There's something to be said about being humble and keeping your accomplishments and blessings to yourself. If you're living well and doing good things, technically you don't need to tell anyone. But sometimes it's hard to resist the urge to show off. Throughout history, there have been people who have said or done things so remarkable that they couldn't help but be seen as bragging, and some were more believable than others. That's not to say all of these people were lying. But neither are we saying they were all telling the truth.
10. David Ingram claimed to have walked from Florida to Canada in 1568.
Feats of strength and endurance are always impressive. We hold the Olympic Games every two years, alternating between winter and summer games, so the best athletes from around the world can compete against each other and see who's truly the best at any given moment. But these games are highly structured and limited in scope. For a truly epic feat of human endurance, we can go back to 1568 and look to David Ingram.
Ingram was a British sailor who landed in the Gulf of Mexico with a crew of 100 men after losing a battle with the Spanish. According to Ingram, most of the men headed south, while Ingram and a few others headed north . They stayed within 30 miles of the coast and walked. And walked. And then walked some more.
It took the men nearly a year to travel 2,000 miles before they were rescued. By then, only Ingram and two others remained alive. They traveled to Florida and found themselves in Nova Scotia , on the east coast of Canada. Pretty incredible, right?
Ingram shared details of his journey after his rescue, and history has disapproved of some of them. For example, when he described seeing herds of elephants in the desert. It's worth noting that Ingram was illiterate, so his account was in the form of answers to questions asked 20 years later. Therefore, the details may have been unclear, exaggerated, or completely fabricated. We will likely never know for sure.
9. Wilt Chamberlain claimed to have slept with 20,000 women.
It's hard to overstate how remarkable Wilt Chamberlain was. The man beat dozens of records in professional basketball, including scoring 100 points in a singles match. On the court, he was so magnificent that few players can even hope to match him, and many of his records are considered unbreakable.
Off the court, Chamberlain was somehow even larger than life, so to speak. His most notable claim to fame outside the game was sleeping with 20,000 women .
Chamberlain made the claim in his 1991 book. He was born in 1936, making him 55 years old at the time. No one knows exactly when Chamberlain might have become sexually active, but let's say he started in his teens (most people hypothetically calculate him at age 15 to make the numbers easier to handle), and then it's said he had about 40 years to reach those 20,000 accolades. This means he would have needed to sleep with 500 women a year for 40 years straight. That's about 1.4 women every day of his adult life, plus a few days during his teenage years.
Many people have doubted this claim over the years, arguing that it's completely unrealistic. What is known is that his friends and teammates knew he was a fan of threesomes, so he often slept with two women at once. Teammates also claimed that at one point they saw him with at least 23 women during a 10-day trip.
Was the number really fake? Only Chamberlain knew for sure, and he died in 1999.
8. Alan Shepard claimed to have hit a golf ball several miles across the Moon.
Alan Shepherd was the first American in space and the fifth man on the moon. His contributions to space exploration are enormous, and he will go down in history as an inspiration. As remarkable as his life and career were, even Shepherd was not above hiding the odd details of his accomplishments, or so it seems.
One of the most memorable moments of Shepherd's journey to the moon was when he claimed to have hit the moon with a golf ball and it flew "« miles and miles and miles »"Now, as you may know, gravity on the Moon is a fraction of what it is on Earth, and a human astronaut could jump onto the Moon and float above the lunar surface as if they had wings. But how far can a golf ball fly?
It turns out it wasn't miles, miles, and miles. And let's be honest with Shepard, that quote was made in jest. He later downgraded his skills to 600 feet Using the Moon? Gravity. That sounds more reasonable. But it's still a long way off.
Photographs revealed that the distance between Shepherd's footprints and the ball's location was only 120 feet. It would have been nice if he had used a sand wedge.
7. A Texas veterinarian claimed to have collected Bigfoot DNA.
Humanity loves mysteries, especially those that tantalize with the discovery of something simultaneously terrifying and beautiful. This is the great appeal of UFOs and aliens. But there are also homegrown mysteries. Bigfoot, for example. This legendary monster is said to roam almost the entire world under one name or another. This not-quite-human beast has fascinated people for centuries. But until now, no one has found the real one. However, that doesn't mean no one hasn't tried.
Aside from photos and videos, which are more or less convincing depending on your predisposition, some have used science to try to prove Bigfoot's existence, and no one has tried harder than Dr. Melba Ketchum (no relation to Ash), who claimed to have taken a Bigfoot DNA sample and analyzed it in 2012, thus proving that the creature was not only real, but partly human .
Ketchum's press release states that the Yeti was a member of a species that diverged from humanity around 15,000 years back when another species mated with human females. You might be surprised to learn that none of this has been peer-reviewed, and no one else has seen evidence for these claims.
6. Nokia sold 400,000 of its N Gage gaming systems.
Handheld gaming has had its ups and downs over the years. The Gameboy revolutionized modern gaming, but the Atari Lynx was a flop. Among the many offerings in this space was the Nokia N Gage system, which debuted in 2003 and gained a large following. Nokia claimed to have sold out in just two weeks. 400,000 devices . This would have brought him resounding success.
If you're struggling to remember what the Nokia N Gage looked like and how it could have become such a hit, don't worry. It wasn't. Nokia later admitted their boasts were less than truthful. They shipped 400,000 units to stores, but that didn't mean consumers bought them. In fact, they managed to sell only 5000 units for the first week.
5. Hulda Clark made millions by claiming she could cure cancer.
Hulda Clark was a fraud, and her lies exploited some of the world's most vulnerable people. Clark claimed she could cure cancer. And when people are desperate enough, when they know they're going to die soon or that a loved one is going to die, they'll believe almost anything. They'll also pay almost anything, and Clark took advantage of that.
Clarke claimed she created low-voltage electrical device , which would cure not only cancer, but also AIDS and many other deadly diseases. She wrote books and sold supplements and her devices to the dying. She convinced them that the root of all these diseases is intestinal parasites , and that with the help of her car and diet everything could be fixed.
Needless to say, Clarke was a fraud from top to bottom, and ironically, she died of cancer herself.
4,700 people claimed kinship with the prince after his death
Have you ever heard of someone winning the lottery and suddenly discovering all these distant relatives they never knew existed? It happens, and in different ways. For example, after the musician Prince died without leaving a will, suddenly appeared as many as 700 people , who call themselves his relatives.
Prince's estate was valued almost $1 billion , so anyone hoping to prove he was their long-lost brother would need scientific evidence, but that didn't stop people from trying with stories as weak as "we lived in the same neighborhood.".
3. Terrence Howard claims to have invented new mathematics
Many people have claimed to have invented remarkable things over the years, including cold fusion and a water-powered engine. Actor Terrence Howard claimed to have invented a new kind of mathematics.
In the Howard system 1 x 1 = 2 . This was a big, fundamental tenet of his belief system, and also the reason why people widely ridiculed him online. His explanation is hard to understand because, well, it's obvious. But it stems from his belief that if square root of four equals two, then the square root of two must be one, otherwise two means nothing, and therefore one times one equals two. Did you get that? Not many other people did. At best, this seems like a fundamental misunderstanding of what exactly "time" means in the multiplication equation.
Despite his foolishness, Howard is a firm and sincere supporter of what he calls Terryology, and believes that geniuses like Tesla, Einstein, and Pythagoras would have been shocked if it had not been for what he did.
2. Matt Hoffman says he's had 100 concussions
BMX racer Matt Hoffman was one of the biggest names in the X-Games crowd around the time Tony Hawk rose to fame. He can also lay claim to another noteworthy, albeit less enviable, claim. Hoffman says , what for my life suffered more 100 concussions .
Like football players, BMX riders fall hard and often hit their heads. Dave Mirra, another track star, was suspected of committing suicide after personality changes caused by too many concussions.
As for Hoffman, then after a blow to the head he once forgot that his wife was pregnant . It wasn't a memory that seemed to return. He simply had to relearn that he was about to become a father. He also claimed that at one point he suffered complete amnesia for eight months, and couldn't taste food for seven years.
While his claims sound preposterous, it's worth noting that such head trauma is associated with severe, even violent, personality changes. Suicides and homicides have been repeatedly linked to athletes who have suffered too many concussions, so this is a serious issue with life-changing consequences.
1. Writer Barbara Cartland made 49 marriage proposals.
In the world of romance, there are few things a person can boast about. We've already seen Wilt Chamberlain's claims about sexual partners, but what about a more realistic boast? Author Barbara Cartland, once called queen of romance , claimed that 49 men proposed to her before she got married. That's a lot of courtship.
The story she told was that she had made a rule that she would never kiss a man until he had formally proposed. This provides a little more insight into why so many people do, although it still takes a lot of effort for a man to go through with a kiss, especially if there's a ring involved. Needless to say, Cartland must have been a remarkably charming woman.