Thrown from a castle window, they survived and started a war

On 23 May 1618, Protestant nobles in Prague hurled two Catholic imperial officials and their secretary out of a third-story window at Hradcany Castle. All three survived the roughly 70-foot fall, which Catholics credited to angels and Protestants to a soft landing in a manure pile. The incident triggered the Bohemian Revolt and helped ignite the Thirty Years' War, one of the deadliest conflicts in European history.

— C. V. Wedgwood, The Thirty Years War — Jonathan Cape, 1938
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