Chang and Eng Bunker. The original “Siamese” Twins.
They worked for PT Barnum for many years then retired to a farm in North Carolina where each then married and had 21 children. One of their sons served in the Confederate army in the Civil War and they lost most of there money and had to return to show business.
The Muslim conquest, rape and pillage of India. The Pakistani deparadations in (then) East Pakistan. The unspeakably brutal Goa Inquisition. The East India Company’s atrocities in India. How about the Chinese Great Leap Backward oops… *Forward? *The blood-soaked history of Islam, and the life of its colorful “prophet”? British imperialism? Church-funded evangelization and social engineering projects all over Asia?
Take your pick, but good luck getting them released to the public, or if you choose an Islam-related one, keeping your head on your shoulders. There’s a reason no one has made movies about these events.
They did make one, but you wouldn’t like to see it. It had Horst Bukhholz as Cervantes, Gina Lolobrigida as the girlfriend, and Jose Ferer as the Turk (but this time he doesn’t rape the protagonist).
There has been an astonishing lack of attention to Nellie Bly. She had one of the most remarkable lives of any person ever, nevermind for a woman in her time.
The only “movie” listed about her is a 1981 TV movie.
Why Hollywood continues to almost completely ignore this woman is baffling.
The Haitian Revolution? The only successful slave revolt that led to the founding of a nation.
Considering the dates ( it began in 1791 and ended with the defeat of the French in 1804) and the region, I’m surprised how little attention it gets.
They just did, only they used Salamis, a battle 2000 years earlier, in 300: Rise of an Empire.
The explosion of Santorini/Thera – bigger than Krakatoa, and in a much more populated area. May have caused the downfall of Minoan civilization.
I’ll second The Peasant’s REvolt. I wrote a play about that, many years ago.
As far as I know, nobody’s made a film about John Brown and the raid on Harper’s Ferry
Ibn Battuta and his travels – he went a LOT further than Marco Polo
It’s not a provable event, but it’s likely enough, and it’d make a great offbeat movie – L. Sprague de Camp’s historical novel An Elephant for Aristotle about a Greek army officer charged by Alexander the Great to shepherd an elephant all the way from India back to Greece (as a gift for his tutor, Aristotle). Aristotle certainly observed and reported on the Indian elephant, so somehow one got back to Greece. de Camp speculates that his former pupil may have been responsible. Getting an unwilling pachyderm to walk a thousand miles through hostile country with no bridges that could bear him must have been a spectacular undertaking.
In fact, another of de Camp’s historical novels fits this topic as well – The Bronze God of Rhodes, about the events leading up to, and the actual building of, The Colossus of Rhodes. (There was a 1960s Italian epic called The Colossus of Rhodes, but accurate history it ain’t)
Not a Hollywood feature, but an IMAX film was made about him and his travels in 2009: Journey to Mecca. At 40 minutes, it’s necessarily compressed, but the photography is spectacular.
She does sound absolutely amazing! I’d only heard her name before, knew nothing about her.
The Wiki page does say there’s a film about her experiences in the asylum coming out later this year, though the cast list isn’t stellar.
The characters seemed flat and one dimensional. Also Earth and Venus have evidently no chemistry so trying to shoe in a love story between them was less than inspired.
Why would he have bothered when there were African elephants readily available?
Possibly because Indian elephants and African ones differ, and the differences were part of the interest. Aristotle’s description is definitely of an Indian elephant – which prompts the question of how it got there.
I agree that she’s fascinating. I learned about her from a children’s biography by Iris Noble, Nellie Bly: First Woman Reporter.
She may not have had a major movie about her made, but last week she had an exctensive Google Doodle about her, celebrating what would have been her 151st birthday:
Years ago, there was a book listing the most important people of all time. Newton was #2, right after Muhammad.
We KNOW why there hasn’t been a movie about Muhammad (directors like their heads), but Newton is still a definite possibility.
What makes you think African elephants were “available”, by the way? They live in Sub-Saharan Africa, which is itself a pretty good slog from Greece. The story of someone bringing an African elephant to Greece, it seems to me, would make about as interesting a story as getting one there from India.
And if you say “Hannibal had them!”, well, exactly where he brought them from isn’t exactly clear:
Is this a movie or a book??
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Huh? This makes it sound like African elephants were unusual in the ancient Mediterranean world. Which they weren’t, particularly. There were certainly elephants in North Africa well into Roman times. Carthage used them in several battles in both the First and the Second Punic Wars, the ones brought across the Alps weren’t unique in that respect. Hannibal used them again at Zama. The Romans would themselves use elephants, brought from Africa, when they went to fight in Macedonia and Greece. King Juba of Numidia brought some along to face Caesar at Thapsus (where Juba was on the side of Caesar’s enemies in the civil war) as late as 46 BC.
So, it’s only a “mystery” where Hannibal got them if you ignore the obvious explanation: They were living in North Africa.
Which, BTW, your (rather confusingly written) linked article doesn’t even deny. It just says that Hannibal’s local elephants were smaller than the ones living further south, and cites a dude that finds the idea of Hannibal using “small” elephants “unsatisfying”. Well, whatever. I think “small” is a relative term. They’re freaking elephants!
BTW, Hannibal also wasn’t the first to bring elephants into Italy, by a long shot. The Romans first encountered them in the armies of Pyrrhus, when he invaded Italy way back in 280 BC. Apparently, Pyrrhus got his from Egypt.
As far as I know, there aren’t any mentions of use of African war elephants after Thapsus, but that’s probably mostly because they often kind of sucked in battle, certainly by that point in history. At Thapsus they panicked and trampled Juba’s own troops, which was the kind of thing they had a reputation for doing. And they did disappear from the area during the Roman Empire, probably hunted to extinction (the Roman Empire was something of an extinction event for North Africa in general).
Or, well, at least there’s no mention of them in a major way. They do pop up here and there. Claudius is said to have brought along elephants (or at least one elephant) when he invaded Britain (for, presumably, shits and giggles).
I do agree, though, that they probably weren’t exactly “readily available” in Greece at the time of Aristotle. 