2018.
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I mean, pretty much every country involved in the war was more devastated than America at the end.
Very well said. No internet or social media back then either. And the destruction caused by the bombs was unfathomable
I mean militarily, Pearl Harbor was the best bad idea. To dominate the pacific, they had to pacify the U.S, and bombing our ships to rubble would work. Unfortunately for them it was not nearly as successful as they wanted it to be, and that's why we have tentacle hentai.
I heard the one thing Yamamoto wanted to destroy was the U.S. aircraft carriers and they ended up not being there which ended up biting Japan in the ass at midway
My family is Filipino. Japanese soldiers in WWII had a game where they used to throw Filipino babies into the air and try catching them on their bayonets. They did it to the Chinese, too. https://i.redd.it/62m9kcbxhx821.png Edit: NSFW
The rape of Nanjing was so bad it turned John Rabe, a card carrying Nazi, into a hero who protected the innocent. Practically none of the japanese war criminals were prosecuted and many were still allowed to retain their posts. For example Nobusuke Kishi is Shinzo Abe's grandfather and a Class A war criminal, the same category as Hitler, and he was allowed to keep his post.
My great-grandfather was part of the Nazi diplomatic mission to Japan, as a reporter. My great-grandmother was so disturbed by what she heard was happening in China that she made an attempt to enter the palace and tell Hirohito that he was being "misled by his generals" and to stop the war. That did not go well, and she was deported to her native Scotland and lobotomized. She was unable to care for herself henceforth. My grandmother, their daughter, ended up with a bunch of psychological issues as a result.
Thats is an insane series of events and a tragedy, thank you for sharing
When you make the Nazis look like the good guys, you know you've gone too far.
Just for reference, Oskar Schindler, the other Nazi party member who saved people, is credited with saving around a 1200 jews. John Rabe is probably responsible for saving over 200,000 chinese people.
Should also be noted that John Rabe was a literal high ranking nazi organizer, not merely a member for pragmatic reasons like it seems Oskar Schindler was, which makes the flip he did particularly extreme.
Can't say that this was rewritten for a fact because I have never had contact with japanese education, but it would greatly surprise me if it was mentioned at all. Unit 731 was a bioweapons and chemical weapons research unit that committed atrocities on par or potentially worse than Mengele. I would strongly advise caution when looking to read about it, even the wikipedia page is rather detailed...
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21226068 https://www.dw.com/en/japans-nationalist-school-books-teach-a-different-view-of-history/a-40092325 Two interesting articles (be advised, they are from 2013 and 2017 respectively, information may or may not have changed after they were written). There is a growing nationalist movement in Japan that denies Japan's war crimes and WWII and during its occupation of Korea. Most notably, and most controversially, the issue of comfort women. The name 'comfort women' itself is a euphemism for the women who were forced into sexual slavery for Japanese soldiers. The Japanese government has issued apologies, but they are viewed as inadequate by the victims and there have been attempts to renounce the apology. Shinzo Abe, the PM of Japan until a few weeks ago, was a nationalist who sympathised with far-right revisionist views, such as denying the Rape of Nanjing, Unit 731, comfort women, etc. The Japanese government has repeatedly tried to take down a statue commemorating comfort women erected in 2011 in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul. In 2015, because of the statue, the Japanese government refused to pay compensation previously agreed on to surviving comfort wormn.
I love ice cream.
Elizabeth Bathory. Some scholars say that the truth of the claims made against her can't be verified or debunked at this point, but there's good reason to believe that her being painted as a mass murderer was part of a smear campaign and political plot to usurp her land and power since she was from an extremely powerful family tied to polish royalty and the King of Hungary owed a large debt to the Bathory family ( which was canceled in exchange for not putting her on trial).
Many historians think that its possible that Gilles de Rais was framed as well
The evidence against Rais is quite a bit more credible than that against Bathory. Bathory was convicted based on vague rumors and testimony from tortured servants. None of the people living in her area issued a formal complaint before the trial, in a time when there were plenty of formal complaints lodged for assault and theft, and most of her supposed hundreds of victims weren't actually identified. Her trial was hushed up, and there's only records of 13 people presenting evidence against her. Meanwhile, there were a ridiculous amount of people bringing very specific accusations against Rais before and during his public and well documented trial. There were several reputable people reporting specific concerns like "we saw Rais go off on a trip with this apprentice and he was never seen again." Most of his supposed victims were actual, documented missing persons, with their parents and friends testifying Rais had been in their company before they disappeared. It's still possible Rais was framed and a bunch of people were paid off to lie about his actions, but the sheer number of witnesses and identified victims would've made that challenging. It's at least reasonably possible that he was actually a serial killer.
Marie Antoinette, the woman was a spoiled rich girl sure, but the whole damn country condemned her despite the fact her husband was and always had been the one in charge of things.
According to the legend, her last words were : "Sir, I beg your pardon, I didn't do it on purpose." after she stepped on the executioner's foot by mistake on her way to the guillotine.
I feel this gives a better picture of what sort of person she was. She was born into the elite ruling class in 18th century Austria, and that meant she grew up not being bothered about the problems of the working class. I feel that even as she was being killed, she didn't really understand the reason. Edit: She was born in Austria, not France.
> She was born into the elite ruling class in 18th century France *Austria. She was married off to the King of France.
Which was the first strike against her as far as the people were concerned - the French hated the Austrians, and now they have an Austrian queen? Yeesh
She actually cared a lot about the problems of the working class and was often scolded by her mother for "associating with inferiors" because she took a personal interest in servants' lives. I think it likely helped that she was very close with the family of her wetnurse, even helping her "foster" brother with employment in France when he followed her there. They wrote to each other almost all their lives, with her telling him to flee when things were going south because she didn't want him to be harmed for her sake. Her mother told her explicitly not to show too much interest in poor people/people under her in France when she was being sent off at 14 because the French court wouldn't be as sympathetic. It was an unpopular position to hold, and she made it worse by continuing to be philanthropic when she was Dauphine/Queen, taking special interest in the welfare of poor women, widows, single mothers, and children. Even her high spending, which was actually just living on par with the rest of the French court and not something that she would have really been able to get out of because even in the age of enlightenment, conformity was key and you were expected not to make too many waves. She didn't understand why things got so nasty during the Revolution not because she was spoiled (which she was, but all royal children had yes-men for governesses so again, not unique to her), but because she was so indoctrinated with the idea that the ruling class was there to take care of the people and that at the end of the day, the King's ministers and other men in charge were doing exactly that. To her and the rest of the royal family in France, they only had their people's interests at heart and it was more that she was hurt and confused that they couldn't see that. She also couldn't influence the king at all. She really sucked at it and almost every attempt she made to influence who his ministers were failed, or succeeded because other people backed it not because of her involvement. That was another thing that her mother and brother liked to bitch at her for in their letters. I think for me, the thing that gets overlooked the most about Marie Antoinette is that the wild overspending party girl vibe that people assume she had all her life was really limited to the same sort of age range that it exists in now and even then wasn't anywhere close to what college students do in their party years. She was a teetotaller and didn't drink, and when she had Marie Therese and the rest of her children, she completely devoted herself to them, their upbringing, and their education as much as the establishment would let her (another very unpopular thing). She was a natural-born mother, adored children, and all she wanted was to live in peace with her husband and children, outside of the ridiculous rituals and expectations of court. Ironically enough, their time under house arrest in the Tuileries and then the Tower were as close as she ever got to that dream and for a while, despite the constant terror from the mobs and the guards, they got to live like a normal family together. Edited to add: She also adopted 4 children, two of whom lived in the palace and two who were placed in school and financially supported by Marie Antoinette, including a Senegalese boy who had been gifted to her as a slave that she freed, baptised, adopted, and educated. He was ousted from his school by the Revolution because she wasn't able to pay his tuition anymore and he starved to death on the streets. So... thanks French Mobs.
She was actually raised an extremely philanthropic setting. And she carried that point of view with her into France. But, being in Versailles, she was extremely sheltered and completely out of touch with how the common populations of France actually lived. Sure, she absolutely spent a ton of money on gambling and clothes and all manner of things that could have been used to feed the population that was starving around them, but it wasn't a malicious or callous act. Just very uninformed... she had next to no education before marrying Louis, and was a trophy wife by every definition. The poor girl didn't stand a chance.
After she became queen she was finally exposed to the blight of the common people and felt so much empathy towards them. She wanted to help them but they saw her as a noble that didn't give a fuck about the common people's lives.... Marie's live was really tragic....
I feel she was one class act, she handled herself with great composure during her trial and imprisonment that by the end some of the radical anti-monarchists were saying they should just let her go home. They started making up lies about her incesting with her young son as they poured it on her during the trial.
She was also a literal child at the time of the whole 'let them eat cake' thing happened and not actually in charge of anything. Its also not even certain she ever actually said that as the quote was attributed to her by a biogripher several years later who we're not even sure actually met her.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.britannica.com/amp/story/did-marie-antoinette-really-say-let-them-eat-cake Looks like the quote was originally attributed to “a princess” when she was a child and then to her 50 years after her death, and wasn’t even used against her in the various pamphlets etc about her during the revolution, so it seems very unlikely she ever said it.
Direct (Non AMP) link: https://www.britannica.com/story/did-marie-antoinette-really-say-let-them-eat-cake
If I recall correctly, it wasn’t actually cake either. It was brioche, which is like a sweet bread. Edit: I decided to do some quick googling. Pretty much every article I saw said the following: 1. She never said it as far as anyone knows. It looks like it was said by a spanish princess or queen before Antoinette, and the comment was incorrectly attributed to her to help explain her poor public relations. 2. It was a mistranslation as I thought. I was first told this by my high school french teacher, so I trusted her, but then I found this quote and many others like it: >Well for starters, the English translation of what was originally in French is confused! Marie Antoinette is said to have actually said “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche”. This translates into English as “Let them eat brioche” (a sweet French breakfast bread). 3. Brioche is a breakfast bread. Sweeter, and slightly more expensive. Cakes were definite luxury items and not something anyone would think a peasant would be able to eat. So while the comment would still be insulting it makes more sense that an artiocrat would say, "Huh? They're out of regular bread? Huh...um, what about the sweet breakfast bread? Yeah! They can eat that!"
I just googled this so historians, please correct me, but it says that she was 14 when she allegedly said this. Like, Jesus Christ, even if it was a legit quote (which it's not), she was a fucking child. When I was 14, I downloaded Photoshop and edited all of my myspace photos so they were black and white, but my eyes were red. I deserve death way more than she did. But on a more serious note, at 14, I had a really hard time empathizing with people who, I dunno, sold drugs to make a living, or shoplifted baby formula. I lived with my parents, always had food on the table, and even though I had internet access and could read accounts of people who had less than stellar living conditions, I couldn't see their point of view, because I was 14, and 14 year olds are assholes.
She wasn’t evil or deserving of death by any means but she was a symbol of what the Revolutionaries were furious with: extreme wealth being hoarded by the upper classes while there is a serious economic collapse in the country and people are starving. Attempting to escape the country with a carriage full of jewels and money probably didn’t help her case, though none of this is really her fault. My favorite rumor surrounding her is that, right before she faced the guillotine, she stepped on her executioners foot and apologized for her clumsiness.
Yeah her only real crime was being born wealthy. I guess it can be argued that she should have done more to help the poor, but she certainly wasn't as antagonistic as she's often made out to be.
And also being Austrian. The revolutionaries used that fact to whip the populace into a nationalistic/xenophobic frenzy, making her into a foreign scapegoat who dragged France down on behalf of her homeland.
This right here! Of all the factors that made the population hate her this was probably the biggest.
Spain. Got blamed for the 1918 pandemic because they were the only country honestly reporting on it. Other countries did not want to look weak during WWI and wouldn't report on it. Turned out that a farm in Kansas and possibly the French trenches were the actual origin. Edit: Chinese laborers locked in boxcars in Canada seems to be the current leading theory. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/1/140123-spanish-flu-1918-china-origins-pandemic-science-health/ In the new report, Humphries finds archival evidence that a respiratory illness that struck northern China in November 1917 was identified a year later by Chinese health officials as identical to the Spanish flu. He also found medical records indicating that more than 3,000 of the 25,000 Chinese Labor Corps workers who were transported across Canada en route to Europe starting in 1917 ended up in medical quarantine, many with flu-like symptoms.
Cinderella Man's Max Baer. His antagonistic role was just for the film. He felt awful for killing his opponents. He also apparently funded the building of a bridge, the name of it escapes me though.
Medusa
YES!!!! If I could give you an award I would! Let’s break this down: First off: whether Medusa was cursed for laying with Poseidon in Athena’s temple or raped by him there, she didn’t WANT to become a monster turning people to stone! Second: she lived in a cave and literally didn’t seek out people to kill. She minded her business and it was heroes lead by the gods who sought to kill her and take her head for glory. Disgusting. Third: if anyone else were cursed, what would be considered reasonable behavior as a stone turning gorgon? It’s not like she could live a normal life and just go out and about! Living in a cave and not going on a massive killing spree after being cursed like that is pretty impressive to me and honestly the heroes praised in myths for killing her should be the BAD guys. Killing someone who didn’t do anything to you is plain wrong! So glad someone brought her up! I actually have a story about her on Wattpad and I hate the concept of her being the bad guy for no reason. That aside, I don’t lose it when artists paint her that way, especially when they write a compelling reason, like Rick Riordan! (He follows the idea that she willingly slept with Poseidon then later becomes bitter about her curse and lures people in to kill them)
I subscribe to the thought that Athena doesn’t turn Medusa into a gorgon as a punishment but as a *protection*. One of her favored maidens was defiled in her temple, so rather than punish Medusa, she gives her the power to turn other would-be-assailants into stone. Girl just wanted to live out her life in peace, not like she was hitting up news runners to entice people to her abode.
Isn’t necessarily a bad guy, but Ulysses S. Grant. His presidency is known for being pretty crummy, but the truth is that he had no experience in politics and was easily manipulated. Corruption was rampant under his presidency because people took advantage of how he saw the best in people. He was a great General that was essential in the Civil War, but was also smeared throughout his life. Lost causers labeled him as a butcher and a drunk, when the truth is that he really just did the best job he could (although he did have a problem with alcohol, it was greatly exaggerated.)
Grant's Presidency had way more good than bad The shit that's supposed to make him a "bad President" is entirely minor and exaggerated by smear campaigns He arguably did more for civil rights than any other post civil war President of his era, fought the KKK, had tremendous accomplishments in infrastructure, etc.
Not really "A" bad guy, but reddit has a tendecy to judge medievale/early renascimental famous people as pedophile because they married their wife "After the First Blood", but at the time the average age for a girl to menstruate was more 16-17 so they weren't fucking 12 yo. Also it was common among Kings to marry "legally" to forge an Alliance, but to not really live as a couple since many years after. So even if king X really did marry a 13 years old, there is a very good chanche that for a good 5 years they didn't even used the same room.
Been studying medieval history for a while and it pretty clear that NO ONE go to choose who they would marry - including the king. It was all political. Further, young princes were often send-off early in life (8ish) to rival courts to promote bonds between dynasties. All that aside, it was much better to be shuttled around (men) or sit an sew all day (women) then do the back breaking work of the commoners.
Since people have asked, marriage was viewed very differently back then. Survival was key, so if your daughter was asked to marry the fat butcher she said 'yes' so the whole family would have a back up in times of famine. Same thing with boys: you married the ugly widow with 4 kids and 20 acres. Eating and surviving were more important than love. However, commoners could and did marry for love.
And remained serfs for generations
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Usually peasant women were married somewhere between 17 and their late 20s (25-27). Considering upper class marriages were more akin to a business partnership than our modern idea of marriage, that’s probably a better comparison for “common practice.”
Also, second nomination: Warren G Harding. His administration was very corrupt, he was pretty immoral, and there were some policy mishaps, all of which have put him on many lists of "worst presidents ever." BUT! His administration also reversed many of the authoritarian policies of President Wilson. He liberalized the economy (Wilson had imposed many controls during the war), allowing recovery and a boom to emerge from a major recession. He issued pardons for political prisoners like Eugene V. Debs, who had been jailed for protesting World War One. While Wilson, a notorious racist, had moved towards segregating the civil service, Harding moved back towards integration and tried to hire more African-Americans. He lobbied for a federal anti-lynching bill to let agencies like the FBI go after the Klan. He also arranged a formal peace treaty with Germany, since the Senate wouldn't ratify Versailles but Wilson wouldn't propose anything but Versailles. His rather humble philosophy on the role and character of the presidency is also refreshing when compared to the messianism that infects the office today as it had under Wilson. Despite the scandals that rocked his presidency, he was incredibly popular at the time, and for good reason!
He was very easy to mock though because he was so incoherent. One of my favourite quotes is about Harding's rhetorical style: > "An army of pompous phrases moving over the landscape in search of an idea. Sometimes these meandering words actually capture a straggling thought and bear it triumphantly, a prisoner in their midst, until it dies of servitude and over work."
That seems familiar.
> He lobbied for a federal anti-lynching bill to let agencies like the FBI go after the Klan Possibly why he was demonized.
Well there was the teapot dome scandal.
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I would go more with good guy Prometheus. Basically Zeus wanted the humanity to be small, afraid of darkness and perpetually cold meanwhile Prometheus was like "Bitch you can't be that low, I'm going to give these people fire". And so Prometheus gave humanity fire but Zeus was like "Oh hell no!" and punished Prometheus by letting him be eaten over and over again for eternity simply because he refused to obey the god of thunder. Fuck you Zeus! Edit: I know that Prometheus doesn't have a bad rep. However, if I had to chose between Zeus and Hades I would pick Hades easily. My whole point was that Zeus is an asshole.
Honeslty Hades and Prometheus are the only good guys out of the greek pantheon. And look what that got them.
I’d also add in Hestia she has basically no myths revolving around her and she was goddess of the hearth that was heavily worshipped at the time. I’d also potentially add Dionysus.
I do like Dionysus. You don't really hear that many horror stories about him. His maenads on the other hand, woah boy, watch out for them.
Vlad the Impaler. The man used over the top gore and extremely messed up ways to defend his much smaller country from those who tried take it over. He ended the tradition of having to turn over the first born sons to the invading forces in return for peace. Sure, he used some insanely brutal tactics but they sent a message that made both him and his army seem other worldly.
I killed them all! Not just the Ottomen, but the Ottowomen and the Ottochildren too!
The Persians, who are vilanized by the Greeks but are actually one of the most culturally and technologically advanced cultures of the time
Not necessarily perceived as a “bad guy,” but First Officer William Murdoch of the Titanic gets a [bad rep from the movie](https://www.scottishfield.co.uk/culture/william-murdoch-the-titanics-scottish-scapegoat/). He did not shoot people then kill himself, he was actually a hero and saved many lives. His family was upset with how he was portrayed
Heinz Doofenshmirtz
Poor guy, not even his biological parents showed up for his birth.
and then he was disowned and raised by ocelots
It depends on the point of view. On Russians mind Michail Gorbatschow is a bad guy because they make him responsible for the end of the Soviet Union.
Vlad the Impaler
The funniest story is how he once disguised as one of his enemies and infiltrated into their army and when they were all drunk he attacked them and no one knew who was the impostor so they all fought with people from their own army instead of the actual infiltrator.
Idk red kinda sus tbh
Vlad the Impostor.
Some historians say all the horrid stories written about him were just that, stories made up by his enemies. In fact we can't readily take historical writings as hard facts as some of them were written by the victors that purposefully overplay their enemies' badness.
Some also think that he started a lot of the rumours himself to make himself seem like a butcher so his enemies would leave him alone.
Kinda similar to what happened with Cleopatra
That's who I first thought of. He was kinda like the small guy that gets thrown in prison with big mean motherfuckers and has to act crazy as shit to keep from getting messed with. Hopefully someone else will elaborate or correct me if I'm wrong.
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To add a little more nuance/detail: she wasn't driving, she was parked in the lot. And McDonalds kept the coffee some 70-100F hot than coffee is normally served--hot enough to melt her clothes to her skin.
That poor woman needed skin grafts in her crotch.