Historic achievement most resembling fiction

I’m currently reading The Greatest Game Ever Played. It tells the story of the 1913 US Open (golf) where a 20-year old amateur - Francis Ouimet - goes head to head with arguably the greatest pro at the time - Harry Vardon.

Ouimet wins!

You may recall this was a movie a couple of years back. Whether you like golf or not, I highly recommend the movie and/or the book.

But reading this I keep thinking you couldn’t make up stuff as incredible as this. Ouimet and Vardon both are born into crushing poverty. Vardon conquers the golf world, before suffering a potentially career-ending illness, from which he fights back to regain his status at or near the top. Ouimet grow up across the street from and caddying at the club where the 1913 Open is held. At the tourney Ouimet’s intended caddy is a no-show, and he ends up using the caddy’s 10-year old brother. The last 2 rounds are played in a torrential downpour. Coming down to the wire the outcome is too close to call…

Reading this book I keep thinking “You couldn’t make this stuff up! No one would believe you!”

I was wondering if you guys might offer your examples of the most unbelievable tales of human achievement. Stories that you wouldn’t believe possible if they hadn’t actually occurred. Also, identify any books or movies you believe relate these instances well.

Not to get the thread off on the wrong foot, but anything involving the rise of a religion or cult, especially stories relating to large chunks of people being converted en masse decades or centuries after the founding religious figure would have passed from living memory.

That’s gotta come close to setting a record for the crappiest response to a well-intentioned OP. Clearly you had no intention OTHER THAN getting the thread off on the wrong foot. :rolleyes:

What Dinsdale said.

Early in the history of FedEx, founder Fred Smith found himself unable to make payroll and facing the failure of his business without a large immediate cash infusion. So he went to Vegas, bet what little he had, and won.

Cool! Was that before or after that plane went down, stranding the FedEx guy on a desert island? :wink:

I’ll look into this. Undoubtedly an exception to the greater number of guys who went to Vegas to bail out their start-ups, only to bet red when they should have bet black, only to have their histories written in bankruptcy court…

Long before. I seem to recall it being told the last FedEx sales convention (held in Las Vegas, which is why it came up) that I attended.

1.) The Dam Busters – the true story of the special bombs and bombing technique used to destroy several German dams in a brief set of runs. The engineering was so utterly bizarre that it’s amazing that it worked – the bombs were built into cylinders that “skipped” like a rock over the surface of the lake behind the dam. If released at the proper height, distance, and speed, the bomb ended up right at the wall of the dam, where it sank and blew up niext to the inner wall, concentrating the force of the explosion right at the dam and destroying it. (Whereas if they dropped the bombs in the lake the water would dampen the force of the explosion. It wouldn’t work). It was written up as a book by Paul Brickhill (Who wrote tThe Great Escape – and was in that prison camp) and later made into a classic movie. George Lucas saw it, and liberally lifted from it for the Death Star Trench sequence of the first Star Wars – right down to using verbatim dialogue. Please note that the real-life bombadiers did NOT turn off their targeting computers – they relied on their crude targeting devices to hit their “thermal exhaust port”.

Amazing that such odd technology worked – but it did. If someone were writing it as a piece of fiction it would’ve failed, or only partly worked.
2.) Alistair Cooke’s most popular column/broadcast was a “Letter from America” from 1950 about a stolen baby. The baby was a premature baby, and even a few hours out of its incubator would be fatal, and the baby was missing for days…

Here, read it:

I would have to go with the battle of Thermopylae as recently popularized by the movie 300. Even with the 700 backup for a group of 1000, they kicked ass in a way that is usually only seen in over the top action flicks.

The conquests of the Aztec and Inca Empires by small bands of Spanish adventurers in the 1500s. Cortez conquered the bloodthirsty Aztecs with a force which initially consisted of 600 men. Pizarro conquered the largest empire on Earth at the time, with millions of inhabitants, with fewer than 200 men.

Both conquests included events and scenes that equal some of the wildest and most incredible inventions of fiction - for example, the Noche Triste, when Cortez’s forces barely escaped from the Aztec island capital Tenochtitlan after the death of Moctezuma by battling their way across the causeways across the lake under fierce attack, or the Battle of Cajamarca, in which Pizarro’s tiny force defeated an Inca army of perhaps 80,000 men and took the emperor captive. I don’t think that either has ever been adequately been portrayed in film. The Conquest of New Spain, written by Bernal Diaz, one of Cortez’ foot soldiers, is one of the best accounts of the conquest of Mexico by an eyewitness.

Thermopylae is a good choice as are a lot of ancient battles. Another I’d pick is the story of the Ten Thousand.

A couple of unlikely sports stories recently became Oscar-nominated movies:

Seabiscuit and Cinderella Man (about Heavyweight boxing champ Jimmy Braddock).

The story of The Amistad is another one. Prisoners on a slave ship break out, take over the ship, but don’t know how to navigate it back to Africa and wind up in America, where a court battle takes place to decide their fate…and they are sent back to Africa. I would never have believed something like this if it had been written as a story…send slaves back to Africa? Never happen! Except it did.

The story of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition is a great one.

In 1914 the expedition gets their ship caught in Antarctic ice. They stay in the ice for a few months, then some of them go off on an astonishing voyage to get help.

Then three of them sail 800 miles across Antarctic waters in a rowboat.

Then three of them walk across the island of South Georgia in 36 hours, a feat that modern, experienced, well-nourished climbers have failed to duplicate.

They finally get help at a whaling station. It takes four tries, but they pick up the guys they left behind and every single person gets home safely, after 22 months.

What’s more, they had a guy with a movie camera with them, and you can see a bunch of actual footage.

Interested? Check out the documentary about the expedition. Careful not to break your jaw when it hits the floor.

How about some of Audie Murphy’s exploits? From wiki, here’s his Medal of Honor citation:

Clearly my intention was to say that I find the idea of people removed from, say, Jesus or Buddha or Muhammad by tens of thousands of miles of space and hundreds of years of time finding themselves in what they consider to be a personal relationship with that historical figure to be something which, if presented as fiction, I would find a stretch of credulity.

Clearly I knew that I might get some offenderati kneejerk reaction which is why I prefaced it as I did. Clearly that wasn’t good enough in the face of someone who clearly has the power to read minds to figure out what’s going on in my head better than I do.

Neat stuff, all of it. Keep it coming.

I tend to think of myself as a not particularly sappy kinda guy, but there is something that makes me feel all sappy - almost inspired - when I hear some of these incredible accomplishments.

Gates of Fire is a pretty amazing representation of Thermopylae.

I was going to offer Shackleton - read a few books on that expedition myself. Perhaps especially notable for the fact that they had a photographer along with them! Polar explorers always amaze me at what they would put themselves through.

Saw both Seabisuit and Cindarella Man, and read Seabiscuit. Both great examples of what is possible when a good storyteller gets ahold of good material. Next time I hit the library I’ll look up the book on Braddock.

In terms of unbelievable hardships, I’ll offer Through a Howling Wilderness, the story of Benedict Arnold leading troops on a stroll from Maine to attack Quebec in the winter of 1775. Brr! Just thinking of it makes me want to warm up some hot chocolate in the microwave, button up my sweater, and take a nap!

The 2007 Fiesta Bowl - Boise St. vs. Oklahoma. Stuff of legend.

Battle of Hastings: William’s herald asks to be allowed to strike the first blow and permission is granted. He then charges the English lines alone, killing several defenders before he himself is struck down. (Okay, Wiki disputes this, but since when is history never disputed?)

King Jean II is captured in the Battle of Poitiers. His ransom is set at 3,000,000 crowns and he is released on the honor of later coming up with the ransom. Back in the French court, troubles arise in coming up with the ransom, so he gives himself back up to the English. It was amazing at the time, too, but the very un-prisonlike environment French and English nobles enjoyed when in each others stay explains part of it.

I don’t recall which specific battle this is, but the Vikings invading England were caught on a island with only a narrow causeway between them and the English, who repel wave after wave trying to cross into the open. The Vikings ask to be let onto the mainland in order to have a fairer fight: permission was granted. The Vikings won the ensuing fight.

How about Men Against the Sea? As a novel, it’s the sequel to Mutiny on the Bounty, but tells the true story of Captain Bligh after the mutiny, where he and 18 of his crew were put into a 23-ft launch (so loaded down that the sides were only a few inches above the water), with a few days’ food and water, a sextant and pocket watch, and a few swords. Bligh navigated 3600 nautical miles with the loss of only one person (killed by natives).

You don’t have to go to Nordhoff and Hall’s novel for that – you can get all the drama from Bligh’s own diary, which was published several times. I bought and read the paperback version back in high school.