We’ve all done crazy things for love. Of course, crazy is a relative term. Some of us give up our favourite food, some of us apparently even get married. And some of us refuse to watch The Dark Knight Rises until 2 months after its release when our partner is finally well enough to go see it with us. No, I have no unresolved issues.
The point is, sometimes love can push the crazy to stratospheric levels. Like these special ones we’ve assembled here:
1. Alexey Bykov faked his own death in a gruesome car accident as part of an elaborate proposal.
Proposals are hard. Well, they’re not really, but going by the kind of stuff you see on the internet, if you’re bending the knee, you’re in for some serious competition. Just a simple Google search and you’ll find Harry Potter proposals, Game of Thrones proposals, flying proposals. Some guy even got 48 of his friends to dress up as carrots for a proposal.
But we’re not exactly sure what inspired Alexey Bykov to pretend to kill himself first, get his girlfriend to bawl her eyes out, and then get down on one knee to ask her to spend the rest of her life with him.
And it wasn’t half-assed. The man hired a movie director, stuntmen, make-up artists and a script writer to make a convincing accident scene.
His reasoning for it all?
“I wanted her to realise how empty her life would be without me and how life would have no meaning without me.”
Surprisingly, she said yes!
2. A kid got his friend to shoot him so his ex would feel bad for him and get back together with him. Spoiler alert: She didn’t.
Now, when your ex dumps your sorry ass, the most ideal scenario for most of us is we pick ourselves up, work harder than ever, become a multi-billionaire and buy a Porsche to park in front of our ex’s home.
Break ups however, are not ideal, they’re like a kick in the crotch. And when faced with such a scenario, you either stoicly bear the pain and continue with life, or whimper in agony, and after a little longer, continue with life.
Jordan Cardella, however, chose pity. He decided that getting his friend to shoot him would convince his former girlfriend to take him back after seeing him in pain. So Jordan got a couple of his friends to shoot him three times.
Fortunately, his friend refused to shoot him thrice. Unfortunately, he shot him once.
Long story short, the two friends were sentenced to 2 years’ probation in what prosecutors termed “the most phenomenally stupid case” they had ever seen.
The kicker? His former girlfriend wanted nothing more to do with him.
3. Carl Tanzler lived with the corpse of the person he was in ‘love with’ for over 7 years before he was arrested.
For most people, “till death do us part”, is pretty much the ultimate in commitment. For Carl Tanzler, however, that wasn’t enough.
Tanzler’s obsession with Maria de Hoyos began when she was brought to the US Marine Hospital in Key West, Florida, because she was suffering from tuberculosis.
By all accounts, Carl Tanzler fought desperately to save her, providing medication and medical equipment while also showering Maria with gifts. However, most people agree that she did not reciprocate his feelings.
She succumbed to the disease, but Tanzler had a huge mausoleum built for her, to which he had his own key.
After a couple of years of visiting her grave every night, in 1933 Tanzler decided this wasn’t enough and took the body home. He replaced the eyes with glass, made a wig, and even stuffed the body with rags so that it would retain its shape.
Eventually, the authorities arrested him for his crimes, a full SEVEN years after housing her body snuggling up to her.
4. A NASA intern stole Moon rocks from a secure facility. And had sex on them.
As crazy things go, this one’s not so bad, especially with regards to this list. Thad Roberts and Tiffany, two NASA interns, created an elaborate plan to steal Moon rock samples from NASA.
And yes, we get the romantic connotations of someone actually stealing the Moon for their significant other. As the story goes, the two spread the rocks over a bed and sex on it.
While they may or may not have gotten away with it, most people agree that the reason they got caught was their need to sell the samples. That was when NASA suddenly woke (they didn’t realise the samples were stolen until 2 days after the incident) and managed to track down the thieves.
5. A farmer wrote a loving birthday message to his wife. In shit.
What’s the shittiest birthday greeting you’ve ever got? Now take that, multiply it by all the other shitty birthday greetings you’ve ever gotten, and it’d still fall short of this farmer’s wife’s experience.
When Dick Kleis was looking for ideas to give his wife a birthday greeting, he must’ve noticed the spare manure he had lying around. 55,000 kgs of it to be exact. And he went for it.
Oh, to be a fly on manure pile when farmer Kleis decided that yes, this, this pile of shit right here would be the perfect way to greet his wife on her birthday.
6. The Chinese couple who lived in a cave because the world didn’t want them together.
Now this story right here, this is truly heartbreaking. The world is full of rules of who should be together and who shouldn’t, and this one is right up there with the saddest of them.
In the 1950s, Liu Guojiang fell in love with Xu Chaoqing. The problem? Liu was a 19-year-old and Xu was a recently widowed mother, over 10 years older than him.
Society would not let them stay together, so they decided they didn’t need society any more. Running away from their village, they found a cave for themselves and Xu’s kids and moved in there.
As they got older and the climb up to the cave grew harder and harder, Liu spent 50 years hand carving a 6,000 step ladder for his wife, just to make it easier for her to move around.
If that ain’t love, I don’t know what is.