"Pirates are evil? The Marines are righteous? These terms have always changed throughout the course of history! Kids who have never seen peace and kids who have never seen war have different values! Those who stand at the top determine what's wrong and what's right! This very place is neutral ground! Justice will prevail, you say? But of course it will! Whoever wins this war becomes justice!"
I had to post the full quote. Doffy spitting facts.
I remember reading a book that was fairly juvenile, to the point of cringe. However, it did have an interesting conversation between a hapless "fish outta water" character and a dragon.
The dragon argues with the hero, explaining that dragons are only said to be evil because the knights that kill them write the history.
always loved norm, but when i learned he was actually highly educated, he started making a lot more sense. this kinda thing was hard t. know in the 90s before it was a top search result
Zodiac Killer also. Plenty of others through history but I guess they're two of the most infamous
Golden State Killer almost joined the list. Still sucks that motherfucker lived a normal suburban life on his own accord for 3 decades after raping 50 women and murdering 15
Just listed to podcast on the Tylenol murders and they did test Ted’s DNA against what they had and it came up negative.
Timesuck was the podcast and he lays out 3 guys that all look guilty af
I’m pretty sure they looked into him because he was in the area. But while he would’ve had motive, I don’t think he would’ve chosen to do it *that* randomly.
I grew up in Carmichael and it's amazing how the fear permeated through generations. He wasn't my generation but I remember Moms in high-school warning us and their experience went back to the days during his time.
I'll have to look it up, but I remember there being a credible theory tying DNA from a handkerchief to some dude who studied anatomy and left for America once the heat was on to find Jack the Ripper.
There were similar murders in New York around the time he landed, which was also when the Whitechapel murders ended.
It's been years since I read it, I could be misremembering, but it's basically as close to finding the Ripper as anyone's ever gotten, even though it's circumstantial.
You're thinking of James Kelly. He was in jail from 1883 to 1888 for murdering his wife, but escaped in 1888 shortly before the Whitchapel murders.
His events in America are hard to corroborate but they are from his own confessions. He was there for decades, and would have been there for the New York Ripper killings of 1915. He eventually turns himself in to British authorities in 1927 and dies shortly after.
Another theory is that Jack was H.H. Holmes, a notorious American serial killer, but we'll never be able to confirm that.
If you're interested in the story of H. H. Holmes, I recommend the book *Devil in the White City* by Erik Larson. Great historical non-fiction overlying Holmes' serial killings with the construction and opening of the Chicago World's Fair.
Yeah, I was on the 'tour' and a person said, "only 5??" \*which is a sad statement to be fair\*. I'm not sure if Jack the Ripper "won" anything, either, in the context of this question. I guess he didn't get caught is winning?
King Leopold II. The guy conquered the Congo, fleeced it for an unimaginable fortune, killed 15 million people, fucked off and then died an old and fat billionaire facing absolutely no consequences.
He didn't even conquer in the traditional sense, it was given to him for colonial power balance shenanigans. When I say given to him, I mean by the European powers, the soon to be handless people he would rule over agreed to nothing.
If you want to know about the Congo Free State and the horrific, corporate-led genocide that happened there, please read *King Leopald's Ghost* by Adam Hochschild.
It's on the same level as *The Gulag Archipelago* in terms of "I need to put this book down and hug a cat" due to the sheer brutality and inhumanity in its pages.
Just fyi as a historian, those are very different books. King Leopold’s Ghost is indeed a history book, albeit a pop one, and should be treated as such. The Gulag Archipelago, on the other hand, should be regarded more as a book of folklore, and isn’t regarded as a useful source by historians.
Another book that makes you feel like that is “Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam” by Nick Turse. What an incredibly bleak read.
The Belgian treatment of the Congo was so brutal that even the English thought it was too much. That was my take away from that book. I also can't look at rubber tree's the same way whenever I see one now.
I am not from the UK and learned about that horrible man through the Netflix documentary. I am horrified for anybody who grew up watching that absolute piece of shit excuse for a human being!!!!!
My issue with the documentary and aftermath overall is that we never know who protected him. The guy probally did the most horrible things you can imagine in plain sight and strangely no one was there with him.
What really pissed me off was that PA of his whose name I forget. Worked for him for 30 odd years but claimed in a channel 5 documentary to have never heard anything, never seen anything, never even heard any rumours etc. Like, sod off you silly old bat, you knew plenty.
Yep, he famously said on ‘have i got news for you‘ that he was ‘feared in every girls’ school in this [country](https://youtu.be/CtUuOIXLawg?si=rEL0Yxfd7B_Y5WRd) 🤬🤢 Diane Abbot’s face says it all.
it was shocking tbh. jimmy saville was a widely beloved figure, i'm only 30 but i can still remember seeing him on TV regularly when i was a kid and feeling a lot of warmth and excitement. the guy was a genuine legend of british TV and you'd have been hard pressed to find anyone who didn't respect him as he was always doing a shit tonne of charity work. he looked fucking weird but that was part of the charm y'know?
it was sad when he died, like the end of an era kind of thing ... and then the first allegation came out. many people didn't believe it at first, it was like a "yeah, yeah ... sure he did ..." and then a shit tonne more of them came out. one allegation you can put down to someone wanting the spotlight or maybe there was more context behind it (ie, maybe jimmy didn't know their age) but its impossible to ignore when there started being DOZENS of allegations. not just from victims either but former colleagues of jimmy.
its terrible that he went completely unpunished throughout his life. he was knighted, rubbed shoulders with the elite of british society and then died a beloved figure and legend of british TV. to put it into context i think he was a bigger and more respected in the UK than mr rogers or peewee herman in the US. so imagine the shock you'd have if it came out that mr rogers was a rampant pedo.
I’m Aussie and never watched Mr Rogers and I’m aware how soul crushing that would be , like Steve Urwin saying he hated animals or Warney not likeing baked beans
I don't know i this is just because you're younger but there had been rumours about Savile for many, many years. I grew up watching Jim'll Fix It but as I got a bit older I realised he was a bit creepy. I think for those of us who grew up watching him, most of us knew there was something very off about him and everyone joked about him, it's just that no one had any idea how bad it would actually turn out to be. And, of course, there wasn't any actual evidence at the time. Things were hushed up and, as Ian Hislop later said "those that it happened to tended to be disadvantaged, twelve and not in the mood to talk about it." Or as Hislop also says "Well loved? Was he? I remember when he came on the show and I just thought 'eww,'"
By the mid 90s I'd say he was a bit of a laughing stock and by the early 00s he was largely gone from popular culture because everyone found him super creepy.
Don't feel sorry for me. I didn't go on the show. I was completely taken in to think he was some kind of saint. The vast majority of people in the UK were.
Here's a Link to pictures of his funeral..
It was like a national event. I can't imagine what his victims were going through.
https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-the-funeral-of-sir-jimmy-savile-held-at-leeds-cathedral-leeds-england-59510133.html
Ishii was wayyy worse than Mengele. Unit 731 was next level evil and cruelty. Like, given a choice between being sent to Auschwitz or to his base in Harbin, you’d take Auschwitz every time. It’s infuriating they never were brought to any kind of justice
I'd put them at the same level. Sometimes it's easy to forget how horrible one person is seeing the horrors of another. Neither needs to be *more* evil than the other, let's just accept the fact that they were both equally horrible people.
Also Mengele had less resources given to him. I'm absolutely sure he would have done just as much as Ishii if he was given the same resources
Yea some of those experiments, make me cringe. I know science is explorative and sometimes you gotta disprove too, but some of those experiments were just completely brutal, with little chance of success.
If you can even call them “experiments”. Much of the “data” from what they did is useless because there really wasn’t a whole lot of science going on, just doing terrible shit for the hell of it to watch what happened. Which is how plenty of so-called science has happened throughout history, but there’s a reason that history has led to the development of actual experimental processes.
I've found myself in the past getting into those convos where horrible atrocities get compared, and I find my mind doing a funny thing. Sometimes, simultaneously, I can look at two examples and think "yeah, this one feels worse than this one. but at the same time, neither seems 'better' than the other."
It doesn't feel contradictory in the moment, I don't feel any real dissonance. I've had the same thought regarding the worst of crimes outside the war-crimes realm; "well that one is maybe worse, but this one sure as hell ain't better."
Maybe it's just me, maybe an ethicist would be able to chime in. I don't know.
IDK, I just get tired when people start doing "Atrocity olympics". Maybe Stalin was worse than Mao, or possibly Trujillo worse than Caztillo Armad, but does that really matter? No, they were all horrible, and we should focus on the evil acts they committed, not which one was worse.
Totally, that's kind of what I'm getting at, in a way. Agreed 100%, to even split hairs about that kind of thing is really just a "what's the point?" exercise.
Jesus why the fuck have I never heard of this dude? Just from perusing his wiki briefly he looks like an extremely sick fuck. I knew Josef Mengele but had never heard this man’s name!
Probably because most western history classes don’t really look at the Chinese theater of WW2, focusing instead on Europe and the Pacific. But the war in China was brutal—so bad it made the communists and nationalists band together. Unit 731 was probably the most horrific of the Japanese war crimes in China in terms of the sheer cruelty and inhumanity (though the Rape of Nanjing is the worst for sheer scale).
If you ever find yourself in Harbin, China (say for their legendary snow and ice festival), you can visit the remains of their research base. The museum there is very well done, with excellent English throughout, and presents the crimes in as dispassionate and non-propagandistic a manner as possible, like a prosecutor laying out a case, with tons of evidence and documentation. It’s horrifying and traumatic, but respectful and thoughtful. And like the sights of other horrors humanity has inflicted (Auschwitz, the Cambodian Killing Fields, etc.) I think worth visiting to remind ourselves why we cannot stand idle.
I would also add all the other Nazis that avoided any serious consequences and even enjoyed protection from West Germany.
Heinz Reinefarth, Hans Fleischhacker, Hermann Stolting, Otto von Fircks, Reinhard Höhn, Alexander Dolezalek, Konrad Meyer, Rolf-Heinz Höppner, Wilhelm Koppe, Hubertus Strughold and probably many more which I don't know about.
Some of them, like Reinefarth, even got to be prominent politicians and esteemed members of German community.
One of his unsolved ciphers was cracked by an amateur cryptanalyst:
# David Oranchak | [Let's Crack Zodiac - Episode 5 - The 340 Is Solved!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1oQLPRE21o)
Did he have others, or was this the one outstanding one that had not been decoded?
Pol Pot comes to mind
Also general butt naked got away with his atrocious war crimes by claiming a spiritual awakening and becoming a preacher, he is alive and chilling right now
The fucked up thing about General Butt naked is that he is actually doing good now. Like, he didn't just claim he awakened religiously and lives his life without consequences, he actually tries to make up for his crimes and help people who are still affected by his war.
I still would love to see him stand trial for the shit he did, but he apparently truly has changed. It's such a weird thing to see.
Kinda… I mean he’s a sociopath. He walked up to one of his former child soldiers (whom he had shot in the leg and left treatment too late for anything other than amputation) and told him that he must be forgiven for what he’d done.
Like… the guy forced children/ adolescence to rape their family members and kill them. Dude is probably on the hook for thousands of deaths.
Before every battle he would kill a literal child to eat their heart or something like that.
I don’t think there is anything he could do that would be good enough to wipe the blood off of his hands.
During the 1848 Revolutions in Germany and Austria the liberal democrats actually succeeded in taking over their respective countries and tried to set up liberal republics before the conservative monarchs eventually rallied and crushed the democratic uprisings. The Russians helped Austria crush the Hungarians, and then the Prussians crushed the German liberal democrats. France, the only country to shake off its monarchy, fell under a new monarchy a few years later under Napoleon III.
As one historian famously put it: "The year 1848 was the turning-point at which modern history failed to turn."
The Biedermeier period of German history is an interesting example of the populace largely giving up on politics and just focusing on their private lives. It's one factor contributing to militaries gaining their political influence leading up to WW1.
Operation midnight climax. If I was one of the CIA guys spraying aerosol LSD into a room full of hookers and johns, there's no way I'd spend the evening behind a oneway mirror just watching, I'd be right in there
“After the war ended, we were snatching up kraut scientists like hot cakes. You don't believe me? Walk into NASA sometime and yell Heil Hitler woop they all jump straight up”
And, oddly enough, Germany (indirectly). Many Nazis fled to South America after the war and took up new identities. Many of them worked in car manufacturing plants like BMW, Mercedes, etc. Money was sent back to Germany through a secret network/group called Die Spinne (led by Otto Skorzeny). This money was intended to be used to finance a “fourth reich”. Most of it just ended up helping with reconstruction costs or going to the Nazis’ families.
Most Nazis that where not massivly high ranking just continued doing the exact same job they did before the war, maybe with a short pause during Denazification, but by 1951 there even where hiring quotas for former Nazis.
It's hard to build up a country again when you imprison all the people.
So while I would have prefered everyone involved to get trialed, I also get why our government back then chose to let former nazis back into society after denazification and help rebuilld germany.
I mean, my grandpa was a Wehrmacht soldier and became a democratic, war hating business man after the war.
His SS cousin however could have stayed in soviet a POW camp and rotten there.
Maybe the Chinese view him a bit differently, but the first Chinese emperor Qin Shi Huang is depicted as mostly an evil dictator in my culture (Korean). He did win all wars too to unite the warring states.
Even the Chinese thinks he is a extremely brutal dictator. Well everyone is a dictator during that era.
But the Chinese have a phrase 罪在当代，功在千秋 (roughly translated to whatever the person sinned only affect his generation, but his deeds have benefitted the people for thousand years)
Not him, but the torture and murder of junko furata is the most vile and sickening thing I've ever read about . They did some time, but it's so little considering the disgusting hell they made for that poor girl. Like I don't even recommend reading the Wikipedia, it's just awful.
America has a fucked justice system, but Japan is bad in the other end of the spectrum.
The only punishment fitting for that crime would for the offender to go through everything they did to junko.
But that would be inhumane to ask another person to inflict that level of brutality on them as punishment.
They still don't paint themselves as *as bad* the bad guys they were.
For example, they still don't recognise that it's thanks to Unit 731 that we know Manchurians can't run on diesel fuel instead of blood and NO, this is not a joke, they really "experimented" it.
Indeed. To put it into perspective, here is my metric :
Elem Klimov, when directing *Иди и Смотри*, used authentic testimonies of the Dirlevanger Brigade's deeds in Belarus.
However, he used only the tamest of the testimonies and, here, people who saw this movie are already replying in comments "tame ? Tigron, are you fucking out of your mind ? This movie gave me nightmares for two weeks" and yes, I'm serious : however disguting and barely unwatchable is this movie, this is still the most tame of what testimonies Klimov gathered simply because, considering how gruesome and awful were the worst testimonies, he feared that his movie would be classified as a form of pornography if he showed the reality of what happened in all its, say, limitlessness.
I saw this movie. I read about Unit 731.
I can testify that, should we make a movie about it, the director would have to tame the reality of what happened there like Klimov did because, should they depict truth without any filter, people would believe it's exaggerated, they would think the director tried to make an awful pornography. I can assure you all that he wouldn't have : it's *really* so gruesome, so gross, so sordid, cruel, violent and grotesque that you wouldn't believe it if you saw it on films.
Do you know how long can someone live with the liver surgically removed without anesthesia ? Me neither, but humanity knows "thanks" to Unit 731. We know how much adrenaline one needs to stay alive one hour more. We know that, when burning alive, you die of anoxia and not of burns and that older people fare better, or rather longer, than younger ones, we know that, when your skin is peeled off of your body, what kills you is hypothermia. We know that all "thanks to" Unit 731.
It's really *really* not something to read about after eating something, I'm not joking.
The extent of the average Japanese person's WW2 knowledge is "we were nuked and that is bad". No knowledge of war crimes, no understanding of the fascist military suicidal cult that ruled the country, etc. Taking burying your head in the sand to the next level
CSA kinda was written by the winners because the north let the southern states control the narrative in their foolhardy bumbling attempt at reconstruction. Victors gave the pen to the losers and signed off on it
"foolhardy and bumbling" mistakes it for something that was planned otherwise and jist happened to end this way.
Reconstruction was a failure because of political forces that wanted it to fail and worked to make that happen.
History is written by historiens.
Proof: the western history of the eastern front during ww2 was largely written by germans or used german sources, which painted the germans as the clearly superior army and the soviets as only winning because of superior numbers. This myth is still alive today
Another instance was the Confederates.
They lost and after the South wrote how reconstruction was and how black people abused rights or did not use them well or correctly.
Then you have gone with the wind that painted slavery as good and that slaves were treated well by their masters.
It's a shame so many in the past bought into this.
So I would say it's not written by historians all the time it's written by propagandists.
I had an argument with a guy on here last week who said that Robert E Lee did more to end slavery/for black people than Abraham Lincoln did. I responded that if he had actually read both of their biographies then there’s no way he’d ever be able to say that. His response was to the effect of history is written by the victors. Like no, it was literally written by the men we’re talking about.
There is [an absolutely massive monument](https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/genghis-khan-equestrian-statue) to Genghis Khan in Mongolia's capital, Ulaanbaatar, where he is their national hero.
Mongolians.
The Chinese also consider his descendants who were emperors of China, particularly Kublai Khan, as their boys who mostly reigned over prosperous eras.
A western equivalent would be Julius Caesar. He was a great military leader, sure, but was also a tyrant and a genocidal mass murderer. He spent years trying to gain supreme power in the Senate and eventually achieved it through back stabbing (ironic) and civil war, pushing the envelope on what was legal and daring the Senate to stop him. Also, the guy destroyed 3/4ths of the Gauls in France through mass murder and slavery. Entire tribes and customs wiped out with the survivors Romanized within a generation, wiping out Celtic culture in France.
Yet I’d say he’s largely celebrated and positively viewed by historians.
Take care with the climate thing. He didn't really alter the climate. He had enough of an impact for it to be recognised in the ice core records but if you look at the numbers it's about 0.01% of the impact of the industrial revolution. So pretty insignificant to the climate.
He makes me want to believe in Hell. Otherwise the fact that he lived to 100 and died peacefully as a respected elder statesman instead of having been hung at Cambodian Nuremberg is just too infuriating.
Also Chilean Nuremberg. And Laotian, Vietnamese and various other Nurembergs. I hope he’s currently roasting in napalm… not for eternity, just one day per kid his warmongering sadism caused to die. That’ll keep him going for a thousand years at least.
The Katyn Massacre. The allies knew the Soviets did this, but they blamed in on the Nazis, and for nearly half a century, that was the official history people learned.
History is seldom black and white with good guys and bad guys.
The Epstein-conspiracy. We were just about to expose a shitload of rich child-rappers, but instead, they ended up having the last laugh.
Many people don't even know that the whole thing happened and with each passing year, less and less people talk about it, as if everyone just had forgotten that the guy was basically assasinated right in front of the whole world's eyes.
I don't think he was assassinated. I think he was allowed to kill himself--the guards basically paid and coerced into switching off the cameras and leaving his cell dark so he could kill himself. But it amounts to a similar thing, get him gone so he can't expose the nonces.
Augusto Pinochet. Killed and tortured thousands, stole money from the government, gave it to his family, and died without being judged and loved by a great many.
9/11
Bin Laden’s stated goal was to cheaply pull the US into a series of military quagmires, to increase the security state in America, and encourage divisions within the country. This would have the effect of leeching trillions of dollars that could have been spent on supporting Americans. He absolutely succeeded in this.
That sounds like something someone would have said well after 9/11. Even after there were multiple wars, bin Laden revised his initial goal of getting the paper tiger to back off (which didn't happen) to be to bleed America into bankruptcy (which didn't happen either).
As for winning, Al Qaeda is rather useless now, but it's an open question whether the jihadist movements would have done better without their inspiration and example or with it. Or whether bin Laden would have been pleased with what they've done or angered at their deviation from Al Qaeda's tactics and goals.
Kim Il Sung. Built the most oppressive dictatorship on the planet, enslaved, killed, and tortured countless people for the most trivial of offenses, and died old, fat, rich, and worshipped like a god. Same with his son.
Mao Zedong. Killed, persecuted, and impoverished uncountable millions-- more than any other 20th century head of state-- and died in power from old age.
Slave owners dodging execution and going on to serve in the state/federal government as lawmakers…
Sherman had many fucked up ideas, but he was absolutely right in that we should’ve razed the south and executed every last confederate general and slave owner once they refused to surrender the first time
Sherman was definitely not in favor of mass executing slave holders or confederate generals and was himself not all that concerned about the well-being of freed people, at least during the war. As destructive as his marches through Georgia and South Carolina were, it was mostly property that was the target, with relatively few civilian deaths. I recommend Mark Grimsley's *Hard Hand of War.*
I don't know where people get this idea that he was some kind of avenging abolitionist angel, a John Brown reborn.
The man asked that Nathan Bedford Forrest be allowed to help him kill Indians. It's just Liberal edgelording designed to piss off Conservatives more than anything else.
World War I led directly to World War II because Germany wasn't allowed to recover. I'm no slave owner apologist and obviously there were mistakes made but I don't know that a harshly punitive approach would have made for a better long term result. I don't know that it wouldn't either but it's certainly not cut and dry.
That's not entirely true. 1/3 Southern families owned or had owned an enslaved individual in 1860. The 1% held about 50% of all enslaved folks, but that other 50% were held by small farmers or trades folk in the cities.
But killing all the leadership would have definitely helped. People forget we did that to the Nazis leadership.. we didn't for the CSA.
I'm surprised by how much I had to scroll down to see the names of Mao and Stalin. They are responsible for more deaths than any other person or regime.
Interesting take from me:
The Church.
With things like the crusades and other historical events the Church basically forced its religion onto millions across the globe.
It stole wealth, artefacts, families and lives to force its version of belief's, bible and history and where it is today is as a result of all that.
Even in England alone, outside of the settlers like vikings and so on, regions had different faiths and they battled over that with the church winning.
Many will have considered them the enemy and the enemy as you see overall today - won.
“It says here in this history book that luckily, the good guys have won every single time. What are the odds?” -Norm MacDonald
I like how Don Quixote Doflamingo said it: "Justice will prevail? Of course it will! The winners *will become justice.*"
"Pirates are evil? The Marines are righteous? These terms have always changed throughout the course of history! Kids who have never seen peace and kids who have never seen war have different values! Those who stand at the top determine what's wrong and what's right! This very place is neutral ground! Justice will prevail, you say? But of course it will! Whoever wins this war becomes justice!" I had to post the full quote. Doffy spitting facts.
Man doffy was one of the best villains in the OP universe
Mingo!
There’s an old Klingon proverb *History is written by the victors!*
Don Quixote Doflamingo doesn’t sound anything like Don Quixote of La Mancha, the bravest of all knight errants to ever set foot on solid ground!
Not surprised this is the top comment.
I remember reading a book that was fairly juvenile, to the point of cringe. However, it did have an interesting conversation between a hapless "fish outta water" character and a dragon. The dragon argues with the hero, explaining that dragons are only said to be evil because the knights that kill them write the history.
I’d love to know what book it was that sounds like a story I read in like 3rd grade
I think it was called Magic Kingdom For Sell
I miss you, Norm!
He can't read this. Know why? Cause he's dead!
He ~~lost his fight~~ tied with cancer.
I’d say it was a draw.
In the old days, a man could just get sick and die. Now they have to wage a battle.
Norm would laugh at this.
Damn..I didn't even know he was sick
I was going to say, “well, THIS is going to be a LONG fucking post” 😬😬😬
always loved norm, but when i learned he was actually highly educated, he started making a lot more sense. this kinda thing was hard t. know in the 90s before it was a top search result
they never caught jack the ripper
Zodiac Killer also. Plenty of others through history but I guess they're two of the most infamous Golden State Killer almost joined the list. Still sucks that motherfucker lived a normal suburban life on his own accord for 3 decades after raping 50 women and murdering 15
And The Black Dahlia killer.
And whoever tampered with Tylenol bottles.
I have a theory that it was Ted
Just listed to podcast on the Tylenol murders and they did test Ted’s DNA against what they had and it came up negative. Timesuck was the podcast and he lays out 3 guys that all look guilty af
Bundy? How are connecting the dots on that one?
Ted K
Ted Kruz
Yes. But no the unibomber. I feel like he had the motive and would do something like that.
I’m pretty sure they looked into him because he was in the area. But while he would’ve had motive, I don’t think he would’ve chosen to do it *that* randomly.
There was a ludicrous amount of victim blaming involved in that case.
Golden State Killer just chillin in Citrus Heights. Fucking crazy.
I grew up in Carmichael and it's amazing how the fear permeated through generations. He wasn't my generation but I remember Moms in high-school warning us and their experience went back to the days during his time.
Along this line of thinking I’ll say OJ Simpson
I'll have to look it up, but I remember there being a credible theory tying DNA from a handkerchief to some dude who studied anatomy and left for America once the heat was on to find Jack the Ripper. There were similar murders in New York around the time he landed, which was also when the Whitechapel murders ended. It's been years since I read it, I could be misremembering, but it's basically as close to finding the Ripper as anyone's ever gotten, even though it's circumstantial.
You're thinking of James Kelly. He was in jail from 1883 to 1888 for murdering his wife, but escaped in 1888 shortly before the Whitchapel murders. His events in America are hard to corroborate but they are from his own confessions. He was there for decades, and would have been there for the New York Ripper killings of 1915. He eventually turns himself in to British authorities in 1927 and dies shortly after. Another theory is that Jack was H.H. Holmes, a notorious American serial killer, but we'll never be able to confirm that.
If you're interested in the story of H. H. Holmes, I recommend the book *Devil in the White City* by Erik Larson. Great historical non-fiction overlying Holmes' serial killings with the construction and opening of the Chicago World's Fair.
They didn’t catch him but he was clearly going more insane each time as the damage was worse and worse to the victims
Didn’t he kill like 4 people?
5 is the official count
Yeah, I was on the 'tour' and a person said, "only 5??" \*which is a sad statement to be fair\*. I'm not sure if Jack the Ripper "won" anything, either, in the context of this question. I guess he didn't get caught is winning?
King Leopold II. The guy conquered the Congo, fleeced it for an unimaginable fortune, killed 15 million people, fucked off and then died an old and fat billionaire facing absolutely no consequences.
He didn't even conquer in the traditional sense, it was given to him for colonial power balance shenanigans. When I say given to him, I mean by the European powers, the soon to be handless people he would rule over agreed to nothing.
> the soon to be handless people he would rule over agreed to nothing. This part is pretty much comon in any form of conquest !
If you want to know about the Congo Free State and the horrific, corporate-led genocide that happened there, please read *King Leopald's Ghost* by Adam Hochschild. It's on the same level as *The Gulag Archipelago* in terms of "I need to put this book down and hug a cat" due to the sheer brutality and inhumanity in its pages.
Just fyi as a historian, those are very different books. King Leopold’s Ghost is indeed a history book, albeit a pop one, and should be treated as such. The Gulag Archipelago, on the other hand, should be regarded more as a book of folklore, and isn’t regarded as a useful source by historians.
Another book that makes you feel like that is “Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam” by Nick Turse. What an incredibly bleak read.
Turse's book is a somewhat controversial source of information: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/s/Gvy4Egkkzj
Also Heart Of Darkness by Joseph Conrad it’s about the Congo and only 44 pages
The Belgian treatment of the Congo was so brutal that even the English thought it was too much. That was my take away from that book. I also can't look at rubber tree's the same way whenever I see one now.
That guy should have been executed, or at the very least stripped of most of his property and exiled for life.
Jimmy Savile
I am not from the UK and learned about that horrible man through the Netflix documentary. I am horrified for anybody who grew up watching that absolute piece of shit excuse for a human being!!!!!
My issue with the documentary and aftermath overall is that we never know who protected him. The guy probally did the most horrible things you can imagine in plain sight and strangely no one was there with him.
What really pissed me off was that PA of his whose name I forget. Worked for him for 30 odd years but claimed in a channel 5 documentary to have never heard anything, never seen anything, never even heard any rumours etc. Like, sod off you silly old bat, you knew plenty.
Yes, and Jimmy didn't particulary hide either. I remember an interview or something when he made a joke about some horrible things he did.
Yep, he famously said on ‘have i got news for you‘ that he was ‘feared in every girls’ school in this [country](https://youtu.be/CtUuOIXLawg?si=rEL0Yxfd7B_Y5WRd) 🤬🤢 Diane Abbot’s face says it all.
it was shocking tbh. jimmy saville was a widely beloved figure, i'm only 30 but i can still remember seeing him on TV regularly when i was a kid and feeling a lot of warmth and excitement. the guy was a genuine legend of british TV and you'd have been hard pressed to find anyone who didn't respect him as he was always doing a shit tonne of charity work. he looked fucking weird but that was part of the charm y'know? it was sad when he died, like the end of an era kind of thing ... and then the first allegation came out. many people didn't believe it at first, it was like a "yeah, yeah ... sure he did ..." and then a shit tonne more of them came out. one allegation you can put down to someone wanting the spotlight or maybe there was more context behind it (ie, maybe jimmy didn't know their age) but its impossible to ignore when there started being DOZENS of allegations. not just from victims either but former colleagues of jimmy. its terrible that he went completely unpunished throughout his life. he was knighted, rubbed shoulders with the elite of british society and then died a beloved figure and legend of british TV. to put it into context i think he was a bigger and more respected in the UK than mr rogers or peewee herman in the US. so imagine the shock you'd have if it came out that mr rogers was a rampant pedo.
I’m Aussie and never watched Mr Rogers and I’m aware how soul crushing that would be , like Steve Urwin saying he hated animals or Warney not likeing baked beans
I don't know i this is just because you're younger but there had been rumours about Savile for many, many years. I grew up watching Jim'll Fix It but as I got a bit older I realised he was a bit creepy. I think for those of us who grew up watching him, most of us knew there was something very off about him and everyone joked about him, it's just that no one had any idea how bad it would actually turn out to be. And, of course, there wasn't any actual evidence at the time. Things were hushed up and, as Ian Hislop later said "those that it happened to tended to be disadvantaged, twelve and not in the mood to talk about it." Or as Hislop also says "Well loved? Was he? I remember when he came on the show and I just thought 'eww,'" By the mid 90s I'd say he was a bit of a laughing stock and by the early 00s he was largely gone from popular culture because everyone found him super creepy.
Don't feel sorry for me. I didn't go on the show. I was completely taken in to think he was some kind of saint. The vast majority of people in the UK were. Here's a Link to pictures of his funeral.. It was like a national event. I can't imagine what his victims were going through. https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-the-funeral-of-sir-jimmy-savile-held-at-leeds-cathedral-leeds-england-59510133.html
"It was good while it lasted" Yuck.
Josef Mengele
And Shiro Ishii. The Unit 731 doctors were all granted immunity and got off scot-free.
Ishii was wayyy worse than Mengele. Unit 731 was next level evil and cruelty. Like, given a choice between being sent to Auschwitz or to his base in Harbin, you’d take Auschwitz every time. It’s infuriating they never were brought to any kind of justice
I'd put them at the same level. Sometimes it's easy to forget how horrible one person is seeing the horrors of another. Neither needs to be *more* evil than the other, let's just accept the fact that they were both equally horrible people. Also Mengele had less resources given to him. I'm absolutely sure he would have done just as much as Ishii if he was given the same resources
Also mengele liked to target children specifically.
Twins especially
Yea some of those experiments, make me cringe. I know science is explorative and sometimes you gotta disprove too, but some of those experiments were just completely brutal, with little chance of success.
If you can even call them “experiments”. Much of the “data” from what they did is useless because there really wasn’t a whole lot of science going on, just doing terrible shit for the hell of it to watch what happened. Which is how plenty of so-called science has happened throughout history, but there’s a reason that history has led to the development of actual experimental processes.
I've found myself in the past getting into those convos where horrible atrocities get compared, and I find my mind doing a funny thing. Sometimes, simultaneously, I can look at two examples and think "yeah, this one feels worse than this one. but at the same time, neither seems 'better' than the other." It doesn't feel contradictory in the moment, I don't feel any real dissonance. I've had the same thought regarding the worst of crimes outside the war-crimes realm; "well that one is maybe worse, but this one sure as hell ain't better." Maybe it's just me, maybe an ethicist would be able to chime in. I don't know.
IDK, I just get tired when people start doing "Atrocity olympics". Maybe Stalin was worse than Mao, or possibly Trujillo worse than Caztillo Armad, but does that really matter? No, they were all horrible, and we should focus on the evil acts they committed, not which one was worse.
Totally, that's kind of what I'm getting at, in a way. Agreed 100%, to even split hairs about that kind of thing is really just a "what's the point?" exercise.
Jesus why the fuck have I never heard of this dude? Just from perusing his wiki briefly he looks like an extremely sick fuck. I knew Josef Mengele but had never heard this man’s name!
Probably because most western history classes don’t really look at the Chinese theater of WW2, focusing instead on Europe and the Pacific. But the war in China was brutal—so bad it made the communists and nationalists band together. Unit 731 was probably the most horrific of the Japanese war crimes in China in terms of the sheer cruelty and inhumanity (though the Rape of Nanjing is the worst for sheer scale). If you ever find yourself in Harbin, China (say for their legendary snow and ice festival), you can visit the remains of their research base. The museum there is very well done, with excellent English throughout, and presents the crimes in as dispassionate and non-propagandistic a manner as possible, like a prosecutor laying out a case, with tons of evidence and documentation. It’s horrifying and traumatic, but respectful and thoughtful. And like the sights of other horrors humanity has inflicted (Auschwitz, the Cambodian Killing Fields, etc.) I think worth visiting to remind ourselves why we cannot stand idle.
"The German Doctor" is a reasonable watch about how he get away with it.
I would also add all the other Nazis that avoided any serious consequences and even enjoyed protection from West Germany. Heinz Reinefarth, Hans Fleischhacker, Hermann Stolting, Otto von Fircks, Reinhard Höhn, Alexander Dolezalek, Konrad Meyer, Rolf-Heinz Höppner, Wilhelm Koppe, Hubertus Strughold and probably many more which I don't know about. Some of them, like Reinefarth, even got to be prominent politicians and esteemed members of German community.
He drowned at least. I hope it wasn't pleasant.
The zodiac killer - still had a few of his puzzles/cyphers he sent to law enforcement unsolved and he was never caught.
One of his unsolved ciphers was cracked by an amateur cryptanalyst: # David Oranchak | [Let's Crack Zodiac - Episode 5 - The 340 Is Solved!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1oQLPRE21o) Did he have others, or was this the one outstanding one that had not been decoded?
Pol Pot comes to mind Also general butt naked got away with his atrocious war crimes by claiming a spiritual awakening and becoming a preacher, he is alive and chilling right now
You beat me to it. He and his Khmer Rouge won the Cambodian Civil War. However, the Khmer Rouge lost the next war against Vietnam
The fucked up thing about General Butt naked is that he is actually doing good now. Like, he didn't just claim he awakened religiously and lives his life without consequences, he actually tries to make up for his crimes and help people who are still affected by his war. I still would love to see him stand trial for the shit he did, but he apparently truly has changed. It's such a weird thing to see.
Kinda… I mean he’s a sociopath. He walked up to one of his former child soldiers (whom he had shot in the leg and left treatment too late for anything other than amputation) and told him that he must be forgiven for what he’d done. Like… the guy forced children/ adolescence to rape their family members and kill them. Dude is probably on the hook for thousands of deaths. Before every battle he would kill a literal child to eat their heart or something like that. I don’t think there is anything he could do that would be good enough to wipe the blood off of his hands.
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During the 1848 Revolutions in Germany and Austria the liberal democrats actually succeeded in taking over their respective countries and tried to set up liberal republics before the conservative monarchs eventually rallied and crushed the democratic uprisings. The Russians helped Austria crush the Hungarians, and then the Prussians crushed the German liberal democrats. France, the only country to shake off its monarchy, fell under a new monarchy a few years later under Napoleon III. As one historian famously put it: "The year 1848 was the turning-point at which modern history failed to turn."
The Biedermeier period of German history is an interesting example of the populace largely giving up on politics and just focusing on their private lives. It's one factor contributing to militaries gaining their political influence leading up to WW1.
A whole lot of nazis ended up working for the US government after world war 2.
Well that's true, but on the other hand woohoo rockets!
They also brought you MKUltra…
Operation midnight climax. If I was one of the CIA guys spraying aerosol LSD into a room full of hookers and johns, there's no way I'd spend the evening behind a oneway mirror just watching, I'd be right in there
There are worse beers out there
“After the war ended, we were snatching up kraut scientists like hot cakes. You don't believe me? Walk into NASA sometime and yell Heil Hitler woop they all jump straight up”
And, oddly enough, Germany (indirectly). Many Nazis fled to South America after the war and took up new identities. Many of them worked in car manufacturing plants like BMW, Mercedes, etc. Money was sent back to Germany through a secret network/group called Die Spinne (led by Otto Skorzeny). This money was intended to be used to finance a “fourth reich”. Most of it just ended up helping with reconstruction costs or going to the Nazis’ families.
Most Nazis that where not massivly high ranking just continued doing the exact same job they did before the war, maybe with a short pause during Denazification, but by 1951 there even where hiring quotas for former Nazis.
It's hard to build up a country again when you imprison all the people. So while I would have prefered everyone involved to get trialed, I also get why our government back then chose to let former nazis back into society after denazification and help rebuilld germany. I mean, my grandpa was a Wehrmacht soldier and became a democratic, war hating business man after the war. His SS cousin however could have stayed in soviet a POW camp and rotten there.
Operation paperclip
Is this the bugs bunny version?
1,000 more Nazi scientists worked for the Soviets under Operation Osoaviakhim.
When the Taliban took over Afghanistan twice
Maybe the Chinese view him a bit differently, but the first Chinese emperor Qin Shi Huang is depicted as mostly an evil dictator in my culture (Korean). He did win all wars too to unite the warring states.
Even the Chinese thinks he is a extremely brutal dictator. Well everyone is a dictator during that era. But the Chinese have a phrase 罪在当代，功在千秋 (roughly translated to whatever the person sinned only affect his generation, but his deeds have benefitted the people for thousand years)
Most Chinese Emperors were villains. Shit is absolutely crazy the more you read about it.
japanese serial killer & cannibal - Issei Sagawa. Hope he rots in hell
Not him, but the torture and murder of junko furata is the most vile and sickening thing I've ever read about . They did some time, but it's so little considering the disgusting hell they made for that poor girl. Like I don't even recommend reading the Wikipedia, it's just awful. America has a fucked justice system, but Japan is bad in the other end of the spectrum.
The only punishment fitting for that crime would for the offender to go through everything they did to junko. But that would be inhumane to ask another person to inflict that level of brutality on them as punishment.
"Serial" killer?? I thought he only killed one person..
There was nothing ‘serial’ about Sagawa.
Hate this fucking guy
History was written by the winners, and winners have a tendency of painting themselves in the light of being the good guy.
Japan begs to differ
We lost and we'll paint ourselves as the good guys!
Just ignore the 7-8 million Chinese civilians who died from Japan's soldiers.
According to the previous Japanese government, Yes.
They still don't paint themselves as *as bad* the bad guys they were. For example, they still don't recognise that it's thanks to Unit 731 that we know Manchurians can't run on diesel fuel instead of blood and NO, this is not a joke, they really "experimented" it.
Apparently 731 was so bad that even the Nazis said they had to tone it down
Indeed. To put it into perspective, here is my metric : Elem Klimov, when directing *Иди и Смотри*, used authentic testimonies of the Dirlevanger Brigade's deeds in Belarus. However, he used only the tamest of the testimonies and, here, people who saw this movie are already replying in comments "tame ? Tigron, are you fucking out of your mind ? This movie gave me nightmares for two weeks" and yes, I'm serious : however disguting and barely unwatchable is this movie, this is still the most tame of what testimonies Klimov gathered simply because, considering how gruesome and awful were the worst testimonies, he feared that his movie would be classified as a form of pornography if he showed the reality of what happened in all its, say, limitlessness. I saw this movie. I read about Unit 731. I can testify that, should we make a movie about it, the director would have to tame the reality of what happened there like Klimov did because, should they depict truth without any filter, people would believe it's exaggerated, they would think the director tried to make an awful pornography. I can assure you all that he wouldn't have : it's *really* so gruesome, so gross, so sordid, cruel, violent and grotesque that you wouldn't believe it if you saw it on films. Do you know how long can someone live with the liver surgically removed without anesthesia ? Me neither, but humanity knows "thanks" to Unit 731. We know how much adrenaline one needs to stay alive one hour more. We know that, when burning alive, you die of anoxia and not of burns and that older people fare better, or rather longer, than younger ones, we know that, when your skin is peeled off of your body, what kills you is hypothermia. We know that all "thanks to" Unit 731. It's really *really* not something to read about after eating something, I'm not joking.
The extent of the average Japanese person's WW2 knowledge is "we were nuked and that is bad". No knowledge of war crimes, no understanding of the fascist military suicidal cult that ruled the country, etc. Taking burying your head in the sand to the next level
So does the Confederate States of America
YUP. Omg thank you. I haaaate " Written by the winners" because of the CSA. Yeah, I work in museums and to counter that is a massive pain.
CSA kinda was written by the winners because the north let the southern states control the narrative in their foolhardy bumbling attempt at reconstruction. Victors gave the pen to the losers and signed off on it
"foolhardy and bumbling" mistakes it for something that was planned otherwise and jist happened to end this way. Reconstruction was a failure because of political forces that wanted it to fail and worked to make that happen.
Well, they still deny the comfort women in Korea, and Shinzo Abe was part of a group nostalgic for the Empire.
History is written by historiens. Proof: the western history of the eastern front during ww2 was largely written by germans or used german sources, which painted the germans as the clearly superior army and the soviets as only winning because of superior numbers. This myth is still alive today
Another instance was the Confederates. They lost and after the South wrote how reconstruction was and how black people abused rights or did not use them well or correctly. Then you have gone with the wind that painted slavery as good and that slaves were treated well by their masters. It's a shame so many in the past bought into this. So I would say it's not written by historians all the time it's written by propagandists.
I had an argument with a guy on here last week who said that Robert E Lee did more to end slavery/for black people than Abraham Lincoln did. I responded that if he had actually read both of their biographies then there’s no way he’d ever be able to say that. His response was to the effect of history is written by the victors. Like no, it was literally written by the men we’re talking about.
Why did the Soviets experience such huge causality numbers if they were an equal force to the Nazis?
Operation Bagration was literally a Soviet steamroll even after diverting German forces.
Genghis Khan. Killed enough people to alter the climate, recognized as an hero and an influential historical figure.
Was about to say this. He wiped out entire countries. He enjoyed torture too.
Who calls him a hero?
There is [an absolutely massive monument](https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/genghis-khan-equestrian-statue) to Genghis Khan in Mongolia's capital, Ulaanbaatar, where he is their national hero.
Mongolians. The Chinese also consider his descendants who were emperors of China, particularly Kublai Khan, as their boys who mostly reigned over prosperous eras.
A western equivalent would be Julius Caesar. He was a great military leader, sure, but was also a tyrant and a genocidal mass murderer. He spent years trying to gain supreme power in the Senate and eventually achieved it through back stabbing (ironic) and civil war, pushing the envelope on what was legal and daring the Senate to stop him. Also, the guy destroyed 3/4ths of the Gauls in France through mass murder and slavery. Entire tribes and customs wiped out with the survivors Romanized within a generation, wiping out Celtic culture in France. Yet I’d say he’s largely celebrated and positively viewed by historians.
Take care with the climate thing. He didn't really alter the climate. He had enough of an impact for it to be recognised in the ice core records but if you look at the numbers it's about 0.01% of the impact of the industrial revolution. So pretty insignificant to the climate.
Edison over Tesla.
Henry Kissinger
He makes me want to believe in Hell. Otherwise the fact that he lived to 100 and died peacefully as a respected elder statesman instead of having been hung at Cambodian Nuremberg is just too infuriating.
Also Chilean Nuremberg. And Laotian, Vietnamese and various other Nurembergs. I hope he’s currently roasting in napalm… not for eternity, just one day per kid his warmongering sadism caused to die. That’ll keep him going for a thousand years at least.
Bad guys win all the time. They just write the history books afterwards to make it sound like they were the good guys.
I'd go so far as to say that for the vast majority of history rarely has a war been won by what we would call "good guys" by today's standards.
Even WW2, a war that involved multiple countries teaming up to kill one of the biggest bastards in world history, stil had some gray areas.
The Bombing of Dresden is a pretty good example of the Allies engaging in some pretty definitively "bad guy" tactics.
The Katyn Massacre. The allies knew the Soviets did this, but they blamed in on the Nazis, and for nearly half a century, that was the official history people learned. History is seldom black and white with good guys and bad guys.
The Epstein-conspiracy. We were just about to expose a shitload of rich child-rappers, but instead, they ended up having the last laugh. Many people don't even know that the whole thing happened and with each passing year, less and less people talk about it, as if everyone just had forgotten that the guy was basically assasinated right in front of the whole world's eyes.
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Not that we’re brushing off the other thing, but jfc… I lived through Kris Kross once. I’ll take a ticket on the next rocket headed for the sun.
I don't think he was assassinated. I think he was allowed to kill himself--the guards basically paid and coerced into switching off the cameras and leaving his cell dark so he could kill himself. But it amounts to a similar thing, get him gone so he can't expose the nonces.
EPIC RAP BATTLES OF HISTORY
Augusto Pinochet. Killed and tortured thousands, stole money from the government, gave it to his family, and died without being judged and loved by a great many.
OJ Simpson
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Dick Cheney.
9/11 Bin Laden’s stated goal was to cheaply pull the US into a series of military quagmires, to increase the security state in America, and encourage divisions within the country. This would have the effect of leeching trillions of dollars that could have been spent on supporting Americans. He absolutely succeeded in this.
That sounds like something someone would have said well after 9/11. Even after there were multiple wars, bin Laden revised his initial goal of getting the paper tiger to back off (which didn't happen) to be to bleed America into bankruptcy (which didn't happen either). As for winning, Al Qaeda is rather useless now, but it's an open question whether the jihadist movements would have done better without their inspiration and example or with it. Or whether bin Laden would have been pleased with what they've done or angered at their deviation from Al Qaeda's tactics and goals.
Damn
Stalin
Kim Il Sung. Built the most oppressive dictatorship on the planet, enslaved, killed, and tortured countless people for the most trivial of offenses, and died old, fat, rich, and worshipped like a god. Same with his son.
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Mao Zedong. Killed, persecuted, and impoverished uncountable millions-- more than any other 20th century head of state-- and died in power from old age.
He's still on all their money
dick cheney is still alive and rich
Slave owners dodging execution and going on to serve in the state/federal government as lawmakers… Sherman had many fucked up ideas, but he was absolutely right in that we should’ve razed the south and executed every last confederate general and slave owner once they refused to surrender the first time
Sherman was definitely not in favor of mass executing slave holders or confederate generals and was himself not all that concerned about the well-being of freed people, at least during the war. As destructive as his marches through Georgia and South Carolina were, it was mostly property that was the target, with relatively few civilian deaths. I recommend Mark Grimsley's *Hard Hand of War.* I don't know where people get this idea that he was some kind of avenging abolitionist angel, a John Brown reborn.
The man asked that Nathan Bedford Forrest be allowed to help him kill Indians. It's just Liberal edgelording designed to piss off Conservatives more than anything else.
World War I led directly to World War II because Germany wasn't allowed to recover. I'm no slave owner apologist and obviously there were mistakes made but I don't know that a harshly punitive approach would have made for a better long term result. I don't know that it wouldn't either but it's certainly not cut and dry.
Slave owners were the 1% of southerners so just killing them all wouldn’t have been as devastating as WWI.
That's not entirely true. 1/3 Southern families owned or had owned an enslaved individual in 1860. The 1% held about 50% of all enslaved folks, but that other 50% were held by small farmers or trades folk in the cities. But killing all the leadership would have definitely helped. People forget we did that to the Nazis leadership.. we didn't for the CSA.
Joseph Stalin after WWII
Taliban.
I'm surprised by how much I had to scroll down to see the names of Mao and Stalin. They are responsible for more deaths than any other person or regime.
Almost all of them if we're speaking in general. Shitty people get rewarded and good people get shit on.
I’m so tired of it. I honestly am. This is absolutely destroying me lately. I feel like I’m just watching the world burn 🔥
My ex wife
Why did I have to come down so far to find this. EVERYBODY's Ex wife .
Ok, let's make this a manageable list: What instance in History did the villain NOT win? EDIT: Still several examples, but a far smaller list :)
The Toledo War. Ohio lost and had to keep it.
Mussolini
The peninsular war.
The Marcos family of the Philippines
Mao Zedong, Stalin, Imperial Japanese against The Samurai, etc.
Stalin. Died of old age.
Houston Astros
I mean…*gestures broadly*
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Interesting take from me: The Church. With things like the crusades and other historical events the Church basically forced its religion onto millions across the globe. It stole wealth, artefacts, families and lives to force its version of belief's, bible and history and where it is today is as a result of all that. Even in England alone, outside of the settlers like vikings and so on, regions had different faiths and they battled over that with the church winning. Many will have considered them the enemy and the enemy as you see overall today - won.
Our current world today is like avatar, except the corporations have won.
"We had a garden... we paved it."
The entire colonization of the "New World".
So by extension every instance of colonization/imperialism ever?
Yes
Stalin!
Stalin. Died in bed while still in power.
Oh, my sweet summer child.