The piece of paper that fooled Hitler (and why you'd better have brains on your side if you're going to win a war)

Alan Turing, whose work was vital to cracking the Nazi code, finally got a posthumous apology from the UK government thanks to the work of John Graham-Cumming.

Why?
Alan Turing was also gay and he was prosecuted for "gross indecency" (essentially being gay) in 1952. To avoid prison he agreed to be injected with female hormones as a sort of 'cure' for homosexuality. Two years after his prosecution he was dead: he killed himself by eating an apple dipped in potassium cyanide.