The wife of American traitor Benedict Arnold, Peggy Shippen played a crucial role in her husband’s espionage ring during the Revolutionary War.

Dorothy Gibson's career as a silent film actress was in full swing when she survived the Titanic sinking in April 1912. Then, just a month later, she played herself in "Saved From The Titanic."

In the 1950s, a Japanese woman named Masako Katsura took the billiards world by storm — and made a name for herself in the traditionally male-dominated sport.

After Ryan Wayne White of Kokomo, Indiana was diagnosed with AIDS on December 17, 1984, his case sparked widespread discussion about this stigmatized disease.

When Secret Service agent Clint Hill heard the first gunshot in Dallas on November 22, 1963, he raced toward John F. Kennedy's limo to throw his body over Jackie and the president, but he was a second too late.

When C.P. Ellis was tasked with working with Ann Atwater to desegregate Durham, North Carolina schools, he was an "Exalted Cyclops" of the KKK. Ten days later, he was a strong supporter of the civil rights movement.

Uncovered in New York in 1869, the Cardiff Giant was a 10-foot-tall "petrified man" that countless Christians believed was proof of the existence of Biblical giants.

Wilhelm Adalbert Hosenfeld was a German schoolteacher turned army officer who helped save a number of Polish Jews from the Holocaust before dying tragically in a Soviet prison.

Members of the Praetorian Guard were supposed to protect the Roman emperor — but they amassed so much power that they often assassinated emperors they didn't like.

A Presbyterian minister, Sylvester Graham believed that all of America's moral failings could be traced back to an unholy diet — and created a strict meal plan to "cure" society's ills.

In 1971, Donald Marshall Jr. was wrongfully convicted of killing his friend in Nova Scotia. And even after the conviction was overturned, he was still blamed for the judicial error.