10 people who had the universe conspiring against them
Sometimes it feels like the world is on your shoulders. In severe cases, we might even believe that the universe is conspiring against us, looking for ways to break our knees and shake us from the paths we have chosen. The truth is that there is no vendetta against us by higher powers or universal energies; there is just life, and life can be unfair sometimes. All we can do is hold on, stiffen that upper lip and keep going.
But on rare occasions, when you hear what some have endured throughout their lives, you wonder which god of bad luck they offended or what kind of curse was placed on their parents, and on every generation that follows. Here are ten unfortunate people who the universe conspired against them.
Related: Top 10 happiest unhappy people whose happiness almost killed them
10 Lady Jane Gray (c. 1537–1544)
Have you ever wondered who had the shortest reign in England’s royal history? Look no further, as Lady Jane Gray only held the throne from July 10 to 19, 1553, a total of nine long days.
At the age of 16, Lady Gray ascended the throne after the young King Edward VI died. His dying wish was for her to ascend the throne in the hope of keeping England as Protestant as possible, as opposed to Catholic, which the king’s eldest half-sister, Mary – the one with the most direct path to the throne – would promote.
Jane was the great-granddaughter of King Henry VII through his daughter Mary Tudor, and was therefore a great-niece of King Henry VIII and a cousin of Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth I. The people revolted from direct descent, and Jane was gone less than ten days later.
After being deposed, Jane – along with a number of others – was charged with high treason, but the current Queen Mary took it easy, allowing them to remain high-profile prisoners in a sort of house arrest arrangement rather than having them executed. Shortly afterwards, Jane became involved in a rebellion against the ever-unpopular Queen Mary. However, Mary was still willing to spare her if she converted to Catholicism. She refused and Lady Gray was executed for treason in February 1554.[1]
9 Miltiades (died 489 BC)
Miltiades was an Athenian general in the Greek army, known for his military prowess and understanding of war tactics. He has been recognized over the years as an important part of the victory of the Persians and in particular the Battle of Marathon. Here he won a miraculous victory by helping to change Greek military tactics.
How was that considered an accident? Allow us to explain. After achieving a victory over the Persians, Militiades, along with a fleet of about 70 ships, were sent to conquer the areas that sided with the Persians. The campaign was a failure and upon his return the short-sighted masses demanded his head.
He was accused of dissent, fined 50 talents and, after sustaining a leg injury, suffered a severe attack of gangrene, which ultimately cost him his life. There are even versions of the story that suggest he was captured and died in captivity.[2]
8 Adolf Sax (1814-1894)
Perhaps it is incorrect to suggest that Adolphe Sax, the inventor of the saxophone, is an unhappy person. If you think about it, the opposite may sound true. Be that as it may, it’s not all people who are bombarded with as many accidents as Sax.
Basically, Sax fell down a flight of stairs at the age of three, leaving him bedridden (possibly in a coma) for a week. He swallowed and passed a needle at a time when medical intervention was limited, and swallowed a toxic cocktail of white lead, copper oxide and arsenic, surviving the ordeal. If that wasn’t enough, he also fell on a burning stove, suffering severe burns but avoiding infection, even surviving at the age of 10 when he was caught in a flurry. He was later discovered face down in the water near a mill and still being pulled by.
He was then shot by an exploding container of gunpowder and avoided death when a large slate tile from a roof fell on his head, sending him back into a deep coma. A life condemned to misfortune and smooth jazz.[3]
7 Diego de Almagro (1475-1538)
The Almagro was a man who played a major role in the fall of the Inca civilization when he and his Spanish conquistador friends wreaked havoc in South America. But the man wasn’t having it all his way; in fact, he had a pretty unhappy life.
For starters, the man lost an eye to a spear thrown at him during a skirmish with one of the local armies. He then moved further and further into Chile in the hope of finding silver and gold, a country of immense wealth. But all he found were mountains. He lost most of his army to the treacherous Andes mountains and the Mapuche natives and was forced to turn around after two years.
Back in Panama, he faced a civil war with his Spanish counterparts over whom he had the upper hand in battle for the first time. But after reinforcements arrived, his troops succumbed. He was arrested and sentenced to death by garotte, an iron collar that is slowly tightened around your neck. His body was beheaded and shown to the public as a warning. Ouch![4]
6 Rosalind Franklin (1920-1958)
Rosalind Franklin died at the young age of 37 from an aggressive ovarian cancer – a terrible condition and enough to suggest that fate had the cards against her. But her death alone isn’t the reason she made this list.
You see, when James Watson and Francis Crick announced that they had discovered the DNA double helix and the building blocks of our human existence, they left out a crucial fact. Rosalind Franklin was instrumental in his discovery through her X-ray diffraction image of DNA. Franklin was never mentioned in their announcement.
Watson and Crick became Nobel Prize winners, citing Franklin’s work alone as inspiration for their discovery. Franklin, meanwhile, missed it when she died (possibly from radiation she experienced during her research) four years before the award was presented, making her ineligible to receive it. Her unfortunate legacy lives on.[5]
5 Pheidippides (530-490 BC)
If you can’t imagine anything worse than getting up early on the weekend and running a 5K, consider Pheidippides, a runner for the military and the man who inspired the marathon. Literal.
Pheidippides was an Athenian messenger who was crucial to the Greek’s success, as he had to carry messages between armies and battle centers. However, his greatest achievement came when he made the desperate trek from Athens to Sparta in the hope of convincing them to come to Athens’ aid before returning to Athens. A run of nearly 300 miles, only to discover that the Spartan reinforcements would not arrive in time to join the battle.
Before taking his final bow, Pheidippides made the 25-mile flight from a battlefield at Marathon to Athens, where he fell dead of exhaustion.[6]
4 Helen Palmer Geisel (1898–1967)
The name Dr. Seuss has become synonymous with funny rhymes and stories that often act as a strong moral compass. But everything is not always as it seems, and the wife of the famous Dr. Theodore Seuss Geisel was not filled with fairy tales and joy.
Helen Palmer, first wife of Dr. Seuss, had a torrid life. Although Dr. Seuss was guilty of infidelity, he remained married to Helen until her untimely death. It has even been suggested that Geisel had an affair (with his future wife, no less) while his beloved wife was suffering from severe depression and a disease known as Guillain-Barre syndrome, a disease that affects the nervous system.
Helen had polio as a child and walked with a limp; she struggled with infertility and later in life was diagnosed with cancer that required intensive treatment and radiation. Then came partial blindness and deafness, which eventually led to an addiction to barbiturates, a sedative, to cope with all her ailments. Helen eventually took her own life by overdosing on barbiturates.[7]
3 Alan Turing (1912-1954)
Before it even existed, Alan Turing, philosopher, dreamer, mathematician and computer scientist, had a lot going for him. However, the age he was born wasn’t one of those things. As a man who made countless contributions to modern computer science and was a valuable asset in deciphering enemy military codes during World War II, he should be heralded as a national treasure. The opposite happened.
Turing was treated like a common criminal due to the fact that homosexuality was illegal. Convicted under Victorian laws, he was labeled a criminal and forced to undergo a process known as chemical castration. Finally, Turing had enough and took a lethal dose of cyanide.
In 2009, the British government apologized for his treatment and in 2013 he received a royal pardon. But unfortunately that didn’t make up for a life full of misery.[8]
2 Ignaz Semmelweis (1818-1865)
Imagine a world where you advocate for doctors and surgeons to practice proper hygiene principles and then receive the scorn of the entire medical community.
Semmelweis, a gynecologist now known as the father of hygiene, realized that the spread of childbed fever (and other ailments) could be prevented by using the right hand disinfectants. The world ignored, criticized, or almost attacked him, and the preventable deaths continued, much to his frustration.
Semmelweis began to suffer from numerous complications: severe depression, absent-mindedness, manic obsession, and focusing all conversations on his much-ignored solution to a common problem. He developed a cognitive disability that could have been Alzheimer’s disease, mental exhaustion or late-stage syphilis before he was eventually referred to a psychiatric facility where he was beaten to death by his handlers. Unfortunately, he did not receive recognition for his work until years later.[9]
1 Carlos II of Spain (1661-1700)
King Carlos II of Spain was the last monarch of the Habsburg dynasty, but was also known as Charles the Haunted (nowhere is the ruthless nature of humanity more apparent). The unfortunate King Carlos had a relatively short life, marked by constant ill health.
The problem was the Habsburgs’ policy of literally keeping the crown in the family. Years of inbreeding left Carlos physically handicapped and deformed, with a large tongue that made speaking difficult. He was bald at a young age and towards the end of his life was plagued by epileptic seizures.
The last three years of Carlo’s life (which were also the last three years of the Habsburg rule) were dominated by succession problems, as the unfortunate king was unable to father children. This led to the War of Succession and the eventual dismantling of Spain’s European possessions.[10]