Unfortunately for him, Australia wasn't any more progressive than the United States at that time, being under the grip of a whites-only immigration policy, so having one of their own support racial equality in front of the entire world was like a kangaroo punch to the groin.

Photos.com
It's the third leading cause of death among Australian males.

So even though he was a world class runner and No. 2 in the world, Norman was blacklisted from any future Olympics. And they really meant it -- with Norman out of the picture, Australia didn't send anybody to sprint in the 1972 Munich Games.

After he was ostracized from the Aussie establishment, Norman went through a severe period of depression and substance abuse. Although he'd hoped to receive recognition at the 2000 Sydney Olympics -- it being his home country and in a more enlightened world -- he was again snubbed, being the only Australian Olympian who wasn't given a chance to run a VIP lap of honor.

Nick Laham/Getty Images Sport/Getty Images
"Hey, it's only the year 2000; social issues take time ... try again in 2115."

All because he didn't, what, do a "white power" salute in response? In our opinion, that would have made things even more awkward. And speaking of stupid racist controversies ...

The Video:

George Holliday was a simple drain rooter (the guy you call when your drains are backed up from all the candy bar wrappers and cigarette butts you've flushed down there) who lived a happy life until the night of March 3, 1991, when he heard the sirens that would turn his life upside down. Grabbing his video camera and heading into the street, he wound up capturing the infamous scene of half a dozen police officers beating the living shit out of Rodney King. It was a tape that never found its way to the family memories collection.

Comstock/Comstock/Getty Images
Other notable exceptions: Cousin Steve's wedding and Mother's Day '89.

The Tragedy:

This being before the days of smartphones, there were certain police officers who figured they could do pretty much whatever they wanted in public, because who's going to believe the word of some doped-up black guy? And they were still kind of right -- despite the clear footage of cops trying to make pancake batter out of a near unconscious man, the police were acquitted of all charges, which sparked the LA riots that led to 54 deaths, almost 3,000 injuries, and hundreds of buildings torched.

Universal Television
And a "very special" episode of The Fresh Prince.

Everybody wanted somebody to blame for the wreckage, and although many pointed their fingers toward more deserving targets, a depressing number of people turned their ire against Holliday for having the presence of mind to film the events. He started getting death threats in the mail, and once the media put a face to his name, he became known locally as "the guy who started the riots," in much the same way that NBC is responsible for the trauma of 9/11, we guess.

Holliday lost his job and his marriage because of the media circus. He works as a freelance rooter these days, but can't advertise for fear of people tracking him down. And the final kick in the balls of the whole thing was that his trivia card in Trivial Pursuit misspelled his name as "Halliday."

Michael Kelley/Los Angeles Times
"My only solace is having the best beard in the tri-state area."

Being that he was just a simple immigrant from the projects, Romero couldn't deal with the newfound fame that now haunted him, and he fled from town to town in an effort to return to the simple life. It didn't help that he always harbored guilt over the role he believed he had in delaying Kennedy long enough for Sirhan to get a good shot in.

National Archives/Getty Images News/Getty Images
Similar to Jackie's "It's a beautiful day! Let's put the top down!" guilt.

While he did eventually settle down and raise a family, Romero missed out on attending college and, as of the last time a reporter forced him to talk, never fully learned to cope with the celebrity caused by the infamous picture. It's so weird, it's like some people don't want to be famous. Hey, speaking of which ...

The Tragedy:

Oh, the men in that photo became celebrities, all right. And, as we just established, that's not everyone's goal in life.

indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com
"Does my ass really look that big?"

The problem was, the raising of the flag was by no means the end of the fighting -- of the six men who appeared in the photo, three wound up getting killed in battle soon thereafter. Fearing that it would be a PR nightmare if all of the men lost their lives, the American military brass decided to pull the survivors out of the war and make them famous. John Bradley and Rene Gagnon were quickly identified and flown home, which left the third and last flag man, Native American Ira Hayes, to become the real life Private Ryan. But Hayes didn't want to be found.

Sure, Hayes knew that staying behind would likely kill him (it was the deadliest battle to date in the Pacific theater), but he didn't want to abandon his fellow men just because someone had taken a cool photo. He allegedly even threatened Gagnon with bodily harm if he named Hayes as the sixth man in the scene. But eventually, pressure from his superiors forced Gagnon to give up Hayes' name, and Hayes was pulled from combat, being a celebrity and all.

1000nations.wordpress.com
With a stare like that, who needs middle fingers?

So he came home, heard about how his friends back in the war were killed, one by one, and the resulting guilt ruined his life. Because it's not like the world would let him forget -- for the rest of his years, people tracked Hayes down at his home on the Pima Indian reservation to get his autograph, which just worsened the guilt he carried for having (in his mind) left his friends on Iwo Jima to die. Eventually, he succumbed to alcoholism.

Jesus, that's sad. Let's move on from the tragic stuff and look at a nice, peaceful painting ...

The Portrait:

John Everett Millais' Ophelia is probably the most beautiful painting in history of someone dead in a river. It took the artist five months to complete. So how in the hell could a painting ruin anybody's life? It's not even showing a real person.

The Tragedy:

Actually, it is. Elizabeth Siddal, the model for the painting, was a hatmaker's assistant in Victorian England when she caught the eye of an artist who thought her pale skin and red hair made her a perfect portrait model. So Siddal spent the remainder of her days living as a kind of Victorian Lindsay Lohan, posing for some of the great Victorian artists and ultimately spiralling into drugs and an untimely death. And it all started going downhill with Ophelia.

Wiki
"If only something could have foretold things involving Ophelia ending so tragically."

See, to simulate the scene, Millais had Siddal lie perfectly still in a bathtub. No problem, except it was winter, and as the heat lamps under the tub went out, the water turned frigid. With the consummate professionalism innate to every supermodel, Siddal stayed motionless for hours as Millais painted, plus five minutes while he stepped out to smoke a comically large pipe and toss ha'pennies at orphans.

But dedication takes its toll: Siddal contracted pneumonia and remained in poor health for the rest of her life. This was the 1800s, remember -- if the pneumonia didn't kill you, the treatment would. In this case, a common treatment was laudanum, a mixture of alcohol and opium that, while probably very enjoyable, wasn't a miracle cure for anything except sobriety. Siddal became addicted, and in 1862, with an unhappy marriage and a recent stillborn pregnancy probably caused by the drug, she overdosed in a probable suicide.

The New York American
The only definite is that Victorian-era doctors were fucking awful.

Her husband, artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti, was overcome with grief and guilt, for which the only known cure is slipping a notebook of poems you've been working on into your wife's coffin. So that's what he did. But seven years later, regretting his rash decision, Rossetti had Siddal's body exhumed to recover the poems so that he could publish them. Because love is fleeting, but there's no regret like leaving your best poetic work to become worm food.

Lewis Carroll
A douche by any other name ...