5 People Who Took Revenge to a Whole New Level

Olga ruled both hers and her newly conquered kingdoms until her death in 969, helping spread Russian Orthodoxy throughout the land. In honor of this accomplishment, the church later made her a saint. We'd make a joke about the apparently low standards of sainthood back in the day, but honestly, if we were the church, we'd have done the same thing. You just do not piss off a Russian princess.

Then shit got real: Salomon was sent to Saipan in the Pacific Theater, where he served as an impromptu regimental surgeon to the troops. While treating the wounded, Japanese forces overwhelmed Salomon's field hospital. Four enemy soldiers stormed the tent, and when one of them bayoneted an American soldier Salomon had just pretty much finished saving, he channeled some of that infamous dentist rage.

Salomon shot two of the soldiers outright, kicked a knife out of another's hands, and headbutted the last into submission. He then ordered all of the wounded out of the tent. But since his soldiers didn't have any cover fire, Salomon took up a machine gun and provided it. Just stop and imagine being a soldier in that tent: You're hurt. You know the end is near. The enemy is in your base, and there are no able-bodied guards -- just a single, solitary dentist ...

The wounded managed to make it out safely, and the last thing they saw of their camp was a meek, glasses-wearing dental technician, completely alone, mowing down wave after wave of enemies with a machine gun. When the Americans came back and retook the area the next day, they found Salomon dead. It was a tragic loss -- for the Japanese: They also found nearly 100 enemy troops dead in front of Salomon.

Salomon had been shot more than 70 times, most of which he shrugged off, because you can't down a dentist with anything less than an elephant gun -- everybody knows that. Salomon earned a posthumous Medal of Honor for taking out two entire platoons of enemy soldiers single-handedly. So here's to you, Benjamin Salomon: Thank you for scraping away the plaque of evil with the little ... scraper thing(?) of justice.

When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Alec, now a teenager, escaped from the Gouldin plantation in search of the Union Army. He met up with a Union colonel named Ferdinand Dayton and successfully joined up with the First New Jersey Cavalry. Now an armed soldier for the Army of the Potomac, Alec led a mounted posse back home to do some reading of his own. Blood reading.

That, uh ... that sounded better in our heads. We're not much for vengeful one-liners.

Just like in Django, Alec's nemesis -- the cruel, heartless taskmaster who made his life a living hell -- was actually a fellow slave, made overseer for his devotion. According to audio records, when the overseer heard the posse approaching, he stuck his head out an upstairs window and shouted: "Who is it? Who's there?"

Alec replied: "This is me! This is Alec! I'm going to shoot you!"

Alec apparently wasn't much for vengeful one-liners either. But he was, at least, accurate: The former slave then personally shot and killed his former overseer. After the war, Alec moved to Vermont, where he bought a 100-acre farm he called "Journey's End." He spent the next 50 years of his life on his farm, presumably teaching a horse to moonwalk.

Pusser went on a righteous tear, arresting, driving out of town, or outright killing several members of the SLM, including the mistress of their leader, Carl "Towhead" White. (No, Pusser didn't go full evil in his pursuit of vengeance; she tried to kill him first.) The SLM retaliated by murdering Pusser's wife. And if they had seen any action movies, especially the several they ended up making about Buford Pusser, they'd know this didn't shut Pusser down. It only sealed their fate.

Now a man with nothing to lose, Pusser took out two mafioso by straight-up driving his car through the front of an illegal Casino. As if to prove that he had gone full Payback-style antihero, Pusser next paid for a hitman to take out Towhead White. With the SLM splintered from White's death, Pusser personally went after the rest of his wife's killers, even as they fled the state.

Now, nobody is officially copping to the illegal vigilante kills that followed, but strangely enough, nearly all of the suspects in the murder of Pusser's wife were found shot dead. Only one suspect survived, and that's because he voluntarily went to jail as soon as he heard Pusser was in town. With his revenge now more or less complete, Pusser simply went back up to Tennessee and showed up at work again. Hopefully he at least clocked out, as we're pretty sure you can't use company time for a Vengecation.

Aside from scaring the holy shit out of the kid with some sort of geriatric hex (did you know old people could do that?! We thought it was just gypsies!), Beaman also took the boy under his wing and taught him how to shoot, presumably via a series of cryptic lessons involving sweeping floors, painting fences, and waxing wagons.

By the age of 15, Frank had graduated with honors from Mose Beamon's Murder Academy and Beanery (it was the old west, it's safe to assume everything was also a beanery). Eaton figured he might have more to learn about the fine art of shootin' folks in the eyeballs, so he stopped in Ft. Gibson, Okla., to get some military training. But even back in the 1800s, the army didn't just up and hire any juvenile Punisher that showed up on their doorstop wanting to learn more about murder. They said he was too young to join up, but invited him to target practice with his pistol anyway. Eaton beat every trained soldier in the camp. The justifiably impressed/terrified colonel gave Frank the nickname Pistol Pete right there on the spot, if only to stop him from shooting for just a moment.

When Eaton was 20 years old, he became one of the youngest marshals in history. Now, finally, armed with a badge (as well as a lot of guns), Frank set out to kill the men who shot his pa. By 1887, he had defeated five of the murderers in full fledged shootouts. The sixth escaped Pete's wrath, but only by selfishly dying before Eaton could get to him.

Evan V. Symon is a Moderator in the Cracked Workshop. When he isn't planning his own revenges, he can be found on Facebook and be sure to bookshelf and vote for his new book The End of the Line.

Follow Jacopo della Quercia on Twitter.

For more devious ways people got back at each other, check out The 5 Most Satisfying Tales of Payback and The 6 Most Hilariously Creative Acts of Revenge.

If you're pressed for time and just looking for a quick fix, then check out 4 Reasons Insects Will Soon Be a Staple of Your Diet.