History's Most Confident Idiots
Confidence is a beautiful thing. It gets people to climb mountains, start companies, and ask their crush out at the wrong time. It also, historically, gets people to declare war on a superpower from their bedroom, jump off the Eiffel Tower in a homemade suit, and send the German Navy to its death via a toilet. This post is about that second kind. Four real stories. Four moments where someone looked at the situation, decided they had it completely figured out, and then reality did what reality does. I'm not making any of this up. History did not have to go this far. And yet. The Man Who Beat America (In His Own Head) Let's start with Idi Amin. If you don't know Idi Amin, here's the short version: he ruled Uganda from 1971 to 1979, and he gave himself the official title of "His Excellency President for Life, Field Marshal, Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Seas." That title alone tells you everything about the man's relationship with r...