Here are six interesting historical events that should be turned into movies

Period dramas and historical nonfiction movies are difficult genres to capture. A Reddit user u/lowtack asked Reddit users what historical event they think should be made into a feature film and the replies are a revelation. From aircraft hijacking conspiracies to defiance against the Nazis, the Reddit thread has it all. 

Here are some historical events that would definitely serve as great plots to make Oscar-winning movies.

1. Defiance of Nazis

Reddit user Grey_Gryphon writes, "Syndrome K: In 1943, a hospital in Rome located next to a Jewish ghetto, let Jews fleeing Nazi raids hide there. The professors in charge admitted Jews under the fake diagnosis of 'Syndrome K', described as a highly contagious and dangerous disease. This successfully kept the Nazis out of the quarantine wards and the Jews safe for the duration of the war."

2. The 1904 Olympics

This one would make for a hilarious dark comedy meets sports genre movie. User Hititwitharock writes, "I need a Coen brothers movie of the 1904 Olympic marathon." User fubo in the comments explained, "Over half of the 32 entrants did not finish the marathon. The marathon's first 'winner' got his picture taken with the US President's daughter. Then it turned out that he cheated by hitching a ride in a car. The second 'winner' had been doped with rat poison, and was carried over the finish line by his friends. If he hadn't received immediate medical attention, he would have died on site. Multiple runners, including the winners of the previous two years' Boston Marathons, got lung injuries from dust kicked up by the race officials' cars. The fourth-place finisher got sick on the way, having stolen apples that turned out to be rotten from a nearby orchard. The ninth-place finisher might have placed better if he hadn't been chased off course by wild dogs. One of the organizers believed that 'purposeful dehydration' would help the runners, and had deliberately limited the water sources available to the runners."

3. The flight passengers who got stuck at the start of WWII

Reddit user bigred49342 writes: "The story of the Pan Am flight that got caught in New Zealand at the start of WWII and couldn't fly back home by going east because it was too dangerous. So instead they took their flying boat and flew west on routes they had to figure out from maps pulled from borrowed encyclopedias, dodging the Japanese, and trying to find enough fuel to keep the plane going. The whole thing took months culminating in taking off from a river in the Congo and having to skim along through a canyon to build up speed since they were too heavy in order to even have a chance of crossing the Atlantic." This story has been turned into a book written along with the captain of the flight called "The Long Way Home," explained the user.

4. Hijacking conspiracy gone wrong, terribly wrong

User Ok_Kinda_Guy writes: "Auburn Calloway was a Stanford graduate who loved his family, but couldn’t afford to send his kids to college." The user explained that in 1994 Calloway, who flew airplanes for FedEx, devised a plan to die in a plane crash to get insurance money so that his kids could go to college. So he tried to hijack a plane but disguise it as an accident. He boarded the plane prepared with weapons like spear gun and hammers hidden in a guitar case. When he got acquainted with the crew, he went into the cockpit and hit everyone with hammers to make it look like they died from the force of hitting the ground. However, "Calloway f***ed with the wrong crew." After the first officer was semi-unconscious, two other crew members fought back to stop Calloway. The first officer, a "half unconscious pilot," treated the plane like a fighter aircraft and turned it upside down. The story ends with the crew taking a u-turn, an emergency landing and Calloway getting arrested. The crew was never able to fly again commercially because of the injuries they sustained.

5. The Chinese pirate

The user randomguy987654321 writes: "Unless it's been done already, the life story of Ching Shih." The user continued to explain that Ching Shih was a Chinese prostitute who became the deadliest pirate of all time. "At the height of her power, she commanded over 800 large ships, 1000 smaller vessels, and over 70,000 pirate crew, comprised of both men and women."

6. Robert Smalls

User USCplaya wants a movie on Robert Smalls and writes: "Born into slavery, sent to Charleston at the age of 12 to work, gets a job on a boat, when the Civil War starts he steals the boat and snuggles his family and the family of the other slaves past Fort Sumter and out to the north blockade, becomes a folk hero and meets with Lincoln and Edward Stanton to convince them to allow blacks to join the army, personally recruits thousands of blacks to fight, becomes the first captain of a ship in the navy, wins numerous engagements during his service, wins a seat in the SC house and then the US house, fights against racist groups like the Red Shirts, overcomes false accusations and earns his seat back.... Dude is amazing."