
Before Tim Allen became a household name for grunting on "Home Improvement," he was a low-level drug dealer who walked through an airport with a pound of cocaine. To avoid a life sentence, he ratted out his partners and went on to become the comedian you know today.

Robert McGee was left permanently scarred after surviving a scalping at the hands of the Sioux tribe in 1864, when he was just a 13-year-old orphan.

Hundreds of young women who worked in watch factories throughout the 1920s were exposed to so much radium that they came home glowing in the dark.
The exposure often caused their vertebrae to collapse, their jaws to fall off, and their lives to end slowly thanks to agonizing battles with cancer.

After John Dillinger was shot and killed by the FBI in 1934, a Chicago morgue put the bank robber's body on display to the public. Thousands of spectators lined up to see the fallen criminal, who by that point had become a mythical Robin Hood figure of sorts.
Though there is little evidence Dillinger ever shared his wealth, he had fully captured the public's imagination as a hero fighting Depression-era authorities — as well as being a renowned womanizer.

Jakob Nacken, the tallest Nazi soldier ever at 7'3", speaks with 5'3" Canadian Corporal Bob Roberts after surrendering to him near Calais, France in September 1944.