('Reeshemah Taylor','Unknown','N/A','Kissimmee, FL, USA','21st-century American Policeman','<p>If you were going to make a list of the most insanely-tough jobs on the face of the planet, you&rsquo;d probably have to list being a prison guard in the Florida Department of Corrections fairly high on the list.&nbsp; Sure, we all pretty much hate our jobs and would seriously consider sticking an arm into the whirring gears of a grain thresher if it meant we might be able to collect a worker&rsquo;s comp check every week for the rest of our lives, but no matter how bad you&rsquo;re dreading the morning grind after a long weekend, you can honestly take some degree of solace in the fact that your job probably doesn&rsquo;t involve getting mean-mugged for eight hours a day by real-life murderers who want nothing more than to beat you to death with your own arms.&nbsp; It&rsquo;s all the bullshit of a regular job &ndash; asshole co-workers, shitty break room coffee, long hours of boredom, and setting your alarm clock for six AM every weekday, except that when someone gets &ldquo;a case of the Mondays&rdquo; they shank three inmates to death with a pencil, set a mattress on fire, and try to bite you.&nbsp; Sure, working as a barista in a rich suburb is an undertaking so inhuman that it should probably fulfill some sort of court-ordered Community Service requirement, but no matter how many soccer moms roll their eyes and sigh loudly into their iPhones at least you don&rsquo;t constantly have to really worry about a mass-murdering psychopath with a swastika face tattoo coming over the counter and trying to give you a tracheotomy with a sharpened spoon.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Officer Reeshemah Taylor of the Osceola County Department of Corrections not only spends her work week locked behind barbed wire with hundreds of violent arsonists, murderers, rapists, and thieves, she does this in the state of Florida, which for some reason seems to breed <a href=\"https://twitter.com/_FloridaMan\">a rare type of person</a> that you don&rsquo;t typically encounter outside of an insane asylum or one of those bizarre cartoons on Adult Swim that make absolutely no fucking sense whatsoever.&nbsp; For Officer Taylor and her co-workers, every day is a life-or-death struggle &ndash; since 2001, there have been seven corrections officers in Florida killed in the line of duty, with presumably many more injured.&nbsp; The only way to keep order and stay alive when your job puts you within arm&rsquo;s reach of Crips, Latin Kings, Aryan Brotherhood, motorcycle gangs, serial killers, bank robbers, drug dealers, and various other unsavory characters with absolutely nothing to lose is by being smart, careful, and so insanely over-the-top badass that nobody even thinks about fucking with you.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/87594721905/reeshemah1.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>June 22<sup>nd</sup>, 2009 started like pretty much every single day of Officer Taylor&rsquo;s career &ndash; get up, eat some breakfast, get your kids off to school, and then drive your sensible vehicle past sniper towers and guard dogs into a hardcore escape-proof facility populated by a few hundred convicted felons and like a dozen armed guards.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Taylor was assigned to the Medical Unit of the Osceola County Jail that day, patrolling the sickbay, when she suddenly realized that something was wrong.&nbsp; She&rsquo;d been trying to get a hold of one of her co-workers on her walkie-talkie, but for some reason this guy wasn&rsquo;t responding when she asked him to check in.&nbsp; Now, radio problems are probably fairly normal in this kind of job, and maybe the dude was just busy or something, but being a prison guard isn&rsquo;t the sort of job where you can just shrug &ldquo;fuck it,&rdquo; kick your feet up on the desk, put on a YouTube video, and chill until your co-worker shows up.&nbsp; If he&rsquo;s not responding, you gotta make sure he&rsquo;s OK.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/87594721905/reeshemah2.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Calling in on her radio again, Reeshemah Taylor headed through the Medical Unit towards the prison cells on the other side, checking in on the other officer&rsquo;s last known position.&nbsp; As she entered the cell block, she heard something, ever so faint, coming from a cell on the far side of the corridor.&nbsp; A man&rsquo;s voice, whispering something urgent.</p>\r\n<p>She hustled to the cell to investigate.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>When she entered, she immediately felt the barrel of a nine millimeter semi-automatic handgun press against her forehead.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/87594721905/reeshemah3.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The inmate&rsquo;s name was never released, but he has been identified as a member of the Netas, an insanely-terrifying Puerto Rican street gang known for running drugs and guns, attacking rival gang members in prison, and for encouraging its members to launch brutal ambushes against police officers and prison guards whenever the opportunity seems convenient.&nbsp; Their most famous act of over-the-top horror-movie fucked-up-shit was in the early 1980s, when a group of Netas found themselves incarcerated on the same cell block as the leader of a rival game, Los 27.&nbsp; An enterprising group of Netas spent weeks using sharpened spoons and their bare hands to dig a goddamned hole in the wall between them and the Los 27 gang leader, attacked him in the middle of the night, stabbed him 150 times, and chopped him into 84 pieces.&nbsp; They mailed his finger to the guy&rsquo;s mother, his foot to the prison warden, and FedEx&rsquo;ed the dude&rsquo;s eyes to his second-in-command.</p>\r\n<p>When I ran a Google Image Search for the Netas Association, this was the first thing that popped up:</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/87594721905/reeshemah4.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> <em>Yeah, that&rsquo;s pretty intense.</em></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Like I said, I don&rsquo;t know this inmate&rsquo;s name, but he probably didn&rsquo;t have all the face tattoos, because his plan was basically the same thing Jean Reno uses to trick Gary Oldman in <em>The Professional</em>.&nbsp; The inmate, who was literally serving three <em>consecutive fucking life sentences without the possibility of parole </em>for his role in numerous bank robberies, assaults, and homicides, had faked sick, gained a transfer to a cell in the Medical Unit, ambushed a guard, knocked him out, stripped him of his uniform, and taken his weapon.</p>\r\n<p>His plan was pretty fucking simple &ndash; dress up like a guard and walk out the front door of the facility.&nbsp; If any cops tried to stop him, kill as many of them as he could.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>When Officer Reeshemah Taylor stared down the barrel of her co-workers service pistol, she immediately recognized the man with his finger on the trigger.&nbsp; In that one split-second instant, she knew this maniac could cap her, get re-captured, be sentenced to yet another life sentence, and still consider the entire ordeal a Win because at least he got to kill a cop in the process.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>His cold gaze locked on her, and he opened his mouth to shout-whisper an order to his new captive.</p>\r\n<p>She reacted before he could even get a word out.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/87594721905/reeshemah5.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/87594721905/reeshemah5a.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/87594721905/reeshemah5b.gif\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/87594721905/reeshemah5c.gif\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>In one lightning-quick, gut-instinct, fuck-you-better-do-something-or-you&rsquo;re-gonna-die moment, Officer Reeshemah Taylor of the Osceola County Department of Corrections stared down a cold-blooded hardcore murderer twice her size and then ducked her head away from the pistol, <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jS6kAKj8R9o\">grabbed it with both hands</a>, redirected it away from her face, stepped back, and then threw her entire body weight into a full-on fucking knee strike to the gonads, slamming her femur into his junk with an epic ballknock so badass it probably blew out the windows at the high school across the street (and yes, there is a high school <a href=\"https://www.google.com/maps/place/Osceola+County+Corrections+Department/@28.2960869,-81.3555783,17z/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x88dd85e5402f3fb9:0xac2b8a69d420bda8\">across the street</a> from the Osceola County Jail).&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Now, keep in mind here that this guy is a notorious gang member, and probably very high on the list of the most dangerous men in the entire building.&nbsp; He&rsquo;s huge.&nbsp; He&rsquo;s killed people.&nbsp; He&rsquo;s already overpowered another guard and taken his weapon.&nbsp; This guy had a foot of height and maybe a hundred pounds on Officer Taylor.</p>\r\n<p>Of course, the ballknock is a very powerful attack.&nbsp; The effects of having his nuts plowed up into his esophagus caused him to drop the pistol, which hit the ground and skittered across the cell.</p>\r\n<p>Despite the agonizing pain of having your sack used as a punching back, this guy still spun on his heel, turned, and dove for the gun.</p>\r\n<p>But he wasn&rsquo;t going to escape Officer Reeshemah Taylor that easily.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/87594721905/reeshemah6.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Officer Taylor knew she had to strike while she had this guy on the ropes.&nbsp; The second he spun, she threw her arm around his neck, grabbed his throat in the crook of her elbow in a fucking choke hold, and pulled this guy down to the ground.&nbsp; When he hit the deck, she got her legs around him, scissoring her legs around his midsection and clamping down to cut off his ability to squirm away or breathe properly.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><em>With her free hand that wasn&rsquo;t currently choking the fuck out of a 200-pound convicted murderer</em>, Officer Taylor pulled her radio, and called in the code for backup to converge on her position immediately.</p>\r\n<p>Typical response time for something like that is about thirty seconds.&nbsp; Which I imagine is a goddamned eternity when you&rsquo;re in a life-or-death wrestling match with a rampaging psychopath twice your size who is actively trying to break free from your insane kung fu grip and shoot you and all of your co-workers in the face.</p>\r\n<p>Despite straining all of her muscles to their absolute limit, Officer Taylor clamped that fucking rear naked choke on a tatted-up muscle bro gang member and locked that dude down until help could arrive.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/87594721905/reeshemah71.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /><br /></p>\r\n<p>For her incredible bravery, mad kung fu actions skills, and complete inability to succumb to her own imminent mortality, in 2011 Officer Reeshemah Taylor was awarded the Medal of Valor, which is the highest award a police officer, firefighter or EMT can be awarded by the United States Government.&nbsp; &nbsp;The citation speaks for itself:<br /><br /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><em>&ldquo;Ofc. Taylor engaged an inmate that was far superior in size, strength, motivation, and intention.<br />She successfully subdued this inmate through sheer determination, instincts, will, and courage.<br />Her efforts, in the face of imminent death, saved the lives of many.&rdquo;</em></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/87594721905/reeshemah8.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /><br /> <em>\"You all share &mdash; you\'re all crazy, God love you &mdash; you all share a selflessness <br /> that\'s not easy to explain, a commitment to your fellow man that\'s rare, a bravery that inspires.\"<br /><br /> - Vice President Joe Biden, to the 2011 Medal of Valor recipients<br /></em><br />&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Links:</p>\r\n<p><a href=\"https://www.bja.gov/programs/medalofvalor/awardees/09-10taylor.html\">Medal of Valor Citation</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.americanjail.org/osceola-county-co-awarded-medal-of-valor/\">American Jail Association</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.wjhg.com/home/headlines/Honoring_Law_Enforcement_Reeshemah_Taylor_2010_Officer_of_the_.html\">WJHG 7 News</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.nleomf.org/officers/month/otm-archive/february-2010-officer-of-the.html\">National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://news.yahoo.com/biden-honors-police-firefighters-medals-195809523--politics.html\">Yahoo News</a></p>','2015-10-02','87594721905','reeshemah.jpg','reeshemah-small.jpg','Reeshemah Taylor','Florida prison guard is ambushed by a gun-wielding convicted murderer, and has just a split-second to fight back against a gang leader intent on taking her life.','“I knew his background, I knew what he was capable of, and I knew that if I was in that situation what I would do.  I figured that he was going to try and kill every single one of us that day.  I wasn’t ready to die that day, so I did what I had to do.”'),('Gunnhild Gormsdottr','c. 910 AD','c. 977 AD','Denmark','Medieval Danish Queen','<p><em>Hey guys, sorry I missed the post on Friday.&nbsp; This week, to celebrate the release of <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Guts-Glory-The-American-Civil/dp/031632051X/ref=pd_rhf_gw_p_img_1?ie=UTF8&amp;refRID=0TK0YRVB2H7K2GM6JZPC\">Guts &amp; Glory: The American Civil War</a> in paperback on Tuesday, I&rsquo;m posting a chapter from my other Guts &amp; Glory book, <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0316320560/ref=s9_qpp_gw_p14_d99_i3?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&amp;pf_rd_s=desktop-7&amp;pf_rd_r=17ZGJYY1E8JW7289A9V9&amp;pf_rd_t=36701&amp;pf_rd_p=2090149182&amp;pf_rd_i=desktop\">Guts &amp; Glory: The Vikings</a></em>.&nbsp; <em>In case you guys have missed out on this, I&rsquo;m in the process of working on a series of books that focus on specific events &ndash; the next is World War II, and last week I started writing one on the American Revolution.&nbsp; The whole undertaking is really challenging, but it\'s also a lot of fun and I&rsquo;m really happy with the way they&rsquo;re coming out.&nbsp; Anyway, it would really help me out a ton if you guys checked them out.&nbsp; The Civil War one is like $4 or something on Amazon, which is kind of intense considering it took me a year to write it, but I think it&rsquo;s probably worth the price of a latte to have a cool, non-boring book about the pivotal event in American history.&nbsp; If you do check it out, and you think it\'s cool, I\'d also really appreciate it if you\'d leave me a review on there as well.<br /></em></p>\r\n<p><em>Anyways, that&rsquo;s my shill.&nbsp; Now here&rsquo;s a chapter I wrote about an insane Viking Queen.</em></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/241220527868/61s3Rex-d8L._SX375_BO1,204,203,200__.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"238\" height=\"316\" /><br /><br /></p>\r\n<p>Just because they weren&rsquo;t always leaping from the decks of burning longships swinging their mighty broadswords swords wildly at a mob of terrified, fleeing French peasants, it doesn&rsquo;t mean that Viking women weren&rsquo;t some of the toughest, most independent, most ferocious, and most utterly ruthless human beings on the planet.&nbsp; Hailing from the most feminist-liberated civilization on the planet, Viking women owned property, had rights, built structures, managed farms, and basically ran the show in Norway, Denmark, and Sweden while their big strong husbands were gone for months or even years at a time on their epic raids.&nbsp; The self-reliance and strength required to keep your family alive in a harsh, sub-zero tundra environment surrounded by Vikings made the Norse women fierce bold, and daring&hellip; and more than a match for their axe-swinging husbands and sons in matters of personal courage and intellectual toughness.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Of those daring, no-nonsense Norse women, none was more fierce &ndash; or notorious &ndash; than the infamous Gunnhild, Mother of Kings.&nbsp; Wife, mother, and daughter of powerful Viking ruler, two-time Queen of Norway, well-spoken political animal, and a woman so despised for her cruelty that saga writers portray her less like a historical figure and more like a wicked witch from an antiquated fairy tale.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/241220527868/gunnhild1.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Sources differ on where Gunnhild came from, but the best guess is that she was a daughter of Gorm the Old, a powerful Viking king who had spent his apparently-exceptionally-long life conquering most of the small kingdoms of Denmark and uniting them into one land.&nbsp; Gorm was basically the Harald Fairhair of Denmark, and by the time both those guys were done killing everyone who disagreed with them the entire Viking lands had gone from being a bunch of tiny nothing kingdoms to two really powerful ones &ndash; Norway and Denmark.&nbsp; Naturally, the best thing to do was to unite those two countries through marriage.&nbsp; So Gorm the Old&rsquo;s daughter Gunnhild was sent to Norway, to marry Harald Fairhair&rsquo;s son Erik.&nbsp; This would, in theory, unify the land under one Viking King, and everyone would live happily ever after forever in one happy sing-along filled with helmets and axes and burning and destruction.</p>\r\n<p>Unfortunately, things don&rsquo;t usually work out that way.</p>\r\n<p>For starters, Princess Gunnhild was not your typical glass-slipper-wearing Disney princess with a Dentyne smile and one of those little waves the beauty queens do on TV.&nbsp; Sure, she was legendarily beautiful, eloquent, and really fun to talk to at parties, but she was also calculating, ambitious, and deadly.&nbsp; According to one (heavily-unreliable) source, she&rsquo;d spent part of her life living in a hut near the North Pole learning magic from two Finnish sorcerers only to have them murdered once she&rsquo;s become more powerful than them.&nbsp; While the whole witchcraft and magic thing was probably bogus, it is true that Gunnhild didn&rsquo;t take talk-back from anybody, and she didn&rsquo;t hesitate to go for the jugular to get what she wanted.</p>\r\n<p>Gunnhild&rsquo;s husband was a nice, handsome prince named Erik Bloodaxe.&nbsp; Yes, Bloodaxe.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/241220527868/gunnhild6.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Erik was the favorite son of <a href=\"/index.cgi?id=303556515876\">King Harald Fairhair</a>, and after Fairhair retired from being King in the late 920s he passed the throne off to Erik and Gunnhild, who were crowned King and Queen of Norway.&nbsp; Of course, as I mentioned before, Harald Fairhair had <em>a lot of kids</em>, and this king/queen thing didn&rsquo;t sit well with all of Erik&rsquo;s TWENTY half-brothers, all of whom wanted that crown for themselves.&nbsp; When Harald died a couple years later, Erik&rsquo;s brothers all decided they were going to do something about it.</p>\r\n<p>Luckily for Erik Bloodaxe, he had a secret weapon &ndash; his wife.&nbsp; Queen Gunnhild, working secret back-room treaties, buying off corrupt politicians, and outright hiring professional assassins and poisoners, immediately went to work making sure nobody even dreamed of taking the Crown of Norway from the head of her beloved husband.&nbsp; One by one, and for various reasons, Erik Bloodaxe&rsquo;s half-brothers began passing out of history.&nbsp; One of &nbsp;them tried to make an alliance against Erik, so Gunnhild had him locked inside his own house, which was then set on fire.&nbsp; Another brother picked a fight with Erik over a land dispute, so Gunnhild paid a witch to poison him.&nbsp; She got one brother deported to England.&nbsp; Another was completely discredited and abandoned by his own followers.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Eventually, with brothers dropping off all over the place, things got so out of control that all of the sons of Harald Fairhair raised armies and fought it out in a huge battle on a giant snowy field near Erik&rsquo;s palace.&nbsp; Four separate armies, each commanded by a Fairhair son, met on the field in a swirling, bloody melee that left thousands of brave Vikings dead on the field.&nbsp; From the rubble, smoke, destruction, and carnage, only one side emerged victorious &ndash; that of Erik Bloodaxe and his wife Gunnhild.<br /><br /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/241220527868/gunnhild4.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> <em>Erik Bloodaxe&rsquo;s nickname doesn&rsquo;t just come because his weapon was <br /> almost always completely soaked in blood &ndash; it came because he <br /> took the axe to his own flesh-and-blood.</em></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Things went great for a while.&nbsp; Erik Bloodaxe and Queen Gunnhild ruled with an iron fist, kept the jarls in line, eviscerated anyone who challenged them, and still found time to have nine kids together somehow.</p>\r\n<p>Well, I guess it turns out that even though tyranny is fun if you&rsquo;re the tyrant, it didn&rsquo;t really work for the jarls of Norway, and after a couple years of suffering under Erik and Gunnhild those guys went looking for help.&nbsp; They found Hakon the Good, the young boy Gunnhild had sent away to be raised by King Aethelstan of England, and asked him if he wanted to be King of Norway.&nbsp; Hakon said sure, returned to Norway with a sword named <em>Quernbiter </em>(because it was so sharp it could cut through a quern, or sharpening stone) and a loyal group of followers, and Erik&rsquo;s now-bitter jarls and soldiers deserted him almost immediately.&nbsp; Erik Bloodaxe fought Hakon the Good in battle, was defeated, and had to flee Norway.</p>\r\n<p>Queen Gunnhild, driven from her palace by traitors, seethed with rage.&nbsp; She would get her revenge.&nbsp; She swore it.</p>\r\n<p>Gunnhild and Erik Bloodaxe went to England, where they settled in York, the Viking-controlled city that had been captured from the English by Ivar the Boneless.&nbsp; Gunnhild helped establish Erik as the Viking King of York, where he ruled for the next decade or so, issued coins, and spent his summers leading military campaigns to ravage the English, Scottish, and Irish countrysides of goods and supplies.&nbsp; When the people of York threw him out and put some other guy on the throne, Gunnhild and Erik regrouped, attacked, and re-captured the Kingdom back.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/241220527868/gunnhild2.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>It was a dark day in 954 AD when word came to Gunnhild that her beloved husband, Erik Bloodaxe, had been killed in battle with the English, and the armies of England were marching towards York.&nbsp; The Queen gathered her children, commissioned a boat, and headed to the Orkney Islands, a small series of islands off the coast of Scotland where her daughter was married to a powerful jarl named Thorfinn Skull-Cleaver.&nbsp; Thorfinn took Gunnhild in, and she immediately began strategizing her next move.</p>\r\n<p>From this point on, Gunnhild Mother of Kings becomes somehow even more intense.&nbsp; First, she organizes treaties and alliances between Thorfinn and powerful jarls both in England and Norway.&nbsp; She encouraged bands of adventure-hungry Viking raiders to launch attacks up and down the coast of Norway to destabilize Hakon the Good&rsquo;s rule, promising the pirates rewards if she ever regained the throne.&nbsp; She reached out to her brother, King Harald Bluetooth of Denmark, for reinforcements and support.&nbsp; She trained her son, Harald Greycloak, in the arts of leadership and strategy.</p>\r\n<p>After biding her time for seven long years, Gunnhild was ready to make her move.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/241220527868/gunnhild5.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>She arrived off the coast of Norway at the head of a gigantic fleet of warriors of every walk of Viking life &ndash; Thorfinn Skull-Cleaver&rsquo;s Orkney men, jarls from York, Danish troops on loan from Harald Bluetooth, and mercenary Viking pirates she&rsquo;d contacted on remote islands, all unified in one invasion armada.&nbsp; When they landed, they were joined by Norwegian forces that had been loyal to Erik, or who had been promised money and power in the new reign of Gunnhild.</p>\r\n<p>When King Hakon the Great of Norway met Harald Greycloak on the field of battle in 961, Hakon was outnumbered six to one.&nbsp; He fought hard, and bravely, but it wasn&rsquo;t enough.&nbsp; The battle turned, and Hakon was killed &ndash; not just by an arrow, but by Gunnhild&rsquo;s dark magic, if you want to believe all the legends.</p>\r\n<p>The real force behind the throne of King Harald Greycloak, Queen Gunnhild Mother of Kings ruled Norway as a tyrant for nine long years.&nbsp; Land and wealth was seized from disloyal jarls, military raids were launched against would-be usurpers, and all who opposed her were wiped out with extreme brutality. &nbsp;&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/241220527868/gunnhild31.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>As you can imagine, this sort of thing doesn&rsquo;t last forever, and Gunnhild Mother of Kings was deposed yet again in 970, when another guy named Hakon got mad that Gunnhild set his dad on fire and raised an army to fight her.&nbsp; Supported by the oppressed nobles of Norway, Hakon took his forces into battle with Harald Greycloak, defeated him, killed the King, and Gunnhild was forced to flee to the Orkneys once again.</p>\r\n<p>Gunnhild went back to work trying to reclaim her throne, but another invasion by her other sons in 971 was defeated by Jarl Hakon.&nbsp; Hakon, not interested in keeping Gunnhild around to thwart him at every turn, made a deal with Harald Bluetooth of Denmark, and Harald sold out his own sister to secure a sweet treaty with Hakon.&nbsp; When Gunnhild returned to Denmark in 974, Harald had his now-elderly sister arrested, and sentenced her to death by having her drowned in a bog.&nbsp; These things happen.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/241220527868/Gunnhild-egger-sine-sonar.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>','2015-10-12','241220527868','gunnhild.jpg','gunnhild-small.jpg','Gunnhild, Mother of Kings','Queen, wife, and mother of Kings, this diabolical mastermind ruthlessly obliterated all Viking warriors who stood in her path.','“A most beautiful woman, wise and learned, gladsome of speech, but very guileful and stern in disposition.”'),('Jeanne-Louise de Belleville','c. 1300','c. 1359','Nantes, France','Medieval Pirate Queen','<p>It was a cold, gray, rain-soaked day towards the end of the year 1346 when the heavy wood-and-iron doors of the Lord&rsquo;s keep were slammed open with a jarring amount of force.&nbsp; A pair of guards quickly escorted two badly-wounded men out of the rain into the darkly-lit Great Hall, hurrying them forward with a sense of urgency.&nbsp; The men were pitiful to see &ndash; stripped of their weapons, armor, and uniform insignia, and bleeding from cuts and bruises across their bodies, their eyes held the gaze of men who have witnessed untold horrors without even beginning to know how the hell to process their reality.&nbsp; With a heavy sigh, and the urging of the Baron, the two exhausted French sailors began relating their story.</p>\r\n<p>There had been black ships on the horizon.&nbsp; Three of them, almost-mystically appearing through of the thick fog on the English Channel like ghosts emerging from the veil of death itself.&nbsp; Crimson sails, red as blood, propelled the terrifying through the water with inescapable speed.&nbsp; The Baron&rsquo;s men had done what they could.&nbsp; Archers launched fire arrows.&nbsp; Armored marines came to grapples with sword, spear, and axe.&nbsp; But in the end, the ferocity of the terrifying pirate fleet was too much.&nbsp; They were overrun in minutes.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/65331588999/jeannedeclisson1.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Then she came.&nbsp; The Pirate Queen of Hell.&nbsp; Calmly striding along the deck, dragging a fearsome, well-worn axe behind her.&nbsp; She picked out the leader, her men pushed him down to the deck, and she lopped off the man&rsquo;s head like she was prepping a fucking pineapple for a badass pirate pina colada.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>She picked out these two men by hand, pointing to them seemingly at random.&nbsp; Her men immediately went to work decapitating every other surviving member of the crew.</p>\r\n<p>Before heading below decks to check the hold for treasure and plunder, the Pirate Queen looked both survivors in the eye with a cold, hateful stare.&nbsp; You have been left alive, she said, to tell your King that <em>La Tigresse Bretonne</em> has claimed another of his ships.</p>\r\n<p>Congreve was right.&nbsp; Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.&nbsp; King Philip the Fortunate probably would have been wise to consider that before illegally arresting and executing Lady Jeanne de Clisson&rsquo;s husband, confiscating her land, and declaring her an outlaw to the French crown.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/65331588999/jeannedeclisson2.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Jeanne-Louise de Belleville was born in the year 1300, the daughter of a noble family from Britanny, which is that little pointy peninsula on the northwest tip of France.&nbsp; At the ripe old age of fucking twelve she was married off to a 19 year old French nobleman named Geoffrey, and went off to live in his awesome manor.&nbsp; They had two kids together, but he died in 1326, and four years later Jeanne was married again &ndash; this time to a dashing, handsome, super-rich French nobleman named Olivier III de Clisson.&nbsp; By all accounts Olivier was as close as I think you&rsquo;re gonna get to true love in the Feudal System, and this guy had an awesome-as-hell castle outside Nantes that overlooked a scenic river and I don&rsquo;t know I guess some cows or a pretty green field or something.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The Lord and Lady Clisson were obviously pretty happy in their Brittany villa, because they had five kids, didn&rsquo;t end up having to butcher anyone with an axe, and don&rsquo;t really do anything historically noteworthy between 1326 and 1343.&nbsp; Their castle still stands to this day, and, I don&rsquo;t know, I wouldn&rsquo;t mind spending a summer here:</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/65331588999/jeannedeclisson3.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Unfortunately, life in paradise came crashing down to a pretty abrupt end pretty fucking quickly.</p>\r\n<p>The Hundred Years&rsquo; War broke out between England and France in 1337, and even if you don&rsquo;t know shit about the Hundred Years&rsquo; War, you can probably use context clues and the powers of deduction to figure out that it lasted about a hundred damn years, so it&rsquo;s probably pretty safe to say it was a fairly horrific and intense situation for both sides.&nbsp; At its core, the Hundred Years&rsquo; War was a stupid argument over who should be the King of France after the old King of France died without leaving an heir.&nbsp; Well, Lord Olivier III of Clisson sided with the King Philip the Fortunate of France at first, signing on as a badass knight and leading a cavalry attack against the English invaders, but King Edward of England used the power of persuasion and probably a fuckton of gold to convince Olivier that yeah, maybe he should side with England instead.&nbsp; Olivier stopped sending troops to Philip the Fortunate, Philip got mad and had his guards arrest Olivier while the Lord of Clisson was attending a jousting tournament in Nantes.&nbsp; Philip and a small group of nobles went For the Watch on Olivier&rsquo;s ass, declared him a traitor to the crown, hung him, then cut off his head and hung it from the walls of Nantes.&nbsp; Then Philip wrote up a decree that Jeanne was a traitor like her husband, and he ordered her to be arrested and have all of her property confiscated.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/65331588999/jeannedeclisson4.png\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>When Lady Clisson received word of her husband&rsquo;s death, the 43 year-old widow didn&rsquo;t break down.&nbsp; She didn&rsquo;t weep uncontrollably, pop some alprazolam and put on all of her Morrisey albums.&nbsp; She grabbed her axe, a suit of armor, ordered her chamberlain to sell every valuable thing she had, packed her seven kids up in a ship, and sailed it <em>right to the fucking gates of Nantes</em>.&nbsp; When she got there, she had her kids come out and see their father&rsquo;s head mounted on the walls of the city.&nbsp; Do not forget this.&nbsp; Do not forgive this.&nbsp; Seek vengeance at all costs.</p>\r\n<p>I don&rsquo;t know what music was playing while this happened, but I bet it was fucking epic.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/65331588999/jeannedeclisson5.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Jeanne de Clisson sold all of her land, jewels, and worldly possessions, and used the money to buy three massive warships.&nbsp; She painted them black, outfitted them with blood-red sails, hired crews of bloodthirsty marauders, and used the extra cash to bribe the Lords of Brittany not to sell her out to the King.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Then she went to work.</p>\r\n<p>It&rsquo;s uncertain how long the Tigress of Brittany (Sorry dudes, I know she&rsquo;s known as the &ldquo;Lioness of Brittany&rdquo;, but that&rsquo;s not the correct translation of the word <em>tigresse</em>, which means &ldquo;tigress&rdquo; and/or &ldquo;fierce, passionate woman&rdquo;) marauded, pillaged, raped, murdered, decapitated and otherwise horrifically massacred every French vessel in the Channel.&nbsp; Estimates range anywhere from five months to two years.&nbsp; It doesn&rsquo;t matter &ndash; consider that Blackbeard&rsquo;s entire career in piracy lasted for less than two years and you realize that a pirate armada can do a fucking lot of damage in a very short amount of time.</p>\r\n<p>Her mission was simple &ndash; attack anything with a French flag.&nbsp; They took the head of her lover, so now she was going to rain down so many fucking decapitated heads that they&rsquo;d with they&rsquo;d never heard of an executioner&rsquo;s axe.&nbsp; She personally whacked the commander and any noblemen on board, chopping off their heads and throwing the bodies overboard.&nbsp; Her crew would kill any other survivors, but they would always leave two men alive to tell King Philip the Fortunate what had happened.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/65331588999/jeannedeclisson6.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>To make shit even worse for him, Philip the Fortunate couldn&rsquo;t do much to stop this raiding fleet, either.&nbsp; Most of the French fleet had been annihilated by the English at the Battle of Sluys in 1340, and in 1343 he couldn&rsquo;t exactly spare the troops, money, or supplies that would be necessary for an expedition to chase a trio of pirate ships all around the western coast of France.</p>\r\n<p>It wasn&rsquo;t long before the Black Fleet&rsquo;s reign of destruction caught the eye of King Edward of England.&nbsp; Ed was super into the fact that Jeanne didn&rsquo;t attack English ships, so he actually ended up granting her land, titles, and money to thank her for her help clearing the Channel of the enemy.&nbsp; She repaid his debt by ferrying supplies, men, and arrows from England to France to help support the English during the Battle of Crecy.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/65331588999/jeannedeclisson7.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>We all know how most pirate stories end (with our hero swinging from the end of a noose), but fucking Jeanne de Clisson doesn&rsquo;t go down that way.&nbsp; Instead of finally paying the price for her terrifying killing spree, she actually marries an English Lord in 1349, settles down in a sweet castle somewhere on the coast of Brittany, outlives Philip the Fortunate, and dies peacefully sometime around 1359.&nbsp; Her son Olivier IV inherited her estate.&nbsp; He was a charming boy, took after his mother, and is known to history as &ldquo;Olivier the Butcher&rdquo; for his badassitude on the battlefield.</p>\r\n<p>Olivier eventually re-took the castle that had once belonged to his mother and father, and, as I said, the building still stands to this day (the French Resistance used it as a fortress to fight the Nazis during World War II, which is awesome).</p>\r\n<p>The spirits of the tortured lovers are said to haunt the ruins to this day.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/65331588999/jeannedeclisson8.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br />SPOOKY HALLOWEEN SHIT</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Links:</p>\r\n<p><a href=\"https://maggiemcneill.wordpress.com/2014/04/03/jeanne-de-clisson/https:/maggiemcneill.wordpress.com/2014/04/03/jeanne-de-clisson/\">MaggieMcNeill.Wordpress.Com</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://femalepirates.weebly.com/jeanne-de-clisson.html\">Female Pirates</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.jamesadamshistoricenterprises.com/treasuretrove/jeandeclisson.html\">James Adams Historic Enterprises</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.lazerhorse.org/2013/08/31/women-pirates-jeanne-de-clisson-lioness-brittany/%23\">Women Pirates: Jeanne de Clisson</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.factfiend.com/story-jeanne-de-clisson-badass-female-pirate/\">FactFiend</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_de_Clisson\">Wikipedia</a></p>','2015-10-16','65331588999','jeannedeclisson.jpg','jeannedeclisson-small.jpg','Jeanne de Clisson','When the King of France had her husband beheaded as a traitor, the \"Tigress of Britanny\" assembled a fleet of black-hulled warships and personally wreaked vengeance on the Crown.',''),('Joshua Wheeler','November 22, 1975','October 22, 2015','Roland, OK, USA','21st-century American Soldier','<p>It was late on the night on October 21, 2015, when the call came down to the men of the United States Army&rsquo;s 1<sup>st</sup> Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta:&nbsp; We&rsquo;re going in.</p>\r\n<p>The situation was desperate, life-threatening, and insanely time-sensitive.&nbsp; Somewhere in the outskirts of Hawija, Iraq was a hardened, heavily-defended enemy prison compound housing dozens of fighters from the Kurdish Peshmerga &ndash; crucial allies in the war against ISIS.&nbsp; &nbsp;For weeks, the ISIS fighters in the region had been rounding up all threats to their rule, herding them to this camp, and systematically executing them.&nbsp; These maniacs were so over-the-top in their quest to cleanse the countryside of their enemies that they were literally arresting and murdering non-combatant civilians for no reason other than that they happened to be related to Iraqi police officers.&nbsp; Eleven beheaded, burned bodies had been hung from the bridge near the compound.&nbsp; Three mass graves were clearly visible on satellite imagery.&nbsp; A fourth had been dug, but hadn&rsquo;t been filled yet.</p>\r\n<p>The Kurdish Peshmerga wanted their boys back.&nbsp; They were going in, tonight, with or without U.S. assistance.&nbsp; &nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Special Operations Command ordered Delta Force to grab their shit and get ready for a fight.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/235490312434/joshuawheeler1.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Among the Delta operators who slapping mags into their M4s, powering up their night vision, and sprinting out to the waiting Black Hawk transport helicopters was Master Sergeant Joshua L. Wheeler.&nbsp; A 20-year battle-hardened combat vet from Roland, Oklahoma, Wheeler is basically what you&rsquo;d get if you crossed Captain America with Snake Eyes from <em>G.I. Joe</em> and then turned him loose on the Taliban with a heavy machine gun.&nbsp; A quiet, even-tempered family man who always told his wife he was going out on &ldquo;a training mission&rdquo; every time he deployed boots-first into a combat zone, this guy probably volunteered for more over-the-top white-knuckle firefights than an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie marathon over the course of two decades hand-delivering Democracy from the barrel of an assault rifle.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Wheeler grew up in a rough home, with (by all accounts) a couple of parents who were completely checked out and/or just utterly dangerous to everyone around them.&nbsp; With the help of his grandparents and the Cherokee Nation (his mom was half-Cherokee), Wheeler went out of his way to take care of his four siblings when his folks were incapable of doing so.&nbsp; This guy would go to school all day, work nights and weekends as a roofer (one of the most utterly-brutal jobs on the face of this earth, especially when you&rsquo;re doing that shit in the plains of Oklahoma in the dead of summer), and then still manage to change his little bro&rsquo;s diapers and put food on the table for his sisters.</p>\r\n<p>Here&rsquo;s one of my favorite stories about this dude:&nbsp; The first time he came back home was after he&rsquo;d served an operational deployment as an infantry squad leader in the Middle East.&nbsp; He got to his house, and found his mom was super totally out of it and his brothers and sisters were hungry.&nbsp; He opened the pantry.&nbsp; Empty.&nbsp; So, without saying anything, he grabbed his rifle, went into the woods behind his house, <em>friggin&rsquo; shot a deer, hauled its ass back to his house, and then prepped and cooked the thing for dinner.&nbsp; </em></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/235490312434/joshuawheeler2.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> <em>ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED:<br /> COOK DINNER LIKE A BOSS</em></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>As I mentioned, after graduating high school in 1995 Wheeler enlisted in the U.S. Army as an infantryman.&nbsp; He became a certified Airborne jumpmaster, an expert marksman, and a master of small-unit tactics, heavy weapons, and other Badass Shit.&nbsp; After just two years of service he passed Ranger School and qualified for one of the most elite units in the U.S. military &ndash; the 75<sup>th</sup> Ranger Regiment. &nbsp;After serving as a Ranger for nearly a decade, Wheeler was recommended for the only possible upgrade &ndash; Delta Force.</p>\r\n<p>In 2004, on the eve of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Sergeant Joshua Wheeler went into Delta Training.&nbsp; This kind of training is so intense that when you run a Google Image Search for Delta Force Training, one of the first things that pops up is literally a picture of Chuck Norris breaking a dude in half:</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/235490312434/joshuawheeler3.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Special Operational Detachment Delta is a unit so over-the-top balls-to-the-wall secret that the United States Army <em>has never officially admitted that it even exists</em>.&nbsp; Everything we have about it is second-hand from people who claim to have experienced it.&nbsp; We believe it takes on the most badass dudes in the Army, puts them through utterly brutal training, weeds out the guys who can&rsquo;t hack it, and forges the survivors into the most iron-fisted group of stone-cold asskickers anywhere on the planet.&nbsp; They&rsquo;re trained in sniper fire, marksmanship, demolitions, lockpicking, counter-terrorism assault, and taught foreign languages to work with local security forces on high-risk operations.</p>\r\n<p>Without getting too far into it, here&rsquo;s one insane training story that just gives you some idea of how insane these guys are, how well-trained they are, and how tightly-knit this group of operators can be:</p>\r\n<p>Delta Force runs a shoothouse, where teams are trained by kicking in doors and going through a simulated hostage rescue situation.&nbsp; They use live ammunition, and the terrorists are represented by ballistics gel dummies who are outfitted in full military gear.&nbsp; Upon seeing a terrorist, a Delta operator is expected to hit him with a few bullets in less than two seconds.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The &ldquo;hostages&rdquo; hidden in these live-fire exercises are not ballistics-gel dummies.&nbsp; They are other members of Delta Force.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/235490312434/joshuawheeler4.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>As I mentioned, Delta is not officially recognized by the U.S. Army.&nbsp; Details of their operations are so deep-black that they will never be released to the public.&nbsp; The same is most likely true with their official citations and awards for bravery under fire.&nbsp; If the United States has never admitted to being involved in a particular incident, they can&rsquo;t exactly issue a commendation medal to a soldier who wasn&rsquo;t technically supposed to even be there.</p>\r\n<p>Master Sergeant Joshua Wheeler was embedded in Iraq and Afghanistan on 14 combat deployments.&nbsp; He received 11 Bronze Stars.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Eleven.</p>\r\n<p>Four of these were issued with a &ldquo;V&rdquo; device, meaning that it was issued for exemplary bravery above and beyond the call of duty while under direct fire from enemy soldiers.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/235490312434/joshuawheeler5.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>As I said, even though MSG Wheeler received the nation&rsquo;s fourth-highest award for bravery an unbelievable ELEVEN TIMES, we may never see a single one of his citations.&nbsp; He&rsquo;s just that badass.&nbsp; We know that Delta Force&rsquo;s mission has been to hunt down terrorist leaders and capture or kill them behind enemy lines.&nbsp; They tracked Al-Qaeda after 9/11.&nbsp; They found Saddam Hussein.&nbsp; They captured the guy behind the Benghazi attacks, wiped out an ISIS base in Syria, and once grabbed an Al-Qaeda leader right out his friggin&rsquo; apartment building in Libya. In May of this year they went into a base in Iraq and wiped out twelve members of ISIS&rsquo;s high command without losing a single operative.&nbsp; This is badass stuff.</p>\r\n<p>Now, just for the hell of it, I&rsquo;m going to give you a&nbsp; few examples of what <a href=\"http://valor.militarytimes.com/search.php?medal=7\">Bronze Star citations</a> typically look like when they&rsquo;re awarded for combat bravery:</p>\r\n<p><em>&ldquo;&hellip;Personal courage and commitment to mission accomplishment in a combat zone under the most extreme circumstances&hellip;&rdquo;</em></p>\r\n<p><em>&ldquo;&hellip;his highly specialized team transited through over 1,000 kilometers of hostile, enemy terrain as he aggressively pursued the senior leadership of the insurgent enemy forces&hellip;&rdquo;</em></p>\r\n<p><em>&ldquo;&hellip;decisive actions and dedication to never leave a fallen comrade greatly contributed to the effectiveness of the unit\'s mission&hellip;&rdquo;</em></p>\r\n<p><em>&ldquo;&hellip;selflessly re-directed the enemy fire away from his fellow comrade which allowed him to fix the crew served weapon and get it operational&hellip;&rdquo;</em></p>\r\n<p><em>&ldquo;&hellip;directed multiple engagements on enemy fighting positions over a sustained six-hour direct fire fight resulting in the elimination of over 25 enemy combatants&hellip;&rdquo;</em></p>\r\n<p><em>&ldquo;&hellip;while under small arms fire and with grenades impacting near his position, Corporal Burkes engaged and neutralized the enemy insurgents moving his direction&hellip;&rdquo;</em></p>\r\n<p>I can&rsquo;t speak specifically to what this guy did during his career , but I bet it was mind-blowing.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/235490312434/joshuawheeler6.png\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The clock had just clicked over to October 22, 2015, when the Black Hawks began unloading Delta Force and Peshmerga troops outside the ISIS prison.&nbsp; The mission was clear &ndash; Peshmerga would go in, breach the walls with explosives, and break the prisoners out.&nbsp; Delta was only there to provide a perimeter. &nbsp;They were not supposed to engage.</p>\r\n<p>Of course, as tends to happen, shit got messed up.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Peshmerga demo guys got to the wall and detonated the charge, but it didn&rsquo;t work.&nbsp; They weren&rsquo;t getting through the wall.&nbsp; Time was of the essence &ndash; the ISIS guards had now been alerted, and it would be mere seconds before they&rsquo;d set up a defensive perimeter and start capping hostages.&nbsp; If something was going to be done, it needed to be done ASAP.</p>\r\n<p>Despite orders not to engage, Master Sergeant Joshua Wheeler left his position and ran head-on into the battle.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/235490312434/joshuawheeler7.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Under heavy enemy AK-47 fire, Wheeler calmly set up a breaching charge, stacked up his Delta troops, and blew the wall.&nbsp; He charged in, guns blazing, but sadly was hit by a burst of enemy fire that was directed at the breach.&nbsp; He became the first American soldier killed in the fight against ISIS in Iraq.</p>\r\n<p>Behind him, the rest of the Peshmerga and Delta Force raced through the breaching hole, firing and blasting with rifles and grenades in every direction.&nbsp; The assault operation was quick, vicious, and decisive.&nbsp; In minutes, Allied troops had blitzed through the prison facility and taken it over, killing over twenty of the enemy, taking five ISIS fighters prisoner, and driving the enemy back with a hail of automatic weapons fire.&nbsp; The rescuers reached the prison&rsquo;s cell block under heavy fire, cut the gates open, and were shocked to find that instead of 20 Peshmerga fighters, the prison held nearly 80 people &ndash; most of them innocent Iraqi civilians.&nbsp; All of the prisoners had been slated to be executed at dawn.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The Black Hawks came under heavy ground fire as they evacuated the soldiers and hostages, but the only casualty was MSG Wheeler, a man who died a heroic death while saving the lives of 80 people from a gruesome execution.&nbsp; He was brought back to the U.S. for burial on Sunday.</p>\r\n<p>As the Black Hawks pulled away, a flight of F-15 Strike Eagles blew the prison apart with enough JDAM missiles to crater the earth.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>This is a helmet cam video that was released of the prisoners being rescued during the raid.&nbsp; MSG Wheeler does not appear in it at all, but it&rsquo;s an interesting insight to the twenty years this man spent fighting for what he believed was right.</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><iframe src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/3BvqlAvRdY0\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"425\" height=\"350\"></iframe><br /> <em>&ldquo;He was exactly what was right about this world&hellip; <br /> he came from nothing and he really made something out of himself.&rdquo;</em></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Links</p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/24/us/joshua-wheeler-killed-in-isis-raid.html?_r=1\">Joshua Wheeler Killed in ISIS Raid</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/23/world/middleeast/us-commandos-iraq-isis.html?_r=0\">NY Times</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/isis-terror/u-s-special-forces-troops-injured-rescuing-isis-hostages-sources-n449106\">NBC News</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.soc.mil/Memorial%20Wall/Bios/wheeler_joshua.pdf\">Special Operations Command Bio</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_Wheeler\">Wikipedia</a></p>','2015-10-26','235490312434','joshuawheeler.jpg','joshuawheeler-small.jpg','Joshua Wheeler','20-year veteran of Delta Force who received 11 Bronze Stars and participated in a raid that saved 75 civilians from execution at the hands of ISIS.','“In that area, if you didn’t go to college, you basically had a choice of the oil fields or the military.  The Army really suited him; he always had such robust energy and he always wanted to help people, and he felt he was doing that.”'),('Robert Maximilian Friedrich von Ungern-Sternberg','December 29, 1885','September 17, 1921','Gratz, Austria','20th-century Russian Supervillain','<p>Baron Roman Nikolai Maximilian von Ungern-Sternberg is what you would get if you crossed Vlad the Impaler, Genghis Khan, Hitler, Stalin, Kali-Ma and goddamned <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/horseman.html\">Christopher Walken</a> from Sleepy Hollow all up into one dude with access to automatic weapons, high explosives, a horde of psychotic Mongol warriors, then had him blessed by the fucking Dalai Lama to be the physical incarnation of the Tibetan Blood God of Vengeance.&nbsp; In the &ldquo;Mad Baron&rdquo;s six months humping sanity to death, massacring communists and fist fighting wolves (literally fist fighting wolves) in the steppes of Central Asia as the self-proclaimed heir to Genghis Khan, Maximilian von Ungern-Sternberg cleaved himself a blood-soaked reputation so horrific, brutal, and out-of-his-gourd fucking insane that it can only truly be classified as SPOOKY HALLOWEEN SHIT.</p>\r\n<p>Let&rsquo;s put it this way:&nbsp; When the Bloody Baron conquered and plundered the capital of Mongolia at the head of a force of Russian Tsarist infantry, blood-raging Mongol Warriors, wild Cossack cavalry and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome-style Chinese desert bandit raiders, the Baron allegedly cut the still-beating hearts out of his surviving enemies, cleaved their skulls into gold-plated serving dishes, and then offered their flayed, skinless bodies as sacrifices to a bunch of bizarre fringe Buddhist gods &ndash; particularly this guy, the flaming multi-armed death-bringing murder god that Ungern claimed to be &nbsp;claimed to be a physical incarnation of:</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/39684745806/ungern1.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Freiheirr Robert Maximilian Friedrich von Ungern-Sternberg was born in Austria in 1886, the descendent of a line of Russian nobility that he claimed included crusaders, pirates, <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/attila.html\">Attila the Hun</a>, and no fewer than 72 ancestors who died glorious, bloody, horrific deaths in the service of the Tsars of Russia.&nbsp; Even though this guy was about as German as a beer-battered wiener schnitzel during Oktoberfest, the Germans made up a lot of the aristocracy and military dictatorship of the Russian Empire, and this guy grew up in a badass castle in Estonia back when Estonia was still part of Russia.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>As a kid, Ungern-Sternberg had a big problem with beating the fuck out of assholes for no reason at all and then needing to be physically restrained from now mashing their unconscious bodies to a pulp with his fucking fists.&nbsp; He went to a military academy to find some direction for his boundless rage, but after receiving 25 disciplinary charges &ndash; usually for dueling his classmates with pistols or sabers, but also one time when he fucking <em>strangled his roommates goddamned pet owl for some reason</em> &ndash; Ungern resigned in a &ldquo;you can&rsquo;t expel me, I fucking quit!&rdquo; type of situation.&nbsp; He enlisted in the army as a lower officer, hopped a train, and was sent out to East Asia to help defend the border in the wake of the 1905 Russo-Japanese War.</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/39684745806/ungern2.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> <em>&ldquo;Ungern looked at everyone with the eyes of a beast of prey&rdquo;</em></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>From roughly 1906 to 1914, Ungern was an officer in the Cossack cavalry in the eastern front.&nbsp; Now, if you don&rsquo;t know much about the Cossacks, here&rsquo;s the short version &ndash; these guys are fucking insane madman horse warriors who are world-renowned for their face-shanking savagery and hardcore brutality.&nbsp; Commanding a unit he designated the &ldquo;Order of Military Buddhists,&rdquo; Ungern spent most of his time living with the badass Mongols and Cossacks in Mongolia, learned to speak fluent Mongolian, converted to Buddhism, and told his men they could party with unlimited vodka, booze, hash, opium, and women just as long as they kept their shit together and honed their fighting skills day and night.&nbsp; When one group of his own men pissed him off by being too undisciplined, he fucking stripped them down to their underwear, had them jump into a freezing-cold lake in the dead of the Mongolian sub-zero winter, then he pulled them out and fucking sicced goddamn <em>wolves </em>on the poor bastards, forcing them to fight off the assault with their bare hands.&nbsp; Only half of the men survived, but those guys were immediately part of his elite cadre of warriors.</p>\r\n<p>When World War I went down, Ungern and the Cossacks were some of the first men to go charging out there on horseback head-on into entrenched lines of Austrian infantry with belt-fed machine guns.&nbsp; Ungern&rsquo;s attacks were psychotic, suicidal, and completely reckless, but he led every attack personally, galloping ahead on a white horse, seemingly completely impervious to any form of conventional weaponry.&nbsp; He was shot, had horses killed out from under him, took a fucking sword wound to the skull, and was wounded another dozen or so times in hand-to-hand combat over the course of the war, but he fought with an insane disregard for anything a normal person would recognize as fear and just continually went right back into the teeth of the enemy.&nbsp; Most of his unit was massacred pretty much every time they tried to attack, and Ungern was reportedly passed over for promotion despite his bravery because this guy was so suicidally insane that he couldn&rsquo;t really be trusted with a large group of soldiers.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/39684745806/ungern3.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> <em>Cossack cavalry during World War I.<br /> Yes, they fought with lances, swords, and bolt-action rifles.<br /> In the 20<sup>th</sup> century.</em></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>World War I ended with the collapse of the Russian Empire, and before long the situation in Mother Russia deteriorated to where the Communist Red Army was involved in a civil war with the Tsarist White Army.&nbsp; Being part of the aristocracy, Baron Ungern was obviously very pro-White, and he immediately rushed back out East to start kicking the shit out of Bolsheviks, Marxists, and basically just blindly running screaming towards anything red like he was a murderous bull from a cartoon about genocide.&nbsp; Raiding, plundering, looting, and destroying Red Army supporters anywhere he could find them, Ungern led a completely-unsanctioned renegade one-psychopath war against Russian Communism.&nbsp; He outfitted armored trains with cannons from gunships and rode them along the Trans-Siberian Railroad.&nbsp; He dragged prisoners behind his trucks.&nbsp; He skinned people alive.&nbsp; He did all sorts of fucked-up super-villain shit, and he did it all in the name of reinstating a Tsar who had already (unbeknownst to Ungern) already been capped in the head by the Bolsheviks.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/39684745806/ungern4.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Ungern rode around with a couple other White Army generals for a while, but in 1920 he went rogue and made the executive decision to go to Mongolia and recreate the Empire of Genghis Khan by restoring the Living Buddha to the throne of Mongolia and helping the country break away from the Chinese government.&nbsp; So, yeah, that&rsquo;s totally what he went and did.</p>\r\n<p>Baron von Ungern-Sternberg practiced a highly-bizarre, super-obscure ultraviolent sect of Buddhism that was like one part Mola Ram and one part Freddy Kruger.&nbsp; He constantly surrounded himself with soothsayers, fortune-tellers, shamans, and sorcerers, carried a deck of tarot cards into battle with him, and wore about ten pounds of holy symbols around his neck at all times, and his idea of reincarnation was that he was fucking doing you a favor by decapitating you with a machete because maybe next time you won&rsquo;t be reincarnated as such a pussy.&nbsp; He also claimed he could see your soul and read your mind if he stared into your eyes long enough.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/39684745806/ungern5.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Riding at the head of his &ldquo;Asiatic Mounted Division&rdquo;, a bizarre, scary-as-hell mix of six thousand Russian, Mongol, Cossack and Chinese cavalry raiders, Ungern randomly decided he was going to attack the capital of Mongolia, seize it for himself, and then use it as the capital of an empire that would include Mongolia, Manchuria, and Tibet.&nbsp; He surrounded Ulan Bator in 1920, set tons of fires on the hills surrounding the city, then sent his army of fortune-tellers to run screaming into the city saying that those fires were sacrifices to the gods begging the divine beings for the destruction of everyone in the town.&nbsp; Then, when the population was pretty freaked out, the fortune-tellers told them that the White Baron was coming, that he was completely immune to bullets, and that he could appear and disappear at will.</p>\r\n<p>Then the Baron attacked.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Against everything you might imagine, this one guy, commanding an army he recruited and trained himself, captured the capital of Mongolia, declared it was now independent from China, installed a man named Bogda Khan (a guy believed to be the reincarnation of the third-highest lama in Tibet) as the &ldquo;heir to Genghis Khan,&rdquo; and then made himself Ultimate Warlord of a revived Mongol Empire.&nbsp; Even more insane, the friggin&rsquo; Thirteenth Dalai Lama then officially blessed Ungern for his work and said that he was a physical incarnation of <em>Mahakala</em>, that &ldquo;Wrathful God&rdquo; who was on fire up at the top of the page here.</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/39684745806/ungern6.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><em>The required reading on this guy is &ldquo;<a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Bloody-White-Baron-Extraordinary-Nobleman/dp/0465022073/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1446240907&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=The+Bloody+White+Baron%3A+The+Extraordinary+Story+of+the+Russian+Nobleman+Who+Became+the+Last+Khan+of+Mongolia%2C+by+James+Palmer%2C+Basic+Books%2C+2011\">The Bloody White Baron</a>&rdquo;<br /> by James Palmer</em></p>\r\n<p>From here it was pretty much murder city, as Ungern went nuts finding horrible new and terrible ways to execute Bolsheviks, Jews, enemy prisoners, and whatever else he didn&rsquo;t like, slaughtering people without regard for their age, gender, or whether or not they were civilians.&nbsp; He was a very bad man who did a lot of horrible things to people.&nbsp; This should not come as a surprise.&nbsp; But still, there&rsquo;s nothing badass about massacring civilians, even if you find really new and inventive ways to do it.</p>\r\n<p>Well, at some point the Buddhist wheel of Karma caught up with the Bloody Baron, and in August of 1921 he lost his shit and decided to invade Siberia with six thousand guys, overthrow Lenin, and put Tsar Nicholas II&rsquo;s brother Mikhail Romanov on the throne of Russia.&nbsp; This would be an OK plan, except that he had six thousand guys, no tanks, no airplanes, only a couple trucks, most of his guys were on horseback, and Mikhail Romanov had been shot in the face by Bolsheviks three years earlier.&nbsp; Still, Ungern gave it a good honest try, charged a full division of Red Army troops on horseback, and had most of his Asiatic Mounted Division hosed down with belt-fed machine gun ammunition.&nbsp; Ungern regrouped, ordered his men to attack again, and they promptly mutinied, grabbed him, and handed him over to the Soviets.&nbsp; On September 17, 1921, he was executed by firing squad.&nbsp; Before they shot him, the Baron put his St. George&rsquo;s Cross (a high-level medal for bravery from the Russian Empire) in his mouth and chewed it up so the Bolsheviks couldn&rsquo;t get it.</p>\r\n<p>When the firing squad pulled the trigger, one of the bullets struck a religious talisman the Baron wore under his jacket.&nbsp; A fragment of the round ricocheted back and wounded one of the firing squad soldiers in the fucking face.&nbsp; Take that!</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/39684745806/ungern7.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Links:</p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://madmonarchist.blogspot.com/2011/05/monarchist-profile-baron-ungern.html\">The Mad Monarchist</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.newdawnmagazine.com/articles/the-bloody-baron-von-ungern-sternberg-madman-or-mystic\">New Dawn Magazine</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://ahistoryblog.com/2012/08/14/baron-von-ungern-sternberg-1885-1921-bloody-white-baron/\">The Bloody White Baron</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/22/books/review/Goodwin-t.html?_r=0\">NY Times</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/non_fictionreviews/3672047/Baron-Ungern-Sternberg-meteoric-nutter.html\">A Meteoric Nutter</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_von_Ungern-Sternberg\">Wikipedia</a></p>','2015-10-30','39684745806','ungern.jpg','ungern-small.jpg','Baron von Ungern-Sternberg','The \"Bloody Baron,\" this psychotic World War I Russian cavalry commander swore to horrifically butcher all who stood in the way of him forging a revived Mongol Empire.','My name is surrounded with such hate and fear that no one can judge what is true and what is false, what is history, and what is myth.'),('John Walter Ripley','June 29, 1939','October 28, 2008','Keystone, WV, USA','20th-century American Marine','<p>On Easter Sunday, April 2<sup>nd</sup>, 1972, Marine Corps Captain John Ripley was embedded in a small South Vietnamese village on the southern bank of the Cua Viet River.&nbsp; The important crossroads town was a few miles south of the front lines, and Ripley was a senior American military officer chilling with about 600 South Vietnamese Marines.&nbsp; His mission was pretty basic:&nbsp; hang back, get these guys trained and ready for action, and then await further orders.</p>\r\n<p>So you can probably imagine Captain Ripley\'s surprise when he looked out across the Cua Viet River that morning and saw an entire full-strength North Vietnamese Army armored division assembling to attack.&nbsp; Twenty thousand battle-hardened asskickers with AK-47s, RPGs, and 81mm mortars.&nbsp; Two hundred brand-ass-new Soviet T-54 main battle tanks.&nbsp; Armored personnel carriers.&nbsp; Anti-aircraft trucks.&nbsp; Friggin\' pickup trucks with machine guns mounted in the bed.</p>\r\n<p>And the only thing standing preventing this armor-plated face-smashing juggernaut and the complete epic annihilation of all Democracy in Quang Tri Province was a 200-meter-long bridge made of solid concrete and steel.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/17100126367/johnripley1.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Gunshots, mortar fire, artillery, tank cannons and RPGs started erupting throughout the American base on the south side of the River.&nbsp; With bullets whizzing in every direction, Captain Ripley radioed in immediately, requesting an airstrike to level the bridge and save him from having to fight off a force that had more armored vehicles than Ripley had soldiers.&nbsp; The request was denied.&nbsp; There was too much anti-aircraft firepower in the area.&nbsp; Even worse, this full-scale Easter assault wasn\'t just happening in Quang Tri &ndash; it was a massive, coordinated attack across all fronts.&nbsp; The biggest NVA attack since the Tet Offensive.</p>\r\n<p>Ducking through mortar blasts, Ripley went to his commanding officer and requested permission to set charges and blow the bridge himself.&nbsp; His commander radioed that request along to headquarters, and it was also denied.&nbsp; Too dangerous.&nbsp; Too little chance of success or survival.&nbsp; Dig in, Marine, and prepare to fight to the last man... a glorious, futile, idiotic stand that would probably last about eight minutes against a Brigade of goddamned T-54s when all you have for firepower is an M16 and a couple frag grenades.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/17100126367/johnripley2.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Ripley\'s boss hung up the radio and looked straight into the Marine Captain\'s determined eyes.&nbsp; Ripley stared him back, gritted his teeth like a badass, and asked again.&nbsp; Give me a chance.&nbsp; I can do this.&nbsp; You know we\'re fucked if that bridge is still standing two hours from now.</p>\r\n<p>Captain Ripley\'s commanding officer stared out at the endless wall of NVA firepower assembling on the other side of the river, sighed, and said OK.&nbsp; He knew he was sending John Ripley to his death, but sacrificing this man on an impossible mission was the only possible way he was going to keep his command alive.</p>\r\n<p>Rushing back out into the explosion-riddled Marine base, Captain John Ripley didn\'t share his commander\'s pessimistic outlook on life.&nbsp; This balls-out warrior sprinted through mortar fire, jumped a barbed wire chain-link fence, kicked open a lock, broke the explosives out of the base\'s ammo dump, stuffed 40 pounds of TNT in a few giant satchel bags, strapped them to his body, and started fucking <em>monkey bars-ing his way hand-over-hand along the underside of the bridge so he could start planting explosives</em>.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/17100126367/johnripley3.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Nobody had ever doubted that John Ripley was one of the toughest, most fearless, and most badass warriors the United States Marines Corps had ever produced.&nbsp; After growing up in Radford, Virginia, Ripley enlisted in the Marines out of high school, graduated the Naval Academy in \'62, and had been serving in \'Nam since the early days of the war.&nbsp; He\'d also racked up some pretty damn decent hardware as well &ndash; two Bronze Stars, a Silver Star, and a Purple Heart.</p>\r\n<p>The Silver Star had come on August 21, 1967.&nbsp; He was leading a rifle platoon from 3<sup>rd</sup> Battalion, 3<sup>rd</sup> Marines on a mission to reinforce a team that was pinned-down at the front, when suddenly his convoy came under heavy enemy fire from the jungles on either side of the road.&nbsp; Despite panic, machine gun fire, RPG contrails whipping past him in every direction, and a bullet in his leg, Ripley leapt out of his transport truck, ran over to a nearby M42 Anti-Aircraft armored vehicle, jumped onto the .50 cal heavy machine gun, and started spraying bullets in the direction of the enemy.&nbsp; As soon as he spotted the enemy, he ordered the M42 to lower its plane-killing cannons to zero elevation and start ripping the jungle apart.&nbsp; Ripley spent the next three hours forming a defensive perimeter, commanding his Marines to fight off the attack, and radioing in coordinates for air strikes and artillery that fought off the ambush.</p>\r\n<p>And all that had been five years ago.&nbsp; Since then, he\'d served with Marine Force Recon (the Marine Corps\' Special Forces), the Royal Marines, and the Army Airborne Rangers.&nbsp; To this day, he\'s the only Marine in the Army Ranger Hall of Fame.</p>\r\n<p>What he did on the Bridge at Dong Ha, however, is the stuff that took him from \"Vietnam war hero\" to \"all-time, all-world badass\".</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/17100126367/johnripley4.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> <em>An M42 Duster AA truck</em></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>For three solid hours, Captain John Ripley climbed hand-over-hand along steel I-beams beneath the 200 meter long Bridge at Dong Ha.&nbsp; He did this with 40 pounds of explosives strapped to him while hundreds of snipers and infantry on the other side of the bridge fired full-auto AK-47s at him, their rounds pinging off the steel girders as he muscled himself along with brute fucking force.&nbsp; When he got to a spot where he thought he needed to plant some bombs, he would brace himself between the girders, wire up the explosives, bite down on the blasting cap (this is never recommended, because if you bite incorrectly you could <em>detonate the cap and blow your skull into shrapnel</em>), and wire it up.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Think for a second about how damn hard it is to hang off something with just your hands.&nbsp; The screaming muscles in your arms, the crippling pain in your fingers, the uncertainty that you\'ll be able to hold on for another second...... this guy did this for three hours straight, with no support wires holding him, with 40 pounds of gear while people were actively trying to kill him.&nbsp; This Marine knew that a single slip would drop him into the river, where &ndash; if he survived the fall &ndash; he\'d be swept down-current, captured, and probably executed.&nbsp; Failure, falling, mis-wiring a charge, or placing his bombs in the wrong places meant that 200 T-54 tanks were going to drive over the bridge any minute and flatten everything on the other side.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>This is fucking <em>Ninja Warrior</em> meets the <em>Thin Red Line </em>meets <em>MacGuyver</em>.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/17100126367/johnripley5.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> <em>not impressed, lol</em></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>It took Captain John Ripley five trips back-and-forth to wire up all of the bombs.&nbsp; He set them in a diagonal pattern, using some badass science-engineering calculus shit to determine that a diagonal pattern would blow the damn bridge at an angle that would rip it off its moorings and send it into the River.&nbsp; If he\'d set the bombs in a straight line, there was the chance the bridge wouldn\'t actually fall, and that NVA transports would be driving across it any minute now.</p>\r\n<p>On his fifth trip, Captain Ripley set the explosives that were positioned the closest to the enemy side of the river.&nbsp; He bit down on the blasting cap, was happy when he didn\'t blow his head off, set the timer for thirty minutes as bullets ricocheted off the steel around him, and then prepared to monkey bar his way back across the bridge one final time.</p>\r\n<p>When he set the timer, Ripley wasn\'t convinced 30 minutes was enough time for him to get back.&nbsp; But he had to make sure this bridge blew, and, in Ripley\'s mind, there was no chance he was getting back alive anyway.&nbsp; By this point in his mission the entire North Vietnamese Army knew he was there, his arms were burning, shaking, and exhausted, and he was fairly certain he had no chance of ever surviving this one-man voluntary suicide mission.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/17100126367/johnripley6.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>With sniper rounds zipping past his head and the detonation timer ticking down, Ripley brute fucking forced his way 650 feet along the underside of a bridge like some kind of epic freeclimbing combat graffiti artist trying to tag an impossible underpass.&nbsp; Miraculously, against all odds, Ripley somehow reached the south bank of the river, dropped down, started running and then was blown through the air like a fucking action movie when the bridge detonated and exploded behind him.&nbsp; When the smoke cleared, John Ripley looked up and saw the entire bridge had collapsed down into the deep rushing waters of the river below, and there were a bunch of Russians and North Vietnamese standing on the far bank shaking their fist at him.</p>\r\n<p>Ripley calmly, like a badass, reached into his pocket and pulled out his radio.</p>\r\n<p>Then he started calling out coordinates for American aircraft and artillery to start raining hell onto the NVA forces that were now bottlenecked and stuck on the far side of the bridge.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/17100126367/johnripley7.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Captain John Ripley\'s actions literally single-handedly stopped a full division of enemy forces from capturing an entire province.&nbsp; The shit was so impressive and unbelievable that nowadays there\'s a diorama in the U.S. Naval Academy depicting him making his climb.&nbsp; But this Marine\'s work wasn\'t done yet.... Ripley actually stayed behind for the next three days helping the South Vietnamese Marines fight off any attempts by the NVA to assault across the river.</p>\r\n<p>The United States pulled out of Vietnam at year after Ripley\'s heroics, but this Marine stayed in the service until 1992, retiring as a Colonel after 35 years of service.&nbsp; He survived two tours in \'Nam, taught History at the Naval Academy, trained Naval officers at the Virginia Military Institute, earned two Legion of Merit awards, stayed married to the same woman for 44 years (this, in my experience, might be even more difficult than serving two tours in \'Nam), and was a driving force behind the creation of the National Museum of the Marine Corps in Quantico, Virginia.&nbsp; He\'s such a legend that the Marines do a 5K run every November to honor him.&nbsp; He passed away in 2008 at the age of 69.</p>\r\n<p>The United States Marine Corps will celebrate its 240<sup>th</sup> birthday on November 10, 2015.&nbsp; When the Corps looks back at its greatest heroes, Captain John Ripley will be one of the names featuring prominently on the list.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/17100126367/johnripley8.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Links:</p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/04/washington/04ripley.html?_r=0\">NY Times Obituary</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.wnd.com/2003/08/20243/\">Ripley at the Bridge</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.forcerecon.com/col-john-w-ripley.htm\">ForceRecon.com</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://valor.militarytimes.com/recipient.php?recipientid=4314\">Medal Citations for John W. Ripley</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.ripleyrace.com/about\">RipleyRace.com</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ripley_%28USMC%29\">Wikipedia</a></p>','2015-11-06','17100126367','johnripley.jpg','johnripley-small.jpg','John Ripley','Single-handedly stopped an entire NVA armored division by climbing hand-over-hand under a 200-meter bridge to blow it up with explosives.',''),('Joseph Boulogne','December 25, 1745','June 10, 1799','Baillif, Guadeloupe','18th-century French Musician','<p>Joseph Boulogne was born on a plantation, to a French commoner and an African slave on the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe in the year 1745.&nbsp; Now, there are roughly a half-dozen socio-economic-political-cultural-chrono-geographical details in that sentence that would, in theory, make it exceptionally difficult for Mr. Boulogne to achieve any sort of fame, success, or long-lasting feats of heroic awesomeness during his lifetime, but bullshit societal constraints meant about as much to this 18<sup>th</sup>-century badass as the unread Terms of Service document for a shitty iPhone app, and Joe Boulogne wasn&rsquo;t going to choke down his pride and repress his inner badassitude just because every single human being he encountered in his entire lifetime was actively trying to force him into conformity.</p>\r\n<p>And you know what?&nbsp; The world is better off for it.&nbsp; Because by the time this guy died, he was one of the most famous men in France, albeit it under his official aristocratic title and badass stage name, <em>Le Chevalier de Saint-Georges</em>.&nbsp; And even though he was a world champion fencer who sword-fought his way out of two real-life assassination attempts, defended his city from the Austrian Army during the War of the French Revolution, and commanded the first unit of black soldiers in European history, Joe Boulogne is best known as the first classical music composer of African descent &ndash; a music-writing, violin-shredding genius who played duets with Queen Marie Antoinette, ran the Paris Opera, and is known today as &ldquo;The Black Mozart&rdquo;&hellip;. which honestly is a serious fucking bullshit nickname because this guy pre-dates Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart by more than a decade.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/25591814833/saint-georges1.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>But let&rsquo;s start at the beginning.&nbsp; Joseph Boulogne was born in the then-French colony of Guadeloupe in 1745.&nbsp; His dad was a French commoner who had come to the island to build a plantation, and ended up marrying one of his slaves, getting awarded some sort of title of minor nobility, and then was forced to flee the island because he totally might have murdered a guy in a swordfight.&nbsp; So, when Joseph was seven years old, he left Guadeloupe with his mom and dad and sailed to Bordeaux, France.&nbsp; When he turned 13, Boulogne was enrolled in what has to be among the most badass schools ever, being accepted to Bo&euml;ssi&egrave;re&rsquo;s Academy of Fencing and Horsemanship, which I imagine to be like the ITT Tech of shanking faces from horseback.&nbsp; He almost immediately started working on his Master&rsquo;s Degree in Fucking Shit Up, and at the age of 15 he was already kicking his teachers&rsquo; asses in fencing duels.&nbsp; By 17 he is described as having &ldquo;the greatest speed imaginable,&rdquo; slicing and stabbing with a cool Zorro-style rapier and beating ass at a time when pretty much everyone still fought with a sword as their primary weapon&hellip; being the greatest fencer in France in 1762 is more like starting at Striker for Real Madrid than it is like winning a lame old-timey bicycle race in 2015.&nbsp; Oh, and when this guy wasn&rsquo;t kicking ass in fencing demonstrations in front of thousands of cheering fans, he was also a champion runner and pistol marksman, and he like to train his cardio by swimming across the Seine while only using one arm.</p>\r\n<p>Because Joseph Boulogne was partly of African descent, he was basically forbidden by French law from participating in anything cool or exciting, but this guy rarely seemed to give a shit about any of that.&nbsp; He also refused to let motherfuckers step to him or talk shit about him because of his heritage.&nbsp; Like, one time a the fencing master from a rival school in Rouen started throwing shade on Boulogne, referring to him as &ldquo;Bo&euml;ssi&egrave;re&rsquo;s mullato,&rdquo; so Boulogne challenged that asshole to a showdown.&nbsp; Boulogne was by far the most accomplished student at his academy, but now he found himself in a duel with fencing master Alexandre Picard, the guy who was the friggin&rsquo; <em>head instructor </em>at a rival school.&nbsp; The duel was attended by hundreds of people from across France.&nbsp; The hype got so big for it that at one point it ended up being billed as a demonstration of whether or not France should consider outlawing slavery.&nbsp; I&rsquo;m sure that didn&rsquo;t add any pressure or anything.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/25591814833/saint-georges2.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Joseph Boulogne beat that guy&rsquo;s sack off.&nbsp; He went on to graduate the Academy, accept a position in the King&rsquo;s Royal Guard, and was knighted <em>Le Chevalier de Saint-Georges </em>(&ldquo;The Knight of St. George), which is super damn impressive because people of African descent weren&rsquo;t technically allowed to be knighted or hold cool titles like that (but whatever).&nbsp; The fencing school hung his portrait and his swords up in their main fighting hall.</p>\r\n<p>After leaving the Academy, Saint-Georges partied his ass off in Bordeaux, attending balls, fighting in demonstrations, and attending concerts and operas.&nbsp; Then, in an insanely awesome turn of events, all of a sudden in 1764 this guy started playing insane violin jams that blew everyone&rsquo;s faces off and sent them flying to the back of the auditorium.&nbsp; Before 1764, nobody had any idea he could play.&nbsp; There&rsquo;s no record of him having any training, or ever playing before.&nbsp; Then, at the age of 19, all of a sudden this guy fucking <em>shreds</em>.&nbsp; It&rsquo;s like a fucking Disney movie where all of a sudden everyone breaks out in song and you&rsquo;re like, &ldquo;wait, what the hell is going on here?&rdquo;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/25591814833/saint-georges3.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Chevalier de Saint-Georges becomes like the friggin&rsquo; Jimi Hendrix of 18<sup>th</sup> century France.&nbsp; He dresses up in these insane, cutting-edge, silver-trimmed courtier clothes, jams a bunch of badass songs that he wrote himself, and &ldquo;was appreciated not as much for his compositions as for his performances, enrapturing especially the feminine members of his audience.&rdquo;&nbsp; He writes string quartets, concertos, sonatas, and a bunch of other words that basically all mean &ldquo;badass classical jam&rdquo;, plays all the violin solos himself (improvising most of them on the spot), and then bangs a bunch of groupies (a French noblewoman was not allowed to marry someone of African descent, but by all accounts this did not stop them from sleeping with him <em>all the time</em>).&nbsp; Hell, on more than on occasion, Queen Marie Antoinette herself was said to have disguised herself as a regular noblewoman so she could attend his shows, and later on in his career he even played in a string quartet with her.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/25591814833/saint-georges4.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /><br /></p>\r\n<p>Saint-Georges became a superstar in France for his performances with both sword and violin, and when he wasn&rsquo;t serving in the King&rsquo;s Guard he was writing operas, managing a concert hall, and even commissioning new original work from famous contemporary composers like Joseph Haydn.&nbsp; Eventually he was tapped to run the Paris Opera, but a bunch of divas (literally, they are called divas, I&rsquo;m not just throwing shade here) decided they didn&rsquo;t want to work for a &ldquo;mulatto&rdquo;, and even though the King and Queen told those biznatches to deal with it, Saint-Georges said fuck this shit and went to chill in London for a while.&nbsp; While he was there he ate dinner with the Prince of Wales, gave a speech to Parliament about why England should abolish slavery, and trained with the greatest fencing masters in the UK.&nbsp; At one point he was walking home, and some guy jumped out with a gun, demanding Saint-George&rsquo;s wallet.&nbsp; Saint-George fucking snatched that gun right out of the assholes hand, but then, out of the shadows, four more dudes stepped up, swords at the ready.&nbsp; It was pretty clear all of a sudden that this wasn&rsquo;t a mugging &ndash; this was an assassination attempt by pro-slavery douchebags.</p>\r\n<p>Well this wasn&rsquo;t even the first time Saint-Georges had been jumped by a group of would-be murderers.&nbsp; The first time, in Paris, the cops had arrived just in time to find Saint-Georges choking the shit out of one of his assailants.&nbsp; This time, in London, all they found was a pile of unconscious and wounded bodies.&nbsp; He had, in the words of a witness, &ldquo;put them all out of commission&rdquo;.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/25591814833/saint-georges5.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Chevalier de Saint-Georges eventually went back to France, settling in the town of Lille on the Dutch border.&nbsp; He then proceeded to win the city fencing tournament, defeating most of the men in the town guard, and as soon as he&rsquo;d won he passed out into a four-day coma because he&rsquo;d fought the entire tournament while running a fever and suffering from meningitis.&nbsp; He recovered, enlisted in the French National Guard, played concerts every weekend, and fought against Austria in the Battle of Baisieux.</p>\r\n<p>When the Wars of the French Revolution began around 1792, the Chevalier de Saint-Georges was promoted from Captain to Colonel and was given command of the &ldquo;Legion de Saint-Georges,&rdquo; a group of soldiers who had been recruited from the French province of Saint-Domingue (present-day Haiti).&nbsp; It was the first all-black unit to ever serve in a European army, and the Colonel Chevalier de Saint-Georges led them with distinction in battles throughout Holland.&nbsp; At one point, the Legion even thwarted an attempt by a famous French general to turn traitor against the Revolution and capture Lille for Austria.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>As a fairly awesome side note, the Legion de Saint-Georges&rsquo; second-in-command was a Lieutenant-Colonel named Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, better known as &ldquo;The Black Devil&rdquo;.&nbsp; Lt. Col. Dumas is badass in his own right (I will write about him on this site at some point), and his son is the guy who wrote <em>The Three Musketeers </em>and <em>The Count of Monte Cristo</em>.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/25591814833/saint-georges61.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> <em>&ldquo;The Black Devil&rdquo; in battle</em></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Despite staying true to the French Revolution (the revolutionary motto &ldquo;liberty, equality, fraternity&rdquo; was something he could <em>totally</em> get on board with), the Chevalier de Saint-Georges was arrested during the Terror, probably because he&rsquo;d been friends with the Queen and had spent a lot of time with the aristocracy.&nbsp; He was imprisoned for 13 months before being released.&nbsp; He was never actually charged with a crime.</p>\r\n<p>After getting out of jail, Saint-Georges may have gone to Haiti with some of his former men to help battle against <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/index.cgi?id=392004013800\">Toussaint L&rsquo;Ouverture</a> (this has never been confirmed), but eventually settled back down and went back to his musical career.&nbsp; He continued to write, produce music, and play shows, once again becoming a famous household name throughout France.&nbsp; He died in 1799 at the age of 53.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><iframe src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/yN9_weY_Hls\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"425\" height=\"350\"></iframe></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Links:</p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://chevalierdesaintgeorges.homestead.com/page1.html\">Biography</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.neh.gov/humanities/2010/mayjune/statement/black-mozart\">The Black Mozart</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.blackpast.org/gah/saint-georges-le-chevalier-de-joseph-de-bologne-1745-1799\">BlackPast.org</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.notablebiographies.com/supp/Supplement-Mi-So/Chevalier-de-Saint-George-Joseph-Boulogne.html\">Joseph Boulogne</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevalier_de_Saint-Georges\">Wikipedia</a></p>','2015-11-20','25591814833','saint-georges.jpg','saint-georges-small.jpg','Chevalier de Saint-Georges','Master fencer, superstar celebrity, violin-shredding virtuoso, the first black composer, and military commander of the first black infantry regiment in European history.','“He could often be seen swimming across the Seine with only one arm, and in skating his skill exceeded everyone else\'s.  As to the pistol, he rarely missed the target.  In running he was reputed to be one of the leading exponents in the whole of Europe.”'),('Varanus komodoensis','Prehistoric','N/A','Komodo, Indonesia','Prehistoric Indonesian Animal','<p>The Komodo Dragon is the world&rsquo;s largest lizard, the only lizard known to attack creatures bigger than itself, and a fucking psychotic prehistoric predator that has dominated mammalian asses across the South Pacific for millions of years with horrifying freaky gigantic disease-riddled teeth that function as inch-long blood-soaked serrated syringes delivering accelerated, genetically-enhanced mutations of every miserable infectious bacteria from <em>E. coli </em>to staph to the shit that gives you urinary tract infections that make you want to claw your own dick off.&nbsp; Cranking in at nine feet long, growing between 200 and 550 fucking pounds, and hailing from the same part of the world that brought you the unstoppable badassitude of <em><a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/ikouwais.html\">The Raid: Redemption</a></em>, Komodo Dragon bites have a 90% kill rate and can bring down everything from goats to <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHB_CM86rgk\">1300-pound motherfucking water buffaloes</a>.&nbsp; They&rsquo;re awesome swimmers, can outrun <em>wild fucking deer</em> over short distances on land, routinely coldcock rampaging warthogs unconscious by swinging their tails like a two-by-four, are maddeningly-fucking impossible to kill in <em>Far Cry 3</em>, and a helpful pair of them once <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28-7j8dnUAw\">helped James Bond escape</a> from the clutches of some random ambiguous criminal organization that couldn&rsquo;t find a better hideout than a high-end Chinese restaurant &ndash; because if there&rsquo;s one thing Komodo Dragons love more than devouring the entrails of their recently-slain, disease-riddled prey, it&rsquo;s sneak-attack eating bad guys in the name of <em>justice </em>and letting spree-killing MI6 agents springboard off their backs to safety like an alcoholic Mario Brother.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/106948521692/komododragon1.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The first thing you&rsquo;ll notice about Komodo Dragons is that they honestly look pretty much nothing like the kind of bipedal winged red-scaled fuckers you&rsquo;d expect to be straight-up fragging dipshit D&amp;D Paladins with a 40-foot face full of 20d10 flame (Reflex half).&nbsp; The Indonesians call these varmints <em>Ora</em>, meaning &ldquo;land crocodile&rdquo;, which is a little better, but still doesn\'t quite capture it.&nbsp; \"Death Gecko\" maybe?&nbsp; \"Murdersaurus Rex\"?&nbsp; I don\'t know.&nbsp; Either way, these literally-cold-blooded-killers live on the four southeastern islands of Indonesia &ndash; Flora, Gili Motang, Rinca, and of course Komodo, a hot monsoon jungle island five times the size of Manhattan and packed full of ravenous human-murdering reptilian dinosaurs.&nbsp; They were first discovered by the Dutch over a hundred years ago, back in what they call the \"good old days\" when the Dutch were still colonizing islands and exploiting the fuck out them like a maladjusted teenager rocking a turn-based strategy game.&nbsp; In 1926 an expedition under intrepid old-timey pith-helmet-wearing explorer W. Douglas Burden was dispatched to the island to investigate, and tjeu brought back a couple live Dragons to be displayed at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.&nbsp; Thhe trip was so full of danger, excitment, giant monsters, and over-the-top insanity that <em>fucking the movie King Kong was inspired by this expedition</em>.&nbsp; I&rsquo;m not making this up.</p>\r\n<p>Nowadays most of Komodo Island is a touristy national park, which is great for preservation efforts of these prehistoric predators (an estimated 3000-6000 remain in the wild, plus another 200 or so in captivity), but there still have been roughly twenty verified cases where Komodo Dragons killed people and devoured most of their corpses... so don&rsquo;t go thinking these suckers are wussbags and went soft just because they&rsquo;re an endangered species now or something.&nbsp; Recent research suggests that the Dragons may have originally existed in Australia as well, which makes sense <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/australia.html\">because it&rsquo;s fucking Australia</a>, but I guess they don&rsquo;t have a lot of patriotism for the Old Country anymore because one of them <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLIMgXv89VU\">almost killed the Crocodile Hunter</a> a few years ago.&nbsp; Komodo Island residents build their houses on stilts for a reason, folks.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/106948521692/komododragon2.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Komodo Dragons are short, low to the ground, and way better at stealth and camouflage than you&rsquo;d expect for a fucking nine-foot-long carnivorous reptile with an armored hide and a forked tongue the size of Shaquille O\'Neal\'s Reeboks.&nbsp; An ambush predator by nature, the Komodo Dragon uses its badass gigantic yellow Gene Simmons forked tongue to detect its prey, and it&rsquo;s such a hardcore hunter that it can sense blood from almost <em>seven miles away</em>.&nbsp; That\'s like Great White Shark range, and this guy does it through the friggin\' air.&nbsp; If there&rsquo;s no already-dead stuff laying around ready to be eaten (Komodos love leftovers), a Komodo Dragon will lay down in a thick bush, switch on Active Camouflage, and wait for some dumb idiot mammal to wander into its crosshairs.&nbsp; Once its got target lock (typically at around 300 meters), a Komodo Dragon will fucking stampede out of the bush at up to 13 miles an hour and rip snout-first into its prey with a mouth full of curved, backwards-facing serrated teeth that clamp down so hard they can crush bones and rip through flesh.&nbsp; Biting down with an insane 500-600 psi of force (human incisors bite at about 55 psi, fyi), the Komodo Dragon then twists his head and rips at the flesh, trying to create the biggest and most awesomely-gory wound possible.&nbsp; He also has gigantic, powerful claws and a muscle dude tail that hits with the force of a baseball bat and can knock down wild deer, warthogs, and other creatures that would probably kick most humans\' asses in real life hand-to-hand combat.&nbsp; Oh, and if you had any questions about the speed of these things, there&rsquo;s an insane television game show clip called <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZRT5EmcCDQ\">Komodo Dragon Chasing Japanese Woman</a> that should terrify the hell out of you for a large number of reasons (at the time of this writing, the top comment on the video is just \"god damn it, japan\").&nbsp; Sure, these guys look hilarious when they run, but that Lurch-stomp gets a lot less stupid-looking when it&rsquo;s propelling a mouth full of 60+ serrated teeth directly at your balls.</p>\r\n<p>Komodo Dragons eat deer, birds, snakes, crabs, pigs, water buffalo, <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6Riq-d4W_\">wild horses</a>, and smaller Komodo Dragons, and have also been known to dig recently-dead humans out of shallow graves to feast on their corpses like some kind of fucked-up Satanic horror movie antagonist.&nbsp; Scientists think they may have also hunted a now-extinct species of elephant called the <a href=\"https://www.google.com/search?biw=1680&amp;bih=926&amp;tbm=isch&amp;q=dwarf+stegodon&amp;revid=1615062842&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=0ahUKEwjZr-eh68DJAhVS1WMKHV7TBlwQ1QIIHA\">Stegodon</a> that was goddamned ten feet tall and was also a fucking Elephant with tusks and armored hides and all of the other elephant things.&nbsp; Komodo Dragons only need one pound of food per day to survive, but these cold-blooded meat grinders can rip through 5.5 pounds of beef every minute, and devour 90% of their kills (the only thing they leave is the stomach, because these suckers are so insanely carniverous they don\'t want to eat the plant material in their prey\'s stomach).&nbsp; Komodos can also unhinge their jaw like a snake and open their mouths wide enough to swallow goats whole.&nbsp; Sometimes, if the food isn&rsquo;t going down their throat fast enough, Dragons will ram the food (still in its mouth) into a tree to jam it down the gullet faster.&nbsp; This is probably the most terrifying thing I can think of.&nbsp; Once everything&rsquo;s devoured, they just barf up a mass of horns, hair, and teeth and get on their way.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/106948521692/komododragon3.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /><br />&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Another fun, horrifying fact about Komodo Dragons is that their bite contains a weird anti-coagulant venom that prevents wounds from healing, and their mouths are laced with 57 acceleratedly-virulent strains of bacteria, including <em>e. coli</em>, staph, and the bacterias that cause urinary tract infections and sepsis.&nbsp; So, basically, if the flesh-ripping doesn&rsquo;t kill you, the disease will.&nbsp; It\'s really just a matter of time.&nbsp; When a Komodo Dragon attacks its prey, 70% of its victims are dead in minutes.&nbsp; 20% are dead within hours.&nbsp; Only 10% survive the bite-poison-disease combo.</p>\r\n<p>Now, here&rsquo;s something awesome about this &ndash; a Komodo Dragon&rsquo;s teeth works basically the same way as <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/wolverine.html\">Wolverine&rsquo;s</a> claws.&nbsp; Most of the time, its teeth are receded back into the gums, making the Komodo Dragon look like a really surprised old man whenever it opens its mouth.&nbsp; Then, when it&rsquo;s about to bite, the teeth <em>shoot out through the gums like a cat&rsquo;s fucking claws</em>.&nbsp; After festering inside the gingival tissue all day, building up disease, the teeth break the skin, get covered in blood, and then immediately inject a soccer cleat of horrible disease-ridden saw-like bloody teeth into its potential prey, delivering an array of horrible bacteria that all (for some reason we can&rsquo;t quite figure out) multiply at like ten times the normal growth rate of these diseases.&nbsp; This baffles scientists so much that some labs are studying Komodo Dragon saliva in the hopes that they might be able to reverse-engineer that shit into the cure for cancer or other diseases.&nbsp; The Komodo Dragon also naturally injects its venom into the wound, causing it to bleed without healing, which further increases the chance of infection.&nbsp; There&rsquo;s a reason the Discovery Channel documentary on these fuckers is just called <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7CQInAXoqY\">Kills with One Bite</a>.<br /> <br />Let me try to see if I can illustrate this process for you a little better.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/106948521692/komododragon4.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> <br /> <img src=\"/images/106948521692/komododragon4a.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> <br /> <img src=\"/images/106948521692/komododragon4b.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> <br /> <img src=\"/images/106948521692/komododragon4c.png\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/106948521692/komododragon4d.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img src=\"/images/106948521692/komododragon4e.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /><br />&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Komodo Dragon society works kind of like Dudebro society, in that there&rsquo;s usually one Alpha who bangs all the chicks and if anyone fucks with him he will bodyslam your ass into submission and then pour beer on you.&nbsp; <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qc25_G2ezSo\">Komodo Dragon wrestling</a> is fucking awesome, because these two gigantic 9-foot monsters stand up on their back legs, slapfight with their little T-Rex arms, scratch, claw, bite, and seriously suplex each other to the turf WWE style until someone gets pinned.&nbsp; Once you\'re pinned, you gotta give up, otherwise the bigger dudebro dragon kills you and eats you.&nbsp; To protect themselves from their only natural predator (other Komodo Dragons), the Dragon has a thick set of overlapping scales that are reinforced with bone deposits, layed out in an interlacing pattern so that when hit with a claw or bite, it absorbs the hit in a style that is very similar to medieval chain mail armor.</p>\r\n<p>When it&rsquo;s time to get freaky, Komodo Dragons make out by touching their tongues together like horny teenagers, and (also like teenagers), according to one source I read, mating &ldquo;doesn&rsquo;t last long and is over quickly,&rdquo; which sounds pretty anti-climactic and probably explains why some female Komodos prefer to save themselves the trouble and fertilize their eggs asexually (scientists have no idea how these creatures immaculately conceive, but whatever).&nbsp; Females don&rsquo;t bother building nests or shit either, they just climb up and leave their eggs in these huge nests that are constantly being left behind by some kind of weird species of gigantic Indonesian chicken that apparently also lives on Komodo Island.&nbsp; The female will conquer the nest, dig a couple fake tunnels to trick egg-eating animals, and then deposit between 15 and 30 eggs that are roughly the size of a grapefruit.&nbsp; Komodos are kind of cute as babies, but as soon as they&rsquo;re born they have to run away and climb up the closest tree before another Komodo wolfs them down because <em>it&rsquo;s fucking survival of the fittest out here, fools</em>.&nbsp; Once the baby grows to about 4 feet he gets too fat to climb and has to live on the ground like everyone else.</p>\r\n<p>Now, prepare to be horrified by more pictures of a real-life dinosaur that packs more infectious death than a weapons-grade CDC petri dish.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/106948521692/komododragon5.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> <br /> <img src=\"/images/106948521692/komododragon5a.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> <br /> <img src=\"/images/106948521692/komododragon5b.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> <br /> <img src=\"/images/106948521692/komododragon5c.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> <br /> <img src=\"/images/106948521692/komododragon5d.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> <br /> <img src=\"/images/106948521692/komododragon5e.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Links:</p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.zooatlanta.org/komodo_dragon\">Atlanta Zoo</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"https://www.zoo.org/page.aspx?pid=1944%23.VlYiob9WUsR\">Woodland Park Zoo</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-komodo-dragon-is-an-all-purpose-killing-machine-4176149/?no-ist\">An All-Purpose Killing Machine</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-most-infamous-komodo-dragon-attacks-of-the-past-10-years-5831048/?no-ist\">Infamous Komodo Dragon Attacks</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://nationalzoo.si.edu/Animals/ReptilesAmphibians/Facts/FactSheets/Komododragon.cfm\">Smithsonian</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://animals.sandiegozoo.org/animals/komodo-dragon\">San Diego Zoo</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.livescience.com/27402-komodo-dragons.html\">LiveScience</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Komodo_dragon\">Wikipedia</a></p>','2015-12-04','106948521692','komododragon.jpg','komododragon-small.jpg','Komodo Dragon','Nine-foot-long carnivorous reptile that can run as fast as a human and has a bite that carries 57 strains of virulent, unsurvivable infectious bacteria.',''),('Virginia Hall','April 6, 1906','July 14, 1982','Baltimore, MD, USA','20th-century American Spy','<p>One of the greatest spies in American history, Virginia Hall was a 20 year veteran of the OSS and CIA who willingly operated deep behind enemy lines even after her face was plastered on every wanted poster in occupied Germany.&nbsp; While her fellow resistance fighters and associates were being tortured to death, shot in the streets, or impaled on goddamn meat hooks (literally), this hardcore, stone-cold deep cover operative was picking her way through the countryside of occupied France with a Colt .45 and a full communications suite concealed in an ordinary-looking suitcase, looking for the next good spot to set up shop and broadcast German operations plans to Allied command in London.&nbsp; She coordinated air drops of weapons, cash, and reinforcements for French Resistance agents, recruited and trained guerilla fighters, blew up bridges, derailed trains, sabotaged German installations, gathered intelligence on troop positions, and reported all of her findings back to Allied HQ.&nbsp; When she was done with that, she spent fifteen years working behind the Iron Curtain assisting CIA-backed resistance against the dang Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War.&nbsp; She was made a member of the Order of the British Empire and the only woman to receive the Distinguished Service Cross (America&rsquo;s second highest medal for bravery) during WWII, and turned down dozens of other honors because she didn&rsquo;t want to compromise her anonymity so she could keep doing undercover operations for the CIA.</p>\r\n<p>Oh, right &ndash; and she did it all with a wooden leg she named &lsquo;Cuthbert&rsquo;.</p>\r\n<p>At one point, while fleeing the Gestapo for 30 miles through the goddamn Pyrenees Mountains, she reported in that &lsquo;Cuthbert&rsquo; was giving her some trouble and making it a little difficult for her to rappel away from Nazi machine guns.&nbsp; The SOE office in London, not realizing that Cuthbert was actually an inanimate object required for her survival, responded with the following message:</p>\r\n<p><em>\"If Cuthbert is giving you difficulty, have him eliminated.\"</em></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/7164420669/virginiahall1.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Virginia Hall was born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1906.&nbsp; She attended school at Radcliffe and Barnard College, then went off to study abroad in Europe.&nbsp; She attended schools in France, Germany, and Austria, learned German and French fluently, and eventually worked in the American consulates in Venice, Warsaw, and Turkey.&nbsp; Her ultimate goal was to be a Foreign Service officer, but during a horrific hunting accident in Turkey she ended up taking a bullet in the leg and wasn&rsquo;t able to get to the hospital before the gangrene started to set in.&nbsp; The 27 year-old Miss Hall had to have her left leg amputated just below the knee and was fitted for the prosthetic.</p>\r\n<p>Well, back in these days you weren&rsquo;t allowed to be a Foreign Services Officer if you were missing a piece of your leg, so Virginia Hall decided it was time for a career change.&nbsp; She&rsquo;d seen some of the horrible stuff going down in Italy, Germany, and Poland recently, and decided that whatever was going to happen, she wanted to be damn sure she could help out in the fight against Fascism wherever it could be found.&nbsp; She traveled to Paris and enlisted in the French Ambulance Corps as a Private, hoping to help by driving hospital trucks, carrying stretchers, or tending to the wounded.</p>\r\n<p>Unfortunately, the Battle of France lasted about ten days, and with Paris under siege there wasn&rsquo;t a hell of a lot for her to do in the opening days of WWII except get the hell out of town as quickly as possible.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/7164420669/virginiahall2.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Hall escaped to London and pledged her aid to a newly-formed spy agency called the Special Operations Executive (SOE).&nbsp; Knowing full well that she would be tortured and executed if caught as a spy, Virginia Hall volunteered to go <em>back into occupied Europe</em> to try and organize resistance to the Nazis and report in to the British about what was going on behind the Atlantic Wall.&nbsp; The first female operative in the SOE, Virginia Hall crossed the Channel in the middle of the night, deployed to France by torpedo boat, made her way to Lyon, and spent a year and a half posing as an American reporter for the <em>New York Times</em>.&nbsp; Under the guise of &ldquo;chasing down leads&rdquo;, she toured German installations, helped downed UK pilots and French POWs escape, sabotaged Nazi operations, and sent coded messages back to London describing exactly what the heck was going on in occupied France.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/7164420669/virginiahall2a.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Once the United States joined World War II things got a little tougher for her, and before long the Gestapo spy-hunters were closing in on her.&nbsp; Some of her associates were executed, she had to go undercover with a fake ID, and eventually the Nazis put out an order to have <em>La Dame Qui Boite </em>(&ldquo;The Limping Lady&rdquo;) brought in for the kind of &ldquo;questioning&rdquo; that people don&rsquo;t usually manage to survive.</p>\r\n<p>She had to get the hell out of France&hellip; again.&nbsp; Only this time there was a fairly-accurate Wanted Poster with her face on it:</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/7164420669/virginiahall3.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Hall traveled by train out of Lyon, jumped from the train before arriving at her destination (no easy feat with a strap-on leg) then went on foot for over 30 miles through the Pyrenees Mountains into Spain.&nbsp; After multiple harrowing escapes and close calls, Hall arrived in Spain, where she was promptly arrested for trying to enter the country without the appropriate paperwork.&nbsp; She spent six weeks in a Fascist prison before the SOE was finally able to negotiate her release.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>After busting out of Franco&rsquo;s prison, Hall was assigned to stay in Spain, continue sending reports, and coordinate the return of escaped pilots from Spain back to England.&nbsp; After about four months of this bullshit, Virginia Hall really started to miss the good old days when she would spend her Tuesday evenings staring down the barrel of a Walther P38.&nbsp; She would later write, \"I thought I could help in Spain, but I&rsquo;m not doing a job&hellip; I am living pleasantly and wasting time. It isn&rsquo;t worthwhile and after all, my neck is my own. If I am willing to get a crick in it, I think that&rsquo;s my prerogative.\"</p>\r\n<p>It was time to go back into France.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/7164420669/virginiahall4.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>First, Hall went back to London, where she received the Order of the British Empire from King George himself.&nbsp; She was trained in radio work, and transferred over to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) &ndash; the precursor to the modern Central Intelligence Agency.&nbsp; Already a highly-wanted special operative marked for death by the Gestapo, Hall volunteered to infiltrate back into France to organize the Resistance and prep France for the Allied invasion at D-Day.&nbsp; In 1943 she dyed her hair white, changed her appearance, hopped onto a British PT boat, and once again snuck back into occupied France.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>For the next year or so, Virginia Hall coordinated parachute drops of supplies, weapons, and money for the Resistance.&nbsp; She made contacts with local resistance leaders, set up safe houses, rescued downed pilots, and trained and equipped three battalions of Resistance fighters to battle the German occupation.&nbsp; Moving throughout the Haute-Loire region with a sidearm and a radio concealed in a suitcase, she would set up in barns, attics, and safe houses to broadcast missions reports and intel back to London.&nbsp; These radio broadcasts were something that could be traced by the Gestapo, so after setting up and broadcasting, she then needed to immediately pack up and get the hell out of there before the SS showed up to permanently shut down her operations.</p>\r\n<p>They never did.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/7164420669/virginiahall5.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>From 1943 until the liberation of France in 1944, Virginia Hall and her Resistance fighters are credited with destroying four bridges, cutting multiple rail lines, derailing dozens of freight trains, killing 150 German soldiers, and capturing another 300 enemy troops.&nbsp; She also somehow found time to hook up with a French dude, OSS operative Paul Goillot, and the two would be married at the end of the war.&nbsp; The couple actually heard the news while they were undertaking final preparations for a parachute insertion into Austria for a classified sabotage mission behind enemy lines.</p>\r\n<p>For her actions during the war, Virginia Hall received the Distinguished Service Cross &ndash; an award for bravery that is second only to the Medal of Honor.&nbsp; The director of the new CIA wanted to have a big ceremony for her, but Hall declined, saying that any fame she received would only make her job as a spy that much more difficult.&nbsp; She worked as an intelligence analyst in France for the CIA from 1951 to 1966, working against the Russians during the height of the Cold War.&nbsp; The details of most of her operations from this time are still classified.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/7164420669/virginiahall6.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Virginia Hall retired at the age of 60 after over 30 years of service as a badass James Bond style spy.&nbsp; She&rsquo;d spent almost her entire career as a wanted woman, but retired to a quiet, peaceful life on a farm outside Baltimore at the age of 60.&nbsp; She lived to be 78 years old, passing away on Bastille Day 1982.</p>\r\n<p>She remains the most highly-decorated spy in American history.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><a href=\"http://www.patreon.com/badassoftheweek\"><img src=\"../images/7164420669/virginiahall-patreon.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"504\" height=\"392\" /></a></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Links:</p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/wanted-the-limping-lady-146541513/?no-ist\">Smithsonian Magazine</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"https://www.nwhm.org/education-resources/biography/biographies/virginia-hall/\">National Women\'s History Museum</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"https://www.cia.gov/news-information/featured-story-archive/2015-featured-story-archive/virginia-hall-the-courage-and-daring-of-the-limping-lady.html\">CIA.gov</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://americacomesalive.com/2012/03/12/virginia-hall-1906-1982-world-war-ii-spy-for-the-allies/\">America Comes Alive</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"https://www.army.mil/article/121984/MISS_VIRGINIA_HALL\">Army.mil</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Hall\">Wikipedia</a></p>','2016-10-07','7164420669','virginiahall.jpg','virginiahall-small.jpg','Virginia Hall','30 year CIA and OSS veteran who spent all of WWII working behind German lines with the French Resistance.  She\'s the most-decorated female spy in American history, and she did it all with a wooden leg.','\"She is the most dangerous of all Allied spies. We must find and destroy her.\"  - Gestapo transmission regarding OSS agent Virginia Hall'),('Julia Aurelia Zenobia','c. 240 AD','Unknown','Palmyra, Syria','Ancient Syrian Queen','<p>In the Third Century AD, the current nation of Syria produced a soul-crushingly-badass warrior woman from hell who spear-hunted panthers from horseback, spoke four languages fluently, wrote an in-depth textbook documenting a thousand years of Asian history, recited Homerian epic poetry from memory, bloodily avenged the murder of her husband and stepson, annihilated a Roman legion, conquered Egypt, beheaded a dipshit Christian-persecuting Latin governor, ruled an Empire stretching from India to Alexandria, and then mysteriously vanished into history never to be heard from again.&nbsp; Her impressive classical-style oasis palaces and temples in Palmyra might have been blown to hell by ISIS earlier this year, but the story of one of the Middle East\'s &ndash; no, fuck that, one of <em>history\'s</em> &ndash; most white-knuckled badass women rulers can never be forgotten.</p>\r\n<p>Julia Aurelia Zenobia was born sometime around 240 AD in the amazingly-advanced Syrian oasis paradise city of Palmyra.&nbsp; She was tall and beautiful, with dark eyes, dark complexion, and perfect white teeth (I mention this only because British historian Edward Gibbon, in his definitive history written during the 18<sup>th</sup> century, hilariously jokes that, \"in speaking of a lady, these trifles become important\").&nbsp; From a wealthy, powerful family, she is believed to have been a mix of Semetic, Arab, Macedonian and Egyptian descent &ndash; she claimed direct descent from both Cleopatra and Dido of Carthage, which is kind of dubious because Dido of Carthage totally wasn\'t actually even a real person. &nbsp;Regardless, she was very well-educated, spoke fluent Latin, Syrian, Greek, and Egyptian, studied Homer and Plato in the original ancient Greek, and used to keep a running book documenting Asian history so she could refer to it for her own personal use any time she needed to come up with a bomb-ass multi-layer burn while dealing with some idiot rival king.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/258580412460/zenobia1.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>At some point, Zenobia married Septimius Odenathus, a badass dude with a bitchin\' gigantic lumberjack beard who had just taken over a big-time army that was stomping balls in the general vicinity of Palmyra.&nbsp; These two apparently hit it off like something out of a white trash romantic comedy, because instead of taking long walks on the beach and buying each other a new Lexus for the holidays they used to enjoy going out into the fucking wilderness with bows, spears, and javelins and hunting shit like bears, panthers, and wild lions.&nbsp; Odenathus was famous throughout the land for being a hardcore murderer of man-eating wild animals, and &ldquo;the ardor of Zenobia in that dangerous amusement was not inferior to his own&rdquo;.&nbsp; She also refused to ride in those prissy carriages that princesses like to weld out of giant pumpkins, and instead would always be seen galloping around on ultra-fast Arabian war horses while wearing an awesome cape made out of a fucking jaguar she\'d killed with an arrow to the dome.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/258580412460/zenobia2.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> <em>sure, something like that I guess</em></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Now Odenathus\'s family had been granted Roman citizenship by the Emperor Septimius Severus in the 190s, but Rome was in some serious fucking shit during the Third Century.&nbsp; It\'s so bad they call it \"The Crisis of the Third Century\", when they write textbooks about it, so you can kind of get the idea that this wasn\'t exactly the sort of era were legions were racking balls up from the Indus to the Elbe.&nbsp; Well, at one point, the famous Christian-murdering Emperor Valerian tried to fight the mighty Persian Empire and got his dick smashed with a ten-ton ball-peen hammer.&nbsp; Valerian was taken prisoner, and all hell broke out.&nbsp; All told, there were 26 different emperors over the course of about a hundred years, and most of them were about as competent as a slice of pepperoni pizza (and lasted about as long as well).</p>\r\n<p>On the surface, Odenathus and Zenobia stayed loyal to Rome in the Crisis, but basically a weak Roman Empire meant these guys could go off and do whatever the balls they wanted without having to worry about some dipshit Emperor telling them to slow their roll.&nbsp; Odenathus and Zenobia personally led armies across Persia, winning a big battle at Carrhae and besieging their capital.&nbsp; They conquered lands from the Turks in Anatolia, and fought off a full-scale invasion of a Gothic horde that showed up across the Bosporous with a bunch of long hair and wallet chains and Slipknot albums.&nbsp; And the best part is because they were doing all of this technically as a Roman Ally, they were both recognized by the Roman Senate as \"great defenders of the Empire.\"</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/258580412460/zenobia3.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Well one day Odenathus and Zenobia were out knife-hunting for tigers or some shit when Odenathus\'s nephew Maeonius was a total dick and took the first shot of the hunt (note: this is <em>always</em> the job of the King).&nbsp; Odenathus told this kid he fucked up, but Maeonius was a spoiled entitled fucking brat about it, so Odenathus took Maeonius\'s horse away and made the teenager walk home from the hunt, which is like the ancient equivalent of having to walk home from the roller skating rink because you accidentally said the word \"bitch\" to your mom.&nbsp; Maeonius got all butthurt, found a couple disgruntled noblemen, and they all murdered Odenathus and his son (Zenobia\'s stepson) at a dinner party.&nbsp; Then Maeonius had the fucking balls to declare (at the party!) that he should be emperor now because he was next in line anyway.</p>\r\n<p>Big mistake, kid.</p>\r\n<p>Zenobia didn\'t just have this kid beheaded.&nbsp; That would have been letting him off too easily.&nbsp; No, instead she personally sacrificed him and all of his co-conspirators on the altar of the Temple of Baal, offering them up as human sacrifices to appease the spirit of her husband in the underworld.</p>\r\n<p>Fuckin\' a.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/258580412460/zenobia4.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Zenobia then immediately assumed control of the Palmyran Empire she had helped create, and prepared to ram it into the ram-hole of anyone who fucked with her.&nbsp; As Septimia Zenobia Augusta, she ruled over an empire that stretched from Persia to Rome.&nbsp; From her oasis city of Palmyra, she built temples, palaces, and massive buildings in the Greek columned style of architecture.&nbsp; She balanced the economy, forged alliances with Arabia, Armenia, and Persia, and established trade caravans that ran from India to Rome to Parthia.&nbsp; She even got her image on a coin, which is something that <em>never </em>happened with women rulers in ancient history, so that should show you how cool everyone thought she was.</p>\r\n<p>I\'m going to show you a couple pictures of the Palmyran Empire that will probably blow your mind.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/258580412460/zenobia5.png\" alt=\"\" /><br /> <br /> <img src=\"../images/258580412460/zenobia5a.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> <br /> <img src=\"../images/258580412460/zenobia5b.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /><br /> <img src=\"../images/258580412460/zenobia5c.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> <br /> <img src=\"../images/258580412460/zenobia5d.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>During this time, Rome was even more fucked, with Emperors stabbing each others\' rectums every time they turned around, so Zenobia decided fuck this, I\'m not even going to pretend any more.&nbsp; She declared her own Empire, made herself the Queen of the East, and fucking invaded goddamn Egypt with a tremendously-gigantic army.&nbsp; Tens of thousands of light infantry, all armed with arrows and javelins, stormed ahead, supported by fucking badass Cataphract Heavy Cavalry decked out in the biggest, baddest full suits of armor you can imagine.&nbsp; Trampling around the desert like second-century T-72s, she demolished the Egyptian army, took Alexandria (which she claimed was her \"ancestral home\" due to her descent from Cleopatra), and sent a second army north to capture Ankara in Turkey.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>At a time when women rulers weren\'t exactly normal or accepted or not-brutally-murdered-in-their-sleep, Zenobia\'s soldiers actually totally super loved her &ndash; because instead of hiding in a palace behind a pile of gold she would lead from the front.&nbsp; Riding up and down the lines on horseback to encourage the men, she would scream pump-up words to get them inspired to fight.&nbsp; During the marches, she would get on foot and walk miles alongside the troops, realizing that staying in sight would help the warriors win victories for their Queen.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/258580412460/zenobia6.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Ok, well, capturing Egypt kind of pissed off Rome.&nbsp; They sent a Legion after her, commanded by Legate Probus, a guy we really don\'t know a whole lot about except that he was the military commander of North Africa.&nbsp; He attacked, but his forces were no match for Zenobia\'s battle-hardened troops &ndash; his army was smashed, the Roman governor of Egypt was beheaded, and Probus went back to Rome as one of the few men from his legion to not die gloriously in the field of battle.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/258580412460/zenobia7.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>In 272 AD the situation settled down a little, and a badass Roman infantryman named Aurelian clawed his way to the throne of the Empire.&nbsp; Aurelian had gone from soldier to general to emperor, consolidated Roman power, and now he was going after the riches of the Palmyran Empire.&nbsp; He invaded with a huge number of front-line Roman troops, all battle-hardened from conflicts with the Goths and the Gauls, and headed out into the desert.&nbsp; Zenobia personally took command and faced Aurelian a few hundred miles from her capital.&nbsp; Her heavy cavalry overran the Roman horsemen, but her archers weren\'t effective against the infantry &ndash; the legions were simply too powerful and too well-armored.&nbsp; She was defeated twice.&nbsp; Then she \"retired within the walls of her capital, made every preparation for a vigorous resistance, and declared with the intrepidity of a heroine that the last moment of her reign and her life should be the same.&rdquo;</p>\r\n<p>Her defensive strategy was fantastic.&nbsp; She forced Aurelian to marched his army a hundred miles through the desert, and she had her light cavalry hit him every step of the way.&nbsp; Arabian horsemen attacked the baggage trains and supply convoys.&nbsp; Horse archers took shots during the day and set fires at night.&nbsp; It was honestly the same strategy that Saladin would use a thousand years later to defeat Richard the Lionheart in the Third Crusade.</p>\r\n<p>By the time Aurelian reached the walls of Palmyra, he saw a humongous fortress bristling with archers and giant siege weapons that could hurl high-explosive Greek fire bombs hundreds of yards with pinpoint accuracy.</p>\r\n<p>Aurelian immediately offered incredibly favorable terms for surrendering the city.&nbsp; Zenobia told him to fuck off.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/258580412460/zenobia8.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> <em>&ldquo;The Roman people speak with contempt of the war which I am now waging against a woman.&nbsp; <br /> They are ignorant of both the character and the power of Zenobia.&nbsp; <br /> It is impossible to enumerate her warlike preparations, of stones, of arrows, <br /> and of every species of missile weapons.&nbsp; Every part of the walls is provided <br /> with two or three ballista, and artificial fires are thrown from her military engines.&nbsp; <br /> The fear of punishment has armed her with desperate courage.&rdquo;<br /> - Emperor Aurelian</em></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The Romans set up for a siege, but Zenobia held out hope that they wouldn\'t last long in the desert.&nbsp; She sent riders to Persia asking for help, but only heard that the Persian king had just died and the Empire was in a civil war over who should succeed him.&nbsp; That news got worse when she received word from her men in Egypt &ndash; not only was Egypt not sending help, but they\'d rebelled against Zenobia and were now sending a huge army to reinforce Rome.</p>\r\n<p>Zenobia knew she needed to get out and personally appeal for help, so she got on her fastest camel and made a break for it, riding right through the Roman siege lines in the middle of the night to try and get help.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>She didn\'t make it.&nbsp; The Romans got word of her escape and sent horsemen after her.&nbsp; She was captured near the Euphrates River and brought back to Aurelian to negotiate terms.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/258580412460/zenobia9.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>We don\'t really know exactly what happened to Zenobia at this point.&nbsp; One story says that in a defiant last act of queenly heroism she killed herself by drinking poison rather than submit to the will of Rome.&nbsp; Another story says that Aurelian was so damn impressed with her composure, intelligence, beauty, and regalness that he actually set her free, gave her a big estate in Rome, and that she ended up marrying a wealthy Roman aristocrat, had a bunch of daughters, and lived happily ever after.&nbsp; Both are equally credible stories from equally credible sources, so we have no idea.</p>\r\n<p>We do know what happened to Palmyra.&nbsp; Aurelian was actually pretty lenient with the city &ndash; he looted some riches, set up a governor and a garrison, and left the city and the people unharmed.&nbsp; Of course, as soon as he turned around the Palmyrans murdered the entire garrison and decapitated the governor, so Aurelian turned back around and burned the whole place to the ground.&nbsp; I guess these things happen sometimes.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/258580412460/zenobia10.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\" align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Links:</p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.ancient.eu/zenobia/\">Ancient History Encyclopedia</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://womenshistory.about.com/od/ancientqueens/a/Zenobia.htm\">WomensHistory.About.com</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/20/homage-to-zenobia\">Homage to Zenobia</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zenobia\">Wikipedia</a></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Books:</p>\r\n<p>Gibbon, Edward.&nbsp; <em>The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire</em>.&nbsp; Vol 2.&nbsp; Tourneisen, 1787.</p>\r\n<p>Southern, Pat.&nbsp; <em>Empress Zenobia</em>.&nbsp; AC &amp; Black, 2008.</p>','2015-12-25','258580412460','zenobia.jpg','zenobia-smal.jpg','Zenobia','Warrior-queen who defied Rome, conquered Egypt, and used to spear-hunt wild panthers in the Arabian desert.','“Modern Europe has produced several illustrious women who have sustained with glory the weight of empire; nor is our own age destitute of such distinguished characters.  But if we except the doubtful achievements of Semiramis, Zenobia is perhaps the only female whose superior genius broke through the servile indolence imposed on her sex by the climate and manner of Asia.”  -- Edward Gibbon');
INSERT INTO `weekly` VALUES ('Garnet Joseph Wolseley','June 4, 1833','March 25, 1813','Dublin, Ireland','19th-century British Soldier','<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Field Marshal Sir Garnet Wolseley, 1<sup>st</sup> Viscount Wolseley, is a man who completely embodied the <em>Civilization V </em>ultra-domination martial brutality of Victorian England so hard that the only two things in life that made him happy were the Coldstream Guards Band\'s rendition of \"God Save the Queen\" and the act of actively bayonetting enemy warriors to death with his own two hands.&nbsp; A hardcore, one-eyed Redcoat officer with a pith hat, a bushy mustache, a fucking monocle, and a healthy disrespect for anyone who wasn\'t a respectable, up-standing English gentleman, this guy was an epic war hero across four continents who demolished the enemies of imperialism from Beijing to Pretoria and used a bunch of cringe-worthy words like \"savages\" and \"barbaric\" any time he was writing about people of non-English ethnic, political, or social backgrounds.&nbsp; He fucking hated Americans (\"hastily-enlisted, ill-trained civilians in uniform\"), the Irish (\"a howling, begging lot of savages\"), Africans (\"good for nothing\"), Indians (\"cursed woman-slayers\"), newspaper correspondents (\"they eat the rations of fighting men and do no work at all\"), and pretty much everyone else he came across (\"nine men out of ten are simply fools\"), and this fox-hunting, cane-swinging ultra-Brit &nbsp;was so fucking mega Union Jack that you could broadcast Jason Statham eating bangers and mash in the TARDIS with Eric Idle on BBC One and &nbsp;he\'d still think you were a fucking communist.</p>\r\n<p>However, I just finished an epic stint where I wrote a 60,000 word book about the American Revolution in three months while moving apartments during the holidays, and after going through all that I think it\'s probably time I said something nice about a British person for once.</p>\r\n<p>So, here is the story of Sir Garnet Wolseley, a once-impoverished British boy who rose from Ensign to Commander-in-Chief of the British Army without ever once paying for a commission, and a man who battled Ashanti warriors in Africa, overthrew a revolution in Canada, stormed fortresses in India, captured forts in China, claimed the Suez Canal for England, captured a Zulu king, and got half his face blown off in Burma.&nbsp; A man so efficient, cold-bloodedly calculating, and thorough in the destruction of his enemies, that the phrase&nbsp; \"it\'s all Sir Garnet,\" became a popular 19<sup>th</sup> century British Army expression meaning \"everything is in order\".</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/632882432345/wolseley1.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Born in Dublin, Ireland on June 4, 1833, Wolseley\'s father had spent decades serving as a Major in the 25<sup>th</sup> Regiment of Foot.&nbsp; Despite his prestigious military heritage, Wolseley\'s dad had married a woman 25 years younger than him and he died while Garnet was just 14, leaving young Garnet to provide for his mom and his seven younger siblings (!) pretty much by himself.&nbsp; Wolseley wrote a letter to the Duke of Wellington asking to be appointed with a commission in the British Army, but Wellington wrote back and said, <em>yeah kid, sure thing, but write back when you\'re 16</em>.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Wolseley actually had to wait until he was 19 to receive the Duke of Wellington\'s appointment.&nbsp; He was initially assigned to a regiment in England, but Wolseley was too poor to pay to travel from Ireland to London so instead of taking that assignment he just immediately requested a transfer to a Regiment on active duty in the Burma War.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/632882432345/wolseley2.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Wolseley joined the 80<sup>th</sup> Regiment of Foot in Rangoon 1853.&nbsp; In the crippling heat and humidity, he was part of a detachment of 800 men sent to defeat a Burmese chief named Myat Toon.&nbsp; The British went on a 12 day march through the jungle, where they were met every step of the way by snipers, cholera, and the crucified corpses of British soldiers from previous expeditions.&nbsp; When they finally reached the base, Wolseley was so excited to finally see combat that he volunteered to lead the first attack.&nbsp; Charging ahead, screaming for his men to follow him, he immediately fell into a pit trap and knocked himself unconscious.</p>\r\n<p>Later that day, volunteered to lead the second attack, and that one went slightly better.</p>\r\n<p>Rushing ahead, leading his men up the stockades and into the enemy, bayonets at the ready, Wolseley took a bullet in the thigh, but just tried to stem the bleeding with one hand while he waved his sword forward with the other.&nbsp; After the battle he almost died of infection while in the field hospital, but toughed it out by forcing himself to \"starve out\" the fever by not eating anything for a week and a half.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/632882432345/wolseley3.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Wolseley\'s next deployment was to the Crimea, where he volunteered for the Royal Engineers.&nbsp; In a time and an Army where most men paid money or used their aristocratic connections to get promoted, Wolseley was so fearless and capable that he was promoted to Captain just on merit.&nbsp; Building works and bridges on the front lines, he took another bullet (this one didn\'t keep him out of action too long), and then was unlucky enough to be at ground zero of a Russian artillery shell that killed two of Wolseley\'s friends and blew half of the Captain\'s face off.&nbsp; He lost a big piece of his shin, his eye was hanging out of its socket, his jawbone poked through his cheek, and a Royal Army doctor used forceps to pull several chunks of stone out of Wolseley \'s face &ndash; without anesthesia.&nbsp; They just held him down and yanked.&nbsp; Yikes.</p>\r\n<p>A few weeks later, while he was in the hospital, he heard a rumor that the final assault on Sevestapol was about to begin.&nbsp; Wolseley grabbed his sword, ran to his horse, and tried to go join the battle, but he was almost completely blind and could barely walk so eventually he had to frustratedly give up</p>\r\n<p>After healing up, Wolseley joined the 90<sup>th</sup> Regiment and shipped out for China.&nbsp; He never made it, unfortunately, because a couple weeks into the journey his transport ship was caught in a storm and wrecked in the shark-infested waters of the Bay of Biscay.&nbsp; It was all good though, because when the rescue ship picked him up they immediately took him to India, where a huge portion of the British Army\'s Indian forces had just mutinied and killed a bunch of British soldiers and civilians.&nbsp; Ok, no big deal.&nbsp; Wolseley helped liberate the town of Cawnpore, where most of the civilian-murdering had gone down, and he was so pissed at what he saw that when the British Army attempted to break the Mutineers\' siege of Lucknow, Garnet Wolseley was one of the first men to bayonet his way through the enemy lines.&nbsp; He later claimed he would have received the Victoria Cross, if his commanding officer wasn\'t so mad that he\'d disobeyed orders not to press the attack.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/632882432345/wolseley4.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> <em>British troops storming Lucknow</em></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>He finally got to China in 1860, where he stormed Qing Dynasty Chinese fortifications as part of the Second Opium War.&nbsp; Wolseley helped captured the Taku forts, and was present (but did not participate) when the British and French Armies captured Beijing and looted the Emperor\'s Palace.</p>\r\n<p>After China, Wolseley was sent to Canada in 1862 to hang out just in case the British decided to join the Civil War on the side of the Confederates, and Wolseley decided to take a two-month vacation from the Army so he could go hang out with Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson and see how things were going there.&nbsp; He met the rebel Generals in the aftermath of the Battle of Antietam and ended up writing an article in the Montreal newspaper about why Britain should ally with the Confederacy.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/632882432345/wolseley5.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>For the next couple years things were pretty quiet, so he got married to a blonde Englishwoman who had \"the same bodily proportions as the Venus de Milo\" and wrote a book that basically was everything a soldier needed to know in order to be successful in the British Army &ndash; all the good stuff, and all the bad stuff.&nbsp; He kind of got in trouble for this because the British Army didn\'t like him talking shit about some of their stupid practices that didn\'t make any sense, but Wolseley told them to cram it up their gob holes.&nbsp; A few years later they actually asked him to come help them make some reforms to the army, and Wolseley immediately suggested that it was fucking stupid that any idiot could buy ranks in the British Army if they had enough cash (they ended the process shortly after he mentioned this).&nbsp; Wolseley also led the Red River Campaign, a punitive expedition against a rebel uprising in Manitoba.&nbsp; Wolseley marched 1200 men across 1200 miles of largely-uncharted Canadian wilderness to storm the rebel stronghold, but was super pissed to find that they all ran away when they heard he was coming.&nbsp; On the upside, he covered 2400 miles on goddamned Manitoba without losing a single soldier from his command to injury, disease, bear attacks, drowning, heat exhaustion, or any other ailment, and the Canadians pretty much all thought he was the coolest thing since ice hockey.</p>\r\n<p>Well, before long, Lieutenant-Colonel Garnet Wolseley was like the fucking SEAL Team Six of Violently Enforcing the Will of the British Empire on Her Subjects.&nbsp; In 1873 he was deployed to West Africa, where a particularly-warlike tribe called the Ashanti were attacking British protectorate of Ghana.&nbsp; Wolseley showed up, totally fucking lied to the local British media about what direction he would be marching, and then surprised the Ashantis (who were reading British newspapers) by ramming the fucking bayonets of the Black Watch up their asses from the other direction. He built bridges and laid telegraph lines through a couple hundred miles of undiscovered inland Africa, almost died of malaria, beat the Ashanti in three major battles, burned their capital to the ground and forced their chief to sign a treaty agreeing to pay England 50,000 ounces of gold, stop doing human sacrifices, and open their kingdom for trade with the West.&nbsp; The entire expedition cost the lives of 68 of Wolseley\'s soldiers.&nbsp; For his efforts, Queen Victoria gave him an awesome sword, knighted him, and initiated him into a bunch of prestigious military orders.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/632882432345/wolseley6.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>After this came another slow period, where Wolseley didn\'t do much... you know, he just was an ambassador to South Africa, was commander-in-chief of British forces in Cyprus, led a mission that captured the Zulu King who massacred all those British troops at the Battle of Isandlawana, and stormed a fortress called \"The Gibraltar of the Transvaal\" that was defended by an African chief who was notorious for ceremonially mutilating Boer and English colonists in South Africa (Wolseley had that guy and his harem paraded down the streets of Pretoria like something out of an old-school Roman <em>Triumph</em>).&nbsp; All of that is basically like a fucking footnote in this guy\'s life.</p>\r\n<p>Ok, let\'s take a second here, and think about everything that has happened to this motherfucker so far.&nbsp; Want to know something crazy?&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><em>None of this stuff is what Sir Garnet Wolseley is best known for</em>.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/632882432345/wolseley7.JPG\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>After years of being pissed off for a variety of pretty-understandable reasons, in 1882 there was a military coup in Egypt that was aimed at overthrowing the British and Turkish control in the area.&nbsp; Well, once again Wolseley was called in to be the Hammer of Imperialism.&nbsp; He immediately made arrangements for 40,000 men and 41,000 tons of supplies to be shipped from locations in India, Europe, and Africa, meet up in Egypt, and assemble into the largest British Expeditionary Force yet recorded in the history of the Empire.&nbsp; The fact that he was able to make any kind of military logistics on that scale run smoothly or efficiently should tell you why \"It\'s all Sir Wolseley\" was a common 19<sup>th</sup> century expression for \"it\'s all taken care of\".&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Once again, Wolseley told the media (in complete confidence, of course) that he would be landing his forces at the Nile Delta &ndash; and then proceeded to totally <em>not </em>do that.&nbsp; While the reporters (and the Egyptian army) were hanging out waiting for the Brits to arrive (Wolseley told half his own army they would be going there, and then held them back as a reserve just in case), Wolseley\'s invasion force slipped into the Suez Canal in the middle of the night, captured it, and then seized the telegraph office before they could send notifications out about what was going on.&nbsp; In the morning he marched for Cairo, mowing down the Egyptians with a hail of gunfire in three decisive battles and driving them back to their heavily-fortified base at Tel-el-Kabir, just outside of Cairo.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/632882432345/wolseley8.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Tel-el-Kabir was supposed to be unbreachable.&nbsp; The Egyptian dictator had 26,000 riflemen and dozens of artillery pieces behind fortified stone walls and four miles of trenches surrounded by wide-open desert with zero cover.&nbsp; Wolseley had 11,000 operational infantry, 2,000 cavalry, and 61 cannon.&nbsp; But, while surveying the enemy positions (which he deemed to be almost perfect), Wolseley noticed one important thing &ndash; the Egyptians didn\'t keep their advanced posts staffed at night.</p>\r\n<p>So, in the dead of night on September 12, 1882, Sir Garnet Wolseley marched his entire army 5.5 miles through featureless desert.&nbsp; He used Royal Navy navigators, brought up from the ships, to guide the men using the stars so they didn\'t get lost.&nbsp; Then, while it was still dark, the British snuck up on Tel-el-Kabir, and the defenders were awoken by the horrible screams of three Scottish Highlander Regiments bearing down on them with fucking bayonets and broadswords.&nbsp; The Egyptian lines wavered, then attacks from Wolseley\'s Irish, English, and Indian Regiments broke their lines.</p>\r\n<p>The next morning, the Queen received a telegram from General Sir Garnet Wolseley:&nbsp; <em>The war in Egypt is over.&nbsp; Send no more men from England.</em></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><em>&nbsp;</em></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><em><img src=\"../images/632882432345/wolseley9a.png\" alt=\"\" /></em></p>\r\n<p><em>&nbsp;</em></p>\r\n<p>He was already in Cairo and had the rebel Egyptian leader in custody.&nbsp; Garnet Wolseley had lost 58 men killed in the expedition, and the Suez Canal, now officially seized by the British Empire, would remain in British hands until 1956.&nbsp; When he returned home Wolseley was knighted by the Sultan of Turkey, promoted to Full General, given honorary degrees from Oxford and Cambridge, and made a Baron.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>A few years after this, 52 year-old Sir Garnet Wolseley commanded an expedition to the Sudan to try and rescue Chinese Gordon while he was besieged in Khartoum by forces of the Mahdi (this is a tale for a different article), but despite a heroic attempt he arrived at the city just two days after the British garrison had fallen.&nbsp; Wolseley never forgave himself for this failure, although considering all the other shit he accomplished it seems like you&rsquo;d be able to let one thing slide.&nbsp; Either way, later in life he had his Baron title upgraded to Viscount, was part of the Department of the Army commission that suggested <em>fuck yes we need more machine guns in the army</em>, hunted foxes in Ireland, wrote a biography of the Duke of Marlborough, met Flashman, was commander-in-chief of the British Army for six years and then retired in 1900 when he started to show signs of Alzheimer\'s Diseases.&nbsp; He died peacefully in bed in 1913, one of the most decorated and well-known badasses of Victorian England.&nbsp; Which ain\'t bad, considering that this guy never once paid money or pulled political strings so he could get promoted.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/632882432345/wolseley10.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Sources:</p>\r\n<p>Davis, Paul K.&nbsp; <em>100 Decisive Battles from Ancient Times to the Present</em>.&nbsp; New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.</p>\r\n<p>Farwell, Byron.&nbsp; <em>Eminent Victorian Soldiers: Seekers of Glory</em>.&nbsp; London: W.W. Norton, 1985.</p>\r\n<p>Fremont-Barnes, Gregory.&nbsp; <em>The Indian Mutiny 1857-58</em>.&nbsp; Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2007.</p>\r\n<p>MacDonald, John.&nbsp; <em>Great Battlefields of the World</em>.&nbsp; London: Marshall Editions Limited, 1984.</p>\r\n<p>Sandler, Stanley.&nbsp; <em>Ground Warfare: An International Encyclopedia</em>.&nbsp; Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2002.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>','2016-01-08','632882432345','wolseley.jpg','wolseley-small.jpg','Sir Garnet Wolseley','Victorian-Era British officer who won epic campaigns from China to Canada and accomplished more heroic shit in a weekend than most soldiers do in a lifetime.','\"Man-shooting is the finest sport of all. There is a certain amount of infatuation about it; that the more you kill, the more you wish to kill.\"  - Garnet Wolseley, letter to his aunt'),('Edward L. Baker','December 28, 1865','August 26, 1913','Platte River, WY, USA','19th-century American Soldier','<p>Sergeant Major Edward L. Baker of the Tenth United States Cavalry was born in the back of a badass horse-drawn frontier wagon while his parents were Oregon Trailing their shit out to California to start a new life.&nbsp; Robert E. Lee had signed the Confederate surrender at Appomattox Courthouse just seven months earlier, effectively ending the American Civil War, and Baker&rsquo;s parents were pretty psyched about getting the fuck out of town and starting fresh in a new land.&nbsp; They packed their shit, headed out for then California Gold Country, and then popped out a son while they were fording the Platte River in the wilderness of Wyoming (pro tip: never ford the river, always pay that dude to ferry you across).&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>It would be a fitting start for a man who would end up spending 28 years of service to the United States Army braving some of the most dangerous, inhospitable, and unforgiving wilderness on the planet.&nbsp; Because whether he was dodging Apache arrows in the deserts of the American Southwest, charging enemy machine guns in Cuba, or going hand-to-hand with machete-swinging berserkers in the Philippines, this Medal of Honor badass was one of the toughest motherfuckers to ever wear the uniform &ndash; and any origin story that didn&rsquo;t involve him being born in the midst of a grueling cross-country adventure just wouldn&rsquo;t seem fitting for a hardass of this caliber.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/16047969242/edwardbaker1.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>We don&rsquo;t know a hell of a lot about Baker&rsquo;s youth in California, or how this 17 year-old adventurer even ended up at a United States Army recruiting office in Ohio in 1882.&nbsp; I&rsquo;m going to guess it had something to do with cranking fucking sick flaming jams on the trumpet, because when he arrived in the office he was carrying a trumpet and initially enlisted as a Bugler in the Tenth U.S. Cavalry &ndash; one of the most elite, battle-hardened, and toughest military units in the Army during this time period &ndash; probably because he wanted his trumpet-playing to not only be awesome and make him some money, but that he could also inspire a thousand men to saber-charge an enemy formation of infantry just by cranking out a few notes like he meant it.</p>\r\n<p>The 10<sup>th</sup> Cavalry was formed in 1866 as part of an American attempt to pacify those brutal, bloodthirsty, savage Native American tribes that were scalping settlers, attacking Army posts, and burning villages across the West for no good reason except that we technically were stealing their land and building houses on it and then killing them when they complained.&nbsp; Known as the &ldquo;Buffalo Soldiers&rdquo;, the unit consisted entirely of African-American soldiers and NCOs commanded by white officers.&nbsp; Think of it like <em>Glory </em>mixed with Custer&rsquo;s Last Stand.&nbsp; Dressed in blue uniforms and packing badass cowboy six-shooters, cavalry sabers, and lever-action Winchester rifles, the men of the Tenth patrolled the American West on horseback protecting American settlers, fighting uprisings from the Cheyenne, Kiowa, and Commanche, and even occasionally taking down bands of gunslinging bandits holed up in cool cave networks that looked like something straight out of a cheesy Western film.&nbsp; It was so fucking awesome I can barely stand it.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/16047969242/edwardbaker2.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> <em>There are five theories about why the 9<sup>th</sup> and 10<sup>th</sup> were called &ldquo;Buffalo Soldiers&rdquo;:<br /> 1. Black peoples&rsquo; hair made the Indians think of a buffalo&rsquo;s fur.<br /> 2.&nbsp; The Indians believed black people were imbued with the spirt of buffalos.<br /> 3. It&rsquo;s because 9<sup>th</sup> and 10<sup>th</sup> Cavalry wore buffalo hide capes in the winter to keep warm.<br /> 4. The 9<sup>th</sup> and 10<sup>th</sup> fought with the ferocity and tenacity of a buffalo defending its herd.<br /> 5.&nbsp; The Indians thought the 9<sup>th</sup> and 10<sup>th</sup> Cavalry were from Buffalo, New York.<br /> Ok, I made that last one up.</em></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>By 1885, Trooper Baker was a three year veteran in the Tenth, and by this point he&rsquo;d pretty much traded his trumpet for a Winchester and a .45.&nbsp; His unit was transferred from the Great Plains down to the Rio Grande frontier, where there was a dude named <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/geronimo.html\">Geronimo</a> causing all kinds of shit and wrecking balls with a rampaging army of hardcore-as-fuck Apache warriors.&nbsp; Largely believed by 1950s Cowboy movie writers to be the most ferocious of all the Native warrior tribes, the Apache were a tenacious group of hardened warriors who packed a ton of firepower and were experts in the art of the ambush.&nbsp; Baker and his men were part of the crew that went to hunt down Geronimo and his band &ndash; they weren&rsquo;t involved with his capture, but that was only because they were in the middle of a hardcore canyon shootout with a group of Geronimo&rsquo;s loyal Apache followers at the time.</p>\r\n<p>After fighting in Arizona was over, Baker and the Tenth returned to Montana, where they got a new commanding officer &ndash; Black Jack Pershing.&nbsp; The man who would command the U.S. Army in World War I, and go down as among the most hardcore badasses in U.S military history.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/16047969242/edwardbaker3.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Baker&rsquo;s bravery in the face of gunfire, tomahawks, arrows, and other horrible shit quickly earned him a reputation as being one of the baddest dudes in the Tenth Cavalry, and by 1898 he had been promoted to the rank of Sergeant-Major, making him one of the senior NCOs in the unit.&nbsp; I have no evidence of this, but I like to think of him as like a cowboy version of the Sergeant Johnson from <em>Halo</em>.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Baker and the Tenth&rsquo;s next adventure would take them to Cuba, where a huge war had just broken out between the United States and Spain.&nbsp; Cuba was still a Spanish colony in 1898 but the Cubans didn&rsquo;t like being ruled by Spain, so America helped them in their struggle to overthrow the Spanish government because this is America and we believe in freedom, democracy, liberty, justice, and oh yeah maybe we can also steal the Philippines from Spain while we&rsquo;re at it and start building our own Empire <em>shhh don&rsquo;t tell anyone</em>.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/16047969242/edwardbaker4.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>If you think it&rsquo;s a little weird that an Indian-fighting frontier regiment like the Tenth Cavalry would end up being called in to a front-line combat role against a modernized European army is a little weird, that&rsquo;s because it kind of totally is.&nbsp; And there&rsquo;s a fucking weird story behind why they were there.</p>\r\n<p>Most of Cuba at this time was oppressive jungle, plagued with overwhelming heat, rampant disease, and oppressive humidity.&nbsp; Within days of landing on the island, American forces were overcome with malaria, yellow fever, dysentery, and other horrible illnesses.&nbsp; It was so bad that at one point some regiments <em>fucking temporarily suspended guard duty operations </em>because they didn&rsquo;t have enough healthy men who weren&rsquo;t barfing or crapping themselves within an inch of their lives.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>To combat this, the American Army sent&hellip;. all of the black units in the military.&nbsp; Because they believed &ndash; I kid you not &ndash; that black people were immune to tropical diseases.&nbsp; I guess because their grandparents and great-grandparents were from a tropical climate?&nbsp; Who knows.&nbsp; Either way, it didn&rsquo;t work, and it shouldn&rsquo;t surprise you to learn that black people can also get sick when they are bitten by a malaria-infected mosquito.</p>\r\n<p>Well, one unforeseen consequence of this &ldquo;it would actually be kind of hilarious if it wasn&rsquo;t so overtly racist&rdquo; case of terrible 19<sup>th</sup> century science is that the single most climactic American battle since the Civil War was fought by nearly 2,000 African-American soldiers who had been forged into a ferocious fighting machine by decades of combat against the toughest outlaws and Native American warriors in the Old West.&nbsp; And this was a big fucking deal, considering that the Battle of San Juan Hill took place just 20 years after the end of the Civil War (fun fact, the commander of the American cavalry at the battle had been a Confederate General &ndash; when Joseph Wheeler saw his troops winning the fight, he hilariously screamed &ldquo;Come on boys, we got the Yankees on the run!&rdquo; before having to be politely informed by an adjutant that we, in fact, were the Yankees).&nbsp; The heroism of the 9<sup>th</sup> and 10<sup>th</sup> Cavalry at the fight would go a long way towards breaking color barriers in the U.S. Army.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/16047969242/edwardbaker5.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>But, I&rsquo;m getting ahead of myself.&nbsp; Let&rsquo;s start at the beginning &ndash; dawn on July 1, 1898.&nbsp; Edward L. Baker, Sergeant-Major of the 10<sup>th</sup> U.S. Cavalry, stood at the head of his unit, staring up at a heavily-defended Spanish position bristling with barbed wire, trenches, bolt-action Mauser rifles, and belt-fed Maxim heavy machine guns.&nbsp; On his left flank was the Ninth U.S. Cavalry, another unit of Buffalo Soldiers.&nbsp; On his right, was the First Volunteer Cavalry Regiment &ndash; led by Lieutenant-Colonel <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/roosevelt.html\">Theodore Motherfuckin&rsquo; Roosevelt</a> and known as &ldquo;Roosevelt&rsquo;s Rough Riders&rdquo;.&nbsp; Further down the line were a couple infantry brigades, including an all-black Brigade consisting of the U.S. 24<sup>th</sup> and 25<sup>th</sup> Infantry Regiments.</p>\r\n<p>Their objective was simple &ndash; storm out of the jungle, run on foot across open ground, cross a fucking river, scramble up a hill through a couple of seven-foot-tall barbed wire walls, cross a half-mile of enemy trenches, and attack the hardened, sand-bagged, machine-gun-entrenched brick fortress at the top of San Juan Hill.</p>\r\n<p>No problem.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/16047969242/edwardbaker6.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Artillery rang out from both sides as Krupp guns and other heavy cannons started lobbing shells back and forth across the landscape.&nbsp; Towering piles of dirt were kicked hundreds of feet in the air, machine gun bullets whizzed through the jungle brush, and then, suddenly, a screaming horde of American soldiers came racing full-speed out of the jungle on a single-minded mission to capture that fucking hill or die trying.&nbsp; They raced through the ground, taking horrific casualties, but Baker screamed for his men to stay in line, keep your ranks, put fire out there and don&rsquo;t lose your cool.&nbsp; Down the line, the African-American Infantry Brigade took the brunt of the Spanish machine gun fire, losing four commanders in under 11 minutes, but still the attack pushed on.&nbsp; When the army reached the river, men swam or waded across as best they could, then scrambled quickly up the muddy banks on the far side of the river bed in their assault on the hill.&nbsp; <br /> Despite taking heavy casualties in the attack, the Americans regrouped at the base of the hill and prepared for the final push, keeping their heads down as Spanish machine gun and rifle fire cracked endlessly overhead.</p>\r\n<p>Then, from the river, Sergeant-Major Baker heard a horrible scream &ndash; one of his men, his brothers, had taken a bullet while crossing the river, and his wound was so severe he couldn&rsquo;t stand or swim.&nbsp; One of the men Baker had served with for years was about to drown in six feet of river water.</p>\r\n<p>Fuck that.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/16047969242/edwardbaker7.gif\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Despite men taking hits and bullets and explosions all around, Sergeant-Major Edward L. Baker left cover, raced back to the river, jumped in, and grabbed his man.&nbsp; With Spanish snipers taking shots at him from the trenches and the jungle on his flank, Baker grabbed the wounded man, pulled him from the river, dragged him up that fucking muddy slope through sheer force of will alone, and got him in to cover.&nbsp; Nobody could believe it.&nbsp; Even Teddy Roosevelt was impressed &ndash; he would later write about the amazing bravery and heroism he witnessed first-hand by the Tenth Cavalry in the battle.</p>\r\n<p>This rescue was the thing that would earn Baker his Medal of Honor, but for this tough-as-nails Sergeant the hard part was just getting started.&nbsp; Moments after getting back into cover, General Henry S. Hawkins rode out on his horse, turned his back to the enemy guns, and shouted &ndash; &ldquo;Boys, the time has come.&nbsp; Every man who loves his country, forward and follow me!&rdquo;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/16047969242/edwardbaker8.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> <em>&ldquo;When that pack of demons swept forward the Spaniards stood as long as mortals could stand, <br /> then quit their trenches and retreated&hellip; it now seems almost impossible that <br /> civilized men could so recklessly destroy each other.&rdquo;&nbsp; <br /> -- Cpl. John Conn, 24<sup>th</sup> U.S. Infantry</em></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>With a scream, the American lines rose up, unloaded some covering fire, and hurled themselves at the enemy.&nbsp; The Spanish unleashed hell, drilling accurate fire into the U.S. lines, but no force on Earth was going to stop this attack.&nbsp; Teddy Roosevelt, Edward Baker, the Tenth Cavalry, and the rest of the American brigades charged on, leaping in to the Spanish trenches with six-shooters, swords, bayonets, and anything else they could use to kill the enemy.&nbsp; The Spanish lines broke and retreated, pursued closely by the Tenth Cavalry.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The Battle of San Juan Hill cost the lives of over 200 American soldiers, but it was a decisive victory that ended the Spanish-American War.&nbsp; Newspaper correspondents who witnessed the event wrote glowing praise for the soldiers who fought there, and four men from the Tenth Cavalry &ndash; including Edward L. Baker &ndash; would receive the Medal of Honor for heroism in the war.&nbsp; He was promoted to Lieutenant after the battle, making him one of the first black officers in the history of the United States Army.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/16047969242/edwardbaker9.JPG\" alt=\"\" /><br /> <em>&ldquo;Only annihilation could drive them back; the Spaniards could not.&rdquo;&nbsp; <br /> </em>- The <em>New York Sun</em></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>After the war the United States seized control of the Philippines from Spain, which pissed off the Filipinos (who immediately rebelled), and once again it was time to send in the masters of guerilla warfare to come save the day.&nbsp; The Tenth Cavalry and Lieutenant Edward Baker were sent to Manila, where they battled the Philippine Insurrection and did combat with ferocious hardcore jungle warriors who were packing badass slasher-movie-style machetes and were so badass in their berzerking that there are reports of these guys getting shot twice with a .38 and not even breaking stride in their charge.&nbsp; I wish I had more details about Baker&rsquo;s service there, but we do know that after the Tenth Cavalry left the Philippines, Baker stayed behind and became a training officer for the Philippine Scouts &ndash; a tough group of Filipino warriors who were trained to help fight against the rebellion .&nbsp; So that&rsquo;s cool.</p>\r\n<p>Edward L. Baker retired with the rank of Captain after 28 hard years of combat experience in one of the United States&rsquo; most famous cavalry regiments.&nbsp; He lived through the end of the Old West, witnessed the beginnings of mechanized, World War I-style combat, and fought everyone from Apache riflemen to Spanish infantry to Filipino guerillas.&nbsp; After retirement, he went home to Los Angeles, where he died in 1913 at the age of just 48.&nbsp; His grandson, Dexter Gordon, was a famous jazz saxophonist who played jams with Louie Armstrong and Dizzy Gillespie, and is the godfather of Lars Ulrich from Metallica.&nbsp; Don&rsquo;t tread on me, indeed.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/16047969242/edwardbaker10.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Sources:</p>\r\n<p>Hanna, Charles W.&nbsp; <em>African American Recipients of the Medal of Honor</em>.&nbsp; Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2002.</p>\r\n<p>Sutherland, Jonathan.&nbsp; <em>African Americans at War</em>.&nbsp; Vol. 1.&nbsp; Santa Barbara, ABC-CLIO, 2004.</p>\r\n<p>http://www.blackpast.org/aaw/10th-cavalry-regiment-1866-1944</p>\r\n<p>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_L._Baker,_Jr.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>','2016-02-05','16047969242','edwardbaker.jpg','edwardbaker-small.jpg','Edward L. Baker','Lars Ulrich\'s great-godfather was a hardcore Old West Buffalo Soldier Sergeant-Major who fought Apaches under Geronimo and stormed San Juan Hill with Teddy Roosevelt.','“No more striking example of bravery and coolness had been shown since the destruction of the Maine than by the colored veterans of the Tenth Cavalry during the attack upon San Juan:  Firing as they marched, their aim was splendid, their coolness was superb, and their courage aroused the admiration of their comrades.  Their advance was greeted with wild cheers from the white regiments, and with answering shouts they had taken in close pursuit of the retreating enemy.  The war has not shown greater heroism.  The men whose own freedom was baptized in blood have proved themselves capable of giving up their lives that others may be free!”  - New York Mail and Express'),('Lorenc Peter Elfred Freuchen','February 2, 1886','September 22, 1957','Nykøbing Falster, Denmark','20th-century Danish Explorer','<p>Lorenc Peter Elfred Freuchen was a 6&rsquo;7&rdquo; tall walrus-spearing, peg-legged, anti-Semite-clobbering Danish explorer and badass old-school 1900s explorer who wore a fucking awesome coat made of polar bear fur, rocked a seriously epic beard, rode a dogsled 1,000 kilometers across the Greenland ice cap in the 1910s, killed a wolf with his bare hands, escaped a Nazi death warrant at the height of the Third Reich, amputated his own fucking gangrenous toes with a pair of pliers (and no anesthesia), and starred in a goddamned Oscar-winning movie &ndash; which was based on a book that he wrote.&nbsp; And this guy was so over-the-top awesome that he played the fucking villain in a movie that was loosely based around his own autobiography.&nbsp; He was also the fifth person to win the<em> </em>jackpot in the TV game show <em>The $64,000 Question, </em>published thirty books, founded two Adventurer&rsquo;s Clubs, and his biography is called <em>The Vagrant Viking</em>.</p>\r\n<p>Need more proof?&nbsp; Check this shit.&nbsp; One time he was caught in a blizzard and ended up being buried alive in an inescapable cocoon of ice so tightly packed around him that he could barely move.&nbsp; After 30 hours trapped in a frosty tomb the size of a large suitcase this behemoth Dane escaped certain death by molding his own shit into a fucking knife and using it to carve through a solid wall of ice, then crawled another three hours back to base camp like something out of <em>The Revenant </em>meets <em>Everest</em> meets goddamn <em>Shawshank Redemption</em>.</p>\r\n<p>Oh, yeah, and he looks like this:</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/977797832498/freuchen1.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> <em>Freuchen with his third wife.<br /> His coat is made from the fur of a polar bear that he killed himself.</em></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Peter Freuchen was born in Denmark in February 1886 (his birthday was exactly 130 years ago last Tuesday).&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;He studied to be a doctor at some pretty swanky Danish schools, but order and structure and living indoors in the civilized world like a fucking chump wasn&rsquo;t what Freuchen was put on this earth to do, and after getting in trouble quite a bit in school (he wrote in his awesomely-titled autobiography <em>The Vagrant Viking</em> something along the lines that &ldquo;the first victims of my hunter&rsquo;s instincts were my early instructors&rdquo;) Freuchen peaced out and said <em>fuck people, I&rsquo;m going to go explore the damn wilderness</em>.&nbsp; He signed on with every Polar expedition he could, and became obsessed with exploring the uncharted wilderness of Greenland and the North Pole.&nbsp; In 1906, at the age of 20, he and his buddy Knud Rasmussen sailed as far north as they possibly could, then got out of the ship and traveled 600 miles across the frozen wastes of Greenland on a damn dogsled just to see what was out there.&nbsp; They met the Inuit, who were awesome, traded with the natives, learned the language, and then went on badass co-op hunting expeditions to spear walruses, whales, wolves, seals, polar bears, and other insane things.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/977797832498/freuchen2.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> <em>That looks pretty cold.</em></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Freuchen also went on sea-and-land expeditions to places like South Africa, Siberia, and a few other inhospitable wastelands where no person should ever be able to survive (ok, maybe South Africa isn&rsquo;t <em>that </em>bad, but they do have hella Great Whites and that shit freaks me out), but Freuchen&rsquo;s heart was in Greenland.&nbsp; So in 1910 he returned, went as far north as he could bear, and then set up a trading station where he could live among the Inuit.&nbsp; He named his two-person town Thule, after <em>Ultima Thule</em>, which was a marking used in medieval cartography to denote anywhere that was beyond the borders of the known world.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>This is an aerial photograph of Thule today:</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/977797832498/freuchen3.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>In <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qaanaaq\">Thule</a> &nbsp;the daily mean temperature this time of the year is twelve degrees below zero.&nbsp; Negative-twelve.&nbsp; Fahrenheit.&nbsp; As an <em>average daily temperature</em>.&nbsp; And we are talking 1910, when you didn&rsquo;t have windbreaker jackets and wetsuits and Gore-tek thermal shit.&nbsp; This motherfucker was wearing furs, leather, and wool to keep warm.&nbsp; That&rsquo;s it.&nbsp; At one point, his cabin was so could that his breath was turning to ice and lining the inside of the cabin.&nbsp; After he burned through all of his coal, the got smaller and smaller from all the condensation until it was so cramped that he could barely stand up.</p>\r\n<p>Freuchen lived here for like the next decade, learning fluent Inuit and accidentally becoming basically the world&rsquo;s first and foremost expert on the native peoples of Greenland.&nbsp; He married an Inuit woman and had two children, who were given the alphebet-heavy names of Mequsaq Avataq Igimaqssusuktoranguapaluk and Pipaluk Jette Tukuminguaq Kasaluk Palika Hager.&nbsp; Freuchen&rsquo;s grandson would become the first person of Inuit descent to be elected to the Canadian Parliament.&nbsp; Today Thule is home to a friggin&rsquo; United States Air Force base.&nbsp; They have aircraft, fighters, and radar listening posts, and it&rsquo;s home to the 12<sup>th</sup> Space Warning Squadron, which I think is either something designed to provide early-warning detection against either Russkie ICBMs and/or Cylon Basestars.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/977797832498/freuchen4.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> <em>Freuchen and his wife in the 1910s</em>.<br /> <em>She joined him on many of his early expeditions.</em></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Thule served as the home base for seven expeditions between 1912 and 1933.&nbsp; The First Expedition, in 1912, involved crossing a thousand kilometers across Greenland just to prove to Commodore Peary that the North Pole wasn&rsquo;t separated from Greenland by a river.&nbsp; Both Freuchen and Rasmussen almost died on the trip, but they became national heroes overnight for their accomplishment.</p>\r\n<p>Freuchen&rsquo;s first wife died of the Spanish Flu in 1921, and he returned home to Denmark for a while.&nbsp; He began writing for a newspaper called <em>Politiken</em> (it&rsquo;s still around today), and began working on the first of the nearly 30 books he would publish in his career as a bestselling author.&nbsp; Most of his works were focused on Inuit culture and badass man shit like killing bears and surviving in a climate where your piss can practically freeze mid-stream, but he also wrote about the oceans, sailing, and put out some cool hardcore &ldquo;dude kills everyone in a fit of vengeance&rdquo; fiction stories like the ones you see in those old awesome 1920s pulp magazines.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/977797832498/freuchen5.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>In 1924, Freuchen married a friggin multi-millionaire, who was the heiress to a huge fortune because her folks ran the most successful margarine business in Denmark (I&rsquo;m not making this up).&nbsp; Her parents liked Freuchen so much that when they founded a new magazine in 1925, they made Freuchen the editor-in-chief.&nbsp; The magazine is still in circulation today &ndash; it&rsquo;s the longest-running magazine in Danish history.</p>\r\n<p>But don&rsquo;t go thinking Freuchen was going soft just because he was a millionaire best-selling uthor who lived in a massive estate on his own private island (even though that totally did happen).&nbsp; He kept making trips back north and going on badass expeditions, including the one in 1926 that I referenced in the poop story earlier.</p>\r\n<p>Basically, Freuchen was exploring the Northern reaches of Greenland when he got caught out in a hardcore insane blizzard storm:</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/977797832498/freuchen6.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>He took cover beneath a dog sled, but the snow and ice overtook him and he was trapped.&nbsp; The ice was so tight against him that his beard froze to the ice, meaning that if he wanted to turn his head he had to fucking yank a piece of his beard out.&nbsp; After 30 hours of trying to claw and punch his way to safety, Freuchen ingeniously and hilariously chiseled through the wall of ice with a fucking shank he fashioned from his own shit, crawled three hours back to base, took off his socks, saw his fucking toes had gangrene, and then amputated his toes with a pair of pliers and a hammer.</p>\r\n<p>Without anesthesia.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/977797832498/freuchen7.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> <em>When he got back to safety he had his leg amputated.<br /> He had a peg leg for the rest of his life.<br /> This did not stop him from going back to Greenland.&nbsp; A lot.</em></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>One of Freuchen&rsquo; books about the Inuit was turned into a movie in 1933.&nbsp; Telling the tale of a fictional Inuit warrior&rsquo;s adventures in the Arctic, the film&rsquo;s dialogue was entirely in Inuit with English subtitles.&nbsp; Freuchen wrote the story, translated the dialogue, was an interpreter on the set, helped the film crew survive on set, and played the movie&rsquo;s villain.&nbsp; It won an Academy Award, which is awesome, even if the Oscar was for &ldquo;Best Film Editing&rdquo; which really isn&rsquo;t something that Freuchen was actually involved with at all whatsoever.&nbsp; Either way, an awesome side note is that during the premier of <em>Eskimo</em>, Freuchen apparently picked up Nazi director Leni Reifenstahl (Hitler&rsquo;s favorite director, btw), held her over his head, and spun around in a circle, laughing his ass off.&nbsp; She did not enjoy this.&nbsp; He couldn&rsquo;t even use the excuse that he was wasted at the time, because Peter Freuchen never drank.</p>\r\n<p>Freuchen founded &ldquo;The Adventurer&rsquo;s Club&rdquo; in Denmark in 1938, a cool place for cool dudes to sit around and smoke cigars by a fireplace in an awesome wood-paneled room with animal heads on the walls.&nbsp; But unfortunately Denmark was having some Nazi problems around this time, which pissed off Freuchen quite a bit.&nbsp; According to what I&rsquo;ve read, any time someone would say some anti-Semite shit around him, Freuchen would stand up to his full height, walk right up to the dude, and intimidatingly say something along the lines of, &ldquo;I&rsquo;m Jewish.&nbsp; What are you gonna do about it?&rdquo;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/977797832498/freuchen8.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>When the Germans took over Denmark, Freuchen was part of the Danish Resistance.&nbsp; He hid refugees, subverted Nazi operations, and pissed off Hitler so hard that the Germans arrested him and sentenced him to death.</p>\r\n<p>Freuchen escaped, fled to Sweden, and continued undermining the Nazis.&nbsp; Because if an icy coffin isn&rsquo;t going to kill him, the Nazis weren&rsquo;t either.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/977797832498/freuchen9.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>In 1945 Freuchen moved to New York City and married his third wife (the one pictured above), Dagmar Cohn.&nbsp; Dagmar was a fashion illustrator who worked with Vogue, and the pair settled down in NYC to wait out the rest of the war.&nbsp; Nearly 60 years old by now, Freuchen joined the New York Explorer&rsquo;s Club, another cool hangout spot, and today they have a big painting of him mounted on the wall between the taxidermied heads of exotic African wildlife.&nbsp; Freuchen became friends with Mae West, bench-pressed <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Harlow\">Jean Harlow</a> at a party once, and in 1956 he became only the fifth person to win <em>The $64,000 Question</em> (they asked him about the Seven Seas&hellip; big mistake).&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Peter Freuchen died of a heart attack in 1957, just three days after completing his final book.&nbsp; He was 71 years old.</p>\r\n<p>His ashes were scattered over Thule, Greenland.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/977797832498/freuchen10.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Links:</p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://kottke.org/14/01/peter-freuchen\">Kottke.org</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://americandigest.org/mt-archives/citizens/peter_freuchen_thats_pete.php\">American Digest</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://intpolicydigest.org/2014/01/23/key-arctic-survival-improvised-implements-excrement/\">International Policy Digest</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.anothermag.com/art-photography/3425/the-remarkable-life-of-peter-freuchen\">AnOther Magazine</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.theverge.com/2014/2/24/5441984/explorers-club-elon-musk-adventure-space-frozen-poop-chisel\">The Verge</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"https://archive.org/details/vagrantvikingmyl006077mbp\">Full Text of Freuchen\'s Autobiography</a></p>','2016-02-12','977797832498','freuchen.jpg','freuchen-small.jpg','Peter Freuchen','Peg-legged Danish polar explorer who lived with the Inuit, amputated his own toes with pliers, and once escaped certain death by making a knife out of his own frozen shit.',''),('William R. Lawley, Jr.','August 23, 1920','May 29, 1999','Leeds, AL, USA','20th-century American Pilot','<p><em>(Hey guys, I have a new book coming out!!!&nbsp; This one is a badass history of World War II, covering a few people I&rsquo;ve talked about before on the site (the chapters themselves were completely re-written) but also covering tons of awesome WWII tales I haven&rsquo;t told yet.&nbsp; It&rsquo;s due out on March 1, but you can <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0316320595/ref=s9_simh_gw_g14_i1_r?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&amp;pf_rd_s=desktop-1&amp;pf_rd_r=0A3VGJRZ0QA81QD7SEJT&amp;pf_rd_t=36701&amp;pf_rd_p=2079475242&amp;pf_rd_i=desktop\">pre-order it here</a> or pretty much anywhere you like to buy books.&nbsp; I really hope you&rsquo;ll check it out, and thanks as always for your mind-blowing support&hellip; it&rsquo;s a totally insane to think that ten years ago I was just some anonymous jerk at a desk job and today I&rsquo;m promoting the imminent release of my sixth full-length published book.&nbsp; I really couldn&rsquo;t have done it without your help, so thank you.&nbsp; </em></p>\r\n<p><em>Anyway, here&rsquo;s one of my favorite chapters from the new book!)</em></p>\r\n<p><em>&nbsp;</em></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Guts-Glory-World-War-II/dp/0316320595/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1444687552&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=guts+and+glory+world+war\"><img src=\"/images/9390817779/lawley0.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br />yeahhhhhhh<br /></a></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&ldquo;Bandits, incoming, three o&rsquo;clock high!&rdquo;&nbsp; The sudden thumping of twelve machine guns all blasting at once jolted the 15-ton, four-engine aircraft, but United States Army Air Force Lieutenant William R. Lawley, Jr., held her steady.&nbsp; The loud, rumbling propellers roared as he pushed open the throttle and smashed through a thick black cloud of anti-aircraft smoke at nearly three hundred miles an hour, all the while keeping in tight formation with hundreds of other gigantic explosives-filled aircraft that were roughly the same size as those 737s airliners you take to see your grandma during Spring Break.</p>\r\n<p>Overhead, a pair of Nazi Focke-Wulf 190 fighter planes screamed by, ripping off thousands of rounds from twin-linked machine guns and heavy 20mm autocannons.&nbsp; White tracer fire from armor-piercing rounds whizzed past the cockpit, while other bullets punched holes through the sides of the plane with the unsettling ping of steel on steel.&nbsp; Black puffs of enemy artillery popped up all around Lawley&rsquo;s massive aircraft craft, each one representing ship-incinerating surface-to-air artillery shell bursting into a fearsome-looking cloud of screaming-hot shrapnel.&nbsp; The enemy fighters screamed past at speeds of over four hundred miles an hour, passing so close to Lawley&rsquo;s windshield that if he wasn&rsquo;t so busy trying to keep his crew alive he probably could have told you the color of the pilots&rsquo; eyes.&nbsp; As the gray Nazi fighters dove down towards another squadron of American bombers below, Lawley&rsquo;s starboard waist gunner zeroed in on them with his .50-caliber machine gun with a quick burst of tracer fire, but had to release the trigger as a pair of American P-47 Thunderbolt fighter planes dropped in to chase them.</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/9390817779/lawley1.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>It was February 20<sup>th</sup>, 1944, the first day of &ldquo;Big Week,&rdquo; and Lieutenant Lawley&rsquo;s Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress was at the head of a formation of one thousand bombers sent to flatten Germany&rsquo;s production and aircraft manufacturing facilities into smoldering rubble.&nbsp; For some strange reason, the Germans were really making things difficult for them.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Still reeling from their grinding defeat at the Battle of Kursk, in early 1944 Nazi Germany was being forced back all along the Eastern Front.&nbsp; Ok, cool, this was great and all, but total victory over Hitler&rsquo;s goose-stepping minions was going to require a war on two fronts to be successful, which meant at some point there would have to be a joint American-British full-scale invasion of Europe through France to squeeze out Hitler&rsquo;s forces.&nbsp; Easier said than done: &nbsp;Hitler had spent the last four years turning the entire French coastline into his so-called &ldquo;Fortress Europe,&rdquo; bristling with cannons and aircraft from Calais to the Pyrenees.&nbsp; Much like the <em>Luftwaffe </em>needed to take out England&rsquo;s air defenses to mount a successful invasion if the British Isles, now the Allies needed to plaster the German war effort with a few million tons of high-explosives and grind it into ash before attempting a full-blown attack into France.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/9390817779/lawley2a.png\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The not-so-cleverly-nicknamed &ldquo;Big Week&rdquo; was the Allied plan to spend seven days ruthlessly air-mailing explosives to enemy aircraft production facilities deep behind enemy lines.&nbsp; Day and night, wave after wave of American B-17 Flying Fortresses, B-24 Liberators, and British Lancasters blasted shipyards, railroad junctions, power plants, airfields, steel production facilities, dams, and military bases relentlessly, igniting everything from ball bearing plants to oil refineries up into towering explosive fireballs and making it really really hard for anyone in Germany to build a working fighter plane.</p>\r\n<p>These gigantic Bomber raids were nothing new for Lieutenant Lawley.&nbsp; A 23 year-old Alabama boy, this veteran pilot had already flown nine missions over Germany in the last year, running a brutal gauntlet of anti-aircraft cannons and enemy fighter planes every single time.&nbsp; This was his tenth mission, but the first at the controls of a brand-new B-17, nicknamed <em>Cabin in the Sky III </em>because the first two <em>Cabin in the Sky </em>aircraft under Lawley&rsquo;s command had already been blown up.&nbsp; <em>Cabin </em>was named after a musical that is significant because it marked the first on-screen appearance of the moonwalk that Michael Jackson made so famous in the 80s, a fact that contributes very little to World War II history but is cool nonetheless.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/9390817779/lawley3.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The target was an aircraft production plant deep in the German city of Leipzig, a hardened enemy fortress city just a two-hour drive from downtown Berlin.&nbsp; The Nazis, fighting on their own turf, were determined to use everything they had to stop Lawley and his buddies from their mission.</p>\r\n<p><em>Flying Fortress</em> wasn&rsquo;t just a clever name for the Boeing B-17 bomber.&nbsp; This airborne behemoth was a four-engine, 15-ton armored tank with wings and enough machine guns to carve a small mountain into something resembling a giant chunk of Swiss cheese.&nbsp; It had a crew of ten &ndash; the pilot, co-pilot, flight engineer, navigator, bombardier and radioman all worked together to bring the plane into position and release the bombs, and then there were four guys assigned as machine gunners.&nbsp; The ball turret gunner sat in the &ldquo;suicide seat&rdquo;, a small, cramped little circular dome popping out from under the airplane that looked like those plastic balls you see at a McDonald&rsquo;s PlayPalace except it sported twin .50-caliber machine guns and swiveled a full 360 degrees in a circle.&nbsp; The tail gunner wedged himself into a tiny little compartment in the back of the aircraft and was responsible for taking out enemy fighters that dropped in behind the B-17.&nbsp; There were also two machine gunners in the waist of the plane, each manning a gun facing a different side.&nbsp; Add that in with a top-mounted double-machine-gun turret for the flight engineer and a front-facing double-MG turret sticking out below the cockpit for the bombardier and pack it into an armored hull capable of withstanding extreme punishment from enemy aircraft and you&rsquo;ve got, well, a flying fortress.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/9390817779/lawley4.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Over four hundred of these aircraft blackened the sky above Leipzig as the B-17s of the American Eighth Air Force made their attack run.&nbsp;&nbsp; Peering through their mostly-accurate state-of-the-art Norden bombsights and updating their calculations, bombardiers zeroed in on their targets and let fly, releasing thousands of pounds of high explosives plummeting five miles to earth to explode in a carpet of flame and shrapnel.&nbsp; In his rumbling cockpit, braving temperatures running in the negative-fifty degrees Fahrenheit, Lieutenant Lawley breathed oxygen through a gas mask because this was back before cool things like pressurized, heated aircraft.&nbsp; Holding the plane perfectly steady to give his bombardier a stable firing platform was risky because it made Lawley&rsquo;s plane a pretty cherry target for German ground gunners, but that&rsquo;s one of the risks you take.</p>\r\n<p>Bomb explosions rippled the German countryside like a handful of rocks thrown into a lake, each pop representing a leveled building or factory, but on <em>Cabin in the Sky </em>there was a problem &ndash; the bomb doors didn&rsquo;t open.&nbsp; Ice from the extreme cold temperatures of the high altitude had frozen the bomb racks in place, and they didn&rsquo;t deploy with the rest of the American planes.&nbsp; So as the rest of the B-17s accelerated forward, relieved of their heavy bomb loads, <em>Cabin in the Sky </em>lagged slightly behind.&nbsp; Lawley opened the throttle to try and compensate.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/9390817779/lawley5.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Suddenly voices on <em>Cabin in the Sky</em>&rsquo;s intercom called out another finger four formation of Focke-Wulfs, this time diving down from behind.&nbsp; With the sun at their backs, blinding the tail gunner, the Focke-Wulfs ignored the deadly clouds of flak ripping apart the sky around them and hurtled straight into the B-17 formation.&nbsp; Their 20mm cannons struck home at one of Lawley&rsquo;s wingmen, catching her engines on fire and ungracefully dropping her out of the sky like a brick, trailing a black cloud of smoke and flame.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Another flak explosion hit even closer, rocking <em>Cabin in the Sky </em>and peppering one of the engines with shards of metal, causing it to burst into flames.&nbsp; Lawley ordered the copilot to shut it down and kept moving.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/9390817779/lawley6.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>More calls came in.&nbsp; Six o&rsquo;clock low.&nbsp; Three o&rsquo;clock level.&nbsp; The Nazis were everywhere, attacking from seemingly every direction at once.&nbsp; The B-17s stuck close together like a herd of bison, knowing that the only way to survive was to stay close and lay down heavy fields of machine gun fire.</p>\r\n<p>As his gunners fired in every direction, Lawley looked through his cockpit window to see a fleet of twenty or so 190s drop down in front of him, pick out targets, and open fire.&nbsp; With a deafening crash, a 20mm high explosive autocannon shell bust through the front window of <em>Cabin in the Sky</em>, exploding in the cockpit.&nbsp; Everything went black.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/9390817779/lawley7.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Lawley snapped awake seconds later, his ears ringing like he&rsquo;d been inside a church bell when it went off.&nbsp; Alarms were going off all across his console, which was now decorated with shards of shrapnel sticking out of it from every direction.&nbsp; His right arm was shattered.&nbsp; Through blurry vision, Lawley saw his co-pilot slumped over dead, his body laying on the control stick pushing it forward.&nbsp; The plane was in a steep dive, made all the worse by the fact that it still had loaded bomb racks.&nbsp; The pilot-side window was smashed, and broken glass had gone into Lawley&rsquo;s face, arms, and side.&nbsp; The windshield was so smeared with blood and oil that you could barely see out of it.&nbsp; Another engine was one fire.</p>\r\n<p>Amazingly, Lieutenant William Lawley didn&rsquo;t panic.</p>\r\n<p>He did his job.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/9390817779/lawley8.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Determined to keep his plane and his crew alive, the veteran USAAF pilot reached out with his shattered right arm, grabbed his dead co-pilot, and somehow pulled him back off the controls.&nbsp; Then, with just his left hand, he manually fought a 15-ton bomber aircraft out of a ninety-degree nose-first dive at 12,000 feet, leveled it off, and shut down the second burning engine.&nbsp; Looking up, he saw the Focke-Wulf pilots circling around for another pass, so this grim warrior made an evasive turn, dove the plane down into the cloud cover, and accelerated out of there as fast as he could.</p>\r\n<p>Other B-17s in the formation had radioed <em>Cabin in the Sky </em>as Killed in Action, but somehow William Lawley managed to evade the enemy fighters and get the heck out of Leipzig.&nbsp; He flew across Germany, dodging enemy AA positions, then flew in low over the French countryside and ordered the surviving eight members of his crew to grab parachutes and bail out.</p>\r\n<p>It was then that he learned all eight crewmen were wounded in the attack, and that two of them were hurt so bad they couldn&rsquo;t possibly go skydiving right now.</p>\r\n<p>Lawley said ok.&nbsp; I&rsquo;m going to get us home then.</p>\r\n<p>Nobody jumped out of the plane.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/9390817779/lawley9.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The bombardier eventually got the racks unstuck and released his bombs over an unimportant part of the French countryside, but before long another squadron of Me-109 fighters picked up the wounded B-17 on radar and came swooping in for the kill.&nbsp; With his guys running to their guns to bark .50-caliber machine gun fire, Lawley hammered the stick of his crippled plane, dodging and evading with one arm and somehow eluding enemy fighters one more time.&nbsp; In the process, however, he had to use more fuel than he&rsquo;d have liked, and one of the two remaining engines was now almost completely out of gas.</p>\r\n<p>Once the coast was clear and the Messerschmitt fighter planes were gone, Lawley leveled off the plane and promptly passed out from loss of blood.</p>\r\n<p>This was the days before autopilot, and Lawley was the only guy who knew how to fly the plane.&nbsp; Luckily his navigator figured out what was up and woke him up pretty much right away.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/9390817779/lawley10.gif\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><em>Cabin in the Sky </em>somehow reached the English Channel against all odds, received emergency landing permission from a Canadian fighter base on the English coast and, just in case you&rsquo;re wondering how the heck this could possibly get any worse, when William Lawley hit the button to drop his landing gear wheels&hellip; you guessed it&hellip; they didn&rsquo;t deploy.</p>\r\n<p>So, limping in in with three burned-out engines, &ldquo;feathering&rdquo; his only working one by pumping it off-and-on with small amounts of gas, half blinded by broken glass, exhausted from loss of blood, and with no landing gear, eight wounded crew members, and one good arm, Lieutenant William Lawley attempted to crash land a 15-ton Flying Fortress on a grass airfield about the size of a soccer pitch.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>He came in hard on his belly, sliding across the airfield, finally coming to a rest just outside the Canadian barracks.&nbsp; Every member of his crew survived.</p>\r\n<p>Lawley would walk out of the wreckage, spend a few weeks in the hospital, and make a full recovery.</p>\r\n<p>He&rsquo;d successfully pilot four more bombing missions before the war was over.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/9390817779/lawley11.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /><em>The wreckage of Lawley\'s aircraft after landing.</em></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>','2016-02-19','9390817779','lawley.jpg','lawley-small.jpg','William R. Lawley','With his crew injured, his aircraft on fire, and his controls shot to pieces, a wounded B-17 pilot tenaciously attempts fights to get bring his crew home alive.','\"Hitler built a fortress around Europe... but he forgot to put a roof on it.\" - Franklin D. Roosevelt'),('William Speakman','September 21, 1927','N/A','Altrincham, Cheshire, UK','20th-century British Soldier','<p>Pvt. &ldquo;Big Bill&rdquo; Speakman from the British Army&rsquo;s King&rsquo;s Own Scottish Borderers Regiment received the first Victoria Cross medal handed out by Queen Elizabeth II of England, and to this day he is one of just eight living recipients of the British Army&rsquo;s highest award for bravery in combat.&nbsp; And while this alone is worthy Badass of the Week material, what puts this gigantic bearded warrior over the top is the fact that he&rsquo;s better known as the &ldquo;Beer Bottle VC&rdquo; &ndash; an awesome-as-hell epithet he earned in 1951 on a frozen, bullet-riddled hill along the 38<sup>th</sup> Parallel where he single-handedly took on a bum-rushing Brigade of Chinese People&rsquo;s Army Infantry in four hours of close-quarters combat that saw him chucking hand grenades, beer bottles, empty ration tins, pencils, small woodland creatures, kitchen silverware, cricket bats, and his own fucking hulking meaty fists at anything that passed into his field of vision until all that remained of Hill 317 was a humongous pockmarked explosion crater filled with sorrow, misery, broken glass, shrapnel-related mutilation, and lots and lots of dead enemy soldiers.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/543793523196/speakman1.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Born in Cheshire, England, Big Bill joined the cadets at age 15 and enlisted in the Army at 18.&nbsp; He joined the infamous Black Watch on August 10, 1945, signing on with one of the toughest groups of whisky-swilling kilted Scots bayonet-enthusiasts to ever skewer a Nazi to death with his own dismembered manhood.&nbsp; Well, unfortunately for Bill, World War II ended just five days after he enlisted, which was kind of a bummer because he was pretty stoked about the idea of rabbit-punching Fascists in the dick.&nbsp; Instead of Berlin, he ended up getting posted in Hong Kong, where he started trouble, got into a lot of fights, and sang a lot of karaoke where he switched out the actual song lyrics for swear words and euphemisms for fucking.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>After getting promoted a few times (and then immediately demoted for unlicensed barroom-brawl face-punchings of superior officers, local sailors, and/or off-duty Royal Navy personnel), Speakman eventually got the opportunity to legally demonstrate his carefully-cultivated talent for cold-cocking motherfuckers when the British Army decided to send troops to Korea in 1950.&nbsp; Transferring to the King&rsquo;s Own Scottish Borderers, Speakman was sent to the 38<sup>th</sup> Parallel in the Summer of 1951, where he dug in an entrenched position along the Imjin River that separated North and South Korea.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/543793523196/speakman2.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>At this point in the War, UN forces that had been reeling under an attack by the Chinese People&rsquo;s Liberation Army were finally starting to make a stand against the Communist onslaught.&nbsp; Speakman and the Borderers were ordered to cross the Imjin and attack a 1,000-foot-tall mound of heavily-defended dirt known as Hill 317.&nbsp; With no cover, charging at dawn uphill against a heavily-entrenched enemy, Speakman and the Borderers advanced heroically under a curtain of covering fire from 120 tanks, machine guns, and artillery pieces.&nbsp; With a rain of explosive death keeping the Chinese troops&rsquo; heads down, the psychotic Scotsmen stormed Hill 317 through a curtain of bullets, leaping into the enemy trenches and pummeling everyone they could find into a meaty paste with the sort of ferocity you typically don&rsquo;t see outside of an Edinburgh tavern parking lot fifteen minutes after closing time on a Thursday.&nbsp; The battle drove the Chinese from the hill at the cost of just seven dead for the KOSB.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Of course, making an epic charge face-first into machine guns was the easy part.&nbsp; The hard part was going to be to hold the position against an enemy that outnumbered the British by a wide margin and was commanded by a General Staff that took most of their tactical cues from <em><a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eowPka21BNc\">Zapp Brannigan&rsquo;s Big Book of War</a></em>.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/543793523196/speakman3.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The British dug huge, 20-foot-deep trenches, checked their gear, and prepared to gut out another excruciating North Korean winter where it gets so bone-chillingly frigid that it can probably flash-freeze urine mid-stream.&nbsp;&nbsp; Unbeknownst to them, however, the Chinese were massing for an unstoppable horde mode human wave attack head-on up Hill 317 &ndash; a force of 6,000 guys supported by heavy mortars, hundreds of artillery pieces, and nine tanks.</p>\r\n<p>The murderous barrage began around 4pm on November 3, 1951.&nbsp; Suddenly, out of nowhere, the entire slope of Hill 317 erupted like a 4<sup>th</sup> Grade Science Fair baking soda volcano that had been packed to the brim with nitroglycerine and strike-anywhere matches.&nbsp; Guys were diving for cover into their trenches, but the Chinese gunners were chillingly accurate and lobbing so many high-explosive shells that you couldn&rsquo;t stick your hand out of the trench without grabbing a handful of shrapnel.&nbsp; Six thousand (!) shells landed in a little more than an hour, many of them penetrating the bunkers and ripping them apart.&nbsp; UN aircraft and artillery was called in to help, but by dusk there were just 400 British soldiers on the Hill, staring down at a screaming onslaught of thousands of enemy soldiers racing forward with submachine guns and explosives, hurling grenades, bullets, shrapnel and insults up at the shell-shocked defenders. The Chinese used nets, Bangalore mines, and grenades to blast through the barbed wire, and were charging so enthusiastically and fearlessly that in some cases they were actually getting hit by their own artillery</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/543793523196/speakman4.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Private Big Bill Speakman was in the headquarters tent working as a runner for the Sergeant-Major of Company B when reports started coming in on the radio of contact with Chinese infantry.&nbsp; The screams of dying men echoed through the tent, as front-line infantry battled for their lives against an enemy that seemed to be swarming them from every direction.</p>\r\n<p>Speakman&rsquo;s job was to prep grenades and deliver them to the forward platoons.&nbsp; As you can probably imagine, the Army isn&rsquo;t in the habit of shipping live grenades around, so Speakman&rsquo;s job was to grab a crate of Type 35 Grenades, crack the crate open with a crowbar, and then single-handedly prime every grenade in the box &ndash; a process that requires you to pop the base off with a special tool, screw in a fuse, seal the grenade back up, wipe off all the excess packing grease, and then (carefully!) put the grenade back into the crate.&nbsp; Once a crate was fully primed, he&rsquo;d run it up to the forward platoon so they could start chucking away.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/543793523196/speakman5.JPG\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>It took just an hour and a half for the Chinese to completely overrun all forward British positions on Hill 317.&nbsp; As the sounds of battle became louder and louder outside Speakman&rsquo;s tent, the radio reports became less and less frequent.&nbsp; Speakman worked furiously to prime the grenades, his hands shaking as the rumble of artillery and gunfire echoed all around him &ndash; but when reports came in that the Command Post of 5 Platoon &ndash; a tent that was just 20 meters from Speakman&rsquo;s &ndash; was under attack from three sides, Big Bill had heard enough.</p>\r\n<p>He grabbed a shitload of grenades, stuffed them into every pocket he could, and ran for the door.</p>\r\n<p>When his Company Sergeant-Major demanded &ldquo;where the hell do you think you&rsquo;re going?&rdquo;, Big Bill said he was going to go &ldquo;shift&rdquo; some of them.&nbsp; I don&rsquo;t know what that really means, but I get the jist.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/543793523196/speakman6.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>When Speakman raced out of the tent, the sky was pitch black, lit only by the creepy red parachute flares the Chinese had fired to illuminate the British positions with a light that kind of resembles a Red Alert on the Starship <em>Enterprise</em>.&nbsp; Running through explosions, with bullets ripping and whizzing past him from every direction, Speakman jumped feet-first into a trench with a Platoon Sergeant who had dropped his rifle and was just fucking firing a goddamn bazooka at zero-elevation head-on into the enemy positions.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Now, Bill Speakman was six feet, six inches tall, and he had the awesome ability to chuck a hand grenade about twice as far as anyone else in his Regiment.&nbsp; And once he got to his trench, he started chucking bombs like it was <em>Super Mario Bros 2</em> on the 38<sup>th</sup> Parallel.&nbsp; Any time he saw a muzzle flash, heard a battle cry, or saw a group of dudes, he fucking whizzed a frag in there like he was Juan Marichal bean-balling the fuck out of an opposing batter.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/543793523196/speakman7.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>At one point a nearby British machine gun team was taken out by an enemy attack, so Speakman, out of bombs, just ran over with his rifle and single-handedly started swinging his rifle and fists like he was goddamn Wun-Wun at Hardhome, swinging wildly until he&rsquo;d retaken the position.&nbsp; Then he went back for more grenades.&nbsp; He did this <em>ten goddamn times over the course of four hours of non-stop combat</em>.&nbsp; Asked later about how much balls you need to run head-first into a squad of enemy soldiers, Speakman gave an awesomely-British response &ndash; he simply said, &ldquo;You have to mix it with them.&nbsp; There were so many of them, you just had to get on with it.&rdquo;</p>\r\n<p>But still the enemy came on, undeterred in their ferocious attack.&nbsp; Speakman, already wounded by a mortar shell in the leg and a bullet in the shoulder (when ordered by a superior officer to fall back and get medical attention for his multiple shrapnel wounds, Speak simply yelled &ldquo;stuff it&rdquo; and kept fighting), was in the shit so hard that at one point the British started calling in mortar fire <em>on their own position</em>.&nbsp; The New Zealand mortar crews started putting so many rounds on the hill that they had to pour beer down the barrels of their mortars to keep the rounds from cooking off and blowing up in the tube.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/543793523196/speakman8.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Even this wasn&rsquo;t enough &ndash; the battle was lost, and no 400 men on earth were going to be able to hold that hill against 6,000 Chinese soldiers.&nbsp; The hours passed, Speakman ran out of grenades and ammo and was chucking rocks, beer bottles, and anything else he could at the enemy.&nbsp; When they closed for hand to hand combat, Speakman mentioned that they were &ldquo;so close you didn&rsquo;t have time to pull back the bolt&rdquo;.&nbsp; Yet still he fought on, knife to knife with an enemy that outnumbered him like something out of a martial arts flick.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>When the order came to retreat, Big Bill Speakman personally led an attack that drove the Chinese back just enough for the British to retreat out of there.&nbsp; He came away from the battle with multiple grievous wounds, exhausted, and limping, but his actions had saved the lives of many of the men on the hill that day.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/543793523196/speakman9.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Bill Speakman received his Victoria Cross in December, on a day so cold that the bagpipers had to heat their pipes over the fire the night before so they would be warm enough to actually produce a noise.&nbsp; He was the first hero of the Korean War to receive his VC &ndash; the other three who earned it before him were all either dead or captured.&nbsp; He became a hero overnight in his hometown, although he later said that all he wanted to do was get back to front-line service because he fucking hated dealing with reporters and political functions.&nbsp; He would be sent back to Korea, promoted to Lance Corporal, and then immediately busted back to Private because he got into yet another bar fight.&nbsp; A few months after that he was sent to Singapore, and was thrown in the brig for partying too hard while on shore leave, which is awesome considering that this guy was a friggin&rsquo; decorated national war hero at the time of his incarceration.</p>\r\n<p>Speakman eventually settled down, became an armorer for the SAS, married a Women&rsquo;s Royal Army Corps soldier, retired as a Sergeant in 1968 after 22 years of service, and was still climbing mountains and working as a pilot well into his 60s.&nbsp; Last year, at the age of 82, he donated his Victoria Cross and all of his medals to the people of South Korea to thank them for all of the support they&rsquo;ve shown him.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/543793523196/speakman0.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Links:</p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://blogs.wsj.com/korearealtime/2015/04/22/korean-war-hero-from-u-k-donates-medals-asks-south-korea-to-remember-me/\">Wall Street Journal</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/southkorea/11553223/War-hero-donates-VC-to-Korea-asks-for-ashes-to-be-scattered-over-DMZ.html\">The Telegraph</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Speakman\">Wikipedia</a></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Books:</p>\r\n<p>Adkin, Mark.&nbsp; <em>The Last Eleven: Winners of the Victoria Cross since the Second World War</em>.&nbsp; London: Cooper, 1991.</p>\r\n<p>Cawthorne, Nigel.&nbsp; <em>VC Heroes &ndash; True Stories Behind Every VC Winner Since World War Two</em>.&nbsp; London: John Blake Publishing, 2012.</p>\r\n<p>Hunt, Derek and John Mulholland.&nbsp; <em>Beyond the Legend: Bill Speakman, VC</em>.&nbsp; Stroud: The History Press, 2013.</p>','2016-03-04','543793523196','speakman.jpg','speakman-small.jpg','Big Bill Speakman','When Big Bill ran out of grenades, he single-handedly held off an entire Chinese brigade by throwing beer bottles and rocks at them.','“I did not really lead anybody.  There were lots of chaps who did what I did.  I did what anyone would have done.  I was mad... it’s natural.”'),('Yonatan Azarihab','c. 1976','N/A','Petah Tikva, Israel','21st-century Israeli Vigilante','<p>&ldquo;Never bring a knife to a gunfight, son,&rdquo; is a well-established, completely-true proverb that we as humans are all required to pass on to the next generation of whipper-snappers out there, particularly after we&rsquo;ve just schooled them at something that demonstrates how we as old men can still occasionally appear to be way more badass than young punks half our age.&nbsp; Sure, when our grandpas said it to us they all looked like Clint Eastwood sipping scotch in a smoke-filled wood-paneled living room, while today most guys my age scream that shit out after noscoping noobs from across the map without aimbot hax <em>like a fuckin&rsquo; pimp</em>, preferably while gesturing towards their crotch or high-fiving a dude wearing a backwards hat.&nbsp; Regardless of the delivery mechanism, this short, concise maxim is a time-honored expression that probably dates back to the invention of firearms, and it&rsquo;s one that&rsquo;s just as true now as it was first time some 15<sup>th</sup>-century Date Clan harquebusier headshotted a blood-raging samurai swordsman so hard the dude&rsquo;s katana pinwheeled into the distance like George Clooney in <em>Gravity</em>.</p>\r\n<p>But what happens when a guy brings a knife to a fistfight?&nbsp; And you don&rsquo;t even realize you&rsquo;re actually attending a fight of any variety until after a dude is already hanging on your shoulders ramming the knife repeatedly over and over into your fucking spine?&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Well, 40-year-old Israeli citizen Yonatan Azarihab found out for himself three days ago, when some random psychopath came running up behind him in the middle of the day and rammed this ten-inch-long animal-butchering kitchen knife hilt-deep into his neck when he wasn&rsquo;t even looking:</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/301139019511/azarihab1.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>It was around midday on Tuesday, March 8<sup>th</sup>, 2016, and Yonatan Azarihab casually walked into a liquor store in Petah Tikva, Israel, minding his own business without any indication that he was moments away from performing a first-person reenactment of the climactic battle from <em>Under Siege</em>.&nbsp; The news articles say that Azarihab was out &ldquo;collecting money for charity,&rdquo; and while I can&rsquo;t speak to this guy&rsquo;s motivations one way or the other, I <em>can</em> tell you that if I was shanked in a liquor store in the middle of the day on a Tuesday I&rsquo;d probably come up with some story about how I was doing something more noble than just grabbing a six-pack of Miller High Life tallboys so I could drink alone and watch <em>Black Sails </em>in my underwear all day.&nbsp; So, while it&rsquo;s certainly possible that this guy is a legitimately kind-hearted gentle soul who spends his weekdays collecting donations for worthy causes that aid the well-being of the human race, I really like the idea that some journalist asked what he was doing and Yonatan just started sweating and blurted out a hilariously-obvious lie that somehow managed to get it printed as fact in every newspaper in the world.&nbsp; It doesn&rsquo;t matter, because either situation is almost equally badass and it&rsquo;s irrelevant anyways.</p>\r\n<p>What does matter is that seconds after entering the store, an 18-year-old Palestinian named Abd al-Rahman Radad jumped on to Azarihab&rsquo;s back and started stabbing him repeatedly in the back, shoulders, and neck.&nbsp; Azarihab started screaming, and as he was struggling to shrug off his attacker, the man on his back took that fucking huge scary-ass Michael Meyers knife and planted it into Azarihab&rsquo;s deltoid.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/301139019511/azarihab2.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>What Yonatan Azarihab could not have known was that this was just one of several simultaneous, coordinated terrorist attacks that took place across Israel on Tuesday.&nbsp; One hour earlier, a man in Jerusalem opened fire on a crowd with a Carl Gustav sub-machine gun, injuring a couple cops and civilians.&nbsp; Shortly after that, a guy in Jaffa ran through a crowded boardwalk knifing people, wounding another 11 Israelis and killing an American tourist.&nbsp; Elsewhere, a woman pulled a knife and tried to stab a group of police officers before being subdued.&nbsp; This was a Paris attack style coordinated terrorist assault, intent on wounding and stabbing as many Israelis as possible, and Yonatan Azarihab just happened to be rocking a <em><a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payot\">payot</a> </em>in the wrong place at the wrong time around the wrong person, so now he had a huge hunk of razor-sharp steel sticking out of his neck.</p>\r\n<p>Now, I&rsquo;m going to take a second here and pre-emptive-strike some of the comments I&rsquo;ll probably get on the Facebook post this week by saying that I have absolutely zero intention of discussing the never-ending hellhole known as the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.&nbsp; Sure, I know shit is super fucked up there, and that there are two sides to every story, and there are a hell of a lot of deep-seeded socio-political and religious implications going on that can&rsquo;t properly be analyzed at this time in this kind of forum, but, honestly, you&rsquo;re going to have a hard time convincing me to feel sympathy for a dude who decides his only option in life is to run down a crowded street in the middle of the day stabbing civilians in the neck while they&rsquo;re trying to grab some brew-dogs.&nbsp; And, I&rsquo;ll tell you this, if some motherfucker jumped on my back and stabbed me in the ass while I was trying to buy a fifth of Fireball&hellip; err, I mean&hellip; uh&hellip; collect money for a charity that gives free cancer screenings to homeless orphans while teaching them to read the collected works of Aristotle in the original Ancient Greek&hellip; I don&rsquo;t think I&rsquo;d find it in my heart at that moment to try and debate politics with the ass-stabbing psychopath currently ramming a motherfucking prison shank in and around the area where I like to keep my vital organs.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>It would appear that Yonatan Azarihab saw this the same way.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/301139019511/azarihab3.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Reciting the Israeli proverb &ldquo;if I am not for myself, who will be for me?&rdquo;, fucking Yonatan Azarihab went Hulk Mode, channeled his inner Samson, grabbed the angry man on his back, and fucking flung that dude into a giant display of booze bottles.&nbsp; His assailant smashed through the bottles (in a scene that hopefully was not all that dissimilar from the one I fantasize about pretty much every time I see a huge tower of vodka bottles piled at the entrance of a liquor store), crashing to the floor amid a river of broken glass and liquor.&nbsp; As Abd al-Rahman Radad scrambled back to his feet, the liquor store owner ran over in an effort to help, but Yonatan Azarihab was like, &ldquo;Yeah, I got this buddy.&rdquo;</p>\r\n<p>In a scene that plays out probably FAR more dramatically than it did in real life, the sliced-up, bloody, hulking Israeli stood tall, reached for the hilt sticking out of his neck, <em>pulled the goddamn knife out of his fucking neck</em>, and launched a furious attack on the man who just ambushed him.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/301139019511/azarihab4.png\" alt=\"\" /><br /> <em>It&rsquo;s all in the reflexes</em>.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>In <em>Dungeons &amp; Dragons </em>terms, what ensued was basically what happens when the Rogue tries to Backstab the Barbarian but he only does <em>just </em>enough damage to really piss his victim off.&nbsp; Because now Yonatan Azarihab was fucking pissed.&nbsp; In a short, brutal, ferocious fight, Azarihab cut down his attacker, old-school knife-fight style, leaving the man unconscious on the floor of the liquor store.&nbsp; Radad would later be taken to the hospital, but would not survive.</p>\r\n<p>Staggered, dazed, and rapidly losing blood, Yonatan Azarihab slumped down to the bloody floor.&nbsp; Paramedics arrived shortly thereafter, bringing him to the Intensive Care unit with dozens of stab wounds.&nbsp; He was admitted in Serious condition, but in the past few days his wounds have healed and it appears that he will get through this without any serious permanent injury.&nbsp; His actions, pulling a knife out of his neck and then killing his attacker with it (!!!), almost certainly saved many of the citizens of Petah Tikvah from serious injury and possibly even death.&nbsp; It&rsquo;s also super fucking badass.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/301139019511/azarihab5.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>I guess in the last few days some Israeli activist came out and said that stabbing a dude with his own knife after he shanks you in the throat is shitty because it violates the murderous psychopath&rsquo;s <a href=\"http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/209184#.VuLz-eZWVyE\">right to a fair trial</a>, and while I typically tend to agree that police should do their best to exercise non-lethal force I also have to state the obvious fact here that vigilantes are awesome, and if a motherfucker stabs you 40 times in the spine while trying to cop a non-consensual piggyback ride you are well within your rights as a human to suplex that asshole through a tower of Captain Morgan and give him the Arnold Schwarzenegger <em>Commando </em>treatment.&nbsp; So, even though I admit he has a point, fuck that guy.</p>\r\n<p>Oh, and while it&rsquo;s not particularly relevant to Azarihab&rsquo;s story, It&rsquo;s also worth mentioning here that Azarihab wasn&rsquo;t the only Israeli civilian who channeled his inner SEAL Team Six on Tuesday either &ndash; in the city of Jaffa some dude named Yishai Montgomery was just hanging out on a park bench in his Tool shirt practicing the riff from Sober on his guitar when another off-the-chain spree-stabber came running straight up to him screaming like a madman.&nbsp; Montgomery took one look at this blood-drenched knife-wielding murderer and clubbed him in the skull by swinging the guitar like vintage Pete Townshend on a bender, smashing the guitar and knocking the dude senseless.&nbsp; The stunned would-be stabber staggered back and then started running away, and Montgomery chased him down the street screaming for the cops, who eventually caught up with the killer and stopped him.&nbsp; So that&rsquo;s pretty fucking awesome as well.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/301139019511/azarihab6.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.timesofisrael.com/stabbing-victim-pulls-knife-out-of-own-neck-kills-terrorist/\">Times of Israel</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3482910/Ultra-Orthodox-Jew-pulls-knife-neck-uses-kill-Palestinian-stabbed-day-carnage-saw-three-attacks-Israelis.html\">Daily Mail</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/yonatan-azarihab-stabbing-victim-pulls-knife-out-of-own-neck-to-stab-attacker-in-suspected-terror-a6920706.html\">The Independent</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-civilians-spring-to-action-to-stop-terrorists/\">Civilians Spring to Action to Stop Terrorists</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.707689\">Terror Attacks in Israel</a></p>','2016-03-11','301139019511','azarihab.jpeg','azarihab-small.jpeg','Yonatan Azarihab','After being stabbed in the neck from behind, this Israeli asskicker pulled the knife out and used it on his attacker.','“I was inside the store and all of the sudden I felt someone jump on me, I didn’t realize what was happening until someone yelled ‘terrorist’ and I saw the knife in his hand.”'),('Constance Georgine Gore-Booth','February 4, 1868','July 15, 1927','London, England, UK','20th-century Irish Revolutionary','<p>Kicking ass and looking intimidating while wearing a frilly, wide-brimmed foppy Victorian aristocrat&rsquo;s Sunday hat isn&rsquo;t exactly the easiest thing in the world, but when I guess when you&rsquo;re one of history&rsquo;s most pure-blooded badasses you can find a way to make that shit work... especially when you&rsquo;re packing a silver six-shooter revolver big enough to make Dirty Harry give you a solemn steely-eyed bro-to-bro head nod. &nbsp;Known as &ldquo;The Rebel Countess,&rdquo; Constance Markievicz was an early 20<sup>th</sup>-century suffragette, writer, poet, revolutionary warrior, sharpshooting instructor, gunslinger, sniper, and political agitator who spent the better part of the 1910s either busting caps at British officers, fistfighting cops, training Irishmen in pistol marksmanship, or performing balls-out acts of civil disobedience that saw her routinely locked up in some of the most horrible prison hellholes the British Isles had to offer.&nbsp; When she wasn&rsquo;t serving on the Irish Cabinet or being arrested for disorderly conduct, the Rebel Countess was also a Major in the Irish Republican Army, and her role in the Easter Uprising of 1916 helped kick-start the struggle that broke Ireland away from Great Britain as a separate country.</p>\r\n<p>At one point, the Rebel Countess was sentenced to be executed by firing squad for her role in a particularly bloody Irish uprising against British rule &ndash; when she learned that her sentence was going to be commuted to &ldquo;a lifetime of hard labor&rdquo; because of her gender, she cursed out the prosecuting attorneys, dared the British to &ldquo;man up&rdquo; and shoot her, and then (when they refused) she went out and became the first woman elected to the British House of Commons &ndash; a position she was somehow still elected to even while <em>imprisoned for seditious speech against the British government</em>.&nbsp; Even after she got out of the can Markievicz was so gangster that she never even showed up to take office, abstaining from her elected position out of protest.&nbsp; Later she went on to be a Cabinet minister in the independent Irish government and spent her spare time fixing racecars and tearing ass around the Emerald Isle in some of the fastest vehicles she could get her hands on, just for the hell of it.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/879497726394/markievicz1.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /><em>Yes, she always wore that hat when she went into battle.<br /></em></p>\r\n<p>Constance was born in London on February 4, 1868.&nbsp; Her maiden name was Gore-Booth, which sounds like a small room where people get horribly mutilated, and that&rsquo;s probably fitting because this woman would go on to kick a lot of ass as a sniper and revolver marksman during one of the most brutal, bitterly-contested conflicts in the history of Western Civilization.&nbsp; Her family was loaded, and they owned a huge estate in County Sligo, Ireland.&nbsp; Her pops was a badass arctic explorer so nuts that he has the phrases &ldquo;polar bear hunting&rdquo; and &ldquo;shark fishing&rdquo; hotlinked in <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Henry_Gore-Booth,_5th_Baronet\">his Wikipedia entry</a>, so you can probably imagine that Constance had a fairly non-traditional upbringing consisting of sucker-punching megafauna in the throat and then displaying their taxidermied corpses prominently in her living room like an awesomely-rad conversation starter.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>An avid reader, writer, artist, and poet, Constance went off to art school in Paris, where she met and married a dang Polish Count named Casimir Markievicz.&nbsp; Casimir was pretty cool, I suppose, but when he decided he wanted to move to Eastern Europe to work as a journalist covering the events that would become World War I, Constance was like, &ldquo;yeah you have fun with that&rdquo; and moved back to Dublin where she was (only slightly) less likely to be chummed into bait by a German artillery shell.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/879497726394/markievicz2.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> <em>The Countess</em></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Countess Markievicz had been an excellent shooter since she was a young girl, but when the Countess got back to Dublin she really wasn&rsquo;t at the point yet where she was read to start cranking off rounds at police officers just yet.&nbsp; Instead she opted for something a little less shooty and founded an artist and writer&rsquo;s club, inviting some of the best creative minds of the city to come do chill stuff like read poetry and paint stuff and possibly paper mache adorable animals or whatnot.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Around this time is when she started getting really in to the Sinn Fein revolutionary literature that was floating around Dublin during this time.&nbsp; Now, it shouldn&rsquo;t be a surprise to anyone that the Irish and the English haven&rsquo;t always gotten along that well, and but around the turn of the 20<sup>th</sup> century things were really starting to come to a boil in Ireland.&nbsp; Ireland was part of the British Empire at this time, and a lot of people were pissed off and wanted to break away and form an independent Ireland.&nbsp; Countess Markievicz was one of these people, and in 1909 she founded a militant women&rsquo;s organization called the Daughters of Ireland.&nbsp; Working tirelessly, Constance started training the women how to fire a pistol, fortify a building, protest injustice perpetrated by the government, and prepare to fight for a revolution.&nbsp; The Daughters of Ireland became hardcore suffragettes, fighting for a woman&rsquo;s&rsquo; right to vote in Parliamentary elections, and in 1911 Markievicz was arrested for protesting during a visit by the British King.&nbsp; I guess the King showed up in Ireland and was greeted by a crowd of pro-British folks waving Union Jack flags, but Constance just brought a huge black flack and draped it front-and-center during his visit as a &ldquo;fuck you&rdquo; to the King.&nbsp; Some asshole loyalist tried to whack Constance with a British flag to put her in her place, but, according to the story, the wooden flagpole shattered into splinters as soon as it struck her, and she just stood there, totally unhurt, just staring the dude down with an epic mean-mugging.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/879497726394/markievicz3.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> <em>Pistol training.</em></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>After a few months in prison, the Rebel Countess was back in action, this time helping organize the Dublin Lockout, a mass protest against British persecution of the Irish working class.&nbsp; When the British tried to starve out the protesting Irish, Constance used her own money to buy supplies and personally ran a soup kitchen that provided food to starving workers and their families.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>This sort of thing went on for a while, but then the volatile situation in Ireland came to an explosion during the week of Easter 1916, when the people of Dublin rose up in an armed rebellion and declared an independent Irish Republic.&nbsp; The Irish Citizen&rsquo;s Army, including 200 of the Daughters of Ireland, flipped over cars, built makeshift barricades, fortified structures throughout the city, and rose up in armed revolt against the English.&nbsp; From one of the buildings, the Rebel Countess holed up for a week with a bolt-action Enfield and a nickel-plated six-shooter and started taking potshots on the British soldiers sent to quell the rebellion.&nbsp; When she wasn&rsquo;t sniping English officers with ruthless efficiency from behind her sandbagged perch, Major Constance Markievicz was also second in command of the Irish forces, directing troops and squads in a desperate attempt to hold Dublin from the British.&nbsp; As artillery, machine guns, and other World War I armaments rained down gunfire and explosions, Constance Markievicz and the Irish Citizen&rsquo;s Army held out for six long days, battling for their freedom even though they were massively outmatched by the might of the British Army.&nbsp; When the rebel forces were finally overrun, Constance Markievicz is said to have kissed her revolver before surrendering it to the British.&nbsp; Which is rad as fuck.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/879497726394/markievicz4.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /><br /><img src=\"../images/879497726394/markievicz4a.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>As one of the leaders of the rebellion, Constance was brought to trial and sentenced to death.&nbsp; Even as her friends and allies were being executed for their actions, this rebel Countess stood tall in court, declaring to the judge &ldquo;I did what I thought was right, and I stand by it.&rdquo;&nbsp; When the judge declared that she be sentenced to a lifetime of hard labor, she allegedly sighed and disappointedly remarked, &ldquo;I do wish your lot had the decency to shoot me.&rdquo;</p>\r\n<p>Even though she was sentenced to life in prison, Constance Markievicz only served 13 months of her sentence.&nbsp; She was released in 1917, after a General Amnesty was issued for all Irish rebels, and then just one year later Markievicz used her popularity among the Irish people to became the first woman ever elected to the British House of Commons.&nbsp; Of course, as I said, she didn&rsquo;t take office, and not just because at the time she was elected she was actually in prison for protesting British conscription laws.&nbsp; Like the rest of her Sinn Fein party brethren, Constance would never actually take her seat in the British government &ndash; because all members of Parliament are required to swear an oath of allegiance to the King of England, and she wasn&rsquo;t going to ever do that.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/879497726394/markievicz5.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Ireland fought another major war for independence in 1919, and Constance Markievicz once again was on the forefront of battle.&nbsp; She helped stitch uniforms, trained fighters, supplied food with her own money, and served as the Minister of Labor in the Irish Dail government from 1919-1921.&nbsp; After the war, however, she kind of had a falling-out with the leadership because she thought they&rsquo;d wimped out and agreed to a treaty that didn&rsquo;t grant complete independence from Britain.&nbsp; She headed to the United States to try and drum up support from Irish-Americans, and was able to raise some money and weapons for her cause.</p>\r\n<p>The Rebel Countess spent her later years fighting for women&rsquo;s suffrage, and at one point while imprisoned for civil disobedience she organized a 92-woman hunger strike that was so effective that she was released less than a month later.&nbsp; Even into her 50s she loved race cars, taught herself how to build and repair automobiles, and was still a vocal proponent of Irish independence.&nbsp; When she died of appendicitis in 1927 at the age of 59, nearly 250,000 people lined the streets of Dublin for her funeral.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/879497726394/markievicz6.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Links:</p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/easterrising/profiles/po10.shtml\">BBC</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/ireland-1845-to-1922/countess-markievicz/\">The History Learning Site</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.easter1916.ie/index.php/people/a-z/countess-constance-markievicz/\">Easter 1916</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.irish-society.org/home/hedgemaster-archives-2/people/countess-constance-markievicz\">Irish-Society.org</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.rejectedprincesses.com/princesses/constance-markievicz\">Rejected Princesses</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constance_Markievicz\">Wikipedia</a></p>','2016-04-01','879497726394','markievicz.jpg','markievicz-small.jpg','Constance Markievicz','20th-century Irish suffragette and revolutionary who fought the British with a nickel-plated six-shooter.','\"Dress suitably in short skirts and strong boots, leave your jewels in the bank and buy a revolver.\"'),('John Coffee Hays','January 28, 1817','April 21, 1883','Cedar Lick, TN, USA','19th-century American Lawman','<p>19<sup>th</sup> century badass gunslinging Texas Ranger John Coffee Hays is the ultimate rea-life asskicker whose story bizarrely ties together the more well-known tales of Sam Houston, Andrew Jackson, Chuck Norris, Clint Eastwood, Zachary Taylor, Wyatt Earp, and the dude with the shotgun who smokes all those fucking buffalo when you go hunting in <em>The Oregon Trail</em>.&nbsp; In a gunfire-filled life that makes even the most tobacco-soaked gritty dime-novel adventure story look like the Letter from the Editor in a Victoria&rsquo;s Secret catalog, this hard-ridin&rsquo; Texas Ranger busted skulls from Tennessee to California, survived hundreds of battles against ridiculous <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8AvWkrppsg\">Punisher</a>-style odds, and now goes down in history as one of the most famous and important members of the United States&rsquo; most well-known state police force. &nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Born in Cedar Lick, Tennessee in 1817, John Coffee Hays was the nephew of American badass and future president <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/jackson.html\">Andrew Jackson</a>.&nbsp; Hays&rsquo; dad was a high ranking&nbsp; American officer who had fought alongside Andy Jackson&nbsp; at the Battle of New Orleans in the War of 1812, but both Hays&rsquo; dad and mom died of yellow fever when Jack was just 15 years old&hellip; leaving Jack and his six siblings parentless.&nbsp; The kids were sent to Mississippi to live with their relatives, and Hays started working as a land surveyor&hellip; which was a hell of a lot more dangerous job in 1832 than it is these days.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/655547828233/johncoffeehays1.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Basically, back in the 1830s, there was a ton of Louisiana Purchase territory that hadn&rsquo;t been mapped, surveyed, or charted effectively yet, and land surveyors in these days basically went out into the unknown fucking wilderness with a rifle, some food, and a few nerdy math tools and tried to survive by camping out in the middle of nowhere while they took measurements and drew maps.&nbsp; Wild animals, Indian attacks, cold, starvation, and exposure to the elements were constant threats to these small surveying teams, but Hays was more than up to the task of Bear Gryllsing his way through the backwoods in pursuit of the noble cause of geography.&nbsp; Described as a quiet, well-spoken, fairly skinny dude, he really shined in situations where he got to pull his gun and start kicking ass:&nbsp; According to his buddies, he was basically a completely different person &ndash; a &ldquo;monster&rdquo; &ndash; when his life was on the line.</p>\r\n<p>Hays did the land surveying gig for a while, but when shit started going down with Goliad and the Alamo in Texas he decided he wanted to get in on the action.&nbsp; He rode for Texas in 1840, introduced himself to Sam Houston as the nephew of Andrew Jackson, and was immediately given an officer&rsquo;s position in a relatively-new organization charged with providing order on the sprawling frontier &ndash; the Texas Rangers.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/655547828233/johncoffeehays2.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>It didn&rsquo;t take long for Hays to work his way up, and before long &ldquo;Captain Jack&rdquo; was commanding a company of Rangers charged with patrolling the southwestern portion of Texas.&nbsp; Now, if you thought surveying sounded hard, imagine this &ndash; Captain Jack had forty horsemen under his command, and he was charged with almost single-handedly protecting hundreds of miles of Wild West Texas from Comanche raiding parties, Mexican Army patrols, murderous bandit gangs, cattle rustlers, horse thieves, and all other manner of ultra-violent, gun-toting marauders that wouldn&rsquo;t hesitate to start popping caps the instant they saw the five-pointed tin star that was pinned on Hays&rsquo; chest.</p>\r\n<p>Hays&rsquo; first job was to build his team, outfit them, and train them for war.&nbsp; Among the first things he did was tell his guys to dump their shitty one-shot pistols and trade them in for a relatively-new invention &ndash; a five-shot revolver known as the Colt Paterson:</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/655547828233/johncoffeehays3.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>He pulled his 40-man team from a hand-picked crew of the toughest riders and gunmen he could muster.&nbsp; Most were Texans, but he also had plenty of Apache, Comanche, Mexican, and Tejano Rangers riding alongside his crew.&nbsp; He also opened shit up and recruited civilians when he could, especially when they were folks who wanted vengeance &ndash; like, if bandits burned down your house, Hays gave you the opportunity to ride with him and hunt those fuckers down.&nbsp; He also trained his men day and night to shoot and ride, drilling them in daily exercises where they had to shoot a man-sized target at 40 yards while at a full gallop.&nbsp; If he had a few days in a town, he&rsquo;d invite nearby Indian tribes and ranchers to come have &ldquo;riding battles&rdquo; with his men, challenging them to friendly horse-riding and target-shooting competitions for the enjoyment of the townsfolk.&nbsp; Before long, every man in this guy&rsquo;s crew was a pipe-hitting hard-as-fuck gunslinger decked out in animal skins, cool mustaches, rifles, pistols, and big-ass knives.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/655547828233/johncoffeehays4a.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> <br /> <img src=\"../images/655547828233/johncoffeehays4b.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> <br /> <img src=\"../images/655547828233/johncoffeehays4c.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Hays also started adapting Native American, Mexican, and Texas settler survival tactics to give his team more range on the frontier.&nbsp; His guys traveled only with what they could fit in their saddlebags &ndash; ammo, food, water, and maybe a collapsible tent or something.&nbsp; When they were hungry, they shot animals for food.&nbsp; They rode dozens of miles daily, responding quickly to any threats they heard about and riding down gangs and raiding parties with ease.&nbsp; Most would surrender without a fight, simply on virtue of the Rangers&rsquo; reputation.&nbsp; Anyone who resisted usually didn&rsquo;t live to regret it.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>One of Hays&rsquo; Rangers most famous engagements took place on June 8, 1844, at an engagement now known as &ldquo;The Battle of Walker&rsquo;s Creek&rdquo;.&nbsp; Hays only had about fifteen men with him at the time (he often had to split up his force to cover more ground), when suddenly, out of the treeline on the far side of a creek, a similarly-sized force of Comanche rode out and let loose with a volley from their rifles.&nbsp; Hays held his fire and watched as the Comanche then quickly retreated back into the woods.&nbsp; He sized up the situation immediately, and a seasoned Indian fighting vet like Captain Jack Hays wasn&rsquo;t about to fall for this Genghis Khan fake-retreat bullshit.&nbsp; He hung back, told his men to wait, and it was only when the Comanche realized their ambush wasn&rsquo;t going to work that they sent their entire 80-man force out to face the Texans.</p>\r\n<p>So, with a creek separating 15 Texas Rangers from 80 rifle-toting Comanche braves, Captain Jack Hays did pretty much exactly what you&rsquo;d expect him to do.</p>\r\n<p>Charge.</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/655547828233/johncoffeehays5.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> <em>\"Me and Red Wing aren\'t afraid to go to hell together. <br /> Captain Jack, he\'s too mucho bravo. He\'s not afraid to go to hell all by himself.\"<br /> <br /> - The Apache warrior Flacco, Hays&rsquo; elite second-in-command</em></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>As he rode head-on towards a shocked force that outnumbered him nearly four-to-one, Hays screamed out for his men to hold their fire until they were right on top of the enemy.&nbsp; Yelling, <em>&ldquo;crowd them, powder-burn them boys!&rdquo;</em> , John Coffee Hays and the Texas Fuckin&rsquo; Rangers rode to point-blank range on the enemy and then opened up with their revolvers.&nbsp; The&nbsp; Comanche were using one-shot pistols (kind of like a pirate pistol), and in the close range engagement they couldn&rsquo;t put out nearly enough firepower to compete with the Rangers.&nbsp; Hays&rsquo; men unloaded their guns, flipped pre-loaded cylinders into the revolvers in seconds, and kept shooting, dishing out ten rounds in the time it took their enemy to fire one.&nbsp; The enemy bolted almost immediately.&nbsp; Hays didn&rsquo;t lose a man.</p>\r\n<p>One of his officers at the battle, Lieutenant Samuel Walker, was so impressed with the effectiveness of the fight that he would go on to design and co-create a six-shooter pistol known as the Walker Colt.&nbsp; It got a lot of use in the Civil War, and they&rsquo;re the guns used by Clint Eastwood in <em>The Outlaw Josey Wales</em>.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/655547828233/johncoffeehays6.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>There&rsquo;s another amazing story about Hays hunting down a group of smugglers who were running contraband into Texas from Mexico.&nbsp; I don&rsquo;t have a ton of info on this, probably because it was fucking par for the course and nothing special to write about for the 1840s-era Texas Rangers, but I guess Hays tracked these assholes down, cornered them near a ravine, and then surprised them by jumping his horses across a gorge and ambushing from a side they weren&rsquo;t expecting.&nbsp; Even though he had just 20 men with him, Hays captured 29 smugglers, killed a few more, and didn&rsquo;t lose a single Ranger.</p>\r\n<p>Like I said, just another day in the office I guess.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/655547828233/johncoffeehays7.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /><br /></p>\r\n<p>When the Mexican-American War broke out in 1846, Hays was called in to action to assist the American invasion of Mexico.&nbsp; Promoted to Colonel, Hays was given 250 cavalrymen and appointed commander of the First Regiment, Texas Mounted Riflemen.&nbsp; Serving as the cavalry wing of <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/taylor.html\">Zack Taylor</a>&rsquo;s force, Hays&rsquo; Rangers worked as scouts, recon, and anti-guerilla forces.&nbsp; Their job was to keep the supply lines and communications lines open, and this led him to multiple battles with guerilla forces all throughout Mexico.&nbsp; He performed admirably in the battle for Monterey, where his Rangers spent three days fighting through the city streets, and outside Vera Cruz he drove off a force of 200 Mexican cavalry that were threatening the American flank &ndash; without losing a man.&nbsp; There&rsquo;s a great story that Santa Anna referred to the Rangers as &ldquo;Los Diablos Tejanos,&rdquo; and that at some point after the war Hays went to a ball in Austin Texas wearing a dress uniform he&rsquo;d looted from the Mexican President&rsquo;s palace.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/655547828233/johncoffeehays8.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Even though he was a huge celebrity in Texas (they even tried to convince him to run for governor), after the war Hays decided to move out west and start a new life.&nbsp; So, sure, let&rsquo;s do the fucking Oregon Trail shit, that sounds great.&nbsp; He rode from Texas to Tucson, had to stay there six weeks because so many members of his party were sick, and then he rode from there to San Diego, on horseback, fighting off Apache raids, disease, heat, animal attacks, and other horrible stuff every step of the way.&nbsp; From San Diego, he spent two weeks sailing north to San Francisco on a steamboat that almost capsized twice due to storms.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>So, basically, after almost dying a dozen times in the process, John Coffee Hays ended up in San Francisco, California.&nbsp; Because he was by far the biggest badass in the city, Hays was elected to be the city&rsquo;s first Sherriff almost immediately.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/655547828233/johncoffeehays9.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Sherriff Hays built the first permanent jail in San Francisco, disbanded a fairly-murderous vigilante group called the &ldquo;Committee of Vigilance&rdquo;, and brought order by declaring that all alleged criminals had a right to a fair trial under the law.&nbsp;&nbsp; When he wasn&rsquo;t hanging criminals, hunting down thieves, or leading a huge group of militia to defeat the Paiute Indians in the Second Battle of Pyramid Lake, John Coffee Hays worked as the U.S. Surveyor General for California.&nbsp; In that capacity, he founded the city of Oakland, was a stockholder at the Oakland Gas Light Company, served on the Board of Regents for the California School for the Deaf and Blind, founded the Oakland Union National Bank, and was Mayor of Oakland for a while.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>When the Civil War began in 1861, Hays was offered high-ranking commands in both the Union and Confederate armies, but he declined both so that he could focus on all that other shit he had going on.&nbsp; He died peacefully in 1883, and in buried in Oakland&hellip; not that far from Wyatt Earp.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/655547828233/johncoffeehays10.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Links:</p>\r\n<p><a href=\"https://www.policeone.com/police-heroes/articles/6289854-Police-History-The-story-of-John-Coffee-Hays-Texas-Ranger/\">The Story of John Coffee Hays</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.sfsdhistory.com/eras/john-coffee-hays-san-franciscos-first-elected-sheriff\">San Francisco\'s First Elected Sherriff</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.officer.com/article/10248473/john-coffee-hays-texas-ranger\">Officer.com</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.texasranger.org/halloffame/Hays_John.htm\">Texas Ranger Hall of Fame</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Coffee_Hays\">Wikipedia</a></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Books:</p>\r\n<p>Cox, Mike.&nbsp; <em>Texas Rangers</em>.&nbsp; New York, NY: Forge, 2008.</p>\r\n<p>Metz, Leon Claire.&nbsp; <em>The Encyclopedia of Lawmen, Outlaws and Gunfighters</em>.&nbsp; New York, NY: Facts on File, 2003.</p>\r\n<p>Moore, Stephen L.&nbsp; <em>Rangers, Riflemen and Indian Wars in Texas</em>.&nbsp; Denton, TX: University of North Texas Print, 2010.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>','2016-04-22','655547828233','johncoffeehays.jpg','johncoffeehays-small.jpg','John Coffee Hays','One of the toughest and most celebrated Texas Rangers on the Wild West frontier.','“The little Tennessean would seem to be another  man when the cry “Indians” was raised.  He would mount a horse and assume the appearance of a different being.  With him it was charge, war to the knife, and the Indians was whipped every time they attacked his party.” '),('Sern Sern Sin','April 17, 1734','April 7, 1782','Ayutthaya, Thailand','18th-century Thai King','<p>So I got a random email out of the blue yesterday from my book agent, calmly informing me that a book publisher in Thailand wants to buy the rights to print a Thai-language translation of the first <em><a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0061749443?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=badofthewee-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=0061749443\">BADASS</a></em> book.&nbsp; And, while I&rsquo;m not quite sure how well phrases like &ldquo;crotchknocking douchebags&rdquo;, &ldquo;raging killboners&rdquo; or &ldquo;hardcore knuckle sandwich to the grill&rdquo; are going to translate into the intricacies of the Thai language, this honestly seems like the ultimate match made in Badass Hell.&nbsp; On the one hand, <em>of course </em>this book needs to be lining the shelves of a city called Bangkok, but also because ball-crushing badassitude is such an integrally-woven thing into Thai culture that I&rsquo;m pretty sure kids there are born with the innate knowledge of how to knee strike a dude in the gonads with enough PSI to pop a new set of Firestones.&nbsp; It&rsquo;s like part of the second-grade curriculum there to learn how to shatter a dude&rsquo;s nose with your elbow, and Muay Thai kickboxing is such a fundamental aspect of the culture that it wouldn&rsquo;t take much to convince me that <em>Ong Bak</em> was just a documentary about the 2002 Thailand Parliamentary elections.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>So!&nbsp; With that in mind, this week I am going to pay homage to the good people of Thailand and prep them for the airstrike of Ultimate Badassitude&trade; headed their way by writing my article about one of the most awesome warlord heroes from Thai history &ndash; the King Taksin the Great, a common-born street trader who joined the military, rose through the ranks from Private to Commander of the Imperial Guard, led a ferocious guerilla war against a vastly-superior enemy force , threw out an invading army, crowned himself king, conquered new lands, and then went so completely nuts and tyrannical that his own advisors declared him unfit to rule on grounds of insanity and sentenced him to die by being sewn up into a velvet bag and beaten to death with sticks&hellip; which didn&rsquo;t work because he sewed a different person in the bag instead, escaped the capital, and lived as a badass hermit on a mountain until he was 80 years old.&nbsp; Nowadays his face appears on Thai money and giant badass equestrian statues of his steely visage loom over traffic circles throughout the greater Bangkok metropolitan area.</p>\r\n<p>And if any part of that story has already blown your fucking mind, it&rsquo;s only because you weren&rsquo;t paying attention to my first paragraph.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/26560026858/taksin1.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The story of Taksin the Great dates back to the 1760s, at a time when Thailand was known as Siam, Myanmar was known as Burma, and automobiles were known as horses.&nbsp; The details of Taksin&rsquo;s early life are all over the map, mostly because this kid was a commoner so it didn&rsquo;t really make sense for 18<sup>th</sup>-century Thai historians to spend a lot of time documenting his grade school education, but what we do know for sure is that he was born on April 17, 1734, in the Thai capital of Ayutthaya.&nbsp; His father was a Chinese immigrant and his mother was a Thai woman, but it would seem that at some point he was adopted by a powerful lord in the palace.&nbsp; Taksin worked as a trader for a while, studied with Buddhist monks for three years, possibly studied both Thai boxing and Kung Fu (depending on who you ask), and could speak fluent Chinese, Thai, and Hindi, and seems to have had a working knowledge of a few other local dialects as well.&nbsp; He was confident, a good leader, and fearless, and these traits helped him get appointed better and better positions in the Thai government and military so that by the time he was in his 20s, he was already commander of the Imperial Guard and the military Governor of Tak Province.</p>\r\n<p>Well I&rsquo;m not sure how well you remember my article on <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/naresuan.html\">King Naresuan</a>, but one thing you need to know about medieval Thailand is that they really really fucking didn&rsquo;t get along with the neighboring Kingdom of Burma.&nbsp; The two rivals constantly struggled against each other for power, and in the 1760s the pendulum of power had firmly swung in the direction of Burma.&nbsp; Thailand was at the end of a 400-year Kingdom that had seen 33 kings from 5 dynasties, but as these things go the King at this point was a totally useless a-hole who spent all his time banging hookers and shotgunning beer cans in his back yard when he should have been building forts or not bankrupting the economy.&nbsp; Known as &ldquo;The King with Skin Disease,&rdquo; this guy was so worthless that Burma knew they had a perfect opportunity to charge across the border and sword-hump their hated enemies into submission.&nbsp; So in 1764 the forces of Burma assembled for war, invaded Thailand, and set their sights on demolishing the Thai capital.<br /> One of the only things standing in their way was Taksin of the Imperial Guard.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/26560026858/taksin2.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Taksin fought heroically, even as the Burmese surrounded Ayutthaya and laid siege to the capital.&nbsp; In sortie after sortie, Taksin personally led attacks, cutting and slicing through his foes with a sword in each hand, but in the end it just wouldn&rsquo;t be enough.&nbsp; After three years of war and an extended siege Burmese troops tunneled beneath the walls of the capital and began flooding into the streets of the capital.&nbsp; The battle was lost.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>With fires and destruction all around him, Taksin fled the carnage with just a few of his trusted men and headed out into the countryside to try and organize a resistance.&nbsp; The Burmese rampaged through the Thai capital, burning, looting, and plundering, bringing a fiery end to a Siamese Kingdom that had lasted since 1350.&nbsp; Most of the ruling class of Thailand was executed, thousands of people were taken captive, and the city&rsquo;s valuables were hauled back to the Burmese capital.</p>\r\n<p>Bloodied, but far from finished, Taksin swore vengeance.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/26560026858/taksin3.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Before I go any further, there is a really awesome (but somewhat-apocryphal) story that comes out of the Sack of Ayutthaya &ndash; the tale of Nai Khanomtom, the father of Muay Thai.&nbsp; Nai was one of the Thai soldiers taken prisoner during the battle, and he was brought back to Burma with the other POWs.&nbsp; Well, according to the story, the Burmese King had heard a lot of good shit about Thai kickboxing so he decided to set up a tournament where the most badass Burmese martial artists would go <em>Street Fighter II</em> against &nbsp;the best fighters the Thai had to offer.&nbsp; Nai Khanomtom stepped forward as the champion of the Thai, and was matched up with the reigning Burmese boxing champion.&nbsp; Nai first performed the traditional Thai pre-fight dance, then proceeded to beat the fuck out of the Burmese dude.&nbsp; Shocked, the Burmese ref (who had about all the integrity of a WWE referee) disqualified the fight, claiming that Nai&rsquo;s dance had been some Black Magic shit and it skewed the results of the duel.</p>\r\n<p>Thoroughly impressed, the Burmese King apparently offered Nai a deal &ndash; if you can beat eight more of my men, one after the other, I&rsquo;ll give you your freedom.&nbsp; Nai agreed, then proceeded to Black Ninjas the Burmese fighters, kicking their balls through their skulls one after the other until he was surrounded by a giant pile of sweaty shirtless unconscious dudes.&nbsp; The Burmese King held up his portion of the deal, letting Nai go free and offering him a gift &ndash; either a big stack of cash or two hot Burmese wives.&nbsp; Nai chose the wives, saying that it was a lot easier to make money than it was to meet wives.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>To this day, the people of Thailand celebrate &ldquo;Boxer&rsquo;s Day&rdquo; every year on March 17<sup>th</sup> to commemorate Nai Khanomtom&rsquo;s victory over the nine Burmese fighters.</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/26560026858/taksin4.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> &ldquo;<em>Every part of the Siamese is blessed with venom. <br /> Even with his bare hands, he can fell nine or ten opponents. <br /> But his King was incompetent and lost the country to the enemy. If he had been any good, <br /> there was no way the City of Ayutthaya would ever have fallen</em>&ldquo;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>While all that face-kicking was going down, Taksin was moving his troops sixty miles southeast, setting up in the town of Thonburi near Bangkok.&nbsp; He put out a call to the countryside to take back the land from the Burmese, and immediately went to work training his forces for battle.&nbsp; He went to the Chinese, asking them for help, and because Taksin was half-Chinese himself he was able to come back with gunpowder, cannons, money and rifles.&nbsp; He built a fleet, assembled nearly 5,000 men, and then did a badass fucking training montage where they all camped out in a ruined Buddhist temple and he taught them all how to backflip off an Elephant and knee-strike a dude in the eye so hard that his hair catches on fire.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>When his forces returned to Ayutthaya to retake it from the Burmese, the chronicles report that every man in the Thai army was equipped in an unusual way&hellip; instead of a spear and shield they were all dual-wielding swords, knives, hatchets or machetes.</p>\r\n<p>I don&rsquo;t know about you, but that would kind of freak me the fuck out if I saw it.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/26560026858/taksin5a.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /><br /><img src=\"../images/26560026858/taksin5.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Now, it&rsquo;s worth mentioning that Burma pulled a lot of their forces back because they were worried about a war with China, and also because they weren&rsquo;t expecting a fucking 5,000-man strong army of dual-wielding Thai warriors to counter-attack them just six months after sacking Ayutthaya, but in the end the result is the same &ndash; riding in on horseback at the head of his forces, Taksin broke through the gates of the capital and drove the Burmese from the city.&nbsp; Amid the cheers of his people, Taksin rode to the palace, and on December 28, 1768, he declared himself King of Siam.</p>\r\n<p>For the next fifteen years, King Taksin brought about an amazing and improbably new golden age in Thailand.&nbsp; He cracked down on crime, restored order to a kingdom shattered by war, united warring factions within Thailand, and used the Royal Treasury to buy food and medical supplies for his people.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; He expanded his realm, built forts along the border to Burma to prevent another attack, opened trade with China, and even led a couple expeditions that captured lands in Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam (he claimed these had been &ldquo;traditional Thai dominions,&rdquo; but that was bullshit)</p>\r\n<p>So, to recap &ndash; peasant boy son of an immigrant becomes Imperial Guard, defends the capital from a siege, organizes a Kung Fu machete army, retakes the capital just six months later, makes himself King, marries a Laotian princess, and then somehow becomes an awesome, powerful, benevolent ruler who improves the lives of his population.&nbsp; Oh, and he does all of this before he&rsquo;s 40 years old.&nbsp; It&rsquo;s a hell of a thing, but the story only gets weirder from here.</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/26560026858/taksin6.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> <em>Ruined temple in Ayutthaya</em></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Towards the end of this otherwise-normal, Taksin eventually kind of started going completely off the rails psycho.&nbsp; He got more and more into religion, and then eventually decided, fuck it, he was a living Bodhisattva and all the Buddhist monks in Thailand should worship him because he&rsquo;s enlightened and has mystical sacred powers that everyone should bow to.&nbsp; He told everyone his blood was white instead of red, that he could control weather, and that he talked to the Buddha directly like any time he wanted.&nbsp; He started demanding public homage from Buddhist monks and temples, and then had his guards beat up, flog, deport, or imprison anyone who told him that this was an insane thing to ask for.&nbsp; Eventually, amid an increasingly-more-tyrannical and torture-filled reign, King Taksin&rsquo;s advisors organized a coup and officially had the King declared insane, sentenced to death, and succeeded by his son Rama (who actually ended up being a really good king and continued a dynastic line that would last generations).</p>\r\n<p>Now, according to Thai law, it was considered sacrilegious to allow Royal Blood to touch the ground, so the More Humane Execution Method was to tie the King up in a fucking velvet bag <em>Guardians of the Galaxy</em> style and then a bunch of guys would just beat the shit out of the bag with wooden quarterstaffs until the bag stopped thrashing around.&nbsp; So, this is what happened to King Taksin the Great&hellip;. EXCEPT there&rsquo;s a good chance the maniac King actually had someone else stuffed in the bag instead and that he actually escaped the city, climbed to the top of one of the Himalayas, and lived in a cave until he was 80 years old.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>I&rsquo;m listing his Date of Death as April 7, 1782, which is the official story, but if I had to make a wager on it, I&rsquo;d guess he probably lived a lot longer than that.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/26560026858/taksin7.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Links:</p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.britannica.com/biography/Taksin\">Encyclopedia Britannica</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.tigermuaythai.com/phuket-thailand/about-muay-thai/legends-superstition-magic\">Legends of Muay Thai</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.officialkaratemag.com/nai-khanom-tom-father-of-muay-thai/\">Father of Muay Thai</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taksin\">Wikipedia</a></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Sources:</p>\r\n<p>Lee, Khoon Choy.&nbsp; <em>Golden Dragon and Purple Phoenix</em>.&nbsp; London: World Scientific, 2013.</p>\r\n<p>Mishra, Patit Paban.&nbsp; <em>The History of Thailand</em>.&nbsp; Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood, 2010.</p>\r\n<p>Ngaosyvathn, Mayoury and Pheuiphanh Ngaosyvathn.&nbsp; <em>Paths to Conflagration</em>.&nbsp; Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998.</p>\r\n<p>Ooi, Keat Gin.&nbsp; <em>Southeast Asia: A Historical Encyclopedia from Angkor Wat to Timor</em>.&nbsp; Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2004.</p>','2016-04-29','26560026858','taksin.jpg','taksin-small.jpg','Taksin the Great','Peasant soldier becomes King and Liberator of Thailand by training an army of dual-wielding Muay Thai guerilla fighters and unleashing them on an invading enemy.','I swear to devote my heart and soul to liberate our beloved Kingdom.'),('Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna','February 21, 1794','June 21, 1876','Jalapa, Mexico','19th-century Mexican Soldier','<p>Most red-blooded Americans probably only think of Generalissimo Antonio de Padua Mar&iacute;a Severino L&oacute;pez de Santa Anna y P&eacute;rez de Lebr&oacute;n as being the mustache-twirling bad guy in all the Alamo movies, but the real-life Santa Anna is probably one of the weirdest and most fascinating men who ever lived.&nbsp; A brutal tyrant, beloved war hero, and a <em>Presidente-por-Vida</em> who was far more interested in betting on cockfights and banging tavern girls than he was in managing the day-to-day operations of his government, the &ldquo;Napoleon of the West&rdquo; is a guy who spent most of his life rail-sliding a roller coaster track of up-and-down military and political success.&nbsp; He fought more battles than Napoleon and George Washington combined, yet he lost pretty much all of them.&nbsp; He gained independence from Spain and acquired a half-million miles of territory for the country of Mexico, then lost twice that in failed wars and bad political decisions.&nbsp; He was a hero of the Mexican people, elected to the Presidency no fewer than eleven different times, and yet he was also a horribly ruthless dictator who was stripped of power and exiled from his homeland on at least a half-dozen occasions.&nbsp; He rocked a prosthetic leg, was almost single-handedly responsible for bringing bubble gum to the United States, has a <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atumHTucDLU\">sea shanty</a> named after him, once <em>led a military coup against himself</em>, and kind of looks like the bad guy from No Country for Old Men.&nbsp; Despite all this, when you really get down to it, Santa Anna&rsquo;s history IS the history of Mexico in the 19<sup>th</sup> century.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>That alone should probably qualify him as a badass, but just wait until you get a load of this shit.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/1084331811/santaanna1.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna was born outside Vera Cruz on February 21, 1794, at a time when Spain was still ruling Mexico as a colony.&nbsp; Even though his middle-class parents wanted him to be a merchant, Santa Anna defied their wishes and joined the army at the age of 16.&nbsp; Fighting in the Veracruz Infantry Regiment, Santa Anna battled a brutal war against Native American uprisings and the guerilla beginnings of what would become the Mexican Revolution.&nbsp; Riding the countryside under the famously-brutal Spanish officer Joaqu&iacute;n de Arredondo, Santa Anna quickly proved himself as a hardcore pipe-hittin&rsquo; badass.&nbsp; He took an arrow to the arm in 1811, and was cited for bravery at the Battle of Medina in 1813, when Colonel Santa Anna rode down a force of Texas and Mexican rebels, killing 1300 of the enemy while only losing 55 of his own men.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Santa Anna fought hard and brutal battles alongside the Royalist Spanish government in the early days of the Mexican War of Independence, but as the war progressed Santa Anna changed his mind and threw his military support behind a rebel named Agust&iacute;n de Iturbide.&nbsp; Winning many battles against the Spanish Royalists, Santa Anna helped win Mexican Independence and drive the Spanish out of the country.&nbsp; Then, when Iturbide turned out to be a douchebag, Santa Anna changed sides again, joined a rebel group, and overthrew Iturbide in 1823. &nbsp;Then in 1828 he fought a war that overthrew that guy as well.</p>\r\n<p>It didn&rsquo;t take Santa Anna long to earn a reputation for being a hardcore warrior you didn&rsquo;t want to fuck with, but also who you really couldn&rsquo;t trust not to shank you in the ass the moment the war started turning bad against you.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/1084331811/santaanna2.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>In 1829 the Spanish King returned to Mexico with the intention of beating the rebel country back into submission.&nbsp; As the most experienced and most successful military commander in the country, Santa Anna was called forth to lead the Mexicans in the resistance.&nbsp; At the Battle of Tampico in 1829, he bravely led a rag-tag group of Mexican guerillas in a defensive action that fought back an entire Spanish fleet in a single day.&nbsp; The &ldquo;Hero of Tampico&rdquo; earned so much fame and glory from this victory that in 1833 he was overwhelmingly elected President of Mexico.</p>\r\n<p>Santa Anna was thrilled to have the power and honor of being president, but he couldn&rsquo;t have given half a shit about the boring details of actually running a country.&nbsp; He basically handed over the reins of his government to his Vice President almost immediately, and spent the next two years gambling on cockfights and fathering a bunch of illegitimate children.&nbsp; When the VP pissed everyone in Mexico off with his stupid political decisions, Santa Anna brought an army to Mexico City and <em>fucking overthrew his own vice president with a military coup against his own government</em>.&nbsp; How fucking awesome is that?</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/1084331811/santaanna3.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /><em><br />\"Now I\'M in charge around here...<br />uh.. again.\"</em></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Ok, well in 1836 the people of Texas got sick of this political instability bullshit and launched a revolution to break away from Mexico and become the independent Republic of Texas.&nbsp; This really really fucking pissed Santa Anna off.&nbsp; He declared all Texas rebels who dared stand against him would be treated as pirates and murderers, and not be given the honor of being treated as soldiers.&nbsp; Sure, this is super not cool, but you have to kind of give this guy a head nod for the no-fucking-holds-barred scorched-earth Genghis Kahn shit this motherfucker put into the war effort.&nbsp; He marched his men across Texas leaving a smoking crater of burned crops, dead livestock, and brutally-executed prisoners in his path.&nbsp; After straight-up murdering POWs in the Goliad Massacre, Santa Anna continued on and wiped out Texas forces at The Alamo, killing &nbsp;Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie, <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/travis.html\">William Travis</a>, and every other defender to the last man in the process.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>In the end, however, Santa Anna&rsquo;s brutality only made the people of Texas really fucking pissed off, and at the Battle of San Jacinto they beat the shit out of Santa Anna so fucking hard that &ldquo;Remember the Alamo&rdquo; and &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t Mess with Texas&rdquo; became part of the American vernacular.&nbsp; Texas commander Sam Houston curbstomped Santa Anna&rsquo;s forces, destroying the entire Mexican Army at the cost of just 11 Texan lives.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>But Santa Anna was awesomely fucking arrogant even to the last.&nbsp; When brought before Sam Houston as a prisoner of war, Santa Anna stood tall, looked his enemy in the eye, and said (in perfect English) \"Sir, yours is no common destiny; you have captured the Napoleon of the west.\"</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/1084331811/santaanna4.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Since Santa Anna was the current President of Mexico, he couldn&rsquo;t really be executed for his crimes, and instead Sam Houston sent Santa Anna to Washington DC to negotiate a peace treaty.&nbsp; Santa Anna went to the U.S. capital, hung out with <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/jackson.html\">Andy Jackson</a>, and straight-up made a peace treaty with Texas and the United States without even so much as consulting the Mexican Congress.&nbsp; After signing the deal, Santa Anna went home to find that while he was fucking around&nbsp; the States he&rsquo;d been deposed and exiled from Mexico.</p>\r\n<p>Of course, Congress called him back a few months later to put down a rebellion in the state of Zacetetas.&nbsp; Santa Anna showed up, marched his army to the walls of the capital, told the people of the town he would gracefully negotiate with them, and then when they came out to talk he opened fire, stormed the gates, and sacked the city Attila the Hun style.&nbsp; This action got him exiled once again.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/1084331811/santaanna5.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Santa Anna was called out of retirement just one year later, when the French Army launched an attack on the city of Vera Cruz in 1838.&nbsp; Racing to the battle, Santa Anna led his men in a desperate defense of the city against a French invasion fleet, commanding his fort&rsquo;s defenses and leading men in street-to-street fighting all throughout the city.&nbsp; Santa Anna was so close to the front that his horse was killed with a bullet, so he changed horses, rode back, and then took a blast of cannon grapeshot that blew off the lower part of his leg and killed his horse again.&nbsp; He&rsquo;d wear a prosthetic leg for the rest of his life, and in 1841 he would give his blown-off leg a full military parade through the streets of Mexico City before setting it out on public display for all to see.</p>\r\n<p>Santa Anna lost the battle and the city of Vera Cruz, but he had fought bravely, and with very little in terms of trained forces at his disposal.&nbsp; The French invasion force signed a peace treaty with Mexico immediately following the fight, and his success and personal heroism in the battle got Santa Anna appointed Dictator of Mexico almost immediately after.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/1084331811/santaanna6.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Well, as we&rsquo;ve seen, this guy was super charismatic, well-spoken, and probably a shitload of fun to hang out with, but as we&rsquo;ve already seen he wasn&rsquo;t a great head-of-state.&nbsp; He was voted out of office in July of 1839, re-elected in 1841, and then exiled again in 1845.</p>\r\n<p>Santa Anna was chilling in Cuba when 1848 when he heard the news that War was brewing between Mexico and the United States.&nbsp; The exiled General immediately headed to Washington DC and offered his services to American President James K. Polk, asking Polk for the opportunity to travel to Mexico City and help broker peace between Mexico and the U.S.&nbsp;&nbsp; Polk agreed, sent Santa Anna to Mexico, and the moment he got there he immediately was given full command of the Mexican Army and prepared for a full-scale war with the United States.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>As you&rsquo;d expect, he got his ass whomped.&nbsp; Again.&nbsp; Like, he was beat so hard that his prosthetic leg was captured by the 4<sup>th</sup> Illinois Infantry and brought back to the States.&nbsp; It&rsquo;s still on display at the Illinois State Military Museum in Springfield.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/1084331811/santaanna7a.png\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>It shouldn&rsquo;t surprise you at this point to hear that SANTA ANNA STILL WASN&rsquo;T DONE BEING PRESIDENT OF MEXICO.&nbsp; He was exiled to Jamaica, sure, but then they of course brought him back to be President of Mexico for the <em>motherfucking eleventh time</em>.&nbsp; This reign lasted until 1855, when Santa Anna sold New Mexico and Arizona to the United States to pay off some of his debts.&nbsp; This got him exiled for the final time, although he did doggedly spend the rest of his life trying to get back and rule for a twelfth time.&nbsp; One particularly-hilarious instance of this came when the French invaded and conquered Mexico in 1863 (the <a href=\"/zaragoza.html\">Cinco de Mayo</a> battle happened during this time period).&nbsp; With the Mexican people calling out for aid, Santa Anna nobly approached the United States and offered his services in leading a force to re-take Mexico and throw out the French invaders.&nbsp; He conveniently failed to mention to Abraham Lincoln that Santa Anna had also sent a secret letter to the French offering his services to help keep the Mexicans subjugated under French rule.</p>\r\n<p>As a bizarre footnote of history, while Santa Anna was hanging out on Staten Island in 1863 he ran into an inventor named Thomas Adams.&nbsp; Adams was all like, &ldquo;yo dude what&rsquo;s that stuff you&rsquo;re chewing on?&rdquo; and Santa Anna told him it was a substance called <em>chicle </em>that was derived from the Mexican sapodilla tree.&nbsp; Adams bought some of the <em>chicle </em>off of Santa Anna, added flavored sweetener to it, called it Chiclets, and made a shitload of money.&nbsp; He later teamed up with William Wrigley Jr. to create the largest chewing gum company in the world.&nbsp; Come to think of it, this might be Santa Anna&rsquo;s most successful achievement.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/1084331811/santaanna8.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Despite ruling the country with an iron fist, selling off huge chunks of the reason, and losing several wars, Santa Anna was finally pardoned and allowed to return to Mexico in 1874.&nbsp; An old man, half-blind from cataracts, Santa Anna settled down in Mexico City and died in the country he loved in 1876.&nbsp; He given a full military burial with honors, and was buried in Mexico City in a glass coffin &ndash; an incredibly high honor.</p>\r\n<p>Ok, so, sure, Santa Anna was a brutal guy who double-crossed his friends, took no prisoners, and pretty much failed at everything he tried to do.&nbsp; But, in my long history of writing this website I&rsquo;ve always defined badassitude not by the nobility of a man&rsquo;s cause, nor by his success in achieving his goals, but rather by the <em>sheer fucking determination </em>he displays to achieve it.&nbsp; And, when you measure things like that, it&rsquo;s hard to not consider Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna to be deserving of the adjective.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/1084331811/santaanna9.gif\" alt=\"\" /><br /><br /> &ldquo;However he may have been condemned by parties, <br /> his career formed a brilliant and important portion of the History of Mexico, <br /> and future historians will differ in their judgment of his merits. <br /> General Santa Anna outlived his usefulness and ambition, <br /> and died at the ripe age of eighty-four. Peace to his ashes\"</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">--Obituary Mexico City 1876</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Links:</p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/people/s_z/santaanna.htm\">PBS</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.tamu.edu/faculty/ccbn/dewitt/santaanna.htm\">Texas A&amp;M</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.britannica.com/biography/Antonio-Lopez-de-Santa-Anna\">Britannica</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://latinamericanhistory.about.com/od/thehistoryofmexico/p/Biography-Of-Antonio-Lopez-De-Santa-Anna.htm\">About.com</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.history.com/news/history-lists/6-things-you-may-not-know-about-santa-anna\">History.com</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_L%C3%B3pez_de_Santa_Anna\">Wikipedia</a></p>','2016-05-06','1084331811','santaanna.png','santaanna-small.png','Santa Anna','Elected President of Mexico eleven times (and deposed twelve times), the villain of the Alamo rocked a prosthetic leg, brought bubble gum to the United States, has a sea shanty named after him, once led a military coup against himself.','\"A hundred years to come my people will not be fit for liberty… a despotism is the proper government for them, but there is no reason why it should not be a wise and virtuous one.\"'),('Edward I Plantagenet','June 17, 1239','July 7, 1307','London, England, UK','Medieval English King','<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/fe6DUMOc-Jk\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"425\" height=\"350\"></iframe></p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>This weeks\' article is about Edward I Longshanks, the Hammer of the Scots, and the man who kicked the crap out of the Medieval Welsh and incorporated their longbowmen into his army.&nbsp; He was a tough-as-nails rebel-massacring knight, a Crusader (who once survived being shanked in the back with a poisoned dagger), and the guy who basically started Parliament the way we know it today.&nbsp; I wanted to do something a little different this week though, so I did the article as a video that is posted above.&nbsp; I hope you like it.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Links:</p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.historynet.com/king-edward-i-englands-warrior-king.htm\">HistoryNet.com</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.britannia.com/history/monarchs/mon30.html\">Britannia.com</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.britroyals.com/kings.asp?id=edward1\">BritRoyals.com</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_I_of_England\">Wikipedia</a></p>','2016-05-16','732736825156','longshanks.jpg','longshanks-small.jpg','Edward Longshanks','The Hammer of the Scots.',''),('Charles','April 2, 742','January 28, 814','Aachen, Germany','Medieval Frankish King','<p>(<em>Hey guys, it was nice to take a mini summer vacation and have a couple weeks off for the first time in, oh, twelve years, but now I&rsquo;m back in action and ready to kick ass.&nbsp; I got some really good feedback on the YouTube video, and the consensus is that it needs to be shorter, and a little tighter.&nbsp; The good news with that is that now I&rsquo;m just going to use the BotW text as the script for the story, which means I can post these article as YouTube videos as well as text articles, so feel free to check out whichever one you like because from here on out.&nbsp; The only real change is going to be that these will come Monday instead of Friday because I need the weekend to produce these.&nbsp; Also, I&rsquo;ve opened up </em><a href=\"https://www.patreon.com/badassoftheweek\"><em>a Patreon page here</em></a><em> if you are interested.&nbsp; Google Ad revenue isn&rsquo;t nearly what it used to be anymore, so backing me on there will be a huge help, and I&rsquo;m also offering some cool stuff that I hope you&rsquo;ll like.&nbsp; I&rsquo;ve got a couple backers on there right now even though I never really advertised it, so thanks to Steve, Shelby, Lucius, Travis, and Christopher.&nbsp; Ok!&nbsp; That&rsquo;s enough of that bullshit.&nbsp; Here&rsquo;s the video.&nbsp; The article is below.)</em></p>\r\n<p><em>&nbsp;</em></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><iframe src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/S6ZqyNtdai0\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"425\" height=\"350\"></iframe></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Holy Roman Emperor Charles the Great, King of the Franks, Defender of the Faith, and Slaughterer of the Saxons is kind of like what you would get it you crossed King Arthur with the God-Emperor of Mankind of <em>Warhammer 40k</em> mythos, slapped him into a suit of badass 9<sup>th</sup> century Teutonic heavy armor and put him at the head of an endless sea of screaming axe-wielding German cavalry stampeding their way through the lawless uncivilized wilderness of Dark Ages Europe.&nbsp; In nearly four decades of rampant badassitude and unrelenting nut-punches of Christian justice, this human buzz saw of Teutonic vengeance ruefully obliterated the ballsacks of Vikings, Moors, Huns, most of Italy, parts of Eastern Europe, and enough rebellious nobles that he could have wallpapered his castle with the flayed foreskins of anyone stupid enough to fuck with him.&nbsp; He saved the lives of two different Popes on two separate occasions, was the first dude to call his knights <em>paladins </em>(thus inspiring generations of self-righteous dickhead D&amp;D characters), he was one of the only men to ever unite Western Europe under one rule, and he was so over-the-top hardcore that at the age of 80 years old Christopher Lee did not one but two heavy metal albums based on his life&hellip; which should tell you something because Christopher Lee is fucking awesome, and everything he did was epic with the sole exception of that one shitty Police Academy movie where they go to the Soviet Union.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Hell, even despite his imposing physical presence and crushing battlefield genius, nearly 1200 years after his death Charlemagne&rsquo;s legendary wisdom was still helping Indiana Jones&rsquo; dad bring down a Focke Wulf with a fucking umbrella.&nbsp; Also, I am not sure how to even annotate this but this Franco-German badass was so fucking important to European and world history that nowadays we don&rsquo;t even just call him Charles the Great, we call him a weird bastardization of his cool-sounding Latin nickname <em>Carolus Magnus</em>.&nbsp; I can&rsquo;t think of any other non-Roman person we do that with, and I can only assume we do this because Latin sounds really awesome and speaking it always makes you sound like you&rsquo;re either threatening someone or casting a wizard spell.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/285335829594/charlemagne1.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Charles was born in 742, the eldest son of Pippin the Short and a woman named Bertha Greatfoot, which was probably a pretty awesome looking family portrait.&nbsp; Pippin the Short was one in a long line of angry little Medieval dudes named Pippin, and he held a position in the Frankish Kingdom known as Mayor of the Palace.&nbsp; Pippin&rsquo;s dad was Charles Martel, &ldquo;the Hammer of Christendom&rdquo;, a dude you&rsquo;re probably familiar with if you read the first <em>Badass </em>book.&nbsp; Basically, the short version of the story is that the Kings of Frankland were all a bunch of worthless slackers who sat around getting drunk on gilded wine all day, so it usually came down to the lead governmental advisor, the Mayor of the Palace, to actually, you know, run the fucking country.&nbsp; Pippin the Short accomplished this mostly by fighting a ton of wars, and as the heir to the title, Charles was traveling with the Frankish army by the time he was six years old.&nbsp; Growing up fighting wars against the Lombards, Neustrians, Saxons, and other enemies, Charlemagne grew tall and ripped, drilled with the soldiers on the practice fields, camped outdoors, marched day and night on campaign, and dedicated his life to studying swordfighting, archery, horsemanship, and military tactics.&nbsp; It&rsquo;s said that even when this dude was in his 70s he would still always wear a gold-hilted sword at his hip every time he went anywhere.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/285335829594/charlemagne2a.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Ok, so after saving the Pope from a Northern Italian tribe called the Lombards in 751, Pippin the Short got permission from the Church to tell the lame-ass Frankish Kings to fuck off.&nbsp; Pippin was crowned King of the Franks, and when he died in 768, he followed the traditions of his people and split up the realm between Charles and Charles&rsquo; younger brother Carloman.&nbsp; Together, the two men ruled as co-Kings of the Franks, ruling an area that comprised most of present-day France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Holland, and Western Germany.&nbsp; This area is called Frankland, or sometimes the Frankreich, which is obviously named in honor of that time Buffalo Bills backup Quarterback Frank Reich came back from 32 points down to defeat the Houston Oilers in a 1993 AFC Playoff Game.</p>\r\n<p>Ok, well obviously dividing your kingdom between your two sons is a brain-meltingly stupid idea that has never once worked in the entire course of human history, and the bros immediately began plotting to kill each other.&nbsp; Carloman supported a rebellion in Charles&rsquo; lands, so Charles had that guy arrested as an enemy of the faith and shipped off to the Pope for punishment (the Pope had him beaten to death with rocks).&nbsp; Then Charles married the Lombard princess, forged an alliance with his one-time enemies, and prepared for war.&nbsp; Carloman had the good sense to die of illness before Charles got his hands on him, and Charles immediately was like &ldquo;fuck your heirs&rdquo; and assumed command of all of the Franks.&nbsp; Oh, then a couple years later the Pope asked Charles to help defend Rome against the Lombards, so Charlemagne crossed the Alps in the middle of winter, besieged the Lombard castle, and took the Iron Crown of the Lombards from his own father-in-law&rsquo;s head.&nbsp; But don&rsquo;t worry, Charlemagne didn&rsquo;t really believe in executing his Christian prisoners, so instead of whacking his dad-in-law he just forced that guy to become a monk instead.&nbsp; Which is probably way more boring.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/285335829594/charlemagne3.gif\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Charlemagne&rsquo;s biggest, bloodiest, and most horrifically-ultra-violent conflicts were against a Germanic tribe called the Saxons.&nbsp; Now, here&rsquo;s the best way to think about the Frankish-Saxon Wars &ndash; the Franks are the big, armored, sword-wielding Teutonic knight-looking German warriors you picture when you think about the Holy Roman Empire or maybe like the Siegfried legend or something.&nbsp; The Saxons are the insane wild-eyed long-haired Techno Viking Germans you picture when you think about those dudes who hacked up the Romans in the Teutoberg Forest.&nbsp; The Saxons resented Frankish incursion to their lands, so they raided, pillaged, plundered, looted, burned down churches, killed priests, and sacrificed prisoners on altars to Odin and Thor and other cool blood-soaked Viking gods.&nbsp; Charlemagne thought these dudes were a bunch of devil-worshipping witches spawned from the Eye of Terror and tainting the land with their corruption, and the end result was a series of 18 military campaigns over the course of 30 years that resulted in a lot of people having parts of them lopped off by various edged weaponry.&nbsp; The Saxons roasted their prisoners in their armor.&nbsp; The Franks beheaded any of their prisoners who refused to be baptised Catholic.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Using sheer determination and military genius that would rival Caesar versus the Gauls, Charlemagne totally curbstomped his way through the Saxons, smashing them utterly.&nbsp; He chopped down the Irminsul, a holy site of Paganism that was supposed to be the base of the World Tree, smashed their shrines, killed anyone who didn&rsquo;t convert, sent their leadership off to become monks, and then had his historians write stories about how the Archangel Michael himself came down to aid the cause of the Franks against their enemies.&nbsp; When he was done with that, he crossed the Pyrenees to fight the Muslims in Spain (this didn&rsquo;t work out so hot for him), conquered the Bavarians and Bohemians, fought against the Croats, Slavs, and Hungarians, captured lands from Byzantine-supported tribes in Italy, battled the fucking Vikings, and even stormed the Avar Ring, the capital of a tribe of horse warriors descended from Attila the Hun.&nbsp; After he broke through the Avar&rsquo;s near-impenetrable walls, he got his hands on such a humongous amount of looted gold, jewels, and silver that it almost immediately made his kingdom one of the richest in the world.&nbsp; Basically, if you didn&rsquo;t think Catholicism was the shit, this guy was going to smite you righteously.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/285335829594/charlemagne4.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Now, one problem that a lot of conquerors have is that at a certain point your empire is made up of so many different cultures that it&rsquo;s hard to find common threads to keep your civilization together.&nbsp; Charlemagne dealt with this in one very simple way:&nbsp; By making sure all his people were Catholic, and that he was perceived as the Defender of the Faith.&nbsp; He got a great opportunity to do this in 800 AD, when some shit was going down in Rome that required his urgent attention.</p>\r\n<p>Apparently, the old Pope Adrian died in 800 AD, and he was replaced by Pope Leo III.&nbsp; Well, for reasons I don&rsquo;t fully comprehend, Pope Adrian&rsquo;s family didn&rsquo;t like Pope Leo III, so they attacked him in the fucking middle of the street, beat the shit out of him, and tried to cut out his eyes and tongue so that he couldn&rsquo;t be Pope any more.&nbsp; Well, right as this was going down, an honor guard of battle-hardened Frankish paladins was just heading up to the Vatican to send Charlemagne&rsquo;s regards, and they immediately jumped in to regulate some motherfuckers and save the Pope&rsquo;s life.&nbsp; Pope Leo III showed his appreciation for this Deus Ex Charlemagne (and honored Charles&rsquo; many other religious accomplishments) by crowning him Holy Roman Emperor on Christmas Day 800.&nbsp; Leo proclaimed that Charlemagne was the Protector of Catholicism and the true heir to the Roman Empire, which wasn&rsquo;t really the case because the Byzantine Empire technically held that title, but the Byzantines were being led by a woman at the time (a future Badass of the Week named Empress Irene) so Medieval misogyny kind of helped out his claim a bit.&nbsp; The Empress Irene sent a formal letter of protest, and Charlemagne responded by saying maybe the two of them should get married to just solidify the Empire once and for all.&nbsp; She responded by saying nah, she was good.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/285335829594/charlemagne5.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>As Emperor, Charlemagne perhaps-unexpectedly switched gears from &ldquo;ultra murderfactory stab stab&rdquo; to &ldquo;wise old revered leader&rdquo;.&nbsp; He set up his Empire as a center of learning, understanding, and scholarship.&nbsp; He made peace with the Muslims, Slaves, Danes, Basques, Croats, and Briton tribes, forged an alliance with <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/krum.html\">Khan Krum the Horrible</a> of Bulgaria, and made such a nice impression on the Caliph in Baghdad that the Caliph gave Charlemagne a pet elephant.&nbsp; Charlemagne built libraries, gathered every rare book he could find, and had scribes make copies and translations.&nbsp; He brought in poets, educators, philosophers, and religious scholars, wiped out bandits, established trade, created a standardized system of weights and measurements, and developed the writing system that our current alphabet is based on.&nbsp; He built structures like the Palatine Chapel in Aachen, an awesome building that looks like what you&rsquo;d get if you asked the chief architect at Hogwards to design a lair for vampires, and to cement infrastructure, he divided out portions of his lands to Counts, Bishops, and other leaders&hellip; basically creating the Feudal System as we know it.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Despite all of his interest in learning (he spoke fluent Greek and Latin!), Charlemagne never learned to read or write.&nbsp; He kept a wax pad under his bed and would practice writing every night, but the poor dude just never quite got the hang of it.&nbsp; Of course, when you&rsquo;re the fucking Emperor you can just hire people to read to you all day, and he loved badass Homeric epics as well as hardcore religious treatises such as St. Augustine&rsquo;s <em>City of God</em>.&nbsp; He was married five times, had 18 kids, and lived to be in his 70s at a time when most people were dead by 40.&nbsp; Towards the end of his life, doctors started giving him a hard time and told him to stop eating so much roasted meat, but he told them to eat a dick and did whatever the hell he wanted because nobody was going to stop him from jamming so much beef jerky in his face that the Macho Man would have an aneurysm.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/285335829594/charlemagne6.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>After ruling for 40 years, Charlemagne died in 814 at the age of 72.&nbsp; For all of his violence his most important contribution was his legacy.&nbsp; This illiterate German dude had taken a heterogeneous mish-mash of barbarian peoples and turned them into a cohesive, unified group of people, and if you look at the map of his empire, it looks a hell of a lot like a map of present-day Western Europe (hashtag Brexit).&nbsp; He was canonized by an Antipope in the 12<sup>th</sup> century, which is a cool detail even though it totally doesn&rsquo;t count as real sainthood, and nowadays his epic gold-and-silver plated sarcophagus is on display on the chapel he built in Aachen.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/285335829594/charlemagne7.JPG\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Links:<br /> http://www.history.com/topics/charlemagne<br /> http://www.historyworld.net/wrldhis/PlainTextHistories.asp?ParagraphID=elk<br /> http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03610c.htm<br /> http://history-world.org/charlemagne.htm<br /> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlemagne</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>','2016-07-11','285335829594','charlemagne.jpg','charlemagne-small.jpg','Charlemagne','The military genius who crushed the enemies of Christendom, united Europe under one ruler, and brought the continent out of the Dark Ages.','\"By the King of the heavens I think nothing of your nobility and your beauty. Others can admire you. Know this without any doubt; unless you rapidly make up for your idleness by eager effort, you will never receive any benefit from me.\"'),('Flavius Stilicho','c. 359 ','August 22, 408','Germany','Ancient Roman General','<p align=\"center\"><iframe src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/MixPOrhqx_U\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"425\" height=\"350\"></iframe><br /><br /></p>\r\n<p>Magister Militum Flavius Stilicho was the last great hero of the Western Roman Empire.&nbsp; At a time when all of the noble Patrician fat cat losers around him were busy being a bunch of obnoxious, lazy, back-stabbing sycophants more obsessed with slaves, jewelry, and top-shelf hair products, this old-school stoic honor-bound barbarian-smiting warhammer of Imperial justice was out there proving that even though she was dying and decaying from the inside, the blood of Caesar, Scipio, Marius, and Agrippa still coursed through the veins of Roman Empire.&nbsp; He rose from the rank-and-file of the Roman Legions to serve on the Emperor&rsquo;s bodyguard, marry the Emperor&rsquo;s daughter, take command of all Roman armed forces, and then defended the Eternal City from barbarian invaders at the gates not once but twice despite being underfunded, outnumbered, and having every single logistical problem in the Ancient World kicking him in the balls every time he tried to take a leak.&nbsp; In twenty years of military service to the Empire this dude fought off unstoppable hordes of rampaging enemy soldiers with a handful of legionnaires cobbled together at the last minute, and he defended the realm without ever sacrificing his personal honor or his duty to the Emperor.&nbsp; Nowadays he goes down in history as the last great warrior of Rome, and his tragic death marks the end of the Western Empire as we know it.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/3288888804/stilicho1.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Flavius Stilicho was born in Germany around 365 AD.&nbsp; We don&rsquo;t know a whole lot about his early days because the Romans didn&rsquo;t really bother writing down information about kids who didn&rsquo;t come from well-known wealthy Roman families, but we do know that his mother was a Roman provincial and his father was a Vandal, which was a tribe of Germanic barbarian dudes who were super in to smashing mailboxes with baseball bats and tagging graffiti on highway underpasses.&nbsp; Stilicho&rsquo;s dad was a cavalry officer serving the Roman army as an auxiliary, and as soon as Stilicho was old enough to heft a gladius over his head he enlisted in the military to get busy with the head-cracking.&nbsp; He was a badass archer, horseman, and hand-to-hand fighter, a charismatic leader, and a steel-plated tactical genius, and at a time when it was pretty common for soldiers from good families to just pay for military promotions like a dude trying to unlock a Counterstrike skin, Stilicho never once accepted a promotion that wasn&rsquo;t based purely on merit.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Stilicho first shows up in history in 383 AD, when he was selected to command an honor guard sent by Emperor Theodosius to negotiate and ratify a peace treaty with the King of Persia.&nbsp; Stilicho negotiated that shit like a boss, returned to Constantinople in triumph, flexed his pecs, and married the Emperor&rsquo;s daughter Serena, who basically fell in love with him as soon as she saw his six-pack.&nbsp; Marrying the Princess of Rome is pretty badass by itself, but Serena was a shrewd diplomat herself, and she was deftly able to defend him from the machinations of his enemies.&nbsp; Her behind-the-scenes political skills are what kept this guy alive and in power at a time in history where most powerful men ended up futilely trying to remove six-inch blades that had just been embedded in their spines by their best friend.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/3288888804/stilicho2.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The Emperor&rsquo;s son-in-law continued rising through the ranks of the military.&nbsp; He commanded the Emperor&rsquo;s personal bodyguard, and then was trusted with a sizeable portion of the Imperial army at the Battle of Frigidus in 394 AD.&nbsp; Stilicho opened the attack by sending forward his expendable barbarian infantry head-on into the enemy, which resulted in a lot of dead barbarians, which is fine by him, and then while the enemy was busy chopping up the Germans Stilicho flanked around with the cavalry and broke the enemy forces with a pincer move.&nbsp; The enemy commander &ndash; Emperor Theodosius&rsquo; brother &ndash; was captured executed on the battlefield.</p>\r\n<p>Well Emperor Theodosius died in 395, and he left his empire to his two young sons, setting up a divide between East and West that would never really be reunified again.&nbsp; &nbsp;Because the emperors weren&rsquo;t old enough to rule, Stilicho was put in charge of governing the West, and a total asshole named Rufinius was sent to help manage the East.&nbsp; Rufinius was a scheming, self-serving jerk who had willingly ordered one of Stilicho&rsquo;s best friends to his death, so clearly the next logical step was for the brothers to start killing each other.&nbsp; And that&rsquo;s <em>totally </em>what was about to happen, but then all of a sudden there was a rebellion by a tribe of long-haired Germanic barbarian warriors called the Goths.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/3288888804/stilicho3.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Oh hey, remember a minute ago when I was talking about all those barbarians who got mulched into sawdust during the Battle of Frigidus?&nbsp; Well, their commander was a guy named Alaric the Bold &ndash; a man you should be familiar with if you&rsquo;ve read the first Badass book &ndash; and Alaric the Bold didn&rsquo;t get a nickname like that by sitting around and letting a bunch of sandal-wearing Roman d-bags use him as cannon fodder.&nbsp; Alaric the Bold declared himself King of the Goths, kind of like a 5<sup>th</sup>-century Morrisey, and went to work devastating the Greek countryside at the head of a screaming horde of axe-swinging German marauders.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Stilicho immediately raised the armies of Western Rome, sailed across into Thrace, and crashed his armies head-long into the Goth menace.&nbsp; Bloodied and defeated, Alaric retreated further into Greece to escape the wrath of Rome. &nbsp;Stilicho chased him, forced him up a mountain, and then surrounded the mountain with heavy siege engines.</p>\r\n<p>Over in Constantinople, Stilicho&rsquo;s old pal Rufinius decided that the only thing that made him more upset than a rampaging band of plundering Germans was a full-scale Roman army led by Stilicho walking all over his territory, so even though Stilicho had Alaric&rsquo;s nuts in a vice he was ordered to back down and get the hell out of the East.&nbsp; Stilicho was pissed but agreed, and as a parting gift he sent a couple of his troops over to Constantinople to murder Rufinius.&nbsp; Which they did.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/3288888804/stilicho5.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Stilicho returned to Italy to find that one of the provinces in North Africa had rebelled against the Romans, which honestly was just totally not acceptable behavior for those dudes.&nbsp; Their governor, a guy named Gildo, was refusing to send food to Rome and declared himself King of an independent North Africa.&nbsp; Well that wasn&rsquo;t going to fly.&nbsp; Stilicho first provided for the Roman people by importing food from Gaul, and then he went across the Mediterranean and beat some Imperial sense into the rebel king with a couple javelins to the face, smashing Gildo&rsquo;s armies so bad that Gildo killed himself.&nbsp; After dealing with that nonsense, Stilicho returned to Rome and cemented his claim to power by marrying his daughter Maria off to the 14 year-old Emperor Honorius, which is kind of gross, because Maria and Honorius were first cousins, but Gibbon says that Honorius died a virgin so I guess that&rsquo;s some small consolation in that.</p>\r\n<p>It&rsquo;s worth mentioning that Honorius is pretty much a worthless ruler with all the charisma of a week-old pre-chewed chunk of bubble gum.&nbsp; He spent all day in his decadent palace feeding his pet chickens and pigeons, he never showed any inclination to rule whatsoever, and pretty much anybody that met this dude in person immediately lost all respect for Roman rule and attempted a rebellion.&nbsp; Gibbon himself states in his own inimitable fashion that &ldquo;In the eventful history of a reign of twenty-eight years, it will seldom be necessary to mention the name of the emperor Honorius.&rdquo;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/3288888804/stilicho6.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Ok, so around this time Alaric the Bold was getting pretty bored of reducing the cities and townships of Greece to blood-stained burning rubble, so the King of the Goths set his sights on Italy and went full-throttle across the Alps with the intention of beating the Emperor to death with his own dismembered leg.&nbsp; Honorious, hearing reports of the rampaging onslaught of Visigoths beatboxing their way towards his castle, immediately prepared to flee for his life like a coward.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Stilicho told him hang on.&nbsp; I got this.</p>\r\n<p>Now, the Western Roman Empire at this point in time is completely falling apart.&nbsp; The vaunted Legions of old are gone.&nbsp; There is a minimal standing army.&nbsp; There&rsquo;s not much money to raise one.&nbsp; The citizenry are either lazy or rebellious depending on where they live.&nbsp; But Stilicho had a city to defend, and the only thing standing between the Emperor&rsquo;s skull and a barbarian axe was the Last Great Roman Warrior, and this guy was going to be damned if the empire fell apart on <em>his </em>watch.&nbsp; Stlicho rode his horse hard across the Alps in the dead of winter, braved the ice and snow into Gaul, and started cobbling together every single fighting man in the Western Roman Empire.&nbsp; He recalled garrisons as far north as Hadrian&rsquo;s Wall in Scotland.&nbsp; He left entire regions undefended on critical borders.&nbsp; He pulled recruits from German tribes that were among Rome&rsquo;s biggest enemies and stripped garrisons from cities.&nbsp; Basically if you could hold a spear parallel to the ground and thrust it in a vaguely-menacing way, you were going to get called up to face-shank some Visigoths in a fight for your life.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/3288888804/stilicho7.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Alaric the Bold burned, plundered, and pillaged his way through Northern Italy, finally arriving outside the Emperor&rsquo;s palace in Milan in the Spring of 402 AD.&nbsp; Honorius freaked out and ran for it, fleeing with an entourage of toga-wearing dignitaries who wore sandals to work and smelled like flowers all the time, but the battle-scarred, warmongering Visigoths caught up to him and the Emperor had to take emergency refuge in a small walled fort just south of the Alps.&nbsp; The Goths surrounded the fortress, set up siege equipment, and prepared to ransom themselves an Emperor.</p>\r\n<p>But then, just when all appeared lost, on the horizon a lookout spotted something amazing.&nbsp; General Stilicho, protector of Rome, was swimming across the fucking Addua River with a vanguard of thousands of Roman soldiers.&nbsp; When they reached the far side, they pulled themselves out of the water and began lining up in battle formation.</p>\r\n<p>It was around this time that Alaric started receiving reports of Roman Legionnaires marching through basically every single mountain pass in the Alps, all streaming towards the Goths&rsquo; position in sweeping arcs.</p>\r\n<p>In the moment of his greatest victory, Alaric the Bold was about to be completely surrounded by Roman soldiers ready to fight and die to protect the Empire.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/3288888804/stilicho8.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The battle that followed was a crushing Roman victory.&nbsp; Stilicho captured Alaric&rsquo;s camp, took his wife prisoner, freed all the slaves Alaric had taken during his march, and recovered priceless treasures that had been looted from towns ranging from Constantinople to Rome.&nbsp; Alaric escaped with about half of his force intact, and tried to attack the Italian city of Verona on his way out of town, but once again Stilicho beat him to the punch &ndash; Stilicho had bribed some of Alaric&rsquo;s disgruntled chieftains to spy on him for Rome, and when Alaric emerged from the mountain pass outside Verona he was attacked on three sides by Roman forces and smashed to bits.</p>\r\n<p>For being the Defender of Rome, Stilicho was given a Triumph through the streets of the city.&nbsp; Sitting in the spot of honor next to the Emperor, Stilicho led a parade of his victorious soldiers, prisoners, and treasure while all the citizens of the city came out and cheered their hero.&nbsp; In the last 100 years of the Western Roman Empire, only three men received this honor, and Stilicho was the only one who had accomplished the feat without having to kill other Roman citizens in the process.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>(It&rsquo;s not really related, but it&rsquo;s worth noting that this event also marked the last time gladiator battles ever took place in Rome.&nbsp; During the games at the Coliseum that followed the triumph, one particularly violent gladiator battle was interrupted when a badass, fearless Asiatic monk named Telemachus came running out onto the battlefield and tried to separate the two fighters.&nbsp; Telemachus was killed when angry fans threw rocks at him, but Emperor Honorius was in attendance when this went down and he was so horrified by the whole thing that he banned gladiator games forever.)&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/3288888804/stilicho9.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>But, as I&rsquo;ve said, these are dark times for Rome, and it wouldn&rsquo;t be long before Stilicho was going to need to save his people once again.&nbsp; This time it was in 405, when a humongous horde of Ostrogoths crossed the Danube under the command of a warrior named Radagaisus and began immediately creating chaos, mayhem, and destruction.&nbsp; Stilicho once again cobbled together an army out of nowhere &ndash; he promised freedom to slaves who would fight for him, abandoned the defenses anywhere he could spare it, and somehow put together 30 Legions of Roman Infantry to stare down a Gothic horde that was easily three or four times his size.</p>\r\n<p>Time was short, and Radagaisus&rsquo; Goths were moving much too quickly.&nbsp; By the time Stilicho had finally built a half-decent army, he was receiving word that the Gothic army had surrounded Florence and was attempting to starve the population into submission.&nbsp; He was going to have to work quick if he wanted to save the people of that city &ndash; and the people of Rome, who were only about 180 miles away from Florence.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/3288888804/stilicho10.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Stilicho marched his army as hard as they would go.&nbsp; The people of Florence held out bravely, thanks in no small part to the inspiring speeches of St. Ambrose, and then, just when it was starting to look like the Ostrogoths were going to break through the city defenses, &ldquo;All of a sudden, they beheld from their walls the banners of Stilicho, who advanced with his united force to the relief of the fateful city; and who soon marked that fatal spot as the grave of the barbarian army.&rdquo;</p>\r\n<p>Stilicho couldn&rsquo;t afford to lose his valuable troops on a battle in the open, so he took a page out of the Julius Caesar playbook &ndash; he surrounded the besiegers and set up a humongous series of defensive works that bottled the Goths up in a ring around the city.&nbsp; Radagaisus tried multiple times to break out of the trap, but Stilicho&rsquo;s Romans held the line against wave after wave of barbarian attacks.&nbsp; Disease, hunger, and attrition ravaged the Goths.&nbsp; When Radagaisus met with Stilicho to make peace, Stilicho arrested him and sent his head back to the Goths in a catapult.&nbsp; When the rest of the Goths surrendered, he had them all sold into slavery.</p>\r\n<p>Because that&rsquo;s what happens when you fuck with the Roman Empire when it&rsquo;s led by a badass Roman commander.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/3288888804/stilicho11.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Stilicho continued to kick asses for Rome, putting down a Vandal invasion and containing a rebellion in Gaul, but despite all the heroics he&rsquo;d accomplished for the Empire Stilicho wasn&rsquo;t completely immune to subterfuge and political backstabbing.&nbsp; First, the Senate thought Stilicho had gone soft when he agreed to pay Alaric the Bold not to attack Italy again&hellip; which is dumb as hell because negotiating peace to avoid an unwinnable battle is a hell of a lot smarter than having your homeland burned to ash.&nbsp; Then some of Emperor Honorius&rsquo; advisors, jealous of Stilicho&rsquo;s power and influence, started convincing the Emperor that Stilicho was going to overthrow him and seize power.&nbsp; Or that Stilicho couldn&rsquo;t be trusted because he was half-German and therefore had divided loyalties.&nbsp; Or something.</p>\r\n<p>A large number of Stilicho&rsquo;s friends and top generals were ambushed and murdered by their own men in 408 AD.&nbsp; A barbarian warrior broke into Stlicho&rsquo;s tent and tried to murder him as well, but Stilicho defeated that guy, escaped, got to a church and asked for sanctuary so he could write a letter telling the people of Rome never to open their gates to the barbarians and to defend their Empire and their cities to the last man.&nbsp; When Imperial soldiers finally came to arrest him, the great Roman hero went outside with them willingly and was executed by beheading in the Church courtyard.&nbsp; He was 49 years old.</p>\r\n<p>Less than two years after Stilicho&rsquo;s death, Gothic armies under Alaric the Bold invaded Rome once again.&nbsp; With no one left to defend the empire, Alaric encircled Rome in 410 AD, stormed the walls, and his barbarian warriors sacked the city with sword and fire.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/3288888804/stilicho12.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Links:</p>\r\n<p><a href=\"https://www.britannica.com/biography/Flavius-Stilicho\">Britannica</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://jaysromanhistory.com/romeweb/romarmy/art11.htm\">Jay\'s Roman History</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/romanss/g/012708Stilicho.htm\">About.com</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.roman-empire.net/collapse/honorius.html\">Roman-Empire.net</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"https://books.google.com/books?id=HsrGEFpW80UC&amp;pg=PA396&amp;dq=stilicho&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=0ahUKEwjnzsCfiPbNAhVY0mMKHd8uAdgQ6AEIPzAG%23v=onepage&amp;q=stilicho&amp;f=false\">A Dictionary of the Roman Empire</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"https://books.google.com/books?id=7dRUAAAAYAAJ&amp;pg=RA1-PA25&amp;dq=stilicho+gibbon&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=0ahUKEwiDmpqPpvbNAhVC8WMKHdt9CQgQ6AEILzAD#v=onepage&amp;q=stilicho%20gibbon&amp;f=false\">Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stilicho\">Wikipedia</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Stilicho\">Uncyclopedia</a> (not a real source, but it&rsquo;s funny)</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><a href=\"http://www.patreon.com/badassoftheweek\"><img src=\"/images/3288888804/patreon.png\" alt=\"\" /></a></p>','2016-07-25','3288888804','stilicho.png','stilicho-small.jpg','Stilicho','The last great hero of the Western Roman Empire, this Visigoth-smiting warrior defended Rome from barbarian invasion not once but twice.','\"The celestial gift, which Achilles obtained, and Alexander envied, of a poet worthy to celebrate the actions of heroes, has been enjoyed by Stilicho in a much higher degree than might have been expected from the declining state of genius, and of art.\"  -Edward Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'),('Felix Von Luckner','June 9, 1881','April 13, 1966','Dresden, Germany','20th-century German Sailor','<p>Count Felix Von Luckner of the Imperial German Navy was a World War I naval commander known as &ldquo;The Sea Devil&rdquo; who terrorized the Atlantic in the early 20<sup>th</sup>-century at the helm a motherfucking three-masted sailing ship that packed a pair of hardcore 105mm deck guns and a full-auto 7.92mm machine guns.&nbsp; At a time in history where naval battles were being fought by hulking steel-plated dreadnaught battleships, Count Von Luckner and his crew, &ldquo;The Emperor&rsquo;s Pirates&rdquo; (<em>Die Piraten des Kaisers) </em>captured, sunk, and plundered 64,000 tons of Entente shipping in a vessel that looked like it just sailed out of a fucking <em>Pirates of the Caribbean </em>movie.&nbsp; He commanded the only square-rigged warship fielded by either side in World War I, and used it to evade the U.S., French, and British Royal Navies, striking terror into merchant shipping and smashing the delivery of weapons and supplies from America to the battlefield.&nbsp; He also once completed a 1000-mile journey in a whaling boat, escaped a New Zealand prisoner of war camp, and ended up pissing off Hitler so hard that the Nazis eventually put a death sentence on his head &ndash; one that they never managed to collect.&nbsp; Luckner was also an amazing public speaker, incredibly charismatic, and so unbelievably strong that even at the age of 57 he could still rip the 1938 New York City telephone book in half with his bare hands.</p>\r\n<p>But despite a hardcore career of government-sanctioned old-school sailing ship Kaiser Piracy that cut a swath of destruction across two oceans and sent more than a dozen French, British, and American commerce vessels plunging to the depths of the sea, this is the truly amazing thing about Count Von Luckner and the Emperor&rsquo;s Pirates:&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>They did the whole thing without killing a single person.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/136867521431/luckner0.PNG\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Felix Von Luckner was born June 9, 1881, to an aristocratic German military family in Dresden.&nbsp; He came from a long line of Prussian-style asskickers, mostly cavalrymen, and Luckner was pretty much expected to join the cavalry and carry on the tradition of stomping balls in the name of the Vaterland.&nbsp; Luckner, however, was kind of a badass loose cannon, and at the age of 13 he stole his dad&rsquo;s pistol, ran away from home, and volunteered to work a Russian sailing ship as an unpaid cabin boy.&nbsp; This almost backfired pretty spectacularly, because a few weeks after leaving port Luckner was knocked overboard in a storm and nearly drowned.&nbsp; The Russian captain told the crew not to risk their lives to save Luckner, leaving the young German to swim back to the boat, and while he was doing that he was bizarrely attacked by a fucking flock of albatross birds that started pecking the shit out of him while he struggled to keep his head above water.&nbsp; Luckner somehow managed to get back aboard the ship, and when the Russians put into port in Australia, Luckner made the wise decision to quit his job and just hang out in Australia.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Details aren&rsquo;t super clear what the fuck Felix Von Luckner was up to for the next seven years, but it basically just sounds like an epic <em>Fear and Loathing </em>style bender.&nbsp; He got a job as an assistant lighthouse keeper, but then got fired when his boss caught him banging the dude&rsquo;s daughter.&nbsp; He hunted kangaroos, boxed for cash, worked as a bartender, was thrown into jail in Chile for stealing pigs, and got kicked out of a hospital in Jamaica because he couldn&rsquo;t afford to have doctors re-set his broken leg.&nbsp; Like I said, it&rsquo;s some weird shit.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/136867521431/luckner1.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Felix Von Luckner returned to Germany at the age of 20, which was kind of a surprise to his parents who pretty much figured he was dead by that point.&nbsp; Luckner attended Lubeck Navigation College, got a Masters from Papenburg Nautical College, and enlisted in the Imperial German Navy in 1910 &ndash; just one year before the start of World War I.</p>\r\n<p>Luckner&rsquo;s first posting was to the gunboat SMS <em>Panther, </em>which operated off the coast of West Africa in support of <a href=\"/index.cgi?id=79143016174\">Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck</a>&rsquo;s operations.&nbsp; He was transferred to the <em>Konig</em>-class battleship SMS <em>Kronprinz</em> in 1914, where Luckner found himself on the firing line for the largest and most important naval battle of World War I &ndash; the Battle of Jutland, the ultimate showdown between British and German warships in the North Sea.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/136867521431/luckner2.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /><em>The Kronprinz</em></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><em>Kronprinz </em>was at the front of the German battleship line when it encountered the full might of the Royal Navy at Jutland, both sides coming out of a dense fog and suddenly finding themselves on top of each other.&nbsp; <em>Kronprinz </em>and her crew of 1,136 men opened fire immediately, smashing into the British lines with everything they had.&nbsp; She fired 144 heavy shells during the epic battle, was constantly in the middle of the fight, and is sometimes credited with scoring the hit that sunk the HMS <em>Defiance</em>.&nbsp; Despite heavy British shells whizzing past her hull all afternoon, and a Royal Navy destroyer missing her bow with a torpedo by mere inches, the <em>Kronprinz </em>made it through the engagement without sustaining any significant damage.&nbsp; I read one report that Luckner was wounded during this fight, but I wasn&rsquo;t able to confirm that with any other sources.&nbsp; Either way, it&rsquo;s pretty clear he was doing something right, because in December of 1916 he was given his first command &ndash; the recently refitted auxiliary cruiser SMS <em>Seeadler</em>:</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/136867521431/luckner3.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><em>Seeadler </em>(meaning &ldquo;sea eagle&rdquo;) was a 245-foot, square-sailed 3-masted windjammer.&nbsp; Originally built in Scotland, the <em>Seeadler </em>had started out as the <em>Pass of Balmaha</em>, a U.S.-flagged ship out of Boston that had been running weapons to the Russians.&nbsp; <em>Pass of Balmaha </em>was captured by a German U-Boat in 1915, refitted with a concealed 500-horsepower auxiliary engine, and fitted with two 105mm deck guns and two 7.92mm machine guns, all cleverly hidden so that you couldn&rsquo;t tell this fucker was a warship if you were looking at her with a telescope from a couple nautical miles away.&nbsp; In the hands of KaptainLeutnant Felix Von Luckner, this ordinary-looking sailing ship would become one of the most ferocious commerce raiders of the war.</p>\r\n<p>Luckner&rsquo;s first problem was that the British Royal Navy had a blockade that completely surrounded the North Sea and prevented all ship traffic in or out of the German Empire.&nbsp; Engaging it head-on would have been suicide, so Luckner was going to have to find some other way around the&nbsp; entire British Navy if he was going to ever get started on his career in piracy.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/136867521431/luckner4.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /><em>Crew of the Seeadler</em></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><em>Seeadler </em>was intercepted by HMS <em>Avenger </em>just five days after she left port.&nbsp; On Christmas Day 1916, the imposing British warship approached <em>Seeadler</em>, docked beside the German ship, and sent aboard a small contingent of Royal Marines and Royal Navy officers to speak with the captain.</p>\r\n<p>Felix Von Luckner and several of his officers met the Royal Navy officers and told the Brits, in perfect Norwegian, that they were a whaling vessel from Norway headed out to the Atlantic.</p>\r\n<p>And you know what?&nbsp; It worked.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/136867521431/luckner5.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>After bluffing his way past the blockade, Luckner went to work hammering shipping all throughout the Atlantic.&nbsp; Basically, it worked like this &ndash; he&rsquo;d either run down a merchant ship, or send out a distress call so they&rsquo;d come over to assist him.&nbsp; Then he&rsquo;d board the ship, jam guns in everyone&rsquo;s faces, demand the ship&rsquo;s surrender, and take the crew prisoner.&nbsp; Luckner and his men would then investigate the cargo of the merchant ship, plunder anything worthwhile, scuttle the ship, and then head off on their way.&nbsp; For four months he smashed English, French, and Italian shipping up and down the sailing lanes (he later wrote about how he really hated that Holland was neutral in the war, because the Dutch ships were always carrying a bunch of awesome booze but he wasn&rsquo;t allowed to plunder it since they weren&rsquo;t at war with Germany), evading Royal Navy patrols every step of the way.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Ok, well while Luckner never killing anyone was a pretty awesome and admirable quality (it is worth noting I guess that one British sailor did die when a steam pipe burst on his ship as they tried to escape from the <em>Seeadler</em>), pretty soon Luckner had a different problem on his hands &ndash; he had 300 prisoners on his ship and he didn&rsquo;t really have room to take on any more.&nbsp; So, the next time he captured a ship (the French ship <em>Cambronne</em>) off the coast of Brazil, rather than sinking his prize he looted it, pulled down the main mast, stripped it&rsquo;s weapons, put all 300 prisoners on the ship, and told the POWs to wait 24 hours and then sail it into port in nearby Rio de Janiero.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/136867521431/luckner6.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The United States entered the war in 1917, and this made life in the Atlantic a real pain in the fuckin ass for Felix Von Lucknow.&nbsp; He attacked and sank two American transport ships, bringing his total to 11, and then he decided he had to get the hell out of there before someone jammed a battleship up his ass.&nbsp; Luckner rounded Cape Horn, attacked and sank three more British ships, and then headed to the Society Islands to find a nice quiet deserted island where he could refit, repair, and resupply.&nbsp; As he closed on Mopelia Island, however, Luckner got caught in a tsunami, dragged anchor, and ran aground on a coral reef just off the island &ndash; the <em>Seeadler </em>sank after a few hours, and if you visit the island today you can go scuba diving and still see the wreckage:</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/136867521431/luckner7.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Before <em>Seeadler </em>went down Luckner was able to evacuate all crew and prisoners and strip the hold of its supplies and food.&nbsp; His men set up camp on the island, and Luckner took five men, loaded them into one of the ship&rsquo;s boats, and basically took a fucking rowboat from Tahiti to Fiji &ndash; a trip that took nearly a month and spanned 1,800 miles of open, featureless ocean:</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/136867521431/luckner8.png\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Luckner and his men landed in Fiji in September 1917 and tried to pass themselves off as Norwegians, but the Fijians weren&rsquo;t going to be fooled as easily as the Royal Navy was.&nbsp; Luckner was arrested and sent to New Zealand, arriving in Auckland exactly 99 years ago today.</p>\r\n<p>The people of New Zealand were pretty pissed at Luckner, because they blamed <em>Seeadler</em> for the sinking of the passenger ship <em>Wairuna</em> that caused the deaths of nearly 100 innocent civilians &ndash; it took them a while to realize that Luckner hadn&rsquo;t been the captain responsible for that attack.</p>\r\n<p>Well, as you can expect, Felix Von Luckner immediately went to work on his escape.&nbsp; He had men stranded on that island, he wasn&rsquo;t going to give up their positions to the New Zealanders, and he sure as fuck wasn&rsquo;t going to leave them there to die.&nbsp; So, over the course of two months he and his men plotted their escape.&nbsp; They tapped the prison telephone lines, built a working sextant from materials they&rsquo;d procured, and bided their time.&nbsp; On the evening of December 13, 1917, they popped open their cell doors, cut the camp&rsquo;s power, cut the telephone lines, stole the camp commandant&rsquo;s personal motorboat, which was now proudly flying a homemade Imperial German Naval ensign that Luckner had fashioned from a bedsheet and an empty bag of flour.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The next morning, off the coast of the Mercury Islands, Luckner and the five dudes in his motorboat sailed straight up to a New Zealand civilian fishing ship, boarded it, jammed a pistol in the captain&rsquo;s face, and took over.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/136867521431/luckner9.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Luckner&rsquo;s balls-out plan was to attack the island&rsquo;s supply depot, load up on gear, and then bring it to the wreck of the <em>Seeadler</em>, but before he could continue his insane prison break he was run down by a New Zealand warship and forced to surrender.&nbsp; He spent the rest of the war in a prison camp located on a small island just off the coast of Auckland.&nbsp; It worked out OK for his crew, though &ndash; when a French commercial ship sailed over to check out the wreckage, the Emperor&rsquo;s Pirates boarded it, took over, and sailed it to South America.</p>\r\n<p>Felix von Luckner returned home to Germany after the war, wrote his memoirs, gave a lot of talks, and was basically a huge hero across the country.&nbsp; In the 1930s he sailed around the world, visiting Australia, New Zealand (where he was greeted with open arms as a worthy and noble adversary), and touring the United States.&nbsp; During World War II Hitler tried to us Luckner&rsquo;s fame for propaganda purposes, but when Luckner refused to give up his position as a Freemason and his honorary citizenship to the city of San Francisco (?!), Hitler froze his bank accounts, accused him of being a pedophile, and tried to have him arrested.&nbsp; Luckner was later sentenced to death by the Nazis for the crime of handing out passports to Jews so they could escape Germany&hellip; but this sentence was never actually carried out.&nbsp; To this day, Luckner is a hero in the city of Halle, because the old war hero was the man who personally negotiated the city&rsquo;s surrender to the United States in the closing days of the war.&nbsp; He moved to Sweden after the war, married a nice Swedish woman, and died in 1966 at the age of 84.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><a href=\"http://www.patreon.com/badassoftheweek\"><img src=\"../images/136867521431/luckner-patreon.png\" alt=\"\" /></a></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Links:</p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://navymuseum.co.nz/worldwar1/people/count-felix-von-luckner/\">Torpedo Bay Navy Museum</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://navymuseum.co.nz/worldwar1/ships/sms-seeadler/\">New Zealand&rsquo;s War at Sea</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.nzhistory.net.nz/sea-devil-captured-german-naval-captain-count-felix-von-luckner-arrives-at-auckland\">NZhistory.net</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_von_Luckner\">Wikipedia</a></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Books:</p>\r\n<p>Thomas, Lowell.&nbsp; <em>Raiders of the Deep</em>.&nbsp; Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2004.</p>\r\n<p>Thomas, Lowell.&nbsp; <em>Sea Devil &ndash; The Story of Count Felix Von Luckner</em>.&nbsp; London: W. Heinemann, 1938.</p>\r\n<p>Tucker, Spencer.&nbsp; <em>World War I</em>.&nbsp; Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2014.</p>\r\n<p>Watson, Bruce.&nbsp; <em>Atlantic Convoys and Nazi Raiders</em>.&nbsp; Westport, CT: Praeger, 2006.</p>','2016-10-14','136867521431','luckner.jpg','luckner-small.png','Felix Von Luckner','World War I German commerce raider who sank 64,000 tons of British shipping and destroyed 14 vessels.  With a three-masted old-school sailing ship.  And without killing a single person.',''),('Nikola Šubi&#263; Zrinski','c. 1508','September 8, 1566','Zrin, Croatia','16th-century Croatian General','<p>The fortress city of Siget lay in ruins.&nbsp; Fires raged across the castle skylines, the screams of dead and dying men echoing throughout the plazas and squares of a walled metropolis that had once been home to tens of thousands of people.&nbsp; From the innermost walls of the keep, the last bastion of resistance against the unstoppable onslaught, a hardened group of determined men (and one badass woman) tightened their grips on their saber hilts and musket stocks, clenching their teeth in anticipation for a fight they knew most of them had no hope of surviving.&nbsp; On the far side of the gate, sounds of chaos reigned, as hardened enemy soldiers rampaged through the town, burning, smashing, and killing any survivors they came across.</p>\r\n<p>Before the six hundred hungry, exhausted, but determined defenders rode a tall, imposing man with a thick graying beard and a really cool-looking uniform.&nbsp; Already a beloved, heroic figure among his people, this lifelong soldier had fought countless battles in his 58 years of life, many of them against overwhelming odds.&nbsp; He drew his sword, held it high, and declared his intention to fight to the last:&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><em>&ldquo;Let us go out from this burning place into the open and stand up to our enemies.&nbsp; Who dies, he will be with God.&nbsp; Who dies not, his name will be honored.&nbsp; I will go first, and what I do, you do as well.&nbsp; And God as my witness &ndash; I will never leave you, my brothers and knights!&rdquo;</em></p>\r\n<p>With a battle cry and the crack of musket and cannon fire, the Croatian and Hungarian forces threw open the gates to the citadel at Siget and rushed blades-first into a wall of battle-hardened Turkish infantry.&nbsp; The fight these warriors were about to put up is still the stuff of legend among the Croatian and Hungarian people to this day.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/62557834104/zrinski1.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Count Nikola IV Zrinski was born in Zrin, Croatia, in 1508, into a world where basically all of Eastern Europe was doing anything it could to try and stop the onslaught of the all-powerful Turkish Ottoman Empire from smashing the ass of Christendom into charcoal with a booted heel.&nbsp; Nikola and his kid brother Ivan were born to a pretty insanely-well-off noble family, but being that this was a war-torn border country they pretty much immediately had to get into the business of stomping around on horseback swinging a cavalry saber at a bunch of dudes who wanted to burn his house down and take all his land.&nbsp; As a young cavalry officer Zrinski was commended for bravery at the Siege of Vienna in 1529, when he and a small band of Croat horsemen were part of a vastly-outnumbered European force that miraculously defended the Austrian capital from an onslaught of Turkish forces that nearly overwhelmed the city and changed the course of Western civilization forever.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/62557834104/zrinski2.JPG\" alt=\"\" /><br /> <em>The Siege of Vienna</em></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The Super Zrinski Bros returned back to Croatia, spent the next decade or two going back and forth between attacking Turkish forts and telling various Austro-Hungarian princes to fuck off (the Hapsburg dynasty of the Austro-Hungarian Empire ruled over Croatia during this time period, which was fine with Zrinski&hellip; as long as the Emperor wasn&rsquo;t trying to get all up in Zrinski&rsquo;s business with lame shit like &ldquo;Imperial decrees&rdquo; and &ldquo;collecting taxes&rdquo;).&nbsp; In 1540 one of the Zrinskis (possibly both) pissed off the Sultan a little too hard and ended up having a couple farms and mines burned to the ground in retaliation, but they got vengeance in 1542 when they helped the Hungarians during the Siege of Pest &ndash; a battle that kind of sounds like a weird name for an insect extermination company but was actually a pretty intense battle in Hungarian history (the current Hungarian capital, Budapest, used to be two cities &ndash; Buda and Pest.&nbsp; I&rsquo;m not making this up, I swear).&nbsp; The short, oversimplified version is that the Hungarians tried to retake Pest from an army of Turks and Transylvanians (!), took the town, were forced out by a counter attack, and would have been completely shitstormed into McGiblets if Nikola Effin Zrinski hadn&rsquo;t showed up with 400 rampaging Croat horsemen to help cover the Hungarian retreat.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/62557834104/zrinski3.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>To thank him for his assistance, Zrinski was appointed the Ban (governor) of Croatia in 1542, meaning his job was to basically run shit in the Emperor&rsquo;s name.&nbsp; I don&rsquo;t have a ton of details about what went down over the next decade or two, except that we do know for sure that he once challenged the governor of Bosnia to a duel &ndash; Zrinski showed up for the fight, but the guy he challenged did not.&nbsp; Still, I always manage to find a soft spot in my heart for any high-ranking nobleman/politician who has the balls to challenge his counterpart to one-on-one combat</p>\r\n<p>At this point, let me just say that it hasn&rsquo;t been particularly easy to research this dude, and it&rsquo;s not just because the correct spelling of his name involves a bunch of diacritical markings that I haven&rsquo;t memorized the keystrokes for, or that there\'s like nothing written about him in the English language &ndash; it&rsquo;s because he&rsquo;s one of three different dudes named Nikola Zrinski who are important in Croatian history.&nbsp; The second Nikola Zrinksi was <em>also </em>a Croatian Ban &ndash; and that guy is the <em>same person </em>as famous Hungarian poet <em>Miklos Zrinyi</em>, the man who wrote the first epic poem ever comprised in the Hungarian language.&nbsp; That epic poem was about &ndash; you guessed it &ndash; the friggin&rsquo; Siege of Siget in 1566, meaning that the primary source for information about Nikola Zrinski was a poem written by Nikola Zrinski, except that Nikola Zrinski is a different guy than the Nikola Zrinski you&rsquo;re reading about.&nbsp; Oh, and <em>Miklos Zrinyi </em>is just the Hungarian spelling of <em>Nikolas Zrinski</em>, so when you see Miklos Zrinyi it&rsquo;s not explicitly clear which one of these dudes they&rsquo;re referring to.&nbsp; Oh, right, and there&rsquo;s yet another important guy named Nikola Zrinski who was <em>also</em> a Croatian Ban, only this guy led a conspiracy to overthrow the Hungarian King because he thought the King was being too soft in his dealings with the Turks... that conspiracy, known as The Nikola Zrinski Plot (also a cool band name btw), never materialized because this Nikola Zrinsky randomly got killed by a wild animal while he was out hunting one day and was never heard from again.</p>\r\n<p>Nowadays there&rsquo;s a Nikola Zrinski Square in downtown Zagreb, Croatia.&nbsp; It&rsquo;s in honor of all three dudes, because I guess it just makes more sense that way.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/62557834104/zrinski4.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> <em>Zrinski Park</em></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>So now that I&rsquo;ve managed to completely clarify all of that for you, it&rsquo;s time for me to cover 500 years of Turkish-European relations in about a sentence and a half.&nbsp; Basically, the Ottoman Turkish Empire had been whomping ass up and down the Mediterranean dating back to the good old days of <a href=\"/index.cgi?id=46114175341\">Selim the Grim</a> and <a href=\"/index.cgi?id=628057317643\">Alp Arslan</a>, and in the 1560s shit was firmly under the control of the mighty Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent &ndash; a guy so over-the-top awesome that there should be a UN Resolution condemning this website for not posting an article about him yet.&nbsp; In his 46 years as the most powerful man in the world, Suleiman&rsquo;s tireless efforts on land (and those of the corsair <a href=\"/index.cgi?id=29600885073\">Barbarossa</a> by sea), meant that nearly four decades holding all of Eastern Europe&rsquo;s collective nutsacks in a bench vice.&nbsp; However, by January 1566 Suleiman was 72 years old, Austria was fucking with him too much, he&rsquo;d just been defeated by the Knights of Malta under <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/valette.html\">Jean de Valette</a>, and the Magnificent Sultant was looking for one last epic campaign to crush his enemies once and for all.</p>\r\n<p>So, when war broke out once again between Turkey and the Ottoman Empire, Suleiman declared that he would command his thirteenth and final military campaign personally.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/62557834104/zrinski5.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>There&rsquo;s some debate about it, but it seems that Suleiman&rsquo;s plan with this invasion was to finish what he&rsquo;d started in Vienna back in 1529.&nbsp; What we do know for sure is that in early August of 1566, a humongous sea of Turkish infantry, cavalry, and artillery appeared on the horizon outside the walled city of Siget (known as Szigetvar in Hungarian, because why not I guess).&nbsp; Inside, just 3,000 Croat and Hungarian defenders watched the approach of a Turkish force that may have exceeded 100,000 men in strength.</p>\r\n<p>When Suleiman approached the walls of the city, he saw them draped with humongous sheets of red cloth &ndash; a practice usually only used when greeting visiting dignitaries and Kings or celebrating a festival.&nbsp; As Suleiman gazed at this strange display, a single shot rung out &ndash; a cannonball signifying the defenders&rsquo; intentions to try and face an enemy force that outnumbered them by more than 30 to 1.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/62557834104/zrinski6.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> <em>The Zrinski Guard Regiment, wearing<br /> uniforms like the defenders would have worn</em></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>For the next month, the Turkish cannons, rifles, and arrows hammered the stone walls of Siget, ripping apart chunks for mortar and rock with each concussive blast.&nbsp; The defenders fired muskets from the walls, poured oil on attackers, and fought back in a battle that seems like a bizarre mix of Medieval and modern military tactics.&nbsp; Day after day the Turks blasted cannon fire into the town, launching full-scale assaults at night under the cover of darkness in a desperate attempt overcome the castle moat, storm the walls, and overwhelm the defenders with their superior numbers.&nbsp; Eleven times the Turks assaulted.&nbsp; Eleven times they were hurled back from the walls in increasingly desperate fights.</p>\r\n<p>Turkish fire had crippled the outer walls, so Zrinski ordered his exhausted, dwindling forces to retreat back within the inner walls of the keep.&nbsp; There were two baileys there that would be easily defensible, and there were rumors that a nasty wave of disease was sweeping through the Turkish camp and killing many of the enemy.&nbsp; If only he could hold out a little longer, maybe the defenders would have a chance.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/62557834104/zrinski7.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The twelfth Turkish assault was by far the most desperate yet. Rushing through the outer walls, the Turks hammered the inner walls, setting fire to the city and hurling fire bombs into the inner keep.&nbsp; Zrinski ran from post to post, yelling for his men to fight on, and any time the enemy managed to break through and breach the walls they were met by a determined phalanx of Croat and Hungarian warriors fighting hard to throw back the attack.&nbsp; Through blood, smoke, gunfire, and flame, the battle raged for hours.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>When the smoke cleared, the citadel walls had held, but at a terrible cost.&nbsp; Of the 3,000 defenders of Siget, only 600 remained.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/62557834104/zrinski8.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>By September 8, 1566, all hope for the city of Siget seemed lost.&nbsp; Tens of thousands of Turkish warriors, including the elite Janissaries, were all camped in the city, just waiting to press their final assault and overrun the defenses.&nbsp; The city was out of food, almost out of bullets, and nearly every man still alive was wounded in some capacity.&nbsp; There was no aid coming from Christian allies in Austria or Hungary.&nbsp; A couple of the Croat officers&rsquo; wives, not wanting to fall into the hands of the Turks but bound by their faith not to commit suicide, asked to be beheaded rather than survive the siege.&nbsp; One of them dressed as a man and decided to fight heroically alongside the survivors.</p>\r\n<p>It was at this point that Nikola Zrinski decided he would not sit back and wait for the Turks to come to him.</p>\r\n<p>He knew he would not survive, but he was going to go out in a fucking badass blaze of glory.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/62557834104/zrinski9.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>With a crash, Nikola Zrinski and the 600 survivors of the Siege of Siget threw open the doors of the keep and let loose a close-range blast from the only working cannon they had left in the city &ndash; it was out of cannonballs, so they&rsquo;d just loaded it with handfuls of jagged iron that Swordfished into the astonished defenders like a shotgun shell loaded with nails and screws.&nbsp; The blast ripped through the front line of the enemy, and with an epic scream Nikola Zrinski and his men crashed headlong into a sea of enemy warriors.&nbsp; Fighting, slashing, and shooting in all directions, they fought heroically, lashing out <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/travis.html\">Alamo</a>-style, every warrior just looking to do as much damage as possible before they perished.</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/62557834104/zrinski10.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> <em><br />\"To battle, to battle!<br /> Unsheathe your sword, Ban,<br /> Let the enemy know how we die!\"</em></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>In the epic poem (and in the national opera of Croatia), Nikola Zrinski and his officers corps smash through the Turkish lines, break out of the city, charge into the Turkish headquarters camp, and Nikola Zrinski kills Suleiman the Magnificent in a duel before being shot to death himself.&nbsp; This is a suitable epic and badass way to end the story, and you can bet your nutsack that this is how they&rsquo;d end the Hollywood biopic, but in reality it didn&rsquo;t go down this way.&nbsp; In fact, Suleiman the Magnificent was already dead on September 8, 1566 &ndash; he&rsquo;d died of old age three days before, but the Grand Vizier had kept his death a secret so that his men wouldn&rsquo;t lose morale or abandon the fight.&nbsp; In reality, the initial attack was devastating, but it did not take the battle-hardened Turks long to regroup.&nbsp; Zrinski took two musketballs to the chest and an arrow across his head.&nbsp; He would beheaded as he lay dying, and his head was placed outside the city walls on a spike.&nbsp; The officer&rsquo;s wife killed a few of the enemy as well before eventually being shot to death herself.&nbsp; Of the 600 men in that final attack, only seven would survive &ndash; men who were spared by Turkish officers who had been impressed with the bravery and fighting spirit of their enemies.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>When the smoke cleared and the fighting finally stopped, the Turks had taken command of the city, although at devastating cost &ndash; a large number of their force had been killed either by battle or plague, and now, to make things worse, their Sultan lay dead.</p>\r\n<p>Oh, right, and as they entered the citadel to claim final victory, the Croats had one final surprise waiting for them &ndash; a wounded man had stayed behind with a torch, and as the Turks flooded the courtyard he ignited the castle&rsquo;s powder magazine.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/62557834104/zrinski11.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>After Siget, the Ottoman army would head back into Siget to regroup.&nbsp; Zrinski and his brave defenders became heroes overnight, and <a href=\"/index.cgi?id=987262914417\">Cardinal Richelieu</a> even declared that they had &ldquo;saved Christendom&rdquo; with their defense of the city.&nbsp; Known to his people as the &ldquo;Slavic Leonidas&rdquo;, Nikola Subic Zrinski remains a national hero not only in Croatia, but also in Hungary.&nbsp; His former palace still stands today, and the opera of his life is the most famous opera in Croatia.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/62557834104/zrinski12.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> <em>The Hungarian-Turkish Friendship Memorial,<br /> depicting Zrinski and Suleiman together</em></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><a href=\"http://www.patreon.com/badassoftheweek\"><img src=\"../images/62557834104/zrinski-patreon.png\" alt=\"\" /></a></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Links:</p>\r\n<p>Goldstein, Ivo.&nbsp; <em>Croatia: A History</em>.&nbsp; Montreal: McGill-Queens&rsquo;s University Press, 1999.</p>\r\n<p>Petro, Peter.&nbsp; <em>A History of Slovak Literature</em>.&nbsp; Montreal: McGill-Queen&rsquo;s University Press, 1995.</p>\r\n<p>Shelton, Edward.&nbsp; <em>The Book of Battles</em>.&nbsp; London: Houlston and Wright, 1867.</p>\r\n<p>Tracy, James D.&nbsp; <em>Balkan Wars</em>.&nbsp; Lanham: Rowman &amp; Littlefield, 2016.</p>','2016-10-21','62557834104','zrinski.jpg','zrinski-small.jpg','Nikola Zrinski','The \"Slavic Leonidas\", the national hero of Croatia led 3000 men in a desperate last stand against the seemingly-endless forces of Suleiman the Magnificent.',''),('Douglas A. Munro ','October 11, 1919','September 27, 1942','Vancouver, BC, Canada','20th-century American Guardsman','<p>The motto of the United States Coast Guard is <em>Semper Paratus</em>.&nbsp; It means &ldquo;Always Ready.&rdquo;&nbsp; &nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>So on the afternoon of September 27, 1942, when a fatally-wounded Navy Coxswain named <a href=\"/index.cgi?id=52657811114\">Samuel B. Roberts</a> slammed his shot-to-shit Higgins Boat landing craft into the beach at Lunga Point Base at 20 miles an hour, it didn&rsquo;t take long for Coast Guard Signalman First Class Douglas Munro to grab his shit and spring into action.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/863639224967/munro1.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>In the wreckage on the beach, Coast Guard Petty Officer Ray Evans muscled his way out of the smashed Higgins boat as the crew of Lunga Point Base ran towards him.&nbsp; The news was dire &ndash; Evans&rsquo; boat had stayed behind to help evacuate wounded from a Marine Corps attack on Japanese positions along Guadalcanal&rsquo;s Matanikau River, but the enemy resistance had been way stronger than expected.&nbsp; Enemy troops were on the beaches and were maneuvering quickly, and if the Coast Guard didn&rsquo;t do something soon there were going to be three companies of Marines in a hell of a lot of shit.</p>\r\n<p>Within minutes, Signalman First Class Douglas Munro was slamming a belt of .30 cal into a ship-mounted Lewis machine gun, screaming full-speed-ahead towards the warzone at the head of a column of five D-Day-style Landing Craft.&nbsp; He knew the risks, he volunteered for the mission, and he was going to get those Marines the fuck out of there or die trying.</p>\r\n<p>He heard the explosions and gunshots before he could even see the landing zone.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/863639224967/munro2.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The Battle for Guadalcanal in the Fall of 1942 was America&rsquo;s first real ground warfare showdown with the Empire of Japan.&nbsp; This small sandy Solomon Island was the first stop on America Revenge Island-Hopping World Tour 1942, and capturing the Japanese airfield on the tiny South Pacific island would give the United States a good jumping-off point for airstrikes against Japanese bases all throughout the pacific.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>So, in August 1942, several hundred American warships began deploying tens of thousands of Marines to seize the island and hold it against enemy counterattacks.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/863639224967/munro3.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Douglas Munro was a 22 year-old Coast Guardsman from Cle Elum, Washington who kind of looks like Ryan Gosling in some pictures, and in the opening hours of the invasion he piloted one of the LCPs (Landing Craft, Personnel) that dropped troops into the engagement site.&nbsp; Under the pounding cover of heavy naval artillery , Munro maneuvered a 36-foot-long, 225-horsepower, shallow-draft plywood barge full ahead at 12 knots, knowing full well that the lives of 36 Marines and 3 other Coast Guard crewmen were in his hands.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Munro&rsquo;s drop site wasn&rsquo;t on Guadalcanal itself, but on the nearby island of Tulagi, which was way less heavily-defended than Guadalcanal.&nbsp; With his LCP&rsquo;s gunners laying down covering fire from two .30-cals and U.S. Navy warships bombing artillery shells overhead, he reached the beach and safely unloaded a platoon of Marines who immediately stormed ahead to secure the position.</p>\r\n<p>It would be the young Signalman&rsquo;s first taste of combat, but certainly not his last.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/863639224967/munro4.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Serving on a couple different ships off the coast of Guadalcanal, one of Munro&rsquo;s primary missions was to search-and-rescue for downed American pilots.&nbsp; Now, pulling an unconscious aviator out of a sinking aircraft is no fucking picnic to begin with, but shit got really bad for Monroe on the evening of September 20, 1942, when he was commanding a mission to locate and rescue the crew of a U.S. Navy SBD Dauntless dive bomber that had ditched in the water just off the coast of the island.&nbsp; With dusk approaching, Munro and three other men used a shallow-bottomed boat to comb the waters for the wreckage, only to be greeted by a large volume of Japanese machine gun fire from defensive positions along the coast.&nbsp; With bullets splashing up the water all around him, Munro refused to back down and give up the search &ndash; he returned fire, escaped the ambush, and continued his mission.&nbsp; He did eventually track down the smashed fuselage of the Dauntless, and even though the crew had already been rescued by a pontoon boat before Munro arrived that doesn&rsquo;t in any way diminish how fucking ballsy this guy was to push on and try to save lives even while Japanese heavy machine gun bullets were whizzing all around his fucking head.</p>\r\n<p>Munro would be cited for bravery by his commanders for this mission, but it would just be a footnote in his service record compared to what was to follow.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/863639224967/munro5.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Tulagi Island fell, but the Americans were running into some serious shit on Guadalcanal.&nbsp; Fueled by the infamous &ldquo;Tokyo Express&rdquo;, a badass fleet of Japanese transports that funneled an almost endless stream of men, weaponry, and equipment onto the island, the defenders were digging in their fucking samurai swords and fighting hard for every inch of land on the island.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>With the American attack starting to stall, a daring mission was devised by legendary Marine Corps badass <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/puller.html\">Chesty Puller</a>.&nbsp; Puller was a dude so goddamn hardcore that the first time he saw a flamethrower he angrily demanded &ldquo;Where the hell do you put the bayonet?!&rdquo;, and this guy wasn&rsquo;t about to screw around with trench warfare when he could be out there plowing a size ten steel-toed combat boot up the urethras of his enemies .&nbsp; Puller took three companies of the 7<sup>th</sup> Marines (around 500 guys) and deployed them in an amphibious assault around the north side of Guadalcanal Island.&nbsp; Douglas Munro was in command of the operation for the Coast Guard, loading the 500 Marines onto ten Higgins Boats and unloading them onto a quiet sandy beach where they encountered zero enemy resistance.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/863639224967/munro6.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The Marines deployed to the beach with no problem and the Coast Guard boats headed back to base to refuel.&nbsp; Then, suddenly, the crack of Arisaka Type 99s started ripping out through the dense jungle, coming at the Marines from seemingly ever direction at once. &nbsp;The battalion commanding officer and one company commander were killed in the initial barrage of rifle, machine gun, and mortar fire, and the jungle lit up like a fucking Vietnam movie as enemy soldiers opened up on the Marines.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Most of the Higgins Boats had reached base, but one had stayed behind &ndash; a boat piloted by Navy Coxswain Samuel B. Roberts.&nbsp; Roberts&rsquo; ship was raked with machine gun fire, wounding him multiple times, but he still opened up the throttle and sped back to base as quickly as he could.&nbsp; Despite losing massive amounts of blood, Roberts reached the USCG base, told everyone what was going on, and then died pretty much immediately.</p>\r\n<p>The Coast Guard knew that there were Marines out there, trapped in a killzone with nowhere to fall back.&nbsp; If those boys were going to get out of there alive, their only hope was the United States Coast Guard and Douglas Munro.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/863639224967/munro7.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Douglas Munro commanded the lead Higgins Boat, ripping up the wake as he sped full-throttle towards the bullet-riddled beach.&nbsp; Mortars kicked up spires of water all around him, gunshots whizzed past his head or pinged off the ship&rsquo;s hull, but he never once considered turning back.&nbsp; A Coxswain took over piloting the boat as Munro climbed over the bow, jumping into the boat&rsquo;s Lewis Machine Gun mount.&nbsp; He racked the slide, started cranking out full-auto machine gun fire, and ordered his pilot to get right up on the beach.</p>\r\n<p>(As he did this, a familiar sound of ship artillery fire came whizzing over his head from the sea, crashing into Japanese positions in the jungle.&nbsp; Chesty Puller, hearing about the enemy ambush, had commandeered the U.S. Navy Destroyer USS <em>Monssen </em>&ndash; without any authority to do so &ndash; and ordered it to open fire into the jungle.)</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/863639224967/munro8.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The Coast Guard began loading Marines back onto the Higgins Boats, but the Japanese were so close that they were machine gunning all throughout the beachhead &ndash; think of it as kind of like the D-Day landings, only the guys are getting killed while trying to <em>board </em>the boats instead of attacking off them.&nbsp; Munro saw what was going on, realized that the Marines were going to get slaughtered if he didn&rsquo;t do something, and did one of the most badass, selfless, and heroic things you can imagine &ndash;</p>\r\n<p>He ordered&nbsp; his pilot to wedge the Higgins boat onto the beach so that it blocked the enemy machine gun fire and would serve as cover for the wounded Marines boarding the evac boats.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/863639224967/munro9.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Still ripping off machine gun fire in wide sweeping arcs that sliced apart the jungle before him, Douglas Munro voluntarily made himself the biggest (and only) target the Japanese had to shoot at.&nbsp; Firing non-stop rounds from the heavy machine gun, Munro pinned down any potential assaults, and his ship blocked thousands of enemy rounds that were headed towards the evacuating Marines.&nbsp; Both his pilot and co-pilot were wounded, and Munro was shot multiple times, including a round in the head &ndash; but none of it stopped him from manning his weapon and holding back the enemy and buying time for his men.</p>\r\n<p>Douglas Munro and his crew kept fighting until every single man had been evacuated from that beach.&nbsp; As the bullet-riddled Higgins boat finally began to pull back, the last ship to leave the fight, Munro&rsquo;s last words to his pilot were &ldquo;Did they all get off?&rdquo;&nbsp; When he heard they had, he smiled, closed his eyes, and passed away.&nbsp; He was two weeks from his 23<sup>rd</sup> birthday.</p>\r\n<p>Since its inception in 1790, the United States Coast Guard has had an active role in every single war in American history, from the Revolution right up until today.&nbsp; Despite heroic Guardsmen saving countless lives, undertaking thousands of dangerous missions across every ocean on earth, and routinely risking their own safety to protect the lives of others, in the 226-year history of the Coast Guard the only serviceman to receive the Medal of Honor for heroism under fire was Signalman First Class Douglas Albert Munro.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/863639224967/munro10.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /><br /><a href=\"http://www.patreon.com/badassoftheweek\"><img src=\"../images/863639224967/patreon.png\" alt=\"\" /></a></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Links:</p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.uscg.mil/history/articles/Munro.asp\">U.S. Coast Guard Official Website</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.businessinsider.com/the-only-us-coast-guard-member-to-ever-win-a-medal-of-honor-2015-7\">Business Insider</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.douglasmunro.com/\">DouglasMunro.com</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://coastguard.dodlive.mil/2012/09/the-legacy-of-signalman-1st-class-douglas-munro/\">The Legacy of Douglas Munro</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.uscg.mil/history/people/MunroDougUSNrelease.pdf\">Official Press Release from 1942</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Albert_Munro\">Wikipedia</a></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>','2016-10-28','863639224967','munro.jpg','munro-small.jpg','Douglas Munro','The only U.S. Coast Guardsman to ever receive the Medal of Honor.',''),('Joseph R. Beyrle','August 25, 1923','December 12, 2004','Muskegon, MI, USA','20th-century American Soldier','<p>Jesus Christ, people, I take a little personal time and turn this site into Badass of the Month for a little while and I&rsquo;m already randomly encountering fucking mainstream non-Onion media articles debating the pros and cons of American Fascism and seeing non-ironic YouTube comments from wannabe suburban Hitlerjungend keyboard warriors whining that the latest video game trailer is &ldquo;anti-Nazi propaganda&rdquo;?&nbsp; And this isn&rsquo;t even that &ldquo;I disagree with this politician so they&rsquo;re Hitler&rdquo; bullshit that&rsquo;s been a built-in feature of virtually every over-heated Facebook comment flame war since the dawn of the fire emoji, but I&rsquo;m talking about actual, real-life, goose-stepping National Socialism shit going down here on American soil. &nbsp;Excuse me, but <em>what the fuck</em>?</p>\r\n<p>News flash for all of you who lost your goddamn minds in the past six months &ndash; <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ft7kkXO98c\">Nazis suck ass</a>.&nbsp; This is motherfucking America, the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, and I shouldn&rsquo;t have to go around reminding you that &ldquo;Nazi Punks Fuck Off&rdquo; is pretty much the only phrase in recorded history that <a href=\"http://hitlergettingpunched.blogspot.com/2011/08/more-of-same-but-colorful.html\">Captain America</a>, <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bH9l1Cko0Ps\">George S. Patton</a>, and <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxd8ml-n5NE\">The Dead Kennedys</a> have ever completely agreed upon without even the slightest bit of argument &ndash; so clearly there has to be something tangible behind that sentiment.&nbsp; I mean, holy shit, if everyone from <a href=\"http://hitlergettingpunched.blogspot.com/search/label/Stalin%20Punching%20Hitler%20-%20WITH%20FISTS\">Josef Stalin</a> to <a href=\"http://hitlergettingpunched.blogspot.com/search/label/Superman%20Planning%20to%20Punch%20Hitler\">Superman</a> can agree on the fact that National Socialism needs to be tomahawk-slammed into a flaming garbage can by Thomas Jefferson&rsquo;s Poltergeist then maybe &ndash; <em>just fucking maybe &ndash; </em>we can all locate our balls, agree shove all this PC &ldquo;let&rsquo;s consider all the viewpoints, even the batshit insane ones&rdquo; bullshit into a wood chipper, grab <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6X9Yj5ct88\">Super Joe</a>&rsquo;s bazooka, kick Hans Gruber off Nakatomi Plaza one more time, and then parachute back into Reality on a Stars and Stripes canopy while belting out <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPXwkWVEIIw\">In the Mood</a> or whatever the fuck weird big band shit our grandparents used to hum while they were <em>fearlessly motherfucking charging head-first through knee-deep snow into a hail of Nazi machine gun bullet</em>s.&nbsp; That&rsquo;s the real American legacy here &ndash; we are motherfucking <a href=\"https://www.amazon.com/Back-World-War-Champs-Unisex-Adult/dp/B00ILIGEIU/ref=pd_sbs_193_3?_encoding=UTF8&amp;psc=1&amp;refRID=4K9MJ47JK61GH4BJH1E0\">Back-to-Back World War Champs</a> (three-peat if you want to count the Cold War), and now you&rsquo;re actually going to expect me to sit around like a dipshit and have some degree of sympathy for a bunch of genocidal crybaby anti-Democracy whackjobs who, by the sheer definition of their ideology, want to redact basically every single line of the fucking Bill of Rights and rub their balls on the Constitution?&nbsp; I&rsquo;d rather get Lasik surgery from the Death Star laser or have King Kong tattoo the First Amendment on my spine using the needle on the tip of the Empire State Building.&nbsp; Fuck that, and fuck Nazis.</p>\r\n<p>So, to that end, here&rsquo;s an article about a dude who not only kicked Fascist balls for the U.S. of A., but a man who hated those assholes so bad that even after he got captured he broke out of his POW camp, joined up with the Soviet Red Army, and became the only man in World War II to kill Nazis while wearing two different uniforms.</p>\r\n<p>It&rsquo;s the story of United States Army Paratrooper Joe Beyrle, Staff Sergeant of the 82nd Airborne Division and, later, Private of the Soviet First Guards Tank Army.&nbsp; This is his mugshot from the POW camp.&nbsp; It is sure as shit not the mugshot of a man who would sit politely and let you &ldquo;well, actually&rdquo; his ass about the subtle misunderstood intricacies of National Socialist ideology.&nbsp; That&rsquo;s for damn sure.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/98898687205/beyrle1.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>When the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor went down exactly 75 years ago yesterday (<a href=\"https://www.ahctvgo.com/pearl-harbor-the-heroes-who-fought-back/pearl-harbor-the-heroes-who-fought-back/\">I was on a documentary about this recently</a>!), Joseph Beyrle was a high school senior in Muskegon, Michigan.&nbsp; He was a big, strong, asskicking motherfucker who had already been offered a full-ride scholarship to play baseball at Notre Dame, but when a bunch of Imperialist assholes decided to screw with the American way of life he turned down the scholarship, enlisted in the Army, and immediately volunteered for the toughest group of bastards the Army had to offer &ndash; the Parachute Infantry.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>After a brutal accelerated training regimen, exhausting PT in the blistering heat, extended forced marches, grueling full-kit runs up Currahee mountain, and both British and American Jump School, Beyrle was in England by 1943 and ready to start stomping Fascist guts by falling on them from very high altitudes.&nbsp; D-Day was still a few months away, but Staff Sergeant Beyrle didn&rsquo;t want to wait that long, so he volunteered for an incredibly dangerous series of missions &ndash; basically, the OSS would load him up with a backpack full of gold and he&rsquo;d parachute in the France in the middle of the night, where he&rsquo;d get picked up by the <a href=\"/index.cgi?id=7164420669\">French Resistance</a>, give them the gold, and then they&rsquo;d shuttle him around for a few days until he was able to catch a ride back to England.</p>\r\n<p>This is hard core deep cover spy shit behind enemy lines, where failure would probably result in summary execution.&nbsp; He pulled it off without a hitch.</p>\r\n<p>Then he went back and did that shit a second time.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/98898687205/beyrle2.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Joe Beyrle had already hefted a carbine on French soil twice when the word finally came down that it was time to liberate the European continent from the Fascist scourge.&nbsp; On the pitch-black night of June 5, 1944, Beyrle and the 101<sup>st</sup> Airborne Division flew in on their dangerous mission to land behind enemy lines, cut bridges and power supplies, and soften up defenses for the men who were going to land on Utah Beach at dawn.&nbsp; With planes blowing up around him, flak explosions rocking his aircraft, and tracer fire from anti-aircraft cannons snaking around the sky in every direction, Joe Beyrle jumped out of a goddamn airplane to death-from-above the Germans with his massive raging Freedom-boner.</p>\r\n<p>Unfortunately, he landed on the roof of this church at Come du Mond.&nbsp; And, oh yeah, there was a fucking Nazi sniper hiding in the steeple, and that asshole was taking potshots at Beyrle&rsquo;s parachute during the entire descent.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/98898687205/beyrle31.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>With bullets planking off the roof around him, in pitch darkness, with his parachute still spread out around him, Joe Beyrle shimmied down off the roof, slammed a mag into his M1 Carbine, and started out on a mission so badass that when you visit the church at Come du Mond today you can see a plaque that looks like this:</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/98898687205/beyrle4.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Beyrle was a fucking Army of One back before that became Branding&trade;.&nbsp; Completely alone, with no real idea where the rest of his unit was, he killed a few Nazis, found the Come du Mond power substation, blew it up with thermite, ambushed a full squad of German infantry by chucking grenades at them, and then headed off to blow up a bridge and prevent the Nazis from sending reinforcements to Utah Beach.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Unfortunately, he crawled through a hedgerow and fell head-first into a German machine gun nest.&nbsp; He looked up to see ten guys <em>pointing </em><em><a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP_40\">Schmeissers</a> at him.&nbsp; Rather than try to <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/funk.html\">Funk</a> it, he surrendered.</em></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/98898687205/beyrle5.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The Germans marched Beyle deeper into France, towards a POW holding area, when suddenly explosions started ripping out around them everywhere &ndash; either German artillery or American aircraft, it was tough to tell, but both Germans and American POWs were getting blown up by it and it sucked for everyone.&nbsp; Beyrle took shrapnel in his ass and was blown off his feet and into a ditch, but rather than lay there and cry about it he used to opportunity to escape.&nbsp; He evaded capture for another 12 hours behind enemy lines before they caught him again.</p>\r\n<p>This time they put him in a truck and drove it towards St. Lo., but the truck was strafed by Allied aircraft.&nbsp; Beyrle tried to escape again, was caught, was taken to St. Lo., and then the Americans bombed St. Lo all night long and Beyrle was lucky to survive it.</p>\r\n<p>Now, at various points I&rsquo;m going to quote Sgt. Beyrle here, because they simply don&rsquo;t make guys like this anymore.&nbsp; If you want to read his full first-person account, there&rsquo;s a link to it at the bottom.</p>\r\n<p><em>I was interrogated 20-24 hours a day, they were trying to get all the usual questioned answered. \"Why me, a German, was I fighting for the Jews Roosevelt and Morganthau against my own people?\" Sometime during the questioning&nbsp; I called a German officer a \"SOB\" and woke up several days later in a hospital with a big headache and a bashed head and later I was taken back to the monastery.</em></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/98898687205/beyrle6.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>For the next three months Beyrle was starved, beaten, interrogated, and moved to a number of different camps.&nbsp; He&rsquo;d work during the day, survive Allied bombings at night, and weather hunger, disease, and exhaustion constantly.&nbsp; At one point he was locked in a boxcar for a week with 50 other guys.&nbsp; The train was then strafed by Allied planes, and he was lucky to survive that (it seems to be a recurring thing that this dude kept almost getting teamkilled by his own dudes).&nbsp; By September of &rsquo;44 he was in Poland, at a Russian POW camp with about 12,000 Russian men and women POWs.</p>\r\n<p>Naturally, he immediately began planning his escape.</p>\r\n<p>On a cold night in November of 1944, Joe Beyrle and 3 other Americans cut through the barbed wire in the camp and began their escape South.&nbsp; They snuck into a railway station, hopped a train car headed for Poland, and planned to meet up with the Red Army as it pushed through the region.</p>\r\n<p>Unfortunately, they got on the wrong train, and ended up in fucking Berlin.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/98898687205/beyrle7.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>One thing you never hear much about is that there were a large number of Germans who fucking hated Hitler, and they&rsquo;d organized a German Underground Resistance that would help the Allies during the war.&nbsp; Beyrle and the Americans, still in their POW uniforms, linked up with the resistance, and spent nearly a week hiding from the authorities and attempting to contact Allied Command.</p>\r\n<p>The Gestapo found them first.</p>\r\n<p><em>In the next 7 to 10 days we found out everything we had heard about the Gestapo was true. We were interrogated, tortured, kicked, knocked around, walked on, hung up by our arms backwards, hit with whips, clubs, and rifle butts. When you thought they could do no more, they would think of other ways to torture you. When you would slip into semi-consciousness, they would start again.</em></p>\r\n<p>(Still think this sounds like a viable form of government?)</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/98898687205/beyrle8.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>After about a week the Gestapo turned Beyrle over to the German Army, and they put him back in the prison camp at <em>Stalag Luft III</em> &ndash; where he was sentenced to spend 30 days in a 4-by-5 pine box as punishment for escaping.&nbsp; Luckily he only served 7 days in a box so small he couldn&rsquo;t lay down, but that was only because a Red Cross operative from Geneva intervened on his behalf.</p>\r\n<p>It took months for Beyrle to get his strength back, but, as soon as he did, you could be goddamn sure that he was going to make another run for it.&nbsp; With his 3 buddies, Beyrle broke through a wall and made a mad dash for freedom &ndash; the Nazis machine gunned all 3 of Beyrle&rsquo;s friends to death as they ran for it, but Beyrle got away &ndash; only to hear the faint barking of the German Shepherds the Nazis sent to hunt him down.</p>\r\n<p>So, in the freezing ass motherfucking cold of Poland in January, Sgt. Beyrle dove into a frozen river and followed it for a couple miles East to throw off the trail of the dogs.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/98898687205/beyrle9.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Somehow, miraculously, after not being shot, devoured by hounds, or freezing to death, Joseph Beyrle reached Soviet lines.&nbsp; He met up with the First Guards Tank Army, and was greeted by Battalion Commander <a href=\"http://rarehistoricalphotos.com/aleksandra-samusenko-tank-officer-1943/\">Aleksandra Samusenko</a>, a woman who holds the distinction of being the only female tank commander of World War II.&nbsp; Even though he spoke very little Russian, Beyrle convinced Samusenko to let him join up, so she gave him a PPSH-41 submachine gun, a few drums of ammunition, and told him what their next objective was:</p>\r\n<p>He was about to fucking liberate the POW camp he had just escaped from.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/98898687205/beyrle10.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The Red Army smashed the POW camp after a short but bloody fight, and Beyrle had the honor of raiding the camp office and stealing back the POW photo the Germans had snapped when they first captured him.&nbsp; He continued to fight through the Eastern Front for a couple months, kicking ass in battles across Poland, but when a Stuka dive bomber blew up the tank Beyrle was riding on he ended up in a Russian field hospital.</p>\r\n<p>When word came down that there was a U.S. POW in a Red Army uniform, things got kind of crazy.&nbsp; Beyrle met <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/index.cgi?id=18699086166\">Zhukov</a>, was sent back to Moscow, and linked up with the U.S. Embassy there.&nbsp; Unfortunately, when Beyrle finally met a friendly American face after nearly a year of getting his ass kicked behind enemy lines, it turned out that there was yet another problem:</p>\r\n<p>The U.S. Ambassador told him that Joseph R. Beyrle was declared KIA on June 10, 1944.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/98898687205/beyrle11.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The Ambassador was a little concerned that Beryle was lying about his identity and may have been a German spy, and Beyrle was shipped around to Odessa, Egypt, and Italy, before finally being cleared and returning home on April 11, 1945.&nbsp; His parents were pretty surprised and happy to see him, mostly because they thought he&rsquo;d been dead for ten months.</p>\r\n<p>Joe Beyrle was given the Purple Heart, and was honored with awards by Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin at a ceremony in the 1990s &ndash; where he was also given a badass custom AK-47 by the friggin&rsquo; dude who invented the AK-47.&nbsp; Beyrle&rsquo;s son would go on to be the U.S. Ambassador to Russia under G.W. Bush and Obama.</p>\r\n<p>I&rsquo;ll end this the way he ends his autobiography, because it&rsquo;s amazing:</p>\r\n<p><em>My funeral Mass was held at St. Joseph\'s Church in Muskegon by Father Stratz on September 17, 1944. My wife and I were married in the same church on September 14, 1946, by Father Stratz. We are now the parents of a daughter and two sons and have seven grandchildren.</em></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/98898687205/beyrle121.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><a href=\"http://www.patreon.com/badassoftheweek\"><img src=\"../images/98898687205/beyrle-patreon1.png\" alt=\"\" /></a></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Links:</p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://old.506infantry.org/stories/beyrle_his.htm\">Joe Beyrle&rsquo;s Story in His Own Words</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://militarywiz.tumblr.com/post/113136942944/joe-beyrle-an-american-in-the-red-army\">An American in the Red Army</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/jrbeyrle.htm\">Arlington National Cemetery</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"https://www.army.mil/article/127489\">Army.mil</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A240-2004Dec14.html\">Washington Post</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"https://www.warhistoryonline.com/featured/incredible-story-joseph-beyrle-american-fight-u-s-russian-army-wwii.html\">War History Online</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=127286866\">NPR</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Beyrle\">Wikipedia</a></p>','2016-12-09','98898687205','beyrle.jpg','beyrle-small.jpg','Joe Beyrle','After escaping a Nazi POW camp, this American Paratrooper joined up with the Red Army and continued kicking Fascist ass.','');

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