There are undoubtedly countless interesting and significant people who have been forgotten
to history.
Stories are hard to maintain over decades or even centuries, especially if they’re
stories that people would rather not be true.
History is full of these incredible or strange individuals who are mostly forgotten.
Number 5
It’s well known that Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, but if it weren’t
for the skills of one man, that accolade would likely have gone the way of Elisha Gray.
Lewis Latimer was a patent draftsman and inventor in his own right, who played an important
role in the electric industry as our world started to be lit up by electricity.
Lewis was born in 1848 in Massachusetts.
His parents were runaway slaves who had escaped Virginia about six years earlier.
His father, George Latimer, was later captured by the slave owner, but was bought by abolition
supporters who set him free.
Lewis fought in the American Civil War, and was honourably discharged in 1865.
After that, he began his civilian life as an office boy at a patent law firm.
Lewis was incredibly talented, and soon caught the attention of his superiors with his ability
to both quickly and accurately sketch patent drawings.
His talent was undeniable so, despite the prejudices against him, he was promoted to
head draftsman.
By 1876, he was being sought after by inventors to draft patents for their new devices.
One such inventor was Bell.
It was a rush to get the patent for the telephone to the office, as Elisha Gray had also finished
work on a similar device.
Due to Lewis’ ability to work quickly and accurately, and his dedication to the job,
Bell’s patent was submitted hour’s before Gray’s.
Lewis had sat up much of the night working on the patent, which undoubtedly secured Bell’s
place in the history books.
Meanwhile, Lewis was creating inventions of his own.
He had no formal education, but that didn’t stop his creativity or his logic.
He worked with another inventor on creating improved bathroom compartments for railroad
trains, and eventually began working for the chief rival of Thomas Edison.
While working here, Lewis created his most famous invention.
It was an improvement on the lightbulb popularised by Edison.
Those bulbs could only last days at most before they burned out.
By encasing the carbon filament inside the bulb with a cardboard envelope, Lewis was
able to make the filaments last longer, increasing the life of the bulb.
It was the final crucial step into making electric lighting widespread.
He was charged with leading the planning team that would bring electric lighting to the
streets of Philadelphia, New York, and Montreal, as well as government buildings in Canada
and London.
Lewis would later work with Thomas Edison, representing him in court, helping to draft
patents, and inspect plants in search of infringements on Edison’s patents.
He also literally wrote the book on Incandescent Electric Lighting.
Away from lightbulbs, he continued to invent devices of his own, including improvements
to elevators and a device that cooled and disinfected hospital rooms.
He passed away in 1928 at the age of 80.
Number 4
Marozia of Tusculum was one of the most influential women in medieval Europe, but between rumours
that muddied the waters even shortly after she passed away and stories that have been
told in the centuries since, she has become forgotten by history.
Marozia was the daughter of the Count of Tusculum, who had control of the Papacy (PAY puh see)
and of Rome at the time.
The Pope at the time was Sergius III, one of the most corrupt in the church’s history.
He came to power through force, and had the two others vying for the throne thrown into
prison where they passed away through less than natural causes.
While she was still a young woman, Marozia was given by her parents to Sergius to become
his mistress.
She was eventually married to a noble named Alberic I of Spoleto.
Marozia bore Alberic four sons but, strangely, his eldest son John went into the church.
Usually the eldest son would be the one in line to inherit his father’s titles, so
wouldn’t take a church position.
However, it would be John’s younger brother who would inherit his father’s titles, which
only added to speculation that John was actually the pope’s son.
Marozia’s family had been the power behind the Throne of St Peter for a while and, when
her parents passed away, Marozia took over that role.
Her first husband had already passed away from natural causes at the time, and she married
the enemy of the new pope and brother of the King of Italy, Guy of Tuscany.
Marozia and Guy had the pope, John X, thrown into prison where he was later smothered with
a pillow.
She then hand selected the next two popes who would keep the seat warm until her eldest
son was old enough to take the Papacy himself.
Marozia was effectively ruler of Rome at this time, so when her second husband passed away,
the King of Italy decided he should marry Marozia himself.
This was when everything fell apart for Marozia.
Her Pope son approved the marriage and the two were wed, but her second son, Alberic
II, was less happy with the arrangement.
An argument broke out between Alberic and King Hugh of Italy after Alberic accidentally
spilled water on the king.
Hugh slapped Alberic and Alberic went to the people of Rome to start a riot.
He claimed the city would perish due to the “impurity of one woman” and that, if the
king could slap his own stepson, what would he do to the people of Rome.
The people stormed the palace.
Hugh managed to escape but Marozia was captured and thrown in prison where she passed away
a few years later.
Alberic became the de facto ruler of Rome, so any possibility of an unbiased view of
Marozia’s life disappeared.
Number 3
Henrietta Lacks was an ordinary woman, born in 1920 in Virginia.
She would pass away 31 years later due to cancer, leaving behind five children and a
husband.
But, unbeknownst to her or her family, she also left behind a legacy that literally lives
on today.
Henrietta was an African American woman whose mother passed away when she was four years
old.
As a result, Henrietta went to live with relatives, and had to drop out of school when she was
in the sixth grade to help tend the family farm.
She started a family of her own with her cousin, Day Lacks, and the two were married in 1941.
Later that year they moved to Baltimore so Day could work in a steel mill while Henrietta
stayed home and raised the children.
The couple had five children, the last of which was born at the Johns Hopkins Hospital
just four months before Henrietta was diagnosed with cervical cancer.
Johns Hopkins hospitals was one of the few places Henrietta could get medical care due
to her race.
However, there was little they could do to stop the spread of her cancer.
At one point a specimen was taken and, without her knowledge or consent, it was sent to a
lab.
Researchers were trying to create a continuously reproducing cell line.
At the time, medical consent laws meant samples could be used from patients without their
knowledge, and researchers had tried to create this line with the cells of countless individuals
and failed.
They had no reason to believe Henrietta’s cells would be any different, but they were.
The cells survived and reproduced.
While individual cells had a limited life span, the line itself was scientifically immortal.
It was the first immortal human cell line to be discovered.
The discovery was huge for medical science.
While the Johns Hopkins centre made no profit from the cells, they were given away to other
medical researchers.
New medicines and treatments for various diseases were discovered using the cells.
The HeLa cells, as they became known, were important for the development of the polio
vaccine, saving countless lives, and for our understanding of how cancer develops.
These discoveries meant big profit for the medical companies, but the Lacks family saw
none of it.
Henrietta passed away in 1951.
She was in great pain at the end of her life.
Her children were not allowed to visit, so Day would take them to the park across from
the medical centre and Henrietta would watch them through the window.
Medical and money problems continued to plague the family, who had struggled enough when
Henrietta was alive.
By 2000, all Henrietta’s surviving children had medical problems, and her husband had
asbestos-filled lungs.
They weren’t able to get medical insurance.
With the help of Rebecca Skloot, a biological scientist who wrote a book on Henrietta, things
have begun to change and there is more recognition for Henrietta and others like her who made
huge changes to medicine without their knowledge.
A foundation has been set up to help their descendants.
Number 2
It was a real life house of horrors.
Special containers for preserving human meat, shoelaces and leather items made from human
skin, and barrels of salt mixtures designed for disposing of corpses.
For most true crime fans, the set up is eerily similar to that of the infamous Ed Gein, or
perhaps the likes of Jeffery Dahmer or Ted Bundy.
But long before these real life horror staples there was Karl Denke, the Forgotten Cannibal.
Denke’s crimes have been largely forgotten to history.
Having taken place during interwar Germany, there was much more going on at the time that
quickly overtook headlines about this malicious criminal.
But it’s easy to see reflections of his crimes in modern day horror.
Denke was born in Prussia in 1870.
He was from a relatively well off family, his father owning a farm.
Not much is known about his early years, besides the fact he was a terrible student and he
ran away from home at the age of 12, but there didn’t seem to be any signs of the real
life horrors that would come.
When his father passed away, Denke inherited a large chunk of money, which he used to buy
a house.
He would rent out rooms in the house, but was also known as a kind and generous man
and would let vagrants stay for free.
In the small town where he lived, he was known as Father Denke and was a respected member
of the community.
He played the organ at church and would carry the cross during services.
But with the post-war inflation destroying Germany’s economy, Denke lost much of his
wealth.
He was forced to sell the house, but continued to rent out a room on the ground floor.
To make ends meet, he owned a meat shop in town and was licensed to sell pork goods in
a neighbouring city.
He was known for his boneless, pickled pork.
While that doesn’t sound particularly appetising today, his goods were popular given the economic
crisis at the time.
He also sold leather goods like shoelaces and belts, sometimes door to door.
Knowing what we know of Denke today, it’s unsurprising that there was an outbreak of
stomach disorders in the local area in 1925.
It was December 1924 when Denke was finally caught.
At this point, it’s possible he had been operating for 15 years.
He had recently taken in a homeless man named Vincenz Olivier.
On December 21st 1924, he went to the police station with evidence he had been attacked
with an axe.
He claimed Denke was responsible.
This was unbelievable to police, seeing as Denke was such an upstanding member of the
community, and Vincenz himself was thrown in jail for vagrancy.
However, police did investigate the accusation.
Denke claimed he had attacked Vincenz in self defence, which was believable enough, but
he was still put in a cell while police investigated.
Denke would pass away in his cell that night, and police would discover the large amount
of human remains in his flat, complete with logs of who exactly had been the victims of
his crimes.
Despite the scandal leading to pork sales plummeting that winter, it was largely forgotten.
Without documentation it’s hard to say why, but it’s possible economic conditions at
the time, combined with Denke’s reputation, allowed people to convince themselves he had
been trying to help the community.
Or perhaps it was a case of not wanting to talk about something so dark.
The fact that this true story was so easily forgotten makes it one of the creepiest moments
in history.
Number 1
There are likely thousands of unsung heroes from World War 2 who saved the lives of countless
people, yet their stories are widely forgotten.
Whether its government officials who helped smuggle out innocent people from Axis controlled
locations or individual soldiers who went above and beyond the call of duty, it’s
easy to forget an individual’s actions when looking at the war as a whole.
One of the unsung heroes of the war was a man named Witold Pilecki.
Witold is largely unheard of outside of Poland and, even there, his achievements were censored
up until the fall of the Soviet Union in Poland in late 1989.
Witold was a veteran of the Polish-Soviet War of 1919-1921 and when Poland was divided
between Germany and the Soviet Union at the start of World War 2 he joined the resistance.
When the Germans set up Auschwitz camp, very little was known about it by outsiders.
The resistance thought it was just a normal prisoner of war camp – not a nice place
to be but nothing like the horrors that would soon be revealed.
Witold believed there was more to the camp though, and pressured his superiors to clear
him for a mission inside.
Eventually they agreed and, with a fake identity, he positioned himself inside a protest march
in September 1940.
He and the other civilians were rounded up and taken to Auschwitz.
Witold Pilecki was able to smuggle out information about the horrendous conditions and punishments
inflicted on prisoners at the camp.
He described physical and mental torture and the continuous worsening of conditions.
Meanwhile, he managed to set up a resistance movement inside the camp, in the hopes that
they would get the word from outside to launch an attack and take over, but the word never
came.
His reports found their way to the desks of the British and American governments as the
Polish government in exile tried to convince them to take action, either by letting Polish
paratroopers launch and attack or destroying the railway lines into the camp, but the Allies
were silent.
Eventually, the water became too hot for Witold.
He believed the information he had on the camp was too valuable to let himself be taken
out by the officers that were closing in on the resistance, and managed to escape from
the camp after two and a half years.
It wouldn’t be long before he was captured by Soviets and spent the remainder of the
war in a Red Army prisoner of war camp.
After the war, the camp was liberated by American troops and Witold went to Italy, but his sense
of duty to Poland meant he wouldn’t stay there for long.
He returned to Poland to gather intelligence on the Soviet regime there, but his cover
was blown and he was captured again in 1947.
After so many heroic acts during World War 2, he received capital punishment at the hands
of the Soviets in 1948, and his name was censored for decades after.
Today, Witold Pilecki is a venerated figure in Polish history, and he was given Poland’s
highest military honour in 2006.