Exilian
Art, Writing, and Learning: The Clerisy Quarter => History, Science, and Interesting Information - The Great Library => Topic started by: Jubal on November 20, 2011, 05:46:54 PM
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Who do you think were the most badass and awesome guys and girls in History?
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Nikola Tesla
Serbia's answer to every other scientist ever.
Just a few things you should know.
http://www.cracked.com/funny-284-nikola-tesla/
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I guess Mad Jack Churchill should get a mention.
Basil the Macedonian as well. Turned up in Constantinople as a peasant horse-trader, died about forty years later having founded his own Imperial dynasty. :P
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Bob Dole
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Captain Mad Jack Churchill!
Um also Miloš Obilić, the Serbian knight who was responsible for the death of the only Turkish Sultan to have carked it on the battlefield.
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What about the more famous guys like Hitler, Alexander the great, Ganghis Khan, Julias Cessar and the girls like Queen Cleopatra? I think we can take Hitler out though. :)
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Spellcheckeroneo.
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Yeah I'd agree with Alexander and Genghis Khan. Not so much the others because unlike these two, they didn't actually get stuck in themselves. Though feel free to proove me wrong if I am guys. :D
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Na. I think your right. YAY FOR GANGHIS!!!!!
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If you're going to keep spelling it differently, at least use an official alternative like Chinggis. :P
Simo Häyhä (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simo_H%C3%A4yh%C3%A4), the White Death, is an obvious choice.
Harald Hardrada (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harald_III_of_Norway), last of the great vikings. A Kievan commander, captain of the Varangian Guard, and King of Norway. One hell of a track record, as well as individual heroic exploits like his escape from Constantinople and his death in battle.
By extension, the Norwegian berserker who held Stamford Bridge and killed 40 English housecarls was clearly something of a tough nut.
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Wasn't that guy stopped only because someone took a boat and went underneath the bridge and speared him from below? He must have been pretty tough yeah :D
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Simo Hayha - aka The White Death - A Finnish farmer who served one year in the military before retiring back to his humble life. Humble until the USSR invaded that is, when he got a little wound up and went all sniper on them. He killed 705 USSR soldiers with a rifle and an SMG, at temperatures of around 4 degrees Celsius. The USSR had to launch whole missions to try and stop him. None of them succeeded.
I know it's a cliche, but also Leonidas, he was just too awesome not to appear.
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Donald McBane, a Scottish swordmaster.
McBane penned a remarkable book of memoirs, The Expert Swordsman's Companion, or the True Art of Self Defence. Published in 1728, it remains the only fencing book written by a master who had also been a serving soldier; in all he took part in sixteen battles and fifty two sieges. Towards the end of his career he kept an alehouse and fencing school in London and fought thirty seven prize fights in the Bear Garden, but it is extraoridnary that he survived that long.
The son of a Scottish farmer and publican, McBane enlisted in the Scots army in 1687. Five years later he won his first duel, against an army paymaster who had swindled him. Three years after that he took part in the siege of Namur, where he was shot three times and bayonetted six. In 1697 he went home to Inverness but soon reenlisted, fought a further duel in Perth, left his opponent for dead and fled to Ireland where he set up a fencing school. Still a common soldier, he found himself consigned to Holland, where he met the man he thought he killed in Perth. They became friends and set up a new academy together. On learning that four fellow practitioners ran a brothel and gaming house, he decided to take a share and fought all four until the last suddenly produced a pistol from under his hat and fired. The ball missed and McBane chased him and ran him through the ass. They cut him in and from 1700 to 1702 he lived comfortably off the earnings.
At the battle of Nijmegen, McBane's regiment lost all of its baggage, leaving him penniless. He borrowed money but lost it all in a card-game, robbed the winner, was set upon by seven men, wounded five and escaped. After a hell of a lot of other misadventures, including being blown up by a grenade, he set up as a fencing master for a third time, simultaneously keeping a brothel with sixteen girls.
One day, exhausted after preparations for a forced march, he fell asleep and was left behind by his regiment. "Up comes a French Dragoon seeking plunder and took me prisoner and drove me before him until he came to a wood where he wanted to ease nature. When his breeches were down, I mounted his horse and rode for it."
A year later he was marching with the Duke of Marlborough and in one engagement took three bayonette thrusts as well as receiving, "a brace of balls that lies in my thigh to this day." None of this seemed to quench his spirit and he was soon setting up tents for sixty "campaign ladies" as well as sixteen "professors of the sword." This was evidently insufficient, fo he led a raiding party against his Dutch allies and carried off fourteen of their women. The next day, two dozen Dutch swordsmen came to retrieve them. The two sides drank together then fought until eleven Dutch and four of McBane's band lay dead.
In 1706 he took part in a campaign which swept the French out of Flanders, in one siege hurling grenades for eight hours while receiving a ball in the head, "which will mind me of it while I yet live." The following year he fought with a Gascon mercenary who had already killed five men. "Ibound his sword and made a half thrust at his breast. He timed me and wounded me in the mouth. We took another turn, I took a little better care and gave him a thrust in the body, which made him very angry. I gave him a thrust in the belly, he then darted his sword at me, I parried it, he went and lay down on his coat and spoke none."
His next misadventure followed yet another dispute over money: He was severely beaten, thrown down a well and left for dead, fortunately in less than a foot of water. In 1708, during one more siege, he was knocked to the ground by the head of a comrade torn off in a cannon blast. "All his brains came round my head. I being half senseless put up my hand to my head and finding the brains cried to my neighbour that all my brains had been knocked out. He said were they your brains out, you would not speak."
In 1711, now forty seven, McBane quarrelled with two Dutch soldiers. The ensuing brawl left both men dying. Once again he was compelled to flee, only this time he was captured by the French and drafted into their ranks. It didn't take him long to kill two of his new comrades and was arrested. The following day, a drum major from Marlborough's army arrived to exchange prisoners. "Take him," the French general pleaded, "for if he stays, he will kill all my men."
In 1712 the Flanders wars were drifting to an end and McBane returned to Britain to a new marriage and a career with James Figg and his companions. He reenlisted once more in 1715 against the Jacobite rebels and served until discharged because his many old wounds were troubling him. In 1726, "I fought a young clean man at Edinburgh. I gave him seven wounds and broke his arm with a stick. This I did at the request of several noblemen. But now being sixty three years of age, resolve never to fight anymore, but to repent of my former wickedness."
I more or less typed that word for word from a book called By the Sword by Richard Cohen. It's a very good book about the history of swordplay, and if you do see it around I suggest that you buy it.
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Sempronius Densus.
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Not sure about badass... But
(Elizabeth) Erzsébet Báthory (The Blood Countess)
Tortured and killed virgin girls to bathe in their blood...
Possibly more sick and twisted than badass to be honest...
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That is moderately disturbing. I guess if one's going to be a villain and murder people horribly, at least getting known as "The Blood Countess" is something to show for it...?
I've got some genuine additions:
Baldwin IV of Jerusalem, the leper king. Had one of the most debilitating diseases in history, still ruled his kingdom very effectively for about six years until he was blind and couldn't walk, that period including the total loss of function in his sword-arm, which he responded to by learning to fight left handed.
Enrico Dandolo, doge of Venice at the time of the Fourth Crusade. For those who don't know, the Fourth was the one that went wrong. Really wrong. The intention was to take a Venetian fleet to Egypt and capture it with Frankish knights, but this didn't exactly happen, mostly because not enough Crusaders turned up to pay the Venetians.
The Crusade thus ended up capturing parts of the Dalmatian coast for Venice, then taking a load of Aegean islands for Venice on their way to Constantinople where in exchange for help in a coup a deposed Emperor had offered huge amounts of money, to be used to pay the Venetians. This ended with the Emperors all being overthrown and replaced with a candidate backed by Venice.
This entire episode was not masterminded by an energetic, domineering-looking doge in the prime of his life. It was masterminded by a blind eighty year old man named Enrico Dandolo. In retrospect for Europe in general and particularly Byzantium the crusade was A Bad Thing, but for the Venetians at the time they'd just pulled off the biggest trade coup in history, including pulling down an entire Empire pretty much just to open up the Black Sea trade routes, and not only this people were paying them to do it. Magnificent Bastard of history award at the very least.
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I'm not sure about the exclusively virgin or the bathing in the blood bit.. But massive serial killing yes! (I have a slightly worrying obsession with this stuff o.O)
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I just always found serial killing kind of weird, creepy and disturbing and just generally something I don't want to dwell on too much. A lot of people do seem to get quite fascinated by it though.
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Weird, creepy and disturbing, yes. I agree.
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I've heard of "The Blood Countess" before.
Genuinely fascinating.
Jubal, your additions are also great.
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Hahaha, love the additions :p
What about Giacomo Casanova?
He seems to have done a bit of everything, and David Tennant played him once. :p
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Edward Teach aka Blackbeard, wove cannon fuses into his bead and lit them before raids, before boarding and whilst keeping his crew locked in the brig. Despite only standing 5' 6" (okay he was a giant for that time) it took 23 stab wounds and 6 pistol shots to finally kill him. Pirates are worse shots than stormtroopers evidently. Tough SoB but not quite the same as the next guy.
Rasputin, some say he might even be alive today. Those people are crazy or idiots, he's dead but it took a hell of a lot to do the job. First, cyanide poisoned cakes, a shot through the back of the head, when he then got up and tried to strangle his attacker he was beaten with clubs and shot 3 more times. After that he was bound and thrown into an icy lake. Post mortem showed that the cause of death was drowning. That, friends, is truly badass.
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I don't think the height difference was so significant that 5ft6 would have been giant by any means; roughly average at best. Given the modern UK average is 5ft11 and 5ft6 is about average for men in really malnourished countries...
It's also my own height. :P
As to Rasputin I think there's been a lot of debate over the veracity of the stories about his death, though I can't remember the details. Generally weird as hell though.
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Big fan of King Baldwin IV.
King Jan Sobieski of Poland. Broke the siege of Vienna at the head of his charging hussaria.
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Big Bad Pent, nth of his name..
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I wish to submit for consideration the random Danube ferryman in the 1140s who was ordered to ferry Manuel I Komnenos over the river, and more or less told him to bugger off until he'd sorted out the local Cuman raiders. Not exactly the most high-grade military toughness, but a hell of a ballsy move nonetheless (and it worked, for that matter).
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That's pretty cool.
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My own addition, who is not a historical figure as such, but is still awesome, M3 the Wolverine.
http://www.badassoftheweek.com/index.cgi?id=535838729020
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Honey Badgers and Wolverines are insane :D
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Ned Kelly is probably the best I can think of, I'm not all too familiar with historical figures.