Buzz
There are moments when fate's cruel hand seems to possess a twisted sense of humor, steering destinies down paths that feel especially cruel.
Much like a concert pianist struck down by a falling Baby Grand, irony can bring an eerie, mocking tone to events that might otherwise be unfortunate. At other times, victory is just within reach, only for defeat or even death to seize it, giving the illusion of hope to the doomed or the damned.
Here are the ten most tragic ironies, listed in the order they occurred.
10. From Freed to Fried
As the American Civil War neared its end, Confederate prisoner-of-war camps were among the most dreadful places to be. By 1865, the South was so depleted of resources that it could barely feed its own soldiers or civilians, much less the Union soldiers it had captured. At Georgia’s infamous Andersonville camp, out of the 45,000 Union soldiers who entered, around 13,000 never left. Starvation played a major role, as shown in haunting photographs of the survivors.
Then, in April, word reached the South that Robert E. Lee had surrendered. The war was over. A jubilant nation clamored to bring its soldiers home as quickly as possible, including the POWs. With railways destroyed throughout the Confederacy, boats were dispatched to collect the newly freed men from Andersonville and other locations, such as Alabama’s Cahaba Prison.
Among the vessels was the steamboat Sultana, with a capacity of 376. In haste, it was crammed with 2,300 men and began its journey home.
But it never reached its destination. On April 27, several of its overloaded boilers exploded, burning some passengers and drowning others. This tragedy became the deadliest maritime disaster in U.S. history, with the cruel irony that most of its victims were men who had just been freed, only to meet their doom once again.
9. Joseph Johnston’s Last Stand
More than twenty-five years after the American Civil War, two of its most renowned generals would experience a tragic irony of their own.
Next to Ulysses S. Grant, William Tecumseh Sherman was perhaps the Union's most revered military figure. Under Grant, Sherman played a pivotal role in capturing key strongholds such as Forts Henry and Donaldson, as well as leading the successful siege of Vicksburg, Mississippi, the so-called 'Key to the West.' In 1864, when Grant took on the position of General-in-Chief and headed east to confront Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, Sherman took charge of the Western front, seizing Atlanta before launching his famous march through Georgia and the Carolinas.
During the push toward Atlanta, Sherman faced Joseph E. Johnston, his Confederate counterpart, who had been a crucial figure in the conflict since the first major battle at Bull Run in July 1861. By 1864, Union advantages in numbers and resources had begun to overwhelm the shrinking Confederate forces. Johnston did what he could to slow Sherman’s advance, but ultimately failed. Sherman, like his close friend Grant, relentlessly applied pressure, using superior numbers to outflank Johnston’s weaker lines, leading to a gradual, inevitable retreat.
Johnston came to hold a deep, albeit reluctant, respect for Sherman. So much so that when Sherman died in 1891, the elderly Johnston removed his hat during the solemn, rainy funeral. When urged to put it back on, Johnston replied, 'If I were in his place, and he were standing here in mine, he would not put on his hat.'
Johnston contracted pneumonia and passed away the following month—tragic irony mixed with the noble gesture of honoring one’s adversary.
8. The Tragic End of a Hollywood Heroine
Last week, we featured a list of iconic places seen from behind, and among them was the Hollywood Sign. The entry mentioned Peg Entwistle and promised a deeper dive into her story in a future list. This is that list.
Entwistle appeared in only one film: Thirteen Women (1932). In the novel the film was based on, her character is a lesbian who ends her life through starvation after being abandoned by her lover (quite scandalous for the 1930s). However, in the movie, she plays a married woman who kills her husband and ends up incarcerated. The film itself is a unique psychological thriller, featuring a clairvoyant swami who foresees doom, and a vengeful half-Oriental woman determined to make thirteen women commit suicide in retribution for their past mistreatment of her during their school years together.
Unfortunately, test screenings were unkind to Entwistle’s character, Hazel, whose role was cut down from 16 minutes to just four. This perceived failure was too much for the rising actress to bear. Almost exactly a month after the film's release, 24-year-old Peg Entwistle tragically took her own life by climbing to the top of the ‘H’ of the Hollywoodland Sign (the final four letters were removed in 1949) and leaping off, falling 45 feet (13.7 m) to the ground before her body rolled down the side of Mount Lee.
Her suicide note was discovered in her abandoned purse by a hiker nearby. The note read: “I am afraid, I am a coward. I am sorry for everything. If I had done this a long time ago, it would have saved a lot of pain. P.E.” Many believe the Hollywood Sign is haunted by Entwistle’s tragic spirit.
You might be questioning why this entry is included on the list. While it may seem vaguely ironic that Peg Entwistle's character took her own life, here lies the cruelest irony of her life: just before her suicide, she received a letter offering her the leading role in a play about a young woman who also takes her life.
7. The Relapser Who Inspired Recovery
In 1934, Edwin Thacher, known to his friends as Ebby, visited an old friend in Brooklyn Heights. Like many during the Great Depression, Ebby’s friend was struggling, out of work and feeling down.
His friend was also deep in alcoholism, drinking heavily and obsessively. He had tried to quit, but with no success. Since Ebby was an old drinking buddy, his friend William Wilson was looking forward to sharing a few drinks with someone who could keep up with him.
But rather than bringing liquor, Ebby came bearing a message of hope. While he, too, had once been unable to quit drinking, he had found success through a set of principles he learned from a temperance movement called the Oxford Group. With these teachings, Ebby had conquered his alcoholism. He proudly proclaimed that he was a free man.
The conversation had such a profound impact on William Wilson that, today, he is more widely recognized as Bill W., the co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous and the primary architect of its Twelve Steps of Recovery. He went on to become the most renowned sober alcoholic in history.
As for Ebby, his story didn’t end as triumphantly. He went on to... get drunk. A lot. He struggled with frequent relapses for the remainder of his life.
Ironically, one of the reasons Alcoholics Anonymous eventually parted ways with the Oxford Group was its overly aggressive evangelism. Ebby, unable to practice the principles he preached, may have sealed his own fate, while indirectly sparing millions over the following 85 years.
6. A Tragic Irony in One Final Meal
As the Allied Forces closed in on Nazi Germany from both the east and west, the long-held rumors turned into an awful reality when numerous concentration camps were liberated. In death pits like Dachau Camp in southwest Germany, bodies were piled high in some of the most horrifying and grotesque scenes ever witnessed.
Even so, the liberation of the camps brought salvation to hundreds of thousands of those who had managed to survive, if only just. At Auschwitz in Poland, Russian troops discovered 7,000 starved yet still-living individuals. In northern Germany, British forces arriving at Bergen-Belsen Camp rescued 12,000.
It’s no surprise that the majority of freed prisoners were severely emaciated, often mere days from death due to lack of proper nourishment. Tragically, for some survivors, their extreme hunger led to an ironically fatal end.
Naturally, the Allies' first priority was to provide food to those desperately in need. But when they did, many survivors suffered such a severe shock to their system that they died from overeating. This phenomenon, known as “Refeeding Syndrome,” occurs when a malnourished person eats too much too quickly, causing a sort of “sugar shock” as the body’s conversion of food into glucose overwhelms the system.
5. An Unexpected Anthem
Some songs turn out to be far more ironic than anything Alanis Morissette ever penned.
Born in the USA serves as a perfect example. Often used as a crowd-pleasing anthem at political rallies, the song’s title and uplifting, almost jubilant riff seem to evoke a deep sense of patriotic pride that unites both candidates and their supporters. Makes you feel all proud to be an Ameri-… uh, hold on... what’s this about killing a yellow man?
Far from a celebration of patriotism, Springsteen’s 1984 hit tells the tale of a Vietnam War veteran who enlisted after finding himself in trouble back home. When he returns, he’s met with rejection from employers and indifference from the government (not a surprising turn of events). The final stanza echoes, “I’m ten years burning down the road, Nowhere to run, ain’t got nowhere to go.”
The message of disillusionment seems lost on many Americans, including Ronald Reagan, the president at the time the song debuted. “America’s future rests in a thousand dreams inside your hearts,” he said. “It rests in the message of hope in songs of a man so many young Americans admire, New Jersey’s own Bruce Springsteen.” Not quite, Gipper, but we’ll let that one slide.
4. Biggie’s Tragically Prescient Album
Arguably the greatest rapper ever to touch a mic also dropped the most ironically tragic album in hip-hop history.
On March 9, 1997, Christopher Wallace, better known as The Notorious B.I.G. or Biggie Smalls, was tragically murdered while driving with his entourage from a nightclub in Los Angeles. The drive-by shooting was a cold, assassination-style attack, occurring just six months after the murder of his rap rival, the immensely talented Tupac Shakur, in Las Vegas. Both killings were viewed as the most devastating consequences of an ongoing feud between East and West Coast hip-hop icons.
The tragedy of their deaths was compounded by their youth: both Biggie and Tupac were at the pinnacle of their careers and still incredibly young. Tupac was just 25 when he was killed; Biggie was only 24. They had so much more to offer.
However, what made Biggie’s death even more tragic was the album he left behind. Just two weeks after his death, his highly anticipated 22-track double album, Life After Death, was released. The album went on to become the fourth highest-selling rap album of all time. To add another layer of irony, the final track on the second disc is titled “You’re Nobody (Til Somebody Kills You)”.
3. Pain in the Glass
Melvin Henry Ignatow was a man who was far from a pleasant individual.
A man from Louisville, Kentucky, determined that if he couldn't have his girlfriend, Brenda Schaefer, then no one else could. When Schaefer ended their two-year relationship, Ignatow decided to end her life.
The murder was shockingly brutal. Ignatow, with the help of an ex-girlfriend, Mary Ann Shore, meticulously dug a grave and soundproofed Shore’s house. On September 23, 1988, Ignatow lured Schaefer to Shore’s home, stripped her, bound and gagged her, and then repeatedly raped her. Already, I can’t fathom what Shore ever saw in this man.
Ignatow then tied Schaefer to a glass table—an eerie detail that would come back to haunt him later—and smothered her with chloroform.
What makes the situation even worse is that Ignatow and Shore initially got away with the crime. The jury's acquittal was later proven to be wrong when Ignatow confessed to the murder during a perjury investigation. Although he served five years for lying under oath during the trial, US law prohibited him from being retried for the crime itself.
Ignatow was released from prison in 2006. Two years later, while at home, he fell, cut himself, and bled to death. Ironically, the culprit? A glass coffee table. See you in hell, Mel.
2. Judgment Day
9/11 is filled with strange coincidences, but here's one that veers into tragic irony: the very first person to depict the destruction of that fateful day—seven years before it actually happened—shares a name with the first official victim. Well, almost.
In 1994, a year after the initial, failed attempt to bring down NYC’s World Trade Center, VICE magazine published an article titled “What is al-Qaeda?”. The piece provided a deep dive into the then-little-known terrorist group headed by Osama bin Laden.
For reasons unknown, the lead visual for the article featured a cartoon of Beavis and Butthead, who were riding high on popularity in 1994. The two bumbling characters were drawn wearing turbans and, you guessed it, flying planes into the Twin Towers.
Beavis and Butthead were the creation of Mike Judge, who later went on to write the 1998 cult comedy Office Space and the long-running animated series King of the Hill.
On September 11, 2001, one of the first to reach ground zero was Mychal Judge – or more formally, Father Mychal Judge, the chaplain for the New York City Fire Department. Father Judge was aboard one of the first engines to arrive at the scene that day, offering comfort wherever he could. Tragically, he died when the South Tower – the first to fall – collapsed.
His body was swiftly taken across the street to a nearby church. Even though many others had already lost their lives that day due to the initial impact and, heartbreakingly, those who jumped, Father Mychal Judge became 9/11 Victim 0001, marking the first official casualty of the day.
1. The Office Is Closed
Ever wonder why New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani was seen walking through Lower Manhattan on 9/11 instead of coordinating emergency efforts from a command center? The answer is simple: he had no other place to be.
The city’s Office of Emergency Management (OEM) was located in... you guessed it, the World Trade Center. It's akin to setting up a military hospital right between the front lines. A mix of tragic irony and poor foresight, the NYC OEM was established in 1996. Considering this was just three years after the 1993 truck bombing attempt to bring down the Twin Towers, it’s questionable, to say the least, for an office meant to handle emergencies during crises.
The office was located in 7 World Trade Center, right next to the Twin Towers. On 9/11, this turned into a major issue for two key reasons. First, the OEM’s communication system relied on the antenna atop 1 World Trade Center, the first tower to be struck by a plane. That antenna became partially disabled because the Fire Department needed it to coordinate their own rescue efforts.
Then, of course, the towers fell. The North Tower’s collapse – the second of the two to implode at 10:28 am – caused enough damage to 7 World Trade that it required a full evacuation. Later that afternoon, the building also came down.
Thankfully, what started as a forced move for Giuliani to head north eventually turned into a moment where New Yorkers, and the world, witnessed a leader stepping up at the frontlines.
