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Rubbing It In: History’s Greatest Flexes and Ownages

Khalid Elhassan June 3, 2025 17 min

1. Nobody Believed This Act of Ownage at First

1 dmitry ovcharenko. imgur — Dmitry Ovcharenko. Imgur

At first, Ovcharenko chain of command refused to believe his account. That changed when his astonished comrades finally saw the scene of his one-man rampage, and the gruesome evidence scattered all around. Ovcharenko had slaughtered 21 Nazis with grenades, and chopped off the heads of two enemy officers with an ax. That earned him a Hero of the Soviet Union decoration. Unfortunately, he did not live to see the war’s end. Dmitry Ovcharenko soldiered on until World War II’s last year, when he was severely injured as the Red Army advanced into Hungary, and died in late January, 1945.

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Where Did We Find This Stuff? Some Sources and Further Reading

Ancient Origins – What Really Happened to Valerian?

Bulletin of the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 14 No. 1 (1987) – Review: The History of al-Tabari, Volume XXVII, the Abbasid Revolution

Classical Philology, Volume 83, Number 1, Jan., 1988 – Passing the Salt: On the Destruction of Carthage Again

Classical Review, Vol. 27, No. 2 (Mar., 1913) – Passing Under the Yoke

Encyclopedia Britannica – Timur

Gabriel, Richard – Subotai the Valiant: Genghis Khan’s Greatest General (2004)

Glubb, John Bagot – A Short History of the Arab Peoples (1969)

Gonick, Larry – The Cartoon History of the Universe III: From the Rise of Arabia to the Renaissance (2002)

Hildinger, Erik – Warriors of the Steppe: Military History of Central Asia, 500 BC to 1700 AD (1997)

History Collection – Decadent and Depraved Roman Emperors Who Shocked Their Subjects

Inalcik, Halil – The Ottoman Empire: The Classical Age, 1300-1600 (1969)

Lamb, Harold – Tamerlane: The Earth Shaker (1929)

Lord Kinross – The Ottoman Centuries: The Rise and Fall of the Ottoman Empire (1979)

Military History Now – Beyond the Pail: The Unbelievable War of the Oaken Bucket

Morgan, David – The Mongols (1986)

Robinson, Paul – Military Honour and the Conduct of War (2006)

Top War – Dmitry Ovcharenko: The Hero Who Hacked Two Dozen Fascists With an Ax

Vetus Testamentum, Vol. 13, Fasc. 1 (Jan., 1963) – Jericho and Shechem: A Religio-Literary Aspect of City Destruction

War History Online – Russian Rambo of WWII

World History Encyclopedia – Valerian

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.