Which is Stranger: Fact or Fiction?

I suppose I heard the phrase "You can't make that up" one time too many, and that's why I have this question on my mind. Does the phrase hold true when we apply it in the real world? Are events we experience, or have experienced, actually stranger than events in fiction, literature and myth? I would say yes. Picture this: in a small fraction of a vast empire, a small group of individuals cries for their freedom. One such individual assassinates a leader of the empire. Fearing the full wrath of the imperial military, the rebels turn to their ethnic brethren to the east, who have a vast empire of their own. War breaks out between the two empires, with both the western and eastern empires dragging their allies, and the allies of their allies, into the conflict. Eventually, the great eastern empire collapses from within and withdraws from the conflict, leaving the rest of the combatants to fight for no real reason. Around this time, one of the allies of the first empire joins the opposing side. In the end, from across a great sea, military aid comes to the allies of the now-dead eastern empire, and together the allies crush the three empires opposing them. We all know I'm talking about the First World War, but remove the names of Serbia, Austria-Hungary, Germany, Russia, the Ottoman Empire, Britain, France, Italy and America, and it sounds like the plot of some fantasy novel. And these events are tame in the long term.As I mentioned in my last post, I view the two world wars as a single chain of events, beginning long before conflict was sparked a hundred years ago. World War Two really began with the Treaty of Versailles, when France and Britain basically said "F##k you all" to the rest of the world. We all know the rest: a tale of betrayal, of bloodshed, of desperation, of horrors unimagined by any, and effects felt by all. And we can't ignore the fact that all fiction has some basis in fact. Tolkien's battle scenes were inspired by his own experiences on the western front during the First World War. George Lucas's Battle of Endor saw lesser-equipped natives defeat a superior invasion force, substituting the Viet Cong and American soldiers with the ursine Ewoks and Imperial Stormtroopers, respectively. Even George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire, perhaps the most unpredictable work of modern fiction, is guilty of this: Martin, a self-proclaimed history buff, has stated that many aspects of his tale have historical roots: the fictitious Wall is based on Hadrian's Wall, Henry VIII inspired the character of Robert Baratheon, and so on. At the end of the day, in my opinion, events aren't the factor that makes fantasy fantastical.