10 Scandalous Love Affairs That Changed History Forever

Helen was considered to be the most beautiful woman in the world when she was abducted by Paris of Troy (some say they eloped), despite the fact that she was married to someone else. Their affair set in motion a lengthy war between the Greeks (then called the Achaeans) and the Trojans that resulted in thousands of casualties on both sides.

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Henry VIII was still married to his first wife when he became enthralled with young Anne Boleyn while engaged in an affair with her older sister, Mary. When the Pope refused to grant the king a divorce so he could marry Anne, he led the Church of England to break off from Catholicism to become its own distinct religion, which remains one of the dominant branches of Protestantism all these centuries later.

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Technically, Catherine wasn't married when she began her affair with Potemkin (her husband, the Csar, had been assassinated in a political coup that she engineered). Yet their affair led to all manner of political machinations within Russia, such as adding Crimea, Belarus and Lithuania to the Russian empire, along with treaties that expanded Russia's borders to within central Europe. Potemkin's influence on Catherine remained even after she moved on to other lovers, and the fallout of their affair resulted in redefining Russia's borders and setting up the conditions to foment the revolution that followed.

In 1845, Charles Dickens was perhaps Britain's most celebrated writer — and a married man with nine children — when he met 17-year-old actress Ellen "Nelly" Tennan. While Dickens' marriage eventually crumbled, his illicit affair with Tennan continued for 13 years, and was said to have provided him with the inspiration for some of his most celebrated characters, including Estella in Great Expectations.

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Mary Godwin was just 16 when she began an affair with writer Percy Bysshe Shelley, then 21 and extremely married. Their affair resulted in Godwin becoming pregnant and Shelley leaving his wife (who later drowned herself). After the couple married, they vacationed in Switzerland with Lord Byron, where Mary Shelley came up with the idea for a novel about a mad scientist who figures out how to reanimate a corpse in her novel Frankenstein, with Dr. Frankenstein's monster becoming one of the most enduring horror characters of the 20th century and beyond.

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King Edward VIII had only been on the throne of England for a few months when he created a constitutional crisis by proposing to Wallis Simpson, an American divorcee who was in the process of seeking a divorce from her second husband. Edward's reign lasted a mere 326 days before he abdicated the throne in order to marry her, setting his ill-prepared, stuttering younger brother George on the throne instead. When he died at age 56, after a 16-year rule, his daughter Elizabeth II took over at age 25; now 91, QEII has become the longest-reigning monarch in British history.

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JFK's extramarital shenanigans are pretty well documented, but it was his dalliance with Judith Exner that may have led to his own assassination. Kennedy met Exner through Frank Sinatra in Vegas, and she became his mistress — while she was simultaneously the mistress of mob boss Sam Giancana. And while the truth remains murky and will likely never be known, some theories link the mob to JFK's assassination, although that's a matter of some debate. What's not in dispute, however, is that the president of the U.S. was engaged in a lengthy affair with the mistress of a powerful mob boss, which is a weird situation no matter how you look at it.

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The tumultuous affair between movie stars Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor eclipsed their films, and the fallout over their scandalous affair (and the movie that created it) nearly sent a Hollywood studio into bankruptcy. Taylor and Burton were both married when they were cast in Cleopatra, and their scandalous affair made headlines worldwide — Taylor was even scolded by the Pope! Partly due to its mercurial stars, the movie went wildly over budget (adjusted for inflation, it would have cost nearly $350 million to make today). Although it was a box office hit, the massive budget led to a shortfall that nearly bankrupted 20th Century Fox, which wound up laying off thousands of employees and selling off huge tracts of land in Los Angeles to keep from going under. On the plus side, the on-again, off-again relationship between Liz and Dick would provide tabloid reporters with headlines for years to come...

Beatlemaniacs were ticked off when John Lennon left wife Cynthia and their son, Julian, to run off with avant-garde artist Yoko Ono in 1968 — and were even more ticked off when it appeared that Ono was responsible for the breakup of The Beatles (while most agree the band would have broken up anyhow, some fans still hold her responsible). Ono is widely credited for pushing Lennon in more experimental musical directions as well as for his political activism, which characterized much of his work in the 1960s and early '70s.

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In 1988, Colorado Senator Gary Hart was the clear frontrunner to become the Democratic presidential nominee, with pundits predicting the charismatic, handsome politician would easily win the election against Republican nominee George H.W. Bush. Instead, a photograph of Hart and mistress Donna Rice sitting on his lap created a national scandal that led Hart to drop out of the race and resulted in Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis becoming the Democratic nominee — who was crushed by Bush on election night. How different would the world be today had the liberal, progressive Gary Hart been elected president? We'll never know...

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