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There are many things in history that seem ordered or even inevitable – if you lay out the facts and the order of events, it just makes sense, right?
Then there are the moments in history that seem to come out of nowhere and just wreck everything. There’s no order, there’s no sense, and we’re all left picking up the pieces and wondering just what in the heck happened.
These 16 people have thoughts on historical events that seem like maybe, possibly, they were caused by a time traveler who wasn’t very good at their job.
16. He was way ahead of them.
A Belgian businessman was instrumental to the Manhattan Project’s success. Realizing uranium’s importance, he shipped 1,200 tons of it to Staten Island.
When Lieutenant Colonel Nichols contacted him, he simply responded: “You can have the ore now. It is in New York. I was waiting for your visit”
15. Thank goodness for that guy.
The number of times we DIDN’T go to nuclear war because of a false positive of a launch.
Honestly Stanislav Petrov should have statues in every country.
14. He just couldn’t be killed.
I would say there is significant evidence Fidel Castro.
Every single assassination attempt failed, sometimes because of wildly miscellaneous circumstances, including a sabotaged diving suit that somehow got “miraculously switched” with someone else, who ended up drowning in his place.
Dude holds the world record for over 600 attempts, I believe.
13. A mythological Druid.
I might have found a time traveller in Irish mythology
There’s a mythological Druid called Mug Ruith
He is claimed to have lived for over 1000 years, living during the rein of different kings (ok, nothing unusual for Irish mythology there).
But he flew in a machine called the ‘oared-wheel’ which sounds like a helicopter
He wore a hornless bullhide and a bird mask, which sounds like a flight helmet/cap and respirator pilots use
He drove a chariot that blinded those who saw it, deafened those who heard it, had sides of glass and was daylight inside and it killed whoever it struck… chap was driving a car with high beams, beeping the horn, had lights on the inside and was running people over!
12. I think the guns were just scared of Jackson, like everyone else.
When Andrew Jackson’s assassin attempted to shoot him, both of his flint lock pistols misfired. Andrew Jackson had to be restrained after almost beating the assassin to death with his cane.
The two flintlocks were examined after the incident and found to be in good condition.
Also participating in that beatdown was Davy Crockett, a congressman from Tennessee at the time, who happened to be standing there.
11. It all comes back to Poe.
Edgar Allen Poe writes about an event 40+ years in the future.
Basically, Poe writes about four people who are starving at sea, draw straws, and kill and eat the loser, cabin boy Richard Parker.40 odd years later four people are adrift at sea in a lifeboat, one drinks seawater and goes into a coma. When they draw straws for who will be eaten, the coma guy gets the short straw in a development that surprises no one. And so the three other men kill and eat the cabin boy.
Richard Parker. Seriously.
10. A freak tornado.
During the war of 1812, seems like a time traveler with weather control capabilities started a freak tornado that effectively ended the British occupation of Washington.
“More British soldiers were killed by the tornado’s flying debris than by the guns of the American resistance.”
9. Either way, very good timing.
Cyanide Gas Attack Thwarted in Tokyo Subway
20,000 people could have died but a worker found a burning gas bag in a toilet just before it mixed with another poisonous another gas bag – just in time – and put them out. That was in Shinjuku station.
I was in that station that day, and that person might have saved my life.
8. Not once, but twice.
Tsutomu Yamaguchi
Survived both the bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Reads like a satirical time-traveler story where the protagonist screws up his dates.
When he came back to Nagasaki and described the events to his boss, he wasn’t believed.
He returned to Nagasaki the following day and, despite his wounds, he returned to work on August 9, the day of the second atomic bombing. That morning, while he was being berated by his supervisor as “crazy” after describing how one bomb had destroyed the city, the Nagasaki bomb detonated
Must have felt good (in a way) when the 2nd blast happened.
7. A bonehead move.
The Germans spent a lot of time and money developing a magnetic sea mine that probably would have significantly reduced England’s ability to stay in the war, except they dropped a single one of the mines accidentally on an English beach, and also failed to arm it so none of the booby traps were active and the British basically found out straight away how it worked and we’re able to cheaply build magnetic mine sweepers.
6. Tomfoolery.
Franz Ferdinand’s assassination. It was so much happenstance, shenanigans, and tomfoolery that it’s like a special achievement in a hitman game.
Bomb that fails to explode, Generals don’t want troops lining the streets to protect the Duke cause their uniforms weren’t clean. Assassin not sure what’s going on decides to go to a sandwich shop on the corner to get some food.
Everyone decides how to get the Archduke out of town but neglect to tell the driver where to go so, when he doesn’t turn, all the Generals start yelling at him and he pops the clutch throwing said Generals off running boards and the Assassin just walks up and pops them both dead.
Thank you for all the love. Wanted to add one more piece of info. My history teacher at university taught a history class covering between the American Civil War and WWI. For the Assassination, he had recreated the entire downtown area of Sarajevo on two large pieces of plywood. The Apple Quay running next to the Franz Josef Strasa, really detailed. We spent 6 weeks tracing the routes the Assassins took to get there, where they stayed etc.
The big drop was at the end when our teacher told us as part of his thesis on this, he went to Sarajevo in 1955 or so to finish his research and one of his visits was to the WWI museum in Sarajevo. While there he was speaking to one of the staff and found out that one of the conspirators as part of his life sentence, was obligated to be the museum director and ensure the museum stays din working order.
He was able to spend a couple weeks with him and was a trove of information not seen in history books. For the life of me, I can’t remember the assassins name.
5. He was a time traveler?
Leonardo de Vinci. He could have been trying to get attention of other time travelers saying hey I’m stuck back here.
I never thought about that but that’s exactly what I would do if I were a time-traveler stuck in the past.
4. In the blink of an eye.
Tesla’s AC Polyphase System. One minute, we’re in the stone age of electrical distribution, and the next, Buffalo, NY is being powered by the Alternating Current being generated at Niagara Falls by Tesla’s genius system.
3. That should be a novel.
There was a shipwreck in 1664, a shipwreck in 1785, and a shipwreck in 1820. Each had 1 survivor.
Each survivor was named Hugh Williams.
2. Don’t worry.
Digby and A Company managed to travel 8 miles in 7 hours while also taking prisoner 150 German soldiers including members of the SS. During the battle, Digby wore his maroon beret instead of a helmet and waved his umbrella while walking about the defences despite heavy mortar fire. When the Germans started using tanks to cross the bridge, Digby led a bayonet charge against them wearing a bowler hat. He later disabled a German armoured car with his umbrella, incapacitating the driver by shoving the umbrella through the car’s observational slit and poking the driver in the eye.[1]
Digby then noticed the chaplain pinned down by enemy fire while trying to cross the street to get to injured soldiers. Digby got to him and said “Don’t worry about the bullets, I’ve got an umbrella”. He then escorted the chaplain across the street under his umbrella. When he returned to the front line, one of his fellow officers said about his umbrella that “that thing won’t do you any good”, to which Digby replied “Oh my goodness Pat, but what if it rains?”[7]
1. The sled he lost as a child.
The commando raid on the Norsk Hydro heavy water plant in Hardanger Norway during WWII, the Norwegian commandos parachuted in during one of the worst blizzards on record, along with hundreds of pounds of explosives, and had to trek through the Norwegian wilderness for 15 days before they found a hunting cabin.
The English commandos who were supposed to link up with got shot down, and the only reason they were able to make it to the cabin was that they found one of the commandos sled, which he had lost as a child. After that they had to hole up in the hunting cabin for months, waiting out the weather.
They survived on moss until. On Christmas morning, one of the men managed to shoot a deer.
They went on to destroy the heavy water plant as well as sink the ship carrying what heavy water had been produced, effectively ending any chance Nazi Germany had of developing atomic weapons.
The story is even crazier and less plausible than I’ve described, but I’m on mobile so I’ve left some things out.
I have to agree with these assessments, now that I’ve read them.
Do you have thoughts about other things that might belong on this list? Let us know what it is in the comments!
