6 Unintentionally Hilarious Legacies of Famous Figures

High atop a mountain peak in northeastern Iran, near the border with Turkmenistan, gleams a shrine housing the tomb of Khalid Nabi, a Christian prophet predating the Prophet Muhammad who once promoted Christianity throughout the Middle East. Nabi left two important legacies on the world -- for one, his daughter became one of the first Muslims after meeting Muhammad and converting. More significantly, his resting place looks like this:

Yeah, the gravestones all look like wieners. According to some commentators, there are also a bunch of headstones shaped like titties, but it's also possible that some of the wangstones just got buried the wrong way around.

It's notoriously difficult for researchers to study the graves and why they look the way they do because, Iran being a super-conservative religious state, people are afraid to look too closely at the Herculean penis stones. But that hasn't stopped Khalid Nabi Cemetery from becoming a major tourist destination for young people from around the world. Just remember, if you see any state police, the proper response is "Dicks? What are you talking about?"

Away from prying eyes, however, the site is a popular venue for tourists to celebrate ancient Persian culture by pointing, giggling, and taking opportunistic photographs of themselves hugging enormous dongs.

OK, we promise this whole article won't be about people molesting statues. But this entry is.

In 1857, Commander William Lewis Herndon left Havana aboard the SS Central America with a full load of passengers and millions of dollars' worth of gold. It was all smooth sailing until he floated right into the grumpy side of a cyclone. The ship took irreparable damage, but Herndon bravely saw each and every woman and child onto lifeboats. Refusing to leave his post while anyone else was still on board, Herndon and 426 other men went down with the vessel, and his courageous act was memorialized with a tall stone obelisk on the grounds of the U.S. Naval Academy to forever stand as inspiration to countless generations of young sailors.

Also, a tall stone obelisk happens to be perfect for doing this:

In an annual tradition known as the Herndon Monument Climb, upperclassmen lube up the monument with 50 pounds of lard before the plebes (first year academy students) work together to climb it -- a feat that can take over two hours and requires them to strip down to their skivvies, apparently. Once they manage to slip-'n'-slide their way up, they replace the plebe sailor cap at the top of the monument with a much more respectable peaked cap, thereby cementing their status as plebes-no-more.

After four midshipmen were injured during the 2008 climb, then-superintendent Vice Admiral Jeffrey Fowler banned the grease from the event, reducing the multiple-hour climb to a multiple-minute one for the class of 2013. However, his replacement, Vice Admiral Michael Miller, didn't hesitate to bring the sexy back as soon as he took over, saying, "Conducting the ceremonial climb in the same manner as so many previous classes helps to instill spirit and camaraderie among plebes and better links them to the many classes that have gone before them. The Herndon Monument Climb serves as a useful event in reinforcing teamwork, organization, and leadership."

But even after she died and her fiance and 12 other men lugged her earthly remains to the top of Red Mountain to be buried in the place she loved, fate wasn't quite finished sticking it to her: In 1929, torrential rains came along and washed her coffin right the hell down to the bottom of the mountain, where she ended up as a big ol' pile of them bones to be swept up and buried in a cemetery plot of the boring, non-mountaintop variety.

To celebrate her tragic and short life, every year Miramont Castle Museum hosts Emma Crawford's Wake, an authentic re-enactment of a Victorian-era wake, as a way to pay homage to this local legend in a dignified and respectful manner. Oh, but only a few people celebrate Emma Crawford like that. The rest do it like this:

Every year around Halloween, people celebrate the Emma Crawford Memorial Coffin Races, where they recreate Emma's post mortem thrill ride down the mountain by decorating coffins "like hot rods, baby carriages, and the Popemobile," designating one member of their team to act as their coffin-riding "Emma," and then racing them down the street. Oh, and they do it while dressed as pirates and zombies, because shit, why not?

The event draws around 15,000 spectators -- three times the population of the tiny town. And while some might call it an abhorrently disrespectful way to honor a person's memory, we're having a tough time thinking of a way we'd rather be remembered. The killjoys can have their quiet, somber get-together. We'll be racing down the hill in a rocket coffin.

For nearly 20 years, droves of Goths and their accompanying photographers have converged on the little port town for the twice-yearly Whitby Goth Weekend, of which using the famous graveyard as a backdrop for photo shoots is a major attraction. That's thousands of Goths, all clamoring to capture photographs of themselves with the graves in one small cemetery, twice a year for 20 years.

It got so extreme that, in 2011, the church's rector banned photography in the graveyard, stating that it was disrespectful to the descendants of those buried there for swarms of Goths to pose for photographs as they "stand, sit, or even lie on the table graves."

But it turns out that having massive groups of tourists swoop into a small town twice a year is pretty goddamn good for its economy (who knew?), and despite what any grumpy church rector may have to say, the event is still going stronger than ever, with the Goths (and more photographers than anyone knows what to do with) continuing their biannual takeover of the tiny town to do whatever it is Goths do when they put on a Weekend. We're picturing Burning Man, but with way more eyeliner.

OK, we admit this article is mostly about dicks.

If you've stopped giggling, the bulge under Dillinger's sheet is apparently just his arm. But that didn't stop the rumor mill from banging on about John Dillinger's comically enormous shlong, and his apparent arousal at having been shot to death. And the expressions of the other people in the photo certainly seem to support the wang explanation.

It's not known exactly how or when the legend really took hold, but eventually it became widely believed that the gangster's circus tent pole was pickled and stored somewhere inside the Smithsonian Museum. The myth was so pervasive that it even made it into an episode of the classic TV show The Wonder Years, and the Smithsonian Institution itself had a form letter on file to respond to inquiries about it:

"In response to your recent query, we can assure you that anatomical specimens of John Dillinger are not, and never have been, in the collections of the Smithsonian Institution."

Of course, the conspiratorially minded will say that this is just a ruse, and that Dillinger's most famous asset is kept safely under lock and key for fear that he may rise from the grave and beat us all to death with it.

Jason is a freelance editor for this fine website, Cracked.com. Like him on Facebook and help him think of ideas for his kickass epitaph.

Related Reading: People get memorials wrong pretty frequently. Just ask the holocaust victims memorialized by this awful float. Or the 9/11 victims forever remembered by this huge metal vagina. And if you think those memorials were bad, check out the ones our forum members designed.