Random Unbelievable Scenes From Historical Movies That Actually Happened (13 items)

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  (#6) American Sniper

  • Bradley Cooper, Sienna Miller, Jonathan Groff, Kyle Gallner, Leonard Roberts, Marnette Patterson, Jake McDorman, Billy Miller, Sammy Sheik, Keir O'Donnell, Cory Hardrict, Tim Griffin, Brando Eaton, Luke Grimes, James Ryen, Eric Ladin, Reynaldo Gallegos, Benjamin Mathes, Ben Reed, Luis Jose Lopez, Evan Gamble, Jason Hall, Brandon Salgado Telis, Troy Vincent, John Kawalski, Elise Robertson

  The real-life Chris Kyle is known to have exaggerated his military record in his autobiography American Sniper, and Clint Eastwood's movie based on his book does change and exaggerate real events for storytelling purposes. But the Navy SEAL sniper really did manage to take out an enemy from more than a mile away.

  In the movie version, the enemy in question is a sniper and former Syrian Olympic sharpshooter named Mustafa, who menaces coalition troops and Iraqi police officers across Iraq. Mustafa has already slain one of Kyle's friends, Ryan "Biggles" Job. Toward the end of the movie, Kyle finally gets revenge by shooting Mustafa from a distance of 2,100 yards.

  Though Mustafa was a real person, he didn't take out Biggles, and his sniping career wasn't cut short by Kyle. Instead of a legendary enemy sniper, Kyle shot an enemy insurgent who was aiming a rocket launcher at American troops. This is when Kyle's 2,100-yard shot actually happened, in August 2008.

  The shot was Kyle's longest confirmed kill, but not the longest ever recorded. At the time, that would have been Rob Furlong's March 2002 shot from 2,657 yards. That record has since been broken by a Canadian sniper, who in 2017 took out an ISIS militant from 3,871 yards.
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  (#4) Bruno Gaido Really Did Take Down A Bomber And Get Promoted Like He Did In 'Midway'

  One scene from 2019's Midway, which depicts the 1942 raid on the Marshall Islands by Japanese bombers, seems totally unbelievable. In the film, anti-aircraft fire heavily damages a Japanese plane and it careens towards the USS Enterprise aircraft carrier. Nick Jonas, playing real sailor Bruno Gaido, sees that his ship and crewmates are in imminent danger, and runs across the deck. He jumps into a parked bomber and fires its machine gun at the enemy aircraft.

  The Japanese bomber barely misses the Enterprise, but does clip Gaido's bomber. Even more incredibly, Gaido gets promoted on the spot. The moment would appear to be the same exaggerated heroics you'd expect from other Roland Emmerich movies, but according to Gaido's nephew Mike Bortolotti, it really did happen that way.

  Gaido actually did leave his duty station and take down the enemy plane - something he wasn't even trained for. Gaido's commanding officer, Admiral William Halsey, witnessed Gaido's heroism, summoned him to the bridge, and promoted him two ranks to Aviation Machinists' Mate First Class. Journalists even interviewed Gaido's mother Clementa about it shortly after it happened. 

  Bortolotti's only complaint? Nick Jonas's decision to use a Brooklyn accent. The real Bruno Gaido grew up in Milwaukee.
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  (#8) Walk the Line

  • Reese Witherspoon, Joaquin Phoenix, Ginnifer Goodwin, Robert Patrick, Shelby Lynne, Lucas Till, Shooter Jennings, Kerris Dorsey, Dallas Roberts, Waylon Payne, Larry Bagby, Tyler Hilton, Ridge Canipe, Hailey Anne Nelson, Sandra Ellis Lafferty, Johnathan Rice, Dan John Miller, Johnny Holiday, Dan Beene, Clay Steakley, Delaney Keefe, Victoria Hester, McGhee Monteith, Brittany Shaw

  Walk the Line tells the life story of country star Johnny Cash and his relationship with his wife and longtime singing partner, June Carter Cash. The movie definitely has its inaccuracies, but when it came to the moment when Johnny proposed to June, it didn't have to exaggerate. 

  In the movie, Johnny and June are onstage performing their hit duet "Jackson" (for which they had just won a Grammy), when Johnny stops mid-song and pops the question. June tries to get him to continue singing, and so Johnny pours his heart out about how much he loves her and how much he wants to be a better partner. She says yes. 

  It definitely seems like a Hollywood invention, but Johnny really did propose to June onstage on February 22, 1968, in London, Ontario, Canada. Just like in the movie, June tried to keep singing before she said "yes." They were married a week later in Franklin, Kentucky.
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  (#3) Saving Private Ryan

  • Tom Hanks, Matt Damon, Vin Diesel, Paul Giamatti, Bryan Cranston, Nathan Fillion, Ted Danson, Tom Sizemore, Giovanni Ribisi, Andrew Scott, Edward Burns, Adam Goldberg, Barry Pepper, Jeremy Davies, Dennis Farina, Ryan Hurst, Max Martini, John de Lancie, Harve Presnell, Leland Orser, Dale Dye, Kathleen Byron, Corey Johnson, Dylan Bruno, Demetri Goritsas, Nina Muschallik, David Wohl, Laird Macintosh, Vincent Ventresca, Rolf Saxon, Harrison Young, John Sharian, Erich Redman, Nigel Whitmey, James Embree, Amanda Boxer, Ian Porter, Joerg Stadler, Martin McDougall, Grahame Wood, Eric Loren, Adam Shaw, Raffaello Degruttola, Matthew Sharp, Stéphane Cornicard, Rob Freeman, Neil Finnighan, Julian Spencer, Paul Sacks, Stephan Grothgar, Peter Miles, Shane Johnson, Victor Burke, Vincent Walsh, Anna Maguire, Daniel Cerqueira, Marc Cass, Paschal Friel, Steve Griffin, William Marsh, Martin Hub, Mac Steinmeier, Loclann Aiken, David Vegh, Tilo Keiner, Brian Maynard, Sam Ellis, Dorothy Grumbar, Michelle Evans, Sam Scudder, Taylor Murphy, Michael Mantas, Glenn Wrage, Paul Hickey, Gary Sefton, Maclean Burke, Nick Brooks, Crofton Hardester, John Walters, Declan Geraghty, Ronald Longridge, John Barnett, Martin Beaton, Shane Hagan, Aiden Condron, Paul Garcia, Mark Phillips, Markus Napier, Lee Aaron Rosen, James Innes-Smith, Valerie Colgan, Seamus McQuade, Thomas Gizbert, Abbe Muschallik

  The 1998 WWII film Saving Private Ryan isn't based on a true story. Its main characters, Captain John Miller (Tom Hanks) and Private James Ryan (Matt Damon) weren't real people, and the US Military didn't order a squad of soldiers to venture behind enemy lines and rescue a serviceman whose three brothers had perished in combat. However, it's definitely inspired by real events and real people.

  In 1942, five brothers from the same family, the Sullivans, all lost their lives during the Battle of Guadalcanal. In response, the US Department of War instituted a "sole survivor" policy, which stated that family members of service people who perished in combat wouldn't have to serve. The policy was put into action in 1944, when the US Army brought Sergeant Fritz Niland home after his three brothers were KIA. Niland's story was the direct inspiration for the movie. (Although, unlike Private Ryan, Niland was easily located and didn't require a search party.)

  At the beginning of Saving Private Ryan, General George Marshall (a real person) and his staff are debating whether they should, like the title suggests, save Private Ryan. They mention the Sullivan brothers, but the deciding factor is when General Marshall reads "the Bixby Letter."

  According to the movie, this is a letter President Lincoln wrote to grieving mother Lydia Bixby, who supposedly lost five sons in the Civil War. Determined not to allow Mrs. Ryan to share the same fate as Lydia Bixby, General Marshall agrees to rescue Private Ryan. 

  It might sound farfetched that General Marshall conveniently had a letter from the 1860s that  addressed his "sole survivor" problem in 1944, but the Bixby Letter is very much real. Many of the details about the document are uncertain - there's doubt as to whether Mrs. Bixby really lost five sons, as well as whether she might have been a Confederate sympathizer. It's also possible that it wasn't Lincoln who wrote the letter, but his secretary John Hay. But regardless of the doubts, the Bixby Letter has stood the test of time as one of the most evocative writings about the human cost of war.
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  (#12) Citizen Kane

  • Orson Welles, Alan Ladd, Agnes Moorehead, Joseph Cotten, Arthur O'Connell, Ruth Warrick, Everett Sloane, Ray Collins, Herman J. Mankiewicz, Paul Stewart, George Coulouris, Philip Van Zandt, Harry Shannon, Fortunio Bonanova, Walter Sande, William Alland, Dorothy Comingore, Louise Currie, Erskine Sanford, Sonny Bupp, Thomas A. Curran, Charles Bennett, Carl Ekberg, Buddy Swan, Gus Schilling, Georgia Backus

  Charles Foster Kane, the main character of Orson Welles's 1941 masterpiece Citizen Kane, is fictional, but the movie was inspired by real events. Kane was based on real-life newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst - and so closely that the real Hearst actually tried to stop the film from ever being seen. 

  One detail seems like an exaggeration: Charles Foster Kane's wildly ostentatious pleasure palace, Xanadu, where he lives in isolation following the failure of his political career. It's even named after the lavish pleasure palace Kublai Khan completed in 1256. In reality, Hearst had his own pleasure palace that was just as luxurious as his fictional counterpart - and people can still visit it today.

  Hearst spent 28 years building Hearst Castle on what ended up being over 250,000 acres of land near San Simeon, California (Kane's Xanadu was in Florida). The newspaper mogul spared no expense on the 165-room estate, which includes gardens, pools, terraces, walkways, 15th-century painted ceilings imported from Europe, and what was the world's largest private zoo. Today, the descendants of Hearst's zebras can still be seen roaming the grounds.
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  (#10) The Aviator

  • Kate Beckinsale, Leonardo DiCaprio, Gwen Stefani, Cate Blanchett, Alec Baldwin, Jude Law, Willem Dafoe, Martin Scorsese, Josie Maran, Alan Alda, John C. Reilly, Ian Holm, Frances Conroy, Brent Spiner, Kelli Garner, Adam Scott, Edward Herrmann, Danny Huston, Matt Ross, Stanley DeSantis

  It might seem ridiculous that Howard Hughes would have crashed an experimental military aircraft on its maiden flight over one of the most heavily populated cities in the world, but the crash scene in 2004's The Aviator is pretty close to what happened. 

  In both the movie and in real life, the Hughes Aircraft Company received two contracts during the 1940s to design new planes for use in WWII. The conflict ended before the planes were completed and the contracts were canceled, but Hughes still completed development of his XF-11 spy plane. 

  On July 7, 1946, Hughes took the XF-11 on its first test flight. The flight was only supposed to last 20 minutes, but Hughes decided on a longer flight around the Los Angeles Basin to show off his new creation. (The movie suggests the original plan was to fly for an hour and 45 minutes, and Hughes does stick to that after a little pushback.) 

  During the return to his company's Culver City airfield, Hughes discovered an oil leak in the right engine. The engine quickly lost power and the plane began to plummet. The movie shows Hughes attempting to land on a golf course, just as he tried to do in real life. Instead, Hughes crash landed in Beverly Hills, smashing into three homes and destroying one. The incident left Hughes with a crushed collarbone, six broken ribs, third-degree burns on his hands, and lung damage from smoke inhalation.

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