Today I found out about the largely forgotten colorful benevolent dictator of the United States and protector of Mexico, Emperor Norton I. His Imperial Majesty Joshua Abraham Norton I was born between 1811 and 1818 in England. Records of his birth date vary considerably, but it’s likely that the latter date is the correct one. His family immigrated to South […]
Read more
What was supposed to be just another day on the job for 25-year-old Phineas Gage turned out to be anything but, with events transpiring to make him a legend – in neurology anyway. On that fateful day, Phineas Gage suffered a traumatic brain injury when a very large iron rod went through his head. Despite this, he survived and became one of […]
Read more
He died nearly 800 years ago, and yet we all still know his name. From 1190 to 1227, Genghis Khan ruled an empire that eventually stretched from Russia to China. He is responsible for millions of deaths, but he also unified warring factions and brought peace and security to 5000 miles of trade routes. The complicated legacy of his Mongol […]
Read more
Tsutomu Yamaguchi died from stomach cancer. The cancer part perhaps isn’t surprising given that Yamaguchi is currently the only person officially recognized by the Japanese government as having lived through the atomic bombings of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki. (Note: There were actually well over a 100 or so others as well, perhaps as many as 165; they just have never […]
Read more
Ben Franklin was a man of many and varied accomplishments- a Renaissance man in the grand tradition of Leonardo da Vinci. He was a writer, scientist, musician, inventor and innovator, despite only ever receiving 2 years of formal schooling. His ideas and principles helped shape his fledgling nation, and his diplomatic skills assured the newly born United States of America […]
Read more
Most remember John Fitzgerald Kennedy as our youthful and inspiring 35th President who, with his elegant wife, turned the White House into Camelot until his assassination in November 1963. But what few today recall is that long before his presidency, JFK was a well-respected author and even won the Pulitzer Prize for history in 1957 with Profiles in Courage. Born […]
Read more
To this day, the Siberian wilderness is still one of the most isolated places in the world. Known as the Siberian taiga (meaning “forest” in Russian), its harsh, cold climate greatly discourages human habitation. Its steep hills and difficult terrain makes it nearly impossible to travel through it, much less live there. It’s filled with pine and birch trees, nearly […]
Read more
Today I found out about Vasili Blokhin, the “Most Prolific Executioner” of all time, according to the Guinness World Records. Born to a Russian peasant family in 1895, as a young man he quickly earned a reputation for “chernaya rabota”, or “black work”, while serving in the Tsarist army during World War I- gaining recognition from Stalin himself for his […]
Read more
Bob Young was born in Bakersfield, CA., on January 15, 1916. As a relay runner, he was to compete in the 1936 Olympics and would go on to win a silver medal. But despite these two historic (and very cool) accomplishments, Bob Young’s “coolest ever” accomplishment was a very unique one. He gave the finger to Adolf Hitler. Bob was […]
Read more
Joseph Samuels (some sources list his surname as “Samuel”) was an English criminal, born in 1780. After being arrested for robbery at the age of 15, Samuels was eventually convicted and shipped to Australia in 1801. At the time, Australia had a penal colony at Sydney Cove. Security in these early penal settlements was reinforced by the isolation of the […]
Read more
The man was Lt. Col William Rankin. How did he almost drown in the sky? In 1959, while ejecting from his F-8 Crusader at 47,000 ft (14,325 meters) and at a speed of Mach .82 (624 mph or 1004 km/h), he got caught up in a cumulonimbus tower (basically a dense, vertical cloud, generally found in areas of extreme atmospheric […]
Read more
1) His name was originally Michael, not Martin. His father was also Michael King, hence why Martin Luther King Jr. was originally named Michael King Jr. However, after a trip to Germany in 1931, Michael King Sr. changed his own name in homage to historic German theologian Martin Luther. Michael King Jr. was two years old at the time and […]
Read more
The man was Adam Rainer born in Graz, Austria sometime in 1899 (the exact date isn’t known). Rainer’s parents were neither tall nor short for the time, with his father measuring in at 5 feet 8 inches (1.72 m) and his mother at 5 feet 5 inches (1.65 m). He even had a brother who matched his father’s height at […]
Read more
The man was Eric Moussambani Malonga, later nicknamed “Eric the Eel”. Moussambani is from Equatorial Guinea in Africa and only managed to get into the Olympics at all because of a wildcard drawing system put in place by the International Olympic Committee, designed to try to encourage developing countries to participate in various Olympic events. Thanks to this drawing, Equatorial Guinea […]
Read more
He is one of the most admired actors in the history of the movies. Marilyn Monroe called him “the sexiest man” she had ever seen. And if you watch his early, incredible performances in “On the Waterfront” (1954), “Streetcar Named Desire” (1951), “The Wild One” (1953), “The Men” (1950), and my favorite Brando film “Guys and Dolls” (1955), you can […]
Read more
The real name of the “Birdman” was Robert Franklin Stroud. Seattle born Stroud ran away from home at the age of 13 and was first arrested in 1909 at the age of 19 after turning himself in for murder. He shot and killed a bartender, F. K. Von Dahmer, who had allegedly failed to pay a prostitute for whom Stroud was […]
Read more
On October 9, 1985, the great director and actor, Orson Welles, was scheduled to appear on “The Merv Griffin Show”, one of TV’s most popular talk shows. Griffin had actually met Welles years before at his Beverly Hills Hotel bungalow. “I was right outside his bungalow”, recalled Griffin. “I introduced myself, and he said ‘I know who you are and […]
Read more
Perhaps the most popular and beloved U.S. President, Abraham Lincoln is famous for many of his great and historic deeds. As these have been frequently documented, there seems no reason to repeat them here. But few know and realize President Lincoln’s great love for animals. Like many young boys, Lincoln would sometimes do cruel things to animals, but Lincoln quickly […]
Read more