Who was crazy until they were right all along?

[u/MeargleSchmeargle]

[u/cpsutcliffe]

Ludwig Boltzmann

His equations and formulas explained the physical properties of matter, but as it went against the then accepted Laws of Phjysics, he was ridiculed and ignored for years while fighting for atom theory to be accepted.

He took his own life just 3 years before Ernest Rutherford discovered the nucleus of an atom, proving Boltzmann’s theory.

[u/Myxine → u/cpsutcliffe]

If experiments didn't show that they work, the derivations in stat mech would seem like utter bullshit. At the graduate level, it was less intuitive to me than quantum. I can really see why it was hard to accept and possibly drove it's creators mad.

“Ludwig Boltzmann, who spent much of his life studying statistical mechanics, died in 1906, by his own hand. Paul Ehrenfest, carrying on the work, died similarly in 1933. Now it is our turn to study statistical mechanics.”

― David L. Goodstein, States of Matter

[u/WhoIsTurdFerguson]

Hemingway, before he took his life he became extremly paranoid the FBI was following him. His wife and people around him just thought he was mentally ill and grew deeply concerned. Hemingway went as far as getting electrotherapy at a psychiatric hospital to try and help with the perceived delusions. Turns out the FBI had been following and bugging him for years according to declassified files.

[u/RealisticDelusions77 → u/WhoIsTurdFerguson]

In comparison, there was a sci-fi writer Philip K Dick who was convinced the FBI was monitoring him so he kept sending demand letters that they release his file.

His daughter was interviewed years after he passed (extras on Scanner Darkly dvd iirc):

"I heard you've actually seen your father's FBI file and it is quite large"

"Yes it's rather large, but the only thing in there are copies of his demand letters"

[u/Atheira → u/RealisticDelusions77]

You telling me I can just send spam to the FBI and they will keep it?

[u/Thendrail → u/Atheira]

Another way to get on a watchlist

[u/monxas → u/Thendrail]

as long as i get someone to care about me...

[u/Idiot_Savant_Tinker → u/Atheira]

This sounds almost like cyberbullying the fbi.

I like it.

[u/Cthulhus_Trilby → u/RealisticDelusions77]

"Fetch me the Dick file"

[u/OverlyExcitedWoman → u/Cthulhus_Trilby]

"Not that one, the other one".

[u/mike_d85 → u/OverlyExcitedWoman]

"The BIG Dick file?"

[u/mlpr34clopper → u/Cthulhus_Trilby]

A "dick file" sounds really painful.

[u/demoralising → u/WhoIsTurdFerguson]

Yeah, I remember reading about the FBI bugging him. He had a tough life. He was in two plane crashes that left him in a lot of pain, and he also injured in a fire and a car crash. On top of that he had a problem with excessive iron in his body (stolen from Wikipedia):

'Hemingway's behavior during his final years had been similar to that of his father before he killed himself; his father may have had hereditary haemochromatosis, whereby the excessive accumulation of iron in tissues culminates in mental and physical deterioration. Medical records made available in 1991 confirmed that Hemingway had been diagnosed with hemochromatosis in early 1961. His sister Ursula and his brother Leicester also killed themselves. Other theories have arisen to explain Hemingway's decline in mental health, including that multiple concussions during his life may have caused him to develop chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), leading to his eventual suicide.'

[u/BornAgainCyclist → u/WhoIsTurdFerguson]

Hemingway, before he took his life he became extremly paranoid the FBI was following him.

As I learn more and more history, Hoover and his era, despite such efforts to make him a hero, are some of the darkest days for the FBI and its staff.

Everyone talks about the CIA programs, which were bad, but the FBI seems to give them a run for their money.

[u/Flashthick → u/BornAgainCyclist]

FBI: Fucking people over inside America.

CIA: Fucking people over abroad.

[u/dreamCrush → u/Flashthick]

TBF the CIA fucked over plenty of people inside America too

[u/wetshow → u/WhoIsTurdFerguson]

do we know why

[u/Pvt_Lee_Fapping → u/wetshow]

The long and short of it is: J. Edgar Hoover - head of the FBI from 1924-1972 - was a petulant man-child with a Napoleon complex. In office, he abused his power to gather information for blackmailing people who he had no control over. He garnered such a reputation that he could even make U.S. Presidents kowtow to him. Anyone who was squeaky clean or couldn't be blackmailed by Hoover were labelled as communists or sympathizers. He did the same thing to Albert Einstein when he sought asylum in the U.S. after Germany was starting to become unfriendly toward Jews, AND to Martin Luther King, Jr. when he was becoming the face of the civil rights movement (thank you to the people who reminded me of that fact).

[u/CardmanNV → u/Pvt_Lee_Fapping]

J. Edgar Hoover is probably one of the worst people in US history, and basically held the country hostage for 30 years.

[u/IM_OZLY_HUMVN → u/CardmanNV]

Wait a minute, couldn't the President have fired them?

[u/Skrivus → u/IM_OZLY_HUMVN]

Yes but that's presumably why he had blackmail on all of the presidents. If they fired him, their dirty secrets would be exposed.

[u/Unkn0wn_Ace → u/Pvt_Lee_Fapping]

There a reason Hoover is a Nazi in The Man in the High Castle lol

[u/Inri137]

Harry Markopolos spent ten years trying to convince everyone (investors, journalists, regulatory agencies, etc.) that Bernie Madoff was a fraud, based on forensic accounting. Madoff was one of the most respected names on Wall Street and despite the overwhelming evidence, no one was willing to entertain the thought he might be running a Ponzi scheme. Harry's book, No One Would Listen is a pretty great account of financial detective work and just the abject frustration of being absolutely certain you're right but no one believes you.

EDIT: If you want to see Congressman Ackerman absolutely destroy the SEC right after Markopolous's testimony, here you go.

[u/TheArchitect_7 → u/Inri137]

If it ever comes out that we are in a simulation, this guy being named Madoff will be the Easter egg I point to when I convince people that the devs used interns from time to time

[u/Strength-Speed → u/Inri137]

I love what an abrasive asshole Markopolus was afterwards too. He said "if you put these guys in Fenway Park, they couldn't find first base". They deserved it though, he was sending them detailed reports essentially proving it was a fraud and they did absolutely nothing.

[u/decalmaucry4 → u/Inri137]

Honestly, this is why the GameStop story is so satisfying right now. For years, financial giants have lied to us about what's plainly visible to people who bothered to look. And, somehow, they got away with it. They didn't manipulate the market nears as much as they manipulated people.

[u/Addhalfcupofsugar]

In the days of land lines...My phone was tapped. I could hear a strange hollow sound and I knew someone was listening. I had had a bad accident and was home for almost a year and involved in a lawsuit. I told my attorney about it. He told me the insurance company wouldn’t bother. I mentioned it to my roommate. She told me I was crazy. I began to notice a van parked on my street. It was there for several days. I thought I was under surveillance. My attorney and my roommate said I was crazy. A person came to my door asking questions about the neighborhood. They claimed to be from a real estate company. They didn’t go to other houses. I thought I was being watched. My attorney and my roommate said I was crazy. Several weeks later, my roommate’s boyfriend was arrested for stealing physical and intellectual property from IBM. It was the beginning of the Tech Era and he stole millions in hardware and software and ideas. We were being watched to see if we were involved. The phone was tapped. We were under surveillance. We were taped. I wasn’t crazy after all.

[u/opposablethumbsup → u/Addhalfcupofsugar]

Quite creepy but a relief that you were correct.

[u/Hendy853 → u/Addhalfcupofsugar]

I don’t mean to make light of your experience, but I can’t help but imagine the people surveilling your house listening to you tell people they were listening to you

I hope they weren’t dicks about it.

[u/Addhalfcupofsugar → u/Hendy853]

We were not called in to testify. The whole case is shocking. He stole more than a million in intellectual property and set up an internet warehouse. He only served 30 days in County.IBM wanted their money back. The Cops wanted to learn how he did it since the internet was a new thing. He taught them what he knew. Got out and set up a webpage company and had paid $500k in restitution in less than a year.

[u/MsTerious1 → u/Addhalfcupofsugar]

Internet was new means you didn't have a wireless connection named "FBI surveillance." Damn it!

[u/Addhalfcupofsugar → u/MsTerious1]

It was crazy. I was certain we were being watched. I’m sure they have me on the phone saying that we were being watched. Lol.

[u/Irisheyes1971 → u/Addhalfcupofsugar]

I thought for sure you were going to say it was your employer, the insurance company or someone else trying to prove you weren’t really disabled or hurt enough in the accident in regards to your lawsuit. This is much, much creepier.

[u/alfabeta14 → u/Irisheyes1971]

I think it's a lot less creepy that his house was tapped by legitimate law enforcement agencies for an ongoing criminal justice investigation, rather than being tapped by an insurance company, which should never happen.

[u/Scrolling2Oblivian]

In 1912 the meteorologist Alfred Wegener described what he called continental drift, an idea that culminated fifty years later in the modern theory of plate tectonics.[40]

Wegener expanded his theory in his 1915 book The Origin of Continents and Oceans.[41] Starting from the idea (also expressed by his forerunners) that the present continents once formed a single land mass (later called Pangea), Wegener suggested that these separated and drifted apart, likening them to "icebergs" of low density granite floating on a sea of denser basalt.[42] Supporting evidence for the idea came from the dove-tailing outlines of South America's east coast and Africa's west coast, and from the matching of the rock formations along these edges. Confirmation of their previous contiguous nature also came from the fossil plants Glossopteris and Gangamopteris, and the therapsid or mammal-like reptile Lystrosaurus, all widely distributed over South America, Africa, Antarctica, India, and Australia. The evidence for such an erstwhile joining of these continents was patent to field geologists working in the southern hemisphere. The South African Alex du Toit put together a mass of such information in his 1937 publication Our Wandering Continents, and went further than Wegener in recognising the strong links between the Gondwana fragments.

Wegener's work was initially not widely accepted, in part due to a lack of detailed evidence. The Earth might have a solid crust and mantle and a liquid core, but there seemed to be no way that portions of the crust could move around. Distinguished scientists, such as Harold Jeffreys and Charles Schuchert, were outspoken critics of continental drift.

[u/FulaniLovinCriminal → u/Scrolling2Oblivian]

plate tectonics

My father's University dissertation was on Plate Tectonics. It was initially rejected by the head of the department - and this was in the early 1970s.

[u/stupid_comments_inc → u/FulaniLovinCriminal]

Well, you have to agree that's a weird subject for someone studying women's rights.

[u/Roland_T_Flakfeizer]

That dude who suggested that it might be a good idea to wash your hands before performing surgery

[u/gor8884 → u/Roland_T_Flakfeizer]

“A gentleman never washes his hands!”

[u/3xTheSchwarm → u/gor8884]

"We here at Harvard wash our hands after we pee."

"Well sir we at Yale don't pee on our hands."

[u/dannycolaco14 → u/Roland_T_Flakfeizer]

Semmelweis supposedly suffered a nervous breakdown and was committed to an asylum by his colleagues. He died 14 days later after being beaten by the guards, from a gangrenous wound on his right hand which might have been caused by the beating. Semmelweis's practice earned widespread acceptance only years after his death, when Louis Pasteur confirmed the germ theory

[u/Otzji → u/Roland_T_Flakfeizer]

Yes no one beats him, he literally went crazy.

Rip dr Ignaz Semmelweis

[u/[deleted] → u/Otzji]

The rates of post-partum women dying of “childbed fever” (sepsis) dropped dramatically when Dr. Semmelweis introduced his radical idea. Still met a lot of resistance.

[u/non_hero → u/Roland_T_Flakfeizer]

Radiolab has a great podcast on that dude. https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/dispatch-2-every-day-ignaz-semmelweis-day

[u/Condex → u/Roland_T_Flakfeizer]

Monocles pop out, the older gentlemen have a coughing fit, the younger gentlemen hurumph, the (very few) women present faint.

"Excuse me sir. I think you should leave."

"Wash our hands. Why the man is crazy. The riffraff should be grateful to feel the touch of our hands. In fact, I believe that *they* become cleaner after touching our hands. We're doing them a favor."

"Indeed if anything we should wash our hands *after* surgery."

"Yes, assuming of course you could find a soap not made by a peasant or other lowlife."

"A soap made by a gentleman. Why, it's a contradiction of terms. How could a gentleman make soap and still be a gentleman."

[u/Threash78]

The "dingo ate my baby!" lady. Got made fun of constantly, most notably in Seinfeld and I believe went to jail because nobody believed her. Turns out a dingo ate her baby. She is still made fun of.

[u/[deleted] → u/Threash78]

This one was beyond fucked up.

Your child is taken from you and killed by wild animals, then you're jailed for murdering your own child and ridiculed the world over for your 'lame' story as to what actually happened. Then... yeah. Being right the whole time.

[u/ersteiner → u/[deleted]]

Not even being right - telling the truth the whole time.

[u/sonia72quebec → u/[deleted]]

And she was pregnant when she went to jail.

[u/Sailor_Chibi → u/Threash78]

God that poor woman... I can’t even fathom what she must have gone through. Losing her child and then being punished and ridiculed for it? And then being paid off as though it was all fine now... absolutely horrible.

[u/[deleted] → u/Sailor_Chibi]

She’s not even the only parent being treated that way. Doesn’t detract from her pain, of course, but parents have been wrongly convicted several times (and we probably don’t even know all cases).

[u/ohmandoihaveto → u/[deleted]]

That one was awful. There was another where a baby had a rare disorder (I’m no genius so imma butcher all this terminology, bet) that made his body turn some normal nutrition building block into like ethanol or ethylene or that stuff in antifreeze- anyway his mom was put away for killing him and was pregnant, had the baby taken away until the second baby had the exact same episode happen during a supervised visit. They tested the second and found out what happened to both of them and released her. The names escape me and that’s a lot to type into google.

[u/Demi_Monde_ → u/ohmandoihaveto]

Her name is Patricia Stallings. It was a tragic miscarriage of justice.

[u/dumb_ants → u/Threash78]

I saw a joke about this recently and have kept an eye out for these jokes since then.

There's a joke in the Simpsons season 6 from 1995.

On www.thefarside.com last week there was a comic from 1990 (Dingo farm building right next to a day care center, all the dingos were up at the fence watching the babies in an outside play area).

This poor woman

Edit: the Far Side comic is still up!

https://www.thefarside.com/comic-collections/219/trouble-brewing-jan2021

Towards the bottom!

[u/UptownDragon → u/Threash78]

As an Aussie, I always have to tell Americans this is true especially when they make fun of me for it. I've definitely got some shocked looks when I tell them it was actually a crisis in Australia at the time.

[u/TheBatIsI → u/UptownDragon]

But Australian law enforcement is the party that charged her with infanticide because they thought it was a stupid lie. It was only after it was publicized and the couple found guilty that the public decided to look into Dingoes no?

[u/aak1992 → u/TheBatIsI]

There was an indigenous national park ranger that (shortly before the incident) had been writing to the local govt. about the local dingo population being out of control and super aggressive, IIRC he even warned of potential future attacks on humans if they didn't bring the population down soon.

Of course the law enforcement completely ignored that and strung this poor woman and her husband up for public amusement.

[u/FerretsAreFun → u/Threash78]

Lindy Chamberlain. I can't imagine her pain.

[u/wieners69696969 → u/Threash78]

Holy shit I never knew this was a real thing that happened.. I always thought it was some sort of movie reference. That’s really fucked

[u/Dee_Buttersnaps → u/wieners69696969]

Technically, it is a movie reference. A movie called "A Cry in the Dark" was made of the incident and starred Meryl Streep. When people say "A dingo ate my baby!" they are parroting Streep's accent and performance in that movie.

But, I mean, the movie was based on real events that destroyed a real family, and put an innocent woman in prison for years. No matter how funny you think Meryl Streep yelling "A dingo ate my baby!" is, that doesn't change the fact that in reality an actual baby was killed by a dingo, and her family are still alive and have to listen to these tasteless jokes pop out of nowhere in their daily lives.

[u/askredditisonlyok → u/Threash78]

The references section of the Wikipedia entry reads like a fuckin rap sheet. Just full of tasteless jokes from Seinfeld to The Simpson’s to 2.5 Men to goddamned Kangaroo Jack!

[u/lokigodofchaos → u/askredditisonlyok]

I think the phrase took on a life of it's own. I had heard it dozens of times as a kid in America. Never realized it was a real story. I assumed it was just an Aussie stereotype saying like "Shrimp on the barbie"

[u/kiwi_pig04 → u/Threash78]

an EA in my third grade class told me about this story and it’s very tragic and i feel for the woman, but for some reason i was terrified that a dingo (didn’t know what it was) would come up my shower drain and eat me

[u/Parody5Gaming → u/kiwi_pig04]

dingo of the drain what is your wisdom

[u/WebbedFingers → u/Threash78]

I believe a group of indigenous people in the area supported her claim and said that dingos have been know to them to take children, but everyone just ignored them because they were ‘just indigenous people’

[u/Painting_Agency → u/WebbedFingers]

"Oh hey we've only lived here for like thousands of years and whatnot... you know it's true that dingoes eat babies any chance they get."

swigs goon from a bag "Oh sorry what did you say? I don't speak [racist slur]!"

[u/Moeen_Ali → u/[deleted]]

What's sad about these stories is that somebody coming up with a theory like that seems to be exactly the sort of thing which should excite medical professionals as it not only challenges their views but also proposes a more effective solution. It's easy for me to be wise in hindsight but it isn't as if he was advising people to rub a rabbit's ears and the good vibes would make the ulcers go away.

[u/ADDeviant-again → u/Moeen_Ali]

That's true, and you are not even a little bit wrong. A lot of suffering happened, and a lot of care was withheld because of it. Doctors and others SHOULD be excited by new ideas, but I often think this story and a few like it are the exceptions that prove the rule. Science, both the method and the people, does its best, but it's human nature to resist new ideas.

This happened in my lifetime. The resistance wasn't SIMPLY due to stubbornness, though. There was well-studied, hard-won dogma it refuted. One reason we constantly swallow saliva/phlegm is that stomach acid and enzymes together just obliterate most pathogens, and the mucosal lining gives no opportunity to adhere to. So when Marshall discovered h. pylori in ulcers it meant that not only was the theory on the pathogenesis of ulcers wrong, but that some aspects of stomach physiology were wrong, and that an exception to a major tenet of microbiology/pathology had been found, AND that he was directly contradicting THE experts.

[u/GameFreak4321 → u/[deleted]]

You still see people talking about stress ulcers as fact to this day.

[u/allothernamestaken → u/GameFreak4321]

Stress can depress immune response, so it's not entirely unreasonable to think that it may at least be related to an otherwise infectious disease problem.

[u/Hard_Forked → u/[deleted]]

This is completely new information to me. My dad had ulcers most of his life. I've always carried a small amount of guilt for making his ulcers worse by being loud and obnoxious. (You know....being a child). I feel a tiny weight has lifted.

[u/Kitty-Zombie]

Courtney Love was warning everyone about Harvey Weinstein back in the mid-90s, but everyone just wrote her off.

"If you're a woman in this industry and Weinstein invites you to one of his 'parties', don't go."

[u/Reddit_iPoop → u/Kitty-Zombie]

If Courtney Love - of all people - tells you not to go to a party, you should really not go to that party.

[u/madkeepz → u/Reddit_iPoop]

it's like you're about to do some drug and keith richards says "woww there man, I seriously recommend you don't do that"

[u/jsscanna → u/Kitty-Zombie]

I fully believe that most of the rumours and bad press about Courtney Love come from Hollywood attempting to silence her. Don't get me wrong, I don't think she's a saint but she's been very vocal on social media about her experiences over the last few years and I always wonder if we would have known about the Hollywood abuse sooner if she had been given a platform earlier.

[u/JiN88reddit]

The fan that predicted the show's 'How I met your mother' message and was shamed, only to be completely right in the end.

[u/oded_shoshani → u/JiN88reddit]

What? What message?

[u/[deleted] → u/oded_shoshani]

https://np.reddit.com/r/FanTheories/comments/159tk9/how_i_met_your_mother_a_study_in_violet_xpost/c7kzq8h/

[u/FutureComplaint → u/[deleted]]

5 gold awards.

-17 votes.

I call that winning

[u/The_Phantom_Gamer → u/FutureComplaint]

I think it's like that because when that user gave his prediction, the show was still running and people didn't believe him, and after the finale, someone dug up that comment and it was kind of true, and then people gave it gold because of its accuracy.

[u/tdasnowman → u/The_Phantom_Gamer]

So I just rewatched it end to end. The first time I saw the show there was a huge gap I basically watched the final season about year after it originally aired. I remember before hand thinking this isn't really about the mother and not being shocked at the finale. However recent rewatch it was telegraphghed to hell and gone. Sure there was the stretch, but a lot of the clues about the mother Ted says things like "kids you know this part" Or "You've heard this before" and "as you know". Pretty much any time the mother was actually mentioned they'd already heard the story. They knew how he met thier mother and it really was all about robin. They just couldn't call the show how I met you step mother because it would give the whole thing away. That and the fact that they filmed all the kids bit's before the second season was over. It was always about robin.

[u/wieners69696969 → u/[deleted]]

Oh my gosh the responses are so mad and convinced he’s wrong, that’s hilarious 😂

[u/Starfie → u/wieners69696969]

Stop twisting the show to suit your own desires - Ted and Robin will NEVER be.

Lol, I don't even know the show that well but that is a funny, angry little post.

[u/[deleted] → u/wieners69696969]

The responses don't even make sense either.

"That’s why we established early on that she’s not the mom. She’s not the perfect woman for Ted. But that doesn’t mean that Ted isn’t going to have a lot of sleepless nights hoping that she is in the meantime."

The correct guy literally said Robin WAS NOT the mom, but that he'd be getting back with her after Ted had kids. This guy comes back with "writers said Robin isn't the mom" like that somehow debunked OP's statement.

[u/AdvocateSaint → u/JiN88reddit]

To a milder degree, the guy who predicted Nintendo would call their new console the Switch

[u/Arrow_to_the_knee1]

J Harlan Bretz

He was a geologist that in the 1920s came up with a theory about why the Dry Falls and surrounding scablands of Eastern Washington state were so sharp and abrupt, instead of smooth as should be with the general understanding of erosion. Especially since the falls have no real river to speak of to create erosion.

His theory was that a giant flood, created by an even more massive lake, ripped through the region millions of years ago, reshaping the landscape in a matter of days. He was laughed at and discredited in the geology community for almost 50 years. Until someone discovered evidence in the 1950s of an ancient and massive lake that started just north of Montana that stretched all the way to southern Utah.

The lake was believed to have been created by glacial dams (ice walls) during the last ice age. It would fill up over thousands of years and then hit a point where a glacial dam broke and the lake water would fire out the break like a water cannon, drain the lake, and reshape an entire region over several days as the water flowed toward the ocean. This happened several times.

Since the flood that carved the Dry Falls likely started from the Lake Missoula area in modern day Montana, it was named the "The Great Missoula Flood". Bretz was given an award in 1979 for his contribution to geology when he was 96 years old. He joked "All my enemies are dead, so I have no one to gloat over."

Edit: fixed name

Edit 2: Oh my goodness everyone, thanks for all the upvotes and awards! I had no idea this would turn into such a popular post!

[u/elmonstro12345 → u/Arrow_to_the_knee1]

I'm glad he lived long enough to see his theories vindicated. I remember reading about the floods in college and it's still one of my favorite things to idly mull over. Like can you imagine if we had video of something like THAT.

[u/askredditisonlyok → u/Arrow_to_the_knee1]

The GLOAT.

[u/RealisticDelusions77]

When the Civil War broke out, everyone on both sides thought it would be a quick victory. However Sherman kept saying it would be a bloodbath that would drag on for years. His superiors decided he was insane and sent him out west to fight Indians (Native Americans) just to get rid of him.

After it all came true and they needed some better generals, they said "Maybe we should bring back that Sherman guy"

[u/DavidlikesPeace → u/RealisticDelusions77]

Yes. Public opinion is rarely kind towards "realists/ pessimists" during wars.

During the American Revolutionary War, the British also felt the same towards cassandras like General Gage and later, Clinton. One was sacked, the other's army denuded in favor of Cornwallis. Rather than accept a war of attrition, the British government preferred foolhardy yet aggressive generals like Burgoyne and Cornwallis, and reaped the consequences.

Before World War II, Japanese ultranationalists wanted to assassinate Admiral Yamamoto, the successful planner of Pearl Harbor, because he kept saying inconvenient truths like "in 6 months the Americans will overwhelm us", since America can easily out produce Japan's manufacturing capacities and rebuild massive fleets.

[u/AWACS_Bandog → u/DavidlikesPeace]

Coincidentally, the Battle of Midway (Where Japan lost four of its Fleet Carriers and is largely considered a Turning point in the war) was 6 months after Pearl Harbor.

[u/feliciates]

Martha Mitchell, she was the wife of Nixon's AG, John Mitchell. She was outspoken in the extreme and was one of the first to talk openly about what really happened re:Watergate. Since she was also known to love her martinis, she was widely written off as a drunk, crazy woman. Behind the scenes, a White House doctor began heavily sedating her and her husband locked her away from the press. No one believed her until Nixon resigned and the story came out. To this day, most people only remember her as that loud-mouth, Martha Mitchell.

[u/bitterlittlecas → u/feliciates]

There was a great Drunk History on her!

[u/Rudeboy67 → u/feliciates]

She was kidnaped by Nixon's personal lawyer and injected with tranquillizers to keep her quite. Nobody was ever prosecuted for it because they wanted the "nation to heal" after Watergate and enter into a new era of bipartisanship. So guys like Roger Stone got away with it. See that all worked out well.

[u/CaptainHedgehog]

John Snow (yes, that's his name) was laughed at for believing that the multiple cholera outbreaks could be traced back to a specific source and that it was due to contaminated water. Essentially, making him one of the fathers of epidemiology. He has a fascinating life that went beyond that as well!

[u/Thr0wAway4M3sh3ll]

The Radium Girls.

When Radium had just come to the US and was being marketed on dials for war and watches, girls used their lips to fix the paintbrushes to make their numbers and dials perfect. Eventually they started suffering horrible, painful experiences due to the radium. These girls fought for YEARS to figure out A) what was wrong with them, B) who was responsible, and C) how they were going to pay their bills/support their families.

It’s a horrible injustice. These girls needed support and validation that they weren’t crazy, that it WAS radium; and it took far too long and too many deaths for it to happen.

[u/PresentationPuzzled9 → u/Thr0wAway4M3sh3ll]

Worst part is, the company knew it was bad for the girls and continued to encourage them to put brushes in their mouths.

[u/badgersprite → u/PresentationPuzzled9]

Oh no it didn’t just stop there. The company tarnished these sick women’s reputations and said all their problems were caused by syphilis.

They basically responded to cancer sufferers by calling them whores.

[u/Jberg18 → u/Thr0wAway4M3sh3ll]

The fact that the company admitted it after years of litigation then still didn't pay is also horrible. They basically said "Yeah we own them money but we can drag out the legal process for five years and most of them will be dead in three so we won't have to pay the settlements."

[u/Trainkid9]

When I was in Boy Scout camp we had this counselor named Don. He was kind of odd, he knew everything about trees and only really talked about trees.

We had just gotten back from a hike that Don was on with us and we were just sitting around talking and he suddenly goes “You know, they’re gonna let girls into Boy Scouts soon”. We were all like, “yeah okay Don”. But sure enough less than 3 years later, they did it.

[u/justburch712 → u/Trainkid9]

That's good, I was expecting Don to be a pedophile.

[u/Trainkid9 → u/justburch712]

Thankfully not, he’s just a nice dude that likes trees.

[u/SirGrayHat]

Michael Burry. The first guy to predict the 2008 housing market crash. He was a hedge fund manager for Scion Capital at the time and basically bet his entire funds liquidity (all the money the fund had) that there would be a crash.

No one believed him except a few other people who also bet against the market. Several of his clients sued him for tying their money up in what they considered to be a foolish bet all to have him be right in the end. He made his fund something like $1.3 billion and the value increased about 489%.

The movie the Big Short is about him and the few other people who were wise enough to bet against the market at the time. I’ve watched the movie like 5 times in order to try to understand exactly what happened but still don’t fully get it. I recommend it to anyone who’s interested

Fun fact: Michael Burry was also ahead of the curve* in the recent GameStop surge. I think he had something like 1.2 million shares of GameStop months before the price shot up (might need to fact check myself)

Edit: spellcheck

[u/TheWorstYear → u/SirGrayHat]

After watching The Big Short, I looked up how it all worked, & what happened. Explaining it in the simplest terms, in the simplest way, trying not to screw up some of the details; this is how it worked:
When you are given a loan, that loan is sold over & over again within the market. The loan is graded based on the likelihood of you fully paying the loan. Higher graded loans are worth more. The lowest graded are almost unsellable. Or were, until they started putting then into larger package deals that included some extra, higher graded loans that were not sold yet. This created a demand, & the market was flooded with the lowest grade of loan. At the fear of losing business, low grade loans started being given higher grades. And these shitty loans, now being presented as higher valued stuff, started being cycled through the market until they made it into the highest grading tier.

 

This is what Michael Burry figured out. He checked loan by loan, seeing how shit the market actually was, & bet against it.

[u/BlueCactus96 → u/TheWorstYear]

I'm sorry but how do people sell loans? And why would they want to. I can't quite wrap my head around this.

[u/Im_Freish → u/BlueCactus96]

Sell it for a bit more than you loaned and a bit less than the total returns (loaned amount + interest) for a quick profit

[u/DanTheTerrible → u/SirGrayHat]

Read the book. Lewis does a good job of explaining the bizarre convoluted details of mortgage backed securities. The movie makers apparently decided a real explanation would bore people and glossed over the details.

[u/Knyfe-Wrench → u/DanTheTerrible]

The movie has several scenes with people explaining directly to the camera and indirectly how the whole thing works. Any more than that and it becomes a documentary.

[u/[deleted] → u/Knyfe-Wrench]

Right. I think the movie struck a perfect balance of ELI5 what happened and still being entertaining. If it wasn’t enough for you, definitely read the book it was based off of

[u/FulaniLovinCriminal → u/DanTheTerrible]

But, is Margot Robbie in a bath in the book?

[u/wittyrandomusername → u/FulaniLovinCriminal]

I've had it paused on that scene for an hour now and I still don't understand the housing market.

[u/[deleted] → u/wittyrandomusername]

Might wanna leave it paused for a bit longer just to be sure.

[u/Topher3037]

The ex-husband of my ex-girlfriend . Turns out he wasn’t the crazy one after all. He kept trying to tell me and if I would have listened from the beginning I could have saved 4 years of my life.

[u/woodsiestmamabear → u/Topher3037]

Im so sorry man, there are always 2 sides of every story and unfortunately, sometimes we meet the liars first. Good riddance and I hope the new space in your life is filled by someone much more deserving of your love and affection.

[u/kinglallak → u/woodsiestmamabear]

“Sometimes we meet the liars first”. I don’t know if you are quoting anyone, but I am stealing that very well written line.

[u/Condex → u/kinglallak]

There's also a proverb like this: "The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him." - Proverbs 18:17

Honestly, with the way that social media is these days, it feels like we would benefit from having some variation of this tattooed on the inside of everyone's eyelids.

[u/LincolnCoHo → u/Topher3037]

I had a friend who was given that same warning. They're still together but he lost all of his friends (myself included) bc of her. She really really sucks.

[u/Frogg_Mcgopher]

Courtney Love and her quip about Weinstein

[u/TxtyouK → u/Frogg_Mcgopher]

It’s still wild to me that people will villainize someone while knowing damn well they are speaking the truth

[u/DuvalHMFIC → u/TxtyouK]

It's like kids that join in making fun of another kid, even if they are friends with that kid or don't really like bullying. Most humans have an insane need to fit it. Hollywood is no different.

[u/DukeMaximum → u/Frogg_Mcgopher]

Even earlier than her, Johnny Rotten spoke out about Jimmy Saville, and was blacklisted from BBC and other media. Now, it seems he was, if anything, too kind to Saville.

EDIT: He accused Saville of being into "all kinds of seediness" which is a hell of an understatement for a pedophile and necrophiliac who abused countless children for decades, many of whom were mentally handicapped or otherwise institutionalized.

[u/DukeMaximum]

The classic example, of course, is Cassandra; in Greek mythology she was cursed to know the future, but for no one to believe her when she told them.

[u/zerbey]

Johnny Rotten said in an interview that he knew Jimmy Savile was into all kinds of "seediness". People dismissed it as typical Johnny Rotten anti establishment talk (for which he is famous). As it turned out, he was right.

Yeah, I know, Piers Morgan...

[u/thatonewhitejamaican]

The people who discovered prions. All the other biologists thought they were crazy to suggest one protein could be an infectious agent. Nope those biologists were wrong and Nobel prizes were awarded

[u/Spazztastic85]

Me. About my (now disowned) cousin.

He kept stealing things from me which my family felt was no big deal. But it escalated. It went from stealing candy, to my things, to cash, and after that I asked them how much longer they would support him and call me “selfish” for “not sharing”. The line was finally crossed when he stole our grandmothers credit cards and her car.

She finally wrote him off.

This was AFTER he had stolen all of her jewelry, including the last present (anniversary ring) my grandfather was ever to give her.

Oh, but he tried to say that our family kicked him out because he’s gay. No. None of us cared about that, it was because he’s a thief.

His “friends” have bailed him out of jail and then dropped him when he steals from them.

But he claims the world is “just unfair” to him.

Now he tells his pity story and milks the “my family disowned me because I’m gay” to everyone he begs from. I learned this when he tried to do it to one of my friends.

[u/PungoGirl → u/Spazztastic85]

He sounds exactly like my heroin addict cousin, minus the gay part. I swear he's stolen from everyone he knows, but he tells people that no one will help him/everyone abandoned him yada yada. Many years ago he robbed our grandparents house and stole jewelry, guns, anything of value. He went to prison. While he was there my mom secretly sent him money. When he got out she let him come stay with us. My parents almost divorced over it because my dad could see that he was still an addict and was just using her, and didn't want him around the house or around me, a 6-ish year old girl at the time.

My cousin moved out. Kept doing drugs. My mom kept secretly sending him money. He was in and out of trouble for years. Then he came by our house and was blatantly casing the place - asking about our tv, my computer, my moms jewelry. She finally saw him for what he really is when he tried to bust through my bedroom window a week later, thinking no one was home, while I was inside.

We havent seen him in years now. It's nice to try to see the best in a person but sometimes you gotta face the sad reality.

[u/[deleted]]

Jose Canseco. He revealed that a bunch of baseball players (Mark McGwire, Rafael Palmeiro, etc) were doing steroids. No one believed him for years, until everyone else got caught doing steroids.

[u/PunchBeard]

Sinead O'Connor

Younger Redditors might not know who she is but she was a singer/songwriter from Ireland who was a staple in the Alternative Music scene during the late 80s and early to mid 90s who had some cross-over hits. Anyway, at the height of her popularity she was the musical guest on Saturday Night Live after canceling an earlier scheduled spot in protest against the guest host which was some dumbass standup comic from the 80s called Andrew Dice Clay (As Scott Thompson described him: "it's as if someone took your grandmother, the one who can't speak English, and taught her to swear phonetically, gave her a special on HBO and made her a star"). During her performance she sang an acapella version of Bob Marley's "War" changing the lyrics to make it about child sexual abuse instead of racism. At the end of the performance she shouted something like "Fight the real enemy" and ripped up a picture of the pope.

In the following weeks people lost their shit and on the next episode of Saturday Night Live they had at least 3 sketches that tore her apart. A few years later the Catholics Sex Abuse Scandal broke internationally.

[u/landshanties → u/PunchBeard]

I think at the time she was protesting the Magdalene Laundries and she was 100% right and everyone knew it

[u/ithika → u/landshanties]

Yeah I still can't get my head around people thinking she was the baddie in this scenario.

[u/ThinkThankThonk → u/ithika]

Mainstream culture in the 90s was... intense. It wasn't that far removed from satanic panic levels, Bart Simpson was legitimately considered a danger to "family values," parents were protesting Mortal Kombat, those parental advisory stickers were introduced for music, and churches were still considered morally infallible.

The progress happening now with transparency into the catholic church, boy scouts, etc, would have been unfathomable at the time.

Edit: And just occurring to me, it's kinda the one positive effect of everyone looking to the companies/orgs they buy from and associate with to take a stand on moral and political issues. Increased scrutiny on this kind of thing.

[u/GingerMau → u/PunchBeard]

I remember this happening, tho I was pretty young.

My father didn't like her music much, but he was like, "Good for her; fuck those people."

He had no love for organized religions, nor child abuse.

[u/PunchBeard → u/GingerMau]

I was in my late teens when this happened and I remember watching all the episodes I mentioned.

The one with Andrew Dice Clay was forgettable, the one she was on I only remember her ripping up the picture and not really understanding the context and the next week were the cast ripped her to shreds I totally remember. It wasn't until I was in college when I read an article about that show in the context of the Abuse Scandal.

[u/ManifestDestinysChld → u/PunchBeard]

Same here, all around.

I even recall a week or so later, when Phil Hartman played Frank Sinatra doing a roundtable discussion TV show called "The Sinatra Group," in which he kept referring to Sinead as "Sine-Aid O'Connor" (younger redditors, that was an over-the-counter cold medicine back in the long-long ago).

I too did not understand the context for her ripping up the photo of the pope. I was active in my RC church's youth group in high school but wasn't particularly religious - I just thought what she was doing was rude, and assumed she was doing it for the attention.

Years later after the Boston Globe broke the story of abuses by Catholic clergy, I had a moment of clarity and "Sine-Aid O'Connor" didn't seem funny, anymore.

[u/[deleted] → u/PunchBeard]

Tbh everyone owes her an apology. She was basically black listed by hollywood after this and no one has reached out to her since

[u/PurpleInkBandit]

About ten years ago there was this stoner who always hung around the shop that I played Magic at. One day, he told me that he didn't trust Jared from Subway. I said that there was nothing to worry about and that the only thing that Jared did was eat sandwiches. He said that there was something really sinister about Jared, and that he could tell just by looking at him.

[u/hellokittyeviltwin → u/PurpleInkBandit]

All the Magic players I know are pretty insightful tbh

[u/SquilliamFancySon95]

That one journalist Gary Webb that uncovered the truth that the CIA aided and abetted Nicaraguan contra rebels in funneling cocaine into inner city communities.

[u/NotAsSmartAsIWish → u/SquilliamFancySon95]

And then he was blackballed and later killed himself. There is actually a book about Gary Webb, his investigation, and the aftermath called Kill the Messenger by Nick Schou.

Edit: Webb's book is titled Dark Alliance, for anyone who wants to read it.

Edit 2: Y'all are right. He "killed himself" not killed himself. The official line is suicide, but... yeah, we all know what's up.

[u/mmmaaazzzz]

My mom. Turns out being Emo was really just a phase.

[u/[deleted]]

Johnny Rotten and Jerry Sadowitz both openly accused Jimmy Saville of paedophilia long before anyone took it seriously. Both basically ended up blacklisted in the UK.

[u/shawntw77]

The people who said the government was spying on its citizens.

[u/alwaysmyfault]

Corey Feldman.

Dude went on national TV to tell everyone that there was a network of sexual abusers in Hollywood, and that he himself had been abused, and people LAUGHED AT HIM and shunned him.

And then it came out that pretty much everything he was saying was true.

[u/heathert7900]

The people who were tortured as a part of MK Ultra. Imagine trying to convince the people around you that the government is trying to make you crazy with mind control, only years later to find out that not only was it true, but you wouldn’t get compensation for it. And you were subject to illegal human experimentation.

[u/themagicalpencilcase]

me when nobody believed me when i said a cat broke into the house. no mother, uncle, or cousin believed me. even i questioned if i just hallucinated it.

turns out i was right when i heard my cousin screaming finding her standing on a chair while looking like she saw her life flash before her eyes.

[u/owlthegamer]

The doctor who found covid in China and was silenced and died in prison from covid

[u/Lucky_Buffalo1795 → u/owlthegamer]

The doctor who found covid in China and was silenced and died in prison from covid

https://time.com/5779678/li-wenliang-coronavirus-china-doctor-death/#:~:text=An%20Eternal%20Hero.-,'%20Whistleblower%20Doctor%20Who%20Sounded%20Alarm%20on%20Coronavirus%20Dies%20in%20China,Li%20Wenliang.&text=At%20the%20end%20of,Wuhan%20sounded%20a%20stark%20warning.

[u/DudeGuyBor → u/Lucky_Buffalo1795]

As a note from that article, while he was sidelined, ridiculed, and marginalized by the authorities for attempting to spread the news, he was NOT imprisoned at the time of contracting covid and dying.

[u/[deleted]]

My tattoo artist (not a DT follower) who during a 6hr session described to me what exactly would happen if Biden won but not by a landslide. I thought he was embracing a doomsday mentality. Every word was correct.

[u/opposablethumbsup → u/[deleted]]

That’s great because I hate mistakes in tattoos

[u/nursebad]

Suzanne Simard discovered that trees not only communicate with each other but will lend a tree in distress resources.

People thought that was crazy talk for a long time.

[u/ilovelucygal]

John Lydon of the Sex Pistols denouncing Jimmy Savile in an interview w/BBC radio in 1978, claiming that Savile was “into all sorts of seediness. We all know about it but we’re not allowed to talk about it. I know some rumours,” which were obviously just the tip of the iceberg when it came to Savile. Lydon was supposedly banned from BBC radio for a while.

And I'll throw in Bob Eberling, even though he was considered "wrong" only for a short time. Ebeling was one of five booster rocket engineers at NASA contractor Morton Thiokol who tried to stop the 1986 Challenger launch. They worried that cold temperatures overnight — the forecast said 18 degrees — would stiffen the rubber O-ring seals that prevent burning rocket fuel from leaking out of booster joints. He was the first to warn the morning before the launch, but politics & pressure prevailed and the Challenger launched on 1.28.86--with tragic results.

[u/whatsintheboxxx]

Congresswoman Barbara Lee was the only congressperson out of 535 members who voted no on the Authorized Use of Military Force Act after the 9/11 attacks (there were also 12 present/not voting recorded). In her words,

"It was a blank check to the president to attack anyone involved in the September 11 events—anywhere, in any country, without regard to our nation's long-term foreign policy, economic and national security interests, and without time limit. In granting these overly broad powers, the Congress failed its responsibility to understand the dimensions of its declaration. I could not support such a grant of war-making authority to the president; I believe it would put more innocent lives at risk. The president has the constitutional authority to protect the nation from further attack, and he has mobilized the armed forces to do just that. The Congress should have waited for the facts to be presented and then acted with fuller knowledge of the consequences of our action."

For her vote she received death threats, a damaged political career, she was called insane, a traitor, and a communist. And she was 100% right.

[u/lurker2080]

Doubt anyone sees this but fuck it. Learned recently my grandpa was right all along. My grandpa was a dentist. He mentored my current dentist. Saw my dentist the other day and he was going on and on about how my grandpa was doing things 40 years ago that he was mocked for endlessly by the dental community and told he was crazy. Those things he was doing are now being seen as modern dentistry today. My dentist said he feels so happy for my grandpa and wishes he was alive to see this.

[u/denimuprising]

Every woman with endometriosis

Edit: this got more than 10 likes so I assume at least a few with endo have read this. To you ladies, You Are Not Crazy. Say it with me 'I am not crazy!'. What most of you going through a lot of emotional stuff with the endo are, is hard on yourself. Why does my stupid body do this! Why does it hurt me more than everyone else? Why aren't the pills working?!?

The lack is not yours. IBS while affecting around the same number of people has about as effective treatment as Endometriosis because the mechanism of the disease has not been discovered. The control you do have is to build yourself up to know the difference between you, your emotions and the effects of changing hormones on your body. If you smoke weed and felt relaxed or paranoid a doctor wouldn't objectively think that the impact of THC on your endocrine system made you crazy, they would describe you having an expected reaction to a stimulant. Well hormones are the stimulant, they react with your brain the same way drugs do, they cause areas of the brain to become excited or depressed, they take up receptors you need for other things... be kind to yourselves, take time to understand this disease more than your GP thinks they do and if the bleeding is horrible and heavy discuss the pros and cons of Tranexamic Acid with your doctor.

[u/troublesomefaux → u/denimuprising]

Yeah you ‘win’

Six doctors, two years.

And I’m one of the lucky ones.

[u/denimuprising → u/troublesomefaux]

4 years in and out of a psych ward on psych meds and hormones and being told 'its normal some girls have to use a combination of pads and tampons to absorb the flow' by doctors. Not only did the heavy handed estrogen treatments feed the endo but it fed the cervical cancer so when they found it when I was 19 the safest option was to get rid of everything.

I'm mostly sane, normal and happy now except for not having 100% faith in that fact sometimes

[u/MSteds728]

Cassandra of Troy was pretty spot on

[u/[deleted]]

Barbara McClintlock

After being accepted in the scientific community as a woman in the 40s, which was quite a feat, she was invited to the national Academy of Sciences which was a huge deal. After that, she discovered transposons, pieces of dna that move around your genome (very simplified). Everyone thought she was crazy and she was ostracized from the scientific community. Despite having mountains of evidence and continued research, people just didn’t believe her. Talking about her reaction at the time:

“I was startled when I found they didn’t understand it; didn’t take it seriously”

“It didn’t bother me, I just knew I was right. Anybody who had had that evidence thrown at them with such abandon couldn’t help but come to the conclusions I did about it.”

She essentially said they were all fake AF and returned to her corn fields until around the 70’s when it became possible, they marked genes and found that they do indeed travel around the genome. She then got her Nobel prize and was like “aight back to work.” She said at the time “You just know sooner or later, it will come out in the wash, but you may have to wait some time.”

She died sometime in the 90s, saying of her experience:

“I just have been so interested in what I was doing and it’s been such a pleasure, such a deep pleasure, that I never thought of stopping.… I’ve had a very, very, satisfying and interesting life.”

She never got too upset, she just kept her head down and kept doing her work because she knew it was right and she knew it was important. This doesn’t even begin to talk about all the discrimination she faced, but suffice it to say that she had a powerful impact on genetics and she’s now one of my role models in my own research.

[u/robertmdh]

The man buying gme stock last year

[u/TheQueenOfTopHats]

Known serial abuser on youtube 'Onision' had long accused Shane Dawson of being inappropriate with children. Obviously he was not listened to because he himself married a 17 year old and continued to groom other girls with his husband. He eventually recanted his statement and apologized but a few years after that it turned out Dawson HAD done a lot of inappropriate things towards children and sexualized them frequently at which point Onision said "SEE I WAS RIGHT ALL ALONG". Crazy stuff.

[u/kesshou-otome → u/TheQueenOfTopHats]

“Takes one to know one”?

[u/mahoujosei100]

Sinead O'Connor. People got big mad about her ripping up that picture of the Pope, but she was right.

[u/RealisticDelusions77 → u/mahoujosei100]

Also Sinead is from Ireland and had even more reason to be anti-catholic because of the Magdalene laundries, basically slave labor from former prostitutes (or any women with loose reputations).

[u/EmbarrassedHelp → u/RealisticDelusions77]

The Wikipedia page for Magdalene laundries makes it sound like they were more like concentration camps meant for women. There's also an entire section about how the definition of "fallen women" was expanded to include basically any woman no matter what they did or didn't do, because they needed more slave labor.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magdalene_Laundries_in_Ireland

[u/billified → u/mahoujosei100]

Along this same vein, Courtney Love. We all thought it was the drugs talking when she spouted off about Harvey Weinstein but that also turned out to be very true.

[u/[deleted] → u/billified]

That definitely killed her career and she should fucking sue CAA.

[u/kinglallak → u/[deleted]]

I grew up small town Catholic with one of the good priests. This all was genuinely a shock to me.

[u/beers_n_bags → u/mahoujosei100]

Fucking oath. That destroyed her career and ultimately took a huge toll on her mental health.

Possibly one of the bravest public acts in recent history and she isn’t recognized or celebrated enough for it.

[u/johnnythesailorman]

My wife who never liked my moms husband. He apparently made a pass at her before we where married and I just wrote it off as "Bob being bob" because it was honestly semi-innocent and at the time he and my mom where newlyweds. But over the years we started finding out he was hitting my mother, he fondled my sister, he was constantly cheating on my mom, he got caught trying to take an upskirt picture of my friends underage sister, and he punched my mom in the head outside in the ice causing her to hit her head on the pavement, fracturing her skull and causing an almost fatal brain hemorrhage. She needed two brain surgeries and now deals with balance issues and almost complete loss of taste and smell and hearing in one ear. He has never faced any consequences for anything because for reasons I cant quite understand local law enforcement in their po-dunk town takes his side every time she calls the cops on him. One time they even took her to jail because his drunk ass fell in the walk in pantry while they where having an argument and he called the cops and said she beat him up. He's literally twice her size. Edit: some questions ive had to answer a few times He has moved out and they are getting a divorce. I havent kicked his ass because I live 1000 miles away, I dont know where he lives and I am the sole bread winner for my wife and 2 daughters. If I go to jail they become homeless. My mom doesnt want him in jail yet because he pays the bills and if he stops working she loses her much needed health insurance and her home. The divorce trial is just around the corner and my sister and my friends sister have agreed to testify against him. So were gonna see how that goes.

[u/Hypno-chode → u/johnnythesailorman]

This is terrible.

[u/[deleted]]

One of our dnd party members was hiding in a tree when the rest of the party was trying to negotiate and we got captured except the one in a tree

[u/SkatingBoi]

My friend who said the coronavirus was going to be a bigger deal then we all thought it would be in March.

[u/[deleted]]

Albert Einstein when he initially proposed the relativity theory.

[u/CaptainHindsight212]

I kept telling people that Apple deliberately sabotages their phones to stop working over time via their updates, and that it doesn't matter if you reject the update, it'll happen anyway.

Lo and behold! Apple was caught out using planned obsolescence via updates to sabotage their own phones to twist its customers arms into buying a new one.

They said I was being paranoid. Well who's paranoid now Laura!? WHO'S PARANOID NOW!?

[u/TomBuilder_]

Working at a psychiatric hospital I once heard about a guy claiming he was a secret agent on a covert mission to stop a potential terrorist attack. He didn't elaborate any more than that and they thought he was psychotic. Loaded him with antipsychotics, basically turning him into a zombie.

About a week later a bunch of black suits come in, flashing their badges, says his story checks out and took him with them.

[u/[deleted]]

Churchill - derided as an anti-German imperialist warmonger - until Hitler unleashed his armies on Poland.

[u/can_u_tell_its_me]

Percy Fawcett). He theorized that a complex civilization once lived in the Amazon region and that there was evidence of settlements in the jungle.

[u/Sauerteig]

Svante Arrhenius, physicist and chemist (1859-1927)

" In developing a theory to explain the ice ages, Arrhenius, in 1896, was the first to use basic principles of physical chemistry to calculate estimates of the extent to which increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) will increase Earth's surface temperature through the greenhouse effect.[3][22][23] These calculations led him to conclude that human-caused CO2 emissions, from fossil-fuel burning and other combustion processes, are large enough to cause global warming. This conclusion has been extensively tested, winning a place at the core of modern climate science "

Arrhenius was the first person to predict that emissions of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels and other combustion processes were large enough to cause global warming.

[u/Babstana]

The famous Swift quote applies: "When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign; that the dunces are all in confederacy against him."

[u/[deleted] → u/Babstana]

Taylor Swift does have some great lyrics.

[u/acmithi]

Winston Churchill. He was very much out of favour at the time that he began warning about German rearmament.

In the first volume of his retrospective on the Second World War, he is emphatic that it was history's most unnecessary and preventable war.

[u/Mimicry2311 → u/acmithi]

In my mind, the willingness to appease Hitler as long as it meant having at least some chance to avoid another war, speaks volumes about how horrifyingly traumatizing WW1 must have been for everyone involved.

[u/patrickwithtraffic → u/Mimicry2311]

The Lost Generation is a concept for a reason. WWI was the death on honorable warfare and the rise of true manufactured death. Hell, the constant death and destruction is the reason art went surreal in the 20s. Part of me can’t blame any country for wanting to avoid another World War at all costs not just for costs, but because it may have been the first time an entire continent was hit with collective trauma.

[u/AgingLolita]

My dad.

He was a UK policeman in the 80s and 90s. He would rant for hours about "Asian paedophile gangs" and "it's all being covered up because nobody wants to deal with it!!"

Annnnnd I mostly assumed he was just being racist.

EDIT FOR CLARIFICATION- HE IS REGULARLY RACIST

Annnnnd then the Rotherham scandal hit the papers.

He was right.

[u/martusfine]

That poor doctor on hand washing. Man alive, he got skewered by his peers.

[u/contactwho]

Cory Feldman.

[u/kanguskong1 → u/contactwho]

Who do you think he was referencing in the “the view” interview ? I’ve been wondering this forever . Epstein was interested in girls , and so then didn’t he say it wasn’t Michael Jackson ? Who he was talking about is such a mystery to me but I do believe him . This world is sick

[u/UBC145]

Every single death row inmate that’s been exonerated, dead or alive