('4th Battalion, 36th Sikh Regiment','N/A','September 12, 1897','India','19th-century Sikh Soldier','<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">The ball-busting defense of the tiny-yet-critical British fortress at Saragarhi is one of the most storied and famous tales of skull-crushing bravery in the <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/maibhago.html\">already-badass</a> military history of the Sikh people. The middle-finger-u-death response of the ferocious 21 men who bravely held their ground against impossible odds is often held up as the ultimate example of Sikh badassitude, which is really saying something considering that these balls-out Indian hardasses have stories about shit like the dude who ran around pureeing enemy soldiers apart even <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/babadeepsingh.html\">after being mostly decapitated</a> by a broadsword to the throat. Yet despite this epic showdown being the basis for a national holiday among Sikhs and a valiant, head-cleaving last stand worthy of the <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/spartans.html\">Spartans at Thermopylae</a>, this insane tale of 21 warriors going Horde Mode against roughly the entire male population of Central Asia in a single battle remains largely undocumented in Western military histories. This is their tale.</span></p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">The story starts near the end of the 19th century (or, as the British like to call it, \"The Good Old Days\"), when the British Empire stretched from sea to shining sea and the Queen convinced one-quarter of the world\'s population that drinking tea at 4pm was \"totally fucking bodacious\" and/or \"off the chain\" (they used lots of outdated terminology back then). The British Raj was ruling over India, providing enlightened governance and guidance in exchange for shiploads and shiploads of valuable natural resources, and the Empire oversaw the defense of the subcontinent thanks to a series of awesome mountain fortresses positioned along the border between present-day Pakistan and Afghanistan. While it wasn\'t particularly well-fortified or heavily-garrisoned, the outpost at Saragarhi was a seriously critical communications relay position between two major British forts. It played a crucial role in the first line of defense of British India against the tribal warriors of Central Asia &ndash; the Orakazai and the Afridi &ndash; and these guys knew that if they ever wanted to wreak havoc on the subcontinent and punch the Rajah in the Crown Jewels they were going to need to get past this defensive outpost first.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/21sikhs4.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></span><br /><span style=\"font-size: small;\">Sikhs are good at FLIPPING OUT, JUMPING AWESOMELY, and KICKING ASS.<br />This is probably why the British stationed them at such a key installation.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">On the morning of 12 September 1897, signalman Gurmukh Singh of the 36th Sikh Regiment looked out into the horizon and, to his surprise, he saw regimental battle flags. Like, a shitload of them. A massive sea of colors, swirling dust, and more enemy soldiers than you could shake a Kirpan at, even if you\'d built some kind of mechanical rig designed for the sole purpose of shaking Kirpans at things. Unable get his Rain Man on and count how many troops were in the sheer horde of rampaging warriors marching his way, Singh just quickly tallied up the regimental flags and signaled the alarm. When he rushed down from his tower and found his commanding officer &ndash; a lowly Havildar (Sergeant) named Ishar Singh &ndash; he put the estimate on the number of assailants at somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000 riflemen. Oh, plus an unknown amount of heavy artillery. And probably some other shit too.</span></p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">Havildar Singh called his garrison together for an emergency meeting. Standing before him in the tiny courtyard of this small, mud-and-stone garrison was the entire detachment of the 36th Sikhs assigned to the defense of this critical strategic outpost &ndash; all 20 men of it. Calmly, honestly, with no fear in his voice, the non-commissioned officer told his troops that they were most likely the last and only bastion of defense between that teeming throng of blood-thirsty warriors and the heart of India herself &ndash; these 21 soldiers were the only thing even remotely in a position to slowing down a coordinated tactical strike that was guaranteed to take the British and Indian defenders by surprise and wreak havoc across the land. He also told them that even though he knew how much lay at stake here, he wasn\'t about to order his men to their deaths in a hopeless battle they had no chance of surviving. The men had a choice to make &ndash; stand here and defend India against this invasion, hold back the assault as long as possible, and die valiantly in battle, or abandon their position and retreat to the nearby Fort Lockhart where a more sizeable British force was stationed. He put it to a vote among the men. Since they were all going to fight, serve, die, or flee together, they needed to stand as one.</span></p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">All twenty men voted to stay.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/21sikhs2.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></span><br /><span style=\"font-size: small;\">The calm before the battle was kind of like the moments before Helm\'s Deep, only with Orakazai instead of Uruk-Hai.<br />And, you know, Sikhs are roughly a thousand percent more badass than Elves.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">Gurmukh Singh relayed word of this ungodly massive sneak-attack to a nearby British fort as the doomed Sikhs fortified their mud-walled fort as best they could and braced themselves for the onslaught. At 9am, the first of the enemy came into range of their weapons. Havildar Singh issued the order to fire at will, and the 21 men of the 36th Sikhs began to bust out one of the most epic last stands in history.</span></p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">The Orakazai and Afridi did the sort of thing you\'d expect from an overwhelmingly-powerful force assaulting a tiny podunk outpost garrisoned by a force they outnumber roughly 500:1 &ndash; they charged balls out, Emperor Xerxes-style, looking to overrun the defenders by hurling wave after wave of their own men at the walls. It didn\'t work out so hot for them. This gigantor ridiculous horde of ass-kicking maniacs thought they were going to completely bulldoze the Saragarhi Sikhs like a Ford F-350 mega-extendo-cab pickup truck being dropped out of a plane onto a bucket of plastic green army men, but the admittedly-hardcore Orakazai quickly realized that these weren\'t any chump douchebags manning the defenses here &ndash; these were gnarly gnarlington high priest Vatican assassin warlock F-18s ready to deploy their ordinance to the ground, and all these Sikhs came here to do was WIN. On two separate attacks the Orakazai hurled themselves at the walls of Saragarhi, climbing the walls on ladders, laying heavy rifle and cannon fire into the fortress, and on both occasions the 21 defenders shielded themselves with their giant bulletproof balls, kicked down the ladders, and barfed out enough rifle fire to drive the attackers back. This is completely fucking insane, especially considering that the Sikhs didn\'t exactly have access to heavy machine guns or assault rifles back in 18-fucking-97 &ndash; these out-of-their-mind warriors were basically using damned bolt-action rifles, and were somehow firing them so retardedly fast that 10,000 trained warriors with guns somehow found themselves unable to push their way through this ridiculous curtain of leaden deathy evilness. Meanwhile, when he wasn\'t taking potshots from the signal tower with his scoped rifle, the garrison\'s signalman, Gurmukh Singh, was operating his signaling equipment and informing the nearest British outpost (just barely visible in the distance beyond the ridge) exactly what was going on, how many men the enemy had, and what sort of equipment they were carrying. No sweat, right?</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/21sikhs3.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></span><br /><span style=\"font-size: small;\">A member of the Sikh Polo Team.<br />If these guys take polo this seriously, you can only imagine how they handle war.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">While the Vegas books probably would have set the over/under for the duration of this fight at about fifteen minutes, five hours into the combat the Sikhs were still managing to hold out against all odds. Sure, they\'d taken a few hits here and there, but even the wounded men were propped up on the battlements laying down fire on the attackers as best they could. Completely surrounded by a massive mob of troops, these guys continued to dish out withering gunfire with ball-destroying accuracy. Eventually, while the Sikhs were completely overwhelmed by attacks on all sides, a team of Orakazai sappers breached through a particularly lightly-defended section of the outer defenses, snuck in, and set fire to the fort. Their positions concealed by the smoke and flames, and the Sikhs concerned with extinguishing their burning fortress, the rest of the enemy troops managed to charge in and break through the outer walls of the fort, rushing into the courtyard.</span></p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">With their own fortress walls crumbling and smoldering around them in an inferno of shittiness, the Sikhs continued to stand by their initial assessment of, \"You Fucks Are Only Getting Through Here Over Our Dead Bodies\". Havildar Singh ordered his men to fall back to the inner section of the fort, barricade the walls, and continue laying down fire on the attackers who were now swarming over the walls. Singh himself didn\'t make it back&ndash; in an effort to buy his men time to fall back he drew his Kirpan dagger, charged into the horde, and died valiantly in hand-to-hand combat against an impossible swarm of rifle-swinging tribesmen.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/21sikhs5.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">So even now, seven hours into the battle, with their commander dead, their ammunition dwindling, and their fort burning down around them, the Sikhs continued to stick it to the Orakazai with everything they could muster. It didn\'t take long for the enemy to find the weak point in the inner defenses &ndash; a rickety wooden gate that was already on fire &ndash; yet still, even when the tribesmen shot up the gate, stormed the wall, and breached through to the main building of Saragarhi, they blitzed through only to find a determined handful of pissed-off Sikhs standing there with fixed bayonets and vicious scowls. There wasn\'t going to be any Gandalf the White riding in on a hurricane of fireballs this time... these were going to have to take matters up into the points of their blades and finish this like men.</span></p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">Seeing enemies inside the tower, signalman Gurmukh Singh issued his last communications to the British, dropped his signal gear, and took up his rifle, laying down sniper fire on the enemy troops swarming over his friends below. He is credited with killing twenty men by himself, and it is believed that when he ran out of bullets he fixed his bayonet and charged down into the frayshouting the battle cry of the Sikhs &ndash; \"He who cries \'God is Truth\' is ever victorious.\" When British troops reached the position later, they found 21 dead Sikhs and somewhere between 180 and 800 dead tribesmen. The number is debated because when the British showed up there was a second round of fighting over the fort, and it was difficult to say how many enemies were killed between the two fights, but we do know that nearly every single Sikh rifleman was completely out of ammunition. They had started with 400 rounds each.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/21sikhs8.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></span><br /><span style=\"font-size: small;\">\"To the last man, with the last round.\"</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">The balls-out defenders of Saragarhi were slain to the man, but they had held their position all day and well into the evening, delaying the massive onslaught just long enough for the British to get their shit together and reinforce the position. After Saragarhi, the Orakazai moved on to the nearby Fort Gulistan, but the delay at Saragarhi had cost them the element of surprise &ndash; the men at Fort Gulistan were ready for them, and they held the attack back while freshly-arrived British heavy artillery dropped a few hundred high explosive shells right into the middle of the enemy horde.</span></p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">When the story of the Sikhs at Sargahiri was recounted to Parliament, it received a standing ovation from every member of the British government. All 21 Sikhs received the Indian Order of Merit, the highest military award available to them at the time, and their families each received a plot of land and 500 Rupees in cash (the current exchange rate lists 500 Rupees amounts as being equal to about id=\"mce_marker\"0.85 USD, but it was probably worth a lot more back in 1897... though I\'m only basing this on the fact that in 1987 500 Rupees is nearly enough to buy two Blue Rings, and those were by far the most expensive items in <em>The Legend of Zelda</em>.) The tale was mentioned by UNESCO as being as one of eight great stories of collective bravery in human history, and to this day, every September 12th the people of India celebrate Saragarhi Day.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/21sikhs6.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></span><br /><span style=\"font-size: small;\">\"We may sorrow for the sacrifice of these brave soldiers, but the Sikh nation,<br />while it lasts, will never forget the glory of the defence.\"<br /><br />- Lt. Col John Haughton, Commandant, 36th Sikh Regiment</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: small;\">Links:</span><br /><br /><span style=\"font-size: small;\"> <a href=\"http://www.sikhiwiki.org/index.php/Battle_of_Saragarhi\">SikhWiki</a></span><br /><br /><span style=\"font-size: small;\"> <a href=\"http://www.tribuneindia.com/1998/98oct04/sunday/head5.htm\">Tribune India</a><a><br /><br /> </a><a href=\"http://www.indiapost.com/the-battle-of-saragarhi/\">India Post</a></span><br /><br /><span style=\"font-size: small;\"> <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Saragarhi\">Wikipedia</a></span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: small;\">Sources:</span><br /><br /><span style=\"font-size: small;\"> Bhullar, Pritam.&nbsp; <em>The Sikh Mutiny</em>.&nbsp; Siddharth, 1987.<br /><br /> Sharma, Gautam.&nbsp; <em>Valour and Sacrifice</em>.&nbsp; Allied, 1990.<br /><br /> Tyagi, Vidya Prakash.&nbsp; <em>Martial Races of Undivided India</em>.&nbsp; Gyan, 2009.<br /><br /> Yate, Arthur Campbell.&nbsp; <em>Lieutenant-Colonel John Haughton, Commandant of the 36th Sikhs</em>.&nbsp; J. Murray, 1900. </span></p>','2011-02-25','81851845541','21sikhs.jpg','21sikhs81.jpg','The 21 Sikhs','21 Sikhs fight a last stand against 10,000 rampaging tribesmen.','\"Outnumbered and surrounded\r\nAnd still the men fought on\r\nWith a stubbornness and pride for which,\r\nThe Sikhs have long been known.\"'),('Poseidon (aka Neptune)','The Beginning of Time','N/A','The Ocean','Mythological Greek God','<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">Ok people, time for some big news:&nbsp; <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/bookfaq2.html\">I have a new book coming out</a>.&nbsp; I won\'t repeat the shit I mentioned in the link I just posted, but the short version is that it\'s a follow-up to BADASS featuring 40 of my most favorite badass heroes, gods, villains, monsters and mythological figures ranging from classical mythology to literature to modern-day pop culture. Basically it attempts to cover every seriously fucking awesome epic story ever told into one massive book that is heavy enough to double as an implement of hand-to-hand combat. I\'m so super-pumped about it I\'m kind of in danger of vomiting at any moment. Unfortunately, however, despite all of my best attempts to pack the ultimate maximum amount of awesome legendary epicness possible into the pages of the new book, I inevitably wound up leaving out key badass mythological figures. I can live with this to some degree (I am only a man, after all), but honestly, if there is one badass ancient god who would not take well to getting dissed and left out of the book, it\'s the mighty Poseidon &ndash; the Greek god of the sea, and a mega-bearded unstoppable badass so over-the-top awesome he can only be physically depicted through the medium of towering marble sculptures carved from the tusks of the long-extinct sea creatures that Poseidon himself summoned for the sole purpose of being murdered and carved into a likeness of the Sea God. Nowadays Poseidon gets kind of hosed, like he\'s the fucking Aquaman of mythological Greece, but in real life this guy a seriously hardcore, ill-tempered motherfucker who responded to even the most trivial affront by powerbombing a tsunami up your ass and then sending a bunch of vindictive dolphins to dry-hump your lifeless corpse for extra humiliation.</span></p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">Poseidon was one of three sons of the Titan Cronus. His kid brother <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/zeus.html\">Zeus</a> gets a lot of the cred for overthrowing the Titans, slaughtering a bunch of gnarly evil monsters (most of which occurred only with Poseidon\'s help, I might add), and ruling over the Earth, while Poseidon got stuck living under the sea with talking crabs in mermaid town. Sure, spear-hunting leviathans on the floor of the Marianas Trench might not be as glamorous as having babes hand-feed you ambrosia on the peak of Mount Olympus, but hey, it could have been worse &ndash; Poseidon and Zeus\' other brother, Hades, got stuck trudging around the Underworld for eternity like a chump. Sure, it sounds cool, but ruling over Hell really isn\'t as awesome as you\'d think it would be. The excitement dies down after a while. Plus, it should be mentioned the oceans are the most wide-ranging expanse on the face of the planet (and something the Greeks depended on for food, transportation, and adventure), so maybe chilling out on the sea floor flossing your teeth with stingrays, fucking with the Argonauts, giving octuple high-fives to <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/kraken.html\">Krakens</a> and humping hot mermaid babes isn\'t so bad after all.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/poseidon1.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></span><br /><span style=\"font-size: small;\">A typical Tuesday in Poseidon Town.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">According to the badass mythology of the Greeks, Poseidon lived in a gold castle at the bottom of the ocean and had a gigantic fucking trident (natch), which, while probably kind of useless in gladiatorial combat above ground, was pretty awesome when you needed to bust peoples\' shit apart underwater. First off, a trident is a stabbing weapon, and in a practical real-life combat situation it\'s a hell of a lot easier to shank a Great White underwater than it is to fucking try to cut one of them with an axe or some bullshit. Plus, a trident is better than a spear because there are three points, and three is more than one. So it\'s better. As if the stabby-stab aspect of a trident isn\'t awesome enough, when he got really ripshit pissed Poseidon could jam his godly weapon into the sea floor and the scrota-plosion of testosterone generated by the Sea God\'s concussive force was strong enough to cause tidal waves, storms, and earthquakes so intense they would be felt on land. It\'s kind of awesome that even if you didn\'t know the difference between a poop deck and a torpedo tube and had about as much interest in gouging your own eyes out with a rubber spatula as you did of going on a deep-sea fishing expedition, you still didn\'t fuck with this guy unless you like falling down endless pits like the Mario Brothers or that Nazi bitch at the end of <em>Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade</em>. Poseidon was also the guy who everyone blamed epilepsy on, because apparently he was so fucking awesome that when people thought about him too hard it gave them seizures.</span></p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">As you can imagine, people who knew shit about shit knew to give props to the P-man. Like when Alexander the Great was getting ready to lay the smackdown on the Persians at Issus, he had the good sense to stop by the ocean, say a prayer to Poseidon, and then send a four-horse chariot running out into the waves to drown (Poseidon loved that kind of shit. He had a whole army of brass-hooved horses in stables in his aquatic castle, was allegedly the god responsible for teaching men to ride horses, and was the patron deity of horse racing. How the fuck he kept his undersea horses alive without SCUBA gear is one of the great metaphysical mysteries of mythology). The Spartans used to sing his praises before combat, the people of Corinth adopted him as their patron God, and even T-Pain has the good sense to throw props out to Poseidon whenever he goes sailing on a boat.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/poseidon3.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></span><br /><span style=\"font-size: small;\">I FUCKING LOVE HORSES</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">Unfortunately for the dumbshits of Ancient Greece, a lot of idiots didn\'t recognize Poseidon\'s awesomeness, so he had to regulate on them in the sort of way that ultra-powerful, mega-petty motherfuckers righteously laid their vengeance upon those who pissed them off in ancient times. And, honestly, a lot of times this guy was just sitting around <em>waiting</em> for some moron to step to him so he could ram a triple-dose of trident points up into their colo-rectal tissue. The main example of this is the shit that went down with our boy <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/odysseus.html\">Odysseus</a> in Homer\'s <em>Odyssey</em>. Odysseus thought he was the baddest motherfucker ever (which, to his credit, he kind of was), and was so cool that he didn\'t have time to do homage to gods like Poseidon. The Sea God responded to this affront, wrecked Odysseus\' ships, sent monsters to eat a bunch of his men, and made damn sure that the Greek hero spent ten years wandering aimlessly around the Greek Islands before ever setting foot on his homeland. So you can take that to the bank and suck on it, motherfucker. While we\'re on the subject, Poseidon the Earth-Shaker had beef with Troy as well. It all started when the idiot King of Troy told Poseidon that if the Sea God built some awesome walls around the city, he\'d dish out a bunch of sweet rewards (like bacon cheeseburgers). Ok, so Poseidon built the walls of Troy &ndash; no small feat, considering that the entire military of Greece couldn\'t break the walls in a 10-year siege &ndash; but then this jerkass King totally tried to stiff Poseidon on the check, so the God of the Ocean sent a huge sea monster to eat a bunch of the guy\'s kids and trash all of his ships. Then when the Trojan War broke out, Poseidon lent his strength to any Greek hero brave enough to stand against Troy in combat. He also fucked with Aeneas occasionally just to be a dickhead.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/poseidon2.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></span><br /><span style=\"font-size: small;\">This is the sort of shit Poseidon can make happen ANY TIME HE WANTS.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">Another time the mighty King Minos of Crete asked Poseidon for an awesome bull to sacrifice, but when Poseidon sent a completely mega-huge white bull out of the water to be sacrificed, King Minos backed out and kept it as a pet instead. As revenge, Poseidon went for the low blow &ndash; he fucked with Minos\' wife\'s head, made her fall in love with the bull, and she got busy with it and gave birth to the Minotaur. On yet another occasion, the city of Athens couldn\'t decide who should be the patron god of the city. Poseidon gave them a sweet fountain with life-giving drinking water. Athena gave them a stupid fucking olive tree. The Athenians chose Athena, so Poseidon sent a flood that killed a few thousand people.</span></p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">Much like his brother Zeus, Poseidon was also something of a mega pimp-master. In addition to being married to sea nymphs and hooking up with any amphibious humanoid females he could find, he also nailed plenty of mortal women, mermaids, goddesses, and pretty much anyone else he wanted (assuming they weren\'t fast enough to outrun him). He hooked up with Demeter (the Goddess of the Harvest, who fled by turning into a horse &ndash; he responded by turning himself into a stallion, and there\'s not much I can add to that) and fathered the man-eating Cyclops, the mighty hero Theseus, and the significantly-more-Aquaman-like god Triton, and all of the kings of the mythical island empire of Atlantis were said to be sons of his. One time Poseidon humped Medusa so hard that her hair turned into snakes and she was impregnated with a fucking Pegasus. Poseidon was so pumped he sent a sea monster to eat some chick, but unfortunately for the sea monster <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/perseus.html\">Perseus</a> swooped in and killed it. Ah well, it would have been cool.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/poseidon4.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: small;\">Links:</span><br /><br /><span style=\"font-size: small;\"> <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poseidon\">Wikipedia</a></span><br /><br /><span style=\"font-size: small;\"> <a href=\"http://www.theoi.com/Olympios/Poseidon.html\">Theoi</a></span><br /><br /><span style=\"font-size: small;\"> <a href=\"http://www.maicar.com/GML/Poseidon.html\">Maicar</a></span></p>','2011-02-04','42066845630','poseidon.jpg','poseidon1a.jpg','Poseidon','The Greek God of the sea.  And vengeance.  And also horses, for some reason.',''),('Bishnu Shrestha','1976','N/A','Nepal','21st-century Nepalese Gurkha','<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">Bishnu Shrestha wasn\'t looking for a fight on the evening of 2 September 2010. As his express train roared through the darkness of the jungles of West Bengal, this Nepalese ex-soldier sat quietly, looking out the window into the calm stillness of the night sky above. The 35 year old veteran was finally on his way back home, having just retired from his position as a Naik (Corporal) in the 7th Battalion of the 8th Gurkha Infantry &ndash; a famous, battle-hardened regiment of ass-whompers that had produced balls-out awesome war heroes like <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/gurung.html\">Lachhiman Gurung</a>, and a unit in which Shrestha\'s own father had served during Vietnam. One in a long line of warriors, Bishnu himself had seen plenty of combat in Iraq, Afghanistan, and probably a half-dozen other locations that may never be declassified, and now, after having spent a good part of his adult life crushing his foes with the stock of his assault rifle and charging enemy positions armed with a bayonet and his ultra-badass kukri knife, he was looking forward to finally seeing an end to the constant fighting, settling down, and building a family in the quiet mountains of his homeland. On this evening he rode the Maurya Express, a passenger train appropriately sharing it\'s name with historical badass Chandragupta Maurya, enjoying the serenity of the Indian night.</span></p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">But there would be no rest for the weary. Around midnight, the mighty locomotive ground to a halt unexpectedly, sending passengers lurching forward in their seats. Without warning, while everyone was still trying to figure out what the crap hell was going on, suddenly from seemingly every direction passengers stood up and began to whip out all manner of frighteningly gruesome-looking weaponry &ndash; guns, knives, clubs and fucking giant swords(seriously, who robs a train with a sword!) &ndash; and started shouting for everyone to sit still, get out their valuables, and prepare to get ripped the fuck off.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/shrestha1.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">As if that wasn\'t bad enough, from a side door more armed thugs leapt into action, pouring into the train from the jungle beyond. Dozens of unscrupulous goons began making their way down the aisles, shaking down everyone for their shit, stealing wallets, tearing jewelry from the necks of old women, snatchin laptops and cell phones, and waving knives in the faces of terrified hostages.</span></p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">Despite the chaos around him, Naik Bishnu Shrestha just sat there quietly. Not saying anything. Not betraying his emotions. Even when the thugs took his own wallet, he remained silent. Like a true badass, he knew that this wasn\'t his fight. Just be quiet, give them what they want, and survive. It\'s just a few hundred bucks. It\'s not worth dying over.</span></p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">But then shit got out of hand. You see, it just so happened that Shrestha was sitting near a cute 18 year-old girl, and when this gang of baby-kicking terrorists came by her seat they decided it would be awesome to be the complete fucking slime of the earth and gang-rape her in front of her own terrified parents just for shits and giggles. The terrorist leader cut open her shirt while she cried for help.</span></p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">That was fucking it. Bishnu Shrestha couldn\'t just sit by any longer.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/shrestha2.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">Unfortunately for the douchebags of West Bengal, when the thugs had robbed Bishnu they\'d made one fatal mistake: They didn\'t take his kukri. This ultra-hardass Gurkha warrior, one in a long line of head-cleaving soldiers battle-hardened by centuries of hand-to-hand combat (and a steady diet of steel tacks and the corpses of their slain enemies), had given up his money, but knew better than to ever relinquish his weapon. Slowly, effortlessly, he eased the hilt from its hiding place. Now these fuckers were going to see what it felt like to get a taste of their own steel-tipped medicine, and it was going to taste like dental-grade pain and a roll of nasty old pennies.</span></p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">Corporal Shrestha leapt to his feet, drawing the ultimate symbol of Gurkha badassitude with one fluid motion. He flew across the train car, grabbing the would-be rapist from behind in a sleeper hold, pulled him up off the girl, and used him as a human shield while he lunged out and slashed one of the sword-swinging thugs, sending the hapless dude spinning off in a vicious tornado of blood. One of the other motherfuckers, unwilling to stab in the direction of his own boss, instead took the manly man\'s route and tried to cut the girl, slashing his knife wildly at her neck, but the girl only took a minor wound before Shrestha dropped him with a lightning-quick strike. With the terrorists in the immediate vicinity disposed of, he sliced the throat of his human shield and went looking for more fuckers to get his blood-rage off on.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/shrestha3.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">The news reports are pretty vague about what happened during this epic battle, where one balls-out Gurkha face-wrecker carved his way through a pack of 40 merciless cutthroats (indeed, even the above paragraph is a little bit of pulp fiction editorializing &ndash; merely my interpretation of the phrase \"he took control of the attacker and killed everyone around him\") but the fact of the matter is that after his initial ambush this ex-military mecha-hardass from one of the world\'s most over-the-top batshit-insane military organizations suddenly found himself in the middle of a hostage-filled train crawling with well-armed, highly-organized terrorists. This was <em>Die Hard</em> without the cowboy references. <em>Delta Force</em> without Lee Marvin. <em>Under Siege</em> without the Dramamine. and <em>Passenger 57</em> without the always betting on black thing. And, worse yet, it was happening in real life.</span></p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">Over the next twenty minutes, Corporal Bishnu Shrestha raced through the aisles giving those wanna-be punk-ass thugs a first-class ride on the Pain Train to Severed Arteryville, cutting, dodging, and back-alley knife fighting anything carrying a weapon larger than a ball-point pen. He took on the entire train &ndash; 40 men &ndash; at once, killing three and wounding eight more with a ferocious series of face-stabs and Limit Break Whirlwind Slashes so badass they would make Jet Li proud. Even after he took a nasty sword blow that severed every major artery and vein in his left hand, he continued carving up douchebags with his kukri, all the while spraying what I like to imagine to be a pseudo-comical amount of blood from his non-killing hand.</span></p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">The sight of a real man was too much for those weak-willed thugs, and once they realized that they weren\'t just beating up schoolchildren and robbing crippled old ladies of their wedding rings and were instead facing a goddamned psychotic Gurkha with balls so gigantic they barely fit through the doorway of the train car, they dropped all their look and ran for it like fucking pussies. The whole thing was over in about 20 minutes. When the train pulled into the next station, police and emergency personnel were there to treat the wounded and rush Shrestha to the hospital, where he spent two months recovering from the injury to his hand. When the police searched the dead and dying thugs, they recovered 40 gold necklaces, 200 cell phones, 40 laptops, and nearly id=\"mce_marker\"0,000 in stolen cash. Those idiots lucky enough to be left alive were hauled in to jail.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/shrestha4.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">Bishnu Shrestha was temporarily un-retired from the Gurkhas for the purposes of being promoted and subsequently awarded two medals for bravery and awesomeness. His former unit also awarded him with a presumably-rightously-looking silver-plated kukri (kind of like how when you beat <em>Goldeneye</em> you unlock the Silver PP7) and a cash bonus of 50,000 Rupees, which is enough to buy like 200 Blue Rings in <em>The Legend of Zelda</em>. The Indian Government also awarded him the bounty that was on the heads of this vicious gang, and granted him discounted airfare and train tickets for the rest of his life. I guess after hearing this guy\'s insane story they just decided to say, \"fuck those backscatter ultra-invasive x-ray machines, the best anti-terror homeland security measure our country can take is to make sure this guy is on as many flights and trains as possible.\"</span></p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">Ultimately, like a true badass, Bishnu Shrestha doesn\'t need any thanks for doing what he needed to do. The family of the girl he saved offered him a reward of $6,500, but the dude never stopped by to collect it. That wasn\'t the point. The man himself said it best, responding to reporters by saying, \"Fighting the enemy in battle is my duty as a soldier.&nbsp; Taking on the thugs on the train was my duty as a human being.\"</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/shrestha5.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: small;\">Links:</span><br /><br /><span style=\"font-size: small;\"> <a href=\"http://www.myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&amp;news_id=27100\">Republica News</a></span><br /><br /><span style=\"font-size: small;\"> <a href=\"http://timesofindia.hotklix.com/link/News/India/Lone-Nepali-Gorkha-who-subdued-40-train-robbers-bishnu-shrestha-Hamrosite-com\">Times of India</a></span><br /><br /><span style=\"font-size: small;\"> <a href=\"http://thehimalayanbeacon.com/magazine/2011/01/11/kathmandu-indian-govt-confers-nepali-youth-high-decorations-bravery/\">The Himalayan Beacon</a></span></p>','2011-01-28','97426290','shrestha.jpg','shrestha1.jpg','Bishnu Shrestha','One Gurkha fights off 40 train robbers, kills 3, wounds 8.','\"It is better to die than be a coward.\"\r\n\r\n- Gurkha motto'),('Myles Standish','1584','October 3, 1656','Lancastshire, England','17th-century British Mercenary','<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">Myles Standish is one of those high school curriculum staples that hapless teenagers across the country are forced to read about in U.S. History 101 (you can usually find him buried among a gigantic unintelligible clusterhump of names, dates, and whatever-the-fuck else the school board deems boring enough to be featured in a history textbook), and, if anybody remembers him at all, it\'s probably just as \"that beard dude with the funny-looking ascot that apparently was made out of a paper party favor\". Most Americans recognize the name, sure, but the majority of them still probably couldn\'t tell you the difference between Miles Standish and Sacajawea\'s horse if the fate of the free world depended on it. Besides, it\'s not like the Plymouth Colony of Pilgrims is really something that screams \"BADASS!\" at the top of its lungs through blood-stained teeth while leaping face-first through a plate-glass window &ndash; the early settlers of Northeastern America were a small cadre of ultra-conservative pacifist religious types who wore funny hats, dorky shoes with shiny buckles on them, and gorged themselves on turkey at Thanksgiving, and aside from that, who really gives a shit? These guys were so disinterested in the finer arts of battle, glory, and combat that when they set sail from England they packed a couple dozen ministers into the hold but only brought one soldier with them. That might not sound like the most well-thought-out strategy for establishing a colony in a land surrounded by indigenous natives who probably weren\'t too happy with a new group of people landing on their territory, but it turns out that when that one soldier is Miles Standish, that\'s all you need.</span></p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">Like all great mysterious Batman-style action heroes, nobody really knows for sure where Standish came from. While his origin story is the sort of modern-day mystery that keeps professional historians in business these days, pretty much everybody can agree that he was from some part of England (or possibly the Isle of Man, which, as far as I\'m concerned, is basically the same thing), and that at early in his life he had a lot of money, land, exotic cars, more-exotic babes, and enough purebred hunting Beagles that he could have strapped them to a dog sled and ridden them around town, but that his dickhead greedy relatives screwed him over, stole his inheritance, kicked him out of the house, and promptly erased all traces of his name from the family register.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/standish1.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></span></p>\r\n<table style=\"width: 500px;\" align=\"center\">\r\n<tbody>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td><span style=\"font-size: small;\">Standish\'s sword, complete with awesome rune-style markings.&nbsp; As a side note, I\'d like to point out that the Isle of Man has one of the <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Flag_of_the_Isle_of_Man.svg\">most awesome-looking flags</a> I\'ve ever seen. Something about the sight of three torso-less armored legs running about in a circle strikes me as being oddly hilarious for some reason.</span></td>\r\n</tr>\r\n</tbody>\r\n</table>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">Regardless of his obscure and mysterious Boba Fett-esque background, Myles (whose name is also sometimes written \"Miles\" &ndash; I chose the spelling I did because it\'s the way he spells it in his signature and I generally like to take peoples\' own words as authoritative, particularly when it applies to the correct spelling of their own names) soon found himself stripped of his inheritance and out on his ass in the cold, unforgiving wilderness of whatever part of England it was that he came from. Since Myles was far more well-adept at firing musket balls through peoples\' eyes than he was at playing bullshit political games or dealing with any issues that couldn\'t be resolved by shanking his enemies in the larynx, Standish told his jackass family to get fucked, gave everyone the finger, upper-decked all the toilets in his old house, left town forever, and enlisted the British Army. Again, we don\'t know much about his military service to the Crown, but most folks believe he was stationed in Holland and Belgium, where the British and the Dutch were fiercely battling the expansionist armies of Spain. Standish is believed to have fought at the Siege of Ostend, an epic three-year death-binge believed to be one of the longest battles since the Trojan War, and during his tenure as a British officer he distinguished himself as such a seriously badass motherfucker that by the time he was 21 he had already been promoted to a Captain in the infantry &ndash; a rank the British Army didn\'t just hand out to any douchebag capable of waving a pike in the general direction of his enemies.</span></p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">What we do know for sure is that Captain Standish was still living in Holland in 1620 when he befriended a colony of British religious separatists who had moved to Holland to escape persecution from the Anglican Church. This rag-tag group of uber-devout Puritans had come to the Netherlands in search of freedom of religion, and a nice place to practice their faith without being beaten and tortured,, but not long after they arrived they came to the realization that freedom of religion really wasn\'t all that great because it meant that there were a bunch of morons running around smoking hash and believing a bunch of heretical bullshit that the Puritans were totally against. So, rather than sit around in the anarchy of Amsterdam, the Puritans made the obvious decision to sail across the Atlantic Ocean and establish a colony in the New World where they would be free to follow their religion and persecute anyone who didn\'t believe what they believed. Interestingly, despite being perhaps the greatest hero of Plymouth Colony, Standish wasn\'t even a Puritan &ndash; shit, we don\'t even know if he was religious in any way at all &ndash; but as an experienced military commander with more than one severed enemy\'s head on his resume the Puritans offered him plenty of money to journey on the <em>Mayflower</em> and defend them from whatever unknown dangers lay before them in the New World. Standish figured, hey, what the hell, I\'ve got nothing else going on, and agreed to sail across the ocean with a hundred religious fanatics he\'d only sort of met before and make sure that they all didn\'t die horrific deaths at the hands of bears or wolves or Native Americans.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/standish2.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></span><br /><span style=\"font-size: small;\">You can always tell which one is Standish in these old paintings<br />because he\'s usually the only guy wearing armor and carrying a rifle.<br />And, in the end, isn\'t that how we all want posterity to remember us?</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">Standish quickly took charge and asserted his leadership over the Pilgrims on their journey. He was the third man to sign the Mayflower Compact, a document that basically said, \"hey when we get to the New World let\'s act like civilized people and not go all <em>Lord of the Flies</em> on each other\", and when land was sighted in the New World he personally led a 16-man landing party that circled Cape Cod in a rowboat looking for a good place to land. The rowboat landing party explored this mostly-uncharted territory, and Standish himself fought off an Indian ambush (it helped that they were totally freaked the fuck out by the sound of musket fire), discovered corn, and was the guy who decided that Plymouth Rock was the place to rock for setting up new colonies. When the Pilgrims landed and started building their colony, Standish ordered the construction of defenses such as a wooden palisade, and when the Pilgrims built their first Church he hauled a couple cannons up onto the roof and positioned them in the most advantageous positions for defense.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/standish3.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></span><br /><span style=\"font-size: small;\">\"Expedition party ready for action, sire!\"</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">Standish was understandably elected commander of the Plymouth Militia, a massive, formidable fighting force comprised of Standish himself and eight pacifist civilians barely qualified to lift their pikes and muskets. Despite fielding an army comprised of fewer people than the starting Defense of the Pittsburgh Steelers, Standish led countless expeditions out to explore uncharted territory, hunt wild animals, chase off the \"bad\" natives who were looking to kill colonists, and befriend and establish trade with the \"good\" natives who didn\'t seem to mind a bunch of white people living on their lands. In the winter, when a nasty plague swept through Plymouth killing half the population, Standish was one of the only people in town who didn\'t get sick &ndash; as a battle-scarred hardass he\'d already seen every disease you could throw at him and was so tough a little thing like microbial parasites wasn\'t going to make him start retching violently until he died of it. In diplomacy with the natives, he was the enforcer that the Pilgrims desperately needed him to be &ndash; this guy didn\'t take shit from anyone, never backed down, and responded to anything even remotely threatening with the threat extreme mega-violence and the resolve to follow up on it when needed. Like, one time a native tribe sent him a bunch of arrows wrapped in a snakeskin &ndash; an ancient threat of impending war among the tribes of this region. Standish didn\'t flinch. He pulled the arrows out, snapped them over his knee, filled the snakeskin back up with some fucking bullets, and sent it back to the guys who delivered it (quite possibly with a message indicating where exactly his enemies could stick the bullets). Another time, when a rival tribe captured Squanto, the awesome native hero who had helped the Pilgrims get through that difficult first winter, Standish personally went out into the woods in the middle of the night, snuck into the rival tribe\'s, broke into the chief\'s tent, freed Squanto, and then created a diversion by screaming like a madman and shooting an enemy warrior with a musket. His distraction was so effective that the entire camp fled, allowing Standish and Squanto to casually walk back home.</span></p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">Standish\'s most famous outward display of badass behavior happened a few years later, when another rival tribe openly threatened to ambush Plymouth Colony in the middle of the night and massacre everyone they could get their tomahawks on. When Standish went to talk some sense into their chief, the guy started saying a bunch of shit about how short the British officer was. Standish, who was in fact a really short guy (with a temper that led the natives to refer to him as \"The Little Pot that Boils Over Quickly\"), also had a hell of a Napoleon complex going on, and didn\'t take well to being dissed by anyone. The British Captain didn\'t say anything, but the next day, when the two men got together once again to talk business, Standish snaked the knife out of the dude\'s hand and stabbed him to death with it. When the chief\'s two bodyguards jumped in, Standish killed both of them as well in one knife-swinging rampage of steel-tipped destruction. After fighting his way out of the enemy camp, he marched back to Plymouth with the enemy chief\'s head on a pike, and then posted the head on the city wall as a warning. Who else wants to talk shit?</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/standish4.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></span><br /><span style=\"font-size: small;\">Surveying the pike-laden head.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">Sure, you can say what you want about the ethics of stealing your enemy\'s knife in the middle of negotiations and killing three men with it. The Pilgrims certainly did &ndash; they thought he was too hardcore and ultra-violent, and suggested that he should have tried to convert them to Christianity rather than stab them in the eye. But they didn\'t hire Standish to preach the faith &ndash; they brought him along to keep their people alive, and that\'s exactly what he did. Later on, as the makeshift only police officer of the settlement, he arrested a guy named Thomas Morton, who was accused of selling guns to the Indians and engaging in \"riotous behavior\" (the fact that Morton once referred to Standish as \"Captain Shrimp\" earned the prisoner a few extra kicks to the head), and as a British military representative in the New World he did his country proud by leading an expedition against a nearby colony of snooty Frenchman who were accused of being rude to some of the Pilgrims once. He didn\'t end up killing anyone in the raid, but the Frenchies got the point.</span></p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">Standish was elected militia commander every single year for the rest of his life, was assistant governor once, worked as Treasurer for 16 years, and participated in every single military expedition undertaken by Plymouth during his lifetime. He got married, had five kids, built a huge house (possibly naming it after the old manor in which he used to live), and, most importantly, personally oversaw the success and survival of the Pilgrims at Plymouth. When he died in 1656 at the age of 70 he not only left his sons the honor of being related to the most famous warrior the American colonies had yet to see, but he also sarcastically willed them all the property he had been screwed out of by his dickhead family in England.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/standish5.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: small;\">Links:</span><br /><br /><span style=\"font-size: small;\"> <a href=\"http://www.answers.com/topic/myles-standish\">Answers.com</a></span><br /><br /><span style=\"font-size: small;\"> <a href=\"http://www.famousamericans.net/mylesstandish/\">Famous Americans</a></span><br /><br /><span style=\"font-size: small;\"> <a href=\"http://www.mayflowerhistory.com/Passengers/MylesStandish.php\">Mayflower History</a></span><br /><br /><span style=\"font-size: small;\"> <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myles_Standish\">Wikipedia</a></span></p>\r\n<p><br /><br /></p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: small;\">Sources:</span><br /><br /><span style=\"font-size: small;\"> Horne, Charles F.&nbsp; <em>Soldiers and Sailors</em>.&nbsp; Kessinger, 2003.<br /><br /> Jenks, Tudor.&nbsp; <em>Captain Myles Standish</em>.&nbsp; The Century, 1905.<br /><br /> Morris, Charles.&nbsp; <em>Primary History of the United States</em>&nbsp; J.B. Lippincott, 1899. </span></p>','2011-01-21','5275206367','standish.jpg','standish4.jpg','Myles Standish','Personal enforcer of the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock.','\"He was an iron-nerved Puritan who could hew down forests and live on crumbs.\"'),('Jeanne Fourquet','15th Century','Unknown','Beauvais, France','Medieval French Warrior','<p>In June of 1472, Duke Charles the Bold of Burgundy was a fucking dickhead.&nbsp; He was such a complete and total jackass to everybody that the King of France had officially declared him a traitor to the crown, and Charles &ndash; who, like I just said, was a fucking assclown &ndash; got his panties in a wad about the whole thing, raised an army of douchebags and started turning the French countryside into a giant raging inferno of suck.&nbsp; So far in his illustrious career as a no-talent asshelmet who punched third graders in the face, stole candy from underprivileged retards and generally just contributed nothing of value to the human race, Charles the Bold had busted through the city walls of Dinant, Leige, and Nesle, slaughtered all of the inhabitants with his boner and torched everything that wasn&rsquo;t able to be melted down into ingredients for his home-made meth lab.</p>\r\n<p>Well to the people of the town of Beauvais, the idea of being raped, plundered, pillaged and char-grilled into extra-crispy Peasant Burgers by some stupid jackass with a small-penis complex was about as appealing as a swift punch to the ballsack with a mailed fist.&nbsp; They would have rather licked lead paint off the side of a crackhouse than let this mouth-breathing numbnuts into their town, so when they saw him coming they immediately pulled up the drawbridge, assembled the militia, and prepared to stomp this guy&rsquo;s gall bladder into bile with everything they had.</p>\r\n<p>Of course, Duke Charles was the sort of guy who had a crippling inferiority complex and needed to conquer lightly-defended cities just for the sake of trying to make people believe that he didn&rsquo;t have a two-inch wang, so he immediately set in to besiege the poor residents of Beauvais, who had done absolutely nothing to screw with him but somehow ended up getting the short end of the asskicking stick anyways.&nbsp; A mere 300 ragtag militiamen garrisoned the walls of the city, and now they were about to get butt-humped by a horde of pissed off Burgundian knights.</p>\r\n<p>Charles the Bold, being the kind of person who arrogantly demanded that everyone refer to him by the epithet &ldquo;The Bold&rdquo; even though his biggest claim to fame was that he married two of his cousins and ended the lives of more defenseless peasants than a bad sci-fi/fantasy movie about talking, fire-breathing magical evil dragons with machine guns strapped to their heads, immediately sent his troops to storm the city walls.&nbsp; He promised several days&rsquo; worth of plundering, looting, burninating and murdering to his men when they captured the city, and of course the degenerate assholes in his army were totally pumped up about that for some reason.&nbsp; The brave defenders of Beauvais steeled themselves for a life-or-death struggle, but let&rsquo;s be honest here:&nbsp; The odds were pretty good that these dudes were going to end up having to find a doctor to dislodge Duke Charles&rsquo; steel-toed boot from their collective asses.</p>\r\n<p>Everybody pretty much shit themselves immediately, except for one badass chick who wasn\'t going to be intimidated by something as trivial as a fucking army of medieval knights &ndash; Jeanne the Hatchet.&nbsp; She was kind of like Molly Hatchet, only instead of flirting with disaster, she was a master of it.&nbsp; This teenage peasant girl from Beauvais didn&rsquo;t really dig the prospect of being manhandled by some rampaging, plunder-seeking snooty Frenchman, and she was willing to do whatever she could to help out the obviously-overmatched defenders of her hometown.&nbsp; Unfortunately, things weren&rsquo;t looking so hot.&nbsp; The defenders were hurling rocks, arrows, boiling oil, Erlenmeyer flasks full of sulfuric acid, Molotov cocktails and Acme-brand anvils down on the Burgundian troops as they swarmed up the sides of the walls, but a couple of severely-melted faces really only succeeded in pissing them off.&nbsp; The invaders crossed the moat, threw ladders up against the stone walls of the town, and climbed onto the ramparts.&nbsp; Eventually, the champion of the Burgundy army pulled himself on top of the wall, planted the flag of Charles the Bold high above the town, and shouted a bunch of asinine insults about how he was going to have his way with everybody&rsquo;s mothers.</p>\r\n<p>That was the final straw.&nbsp; Jeanne wasn&rsquo;t going just going to stand there and let some jackoff stick his gay-ass flag on the walls of her town.&nbsp; She got super pissed off, grabbed the closest thing to her &ndash; which just so happened to be a gleaming fucking hatchet &ndash; sprinted across the wall like a homicidal Olympian and lunged at the stupid asshole.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/hachette1.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The poor knight didn&rsquo;t even know what hit him.&nbsp; One minute he was standing there, crotch-chopping in the general direction of the citizens of Beauvais, and the next minute this crazy bitch was assaulting him with a hatchet.&nbsp; Jeanne smashed this guy in the shoulder with her axe with enough force to decapitate a rabid Minotaur, and her second swing sent the hatchet blade right into his throat.&nbsp; As the guy stood there, his eyes slowly glazing over, Jeanne kicked him square in the chest, sending him flying off the wall to his death below.&nbsp; Then she pulled the flag up out of the ground, broke the flagpole over her knee and hurled it down into the moat on top of him.</p>\r\n<p>After seeing this display of badassitude so completely xtreme that it generated its own gravitational field, the defenders of Beauvais got super omega pumped up with the energy to punch boulders, play middle linebacker for the Chicago Bears and pull all the stuffing out of their couches with their teeth.&nbsp; The men defending the city fought like they were totally wigged out on a Satanic concoction of Red Bull and crack, killing every Burgundian they could get their hands on and chucking their bodies over the walls of the city.&nbsp; Jeanne continued to flip out like a goddamned ninja on the invaders, swinging her axe like a bloodthirsty lumberjack, and before long Charles the Bold was boldly running away from the ever-swinging death-bringing hatchet arm of our insanely badass heroine.&nbsp; He never returned, and met a miserable end five years later when he was brained with a halberd and his dead body was eaten by wild animals.</p>\r\n<p>When King Louis XI heard about how this one tough broad had single-handedly turned the tide of the battle by hacking up some dude with a hatchet and biting his flag in half with her teeth he couldn&rsquo;t help but get psyched up as well.&nbsp; He threw a parade for her, lavished her with gifts, and gave her the right to marry the man of her choosing, which was kind of a big deal back in the days of arranged marriages when most women were bought and sold like livestock at the county fair.&nbsp; To this day, there is a statue of Jeanne in the town she so valiantly fought to defend, and in celebration of her heroism a parade known as the &ldquo;Procession of the Assault&rdquo; takes place every year on the anniversary of the battle.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/hachette2.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>LOL MORE LIKE CHARLES THE TOLD</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Links:</span><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_Hachette\" target=\"blank\">Wikipedia</a></p>','2008-09-12','900088624033','hachette.jpg','hachette - Copy.jpg','Jeanne Hachette','Teenage girl who defended her city walls with a hatchet.',''),('Khawla bint al-Azwar','600 AD','Unknown','Saudi Arabia','Medieval Arab Warrior','<p>Khawla bint Al-Azwar was the daughter of a powerful chief of a presumably-obscure Arab tribe known as the Bani Assad (which I would like to think is Arabic for BaadAssad). An early convert to the wild newfangled religion of Islam in the early 600s, Khawla would go on to be one of the most hardcore ass-kicking chicks throughout the entire Islamic Conquest, as the sons of the Prophet steamrolled the puny forces of pretty much every non-European civilization in the world. She served as a nurse and a healer, and then when that became boring she fought as a front-line warrior, and now is known among her people as the prime example of how much ass a woman can kick - especially when you piss her off badly enough.</p>\r\n<p>We don\'t know much about her youth, except that as a girl young Khawla learned swordsmanship and literary awesomeness from her brother, a well-known local warrior-poet named Derar who enjoyed stuff like epic poetry and anything involving stuff that explodes. Derar, as the son of the chief, had been trained from birth in the art of pushing these skills to the max, and in passing the knowledge along to his sis he actually in the long run ended up doing himself (and pretty much the entire empire) a favor by doing so.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/khawla1.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>When Derar joined the armies of Islam in their incessant conquests of the Middle East in the 7th century, his sister joined up to follow the soldiers along and provide medical assistance Florence Nightingale-style. Traveling with the ultra-badass general Khalid bin Walid in his sword-point ass-reaming of Palestine, Syria and Jordan, Khawla was one of a team responsible for patching together gaping sword wounds, bringing water to dying men, and replacing bandages and cleaning out wounds. Well, one day, during a battle against the Byzantine Empire outside Jerusalem, Khawla was watching the battle from a ridge when she saw her brother Derar get knocked from his horse and dragged off by Byzantine troops as a prisoner, and suddenly cleaning horrific injuries didn\'t hold as much interest for her as inflicting them did.</p>\r\n<p>It was at this point that Khawla bint Al-Azwar did something that set her apart as one of the most seriously toughest women from the Middle Ages. Rather than sit back and weep about how her brother was now going to be crammed into a pound-me-in-the-ass Byzantine torture chamber for a lifetime of Chinese water torture and boring church hymns, she got seriously seriously fucking pissed off. Khawla ran to the supply tent, grabbed a suit of armor, threw on a black robe with a green sash, turned a black strip of cloth into a badass-looking ninja mask that concealed everything on her face except her eyes, and rode out into battle on horseback carrying a heavy spear and a scimitar.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/khawla2.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>\"I was with the women accompanying the army, <br />and when I learnt that the enemy captured my brother, I did what I did.\"</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The battle at Yarmouk was already going pretty well for Khalid, but pretty much everyone on the battlefield was shocked out of their steel-plated jock straps when they suddenly saw this black-and-green streak of screaming warrior babe come charging in out of nowhere and blast into the Byzantine lines like a burkha-wearing lightning bolt of face-stabbing pain. Stories written down from people who were there claimed that they just saw some crazy knight in a black hood blasting into the Byzantine lines, swinging around a spear that dripped blood, and massacring everything in her wheelhouse like a face-slicing maniac. One guy mentioned that he thought this warrior fought with such fury that it must have been Khalid himself, but then when the real Khalid came over to see what was up everybody was like, \"WHAAA?! Dude what the fuck is going on around here?\" When the Arabic general saw this one dude wasting an entire battalion by himself, he ordered all of his men to attack, and he even sent a trusted member of his personal bodyguard out to ensure that this lone wolf madman made it through the battle alive. In the battle that ensued, the Byzantines were driven from the field and ran home to their mommas. Khawla had not only helped turn the tide of the battle, but as the Byzantine army was routing she led a small detachment that rode down their ranks, found her brother (and the other Muslim prisoners), slew the guards, and brought all of the POWs back to friendly lines.</p>\r\n<p>At the end of the battle, Khalid tracked down this mysterious black-clad knight (who, according to the Arabic histories was at this time covered completely in blood) and demanded the warrior to reveal his true identity. At first Khawla was reluctant (presumably for obvious reasons), but once she revealed herself as a woman Khalid really didn\'t seem to give a shit about it - all he did was tell her that while she may have started the battle standing with the women, now she was going to fight like a man. From that point on, she continued to serve throughout the campaign, battling on horseback with sword and spear in battles across Palestine, Syria and Jordan, including one fight when she personally rallied a routed Muslim force, re-organized them, and led them in a balls-out counter-attack.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/khawla3.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Khawla is pretty awesome because she dealt with pretty much every situation by resorting to extreme head-cleaving vengeance. For instance, while she was fighting at the Battle of Ajnadin, Khawla\'s horse was cut out from under her, sending her sprawling to the sand and losing control of her spear, but this untimely dismounting didn\'t come close to breaking her fighting spirit. Before she could get up, the Byzantines were on her, capturing her and bringing her back to their camp, where she was put in a prison tent with another group of Arab women who had been captured early in the campaign. After the battle, the Byzantine general came by to check out the prisoner, and when he saw how totally smoking hot Khawla was, he told the guards to bring her by his tent later on that night for some good old fashioned sexing.</p>\r\n<p>Well fuck that bullshit. Khawla wasn\'t about to submit to some perv just because she was his prisoner, so she organized the other women around her to get seriously pissed off and decide to stick it to these Byzantine fucks (rather than the other way around). So, as soon as the sun went down, the Arab women in the prison tent broke out of their bindings, grabbed the tent poles, and brought the entire tent down on their heads. When the nearby guards ran over to see what was going on, Khawla bint Al-Azwar busted up through the collapsed tent fabric and cracked the closest guy in the face with a tent pole, sending the dude spinning to the turf. Within moments an entire group of women emerged, wielding tent poles like spears and plunging sharpened tent pegs into anyone around them in an even-more-unhygenic variant on shanktastic icepick homicide. The women fought their way out, escaped across the battlefield to allied lines, and made it out of there. Khawla herself is personally credited with killing five men during the battle, liquefying their brains by cracking them in the dome with a giant hunk of wood.</p>\r\n<p>Khawla served the rest of the war, eventually married a powerful Arab prince, and is now remembered as one of the greatest female warriors in the Muslim world. To this day nearly every city in the Middle East has a school named after her. They\'ve also named a number of awards and military combat ships after her, and even more recently <a href=\"http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2005-07-24-iraq-women_x.htm\">a unit of women soldiers serving in the modern-day Iraqi military</a> is named after the Islamic faith\'s most famous war heroine.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/khawla4.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Links:</span><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.alshindagah.com/mayjun2003/woman.html\">Islamic Heroine</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2005-07-24-iraq-women_x.htm\">USA Today article on the modern Khawla Unit</a><br /><br /></p>\r\n<p><br /><br /></p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Sources:</span><br /><br /><span> Bano, Afsar.&nbsp; <em>Status of Women in Islamic Society</em>.&nbsp; Anmol, 2003.<br /><br /> Hasan, Masudul.&nbsp; <em>Daughters of Islam</em>.&nbsp; Hazrat Data, 1976.<br /><br /> Kurzman, Charles.&nbsp; <em>Modern Islam, 1840-1940</em>.&nbsp; Oxford Univ. Press, 2002.<br /><br /> Miles, Rosalind and Robin Cross.&nbsp; <em>Hell Hath No Fury</em>.&nbsp; Three Rivers, 2008. </span></p>','2010-12-31','403678626986','khawla.jpg','khawla1.jpg','Khawla bint al-Azwar','Warrior heroine of the Islamic Conquest.\r\n','\"Khalid watched a knight, in black attire, with a big green shawl wrapped around his waist and covering his bust. That knight broke through the Roman ranks as an arrow. Khalid and the others followed him and joined battle, while the leader was wondering about the identity of the unknown knight.\"'),('Hongi Hika','1772','March 6, 1828','Kaikohe, New Zealand','19th-century Maori Warrior','<p>When Captain Cook first landed on the islands of New Zealand in the 1769, one thing immediately became apparent to him &ndash; the Maori people are fucking stone-cold hardcore.&nbsp; Part of this sudden realization concerning the undeniable badass credibility of the indigenous Polynesian peoples of this island probably stem from the fact that one of Cook\'s first encounters with the Maori happened when a pimped-out war canoe (I love the idea of \"war canoes\" by the way) rolled up alongside Cook\'s ship and a couple of skull-crushing tribesmen with gnarly full-face tattoos stood up in their ship and held up a set of perfectly-preserved severed heads they had recently detached from the torsos of a band of almost-equally-hardcore warriors.&nbsp; Cook noted with interest that these dried severed heads were so well preserved that the hair and facial features were still intact and fully-recognizable, which was a pretty impressive (if not creepy as fuck) feat of modern engineering that both impressed and intimidated him at the same time.&nbsp; Cook would later learn that taking the heads of your enemies was pretty much a regular custom in Maori culture, and that once the heads had been dried and baked, they were generally put on posts so they could be mocked and cursed (in a manner not dissimilar to the one I quoted above).&nbsp; Oh, and the Maori would eat the dead warriors\' asses with sweet potatoes in an effort to gain the slain warrior&rsquo;s strength <em>Highlander</em>-style.</p>\r\n<p>As there wasn&rsquo;t a written language among the ancient Maori, we don&rsquo;t know much about this warrior-culture before the Europeans first landed there, but the stuff we do know &ndash; and particularly the story of the inventive yet head-popping-offingly ruthless war Chief Hongi Heke &ndash; is sufficient to substantiate the late Captain Cook\'s initial belief that these guys are some of the most pants-crappingly terrifying and intense fighters in history.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/hongihika1.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Hongi Hika, future war chief of the Ngapuhi tribe and master of the North and West areas of the Bay of Islands, was born at some nebulous time in the mid- to late-1770s.&nbsp; As a young man he fought wars against his tribe\'s mortal enemies &ndash; the Ngati Whatua &ndash; and his combat prowess and magical ability to implode his enemies\' skulls with a badass <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/hongihika-jadeclub.jpg\">jade war club</a> made him a minor hero among his people in no short order.&nbsp; In 1808, however, Hongi\'s tribal chief, while trading items with the Europeans, discovered a new, ultra-powerful weapon that he was certain was going to be the most awesome thing to happen to warfare since the invention of decapitation &ndash; the flintlock musket.&nbsp; With this new weapon locked and loaded, Hongi\'s boss was sure he was going to drive all his tribal opponents before him in a haze of blood spray and gunpowder.</p>\r\n<p>It didn&rsquo;t work out so well. In the Ngapuhi\'s first battle against the Ngati Whatua, Hongi\'s side got off one volley of gunfire, and then while they were reloading (a process that back in the day took roughly 20 seconds, which is a really fucking long time to stand around doing nothing when a guy is bearing down on you with a giant club) the Ngati Whatua warriors rushed in and pummeled the Ngapuhi into bloody crapburgers.&nbsp; The war chief, most of his clan, two of Hongi\'s brothers, some donkeys, and a large number of Ngapuhi warriors were massacred, their heads were taken as trophies, and the headless bodies were then eaten cannibal-style.&nbsp; Hongi barely escaped with his life by leading a small group of warriors into the swamp and hiding out for a while, but this wasn\'t exactly glamorous work.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/hongihika2.gif\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Hongi Hika was still convinced that this SNAFU was just a minor setback, however, and he was wise enough to understand that gunfire was inevitably going to be superior to beating douchebags over the head with sticks.&nbsp; As the most senior badass of his tribe, Hongi took over as ruler of the Ngapuhi, and he made a point to maintain contact with the Europeans and trade for as many bullets and as much gunpowder as he could get.&nbsp; After a couple of military successes, he developed a pretty sweet answer to Western Civilization\'s supply-and-demand decapitation problem that would ultimately benefit his tribe in the long run:&nbsp; He would behead captured enemy warriors, smoke their heads, and trade the heads to Europeans for guns and ammo.&nbsp; It turns out there was a pretty huge market for smoked disembodied Maori warrior heads back in Europe (they used them as lawn ornaments or something), so this enterprise into capitalism ended up netting Hongi quite a bit of valuable war material.&nbsp; Hongi, who as a delightfully cute side note has a name that roughly translates into the semi-adorable rubbing-noses \"Eskimo Kiss\" thing, eventually brought the Ngapuhi back to power as a serious force among the Maori tribes that nobody wanted to fuck with.&nbsp; He got a bunch of hardcore face tattoos, married two women (including a blind woman who was a military genius said to be able to see the future), and kept looking out for opportunities to use European advances to tech up his army.</p>\r\n<p>In 1814 Hongi went to Sydney, where he met a British dude named Samuel Marsten who was really into Christianity and Jesus and not beheading people all the time, but who also wasn\'t really equipped to defend his missionaries in their attempts to convert the native population.&nbsp; Hongi, looking to get in good with the Europeans any way he could, ended up setting up the first Christian mission in New Zealand, and took it upon himself to personally protect the missions and dish out excruciating, head-removing tortures on anyone who tried to step to Jesus in New Zealand (Hong himself, however, refused to convert &ndash; he claimed that the whole turn the other cheek thing was &ldquo;unsuitable for warriors&rdquo;.)&nbsp; Hongi&rsquo;s role as the defender of the faith eventually made him so popular among the Brits that in 1820 he was invited to England to meet with King George IV, who personally gave a ton of awesome gifts to the Maori war chief.&nbsp; Hongi kept the awesome suit of medieval-looking armor bequeathed to him by the British monarch, but on the way home from London he stopped into Australia and exchanged pretty much everything else for guns and bullets.&nbsp; By the time he had returned to his native land, Hongi Hika had not only helped put together the world&rsquo;s first Maori-English dictionary, but he\'d also brought three thousand flintlock muskets with him.&nbsp; Now everyone was humped.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/hongihika3.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<table style=\"width: 500px;\" align=\"center\">\r\n<tbody>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td><span>Other fun Pacific Islands headhunting facts:&nbsp; In Sumatra, if you committed adultery with the chief\'s wife, you were killed and eaten (your family had to supply the limes and salt to season your dead ass).&nbsp; Tahitian guys used to crush their opponents corpses with a club, cut the dude open, pull his insides out, and wear him around like a kimono.&nbsp; In Fiji they would eat your brains and use your skull to bail water out of their canoes, and guys in Iban couldn\'t get married until they&rsquo;d taken an enemy head in combat.</span></td>\r\n</tr>\r\n</tbody>\r\n</table>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>I would never take anything away from a death implement as awesome as a club fashioned from a solid hunk of jade, but let\'s be honest here &ndash; traditional Maori weaponry wasn&rsquo;t really super-effective against a dude at close range with a musket.&nbsp; So in 1821, when the freshly-equipped army of Hongi Hika started sailing 40 war canoes up and down the Bay of Islands stopping at every township along the way to smite their foes apart, you can be pretty sure that they were pretty damn successful.&nbsp; The Maori tribes hadn&rsquo;t seen anything like the sort of pain Hongi was dropping on them before, and as a result he destroyed towns up and down the bay, killing everyone, taking their heads, and eating the cooked corpses with a side of horseradish sauce (fun side note:&nbsp; when one Christian missionary accidentally stumbled on the scene of one post-war man-feast, Hongi offered the guy some food, saying that human meat was way better than the shitty pork they ate in Britain all the time).&nbsp; The heads were then sold for bullets, used as target practice, or used as decorative ornaments as needed.&nbsp; Just to prove he was even more hardcore, he cut the tattooed skin off the thigh of one slain enemy, dried it out in the sun, and turned it into an intimidating-looking cartridge box for lugging around his bullets.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/hongihika4.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>For the next year, Hongi&rsquo;s destruction was ultimate.&nbsp; He conquered the Ngati Maru, the Ngati Paoa, the Arwa, and the Waikato, plundered their towns, and captured their women.&nbsp; In 1825 he attacked his ancient enemies, the Ngati Whatua, killing 1,000 men in a single battle while losing just 70 of his own warriors.&nbsp; He easily established himself as the big shit on New Zealand.</p>\r\n<p>Things went well for a while, but eventually the Maori tribes caught on re: guns being awesome and started buying muskets like crazy from the Europeans.&nbsp; The party eventually ended for Hongi in 1828, when he was shot in the lung during a battle.&nbsp; With his last words, the dying Maori war chief called his warriors over to listen to the wind whistle out of his chest, which is pretty creepy/awesome.&nbsp; As an interesting side note, while Hongi was bloody and brutal in his life, he actually did a lot to help the Maori in the long run &ndash; when the Maori went on to armed conflict to resist the inevitable European domination of their homeland, they were a step up on other native cultures throughout the empire &ndash; they already had guns, and they knew how to use them.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/hongihika5.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Links:</span><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://history-nz.org/wars5.html\">History-NZ.org</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/1h32/1\">NZ Government Site</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.nzetc.org/tm/scholarly/tei-TeIMoko.html\">NZTEC.org</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hongi_Hika\">Wikipedia</a></p>\r\n<p><br /><br /></p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Sources:</span><br /><br /><span> Chacon, Richard J. and David H. Dye.&nbsp; <em>The Taking and Displaying of Human Body Parts as Trophies by Amerindians</em>.&nbsp; Springer, 2007.<br /><br /> Knight, Ian and Adam Hook.&nbsp; <em>Maori Fortifications</em>.&nbsp; Osprey, 2009.<br /><br /> Lal, Brij V., and Kate Fortune.&nbsp; <em>The Pacific Islands</em>.&nbsp; Univ. of Hawaii Press, 2000.<br /><br /> MacCormick, Alex.&nbsp; <em>The Mammoth Book of Maneaters</em>.&nbsp; Running Press, 2003. </span></p>','2010-12-24','590320127130','hongihika.jpg','hongihika1.jpg','Hongi Hika','Brutal Maori war chief who collected the heads of his defeated enemies.','\"And where is your father?  He is cooked.\r\nAnd where is your brother?  He is eaten.\r\nAnd where is your wife?  There she sits, a wife for me.\r\nAnd where are your children? : There they are, loads on their backs carrying food as my slaves.\"\r\n\r\n- Speech given by a Maori warrior to the dried severed head of an enemy chief.'),('George Mayow','Unknown','January 1, 1873','United Kingdom','19th-century British Soldier','<p>On the morning of 25 October 1854, outside the quiet town of Balaclava (not to be confused with Baklava, a delicious Greek dessert pastry), the 673 cavalrymen of the British 4th Light Dragoons, 13th Light Dragoons, 17th Lancers, 8th Hussars and 11th Hussars stood at the mouth of a seriously hellacious valley staring at their own suddenly-salient mortality. &nbsp; Atop the large sloped hill on the left side of this ridiculously-deadly valley sat a couple ominous-looking batteries of Russian cannons, all pointing down into the flat grassland below, daring the cavalrymen to approach. To the right, Britain&rsquo;s Turkish allies had just been driven out of their trenches by a massive onslaught of Russian face-stabbing insanity, and the guns they&rsquo;d abandoned while getting shanked in the eye had now been commandeered and re-appropriated for the Russian cause.&nbsp; Directly across the floor of the valley, nearly a mile away, the English cavalry was staring down the giant black muzzles of a few dozen artillery pieces that definitely seemed as though there were not fucking around.&nbsp; As if this wasn&rsquo;t soul-crushing enough, behind those guns lie the main body of the Russian Army &ndash; six regiments of cavalry and roughly twenty battalions of infantry.</p>\r\n<p>The Light Brigade had its orders. Take the guns, immediately.</p>\r\n<p>The unit&rsquo;s second-in-command, Major George Mayow, wasn&rsquo;t the man responsible for this obviously horrific, Stooges-grade clusterfuck of a blunder that he knew would be destined to lead hundreds of brave cavalrymen to a multi-flavored assortment gruesome deaths.&nbsp; He was a soldier.&nbsp; An officer in the service of the Queen.&nbsp; All he could do now was carry out his objectives, press the attack to the best of his ability, lead his troops through a gauntlet of cannon fire, maintain discipline, and bring his boys back as alive as possible.&nbsp; What would result from his (and the rest of the Light Brigade&rsquo;s) actins is not only one of the more intense moments in the storied legacy of the British armed forces, but in all of military history itself. An unbelievably daring, borderline-foolhardy suicide charge against impossible odds, carried out without a single complaint, and executed with a greater degree of success than anyone could possibly have hoped for, Major Mayow made damn sure that the five regiments of the Light Brigade set an example to the world on that fateful day of the true meaning of bravery, heroism, having <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trooper\">badass Iron Maiden songs</a> written about you, and not saying shit to your dumbass commanding officer even when he gives you an order that&rsquo;s completely fucking retarded.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/mayow1.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<table style=\"width: 500px;\" align=\"center\">\r\n<tbody>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td><span>\"We advanced down a gradual descent of more than three-quarters of a mile, with the batteries vomiting forth upon us shells and shot, round and grape, with one battery on our right flank and another on the left, and all the intermediate ground covered with the Russian riflemen; so that when we came to within a distance of fifty yards from the mouths of the artillery which had been hurling destruction upon us, we were, in fact, surrounded and encircled by a blaze of fire, in addition to the fire of the riflemen upon our flanks.\"</span></td>\r\n</tr>\r\n</tbody>\r\n</table>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Despite what Errol Flynn might have you believe, the story of the Light Brigade starts with a completely pointless conflict known as the Crimean War.&nbsp; While I&rsquo;m sure there&rsquo;s a hugely-important back story here that dates back to the Roman Empire or some ridiculous garbage, the short version of the bullshit reason behind this Crimean nonsense is this: The Ottoman Empire used to always come out and publicly say that Russia was the official protector of all Christians in the Ottoman Empire, but then in the mid-19th century they changed their minds and said the French should protect the Christians instead.&nbsp; Logically, Russia got pissed and went to war with everyone in the world.&nbsp; The forces of Imperial Russia crossed the border into Ottoman territory, and Britain, Turkey, France, and like pretty much every European-based organization with a membership of at least four people grabbed a bunch of guns and went to the Crimean Peninsula to rabbit-punch the Tsar&rsquo;s armies right in their Faberge eggs.</p>\r\n<p>Long story short, the only thing of any value on the Crimean peninsula was the Russian port of Sevastopol, and that was really only important because it was Russia&rsquo;s naval headquarters in the Mediterranean (an honor it attained by being the <em>only</em> Russian naval port with any kind of access to the Mediterranean).&nbsp; So obviously the French and British wanted to smash the place into rubble and then urinate on the detritus.&nbsp; The Russians were opposed to this, and when the Allies landed on the peninsula, they soon found themselves staring at these obviously-impenetrable, ready-to-hump-you-in-the-asshole Russian positions outside the town of Balaclava.</p>\r\n<p>Despite full-well knowing that his commanding officer didn&rsquo;t know the difference between his dick and a garden hose, Mayow had a job to do, and as a career military hardass he wasn&rsquo;t about to start questioning orders now.&nbsp; When the bugle sounded the charge and the unit&rsquo;s commander &ndash; General Sir Lordship Master Earl James Brudenell of Cardigan, the Seventh Earl of Cardigan &ndash; led the charge, George Mayow was the second man in formation, spurring his horse straight ahead at the gallop and blitzing balls-out on a suicide charge of goddamned epic proportions.&nbsp; Every man in the Brigade followed.&nbsp; They kept their formation perfectly.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/mayow4.gif\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>\"It is magnificent, but it is not war. It is madness.\"<br /><br /></span></p>\r\n<center><span>- French Marshal Pierre Bosquet,while observing the charge</span></center>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Now here&rsquo;s a fun tip for all of you budding armchair generals out there:&nbsp; it doesn&rsquo;t matter how tough your soldiers are &ndash; if you&rsquo;re going to order a cavalry unit to charge horse-first into a bunch of cannons, it&rsquo;s generally a pretty good idea to specify exactly <em>which</em> cannons you want them to go off and get blown up by.&nbsp; Unfortunately that didn&rsquo;t really happen at Balaclava, and while it turned out that poor General Cardigan was actually supposed to be taking the guns up on the left cliff &ndash; not charging straight ahead like a fucking moron &ndash; Cardigan really didn&rsquo;t get that memo.&nbsp; The Captain who passed the order along from the overall British commander rode out as soon as he saw the cavalry start to move, in an effort to warn them they were headed the wrong fucking direction, but Captain Inscrutable was immediately moked out with a cannon ball and never got to spread the word that there was a little bit of a miscommunication going on here.</p>\r\n<p>The Light Brigade advanced at the gallop, and, as you can expect, they got seriously pounded from every possible direction.&nbsp; Artillery, cannons, and sharpshooters rained fire down from the cliffs, the cannons in front ripped off double-loads of canister shot (a nasty type of pellet ammunition that basically turned their cannon into a giant shotgun that would be right at home on a &lsquo;Mech), and the entire valley turned into a hailstorm of smoke, lead, and body parts.&nbsp; It was like shooting fish in a barrel with a 19th century smoothbore cannon.</p>\r\n<p>Amazingly, however, despite the obscene odds, the Light Brigade didn&rsquo;t slow down.&nbsp; They didn&rsquo;t turn back.&nbsp; Fuck, they didn&rsquo;t even flinch &ndash; these fearless hardasses pressed on, driving at the Russian cannons ahead, determined to slice those canister-loading motherfuckers into shark chum with a few well-places saber hacks to the brain pan as soon as those chumps were within striking distance.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/mayow2.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Against all possible odds (and at a head-crushingly obscene cost, I might add) the Light Brigade reached the Russian positions &ndash; crossing a mile-long kill-zone of non-stop cannon fire and crashing into the artillery crew on the far end of the hellacious highway of mutilation and dismemberment.&nbsp; Most of the Russian gunners were understandably mind-fucked by the fact that the cavalry survived their barrages, so they dropped their shit and ran for it.&nbsp; This didn&rsquo;t help &ndash; most of them were slashed down as they fled.&nbsp; Others tried to valiantly make a stand, but the Brits were too jacked up on adrenaline &ndash; they dismembered those poor suckers so efficiently that after just a few minutes of hand-to-hand combat the artillerymen on the hills (seeing how badly the guys on the ground were getting fucked up) just started firing cannonballs right into the melee, hitting friend and foe alike.</p>\r\n<p>It was here that Major George Mayow really stepped up as a serious badass.&nbsp; After cleaving his was through the gun crews, the executive officer of the Brigade looked around through the smoke and realized that Lord Cardigan was nowhere to be found.&nbsp; With the commanding officer nowhere in sight (Cardigan was off either swordfighting Russian cavalrymen or running for it like a bitch, depending on who you ask), Mayow took charge of the situation.&nbsp; He stood up in his saddle, waved his blood-soaked saber, shouted, and rallied all the survivors in earshot. Just fifteen Lancers and twelve Dragoons responded. All were enlisted men, as virtually every officer in the first wave had been killed, wounded, or unhorsed en route to the Russian artillery.</p>\r\n<p>Mayow ordered his men into formation and then, through the smoke and fire, he suddenly spotted four regiments of Russian cavalry arranged in a battle line a mere one hundred yards away.&nbsp; At first he was a little surprised, but Mayow quickly (and correctly) realized that these guys were just sitting there waiting for the British to turn back so that they could ride them down from behind and slaughter them.</p>\r\n<p>Well not today.&nbsp; The Brigade Major slowly looked around at the 27 men behind him, turned back to the 300-plus Russians ahead of him, and ordered a full-on charge.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/mayow3.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Now let&rsquo;s take a second and look at this from the Russian point of view.&nbsp; These insane British fuckers had just blitzed through a goddamned gauntlet of cannonballs and sniper fire, survived, emerged from the cannon smoke covered in the blood of dead artillerymen (not to mention their own horrific wounds), and now these thirty fearless, seemingly-invincible demons were charging balls-out and lances-first at a force ten times their size.&nbsp; The Russians lost their nerve and bolted.&nbsp; Mayow and his men cut many of them down as they fled.</p>\r\n<p>This second victory would be short-lived as well, however, as the fleeing Russians retreated back to the nearby river, where a second &ndash; even larger &ndash; line of cavalry was waiting.&nbsp; And these guys weren&rsquo;t as impressed with the British show of force.</p>\r\n<p>For a brief moment, there was a somewhat-surreal standoff.&nbsp; Mayow brought his men to the halt, and now they stared out, bloodied, bashed-up, and berserking, at a line of something like two thousand fucking Russian Cossacks and Hussars.&nbsp; The Russians were content to wait &ndash; a second column of cavalry was on its way down from the heights to cut off the British retreat, and it took Mayow a moment to notice it.&nbsp; Fuckity-shit.</p>\r\n<p>Mayow and his men slowly backed away, careful not to turn his back on the men in front of him, and when he thought he was a pretty safe distance he ordered his men to turn and get the fuck out of there.&nbsp; Haul ass, but stay in formation, three-across.&nbsp; Don&rsquo;t give them the benefit of thinking they&rsquo;ve broken our force, or the British spirit.&nbsp; Because, seriously, fuck those guys.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/mayow6.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Mayow and his survivors weren&rsquo;t quick enough to avoid the second column, but they didn&rsquo;t let it stop them &ndash; they just lowered their sabers, crashed through the incoming Russian horsemen, and then hauled ass <em>back through the valley of death</em> again.&nbsp; The surviving British cavalrymen got a little bit of help from the French during their return, when a French cavalry unit circled around the guns on the left side of the valley and attacked the Russians from behind while they fired down on Mayow&rsquo;s men, but honestly at this point it was like someone throwing you an umbrella while you&rsquo;re drowning in the Pacific Ocean.&nbsp; Like, thanks guys, but seriously where the fuck was that twenty minutes ago.&nbsp; Plus, the handful of Russian gunners who survived the Light Brigade&rsquo;s beatdown returned to their guns as soon as the British left, and now they were trying to ram cannonballs up the Dragoons&rsquo; asses as they headed out of there.&nbsp; Despite extreme exhaustion, wounds, and other bullshit, Mayow&rsquo;s column returned to Allied lines.</p>\r\n<p>All told, less than half of the Light Brigade reported for duty the following morning.&nbsp; Mayow and the first wave had taken the brunt of the damage, but every regiment in the charge suffered at least forty to fifty percent casualties.&nbsp; Despite the near-annihilation of the entire Brigade, and their inability to take an impossible-to-take position, the actions of the Light Brigade at Balaclava is now forever remembered as one of the most badass and valiant charges ever undertaken.&nbsp; Queen Victoria herself was so pumped up after hearing the story of the Light Brigade&rsquo;s heroism and bravery in the face of certain death that she decided to create a special award to honor the British heroes who had fought so bravely on the field that day. She had an English metalworker melt down a couple of the Russian cannons that had been captured by the Light Brigade, re-cast them into medals, and named her new honor the <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_Cross\">Victoria Cross</a>.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/mayow5.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<table style=\"width: 500px;\" align=\"center\">\r\n<tbody>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td><span><span>\"The English fought with astounding bravery, and when we approached their dismounted and wounded men, even these refused to surrender and continued to fight till the ground was soaked with their blood.\" <br /><br /></span></span><center>- Lieutenant Koribut Kubitovich, Imperial Russian Army</center></td>\r\n</tr>\r\n</tbody>\r\n</table>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Links:</span><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.ram.org/contrib/the_charge_of_the_light_brigade.html\">Charge of the Light Brigade</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charge_of_the_Light_Brigade\">Wikipedia</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://crimeantexts.russianwar.co.uk/sources/hansard/h550329a.html\">House of Lords Transcript</a></p>\r\n<p><br /><br /></p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Sources:</span><br /><br /><span> Brighton, Terry.&nbsp; <em>Hell&rsquo;s Riders</em>.&nbsp; Macmillan, 2004.<br /><br /> Crider, Lawrence W.&nbsp; <em>In Search of the Light Brigade</em>.&nbsp; Crider, 2004.<br /><br /> Spielvogel, Jackson J.&nbsp; <em>Western Civilization Since 1500</em>.&nbsp; Cengage, 2008. </span></p>','2010-12-17','520839527227','mayow0.jpg','mayow1.jpg','George Mayow','Second-in-command during the Charge of the Light Brigade.','\"Theirs not to make reply,\r\nTheirs not to reason why,\r\nTheirs but to do and die.\r\nInto the valley of Death\r\nRode the six hundred.\"\r\n\r\n- Alfred, Lord Tennyson,\r\nThe Charge of the Light Brigade'),('Gaius Marius','157 BC','January 13, 86 BC','Arpinium, Latinum, Roman Empire','Ancient Roman General','<p>Gaius Marius was born in 157 BC to an equestrian class family well outside of Rome.&nbsp; Plutarch thinks that Marius\' dad was a shit-shoveling menial laborer, though most historians seem to agree that this is probably a load of crap (no pun intended).&nbsp; They\'re pretty sure Mr. Marius was a member of the equestrian class, which, despite its name, didn\'t really have that much to do with those women in leather chaps and silly hats who set a bunch of picket fences on fire and then try to jump over them on horseback, but basically just means he was like a knight &ndash; he wasn\'t an aristocratic senatorial-class patrician douchebag, but he wasn\'t some chump from the teeming unwashed masses of plebian dirt-eating mud-farmers either.&nbsp; Being of a social class that was prestigious enough to allow for military service but low enough to preclude him from a luxurious life reclining on chaise-lounges being hand-fed grapes by half-naked slave girls, Marius did the true Roman badass thing and enlisted in the Legions as soon as he was old enough to hoist a sword above his head without his arm snapping in half.</p>\r\n<p>Marius signed on to serve the Republic as either a junior officer or an enlisted man, fighting in the army of the mighty general Scipio, though it\'s probably not the same Scipio you\'re thinking of. Marius rose quickly through the ranks, proving himself as a man who didn\'t abide the barbarians\' bullshit and who didn\'t appear to have any capacity for feeling fear, pain, or compassion in any way ever, a trait he once demonstrated when he underwent surgery on his leg without even flinching (and this was in the days when strong wine was the closest thing they had to anesthesia). As a young officer, Marius won the respect of the troops by proving that he was one of them &ndash; he ate dinner with the enlisted men, slept on an ordinary bed in the barracks, and was always in the middle of the action, regardless of whether they were digging trenches or impaling Gauls in the throat with javelins &ndash; but his parade-ground, no-bullshit voice always kept the men from getting too undisciplined.&nbsp; This guy was allegedly so shit-your-pants scary that, according to Plutarch he once thwarted an attempt on his life just by getting pissed-the-fuck-off and yelling at the assassin until the guy lost heart and ran for it like a punk bitch.&nbsp; I\'d imagine that winning a number of battles against the unruly barbarian hordes didn\'t hurt his cause any, either.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/marius2.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>At 34, the already-well-known war hero Gaius Marius decided to run for public office under a platform that basically boiled down to, \"aristocrats are a bunch of soft-skinned, lazy douchebags and I am seriously fucking awesome.\"&nbsp; At public speaking events he constantly cracked people up by talking a ton of shit about how the senatorial class wasn\'t fit to hold Marius\' armored codpiece, including one speech he gave where he tore the top of his toga off Hulkamania-style to show the assembled crowd how his upper body was covered in battle scars from being slashed a few dozen times by Spanish longswords and Numidian spear-tips. Then he dared anyone running against him to get up there and show the crowd their ridiculous flabby abs in comparison. (As an only-sort-of related side note, Marius also routinely mocked the patrician aristocratic class for taking the time to study and read classical Greek texts, saying that there was \"no point in learning the language of a civilization you have subjugated.\")</p>\r\n<p>As you can imagine, Marius won a lot of popular elections.&nbsp; First he was elected Quaestor, then Tribune of the Plebians, then some other offices that were probably important but that don\'t really mean anything to anybody anymore.&nbsp; He became super-wealthy and powerful, and eventually married a prominent babe from the Julii family &ndash; a once-powerful clan of Romans that by this point in history had fallen onto some hard times (don\'t worry, the Julii would eventually be revived thanks to Marius\' profound life-long influence on his wife\'s young nephew, a kid named Julius Caesar).&nbsp; He continued winning battles in a war against the North African Numidians, and eventually his popularity became so great that he decided to run for Consul &ndash; the most powerful position in pre-Imperial Rome.&nbsp; Marius was second-in-command of the Roman Army in Africa at the time he decided to run for this prestigious office, but when he told his incompetent douchebag commander he was going to enter the election the jackwagon general laughed in Marius\' face and then told him he was a fucking asshole fore even thinking that Rome would consider appointing a non-aristocrat to the Consulship. Marius not only won the office, but then he then went out and persuaded the Plebian Assembly to sack Marius\' asshole boss and appoint him commander of the army instead. Who\'s laughing now, motherfucker?</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/marius1.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Well beating down the Numidians was great and everything, but by this point a new threat was brewing, and this one was just outside Rome\'s doorstep.&nbsp; Three major barbarian tribes from the North &ndash; the Cimbrii, the Teutones, and the Ambrones &ndash; were on the move.&nbsp; Four hundred thousand people, including men, women, and children, were wandering around Europe, tearing shit apart, searching for a place to settle, and presenting the Roman Senate with an immigration problem that would give Ron Paul a coronary.&nbsp; The sort-of-well-known Roman commanders Caepo and Manlius rode out to stop the barbarians\' march towards the Alps, but not even a guy named Manlius could stop this horde of bloodthirsty warriors &ndash; in a series of epic beatdowns the Romans got their fucking asses hammered into the ground like tent pegs, losing 80,000 soldiers and leaving the door wide open for these angry Germans to rush in and pummel Rome into rubble with their nutsacks.</p>\r\n<p>Marius was just finishing his war in North Africa when the news came down that he needed to get the fuck back to Italy or every single person in the peninsula was going to get humped by a barbarian in a large variety of unsavory ways. He hauled across the Mediterranean, stopping in Rome just long enough to get re-elected consul for a second term and lead the vanquished African King through the streets in chains before rushing out to fight the invaders. Poor Marius didn\'t even have time to properly execute the Numidian King &ndash; he ended up having to just leave the guy in jail, where he eventually died of starvation.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/marius4.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>Later, bro.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>80,000 soldiers is a lot of men to replace, but Marius had a radical plan to replenish his force with a new layer of meat-shielding &ndash; by expanding the recruit pool and allowing landless Romans into the military.&nbsp; At this point in time the Roman Army was made up entirely of landed citizens who bought their own weapons and then showed up for action decked out with whatever they could afford, but Marius changed all that.&nbsp; He standardized the equipment, improved discipline, gave regular everyday Joes the chance to win glory and wealth in combat, and ultimately laid the foundation for a professional standing army that would go on to conquer the entirety of the Western world.&nbsp; He also re-organized the troops from Maniples into Cohorts (developing the Roman Legion as we know it), instituted the Legionary Aquila battle standard, engineered the <em>pilum</em> javelin, and streamlined the logistics of moving huge armies.&nbsp; From that point on, legionaries were also known as \"Marius\' Mules\", presumably because they kicked asses.</p>\r\n<p>Ok, that\'s great I guess, but there was still this nagging problem of the 400-some-odd-thousand screaming berserkers bearing down on Rome with their crazy intelligible screaming and axe-swinging debauchery, and Marius still had to go out and ram some discipline down their throats until they barfed themselves to death.&nbsp; And that\'s just what he did.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/marius3.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The Barbarians split their forces at the Alps, with the Cimbrii horde heading one direction and the Teutones and Ambrones hordes headed the other.&nbsp; Marius sent his second-in-command to slow down the Cimbrii while he went out and blocked the other fuckers.&nbsp; The Teutones were gigantic, super-scary dudes with heavy two-handed broadswords and skinned animal heads for helmets, and they outnumbered the Romans three to one, but Marius didn\'t seem to give a shit.&nbsp; He set an ambush for them, chose the battlefield, and forced them to fight uphill on rough terrain &ndash; and just as the huge line of \'zerks were getting ready to crash into Marius\'s front lines, a second group of Roman infantry popped up from the bushes behind the Teutones, swung in behind the barbarians, and cut them down where they stood.&nbsp; The Ambrones and Teutones hordes were routed, fled in disarray, and the Romans slaughtered them and plundered their camp, killing 100,000 people in a single day of battle.&nbsp; The people of the nearby city of Marseille built fences from the bones of the dead and used their corpses as fertilizer in their vineyards, and from that point on every time they popped the cork on a bottle of Corpsewine they thought of their hero Marius.</p>\r\n<p>But this crazy Gaul-smashing machine of barbarian mutiliation still wasn\'t done crushing his foes into bone dust with his iron-helmeted headbutts of mercilessness.&nbsp; The night of Marius\' celebratory funeral pyre (where he torched all of the barbarians\' possessions he deemed unworthy of being carried through Rome in a triumph), he got word that the Cimbrii had crushed the Romans to the West and were now blitzing through Italy towards the capital.&nbsp; Fucking bullshit.</p>\r\n<p>Marius took the last eight Legions in Rome &ndash; about fifty thousand soldiers at this point, and sent them into combat against a horde of about 300,000 barbarians (though this number includes the women and children that traveled with the warriors).&nbsp; Despite being heavily outnumbered once again, this time by a tribe of battle-hardened warriors from Gaul, Britannia, and Germania, Marius\' cavalry turned the flank on the enemy, crushing them in a ridiculous manner and then riding after them spanking their asses with cavalry swords as the Cimbrii ran for it like chumps.&nbsp; We\'re not sure on the actual numbers, but historians claim 140,000 Cimbrii were left dead and the remaining 60,000 survivors were sold into slavery.&nbsp; What we do know for sure is that after Marius was done with them the Ambrones and the Cimbrii ceased to exist as peoples.&nbsp; The Roman Army suffered 2,000 casualties.&nbsp; In both battles.&nbsp; Combined.&nbsp; Marius was understandably hailed as the savior of his people. He was given a huge triumph, proclaimed the Third Founder of Rome, and was naturally re-elected consul (four more times).</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/marius5.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>Celebratory fist pump.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Unfortunately it turned out that Marius wasn\'t really a great politician, mostly because he didn\'t give a crap.&nbsp; This guy was a soldier, not a politician, and his leadership style was kind of like a State of the Union address being given by George S. Patton.&nbsp; Over the next several years he went back and forth between retiring, inciting riots, destroying people, and getting elected consul, but it just wasn\'t the same.&nbsp; Sure, eventually he helped defeat a bunch of disgruntled rebels in the Social War in 89 BC, but during that war he took a back seat to his former subordinate, another seriously badass motherfucker named Sulla.&nbsp; It certainly didn\'t help things that Marius was almost 70 years old at this point and in really shitty health.</p>\r\n<p>Still, when the senate declared war on yet another badass classical warrior &ndash; King Mithridates of Pontus &ndash; they asked Marius to command the Roman Army on the campaign.&nbsp; Sulla took this as a slight against his talents, got his toga in a wad, and completely over-reacted like a motherfucker &ndash; he put together six Legions, marched his army on Rome, sacked the town, appointed himself dictator, and declared Marius an outlaw.&nbsp; Marius, who was caught completely off-guard by the mind-blowing idea that anyone would ever march troops on Rome, fled to Africa, where he lived in a town set up by veterans of his army.&nbsp; As soon as he heard that Sulla had left to face Mithridates, however, Marius seized the opportunity to do some insane shit himself &ndash; he landed his army of grizzled old veterans on the shores of Italy, marched <em>his</em> d00ds into Rome, murdered fourteen senators who failed to support him, appointed himself Consul a record 7th time, then promptly stroked out and died.&nbsp; There was just no way to top that, so why even try.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/marius6.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<center><span>\"He was visible himself in the front rank, putting into practice the advice he had given,<br />for he was in as good training as anyone and in daring he far surpassed them all.\"</span></center>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Links:</span><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/marius/p/Marius.htm\">About.com</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.unrv.com/empire/gaius-marius.php\">UNRV History</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Gaius_Marius\">1911 Britannica Entry</a> <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaius_Marius\">Wikipedia</a></p>\r\n<p><br /><br /></p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Sources:</span><br /><br /><span> Appianus.&nbsp; <em>The Civil Wars</em>.&nbsp; Trans. John MacKenzie Carter.&nbsp; Penguin, 1996.<br /><br /> Hazel, John.&nbsp; <em>Who\'s Who in the Roman World</em>.&nbsp; Psychology Press, 2002.<br /><br /> Plutarch.&nbsp; <em>Life of Marius</em>.&nbsp; Trans. Rex Warner.&nbsp; Penguin, 2005.<br /><br /> Warry, John.&nbsp; <em>Warfare in the Classical World</em>.&nbsp; Salamander, 1980. </span></p>','2010-12-10','392628727876','marius1.jpg','marius2.jpg','Gaius Marius','The Second Founder of Rome and all-around Classical asskicker.','\"This gave Marius time to toughen the bodies of his men and improve their morale and – most important of all – to make them understand what sort of man he was himself.  That fierce manner of his in command and his inflexibility in imposing punishments seemed to them, once they got the habit of discipline and obedience, not only right and proper but a positive advantage.  His angry temper, rough voice and that forbidding expression with which they gradually grew familiar, seemed more terrible to the enemy than to themselves.\"\r\n\r\n- Plutarch, Life of Marius'),('Witold Urbanowicz','March 30, 1908','August 17, 1996','Olszanka, Poland','WWII Polish Pilot','<p>Almost exactly 70 years ago, the entire free world was basically one bombing raid away from being crotch-knocked off the face of the world forever, replaced by an ultra-fanatical tyranny that would crush the balls of democracy-loving people across the planet. In early August 1940, the situation was seriously bleak for the fate of Free Europe, as the Nazi jackboots were doing a damned effective job of tap-dancing on human faces across the continent. Nine countries had already fallen under Hitler\'s power, most of them without even putting up a decent fight in the process. Even the Republic of France, the might army that had staunchly withstood repeated balls-out assaults from the German war machine not three decades earlier, had been ass-pounded into submission over the course of just a couple weeks. Poland, Czechoslovakia, Belgium, and Holland had all collapsed under the seemingly-invincible Blitzkrieg of goose-stepping Fascists, and now the last bastion of Free Europe was standing alone against this onslaught. Luftwaffe bombers and fighter aircraft strafed the British countryside, blasting military and civilian targets in an effort not only to soften up England\'s defenses for an amphibious invasion, but to crush the spirit of the British people and weaken their resolve to fight. In just two months of the Battle of Britain, over 6,000 German aircraft flew 98 separate attacks on targets from Dover to London. Shit was fucked up and not in any position to get any better.</p>\r\n<p>In baseball terms, the nation of Britain was like a dude standing behind home plate with the 90 mile-per-hour fastball pitching machine aimed squarely at his nutsack, and the ridiculously brave pilots of the Royal Air Force were like a dude in the batter\'s box trying to foul off high heaters before they bust his friend in the junk. Among the few, desperate British heroes tearing ass through the skies, one unsung badass of the Battle of Britain looms large &ndash; Witold Urbanowicz, the balls-out-as-fuck commander of the famous 303 Squadron &ndash; a unit of Polish pilots who escaped Hitler\'s destruction of their homeland and made a point of taking out their pent up murder-rage on the unsuspecting chumps of the Luftwaffe by pulling up behind their Messerschmitts and cramming eight machine guns\' worth of ammunition straight into the enemy pilot\'s taints. In the short, incredibly bloody battle, 303 Squadron recorded three times the number of kills of the average RAF unit, while sustaining just one-third of the losses. Urbanowicz was the man behind this retarded kill ratio, and a hell of a badass in his own right.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/urbanowicz1.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>The Hawker Hurricanes of 303 Squadron.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Witold\'s story starts back in 1939, when Germany and the Soviet Union decided to put aside their irreconcilably-disparate ideologies for the sake of double-teaming Poland into submission. Urbanowicz was a 31 year-old instructor at the Polish Air Force College when war started ripping Poland a new asshole, and, while he wanted to stand and fight the invaders, Witold was ordered to get his cadets the fuck out of dodge before the future of the Polish Air Force officer corps found themselves staring face-to-barrel with a phalanx of Panzer bullshittery. In a daring adventure across the war-torn Polish countryside, Urbanowicz somehow led a class of thirty-something 18 year-old cadets through Poland and across the border into Romania, where he stashed them in a safehouse under the protection of a fellow Polish officer. As soon as he learned that they were going to be protected, Urbanowicz left Romania, went <em>back</em> into Poland, and started mulching the fuck out of Germans and Soviets with a machine gun, fighting alongside a makeshift resistance unit. When his ragtag squad was overrun by the Communists and he was taken prisoner by the Soviet Union, he fucking busted out of a soul-crushing Red Army prison the first night of his imprisonment, evaded capture, made it all the way back to Romania, and re-grouped with his cadets less than a week after he\'d left them. When shit got a little too hot in Romania, he led them south into Syria, where he loaded them on a boat and took them to France to be incorporated in the French Air Force.</p>\r\n<p>As we all love to joke, however, the French didn\'t fare a whole lot better than the Polish once the Nazis aimed their ass-ramming machines Westwards. Paris fell within a month. The French capitulated less than a week after. But Urbanowicz still hadn\'t satisfied his thirst for Nazi blood, nor was his quest for ultimate Fascist-crushing vengeance anywhere near complete. He kept his fighting spirit alive, participated in the British evacuation at Dunkirk, made it across the channel, and joined on with a Royal Air Force unit just in time for the Battle of Britain.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/urbanowicz2.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>While he was undoubtedly a talented pilot and well-versed in aerial combat strategy, aside from one mission in 1936 when he\'d shot down a Russian reconnaissance plane that had violated a Polish no-fly zone, Urbanowicz didn\'t have a whole lot of hands-on battle experience. Of course, it\'s not like he let something like that slow him down &ndash; in his first battle with the RAF he was serving as the rear guard for a formation of Hawker Hurricanes when suddenly he noticed a flight of four Messerschmitt-109 fighters coming up fast from the rear and he decided he was going to make his first encounter with enemy fighters one that would be remembered forever. Without warning, Urbanowicz pulled a bitchin\' 180-degree turn, nearly blacking out from pulling so many barf-inducing Gs that it could have crushed the Terminator\'s skull into a solid hunk of servos and steel, and then strafed all four of those fuckers until their fuselage\'s vaguely resembled cheese graters. By the time the rest of the Hurricanes reached the combat zone, the four Me-109s were already headed full-throttle away from Urbanowicz and his machine gun firing insanity, trailing black smoke behind them all the way back to France.</p>\r\n<p>Urbanowicz was eventually transferred to 303 Squadron &ndash; a badass group of Polish ex-pats who spent their days blasting German bombers into wingless fiery stumps and their nights pounding whiskey and seducing babes with their awesome accordion-playing, polka, and sausage-making skills. He started as a flight commander, but when the squadron leader\'s face got a little melty after his plane caught on fire in the middle of a mission, Urbanowicz took over as the unit\'s commander. He did a damn good job of it, too &ndash; in 43 days of fighting over Britain, his boys recorded 126 kills while losing just five pilots. 303 Squadron recorded 108 kills in September 1940 alone. For reference, the second-best squadron in September claimed 48 victories.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/urbanowicz3.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Urbanowicz\'s main strategy was just to go completely balls-out all the time, leaving the enemy fighter pilots sucking on his contrails while he and his boys fucked up heavy bomber formations from point-blank range. As a result of such a daring strategy, his mission log reads like a series of obscenely badass exploits, each one more mind-fuckingly insane than the one before. On 7 September, he led his 12 aircraft against a huge formation of German heavy bombers, taking out 18 enemy planes while losing just two of his own (and both pilots lived). Four days later, 303 Squadron went up against an armada consisting of 60 bombers, escorted by 40 Me-110s and 50 Me-109s, and somehow pulled out a ridiculous victory &ndash; six Poles took on the entire fighter screen by themselves while the other 6 rushed through and nailed the bombers, downing 17 of them and forcing the enemy to withdraw from the field. Four days after that &ndash; the day of the proposed German amphibious invasion of Britain &ndash; Urbanowicz led 5 planes against 60 Dornier Bombers, blitzing through the fighter screen and raking the enemy craft with machine gun fire from just a few yards away. By the time the Me-109s figured out what the fuck was going on, the entire bomber wing was so jacked up that its pilots were crashing into each other just to get away from these batshit-insane Poles. On the 30th of the month, he broke up yet another massive bomber attack on London in a similar manner, killing one He-111 himself and then taking out two fighters when the Me-109s dove in to assist. Over the course of the war, not only was 303 Squadron undefeated in combat, but it\'s commander &ndash; Witold Urbanowicz &ndash; had personally notched 17 confirmed kills, the second most of any Polish pilot in the war. Oh, and he also boned a lot of British women. Like, a lot of them.</p>\r\n<p>As you can probably imagine, after these reports were rolling in an RAF Group Commander accused the 303 of padding its stats to make itself sound more awesome. Urbanowicz said nothing, but instead politely invited the senior officer to join them on a sortie some time. On the day the RAF officer flew out with them, the Poles shot down 8 planes while only losing one of their own (and the pilot survived). The Commander wrote in his report the next day that they were \"wonderful madmen\", which was pretty much just a cleaned-up version of what he actually said when he was out there, which was something a little more akin to, \"Holy Fuck Balls Sweet Jesus Cinnamon Titties Motherfuck\".</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/urbanowicz4.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Urbanowicz was not only incredibly adept at psyching the Germans out of their flight suits, but he was also excellent at managing his subordinates. For instance, one of his best pilots was a badass Czech dude named Josef Frantisek. Frantisek was a 10-kill ace during the Battle of France who was incredibly talented, but his wingmen hated him because this guy always broke formation and went balls-out at the Germans any time he saw them, without any regard for what else was going on around him. He usually ended up blowing the shit out of his target, but people were still a little ticked that he\'d left their wing unguarded. In order to manage the situation, Urbanowicz broke Frantisek off from 303 Squadron, making him commander of a flight team of one &ndash; Frantisek could go out and do whatever the shit he wanted, whenever he wanted, and the rest of the team didn\'t have to worry about him screwing up their coordinated attacks. Frantisek ended up shooting down 17 more Germans before he crashed into a mountain while doing a barrel roll to impress a group of British babes. You can\'t win \'em all, I guess.</p>\r\n<p>Thanks to the RAF\'s ability to fight off the Luftwaffe bombers, the German invasion never came. After the Battle of Britain turned the tide of World War II in democracy\'s favor, Urbanowicz moved to the States, worked as a flight tactics instructor for a while, and then went to China to serve with the Flying Tigers of the United States Army Air Force. The first non-American to fly in the unit, he flew several combat missions with the Tigers, destroying 15 Japanese river boats, and dropping food and medical aid to the Chinese. His most badass exploit in China was a battle in December 1943, when he found his P-40 Warhawk being marauded by six Japanese fighter craft at the same time &ndash; Witold not only survived, but he killed two enemy planes and sent the rest running back to their mamas. After the war, Urbanowicz moved to Pennsylvania and wrote a couple of books, only finally returning home to Poland in 1996 after the fall of Communism. He was appointed honorary General of the Polish Air Force. Witold Urbanowicz died a year later, having finally seen his beloved homeland free from oppression. In his lifetime he received the Virtuti Militari, the Polish Cross of Valor, and the British Distinguished Flying Cross. Nowadays his story, and the tale of 303 Squadron, is mandatory reading in Polish grade schools.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/urbanowicz5.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Links:</span><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witold_Urbanowicz\">Wikipedia</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.chapshq.com/html_pages/witold_urbanowicz.htm\">Witold Urbanowicz</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/1996/08/20/world/gen-witold-urbanowicz-88-polish-fighter-ace-in-world-war-ii.html\">NY Times Obituary</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/witold_urbanowicz.htm\">History Learning Site</a></p>\r\n<p><br /><br /></p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Sources:</span><br /><br /><span> Fiedler, Arkady.&nbsp; <em>303 Squadron: The Legendary Battle of Britain Squadron</em>.&nbsp; Trans. Jarek Garlinksi. Aquila Polonica, 2010. </span></p>','2010-12-03','229849527979','urbanowicz1.jpg','urbanowicz2.jpg','Witold Urbanowicz','Daring commander of the Polish 303 Squadron during the Battle of Britain.',''),('Reinhold Messner','September 17, 1944','N/A','Bixen, Italy','20th-century Italian Adventurer','<p>They don\'t really celebrate Thanksgiving in other parts of the world, but if they did you could be damn sure that the gods of the Himalayan Mountain range would be thankful for the fact that Reinhold Messner isn\'t still out there making the most formidable and deadliest mountains on Earth look like a bunch of pussies.&nbsp; It\'s been a while since the man universally-recognized as the world\'s greatest mountaineer has jammed his crampons into some unsuspecting Himalayan crevasses, but this guy spent the majority of the 60s, 70s, and 80s pretty much dominating the fuck out of every mountain on the planet.&nbsp; Even today, the 68 year old hardass hasn\'t ruled out the possibility of coming back and pimp-slapping the Himalayas in the Kanchenjunga once more for old time\'s sake&hellip; and nothing freaks them out more than the prospect of staring down this grizzled old ironman and his icy stare of death once again.</p>\r\n<p>The greatest mountain climber of all time was born in a place called Brixen, South Tyrol, which is technically part of Italy but may as well be Austria anyways.&nbsp; He summited his first mountain at the age of five, when his no-bullshit ex-Nazi father helped him get up the 11,000-foot Geisler Peak.&nbsp; It\'s appropriate that Geisler Peak was located in the Dolomite section of the Alps, because even though this guy was at an age where he should barely be old enough to know how to tie his own shoes, he was already announcing to the world that Messner was his name, and fucking up motherfuckers was his game.&nbsp; He was like the Mozart of doing crazy shit, climbing a number of Alps and Dolomites in his youth and making everybody else feel badly about their own lifetime accomplishments in the process, and by the time he was a teenager he had already made a name for himself as an insane climber who worked at ridiculous speeds and basically refused to do anything that didn\'t involve being balls-out all the time.</p>\r\n<p>Back in this time most mountain climbing was done \"expedition style\", meaning that you drove out to base camp with a huge donkey-load of crap, fixed ropes, made Sherpas do all the actual work, and then clipped yourself onto a sturdy rope and walked up to the top.&nbsp; It was like taking an escalator to the summit.&nbsp; Messner decided that this was totally cheating (and also bullshit), so he pioneered his response &ndash; \"alpine style\" mountaineering was where you carry everything you need on your back, and move as fast as possible with no crazy bullshit and no help from anything other than your own hardcoreness.&nbsp; He went without supplemental oxygen tanks, satellite phones, metal protection pegs, fixed ropes, or other things designed to ensure that you don\'t , you know, die on the mountain, and just do it up badass style &ndash; man versus mountain, winner take all, loser ends up face-down in the snow and waits until their corpse gets eaten by a Yeti.&nbsp; Messner was the first man to climb many of the Alps and Dolomites in this way, and he did it faster than anyone and with a way more awesome beard/headband combination.&nbsp; Slopes that took others four days, he was beating in five hours.&nbsp; It was like Tyson knocking the fuck out of the Number One Contender with a first-round uppercut.&nbsp; In his spare time, when he wasn\'t setting the land speed record for summiting the Matterhorn, Messner got a degree in Architectural Engineering &ndash; a specialty that, not being a liberal arts major, was totally not a load of crap.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/messner1.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>As a man who refused to half-ass anything in his life, Messner decided that for his first Himalayan expedition he was going to go straight up the highest sheer rock face in the world &ndash; the 15,000-foot, ice-covered face of Nanga Parbat.&nbsp; In 1970 he became the first person to ever summit this Gateway to Hell using this borderline-suicidal route, then he camped on the summit, descended the other side, and subsequently became the only person to ever cross the mountain from one side to the other.&nbsp; This was cool, but it was less awesome that he lost his brother in an avalanche and had seven toes amputated because of frostbite in the process.&nbsp; Unwilling to be beaten by anything in the world, animate or otherwise, Messner would later go back and become the first person to solo the mountain, climbing it by himself in 1978 without losing any digits in the process.&nbsp; It was the first time any person had summited a Himalayan peak above 26,000 feet without a climbing partner, but it wouldn\'t be the last.&nbsp; Later on, when people claimed that Messner\'s account of his brother getting swept away in an avalanche was bullshit, Messner went back once again, found the body, recovered what was left of it, and proved that those chumps who called him out as a liar were a bunch of \"rat-soup-eating insecure honky motherfuckers\".</p>\r\n<p>After getting up Nanga Parbat without supplemental oxygen, Messner decided he was going to take his alpine style awesomeness all the way up Mount Everest &ndash; the tallest and most formidable mountain in the world.&nbsp; A brutal little hill that had only been summited for the first time 25 years earlier (by fellow badass climber <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/hillary.html\">Sir Edmund Hilary</a>), Messner not only risked death by attempting to climb it, but he shocked the world in 1978 when he announced that he was going to do it without supplemental oxygen.&nbsp; People thought that Messner was fucking psychotic and should have had a strait jacket slapped on him for even suggestion something so ridiculous, because, as far as the climbing community was concerned, if this guy thought he was going to survive at that altitude without an oxygen tank he was probably more fit to climb the walls of a padded room than he was to ascend Everest.&nbsp; At five miles above sea level the oxygen density of the air is one-third of what it is at sea level, and most scientists thought that it was impossible to survive in that climate without suffocating to death or causing serious, irreversible brain damage.&nbsp; Hilary\'s research had shown that the air was too thin to support the circulatory system in anything more strenuous than complete rest, and even modern scientists agree that it\'s impossible for the human body to acclimatize at that altitude &ndash; 8,000 meters is the beginning of what\'s known today as the \"Death Zone\", where lack of oxygen causes severe loss of strength, and the brain stops functioning the way it\'s supposed to, causing normal people to freak out, do stupid shit, become retarded, and then die.&nbsp; Ascending into the Death Zone without an oxygen tank is a ballsy move even today, but in 1978 Messner might as well have been telling people that he was going to explore the wreckage of the <em>Titanic</em> without SCUBA gear.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/messner2.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>It was kind of like this.<br />Only without the ladder, ropes, or anything resembling a safety feature.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>But Reinhold Messner told everyone else the bullshit intellectual community to pound an enema and blow their stupid science out their sphincters, because nothing was going to stop him from grabbing the conventional wisdom about the limits of human endurance, taking it out behind the woodshed, and murdering it into sludge with a rusty hatchet.&nbsp; His 1978 expedition up Everest was like a brutal Ali-Frazier slugfest with Geography itself &ndash; he got caught in a storm on the South Col, suffering through 125 mph winds and temperatures of 45-below-zero for two days straight, and the altitude was so thin that he woke up in the middle of the night gasping for air because the simple act of sleeping was enough to cause the guy to lose his breath.&nbsp; Messner stuck with it though, charging up the mountain face under impossible conditions.&nbsp; By the time he reached the Hilary Step he was collapsing every 10 to 15 feet, laying down in the snow to catch his breath for a few minutes so he could push on, but he persevered, kicked ass, summited, and returned home victorious. His success rocked the pants off of everybody, and actually forced physiologists to go back to the chalkboard and re-examine the human body\'s ability to function at altitudes that can only be described as TOTALLY XTREME TO THE MAX GONZO RAAAARRRRR OOOH YEAH.</p>\r\n<p>Just to prove that it wasn\'t a fluke, Messner went back two years later and soloed the North Face without oxygen, Sherpas, or crevasse ladders, becoming the first (and to this day, only) person to ever go that way without an air tank. Oh, and he summited the mountain in four days.&nbsp; It usually takes most mere mortals a little over a month.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/messner3.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>I got this.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>After Everest, the Messner-Bot 8000 kept rocking through the Alps and Himalayas like they were his bitches, going up Annapurna, K2, Lhotse, Mount Doom, the Aggro-Crag, Space Mountain, Witch Mountain, both Gasherbrums, Broad Peak, Kanchenjunga, Makalu, Dhaulagiri, Manaslu, Shisha Pangma, and Cho Oyu.&nbsp; This guy blitzed up and down these daunting mountains, faster than anyone, using routes nobody else had even attempted, and setting speed records in the 70s still not beaten to this day.&nbsp; A bunch of people have died on these brutal mountains, but this guy didn\'t care &ndash; he was so hardcore he did two 8,000\'ers (Gasherbrum I and II) one right after the other without even returning to camp first, and didn\'t even slow down.&nbsp; This was another first in the history of mountaineering, but this guy has so many \"firsts\" at this point that it\'s barely even worth mentioning it.&nbsp; By 1986, the 42 year old Messner had ascended all 14 mountains in the world taller than 26,000 feet, becoming the first (and for a long time only) human to ever accomplish the feat.&nbsp; Oh, and he did it all without supplemental oxygen or fixed ropes.&nbsp; And with only three toes.&nbsp; Some of the ascents took a couple tries, which is no small feat when you\'re talking about taking an expedition out to Nepal and Pakistan, but Messner was a god damned force of nature, and wasn\'t going to let any bullshit mountain get the better of him.&nbsp; He kept kicking those peaks in their giant ice-covered asses with a pointy set of crampons until he\'d accomplished what is quite possibly the most extreme demonstration of human endurance a person can attempt.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/messner4.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<table style=\"width: 500px;\" align=\"center\">\r\n<tbody>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td><span>For every 2.5 people who summit Annapurna, one person dies on its slopes.&nbsp; It\'s the deadliest 8,000-meter mountain in the world, yet when discussing Messner most people don\'t even bother mentioning it.</span></td>\r\n</tr>\r\n</tbody>\r\n</table>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Once he got into his fifties, Messner\'s days of sprinting up and down the Himalayas like they were speed bumps on the road of extreme awesomeness were behind him, but that didn\'t stop this guy from doing ridiculously badass shit like all the time.&nbsp; In 1989 he walked 1,700 miles across Antarctica carrying all of his supplies on his back, using a technique pioneered by <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/shackleton.html\">Shackleton</a>, and from there he went on to cross Greenland, the Tibetan Plateau, and a couple of deserts.&nbsp; In 2004, at the age of 60, he walked 1,200 miles across the Gobi desert on foot.&nbsp; He also spent 12 years investigating Yetis in the Himalayas (he determined that the myths were based off of sightings of Tibetan brown bears), and served in the Italian Parliament from 1999-2004 under a platform that basically consisted of the political tenet that \"Mountains Kick Ass and We Shouldn\'t Screw with Them\".</p>\r\n<p>Nowadays Messner lives in a hilltop 13th century Italian castle with his hot girlfriend, some kids, and a herd of pet yaks.&nbsp; He runs the Messner Mountain Museum, a collection of artifacts from climbing history, and he has a charity that collects trash and other bullshit discarded on Himalayan mountains by careless wannabe mountaineers.&nbsp; He\'s authored 60+ books, was the subject of a Herzog documentary, and is to this day universally recognized as mountaineering\'s equivalent of Jordan, Kobe, LeBron and Larry Bird all rolled together into the body of a grumpy, crotchety old hardass.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/messner6.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>Messner herding some fucking yaks outside <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/messner5.jpg\">his castle in South Tyrol</a>.</span></p>\r\n<p><br /><br /> <span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Links/Sources:</span><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.time.com/time/europe/hero2006/messner.html\">TIME Magazine: 60 Years of Heroes</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.everestnews.com/history/climbers/messner.htm\">Everest News</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/everest/history/firstwoo2.html\">NOVA Online</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/reinhold-messner-on-top-of-the-world-482133.html%27%3EIndependent%3C/a%3E%3Cbr%3E%3Cbr%3E%3Ca%20href=\">Outside Magazine</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2006/11/reinhold-messner/alexander-text\">National Geographic: Murdering the Impossible</a></p>','2010-11-26','798911528075','messner1.jpg','messner2.jpg','Reinhold Messner','The world\'s greatest mountain climber.','\"After Messner, the mystery of possibility was gone;\r\nthere remained only the mystery of whether you could do it.\"\r\n\r\n- Ed Viesturs'),('Blas de Lezo','February 3, 1689','September 7, 1741','Pasajes, Spain','17th-century Spanish Admiral','<p>Piracy &ndash; kicking ass on the high seas, plundering, sinking merchant ships, and then sauntering back into port to squander all your hard-earned pieces of eight on drunk syphilis-infected wenches &ndash; is one of the historical professions most widely-recognized as being totally badass.&nbsp; It\'s something that basically everybody can get on board with.&nbsp; Everyone, that is, except the Spanish.</p>\r\n<p>You see, all that rape and pillage stuff is decidedly less desirable when you\'re the one getting raped and pillaged, and for most of the Golden Age of Piracy it was Spain\'s galleons and doubloons getting forcibly confiscated in the name of some other random European crown.&nbsp; The Spanish had done a damned impressive job of conquering a massive, formidable continent-spanning empire and milking it for enough valuable metal to give a set of gold teeth to the Martian Face, and they didn\'t really appreciate a bunch of dirty <em>gringos</em> dishing out sail-by shootings, murdering their people and making off with all their hard-earned shit.&nbsp; Sometimes there wasn\'t much they could do about it &ndash; government-sponsored privateers (not to mention formal enemy navies) were pretty adept at taking whatever they could by force of violence and they weren\'t exactly interested in going easy on the Spanish just because they\'d done all the hard work of exploiting the natives for valuable resources.&nbsp; But every once in a while, a man would rise up &ndash; a guy like the insanely-hardcore one-armed, one-eyed, one-legged Admiral Don Blas de Lezo y Olavarrieta &ndash; and kick his awesome-looking peg leg so far into those buccaneers\' rectums that they\'d be picking splinters out of their teeth for months.&nbsp; But Blas de Lezo was even more than that &ndash; this guy was so crotch-destroyingly awesome that not only did he whip the dicks off of the navies of four European powers and destroy squadrons of pirate ships, but he also commanded the Spanish military in the most dominant ass-pounding suffered by the British Admiralty in the 18th century.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/blasdelezo1.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Blas de Lezo was born in the northeastern Spanish port town of Pasaia.&nbsp; The son of a shipmaster and one in a line of great <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Basque_people#Basque_sailors\">Basque sailors</a>, Blas grew up wandering around the docks, learning how to work on old-school sailing ships, and hanging out in super-salty dive bars listening the badass tales of adventure from grizzled old mariners.&nbsp; Looking to get involved in some of that pants-crappingly sweet adventure-ness on the Spanish Main (and hopefully to throat-punch the bitch-hole enemies of the Spanish Crown in the process), Blas enlisted in the navy as a midshipman and set sail for a lifetime of nautical awesomeness.</p>\r\n<p>De Lezo\'s early career reads much like that of much-beloved (and similarly undeniably-badass) British Mega-Hero Lord Admiral Sir Doctor Horatio Nelson S. Preston, Esquire.&nbsp; And by that, I mean that his life as a junior officer was a non-stop series of battles where this guy went completely balls to the wall in the heat of battle, did something awesome, mangled himself in the process, got promoted, and ended up leaving some generally-vital part of his body rotting on the battlefield.&nbsp; During the numerous battles following the War of Spanish succession, Blas de Lezo fought against the English, French, Dutch, and Austrians, all with similar results.&nbsp; At the battle of Gibraltar in 1704 he was hit in the left leg by a cannon and had it amputated at the knee, reportedly without anesthesia, and without making a single utterance of pain.&nbsp; In 1707 he lost his left eye during fighting around Toulon.&nbsp; In 1710 he commanded a Spanish frigate that boarded and captured a much-larger British warship (something that was virtually head-burstingly unheard of at the time), but, since he didn\'t lose any limbs in the process of that particular mission, he made up for it in Barcelona in 1713 when he got an arm blown off by a blast of grapeshot while assaulting a beach in an amphibious assault.&nbsp; It\'s worth noting that his violent disarmament even stop him &ndash; he went on to destroy the enemy fleet by lighting a bunch of his own ships on fire and sending them into the middle of the enemy formation, torching the entire enemy navy apart.&nbsp; Sure, he kind of ripped this idea off from <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/drake.html\">Francis Drake</a>, but, interestingly enough, it turned out that incinerating people with raging floating inferno boats was just as effective in 1713 as it was in 1588.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/blasdelezo2.gif\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Awesomely enough, despite all of these horrific wounds, Blas de Lezo kept on serving his kingdom on the front lines.&nbsp; He was so tough he didn\'t wear an eye patch or a hook hand, just letting his physical manglings hang out there for everyone to see.&nbsp; For mobility and badassitude purposes he did go out and get the hook-up on a totally sweet wooden leg, a badge of honor that led to his men affectionately-referring to him as \"Captain Peg Leg\".&nbsp; His popularity for naval heroism was so great that when King Philip V decided to get married to the Princess of Parma, it was Blas de Lezo\'s duty to personally command the ship that picked up the Princess and carried her to Spain.&nbsp; This was cool but boring.</p>\r\n<p>Captain Blas bounced around for a while after that.&nbsp; First he went to the Spanish Main, where he battled pirates across South America and the Caribbean, capturing eleven Dutch- and British-sponsored privateer vessels and recovering over three million Pesos worth of goods and wealth.&nbsp; After marrying a hot Peruvian babe, he took some time off to go sack the city of Genoa and beat the fuckballs out of some Barbary Coast pirates in North Africa, including a battle when he crushed an Algerian ruler\'s imposing naval fortress and captured the guy\'s capital city.&nbsp; When the Algerian dude returned with a huge navy, Blas de Lezo not only beat the attack off, but he personally pursued the enemy flagship, cornered it in a small inlet, and pummeled it with cockload of flaming cannonballs until its gunpowder store ignited and the entire ship blew up so hard you could see the explosion from space. Or, at least, you would have been able to if there were people in space in the 1700s.&nbsp; I think.&nbsp; Either way, the Algerian ruler died in the explosion, and that part is undebatable.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/blasdelezo3.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Admiral de Lezo was a 39-year veteran of like a dozen wars when he was appointed naval commander of the South American port city of Cartagena in 1740.&nbsp; Located in present-day Colombia, Cartagena was the second-most prestigious city in the Spanish Main (only Havana was wealthier), and a major hub for the Spanish treasure fleets that enjoyed ferrying mule-loads of gold from Peru to Barcelona all day every day.&nbsp; Being the commander of the fort there was kind of a sweet gig.</p>\r\n<p>Not long after Blas got to what was supposed to be a cushy retirement gig, however, Admiral Peg Leg quickly realized that he wasn\'t going to have a whole hell of a lot of time to chill out on the beach with bikini babes sipping Margaritas and Sangria.&nbsp; That\'s because in the Winter of 1740, the well-known jackass British Admiral Edward Vernon sailed into the Caribbean with a huge-as-fuck fleet consisting of over 200 ships.&nbsp; He had come to the New World to kick ass and chew bubble gum, and bubble gum had not been invented yet.</p>\r\n<p>Vernon\'s first dick move was to attack the Spanish city of Puerto Bello, Panama, burn the town, plunder it, and then write a total asshole letter to Blas de Lezo telling him that Cartagena was the next town to feel the punishing thrust of his ass-humping stick.&nbsp; Admiral Blas responded with a fairly politely-worded note:</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<blockquote>\r\n<blockquote><span>\"If I had been in Puerto Belo you would not have assaulted the fortresses of my master the King with impunity, because I could have supplied the valour the defenders of Puerto Belo lacked, and checked their cowardice.\"<br /><br />(Translation:&nbsp; Bring it.)</span></blockquote>\r\n</blockquote>\r\n<p>In February 1740 the Spanish garrison at Cartagena had just 4,000 men, a couple hundred coastal guns, and six functional warships.&nbsp; Blas de Lezo\'s meager force was facing Admiral Vernon\'s armada of 30,000 British and Colonial American soldiers, 51 full-on warships, and over 130 armed troop transports.&nbsp; To put the cherry on top of his Douchebag Banana Split, Vernon was such a throbbing, overconfident assface that before the battle even started he coined a bronze victory medal that he handed out to his men &ndash; it was a picture of the one-legged Spanish Admiral kneeling before the British commander, surrendering his sword.&nbsp; That\'s a pretty ballsy thing to have minted before you\'ve even fired a single gunshot.&nbsp; I can\'t make out the text on the medal (pictured below), but I\'m fairly sure it\'s supposed to read, \"We totally pantsed this guy like a bitch and spanked his booty with our giant iron cannonballs.\"</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/blasdelezo4.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Now sure, Blas had proven his worth against privateer ships, and had more than demonstrated his ability to sacrifice limbs for victories, but he was rapidly running out of appendages and the British Fucking Navy wasn\'t exactly a bunch of disorderly pirate scalawag chumps who would betray their own mothers for a cask of rum and a warm-bodied wench.&nbsp; These guys rightfully-earned a hardcore reputation for being the toughest, best equipped, and most well-trained gunners and sailors in the world.&nbsp; At the risk of continuing my never-ending streak of including at least one Star Wars reference in every single post I\'ve ever written, in terms of fleet strength this was like the Rebel cruisers facing off against the Imperials in the space above Endor at the end of <em>Return of the Jedi</em>.&nbsp; The fact that this analogy equates Blas de Lezo to Admiral Ackbar only makes this more awesome.</p>\r\n<p>One notable difference, however, was that in Cartagena in 1740 it was Admiral Blas de Lezo who would be lying in wait with a devious strategy, and the British commander who would have the camera zoom in on his face just in time for him to yell, \"IT\'S A TRAP\".&nbsp; You see, Blas knew that the British land forces wouldn\'t press their attack on the city until the outer forts were destroyed by the navy, so in an effort to prolong the battle as much as possible he made every effort to continually delay the onset of the British fleet.&nbsp; Despite being outnumbered by more than eight-to-one, Blas launched delaying, hit-and-run attacks on the fleet, standing his ground with his eight warships, striking, and then falling back.&nbsp; Whenever he captured enemy ships, he sailed them into the middle of the only deep draft channel that led to Cartagena Harbor &ndash; the Boca Chica &ndash; and scuttled the captured vessels.&nbsp; The sunken boats created a barrier that made it hard for the British to pass, slowing down their blitz attack and temporarily boning them in the Boca Chica Bow Wow kind of sense.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/blasdelezo5.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>As you can probably imagine, however, you\'re not going to do a whole shitload of good against 51 ships-of-the-line when you\'ve only got eight boats under your command.&nbsp; Blas de Lezo wasn\'t able to hold out forever.&nbsp; The British eventually dragged the sunken wrecks out of the Boca Chica, destroyed or captured all of the Spanish vessels, sent de Lezo\'s captured Admiral Flag back to London as a trophy, and poured into Caragena harbor with a fleet of amphibious transports.&nbsp; Shit looked pretty bleak.</p>\r\n<p>But despite things being pretty much hopelessly fucked beyond any chance of un-fucking, Blas de Lezo refused to let Cartagena fall.&nbsp; Personally leading his men into combat, de Lezo and his cannons, fortresses, and men went completely batshit nuts.&nbsp; It was like the military equivalent of the time when I was 29 and I discovered I liked avocados all of a sudden, and then I spent the next four months shoveling bucketloads of guacamole into my face like all day every day.&nbsp; The Spaniards shot cannons and muskets all day long, pounded 4Lokos all night to keep their buzz going, and then switched back to Red Bull when the sun came back up.&nbsp; They repelled amphibious assaults, land attacks, coastal ship attacks, and any other kind of attack the British could come up with, delaying the siege until the bitch of a Columbian rainy season set in and started dumping a few thousand metric ass-loads of rain and malaria-infected mosquitos on the British army.&nbsp; Once the powder got wet and the invaders\' circulatory systems were loaded up with yellow fever and other bullshit, the Brits and Americans couldn\'t really do a whole lot except crap themselves to death with dysentery and other tropical diseases.&nbsp; The fighting slowly tapered off, and in May of 1741 &ndash; fifteen months after Vernon\'s first cannonade was directed at the defenders of Cartagena &ndash; the British commander ran out of clean underwear and headed back home.&nbsp; Vernon limped back to England with just 3,200 men, roughly a tenth of his initial force. Those \"Victory at Cartegena\" medals became collector\'s items, and Blas de Lezo responded to the news of the British defeat by running onto the parapet facing the ocean and using his one good hand to make the side-to-side \'you can\'t see me\" hand gesture that has made John Cena so famous.&nbsp; Cartegena &ndash; the jewel of the Spanish Empire in the Americas &ndash; remained intact thanks to Admiral Peg-Leg.&nbsp; Spain\'s American holdings would go on to flourish for nearly another half-century.</p>\r\n<p>The Spanish Navy\'s greatest hero, Admiral Don Blas de Lezo, died just four months after Vernon\'s withdrawal.&nbsp; He\'d been shot in his good arm, and, probably unwilling to have a third of his four appendages amputated, decided \"fuck it\" and died of the infected bullet wound.&nbsp; Nobody knows where he ended up being buried, but to this day the city he so boldly defended is appropriately adorned with statues of its hero.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/blasdelezo6.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Links:</span><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blas_de_Lezo\">Blas de Lezo</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Cartagena_de_Indias\">Siege of Cartagena 1741</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.cartagenainfo.net/glenndavid/blasdelezo.html\">CartagenaInfo.net</a></p>\r\n<p><br /><br /></p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Sources:</span><br /><br /><span> Carr, James Revell.&nbsp; <em>Seeds of Discontent</em>.&nbsp; Bloomsbury, 2009.<br /><br /> Harbron, John D.&nbsp; <em>Trafalgar and the Spanish Navy</em>.&nbsp; Naval Institute Press, 1988.<br /><br /> Newton, Paula.&nbsp; <em>Columbia</em>.&nbsp; Viva Publishing Network, 2009.<br /><br /> Steward, William.&nbsp; <em>Admirals of the World</em>.&nbsp; McFarland, 2009. </span></p>','2010-11-19','597422328137','blasdelezo1.jpg','blasdelezo2.jpg','Blas de Lezo','One-armed, one-eyed, one-legged, pirate-hunting Admiral of the Spanish Navy.','\"Because of him, we don\'t speak English.\"\r\n\r\n- Colombian Saying'),('Salvatore Giunta','January 21, 1985','N/A','Clinton, IA, USA','21st-century American Soldier','<p>On Tuesday, November 16, 2010, the President of the United States is going to award the first Medal of Honor to a living recipient since the Vietnam War.</p>\r\n<p>Only seven Medals of Honor have been issued since \'Nam, and until now all of them were presented posthumously.&nbsp; This is pretty understandable considering that Medal of Honor-grade heroism generally involves putting your life on the line and charging headfirst into certain death in order to save your comrades from an otherwise-unsurvivable situation, but three years ago, one man &ndash; Staff Sergeant Salvatore Giunta &ndash; faced ridiculous morale-shattering odds like that and lived to tell the tale.&nbsp; And though he would never probably admit it, this guy is about as seriously badass as they come.</p>\r\n<p>Like many other great badasses from history, Giunta\'s story starts from pretty humble beginnings.&nbsp; A former Subway sandwich artist (note: this isn\'t a pejorative dig or anything &ndash; this is the official terminology the company uses to describe its employees) from a presumably-boring suburban Iowa town of about 6,500 people, Giunta eventually decided that customer service jobs suck balls so he left the restaurant business to serve his country as a soldier.&nbsp; He enlisted in the Army, then went through paratrooper jump school, joined the 173rd Airborne, and served in two combat tours in Afghanistan.&nbsp; While busting faces up and down the untamed warzones of Central Asia, he received a Bronze Star for valor and a Purple Heart for being wounded in the line of duty.&nbsp; I wasn\'t able to dig up any information regarding the circumstances surrounding those medals, but knowing what we know about Giunta I think it\'s probably safe to say he received those medals for injuring his hand while punching a Taliban fighter\'s brain out through the back of his head, then using the disembodied brain to crush the spines of a pack of rabid grizzly bears.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/giunta1.png\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The action that earned this ultra-hardcore soldier the Medal of Honor took place in October 2007, when then-Specialist Giunta was serving as a rifle team leader during a ridiculously dangerous mission through the Korengal Valley.&nbsp; Better known to the Americans as \"The Valley of Death\", Korengal was basically like one giant miserable hellhole filled with heavily-entrenched, well-armed insurgent fighters ready to pop out at every corner and launch a shit-ton of RPGs at anything that even kind of looked like it had a stars and stripes on it.&nbsp; For five years, the Americans had been trying to clear this region of resistance without a hell of a lot of luck &ndash; even a few days before Giunta was marching through there a Taliban force had overrun an American platoon, forcing the U.S. troops to fall back to more defensible positions, and all attempts at clearing out the region with air-to-ground ordinance somehow proved unsuccessful.</p>\r\n<p>Nevertheless, the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team was sent in to check it out, and even though the mission was tough these guys weren\'t exactly the sort of badasses who were going to back down from anything.&nbsp; It was the dark hours of early morning when the men of the 173rd were walking single-filed along a rocky ridge, somewhat comforted by the reassuring sound of Apache gunships circling above.&nbsp; They\'d already been through several days of brutal fighting, and were just ready for the mission to be over so they could go back to base and chill out for a while.&nbsp; Unfortunately, they\'d have no such luck on this mission. Suddenly, out of nowhere, the American squad found itself in the middle of a well-crafted precision ambush by a heavily-armed enemy.&nbsp; Dozens of Taliban fighters armed with heavy tripod-mounted machine guns, sniper rifles and RPGs opened fire on the U.S. column from two sides in what\'s known as an \"L-Shaped Ambush\" &ndash; one weapons team fired its MG straight down the American line while a curtain of tracer fire enfiladed he paratroopers from their flanks.&nbsp; One second these guys were walking home, and the next they were in the middle of the fucking Charge of the Light Brigade, being hammered from two sides by a ridiculous amount of weapons fire from an extremely close range.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/giunta2.gif\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<table style=\"width: 500px;\" align=\"center\">\r\n<tbody>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td><span>\"There were more bullets in the air than stars in the sky.&nbsp; A wall of bullets at every one at the same time with one crack and then a million other cracks afterwards.&nbsp; They&rsquo;re above you, in front of you, behind you, below you.&nbsp; They&rsquo;re hitting in the dirt early.&nbsp; They&rsquo;re going over your head.&nbsp; Just all over the place.&nbsp; They were close &mdash; as close as I&rsquo;ve ever seen.\" </span></td>\r\n</tr>\r\n</tbody>\r\n</table>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>In terms of modern combat, going face-to-face with a couple dozen heavy MGs at a range of little more than twenty feet is seriously about as bad as it can possibly get.&nbsp; At this distance the overwhelming American advantages of extreme air support, superior weapons range and accuracy, and night vision capabilities are all basically useless.&nbsp; For all of their hellfire rockets and heavy weapons, the Apache helicopters circling overhead were helpless to protect the infantrymen &ndash; anything inside about a hundred meters is considered \"Danger Close\", meaning that opening fire on the enemy is hazardous to your own allies as well, and the Taliban were roughly one-tenth of that range from the Americans.&nbsp; The infantry was on its own in an incredibly dangerous situation.&nbsp; The cavalry wasn\'t coming in to save the day this time.</p>\r\n<p>Surprised in the open and outnumbered three-to-one, every single man in the 8-person paratrooper squad was hit by gunfire almost immediately.&nbsp; The lead sergeant took eight rounds, the medic was mortally wounded in the leg, and Specialist Giunta took a round in the armor plate that knocked him flat on his back. Somehow able to keep it together despite an insanely-deadly situation, Giunta reacted instinctively, popping up to his feet and scrambling for the closest thing that even kind of resembled serviceable. He got down off the ridge, ducked behind the edge of the road, and returned fire on the enemy.</p>\r\n<p>Seconds after landing behind cover, however, he noticed his Staff Sergeant\'s head snap back awkwardly.&nbsp; He\'d taken a bullet to the helmet.&nbsp; The sarge had barely hit the ground when Giunta &ndash; despite all human instinct to, you know, <em>not</em> be standing in the open while twenty guys with machine guns completely paint the atmosphere surrounding you with bullets and rocket-propelled grenades - <em>got the fuck up out of cover and ran over to help his buddy</em>.&nbsp; Somewhat amazingly, the sarge was so impossibly hardcore that a bullet to the helmet only kind of dazed him a little, and by the time Giunta and another rifleman reached him the guy was already back on his feet blasting M4 rounds at those motherfuckers who had dared to try to screw with him.</p>\r\n<p>With three guys now together, Salvatore Giunta astutely noticed that the Taliban were trying to divide and conquer the Americans, using heavy weapons to divide the squad in half so that they could split the group and deal with each element individually.&nbsp; Fuck that.&nbsp; So, flanked on two sides by screaming enemy soldiers desperately attempting to pin them down with a seemingly endless stream of bullets, Salvatore Giunta and his two allies did what their assailants least expected &ndash; they charged.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/giunta4.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>\"They brought the fight.&nbsp; We\'ll bring the pain.\"</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The strategy was simple enough &ndash; hit the dirty, lay down suppressing fire, throw grenades.&nbsp; As soon as the explosion goes off, get up and run.&nbsp; Keep moving.&nbsp; Keep firing.&nbsp; Wash, rinse, repeat.&nbsp; Using grenades and rifle fire to pin down the enemy, the Americans launched their daring, balls-out counter-attack on an entrenched force three times larger than their own.&nbsp; They pressed forward, chucking a ridiculous number of grenades, and quickly came across the squad machine gunner.&nbsp; The paratrooper was on his back trying to clear a jam in his SAW, barely able to stand because of the two bullets lodged in his leg.&nbsp; The team stayed with the injured gunner, but Giunta pressed on, firing and throwing grenades.&nbsp; Unable to be stopped by conventional weapons, this guy kept charging through the ambush looking for the rest of the team.</p>\r\n<p>What he discovered only made him even more pissed off.&nbsp; The balls-out Specialist was moving forward, when he saw his squad leader &ndash; badly wounded with eight gunshot wounds &ndash; being carried off by two Taliban motherfuckers.</p>\r\n<p>No way.&nbsp; Not on this guy\'s watch.</p>\r\n<p>Giunta rushed forward, burning through the rest of his magazine, shooting the holy living shit out of the two Afghan fighters in front of him.&nbsp; One dropped to the floor with at least 5.56 millimeters of lead in him.&nbsp; The other dude, seeing the ultra-pissed-ness of Salvatore Giunta coming screaming towards him, wisely dropped the wounded American and ran for it.&nbsp; He didn\'t want any of that.</p>\r\n<p>Giunta reached the sergeant, administered some emergency first aid, and carried the badly-wounded man back to safety.&nbsp; Having now re-assembled the team through his own sheer inability to feel fear, Giunta had reorganized the squad so that it could fight a tactical withdrawal and escape the ambush.&nbsp; As soon as the rifle team was out from Danger Close range, a group of Apaches and Specters lit the place up.&nbsp; Giunta and his squad had to walk a few more miles on foot back to safety.&nbsp; He carried his sergeant the whole way.</p>\r\n<p>Salvatore was informed in September that he will be receiving the Medal of Honor for his brave actions in the Korengal Valley that night.&nbsp; His first reaction was, somewhat interestingly to say, \"fuck this bullshit\".&nbsp; As far as this guy is concerned, every man out there that day &ndash; and every soldier he\'s ever fought alongside for that matter &ndash; deserves to be known as heroes, because everyone out there goes above and beyond every single day.&nbsp; Perhaps that\'s not a bad message to keep in mind during Veteran\'s Day weekend, though for what it\'s worth I think I would argue that what Salvatore Giunta did out there was some seriously next-level shit.&nbsp; Were it not for his bravery, his entire team might have been killed, and his sergeant would have been taken into the hands of the Taliban.</p>\r\n<p>Luckily, Salvatore Giunta was too badass to let that happen.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/giunta5.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<table style=\"width: 500px;\" align=\"center\">\r\n<tbody>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td><span>\"I want to stress the fact that this is the nation&rsquo;s highest honor.&nbsp; Awesome.&nbsp; And it&rsquo;s given to me, but just as much as me, every single person that I&rsquo;ve been with deserves to wear it &mdash; they are just as much of me as I am.&nbsp; This isn&rsquo;t a one-man show.&nbsp; I&rsquo;m here because someone picked me.&nbsp; I hope that everyone around me can share in whatever pride that comes from it.&nbsp; They deserve that pride.\"</span></td>\r\n</tr>\r\n</tbody>\r\n</table>\r\n<p><br /> <span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Links:</span><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/10/AR2010091002712.html\">Washington Post</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2010/11/medal-of-honor-winner-salvatore-giunta-on-bravery-brotherhood-and-the-korengal.html\">Interview with Vanity Fair</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2010/09/10/readout-presidents-call-with-specialist-salvatore-giunta\">White House Press Release</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.armytimes.com/news/2010/09/military-giunta-medal-of-honor-091510w/\">Army Times Story</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.stripes.com/war-excerpt-about-staff-sgt-salvatore-giunta-s-actions-1.117774\">Excerpt from Sebastian Junger\'s Book <em>War</em></a><br /><br /> ABC News</p>','2010-11-12','222403628255','giunta1.jpg','giunta2.jpg','Salvatore Giunta','The first living recipient of the Medal of Honor since Vietnam.','\"Everything slowed down and I did everything I thought I could do, nothing more and nothing less.\r\nI did what I did because that\'s what I was trained to do.\"'),('Jennifer Musa','November 11, 1917','January 13, 2008','Tarmons, Ireland','21st-century Irish Politician','<p>Jennifer Musa was a seriously tough old lady.&nbsp; This Irish battleaxe of a woman not only looks she could have been Clint Eastwood\'s grandmother, it\'s entirely believable that she was also the sort of person who might have flipped over a card table and beaten you to death with a broken-off chair leg if she\'d thought for a second that you were cheating during your weekly bridge game.&nbsp; While the above image alone might be enough to warrant a mutter of \"damn that lady looks pretty badass\", what\'s even more hardcore than her ferocious, imposing stare is the fact that this take-no-bullshit old lady was well-known throughout the lawless deserts of Central Asia as \"The Irish Queen of Balochistan\", and earned a name for herself by making sure everybody in Central Asia knew that she was the toughest motherfucker in town.&nbsp; Now there\'s a hell of a title.</p>\r\n<p>The Future Queen of Balochistan was inauspiciously born in County Kerry, Ireland, in 1911.&nbsp; Like any good Irish Catholic worthy of her rosary, this young farmgirl was one of about a hundred kids, though life in a packed-out farmhouse wasn\'t exactly what she had in mind for a career path.&nbsp; Instead, she moved to Oxford, where she trained to be a nurse.&nbsp; This is where things take an interesting turn.</p>\r\n<p>While living in Oxford, Jennifer met and fell in love with a Philosophy student named Qasi Musi.&nbsp; Qasi\'s father, incidentally, just so happened to be a pretty badass Afghan war leader who had led a successful cavalry charge against the British during the <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Maiwand\">Battle of Maiwand</a> in 1880.&nbsp; After the Second Anglo-Afghan War, the Brits decided they didn\'t like the idea of this saber-swinging maniac busting English asses all over Central Asia, so they expelled him from his tribal homeland in Kandahar.&nbsp; Qasi\'s dad moved across the mountains to a region called Balochistan, which sounds like a made-up place, but is actually <a href=\"http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&amp;source=s_q&amp;hl=en&amp;geocode=&amp;q=Pishin,+Balochistan,+Pakistan&amp;sll=37.0625,-95.677068&amp;sspn=36.231745,78.662109&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;hq=&amp;hnear=Pishin,+Balochistan,+Pakistan&amp;ll=30.486551,66.917725&amp;spn=4.931306,9.832764&amp;t=h&amp;z=7\">a province in present-day Pakistan</a>.&nbsp; As a proven badass, is was easy for this guy to establish himself as a local tribal authority.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/musa1.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>This is Balochistan.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Jennifer and Qasi got married, and in 1948 (just a few months after Pakistan earned its independence from Britain), they moved to Balochistan, bought a 110 year-old mud hut in the town of Pishin, and immediately started decorating it with badass shit like giant-ass swords and pelts from white tigers they had presumably killed with the afore-mentioned giant-ass swords.</p>\r\n<p>Right off the bat, Jennifer Musa\'s arrival in Pishin was kind of like a kick in the teeth to the local population.&nbsp; Here was this ancient tribal culture that believed pretty strongly in <em>Purdah</em>, the religious belief that women were not allowed to be seen by men in public, and then their entire system was curbstomped by the arrival of this hot-tempered mouthy Irish broad who refused to wear the burka, pounded shots of Bailey\'s Irish Cream, and didn\'t take shit from anyone.&nbsp; Nobody knew what the hell to think. It was so weird that there came a rumor around town was that Jennifer was a British Princess who had been given to Qasi as a gift by the British Royal Family as a reward for the Balochistanian prince killing a wild tiger with his bare hands.&nbsp; This was not the case.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/musa2.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>Balochistan is very far away from Ireland.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Jennifer\'s husband died in an automobile accident in 1956, which is tragic but also kind of morbidly humorous when you consider that the Telegraph article I link to below makes a point of mentioning that Jennifer and Qasi owned the only car in the entire town.&nbsp; With her husband dead and a young child to care for, 39 year-old Jennifer had two options &ndash; return home to Ireland, or stay in Balochistan.&nbsp; She opted to stay so that the couple\'s son could remain with his extended family. And presumably also because being a tribal leader in Balochistan is pretty sweet.</p>\r\n<p>But shit was just getting started for Jennifer Musa.&nbsp; After her husband died, this tough broad stepped in and started kicking metaphorical asses all over the place, getting involved in both local and national politics and ferociously battling to protect the Baloch people she loved and the rights of women who had been oppressed by unfair laws for generations.&nbsp; She joined the Pakistani National Freedom Party, and got elected to the only Balochistanian seat when Pakistan formed its first Parliament in 1970.&nbsp; When President (and noted world leader) Zulfikar Ali Bhutto tried to bully her into ratifying a constitution that Jennifer felt didn\'t provide enough safeguards for Balochistan to preserve its regional autonomy, she told him he could bite her pasty ass and light up the constitution while doing so.&nbsp; Bhutto was so adamant about wanting the ratification to be unanimous that he even tried to get Jennifer\'s own brother-in-law to pressure her to sign, but when the Constitution was signed in 1973 Jennifer held the distinction of being the only member of Parliament not to deposit ink onto it.&nbsp; Fuck it &ndash; if she didn\'t agree with that bullshit, she wasn\'t going to just bow down and go along with it because the leader of her country told her to.&nbsp; That\'s just how this chick rolled &ndash; nothng could break her iron will.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/musa3.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>The Musa is not impressed by your puny conventional weapons.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>In 1977 a coup by the Pakistani Army overthrew Democracy and dissolved the Parliament, so the now-former-MP returned home to her beloved Balochistan.&nbsp; By this point, everybody in Balochistan had gotten over their cheauve-tastic preconceptions about what women were capable of, and they all pretty much unanimously understood that \"Mummy Jennifer\" was the Sherriff in town.</p>\r\n<p>Now, I\'ve never really been to rural Pakistan, but I kind of picture this region going down like <em>Fallout</em> with camels. It\'s miles of hot desert, incredibly poor, ruled by tribal warlords, and even the shepherds out there are packing full-auto assault rifles. Still, despite this harsh, only-the-strong-survive environment, Jennifer Musa proved that she was the woman in charge &ndash; local people from farmers to warlords would come to her to help arbitrate disputes and settle arguments, and what she said went. She also continued her work on women\'s rights, establishing literacy among the local female population, and when men weren\'t treating their women right she bullied them into acting a little more civilized by cracking them with sticks. The Telegraph piece I referenced earlier mentions an interview with the local police chief, who mentioned that he was scared of her growing up because when he would fuck up she\'d drag him around town by his ear until he apologized. By the time that guy was thirty years old and running the police department, you can be damn sure he had nothing but respect for Mummy Jennifer. This mini-fiefdom is even more awesome, when you read that she didn\'t even really speak the language very well &ndash; according to her, \"I speak a little Pashto and Urdu, but when I get really angry I go down to English and they understand me.\" It\'s like anything else I suppose &ndash; badassitude transcends the language barrier.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/musa4.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>These are the kinds of guys that came to her for help and advice.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>While it\'s pretty obvious that you didn\'t fuck with this lady, the Irish Queen of Balochistan also went out of her way to help people whenever she could.&nbsp; During the Baloch revolt in the late 1970s, when local freedom fighters were battling the Pakistani government, she worked with both sides to restore peace in the region.&nbsp; When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in the 1980s, she not only took in refugees fleeing the destruction, but used her own money to build an ice factory so that she could produce cold water for the refugees and reliable refrigeration for a region that didn\'t have much in the way of electricity.&nbsp; Even <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akbar_Bugti\">this guy</a> came to her on one occasion asking for help and advice.&nbsp; Jennifer told Akbar to compromise and work together for a peacible solution, but he decided to revolt anyways, and got blown up for it.</p>\r\n<p>Jennifer remained in Belochistan for six decades, refusing to leave even when the neighboring Afghan province of Khandahar was overrun by Taliban insurgents.&nbsp; She raised her son to become a diplomat (he was served a Pakistan\'s Ambassador to both the United States and Russia) and fight for what he believed in, and when she died in 2008 at the age of 90, her entire village came out to pay their respects to the Irish Queen of Belochistan.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/musa5.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<table style=\"width: 500px;\" align=\"center\">\r\n<tbody>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td><span>\"I joined thinking I could do something for Baluchistan and something for women.&nbsp; But you can\'t liberate women until you liberate men. They expected a woman in a burka.&nbsp; So when I arrived, they were a bit surprised.\" </span></td>\r\n</tr>\r\n</tbody>\r\n</table>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Links:</span><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1575879/Jennifer-Musa.html\">The Telegraph</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.thingsasian.com/stories-photos/20733\">ThingsAsian Interview with the Queen of Balochistan</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/1992/08/17/world/pishin-journal-from-pakistan-county-kerry-is-a-lifetime-away.html\">The New York Times</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_22-5-2002_pg3_8\">The Daily Times</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_Musa\">Wikipedia</a></p>','2010-11-05','349283828299','musa1.jpg','musa2.jpg','Jennifer Musa','The Irish Queen of Balochistan.','\"Bhutto told my brother-in-law to work on me.  He said, \'get her vote.\'  He thought the weakest link was a woman.  He\'d never been to Ireland.  In the end, Bhutto gave in.  He never forgave me.\" '),('Mustafa Kemal Ataturk','May 19, 1881','November 10, 1938','Selanik, Ottoman Empire','20th-century Turkish Politician','<p>Every time I post a story about a <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/barbarossa.html\">Turkish</a> <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/alparslan.html\">hero</a> kicking ass for the crescent moon, I can generally come into the office Monday expecting a series of emails from my legions of faithful Turkish readers reminding me, \"Yes, this guy is very cool, but you\'re still missing the biggest badass in our country\'s history so WTF is up with that shit.\"</p>\r\n<p>\"The biggest badass in Turkish history\" no small claim for a land that produced a few centuries of uber-powerful, harem-packing sultans who commanded vast amounts of wealth and flexed nuts over even more massive swaths of land, yet it still appears that despite the excellent pedigree of ass-whomping awesomeness going down in Anatolia, one man stands alone as the unequivocal national hero &ndash; Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. An, asskicking whirlwind of leadership who is almost universally beloved by his people and respected by his enemies. A guy who made a name for himself by crushing his battle opponents\' balls with over-the-top displays of hardcore bayonet-to-face destruction on the battlefield, yet still somehow found a way to end up being honored by the United Nations for promoting \"world peace, international understanding, and respect for human rights.\" A man so unapproachably hardcore that it\'s actually illegal to publicly insult him in his home country, assuming the locals don\'t kick your ass into a paste and you somehow survive to see your trial.</p>\r\n<p>The Legend of Ataturk starts in 1881, with the birth of a kid named Mustafa. Perhaps somewhat ironically, the future \"Father of All Turks\" was born in present-day Thessaloniki, Greece, though, in his defense, it was called Salonica at the time, which is a much more Turkish-sounding name. As They Might Be Giants may have previously informed you, the Greeks and the Turks generally preferred to change the names of cities they captured as a way of taunting their defeated enemies and making life difficult for everybody else, and Salonica-Thessaloniki was not exempt from that time-honored tradition of nomenclaturial confusion. Mustafa went to military school in Istanbul (not Constantinople), graduating as a Lieutenant in 1905, and subsequently unsheathed on the enemies of the Ottoman Empire. Everyone knew Mustafa was going to be pretty big-time &ndash; the guy was such a baller in school that his instructors nicknamed him Kemal, which is the Turkish word for \"perfection\". It\'s not every day you get a bitchin\' nickname like that, and the young military officer was obviously cool with it if everybody wanted to go around calling him \"Mustafa Perfection\" all the time. He joined the Young Turks &ndash; a revolutionary progressive political party that became well-known in history for deposing the Ottoman Sultan in 1908, instituting a parliamentarian constitution to Turkey, and lending its name to a top-25 Rod Stewart song from the 80s. His association with the Turks nearly got Kemal dishonorably discharged and summarily executed for treason, but for some reason this didn\'t happen.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/ataturk1.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>Lookin\' pimp in the desert.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Overthrowing an autocratic dictator and replacing him with democratically-elected officials is pretty sweet and all, but it was going to take more than a bi-cameral legislature to dispel the notion that the Ottoman Empire was pretty crappy compared to what it used to be. Lovingly known to the Western powers as \"The sick man of Europe\" because its military defense capabilities marginally resembled a really bored guy with mononucleosis, the Ottoman Empire found itself continually under attack from powerful outside forces, and it came down to guys like Captain Mustafa Kemal to stand up to powerful modernized armies looking to gank land and wealth away from his rapidly-crumbling empire. Captain Perfect first earned a name for himself as a no-bullshit face-wrecker in Libya in 1911, when he led 200 men on a balls-out charge against 2,000 unprepared Italian soldiers outside Tobruk and not only drove the enemy out of their trenches, but captured a bunch of their shit and made them look like bitches in the process. He later played a supporting role in the Balkan Wars in 1912 and 1913, constantly fighting off massively superior forces of Greeks, Bulgarians and Serbians trying to throw the Turks out of Eastern Europe.</p>\r\n<p>The culmination of Ataturk\'s military career, however, is the incredibly over-the-top display of toughness he demonstrated on the shores of Gallipoli during World War I, when 16 divisions of British, French, ANZAC, and other Allied troops attempted an invasion of the Dardanelles and ran faces-first into Mustafa Kemal\'s titanium-plated nutsack of destruction. Kemal was just a Colonel of a reserve infantry division at the time, stationed at a critical choke point in the Bosporus that, if it fell into enemy hands, would have single-handedly dealt the Ottoman Empire a ball-punch from which it could not possibly have recovered. With the entire hopes and military capability of the Empire on his shoulders, Ataturk threw down with the most hardcore warriors in the world and demonstrated what a little bit of determination, a defensible set of trenches, and a whole lot of bullets could accomplish.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/ataturk2.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>\"I am not ordering you to attack, I am ordering you to die. <br />Until we die, we can win the time for the arrival of new troops and commanders\".</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Kemal was on the front lines when this veritable fuck-ton of Aussies, New Zealanders, and Brits came around looking to cripple Turkey in one fell swoop, and he sure as hell wasn\'t about to let that shit go down on his watch. Without any authority to do so, Kemal took command of the entire defending force in the region and sent them charging to the front lines with orders to hold their positions from this European Zerg Rush at all costs. Tenaciously digging in to fortified terrain, and personally leading counter-attacks to re-take lost territory, this guy basically personally went up and down the shore stuffing himself into the middle of everything even remotely resembling a gunfight. Sure, he was facing an all-star lineup of hardcore asskickers &ndash; Australian, New Zealand, and Gurkha infantry, as well as coastal bombardments by the fearsome British Navy &ndash; but Ataturk didn\'t give a fuck. When the Sari Bair ridge was captured by badass Gurkhas after intense hand-to-kukri fighting, Kemal organized a group of men and re-captured the critical high grounds with a balls-out suicide charge. When he came across a platoon of retreating Turks complaining about not having bullets with which to kill anyone, he told his men to sack up, fix bayonets, hold their position, and shank anything bigger than a swamp rat that came within stabbing range. The actions of this one lowly Colonel almost single-handedly prevented what could have been an overwhelming Allied victory in the opening hours of the amphibious assault, and then, over the next ten months of intense fighting, he tenaciously held the line against a couple hundred thousand determined Allied soldiers. His completely reckless, balls-out attitude towards command (his command HQ was 300 yards from the battlefront) inspired the men to fight for their country, and Gallipoli ended up being a tremendous victory for the Ottomans.</p>\r\n<p>As if that wasn\'t impressive enough, after Gallipoli, Colonel Kamal was transferred to the Caucasus, where he fought a defensive war against the Russians through the frigid mountains, and then to mix it up he went to Syria and held off Lawrence of Arabia\'s Arab Revolt among the burning sands. The guy didn\'t give a crap &ndash; you just pointed him in the direction of hard-charging invaders, and he was going to morph his troops into a giant spike wall ready to impale anything that came its way.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/ataturk3.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Kemal\'s victories weren\'t enough to save the declining Empire from defeat, however, and despite Kemal\'s best efforts to kill everyone in the world, the Istanbul government finally capitulated to the British and French. The Western powers, pissed off about the whole \"world war\" thing, placed a super-harsh, Treaty of Versailles-style series of punishments on the Turks, forcing them to pay tribute, redrawing country boundaries, and carving up their land among the western powers.</p>\r\n<p>Once again, Kemal had to put his sack down and tell the West to go fuck a donkey. This badass military commander didn\'t bust people up and down the Gallipoli shores just to sit back and let a bunch of goddamned Europeans take over his peoples\' lands, and he immediately rejected the terms of the surrender, left Istanbul in a boat in the middle of the night, crossed the Black Sea, established a new governmental capital at Ankara, and declared open revolt against the foreign powers occupying his homeland. For the next two years, this tenacious, no-bullshit asskicker he battled the combined forces of France, Britain, and Greece, halting their offensive on his new capital, crushing them in battle, throwing them back to the Mediterranean, chasing the reinstated Sultan out of Istanbul for the second time, and finally establishing Turkish independence from foreign rule. Suck on that, trolls.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/ataturk4.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>All this assbeatery won Kemal quite a bit of street cred among the Turks (being your peoples\' version of George Washington will do that to a guy), and in 1923 he was elected the first President of a Democratic Turkey. He abolished the Sultanate forever, set up a secular, non-religious-affiliated democracy, and brought 300 years of modernization to his country in the span of about 10 years. He made sweeping legal changes, instituted mandatory education, and abolished laws that denied freedom and equality to women. Fuck, the dude even changed the script to the Latin alphabet and updated the calendar to the shit the rest of the world was using.</p>\r\n<p>Despite wrecking asses in combat at every possible juncture, Kemal was actually totally chill once he came to power. He went out of his way to reach out and establish peace, good relations, and trade with former enemies such as Greece, Australia, and Russia &ndash; people he was ordering his men to stab in the eyes with bayonets not ten years earlier were now extending their hands in friendship. He mediated international disputes, worked for peace, established goodwill among his neighbors, and was so fucking bitchin\' that they even built a monument to the guy in the capital of Australia, and in 1981 the United Nations declared \"The Ataturk Year in the World\" to celebrate the centennial of his birth. Despite all this goodwill busting out of every orifice of the world, it\'s pretty obvious that nobody loved the guy quite as much as the Turks&hellip; the government formally bestowed the title \"Ataturk\" on him, meaning \"Father of the Turks\", and the Turks loved the dude so much they elected him president 15 years in a row, only failing to elect him a 16th time on account of the fact that he was deceased. From what I understand, even to this day pretty much everything in the country is named after him.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/ataturk5.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<table style=\"width: 500px;\" align=\"center\">\r\n<tbody>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td><span>\"Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives... you are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side here in this country of ours... You the mothers who sent their sons from far away countries wipe away your tears. Your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well.\"</span></td>\r\n<td>&nbsp;</td>\r\n</tr>\r\n</tbody>\r\n</table>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Links:</span><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.allaboutturkey.com/ataturk.htm\">All About Turkey</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,860057-2,00.html\">TIME Magazine</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/ataturk_kemal.shtml\">BBC History</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.awm.gov.au/encyclopedia/ataturk.asp\">Australian War Memorial</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.canakkale.gen.tr/eng/anzaccove.html\">ANZAC Cove</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.hyperhistory.net/apwh/bios/b2ataturkkemal.htm\">Hyperhistory.net</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustafa_Kemal_Atat%C3%BCrk\">Wikipedia</a></p>\r\n<p><br /><br /></p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Sources:</span><br /><br /><span> Blumberg, Arnold.&nbsp; <em>Great Leaders, Great Tyrants?</em>.&nbsp; Greenwood, 1995.<br /><br /> Goldschmidt, Arthur and Lawrence Davidson.&nbsp; <em>A Concise History of the Middle East</em>.&nbsp; Westview, 2006.<br /><br /> Haythornthwaite, Philip J.&nbsp; <em>Gallipoli 1915</em>.&nbsp; Osprey, 1991.<br /><br /> Sandler, Stanley.&nbsp; <em>Ground Warfare</em>.&nbsp; ABC-CLIO, 2002. </span></p>','2010-09-03','366149428888','ataturk0.jpg','ataturk1.jpg','Mustafa Kemal Ataturk','The \"Father of all Turks\", and a man so revered in his homeland that it\'s illegal to publicly insult him.','\"A man born out of due season, an anachronism, a throwback to the Tartars of the steppes, a fierce elemental force of a man.  With his military genius and his ruthless determination, in a different age he might well have been a Genghis Khan, conquering empires.\"'),('Matilda of Canossa','1046','July 24, 1115','Northern Italy','Medieval Italian General','<p>Matilda of Canossa gets her epithet from the name of her family fortress. It\'s a rare badass indeed who can claim that they\'re named after a castle, but if anybody in Medieval Europe is worthy of that distinction, it\'s probably Matilda. For 60 years, this hardcore warrior woman kicked asses in Northern Italy, providing the main military defense force for none other than the Roman Popes, single-handedly taking on any challenges to the Papacy. She\'s now one of the few women from the Middle Ages known for her prowess in combat, and her role as the Pope\'s personal badass isn\'t the sort of honor that got handed out to any douchebag with a castle. She was tough, nobody fucked with her, and &ndash; more importantly &ndash; as long as she was around nobody fucked with the Pope without thinking twice about it first.</p>\r\n<p>Matilda was the daughter of a super-powerful lord named Boniface who owned a dickload of land in Northern Italy. When Matilda was six, her pops was shot through the neck with a poisoned arrow, a tragic and unnecessarily-over-the-top death that left young Matilda to inherit the entirety of her father\'s vast domain. Her mother soon married a presumably-awesome guy named Godfrey the Bearded, who stepped in to serve as regent until Matilda was old enough to be useful as a ruler. This was fine and all, but when she turned sixteen Godfrey tried to cement his place as a powerful dude by marrying Matilda off to his son &ndash; a less-than-attractive assburger known as Godfrey the Hunchback, which was significantly less cool with her. Matilda played along and stayed with that Quasimoto motherfucker for a couple years, but eventually got sick of his crap and shipped his ass off to Germany, where he was murdered shortly thereafter in a probably-unrelated incident. From that point on Matilda ruled alone, and as the sole inheritress of her father\'s Northern Italian Dukedom Matilda quickly fell into her now-famous role as the iron shield of the Papacy &ndash; her armies and castles conveniently fell directly between the Vatican and the German armies that were almost constantly seeking to invade it and send the pontiff screaming out of town on a donkey.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/matilda1.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>Matilda chilling with a monk and a soldier.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>In case you\'re curious what sort of antisocial jerkwad would try to send an army to beat the hell out of Popes, I suppose I should mention that nearly the entire lifespan of the Holy Roman Empire ultimately breaks down to little more than a never-ending pissing contest between the Medieval Catholic Church and the ruler of the Holy Roman Empire. On one side, you had the Emperors &ndash; a powerful line of German warrior-kings with unstoppable armies and righteous beards who wanted the official rubber-stamp from the Church so that they could go around telling people they were kicking ass for the Lord and everyone would jump on their holy-face-wrecking bandwagon. On the other hand, you had the Popes &ndash; a revered line of Italian priests who commanded the hearts and minds of the people, and who wanted the Emperors to provide the necessary muscle to carry out the will of the Church. Ultimately, while the Popes and the Emperors both needed each other\'s help to make this whole Holy Roman Empire thing both Holy, Roman, and an Empire, neither of them could agree on which one was supposed to be giving out the orders and which one should be following them. In the end, this jacked-up pseudo-alliance resulted in a lot of strong language and hurt feelings, which then resulted in a lot of severed limbs, burninated cities, and bloodshed, which then resulted in the two sides deciding to make amends and team up again. If \"frenemies\" was a word I could legitimately use in a sentence without wanting to retch up my cranberry juice, this would be a good place for it.</p>\r\n<p>From an early age Matilda was at the center of this incessant conflict, thanks largely to the fact that spent six decades ruling over a half-dozen imposing castles situated along the road from Berlin to Rome. Being a good Catholic princess, Matilda took an oath to defend the Church to death, and was willing to back it up with enough zeal and conviction to make even the most hardcore churchgoers look like whiny apostates. Any time any jerkass wanted to get to Rome to fuck with the Pope, Matilda took it on herself to ride out at the head of an army and lay the smack-down on them, no matter how formidable their armies may have been. When some douchey pretentious king somewhere proclaimed a bullshit anti-Pope (which I should mention is just the term for a false Pope, rather than some crazy/awesome Satanic demon-Pope), she didn\'t put up with that papal bull &ndash; she overthrew the pretender pontiffs, crushed their armies, and erased them from history. In addition to leading troops in the field, managing her castle resources RTS-style, and intelligently mediating disputes between clergymen and noblemen, there are many rumors that she rode out on the battlefield personally, wearing a custom suit of armor and fighting hand-to-hand with axes, pikes, and swords. When this over-the-top head-cleaving ultra-paladin wasn\'t impaling unholy knights on the tip of her lance or crushing heretic skulls into protoplasm, Matilda also provided safe refuge for persecuted clergymen, donated money and weapons to the Church, and somehow found time to make herself fluent in Italian, French, German and Latin.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/matilda5.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>Matilda, seen here giving advice to the Pope.&nbsp; Seriously, that\'s what\'s going on.</span></p>\r\n<p><br /> The big shit in Matilda\'s reign came down in 1077, when Pope Gregory VII got all pissy about something and excommunicated the German king Henry IV, an ultra-tough warrior-ruler who had just completed a bloody campaign in Saxony where he pacified barbarians by de-braining them with a sword. Henry, understandably worried that his soldiers and peasants weren\'t going to be too keen on submitting to the unbreakable iron will of a king who had been disowned by God, freaked the fuck out, crossed the Alps, and went to Matilda\'s castle (where the Pope was hiding), to beg the pontiff for forgiveness. Matilda wasn\'t impressed &ndash; as penance for upsetting the Pope, she made the fucking German king wait outside in the freezing-cold snow for three days before finally letting him in. She was just hard like that.</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/matilda2.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>LOOKS COLD OUT THERE LOL</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Henry and Gregory made amends, Henry was allowed back into the Church, and was then promptly re-excommunicated again a year later. This time, instead of coming dressed in rags and begging forgiveness, Henry rolled into Italy packing a huge fucking army and looking to beat the shit out of the Pope. Matilda fought this huge onslaught of battle-hardened warriors bravely, delaying the invasion as long as she could, but her forces were eventually overwhelmed. Henry broke through Matilda\'s lines, reached Rome, and took the Papal seal. Hilariously, it didn\'t end up doing him a whole lot of good &ndash; as soon as Henry seized the seal, Matilda wrote a letter to all the kings of Europe telling them that the Pope just got his identity stolen by the German king, and for the next year or so Matilda alone was recognized as the official voice of the Pope. Awesome.</p>\r\n<p>Henry installed an anti-pope in Rome and headed back home to Germany telling everybody he was now a Holy Roman Emperor or some shit, but that didn\'t fly with Matilda. As soon as he left, she put together what was left of her army, crushed Henry\'s cronies, retook the capital, and punted the anti-pope into the ocean. Henry came back looking for revenge, and this time she crushed his forces\' balls and drove him back out across the Alps. Henry would later die alone and deposed, and his excommunication would mean doom him to being buried on unhallowed ground &ndash; a huge insult to any self-respecting European king.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/matilda3.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>After sending Henry running crying back to his mama, Matilda kept on rocking out with her frock out in Italy, ever-vigilant for un-Popely douchebags in need of having swords jammed up their nostrils. She conquered several counties that failed to recognize the Papacy\'s power, built churches, donated a lot of money to the Vatican, and cougared it up by marrying a German Prince that was 26 years younger than her. Her last days were spent in peace, and she was so chill by the end of it that she was eventually proclaimed Viceroy of Northern Italy by Emperor Henry\'s successor, a dude who was unoriginally also named Henry.</p>\r\n<p>Matilda died of gout in 1115 at the age of 69. She left her lands to the Church, which in turn used it to protect itself from future Holy Roman Emperors who found themselves leaning towards tendencies that were somewhat less than Roman or Holy. Her body now lies in St. Peter\'s Basilica &ndash; she is one of only three women entombed in the Vatican, and she was the first non-Pope/non-Saint person of any gender to be interred there. Her legend was so cherished and she was so beloved among her native Italians that even the great Michelangelo claimed to be descended to her (though most genealogists today pretty much agree that he was full of shit), and she is still a popular figure even today.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/matilda4.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<table style=\"width: 500px;\" align=\"center\">\r\n<tbody>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td><span>\"At this time only countess Matilda was found among women who scorned the power of the king, who opposed his cunning and power even with military conflict&hellip; who surpassed even men by the virtue of her spirit.\" </span></td>\r\n</tr>\r\n</tbody>\r\n</table>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Links:</span><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://epistolae.ccnmtl.columbia.edu/woman/29.html\">Epistolae</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://medievalnews.blogspot.com/2008/10/matilda-of-tuscany.html\">Medieval News</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://bobrowen.com/valerieeads//eadsmightyinwar.html\">Mighty in War</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.saintpetersbasilica.org/Monuments/MatildaofCanossa/MatildaofCanossa.htm\">St. Peter\'s Basilica</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Catholic_Encyclopedia_%281913%29/Matilda_of_Canossa\">Catholic Encyclopedia</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matilda_of_Canossa\">Wikipedia</a></p>\r\n<p><br /><br /></p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Sources:</span><br /><br /><span> Grant de Pauw, Linda.&nbsp; <em>Battle Cries and Lullabies</em>.&nbsp; Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 2000.<br /><br /> Hay, David J.&nbsp; <em>The Military Leadership of Matilda of Canossa</em>.&nbsp; Manchester Univ. Press, 2008.<br /><br /> Kagay, Donald L. and J. Andrew Villalon.&nbsp; <em>Crusaders, Condottieri, and Cannon</em>.&nbsp; BRILL, 2003.<br /><br /> Keates, Jonathan.&nbsp; <em>The Rough Guide History of Italy</em>.&nbsp; Rough Guides, 2003.<br /><br /> Williams, Nicola.&nbsp; <em>Tuscany &amp; Umbria</em>.&nbsp; Lonely Planet, 2008. </span></p>','2010-09-10','103119129011','matilda1.jpg','matilda1a.jpg','Matilda of Canossa','Italian warrior-princess who served as the Pope\'s personal bodyguard.','\"Now there appeared in Lombardy at the head of her numerous squadrons the young maid Matilda, armed like a warrior, and with such bravery that she made known to the world that courage and valor in mankind is not indeed a matter of sex, but of heart and spirit.\" '),('Jonathan R. Davis','Unknown','Unknown','South Carolina, USA','19th-century American Gunslinger','<p>On December 19, 1854, Captain Jonathan R. Davis, his awesome mutton chops, and two other men were quietly walking through a canyon deep in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California.&nbsp; For those adventurers and prospectors brave and tough enough to withstand the treacherous pitfalls and blistering heat of these uncharted, dangerous, largely-uninhabited lands there was plenty of gold to be found, and veritable shitloads of money to be made.&nbsp; This small group was convinced that they had what it took to get the job done. Captain Davis, an unflinching Eastwoodian gunslinger from South Carolina, scanned the horizon for worthwhile claims to stake, careful to watch out for potential ambushes by native warriors, bloodthirsty brigands, or vicious wild animals.&nbsp; On his left stood James McDonald, an Alabama man, and on his right was Davis\' good friend, a local doctor named Bolivar A. Sparks.&nbsp; These three men had big dreams of striking it rich in California gold, heading back home with wagonloads of unimaginable wealth, and retiring to gold-plated mansions where they could constantly be surrounded by hot corseted babes and taxidermied bear corpses.</p>\r\n<p>But unfortunately any time there\'s money to be made, there will be men are eager to opt out of the whole hard work thing and take that wealth from other by force of arms.&nbsp; And such was the case in California in the 1850s.&nbsp; Little did this small, three-man party know, they were being watched. Nearly a dozen vicious, hardened, remorseless criminals lay in wait for their approach.&nbsp; Eleven utterly-douchetastic scumfucks in the midst of a murderous crime spree. This vile bandit gang had already killed and robbed ten men in the past two weeks.&nbsp; They were eager for more.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/captaindavis7.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>Ten Old West badasses, one less than the group lying in ambush.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>James McDonald never even heard the shots.&nbsp; The bandit crew was out from behind the bushes and rocks of the canyon in a heartbeat, and without saying a word they opened fire into the narrow killzone.&nbsp; The poor bastard fell dead with his pistol still in its holster. Dr. Sparks managed to draw his sidearm, but the physician only managed to get off two wildly inaccurate rounds before being mortally wounded by a couple dozen gunshot wounds to parts of the body that generally don\'t function properly when perforated by a half-inch of metal at a high velocity. Within seconds, both of Captain Davis\'s companions lie dead or dying at his feet.&nbsp; Surrounded, outnumbered, and retardedly outgunned, this lone traveler now found himself in the open, staring down eleven hardened killers rapidly firing a pants-wetting array of revolvers and rifles in his direction.</p>\r\n<p>At a time when most people would have instinctively died from a delightful mix between gunshot wounds to the head and extreme terror, Captain Davis stood firm.&nbsp; These bandit motherfuckers hadn\'t counted on the fact that he was one of the most ridiculously hardcore gunslingers in the Old West.&nbsp; He wasn\'t going to let them slaughter him without a fight.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/captaindavis1.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Davis quick-drew his revolvers with the speed of a rabid, genetically-enhanced tarantula diving down on a pack of unsuspecting crickets.&nbsp; The barrels had barely left the leather of his awesome-looking Han Solo thigh holsters before he\'d already snapped off two unbelievable shots and sent a pair of bandit douchebags straight to Hell without passing Go or collecting $200.&nbsp; Instinctively flipping his internal badass-o-meter into Freak Mode, Davis adjusted quickly, sidestepping gunfire as a pair of bullets grazed his arm and poked holes in his jacket, and he calmly planted another volley of burning-hot lead into the brains of two more jerkwad robbers.&nbsp; By this point, all the gang managed to do was mutter, \"oh fuck\", under their breaths as Captain Jonathan R. Davis tore them all a collective new asshole and then buried their corpses inside of it.&nbsp; In a gunbattle that couldn\'t have lasted more than twenty seconds, Davis emptied both revolvers into the bandits, killing seven men dead with just twelve shots.&nbsp; The Steven Segal of the Old West, Davis had bullet holes through his hat and clothes, but was otherwise unharmed, fully-functional, and more than capable of putting dirtbags in their place at the bottom of the badass food pyramid.</p>\r\n<p>At this point all the fighters left standing were holding empty weapons.&nbsp; Reloading a real bitch back in the days when revolvers and rifles were still cap-and-ball affairs, so with Davis and the remaining four bandits all out of ammunition, there was only one way to settle the score &ndash; a fucking badass knife fight.&nbsp; Three of the bandits drew a set of knives of various sizes.&nbsp; Their leader pulled out a goddamned four-foot cavalry saber.</p>\r\n<p>Davis didn\'t blink.&nbsp; He calmly re-holstered his revolvers (probably twirling them on his fingers first) and slowly unsheathed a twelve-inch Bowie knife from his belt.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/captaindavis2.bmp\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>That\'s not a knife.&nbsp; This is a knife.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The four men charged Davis together &ndash; a screaming pack of armed killers looking to disembowel him the old-fashioned way, avenge the deaths of their comrades, and plunder whatever money remained.&nbsp; Obviously they didn\'t understand that Davis wasn\'t about to back down, even when the odds were stacked ridiculously against him.&nbsp; Even when death was imminent, and had been imminent for the last couple of minutes.&nbsp; The South Carolina gunfighter quietly tightened his grip on the blade, got into an attack position, and hurled himself straight at the dude with the four-foot-long saber.</p>\r\n<p>The details of what happened next aren\'t very specific, so I will attempt to approximate my interpretation of it here with a series of pictures.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/captaindavis3.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/captaindavis8.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/captaindavis4.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/captaindavis9.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/captaindavis10.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/captaindavis5.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>All we know is that when the smoke and dust cleared on the remote canyon floor, Captain Davis was standing in the middle of a pile of four bloody, carved-to-fuck corpses.&nbsp; He didn\'t have a scratch on him.</p>\r\n<p>Davis went around, making sure that all eleven banditos had the good sense to stay dead (and knifing a couple of guys who were stupid enough to still be moving around), before taking off his shirt, cutting it apart, and using it as a tourniquet for the critically-wounded Dr. Sparks.&nbsp; A nearby group of miners, having witnessed the entire bloodbath, came running down to help.&nbsp; Davis instinctively commando-rolled over to the body of his friend McDonald and drew the dead man\'s still-loaded revolver, but once he noticed that the miners weren\'t dumbass enough to fuck with him he let his guard down.&nbsp; The miners searched the dead bodies, finding several hundred dollars in gold, cash, and jewelry.&nbsp; Davis took the loot, hoisted Dr. Sparks on his shoulder, and carried the man down the mountain to his home.&nbsp; Sparks ended up dying in his bed a few days later, and Davis donated the money to the dead man\'s family.</p>\r\n<p>When the miners came back to town and shared the story of what they\'d witnessed with the local media, the paper ran a story about Davis\' epic duel &ndash; how he took on eleven men at onced and iced all of them without mercy.&nbsp; A few doubters came out and said that Davis was full of shit; he responded by offering to lead them to the shallow graves where he\'d buried the outlaws.&nbsp; When the naysayers wisely decided not to fuck with a dude who killed eleven men in two minutes, Davis calmly walked off into the sunset, never to be heard from again.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/captaindavis6.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Links:</span><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.elfinspell.com/SparrowgrassPapersBallad.html\">The Redoubtable Achievements of Captain Davis</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.truewestmagazine.com/stories/the_gang_slayer/171/all/\">True West Magazine:&nbsp; The Gang Slayer</a></p>\r\n<p><br /><br /></p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Sources:</span><br /><br /><span> Cochran, Hamilton.&nbsp; <em>Noted American Duels and Hostile Encounters</em>.&nbsp; Chilton Books, 1963.<br /><br /> Kulczyk, David.&nbsp; <em>California Justice</em>.&nbsp; Word Dancer Press, 2007. </span></p>','2010-09-17','2374529078','captaindavis1.jpg','captaindavis10.jpg','Jonathan R. Davis','A lone gunslinger who took down an entire bandit gang by himself.','\"All the heroes of olden time\r\nWho have jingled alike in armor and rhyme,\r\nHercules, Hector, Quintus Curtius,\r\nPompey, and Pegasus-riding Perseus,\r\nBrave Bayard, and the brave Roland,\r\nMen who never a fight turned backs on;\r\nCharles the Swede, and the Spartan band,\r\nCoriolanus, and General Jackson,\r\nRichard the Third, and Marcus Brutus,\r\nAnd others, whose names won’t rhyme to suit us,\r\nMust certainly sink in the dim profound\r\nWhen Captain Davis’s story gets round.\" '),('Kim Yushin','595','July 1, 673','Gyeyang, Korea','Medieval Korean General','<p>The history of Asia is, generally speaking, the history of one dude coming into a land filled with tiny, pointless kingdoms, beating the shit out of everyone in sight, and unifying the country under a single ruler.&nbsp; It\'s filled with badass stories of head-crushing warrior-kings who ride into an age of chaos and lawlessness &ndash; brutal lands filled with unpronounceable kingdoms and more warlords than you can shake a scimitar at &ndash; and use their own force of will and powers of neck-cleaving to forge powerful, united empires so awesome it made everyone suddenly forget how annoying it was when you couldn\'t go three weeks without having to remember the name of some new king or prince or overlord or something.&nbsp; To that end, Korea\'s version of Qin Shi Huang or Toyotomi Hideyoshi was a larger-than-life military asswhipper named Kim Yushin &ndash; and his story is no less awesome than either of those afore-mentioned badasses.</p>\r\n<p>The most famous hero to come from Korea\'s Three Kingdoms period, Yushin was the Commander of the military forces of the Kingdom of Silla and the man responsible for unifying the Korea peninsula into one cohesive empire that would span a couple centuries.&nbsp; He\'s a guy who has grown legendary for his bravery and mastery of military strategy &ndash; and if you\'ve ever tried to play <em>Starcraft</em> on a Korean Battle.net server, you know that large-scale military strategy is something the Koreans take really fucking seriously.&nbsp; Yushin is also such a ridiculously popular and beloved hero in Korean history that over the last 1,500 years quite a few utterly over-the-top myths have arose regarding the crazy shit that he did during his life.&nbsp; We can only assume that most (if not all) of these legendary stories have some degree of truth to them, though history and folklore have firmly integrated themselves like an alien face-hugger of fictional awesomeness clinging to the gourd of an already-badass space marine to the point where it\'s often times difficult to decipher fact from fiction.&nbsp; We\'re pretty sure the dude didn\'t actually go into a super-scary cave and learn the secrets of military success by talking a Mountain God that could spontaneously morph itself into a prism of five different colors, and that he didn\'t honestly thwart an assassination attempt on his life after being warned at the last second by three hot nymph goddesses that materialized out of nowhere, but those are episodes included in the guy\'s official government-sanctioned biography nonetheless.&nbsp; Somewhat amusingly, Kim was a mega-pimpmaster when it came to using superstition and religion to make himself look awesome to his subjects, so these are quite possibly rumors that he himself invented to convince people to follow him.&nbsp; It worked.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/yushin1.gif\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>Korea at the beginning of the Three Kingdoms Period.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Yushin was born in 595 after an alleged twenty-month gestation period which, if true, would easily have made his poor mother a candidate for Badass of the Week in her own right.&nbsp; He was a member of the royal family in the southern Korean Kingdom of Kaya, though his funeral stele claims he was descended from the Yellow Emperor&ndash; a godlike mythical Chinese ruler who is credited with taming wild bears, crushing 80 barbarian tribes in a single battle by swinging a dog around like a baseball bat, and inventing cereal, herbal medicinal supplements, and the Chinese government.&nbsp; Yushin\'s father\'s Kingdom of Kaya was annexed by the Kingdom of Silla while Yushin was still young, and the royal youth entered into intense training in warfare, horsemanship, and martial arts with the greatest military masters in all of Korea.&nbsp; At 15 Kim joined the <em>hwarang</em>, a chivalrous group of holy Buddhist warriors known as \"The Shining Knights of the Silla Dynasty\" because of how awesome and shiny they were.&nbsp; The <em>hwarang</em> were expert soldiers, archers, and strategists who devoted their lives to Confucianist principles of chivalry, devotion, dedication, and cool-dudery, and all the people of Silla thought they were totally dreamy.&nbsp; Each member of the <em>hwarang</em> commanded a regiment-sized unit on the battlefield, was revered and respected by the populace, and they presumably made every effort to take advantage of the fact that the name of their organization could be used as an onomatopoeia for the sound it makes when you clang a huge-ass sword off of your enemies\' helmets with enough force to explode their brains.</p>\r\n<p>It didn\'t take long for Kim Yushin to stand out from his already-badass peers and prove himself as being one of the most seriously hardcore men to ever huck a broadsword.&nbsp; In an early battle, Kim\'s forces were facing off against the armies of the Kingdom of Koguryo and the Silla knights were seriously getting their faces worked over by an unstoppable wave of screaming Koguryo warrior-psychopaths.&nbsp; When the outcome of the battle was looking bleak, Yushin did what all good battlefield commanders would have done in his situation &ndash; he flipped the fuck out, galloped towards the enemy lines at a dead sprint, jumped his horse over some fortified battlements, trampled some soldiers, blitzed into the middle of the enemy camp, killed the Koguryo general\'s bodyguard, and personally decapitated the commander.&nbsp; Kim then grabbed the dude\'s now-disembodied head and raced back, evading spears and arrows along the way.&nbsp; When he returned to allied lines, Kim nonchalantly dropped the severed General\'s head at the feet of his army and made some hilarious offhand comment about the battlefield not being a good place to lose one\'s head.&nbsp; The Silla got pumped up like a quadruple shot of espresso had just been injected into their jugulars, crushed the leaderless Koguryo, and won the battle.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/yushin2.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>With stories like these (and there are <em>many</em> stories like these), it shouldn\'t be any surprise that by the age of 34 Kim Yushin was promoted to overall commander of Silla forces.&nbsp; Known as the \"Seven-Star General\" (thereby making him at least two to three stars better that any military commander the modern world has to offer) Kim was the dude responsible for realizing that it would be totally fucking awesome to unify the Korean Peninsula under one banner.&nbsp; For those of you who aren\'t incredibly fluent in ancient Korean history (or are for some reason utterly incapable of deciphering the fairly straightforward map I posted above), the land at this time was divided into three realms &ndash; the Kingdoms of Silla, Koguryo, and Paekche.&nbsp; Like any good conqueror, Kim knew that this was bullshit.&nbsp; Before charging headlong into a few hundred spear hedges, however, Kim got his diplomacy on, forged a very unsteady military alliance between Silla and the ultra-massive T\'ang Empire of China, and immediately started coordinating Korean land and Chinese naval operations against his enemies.</p>\r\n<p>The first Kingdom to taste Kim\'s pain was the land of Paekche.&nbsp; Despite fierce resistance, Kim plowed through his enemies like a killdozer of awesome moustaches, finally encircling and laying siege to the Paekche capital in 661.&nbsp; On the morning of the final battle for control of the realm, right as Kim Yushin and his fellow commanders were giving pump-up speeches to the men, this fucking psychotic water fowl all of a sudden came zooming in out of nowhere and started flying around some random General\'s head in a circle.&nbsp; One of the men came out and started screaming hysterically about how this was an omen of impending doom or some other such bullshittery, but Kim wasn\'t going to be one-upped by a creature with the brain the size of a goddamned wingnut.&nbsp; He instead got pissed off, drew his double-edged longsword, and sliced the bird in half with one swing.&nbsp; Everybody froze.&nbsp; Kim slowly looked around at his men and calmly said, \"a small grotesque bird cannot interfere with our great expedition against a bad king.\"</p>\r\n<p>In the ensuing battle the Paekche king and the Crown Prince were driven out of his castle, captured, and shipped off to China.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/yushin3.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>With Paekche subdued, it was time to move on to kicking some Koguryo ass.&nbsp; Kim wasn\'t part of the force that captured the Koguryo capital at Pyongyang (that was a massive Chinese invasion force from the North) but he did continue to prove his awesomeness to everyone at every possible turn &ndash; for instance, when he was leading his army through an impenetrable mountain range leading into the Koguryo lands, a bunch of his men started bitching about being cold and tired.&nbsp; This guy told them to shut their stupid faces, ripped his shirt off Hulkamania-style, and started sprinting through the snow without registering any kind of pain, thereby making everyone else look like total wussbags.&nbsp; They stopped complaining immediately. Koguryo\'s army was defeated, and the once-proud kingdom was carved up and divided between the Silla Kingdom and the T\'ang Empire.&nbsp; For his services kicking balls for the crown, Kim was made Prime Minister of Silla in 668.&nbsp; He put his skills to the test almost immediately, when he thwarted a revolt against the famous Queen Seondeok by setting a kite on fire and flying it up above his army.&nbsp; Ok, well, flying a fire-kite didn\'t win the war by itself, but it was so fucking awesome that it made his men pumped up enough to win the ensuing war.&nbsp; It sounds weird, but trust me, I\'m not making this shit up.</p>\r\n<p>Unfortunately, even after Korea was more-or-less united thanks to Kim Yushin\'s uncanny ability to crush all who opposed him with an endless barrage of siege tanks and/or Hydralisks, it still wasn\'t all good in the hood.&nbsp; T\'ang China had been at odds with Silla throughout the war, and now they were getting ready to fuck with them once again (just because that\'s the way the T\'ang rolled).&nbsp; No sooner had the war ended than the T\'ang Emperor came out and magnanimously offered to allow Silla to be a province of the T\'ang Empire, but when Kim Yushin told them to get bent like a pipe cleaner, the war was on with the realness.&nbsp; You\'d think the T\'ang would have known better than to mess with Kim &ndash; there\'s an old legend that Kim and his buddies were late to meet the T\'ang General in his camp one night, and in response to their perceived insolence the Chinese commander took the local Korean governor hostage and threatened to execute him.&nbsp; Despite being completely surrounded by Chinese warriors, Kim stood there, got super fucking pissed (as he typically did right before doing something over-the-top insane), and told the General that if one hair on the governor\'s head was damaged he was going to single-handedly slaughter the entire T\'ang army by himself.&nbsp; According to the tale, immediately after saying this, Kim\'s sword spontaneously flew out of its scabbard and landed in his hands Jedi telekinesis style.&nbsp; The T\'ang general understandably got a little freaked out and absolved the governor on the spot.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/yushin4.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Despite having some <em>a priori</em> knowledge that this was going to be a seriously bad idea.&nbsp; T\'ang invaded Korea, looking to crush Kim Yushin now that his overwhelming military successes had made him expendable.&nbsp; But Kim wasn\'t some dumbshit who was going to sit around letting himself get slaughtered by a kingdom that had a population that outnumbered his army about a hundred thousand to one &ndash; he went around to the leaders of the other two Korean kingdoms (you know, the guys he\'d spent the last decade crushing in battle) and convinced the entire peninsula to team up against the invading Chinese.&nbsp; It should probably be a testament to Yushin\'s awesomeness that the entirety of Korea decided to say fuck China go along with him &ndash; everyone teamed up, fought hard, and Korea won a number of crucial battles against the Chinese invasion.</p>\r\n<p>Kim Yushin didn\'t survive to see his final victory.&nbsp; He died an old man in 673, during the middle of this defensive war, and it wasn\'t until three years after that his sons led the army that threw the T\'ang Empire out of Korea once and for all&nbsp;. Nevertheless, his role as the great unifier and ultimate badass of the Korean army was cemented &ndash; the Kingdom of Silla would rule the peninsula for over two hundred years, and would serve as the political borders that still stand to this day.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/yushin5.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Links:</span><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Yushin\">Wikipedia</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Kim_Yushin\">New World Encyclopedia</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.fcceastudytours.org/PlacesVisited2009/general_kim_yushin_tomb.html\">General Kim\'s Tomb</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.hwarangdo.com/hwarang.htm#yusin\">Hwarang-do</a></p>\r\n<p><br /><br /></p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Sources:</span><br /><br /><span> Bennett, Matthew.&nbsp; <em>The Hutchinson Dictionary of Ancient &amp; Medieval Warfare.</em>&nbsp; Taylor &amp; Francis, 1998.<br /><br /> Breuker, Remco E.&nbsp; <em>Establishing a Pluralist Society in Medieval Korea.</em>&nbsp; BRILL, 2010.<br /><br /> Green, Thomas A.&nbsp; <em>Martial Arts of the World</em>.&nbsp; ABC-CLIO, 2001.<br /><br /> Harmon, R. Barry.&nbsp; <em>5,000 Years of Korean Martial Arts</em>.&nbsp; Dog Ear, 2008.<br /><br /> Sandler, Stanley.&nbsp; <em>Ground Warfare</em>.&nbsp; ABC-CLIO, 2002.<br /><br /> Seth, Michael J.&nbsp; <em>A Concise History of Korea</em>.&nbsp; Rowman &amp; Littlefield, 2006. </span></p>','2010-09-24','666559229159','yushin1.jpg','yushin1a.jpg','Kim Yushin','Hero of Korea\'s Three Kingdoms era.','\"The hostile countries are without morals.  They are like wolves and tigers, disturbing our frontiers, plundering, and hardly a year goes by in which we are left in peace.  I am but one insignificant subject, devoid of special talents or strength, but I am determined to put an end to this disorder.\"'),('Hans-Ulrich Rudel','July 2, 1916','December 18, 1982','Konradswaldau, Germany','WWII German Pilot','<p>I would hope that over the past six and a half years I have made it abundantly clear that I have no particular love for the Nazi regime of mid-20th century Germany.&nbsp; I mean, seriously.&nbsp; Very few people can argue that, especially at the higher ranks, these guys weren\'t a bunch of seriously evil bastards who possessed very little in the way of redeemable qualities, and they\'re basically not universally reviled by all people on the planet.&nbsp; It\'s a fact that makes them one of the greatest villains from history -- <em>nobody</em> likes these fuckers.&nbsp; Even the modern-day Germans hate them.&nbsp; Having said that, I\'ll also mention that despite all of the horrible bullshit associated with German ultranationalist Fascism, military historians generally also have to concede the fact that one country can\'t possibly fight a war against every civilized nation on Earth at the same time without producing a couple of stone-cold badasses in the process. So, in an effort to bring a little balance to the page (something I have to take into consideration when realizing that roughly a quarter of the people on my list are there because of their exploits killing Nazis), this week I bring to you the story of one of the most ridiculously tough human beings ever produced by our species &ndash; the notorious Hans-Ulrich Rudel.</p>\r\n<p>A product of Silesia, German, Rudel was an utterly unstoppable Stuka bomber pilot who received more medals for bravery than any other German soldier of World War II.&nbsp; This guy was so hardcore that even to this day he remains the most decorated combat pilot of any nation in the history of warfare. He was issued his country\'s highest award for military valor on five separate occasions, which is an utter mind-hump considering that he was serving in a war where successfully flying five combat missions in a row without exploding was pretty much considered a noteworthy achievement.&nbsp; His record of killing over five hundred enemy tanks in combat is a feat that will likely never be duplicated. This guy was some serious shit.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/rudel1.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Rudel is one of the incredibly-gifted, incredibly-lucky motherfuckers who somehow managed to survive the entirety of World War II &ndash; he was there during the German invasion of Poland in 1939, and he was there at the end in 1945 when the entire Reich came crashing down around his head.&nbsp; Not many people can make this claim, considering that the Fatherland lost a good 5 to 6 million people in the war, so it needs to be mentioned when discussing Rudel\'s survivability.</p>\r\n<p>During the invasion of Poland, Rudel worked as a forward observer, flying recon missions over enemy territory and sending back reports to help coordinate the Blitzkrieg.&nbsp; After correctly realizing that being on the front lines of a war is far less terrifying when you are sitting in the cockpit of an aircraft that actually comes equipped with some sort of weaponry, Rudel transferred to dive-bomber training in 1940, where he learned the ins and outs of the notorious Ju-87 Stuka Dive Bomber. Now, the Ju-87 wasn\'t exactly a glamorous aircraft. It was slow, ugly, hard to maneuver, and the landing gear was always in the \"down\" position, but it was also one of the deadliest pieces of machinery in the entire war.&nbsp; Equipped with a few hundred pounds of heavy ass-busting bombs and sporting two under-wing mounted 37mm anti-tank cannons, this thing was the predecessor of badass shit like the <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/warthog.html\">A-10 Warthog</a> that we all so know and love.&nbsp; At the controls of this thing, however, Rudel was a maestro of bomb-humping the fuck out of any piece of equipment larger than an outboard speedboat motor.&nbsp; Flying in the 1st Squadron of Dive Bomber Group 2, Rudel spent a solid five years of his life turning any and all vehicles with the Soviet Red Star on it into busted-to-shit, melted-down hunks of twisted steel and corpse-parts.&nbsp; It got to be to the point where you seriously couldn&rsquo;t ride your bike through the Ukraine without this psychotic dive-bomber air-mailing a bomb into your eye socket.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/rudel4.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Rudel\'s most balls-out accomplishment actually came pretty early in his reign of terror across the blood-streaked skies of Eastern Europe.&nbsp; On 23 September 1941, Rudel\'s squadron was tea-bagging the Soviet Baltic Fleet as they sat helpless in port near Leningrad, and Rudel decided, what the fuck, he was going to set his bomb sights on the huge-ass battleship <em>Marat</em>, which was currently in the process of hammering the German aircraft with a huge battery of anti-aircraft firepower.&nbsp; Rudel cranked the throttle, came in high, then lurched his plane into a ninety-degree dive, pointing the nose of his machine directly at the top of the <em>Marat</em>.&nbsp; Then, just at the last second, he cranked back on the stick, released the bombs, and flew out of there in front of a gigantic explosion &ndash; his bomb had gone right into the battleship\'s asshole and ignited the ammunition stores, causing a ridiculously-tremendor explosion that cracked the hull of the 600-foot-long warship in half and sending her to the bottom of the Baltic Sea.</p>\r\n<p>That\'s right, folks &ndash; Hans-Ulrich Rudel killed a battleship with a two-man aircraft, and he only needed one shot to do it.</p>\r\n<p>Rudel flew 500 missions on the Eastern Front between 1940 and 1942, which is god damned impressive, especially when you consider that U.S. bomber pilots were usually allowed to go home after completing 25 missions without dying (an incredibly rare achievement in its own right).&nbsp; The German hurricane of bombicide was awarded the Knight\'s Cross a couple times (including once when he was given the award by The Red Baron\'s cousin), and returned home with enough awards and honors to snap a camel in half.&nbsp; He was made an instructor at a German flight school, and asked to train new recruits in how to be awesome at flying Stukas, but Rudel got bored of that shit pretty quickly and requested to return to the battlefield.&nbsp; He was made squadron commander, flew 500 more missions between 1942 and \'43, killed twelve T-34 tanks in one day during the Battle of Kursk, and made such a name for himself as a destroyer of Russian shit that Stalin himself put a huge bounty out on Rudel\'s head.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/rudel3.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The closest Uncle Joe ever came to collecting on that bounty was during a clusterfuck operation that came shortly after Rudel became the first German pilot to fly 1,500 combat missions.&nbsp; On one fateful day, Rudel was leading a team of dive bombers on a run to bust up some more Russian armor, when all of a sudden one of his wingmen was shot down by a pair of douchey Soviet fighters.&nbsp; Rudel managed to chase off the enemy planes (which is impressive in and of itself considering that he was piloting a Stuka against fighter aircraft) and then landed to check on the downed crewmen.&nbsp; This was a pretty routine things for him (it was the seventh time he\'d set down behind enemy lines to save his friends from whatever horrible shit the Russians did to captured German pilots), but this time there was a little bit of a hitch &ndash; the ground was too wet to take off, and now Rudel and his buddies were stranded 30 miles behind enemy lines with not weapons or support.</p>\r\n<p>Not that this stopped Rudel from continuing to be completely balls-out or anything.&nbsp; He led his team on a desperate run through freezing-cold temperatures, evaded enemy patrols, and covered the thirty miles to safety in a twenty-four hour sprint-fest.&nbsp; Rudel finalized his escape by jumping in the damned Dnieper River and swimming 600 yards through ice-cold water to safety, though the escape was so intense that of the four downed pilots he was the only member to return to base alive.&nbsp; It\'s just a testament to the fact that you couldn\'t kill the guy.&nbsp; Shit, a few dozen missions after that, Rudel got his fucking leg blown off by anti-aircraft fire, but this unstoppable killing machine just got a prosthetic leg attached, kept flying combat missions, and used his one good leg to kick the shit out of another 13 enemy tanks.&nbsp; So think about that the next time some hilarious joker declares that something is like \"a one-legged man in an asskicking competition.\"</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/rudel6.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>This is the first thing that comes up when you Google<br />\"one legged man in an asskicking competition\".</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>All in all, Hans-Ulrich Rudel flew 2,500 combat missions -- more than any pilot ever, for any country, in any period of time.&nbsp; His stats speak for themselves &ndash; 11 airplanes, 519 tanks, 4 trains, 70 landing craft, two cruisers, a destroyer, a battleship, and over 1,000 enemy trucks and transport vehicles met their ends at his hands.&nbsp; He received the Knight\'s Cross (Germany\'s answer to the Victoria Cross or the Medal of Honor) five times &ndash; they seriously had to invent shit to add to his Knight\'s Cross, because there wasn\'t anything in the book for what you give a guy who already has the Cross with oak leaves, swords, diamonds, bells, whistles, etc.</p>\r\n<p>After Germany somehow managed to lose the war despite Rudel destroying enough war material to comfortably outfit the militaries of a number of smaller countries, Rudel flew his squadron to American lines and surrendered to the U.S. He was hospitalized for a year with a vast array of horrible shit wrong with him (this is what happens when you fight a war non-stop for six years), and then moved to Argentina where he hung out with Fascists and wrote a bunch of totally crazy shit about how he would have fought the entire war again if he\'d had the chance.&nbsp; I came across a few references mentioning that his input was used by American engineers while they were designing the A-10 Warthog, though I wasn\'t able to back this up with any reliable source material, so take that for whatever its worth.&nbsp; If nothing else, you can be damn sure that his successes killing tanks with aircraft played a major part in the decision to develop the famous American ground attack aircraft.</p>\r\n<p>Rudel died in 1982, and is understandably still pretty despised by everyone in Russia.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/rudel2.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Links:</span><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans-Ulrich_Rudel\">Wikipedia</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.achtungpanzer.com/gen9.htm\">Achtung Panzer</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.ww2aircraft.net/forum/stories/hans-ulrich-rudel-tank-destroyer-349.html\">WW2aircraft.net</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=3E7A3A6192E19A33\">YouTube</a></p>\r\n<p><br /><br /></p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Sources:</span><br /><br /><span> Kurowski, Franz.&nbsp; <em>Luftwaffe Aces</em>.&nbsp; Stackpole, 2004.<br /><br /> Rudel, Hans-Ulrich.&nbsp; <em>Stuka Pilot</em>.&nbsp; Ballantine, 1958.<br /><br /> Weal, John.&nbsp; <em>Ju 87 Stukageschwader of the Russian Front</em>.&nbsp; Osprey, 2008.<br /><br /> Williamson, Gordon.&nbsp; <em>Knight\'s Cross with Diamonds Recipients</em>.&nbsp; Osprey, 2006. </span></p>','2010-10-01','116680329270','rudel.jpg','rudel1.jpg','Hans-Ulrich Rudel','The most decorated combat pilot ever.','\"Lost are only those who abandon themselves.\"'),('William McBryar','February 14, 1861','March 8, 1941','Elizabethtown, NC, USA','19th-century American Soldier','<p>Part of the reason I was such an obnoxiously-lazy slacker about updating the site in the past few weeks is because my party animal Dad was in town living in my one-bedroom apartment with me for roughly two weeks, and in a blurry fortnight of shutting down bars, pounding Bloody Marys at 7am, and debating the finer points of <em><a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/kirk.html\">Star Trek</a> </em>canon we also watched so many badass 1950s and 60s Old West cowboy movies I&rsquo;m fairly confident that through the powers of Badass Osmosis (<em>Badassmosis</em>) I&rsquo;ve gained the ability to Johnny Ringo a pair of six-shooters around on my fingertips while riding a horse backwards up a flight of stairs and then take on a saloon full of Kansas Redlegs even though I&rsquo;ve got a fifth of Jack coursing through my veins.&nbsp; Watching the new <em>Magnificent Seven </em>movie at a cool-as-hell movie theater that sells booze last night did nothing to dissuade me of this notion.</p>\r\n<p>So, to that end, here&rsquo;s the story of one of the most hardcore heroes of the Wild West &ndash; a steel-jawed Buffalo Soldier who served twenty years in the United States Army, taking on all enemies from Arizona to the Philippines with a Winchester .44-40, a Colt Peacemaker, an awesome wide-brimmed hat, and a fully-operational weapons-grade mustache.&nbsp; This is the story of Lieutenant William McBryar &ndash; Wild West gunslinger, Indian-fighting cavalryman, Medal of Honor recipient, and one of the first commissioned officers in the history of the United States Army.&nbsp; The real-life version of what you&rsquo;d get if you combined Sergeant Apone with Django Unchained, scored his life with &ldquo;<a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gtXSVGp7Lo\">God&rsquo;s Gonna Cut You Down</a>&rdquo; by Johnny Cash and cast him into a <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/wayne.html\">John Wayne</a> movie.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/939522632442/mcbryar1.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> <em>Before I get seriously going here, I should call out up front that<br /> &nbsp;Denzel&rsquo;s character in the new Magnificent Seven movie isn&rsquo;t based on McBryar &ndash;<br /> &nbsp;he&rsquo;s actually (fairly loosely) based on real-life U.S. Marshal <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/bassreeves.html\">Bass Reeves</a>&hellip; <br /> although in the original version of the movie &ndash; the one titled The Seven Samurai &ndash; <br /> it&rsquo;s a totally different character portrayed by <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/mifune.html\">Toshiro Mifune</a>, <br /> making this a bizarre confluence of paraphernalia from across the <br /> badass space-time continuum. </em>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>William McBryar was born in Elizabethtown, North Carolina, on February 14, 1861 &ndash; two months before the Confederate Army shelled Fort Sumter, kicking off the American Civil War.&nbsp; He was a just an infant during the war, growing up his formative years in the difficult, explosive world of the Reconstruction South.&nbsp; He attended college in Tennessee, was an excellent student, and spoke fluent Spanish and Latin, but still had trouble finding steady work in his hometown.&nbsp; By 1887 he was living in New York City, and it was around this time that the 25 year-old figured it was time to try for a new life out west.&nbsp; He enlisted in the United States Army, requesting to be sent to the frontier.&nbsp; They shipped him out to Arizona to join the 10<sup>th</sup> United States Cavalry&ndash; one of the original Buffalo Soldier regiments.</p>\r\n<p>I&rsquo;ve talked about Buffalo Soldiers before on this site, but the men who made up the 9<sup>th</sup> and 10<sup>th</sup> Cavalry (and the 24<sup>th</sup> and 25<sup>th</sup> Infantry) were some of the toughest, most experienced, most seasoned Indian fighters in the United States Military.&nbsp; These four regiments were comprised entirely of black soldiers with white officers, and (possibly because of this) were typically given some of the most dangerous postings in the West.&nbsp; When Trooper McBryar reported for duty, the Tenth Cav had just finished participating in an epic multi-state adventure to hunt down badass Apache leader <a href=\"/index.cgi?id=723642411240\">Geronimo</a>, where they&rsquo;d braved the harshness of the wilderness and gone toe-to-toe with some of the fiercest horsemen and warriors in the history of North America.&nbsp; Seriously, check out Apache history some time if you get a chance &ndash; this is a group of unmatched horsemen and fighters.&nbsp; A couple cavalrymen from this time reported that some Apache warriors could hang off the side of their horse mid-gallop (without a saddle!) and fire a dang bow and arrow <em>from underneath the dang horse while it was charging</em>.&nbsp; That&rsquo;s some Lars Anderson shiz right there.</p>\r\n<p>This was an elite regiment of battle-hardened soldiers, and Trooper McBryar was about to make a name for himself as one of the most celebrated and ferocious men to ever serve in the unit.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/939522632442/mcbryar2.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>McBryar&rsquo;s first expedition was a mission to hunt down the Apache Kid, a former Apache Scout who was now on the run from the U.S. government after he killed a couple cavalrymen in a gunfight that (we now know) he didn&rsquo;t even start.&nbsp; Still, the Apache Kid was dangerous, deadly, and traveling with a group of men that were not to be screwed around with.&nbsp; McBryar was in K Troop of the Tenth, and while his unit wasn&rsquo;t the one that brought the Apache Kid in, McBryar spent the next several months riding&nbsp; with mountain patrols into the rocky Arizona wilderness, never knowing what kind of trouble he was going to run in to.&nbsp; He got into gunfights with Apaches and outlaws, tracked down cattle thieves, settled local disputes, and hunted down pretty much anyone else in the lawless wilds of the West that needed to be arrested &ndash; all the while braving everything from cougar attacks to dehydration and sunstroke in the sweltering, oppressive Arizona heat.&nbsp; He put 400 miles under his horse&rsquo;s hooves, caught his fair share of outlaws, and suffered a serious injury when a horse fell on him once (I have no idea how this happened and no further details about this injury, and I have so far been unable to mentally picture this happening in a non-hilarious fashion).&nbsp; Throughout his four years in Arizona, he received the score of &ldquo;Excellent&rdquo; on all of his ratings, and was promoted up to Sergeant.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/939522632442/mcbryar3.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The action that earned McBryar his Medal of Honor took place in March of 1890, when word came in to Fort Thomas that a band of five Apache had ambushed and killed a Mormon traveler and robbed his wagon.&nbsp; When K Troop&rsquo;s commander heard someone was screwing with the Mormons again he hopped up in the middle of his dinner, grabbed his gun belt, told McBryar to assemble eight other guys, and the ten-man squad of hard-riding soldiers galloped off to bring these outlaws to justice.</p>\r\n<p>Riding hard through the Arizona wilderness, K Troop covered 290 miles in just five days.&nbsp; Tracking the outlaws through steep canyons and across rivers, the men of K Troop finally caught up to the Apache in a rocky, narrow canyon along the Gila River Valley.&nbsp; Taking accurate sniper fire from Winchester rifles, the cavalrymen ducked for whatever cover they could find and immediately tried to return fire.&nbsp; Barking orders like a badass Sergeant should, McBryar arranged his men to turn back the excellently-planned ambush, and the Apache were steadily driven back, taking cover in a cave along the steep rocky cliffs.&nbsp; Moving through a hail of gunfire from both directions, the tough-as-nails Sergeant moved forward, ducking from rock to rock and firing back with his rifle as he approached the entrance of the cave.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/939522632442/mcbryar4.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>When McBryar got near the cave, he could see that there was no easy way to take the position without losing a lot of men.&nbsp; The Apache had an excellent defensive position&hellip; possibly one they&rsquo;d already reinforced.&nbsp; Charging in was suicide.&nbsp; However, at the same time, the Apache were still putting out accurate rifle fire on the rest of K Troop, who were strung out along the ravine in dangerously exposed positions.</p>\r\n<p>So McBryar did one of the most badass cowboy things I&rsquo;ve ever heard of.&nbsp; He didn&rsquo;t charge in there like an idiot &ndash; he decided he was going to Math the pants off of these guys.</p>\r\n<p>He took a good position, drew out his Winchester, and aimed it at the roof of the cave, just inside the entrance.&nbsp; When the large .44-40 caliber round left his rifle, it struck a rock at just the right angle that it sent a white-hot, razor-sharp shower of rock and bullet fragments ricocheting straight into the enemy firing position.</p>\r\n<p>He continued to do this, hitting the same spot over and over, until finally the Apache threw their weapons down.</p>\r\n<p>In the battle, the five outlaws suffered two dead and one wounded.&nbsp; &nbsp;K Troop didn&rsquo;t suffer a single injury.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/939522632442/mcbryar5.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The commander of the Tenth Cavalry was General Benjamin Grierson, a hardened United States cavalryman who led the famous cavalry raid that was instrumental in the Union capture of Vicksburg during the Civil War.&nbsp; When Grierson heard the story of how this battle was won, he described it as &ldquo;one of the most brilliant affairs of its kind that has occurred in recent years&hellip; an excellent example of what promptness and indefatigable exertion may accomplish in the face of almost insurmountable obstacles.&rdquo;</p>\r\n<p>Sergeant William McBryar became the first man in the Tenth United States Cavalry to ever receive the Medal of Honor.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/939522632442/mcbryar6.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> <em>The 25<sup>th</sup> Infantry in Montana, c. 1890</em></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Amazingly, McBryar was just getting started with his career.&nbsp; After four years in the blistering Arizona heat he was transferred to Fort Custer Montana, where he got off the train in the middle of a sub-zero blizzard.&nbsp; Transferred to the 25<sup>th</sup> Infantry Regiment (another unit of Buffalo Soldiers), McBryar was promoted to Quartermaster Sergeant, helped keep order during some old west railroad strikes, and eventually shipped off for Cuba to fight in the Spanish-American War.</p>\r\n<p>McBryar survived a life-threatening bout with malaria, but not even a mass-murdering tropical disease was going to keep this warrior from fighting on the front lines alongside his men in an epic struggle against the enemy, and he rallied in time to command his men at the Battle of El Caney.&nbsp; While <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/roosevelt.html\">Teddy Roosevelt</a> other buffalo soldiers like <a href=\"/index.cgi?id=16047969242\">Edward L. Baker</a> were fighting for San Juan Hill, McBryar and the 25<sup>th</sup> Infantry were ordered to take a well-defended fort positioned along the key Spanish outpost at Guantanamo Bay.&nbsp; Many of the 25<sup>th</sup> officers were sick, so McBryar was given command of H Company&rsquo;s Second Platoon and ordered to assault a fortified Spanish block house, where a large number of the enemy had dug in at the top of an imposing hill.&nbsp; Well, sure boss, no problem.&nbsp; McBryar led his men up to within 500 yards, hit the deck, and opened up on the enemy.&nbsp; Once he had them pinned down from the front, he then led a smaller group around the blockhouse&rsquo;s flank, driving them up to within 50 yards (!) of the Spaniards and opening fire once again.</p>\r\n<p>They waved the white flag as soon as they saw they&rsquo;d been outmaneuvered.&nbsp; McBryar&rsquo;s position was taking so much crossfire from other Spanish controlled blockhouses that he had to ask another company to move up and accept the surrender while he repositioned his men to return fire.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/939522632442/mcbryar7.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> <em>Guantanamo, as you probably know, is still a United States military facility to this day.</em></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>For his service and heroism in over ten years of service to the United States Military, Sergeant William McBryar was promoted to Lieutenant of the newly-formed Eighth Volunteer Infantry.&nbsp; He was one of the first black officers in the U.S. Volunteers, which was a huge deal in the 1890s &ndash; a time when Jim Crow laws were segregating everything from schools to drinking fountains (&ldquo;separate but equal&rdquo;) and juryrigging the polls in such a way that some states managed to disenfranchise nearly 90% of their black population from being able to vote.&nbsp; When McBryar was inducted into the Fort Leavenworth Hall of Fame in 2009, Command Sergeant Major Philip Johndrow is quoted as saying, \"The day an African American puts on the same uniform as everybody else, they know that they have joined the most democratic institution in our nation, where they will rise or fall based on their own merit&hellip; all of this was made possible by the persistence and sacrifice of Soldiers like Sergeant Major McBryar.\"</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/939522632442/mcbryar8.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The Eighth Volunteers were mustered out in 1899, and McBryar re-joined the 25<sup>th</sup> Infantry, enlisting as a Private again.&nbsp; Naturally, this didn&rsquo;t last, and when he shipped off for the Philippines he was already a Battalion Sergeant Major.&nbsp; He spent a few years patrolling the harsh, ambush-heavy, unforgiving jungles of Manila Bay during the Philippines War before returning stateside and spending a few years at Fort Leavenworth.&nbsp; He was medically discharged at age 44 with Rheumatism, a 20 year veteran of the Army.&nbsp; He tried to re-enlist to fight in World War One, but at age 51 the Army decided he was too old to fight.&nbsp; Honestly, I bet this dude was one of those Eastwood types who only got more terrifying and badass with age.</p>\r\n<p>Lieutenant William McBryar got married, worked as a watchman at Arlington National Cemetary, taught a course at St. Paul&rsquo;s College in Virginia, and passed away of illness in March 1941 at the age of 80.&nbsp; He&rsquo;d been born two months before the Civil War, passed away nine months before World War II, and done his country proud in every military engagement that took place inbetween.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/939522632442/mcbryar9.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><a href=\"http://www.patreon.com/badassoftheweek\" target=\"_blank\"><img src=\"/images/939522632442/mcbryar-patreon.png\" alt=\"\" /></a></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Links:</p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.cmohs.org/recipient-detail/1770/mcbryar-william.php\">Congressional Medal of Honor Society</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/williamm.htm\">Arlington National Cemetery</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"https://www.army.mil/article/21394/NCOs_inducted_into_Fort_Leavenworth_Hall_of_Fame\">NCOs Inducted to Fort Leavenworth Hall of Fame</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_McBryar\">Wikipedia</a></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Books:</p>\r\n<p>Hanna, Charles W.&nbsp; <em>African American Recipients of the Medal of Honor</em>.&nbsp; Jefferson, NC: McFarland &amp; Co., 2002.</p>\r\n<p>Leckie, William H. and Shirley A. Leckey.&nbsp; <em>The Buffalo Soldiers</em>.&nbsp; Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003.</p>\r\n<p>Schubert, Frank N.&nbsp; <em>Black Valor</em>.&nbsp; Lanham, MD: Rowman &amp; Littlefield, 2009.</p>','2016-09-30','939522632442','mcbryar.jpg','mcbryar-small.jpg','William McBryar','Buffalo soldier and twenty-year U.S. Army veteran, he received a Medal of Honor fighting the Apache and was one of the first black officers in the history of the U.S. military.',''),('Lachhiman Gurung','December 30, 1917','December 12, 2010','Dakhani, Nepal','WWII Nepalese Gurkha','<p>There are plenty of seriously hardcore warrior associations out there, but as far as I\'m concerned it doesn\'t get a whole lot better than the Gurkhas.&nbsp; From as early as the 19th century, these sack-tearing hardasses from rural Nepal have been like Britain\'s personal detachment of borderline-sociopathic serial killers.&nbsp; They\'re so disarming it\'s unnerving &ndash; they\'ve got big, easy smiles, they\'re quiet, incredibly polite, respectful, and never really bother anybody.&nbsp; They just want to chill out and drink some beers.&nbsp; While none of this really screams badass through a truck-mounted megahorn, it\'s the deadliest, most insane motherfuckers who don\'t need to get all up in your face and talk a bunch of shit about how awesome they are. These are guys who know they can turn you from a rampaging dumbass to an eviscerated carcass in about two seconds if they want to, and they\'re confident enough in their abilities that they don\'t need to go all macho-man about it just because they\'re secretly worried that other people think they have small dicks or something. Despite the cool, calculated exterior, though, when it comes time to flip out, the Gurkhas are some motherfuckers who seriously FLIP THE FUCK OUT:</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/gurung1.bmp\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>Every couple of years, the Gurkhas fighting in Afghanistan<br />get in trouble because they\'re always beheading the corpses of Taliban fighters.<br />That\'s not even a joke.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>On the night of 12 May 1945, Lachhiman Gurung of the 8th Gurkha Rifles was part of a small forward platoon dug into trenches defending a position in Burma, when all of a sudden his tiny unit came under a massive attack from a couple hundred Japanese soldiers looking to punch through these defenses and then punch a few holes into his torso so that they could tear out his large intestines and strangle him to death with them.&nbsp; The idea of this was not very appealing to Lachhiman.</p>\r\n<p>The marauding Japanese first decided to soften up the Gurkha positions by chucking three full dickloads of hand grenades and various explosive materials into the Allied trenches and then face-shooting the bejeezus out of anyone who tried to dive out of the trench or otherwise escape their imminent fragmentation-related demises.&nbsp; Gurung summarily developed an ingenious third option &ndash; one which didn\'t blow him up and didn\'t result in exposing himself to an enfilade of enemy fire &ndash; he just snatched the fucking live grenades up from the floor of the trench and chucked them back at the Japanese.&nbsp; His tactic of hurling insults and incendiaries at the enemy whenever the opportunity presented itself worked out well for a while, and he sent two flying explosive middle-fingers back at his assailants, but the third time proved to not be the charm for Lachhiman &ndash; his timing was a little off and the grenade ended up detonating in his hand.&nbsp; In the military, this is what they refer to as, \"bad\".</p>\r\n<p>The frag blew off a couple fingers, destroyed his right arm, and nearly took off half his face.&nbsp; He was left bleeding, partially blinded, crippled, and seriously fucked up in general, but despite having half of his body blown into something vaguely like Two-Face from Batman, Lachhiman Gurung was sure as fuck not going to stop resisting this onslaught as long as he was capable of sustaining basic life functions.&nbsp; Half-dead, bloody, and badly wounded, Gurung drew his kukri knife &ndash; the ultimate symbol of Gurkha badassitude &ndash; jammed it point-first into the ground before him, and defiantly yelled into the darkness, \"No one will pass here today!\"</p>\r\n<p>Then he grabbed his rifle, chambered a round, and shouted, \"Now come and fight a Gurkha!\"</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/gurung2.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>There are very few occasions in which drawing a line in the sand is not badass.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>With every other man dead or dying around him, Lachhiman Gurung never stopped shooting every Japanese person he could see.&nbsp; This dude, by himself, loaded, cocked, and fired his fucking bolt-action rifle for four hours of non-stop combat, fighting off wave after wave of attackers like a wounded wolverine tearing his own leg off with bullets.&nbsp; His tactic for success was to lie down in the trench, not get shot, wait until he could hear the enemy soldiers nearly right on top of him, and then pop up like a murderous, rifle-toting whack-a-mole and smoke some dude in half at point-blank range with his left hand.&nbsp; Then he\'d reposition the rifle, chamber a new round (lefty), shift it back, and blast another guy apart.&nbsp; How the fuck he managed to hold off 200 gun-toting, battle-hardened Japanese soldiers using this technique is completely beyond me, but the authors of the Victoria Cross citations aren\'t usually in the habit of making shit up off the tops of their heads.</p>\r\n<p>By the time the smoke cleared the next morning, Gurung had been fighting for over four hours straight.&nbsp; 31 Japanese soldiers lay dead in the field before him.&nbsp; He\'d single-handedly kicked all their asses, and I of course mean single-handedly in every possible meaning of the word.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/gurung3.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>A Lee-Enfield SMLE Mk III bolt-action rifle similar to the ones carried by 8 Gurkha.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Gurung obviously had to be hospitalized, mostly for for extreme blood-hysteria and obscenely high levels of deathtosterone, but also because half his arm had been blown off by a grenade and explosive shrapnel had blinded him in the right eye.&nbsp; He never regained use of his right arm, but this guy ripped so many balls with his off-hand that they let him stay in the service and finish out the war with his unit.&nbsp; He refused to be sent home anyways, and if there\'s one thing about Lachhiman Gurung, it\'s that you can\'t fucking make this guy move anywhere he doesn\'t want to go, so his superiors were just like, \"forget it dude, whatever you want is bitchin\' with us.\"</p>\r\n<p>After the war, Gurung moved back home to Nepal for a while, but then eventually emigrated to Britain.&nbsp; Even into his significantly more decrepit years, this guy continued staying true to his people and never forgot his roots &ndash; in 2008 when Gurkha soldiers were told they weren\'t allowed to live in Britain because they had \"failed to demonstrate strong ties to Britain\", the 91 year-old Gurung hauled ass out to the High Court out there decked out in about a million medals and told the judicial system to take their bullshit law, crumple up the paper it was printed on, and jam it up their own urethras.&nbsp; Everyone was so impressed that they ended up repealing the stupid law. Damn straight.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/gurung5.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Links:</span><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lachhiman_Gurung\">Wikipedia</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/modest-gurkhas-relive-heroic-deeds-done-on-behalf-of-britain-950801.html\">The Independent</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/5256952/Hero-Gurkha-fights-for-granddaughter-carer-to-be-allowed-to-stay.html\">The Telegraph</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article679801.ece\">The Times</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.victoriacross.co.uk/descrip_l.html\">Victoria Cross Citation</a></p>','2010-10-15','183349929891','gurung.jpg','gurung1.jpg','Lachhiman Gurung','Gurkha soldier who held off 200 Japanese with just one arm.','\"I had to fight because there was no other way.  I felt I was going to die anyway, so I might as well die standing on my feet.  All I knew was that I had to go on and hold them back.  I am glad that helped the other soldiers in my platoon, but they would have all done the same thing.\"'),('Su Kong T\'ai Djin','1849','1928','Fukien, China','19th-century Chinese Athlete','<p>I\'ll begin this mysterious tale by simply relaying the events of T\'ai Djin\'s utterly-nuts life as I have heard them from a variety of questionably-legitimate sources.&nbsp; The way it has been written in the lore of the Shaolin-Do Kung Fu temples, passed down from generation to generation among the practitioners of this deadly martial art, spoken in hushed voices between old masters and curious students alike.&nbsp; Only after I have done my due diligence in reporting the story shall I make any attempt to discuss the veracity of these claims, so for those of you who are already furiously opening up browser tabs so that you can unleash your boundless rage by loudly punching out the phrase \"LOL YA RITE KUN FU WEREWOLF WTF DIAF LOOSER\" into the subject line of an email, please wait until the ride has come to a complete stop before lifting up on the lap bar. Here we go.</p>\r\n<p>The boy who would be named T\'ai Djin was born in the Chinese town of Fukien in 1849.&nbsp; His parents &ndash; poor, uneducated farmers that they were &ndash; were understandably somewhat concerned when their newly-born boy came out of the womb and was completely Fukien covered in hair from head to toe.&nbsp; Their immediate thought was that this crazy-ultra-body-beard Cousin It motherfucker they were looking at was in fact not a child, but some kind of demonic evil spirit, perhaps dispatched to the mortal realm to devour humans and steal their hair to add to his already-impressive collection of follicles.&nbsp; It turns out he was actually just afflicted with a rather extreme case of the rare genetic disease known as <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertrichosis\">Hypertrichosis</a>, which is also known by the largely more-pronounceable and infinitely more-badass moniker \"Werewolf Syndrome\", but this was something that was slightly beyond his parents\' grasp.&nbsp; Hypertrichosis wasn\'t exactly a commonly-diagnosed illness in rural China in the late 1840s, so even though it was technically their fault for passing along some moderately-mutated genetic material, T\'ai Djin\'s parents still decided that instead of getting the kid some topical ointment they\'d instead just abandon their little demon-baby in the woods so that he could die of exposure and put everyone else in the world out of his misery.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/taidjin1.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>Petrus Gonzales - a true historical example of Hypertrichosis.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>If world mythology has taught us anything, however, it\'s that abandoning your kid in the wild is pretty much the number one way to turn them into a huge raging badass.&nbsp; Not long after the dump-and-run heroism of his parents, the boy was discovered by a wandering group of, would you believe it, wandering Shaolin monks.&nbsp; The monks, correctly observing that this small infant was a human child and not the physical incarnation of evil manifest into flesh, took the kid back to the Fukien Shaolin Temple to teach him some Fukien Kung Fu his ass off.</p>\r\n<p>The monks are the ones who gave T\'ai Djin his name, and they were unable to get him adopted to a nice local family on account of his mutant hair growth factor, so instead they decided to train him to become the most ultimate killing machine that ever lived.&nbsp; T\'ai Djin, for his part, didn\'t have a whole lot of incentive to leave the comfort and acceptance of the Temple and his Shaolin brothers to go out and be ridiculed and ostracized by the local population, so this guy instead just spent his life learning how to smash boards with his head and withstand people cracking him in the balls with steel rods all day long without even flinching or changing his expression to anything other than boredom.&nbsp; He learned 200 empty hand Kung Fu styles and became a master of 140 weapons (though why the hell a bunch of Buddhist monks had 140 weapons laying around their home is a little beyond my comprehension), effectively meaning that he was capable of instantaneously killing a man with anything and everything he had available to him at any time ever.&nbsp; T\'ai Djin became the Wikipedia of martial arts, absorbing the knowledge of all ten Temple masters and assimilating it into one furious tornado of hairy carnage that makes the WB\'s Tazmanian Devil look about as menacing as a tumbleweed blowing through the middle of the Gunfight at the OK Corral.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/taidjin2.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Eventually the Shaolin masters decided to appoint \"The Hairy Master\" the first Grand Master of the Fukien Shaolin Temple, where he assumed leadership of the combat arm of the monastery and was tasked with training initiates in the art of pummeling people\'s brains into a gray-brown slurry of misery.&nbsp; They were all truly impressed with his radness.</p>\r\n<p>As you can probably imagine, crazy tales of badassitude tend to be associated with things Werewolf Kung Fu Grandmasters, and T\'ai Djin was no exception.&nbsp; One story claims that he walked into a convention of Shaolin Masters so that they could all check out how awesome he was, but as soon as this dude entered the room he flipped the fuck out, pulled a knife from his belt, and threw it straight up into heaven with enough force to puncture God.&nbsp; Everyone was sitting around like, \"WTF dude\", when all of a sudden this fucking Japanese ninja assassin fell down from the rafters with a knife wedged directly through the frontal lobe of his brain.&nbsp; T\'ai Djin claimed that he heard 13 people breathing when he entered the room, but could only see 12 men, so he echo-located the ninja and eliminated him immediately.</p>\r\n<p>Another story claims that he was the master of the Dim Mak, or the \"Werewolf Death Touch\", which is a seriously real thing, except that I added the word \"Werewolf\" to make it sound even more badass.&nbsp; Basically, this shit is where you\'re supposed to run up to some fucking chump and go totally Jean-Claude Van Damme from <em>Bloodsport</em> on him, simultaneously exploding every organ in the dude\'s torso by just smashing him with a couple of fingers:</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/taidjin3.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Now imagine those eyes peering out at you from behind the most utterly out-of-control beard in this history of beardage and you\'re starting to get the idea.&nbsp; Some stories claim that when this guy would get bored of beating the shit out of Shaolin monks all day he would run out into the woods and wrestle bears to death just for the hell of it.&nbsp; He also led the Shaolin warrior monks on missions to help protect the populace of Southern China from, no kidding, coastal raids by Japanese pirates.&nbsp; To be perfectly honest with you, I hope to crap that this story is true, because nothing in the world makes me happier than imagining a Werewolf Shaolin Kung Fu Monk taking on a ship full of Japanese Ninja Pirates.&nbsp; Seriously.</p>\r\n<p>T\'ai Djin is also credited with burning down the Shaolin Temple, though apparently he did it in a good way.&nbsp; I guess the Emperor of China was getting all pissed off about how awesome the monks were, so he sent a huge-ass army to trash the place and murder everyone inside.&nbsp; T\'ai Djin found out about this, and, knowing that defending the temple was strategically impossible, he just had his people remove everything valuable and torch the place to the ground.&nbsp; A last stand would have been nice, sure, but there\'s also something kind of cool about this guy becoming the first Grandmaster of the Temple and then torching the entire place into ashes before he could abdicate to a successor.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/taidjin4.png\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>Legend has it that T\'ai Djin left a note for the Emperor\'s men.&nbsp; It read:<br />LOL LOOSERS YOU MARCHED ALL THIS WAY 4 NUTHIN NOW DIAF PLZ</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Things weren\'t really the same without the temple, though, and eventually T\'ai Djin died in 1928 at the age of 79. This in itself is pretty damn impressive though, considering that Hypertrichosis is usually a terminal illness.&nbsp; According to the legend, he passed down his entire wealth of knowledge to a young disciple before dying so that his legacy of awesomeness would go on.</p>\r\n<p>Now for the bad news &ndash; there\'s really not a ton of info out there that lends any credibility to this admittedly-awesome story.&nbsp; The only real sources I was able to track down on him were from websites supporting the martial art he was purported to study &ndash; a school that as far as I can tell was founded by an Indonesian guy in Kentucky in the 1960s (who, to his credit, claims to have learned his skills from T\'ai Djin\'s prized pupil).&nbsp; I know there\'s not much reliable info out there on many of the great martial arts masters (even Jubei, Musashi, and the legendary Wong Fei Hung are tough to find good info on) but it\'s kind of a bad sign when there\'s more info out there on <a href=\"http://wow.allakhazam.com/db/mob.html?wmob=3706\">Tai\'jin</a>, the Horde Priest Trainer in World of Warcraft, than there is on a supposedly-real human being.&nbsp; It\'s not super-reassuring.</p>\r\n<p>However, I would argue that this mysterious history only serves to make T\'ai Djin\'s legend that much more intriguing. He\'s like the Boba Fett of Kung Fu Werewolves.&nbsp; The fact that we might never know his true history or identity only serves to make him that much more badass.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/taidjin5.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>P.S. Tiger Balls.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Links:</span><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.usadojo.com/biographies/su-kong-tai-djin.htm\">USA-Dojo.com</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://thehumanmarvels.com/?p=94\">The Human Marvels</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.shaolin-do.com/history.php\">A Brief History of Shaolin-Do</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaolin-Do\">Wikipedia</a></p>','2010-10-22','721147929924','taidjin.jpg','taidjin1.jpg','T\'ai Djin','Shaolin Kung Fu Werewolf Grandmaster.','This week\'s tale, dear readers, is a bizarre one.  A borderline-insane, highly-controversial story that walks a thin barbed-wire tightrope between being total bullshit and the sort of head-crushing physical manifestation of awesomeness that can only be described as one of the most badass things ever.  A story so conceptually ridiculous that it can only legitimately be busted out in the weeks before Halloween, lest any man fool enough to tell it be laughed straight out of the Internet, damned to an eternal hellhole of self-loathing and pitiful one-bar wi-fi access.\r\n\r\nThis, my friends, is the story of T\'ai Djin, the Kung Fu Werewolf.'),('Dwight Hal Johnson','May 7, 1947','April 29, 1971','Detroit, MI, USA','20th-century American Soldier','<p>You don\'t really think of Vietnam as being a tank warfare kind of affair. Sure, there were plenty of intense, groin-crushing battles fought during the vicious multi-year slugfest through the jungles of Southeast Asia, but most of these showdowns were the ambush / search-and-destroy sort of events, with infantrymen slogging through armpit-deep mud, fighting off ambushes and human wave attacks in miserable driving rainstorms, and crawling through carefully-dug tunnels laden with booby traps.&nbsp; You don\'t exactly picture a Blitzkrieg of Panzers blasting through the hedgerows of Normandy or anything, mostly because trying to drive a tank through a jungle is a logistical undertaking that borders on being retarded.</p>\r\n<p>Perhaps that\'s why Specialist Dwight Johnson of the 1st Battalion, 69th Armor Regiment holds the impressive distinction of being the only tank driver to receive the Medal of Honor for actions in combat during Vietnam.&nbsp; Although, as you might expect, the actions that led to Spc. Johnson receiving America\'s highest award for bravery in combat actually had very little to do with this ultra-over-the-top hardass actually sitting behind at the controls of his M48A3 battle tank, and a lot more with taking on an entire North Vietnamese Army offensive by himself armed with nothing more than a .45-caliber handgun and a complete lack of anything resembling fear or restraint.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/dwightjohnson1.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>In mid-January 1968, just a few days before the infamous Tet Offensive seriously knocked the American forces on their collective asses, the 1/69th Armor received a frantic call from a front-line Infantry platoon that had just come under attack by a hellacious battalion-sized force of battle-hardened North Vietnamese regulars.&nbsp; Eager to get into the action and save his buddies from what was quickly becoming a soul-sucking situation of intense crappiness, Dwight Johnson jumped behind the wheel (stick? Controls? I have no idea what the hell the driver\'s seat of a tank looks like) of his M48 and started barreling ass through the jungle towards the sounds of distant gunfire, busting through the jungle underbrush like Ripley plowing the APC to rescue the Colonial Marines in <em>Aliens</em>.&nbsp; I have no doubt that if Paul Reiser had been in the hull, Johnson would have told him to suck it.</p>\r\n<p>Of course, as I indicated in my lead paragraph, the terrain in rural Vietnam isn\'t incredibly responsive when you go around trying to plow several thousand tons of metal through it &ndash; you\'d have a better chance driving an APC through Candyland on a sunny summer afternoon.&nbsp; So, of course, as luck would have it, the second that Johnson\'s tank approached the firefight, one of the treads blew out, rendering the vehicle immobile.&nbsp; <em>Thanks for stopping by, now please enjoy the show while you watch all your buddies get gunned down by a force that outnumbers them ten to one.</em></p>\r\n<p>Fuck that noise.&nbsp; Dwight Johnson grew up on the mean streets of the Detroit housing projects, and he wasn\'t going to just sit around like a dumbass while American troops were out there getting shot in the head right in front of him.&nbsp; Johnson reached down into the cockpit of the tank (again, I have no goddamned idea if this is the correct terminology ornot), and grabbed the only weapon that had been issued to him by the United States Army:&nbsp; A Colt M1911A1 .45-caliber pistol.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/dwightjohnson2.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>I shit you not, this tank pilot hopped out the hatch of this heavily-armored bulletproof vehicle and charged into battle against camouflaged, experienced, AK-47-toting enemy soldiers armed with nothing more than a handgun, a really bad attitude, and an uncontrollable urge to kill everything in sight.&nbsp; He charged <em>into the middle of the ambush</em>, fighting alongside the men of the trapped platoon, capping dudes with his pistol with incredible proficiency.&nbsp; When Johnson burned through the last magazine of his weapon, he ran back to the tank, reached in, and found a submachine gun lying around in there for some reason, which he eagerly then took <em>back into the middle of the ambush</em>.&nbsp; With the Americans desperately trying to fight off an increasingly-more-deadly human wave attack, the battle soon moved into close-quarters, hand-to-hand beatdown-style combat.&nbsp; Johnson blasted a few guys with the SMG at extreme-close range, but eventually had to discard the weapon after he snapped the stock in half while smashing some dude\'s face in with it (seriously).</p>\r\n<p>Now completely out of ammunition and/or anything he could use as a workable firearm, Johnson rushed back to the tanks.&nbsp; Seeing that his vehicle was still hopelessly immobile, he rushed over to his platoon Sergeant\'s tank, opened the hatch, and peeked in.&nbsp; The tank\'s gunner was badly wounded &ndash; slumped in his seat, but still breathing.&nbsp; Johnson heroically pulled the dude out the hatch while bullets whizzed by his head, hoisted the wounded soldier on his back, and carried the dude to a nearby APC so he could receive medical attention.&nbsp; Then, of course, Johnson sprinted back to the tank, hood-slid across the front of it like a 70s detective movie, jumped in, and started firing the fucking main cannon at the NVA soldiers who were by now rapidly closing in on the tanks\' position.&nbsp; Within seconds he was spraying the battlefield with some large-caliber destruction, and holding the honor of being the guy in the battle who fired both the engagement\'s largest and smallest weaponry.&nbsp; I say \"of course\" he did this, because at this point in the story nothing should really surprise you about this guy &ndash; he didn\'t pull any punches, didn\'t stop fighting for any damn reason ever, and definitely wasn\'t going to let anything short of death stand in the way of his super-intense, Viking-quality blood rage.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/dwightjohnson3.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Eventually the main gun on the M48 jammed, presumably as a result of Johnson firing so many goddamned tank rounds out of it so rapidly that it melted the barrel into a clumpy metallic sludge.&nbsp; Once again left without a viable means for killing people, Johnson quickly glanced around the interior of the tank, taking stock of what was available.&nbsp; What he found were more magazines for the 1911.</p>\r\n<p>So, for the third time, Specialist Dwight H. Johnson rushed into the middle of a raging warzone firing his pistol at anything that moved.&nbsp; After killing a few more NVA (the Medal of Honor citation eventually gave up trying to tally this guy\'s kill totals), and burning through the rest of his ammunition, Johnson hopped up onto the roof of his tank, exposing himself in full view to the enemy soldiers, and started mowing people down with the .50-caliber machine gun on the cupola.&nbsp; By the time the smoke cleared, the American forces were standing alone on the battlefield.&nbsp; Spc. Johnson\'s insane, utterly-ridiculous kill-frenzy of destruction had helped not only fight off a massive battalion of NVA soldiers, but also rescued the stranded U.S. platoon from a situation in which they would have otherwise been completely humped.&nbsp; He received the Medal of Honor for his actions, battled with his regiment through the Tet Offensive, and survived the war.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/dwightjohnson4.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Links:</span><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.mishalov.com/JohnsonDwight.html\">Medal of Honor citation</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwight_H._Johnson\">Wikipedia</a></p>\r\n<p><br /><br /></p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Sources:</span><br /><br /><span> Department of the Army.&nbsp; <em>The Soldier\'s Guide</em>.&nbsp; Skyhorse, 2007.<br /><br /> Sutherland, Jonathan.&nbsp; <em>African Americans at War</em>.&nbsp; ABC-CLIO, 2004.<br /><br /> Williams, Albert E.&nbsp; <em>Black Warriors</em>.&nbsp; Buy Books, 2003. </span></p>','2010-08-27','742155130061','dwightjohnson.gif','dwightjohnson1.gif','Dwight H. Johnson','Vietnam War tanker who got out of his tank to fight off an ambush with his pistol.','\"Specialist Johnson\'s tank, upon reaching the point of contact, threw a track and became immobilized. Realizing that he could do no more as a driver, he climbed out of the vehicle, armed only with a .45 caliber pistol.\"\r\n\r\n- Medal of Honor Citation'),('Galvarino','Unknown','November 30, 1557','Chile','16th-century Chilean Warrior','<p>One of the cool things about running this site is that every once in a while I get the opportunity to write about a guy who may not have had any real significant impact on the course of history, but who, generally speaking, is completely fucking out-of-his-mind psychotic.&nbsp; Sure, these hardcore war-factories may not have always been successful in their endeavors &ndash; they may not have rescued their people from imminent destruction at the hands of a foreign invader, fought off an overwhelming force by tearing a few thousand guys limb from limb with their teeth, or personally wrested a blood-stained crown from the severed head of a mighty emperor.&nbsp; Hell, these pinnacles of awesomeness may not even have won the battles they were fighting &ndash; but damn it, these red-meat-crazy murderous nutjobs pulled out all the stops, went completely balls-to-the-wall, and did some ridiculous bullshit in the name of being insanely badass.&nbsp; They\'re the stories that typically don\'t make the history books, yet people would still do well to remember them&hellip; if for no other reason than simply because they\'re totally fucking awesome.</p>\r\n<p>Galvarino is one of those men.</p>\r\n<p>There\'s no other logical explanation for how a real-life historical figure could inspire a piece of artwork that looks like this:</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/galvarino.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Galvarino\'s story start back in the mid-1500s, when the good people of Spain were full-swing in the lucrative business of making North, Central, and South America its bitches.&nbsp; Plenty of ink has been devoted over the years to the Spanish colonization of the New World, but the undisputed fact is that the Spaniards rolled across the Atlantic in their ships, subjugated the balls off of everything they could find, mined a few billion donkey-loads of gold, and conquered a swath of land roughly ten times the size of their own country with nothing more than a hell of a lot of determination, a few firearms, and a healthy resistance to a wide array of crazy European microbial diseases.&nbsp; These guys weren\'t screwing around &ndash; even the mightiest native Empires crumbled before the might of the Spanish Empire (and empire which, by the way, was so mega-extreme that it\'s motto was, \"PLUS ULTRA!\"), and anyone who screwed with them quickly found themselves getting summarily disemboweled at sword point without much in the way of subtlety.&nbsp; The Spanish were like The Borg of the 16th century world: Resistance is futile. Prepare to be assimilated.</p>\r\n<p>After chainsawing their way through the Aztec and Inca Empires, the Spanish eventually turned their attention towards the subjugation of the Mapuche Indian tribes residing in the southern part of present-day Chile.&nbsp; The Mapuche, much like their less-fortunate predecessors, weren\'t particularly interested in getting their asses conquered by a bunch of foreigners, and they put up a tenacious defense against the European invaders that would have made Captain Picard proud.&nbsp; Under the command of a badass dude named Lautaro (a man I plan on writing about here in the future), the Indian warriors utilized cutting-edge guerilla tactics and intense face-stabbing acumen to fight off the overwhelmingly superior firepower of the Spanish forces, and seriously pissed of the Spanish commanders so hard the European generals decided to take some unique and borderline-sadistic steps towards crushing the spirits of these obstinate rebels.</p>\r\n<p>To that end, after one particularly brutal battle near the province of Lagunilla, the Spanish found themselves in possession of quite a few prisoners of war.&nbsp; One of these dudes was a particularly tough Mapuche tribal war leader named Galvarino.&nbsp; Deciding that drastic measures needed to be taken to further embitchinate the populace, the Spanish governor decreed that Galvarino was to have his right hand chopped off with an axe as punishment for raising arms (nyuk nyuk) against the Spanish.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/galvarino4.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /> <span>It was... unpleasant.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Apparently these guys didn\'t realize who they were fucking with.&nbsp; Galvarino wasn\'t just some chump who was going to run off crying just because some giant gorilla hacked his limbs off with a fucking axe &ndash; he was a seriously hardcore bastard.&nbsp; Without uttering a word of protest, the super-pissed Mapuche prisoner knelt before the chopping block and placed his sword arm on the slab.&nbsp; One slice of the axe popped it off like a crappy Halloween prop.&nbsp; <em>Galvarino didn\'t flinch</em>.&nbsp; The emotionless automaton of a badass just had his fucking arm removed with a hatchet, yet he was sitting there motionless, not saying a word, his expression solidly locked into \"uber-ripshit pissed\" mode.&nbsp; Jesus, even <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/vader.html\">Darth Vader</a> held his arm in pain after getting it prematurely detached in battle.</p>\r\n<p>That\'s not even the beginning.&nbsp; Seconds after losing his hand, Galvarino quietly removed the bloody stump-nub from the chopping block, and unhesitatingly placed his <em>other hand</em> out to be removed.&nbsp; The Spanish executioner sliced through that one as well, because what the hell else was he supposed to do.&nbsp; Once again Galvarino failed to register emotion.&nbsp; Finally, the Mapuche chief put his head on the block, ready to die.</p>\r\n<p>But the Spanish weren\'t going to let Galvarino off the hook so easily.&nbsp; Instead, they released him to return to his people without any hands, ordering him to show the Mapuche what was going to happen to them if they didn\'t give up their silly independence and start paying exorbitant amounts of gold to the Spanish Crown.</p>\r\n<p>Their biggest mistake was letting him live.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/galvarino6.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The Spanish tried to make an example of Galvarino, but all he did was show his people an example of what it means to be totally fucking over-the-top badass.&nbsp; As soon as he got back to his village, Galvarino showed everyone his stumps, screamed a bunch of angry profanity, and demanded a full-scale revolution against the Spanish for pulling such a dick move on him.&nbsp; Everybody saw this bullshittery and got understandably upset about the whole thing, deciding right then and there that they were going to strengthen their resolve and deliver an unrelenting barrage of ball-kicks to any European crotches they could get their feet on.&nbsp; Galvarino was immediately elected to be his tribe\'s war leader, and to command his people in the inevitable death-feud against the Spanish.&nbsp; Not wanting to be hampered by a little thing like \"not having any hands\", this guy did one of the most balls-out ridiculous things I\'ve ever heard of &ndash; he <em>tied blades to his stumps and went into battle with swords for hands</em>.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/galvarino3.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Are you kidding me?&nbsp; No matter how tough, or how great a warrior you are, not being able to physically hold a weapon is kind of a career-ending injury in the military combat department.&nbsp; Yet on November 30, 1557, when 1,500 Spaniards were ambushed by 3,000 Mapuche warriors outside Millarapue, the native forces were being led into battle by a dude with goddamned steak knives duct-taped to his wrists and a bloodthirsty sneer on his face.&nbsp; I think we can all appreciate the fact that this is some seriously next-level badass shit.</p>\r\n<p>In the interest of academic integrity, I should probably take a second here to mention that the only source I was able to find to corroborate the sword-hands claim was a Spanish-language text that was translated for Galvarino\'s Wikipedia page, and, generally speaking, I am loathe to use Wikipedia as a primary source for anything that doesn\'t involve <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonic_the_Hedgehog_%28series%29\">ludicrously-in-depth descriptions of video game-related minutiae</a>.&nbsp; I\'m somewhat hampered, however, by the fact that I don\'t read Spanish, and there\'s not a whole lot of info about this guy printed in English.&nbsp; (If any readers out there can corroborate this with a legit source, I would be grateful to see it).&nbsp; However, having said that, I fucking love this story so much that I\'m compelled by every fiber of my being to believe that this blade-armed madman was out there rushing through the battlefield in 1557 slicing off fools\' like a hardcore Baraka fatality, tearing the Spanish new face-holes with nothing more than his endless rage and his <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/wolverine.html\">Wolverine</a>-style hand blades.</p>\r\n<p><em><span>(Note: Special thanks to Andres for sending along <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/ww.coronel.cl/municipalidad/municipio/index.php?option=com_content&amp;view=article&amp;id=60\">this link</a> to a the official website for the city of Coronel, Chile, which confirms the knife-hands story.)</span></em></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/galvarino2.gif\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Unfortunately, as I alluded to in the beginning, the battle didn\'t go well for Galvarino and his brave warriors.&nbsp; Two-to-one odds and brain-crushing badassitude are only going to go so far when you\'ve got a wooden spear and a loin cloth and you\'re facing off against professional soldiers with steel armor, crossbows, and rifles.&nbsp; Galvarino\'s troops were defeated after an intense, two-hour fight, he was re-captured by the Spanish, and 30 of his bravest warriors were hanged from trees.</p>\r\n<p>Some of the Spanish took pity on the hand-less Mapuche leader Galvarino, but when they offered him leniency, this stone-cold warrior told them straight-up that even without his sword hands he had no intention of doing anything except tearing the Spanish apart with his teeth.&nbsp; What happened to him next his the subject of quite a bit of debate &ndash; some say he was hanged, others say he was fed to dogs, and still others say he managed to throw himself on a sword in an effort to deny the Spanish the satisfaction of causing his death &ndash; but either way, he definitely died.&nbsp; Even in death, however, Galvarino managed to further inspire his people to do some seriously badass shit, if for no other reason than just to try to come close to the insane example he had set for them.&nbsp; When the Mapuche in the surrounding area heard news of this fearless warrior, his determination to fight no matter what, and his fucking awesome sword-hands attack on the Spanish, they got their shit super-pumped up about kicking ass. He was like a one-man Alamo &ndash; even to this day he\'s remembered as a national hero who gave up everything to defend his freedom. There\'s even an asteroid and a couple of Chilean warships named after him. The even more amazing thing is that the Mapuche actually ended up being one of the few indigenous American peoples not to be conquered by the Conquistadors &ndash; their fight was so tenacious and brutal (perhaps helped by the memory of guys like Galvarino), that they retained their independence, only officially becoming part of Chile in the late-1800s, and never being subjected to the domination of Spain.&nbsp; I guess stories like that have a tendency to get people fired up.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/galvarino1.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Links:</span><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galvarino_%28Mapuche%29\">Wikipedia</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.myetymology.com/encyclopedia/Galvarino_%28mapuche%29.html\">MyEtymology.com</a></p>\r\n<p><br /><br /></p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Sources:</span><br /><br /><span> Bizzarro, Salvatore. <em>Historical Dictionary of Chile</em>. Scarecrow, 2005.<br /><br /> Castillo-Feliu, Guellermo I. <em>Culture and Customs of Chile</em>. Greenwood, 2000.<br /><br /> Guinot, Laura. <em>Conspiracy in Mendoza</em>. Trafford, 2009.<br /><br /> Sismondi, Jean-Charles-Leonard. <em>Historical View of the Literature of the South of Europe</em>. H.G. Bohn, 1853.<br /><br /> Villalobos, Sergio R. <em>A Short History of Chile</em>. Editorial Univeritaria, 1996. </span></p>','2010-08-20','483759730182','galvarino5.jpg','galvarino5a.jpg','Galvarino','When the Spanish cut off his hands, he strapped swords to his stumps and kept fighting.','\"Even these crimson hands thou sever\'st from my valiant arms shall yield a thousand fold – for when the earth hath drunk my blood, an iron harvest she shall yield, of hostile hands to enslave and bind thine own.\"'),('Erzsébet Báthory de Ecsed','August 7, 1560','August 21, 1614','Nyribator, Hungary','17th-century Hungarian Supervillain','<p>Late last week I did a magazine interview where I said that being a badass juggernaut of unrelenting awesomeness was all about crushing the balls of worthy adversaries on the field of combat, and that there was a big difference between cleaing your way through a crowded, blood-spattered battlefield while dual-wielding a matching set of combat screwdrivers (flathead and Philips-head), and murdering scores of innocent people just because you\'ve completely flipped your shit and now a bunch of completely bat-guano-insane demonic voices in your head spontaneously started telling you that it would be totally fucking awesome if you crammed all your neighbors down the garbage disposal in your sink.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>While I completely believed this noble ideal of ultra-righteous badassitude when I said it, upon reading the <a href=\"http://newyork.citypudding.com/uncategorized/pudding-talks-with-badass-of-the-weeks-author-ben-thompson\">published article</a> earlier this week I immediately shifted gears, and started thinking of it as a personal challenge to see whether or not I could make a convincing argument for a remorseless, completely-unsympathetic murderer also being totally badass.&nbsp; So, of course in the spirit of attempting to go as completely balls-out as my office dress code will allow, this week I\'m talking about a misanthropic sadist who is widely believed to be the most prolific serial killer in history.&nbsp; A horrible, miserable human being with absolutely no redeeming qualities whatsoever.&nbsp; A murderous psycho hose beast who was such a complete motherfucking horrible wretch that for a couple generations after her death it <em>against Hungarian law to speak her name in public</em>. A woman who, to this day, is known simply by one crazy, ominous, yet undeniably-badass title:&nbsp; The Blood Countess.&nbsp; Elizabeth Bathory.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/bathory1.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>This is not a woman you want to fuck with.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Bathory was born in 1560, in a quiet, pleasant little area of Eastern Europe known as Transylvania (perhaps you have heard of it).&nbsp; Her family was a very distinguished line of illustrious Hungarian/Transylvanian nobility &ndash; her Uncle had been the King of Hungary, and her cousin Stephen Bathory, the Duke of Transylvania, had fought several successful campaigns against the Turks, was good buddies with our friend Vlad the Impaler, and to this day remains a much-beloved war hero throughout his homeland.&nbsp; Of course, as is the case with pretty much every royal family in Medieval Europe, House Bathory was also prone to alarming bouts of inbreeding (as one Middle Ages manuscript puts it, \"If ye cannot keepeth it in thy pants, keepeth it in thine family\"), and a couple generations of squaring off the ol\' family tree are bound to produce a few creepy weirdo cousins along the way.&nbsp; So, while Lizzy had plenty of illustrious leaders, warriors, knights and heroes in her bloodline, she also had a drunk-ass lecherous psycho sex fiend for a brother, an aunt who was a lesbian witch, and another uncle who was a devil-worshipping alchemist.&nbsp; Elizabeth herself was raised Protestant, which to a lot of folks in ultra-Catholic 16th century Hungary wasn\'t a hell of a lot better than being a goat-sacrificing Satanist transsexual sex fiend warlock, and it didn\'t help her cause much that in her youth the girl was prone to epileptic seizures and what contemporary sources like to refer to as \"fits of extreme rage\".</p>\r\n<p>Despite brief moments where she went batshit bonkers with a meat cleaver and started swinging wildly at anything that moved, young Elizabeth (whose given Hungarian name is Erzsebet... I chose to write it in the Westernized style so that I don\'t have to go back a thousand times to see if the z comes before the s) taught herself to speak Greek and Latin, and was one of the few members of the Transylvanian nobility who bothered to learn how to read and write.&nbsp; As was the typical case back in the Middle Ages, Bathory was engaged at 11, got pregnant out of wedlock at 14 while \"horse playing\" with a local peasant boy (which quite honestly sounds like a little TMI as far as I\'m concerned), and at 15 married Count Ferencz Nadasdy, a man affectionately known to his cowering, disemboweled, armless enemies as the \"Black Knight of Hungary\".</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/bathory2.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>The ruins of Cachtice Castle, the lovely couple\'s charming little home.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The Blood Countess and the Black Knight ruled over a bitchin\' old castle and had a fiefdom of 17 villages stocked completely full of hapless peasants with whom they could pretty much do whatever the fuck they wanted whenever the hell they felt like it.&nbsp; Bessie\'s husband was gone on campaign a lot, fighting in those endless wars against the Ottoman Turkish Empire that Eastern European Kingdoms seem to constantly have been involved in, and Elizabeth spent a lot of time home alone in the castle with only an army of young boy-toy lovers and obedient servants to keep her company.&nbsp; When having people feed her, wait on her, and have sex with her any time she wanted got boring, Elizabeth started sending letters to her hubby asking him to tell her the gory details about all the sweet torture methods he was using to extract information out of his prisoners.&nbsp; His responses got Lizzie so hot that she then decided she\'d test them out on people she\'d kidnapped from one of the villages under her domain.</p>\r\n<p>At first it was typical stuff &ndash; beating the crap out of servants with red-hot pokers, pouring honey on local peasants and tying them to trees in the woods so wild animals would eat them, and having gypsies sewn up inside dead horses Luke Skywalker Tauntaun-style (yes these are all pretty common punishments in the 16th century &ndash; I\'m not even making this shit up), but together with The Black Knight, Bathory really expanded her horizons in the field of perverted freaky shit.&nbsp; I won\'t really go into a lot of the gruesome slasher-movie details of her drunken torture-orgies except to say that she was really into giant mechanical Bond Villain-style deathtraps, and that most of the stuff that went on in her castle probably would have given the Marquis De Sade a boner.&nbsp; It was sick and twisted, sure, but hey, it was a good bonding exercise that helped Elizabeth stay close to her beloved husband while they tried to make their long-distance relationship work &ndash; he would mail her suggestions for torture devices, and she\'d write him back and let him know how it went.&nbsp; It\'s cute, in a fucked-up Tim Burton / <em>American Psycho</em> / what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-you-assholes kind of way.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/bathory3.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<table style=\"width: 500px;\" align=\"center\">\r\n<tbody>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td><span>Bathory was also really into Iron Maidens, and I don\'t mean that she had <em>The Number of the Beast</em> on vinyl (though, now that I\'m thinking about it, \"Run to the hills / Run for your lives\" would have been good advice for the poor peasants unlucky enough to live in one of her seventeen villages).</span></td>\r\n</tr>\r\n</tbody>\r\n</table>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The Black Knight died in 1604, and his death somehow made the 44 year-old Bathory even more completely Goddamned insane in the membrane.&nbsp; The Blood Countess next started getting really into witchcraft, got it on with a bunch of devil-worshippers, hired a dwarf to torture people for her, and allegedly put together a spell that was supposed to summon an army of 99 black cats to materialize out of thin air and rip her enemies\' hearts out in what I can only envision would be the most adorable mauling of all time.</p>\r\n<p>Despite all the cat-summoning and unnecessarily-violent stuff she did to her peasantry, however, what Elizabeth Bathory is most famous for is the accusation that she used to take baths in a large porcelain tub filled with virgins\' blood.&nbsp; According to the story, one time Bathory bitch-slapped some servant girl, and noticed that the blood that landed on her skin worked like some kind of badass moisturizer that both hydrated and exfoliated, so she went completely over-the-top balls-out (or whatever the female version of that might be), stripped naked, and started spending a couple nights a week sitting in a candlelit blood-filled bathtub with a good book and a bottle of Mr. Bubble as a means of keeping her skin young and her good looks eternal (this was of course in the Dark Ages, back before Botox, plastic surgery, and Noxema).</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/bathory4.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span> (Not pictured:&nbsp; Bottle of strawberry-scented Herbal Essences,<br />boom box playing either ambient New Wave or \"Splish Splash I Was Taking a Bath\")</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>This bloodbath story, incidentally, is the basis for the Dracula / Vampire myth that seems to be a major factor in every single piece of non-Zombie-related literature, television and film released in the last five to seven years. Most people like to point to the name-recognition of Vlad Dracula as the main source of the ever-present Nosferatu legend, but while Vladdie certainly had his own problems, the idea of a Transylvanian Count(ess) who stays youthful forever by drinking blood is much more closely related to Elizabeth Bathory than it is to Vlad the Impaler.&nbsp; So while I continue to hold that serial killing and torture really isn\'t all that badass, single-handedly serving as the basis for one of the most successful, popular, and all-encompassing modern myths of all time sure as shit is.&nbsp; I mean, fuck, without her, there\'s no <em>Castlevania</em>, and what the hell kind of sick, twisted world would allow that?</p>\r\n<p>When you tie the whole <em>Castlevania</em> thing in to the fact that she suffered from her fits of epileptic rage even into her later years &ndash; making her prone to biting and eating human flesh (!!!) &ndash; she was like the Reavers from <em>Firefly</em> meets the vampire babes from <em>Bram Stoker\'s Dracula</em> with perfect, wrinkle-free skin and without all the obnoxious sparkly-vampire teen angst abstinence of <em>Twilight</em>.&nbsp; The fact that she has a pretty sweet Viking Metal band named after her also helps her badass cred.</p>\r\n<p>Oh, and also the fact that this woman is pretty much the most freak-out terrifying human being who ever lived.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/bathory5.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>Words cannot describe how much I love this album cover.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Bathory was able to get away with her crimes for 35 years, mostly due to the fact that this Satanic sex-falcon murder-fiend was only torture-fucking the peasants on her land and nobody really gave a rat\'s sack about peasants anyways.&nbsp; Eventually, Bathory got a little too big for her bathtub and started executing members of the lesser nobility, so the Prime Minister of Hungary got sick of her shit and sent a team of <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/vanhelsing.html\">Abraham Van Helsing</a> priests to assault her creepy castle.&nbsp; They staged a raid in the middle of the night on Christmas of 1610, discovered a scene described as \"too monstrous\" to be recounted (even at her trial), and forcibly took Bathory and her accomplices into custody after a brief struggle.&nbsp; The Blood Countess\' staff was tortured for confessions and then buried alive, and Bathory herself was barricaded inside a small Hannibal Lechter-style prison room in a remote Slovakian castle with her only access to the outside world being little slits for air and food.&nbsp; Depressed that she wasn\'t able to torture anyone anymore, Elizabeth Bathory got super pissed and died by starving herself to death (which you gotta admit is pretty hardcore).&nbsp; She was found dead almost exactly 397 years ago, on August 21, 1614, with her last words being a batshit-insane suicide letter describing the afore-mentioned army of heart-devouring kitties.&nbsp; The 54 year-old Blood Countess is believed to have killed somewhere between 600 and 1,000 people during her lifetime, making her the most prolific serial killer in the history of the world.&nbsp; Suck it, Ted Bundy!</p>\r\n<p>Of course, as a final note, it also bears mentioning that these stories about her could all be bullshit, and the downfall of Elizabeth Bathory could all just have been a wildly-elaborate conspiracy by the Catholic Hapsburg dynasty to discredit and shame the Protestant rulers of Transylvania.&nbsp; For example, that whole \"bathing in human blood\" story doesn\'t appear in history until some French dude wrote about it nearly 100 years after Elizabeth\'s death (it wasn\'t even mentioned at her trial), and a lot of the gore-intensive accusations made against her were only confessed under Spanish Inquisition-style torture.&nbsp; So who knows.&nbsp; I guess I\'d argue that it doesn\'t matter &ndash; that Bathory\'s legacy is probably way more badass than any of the insane fucked-up shit she did during her actual life anyways.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/bathory6.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Links:</span><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/serial_killers/predators/bathory/countess_1.html\">TruTV Crime Library</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A593084\">BBC</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.weird-encyclopedia.com/Bathory-Elizabeth.php\">Weird Encyclopedia</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_B%C3%A1thory\">Wikipedia</a></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Sources:</span><br /><br /><span> McNally, Raymond T. <em>Dracula Was a Woman</em>.&nbsp; McGraw-Hill, 1983.<br /><br /> McNally, Raymond T. and Radu Florescu. <em>In Search of Dracula</em>. Houghton-Mifflin, 1994.<br /><br /> Powell, Michael. <em>101 People You Won\'t Meet in Heaven</em>. Globe Pequot, 2007.<br /><br /> Vronsky, Peter. <em>Female Serial Killers</em>. Penguin, 2007. </span></p>','2011-08-26','187156025629','bathory1.jpg','bathory2.jpg','Elizabeth Bathory','The Blood Countess of Transylvania, and basis for the Dracula/vampire myth.',''),('Shaka kaSenzangakhona','1787','September 22, 1828','KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa','19th-century Zulu General','<p>When discussing the most bone-crushingly badass military empires of Sub-Saharan Africa, there is really only one word that comes to mind &ndash; Zulu.&nbsp; Of all the myriad tribal leaders, tyrannical despots, and vicious totalitarian warlords that have exerted their will across this war-torn region from pre-history until the modern day, no power-hungry madman has been able to surpass the ass-kicking legacy of the Zulu Empire and its fearsome ability to carve out a mighty empire one impaled corpse at a time.&nbsp; The utterly-fearless warriors of this 19th century powerhouse made a name for themselves by ferociously charging lance-first into combat anywhere they could find it, massacring their foes with machetes and spears, and even sticking it to the world\'s most advanced European powers when they came around for a heavyweight title match of badassitude.&nbsp; Of all the Zulu leaders who commanded the Empire during this period, one man stands sack-and-shoulders above the rest when it comes to unrivaled badassitude &ndash; the infamous Shaka Zulu.&nbsp; The military mastermind behind the Zulu Empire, and one of the most hardcore tyrants who ever lived.</p>\r\n<p>For a mighty Zulu Chieftain who would go on to expand his tribe\'s numbers from a mere 1,500 people to a 250,000-strong Empire spanning over two million square miles, Shaka\'s origin story was actually a little less than epic.&nbsp; Far from face-planting the planet at Warp Factor 5 along with a few thousand chunks of the Planet Krypton, Shaka was born to human parents in 1787, the illegitimate son of a minor Zulu chief and his fianc&eacute;e &ndash; a woman who, by the way, the chief hadn\'t actually had sex with yet.&nbsp; The promiscuous bride-to-be blamed her pregnancy on some kind of Virgin Mary-style immaculate conception or some shit, but nobody really bought that excuse.&nbsp; The unwanted kid was named Shaka, which of course is derived from the Zulu term <em>iShaka</em>.&nbsp; While you\'d think it would have been humiliating enough to be named after something that sounds like something Steve Jobs would come up with in response to the <a href=\"http://www.break.com/index/hilarious-shake-weight-exercise-for-women.html\">Shake Weight</a>, it\'s actually the Zulu term for a particular type of intestinal parasite, which is somehow even less flattering.&nbsp; It\'s like being named Dysentery Jones or Hookworm Jackson. Other fun nicknames for young Shaka included \"the bastard\", and \"the one with no father\".&nbsp; He and his mother were exiled from their tribe, and forced to live as outcasts, which sucked everyones\' asses on fire.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/shakazulu1.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span><strong>SHAKA:</strong>&nbsp; wtf this sux</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Being named after a microbe gave Shaka a sort-of \"Boy Named Sue\" complex, and he ended up spending most of his youth pummeling the fuck out of any neighborhood kids that talked shit about his name, his bastard-ness, or his mother\'s honor.&nbsp; His ability to re-arrange the bone structure of his enemies\' faces with little more than a clenched fist and a whole lot of pent-up rage soon earned young Shaka a place of honor as a Zulu Warrior in the service of the chief, where he could put his destructiveness to good use against the enemies of his people.&nbsp; In his time in the army, Shaka learned tactics, strategy, and how to effectively kill the largest number of people in the shortest number of time, which is kind of useful if you\'re into that sort of thing.&nbsp; Shaka showed so much aptitude for destruction, in fact, that after the death of Shaka\'s father the Zulu king appointed Shaka war chief of his tribe.</p>\r\n<p>Shaka Zulu\'s first act as war chief was to dispatch his warriors to kill the fuck out of anyone who ever talked shit about him or his mom, mostly because those guys were bastards and Shaka didn\'t really want a bunch of dickheads serving in his army anyways.&nbsp; He then went on to completely revamp the way the Zulu fought war.&nbsp; You see, up until this point in history, Sub-Saharan African warfare was pretty much one of the most retarded things ever.&nbsp; Two groups of warriors would basically just line up fifty feet apart from each other, shout insults about the sexual practices of their enemies\' women, throw a couple javelins, and then run away screaming about how awesome they were.&nbsp; Shaka, being a man of extreme skull-crushing violence, decided that war would be a shitload more effective if people actually died from it.&nbsp; So, to that end, he threw away the \"cowardly\" javelins and replaced them with big, heavy, fuck-off spears called <em>assegai</em>.&nbsp; Then, to further optimize his warriors\' effectiveness in close-quarters combat, he redesigned the Zulu shield, making it bigger, more durable, and actually useful.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/shakazulu3.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>After equipping his army with more practical implements of eye-stabbing awesomeness, Shaka then went to work making his men a thoroughly balls-out as possible.&nbsp; He organized them into regiments and formations, made them run barefoot 50 miles a day through the savannah, and taught them techniques for using their shield to hook and pull the enemy\'s shield and expose the guy\'s ribs for a totally bitchin\' shank to the ribs.&nbsp; During his brutal, intense training in the Art of Badass, any man under his command who showed pain, complained, or dropped his weapon was executed on the spot as a coward.</p>\r\n<p>With this redesigned army of badass warriors under his command, Shaka Zulu then went on a rampage of aorta-piercing destruction across Sub-Saharan Africa.&nbsp; His radical formations would charge into battle, fighting with a ferocity never before seen on the Savannah, and his warriors massacred any punks dumbshit enough to stand in his path.&nbsp; No one could stop him.&nbsp; When a rival tribe was appropriately bitch-ified by Shaka, he would give the vanquished douchebags two options &ndash; join the Zulu and renounce their native tribe, or receive a catastrophic puncture wound to the brain.&nbsp; Most of his victims took the significantly more appealing option, and, as a result, Shaka Zulu is one of the few military commanders from history who finished a war with a <em>bigger</em> army than he had when he started.&nbsp; When he had assumed control over the entire Zulu nation after the death of the King in 1817, Shaka ruled over 350 warriors and 1,500 citizens.&nbsp; At the time of his death ten years later, he led 40,000 warriors, 250,000 citizens, and claimed two million square miles of territory for his people &ndash; arguably the most powerful African empire since Ancient Egypt.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/shakazulu4.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Shaka was, first and foremost, a military asskicker.&nbsp; He preferred to charge head-first into battle at the front of his men, decked out in a presumably-awesome-looking uniform made from blue monkey fur (!), and was always more comfortable fighting a war than administrating over the mundane bullshit of a kingdom.&nbsp; So, as a ruler, he was kind of a psychotic lunatic.&nbsp; Sure, he made diplomatic contact with the British and established some trade routes, but this guy generally preferred mass executions and public witch burnings (he claimed he could \"smell\" witches) to anything resembling agrarian reform or due process under the law.&nbsp; Perhaps the best demonstration of this is how Shaka completely flipped his shit after his mom died &ndash; the distraught ruler ordered a three-month period of mourning for all the Zulu people, in which no one was allowed to eat anything.&nbsp; Then he killed some cows so that the calves would know what it was like to lose a mother, and went around executing 7,000 people who \"didn\'t look sad enough\".</p>\r\n<p>As you can probably imagine, this sort of behavior doesn\'t win you a whole lot of popular support, and in 1828 Shaka was murdered to death by his brothers, who dumped his body in an unmarked grave and buried him under a bunch of heavy-ass rocks.&nbsp; Despite his inglorious end at the sharp end of a bro-sassin\'s knife, Shaka Zulu had already established one of the most dominant Sub-Saharan African kingdoms in history.&nbsp; His successors would continue implementing the military tactics he designed, further expanded the borders of the Zulu Empire, and would even win a major battle against the British Empire at Isandlwana fifty years later.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/shakazulu2.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Links:</span><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.carpenoctem.tv/military/shaka.html\">Carpe Noctem</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.zulu-culture-history.com/shaka_zulu_life.htm\">Zulu Culture</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.hyperhistory.net/apwh/bios/b1zulushaka.htm\">Hyperhistory.net</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.historynet.com/shaka-zulu-chieftain.htm\">History Net</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaka\">Wikipedia</a></p>\r\n<p><br /><br /></p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Sources:</span><br /><br /><span> Cawthorne, Nigel.&nbsp; <em>Military Commanders</em>.&nbsp; Enchanted Lion, 2004.<br /><br /> Kagan, Neil.&nbsp; <em>National Geographic Concise History of the World</em>.&nbsp; National Geographic, 2006.<br /><br /> Lanning, Michael Lee and James F. Dunnigan.&nbsp; <em>The Military 100</em>.&nbsp; Citadel, 2002. </span></p>','2010-08-13','576641720646','shakazulu.jpg','shakazulu1.jpg','Shaka Zulu','Merciless warlord who carved out Sub-Sahran Africa\'s most powerful Empire.',''),('Edward Kelly','June 1854','November 11, 1880','Beveridge, Victoria, Australia','19th-century Australian Outlaw','<p>For as much as I talk about <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/australia.html\">Australia</a> being a seething hellhole of awesome and <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/lighthorse.html\">its people</a> being more balls-out than a male pornstar with a malfunctioning zipper, I\'ve somehow yet to feature the country-continent\'s greatest folk hero &ndash; the head-fuckingly-hardcore bushranger Edward \"Ned\" Kelly and the ridiculously-sweet suit of homemade <em>Plate Armor of Bullet Resistance +1</em> that turned him from a local folk hero into <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/predator.html\">the Predator</a> and then into a national legend.&nbsp; Being recognized as one of the toughest guys to ever whip asses through the Outback is no small feat in a land packed full of poisonous trees, murderous jellyfish, and Aussie-rules football players, but, as the picture above might indicate, this guy was no ordinary badass.&nbsp; He was next-level shit.</p>\r\n<p>As the British so often love to point out, the island of Australia was originally set up as a penal colony where the English could dump off all the undesirable dirtbags of London and forget about them forever.&nbsp; The entire country was basically like a real-life <em>Escape from New York</em> - once you go in, you don\'t come back out, and the entire countryside was apparently just a freak-out of murder and lawlessness that made the dystopian future of <em>Road Warrior</em> look like that Disney movie with the talking cars.&nbsp; Being a cop on an island full of Snake Plisskens probably wasn\'t exactly a goddamned picnic by any stretch of the imagination, but in the mid- to late-19th century the rural police in Australia really seemed to get a kick out of fucking people over just for the sake of being raging assholes.&nbsp; At least, that\'s what the Kelly family claimed (repeatedly).&nbsp; The Kellys were deported from Ireland to Australia in 1843 as a result of some trumped-up pig-stealing charges, and Ned\'s dad, either through police dickheadery or legitimate criminal behavior, somehow constantly found himself getting fist-humped by the long arm of the law.&nbsp; Mr. Kelly was arrested a few dozen times, fined, beaten up, and died an early death as a result of a few decades\' worth of hard livin\', pig thievin\', and near-constant incarceration in a variety of hard labor penitentiaries.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/nedkelly.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>It should come as no surprise that young Edward Kelly (pictured above with his awesome beard and equally-rad hairstyle) wasn\'t exactly breaking down the doors of the governor\'s office asking to be put on the waiting list for the incoming class of the Victoria County Police Academy.&nbsp; Having your dad busted by the cops every couple weeks tends to have that effect on a kid.&nbsp; It probably also didn\'t help that Ned himself ended up getting arrested several times before he was even out of his teenage years including one assault charge in 1869 for punching a guy that was hilariously-named Ah Fook (rumor has it the guy yelled out his own name while being jacked in the face), and another time when he mailed a set of cow balls to his neighbor\'s wife and then fought the guy when he came around to bitch about it.&nbsp; When he was 16, Kelly was seen riding around town on a horse his buddy lent him and some dork cop tried to arrest him for horse thievery.&nbsp; When the police reinforcements showed up to help apprehend Neds, they found Kelly riding the cop through the streets like a horse.</p>\r\n<p>As entertaining as these tales of civil disobedience may have been, things took a far more serious turn in 1878, when some drunk-ass, power-mad constable came to the Kelly house and started talking shit to everyone and being a total jacknut.&nbsp; The Kellys tolerated this for a while, but when the hammered officer tried to get fresh with Ned\'s sister Kate, Mama Kelly whipped out a fucking shovel and cracked the guy across the knuckles with it.&nbsp; No longer capable of groping anything with his busted-up hand, the constable ran crying back to the police station and told his buddies that the big, bad Kelly Gang assaulted him and kicked his ass.&nbsp; A posse of cops returned to Kelly\'s house that night &ndash; Ned and his brother got out of there in time, but several members of his family were arrested and a warrant was issued for his capture.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/nedkelly1.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>From that point on, Ned Kelly decided he was going to dedicate the rest of his wild life to fucking authority in the mouth.&nbsp; He escaped into the bush of rural Australia, where he used his toughness and resourcefulness to live off the land <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/albertjohnson.html\">Albert Johnson</a>-style.&nbsp; He hunted for food, drummed up support from the local populace (who were also apparently sick of the Victoria Police\'s bullshit) and probably spent his free time <a href=\"http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10611973\">riding crocodiles</a>, crushing Foster\'s cans on his beard, and going down to the batting cage to prove his nut-tacular fortitude by letting a bunch of 80 mph baseballs ricochet off his sack like they were hitting a cement wall.</p>\r\n<p>But the Governor of Victoria wasn\'t about to let Ned get away with criminally being present while some asshole cop deservingly got the shit kicked out of him with a shovel.&nbsp; The Gov already had Kelly\'s number, and Ned was formally accused of having shot the officer in the hand with a pistol and publicly declared an outlaw.&nbsp; A trio of marshals headed out to the Wombat Ranges to hunt down Ned and his brother, but those guys were incompetent idiots and couldn\'t have tracked down the Kelly gang if they\'d lojacked them.&nbsp; When the dumbshit cops decided to take a break from their incredibly-well-planned manhunt to shoot handguns at wild parrots, the Kellys got the drop on them, ambushing them near Stringybark Creek and holding them at gunpoint.&nbsp; The lead cop immediately went to turn his revolver on the Kelly Gang, so Ned in turn smoked all three officers.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/nedkelly2.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>I\'m certainly not a proponent of cop killers, but this is kind of insane.&nbsp; From this point on, these guys immediately became the bushranger Aussie equivalent of Jesse James or Cole Younger - folk hero outlaws on the run from the cops.&nbsp; From that point on, unable to return to civilized life, the Kellys went on an insane bank robbery spree, declaring war on authority everywhere they could find it.&nbsp; Their actions, while obviously illegal, earned Ned a reputation as something of a Robin Hood-like character &ndash; sure, he was taking hostages, robbing banks, and stealing all the cash for himself, but in the banks that they robbed the Kellys would pull all the mortgage deeds out of the bank vaults and set them on fire, absolving oppressed homeowners of their debts to the bank.&nbsp; Ned and the Kelly Gang gained local support, built a network of accomplices to help hide them from the law, and pissed off the local cops worse than the Dukes of Hazzard County.</p>\r\n<p>As is the case with nearly every pirate, outlaw, and public enemy in history, however, Ned Kelly\'s hurricane of destruction needed to abruptly come to an ultraviolent end at some point, and for Ned that time was June 1880.&nbsp; He and his gang got a little too overexcited one day, took a bunch of hostages in a pub in Glenrowan, and then tried to blow up a passenger train full of cops.&nbsp; When the train didn\'t explode the way he hoped it would, Ned Kelly soon found himself completely surrounded by armed police, holed up inside a crappy little pub with no escape.&nbsp; Not one to go down without a totally badass last stand, Ned Kelly opened the pub door and whipped out one more surprise that the cops never saw coming:</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/nedkelly4.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Ned Kelly fucking <em>Army of Two</em>ed it, busting through the door in a suit of full plate armor he had constructed himself out of plowshares, bolts, and the blood of Yetis he strangled to death with his bare hands.&nbsp; He and his gang, each wearing 96 pounds of homemade <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/heemeyer.html\">Killdozer</a>, rushed out, guns blazing, fighting a hopeless last battle against an entire county worth of police officers.</p>\r\n<p>In the carnage that ensued, every member of Kelly\'s gang was killed, and Ned was shot nearly a dozen times in the arms and legs.&nbsp; Yet, somehow, he continued to press on &ndash; shambling forward Frankenstein-style, firing his rifle with one arm, until he was finally (and understandably) dropped by a close-range shotgun blast to the knees.&nbsp; He somehow survived this as well, but was captured, arrested, and thrown in the dock.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/nedkelly6.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>His armor is now in an Australian museum.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Ned\'s battle with the cops made headlines across the country the next morning, and Kelly was instantly catapulted to national celebrity.&nbsp; This armor-plated madman\'s story was so insane that 30,000 people went out that day and signed a petition calling for leniency and mercy for this misunderstood psychopath.&nbsp; They didn\'t get it &ndash; he was convicted of murder and hung from the neck until dead. Allegedly, his last words were, \"Ah well, I suppose it has come to this... such is life.\"</p>\r\n<p>I can\'t tell you how much I love the idea that his last words were basically, \"eh, fuck it.\"</p>\r\n<p>Despite the fact that he was an outlaw bushranger, Ned Kelly is now revered in Australia as a national hero and one of the most badass motherfuckers to ever live.&nbsp; He is the subject of dozens of Australian folk songs and artwork, was the subject of the world\'s first feature film, and even appeared on a postage stamp in 1980.&nbsp; To this day, particularly hardcore Aussies self-identify as \"Neds\".</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/nedkelly3.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>Coolest statue ever?</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Links:</span><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ned_Kelly\">Wikipedia</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.ironoutlaw.com/\">IronOutlaw.com</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.australianbushrangers.com/\">AustralianBushrangers.com</a></p>\r\n<p><br /><br /></p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Sources:</span><br /><br /><span> Brown, Max.&nbsp; <em>Australian Son: The Story of Ned Kelly</em>.&nbsp; Network Creative, 2005.<br /><br /> Seal, Graham.&nbsp; <em>Encyclopedia of Folk Heroes</em>.&nbsp; ABC-CLIO, 2001.<br /><br /> Seal, Graham.&nbsp; <em>The Outlaw Legend</em>.&nbsp; Cambridge Univ. Press, 1996.<br /><br /> Thomas, Paul.&nbsp; <em>Outlaws</em>.&nbsp; Black Rabbit Books, 2002.<br /><br /> White, Charles.&nbsp; <em>History of Australian Bushranging</em>.&nbsp; Angus and Robertson, 1903. </span></p>','2010-08-06','458687821272','nedkelly7.jpg','nedkelly70.jpg','Ned Kelly','Australian bushranger fought a last stand in a homemade suit of plate armor.','\"Let the hand of the law strike me down if it will, but I ask that my story might be heard and considered;  not that I wish to avert any decree the law may deem necessary to vindicate justice, or win a word of pity from anyone.  If my life teaches the public that men are made mad by bad treatment, and if the police are taught that they may not exasperate to madness men they persecute and illtreat, my life will not be entirely thrown away.  People who live in large towns have no idea of the tyrannical conduct of the police in country places far removed from court;  they have no idea of the harsh and overbearing manner in which they execute their duty, or how they neglect their duty and abuse their powers.\"'),('Anna Alexandrovna Timofeyeva-Yegorova','September 23, 1916','October 29, 2009','Soviet Union','WWII Russian Pilot','<p>Senior Lieutenant Anna Timofeyeva-Yegorova of the Soviet Union\'s 805th Ground Attack Regiment wasn\'t one of history\'s most badass aviatrixes just because she neck-punched antiquated social conventions and resolutely commanded a squadron of airmen who unquestioningly followed her orders.&nbsp; It\'s not even because she flew one of the most versatile and effective attack craft of the Second World War and survived nearly 250 combat missions at a time when the typical pilot was lucky to make it to 10 without getting pulped into ground beef by any number of highly-efficient German devices designed for shredding aircraft armor apart like a .50-caliber sniper rifle round punching through a can of Sprite.&nbsp; No, Timofeyeva-Yegorova was a badass chick because she never backed down from anything, ever, no matter how intense &ndash; not misogynistic subordinates, not perpetual German anti-aircraft fire, and not even harsh interrogations from two of the most brutal, torture-iffic secret police organizations this side of the Inquisition.&nbsp; She had one primary objective in life &ndash; dessicating fascists into bloodless hunks of meat &ndash; and she pursued it with the sort of unstoppable relentlessness that would have made the Terminator himself manufacture tear ducts for the sole purpose of crying a single tear of joy.</p>\r\n<p>Anna\'s quest to defend her homeland from the specter of Fascism started from a pretty inauspicious place.&nbsp; Yegorova (her vowel-rich name is generally shortened to this to preserve the sanity of all those reading and/or writing about her) was one of 16 children born to an apparently-nymphomaniac peasant family in some podunk village in Western Russia.&nbsp; In her early years, Anna neglected annoying serf duties, went to school, studied history and physics, and eventually moved to Moscow.&nbsp; In the city she found work as a locksmith, a flight instructor, and a construction worker, where she helped build the Metro.</p>\r\n<p>Being well-versed in a variety of manual labor specialties is cool or whatever, but the day she heard about the war breaking out, Yegorova immediately got pissed, ran down to the recruiting office, and volunteered to serve her country in combat.&nbsp; As soon as they heard that she was an experienced pilot, the Soviet Air Force dropped Anna in the cockpit of a miserably-shitty Polikarpov Po-2 reconnaissance plane and set her to work scouting out enemy troop movements and weapon emplacements.&nbsp; While this may sound like some kind of cushy desk job or some ballsack, in reality this kind of recon work is about as safe as strapping on a hot dog vest and trying to sprint through the tiger enclosure at the zoo.&nbsp; Clumsily looping through the air in a dinky wooden aircraft with a top speed that makes a Segway look like a jet engine, this fearless pilot spent the first two years of her military career flying out in broad daylight looking for locations packed with ground-to-air artillery and people looking to kill her, then circling around the bullets for a little while until she had a good mental count of what was in the area before finally heading home.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/yegorova1.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The risks associated with this sort of work are perhaps best exemplified in one particular mission Yegorova undertook in mid-1942.&nbsp; She was dispatched by high command to haul ass to the front lines and deliver a critical message to some randome battlefield commander, but right as she was putt-putt-putting her way to the warzone in a flying typewriter she suddenly found her plane locked firmly in the gun sights of a state-of-the-art German fighter aircraft.&nbsp; Yegorova attempted to evade, but there\'s really only so much you can do when your plane handles like a shopping cart and your only armament is a small-caliber handgun strapped to a holster on your thigh.&nbsp; The Soviet aviatrix\'s Po-2 ended up on the wrong end of some dual-linked 20mm cannons, got punched full of holes, caught on fire, exploded, and suddenly turned into a giant, no-longer-airworthy fireball of death. Despite the notable setback that she wasn\'t issued a parachute with her uniform (Soviet high command\'s view was that people were significantly more expendable of a resource than canvas), Yegorova somehow managed to pull out of a fiery death-spiral, ditch in a field, and extricate herself from the crumpled flaming shitball before it was completely incinerated.</p>\r\n<p>But the German pilot wasn\'t going to let this chick get off that easy.&nbsp; That jackass circled back around for another pass, strafing her from an extremely low altitude as she ran for the cover of a nearby cornfield.&nbsp; Badly burned, bruised, and exhausted, Yegorova evaded the machine gun fire, made it to a nearby cornfield, ducked behind the stalks, and buried herself under the vegetation.&nbsp; The German guy came back around again, but when he was unable to find her he got bored and went home.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/yegorova2.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Not only is this about as hardcore as an Everlasting Gobstopper, but it\'s not even the best part of the story.&nbsp; As I mentioned in the intro &ndash; Anna Yegorova never backed down from anything, and never gave up on her mission.&nbsp; Before the plane had burnt to a crisp, she somehow managed to pull the commander\'s orders out of the cockpit and jam them into her flight vest.&nbsp; Now burned, bruised, and half-dead she got up, dusted herself off, and ran to the front lines on foot, hand-delivering the message to the commander in the middle of a raging firefight against German tanks.</p>\r\n<p>Balls-out displays like this are hard to overlook, and after a couple more demonstrations of her titanium ovaries, the Soviets decided to train Yegorova as a combat pilot.&nbsp; She didn\'t join Raskova\'s Night Witches like many other women pilots of the time, however &ndash; instead she fell in as one of the only female pilots in the all-male 805th Ground Attack Regiment.&nbsp; Yegorova was assigned to fly the Il-2 Shturmovik attack aircraft, which was a significant upgrade over the Po-2 bullshittery she\'d been stuck with over the first two years of her career.&nbsp; The Sturmovik was serious shit &ndash; it wasn\'t fancy, but it sported decent armor, two machine guns, and either 1,300 pounds of bombs or 8 rockets, depending on what kind of mood you were in at the time.&nbsp; Primarily used to sautee the fuck out of tanks, railways, airfields, and even warships, this thing was like the <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/warthog.html\">A-10 Warthog</a> of World War II.&nbsp; Only without the Avenger gun.&nbsp; And it blew up a lot.&nbsp; Like, a lot.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/yegorova3.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>For the next two years, Anna Yegorova gave the middle finger to the obscene casualty rates of the Soviet Air Force and flew 243 combat missions, busting German armor across the Taman Peninsula, across the Stalingrad Campaign, through Belorussia, and over Poland.&nbsp; She received the Order of the Red Banner for a mission where she volunteered to fly into a heavily-defended German area and drop smoke bombs to conceal the movements of advancing Soviet troops, was then promoted to Squadron Commander and Regimental Navigator.&nbsp; Even in Soviet Russia, where it wasn\'t completely uncommon for women to serve in front-line warfare, a warrior babe had to have some serious badass cred if she wanted a bunch of hotshot men to follow her orders.&nbsp; Anna had it.</p>\r\n<p>As was the case with many pilots during this hellacious war, Anna\'s luck eventually ran out.&nbsp; On 20 August 1944 her craft was hit by AA fire while she was on a strafing run against some strategically-critical German armored positions.&nbsp; Even as she pulled up to examine the damage, she knew the outlook was grim &ndash; her instruments were smashed, the engine was on fire, the radio was damaged, and her gunner was splattered out in pieces in the Shturmovik\'s backseat.&nbsp; But once again Anna refused to give in &ndash; this badass chick knew that if she broke off the attack, the rest of her squadron would follow her lead.&nbsp; As flight leader she had to stay with it no matter what, Wedge Antilles style, and make sure that her men stayed on target.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/yegorova4.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The second strafing run would be the last of her career.&nbsp; A German round exploded up through the bottom of her plane, detonating the craft, blowing her out through the cockpit like Goose from <em>Top Gun</em>, shattering the glass and probably looking kind of awesome in the process.&nbsp; The force of the impact caused Anna to black out temporarily, and by the time she regained consciousness and yanked the parachute cord she was already too low to the ground for the newly-issued piece of equipment to do a hell of a lot of good.&nbsp; Even though the \'chute opened, hitting the ground at high velocity isn\'t exactly like being gently licked a thousand unicorns with Skittle tongues and pillows for teeth &ndash; the bitch-force of gravity drove her hard into the ground, breaking her spine, leg, both arms, and all of her ribs in the process.&nbsp; In the span of about thirty seconds she\'d gone from the Death Star trench run to a flying explosion to a crumpled, badly burned, broke-to-shit heap on the battlefield.&nbsp; German infantry closed on her position immediately, capturing her before she even had time to draw her sidearm.</p>\r\n<p>Barely conscious, Anna Yegorova was dragged to a German POW camp in Poland, where she was unceremoniously dumped her in a cell and left to rot.&nbsp; The only medical treatment she received in captivity was from her fellow inmates, many of whom were then subsequently beaten for aiding her (though they continued to do so anyway).&nbsp; For six months, the half-dead pilot slowly recuperated from her grievous injuries, somehow hanging on to what was left of her life and refusing to quit.&nbsp; She was questioned a couple times by prison guards, the SS, and the Gestapo, but never once broke under their interrogation.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/yegorova5.png\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Finally, in 1945, Soviet tanks rolled into the prison camp, crushing through the walls and liberating the captured soldiers inside.&nbsp; The Germans killed as many POWs as they could before they left, but once again Yegarova survived.&nbsp; Unfortunately, the Red Army wasn\'t particularly interested in the humane treatment of Lieutenant Yegarova either &ndash; she was the only woman in the camp and they immediately suspected her as a traitor and a spy, arrested her, and threw her into an NKVD prison.&nbsp; How being a woman equates to being a traitor is anyone\'s guess, but there you have it.&nbsp; For an additional 10 days, the one-time Soviet hero was ruthlessly grilled by her own countrymen &ndash; hardcore KGB and NKVD interrogators who cut their teeth drilling information out of SS prison camp guards and Gestapo prisoners.&nbsp; It sucked.</p>\r\n<p>But once again, Anna Yegarova showed that she had balls of steel.&nbsp; She was a fucking hero, and these guys were treating her like a traitor.&nbsp; On the eleventh day of captivity in Russia, she finally resolved to exonerate herself or die trying.&nbsp; When the guards came for her that evening, she pushed past them, rushed through the prison, knocked over an armed guard, and busted into the office of the NKVD Colonel in charge of the prison.&nbsp; Standing there defiantly as a group of Russian guards hurried after her, she told the dude straight to his face, \"You can shoot me, but I won\'t let you torture me.\"</p>\r\n<p>He released her that day.&nbsp; When she returned home she learned that she had been \"posthumously\" named a Heroine of the Soviet Union &ndash; the highest award for military bravery offered by the USSR.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/yegorova6.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Links:</span><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Yegorova\">Wikipedia</a></p>\r\n<p><br /><br /></p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Sources:</span><br /><br /><span> Noggle, Anne and Christine A. White.&nbsp; <em>A Dance with Death</em>.&nbsp; Texas A&amp;M University Press, 2001.<br /><br /> Sakaida, Henry.&nbsp; <em>Heroines of the Soviet Union</em>.&nbsp; Osprey, 2003.<br /><br /> Timofeyeva-Yegorova, Anna.&nbsp; <em>Red Sky, Black Death</em>.&nbsp; Slavica, 2009. </span></p>','2010-07-30','146197221310','yegorova.jpg','yegorova1.jpg','Anna Yegorova','WWII Sturmovik pilot and Heroine of the Soviet Union.','\"It was very difficult to be the leader of a male squadron. They trust you – not because you are a woman, but because you are a skillful and trained pilot.  The Germans always fired at the lead plane, because if the leader was shot down, the formation would disperse and leave without the commander.\"\r\n'),('Saito no Musashibo Benkei','1155','1189','Japan','Medieval Japanese Samurai','<p>Before we get started this week, I\'ll go ahead and address the obvious question &ndash; WTF is up with the ads?&nbsp; Well folks, after several months of progressively getting into deeper and deeper shit with my boss for writing and reading about badass stuff during work hours, I\'m honestly about one TPS report away from ragequitting my day job with all the tact and subtlety of a guy hurling his controller against a wall after dying in the boss battle with Sephiroth 57 times in a row (or, perhaps more realistically, just getting outright canned).&nbsp; With my future financial well-being in mind I\'ve decided to throw a couple hopefully-unobtrusive Google ads on the site as a means of gauging whether or not the Internet is something that can actually provide a legitimate income.&nbsp; If I\'m somehow able to sustain myself and just do the writing thing full-time, it would give me a dickload of time to do a bunch of shit I\'ve been putting off for a while (like re-writing those blacked-out badasses on the list, putting together some new miscellaneous articles, and maybe starting up a Podcast), as well as just being awesome just on general principle.&nbsp; In my HMTL wankering I also added a search box to the bottom of the page, in case you needed a more convenient way to figure out how many times in the history of the website I\'ve used the word \"douchebaggery\" in a sentence (the answer is twice). So, with that out of the way, on to the badass shit.</p>\r\n<p>The Japanese hero Saito Musashibo Benkei was a massive, ferocious behemoth of a man. This feudal Japanese sack-wrecker was known for being not only strong enough to pulverize your head into a disgusting grayish mush just by squeezing your face really hard with his bare hands, but also for having an appearance so hideously ugly and freakishly ogre-like that just looking at this guy caused many opposing warriors to drop their swords, go into respiratory failure, and instantly take a huge dump in their armor.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/benkei1.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Benkei was a Buddhist priest, but he wasn\'t the sort of Buddhist priest that spends all day in their sanctuary praying, thinking about peace, and not going around smashing people in the groin with a bladed poleaxe until they cough up their prostate. He joined a monastery, but that was a little too tame for him, and he was eventually kicked out because of his recklessness and general balls-outitude. So, in true badass fashion, Benkei went out into the woods, built a one-man shrine to the Buddha next to a bridge over a quiet, peaceful stream, and dedicated his life to beating the holy living fuckshit out of any insolent jacknuts who tried to cross his bridge. During what must have been a rather successful and lengthy career as a moderately-holy highwayman, Benkei won 999 duels without suffering a single defeat.</p>\r\n<p>The 1,000th man who attempted to cross the bridge was a samurai feudal lord named Minamoto no Yoshitsune. In an epic, Soul Calibur-esqe deathmatch between the two men, Yoshitsune somehow managed to emerge on top, disarming the hulking behemoth with some crazy Princess Bride shit. Benkei, totally in awe of the man who somehow just rocked his face in hand-to-hand combat, immediately swore a Wookie Life Debt to Yoshtisune. He followed his new lord through the entirety of a massive war that swept across Japan, kicking asses wherever he was able to find them, and helping the Minamoto Clan of neck-slashing samurai achieve victory over their hated rivals, the Taira Clan.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/benkei2.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Things were going pretty well for these guys until one day all of a sudden Yoshitsune\'s brother decided he was going to take charge, seize power for himself, and declare his brother a traitor and an outlaw. Out of nowhere, a huge group of powerful Minamoto warriors came rushing out, destroyed all of Yoshitsune\'s retainers, and laid siege to the once-powerful warlord\'s castle.</p>\r\n<p>Yoshitsune, knowing that the end was near, decided that the only rational way of dealing with the dishonor of having been cocked over by his own Clan and defeated in battle was to ritualistically disembowel himself by committing seppuku. It takes a little bit of time to do the seppuku thing up right, though, so in his final act as a samurai lord Yoshitsune ordered his last surviving warrior &ndash; Saito Musashibo Benkei &ndash; to guard the castle while he sat down and ate a folded-up Frisbee Real Ultimate Power-style.</p>\r\n<p>Now, this may seem like a foreign concept to you and I, but back in the days of the daimyo killing yourself in the appropriate manner was a really big deal. I guess you can kind of think of committing seppuku as getting totally pissed off out of your mind because you\'re about to lose a round of multiplayer Halo, and ragequitting by blowing yourself up with the rocket launcher in order to deny your doucheface opponent the satisfaction of getting the final kill-shot on you. Ultimately, the point here is that Benkei took this order seriously.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/benkei3.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Benkei went out to the drawbridge leading towards the castle, clenched his naginata in his fists, and dared the army on the other side to fucking fuck with him. A couple punk-ass bitches thought they wanted a piece of SMB, but Benkei slapped the fail out of them with the blunt end of his bladed axe, knocking their brains out and sending crumpled remains splashing into the moat. The enemy army stood across from him, trying to figure out how the balls they were going to get past him, and whenever some dumbshit managed to find the cojones required to step foot on the drawbridge Benkei made sure the last thing he saw was a foot-long hunk of razor sharp steel.</p>\r\n<p>Realizing that any attempts of fighting Benkei like a man was going to result in an eviscerated brain pan, the opposing army just decided to shoot a bunch of arrows at him instead. Amazingly, this didn\'t even seem to faze him all that much &ndash; he just stood there, weapon at the ready, his armor bristling with a couple dozen arrows. Legend has it that he was so defiant and pissed off that he actually died standing upright, and that the dumbass retards he was fighting didn\'t seem to pick up on it until he\'d already been dead for some time. Whatever the case may be, Benkei was eventually killed by a gatling gun barrage of arrows, but by the time the rival hordes broke into the inner sanctum of Yoshitsune\'s castle it was too late &ndash; the proud warrior had already completed the ritual and died with all the honor due a samurai of his stature. So I guess that\'s worth something.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/benkei4.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Sources:</span><br /><br /><span> De Benneville, James.&nbsp; <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Tales of the Wars of the Gempei</span>.&nbsp; Bibliobazaar, 2001.<br /><br /> Murasaki Shikibu.&nbsp; <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Tale of the Heike</span>.&nbsp; Trans. Helen Craig McCullough.&nbsp; Stanford Univ. Press, 1994.<br /><br /> Turnbull, Stephen R.&nbsp; <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">The Samurai: A Military History</span>.&nbsp; Routledge, 1996.<br /><br /> Turnbull, Stephen R.&nbsp; <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Warriors of Medieval Japan</span>.&nbsp; Osprey, 2007. </span></p>','2010-07-16','554303921367','benkei.jpg','benkei1.jpg','Saito Musashibo Benkei','Feudal Japanese warrior so tough that not even being dead could bring him down.','\"Benkei stood there defiantly, naginata in hand, and so terrible did he look that none dared approach him.\"\r\n\r\n- Stephen Turnbull, The Samurai: A Military History'),('Wayne Thomas Shelford','December 13, 1957','N/A','Rotorua, New Zealand','20th-century NewZealand Athlete','<p>It\'s my secret shame that I love watching World Cup soccer. I know, this may forever taint all of your opinions of me from here until the Apocalypse, but it\'s the sad truth. Like most red-blooded Americans, I really couldn\'t give a flying disembodied nutsack about soccer most of the time, but for one month every four years I seem to find myself inextricably glued to the television watching every frustrating failed goal-scoring attempt like it was James Bond trying to disarm a planet-smashing nuclear warhead with two seconds left on the timer and the fate of Western civilization hanging in the balance. I become one of those guys who tell their co-workers, \"Wow, that was a great match\", after a 1-1 tie game that was, in all actuality, probably about as boring as a textbook on Neanderthal art history. I use the word \"pitch\" to refer to a soccer field, even though the word causes me actual, physical pain every time I say it. I really can\'t explain exactly what it is that turns me vaguely-European for four weeks out of the year... maybe it\'s the blood-and-guts drama, maybe it the way so many people from all over the world seem to think that this is the greatest shit since baked potatoes, maybe it\'s the fact that it comes on in the middle of the workday and gives me a legitimate excuse for ditching my cubicle and watching sports in an unoccupied conference room, or maybe it\'s just that it\'s supported by a fucking <a href=\"http://www.cnn.com/2010/SPORT/football/07/08/germany.octopus.explainer/index.html\">psychic mini-Kraken</a> that serves as the closest thing real-life has to a creepy-as-hell aquatic Hypnotoad. It\'s like every time the World Cup rolls around there\'s some sort of bizarre vortex that tears a hole in the fabric of the universe just long enough for the citizens of America to realize what life might have been like if the Revolutionary War had gone a little differently and we were still run by British, and, much like our period as one of the King\'s colonies, it\'s pretty cool for a little while but eventually we get over it and go back to doing our own thing.</p>\r\n<p>There is, however, one dark, unspeakable aspect of international soccer that I cannot in good conscience seem to overlook. One monumentally un-badass facet of the game that dominates the sport, and which rears its hideous bulbous head with such alarming frequency that it\'s impossible to watch an entire match without clenching your fists in a mildly-pissed sense of outrage &ndash; the unbridled, shameless flopping.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/shelford1.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Soccer is probably one of the only organized sports out there that actually rewards pussy behavior (though I have to admit that basketball is getting there). Like it or not, for whatever reason there\'s a huge incentive in the sport for some big, supposedly-tough douchebag to send himself hurtling through the air every time his opponent\'s leg gets anywhere close to the ball. These goddamned floppers routinely go flying at the first sign of a challenge, and then spend two minutes rolling around on the pitch howling and weeping like they\'ve just been shot in the kneecap at point-blank range with a shotgun. Then, as soon as the foul is called, these faking assclowns just pop up like nothing\'s wrong and start sprinting around without so much as losing a step. Sure, I have no doubt that it probably hurts like a motherfucker when you get tripped up while running at full speed, but this is some of the most ridiculous weaksauce shit I\'ve ever seen. Every other sport has a culture that requires you to take it like a man &ndash; don\'t let the other fuckers see that they hurt you, get your ass up, and tough it out. Don\'t give them the satisfaction of knowing that they\'ve hurt you, and don\'t stop trying to crush peoples\' faces inside out until you hear the whistle. In some soccer games it\'s more like there are twenty-two NFL wide receivers on the field simultaneously bitching and complaining about calls &ndash; some of these guys spend so much time rolling around or arguing with the refs that they completely take themselves out of what might have actually been an interesting play, shamelessly trying to draw a bullshit foul call rather than actually playing the fucking game the way it was intended. It\'s infuriating, especially to people who enjoy badassitude.</p>\r\n<p>The game of rugby is the exact opposite of soccer. I won\'t pretend that I really know anything about the sport &ndash; I think I\'ve probably watched three rugby matches in my entire life, and those were at like four in the morning while I was intoxicated and not in any position to be trying to remember or absorb any sort of new information. I tend to think of it as a crap-your-pants insane cross between <em>Mutant League Football</em>, <em>Blood Bowl</em>, <em>Base Wars</em>, and <em>Kill the Man with the Ball</em>, and from what I\'ve seen, that might not be too far off. All I\'m really certain of is that when you\'re talking about international rugby there\'s one team that perpetually dominates the sport year after year &ndash; the New Zealand All-Blacks &ndash; and among the All-Blacks, there\'s one man who is an epic legend that all badass aficionados (even those who couldn\'t give a crap about sports) should be able to appreciate: Buck Shelford.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/shelford2.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>I love that the cover of his biography is just him showing off his unstoppable ballsack.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Shelford is a New Zealander of Maori descent, meaning that his ancestors were part of an uber-intense warrior-culture that <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mokomokai\">tattooed their faces</a>, beat the shit out of European colonizers by clubbing them in the dome with jade bludgeons until their skulls exploded out their ears, and cut off the heads of their enemies to carry around as trophies demonstrating how good they were at killing people and lopping off their heads. The Maori are seriously nuts, and you really don\'t want to cross these guys unless you enjoy being put in a headlock that\'s only marginally less decapitation-inducing than having a dude clamp a giant bear trap on your neck. In order to honor his heritage, Shelford revamped the <em>haka</em>, the <a href=\"http://www.allblacks.com/index.cfm?layout=haka\">moderately-terrifying dance</a> the All-Blacks perform before games as a way of collectively threatening the opposing team with bodily harm just moments before beating the shit out of them with a few career-ending tackles that would leave most normal humans crumpled in a boneless heap on the floor. Shelford is believed by some people to be the greatest player to ever play at his particular position in rugby, whatever that position may be, and he captained the All-Blacks during a period of time when they went undefeated for three and a half straight years. What I\'m trying to say is that he was good at rugby.</p>\r\n<p>And now, finally, a good twelve hundred words into the article, we get to the crux of why I chose to include Shelford on the website this week &ndash; his incredible, literally balls-out actions during a match with the French national team in 1986 that was so hardcore and brutal it\'s simply known as the \"Battle of Nantes\". Actions that rank very high on the list of the most badass things ever recorded on the field of any sport throughout the course of history.</p>\r\n<p>During his international match against the French, Shelford was basically just running around doing his thing (a \"thing\" that usually involved charging around the field without any kind of padding more protective than a headband and hitting dudes harder than Ronnie Lott decapitating a receiver on a crossing route) when all of a sudden, about 20 minutes in, he ended up on the bottom of a huge-ass pile of anarchy with a bunch of giant rugby motherfuckers kicking and clawing for the ball. In all the fighting and battling for possession, Shelford was jacked in the face with a bare-knuckled roundhouse punch that knocked out four of his teeth. But that wasn\'t the worst of it &ndash; not long after getting de-toothed with a sucker punch, a French cleat found its way through the pile and struck Shelford directly in the ballsack, ripping it open leaving one nut hanging out of his scrote.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/shelford3.png\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>You are reading this correctly &ndash; the guy got Monkey Steals the Peached by a fucking spiked boot in the middle of a rugby game. Displaying what can only be the utter, literal definition of balls-out, Shelford amazingly didn\'t even seem to give a shit about a wound that would have brought even a <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/stamfordbridge.html\">berserking Viking warrior</a> to his knees in agony. Bleeding badly, missing a ball from his goodie sack, and in what could only have been excruciating pain in both his face and groin, Shelford didn\'t roll around on the turf crying like some kind of professional soccer flopper punk. He didn\'t get carted off to the hospital in an ambulance for emergency surgery. He didn\'t even go to the locker room strapped to the back of one of those little golf cart thingies. This psychotic madman <em>got up, walked off the pitch holding his balls back in place, stood on the sidelines, and waited patiently while the team doc stitched up his nutsack on international television</em>. Without anesthesia. With a cameraman right in his face, taping the entire gruesome procedure. I didn\'t find the footage of the incredibly-unhygenic surgery, but I\'m not going to lie and say that I tried very hard, either. There are some things which can be sufficiently described with text and don\'t necessarily require people to see things that can never be unseen.</p>\r\n<p>Seriously, are you kidding me with this shit? Not only is this the most insane tale of on-field toughness ever recorded, but shortly after having a threaded needle repeatedly jammed into in an area where most guys aren\'t particularly keen on inserting pointy objects, this unstoppable Rugby-Bot 9000 <em>came back and played the second half</em> with a stitched-up junkbag and a mouthful of gauze to prevent him from coughing and spitting blood all over the place Alice Cooper-style. Despite being only slightly more well-put-together than Frankenstein\'s Monster at this point, Shelford continued pushing it to the limit, and didn\'t slow down, half-ass it, or back down from hardcore contact &ndash; while trying to plow through for extra yards later on in the game he took yet another huge hit and ended up receiving a massive concussion. To this day the guy has absolutely no recollection of the game. Maybe that\'s a good thing&hellip; it would be the only game he played for the national team in which the All-Blacks lost, and intensive hardcore crotchal trauma is generally not the sort of thing most people would presumably be too keen on remembering. Shelford would get his revenge nevertheless, simply on principle alone &ndash; a year later he and the All-Blacks would square off against the same French team in the finals of the first-ever Rugby World Cup and with a fully-functioning ballsack (we can fix it&hellip; we can make it better, faster, stronger&hellip;), Shelford overcame his groin-kicking adversaries and led New Zealand to the world championship in the sport of professional badassball.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/shelford4.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>In honor of Buck, I should hope the All-Blacks would try to work a little bit group crotch-chopping action into their <em>haka</em>.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Links/Sources:</span><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/rugby_union/international/2354565.stm\">BBC Article</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayne_Shelford\">Wikipedia</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.liveupdater.com/speakers/livearticle.asp?ArtID=-1632426447\">New Zealand Speakers</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.therugbyforum.com/features/trfhof/140-hall-of-fame-inductee-wayne-qbuckq-shelford\">Rugby Hall of Fame</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.sportingo.com/rugby/a4683_all-black-legend-buck-shelford\">Sportingo.com</a></p>','2010-07-09','16999521462','shelford.jpg','shelford1.jpg','Buck Shelford','Rugby player has ball ripped off in first half, comes back and plays the second.',''),('John Basilone','November 4, 1916','February 19, 1945','Buffalo, NY, USA','WWII American Marine','<p>Throughout the course of the website\'s lifespan, I\'ve hit most of the biggest and most famous badasses in United States Marine Corps history. I\'ve talked about Daly, Hathcock, Puller, and many others both digitally and in print, though to date there has been one glaring omission to this long, hallowed list of American war heroes &ndash; Gunnery Sergeant John Basilone. A one-man nuclear warhead of destruction, Basilone is the only man to receive both the Medal of Honor and the Navy Cross for actions in combat during World War II, and was the first enlisted Marine in WWII to receive the Medal of Honor and live to talk about it. He nowadays is correctly remembered by Marines across the U.S. as one of the toughest mofos to ever beat a dude to death with a heavy machine gun.</p>\r\n<p>The sixth of ten kids born to an off-the-boat Italian family in Buffalo, New York, Basilone knew from his youth that he was interested in a life of busting peoples\' chest cavities apart with his fists and/or some kind of large-gauge automatic weapon ammunition. He initially joined the U.S. Army in 1934, where combined both of these hobbies by spending most of time by punching people ruthlessly in the head for fun as an Army boxing champions. Eventually Basilone got bored of beating the crap out of his fellow Americans and, after a brief return to the States, re-enlisted in the Marine Corps so that he could head back to the Pacific and prove to everyone how gigantic and inflexible his balls are.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/basilone6.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Not long after joining the Corps, the Empire of Japan spontaneously decided it would be sweet to sneak up and blow the crap out of a bunch of U.S. battleships when nobody was looking, and the American government responded to this affront to its honor by unleashing Gunnery Sergeant Basilone on the Japanese-controlled island of Guadalcanal in1942. Just six months after Pearl Harbor, Basilone was one of the first guys to hit the beach. Fighting through the pouring rain and untold amounts of suck, the Marines clawed every inch of land they could wrench from the hands of the Japanese, finally capturing the critical airbase at Henderson Field &ndash; a vital strategic location that allowed the Americans to bring up supplies, men, gear, and machines to help them on their march across this lush tropical hellhole of bullets and explosions.</p>\r\n<p>As the battle started to turn against the Empire of Japan and control of Guadalcanal slowly began to slip through his katana-gripping fingers, the commander of the Imperial forces decided to put together one last-ditch effort to re-take the airfield &ndash; a delicate mix of subtlety, sublime tactics and an intricate battle plan that basically consisted of \"let\'s take 3,000 motherfuckers with grenades and bayonets and shove them right up everyone\'s assholes\". A sound plan of attack, to be sure, especially considering that these three thousand dudes were all being hurled into a narrow pass defended by one fifteen-man machine gun team attached to the 7th Marine Regiment, but unfortunately for the Japanese, they didn\'t bank on the fact that Gunnery Sergeant John Basilone was a human force field of bullets had no intention of sitting back and letting himself get steamrolled by a force two hundred times larger than his own detachment.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/basilone3.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>This is the sort of statue you get made of you when you\'re a total badass.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Knowing that the attack was coming, Basilone fortified the pass Leonidas-style, only instead of relying on spears and shields he set up barbed wire fences and full-auto tripod-mounted .30-caliber machine guns. He didn\'t have to wait long after digging in. In the middle of the night of October 24, 1942, the full-on frontal attack of balls-out Japanese infantrymen came blitzing through the ankle-deep mud and driving rain. As a fearsome horde of screaming, bayonet-waving Japanese soldiers rushed towards Henderson Field looking to bury the U.S. base in a pile of American corpses, mortars, artillery, and hand grenades poured into the heavily-outnumbered American positions. Basilone knew some serious shit was about to go down.</p>\r\n<p>The Marines fought bravely against the onslaught, but the Japanese human wave attacks never stopped, never relented, and for the next 72 hours, day and night, there wasn\'t a minute of their lives that wasn\'t haunted by a screaming Japanese dude stuffing a blade in their mugs or zinging bullets into the American sandbags. Basilone, however, wasn\'t going to fucking budge. For three three days and nights, without food or sleep in a marathon of carnage that can only be referred to as \"Jack Bauerian\", Basilone lugged a giant-ass 100-pound Browning heavy machine gun from position to position, constantly re-adjusting his fields of fire and constantly making sure that everything in front of his position was coated in a thick hail of tracer fire and crunchy lead death. When one of his squad\'s three operational machine guns jammed up from caked-on mud, overheating, or having the trigger lever worn out from extended bouts of cap-busting, Basilone worked his nuts off to clear the weapon and get it operational as soon as possible. When taking the time to pop open the firing mechanism wasn\'t practical because of all the pissed-off soldiers trying to put rifle rounds into his brain from point-blank range, Basilone dropped the gun, pulled the .45 from his waistband, and opened fire on the attackers with his pistol, sometimes from distances of less than ten feet. At one point he was down to just two survivors in his squad &ndash; one of which was now missing a hand &ndash; yet he still continued to fight relentlessly against all odds. Not even something as daunting as, you know, not having ammo and being almost completely overrun by enemies could stop this crazy one-man abattoir from IDKFA-ing his way through the enemy at every possible turn &ndash; at one point he fought his way through enemy with only his Colt M1911, got back to the airbase, and fought his way <em>back</em> to his squad with enough ammo to keep his guns fully-operational. By the time the sun rose on the fourth day, Gunnery Sergeant Basilone\'s machine gun crew had just three men standing. They had burned through 125 belts of ammunition. The entire Japanese regiment was annihilated.</p>\r\n<p>After Basilone picked his way through the mountains of bodies, he received the Medal of Honor for his balls-out actions, and returned to the states to a ticker-tape parade. Between this guy and <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/paige.html\">Mitchell Paige</a>, the Japanese didn\'t stand a chance at Guadalcanal &ndash; these two Marines nearly single-handedly held the line against impossible odds, crushing everything in sight with their nutsacks and machine guns and maintaining the island as a forward base deep in the heart of the Japanese Empire.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/basilone1.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>Basilone, Page, and some other dudes.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Once Basilone\'s story got out into the papers and everybody had a solid appreciation for just how much ass this guy could kick, Basilone was understandably looked at a larger-than-life hero among the American public. He went on a national tour to raise war bonds and pump up the populace along the homefront, and the Corps offered him an officers\' commission and an opportunity to train troops at bases stateside, but Basilone wasn\'t a politician or a figurehead &ndash; he was a warrior. He refused any MoS that didn\'t involve firing heavy weapons at enemy combatants, telling his commanders that he wasn\'t going to turn his back on the Marines that needed him.</p>\r\n<p>So John Basilone went back into the shit. His next assignment: the amphibious landing on the beaches of Iwo Jima, which isn\'t exactly a picnic or anything, but this guy wouldn\'t have had it any other way. Back in his familiar role as a machine gun team leader, Basilone stepped right back into the business of slaughtering Imperial soldiers and pumping up Marines with his awesome ability to become totally hardcore at will. As soon as the landing craft hit the beach, the Marines came under intense fire from heavily-fortified Japanese blockhouses on the ridges ahead. Basilone, who was apparently was also completely immune to fear in any capacity, ran up and down the beach getting his men up and urging them to get to cover. Once his troops were safely not being torn to fuck by Japanese machine guns, Basilone grabbed a satchel of explosives, ran up to the nearest blockhouse, and blew it into the prehistoric age with a series of grenades and demo charges. The pinned-down Marines received a brief respite, picked themselves up, and continued pressing the attack.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/basilone4.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>But, amazingly, Basilone still hadn\'t reached his lifetime asskicking quota. He pressed forward towards the Iwo Jima airfield, but as he reached a mine-infested field of mud and nasty shit, he saw a couple of USMC tanks stuck in the ground, unable to move forward. Basilone knew that these tanks would be pretty useful against machine gun nests (being that, you know, they are bulletproof), so, despite the zipping machine gun bullets, exploding artillery shells, and motherfuckers shooting anti-tank rockets at the helpless vehicles, Basilone <em>ran the fuck out</em> into the open field and helped push the tanks free. The combined force of tanks and infantry overran the airfield\'s defenders, capturing Iwo Jima\'s most critical location for the Americans.</p>\r\n<p>Unfortunately, Basilone wouldn\'t be around to drink some celebratory drinks with his men. He was killed by mortar shrapnel not long before the end of the battle. He posthumously received the Navy Cross, the second highest bravery award available to Marines, thus becoming the only Marine from the war to earn both the Navy Cross and the Medal of Honor. He is now buried in Arlington National Cemetery, one of the true heroes of the American military.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/basilone2.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Links/Sources:</span><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv/2010/03/28/2010-03-28_film_to_honor_her_hero_wwii_uncle.html\">NY Daily News</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://ww2db.com/person_bio.php?person_id=85\">WWII Database</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.salem-news.com/articles/may122010/basilone-marine-ro.php\">Salem News</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.cimorelli.com/pie/heroes/basilone.htm\">WWII Paperwork</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/johnbasi.htm\">Arlington Cemetery</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://articles.latimes.com/2010/may/03/entertainment/la-et-basilone-20100503\">LA Times</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.marineswwii.com/john_basilone.php\">MarinesWWII.com</a></p>','2010-07-02','50581021494','basilone.gif','basilone1.gif','John Basilone','Marine Corps legend and hero of Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima.','Stouthearted and indomitable, Gunnery Sergeant Basilone, by his intrepid initiative, outstanding skill, and valiant spirit of self-sacrifice in the face of the fanatic opposition, contributed materially to the advance of his company during the early critical period of the assault, and his unwavering devotion to duty throughout the bitter conflict was an inspiration to his comrades and reflects the highest credit upon Gunnery Sergeant Basilone and the United States Naval Service.\r\n\r\n- Navy Cross citation'),('Frederick Barbarossa','1122','June 10, 1190','Germany','Medieval German General','<p>Amazing, heart-warming stories about the triumph of the human sprit through the medium of homemade artillery are cool and all, but every once in a while you need to sit down and sink your teeth into a straight-up, no-bullshit medieval ass-annihilator who responded to dissenters with a crushing mace-wound to the balls, clawed together an empire by punching people in half with a steel-plated gauntlet, and enjoyed drinking lager amid giant steaming piles of broke-to-fuck corpses.&nbsp; Frederick Barbarossa is one of those men.</p>\r\n<p>Barbarossa was one of the most stone-cold shit-wreckers of the 12th century, which is saying something because (as you all know) the 12th century was a pretty prime time in history for stone-cold shit-wreckers.&nbsp; He was born in the year 1122 to a family that claimed lineage to fellow-badass Charlemagne, and was intent on upholding the legacy of endless beatings and military ball-crushings initiated by their prestigious forefather.&nbsp; Fredericks\' father was the Duke of Swabia, which is a weird name for a Duchy, and his mother was the daughter of a guy named Henry the Black, who I know very little about, though he doesn\'t sound like a super-friendly, totally-easy-going kind of person.&nbsp; Freddy grew up learning all the hardcore shit German royalty taught their kids in the Dark Ages, a curriculum that mostly featured people getting beat about the head and legs with inflexible wooden rods or tearing wild beasts apart with their hands or teeth.&nbsp; In order to further assert his manliness over the less-testosterone-y denizens of the Fatherland, Frederick one day decided to grow one of the most righteous beards ever recorded.&nbsp; This face-rug was so epic that it actually became part of his name &ndash; Barbarossa is just the Italian way of saying \"Red Beard\", which would be a totally sweet name for a Caribbean pirate or a plunder-seeking Viking warlord.&nbsp; Turns out it fit Frederick just fine in his role as the future iron-fisted totalitarian ruler of Central Europe.&nbsp; Despite already having a reputation for toughness, he made a name for himself in a live-fire exercise at the age of 25, when he traveled to the Holy Land and fought in the Second Crusade in a place of honor alongside the German king.&nbsp; The Second Crusade ended up being basically a huge clusterfuck of misery that resulted in what can perhaps be most eloquently described as <span>OMG EPIC FAIL LOL</span>, but in his role as a relatively-non-influential battlefield commander Barbarossa cleaved so many warriors to pieces and performed so well that nobody really blamed him for Christianity\'s poor showing in the campaign.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/frederickbarbarossa.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Frederick was such a hardcore warrior and natural leader that when King Conrad died in 1152 he snubbed his own son out of his inheritance and appointed Barbarossa king instead, which was a serious burn to the young Prince.&nbsp; Barbarossa thought this was pretty bitchin\', but decided he\'d much rather be an Emperor than just a King, so he went down to the Vatican in Rome and told the Pope to get busy with the crowning and the anointing and whatnot.&nbsp; The Pope &ndash; who was always quite the negotiator during this period of history &ndash; agreed to declare Frederick Emperor of a newly-reformed Holy Roman Empire, but only if Frederick went out and ruthlessly beat some commune-living atheists into submission for him.&nbsp; Before the Pope had even finished his sentence, Barbarossa was standing in a castle in Lombardy setting fire to priceless tapestries and bashing peoples\' skulls in with an unrelenting series of vicious bearded headbutts.</p>\r\n<p>Less than two years into his reign as King of Germany, Frederick Barbarossa had already married the moderately-hot Queen of Burgundy, been crowned Emperor, quelled rebellions in some unruly provinces, and intervened in a civil war in Denmark that he had absolutely no stake in.&nbsp; He solidified his position among the princes of Germany with his mad leadership skillz, and then used a combination of diplomacy, violence, and ultra-violence to assimilate Poland, Bohemia, Burgundy, Hungary, Denmark, and much of Northern Italy under his Empire.&nbsp; When this guy wasn\'t trampling the ass out of people with balls-out charges from heavily-armored Teutonic knights, Frederick made a bunch of important laws and shit.&nbsp; Like, for instance, he officially declared that if you were going to start a private war against some noble family that was pissing you off, you had to give them at least three days notice before stomping them into oblivion.&nbsp; This seems fair to me, and everybody else pretty much tended to agree as well.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/frederickbarbarossa2.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>BEEEEEAAAAAAARRRRRRRRDDDDDD</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>It turned out that while calling yourself an Emperor and everything is really awesome, being the Holy Roman Emperor was kind of a pain in the ass because you always had to deal with power-hungry Popes trying to assert their authority over you.&nbsp; Frederick eventually got sick of that shit, and decided to make the Pope understand that no matter how much moral authority you may have, the dude with the giant fucking sword generally is the dude who makes the rules.&nbsp; In 1158, Barbarossa marched his armies over the Alps into Italy and started trashing everything he could find.&nbsp; The Italian armies were crushed, and those cities unwise enough to resist the German onslaught were surrounded and besieged.&nbsp; Frederick had places to go and people to kill, however, and he didn\'t want to screw around with extended sieges, so instead of starving out the inhabitants he just captured a bunch of still-breathing prisoners of war, stuffed them into catapults, and launched live civilians head-first into the enemy battlements until the defenders had the good sense to surrender.&nbsp; Barbarossa didn\'t even get to Rome before the Pope crapped himself and died, and Frederick just went home and called it a night.</p>\r\n<p>The replacement Pope still stubbornly kept up the \"I RULE YOU\" shenanigans, but rather than walk all the way back to Italy and break heads apart Frederick just appointed an Antipope instead.&nbsp; The Antipope was kind of like a real Pope, only he had no actual authority, a unilateral loyalty to the German Emperor, and a much cooler title.&nbsp; This is pretty bizarre, but you kind of have to respect how awesome it is that Frederick Barbarossa arbitrarily gave himself the power to appoint the leader of the Roman Catholic Church.&nbsp; Frederick eventually decided that the Antipope was fun and everything, but he couldn\'t really handle the fact that the real Pope was sitting around not bowing to his will.&nbsp; So in 1165 he conquered Italy again, burned down a bunch of cities as he passed through, and chased the real Pope out of Rome.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/frederickbarbarossa3.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>GIVE US UR POPEZ</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Eventually the Italians got tired of having their cities set on fire and their people mercilessly massacred all the time, so in 1174 Frederick\'s territories in Lombardy openly rebelled against the Empire.&nbsp; This time, however, Barbarossa didn\'t wind up celebrating his ability to destroy Italian architecture - he was sold out by his own cousin (and vassal) when Henry the Lion refused to send troops to help in the war effort.&nbsp; Between battle, illness, and miscellaneous bullshit, Frederick lost the war, returned to Germany in defeat, and avenged his honor by invading Saxony, destroying Henry, stripping him of his lands, and exiling him to England.&nbsp; Legend has it that Frederick only spared his cousin\'s life after Henry the Lion fell at his feet and begged for forgiveness.</p>\r\n<p>From this point on, Frederick let off on the gas pedal of the non-stop assbeatings, and decided to take a more diplomatic approach to world domination, gaining power over Italy through back-door power plays.&nbsp; He finally acknowledged the (real) Pope, convinced his former subjects in Italy to consent to allying themselves with him, married his son to the Princess of Sicily, and got his son coronated King of Italy in 1186, just twelve years after his attempt to conquer the land by force had failed.</p>\r\n<p>But don\'t go thinking that this ass-wrecking manic got soft with his old age or anything - he could still talk shit with the best of them, and he wasn\'t too civilized to settle disputes with extreme violence at the first sign of trouble.&nbsp; Like when Saladin conquered Jerusalem to kick off the Third Crusade, Barbarossa was totally ripshit.&nbsp; In awesome badass fashion he sent the Muslim ruler a letter saying that he was coming down there to kick his ass personally, and that the next time they spoke it was going to be face-to-face (or, more appropriately, face-to-sword).&nbsp; He assembled 20,000 badass knights, charged over land through Hungary, Serbia, and the Byzantine Empire, and fought two successful battles in Asia Minor.&nbsp; Ultimately however, Barbarossa never got to make good on his thinly-veiled threat &ndash; he died trying to charge through a river in full armor to get to the front lines of a nearby battle when the current swept his horse out from under him mid-stream.&nbsp; It\'s an \"A\" for effort, but the execution was a little lacking.&nbsp; Barbarossa was buried in Antioch, though some German folklore claims that he\'s just resting in a cave, waiting to save his people in the time of their greatest need.&nbsp; Even today his name is synonymous with bloodshed, as evidenced by the fact that the WWII Operation Barbarossa - the largest and most violent and bloodiest campaign in the history of war &ndash; is named after him.</p>\r\n<p>That seems appropriate somehow.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/frederickbarbarossa5.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>GO GET ME SOME NACHOS, BOY!!!!</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Links:</span><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://militaryhistory.about.com/od/army/p/barbarossa.htm\">MilitaryHistory.About.com</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06252b.htm\">Catholic Encyclopedia</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.middle-ages.org.uk/frederick-barbarossa.htm\">Middle-Ages.org</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_I,_Holy_Roman_Emperor\">Wikipedia</a></p>\r\n<p><br /><br /></p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Sources:</span><br /><br /><span> Fines, John.&nbsp; <em>Who\'s Who in the Middle Ages</em>.&nbsp; Barnes &amp; Noble Publishing, 1995.<br /><br /> Haaren, John and Addison B. Poland.&nbsp; <em>Famous Men of the Middle Ages</em>.&nbsp; Memoria, 2008.<br /><br /> Sime, James.&nbsp; <em>History of Germany</em>.&nbsp; H. Holt, 1884. </span></p>','2010-06-25','554303921539','frederickbarbarossa1.jpg','frederickbarbarossa1a.jpg','Frederick Barbarossa','German ruler who rebuilt and expanded the Holy Roman Empire.',''),('Flora Sandes','January 22, 1876','1955','Nether Poppleton, Yorkshire, UK','WWI British Soldier','<p>Flora Sandes was a tough-as-shit old British chick who took the stereotypical Victorian attitudes towards women, ram-rodded them down the tube of a howitzer, and blew them straight through the heads of anyone who stood across from her on the battlefields of World War I.&nbsp; This battle axe of a hardass was the only British woman to officially serve as an infantryman in the war, the first woman to ever be commissioned as an officer in the Serbian army, and performed so many intense acts of badassitude that she\'s now considered a war hero in both her homeland and her adopted country of Serbia.</p>\r\n<p>Flora was born in Yorkshire, England in 1880something.&nbsp; The daughter of an Irish Anglican vicar, she didn\'t let a little thing like social convention stop her from being a total tomboy in her youth.&nbsp; Flora typically eschewed barfingly-girly crap like doilies and lace gloves for crazy shit like horseback riding, fencing, and shooting, and after cars were invented she bought a beat-up old French racecar and used to tear ass around her neighborhood like a goddamned lunatic all the time.&nbsp; Of course, back in 1909 racecars probably topped out at about 35 miles per hour, but I think we can still agree that this of course kicks ass.</p>\r\n<p>Despite the fact that she was as knuckle-crackingly hardcore as any boy she knew, back in the 1910s there really weren\'t a whole lot of options available for English women who wanted to professionally beat the shit out of people all the time.&nbsp; The closest thing she could get to front-line military service was the ambulance corps, which would at least let her work on the front lines of armed conflict, so when it started looking like World War I was imminent she immediately started taking courses in first aid and training herself to be a combat medic.&nbsp; When 1914 rolled around and the Serbian Army in Eastern Europe quickly found itself getting surprise butt-humped by the combined armies of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Bulgaria, she was part of one of the first Red Cross teams dispatched to the Balkans to help assist wounded soldiers by running through a bullet-strewn battlefield and dragging their half-dead asses to safety.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/sandes1.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>In August 1914 Flora Sandes and 36 other nurses arrived at a small town just 50 miles from Belgrade, Serbia, a place which of course is a city well-known for being <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Belgrade_history\">totally not-dangerous at all</a>.&nbsp; Within a year of being surrounded by artillery shells and constantly confronted with battle and conflict, Flora Sandes had ditched her nursing gig and was decked out in a Sebian Army uniform, running through No Man\'s Land flinging hand grenades into Austro-Hungarian trenches and charging enemy positions with fixed bayonet.&nbsp; With the situation a few fathoms beyond dire and Serbia fighting for its very existence, the commanding officer of the volunteer division &ndash; which was awesomely known as \"The Iron Regiment\", by the way &ndash; officially took her on as a soldier in the Serbian Army.&nbsp; From that point on, Flora Sandes went into every engagement fighting alongside the men, occasionally even administering first aid and field dressings, in her works, \"between shots\".&nbsp; In just a few months of daring, balls-out (?) combat, she had been promoted from Private to Corporal to Sergeant.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/sandes3.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>By October of 1915 the Austrians and Bulgarians had finally overwhelmed the outnumbered and exhausted defenders of Belgrade and broken through much of Serbia\'s lines.&nbsp; Out of options, Sandes was part of the front-line Serbian infantry during the \"Great Retreat\" across the mountains of Albania.&nbsp; In a months-long march through mud, rain, and the freezing cold of the Albanian winter, with no supplies, no food, and limited clothing, Sandes and the Serbian forces trudged through incredibly difficult terrain, desperately trying to salvage what was left of their army.&nbsp; By the time the Serbian forces regrouped and formed a new defensive line in Greece, the military had lost 40,000 men to shitty non-combat causes.&nbsp; Flora Sandes, however, stood strong, proving yet again that she was just as hardcore as even the most neck-snapping asskickers in her newly-adopted armed forces.</p>\r\n<p>In continued fighting across the Macedonian Front, Sandes further distinguished herself in combat, being promoted to the rank of Sergeant Major within the year.&nbsp; When she wasn\'t bayoneting people through the eyes or crawling under barbed wire and machine gun fire, she wrote letters home, published a book, and convinced the British government to buy new uniforms to replace the tattered rags her war-weary unit was sporting, a feat that earned her a great deal of respect with her soldiers.&nbsp; Back in England she became a heroine to women across the country for how badass chicks could be in combat, while her comrades knew her simply as \"Our Brother\".</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/sandes2.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>After several months of intense direct combat, Sandes was seriously wounded while charging ridiculously-fortified Bulgarian infantry positions outside the Macedonian town of Monastir.&nbsp; The 40 year-old infantry sergeant was critically wounded by a grenade while she was involved in hand-to-hand fighting over a strategically-critical hill, yet she still somehow didn\'t even let getting fragged nearly in half stop her from contributing to the war effort.&nbsp; As soon as she was able to stand up from her hospital bed, she started working as a nurse, and once she was back to full strength she mustered back in with her old unit.&nbsp; By this point the war was over, but everybody still appreciated how tough it was &ndash; in June 1919 an act of the Serbian Parliament officially made her the first woman to ever be commissioned an officer in the Serbian military, which is admirable, and she received the King George Star, the highest military honor offered by the Serbian government.</p>\r\n<p>Flora Sandes retired as a Captain and continued living in Serbia, though she was less excited about the grim prospect of a world where people didn\'t kill each other all the time.&nbsp; At age 51 she married an ex-pat Russian general who had fought against the Communists, and she loved her Serbian home so much that she didn\'t even evacuate it when the Nazis stormed through during WWII.&nbsp; The Gestapo interrogated her a couple times and tried to get her to tell them god-knows-what, and she of course told them to get fucked with a jackhammer until the other end came out their eye sockets.&nbsp; They didn\'t press the issue.&nbsp; After her husband died, Flora returned to England, and went on tour across the world talking about her experiences and how awesome it was that time she bayoneted that guy to death at close range.&nbsp; She died in Suffolk in either 1955, 1956, or 1961, depending on what source you\'re reading at the time, and is now probably one of the great unsung military heroines of all time.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/sandes5.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Links:</span><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.bbc.co.uk/histor/british/britain_wwone/women_combatants_01.shtml\" target=\"blank\">BBC</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.firstworldwar.com/bio/sandes.htm\" target=\"blank\">FirstWorldWar.com</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flora_Sandes\" target=\"blank\">Wikipedia</a></p>\r\n<p><br /><br /></p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Sources:</span><br /><br /><span> Davies, Norman.&nbsp; <em>Europe: A History</em>.&nbsp; HarperCollins, 1998.<br /><br /> Gullace, Nicoletta.&nbsp; <em>The Blood of Our Sons</em>.&nbsp; Macmillan, 2002.<br /><br /> Hazen, Walter A.&nbsp; <em>World War I</em>.&nbsp; Good Year, 2006.<br /><br /> Miles, Rosalind and Robin Cross.&nbsp; <em>Hell Hath No Fury</em>.&nbsp; Three Rivers, 2008. </span></p>','2010-06-18','151325622087','sandes4.jpg','sandes5.jpg','Flora Sandes','The only British woman to serve in combat in WWI.','\"Although she had been given elementary medical and military training in the Women\'s First Aid Yeomanry Corps and St John\'s Ambulance, she had no regrets about leaving nursing for the life of a combatant.  Indeed, she relished those times when the savage explosion of her bombs was followed by a \'few groans and then silence\' since a \'tremendous hullabaloo\' signalled that she had inflicted \'only a few scratches, or the top of someone\'s finger... taken off\'.\"\r\n\r\n- Joanna Burke, Women and the Military During World War I'),('Yang Youde','1954','N/A','Wuhan, China','21st-century Chinese Vigilante','<p>Yang Youde is a 56 year-old farmer living outside Wuhan city in China\'s Hubei province who never really wanted anything more than to live in peace and not get reamed in the asshole when he finally got around to selling his small, quiet farm.&nbsp; He signed a contract that would allow him to live in his home and work his land until 2019, and spent the long days out in the fields harvesting cotton and fruit and fishing in a nearby lake for food.&nbsp; Life was good, even if it was probably a little boring from time to time.</p>\r\n<p>At the beginning of this year, however, Youde quickly learned that living on a farm and not being utterly screwed over by greedy douchebags was apparently too much to ask.&nbsp; I\'m not incredibly well-versed in rural Chinese agrarian law (it\'s one of those educational fields that falls into the category of, \"I\'d rather rake a gonorrhea-infected toothbrush across my eye than read this shit\"), but my understanding of the situation here is that some bigshot asshat developing firm came in and \"requisitioned\" Youde\'s farm out from under him, forcing him to break his contract and sell his land so that they could build apartment buildings for serial killers or giant evil factories that crushed orphans up and turns them into biological weapons of mass destruction.&nbsp; The big shot pompous assholes of SuperMechaCorp Developers offered Youde the Chinese monetary equivalent of about id=\"mce_marker\"9,000 for his land, which amounts to roughly one-fifth of what the farm is actually worth.&nbsp; When Youde brought this up in \"negotiations\", the developers told him that if he didn\'t agree to it they would send a couple dozen guys to beat the fuck out of him in the hopes that some massive head trauma would help him change his mind.&nbsp; Youde told them to hump a lawnmower.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/youde5.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Anybody who\'s been late on a credit card payment can tell you that collection agents are relentless jackhammers of evil who sustain themselves by battering down your defenses until you crumple into a beat-to-shit heap on the floor of your apartment.&nbsp; In Communist China, they\'re worse.&nbsp; In terms of rearranging your asshole, these guys are more akin to Fat Tony and his crew of baseball bat-lugging kneecap-smashers than anything resembling an annoying telemarketer or a late-night repo driver.&nbsp; When the big development bullies sicked these guys on poor Youde, they skipped out on the harassing phone calls and went straight to the face-to-face threats of physical violence portion of the negotiations.</p>\r\n<p>But Youde wasn\'t your typical uneducated pushover farmer that these fucks could just steamroll in the name of industrialization and corporate greed and orpan-crushitoriums.&nbsp; These guys were only going to take the farm over this guy\'s dead body.&nbsp; So on February 26, 2010, when a team of thirty evictors, bulldozer drivers, and assorted goons showed up on Youde\'s land armed with clubs and ominous-looking Member\'s Only jackets, they ran into one fifty year-old man rolling this thing out of his storage shed and aiming it in their direction:</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/youde1.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>What you\'re looking at is a fucking <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/youde-mlrs.jpg\">MLRS</a> made out of PVC pipe and a wheelbarrow.&nbsp; Each of these tubes was loaded with a powerful rocket-like firework, primed and ready to launch, and as soon as those cudgel-toting suckers were in range he let loose a barrage of gunpowder bombs that lit up Hubei province like the Chinese New Year.&nbsp; Shit was exploding everywhere, dudes were diving for cover, and Youde was (probably) cackling like a maniac.</p>\r\n<p>Unfortunately, Youde\'s rocket salvo, while unequivocally badass, wasn\'t designed for fighting a sustained engagement against a horde of angry thugs, and reloading this rocket cart was a process that made a flintlock musket look like an assault rifle.&nbsp; The evictors picked themselves up off the floor, rushed over, and kicked the shit out of Youde.&nbsp; As the farmer was lying on the turf with a couple boot-marks in his face, they told him that they were going to go home, get their bulldozers, and flatten Youde\'s home into rubble, and that he better not be there when they got back.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/youde6.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>So yes, it\'s sort of anti-climactic that Youde\'s rocket salvo didn\'t prevent the goons from delivering a beatdown on him, but this is all part of any great iconic 80s action movie.&nbsp; The brave hero stands up to impossible odds and gets his ass kicked hard, but rather than give up, he just gets right back up and keeps fighting.&nbsp; Yang Youde knew he needed to move fast to defend his home before these guys returned to finish the job, and he immediately got on the phone with his friends and family to figure out a plan of attack.</p>\r\n<p>So Yang Youde built a cannon tower next to his house.&nbsp; And when I say \"cannon tower\", I mean like the <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/youde-cannon.gif\">Warcraft II</a> shit &ndash; a tall, homemade lookout tower equipped with a portable PVC rocket launcher capable of firing projectiles 300 feet through the air, an arsenal of super-explosive fireworks, a megaphone, and a couch where he could max and relax while watching for intruders.&nbsp; When these guys came back, he was ready to shove a few hundred pounds of gunpowder down their esophagi.</p>\r\n<p>Two weeks ago, on May 26, the evictors came back, and this time, they were ready for whatever Yang could throw at them.&nbsp; Or so they thought.&nbsp; That afternoon Youde looked out from his watchtower to see a line of a hundred men equipped with riot shields and clubs, supported by a tank platoon of bulldozers and construction equipment.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/youde2.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>But once again Yang Youde again refused to back down.&nbsp; He got on the bullhorn, ordering the evictors to stop, re-asserting his right to the land, and (hopefully) screaming something along the lines of, \"git offa my propertay!\"&nbsp; When they didn\'t stop, he dropped the effing hammer.</p>\r\n<p>From 300 yards out, Yang Youde fired a relentless, non-stop barrage of artillery.&nbsp; The new-and-improved fireworks exploded with tremendous noise, smoke and colors, and his farm suddenly turned from a peaceful fishing hole to Omaha fucking Beach in the span of about ten seconds.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/youde3.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Unable to advance through this insanity, the evictors were held at bay for roughly an hour, when the police showed up and broke up the battle.&nbsp; The evictors were sent crying back to their dirtbag bosses, and Yang was hauled down to the station for questioning.&nbsp; Awesomely, the cops weren\'t able to charge Youde with any serious criminal offenses &ndash; he hadn\'t been shooting with the intention of harming the invaders, purposely firing well in front or behind the attackers, and even though indiscriminately turning your home into a one-man artillery battalion is considered a \"public safety violation\" by the People\'s Republic of China, the cops respected this guy\'s stones and let him off with a promise that he \"won\'t do anything illegal\" again.</p>\r\n<p>He still owns the farm.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/youde4.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Links/Sources:</span><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.zonaeuropa.com/20100607_1.htm\">EastSouthNorthWest News</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://english.ntdtv.com/ntdtv_en/ns_china/2010-06-10/958613232846.html\">NDTV</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100608/od_nm/us_china_cannon\">Yahoo News</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/7810735/Chinese-farmer-declares-war-on-property-developers-with-homemade-wheelbarrow-cannon.html\">Telegraph.uk</a></p>','2010-06-11','32041122138','youde.jpg','youde1.jpg','Yang Youde','Chinese farmer defends his land with homemade rocket launchers.','\"Personal interests are trivial, but failure to implement official policies is serious.\r\nOutsiders must not enter/exit at will, or they will be responsible for any accident that happens to them.\r\n'),('Logan','October 1974','N/A','Alberta, Canada','Fictional Canadian Vigilante','<p>Over the past couple of months I have been perhaps correctly accused of gross negligence in my solemn duty to acknowledge the great badasses of the fictional realm.&nbsp; While I was marginally-convinced that my diabolical one-man conspiracy to maliciously oppress the figments of other peoples\' imaginations would go completely unnoticed by the unwashed masses, I apparently did not fully anticipate the rabidity of the crazed e-mail Vikings that pillage and plunder the digital thatched-roof cottages of the Intarw3bz.&nbsp; So this week, I figure that there is no better opportunity to announce my attendance at this year\'s <a href=\"http://www.comic-con.org/cci/\">San Diego Comic Con</a> than by featuring one of my all-time favorite comic book badasses: The mostly-feral, ultra-ferocious Canadian lumberjack-assassin known as Wolverine.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<blockquote>\r\n<blockquote><span><em>(Side note: I understandably don\'t warrant billing on the same page as special guests like Stan Lee and Ray Bradbury, but rest assured that I will have a booth at Comic-Con this year&hellip; if you\'re so inclined, feel free to stop by and bodyslam your arch-enemy through my non-breakaway table while screaming the word \"BADASS\" at the top of your lungs.)</em></span></blockquote>\r\n</blockquote>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/wolverine1.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>FACE PUNCH!</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Like many great badasses, one of the coolest things about Wolverine is that nobody really knows where the hell he came from or why the fuck he always seems to want to impale people through the face with a half-dozen foot-long claws forged from a metal so intense and hardcore that it doesn\'t even exist in real life. &nbsp; His profile on <a href=\"http://www.marvel.com/\">Marvel.com</a> claims that his real name is James, and that he was born in the 1880s, but this isn\'t really ringing any bells for me.&nbsp; Admittedly, I haven\'t read a whole lot of comic books in the last ten years or so, but I feel like I would remember something like Wolverine being raised by Indians, training as a Japanese samurai, parachuting into France during the D-Day campaign of World War II, and performing covert black ops with the CIA.&nbsp; While I won\'t question the badassitude of the Nazi-fighting spy-samurai lumberjack story, I really only know him as the mysterious Logan, a Canadian badass woodsman who chomps cigars and spends all of his time being drunk, super-hairy, and completely covered in whatever substance passes for the blood of his usually-bizarre enemies, and there was something kind of awesome about him not really having any backstory at all.&nbsp; Honestly the only thing more badass than having no family history and just one name is if your parents give you \"Danger\" as a middle name on your birth certificate.&nbsp; Back in the good old days when we rode our bikes 300 miles up a magma-covered volcano to buy comics we didn\'t really understand what the hell was going on with Logan or his past, and we were fine with it as long as he wasn\'t whining and bitching about it all the time.</p>\r\n<p>In addition to being the prototypical comic book anti-hero who couldn\'t give a flaming shit about anything that didn\'t involve booze, revenge, or banging his commanding officer\'s wife, Wolverine\'s badass cred is largely precipated on the fact that he is a borderline-criminally insane sociopath who never combs his hair and who can shoot giant fucking razor-sharp claws out of his hands at will.&nbsp; These ridiculously-deadly hand-swords are so unbelievably gnarly that they can cut through pretty much any material known to man, and are apparently imbued with some sort of magical ridiculousness that lets them block bullets and re-direct rockets in mid-flight.&nbsp; I once saw Wolverine tear apart a helicopter in mid-flight with these things, and it was so over-the-top that I almost forgot he was being portrayed by Hugh Jackman in a movie.&nbsp; You\'ve got to respect the fact that Wolverine, much like <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/punisher.html\">The Punisher</a> doesn\'t seem to give a shit about subduing evildoers when he could just eviscerate them and kick their meat-less torsos into the molten-hot plasma core of some bizarre space station orbiting an undiscovered planet in another dimension.&nbsp; I mean, a gleaming set of huge bloodthirsty Ginsu blades protruding from your knuckles doesn\'t exactly scream, \"peaceable solution,\" and by the time you hear the <em>Snikt Snikt</em>, all you can really do is get ready to discover what the inside of your scrotum looks like.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/wolverine2.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Logan takes his sweet superhero name from a permanently-rabid evil monster known as the <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/wolverine-animal.jpg\">wolverine</a>.&nbsp; The biggest member of the weasel family and a larger relative of the notoriously-infernal <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/honeybadger.html\">African Honey Badger</a>, wolverines are demonic hellspawns that voraciously devour caribou-sized mammals, attack anything that moves, and have absolutely no fear of anything and no respect for their own well-being. These things exist solely for survival at all costs &ndash; many rumors circulate where these creatures get their legs caught in bear traps and then <em>chew their own fucking legs off</em> in order to escape. Don\'t be fooled by how deceptively cute these awful creatures may be &ndash; wolverines are vicious, murderous beasts who live solely to wreak misery and destruction on the good citizens of planet Earth.</p>\r\n<p>Our boy Logan chose his name wisely.&nbsp; Like his namesake, Wolverine also doesn\'t give a shit &ndash; he\'ll take on anybody, anytime, anywhere, no matter what the size differential may be, and he doesn\'t stop fighting.&nbsp; Ever. No matter how horrific his injuries may be. Able to take a severe amount of punishment because of his incredible mutant healing factor and his adamantium-laced skeleton, Wolverine is capable of absorbing wounds that would leave pussier heroes crying in their coffins from a mortal case of death, and he just gets up and keeps on stabbing supervillains in the balls.&nbsp; One time he had his entire adamantine skeleton forcibly ripped out by Magneto, but he <em>still</em> came back from it.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/wolverine3.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Wolverine also possesses heightened animal-like senses, which he presumably honed in his many years of being Canadian. He can fly into a Barbarian-esque blood rage at will, fueling his murderous kill-lust with a lethal injection of liquid rage and tearing even the most dismemberment-resistant villain into a moist pile of corpse parts.&nbsp; He has badass skills with a samurai sword, though why the hell he would want to use a sword when he has built-in dagger hands is beyond me, and is allegedly a master of every single form of hand-to-hand combat (including the imaginary ones).&nbsp; He\'s highly-resistant to psychics and leprechauns, fixes Professor X\'s jet aircraft, and, according to the <a href=\"http://x-men.wikia.com/wiki/Wolverine\">X-Men wiki page</a>, has a power known as \"retarded aging\", which sounds hilarious.</p>\r\n<p>After he got bored of cage fighting for money and harvesting maple syrup by decapitating trees with his claws, Wolverine joined the X-Men, where he was originally drawn by a guy named <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Cockrum\">Cockrum</a>. &nbsp; Together with his X-Homies he battled Magneto, the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, and the Juggernaut (a name I can\'t type without following it up with the word \"bitch\"), and later joined Alpha Flight, the Avengers, the New Avengers, and pretty much every single superhero organization in the Marvel Universe.&nbsp; In fact, it\'s a little known secret that for a short period of time in the late 90s Wolverine appeared in every single comic book ever printed.&nbsp; That\'s how much people liked him.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/wolverine4.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>Wolverine on top of a pile of dead ninjas.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Even when he didn\'t have the Russian badass Colossus around to hurl him at people like a three hundred pound human javelin, Wolverine was cool with going out on his own and learning about his ultra-mysterious past by irrationally attacking every single humanoid that had any information about his origins.&nbsp; His battles with Sabertooth are part of comic book legend, though it was also totally sweet when he spiked Communism in the urethra while fighting the ultra mutant-Commie Omega Red.&nbsp; He also fought Dracula on a couple occasions, and I seriously once saw him shank a werewolf with his claws.</p>\r\n<p>Basically, Wolverine is what you would get if you combined a hockey enforcer, a rabid animal, and a wood chipper.&nbsp; he doesn\'t talk much, never backs down, and can\'t be killed by conventional weapons.&nbsp; He\'s easily one of the most badass and popular comic book heroes ever.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/wolverine5.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Links:</span><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://marvel.com/universe/Wolverine_%28James_Howlett%29\" target=\"blank\">Marvel.com</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolverine_%28comics%29\" target=\"blank\">Wikipedia</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://x-men.wikia.com/wiki/Wolverine\" target=\"blank\">Ridiculously long bio on the X-Men wiki</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Wolverine\" target=\"blank\">Some great info on the character and the animal</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/wolverine.html\" target=\"blank\">Info on actual wolverines</a></p>','2010-06-04','561899622221','wolverine.jpg','wolverine1.jpg','Wolverine','The prototypical comic book anti-hero.','\"I\'m the best there is at what I do, but what I do best isn\'t very nice.\"'),('Leonard A. Funk, Jr.','August 27, 1916','November 20, 1992','Braddock, PA, USA','WWII American Soldier','<p>With Memorial Day upon us here in the States, I once again feel compelled by some unspoken sense of duty to bring you a story about an American soldier who shot a lot of Nazis with an automatic weapon until most of them were no longer alive.&nbsp; I have no idea what the connection is between this particular weekend and my interest in hardcore gun battles blasting across the hedgerows of Normandy, though I presume it has something to do with the fact that I\'m usually gearing myself up for a few days of watching <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/speirs.html\">Band of Brothers</a> and barbecuing hamburgers (albeit with varying levels of success).&nbsp; Luckily these sorts of stories almost never seem to get old for some reason, which is a good thing.&nbsp; This is particularly true in the amazing case of U.S. Army First Sergeant Leonard A. Funk, Jr.&nbsp; This monstrous cannonball of de-Nazification was the most decorated American paratrooper of World War II, which is a feat of ultimate badassitude in and of itself.&nbsp; But the story behind this guy\'s Medal of Honor citation involves one of the most intense and stone-cold close-quarters gunfights I think I\'ve ever read &ndash; an epic, bloody, super-brief showdown on par with some of the greatest standoffs this side of a John Woo movie.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/funk1.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Leonard Funk enlisted in the Army in June 1941, just six months before the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor brought the United States into all the World War II goodness that was already blowing up half of the globe.&nbsp; The 21 year-old recruit easily completed jump school, was assigned to Company C of the 508th Parachute Infantry, 82nd Airborne Division, and trained himself in the fine arts of leaping out of an airplane and killing people in the head with bullets.&nbsp; Once he was deemed \"pretty awesome\" at those tasks, he went on his first combat drop, which incidentally involved parachuting behind enemy lines on the same day that the Allied forces were landing on the beaches at Normandy.&nbsp; During the campaign that followed he went on some intense, balls-out night raids and daring attacks on enemy positions, and was so hardcore over the next three months that by September he had been promoted from Private to the Company\'s First Sergeant.</p>\r\n<p>Standing just five and a half feet tall, Lenny Funk wasn\'t exactly the most physically imposing warrior to ever live, but his hardcore tenacity in combat and amazing ability to coordinate his associates to kill lots of people without dying themselves eventually earned him the respectable nickname \"Napoleon\", and there are a lot worse dudes you can be compared to.&nbsp; He didn\'t disappoint his namesake &ndash; after parachuting into Holland in the early stages of Operation Market Garden, he led a successful small three-man patrol that charged into the face of three fully-crewed 20mm anti-aircraft guns that were firing on US gliders.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/funk2.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>A 20mm gun crew.&nbsp; Funk and two wingmen took out three of these things in the span of a few minutes.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Charging in, balls-out and guns blazing, Funk and his small team destroyed the three enemy positions <em>Wolfenstein</em>-style and wiped out twenty German soldiers without losing a man.&nbsp; They cleared the landing zone for Allied gliders and paratroopers, and then proceeded to secure the area while the rest of the invasion force regrouped and organized.&nbsp; Even though Market Garden ended up being a failed mission, Funk\'s impressive actions earned him the Distinguished Service Cross, the second-highest award for bravery offered by the Army.</p>\r\n<p>But he wasn\'t done.&nbsp; If you think taking out twenty dudes and three artillery pieces with just three guys was an impressive piece of Napoleonic maneuvering, this guy somehow one-upped himself the only way he could &ndash; by single-handedly busting up German operations with his nutsack and receiving the Medal of Honor.</p>\r\n<p>On January 29, 1945, Leonard Funk\'s company was deployed to Belgium to help prevent the German breakout during the Battle of the Bulge, an intense bloodbath that presumably gets its name from Lenny Funk\'s raging kill-boner.&nbsp; Taking over command of the company after the death of the XO, Funk knew the supreme importance of kicking the Germans\' asses before they could bust through American lines and cause serious havoc on the invasion operations.&nbsp; As if it\'s not enough indication of the state of the company that this dude was a Sergeant acting as a Captain, Funk went around looking for people to help him take out a strategic German strongpoint but couldn\'t even scrounge together a platoon-sized unit of combat-ready infantry.&nbsp; So, realizing the significance of this bullshit, he said fuck it &ndash; he went down to the clerks\' office, threw together an ad hoc platoon of pencil-pushers and supply techs, whipped them into shape, and attacked a goddamned town with the rag-tag crew.&nbsp; Despite being woefully inexperienced, these Renegades of Funk charged fifteen miles through waist deep snow, into a driving blizzard and brutal artillery bombardments, attacked the town, cleared out fifteen houses, and captured over eighty German prisoners of war in just a few hours.&nbsp; Oh yeah, and they didn\'t take a single casualty in the process.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/funk3.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Funk, of course, wasn\'t going to quit just because he\'d single-handedly captured an entire town and its garrison with just thirty non-combatants, and he immediately left the eighty POWs under guard of four armed Americans and pressed on with his attack.&nbsp; While he was out beating people to death with anything larger than a two-by-four, however, a group of Germans in arctic camouflage snuck back into the town Funk had just captured, overwhelmed the American guards, and freed the recently-captured POWs. Funk and one of his men returned to their camp to find a hundred cranky Germans waving guns in his face, and a Nazi officer pointing at Luger in his face from point-blank range.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/funk4.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>Ah, sheisse.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Now, the logical reaction here would obviously be to put your hands up and prepare to spend the rest of the war either in a prison camp or a coffin, depending on what kind of mood the Wehrmacht officer is in, because you are fucked. You\'re standing there like an idiot with your Tommy gun slung over your shoulder, staring down a hundred guys with guns and a dude shoving a pistol in your face.&nbsp; The only other Allies in the area are all sitting on the ground with their hands on their helmets.&nbsp; You\'re more boned than a schoolteacher in a low-budget porn.</p>\r\n<p>But that\'s not the way Leonard Funk saw it.&nbsp; This crazy hardass saw a tough-as-shit Mexican standoff.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/funk5.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>Re-enactment.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>With all these guys pointing weapons at him, this insane titanium-balled asskicker did the unthinkable.&nbsp; He brought the Funk.&nbsp; In one lightning-quick movement, the paratrooper unslung the Tommy gun from his shoulder, swung it around, and blew away the officer with a burst of .45 ACP ammuniton to the chest and abdomen.&nbsp; That\'s some <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/bourne.html\">Jason Bourne</a> shit right there, but the insanity was just beginning.&nbsp; After blasting the German so hard that the dude probably flew six feet backwards through the air in slow motion, Funk whipped his weapon around immediately started spraying the Germans behind him with bullets, wasting as many as he could.&nbsp; Over the sound of full-auto SMG fire, Funk screamed for the captured Americans to get off their asses and grab guns off of the dead Nazis.</p>\r\n<p>The Germans immediately returned fire on Funk, of coruse, but this dude was apparently more bulletproof than Steven Segal.&nbsp; Gunfire took out the American standing next to Funk, but the badass Sergeant not only continued firing, but he blew through his mag, <em>reloaded</em>, and popped off another full magazine of ammunition into the Germans.&nbsp; In under a minute of fighting, Funk had unleashed 60 bullets, killed 21 Germans and wounded 24 more.&nbsp; Anyone left standing after this flagrant display of awesomeness wisely dropped their guns and raised their hands.</p>\r\n<p>Funk would receive the Medal of Honor for about forty-five seconds worth of ultra-intense work, and would continue on to get the Silver Star, the Bronze Star, and three Purple Hearts, though I wasn\'t able to locate citations for any of those awards.&nbsp; He left the Army after the war, served as regional chief of the Pittsburgh Veteran\'s Affairs Office for a while, shaved off his \'stache, and generally continued being awesome.&nbsp; He died in 1992, and is now buried in Arlington National Cemetery alongside many other U.S. military heroes.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/funk6.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>This guy was so tough he trained by parachuting with dogs.&nbsp; Or something</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Links/Sources:</span><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://militarytimes.com/citations-medals-awards/recipient.php?recipientid=2199\" target=\"blank\">Award Citations</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/lafunk.htm\" target=\"blank\">Arlington National Cemetery</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.508pir.org/co_pix/co_c/co-c-f.htm\" target=\"blank\">Newspaper Article</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_A._Funk,_Jr.\" target=\"blank\">Wikipedia</a></p>','2010-05-28','866944422345','funk.jpg','funk1.jpg','Leonard A. Funk','U.S. paratrooper who took out 40 Germans in 60 seconds.','\"Although overwhelmingly outnumbered and facing almost certain death, 1st Sgt. Funk, pretending to comply with the order, began slowly to unsling his submachine gun from his shoulder and then, with lightning motion, brought the muzzle into line and riddled the German officer.\"\r\n\r\n- Medal of Honor Citation'),('Fridtjof Wedel-Jarlsberg Nansen','October 10, 1861','May 13, 1930','Christiania, Norway','20th-century Norwegian Adventurer','<p>If you can look at this picture and tell me that this isn\'t one of the sweetest photos of a dude with a \'stache that you\'ve ever seen, then you obviously need to learn a little something about facial hair and being awesome.&nbsp; This picture alone makes the guy badass, even if you didn\'t know the story behind it.&nbsp; You will be pleased to learn, no doubt, that the man behind this vicious strip of solidified testosterone is sufficiently badass to pull off a soup strainer that epically righteous.&nbsp; It can be no other way.</p>\r\n<p>Fridtjof Nansen was a tough-as-nails Norwegian psychopath with an impossible-to-spell first name and an unstoppable desire to constantly freeze his balls off and risk his life in the name of science and kickassery.&nbsp; Born in 1861 in a town near Oslo, as a teenager this super-brilliant, ultra-hardcore crazy person constantly went outside into the frostbite-inducing snow-covered wilderness <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/grylls.html\">Bear Grylls</a>-style to test himself against the most volatile bullshit Mother Nature could furiously dump on him.&nbsp; Spending days and weeks at a time alone in the wild with just his faithful dog, a sharp knife, and his badass \'stache to keep him company, this guy quickly forged himself into a high-endurance asskicker.&nbsp; This dude was so ridiculously tough that that he could get out and cross-country ski fifty miles a day, every day, for pretty much as many days as he wanted.&nbsp; For those of us who have no idea what skiing two marathons back-to-back actually means, the 50km cross-country ski race (30 miles for those of you who continue to resist the global tyranny of the metric system) is the longest ski race the Olympics has ever offered.&nbsp; In <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-country_skiing_at_the_1948_Winter_Olympics_-_Men%27s_50_km\">the 1948 games</a>, 20 world-class athletes busted ass and finished the race in times ranging from 4 to 5 hours, with seven more guys dropping out and not even being able to crawl their half-dead asses over the finish line.&nbsp; They haven\'t offered the race since, presumably because that bullshit constitutes something akin to \"cruel and unusual punishment.\" For this guy it was half a day\'s ski in the woods.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/nansen5.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>In 1882, the 21 year-old Nansen went on a naval expedition to Greenland and instantly fell in love with the harsh, unyielding hellhole he discovered there.&nbsp; Greenland, contrary to what it\'s name might imply, is actually a <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/nansen-greenland.jpg\">freezing-ass wasteland</a> of ice and pain and misery, but that\'s apparently the sort of thing that appeals to guys who enjoy spending their time fist-fighting wild animals in the uncharted mountainous regions of Norway.&nbsp; Nansen, who loved learning about zoology, ecology, and oceanography, used his time on the ship wisely &ndash; while lesser men were below decks doing wussy crap like huddling for warmth or losing their fingers to frostbite, Nansen was getting up-close-and-personal with polar bears, making observations and writing a damn book about how balls-out he was.</p>\r\n<p>Returning to Norway so pumped up he wanted to barf, Nansen got his Ph.D. in zoology from the University of Oslo. When he wasn\'t working on a dissertation exploring the central nervous system of lower invertebrates, developing the groundwork for the field of science that would become neuron theory, or working at a research station with Armauer Hansen (the man who discovered the leprosy bacteria), Nansen took a study break to ski 300 miles over a usually-impenetrable mountain range so that he could participate in a ski jumping competition that was taking place on the other side of the country.&nbsp; I wasn\'t able to find the results of the competition, but knowing what we know about this guy it\'s probably safe to assume that he flew off the ramp, did a double backflip and landed on top of a volcano in Iceland.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/nansen6.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>One day Nansen got bored of being a super-genius ski-jumping wilderness expert, so he got a couple friends together and decided to be the first person to cross Greenland on skis.&nbsp; To this point, nobody had ever attempted an exploration of the interior of Greenland, and the closest anybody had come to reaching the North Pole was writing a letter to Santa Claus, but Nansen didn\'t give a crap about any of that shit.&nbsp; Nothing would stand in the way of him kicking one of Saint Nick\'s reindeer in the antlers.&nbsp; He landed a ship on the East coast of Greenland, unpacked his skis, and got ready to freeze his junk off. Figuring that retreat or surrender would be an indelible sign of weakness, Nansen took the head-searingly insane step of <em>burning his boats</em> after he landed, thereby removing the one possible avenue of escape from this uncharted wasteland nobody had ever successfully ventured across without dying. &nbsp; Victory or death, as they say.&nbsp; Nansen and five other men then spent the next two months cross-country skiing across the continent, battling through dangerous ice, exhaustion, elevations over 9,000 feet, and temperatures as low as fifty below.&nbsp; Incredibly, they made their way all the way from east to west, landing in the warmer sunny climes of Siberia before heading home to a victory parade, an artillery salute, and the status of a national hero.&nbsp; Fridtjof turned his experience into two best-selling books, both of which he also illustrated, because of course this guy was strong, smart, and also artistic. And women loved him, obviously.</p>\r\n<p>For his next trick, Fridtjof Nansen decided he was going to become the first person to reach the North Pole.&nbsp; He developed a pretty ingenious tactic for doing so &ndash; he built the famous, ultra-hard wooden ship <em>Fram</em>, lodged it into the ice pack off the coast of Siberia in 1893, and let it drift in the ice while the tides of ocean carried him across the pole.&nbsp; This was a tactic that would be used by great explorers from Scott to Shackleton to traverse both Arctic and Antarctic climes, and this guy pioneered that shit.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/nansen2.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>Ah, good times.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Nansen and his crew drifted for 18 months, somehow surviving in the freezing-ass cold temperatures, but unfortunately the tides of the Arctic Sea decided not to cooperate with Nansen\'s plan, no matter how good it was or how intensely he tried to stare it down.&nbsp; Realizing that he was drifting too far from the pole and wouldn\'t cross it, Nansen obviously did the badass thing &ndash; he and one other guy jumped out of the drifting boat, jumped on a dog sled, and rushed 140 miles across open ice to get there.</p>\r\n<p>Nansen didn\'t reach the pole &ndash; he was forced to turn back just a couple hundred miles away &ndash; but he had achieved the highest latitude ever reached at this point in history, which was definitely something to be proud of.&nbsp; Not convinced that he could find his still-drifting ship as it made its way through the polar ice, Nansen and his homedog instead headed south across Greenland.&nbsp; They spent a winter living in the inhospitable climate of the extreme North, building a hut out of stone and eating walrus blubber and polar bears he personally clubbed to death with his boner, and finally reached Norway by kayak the next summer.&nbsp; In addition to being awesome and also kicking ass, the six volumes of research material he published on his trip got him a post as a Professor of Oceanography at the University of Oslo and plenty of prestige in the legitimate scientific community.&nbsp; His ship, <em>Fram</em>, would go on to carry Roald Amundsen to the South Pole.&nbsp; To this day, it\'s still the wooden ship that has achieved the furthest North and furthest South latitudes, and this dude built it back in 1890 using ingenious mathematics-oriented ship-building techniques he devised himself.</p>\r\n<p>When World War I broke out in 1914, Nansen had to halt his balls-out research/almost dying, which sucked.&nbsp; He was so pissed about it that he went out and won the Nobel Peace Prize so that he could get back to doing dangerous things.&nbsp; Seriously.&nbsp; He was Norway\'s representative in the League of Nations, the High Commissioner for Refugees, and he closely worked with governments and the Red Cross to provide humanitarian aid to people affected by the war.&nbsp; He negotiated a relaxation of the Allied blockade of Europe, allowing much-needed food to get through to starving people, and negotiated the repatriation and ethical treatment of displaced persons and refugees, developing techniques still used by the UN today.&nbsp; His most badass accomplishment to this end was the development of the \"Nansen Passport\", a document that allowed refugees to travel to countries that could help them.&nbsp; My guess is that he just put his picture on there and people were so awe-struck by the glorious stache that they did whatever he wanted.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/nansen3.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>\"LET THIS PERSON INTO YOUR COUNTRY!!!\"</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>After the war, Nansen continued being awesome to the world.&nbsp; He negotiated post-war prisoner-of-war exchanges and releases, and helped Turks, Greeks, and Armenians escape persecution from various sources after a bunch of terrible shit went on in their respective territories.&nbsp; When the Russian people were starving to death after a decade of war and revolution, Nansen rallied international support and got food and medical supplies for them.&nbsp; The Soviets distrusted the Western powers, and refused to deal with anyone except Nansen.&nbsp; He\'s credited with saving the lives of something like ten million people with his food policy in Russia. Not bad for a guy who was head-butting polar bears and building shelters in the wilderness of Greenland a few years earlier.</p>\r\n<p>The adventurer, explorer, scientist, and humanitarian badass Fridtjof Nansen died in 1930 &ndash; just a couple years before he would have found a way to single-handedly end World War II with his facial hair.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/nansen4.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Links:</span><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.fram.museum.no/en/default.asp?page=90\">Fram Museum</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/articles/sveen/index.html\">Fridtjof Nansen: Scientist and Humanitarian</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.fni.no/nansen.html\">Nansen Institute</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1922/nansen-bio.html\">NobelPrize.org</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fridtjof_Nansen\">Wikipedia</a></p>\r\n<p><br /><br /></p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Additional Sources:</span><br /><br /><span> Christensen, C.A.R.&nbsp; <em>Fridtjof Nansen: A Life in the Service of Humanity</em>.&nbsp; United Nations, 1961.<br /><br /> Nansen, Fridtjof.&nbsp; <em>The First Crossing of Greenland</em>.&nbsp; Longman, 1897. </span></p>','2010-05-21','957432122363','nansen.jpg','nansen1.jpg','Fridtjof Nansen','Arctic explorer, adventurer, scientist, and Nobel Prize winner.',''),('Lakshmi Bai, the Rani of Jhansi','November 19, 1835','June 17, 1858','Varanasi, India','19th-century Indian General','<p>People generally like to refer to the warrior-queen Rani Lakshmibai as India\'s version of <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/joanofarc.html\">Joan of Arc</a>.&nbsp; And yes, sure there are plenty of obvious similarities between this young warrior-maiden who came out of nowhere to lead her people in their efforts to skewer Englishmen through the torso with a bunch of keenly-sharpened metallic objects, and the fact that she\'s considered a martyr for the cause and revered by her countrymen even to this day bears quite a resemblance to the nut-squashing antics of the Limey-cleaving Maid of Pucelle.&nbsp; Personally, however, I think I would argue that she\'s more akin to being the <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/wallace.html\">William Wallace</a> of India rather than anything else &ndash; not only because this insane never-say-die blood factory was tall, charismatic, and more then capable of personally sawing your brain in half with a giant two-handed sword, but because she was also incredibly successful in leading her overly-oppressed comrades in a valiant, brutal rebellion against British occupation of their homeland.</p>\r\n<p>Born in 1835 in the Princely state of Jhansi in Northern India, Rani Lakshmibai\'s mother died when she was just a young child, leaving most of the child-rearing duties to her incredibly-busy father, the King of Jhansi. As a member of India\'s elite warrior caste, Dad knew the value of being able to lop peoples\' helmets off with one swing of a blade, so he decided to forgo the bullshit curriculum usually foisted upon Indian women at this time and instead opted to teach her how to do badass shit like ride elephants, jump over fire-pits on horseback, swordfight, shoot a crossbow, load a musket, read, and write.&nbsp; Training in the arts of war every waking moment, Lakshmibai quickly became an unstoppable snowplow of sare-wearing destruction, and even passed on the secret art of scrotal-annihilation to any other women of the court who thought it would be totally flippin\' sweet to kick peoples\' asses.&nbsp; Before long, Raini managed to assemble an ultra-loyal personal bodyguard of mecha-tough women courtiers who doubled as organic wood chippers capable of slicing and dicing people apart like a paper shredder tearing through a necktie.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/rani1.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>MEGA XTREEEEEEEEME</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>As soon as she was old enough, Lakshmibai was married off to some older guy, as was the custom in the day.&nbsp; But the quiet, demure life wasn\'t in the cards for this hardcore chick.&nbsp; A few years into the marriage, she had a son, who died at four months old, and then almost immediately lost her husband just a year and a half later.&nbsp; In the wake of these these terrible tragedies, the new Queen of Jhansi adopted a son to serve as heir to the Kingdom as soon he was old enough to rule.&nbsp; In the meantime, she\'d serve as his regent and bifurcate the craniums of anyone who wanted to fuck with him by suplexing a whirling circular saw on their heads.</p>\r\n<p>The main big dogs in India during the mid-19th century was a power-hungry ultra-capitalist mega-corporation known as the British East India Company.&nbsp; If it helps, you can think of these guys as being like something out of Shadowrun, Blade Runner, or any of the other hundred-billion cyberpunk dystopian sci-fi futures where super-powerful evil companies spend all their spare time plotting world domination and developing diabolical schemes, only these guys were real, super powerful, and their private armies were equipped with tech that far outstripped anything that was possessed by the indigenous peoples they were currently dominating.&nbsp; Basically if you ruled a province in India in the 1850s, you had two options: do what these guys say, or be forcibly replaced by someone who will.&nbsp; And when the East India Company heard that the King of Jhansi was an adopted young boy with no royal blood, the high-ranking company officials declared the throne to be \"lapsed\", and the region to be \"officially in the getting-fucked-by-us business.\"&nbsp; Rani was deposed, given a small pension, and told to keep her mouth shut and deal with it if she knew what was good for her.</p>\r\n<p>But Rani Lakshmibai wasn\'t the sort of warrior-chick who wasn\'t going to sit around take a heaping handful of disrespect without replying with a bindi-ed headbutt of vengeance.&nbsp; First, she tried the go the legal-yet-less-violent bureaucratic route, filing a formal appeal in the British courts, and going to trial to assert the legitimate right of her and her adopted son to rule.&nbsp; This failed, of course, because the courts were being run by the people trying to screw her over.&nbsp; The British continued to diss her, overtax the populace, and &ndash; even worse &ndash; they began to systematically slaughter sacred cows and chop them up for food.&nbsp; It was more than obvious that negotiations weren\'t working, and the justice system was just as bullshit then as it is today.</p>\r\n<p>Somewhat fortuitously, in June 1857 the entire Indian army mutinied against the forces of Colonial Britain, because honestly nobody in the country could really stand those guys.&nbsp; Seeing an opportunity arise at the perfect moment, the 22 year-old Queen Lakshmibai formally declared open revolt five days later, attacked the British fort at Jhansi, recaptured her homeland, and massacred every British man, woman, and child she could get her hand son (which was pretty much all of them.)</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/rani4.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>The fort at Jhansi, circa 1860 or so.<br />The walls were perfect for defense against warriors, <br />but were somewhat less effective versus cannons.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>(I should mention that the sources aren\'t particularly clear about her involvement in the massacre &ndash; some people claim not only that she wasn\'t there, but that she was officially reinstated as Queen of Jhansi by the British after she came out and publicly decried the violent murder-fest as being bad and wrong and wrong and bad.&nbsp; I had a hard time figuring out where the truth was in this story, so feel free to go ahead and believe whichever version makes you feel better about yourself.)</p>\r\n<p>Whatever the case may be, Rani Lakshmibai quickly solidified herself as ruler of Jhansi, built up her defenses, and a lot of British people were cleaved apart in the process.&nbsp; During the events of the Great Indian Rebellion of 1857, Lakshmibai consolidated her small kingdom, trained the men and women in her service in the arts of combat, and on two separate occasions personally repelled two large-scale invasions from jackass rival regional lords.&nbsp; Some reports indicate that she personally charged into battle on horseback on countless occasions with her child strapped onto her back, a sword in each hand, and the horse\'s reins in her teeth.&nbsp; That\'s fucking hardcore.&nbsp; I picture it being like a 19th-century cavalry version of <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/ripley.html\">Ripley</a> incinerating the Alien Queen\'s egg baskets with a blowtorch duct-taped to a machine gun while carrying Newt around in her other arm.</p>\r\n<p>Seeing that the loyalist forces were unsuccessful in taking down this hardcore chick and her heavily-entrenched, highly-disciplined army, the British general Sir Hugh Rose launched a full-scale invasion of his own, bringing a couple thousand men and cannons to blow Jhansi to shit until the people there had the good sense to surrender.&nbsp; Despite facing a crippling force that would have explodiated the fuck out of most other city-states in about ten seconds, Rani held out for two full weeks against the onslaught, clinging to survival just long enough for a 20,000-man strong relief column to arrive from a nearby rebel province and attack the flank of the British Army.&nbsp; She had succeeded in holding out to defend her city.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/rani2.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Uh, unfortunately for Rani, the rebels hadn\'t really had much experience with heavy artillery, and the first couple cannon shots blew the shit out of their ranks and they ran away.&nbsp; Fuck.</p>\r\n<p>Having put all her eggs in the \"massive horde coming to my aid\" basket, and now seeing that the situation was now utterly hopeless, Rani evacuated as many people as she could in the middle of the night, abandoning the village and retreating to link up with another rebel group nearby.&nbsp; Combining her forces with that of the remaining mutineers, she continued to fight her way through what was increasingly becoming a hopeless effort to overthrow colonial rule in India.&nbsp; She led her warriors to defeat the Maharaja of Gwalior after he defected from the rebel cause, but was killed in battle during a counter-attack by the British 8th Hussars Regiment while trying to rally her troops.&nbsp; Fulfilling her dying wish not to let her body fall into British hands, her followers built a funeral pyre in the middle of the battlefield and burned her on the spot.&nbsp; The rebellion would end up being quashed by the British, and India would remain a colony until 1948.&nbsp; Her son survived the war, but spent his years living out on a British pension and renouncing his claim to the throne.&nbsp; As a result of her personal leadership, ferocity in combat, and hardcore tenacity, Sir Rose would later be quoted as saying that she was the bravest, most fearless, and most dangerous rebel commander of the entire Indian uprising.</p>\r\n<p>Over the years, the Queen of Jhansi has become a near-mythical hero among the people of India for her role kicking ass during the 1857 Rebellion.&nbsp; She fought bravely, refused to surrender, and died the death of a martyr for freedom.&nbsp; She now has a couple statues in her honor, is included in all Indian history textbooks, met Flashman a couple times, and is so synonymous with being an asskicking chick that when the Indian National Army put together an all-female infantry unit during World War II they had the good sense to name it after her.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/rani3.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Links:</span><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.iloveindia.com/indian-heroes/rani-laxmibai.html\">ILoveIndia.com</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.mapsofindia.com/who-is-who/history/rani-lakshmi-bai.html\">MapsofIndia.com</a> <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rani_Lakshmibai\">Wikipedia</a></p>\r\n<p><br /><br /></p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Sources:</span><br /><br /><span> Agrawal, Lion M.&nbsp; <em>Freedom Fighters of India</em>.&nbsp; Gyan, 2008. <br /><br /> Cook, Bernard A.&nbsp; <em>Women and War</em>.&nbsp; ABC-CLIO, 2006. <br /><br /> Gupta, Om.&nbsp; <em>Encyclopaedia of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh</em>.&nbsp; Gyan, 2006. <br /><br /> Jain, Simmi.&nbsp; <em>Encyclopaedia of Indian Women through the Ages</em>.&nbsp; Gyan, 2003. </span></p>','2010-05-14','554453722422','rani.jpg','rani1.jpg','Rani Lakshmibai','Sword-swinging heroine of the 1857 Indian Rebellion against England.','\"Thus the Maratha Queen tall in statue, handsome in person, young, energetic, proud and unyielding from that moment indulged in the stern passion of anger and revenge.\"'),('Craig Harrison','1975','N/A','Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, UK','Modern-Day British Sniper','<p>Craig Harrison is a hardcore, heavily-tattooed British sniper who went completely balls out, tried a couple of utterly-impossible long range shots, and somehow ended up breaking the record for longest kill shot ever recorded in the history of warfare.&nbsp; Twice.&nbsp; On consecutive shots.&nbsp; His nickname, \"The Silent Killer\", is more than just a clever BBS handle or the sort of ethereal text you see floating over some douchey opponent\'s head in a multiplayer <em>Call of Duty</em> game &ndash; it\'s a well-deserved, appropriately-badass nickname he received by attacking from such a long range that the sound of his gunshots fell on dead ears.</p>\r\n<p>I suppose I should start by pointing out that I\'m not really huge on world records, particularly as they apply to killing soldiers in battle.&nbsp; Sure, I appreciate a totally-righteous noscope headshot just as much as the next red-blooded military historian, but the whole idea of breaking out a tape measure to admire your shot seems kind of morbid and pointless in a lot of ways.&nbsp; The story of Craig Harrison capping a Taliban machine gun crew from 8,120 feet away to save the lives of his comrades, however, is about as close as you can get to the complete opposite of both those words.</p>\r\n<p>Harrison is a Corporal of Horse in the Household Cavalry of the British Army.&nbsp; Nowadays the phrases \"household cavalry\" and \"corporal of horse\" obviously don\'t exactly mean that you\'re prancing around parade grounds on an oversized pony, slashing cannon crews with sabers, trampling your way through China shops, or shoveling horse shit around a dirty field all day &ndash; it\'s just a cleverly-quirky British ways of saying that these meat-eating nut-crushers spend their days riding from warzone to warzone in one of these crazy-looking armored death-dealing motherfuckers:</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/harrison1.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>Hello, I am the gun-toting Satanic love child of a BattleMech and a backhoe.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Back in November of 2009, Corporal of Horse Harrison (I\'m only assuming that this is the correct way to address him, even though it sounds kind of ridiculous) was part of a convoy traveling through a particularly-nasty Taliban-infested stretch of sunny Afghanistan.&nbsp; Harrison was back near the tail end of the column, when all of a sudden he spotted an enemy machine gun crew charging out of a concealed position and setting up a heavy-duty PKM machine gun.&nbsp; Almost immediately, the heavy barking of automatic weapons fire starting bearing down on the lead vehicle &ndash; the once carrying Harrison\'s commanding officer &ndash; and it pretty much looked like this guy was about to be cluster-fucked in the head with bullets and gunned down in a brutally efficient, excellently-planned ambush.</p>\r\n<p>Unfortunately for the Taliban, they picked the wrong day and the wrong weather conditions in which to fuck with the wrong commanding officer.</p>\r\n<p>The Corporal of Horse got out of the Jackal 4x4 jeep he was riding in, dropped the bipod on his L115A3 long-range sniper rifle, and rested it on the ledge of a nearby building.&nbsp; He drew a line on the Taliban machine gun crew through the scope of his weapon, quickly trying to assess range, distance, wind conditions, and all the other sorts of things you need to take into account when you\'re trying to bust a bullet into someone\'s skull from 1.54 miles away.&nbsp; He got the driver of the truck to spot for him, but I can only assume that spotting for a balls-out sniper as he attempts the longest shot ever taken isn\'t exactly the sort of skill you can fucking pick up on the fly.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/harrison2.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Now the chance of actually hitting anything smaller than the Death Star from this range is, according to the specs of the L115A3 LRR, basically goddamned-near impossible. Not only was Harrison acting quickly, trying to divert the enemy fire as fast and efficiently as possible, but he was friggin\' aiming for a target that was 3,200 feet beyond the effective range of his weapon.&nbsp; For reference, the maximum effective range of the standard-issue U.S. Army service rifle, the M4, is 1,500 feet.&nbsp; Total.&nbsp; Corporal Harrison was shooting at moving enemies from 8,120 feet away, and had about as much chance of hitting the Great Wall of China as he did of hitting this Taliban machine gun nest, but he apparently didn\'t even give a shit.&nbsp; Harrison lined up his sights, held his breath, and squeezed the trigger.</p>\r\n<p>It took the bullet three full seconds to hit the target (!), but Harrison\'s aim was true.&nbsp; The dude dropped.</p>\r\n<p>As if that isn\'t so incredibly head-blowingly insane that you kind of want to barf a little bit, I should say that Harrison wasn\'t even fucking done yet.&nbsp; When the MG operator fell to the turf dead from a bullet stuffed through the vital organs of his abdomen, the gunner\'s assistant took over the operation of the weapon.&nbsp; So Harrison readjusted his aim and dropped him too.&nbsp; Then he put a third round into the gun, smashing it to shit and rendering it inoperable.</p>\r\n<p>That\'s right, fools &ndash; this guy hit three different targets on three consecutive shots from longer range than anyone has ever shot anything with an infantry rifle.&nbsp; He beat the official record held by also-badass Canadian sniper Rob Furlong by 50 yards, or roughly half the length of a goddamned football field.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/harrison4.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>What 50 yards looks like to a marksman</span>.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>If you value your sanity, you won\'t even try to follow the <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/harrison-wikipedia.gif\">ridiculously hard-to-understand Wiki entry</a> for Corporal Harrison, which lists one sentence on the actual man himself and then provides enough miserably-awful calculus to make the incorporeal ghost of Albert Einstein start bleeding ectoplasm out of his ears.&nbsp; The gist of it is that even though he had perfect weather conditions for shooting motherfuckers, when Corporal Harrison hit those dudes he was aiming at a spot roughly 400 feet above his intended targets.&nbsp; That\'s a <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/harrison-40storybuilding.jpg\">40-story building</a> worth of gravity and muzzle velocity loss he needed to somehow account for in his head while under pressure in a life-or-death situation.</p>\r\n<p>As if this isn\'t ridiculously hardcore in itself, Corporal Harrison went on to kill or wound twenty more Taliban soldiers in the battles that ensued during his unbelievably epic tour of duty.&nbsp; In a battle a couple months ago he took a bullet off the fucking skull and didn\'t even miss a day of work from it.&nbsp; Then he broke both his arms when his truck drove over a roadside bomb, but still didn\'t even give a shit.&nbsp; His first concern was that he may have lost a little bit of accuracy - you know, because of the whole \"both of his arms were fucking broken\" thing - thereby making him only two to three times better at shooting than your average mortal human, but according to him this isn\'t really the case.&nbsp; He\'s still awesome, and the dude\'s already one his way back out to the front to express mail extreme asskickings from distances inconceivable to even the most hardcore snipers in the world.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/harrison3.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Links/Sources:</span><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/2010/05/03/2010-05-03_british_sniper_craig_harrison_the_silent_assassin_breaks_record_kills_target_fro.html\" target=\"blank\">NY Daily News</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1270414/British-sniper-sets-new-sharpshooting-record-1-54-mile-double-Taliban-kill.html\" target=\"blank\">Daily Mail</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.nypost.com/p/news/international/sniper_kills_qaeda_from_mi_away_sTm0xFUmJNal3HgWlmEgRL\" target=\"blank\">NY Post</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/afghanistan/article7113916.ece\" target=\"blank\">Times Online</a></p>','2010-05-07','20797322949','harrison.jpg','harrison1.jpg','Craig Harrison','British sniper recorded the longest-range kill in history.  Twice.  In consecutive shots.','The dial on his huge watch is permanently set to \"TIME TO KICK ASS\".'),('Lothar von Arnauld de la Perière','March 18, 1886','February 24, 1941','Posen, Prussia, Germany','WWI German Sailor','<p>You\'ve got to be pretty hardcore to serve on a World War One submarine.&nbsp; Diving down beneath the waves, running silent and/or deep, and torpedoing the holy living crap out of unsuspecting warships sounds like a totally exciting time in theory, but in the end you\'re basically like one step away from being buried alive in a motorized, weaponized steel coffin.&nbsp; One false move and you\'re getting teabagged from above by depth charges, and it\'s not exactly like you can depend on jumping overboard and clinging to a life raft or some shit &ndash; if your submarine hull is compromised, you\'ve got a better chance of survival by loading yourself into a torpedo tube and launching yourself head-first into a deep-sea minefield.&nbsp; So to go out there in one of these clanking, ultra-dangerous deathtraps and not only make the entire ocean your bitch, but survive the war and sink more tonnage than any other sub commander in history makes you a seriously nails badass.&nbsp; Having a sweet name like Lothar doesn\'t hurt, either.</p>\r\n<p>Kapitanleutnant Lothar von Arnauld was born in 1886 in the Prussian town of Posen (present-day Poznan, Poland) to a military family that had served in the asskicking rmies of Frederick the Great.&nbsp; Inspired by the life-long tradition of kidney-stomping badassitude, Lothar enlisted in the Imperial German Navy in 1903.&nbsp; He served as a torpedo officer on the soon-to-be-famous cruiser <em>Emden</em> for a while, and was eventually so chill that he was selected to serve on the staff of a prominent Prussian Admiral.</p>\r\n<p>Being an adjutant or whatever was cool I guess, but once the Great War went down, Lothar had an itching to get out onto the battlefield and make a name for himself as someone who punched through battleship hulls with his fists and could smoke entire fleets by carrying a deck gun around like Arnold using the mini-gun in <em>Terminator 2</em>.&nbsp; Arnauld first applied to serve as commander in the German Zeppelin corps, but was denied on the grounds that zeppelin duty was \"too pussy\" for someone of his brass-balled stature.&nbsp; Instead, he was trained as a U-boat commander, and in January 1916 he took command of the deadly warship <em>U-35</em>:</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/arnauld1.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>Er... it might not look like much here, but trust me, it\'s sweet.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>When Lothar got out of sub officer\'s school World War I had already been going on for about a year and a half, and by this point <em>U-35</em> was already being operated by a well-trained and highly-badass crew of able seamen.&nbsp; Arnauld led these daring men out into the Mediterranean in search of British and French warships and merchant vessels, intent on turning the entire sea into one giant endless field of listing hulks, burning flotsam, and charred fools.&nbsp; Despite taking the bridge nearly two years after the start of the conflict, it took Lothar von Arnauld just ten months to become the most murderously-successful submarine commander in the war.&nbsp; On one of his first war patrols this guy smashed 23 ships apart in the span of four weeks, then came back, refitted, and in the period of July-August 1916 he crushinated a brain-implodingly impossible 54 ships and sent 91,000 tons of supplies plummeting to the bottom of the sea.&nbsp; To put 91,000 tons into perspective, this number represented two-thirds of the total tonnage sunk worldwide during this period of the war.&nbsp; It\'s also the displacement weight of most modern-day nuclear-powered aircraft carriers loaded down with men, supplies and aircraft, and roughly the equivalent of 724 million Quarter Pounders with Cheese.</p>\r\n<p>Perhaps the most balls-out thing about this impossible shit though is that this psychotic ship-killing maniac didn\'t even go about his naval destruction rampages the old-fashioned way by simply torpedoing the balls off of enemy hulls and then slinking off into the darkness.&nbsp; Fuck that &ndash; this guy wanted some face-to-face action, preferring instead to <em>surface his sub</em> (thereby removing the one major advantage a submarine has over a surface vessel) and pummeling the enemy ships retarded with his 88mm deck gun.&nbsp; You read that correctly &ndash; Lothar von Arnauld smoked ships by blasting them at point-blank range with a fucking cannon.&nbsp; Part of this is because the <em>U-35</em> only carried six torpedoes at a time, and resupply points were few and far between, but most of it is just because he was totally awesome and understood the value of going the extra mile when annihilating your enemies.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/arnauld2.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>After asshumping shipping lanes without mercy, Lothar von Arnauld received the Pour le Merite &ndash; Germany\'s highest award for military bravery &ndash; after just ten months in command.&nbsp; He also received the Iron Cross first and second class, and about a million other awards during his long and extended career of making Allied merchant vessels cry out for their mamas.&nbsp; Towards the end of the Great War, the German government was running out of badass shit and honors to bestow on their most decorated naval commander, so they eventually just came out and were like, \"Uh, dude, we\'re out of medals&hellip; so, like, is there anything you really want?\"&nbsp; Lothar said he thought it would be pretty sweet to get an autographed picture of the Kaiser, so they mailed him one.&nbsp; Awesome.&nbsp; I picture this being like some Polaroid of the mustached old Emperor in one of those pointy helmets giving a wink and a thumbs-up with a cool inscription like, <span>\"KEEP ON R0X0RING XOXO -KAISER\"</span>, though sadly I have a feeling this wasn\'t the case.</p>\r\n<p>In twenty-eight months of command on <em>U-35</em>, Lothar went on ten war patrols, destroying 188 ships in the process, or roughly a number of vessels equal to the size of some countries\' entire Navies.&nbsp; To this day <em>U-35</em> remains the deadliest U-boat ever built.&nbsp; After sweeping through the Mediterranean and blowing away anything larger than a Union Jack-patterned inner tube, von Arnauld was transferred to command of a new and improved 400-foot sub designated <em>U-139</em> and took his show out to the Atlantic to hunt for merchant ships bringing supplies from America to England.&nbsp; In his most famous battle, Lothar von Arnauld single-handedly attacked a convoy of twelve British ships with nothing but his iron nutsack and his unflinching hatred for any ship that doesn\'t come factory-equipped with a periscope.&nbsp; Lothar plowed ahead and torpedoed the first ship, but then in a freak turn of events the sinking vessel crashed down on top of the submerged <em>U-139</em>, crushing the top part of the ship and destroying the conning tower.&nbsp; Being dragged to the bottom of the ocean by the weight of a sinking chunk of metal that used to be an enemy ship, von Arnauld blew out the ballast tanks, freed the U-boat from its underwater submission hold, and brought his half-blind, barely-seaworthy ship to the surface, where he turned his deck guns on the remaining ships.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/arnauld3.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Another cool thing about Lothar is that he was a totally noble and honorable commander, always making a point of conforming to the international rules of submarine warfare that were in place during the time of the Great War.&nbsp; Despite the fact that his enemies were sending out warships disguised as merchant vessels and constantly trying to lure him into bullshit traps, Lothar always made the attempt to induce the surrender of merchant ships before simply firing on them.&nbsp; He preferred instead to board them, put the civilian crew on lifeboats with a map to the closest island, take the ship registry, and then nuke the site from orbit once everyone was safely beyond the minimum safe distance.&nbsp; Warships, of course, were shit-out-of-luck.</p>\r\n<p>Lothar von Arnauld was finally forced to come back to port after the Armistice was signed, but as a side-note of badassitude this guy loved subs so much that he actually pulled a lot of the furniture from the interior of <em>U-139</em> and used it to decorate his home.&nbsp; He retired from the German Navy in 1931 and spent about a decade working as an instructor at the Turkish Naval Academy.&nbsp; Arnauld was recalled to his homeland at the onset of World War II, where he was to serve as the Vice Admiral of the Baltic Fleet, but he was killed in a plane crash in 1941 before getting to do anything very cool.</p>\r\n<p>The most successful submarine commander in history based on total tonnage sunk, during his incredible career Lothar von Arnauld sunk 194 ships and destroyed 454,000 tons of equipment and supplies.&nbsp; To this day, this number is roughly double of the second guy on the list, and that dude was sailing around in World War II with better equipment and without having to conform to any kinds of rules of limited engagement.&nbsp; Not too shabby.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/arnauld4.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Links:</span><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://militaryhistory.suite101.com/article.cfm/lothar_von_arnauld_ace_of_uboats\">Ace of U-Boats</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa4442/is_200405/ai_n16061337/?tag=content;col1\">U-Boat Ace of Aces</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.uboat.net/wwi/men/commanders/10.html\">U-Boat.net</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lothar_von_Arnauld_de_la_Peri%C3%A8re\">Wikipedia</a></p>\r\n<p><br /><br /></p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Sources:</span><br /><br /><span> Gunton, Michael.&nbsp; <em>Submarines at War</em>.&nbsp; Carroll &amp; Graf, 2005.<br /><br /> Thomas, Lowell.&nbsp; <em>Raiders of the Deep</em>.&nbsp; Naval Institute Press, 2004.<br /><br /> Tucker, Spencer.&nbsp; <em>Encyclopedia of World War I</em>.&nbsp; ABC-CLIO, 2005. </span></p>','2010-04-30','718563523022','arnauld.jpg','arnauld1.jpg','Lothar von Arnauld','The most successful submarine commander ever.','\"I very rarely torpedoed a ship even when it was authorized.  I much preferred the method of giving warning and doing my sinking by gunfire or by placing explosives aboard.  In that way I saved torpedoes.  And besides, I could accost the lifeboats, look over the ship\'s papers and get its name and tonnage.\"'),('Torii Mototada','1539','September 8, 1860','Okazaka, Aichi Province, Japan','19th-century Japanese Samurai','<p>To those of us in the West, seppuku is a pretty difficult concept to understand.&nbsp; Sure, nearly every red-blooded military aficionado of European descent can appreciate a good, brutal last stand every now and then, where a great hero goes down completely surrounded in a chest-deep pile of freshly-disemboweled corpses, but as far as most of us are concerned, being forcibly taken prisoner after putting up a valiant, super-bloody defense isn\'t really a sign that you\'re a spineless dishonorable loser who brings nothing but crushing, inescapable shame on your entire clan for all eternity.&nbsp; If anything, being captured alive means that a real hardass can continue fighting, plan a daring escape, shank a dude in the prison yard for no reason, or really do any number of badass things available to you once you\'re locked-down in some bullshit military clink.&nbsp; In Japanese culture, however, this isn\'t really the case &ndash; to those who follow the code of Bushido, being captured alive by your enemies is the greatest dishonor you could possibly suffer.&nbsp; If you\'re going to allow your good name to befall such an inglorious end by falling into the possession of your enemies, you may as well just go all the way and turn your family coat of arms into a giant bag of douches because you fucking suck and are a miserable excuse for a soldier.&nbsp; To the samurai, the only way to preserve anything even remotely resembling honor was by gloriously stabbing yourself in the abdomen with a sharp object and ruthlessly cutting out your own guts like a badass.</p>\r\n<p>So, by this rationale, if seppuku is one of the most honorable last acts a warrior can undertake, then the guy responsible for committing the most widely-respected seppuku in Japanese history would be pretty much awesome.&nbsp; Here\'s a fun historical fact:&nbsp; He was.</p>\r\n<p>Torii Mototada was one of the chief generals of a super-powerful Japanese feudal lord named Tokugawa Ieyasu.&nbsp; If the name Tokugawa seems vaguely familiar to you somehow, that would probably be because this guy was the founder of a powerful Japanese Shogunate that would rule the land for over two and a half centuries &ndash; a task that was made possible in no small part by the inexhaustible head-cleavery of Torii Mototada.&nbsp; Torii and Tokugawa were very close friends dating back to their youths, having served together in combat for the entirety of their careers, and Torii had made a badass name for himself as a tough-as-shit warrior in a battle when he led 2,000 cavalrymen in a rearguard action against 10,000 enemy samurai and somehow smashed his way through the enemy ranks like a <a href=\"http://turok.wikia.com/wiki/Cerebral_Bore\">Cerebral Bore</a> drilling into someone\'s cranial cavity at a very high RPM rate.&nbsp; Torii was also present during the siege of Ueda Castle, which was commanded by a famous samurai dude known as \"The Crimson Demon of War\", and unflinchingly attacking someone with a nickname like that can only help your reputation for being a pretty hardcore badass.&nbsp; As a token of respect for Mototada\'s friendship, duty, and military asskickery, Tokugawa rewarded his friend by granting him command of the ultra-important fortress of Fushimi Castle in southwest Japan:</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/mototada2.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Now during this particular time in Japanese history (1600 AD), two major factions were vying for ultimate iron-fisted supremacy over the countryside &ndash;Tokugawa\'s already-in-control army, and the remnants of the forces loyal to the now-deceased badass <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/hideyoshi.html\">Toyotomi Hideyoshi</a>.&nbsp; Commanding the garrison at Fushimi Castle was a big deal not just because it blocked the only path leading from Hideyoshi territory to the Tokugawa-controlled capital, but because it also used to be Hideyoshi\'s personal residence, and sleeping on the bed that once belonged to the leader of your enemies is just kind of kickass in principle alone.&nbsp; However, being awesome in this regard also meant that Fushimi was going to be the first fortress attacked in the inevitable war between the Tokugawa and the Hideyoshi armies &ndash; when someone\'s in ur house eatin ur f00ds you don\'t fuck around when it comes to dislodging them with flaming arrows and multi-pointed steel-plated stabbing-ness.</p>\r\n<p>The attack finally came in August of 1600, when Torii Mototada received word that 40,000 of Hideyoshi\'s men were rapidly approaching with the intent of crushing Fushimi Castle to rubble with their nuts and then teabagging the corpses of Mototada\'s favorite lieutenants and concubines.&nbsp; Torii, knowing that his impossibly-small garrison had absolutely no chance to survive (some sources cite the number of defenders as just over two thousand), resolved to die with honor in a badass fiery last stand rather than pull back and give up the castle like a non-seppuku-committing punk.&nbsp; When word came down of this surprise invasion, Tokugawa was all the way off on the other side of the country subjugating barbarians by shoving his katana through their heads, so Mototada knew that he would best serve his lord by holding out as long as possible and giving Tokugawa a chance to about-face his giant army, tear ass back across the countryside, meet the enemy before they reached the capital, and righteously whip the pants off those Hideyoshi bastards once and for all.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/mototada1.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Knowing that the fate of Japanese history was hanging in the balance, Torii Mototada made the bold decision to make an awesome last stand and turn Fushimi Castle into the Japanese <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/travis.html\">Alamo</a>.&nbsp; He would stand, hold out as long as possible, wreak as much nut-crunching devastation as his two thousand sword-swinging samurai psychos could muster, and make sure that his ridiculously hardcore struggle against impossible odds would serve as an inspiration to the rest of the Tokugawa army about what it means to be a badass.&nbsp; He wrote his final letter, stating his desire to be remembered as a warrior of honor, and then immediately set about making sure the Hideyoshi invaders would pay for every inch of land with a fire hose-like explosion of over-the-top arterial blood spray.</p>\r\n<p>On 27 August 1600, the battle flags of Hideyoshi commander Ishida Mitsunari appeared over the rise outside Fushimi Castle.&nbsp; The army Ishida brought with him was ridiculous &ndash; easily ten to twenty times the size of the castle garrison &ndash; but Torii Mototada couldn\'t have given a flying fuck at a rolling donut.&nbsp; Toriiordered his archers and musketeers to the battlements, opened fire on the attackers, and then withstood a tremendous, unstoppable onslaught of wave after wave of spear-slinging samurai warriors.</p>\r\n<p>For a week the defenders of Fushimi Castle raged against their attackers.&nbsp; Even as the defenses, walls, and battlements were crumbling around them and they continually moved back to interior positions, they never showed any fear or cowardice, or any emotion other than blood-rage and the undying desire to beheat as many of their attackers as humanly possible.&nbsp; Even after the garrison retreated to the main tower, the last bastion of defense for Fushimi Castle, and then the tower was then set on fire, Mototada\'s men continued to hold out against the attack of steel and flames.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/mototada3.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>On the eighth day of the siege, Mototada\'s force had been reduced to just 200 brave men surrounded by a battle-hardened army of 35,000.&nbsp; The castle burning, and the men all wounded and exhausted, Torii Mototada\'s chief lieutenant asked if it was time to call it quits and commit seppuku.&nbsp; Fuck that.&nbsp; These guys hadn\'t come this far just to throw in the towel like a bunch of bitches, and as long as they had some semblance of a military they were going to just keep stabbing fools in the nards with longswords until they died.&nbsp; Mototada led five badass, balls-out charges from the castle tower right into the balls of the enemy formation, cutting down everyone in his way, which is insane.&nbsp; Most people would be lucky to last five seconds commanding two hundred men against thirty-five thousand, but I guess this guy was just that extreme.</p>\r\n<p>Repeatedly sending your men on insane suicide charges is great and all, but it does eventually tend to take a toll on your forces.&nbsp; Finally, on the tenth day of the siege, Torii Mototada and his ten most hardcore samurai were all that remained, battling ferociously as their now-worthless castle burned around them.&nbsp; Torii, pressed on all sides by spear points and samurai swords, finally collapsed from an epic number of spear, arrow, and sword wounds.&nbsp; An enemy samurai named Saiga Shigetomo rushed up, spear poised for a kill-shot, but Torii found just enough strength do raise his arm and yell, \"Hold up motherfucker!&nbsp; Just give me a sec here.\"&nbsp; Amazingly, the guy stopped dead in his tracks, presumably cowed in the presence of Mototada\'s insane steel-tempered ballsack.&nbsp; Mototada, already half-dead, pulled himself up onto his knees, drew his dagger, and died an honorable and appropriately-gory death through seppuku.&nbsp; The Siege of Fushimi Castle had cost the invading Hideyoshi army three thousand men, and, more importantly, ten days that they couldn\'t afford to waste.&nbsp; Tokugawa Ieyasu would arrive shortly thereafter with an army of 90,000 warriors, crush the Hideyoshi at the Battle of Sekigahara, and establish a dynasty that would go on to rule Japan for two and a half centuries.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/mototada.gif\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Links:</span><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.docstoc.com/docs/15900427/The-Last-Statement-of-Torii-Mototada\">The Last Statement of Torii Mototada</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://wiki.samurai-archives.com/index.php?title=Torii_Mototada\">Samurai Archives</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torii_Mototada\">Wikipedia</a></p>\r\n<p><br /><br /></p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Sources:</span><br /><br /><span> Bryant, Anthony J.&nbsp; <em>Sekigahara 1600</em>.&nbsp; Osprey, 1995.<br /><br /> Turnbull, Stephen R.&amp;nbps; <em>The Samurai</em>.&nbsp; Routledge, 1996.<br /><br /> Wilson, William Scott and Gregory Lee.&nbsp; <em>Ideals of the Samurai</em>.&nbsp; Black Belt Communications, 1982. </span></p>','2010-04-23','826754023094','mototada4.jpg','mototada.gif','Torii Mototada','Commander of the Japanese Alamo.','\"For myself, I am resolved to make a stand within the castle and to die a quick death.  It would not take much trouble to break through a part of their numbers and escape, no matter how many tens of thousands of horsemen approached for the attack or by how many columns we were surrounded.\r\n\r\nBut that is not the true meaning of being a warrior, and it would be difficult to account as loyalty.  Rather, I will stand off the forces of the entire country here, and, without even one one-hundredth of the men necessary to do so, will throw up a defense and die a resplendent death.  By doing so I will show that to abandon a castle that should be defended, or to value one\'s life so much as to avoid danger and to show the enemy one\'s weakness is not within the family traditions of my master Ieyasu.\"'),('Leonid Ivanovich Rogozov','March 14, 1934','September 21, 2000','Chita Oblast, USSR','20th-century Russian Doctor','<p>Self-surgery is one of the most hardcore things a human being can attempt.&nbsp; Throughout history there are several ultra-bonkers cases of hardcore, moderately-insane individuals going under their own knife-wielding hands &ndash; a couple years ago <a href=\"http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3606845.stm\">this woman</a> in rural Mexico gave herself a c-section with a kitchen knife while using hard liquor as an anesthesia.&nbsp; In 1999, <a href=\"http://www.usatoday.com/weather/resources/coldscience/adrop0.htm\">a woman named Jerri Nielsen</a> biopsied her own breast cancer while ice-bound in Antarctica, with her only access to medical professionals being through videoconferencing equipment.&nbsp; <a href=\"http://www.skepdic.com/trepanation.html\">This group of psychotic hippie nutjobs</a> used to get blitzed on LSD in the 60s and drill holes in their heads with power tools as a path to spiritual enlightenment, and <a href=\"http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7960768.stm\">this Italian neurosurgeon</a> once finished a brain operation while suffering from a heart attack &ndash; which isn\'t exactly self-surgery, but still needs to be included among any list of hardcore surgical operations.</p>\r\n<p>Despite all of these incredibly gonzo attempts at curing disease by taking a scalpel to your own abdomen, by far the most often-requested self-surgery incident I receive emails for is the super-intense case of Leonid Rogozov &ndash; the twenty-seven year old Soviet surgeon who, in 1961, removed his own appendix in the middle of an Antarctic hellhole surrounded by a bunch of guys whose only experience with medicine was when their physicians told them to turn their heads and cough.&nbsp; Since I generally like to do fan service any time it doesn\'t compromise my own principles of badassitude, I will now attempt to humbly present the first documented case of a successful auto-operation of this caliber performed under these impossible working conditions.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/rogozov1.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Antarctica is fucking cold.&nbsp; I\'m not sure if you know this or not, but it\'s true.&nbsp; I wouldn\'t bullshit you on this.&nbsp; Why the hell you would ever want to go there is something I may possibly never understand, but that doesn\'t mean that I can\'t have a healthy respect for those psychopathic adventurers who get out there and explored the uncharted glacier-covered wastelands of nothingness &ndash; it takes serious nuts to get out there and survive in the world\'s harshest climates with only penguins and bloodthirsty Orcas to keep you company, and that\'s something that Leonid Rogozov had plenty of.</p>\r\n<p>Rogozov was in the midst of a pretty promising career as a surgeon, and had just finished working on a dissertation aimed at designing a new method for operating on esophageal cancer, but a few weeks before he was supposed to get in front of the board and defend his dissertation he decided, \"fuck it, I\'m going to peace out of here, join the sixth Soviet Antarctic expedition, and drive giant tractors around in wind chills of negative one hundred and forty degrees Fahrenheit.\"&nbsp; So he did.&nbsp; He ditched school, joined the South Pole expedition, and was one of just twelve men who departed Leningrad in 1960 to set up a polar base in the middle of fucking ass-nowhere.&nbsp; Doing triple-duty as the expedition\'s doctor, assistant meteorologist, and heavy-vehicle operator, Rogozov spent thirty-six days at sea, withstood hella-bitter Antarctic temperatures so nut-bustingly cold that it would turn most guys\' dicks into those liquid nitrogen bananas scientists like to use to hammer nails into boards, and helped build the Russian base at Novolazraveskaya Station.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/rogozov2.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>It\'s tough to look like a badass when you\'re chillin\' with penguins.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://tinyurl.com/y734xbl\">Here\'s a satellite image of Novolazarevskaya Station</a>.&nbsp; The astute cartographer will notice that there is absolutely goddamned nothing around this consonant-heavy installation except for glacial snow, freezing cold water, and unbearable soul-crushing misery.&nbsp; It\'s a brutal climate designed by the gods to crush the life out of the weaker species of earth, and this dude was out there in the middle of nowhere just jumping snowmobiles through flaming hoops and stitching up workers who busted their arms falling off construction towers.</p>\r\n<p>Well this was great fun and all, until the night of 29 April 1961, when Rogozov started barfing all over the place, ran a temperature, and started having searing pain coursing through his abdomen.&nbsp; Rogozov, being a surgeon, of course managed to diagnose himself with acute appendicitis.&nbsp; That was the easy part.&nbsp; The hard part was that intense winds, freezing temperatures, and the afore-mentioned misery of the Antarctic cold season prevented him having any hope of evacuation, and he was stuck in a recently-constructed work facility with no hospital equipment, no medical personnel, and an agonizingly-painful infected internal organ that was going to kill him if he didn\'t get it removed in the next twenty-four hours.</p>\r\n<p>Uh, fuck.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/rogozov3.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>While most people would have simply died slow, excruciating deaths like chumps, Leonid Rogozov decided that he was going to will himself to live.&nbsp; With all the odds stacked against him, this guy decided he was going to get in there and yank the damn thing out himself &ndash; no matter how ridiculous a prospect that may have been.&nbsp; Sure, appendectomies are some of the easiest surgical procedures you can perform, but it\'s significantly less simple when you\'re in a makeshift operating room, working blind and upside-down while running a fever and suffering from extreme nausea, and being assisted by a bunch of uneducated manual laborers.&nbsp; Rogozov didn\'t give a shit.&nbsp; He ordered his men to get the medical room as sterile as possible, and then, assisted by a weatherman, a mechanic, and the base manager (who was there as back-up just in case either of the other two assistants got nauseous and passed out &ndash; never mind the fact that Rogozov was out there on his own), Rogozov laid down on the operating table, took his favorite scalpel, and sliced a five-inch incision across his own lower abdomen.</p>\r\n<p>For the next hour and forty-five minutes, the super-sick, dying Leonid Rogozov operated on his own badly-infected appendix.&nbsp; Unable to see down into his own gaping wound, Rogozov had to work by feel alone, without gloves, and sometimes using just a mirror that was being held above him by one of his assistants (Rogozov later said that this was less helpful than you might think, because everything in the mirror is backwards and it was really screwing with him).&nbsp; Suffering badly from stress and illness and overall suckitude, Rogozov had to take breaks every five or ten minutes to vomit, collect his energy, or wait for the room to stop spinning, but this guy was so insanely badass that he just kept plowing through the procedure, doing whatever he needed to do to survive.</p>\r\n<p>Now my first-hand experience with surgical procedures is minimal at best (you\'d have a better chance of explaining to me how fuckin\' magnets work), so the closest thing I can equate this to would be tattooing yourself by writing in cursive, upside-down, with your eyes closed while dying of malaria.&nbsp; And if you spelled something wrong you died in a matter of seconds.&nbsp; So, like, no pressure or anything.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/rogozov4.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>\"I didn&rsquo;t permit myself to think about anything other than the task at hand.<br />It was necessary to steel myself, steel myself firmly and grit my teeth.\"</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Somehow, despite every single possible factor stacked up against him, Rogozov yanked the misbehaving organ out of his exposed breadbox.&nbsp; Just before he passed out, he remembered specifically noticing that the appendix was so badly infected that it would have ruptured within the next couple of hours, putting him in a situation he certainly would not have survived.</p>\r\n<p>Amazingly, two weeks after this crazy juryrigged operation Rogozov was back in action, working as the base doctor for the rest of the trip.&nbsp; Dude didn\'t even get evacuated back home once the weather cleared up &ndash; he stayed in Antarctica for a full year, returned home with the rest of his team, finally defended his dissertation, received the Order of the Red Banner of Labor award from the Soviet government, and lived the rest of his life as a Professor of General Surgery in St. Petersburg.&nbsp; Insane.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/rogozov5.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<table style=\"width: 500px;\" align=\"center\">\r\n<tbody>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td><span>\"When Rogozov had made the incision and was manipulating his own innards as he removed the appendix, his intestine gurgled, which was highly unpleasant for us;&nbsp; it made one want to turn away, flee, not look&mdash;but I kept my head and stayed.&nbsp; Artemev and Teplinsky also held their places, although it later turned out they had both gone quite dizzy and were close to fainting... Rogozov himself was calm and focused on his work, but sweat was running down his face and he frequently asked Teplinsky to wipe his forehead... The operation ended at 4 am local time.&nbsp; By the end, Rogozov was very pale and obviously tired, but he finished everything off.\" </span></td>\r\n</tr>\r\n</tbody>\r\n</table>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Links:</span><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/339/dec15_1/b4965\">BMJ Case Report</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://englishrussia.com/index.php/2009/12/21/leonid-rogozov-%e2%80%93-a-hero-surgeon/\">English Russia</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonid_Rogozov\">Wikipedia</a></p>\r\n<p><br /><br /></p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Sources:</span><br /><br /><span> Rubin, Jeff.&nbsp; <em>Antarctica</em>.&nbsp; Lonely Planet, 2005.<br /><br /> Wise, Jeff.&nbsp; <em>Extreme Fear</em>&nbsp; Macmillan, 2009. </span></p>','2010-04-16','648589523132','rogozov4.jpg','rogozov5.jpg','Leonid Rogozov','Soviet surgeon removed his own appendix in Antarctica.','\"I did not sleep at all last night.  It hurts like the devil!  A snowstorm whipping through my soul, wailing like a hundred jackals.  Still no obvious symptoms that perforation is imminent, but an oppressive feeling of foreboding hangs over me... This is it... I have to think through the only possible way out:  to operate on myself... It’s almost impossible... but I can’t just fold my arms and give up.\"'),