During World War I, British Army officer T.E. Lawrence helped lead an Arab revolt against the Ottoman Empire. After the war, he wrote about his extraordinary exploits in his memoir Seven Pillars of Wisdom. That and the accounts of others inspired the 1962 movie Lawrence of Arabia, starring Peter O'Toole in the titular role.
Among Lawrence's most famous battles was a successful ambush on a Turkish train at Hallat Ammar. It was retold in the movie scene embedded above.
(Photo: Ali Baldry)
Did it really happen? Some historians think that Lawrence exaggerated his wartime heroics. But now there's evidence to support Lawrence's recollection of the train ambush. Archaeologists studying the sites of his battles found a bullet at the location of the train ambush. That bullet was of a caliber that only Lawrence was known to carry. Phys.org quotes archaeologist Neil Faulkner:
Professor Nicholas Saunders said: "The bullet we found came from a Colt automatic pistol, the type of gun known to be carried by Lawrence and almost certainly not used by any of the ambush's other participants." [...]
Dr Neil Faulkner said: "Lawrence has something of a reputation as a teller of tall tales, but this bullet – and the other archaeological evidence we unearthed during ten years of fieldwork – indicates how reliable his account of the Arab Revolt in Seven Pillars of Wisdom is."
-via American Digest