- Never underestimate what spite-fueled anger can achieve.
All expect the most saint-like of us have that one person. You know who they are — they’re that scumbag who deserve nothing good in their lives.
Still, most of us aren’t ready to go out of our way just to spite people. But then you have those people who are.
Here are seven cases of people doing incredibly petty (and frankly pretty weird) things out of nothing but pure spite.
7. The Vantablack Saga
In 2014, Surrey Nanosystem invented Vantablack, the blackest black that ever blacked. Many artists were looking forward to using the color that absorbed 99.965% of visible light.
And then sculptor Anish Kapoor bought the exclusive right to use Vantablack artistically.
Incensed, British artist Stuart Semple developed the brightest, most garish pink color ever created and made it available to everyone — except Kapoor, who was explicitly banned from touching the stuff in its license agreement. Yet, Kapoor somehow got his hands on the stuff and made a mocking social media post about it.
Even more upset, Semple developed yet another color. This one was Black 3.0, a black even blacker than Kapoor’s Vantablack, making his earlier black artistically pointless.
The whole spite-fueled color competition has now been rendered entirely pointless because, in 2019, MIT researchers revealed a black coating that absorbs 99.995% of all visible light.
6. The Moriarty Monument
Daniel Moriarty was an Irish immigrant to the U.S. in the 19th century. He came from humble beginnings but worked his way up to become a successful and wealthy real estate magnate in New Orleans.
Yet, his money didn’t bring respect. The area’s other rich people scoffed at Moriarty as they considered him a nouveau-riche upstart.
That never sat right with Moriarty. When his wife, Mary, died in 1887, Moriarty took his chance to show up everyone who had humiliated him.
He spent the next 18 years constructing an enormous memorial monument to his late wife. The Moriarty Monument, finished in 1905, stands 80 feet tall, features four statues (representing faith, hope, charity, and Mary herself), and has the name MORIARTY plastered on its side in big block letters.
We can only assume Daniel climbed the monument at least once just to look down on everyone else.
5. The Tyler Spite House
Dr. John Tyler was an ophthalmologist who lived in Frederick, Maryland, in the early 19th century. In 1814, he discovered the city planned to build a road through an empty plot of land he owned.
Well, he didn’t like that. He began looking for legal loopholes that would allow him to stop the construction on his property.
He found an old law dictating that roads couldn’t be built on private land with a building. It didn’t even need to be a complete building — any obvious progress toward one was enough.
So, Tyler hired a builder to break ground on the plot. When city officials came to inspect the property the next day, they found an incredibly smug Tyler pointing at the hole in the ground.
That said, Tyler did end up building a house that he then rented out. It stands to this day and is known appropriately as the Tyler Spite House.
4. The Waldorf-Astoria Hotel
The Waldorf-Astoria Hotel is known worldwide for being the den of ultimate luxury. And it exists only because of a spiteful feud between William Waldorf Astor and his aunt Caroline Schermerhorn Astor, who lived in neighboring mansions on 5th Ave.
The two never got along and, when William left New York for England in 1890, he decided to make his hated aunt’s life miserable. He had his mansion demolished and constructed the luxurious Waldorf Hotel in its place, knowing that it would infuriate Caroline.
Well, Caroline moved elsewhere a few years later. Her son, John Jacob Astor IV, decided to up William’s stunt and razed Caroline’s mansion only to build an even fancier hotel — The Astoria.
Eventually, however, the family feud was settled and the two hotels combined into the legendary Waldorf-Atoria.
3. The Self-Mutilating Nuns
The year was 870 and Vikings led by Ragnar Lothbrok (of the History Channel show Vikings fame) were ravaging northern England. The news of the raiders’ approach reached Coldingham Abbey, home to a convent of nuns.
The holy women had heard of the Vikings’ lecherous ways and knew they’d have to abandon their abbey or likely be raped. Faced with a humiliating fate either way, Aebbe the Younger, the Abbess of Coldingham, instructed the sisters to cut off their noses and upper lips.
That way, she hoped the Vikings would be repulsed and not touch the nuns. Or, if they did rape them, they’d become known as the raiders who bedded ugly, mutilated women.
Aebbe’s trick worked — kind of. The Vikings didn’t want to touch the noseless nuns so they locked them in their abbey and set it on fire.
We suppose Aebbe had the moral victory.
2. The Castle of Spite
The Carbisdale Castle is the last castle built in Scotland, completed in 1907. It’s also known as the Castle of Spite for its petty history.
Mary Caroline Blair married the Duke of Sutherland in 1889, much to the Duke’s family’s chagrin. When the Duke died in 1892, he left his fortune to Mary.
His family, however, did their utmost to stop her from getting her inheritance. After a lot of legal wrangling (and a prison sentence for destroying documents), Mary and the Duke’s family agreed that she would relinquish most of the land in exchange for a castle on the property.
So, Mary picked the highest hill right by the family’s property to make sure they would always see the castle. She also had a large clock tower built with a clock on each side — except the one that faced the Sutherland family’s mansion.
What a way to tell someone you don’t give them the time of day.
1. Lamborghini
Today, Lamborghini is a renowned manufacturer of luxury sports cars. But few people know that the company was founded just to spite Ferrari.
You see, the founder Ferruccio Lamborghini had found success by manufacturing farm tractors. He loved Ferrari cars and owned one, but he wasn’t satisfied with the mediocre clutch on the car.
So, he reportedly wrote a letter to Enzo Ferrari, telling him he was a fan and suggesting improvements to the clutch based on his engineering knowledge. Ferrari didn’t like Lamborghini stepping out of line and allegedly sent him back a letter suggesting that he stick to his tractors.
Enraged, Lamborghini decided he would show Ferrari who would build a better sports car. In 1963, he founded his own car marque — with the help of ex-Ferrari employees who also had a bone to pick with their previous employer.