25 Comebacks In History That Were Completely Unexpected

A couple thousand citizen soldiers defeated the overwhelmingly superior Persian army. Not once, but twice. You can thank them for democracy.

Everybody thought he was over until he did Pulp Fiction.

Few bands have ever come back the way Aerosmith did in the 90’s.

In terms of numbers, there was no way that the colonies should have won that war, but they did.

During the 1996 Everest Disaster, Beck was left alone on the mountain but managed to make his way down to base camp. Nobody thought he would survive, so they made him comfortable in a tent where he nearly froze to death…again. He survived the second night in spite of losing his arm, both legs, and his nose.

In the late 90’s they were pretty much done as a company, at least until Steve came back and turned everything around. Also, Microsoft bailed them out for various reasons.

Specifically his fight against George Foreman. Nobody thought he would win.

Regardless of where you stand on the issue, everybody thought that he would get convicted. Somehow though, the defense managed to pull out all the stops.

During these Olympics, the US beat the Soviet Union in the ice hockey game that’s come to be called The Miracle On Ice. The craziest part is that the Soviet players were all professionals while the Americans were all amateurs (as per law).

Japan had destroyed a sizable portion of America’s Pacific fleet, but somehow the US still pulled through to defeat the Japanese.

More specifically, the United Kingdom during World War II. The Battle of Britain was looking pretty grim, but somehow that stiff British upper lip pulled them through.

He went from a 27 year stint in prison to being the first black president of South Africa.

They went from being some of the most powerful kingdoms on the block to being overrun several times during the 20th century. After the fall of the Iron Curtain, however, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, and Poland began to rebound significantly faster than most former-soviet aligned states. Today they are still modernizing rapidly as part of the European Union.

While the Middle East was the cradle of civilization, it definitely lost its flair for several thousand years…until they found oil.

In spite of constant defeats and eventually barely even having an army, Rome somehow pushed back the Carthaginians.

We can see you rolling your eyes, but we just had to include some comedy in our list. It was getting too heavy. In all seriousness though, this was a pretty hyped up comeback that led to a lot of disappointment.

There has probably never been more of a successful failure in history.

He was exiled, came back, and had to be exiled again.

He was messed up for a long time, but as of this writing, he is more popular than ever.

They tried to do stuff with it in the 90’s but mostly failed. These days it’s a fast rising aspect of technological advancement.

For those of you that don’t know, Marvel almost went bankrupt at one point.

With one of the most powerful armies the world had ever seen on the doorstep of their capital, the Soviets managed to push the Nazis all the way back to Berlin.

On a similar note to the Soviet Union, Germany as the world’s 4th largest economy in spite of being the epicenter of two world wars is quite amazing.

Of course, we can’t forget to mention Japan. It was devastated twice through nuclear warfare, and today it’s right up there with Germany.

This teenager from Wisconsin is the first known person in human history to have survived rabies without the vaccine.

Note: For those of you who don’t know, this happened in 2004 when she was treated with an experimental method known as the Milwaukee Protocol. Basically, she was put into a medically induced coma and injected with antiviral drugs.