5 People You've Never Heard Of Who Saved the World
John F. Kennedy? You've heard about him. Caesar? Got his own salad.
History is stuffed with famous warriors and mad geniuses who are just waiting to be played by Russel Crowe, or at least, Ben Affleck.
This article isn't about them. This is about the little guys who wandered onto History's highway and managed to do something that changed the world for the better, and in a huge way.
#5.
The Security Guard Who Brought Down a President
Wait, Who?
There you are, getting ready for work, brushing your teeth, staring at the mirror, wondering if anyone is going to notice that zit... and then this thought kinda just pops into your head:
"Today, I'm going to accidentally bring down the American government."
Never happened to you? Security guard Frank Wills had no early warning either. With a hefty paycheck of $80 a week, Wills might have had good reason to believe he was well out of History's high beams. But in 1972, while patrolling the offices where the Democratic National Headquarters was, Frank noticed that little strips of tape was holding a few doors open. He tore them off. Coming back later, he saw that the tape had been replaced and, deciding that shenanigans were afoot, he called the police.
Not on Frank Wills' watch!
You all pretty much know the rest of the story. The burglars were arrested, tied to Nixon's re-election campaign and eventually, to the President himself. Amidst charges of massively illegal behavior, Nixon finally resigned in 1974, and was beaten to death in an alleyway behind a New Jersey Taco Bell.
The one on Rt 34.
No, wait. He became a bestselling author, and lived for years.
Wills, the hard working American who was just doing his job, managed to disintegrate into obscurity almost as quickly as he'd emerged. He played himself in the 1976 movie All the President's Men, but he didn't even get a raise for bringing down the government. In fact, when he left the job because they apparently refused to pay for vacation time, he found he couldn't get work anywhere else. One university told him that they didn't want the government to withhold funding because they'd hired him as a security guard.
Money went fast, and there wasn't a whole hell of a lot of it to begin with. He couldn't pay his electricity bill, couldn't afford to bury his mother, and had to wash his clothes in a goddamn bucket. And not one of those fancy golden buckets. In 1983, he was sentenced to a year in prison for shoplifting a pair of $13 shoes. And that was pretty much it until he died in 2000.
Without This Person, We Might Not Have:
The desire to add "-gate" to every scandal that makes the news. That, and an executive branch that wasn't totally corrupt. For most of the 20th century the media had a crush on the president. Teddy Roosevelt made racist jokes, JFK chased tail, and the press blushed and wondered if the president ever thought of them when they weren't around. Frank Wills showed the world how important accountability can be, especially when the president is a paranoid lunatic.
Watergate caused Congress to strengthen the Freedom of Information act, making it a vicious scalpel of Truth for the common man. Until George W. Bush weakened it in 2001. And in 2002. Don't worry, though. We're pretty sure his intentions are pure.
#4.
The Kid Who Killed Richard the Lionheart (and Changed History)
Wait, Who?
Richard I of England, usually portrayed as a smug Sean Connery type, spent most of his life at war. When he wasn't slaughtering heathens, hating Jews and seizing land, he was at war with his brothers and his father. The man had lived to the then-unbelievable age of 42 when a hundred elite assassins sacrificed their lives to mortally wound him in a dazzling swordfight along a sheer cliff face.
No, just kidding. It was one kid with a crossbow and a frying pan.
The young assassin was such a nobody that historians don't even know his name, calling him either Peter, Dudo, John or Bertran (we'll just call him PDJB). The Lionheart came to PDJB's tiny land to suppress a minor revolt, killing the kid's father and brother during the assault. With most of the castle's defenders dead, Richard the Lionheart took a stroll along the base of the walls.
And there, history tells us, the Lionheart rofled. Because at the top of the wall, all alone, was our friend PDJB, batting away arrows with a dented frying pan, and shouting insults at the top of his young lungs. Spotting the king, the boy fired an arrow and missed. Richard, who clearly thought arrow wounds were things that happened to other people, cheered on the defender. The second arrow buried itself in his shoulder. After an unsuccessful surgery made the wound gangrenous, the dying king had PDJB brought to him, and pardoned the boy. Once the king had died, his soldiers skinned PDJB alive. Then, to drive home the point that everyone was just so irritable about the regicide thing, they hung him.
With Richard dead, his brother John became King of England, and began losing territories from Richard's hard-won empire so fast that you have to imagine he was getting candy and handjobs out of it.
Without This Person, We Might Not Have:
The Magna Carta. Though there is still a debate as to whether Richard was even into the ladies, he was still married to one. If he had survived long enough to have a kid, the crown wouldn't have gone to John, who lost so many battles that he got the nickname "Softsword". After a particularly nasty defeat, his Barons forced him to sign a document that essentially made him a king in name only. Add this to the fact that we remember John now as the sissy, whining lion in Disney's Robin Hood, and you have a pretty fair idea of how bad he was for England at the time.
King John signing the Magna Carta. Also, some guys with pots on their head.
If it wasn't for that one lucky shot, English royalty might have held on to their God-given deathgrip on the lives of their subjects. Our Magna Carta-inspired Constitution? Gone. And you and I, buddy? Proud citizens of the great nation of "New England". Kiss that July 4th holiday goodbye, suckers. And pretty much all of the political advances of the past few hundred years.
#3.
The Slave Girl Who Helped Conquer The New World
Wait, who?
Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortes has always been credited with taking down the savage Aztec empire when it was at its bloody peak, but he never would have gotten anywhere if it hadn't been for his mistress, Dona Marina.
Let's look at the numbers. The population of the Aztec empire around that time was about 20,000,000. Cortes, in typical we-have-superior-weapons-plus-they-are-heathen-savages fashion, only thought to bring 600 men. We'll leave you to do the hilarious math. Fractions have never been our strong point.
The idea is insane. He should have been on a sacrificial altar within a week. But shortly after landing, he was given twenty slave girls as a gift. La Malinche, later Dona Marina, was among them, and became his "translator".
Okay. What the hell is going on in this picture?
Remember: Cortes and his men didn't know the land, the language or the culture. Any reinforcements were months and months away. With Marina's help, the Spanish army avoided traps, made allies among the natives and worked their way towards the capitol of Tenochtitlan, which surrendered without a fight.
Historians have been having a vicious cage match over this for years. The most interesting theory is that Marina took advantage of religious prophecy and imagery to trick her people into thinking that Cortes was the earthly incarnation of the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl. By the time the devout emperor realized he had been tricked, it was too late.
Without This Person, We Might Not Have:
The world.
Everyday life in the Aztec Empire looked like a Rob Zombie movie. During one four day "festival" they sacrificed 84,400 people in order to prevent their sun god from causing the apocalypse.
Now nobody can say for certain what would have happened to this terrifying culture if they'd given Cortes a less cunning slave girl, but it almost definitely would have happened like this:
Instead of gods, the Aztecs see Cortes and his men as bank robbers with weird pigmentation. After slaughtering them easily, they spend the next few decades studying his advanced weapons. Hundreds of years later, you spend most of your childhood hoping that Aztec fighter jets don't bomb your city as a sacrifice to the sun god.
Aztecs conducted human sacrifice, however as the only numbers we have are Spanish (trying to justify their own atrocities after), most of the modern historiography says that it seems the Aztecs only conducted human sacrifice in times of great trouble or times that required a supreme sacrifice (a massive holiday) and they were *not* mostly women and children.
ReplyMore importantly, most historians today agree that it wasn't superior technology that killed the Aztecs... it's tat nearly 90% of their population was wiped out within one generation of Cortes's arrival. La Malinche was clever, but just kept Cortes's men alive and respected long enough to learn about gold and report back to Spain. She didn't bring down the Aztecs. That was smallpox.
The "slave girl that helped conquer the new world" is one of the "5 people you've never heard of who saved the world"? Since when commiting genocides and destroying entire civilizations in the blink of a century "saves" the world? Ah yes, when the White Man does it!
Okay so everybody in the comments seem to be defending the Aztecs, but they did sacrifice people, rather horribly (like ripping their heart out) often to women and children. And although they did have amazing breakthroughs, they were ancient. Their math and astronomy was really old. They got to a certain point of understanding and then just stopped. This is stagnation in a culture, there is no progress. So although the Aztecs may have figured some things out first, they never added to it. The Europeans would improve upon new technologies. By the time the Spanish were invading the Aztecs, their math and technological advancements were far better. You know this because they are the ones who had the guns, the armor, and the ships. So although the Aztecs had good points, their culture could not compete with the (at the time) more advanced Spanish.
Reply... I could live without ''modern day France''. They had this annoying idea that ''okay, now that we control all this land and people, let's crush every single culture to replace it with French.'' Aka cultural genocide.
Replyyou mean like america?
f**k Malintzin f****n whore
Replyyea, the aztec would spread their culture all over the world, advanced mathematics, astronomy and a very precise calendar that included the idea of add an extra day every four yeras, obligatory public education for everyone (included the slaves), and advanced medical tradition, and little customs like bath every day, not allowing people under 30 to get drunk, the most important person in the government elected by representatives of the people, it's really good that these horrible things don’t become common until 200 0r 300 years later.
ReplyHey there, don't you dare question the supremacist attitude of European dominant cultures.
Umm yea but they still f*****g sacrificed people, mostly women and children. That's really horrible, plus I will add that the European powers at the time had a better understanding of mathematics and technology as they are the ones who invented guns and armor. The Aztecs were unfortunately in a situation of stagnation, meaning there had been no progress, what they had learned a long time ago, there were still doing; they didn't improve past a certain point.
...Ok Seriously, Cracked needs to stop saying ZOMG THE MAGNA CARTA on every damned article. Yes it was an important document, perhaps one of the greatest ever, but seriously, you cannot just pull s**t out of your ass like New England.
ReplyLa Malinche is actually one of the most famous person in the Coquest of Mexico, at least for us mexicans. And I totally disagree with most of the said about Aztecs, because yeah, they killed people for stupid reasons, LIKE ALL THE OTHER CIVILIZATION ALL OVER THE WORLD. In fact, the wars in the precolumnbine world was only for taking slaves for sacrifices, they didn't kill much people while fighting, like the Europeans did. The hate the other "tribes" (not actually tribes, but...) most of people reference in this coments, is true, again like for much other countrys in all the worlds. I don't need to say that USA is one of the most hated countries in the world right now, and that make you bad people??? Yes and no. My only point is that you make aztecs look like savages when is not a problem of the aztecs. It's a problem of the humankind. Human is a savage, blood-thirsty beast.
ReplyThis is bullshit you made the aztecs look like savages and you basically said that their deaths was a good thing. The aztecs where highly advanced and you criticize them for killing over religion the europeans killed millions over religion in europe. and bascilly most of the natives in america.
Reply Hide All See All 4 RepliesActually, Aztecs also made killing a part of their religion. To the Aztecs, Cortes was Darth Vader, but to the Non-Aztec Mexican indigenies, AKA all the other tribes that the Aztecs routinely pick on, massacre, sacrifice to their gods and treat like total shit, to these tribes, Cortes was their Che Guevara. Granted, he was a murderous bastard, but he was destroying the one thing that kept them enslaved for so long. The millions of Indians dying there died from Smallpox. Sure, some Spaniards mistreated the Indians, but even if they came like peace loving hippies they would've murdered the continent anyway since they came of the boats all sick with fever and smallpox.
Vader, you write that as if Europeans didn't also use religion as an excuse for mass killing. The French mauled into non-existence the Cathars using religion as an excuse for some ethnic cleansing and territorial expansion.
The difference is that the Inquisition and the Crusades spare you if you either leave or convert. The Aztecs don't.
The Cathars fired the first shot anyways.....WHEN THEY KILLED PAPAL AMBASSADORS SENT TO COMPROMISE WITH THEM.
JRR Tokien - the dude who wrote the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings, was born in S. Africa. He lived there as a kid and began to pick up some hobbies that eventually led to LOTR.
ReplyHe actually hated racism and made it a big part in the whole elves vs human thing; forcing them to cooperate against Sauron together.
soooo...what good thing have come from France? I mean other then cheap hookers
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesStatue of Liberty - well, part of it. Oh and good war movies of Americans beating up the Germans.
Winning the American War of Independence?
A couple of genocides and a special form of bigottry making them think French language should make all other languages dissapear. A charming trait they share with English and Mandarin speakers, among others.
f**k you!!! even Hitler couldn't kill 84,000 people in Four days. Cite your sources and don't make up bullshit
Replyyou think maybe the people who were sacrificed wanted to be sacked? If you have to hunt down every person, no, but if people were lining up...
actually the dona marina one doesn't matter at all because within 10 years 97% of aztecs were dead due to the disease the Spanish brought. So even if all the Spanish were later killed later conquistadors could have destroyed the remaining Aztecs.
Replynot really, they would have been killed quickly and while some disease likely would have happened most likely it wouldnt have even come close to wiping them out, overall though the culture would likely have imploded at some point anyways
It is so much more complicated than this it's not even funny. Most scholars agree it was a massive weakening and dying off in population that kept Cortes (and his NUMEROUS Indian allies) in control until reinforcements could arrive from Spain. I wouldn't say the culture would have likely imploded, after all, some parts of it certainly still survive today in more subtle ways.
Bonus irony points: Richard invented the crossbow in the first place.
ReplyAll that warring and spending dragged the French government into some damn serious debt, which would eventually contribute to the French Revolution, which is often credited as being one of the most influential movements in history.
Replysounds like u.s.a., circa 2011..
I was wondering why you were getting so many down-votes, as the first part is true... then I saw the comparison to the US today.. and went "oh..."
ptjb... good work, historians! way to nail down your facts! way to earn your phd's!
ReplyWhat facts do you want nailed down? Historical records give the kid various names and there is no realistic way to tell which one was actually the real name. Should the historians just magically scry for the true name? Or maybe they should just pick one name from the documents and destroy the others and make believe they didn't exist ever.
aztec fighter jets! good one...
ReplyStanislav Petrov should have been in this article as number 1. What did he do you ask? He simply stopped the Russians from initiating a nuclear attack on the US in 1983, when Russia's early warning system falsely indicated an offensive missile launch. But yea, I guess that's not really a big thing.
ReplyThey did give him mention in another article tho .....
Didn't see this comment before posting. Agreed!
I got to say Doña Marina is well known, and you seem to read a hell a lot Garry Jenning books.
ReplyBlood diamonds do not come from South Africa. The term refers to now illegal diamonds sold out of western African nations embroiled in never ending civil wars. Also apartheid ended quite some time ago. Besides Dave Matthews there isn't much evil going on because of South Africa. I mean unless you count all the rapes and murders. Then again that's pretty much mitigated by the fact that South Africa gave us the flame-thrower car. The rape and murders I mean. Nothing can make up for Dave Matthews.
ReplyThe Magna Carta didn't end divine right for the English monarchy. Absolute monarchy continued (nominally, at least) through the Tudors and only officially dropped off partway through the Stuarts. You know, with Charles I's head.
ReplyBut the Magna Carta allowed a set precedent to exist from which the 'Petition of Right' and the 'Bill of Rights' came from (of which of the latter the American Constitution is based on).