Truth – a very subjective thing that the majority find hard to accept. Many spend their lives advocating for their beliefs but either get ridiculed or aren’t taken seriously, only to be proven to be correct when it’s way too late. Ever wondered who those people are? Well, today’s your lucky day!

“Who are some people who died telling us the truth?” – this netizen took to Reddit, inviting its members to share the names and stories of those who perished in their pursuit of truth. The thread garnered nearly 30K upvotes as well as 5.3K comments.

More info: Reddit

#1

Ignaz Semmelweis. The first doctor to implement hand washing in hospitals. It’s saved millions of lives and is the single greatest innovation in medicine.

For his radical theory, that doctors were killing patients by not washing their hands, he was shunned from the medical profession by his peers. The rejection and failure to adopt hand washing drove him mad. His rival took his job and had him sent to the asylum. He died 4 days after being committed, from injuries he sustained from being beaten in the ward.

Years after his death, his theories about hand washing were proven correct. Today he’s known as “the savior of mothers” because he first proved hand washing saved lives by implementing it in the birthing ward, where 1 in 4 women died at the hospital during birth. This was because doctors would handle cadavers and then immediately attend to birthing mothers, infecting them. After hand washing was implemented, the rate of death for birthing mothers dropped to less than 5%.

Image credits: itscomplicatedwcarbs

#2

Carrie Fisher. She tried exposing Harvey Weinstein long before anyone else did, and was labelled ‘crazy’ because of it. She died about a year before the truth was revealed

Image credits: unknownselection

#3

There was a shunned Japanese politician who had spent a lot of his town's budget on building a tsunami wall that was built higher than any tsunami ever recorded in the area. Almost all people in that town cursed him for wasting their money until his death.. Then came the big 2011 triple disaster in Japan. No one from the town died thanks to the barrier which withheld the biggest tsunami to ever hit.

Image credits: gtr06

#4

Sophie Scholl was a German student and anti-[war] political activist. She was born on May 9, 1921, in Forchtenberg, Germany. In 1942, Sophie and her brother Hans co-founded the White Rose, a non-violent resistance group that opposed the regime. The group distributed leaflets calling for passive resistance to the government and urging Germans to rise up against the regime.

On February 18, 1943, Sophie and Hans were arrested by the Gestapo while distributing leaflets at the University of Munich. They were interrogated and sentenced to death by the People's Court on February 22, 1943. On the same day, Sophie, Hans, and their friend Christoph Probst were executed by guillotine.

Sophie's final words were "Such a fine, sunny day, and I have to go, but what does my death matter, if through us, thousands of people are awakened and stirred to action?" Her courage and commitment to justice have since inspired countless people around the world.

Image credits: hostilecircus

#5

The Idaho cult Mom, Lori Vallow's husband, Charles. Not only did he know she was going to kill him but he also knew the kids were in danger and begged the police to address the fact that she was clearly not mentally stable. He finally got the police to require a mental health exam for her but there's audio of the police officers telling her how to pass it and treating her like a victim of her husband. The audio of him talking to the police is really depressing... guy is just begging them for help and they basically patted him on the head.

He was right and now he's dead and so are those poor kids. Really depressing case.

Image credits: littleirishpixie

#6

Dr. Li was widely regarded in China as a heroic truth-teller. He had been punished by the authorities for trying to warn others about the virus, and then, in a terrible turn, had become severely sickened by it. Weeks later, he would become China’s most famous fatality of the emerging pandemic. He was 34. -The New York Times about COVID-19

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#7

The poor Kurdish girl in Iran who was killed because she chose not to wear her hijab the "right" way.

Image credits: imgrandojjo

#8

Martha Mitchell. Blew the whistle on Watergate only to be gaslit and accused of being a mentally unstable alcoholic by her husband, political cronies, and even her own kids.

Image credits: RumBunBun

#9

John O'Neill, headed the investigation of the attack on the USS Cole. Warned FBI about Al Qaeda and Bin Laden. Was basically told to shut up. Left the FBI to head security at the World Trade Center because he knew there would be another attack there eventually after the first car bombing in the parking ramp.

He died on 911.

Image credits: MNConcerto

#10

Bob Ebeling. Him and 4 other engineers told NASA to delay the Challenger mission.

Most of us know what happened on January 28th 1986.

Image credits: Bunnuh77

#11

Caruana Galizia
The journalist who broke the story about the Panama papers.

Image credits: skydvr44

#12

Nicole Brown Simpson. She told her friends and the police that OJ would kill her and get away with it.

Image credits: TheSocialABALady

#13

Sergei Magnitsky, whistleblower of corruption in the Russian government including human rights violations and strong opponent of Vladimir Putin. While in prison he died one week before his court date to testify from what was originally deemed malnourishment and an untreated heart condition with medical neglect. An investigation later found that he had been severely assaulted shortly before his death.

Image credits: NsaAgent25

#14

Marie Curie

To quote the Fact Sphere from Portal 2: “Marie Curie invented the theory of radioactivity, the treatment of radioactivity, and dying of radioactivity.”

And the follow up on the Portal wiki: Marie Curie technically only discovered dying of radioactivity.

Image credits: buttercupgirl16

#15

Tesla. He died single in a hotel in NYC. He said all this life he had been working to improve society and people, but was always laughed at. I guess with him now famous, he is laughing last.

Image credits: dsvoboda080182

#16

Karen Silkwood. From Wikipedia:

>Karen Gay Silkwood (February 19, 1946 – November 13, 1974) was an American chemical technician and labor union activist known for raising concerns about corporate practices related to health and safety in a nuclear facility.

>After testifying to the Atomic Energy Commission about her concerns, she was found to have plutonium contamination on her body and in her home. While driving to meet with a New York Times journalist and an official of her union's national office, she died in a car crash under unclear circumstances.

[Link to Wikipedia entry on Karen Silkwood.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Silkwood)

Image credits: sucrose_97

#17

Scientists Executed by the Catholic Church

1. Hypatia
Hypatia was a pagan philosopher in late 4th century Alexandria. She appears to have been a lecturer in Platonic thought, a practicing scientist, and the author of several mathematical treatises. She was killed by a Christian mob in the year 415.

2. Roger Bacon
Roger Bacon (1220-1292) was an English philosopher and Franciscan friar who is was a talented natural scientist and is considered one of the pioneers of the "scientific method" and was noted for his use of empirical observation. His greatest work was the Opus Major, which contains treatments of mathematics, optics, alchemy, and astronomy, including theories on the positions and sizes of the celestial bodies. Bacon appears to have been imprisoned by the ecclesiastical authorities sometime around 1279 and may have died in captivity.

3. Pietro d' Abano
Pietro d' Abano (1257-1316) was an Italian philosopher, astrologer, and professor of medicine. He was a noted author whose most famous work was Conciliator Differentiarum, quæ inter Philosophos et Medicos Versantur, an exploration on the relationship between contemporary medical theories and Aristotelian natural philosophy. He was arrested by the Inquisition and died in prison around 1316. He was condemned posthumously and his bones burned.

4. Cecco d' Ascoli
Cecco d' Ascoli (1257-1327) was an Italian encyclopaedist, physician, and scholar specializing in mathematics and astronomy. He was a professor of astronomy at the University of Bologna and was such a noted astronomer that there is a crater on the moon named after him. He is famous for his feud with the poet Dante. He was eventually tried for heresy and burned at the stake in Florence, the first university professor to be condemned to death by the Inquisition.

5. Michael Servetus
Michael Servetus (1509-1553), usually known simply as Servetus, was a Spanish doctor, theologian, mapmaker, and Humanist scholar. His expertise spanned many areas; he wrote treatises in mathematics, astronomy, meteorology, geography, human anatomy, medicine and pharmacology, as well as jurisprudence and poetry. In 1553 he was tried and sentenced to death in Vienna by the Inquisition, though it would ultimately be the Calvinists who put him to death in Geneva later that year.

6. Girolamo Cardano
Girolamo Cardano (1501-1576) was a Renaissance polymath whose talents ranged from mathematics to medicine, biology, physics, chemistry, astronomy, philosophy, and linguistics. He was one of the most influential mathematicians of the Renaissance, and was one of the key figures in the foundation of probability and the earliest user of the binomial coefficients and the binomial theorem in the west. He wrote over 200 scientific treatises.He was arrested and condemned by the Inquisition and spent several years imprisoned, though he was eventually released and rehabilitated by Pope Gregory XIII. He is famous for his contributions to algebra and made the first systematic use of negative numbers.

7. Giordano Bruno
Bruno is among the most famous scientists ever to run afoul of the Inquisition. Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) was a Dominican friar, mathematician, astronomer and poet. He is most remembered for his cosmological theories. After seven years of trials in Rome, he was condemned and burned at the stake in 1600.

8. Lucilio Vanini
Philosopher and physician Lucilio Vanini (1585-1616) was a Carmelite and noted late Renaissance scholar. He was a libertine, political opponent of the popes, and known as an early proponent of some form of evolution from primates. He once left the Church for Anglicanism but later returned to the faith. He went through a period of itinerant wandering, where he seemed to always get in trouble with the authorities. He eventually adopted a false identity and died under circumstances that are still uncertain in 1619, executed for blasphemy and heresy by the authorities in Toulouse. He was strangled, had his tongue removed, and his body burned.

9. Tommaso Campanella
The Dominican friar Tommaso Campanella (1568-1639) was an Italian astrologer, philosopher, and poet. Early in his clerical career he became disenchanted with Aristotelian thought and became a proponent of the new empiricism. He was briefly imprisoned by the Inquisition for engaging in wild astrological speculation. He was released but was apprehended in Calabria, tortured, and spent twenty-six years in prison. He was later released to be part of the court of Pope Urban VIII and had some remote involvement in the Galileo affair. Despite his age, he again got in trouble and had to go into exile to the court of Louis XIII of France, where he died in 1639.

10. Kazimierz Lyszczynsk
Kazimierz Lyszczynsk (1634-1689) is different than the rest of the people we have examined in that he did not have a reputation as a scientist. He was a Polish soldier and nobleman, but also an amateur scholar and philosopher. Lyszczynsk was educated by the Jesuits but later became an opponent of the Society, whom he later opposed as a judge in several cases against the Jesuits concerning ownership of estates. He was arrested and charged with atheism and blasphemy based on an allegedly atheist manuscript he had written entitled "On the Non-Existence of God." He was condemned and beheaded in 1689 after having his tongue tore out and hands burned.

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#18

That guy who got crushed to death with rocks in the Salem trials. Giles Corey, I believe.

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#19

Bud Dwyer. He was a politician in Pennsylvania in the 1980s and he was accused of accepting bribes. He denied it but he and his family were receiving tons of hate from people to the point in which he called for a public announcement with news cameras and such.

He took a gun out of an envelope and put it in his mouth and pulled the trigger. Local news outlets now had video of a politician killing himself.

Years later it was learned that he *really didn’t* accept bribes.

Image credits: vidgmchtr

#20

Not exactly killed directly, but still punished severely: Galileo.

Killed: Socrates

Image credits: dodexahedron

#21

Dr David Kelly, exposed the lies about WMDs then “[unalived himself]”. It was just a coincidence that the government refused to open an enquiry into his death, who needs to investigate a “self-unaliving”

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#22

Alberto Nisman

He was a prosecutor investigating the President of Argentina at the time, Cristina Fernandez de Kirshner. Wound up doing the ol' Epstein and [ended his life]. In the waste basket next to where he was found, there was a draft for an arrest warrant for the president.

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#23

Obviously Oscar Wilde, "Either those curtains go or I do."

Image credits: gildorratner

#24

heyitsEnricoPallazzo said:

Pat Tillman

who519 responded:

One of the greatest tragedies of the last 20 years. If he had survived he would have been an incredible anti-war voice and potentially a masterful politician. The dude was smart as hell, tough as hell and compassionate as hell. Not many people fit that mold on this Earth.

Edit: If you haven't read "Where Men Win Glory" by Krakauer it is a great look into this imperfect hero's life and the mythos that has drawn young brave men into war for millennia.

TrooperJohn added:

Which is exactly why he was eliminated.

A young, white, handsome pro athlete turned military hero coming back home to tell Americans the entire war was a big lie? There's no way that would have been allowed.

Image credits: heyitsEnricoPallazzo