Original subtitles

[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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