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  • 6/20/2025
From epic battles with unlikely allies to haunting disappearances and bizarre revenge plots, history is filled with stranger-than-fiction tales! Join us as we explore the most unbelievable true stories that Hollywood has somehow overlooked. These incredible historical events have all the drama, twists, and characters worthy of the big screen!
Transcript
00:00Some of the wolves were killed in the struggle, but the rest vanished into alleys of the city, leaving Paris in a state of fear.
00:07Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're counting down our picks for the wildest historical events that would make great movies.
00:14To be clear, while some of these may be referenced on the silver screen or appeared in documentaries, none have received the full film treatment.
00:22What's for there? How can I meet this?
00:30The Battle of Castle Itter
00:33In the small village of Itter, Austria, lies a medieval castle named Schloss Itter.
00:39The castle was seized by SS Lieutenant General Oswald Pohl under orders from Heinrich Himmler on February 7, 1943.
00:47This World War II battle saw a small group of strange allies hold an Austrian castle-turned POW camp against an approaching German panzer division.
00:56The defenders included troops from an American tank battalion and French prisoners, whose members included two former French prime ministers, multiple French military commanders, and Charles de Gaulle's sister.
01:09Even more bizarre is that they were aided by German soldiers and an SS commander who had defected.
01:15The group held off the Nazi attack until Jean Barotra, a tennis star, could return with reinforcements after vaulting the fortress wall.
01:24Oh, and the XSS guy died taking a bullet for one of the ex-French prime ministers.
01:29How is this not a movie yet?
01:32Olga of Kiev's Revenge
01:34Everyone loves a good revenge story, and this one has all the makings of a bloody R-rated affair.
01:41Olga's husband Igor was murdered by the Drevlians, who then had the audacity to propose that she marry his killer, Prince Maul.
01:49To get back at them, Olga at first pretended to accept their offer.
01:53However, she actually had their messengers burned or buried alive.
01:56Olga then pretended to want to throw a wake for her late husband in the city where he died.
02:01However, she had her men massacre the drunken Drevlians at the party, before laying siege to the city and burning it down, using birds to spread the fire.
02:12Her revenge, recorded in the Primary Chronicle, has since become the stuff of legend.
02:18Since she was later named a saint, maybe they could call it Saint of Vengeance.
02:23Mansa Musa's Pilgrimage
02:25Ruling the Mali Empire in the 14th century CE, Mansa Musa, or the King of Kings, amassed a fortune that possibly made him one of the wealthiest people who ever lived.
02:37Often considered one of the wealthiest men to ever live, Mansa Musa ruled Mali in the 14th century.
02:44Between 1324 and 1325, Musa made a hajj or pilgrimage to Mecca.
02:49Musa gave generously on his way there, maybe too much.
02:53In 1375, the Catalan Atlas map added the Mali Empire, with a drawing of an African king sitting on the golden throne in Timbuktu, with a piece of gold in his hand.
03:04Although he reportedly built many mosques, Musa also gave away so much gold that he may have destabilized the economies of multiple countries.
03:13He also ran out of money, to the point where he had to borrow some of what he gave away on the return trip, even going into debt.
03:20Musa's absurd journey would make a crazy historical road movie.
03:24Plus, we need more movies about Africa.
03:28The disappearing village at Anjikuni Lake.
03:30There were records showing that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police had investigated the case again in 1931.
03:37These Mounties stated that they discovered an uninhabited settlement, but they deemed it to be either a seasonal or permanent abandonment of the site with no mysterious overtones and closed the case.
03:49In 1930, in what is now known as the Nunavut Territory in Canada, fur trapper Joe LaBelle discovered that an Inuit village near Lake Anjikuni had apparently disappeared.
04:01The villagers were nowhere to be seen, with their food and belongings still laying where they left them, suggesting they'd left suddenly.
04:08A grave had also been unearthed, and a team of sled dogs had starved to death.
04:12The incident is often connected with alien abduction theories or supernatural native legends.
04:18While many have questioned the veracity of the story, even if it is a fabrication, it would still make for a great sci-fi or horror movie.
04:26The Cadaver Synod.
04:27Ecclesiastical gatherings and trials are all the rage these days, and yet one of history's most bizarre religious trials has yet to make it to the big screen.
04:36Pope Formosus, you stand accused of heresy, lying, and conspiring to be pope.
04:43What say you to those charges?
04:46Pope Stephen VI is best remembered for initiating a tribunal against one of his predecessors, Pope Formosus, after Formosus was already dead.
04:57The late pope's corpse was propped up on a throne, and a deacon was appointed to answer for him to refute the charges against him.
05:05Formosus was found guilty, had three of his fingers cut off, and he was buried again in a different grave, only to be dug up again and thrown into the river.
05:15Pope Stephen, meanwhile, was overthrown and killed in prison.
05:19Politics, courtroom drama, grave digging, this has it all.
05:24Pope Formosus was shortly restored of his papacy, and this demonizing undone, anti-law was set in place that no person after death can be trialed and persecuted for what they might have done.
05:35The fake RMS Carmania.
05:37The Cunard liner RMS Carmania, newly converted to an armed merchant cruiser, was patrolling the South Atlantic Ocean when she encountered a baffling sight near the tiny island of Trindade.
05:48In 1914, Germany lacked warships, so they decided to arm one of their ocean liners with guns.
05:57The SMS Cap Trafalgar was retrofitted to resemble the RMS Carmania, a British luxury liner.
06:05Its mission was to use its disguised appearance to harass and sink British merchant vessels, who would be none the wiser until it was too late.
06:12It was a brilliant plan.
06:14However, after a fruitless first voyage, the Cap Trafalgar finally encountered a British ship.
06:20The only problem?
06:21It was the real RMS Carmania, which had also been given armaments.
06:26The ship they had just come face-to-face with, the first ship of the Cap Trafalgar's top-secret cubo mission, was the Carmania.
06:35The ship they were disguised as, disguised as them.
06:39The Cap Trafalgar was promptly sunk after a battle against the ship it intended to imitate.
06:45The world deserves this comedic historical naval action movie.
06:50Toronto Circus Riot.
06:51How does a fight between a clown and a fireman end up reshaping Toronto's reputation alongside its police force?
06:58A fireman and a clown walking into a brothel sounds like a good setup for a joke, and we'd argue, for a movie.
07:05In July 1855, a group of circus clowns and a group of volunteer firefighters got into a fight at a bordello in Toronto, Canada.
07:16The clowns won the day, but that wasn't the end.
07:19The firefighters came to the circus the next day, and burned some of the circus's wagons.
07:25People were throwing stones, setting tents on fire, and when the Hook and Ladder Firefighting Company showed up, not to put out the fires, but to join the fight, all hell broke loose.
07:35More firefighters arrived, but instead of doing their jobs, they helped their comrades in their mayhem.
07:41The mayor had to call in a militia to stop the violence.
07:44Oh, and because the police failed to prosecute, most of the police force was fired.
07:49The real circus was Toronto all along.
07:53The Wolves of Paris.
07:54While the exact year is somewhat debated, several accounts agree that during the early 15th century, Paris was attacked by a marauding pack of man-eating wolves during a harsh winter.
08:05The pack's leader was nicknamed Courtauld, or Bobtail, and they killed several dozen people throughout that winter, leaving many in fear of leaving their homes.
08:14Courtauld and the other grey wolf packs that roamed the forests outside of Paris instilled an overwhelming amount of fear in Parisians and foreigners.
08:21According to the stories, a group of Parisians banded together to ambush the wolves, driving them into Notre Dame, and killing them all with rocks and weapons.
08:31This has all the makings of a great horror or thriller film, with the ravenous beasts and winter setting giving it plenty of scare potential.
08:39The Man Who Rode the Thunder.
08:41Survival stories have proven to be successful movies in the past, and this is a contender for the most incredible.
08:47At 6 p.m. on a summer night in 1959, pilot Lieutenant Colonel William Rankin's F-8 suffered an engine failure while flying at 47,000 feet at 500 knots.
09:00The failure was followed by a fire warning, then a system failure. Rankin was about to have a very bad day.
09:07William Rankin was a marine pilot.
09:09While flying a jet over a cumulonimbus cloud, his engine failed, and he was forced to eject.
09:14Rankin's parachute opened early, and he spent 40 minutes after ejection being pelted by hailstones and thrown about by the storm.
09:24He suffered frostbite, extreme decompression, and bruising. He even nearly drowned in mid-air.
09:31He tried to hold his breath, but it was a very dangerous thing to do while falling at breakneck speed.
09:36But he still made it safely to the ground.
09:38Rankin wrote a book about the experience, but a movie could take his incredible story to amazing heights with the right director and effects.
09:46Hitching a ride turned out to be a tough task.
09:49Imagine a man standing on the side of the road, covered in blood, and dressed in a soaked, ripped-up flight suit.
09:56No wonder there weren't many volunteers to give him a lift.
09:58But eventually, someone picked him up and drove to a payphone where Rankin managed to call for an ambulance.
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10:211904's Disastrous Olympic Marathon
10:24The 1904 St. Louis Olympic Marathon was a disaster.
10:29It was a story of fraud, thievery, raw eggs, rat poison, food poisoning, liquor, feral dogs, and at least three separate incidents of near death.
10:38It was the stupidest sporting event of all time.
10:42The Olympic Games are usually a spectacle, but the Men's Marathon at the 1904 Olympics in St. Louis was a cavalcade of insane events.
10:51Firstly, the organizer, James Edward Sullivan, set up only one water station along the dusty, hot roads the competitors were running, on purpose.
11:00This led to only 14 out of the 32 of them finishing.
11:04The initial first-place winner was disqualified after the discovery he'd hitchhiked part of the way.
11:10The actual winner had taken performance-enhancing drugs, which were basically rat poison.
11:14The fourth to arrive took a nap after eating rotten fruit, which he stole.
11:19And that's just scratching the surface.
11:21Give this story to someone like the Coen brothers, and let them bring this comedy of errors to life again.
11:27Is there a bizarre historical story we're nuts for forgetting?
11:31Tell us your favorites in the comments.
11:33The war was over, but the submarine, developed in peacetime, took its place with the airplane as a major destructive force.
11:41According to Simonimoo!

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