The biggest scandals to ever hit the History Channel

Ice Road Truckers is one of History's best-known reality shows, depicting the perilous lives of drivers in the iciest regions of Canada and Alaska. And sure, it's been criticized by actual trucker media like Truck News for exaggerating or even outright faking some of the danger, but the real scandal hit the show in 2013, when Ice Road Truckers star Timothy Zickuhr kidnapped a woman and held her for ransom.

According to a CBS report, Zickuhr abducted Lisa Cadeau after hiring her for sex work in Las Vegas. He claimed that she had overcharged him by $1,000 and demanded she meet with him to settle the dispute. But instead of "settling" anything, he dragged her back to his apartment, beat her, tied her up with backpack straps, shoved her in a closet, and doused her with cold water from a mop bucket.

Fearing for her life, Cadeau gave Zickuhr the phone number of an undercover police officer, claiming he was a man who could pay her ransom. Zickuhr called the number and unknowingly arranged his own arrest. The Las Vegas Sun reports that he forced Cadeau to jump out a second-story window in order to avoid police detection ... before he brought her directly to the undercover officer. Zickuhr confessed on the spot, admitting that he intended to hold Cadeau hostage and prostitute her through Craigslist and that he had "made a mistake." Yeah ... no kidding.

Every so often, even the History Channel has to admit that some of their programming is a tad controversial. There was that one time that they commissioned and then abruptly canceled a $30 million mini-series about the Kennedys, for example. The Hollywood Reporter explains the bizarre fate of The Kennedys, which was a scripted, eight-part series about John F. Kennedy and his family, leaning hard into some of the more tawdry rumors about the famous clan. An early leaked draft of the script caused an outcry among Kennedy family allies, and after months of rewrites and filming, the high-profile project was pulled entirely for being pretty much wall-to-wall slander and lies. Or, as the official statement went, it was "not a fit for the History brand."

Co-creator Joel Surnow still defended his project in an interview with the Atlantic, saying people were biased against him for being a staunch conservative who wanted to make a Kennedy series. Conspiracy theorists also took the opportunity to insist that the surviving members of the Kennedy family had bullied the History Channel into dropping the show (because conspiracy theorists love the Kennedys), but all we know for sure is that when the mini-series eventually did come out elsewhere, the Hollywood Reporter review called it "dull," "unwatchable," and "a ham-fisted mess."

In the grand tradition of that weird Animal Planet "documentary" about mermaids, Bigfoot Captured was a feature-length special about the discovery and capture of a real Sasquatch. It was also, as Paste Magazine put it, a TV abomination. See, the History Channel styled Bigfoot Captured as a real documentary, about an actual real live forest ape, despite the fact that the entire program was pure fiction. Only, some people didn't realize it was fictional, since the "scripted story" disclaimer was buried deep in the credits. This left some viewers furious about pseudoscience being presented as fact and some viewers thoroughly excited to discover "proof" of a "real" Bigfoot. Many took to Twitter to spread the good news about America's favorite cryptid.

I mean, sure, in theory a mockumentary about Bigfoot could be a bit of innocent fun. But not only did the History Channel fool their audience, they also more or less lied to their guest experts about the nature of the production. In an interview with Idaho State Journal, Professor Jeff Meldrum said he was disappointed to discover that the documentary faked evidence and had no interest in working from credible information. He confirmed that he had nothing to do with the overall plot, hadn't been told what he was getting himself into, and suggested that viewers "take what you can from it, and have a chuckle over the remainder."

Remember when the History Channel "solved" the mystery of Amelia Earhart, only to have their key piece of evidence debunked right away by a blogger? Because that happened. According to Vanity Fair, the documentary Amelia Earhart: The Lost Evidence caused some short-lived excitement when it presented a photo of Earhart and her navigator, alive and in the Marshall Islands after her mysterious disappearance. The documentary suggests that Earhart survived her infamous crash in 1937 and that the U.S. government knew she was alive but covered it up ... because ... conspiracy?

Anyway, the History Channel only had a brief moment of historical triumph before they were thwarted by a blogger with access to a library. National Geographic reports that Japanese military blogger Kota Yamano decided to do a little fact-checking on Amelia Earhart's fate. He looked up the alleged location of the photo in the Japanese national library's database and found it right away. He said it took him a half hour. Turns out, the photo was published in a Japanese coffee table book in the year 1935. Two years before Earhart took her flight. So even if it were Amelia Earhart in that photo (it's not), it definitely doesn't prove anything about her disappearance. In response, the History Channel promised that they have a team of experts "exploring the latest developments about Amelia Earhart," and they will surely keep the public informed if she should pop up again.

It's one of the world's most ridiculous conspiracy theories: the government is filling the air with chemicals so that they can mind-control everyone on planet Earth, or make everyone sick, or control the weather or something. Just pick your favorite. Most people intuitively understand the sheer stupidity of this idea, because if it was actually true that the government was filling the air with chemicals in a bid to mind-control everyone, they appear to be really, really bad at it. Have you noticed an unusually large number of people stumbling around in our streets muttering things like, "Must manipulate futures prices?" Neither have we.

Anyway, the whole idea is so patently stupid that most people don't even think about it, except History, who evidently felt like it was worth an entire show. But according to Contrail Science (and now everyone who believes this stuff is shouting, "You can't trust Contrail Science because they are totally in on it!") the History special basically just repeated the whole stupid conspiracy theory and provided a platform to the whack-jobs who actually believe it, thus making the theory seem credible ... which is just such an awesome thing to do in an era where half the population already doesn't trust science. Thanks, History, for making it someone else's job to remind everyone that you can't trust a conspiracy nut, even one who gets to be on the History Channel.

The reality competition Alone is totally about history, because everything you'll see in any given episode was shot in the historical timeframe of six months ago.

This particular reality show tries to one-up Survivor by abandoning its contestants in the middle of nowhere and then following their journey to survive alone in the wilderness. Happily, none of these people are naked, because another truly awful reality show already did that.

According to E-Celebrity, one really stupid thing that got viewers fired up about the show (and not in the good way) is the fact that contestants aren't being forced to survive miles from civilization, which is what the showrunners want you to believe. No, in many cases the contestants are actually within an hour's walk of the nearest town, and sometimes they're in a place where there is a network of trails, which definitely seems to suggest that they're just not really that isolated.

When you think of lumberjacks, you usually think of burly dudes in plaid, chopping down trees, putting "wipe your butt on a spotted owl" stickers on their trucks, and maybe pressing wildflowers like in that Monty Python song. You don't typically think of them pulling stuff out of the water, because that's not where trees usually are.

According to NPR, though, there was a time when lumberjacks used to put felled trees on rafts and float them down the river, and every now and then the trees would fall off the raft and sink to the bottom. And they don't rot down there, either — if the water is cold, the trees will stay preserved at the bottom for a long time, and can eventually be salvaged.

The problem is, salvaging sunken trees is not legal in the state of Washington. That didn't stop Ax Man star Jimmy Smith from fishing those logs out of the river on national freaking television, which was either ridiculously arrogant or ridiculously stupid. Smith had an entirely altruistic reason for his actions, though: to protect people participating in water sports on the river, in case they're using like an 11-foot-long oar or something and they accidentally get it stuck on a log. "If I can save on kid or one boater, I think it's worth it," Smith said. And we're sure that the money he got for those logs didn't factor into it at all.

Pawn Stars fan favorite Austin Lee Russell is better known by his stage name, Chumlee. He's portrayed as the comic foil at the Gold and Silver Pawn Shop, where he's often the butt of jokes. Occasionally he'll impress his fellow pawn shop workers with his talent at the game of pinball. More frequently, he'll deliver his lines in a way that lets you know the money is only barely keeping him on the show. In non-televised reality, though, Chumlee's life is somewhat less whimsical and comedic.

As USA Today reports, police carried out a search of his house while following up on sexual assault allegations in 2016. They did not find the evidence to convict Chumlee of sexual assault, but they did find drugs in his regrettably named "Chum Chum" room, including marijuana and meth, as well as numerous illegal firearms, and quite a few items usually found with people who package and sell narcotics. According to the New York Daily News, however, the reality star was able to avoid jail time with a plea deal despite being charged with quite a few felonies.

When your livelihood depends on your reputation as a purveyor of high-quality work, and your work is suddenly on display to an enormous television audience, it seems like it would be in your best interests to make sure you keep producing high-quality work. Sure, you might feel like your fame has put you on the top of the world and it will never end, but that's how Spencer Pratt felt, too. Who is Spencer Pratt, you ask? Exactly.

So our advice to reality stars is this: Do high-quality work. According to the Vegas Tourist, though, at least one reality star has failed to follow that piece of advice.

Rick Dale from American Restoration was called out in 2012 for restoring a 1950s-style jukebox but failing to actually repair the thing. He kept the jukebox for two months, did a great job making it look good, but when the owner got it back he discovered that it wasn't in working order, even though restoring it to working order was part of the original agreement. Now, it's great to have a sharp-looking, jukebox but what you really want is a sharp-looking jukebox that plays music, and you especially want that if you paid someone $4,000 to make it look sharp and play music. But not only did Dale reportedly fail to acknowledge that the work wasn't complete, he also cashed the check and stopped returning his customer's phone calls. How professional.

Shows about buried/sunken treasure and unsolved historical mysteries tend to do well for History, but as anyone who was inspired by Indiana Jones to become an archaeologist can tell you, real treasure hunting is super-boring. So to get people to actually tune in to a show about buried/sunken treasure, you kind of need to sensationalize, embellish, and just make things up as you go along. The trouble is, most people believe reality television will contain some actual reality, and the accuracy of most treasure hunting shows is questionable at best.

The History show Pirate Treasure of the Knights Templar was a short-lived series starring forensic geologist Scott Wolter and treasure hunter Barry Clifford. Their team was searching sunken wrecks off the coast of Madagascar that they believed were connected to the Portuguese Templars.

The show was called out for unprofessionalism by UNESCO, which accused them of treating the research and recovery of the vessels in "an unscientific manner, without the necessary precautions and leading to damage to the sites as well as making it more difficult to understand the historic background of the sites." In response, Wolter basically claimed that UNESCO was just jealous. "UNESCO hates Barry Clifford simply because he is the most successful pirate ship discoverer in history," he wrote on his blog. Oh, okay, that must be it. Still, the show only lasted one season, so he clearly isn't that successful of a discoverer.

You will be shocked to hear that History's Vikings is a dramatization, not a documentary.

Now in History's defense, Vikings is based on the old Norse sagas, which National Geographic says were written down in the 13th century but were passed down verbally for centuries before that. So the "facts" that are recorded in the Norse sagas probably aren't really facts — they've likely been embellished, altered, or even completely made up. Historians don't really even agree on whether the show's central character, Ragnar Lothbrok, even existed.

One of the biggest liberties showrunners took was with the relationship between Ragnar and Rollo. In real life (assuming Ragnar existed, obviously), the two men were not only not brothers, it's unlikely they ever even met. And the show's timeline is all off, too — we see our favorite marauders raiding a monastery in Season 1, and then attacking Paris in Season 3, which are two events that happened 120 years apart. Also, the Vikings did wear helmets (though not horned helmets like you're probably picturing), Christians didn't crucify heathens (crucifixion was purely a Jesus thing), the Vikings almost never fought pitched battles (they preferred raids), and as much as we love the shield maidens, there probably weren't that many of them, if they existed at all. Sadly, that doesn't leave a whole lot of room for the truth.