1

"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."

TuckerMouse

2

"There was a shipwreck in 1664, a shipwreck in 1785, and a shipwreck in 1820. Each had 1 survivor. Each survivor was named Hugh Wiliams."

Pm_me_gnus

3

"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”"

Plopsaland

4

"The commando raid on the NorskHydro 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."

Gentleman_Viking

5

"Franz Ferdinand’s assassination. It was so much happenstance, shenanigans, and tomfoolery that it’s like a special achievement in a hitman game."

RigasTelRuun

6

"Tsutomu Yamaguchi

Survived both the bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Reads like a satirical time-traveler story where the protagonist screws up his dates.

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."

OlympusJMoosecock & ChickenBaconPoutine

7

"Da Vinci. The mad man designed a tank in the 1500s.

However, he designed the gearbox backwards to make any real version’s wheels lock up and fail. He also designed a 12-barrel gun carriage, which is basically the machine gun on steroids, the early parachute, the double hull, the use of concentrated solar power, and a calculator. The man was several centuries ahead of his time."

Jakkzzyy & TheCrusader1296

8

"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 Niagra Falls by Telsa’s genius system."

Randyfromm

9

"Fidel Castro’s assassination attempts being dodged is so unrealistic (really, he dodged about 600) that it feels like a time traveller went back and foiled every single one of them"

Attention_Some

10

"The American Civil Wars first real battle was at Bull Run on land belonging to a Mr. McLean. After that he said “Screw this, Ima move to the country and avoid this war”. He moved to Appomattox Courthouse, VA where Lee surrendered to Grant…in the McLean’s living room.

Later, Wilmer Mclean was heard to have said “The war began in my front yard and ended in my front parlor.”"

Rgrtom & slumberjackpj

11

"Richard Lawrence tried to assassinate Andrew Jackson, but both of the pistols he attempted to fire at him misfired- then Jackson proceeded to beat this fellow with his cane. While the assassin was not a time traveler, once certainly could have sabotaged his pistols with a spritz of water on each."

Darcet

12

"Just whoever has been working in The Simpsons writers room"

Stonesword75

13

"Will need to try find what the guy called himself. Basically random dude who no-one has ever heard of arrives in NYC and starts buying shares in a market slump. Makes money on every single trade. Share price is falling, he buys it, just after he buys it, it starts rising, he sells as it turns and drops.

But he’s doing that across the whole share market. Insider trading is suspected but he’s not making or taking phone calls and there’s no way he’s got an in on seemingly everything. Also no-one knows who he is, literally no-one has ever met this guy before.

Makes a cr#p load of money in very little time, gets arrested on suspicion of fraud because no-one is that lucky. Says something along the lines of, “I know I shouldn’t have done that but I got carried away with all the excitement.” Bail is set at IIRC $1m, which is immediately paid by another guy no-one has ever heard of.

They both leave and poof. No records of either of them existing prior to the trading or bailout. They’re just gone, search is conducted and it comes up with nothing."

TAOJeff

14

"Jack Ruby clearly was sent to kill Lee Harvey Oswald so no one would ever discover it wasn’t him who killed Kennedy."

Possiblyhysterical

15

"Dropped nuke fails to detonate over NC. All because a worker messed up a diode or something on the main board."

LordInventus

16

"Satoshi Nakamoto

He came out of nowhere, invented bitcoin, and then disappeared. Easiest trillion dollar play."

DawnOfTheSecondDay48

17

"Jimmy Page moved with his parents to Miles Road, Epsom at Surrey. When they enter on their new house, there was only one thing inside: an acoustic guitar. Jimmy Page was 12yo by this time. To those who don’t know, Jimmy became one of the greatest guitarists of all time."

Joaaoluucas