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

[Wyrd of Gawd]

How about the time we nuked Mississippi?

[Gawdzilla]

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.

H. H. Holmes, a real life movie monster seems to have inspired a movie genre.

[Gawdzilla]

How about the time we nuked Mississippi?

Hardly counts without the  now does it?

[Living in Death]

It's not really stranger than fiction specifically, but the black death was crazy. It really was like something from a horror story.

As for something really stranger than fiction; that molasses truck that went up somewhere in America (Boston, was it?) and suffocated so many people. Apparently, you can still faintly smell the aroma in the streets.

One other; the ghostly shadows of Hiroshima. Marks on the ground that remain of the people who happened to be unfortunate enough to be caught in the blast. I heard that they actually detected human DNA within some of the marks. Creepy, huh?

[vorlon13]

This is a doozey:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Peigneur

[Thumpalumpacus]

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.

[scoobysnack]

I would have to say the false flags of psychological warfare. Operation AJAX where terrorist attacks were carried out by the CIA and blamed on Iranian leadership Mohammad Mosaddegh to get the people to support getting rid of him. Just recently declassified.

http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB435/

If anyone is interested in learning of hte other false flag attacks that led to every war in recent history:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrXgLhkv21Y

[Excited Penguin]

I would say Napoleon's military career as a whole.

[abaris]

H. H. Holmes, a real life movie monster seems to have inspired a movie genre.

Funny that Jack the Ripper takes center stage when it comes to the 19th century. Holmes, operating only a decade later, is hardly ever mentioned. Although he was much more prolific and certainly much more sophisticated. Hell, he designed a whole hotel with the sole purpose of murder and disposal of victims in mind.

[scoobysnack]

Anyone heard of tectonic warfare? Basically using energy directed super weapons to create earthquakes. Operations like HAARP for directed energy beyond the scale most can comprehend.

“Others are engaging even in an eco-type of terrorism whereby they can alter the climate, set off earthquakes, volcanoes remotely through the use of electromagnetic waves.”
-April 1997, Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen stated in a United States Department of Defense news briefing

Don't know much about this, but this was an interesting concept including weather modification for war.

Then we have the craziest Russian political leader in DUMA of the LDPR, Vladimir Zhirinovsky. Youtube some of his videos, he's hillarious. One thing he said was this. He threatens to destroy any part of the world with secret weapons of mass destruction to create tsunamis.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALVRPV4IXik