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." Check out one of our newest videos right here! Plus, even more Grunge videos about your favorite
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