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People say a lot of stupid stuff. And we judge them for it. But every now and then, over time, enough evidence emerges to prove us all wrong and redeem even the wildest statements.
Interested in these cases, Redditor TheCheeryStranger recently asked other platform users, "What 'crazy' person in history was right the whole time?" and everyone immediately started sending in their answers.
From Ernest Hemingway talking about the FBI tailing him to Galileo Galilei being trialed by the Church for his heretic claim that the Earth revolves around the sun, here are some of the most interesting ones.
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#1
Clair Patterson-he was made out to be crazy by giant oil companies bc he tested ice cores in the Arctic and figured out that the amount of lead in the atmosphere, the water, and our bodies was extremely high and caused by leaded gasoline. He petitioned Congress for years to make it illegal to add lead to gasoline, but the corporations kept getting him shut down because they used lead as an anti-knock agent for internal combustion engines. Ironically, lead was causing everyone else to go crazy because it is shaped like a neurotransmitter and blocks receptors causing insanity, similarly to what mercury does, and many employees of the oil companies had gone mad. After decades of battling the oil companies, he finally got his way and lead was removed from gasoline. Since then, the amount of lead in the atmosphere and I’m living things has decreased dramatically. Clair Patterson… a f**king hero.
He also created the first truly “clean room.”
RELATED:
#2
Sinead O’Connor - she was vilified for ripping up a photo of the pope to protest child abuse within the Catholic Church. Spoiler alert - the Catholic Church was covering up child abuse.
Rost it 2 years ago
I dont think any reasonable people thought she was crazy. this has been known for years. the catholic church is one of the worst organizations in the world. They have killed more people over the years than any country.
jevais 2 years ago
This organization has almost wiped out the first nation people of the Americas, the Inquisition throughout all their colonized colonizers, believing in witchcraft and all the rest.
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Jayne Kyra 2 years ago
"the Catholic Church was covering up child abuse." IS covering up child abuse. Just a little fix.
SinéadQ 2 years ago
Her career was destroyed after that. So sad. She has the most incredible voice.
Everything is fascinating. 2 years ago
She was right about this. She was/is slightly.... unstable. Sadly that detracts from her very important message.
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Kona Pake 2 years ago
What about the kidnapping and imprisonment of indigenous children and their murder around the world!
Susie Elle 2 years ago
That, too, is a problem, however we were talking about a different problem than this one.
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buttonpusher 2 years ago
They pretty much controlled Ireland. Hating on the pope was a big no-no. I mean what would the neighbours think! Thinks have changed a lot, fortunately. She does have mental health issues, and then her son's suicide early in the year. She hasn't had it easy. 😟
Stan Brooks 2 years ago
Every Catholic Church should be considered a crime scene and wrapped in crime scene tape.
Melissa Rodriguez 2 years ago
That goes for the majority of organized religions as well.
Load More Replies... Leigh Jones 2 years ago
Enda Kenny Taoiseach had this brilliance to say. I've never heard a WM politician so utterly convincing or truthful, much less a Church leader. Enda ripped the guts out of any denial by anyone anywhere. Probably why we don't hear it enough. “Tuam is not just a burial ground, it is a social and cultural sepulchre. That is what it is. As a society in the so-called ‘good old days’, we did not just hide away the dead bodies of tiny human beings, we dug deep and deeper still to bury our compassion, our mercy and our humanity itself,”
Marita Berndt 2 years ago
Tragic. And organised religious are still ripping off idiots everywhere. Go figure.
Pam Harris 2 years ago
If Catholics were allowed to have sex normally (like the rest of us!), than maybe they'd leave the children alone...maybe
Phil Green 2 years ago
I don't think anyone ever doubted her. I certainly never thought she had done anything wrong.
Marnie 2 years ago
It ruined her career, because lots of people were highly offended. Also, she never said why she did it. In fact, this is the first I'm hearing that it had anything to do with child abuse. (I guessed all these years that it had to do with the fighting between Catholics and Protestants in Ireland.)
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Chelsea Evans 6 months ago
Poor woman was made famous because she was making music about politics and war and questioning authority and then did a very small, very quiet act of protest and everyone treated her like a pariah until the day she died. It drove her mad. People literally dogged this woman to death. Because she spoke out against people who would see your children sexually abused by men in powerful positions. Same s**t different day
Baru Maitrová 2 years ago
Unfortunately there are many "fake" Christians who are not good people and they hide behind religion. Even in middle ages this used to be common, including selling forgive papers and collecting property, having luxury life, not caring about the belief and about their people... Sad truth 😢
Linda Rotger 2 years ago
She deserved an apology and was brave for making her opinions known publicly.
Kim Lorton 2 years ago
They still do nothing to prevent it from happening. At the first complaint, at once the complaint must be investigated, and they aren’t. They doubt the ones, the children, who are doing the complaining.
Janet Graham 2 years ago
She had more than just that against the Catholic Church, but she was right on all of it.
Harold Houfek 2 years ago
Boys Town a disgrace, embarrassed to say I was born and raised in Omaha and nobody knew about it
Dorothy Cloud 2 years ago
Just makes me sick to think of that going on & they are still getting protected!
Roxy Eastland 2 years ago
What I don't understand is why the Christian god, to whom Catholic priests supposedly have a hot line (hence women can't be Catholic priests because God apparently doesn't want to speak to women), doesn't have anything to say to the priests etc about it? Is the Christian god okay with child abuse?
Dre Mosley 2 years ago (edited)
I was watching that as it happened. Pretty much killed her mainstream career that night, unfortunately. I know that a lot of radio stations here blacklisted her music back then. Pope John Paul II was pretty much sacred worldwide.
Allen Packard 2 years ago
Oh boy... I remember thinking "what is this even about?" I was about 10 or so.
Mike Weber 2 years ago (edited)
I remember watching when she did that but have no recollection of her saying anything about child abuse, just a general anti Catholic sentiment. 🤔
Mosheh Wolf 2 years ago (edited)
She wasn't talking about child abuse, she was talking about the role that religion and religious leaders were playing in most of the oppression going on in the world. She was Irish, so she focused on the leader of her country's main religion. Ireland had a host of other issues which could be blamed on Catholicism. The reason that people thought it was a bit crazy was that it simply seemed to come out of nowhere with no context. One moment she's singing a song, the next moment, she's calling the Pope "The Real Enemy" and ripping up his photo.
LaToya Mack 2 years ago
Guess sanctioning WORLD WIDE slavery of black and brown peoples, on the entire globe was as cool BUT pedophilia especially to its own was just is unacceptable. ✅ Got it✅
APL 2 years ago
Pope John Paul II and his successors are guilty of covering for child rapists, and all your whining about Muslims won't change that simple fact.
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APL 2 years ago
You think people should tolerate the systematic protection of paedophiles? Not a Catholic, just a nonce then.
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APL 2 years ago
Stop trying to blame the Muslims for the crimes your church is committing.
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BasedWang12 2 years ago
Pffft oh then my bad, I didn't understand that this totally justifies her career being shattered. Thanks
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Aliquid 2 years ago
Even if your statement is true, it doesn't change the fact that she was "right", and that's what this post is about. Ad hominem attacks don't change the facts.
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APL 2 years ago
Amazing how Catholics get so much grief for the crimes they commit and are still actively covering up! How terribly unfair the world is. Never mind, your suffering shall be rewarded in Heaven, which you will share with fifteen hundred years' worth of paedophiles.
Load More Replies... #3
Stanislav Petrov. Though we don't see him as crazy, I'm sure his crewmates thought he was. He directly disobeyed Soviet military protocols and prevented a nuclear war.
#4
Rose McGowan was completely ostracized and blacklisted for talking about Weinstein too early.
#5
Tesla. Edison is still credited with the lightbulb. His last words put it into perspective "All these years that I had spent in the service of mankind brought me nothing but insults and humiliation"
#6
The inventor of dialysis, Dr. Willem Kolff. Although it's hard to blame them, haha. He saw people dying of kidney disease and said "Hey, what if we take all of the blood out of your body, clean it, and put it back in?" (Cleaning your blood is the job of your kidneys, and a dialysis machine is basically an artificial kidney, on the *outside* of your body.) It was a wild idea and he started his work during WWII and had to work with basic materials like orange juice cans, sausage skins, and a washing machine. Many of the first patients died, but they were already going to die painfully. Eventually, he ironed the kinks out and started saving lives.
#7
Lisa Bonet. She was vilified for hating Cosby in the 80s. Who’s the villain now?
Lorrie Rothstein 2 years ago
He didnt like when she was naked in a movie. He had her character denise leave diffrent world because she was pregnabt in real life
#8
Corey Feldman talking about child sex abuse in Hollywood.
#9
John Yudkin. The single scientist who didn't believe the sugar industry's research that demonized fats. Till his death he's adamant that fats weren't the cause of obesity and heart attacks.
rumade 2 years ago
Yup, my mum read his book Pure, White and Deadly many years ago. People thought he was a conspiracy nut, because *surely* fat in food leads to fat in arteries. Tell that to the people who live in the Arctic Circle and traditionally eat large amounts of seal blubber. To be honest though, I hate this crusade against sugar we're now having. In the UK everything is packed with artificial sweeteners. I'd rather have real sugar, in small quantities as a treat than eat sweeteners regularly. There's emerging evidence that they do damage to your gut microbiome.
#10
There was a wacko looking guy on Oprah who stopped his vanilla presentation to tell the audience that plastic causes cancer, stop using it to store food and water.
Oprah cut to commercial and whisked him off the show.
Dude was right. BPAs were outed that day, but it took another decade for that info to become public knowledge.
#11
Will Rogers a humorist when he invented the term "trickle-down" economics as a joke stating that this type of economy would just make the rich richer and the poor poorer.
And then we actually implemented it and used the term trickle-down. And Will Rogers was right.
The rent has gone though the roof and our salaries have stagnated and we can't afford "The American Dream" anymore.
Leo Domitrix 2 years ago
The fact anyone voted twice for the administration that implemented trickle-down economics still shocks me, and I was alive for both times Reagan was voted in... And old enough to cry both times, too.
#12
Hemingway talked about the FBI following him prior to his suicide. They thought he was paranoid. Decades later some papers get released, turns out the FBI was following him.
#13
Rutherford B Hayes. Not necessarily viewed as crazy, but largely viewed as a bad or useless president.
"This is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people no longer. It is a government of corporations, by corporations, and for corporations."
Said that in the late 1800's.
Leo Domitrix 2 years ago
He was POTUS 1876-81, after a very nasty election (think: the 2016 of its day). The qoute can be found in "The Diary & Letters" of same, published in the edition I've seen in 1920-something.
#14
During the plague in Moscow there was a priest (or something) DIScouraging people kissing the statue of Maria, as to stop the spreading of the virus.
The poor man was burned alive for blasphemy.
Bernd Herbert 2 years ago
Aww, the good old times where the church had much more power and religious beliefs were more common than nowadays.
#15
Giordano Bruno was (probably) the first European who proposed the possibility that not only was the universe infinite, but stars were not just points of light in the sky; they could be suns with their own planets, and that some of those planets might even host life.
The Catholic Church had him tried for Heresy and had him burned at the stake and his contemporaries though he was completely insane. He had some kooky ideas, but he was absolutely right about the size of the universe and stars being suns with their own planets.
#16
Craig Ferguson having empathy for Britney Spears in his 2007 monologue.
#17
Remember the government accountant in George W Bush’s presidency who said the war in Afghanistan would cost a billion dollars a month and he was fired? Well, he was right. It was 300 million dollars per day for 20 years.
Stephen Leifer 2 years ago (edited)
At least former Halliburton CEO, Cheney, got his company no-bid contracts to help rebuild Iraq.
#19
Heinrich Schliemann. He 100% believed that ancient Troy had really existed. So he armed himself with a copy of the Iliad, and actually managed to find and excavate the city. He'd told everyone and their sister that Troy was a real place for 40 years before he found it, and everyone thought he was cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. Not so much, it turns out.
#20
Martha Mitchell.. She was like part of the reason why it was discovered that Nixon was involved in Watergate. Her husband was part of the Nixon group so she got some inside details. When she wanted to tell the news about the whole scandal, her husband and Nixon men put her in a hotel and restrained her from having any contact with anyone. She was seen as an insane person her husband and Nixon's men even managed to convince the psychiatrists that she was out of her mind.
Actually there's a phenomenon in psychology which was named after her a.k.a the Martha Mitchell Effect
#21
Charles Darwin. The religious outcry against evolution was engineered by his academic rivals more than from religious resistance. But even now, after all that politics is centuries dead, there remain people who categorically resist demonstrable fact because of it.
Wintermute 2 years ago
This should be more commonly known. I didn't learn about the roots of the rejection of evolution until I was in a college level anthropology course. I always assumed it was a religious objection. Just proves that religion isn't qualified to know what it's upset about.
#22
Galileo - he believed the Earth and other planets orbited the Sun, contrary to popular belief that all stars and planets orbited Earth. The Catholic Church called it heresy, and ordered him to turn himself in to the Holy Office to begin a trial for his beliefs.
Stephen Leifer 2 years ago (edited)
Galileo knew to tread lightly. His colleague, Giordano Bruno, was executed via burning at the stake for believing in heliocentricity.
#23
Rachel Caron found that DDT was weakening the shells of bird eggs and contributing to the decline in the bald eagle population. She faced quite a bit of backlash from publishing her book "Silent Spring" detailing her research on the topic.
#24
Eisenhower. Re: The military–industrial complex
"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist."
Matthew Coughlin 2 years ago
And no one talks about Eisenhower's 99% taxation plan on businesses unless they increased wages, offered more benefits, gave payed time off, etc.
#25
Carrie Nation of the Temperance/Prohibition movement
She has been ridiculed and lambasted by history as a kooky, prudish anti-alcohol crusader. But she was actually a diligent progressive activist working through a proto-social justice lens.
Her beef wasn't with alcohol, but rather with distilleries and suppliers flooding small towns with enormous quantities of cheap, low-quality liquor with the explicit intent of turning emotionally devastated WWI veterans into drunkards for profit. (The knock-on effects of that campaign included rampant domestic violence and poverty.)
Gal was working to uplift the most vulnerable people and is only remembered for making a show of smashing bottles.
Stephanie A Mutti 2 years ago
Anyone who publicly tries to uplift the vulnerable will be made a mockery by the powerful; it's not within their agenda to share power.
#26
All the people that said the NSA/CIA was spying on us for years.
Thanks to edward Snowden we now know that was true and it was so much so that the NSA had built back doors in pretty much every single electronic device that exsists all the way down to the network switch level on cisco switches and the internet backbone through AT&T network hubs. The fact that there wasnt mass revolt after that information was released kinda blew my mind.
Got Myself 4 Pandas 2 years ago
I'm likely in a minority but I really don't give any f***s if people want to waste time listening into my daily life/phone/emails etc - all they're going to get is me talking c**p with mates, my husband and my kids, meme wars that go on for months at a time, the insane number of cake decorating videos I watch and my true crime obsession. I don't see some government employed person bored oot their tits seeing the drivel people talk as an invasion of privacy - and if snooping on folks interactions prevents some big disaster like the twin towers then I think it's worth it. And I kinda like the fact I'll mention wanting a new mattress and then getting every ad directed towards mattresses, it reminds me to look for them when I'd likely otherwise forget as my brain is like Swiss cheese
#27
Boltzman spend his life trying to prove his formula but ended up commiting suicide because none of his collegues believed him. Now, his formula is basically the 'amen' in thermodynamics.
#28
Morgan Robertson.
In 1898 he published a story about a ship named the Titan, a fictional ship, that sinks after hitting an iceberg. Allegedly (and I can’t find any proof of this) it was initially dismissed for being too outlandish.
14 years later, the Titanic sinks in an eerily similar fashion. Robertson dismissed all claims of being psychic, and was just familiar with ships of the time and their flaws.
#29
I don't know that guy's name but he basically from 1541-1542 travelled accross south america. The first european to do so. While he was on his journey he said he saw millions of people and large cities , with a lot of life in them , where today is the amazon rainforest.After he had finished his journey he had told the stories of those cities and about a hundred years later when explorers visited the place there was nothing , no cities , no people , just jungle. So they thought he had made all that up. But modern technology has shown that there might have accually been a lot of cities there , and that those people died out with smallpox and all cities were covered by the jungle within the course of 50 years. So basically people thought he was crazy and made everything up but in modern times its proven that he was right all along.
Julie Bruton 2 years ago
The explorer was Francisco de Orellana. The YouTube link for the BBC documentary, Unnatural Histories, is https://youtu.be/ihvySe6yROE
#30
Dr. Atkins.
When his first book 'The New Diet Revolution' came out, he was mocked and ridiculed for thinking that refined sugars, flour, and starch caused the glycemic index to skyrocket which led to your body storing fat. When he died people thought he died from his own diet.
Keto-acidosis and how you can lose weight by reducing your glycemic index was largely his research.
It was later stolen and copied and called 'The Zone Diet' and 'The Caveman Diet' and 'The Paleo Diet' which were all based on his work.
What do you think ?
Donkey boi 2 years ago
I'm surprised Johnny Rotten isn't on the list. Banned by the BBC in 1978 for calling out Jimmy Saville as a predator.
Tiny Dancer 2 years ago
Yeah, there's even an audio recording of him calling Jimmy out (https://boingboing.net/2022/04/12/watch-johnny-rotten-call-out-jimmy-savile-decades-before-netflix.html), but the BBC refused to air it back then. I couldn't stand the man (Johnny) when he was with the Pistols and he's still a bit of the old "mad lad", but his recent interviews and comments have been spot-on.
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Šimon Špaček 2 years ago
Thor Heyerdahl. That guy said that it is completely possible to build a raft in South America (I think it was in Peru) and use it to sail to Philiphines. Many experts didn't believe him, so he made a party of six or seven guys, built the raft and made the journey.
Romenriel 2 years ago
Many more scientists. On top of my head, Barbara McClintock, Gregor Mendel, Louis Pasteur, Joseph Lister, Ignaz Semmelweis (especially Ignaz Semmelweis), Frances Oldham Kelsey and likely many more. Some of them were proven right in their lifetime and received high honors, some of them didn't live to see fruits of their labour.
APL 2 years ago
Semmelweis! I was trying to remember his name. Yes, he should have been up there.
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Paw Paw 2 years ago
I'm waiting for the time that John Anthony West is validated about his findings on the age of the Pyramids and The Sphinx.- 14,000 years. Of course people called him crazy, but his research is based on Geology, not Archeology. As I see it, and my Geology prof agreed, Geology is an exact science. Archeology is interpretive, and at times, makes things either "fit", or disappear. Interesting dilemma.
John Baker 2 years ago
Just because you're right doesn't mean you aren't crazy. And some of these people may not have been crazy, but neither were they right.
Angela Turrall 2 years ago
Came here to say the similar, a handful of these people were considered crazy anyway, and were just considered more crazy or the crazy label was (very very wrongly) weaponised against them, as a result of their beliefs or statements, despite them being correct. Sadly all too common in Hollywood especially, and far too effective against women.
Load More Replies...
Kate Jones 2 years ago
It's sad how many of these people were negatively affected by religion and religious views of others. And it's still happening. It's like we never learn to stop allowing religion to dictate our government or people's lives just in general.
M Bartlett 2 years ago
Please change keto-acidosis to ketosis. They are NOT the same thing. Keto-acidosis is life threatening.
Chloe *Leah* Pheonix 2 years ago
Alfred Wegener was thought to be crazy when he presented his theory on continental drift
censorshipsucks 2 years ago
Denying continental drift always blew my mind. What, did europe and north america both independently evolve foxes and bears from the first single-celled organisms? Clearly the continents were joined for most of earth's history. I remember clearly as a 5 year old in kindergarten looking at a globe of earth and saying "hey I see south america fits against africa". It's so obvious it's painful.
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Karen Sandness 2 years ago
Actually, yes. The original Salk vaccine needed boosters, and so did the smallpox vaccine.
Load More Replies...
Donkey boi 2 years ago
I'm surprised Johnny Rotten isn't on the list. Banned by the BBC in 1978 for calling out Jimmy Saville as a predator.
Tiny Dancer 2 years ago
Yeah, there's even an audio recording of him calling Jimmy out (https://boingboing.net/2022/04/12/watch-johnny-rotten-call-out-jimmy-savile-decades-before-netflix.html), but the BBC refused to air it back then. I couldn't stand the man (Johnny) when he was with the Pistols and he's still a bit of the old "mad lad", but his recent interviews and comments have been spot-on.
Load More Replies... Šimon Špaček 2 years ago
Thor Heyerdahl. That guy said that it is completely possible to build a raft in South America (I think it was in Peru) and use it to sail to Philiphines. Many experts didn't believe him, so he made a party of six or seven guys, built the raft and made the journey.
Romenriel 2 years ago
Many more scientists. On top of my head, Barbara McClintock, Gregor Mendel, Louis Pasteur, Joseph Lister, Ignaz Semmelweis (especially Ignaz Semmelweis), Frances Oldham Kelsey and likely many more. Some of them were proven right in their lifetime and received high honors, some of them didn't live to see fruits of their labour.
APL 2 years ago
Semmelweis! I was trying to remember his name. Yes, he should have been up there.
Load More Replies... Paw Paw 2 years ago
I'm waiting for the time that John Anthony West is validated about his findings on the age of the Pyramids and The Sphinx.- 14,000 years. Of course people called him crazy, but his research is based on Geology, not Archeology. As I see it, and my Geology prof agreed, Geology is an exact science. Archeology is interpretive, and at times, makes things either "fit", or disappear. Interesting dilemma.
John Baker 2 years ago
Just because you're right doesn't mean you aren't crazy. And some of these people may not have been crazy, but neither were they right.
Angela Turrall 2 years ago
Came here to say the similar, a handful of these people were considered crazy anyway, and were just considered more crazy or the crazy label was (very very wrongly) weaponised against them, as a result of their beliefs or statements, despite them being correct. Sadly all too common in Hollywood especially, and far too effective against women.
Load More Replies... Kate Jones 2 years ago
It's sad how many of these people were negatively affected by religion and religious views of others. And it's still happening. It's like we never learn to stop allowing religion to dictate our government or people's lives just in general.
M Bartlett 2 years ago
Please change keto-acidosis to ketosis. They are NOT the same thing. Keto-acidosis is life threatening.
Chloe *Leah* Pheonix 2 years ago
Alfred Wegener was thought to be crazy when he presented his theory on continental drift
censorshipsucks 2 years ago
Denying continental drift always blew my mind. What, did europe and north america both independently evolve foxes and bears from the first single-celled organisms? Clearly the continents were joined for most of earth's history. I remember clearly as a 5 year old in kindergarten looking at a globe of earth and saying "hey I see south america fits against africa". It's so obvious it's painful.
Load More Replies... Karen Sandness 2 years ago
Actually, yes. The original Salk vaccine needed boosters, and so did the smallpox vaccine.
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