Most people who go missing turn up safe and well, within a few hours or days. Some, unfortunately, are found dead. When people do leave, the reason is often obvious, too—because they are running away from something (debt or the police, for example) or to something (a new partner or a fresh start).

It is very rare for people to disappear entirely completely and forever, but occasionally, even prominent figures seem to vanish without a trace for no reason at all. Here, we look at some very cold cases indeed.

10 John Lansing Jr.

In 1829, John Lansing Jr., former chief justice of the New York State Supreme Court, popped out to mail a letter and was never seen again. Lansing had had a glittering legal career. He was a member of the Congress of the Confederation in 1785 and was part of the Constitutional Convention in 1787. Lansing was said to have suffered from a stammer, which hindered his political career, but he still managed to become the chancellor of New York in 1801. In 1800, Lansing presided over People v. Weeks, the first formally documented murder trial in American history.

On the night of his disappearance, December 12, 1829, John Lansing left his hotel in Manhattan to mail a letter via boat. It was the last anyone saw of him. A number of theories were proposed at the time of the disappearance: that he had tripped and fallen off the dock, that he was mugged and killed, and his body was hidden somewhere, or that he was murdered by political enemies. The last theory gained some weight when the grandson of the publisher Thurlow Weed maintained that his grandfather had evidence that Lansing was murdered by powerful political enemies, though he refused to name them.^[1]

It is unlikely that we will ever know the truth, and Lansing’s body has never been found. If it were to be found, there is an empty tomb in his hometown of Albany, New York, with Lansing’s name on it, just waiting for him to come home.

9 Solomon Northup

Solomon Northup, the author of the famous book Twelve Years a Slave, disappeared without trace in 1857. His book, made into an Oscar winning-film in 2013, recounts the true story of his kidnapping and subsequent sale into slavery. His treatment under the brutal Edwin Epps makes especially difficult reading. Northup’s book was an immediate success, selling 30,000 copies in the first two years.

After his escape, Northup was said to have worked on the Underground Railroad, aiding other slaves to escape, and spent much time unsuccessfully trying to bring a suit against his kidnappers. In Washington, DC, Northup was not allowed to testify in the case because he was black. He was later allowed to file the suit in New York, but after a number of delays, the case was dropped.

He embarked upon a speaking tour in Canada in 1857 and never returned home. He was never heard from again, though a letter written in 1863 claimed he was alive. A number of theories have been proposed as to what happened to him: that he became a spy for the Union Army and was captured and killed, that he was kidnapped and made a slave again, or that he had just wandered away and died where no one knew him and is buried in an unmarked grave somewhere.^[2]

Whatever happened to Solomon Northup, he made a contribution to the abolition of slavery and the conscience of the United States and the rest of the world that lived long after him.

8 James William Boyd

In 1865, Captain James William Boyd, an officer of the Confederacy, was released after having been captured by the Union. He was due to meet his son and travel to Mexico when he vanished without trace. Boyd’s disappearance is the subject of a conspiracy theory that he was killed after being mistaken for John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of President Abraham Lincoln.^[3] Boyd was said to somewhat resemble Booth and shared the same initials, none of which seems to be hard evidence, and the theory has been proposed, discounted, ridiculed, and fictionalized by a whole host of historians and writers, most of whom relegate Captain Boyd to a subplot in someone else’s drama.

What is known is that Boyd was held as a prisoner of war by the Union until February 1865, when he was released so that he could return home to take care of his seven children, his wife having died while he was incarcerated. His son is said to have received a letter telling him to meet Boyd in Brownsville, Texas, but Boyd never showed up for the rendezvous, and no further word was ever received from him.

7 Charley Ross

Charley Ross was only four years old in 1874, when he and his older brother Walter were enticed into a horse-drawn carriage while they were playing in their garden in Philadelphia. Five-year-old Walter was able to get out further down the street, but Charley was driven away and was never seen again.

The kidnapping of Charley Ross is notable for two reasons. It was the first well-documented instance of a ransom note being sent in American history, and it also led to a change in the law. Until that time, kidnapping had been a misdemeanor offense. In 1875, in Pennsylvania, this was changed to a felony.

In all, 23 ransom letters were sent to the Ross family, demanding $20,000. The authorities were inexperienced at dealing with kidnapping, and the mayor’s office foolishly offered a reward of, coincidentally, $20,000 for his return. This unleashed an unending wave of sightings, tip-offs, and outright fabrications from people desperate to collect the reward and made the job of finding the boy that much harder. People claiming to be Charley turned up regularly at the Ross family home even years later.

When two men were shot by police officers in the process of committing a robbery, one of them, Joseph Douglas, confessed to the kidnapping. Both men died at the scene before they could say anything more. One of their associates was also tried and convicted of complicity in the kidnapping, but he never revealed the whereabouts of Charley or his remains.

In 2012, 22 of the ransom letters were found. The next year, they were auctioned, ironically, for $20,000.^[4]

6 William Cantelo

William Cantelo (possibly pictured above) was the inventor of an early form of machine gun. Cantelo kept a laboratory in the basement of the pub he ran in Southampton, England, and neighbors would often hear sounds like rapid gunfire coming from below. Sometime in the 1880s, Cantelo told his sons he was going on a business trip to try to sell his new invention and was never seen again.

It was first assumed that Cantelo had met with an accident on his travels, until his sons saw a newspaper photograph of another inventor named Hiram Maxim. Maxim is credited with creating the Maxim Gun, a type of machine gun. And he bore an uncanny resemblance to William Cantelo.

Cantelo’s sons certainly believed that Maxim was their father and hired a private investigator to establish the truth, without success. There is also some evidence that Maxim visited Southampton and may have met Cantelo, if, indeed, he wasn’t Cantelo. Whatever the truth, Hiram Maxim died an extremely rich man, while William Cantelo’s sons inherited a pub with bullet holes all over the basement.^[5]

5 Louis Le Prince

Louis Le Prince was a pioneer of the motion picture industry, along with the Lumiere Brothers and, of course, Thomas Edison. As a young man, Le Prince had frequented the studio of Jacques Daguerre (of Daguerreotype picture fame) and became fascinated with first images and then moving pictures, receiving a patent for his Le Prince Single-lens Cine Camera in 1888, ahead of Edison.^[6]

However, before Le Prince could get the recognition that he deserved, he disappeared suddenly and mysteriously in 1890 after boarding a train at Dijon, bound for Paris. There are a number of theories about what happened to Le Prince after he boarded the train, some of them mundane, others slightly more outlandish. It has been suggested that he killed himself because he was on the verge of bankruptcy or disappeared deliberately to avoid being exposed as homosexual. It has also been suggested that his brother murdered him in a row over his mother’s will. Le Prince’s widow even maintained that Thomas Edison ordered a hit on him in order to get him out of the way and prevent him from taking the credit for his invention.

Whatever you may choose to believe about his fate, what is certain is that Le Prince’s Cine Camera recorded the world’s first moving images with the Roundhay Garden Scene in 1888.

4 Flannan Isles Lighthouse Keepers

All three of the keepers of the Flannan Isles Lighthouse, located in Scotland’s Flannan Isles, were found to be missing on December 26, 1900, and were never seen again. It was against the regulations for all three keepers to leave their posts at any one time, particularly during a storm, when the lighthouse would have been a godsend to any ships caught in the rough seas. So why did they all leave their posts?

What is known is that when the relief keeper landed on the island, he found the lighthouse deserted. Further investigations showed that the men had certainly been working up until December 15, as their logs showed, and a vessel reported passing the lighthouse that night and noticing that the lamp was not lit, a fact not known at the time.

On inspection, the light was found to be in good working order.

We’ll probably never know what happened to them, although a number of theories have been put forward. One was that, after having previously been fined for not tying down equipment, the three keepers went together to ensure that everything was made safe ahead of the storm and were either swept off the rocks by a large wave or blown off the side of the cliff in a gale. Another theory suggested that two keepers had gone out to check ropes, and when they didn’t return, the third went out to find them, only to perish himself.^[7] In 1912, the English poet Wilfred Wilson Gibson published a poem, “Flannan Isle,” which suggested a much more mysterious end, dwelling on overturned chairs and untouched meals and supernatural misgivings, for which there was never any basis in fact.

3 Belle Gunness

Belle Gunness was a Norwegian-American serial killer who vanished from her farm in Indiana on April 28, 1908, after having killed as many as 40 people. By means which would today be called catfishing, Belle struck up pen-pal relationships with men who responded to her personal advertisements for investors looking for possible relationships. She corresponded with her victims for a number of months before convincing them to visit, bringing with them their life savings in cash while telling no one where they were going.

The ruse worked surprisingly well, and a number of men, most of them homesick for their native Norway, would turn up at her door with a $1,000 or more wrapped in paper parcels, after which they would never be seen in one piece again.^[8]

Belle was believed at one time to have died in a fire at her home, where the remains of three charred bodies, thought to be her children, and an equally burned female torso were found. Belle’s sometime boyfriend, Ray Lamphere, was arrested and questioned and charged with arson. However, when police began to excavate the farmhouse, they found a number of bodies, and body parts, that clearly had nothing to do with him.

It was later believed that the headless torso was not that of Gunness at all but rather her housekeeper, who had mysteriously disappeared. It is certainly true that Gunness had withdrawn large amounts of money from the bank immediately prior to the fire. Lamphere is said to have confessed before his death that he helped Gunness to set the fire and drove her to the train station to make good her escape. Despite numerous sightings in the years following, her whereabouts have never been determined.

2 Bobby Dunbar

Bobby Dunbar was only four years old in 1912, when he disappeared while on a family holiday in Louisiana.

Hundreds of volunteers joined in the search for Bobby, combing the riverbanks, slicing open the bellies of alligators, and even dynamiting the lake, thinking that the blast might dislodge the child’s corpse. Bobby appeared to have vanished into thin air until, eight months later, he was found alive and well in the care of William Cantwell Walters from Mississippi.

Walters was found guilty of kidnapping, despite his vehement protests that the child was, in fact, his nephew. The child was taken home to his mother, who is said to have exclaimed, “Thank God, it is my boy,” before fainting.

William Walters was convicted of child abduction and sentenced to life in prison, though he only served two years. However, in 2004, DNA tests proved that the boy (pictured above) who was “rescued” from Walters was not Bobby Dunbar and was in all probability the nephew that Walters had claimed.^[9] What happened to Bobby is unclear, but the most likely explanation is that he drowned in the river on the same day he disappeared.

1 Ambrose Small

Canadian millionaire and theater impresario Ambrose Small disappeared from his office at the Grand Opera House in Toronto, Ontario, on December 2, 1919, the same day that the sale of his theaters was due to go through. Small was certainly in a hurry for the transaction to be completed and was instrumental in moving the signing date up by two weeks.

However, although the sale netted Small over $1 million, he never withdrew a penny of the money, all of which was still in the bank when his disappearance was discovered. Nor was he reported missing by his wife, who assumed him to be “in the arms of a designing woman,” and it was only on January 3, a month later, that his disappearance was reported in the press.^[10]

A number of theories abounded at the time, including that he had been killed by his wife and burned in the furnace at the Grand Theatre or that the police had helped Small disappear.

Ward Hazell is a writer who travels, and an occasional travel writer.

History isn’t always kind to the sisters in the shadows. Traditionally, their opportunities were less, even though many were equal to or more brilliant than their famous siblings. They were the muses who inspired and the heroes who walked away for all the wrong reasons when fame came. Sometimes, their lives were tragic.

10 Maria Anna Mozart

Maria Anna Mozart (left above) was a musical genius. A child prodigy before her brother, Wolfgang Amadeus (center above), she dropped jaws all over Europe. At only 12, she fluently performed difficult piano pieces. She might even have been the root of Wolfgang’s remarkable legacy: Maria was trained only by her father, Leopold (right above), a court musician, but both Maria and Leopold guided Amadeus from age five onward. Amadeus received top-class training and toured for years, playing with Maria in front of thousands.

When Maria turned 18, Leopold terminated her musical career because it wasn’t acceptable for women to tour as musicians. Amadeus never lost admiration for his gifted sibling, though. In 1770, he wrote to Maria, praising one of her compositions, which he called “beautiful.” Unfortunately, the world will never hear the piece that so impressed Amadeus Mozart; it has been lost.

9 Rosalie Poe

Many aspects of Edgar Allan Poe’s life were weird, but the life of his sister, Rosalie, two years his junior, was tragic. From a young age, their nursemaid pacified them both with gin and opium. The two lost their parents early on. Rosalie was adopted by Mrs. Mackenzie, who had helped the poverty-stricken Poe family. Edgar was adopted by the Allan family.

Rosalie’s mental and physical development didn’t progress beyond a certain level, possibly from the alcohol and drugs she was fed as a child. She suffered from melancholy and weakness. Even worse, her brother had no time for her. After her adoptive mother died and war left the rest of the Mackenzies destitute, Rosalie was forced to live on the streets. By this time, Edgar had already died. Eventually completely broken, Rosalie died in a charity home.

8 The Wilde Sisters

Emily and Mary were Oscar Wilde’s half-sisters. Whether he knew about their existence or not remains unknown. They were the illegitimate offspring of Oscar’s father, an esteemed surgeon who went through great pains to keep the girls out of sight—even when they died.

In 1871, when Emily was 24 and Mary 22, he sent them to live with a relative in Monaghan, Ireland. A welcome ball was held in their honor. During a waltz, Emily’s dress caught fire near the fireplace, and while trying to put the flames out, Mary’s clothing also ignited. Suffering full-body burns, Mary perished within days, but Emily languished for three weeks before the end came. Due to the influence of their father, their deaths received minimal newspaper coverage, only a small obituary with changed names.

7 Muriel Earhart

Amelia Earhart’s sister was an activist, author, and award winner. Amelia might have gotten the media coverage and the immortality due to her famous disappearance, but Muriel made waves in different places.

For most of her life, Muriel lived in Medford, Massachusetts, where she taught high school English. Very active in her community, Muriel helped others, taught, and sat on several committees and organizations. She was Medford’s “Citizen of the Year” in 1979, and award-winning poetry flowed from her pen. Muriel also wrote educational articles, her husband’s biography, and (unsurprisingly) the story of Amelia Earhart. She lived to be 98 and died in her sleep in 1998.

6 Katharine Wright

The Wright brothers not only had a sister, but she flew with them. Born in 1874, Katharine became the only Wright sibling to hold a college degree. While working as a teacher, she also handled her brothers’ business affairs and managed to charm investors with her trademark shyness. She encouraged Orville and Wilbur in their flight experiments, kept the press on track (staving off many rumors), dealt with sponsors, warded off the weirdos, and supplied information to scientific requests.

When Orville crashed during one of his flights, killing his passenger and injuring himself grievously, she nursed him back to health. France awarded the Wrights the Legion of Honor, and Katharine remains one of the few US women to hold this award. In her fifties, she married an old friend, but three years later in 1929, an aggressive case of pneumonia claimed her life.

5 Ilse Braun

Ilse Braun (left above) was a receptionist for a Jewish doctor when her sister, Eva, got involved with Hitler. The eldest of three Braun sisters, Ilse was the one who kept away from Nazi ideals. Eventually forced to quit her job for her own safety once the Nuremburg Laws were passed, Ilse resisted Eva’s attempts to get her a job with Hitler’s personal physician. She also didn’t believe Eva’s second suicide attempt was serious, though Hitler fell for it. (Eva drank too few pills to actually overdose.)

It was inevitable that Ilse would meet with the fuhrer. When she did, she was not impressed. She thought Hitler looked better in his propaganda portraits than he did in real life, and she found his hands rather white and feminine. Later, Ilse became a deft journalist for a right-wing newspaper. She passed away in 1979, in Munich, from cancer.

4 Paula Hitler

Paula was the only full sibling of Adolf Hitler. As a boy, Hitler was beaten by their father, and in turn, Adolf beat his sister. One of her earliest memories was a teenage Hitler hitting her in the face when she was eight. The Hitler children were seriously dysfunctional; Paula believed being manhandled by her brother was “good for her education.”

Researchers were stunned by a discovery regarding Paula Hitler. Historically seen as the innocent victim of her brother’s madness, newly unearthed Russian interrogation papers revealed that she was engaged to a particularly horrific Nazi: euthanasia doctor Erwin Jekelius, who gassed 4,000 people. Unlike Eva’s sister Ilse, Paula went along with the Nazi movement. The Russians caught her fiance before they could marry, and Paula ended up living under a false name near Berchtesgaden. She died in 1960.

3 Wilhelmina Van Gogh

With the spotlight on Vincent van Gogh cutting off his own ear, few are aware that his sister, Wilhelmina, spent decades in a psychiatric institution. Born in 1862, she was the artist’s youngest sister. After her two brothers died when she was in her early thirties, Wilhelmina started working at a hospital. She was also one of the first feminists and helped raise money to open the Dutch national bureau for women’s work.

In terms of historical records, Wilhelmina disappeared until 1902, when she was placed in psychiatric care with a dementia diagnosis at age 40. According to records, she spent another 40 years in the lounge just sitting in her chair and had to be force-fed. What happened during the years between working at the hospital and reappearing in a madhouse, or even if she was truly insane, will probably never be known.

2 Sundari Nanda

Princess Sundari Nanda was a much-loved figure during her life but is nearly unknown outside Buddhist communities today. This remarkable woman was not only the half-sister of the Buddha, but she also became enlightened.

Inspired by the Buddha, Sundari’s mother became the first nun of the new belief system, and later, Sundari followed her into the order. However, she did so out of family obligation and was more preoccupied with her beauty and popularity than her work as a nun. Noticing this, the Buddha summoned her. He gently instructed her in a difficult lesson: that all youth and beauty fade.

This vision so shook Sundari that she realized the impermanence of everything. Through intense meditation, she broke free from vanity. Her dedication brought her enlightenment, peace, and her brother’s recognition that she was best in the practice of jhana—complete meditative absorption.

1 Ama Jetsun Pema

As a child, Jetsun played in the gardens of her brother’s palace. Her brother was, and still is, the 14th Dalai Lama. Before tensions with China exiled her brother to India, Jetsun was sent there to start school. The Catholic environment prevented her from pursuing Buddhism, but she picked up English and French. Hoping to work for her brother, she studied at a secretarial college in London. But then fate threw Jetsun into a role that would comfort many refugees.

Refugee children, smuggled from Tibet to India, landed under Jetsun’s care when her sister fell ill and could no longer manage them. Soon, the Tibetan Children’s Village was founded, the first of many. Throughout the years, Jetsun has provided education and hugs for thousands of children. Fondly nicknamed “The Mother of Tibet,” the 73-year-old is finally starting to study Buddhism.

Humanity has always had an intimate relationship with food. So it should come as no surprise that some of the most notable, influential figures throughout history have often had bizarre notions of how and what to eat.

10 Zuckerberg Only Eats What He Kills

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is famous for taking on yearlong challenges of self-improvement, such as wearing a tie every day in 2009 and studying Chinese every day in 2010. It came as a bit of a shock, though, when he announced in 2011 that “the only meat I’m eating is from animals I’ve killed myself.” After announcing the decision on his private page, he posted, “I just killed a pig and a goat,” which prompted various reactions from his followers.

According to an email that Zuckerberg sent to Fortune magazine, “I started thinking about this last year when I had a pig roast at my house. A bunch of people told me that even though they loved eating pork, they really didn’t want to think about the fact that the pig used to be alive. That just seemed irresponsible to me. I don’t have an issue with anything people choose to eat, but I do think they should take responsibility and be thankful for what they eat rather than trying to ignore where it came from.”

His instructor was Silicon Valley chef Jesse Cool, who introduced Zuckerberg to local farmers and advised him on the slaughters of his first chicken, pig, and goat.”He cut the throat of the goat with a knife, which is the most kind way to do it,” said Cool to Fortune. Zuckerberg’s first kill, however, was a lobster that he boiled alive. Initially, this was emotionally difficult for Zuckerberg, but he said he felt better after eating it. As he told Fortune in an interview, “The most interesting thing was how special it felt to eat it after having not eaten any seafood or meat in a while.”

9 Beethoven’s Soup

Ludwig van Beethoven is known for many things, but few know just how seriously he took his soup. According to the famous composer, only a housekeeper or cook with a pure heart could prepare a pure soup. Beethoven brooked no opposition, particular not from his long-suffering secretary Anton Schindler. If Beethoven thought a soup was bad and Schindler disagreed, Beethoven would send him an insulting note: “I do not value your judgment on the soup in the least, it is bad.”

One of Beethoven’s favorite dishes was a mushy bread soup, which he consumed every Thursday with 10 large eggs to be stirred into the soup. He inspected the eggs by holding them to the light and then cracking them open with his hand. Woe to the housekeeper if they weren’t all entirely fresh. Beethoven would call her in for a scolding. She only half-listened because she had to be ready to flee, as it was Beethoven’s custom to pelt her with the eggs as a punishment.

According to Ignaz von Seyfried, an opera conductor during Beethoven’s time: “[Beethoven’s housekeeper] held herself in readiness to beat a quick retreat before, as was customary, the cannonade was about to begin, and the decapitate batteries would begin to play upon her back and pour out their yellow-white, sticky intestines over her in veritable lava streams.”

8 Gerald Ford’s Strange Lunch

It is a commonly cited piece of trivia that President Richard Nixon ate a daily lunch of cottage cheese covered in ketchup. After he was elected president, an article in the Washingtonian quipped that elegant White House dinners had been replaced by cottage cheese and ketchup. He even had cottage cheese with pineapple slices for lunch on the day that he announced his resignation from the presidency.

Less commonly known is that President Gerald Ford was also an aficionado of the bizarre but strangely appealing lunch menu item, which he consumed every day while reading or working. An Air Force One staffer revealed in the book Inside the White House:

President Ford had A-1 sauce and ketchup, mostly A-1 sauce, with the cottage cheese. We always had a vegetable garnish with spring onions, celery sticks, radishes. We always served ketchup and A-1 sauce with it. In most cases, he used A-1 sauced mixed in. [ . . . ] When we were going to land, he used mouthwash because of the onions.

Ford also liked a drink, although he could usually handle his alcohol. He once got drunk on martinis on Air Force One while returning from a meeting with the Soviet premier. That same staffer said, “We put him to bed. In the middle of the flight, he came out in his underwear and said ‘Where is the head?’ Normally, he knew where the head is. He could walk. He was slurring words. It was the one time he overindulged and was tipsy.”

7 Nicolas Cage’s Diet Of Dignified Animals

Nicolas Cage is known for a storied career of both great and terrible performances. There are certainly enough strange things to say about him, but his diet may top them all. He only consumes animals that he judges as mating in a “dignified way.”

Explaining the reason for his choice to The Sun, Cage said, “I have a fascination with fish, birds, whales—sentient life—insects, reptiles. I actually choose the way I eat according to the way animals have sex. I think fish are very dignified with sex. So are birds. But pigs, not so much. So I don’t eat pig meat or things like that. I eat fish and fowl.”

He may not eat those salacious swine, but he has consumed strange things in the name of art. The 1988 movie Vampire’s Kiss called for Cage to eat a live cockroach, which he did with some difficulty. “Every muscle in my body didn’t want to do it,” said Cage to The Telegraph. “But I did it anyway.”

6 Henry Ford’s Weeds

Henry Ford was a picky eater who usually had nuts or raisins in his pocket. In his youth, he was largely uninterested in food and mostly moved it around on his plate to give the appearance of eating it. This changed when he started to perceive his body as a machine and his stomach as a boiler that he needed to give the right fuel.

The act of eating was more practical than sensual, and Ford experimented with wild weeds as a source of nutrition. His dietary experiments caused misery to his business associates, although they were better received by his friend George Washington Carver, who was of a like mind on that sort of thing.

Even though Ford received a salary of almost $1 million a year, he preferred a diet of “roadside greens,” which were essentially edible weeds that Ford gathered from his garden or outside. According to biographer Sidney Olson: “There is nothing quite like a dish of stewed burdock, followed by a sandwich of soybean bread filled with milkweeds, to set up a man for an afternoon’s work.”

The weeds that Ford collected were often lightly boiled or stewed and then used in salads or sandwiches. However, the diet seemed to pay off because Henry Ford was rarely sick and lived to the ripe old age of 83.

5 Evo Morales’s Gay Chicken

Bolivian President Evo Morales caused controversy in 2001 when he claimed that eating hormone-injected chicken was a root cause of homosexuality. At the World People’s Summit on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in Cochabamba, he shocked the socially progressive audience with his views. “When we talk about chicken, it’s pumped full of female hormones,” he said, “and so when men eat this chicken, they stray from being men.”

He also linked the consumption of fowl with male baldness. Within a few hours, the impact of his comments had spread to the international media.

Morales’s government quickly went into spin doctor mode, insisting that the president had been referring only to genital abnormalities. In a public statement, the Foreign Relations Ministry explained, “[Morales] made no mention of sexuality. Rather, he said that eating chicken that has hormones changes our own bodies. This point of view has been confirmed by scientists, and even the European Union has prohibited the use of some hormones in food.”

Many gay rights activists were unconvinced. The president of the Argentina Homosexual Community, Cesar Cigliutti, said, “It’s an absurdity to think that eating hormone-containing chicken can change the sexual orientation of a person. By following that reasoning, if we put male hormones in a chicken and we make a homosexual eat it he will transform into a heterosexual.”

In a different vein, Morales also took shots at Coca-Cola. “If the plumber comes to your house and can’t get the job done with all his tools,” said Morales, “have him pour Coca-Cola down the clogged toilet, and problem solved.” This was received more favorably as many in Bolivia believe that the US soda company exploits Bolivia’s coca supplies. Also, a local company had just launched a rival drink called “Coca-Colla,” with “Colla” being a reference to the native Andean highland people.

Morales has a long-standing antipathy toward unhealthy American food, complaining at the UN in 2013 that “the fast food of the West is a great harm to humanity.” He accused fast food companies of causing cancer and conspiring to suppress the rise of quinoa as a healthy alternative source of nutrition.

4 Howard Hughes’s Food Fetishes

Movie mogul, industrialist, and businessman Howard Hughes suffered from obsessive-compulsive disorder, which was reflected in his eating habits. He gave a number of bizarre food preparation and serving orders to his servants, including wrapping spoon handles in tissue paper. They were then sealed with cellophane and wrapped in a second piece of tissue paper. He would only touch the covered handles because he was obsessively afraid of germs.

His servants had to open cans of food in a specific way, too. First, the servant would hold the can under warm running water. Then he or she used a brush and special bars of soap to remove the label 5 centimeters (2 in) from the top of the can. Next, the can was soaked to remove any dust and germs. Then the bottom was cleaned in the same manner as the top. All the indentations of the can also had to be scrubbed with soap and rinsed. Throughout the process, the servant was not permitted to let go of the can.

Hughes suffered constipation because he refused to eat leafy vegetables. His meals were very uniform, and he enjoyed a regimented menu that he changed every few months. He usually ate a medium-rare butterfly steak with 12 peas of uniform size. If any of the peas were too large, Hughes would send them back to the kitchen to be replaced. He ate almost every meal alone. According to his chef, Hughes didn’t even eat Thanksgiving or Christmas dinners with his wife.

But Hughes liked fudge. When he became reclusive in his later years, he virtually subsisted on chocolate bars and milk. He isolated himself in a studio near his home, surrounded by empty milk bottles and containers which he used to relieve himself when nature called. This reclusive lifestyle took a toll on his health. When he finally died, people compared the state of his body to that of a Japanese prisoner of war.

3 Hitler’s Flatulent Vegetarianism

Many meat lovers enjoy telling their vegetarian friends that Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian, and vegetarians often vehemently disagree. The truth is more nuanced. Until the early 1930s, Hitler showed a penchant for certain meat products, particularly liver dumplings and sausages. He is said to have subscribed to Wagner’s theory that “[the] thirst [for flesh and blood] . . . can never be slaked, and fills its victims with a raging madness, not with courage.”

Yet he did not completely turn against the consumption of meat until his niece and possible lover Geli Raubal committed suicide in 1931. After that, he refused to eat breakfast ham. “It is like eating a corpse!” he said.

Hitler also turned away from meat because he believed it caused chronic constipation and flatulence. He ate his vegetables raw or pulped into a mush. Some of his favorite foods were oatmeal with linseed oil, cauliflower, cottage cheese, boiled apples, artichoke hearts, and asparagus tips in white sauce.

The high-fiber diet had precisely the opposite effect on his bowel drama. After Hitler consumed a particularly large plate of vegetables, his physician, Theo Morell, recorded in his diary that Hitler experienced “constipation and colossal flatulence . . . on a scale I have seldom encountered before.”

Of course, this is not only the fault of his vegetarian diet but also the ridiculous regimen of drugs and treatments administered by his doctor, which included chamomile enemas and a heavy dose of supplements. Some of those supplements were vitamins, testosterone, liver extracts, laxatives, sedatives, glucose, opiates, and poisonous strychnine tablets for gas.

The argument over Hitler’s vegetarianism is a bit of a red herring. He did occasionally indulge in animal products, but so do 70 percent of vegetarians. Even so, Hitler’s decision to become a vegetarian in no way refutes the moral arguments that vegetarians hold against meat eating.

2 Mussolini’s Milk Addiction

Benito Mussolini also had digestive problems and weird eating habits, such as refusing to eat anything at banquets. He believed that eating was an activity to which one should devote one’s complete attention and that eating in the presence of others would make one “apt to eat wrongly.”

In 1925, he vomited blood while at his house in Rome and was forced to take several weeks off from public appearances. Rumors circulated that Mussolini might have to be replaced as the National Fascist Party leader. Doctors diagnosed him with a stomach ulcer and recommended a drastic change in diet after he refused to have surgery. His new diet was mainly composed of fruit and up to 3 liters (1 gal) of milk every day. This apparently didn’t help him because he suffered another ulcer in 1929.

After the Allies invaded Italy and the Fascists retreated to a German satellite state called the Salo Republic, Mussolini sought the assistance of a physician named Dr. Zachariae. Shocked by his patient’s appearance, the doctor said, “I found myself before a ruin of a man who was evidently on the brink of the tomb.” Mussolini suffered from ulcers, anemia, constipation, insomnia, and low blood pressure. His skin was dry and inelastic, and his abdominal area around his liver was engorged.

Zachariae blamed Mussolini’s ridiculous milk diet and cut his milk intake to 0.25 liters (0.5 pt) each day for a week. Then he went cold turkey. The doctor began to treat Mussolini with small doses of vitamins and hormones, which had an immediate positive effect. After his liver returned to its normal size, Mussolini remarked, “I must tell you I feel liberated. I no longer feel pains in my stomach, and I don’t fear the night.”

The doctor insisted that Mussolini eat some light vegetables like carrots and potatoes, which he had once been unable to stomach, and to take his tea without milk. Although Mussolini preferred vegetarianism, the doctor insisted that his patient eat small amounts of boiled chicken and fish to increase his protein intake. Along with injections of vitamins B and C, the new diet caused his red blood cell count to rise and his health to improve. Despite Mussolini occasionally refusing to take food while the Italian people were starving, Zachariae later boasted that he had restored Mussolini to the health of a man of 40.

1 Kim Jong Il’s Gastronomy

Due to the testimony of Kim Jong Il’s former personal chef, Kenji Fujimoto, we know quite a bit about the eating habits of the former North Korean tyrant. While much of the country was starving, Kim indulged in expensive and elaborate food and drink. He had a wine cellar with over 10,000 bottles and a library with thousands of cookbooks.

Kim was committed to getting the best food and often sent Fujimoto on foreign excursions to pick up delicacies: Iran and Uzbekistan for caviar, France for cognac, Denmark for pork, western China for grapes, Thailand for papayas and mangoes, and Beijing for McDonald’s fast food. Former North Korean diplomats also sent back exotic delicacies, such as camel’s feet, from the countries in which they were stationed.

Kim established an institute of top doctors and scientists to design a diet to increase his longevity. This was a source of concern, as the 158-centimeter (5’2″) dictator’s former eating habits had brought him to a weight of almost 90 kilograms (200 lb). The doctors began to inspect every grain of his rice by hand to make sure it was perfectly shaped with no cracks or chips. Kim insisted that the rice be cooked over a wood fire using trees cut from Mount Paektu, a legendary mountain on the border with China.

Fujimoto also revealed the dictator’s love of sushi. When Fujimoto sought to leave North Korea (after being banned from travel abroad), he did so with a cunning ruse. He showed the “Dear Leader” a new episode of the cooking show Iron Chef, in which the secret ingredient was sea urchin roe, or uni.

He casually mentioned that the best place to acquire the ingredient was from Rishiri Island off the coast of Hokkaido. Kim couldn’t resist sending the chef, who eluded his handlers at a fish market in Tokyo and disappeared into the crowd. Fujimoto didn’t return to North Korea until after Kim Jong Il’s death.

David Tormsen only eats shoe leather and chives. Email him at [email protected].

We tend to think of history like a comic book: we have heroes, we have villains, the end. But that is not how real life works. People are too complex to be boiled down into one easily digestible image. However, that has not stopped history from conveniently forgetting a few things about some of its most famous figures. From the bizarre, to the disgusting, to the downright horrifying, prepare for a look at the secret lives of ten history class staples you thought you knew.

10Charles Dickens

Iconic English author Charles Dickens is probably the only Victorian figure most people can name. Aside from penning classics like A Tale of Two Cities and Oliver Twist, Dickens was the mind behind everyone’s favorite holiday ghost story, A Christmas Carol. It seems obvious that the man who dreamed up Ebenezer Scrooge’s uplifting transformation would himself have been a pretty kind fellow.

But he was actually kind of an obnoxious creep. When not busy scribbling tales of generosity and love, Dickens was known to be fond of incredibly annoying “pranks.” He would speak in a language he had invented. He would run up to strangers on the street and screech bizarre nonsense riddles at them. And during one particularly insane trip to the beach, he grabbed a random young woman, dragged her down to the water, and threatened to kill her. He claimed he had fallen in love with her and that the two must drown together. So ironically, Dickens was the last guy you wanted over for Christmas dinner.

9Charles Lindbergh

American aviator Charles Lindbergh made history with his famous 1927 non-stop flight across the Atlantic. This world-first rocketed Lindbergh to instant stardom and earned him the adoration of pretty much the entire planet. Maybe a little too much adoration, as it turns out.

Widespread affection and the ability to fly are apparently a recipe for temptation: Lindbergh had mistresses in far-flung locations the world over. When not with his wife Anne, he would spend time with his secretary, Valeska, or one of two sisters in Munich, Germany. These affairs lasted long enough for him to father children with all of them, and then kept right on going. Lindbergh kept a total of three families that knew nothing about the others. He would visit his illegitimate families a few times a year, stay for a few days, show them a good time, and then literally take off again. His children only ever knew him by a fake name.

8Alexander Graham Bell

Any grade school kid can tell you who Alexander Graham Bell was. This genius inventor gave us the telephone and connected people in a way previously thought impossible. Aside from being the grandfather of the smartphone zombie, this heroic inventor was a gleaming beacon of togetherness and social interaction.

So it is pretty ironic that he was also a devoted anti-deaf activist. Bell was a proponent of eugenics—the idea that people with disabilities were defective and should not be allowed to “contaminate” the human gene pool. According to Bell, deaf people were especially threatening to “normal” society, and he worked tirelessly to keep them down. He attempted to have sign language outlawed, deaf teachers thrown out of schools, and the marriages of deaf individuals banned. Most horrifically, like most eugenicists, he was in favor of the sterilization of deaf people. This was all done to destroy deaf culture and force those with hearing loss to simply put up with a society that refused to accommodate them.

7King Edward VII

England’s King Edward VII ruled in the very early years of the 20th century. During that time he did all of the things you would expect an English king to do: he signed treaties, posed for paintings, etc. But bizarrely, this seemingly mundane monarch became best known for the incredibly un-kingly things he did in his spare time.

Specifically, he had lots and lots of extremely kinky sex. After falling out of favor with his mother, Queen Victoria, for allegedly causing the death of his father, he decided to go for broke. No longer worried about repercussions, he embarked on a series of over-the-top sexual escapades that would continue until he eventually took the throne. These included royal wife-swapping, bathing in champagne with prostitutes, and the commissioning of a very special piece of furniture. Being a rather large fellow, the good king found sex to be too much of a workout. His salvation came in the form of an ornate “sex chair,” able to seat three people, which allowed him to get nasty in royal comfort.

6King Tutankhamun

Since archaeologist Howard Carter’s famous 1922 discovery of the Tomb of Tutankhamun, King Tut has become a household name. The mighty ruler is synonymous with the wealth and power of Ancient Egypt. When we think Pharaoh, we think King Tut.

Yet, despite the many discovered paintings of Tutankhamun portraying him as exactly the regal figure we imagine, he was actually anything but. Recent tests performed on his corpse have revealed the true form of this legendary pharaoh.

Like many royal families throughout history, Tut’s was absolutely packed with incest—his parents were brother and sister. As a result, the young king suffered from a range of horrifying deformities including a club foot, severe overbite, skeletal deformations, and abnormally wide hips that required the constant use of a walking stick. Far from the robust ruler we like to imagine, the real King Tut probably needed help to get up from his throne.

5H. G. Wells

When we think H. G. Wells, famed author of classics like The War of the Worlds and The Time Machine, we think science fiction. When we think science fiction, we think glasses, social awkwardness, and general nerdiness. We may not like ourselves for it, but we can not help but see Wells as just another shy, scrawny bookworm.

In truth, he had more sex than you will ever have, dream of, or daydream about. After a frustratingly boring childhood in 19th century England, he decided to really let his hair down and enjoy life. And so, between dreaming up alien invasions and invisible madmen, he went to great lengths to build a truly legendary collection of sexual adventures. Adventures which, ever the writer, he recorded in a detailed journal. The daughter of a close friend was described as “most interestingly hairy,” and the friend herself as “insatiable.” An Australian novelist was “entertained” on a copy of a bad review she had received, which was burned afterward. Wells even described himself as “Your Lord, the Jaguar” to some lovers. These erotic escapades continued right up until his death.

4Ulysses S. Grant

Aside from being the 18th President of The United States, Ulysses S. Grant is best known for his role in the Civil War. Working closely with Abraham Lincoln, he led the Union Army to victory over the Confederacy and ended slavery in the US. His valiant actions made him a hero to millions . . . millions who probably had no idea just how racist he really was.

While it is true he believed slavery was evil and worked to end it; he was still a dedicated white supremacist. He believed people of different races could never live together peacefully, and so after freeing the slaves and becoming President, he devised a plan. Rather than work to solve racial tensions among whites and their newly-freed slaves, he would simply ship all the black people to an isolated island. The Caribbean island of Santo Domingo was to be given $1.5 million in exchange for allowing roughly four million forcefully relocated former slaves to stay there. The proposal gained frightening support before thankfully falling through at the last minute.

3Hans Christian Andersen

Famed Danish author Hans Christian Andersen is second only to The Brothers Grimm when it comes to beloved childhood fairy tales. The Little Mermaid, The Ugly Duckling, even The Snow Queen, the story that was adapted into Frozen, were all his. We tend to think of him as a gentle, pure sort who had a permanent smile on his face.

And he probably did, but not for the reason you think. Andersen, a socially awkward and intensely lonely man, was completely obsessed with masturbation. Too shy to ever actually attempt sex, but with quite a sexual appetite, he often enjoyed some “alone time.” He even made a note of each, and every time he did so in his diary, as well as the person who had inspired that particular session. He developed a habit of visiting brothels and paying the prostitutes just to talk to him for a little while. He then went home, took care of himself, and made another journal entry, which sometimes consisted of nothing but the words “penis sore.”

2Mother Teresa

The name Mother Teresa instantly conjures thoughts of selflessness, kindness, and generosity. This Catholic missionary devoted years of her life to easing India’s rampant disease and poverty. So it should not come as much of a surprise to learn that she was canonized in late 2016, officially becoming Saint Teresa of Calcutta.

What may come as a surprise, however, was her horrifying treatment of the patients in her hospitals. Mother Teresa adhered to the nightmarish philosophy that the greatest gift a person can be given is to “participate in the sufferings of Christ.” Therefore, she would stubbornly refuse painkillers to seriously sick or wounded patients and allow wounds to remain open. The suffering, she believed, would bring people closer to Jesus. And even this terrifying cult philosophy aside, these facilities were laughably unfit to cure anyone; Mother Teresa encouraged her volunteers to remain completely medically untrained because “God empowers the weak and ignorant.” As such, needles were often reused, and curable patients were written off as lost causes. She may have meant well, but even a brief time in the care of Mother Teresa would probably have left lasting damage.

1Tibetan Monks

If you have ever seen a movie set in Asia, you have more than likely seen a Tibetan monk. These mellow, red-robed Buddhists, which include the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Dalai Lama, seem like the most peaceful men in history. High in their lofty mountain palaces, they meditate and spend their days in tranquility.

But that was not always the case. As recently as 1959 Tibet was less Nirvana and more Nazi Germany, gripped by a brutal system of segregation and exploitation. The benevolent monks—called Lamas—we know and love were once vicious tyrants that enslaved their people through fear and a crippling tax system.

The callous Lamas treated everyone without their own extravagant castle as purely expendable; kidnapping, rape, and torture were common practice. The rare few that stood up to them did not do so for long—cut hamstrings, and removed eyeballs were standard punishments for the disobedient. This horrifying regime was toppled after China invaded Tibet in 1950, finally ending the monks’ reign of terror and transforming them into the smiling clichés they are today.

Stuck in stories that are embellished or written with old facts, famous figures often do not bring their entire selves to the table. They may have been superb leaders or artists, but they had habits and made mistakes like any ordinary Joe.

New and rare facts can reintroduce a historical character on a more human level, revealing triumphs and struggles with family, signs of future greatness in childhood, and even devastating secrets. Most of all, personal tidbits enrich the linear story that made the person famous. How these well-known figures dealt with others, died, and hid images in their work or scandals in their lives can give us a better understanding of their authentic histories.

10 Newton’s Graffiti

When Sir Isaac Newton was a boy, he apparently had a habit of drawing on walls. Perhaps suitably, the discovery was made by employing technology that used light in a novel way. Newton became famous because of his experiments with light and prisms.

In 2017, researchers investigated Woolsthorpe Manor in England. This was where Newton was born in 1642 and spent his younger years. There was a reason why the team focused on the manor’s walls. Previous drawings dating to Newton’s lifetime had been discovered in the 1920s and 1930s.

His friend William Stukeley wrote in 1752 that Newton drew on surfaces in a prolific manner—even the ceilings did not escape his charcoal stick. He must have had very forgiving parents.

The walls were scanned with light from different directions simultaneously. This photographic technique, called RTI, detected an invisible carving. It showed a windmill, a first for the manor. The drawings described by Stukeley had included people, animals, plants, and mathematical and geometric figures.^[1]

It is believed that the young Newton, who was drawn to all things mechanical, was captivated by a mill being constructed nearby at the time.

9 Jane Austen Was Possibly Poisoned

Ever since famous novelist Jane Austen died in 1817, the reason for her death has remained a mystery. She died young, aged 41, and left letters behind which hinted at a more sinister demise. Mostly, cancer and Addison’s disease were suspected. Then somebody considered an unnatural cause.

When crime writer Lindsay Ashford wanted to write her next book, she did so in Chawton House, the old home of Austen’s brother. She read Austen’s letters and found symptoms the author mentioned months before she died. Tragically, Jane thought she was getting better. Thanks to her crime research, Ashford noticed a strong similarity to arsenic poisoning, especially the trademark skin discoloration.

A former president of North America’s Jane Austen Society also told Ashford that a lock of the writer’s hair had tested positive for arsenic. While experts do not agree with Ashford’s belief that murder cannot be discounted, they feel it is plausible that she might have ingested the poison in another way.

At the time, a medicine called Fowler’s Solution was prescribed for many complaints, including rheumatism. Austen’s letters revealed that she had rheumatism. One of the ingredients in Fowler’s Solution was arsenic.^[2]

8 Churchill’s Daughter Fought In World War II

Winston Churchill was known for his witty comments, but one delighted his teenage daughter, Mary. When General Pile complained to the prime minister that he lacked soldiers for the antiaircraft batteries, Churchill said, “No, I can’t spare any men, you’ll have to use women.”

Mary immediately joined the Auxiliary Territorial Service. Even though she had to face prejudice, she climbed the ranks. In this case, the prejudice had nothing to do with her gender but instead with the fact that she was the prime minister’s daughter.^[3]

Many expected Mary to behave like a pampered brat, but she scrubbed floors with the rest of them. Her modesty and hard work landed her the respect of her peers and leaders. In 1944, at age 21, she held the rank of junior commander. Mary led a battery of 230 women who fought at the front line, a fact her father was quite proud of.

She earned something of a celebrity status. But remarkably, she was more occupied with working hard and, like the young person she was, finding a party with friends every night. Mary retired from her army career in 1946.

7 Churchill’s Mother Stole His Inheritance

Jennie Churchill was a social butterfly who liked the high life. When her husband, Lord Randolph, died in 1895, he went down in the Churchill story as the father who hated the boys and left them no inheritance. Winston, 20, and Jack, 14, were told by their mother that there was nothing for them in the will.

Recently, historians uncovered the deception. They were allowed to study family letters kept by Jack’s descendants, which revealed that he was the first to realize what his mother had done.

While trying to help Jennie with the financial mess after the divorce from her second husband, Jack scrutinized his father’s will. Since he had to abandon his dream career and delay marriage because he had no money, Jack was shocked to discover that there was a fund for both him and Winston.

Jennie had stolen their inheritance, a sum worth about £1.1 million in early 2018.^[4] She spent it in the 1890s when she had a hectic social life as the mistress of Edward, Prince of Wales. The family letters also revealed that Lord Randolph was a caring father, contrary to his historical image.

6 Hemingway’s First Story

Ernest Hemingway, author of several classics, rarely threw anything away. This hoarding habit allows researchers to understand this great writer better as a person. In 2017, one of the most exciting discoveries was made—the first roots of his talent. Hemingway had left an archive of personal belongings with the Bruce family, who were lifelong friends.

After Hemingway’s death in 1961, they allowed his wife to take what she wanted and they kept the rest. During the past 15 years, historians began to catalog the Bruce collection in Key West, Florida. A damaged notebook caught their attention. Stored in a Ziploc freezer bag marked “Sep. 8, 1909,” it turned out to be Hemingway’s first known fiction.

Written when he was 10, the short story describes a trip through Europe with letters to his parents and journal entries. At first, researchers believed that it was a factual account. Then they realized that the young Hemingway had never gone on such a trip.

It was only then that the significance of the 14-page story became clear. Not only was it his earliest work, but it showed that Hemingway’s hallmarks of realism and imagery were already in place.^[5]

5 Walt Disney Was Mean

When biographer Neal Gabler was given access to the entire Disney archives, he discovered a very different Walt Disney. Mostly seen as a kind old man churning out touching movies, Disney practically became every kid’s uncle. In truth, Disney was a horrific boss. He saw communists everywhere and hated them with a passion. He even believed that the Screen Actors Guild was a communist cell.

He often humiliated his employees, and all hell broke loose when they tried to form a union. He posted armed guards, sacked organizers, lowered salaries, and ordered the studio coffee shop to keep shorter hours. When a strike loomed, Disney physically attempted to attack the man who led the unhappy workers. He wasn’t keen on hiring black employees at Disneyland, either.

Disney’s family was not exempt. He preferred to play with a train set instead of being with his wife. His brother Roy worked for Walt and was treated as badly as the rest of the employees. Walt Disney even missed his father’s funeral because he did not want to abandon a business trip.^[6]

4 Clement Initially Saved The Templars

The blockbuster novel (and subsequent movie) The Da Vinci Code helped to bring this mysterious order back from obscurity. The Knights Templar were military monks. They formed in 1118 to protect pilgrims traveling in the Holy Land. But the order’s growing wealth and furtive ways made rich grounds for medieval accusations of heresy.

Most historians believe that the Templars were only guilty of lending King Philip IV of France money that he could not repay. In 1307, the king arrested their leaders, and in 1312, Pope Clement V found them guilty. They were burned at the stake. Templars who survived the violent extermination disappeared into other orders.

In 2007, a remarkable document was found in the Vatican. The 700-year-old “Parchment of Chinon” revealed that Pope Clement found the Templars guilty of immorality but innocent of heresy in 1308. Far from wanting to execute them, Clement planned on reforming the order. However, pressure from Philip steered Clement into reversing the verdict. If it had not been for that, the Templars might still exist today.^[7]

3 The Nude Mona Lisa

A charcoal sketch sat in a French art collection for 150 years before somebody saw a similarity with Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. Called the Monna Vanna, she was thought to have been produced by students from the artist’s studio.

In 2017, experts at the Louvre Museum in Paris declared that the master himself likely played a part in its creation. The portrait shows a nude woman sitting in a classic Mona Lisa pose. Her face is a little different, but the two women’s hands are identical. Both pictures are also around the same size.

Like the Mona Lisa, the charcoal drawing radiates the magnificent quality for which da Vinci was known. The Monna Vanna was dated to the end of da Vinci’s life. (He died in 1519.) This meant that both works were created at the same time.

Why they resemble each other so much is not entirely clear. Perhaps they were meant to be a pair, and the Monna Vanna, which was likely a preparatory piece for an oil painting, was never completed.^[8]

2 The Brain In God’s Throat

Michelangelo’s most famous works include a series of Sistine Chapel panels. The Renaissance master is renowned for nearly flawless depictions of human anatomy. But one panel is a bad misfit. Called the Separation of Light from Darkness, it features God. Otherwise perfect, God’s neck appears bulbous and is illuminated differently than the rest of the fresco.

Some wondered if Michelangelo gave God an enlarged thyroid gland (goiter). It simply does not look like a normal neck. However, it does resemble a brain stem. It sounds quirky that the painter planted an organ in God’s throat, but it is not the first time. In the past few decades, several doctors have identified brain and kidney motifs in other Sistine paintings.

In 2010, a medical team studied God’s awkward neck. Using the shadows as an outline, they digitally compared it with photos of a human brain. The result was a close fit with a ventral view of the brain stem.

So, what was Michelangelo’s game? Not everyone agrees that there are hidden images. However, Michelangelo sliced up cadavers his whole life. He knew the brain inside and out. It is possible that he understood the organ’s importance and, therefore, associated the brain with God.^[9]

1 Einstein’s Missing Daughter

In 1902, the unknown Albert Einstein had a child out of wedlock. Her name was Lieserl. During that time, an illegitimate birth was a scandal. But the mother, Mileva Maric, decided to keep the baby. A student in Zurich, she returned home to Serbia.

Any facts about Lieserl come from her parents’ letters. They assumed that the baby would be a girl and chose her name. They discussed nursing, how the baby fared, and how to be together as a family.

But Einstein never told his own family about Lieserl. He kept it so secret that Einstein experts learned of her only when letters surfaced decades after his death.

Einstein never appeared to have met his daughter. He married Mileva, but they moved to Bern without their child. Lieserl contracted scarlet fever at about 18 months old, and Mileva visited the infant in Serbia.

In Einstein’s letters, he first asked after Lieserl’s health. Months later, upon learning that Mileva (still in Serbia) was pregnant again, he spoke as if this other baby was a replacement, calling it a “new Lieserl.”^[10]

Nobody knows what happened to the original. She was never mentioned again. There are no records of her death, her adoption, or even her life. There is also no sign that her birth was registered.

A posthumous pardon is a form of symbolic redemption; a way of trying to right a wrong and redeem a reputation that had been tarnished for a long time. By definition, the person it is intended for is already dead, and that does prompt a discussion over the true merits of such a pardon. Some feel it is a waste of time and resources, others believe it remains necessary, even if it is overdue.

We’re not here to debate any of that. Instead, we are going to look at ten famous cases where historical figures received pardons decades, centuries, and, in some cases, even millennia after their deaths.

10. Cicero

Back in 63 BC, a group of angry politicians, soldiers, and farmers led by Lucius Sergius Catilina (better known simply as Catiline) tried to stage a coup on the Roman Republic and overthrow by force the two ruling consuls, Cicero and Gaius Antonius Hybrida. Their plan didn’t work. The Catiline Conspiracy, as it was known, was exposed by Cicero, causing Catiline to flee Rome and later be defeated by Antonius at the Battle of Pistoria. 

Meanwhile, back in Rome, Cicero exposed several other co-conspirators and had them executed without trial. For 2,000 years, this has been a blemish on the record of the famed orator and statesman, who has been accused of murder after embellishing the threat to the state posed by the conspirators to advance his own career. But now, after all this time, Cicero has been cleared of any wrongdoing in a trial held at the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom.

Of course, this wasn’t legit, but rather a mock trial organized by the charity Classics for All. Cicero’s defense was provided by King’s Counsel Ali Bajwa while the jury was comprised of 50 of his peers, all of them history buffs. The barrister noted at the outset of the trial the lengthy delay in bringing the case to court. He argued that the attempted coup brought the Roman Republic into a state of war and that Cicero acted lawfully as a head of state during such a time by purging the government of enemies within who were guilty of treason. The jury voted in Cicero’s favor by a vote of 28-22 and the Roman statesman was cleared of all charges.

9. Lenny Bruce

American comedian Lenny Bruce said a lot of things that upset and offended people. It was kind of his thing. Eventually, this started getting him into trouble with the law, as Bruce was arrested several times on obscenity charges during the 1960s. In all cases, he was either acquitted or had the charges dropped, but not in New York. 

After performing in April 1964 at the Cafe Au Go Go, he was, once again, arrested for obscenity and, this time, he was prosecuted and found guilty following a highly-publicized six-month trial. Lenny Bruce was released on bail during his appeal but died of a drug overdose before it was decided on August 3, 1966.

Almost 40 years later, Bruce was cleared of any wrongdoing when he received the first posthumous pardon in New York State history courtesy of Governor George Pataki. The campaign to clear the comedian’s good and smutty name was spearheaded by his daughter and ex-wife, multiple prominent First Amendment activists, as well as entertainers such as Robin Williams, Penn & Teller, and the Smothers Brothers. 

8. Henry Ossian Flipper

Henry Ossian Flipper made history in 1877 when he became the first Black American to graduate from the United States Military Academy at West Point. He then earned a commission as a second lieutenant with the US Cavalry, joining one of the Buffalo Soldier regiments. After serving in the Apache Wars, Flipper was transferred to Fort Davis where he became the new quartermaster. 

During his time there, some money went missing from the safe and Flipper was arrested and charged with embezzling. A court-martial in 1881 found him innocent of the main charge, but guilty of a secondary one which had been added during the trial – conduct unbecoming of an officer. For this, Flipper received a dishonorable discharge in 1882. 

Ever since then, there has always been talk that the actions that led to the lieutenant’s dismissal were racially motivated. An Army review conducted at a later date indicated the same thing. Rumors suggested that Flipper might even have been set up by his commanding officer. 

It took a long time, but Flipper eventually found justice. In 1976, the Army exonerated him and changed his dismissal to an honorable discharge. Then finally, in 1999, President Clinton gave him a full pardon and restored his good name.

7. Susan B. Anthony

President Trump also offered a full posthumous pardon to a person in a similar situation – 19th-century women’s rights activist Susan B. Anthony who campaigned tirelessly to grant women the right to vote. 

Back in 1873, she was the defendant in a trial that caused a bit of a brouhaha in the country after being arrested for voting illegally in the 1872 presidential elections. She wasn’t the only one who did this; fourteen other women from the same ward voted but none of them had the high profile of Anthony so the government didn’t bother taking them to trial. 

The judge in the case, Supreme Court Justice Ward Hunt, already had an obvious negative view of women’s suffrage. He didn’t allow Anthony to speak until after the verdict and even directed the jury to find her guilty. The punishment wasn’t severe – a $100 fine – but Anthony still proudly announced in the courtroom that she would not pay a single cent. She knew what she was doing – she wanted to take her case all the way to the Supreme Court. The judge knew this, too, so he declared that Anthony would not be jailed for refusing to pay the fine, and the court took no further action.

6. Oscar Wilde

Nowadays, Oscar Wilde is hailed as one of the greatest writers of the English language, but people did not always have such a positive opinion of him. In fact, following a highly-publicized trial, Wilde was convicted of homosexual acts and did two years of hard labor that left him a weakened shell of his former self and brought on his death a short while later.

This drama started unexpectedly – with Wilde serving as the accuser, not the defendant. In 1895, the Marquess of Queensberry publicly denounced the playwright as a “posing sodomite” because he was having a secret liaison with the Marquess’s son, Lord Alfred Douglas. Wilde decided to take him to court for criminal libel, but this turned out to be a terrible move because the nobleman produced evidence that he was telling the truth. The case against the Marquess was dropped and Wilde was then arrested for sodomy and gross indecency. He was found guilty and given the maximum sentence of two years of labor which left him frail and sickly. After being released, Wilde moved to France and died of meningitis three years later, although what caused the illness is still a matter of debate.

In 2017, Oscar Wilde and tens of thousands of other men in similar situations all received posthumous pardons after Turing’s Law went into effect, named after World War II codebreaker Alan Turing. But more on him later.

5. Jack Johnson

In 1908, boxer Jack Johnson pissed off a lot of racist white people when he became the first black world heavyweight champion in history. He pissed them off even further in 1910, after winning a match dubbed the “Fight of the Century.” His opponent was James Jeffries, a previously undefeated fighter who was billed as the “Great White Hope” and came out of retirement just to take the title away from the black boxer. When Johnson defeated Jeffries, race riots erupted in at least a dozen cities across the country.

The city of Chicago got its chance to take revenge on Johnson in 1912, only a few months after the boxer opened a swanky, desegrated nightclub named Cafe de Champion. A white woman from Minneapolis complained to the police that her daughter, who worked at the club, was in a relationship with Johnson after he somehow abducted her. The City Council passed a resolution to revoke the club’s liquor license, music was prevented from playing on the premises and Johnson wasn’t even allowed inside the building anymore. 

Still, the city wanted even more, so when another white woman admitted that she, too, had an affair with the boxer and that the couple traveled across state lines, Johnson was arrested for violating the Mann Act which pertained to “white slave traffic.” He was found guilty and fled to Europe before eventually returning and serving his sentence. There was no doubt that the targeting of the boxer was racially motivated, so after a passionate campaign spearheaded by actor and boxing enthusiast Sylvester Stallone, Jack Johnson received a full pardon from President Trump in 2018.

4. Robert E. Lee

Following the Civil War, President Lincoln issued a general amnesty to the Confederates as long as they accepted the abolition of slavery and subscribed to an oath to “henceforth faithfully support, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States and the Union of States thereunder.” There were a few exceptions, though, including officers who held and resigned Army and Navy commissions in order to join the South. They could still receive clemency, they just needed to apply directly. 

General Robert E. Lee, the man who led the Confederate Army, was among them. He accepted the oath and filed the petition but, somehow, the paperwork slipped through the cracks. Secretary of State William Seward usually gets the blame. As a final “screw you” to Lee, he received his petition and gave it to a friend as a souvenir, while instructing his underlings to “lose” the oath somewhere in the State Department records. A few years later, Lincoln’s successor, Andrew Johnson, issued a second amnesty which removed those exceptions. For whatever reason, Lee never followed up on his petition and he died in 1870, technically, stateless.

Fast-forward an entire century and an archivist going through old records found the general’s lost-lost oath inside the National Archives. After five more years of tedious bureaucracy, President Gerald Ford signed the congressional resolution on August 5, 1975, which granted Robert E. Lee a pardon and restored his full citizenship.

3. The Groveland Four

A particularly dark chapter in Florida’s history was the Groveland Four case. In 1949, four Black teenagers stood accused of raping a white woman and assaulting her husband in Groveland, Lake County, Florida. One of them, Ernest Thomas, went on the run and was caught by an angry mob and shot over 400 times. Another one, Samuel Shepherd, was killed by a sheriff after claiming that he tried to escape. The other two, Walter Irvin and Charles Greenlee, confessed after torture and were both found guilty and sent to prison. Irvin was paroled in 1968 and was found dead in his car a year later, while Greenlee became the only one able to put the whole ordeal behind him. He was paroled in 1962 and moved to Tennessee with his family, passing away in 2012.

Even during the 1950s, the Supreme Court ruled that the four men did not receive a fair trial. By the time the second trial came around, only two of them were still alive, and even if they were represented by future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, they were still found guilty by an all-white jury.

It wasn’t until half a century later that the state of Florida recognized the injustice done to them. In 2019, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis issued a posthumous pardon to the Groveland Four, and two years later, a judge exonerated them of all charges.

2. Alexander the Great

Alexander the Great faced a similar trial to the aforementioned Cicero. And by similar, we mean identical. It was the same kind of mock trial organized by the charity Classics for All, just in a different year. As before, the trial took place at the UK Supreme Court, where the Macedonian king stood accused of war crimes during the burning of Persepolis. His defense was provided by King’s Counsel Patrick Gibbs, while King’s Counsel Philippe Sands served as prosecutor and Lord Leggatt, Justice of the Supreme Court, presided over the trial.

There was no debate over whether Alexander was responsible for the city’s destruction or not. We know he was. It was just a matter of the motivation behind it. The prosecution claimed that it was a deliberate political act, while the defense argued that it was merely a tragedy resulting from drunken behavior. We’ve all been there. Unfortunate, sure, but not a war crime. 

In the end, the mighty conqueror walked out of the courtroom a free man, having been acquitted on all four counts of war crimes.

1. Alan Turing

Alan Turing was an English mathematician, computer scientist, and cryptanalyst. He was one of the pioneers of artificial intelligence and computer science and, as a codebreaker, was instrumental during World War II by helping the Allies crack coded messages from the Axis powers. Nowadays, there are like a bajillion things named after him, he’s on the £50 note, and he regularly features among the first in polls of greatest Britons who ever lived. 

Unfortunately, in his own time, Turing wasn’t as appreciated for one reason – he was gay. In 1952, he was charged with “gross indecency” and pled guilty. To avoid prison, he accepted a hormonal treatment to reduce his libido, a process we now call chemical castration. Less than two years later, Turing committed suicide by cyanide poisoning, although some believe his death might have been accidental.

In 2009, the British government issued an apology for how Turing was treated, with Prime Minister Gordon Brown writing that he “deserved so much better.” Still, it wasn’t a pardon. In fact, a pardon was denied by then Justice Minister Lord McNally, reasoning that Turing was correctly convicted based on the laws at the time. Eventually, the queen stepped in and used a special exception known as the royal prerogative of mercy to grant a pardon to the computer scientist. Not only that, but in 2016 the UK passed the Alan Turing Law which granted retroactive pardons to all men who had been convicted for homosexual acts in the past, including the aforementioned Oscar Wilde.

History is a funny thing. Laid out in a textbook, it all seems rather simple. Fact follows fact, and each historical event is presented with a certainty that convinces the reader that the author knows exactly how it happened.

The reality is much different. Historical events and people are puzzles that have been pieced together with any scrap of evidence that historians can find. Letters, maps, books, diaries—these all contain clues to what actually happened or what someone was really like.

Our views of the past and its people are always changing and always controversial. In the 10 cases below, the sexuality of these people may be more complex than you think.

10 Julius Caesar

The ancient Romans had very different views about sexuality than the people of many Western societies today. Bisexuality and homosexuality were considered normal as long as a man took the dominant role in these relationships. The Romans didn’t really see anything wrong with sexual relations between two men unless a person found himself on the receiving end of another man’s affection.

This is where Caesar found himself in a bit of trouble. Around 80 BC, when he was about 20 years old, he had been sent to gather a fleet from King Nicomedes IV of Bithynia. Caesar tarried at the court of the king and returned to spend some time there when his mission was completed.

Rumors quickly grew and followed him throughout his political career. Political opponents leaped at the chance to show Caesar in a damning light. Stories that he had prostituted himself to the king swirled about Rome, earning him the unflattering nickname “the queen of Bithynia.”^[1]

Caesar denied these claims. Indeed, they are unverifiable simply due to the amount of time that has passed. But there was enough of a story there for Roman political circles to run with it and enough that historians speculate to this day.

9 James Buchanan

James Buchanan served as the 15th president of the United States from 1857 to 1861. His administration is largely overlooked because it occurred so close to the Civil War, even though many historians rank Buchanan’s presidency as one of the worst of all time. He does, however, have the distinction of being the only president never to have married, and he may be the first gay man to have ever held that office.

Why do many historians believe that to be the case? After a brief engagement to Anne Coleman, who would later commit suicide, Buchanan never had another romantic relationship with a woman. Even the relationship with Coleman is believed to have been more about her family connections than any affection that Buchanan may have felt for her.

Some see this as a sign of his asexuality, or disinterest in romantic relationships. But it is in his relationship with William Rufus King, who had been vice president under Franklin Pierce, that evidence of homosexuality persists.

The two men lived together for 13 years—between 1840 and 1853, the year of King’s death. Buchanan referred to their relationship as a “communion.” Other observers used less flattering terms for the two men, such as “Aunt Nancy” and “Miss Fancy.” This inseparability and the fact that both were softer, more effeminate men led to speculation about their sexuality.

This is a view shared by several historians.^[2] Whether this was just an extremely close friendship or something more is difficult to say as some of the correspondence between the two may have been destroyed after their deaths. Yet, some people remain convinced that James Buchanan was the first member of the LGBTQ community to serve as the head of this nation.

8 Abraham Lincoln

Back-to-back gay presidents?

It seems too good to be true, but many historians believe this to be the case. Abraham Lincoln is the most written about, pondered over, and analyzed president to ever live in the White House. Every aspect of his life has been turned inside out in hopes of gleaning new knowledge about this complicated, charming, and inspirational person. Is it possible that he had hidden relationships with different men during his life which his contemporaries and most teachers or professors rarely or never comment on?

C.A. Tripp, the author of The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln, would say “yes.” In his book, Tripp states that Lincoln had relationships with at least two different men, Joshua Speed and David Derickson.^[3]

Lincoln lived with Speed for four years and shared the same bed with him. While this was often done to save space when people were traveling or for a short period of time, the fact that a wealthy man was sharing a bed with another for an extended period is an oddity. When combined with the exceptionally close and emotional friendship between the two, this led Tripp to believe that there was a romantic relationship between the Lincoln and Speed.

Derickson, a captain in the army, was assigned to be one of Lincoln’s bodyguards. They shared a bed whenever Lincoln’s wife was away. The two men were often together. Lincoln kept Derickson as his guard for longer than usual and even attended Derickson’s church. Their relationship was a source of rumors around Washington, and several diaries of the time refer to it.

7 Richard The Lionheart

When thinking of Richard the Lionheart, the famous British king, many images come to mind. Most are of epic battles of the Crusades with Richard gallantly charging on horseback, banners blowing in the wind. Yet, there was another side to this man that is worth exploring.

As a young man, Richard was believed to have had a love affair with Philip II of France. It was said that Philip loved Richard “as his own soul” and that “their beds did not separate” at night. They formed an alliance between their nations and even fought in battle together. Though their relationship would sour after the Third Crusade, Richard almost certainly had other lovers, both male and female. At one point, he did public penance for the sin of sodomy.^[4]

6 Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes was a masterful American poet and a major force of the “Harlem Renaissance” of the 1920s. His work is best known for shedding light on the black experience in America. In the minds of many, he has become one of the greatest poets produced by the US. Yet, for all his fame, he was an exceptionally private man. This makes it difficult to glean any insight into the workings of his mind.

His biographers claim that his sexuality is at least ambiguous. Langston had homosexual experiences, even admitting to one while he was serving as a seaman early in his life. But he had relationships with women as well, so he may not have thought of himself as a “gay man.”

Many critics of the view of a gay Langston Hughes go as far as to describe him as largely asexual, pointing to the fact that his relationships were few and far between. Others, such as Alden Reimonenq, refer to Hughes as living a “secret life silently in the confines of a very narrow but well-constructed closet.”^[5]

The problem with a closet being so well-constructed, though, is that it’s hard to see inside. This leaves us to ponder the personal feelings behind such a powerful, creative force in our literary history.

5 Sparta

When we think of ancient Sparta, we imagine men forging themselves into the world’s greatest soldiers and lines of hoplites facing down the enemy in a scene straight out of Zack Snyder’s film 300. However, we don’t normally think of homosexual relationships. (With that many abs on display, it’s a little strange that we don’t.) Nevertheless, homosexuality was a common practice in Sparta and was even considered part of their military strategy.

Sparta was a society built around its military. All Spartan males were taken from their mothers at a young age and enrolled in the agoge, a rigorous training and education system. The boys would live in the barracks until they reached adulthood. They were surrounded by nothing but other boys for all their formative years, and homosexual encounters were commonplace and encouraged.

It was actually considered a mark of shame if an older boy did not court a younger one. The Spartans viewed these relationships as a way to gain unit cohesion and shore up one’s valor on the battlefield. A person was likely to fight harder if he was protecting his lover.

Even after marriage, a Spartan man spent little time with his wife except for breeding purposes, which was seen as a duty (the creation of more Spartans). They largely preferred to live among their fellow men. There are even stories of Spartan wives dressing up as soldiers on their wedding nights to ease the minds of their husbands, who were used to homosexual encounters.^[6]

4 Jane Addams

Jane Addams (1860–1935) is a figure of immeasurable importance to the US. As a symbol of the Progressive Era and the women’s suffrage movement, she was responsible for the first settlement house, known as Hull House, in the country. Her work in reforming child labor laws and improving public health, sanitation, social welfare, women’s rights, and race relations earned her a Nobel Prize.

However, her personal love life is often overlooked. The most likely person with whom Addams may have had a relationship was Mary Rozet Smith. She worked with Addams at Hull House and provided Addams and her organization with financial support.

The two formed a “Boston marriage,” which was a 19th-century term to describe two unmarried women who lived together. They even bought a summer house together. Much of their correspondence has been destroyed in accordance with Addams’s wishes, but what remains shows an intimate relationship between the two.

They wrote to each other every day when they were separated and lived together until Smith’s death in 1934. Whether or not historians agree on her sexuality, one group seems to be certain about it: Addams was inducted into the Chicago LGBT Hall of Fame in 2008.^[7]

3 J. Edgar Hoover

J. Edgar Hoover served as the director of the FBI for 37 years—from 1935 until his death in 1972. He was a powerful, feared, and controversial governmental figure who served during numerous presidential administrations.

Hoover is often credited with building the FBI into a professional force by stressing a more analytical, scientific approach than they had used in the past. He is just as often accused of egregious abuses of power while helming the nation’s top police force.

His sexuality has also been scrutinized, with persistent rumors that he was a transvestite and a homosexual. In particular, it has been widely speculated that he had a long-standing relationship with Clyde Tolson, Hoover’s assistant director and the man to whom Hoover left his property in his will.^[8]

The two of them were always seen together, often taking vacations and going out to clubs with one another. Critics of this view describe their relationship as “brotherly.” Some accounts report that gangster Seymour Pollock had proof of this relationship and used it to pressure Hoover to overlook Pollock’s criminal acts.

2 Eleanor Roosevelt

Eleanor Roosevelt was first lady of the United States from 1933 to 1945, a delegate to the United Nations, a political activist, a feminist, and a promoter of civil rights. She was married to Franklin Roosevelt, who was US president longer than any other person and guided the country through the Great Depression and World War II.

Their marriage was complicated by her husband’s numerous extramarital affairs. The two had more of a political marriage than anything romantic. Mostly, they held a “live and let live” policy, each keeping to their own business.^[9]

In her book Eleanor and Hick: The Love Affair That Shaped a First Lady, Susan Quinn states that the first lady had an affair of her own with a reporter named Lorena Hickok from the Associated Press. Hickok was a known lesbian, and the thousands of letters between the two show that they had an intimate relationship.

These letters were full of flowery language and feelings of yearning for each other. Besides that, the two were almost constant companions, adding to historians’ suspicions. Whether this was merely a close friendship or something more has been the subject of a thorny debate for historians over the years, although there is too much evidence to simply dismiss it out of hand.

1 Frederick The Great

Frederick II (aka Frederick the Great) was king of Prussia from 1740 to 1786. He built Prussia into a great power by reforming both the civil and military aspects of the country. He was the victor of the Seven Years’ War and became a symbol of what a great German leader should look like. Dutiful, intelligent, and skilled in the art of war, Frederick cut a figure that the German people would admire for generations.

Yet, as far as his sexuality goes, there is quite a bit of evidence to suggest that Frederick was predominantly homosexual. Though he took great pains to show his parents that his marriage to Elisabeth Christine was completely normal, he spoke of an aversion to her in his private writings.

After becoming king, he had no time for her whatsoever and hardly seemed interested in the woman at all. In fact, it becomes clear from his private letters that he had enjoyed relations with several young officers in his regiment as a younger man. Court gossip from the time was chock-full of the king’s private dalliances as well.

There was an attempt by his physician, Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann, to cover up evidence of Frederick’s sexuality. Zimmermann claimed that an operation to treat Frederick’s gonorrhea had left the king mutilated and unable to perform any type of sexual act, leading to rumors of homosexuality.

This does not seem to be all that credible, though, as the surgeon who prepared Frederick’s body for burial said quite the opposite: The royal genitals were “as complete and perfect as those of any healthy man.”^[10]

By donating a lot of money to hospitals and universities to have their names emblazoned on buildings, the wealthy can ensure that the public remembers them in a generous and shining light. But most of us don’t get to decide what our legacy will be after we’re gone.

Certain people are not remembered for their greatest accomplishments or their most infamous deeds. Rather, they are immortalized for other exploits which have become more memorable in the eyes of history for one reason or another.

10 Robert FitzRoy

English Vice Admiral Robert FitzRoy is primarily remembered today for serving as captain of the HMS Beagle during the iconic voyage of Charles Darwin. The two became friends even though the former was a devout man who thoroughly opposed Darwin’s profane ideas. He even came up with his own peculiar hypothesis to explain the disappearance of the dinosaurs. Quirky ideas aside, FitzRoy’s main claim to fame should be inventing the weather forecast.

In 1854, FitzRoy was appointed the head of a new meteorological department within the Board of Trade whose job was to collect weather data at sea. This would be the precursor to the Met Office, the UK’s modern national weather service.

The main goal of the department was to develop better wind charts to reduce sailing times, but FitzRoy became convinced that closer study allowed them to predict storms. He finally developed the first gale warning after the Royal Charter wrecked in 1859, causing the deaths of hundreds.

FitzRoy benefited from another recent invention, the electric telegraph. It allowed him to gather weather data from all over the coasts in real time and send out warnings when needed from his London office.^[1]

Since he was issuing storm warnings anyway, FitzRoy reasoned that he might as well send them to the newspapers, too. His first forecast was published in The Times on August 1, 1861.

9 Zeppo Marx

Herbert Marx, better known by his stage name “Zeppo,” was part of the Marx Brothers, one of the most successful comedy acts of early Hollywood. Alongside Gummo, Zeppo is considered one of the “other brothers,” the ones who left the act early on to focus on other projects while Groucho, Harpo, and Chico formed the definitive incarnation of the Marx Brothers.

Herbert was mechanically inclined, so he started a company called Marman Products that manufactured various machines and components. He built a short-lived motorcycle called the Marman Twin which was in production between 1948 and 1949.

During World War II, his company manufactured multiple parts for the war effort, the most notable being the Marman clamp used to secure cargo. It held the atomic bomb aboard the Enola Gay and is still being used today, even on spacecraft.

Zeppo also invented a vapor delivery heating pad, but his most useful invention was a cardiac pulse rate monitor watch.^[2] It observed the wearer’s heart rate and alerted him about an irregular heartbeat.

8 William Bligh

Captain William Bligh is best known for being in command of the HMS Bounty when the most famous mutiny in history occurred. The story of the Mutiny on the Bounty was popularized during the 20th century thanks to multiple films. They also solidified Bligh’s role as a tyrant while the mutiny leader, Fletcher Christian, always played the hero. More notable, however, was Bligh’s role in the Rum Rebellion, the only military coup in Australian history.

Bligh continued to have a successful career after losing the HMS Bounty and, in 1806, was appointed governor of New South Wales. At the time, a disproportionate amount of the state’s wealth and properties were under the control of the New South Wales Corps. Its officers owned a lot of businesses, represented the bulk of Sydney’s upper class, and dominated the legal system.

Furthermore, they were engaged in the private trading of goods such as rum, going against government regulation. Many historians believe a by-the-rules disciplinarian such as Bligh was purposely appointed governor in the hopes of being able to minimize their influence.

Unsurprisingly, Bligh frequently butted heads with Sydney’s entrepreneurs, especially John Macarthur. The former captain described Macarthur as the main agitator, but another prominent role was played by Major George Johnston, the commander of the New South Wales Corps.

Tensions between the two camps escalated until Bligh planned to charge several officers with treason. At that point, Johnston rallied his 400 men, went to the governor’s house, and deposed Bligh.^[3] His side argued that the governor abused his power and was not fit for duty. In the end, the British government sided with Bligh and declared the Rum Rebellion illegal.

7 Barbara Cartland

Barbara Cartland was the British novelist known for the prodigious rate at which she churned out books about Victorian romance, averaging roughly one a month. She ended her career with 723 published novels. When she wasn’t busy writing, Cartland also took an active interest in aviation and helped develop the military glider.

The author became a fan of gliders during the 1920s. She once saw a show in Germany which involved aerotowing. (A small aircraft took the glider into the air using a tow rope and sent it on short trips.) Cartland liked this, but she thought it was pointless unless it could also be used for long-distance journeys.

In 1931, she enlisted the help of two RAF officers and built her own glider named The Barbara Cartland. She embarked on a 320-kilometer (200 mi) trip. As she was carrying a bag of letters aboard, she also flew the world’s first airmail glider.

The idea of using gliders on long trips appealed to the military, who believed they could be used for troop transport into combat zones. During World War II, the British, Germans, Soviets, and Americans all employed military gliders. Cartland was honored for her contributions with the Bishop Wright Air Industry Award in 1984.^[4]

6 Amelia Bloomer

Women’s rights advocate Amelia Bloomer is forever linked to the style of dress which she helped to popularize and which bears her name. However, her efforts for women’s suffrage extend beyond a fashion statement.

Arguably, her greatest accomplishment was publishing The Lily, the first newspaper in the United States edited by and for women. Initially, it focused exclusively on promoting temperance, but it gradually came to include other women’s matters as well. The inaugural issue appeared on January 1, 1849.

The Lily was quickly followed by other periodicals edited by women. This included The Revolution, a newspaper established by suffragists Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. They were introduced to one another by Bloomer.

She first wrote of the famous attire in an April 1851 issue of The Lily. The loose-fitting Turkish trousers combined with the skirt ending below the knee were far more practical and comfortable than the Victorian-style dresses which women were expected to wear. Interest in the new fashion was immediate. Adopters of the style became known as “Bloomerites,” while the pantaloons were called “bloomers.”

Bloomer actually only wore the fashion named after her for a few years before returning to the old style.^[5] She felt that people became too fixated on the dress, and it detracted attention from more important topics.

5 Epicurus

Merriam-Webster defines an “epicure” as one with sensitive and discriminating tastes, especially in food and wine. The word is based on Epicurus, the Greek philosopher who devised a new hedonistic philosophy called Epicureanism. At first, it seems like a fitting way to honor the ancient scholar, except that it goes against what Epicurus actually believed in.

Hedonism is a school of thought that argues that the pursuit of pleasure and intrinsic goods should be the main goals in life. Strictly speaking, Epicurus was a hedonist as he believed that pleasure was the greatest good. But his idea of pleasure was starkly different from modern epicures.

Epicurus had no interest in sumptuous feasts or expensive possessions. He believed that the highest state of happiness was achieved through a combination of ataraxia and aponia. The former means a state of tranquility free of fear and distress, while the latter refers to the absence of pain.^[6]

Epicurus advocated that happiness came from a reduction in desires. He specifically categorized luxury food as a natural but unnecessary desire. In other words, one shouldn’t spurn this extravagance if it happens to be available, but one should not seek it out. Doing so will lead to unhappiness by creating anxiety in anticipation of fulfilling the desire and pain when it becomes unfulfilled.

4 John Montagu, Earl Of Sandwich

The name John Montagu probably won’t ring a bell with many people, but they might recognize him from his title, Earl of Sandwich. He is the man who gave the name to the most popular, versatile food in the world—the sandwich.

According to the story, Montagu was an avid gambler and wanted a food that he could eat without leaving the card table. His buddies soon started asking for “the same as Sandwich” which just became a sandwich eventually. According to a more complimentary version, Montagu was such a hard worker that he wanted something he could eat at his desk in his office.

The biggest position held by Montagu in his career was First Lord of the Admiralty. He had the post from 1748 to 1751, in 1763, and from 1771 to 1782. His final stint wasn’t considered particularly successful, especially due to his administration during the American Revolutionary War. He did do something worthwhile, though, and that was sponsoring the voyages of James Cook.

When Montagu was put in charge of the navy, Cook had just finished his first voyage to Australia. He was commissioned for another trip, and the Earl of Sandwich gave him the HMS Resolution, a sloop that Cook described as “the fittest for service of any I have seen.”

He used it on his next two voyages. In 1778, Cook became the first European to discover the Hawaiian Islands, which he initially named the Sandwich Islands in honor of his patron.^[7]

3 Elisha Gray

The story of Elisha Gray is fairly well-known. Both he and Alexander Graham Bell invented telephone prototypes around the same time, but Bell beat him to the patent office by a matter of hours. In another version, Bell actually stole the usage of liquid transmitters for his telephone design from Gray by illegally looking at his patent application.

The two went to court. Bell won, and Elisha Gray became one of the prominent examples of people getting screwed out of the history books. However, Gray’s story did not end there. He continued inventing and had around 70 patents by the time he died in 1901. He also founded the Western Electric Manufacturing Company, which lives on today as the Fortune 500 corporation Graybar.

As an inventor, Gray mostly kept working on improving the telegraph. One creation of note was the telautograph, which was a precursor to the fax machine.^[8] The receiving station had a pen attached to servos which could reproduce whatever the sender was writing at the other end. It could be used to transmit a signature, a letter, or even a drawing and quickly became popular in banks, hospitals, and railway stations.

2 Victor Noir

Three-and-a-half-million people go to see the famed Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris every year. One of the most visited tombs is that of French journalist Victor Noir, who was gunned down by Prince Pierre-Napoleon Bonaparte in 1870. However, most tourists are only interested in one thing—rubbing the genitals of Victor Noir.

Here’s what happened.

Noir found himself embroiled in a feud between Prince Bonaparte and Henri Rochefort, the owner of the newspaper for which Noir worked. Eventually, the prince challenged Rochefort to a duel. Paschal Grousset, the paper’s editor, sent Noir and another man named Ulrich de Fonvielle as his seconds to set the terms of a duel between the prince and Grousset.

But the prince only wanted to duel with Rochefort, a fellow nobleman. An argument between Noir and the prince escalated into a fight, and Bonaparte gunned down Noir. Whether the prince or the journalist hit first is a matter of whose story you believe.

Noir’s death and Bonaparte’s subsequent acquittal enraged the populace at a time when the imperial family wasn’t too popular to begin with. Noir’s martyrdom gave revolutionaries the opportunity they needed to lead an uprising. Although the insurrection failed, the empire didn’t survive for long. The Franco-Prussian War led to the emergence of the Third Republic later that year.

After the establishment of the republic, Victor Noir’s remains were moved to Pere Lachaise Cemetery where sculptor Jules Dalou created a bronze statue for Noir’s grave. For some reason, Dalou gave Noir’s effigy a generous protuberance down his pants. It soon became a tradition for female visitors to kiss the sculpture on the lips and rub its genitals to improve the women’s sex lives.^[9]

1 George Washington Carver

In 1941, Time magazine called George Washington Carver the “Black Leonardo.” Although he was born into a slave family, Carver became one of the country’s leading experts on agriculture, even serving as adviser to multiple US presidents. Despite all this, he is remembered as the “peanut butter guy.”

This not only grossly trivializes his efforts, it’s not even accurate. Carver did develop hundreds of new uses for peanuts, but peanut butter wasn’t among them. The Aztecs made peanut paste centuries before him. Even in modern times, patents already existed for various methods of preparing the comestible.

Carver’s main contributions involved easing the plight of the American farmer. Cotton was the primary crop in the South, but it was a demanding crop with high nutrient needs. It often left the soil poor and, consequently, resulted in worse yields the following years.

Carver encouraged farmers to rotate their crops and alternate cotton with soil-enriching plants, which was cheaper and more effective than fertilization. He tested the soil to see what would grow best in the region and primarily recommended peanuts and sweet potatoes.^[10]

Of course, this posed a new problem: What would the farmers do with all those peanuts and sweet potatoes as they weren’t widely consumed? Carver started developing hundreds of new uses for “undesirable” crops and turned the peanut into one of the nation’s leading crops.

We all like to indulge our appetites every now and then. Maybe eat a bit more than we should. Maybe try out something new or exotic, or maybe simply ravage an entire pint of delicious ice cream in one go. Well, compared to the next ten entries, we’re not even playing in the same ballpark.

10. William Buckland

We start off with William Buckland, famed English theologian, geologist, paleontologist, and Dean of Westminster. In 1824, he wrote the first complete account of a dinosaur, which he named Megalosaurus. However, it was his relationship with non-extinct or extant animals that we are concerned with. 

Buckland wanted to eat everything. It was literally his life’s ambition to eat one of every animal on the planet, like some kind of bizarre mash-up between Noah and Hannibal Lecter. Because, as he taught his students at Oxford, the stomach “rules the world. The great ones eat the less, the less the lesser still!

Buckland’s position with the Society for the Acclimatization of Animals allowed him to import all sorts of exotic animals to the country. Hedgehogs, panthers, crocodiles, ostrich, porpoises – they all made their way to his dining table. The worst thing he tasted was apparently blue bottles, while mice on toast were his go-to snack.

By far the strangest story involving Buckland’s bizarre appetite concerns the mummified heart of a French king, but this one is in the “maybe” pile as to whether it actually happened or not. In 1848, while visiting Lord Harcourt, the Archbishop of York, Buckland was presented with a preserved heart in a silver casket, said to be that of King Louis XIV. Unable to restrain himself, the theologian immediately gobbled it up in front of his shocked audience.

9. John Montagu

Compared to everyone else on this list, John Montagu, the 4th Earl of Sandwich, had quite tame eating habits. However, they were still unusual for that time and he is much better remembered nowadays for them than for anything else he did, despite the fact that he held the positions of Postmaster General, Secretary of State, and First Lord of the Admiralty during his lifetime.

John Montagu gave his name to one of the most common, versatile, and popular foods of all time – the humble sandwich. There is no doubt that he popularized it, but did Montagu actually invent the sandwich? Well, no. It is such a basic snack that it has existed, one way or another, for a long time before the earl, but we have no idea who actually was its creator. The practice is, at least, 2,000 years old, as an account of Rabbi Hillel the Elder making sandwiches exists dating back to the 1st century BC.

As to how exactly Montagu became associated with the sandwich, the story goes that he was such an inveterate gambler that he asked for some simple sustenance in the form of meat between two slices of bread so that he wouldn’t have to get up from the card table. A more flattering version claims that Montagu was such a dedicated man that he ordered sandwiches at his desk so he wouldn’t have to stop working.

8. Nicholas Wood

While Buckland consumed strange food for his own gratification, other people managed to turn it into a career. At first glance, Nicholas Wood looked like a typical 17th-century English farmer. However, when it was lunchtime, the man could easily put away 60 eggs, multiple pies, and a hefty chunk of lamb, and still hunger for more. No wonder, though, that he became known as the Great Eater of Kent.

At first, Wood did this to impress the fellas down at his local inn, but he soon realized that he could turn his prodigious appetite into a sideshow act for fairs and festivals. He even got booked every now and then as entertainment for a nobleman’s banquet or two. Wood particularly attracted the attention of poet John Taylor, who gave us the most detailed account of Wood’s eating prowess in a pamphlet he wrote with the catchy name “The Great Eater, of Kent, or Part of the Admirable Teeth and Stomach Exploits of Nicholas Wood, of Harrisom in the County of Kent His Excessive Manner of Eating Without Manners, In Strange and True Manner Described.”

Taylor was so impressed that he wanted to become Wood’s manager and bring him to London. At first, the “Kentish Tenterbelly,” as the poet called him, agreed, but he got cold feet and backed out. From that point on, Taylor no longer mentioned his feasting feats and the Great Eater of Kent disappeared from the annals of history.

7. Apicius

Although we don’t know much about Apicius, we do know that he lived in Rome sometime during the 1st century, that he had extravagant tastes when it came to food, and that he had the wealth to indulge in them. There is even a Roman cookbook named after him, better known as De re Culinaria, although it is a collection of collected recipes and it is impossible to tell how many were contributed by Apicius himself.

Some of the gourmet dishes recommended by Apicius included stuffed mice, jellyfish omelets, and dolphin meatballs. The tastiest food, however, was something a bit more commonplace – pork or goose liver. The best way to prepare it involved feeding the animal dry figs until it was stuffed and then making it drink “mead or honyed wine” until it keeled over dead. According to Apicius, there was no other “flesh of any other living creature, that yeeldeth more store of dishes to the maintenance of gluttonie, than this.”

Apicius is also credited with creating the most decadent dish of that era, which, for Roman times, is really saying something – the lark tongue pie. The reason this course was so outrageous was because the lark was a tiny bird. Its tongue was absolutely minuscule and you needed around a thousand birds for a single pie. 

6. Andre the Giant

Not all men have large appetites for food. Some of them enjoy their drinks more than their vittles and, if the stories are to be believed, then Andre the Giant was the biggest drinker of them all.

As his name might suggest, French pro wrestler and “The Princess Bride” actor Andre the Giant was a mountain of a man. He wasn’t nicknamed “The Eighth Wonder of the World” for nothing. So you would expect a guy like him to imbibe more than your average person, but even for his size, Andre’s love of all things alcohol was legendary among all those who knew him.

Pretty much every wrestler from that era has, at least, one Andre drinking story. Bobby Heenan wrote in his memoir that the Giant once stayed until 4 in the morning at the Marriott Hotel bar drinking 40 vodka tonics before finally calling it a night. He would often down six bottles of wine just to get him in the mood for more drinking. When he had to stop drinking to lose weight, he restrained himself to only four or five bottles with dinner.

Andre’s biggest drinking session came when he knocked back 119 beers in just six hours. According to the wrestlers he was with, that was the only time they actually saw the Giant pass out from booze, which he did in a hotel hallway. The problem was that he was too heavy to move so, instead, they draped a piano cover over him and let him sleep it off. Andre remained undisturbed until the next day, as everyone thought he was a piece of furniture.

5. Michel Lotito

From one Frenchman, we move on to another, Michel Lotito, better known as Monsieur Mangetout or “Mr. Eat-All.” As his name implies, his appetite wasn’t particularly picky. Lotito ate everything. And when we say “everything,” we don’t mean any kind of food that he could get his hands on. We mean everything – glass, razor blades, beds, television sets, computers, bicycles, chandeliers, and, his crowning achievement, an entire Cessna 150 airplane.

Lotito discovered his unusual skill when he was a teenager. It was a combination of two bizarre physical traits – an abnormally high threshold for pain and an extra thick stomach lining and intestines, which meant that he could swallow just about anything with little ill effects.

He first achieved fame in 1979 when he entered the Guinness Book of Records for eating a bicycle over the course of 15 days. From then on, TV shows, fairs, and festival appearances followed, but already he had started on his most ambitious project. It took Lotito two years, between 1978 and 1980, but he managed to eat, piece by piece, an entire Cessna 150 aircraft.

Guinness estimated that Lotito consumed around nine tons of metal during his lifetime. Oddly enough, it was soft foods such as bananas and boiled eggs that gave him an upset stomach.

4. Elagabalus

Having a ravenous and extravagant appetite is one thing, but also being able to indulge it is quite another. In order to afford such outlandish and hedonistic dishes on a regular basis, you’d have to be a Roman emperor or something. Lucky for Elagabalus, that’s exactly what he was.

Tales of the excesses of Elagabalus have been often told, mainly by people who didn’t like him very much. But there is no doubt that the young emperor enjoyed the finest things in life. When Elagabalus and his guests dined, they all sat on silver beds, as the perfume of amaranth was gently fanned by boys whose curly locks were used as napkins. As for the menu:

“Sows’ breasts with Lybian truffles; dormice baked in poppies and honey; peacocks’ tongues flavored with cinnamon; oysters stewed in garum…flamingoes’ and ostriches’ brains, followed by the brains of thrushes, parakeets, pheasants, and peacocks, also a yellow pig cooked after the Trojan fashion, from which, when carved, hot sausages fell and live thrushes flew; sea-wolves from the Baltic, sturgeons from Rhodes, fig-peckers from Samos, African snails and the rest.”

3. Francis Battalia

Everyone on this list had large and unusual appetites, but at least most of them consumed food. That cannot be said for 17th-century Italian soldier Francis Battalia. We’ll let you guess what his preferred nourishment was, but we’ll give you a hint – he was known as the Stone-Eater.

Like others, Battalia turned his peculiar eating habits into a sideshow performance. In front of a curious crowd, he would swallow large plates full of stones and gravel, and then shake his body violently so the people could hear them rustle inside his stomach. 

Unsurprisingly, some people were skeptical and thought that Battalia was faking the whole thing, but he allowed himself to be tested to show that his Stone-Eater act was legit. A doctor named Bulwer wrote an account of Battalia in his paper Artificial Changeling. He claimed that the Italian was monitored for 24 hours, a time during which he not only ate exclusively rocks, but also excreted a sandy and crumbly substance.

2. Tarrare

The third and final Frenchman on our list, Tarrare was someone who, like others previously mentioned, would eat just about everything he could get his hands on. However, he didn’t do it to set records or to put on a show, he did it because his hunger would simply not stop.

Ostensibly born in Lyon circa 1772, Tarrare’s gargantuan appetite started exhibiting from an early age. Eventually, unable to feed him, his parents kicked him out, so teenage Tarrare roamed the streets of France, begging, stealing, and putting on sideshows to try and satiate his unending appetite. 

When the War of the First Coalition broke out, Tarrare joined the French Revolutionary Army, but even quadruple rations weren’t enough to satisfy him. He was admitted to the hospital, where doctors were mainly interested in testing the limits of his gluttony. They once fed Tarrare a meal fit for fifteen men, which he devoured without any problem. They started feeding him live animals – cats, dogs, snakes, lizards – Tarrare ate them all without hesitation.

The army tried using him as a courier who would swallow secret documents, cross the border and pass them through his system a couple of days later. The experiment was an abysmal failure, as Tarrare was caught immediately, kept prisoner for a few days, given a beating, and sent over the border.

Back in France, doctors started experimenting on him again, but would no longer feed him all he could eat. Whenever Tarrare didn’t get his fill, he prowled the streets at night, scrounging the gutters for garbage and offal. He then moved on to munching on the corpses in the morgue and was even suspected of stealing and eating a toddler. At that point, the doctors said enough is enough and chased the famished fiend out of the hospital. 

1. Charles Darwin

We end with the most famous name on our list – Charles Darwin. Obviously, he was a man fascinated with the animal world around him, and it seems that this fascination also included wanting to know how they all tasted…for science, of course.

Darwin first started indulging in this habit during his student years at Cambridge, where he became a member of the Glutton Club, whose goal was to feast on “birds and beasts which were before unknown to the human palate.” They ate hawks and bitterns, but were left supremely disappointed by a dish of brown owl, which Darwin could later only describe as “indescribable.”

Once aboard the Beagle and headed to faraway lands, Darwin could once again indulge his cravings for rare and exotic meat. Pumas, iguanas, giant tortoises, and armadillos were all on the menu, but it was a giant rodent assumed to be an agouti that the naturalist described as “the very best meat [he] ever tasted.”

We all have hidden talents that we like to break out every now and then to show off. Famous people are no different. Most of them get primarily remembered for one or two things, but that does not mean they don’t have a few other skills in their bag of tricks.

10. Christopher Walken the Lion Tamer

Christopher Walken is, without a doubt, one of the most distinctive characters that Hollywood has ever produced, and that is before you find out that he spent one summer working as a lion tamer.

Even before he became a big-shot actor, Walken was meant for show business. He started out as a child actor in the ’50s, appearing in variety and sketch shows alongside the likes of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. Then, as a teenager, he began looking for more adventurous experiences and that’s how he ended up joining the circus when he was 16.

At the circus, Walken became a trainee lion tamer, working with a lioness named Sheba. The gig didn’t last long, but the actor still remembers it fondly: “I would come into the cage and wave my whip, and she’d lazily get up and sit like a dog and maybe give a little roar. I like cats a lot. I’ve always liked cats. They’re great company.”

9. Willie Nelson the Black Belt

Most people might regard Willie Nelson as the poster boy for the chilled-out, long-haired hippie artist/activist who simply enjoys getting stoned and making music with his friends, but there is one characteristic they might be leaving out – his expertise in martial arts.

This is not something that Nelson has gotten into recently. The outlaw country music star has been practicing martial arts for decades, as he considers it one of the best exercises you can do to stay fit: “It’s just good for you physically. For your lungs. The more you’re breathing, exercising, the better you’re going to feel.”

And Nelson is pretty good at it, too. Back in 2014, the Red-Headed Stranger celebrated his 81st birthday by becoming a fifth-degree black belt in GongKwon Yusul, a Korean martial art that Willie Nelson has mastered over a period of 20 years.

8. George Washington the Ballroom Dancer

George Washington might be remembered for his proficiency on the battlefield and in the Oval Office, but not so much for his talents on the dance floor. And that is a shame because, according to numerous people who witnessed it firsthand, the Father of the Country not only liked to boogie, but he was pretty good at it, too.

Washington described dancing as “so agreeable and innocent an amusement.” His fondness for this activity began as a young officer when he became the master of the minuet. However, he got to enjoy it the most in his later years, after retiring from public office, and if there was a ball in Virginia, somewhere around Alexandria, chances were pretty good that the former president might attend to strut his stuff.

7. Nostradamus the Jam Maker

Sixteenth-century French astrologer Nostradamus might be a favorite among crackpots all over the world for his book on prophecies, but that’s not his only available work. In 1555, he also published Traité des fardemens et confitures, or “Treatise on Make-up and Jam,” two things that obviously go perfectly together. 

You have to remember that Nostramaus’s day job was that of apothecary, so he put together a book with all kinds of recipes. His cure for the plague was a popular choice, but you could find all sorts of instructions in there, from food recipes like marmalade, marzipan, and quince jelly, to make-up tips such as how to whiten your teeth or turn your hair golden blond. 

Nostradamus mostly collected these recipes and placed them in his book. They weren’t his own original creations. However, he did include one personal recipe for a “love jam.” He described it as being so potent that “if a man were to have a little of it in his mouth, and while having it in his mouth kissed a woman, or a woman him, and expelled it with his saliva, putting some of it in the other’s mouth, it would suddenly cause … a burning of her heart to perform the love-act“.

6. Pierce Brosnan the Fire Eater

In 1996, right after he starred as James Bond in GoldenEye, Pierce Brosnan began doing media appearances to promote the movie. This included a guest spot on The Muppets, which would have involved a big segment for the finale where Brosnan could showcase his special talents. Well, he couldn’t really sing or dance, but Brosnan did have an ace up his sleeve – he could breathe fire.

This was a little trick that he picked up in 1969 while working at the Oval House Theater in London. It’s been on his CV ever since, although the Muppets show in 1996 was the last time that Brosnan did his fire-breathing act since it didn’t really work out too well for him that night. Here’s what happened according to him:

“The last segment of the show was me fire-eating. I made my own brand – I had the kerosene, I was in the tuxedo. The prop guy was there and he said, ‘This (other) stuff is great. It doesn’t taste of anything, you don’t smell it.’ I went, ‘This is good. I’ll try this.’

It was like rocket fuel. I blew it, it all came back into my mouth and my mouth blew up. I had blisters for the rest of the show.”

5. Will Wright the Street Racer

Those of you who have only heard of the Cannonball Run from the 1980s comedy movie starring Burt Reynolds might be surprised to find out that it used to be a real race across the United States, from New York City to Los Angeles. Like its movie counterpart, it was always unsanctioned since it was clear to everyone that the racers constantly broke the speed limit all over the country.

During the early 1980s, the race briefly became known as the U.S. Express and, in 1980, it was won by a guy named Will Wright, who finished the race in first place alongside his co-driver Rick Doherty in a souped-up Mazda RX-7 with a time of 33 hours and 39 minutes.

If you’re not a gamer, then the name Will Wright probably doesn’t mean anything to you, but if you are, you might recognize him as the designer behind one of the biggest franchises in gaming history – The Sims.

4. Paul Revere the Forensic Dentist

Everybody has heard of Paul Revere’s famous ride, as he raced throughout the night to alert the colonies of the impending attack on Lexington and Concord. Before all of this, though, Revere was a silversmith by trade and, during a particularly low point in his career when business was down, he even took up dentistry. One of his clients was one of the Founding Fathers, Major General Joseph Warren, who got fitted with a pair of ivory false teeth by Revere. 

Warren was killed at the Battle of Bunker Hill and later buried in a mass grave without his uniform or identification. Nine months later, when the British evacuated Boston, Revere and Warren’s brothers went to the battlefield to search for his remains and give him a proper burial. This was a desperate move since the body would have been unrecognizable by now, but Revere managed to identify it thanks to a walrus tooth that he had fitted into Joseph Warren’s mouth. In the process, Paul Revere became the country’s first forensic dentist.

3. Johnny Cash the Morse Code Master

In 1950, an 18-year-old Johnny Cash was looking for a sense of purpose, so he did what many young men do – he joined the military. He enlisted in the Air Force and got sent to Lackland Air Force Base for training before being shipped across the Atlantic to Landsberg, West Germany, where he spent the next three years of his life. That’s where Cash discovered that he had an unexpected skill – that of using and deciphering Morse Code. Unsurprisingly, he was made a Morse Code operator and made to listen in on the Soviets.

This gave rise to a famous story that Johnny Cash was the first American to hear that Joseph Stalin had died after intercepting the message by chance. This is almost certainly a myth, but one that Cash himself encouraged with a wry smile, writing in his autobiography:

“I was the ace. I was who they called when the hardest jobs came up. I copied the first news of Stalin’s death. I located the signal when the first Soviet jet bomber made its first flight from Moscow to Smolensk; we all knew what to listen for, but I was the one who heard it…”

2. Hirohito the Marine Biologist

Hirohito might have attained infamy as the Emperor of Japan during World War II, but there was another side to him – that of a dedicated marine biologist. He was described as wearing “ two faces. There was the placid, impassionate, and, even, obedient leader in public regard, and there was the eager intent of the original investigator whether in the field or the laboratory, bent on discovery and understanding.”

During his school days, the crown prince found a passion for biology which carried on for the rest of his life. He soon started collecting shells and, from there, he moved to studying marine biology, taking advantage of the rich biodiversity of Sagami Bay near one of the imperial villages. During his lifetime, Hirohito’s collection grew to over 57,000 specimens and he published 15 monographs on the marine fauna in the bay, where he described over 300 new species. He eventually specialized in hydrozoans, really tiny predators related to jellyfish and sea anemones. 

It seems that the interest in marine biology runs in the family, as his son and heir also took up the practice, but focused his studies on the Gobiidae fish family.

1. Thomas Jefferson the Archaeologist

Thomas Jefferson bore many titles during his lifetime, but one that often gets overlooked is the “Father of American Archaeology.” That’s because Jefferson led the first scientific archaeological dig in the country’s history when he directed the excavation of a mound in central Virginia. 

Jefferson employed the kind of thoroughness and dedication that you would expect from someone like him. His systematic trenching and use of stratigraphy pretty much anticipated what would become the standard approach to archaeology by almost a century. 

The mound was located in Monacan Indian territory, so it likely belonged to them or their ancestors. As many as a thousand different human remains were found at the site. However, the area flooded several times in the centuries that followed, and by 1911 it was reported that the mound had been entirely washed away.