5 Historical Figures Who Were Super Annoying
Famous people usually get that way by being talented, smart, brave, or failing any of that, massively charismatic. After all, it’s hard to become a historical figure if you’re so obnoxious that no one lets you hang around long enough to do anything historic. Still, some people beat the odds and manage to become household names despite being absolutely insufferable.
Trotsky Was An Anti-Tipping Guy
You know those guys usually found on Reddit and in better Tarantino movies who rail against the social pressure to pay service workers additional gratuities? Leon Trotsky was among them. It makes sense, considering his whole deal — he believed a widespread movement against tipping would force employers to pay decent wages in the first place — but he was so loud about it that servers at his favorite cafe in the Bronx had a habit of spilling soup on him. He kept going, though, so it must have been some amazing soup.
Dickens Was a Prankster
The only reason we know Charles Dickens as a genius is because he had a quill, not a YouTube channel. There was nothing he loved more than going on vacation somewhere nobody knew who he was and terrorizing the locals by pretending to speak made-up languages, interrupting them in the street to “tell them complicated jokes and puns” and generally harassing women. Once, he picked up a woman on the beach, carried her down to the water and declared that he was so in love with her that he intended to do a murder-suicide by ocean. For some reason, cops weren’t called, probably because they hadn’t been invented yet.
Diogenes Had No Respect for Anyone
Greek philosopher Diogenes was kind of like Tyler Durden, living in squalor with as few possessions as possible and believing this made him enlightened. He had about the same manners, too, with a habit of pissing, shitting and masturbating anywhere and any time he liked. He hated Plato, often attending his lectures just to eat loudly in the front row and shit himself to chase everyone else off, and was known to walk around brandishing a lamp at people, claiming to be “looking for an honest man.” Yes, very cute, Diogenes, but some of us are trying to get to work.
Farouk I Was a Rampant Pickpocket
Despite being literally the king of Egypt and therefore wealthy enough to buy anything he wanted, Farouk I loved to steal. Sometimes, he did so openly, knowing that his subjects were required to surrender anything he asked for anyway. When the opportunity presented itself, however, he pardoned a master thief on the condition that he teach him how to pickpocket, a skill he used to lift an heirloom watch from Winston Churchill during a dinner. He didn’t keep it long after Churchill panicked in its absence, preemptively complimenting the “great sense of humor” of the English, but whether Churchill responded with that humor or a good jowl-waggling rebuke is lost to time.
Caligula Annoyed Himself to Death
Roman Emperor Caligula is known for his ruthless megalomania, but he was also an irritating little shit. He woke up the senate in the middle of the night to watch him dance and legally forbid anyone from being in a position to see his bald spot, but what sealed his fate was when he decided to be a pest to one of his guards, Cassius Chaerea. He was a lauded soldier who happened to have a high-pitched voice, which Caligula mocked mercilessly, in addition to forcing him to kiss his ring while moving his hand in an “obscene fashion” and assigning dirty words as pass codes just to make Chaerea say them. It’s no surprise that when mutiny came for Caligula, it was Chaerea who did the stabbing. Thirty stabbings, to be precise. In the end, it wasn’t his cruelty that did him in — it was his overwhelming stabbability.
