On December
9, 1945, General George S. Patton Jr.—the audacious commander whose Third Army
raced across Europe—set out for a pheasant hunt near Mannheim, Germany. In the
back seat of his 1938 Cadillac staff car, driven by PFC Horace Woodring, Patton
sat beside Chief of Staff Maj. Gen. Hobart “Hap” Gay. At 11:45 a.m., near a
railroad crossing a slow-turning 2.5-ton U.S. Army truck cut across their path.
The low-speed collision—barely 20 mph—sent the unrestrained Patton slamming
forward into the steel-framed glass partition.
He suffered a
severe spinal cord injury. Bleeding from a deep scalp laceration, Patton
remained conscious. He lay in traction
for twelve days.
On December
20 a blood clot traveled to his lungs. He died in his sleep at 5:55 p.m. on
December 21, 1945, at age 60, from a pulmonary embolism. On Christmas Eve he was buried, at his own
request, among the men of his Third Army in Luxembourg American Cemetery.
A conspiracy
theory surrounding General Patton's death alleges that his December 9, 1945,
low-speed car accident was deliberately staged as part of an assassination
plot, rather than a tragic mishap, with the goal of silencing his outspoken
anti-Russian views. Believers in this
theory claim Patton was a loose cannon who might expose scandals, run for president
in 1948, or spark WW 3, making him a threat to U.S., British, or Soviet
interests.
Crazy Horse, born around 1840
as Tashunke Witko, was a revered Oglala Lakota warrior and leader known for his
fierce resistance against U.S. encroachment on Native lands. He played a
pivotal role in the Great Sioux War of 1876-1877, notably at theBattle ofLittle Bighorn, where Lakota and Cheyenne forces defeated Lt. Col. George
Custer's 7th Cavalry.
After the harsh winter of
1876-1877 depleted resources, Crazy Horse surrendered with about 900 followers
at Camp Robinson (later Fort Robinson) in Nebraska on May 6, 1877, under
General George Crook. Promised a reservation in their homeland, tensions arose
amid rumors of his potential flight or uprising. On September 5, 1877, military
authorities ordered his arrest to prevent disruption.
Escorted to the guardhouse, a
scuffle erupted when Crazy Horse resisted confinement. In the chaos, he was
bayoneted in the back by a soldier—accounts vary on whether it was intentional
or accidental—and mortally wounded. He died that evening, around midnight, at
age 37. Crazy
Horse's remains were move to an undisclosed location, His final resting place
remains unknown.
Today, the Crazy Horse
Memorial in South Dakota honors his legacy as a symbol of Indigenous resilience.
Ulysses S.Grant, Civil War hero and 18th U.S. President, died on July 23, 1885, at age 63
from throat cancer at Mount McGregor in New York. Ruined by swindler Ferdinand
Ward's Ponzi scheme, the bankrupt Grant raced against agony to finish his
memoirs, aided by Mark Twain's generous 70% royalty deal.
Unable to
speak or eat without agony, he penned 366,000 words in under a year, declaring
on July 16, "nothing more... I am not likely to be more ready to go."
He passed peacefully surrounded by family.
He whispered "Let us have peace"—his tomb's inscription.
Posthumous sales of hismemoirssecured his wife’s future and cemented Grant's
literary triumph.
In the late 1880s, the Ghost Dance
movement swept through Native American communities, offering hope of a
spiritual renewal that would restore traditional ways and expel white settlers.
Sitting Bull, though not a primary leader of the movement, supported its
message of cultural revival. On December 15, 1890, Indian Agency police, acting
on orders to arrest him, arrived at Sitting Bull’s cabin on the Standing Rock
Reservation. The attempt to apprehend him turned violent when his followers
resisted. Sitting Bull was shot and killed. He was around 59 years old.He is buried at Fort Yates, North Dakota.
One of the most
debated issues of the Battle of the Little Bighorn is the exact nature of
George Armstrong Custer’s death.Who
killed Custer, where was he killed, and when did he die?
One
popular theory says that Custer was seriously wounded (or even killed) early in
the battle.Custer advanced with several
companies down Medicine Tail Coulee in an attempt to ford the river.Supposedly, Custer was shot in the middle of
the stream and the cavalry retreated after placing the dying man back on his
horse.White Cow Bull claimed to have
fired the shot that felled a buckskin clad soldier.Was it Custer?None of the other warriors who were actually
present at the ford ever mentioned the incident.The only corroboration comes from two of
Custer’s own Crow scouts, who were not actually there.The scout White Man Runs Him heard later that
Custer was hit in the chest by a bullet and fell into the water.The account of the scout Goes Ahead, comes to
us second hand from his wife Pretty Shield, to whom he supposedly told the
story that Custer was killed at the river and that he was drunk at the time.
Historians
have suggested that the attempt to ford the river at Medicine Tail Coulee was
abandoned not because Custer was shot but because he realized that this was the
middle of the village not the end.In
any event, the Crow scout Curly, reported Custer in robust health, after he had
supposedly been shot, galloping north in an attempt to find another crossing
point.
There
are many other candidates for who killed Custer, including Custer himself.According to this theory, Custer killed
himself because he feared capture.Custer’s body had two wounds, a chest wound and a head wound in the left
temple.It would have been difficult for
the right handed Custer to shoot himself in the left temple, but theoretically
this could have been an “assisted” suicide.
Among
those claiming to have killed Custer were:Red Horse, a Miniconjou warrior; Flat Hip, a Hunkpapa warrior, and Walks-Under-the-Ground, a Santee warrior who wound up in
possession of Custer's horse
after killing somebody.Little Knife, a Hunkpapa warrior,
said Brown Back killed Custer to avenge his
brother.Two sons of Scarlet Tip, chief of the Santee, claimed
they jointly killed Custer.
Cheyenne oral tradition
passed down since 1876 says that Custer may have been killed by a woman
warrior, Buffalo Calf Road Woman.Minimally, she is said to have knocked Custer off his horse with a club
and made off with his saber.
In 1905 Rain-in-the-Face made
a deathbed confession that he thought it was he who had killed Custer having
been “so close to him that the powder from my gun blackened his face.”
The mystery of who killed
Custer was probably never known. The dust, smoke and chaos of the battle made
it impossible
to distinguish one soldier from another.When asked, Sitting Bull said that nobody
knew who killed Custer — nor even knew that he was present until dayslater.
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