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Interesting People
Wan Hu
First "Astronaut"
Chinese scholar who in ~2,000 BC attempted to use rockets on a chair to fly into the sky... leading to his death.
Mawé People
Brazilian Indigenous People with warrior initiation rite involving wearing gloves filled with hundreds of bullet ants [most painful ant bite] for 5 minutes each: 20 sessions.
Aghori
Modern Day, Native cannibals that are descendants from a Indian culture devoted to Shiva through morbid rituals. Some of their guru's are respected by locals for believed "healing powers".
Tarrare
The Man Who Could Eat Anything
A french showman/soldier who had a unusual appetite - constantly hungy - he'd eat whatever he could. Corks, stones, baskets of apples, whatever he could find in the street, only getting sick from his hunger.
Thomas Wedders
Longest Nose
Performer in the 1700's with the disputed longest nose that was 7.9 inches long - likely caused by hypertrophy.
Ching Shih
Most successful female pirate
Female Chinese pirate leader, who captained a fleet of 400 junk ships at her peak. She would attack major powers like the Portugese and East India Company until she surrendered to the Qing Dynasty while avoiding prosecution for her & her husband... dying at the age of 68. (China).
Phineas Gage
1800s American railroad worker who survived an iron rod running through his head - destroying majority of his frontal lobe. Yet, he survived for 12 years after, although acting like a completely different person.
Evariste Galois
Early 1800's Teen math genius who solved a condition for polynomials to be solved by radicals - died young at 20 during the 1830 French Revolution in a duel.
Sathya Sai Baba
Indian Guru who self-proclaimed at 14 (1930) to be a reincarnation of a saint, got a cult following after "materializing objects" aka. sleight of hand.
John Murray Spear
A spiritual leader - broke ties with the church - he thought he called create something called "New Motive Power" - a messianic "perpetual motion machine" that he compared to Jesus Christ.
Lead his followers to try to create it until their contraptions were destroyed by his own angry spiritualists.
Tycho Brahe
An astronomer in the 1500s - he was a noble with a odd lifestyle having a pet moose that would get drunk at parties and losing his nose in a duel replacing it with a brass one.
William Randolph Hurst Sr.
1900's Politician & Newspaper Publisher - having the largest magazine company in the world.
Supported the Nazi's in WWII - then went into debt during the Great Depression.
Lawrence Bader
Man unknowingly lives 2x lives
Salesman suffers from Amnesia/Cancer & starts 2nd life after disappearing on a fishing trip in 1957, remarrying with another kid & adopting.
It wasn't until 8 years later that someone recognized him and he was surprised to learn he had another family.
Jon Brower Minnoch
Heaviest Person
Heaviest person in history at 1,400 lbs.
Still owned & drove for his own water taxi company in 60's/70's Seattle for 17 years. Broke the record for greatest weight disparity in a married couple - his wife weighing 110 lbs. Managed to lose 900 lbs temporarily.
Walter Jackson Freeman II
>My vote for most vile person in the medical field.
Lobotomist who personally performed 4,000 operations with more than half being ice-pick procedure without surgical training. 100 died and those that lived were stunted/unable to function independently.
George Wallace
Mr. Segregation Now, Segregation Tmrw, Segregation Forever
Racist governor who would block black students from entering universities. Refused to give his wife her cancer diagnosis....only men were notified in 60's.... when she was governor after him.
Shirley Chisholm
(Her Motto: Unbound and Unbossed)
First black woman elected to US Congress and 1st to run for US Presidency... visited above Wallace regardless of prior incidents... who pledged support to Chisholm for votes on bill.
Doris Duke
"Richest Girl in the World"
A tobacco heiress and socialite, she had a significant media following for her luxurious lifestyle & love life.
She briefly was a news correspondent, jazz pianist, competitive surfer, and was good friends with Jackie Kennedy.
Donated majority of fortune to charity before she passed.
Anatoli Bugorski
Russian particle physicist
Survived a radiation accident in 1978 when a proton beam from a particle accelerator passed through his head. He reportedly didn't feel any pain but saw the a flash "brighter than a thousand sons" - with the head received a dose of 200-300K roentgens (radiation measure). Still alive today.
Ludger Sylbaris
Volcano Survivor
One of the 3 survivors of a 1902 volcano eruption on a French-occupied island in the Caribbean. Lucky for him he was in prison, so the jail cell shielded him from the blast & barely from the hot clouds of ash/rock.
Stanislav Petrov
Man Who Prevented WWIII
A Soviet Colonel who stopped WIII from happening in 1983 by disobeying orders.
During a false alarm incident - where the system reported a US missle was launched by possibly 4 more - he judged it to be an error avoiding a escalation between the US/Soviets.
Happy Science
(Also "Institute for Research in Human Happiness")
Japanese cult movement found in 1986 that believes a former Wall Street trader is a incarnation of a supreme being from planet Venus.
Sergei Krikalev
Last Man of the Soviet Union
He was stranded in space for 311 days because the Soviet Union had dissolved in 1991 - causing a delay in his return.
Spent over 2 years in space - causing him to be 0.02 seconds younger than anyone born at the same time because of time dilation.
Gedhun Choekyi Nyima
The Missing Dalai Lama
Dalai Lama who after being declared so, was kidnapped by China at the age of 6 and has been missing since 1995.
The United Nations have continously called for his release - to the point China gave an update in 2020 that he was "now college graduate with a stable job" - but has not provided any evidence for the statement.
Iqbal Masih
Pakistani child activist who spoke out at the age of 10 for the abusive child labour essentially as slaves after he escaped at the age of 10. (He reported to the police as forced labour was declared illegal but was brought back for a "finders fee"). Escaped again and helped an estimated 4,000 kids escape - before being assassinated in 1995 by the "carpet mafia" (from the factories).
Jack Kevorkian
Dr. Death
Assisted with 130 patients committing physician-assisted suicide which was controversial enough he served 8 years of a 10-25 prison sentence in 1999.
"Dying Is Not a Crime"
Mark Klein
AT&T Whistleblower
AT&T Technician who revealed in 2006, that the company cooperated with the US Security Agency in setting up network hardware in their building as "Room 641A" to monitor/capture American communications.
Ted Williams
Man preserved for Resurrection
Red Sox Baseball Player who post-death (2002) decided to freeze himself, "cryonics", with his body suspended in liquid nitrogen.
He put in his will he wanted to be put in bio-stasis in-case he could somehow be resurrected in the future.
John Hagee
Blood Moon Conspiracist
Crazy televangelist who believes blood moons will bring the end of the world in 2014 (Dead Space Fan?) & Hurricane Katrina happened because God was unhappy with a Pride Parade...
Roman Von Ungern-Sternberg
"God of War"​
He was an anti-communist Russian general that was part of the 1917 Russian Civil War.
He forced China out of Mongolia & restored the Khan - but occupied the country through brute force.
Ari Nagel
The Target Donor
Professor with over 160 children through Target sperm donations - 5 of the mothers sued for child support and he now has half of his university paychecks (he's a professor) garnished towards support payments.
Jonathan Meijer
Man with the most children
Dutch musician sued for fathering 600 children through sperm donations as there's a higher risk that it could foster unknowing relations between relatives.
Blacklisted in 2017, with some organizations reporting he could have 1,000+ children due to donating to other countries/contients.
Alexei Navalny
Russian Politician imprisoned for anti-government protests, transferred & died in an arctic colony after receiving another 19 yrs for running in 2024 election.
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