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.

On April 28, 1996, Martin Bryant pulled out an AR-15 rifle and began shooting indiscriminately at people in Port Arthur, Tasmania — and he didn't stop until 35 victims were dead.

On July 16, 2011, more than 60 people came to 17-year-old Tyler Hadley's house and partied for hours — unaware that his parents' corpses were hidden just behind their bedroom door.

In June 1969, Dennis Lloyd Martin walked off to play a prank on his dad and never returned, sparking the largest search effort in the history of Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

In 1944, Finnish soldier Aimo Koivunen got separated from his unit and survived for weeks inside the Arctic Circle without food or shelter — fueled by a dose of meth large enough for 30 men.

Just days after her 24th birthday in August 2015, Alison Parker and 27-year-old cameraman Adam Ward were murdered in the middle of an on-air morning interview which was broadcast in real time.