Top 10 Historical Figures You Didn't Know Got ARRESTED

This is more of a house arrest, but arrest all the same. When Dionysius I died, his son Dionysius II took the throne. Philosopher Plato was persuaded by Dion (Dionysius-junior’s uncle) to come to the Sicilian palace in an advisory position, in the hopes that the young ruler would incorporate philosophy into his rule. However, when Uncle Dion was exiled for sedition, Plato became a prisoner of the tyrannical nephew, essentially under house arrest. In time, Plato was granted leave back to Athens where he stayed until he was once more invited to the palace. He actually went and got trapped again. He returned home eventually, but that second time was on you, Plato.

Best known for writing the novel “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” Ken Kesey was arrested in 1965 for marijuana possession. That in itself isn’t super interesting, but the story behind the arrest reads like a movie. Kesey evaded arrest for months by faking his own death. With the help of some friends, Kesey parked his car on a cliff’s edge in Eureka, California, and left a note in the vehicle. He then sought refuge in Mexico. Unfortunately, the FBI wasn’t buying the front and continued to search for the author, eventually catching him 8 months later. Kesey served 5 months in a Redwood City prison for his clever crimes.

Babe Ruth was a baseball superstar, and he spent one, yes one, day in jail in 1921 for speeding tickets. Having paid $100 in fines, Ruth still needed to do his time, and he did so. However, on the same day as his jail time, he was slated to play a baseball game. If he was not present for said game, he would have had to pay a $500 fine to the team. Therefore, upon leaving the jail at 4:00 pm, Ruth sped across New York City with a police escort (irony!) in order to make the last part of the game. It pays to be a big deal in sports.

Miguel de Cervantes, the author of “Don Quixote,” is not a man whose history is clear. A lot of details are unknown. However, we do know he had his brushes with the law. In the 19th century, a historian discovered an arrest warrant from 1569 in Cervantes’s name, in which he was charged with wounding a man in a duel. His jail time came later in life, however, in the late 16th century. He worked first as a purchasing agent and then as a tax collector, and was arrested several times for “irregularities” in his finances, spending short amounts of time in jail each time. Nothing to stab a windmill over, but interesting to know all the same.

Even presidents aren’t safe from the long arm of the law, and Ulysses S. Grant found this out in 1872. The Civil War hero was arrested in Washington, for the heinous crime of… wait for it… speeding in his horse and carriage. You see, Grant was a big fan of horses and horsepower. He would routinely speed through the streets of Washington. The speeding epidemic began to cause a problem in Washington. Officer William H. West pulled him over once, letting him off with a warning. However, the very next evening, West once again caught the President, this time taking him in with another group of speed demons. Fines were paid and such, but Grant did not show up for his court date.

It shouldn’t come as a big surprise that Karl Marx was arrested at some point, given his political views and controversial publications. His first arrest, however, was basically for drunk and disorderly conduct when Marx was a student at the University of Bonn in 1835. Marx was involved with some extracurricular clubs, namely a radical politics assembly, The Poets’ Club, and a drinking organization called the Trier Tavern Club. The drinking club was known for antagonizing the wealthier students on campus, and one of these incidents got Marx thrown in jail at one point. Later in life, Marx was arrested and accused of providing weapons to workers in Belgium.

Oscar Wilde is a celebrated writer, famous for works like “The Picture of Dorian Gray” and “The Importance of Being Earnest.” He was perhaps just as well known for his dedication to “art for art’s sake,” his bombastic and outrageous personality and his run-ins with the law. Sadly, 19th century London was a far less progressive place than it is today, and it was only in 1967 that sexual activity between two men was decriminalized. This was what Wilde was tried and convicted of in 1895. He served two years’ hard labour on the charges of “gross indecency,” which was the maximum charge. Wilde once said, “I have no objection to anyone’s sex life as long as they don’t practice it in the street and frighten the horses.”

Most of the political revolutionaries in history spent time in jail at some point. Former Soviet Union leader Joseph Stalin had quite the wrap sheet, prior to his rise to power. Between 1902 and 1913, he was arrested seven times and sent into exile six times. He wasn’t kept in exile very well, as he escaped five out of the six times. He was arrested for his revolutionary activities, as one would expect, spending six to eight months in prison at a time. In spreading his Marxist-Leninist political beliefs, inciting riots and public disturbances eventually earned him some prison time or exile. It’s puzzling that they kept exiling him, as he would frequently escape.

Bill Gates, co-founder of the tech giant known as Microsoft, was arrested three times in his younger days. This may sound intriguing, but honestly, all three times were for traffic violations, which is arguably completely uninteresting. Did anyone truly believe Bill Gates was a wild child in his youth? He was arrested in 1975 for driving without a license, then in 1977 for supposedly running a stop sign, and a third time in 1989 for suspicion of drunk driving (a sentence which was later reduced).

The second U.S. president to make our list, George W. Bush has admitted that, in his youth, he spent more time than he would have liked drinking. And eventually, he chose to abstain from alcohol entirely. But before he came to that decision, Bush was arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol while in Maine, near his summer home, in 1976. He paid a $150 fine, and had his license suspended for a time. And that was that, until the year 2000 - when Bush was elected President. His arrest record came up as an issue when the president wished to enter Canada, as according to Canada’s Criminal Code, he could not enter the country freely having committed an indictable crime by Canada’s standards. President Bush didn’t actually make his first official visit to the Great White North until 2004, but the reason for this delay is probably unrelated. Probably.