('Harrison Okene','1984','n/a','Warri, Nigeria','21st-century Nigerian Sailor','<p>At 5am on the frigid, rain-swept morning of Sunday, May 26, 2013, the tugboat <em>Jascon-4</em> bobbed through the black waters off the coast of Nigeria, dutifully carrying out a vital mission &ndash; to secure a massive, several-hundred-foot-long oil tanker ship packed to the brim with gasoline that had just been extracted from the nearby Chevron oil platform.&nbsp; Part of a $3 billion industry that extracts 238,000 gallons of crude from the ocean depths every year, the hulking tanker was being thrown about by massive ocean swells, crushing waves, and a relentless, battering rainstorm that had no end in sight, and the small, ultra-powerful <em>Jascon-4</em> had been called in to fix a line to her and keep her from capsizing, releasing thousands of gallons of petroleum into the ocean, and watching helplessly in horror as mother nature proved that a thousand-ton ship packed with millions of dollars of fuel is no match for the full fury of the Earth herself.</p>\r\n<p>Of course, it was just another morning in the life of 29 year old Harrison Okene, the Nigerian-born ship\'s cook aboard the <em>Jascon-4</em>.&nbsp; Okene went on missions like this all the time, knowing that dangerous situations, high seas, and the constant risk of being blown up in a gigantor painful gasoline explosion were all just part of the job description, and as long as his <a href=\"http://www.allnigerianrecipes.com/fufu-recipes/pounded-yam.html\">Pounded Yam Fufu</a> recipe came out all right and the Captain didn\'t end up puking his guts out from food poisoning everything was going to be whatever the Nigerian version of Kosher is.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/80310173457/okene1.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br />Just another day in the life.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Okene had just woken up, and he stabilized himself along the bulkheads as he headed for his morning trip to the John before getting ready to put on some breakfast for the other 11 crewmembers aboard the tug.&nbsp; Still in his underwear, the ship\'s cook was sleepy, probably a little seasick, and most likely just feeling the way most people feel when they have to get up at friggin\' five AM on a Sunday to go to work, completely, blissfully unaware that he was about five minutes away from being abruptly thrown face-first into a horrific deathtrap so cruel and unusual that if a Dungeon Master threw it at his D&amp;D party they\'d all kick his ass on the spot.</p>\r\n<p>You see, no sooner had Okene sat down on the can then a ridiculously-huge wave smashed HARD into the side of <em>Jascon-4</em>, spraying sheets of water across the rain-hammered deck, cracking a piece of the hull, and flipping the tug over on her side.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Honestly, of all the places to be when your ship flips upside down and begins to capsize and sink to the bottom of the ocean, sitting on the toilet at five in the morning has to be among the worst.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/80310173457/okene2.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Okene, thrown so hard by the awesome crushing power of <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/poseidon.html\">Poseidon</a>\'s Fury that he flew all the way out of his bathroom stall in a scene that probably would have been hilarious to watch if it wasn\'t one of the most completely utterly terrifying things you can possibly imagine, jumped to his feet, pulled up his drawers (hopefully), and rushed out of the men\'s room.&nbsp; He entered a hallway in the bowels of the ship and instinctively began sprinting for the emergency hatch, where three of his crewmates were already preparing to seal off.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Before he got there, a torrential wall of rushing, freezing water came seemingly out of nowhere, slamming into the three men and carrying them off into the abyss.&nbsp; It was so gruesome to watch that Harrison Okene immediately knew that all three sailors were dead on impact.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>But there was no time to think &ndash; Okene, trapped below decks with his only possible avenue of escape blocked by deadly rushing water, the Nigerian cook fought against the mighty current of water flooding into the passageway, muscling himself through another bulkhead into the ship\'s officer\'s cabins.&nbsp; The water continued to rush in, forcing Okene back into the bathroom that adjoined the Captain\'s room, hurling him up against the wall as the entire tugboat, continually pounded with waves and taking on unsustainable amounts of water, terrifyingly rolled upside down and began to slowly sink towards the bottom of the sea.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/80310173457/okene3.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Only, somehow, Harrison Okene didn\'t drown.&nbsp; The ship\'s cook, swimming up towards the ceiling of the cabin (which had originally been the floor before the whole thing got turned upside-down), found himself somehow caught in a pitch-dark, four-foot bubble of breathable air.&nbsp; Hanging on to the base of the overturned sink, the cook held his head above water, breathing normally, sweating balls as he felt the <em>Jascon-4</em> inexorably sink further and further in the depths of the Atlantic Ocean, finally coming to a rest on the ocean floor after what seemed like ages.</p>\r\n<p>He was trapped.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Buried alive in a watery grave, Harrison Okene, ship\'s cook on the tugboat <em>Jascon-</em>4, was now stuck, in his underwear, in the total darkness of a tiny bubble of air, locked in an upside-down ship resting on the ocean floor, 100 feet below in the frozen depths of the Atlantic.&nbsp; Treading water or using his strength to hold his head above water, maintaining his breathing to preserve his oxygen, his entire mostly-naked body completely exposed to freezing-cold salt water, with no food, no light, no drinkable water, limited oxygen, and no hope of a timely rescue, Okene, the sole survivor of the crew, resigned himself to his fate, yet still stubbornly and resolutely refused to give up, for any reason, ever.&nbsp; He was going to ride this out, hold on, and fight for his life until the murky waters of the Atlantic or the excessive amounts of carbon dioxide finally asphyxiated him and laid him to rest with his crew.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/80310173457/okene4.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Nigerian rescue crews received the mayday from the <em>Jascon-4</em>, but with the storm raging and the rapidity with which the vessel plummeted to the sea there was no chance of mounting a timely rescue operation.&nbsp; Even once the weather cleared later that day, there was still the relatively-noticeable problem that the ship was upside down &ndash; a major set of hazards for anyone brave enough to attempt swimming inside the vessel &ndash; and that it was, you know, like nine stories down underwater, and even highly-trained, professional SCUBA divers aren\'t recommended to remain at that depth (roughly 30 meters or 100 feet) for more than 20 minutes at a time.&nbsp; It\'s simply too dangerous, even for rescue swimmers.</p>\r\n<p>Harrison Okene, a ship\'s cook in his boxer shorts, stayed down there for 60 hours.</p>\r\n<p>Starving, freezing, with salt water peeling the skin off his tongue and body, his body pruning up like a raisin, holding on to an overturned washbasin, somehow kept his wits about him and refused to give up.&nbsp; Realizing he needed to get out of the water and rest, Okene used the last bit of his strength to make several trips holding his breath and swimming into the adjoining officer\'s cabin, where he felt around in the darkness, tried to avoid a host of dangerous things under there, and swam back carrying any kind of wooden objects he could feel around and locate.&nbsp; After a few trips like this, Okene was able to fashion some kind of small raft &ndash; it wasn\'t like Bear Grylls level of craftsmanship or anything, but it floated, and it was enough for him to get his body out of the water, attempt to warm up, and rest the screaming muscles in his arms and legs.&nbsp; As he lay there, reviewing the course of his life until this point, the only sounds that reached his ears were his own breath slowly killing him, the gentle lapping of water against the sides of the cabin, and the horrific sound of his dead crew members being eaten by fish and other unseen aquatic creatures.</p>\r\n<p>He stayed there for the next three days.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/80310173457/okene5.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Eventually, a team of South African rescue divers were brought in to check out the wreckage and salvage what they could.&nbsp; Swimming through the depths in full gear with underwater flashlights, the divers found the bodies of 10 crew members, then headed into the ship to investigate.</p>\r\n<p>When Harrison Okene heard a metallic tapping coming from somewhere in the ship, he nearly crapped a brick.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Okene, knowing he was working on the last of his oxygen, leapt from his raft, dove down into the inky black waters, and ripped the faucet from the sink.&nbsp; Pulling himself back up, he began to slam the faucet against the ceiling as hard as he could, trying to call to the divers before they abandoned him to his fate once again, quietly hoping that by entering the ship these dudes didn\'t upset whatever delicate physics thing was going on here, flood his cabin with water, and trap him 30 meters underwater without any air.</p>\r\n<p>Minutes later, he saw a flashlight head down the hallway.&nbsp; It was the first light he\'d seen in three days.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Okene tapped the diver as he swam by, marginally concerned that the South African dude didn\'t freak the hell out , think he was being mauled by something from <em>Deep Star Six </em>or <em>Leviathan</em>, and shank the hell out of him with a jackknife or harpoon or something, but even though he startled the dude he nearly jumped out of his wet suit, Okene wasn\'t greeted with a stab to the gut.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Finally, at 7:30pm on&nbsp; May 28<sup>th</sup> &ndash; 62 hours after his boat flipped &ndash; Harrison Okene, exhausted, starving, and dangerously dehydrated, was equipped with a rebreather and oxygen tank.&nbsp; He used his last ounces of strength to swim out from the wreckage.</p>\r\n<p>But his journey wasn\'t over yet &ndash; Okene had been down there so long, and had sucked so much Nitrogen into his lungs, that bringing him straight to the surface would have killed him immediately.&nbsp; Instead, he needed to spend the next 60 hours in a Decompression Chamber.</p>\r\n<p>This is what the inside of a Decompression Chamber looks like:</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/80310173457/okene6.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">Out of the frying pan...</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Harrison Okene, having gone through a claustrophobic person\'s worst nightmare, was finally released to the hospital on June 1<sup>st</sup>, and only just was cleared to go home earlier this week.</p>\r\n<p>His 62-hour ordeal, trapped in his underwear in a bathroom 100 feet below the ocean\'s surface, is believed to be the longest any human being has ever survived after being trapped underwater.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/80310173457/okene7.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> The <em>Jascon-4 </em>in better days.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Links:</p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://gcaptain.com/tugboat-jascon-sinks-heavy-weather/\">Tugboat Sinks in Heavy Weather</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/31/us-chevron-nigeria-idUSBRE94U0SU20130531\">Ten Dead After Boat Sinks at Chevron Nigeria Facility</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/12/nigeria-sailor-survive-air-pocket\">The Guardian</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/12/us-nigeria-shipwreck-idUSBRE95B0M120130612\">Reuters</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2013/06/harrison_okene_s_shipwreck_air_bubble_how_could_he_survive_underwater_for.html\">Trapped in an Underwater Air Bubble for Three Days</a></p>','2013-06-21','80310173457','okene.jpg','okene-small.jpg','Harrison Okene','Nigerian ship\'s cook survives 60 hours trapped in an air bubble 100 feet below the surface.',''),('Muhammad Mahmood Alam','July 6, 1935','March 18, 2013','Calcutta, India','20th-century Pakistani Pilot','<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">A pair of American-built F-86F Sabre jet fighters streaked through the skies above the Punjab region of Pakistan on September 7, 1965, holding formation as their General Electric J47 Turbojet engines sending them hurtling through the air at speeds in excess of 450 miles an hour.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>In the lead aircraft, Squadron Leader Muhammad Mahmood Alam, commander of Number 11 Squadron, Pakistan Air Force, kept his eyes peeled, straining to make out shapes of enemy aircraft somewhere on the horizon.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>He and his wingman had been scrambled fifteen minutes earlier, when the Combat Air Patrol over Sarghoda issued a distress signal requesting immediate assistance, and Alam had an uncontrollable urge to kill everything in sight, an overdeveloped need to satiate his blood-lust on a tasty dish of murderous vengeance, and an itchy trigger finger hovering over a six-pack of Browning M-2 .50-caliber heavy machine guns embedded in the nose of his aircraft.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">His wingman came on the radio with a sentence that wouldn\'t have been more beautiful to Alam\'s ears if it had been written as a Beethoven concerto:<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>\"Contact.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>Bogeys, one o\'clock low.\"</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">It only took the excellently-mustached, awesomely-sunglassesed Pakistani fighter pilot a moment to notice the five Indian Air Force Hawker Hunter jet fighters screaming through the cloudless sky, maintaining perfect formation just 200 yards above the Punjabi treetops.</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Without hesitation, Squadron Leader M. M. Alam rolled his F-86 into a dive and flicked the lever to arm the pair of AIM-6 Sidewinder missiles lovingly tucked beneath the wings of his flying, jet-fuel-powered, Mach-1-capable, machine-gun-equipped steel murder-box.</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: center;\" align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/283661830799/alam1.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">A 12-year veteran of the Pakistan Air Force commanding the first fighter-jet-equipped attack squadron in his country\'s history, Squadron Leader Alam was already being hailed as the PAF\'s greatest hero, thanks in no small part to his appearance resembling that of a 1980s cop show action TV series hero, but also for his brave actions just a day earlier, when he had engaged the enemy in a series of bullet-riddled dogfights that netted him two Hawker Hunter kills at close-range with his heavy machine guns.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>This action, enough for most people, netted the Squadron Commander the Pakistan Star of Courage &ndash; the highest award offered for bravery by his country &ndash; and it would mark the first time in his country\'s history that a combat medal of any kind was issued to a member of the Pak Air Force.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>Alam, not satisfied with his insane ability to use a machine gun mounted on a flying vehicle moving at 600 miles an hour to somehow hit another vehicle also flying 600 miles an hour, was still monumentally pissed off because during the battle the Indian Air Force shot down and killed two men from his command.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>Alam, having developed a taste for blood and vengeance and probably beef, had jumped at the chance to get back in the air and get his eye-for-an-eye on.</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Personal vendettas aside, it didn\'t help that there is really no love lost between India and Pakistan, two currently-nuclear-equipped nations that share a border, a common history, and a mutual desire to bomb the other one into a smoking crater filled with corpses.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>Alam had actually been born in British India in 1935, but his family moved to Pakistan after it seceded in 1947, and the two countries have basically hated each other ever since.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>This particular outbreak of hostilities, known as the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965, had started out as a dispute over Kashmir, a disputed region claimed by both countries (as well as China for some reason), but was really just a good opportunity for two countries that hate each other super bad to beat the hell out of each other all the time.</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: center;\" align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/283661830799/alam2.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">The lock-on indicator growled menacingly as Alam slammed the stick sharply into a bowel-crushing dive, aiming the nose of his F-86 for the last aircraft in the Indian formation.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>The back pair of Hawker Hunters, hearing the sound of their impending doom breathing down their necks, broke hard, deftly shaking Alam\'s AIM-6 Sidewinder and sending the supposedly-heat-seeking air-to-air missile to miss its target, exploding semi-harmlessly into the trees below.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>Alam, unfazed, rolled his craft towards the two, tracking them down like a lion running down stragglers he\'d separated from the herd.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>He dropped in behind them, armed his second missile, and fired, sending the heat-seeker hurtling towards the Hawkers.</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">The Sidewinder went off before it hit the fuselage, the explosion destroying the fuel lines of the Hawker Hunter and forcing the pilot to punch out of there and eject.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">But Alam wasn\'t done.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>He swung his craft around, left the other straggler to his wingman, and immediately slammed the throttle open.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>He wasn\'t letting the rest of the formation get away.</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">30 seconds had elapsed.</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: center;\" align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/283661830799/alam3.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Alam dropped his craft down and rocketed onwards, screaming through the skies just 200 yards above the deck, the fuselage of his aircraft dangerously close to the treetops zipping below him.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>Ahead, he noticed the rest of the IAF squadron, still holding <a href=\"http://www.3bktj.co.uk/figures/fig3.jpg\">line-astern formation</a>, racing for the safety of the Indian border and its friendly AA guns.</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">They didn\'t notice the mildly-psychotic Pakistani dude on their tail until it was too late.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Forgetting about his unreliable missiles, M. M. Alam wanted to do this the old-fashioned way &ndash; he closed to machine gun range.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>In a jet fighter.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>At 200 feet elevation.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>Against three enemy jets flying in formation, with, unbeknownst to Alam, two additional fighters charging straight-in on his position.</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: center;\" align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/283661830799/alam4.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Six Browning heavy machine guns spewed out hundreds of rounds of .50-caliber ammunition in one short, controlled burst, as Alam &ndash; an expert pilot who had routinely received awards and honors for his aerial gunnery &ndash; opened a six-pack of whup-ass up the tailpipe of the last aircraft in the IAF formation.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>Bullets ripped through the craft\'s fuselage, sending it plummeting to the earth in flames.</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">The two surviving aircraft broke hard to the right.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>Alam was ready for it.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>He had studied aircraft piloting in the United States and UK, including a training course with the Royal Air Force that involved serious flight time in the Hawker Hunter.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>He knew exactly what that plane was capable of, and how to stop it.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>He banked hard, releasing two more bursts, each one riddling the enemy with dozens of rounds.</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Then, almost from nowhere, those two other IAF Hawkers showed up, flying straight at Alam head-on.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">He banked hard towards them, and they basically flew right into his crosshairs.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>He didn\'t hesitate to pull the trigger twice more.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>They both burst into flames and plummeted to the earth.</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: center;\" align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/283661830799/alam5.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Official Pakistani sources (including several others) credit Muhammad Mahmood Alam with killing five enemy aircraft in one minute &ndash; including 4 kills in 30 seconds.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>Not only has this never been done before, but it also makes Squadron Leader Alam the only fighter pilot in human history, from any country, to become Ace (five kills) in a Day from the cockpit of a jet fighter.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>Other sources credit him with 3 kills, 2 damaged, which, I would argue is just as impressive, considering he did still hit five enemy planes in sixty seconds, and hit them hard enough to mess their asses up.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>Regardless of how you want to score it, his actions on this day netted him his <em style=\"mso-bidi-font-style: normal;\">second Pakistan Star of Courage in two days</em>.</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">The Indo-Pakistani War of 1965 would last just 17 days.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>Muhammad Mahmood Alam would fly 40 missions, netting 9 enemy aircraft kills, a number that to this day makes him the highest-scoring fighter pilot ever to fly on the Indian subcontinent.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: center;\" align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/283661830799/alam6.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Alam continued serving in the Pakistan Air Force for over 30 years, commanding a squadron of Mirages in another war against India in the 70s and allying himself with anti-Taliban Afghan warrior <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/massoud.html\">Ahmad Shah Massoud</a> in the Mujahedeen\'s struggle against the Soviet Union in the 80s.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>He Retired in 1982 as an Air Commodore (which is just a cool way of saying One-Star General), and, as an added badass bonus, some sources suggest that the was forced out by High Command because he was on a Ned Stark mission to expose corruption in the highest levels of the Pakistani military.</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">M. M. Alam, the greatest hero of the Pakistan Air Force and a national hero of the country, died of respiratory failure in March 2013 at the age of 78.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>Nowadays there\'s a major commercial street named after him in downtown Lahore, and, if you ever visit the Pakistan Air Force Hall of Fame in Karachi, you\'ll see his name is the first one listed on the wall.</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: center;\" align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/283661830799/alam7.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Links:</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_Mahmood_Alam\">Wikipedia</a></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><a href=\"http://www.defencejournal.com/2001/september/alam.htm\">Alam\'s Speed Shooting Classic</a></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><a href=\"http://tribune.com.pk/story/522568/war-hero-mm-alam-passes-away/\">International Herald Tribune</a></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><a href=\"http://www.mediapoint.pk/know-thy-hero-muhammad-mahmood-alam-m-m-alam/\">Mediapoint.pk Obit</a></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span class=\"MsoHyperlink\"><a href=\"http://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=274\">F-86 Saber Details</a></span></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span class=\"MsoHyperlink\"><span style=\"text-decoration: none;\">&nbsp;</span></span></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span class=\"MsoHyperlink\"><span style=\"color: windowtext; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;\">Sources:</span></span></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Polman, Norman and Dana Bell.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span><em style=\"mso-bidi-font-style: normal;\">One Hundred Years of World Military Aircraft</em>.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>Naval Institute Press, 2004.</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Spick, Mike.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span><em style=\"mso-bidi-font-style: normal;\">The Complete Fighter Ace</em>.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>Greenhill, 2009.</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Tufail, M. Kaiser.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>\"Alam\'s Speed Shooting Classic\".<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>Defense Journal.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>September, 2001.</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Tufail, M. Kaiser<em style=\"mso-bidi-font-style: normal;\">.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>Great Air Battles of the Pakistan Air Force</em>.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>Ferozsons, 2006.</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Werrell, Kenneth P.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span><em style=\"mso-bidi-font-style: normal;\">Sabres over MiG Alley</em>.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>Naval Institute Press, 2005.</p>\r\n<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>\r\n <o:OfficeDocumentSettings>\r\n  <o:AllowPNG/>\r\n </o:OfficeDocumentSettings>\r\n</xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>\r\n <w:WordDocument>\r\n  <w:View>Normal</w:View>\r\n  <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom>\r\n  <w:TrackMoves/>\r\n  <w:TrackFormatting/>\r\n  <w:PunctuationKerning/>\r\n  <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/>\r\n  <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>\r\n  <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent>\r\n  <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>\r\n  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M. Alam','The only man to ever become Ace in a Day from the cockpit of a jet fighter.',''),('Lyle Bouck, Jr.','December 17, 1923','N/A','Fenton, MO, USA','20th-century American Soldier','<p>By mid-December of 1944, the eighteen men of the 99<sup>th</sup> Infantry Division&rsquo;s Reconnaissance and Intelligence Platoon knew something big was about to go down in the Ardennes Forest on the Belgium-Germany border.&nbsp; Something that could potentially change the course of World War II.&nbsp; Something that could also potentially make Eisenhower and Montgomery crap their pants.</p>\r\n<p>Under command of First Lieutenant Lyle Bouck, this elite platoon of American recon troopers had spent the past few weeks setting up communications listening posts along the German-controlled Siegfried Line, trying to get a feel for what was going down in Nazi town.&nbsp; When that hadn&rsquo;t worked, they were like fuck it and went out on a bunch of ultra-dangerous commando missions deep into enemy territory, breaking into German bases as far as two miles behind the front lines, grabbing unsuspecting Wehrmacht troops, and beating information out of them the old-fashioned way.</p>\r\n<p>What they learned was that somewhere along the border of Belgium and Germany Hitler was amassing 200,000 of his toughest veteran soldiers &ndash; including four insanely-badass, elite SS Panzer Divisions packed with hundreds of tanks &ndash; in preparation for a balls-out full-scale attack across Allied lines.&nbsp; These battle-hardened warriors were ordered to punch through overextended American lines, capture Antwerp, and reverse the Allied successes in the Normandy Campaign in one massive punch to the balls with a few thousand tons of Blitzkrieg-ready armored vehicles, and they were locked and loaded for the operation.</p>\r\n<p>The Battle of the Bulge was about to begin, and Lyle Bouck and the Reconnaissance and Intelligence Platoon were about to get a front-row ticket for the action.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/87588933208/bouck1.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>At 20 years old, First Lieutenant Bouck was one of the youngest officers in the American army.&nbsp; A Missouri native, he&rsquo;d joined the National Guard at the age of 14 to help his parents pay bills, but after Pearl Harbor he was sent to OCS and trained to lead dangerous patrols behind enemy lines to gather intel.&nbsp; His 17 men, all expert marksmen trained for badass commando ninja shit, were some of the first soldiers to receive the Combat Infantryman Badge for kicking ass on the field of battle in World War II.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>They were an elite <em>Mission: Impossible </em>strike team capable of sneaking in, surveying the enemy, breaking a few necks, and getting out of there undetected.</p>\r\n<p>So when these guys were told by Allied command that they were to occupy defensive positions on a ridge overlooking a major road near the Belgian town of Lanzerath, dig fortifications, and prepare to hold their ground at all costs until death do you part because the entire goddamned German Sixth Panzer Army was headed their way, they were a little surprised.&nbsp; Kind of in the same way you&rsquo;d be a little surprised if you won three multiplayer <em>Splinter Cell</em> matches in a row and Norman Schwarzkopf kicked in the door to your apartment and told you to assassinate the Ayatolla of Iran, then kicked you in the crotch with a steel-plated boot for no reason at all without any warning whatsoever.</p>\r\n<p>Except instead of complaining and grabbing their nuts, Bouck and his men got to work on their bunkers immediately.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;<img style=\"display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;\" src=\"/images/87588933208/bouck2.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>They knew that on the road towards Lanzerath were several hundred hardcore Panzer Mark V &ldquo;<a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/panther.html\">Panther</a>&rdquo; main battle tanks, tens of thousands of crack SS stormtroopers, an imperial metric fuckton-load of trucks and armored cars, and a few hundred tons of artillery, all of them prepared to fight with the sort of blood-rage desperation that can only come from the knowledge that this was Nazi Germany&rsquo;s last chance to turn the tide of World War II and keep the Americans from setting foot in the Fatherland.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Lyle Bouck had 18 men organized in two 9-man squads, supported by 4 forward artillery observers &ndash; the dudes who are supposed to be ranging in howitzer fire, not engaging in hand-to-hand combat with goddamned Nazi sturmtruppen.&nbsp; He had no armor, no anti-tank capability (there had been a Tank Destroyer company assigned to cover his flank, but they drove away without telling him), no air support, no backup, no reinforcements, and he&rsquo;d been told via his only radio that the artillery had &ldquo;higher priority targets&rdquo; and that he shouldn&rsquo;t be able to count on calling in a barrage.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>On 15 December 1944, Bouck ordered his men to dig trenches overlooking the road to Lanzerath, fortify them with pine logs, and set up pillboxes with interlocking fields of fire.&nbsp; With a forest at his back, between Bouck and the town was an open field with a barbed-wire fence.&nbsp; He positioned his .30 caliber machine gun, two BARs, and traded a supply guy for the .50 cal on his jeep.</p>\r\n<p>Then he waited.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/87588933208/bouck3.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The German plan of attack was simple &ndash; they needed the road to Lanzerath open so they could roll the 1<sup>st</sup> and 12<sup>th</sup> SS Panzer Divisions through it.&nbsp; After a massive, 90-minute artillery barrage that shredded the trees apart above Bouck&rsquo;s head, a full-on attack by Wehrmacht infantry was to break through American lines across the entire Ardennes front, and then the SS Panzers were to exploit the breach and break for Antwerp.&nbsp; The job of securing Lanzerath Pass fell to the 3<sup>rd</sup> Fallschmirjager Division &ndash; a once-proud unit of crack paratroopers who had been decimated in Normandy, and who now had their hardened core of veterans supplemented by young boys and old men previously deemed unfit for service in the German military.&nbsp; Despite their recent losses, morale was high &ndash; the Germans had been told that the Americans were &ldquo;a gum-chewing, undisciplined half-breed with no stomach for real war.&rdquo;</p>\r\n<p>Atop Lanzerath ridge Lyle Bouck and the 18 men of the I&amp;R Platoon lay in wait, clutching their rifles, each man drawing a bead as a full battalion of over 700 German Paratroopers marched down the road towards the town.&nbsp; Bouck ordered his men to wait for the lead elements to pass, wait until you see an officer or two, and then open fire.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/87588933208/bouck4.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>When the enemy was in range, Bouck and the I&amp;R troops opened fire, each man&rsquo;s rifle finding its mark.&nbsp; The Germans dove for cover in ditches on either side of the road, keeping their heads down as the .30 and .50 cals ripped up the ground around them.&nbsp; Not realizing what they were facing, the Paratroopers dispatched a full company &ndash; over 150 men &ndash; to assault the woods and take out the Americans.&nbsp; As one, a wave of Germans rose and began charging up the hill, cranking out massive amounts of firepower from their fully-automatic MP40 and MP44 submachine guns.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The Americans kept their heads down, didn&rsquo;t lose their cool, and mowed down the enemy as they raced across the open field with accurate fire from their M1 Carbines and curtains of hot lead from twin machine guns and two assault rifles.&nbsp; No German made it beyond the barbed wire fence.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/87588933208/bouck5.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>After a brief truce for German medics to pull back their wounded, the Paratroopers launched a second assault, this time charging through knee-deep snow under the cover of heavy mortar and machine gun fire.&nbsp; Still, the Americans held them off, each of the 18 I&amp;R guys losing their shit and fighting like madmen &ndash; one crazy Serb named Milosevich was manning the .30-cal by himself (usually a two person operation) despite being barefoot for most of the battle because the Germans showed up while he was drying his socks.&nbsp; His foxhole mate was a psychotic real-life FPS character switching between his M1 rifle, a Grease Gun, and a Colt .45 pistol depending on the situation.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Once again, the German assault was thrown back by a hail of gunfire.&nbsp; Somewhere down the road, behind the 700 paratroopers, the men of the 1<sup>st</sup> SS Panzer Corps waited at their tanks, stuck in a traffic jam and already five hours behind schedule in an operation that required near-perfect execution to succeed.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/87588933208/bouck6.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The 3<sup>rd</sup> Division launched two more full-scale attacks, this time not just supported by 81mm mortars, but also by hardcore full-scale artillery that pounded bus-sized holes around the American foxholes.&nbsp; Still Bouck and his men fought tenaciously, even as Paratrooper units got close enough that the U.S. recon troops &ldquo;could see the expressions on their faces as we shot them.&rdquo;&nbsp; Twice more they were thrown back by point-blank pistol shots in the face and hand-to-hand combat.</p>\r\n<p>The battle had begun at 6am.&nbsp; Now, ten hours later, almost completely out of ammo, with his .50 cal knocked out by a mortar and a couple men wounded, Bouck was hoping to make it one more hour so he could withdraw his men under the cover of darkness.&nbsp; 18 American recon and intel troopers had successfully held up an entire German Panzer Army for almost a full day, buying the Allies that much more time to organize a defense and counterattack to stop the Nazi advance.</p>\r\n<p>The Paras launched their final attack at dusk.&nbsp; This time, however, instead of a head-on attack, they flanked through the forest, where they stepped on a bunch of tripwires attached to grenades and blew themselves up.&nbsp; The Americans heard the grenades go off and tried to adjust their positions, but their ammo was depleted and their positions were overrun by swarming Germans.&nbsp; Bouck and his men surrendered and were almost summarily executed by the pissed-off Krauts, but cooler heads prevailed and instead of being machine gunned they were taken prisoner.&nbsp; They hadn&rsquo;t lost a single man.</p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><br /><img src=\"../images/87588933208/bouck8.JPG\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The Americans had fought so hard the Germans weren&rsquo;t convinced that these 18 guys were all that were in the woods, and even though the forest was clear the Germans refused to advance until the commanding officer of the 1<sup>st</sup> SS Panzer Division, Joachim Peiper, showed up at 1am that night and personally took a battalion of paratroopers into the forest to verify that it was empty.</p>\r\n<p>1LT Lyle Bouck turned 21 years old at midnight on December 17<sup>th</sup>.&nbsp; He was finally legal to drink in the States, but instead of partying at a titty bar he was walking two miles through knee-deep snow with a bullet in his calf while Nazis pointed guns at him.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;<img style=\"display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;\" src=\"/images/87588933208/bouck7.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The I&amp;R Platoon was sent on an 11-day train ride to a prison camp in Germany, where they spent four months in the freezing-cold outdoor camp in the middle of the German Winter.&nbsp; Suffering from hypothermia, starvation, and dehydration, Bouck himself was near death when the men of his old unit &ndash; the 99<sup>th</sup> Division &ndash; finally marched in and rescued him.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Lyle Bouck made it back home to Missouri, became a chiropractor, and has been married for 58 years.&nbsp; From the day he got home he started writing letters to the government insisting on medals and recognition for the brave men of his unit who had fought so hard and single-handedly delayed the German advance in the Battle of the Bulge by almost 24 hours.&nbsp; His story went untold until 1981, when the President awarded him the Distinguished Service Cross, and ordered that Bronze Star or Silver Star medals should be awarded to all 17 of his men.&nbsp; It is now the most decorated American platoon of World War II.</p>\r\n<p>Bouck turned 90 years old last week.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;<img style=\"display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;\" src=\"/images/87588933208/bouck9.PNG\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">The I&amp;R Platoon in 1981.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Links:</p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/12/16/battle.bulge/\">http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/12/16/battle.bulge/</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.npr.org/programs/watc/features/2004/dec/longestwinter/excerpt.html\">http://www.npr.org/programs/watc/features/2004/dec/longestwinter/excerpt.html</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyle_Bouck\">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyle_Bouck</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Lanzerath_Ridge\">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Lanzerath_Ridge</a></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Sources:</p>\r\n<p>Kelly, C. Brian.&nbsp; <em>Best Little Stories from World War II. </em>&nbsp;Sourcebooks Inc., 2010.</p>\r\n<p>Kershaw, Alex.&nbsp; <em>The Longest Winter</em>.&nbsp; Da Capo, 2005.</p>\r\n<p>Merriam, Robert E.&nbsp; <em>Battle of the Bulge</em>.&nbsp; Merriam, 1999.</p>\r\n<p>Neill, George W.&nbsp; <em>Infantry Soldier</em>.&nbsp; University of Oklahoma Press, 2002.</p>\r\n<p>Wijers, Hans J.&nbsp; <em>The Battle of the Bulge</em>.&nbsp; Stackpole, 2009.</p>','2013-12-27','87588933208','bouck.jpg','bouck-small.jpg','Lyle Bouck','18 American recon troops hold off the entire 1st SS Panzer Corps in the opening hours of the Battle of the Bulge.','“I was told then to drive to Lanzareth, where I should meet elements of the parachute regiment of 3rd Fallschirmjager Division.  This regiment had attempted to attack through the woods west of Lanzareth towards Honsfield and had been repelled three times.”  - Joachim Peiper, commanding officer, 1st SS Panzer Division\r\n'),('Henry Knox','July 25, 1750','October 25, 1806','Boston, MA, USA','18th-century American Soldier','<p>Fat Henry Knox was a gigantic American bookstore clerk who rolled cannon caissons like MDMA tablets, served as the chief Artillery officer of the American Revolution, was a founding father and homeboys with George Washington, served as the first Secretary of War (back when we still had badass offices like that) and was so hardcore in his unstoppable ability to protect the Continental Army with an endless barrage of face-obliterating grapeshot gunfire that nowadays the most secure military facility in the United States &ndash; Fort Knox &ndash; bears his name.</p>\r\n<p>People like to talk shit about Knox for his weight.&nbsp; Sure, the fact that he was a signer of the Declaration of Independence means he was <em>literally the</em> <em>first fat American</em>, but here\'s the deal:&nbsp; He was a big dude who kicked the snot out of punks and was so baller that the fort bearing his name is, no joke, literally packed from floor to ceiling with enough gold bricks to back up every single dollar bill ever printed in the United States and still have enough left over to club Kim Jong-Un and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad retarded.</p>\r\n<p>As far as I\'m concerned if this dude had been rocking that shit in the mid-1990s they might as well have spelled Fat with a Ph, because Fat Henry Knox was basically the first American gangsta.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/57276631074/knox1.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> Run from the police picture that, nigga I\'m too fat,<br />I fuck around and catch a asthma attack,<br />That\'s why I bust back, it don\'t faze me,<br />When he drop, take his Glock, and I\'m Swayze.</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Born in 1750 to first-generation Scottish immigrants, Knox grew up in pre-revolutionary Boston.&nbsp; He dropped out of school at age 11 to help his momma after his con-man pops lost the family fortune on shitty business practices then bailed on the family, leaving his wife and 10 kids to fend for themselves.&nbsp; Knox grew up on the skreets, got a miserable retail job working behind the counter of a bookstore, and spent all of his spare time reading about badass shit like cannons and artillery and other things that kill people with explosions.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Within 10 years, Knox was running his own bookstore and was a member of the local militia unit.&nbsp; Sure, he didn\'t have cannons to work with, but he liked watching the Brits work their guns during military drills outside the city.</p>\r\n<p>Knox wasn\'t a huge fan of British rule over the colonies, but life got real intense for him in 1770, when he was at some random political rally that got out of control and the redcoats ended up firing a volley of muskets into the crowd, killing five people.&nbsp; From that point on, he was pissed.&nbsp; This, of course, didn\'t stop him from boning and then eloping with the daughter of the King\'s Royal Secretary to Massachusetts then going off and signing the Declaration of Independence because, fuck it, insert your favorite misogynistic rap lyric about killing people and banging chicks here.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/57276631074/knox2.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br />School of Hard Knox.</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The British eventually had enough of the Colonies whining and complaining about every fucking thing the King did, so they send a bunch of dudes over here to kill us all.&nbsp; They occupied Boston in 1775, but not without a fight &ndash; Knox, a Private in the Colonial Militia, was on the battlefield at Bunker Hill, charging straight into the British lines with fixed bayonets, completely not giving a damn that he was like a foot taller and a hundred pounds heavier than any other Colonial infantryman on the field and was probably a really good target for British snipers.&nbsp; It would be Knox\'s first battle.&nbsp; By the time it was over, he\'d have served in every single major engagement in the Northeastern Theater.</p>\r\n<p>After the Brits defeated the Americans at Bunker Hill and occupied Boston, Henry Knox went to General George Washington and offered his services &ndash; not as a gunslinger, but as a dude who had read a lot of books about cannons and <em>probably </em>knew how to operate one.&nbsp; Washington was so impressed at having anybody in his entire army who could at least fire one of those damn things, so he and John Adams made Knox a Colonel and put him in charge of the previously-nonexistent Artillery army of the Continental Army.</p>\r\n<p>Of course, there was one minor problem with this.</p>\r\n<p>The Continental Army did not have a single piece of artillery in their entire organization.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/57276631074/knox3.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>No problem.&nbsp; Knox knew how to get shit done.&nbsp; Sure, maybe the Brits had every single firearm bigger than a musket in the greater New England Area, but the rebels had taken Fort Ticonderoga in upstate New York, and he\'d bring those damn guns to the front lines if he had to carry them on his back.&nbsp; Knox rode the 300 miles from Boston to New York, surveyed the fort, and checked out their graveyard of busted cannons.&nbsp; Most of them were unusable, but Knox found 59 guns ranging from 4-pounders to 24-pounders that could be salvaged.&nbsp; All he had to do was drag them 300 miles back to Boston across unpaved roads in the middle of December in upstate New York, and he\'d have to be quiet about it because he didn\'t have any infantry to defend the convoy and if the British figured out what was going down they\'d roll up and turn the entire column into a mile-long line of corpses.</p>\r\n<p>Knox found 42 sledges, recruited an army of civilian workers, and proceeded to haul 62 tons of artillery 300 miles through snow and ice in the middle of the winter, in territory that was technically occupied by the enemy.&nbsp; When they went uphill, they all shoved as hard as they could.&nbsp; When they went downhill, they used drag chains and ropes to keep the guns from breaking away, falling down the hill, and probably either breaking and/or killing someone.&nbsp; When a couple guns broke through the ice of a frozen lake and fell to the bottom, Knox engineered a team to ice-fish them out of there.</p>\r\n<p>It took about a month, but the caravan crossed the Hudson River, went over the Berkshire Mountains, and down an old, unmarked, unpaved Indian trail to Boston, where Knox set them up on Dorchester Heights and blew the British out of Boston.&nbsp; When the Continental Army marched into Boston, Knox was at the head of the army.&nbsp; The first thing he heard when he entered the gates, and I shit you not about this, was some loyalist asshole in the crowd shouting a terribly-unclever fat joke at him.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/57276631074/knox4.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Knox had won the battle, but the Father of American Artillery still had a hell of a job ahead of him.&nbsp; He had a bunch of guns, but none of them were the same caliber.&nbsp; Hell, some were British, some were French, and others were these weird-ass American-built ones made by some jerkwad Unabomber crackpot blacksmith in his garage.&nbsp; He also had an army of guys who had never worked a cannon before, but he recruited 1200 semi-competent soldiers, taught them how to shoot the thing, and then pumped them up so hard that by the end of the war the Continental Artillery became famous for being the last rebel units to withdraw from any battle.</p>\r\n<p>As you read that paragraph, it\'s important to remember that prior to the Battle of Bunker Hill Henry Knox\'s entire body of knowledge on artillery came from books he read and not from any first-hand life experience on the subject.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/57276631074/knox5.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> \"Yeah, uh&hellip; any of you guys know how to work this thing?\"</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Knox also thought it might be cool if the artillery could, you know, move around with the rest of the infantry to support them, which is something that hadn\'t been really done very much during this time of history, probably because cannons were a thing most armies actually had and they weren\'t being forced to make due with an artillery arm that was about half the size of what it should be.&nbsp; So, since he was already basically an expert on moving cannons from place to place, this became Knox\'s speciality.</p>\r\n<p>The best example of this is at the Battle of Trenton, when Washington crossed the Delaware River in the middle of the night on Christmas Eve to kill a bunch of Germans in their sleep.&nbsp; Sure, we always see that pic of Washington standing in a rowboat looking epic with a sword, but what you don\'t see is Fat Fucking Henry Knox somehow bringing 18 full-sized field artillery pieces across that same river in those same shitty little boats.&nbsp; Knox crossed the river, set up his guns in the streets of Trenton, New Jersey, then shot the Hessians point-blank when they walked out of the houses they were quartering in.&nbsp; When they tried to charge him, he smoked them with his nine (pounder).&nbsp; Then he sailed his shit BACK across the river.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/57276631074/knox6.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">18 cannons, each one weighing about 2400 pounds.<br /> In these boats.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Knox was promoted to Brigadier General, and proceeded to continue kicking every ass he could find in a 300-mile radius from his position.&nbsp; At the Battle of Princeton, he covered the American withdrawal after they were routed by British infantry, and Knox\'s gunners did such a badass job of it that it actually turned the entire tide of the battle around and the Americans ended up winning.&nbsp; At Brandywine the Brits launched charge after charge and eventually overran the American positions, and those artillerymen suck in the middle who didn\'t die working their guns fell back and launched attacks to try and re-capture them (and were, by and large, killed in the process).&nbsp; When the Brits took stock of the guns they\'d captured, the Regimental commander sent a letter to his commanding officer that basically read, \"What the fuck is going on here I have no idea how the hell they run an artillery battalion when none of their guns are even the same caliber.\"</p>\r\n<p>Knox made up for the loss of these guns at the Battle of Monmouth, when he personally rode back-and-forth across the entire battlefield moving his guns around and directing the batteries while enemy snipers took potshots at him.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/57276631074/knox7.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>During breaks in the fighting, Knox created the Springfield Arsenal in Springfield, Mass &ndash; a facility that produced cannons and rifles through the Revolution, Civil War, and World War II.&nbsp; They were manufacturing U.S. Army M-14s when that plant finally shut down in 1968.&nbsp; Oh yeah, and he also set up a school to instruct military personnel in 1779, teaching artillery operation and tactics in what is, for all intents and purposes, the first military academy in American history.</p>\r\n<p>Knox served through the war, and was the guy who directed the artillery barrages during the Siege of Yorktown in 1781.&nbsp; He ordered \"ricochet shot\", meaning the ball would be shot at knee level in such a way that it would blow apart legs and knees, then <em>bounce </em>and continue going with enough force to cripple more people.&nbsp; His first shot of the siege killed a British General.&nbsp; At 800 yards, he not only leveled the city, but he destroyed every British artillery piece and a bunch of ships they had stationed in the harbor.&nbsp; The British commander surrendered Yorktown without a fight, ending the American Revolution.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/57276631074/knox8.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> BARF</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>After the war, Brigadier General Fat Henry Knox was briefly the Commander-in-Chief of the American Army, but was then appointed to President Washington\'s cabinet as the first Secretary of War.&nbsp; He set up a militia that became the National Guard, created the United States Navy, suppressed a revolution in Massachusetts, then talked a bunch of shit about how the new Constitution kicked ass.&nbsp; He retired in 1794 after 20 years of service to his country.</p>\r\n<p>Knox died in 1806 from a ruptured appendix.&nbsp; Nowadays Fort Knox, the home of a large portion of American gold deposits and supposedly the most heavily-fortified position on American soil, bears his name.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Fittingly, in 1964, an attempted breach of Fort Knox by global supervillain Auric Goldfinger was saved by British secret agent James Bond, thus bringing this entire story full-circle.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/57276631074/knox9.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">\"General Knox, who has deservedly acquired the character of one<br /> &nbsp;of the most valuable officers in the service, and who combating almost innumerable <br /> difficulties in the department he fills has placed the artillery <br /> upon a footing that does him the greatest honor.\" <br /> <br /> &nbsp;- George Washington</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Links:</p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.nps.gov/york/historyculture/knoxbio.htm\">National Parks Service</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://knoxmuseum.org/knoxbio.html\">The Knox Museum Bio</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://militaryhistory.about.com/od/army/p/knox.htm\">About.com</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.ushistory.org/valleyforge/served/knox.html\">Who Served Here?</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Knox\">Wikipedia</a></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Sources:</p>\r\n<p>Bilias, George Athan.&nbsp; <em>George Washington\'s Generals and Opponents</em>.&nbsp; Da Capo, 1994.</p>\r\n<p>Brooks, Noah.&nbsp; <em>Henry Knox, a Soldier of the Revolution</em>.&nbsp; G.P. Putnam, 1900.</p>\r\n<p>Puls, Mark.&nbsp; <em>Henry Knox</em>.&nbsp; Palgrave, 2008.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>','2013-07-12','57276631074','knox.jpg','knox-small.jpg','Fat Henry Knox','Commander of the Continental Artillery, first Secretary of War, and original American gangsta.','\"We loaded with canister shot and let them come nearer.  We fired altogether again and such destruction it made, you cannot conceive – the bridge looked red as blood, with their killed and wounded and their red coats.  The enemy beat a retreat.\"'),('Boudicca','Unknown','61 AD','Norfolk, UK','Ancient Briton Queen','<p><em>As I realize I forgot to bring my laptop charger with me to San Diego Comic-Con (come visit me at Booth 2000, by the way), I\'m posting a story from the new book, BADASS: ULTIMATE DEATHMATCH.&nbsp; Incidentally, this woman also features in my <a href=\"http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2146143533/badass-spades-and-grenades-playing-cards-with-ball?ref=live\">new badass kickstarter campaign</a> where we\'re trying to make a regular deck of playing cards featuring 52 great badasses from history.) </em><br /><br />Boudicca is one of the few people in history to have a statue of themselves prominently displayed in a city they\'re famous for burning to the ground.</p>\r\n<p>The story of how the fiery slaughter and wanton ruination of the city of London became so fondly remembered begins in the year 61 AD, when some painfully-uninteresting ruler of the Iceni tribe of northern Britannia had the audacity to die of old age and leave behind the most tragically-misunderstood will in the history of last wills and testaments.&nbsp; Without getting too much into the mind-numbing world of common law litigation, when this old codger kicked it, he left behind a poorly-spelled hand-written note in crayon and food coloring that granted control of his tribe to his wife (and co-ruler) &ndash; an iron-spined, well-respected Celtic warrior-babe known as Boudicca &ndash; but that also made the Roman Emperor a co-ruler of the land as well.&nbsp; Because the Iceni were a client-state of Rome, he figured he didn\'t really have much say in the matter in the first place, but with this terrible will he unwittingly gave Rome more power than it already had over his people, and probably gave his attorney an aneurysm in the process.</p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img src=\"../images/158183026542/905476727.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br />What up.</p>\r\n<p>Well the Roman Emperor at this time was a guy named Nero.&nbsp; For those of you who don\'t have alarm bells going off in your head when you read that name, Nero is famous for being a complete bastard who assassinated his own mother, executed anyone who disagreed with him, \"accidentally\" burned Rome to the ground, and was so despised by his own people that he eventually cried himself to death in a hysterical fit of emo self-loathing.&nbsp; Needless to say, this wasn\'t the sort of self-righteous prick who saw some barbarian Queen as his socio-political equal, and he certainly wasn\'t about to pass up an opportunity to seize a prime strip of the Britannia countryside from the hands of some uncivilized sheep-sodomizers from BFE.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Within days of the chieftain\'s death, Nero\'s representative in Britannia, an even-more obnoxious human colostomy bag named Decianus Catus, showed up in Iceni lands with a few hundred Roman troops, promptly confiscated Boudicca\'s crown, stripped the tribe\'s noblemen of their land, and held pretty much every single person in the realm upside down by their ankles and shook them until the change fell out of their pockets.&nbsp; Nobles and royal family members were enslaved, regular peasants were force-conscripted into the Roman Army, Boudicca was publicly whipped for \"insolence,\" and her daughters were viciously raped by Roman soldiers.</p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">This, of course, only succeeded in making Boudicca angry.&nbsp; And you wouldn\'t like Boudicca when she\'s angry.</p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><br /><img src=\"../images/158183026542/Boudicca_by_ChrisRawlins.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>The new Queen of the Iceni &ndash; a hellraising gore-fanatic known as Boudicca &ndash; was a ferocious, skull-crushing force of nature capable of unleashing an epic fury-driven murder-rage so unbelievably foul that, according to legend, within days of Decianus Catus\' incursion, the people living in nearby Roman cities actually started having wild visions of their impending apocalyptic doom.&nbsp; All across Britannia, horror-movie-grade eyewitness reports started rolling in of some seriously heavy shiz:&nbsp; The ocean waters were turning red with blood.&nbsp; Corpses were washing up on the beach, only to disappear when the authorities showed up.&nbsp; Torrents of blood were raining from the sky.&nbsp; Burning houses were allegedly flipped upside-down like parked cars after an EPL soccer riot.&nbsp; Totally jacked-up Four Horsemen / Plagues of Egypt stuff.</p>\r\n<p>Even if these visions weren\'t just mass hysteria hallucinations brought on by reports of Boudicca\'s limitless desire to personally eat the faces off of every Roman in Britannia, they were pretty good descriptors of what happened next.&nbsp; Shaking with righteous anger, the warrior-queen pulled herself together, painted half of her body blue, received the blessing of the badass creepy Stonehenge Druids, called her countrymen together, and publicly told them, \"Let us show them they are hares and foxes trying to rule over dogs and wolves&hellip; the gods will grant us the vengeance we deserve.\"</p>\r\n<p>It was on.&nbsp; Big time.</p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img src=\"../images/158183026542/ancient-britons_box_front_web.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>Amped up on Red Bull and sporting raging killboners the Iceni men, women, and adolescents went totally Beast Mode and started charging across the countryside taking torches and chainsaws to every item larger than a matchbook.&nbsp; The flood of barbarian rage-flesh blitzed into the nearby city of Colchester, mercilessly wiped out the garrison (the same legionaries who had perpetrated the crimes against the Iceni), massacred the entire civilian population of the city, then waded through knee-deep rivers of gore to set fire to every structure they could find.&nbsp; A handful of quick-thinking Romans took refuge inside the one building in the city that wasn\'t capable of bursting into flames &ndash; the giant stone temple of the God-Emperor Claudius &ndash; but after the Britons were done destroying the town they simply kicked in the front doors, decapitated everyone inside, pulled the structure apart brick-by-brick, and then broke the bricks into dust and stuffed them down their pants.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>And Boudicca was just getting started.&nbsp; This human mushroom cloud of a woman stood on the charred ashes of Colchester, amidst heaps of mutilated burning corpses, and delivered a pump-up speech inspiring her bloodlusting warriors to continue execrating their cruel vengeance on the world.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img src=\"../images/158183026542/boudicca-121.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>According to contemporary sources, the mighty war-queen cut an imposing figure &ndash; she was tall, strong, and fully-committed to the cause, with a harsh, commanding voice that demanded respect and obedience from anyone who heard her, kind of like a sexy Saruman.&nbsp; A fierce-to-death warrior in her own right, Boudicca also personally rode into battle on a badass giant war chariot, carrying a large scrotum-piercing spear and shanking the nuts off of all who crossed her.</p>\r\n<p>Rome eventually got their junk together, figured out that Boudicca wasn\'t just going to \"get over\" the whole public-flogging, daughter-raping thing, and marched a full Legion of Rome\'s toughest warriors out to meet her on the field of battle.&nbsp; The veterans of Legio IX Hispania positioned themselves directly in the path of the Iceni warriors, formed battle lines, and prepared to meet the charge head-on.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The Ninth Legion was slaughtered almost to the last man, merely a speed bump for Boudicca\'s war chariots as they hauled ass across the ravaged countryside.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img src=\"../images/158183026542/pictish-warrior-cover.PNG\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>When the lightly-armed, under-manned Roman garrisons in Britannia heard that a full-strength Roman Legion just got its face rearranged by a horde of screaming dudes who painted themselves blue and came sprinting out of the woods chucking severed human heads like 90-mile-an-hour fastballs, they immediately tucked their balls away, dropped their <em>pila,</em> and made a mad dash for the nearest fallout shelter, giving Boudicca free reign to have her ultraviolent way with the people of Britain.&nbsp; She headed south, to present-day London, which at the time was already a decent-sized city bustling with industry and lucrative trade.&nbsp; She put the entire population to death, finger-painted amateur artwork in their blood and then immolated London with fires so obscenely hot that the entire city melted into a ten-inch-thick layer of scorched earth that can allegedly still be seen whenever London construction companies dig foundations for large buildings.&nbsp; After this they hit Verulamium, wiping that city off the map forever, then stabbed, burned, crucified and/or otherwise killed the entire human population as sacrifices to the gods.&nbsp; In just a few months of total war, the Warrior Queen of the Iceni had annihilated three major cities, refusing to spare a single town, village, estate, or farm in between.&nbsp; The death toll of her rampage is believed to be something like 70,000 people, a number that doesn\'t include the five thousand men of Ninth Legion who were now high-fiving Mars in the afterlife.</p>\r\n<p>At this point, everybody realized that things were getting totally out of hand.&nbsp; Unfortunately, there was only one Roman Legion left in Britannia &ndash; a mere five thousand veteran warriors staring down a teeming, unruly horde of spine-snapping barbarians who had up to this point responded to all opposition by rolling decapitated heads like bowling balls into their formations and then face-kicking the survivors unconscious with spiked boots.&nbsp; The Legion commander, a grizzled-as-Eastwood hardass known as Suetonius Paulinus, knew he was the last hope for Roman Britain &ndash; if he were unable to stop Boudicca\'s death march the Iceni hordes would easily overrun the remaining cities on the island, execute the entire population in even crueler and more unusual ways, and throw the Empire out on its ass.&nbsp; Failure would not be an option.</p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img src=\"../images/158183026542/791a6c0b493a240f725f2572fc3e8365_large.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br />A sample card from <a href=\"http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2146143533/badass-spades-and-grenades-playing-cards-with-ball?ref=live\">my kickstarter</a>.<br />Seriously, please fund this thing.&nbsp; <br />You know you want this in your next Royal Flush.</p>\r\n<p>So, in true badass Roman fashion, Suetonius Paulinus resolved to make a stand &ndash; to solve this way-out-of-control situation in an all-or-nothing deathmatch against impossible odds.&nbsp; And so, outnumbered ten-to-one by blue dudes with gigantic axes and spears, he drew up a battle line right in front of the Briton horde, hoping to take advantage of their newfound-overconfidence by forcing them to fight on a field of the Roman commander\'s choosing.&nbsp; Suetonius put his men at the top of a hill, flanked by super-steep inclines on either side with a dense forest covering his back &ndash; there would only be one direction from which Boudicca could attack, and the field was small enough that he could block the entire hill while still cycling fresh troops in and out of the fray.&nbsp; Suetonius was certain she wouldn\'t pass up the opportunity if it presented itself.</p>\r\n<p>Boudicca didn\'t disappoint.&nbsp; Eager to end the war in one final blood-soaked deathstroke, the blood-drenched Queen marched her entire tribe straight into the valley after Suetonius\' tiny yet dedicated force.&nbsp; The Iceni were so confident of their victory that they brought their baggage trains with them to the battlefield, loaded up with the soldiers\' families so they could all witness the final destruction of the Roman Empire in Britain firsthand.&nbsp; 80,000 beefy barbarians rushed straight-on into a solid wall of Roman tower shields.&nbsp; When they got close enough, they threw human heads.&nbsp; The Romans threw javelins back.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The javelins were slightly more effective.</p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img src=\"../images/158183026542/boudicca1.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>Disoriented by a whistling volley of polished javelins impaling their bravest warriors, the Iceni charge faltered somewhat, and, their tower shields raised and braced, the Roman lines somehow withstood the tremendous crush of Briton fury.&nbsp; Suetonius\' disciplined veterans frantically stabbed out between their shields with their short swords in a shank-tastic frenzy of groin-stabs, cutting down the Britons while they struggled to swing their oversized weapons in such tight quarters. The Briton charge stalled, broke, and before long it was the Romans who were pushing their adversaries backwards &ndash; straight into the baggage train they\'d brought along with them.&nbsp; Suetonius ordered a full-on charge, unleashed his cavalry, and chomped through them like a fat kid obliterating an oversized handful of cotton candy at the county fair as the Iceni desperately struggled to flee the field.&nbsp; Boudicca herself managed to fight her way out through the carnage, but when the smoke cleared she was left with only about a quarter of her once-mighty force.&nbsp; Seeing her triumphant army now horribly mutilated beyond recognition, she chugged some poisonous Jell-O shots and died.&nbsp; For her efforts in boldly defying Rome to her last breath and leading her people to glorious (if only temporary) victories against their hated enemies, Boudicca\'s people gave her queen a hero\'s burial, entombing her with a horde of royal gold that to this day has never been found.&nbsp; Nowadays there\'s an appropriately-epic statue of her standing near the Parliament buildings in London (you know, the city she burned to the ground), and she\'s also got about a half-dozen British Navy warships named after her.</p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img src=\"../images/158183026542/Boudicca_Monument.jpg\" alt=\"\" />&nbsp;</p>','2013-07-19','158183026542','boudicca-spear.jpg','220px-Queen_Boudica_by_John_Opie.jpg','Boudicca','Warrior-queen of the Iceni.','\"The Roman legion which dared to fight us is annihilated.  The others cower in their camps, or watch for a chance to escape.  They will never face even the din and roar of all out thousands, much less the shock of our onslaught.  Consider how many of you are fighting – and why.  Then you will win this battle or perish.  That is what I, a woman, plan to do – let the men live in slavery if they will.\"'),('Al-Malik, Al-Zahir Rukn al-Dunia wal-Din Abu l-Fath Baybars','c. 1223','July 1, 1277','Crimea, Ukraine','Medieval Egyptian Warlord','<p>Al-Malik, Al-Zahir Rukn al-Dunia wal-Din Abu l-Fath Baybars was a gigantic, hulking, blonde-haired, blue-eyed Muslim warrior with a vicious temper, a ridiculously-huge broad-bladed scimitar, and a relentless desire to take on the two most powerful land empires in the world and leave nothing in his path except a field of vulture-ridden corpses and smoking cinders.&nbsp; Born a dirt-poor peasant, sold as a slave, and forced to fight as a front-line warrior against his will in hardcore sword battles against bloodthirsty Mongols and fanatical European Crusaders alike, this badass organic war machine rose from slave to general, overthrew two Sultans of Egypt, seized power for himself, and became the most famous character in post-Pharaoh Egyptian history.</p>\r\n<p>Born into an impoverished dirt-farming Kipchak Turk peasant family somewhere on the Crimean peninsula in present-day Ukraine, Baybars, like many of his Kipchak Turkic relatives, was tall, strong, and powerful, with long blonde hair and blue eyes &ndash; although one of his eyes was afflicted with cataracts so it was cloudy white, making him look even more imposing and badass.&nbsp; When he was a young man, Baybars\' tribe was attacked by the Mongols &ndash; a ferocious Empire of steppe warriors who, under the able command of a dude named Genghis Khan, were in the process of carving out the largest contiguous land empire in human history by wakeboarding a torrent of human blood that stretched from China to Austria.&nbsp; The Mongols killed Baybars\'s parents, torched his village, took him prisoner, and sold him into slavery in Damascus, where he was sold to the Sultan of Egypt for a bag of rocks and a pair of Bo Jackson rookie cards.</p>\r\n<p>Baybars was brought back to Egypt and, due to his size, bad attitude, and ability to wield massive weaponry with ruthless efficiency, was enlisted in the Mamluk Infantry &ndash; a regiment of badass slave-warrior killbots forced to convert to Islam and serve the Sultan of Egypt in battle until such time as they died a painfully-bloody and glorious death in battle.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/83665024147/baybars1.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> Mamluk training.<br /> Please note the DUDE WITH THE FUCKING FIRE LANCE <br /> AND FLAMING HORSE WTF</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Slave-warrior Baybars was thrown into war almost immediately, as the Sultan hurled his legions head-on into combat against the Crusader Kingdoms that were still clinging to their foothold in the Middle East.&nbsp; Described by one Crusader as, \"as brilliant as Caesar, and as harsh as Nero,\" Baybars rose through the ranks quickly thanks to his military brilliance, fanatical bravery, and insane personal strength/psychoticness.&nbsp; He was transferred to the Bahriyya Regiment, a unit of 1,000 Mamluk shock troopers who served as the personal bodyguard of the Sultan when they weren\'t being used as the spearhead of every major Egyptian military offensive ever all the time, eventually becoming the unit\'s commander after he took over for his wounded commander at a battle in Gaza in 1244 and rallied the Egyptian army to victory against the infidel.</p>\r\n<p>Well the Europeans got a little pissed off about this while Egyptian bullshit, so in 1250 they launched the Seventh Crusade.&nbsp; French King Louis IX dumped 60,000 heavily-armed Crusader knights on the shores of the Nile, marched towards Cairo, crossed a few canals, and ambushed the entire Egyptian army while they were still in their war camp, the Knights Templar and Hospitaller leading a charge of heavy cavalry that smashed the Muslim forces, killed the Sultan of Egypt, and sent the entire Islamic military running for the hills.</p>\r\n<p>Everyone except Baybars, that is.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/83665024147/baybars2.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Baybars was just a regimental commander, but when he saw the entire Egyptian army fleeing towards the safety of the nearby walled city of Al-Mansurah, he devised a plan.&nbsp; Standing atop a wall, he rallied his men to hold their ground, even as thousands of English, French, and German knights stampeded in their direction.&nbsp; Baybars calmed down his previously-leaderless troops, reorganized them in defensive positions, then gave the order to <em>open the gates of the city</em>.&nbsp; The Crusaders rushed in, hoping to crush the Muslim forces once and for all and clear the way to Cairo.</p>\r\n<p>Baybars slammed the gates shut behind them as soon as they were in.&nbsp; The Crusaders, unable to use their cavalry in the narrow streets, were boxed in, suddenly ambushed and surrounded not only by thousands of Jihadis, but also by the townspeople themselves, most of whom knew that bloody painful death was all they could look forward to if the Europeans took the town.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The Crusader army was crushed.&nbsp; Baybars didn\'t take any prisoners.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/83665024147/baybars3.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>When the new Sultan took over, that idiot didn\'t show Baybars and the Mamluks enough appreciation for pulling his Halal bacon out of the European Crusader fire, so Baybars and his men orchestrated a coup d\'etat Praetorian Guard style, ambushing the Sultan in his palace, executing him (some say Baybars was the man who dealt the killing blow), and putting a Mamluk Sultan in power.&nbsp;&nbsp; Suddenly the slaves had become the masters.</p>\r\n<p>Infighting among the Mamluks eventually forced Baybars out of town, and the slave-general fled to Syria, where he worked as a badass mercenary for the next couple years.&nbsp; It was a new threat from an old enemy, however, that finally forced the fugitive badass to return to Cairo and offer his warrior-murdering services to his adopted homeland:&nbsp; The Mongols were coming.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/83665024147/baybars4.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br />Say what now?</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>In the year 1260, emissaries from the Great Khan arrived in Cairo with a message &ndash; the invincible Mongol Hordes were en route to Egypt, and only the unconditional surrender of the Sultan would prevent the utter destruction of their entire civilization.&nbsp; Baybars, naturally, had the emissaries executed and sent their balls back to the Khan in a box.&nbsp; Then he prepared for war.</p>\r\n<p>The Mongol Horde, now under command of Genghis Khan\'s grandson HULAGUALAUGLAUG Khan, had not lost a battle in the 40 year history of the Empire.&nbsp; They\'d destroyed Imperial China.&nbsp; They\'d crushed the Empires of Central Asia.&nbsp; They spent 8 days plundering Baghdad, then killed the Caliph (basically the Muslim Pope) by rolling him up in a Persian rug and trampling him with horses.&nbsp; They\'d crushed the Prince of Russia to death by laying boards over him and eating dinner on his corpse.&nbsp; They leveled Damascus.&nbsp; And now the only thing that stood between the Mongol Empire and Jerusalem, Mecca, and Cairo were the armies of the Egyptian Sultan and Baybars\' enormous nutsack.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/83665024147/baybars5.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Baybars, now in command of the entire Egyptian Army, met the Mongols at a place called Ain Jalut &ndash; the \"Pools of Goliath\" &ndash; just north of Jerusalem.&nbsp; He lined 60,000 Egyptian troops in battle formation against 30,000 Mongols, but even the two-to-one advantage was no guarantee of victory.&nbsp; The Invincible Mongols rushed ahead, firing their fearsome composite bows into the Egyptians, then following it with a ridiculous charge of heavy cavalry that smashed the Egyptian lines and sent the entire army into a full retreat.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>As he had done before, Baybars rushed to the front to rally his troops, even as the Mongols pursued them relentlessly, cutting fleeing Mamluk warriors down as they ran for their lives.&nbsp; Somehow, Baybars turned his troops back even in the face of an overwhelming rout, ordering them to turn, stand and fight.</p>\r\n<p>The Mongols bore down on Baybars and his shattered regiments.&nbsp; It looked like this would be their last stand.</p>\r\n<p>It was at this point that another 60,000 Egyptian horsemen came out of the forests on either side of the battlefield, slamming into the Mongol flanks and cutting off their only escape route.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/83665024147/baybars6.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> Uh oh, looks like someone got caught with their nuts in a zipper.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Baybars took no survivors.&nbsp; The Mongols were slaughtered to the last man.&nbsp; It would be the first defeat the Horde would ever suffer,&nbsp; and their defeat at Ain Jalut would mark the furthest their Empire would ever stretch in the Middle East.&nbsp; On the way home to Egypt, Baybars asked the Sultan for a promotion for, you know, kicking so much ass, and when the Sultan said no Baybars decapitated him, seized the Citadel of Cairo, and took the name Al-Malik al-Zahir, meaning \"The Conquering King\".&nbsp; Since everyone hated the sultan and loved Baybars anyways, nobody really cared.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Ruling an empire stretching from Cairo to Baghdad for over 17 years, Baybars, the ex-slave, lived in a massive palace, cleaned up the city of prostitutes and hashish, built mosques, shipyards, roads, and bridges, and was so beloved that he became known as \"The Lion of Egypt\".&nbsp; He elected a new Caliph, kept the Mongols at bay, and went to work forcing those annoying Crusaders out of the Middle East, capturing Antioch in 1268, crushing the Knights Templar stronghold of Arsuf, obliterating the Hospitallers at Krak des Chevaliers in 1271, and destroying the armies of Lesser Armenia a few years later, being sure to either massacre or enslave the entire populations of cities that defied him and hanging the heads of enemy kings on the gates of Cairo.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Baybars eventually died in 1277 when he accidentally assassinated himself.&nbsp; Apparently, he\'d poisoned the drink of one of his rival princes, but that guy switched cups Dread Pirate Roberts style when Baybars wasn\'t looking and the 54-year-old Sultan died after 13 days of poison, ironically becoming the third Sultan of Egypt he\'d assassinated with his own hand.&nbsp; His descendents, however, would forever keep the Mongols out of Egypt and the Crusaders out of the Middle East, and would remain in power so long that when Napoleon Bonaparte invaded Egypt in 1798 it was still ruled by Mamluk Sultans.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/83665024147/baybars7.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Links:</p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/baybars.htm\">http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/baybars.htm</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baibars\">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baibars</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.arabacademy.com/arabic-blog/tag/mamluk-sultan-baybars-1st/\">http://www.arabacademy.com/arabic-blog/tag/mamluk-sultan-baybars-1st/</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.historyofwar.org/articles/battles_mansura.html\">http://www.historyofwar.org/articles/battles_mansura.html</a></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Sources:</p>\r\n<p>Grant, G.B.&nbsp; <em>Commanders</em>. DK Publishing, 2010.</p>\r\n<p>Meri, Josef W. and Jere L. Bacharach.&nbsp; <em>Medieval Islamic Civilizations</em>.&nbsp; Taylor &amp; Francis, 2006.</p>\r\n<p>Rogers, Clifford.&nbsp; <em>The Oxford Encyclopedia of Medieval Warfare and Military Technology</em>.&nbsp; Oxford Univ. Press, 2010.</p>\r\n<p>Slack, Corliss K.&nbsp; <em>Historical Dictionary of the Crusades</em>.&nbsp; Scarecrow, 2013.</p>','2013-07-26','83665024147','baybars.jpg','baybars-small.jpg','Baybars','Slave to Sultan, defeated the Mongols, destroyed the Crusaders.','\"Hadst thou but seen thy knights trodden under horses\' hooves, thy palaces invaded and ransacked for booty, thy ladies bought and sold at four to the dinar of thine own money! Hadst thou seen any churches demolished, the crosses sawn in sunder, they garbled gospels hawked about before the sun, the tombs of thy nobles cast to the ground...then thou wouldst have said, \'Would God that I were dust!\'\" - Letter to a Crusader King after destroying his army and capturing his castle.  This is the precursor to \"in ur base killin ur d00dz\"'),('Hernando Cortes Pizarro','c. 1485','December 2, 1547','Medellin, Castille, Spain','16th-century Spanish Conquistador','<p>Hernan Cortez defied a direct order from a superior officer and took 600 guys to Mexico, where he founded Veracruz, took on the Aztec Empire, convinced them he was the physical incarnation of an ancient god, then conquered the largest, most warlike, and most badass Native American civilization the continent of the Americas had ever seen despite having just a handful of troops, a few guns, a couple suits of steel armor, and a little bit of smallpox.&nbsp; Once that was done he built Mexico City on the ruins of the civilization he\'d just razed into dust, changed the genetic makeup of the Mexican population forever, discovered California, and retired to a life of luxury in Seville.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>If you haven\'t <a href=\"http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2146143533/badass-spades-and-grenades-playing-cards-with-ball\">checked out my kickstarter</a> yet, we\'re down to the last 10 days.&nbsp; Here\'s the sort of card art a man like Cortes inspires:</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/584245310466/cortes1.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">why haven\'t you <a href=\"http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2146143533/badass-spades-and-grenades-playing-cards-with-ball\">ordered a deck</a> yet</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">whyyyyy</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The most hardcore Spanish Conquistador to ever impale the indigenous population of the Americas in the face at point-blank range with a large caliber musket ball was born in Castille, Spain, somewhere in the vicinity of 1485.&nbsp; The only son of an aristocratic family that had lost all of its money for some reason, Cortez\'s dad sent him to study law at a University, but that was a bunch of crap so Cortez flunked out like a badass, quit school, and decided to join on as a mercenary soldier on a ship destined for adventure on a hostile, untamed continent that had only just been discovered 10 years earlier.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Cortez\'s first attempt to venture to the New World ended up being a failure &ndash; apparently, the night before he was supposed to leave, he scaled a stone wall to sneak into his girlfriend\'s second-story bedroom, but the wall collapsed under him, pinning the horny teenage Spaniard under several hundred pounds of rock, and by the time he pulled himself out of the rubble his ship had already left.&nbsp; It wasn\'t until later in the year 1504 that the 19-year-old adventurer finally set sail for Hispanola, ready to discover, explore, conquer, and destroy all that stood before him in the name of the Spanish King, Catholicism, and the good-old-fashioned manly desire to plunder gold, silver, and other shiny objects anywhere he can find them.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/584245310466/cortes2.JPG\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>In Hispaniola (the present-day Dominican Republic) Cortez earned a name for himself as a stone-cold asskicker who ruthlessly squashed native uprisings with the sharp side of his Spanish broadsword and a healthy dose of gunpowder, but when he was offered a land grand by the local Spanish governor he responded like a badass, saying he was there to get gold, \"not till the soil like a peasant.\"&nbsp; In 1511 he joined Diego Velazquez in the Spanish conquest of Cuba, where he brought the King\'s Will to the Cubans, ate some sweet sandwiches, smoked a few cigars, was cited for bravery in battle, fought a couple duels over girls, suppressed another native uprising, married his commanding officer\'s sister-in-law, and ruled as the mayor of Santiago.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Around 1518, reports started coming in of a super-rich civilization to the West, where guys went to work in gold-plated flying cars and wallpapered their homes in sapphire dust and first-edition copies of original <em>Fantastic Four </em>comic books.&nbsp; Cortez was intrigued, and asked Velazquez permission to go over there and plunder the hell out of them.&nbsp; Velazquez said ok, cool, sounds like a plan, but then eventually changed his mind and was like no way Jose but Cortez ignored this and went anyways.&nbsp; In February 1519, the 34-year-old Conquistador landed on the coast of Mexico with 600 men, 16 horses, 11 cannons, and no support, founded the city of Veracruz, dismantled all of his ships, and told his men the only way they were getting out of there was through brutal conquest and ultimate destruction.</p>\r\n<p>Then he beat up on some local Indian tribes just to show them who\'s boss.&nbsp; They fought hard, but it\'s kind of tough to put up a half-decent struggle when you\'re in a loincloth, carrying a sharpened spear, and have never seen a horse before in your entire life and now you\'re facing plate-armored European heavy cavalry that suddenly materialized out of thin air armed with crossbows, steel swords, and friggin\' guns.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/584245310466/cortes3.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>After subduing the local tribes on the Yucatan, Cortez started to hear rumors of an insanely-powerful, ultra-warlike tribe known as the Aztecs &ndash; a bunch of stone-cold asskickers who beat the snot out of every major tribe in Mexico, ritualistically disemboweled their still-living enemies on an altar to the Sun God, and carried badass obsidian saw-sword weapons so hardcore they could decapitate a horse with one swing.&nbsp; When Cortez learned they also had a lot of gold and silver, he was obviously interested, and the whole horse-decapitation, forging-an-empire-out-of-eviscerated-corpses thing didn\'t seem to deter him &nbsp;from taking on the New World\'s most hardcore warrior culture with 600 guys and a handful of guns.&nbsp; Cortez made the 3-month journey to the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan, a city of 200,000 people built in the middle of a lake where the tallest structure was a giant pyramid that featured daily human sacrifices.</p>\r\n<p>Luckily for Cortez and the Spaniards, their arrival just so happened to coincide with an ancient Aztec prophesy about white-skinned gods arriving from the East with advanced weaponry and godlike powers.&nbsp;&nbsp; When the Aztec Emperor Montezuma came out and asked Cortez if he was the physical incarnation of the Serpent God Quetzalcoatl, Cortez was like, \"Uh&hellip; yes?\", then captured Montezuma, ransomed him for a crap ton of gold, and ruled the Aztec Empire through him.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/584245310466/cortes4.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">\"Sure, I\'m&hellip; uh&hellip; Quetzalco-whatever&hellip;\"</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Just for fun, here are two images of Quetzalcoatl.</p>\r\n<p>Yes, this is a blatant, egregious violation of the Starfleet Prime Directive exploited solely for personal gain and an insane lust for power, but you kind of have to give Cortez props for convincing the indigenous population that he was the second coming of this dude:</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/584245310466/cortes5.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/584245310466/cortes6.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Well, sure, ruling the Aztecs was fun, but there was also that whole issue of disobeying a direct order from his commanding officer not to plunder and pillage an entire human civilization, and in April of 1520, Governor Velazquez sent a massive force of 900 Spaniards to Mexico with orders to arrest Cortez and bring him to justice.&nbsp; Cortez, undeterred, left just 120 troops in Tenochtitlan to police 200,000 Aztecs, hauled ass back to Veracruz, ambushed the 900-man invasion force with just 260 troops, defeated them, captured their commander, and convinced any Spaniard left standing to join up with him and plunder the Aztecs for personal gain and profit.&nbsp; By the time he returned to Tenochtitlan, not only was he still running amok as a loose cannon, but he\'d somehow managed to double the size of his army.</p>\r\n<p>Unfortunately for him, the situation kind of went to hell while he was gone.&nbsp; When he returned, he found his 120-man garrison was pinned down inside the Aztec palace, besieged by a city full of angry, pissed-off badasses who wanted nothing more than to gut them like fish.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/584245310466/cortes7.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">Spanish POWs sacrificed to Aztec gods.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Rolling up on a 16<sup>th</sup>-century <em>Black Hawk Down</em>, Cortez first put Montezuma out there to try and calm the horde, but the Aztecs killed him by chucking giant rocks at his face.&nbsp; Then they stormed the palace, fearlessly charging head-on into rifle and crossbow fire, and Cortez was only able to beat them back with massive blasts of grapeshot at point-blank range. Battling an enemy that one Spanish soldier described as being tougher than the Moors and the French combined, Cortez and his men fought their way through the streets of a hostile city, besieged and attacked on all sides by livid native warriors armed with a vast assortment of ultra-deadly weapons.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>During the intense, two-day struggle to escape Tenochtitlan, the Spanish troops fought their way up the Aztec Temple, through one of the causeways, and finally out into the open, where a charge of heavy cavalry drove off the pursuing Aztec army.&nbsp; Of his 1,100 troops, Cortez suffered 600 dead, lost all of his cannons, and was forced to leave a huge portion of his treasure behind.</p>\r\n<p>He vowed to come back and get vengeance.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/584245310466/cortes8.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Back in Veracruz, Cortez sent ships to Jamaica to buy artillery and supplies, appealed to Cuba for Spanish reinforcements, and recruited the local Tlaxcalan tribe (you may remember them from the <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/index.cgi?id=764207417779\">Tlahuicole</a> story) to join him in an all-out attack on the Aztec Capital.&nbsp; By 1521, he had a force of 86 cavalry, 118 crossbowmen/riflemen, 700 heavy infantry, and over 20,000 Tlaxcalan Native Warriors.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>By the time he returned to Tenochtitlan, he\'d also managed to unwittingly wipe out nearly half the population of the Aztec civilization by accidentally leaving behind a little thing called Smallpox when he was in town the first time.</p>\r\n<p>Cortez attacked Tenochtitlan in a 3-month siege, blocking off all the island city\'s bridges and causeways, cutting off their aqueducts, bringing cannon-bearing ships onto the lake, and finally assaulting the city itself.&nbsp; Over the next 10 weeks both sides fought bitterly, with the Aztecs throwing body parts of sacrificed Spanish POWs at Cortez\'s men and charging fearlessly in to hand-to-hand combat, and the heavily-armored Spanish responding by hacking and slashing with heavy steel blades and firing guns at point-blank range into a throng of raging native warriors.&nbsp; &nbsp;Tenochtitlan fought heroically, but was ultimately taken, burned to the ground, and its population nearly entirely wiped out.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/584245310466/cortes9.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Cortez built Mexico City on the ruins of Tenochtitlan, dismantled the Aztec religion, brought in Catholicism, and forever changed the genetic makeup of the Mexican people.&nbsp; The city he founded would serve as the center of Spanish America for the next 300 years, not only changing the face of the New World forever, but bringing so much gold and silver home that Spain would dominate Europe for decades.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The King eventually forgot about the disobeying orders thing in the name of gold and made Cortez governor of New Spain in 1523.&nbsp; He crushed his enemies, suppressed a revolution, poisoned a few Spanish rivals, built cities, and Catholicized the population before being removed from power in 1526 on charges of assassinating Ponce de Leon (seriously).&nbsp; He continued to explore, searched for a sea route through North America, and discovered (and named) California before retiring to Seville in 1541.&nbsp; He died in 1547 of a lung infection.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/584245310466/cortes10.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Links:</p>\r\n<p><a href=\"/admin/BBC\">BBC</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.biography.com/people/hern%C3%A1n-cort%C3%A9s-9258320\">Biography.com</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04397a.htm\">Catholic Encyclopedia</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.aztec-history.com/hernan-cortez-biography.html\">Aztec-History.com</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hern%C3%A1n_Cort%C3%A9s\">Wikipedia</a></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Other Sources:</p>\r\n<p>Davis, Paul K.&nbsp; <em>100 Decisive Battles</em>.&nbsp; Oxford University Press, 1999.</p>\r\n<p>Sandler, Stanley.&nbsp; <em>Ground Warfare</em>.&nbsp; ABC-CLIO, 2002.</p>','2013-08-02','584245310466','cortes.jpg','cortes-small.jpg','Hernan Cortez','Conquistador who conquered the New World\'s most badass civilization with 600 soldiers.','\"We Spaniards know a sickness of the heart that only gold can cure.\"'),('Sir Adrian Paul Ghislain Carton de Wiart','May 5, 1880','June 5, 1963','Brussels, Belgium','20th-century Belgian Soldier','<p>Adrian Carton de Wiart was a Belgian aristocrat who survived 11 wounds across three wars, led infantry charges on three continents, survived a couple plane crashes, was shot in the face at least three times, lost an eye, a hand, and a lung, accumulated enough shrapnel in his body to set off every metal detector from here to Berlin, made friends with basically every world leader from Pope Pius to Chiang Kai-Shek, and still spent the majority of his 80s hunting ducks one-handed on a massive estate where he lived with a woman half his age.</p>\r\n<p>He\'s a guy with a Wikipedia article that reads like a Badass of the Week entry, and he looks like a righteously pissed-off Pirate Tom Selleck in a British Lieutenant-General\'s uniform.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/30045813384/wiart1.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Born in the late 19<sup>th</sup> century to ultra-wealthy Belgian nobility with enough names and titles to max out the character limit of any government form not printed in Eastern Europe, Sir Adrian Paul Ghislain Carton de Wiart, Esquire DDS VC ETC was far more interested in kicking asses and beating the shit out of enemy warriors on the blood-stained field of battle than he was in having dinner parties or learning the White Guy Macarena or doing any of that other annoying Pride and Predjudice bullshit, so the minute Carton de Wiart\'s parents shipped him off to some annoying Catholic Boarding School he broke out of there, ran to the nearest British Army recruiting office, grew an insta-\'stache, convinced the dude there that he was a 25 year old drifter, and joined the Service of the Queen fighting the Boers in South Africa.</p>\r\n<p>Fighting alongside legendary future British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Carton de Wiart led infantry attacks straight-on into the face of the enemy whenever those quasi-Dutch German-Afrikaners or whatever the hell they are presented him an opportunity to point the tip of a bayonet their direction.&nbsp; He caught a bullet with his iron-plated groin and took another round through a lung that knocked him out of action for about fifteen minutes, so Carton de Wiart went home, attended Oxford University for a while, and married an Austrian Countess, but even those two were married for like 50 years he doesn\'t even bother mentioning her in his memoirs because whatever it\'s not like it\'s a big deal to marry an Austrian Countess or anything.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/30045813384/wiart2.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> Charging Boer Kommandos head-on like he means it.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>One his lungs and balls had recovered, Carton de Wiart joined the Imperial Light Horse, served in South Africa and India, and became well-known for being the toughest, strongest, most foul-mouthed, most badass motherfucker anywhere he went.&nbsp; His favorite hobbies were polo and hunting wild boar with a knife, he was known to drink wine to celebrate surgeries or disasters, and he tried to avoid carrying his revolver into combat because he was genuinely worried he\'d get so uber blood-rage pissed off once the bullets started flying that he\'d turn it on his own men if he thought they were acting like pussies on the battlefield.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>When the Great War came around, Adrian Carton de Wiart was naturally ready to start cracking skulls like pistachio nuts and then presumably devouring anything that came out of the middle.&nbsp; His experience fighting in Africa got him assigned to the East Africa Camel Corps, a badass unit of hard-looking bastards who rode through the desert on camels and launched surprise hit-and-run raids on enemy positions with a hail of gunfire and dromedary spit.&nbsp; While leading one charge in Somaliland against the \"Mad Mullah\" Mohammad bin Abdullah, Carton de Wiart was climbing up a fort when he got shot in the face, but all this did was piss him off and give him a good excuse to wear a fucking eyepatch for the rest of his life.&nbsp; It didn\'t even knock him out of <em>that campaign</em> &ndash; a few weeks later he was shot in the face again, this time losing part of his ear, but still went on to win the British Army\'s second-highest award for military bravery for his service.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/30045813384/wiart3.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> Dude even made camels badass.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>After charging through the sands on camelback deflecting bullets with his face and capturing enemy strongholds in East Africa, A.D.C. was transferred to France, where the war was pretty fucking far from quiet on the western front.&nbsp; Commanding British Infantry battalions over-the-top into no-man\'s-land, personally leading attacks face-first into German machine gun nests, Carton de Wiart got a hand blown off a Ypres, bit a few of his fingers off to prevent infection, was shot through the skull and the ankle at the Battle of the Somme, took bullets to the hip, leg, and other ear, and still somehow recovered from these presumably crippling/fatal wounds quickly enough to receive the Victoria Cross for kicking ballsacks at the Battle of La Boiselle in 1916.&nbsp; Apparently Carton de Wiart was leading the 8<sup>th</sup> Glouchestershire Regiment in a bayonet charge when three other less-badass British Battalion commanders died like assholes, so Wiart took command of all four units and pressed the attack, personally running up and down the trenches barking orders and waving around a walking stick while German bullets whizzed past his eyepatch.</p>\r\n<p>He also doesn\'t mention his Victoria Cross in his memoirs.&nbsp; Because fuck it, ball don\'t lie.</p>\r\n<p>When asked about his experience being shot and/or blown up eight separate times while leading infantry in the bloodiest military conflict in human history, Carton de Wiart remarked, \"Frankly I enjoyed the war.\"</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/30045813384/wiart4.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">Over the top in more ways than one.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>In the 1920s, Carton de Wiart was sent to Poland to help them deal with being simultaneously attacked by the Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Russians, Czechs, and pretty much very other Commie bastard Eastern Europe had to offer.&nbsp; He survived having his train car machine gunned by Ukrainian infantry, befriended Josef Pilsudski, became aide-de-camp to the King of Poland, and received a huge land grand on the Poland-USSR border for his services.&nbsp; Naturally, Carton de Wiart spent every day in the DMZ firing a shotgun trying to hunt ducks with one arm.</p>\r\n<p>Carton de Wiart spent his tenure in Poland advising the British Crown and the Pope personally, surviving two plane crashes in two years, running a gun-smuggling ring to bring supplies to Poland through Budapest, participated in a duel that involved Carl Gustav Emil Mannerheim, the future overall commander of the Finnish military in World War II, and fighting a war against the Russians.&nbsp; In 1920 he shot his way out of Warsaw on a train, hanging onto the railing of a moving express train firing his revolver at a band of Cossack Red Army cavalrymen who were trying to arrest and execute him.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/30045813384/wiart5.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>After Carton de Wiart helped the Poles win the war he continued living on his Polish estate, but in 1939 the Nazis blew up his house so I guess he had to leave town and fight yet another World War.&nbsp; A.C.W. drove through Poland, had his car attacked by Luftwaffe dive-bombers, made his through Romania on a fake passport (somehow disguising himself despite being a 60 year old one-armed, one-eyed British-Belgian man), and enlisted back in the British military.&nbsp; He commanded a raid in Norway to re-take Trondheim from the Nazis in 1940, and when promised support and reinforcements never showed up he commanded his troops as they fought off a counter attack by German Destroyer ships and badass Bond Villain-style ski troops.&nbsp; A year later, while flying to Yugoslavia, Carton de Wiart\'s plane crashed in the water off Libya, so the 60 year-old dude swam to the shore, where he was captured by Italian troops and thrown into a POW camp, making the General one of the highest-ranking POWs of the entire war.</p>\r\n<p>He undertook five escape attempts, including one where he spent 7 months digging a tunnel, escaped, and evaded capture for over a week.&nbsp; He was eventually released in 1943, and sent to be the Special Representative to China, where he helped Chiang Kai-Shek fight the Japanese and once talked shit to Mao at a dinner party.</p>\r\n<p>Adrian Carton de Wiart, wounded 11 times in 3 wars, retired from the military in 1947, married a chick half his age, and survived to be 83 years old.</p>\r\n<p>His memoirs are titled <em>Happy Odyssey.&nbsp; </em>Winston Churchill wrote the foreword.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/30045813384/wiart6.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Links:</p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.rdgmuseum.org.uk/history-and-research/famous-soldiers-of-the-royal-dragoon-guards/sir-adrian-carton-de-wiart/\">RDG Museum</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2366714/Is-best-Wikipedia-entry-VC-winning-officer-shot-face-head-stomach-ankle-leg-hip-ear.html\">Daily Mail Bio</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_Carton_de_Wiart\">Wikipedia</a></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Sources:</p>\r\n<p>Carton de Wiart, Adrian.&nbsp; <em>Happy Odyssey</em>.&nbsp; Pen and Sword, 2007.</p>\r\n<p>Davies, Norman.&nbsp; <em>White Eagle, Red Star</em>.&nbsp; Random House, 2011.</p>\r\n<p>Tucker, Spencer<em>.&nbsp; Who\'s Who in Twentieth Century Warfare</em>.&nbsp; Routledge, 2003.</p>','2013-08-16','30045813384','wiart.jpg','wiart-small.jpg','Adrian Carton de Wiart','Psychotic one-eyed British Army officer wounded 11 times in 3 wars across 3 continents.  ','\"Governments may think and say as they like, but force cannot be eliminated, and it is the only real and unanswerable power. We are told that the pen is mightier than the sword, but I know which of these weapons I would choose.\"'),('Monsopiad','unknown','unknown','Kotah, Sabah, Malaysia','Borneo Headhunter Warrior','<p>Monsopiad was a psychotic machete-swinging blood-raging Borneo berserker motherfucker who used a custom-made sniper-rifle-style blowgun and a razor-sharp horror-movie-grade blade decorated with the hair and bones of his slain enemies to decapitate over forty enemy warriors in screaming in battle like a fucking bastard, a feat that makes him one of the most honored Dayak headhunter tribal war-chiefs in that warrior-cultures history, and the awesome-looking longhouse where he chugged rice wine surrounded by hot Malaysian babes and the skulls, bones, and hair of his defeated nemeses is now a national cultural heritage museum among the Borneo people.</p>\r\n<p>If you think that sentence was just a little bit fucking excessive, just wait until you hear about the shit this guy may or may not have accomplished in a lifetime that makes even some of the most bloodthirsty blood-raging Vikings look like a bunch of seven year-old girls crying their goddamned eyes out because Justin Beiber just rode by them on a fucking Razr Scooter and bitch-slapped the ice cream cone right out of their hands.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/285483221108/monsopiad1.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">[insert utterly-inappropriate oral sex double-ententre here]</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The South Pacific island of Borneo is home to some of the most notorious headhunter warrior cultures of all time &ndash; insane tribal natives who would just as soon shank you in the retina with a poison-tipped blowgun dart and devour your still-beating heart with a side of ranch dressing as they were to welcome you to Thanksgiving dinner with some Pocahontas shit.&nbsp; Raiding the sea, the land, and anywhere else their canoes or legs could take them, the Dayaks and other tribes prided themselves on their hand-to-hand combat prowess, ability to decapitate motherfuckers with badass-looking machetes, and collect limited edition copies of shrunken human heads taken from enemy warriors gloriously hand-massacred in a gruesome style of warfare that vaguely resembled a cross between an ultra-violent Japanese sci-fi samurai anime and License to Kill, Slappers Only four-player <em>Goldeneye </em>with machetes.</p>\r\n<p>According to the Dayaks, you weren\'t a Real Man until you\'d \"seen blood\", engaged the enemy in combat on the field of battle, removed his head from his torso by way of a well-placed hack to the throat, and then performed a hilarious Sack Dance like you\'d just dropped an opposing Quarterback in the end zone for a safety.&nbsp; Whacking off a dude\'s head was supposed to suck out his soul, adding yet another level of humiliating insult to the degradation involved with being publicly shown-up in combat and beheaded in front of all your friends and family, and that soul would then be added to the strength of the man who had killed him.&nbsp; It was all very Highlander, \"There Can Be Only One\", shit, but the Borneoans were pretty into it &ndash; if you were a hardcore Headhunter you were basically a superstar, and got all the chicks, booze, and choice cured meats, and most badass post-game after-party feasts involved local women in grass skirts dancing seductively around campfires singing about how potent and amazing you were.&nbsp; It was kind of like those rappers who write choruses where girls with beautiful voices sing about how horny then get whenever he takes them for rides in his Ferrari made out of ten-thousand-dollar bills that also morphs into a helicopter and something out of the <em>Gundam Wing </em>series.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/285483221108/monsopiad2.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">I just love your flashy ways,</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">That&rsquo;s why they broke and you\'re so paid.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Well, the general idea of Borneo Headhunters is pretty well known now, but since these dudes didn\'t really waste their time writing any of their history down the most we know about these dudes comes from the British explorers who landed on Borneo in the late 19<sup>th</sup>-century, immediately ran screaming away from hundreds of armed natives waving a vicious-looking array of bladed weaponry and decked out in wargear more heavily-decorated with human skulls than the most intense <em>Warhammer 40k</em> cover artwork ever, quickly scribbled something like, \"note to self <em>WHAT the fuck DO NOT GO HERE AGAIN\"</em> in their diaries, then went home and tried to convince the British public that they were heroes.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Still, there is one name that comes to the surface when you read about these dudes.&nbsp; And there\'s only one warrior that actually has a museum dedicated to his exploits &ndash; Monsopiad.&nbsp; The war-king.&nbsp; The guy who\'s story is so intense, and was passed down by word-of-mouth so long, that most of the details of his life have occasionally been chalked up to myth, folklore, and general bullshit.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>I\'d argue that you can say what you want &ndash; there are still 42 human skulls hanging from the ceiling of his house, all of which were removed by a sharp object traveling at high speeds, and they had to get there somewhere.</p>\r\n<p>Here\'s his story.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/285483221108/monsopiad3.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Monsopiad was born an indeterminate number of generations ago, in a town called Kuai, in the Sabah region of Borneo.&nbsp; His grandpa was the master of the town, but he did a shitty job of it, and the town pretty much sucked gigantic fucking balls because roughly every three or four weeks a random gang of assholes would crash through the jungle, chop off the domes of any man they could catch, run off with the women, torch their huts, and plunder everything valuable they could find.&nbsp; The people of Kuai eventually learned to deal with this by running for their fucking lives every time these douchebags arrived, then hiding in the forest and watching while those guys stole their food and torched their houses for the eight hundredth goddamned time.</p>\r\n<p>Monsopiad, a young man who was bigger, stronger, and more badass than any other motherfucker Borneo had ever seen, wasn\'t down with this.</p>\r\n<p>The boy warrior went out into the rainforest, worked his balls off in a badass fucking training montage, prayed to the gods, and eventually derived his Ultimate Powers of Asskicking from a Bugang Bird, a cool-looking creature sacred to the animistic religion of Monsopiad\'s tribe. &nbsp;&nbsp;When this dude finally came crawling out of the woods covered in blood and dirt, jacked up and pissed off and ready for action, everyone was like, \"Budaaaaaaaaang dude what the fuck?!\"&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Then Monsopiad procced to kill every single person who had ever wronged him or his tribe.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/285483221108/monsopiad4.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Carrying a 3-foot-long broadsword decorated with bones and human hair, and packing a 7-foot-long smoothbore blowpipe carved from a single chunk of wood, Monsopiad went on a vengeance ride to protect his village by killing basically every able-bodied man in a ten-mile radius.&nbsp; His blowpipe, carved by a master craftsman, fired poison darts treated with a toxic tree sap that had been wrapped in fireproof palm fronts and super-heated to the point where the toxin seeped out into the dart &ndash; a hit with one of these would cause an almost-instantaneous heart attack in the victim.&nbsp; If that didn\'t work, the massive blowpipe was chiseled at the tip like a bayonet and could be used as a spear at medium-range, and at close range his curved, machete-like Mandau sword was more than weapon enough to make any human being on earth piss themselves with tears of joy.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Monsopiad avenged his village, systematically hunted down every tribe that had ever pillaged them, and ensured the safety of his tribe by killing 42 enemy chiefs, cutting off their heads, and displaying them outside his house.&nbsp; He was also, by most accounts, and excellent dancer, hunter, and could drink enough rice wine and chili-powder-flavored pork barbecue to barf fire for a month.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/285483221108/monsopiad5.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>After avenging his village, Monsopiad came home to a huge party, and everyone made him head war-chief presidente por vida etc.&nbsp; Monsopiad, however, was so hardcore in the whole killing people and beheading them thing that he just couldn\'t stop himself, and instead of chilling on top of piles of cooked pork and hot chicks he instead got so pumped he decided he was going to KILL EVERYONE EVER.&nbsp; This lop-aholic just started wiping out rival tribes, killing his own people, and massacring basically everyone with a neck.&nbsp; His people eventually decided, fuck it, this guy is cool and all but we gotta do something about this shit, so they Julius Caesared his ass in the middle of the night.&nbsp; Monsopiad woke up in bed in the middle of the night to like twenty guys jumping on top of him with knives.&nbsp; He fought hard, managed to kill a couple of them, but was eventually overpowered and executed beyond recognition.&nbsp; Because he was such a total badass, nobody could decide who deserved the honor of taking his head, so he ended up being one of the only Borneo Headhunter warriors to be buried with his head intact.&nbsp; Then the villagers named the town after him, and his grave is now a cultural village dedicated to Borneo warriors.</p>\r\n<p>Borneo Headhunters continued being badass and chopping off skulls, all the way until the 20<sup>th</sup> century when most of them converted to Christianity and Islam, two religions that kind of frown on randomly decapitating people.&nbsp; This, of course, didn\'t stop them from capturing, killing, and beheading over 1,500 Japanese soldiers during the Japanese occupation of the island in World War II.&nbsp; It also didn\'t stop them from freaking out in 2001 over some immigration law and killing over 200 people with blowpipes and machetes.&nbsp; I think that regardless of our attitudes towards wanton murder, we can all agree this is hardcore.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/285483221108/monsopiad6.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Links:</p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext02/ptbor10.txt\">The Pagan Tribes of Borneo</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.journeymalaysia.com/MCUL_monsopiadculturalvillage.htm\">Journey Malaysia</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/featured/headhunting-tribes-borneo/20773\">In Search of the Headhunting Tribes of Borneo</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1323973/200-killed-by-blowpipe-tribesmen-in-Borneo.html\">200 Killed by Blowpipe Tribesmen in Borneo</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.sabahtourism.com/sabah-malaysian-borneo/en/destination/78-monsopiad-cultural-village/\">Monsopiad Cultural Village</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsopiad\">Wikipedia</a></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Sources:</p>\r\n<p>Coppel, Charles A.&nbsp; <em>Violent Conflicts in Indonesia</em>.&nbsp; Routledge, 2005.</p>\r\n<p>De Raedt, Jules, and Janet Hoskins.&nbsp; <em>Headhunting and the Social Imagination in Southeast Asia</em>.&nbsp; Stanford Univ. Press, 1996.</p>\r\n<p><em>Malaysia &ndash; Brunei &ndash; Singapore</em>.&nbsp; Hunter Publishing, 1997.</p>','2013-08-23','285483221108','monsopiad.jpg','monsopiad-small.jpg','Monsopiad','Legendary Borneo Headhunter who took over 42 heads in combat.',''),('Bhakti Thapa','c. 1741','April 16, 1815','Lamjung, Nepal','19th-century Gurkha Warrior','<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Bhakti Thapa was a 74 year-old tough-as-shit-looking Gurkha badass who charged screaming full-throttle into combat against rampaging Sikhs, fanatical Chinese Imperial troops, various other flavors of rival Gurkhas, and the unstoppable British war machine, all while brandishing an awesome-looking razor-sharp kukri knife in one hand and a sawn-off double-barreled flintlock musket packed with buck-and-ball shot in the other.&nbsp; Once both barrels of his <em>Doom II</em> super shotgun had successfully atomized the brain pans of anyone before him, he then pulled a heavy-as-fuck broadsword, dual-cleaved his way through hordes of enemy troops, and made such a name for himself as a skull-dismantling human mutilation machine that even though he never wrote a single word of poetry, invented any sort of device, or held any kind of elevated political position, he\'s listed in official Nepalese documents as a National Hero of Nepal and there\'s a Hindu shrine atop one of the Himalaya mountains dedicated to venerating him as a God of War.</p>\r\n<p>Oh, right, I also almost forgot to mention that this guy\'s hardcore badassery on the field of combat fearlessly rushing British cannons and bayonets with a pair of edged weapons at the ready is part of the reason the British decided, hey, maybe it might be a good idea if we recruited a couple regiments of these Gurkha guys to fight on behalf of the British Army because these dudes are fucking nuts.</p>\r\n<p>Which worked out pretty well for them.&nbsp; Because Gurkhas kick ass.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/754350210833/thapa1.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> This is a Gurkha.<br /> Bhakti Thapa is one of the ancient heroes these guys want to emulate.</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Born in 1741 to a poor shepherd family high atop the Himalaya Mountains, Bhakti Thapa, like most Gurkhas, was tough as shit.&nbsp; Utterly fearless, conditioned by long hours chasing yaks or sheep or whatever around mountainous valleys situated in an elevation that would make most people suffocate from lack of oxygen, Thapa was as tough a human being as our species is capable of forging.&nbsp; As soon as he was old enough, Thapa joined the army and went to war, because that\'s just what you do when you\'re a Real Man living in the 18<sup>th</sup> century and you\'re strong enough to bench press oxen and can scare poisonous snakes away with your moustache.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>At this time, Thapa\'s native Kingdom of Gorkha was in the process of a massive campaign of expansion, a period that began when they invaded their neighbors in the Kathmandu Valley, conquered them, and changed the Kingdom\'s name to the Empire of Great Nepal.&nbsp; The British East India Company attempted to intervene in this rapidly-expanding empire in 1767, but of the 2500 men they dispatched, pretty much every single one of them was lost to some combination of disease, desertion, or gruesome kukri wounds to the face. &nbsp;The Gurkhas took the British guns and equipment, turned them on their neighbors, and casually continued their conquest.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/754350210833/thapa2.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> Gurkha warriors, circa 1815.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Due to his own personal bravery and fearlessness, Bhakti Thapa rose to a position of command, and immediately put it to good use during the conquest of the Jumla Province, when he crossed two thousand men over the motherfucking Himalayas and attacked their base from the <em>impenetrable mountain side </em>of its defenses.&nbsp; If they\'d been ready for an army of mountaineering swordsmen to sneak-attack them in the taint, the Jumla army would easily have been able to turn the assault back, but, since attacking from the Himalaya Mountain side of the castle seemed utterly impossible and/or retarded, Thapa was able to waltz right in and press the barrel of his shotgun against the back of the enemy commander\'s skull and force him to surrender.</p>\r\n<p>Unexpectedly-rapid Nepalese conquest in pretty much every direction at the same time eventually put Nepal into conflict with the region\'s three other superpowers &ndash; the Sikhs in Punjab, the Chinese in Tibet, and the British in India.&nbsp; Thapa had already fought the British and engaged in a few skirmishes with the Sikhs, but in 1792, the Chinese Manchu Emperor launched an all-out assault through Tibet that is awesomely known as \"First Pacification of Gorkha\".&nbsp; Thapa fought in a few early battles against the rapidly-oncoming Chinese hordes as they attempted to capture Nepal and subjugate the Empire as a Chinese province, but Thapa\'s primary responsibilities lie elsewhere &ndash; he was to stay on the India side of Nepal and keep that border secure against the British, the Sikhs, and domestic unrest, and basically patrol all of Pakistan and Northern India despite virtually every single able-bodied soldier in his command having been reassigned to fight the Chinese.</p>\r\n<p>Naturally, every single province Thapa had just conquered in this area rose up in revolt at the same time.&nbsp; Thapa, tasked with defending several thousand miles of mountainous Himalaya terrain despite never having more than a few thousand men under his command at a time, quelled them all.&nbsp; With extreme violence. &nbsp;Like a badass.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/754350210833/thapa3.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> SUCK IT FOOLS</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Nepal eventually settled its differences with China and Punjab, but when they refused to allow the British East India Company to send trade caravans to China through Nepal, things got really bad.&nbsp; This shit blew up for real in 1814, when the EIC declared war on Nepal and sent like 20,000 guys to fuck Nepal up and carve a trade route with human blood and cannon fire if it took them two trips.&nbsp; Outnumbered, underequipped, and facing the most badass military force in the world, Bhakti Thapa and his Gurkha badasses didn\'t flinch &ndash; they grabbed their kukri daggers, packed some nails and ball bearings into their shotguns, and got ready to rock.</p>\r\n<p>At first, things went well.&nbsp; Thapa, using elephants to drag cannons and equipment from position to position, reinforced his mountain strongholds, and a combination of disease, altitude, and gunshot wounds held back the British onslaught.&nbsp; Of course, that didn\'t last for long, and the Brits, unable to show weakness to any native Indian culture for risk of losing their entire grip on the subcontinent, pressed the attack.&nbsp; Under the command of the able General Sir David Ochterlony, the British adopted a strategy not of \"hay doods charrrrrrrge yeee-haww\" but instead used their advantage in numbers to outmaneuver the enemy like Gary Kasparov out-chessing the holy living fuck-all out of your idiot asshole cousin who likes to talk shit about how he\'s \"awesome at chess\" every time you mention anything involving that involves requiring even the slightest bit of brain power.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/754350210833/thapa4.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>While this wasn\'t sexy, interesting, or fun to read about, the Brits eventually outmaneuvered the Gurkhas, cutting the Nepalese army in half by seizing an easily-defendable high-altitude mountain fortress at a place called Deothal and packing it full of redcoats.&nbsp; If the Gurkhas were going to have any hope of winning the war, they needed to capture this fortress by full frontal assault.</p>\r\n<p>It was, for all intents and purposes, a suicide mission, but it was one that the Gurkhas had to undertake if they wanted any hope of ending the war.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Bhakti Thapa took 2,000 of his men and prepared them for the fight of their lives.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/754350210833/thapa5.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>At 4AM on April 16, 1815, 74-year-old Nepalese battle-rager Bhakti Thapa and two thousand of the toughest Gurkha warriors on earth ran screaming out of their camp, brandishing their kukris in their left hands and flintlock shotguns in their right.&nbsp; Ahead of them, positioned atop a steep mountain, lay an almost-unbreakable fortress manned by 3,500 British and Indian soldiers supported by a battery of ultra-modern 6-pounder cannons.</p>\r\n<p>Braving a hail of grapeshot, musketballs, and other assorted horrible shit, the Gurkhas fearlessly rushed ahead, climbing like berserker Sherpas towards their objective, almost completely ignoring the carnage ripping apart their battle lines.&nbsp; Thapa, an old man at the head of his rampaging forces, screamed for his men to continue, rushing forward against impossible odds, somehow reaching the barrels of the British cannon and discharging his shotgun into the first artillery officer he could find.</p>\r\n<p>British artillery mowed them down \"like wheat\", but the Gurkhas still rushed on, reaching the guns, wounding or killing all but six of the gunners, and fighting like demons even as a second line of British infantry formed up in a battle line, unleashed a volley of gunfire, and rushed ahead with their bayonets.&nbsp; The Gurkhas, having fired their shotguns, battled back with swords and kukris, screaming their war-cries and slashing at the enemy in some of the most brutal hand-to-hand fighting the East India Company ever endured.</p>\r\n<p>After nearly an hour of intense fighting, the Gurkha leader Bhakti Thapa, already wounded several times, his clothes soaked in blood from both himself and his enemies, was shot point-blank in the chest with a Brown Bess, the musketball penetrating his heart and killing him on the spot.&nbsp; Their seemingly-invincible commander now dead, the Gurkhas lost their resolve, and began to fall back.&nbsp; The British line held.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/754350210833/thapa6.gif\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Bhakti Thapa\'s death is like the Gurkha version of Hector dying at the end of the <em>Iliad </em>&nbsp;(spoiler alert I guess?).&nbsp; The British commander, General Ochterlony, had the noble warrior\'s body wrapped in a shawl and returned to Nepalese lines, and both armies gathered to watch his funeral pyre as he was burned on the battlefield.&nbsp; With his death, the war was over.&nbsp; The British fortress held, the Gurkha lines were split, and the war was over in under a month. The British assumed control of 1/3 of the Nepalese Empire, but, after having witnessed the bravery of hardcore warriors like Bhakti Thapa, they also decided to recruit badass Gurkhas to fight alongside the British.&nbsp; They would prove themselves to be among the toughest and most loyal warriors the British Empire would ever recruit, fighting heroically in wars from India to Germany to the Falkland Islands.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Back home, Deothal Battle Day is a national holiday in Nepal , a day to celebrate the undaunted spirit of the Nepalese people, and Bhakti Thapa is one of a dozen people officially recognized by the government as a National Hero of Nepal.&nbsp; Seven of his broadswords and seven kukris hang in a shrine near his home, and twice a year a Hindu priest sacrifices a pig there to honor his memory.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/754350210833/thapa7.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Links:</p>\r\n<p>Cross, J.P.&nbsp; <em>Gurkha Tales</em>.&nbsp; Casemate, 2013.</p>\r\n<p>Farwell, Byron.&nbsp; <em>The Gurkhas</em>.&nbsp; W.W. Norton, 1984.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Gould, Tony.&nbsp; <em>Imperial Warriors</em>.&nbsp; Granta, 1999.</p>\r\n<p>Hamal, Lakshman B.&nbsp; <em>Military History of Nepal</em>.&nbsp; Sharda Pustak Mandir, 1995.</p>\r\n<p>Wilson, Horace-Hayman.&nbsp; <em>The History of British India from 1805 to 1835.</em>.&nbsp; Madden and Malcom, 1846.</p>','2013-08-30','754350210833','thapa.jpg','thapa-small.jpg','Bhakti Thapa','74 year-old Gurkha charges into battle with the Chinese, Sikhs, and British armed with a kukri knife and a double-barreled shotgun.','\"The Gorkhas displayed the most undaunted resolution, advancing to the very muzzles of the guns, and endeavouring to strike down their opponents over their bayonets.  Although repeatedly swept away by the discharge of grape from the two field-pieces which command the approach, they returned to attack with such obstinancy, and kept up so close a destructive fire upon them, that all by whom the guns were served were either killed or disabled…\"  -Horace-Hayman Wilson, The History of British India from 1805 to 1835'),('Beliye Kolgotky','unknown','unknown','unknown','20th-century Russian Snipers','<p><em>(Note: I just learned last night that I have to go to court today, so instead of finishing up the article I was working on here\'s my favorite chapter from my largely-unpurchased book BADASS: Birth of a Legend.)</em></p>\r\n<p>Anybody who\'s ever watched the crazy crap they put on the Winter Olympics networks at like two o\'clock in the morning knows that women\'s biathlon is one of the most ridiculously sweetest sports ever invented.&nbsp; For those unhappy few of you who have never had the glorious, life-altering opportunity to watch this badass-athalon in action, it\'s basically just a bunch of tall, super-athletic Nordic and Eastern European superwomen sprinting through the snow on cross-country skis with rifles slung on their backs, then dropping down to a prone position every once in a while, somehow instantaneously managing to completely control their heavy breathing and exhaustion-induced hand shaking, and blasting a series of perfectly-aimed rifle rounds through the bullseye of a target a couple hundred meters away.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The much-feared Beliye Kolgotky (White Tights) are what you would get if you took a small detachment of these semi-mechanical sniper babes, dropped them right in the middle of a raging goddamned warzone and told them to completely flip out and just go nuts on anything with a ballsack.&nbsp; The fearsome product of an utterly-unsubstantiated urban legend that has been circulating through the ranks of Russian enlisted men for nearly four decades, many front-line troops swear that the White Tights are a company of elite blonde-haired nationalist biathletes from the Balkans or the Ukraine who abandoned their sport (presumably for it being \"too pussy\") and took on new careers as manslaughtering anti-Russian mercenaries.&nbsp; Gunning down Russian soldiers and officers without mercy. Rumors of these death-slinging sharpshooters are known to every man serving on the battlefront of Russia\'s post-Soviet wars.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/93548749731/female_sniper.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The White Tights (also known as \"White Stockings\", or, alternatively, and I\'m not making this up, \"Bitch-Cuckoos\") are so named for their customary battlefield dress &ndash; a tight-fitting white camouflage jumpsuit designed to help them remain unseen amidst the snow-covered wilderness of the Caucasus Mountains.&nbsp; The story goes that these women were master athletes and marksmen who harbored intense nationalistic pride for their homelands (usually the Ukraine, Latvia, or Estonia), and decided to dedicate their lives to shoving their fists up the USSR\'s rectum at every opportunity.&nbsp; Trained by elite foreign sniper instructors, equipped with top-of-the-line overseas weaponry, and motivated by unbending hatred of the Cyrillic alphabet and a seething desire to kill everyone in the world, these women now go around offering their particular services to the enemies of Russia.&nbsp; War stories of these white-clad black widows smoking chumps from concealed sniping positions have persisted through every Russian conflict since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s &ndash;they\'ve even been cited as battling alongside the Georgians during the South Ossetia campaign as recently as 2008.</p>\r\n<p>While I should mention that I typically wouldn\'t refer to any group of soldiers fighting for what they believe in as \"villains\", every time you hear about these women, it\'s by someone who was on the receiving end of their handiwork, and in the legends, the White Tights aren\'t seen as noble freedom fighters or revolutionaries &ndash; they are vicious, cold-blooded ice queens.&nbsp; Sitting completely motionless in bombed-out husks of old buildings for days at a time, these calculated killers lie in wait for their unsuspecting prey, deal an insta-kill headshot with all the effort it takes most of us to brush our teeth, and vanish into thin air even before the dead man\'s comrades hear the gunshot.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/93548749731/tumblr_m6qcj3s8zm1r2r904o1_5001.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The Tights are primarily believed to target Russian officers, dealing them a silent death from a couple hundred yards away with one in the brain and throwing their troops into disarray.&nbsp; When a high-ranking military commander isn\'t available, these black widows particularly enjoy torturing and tormenting their victims like a cat playing with its prey before finishing it off.&nbsp; They much prefer putting the first round into their victim\'s kneecap, sending him crumpling to the earth.&nbsp; The next round goes into his right hand, preventing him from working his rifle, and then one more directly through the balls to dish out the maximum amount of pain possible.&nbsp; From there, she lets her prey sit there to die a slow painful death, bleeding out through three 7.62mm-sized holes in three very painful parts of his body.&nbsp; If any of the guy\'s friends come out to help, she drops them with one shot, sometimes trying to arrange it so that the corpses fall in a way where they spell out swear words.&nbsp; In addition to being motionless, deadly-accurate, and utterly undetectable without some kind of long-range thermal imaging, the Tights are also credited with packing top-of-the-line rifles with effective ranges that more than double the range of standard-issue Russian-built sniper systems, making them damn near unkillable once they\'ve got your range zeroed into their scopes.</p>\r\n<p>In another badass display of fear-inspiring awesomeness, the Tights are occasionally mentioned as being capable of tapping-into protected Russian radio frequencies, and using the channel to taunt their prey, telling the enemy soldiers exactly what they plan on doing to them. Metal Gear fans will immediately recognize it as the modus operandi of Sniper Wolf, the terrorist rebel warrior chick who captured Solid Snake, shot his girlfriend a bunch with a high-powered .50-caliber sniper rifle, and then died one of the more epic deaths in video game history.&nbsp; The common presumption is that the Slavic-accented, blonde-haired, white tights-clad sniper chick from the game was based off of this myth, but when you\'re talking about anything involving game designer Hideo Kojima, you can never really be sure what the hell is going on.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/93548749731/mgs-sw.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Of course, the idea of hardcore, mysterious sniper chicks isn\'t completely unprecedented.&nbsp; Aside from the fact that there were actually women snipers serving for the Soviet Union during World War II &ndash; women like Heroine of the Soviet Union Lyudmila Pavlichenko, who won the nation\'s top award for military bravery by notching 309 confirmed sniper kills during her career blasting Nazi skulls on the Eastern Front &ndash; these sorts of tales date all the way back to antiquity.&nbsp; The most famous was of course that of the Amazons.&nbsp; A fierce, mysterious society of asskicking warrior-women who allegedly lived in uncharted lands and only ventured back to civilization once a year so that they could hook up with guys (and hopefully produce female children as a result of their one-night stands), these militaristic slaughter-mongers excelled at archery, javelin-hucking, and cleaving people from head to groin with battle axes.&nbsp; The Amazons were similarly masters of ranged combat, and, perhaps even more interestingly, the Greek historian Herotodus places them as living \"North of Scythia\", which geographically places them roughly in present-day Ukraine &ndash; the same place the Russians suggest the White Tights originated.&nbsp; Also like the Tights, the Amazons were completely mysterious, only exist in hearsay accounts, and are widely believed to have been a figment of some guy\'s overactive imagination.</p>\r\n<p>In terms of cultural anthropology, it also shouldn\'t be overlooked that these unseen killer women have blonde-haired and blue-eyes.&nbsp; While this may seem like a pretty standard physical description for an Eastern European woman to you or I, it\'s also the stereotypical appearance of the some of Russia\'s oldest and bitterest enemies.&nbsp; Sure, some Russians share these physical attributes, but between two World Wars and the Cold War, these blonde/blue women directly prey on deep-seeded fears instilled through a century and a half of conflict and tension against countries such as Germany and the United States.&nbsp; Taking these ultra-Aryan super-women (&uuml;berwenchen?) and dropping them into a warzone alongside Russia\'s other greatest cultural enemy &ndash; radical extremist Muslim militants &ndash; is kind of like grabbing a bullhorn and telling a battalion of U.S. troops that they\'re going to war against Nazi-Commie Taliban Zombies who drive Japanese-made automobiles and hate barbecue cookouts.</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/93548749731/129485477_b01ba73218_z1.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Despite the fact that no reliable documented evidence has ever been uncovered confirming the existence of these super-shady death babes (the closest thing is one Kremlin spokesman being quoted as saying, \"They exist.&nbsp; Military intelligence says so, and they don\'t make mistakes.\"), and no Western journalist has ever seen them, this urban myth is so pervasive that most front-line Russian troops implicitly believe in the existence of these women without question.&nbsp; The thought alone of some murderous assassin woman lying in wait for them to make one false step so they could take a gunshot to the balls is enough to inspire belief.&nbsp; To this day, no one knows the truth behind the legends, a detail some folks chalk up to the belief that these women are never captured alive.&nbsp; The theory is that they realize that survival and capture is not an option for them (there have been unconfirmed, presumably-propaganda reports of captured women being drawn-and-quartered by APCs for their suspected involvement in the terror-inspiring elite sniper cadre), and in response they carry a sidearm to put one in the dome if they think there\'s a chance of being taken alive.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>In the end, there are really only two explanations &ndash; the White Tights are either really good, or they\'re non-existent.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/93548749731/b18_063003791.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p><em><br /></em></p>','2013-09-06','93548749731','whitetights.jpg','whitetights-small.jpg','The White Tights','A mysterious, possibly-mythical band of women snipers who have made life miserable for the Russians for decades.','\"\'I\'ll kill you slowly, because I love.  First I will shoot you in the leg… I promise I aim at the patella.  Then the hand.  Then the egg.  Don\'t worry, I am a world-class athlete.  I do not miss.\"\r\n\r\n- Alleged transcript of a White Tights sniper speaking to Russian conscripts over a secure military radio frequency\r\n'),('Mariya Oktyabrskaya','August 16, 1905','March 15, 1944','Crimea, Ukraine','20th-century Russian Soldier','<p>When Nazis invaded her homeland, bombed her city, blew up her house, kicked over her garbage cans, walked across her kitchen floor without taking their boots off, and violently killed her husband during the Battle of Kiev, the Ukrainian housewife/political activist/ultimate killing machine Mariya Oktyabrsakaya didn\'t just get so roid-ragingly pissed that should could have torn the turret off a Panzer IV with her teeth.</p>\r\n<p>She got revenge.&nbsp; Violent, armor-piercing, high-explosive, white-knuckled revenge served Siberian Ice Cold with a side of mashed potatoes and a pot of hot borscht to the face.</p>\r\n<p>This hardcore woman sold all of her worldly possessions, clenched her teeth, bought a 26-ton T-34 Main Battle Tank, taught herself how to drive it and repair it, and just start blasting the ever-loving unholy Nazi-loving dickballs off of every single gun-swinging Fascist bastard that came within range of the fearsome-looking 76mm cannon mounted on the turret of her vengeance-fueled war machine, and she didn\'t take her finger off the trigger or her hands off the throttle until someone pried them out of her cold dead hands.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/64071327108/oktyabrskaya1.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>One of ten kids born into a massive, dirt-poor Ukrainian peasant family back in the dying days of the Russian Empire, Mariya Oktyabrskaya was a hardcore Communist who took part in the Russian Revolution, married a Red Army officer in the new Soviet Union, and did her job for the proletariat working factory and phone operator jobs for whatever the hell passed as minimum wage in 1930s Russia.&nbsp; Things were going well, she was active in political Commie stuff, her husband was probably a pretty cool guy, and everything was pretty much excellently set up for it to be the idyllic beginning of some action movie right before the hero flips out like a ninja and starts machinegunning his way through hordes of faceless jobbers in generic-looking uniforms.</p>\r\n<p>The catalyst for this Ultimate Freak Out of Doom was the Nazi invasion of Soviet Russia in 1941, when roughly two-thirds of Hitler\'s army came waltzkreiging their way into the Motherland riding a tidal wave of sloped armor-plated blast-resistant steel and 88mm high-explosive anti-tank cannons.&nbsp; Things were blowing up like crazy all over the place, the Nazis cleaned house, and the Wehrmacht was rocking it so hard that pretty much every time an SS officer took a leak two thousand Russians exploded.</p>\r\n<p>That was bad enough.&nbsp; But it was when the Germans attacked Kiev, killed Mariya\'s husband, and flattened the city that she decided it was time to take matters into her own hands.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/64071327108/oktyabrskaya2.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> HEEERE\'S JOHNNY</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Mariya Oktyabrskaya, shaking with wifely Communist rage and an insatiable urge to kill every Fascist on Earth, went to Siberia, sold everything she owned, bought a brand-spanking-new olive drab T-34 Medium Battle Tank fresh off the assembly line directly from a manufacturing facility, taught herself how to operate it, painted the words \"Fighting Girlfriend\" in Cyrillic on the side of the turret, and rolled it right up to the first Red Army armored division she could find &ndash; the elite 26<sup>th</sup> Guard Tank Brigade.</p>\r\n<p>These dudes weren\'t quite sure what to make of Oktyabrskaya at first, but, you may know, it\'s hard to say no to a chick in a tank, so they were like, \"yeah dude sounds great little lady lol let\'s see what you got toots\".&nbsp; They enrolled her in a three-month training program, hooked her up with three crewmen to help her man the tank, enlisted her in the Red Army as a driver and a mechanic, and threw her straight into front-line combat, even though most of the dudes in the service were pretty much convinced she was going to make it about twenty feet before some Tiger tank blew her up so hard that her badass-looking driving goggles would land in another dimension.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Sergeant Oktyabrskaya rolled her T-34 to the front, revved the hardcore 500 horsepower 38.8 Liter V12 engine loud enough to drown out the sound of a jet engine, did a kickass Tank Burnout like an armor-plated machine-gun toting analogue of Vin Diesel\'s \'69 Charger in <em>The Fast and the Furious, </em>and peeled out straight into the middle of an oncoming wave of Nazi tanks.&nbsp; When the black smoke finally dissipated and the sky stopped being a raging tornado of scrap metal and dead Nazis, Fighting Girlfriend had wiped out a half-dozen self-propelled anti-tank guns, a couple machine gun nests, and had been the first tank to spearhead a full breakthrough of the German position.</p>\r\n<p>She was just getting started.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/64071327108/oktyabrskaya3.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Just in case anybody still questioned this rampaging war-chick\'s gigantic titanium-armor-plated fem-balls, Oktyabrskaya proved herself yet again in a battle that took place just a couple weeks after this, when, in the midst of a massive crossfire, she literally <em>jumped out of her tank to fix it in the middle of a battle</em>.&nbsp; A Panzershreckt bazooka team had blown one of the treads on her T-34 and Mariya, not content to wait around for Soviet Triple-A to come make a battlefield service call, popped the hatch, left the relative safety of her bulletproof tank driver\'s cockpit, ordered her turret gunner to lay down enough machine gun fire to dismember a forest, and repaired the tread while Nazis took potshots at her.&nbsp; With enemy bullets pinging off the hull of her tank, Mariya dug through her repair kit, fixed the tread, gave the Germans the finger, then hopped back into the tank and crushed a couple dozen guys underneath the newly-repaired treads of her ferocious all-consuming war machine.&nbsp; Oh yeah, and if you think jumping out of your tank to fix it is insane, it is.&nbsp; But this didn\'t stop Mariya Oktyabrskaya from doing it <em>twice more during her career</em>.</p>\r\n<p>Her comrades in the 26<sup>th</sup> Guards Tank Brigade naturally accepted her into their ranks as \"one of the guys\" almost immediately after seeing this ridiculousness go down, and within the next few months the Russian papers caught on to Mariya\'s story and got her involved with the Commie Propaganda Machine.&nbsp; Fighting on the front lines in battle after battle, Oktyabrskaya is also believed to have participated in the largest tank battle ever in human history, the Battle of Kursk, in 1943, rocking the control stick of the T-34 in a psychotic melee of German and Russian armor that had more in common with <em>Iron Tank </em>on the NES or a <em>MechWarrior</em> multiplayer server than a traditional tank battle.&nbsp; With tank-destroying bazooka rockets and armor-piercing artillery shells cratering the earth into a scorched pothole of misery, Oktyabrskaya swerved, darted, evaded, and positioned her tank so her gunners could do their part to level the German war machine and turn the tide of the war against Hitler once and for all.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/64071327108/oktyabrskaya4.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> The Battle of Kursk.</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Fighting Girlfriend fought her final battle in November, after having served in front-line combat for almost a full year.&nbsp; The Germans, having been smashed at Stalingrad, Moscow, and Kursk and now being pressed on the Normandy front as well, were falling back, desperately trying to hold on to their positions, and Oktyabrskaya and the Russian War Machine were steadily driving the Nazis back to Berlin.&nbsp; Oktyabrskaya was ordered to undertake a daring night attack on German positions, flipping on the searchlight of her T-34, driving through almost total darkness straight on into heavily-fortified enemy positions, trying desperately to focus her fire on enemy muzzle flashes and driving on instinct and reaction time alone.</p>\r\n<p>Spearheading the assault, Oktyabrskaya drove straight-on into the enemy, wiping out a StuG self-propelled anti-tank gun (basically a badass tank without a moveable turret) with a well-placed shot and rolling her machine over two packed-out trenches full of Nazi artillery and infantry, wasting everything on either side of her.&nbsp; The Germans focused their fire on the lead Soviet tank that was smashing through their lines, and one round from an anti-tank artillery gun nailed Fighting Girlfriend in the tread, breaking its track and starting a small fire.&nbsp; Mariya Oktyabrskaya, once again fearless in the face of enemy fire, leapt out, put out the flames, and went to work on the track.</p>\r\n<p>A German artillery shell exploded nearby, killing her with razor-sharp shrapnel to the head, her body falling onto the tank she was repairing.&nbsp; A second shell scored a direct hit on Fighting Girlfriend, lighting it up in an awesome-looking Blaze of Glory.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>For her service to the Motherland, Tank Driver Mariya Oktyabrskaya would be awarded the Gold Star of the Hero of the Soviet Union, the highest award for military bravery offered by the USSR.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/64071327108/oktyabrskaya5.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Sources:</p>\r\n<p>Forczyk, Robert.&nbsp; <em>Panther vs. T-34</em>.&nbsp; Osprey, 2007.</p>\r\n<p>Miles, Rosalind and Robin Cross.&nbsp; <em>Hell Hath No Fury</em>.&nbsp; Random House, 2008.</p>\r\n<p>Pipe, Jim.&nbsp; <em>Wild Warriors</em>.&nbsp; Evans Brothers, 2011.</p>\r\n<p>Sakaida, Henry.&nbsp; <em>Heroines of the Soviet Union</em>.&nbsp; Osprey, 2003.</p>\r\n<p>Streather, Adrian.&nbsp; <em>Soviet Military and Paramilitary Services</em>.&nbsp; Veloce, 2011.</p>','2013-09-13','64071327108','oktyabrskaya.jpg','oktyabrskaya-small.jpg','Mariya Oktyabrskaya','When Nazis killed her husband, she bought a tank.',''),('Tibor Rubin','June 18, 1929','N/A','Paszto, Hungary','20th-century American soldier','<p>Tibor Rubin was a Hungarian-born Jewish badass warmongering asskicker who survived a Chinese prison camp, a Nazi concentration camp, single-handedly defended a hill against the entire North Korean army TWICE, was nominated for the Medal of Honor four times, received it once, and lived to tell the tale.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>In the process he single-handedly saved the lives of 40 of his fellow comrades by breaking out of a hardcore Chinese POW camp, raiding their barracks and stores for food and medical equipment, breaking <em>back in to the prison camp</em>, and then administering it to wounded and starving American troops.&nbsp; Which would be impressive if he\'d only done it one time in his entire life.</p>\r\n<p>Instead he repeated that routine almost every single day for roughly a year and a half, full knowing that being caught just one time or making just one mistake would result in him being thrown into a dark hole and tortured to death in the most excruciatingly painful ways the Chinese Communist torture-farmers could imagine.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/30580827259/rubin1.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Born in Hungary in 1929, Tibor Rubin\'s father was a shoemaker who\'d also just so happened to be a war hero in World War I who had fought on the Eastern Front and survived six years in a Russian Gulag POW camp.&nbsp; Despite fighting in the Austro-Hungarian Army as an ally of the German Empire, Mr. Rubin\'s Jewishness apparently outweighed his patriotism, and when Adolf Hitler came rolling up in 1943 with his Final Solution the entire Rubin family was sent to Auschwitz.&nbsp; It\'s quite honestly beyond the scope of a website comprised primarily of history-based dick jokes to get into what went on there, but it was bad.&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;Tibor Rubin\'s father, sister, and mother did not make it out alive, and Tibor himself, only 13 when he was taken, was forced to endure 14 grueling months after being transferred to Mauthausen Concentration Camp in Austria.</p>\r\n<p>When the horrific death camp was liberated by American soldiers in 1945, 15 year-old Tibor Rubin swore from that moment on he would repay the United States for getting him out of there.</p>\r\n<p>It took Rubin 3 years to get to the states, and he immediately attempted to enlist in the United States Army.&nbsp; He was denied because he failed the English test.&nbsp; So he learned English, tried again in 1950, was accepted, went to boot camp, and was immediately shipped out to South Korea to fight and die for his new country.</p>\r\n<p>Rubin was happy to do it.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/30580827259/rubin2.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Serving with the 1<sup>st</sup> Cavalry Division, \"Ted\" Rubin was a front-line soldier in the early days of the Korean War, back when wave after wave after wave of fanatical North Korean communists, supported by the Chinese, came flying across the 38<sup>th</sup> parallel and started laying waste to American-supported Democratic South Korea.&nbsp; The Americans and Koreans, badly outnumbered and being basically gangbanged by Communists (that would be an excellent band name by the way), were forced to retreat to a tiny perimeter around the city of Pusan and wait for reinforcements.&nbsp; The 1<sup>st</sup> Cavalry was ordered to hold the roads as long as possible, defend at all costs against literally hundreds of thousands of North Korean troops, and keep the road open so supplies and troops and refugees could be evacuated back to Pusan.</p>\r\n<p>Corporal Ted Rubin was positioned atop a critical hill overlooking the main road to Pusan.&nbsp; When every other man in his unit was killed in hand-to-hand combat with a massive human wave attack of NK troops armed with everything from WWII Russian bolt-action rifles to sharpened sticks and heavy rocks, Ted Rubin went total blood-rage berserker, grabbed a .30-caliber machine gun out of the hands of a dead U.S. gunner, and single-handedly defended the hill for over 24 hours, inflicting, as the Medal of Honor citation puts it, \"massive casualties\" on the enemy.&nbsp; When reinforcements finally arrived to dope out the situation, they found Ted Rubin sitting on top of the mountain next to a smoking gun barrel, an empty ammunition can, and the largest pile of dead Koreans you\'ve ever seen.</p>\r\n<p>Two weeks later he led a one-man assault on the enemy and personally captured over a hundred North Korean troops by himself.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/30580827259/rubin3.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> North Korean human wave attack.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>During the period between 1950 and 1953, Ted Rubin fought on the front lines with a ridiculous amount of bravery, guts, and balls-out awesomeness.&nbsp; He was so damned impressive that his commanders nominated him for the Medal of Honor four separate times, the Silver Star twice, and a couple other medals a few more times, but never actually received any of them because his First Sergeant was a hardcore Mel Gibson-style anti-semite bastard who refused to write up any of the reports, once telling a fellow Sergeant that he\'d rather be court martialed than see a Jew receive the Medal of Honor.&nbsp; Instead, the First Sergeant would just sent Rubin out on a bunch of crazy suicide missions and ultra-dangerous patrols, hoping to get this American hero killed before he could get any more medals.</p>\r\n<p>Naturally, Rubin kept coming back alive.&nbsp; He was just weird like that I guess.</p>\r\n<p>After 3 years kicking ass up and down the Korean peninsula, Tibor Rubin found himself in yet another jacked-up situation in October of 1953, when his 150-man company was assaulted by an entire Brigade of Chinese infantry &ndash; almost 5,000 men.&nbsp; Rubin, flipping his business into full-on freak-out mode once again, grabbed a .30 cal machine gun out of a gun pit that had been wiped out with a grenade, repositioned the weapon, and started blasting everything he could see with a flying curtain of sheet metal.&nbsp; Wounded badly by shrapnel and shot a couple times, Rubin kept firing until he ran out of bullets, got blown up with a grenade, and had his unconscious body hauled back to North Korea as a Prisoner of War.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/30580827259/rubin4.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">The Korean War was hardcore shiz.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Thrown into a Chinese-run Prisoner of War camp in Pyoktong, Korea, Ted Rubin and 35-40 of his fellow GIs were essentially tossed in a hole and forgotten about.&nbsp; Deprived of food, medical care, and common human respect, these wounded, starving men were subjected to horrifying conditions trapped in small, squalid cells in below-freezing temperatures without access to basic aid or cold weather clothing.&nbsp; Every day men were starving, dying of their wounds, or freezing to death.</p>\r\n<p>Rubin remembered this sort of thing pretty well.&nbsp; And, more importantly he knew how to survive it.</p>\r\n<p>As a Hungarian national from a fellow Communist country, the Chinese camp commander offered Rubin a free ticket out of the camp and back to his home country.&nbsp; He refused.&nbsp; Instead, for the next year and a half, Ted Rubin &ndash; the badly-wounded Hungarian with more American patriotism than half the population of this country &ndash; repeatedly snuck out of his cell in the middle of the night, broke into supply depots around the camp, stole the food and supplies his buddies needed, brought it back, broke BACK IN to the prison cell, and administered aid to the sick and dying.&nbsp; When he wasn\'t doing that, he was utilizing morale-building tricks he\'d learned in Nazi death camps to keep the spirits of his men alive.&nbsp; We\'re going to get home, guys, don\'t worry about it.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/30580827259/rubin5.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br />Tibor Rubin sneaking a box of food back to the American prison cell.&nbsp; <br />(dramatization)</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>After nearly two years in a Chinese POW camp, surviving brutal, horrific conditions, Ted Rubin and 40 men from his company were released back to America.&nbsp; He returned home, went to work in his brother\'s liquor store, and went back to his daily life.</p>\r\n<p>Meanwhile, the men he\'d saved continually pushed for Rubin to get some kind of official recognition by the American government for all the badass/awesome work he\'d done saving and/or taking lives in Korea between 1950 and 1953.&nbsp; Their calls and letters went unheard until very recently, when the United States Army opened up an inquiry into racism involving medals, saw all the reports from the C.O.\'s about Rubin\'s bravery, read all the letters from the GI\'s in the camps, and did basically what you\'re doing right now, which is to be like, \"holy crap, how the hell have we never heard of this guy before.\"</p>\r\n<p>On September 23<sup>rd</sup>, 2005, almost exactly 8 years ago today, 76 year-old Tibor Rubin became the 18<sup>th</sup> Jewish recipient of the Medal of Honor.</p>\r\n<p>It was an award long overdue.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/30580827259/rubin6.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Links:</p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.army.mil/medalofhonor/rubin/profile/\">http://www.army.mil/medalofhonor/rubin/profile/</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/tibor_rubin.html\">http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/tibor_rubin.html</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.military.com/NewContent/0,13190,MoH_Tibor_Rubin,00.html\">http://www.military.com/NewContent/0,13190,MoH_Tibor_Rubin,00.html</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tibor_Rubin\">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tibor_Rubin</a></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Sources:</p>\r\n<p>Brody, Seymour.&nbsp; <em>Jewish Heroes and Heroines of America</em>.&nbsp; Frederick Fell, 2004.</p>\r\n<p><em>Medal of Honor</em>.&nbsp; Artisan, 2011.</p>\r\n<p>Willbanks, James H.&nbsp; <em>America\'s Heroes</em>.&nbsp; ABC-CLIO, 2011.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>','2013-09-20','30580827259','rubin.jpg','rubin-small.jpg','Tibor Rubin','Hungarian-born Concentration Camp survivor turned American war hero.',''),('Carl Phillip von Clausewitz','June 1, 1780','November 16, 1831','Burg, Prussia','19th-century German Soldier','<p>To most military historians and war-mongering armchair generals, Carl von Clausewitz is some stuffy know-it-all jerk that everybody feels like they need to read even though they never do because it\'s not particularly exciting.&nbsp; His book, <em>On War</em>, is the single most influential military theory text in human history, yet few people can recite any part of it other than the bit about war being \"politics by other means\".</p>\r\n<p>Well forget all that shit.&nbsp; This guy was the fucking definition of an asskicking German warrior. &nbsp;He was the goddamned Sir Isaac Newton of kicking ass, his book laid out principles that have defined Western military doctrine for the last century, and while engaging the enemy head-on he was wounded twice serving on the front lines as a General for two separate European armies, personally witnessed Napoleon\'s two greatest defeats, once snuck through enemy lines to convince an entire Corps of infantry to desert their commanding officer, ran the shit at the Berlin War Academy for over a decade, banged a Countess even though he was just a regular commoner, and is still a best-selling author 180 years after his death.</p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img src=\"/images/26192729632/clausewitz7.png\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>One of the most badass people ever named Carl was born near Magdeburg in 1780, the son of a retired army officer who had kicked ass across Europe with Frederick the Great but now just sat on his ass exaggerating old war stories, complaining about the arrow he took in the knee, and telling chicks he was Prussian nobility even though he totally was just some middle-class geezer.&nbsp; Clausewitz was like whatever and bailed from his home in 1792, enlisting in the Prussian Army at the ripe old age of 12, and was immediately thrown into hardcore backwoods tooth-and-nail guerilla fighting against guillotine-equipped French anarchists during the Wars of the French Revolution.&nbsp; <br /><br />Staring down the sights of his musket at a horde of his soon-to-be-despised foes from the front rank of a Prussian Infantry regiment, this MENSA-grade preteen somehow impressed his superiors enough to be promoted to Lance-Corporal at thirteen, commissioned an officer before his balls dropped, and promoted to Lieutenant at 15.&nbsp; Even though he still wasn\'t technically old enough to drive a car, drink beer, or get into R-rated movies without parental supervision, Lieutenant Clausewitz was stomping across Europe in hard-soled German shit-kicker boots shanking French regular infantry in the eye with a bayonet at the Siege of Mainz and across several engagements during the 1793 Rhine Campaign, all the while cultivating his intense love of war and his ridiculously-over-the-top hatred of all things West of Germany.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/26192729632/clausewitz1.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> \"The invention of gunpowder and the constant improvement of firearms are <br /> enough in themselves to show that the advance of civilization has done nothing <br /> practical to alter or deflect the impulse to destroy the enemy, <br /> which is central to the very idea of war.\"</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>After the war things got super boring as fuck for Clausewitz, so instead of sitting around the barracks all day scratching his nuts and complaining about the weather he enrolled in the Berlin War Academy and started studying every single thing he could possibly learn about viciously and brutally sawing the pants out of all who opposed him on the battlefield with a hail of gunfire and a point-blank cannon shot to the face.&nbsp; Graduating from his country\'s most prestigious military academy at the top of his class, Clausewitz was appointed to serve as a military aide to Prince Augustus, the current ruler of Prussia, assuming the position just in time for his country to face what would become their most hated and fearsome opponent yet &ndash; the new French Emperor, Napoleon Bonaparte.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/26192729632/clausewitz2.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> Sup.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Napoleon had already been royally fucking shit up in Europe for a while, but Prussia only truly started to get worried about the little Corsican dude and his unstoppable horde of patriotic rifle-toting Frenchmen after the Battle of Austerlitz in 1805, when L\'Emperoreurur marched West, engaged the combined might of both Austria and Russia at the same time, and smashed their asses so hard with his gigantic iron-plated cannon balls that it splintered the ice underneath them and dumped both armies to their deaths in a freezing-cold lake.&nbsp; Clausewitz was a chief-of-staff when Prussia mobilized for war, and, at the Battle of Jena-Auerstadt in 1806, Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of France, personally went up against Carl von Clausewitz &ndash; a man who, as I mentioned earlier, is nowadays widely believed to be the greatest theoretical military genius of the modern era.</p>\r\n<p>Napoleon beat the holy ever-loving catfuck bejeezus out of the Prussians in one of the most humiliatingly lop-sided defeats the German military would ever suffer.&nbsp; Clausewitz, personally engaged during a rearguard action, was wounded in combat while personally defending the Crown Prince of Prussia from onrushing French troops.&nbsp; He spent the next two years imprisoned in France and Switzerland, surrounded by French people and cuckoo clocks and other bullshit he couldn&rsquo;t stand.&nbsp; Prussia was conquered, the Prince was captured, the Prussian military was dismantled, and Carl von Clausewitz sat rotting in a prison cell stewing with rage and plotting his cold, calculating, deliberate revenge.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/26192729632/clausewitz3.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">\"There is only one decisive victory: the last.\"</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Clausewitz was released from prison in 1807 and sent back to Berlin, where he immediately threw himself into furthering his understanding of tactics, warfare, and battle.&nbsp; He got involved in intellectual circles that discussed everything from artillery tactics and the Frederick the Great\'s campaign history to Enlightenment literature and the complicated rationalist philosophies of Immanuel Kant.&nbsp; He spent time with the top Prussian generals, made friends with Gebhard von Blucher, became a professor at the Berlin War Academy, worked as the personal military tutor to the future Prussian King Wilhelm III, and married a hot well-educated Prussian Countess by blowing her corset off with his ridiculous ability to intelligently discuss Goethe, Voltaire, and Mozart while putting a bullet through the Ace of Spades at 100 paces and swordfighting a bear.</p>\r\n<p>So, as you can imagine Carl von Clausewitz was kind of righteously pissed off as hell out of his mind in 1812 when Napoleon forced Prussia to ally with him and invade Russia.&nbsp; Clausewitz was so enraged, it turned out, that he and 30 other Prussian generals not only refused to fight under Napoleon\'s command, but actually defected from Prussia, fled the country, rolled right up to the Russian Tsar\'s palace, and offered their swords to help him fight off Napoleon\'s invasion.&nbsp; Before he left town, the ever-honorable Clausewitz first informed his pupil, King Wilhelm III, of his intentions to abandon the cause and continue battling Napoleonic assholery across Europe.&nbsp; The 15 year-old king disowned Clausewitz, and told him never to return.&nbsp; Clausewitz handed him a book he\'d written on military tactics before he left.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/26192729632/clausewitz4.png\" alt=\"\" /><br /> \"Strength of character does not consist solely in having powerful feelings, <br /> but in maintaining one&rsquo;s balance in spite of them. Even with the violence of emotion,<br /> judgment and principle must still function like a ship&rsquo;s compass,<br /> which records the slightest variations however rough the sea.\"</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Serving in the Russian-German Legion, a unit of German ex-pats battling the invading armies of Napoleon, Carl von Clausewitz continued the struggle, this time using new tactics and strategies he\'d learned to help him battle his hated French enemies.&nbsp; He undertook guerilla raids aimed at slowing down Napoleon\'s forces, participated in the ultra-deadly and decisive Battle of Borodino that dealt the final, bloody blow to Napoleon\'s invasion hopes, and then, as Napoleon was retreating back to France, Clausewitz snuck into enemy territory, found the commander of the Prussian troops under Napoleon, and convinced him to abandon L\'Emperor and defect to the Russians.&nbsp; The guy did, and Napoleon got so pissed at losing an entire Corps of infantry overnight that he broke the alliance with Prussia and told them to go fuck themselves.</p>\r\n<p>King Wilhelm didn\'t let Clausewitz back into the Prussian military immediately, so Clausewitz formed his own independent command of Guys Who Hated the French and led a multinational force of Lithuanians, Poles, Brits, and Prussians during the War of Liberation in 1813, including one battle outside Lutzen when he was wounded while leading a cavalry charge on enemy positions.&nbsp; Once Napoleon was defeated and exiled Clausewitz was allowed back into the army, and when Napoleon tried once again to fuck with him Carl von Clausewitz played a crucial role in the Waterloo Campaign that destroyed the Emperor\'s power once and for all, fighting a rearguard action and holding the line against a French army that outnumbered him two-to-one.</p>\r\n<p>By 1818, 38 year-old Prussian soldier Carl von Clausewitz was a 26-year army veteran who had held the rank of General in both the Prussian and Russian armies, served in three campaigns against Napoleon, married a countess, and was working as the Director of the German War Academy in Berlin, the most highly-regarded military academy on the European continent.</p>\r\n<p>None of this, however, is what he is remembered for.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/26192729632/clausewitz5.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">\"All war presupposes human weakness and seeks to exploit it.\"</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>It was around this time that Carl von Clausewitz made his lasting mark on history.&nbsp; He took all the shit he learned from his own experiences serving as a high-level officer in two different European armies against the single most brilliant military field commander of the 19<sup>th</sup> century and wrote his magnum opus top shelf double-malt besonderes masterpiece: &nbsp;<em>On War, </em>also known by its significantly-more-awesome-sounding German title <em>Von Krieg</em>.<em>&nbsp; </em>A massive, marginally-boringly-written yet ultra-mind-detonating-genius tome of hardcore military tactics and high-level brain-liquifying political strategy which, if I had to boil it down to one sentence, basically equates to, \"Yeah, sure, war is all about kicking ass, but it\'s also a fuck of a lot more complicated than that.,\" which doesn\'t exactly have the same punch as \"War is Hell\" or \"Hell is other people\" or \"What the hell is that fucking Mecha War Yeti doing running around with tactical nuclear missile launchers mounted on its spiked shoulder armor,\" but his book on the ins and outs of limited war as a political tool was still badass enough and important enough that to this day it\'s studied in every single military academy in the western world.&nbsp; His shit formed the foundation for Helmut von Moltke\'s campaigns to kick ass in the Franco-Prussian war and make Germany a unified country, was studied by unabashedly-hardcore dudes like Patton and Eisenhower, and has generally, you know, just guided all U.S. and NATO operational activity principles for every engagement since Vietnam.&nbsp; Which ain\'t bad considering he was busting this beeswax out halfway across the world in 18-goddamned-31.&nbsp; It\'s basically the <em>Origin of the Species</em> of asskicking.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Clausewitz didn\'t live to see his book become the single most influential military theory book ever published, but that was actually ok with him because he didn\'t want to put it out there during his lifetime because he knew it would kick off an unholy shitstorm that could potentially have ruined his career and cost him his job.&nbsp; After he died of cholera during an operation in Poland in 1831, Carl\'s widow Marie unsealed the manuscript, wrote an introduction to it, and published it.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>It remains the most widely-read and famous book on military strategy since Sun Tzu\'s <em>Art of War</em> was first written around 500 BC.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/26192729632/clausewitz6.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">\"Given the same amount of intelligence, timidity will do a thousand times more damage than audacity... <br /> if the leader is filled with high ambition and if he pursues his aims with audacity and strength of will, <br /> he will reach them in spite of all obstacles.\"</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Links:</p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.clausewitz.com/readings/Bassford/Cworks/Works.htm\">http://www.clausewitz.com/readings/Bassford/Cworks/Works.htm</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199791279/obo-9780199791279-0026.xml\">http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199791279/obo-9780199791279-0026.xml</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_von_clausewitz\">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_von_clausewitz</a></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Sources:</p>\r\n<p>Clausewitz, Carl von.&nbsp; <em>On War</em>.&nbsp; Wilder, 2008.</p>\r\n<p>Clausewitz, Carl von.&nbsp; <em>The Campaign of 1812 in Russia</em>.&nbsp; J. Murray, 1843.</p>\r\n<p>Sandler, Stanley.&nbsp; <em>Ground Warfare</em>.&nbsp; ABC-CLIO, 2002.</p>\r\n<p>Weir, William.&nbsp; <em>50 Military Leaders Who Changed the World</em>.&nbsp; New Page, 2007.</p>','2013-09-27','26192729632','clausewitz.PNG','clausewitz-small.jpg','Carl von Clausewitz','The most influential military mind of the modern era.','\"Kind-hearted people might of course think there was some ingenious way to disarm or defeat the enemy without too much bloodshed, and might imagine this is the true goal of the art of war. Pleasant as it sounds, it is a fallacy that must be exposed: War is a dangerous business where mistakes that come from kindness are the very worst.\"'),('The Swiss Pikemen','c 14th century AD','c 1522 AD','Switzerland','Medieval Swiss Soldiers','<p>You ever look at a Swiss Army Knife and be like, \"lol Swiss Army har har har more like Swiss Miss Brand Hot Chocolate because lol what the hell have the Swiss ever done lol it\'s totally fitting the Swiss Army only uses can openers, corkscrews, and pocket knives am I right here folks duh hurrrrrrr?\" &nbsp;Honestly, pretty much everyone not currently residing within the Swiss Alps has felt this way at some point in their lives, and with a fairly good reason &ndash; the Swiss are monuments to International Neutrality; an apathetic bastion of cuckoo-clock-making \"meh\" in a world where everyone and their grandmas are out there trying to lop each other\'s heads off and use their decapitated corpses as decorative coffee tables commemorating the time they once chopped a dude\'s head off for no reason at all.&nbsp; Despite being basically half-German, half-French, and half-whatever-the-hell Romansh is, these ambivalent diplomacy -mongers spent their entire existence dead in the center of a war-torn European hellhole of artillery-laden destruction yet somehow systematically managed to avoid every major armed conflict of the last two hundred or so years.&nbsp; It\'s like, pick a side dudes and stand for something, right?</p>\r\n<p>Wrong.&nbsp; The reason the Swiss have had the luxury of being neutral through two World Wars and a Franco-Prussian conflict is because these guys are so over-the-top hardcore badass as hell that nobody would dare screw with them.&nbsp; They\'re a tough-as-shit, patriotic population with one simple rule of war &ndash; if you come into Swiss territory, we will show you No Quarter, take no prisoners, and kill every last motherhumping invader who would dare set foot on our soil.&nbsp; Every single man in Switzerland has been given hardcore professional militia training, been handed a government-issued SiG-550 assault rifle, taught how to use it in live-fire exercises, and keeps it in his home just in case anyone ever decides to step to his country\'s Badass Neutrality clause.&nbsp; The idea is simple &ndash; don\'t step to us, and we won\'t bash your head in with a magazine full of 5.56mm NATO ammunition.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/31684493594/swisspikemen11.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">The Swiss Army in 2013.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The idea of No Quarter for Invaders is a time-honored tradition of military badassitude that dates back to the middle ages, when the Swiss Pikemen were the single most badass infantry formation the world had ever seen.&nbsp; An awesome hedge of fast-moving, always-attacking twenty-foot spears that skewered the balls of any army the Kings of Europe could throw at them, the Swiss Phalanx won independence for its country against three separate armies, won several battles against impossible odds, and then became so highly-recruited as mercenaries that monarchs from Spain to Austria would get into bidding wars over who got the opportunity to hire them.</p>\r\n<p>The story starts in the 1300s, when Switzerland was part of the Holy Roman Empire.&nbsp; The short version of the story is that the Swiss Cantons (basically city-states) decided hey, fuck feudalism, having an Emperor sucks, we just wanna do our own thing and be left alone.&nbsp; They declared the Swiss Confederation, a loosely-associated group of states where every man was free to chill out and just do whatever he wanted.&nbsp; There was no overarching president, every man was a citizen-soldier who was trained in militia tactics, and even though they were still technically part of the Holy Roman Empire, Switzerland was pretty much its own thing.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>As you might imagine, this didn\'t work for the Holy Roman Emperor.&nbsp; That guy, a dude named Leopold, decreed that these \"rude cow-milker\" hill-people peasant hick motherfuckers needed to be skewered by cavalry lances until they\'d learned a lesson in Medieval hierarchy, and sent a ton of assholes to beat the shit out of them for real.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/31684493594/swisspikemen21.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">Hello, we are here to kill you.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Leopold had greatly underestimated his opponents.&nbsp; The Swiss were poor peasant farmers, sure, but while they couldn\'t afford heavily-armored footmen, high-tech crossbows, or massive numbers of heavy knight cavalry, they made do with what they had.&nbsp; And what they had were badass, Alexander the Great-style Macedonian phalanx fucking 20-foot-long pikes that outreached any kind of sword or axe or cavalry lance you could throw at it.&nbsp; Organized into well-disciplined, hard-fighting squares where every man in the unit was fighting alongside his best friends and neighbors, the Swiss wore no armor, leveled their pikes, and used what they lacked in defense to make up for in mobility.&nbsp; According to medieval sources, these guys were so badass that they could move at a dead-run while maintaining perfect shoulder-to-shoulder formation, attack in any direction, defend against attack from any side, and sprint through forests, over trenches, and up hills in order to plow into their enemies with a five-pike-deep wall of pointy deathiness.</p>\r\n<p>The men of Switzerland had been trained in this from the time they were six years old.&nbsp; They could do it in their sleep.&nbsp; And, as Europe would soon learn, they would be the greatest infantry fighting force of the Middle Ages &ndash; a hardcore, face-stabbing assortment of badasses who were only finally slowed down by the <em>invention of gunpowder</em>.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/31684493594/swisspikemen31.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">I don\'t care how cool your armor looks,<br />you do not want to charge this on a horse.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>In November of 1315, the Holy Roman Empire marched 5,000 armored knights into Switzerland looking to put an end to this whole Swiss Confederacy bullshit.&nbsp; A mere 2,000 Swiss rolled boulders down a hill, charged down in full phalanx formation right into a formation of heavily-armed enemies that outnumbered them two-to-one, hacked the Austrians to pieces, and drowned any prisoners by throwing them through a hole into a frozen, ice-covered lake.&nbsp; A couple years later, some jerks from the Kingdom of Burgundy (part of present-day France) tried to assert their dominance over Switzerland, marched 20,000 peasant conscript assholes across the Alps, then watched in horror as just 1,500 Swiss arranged in two gigantic bricks of pikemen plowed into their formation, broke their lines in half, surrounded them somehow, drove them from the field, and drowned 80 Austrian and Burgundian barons in a river.&nbsp; In 1386 they did it again, beating 6,000 Austrian dismounted knights with 1,200 unarmored pikemen, beating the Holy Roman Empire so severely that the Hapsburg Dynasty made a 50-year peace treaty with Switzerland because he didn\'t want to deal with it anymore.</p>\r\n<p>The best example of Swiss pike badassitude is the Battle of St. Jakob an der Birs, which took place on August 24, 1444.&nbsp; Basically, after that 50-year peace treaty expired, the Emperor once again tried to assert his power over the Confederacy.&nbsp; He allied with King Louis XI of France, who sent 30,000 men into Switzerland to pound the Swiss into submission.&nbsp; Louis came across a small group of Swiss outside a little monastery &ndash; somewhere between 1,200 and 1,600 pikemen.&nbsp; But these guys came here to fight, and they meant business.</p>\r\n<p>Louis XI had the best armor in the world.&nbsp; The most experienced knights.&nbsp; The toughest warriors.&nbsp; And he outnumbered the Swiss fifteen-to-one.</p>\r\n<p>The 1,500 Swiss took a look at Louis\'s 30,000-man army, formed up into one square of pike, and charged.</p>\r\n<p>They charged.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/31684493594/swisspikemen81.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">A Swiss \"push of pike\", also known to<br />Medieval sources as a \"face-shanking clusterfuck \".</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The tiny square of Swiss plowed straight into the main French body of troops, and, despite all measure of bravery and sanity, broke the center of the French formation.&nbsp; Louis, freaking out, ordered his men to completely surround the Swiss and kill the shit out of them from every side.&nbsp; The Swiss formed a defensive posture known as the \"hedgehog\", where they formed a square and put spears out in all four directions.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The battle lasted ten hours.&nbsp; At one point, an Austrian noble called for a cease-fire to talk peace.&nbsp; The 700 surviving Swiss pikemen beat him to death with rocks, so Louis ordered his crossbows to hang back and hammer the Swiss until everyone was dead.</p>\r\n<p>Only ten Swiss soldiers walked away from the battle.&nbsp; But the French had lost 3,000 men.&nbsp; Even though he\'d won the battle, Louis XI immediately called off his attack, returned to France, made an Alliance with Switzerland, and started trying to hire their pikemen as mercenaries for the French Army.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/31684493594/swisspikemen91.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>In 1474, the Emperor of Austria got sick of the Swiss, said \"fuck it\", and sold Switzerland to Duke Charles the Bold of Burgundy.&nbsp; Charles the Bold, who you may remember from the <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/index.cgi?id=900088624033\">Jeanne Hachette</a> story, was a world-famous bastard, and he immediately ran into Switzerland, captured the first town he could find, and killed the entire garrison &ndash; half of them by hanging, and the other half by drowning.&nbsp; Then he sent out a declaration that he had a couple dozen of these newfangled black powder Cannons, and he was going to utilize them to bone Switzerland until everyone was dead.</p>\r\n<p>By the time he left the town, the Swiss had 20,000 pikemen waiting for him.</p>\r\n<p>They kicked his ass and took his cannons away.&nbsp; He retreated.&nbsp; Then they defeated him again.&nbsp; Charles withdrew and built fortifications, so they Pikemen charged out of the forest, humped him into submission, drowned his entire army in a lake, and killed 8,000 Burgundians while losing just 410 men.&nbsp; Charles the Bold ran for it, but he didn\'t get far &ndash; the Swiss caught him, killed him with a halberd to the face at the Battle of Nancy in 1477, and left his body to be eaten by dogs.&nbsp; Because fuck that guy.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/31684493594/swisspikemen51.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>From this point on, not only did nobody fuck with Switzerland, but basically every ruler from Austria to France spent the next hundred years or so hiring Swiss Pikemen to fight for them as badass neck-obliterating mercenaries.&nbsp; The Swiss were happy to comply.&nbsp; Decked out in garishly-big-pimpin\' uniforms, Swiss merc bands hired themselves out to anyone who would pay them, kicking ass from Spain to Italy and carting off all the plunder they could carry.&nbsp; In 1494 they helped the French conquer Naples.&nbsp; In 1525, they conquered Milan, then fought against the French.&nbsp; The back-and-forth was so intense that Kings were hiring them not just because they wanted the best infantry in Europe, but also because they didn\'t want to have to face these guys in combat, and various Kings routinely found themselves in bidding wars to see who could secure the services of Swiss pikemen.&nbsp; To this day, there\'s a saying in France that dates back to this time period &ndash; \"No money, no Swiss.\"</p>\r\n<p>Oh yeah, and the Swiss took their jobs really damn seriously.&nbsp; Remember that \"no quarter for the invaders\" thing?&nbsp; It applied to their mercenary work as well &ndash; any foreign mercenaries caught by the Swiss in combat would receive no mercy and be massacred on the spot.&nbsp; It was the Swiss way of making sure there wasn\'t any competition for their merc jobs.</p>\r\n<p>The Swiss would battle through the Middle Ages, staying strong until the eventual ascendancy of cannons and muskets phased the pike out as a viable infantry weapon.&nbsp; But even in the twilight years of their power they stayed badass &ndash; when guns were still being fine-tuned, the Swiss would lay down on the ground in formation, wait for the bullets to sail over their heads, then get up and run straight at the enemy until they were all dead from being impaled, and even in 1522, in a battle where 3,000 Swiss were mowed down charging Spanish musketeers, the infantrymen told their officers the only way they\'d charge a second time was if the officers led from the front.&nbsp; The officers agreed.&nbsp; The battle was a crushing defeat, but you can never debate these guys\' bravery.</p>\r\n<p>To this day, the Swiss still serve as the personal bodyguard of the Pope.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/31684493594/swisspikemen71.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Sources:</p>\r\n<p>Dandliker, Karl<em>.&nbsp; A Short History of Switzerland</em>.&nbsp; S. Sonneschein, 1899.</p>\r\n<p>Dupuy, Trever Nevitt.&nbsp; <em>The Evolution of Warfare and Weapons</em>.&nbsp; Da Capo, 1990.</p>\r\n<p>Jones, Archer.&nbsp; <em>The Art of War in the Western World</em>.&nbsp; University of Illinois Press, 2001.</p>\r\n<p>Oechsli, William.&nbsp; <em>History of Switzerland&nbsp; 1499-1914</em>.&nbsp; Cambridge Univ. Press, 1922.</p>\r\n<p>Poulos, Terrence.&nbsp; <em>Extreme War</em>.&nbsp; Citadel, 2007.</p>\r\n<p>Sandler, Stanley.&nbsp; <em>Ground Warfare</em>.&nbsp; ABC-CLIO, 2002.</p>','2013-10-04','31684493594','swisspikemen.jpg','swisspikemen-small.jpg','The Swiss Pikemen','The most dangerous infantry unit of the Middle Ages.','\"The Swiss are well-armed and very free.\"  - Niccolo Machiavelli '),('Smilodon Fatalis','c. 1.6 million BC','c. 10,000 BC','Various','Prehistoric Killing Machine','<p>If there\'s one thing the Internet has ever successfully managed to accomplish, it\'s that it has completely distracted the human population of earth from the raw murderous killing power of our planet\'s most ruthless and cold-blooded killers &ndash; cats.&nbsp; Considering that these heartless feline murder-factories are some of the only creatures in the world that literally <em>kill for fun, </em>snuffing out the life of everything from rabbits to birds not for food or sustenance but simply<em> </em>because they get high and rock boners off the pure unadulterated feeling of sinking their fangs into the neck of an unsuspecting rodent, it\'s seems like every goddamned time I power up my monitor I\'m being visually assaulted by some obnoxiously-adorable little kitty slap-fighting a vacuum cleaner while wearing a set of Mickey Mouse ears.</p>\r\n<p>Do not be deceived by the pro-feline media.&nbsp;&nbsp; Cats aren\'t cute &ndash; they are HORRIFIC FUCKING KILLING MACHINES.&nbsp; These ferocious, ultra-wild, neck-chomping mass-killing deathbringers that have survived on this Earth for millions of years thanks solely to their ability to rip open torsos, rend flesh, and de-meat their prey with a relentless assault of teeth, claws, bulging muscles and stealth-like fury, then slink back into the shadows with the sort of silent deadliness that would give even the most hardcore Master Ninja Vampire a crippling case of performance anxiety and a Zoloft prescription.</p>\r\n<p>And no cat on this earth has ever been more terrifyingly hardcore than the Saber-Toothed Tiger.&nbsp; A prehistoric lion-sized monster cat with serrated teeth the size of Gurkha knives who roamed around Ice Age America killing Elephant-sized Mammoths, gigantic Cave Bears, and badass cavemen by ripping open their torsos with a single bite from their double-bladed otherworldly fangs, laughing its ass off while it\'s brutalized victim slowly bled to death from the single most painful wound a living organism can receive, and then calmly devouring their still-warm corpses, confident that no scavenger bullshit assholes would dare fuck with their kill.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/11577785209/sabertooth1.png\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Apparently, according to most of the research I\'ve performed, it is utterly fucking mandatory to begin any article on the <em>Smilodon Fatalis</em> (Latin for \"Deadly Blade-Tooth\", perhaps one of the most badass Genus-Species combinations this size of <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/trex.html\">T. Rex</a>) by mentioning that Sabertooth Tigers aren\'t really related to Tigers but are more like Lions or Panthers or some other fucking random big cat that looks pretty much exactly like a Tiger anyways.&nbsp; I guess the politically-correct thing these days is to call them Gender-Neutral Non-Denominational Saber-Tooth Cat-Like Mammal-Americans or some bullshit, but I\'ll just call them Sabertooth Motherfuckers and be done with it because I don\'t have time for this nonsense.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>True Sabertooths come in a bunch of different flavors and a half-dozen or so species that lived everywhere from Illinois to Argentina (and that doesn\'t even include <a href=\"http://www.abc.net.au/science/ausbeasts/factfiles/pleistocenemarsupiallion.htm\">Australian Marsupial Lions</a>, which are like mini-sabertooth kangaroo wombats), but generally speaking these gigantic man-eating catbeasts were roughly the size of a modern-day Lion except that they were more compact and about twice as heavy, weighing in at around 600 pounds of pure solid Mammoth-humping muscle.&nbsp; And oh yeah, IN CASE YOU FORGOT they had horrifying 7-inch fucking dagger teeth the size of butcher knives that were GODDAMNED SERRATED like a saw blade on the back side so they could more effectively rip you a few new ones and maximize the bleeding in whatever poor bastard managed to get his guts violated into sludge by the ever-chomping, ridiculously-oversized fangs of these terrifying Prehistoric Dracula-Cats.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/11577785209/sabertooth2.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>As is their way, Paleontologists love to bicker incessantly amongst themselves over the stupidest minute details about what the hell these long-extinct beasts used to do in their free time, but for the most part we\'re sure they were masters of stealth and camouflage, built for strength rather than speed.&nbsp; Smart, calculating, and agile (not to mention strong as shit), these cats were ambush hunters, meaning they hid in the grass, snuck close to their prey, then lunched out at them at close range, trading the speed and endurance of modern Cheetahs and shit for the sort of hardcore ultra-jacked muscle tone an 8-foot-long gigantic cat would need to have in order to QB sack a fucking horse and bite out its jugular.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>A couple books suggested that these fuckers even actually climbed goddamned trees in the forest and DIVE BOMBED YOUR ASS LIKE BATMAN, and if you can think of anything more pants-crappingly terrifying than an 8-foot-long, 600-pound, \'roided-out Lion with 7-inch serrated teeth Death From Above-ing your face from 10 feet up I\'ll happily submit a 1,000-word essay on why you have no fucking clue what you\'re talking about.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/11577785209/sabertooth3.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Here\'s a fun fact:&nbsp; modern lions kill their prey by suffocation.&nbsp; They tackle their dinner, wrestle it to the ground, throw their entire weight on the flailing beast, then use their teeth to crush its windpipe and choke the fucking fuckall out of it until it stops moving.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Well your average Antelope these days gets off easy compared to how the Sabertooth dealt with its potential food.&nbsp; His teeth weren\'t for crushing &ndash; they were for biting, ripping, and doing other nasty vicious things that were far more slasher-grade bloody.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Not only that, but the jaw bones and joints of a Sabertooth are twice the width of a lions, meaning that its bite was probably about twice as hard as that of a Lion.&nbsp; And a Lion\'s bite is 25 pounds-per-square-inch harder than that of a FUCKING GREAT WHITE SHARK.&nbsp; A Sabertooth could also open its mouth twice as wide as any other cat &ndash; 120 degrees &ndash; giving him plenty of opportunity to sink his monster fangs into something delicious.&nbsp; Like your face.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/11577785209/sabertooth4.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">LOL U GOT SUMTHIN IN UR EYE ROFL</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The theory is that a Sabertooth would lie in wait, then, right when some dumb meat-filled asshole would walk by he\'d charge out at high speed, hurling his massive weight into his prey like a Semi Truck plowing into a crowded bus stop, then latch on with his Schwarzenegger-like forearms and murph the bastard into submission.&nbsp; Holding his target\'s head still while he unhinged his creepy snake jaw, the Sabertooth would plunge his seven-inch implements of penetrating death into the neck of his foe, then jerk his head violently, gutting the soon-to-be-dead bastard from ear-to-ear, ripping out his jugular, carotid, and windpipe and causing massive bloody trauma all over the place.&nbsp; With his prey in its death throes all our cat friend needed to do was chill and hold it steady until it bled out. &nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>For bigger prey like Mammoths, the Sabertooth would skip the neck and go for the soft underbelly, running under the giant rampaging trample-happy beast like Luke Skywalker attacking an AT-AT with a lightsaber and use its fangs to carve that oversize plant-eating dumbass from sternum to groin until its guts came out.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/11577785209/sabertooth5.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Sometimes hunting alone, sometimes hunting in packs, Sabertooths attacked horses, camels (which apparently lived in North America before the last Ice Age), smaller Mammoths, Toxodons (retarded-looking horsebeasts), and some kind of fucked up giant sloth monster called a Ground Sloth.</p>\r\n<p>Oh yeah, the Ground Sloth, the chief prey of a Sabertooth, looked like this and had four fists full of 10-inch claws:</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/11577785209/sabertooth6.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>In some rare cases, there is also evidence of Sabertooths doing battle with large Mammoths, Cave Bears (a prehistoric 1,000-pound brown bear that made Grizzlies look like Teddy Ruxpin), and other predators, including one time these paleontologists found a 5-foot-long, 200-pound Dire Wolf with a broken-off piece of Sabertooth Tiger fang snapped off in its skull and were all like \"daaaaaayam\".</p>\r\n<p>Skull-biting a Dire Wolf not enough for you? &nbsp;Assuming that paleontologists are correct about the Sabertooth going extinct around 10,000 BC it\'s probable that they preyed on humans as well.&nbsp; As evidence, here\'s a pic from the epic post-impressionist Roland Emmeric documentary <em>10,000 BC</em> depicting what such an event might look like:</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/11577785209/sabertooth7.gif\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>And before you say that\'s a bunch of bullshit, no tiger is that big, here\'s a real-life comparison between some people and a Liger:</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img src=\"../images/11577785209/sabertooth8.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img src=\"../images/11577785209/sabertooth9.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Scary shit.</p>\r\n<p>Sabertooths lived in Los Angeles, and a lot of them were dug up in the excavations of the La Brea Tar Pits, but bones have been found everywhere from Illinois to Argentina and Brazil.&nbsp; The fact that many of these fossils indicate that some Sabertooths survived crippling injuries for an extended time leads us to believe that these dudes worked in packs and took care of their sick and wounded, but Sabertooth bite marks found in the bones of other specimens means that these guys like to kick each other\'s asses for fun sometimes as well.</p>\r\n<p>Despite being the Kings of the Pangean Forests, Sabertooth Cats ultimately died out some time around 10,000 BC after they ate all the other megafauna and died out due to lack of food and excess of tar pits.&nbsp; Which is sad for anyone who wanted to have their brain bitten in half by a 7-inch butcher knife of a tooth while walking around Hollywood Hills.</p>\r\n<p>OK FINE ANYWAYS, yes, I am fully aware of the fact that the entire point of the Internet is to have a place for assholes to post cat pictures so CHECK THIS SHIT OUT:</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/11577785209/sabertooth10.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/11577785209/sabertooth11.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/11577785209/sabertooth12.gif\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/11577785209/sabertooth14.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/11577785209/sabertooth17.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/11577785209/sabertooth18.gif\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/11577785209/sabertooth19.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/11577785209/sabertooth20.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Links:</p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://a-z-animals.com/animals/sabre-toothed-tiger/\">http://a-z-animals.com/animals/sabre-toothed-tiger/</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/mammals/smilodon/\">http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/mammals/smilodon/</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/mammal/carnivora/sabretooth.html\">http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/mammal/carnivora/sabretooth.html</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saber-toothed_cat\">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saber-toothed_cat</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://icanhas.cheezburger.com/\">http://icanhas.cheezburger.com/</a></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Sources:</p>\r\n<p>Andersson K, Norman D, Werdelin L (2011) Sabretoothed Carnivores and the Killing of Large Prey. PLoS ONE 6(10): e24971.</p>\r\n<p>Anton, Mauricio.&nbsp; <em>Sabertooth</em>.&nbsp; Indiana Univ. Press, 2013.</p>\r\n<p>Kelly, Miles.&nbsp; <em>1000 Facts About Prehistoric Life</em>.&nbsp; Miles Kelly, 2010.</p>','2013-10-11','11577785209','sabertooth.jpg','sabertooth-small.jpg','The Sabertooth Tiger','Giant prehistoric lion with butcher knives for teeth.',''),('Andrei Sakharov','May 21, 1921','December 14, 1989','Moscow, Russia','20th-century Russian Scientist','<p>It took badass Soviet theoretical physicist Andrei Sakharov four months to create the most obscenely-huge thermonuclear device ever constructed in human history &ndash; a terrifying implement of mass destruction that makes other mushroom-cloud-generating fission-powered monstrosities look like a couple of those stupid baking soda and vinegar volcanoes being thrown into the eternal fires of Mount Doom.&nbsp; A horrific implement of white-hot vaporizing obliteration that qualifies not as a weapon but as a Human Extinction Event.</p>\r\n<p>He created the Tsar Bomba &ndash; the Emperor of Bombs.&nbsp; A weapon with the explosive power equal to taking <em>every single conventional bomb dropped in World War Two combined, </em>and then <strong>multiplying that explosion by TEN</strong>.</p>\r\n<p>While you&rsquo;re reeling from that, try to wrap your head around this too:&nbsp; He also received the 1975 Nobel Peace Prize, and, to tie this all in to current events, the first recipient of the European Parliament&rsquo;s annual Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought was recently-passed humanitarian / world-leader Nelson Mandela.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/20094501128/sakharov11.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Born in Moscow, as a teenager Andrei Sakharov had to change schools to study theoretical physics in Turkmenistan because it was a little disruptive to his studies when the Nazis started sending Stuka dive-bombers to strafe Moscow State University in their endless quest to kill every human being in Russia during World War II.&nbsp; After graduating with his Ph.D., Sakharov was relocated to a secret Soviet city of engineers and scientists known as Atomgrad and offered a job creating a nuclear weapons program for Stalin&rsquo;s Soviet Union.&nbsp; He quickly proved to be the closest thing the Soviets had to Albert Einstein.</p>\r\n<p>Russia got nukes in 1958, and by 1961 the full-on Cold War nuclear arms race between Russia and America was like the Peyton Manning vs. Tom Brady of Destroying All Sentient Life in the Universe.&nbsp; New Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, already pissed off about JFK&rsquo;s Bay of Pigs bullshit and currently developing his plan to build a Huge Fucking Wall right through the middle of Berlin, wanted to show the U.S. what Soviet Russia could do.&nbsp; He ordered Sakharov to head up the Third Idea program, commanding the physicist to create the biggest bomb ever made in recorded human history.&nbsp; A 100 Megaton three-stage fusion/fission thermonuclear device <strong>three</strong> <strong>thousand</strong> <strong>times</strong> more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb, and a device that would be capable of craterizing Paris and all of its suburbs in a single airburst detonation.&nbsp; It had to be small enough to fit into an airplane, yet still powerful enough to send a mushroom cloud into Lower Earth Orbit.&nbsp; And it had to be ready in 16 weeks.</p>\r\n<p>Sure thing, boss, coming right up.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/20094501128/sakharov2.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br />Always strapped, when I hit the club.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Nicknamed &ldquo;Kuzka&rsquo;s Mother&rdquo;, from the Russian expression &ldquo;To show them Kuzka&rsquo;s Mother,&rdquo; which loosely translates to &ldquo;I FUCKING FUC KYOU UP MOTHER FUCKER,&rdquo; the Tsar Bomba was designed to be a three-stage weapon, with a regular boring old fission-powered nuclear warhead the size of the Nagasaki bomb triggering a shit fuck ton of fusion and fission materials that would ignite and blast a hole straight down to the Earth&rsquo;s core.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Sakharov got right to work.&nbsp; First, he moved his team out to Novaya Semlya, a freezing-cold snowbound island north of Siberia that the Soviets had made available to him by forcibly relocating the entire population of the island to the Russian mainland.&nbsp; Sakharov&rsquo;s first design decision was to drop the nuclear payload from 100 Megatons to 50 Megatons, meaning it would &ldquo;only&rdquo; be the equivalent of 50 MILLION TONS of TNT wrapped up in one single detonation and was probably less likely to single-handedly bring about Worldwide Nuclear Winter.&nbsp; He also &ndash; and this is HUGE &ndash; decided to make most of the explosion fusion rather than fission, which, amazingly, would make this one of the &ldquo;cleanest&rdquo; nukes in history in terms of radioactive fallout and damage to the planet&rsquo;s environment.</p>\r\n<p>The next thing he did was to skip a lot of the boring calculations, because he didn&rsquo;t really have time to screw around with minor details when developing the hugest weapon in human history and there weren&rsquo;t really computers to do that shit for you in 1961.&nbsp; So instead he did a little scribbling on a napkin and decided to go with his &ldquo;best estimates&rdquo; as to what would create a fusion explosion without destroying the earth or getting him sent to a Soviet gulag for wasting millions of dollars of Soviet money on a super-nuke that didn&rsquo;t explode.&nbsp; This is one of those decisions that typically create zombie apocalypses or giant radioactive Praying Mantis monsters when scientists make them in movies, but apparently Sakharov hadn&rsquo;t seen any of those films and carried on as normal.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/20094501128/sakharov3.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>It took 112 days to complete the weapon.&nbsp; Measuring in at 8 meters long and 27 tons, the Tsar Bomba had to be carried by a special Tu-95 Strategic Bomber that had been customized by cutting away the fuselage so it could even mount the weapon.&nbsp; The mission was so dangerous that the pilot, Major Andrei E. Durnovtsev, was immediately promoted to Lieutenant Colonel and given the Hero of the Soviet Union medal just for agreeing to attempt the mission.</p>\r\n<p>At 11:32am Moscow Time on October 30, 1961, Durnovtsev&rsquo;s aircraft released the Tsar Bomba over the frozen wasteland of Novaya Semlya.&nbsp; Falling from an altitude of 35,000 feet (the typical cruising altitude for most commercial airplanes), Tsar Bomba parachuted towards the earth on its epic mission.</p>\r\n<p>When it reached 13,000 feet, it detonated.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><iframe src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/WwlNPhn64TA\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\"></iframe></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The five-mile-wide fireball expanded to a diameter that touched the earth and also reached the altitude of the aircraft that deployed it.&nbsp; Windows broke 550 miles away.&nbsp; All structures within 60 miles were leveled.&nbsp; The heat was so intense that any exposed human flesh within 12 miles would have instantly been seared with third-degree burn and would require skin grafts to repair.&nbsp; Radio transmissions in the area were interrupted for over an hour.&nbsp; The 40-mile-high mushroom cloud was seven times the height of Mount Everest, extending all the way into <em>fucking space</em>.&nbsp; American military scientists read the detonation as a 5.0 earthquake.</p>\r\n<p>And that was at half power.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>At the full 100 Megatons Khrushchev originally ordered, Tsar Bomba would have burned the flesh off of anyone in <em>all of West Germany</em>.&nbsp; If it had been dropped on the ground in London using the previously-prescribed radioactive materials (remember that Sakharov found a way to limit radiation damage by 97%), people in Poland would have died from the fallout.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Here&rsquo;s a picture of what the blast would have looked like if Sakharov&rsquo;s 50 Megaton Tsar Bomba was dropped on Lower Manhattan.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/20094501128/sakharov4.png\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The yellow circle is a glass-filled crater.&nbsp; The red is complete destruction of even reinforced steel structures.&nbsp; The Gray area represents a 99% human fatality rate from impact and heat damage.&nbsp; Any exposed human flesh in the Orange circle would suffer instantaneous third-degree burns, and anything combustible or flammable in that area &ndash; including all wood structures and vegetation from New Jersey to Connecticut &ndash; would immediately burst into flames.</p>\r\n<p>None of this takes into account radiation, wind, or weather.&nbsp; It&rsquo;s just a straight-up airburst detonation and heat.&nbsp; It also doesn&rsquo;t account for the 5.0 earthquake, which, in this setting, might even produce <strong>radioactive tsunamis<em>.&nbsp; What the fuck</em></strong>.</p>\r\n<p>According to <a href=\"http://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/\">NUKEMAP</a> (a program that is way more fun than it should be), this detonation would leave an estimated 8.9 million people dead and another 4.8 million injured.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/20094501128/sakharov5.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Here\'s a double-down for my Euro Readers.&nbsp; Casualty estimate:&nbsp; 14.7m dead, 6.9m injured</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;<img style=\"margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto; display: block;\" src=\"/images/20094501128/sakharov6.png\" alt=\"\" />&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Now, I&rsquo;m not advocating worldwide thermonuclear war or anything (would you like to play a game?), but WHAT THE FUCK.&nbsp; This is hardcore, people walking around looking like fucking mutants, end of days apocalypse Fallout 3 shit here, all produced by basically one theoretical physicist in about the time it takes to complete one semester of Physics 101.&nbsp; For developing this weapon, and for his future work in theoretical physics, Andrei Sakharov received all of the highest civilian awards offered by the USSR:&nbsp; The Hero of Socialist Labour (three times), the Order of Lenin (four times), the Lenin Prize and the Stalin Prize.</p>\r\n<p>But Andrei Sakharov wasn&rsquo;t excited.&nbsp; He lost his shit.&nbsp; Something about cracking the earth and killing billions of people just didn&rsquo;t sit well with this dude, and Sakharov actually spent the rest of his life criticizing nuclear testing, advocating test ban treaties, and actively trying to stop Russia and America from getting into a nuclear war and destroying all life on the planet.&nbsp; He ordered all future Russian tests to take place underground to minimize radioactive fallout.&nbsp; He helped push through the Partial Test Ban treaty in 1963.&nbsp; He urged Soviet ministers to approve the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty to stop the manufacture of ABMs and slow down the arms race between NATO and the Russians.&nbsp; In fact, we have Andrei Sakharov to thank for a LOT of the work that went towards getting the USSR and the USA to work out their difference and stop escalating their nuclear arsenals, and due to his work on nuclear disarmament he was nominated for the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize and won it in 1975.</p>\r\n<p>Not too bad for a guy who created the World&rsquo;s Biggest Bomb.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/20094501128/sakharov71.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Eventually he pushed too hard, started protesting the Soviet war in Afghanistan and the corruption of the USSR&rsquo;s Marxist ideals into a totalitarian dictatorship, and the Soviets called him out as a traitor.&nbsp; He was stripped of his awards and sentenced to house arrest, and when he resisted with a hunger strike the KGB sent him to a hospital for force-feeding.&nbsp; Imprisoned from 1980-86, he was was finally released during Perestroika when Mikhail Gorbachev personally ordered his release.&nbsp; He received the International Humanist Award in 1988, and died of a heart attack in 1989 at the age of 68.&nbsp; He&rsquo;s remembered in statues and monuments across Russia, and one of the <em>Enterprise</em>&rsquo;s shuttlecraft is named after him in <em>Star Trek: The Next Generation</em>.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Every year, the European Parliament honors his work by issuing the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought to people and organizations dedicated to human rights.</p>\r\n<p>On that note, here are a bunch of awesome videos of nuclear explosions.</p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/XsnL6gmGOZA\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\"></iframe></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Links:</p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Russia/TsarBomba.html\">http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Russia/TsarBomba.html</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://brickmuppet.mee.nu/adventuresinscience/archive/2013/1\">http://brickmuppet.mee.nu/adventuresinscience/archive/2013/1</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.atomcentral.com/tsar-bomba.aspx\">http://www.atomcentral.com/tsar-bomba.aspx</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/featured/the-world%E2%80%99s-biggest-bomb-about-this-episode/846/\">http://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/featured/the-world%E2%80%99s-biggest-bomb-about-this-episode/846/</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba\">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba</a></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>','2013-12-06','20094501128','sakharov.jpg','sakharov-small.jpg','Andrei Sakharov','Created the biggest bomb in human history, received the Nobel Peace Prize.','The clouds beneath the aircraft and in the distance were lit up by the powerful flash. The sea of light spread under the hatch and even clouds began to glow and became transparent. At that moment, our aircraft emerged from between two cloud layers and down below in the gap a huge bright orange ball was emerging. The ball was powerful and arrogant like Jupiter. Slowly and silently it crept upwards.... Having broken through the thick layer of clouds it kept growing. It seemed to suck the whole earth into it. The spectacle was fantastic, unreal, supernatural.\r\n'),('Hammurabi','c. 1800 BC','1750 BC','Babylon, Iraq','Ancient Babylonian Lawgiver','<p>When most assholes talk about Hammurabi in history textbooks and other annoying bullshit, they are all like, \"Oooh Hammurabi made the first codified system of laws in human history and here\'s a picture of him and here\'s EIGHT MILLION PAGES OF BORING LEGAL SHIT about laws and jurisprudence and god-knows-whatever-the-fuck-else, and within the span of like two sentences this guy goes from \"Badass dude with mega beard emotionlessly condemning terrified citizens to a brutal waterlogged death while sitting on a gold throne with his feet resting on the back of a mountain lion,\" to a previously-unknown level of \"holy shit lighten up here Phoenix Jones I\'m not fucking trying to pass the Bar or anything here\"-grade technical jargon and everyone wants to slit their wrists with a letter opener.</p>\r\n<p>I\'m not going to talk boring legal semantics.&nbsp; Yes, Hammurabi instituted the first known Code of Laws in human history.&nbsp; That\'s awesome.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>What\'s more awesome is that his law was basically a government-issued mandate to Live for Revenge, and he carved that law on 4-ton hunk of black rock shaped like a giant penis.&nbsp; He also ruled the most powerful city-state in the world for 42 years, conquered Mesopotamia with a marauding army of flaming war chariots and bloodthirsty spearmen, destroyed and plundered Ancient Sumeria, kicked the Assyrians asses, dished out death sentences on a daily basis, commanded that short-changing bartenders should be executed by drowning, and is still so highly-respected as a paragon of moral badassitude that his face is carved into government buildings across the world &ndash; including the U.S. Capitol and the Supreme Court.</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/454889922613/hammurabi1.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">It\'s good to be the King.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The ultimate Lawful Neutral Ancient World Asskicker, Hammurabi became the sixth King of Babylon after his dad beefed it in like 1792 BC or some shit.&nbsp; When Hammurabi took over, Babylon was still some random-ass town in the Fertile Crescent, and his city-state covered 50 square miles, which is like roughly the size of Sioux City, IA, which of course is the fourth-largest city in Iowa.&nbsp; By the time he was done, he\'d have a multi-civilization empire covering a massive swath of land that could stretch from Sioux City to Washington, DC.</p>\r\n<p>A natural genius with a talent for all things badassitude-related, Hammurabi\'s expansion wasn\'t just because of his hardcore ability to trample the scrotums of all who opposed him with a fleet of war chariots and flaming arrows, but also because this guy was a master at awesome 4X-style diplomacy. &nbsp;First, he went south into Sumeria and zigguratted that ass, conquering the once-powerful city-states of Borsippa, Kish, and Sippar.&nbsp; Then, when the three other big powers in Mesopotamia got a little nervous and tried to fuck him up, Hammurabi played all three of them against each other so that he never had more than one enemy at a time.&nbsp; He befriended one empire, teamed up with it to kick the ass of another, then double-cross his allies, and by the time the third empire got its act together it was already too late.&nbsp; Wham, bam, thank you ma\'am, now here are a bunch of temples and public works courtesy of your new King Hammurabi, the man who now rules all land between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/454889922613/hammurabi2.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>As if conquering a decent portion of the known world wasn\'t a big enough deal, the main reason Hammurabi is a household name among history nerds is because of the afore-mentioned phallic-looking law code that he imposed upon all those lucky enough to find themselves in the grasp of his iron rule.&nbsp; Yeah, sure, there may have been some Sumerian fuck who had a codified law before Hammurabi, but this is the oldest one we\'ve ever found so screw it that\'s what we\'re going with.</p>\r\n<p>In true badass fashion, King Hammurabi had his omnipotent 282-item legal code carved out on giant-ass 8\' tall black stone tablets strategically positioned every couple hundred feet around his Kingdom just in case anybody ever forgot the fact that he made a bunch of laws happen.&nbsp; Carved from single slabs of diorite, the Code begins and ends with a prayer to the gods, but it\'s not a nice Mr. T / Hulk Hogan kind of \"drink your milk and eat your vitamins\" prayer &ndash; it\'s a creepy-as-hell prayer requesting the Gods of Babylon to eternally damn and curse anyone who doesn\'t abide by Hammurabi\'s Four Tons of Law to a life of misery and eternal damnation.</p>\r\n<p>Then just to be awesome he had a guy carve a pic of him high-fiving the King of the Babylonian Gods Moses-style so everyone knew how serious he was.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/454889922613/hammurabi3.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> Hey, check out my stele baby.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Hammurabi\'s Law was a pretty brutal code, in which the following unpardonable offences were punishable by death:&nbsp; Theft, perjury, kidnapping, harboring slaves or fugitives, banditry, breaking and entering, insubordination by military and police officers, selling wine to outlaws, murder, building an unsafe house, and going into someone\'s house to put out a fire and then robbing him (Hammurabi was very specific about this).&nbsp; People who were guilty of incest, indecent exposure, or short-changing their customers were thrown into a river, and medical malpractice resulted in the physician getting his fingers chopped off.&nbsp; Basically this guy wasn\'t messing around.</p>\r\n<p>While the most famous aspect of Hammurabi\'s Code involves the much-quoted \"Eye for an Eye, Tooth for a Tooth\" bit (awesomely known by as the <em>Lex Talionis, </em>the \"Law of Retaliation\"), here are a couple of other excellent statutes, brought to you courtesy of your favorite Babylonian.</p>\r\n<p style=\"margin-left: 30px;\">-&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; If a man charge a man with sorcery, and cannot prove it, he who is charged with sorcery shall go to the river.&nbsp; Into the river he shall throw himself, and if the river overtake him his accuser shall take the estate of the accused.&nbsp; If the river shows the man to be innocent, and he comes forth unharmed, he who charged him with sorcery shall be put to death.&nbsp; He who threw himself in the river shall take the estate of his accuser.</p>\r\n<p style=\"margin-left: 30px;\">-&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; If the wife of a man be taken in lying with another man, they shall bind them and throw them in the water.&nbsp; If the husband of the woman would save her life, he may.</p>\r\n<p style=\"margin-left: 30px;\">-&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; If a man take a wife and she give a maid-servant to her husband, and that maid-servant bear children and afterwards would take rank with her mistress, because she has borne children, her mistress may not sell her for money, but she may reduce her to bondage and count her among the maid-servants.&nbsp; If she have not borne children, the mistress may sell her for money.</p>\r\n<p style=\"margin-left: 30px;\">-&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; If a savage bull, in his charge, gore a man and bring about his death, this case has no penalty.&nbsp; If a man\'s bull have been wont to gore, and they have made known to him his habit of goring and he have not protected his horns or have not tied him up, and the bull gore the son of a man and bring about his death, he shall pay one-half mana of silver.</p>\r\n<p style=\"margin-left: 30px;\">-&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; If a tavern-keeper does not accept corn according to gross weight in payment of a drink, but takes money, and the price of the drink is less than that of the corn, she shall be convicted and thrown into the water.</p>\r\n<p>Obviously, nowadays he\'s remembered as a wise, intelligent, fair ruler, because this shit is awesome.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/454889922613/hammurabi4.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>That\'s basically just a taste of what Hammurabi had to offer the peeps of Babylonia.&nbsp; Basically, his code amounts to Badass Revenge &ndash; if some shitty contractor builds a house for a guy and it falls down and kills him, the contractor is put to death.&nbsp; If the homeowner\'s son dies in the accident, so does the contractor\'s son.&nbsp; If you fuck up irrigating your fields and end up flooding your neighbor\'s crops, you owe him restitution.&nbsp; If you can\'t pay, you and your entire family are sold into slavery and the money is given to the guy to pay him back for his losses.&nbsp; Fuck yeah accountability or some shit.</p>\r\n<p>There were also quite a few social laws in there, mostly aimed at keeping families together.&nbsp; If you pimp-slapped your mom, you got your hand chopped off.&nbsp; If you told your father he wasn\'t your \"real dad\", Hammurabi would cut out your tongue and feed it to dogs.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Women had a pretty decent go of it, considering that this was like 1700 BC &ndash; you could keep your kids and remarry if your husband divorced you, and if he died all the rights of homeownering were transferred to you, because, as Hammurabi put it, a big part of the Code was \"to prevent the strong from oppressing the weak and to see that justice is done to widows and orphans.\"&nbsp; Of course, if you were deemed a \"bad wife\", whatever that means, then your husband could downgrade you from wife to servant and force you to work as his slave, too, so it wasn\'t exactly the sort of place Susan B. Anthony would\'ve hung out at either.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/454889922613/hammurabi5.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Most of Hammurabi\'s punishments involved execution by drowning.&nbsp; Basically he\'d tie you to a board and throw you in the Euphrates River.&nbsp; If you somehow got out and survived, good for you &ndash; I guess the Gods want you to live, and maybe you were innocent all along.&nbsp; If you drowned, good riddance.&nbsp; I\'m also a huge fan of this because basically rather than sentencing you to death for your crimes, Hammurabi is sentencing people to be strapped to a board and thrown in a river, and any time the Legal System advocates putting a man or woman in a life-or-death struggle for their own survival t\'s pretty badass.</p>\r\n<p>Hammurabi\'s Code held together all of his conquered people under one unified system of laws, and that, combined with Hammurabi\'s forty-plus year iron-fisted reign over Mesopotamia, led to a period of unprecedented peace in the Fertile Crescent.&nbsp; Roads and irrigation systems were built.&nbsp; Temples went up.&nbsp; Defensive fortifications were built around large cities.&nbsp; Everyone tipped their bartenders.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/454889922613/hammurabi6.gif\" alt=\"\" /><br /> I\'m not sure about this new Civ game.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Hammurabi died in 1750 BC.&nbsp; His throne was passed to his sons, but, as is pretty typical with spoiled rich asshole sons of emperors, they all fought each other, couldn\'t agree on anything, and pissed everyone off, and all the civs Hammurabi had conquered rebelled and the Empire broke apart (they\'d be back a few hundred years later under Nebuchadnezzar).&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The Code of Hammurabi was sacked by Persians a few hundred years after Hammurabi\'s death, but its legacy lived on in written, codified laws passed down by kings throughout Mesopotamia for the next few millennia.&nbsp; The original Stele was dug up in Persia in 1901.&nbsp; Nowadays its in the Louvre.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/454889922613/hammurabi7.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">Hammurabi chokes out a fucking lion<br />while dishing out laws and shit.</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Links:</p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.ancient.eu.com/hammurabi/\">http://www.ancient.eu.com/hammurabi/</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.history.com/topics/hammurabi\">http://www.history.com/topics/hammurabi</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/hamcode.asp\">http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/hamcode.asp</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.ushistory.org/civ/4c.asp\">http://www.ushistory.org/civ/4c.asp</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hammurabi\">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hammurabi</a></p>','2013-10-25','454889922613','hammurabi.jpg','hammurabi-small.jpg','Hammurabi','An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.','\"Anu and Bel called by name me, Hammurabi, the exalted prince, who feared God, to bring about the rule of righteousness in the land, to destroy the wicked and the evil-doers; so that the strong should not harm the weak; so that I should rule over the black-headed people like Shamash, and enlighten the land, to further the well-being of mankind\"'),('David Vivian Currie','July 8, 1912','June 20, 1986','Sutherland, Saskatchewan, Canada','20th-century Canadian Soldier','<p>Exactly seventy years ago today the largest amphibious assault in human history delivered a star-powered Little Mac <em>Mike Tyson&rsquo;s Punch Out </em>uppercut directly into the soft, tender, <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler%27s_possible_monorchism\">possibly-one-testicled nutsack</a> of Adolf Hitler, opening a second front in a war that was already going very badly for <em>der F&uuml;hrer</em> and marking the beginning of the end of the brutally-monstrous insanity known as the Third Reich.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Let&rsquo;s pause for a second here and consider the fact that, as of the time of this writing, there exists a Wikipedia entry solely devoted to the study and understanding of Adolf Hitler&rsquo;s scrotum.&nbsp; You can give our species limitless resources and unfettered access to the entirety of human knowledge, and we&rsquo;re still just going to use it to talk about balls all day.</p>\r\n<p>Look, we all know the story of D-Day. &nbsp;&nbsp;It&rsquo;s one of the most famous military engagements of all time, and literally every goddamn multimedia presentation from political ads to war documentaries to Chevy commercials features some variety of sentimental-sounding piano music played behind some iconic image of steel landing craft carrying American soldiers towards the ominous shores of that imposing French beach.&nbsp; It was a massive, heroic undertaking that turned the tides of war against a man who is almost universally-accepted (even by his own countrymen) as the single most evil person in history.</p>\r\n<p>This isn&rsquo;t the story of the first battle of the Normandy Campaign.&nbsp; It&rsquo;s a story about the last one.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>It&rsquo;s the tale of how 50,000 battle-hardened Nazi stormtroopers from the German Seventh Army were completely surrounded and captured thanks in no small part to the actions of one 32 year-old Canadian auto mechanic named Dave.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/898588118753/currie1.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> This is Dave.</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>David Vivian Currie was born in Saskatchewan, which is somewhere in Canada, and he went to Moose Jaw Technical School, because of course he did.&nbsp; Trained as an automobile mechanic and welder, Currie joined the local Moose Jaw Militia in 1939 when it looked like things were possibly getting a little World War Two-ey in Europe, and once the shootin&rsquo; got started he immediately enlisted and became a Lieutenant in the Canadian Army.&nbsp; His skills at repairing broken vehicles and overcharging for automotive parts perfectly suited him to the tank service, and by June of 1944 he had been promoted to Major and given command of a squadron in the Canadian Armored Corps&rsquo; South Alberta Regiment. &nbsp;&nbsp;Despite two years of intensive training and three years of service during World War II, Currie had yet to see combat, and was still itching for the opportunity to squirt a water bottle in the face of some SS-Gruppenfuhrer and then rack that idiot in the ballsack with a hockey stick when he wasn&rsquo;t looking.</p>\r\n<p>He&rsquo;d get his opportunity in June 1944.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/898588118753/currie2.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> Canadian troops landing on Juno Beach,<br /> June 6, 1944</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Deploying on bullet-riddled beaches with badass nicknames like Sword, Juno, and Omaha, soldiers from the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom slogged through the wet, blood-soaked sand and heroically smashed through the outer wall of Germany&rsquo;s European defenses and began pushing their way slowly towards Berlin.</p>\r\n<p>With the Americans advancing off the beach from the west and south, busting heads in places like St. Lo and Carentan, the British and Canadian armies moved down from the north, clawing their way off the beaches, scraping through the panzer-obstructed hedgerows of France, and ultimately trapping the German defenders of Normandy in the Falaise Pocket -- a delightful little hellhole that in keeping with the overarching theme of this article kind of looks like a nutsack full of Nazis.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/898588118753/currie3.png\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Do you see that little spot called St. Lambert with the big fucking dotted arrow running through it?&nbsp; That&rsquo;s the quiet, peaceful, not-yet-demoished little French village of Saint-Lambert-sur-Dives.&nbsp; Named for St. Lambert, the Patron Saint of THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE, this place was a charming little town in the middle of the countryside that, oh yeah, just so happens to be home to one of the only roads big enough to carry all those little Nazi flags out of the holy-shit-we&rsquo;re-fucked trap and back to a position where they aren&rsquo;t completely surrounded on three sides.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Capturing and cutting off the only escape route for the entire German Seventh Army fell to, you guessed it, our friend David Vivian Currie.&nbsp; A guy with just ten days of combat experience, all of them just now in Normandy, Currie was commanding C Squadron of the South Alberta Regiment.&nbsp; Together with two infantry companies of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, this guy was now being ordered to single-handedly capture St. Lambert and close off the Falaise Pocket, then hold his position against the entire fucking German Army until reinforcements could arrive.</p>\r\n<p>Currie had about two hundred men and maybe a dozen M4 Sherman tanks at his disposal.&nbsp; He didn&rsquo;t have access to artillery, couldn&rsquo;t call in air strikes, and, if he&rsquo;d had any actual reconnaissance of the area, he&rsquo;d have known that the town was defended by a detachment of the 2<sup>nd</sup> Panzer Division that outnumbered the Canadians by a factor of three.</p>\r\n<p>Major David Vivian Currie unflinchingly told his men to line up and attack.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/898588118753/currie4.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Charging across the Normandy countryside in the hull of a 30-ton armor-plated death tank, Currie and the Sherman tanks of the South Alberta Regiment charged full-throttle head-on into German 88mm artillery cannons and concrete-fortified positions.&nbsp; In addition to the shitloads of infantry and artillery, the town was also defended by some hardcore, massive, heavily-armored 60-ton Tiger I tanks that were literally twice the size of the Canadian Armored Corps&rsquo; 30-ton Shermans and shot an armor-piercing round so fucking over-the-top that it would occasionally shoot through the hull of a Sherman and come out the other side.&nbsp; The first attack by the Canadians, while determined, was beaten back, with two of Currie&rsquo;s precious tanks knocked out of action by direct hits from German artillery.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>As soon as dusk began to fall on the battlefield, David Vivian Currie dismounted his command tank, ran across the fucking battlefield <em>on foot, </em>surveyed the German defenses personally, then, before heading back, the Canadian commander stopped by the old battle field to <em>pull wounded men out of the two fucked-up tanks while German mortars and machine guns blasted everything around him</em>.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/898588118753/currie5.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p><br /> Currie somehow made it back from the front lines, saving the lives of quite a few of his fellow men in the process.&nbsp; Then, armed with the basic idea of where the mortars and machine guns and tanks were situated, Currie hopped into his fucking tank and ordered his men to attack again.&nbsp; Blasting with his 75mm cannon and spraying gunfire from two .30 caliber machine guns, Currie not only gave orders to the crew of his command tank, but also barked out commands to his entire squadron via radio, coordinating a 10-tank attack on the hardened German positions in St. Lambert.&nbsp; At one point, his own tank encountered a Tiger I, but this only succeeded in pissing him off &ndash; Currie ordered his gunner to put an anti-tank shell through the side of the turret and into the German tank commander&rsquo;s brain, and within seconds the Nazi war machine had been blasted into a smoke-filled coffin.</p>\r\n<p>Despite all odds, the Canadian Armored troops entered St. Lambert and pushed the Germans out.&nbsp; The fun, of course, was just getting started, because now Currie had to hold his ground.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/898588118753/currie6.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>From heavy artillery to unrelenting profanity, the Germans threw every goddamn thing they had at David Vivian Currie and his motley band of 200 pissed-off Canucks.&nbsp; Currie and his men held strong in the face of thousands of bullets and hundreds of tons of artillery and armor.&nbsp; During lulls in the fighting Major Currie ran up and down the line to personally pump up his men, then ran back to his tank at the first sign of trouble so he could fight off the next counter-attack.&nbsp; At one point the enemy got so close to Currie&rsquo;s tank that he had to pop the hatch on top of his Sherman, grab a rifle, and stand half-out of his tank with a fucking Enfield taking pot shots at German infantrymen who were less than 50 yards away from him.&nbsp; Another time a German convoy ended up taking a wrong turn, and this stone-cold massively-balled tank commander pulled a goddamned pistol on the truck driver and took the entire detachment prisoner.&nbsp; Another time Currie was forced to call down artillery strikes on positions less than 20 meters from his own tank, basically raining explosives down on his own head and threatening to blow himself to shit rather than give the town to the goddamn Jerries.</p>\r\n<p>For 36 long hours &ndash; a full day and a half &ndash; David Vivian Currie held St. Lambert against everything the <em>Wehrmacht</em> could throw at him.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/898588118753/currie7.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>During that agonizing day and a half of constant fighting, the only reinforcements to make it through to help him were a small platoon of 40 Canadian infantrymen who somehow snuck through German positions to get to Currie and his defenders.&nbsp; Currie, despite being the only surviving officer in his detachment, still took the time to show these men exactly where he needed them, then to calmly explain specifically what was at stake with this battle.&nbsp; With bullets and artillery exploding everywhere, Currie calmly told his men to hold the line at all costs, somehow staying totally chill even with Nazi mortar shells falling on the roof above him.</p>\r\n<p>At dusk on August 20<sup>th</sup>, 1944, the Germans organized their troops for their final assault on St. Lambert.&nbsp; As they moved into position, they were surprised as fuck to find artillery strikes and Canadian tanks rolling right up into their positions, blasting them at almost point-blank range.&nbsp; The entire planned counter-attack was crushed before it had even lined up for battle.&nbsp; The 2,100 surviving German defenders of the town surrendered to David Vivian Currie and his 200 Canadians.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/898588118753/currie8.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> Currie is the guy with the pistol,<br /> second one in from the left.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>In four days of sleepless, constant battle, Major David Vivian Currie and the men of the South Alberta Regiment destroyed seven tanks, twelve 88mm artillery guns, 40 armored cars, killed 800 Germans and took 2,100 prisoners.&nbsp; They drove back repeated counter-attacks, held the road, and sealed the only escape route from the Falaise Pocket.&nbsp; The entire German Seventh Army would surrender shortly after, with over 50,000 Prisoners of War falling into Allied hands.&nbsp; St. Lambert was the last battle of the Normandy Campaign.</p>\r\n<p>But David Vivian Currie still wasn&rsquo;t done.&nbsp; He&rsquo;d participate in another amphibious attack just a month later, moving into the Netherlands as part of the Battle of the Scheldt.&nbsp; He&rsquo;d spend his November liberating the Dutch from Nazi rule, firing cannons at Nazi tanks, and getting lots of chocolate and cute girl smiles for his efforts.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/898588118753/currie9.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>In December 1944, David Vivian Currie personally received the Victoria Cross from King George VI.&nbsp; He would be the only Canadian to receive the Victoria Cross for actions during the Normandy Campaign, and to this day he remains the only Canadian Armored Corps soldier to ever receive the honor.&nbsp; After World War II he was appointed Sergeant-at-Arms for the Canadian House of Commons, meaning that he spent over 17 years of his post-war career as the guy who was single-handedly in charge of keeping the entire government of Canada alive.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>I can&rsquo;t think of a better man for the job.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/898588118753/currie01.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Links:</p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.cmp-cpm.forces.gc.ca/dhh-dhp/gal/vcg-gcv/bio/currie-dv-eng.asp\">http://www.cmp-cpm.forces.gc.ca/dhh-dhp/gal/vcg-gcv/bio/currie-dv-eng.asp</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://canadianwarheroes.com/citations/world-war-2/major-david-vivian-currie/\">http://canadianwarheroes.com/citations/world-war-2/major-david-vivian-currie/</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.canadaatwar.ca/page27.html\">http://www.canadaatwar.ca/page27.html</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.cbc.ca/archives/categories/war-conflict/second-world-war/general-22/homecoming-of-major-david-currie-vc.html\">http://www.cbc.ca/archives/categories/war-conflict/second-world-war/general-22/homecoming-of-major-david-currie-vc.html</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Vivian_Currie\">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Vivian_Currie</a></p>','2014-06-06','898588118753','currie.jpg','currie-small.jpg','David Vivian Currie','Canadian mechanic who sealed off the Falaise Pocket and trapped over 50,000 Nazis during the Normandy Campaign.','We knew at one stage that it was going to be a fight to a finish but he was so cool about it, it was impossible for us to get excited.'),('George Lewis Schwartz, Jr.','May 10, 1918','October 12, 1954','Wilmington, DE, USA','20th-century American Pilot','<p>I know, I know, I\'m late on posting the story this week.&nbsp; The sad, tragic reality is that my Friday morning flight home from Honolulu was massively delayed to the point where I couldn\'t make my connection, so I was stranded in Hawaii without my computer all day on Friday, where I spent most of the day sobbing uncontrollably into a floral-print sarong, my will to live utterly crushed by the inevitable truth that I was disappointing literally dozens and dozens of loyal readers of this website.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>But, as horrible as it was to be marooned on a tiny volcanic island in the middle of the South Pacific for twenty-four hours with no possibility of rescue and nothing but a neon-colored fruity alcoholic beverage, my beautiful wife, and a moderately-priced Waikiki Beachfront hotel to sustain me, there is a silver lining to this raincloud of sun-drenched horror &ndash; I was able to make yet another trip out to the naval base at Pearl Harbor to see a crucial site that once played a crossroads in American history, and while I was there, I read the story of a man who absolutely must be mentioned on this website without any further delay:&nbsp; Second Lieutenant George Welch of the United States Army Air Corps.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/762110622405/welch1.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>George Welch didn\'t have to join the military.&nbsp; He was brilliant, an excellent student trained as a mechanical engineer at Purdue, and the heir to the multi-million Welch\'s Grape Juice fortune.&nbsp; He didn\'t need to go off gallivanting in the cockpit of a fighter plane flying three hundred miles an hour straight-on into a fleet of onrushing enemy aircraft filling the sky with a Bullet Hell of 7.7mm machine gun fire, risking his life and sanity in the service of his country.&nbsp; But then again, being stationed at Naval Station Pearl Harbor in February of 1941 wasn\'t such a bad gig, either &ndash; there was no war to fight, so Welch was hanging out with hot Polynesian chicks in grass skirts and coconut bikinis, drinking Mai Tais by the pool and maybe I guess flying a mission or two just to keep his skills sharp.&nbsp; For the 23 year-old Second Lieutenant and his best friend, fellow pilot Ken Taylor, the most exciting thing going on was the one time they went to a party with parachutes hidden under their dinner jackets and they pulled the ripcord in the middle of the dance floor, a move that almost certainly charmed the skirts off every broad in the joint (to use the parlance of the times).&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>December 6, 1941, was no exception.&nbsp; The two buddies went out for a night of drinking, partying, and macking on chicks, spent all night dancing to awesome Big Band orchestra Glenn Miller jams at the USO with hot pinup girls in low-cut blouses and tight-fitting dresses, got wasted on any number of alcoholic beverages, then stayed up until dawn playing poker with their buddies, smoking fat cigars, and cracking jokes about whatever the hell people joked about before the creation of the Internet.&nbsp; Around 6:30am they hopped in Welch\'s sweet-ass Buick, drove home semi-drunk, and passed out face-down in their bunks still wearing the dress uniforms they\'d put on to impress the dames at the party.</p>\r\n<p>They were jolted awake an hour later by the last sound they were expecting to hear in this corner of paradise &ndash; explosions.&nbsp; Big ones.&nbsp; The roaring of fighter plane engines.&nbsp; Gunfire.&nbsp; Screams.&nbsp; And an announcement on the loudspeakers:</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><em>Air raid Pearl Harbor.&nbsp; This is not a drill.</em></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/762110622405/welch2.JPG\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>353 Japanese aircraft, launched from six aircraft carriers, were swarming through the skies above Oahu, strafing airfields, bombing supply bases, and torpedoing naval vessels in what would become the most devastating surprise attack in American History and the single darkest day in the history of the United States Navy.</p>\r\n<p>But George Welch and Ken Taylor weren\'t going to let the Japs get away without a fight.&nbsp; Knowing that his own airfield was trashed, Welch hopped up, ran to his telephone, and called in to an auxiliary airfield on the North Shore.&nbsp; Get two P-40s fueled, armed, and ready.&nbsp; We\'re going up.&nbsp;&nbsp; And we\'re gonna stick it to these bastards.</p>\r\n<p>Then they grabbed their keys, threw on their tuxedo jackets, jumped in his Buick and hauled ass 16 miles down winding mountain roads through the heart of Oahu Island at speeds of over 100 miles an hour while Mitsubishi A6M Zeroes made strafing runs on the highway behind them with twin-linked 20mm cannons and sent the entire island up in a raging bullet-soaked inferno.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/762110622405/welch3.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>When Welch and Taylor reached the airfield, their P-40 Warhawks were already gassed up and armed with ammo for their quad-linked .30mm machine guns.&nbsp; The mechanics didn\'t have any .50 cal for their main guns, but Welch and Taylor didn\'t give a crap &ndash; no time to worry about that, we\'ll make do with what we\'ve got and try to down armored enemy bombers with a machine gun primarily designed to take out infantry.&nbsp; They hopped into their cockpits, quickly checked their instruments to make sure everything seemed kosher, then tore ass into the skies despite, oh yeah, not having any orders from a commanding officer to charge balls-out straight into an enemy formation and rip them to shreds in a hail of gunfire.</p>\r\n<p>Welch flew point with Taylor as his wingman, and together the Army pilots unflinchingly cranked it full-throttle towards a formation of twelve D3A Val dive bombers (some sources say they were B5N Kates, a minor detail I only mention here because my much-beloved hardcore aircraft nerd fans will undoubtedly call me out on this), guns blazing.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/762110622405/welch4.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> Actual gun camera footage taken from Ken Taylor\'s <br /> aircraft at the beginning of the battle.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Ripping into the formation of Vals at an altitude of just 1,000 feet, Taylor and Welch each took down an enemy bomber.&nbsp; They scattered, and Taylor broke off, downing another foe in the swirling aerial melee.&nbsp; Welch, who was unlucky enough to have one of his guns jam, leaving him with just three .30 cals, reportedly took an incendiary round through his fuselage during the fight.&nbsp; While this detail may be debated, Welch did pull up through the clouds, checked his instruments, and as soon as he realized everything was chill he dove back down through the cloud cover, pouncing on another Val and blasting it into a flaming chunk of no-longer-airworthy scrap metal.</p>\r\n<p>In just a few moments of battle, both Welch and Taylor had scattered a bombing run and downed four enemy aircraft.&nbsp; They came in hard to Wheeler Field, landing on the airstrip in the middle of explosions and dodging friendly fire from American AA guns on the ground.&nbsp; They parked near the only working gas truck, and ground crews immediately went to work refueling and rearming the P-40s.&nbsp; The main ammunition dump had been hit hard and was burning, but two badass techs were like forget that and ran into the burning building to grab .50-caliber ammo for the idling aircraft.&nbsp; While they were on the ground some dumbass Major came running over to their airplanes and gave Welch and Taylor a direct order not to take off, but they told him to get lost and immediately went back into action.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/762110622405/welch5.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The two pilots took off right into a cloud of 15 bombers, escorted by a flight group of ultra-deadly Zeroes, but they didn\'t give a crap.&nbsp; Spewing fire everywhere, Welch and Taylor hosed the formation with bullets, breaking them apart in every direction.&nbsp;&nbsp; Taylor took a burst of fire in the cockpit &ndash; two slugs embedded themselves in the seat near him and one round went through his leg &ndash; but this didn\'t even slow him down that much, and when a second Val dropped behind Taylor to finish off the kill our boy George Welch came in out of nowhere and detonated the Japanese fighter-bomber\'s fuselage with a blast of .50 cal death.&nbsp; Breaking hard, Welch then went after one of the Zeroes, downing the enemy aircraft over the ocean with another burst of gunfire.</p>\r\n<p>At the end of the day, George Welch and Ken Taylor flew three sorties against the Japanese.&nbsp;&nbsp; One of just a handful of Americans to get airborne during the fight, they accounted for six confirmed kills, but probably ended up accounting for at least 10 of the 29 Japanese planes that were shot down over Pearl Harbor during the attack.&nbsp; For their daring actions kicking balls in the skies and becoming the first American pilots to score an air-to-air kill during World War II, they received the Distinguished Service Cross &ndash; the second highest award for bravery offered by the U.S. Army (they\'d been nominated for the Medal of Honor, but denied because they\'d undertaken the operation without having orders to do so&hellip; gotta love Army bureaucracy).</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/762110622405/welch6.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>After the war, George Welch continued fighting with the Pacific Fleet, flying the ultra-crappy P-39 and the equally-badass P-38 Lighting.&nbsp; During three combat tours against the Japanese he flew 348 missions, recording 16 confirmed kills &ndash; becoming a three-time Fighter Ace and always making it happen in groups of two or more kills at a time because he was just hard like that.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>After the war, Welch stayed with the Air Force as a hardcore death-defying test pilot, and he was the first guy to test-fly America\'s first real jet fighter, the F-86 Sabre.&nbsp; While piloting it he may have actually broken the Sound Barrier two weeks before Chuck Yeager, but it didn\'t really count because his equipment failed and his flight logs didn\'t have any record of how fast he was going.&nbsp; Either way, it worked out pretty well, because Welch commanded a training squadron of F-86s during the Korean War, teaching new recruits how to fly the ship he\'d pioneered and use it to effectively ruin the lives of Commie bastards everywhere.&nbsp; As an extra badass touch, Welch personally led his squadron into battle despite having specific orders not to do this, and, by all accounts, he managed to shoot down a half-dozen MiG-15s with his F-86 even though he wasn\'t able to receive credit for his kills because of the whole \"disobeying a direct order\" thing.&nbsp; Instead he passed the kills off to his students, which is cool as hell.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/762110622405/welch7.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>After Korea, Welch went back to being the Chief Test Pilot for North American Aviation.&nbsp; He died on October 12<sup>th</sup>, 1954, when the F-100 Super Sabre he was test flying broke apart while pulling seven Gs at Mach 1.1.&nbsp; Which, while tragic, is a hell of a sentence to have as your obituary.</p>\r\n<p>He is a true unsung hero of American aviation history and an utterly hardcore badass.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/762110622405/welch8.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> Welch (on the right), with Ken Taylor in December 1941.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Links:</p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.militaryaerospace.com/blogs/aerospace-defense-blog/2009/12/vengeful-american-fighter-pilots-get-their-pound-of-flesh-at-pearl-harbor.html\">http://www.militaryaerospace.com/blogs/aerospace-defense-blog/2009/12/vengeful-american-fighter-pilots-get-their-pound-of-flesh-at-pearl-harbor.html</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.planesandpilotsofww2.webs.com/Welch1.html\">http://www.planesandpilotsofww2.webs.com/Welch1.html</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.airforcemag.com/MagazineArchive/Pages/1993/May%201993/0593valor.aspx\">http://www.airforcemag.com/MagazineArchive/Pages/1993/May%201993/0593valor.aspx</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.aviation-history.com/airmen/pearl.htm\">http://www.aviation-history.com/airmen/pearl.htm</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.pearlharborhero.net/id21.html\">http://www.pearlharborhero.net/id21.html</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_on_Pearl_Harbor\">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_on_Pearl_Harbor</a></p>','2013-11-16','762110622405','welch.jpg','welch - Copy.jpg','George Welch','One of the only American pilots to fight back during Pearl Harbor.','\"Get two P-40s ready.  It\'s not a gag--the Japs are here.\"'),('Lauri Torni','May 28, 1919','October 18, 1965','Viipuri, Finland','20th-century Finnish Commando','<p>Larry Thorne was a hardcore cyclone of SMG-chunking bullet rage who served in the Special Forces of three different countries, led an elite detachment of badass Finnish ski troops on balls-out raids behind Soviet lines during the Winter War, commanded a Waffen-SS sabotage squad during World War II, and was an original United States Army Green Beret who commanded clandestine black ops in Iran and coordinated raids against the Ho Chi Minh trail in the opening years of the Vietnam War.&nbsp; He lived hard, shoved his knife in the faces of Commies from Helsinki to Hanoi, is a national hero in Finland and a legend in the U.S. Special Forces, and was so over-the-top hardcore that when he went Missing in Action somewhere in Laos everybody that knew him pretty much figured he&rsquo;d finally become so awesome he literally morphed into a gigantic NVA-obliterating explosion.</p>\r\n<p>Born in Finland in 1919, Lauri Torni (there are some umlauts and shit in there somewhere) was already a Captain in the Finnish Army Reserve in 1938 when Josef Stalin got a hard-on for hammer-humping Finland in the mouth with Bolshevism and sent like seventeen point five million Russians screaming into Scandinavia on a murderous rampage to seize all the valuable snow and ice resources Finland had to offer.&nbsp; Finland&rsquo;s army, not really exactly expecting to go to war with Russia of all fucking things (they&rsquo;d just signed a non-aggression pact with Stalin in 1932), was like holy shit we got like 300,000 guys and you&rsquo;ve got a million dudes plus a bunch of those awesome new tanks everyone&rsquo;s been talking about, but that of course didn&rsquo;t stop them from grabbing every gun they could find and ripping the Red Army a new asshole with a never-ending stream of anti-communist bullets because OH YEAH here&rsquo;s a picture of Lauri Torni&rsquo;s ski warriors <em>biathloning their shit with skis and machine guns and fucking gas masks:</em></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/32651874379/thorne1.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> You have selected:<br />INVADE FINLAND<br /> Are you sure?<br /> Y / N</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Fighting in the freezing cold of the winter alongside fellow badasses like ultrasniper <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/hayha.html\">Simo Hayha</a>, Lauri Torni commanded and trained ski warfare teams designed to shred into the battlefield in the most totally xtreme to the max way possible, spray around enough lead to smelt into a half-pipe, then haul outta there and launch a sweet ski jump off a ramp while things explode behind them.&nbsp; &nbsp;These ice-cold killers launched guerilla attacks deep behind Red Army lines on dozens of occasions, disrupting their supply and communications, then peeling back to the front lines just in time to hold the line with the Regular Army against a ridiculously-terrifying human wave attack launched from a Communist force that outnumbered the Fins like five to one.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>It helped that the Red Army was basically retarded after being utterly lobotomized during Stalin&rsquo;s idiotic purges of the Russian military high command, but it&rsquo;s not small fucking feat of amazerballs that Lauri Torni and his Olympic Bloodbathing gold medal team held back an all-out Soviet Union assault for several months.&nbsp; By the time the peace talks rolled around to end the war, the Reds had lost 323,000 men to the Fins&rsquo; 70,000 &ndash; a kill ratio that would make any CoD player rip off a righteous boner &ndash; and Lauri Torni had received every single medal for military badassitude offered by the government of Finland, ranging from the Mannerheim Cross (their Medal of Honor) all the way down to a hilariously-bad hand-fingerpainted coffee mug that said &ldquo;World&rsquo;s Greatest Dad #1 Love You Forever Daddy&rdquo; in Finnish even though Torni didn&rsquo;t even have kids or a girlfriend or a wife because he was MARRIED TO KICKING COMMIE ASS and it&rsquo;s a cruel fucking mistress #1 forever.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/32651874379/thorne2.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Ok well the part that sucked for Torni was that the war was over and he couldn&rsquo;t go around killing Russians anymore, and since he felt like he still had some vengeance he needed to unleash he was like hey, fuck it, these German dudes are still fighting Russia so imma get up on that.&nbsp; The Germans had been looking to recruit experienced fighters who had first-hand knowledge of the Soviet Army, and Torni and a few other Winter War vets were organized as a Finnish Waffen-SS battalion and unleashed on the Reds.&nbsp; He earned the Iron Cross after leading an MG34 machine gun team that charged into the middle of a firefight, guns blazing, and pulled a wounded company commander out of an enemy ambush, but stepped on a land mine after that and kind of got blown up a little bit.</p>\r\n<p>A face full of shrapnel didn&rsquo;t slow Torni down too bad, however, and by the time he was out of the hospital he was happy to learn that Finland had re-joined battle with the Soviet Union, allying with Germany and trying to re-take land that had been lost to the Russkies in the Winter War.&nbsp; Once again Torni went into battle at the head of the ski troops, this time personally leading a badass assault squad known as &ldquo;Detachment Torni&rdquo; that specialized in sabotage and recon.&nbsp; &nbsp;Comprised of 60-70 men (including a future President of Finland!), Detachment Torni went on countless raids against the Soviet Union, and he was such a royal pain in Stalin&rsquo;s nutsack that the Soviet Union put a bounty on Torni&rsquo;s head of 3 million Finnish Marks for anyone who would give him up.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>It&rsquo;s worth noting that there is no record of the Russians putting a bounty on the heads of <em>any other Finnish commander</em> in the war.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/32651874379/thorne3.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> Torni is the one in the center.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Well, we all know how World War II shaped out, and as the Russians were pushing Germany back they forced Finland out of the war 1944.&nbsp;&nbsp; Torni jumped in a U-Boat and sailed to Berlin, where he was trained as a saboteur by the Kriegsmarines.&nbsp; He eventually returned to Finland and continued to resist the Soviets, a nice little move that got him arrested and declared an &ldquo;enemy of the people.&rdquo;&nbsp; Torni escaped prison three times, and the third time he managed to get in touch with the former director of the OSS and find asylum in the United States.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Lauri Torni changed his name to Larry Thorne and started working as a carpenter in Brooklyn, but war was in this dude&rsquo;s blood and in 1954 he said fuck it an enlisted in the United States Army as a Private, even though he&rsquo;d spent six years fighting World War II as an officer in two different military commands.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/32651874379/thorne4.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Obviously it didn&rsquo;t take long for Thorne to prove his worth, and in his first ten years of military service to the United States government he trained NATO forces in West Germany, ran a sabotage and reconnaissance school for the 10<sup>th</sup> Special Warfare Group, and made a name for himself as one of the first &ndash; and most legendary &ndash; Green Berets in American history.&nbsp; His crowning achievement came in the late 50s, when he led a mission into the Middle East to recover bodies and classified data from a C-130 transport plane that had gone down in the largest mountain range in Iran, ditching atop a cliff just 20 miles from Tehran.&nbsp; Three missions had attempted to get to the crash site and failed, but Captain Larry Thorne grabbed his shit, parachuted in with a 12-man team, made his way up 14,000 feet of elevation deep in enemy territory, and somehow recovered the data and snuck out of there undetected.</p>\r\n<p>Naturally, when the United States started getting involved in South Vietnam and needed some serious fucking badasses to roll in there and start preparing to kick Communist balls into proletarian jelly, Larry Thorne was all over it like stink on lutefisk.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/32651874379/thorne5.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">Currently Listening To:<br /> Fortunate Son<br />Creedence Clearwater Revival<br /> Willy and the Poor Boys</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Having now kicked ass in waist-deep sub-zero snow drifts, high-altitude Iranian steppe mountains, and hardcore mud-covered rain forest wilderness, Captain Larry Thorne doubled-down on asskicking and served two tours of duty in South Vietnam as part of the highly-classified, highly-awesome Military Assistance Command, Vietnam Studies and Observations Group &ndash; an elite unit of clandestine black ops asskickers known as MACV-SOG.&nbsp; Specializing in non-conventional warfare and shanking fuckers in the back of the neck until they barf out a Ka-Bar, Thorne and MACV-SOG spent several years running deep cover ops into Cambodia and Laos to track down the NVA supply network that eventually became known as the Ho Chi Minh Trail.&nbsp;&nbsp; <br /> Rocking it old-school with a WWII-era Scandinavian-made Carl Gustav SMG, Captain Thorne planned missions by going on aerial recon himself in a UH-34D Seahorse chopper, figuring out the mission, then personally leading raids, attacks, intel gathering and sabotage missions.&nbsp; He was wounded twice, received a Bronze Star for bravery in combat, and was immediately recognized as one of the toughest sons-of-bitches in a military organization that prides itself on being able to kill people in their sleep.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/32651874379/thorne6.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> MACV-SOG operatives in South Vietnam.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Thorne&rsquo;s last mission took place on October 18, 1965, when he was leading an aerial insertion behind enemy lines, 20 miles across the Laotian border &ndash; a place the United States wasn&rsquo;t even supposed to be.&nbsp; Continuing on despite bad weather, Thorne made sure that his teams hit the ground, and then, as he was circling back around, his helicopter went into some nasty-looking clouds and was never seen again.&nbsp; He was listed Missing in Action after a 28-year career of military service and never heard from again.&nbsp; The mission however, was a success &ndash; his men called in 51 air strikes against Ho Chi Minh Trail supply stations and made it out of there alive.</p>\r\n<p>For the next 30 years there was a lot of speculation about what happened to Thorne.&nbsp; Some thought he walked away and survived, others suspected maybe the Russians finally got a hold of him and stuck him in a Gulag somewhere.&nbsp; His old buddies, knowing how tough this dude was, would make a toast to him &ldquo;wherever he may be&rdquo; every year on the anniversary of his disappearance, and a picture of him was shown to NVA defectors to see if maybe they recognized him.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Major Larry Thorne&rsquo;s body was eventually found in the wreckage of a downed chopper in Laos in the 90s, and his body was relocated to Arlington National Cemetery in Washington, DC.&nbsp; Finnish diplomats were in attendance.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Nowadays the Larry Thorne Award is given by the U.S. Army Special Forces every year to honor the toughest detachment in the Green Berets.&nbsp; Which isn&rsquo;t a bad way to be remembered.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/32651874379/thorne7.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> Thorne, far left, taken just before his final mission.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Links:</p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&amp;tl=en&amp;js=n&amp;prev=_t&amp;hl=en&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.kansallisbiografia.fi%2Fkb%2Fartikkeli%2F7845%2F&amp;act=url\">Finnish</a><a href=\"http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&amp;tl=en&amp;js=n&amp;prev=_t&amp;hl=en&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.kansallisbiografia.fi%2Fkb%2Fartikkeli%2F7845%2F&amp;act=url\"> Bio</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/larry-thorne.htm\">http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/larry-thorne.htm</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.eucom.mil/article/19753/the-ideal-green-beret\">http://www.eucom.mil/article/19753/the-ideal-green-beret</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lauri_T%C3%B6rni\">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lauri_T%C3%B6rni</a></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Sources:</p>\r\n<p>Blackburn, Michael.&nbsp; <em>US Army Special Forces Small Unit Tactics Handbook</em>.&nbsp; Blacksmith, 2013.</p>\r\n<p>Gill, Henry A.&nbsp; <em>Soldier Under Three Flags</em>.&nbsp; Pathfinder, 1998.</p>\r\n<p>Gillespie, Robert M.&nbsp; <em>Black Ops, Vietnam</em>.&nbsp; Naval Institute, 2011.</p>\r\n<p>Jowett, Philip.&nbsp; <em>Finland at War 1939-45</em>.&nbsp; Osprey, 2012.</p>\r\n<p>Lembcke, Jerry.&nbsp; <em>CNN&rsquo;s Tailwind Tale</em>.&nbsp; Rowman &amp; Littlefield, 2003.</p>','2014-01-10','32651874379','thorne.jpeg','thorne-small.jpg','Larry Thorne','Finnish Special Forces commando fought the Reds while serving with three different countries in World War II and Vietnam.','“They are so many and our country is so small… where shall we find space to bury them all?”  - Finnish saying during the 1939 Winter War with the Soviet Union'),('Narcisco Ortilano','Unknown','Unknown','The Philippines','20th-century Filipino Soldier','<p>In the mind-numbing, what-the-fuck-am-I-doing-awake early hours of January 12, 1942, Private First Class Narcisco Ortilano of the 2<sup>nd</sup> Battalion, 57<sup>th</sup> Infantry Regiment, United States Army Philippine Scouts scanned his eyes alertly through the darkness for any signs of movement.&nbsp; The heart-pumping surge of adrenaline brought forth from sounds of distant machine gun fire and unholy artillery shelling helped him fight eyelids that hadn&rsquo;t seen sleep in a minor eternity.&nbsp; Cooking in the sweltering heat and humidity of an unseasonably warm Philippines dry season, this hardened warrior took a swig of tepid water from his canteen and double-checked the belt on his Browning Model 1917 heavy machine gun, ensuring that when the time came this death-spewing behemoth would be barfing out an apocalyptic typhoon of thirty-aught-six ammunition so intense that the entire extended Japanese Imperial Family would be picking shell fragments out of their miso soup for the next half-dozen generations or so.</p>\r\n<p>Pfc. Ortilano was pissed.&nbsp; And not just the kind of pissed you get when the waiter brings out lukewarm adobo and then sneezes in your face when you ask him to send it back.&nbsp; This was the kind of pissed you get when the Japanese Imperial Navy bombs the fuck out of the entire United States Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, temporarily cripples the American naval war machine, then seizes the opportunity and proceeds to gun-hump every single island in the Pacific Ocean with high-yield explosives and tens of thousands of angry screaming warriors armed with bolt-action rifles and samurai swords&hellip; including your home town.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Dug into a trench on the beaches near the Philippines&rsquo; Bataan Peninsula, with Japanese amphibious transports deploying swarms of elite troops all around his position and his terrified family taking shelter just on the other side of Manila Bay, Private First Class Narcisco Ortilano cracked his knuckles, racked a round into the chamber, and nodded to his gunner&rsquo;s assistant to keep his eyes open for anything that needed to be carved apart with 600 rounds per minute of 30.-06 water-cooled Fuck You.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/67090198072/ortilano1.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The full-scale invasion had begun a few days earlier.&nbsp; A hundred and twenty thousand Japanese soldiers deployed by a huge naval fleet and supported by mortars, artillery, tanks, over six hundred aircraft, and anything else they could scrape together.&nbsp; They stormed the beaches, guns blazing, crashing into the defenses set up by the U.S. and Filipino defenders bayonets-out, hurling themselves into combat with all the grace and subtlety of a Hello Kitty mall kiosk.&nbsp; The Allies had fought their balls off, throwing back attack after attack, but the Japanese were hardcore motherfuckers &ndash; in one night attack the first wave of soldiers threw themselves down chest-first into barbed wire, holding it down with their bodies so their comrades could climb over and dive into the Allied trenches.&nbsp; Before long, the overwhelmed outer defenses started to waver and break under the non-stop onslaught of Imperial troops.</p>\r\n<p>Ortilano had been in the shit with the 57<sup>th</sup> already, cranking off rounds into an a seemingly-endless horde of attackers for the past few days of almost non-stop combat, but he&rsquo;d just lugged his hundred-pound portable murder machine back to the second line of defense and was now dug in waiting to hold off yet another attack.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>He didn&rsquo;t have to wait long.&nbsp; With a terrifying chorus of &ldquo;Banzai&rdquo; (meaning &ldquo;ten thousand years&rdquo; or, perhaps better translated as &ldquo;long live the Emperor&rdquo;) the sugarcane field across from him erupted with accurate covering fire from dozens of rifles and submachine guns, a large force of unseen Japanese infantry spraying bullets Ortilano&rsquo;s direction.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/67090198072/ortilano2.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The Philippine defenders responded immediately, the entire sector erupting as back-and-forth gunfire lit up the field with tracers, but in the initial barrage Ortilano&rsquo;s gunner&rsquo;s assistant &ndash; a vital part of his two-man weapon crew &ndash; took a round to the dome almost immediately, slumping over lifelessly in a pool of his own blood.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Ortilano barely had a chance to acknowledge the death of his friend and weapon loader before his eyes focused on an even more immediately-pressing threat &ndash; a Japanese infantry squad of battle-hardened warriors leaping forth from the treeline, bayonets and rifles held high, charging straight on at his position.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/67090198072/ortilano3.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> Is that guy on the left smiling?<br /> There&rsquo;s no smiling in war.<br /> Come on guys, get it together.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>With the shadowy shapes of eleven heavily-armed Japanese Regular Infantry warriors screaming towards him, rifles at the ready, their fixed bayonets menacingly glinting in the moonlight, Narcisco Ortilano made his initial barrage of machine gun fire count.&nbsp; A sweeping arc of non-stop automatic lead mutilation raked the open field, spinning four of the enemy to the ground with mortal injuries from a very large caliber crew-served heavy weapon being maniacally operated by one blood raging madman who would stop at nothing to defend his beloved homeland.&nbsp; With sounds of gunfire and mortar explosions erupting all around him, ripping up he jungle and beach throughout his sector, and hordes of the enemy racing towards him, Ortilano kept his thumb planted on the trigger, presumably shouting some amazing swear words or perhaps screaming incomprehensibly, shouting over the din of a massive barrage of high-octane bullet hell destruction.</p>\r\n<p>It was around this time that Narcisco Ortilano&rsquo;s machine gun jammed.&nbsp; And the only guy capable of helping him clear it was lying face down in the foxhole beside him.</p>\r\n<p>So he improvised.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/67090198072/ortilano4.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Covered in blood and soot, surrounded by gunsmoke, with bullets whizzing past him and seven screaming enemy soldiers sprinting towards his position, Narcisco Ortilano let go of the trigger of his machine gun, stood up straight, unholstered his .45 in ultra-badass slow motion, and then proceeded to blast the living fuck out of everything, everywhere.&nbsp; An expert-rated marksman with the pistol, Pfc. Ortilano made his seven-round magazine of .45-caliber count, steadying his hand despite the adrenaline and ripping off fucking deadly-accurate rounds into the darkness at moving targets with ungodly lights-out precision.&nbsp; One after the other, the Japanese infantry hit the deck, each one eating a bullet nearly every time he pulled the trigger.</p>\r\n<p>Seven shots, five kills.</p>\r\n<p>Badass.</p>\r\n<p>Except that now he was out of bullets and two super-pissed-off motherfuckers with bayonets were coming at him from different directions to skewer him like a goddamned voodoo doll.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/67090198072/ortilano5.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The two Japanese dove into Ortilano&rsquo;s foxhole on opposite sides.&nbsp; The Filipino, amped up from just fucking murdering the shit out of nine of their buddies in the span of about twenty seconds, wasn&rsquo;t about to just sit there and let himself get impaled like a chump &ndash; he was going to <em>fuck them up</em>.</p>\r\n<p>The first dude stabbed at Ortilano, but he sidestepped and grabbed for the weapon.&nbsp; The Imperial soldier jerked the rifle to the side to avoid Ortilano&rsquo;s clutches, and in the process the razor-sharp edge of the bayonet sliced off our hero&rsquo;s thumb&nbsp; at the knuckle, sending waves of searing pain through him and spurting blood all over the place.&nbsp; Screaming, Ortilano tried again, grabbing the end of the Japanese soldier&rsquo;s barrel just as the other guy jammed his bayonet into Ortilano&rsquo;s back.</p>\r\n<p>This only made him angry.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/67090198072/ortilano6.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Screaming in agony, stabbed in two places, missing a thumb, and surrounded by guys with weapons, Ortilano channeled his energy into full-on ultra death blood rage, ripped the gun right out of the dude&rsquo;s hand, and stabbed him through the chest with his own fucking bayonet.&nbsp; The other Japanese dude, having just unsuccessfully shanked a one-thumbed Filipino berserker while he was in the process of fucking ripping apart ten guys with a machine gun, a pistol and a stolen bayonet, decided &ldquo;yeah, that&rsquo;s enough of that,&rdquo; and ran for it.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>He got about two steps before Ortilano returned the favor and planted a bayonet in his ass.&nbsp; Only he was a little better at it, because, oh yeah, he was also expert-rated in bayonet.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/67090198072/ortilano7.gif\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Standing in his foxhole, covered in the blood of his enemies, standing on top of a pile of a dozen corpses, Private First Class Narsisco Ortilano surveyed the land, saw the battle dying down, wrapped a tourniquet around his still-bleeding thumb-stump, and went back to his post to un-jam his machine gun.&nbsp; When his commanding officer came by the next morning and saw this dude sitting alone in a field of dead bodies, he asked Ortilano what the hell happened.</p>\r\n<p>Ortilano&rsquo;s response?&nbsp; &ldquo;Oh, some Japanese tried to scare me.&rdquo;</p>\r\n<p>He became the first Filipino to receive the Distinguished Service Cross, the Army&rsquo;s second-highest award for kicking ass.&nbsp; He survived the 65-mile Bataan Death March and twelve months of brutal captivity in the most notorious Japanese prison camp of the war, and personally accepted the award in 1946.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/67090198072/ortilano8.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> The Philippine Scouts.<br /> Yeah.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Links:</p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.philippine-scouts.org/the-scouts/ps-militaria/57th-inf-regt-militaria.html\">http://www.philippine-scouts.org/the-scouts/ps-militaria/57th-inf-regt-militaria.html</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://projects.militarytimes.com/citations-medals-awards/recipient.php?recipientid=32305\">http://projects.militarytimes.com/citations-medals-awards/recipient.php?recipientid=32305</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Bataan\">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Bataan</a></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Sources:</p>\r\n<p>Dioso, Marconi M.&nbsp; <em>The Times When Men Must Die</em>.&nbsp; Dorrance, 2010.</p>\r\n<p>Holbrok, Stewart H.&nbsp; <em>None More Courageous</em>.&nbsp; Read, 2007.</p>\r\n<p>Young, Donald J.&nbsp; <em>The Battle of Bataan: A Complete History</em>.&nbsp; McFarland, 2009.</p>','2014-01-17','67090198072','ortilano.jpg','ortilano-small.jpg','Narcisco Ortilano','One Filipino warrior vs. an entire squad of Japanese infantry.  Who ya got?',''),('Selim I','October 10, 1465','September 22, 1520','Amasya, Turkey','16th-century Turkish Sultan','<p>Selim the Grim was a semi-insane, full-on-maniacal asskicking warmonger who used the most brutal, vicious, and hard-to-clean methods at his disposal to utterly puree the nutsacks of everyone who ever annoyed him in any conceivable manner.&nbsp; Incompetent Viziers, heretics, opium dealers, his dad, Shi&rsquo;ites, disobedient military officers, idiot family members, and the vast majority of the Egyptian population were all ground into meat-sawdust before his relentless blood-churning face-stabby onslaught, as the almighty Sultan of the Ottoman Empire virulently dragged his ten-ton balls throughout the Middle East and North Africa like a post-apocalyptic steamroller pimped out with a spiked roller, twin-linked laser Gatling guns mounted where the headlights are supposed to be, and an airbag deployment system hard-wired to detonate with the force of a fifty megaton thermonuclear warhead.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/46114175341/selim6.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>A rawhide-chomping neck-snapper notorious for his fiery temper, righteous all-consuming anger, sweet nickname and even sweeter mega-handlebar moustache, Selim the Grim was the son of Bayezid the Saint, a fun fact that pretty much beats you over the head with the Irony Stick.&nbsp; Despite his name, Bayezid was a largely-unpopular Sultan who spent more time humping his harem and doing hard drugs than building chariots out of the flayed skin of his enemies, but Selim&rsquo;s grandpa was Mehmet the Conqueror so you know our Prince had some good face-smashing genetics in there somewhere.&nbsp; Bayezid knew this and was honestly a little freaked out by having such a tough motherfucker for a son, so instead of proclaiming Selim his successor as Sultan he instead decided the crown should pass to Selim&rsquo;s brother, the significantly-less-severe Prince Ahmed, a man so largely insignificant to the story that he doesn&rsquo;t even rate an epithet.</p>\r\n<p>The important thing here is that guys with epithets like &ldquo;The Grim&rdquo; don&rsquo;t appreciate being disrespected, even if it is by their own dad.&nbsp; So I think you can see where this is going.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/46114175341/selim1.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br />The situation is looking a little.... <em>grim </em>for you, brother.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>In 1512 Selim the Grim marched to Istanbul at the head of an army of twelve thousand Janissaries, rearranged Ahmed&rsquo;s shit at a molecular level with enough sword points to outfit a Peter Jackson movie, kicked in the front door of the Turkish Palace, and then struck a pose like he&rsquo;d just scored a touchdown when the entire population of the city came out and threw him a spontaneous parade to celebrate their Prince coming to wreck the fuck out of everything that was wrong with the Turkish Royal Family.&nbsp; Bayezid, competently realizing he was in kind of a bad situation, immediately quit his job as Sultan and died, leaving the twenty-something Selim to rule as Sultan of the Ottoman Empire.</p>\r\n<p>Selim\'s first order of business was to have the entire male population of his family murdered.&nbsp; But, since it was considered barbaric and immoral to spill the blood of the Ottoman Royal Family, he offered his siblings a far more humanitarian death &ndash; he had two brothers, five cousins, and any other man who could produce a semi-legitimate claim to the throne ritualistically strangled to death with silk cords by guys with giant hands.&nbsp; This worked out so well and created such a smooth, succession-war-free transition that from this point on almost every Turkish Sultan would perform the same service to all his brothers when he became ruler.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/46114175341/selim2.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Energetic, powerful, super-religious, and utterly indifferent to any earthly pleasures not involving conquest, carnage, the complete assimilation of every Muslim culture in the Middle East under the blood-stained banner of the Ottoman Empire, (and, depending on who you ask, copious amounts of opium), Selim&nbsp; the Grim went to work trying to recreate the Good Old Days of the Middle East-spanning Caliphate, only this time with himself on the throne.&nbsp; Also, he really hated Shi&rsquo;ites, so he had all of them imprisoned, executed, or sold into slavery.&nbsp; Literally <em>all of them</em>.&nbsp; Then, after making a couple peace treaties with Spain, Italy, and Hungary to secure his Euro borders, the Sultan decided to fight Persia, and not just because Persia was Shi&rsquo;ite, but because attacking Persia is pretty much a staple of all good warlords who operated in or around the Middle East.&nbsp; Selim the Grim provoked the Shah in a badass manner, grabbing a pad and paper and sending a bunch of angry, psychotic drunk-text-quality letters to the King of Persia that were more or less a mash-up of death threats, Koran verses, newspaper clippings, song lyrics, and sarcastic poetry he came up with himself (I&rsquo;m not joking about this).&nbsp; The Shah responded by asking whether or not Selim was smoking crack, and when his messengers delivered the Shah&rsquo;s letter they also brought a box of really high-quality opium for Selim to dive into.&nbsp; Which was a nice touch, honestly.</p>\r\n<p>Incidentally, howver, this was pretty much the exact response Selim the Grim was hoping for.&nbsp; The Mighty Sultan gathered his men, marched a thousand miles across the deserts and mountains of Anatolia, and hurled his warriors into battle with the Persians in 1514.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The Persians fielded a massive force of spearmen and archers numbering almost 120,000 men. Selim was outnumbered, but he had a little surprise he&rsquo;d picked up from the Europeans.&nbsp; Namely, a fucking shitload of cannons and several regiments of infantry equipped with matchlock muskets.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/46114175341/selim3.png\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Selim the Grim (whose name is also sometimes translated Selim the Severe because of the <em>severe asswhippings </em>he was dishing out like parking tickets <em>every damn day</em>) drew the Persians out into the open, then scattered his own infantry and rolled up an assload of cannons and riflemen and proceeded to Swiss cheese the enemy with so many fucking bullets you&rsquo;d think he was air striking them with a squadron of Terminators.&nbsp; The Shah was wounded and fled the field as fast as his gimpy legs could carry him, leaving Selim to capture his camp (which included the Shah\'s personal harem).&nbsp; Any soldiers that surrendered were executed, and all the women and children in camp were sold into slavery throughout the Empire.&nbsp; Then Selim marched through Persia, captured Baghdad, Kurdistan, Anatolia, Georgia, and parts of Azerbaijan, and when the deposed Persian ruler sent a couple of his friends to ask if he could please have one or two of his wives back Selim responded by having all of the political ambassadors thrown into the ocean and all the wives sold off as slaves.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>As a crazy side note, Selim was also a rather violent and tyrannical patron of the arts.&nbsp; Like, when he sacked the Persian capital he enslaved the 1,000 greatest artists in Persia, dragged them to Istanbul, and then jammed a pallate and some brushes in their hands and forced them to work to beautify the city.&nbsp; Throughout his reign, Selim also encouraged intellectuals, astronomers, mathematicians, and scientists to come to Istanbul as well and work together to improve human knowledge.&nbsp; Which is actually awesome.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/46114175341/selim4.gif\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Well once Persia was toast, Selim the Grim headed into Syria to do battle with the Egyptian Mamluke Sultans, who at this point were basically worthless anyways so who cares.&nbsp; Thanks to a tactically-brilliant strategy of &ldquo;shoot them all in the fucking face, then charge in balls-out on horseback and stab anyone who is still alive afterwards,&rdquo; Selim&rsquo;s ultraloyal Janissaries crushed the Mamlukes, captured Damascus, chased the fleeing armies back across Sinai Peninsula, and then vengefully destroyed them in a huge battle on the banks of the Nile in 1517.&nbsp; Selim, being Selim, then had the population of Cairo whacked, captured the Mamluke Sultan, executed him, declared himself ruler of Egypt, and headed home with 1,000 camels loaded with gold and silver and a bunch of really important Islamic religious artifacts that really looked great hanging on the walls of the Sultan\'s palace.</p>\r\n<p>Selim the Grim ruled the Ottoman Empire for just eight years, dying of fever in 1520 while he was thinking of brutal ways to exterminate the rebels on the fringes of his empire.&nbsp; In that short span of time he consolidated his power base in Turkey, had himself declared Sultan, adopted gunpowder as a viable tool of warfare, conquered Persia, destroyed the Mamlukes, captured Damascus and Cairo from the enemy, took control over Baghdad, Jerusalem, Mecca, and Medina, and more than doubled the size of his empire.&nbsp; Despite being the most tyrannical and militaristic of the early Sultans, Selim also had himself appointed Protector of the Holy Places and Caliph of Islam, meaning that he was officially recognized by world Islam as the &ldquo;successor to Mohammad&rdquo;, and the political and religious head of the Muslim World.&nbsp; He was the first Ottoman Sultan to take the title, but everyone after him would follow suit, including his son Suleiman the Magnificent, a pretty fucking famous dude who would build upon Selim&rsquo;s successes in the years to come.&nbsp; Thanks to Selim the Grim, the Turks would be a dominant force on earth and a major player in world politics until the end of World War I almost 400 years later.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/46114175341/selim5.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\" align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Links:</p>\r\n<p>Gibb, E.J.W.&nbsp; <em>A History of Ottoman Poetry</em>.&nbsp; Luzac &amp; Co., 1902.</p>\r\n<p>Jacob, Samuel.&nbsp; <em>History of the Ottoman Empire</em>.&nbsp; Griffin, 1854.</p>\r\n<p>Nafziger, George F.&nbsp; <em>Islam at War</em>.&nbsp; Greenwood, 2003.</p>\r\n<p>Schevill, Ferdinand.&nbsp; <em>History of the Balkan Peninsula</em>.&nbsp; Harcourt, Brace, &amp; Co., 1922.</p>\r\n<p>Sykes, Percy Molesworth.&nbsp; <em>A History of Persia</em>.&nbsp; Read Books, 2006.</p>\r\n<p>Waters, Clara Erskine Clement.&nbsp; <em>Constantinople</em>.&nbsp; Estes and Lauriat, 1895.</p>','2014-01-24','46114175341','selim.jpg','selim-small.jpg','Selim the Grim','Bloody Ottoman Sultan who doubled the size of his empire and destroyed his enemies without mercy.','“Honorably anxious to deliver the nation and countries that groan beneath your yoke, we have resolved to lay aside our imperial ornaments, to put on our harness and coat of mail, to display our ever-victorious banner, to assemble our invincible armies, to draw the vengeful sword from the scabbard of our wrath, and to march with our trusty soldiers, whose sabres always inflict mortal wounds, and whose arrows could reach an enemy were he even in the constellation of Sagittarius.”  - Selim I, letter to the Persian Shah'),('Isabella of Castile','April 22, 1451','November 26, 1504','Madrigal de las Altas Torres, Spain','Medieval Spanish Queen','<p>Even though most of you fools out there probably know her only as the second half of the ubiquitous &ldquo;Ferdinand and Isabella&rdquo; thing that gets barfed out every year on Columbus Day or in the preface of some bullshit American history textbook, it&rsquo;s important for you to all know that pretty much every single badass thing you know about Medieval Spain was brought to you courtesy of Queen Isabella of Castile &ndash; a woman who crushed faces, won wars, conquered her foes and purged heretics like a <em>Warhammer 40K </em>hero and still is somehow remembered as a sweet, innocent, kind-hearted little Catholic School princessa who liked ponies and was followed around by singing cartoon fairies or some shit.</p>\r\n<p>But this wasn&rsquo;t some meek little queen who followed her big strong man King Ferdinand around like a puppy dog and sat around tapping her fingers on the desk waiting for Columbus to come back and tell her something interesting about the New World &ndash; this was a hard-as-concrete warrior queen dominatrix of totalitarian destruction who seized her Kingdom by force of arms, ruled it as sole regent her entire life, forged alliances with powerful kingdoms across Europe, forged her national debt into a gold-plated treasure vault, destroyed violent criminals with an army of legalized Batman-style vigilantes, personally led armies into battle against the Moors, authorized the creation of the fucking <em>Spanish Inquisition</em>, financed the discovery of the New World, and ultimately unified a bunch of tiny little bullshit Spanish Kingdoms into a mighty planet-spanning 4X empire that held every civilization on earth in a vice grip between its iron-plated metaphorical <em>cojones</em>.&nbsp; So even though she&rsquo;s a widly-non-PC ruler who is almost universally (and understandably) despised by the Muslims, Jews, Portuguese, and American Indians alike, it&rsquo;s hard to argue with a resume like that.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/312731522029/isabella1.gif\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>When Isabella was born in 1451 Spain was basically just a bunch of crappy little El Cid-style kingdoms that spent most of their time fighting each other and the Muslims and honestly doing little else of any importance.&nbsp; Isabella&rsquo;s dad was the boss of the Kingdom of Castile, one of the afore-mentioned kingdoms, and her mom was his second wife, who was like a Portuguese princess or something.&nbsp; When Izzy was still a baby her dad died and left the kingdom to her half-brother Henry, and Henry &ndash; who, I kid you not, is known to history as Henry the Impotent &ndash; immediately shipped Isabella and her mom off to the middle of ass-nowhere to rot because he didn&rsquo;t like the idea of his dad getting re-married and now that he was king he could be as spoiled as he wanted about it.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Princess Isabella lived in relative poverty for a few years, and then Henry the Impotent relocated her back to the court and basically put her under house arrest in the royal palace.&nbsp; While she was there she spent her time reading everything she could get her hands on, observing court officials in action, and essentially learning everything she could about how to effectively run shit, doing this all while watching her idiot half-brother urinate away her father&rsquo;s life savings while the kingdom went to hell around him.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/312731522029/isabella2.png\" alt=\"\" /><br /> Kingdoms of the Iberian peninsula.<br />Isabella was turn that little pink square into an ocean-spanning Empire.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Henry, who got his nickname by claiming that a witch&rsquo;s curse made it impossible for him to get a boner (although in an awesome turn of events, the whole lifelong-flaccid thing may have actually been a rumor propagated by Isabella herself to discredit him), was such a dumbass that eventually the nobles of Castile convinced Isabella&rsquo;s brother to rise up and overthrow him.&nbsp; Unfortunately those attempts failed when the guy caught Bubonic Plague and died of the Black Death, which kind of hurt his cause a little bit.&nbsp; The nobles went to Isabella and were like, &ldquo;Uh, so you wanna get in on this or what?&rdquo; but instead of fighting a losing war Isabella made peace with Henry.&nbsp; The main condition of the treaty was that Henry wasn&rsquo;t allowed to arbitrarily marry her off to some bozo without her permission, even though this was a pretty common practice among princesses in the 15<sup>th</sup> century.&nbsp; Henry agreed, and then tried to go back on it almost immediately and marry her to some Austrian numbnuts.&nbsp; Isabella refused the proposal, snuck out of the royal palace, traveled alone to some river somewhere, and secretly married her second cousin Ferdinand, who was the Prince of the neighboring Kingdom of Aragon.</p>\r\n<p>Henry the Impotent died in 1474, but instead of leaving the kingdom to Isabella as he had promised he left it to his sister Juana instead.&nbsp; So Isabella raised an army, joined it with Ferdinand, kicked the ever-loving shitballs out of her enemies, defeated the Portuguese (who intervened on Juana&rsquo;s behalf), and then marched over a pile of corpses to take her rightful place on the throne of Castile.&nbsp; Despite what you may have been led to believe, Isabella never relinquished her hold on the throne &ndash; she and Ferdinand were each sole independent monarchs of their own separate Kingdoms, united by marriage for the common good.&nbsp; Aragon and Castile wouldn&rsquo;t be formally unified into modern Spain until the reign of their grandson a couple decades later. &nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/312731522029/isabella3.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>For the next 35 years, Queen Isabella of Castile <em>got shit done</em>.&nbsp; Decked out in pimpin&rsquo; expensive dresses and jewels, Isabella crushed the power of the nobles and began a new era where the Queen was the sole autocratic power in the land.&nbsp; She fixed the national debt by ending corruption and wasteful spending among the aristocracy.&nbsp; She clamped down on crime by giving official government funding to groups of pissed-off vigilantes who had been fighting to rid the land of bandits, turning them into the first national police force Spain had ever seen.&nbsp; When she wasn&rsquo;t kicking in the doors of corrupt politicians or having violent criminals publicly beheaded in the streets, Isabella was also a devoted patron of the arts, education, and learning &ndash; especially for women.&nbsp; She brought in a couple guys from Germany with a newfangled machine known as the Printing Press, gave them a tax-free place where they could crank out books, and then set up libraries and schools where anyone could go read them.</p>\r\n<p>But don&rsquo;t go thinking that just because she liked books and stuff this chick was by any means not insanely tough as fucking nails, or that she wasn&rsquo;t a tyrannical dictator who crushed any potential enemies with an iron-plated chainmail fist.&nbsp; In 1478, Isabella was so hardcore that she authorized the beginning of the motherfucking Spanish Inquisition &ndash; the first state-sponsored administration in Europe devoted to torturing the piss out of heretics until they either confessed or died in excruciating pain or preferably did both at the same time and then had their corpses eaten by stray dogs in the street.&nbsp; Using a vast array of scary nightmare-inducing medieval devices, Isabella&rsquo;s dark agents scoured the land for anyone who didn&rsquo;t think Catholicism was awesome, and then either forced them to convert, kicked them out of Spain, and/or tortured them within an inch of their lives.&nbsp; And while having goons beat the shit out of your own subjects just because they don&rsquo;t have the same religious beliefs as you isn&rsquo;t something I would call badass or admirable or awesome, it&rsquo;s still worth mentioning because holy shit.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/312731522029/isabella4.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Speaking of a bloodthirsty zeal for Catholicism, it was also kind of pissing Isabella off that all these Moors were hanging around in southern Spain not being Catholic, so she and Ferdinand ordered the Reconquista in 1482.&nbsp; Declaring war on the Emirate of Granada and sending a now-unified army of hardcore Spanish knights marching into the fortified mountains of al-Andalus, Isabella&rsquo;s heavy cavalry, pikemen, and musketeer regiments brutally fought to re-take the Iberian Peninsula from the Muslim warriors who had overrun it nearly 700 years earlier.&nbsp; The Muslims fought heroically for every inch of their homeland, but the ferocious Isabella spared no expense in her war.&nbsp; She brought in top-of-the-line matchlock rifles, cannons, and hardcore mercenary soldiers from across Europe, commanding the utmost loyalty from her troops by sparing no expense to ensure that her wounded vets received some of the best medical care in Europe as they recovered from their injuries.</p>\r\n<p>The war was long and brutal, but in January of 1492 the Queen personally received the unconditional surrender of the Emir of Granada.&nbsp; Spain was united under a Catholic monarch.&nbsp; There would never again be a Moorish Emir on the peninsula.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/312731522029/isabella5.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>With the Kingdoms of Spain united, the Muslims headed back across the Strait of Gibraltar, and the Catholic Church rocking out with iron maidens, Isabella turned her attention to further securing her position as a key player in European politics.&nbsp; First she and Ferdinand married their son off to an Austrian princess (their grandson would become the Holy Roman Emperor).&nbsp; She also married her daughter Catherine of Aragon off to the English King Henry VIII, but that worked out slightly less well.&nbsp; Meanwhile Ferdinand was out drinking beers with the Pope, becoming buddies with Cesare Borgia&rsquo;s dad and forming a powerful alliance with several powerful Italian states.</p>\r\n<p>It was around this time that a Genoese dude name Chris Columbus came rolling into town promising to discover an ocean route to India and bring back riches from Far East.&nbsp; Isabella, an intelligent, well-read, forward-thinking woman, was like, yeah dude, let&rsquo;s FUCKING DO THIS and gave Columbus a shitload of money to sail around the world into uncharted territory.&nbsp; She hooked him up with cash for the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria, told him to get the fuck out and discover something, and then totally wasn&rsquo;t fazed when he did it.</p>\r\n<p>Columbus returned a year later with a shipload of gold, treasure, and American Indian slaves, but in an out-of-character display of not wanting to exterminate non-Catholics Isabella immediately ordered him to release the natives treat the indigenous peoples of the Americas with the utmost kindness and respect.&nbsp; Columbus and the other Conquistadors of course completely ignored this, but that was her rule nonetheless.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;<img style=\"display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;\" src=\"../images/312731522029/isabella6.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">Columbus: Hey I brought you some Indians and shit.<br />Isabella:&nbsp; Yeah, I don&rsquo;t these these dudes are from India.<br />Columbus: Yeah they totally are.<br />Isabella: Ok well take them back home because WTF</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Realizing what her explorer had accomplished, Isabella financed twelve more expeditions to the New World between 1500 and 1502, three of which were headed up by Columbus and one of which included Juan Ponce de Leon.&nbsp; In doing so, she laid the foundation for a Spanish Empire that would bring countless thousands of tons of gold across the Atlantic and turn Spain into the single most powerful and richest civilization on earth for the next hundred years or so.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Say what you want about the ethics involved with any of this shit.&nbsp; One thing is for certain &ndash; Queen Isabella of Castile had a plan, she <em>got shit done, </em>and she ultimately changed the course of human history of several significant and long-lasting ways.</p>\r\n<p>She&rsquo;s also the first woman to ever appear on a U.S. Postage stamp.&nbsp; Isn&rsquo;t that weird?</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/312731522029/isabella7.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Links:</p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08177a.htm\">http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08177a.htm</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://womenshistory.about.com/cs/medrenqueens/p/p_isabella_i.htm\">http://womenshistory.about.com/cs/medrenqueens/p/p_isabella_i.htm</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.pbs.org/kcet/when-worlds-collide/people/queen-isabella-and-king-ferdinand-i.html\">http://www.pbs.org/kcet/when-worlds-collide/people/queen-isabella-and-king-ferdinand-i.html</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/eagle/congress/bucklin.html\">http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/eagle/congress/bucklin.html</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.medievalqueens.com/queen-isabella-of-castile.htm\">http://www.medievalqueens.com/queen-isabella-of-castile.htm</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isabella_I_of_Castile\">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isabella_I_of_Castile</a></p>','2014-02-07','312731522029','isabella.jpg','isabella-small.jpg','Isabella of Castile','Seized the throne of Castile, drove the Moors from Spain, created the Inquisition, and financed the discovery of the New World.','She was an endeavored woman, very powerful, very prudent, wise, very honest, chaste, devout, discreet, truthful, clear, without deceit. Who could count the excellences of this very Catholic and happy Queen, always very worthy of praises.'),('Ashurnasirpal II','c. 900 BC','859 BC','','Ancient Assyrian Warlord','<p>Ashurnasirpal II is the epitome of everything you would ever want out of a psychotically deranged vengeance-sucking ancient conquest-mongering megalomaniac who drove his jet-fuel-powered chariot across a road paved with corpses so he could kill a lion with his fists.&nbsp; A man who responded to the slightest protest against his power by epically crushing his enemy into bonemeal, ferociously grinding their powdery remains into glass with his massive iron fists, and then using that skullforged-glass to make a stylish designer necklace for whichever Goddess he was currently boning.&nbsp;&nbsp; An unflinching, white-knuckled hardass who lived in an opulent gem-encrusted palace and literally used the broken bodies of his enemies to build towering monuments to his eternal might, this old-school Biblical-style murder-lord was one of the first true continent-spanning conquerors in human history and <em>seriously </em>not the kind of guy you wanted to see standing across from you on a dusty Mesopotamian battlefield. &nbsp;&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>He&rsquo;s also one of the first military commanders in history to use cavalry on the battlefield, a tactic he utilized personally when he hunted lions in his spare time.&nbsp; &nbsp;</p>\r\n<pre>&nbsp;</pre>\r\n<p><img style=\"display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;\" src=\"/images/461274131521/ashurnasirpal1.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<pre>&nbsp;</pre>\r\n<p>Although Ashurnasirpal II probably didn&rsquo;t kill them by walking right up to them without flinching, grabbing them mid-pounce with his bare hands, and then choking them the fuck out one-handed while planting a sword in their hearts and making unblinking steady eye contact so that the last thing that passed through the once-mighty predator&rsquo;s mind was the iron-clad reminder that he was no longer the Apex Predator of the bare-knuckle food chain.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Of course, that didn&rsquo;t stop the King of Assyria from having badass ancient comic book artists draw pictures of him doing that very thing.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><img style=\"display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;\" src=\"/images/461274131521/ashurnasirpal2.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<pre>&nbsp;</pre>\r\n<p>Or then going home after manually asphyxiating 600-pound multi-clawed beasts with teeth the size of steak knives and getting a nice relaxing back rub from a weird eagle-headed god who apparently had nothing better to do with his time.</p>\r\n<pre>&nbsp;</pre>\r\n<p><img style=\"display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;\" src=\"/images/461274131521/ashurnasirpal3.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<pre>&nbsp;</pre>\r\n<p>In fact, there wasn&rsquo;t a whole lot Ashurnasirpal II <em>didn&rsquo;t</em> have himself illustrated doing. &nbsp;</p>\r\n<pre>&nbsp;</pre>\r\n<p><img style=\"display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;\" src=\"/images/461274131521/ashurnasirpal4.JPG\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<pre>&nbsp;</pre>\r\n<p>Ascending to the throne of Assyria in 883 BC, Ashurnashirpal II inherited a once-mighty Mesopotamian Empire that was in a sad state of decline.&nbsp; Located between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in present-day Iraq, the Assyrians were a tough group of motherfuckers, but even though its name kind of sounds like a trendy hipster bakery life in the Fertile Crescent wasn&rsquo;t exactly a relaxing afternoon sipping sextuple raspberry frappalattes back in the 8<sup>th</sup> century BC, a time when basically every asshole king with a decent collection of sharp sticks had delusions of grandeur about being the son of some god nobody&rsquo;s ever heard of before. &nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Ashurnasirpal&rsquo;s dad had done a good job of building up the Assyrian War Machine into a powerhouse capable of brutal world domination, but he died before he could do much with it and it was up to Ash to step in and make sure everyone in Mesopotamia was shouting hail to the king, baby.&nbsp; He consolidated his holdings, assembled his troops, and then launched his armies on 14 epic military campaigns in 24 years, crushing all before him with a sea of infantry, cavalry, and chariots and turning his Kingdom into one of the ancient world&rsquo;s first true Empires.</p>\r\n<pre>&nbsp;</pre>\r\n<p><img style=\"display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;\" src=\"/images/461274131521/ashurnasirpal5.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>Assyria city walls and Illraiseyoua FOOT UP THE ASS</em></p>\r\n<pre>&nbsp;</pre>\r\n<p>Utilizing massed heavy cavalry to shatter enemy formations like a ninja with a huge fucking beard spin-kicking a wooden board at a mall food court karate demonstration and traveling with heavy, surprisingly-mobile iron-headed battering rams capable of demolishing their way through city walls and gates (this was a pretty forward-thinking concept at this time), Ashurnasirpal swept his foes before him in a sea of splinters and iron-plated scrotal annihilation.&nbsp; Towns that opposed him &ndash; or those that rebelled against him &ndash; were shown the sort of extreme over-the-top brutality that makes even hardcore 1970s exploitation escape from women&rsquo;s prison movies look like the Hallmark Channel TV edit of a 1990s Cinemax Shannon Tweed movie. &nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The concept was simple &ndash; ensure compliance through extreme brutality.&nbsp; Be warm, kind, and accepting to cities that surrender to you, and make an example out of one town that resists &ndash; and make that example so fucked-up that nobody would ever dare think about opposing your godlike might again.&nbsp; It&rsquo;s a concept that Ashurnasirpal helped institute, and guys like Genghis Khan and Tamerlane would utilize to force entire civilizations into capitulation.</p>\r\n<pre>&nbsp;</pre>\r\n<p><img style=\"display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;\" src=\"/images/461274131521/ashurnasirpal6.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>Ashurnasirpal determining what to do with a captured enemy town.</em></p>\r\n<pre>&nbsp;</pre>\r\n<p>After capturing one city, Ashurnasirpal built a huge pillar describing how he fucking just owned the assholes that lived there.&nbsp; Then he publicly flayed the bodies of the town leaders, covered the pillar with their dried skin, and placed impaled bodies around the walls in decorative patterns just to drive the point home (wow, I didn&rsquo;t intend for that to be a pun when I wrote it) in case anybody was curious whether or not it might have been a good idea to fucking start shit with Ashurnasirpal II of Assyria.&nbsp; In another town he cut off his prisoners&rsquo; noses, arms, ears, and/or eyes, put everything in a pile, and then set them on fire.&nbsp; One time he had a governor dragged out in the street and tortured to death for disobeying him, then had that guy&rsquo;s body hung outside the front door of the city as a warning to the populace.&nbsp; In yet another conquered town, Ashurnasirpal built a minaret out of human heads, another pile out of severed ears, and then set the entire town on fire with everyone still in it.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Like I said, the Fertile Crescent wasn&rsquo;t really the best place to sit quietly with a pretty girl, a cup of coffee, and a ham-and-cheese croissant and quietly discuss iPhone apps and shitty obscure bands nobody likes.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><img style=\"display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;\" src=\"/images/461274131521/ashurnasirpal7.png\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<pre>&nbsp;</pre>\r\n<p>As you can probably imagine, most of the Mesopotamian tribes really really weren&rsquo;t interested in having their skinless corpses turned into art by macabre interior decorators, and one by one the cities and towns of the Fertile Crescent fell before the might of the revitalized Assyrian Empire.&nbsp; Ashurnasirpal face-speared his father&rsquo;s hated rivals in the North, massacred rebels in the West, and drove his chariots east, through Phoenicia, impaling and burninating his way from roughly present-day Baghdad until his warriors ceremoniously washed the blood from their spears by dipping them in the Mediterranean Sea.&nbsp; Kings from across the lands brought him tribute &ndash; ebony, silver, gold, tin, copper, linen, cedar, and monkeys (both large and small&hellip; Ashurnasirpal makes a point of noting this in his autobiography, which, as you saw, is fucking chiseled into rocks the size of refrigerators).&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>To his credit, Ashurnasirpal used this treasure to dramatically improve the living conditions in the Assyrian Empire.&nbsp; He built roads, temples, and shrines across the land, enlarged already-impressive buildings and structures, built walls around undefended cities, and encouraged noble things like art, trade, and culture.&nbsp; He unified the tribes under his rule by bringing in administrators from across the Empire, taking great care to build political and governmental infrastructure in the kingdoms he&rsquo;d just finished torching into ash and cinders and making sure that everyone in his empire had food, water, and protection under his rule.&nbsp; Which is something.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>\r\n<pre>&nbsp;</pre>\r\n<p><img style=\"display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;\" src=\"/images/461274131521/ashurnasirpal8.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>The Assyrian city of Kalakh.</em></p>\r\n<pre>&nbsp;</pre>\r\n<p>The crowning achievement of Ashurnasirpal&rsquo;s non-massacratory rule was when he rebuilt the ancient Assyrian capital at Kalakh, which had been burned down by enemies in 1260 BC.&nbsp; Ashurnasirpal, flush with riches from his epic conquests, built himself a palace worthy of a guy that shanks lions to death, creating a sprawling city with towering temples, a botanical garden, a zoo of exotic animals, and a supply of fresh water thanks to a canal he had slaves dig from the Zab River into the middle of town.&nbsp; When he finally opened the city, he threw a fucking insane 10-day-long rager keg party that, according to him, was attended by almost 70,000 people.&nbsp; Basically it was Assyrian Ozzfest, right down to the creepy bearded guys with spikes and judicious over-placement of human skulls. &nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>At the center of Kalakh was Ashurnasirpal&rsquo;s palas &ndash; a 269,000 square foot sprawling mansion fit for the sort of king who goes around having peoples&rsquo; skin cut off and then set on fire.&nbsp; Situated on six acres of land, he decorated his insane palace with gold doors, white limestone sculptures of ferocious wild beasts, and hundreds of file-cabinet-sized limestone slabs carved with pictures of himself either banging fertility goddesses or killing people with his bare hands. &nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>There was so much shit in his palace like this that when archaeologists unearthed it in 1845 they needed an entire wing of the British Museum to house it, and all of the hand-chisled evidence pointed to one thing:&nbsp; Don&rsquo;t fuck with Ashurnasirpal.</p>\r\n<pre>&nbsp;</pre>\r\n<p><img style=\"display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;\" src=\"/images/461274131521/ashurnasirpal9.GIF\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<pre>&nbsp;</pre>\r\n<pre><br /><br />Links:<br /><br />http://www.ancient.eu.com/Ashurnasirpal_II/<br /><br />http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/38459/Ashurnasirpal-II<br /><br />https://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/article_index/a/ashurnasirpal_ii,_king_of_assy.aspx<br /><br />http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashurnasirpal_II<br /><br />Books:<br /><br />Atac, Mehmet-Ali. The Mythology of Kingship in Neo-Assyrian Art. Cambridge Univ. Press, 2010.<br /><br />Bryce, Trevor. The Routledge Handbook of People and Places in Western Asia. Routledge, 2013.<br /><br />Kuiper, Kathleen. Mesopotamia: The World&rsquo;s Earliest Civilization. Rosen, 2010.<br /><br />Mountjoy, Shane. Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. Infobase, 2005.</pre>','2014-02-14','461274131521','ashurnasirpal-large.png','ashurnasirpal-small.jpg','Ashurnasirpal II','All-conquering bloodthirsty King of Assyria built a temple out of flayed human skin, built minarets out of human heads, then \r\n\r\ncommissioned art depicting him banging fertility goddesses and strangling lions.','“Their men young and old I took prisoners. Of some I cut off their feet and hands; of others I cut off the ears noses and lips;\r\n\r\nof the young men\'s ears I made a heap; of the old men\'s heads I made a minaret. I exposed their heads as a trophy in front of their \r\n\r\ncity. The male children and the female children I burned in flames; the city I destroyed, and consumed with fire.”'),('Charles Calvin Rogers','September 6, 1929','September 21, 1990','Claremont, WV, USA','20th-century American Soldier','<p>Charles Calvin Rogers was a math major.&nbsp; A Lieutenant Colonel.&nbsp; An artillery commander.&nbsp; A decorated senior officer whose job involved staying back behind the front lines calculating firing angles with a slide rule and a portable astrolabe, launching artillery shells the size of small children at enemy coordinates screamed into his ear via radio by panicking junior-grade infantry officers, and blowing the crap out of things at such long distances he needed a decent hill and a pair of high-magnification binoculars just to get a decent look at the fireworks.</p>\r\n<p>He wasn&rsquo;t supposed to be bayonet-charging a horde of North Vietnamese Army regulars on the Cambodian border in the middle of Halloween night with two goddamned chunks of burning-hot mortar shrapnel embedded in his ribs and AK-47 bullets ripping up the jungle underbrush around from every direction.</p>\r\n<p>But when the opportunity presented itself, he didn&rsquo;t pass it up.&nbsp; He rallied his troops, slapped a magazine into his rifle, and didn&rsquo;t stop cracking skulls until the sun came up.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/231693517265/charlescrogers1.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Midnight had just ticked Halloween 1968 over to November 1 when the first NVA mortar bursts began raining high-explosive shrieking death down onto Fire Base Rita, a forward position deep in the jungles on the Vietnam-Cambodia border.&nbsp; Red flares went up in the woods, backlighting a sea of movement that was punctuated by battle cries, death screams, and a non-stop stream of full-auto machine gun fire that lit up the night with enough tracer fire to make the once-peaceful rain forest immediately start looking like a laser gun firefight from the old-school 1980s <em>G.I. Joe</em> cartoons.</p>\r\n<p>It was a full-on NVA human wave attack.&nbsp; Hundreds of battle-hardened, tough-as-nails Vietnamese infantry poured out of the jungle, laying down covering fire with mortars, grenades, RPGs and machine guns, barreling down on a vastly-outnumbered U.S. position that suddenly found itself in a desperate struggle between life and a grisly death.</p>\r\n<p>Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Calvin Rogers, commanding officer of the 1<sup>st</sup> battalion, 1<sup>st</sup> Infantry Division, rushed outside his tent, took immediate stock of the situation while RPG contrails streamed overhead, and went right to work positioning his howitzer batteries to blanket the jungle with great vengeance and furious anger.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/231693517265/charlescrogers2.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Rogers&rsquo; guns sprung to life, barfing anti-personnel shrapnel-filled fireballs straight into the face of the onrushing enemy horde, exploding asses and balls and other unspeakable things in a cloud of dust, but still the fearless Vietnamese warriors rushed onward, undaunted by the destruction in their ranks.&nbsp; Balls-out NVA combat engineers, racing frantically under the cover of mortars and suppressing fire, ran right up to the American barricade, undauntedly planted explosive charges while U.S. infantry fired point-blank into their ranks, and then blasted huge gaping holes through the firebase&rsquo;s outer walls.&nbsp; Through the cloud of dust, dirt, and blown-apart sandbags rushed a seemingly-endless stream of screaming fighters armed with bayonets and AK47s.</p>\r\n<p>Calvin Rogers, a 16-year veteran from West Virginia, hadn&rsquo;t seen the enemy this close in a long time.&nbsp; Steel-eyed and resolute in his need to kick asses and save his men, the 39 year-old Lieutenant Colonel grabbed his helmet and rifle and raced right up towards the front-line artillery positions &ndash; nothing was going to keep his guns from firing, and he was absolutely determined to turn back this assault before the enemy swept in and overran his artillery position.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/231693517265/charlescrogers3.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Rushing straight into the teeth of the attack, Colonel Rogers barked orders at his shell-shocked men, most of whom had never been quite so close to an enemy mortar attack before.&nbsp; Grabbing men by their jackets and pulling them to their feet, Rogers seemed to utterly ignore the tracer bullets and epic action-movie grade explosions rocking the jungle around him as he personally turned the guns into position, rallied his men, and shouted out firing coordinates and directions.&nbsp; When one enemy mortar shell airbusted right above his damn head, the concussive blast knocking him off his feet and into the dirt below, Rogers didn&rsquo;t even seem concerned &ndash; he popped right back up on his feet, and the burning shrapnel in his body didn&rsquo;t even seem to stop him from completing the sentence he&rsquo;d started right before being blown the hell up.</p>\r\n<p>Almost immediately after this, a call came up from another battery &ndash; the NVA were crawling up their asses, swarming over the sandbagged defenses, and the artillery positions were in danger of being overrun and flanked.</p>\r\n<p>Rogers, a battalion commander who was already bleeding and wounded, organized a small crew of U.S. artillerymen, told them to grab their rifles, and personally led a counterattack straight into the face of a much-larger enemy force.&nbsp; After an intense midnight firefight and the utter confusion hand-to-hand combat where Rogers personally killed a few of the enemy but also took a bullet from an AK-47, his determined attack threw them back and recaptured the gun.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/231693517265/charlescrogers4.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>During the subsequent break in the fighting medics raced over to Rogers, who by now was covered in blood (both his and that of his enemies), but he refused medical treatment &ndash; he was in full-on blood rage berserker mode and a stupid little thing like a couple profusely bleeding bullet and shrapnel wounds weren&rsquo;t going to keep him from single-handedly saving the 1<sup>st</sup> Artillery Battalion, 1<sup>st</sup> Infantry Division -- the oldest artillery unit in American history (originally formed by <a href=\"/index.cgi?id=57276631074\">Fat Henry Knox</a>) &ndash; from complete annihilation.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>He knew the fight wasn&rsquo;t over.&nbsp; And he was right.</p>\r\n<p>After a brief break to regroup, the NVA tried a second assault, this time at a different part of the American line.&nbsp; Rogers, rallying his exhausted, bloodied, wounded troops, once again directed a metal storm of artillery shells raining down on the attackers like a pi&ntilde;ata from hell or one of those Ice Storm wizards from <em>Warcraft II</em>.&nbsp; When they got too close for comfort, Rogers regrouped his ad hoc strike team, hurled them into the breaches, and again personally shot up the enemy bad enough that they were forced back to the jungle to regroup.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/231693517265/charlescrogers5.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>By this point dawn was breaking over the jungle.&nbsp; The Vietnamese had one final chance to launch their attack before the sun would deprive them of the cover of darkness.&nbsp; This time, they pulled out all the stops, hurling the last reserves of their exhausted soldiers straight-on into the teeth of the American defenses in a last desperate attempt to crush Firebase Rita to rubble, capture the U.S. artillery pieces that had wrought so much horror on their lines, and turn them against their former owners.</p>\r\n<p>Charles C. Rogers had other ideas.&nbsp; Already twice wounded, and having led two separate counterattacks, he again rallied his men for action.&nbsp; He checked their health, got them resupplied, and personally went up and down the line encouraging them to fight their asses off and hold their positions at all costs.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/231693517265/charlescrogers6.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>This attack was the most brutal.&nbsp; The NVA, charging ahead under mortars and rocket-propelled grenades, filled the jungle with explosions and shrapnel in a desperate final attack.&nbsp; Lt. Col. Rogers stood tall, again directing his troops, but when a Vietnamese mortar shell detonated over one of his howitzers, killing most of the gun crew, this ferocious one-man army sprung into action, personally racing over and manning the gun almost by himself.</p>\r\n<p>Rogers point-blank blasted the enemy at zero elevation, rocking fire straight into the hard-charging enemy forces.&nbsp; Another heavy mortar round blasted his artillery piece, blowing the thing up in his face, knocking him from his feet, and racking his body with twisted metal shrapnel.&nbsp; Unable to stand, and bleeding badly, he continued to shout directions and orders to his men, encouraging them to fight on, directing fire even as medics were tending to his wounds.</p>\r\n<p>The line held.</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/231693517265/charlescrogers7.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>By the time Richard Nixon awarded Charles Calvin Rogers the Medal of Honor in 1970, Rogers had already been back in &lsquo;Nam for a year.&nbsp; He would serve through the rest of the war, then be transferred to Germany, where he was promoted to Major General, given command of NATO&rsquo;s VII Corps Artillery in Berlin, and spent the late 70s and early 80s preparing plans to counter a possible Soviet attack against West Germany.&nbsp; When that didn&rsquo;t look like it would actually ever happen he retired in 1984, got an M.A., and became a Baptist minister.</p>\r\n<p>He remains the highest ranking Black American to ever receive the Medal of Honor.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/231693517265/charlescrogers81.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Links:</p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://aavw.org/served/cmoh_rogers_abstract01.html\">http://aavw.org/served/cmoh_rogers_abstract01.html</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2456411/posts\">http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2456411/posts</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Calvin_Rogers\">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Calvin_Rogers</a></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Sources:</p>\r\n<p>Reef, Catherine.&nbsp; <em>African Americans in the Military</em>.&nbsp; Infobase, 2010.</p>\r\n<p>Sutherland, Jonathan.&nbsp; <em>African Americans at War</em>.&nbsp; ABC-CLIO, 2004.</p>\r\n<p>Tingstrom, Edwin C.&nbsp; <em>Courage and Valor.&nbsp; </em>Xlibris, 2013.</p>','2014-02-24','231693517265','charlescrogers.jpg','charlescrogers-small.jpg','Charles C. Rogers','When the NVA threatened to overrun American artillery at a critical firebase, this 40 year-old math major met them with a bayonet and an assault rifle.',''),('Themistocles','c. 524 BC','459 BC','Athens, Greece','Ancient Greek Admiral','<p>(<em>Note: I was hosptialized yesterday, and even though I\'m home today I\'m really not in any condition to research and write a new badass.&nbsp; I did see a lot of trailers for the new 300 movie while I was laid up, so here\'s a story from <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Badass-Deathmatch-Skull-Crushing-Fistfights-Engagements/dp/0062112341\">Badass: Ultimate Deathmatch</a> talking about the true history of Themistocles and the Battle of Salamis, because it looks like they maaaaay have messed a few thing up in the movie translation)</em></p>\r\n<p>In the years following the Battle of Thymbra, the descendants of Cyrus the Great forged a ridiculously huge empire that covered a good portion of Central Asia, the Middle East, and East Africa, but despite the Persians&rsquo; much-deserved street cred as no-nonsense face-wrecking hardasses, the stubborn Greek city-states of Sparta and Athens still refused to suck it up and submit to the will of their would-be future overlords. In 490 BC the great Persian emperor Darius I tried to pound some sense into their Hellenistic crotches with an obscene amount of club-wielding violence, but his incomprehensibly huge invasion armada of six hundred ships and a hundred thousand soldiers was miraculously defeated outside the city of Marathon when a heavily armored phalanx of ten thousand balls-out (literally&mdash;there wasn&rsquo;t much under those tunic skirts) Athenian warriors met an amphibious landing force ten times their size on the beaches, drove the invaders back to their boats on a crimson tide of severed limbs and mutilated corpses, and then torched the Persian transports for good measure.</p>\r\n<p>A Greek warrior named Themistocles had been on the front lines at the Battle of Marathon, and as he watched the shattered remnants of the fleet limb pack to Persia this grizzled warrior knew that the Persians weren&rsquo;t the sort of guys who were going let a defeat like that go unpunished&mdash;you don&rsquo;t build the largest empire in the world by going home and crying into a plate of hummus every time you lose a battle, and Themistocles knew that if the Greeks wanted to keep the Persian emperor from sailing right back into town and offloading another hundred-thousand-man invasion force 26.2 miles from the Acropolis, Athens needed to clog the Aegean Sea with enough ship-mounted battering rams and pitch-filled firebombs to nuke a small island off the map. Now, in addition to having a name that sort of looks like &ldquo;Testicles,&rdquo; Themistocles also happened to be an archon of Athens, meaning that he was one of a small group of men responsible for the day-to-day governance of the city-state. Well, this guy was so single-mindedly hardcore about building warships that when one of the other dumbass archons defiantly announced that he thought blowing the entire treasury on boat construction projects wasn&rsquo;t really the most totally bitchin&rsquo; idea ever conceived in the history of idiot politicians, Themistocles fabricated a political scandal that resulted in that asshole being disgraced, stripped of his office, and exiled out of town forever, because screw him for not appreciating the awesomeness of fire-breathing battle boats.</p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img src=\"/images/65184208852/Hist5.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>Say what you want about this guy&rsquo;s shady political muckraking, but it turned out that Themistocles was right. Ten years after Marathon, Darius&rsquo;s son Xerxes returned with an obscene amount of arrogance, some daddy issues, one of the coolest names in history, and a force three times the size of the army the Persians had fielded at Marathon&mdash;three hundred thousand warriors and twelve hundred ships all intent on spear-humping the face of every man, woman, and child in Greece. As Athens was evacuated, King Leonidas of Sparta headed out on a fateful journey to stuff the mountain pass at Thermopylae with the rock-hard abs of three hundred screaming Spartans, but as brave as this was, the stand at Thermopylae wouldn&rsquo;t have been all that useful if the Persians had been able to simply load their warriors into ships, sail around the pass, and stab the Greeks in their asses when they weren&rsquo;t looking. Xerxes thought about this, but unfortunately for him one thing stood in the way of the Persian fleet, blocking their path around Thermopylae and forcing the Persians to send thousands of their toughest warriors marching to their horrific deaths in a narrow pass against a heavily entrenched and almost-unkillable Spartan phalanx. That thing was the newly constructed Greek fleet, and the primary object blocking their passage was the gigantic nutsack of the Athenian naval commander Themistocles.</p>\r\n<p>While Leonidas barricaded the only land entrance to Greece with heaping piles of dead bodies, dented breastplates, and empty bottles of baby oil, Themistocles covered the Spartans&rsquo; flank by wedging his two hundred warships into a narrow strait just off the coast of Thermopylae at a place called Artemesium. Outnumbered almost four to one and facing off against an armada crewed by some of the world&rsquo;s best seamen&mdash;the Phoenicians and the Egyptians&mdash;Themistocles used the terrain to his advantage, forcing the Persians to attack in a single-file line, one squadron of ships at a time, ensuring that when the two fleets closed to ramming distance the Persians didn&rsquo;t have any room to maneuver. On three separate occasions Xerxes&rsquo;s admirals attempted to straight-up pimp-slap Themistocles with wild, unruly bum-rushes, but on all three occasions the Athenian hero shoved a battering ram so far up their poop decks that every Persian within fifty miles was coughing up splinters. The Persian admiral, seeing that charging straight on into the Greek fleet was producing roughly the same result as if he had just ordered his ships to set themselves on fire and blitz full speed into some rocks, dispatched one-third of his fleet to circle around the island Themistocles had been using to cover his flank and attack the Greeks from the rear. After a freak storm obliterated the entire expedition, Themistocles was careful to pour one out for Poseidon.</p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img src=\"/images/65184208852/49.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>When word came down that Leonidas and the Spartans had finally ended up on the bad end of the ol&rsquo; stabbity-stab and that their crucified corpses were now being used as delightfully macabre decorations outside the pass at Thermopylae, Themistocles was forced to pull the fleet back. The Persians immediately started sprinting their way across Greece, burning and plundering and kicking the crapballs out of everything in their path, but, thankfully, by this point most of the residents of those doomed towns had already evacuated to safety. The Persian war machine was still plowing along, however, and hard-hitting warmongers like Themistocles don&rsquo;t exactly take it all that well when foreign invader sons-of-bitches come in and start ravaging their countryside like frat boys on homecoming week. In the aftermath of Thermopylae, the Greek leaders ordered Themistocles to set up a blockade to try and slow down the Persian advance, but screw that&mdash;even though he was heavily outnumbered, he wasn&rsquo;t about to run from those bastards, and he sure as hell wasn&rsquo;t going to sit back and turtle up when he should be out there cracking the enemy in the jaw with a flaming two-by-four until they needed skin grafts and steel rebar to wire their mouths shut. Themistocles knew that if he could cripple the Persian navy with one decisive battle, they wouldn&rsquo;t be able to supply their land forces and the entire invasion would completely implode on itself. And so, despite strict orders not to engage the enemy in a full-scale battle, and seemingly unaware that he had a mere 366 triremes staring down an armada of over a thousand Persian warships (they&rsquo;d been reinforced since Artemesium), Themistocles resolved to make a stand. He decided that in a small, narrow inlet known as Salamis, just seven miles from his beloved Athens, he was going to put up a fight that would determine the fate of the war forever&mdash;a no-holds-barred ocean brawl that would be reminiscent of the battlestar <em>Galactica</em> taking on three Cylon basestars in orbit above New Caprica or Rocky Balboa knocking the piss out of Tommy &ldquo;Machine&rdquo; Gunn in that one <em>Rocky </em>movie everyone forgot about.</p>\r\n<p>First, Themistocles positioned almost all of his ships inside the inlet of Salamis (which I now have it on good authority is <em>not</em> pronounced the same way you would refer to multiple slices of salami). He made damned sure that the Persians knew exactly where they could come to find him, and then he started spreading BS rumors about how Greek morale was in the toilet and how the Athenians had all lost the will to fight and were now considering abandoning war altogether and enrolling in quilt-making classes at the local fabric store. The Persian admirals knew that the destruction of Themistocles&rsquo;s fleet would spell the end of Greece once and for all, and so, when dawn arose one crisp September morning, the Greek crews looked to the horizon and saw the entire Persian navy plowing through the bottlenecked entrance to the inlet at full speed, anxious to crush Themistocles before he could get away&nbsp; and regroup. Emperor Xerxes himself, confident that the end of the war was at hand, had a golden throne positioned high on the rocks above the inlet so he could witness the final defeat of Greece personally, laugh his ass off the whole time, and then urinate down onto the ashes of Athens as it burned into charcoal.</p>\r\n<p>The Greeks took one look at this armada, hesitated for a second, and then promptly ran for it like bitches.</p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img src=\"/images/65184208852/NH_0705_Stake.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>The Persians, already tasting their sweet, delicious, cinnamon-infused victory, greedily broke ranks and pursued the fleeing Greek fleet as fast as they could, each ship&rsquo;s commander looking to seek glory for himself by destroying as many of the enemy as possible as they ran for it like cowards in the face of unstoppable Persian might.</p>\r\n<p>But then something incredible happened. Almost in unison, the Greek ships suddenly stopped running. In one motion, Themistocles&rsquo;s triremes quickly wheeled around with chilling precision and formed up immediately into perfect battle lines. Just like that, the Athenian commander now found himself at the helm of a spearhead of wooden vengeance, staring down his ship&rsquo;s battering ram at a disorganized mass of Persian ships all crushed together inside a narrow, tiny inlet without any place to maneuver or escape.</p>\r\n<p>If this were a movie, this is the part where we&rsquo;d get the close-up shot of the Persian admiral looking surprised and shouting:</p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img src=\"/images/65184208852/original.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>Naval battles in antiquity were totally sweet because they were little more than aquatic demolition derbies with arrows, battering rams, and gigantic shipboard flamethrowers smashing the crap out of each other in a semi-anarchistic explosion of destruction. Essentially, it worked like this: a fleet of insane wooden deathtraps masquerading as warships would load up with enough sword-swinging warriors to choke a Rancor, cram their holds full of volatile, unstable explosives, and then sail around at top speed with the single-minded goal of crashing head-on into an enemy ship, punching a hole in its hull, lighting it on fire, and then lowering a boarding plank so the marines could start carving their names on the skulls of the poor chumps on the opposing ship. It was like a homicidal fiery cross between a monster truck rally and a really spirited game of bumper boats, and in this no-holds-barred, <em>Beyond Thunderdome</em> arena of nautical face annihilation, Themistocles was like the Classical Age equivalent of Truckzilla&mdash;the twenty-story-tall, fire-breathing, dinosaur-shaped robot that lives only to devour hope and frighten children and that gets its nutrition from a steady diet of late-1980s model sedans and the unclean souls of wretched humans hurled forth into its unforgiving diabolical chomping steel jaws.</p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img src=\"/images/65184208852/337065SALAMISCROP.JPG\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>In the seasickness-inducing aquatic anarchy off the coast of Salamis that day, Themistocles was right in the middle of the action, punching Persian vessels into wreckage with his prow and ruining the ass of Xerxes&rsquo;s once-proud fleet in an epically spectacular fashion. Those Persian ships that weren&rsquo;t disintegrated by battering rams or set ablaze by flaming arrows either ran ashore on the rocks or had their decks swarmed by armored Greek warriors anxious to get their murder on. The Persian admiral&rsquo;s flagship was sunk in the early minutes of the fight (taking him down with it), further contributing to the hair-pulling WTF disorder among their ranks, and before long all Emperor Xerxes could do was scream maniacally from his golden throne and swear like a sailor as he helplessly watched the Greek formation drive a wedge of hull-obliterating ruination through his entire fleet. The Persian armada fell into disarray; their ships started accidentally crashing into each other, and the entire Persian fleet was bludgeoned into flotsam in the matter of hours, leaving nothing but a floating slick of blood and grease on the water&rsquo;s surface. Xerxes, afraid for his own safety and disgusted by his navy&rsquo;s poor showing, ran away and headed home, abandoning the entire invasion force to their fate. Victory was now impossible. The Persians, unable to bring supplies or reinforcements to the battlefront due to Themistocles&rsquo;s complete control of the seas, were overrun by a Greek counterattack, and it would take less than a year for the Greeks to recapture their homeland from the invaders.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">&nbsp;<img src=\"/images/65184208852/A005965.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>','2014-03-01','65184208852','Beeld,_Themistocles_-_Unknown_-_20408396_-_RCE.jpg','Illustrerad_Verldshistoria_band_I_Ill_116.png','Themistocles','Athenian commander who took on the full might of the Persian Navy in the final defense of his homeland.','Forward, sons of the Greeks! Liberate the fatherland, liberate your children, your women, the altars of the gods of your fathers and the graves of your forebears: Now is the fight for everything. —Aeschylus, Persians\r\n'),('Wayne O\'Mahoney','c. 1973','N/A','Charleston, England, UK','21st-century British Vigilante','<p>You know how I always love to talk about great face-smashing heroes from history going completely balls-out in a single-minded badass rage to destroy all who oppose them in a cataclysm of neck-snapping Charles Bronson street justice?</p>\r\n<p>Take a look at this:</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/88960720117/omahoney1.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>This is a security camera photo of 41-year-old naked English Lance Corporal Wayne O&rsquo;Mahoney beating the shit out of three knife-wielding assholes who stupidly attempted to jack his girlfriend&rsquo;s brand new car in the middle of the night and didn&rsquo;t expect to be pummeled ruthlessly in the skull with a crowbar being swung from a big, sweaty, completely naked British dude with a ballsack larger than all three of their brains combined.</p>\r\n<p>Do I have your attention?</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/88960720117/omahoney2.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>It was still pitch-black in the early morning hours of April 2, 2011, when a heavy steel-toed boot abruptly and repeatedly smashed against the front door of Lance Corporal Wayne O&rsquo;Mahoney&rsquo;s apartment in Salford, England.&nbsp; Three douchebag career criminal asshole thieves, dressed head-to-toe in black and sporting hardcore-looking ski masks like something out of a bank heist movie, quickly busted in the door, blasting it off the hinges with their boots and forcing their way into the apartment.</p>\r\n<p>Wayne O&rsquo;Mahoney, a no-bullshit, tough-as-nails British Army artillerist and Iraq War veteran, had been sleeping naked with his girlfriend upstairs &ndash; which is always an amazing way to start any story involving a guy&rsquo;s badass exploits.&nbsp; The sudden impact of the door being smashed to splinters by a trio of gangsters jolted him awake, and within a split second the Lance Corporal&rsquo;s mind flipped from &ldquo;kicking back in bed with a hot naked chick&rdquo; to &ldquo;time to wake up and kill the fucking shit out of some asshole terrorists with my bare hand.&rdquo;</p>\r\n<p>He leapt up, slammed his feet on the hardwood, took two steps, and flung himself down the stairs towards the first fucking thing he could see.</p>\r\n<p>As far as I can guess, the last goddamned thing the hardened , knife-wielding, ski-mask-clad thief at the bottom of the stairs expected to see at five o&rsquo;clock in the morning was a big naked 40-year-old British dude sailing down a flight of steps at him like a big naked Macho Man Randy Savage.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/88960720117/omahoney3.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>O&rsquo;Mahoney, livid with righteous naked fury, sailed through the night sky with all the grace of E.T.&rsquo;s bicycle ride, his air strike Death from Above crosshairs set on the unsuspecting dipshit below.&nbsp; Desperate to defend his home and his girl, and completely over-the-top Big Mac Attack out of his goddamned mind, the British Army vet utterly disregarded the deadly weapon being brandished at him, tackled the thief to the deck, and proceeded to pound his fucking ass with a series of epic face-punches.&nbsp; The guy called to his buddies, screaming for them to aid him from the merciless pounding he was receiving, but those cowards immediately took one look at this shit and were like &ldquo;fuck this&rdquo;, bolting in different directions out the front door of the house.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The thief, squirming free from O&rsquo;Mahoney and Little Wayne, took one more good shoryuken to the nutsack and then followed them out the door.</p>\r\n<p>But O&rsquo;Mahoney wasn&rsquo;t done teaching them a lesson just yet.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/88960720117/omahoney4.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>As Wayne raced to the door, he came to the horrible realization that while those assclowns were in his house one of the thugs had grabbed the keys to his girlfriend&rsquo;s brand-new car &ndash; and that asshole was now using them to unlock the driver&rsquo;s side door.</p>\r\n<p>The driver&rsquo;s side door of the <em>brand new fucking car</em> <em>Wayne had just bought that morning</em>.&nbsp; The factory-stock SEAT Leon had cost five figures and had about twenty miles on the odometer.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>This guy sure as shit wasn&rsquo;t getting away with it intact.&nbsp; Wayne would make sure of that.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/88960720117/omahoney5.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Wayne O&rsquo;Mahoney, still rocking the no-clothes look, ran to his front door and threw open the lid of the toolbox he kept by the door.&nbsp; He grabbed the first thing he could find &ndash; a small crowbar &ndash; and charged over to the car brandishing it like it was goddamned Excalibur and he was the King Arthur of smashing thugs&rsquo; brains in with a tire iron.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>As he approached the car at speeds roughly approaching the Earth&rsquo;s escape velocity, Wayne caught a glimpse of the thief sitting in the driver&rsquo;s seat.&nbsp; The guy was waving a big knife around like hey dude stay the hell away from me in a desperate attempt to look like he wasn&rsquo;t about two seconds away from shitting his pants and ruining the upholstery.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>O&rsquo;Mahoney didn&rsquo;t give a fuck.&nbsp; He smashed out the driver&rsquo;s-side window of his own brand new car with a single running swing from his crowbar, showering the thug with broken glass and misery.&nbsp; Like a true badass, Wayne O&rsquo;Mahoney would rather fucking destroy his new car with his bare hands than watch some asshole Rolling Stones-hating anti-Brit terrorist Jackson his shit, and that is of course something we should all be able to appreciate.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/88960720117/omahoney6.gif\" alt=\"\" /><br /> Dramatic interpretation.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>With the window smashed to shit, Wayne O&rsquo;Mahoney reached in, grabbed the stunned thug by his stupid neck, and then proceeded to righteously punch him repeatedly in the face and head over and over again without mercy.&nbsp; Bashing this guy&rsquo;s skull with a devastating series of completely-nude fist-punches to the dome, the British Army war hero showed that would-be car thief that Grand Theft Auto might be a fun video game and all, but when you fuck with the wrong innocent bystander you&rsquo;d better be prepared to reap the consequences.&nbsp; With your face.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>O&rsquo;Mahoney, who, oh yeah, had been put on medical leave from the Army for a fractured goddamned scapula, didn&rsquo;t even seem to notice that he was breaking this guy&rsquo;s head <em>while punching him on broken fucking shoulder</em>.&nbsp; With a soundtrack that closely mirrored a <em>Mortal Kombat </em>arcade game, Wayne continued waling on that douchebag until finally the carjacker had enough, managed to break free from Wayne&rsquo;s grasp, slid over to the passenger seat, fled the vehicle, and ran off down the street screaming and crying and urinating uncontrollably.&nbsp; Presumably this bastard still has nightmares about Wayne O&rsquo;Mahoney&rsquo;s junk.&nbsp; We can only hope.</p>\r\n<p>Awesomely, it was only after the entire battle had ended and the neighbors had come out to see what the commotion was about that Lance Corporal O&rsquo;Mahoney realized he&rsquo;d forgot to put on pants or anything.&nbsp; When he realized why he was getting all the funny looks from his friends, family, and neighbors, this adrenialine-charged, never-give-a-fuck hardass just shrugged, went inside, and curled back up next to his girlfriend.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/88960720117/omahoney7.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Links:</p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-12978065\">http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-12978065</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2003018/Salford-soldier-Wayne-OMahoney-tackles-knife-wielding-robber-stark-naked-street.html\">http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2003018/Salford-soldier-Wayne-OMahoney-tackles-knife-wielding-robber-stark-naked-street.html</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/naked-soldier-leaps-from-his-bed-to-stop-857915\">http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/naked-soldier-leaps-from-his-bed-to-stop-857915</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://metro.co.uk/2011/06/14/manchester-cctv-shows-naked-wayne-omahoney-tackling-car-thieves-42995/\">http://metro.co.uk/2011/06/14/manchester-cctv-shows-naked-wayne-omahoney-tackling-car-thieves-42995/</a></p>','2014-03-07','88960720117','omahoney.jpg','omahoney-small.jpg','Wayne O\'Mahoney','41 year-old naked British Army vet beats the hell out of three guys trying to jack his car.','\"I thought, someone\'s in my house, without my permission. They better bring an army.\"'),('Trieu Thi Trinh','c. 225','248','Thanh Hoa Province, Vietnam','Ancient Vietnamese Warrior','<p>Trieu Thi Trinh was a hardcore Vietnamese battle-queen who tried to liberate her people from Chinese imperial aggression by thundering into combat mounted on the back of a colossal war elephant while clad in golden armor and carrying a blood-soaked sword in each hand.&nbsp; In her now-legendary quest to save her country from oppressive invaders, this determined rebel war-goddess terrified her enemies with so much estrogen-charged nitro human massacre-ation that after she died the enemy commander completely lost his shit and carved a hundred dicks into this walls of his headquarters to protect himself from having his nightmares repeatedly haunted by her vengeful restless spirit.</p>\r\n<p>By 248 AD the armies of Imperial China had been firmly emplanted in the Vietnamese jungle for over 200 years, yet for some reason the wildly-oppressed and insanely-pissed Viet people still hadn&rsquo;t really softened up to the idea of chafing under the suffocating yoke of foreign aggression.&nbsp; When the Han Dynasty collapsed in the year 220, the Viet people tried to rebel, but without an organized resistance they were crushed by the Kingdom of Wu in an unspeakable pointy beatdown, and the Vietnamese ruling family was deposed and replaced by guys who were much less likely to try and start shit with the constantly-ball-crushing armies of Imperial China.</p>\r\n<p>This, of course, did not stop the Viet from wanting vengeance.&nbsp; And freedom.&nbsp; And preferably both at the same time, served cold with a big bowl of Pho and maybe a sweet roll or something.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/72264235774/ladytrieu1.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> This is an African Elephant, but you get the idea.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Details of Lady Trieu&rsquo;s life are all over the place, but as far as we can tell she was orphaned at an early age and was raised by her brother and her brother&rsquo;s brutally-unlikeable wife, who was a horrible witch.&nbsp; In a story that sounds like something out of a badass kung fu grindhouse movie, when Trieu was 19 she killed her evil sister-in-law in a straight-up hardcore backwoods street fight, fled into the wilderness, climbed a mountain, and spent the next several months training herself how to become an even more efficient human killing machine so that she could destroy the Chinese and liberate her people once and for all.&nbsp; When the men of the Province heard that there was some awesome hardcore babe living on a mountain punching trees and riding elephants and doing other tremendous feats of girl-manliness, they flocked to join her cause because that shit sounded awesome.&nbsp; Before long, Lady Trieu commanded an army of over a thousand warriors eager to paint the jungles red with human blood for their homeland.</p>\r\n<p>Trieu&rsquo;s recently-widowered brother didn&rsquo;t really like the idea of his lil&rsquo; sis kicking off peoples&rsquo; heads and punching his girlfriend, so he climbed the mountain to tell Lady Trieu to chill the fuck out, get married, and start having kids like a normal medieval woman.&nbsp; Trieu, burning with rage at the occupation of her homeland, responded with a pump up speech so over-the-top pump-up hardcore that her brother was all like, &ldquo;yeah dude, fuck it, I&rsquo;m in.&nbsp; Where you keep the swords in this place.&rdquo;</p>\r\n<p>In the spring of 248 AD, the last thing the Chinese occupation forces expected to see charging out of the jungle was a pissed-off battle-babe riding a stampeding elephant and leading a swarming army of hardcore swordsmen who&rsquo;d spent the last six months training on top of a mountain somewhere.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/72264235774/ladytrieu2.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br />TRUNKS OUT BABY<br /><br /></p>\r\n<p>Screaming into the battlefield with dual swords, Trieu and her army overran the enemy positions, driving the government forces back.&nbsp; The Chinese-appointed Vietnamese leaders appealed to China for help, and the King of Wu responded with a huge flood of warriors, but Trieu Thi Trinh took on all comers in an epic string of battles across Southeast Asia.&nbsp; Known as &ldquo;The Lady General Clad in Golden Robe,&rdquo; (a sweet nickname), Lady Trieu engaged the Chinese in several battles (some say as many as thirty) over the next six months, not only facing the enemy with guerilla attacks, but also launching full-scale assaults at walled cities &ndash; something few other Viet revolutionaries had ever done against the Chinese.</p>\r\n<p>With her hardcore deeds of impeccable awesomeness inspiring the people and pumping everyone up, a bunch of insane legends started to sprout up about the mysterious Lady Trieu who was running around on a pachyderm pimp-slapping the enemy up and down the South China Sea.&nbsp; By the time her story was written down a few years after her death, Trieu went from an ordinary warrior woman to some kind of ultra-heroic other-wordly Goddess of War who was super hot, stood nine feet tall and and had three breasts, <em>Total Recall </em>style, which were so huge that she had to sling them over her shoulder to fight or strap them down with some mega sports bra.&nbsp; I can&rsquo;t really decide if this is the girl version of &ldquo;he needed a wheelbarrow to carry his balls around,&rdquo; or if they were just <a href=\"http://unrealitymag.com/index.php/2012/08/17/a-gallery-of-rob-liefleds-anatomical-abominations/\">Rob Liefled</a>&rsquo;ing her out superhero-style, but I guess it doesn&rsquo;t matter.&nbsp; Legends also claim she had a voice that rang out as clear as a temple bell even over the din of a raging battlefield, and that after several battles the Chinese would flee at the sight of her because &ldquo;it would be easier to fight a tiger than face Lady Trieu in battle.&rdquo;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/72264235774/ladytrieu3.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Lady Trieu stormed through Vietnam during the spring and summer of 248 AD, leading one of the most successful and widespread resistances to Chinese occupation that Vietnam would ever undertake.&nbsp; Unfortunately, Trieu&rsquo;s armies were not equipped for siege warfare, so rather than assault most of the walled cities they were forced to make camp and lay siege &ndash; a bad place to be if you&rsquo;re an under-equipped peasant army.&nbsp; The King of Wu bribed some of her men away, others got bored and left, and when the weather started to change, even more had to go home to sow their fields so their families wouldn&rsquo;t starve in the winter.&nbsp; Weakened by the rapid loss of manpower, Trieu&rsquo;s armies became vulnerable. &nbsp;She was attacked, defeated, and surrounded, and drowned herself in a river to avoid capture.</p>\r\n<p>One Vietnamese chronicle says that the Chinese discovered Lady Trieu&rsquo;s one weakness was that she was grossed out by dongs, so the Chinese ran into battle totally naked and she couldn&rsquo;t handle it, but that seems like a stretch.&nbsp; Plus they already used that excuse when they talked about the <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tr%C6%B0ng_Sisters\">Trung Sisters</a> 200 years earlier.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/72264235774/ladytrieu4.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Even in death, Lady Trieu continued her patriotic acts of badassitude.&nbsp; It started with the commander of the Chinese army, who, as I mentioned, had a psychotic existential meltdown and was terrorized by nightmares of the Viet warrior-queen for the rest of his life.&nbsp; It literally got so bad that he ordered a hundred wooden dicks be carved into the outside of his headquarters building to frighten her away (I&rsquo;m sure the Imperial artisans were like, &ldquo;Sure buddy, <em>that&rsquo;s </em>why you put in that work order&hellip;).&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>In later years, Lady Trieu is also said to have been in the dreams of other revolutionary Viet heroes like <a href=\"/index.cgi?id=64704252382\">Tran Hung Dao</a>, materializing to give him advice kind of like when Babe Ruth shows up in Bennie the Jet&rsquo;s bedroom in <em>The Sandlot, </em>only instead of tips on his batting stance she gave him hints on how to fight guerilla war against the bloody Mongol invasion.&nbsp; The government of Vietnam tried to write Trieu Thi Trinh out of public memory in the mid-15<sup>th</sup> century, when Neo-Confucianism took hold and issued a blanked &ldquo;No Girls Allowed&rdquo; rule in their history books, but legends like hers don&rsquo;t just fade away.&nbsp; To this day, 800 years later, several shrines exist to honor her spirit, a bunch of streets are named after her, and the elephant-riding woman badass is still considered one of the greatest national heroes in Vietnamese history.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/72264235774/ladytrieu5.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br />Lady Trieu postage stamp.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Links:</p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://asianhistory.about.com/od/vietnam/p/Lady-Trieu-Vietnam.htm\">http://asianhistory.about.com/od/vietnam/p/Lady-Trieu-Vietnam.htm</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.amazingwomeninhistory.com/trieu-thi-trinh-the-vietnamese-joan-of-arc/\">http://www.amazingwomeninhistory.com/trieu-thi-trinh-the-vietnamese-joan-of-arc/</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Tri%E1%BB%87u\">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Tri%E1%BB%87u</a></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Sources:</p>\r\n<p>Marr, David G.&nbsp; <em>Vietnamese Tradition on Trial, 1920-1945</em>.&nbsp; University of California Press, 1984.</p>\r\n<p>Miles, Rosalind and Robin Cross.&nbsp; <em>Warrior Women</em>.&nbsp; Quercus, 2013.</p>\r\n<p>Olsen, Kirstin.&nbsp; <em>Chronology of Women&rsquo;s History</em>.&nbsp; Greenwood, 1994.</p>\r\n<p>Smith, Bonnie G.&nbsp; <em>The Oxford Encyclopedia of Women in World History</em>.&nbsp; Oxford Univ. Press, 2008.</p>','2014-03-14','72264235774','ladytrieu.jpg','ladytrieu-small.jpg','Trieu Thi Trinh','19 year-old Vietnamese girl kills a person, trains in forest, raises army, fights Chinese while riding a war elephant.','\"I only want to ride the wind and walk the waves, slay the big whales of the Eastern sea, clean up frontiers, and save the people from drowning. Why should I imitate others, bow my head, stoop over and be a slave? Why resign myself to menial housework?\"'),('Eugène François Vidocq','July 23, 1775','May 11, 1857','Arras, France','19th-century French Detective','<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span style=\"mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;\">When Eug&egrave;ne Fran&ccedil;ois Vidocq wasn&rsquo;t pulling off badass heists, humping every woman in sight, killing people by planting his rapier in their chests in hardcore back-alley fencing duels instigated for the slightest offenses, and/or doing all three of these things at the same time, you could probably find him either locked up in the nearest penitentiary, fleeing from the law, or wading through the battlefields of the French Revolution knee-deep in dead Austrians with a fixed bayonet, a musket full of buckshot, and a murderous gaze in his eyes.</span></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Not exactly the sort of man you&rsquo;d expect to become the founder of the French National Police, the father of modern forensic science, the first true police detective, and the inspiration characters ranging from Sherlock Holmes to Inspector Javert to <a href=\"http://www.boomtron.com/2011/07/badass-of-the-week-batman/\">Batman</a>.</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: center;\" align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/42554895836/vidocq1.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> You gotta ask yourself a question.<br /> Do I feel lucky?<br /> Well?<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>Do ya, punk?</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">One of six kids growing up in a fairly wealthy household, Eugene Vidocq was a total bastard when he was younger.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>After being busted a couple times for stealing knick-knacks from his own family, Vidocq eventually ran away from home at the age of 14, joined a traveling carnival for a while, and eventually enlisted in the Bourbon Regiment so he could fight in the Wars of the French Revolution.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>He was on the front lines at the Battle of Valmy, when the French defeated the Austrians and Prussians, and when this guy wasn&rsquo;t capping Teutonic freedom-hating Imperials in the eye socket with a musketball he spent most of his free time becoming the most hardcore swordfighter in all of France.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>An expert fencer who kicked ass with a ferocity and a nastiness that brutally overpowered his significantly-wimpier enemies, Vidocq eventually became known as <em style=\"mso-bidi-font-style: normal;\">Le Vautrin</em>, meaning, &ldquo;the <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/warthog.html\">wild boar</a>,&rdquo; and leave it to the friggin&rsquo; French to have a flowery-sounding word to describe a goddamned warthog.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>After serving with distinction in several battles, winning fifteen duels, killing three men in swordfights, and getting sweet scar across his face, Vidocq was promoted to Corporal of Grenadiers, but was court-martialed at his own promotion ceremony when he cold-cocked his Sergeant Major in his stupid face after that idiot offended his honor and refused to fight him in a duel.</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Rather than be court-martialed and executed for insubordination, Vidocq went AWOL, changed his name, re-joined the Army with the 11<sup>th</sup> Chasseurs Regiemtn, and fought the Holy Roman Empire at the Battle of Jamappes.</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: center;\" align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/42554895836/vidocq2.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> This is what beating the shit out of someone looked like<br /> in the late 18<sup>th</sup> century.</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Eugene Vidocq left the army just around the time Napoleon Bonaparte was getting ready to show up, retiring in 1795 at the age of 20.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>For the next ten years he walked the land like Jules Winnfield, banged a bunch of chicks, got married, got separated, and settled in to a nice lucrative life of crime in Brussels.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>His robbery, forgery, and other dastardly deeds of deviousness landed Vidocq in jail a couple times, but every damn time they put him in the pen he came up with some brilliant plan to bust outta there &ndash; including one time he busted out while disguised as a nun and another time when he jumped out a third-story window into a river and swam across to the other shore.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>In the decade or so he was on the run from the law Vidocq spent time living in a gypsy camp, working as a sailor on a Dutch pirate ship, and studying under a master of the French martial art <a href=\"http://bigstickcombat.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/what-is-savate-300x241.jpg\">savate</a>, but eventually the cops caught up with him and sentenced the hot-headed career thief to death for being such a total bastard all the time.</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">It was while he was appealing his death sentence that 34 year-old Eugene Francois Vidocq decided to turn his life around.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>Facing his own mortality, he decided that instead of being hanged or guillotined, he&rsquo;d offer up his services to the police as a spy and an informant.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Police work would never be the same again.</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: center;\" align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/42554895836/vidocq3.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> <img src=\"/images/42554895836/vidocq3a.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> Basically a day in the life of Inspector Vidocq.</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">At first, Vidocq just used his prison and underworld connections to gather intel and data on bad guys &ndash; both what they were planning to do in the future, and what crimes they&rsquo;d already committed.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>Before long, however, the guys in charge realized the Vidocq had an incredible ability to gather a ridiculous amount of information on perpetrators, and before long they let him loose to crack down on crime across all of France.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>Using disguises, fake ID&rsquo;s, surveillance of suspects, a photographic memory for faces and some good old-fashioned white-knuckle undercover intelligence gathering &ndash; none of which had ever been done in police work before &ndash; Vidocq was handing out warrants like parking tickets and busting more crooks than a <em style=\"mso-bidi-font-style: normal;\">Law &amp; Order </em>marathon being played on an old-ass TV at your grandma&rsquo;s house where scrambled reruns of <em style=\"mso-bidi-font-style: normal;\">CSI: Miami </em>pop in during the commercial breaks and your uncle is being handcuffed by the feds on your front lawn. <span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp;</span>His mind-bending success tracking down criminals in back alleys, busting up robbery rings, and face-punching scumbags unconscious while wearing an awesome-looking top hat was so impressive that the French government eventually gave him free run to do whatever he needed to do across all of France.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>In 1811 they put him in charge of his own task force, known as the Surete Nationale, which was basically the first national police force in any country in the world.</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Today the Surete is known as the French National Police.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>It&rsquo;s basically their FBI.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>Here&rsquo;s a picture of them in action:</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: center;\" align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/42554895836/vidocq4.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> (Cue dramatic slow-mo shot and wailing guitar solo)</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Commanding a force of 28 detectives, almost all of whom were former criminals like himself, Vidocq executed hundreds of arrests on gangsters, assassins, and con men across France.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>Tracking down punks on foot, getting into fistfights, chasing guys through crowded streets, and negotiating harrowing undercover deals, Vidocq and his men almost single-handedly reduced crime 40% in 8 years through a series of groundbreaking police techniques that are basically still standard operating procedure today.</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Vidocq was the first guy to use forensic science to help him solve crimes.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>He took shoe impressions at crime scenes using plaster of paris.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>He invented the indelible ink they still use on paper money today, using it as a way to help him identify forgeries.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>He removed bullets from corpses and compared them to alleged murder weapons, which seems like basic common sense, but was completely revolutionary shit in fucking 1811 when most murder weapons were flintlock pistols that took forty-five seconds to load and only gave you one shot.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>To put this shit in perspective, Eugene Vidocq was checking bullets for caliber and striations sixty-five years before the first police officer ever dusted for a fingerprint.</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: center;\" align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/42554895836/vidocq5.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">As a one-time crook himself, Vidocq also understood the importance of understanding the criminal mind in order to beat him.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>He made notes on people he&rsquo;d arrested, found new and exciting ways to get information out of them through interrogations, and began one of the first criminal databases when he began recording data from all of his arrests and indexing them on notecards.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>When bad shit went down, Vidocq was the only guy on the planet who had the ability to pull up an index card with the suspect&rsquo;s name, aliases, physical description, and typical modus operandi, which meant he was about five thousand light years ahead of any other cop in the world when it came to solving a crime.</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">It&rsquo;s no wonder that when Scotland Yard was founded 18 years after Surete, they sent their top brass to Paris to study detective shit first-hand from Eugene Francois Vidocq.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>Or that when the New York Police Department became one of the first permanent law enforcement organizations in the United States in 1845, their commanders spent two weeks living with Vidocq even though he was 70 years old and had been retired for two decades.</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: center;\" align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/42554895836/vidocq6.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: center;\" align=\"center\">Detective Move #1:<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>PUNCH FACE<br /> THEN TAUNT HIS UNCONSCIOUS CORPSE IN GERMAN</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">After 20 years on the force, Detective Vidocq retired from his position at the age of 58 and founded a paper factory that gave hard-on-their-luck ex-cons a decent respectable place to work.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>Awesomely enough, Vidocq was still wanted as a fugitive, and had been the entire time he was working as a cop, but the French government eventually got that shit dismissed and cleared his name.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>Vidocq went back to the force and ran the Surete again for a few years, but eventually retired and founded the world&rsquo;s first private detective agency, tracking down embezzlers, burglars, and other bastards the cops didn&rsquo;t have time to bust.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">A huge celebrity across France for his amazing deeds beating the shit out of crooks and dragging their bludgeoned asses to court to face justice, Vidocq hung out with writers like Alexandre Dumas, Victor Hugo, and Honore Balzac (who I mention not because I know anything about him but because his name looks like &ldquo;ballsack&rdquo;), served as an inspiration for guys like Poe, Melville, Dickens, and Arthur Conan Doyle, and seriously continued having sex with basically every single woman in the greater Paris metropolitan area.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>He died in 1857 at the age of 82.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Modern police are still using his techniques 157 years later.</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: center;\" align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/42554895836/vidocq7.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Links:</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><a href=\"http://www.vidocq.org/vidocq.html\">http://www.vidocq.org/vidocq.html</a></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><a href=\"http://www.strandmag.com/vidoq.htm\">http://www.strandmag.com/vidoq.htm</a></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><a href=\"http://www.crimelibrary.com/gangsters_outlaws/cops_others/vidocq/1.html\">http://www.crimelibrary.com/gangsters_outlaws/cops_others/vidocq/1.html</a> <a href=\"http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/627972/Francois-Vidocq\">http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/627972/Francois-Vidocq</a></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eug%C3%A8ne_Fran%C3%A7ois_Vidocq\">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eug%C3%A8ne_Fran%C3%A7ois_Vidocq</a></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Sources:</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Panek, LeRoy.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span><em style=\"mso-bidi-font-style: normal;\">An Introduction to the Detective Story</em>.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>Popular, 1987.</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Steverson, Leonard A.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span><em style=\"mso-bidi-font-style: normal;\">Policing in America</em>.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>ABC-CLIO, 2008.</p>\r\n<p style=\"mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;\">Wilson, Colin.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span><em style=\"mso-bidi-font-style: normal;\">World&rsquo;s Greatest True Crime</em>.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>Barnes &amp; Noble, 2004.</p>\r\n<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>\r\n <o:OfficeDocumentSettings>\r\n  <o:AllowPNG/>\r\n </o:OfficeDocumentSettings>\r\n</xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>\r\n <w:WordDocument>\r\n  <w:View>Normal</w:View>\r\n  <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom>\r\n  <w:TrackMoves/>\r\n  <w:TrackFormatting/>\r\n  <w:PunctuationKerning/>\r\n  <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/>\r\n  <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>\r\n  <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent>\r\n  <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>\r\n  <w:DoNotPromoteQF/>\r\n  <w:LidThemeOther>EN-US</w:LidThemeOther>\r\n  <w:LidThemeAsian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian>\r\n  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Heading\"/>\r\n </w:LatentStyles>\r\n</xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]>\r\n<style>\r\n /* Style Definitions */\r\n table.MsoNormalTable\r\n	{mso-style-name:\"Table Normal\";\r\n	mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;\r\n	mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;\r\n	mso-style-noshow:yes;\r\n	mso-style-priority:99;\r\n	mso-style-parent:\"\";\r\n	mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt;\r\n	mso-para-margin:0in;\r\n	mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt;\r\n	mso-pagination:widow-orphan;\r\n	font-size:8.0pt;\r\n	font-family:\"Arial\",\"sans-serif\";}\r\n</style>\r\n<![endif]-->','2014-03-21','42554895836','vidocq.jpg','vidocq-small.jpg','Eugene Vidocq','The father of modern detective work.',''),('Joe Greenstein','July 15, 1893','October 8, 1977','Suvalk, Poland','19th-century American Entertainer','<p>I&rsquo;m sitting at my booth at Emerald City Comic Con this weekend (without wi-fi access, which is why this was posted on a Monday instead of over the weekend), and this year, instead of talking about another of my favorite fictional superheroes as I&rsquo;ve done in years past, I&rsquo;ve decided to write the insanely-over-the-top story of a real-life man of steel so ball-shatteringly ridiculous you&rsquo;d think the entire story was the product of a methed-out comic book creator&rsquo;s delirious sunstroke fever dream after he watched too much <em>Samson and Delilah </em>and decided he needed to write about a five-foot-tall Jewish strongman with superhuman strength who punches out gangs of Nazis singlehandedly, throws hardcore dock workers through plate glass windows, and can drive a carpenter&rsquo;s nail through six inches of plywood with his fucking forehead while pulling a jet engine down a city street with his hair.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The Mighty Atom, is that man.&nbsp; A ridiculous, sack-to-the-wall maniac from the glory days of badass old-time strongmen, this guy was world-famous for his insane feats of strength, most of which involved pulling things that were strapped to his hair with chains. &nbsp;And when this ultra-compact mass of bodybuilding superhumanness wasn&rsquo;t changing flat tires with his teeth or biting quarters in half, he was out there in the real world deflecting bullets with his face and walking through unlit alleys in New York City hospitalizing any criminals that were unlucky enough to accidentally try and mug him.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/651068116795/mightyatom1.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>But the Mighty Atom wasn&rsquo;t always a Fascist-pummeling hammer of Judaic justice.&nbsp; Born in Poland in 1893 to a dirt-poor family that barely had two Nutrigrain bars to rub together, Yoselle Greenstein came out six week premature and was so sickly and weak that doctors didn&rsquo;t expect him to survive his infancy.&nbsp; &ldquo;Joe&rdquo; did, but throughout his youth he suffered from chronic asthma and lung problems, and at the age of 14 he came down with tuberculosis and was given six weeks to live.&nbsp; Figuring, fuck it, I&rsquo;m dead anyways, Greenstein left home one night and tried to sneak into a traveling circus that was in town, but when the terrifying carnies who worked there saw this scrawny punk trying to rip them out of a full-price admission they dragged him out of the circus, beat him within an inch of his life, and left him for dead in a muddy alley.</p>\r\n<p>It&rsquo;s not exactly &ldquo;Alien baby Prince of Krypton discovered in Kansas in wreckage of badass spaceship&rdquo;, but it was in this sad condition that Joe met the circus strongman, a guy named Champion Volanko.&nbsp; Volanko, a hardcore master of Feats of Strength who could military press a basket full of hot chicks in each hand while busting out a winning smile under his incredible handlebar mustache, saw this poor bastard trying to crawl home from a righteous asskicking, picked Greenstein up, and took him back to his trailer to let him chill out with a cup of coffee and a Hot Pocket or something.&nbsp; As the two talked, Volanko was impressed by Greenstein&rsquo;s determination, and offered to train him in the fine art of old-time strongman-dom.&nbsp; Joe Greenstein didn&rsquo;t return home, ran away with the circus, and spent the next 18 months traveling Russia, Central Asia, and India learning strongman techniques from Volanko and hardcore Yoga breathing techniques from an Indian strongman named The Great Gama.&nbsp; By the time he returned home, he was a different man.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/651068116795/mightyatom2.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The still-teenage Greenstein returned home, got married to a hot babe, and then left Poland in 1910 because being a Jew in Poland in the years leading up to World War I was really not anybody&rsquo;s definition of a fun time.&nbsp; He went to Galveston, Texas, where he found work as a dock hand, an oil field worker, and one of those guys who lays railroad tracks by smashing giant steel spikes with a ten-pound two-handed sledgehammer.&nbsp; When this guy wasn&rsquo;t unloading cargo containers or fucking up railway spikes with a mallet, he performed shows as a professional wrestler, bodyslamming his opponents back in the day when sideshow wrestling more closely resembled MMA cage fighting than WWE stone-cold stunners.&nbsp; He soon became so well known that he met up with <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/index.cgi?id=425012623235\">Jack Johnson</a> and learned a couple fighting techniques from the future heavyweight champ.</p>\r\n<p>Oh yeah, well remember how I said Joe married a hot chick?&nbsp; While he was in Galveston some asshole co-worker became super fucking obsessed with her, and decided that the only reason she wasn&rsquo;t responding to this idiot&rsquo;s unwanted advances was because she was married.&nbsp; So this guy came to work one day with a .38 revolver and shot Joe Greenstein at point-blank range.</p>\r\n<p>Greenstein walked out of the hospital under his own power that same afternoon.&nbsp; Some sources say his skull was so fucking hard the bullet ricocheted off it, causing minimal damage.&nbsp; Others say the bullet literally flattened on impact with Greenstein&rsquo;s skull, but this seems much harder to believe.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Either way, the legend was growing.&nbsp; Before long, this guy was going to make a living off it.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/651068116795/mightyatom3.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> BALLS OF STEEL</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Not really wanting to be shot in the face any more, Joe Greenstein eventually moved to New York, where the 5&rsquo; 4&rdquo;, 140-pound little man quickly made a name for himself as one of the strongest men on earth.&nbsp; Performing strongman feats for cash on Coney Island, the Mighty Atom drew massive crowds as hundreds and even thousands of people packed in to witness his FEATS OF STRENGTH.&nbsp; He could drive nails through sheet metal with his bare hands.&nbsp; He could change a car tire without tools.&nbsp; He could bend bars with his teeth, bite through steel chains and quarters, and un-bend horseshoes by pushing them against his forehead.&nbsp; In the 30s he laid on a bed of nails, put a plank across his body, and then sat there while a full-size Dixieland band performed show tunes on his chest.&nbsp; In 1928 a Buffalo newspaper mentioned that he secured a Fairchild FC-2 fucking AIRPLANE to his hair with a chain, then held the aircraft in place while the pilot revved the engine up to 30 miles an hour.&nbsp; Another strongman tried this same feat of strength a few years later <em>and died when he scalped himself</em>.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>And ok, yeah, I know that there are tricks and techniques and old-timey movie magic stuff to help out strongmen when they performed their feats of strength.</p>\r\n<p>But, for what it&rsquo;s worth, nobody who saw him in person ever came to any other conclusion than that this guy was the real deal.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><iframe src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/a7jQ-KL2Z_o\" width=\"320\" height=\"240\"></iframe></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>What makes the Mighty Atom so awesome, however, isn&rsquo;t just his ability to disassemble early-model Fords with his chompers or serve as a human stage for barber&rsquo;s shop quartets.&nbsp; It was his the way he dealt with assholes who had a problem with him for some reason or other.&nbsp; Like the early 1930s, a guy pulled a .32 on him and tried to rob him of his strongman money.&nbsp;&nbsp; The Mighty Atom took the gun away from the thug, kicked his ass, and kept the piece in a box in his house with other treasures he&rsquo;d looted off vanquished adversaries during his career.&nbsp; In 1936 a half-dozen drunk longshoremen didn&rsquo;t see what the big deal with Atom was, so they jumped him after a show in a dark alley.&nbsp; The Mighty Atom was stabbed once and hit a couple times, but took control of the situation like the fucking behemoth that he was, throwing a couple of the guys through plate-glass windows and knocking five of the six men unconscious with his fists of stone.&nbsp; The New York World Telegram ran the article on the front page, quoting a responding police officer as saying, &ldquo;we had to save the mob from <em>him</em>!&rdquo;</p>\r\n<p>My favorite example of this kind of thing came in 1939, when The Mighty Atom was walking past the headquarters of the American Nazi Party and took offense at the &ldquo;No Jews Allowed&rdquo; sign they&rsquo;d hung out front.&nbsp; Atom, with his trademarked balls of iron, walked right up to the front door, pulled down the sign, and ripped it in half with his bare hands.&nbsp; An angry mob of roughly twenty hardcore skinhead Nazi sympathizers charged out to beat this guy&rsquo;s ass into a bloody pulp.</p>\r\n<p>The Mighty Atom was not impressed.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/651068116795/mightyatom5a.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>When Joe Greenstein was brought to court to defend himself against charges of Aggravated Assault, Grievous Bodily Harm, and Mass Mayhem (awesome) a few weeks later, the Judge was surprised to see one small man sitting in the defendant&rsquo;s chair, and 18 bandaged, bloodied, and beat-up skinheads on the plaintiff&rsquo;s side.&nbsp; When the Judge asked why there were more plaintiffs listed on the complaint than there were in court, the skinheads said that a few of their people were still in the hospital.</p>\r\n<p>The Judge looked at Greenstein, and asked him about the fight.</p>\r\n<p>Greenstein said, &ldquo;It wasn&rsquo;t a fight, your honor.&nbsp; It was a pleasure!&rdquo;</p>\r\n<p>The Judge blinked twice, said, &ldquo;fuck this shit,&rdquo; and dismissed the case.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/651068116795/mightyatom5.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>As The Mighty Atom, Joe Greenstein spent World War II performing strongman feats to help raise money for War Bonds to fight Hitler and the Nazis.&nbsp; When he wasn&rsquo;t on tour, Greenstein helped out the NYPD, working on drives to recruit men to help staff the under-strength police department, and taught ju-jitsu to the officers in what was one of the first martial arts training programs in American law enforcement history.&nbsp; He didn&rsquo;t ask for or receive payment for any of these things.</p>\r\n<p>The Might Atom continued performing strongman feats well into his 80s, and was featured in things like the Guinness Book and Ripley&rsquo;s Believe It or Not.&nbsp; He sold out Madison Square Garden, taught fighting techniques to the IDF, inspired DC Comics&rsquo; character &ldquo;The Atom&rdquo;, sold his own line of health care products out of the back of his van, wrote some poetry, and had 10 kids with his still-smoking-hot wife.&nbsp; He passed away in 1977 at the age of 84.</p>\r\n<p>Just before his death, he could still be found wandering the streets of New York City alone at night, just hoping some punk would have the guts to try and mug him.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/651068116795/mightyatom6.gif\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Links:</p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://legendarystrength.com/mighty-atom/\">http://legendarystrength.com/mighty-atom/</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.sideshowworld.com/43-SO-MS/Mighty-2/Atom1.html\">http://www.sideshowworld.com/43-SO-MS/Mighty-2/Atom1.html</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.thehumanmarvels.com/joseph-greenstein-the-mighty-atom/\">http://www.thehumanmarvels.com/joseph-greenstein-the-mighty-atom/</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.beezone.com/MightyAtom/the_mighty_atom.html\">http://www.beezone.com/MightyAtom/the_mighty_atom.html</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.beezone.com/MightyAtom/mighty_atom.html\">http://www.beezone.com/MightyAtom/mighty_atom.html</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.onlythemighty.com/2013/03/joseph-greenstein-aka-mighty-atom-nail.html\">http://www.onlythemighty.com/2013/03/joseph-greenstein-aka-mighty-atom-nail.html</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Greenstein\">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Greenstein</a></p>','2014-03-31','651068116795','mightyatom.jpg','mightyatom-small.jpg','The Mighty Atom','Badass old-time strongman who once beat the hell out of 20 Nazis single-handedly.','Breathe deeply. Refuse to be weak. Refuse to be sick. Refuse to die. Think strong and you will be.'),('Classified','Classified','Classified','England, UK','21st-century British Soldier','<p>In the early morning hours of a cold, dark December, a frightening call came through the comms channels at British forward operating base Stega 2 on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border:&nbsp; Intel reports that a large, highly-trained team of Taliban fighters with heavy weapons were planning an ambush on the base, and that the team consisted of at least one suicide bomber with enough explosives strapped to his chest to vaporize sheet metal and craterize the Earth&rsquo;s crust.</p>\r\n<p>Situated in the rocky southern reaches of Afghanistan&rsquo;s brutal Helmand Province, an insurgent-packed district that more closely resembles a <em>Mad Max </em>post-apocalyptic wasteland than the sort of place you&rsquo;d want to spend your Christmas vacation, Stega 2 is nevertheless positioned a critical coalition stronghold overlooking the two major highways through the mountains that link Pakistan to Afghanistan.&nbsp; Basically it&rsquo;s the I-95 of homemade bomb components and AK-47 replacement parts, so it&rsquo;s really not a bad idea to have a couple pairs of eyes doping things out through the scope of a high-powered sniper rifle every once in a while.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/4116936037/britishsniper1.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> Roadside rest stop in Helmand Province, Afghanistan.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The British Army is hoping to be completely out of Afghanistan by the end of 2015, and even today roughly 95% of counter-insurgency operations in the region are being handled by Afghan Army nationals rather than badass deep cover SAS operatives.&nbsp; The Brits are winding down their mission and getting ready to head home, so, naturally, they weren&rsquo;t particularly interested in some jerkwad running into their base with a mini-nuke strapped to his chest and blowing the hell out of them just two days before retirement.&nbsp; Stega 2&rsquo;s commanders immediately scrambled troops to scan for this threat and intercept if possible.</p>\r\n<p>One of the men they called on was a 20 year-old Lance Corporal from the 1<sup>st</sup> Battalion of the elite Coldstream Guards.&nbsp; The Coldstreams, an English unit formed in 1650 as part of Oliver Cromwell&rsquo;s New Model Army, are one of the most elite forces in the UK military and the oldest active-service Regiment in the British Army &ndash; which is no small thing.&nbsp; Part of the Household Division, you probably know the Coldstream Guards best for being those dudes in the red uniforms with the crazy badass hats who stand around guarding the Queen all day, but in the field the 1<sup>st</sup> Battalion is an ultra-hardcore force of counter-insurgent light infantry who have served with distinction in Northern Ireland, the Balkans, Iraq, and Afghanistan.</p>\r\n<p>For security purposes, the Lance Corporal&rsquo;s name is classified.&nbsp; Probably because if a picture of him made the front page of a newspaper the newspaper would immediately catch on fire and burn down three city blocks.&nbsp; So basically let&rsquo;s just assume he&rsquo;s the <a href=\"/snakeeyes.html\">Snake Eyes</a>, only more British.&nbsp; So like he does backflips and wears a mask but will also slam a pint of room-temperature-ale at eleven AM and then punch you in the fucking face if you talk shit about Man U.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/4116936037/britishsniper2.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>In his tenure serving on the front lines in Afghanistan on his deployment, this particular Lance Corporal had already earned a reputation for being something of a skull-crushing badass who could blast your head into gibbed-out chunks of cantaloupe-like substance from a distance so obscene that you&rsquo;d be a smear on the pavement before the Speed of Sound even managed to transmit the sound of the gunshot to your location.&nbsp; Equipped with an awesome new bolt-action L115A3 AWM .338-caliber sniper rifle, the same weapon <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/harrison.html\">Craig Harrison</a> used a few years ago to cap a dude from almost two miles away, The first time this hardcore human killing machine pulled the trigger in combat he planted a round into a Taliban machine gunner from a range of 1,465 yards.</p>\r\n<p>For reference, 1,465 yards is roughly eight-tenths of a mile.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Here&rsquo;s a quick photo reference.&nbsp; The target would be the black square on the white target that is the furthest away.&nbsp; At that range, it takes the bullet over a second to reach the target, and the bullet&rsquo;s trajectory is influenced not only by wind and gravity, but by the goddamned <em>rotational speed of the earth</em>.&nbsp; You think you were the hottest shit since liquid-hot molten volcanic magma because it only took you sixteen tries to snipe that Chernobyl dude in <em>Call of Duty 4</em>?&nbsp; Try this on for size:</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/4116936037/britishsniper4.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> All in a day&rsquo;s work.</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Using drones, patrols, and other methods of recon, the Brits patrolled the area all morning in search of the enemy infiltration team.&nbsp; Then, around 9:30am, just a few clicks out from base, our eagle-eyed Lance Corporal dropped to cover and peered out through his scope at a large group of men heading towards his position.&nbsp; Unable to determine if the group was hostile or friendly, the Lance Corporal radioed in for assistance.&nbsp; Soon a squad of Coldstream Guards began working their way cautiously towards the group.</p>\r\n<p>Then, just as the men in his scope climbed over an outcropping of rocks, he saw it &ndash; an AK-47, barely peeking out from under the man&rsquo;s winder scarf when he lifted his arms.</p>\r\n<p>Moments later, gunfire erupted across the valley as the large group of Taliban whipped out assault rifles and opened fire on the Brits, spraying a hellish curtain of 7.62mm lead in the Coldstreams&rsquo; direction.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The call came back to the Lance Corporal&rsquo;s radio.&nbsp; Roger that, you are clear to engage all hostile forces.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/4116936037/britishsniper3.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Gripping the stock of his rifle as he squinted through the scope, the Lance Corporal flicked off the AWM&rsquo;s safety, took a deep breath, adjusted his scope, double-checked the wind speeds, and calmly drew a bead on the man he&rsquo;d been watching.&nbsp; The Taliban fighter drew his AK, peeked around the rock he was using for cover, and then made a break for a nearby ditch to get in a firing position where he would have a better vantage point to shoot at the Coldstream Guardsmen.</p>\r\n<p>But this Lance Corporal wasn&rsquo;t about to sit there and watch this enemy warrior pick of his guys just a few weeks before they were heading home to their families.&nbsp; Tracking his target as he made a break for open ground, the Lance Corporal lined up the crosshairs, exhaled, and waited.&nbsp; The man crossed the ground, jumping into the ditch, where he linked up with a half-dozen other Taliban fighters who were preparing to organize for an assault.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The British Lance Corporal made one last check, ranging his quarry in at 930 yards.&nbsp; He pulled the trigger.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/4116936037/britishsniper5.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>To the surprise of goddamn near everybody within a mile and a half radius, the enemy soldier completely exploded in a gigantic towering mushroom cloud of fire, shrapnel, and black smoke, bursting into the stratosphere like he&rsquo;d been making out with a Tomahawk missile and accidently pushed the self-destruct button.&nbsp; When the black smoke cleared, the British realized that there was no more gunfire coming from the enemy positions.</p>\r\n<p>Where the Taliban assault team had been assembled there was now a smoking black crater with six dead fighters.</p>\r\n<p>The Lance Corporal&rsquo;s bullet had struck a suicide bomb vest strapped with 44 pounds (!) of homemade bathtub high explosives, somehow detonating whatever insane compound he was using, killing him and six of his friends, and sending the rest of the Taliban force wisely running for the fucking hills.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/4116936037/britishsniper6.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> It would have been marginally safer for the man<br /> if he was just wearing a Jager bomb vest.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Yeah.&nbsp; Forget one shot, one kill&hellip; this was one shot, six kills, and hey guys I just single-handedly won the battle for us with a single bullet from a bolt-action rifle from <em>nine football fields</em> away.&nbsp; Just to put this shit into perspective, 930 yards is a little over a half-mile.&nbsp; It would take you a good 15+ seconds to <em>drive </em>that distance in a <a href=\"http://www.owendmonet.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/2011-Ferrari-458-Italia-Front-Side-Wallpaper-HD-Wallpapers.jpg\">Ferrari 458</a>.&nbsp; If you stood that far away from me and held up an optometrist&rsquo;s seeing-eye chart I wouldn&rsquo;t be able to read the second row for your if I had one of those fucking telescopes you use to observe the moons of Jupiter.&nbsp; Yet this insane ultra-robo marksman somehow lit up a bomb vest full of nitroglycerine with a chunk of metal that measures 8.59 millimeters in diameter. &nbsp;&nbsp;I don&rsquo;t know what the Sabermetrics on this shit would look like, but his K-rate is insane.&nbsp; It&rsquo;s the sort of shot you only see in a cheesy early-90s FPS where every map, regardless of whether it&rsquo;s an enemy base or a bustling city dockyard, is completely saturated with giant red barrels that detonate like claymore mines whenever you accidentally hit them with a crowbar.</p>\r\n<p>The battle took place back in December, but the details were only released two days ago.&nbsp; Presumably the shooter received some kind of Olympic Gold Medal for firing it.&nbsp; Hopefully, at some point, his name will be declassified.&nbsp; But I&rsquo;m OK with it if it never is.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/4116936037/britishsniper7.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Links:</p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/10735666/British-sniper-in-Afghanistan-kills-six-Taliban-with-one-bullet.html\">http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/10735666/British-sniper-in-Afghanistan-kills-six-Taliban-with-one-bullet.html</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.stripes.com/news/1-sniper-1-bullet-6-afghan-insurgents-dead-1.275620#.UzsDm61dVPI\">http://www.stripes.com/news/1-sniper-1-bullet-6-afghan-insurgents-dead-1.275620#.UzsDm61dVPI</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://news.yahoo.com/single-snipers-bullet-killed-six-taliban-104053408.html\">http://news.yahoo.com/single-snipers-bullet-killed-six-taliban-104053408.html</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2593804/British-sniper-kills-six-Taliban-fighters-single-bullet.html\">http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2593804/British-sniper-kills-six-Taliban-fighters-single-bullet.html</a></p>','2014-04-04','4116936037','britishsniper.jpg','britishsniper-small.jpg','One Shot, Six Kills','An unidentified British sniper single-handedly stops a Taliban ambush with just one bullet.',''),('Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck','March 20, 1870','March 9, 1964','Saarlouis, Germany','20th-century German Soldier','<p><em>(Note:&nbsp; This week marks <a href=\"/index.cgi?ccpage=1&amp;ccid=532384410986\">ten years</a> since my first Badass post. Thank you for your support!)</em></p>\r\n<p>Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck was a Tom Selleck-&lsquo;stached badass cigar-chomping World War I German military commander who fought one of the most intense guerilla wars in modern military history, stomping his enemies&rsquo; nutsacks into gibbery wet bits up and down the eastern coast of Africa &nbsp;despite constantly being outnumbered by roughly a factor of seven billion.&nbsp; Which, of course, is pretty fucking weird considering that hopefully you&rsquo;re aware that Germany kind of totally lost World War I, plus most people probably don&rsquo;t even realize that a decent chunk of World War I was fought in Rwanda and Burundi.&nbsp; Yet here was Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, right in the middle of the shit, shouting orders to hardcore Mauser-slinging African tribal infantry in perfect Swahili as they maneuvered through impenetrable jungles preparing to ambush English supply depots at the base of Mount Kilimanjaro.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>A no-bullshit master of backcountry African bush warfare, Lettow-Vorbeck was not only a hero of Germany, but a man who to this day commands the respect of a worthy adversary from the South Africans &ndash; which is damn high praise.&nbsp; And, if that&rsquo;s not enough, after the war he was placed under Nazi surveillance because he personally told Hitler to &ldquo;go fuck himself.&rdquo;&nbsp; Which is literally a direct quote, not just me going off on some foul-mouthed tirade or something.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/79143016174/lettow1.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /><br /></p>\r\n<p>The son of a Prussian Army officer and a minor member of the Prussian nobility, Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck grew up as part of the excellent Imperial German military tradition where every boy old enough to flush a toilet is taught how to disembowel a cuirassier with a razor-sharp cavalry saber.&nbsp; He graduated from the prestigious Imperial Kriegsacademie in 1899, battled machete-swinging Chinese guerillas during the Boxer Rebellion of 1900, and was wounded in the eye and chest by shrapnel while fighting a native African uprising in Namibia in 1904.&nbsp; While getting nailed in the fucking eye by a white-hot shard of twisted metal wasn&rsquo;t exactly the most insanely fun thing this side of riding the Radioactive Nightmare roller coaster at Six Flags Nuclear Post-Apocalyptic Hellhole, Lettow-Vorbeck did get a front-row seat to how hardcore guerillas can really fucking piss off a bunch of front-line, well-equipped European soldiers pretty damn effectively.&nbsp; And he learned some tricks.</p>\r\n<p>When 1914 rolled around, it was pretty goddamned obvious that the entire globe was about to erupt into a catastrophic series of horrific explosions.&nbsp; So the moment he was placed in command of a ridiculously-small infantry unit in German East Africa (present-day Tanzania), Lettow-Vorbeck immediately started preparing for the idea that he would have to single-handedly fight the entire British colonial army in Kenya and Uganda pretty much all by himself.&nbsp; Lettow-Vorbeck&rsquo;s commanding officer was all like, &ldquo;Naw brah chill, we got a treaty in place with the British dudes saying that all the African colonies are gonna remain neutral even if World War I breaks out, so just hit this shit and let&rsquo;s watch <em>SVU</em>,&rdquo; but the lifelong Prussian officer wasn&rsquo;t buying it.&nbsp; He ignored a direct order not to mobilize for war, organized a cadre of 250 German officers to command 2,500 hardcore African tribal warriors known as Askari, and began training his men in how to fight a badass guerilla war against impossible odds.</p>\r\n<p>It turns out that disobeying a direct order was the best thing Lettow-Vorbeck could have done.&nbsp; Because roughly fifteen seconds after the Great War turning into a shooting match, a huge flotilla of British troop transport ships came rolling up on the German-controlled port city of Tanga.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/79143016174/lettow3.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> Let&rsquo;s do this.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The British amphibian assault force that rolled up on Tanga in 1914 outnumbered Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck&rsquo;s army roughly eight to one.&nbsp; It was supported by naval artillery, troop transports, airplane reconnaissance, and when the loading planks slammed down on the Tangan shore they unloaded over ten thousand hardcore British and Indian troops, most of whom immediately barfed from seasickness and then locked and loaded their rifles.</p>\r\n<p>Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, seeing a force eight times his size, withdrew to the jungles surrounding Tanga, ranged in his machine guns, and started spreading out a field of rapid-fire death that sprayed the landing craft with a torrential downpour of hot lead.&nbsp; The British force organized and charged into the jungle after him, but Lettow-Vorbeck&rsquo;s men did as they were trained to do &ndash; they scattered, broke apart into small, mobile, asskicking units of 100-200 men each, and picked apart the disorganized British force piece by piece as they tried to clumsily make their way through the jungle.&nbsp; After blunting their attack, the Germans took over, got the invaders on their heels, pushed them back to their boats, forced them to sail away, and then captured a fucking shit-ton of machine guns, artillery, rifles, and ammunition they&rsquo;d left behind on their way outta town.&nbsp; The British suffered 4,000 casualties in the battle.&nbsp; Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck lost 15 Germans and 54 Askaris.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/79143016174/lettow4.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">On like neckbone.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>After kickflipping the British invasion like a pissed-off 1960s Baptist minister rage-smashing Beatles records over his head, Paul von 44-year-old Colonel Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck moved north into Kenya, where he awesomely became the first and only German military commander in history to ever launch an invasion into British territory.&nbsp; Badly outnumbered, undersupplied, and knowing that his only food was going to come from knife-hunting savannah lions on the Serengeti, Lettow-Vorbeck went to work doing everything in his power to cripple the British infrastructure and wreak havoc on their war effort.</p>\r\n<p>Charging insanely into combat at the head of his force of hardcore African infantrymen drawn from the most warlike tribes of Tanzania, Colonel von Lettow-Vorbeck moved quickly through the savannahs and jungles, surprise-attacked British rail lines in Kenya, bombed communications bases near Mount Kilimanjaro, and destroyed bridges near Lake Victoria with a little more than dynamite and his boner.&nbsp; In his rampage, the Prussian face-smasher even captured a massive cache of weapons and ammo in the Kenyan city of Taveta, making off with crates of captured Enfields and over a million rounds of ammunition.&nbsp; Commanding just 218 officers and 3,000 Askari, Lettow-Vorbeck also fucked up a 100-mile stretch of the Uganda Railway, setting trains and bridges on fire, disrupting the British war effort in Africa, and forcing the Brits to send troops and supplies to Africa when they were supposed to be deploying to the Western Front in Europe.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/79143016174/lettow5.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> Lemme ride that donkey donkay</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The only reinforcements Lettow-Vorbeck received came in 1915, when the German heavy cruiser <em>Konigsberg </em>sunk in the Rufiji Delta and the marooned crew agreed to join Vorbeck&rsquo;s raiders.&nbsp; The always-resourceful Prussian commander got the crew to show him the wreck, then used winches and ropes to hoist out the ship&rsquo;s artillery, raising four 105mm howitzers from the relatively-shallow depths.&nbsp; He forged wheels out of barrels, mounted the guns on them, and augmented his forces with a battery of cannons that were primarily designed to sink naval vessels.</p>\r\n<p>For the next three years, Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck made life a living hell for the British military in Africa.&nbsp; When they sat back, set ambushes, and waited for him to hit a city or a railroad station, he snuck around behind them and burned a supply depot a hundred miles away.&nbsp; When they tried to take the fight into the jungle and hunt him down, they lost thousands of men to malaria, sleeping sickness, and other horrible mosquito-born shit, and then right when they thought they&rsquo;d finally surrounded him Vorbeck would come up behind them, shoot them in the ass with a ship cannon, and then melt back into the jungle without a trace.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/79143016174/lettow6.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>At the Battle of Mahiwa in 1917, he was simultaneously attacked by a force of English, Belgians, and Portuguese who outnumbered him four to one and had him pinned down in an area where he had no choice but to fight, so Lettow-Vorpek personally scouted the battlefield on his bicycle, positioned his unit&rsquo;s machine guns, and not only turned back a direct assault from 5,000 screaming enemy soldiers, but somehow slipped part of his force around, flanked the attackers, and launched an epic Askari bayonet charge, sending his warriors screaming across the field towards machine gunners armed only with a sharpened iron stake attached to the end of their rifle.&nbsp; In intense hand-to-hand face-punching shank-o-matic fighting, Lettow-Vorbeck&rsquo;s men overcame the massive force, dealing 3000 casualties and losing just 519 men.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>He also captured their camp, which, according to him, included &ldquo;so much wine and schnapps that even with the best will in the world it was impossible to consume it all.&rdquo;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/79143016174/lettow7.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>A master of the African bush (a moniker that sounds sounds fantastically pornographic), Lettow-Vorbeck&rsquo;s guerilla jungle war got a little hotter in when he had to face a competent new British commander &ndash; a tough-as-nails South African Boer named Jan Smuts who&rsquo;d led his own bush war a few years earlier and whose name further improves the double-entendre potential of this paragraph.</p>\r\n<p>Smuts showed up with 45,000 well-trained South African and Indian soldiers, and despite Lettow-Vorbek&rsquo;s ability to repeatedly outmaneuver his adversary and escape all attempts to surround him, repeated attacks began to grind down the German forces.&nbsp; With no reinforcements to replace his lost men, Lettow-Vorbeck left Uganda and shifted his attacks into Mozambique and Rhodesia, hammering Portuguese, Belgian, and South African bases there.&nbsp; The war ended shortly after, and the old-school warrior dutifully marched out of the jungle and surrendered his command.&nbsp; He had fought all of World War I from beginning to end, was constantly outnumbered, and single-handedly made life miserable for the British Empire in Africa despite never having more than 11,000 men at any given time.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/79143016174/lettow9.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>An epic, unconquered champion of the German people, Lettow-Vorbeck and his officers returned home in 1918 and were given a hero&rsquo;s parade down the streets of Berlin.&nbsp; After retiring as a Major-General, Lettow-Vorbeck entered politics as a hardcore Kaiser-lovin&rsquo; monarchist, led troops to Hamburg to throw down a Communist uprising in 1919, served in the Reichstag in 1929, and constantly opposed the politics of a young punk named Adolph Hitler.&nbsp; After Hitler seized power as Chancellor he offered the Great War hero a position as a foreign ambassador.&nbsp; Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck told Hitler to fuck off.&nbsp; &nbsp;He was subsequently denied his pension, had his home searched, and was kept under constant surveillance as a potential &ldquo;enemy of the people&rdquo; (or whatever the Nazis called them), but what can you do.</p>\r\n<p>As an awesome side note, in 1953 Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck returned to East Africa at the request of his old enemy Jan Smuts, who by now was a good friend of Vorbeck&rsquo;s and was also the Prime Minister of South Africa.&nbsp; When he arrived in Tanzania, Vorbeck was greeted by a group of Askari veterans who had served under him.&nbsp; They sang the song of his regiment, <em>Heia Safari! </em>and threw up a cheer as soon as they saw their commander.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/79143016174/lettow8.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Links:</p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.firstworldwar.com/bio/lettowvorbeck.htm\">http://www.firstworldwar.com/bio/lettowvorbeck.htm</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.nam.ac.uk/exhibitions/online-exhibitions/enemy-commanders-britains-greatest-foes/paul-von-lettow-vorbeck\">http://www.nam.ac.uk/exhibitions/online-exhibitions/enemy-commanders-britains-greatest-foes/paul-von-lettow-vorbeck</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://timashby.com/the-german-general-who-told-hitler-to-go-screw-himself/\">http://timashby.com/the-german-general-who-told-hitler-to-go-screw-himself/</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://peterbaxterafrica.com/index.php/2010/07/16/paul-emil-von-lettow-vorbeck-german-commander-african-hero/\">http://peterbaxterafrica.com/index.php/2010/07/16/paul-emil-von-lettow-vorbeck-german-commander-african-hero/</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_von_Lettow-Vorbeck\">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_von_Lettow-Vorbeck</a></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Sources:</p>\r\n<p>Shillington, Kevin.&nbsp; <em>Encyclopedia of African History</em>.&nbsp; Routledge, 2005.</p>\r\n<p>Strachan,Hew.&nbsp; <em>The First World War</em>.&nbsp; Penguin, 2005.</p>\r\n<p>Tucker, Spencer C. and Priscilla Mary Roberts.&nbsp; <em>The Encyclopedia of World War I</em>.&nbsp; ABC-CLIO, 2005.</p>\r\n<p>Tucker, Spencer C.&nbsp; <em>The European Powers in the First World War</em>.&nbsp; Routledge, 2013.</p>','2014-04-11','79143016174','lettow.jpg','lettow-small.jpg','Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck','Undefeated German WWI commander, master of African guerrilla warfare, an a man who once told Hitler to go fuck himself.',''),('Raden Wijaya','c. 1260','1309','Malang, Indonesia','Medieval Indonesian Conqueror','<p><em>The Raid 2</em> fucking owns.&nbsp; I know it got its balls knocked around at the box office in its opening weekend and did about as well in the multiplex as a documentary detailing the many amazing ways a person can make toast, but the fact that this fucking crime action gem was beat out by some evil live-action Disney propaganda film about how Grizzly Bears aren&rsquo;t actually gigantic meat-filled <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/index.cgi?id=9634649523\">killing machines from hel</a><a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/index.cgi?id=9634649523\">l</a> is more of a sad, damning indication of the increasing wussification of the world than it is an indictment of a ball-crushing, leg-snapping action flick that instantly became my third favorite movie of the last five years, behind only The Raid 1 and that Expendables movie where Van Damme kills one of the Hemsworth brothers by roundhouse kicking a Bowie knife into his sternum.</p>\r\n<p>To that end, here&rsquo;s a clip from the film where a shady-looking Indonesian dude in a hoodie takes a baseball bat and fucking destroys a half-dozen guys with the same over-the-top unstoppable brutality I used to eviscerate the English language in that last paragraph when I somehow managed to use the phrases Disney, Van Damme, Grizzly bear, and ball-crushing in the same sentence.&nbsp; While this shit is actually pretty fucking tame for this film, the way it goes down is such a beautiful thing that it makes it difficult for me to decide whether I want to start an epic slow clap or just pop a Louisville Slugger-like perma-boner so intense it would require me to spend the rest of my life with a concealed weapons permit taped to my junk like I&rsquo;m wearing a wire for the FBI.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/6MEg2Uue-68\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"425\" height=\"350\"></iframe></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Oh right, and this baseball bat dude is just some minor asshole in the film.&nbsp; When shit goes down our hero fights this guy <em>and another person at the same time, </em>and that&rsquo;s not even the best fight in the movie.&nbsp; The Raid 2 also has one of the best car chases I&rsquo;ve ever seen.&nbsp; Which is saying something.</p>\r\n<p>Anyways, I&rsquo;ve made my <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/ikouwais.html\">feelings on the first movie</a> publicly known (and my feelings are that it is the single greatest action movie ever made), but even before my adrenaline levels reached something even remotely resembling the nominal range I got thinking about Indonesia, which, sorry Indonesians, isn&rsquo;t a place I knew a damn thing about.&nbsp; They have a cool-sounding language, though, and they apparently excel and dismembering each other with hammers and epically rage-grinding broken beer bottles into one another&rsquo;s faces with a ruthless cold-blooded enthusiasm you typically don&rsquo;t see outside a DMV office or the back of the line on Ben &amp; Jerry&rsquo;s Free Cone Day, so there has to be something to it.&nbsp; To that end, this week I decided to dig up a great head-cleaving warrior hero from Indonesian history and give his story the blood-soaked boner-joke treatment it so righteously deserved.</p>\r\n<p>What I found was an epic tale about a mighty Javanese machete-swinging war-prince who banged four different princesses, cleaved his way through an endless horde of enemies on a single-minded quest to seize ultimate power for himself, and pulled off what has to be the ballsiest diplomatic maneuver that was ever attempted in the 13<sup>th</sup> century:</p>\r\n<p>He is the only person I&rsquo;ve ever heard of who actually double-crossed the fucking Mongol Horde.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>And he got away with it.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/769113610696/radenwijaya1.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> Meet Raden Wijaya, seen here contemplating the severed heads of <br /> his enemies while the Mongol Fleet burns and sinks behind him.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Ok, the first thing you need to understand about Indonesia is that it&rsquo;s made up of a bunch of small islands in Southeast Asia.&nbsp; Back in the 1290s, the biggest kingdom in the region was ruled by a guy named Kertanegara, an iron-fisted old-school &ldquo;kill &lsquo;em all&rdquo; ruler who had dedicated twenty years of his rule towards carving out an empire on the severed necks of his enemies.&nbsp; Kertanegara united most of the island of East Java, sailed over to Sumatra and led a successful campaign against his enemies there, and had even attacked the island of Bali, wiped out their army, and brought their King back to Java in chains so he could show him off to his friends like he was a first-place trophy from that youth basketball league you rode the pine for in 1992.&nbsp; This dude forged himself a nice little kingdom, and was feeling so great about his ultra-totalitarian dominance over his domains that when Mongol emissaries came by in 1292 demanding Kertanegara&rsquo;s submission, the King of Java had their faces torched with branding irons, cut off their ears, and sent them running back to Kublai Khan, hopefully accompanied by some asinine joke about &ldquo;not being able to hear your demands&rdquo; or something.</p>\r\n<p>Raden Wijaya was born to a family of noblemen, and was trained from birth in the fine art of executing perfect badass-looking flying knee strikes and cutting peoples&rsquo; heads in half with a goddamned machete.&nbsp; A hardcore fighter, noble leader, and all-around studly beefcake, Raden Wijaya was apparently so baller that King Kertanegara promoted him to General of his military and gave him four of his daughters as wives.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/769113610696/radenwijaya2.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> It&rsquo;s good to be the Raden.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Well sleeping with a different princess every night, killing Sumatran warriors with your bare hands and an extra-sturdy fistful of dental floods, and coming back home with the King of Bali in a man-sized version of those airplane cat carriers was amazing and everything, but that kind of behavior doesn&rsquo;t really make you a hell of a lot of friends.&nbsp; Before long some punk-ass motherfucker named Jayakatwang got all jealous about not getting enough positive recognition for all the dumb shit he was doing, so he decided to raise and army and pry the crown from Kertanegara&rsquo;s dome with some needle-nosed pliers and the Fire Department&rsquo;s Jaws of Life.&nbsp; Jeyakatwang (whose name looks like it would sound really pornographic/hilarious if pronounced aloud) organized a group of rebellious nobles in East Java, mobilized an army of rebels, and basically almost completely surrounded Kertanegara&rsquo;s throne room overnight.</p>\r\n<p>Raden Wijaya, the ever-loyal general, did what he could.&nbsp; He took his forces north of the capital, ran screaming into combat at the head of a phalanx of Javanese spearmen, and plowed through rebel douchebags like Bruce Lee fucking up a gang of inept black-uniformed ninjas.&nbsp; After littering the field of battle with the dismembered corpses of enemy douchebags, however, Raden Wijaya turned south just in time to receive word that the capital had fallen, King Kertanegara and all his ministers had been murdered in their palace, Jerk-a-wang had made himself king, and now basically every able-bodied warrior in East Java was looking too kill Raden Wijaya and collect the massive bounty on his head.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/769113610696/radenwijaya3.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> Badass-looking 19<sup>th</sup>-century Bali warriors.<br /> Those are the eyes of a killer.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Hunted and attacked every step of the way, Raden Wijaya fled west across the island of Java.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>When he reached the coast, he saw a peculiar sight:</p>\r\n<p>One thousand Chinese warships, anchored in the Java Sea, preparing to unload thirty thousand Mongols on a mission of conquest, revenge, and face-branding retribution.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/769113610696/radenwijaya4.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> Hey assholes, what&rsquo;s up?<br /> I got this guy here with no ears who<br /> wants to talk to you.</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Weighing his options, Raden Wijaya once again showed the unimaginable scope of his mighty brass-clad testicles.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>He walked right up to the Mongol leader, announced himself as the True King of Java, and offered his loyalty and yearly tribute if the Mongols would help him depose the usurper who now sat on the throne.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The Mongol Army mobilized for war.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/769113610696/radenwijaya5.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> Javanese warriors.</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Now, the Mongols&rsquo; reputation for effortlessly grinding their heels into to teeth of every civilization on earth is in no way unwarranted, so I probably don&rsquo;t need to tell you how this shit went down.&nbsp; Raden Wijaya gave the Mongols all the maps and information they needed to move through the countryside (a move that actually helped his people, as he led the Mongols through countryside and kept them from looting the Javanese towns and villages), navigated them right into the heart of the jungles (where they subsequently caught a ridiculous number of ultra-deadly tropical diseases), and then walked them right up to the front door of King JerkWang&rsquo;s capital.&nbsp; The Mongols utterly destroyed Jayakatwang&rsquo;s army in plain view of the palace, and then headed back to their ships to get wasted and celebrate adding another Kingdom to the Great Khan&rsquo;s Empire.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>That night, once they were all good and drunk and unarmored, Raden Wijaya suddenly appeared at the entrance of the Mongol camp along with tens of thousands of hardcore Indonesian warriors just looking for a good back-alley street brawl.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/769113610696/radenwijaya6.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br />OPEN WIDE AND SAY AHHHH</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The Indonesians charged the Mongol camp, defeated them in battle, mowed them down by the hundreds, drowned another thousand or so of them in a river, and forced the Mongols to flee back to their boats and escape, all while suffering minimal losses himself.&nbsp; When the Mongol expedition commander returned to China to face Kublai Khan, he received 70 lashes with a whip and was stripped of all his worldly possessions.&nbsp; It would be the last conquest attempted by Kublai Khan, who would drink himself to death a few months later and is now remembered less for his military conquests and more for the insane poem that English dude wrote while tripping balls on opium.</p>\r\n<p>Raden Wijaya, meanwhile, was crowned King of the new Majapahit Kingdom on November 12, 1293.&nbsp; After scouring the land of dissenters and crushing an uprising of angry nobles, Raden Wijaya set up the foundation for a mighty Indonesian Empire that would bring about a Golden Age in Indonesian history and would rule the lands of Java, Bali, and Sumatra for the next two hundred years, only finally falling when the Dutch East India Company showed up in 1528 with guns and started shooting everything.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/769113610696/radenwijaya7.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> One of the more impressive Hindu<br />Temples built by the Majapahit Kingdom</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>King Raden Wijaya ruled for 16 years, eventually dying in 1309 of causes that I didn&rsquo;t remember to write down when I was taking notes for this article.&nbsp; His son would succeed him, but when that kid was murdered by his doctor during surgery (which has to easily be one of the worst ways a person can die) Raden Wijaya&rsquo;s sister took over as Queen and acted as regent for a guy named Gajah Mada.&nbsp; Gajah is notable mostly because he really fucking loved chili peppers or Sriracha or whatever but swore that he wouldn&rsquo;t eat any more spicy food until he conquered Bali, which he did in 1343.</p>\r\n<p>Over the next two hundred years, the Kingdom of the Majapahit would built temples, establish trade relations with kingdoms from Thailand to Vietnam, sign treaties with the Khmer, and usher in a golden age of Javanese culture.&nbsp; To this day, Raden Wijaya is a national hero in Indonesia.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/769113610696/radenwijaya8.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Links:</p>\r\n<p>Kinney, Ann R.&nbsp; <em>Worshipping Siva and Buddha</em>.&nbsp; University of Hawaii Press, 2003.</p>\r\n<p>Purwadi.&nbsp; <em>History of Java</em>.&nbsp; Jakarta: Tanah Air, 2007.</p>\r\n<p><em>The World and Its Peoples</em>.&nbsp; New York: Marshall Cavendish, 2008.</p>','2014-04-18','769113610696','radenwijaya.jpg','radenwijaya-small.jpg','Raden Wijaya','Medieval Indonesian warrior-prince kills everyone, bangs a half-dozen princesses, then tries to double-cross the Mongol Horde.',''),('Leona Woods','August 9, 1919','November 10, 1986','La Grange, IL, USA','20th-century American Scientist','<p>You know how roughly 80% of all Internet Blog Posts&trade; these days are frustration-soaked rage-fueled diatribes complete with blatantly-inappropriate email snippets and brutal Twitter screenshots horrifically illustrating the murderous uphill battle most women have to face when attempting to be taken seriously for their work in the fields of science and technology?&nbsp; Well give this shit a second to rattle around in your dome:&nbsp; Leona Woods was a hardcore nuclear physicist who found work in a military tech field in the 1930s, at a time when the women&rsquo;s rights movement was something that made <em>Mad Men </em>look like the fucking Lilith Fair, and as the most prominent woman working on the Manhattan Project she helped create the world&rsquo;s first nuclear chain reaction, developed techniques that would completely change the understanding of particle physics, built at least three nuclear reactors (one of which was on a tennis court underneath an abandoned football stadium), and helped forge the Plutonium that was used in the world&rsquo;s first atomic bomb detonation.</p>\r\n<p>She was also tough as shit, never took no for an answer, made no apologies for anything she did in her life, and went to her grave ardently defending her role in personally crafting the Fat Man fission bomb that leveled Nagasaki and brought World War II to a grinding halt with one earth-cratering explosion.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/132987716098/leonawoods11.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> The Manhattan Project team that built the world&rsquo;s first nuclear reactor.</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Born in 1919 in a suburb of Chicago, Leona Woods was a child prodigy who graduated high school at 14 and received her B.A. in Physics from the University of Chicago at 18.&nbsp; You&rsquo;d think that possessing a Doogie Howser-level IQ and earning a college degree from a prestigious university before you&rsquo;re legally old enough to chug beer would make it fairly easy for a person to gain entrance into a graduate program, but Woods found herself hindered by her lack of a dong and when she asked her Nobel Laureate / Iron Cross recipient professor to be her academic advisor he calmly told her that if a woman wanted to pursue science professionally she should be prepared to starve to death.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Undeterred, Woods went to a guy named Robert Mullikan, who wasn&rsquo;t a Nobel Laureate yet but would become one in a few years when he&rsquo;d discover some way to compute the size and shape of a various molecules.&nbsp; Mullikan was impressed by Woods&rsquo; academic experience and aptitude in a bunch of experimental and theoretical fields that sound really impressive to a person like me who doesn&rsquo;t know shit about advanced particle physics, and signed her on for a top-secret, ultra-black-ops military project he and many of his fellow scientists had been assigned to work on:&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The Manhattan Project.&nbsp; The quest to harness the power of the atom, achieve a man-made nuclear fission reaction, and get the fucking Nuke before Hitler.</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/132987716098/leonawoods2.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> &ldquo;If the Germans had got it before we did, I don\'t know what would have happened to the world. <br /> Something different. Germany led in the field of physics, in every respect, at the time war set in, <br /> when Hitler lowered the boom. It was a very frightening time.&rdquo;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>In November of 1942, a joint team of British and Norwegian commandos launched a daring night raid on a remove German research installation high in the snow-covered mountains of Norway, where the Nazis were harvesting large amounts of heavy water for use in the production of nuclear weapons-grade plutonium.&nbsp; The mission was a complete failure.&nbsp; Two of the gliders crashed, killing most of the crew, and those who survived were tortured for information and then executed by the Gestapo.&nbsp; The fallout from the mission was bad &ndash; the Germans, who already had a head start on their mission and were employing some of the greatest physicists on Earth &ndash; knew the Allies were on to them.&nbsp; They were going to accelerate their project, and God help the world if Hitler got The Bomb before we did.</p>\r\n<p>Dr. Enrico Fermi knew this.&nbsp; An Italian physicist who&rsquo;d already received the Nobel Prize for fucking discovering Plutonium a few years earlier, Fermi had worked with the Germans for a while before ultimately deciding to flee Mussolini&rsquo;s reign.&nbsp; He knew what they could do.&nbsp; And he had to beat them to the punch.</p>\r\n<p>Fermi&rsquo;s plan was bold &ndash; he was going to build the world&rsquo;s first nuclear reactor.&nbsp; Operating on a squash court in the tunnels beneath the stands of the University of Chicago&rsquo;s football stadium, he drew up plans to build a 20-foot-tall, $2.7 million nuclear reactor out of graphite and uranium.&nbsp; He brought in 50 of the best physicists he could find, including Leona Woods, swore them to absolute secrecy, and set them to work.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/132987716098/leonawoods3.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> Pile-1, the world&rsquo;s first nuclear reactor.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Leona Woods wasn&rsquo;t just the only woman on the project; at age 23 she was also the youngest member of the team.&nbsp; Hell, she hadn&rsquo;t even completed her Ph.D. yet, but she was out there working long hours in the freezing-cold dungeon below an abandoned football stadium building boron triflouride counters to monitor radiation emissions and forging together the granite bricks they used to buffer the uranium in Pile-1.&nbsp; The reactor, which didn&rsquo;t bother with stupid bullshit like radiation shielding, emergency shutdown procedures, or a cooling system to protect the crew from the six tons of pure uranium that were packed into the fucking proto-reactor like .45s in a Tommy gun&rsquo;s barrel drum magazine, was constructed from the ground up by a hard-working team that was ultra-dedicated to their mission of, you know, saving the fucking world from Adolph Hitler.&nbsp; One story tells about how Leona Woods was out in a hallway under the stadium with a goddamn blowtorch welding together a canister packed with beryllium and radium salt when she was approached by some d-bag numbnuts who was all like, &ldquo;yo toots you&rsquo;re not gonna be able to have kids if you keep exposing your junk to a football-sized package of radioactive isotopes.&rdquo;&nbsp; In response, Woods flipped up the visor of her welding mask, looked the dude in the eyes, and told him it was more important to her to get this shit crafted correctly.</p>\r\n<p>Despite working brutal dawn-to-dusk shifts doing everything from straight-up slide-rule physics to hardcore manual labor working with ultra-dangerous fissionable materials, Leona Woods also found plenty of time to head over to her family farm and help her mom take care of that year&rsquo;s potato crop.&nbsp; Leona&rsquo;s brother usually helped out with that sort of thing, but with him serving as a Marine Corps flamethrower operator on some unnamed island in the South Pacific he was a little busy.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/132987716098/leonawoods5.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> &ldquo;She was a tall young girl built like an athlete, who could do a man\'s job and do it well. <br /> She was the only woman physicist in Enrico\'s group. &nbsp;<br /> At that time, her mother, who was also endowed with inexhaustible energy, <br /> was running a small farm near Chicago almost by herself. To relieve Mrs. Woods of some work, <br /> Leona divided her time between atoms and potatoes.&rdquo;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>On December 2, 1942, one month after the failed British raid and almost exactly a year after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the world&rsquo;s first nuclear reactor was ready to blow shit up at an atomic level.&nbsp; Leona Woods was seated next to Dr. Fermi so she could call out the readings from her equipment, well aware that if things didn&rsquo;t go right the only emergency contingency plan was for a so-called &ldquo;Suicide Team&rdquo; to run in there with buckets full of a cadmium-water solution to literally try and douse a nuclear chain reaction fucking volunteer firefighter bucket brigade style.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>She witnessed the first time in human history that man was able to control the power of the atom.&nbsp; In the 28-minute experiment, later referred to by the commanding officer of the Manhattan Project as &ldquo;the single most important scientific even in the development of atomic power,&rdquo; the reactor generated 200 million watts of nuclear fission energy in a controlled environment.&nbsp; It was proof of concept.&nbsp; It formed the foundation for the creation of nuclear reactors that provide power to thousands of cities and towns throughout the world.</p>\r\n<p>And now it was time to blow shit up.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/132987716098/leonawoods4.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Leona Woods got her Ph.D. a year later, married a guy she&rsquo;d worked with on the team, and was redeployed to Hanford, Washington to work on the creation of fissionable materials to use in a nuclear bomb.&nbsp; Refusing to take time off work even while pregnant (she would ride a shitty Army bus to work in the morning, barf in the bushes on her way into the office, and spend the rest of the day doing SCIENCE THINGS), Woods oversaw the construction of three much larger nuclear reactors that were built off the specs from Fermi&rsquo;s Pile-1 back in Chicago.&nbsp; The most famous, Reactor B, stood five stories high, utilized over 200 tons of uranium, and was the first large-scale reactor to produce weapons-grade plutonium-239.</p>\r\n<p>Because it was a military project, naturally when they first turned it on it didn&rsquo;t work.&nbsp; Leona Woods was on the team that fixed it.&nbsp; She realized that there was a contamination of xenon that was fucking everything up, so she and her team found a workaround.</p>\r\n<p>The B Reactor went online in September 1944, operating at 250 million watts &ndash; roughly half the power of a modern-day nuclear power plant.&nbsp; Its superheated radioactive energy forged large amounts of fissionable material, and it was Woods&rsquo; project that sent the Plutonium to New Mexico to be used in the first nuclear detonation at Los Alamos.</p>\r\n<p>Once again finding herself the only woman on the team, Woods made note in her autobiography that the Du Pont company was nice enough to build her a separate bathroom.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/132987716098/leonawoods6.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> B Reactor.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The Nazis were a little too busy getting their asses kicked to finish their weapons program, but the Manhattan Project would play a critical role in ending World War II on the other front -- the war with Japan.&nbsp; Leona Woods and her team at Reactor B would ultimately produce the Plutonium used to craft Fat Man, the nuclear bomb that obliterated Nagasaki on August 9, 1945.&nbsp; When asked whether, hey, maybe it was overkill to drop two bombs on Japan, Woods responded like a badass &ndash; double-middle fingers, fuck you guys, I&rsquo;d rather nuke a country I&rsquo;m at war with than face the massive casualty numbers estimated for American troops in an invasion of the Home Islands.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>In her mind, that nuke had saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of American soldiers and Marines.&nbsp; She may have been right.&nbsp; We&rsquo;ll never know because history doesn&rsquo;t really work like that.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/132987716098/leonawoods7.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>After the war Woods was one of the most prominent female scientists in the United States.&nbsp; She had a long, successful career studying &ldquo;climatology, diatomic molecular spectroscopy, fundamental particle physics, the general structure of the universe, quantum chemistry, and quasars,&rdquo; which sounds impressive because aside from &ldquo;the general structure of the universe&rdquo; (which sounds like a fucking hell of a scientific endeavor) I don&rsquo;t know what any of that other stuff actually even means.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Dr. Leona Woods Marshall Libby wrote three books, over two hundred academic papers, built the Pile-3 Nuclear Reactor in Chicago using uranium and heavy water.&nbsp; She helped create and taught at the UCLA Department of Environmental Research with her second husband, Willard Libby, who you might know as the guy who won the Nobel Prize for inventing Carbon-14 dating.&nbsp; She spent the later years of her life advocating for nuclear power, arguing that we should use radiation as an alternative to pesticides for cleaning food and purging it of harmful microbes, and determined a way of using the rings in a tree&rsquo;s stump to determine what the climate was like in ancient times.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/132987716098/leonawoods8.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Links:</p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://manhattanprojectvoices.org/oral-histories/leona-marshall-libbys-interview\">http://manhattanprojectvoices.org/oral-histories/leona-marshall-libbys-interview</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.nndb.com/people/280/000225602/\">http://www.nndb.com/people/280/000225602/</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://articles.latimes.com/1986-11-13/local/me-24930_1_nuclear-reactor\">http://articles.latimes.com/1986-11-13/local/me-24930_1_nuclear-reactor</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://apcentral.collegeboard.com/apc/members/courses/teachers_corner/31784.html\">http://apcentral.collegeboard.com/apc/members/courses/teachers_corner/31784.html</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.atomicarchive.com/History/firstpile/index.shtml\">http://www.atomicarchive.com/History/firstpile/index.shtml</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.hanford.gov/page.cfm/BReactor\">http://www.hanford.gov/page.cfm/BReactor</a></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Sources:</p>\r\n<p>Libby, Leona Woods Marshall.&nbsp; <em>The Uranium People</em>.&nbsp; New York: Crane, Russak, 1979.</p>\r\n<p>Ogilvie, Marilyn Bailey and Joy Dorothy Harvey.&nbsp; <em>The Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science</em>.&nbsp; Taylor &amp; Francis, 2000.</p>\r\n<p>Sanger, S.L.&nbsp; <em>Working on the Bomb</em>.&nbsp; Continuing Education Press, 1995.</p>\r\n<p>Wayne, Tiffany K.&nbsp; <em>American Women of Science Since 1900.&nbsp; </em>Oxford: ABC-CLIO, 2011.</p>','2014-04-25','132987716098','leonawoods.jpeg','leonawoods-small.jpeg','Leona Woods','The only woman on the Manhattan Project, this physicist helped build the world\'s first nuclear reactor, then produced the fissionable material used in the first atomic bomb.','“I have no regrets. I think we did right, and we couldn\'t have done it differently.  Yeah, I know it has been suggested the second bomb, Nagasaki, was not necessary. The guys who cry on shoulders. When you are in a war to the death I don\'t think you stand around and ask, ‘Is it right?’”'),('Gonzalo Guerrero','c. 1470','c. 1532','Palos, Spain','16th-century Spanish Mercenary','<p>Monday morning will be the first Monday morning in many weeks that hasn&rsquo;t completely sucked balls.&nbsp; This is mostly because instead of sitting around fluorescent-lit cubicles debating the pros and cons of committing seppuku with an ordinary pair of non-lefty scissors, we&rsquo;ll be spending the vast majority of our work/school days dreaming about the dozens of El Grande Presidente Margaritas and sombreros full of guacamole and triple-tequila infused Dos Equis we&rsquo;re going to shotgun at whatever badass Cinco de Mayo party we plan on attending.&nbsp; And that&rsquo;s great.&nbsp; A truly noble endeavor worthy of the annals of history.&nbsp; But while you guys are all out there navigating through salsa-dancing gyrating fields of hot girls in &ldquo;Hecho en Mexico&rdquo; half-shirts in your noble quest to cram dual-wielded fistfuls of quadruple-stuffed quesadillas in your faces like that <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOCtdw9FG-s\">burrito-eating hamster</a>, don&rsquo;t forget that Mexico also boasts a badass history that includes hardcore shit ranging from giant stone pyramids full of heart-mutilating human sacrifices to awesomely-mustached <a href=\"/index.cgi?id=26881782484\">shotgun-slinging revolutionaries</a> with bandoliers of rifle bullets fighting for independence by crashing locomotives full of explosives into enemy fortifications.</p>\r\n<p>I&rsquo;ve already discussed how the Cinco de Mayo holiday is the annual celebration of badass 19<sup>th</sup>-century Mexican warrior <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/index.cgi?id=61286222462\">Ignacio Zaragoza</a> defending his homeland by carving his name into the armies of France at the head of a bad-as-hell armada of machete-wielding Danny Trejos, but this week I&rsquo;ll feature another truly unsung hero from early Mexican history &ndash; Gonzalo Guerrero.&nbsp; A guy who to this day is mentioned as being basically the first of the modern-day Mexicans, and a guy who&rsquo;s story reads like a real-life <em>Avatar, Last Samurai, </em>or <em>Dances with Wolves </em>except with more cannibalism and shipwrecks and explosions and instead of morphing himself blue and dicking around in some dumb forest the dude pierces his septum with a stick and gets a fucking tattoo on his face.<br /><br /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;<img src=\"/images/187244728542/guerrero1.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /><br /></p>\r\n<p>As tends to be the case with many great badasses, we don&rsquo;t know much about Gonzalo Guerrero&rsquo;s past.&nbsp; One story claims that he was a badass Spanish mercenary who enlisted in the military at the age of 17 and fought on the front lines as a soldier of fortune against the hated Moors during the Reconquista, charging screaming towards imposing Muslim fortifications in a steel breastplate, armed with a sharp Spanish steel sword and a single-shot matchlock arquebus rifle.&nbsp; After the final defeat of the Moors by <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/index.cgi?id=312731522029\">Isabella of Castille</a>, Guerrero was out of battles to fight, so he offered his services to join Christopher Columbus on his fateful voyage to the New World.&nbsp; Sailing the uncharted reaches of the Atlantic Ocean aboard the <em>Nina</em>, Guerrero landed on Hispanola, ended up in Cuba, and decided to stay behind and man the garrison of a Spanish fort that had been built to maintain order in the region by shooting the shit out of any uppity Natives who were opposed to the idea of having a Spanish Empire forged on their backs in their own homeland.&nbsp; That this guy fought in the Reconquista and participated in the first journey from Europe to the New World and all it accounts for is a short opening paragraph in his biography should tell you something about how badass he is.</p>\r\n<p>Around 1511, Guerrero took part in a violent Spanish raid to plunder gold, food, slaves, and silver from present-day Colombia, but as his treasure-laden ship was making its way back to Cuba a massive storm &ndash; possibly a hurricane &ndash; came flying in out of nowhere and teabagged the Spaniards with torrential rain, bad karma, and sixty mile an hour winds.&nbsp; Smashed by the winds and tossed around by the waves, the mast splintered off Guerrero&rsquo;s ship, and a huge chunk of wood brained the Spanish mercenary, sending him careening over the railing and into the swirling black waters of the rain-drenched Caribbean.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/187244728542/guerrero2.png\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Swimming through the stiff currents in near-zero visibility, Guerrero somehow fought his way to a lifeboat that had been dropped into the water by some of the crew.&nbsp; Hauling himself aboard, Guerrero and his fellow sailors waited out the storm, which smashed their caravel into splinters and left them adrift alone on the high seas in a tiny little lifeboat with no sails or oars.&nbsp; Dead in the water, the 20 survivors drifted at sea for over two weeks.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>When the ship finally came within sight of the shore, only 8 sailors remained.&nbsp; In order to survive, those eight had sustained themselves by eating the uncooked bodies of the others who had perished.&nbsp; Without salt or queso or sriracha or <em>anything</em>.</p>\r\n<p>The exhausted, dehydrated, sunburned survivors struggled to the shore, landed on the coast of Mexico&rsquo;s Yucatan peninsula, and immediately came face-to-face with a terrifyingly hardcore band of tatted-up angry Mayan warriors.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/187244728542/guerrero3.png\" alt=\"\" /><br /> Great.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The Spaniards were immediately taken prisoner, and brought back to the king of whatever city-state these warriors had come from.&nbsp; Now, as I mentioned in my piece on <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/index.cgi?id=48066411937\">Yuknoom the Great</a>, the Mayans were badass as fuck, and these guys weren&rsquo;t exactly thrilled to see a group of bizarre white-skinned weirdoes landing on their shores like they owned the place.&nbsp; Thinking this whole \"hey here\'s some white people\" thing was a sign from the gods, the Mayans immediately sacrificed four of the Spaniards by cutting out their hearts and eating them.&nbsp; The other four, including Guerrero, were thrown in cages to be sacrificed later.</p>\r\n<p>Well, yeah&hellip; fuck that.&nbsp; Within a few days, Gonzalo Guerrero and his fellow mercenaries gathered enough strength to attempt an escape.&nbsp; They broke out of their cages, ran for it, and fled into the completely-unknown jungles of the Yucatan, figuring that death by jaguar bite to the skull was probably preferable to having Mola Ram Kali Ma your ass in front of all your buddies.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Naturally, the group of fugitives was captured again, this time by warriors of a different Mayan city-state.&nbsp; And these guys didn&rsquo;t sacrifice the Spanish, they simply enslaved them and worked them so hard that two more guys died from exhaustion.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/187244728542/guerrero4.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> Dude can&rsquo;t catch a break.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>So now only two Spaniards remained &ndash; Gonzalo Guerrero and a Franciscan friar named Geronimo de Aguilar.&nbsp; Geronimo stayed true to his Spanish roots, saying his prayers every day and asking God for deliverance from his miserable existence, but Guerrero was actually kind of starting to dig this Mayan shit.&nbsp; He started wearing native-style clothing, learned the language, got some kickass tattoos on his face, pierced his nose with a stick, and eventually won his freedom in the most badass way imaginable &ndash; by saving his tribe&rsquo;s chief from an alligator attack by <em>kicking the fucking alligator&rsquo;s ass in hand-to-hand combat</em>.&nbsp; Guerrero got out of slavery, bought Geronimo&rsquo;s freedom, and immediately went about turning his Mayan city-state from a tiny little kingdom into an all-powerful Mayan war machine of death and destruction.</p>\r\n<p>Gonzalo Guerrero, a lifetime war-monger who kicked ass from Cordoba to Cuba and survived anything and everything the universe threw at him, started teaching European-style military tactics to the Mayans.&nbsp; He taught them to build fortifications, how to organize into military units, and how to launch full-scale assaults or minor hit-and-run raids.&nbsp; He drilled them in tactics and technique.&nbsp; He commanded them in raids and battles against rival Mayan tribes, building up power and prestige for his king by charging full-on into battle armed with a blowgun, a spear, and an obsidian sword and massacring all who stood in his path in a torrential rampage of carnage.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/187244728542/guerrero5.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Thanks to his impeccable ability to smite and annihilate all that stood before him in a fury of massive sword wounds to the skull, Gonzalo Guerrero became more and more powerful in his tribe.&nbsp; Eventually, his chief hooked him up to marry the Mayan princess Zazil Ha, and together the newlyweds produced the first Mestizo children conceived in Mexico.&nbsp; Guerrero and Zazil Ha had three sons together, and eventually took over the operation of a prestigious temple located on a powerful trade route between some of the Mayan land&rsquo;s wealthiest city-states.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Then, something weird happened.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The Spanish showed up.</p>\r\n<p>After hearing several rumors of mysterious white men living in the Mexican jungles, the Spanish Conquistador Hernan <a href=\"/index.cgi?id=584245310466\">Cortes</a> landed on the Yucatan to see what the hell was going on.&nbsp; He somehow tracked Guerrero and Geronimo down, came to visit them in their kingdom, and offered to take these marooned sailors home &ndash; a good eight years after they&rsquo;d been shipwrecked and presumed dead.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Friar Geronimo was ecstatic.&nbsp; He threw his arms around Cortes, thanked the Lord for answering his prayers, and went for the high-five bro-hug with Gonzalo Guerrero.</p>\r\n<p>But Guerrero left him hanging. &nbsp;He wasn&rsquo;t going anywhere.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/187244728542/guerrero7.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>In Spain, Gonzalo Guerrero had known only war and destruction.&nbsp; Among the Maya, he had a wife, a nice home, a place of power, and a new life.&nbsp; He told his old comrade-in-arms Friar Geronimo:</p>\r\n<p>\"I married a Mayan woman, have three children, am chief and captain, taken their ways with tattoos, pierced ears and scared face&hellip;this is my place.&rdquo;</p>\r\n<p>Friar Geronimo tried several times to convince him to come, but Guerrero had made his decision.&nbsp; He stayed behind.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/187244728542/guerrero8.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br />From Zorro villain to native berserker in three easy steps.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Guerrero lived among the Maya for another 13 years, earning himself and his family a place of honor among the tribe.&nbsp; He helped his people win wars against &nbsp;their rivals and expand their influence throughout the region.&nbsp; Then, around the 1530s, the Spanish Conquistadors showed up looking to ravage and pillage the lands.&nbsp; Again, Guerrero came to the aid of his people, leading them in combat against his former countrymen, battling the forces of Pedro de Alvarado when their arrived to try and conquer the Maya. His knowledge of the European style of warfare allowed his people to win a few early encounters, delaying the advance of the Spanish up from Honduras into Mexico.</p>\r\n<p>Gonzalo Guerrero, the 50-year-old badass Spanish mercenary turned hardcore Mayan war chief, was eventually killed in battle in 1532, when he was shot in the chest by an arequebus while leading a fleet of 50 canoes to aid a Mayan village that was under attack from Spanish troops.&nbsp; To this day he remains a hero of Mexico &ndash; the first man to blend traditional Spanish culture with the culture of the indigenous populations, and the sort of hardcore life-taking badass we should be thinking about the next time we pop open a Corona.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/187244728542/guerrero6.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Links:</p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.bicycleyucatan.com/gonzaloguerrerochetumal.html\">http://www.bicycleyucatan.com/gonzaloguerrerochetumal.html</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.examiner.com/article/gonzalo-guerrero-man-or-myth\">http://www.examiner.com/article/gonzalo-guerrero-man-or-myth</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzalo_Guerrero\">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzalo_Guerrero</a></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Books:</p>\r\n<p>Carrasco, David and Scott Sessions.&nbsp; <em>Daily Life of the Aztecs</em>.&nbsp; ABC-CLIO, 2011.</p>\r\n<p>D&rsquo;haen, Theo and Patricia Krus.&nbsp; <em>Colonizer and Colonized</em>.&nbsp; Rodopi, 2000.</p>\r\n<p>Juan-Navarro, Santiago and Theodore Robert Young.&nbsp; <em>A Twice-Told Tale</em>.&nbsp; University of Delaware Press, 2001.</p>\r\n<p>Peck, Douglas T.&nbsp; <em>The Yucatan from Prehistoric Times to the Great Maya Revolt</em>.&nbsp; Xlibris Corporation, 2005.</p>','2014-05-02','187244728542','guerrero.jpg','guerrero-small.jpg','Gonzalo Guerrero','Hardcore Spanish mercenary shipwrecks on the Mexican shore, becomes war leader of the Mayans.','“He also showed the Indians how to fight, teaching them how to build fortresses and bastions.  In this manner, and by behaving like an Indian, he built up a great reputation for himself and they married him to a very high-ranking lady by whom he had children... he tattooed his body, grew his hair long ,and pierced his ears so as to wear earrings like the Indians.”'),