History books are full of grisly details about who got stabbed, what town got burned to the ground, and which kings married their cousins -- so imagine the stuff that gets edited out. Or, you know, read about it in this article instead. As part of our continuing quest to tell you the stuff your teachers didn't want you to know, here are some gruesome and little-known addenda to some of the most famous moments in history.
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The Man Who Tried to Save Lincoln Went All The Shining on His Family
National Archives and Records Administration
You've probably seen this illustration a hundred times, but can you name everyone in it?
Library of Congress
The Illuminati members behind the curtain don't count.
That's obviously John Wilkes Booth on the right, followed by Abraham Lincoln going, "But I wanna know what happens next! D'aww ..." and first lady Mary T, but unless you're a history buff you probably don't know that the other two are Union Army Major Henry Rathbone and his wife, Clara Harris, daughter of a prominent U.S. senator. Rathbone is best known for trying to stop Booth and getting a piece of that dagger you see up there for his trouble, and not so much for the Kubrick-esque horror that his life later spiraled into.
Rathbone was seriously injured while attending the most disastrous double date in history, and though he physically survived the attack, his mind never recovered. The officer blamed himself for failing to stop Booth, and even though he eventually married Clara two years later, wedded life only added to his insanity.
Love couldn't cure all. They'd have blamed Hollywood, but it didn't exist yet.
Eventually, Rathbone's mind deteriorated to the point that on Dec. 23, 1883, he decided to deck the halls with his family's blood. While serving as a U.S. consul in Hanover, Germany, Rathbone tried to kill his three kids, and when his wife stopped him, he fatally shot and stabbed her, then stabbed himself -- mentally replaying Booth's actions from 18 years earlier.
The police found Rathbone covered with blood and completely out of his mind. According to a widely repeated but unconfirmed report, he claimed that there were people hiding behind the pictures on his wall.
There were, but it wasn't clear why that justified murder.
Rathbone spent the rest of his life in a lunatic asylum, where he complained of secret machines in the walls blowing gas into his room and giving him headaches. He died in 1911, becoming the last casualty of the Lincoln assassination nearly half a century after the fact.
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