What's your favorite "History is Stranger than Fiction" moment from world history?

[Rev. Rye]

Well, here's one example that springs to mind:

Dennis Rader, also known as BTK, stalked Kansas for almost three decades. He probably wouldn't have been caught if he had not A) Asked the authorities if forensics could track him down, and B) Believing what they said, gave the police a floppy disc with metadata that fingered him. But this isn't the unbelievable part:

During his trial, his pastor stood by him until he got to explain his views on the afterlife: that he expected his victims (all 10 of them) to be his slaves in the afterlife. Said pastor walked out of the trial, and, having formerly been a member of Rader's Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, I am very prepared to believe that the reason was far less related to the disgust most people would feel and more to the fact that his view of the afterlife is closer to Egyptian mythology than Christianity.

Also, Gary Heidnik (one of the models for Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs), contended his innocence to his dying day. When he was arrested with some women (his future victims) chained in the basement, he insisted they came with the house.

Of course, if we're talking about world history, the War of Jenkin's Ear takes the cake; England went to war with Spain because one sailor got his ear cut off. And, insanely, the ear may not have even been actually cut off at all.