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Abraham Lincoln Created The Secret Service On The Day He Was Assassinated

Not many people know this, but Abraham Lincoln -- 16th President of the United States, Freer of Slaves and Rocker of Stovepipe Hats -- was assassinated in a theatre by John Wilkes Booth. It's true! They even made a movie! The part about vampires might not be historically accurate, but the rest really happened.

But wait, why was some loony actor able to get into the President's private box and shoot him in the head, anyway? Where the hell was the Secret Service?

dcdebs/iStock
"Doing... Uh... Secret stuff..."

Cut them some slack: It was literally their first day on the job. They had just been authorized into existence by Lincoln himself... on the very same day that he was killed. To be fair, Lincoln did not intend the Secret Service to be the platoon of presidential bodyguards that it is today. Lincoln envisioned the Secret Service as an elite force fighting against the number-one enemy plaguing America at the time: dastardly money counterfeiters. That's totally still their responsibility, by the way -- the whole "let's try to keep the President alive" thing just sort of fell upon them. The Secret Service is the government equivalent of your coworker who never complains, and just gets more and more work piled upon them because of it.

Xchangerjunior/Wiki Commons
Someone told them "protect this," and things spiraled from there.

3

JFK May Have Nailed Hitler's Girlfriend

In 1941, Danish-born Inga Arvad was a hotshot journalist working for the Washington Times-Herald, and also a former beauty queen and actress. When she first set out to interview John F. Kennedy, there's really only one way things could have gone... Although Kennedy was just a sickly 24-year-old Navy ensign at the time, he was already John "You Know What The 'F' Stands For" Kennedy.

Department of State
"I actually have just three healthy organs, but all are between my legs."

The two began a year-long affair that might have ended up in marriage, if not for JFK's father, Joe, nixing the relationship.

Old Joe's reasons were typical, overprotective-father horse crap: He objected to the minor detail that Arvad was, in fact, already married. Also, he was kind of worried about the FBI actively investigating her as a possible Nazi spy. And he wasn't super keen on the rumors that she might have also been banging Hitler.

Bettmann / Getty Images
But other than that, wife material!

2

The Captain Who Ferried Darwin To The Galapagos Became A Fierce Critic Of Darwinism

Robert FitzRoy was captain of the HMS Beagle, the ship that carried Charles Darwin to the Galapagos Islands, where he would reach the epiphanies that led to his theory of natural selection, the precursor to evolution. The wealthy, strapping, intelligent FitzRoy was not only a celebrity of his time, but also a scientifically minded renaissance man himself. He got on very well with Darwin for the duration of their five-year trip. Which made it all the more surprising when he became an absurdly staunch critic of Darwinism.

Owen Stanley
Was he bitter that Charles never called afterward?

1

The Former FBI Agent Who Tried To Warn Everybody About Impending Al-Qaeda Attacks Died... On 9/11

John P. O'Neill was an office nuisance: That guy who won't shut up about that one little thing that nobody else cares about. Only, instead of whining about photocopier restocking protocol or dual dental plans, O'Neill kept prattling on about the possibility of an al-Qaeda-orchestrated terror attack within the United States.

FBI
"The good guys from Rambo III? Get real."

O'Neill wasn't the easiest guy to work with. Though he rose to the rank of chief of counterterrorism for the FBI, and managed to track down the 1993 World Trade Center bomber, he was still a divisive figure. Although brilliant, he was both arrogant and brash, and so bullish about his theories that others often actively ignored him. Unfortunately, this included his theory that the FBI and the CIA needed to start preparing for an inevitable major terror attack on home soil, likely perpetrated by al-Qaeda.

In the summer of 2001, the rest of the Bureau finally caught on and started looking into this whole "attack on American soil" thing, but that was too late for O'Neill -- he had been worn out by financial troubles, tumultuous personal and professional problems, and a growing paranoia about enemies within the intelligence community. In search for greener pastures, O'Neill left the FBI and got himself a cozy, lucrative new job... as the chief of security at the World Trade Center in New York.

Carol M. Highsmith
Ruh roh.

Mere weeks into his new job, O'Neill was on the receiving end of the exact worry that had cost him his last job and landed him his new one. He was one of the thousands of victims who perished in the 9/11 attacks. We hope his last words were "I told you so." Nobody has ever earned them more.

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