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

[abaris]

Franz Ferdinand's assassination. He survived several attempts on his life during the motorcade, but his chauffeur made a wrong turn on the way to the Archduke's next engagement, and that was down a dead-end alley. It just so happened that Gavril Princip, one of the plotters, was walking down this alley, dejected because he'd missed any chance to make his attempt during the motorcade, when he realized that his target had just realized their mistake and were trying to turn around. He took his opportunity and made his kill.

The spark that lit Europe ablaze would not have happens had it not been for a wrong turn and a random encounter.

Doesn't make it any less strange, but it wasn't a dead end. It was just the original route. Nobody had bothered to inform the driver of a change, after the first attempt. Princip just stood where he expected the Motorcade according to the plan. Strange comes in when it really turned up there. And not only that. It came to stand right before his nose, since the driver started to reverse.

And they didn't even change the route because of security concerns, but because the archduke wanted to visit the ones being injured in the first attempt in the hospital. If they hadn't changed it at all, things would have been more difficult for Princip, since then he would have had to deal with a moving target. Princip wasn't such a good shot, since it took him three bullets to hit his mark anyway.

The car's still at the museum of military history in Vienna. You can see the bullet holes in it's side.



The story gets even stranger, since that same car is tied to all kinds of conspiracy stories. Such as killing everyone who ever owned it. Easily debunked bullshit, since it didn't drive another mile since that day in 1914. The owner gave it to the emperor, who in turn donated it to the museum. Where it survived two world wars, which is a story in it's own right.

Franz Ferdinand's uniform and even the sofa where he breathed his last, survived too.