They say history books are written by the winners.
But some of the winners in your history books were actually pretty big losers.
Here's a look at why these respected historical figures were actually horrible people.
Woodrow Wilson is considered by many to be one of America's greatest progressive presidents:
he passed the first child labor laws, established the Federal Trade Commission, and codified
the eight-hour day.
Wilson shored up antitrust laws, helped end World War I, and at least allowed women's
suffrage, even if he didn't outright support it.
So he was indeed a pretty progressive president.
Assuming you were white.
Yes, unfortunately Wilson was also an irredeemable, unapologetic racist.
In his book A History of the American People, Wilson called Black Americans, quote, "an
ignorant and inferior race," saying of the Emancipation,
"It was a menace to society itself that the negroes should thus of a sudden be set free
and left without tutelage or restraint."
And his policies reflected this belief.
As president, he actually re-segregated the federal government.
According to historian Sheldon Stern, Wilson even personally fired all but two of the Black
supervisors in federal service, replacing them with white people.
According to historian Lloyd Ambrosius, during the postwar Versailles conference Wilson killed
a proposal for racial equality in the League of Nations, ensuring racism could thrive not
just nationally, but also globally.
Oh, and there was also the fact that he publicly championed the Ku Klux Klan, leading to a
massive nationwide surge of open racism that led to decades of turmoil, strife, and tragedy.
Not only did he hold a private screening of the pro-Klan film The Birth of a Nation at
the White House, the film actually includes a quote from Wilson saying,
"There had sprung into existence a great Ku Klux Klan, a veritable empire of the South
to protect the Southern country."
So when you hear the words "institutionalized racism," remember to credit Woodrow Wilson
for institutionalizing it.
Wilson wasn't the only major figure at the beginning of the 20th century who was practically
dripping racism.
Henry Ford was also one of the most virulently racist public figures in modern American history.
Ford was also, of course, one of America's greatest entrepreneurs and innovators, a man
who literally changed the world.
He not only transformed the way people get around by selling cars everyone could afford,
but Ford also revolutionized industry by creating the moving assembly line.
He also hated Jews.
And even the Henry Ford Museum says, quote, "Ford's anti-Jewish sentiments ran deep."
In 1918, Ford bought a local newspaper called the Dearborn Independent, and two years later
he began using the paper as a vehicle for his anti-Semitic views.
He would later collect his Jew-bashing articles together as The International Jew: the World's
Foremost Problem, which would go on to sell millions of copies and be translated into
a dozen languages.
Just how influential were Ford's racist views?
In 1931, the rising German political figure Adolf Hitler gave an interview to a Detroit
News reporter, who noticed that Hitler had a large portrait of Henry Ford in his office.
Hitler said,
"I regard Henry Ford as my inspiration."
Hitler also wrote about Ford in his racist screed Mein Kampf, saying that Ford was the
only person in America not controlled by Jews.
"Only a single great man, Ford, to their fury, still maintains full independence."
In 1938, four months after Hitler annexed Austria, Henry Ford accepted the highest medal
Germany could give a foreigner in honor of his service to the Reich.
Under Ford, the Ford Motor Company continued doing business with Nazi Germany throughout
the war, with their European factories helping build the engines of war the Nazis used to
fight American soldiers.
John Lennon was half of one of the greatest songwriting duos and part of one of the most
influential bands of the 20th century.
The Beatles had 20 number-one hits, 34 Billboard top ten songs, and some of the most recognizable
tunes on the planet.
And after leaving the Beatles, Lennon became a symbol for peace and love, promoting anti-war
sentiments in his music and protesting against violence.
Behind the scenes, however, Lennon had a violent temper, and regularly took out his frustrations
on the women he was involved with.
That he physically abused his first wife, Cynthia Powell, before leaving her is not
only something he admitted to, he actually wrote it into one of the Beatles' better-known
songs, as "Getting Better" includes the line
"I used to be cruel to my woman, I beat her and kept her apart from the things that she
loved."
He openly admitted his history of violence to Playboy in 1980, saying
"I used to be cruel to my woman, and physically...any woman.
I was a hitter."
Lennon modeled his behavior on his father, who abused Lennon's mother and then abandoned
them both, just as Lennon abused his first wife and then abandoned her and their young
child.
If there's anything to be said in Lennon's favor, it's that he tried to change his ways
as he got older.
Sean Lennon, John's son with second wife Yoko Ono, told Rolling Stone,
"I think his greatest achievement was recognising that he was a macho a--hole and trying to
stop it."
"And I really believe women have the worst…whatever it is, however badly or poor people are, it's
the woman who takes it when they get home from work."
Roald Dahl created fantastic stories enjoyed by generations of children all over the world.
His characters aren't merely beloved, many are household names.
Unfortunately, Dahl's dark humor and comic violence so many of us enjoyed reflected something
darker and far more serious within him.
"I think the more successful you become in any profession, the more serious you become."
The creator of Willy Wonka was such a jerk that, according to the BBC, his wife called
him "Roald the Rotten."
Aside from just being a jerk, he also cheated on her constantly, including with her best
friend, and even while she was recovering from a stroke.
He also had to revise several books because they included racist stereotypes and caricatures,
including The BFG and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
Dahl said,
"It didn't occur to me that my depiction of the Oompa-Loompas was racist, but it did occur
to the NAACP and others...which is why I revised the book."
Dahl said those were just oversights, and according to Dahl's wife, Charlie was even
supposedly supposed to be dark skinned rather than white.
But Dahl never tried to deny his deep anti-Semitism, even indirectly blaming the Jews for the Holocaust
by saying
"Hitler didn't just pick on them for no reason."
Coco Chanel is one of the world's most influential fashion empires, named after the famous French
designer who originally founded the company.
Chanel liked the high life and was known to associate with British aristocrats, French
politicians, and, spoiler alert, German military officers in Paris during the Nazi occupation.
Nazi gear was pretty haute couture after all.
When war broke out, Chanel secured lodging at the Paris Ritz.
After the fall of France, many German officers ended up living there as well, one of whom
reportedly shared more than Coco's address.
Not only was she literally in bed with a Nazi, though, she was also figuratively in bed with
the Nazis too, as documents only recently declassified strongly indicate that Chanel
was secretly working as a Nazi spy.
And not only did she work for the Nazis, she also used their anti-Semitic laws to target
her business partners.
A French documentarian told The Jerusalem Post that
"...with the help of the Nazis occupying France, [Chanel] went to great lengths to get rid
of her Jewish associates."
After the Nazis were driven out of Paris, Chanel fled to Switzerland to avoid charges
as a Nazi collaborator.
She managed to get off scot free, though; many historians believe that her friend Winston
Churchill interceded on her behalf, possibly to prevent her from spilling damaging secrets
about other suspected Nazi collaborators within the British Empire.
Theodore Roosevelt is on Mount Rushmore, right there in between Thomas Jefferson and Abraham
Lincoln.
That's how highly Americans think of the president we know as Teddy.
He passed food and drug safety regulations, started the American political tradition of
environmental conservation, made the first worker's compensation laws, got the Panama
Canal started, enacted laws to protect workers from big business, and won a Nobel Peace Prize.
So he did a lot of great stuff.
But he was also an unrepentant nationalist, imperialist, and racist.
Roosevelt believed in the superiority of the Western world, and that white people had the
right to take what they wanted.
He wrote in Winning the American West that,
"All men of sane and wholesome thought must dismiss with impatient contempt the plea that
these continents should be reserved for the use of scattered savage tribes."
Roosevelt believed in the literal supremacy of American civilization and defended practically
any effort to expand that civilization, saying in an 1886 speech,
"I don't go so far as to think that the only good Indian is the dead Indian, but I believe
nine out of every ten are."
As such an ardent believer in the inherent superiority of America, Teddy encouraged American
expansion overseas, both as Secretary of the Navy and later as President.
When the US defeated Spain and took the Philippines as a colony in 1898, Teddy was a vocal proponent
for subduing the Filipinos by force, resulting in horrific war crimes and hundreds of thousands
of dead Filipinos in a forgotten war that raged in one form or another for over 14 years.
A highly charismatic warrior who sacrificed his life fighting against imperialists, Che
Guevara has become an inspirational meme to many millions of people, which is kind of
ironic considering chances are he'd kill most of the people wearing his face on a T-shirt.
While other revolutionary leaders like Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. were promoting
non-violence, Guevara went completely in the opposite direction, promoting bloodshed.
He wrote in his "Message to the Tricontinental" that successful revolution required
"...hatred as an element of struggle; unbending hatred for the enemy, which pushes a human
being beyond his natural limitations, making him into an effective, violent, selective,
and cold-blooded killing machine."
He was also racist and homophobic in his policies.
The revolution wasn't for the people, it was only for his people.
Anyone who didn't toe his line faced death.
He and Fidel Castro established labor and concentration camps in Cuba after the revolution
for anyone needing to correct their "anti-social behavior," like capitalists, Afro-Cuban priests,
and homosexuals.
When setting up the new regime in Cuba, Che's orders were simple:
"If in doubt, kill him."
Thomas Edison has over one thousand patents to his name and is described by the Library
of Congress as "one of the most famous and prolific inventors of all time."
The influence he's had on the fields of electric power generation and mass communication affected
the lives and livelihoods of billions of people.
The advances he and his company made in sound recording and motion pictures created entirely
new mediums for entertainment, changing human leisure time forever.
Thomas Edison's innovative spirit also manifested itself in shockingly terrible ways, however.
Despite his reputation as an inventor, he was first and foremost a ruthless businessman
who regularly placed personal gain and power over science and innovation — just take
a look at how he screwed over true innovator Nikola Tesla.
He also engaged in a running feud with rival inventor George Westinghouse.
Edison's company produced direct current, or DC, machines, while Westinghouse manufactured
alternating current, or AC.
Edison started a slander campaign against AC, claiming that it was dangerous.
To try and prove his point, Edison staged a series of executions where he electrocuted
animals for show.
During this campaign, he murdered not just a dog, but horses, cattle, and even an elephant
named Topsy.
Fans of the film The Greatest Showman know that P.T.
Barnum spent decades as ringmaster to the wildest spectacle in the world.
But the movie totally retconned the uncomfortable fact that his entertainment empire was built
on the often heartless exploitation of his workers, some of whom were literally slaves.
Yes, it's true: his most callous exhibition was also his first, as Barnum began his career
by leasing an elderly enslaved woman named Joice Heth, who he claimed was the 161-year-old
former nurse of George Washington.
When Heth died in 1836, Barnum actually hosted a public autopsy of her body in a New York
saloon, charging 50 cents per person to watch.
According to Smithsonian Magazine, Barnum tried to rewrite history later in life, claiming
he was not a racist.
But as Barnum biographer Benjamin Reiss said,
"With Barnum you never know if that's part of the act."
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