10 Historical Figures Who Became Villains Because of What We Know Now

10 Historical Figures Who Were Actually Villains Because of What We Know Now

Welcome to MsMojo, and today we’re exploring the infamous moments when celebrated historical figures turned out to have done horrible things due to later discoveries or recent resurfacings, morphing them into history’s villains.

Christopher Columbus

For decades, Columbus Day has been celebrated in the US as a federal holiday. After all, Columbus apparently discovered the Americas, which was news to those already living there. As society has progressed and more evidence has come to light, the actions of the Italian explorer have been heavily criticized. For starters, during his first voyage to the Americas and the Caribbean, he quickly took indigenous people hostage and demanded that they show him where they got their gold from. In some accounts, Columbus enslaved and maimed members of the native populations. Other alleged crimes include assaulting women and being complicit in genocides, including the destruction of the Taíno Indigenous people. As such, Columbus’s name is far more controversial today.

Henry Heimlich

Nowadays, some groups are calling for the life-saving method to be named “abdominal thrusts." Previously, the procedure to dislodge obstacles blocking the upper airways was known as the Heimlich manoeuvre. Invented by the thoracic surgeon Heimlich, he was celebrated as a medical legend. However, one of his sons, Peter, has been vocal in criticizing his father’s methods, even claiming he stole the manoeuvre from someone else. Heimlich also promoted his method to help drowning victims. However, other medical professionals have criticized the danger of that. Heimlich was a prominent supporter of the pseudoscience, malariotherapy. He believed infecting someone with malaria could cure cancer, HIV, and other such diseases, which is heavily disputed. Heimlich stated he had success in trials, but refused to share the details.

J. Marion Sims

Labeled as “the father of gynecology,” Sims, with a focus on repairing fistulas, helped transform the field of medicine. Yet in 2017, when statues of controversial people were being removed from the US, his dark experiments resurfaced. Sims notoriously practiced his surgical methods on enslaved Black women, which he began in 1845. While anesthesia was newly introduced at the time, Sims didn’t use it on any of the women in the early days. When word spread about the experiments, White women soon signed up for the procedure, only for most to be unable to cope with the pain. One of the enslaved women Sims experimented on was Anarcha Westcott, who was believed to have been a minor at the time.

Thomas Jefferson

As a Founding Father and the third US President, Jefferson is often celebrated as a key figure in building the country. He was well-known for publicly being against the slave trade. Behind the scenes, it was, indeed, a different story. After all, at Monticello, his private residence, it’s believed he had over 620 slaves over his life on his plantation. And modern DNA evidence has suggested Jefferson’s misdeeds went beyond human ownership. Between 1787 and 1789, the recently widowed Jefferson went to Paris, France, taking his daughter and slaves, including Sally Hemings. During this time, it’s believed that Jefferson, who was 30 years older than Hemings, fathered children with the minor. Even after Jefferson’s death in 1826, Hemings wasn’t formally released as a slave.

John B. Watson

As one of the trailblazers of behaviorism in psychology, Watson’s work has been invaluable in understanding development. His most famous study was the “Little Albert” experiment. Conducted in 1920, Watson used classical conditioning methods to make an infant frightened of animals by clanging an iron rod when Albert met them. Shockingly, Watson didn’t uncondition the boy. In 2009, researchers examined what happened to “Little Albert.” Hall P. Beck and Sharman Levinson believed that he was Douglas Merritte, who passed away a few years after the experiment due to complications from a possible disability. However, in 2014, other researchers claimed the child was Albert Barger, who’d passed away in 2007. According to his family, Barger was frightened of animals his whole life.

Hans Asperger

Known for his work in autism, which even resulted in a now-defunct syndrome related to autism being named after him, Asperger was an Austrian doctor. He often claimed he was persecuted by Germany during World War II. Yet in 2018, researchers uncovered documents that provided evidence to the contrary. During the war, Asperger was involved in Germany’s “Aktion T4” program, which forced euthanasia on people with disabilities and mental illnesses. Documents showed he selected patients to send to Vienna’s infamous Am Spiegelgrund clinic for “Aktion T4.” Nearly 790 people lost their lives at the clinic. Heinrich Gross, who was the lead psychiatrist at Am Spiegelgrund, was deemed unfit to stand trial when his crimes were discovered in the ‘90s, while Asperger died in 1980.

Pablo Picasso

With his storied work in art, especially when it came to cubism, Picasso developed into one of the most influential artists in the modern era. Some people even compared him to a saint. Yet over the years since his passing in 1973, more evidence began emerging that he was incredibly unsaint-like. On top of having many affairs, typically with far younger women, Picasso’s exes have often described his behavior as abusive. Dora Maar spoke about times he forced her to physically fight with other prospective partners of his. She and Françoise Gilot have stated that Picasso was physically abusive towards them, too. With all the evidence emerging, Picasso’s legacy makes it increasingly difficult to separate the art from the artist.

Grover Cleveland

Somehow, before he became the first US president to serve non-consecutive terms, Cleveland managed to survive two scandals that, especially with further examination, should’ve destroyed his career. Firstly, during the 1884 election, it emerged he’d fathered a child out of wedlock with Maria Halpin and paid her money. Yet Halpin told reporters that she was assaulted by Cleveland, resulting in a pregnancy. When she sought his help, he had her committed to an asylum, and the child was adopted by another family. Seemingly to distract from this scandal, Cleveland then married Frances Folsom in 1886. Cleveland, who was 28 years older than her, met Folsom when she was a child, as he was friends with her father, Oscar, and was her unofficial guardian.

Coco Chanel

A trailblazer in women’s fashion, Chanel is seen as one of the most important designers of the 1900s. While she passed away in 1971, her celebrated legacy would eventually degrade decades later. In 2011, journalist Hal Vaughan released a book that examined Chanel’s actions during World War II. Thanks to declassified documents, Vaughan discovered strong evidence that the French designer was a spy for Germany and worked with Walter Schellenberg, the head of foreign intelligence, who was later convicted of war crimes. On top of being involved in plans for Germany to take over Madrid, Spain, Chanel was also a cog in Operation Modellhut. This plan involved her using her connection to Winston Churchill to negotiate a ceasefire with select higher-ups in Germany.

King Leopold II of Belgium

In Belgium, Leopold is often referred to as the “Builder King.” However, to the rest of the world, especially in the modern-day Democratic Republic of the Congo, his legacy is nothing but terror. Due to the 2020 George Floyd protest, Leopold’s crimes resurfaced. After taking control of the region, Leopold established the Congo Free State in 1885. He then enslaved the local population, forcing them to extract resources, such as ivory and rubber. Leopold instigated deplorable methods against the slaves, including kidnapping family members, maiming workers who didn’t meet quotas, and executions. As a result of his rule, which ended in 1908 when the Belgian government took control, it’s estimated that up to 15 million Indigenous people lost their lives, around half of the population.

Are there any other historical figures who turned out to be villains that we missed from the video? Let us know below.