All language subtitles for The UnBelievable with Dan Aykroyd s02e02 Sweet Revenge.eng

[rhythmic music]

- Looking for payback?

How about a DIY
project fueled by rage?

- It is a absolute
wrecking machine.

- It's knocking down buildings,
running over vehicles.

- [Jason] Local law
enforcement have no idea

how to stop this thing.

What about being on
the receiving end

of vengeance by beast?

[elephant roaring]

- Those poachers have now
angered the alpha female.

They attack at night, when
humans are most vulnerable.

[elephant snarling]

- Or consider the case
of the Ukrainian princess

who stops at
nothing to get even.

- She orders her men
to slaughter them all.

[swords swishing]

- By the time the night is over,

5,000 of them have
been put to the sword.

Olga finally has her revenge.

[apprehensive music]

- These are stories
of sweet revenge

so astonishing they
are truly unbelievable.

[mysterious music]

[mysterious music continues]

[dramatic music]

Revenge, a dish
best served cold,

unless you're Peter the Great,

in which case it's a
dish best served pickled?

[rhythmic music]

- Peter the Great is considered

to be a rather ruthless ruler.

He is known for his penchant
for torturing people.

- Dismemberment, hanging,
limbs being removed.

He is not a man to cross.

- [Dan] It's something
his wife Catherine

learns the hard way.

- Peter finds out that Catherine

is potentially carrying on

with one of his
advisors, Willem Mons.

[dreary music]

Because accusing the
queen of adultery

has political
implications for himself,

he decides to accuse Mons
of bribery and embezzlement.

- [Dan] Not surprisingly,

Willem Mons is found guilty
and swiftly beheaded.

But Peter's wife Catherine won't
be getting off easy either.

- In addition to his notoriously
bad temper and bloodlust,

Peter the Great considers
himself a fan of the sciences.

He has a cabinet of curiosities.

He has pickled fetuses,
he has two-headed goats,

syphilis-ridden skulls and jars.

It's possible that these
curiosities kind of inspired him

to come up with a creative
payback for his wife.

[suspenseful music]

- According to the legend,

he decides he's going to
take Willem Mons' head

and have it pickled in a jar
to be presented to his wife,

to have her keep on her
bedside as a warning

not to repeat what she has done.

[suspenseful music]

[Catherine shrieking]

- [Dan] Peter's
act of revenge

doesn't have its
intended effect.

[rhythmic music]

Rumor has it Catherine
keeps the head

even after Peter dies
the following year.

- Catherine, for her part,

gets her own post-mortem
revenge on Peter.

After Peter's death,
Catherine uses money

from the royal estate,

money that Mons was falsely
accused of embezzling,

and showers it upon
his surviving family.

- Now that is sweet, or
perhaps sour revenge.

However, it pales in comparison

to what the angriest wife
in Soviet history plans

for the Nazi war machine.

[rhythmic music]

- Maria Oktyabrskaya
is born in Crimea

around the turn of the century.

She is a Russian serf.

So when the communist
revolution happens,

she sees this as a way
out of her abject poverty.

[rhythmic music]

- Maria is an
idealistic young woman.

And in 1925, she's very proud

to marry a Russian soldier.

And as the saying
goes in Russia,

marry a soldier, marry the army.

So as an army wife, Maria learns
some basic military skills,

how to drive military trucks,

and she gains familiarity
with weapons and munitions.

She actually becomes a
pretty formidable person.

[tense music]

- When the Nazis invade
in the summer of 1941,

her husband is
sent to the front.

[dreary music]

She finds out two years later

that he was killed in the
opening moments of the invasion.

- Of course Maria does
not take that news well.

She is out for blood.

- [Dan] Maria sells
all of her possessions

and does whatever she can to
raise money to fund her plan.

- So she writes Stalin and says,

"I want to go out there and
avenge my husband's death, and

I'm so serious about this

I have deposited 50,000 rubles

in the National Republic
Bank, and I want a tank."

- And Stalin responds
with one word, "Da."

[intrepid music]

- Maria is granted a T-34 tank

with the term Fighting
Girlfriend painted on the side.

- [Dan] By September, 1943,

Maria and the
Fighting Girlfriend

are both ready to
make the Nazis pay.

- Her first mission is
to protect Stalingrad.

And when she shows up,
she means business.

[tense music]

- On numerous occasions, the
tank is extremely successful.

It's leading the breakthrough.

It's taking out
infantry positions.

It's taking out
machine gun positions.

And then boom, it's hit by
a German anti-tank shell.

The shell severs
part of the track.

Immediately now, she decides
to spring into action.

Miraculously, she repairs
the tank track under fire,

gets it back into battle,

and off goes
Fighting Girlfriend again.

[dreary music]

- [Dan] Maria
is invincible.

For two more months,

she continues bulldozing
through enemy trenches,

taking out anyone in her path.

[intense music]

- In January of 1944,

bitter cold time of year,

Maria and her crew are
taking part in an attack

against Nazi forces in Belarus.

[booming sound]

- The tank is hit,
the track is severed,

and she jumps out
under fire yet again

when a shell explodes near her.

She's dragged
off the battlefield,

but she ends up in a coma.

- [Dan] Two months
later, on March 15th, 1944,

Maria succumbs to her injuries.

- Maria is buried with
full military honors

and posthumously awarded
medals for heroism.

And in a final tribute to her,

the medals are melted down
and used in the manufacture

of a new
Fighting Girlfriend tank.

So Maria's crusade
for revenge continues.

[dramatic music]

- For her efforts,
Maria is also awarded

the title of Hero
of the Soviet Union,

the nation's highest honor.

In mafia-controlled
Naples, Italy,

another widow's
vengeance earns her

a much less honorable title.

Meet the Godmother.

[intense music]

- In 1935,

Assunta Pupetta Maresca

is born outside of Naples,

kind of at the foot
of Mount Vesuvius.

And she is born into an area

that is completely run
by organized crime.

- The town that
Pupetta grows up in

is seen as so
corrupt and so evil

that a local priest decides
to perform an exorcism

on the whole town
from a helicopter.

It doesn't work.

[intense music]

She is part of a family
that's organized crime,

and they specifically deal
in black market cigarettes.

- [Dan] Pupetta's
nickname means little doll.

But even as a child,
she's not innocent.

- Pupetta stashes
contraband in her dollhouse.

In grade school, she
stabs a classmate

who's the daughter of
a rival crime family.

She is in it from
the very beginning.

- So as she grows up,
she is a beauty queen.

She is really kind of
perfectly positioned

to become a wife to a mafioso.

- She is a catch, and
she finds her match

in Pascalone Simonetti.

[dramatic music]

Pascalone is very
well known in the area

because he is in charge
of the vegetable racket.

- [Dan] This tough guy
gets a piece of every vegetable

that comes through
the port of Naples.

And after a whirlwind courtship,

the two lovebirds tie the knot.

- Very quickly, Pupetta
becomes pregnant.

But the honeymoon phase
of this relationship

is to be short-lived.

[apprehensive music]

[suspenseful music]

- Because Pasquale's business
is really, really lucrative,

that means that other people
want the same thing he has.

- [Dan] Chief
among his rivals

is a man named Antonio Esposito,

a former partner who has taken

to mocking Pascalone in public,

calling him the president
of potato prices,

which sounds even more
insulting in Italian.

- The tensions between
Pascalone and Antonio

heat up to the point

that violence becomes
the only option.

[tense music]

Pascalone is rushed
to the hospital.

Pupetta is there to meet him.

He is dying.

And she asks him,

"Who did this to you?"

And he says, "Antonio Esposito."

That moment, on that day, she
starts plotting her revenge.

- [Dan] As he
will soon discover,

Esposito has messed
with the wrong Pupetta.

[dreary music]

- It's August 4th, 1955,

less than a month after
Pascalone's death.

Pupetta is eight
months pregnant.

She tracks down Antonio.

She finds him in a cafe.

In broad daylight,

Pupetta pulls out her
gun and shoots Antonio

29 times,

which means she had to reload.

[dramatic music]

[dramatic music continues]

- Pupetta is not above the law.

She gets arrested.

Everybody knows who the
pregnant murdering woman is.

It's her.

- And over the
course of the trial,

the world catches news of
this pregnant young woman

who carried out this revenge.

She becomes an
instant celebrity.

She gives interviews,
she talks to the press.

And when they ask,

"Do you regret this,
you know, killing a man,"

she said, "I did it for love
and I would do it again."

- [Dan] Her courtroom
drama may sell a lot of ink,

but it doesn't keep
her out of prison.

What it does do is
make her a legend.

[intense music]

- Because of the violence and
the vengefulness of this act,

it also starts to
establish her mob cred.

She earns the title of Madrina,

which is the first
godmother in mafia history.

- She has her baby
while incarcerated,

and her fellow inmates
changed the baby's diapers.

- Her sentence is
originally for 24 years,

but she only serves 10 of it.

And then she receives a pardon,

so the whole thing is wiped
clean off of her record.

[dramatic music]

- Unlike her rival mob bosses

who end up dying violently,

she passes away peacefully
at the age of 86 in Campania.

[dreary music]

- Before she dies,
Pupetta Maresca is asked

about her vengeful reputation,

to which she replies,

[speaking in foreign language],

"I sleep fine at night."

- Is the searing desire
to make villains pay

an emotion limited to humans

or do animals feel the
need for retribution?

You bet they do.

[bright music]

- Many cities in China
have stray and feral dogs.

There's an estimated
40 million stray dogs

throughout the entire country.

And the city of
Chongqing is no different.

[dog barking]

[dogs snarling]

- A man coming home from work

is confronted with a very
slight inconvenience.

There's a stray dog sleeping
in his parking space.

- So the driver loses his
temper, exits the car,

kicks the dog, and the
dog goes running off.

[dreary music]

- The next morning,
he returns to his car

and sees that it's
brutally vandalized.

- He's completely puzzled.

This is not some random accident

where something fell or
another driver sideswiped him.

Someone went to real trouble
to vandalize this vehicle.

- So the man is very unnerved,

and so he goes to a neighbor who

happens to have
a security camera

pointed in that direction.

And what he finds is
completely unbelievable.

[intense music]

It's not just the dog
that the man kicked.

It's all of the dog's friends.

They knew which car to attack.

All the other cars
were untouched.

They came for revenge.

[dramatic music]

- Now one would assume
that a pack of dogs

would band together
to take down prey

or to fight off a predator,

but what you're seeing
looks like an act

of premeditated
vigilante justice.

[dog barking]

- If you think a pack of
stray dogs can do some damage,

that's nothing compared to
a herd of angry elephants.

[intense music]
[elephant breathing]

- So unfortunately, the
ivory trade is alive and well

all around the world,
even if it's illegal.

- Elephant ivory can bring
in life-changing money.

- [Dan] That big payday

is what motivates
a group of poachers

to target a large male elephant

in the forests of Eastern India

during the summer 2011.

- There are no lengths that
these poachers won't go to.

[elephant roaring]

And obviously elephants
are super dangerous.

So they have the idea to
poison a piece of jackfruit.

And an elephant eats
it, and he dies,

and they take his tusks.

- [Dan] But
these poachers messed

with the wrong pachyderm.

- Those poachers have now
angered the alpha female.

And she is a vengeful animal.

[elephant roaring]

- Over the course of
the next two weeks,

the herd destroys 54 homes
in the surrounding area.

[resident speaking
in foreign language]

[elephant roaring]

- [Dan] This isn't
simply blind rage.

[elephant roaring]

The elephants have a strategy.

- To minimize their
chances of being hurt,

they hide in the
forest during the day

and then they attack at night,

when humans are most vulnerable.

[elephant roaring]

- [Dan] Eventually,
authorities are able to

drive the herd
away from the area

but not before a
strong message is sent.

Do not cross a large
animal that doesn't forget.

- Elephants have the
largest brains of any animal

that has ever walked the Earth.

And like us, they make
lifelong relationships.

- There are elephant graveyards
documented around the world

that those same packs will
go back to again and again

as though they are
visiting the dead,

just as a human would
go to a cemetery.

So we know that they understand
the concept of death,

and it's not that far
a stretch to think

that they might then also
be able to understand

this concept of revenge.

[apprehensive music]

- Though our angry
elephants do destroy homes,

fortunately they do
not destroy humans.

Our next target of revenge
isn't quite as lucky.

[intense music]

- Vladimir Markov
is a hunter-poacher

in far east Russia,

kind of on the border between
China and North Korea.

And it's an extremely
hand-to-mouth existence.

- This is an area which
was heavily reliant

on the timber industry.

But by the late
'80s, early '90s,

when the Soviet Union starts
to crumble and collapse,

it takes this local
industry with it.

And so, because of that,
Markov literally has to do

whatever is necessary
to be able to survive.

- [Dan] Faced
with bankruptcy,

Markov is prepared
to support himself

by any means necessary.

- Now, poachers normally
go after boars or badgers,

but those who are really
looking for a big payday

recognize that the real
money is in the big game.

[dramatic music]

- [Sami] And the mother
of all trophies

is the Siberian Amur tiger.

[tiger growling]

If you're able to bag one,

the carcass would fetch
you about 30 grand.

[tiger growling]

- The biggest market
for this is China,

where various body parts can
be used for healing properties.

The whiskers are said
to make you bulletproof.

And a tiger's penis
is used in soup,

which is said to
be an aphrodisiac.

[dramatic music]

- [Dan] Vladimir Markov

has this potential
payday in mind

when he stumbles on a
set of large tiger tracks

one cold December night.

- Now, if you're a poacher,

remember that Siberian
tigers are badass.

They weigh around 500 pounds.

They're incredibly stealthy.

They're incredibly fast.

If they were to jump vertically,

they could clear a basketball
hoop with no problem.

So who is hunting whom?

[suspenseful music]

- As Markov comes
upon the tiger,

he's lucky because he
sees that it's distracted

as it's feeding on a
boar it's just killed.

Recognizing that he has one
shot to take this tiger down,

he shores himself up, takes aim,

[suspenseful music]

and fires.

[gun firing]

- He hits the tiger
but doesn't kill it.

The tiger runs off.

So Markov has a very, very
upset apex predator in the wild.

- Markov is pretty
desperate, so he decides,

you know, let me make the
best of the situation.

And he drags the boar
back to his cabin.

- [Yohuru] What Markov never
imagined is that the tiger

is actually now following
his scent trail.

[intense music]

- [Dan] When Markov
returns to his cabin,

the wounded tiger is
already there waiting.

Not only does he attack,

he destroys everything
with Markov's scent on it.

[tiger snarling]

It is clear this
is very personal.

- By the time people
actually find Markov,

there's very little left of him.

- We're talking
about stumps of bone

sticking out of his boots,

and remnants of an arm
stuck inside his shirt,

and most shockingly,
his head with no face.

[intense music]

What's so remarkable about
this attack for authorities

is that if we we're
talking about humans,

this would be a case
of premeditated murder.

Clearly, the tiger had
plotted its revenge.

[tiger snarling]

- As Markov sadly discovered,
it seems that tigers,

like humans, don't always
forgive and forget.

- Perhaps you've heard
the name Vlad the Impaler,

the real life
Transylvanian inspiration

for Bram Stoker's "Dracula."

In fact, the real Vlad's
murderous exploits

had nothing to do with vampirism

and everything to do
with bloody revenge.

[dramatic music]

It's 1447 in Wallachia.

A civil war is about to wet

young Vlad III's
thirst for vengeance.

[rhythmic music]

- Vlad III's father, Vlad II,

is deposed and brutally murdered

by a group of aristocrats
known as boyars.

[Vlad II groaning]
[intense music]

- And as a part of this coup,
Vlad's older brother, Mircea,

is blinded and buried alive.

[Mircea yelling]

- While all this is going on,
Vlad, he's being held prisoner

by an Ottoman sultan,
and he doesn't even know

what has happened to his family.

[dramatic music]

- [Dan] Once
Vlad escapes captivity

and discovers his family's fate,

he embarks on a decade-long
quest for retribution.

- After 10 years of
bitter civil war,

Vlad III finally has the
country under control.

[imperious music]

He invites all of these
boyars, 200 of them,

into a big Easter feast to
celebrate the new found peace.

- [Dan] But
this is no egg hunt.

- There's drinking.

People are not on their guard.

And that's when everything
goes massively wrong.

[suspenseful music]

The first thing that happens

is Vlad takes all of the
women and the elderly.

He stabs them, he impales them.

[victim groaning]

- He then takes
the able-bodied men

and puts them into slavery.

- He puts these boyars to work,

rebuilding and strengthening
Poenari Castle,

which is big and gothic and
becomes one of the inspirations

for Bram Stoker's "Dracula."

[dramtic music]

- [Dan] The reward
for their hard work?

They get to help Vlad
earn his nickname.

- Vlad takes all of
the surviving boyars

and he impales them.

[boyars groaning]

But the impalement is slow.

These are sharpened tall
spikes that are greased.

And he places each
of them on the spike

where the spike goes
through the anus.

And over the course of
days and even weeks,

gravity does its work.

And so surrounding Vlad's Castle

are these aristocrats
agonizing as they slowly die.

- Vlad's exploits earn him
fame as a blood thirsty tyrant.

Yet, if he were a blood
thirsty Ukrainian princess,

they might have
made him a saint.

[upbeat music]

It's the 10th century
in what is now Ukraine,

and Princess Olga of Kiev
receives some tragic news.

- Her husband, Prince
Igor, has been murdered

by a group of people
known as the Drevlians.

- The Drevlians' beef with Igor

is that he taxes too heavily.

And they decide that they
should send a message

about their feelings.

[dreary music]

- They tie his arms and
his legs to these trees,

two saplings that have
been bent together.

- They're pulled back,
almost like a slingshot.

[intense music]

When these trees are released,

[suspenseful music]
[ropes cracking and snapping]

it tears him apart.

- Prince Mal, the
leader of the Drevlians,

sees this as an opportunity.

And so he proposes marriage

as a way of uniting the
power of their two realms.

- So Prince Mal sends
20 dignitaries to Kiev

with a marriage proposal
for Princess Olga.

And Olga doesn't reject
this out of hand.

She actually welcomes
the envoy with open arms.

- What they don't know is
she's been having her people

dig a giant trench.

[ominous music]

She trots them out and her
soldiers shove each of them

inside this trench.

- As Olga watches, her
soldiers bury the men alive.

[ominous music]

[tense music]

- Before Prince Mal could
discover the deception,

Olga sends word
back to the prince

that she is still entertaining
this marriage proposal

but only if he sends his
best men back to Kiev

to escort her to the prince.

- [Dan] When they arrive,

Olga offers them her bathhouse

to freshen up after
their long journey.

But it won't be a
bath that warms them.

- They walk inside,
Olga locks the door,

and sets it on fire.

[dramatic music]

- [Dan] Gruesome, sure,

but Olga's just getting started.

- Olga needs to stay ahead of
the news of what she has done.

And so she gets her army.

She travels to the
Drevlian capital.

- She essentially
convinces Prince Mal

to organize this feast in honor
of these pending nuptials.

- At the perfect moment,
when they're drunk,

she orders her men to
slaughter them all.

[apprehensive music]

[swords swishing]

- By the time the night is over,

5,000 of them have
been put to the sword.

[apprehensive music]

- [Dan] With
their army decimated,

there's nothing left
for the Drevlians to do

but throw themselves
on Olga's mercy,

which she offers
at a small price.

- She only demands three pigeons

and three sparrows from each
house, a meager peace offering,

at least from the
standpoint of the Drevlians.

- [Dan] But as you might
expect, there's a catch.

- What they don't
know is that Olga

has her soldiers take
each of these birds

and wrap a piece of sulfur
and a piece of cloth,

and attach it to
the bird's legs.

- [Dan] Sulfur is
a flammable accelerant.

So when the birds land
back in their nests

in Drevlian chimneys, they
burn down every house.

- Olga finally has her revenge.

Now, in a final strange twist,

Olga will later
convert to Christianity

and help lead her people in
converting to Christianity.

And because of that, the
Russian Orthodox Church

makes her a saint.

[intense music]

- I guess this is before they
gave saints background checks.

Coming up,

you can fight city hall,

you just have to get creative.

- Nothing angers the little guy
more than getting pushed around

by government bureaucracy.

But when it comes to
taking on the man,

there are two things
that can even the odds,

a taste for revenge and alcohol.

[dramatic music]

- It's September, 2017

in the sleepy town
of Westford, Vermont,

and a local businessman
named Ted Pelkey

is raising a ruckus
at the town hall.

[tense music]

- Ted's goal is to bring
his truck repair company

onto his property.

However, the Westford
Review Board says no

because they think that it
is going to be a big eyesore.

- [Dan] Convinced the
review board is out to get him,

Pelky and his wife blow off
some steam at a local bar.

And like most great ideas,

his next one comes up
after a few drinks.

- He says, "I'm gonna
make a huge middle finger,

and put it right
on my front lawn,

and point it directly
at the board."

- [Dan] This obscene
gesture won't come cheap.

Pelky shelves out $4,000

to commission a seven-foot tall,

700-pound one finger salute.

[dramatic music]

- The town hall gets upset
about this, to say the least.

- They accused Ted of
violating a local ordinance

against erecting billboards
on your property,

and Ted is crestfallen.

In a final irony,

the state defends his
middle finger statue as art,

protected by Ted's
First Amendment rights.

- [Dan] So while you
still can't fight city hall,

in Vermont, you can
flip them the bird.

Pelky may win the prize for
the most creative vengeance,

but other folk are hell
bent on pure destruction

to make their point.

Take the case of town
versus Killdozer.

[apprehensive music]

- It's June of 2004,

and the town of Granby, Colorado

has descended into panic

[dramtic music]
[buildings crashing]

because there is a
homemade armored vehicle

laying waste to local
buildings in the community.

It is a absolute
wrecking machine.

[armored vehicle rumbling]

The local law
enforcement have no idea

how to stop this thing.

- It seems to be armor-plated.

It's knocking down buildings,
running over vehicles.

It seems to be retrofitted

to be more of an
armored fighting vehicle

than an actual bulldozer.

As a matter of fact, it's
quickly nicknamed the Killdozer.

- [Dan] But what
the scared citizens

of Granby don't realize

is that the man driving
the steel-clad behemoth

is a neighbor they
know and like.

[dreary music]

- Marvin Heemeyer is the
local man behind the wheel.

He is known as an expert welder.

And in fact, he runs a very
successful business in town.

Outwardly, he seems to
be living a happy life.

- [Dan] Life should
be good for Marvin,

but there's something
sticking in his craw.

- For years, Marvin
has been in a battle

with the Granby Town Board
due to a land dispute.

- [Dan] The trouble
starts in the early '90s,

when Marvin outbids the
concrete company next door

for a prime piece of land.

They allegedly retaliate

by using their
connections with the board

to get Marvin slapped
with costly fines.

- One of the persecutions
that Marvin feels

is inflicted on
him is the demand

to connect his welding shop
to the town sewer line,

which is prohibitively
expensive.

When he fails to do so,

the town board begins
levying ruinous fines on him.

- In his mind, it's designed
to put pressure on him

to sell the land.

- Marvin grudgingly
pays the fines,

but when he's making
out his check,

he uses the memo section
to insult the town board,

calling them cowards and frauds

- [Dan] As the
town fines continue

with no end in sight,
Marvin's rage builds.

[rhythmic music]

- One night, Marvin claims
to hear the voice of God.

That voice tells
him to get revenge

on all of the people that
are involved in this scandal.

[dramatic music]

Marvin gets himself a
bulldozer at a local auction.

And while he is running his
business during the day,

at night, he's spending his time

creating this impenetrable,
armored attack vehicle.

- [Dan] Marvin covers
the Killdozer in steel plates

reinforced with concrete
to make it bulletproof.

Instead of windows,
he installs cameras

all around the Killdozer
behind bulletproof glass

and uses monitors
to see outside.

[apprehensive music]

- [Mitch] It takes Marvin
about a year and a half

to construct this
monster machine.

And during this time,
people do visit him,

but apparently they never think

to look under the enormous tarp.

- [Dan] On June 4, 2004,
Marvin's rampage begins.

[intense music]

- The first thing
he turns into rubble

is the concrete
factory next door,

owned by the family who
he had the problems with.

- Law enforcement shows up,

and they start firing
50-caliber bullets at him.

They even try to use
concussion grenades,

but not a scratch
on the Killdozer.

- [Dan] Marvin
takes to the highway

to visit everybody
on his long list.

- Next, Marvin hits
the propane company

owned by a town board member.

- Then he moves to
the town hall itself

and runs it completely
into the ground.

- He turns the Killdozer
towards the hardware store,

also owned by a board member.

But Marvin makes one
massive tactical blunder.

He fails to realize the
building does have a basement.

The Killdozer wedges into the
basement, where it gets stuck.

[suspenseful music]

- [Dan] The dozer
starts overheating,

then finally shuts down.

Marvin's revenge mission
has reached its end.

[rhythmic music]

- Marvin does not
survive the ordeal,

but he does become
a folk hero of sorts

for the people in the area,

people who feel that taking
matters into their own hand

is the only act they have left.

[dreary music]

- We've seen what one man can do

when he's hell bent on payback.

But what about spite
when money is no object?

- Philadelphia might be
the city of brotherly love,

but according to a legend,

Boston might be the
city of brotherly spite.

[dramatic music]

- Boston's North End is
one of the most expensive

and sought after
neighborhoods in the city.

- This is such a beautiful area.

The houses are majestic.

They're statuesque.

And then you see this
little teeny-tiny house.

- They call it the Skinny House.

It's nine-feet wide
and, at its skinniest,

tapers into just six-feet.

Somehow they jammed two bedrooms
and a bathroom in there.

- [Dan] Perhaps
that's because according

to local legend,

this house wasn't built
for creature comfort.

It was built for sweet revenge.

- The folklore around this
house goes something like this.

There are these three brothers

that inherit this very
valuable plot of land

on Hull Street.

- One of the brothers
is said to have gone off

to fight the Civil War.

Supposedly, while that
brother is off fighting,

the other two concoct a plot

to build their dream houses
with these amazing views,

leaving very little
of the plot left

for their absent brother.

- When this brother
comes back from war,

he discovers that he has this
tiny little sliver of land.

It's useless.

- [Dan] The absurdly
narrow plot is too small

for his own dream home,

but it may be large enough
to ruin his brother's.

- That third brother
erects the skinniest

and most ridiculous house just
to block the brothers' views

and their access to
the back property.

- And this act of retaliation

actually earns the home its
other name, the Spite House.

- It's hard to say for sure

whether or not this
legend is true,

but it has definitely
made that property

incredibly valuable.

In 2021, it sells
for $1.2 million.

- That's big bucks for a tiny
house built out of spite.

But when you're really loaded,

as in ridiculously
large piles of money,

revenge can come super sized.

[tense music]

- Corina Kavanagh,
in the mid 1930s,

is living a life most
of us would envy.

She is an incredibly
wealthy Irish heiress.

She is living in Bueno Aires.

And she's also deeply in love.

Her beloved is the son of

Mercedes Castellanos
de Anchorena,

who is basically one of
the richest matriarchs

of the area at the time.

- The Anchorena family
is kind of the equivalent

of the Astors and
the Stuyvesants

in the United States.

They're old money and very
protective of the status

and the traditions
associated with it.

[dramatic rhythmic music]

- Because Mercedes comes
from a family with old money,

she does not want
Corina's new Irish money

mixing in with her
family, frankly.

- So she tells her son to
break off the relationship,

which he does.

And this truly breaks
Corina's heart.

[rhythmic music]

- [Dan] Instead of
wallowing in sadness,

Corina breaks out her checkbook.

She has a big surprise
coming for Ms. Anchorena.

- The Anchorena family
lives in a mansion

where if they look
out their windows,

they can gaze upon the church.

It's a sort of point
of pride for them.

Mercedes wants to buy a plot
of land in between her home

and the church to
build another mansion.

- [Dan] Buying this land

is about more than
just a bigger home.

For Mercedes, it's about
the legacy of her family.

- There is an idea that the
closer you are to the basilica,

the better you are.

It's about both social
and religious placement.

It suggests that you
have been chosen by God.

- Mercedes, she makes
an offer to the broker.

And she's thinking,
because of her status,

it's in the bag already.

She goes off on
vacation to celebrate.

- Corina swoops in with her
very, very robust checkbook,

and she doubles the offer
on the parcel of land.

And she gets it instead.

But she goes farther than that.

- What she builds becomes
the 33-story Kavanagh Tower,

the first skyscraper
in Argentina.

But for Corina,
that's not the point.

- She built this immense
art deco skyscraper

to completely
obliterate the view

that Mercedes has
of the basilica.

She has not only blocked her
from getting close to it,

she now can't even look
at it if she wants to.

Corina recognizes that
she has been blocked

from Mercedes's son,

and now Mercedes will
live in her shadow

for as long as that
building stands.

- Hell hath no fury
like a scion scorned,

unless of course you're
a filthy rich maharaja

slighted by a
British car dealer.

- For many long years, India
was ruled by regional princes

called maharajas.

Some were fabulously wealthy
and not shy about showing it.

And in the early 20th century,

nothing said rich
like a Rolls-Royce.

[intrepid music]

- [Announcer] This is Britain,
motor-maker to the world.

- When you think of
the name Rolls-Royce,

you think of quality,
you think of excellence.

It's a vehicle for the
wealthiest of the wealthy.

It is for the elite.

- There's a story that's
been going around India

for about a century now.

According to the legend,

it's all about a maharaja
who visits London in 1920.

[dramatic music]

The maharajas are
extremely wealthy,

and they love to show off their
wealth at any opportunity.

- So Jai Singh, the
maharaja of Alwar,

decides that he's gonna go
check out a new Rolls-Royce

while he's in London.

- So he goes into this
Rolls-Royce dealership

looking very casual,
not like a maharaja,

and the salesman just
kind of brushes him off.

- Not surprisingly,
the maharaja is miffed,

but he leaves without
making a scene,

all the while
plotting his payback.

- Two days later, the
Rolls-Royce dealership

gets a message that
the maharaja of Alwar

is coming in to buy a
series of Rolls-Royces.

- He decides to come
back in his full garb

that just really displays not
only who he is and his power

but also his wealth.

- He cooll-y buys everything
they have in the showroom.

That's six Rolls-Royces.

- The cost of a Rolls-Royce
at this time is about $15,000,

which is 10 to 15 times as
much as the average salary

in Great Britain at this moment.

That comes out to about a
half a million dollars per car

by today's standards.

- [Dan] That's a very
good day for Rolls-Royce

and this salesman in particular.

But what he can't
know is that Jai Singh

has no intention of
driving these cars.

- He's so upset he takes
those six Rolls-Royces home

and he gives them to the
city to use as trash trucks.

That's the message he
sends to Rolls-Royce.

[dramatic music]

Well, it does not take long
for that to get back to the UK.

- Needless to say,

the stunt gets a lot
of attention worldwide.

This is a huge public
relations disaster.

And Rolls-Royce then becomes
a bit of a laughing stock.

- Rolls-Royce not only
refunds him the money

for those six that he bought,

they actually give him an
additional six Rolls-Royces

if he promises to take
them out of trash duty.

The maharaja gets what
he wants, revenge,

and a Rolls-Royce,
or 12 of them.

Now, we don't know a
hundred percent for sure

that this story happened
exactly this way,

but it is a great
reminder to everyone

to not judge a
book by its cover.

[dreary music]

- We've seen revenge take
very different forms,

from kings who decapitate to
beasts who refuse to forgive,

from skinny, spiteful houses
to murderous pregnant spouses.

But what's the
lesson in all this?

Perhaps it's that while revenge
is seldom actually sweet,

it is often truly unbelievable.

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