('Basil Plumley','January 1, 1920','October 10, 2012','Shady Spring, WV, USA','20th-century American Soldier','<p>Command Sergeant Major Basil Plumley of the United States Army passed away almost exactly one month ago today. In his 50+ years of service to the American military both in a combat and civilian role, he was decorated 40 times for bravery by at least five different countries, fought in three continent-spanning wars against global Fascism and Communism, participated in a couple dozen of the bloodiest and most vicious battles this country has ever seen, and once pulled out his .45-caliber Colt 1911 service pistol and led a bayonet charge through a bullet-strewn jungle against a force of AK-47-toting soldiers that outnumbered him 5-to-1.</p>\r\n<p>I figure Veteran\'s Day weekend is as good a time as any to mention him on this website.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/plumley1.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>This will make him the second <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/basil.html\">Basil</a> I\'ve posted on this site in as many months,<br />which it actually causing me to reconsider the badassitude of the name Basil.<br />So, to commemorate that, here\'s a pic of Basil Rathbone.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Basil Plumley was born in Blue Jay, West Virginia on New Years\' Day 1920. One of six children of a hard-working WVA coal miner (Derek Zoolander-style), Plumley was a big, strong, no-bullshit kid who dropped out of high school to be a truck driver, which is about as tough a job as you can get. Luckily for America, the unholy dickishness of Adolph Hitler and his goose-stepping Fascist lackeys eventually forced Basil to reconsider his career path, and in 1942, at the height of World War II, Plumley quit his job, put his feet in a pair of size 12 combat boots, and enlisted in the United States Army, volunteering to serve as an air assault paratrooper in the elite 82nd Airborne Division.</p>\r\n<p>As a Private in the 320th Glider Field Artillery Battalion, it\'s important to note that even though Plumley was in the 82nd Airborne his WWII combat drops didn\'t involve him jumping out of airplanes. Instead, he was deployed, as the name might imply, in gliders &ndash; basically gigantic, slow-moving plane-shaped wooden boxes with no engines that may as well have had bulls-eyes painted on the sides to help the German gunners shoot them down more easily. Gliders were deployed like this &ndash; you\'d take a tiny little metal cable, tie one end to the front of the glider and the other end to the back of a B-24 bomber, then the bomber would just drag this thing through the sky until they got over the landing zone. If you got to the LZ without the cable snapping mid-flight (this was a fairly common occurrence), the bomber pilot would release the cable on his plane, and the glider pilot then had to hope that the metal cord didn\'t whip around and cut his wooden aircraft in half (this also happened). Once detached, the pilot would slowly glide to earth while anti-aircraft fire ripped up the skies around it, and then attempt to crash land it in a small field without killing everyone inside. Then the guys inside would deploy through one of three doors, hopefully without people shooting machine guns at them while doing so. You can kind of think of Gliders as being the airborne version of those landing boats from D-Day, only not bulletproof and without an engine or the ability to float and if it hit a piece of barbed wire the entire thing could flip upside down and everyone on board would be crushed by sixteen tons of field artillery.</p>\r\n<p>Ah, good times.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/plumley2.bmp\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>Glider troops.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Despite the possibility of dying in a hundred gruesome horrific ways without even getting off the aircraft, Basil Plumley did his duty, fighting in some of WWII\'s most brutal battles. In 1943 he deployed in Sicily, helping to capture the island from the Nazis. After that, he landed in Salerno on mainland Italy, where in support of the 325th Glider Infantry Regiment he landed 15 miles from where he was supposed to be, then climbed a 4,000-foot mountain, relieved a group of Army Rangers, then held out against a coordinated German infantry and artillery attack for a couple days. At D-Day he landed behind enemy lines in Normandy and attacked the town of St. Mere-Eglise &ndash; a critical city along the highway the Germans were going to use to counterattack the forces landing at Omaha and Utah Beaches &ndash; and smashed it with howtizers until every last Nazi was dead. After that he participated in the largest airborne combat operation in human history &ndash; Operation Market Garden &ndash; where he landed behind German lines in the Netherlands and helped the 82nd captured the bridges at Nijmegen. Later on in the war he dropped into the Ardennes Forest during the Battle of the Bulge, taking on German Tiger tanks with a bazooka and a howitzer, then fought in the Rhineland and participated in the occupation of Berlin in 1945.</p>\r\n<p>All of that shit combined would be enough to get someone listed as a badass on this website, but for Plumley it\'s like the first fucking paragraph in his obituary. After WWII, Plumley decided he really fucking loved the Army, so he decided to do it until some bastard had the balls to shoot him to death. This never happened, which explains why, despite recieving four wounds in action during his 30-year career, this hardcore bullet-proof warrior still lived to be 92 years old.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/plumley3.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>The 320th in the Ardennes, December 1944.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Sergeant Plumley\'s next stop was Korea, when a bunch of Chinese and North Korean assholes thought it would be awesome to charge across the 38th parallel and force-feed a heaping pile of Communism to a bunch of Democracy-loving Koreans who weren\'t really all that interested in choking down a fistful of Marxism. Serving in the 187th Airborne Regimental Combat Team, part of the 101st Airborne, Plumley received three campaign stars for blowing the shit out of anyone who deserved it. Fighting in the same unit as <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/speirs.html\">Ron Speirs</a> (I couldn\'t find anything indicating that they knew each other), Plumley dropped behind North Korean lines during Operation Tomahawk, fought in the Yongju and Kaesong campaigns, and participated in the ultra-bloody Battle of Porkchop Hill in 1953, when he and a badly-outnumbered group of his closest friends held out against massive artillery barrages and ridiculously-gigantic human wave attacks by two full-strength divisions of Chinese and North Korean infantry, throwing the enemy back with hand-to-hand combat, bayonet charges, and .45 automatics to the dome at point-blank range while Chinese and Soviet-made 81mm mortar shells turned the sky red above them and showered soldiers on both sides with white-hot shrapnel.</p>\r\n<p>But, amazingly, none of this is what Basil Plumley is famous for either.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/plumley4.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>American soldier on Porkchop Hill.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>No, despite all of this amazing shit, what Basil Plumley will forever be remembered for is his actions in Ia Drang Valley during the Vietnam War, when he and a badly-outnumbered force of pinned-down American troops somehow held out despite being ambushed by two full regiments of battle-hardened enemy soldiers.</p>\r\n<p>Sergeant Major Basil Plumley was a twenty-three year infantry veteran of two wars and countless battle in November 1965, when, as the senior non-commissioned officer of the 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Air Cavalry Division, he was deployed by helicopter deep behind enemy lines into Vietnam\'s Ia Drang Valley. Known to his men as \"Old Iron Jaw\" thanks to his refusal to put up with bullshit from anyone (especially the men in his command) at Ia Drang Sergeant Major Plumley suddenly found himself in the middle of the first &ndash; and one of the bloodiest &ndash; battles of the Vietnam War.</p>\r\n<p>The 7th Cav had been deployed to recon enemy troop movements along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. What the 450 American soldiers found shortly after landing was that they were completely fucking surrounded by 2,000 North Vietnamese Army regulars who had been forged into ferocious killing machines thanks to nearly a decade of combat experience kicking the shit out of the French and throwing them out of their country.</p>\r\n<p>This was bad.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/plumley5.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>Ia Drang.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Plumley was one of the first American boots on the ground in Ia Drang, and when the bullets started flying at him and his troops from every direction he immediately went into hardcore badass twenty-year vet mode, pulled out his trusty .45 (he refused to use the M-16 at first because after two decades with wood-and-steel M1s and M14 he thought the M-16 was a bullshit plastic piece of crap he could have cracked in half over his knee), opened fire on the enemy, and started charging up and down the battle lines getting his men organized in a defensive perimeter. For the next four days Plumley and his men held Landing Zone X-Ray, one of the only places where guys like <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/crandall.html\">Bruce Crandall</a> could land their choppers to extract wounded men, pumping up his troops, organizing defenses, and capping anyone stupid enough to be within range of his pistol.</p>\r\n<p>One good example of how fearless and hardcore this guy was during Ia Drang comes from Joseph Galloway, a civilian photographer who had been attached to help document the war. During one stretch of the fighting, a shitload of mortars and AK-47 fire started ripping up the jungle all around him, so Galloway understandable dove for cover and kept his head down as automatic weapons fire zipped past him from every direction. As he was laying there, he felt a sharp kick to the ribs from a steel-toed boot. He looked up to see Basil Plumley, standing tall like Colonel Kilgore, oblivious to danger. Plumley just yelled, \"You can\'t take no pictures lying on the ground, sonny!\"</p>\r\n<p>Later on in the battle Plumley found Galloway and handed him an M-16 and three mags of ammunition. Galloway said he was a photographer &ndash; a noncombatant. Plumely told him, \"Ain\'t no such thing, boy,\" and walked away.</p>\r\n<p>Yet another time, during a night attack, U.S. planes started dropping supplies with flares attached to the parachutes so the troops could see them. When one parachute was shot by the NVA, the flare landed in a box of spare ammunition, so Plumley just walked over there, grabbed the flare before it set off the entire box of ammo, threw it off into the forest like he didn\'t even give a shit, then went right back to the battle.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/plumley6.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The men of the 7th Cavalry held out valiantly, but ultimately they were still outnumbered five-to-one, deep in enemy territory, and completely surrounded by troops with heavy weapons pointed right at them, and casualties were piling up. But Plumley didn\'t give a shit. He wasn\'t about to fucking back down. The unit\'s commanding officer, Hal Moore, vividly recalls in his book <em>We Were Soldiers Once&hellip; and Young</em> that he was standing there with Plumley, looking at the piles of wounded and the untenable position they were in, and he was like, \"Jesus Christ, it\'s <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/crazyhorse.html\">Little Bighorn</a> all over again!\"</p>\r\n<p>Plumely just looked at him, no emotion at all, and said, \"Custer was a pussy. You ain\'t.\"</p>\r\n<p>That night, as AK-47 fire ripped up the jungle, the order went down the American battle line &ndash; fix bayonets. When some of the troops were like, \"what the fuck is a bayonet?\", Plumley got pissed. Screaming over the din of mortars and machine guns, Plumley drew his pistol and said something to the effect of \"You sons of bitches, take that pointy fucking thing you use to open your c-rations, stick it to the end of your rifle, and follow me!\"</p>\r\n<p>I read an interview with Plumley where he discusses what happened next. All he says is this: \"We fixed bayonets. We moved out. Killed about twenty-seven or twenty-eight. That was it.\"</p>\r\n<p>It was in a book on interviews of soldiers. Most guys\' interviews were between 4 and 10 pages. His was 3 paragraphs.</p>\r\n<p>What we do know is that alongside men like <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/rescorla.html\">Rick Rescorla</a>, Basil Plumley and the 500 surviving members of the 7th Cavalry bayonet charged a force of over 2,000 NVA troops and drove them back in hand-to-hand combat. The attack didn\'t defeat the NVA, but it did buy the 7th enough time to evacuate Ia Drang, and their victory saved the lives of the entire command. Plumley was one of the last men to leave the valley.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/plumley7.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>\"Sam Elliott underplayed him. He was actually tougher than that.<br />He was gruff, monosyllabic, an absolute terror when it came to enforcing standards of training.&rdquo;<br /><br />- Joseph Galloway</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Plumley served through the rest of the war and retired from the Army in 1974 as a Command Sergeant Major, which is one of the highest NCO ranks in the military. He then spent the next 15 years working as a civilian at the hospital on the grounds of Fort Benning, where he mentored young soldiers, set up the Army Infantry Museum, and continued to utterly terrify grown men who hadn\'t served under him for 20 years. He died on October 10, 2010, at the age of 92, passing away just 4 months after his wife of 62 years. During his 32 year military career he\'d fought in 3threewars and received 40 decorations, including two Silver Stars, two Bronze Stars, three Presidential Unit Citations, three Combat Infantryman\'s Badges, five Master Parachutist Badges, four Purple Hearts, eight Air Medals, the Legion of Merit, Croix de Guerres from both France and Belgium, the Dutch Order of Orange, and three Gallantry Crosses from the Republic of Vietnam.</p>\r\n<p>He\'s one of the toughest and most decorated soldiers this country ever produced.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/plumley8.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>\"To this day, there are veterans of the 1/7 CAV who are convinced that God may look like CSM Plumley,<br />but HE is not nearly as tough as the Sergeant Major on sins small or large.\"<br /><br />- Excerpt from his Army Times obituary</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Links:</span><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.armytimes.com/news/2012/10/ap-basil-plumley-veteran-3-wars-dies-101012/\">Army Times Obit</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/16/us/basil-l-plumley-decorated-army-veteran-dies-at-92.html\">NYTimes Obit</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://army.togetherweserved.com/army/servlet/tws.webapp.WebApp?cmd=ShadowBoxProfile&amp;type=Person&amp;ID=221095\">Together We Served</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.ww2-airborne.us/units/325/325.html\">The 325th Glider Regiment</a></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Sources:</span><br /><br /><span> Moore, Hal and Joseph Galloway. <em>We Were Soldiers Once&hellip; And Young.</em>. Random House, 2004.<br /><br /> Steinman, Ron. <em>The Soldiers\' Story</em>. Barnes &amp; Noble Publishing, 2000. </span></p>','2012-11-09','179050731813','plumley.jpeg','plumley-small.jpeg','Basil Plumley','35-year Army veteran of three wars, decorated 40 times for bravery.','\"Gentlemen, prepare to defend yourselves.\"'),('Operation Chavin de Huantar','December 17, 1996','April 22, 1997','Lima, Peru','20th-century Peruvian Soldier','<p>On the evening of December 17, 1996, over five hundred of Peru\'s senior diplomats, military officers, and government officials got together at the Japanese Ambassador\'s lavish residence in Lima to play Twister, drink pisco sours and shotgun cans of cheap sake in celebration of the Japanese Emperor Akihito\'s 63rd birthday. They were expecting to get tore up, hit on some cute chicks, maybe network with other senior VIPs and rap moguls or whatever, then go home and get their socks and ties together for work the next day. They weren\'t expecting to find themselves in the middle of a worldwide hostage crisis that would result in a badass special forces commando operation so flamingly over-the-top hardcore it would make Tom Clancy pop a boner strong enough to tear a hole in the hull of a <em>Nimitz</em>-class aircraft carrier.</p>\r\n<p>Shortly after dark, just as the party was getting good, a well-trained, highly-efficient, ultra-ruthless group of 14 heavily-armed Peruvian terrorists scaled the walls surrounding the compound, snuck past the 50+ armed bodyguards stationed outside, evaded the 10+ security guys inside the building itself, and forced their way in, interrupting the phat beats and rousing dinner conversation with a few hundred staccato bursts of automatic weapons fire from their Kalashnikov AKM and AK-47 assault rifles. Everyone hit the deck, screaming for their lives while the terrorists rounded up all 500 guests, barricaded themselves inside the two-story residence building, and threatened to waste them all with hand grenades if they tried anything stupid. The Lima, Peru SWAT team rolled up on the scene but were driven back by a hail of automatic weapons fire that wounded a couple officers. When the SWAT guys tried to launch tear gas through the windows, the terrorists pulled out goddamned gas masks and kept firing. They\'d brought plenty of ammunition with them, and they weren\'t afraid to use it.</p>\r\n<p>Things just got real.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/chavin1.gif\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The next morning, the flag of the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (which is acronym-ized MRTA because in Spanish you\'re allowed to move letters around however you want) was flying high above the Japanese Ambassador\'s residence, and the groups slogans were posted all around the exterior of the building. Now, Peru is no stranger to terrorist assclowns, and the MRTA wasn\'t just some hack-job puny little organization &ndash; these were hardened bastards with a big-time chip on their shoulder and no compunctions about hacking up civilians and cops with machetes and then booby-trapping their corpses with live grenades so they can blow up EMTs and paramedics and small woodland creatures. In the ten years prior to this event, this hardcore Marxist terror group had launched dozens of attacks against the government, police, and civilians, including one time in July 1985 when they assaulted 7 police stations in a single day and another time when they shot up a bunch of radio stations and forced them to play MRTA propaganda and previously-unreleased Tupac albums. They were ruthless, dedicated, and had exhibited exactly zero interest in showing mercy to anyone.</p>\r\n<p>Their commander was Nestor Cerpa &ndash; a stone-cold asshole who six months earlier shot up a truck full of Peruvian soldiers, filled the truck up with dynamite, and then set it off in the center of the town of Chimbote &ndash; and when he got on the phone with the Peruvian government demanding the release of 170 incarcerated members of the MRTA and the Shining Path, everyone with two brain cells to rub together knew if the government didn\'t do something soon there would be lots and lots of dead hostages inside that building in a fairly short period of time.</p>\r\n<p>Unfortunately for Cerpa, it turns out that Peru does not negotiate with terrorists. They send guys like this to rip them a new asshole:</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/chavin2.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The situation wasn\'t good. The residence was basically a fortress &ndash; a two-story stone structure with bomb-proof doors positioned strategically in the middle of a wide-open courtyard surrounded by a high wall. Even if you were able to get o team over the wall without being spotted by a guard (a very low-probability event), the MRTA set booby traps throughout the house and planted goddamned land mines in the courtyard. Any troops approaching the building from the ground would have to scale a wall, move through an open, land-mined killzone without any cover whatsoever, then find a way to actually enter the structure, and oh yeah they\'d also have to do all that in about the time it takes a person to pull the pin on a hand grenade and throw it into a room full of hostages. Aerial insertion was impossible, since the terrorists would certainly open fire on the hostages at the first sound of military helicopters approaching.</p>\r\n<p>So the Peruvian military command came up with a plan &ndash; they wouldn\'t do either. They\'d tunnel underneath the structure and assault it up through the floor like the Locust in <em>Gears of War</em>.</p>\r\n<p>Huh?</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/chavin3a.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Planning the mission would take time. The Peruvian government refused to release the terrorist prisoners, but they did humor Nestor Cerpa a little, carrying out half-assed negotiations over the course of the next four months that awesomely-enough convinced the MRTA to release all but 72 of their hostages. Meanwhile, Peru assembled 140 of their toughest warriors &ndash; they didn\'t have a dedicated counter-terrorism unit, so they instead hand-selected badasses from the National Police, SWAT, the Army, Navy and Air Force, taking guys who had cut their teeth fighting the Ecuadorians in the Cenepa War a year earlier. These men were moved to a secret military base, where they spent the four months training for this operation on a <em>full-scale replica of the Japanese Ambassador\'s residence</em> they\'d constructed from scratch using blueprints and photographs. To get further intel, the Peru Intelligence Service snuck microphones and cameras into the building, concealing them in water bottles and board games to be handed out to the hostages. Since many of the hostages were high-ranking military generals and naval admirals, they knew exactly what was going on and positioned the stuff in places where it would do the most good. Furthermore, the Peruvians sent in intelligence officers disguised as news reporters to conduct fake interviews with the terrorists, using Cerpa\'s own vanity and narcissism to gain as much info as they could on what the hell was going down inside the crisis zone.</p>\r\n<p>While all this was going on, miners and engineers from across Peru were brought in to dig nine lighted, ventilated, sound-proof tunnels underneath the grounds of the residency. The police blasted loud music and drove heavy trucks by to conceal the sound of the noise, but still Cerpa and the MRTA suspected nothing out of the ordinary. Nobody &ndash; from the international media covering the crisis to the terrorists inside the building &ndash; thought Peru had the balls to assault the residence.</p>\r\n<p>They did.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/chavin3.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>Peruvian Commando training.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The plan was simple, if not completely insane &ndash; 70 cops and snipers would maintain a perimeter around the outside of the wall, while the other 70 commandos would go through nine tunnels and attack the building from different angles. A major hole would be blown through the floor of the living room, and that team would enter, clear the first floor, then move up. While all that was going on, a second team would come up through a different tunnel with a pair of ladders, enter the second floor windows in the rear of the building, and get to the hostages. Once the firing commenced, a third team would go over the wall and assault right through the front door, then help bring the hostages out of there. Orders were to shoot terrorists on sight. Get to the hostages before any of those terrorist Commie bastards can turn an AK-47 their direction.</p>\r\n<p>On the night of April 21, 1996, three teams of Peruvian commandos sat in complete silence, painted their faces green and black, checked the magazines and silencers on their SMGs, strapped in their bullet-proof vests, and made their way into the tunnels. Their commander gave them one final order: It is strictly forbidden for you to die on me. You are going to be in serious trouble if you die on me.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/chavin5.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<table style=\"width: 500px;\" align=\"center\">\r\n<tbody>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td><span>\"I was sitting in the tunnel below the residence, with my gun, specially made for commandos. I had use it a lot of times in Cenepa. I called it \"the mute\". The silencer blocked any trace of noise. I was thinking there, thinking about what was about to happen. Within hours I will be able to confront the bastard that had taken to kill so many people. It enrages me when my country is violated like that. Witnesses to that are the more than 30 Ecuadorians that I killed in the Cenepa conflict. I couldn\'t sleep.\"<br /><br /></span><center><span>&ndash;Luis Mantilla, Peruvian Special Forces</span></center></td>\r\n</tr>\r\n</tbody>\r\n</table>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Intel had informed the commandos that the terrorists were planning on playing a five-on-five soccer game in the gigantic living room of the residence around 3pm that day, and the mission was to take advantage of the fact that not even hardcore ultra-tense hostage crises can keep South American people from playing soccer. The commando teams got into position, set their plastic explosive charges, and patiently waited for the sound of a rubber ball being kicked around above their heads.</p>\r\n<p>At 3:23pm on April 22, 1997, they got the go order.</p>\r\n<p>The Peruvian commanders sent a message to the hostages via a transmitter they\'d smuggled inside recommending that the hostages barricade themselves inside their room and prepare for some serious shit, and in broad daylight, in front of news crews from across the world, 70 Peruvian commandos launched an all-or-nothing balls-to-the-damn-wall assault on the terrorist compound.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/chavin6.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>\"It was our job to give back order and peace to our country.\"</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>First, a massive explosion ripped a gimongous hole in the floor of the living room right in the middle of the terrorist soccer match, blasting the hell out of the room, showering it with shrapnel, and ripping four of the terrorists to pieces immediately. Hardcore scary-looking commandos raced up through the floor, guns blazing, while the surviving terrorists fled up the stairs to the second floor, spraying bullets wildly from their AK-47s while their asshole comrades fell in heaps around them.</p>\r\n<p>Outside the building, several more holes opened up in the courtyard as teams raced into action, throwing ladders on the walls and climbing onto the roof and into the second story. One team managed to flank the fleeing terrorists as they ran the hell away from the psychotic machine gun-toting dudes climbing out of the damn floor, firing in through the window and capping a couple more as they ran towards the hostage room. These commandos breached the windows to enter, but were slowed down by a booby trapped explosive at the top of the stairs.</p>\r\n<p>While all this was going on, another team went over the wall and charged straight-on into the compound. A guy with a heavy steel shield broke in the door and his team rushed in behind him, killing two female terrorists before they could swing their AKs around at them (the commandos catch some heat for killing these two, especially since one of these women was a teenage girl, but if running this site has taught me anything it\'s that a woman can squeeze a trigger or lob a grenade just as well as any man so I really don\'t see what the problem is here).</p>\r\n<p>As the building was swarming with troops and explosions and gunfire were rocking the residence, there were still a group of unaccounted for terrorists rushing to kill the hostages. One team of commandos put an end to that quickly, blowing a hole through the roof and shooting down into the second floor hallway, killing the remainder of the terrorists, including the leader, as they ran to finish off the hostages. The other teams reached the hostages and escorted them safely from the building.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/chavin8.gif\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /> <br /><br /> <img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/chavin7a.png\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /> <br /><br /> <img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/chavin7.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>If you\'re interested, <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bls7B191cpU\">here\'s a link to the raw footage</a> of the assault. It\'s pretty intense.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>22 minutes after the first explosion, a team of Peruvian commandos pulled the MRTA flag down from the roof and set it on fire, ending the battle. Considering the extreme insanity and danger of the mission, a subterranean assault carried out in front of the world\'s news cameras in broad daylight against an entrenched enemy in a hostage situation, the results were staggering &ndash; all 14 terrorists lay dead, and 71 of the 72 hostages were saved (one died of a heart attack after being hit by a stray bullet). The commandos had sustained nine wounded, mostly from the explosions, and two dead &ndash; a Lieutenant who was caught in the crossfire and a Colonel who was mortally wounded shielding the Peruvian Chancellor from a terrorist grenade. Not bad, considering how catastrophically terrible this could have gone down.</p>\r\n<p>The mission was declared an unqualified success by the Peruvian government. To this day April 22 is Peru\'s National Day of Military Valor.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/chavin9.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>\"I was stunned. The President himself congratulating me.<br /> \'Thank you Mr. President. I did it for my country.<br />For peace and democracy... I did it for my beloved Peru.\'\"</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>As a weird footnote, it\'s worth mentioning that the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights opened a ridiculous investigation as to whether or not the Peruvian commandos violated the human rights of the terrorists by shooting a couple of them who may or may not have been trying to surrender. Now, I support human rights as much as anyone, but I also kind of think that when you\'re taking hostages at gunpoint and opening fire on the cops with an assault rifle you kind of forfeit your right to not be shot in the face by badass fucking commandos coming up through the floor to kill you. But maybe that\'s just me.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/chavin10.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>After kicking the shit out of Kalashnikov-toting Marxist terrorist assholes,<br />Peruvian SF operators rock it like gangstas with with hot chocolates and keke sandwiches.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Links:</span><br /><br /></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/showthread.php?76509-REQ-Japanese-embassy-hostage-crisis-Lima-Peru-1996-1997&amp;highlight=japanese%20embassy\">First-hand Account at MilitaryPhotos.net</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.specialoperations.com/Foreign/Peru/Assault.htm\">SpecialOperations.com</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://enperublog.com/2008/08/18/japanese-hostage-crisis-and-operation-chavin-de-huantar/\">PeruBlog.com</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&amp;tl=en&amp;js=n&amp;prev=_t&amp;hl=en&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;layout=2&amp;eotf=1&amp;u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.rpp.com.pe%2F2011-04-22-el-rescate-chavin-de-huantar-14-anos-despues-noticia_358209.html&amp;act=url\">RPP Noticas</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Chav%C3%ADn_de_Hu%C3%A1ntar\">Wikipedia</a></p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Sources:</span><br /><br /><span> Combs, Cindy C. and Martin Slann. <em>Encyclopedia of Terrorism</em>. Infobase, 2009.<br /><br /> Giampietri, Luis. <em>41 Seconds to Freedom</em>. Ballantine, 2007.<br /><br /> Perez, Carlos. <em>Anatomy of a Hostage Rescue</em>. Naval Postgraduate School, 2004. </span></p>','2012-11-16','527440332232','chavin.jpg','chavin8-small.gif','Chavin de Huantar','14 heavily-armed terrorists take 500 of Peru\'s most senior political leaders hostage, and it\'s up to Peru\'s Special Forces to get them out alive.','\"These terrorists think that they already got us. That they screwed us. Well it is time to screw them for good. The tunnels that they once used to rescue some of their comrades are now going to be used to send them to hell. \"\r\n\r\n–Luis Mantilla, Peruvian Special Forces'),('Harpagornis moorei','c. 1.8 million BC','c. 1600 AD','New Zealand','Prehistoric NewZealand Monster','<p>Haast\'s Eagle is a brain-aneurysm inducing species of gigantic man-eating winged monstrosities that became notorious among the Maori tribes of pre-colonial New Zealand thanks to their horrific propensity to silently dive-bomb down from the tree tops in absolute silence, crush the skulls of 450-pound beasts like a Volkswagen driving over a soda can, then fly off into the darkness clutching the tribe\'s women and children in a fist full of razor-sharp 4-inch talons so they could be slowly and painfully shredded to death at the beast\'s leisure.</p>\r\n<p>This is not a myth or a legend. This is a real thing that actually lived on Earth-One\'s material plane as late as 1600 AD.</p>\r\n<p>Known as the \"Tiger of the Skies\", Haast\'s Eagles are one of the only birds to ever be the apex predator of an ecosystem, a distinction they hold mostly because there are no predatory mammals on New Zealand, but also because what the fuck is going to step to a pissed-as-hell mega-raptor so ungodly gigantulous that it\'s wings blacken the sky and its insanity-causing shrieks presumably caused deafness and incontinence in anything unlucky enough to hear it. Gigantic, feather-covered instruments of God\'s Unadulterated Fury, Haast\'s Eagles stood six feet tall, weighed a little over 35 pounds, and had a wingspan of roughly ten feet. These goddamned things were, no exaggeration, the size of hang gliders, tore ass through the densest jungles of New Zealand with the dexterity of a howler monkey, and boasted black, pointy, fuck-off claws that were about the same size as a modern-day Bengal tiger\'s.</p>\r\n<p>Here\'s a picture of a Haast\'s Eagle fucking with a couple Moa birds:</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/haasteagle1.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Doesn\'t look like much? Not impressed by an ordinary-looking eagle being a total dick and harassing a pair of stupidly-hilarious looking no-armed wingless asshole birds spastically running around like dumbasses squawking in what scientists largely agree probably sounded like the genetic reject of a failed goose-emu cross-breeding experiment run through Lil\' Wayne\'s auto-tuner?</p>\r\n<p>I don\'t blame you. But you should be. Because here\'s a size comparison between those birds and you and me:</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/haasteagle2.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/haasteagle2a.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Those flightless idiots in that pic up there are Moa &ndash; a species of tragically-stupid, doomed flightless ostrich-like bird-creatures that stood nine feet tall and weight 450 pounds, which is about the same as a Siberian Tiger or a North American Black Bear. The Moa were about 15 times the Haast\'s Eagle\'s mass, yet this thing could dive-bomb them with enough force to crush their skulls and/or pelvises and/or dicks, and once those poor dumb bastards were immobilized, crippled, and/or de-balled the Haast\'s Eagle\'s 1,000 psi of talon crushing might was powerful enough to snap their bones in half.</p>\r\n<p>And if it could do that to a creature the size of the Cyclops, it could sure as hell do it to a human. And it did. A lot, actually, if the folk stories and modern science are right.</p>\r\n<p>Here\'s a scale model of a Haast\'s Eagle next to some artists or some shit who would almost certainly be rendered instantaneously dead by face-beaking if this were an actual specimen that came alive like Kim Cattrall in that movie with the mannequins:</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/haasteagle3.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>In Soviet Russia, Thanksgiving bird eat YOU!</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Haast\'s Eagles were forest-dwelling eagles rather than soaring eagles, which means they relied on strong leg muscles, ridiculous vertical leaping ability, and were much more about flapping their wings around like rampaging flap-happy madmen than just coasting and gliding like a bunch of lazy assholes. They had crazy good eyesight, were ridiculously good at barrel-rolling through even the densest foliage, and had one of the most goddamned fucking terrifying methods of catching their prey this side of Air Jaws.</p>\r\n<p>Basically, it worked like this. A Haast\'s Eagle would fly up to a branch near the top of a particularly tall tree, then sit there in complete silence, scanning the horizon with it\'s ultra-sharp eagle eyes (see what I did there) like a badass super-sniper assassin waiting patiently for his next kill. Then, once some moron was stupid enough to wander aimlessly into the Haast\'s Eagle\'s killzone, this thing would FREAK THE FUCK OUT, silently let go of the branch and kick in the afterburners all the way to the danger zone until it looked like the cover of Judas Priest\'s <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Screaming-Vengeance-Exp-Judas-Priest/dp/B00005K9LK\">Screaming for Vengeance</a> album cover. Then, before the idiot Moa or human or whatever it was hunting even heard a single noise, the Haast\'s Eagle would fucking PLOW into them at speeds of up to 60 miles an hour.</p>\r\n<p>For reference, here\'s a picture of a Volvo making out with a concrete wall at 60 miles an hour:</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/haasteagle4.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>This was kind of like that, only completely silent and instead of a windshield you were being hit with two fists full of 4-inch talons the size of paring knives. The blow would crush the skull, spine, pelvis, or legs of the prey, then the Haast\'s Eagle would finish the job either by disemboweling you with its talons and beak or by snapping your bones with it\'s kung fu grip. We don\'t know exactly how mighty the grip strength on a Haast\'s Eagle was, but we do know that Bald Eagles &ndash; which are a little less than half the size of a Haast\'s Eagle &ndash; grip with 350 psi in their talons. For reference, the average human male\'s maximum grip strength is 100 psi, and the bite of a German Shepherd is measured at 250 psi. So&hellip; yeah.</p>\r\n<p>We believe that Haast\'s Eagles primarily ate Moa, as well as other birds, small mammals, and human children, but other forest eagles, like South America\'s Harpy eagle, have been known eat porcupines, snakes, kinkajous, anteaters, parrots, and something called a titi monkey which honestly sounds like it should be the name of a wet t-shirt bar on Cabo San Lucas. While this is cool and all, it also bears mentioning that one of the craziest fucking birds on earth, the Golden Eagle, eats goddamned mountain goats, killing them by picking them up in its claws, carrying them over to a cliff, dropping them to their deaths, and then flying down and eating the corpse.</p>\r\n<p><em>Mountain goats</em>. If you don\'t believe me, <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yz7FFlFy8eM\">here\'s a video of it happening</a>. Oh, and <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wwvPLPntZk&amp;feature=related\">here\'s a video of them killing foxes and wolves</a>.</p>\r\n<p>Once again, since I feel like the scale is something that needs to repeated indefinitely, here\'s a Golden Eagle:</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/haasteagle5.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>And here are its claws:</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/haasteagle6.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The Haast\'s Eagle was <strong>40% bigger</strong> than the Golden Eagle. <em>And it actually attacked and ate people</em>. I feel like I cannot italicize or bold or caps this article enough, because the mortal set of HTML font tags and punctuation cannot handle how <span><em><strong>FUCKING NUTS THIS SHIT IS</strong></em></span>.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/haasteagle8a.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>Here\'s an eagle carrying off a fox. Shit is terrifying.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Haast\'s Eagles are named after the guy who invented them, Herr Doktor Johann Franz Julius \"Du Hast\" von Haast, a German University of Bonn graduate (a \"boner\" if you will) and Rammstein aficionado who accidentally discovered the bones of these monstrous avian killing machines while looking for glaciers in a swamp somewhere in New Zealand in the year 1872. Haast, after exclaiming \"Holy Jesus shit what the fuck?!?!?!\" eventually decided that these <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/scifi.html\">Sci-Fi Original Movie</a>-grade air-to-ground cruise missiles of pointy horribleness were the result of something called Island Gigantism, which is a really awesome way of saying that creatures with no natural predators tend to continue killing and eating everything in their paths until they become oversized living nightmares manifest into reality. Haast, for the record, also speculated that while the creatures themselves grew way the fuck bigger their brains stayed small and bird-sized, a fact that in a lot of way actually makes them more terrifying. Whatever the cause, most scientists are fairly certain that the Haast\'s Eagle was such a ridiculous predator that over the course of two million years or so many other bird species <em>evolved to develop camouflaged plumage</em> just to escape it, and when they weren\'t eating human children (a fact that has been confirmed through the use of genetic testing by modern-day scientists), Haast\'s Eagles roamed thousands of miles of the New Zealand countryside looking for girlfriends or prey and not giving a fuck about anything else because they had no natural enemies aside from a guy armed with a spear.</p>\r\n<p>When the Maori first settled New Zealand, they developed legends and myths about these ridiculous beasts that swooped down from the sky and either maimed or carried off their women, children, and elderly. They called it either Te Hokioi or Te Pouakai, some sects worshipped them as bird gods, and most people believed that they lived in the mountains and were the ancestor of kites (and if your mind went to small <a href=\"http://www.amazingben.com/rpg.html\">RPG</a> dragons when you read \"kites\" you are a nerd... I mean like actual kites that you fly with your family on the weekends). Most of their legends are similar to Western \"giant killer bird\" stories like the Roc, the Thunderbird, and Prometheus (the Greek Titan who gets disemboweled every single day by a giant eagle, not the terrible sci-fi movie. And yes that movie was fucking terrible and I hated it and I will hear no discussion on the subject from anyone), so at first the Europeans just chalked the child-eating bird stories up to myth and folklore. Then they stared into the beak of insanity.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/haasteagle7.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br />New Zealand, circa 1400</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>While the Haast\'s Eagles lived for over 2 million years, they eventually died out in 1500 or 1600 AD, largely because psycho badass <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/hongihika.html\">Maori headhunters</a> killed all the Moa birds, stabbed or shot all the Eagles, and cut down all their trees. When Europeans first landed on New Zealand, they thought this whole \"man eating bird\" thing was bullshit, but then Julius von Haast showed them that no, holy shit, this is a real thing.</p>\r\n<p>Now, as I\'ve done previously with similarly-terrifying gigantic Paleolithic monstrosities like <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/trex.html\">T-Rex</a> and <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/megalodon.html\">Megalodon</a>, here\'s a badass series of fucking over-the-top awesome pictures I couldn\'t fit in anywhere else in this story. Happy Thanksgiving, here\'s a bird that can devour you in two bites:</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/haasteagle8.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><br /> <img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/haasteagle8b.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><br /> <img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/haasteagle8c.png\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><br /> <img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/haasteagle8d.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><br /> <img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/haasteagle8e.jpeg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><br /> <img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/haasteagle8f.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><br /> <img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/haasteagle8g.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><br /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Links:</span><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.nzbirds.com/birds/haasteagle.html\">NZBirds.com</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.wingspan.co.nz/extinct_birds_of_prey_new_zealand_haasts_eagle.html\">NZ Birds of Prey</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.examiner.com/article/man-eating-giant-haast-s-eagle-legend-backed-by-new-study\">Examiner.com</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32798238/ns/technology_and_science-science/t/extinct-eagle-may-have-eaten-humans/#.UK0KZmeKhBk\">MSNBC</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.kcc.org.nz/haasts-eagle\">Kiwi Conservation Club</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.eversostrange.com/2011/01/13/haasts-eagle-the-man-eating-monster/\">Ever So Strange</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haast%27s_Eagle\">Wikipedia</a></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Sources:</span><br /><br /><span> Hart, Donna L. and Robert W. Sussman. <em>Man the Hunted</em>. Basic, 2005.<br /><br /> Hume, Julian C. and Michael Walters. <em>Extinct Birds</em>. A&amp;C Black, 2012.<br /><br /> Worthy, T.H. and Richard N. Holdaway. <em>The Lost World of the Moa</em>. Indiana Univ. Press, 2002. </span></p>','2012-11-23','6503555514','haasteagle.jpg','haasteagle3-small.jpg','Haast\'s Eagle','A man-sized eagle that was notorious for carrying off Maori women and children and eating them.',''),('Huddie Ledbetter','January 20, 1888','December 6, 1949','Mooringsport, LA, USA','20th-century American Entertainer','<p>Lead Belly is a badass old-school wrecking ball of folk-singing awesomeness who worked hard fucking labor as a sharecropper in the Depression-era South, lived it up with hot chicks, stiff drinks, and smoke-filled clubs in Renaissance-era Harlem, kicked his enemies\' collective punk asses in at least five hardcore back-alley knife fights, escaped from jail once, convinced the governors of two states to pardon him from murder raps using nothing more than a guitar and his singing voice, and went on to basically help create modern music by influencing everyone from Johnny Cash and Frank Sinatra to Kurt Cobain and Jack White. He was tough as hell, built like a house, and he drank hard, fought harder, played the twelve-string guitar better than any man alive during his day, and once responded to being stabbed in the throat with a prison shank by pulling the shiv out of his own neck and almost murdering the dude with it.</p>\r\n<p>Huddie William Ledbetter was born on a Louisiana bayou in January of 1888 (some sources claim 1889, not that it matters). One of five kids, Ledbetter\'s dad was a sharecropper &ndash; a tough, calloused-handed wandering manual laborer who worked insane twelve-hour shifts in the hot Louisiana sun for basically zero pay. Huddie Ledbetter quickly realized that bouncing around the countryside with his dirt-poor family looking for bullshit backbreaking jobs wasn\'t his thing, so he decided to get the hell out of there, beat the shitty hand that circumstance had dealt him, and become a fucking superstar musician. By twelve he\'d dropped out of school. By fifteen he\'d taught himself how to play the accordion (one of the hardest and most complicated instruments this side of the bassoon or the space bagpipes) and was playing shows in the St. Paul\'s Bottom neighborhood of Shreveport, Louisiana &ndash; a hardcore red light district packed with more hookers and hooch than Al Capone\'s basement. Surrounded by drunken debauchery didn\'t derail Lead Belly\'s quest for awesomeness, and he was all up in St. Paul\'s Bottom cranking out jams on a fucking accordion, blowing everyone\'s skulls out of their heads with his music, then going home with a fifth of scotch and the hottest chick in the club. By the age of sixteen he was married with two kids. By twenty he was divorced, out of Shreveport, wandering the South playing shows in any venue that would have him and working hard labor jobs when the music business didn\'t pay the bills.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/leadbelly1.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>It ain\'t easy looking like a badass while holding an accordion.<br />Lead nails it.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>I pretty much imagine Lead Belly\'s early life being kind of like Tommy Johnson in <em>O Brother, Where Art Thou</em>, only with more face-shanking brutality. Lead rode the rails, traveling the land from the beer-soaked streets of Shreveport\'s seediest neighborhoods to the hottest clubs in Deep Ellum, Texas, hanging out at every bar, saloon, and music venue along the way. But Lead wasn\'t just there to party. He made it his life\'s mission to listen to every musician he could find and absorb all the musical knowledge he could. He learned to play the piano, guitar, harmonica, mandolin, and violin, became the undisputed master of the twelve-string guitar, and spoke to so many famous blues and folk musicians that he became a walking encyclopedia of American folk tunes. Before long he could play basically every folk song there was (he claimed to have over 500 tracks in his Brain iPod), and when he wasn\'t putting a new spin on old standards he was writing badass songs about cowboys, sailors, women, booze, prison, and God. And Hitler. Along the line he worked hard jobs to earn enough cash to put food on the table, hammering railroad spikes, picking cotton, herding cattle as a cowboy, and hammering fence posts. Real Man kind of work, and work he was damn good at thanks to his being basically gigantic and stronger than a team of oxen hitched to a mystical narwhal.</p>\r\n<p>Lead Belly\'s budding music career hit a slight hitch in 1915, when the folk guitarist was arrested for punching a dude in the face, pulling a gun in the middle of a barroom brawl, then pummeling someone with it. He was sentenced to serve an unspecified period of hard labor on a fucked-up chain gang in Harrison County, Texas, busting out hard work that paid even worse than sharecropping. Two days into his mandatory community service whacking rocks with a pickaxe for no good reason Lead slipped off when the shotgun-toting guards weren\'t looking, bolted out of there on foot (some sources claim they sent dogs after him but he managed to elude them), escaped the prison work patrol, fled to the next county, changed his name, and went right back to work as a manual laborer by day and an aspiring musician by night.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/leadbelly2.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>A 1920s-era chain gang.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Lead managed to lay low long enough for the heat to die down, but this stone-cold, two-fisted badass was a hot-blooded man whose profession required that he frequent a lot of divey bars populated by a fair number of douchebags, and trouble found him once again a few years later. The details of this particular story are a little sketchy, but apparently in 1918 Lead\'s cousin\'s husband was doing some fucked-up bullshit, so Lead decided that the best way to resolve the situation was to show up at the dude\'s house with a knife and a pistol and beat the shit out of him and all of his friends. In the ensuing battle Lead Belly shot the husband dead and knocked another guy unconscious, a feat of badassitude that earned our hero a sentence of 7-to-35 years in the Texas State Penitentiary.</p>\r\n<p>During his stay in the clink, Lead Belly made a hell of a name for himself by smuggling in a guitar and spending all of his free time singing songs and playing music for the guards and prisoners. Eventually, the Governor of Texas got word of what was going on and decided he needed to see this \"Singing Convict\" shit for himself, and he was so goddamned impressed that he ended up bringing his entire family and friends back a couple times just to hear Lead Belly shred the twelve-string. Six years into his sentence, Lead Belly wrote a song asking the Governor for a pardon.</p>\r\n<p>He got it.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/leadbelly3.png\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>Even though he always played shows in a three-piece suit and a bow tie,<br />Lead Belly was more gangsta than half of Death Row Records.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Most music historians agree that it was in prison that Huddie Ledbetter got his now-famous nickname. There are tons of theories as to why \"Lead Belly\" is the name that stuck, and I dare say all of them are awesome. Some folks claim it\'s because he was tough as hell, built like a wall of iron and muscle and capable of swinging an axe or shovel with twice the strength of any other inmate. Some say it\'s because he could drink even the nastiest fucking bathtub moonshine and show no ill effects. Others claim that he once took a bullet (in some versions a full-on blast of shotgun buckshot) to the abdomen and survived. We will probably never know for sure, but we do know that from this point on Huddie Ledbetter was only known as Lead Belly.</p>\r\n<p>Lead spent the next five years playing shows and working hard shitty day jobs, but trouble found him once again in 1930 when he and some friends got into a back alley New Orleans knife fight with a gang of white guys who were presumably looking for trouble and found a hell of a lot more of it then they\'d bargained for. Lead was arrested for stabbing one of those fucks, and was sentenced to another lengthy stay, this time in the Louisiana State Penitentiary. Just like before, Lead Belly entertained the guards, inmates, and wardens with his music, but it turns out there are asshole critics everywhere &ndash; a couple years into his stay, some inmate jumped Lead Belly from behind and drove a prison shank into the side of his neck. Lead responded by throwing the dude down, <em>pulling the fucking knife out of his own neck</em>, and almost killing the guy with it. For the rest of his life he had a hardcore scar that spanned several inches across his throat.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/leadbelly4.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>Louisiana State Penitentiary, circa 1930.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Just like before, Lead Belly\'s \"singing convict\" thing began to draw some local attention, and it was in 1934 that a historian and folklorist named John Lomax showed up at the Lousiana State Pen to see what was up with this guy. He was so blown away that he had Lead record some tracks on a phonograph disc (this would mark the first time he was ever recorded). Lead recorded a song called \"Goodnight, Irene,\" that he\'d learned from his uncle, as well as a couple other tracks. Lomax played them for the Governor of Louisiana, asking for a pardon, and once again, Lead Belly was let out of jail solely on account of his singing voice and musical prowess. The two men then spent the entirety of 1934 driving around the Depression-Era American South working together to collect and archive priceless samples of American folk music.</p>\r\n<p>By 1936 Lead Belly found himself playing twice a night at the famous Apollo Theatre during the Harlem Renaissance, being recorded for <em>TIME</em> newsreels, having a bunch of awesome shit written about him in the <em>People\'s Daily</em> (the official newspaper of the American Communist Party, which is slightly interesting considering he was not actually a communist) and getting his songs recorded by Columbia Records. His new-found fame was slightly derailed in 1939 when he was arrested for stabbing a guy during a knife-fight in Manhattan (this is documented knife-fight number five, for those of you keeping track at home), but once he got out of jail he jumped right back into action, getting a regular spot on a weekly CBS radio show where he played songs with guys like Woodie Guthrie and Pete Seeger.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/leadbelly5.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>Talkin\' Lead Belly Woodie Guthrie Knife Fightin\' Blues.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>I won\'t get into Lead Belly\'s music too much, except to say that he was known as the \"King of the Twelve-String\". Using a thumb pick to play the walking base line and finger-picking the rest (note: this is incredibly difficult), Lead accentuated his songs by stomping his foot and shouting out calls and cadences that he learned while working hard labor on the railroad line. His songs are interesting because Lead just tuned his guitar strings with one another rather than to the standard E, then adjusting his voice accordingly (this maddens those people who spend all day trying to transcribe guitar tabs). He played shows every single day of his life, recorded a definitive collection of folk and blues songs, took requests at his shows and could instantaneously recall any of the 500 songs he knew from memory, and played whatever the hell he wanted whenever he felt like it. He never really saw any of the money he made, and lived basically in poverty in Harlem with his fourth wife, but he was living the dream of playing music professionally so fuck it I guess.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/leadbelly6.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>Bob Dylan once referred to Lead Belly as<br />\"one of the few ex-cons to ever record a successful children\'s album.\"</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>At the age of 53 Lead Belly registered for the Draft to enter World War II, but was never called up. He continued living it up and playing music, but during a European tour in 1949 (he was one of the first American blues/folk artists to become popular in Europe) he was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig\'s Disease and forced to return home to the States. He died of ALS in December 1949 at the age of 61. One year after his death, Pete Seeger\'s band, The Weavers, recorded a cover of Lead Belly\'s \"Goodnight, Irene.\" The song that got Lead Belly out of prison became a number one hit in 1950, earning the Weavers millions of dollars. A decade after that, Lead Belly\'s arrangement of \"The House of the Rising Sun\" would be covered by some British dudes who are presumably still living off the royalties of that one song.</p>\r\n<p>There\'s a life-sized statue of Lead Belly across from the courthouse in Shreveport, Louisiana (I find this to be awesome), and the state erected a marker at his grave site. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame early in the Hall\'s life, and his music, which became insanely more popular after his death, has been covered by Bob Dylan, the White Stripes, Johnny Cash, Elvis, the Grateful Dead, the Rolling Stones, the Doors, Led Zeppelin, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Tom Petty, and dozens of other bands, almost all of whom cite(d) this hard-drinking, hard-fighting badass as a major influence on their careers.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/leadbelly7.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Links:</span><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.allmusic.com/artist/leadbelly-mn0000124390\">AllMusic.com</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://rockhall.com/inductees/lead-belly/bio/\">Rock &amp; Roll Hall of Fame</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.cr.nps.gov/delta/blues/people/leadbelly.htm\">NPS.gov Bio</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://haveringhavers.blogspot.com/2008/04/lead-belly.html\">Havering On</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_Belly\">Wikipedia</a></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Sources:</span><br /><br /><span> Hartman, Gary. <em>The History of Texas Music</em>. Texas A&amp;M Univ. Press, 2008.<br /><br /> \"Lead Belly\". <em>LIFE</em>. April 19, 1937.<br /><br /> Petrusich, Amanda. <em>It Still Moves</em>. Macmillan, 2009.<br /><br /> Wolfe, Charles K. and Kip Lornell. <em>The Life and Legend of Leadbelly</em>. Da Capo, 1992. </span></p>','2012-11-30','1671462811','leadbelly.jpg','leadbelly-small.jpg','Lead Belly','The hard-drinking, hard-fighting ex-con who killed two guys and then invented modern music.',''),('Shen Jianzhong','1974','N/A','Bazhou, Hebei, China','21st-century Chinese Vigilante','<p>Forget the whole Free Market Western Capitalism Democracy America Fuck Yeah versus State-Run Communist-Socialist Iron Curtain Boot Up Your Ass thing &ndash; the primary difference between the Western economic system and the Chinese economic system is that here in the Land of the Free Home of the Brave our evil soulless puppy-mulching mega corporations are content in metaphorically fucking over everyone in the country, turning their hard-earned savings into gold-plated toilet paper, then chilling in their mansions chowing down on dolphin-infused tuna salad sandwiches, whereas in China they cut out the middle man entirely and literally just hire a bunch of guys with clubs to go to your front door, beat the shit out of you, steal your wallet, and collect your wife\'s tears in a jar so their CEO can drink it, absorb her sorrow and become the ultimate kung fu killing machine.</p>\r\n<p>Shen Jianzhong is a 38 year old dude who up until last month was living in a tiny little basement apartment in the village of Bazhou, Hebei Province. Bazhou is a quaint little town about an hour and a half south of Beijing that despite having roughly 4,000 years of history still merits little more than a Wikipedia stub with a handful of broken links, but with the rapid conversion of the Beijing Metro Area from \"gigantic fucking city\" to \"nightmarish urban dystopian sprawl of William Gibsonian proportions\" suddenly a bunch of rich opportunistic assholes decided there was some cash to be made by riding into this place like a horde of bulldozer-riding Mongol warriors, flattening this place straight to hell like the T-800s crushing skulls at the beginning of <em>Terminator 2</em>, and then building fantastically-overpriced luxury condos and diamond-encrusted table tennis coliseums on the smoldering bombed-out ruins.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/shen1.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>So about six months ago the evil Chinese Weyland-Yutani Umbrella Corporation goons rolled into Bazhou with one thing on their minds &ndash; let\'s get these assholes who live here out of their homes so we can turn their shitty apartments into designer parking lots for the rich and famous to drunkenly urinate on, in, or around. First, they came to Shen Jianzhong\'s house with a message of prosperity &ndash; \"Hey buddy, don\'t be worried or suspicious or anything, we\'re not going to totally fuck you over we\'re just going to make your neighborhood so unassailably awesome that your penis will literally double in size just from living here! You just move out now, we\'ll pay your rent while you live somewhere else for a while, and then in two years you can move back into a house even bigger than the one you have now, PLUS we\'ll install a chromed-out ATM/Toaster combo device that literally dispenses tax-free cash money and shards of pure platinum every time you make Pop-Tarts!\"</p>\r\n<p>Shen Jianzhong wasn\'t impressed. First off, he heard that these same Tyrell Corporation sleazeballs had talked to the next town over and offered the folks there an even better deal than they were offering him and he figured if these assholes were going to make up shit about trading in the deed to his house for a mystical leprechaun fairy unicorn that shits out Skittles and gold nougat they might as well lie to him just as hard as they were lying to those other chumps. And second, what the fuck. I\'ve seen emails asking me to wire money to disabled orphan veteran businessmen in the Sudan that were more believable than this horseshit.</p>\r\n<p>Shen and his neighbors told these clowns to stick their balls in a food processor.</p>\r\n<p>Then things got ugly.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/shen2.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>I wrote a while back about the scare tactics Chinese developers used against <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/youde.html\">Yang Youde</a>, a man who ended up being forced to defend his farm by building a <em>Warcraft II</em>-style Cannon Tower in his backyard, so you already know these assholes will do whatever they can to wrench the property deed away from whatever poor sucker owns it, then pay off the cops and judges to look the other way. For six months, things got progressively worse. First they put up posters saying leave or face dire consequences. Then they send their gang of goons to block off Shen\'s entire street, preventing people from entering or leaving. When that didn\'t work, they started harassing the people that lived there more &ndash; yelling at women, telling them they were going to kill their kids. Every day the citizens of the neighborhood walked to work or to the store and were berated by thugs screaming at them and brandishing clubs and bats. Every night they had bricks and fireworks shot through the windows of their homes, death threats stuck under their doors, and anyone unlucky enough to be in his front yard after dark got punched in the face. It was crazy anarchy Night of the Living Dead shit, and the cops didn\'t do a fucking thing about it.</p>\r\n<p>Most of Shen Jianzhong\'s neighbors moved away, but this was his home, and he wasn\'t going anywhere. Then, about a month ago, Shen was getting his stuff together for work, when he heard a commotion outside. His wife had just run out for some Ramen noodles, and as she was coming back from the store she was confronted by a teeming, angry mob of somewhere between 30 and 50 men, some of whom were carrying clubs and other weapons. They harassed her, like they\'d done before, but this time they got a little more aggressive. She ran to the house, and tried to close the door on them, but they crushed up against it yelling like a throng of Chinese zombies:</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/shen3.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Shen Jianzhong and his 18 year-old son ran to see what was going on, and got to the entryway of their home just in time to see a couple big strong super-manly pieces of human garbage shove the door back in Shen\'s wife\'s face, sending her and the groceries toppling over backwards. A couple particularly-heroic fuckers then came into the house after her.</p>\r\n<p>This is probably as good a time as any to mention that Shen Jianzhong is a professional fitness instructor who holds the Chinese National record for roller-assisted push-ups in a minute. And that he taught himself Jeet Kune Do (the fighting style Bruce Lee invented) at the age of 18 and has been training in it every single day for the last twenty years straight.</p>\r\n<p>It was on.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/shen4.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>Oh, you\'re going to wish you hadn\'t done that.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Shen Jianzhong saw red. He didn\'t give a fuck that fifty pissed-off bully motherfuckers had shown up at his front door with pipes and clubs to forcibly evict him from his home with massive blunt force trauma to the facial region, or that his odds of surviving what was about to go down were about as good as Neil Patrick Harris\' chances of going fifteen rounds with Kimbo Slice &ndash; watching his wife get knocked to the floor was the last fucking straw. They had pushed him too far, and now Jianzhong and his son were going to go <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/odysseus.html\">Odysseus</a> and Telemachus on these bastards and shove the Way of the Intercepting Fist all the way up their fucking collective asses:</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<center><span>If you gave me all your father\'s possessions,<br /> all that you have now, and what you could add from elsewhere, <br /> even so, I would not stay my hand from the slaughter, <br /> until I had taken revenge for all the suitors transgression. <br /> now the choice has been set before you, either to fight me<br /> or run, if any of you can escape death and its spirits. <br /> But I think not one man will escape from sheer destruction.\" </span></center>\r\n<p><br /> Here is my attempt to illustrate what happened next. </p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/shen5.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><br /> <img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/shen5a.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><br /> <img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/shen5b.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><br /> <img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/shen5c.png\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><br /> <img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/shen5d.gif\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><br /> <img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/shen5e.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><br /> <img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/shen5f.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><br /> <img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/shen5g.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><br /> <img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/shen5h.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><br /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Shen Jianzhong and his son went to work dismembering everyone around them in a scene I mentally equate to that of Shen\'s idol, Bruce Lee, <a href=\"http://youtu.be/Fb4QoUEEF6A\">dismantling hordes of faceless jobbers with a variety of weaponry</a> in <em>Enter the Dragon</em>. In a brief but incredibly brutal flurry of kicks, punches, elbow strikes, and tiger claws, the Family Shen whirled throughout their living room, beating every fuck out of every jackass wannabe thug stupid enough to wander aimlessly into their wheelhouses. Shen\'s quote on the subject is priceless &ndash; he just says, \"It was self defence. I really cannot remember what kung fu skills I used. It was quite messy. Only seven people were injured because the rest were scared and stayed outside. Some of them ran away.\"</p>\r\n<p>Which is basically him saying he would have snapped every single one of them in half if he\'d had the chance, and that he was disappointed that he only pummeled seven men unconscious basically by himself.</p>\r\n<p>This is a video of the aftermath, taken by a neighbor who missed the actual fight, but was smart enough to grab his iPhone and record the carnage afterwards. (Note: There is nothing bloody or gruesome or disturbing in this video, for those of you who are squeamish).</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><object width=\"561\" height=\"420\" data=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/gXGIk9x-FI0\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\"><param name=\"src\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/gXGIk9x-FI0\" /></object><br /><br /><span>Sorry, I can\'t hear you over the sound of me BEATING THE SHIT OUT OF EVERYONE.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The video, in case it ever gets pulled, is a man walking through Shen Jianzhong\'s house. When he gets to the living room, there is a FUCKING PILE OF SEVEN UNCONSCIOUS MEN clustered in a very small area, all laying face-first where Shen had planted them, with a couple other chumps laying around holding their heads and faces and balls which are all sore from over-kicking. It\'s literally not that different from the Jet Li picture I just posted above.</p>\r\n<p>When the corrupt city cops showed up, however, they weren\'t happy. They tried to arrest SHEN (!!) for assault, so he ran the fuck out of there with his family and fled to Beijing, where his son was promptly arrested and held without bail. Shen, not sure of what to do, posted that video on Chinese YouTube, where it racked up two million hits in under a week. A British reporter went there to interview him, but in the middle of the interview, Shen bizarrely got a call from a man who apparently was a high-ranking member of the Chinese Communist Party, who claimed he saw the video and was \"outraged\" by the corruption and vowed to set everything right.</p>\r\n<p>Let\'s hope it happens. Badassitude like this should not go unrewarded.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/shen6.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>&ldquo;I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once,<br />but I fear the man who had practiced one kick 10,000 times.&rdquo;<br /><br />-Bruce Lee</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Links:</span><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/9710514/Chinese-thugs-knocked-out-by-amateur-Kung-Fu-fans.html\">Telegraph Article</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://beijingcream.com/2012/11/chinas-newest-badass-is-kung-fu-master-who-thwarted-a-mob-of-thugs-out-to-evict-him/\">Beijing Cream</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.businessinsider.com/shen-jianzhong-beats-thugs-with-kung-fu-2012-11\">Business Insider</a></p>','2012-12-07','66137711855','shen.jpg','shen-small.jpg','Shen Jianzhong','Thirty goons show up at the home of a Chinese fitness instructor and try to bully him out of town.  They fail.','“Do not pray for an easy life, pray for the strength to endure a difficult one”\r\n\r\n- Bruce Lee'),('&#1052;&#1080;&#1083;&#1091;&#1085;&#1082;&#1072; &#1057;&#1072;&#1074;&#1080;&#1115;','1888','October 5, 1973','Koprivnica, Serbia','20th-century Serbian Soldier','<p>Considering that she\'s the single most-decorated female soldier in world military history, a grizzled seven-year veteran of three wars fought across two continents, a two-time recipient of her country\'s highest award for military bravery, and a poor farm girl who single-handedly captured at least fifty enemy combatants and two enemy trenches during her career, there\'s not a whole lot of digital ink on the Internet dedicated to Sergeant Milunka Savic that isn\'t printed in a language with so many consonants and accent marks that it looks like someone fell asleep on the keyboard with their character map open.</p>\r\n<p>There should be.</p>\r\n<p>Milunka Savic was born in Koprivnica, Serbia, some time in either 1888 or 1889, depending on whether you\'re down with the Gregorian Calendar or if you\'re still hung up on that Julian Calendar bullshit. We don\'t know much about her early life in this tiny rural mountain village, except that in 1912, at the age of 24, she got bored of her regular life, chopped off all her hair, dressed in men\'s clothing, and volunteered for the Serbian Army to help fight the First Balkan War and drive the Ottoman Turkish Empire out of Europe forever on a tsunami of bullets and brain matter. Some sources claim she did some Mulan-style Freaky Friday shit and took her brother\'s spot after her bro was drafted in to the King\'s service, though I wasn\'t able to confirm this because shockingly I don\'t actually speak a hell of a lot of Serbo-Croatian (although I am trying to learn&hellip;seriously). Either way, she enlisted, and since nobody realized she wasn\'t a dude (or at least they didn\'t give a shit if she was or wasn\'t) they handed Milunka a rifle and a helmet and a couple of hand grenades and sent her on her merry way to blast the entrails out of the enemies of the Serbian people with a chuckable sphere of explosives the size of a softball.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/savic1.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Savic face-shanked her way through the First Balkan War with a razor-sharp bayonet and a handful of 7.62xmmR ammunition, participating on the front lines of several key battles as the combined armies of Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, and a couple other countries smashed the armies of the crumbling Ottoman Empire and drove their shattered remnants back across the Bosporus and out of the Balkans forever. Unfortunately, however, this was just the beginning of some pretty fucking dark days in Southeastern Europe. You see, apparently some expansionist assholes in Bulgaria got their panties in a wad about wanting to add Macedonia to their Empire, but since Serbia is the one that captured it from the Turks they of course said take a long hike up the slopes of Mount Doom and dump your balls in the lava when you get to the top. The Bulgarians took this out of context, got mad, and sent their entire army into Macedonia to wrench it from the cold dead hands of every Serbian they could find, two million soldiers mobilized on either side of the border, and mere months after the Balkans had miraculously united in a common cause (death-hate for the Turks) the Bulgarian and Serbs went right back to beating the shit out of each other with lead pipes and pitchforks.</p>\r\n<p>Pvt. Savic barely had time to swap the dried blood from her rifle before the Second Balkan War was on like Donkey Kong, and once again this estrogenocidal kicker of other peoples\' nutsacks was back out on the front lines lobbing grenades with reckless abandon like the Ikari Warriors or a tennis ball machine juryrigged by the Unabomber Ted Kaczynski. Positioned at the dead center of the Serbian lines during the Battle of Bregalnica, Milunka Savic and the now-famous Serbian \"Iron Regiment\" bore the brunt of the Bulgarian attack, withstanding the full might of their forces and then launching a desperate series of counter-attacks aimed at breaking their onslaught. On her tenth (!) combat charge leading a squad of men straight-on over barbed wire towards Bulgarian machine guns, artillery guns, and bayonets, Savic was hit by an enemy grenade and blown off her feet with shrapnel wounds throughout her body, and could only watch and bleed as her countrymen managed to carry this final attack, defeat the Bulgarians, and capture two divisions of enemy soldiers in the process. The badly-wounded Savic was carried to the field hospital, where the doc working on her was fairly surprised to learn that she had girl parts where her man-junk was supposed to be.</p>\r\n<p>Oops.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/savic2.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>Serbian troops headed to battle in 1914.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Once she was healed of her wounds, Private Milunka Savic was brought before her commanding officer to try and explain what the hell was the deal with the whole not having a dong thing. She stood at attention and said, yeah, sure, I\'m a girl, but I also just fucking charged face-first into artillery fire while spewing large-caliber rifle fire in every direction and dishing out hand grenades like parking tickets, so deal with it. Her commander offered her a transfer to the nursing corps, where she could hang back from the front lines and patch up wounded soldiers and let the real men handle all the messy bayonet-to-the-crotch work.</p>\r\n<p>She told him she would not accept any position that did not allow her to carry a gun, charge into combat wherever it presented herself, and fight the enemies of her people.</p>\r\n<p>He told her he\'d think about it, and that she should come back tomorrow for his decision.</p>\r\n<p>She stayed at full attention and told him, \"I will wait\".</p>\r\n<p>He made her stand there for about an hour before he agreed to let her stay in the infantry. He also promoted her to Junior Sergeant, because, fuck it, she probably had bigger balls than any man in her unit anyways.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/savic3.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>Serbian Army soldiers waiting to the order to cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The Second Balkan War ended in 1913, but even more nasty shit went down in Sarajevo Town on June 28, 1914, when the Austro-Hungarian Empire\'s Archduke Franz Ferdinand &ndash; a man famous solely for his ability to be shot to death &ndash; was assassinated by a Serbian Anarchist named Gavrilo Princep. Certainly you\'ve heard this story before, particularly if you\'re a big fan of hipster music, but basically the Austro-Hungarians were good buddies with the Bulgarians, and Princep was like \"fuck that\" because his people had just been to war with Bulgaria, etc. Long story short, Austria-Hungary was pissed, and they invaded Serbia. Serbia was allies with the United States, England, France, and Russia, and Austria-Hungary was friends with the Turks and the German Empire, and the next thing you know you\'ve got World War I on your hands and the Austro-Hungarian Empire is marching half a million jackbooted Teutonic goons with stupid hats and large rifles across the Serbian border to turn their entire country into a flaming inferno.</p>\r\n<p>The Austo-Hungarian Empire sent out 450,000 men from a hardcore, battle-tested, professional army that was equipped with top-of-the-line German and Austrian artillery and machine guns and drilled to lock-step precision in every aspect of military combat. The Serbian Army consisted of 250,000 citizen-soldiers, mostly volunteers, carrying cast-off weaponry handed down to them from the Imperial Russian Army (you know, the guys who had just lost a humiliating war to Japan and who were about to get massacred by the Germans). So, as you can expect, some crazy shit was about to go down.</p>\r\n<p>That crazy shit was that the entire Serbian Armed Forces formed up in one place and full-on balls-out charged a force that was nearly twice the size of their own.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/savic4.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>WWI troops going over the top.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Sergeant Milunka Savic, commander of the Iron Regiment\'s Assault Bomber Squad, charged into the Battle of the Kolubara River armed with her Mosin-Nagant rifle and three bandoliers of hand grenades &ndash; one across each shoulder and one worn across her waist like a belt. She single-handedly assaulted an Austrian trench, rushing across No Man\'s Land (I feel like there\'s an Eowyn / <em>Return of the King</em> joke to be made here) hurling grenades out like Mardi Gras beads and blasting the fuck out of everything around her, then diving feet-first into an Austrian bunker with her bayonet at the ready. Inside, she found 20 men, all of whom threw their weapons down and surrendered to her. Once those POWs were secured, she continued on, dropping bombs like a Predator Drone and smoking enemy machine gun nests from distances so impressive that from this day forth her nickname was \"The Bomber of Kolubara\", stopping only when an enemy artillery shell landed next to her and planted a couple pieces of shrapnel in her head. For her exploits on the battlefield, Savic received the Karadjordje Star with Swords, the highest award for bravery offered by the Kingdom of Serbia, and the battle was such a success that the Serbs pushed the Austrians out of Serbia completely. They didn\'t return for 10 months.</p>\r\n<p>Well, shrapnel in the head or not, there was still a war to fight, and Sergeant Savic went right back into action just a few months later. At this point, Serbia was in deep shit &ndash; they were alone, without any support, badly outnumbered, and being attacked from all sides by armies from Bulgaria, Austria, Germany, and the Ottoman Empire. Savic fought like a demon as the Serbian Army scrapped for their lives, earning a second Karadjordje Star at the Battle of Crna Reka in 1916 when she attacked a Bulgarian trench, cleared it out with grenades, rifle fire, and a bayonet, and single-handedly took 23 Bulgarian soldiers prisoner.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/savic5.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>But the war was going badly for Serbia, and with the vengeful Bulgarians and Austrians burning Serb cities the Serbian Army evacuated as many civilians as they could and began a long, brutal fighting withdrawal through the knee-deep snow drifts and snow-covered mountains of Montenegro, Albania, and Kosovo as they withdrew to the coast. Milunka Savic was wounded seven more times during this fighting retreat (bringing her total wounds to nine!) as she and her people desperately attempted to evacuate tens of thousands of civilians and save the core of her army.</p>\r\n<p>When she reached the coast and was evacuated by French and British warships, she was one of just 125,000 soldiers left in the Serbian Army.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/savic6.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>Serbian withdrawal through Montenegro.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The Serbian Army withdrew to Corfu, then Greece, where they joined up with the French Army and continued the war against the Turks and Krauts and other assorted villainy. Serving in the Serbian Brigade of the French Army, Sergeant Savic continued commanding the Assault Bomber Squad, fought through the rest of the war, ended up on the front page of some European Newspapers, and ended up winning enough awards from her service that her ribbon board weighed roughly the same as a suit of medieval plate armor. She received the French Legion d\'Honneur twice, the Russian Cross of St. George (awarded for \"undaunted courage by a non-commissioned officer), the British Medal of the Order of St. Michael, the Serbian Milos Obilic Medal, and was the only woman from World War I to receive the French Croix de Guerre (the highest bravery award they have).</p>\r\n<p>The best story from this time period, however, is this. While stationed on a base in Thessalonica, some French officer got word that she was fucking brutal with hand grenades. He laughed at the idea that a woman could be that badass, so he took a bottle out of a case of ultra-expensive 1880 Cognac, set it on a post 40 meters (131 feet) away, and dared her the rest of the case that she couldn\'t hit it.</p>\r\n<p>She drilled it on her first try. That night her unit blew through 19 bottles of the finest Cognac on Earth.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/savic7.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>After the war ended and Serbia was liberated, Milunka Savic declined an offer from the French government to move her to Paris and put her up with a nice pension, instead opting to return to her homeland. She got married, had a kid, got a job at a bank, and adopted three children who had been orphaned by the war. When the Germans came through Belgrade during the Second World War in 1940, Savic refused an invitation to attend a banquet held in honor of the city\'s New German Overlords &ndash; a feat that got her a ten-month stint in Banjica Concentration Camp. She survived that as well, however, and after the war she was offered a state pension for being such a ridiculousy-hardcore war hero.</p>\r\n<p>Milunka Savic, the world\'s most decorated female war hero, died in Belgrade on October 5, 1973, at the age of 84. She was buried in a famous cemetery there with full military honors.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/savic8.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Links:</span><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.heroesofserbia.com/2009/11/milunka-savic-wwi-veteran-most.html\">Heroes of Serbia</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.military-quotes.com/forum/milunka-savi-t99115.html\">Military-Quotes.com</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&amp;sl=sr&amp;u=http://www.blic.rs/Vesti/Reportaza/201674/Pred-Milunkom-su-i-generali-salutirali&amp;prev=/search%3Fq%3DMilunka%2BSavi%25C4%2587%26start%3D10%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26hs%3DkRG%26sa%3DN%26tbo%3Dd%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26biw%3D1920%26bih%3D948&amp;sa=X&amp;ei=iWzLUPXDBoreiAKYnIGoCA&amp;ved=0CFIQ7gEwBTgK\">Blic Article</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&amp;sl=sr&amp;u=http://www.mojheroj.com/drustvo/68.html&amp;prev=/search%3Fq%3DMilunka%2BSavi%25C4%2587%26start%3D10%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26hs%3DkRG%26sa%3DN%26tbo%3Dd%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26biw%3D1920%26bih%3D948&amp;sa=X&amp;ei=iWzLUPXDBoreiAKYnIGoCA&amp;ved=0CGYQ7gEwCDgK\">Serbian History Site</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&amp;sl=sr&amp;u=http://www.riznicasrpska.net/ponossrpstva/index.php%3Ftopic%3D69.0&amp;prev=/search%3Fq%3DMilunka%2BSavi%25C4%2587%26start%3D10%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26hs%3DkRG%26sa%3DN%26tbo%3Dd%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26biw%3D1920%26bih%3D948&amp;sa=X&amp;ei=iWzLUPXDBoreiAKYnIGoCA&amp;ved=0CDwQ7gEwATgK\">Collection of Serbian News Articles</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milunka_Savi%C4%87\">Wikipedia</a></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Sources:</span><br /><br /><span> Bucur, Maria. <em>Staging the Past</em>. Purdue Univ. Press, 2001.<br /><br /> Batinic, Jelena. <em>Gender, Revolution, and War</em>. Stanford Univ. Press, 2009.<br /><br /> Deroc, Milan. <em>British Special Operations Explored</em>. East European Monographs, 1988. </span></p>','2012-12-14','97717212284','savic.jpg','savic8-small.jpg','Milunka Savic','The most decorated female soldier in military history.',''),('Yuknoom Che\'en II','September 11, 600 AD','April 3, 686','Calakmul, Mexico','Ancient Mayan Warlord','<p>For being a hardcore society of club-swinging, pyramid-building, jungle-dwelling badasses that went around in the 3rd Century AD building gigantic structures out of soft, usually-unworkable limestone and making incredible achievements in art, science, astronomy, and mathematics, it\'s a goddamned tragedy that the only thing your typical <em>Real Housewives</em> mouth-breather knows about the Mayans involves a shaky, dubiously-unverified link to an out-of-control obnoxious John Cusack movie. If it\'s not the annoyingly-ubiquitous <a href=\"http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/eschatology\">eschatological</a> insults to the collective human intelligence that are being posted on every Facebook wall on Earth today, it\'s some other inane <em>Ancient Aliens</em> bullshit about Pakal the Great &ndash; the 68-year ruler of the city-state of Palenque who was so beloved by his people that they worshipped him as a living deity &ndash; actually being a time-traveling cybernetically-enhanced ubermench astronaut from the future teleporting through the space-time continuum on a <a href=\"/yuknoom-spacemanpakal.gif\">motorized rocket car</a> made out of autopsied Grey aliens and jet-fuel-soaked dragon bones salvaged from <a href=\"/predator.html\">The Predator</a>\'s spaceship.</p>\r\n<p>Well, if you\'re reading this, it\'s probably a good indication that this 2012 Mayan Apocalypse OMG Downfall of Western Civilization Holy Shit Balls We\'re All Gonna Die Screaming in a Fire thing has gone the way of Y2K, Rapture 2011, and jokes about <em>Duke Nukem Forever</em>, so instead of beating you all savagely about the head and neck with a ham-fisted take on why the Mayans shockingly weren\'t capable of accurately predicting events that would occur one thousand years after they ceased to exist as a cohesive civiliazation, instead I\'ll share the story of perhaps the single most badass, face-cleaving Mayan warlord who ever lived &ndash; the mighty Serpent King Yuknoom Che\'en II, Divine Lord of the Snake Kingdom Calakmul.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/yuknoom2.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>EPIIIIIIIIIC</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>For those of you who don\'t sleep in Ancient Mayan footie pajamas and recite prayers to Kukulkan every night before bed, it\'s best to think of Mayan Civilization of Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize as being a loose conglomeration of Ancient Greek-style city-states populated by people who shared a common language and culture, but who also really fucking hated each other and settled the overwhelming majority of their disputes by shoving razor-sharp obsidian daggers into the torsos of anyone who disagreed with them and then displaying the decapitated heads of their enemies outside their favorite sports arenas. Yuknoom Che\'en the Second was born into the royal family of one of the most powerful and badass of these 7th-century Mayan city-states &ndash; the sprawling metropolis of Calakmul, which is located in the Yucatan Peninsula about 20 miles on the Mexican side of the Guatemala border. As a Prince of this warlike civilization, Yuknoom would have typically been there on the front lines as a young man, hucking spears and swinging a badass-looking war sickle as the armies of his father &ndash; a man historians only know as King Scroll Serpent &ndash; marched a gigantic army two hundred miles through a dense jungle and attacked, captured, and plundered the rival city-state of Palenque in 612, ripping the city-state a new asshole so hard that they ended up having to TARDIS in the afore-mentioned Pakal the Great a few years later to bail their shit out and rebuild their civilization with his alien-obtained space mysteries.</p>\r\n<p>About a decade after utterly razing one of the most powerful Mayan city-states to the ground, Yuknoom continued his warlike conquest of his enemies, painting himself blue and going on campaign with his brother when the armies of Calakmul crushed the city-state of Narajo, tied their captured King to a pole, and dragged him 100 miles through the jungle back towards Calakmul, where they then either roasted him alive and ate him or tortured him to death with fire (the words for this in the Mayan language are the same so please believe whatever you think is more awesome). Then, just to be dicks, Yuknoom had his stonemasons chisel a scene depicting his glorious battlefield victory and subsequent King-devouring awesomeness on the side of the main pyramid in Narajo, which kicks ass because it\'s basically the 7th-century Mayan equivalent of cold-cocking a dude unconscious and then tattooing a dick on his face before he wakes up.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/yuknoom3.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">GET THE SHARPIE</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Yuknoom\'s brother died in battle in 636, and our 36 year-old hero took over as <a href=\"/yuknoom-thulsadoom.jpg\">Divine Lord of the Snake Kingdom</a> (Calakmul\'s house sigil was a serpent\'s head, so it was known as the Snake Kingdom). He inherited the skull-laden throne of a prosperous, militaristic city-state, and over the next five decades turned it into a massive empire that dominated the entirety of Mayan Civilization. From his throne atop a 150-foot limestone pyramid in the middle of a badass jungle, Yuknoom ruled over nearly 100,000 people, and brought about a golden age of architecture, astronomy, math, and insanely-hardcore art depicting jaguars and eagles eating still-beating human hearts atop piles of rotting corpses. He established trade routes stretching from Central Mexico to Panama, built more structures and monuments than any other Mayan ruler, and viciously crushed anyone who stood in his path.</p>\r\n<p>And got to live here:</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/yuknoom4.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>One of two pyramids at Calakmul.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Now, in the mid-7th century, the Warsaw Pact to Calakmul\'s NATO was the city-state of Tikal. The only game in town that rivaled Calakmul in scope and power and head-cleaving murderocity, Tikal was a hard-ass group of blowgun marksmen and spear-swinging motherfuckers, and these two empires were balls-deep in the middle of an epic 150-year war of annihilation that dated back to the days of Yuknoom\'s grandfather whacking fools in the face with an obsidian battle axe in waist-deep snow uphill both ways and gas cost two pennies and you didn\'t have to lock your door at night.</p>\r\n<p>Well, luckily for Yuknoom the Great, the once-proud Tikal was having a little bit of high school drama bullshit going on in their royal family, as a pair of idiot brothers named Nuun Uiol Chaak and B\'alah Chan K\'awiil were arguing about who should be Homecoming King. Nuun &ndash; whose name translates to \"Shield Skull\", making him sound like a <em>Borderlands</em> villain &ndash; was the ruler of Tikal itself, while B\'alah (which I always read as \"Baller\") ruled the Tikal-occupied colony of Dos Pilas (Spanish for \"Two Pilas\"). Yuknoom really didn\'t give a shit who should be King or who shouldn\'t, so in 657 he intervened in their penis-measuring competition by showing up with a hammer and knocking both of them in the balls with it until they barfed. First, he attacked and conquered Dos Pilas, sending B\'alah into exile, and then he went straight on to Tikal, crushed Shield Skull\'s men, sent him in to exile as well, sacked the city, then brought all of his Tikal prisoners back to Calakmul where they ritualistically had their hearts cut out of their chests by Mayan priests at the top of a stone pyramid. Once their hearts had been tossed aside, Yuknoom had them decapitated, and their skulls were skewered on racks and placed on public display throughout the city.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/yuknoom8.jpeg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>A public skull display outside an Aztec temple.<br />The Mayans impaled their heads vertically instead of horizontally, but you get the idea.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Now, as you may have gleaned from the ridiculously-insane shit that has happened in the preceding paragraphs, the Mayans were tough motherfuckers. This was a civilization that played fucking volleyball on a stone court with a 9-pound medicine ball that was hit back and forth so hard that it could legit straight-up kill a player if it hit him in the face or the stomach, so, as you might guess, hardcore berserker Mayan warlords with names like Shield Skull don\'t just give up and call it a night every time you destroy their armies and ceremonially eviscerate all their friends and loyal followers in the parking lot of a 7-11. Shield Skull swore bloody vengeance, fled into the jungle, and started sneaking around to other city-states trying to build up an alliance to take out Yuknoom and crush Calakmul once and for all.</p>\r\n<p>Shield Skull\'s first stop was Palenque, that place that had been plundered by Yuknoom\'s dad a few years back. Palenque\'s king, Petty Officer First Class Pakal the Great of the United Nations Air and Space Time Travel Exploration Department, said he\'d offer military and financial aid if Shield Skull needed it. When Yuknoom heard what was going on, he hauled ass out there, massacred Palenque\'s armies, chased Pakal out into the jungle on a fusion-powered motorcycle, and burned the city down a second time.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/yuknoom6.png\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>Mayan Civilization. Yuknoom would kick the shit out of every one of these cities<br />at some point in his 51-year reign.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Shield Skull\'s next stop on his Yuknoom Hate-Fest World Tour was the city-state of Naranjo, the place that was still a little bitter about having their ziggurat vandalized and their leader devoured by Yuknoom a few decades ago. Naranjo, who had rebuilt their army in the interim period, also agreed to help, and their King kicked off his campaign by launching an attack that conquered Caracol, a nearby city-state that was allied with Yuknoom.</p>\r\n<p>The tablet describing the conquest of Caracol is the last appearance of the Naranjo Royal Family anywhere in history.</p>\r\n<p>The next mention of the city-state is in 680, when Yuknoom is personally presiding over the installation of a new dynastic line, one that is related to him through marriage.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/yuknoom5.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>It would take Shield Skull 15 long years to finally gather enough troops and support to launch a surprise onslaught and re-take Tikal and Dos Pilas back Yuknoom, liberating his people and crowning himself the rightful King of Tikal.</p>\r\n<p>It took the 77 year-old Serpent King of Calakmul less than twenty months to paint the jungle red with the blood of Shield Skull and his entire army, destroying them utterly in a battle in 679 that the Mayan historians describe as featuring knee-deep pools of blood and heaping piles of severed human heads.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/yuknoom9.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>Mayan warriors, seen here looking FUCKING TERRIFYING.<br />Note: You do NOT want one of these dudes coming through the jungle after you with a sickle.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Yuknoom would spend the rest of his life turning his city-state into an expansive Empire that encompassed almost all of Classical Mayan Civilization. He would sack El Peru, install three new kings in Canacun, and capture Piedras Negras. Artifacts from his reign could be found as far south as Lake Peten Itza, over 150 miles away from Calakmul, and his empire stretched the entire width of the Yucatan Peninsula. He died on April 3, 686, at the age of 85. He was succeeded by his son, the amazingly-named King Jaguar Paw, Claw of Fire, a name that only further demonstrates how hardcore Yuknoom must have been.</p>\r\n<p>Of course, it probably bears mentioning that King Jaguar Paw, Claw of Fire would be defeated by the next King of Tikal, the hard-as-fuck Lord Jasaw Chan K\'awiil, who would crush Jaguar Paw in battle in 685, sack Calakmul, and bring back a resurgence of Tikal\'s power, but Mayan Civilization faded out and collapsed not to long after that so at least his victory was short-lived.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/yuknoom7.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>The ruins of Tikal.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Links:</span><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.mesoweb.com/encyc/index.asp?passcall=rightframeexact&amp;rightframeexact=http%3A//www.mesoweb.com/encyc/view.asp%3Fact%3Dviewexact%26view%3Dnormal%26word%3DGreat%26wordAND%3DYuknoom+the\">Mesoweb</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://latinamericanhistory.about.com/od/Maya/p/The-Ancient-Maya-War-And-Warfare.htm\">About.com</a></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Sources:</span><br /><br /><span> \"Dos Pilas\". <em>Guatemala Sights</em>. Mobilereference, 2011.<br /><br /> Glassman, Steve and Armando Anaya. <em>Cities of the Maya in Seven Epochs</em>. McFarland, 2011.<br /><br /> Hedman, Matthew. <em>The Age of Everything</em>. Univ. of Chicago Press, 2007.<br /><br /> Mann, Charles C. <em>1491</em>. Random House, 2006.<br /><br /> Martin, Simon and Nikolai Grube. <em>Chronicle of the Mayan Kings and Queens</em>. Thames &amp; Hudson, 2008.<br /><br /> Sharer, Robert J. and Loa P. Traxer. <em>The Ancient Maya</em>. Stanford Univ. Press, 2006. </span></p>','2012-12-21','48066411937','yuknoom.jpg','yuknoom5.jpg','Yuknoom the Great','Hardcore Mayan ruler who built monuments out of the skulls of his enemies and who may have once actually eaten a rival king. ',''),('Robin Olds','July 14, 1922','June 14, 2007','Honolulu, HI, USA','20th-century American Pilot','<p>One of the most kickass and rewarding parts of writing a web page about violence and destruction and explosions and semi-historical dick jokes about the Roman Empire is when I get email from active-duty service members telling me how much they\'re digging the site.&nbsp; Sure, I\'m not exactly performing life-saving brain surgery on underprivileged third-world orphans or improving the quality of human life by brewing endless shots of life-saving espresso at the local Starbucks, but nothing makes me feel quite as awesome as receiving email from badass fighter pilots telling me that they pin my stories on their squadron boards or that their air tactical wing has \"Badass Wednesdays\" where the C.O. reads stories out loud to his units to pump them up.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>One thing that sticks out to me, however, is this &ndash; in roughly every email I have ever received from airmen and pilots of the United States Air Force, one name appears front and center in gigantic italicized red text:&nbsp; Colonel Robin Olds.&nbsp; A three-time ace across two wars so balls-out that his moustache has its own chapter on his Wikipedia page, Robin Olds was an old-school blood-and-guts fighter pilot who pulled more Gs on his way to the bathroom than most mortal men ever dared to experience in their entire lives, and he could dogfight his way out of everything from a swirling flak-covered World War II air battle to the virtually-impossible final level of <em>Ikaruga, </em>then go home and sleep with his supermodel pin-up girl wife.&nbsp; This was a charismatic, hardcore air warrior who knew the importance of keeping his interviews short, his inverted barrel rolls tight, and his machine gun bursts controlled, accurate, and as fatal as a mouthful of napalm.</p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img src=\"/badass/images/784151231971/olds1.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Born in Honolulu and raised in Virginia, Robin Olds was the son of a well-known American General who had trained combat pilots to blast the hell out of German Fokkers in the skies above the battlefields of World War I, so basically you might say that he never really had a prayer of being anything other than a hardcore dogfighting maniac.&nbsp; He flew in his first plane &ndash; a badass open-cockpit WWI-style biplane &ndash; at the age of 8, and by the time he was 17 he was already running across the border to enlist in the Royal Canadian Air Force to fight the Germans during the earliest days of World War II.&nbsp; Dad pulled some strings and got Robin\'s RAF paperwork ripped up, because seriously what the hell, so instead of shipping to England in 1939 Robin Olds enrolled at the United States Military Academy at West Point and became an All-American Defensive Tackle for their then-still-wildly-successful football team.&nbsp; Never one to half-ass anything in his life, Olds earned a reputation for being virtually indescribable during the 1940 Army-Navy Game, when he got several teeth busted out of his head while trying to make a tackle, refused to be taken out of the game, and played the entire second half spewing blood out of his mouth like a jacked-up cross between Jack Lambert and one of the zombies from <em>The Walking Dead</em>.&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Well steamrolling running backs and busting out hilarious sack dances overtop of de-cleated opposing QBs was great and all, but even though Olds played well enough to be inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame (an honor he received in 1985), his true passion in life at this time was blowing up Nazis aircraft and sending their pilots hurtling back towards the Vaterland like flaming meteors.&nbsp; So after he was done with West Point Olds shipped out to England, got familiar with the cockpit of the badass P-38 Lightning fighter plane, and started flying missions over occupied Europe to help support the D-Day operations in Normandy.&nbsp; &nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/badass/images/784151231971/olds2.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">Fact: The P-38 is one of the sweetest-looking fighter planes ever.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp; </p>\r\n<p>Olds scored his first kill on August 14, 1944, when he turned a Focke-Wulf 190 into a fiery German-filled inferno, but it was on a particularly balls-out mission 11 days later that Captain Robin Olds truly made a name for himself as a man that needed to have a special flight suit constructed just to contain his ridiculously-oversized steel testicles.&nbsp; On that particular mission, Olds\'s squadron was assigned to escort a flight of B-17s on a bombing run deep inside Germany when suddenly his fighter group came upon a massive formation of over 50 ultra-hardcore German Me-109 fighter aircraft.&nbsp; Undeterred by staring his own bloody, gruesome death straight in the face, Olds ordered his four-plane element to <em>advance </em>on the German formation, despite the notable problem that he was outnumbered roughly 15-to-1 and .&nbsp; When the Three and Four man in his formation reported in with \"engine trouble\" and couldn\'t get up enough speed to engage the enemy, Robin Olds naturally looked over at his wingman and said, \"Ok, you take the 25 on the left, I\'ll take the 25 on the right.\"&nbsp; He throttled up to combat speed, dropped fuel tanks, and prepared to charge head-first into an aerial engagement that would make the Battle of Endor look like a couple of Hello Kitty kites harmlessly bumping into each other on a sunny day in the park.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Unfortunately, when he dropped his fuel tanks, Robin Olds got a little too excited about the killing and forgot to switch over to internal fuel.&nbsp;&nbsp; Both engines stalled and died.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>He pulled the trigger anyways.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The P-38\'s quad-linked .50 cals and 20mm cannon barked fire like the Queen of Hell, shredding the fuselage of the lead Me-109 and sending it hurtling into a death spiral.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Olds credits himself as being the only man to ever record a confirmed kill while in glide mode.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;<img src=\"/badass/images/784151231971/olds3.png\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">\"I know it sounds ridiculous for two guys to attack that many airplanes, but I ask anybody who\'s listening, put yourself in one of those German airplanes.&nbsp; One of your people screams that he\'s been hit, he\'s bailing out.&nbsp; Every man in that huge gaggle was wondering if there was someone right behind them.\"</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The two P-38s accelerated, diving into the 50-plane formation, firing in every direction like wildmen.&nbsp; Olds\'s wingman capped two more aircraft while Olds got his engines back on-line and dove down at the enemy.&nbsp; However, during the fight, Olds took one dive a little too steep, his controls locked up on him, and he only narrowly avoided crashing nose-first into a wheat field by cranking a hard-ass turn so ridiculously-dangerous that the G-force of the turn shattered the cockpit window out of his aircraft.&nbsp; This lack of a windshield of course didn\'t stop him from shooting down another Me-109 &ndash; some asshole dove down to finish Olds off, but he banked left hard, slammed on the air brakes, let the German shoot past him, then rammed a 20mm cannon round up his tailpipe.&nbsp; This would be his fifth kill of the war, making Captain Olds the first fighter ace from his squadron.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>He\'d fly dozens more missions in P-38s and P-51, spending the later years of the war shooting down Me-109s, taking his propeller plane up against Me-262 jet fighters, and performing dangerous strafing runs on German airfields.&nbsp; He\'d finish the war with 12 air-to-air kills, making him a two-time fighter ace, and an additional 11.5 fighters destroyed on the ground.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img src=\"/badass/images/784151231971/olds4.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Despite his unquestioned badassitude as a combat pilot, a series of mustache-related problems with authority and repeated insubordination kept Olds\'s jackass superiors from sending him out to blow the shit out of Commies in the Korean War, so when his numerous requests to transfer to combat duty were denied Robin Olds joined the air demonstration team, serving as a stunt pilot to help promote the USAF, and went on a joint NATO mission that resulted in him becoming the first foreigner to ever command an RAF unit in peacetime.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>He also went out and married Ella Raines, the famous pin-up girl and Hollywood actress who used to co-star in movies with guys like John Wayne.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp; </p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">&nbsp;<img src=\"/badass/images/784151231971/olds5.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Finally, 23 years after kicking ass in World War II, Robin Olds got to return to combat duty, this time in the skies above the canopy jungle of North Vietnam.&nbsp; As one of the only USAF pilots with live-fire dogfighting experience, Colonel Olds was assigned to command the 8<sup>th</sup> Tactical Fighter Wing.&nbsp; He instantly became beloved by his men, not only because he taught them badass shit like how to shove missiles down the throats of Commie bastards, but by assigning flight leaders by skill rather than rank. &nbsp;In fact, despite being the Commanding Officer of the entire Wing, Olds himself wore a rankless flight suit and routinely flew as the Number Two man and allowed a subordinate officer to command the mission.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Well at the time Robin showed up, the USAF had a bit of a problem.&nbsp; They\'d been sending F-105s and other heavy fighter-bombers into North Vietnam to blow up the Ho Chi Minh Trail, but those suckers were getting eaten alive by hardcore, ultra-fast Soviet-built MiG-21 fighters that routinely popped up from the cloud cover, smoked the American planes with well-placed air-to-air missiles, then ducked back below the clouds before anybody knew what the hell just ballknocked them.&nbsp; If the Americans were going to stop taking heavy losses to Vietnamese fighters, they needed to do something about it.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>And Colonel Olds had a plan.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/badass/images/784151231971/olds6.gif\" alt=\"\" />&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Olds\'s plan was known as Operation Bolo, named after a badass Filipino fighting knife.&nbsp; The idea was simple &ndash; you take a team of F-4 Phantom jet fighters, have them fly in the same formation and the same speed as the slower, less-maneuverable F-105s, and try to trick the MiGs into picking on someone their own size.&nbsp; Olds set up his men with the same radio frequencies and callsigns, flew the same bombing run the F-105s were running, and basically tried to walk straight-on into a Vietnamese ambush in the hopes that he might somehow survive and take a couple of the enemy with him.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>What resulted was the biggest air battle of the Vietnam War.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>On January 2, 1967, Olds and three other F-4s made their fake run, and were greeted by a swarm of MiG-21s flying up out of the clouds after them, missiles armed and locked.&nbsp; With the enemy trying desperately to get a lock on him, Olds climbed and banked hard, buying his wingman&nbsp; time to drop behind the MiGs and open fire with air-to-air sidewinder missiles.&nbsp; Suddenly aware that they were facing fighters instead of bombers, the Vietnamese scrambled more MiGs from the airfield, and they dove into the fray just as the second element of Olds\'s ambush arrived on the scene and throttled headlong into the raging battlefield.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/badass/images/784151231971/olds7.jpg\" alt=\"\" />&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>So in the skies just outside Hanoi, North Vietnam, dozens of MiG-21s and F-4s dove in and out of the clouds, with the world\'s two most advanced fighter jets ripping missiles and cannons at each other in a furious frenzy of air-to-air combat.&nbsp; During the carnage Robin Olds personally took out one of the enemy by executing a ridiculously-tough loop-de-loop vector roll, pulling crazy Gs, dropping in right behind the enemy bandit and blowing him out of the sky with a Sidewinder missile.&nbsp; With surface-to-air missiles the size of telephone poles rocketing up through the cloud cover at him, Olds banked and dove through the fray, wasting everything in sight as the Americans took advantage of their surprise and cut a trail of explosions through the NVA Air Force.&nbsp; In just thirteen minutes of combat, seven MiGs were killed &ndash; roughly half of North Vietnam\'s MiG-21 fleet &ndash; and the Americans hauled back to their base in Thailand with zero casualties.&nbsp; &nbsp;For his actions in the skies, and his planning of the mission, Olds received his third Silver Star.&nbsp; He\'d go on to fly 100 combat missions in \'Nam, recording three more MiG kills in the process, bringing his career total to 17.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>After the war, this three-time ace served with the Joint Chiefs in the Pentagon, telling them to drop the nuclear strategic bombing thing and adapt the surgical strike air superiority strategy the U.S. employs today, then served as Commandant of the Air Force Academy for four years.&nbsp; He retired in 1973, continued to be active in Air Force operations, and passed away in 2007.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;<img style=\"display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;\" src=\"/badass/images/784151231971/olds8.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><strong>Links:</strong></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/20/us/20olds.html?_r=0\">NY Times Obit</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.af.mil/information/heritage/person.asp?dec=&amp;pid=123006521\">US Air Force Bio</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.usafa1961.org/robin_olds.htm\">USAF Academy Bio</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.airforce-magazine.com/MagazineArchive/Pages/2008/June%202008/0608olds.aspx\">Air Force Magazine</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://militaryhistory.about.com/od/airforce/p/Vietnam-War-Brigadier-General-Robin-Olds.htm\">About.com</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Olds\">Wikipedia</a></p>','2012-12-28','784151231971','olds.JPG','olds-small.jpg','Robin Olds','Three-time ace and USAF legend who obliterated everything from Nazi Me-109s to MiG-21 jet fighters.','\"The deliberately planned fighter sweep went just as we\'d hoped.  The MiGs came up.  The MiGs were aggressive.  We tangled.  They lost.\"');
INSERT INTO `weekly` VALUES ('Zheng Sen','August 1624','June 23, 1662','Hirado, Nagasaki Prefecture, Japan','17th-century Chinese Admiral','<p>The Great Rebel-Quelling General Koxinga Zheng Chenggong, Lord of the Imperial Surname and Last Defender of the Ming Dynasty, was a hardcore ocean-raiding scurvy pirate captain who, over the course of his short 12-year career terrorizing the high seas at the helm of a fleet of warships, ascended from his already-badass station as a vicious, marauding sea-dog to become the adopted son of a Chinese Emperor, a national hero in Japan, Communist China, and Taiwan (thus marking the first and only time in recorded history those three places have ever agreed on anything), and the only pirate to ever end up being &ndash; I shit you not &ndash; worshipped as a living God of War.<br /><br />If that\'s not good enough for you, the name Koxinga actually used to be transliterated Cocksinja, and I can\'t be the only person on the planet juvenile enough to think that looks like \"Cocks Ninja\".&nbsp; I\'m not sure if the weird mental image of a hilarious dick-punching ninja this conjures up helps his badass cred or not but I cannot in good conscience continue writing this article without mentioning that first.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img src=\"/badass/images/402341815414/koxinga1.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The future Pirate God of Taiwan was born in Nagasaki Prefecture, Japan, some time in 1624 when his Japanese mother was knocked up by one of Southern China\'s most infamous pirate lords.&nbsp; One of the many legends surrounding Koxinga\'s life claims that he trained as a samurai as a young child, working out his &lt;i&gt;katana&lt;/i&gt; chops with a highly-respected Japanese sword instructor as early as six years old, but who knows if that\'s true or not.&nbsp; What we do know for sure is that some time in the early 1640s he was called back to China by his father to help take part in one of the most successful pirate empires the world has ever seen, and from that point on Koxinga never looked back at anything other than the burning wreckage of any vessel stupid enough to try and share the South China Sea with him.<br /><br />Koxinga\'s dad had started off as some random pirate jobber nobody, but over a long and storied and excruciatingly violent career he\'d built up such a massive armada of sea-roving hardasses that the Emperor of China finally decided, \"Fuck it, I\'m not even going to try to screw with this asshole anymore,\" and offered him a position as an Admiral in the Ming Chinese Navy.&nbsp; This is made even more awesome by the fact that Koxinga\'s dad lived in the province of Fukien, thereby making his official title \"The Fukien General,\" a rank that presumably carries even more weight when forcefully spoken in a low-class British accent.&nbsp; What\'s even better is that while Koxinga\'s dad was collecting Imperial paychecks for being a pirate-huntin\', Emperor-lovin\', kickass Fuckin\' General, he still kept up his own illicit pirate activities on the side, AND ran a a lucrative on-the-downlow black-market silk trade with the Dutch and British East India Companies.&nbsp; It was so out of control that by the time Koxinga was summoned back to town to help pops out with his operation he was stepping into a massive criminal empire that generated over 100,000 silver taels a year (which is a lot of taels&hellip; it works out to about 4.5 tons of silver a year).</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img src=\"/badass/images/402341815414/koxinga2.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">A badass Chinese pirate ship.&nbsp; Koxinga would command a fleet of roughly 800 vessels like this.</p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Well despite being offered a leadership position in one of the most successful organized crime operations in Chinese history, Koxinga tried to do the Michael Corleone thing and headed off to study government administration at the prestigious Nanking University instead.&nbsp; Ok, sure, so that was going well for a while, but everything went to shit in 1644 when a massive uprising by the barbarian Jurchens of Manchuria swept into Beijing, obliterated the armies of the Ming Dynasty, hung the Emperor from a lotus tree, and then declared the creation of a new Imperial Dynasty known as the Qing.&nbsp; The Emperor\'s only surviving son &ndash; the man who according to Chinese custom was now the True Emperor &ndash; fled to the only person he knew had a chance of protecting him: Koxinga\'s dad.<br /><br />Life, liberty, and the pursuit of booty might not have been enough to motivate Koxinga to follow in his dad\'s footsteps, but when it became a matter of defending the Last Surviving Emperor of the Ming Dynasty against a marauding horde of usurper foreign barbarians from hell, this dedicated kicker of other peoples\' asses hauled his shit back home and prepared to defend China with his life.&nbsp; He was symbolically adopted by the Emperor, given a badass sword, an Imperial Seal with the words \"Great Rebel-Quelling General\" on it, and the title Koxinga (meaning \"Lord of the Imperial Surname\"), and sent out to kick the shit out of the Qing armies that were methodically destroying everything in their path like an industrial-grade riding lawnmower mulching a LEGO village into plastic dust.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img src=\"/badass/images/402341815414/koxinga3.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">A badass Ming Dynasty two-handed sword modeled after the Japanese no-dachi.</p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Koxinga was pretty much unmatched in his prowess as a warrior, barricading any and all entry points to Fukien with his massive nutsack and routinely bitch-slapping the Qing every single time they tried to bust in and kick the shit out of the Last Ming Emperor.&nbsp; Unfortunately, his battlefield successes didn\'t end up doing his beloved Emperor a whole hell of a lot of good, because about six months after Koxinga won a major victory Koxinga\'s dad betrayed the Emperor, stabbed his own son in the back, sold out to the Qing, and surrendered Fukien to the enemy.&nbsp; Koxinga\'s dad had been promised by the Qing that he could keep his position and title if he\'d just give up the Emperor.&nbsp; The Qing rewarded him for his loyalty by kicking him in the balls, dismantling his pirate armada, drowning the Emperor in a well, and then dragging Koxinga\'s dad back to Beijing in chains, where they\'d toss him in a dungeon and let him rot for 15 years before summarily executing him.&nbsp; Which sucked.<br /><br />This, as you might imagine, left Koxinga in a little bit of a jam.&nbsp; The Emperor and the Dynasty he was supposed to protect were dead.&nbsp; His father was incarcerated.&nbsp; He was an outlaw.&nbsp; All that remained of the largest pirate army in world history was himself and about a dozen of his closest commanders, all holed up in a small Confucian temple in some remote part of the mountains.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>But Koxinga wasn\'t about to give up just because the odds were ridiculously-skewed against him and the rest of mainland China had already accepted their New Manchurian Overlords.&nbsp; Fuck that.&nbsp; He took out his zippo, ceremonially torched the scholar\'s robes he wore at Nanking University, and swore that he would only wear full plate armor until such time as the Qing were thrown out of China by their balls and the Ming Dynasty was restored to its rightful place on the Imperial Throne.&nbsp; One by one, his officers vowed to follow him.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img src=\"/badass/images/402341815414/koxinga4.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Koxinga headed to Xiamen province, the last bastion of Ming Loyalty, and went to work rebuilding an army. Using his own charisma, his fervent dedication for kicking ass, and his exceptional ability to make the Qing Armies look like a bunch of inept spear-swinging morons straight out of a <em>Dynasty Warriors</em> game, the Last Hero of the Ming Dynasty assembled a massive army of loyal warriors and started beating ass everyone ass was to be found, kicking the shit out of his enemies in a series of campaigns that lasted almost 15 years. He constructed a mighty fleet of over 3,000 warships, which he used not only to attack Qing coastal fortifications and settlements, but also to raid their shipping pirate-style to finance his operations (a funding that was augmented by continuing his father\'s black-market silk dealing). On land, he attacked towns and forts, destroyed the Qing Armies with ambushes and badass fire-bomb attacks, personally leading from the front and beheading any of his officers cowardly enough to order their troops to retreat. One cool story involves a Qing warlord who ruled over an \"impenetrable\" island fortress waking up hung over and finding Koxinga standing in his bedroom. Another claims that Koxinga was standing on a hill coordinating an attack on a rival town one time, and when he bent down to tie his sneakers a cannonball came flying where his head just was and blew up Koxinga\'s shield-bearer, so Koxinga responded by capturing the town and having every artilleryman in the city executed. Yet another war story claims he was able to set up underground explosives that were capable of being remote-detonated (in 1659!), and when the Qing marched out to the battle he blew the ground out from under them and wiped them out. Every time he attacked, he won. Every time the Qing sent navies out to stop him, \"putrid corpses and tangled wreckage strewed the shores of Xiamen.\"</p>\r\n<p>Koxinga continued to build up his forces, and then in 1659, with his supplies and food getting short, he launched an all-out attack on the city of Nanking in a balls-to-the-wall effort to re-take the former Imperial Capital and re-establish the Ming Dynasty once and for all. His attack failed &ndash; he took the outer walls with a brilliant attack, but then all his men raided the liquor stores and got wasted, giving the Qing the opportunity to charge out and destroy them for their incompetence by setting them all on fire with flaming arrows and fire boats. Koxinga\'s massive army of 170,000 troops and 3,000 warships was reduced to a mere 15,000 soldiers &ndash; enough to win a few battles, but not enough to overthrow the Qing Dynasty.</p>\r\n<p>Oops.</p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/badass/images/402341815414/koxinga5.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>But, as we\'ve already seen, Koxinga was not a dude who understood the meaning of the phrase, \"you\'re totally boned so why the fuck don\'t you just give up.\" Instead of calling it a day, he instead decided to do something totally fucking insane &ndash; he loaded 25,000 loyal citizens on a fleet of 800 warships, left China in <em>Battlestar Galactica</em>-style armada, and decided to conquer Taiwan from the Dutch and set up a new Chinese government-in-exile over there.</p>\r\n<p>Huh?</p>\r\n<p>That\'s right folks &ndash; Koxinga, the Pirate King of Taiwan, took 25,000 people across the 100 mile Strait of Taiwan, landed his last 15,000 soldiers on the shores of Taiwan, besieged the Dutch-controlled Fort Zeelandia &ndash; their only military presence on the island &ndash; for nine months, assaulted it with a screaming horde of sword-swinging madmen, threw the \"red-haired foreigners\" out on their ginger asses, took their commander\'s daughter to be his concubine, and declared himself King of Taiwan, creating the first Chinese-controlled government of Taiwan in the process.</p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/badass/images/402341815414/koxinga6.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>From his new base in Taiwan, Koxinga built up the infrastructure of the island, continued his trade routes with Japan, Southeast Asia, and Britain, beheaded a bunch of people, and swore to regroup, rebuild, and re-take China from the barbarian Manchus. Oh, and he also sent an envoy to the Philippines to inform the Spanish governor that he had about a year to prepare before Koxinga showed up and conquered the Philippines as well.</p>\r\n<p>He never really got the chance. He died of malaria six months after takign Taiwan, at age 37, but his work was already done &ndash; he\'d set up a dynasty that would rule Taiwan for 20 years (it would eventually be conquered by the Qing in 1683), and created a legacy that would see temples built in his honor across Taiwan. Today he\'s revered as the founder of Chinese Taiwan and a hero in Japan, China, and Taiwan.</p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><br /> <img src=\"/badass/images/402341815414/koxinga7.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>','2013-01-04','402341815414','koxinga.jpg','koxinga-small.jpg','Koxinga','The only pirate to ever be worshipped as a living God.','\"Are these not sufficient proofs of your incompetency and inability to resist my forces? I will give you more and stronger ones. But if you still persist in refusing to listen to reason and decline to do my bidding, and if you wish deliberately to rush to your ruin, then I will shortly, in your presence, order your castle to be stormed. If I wish to set my force to work, then I am able to move heaven and Earth. Wherever I go I am destined to win. Therefore take warning, and think the matter over.\"'),('Violette Morris','April 18, 1894','April 26, 1944','Paris, France','20th-century French Athlete','<p>A hardcore bruiser of a Frenchwoman with a bad attitude, a vicious mean streak, and a right hook that hit like a thermonuclear warhead, Violette Morris was a tough-as-shit asskicker who won over twenty French national athletics titles in everything from boxing to shotput, earned over 50 medals for busting heads in national and international competition, took the field in over 200 professional soccer matches, placed first in almost two dozen auto and motorcycle long-distance endurance races, then responded to being barred for life from French sports by joining the Gestapo, terrorizing the French Resistance with a nail-studded whip, and then dying in a withering hail of machine gun fire when a joint British/French Commando raid peppered her supercharged sports car with enough ammunition to take down an F-15.</p>\r\n<p>And yeah, I know, the Nazi connection leaves a bad taste in my mouth too, but in this case I\'m going to argue that the purpose of this site isn\'t to write effusive praise-happy love songs to the most kind-hearted puppy-hugging humanitarians in Rainbow Land, but rather to tell tales of history\'s most balls-out heroes, villains, psychos, madmen, and anyone else who did badass shit.</p>\r\n<p>And this chick did some pretty badass shit.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/temp/morris1.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Violette Morris was the daughter of some prominent French Baron or General or whatever the fuck, but the fact that she was much more likely to sucker-punch a dude in the nads and steal the keys for his hotrod than she was to curtsey to a stupid Marquis made her kind of a poor candidate for Baroness-daughter-ness, so instead of ramming Finishing School down her throat like a doily-embellished tongue depressor pops shipped Violette off to be raised in a nice quiet convent instead. As you can probably guess, a bisexual future Gestapo interrogator who smokes 3 packs a day and swears like a fucking sailor isn\'t exactly a satisfactory fit for a nunnery either, so instead of settling down and playing nice Violette took her time in the Lord\'s House and dedicated it to violently owning every woman there in every single sport that has ever been invented.</p>\r\n<p>Despite being just 5\'5\" tall and 150 pounds, Violette Morris was basically the LeBron James, Tom Brady, and Alabama Crimson Tide of everything in France in the early 20th century. At French track and field championships, she won the national title in archery, weightlifting, cycling, swimming, tennis, and a couple other stuff I don\'t feel like listing. She tried out for &ndash; and made &ndash; the French National Water Polo team, which is fairly mind-blowing because there wasn\'t a women\'s program in the sport and she is, to this day, the only female to ever make the men\'s squad. She also played midfield on a national champion soccer team, going up against both men\'s and women\'s teams, and was not only the women\'s national heavyweight champion in boxing, but was so fucking hardcore at that shit that she would routinely put on public displays where she\'d take on any challengers &ndash; men or women &ndash; that thought they could fuck with her and pummel them senseless with a vicious series of Dragon Punches and Tiger Uppercuts.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/temp/morris2.gif\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>When some random gigantic globe-spanning war with Germany broke out in 1914, Violette\'s boxing gym was redecorated over to be a Red Cross aid station, so Morris naturally just said fuck it and volunteered to run head-on into enemy bullets for her country. Her crazy daredevil driving skills and complete immunity to fear and <em>Fear</em>-based effects got her a cushy job driving an ambulance on the front lines during World War I, where she would basically haul ass at maximum velocity in what basically amounted to a modified fucking Model-T Ford, dodging German machine gun fire and swerving past artillery shells and bombed-out craters in a furious effort to get critically-wounded French soldiers to the hospital before they bled out and died. No pressure.</p>\r\n<p>Her first posting was the Battle of Verdun, where she drove her ambulance through one of the bloodiest battles in human history, with two million men killing each other over the course of 10 months of non-stop homicide. After that she worked as a courier during the Battle of the Somme &ndash; the second biggest battle of the war behind Verdun &ndash; where her job involved navigating a rubble-strewn, bullet-riddled, trench-filled wasteland from hell behind the handlebars of a suped-up government-issue motorcycle to deliver orders and supplies that were critical to the French war effort. During her adventure at the Somme, she wrecked her bike no fewer than three times, and every time she just pulled herself out of the mud, dusted herself off, repaired her bike on the spot in the middle of a goddamned warzone, and completed her mission.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/temp/morris3.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /><br /><span>Battlefield at the Somme. Not good motorcycle terrain.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>After the war Violette Morris took a brief break to win Olympic Gold Medals in discus, javelin, and shot put (yawn), but the need for speed was in Morris\'s veins, and, as I mentioned in the intro, the only way you were going to get this woman out from behind the steering wheel was in a body bag.</p>\r\n<p>Her first non-life-or-death competitive speed-based driving experience was in 1922, when she received a brand-new B.N.C. cyclecar and entered the Bol d\'Or &ndash; an ultra-grueling 24-hour endurance road race that required competitors not only to stay awake for Keifer Sutherlandian spans of time, but to spend that entire span hauling fucking ass and navigating hairpin corners as fast as your top-of-the-line race car can carry you. She\'d been entered by some dipshit promoter who thought it would be a novelty to enter a woman in the race because ha ha ha what the fuck.</p>\r\n<p>She placed fourth and set a new lap record. By 1926 she\'d be the three-time defending champion.</p>\r\n<p>Two weeks after her first shot at the Bol d\'Or, Morris entered another typically-men\'s-only race, and kicked everyone\'s asses by driving a 750 cc, 90 horsepower open-top cyclecar through the treacherous winding roads of the Pyrenees Mountain range faster than any man ever had. A year later she\'d win the Grand Prix de San-Sebastian, the Bol d\'Or, and be the proud owner of the Women\'s Racing Cup, the Team Racing Cup, and the President\'s Racing Cup, which is basically the Sprint Cup of mid-century France. She was like Danica Patrick if Danica Patrick actually won races.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/temp/morris4.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Throughout the mid-20s Violette Morris continued dominating everyone and everything, but her ultra-aggressive, balls-out, in-your-face style really pissed a bunch of jackasses off. Like, apparently a bunch of up-tight dickwads thought she was being all \"unladylike\" or whatever the fuck just because when she was playing for the French National Women\'s Soccer team she\'d repeatedly respond to hard fouls against her teammates by taking the offending opposing player out with a dirty tackle (or just straight-up coldcocking them in the jaw in the middle of the pitch), drawing a red card, and then go back and get busted having sex with her teammates in the locker room after the match.</p>\r\n<p>Morris didn\'t give a fuck. She continued to dominate sports and racing, was openly public about her relationships with women, dressed like a man, fought hard, drank harder, and sang bawdy songs at Parisian nightclubs with cool chicks like Josephine Baker. Late in 1926 she even got a double-mastectomy, having her breasts removed old-school Greek Amazon style, ostensibly because they were so huge that she couldn\'t fit behind the wheel of a race car (I like to think of this as the feminine version of that joke I like to make about fighter pilots having balls so huge they don\'t fit in the cockpit), though my guess is the actual reasoning behind this move probably went a little deeper than automobile maneuverability concerns.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/temp/morris5.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Well eventually the French Athletics Commission got a little fed up with this and decided that because Violette Morris liked to wear pants and touch other women\'s boobs she shouldn\'t be allowed to play sports anymore. She was stripped of her athletics license, banned from all sporting events in France, and barred from participating in the 1928 Olympic Games. She appealed this decision on grounds of \"WTF Holmes\", and not only was her case thrown out, but the French media covering the trial obliterated her in the press with a smear campaign that makes the YouTube commenter community look like a support group for single moms. She opened an auto shop building race cars, which was basically the next best thing to actually getting to drive them, but then she lost her business in the Great Depression of 1929 and was forced to scrape together a living by giving tennis lessons to the dumbass kids of rich aristocratic douchebags.</p>\r\n<p>Morris was pissed. And she wanted revenge.</p>\r\n<p>She got the opportunity in 1936, when one of her former racing rivals named Gertrude Hannecker, an undercover Nazi spy, came to her with an interesting question &ndash; how far are you willing to go to wreak vengeance on the French establishment?</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/temp/morris6.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Well the story gets fucked up from here. Morris joined the Reich, performed acts of espionage against the French government throughout the late 30s, and when France finally fell to Hitler in 1940 Violette Morris became so ferocious in her tactics rooting out the French Resistance that she was known as \"The Hyena of the Gestapo\". Rolling through town with psychotic thugs named One-Armed Jean, Jo the Mammoth, and Le Sanguinaire (\"The Bloodthirsty\"), this former boxing champ realized she had a hell of a knack for beating confessions out of prisoners &ndash; which, incidentally, is kind of the Gestapo\'s thing anyways &ndash; and armed with nothing more than a whip and a zippo lighter she destroyed Resistance cells and British SOE spies anywhere she could find them. Which is admittedly pretty impressive, even though I don\'t exactly have any love for her ideology.</p>\r\n<p>So&hellip; yeah, it\'s kind of a bitter finale because this chick goes from Jimmy Johnson to Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS in the course of like 2 paragraphs, but it turned out that by-and-large the Nazis tended to get what was coming to them, and that\'s exactly how it went down with Violette Morris. She became so notorious in her counter-espionage tactics that the SOE organized a special mission to take her out of the picture, and on April 26, 1944 &ndash; just a month or so before D-Day &ndash; British Commandos and French Resistance partisans ambushed her and opened fire on her supercharged sports car with a dozen or so machine guns, whacking her out in slow motion Sonny Corleone-style. She was buried in a potter\'s field and is now basically almost universally-despised by everyone in France. Which, honestly, should probably count as bonus points somewhere.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/temp/morris7.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Links:</span><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://jalopnik.com/5942494/meet-the-woman-who-cut-off-her-breasts-to-be-a-better-racer\">Jalopnik</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://doriangrayscloset.posterous.com/violette-morris-the-hyena-of-the-gestapo\">Dorian Gray\'s Closet</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&amp;tl=en&amp;js=n&amp;prev=_t&amp;hl=en&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;eotf=1&amp;u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.leblogauto.com%2F2009%2F04%2Fviolette-morris-du-rose-au-brun.html&amp;act=url\">Le Blog Auto</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?act=url&amp;depth=1&amp;hl=en&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;prev=_t&amp;rurl=translate.google.com&amp;sl=auto&amp;tl=en&amp;twu=1&amp;u=http://moto.wp.pl/kat,73756,title,Violette-Morris-motoryzacyjna-pasja-do-szalenstwa,wid,14952651,wiadomosc.html%3Fticaid%3D1fddd&amp;usg=ALkJrhhmNGWjDMuagUeWNo17qVUr7S8RPA\">Moto.pl</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violette_Morris\">Wikipedia</a><br /><br /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Sources:</span><br /><br /><span> Bouzanquette, Jean Francois. <em>Fast Ladies</em>. Veloce, 2009.<br /><br /> Debordes, Jean. <em>Paroles de Resistants</em>. Editions de Boree, 2003.<br /><br /> Moore, Allison. <em>Sexing Political Culture in the History of France</em>. Cambria, 2012.<br /><br /> Rejali, Darius. <em>Torture and Democracy</em>. Princeton Univ. Press, 2009. </span></p>','2013-01-11','105398215267','morris.jpg','morris-small.jpg','Violette Morris','Professional race car driver, national champion in 20 sports, Olympic Gold Medal shot put and discus thrower, hated enemy of the French Resistance. ','\"Whatever a man can do, so can Violette.\"'),('Desmond Doss','February 7, 1919','March 23, 2006','Lynchburg, VA, USA','20th-century American Soldier','<p>Corporal Desmond Doss of the 77th Infantry Division is, as far as I can tell, one of the only people in American history to receive the Medal of Honor &ndash; the country\'s highest award for military bravery in the face of thousands of fanatical enemy combatants psychotically unloading a hellacious cloud of bullets in your direction with varying degrees of accuracy &ndash; not only without ever actually firing a shot in anger, but without ever even <em>actually carrying a weapon into combat in his entire life</em>. Not a rifle. Not a knife. Nothing.</p>\r\n<p>He didn\'t need one to save the lives of at least 50 men in a single battle and become the first Conscientious Objector to ever earn the Medal.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/528487830784/doss14.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Desmond Doss was born in Lynchburg, Virginia in 1919 to a super-religious family of hardcore Bible-thumping Seventh-Day Adventists. A firm believer in the Sixth Commandment (that\'s the one about not murdering other people), Doss had a marginally difficult time reconciling his desire to serve his country in World War the Second with his disinclination to shoot other human beings in the face at close range with a thirty-aught-six slug delivered from the piping-hot barrel of a bayonet-equipped M1 Garand. He registered for the draft on his 18th birthday like every patriotic red-blooded football-watching American man was supposed to do, and he took a decent civvie job working on Navy ships at the Newport News docks, but then just to be safe he went out and took a little bit of medical training as well so that in case his number actually got called he could be sure he wouldn\'t have to be packing heat when he was deployed into a hellacious overseas war zone.</p>\r\n<p>When Doss\'s number came up in 1942 and he was ordered to report to the Army recruiting office, he didn\'t try to defer or punk out or cry or any stupid nonsense like that. He was, however, still unwilling to compromise his principles re: inflicting ridiculous amounts of violent brutal death on the enemy, so when he got there Doss requested \"non-combatant\" status on his enlistment paperwork. Since that\'s not a real thing, the Army stamped him \"Conscientious Objector\" instead &ndash; a classification that allowed Doss to get away with not carrying a rifle into combat, but one that also kind of lumped him in with that all-too-popular notion of flag-burning, America-hating hippies who would much rather quietly cry themselves to sleep listening to indie folk music than hack someone\'s arms off with a machete and drink their blood out of a melted combat boot.</p>\r\n<p>It\'s also not a classification that makes you a hell of a lot of friends when you\'re sitting in a foxhole with a bunch of guys who are fighting and dying for the flag.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/528487830784/doss2.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Desmond Doss\'s refusal to carry even so much as a combat knife on his person at any time meant that he took a lot of crap from his comrades early on in his career, because, as you can guess, it makes your typical G.I. a little uneasy when the guy who\'s supposed to be watching his back would be severely outgunned by a gang of third-graders armed with slingshots and water balloons. Soldiers threw their boots at him. One Sergeant tried to get him court-martialed for disobeying a direct order to carry a rifle. Another officer tried to transfer him out of the unit, then, when that failed, attempted to have him discharged as a mental case.</p>\r\n<p>Doss sat there, took the abuse, completed his Medic training, and then when the bullets started flying he showed them all that he had the biggest, brassiest balls in the entire Division. Because sure, anyone can stare at the enemy down the iron sights of a trusty rifle, but only a truly fearless badass would sprint towards them with a bulls-eye painted on his helmet and armed with nothing more than a box of Band-Aids and tube of Neosporin.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/528487830784/doss3.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Doss\'s first chance to prove himself came during the American assault on the Japanese-controlled island of Guam in 1944, when he courageously charged through knee-deep mud in driving rain on multiple occasions to reach wounded men anywhere on the battlefield, any time of the day or night, seemingly utterly oblivious to any bullets or mortars that happened to be choking the battlefield at the time. With his Medic insignia prominently displayed on his helmet and sleeve &ndash; an emblem that made him a big, meaty target for Japanese snipers eager to crush the American morale by capping their doctors &ndash; Doss accompanied hundreds of missions through the dense jungles of the small Pacific island over the course of several months of intense combat, routinely going out with search-and-destroy patrols even when he hadn\'t actually even been assigned as the Medic for the unit. For his repeated bravery dragging wounded and dying men out of ultra-deadly killzones and giving them life-saving first aid, Doss earned his first of two Bronze Stars.</p>\r\n<p>After a brief stopover in New Caldeonia, Doss was next shipped out to the Philippine island of Leyte in December \'44, this time as a stretcher-bearer rather than a field medic. One again, he showed everyone that you don\'t need to make fools\' heads explode to be badass, earning his second Bronze Star for an action where he ran a hundred or so yards through wide-open brush to save two critically-wounded soldiers who had been caught in a deadly crossfire from two hardened Japanese machine gun positions. Doss somehow made it to the men in one piece, realized one was dead, and then single-handedly carried the other man back through ankle-deep mud to the safety of the jungle, where he built a stretcher out of bamboo and dragged the wounded soldier to safety while Japanese snipers used his skull for target practice.</p>\r\n<p>And, honestly, that was like a typical Wednesday for a combat medic in Leyte.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/528487830784/doss4.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br />\"I made It a practice to go out on patrol with the men. The non-com warned me not to,<br />but I told him, it may not be my duty but it was what I believed in.<br />I knew these men; they were my buddies, some had wives and children. <br />If they were hurt, I wanted to be there to take care of them. <br />And when someone got hit, the others would close in around me while I treated him, <br />then we\'d all go out together.\"</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>But it was in the hell of Okinawa in 1945 where Cpl. Desmond Doss would perform the ridiculously-over-the-top act of desperate death-despising balls-outitude he would come to be remembered for in the annals of American military history. His unit, B Company of the 1st Battalion, 307th Infantry Regiment, 77th Infantry Division, had been ordered to take part in the massive operation to capture the Maeda Escarpment &ndash; a 400-foot-high ridge overlooking the entire south side of the island that was virtually packed solid with boulders, machine gun nests, booby traps, concrete pillboxes, and winding caves filled with angry gun-wielding Japanese people. Every step of the battle was hell, as the Japanese contested every square centimeter of the hill with their lives. Doss and B Company climbed ropes up sheer cliff faces, advanced through dangerously-wide-open minefields, and cleared out enemy positions with flamethrowers and satchel charges as the tenacious defenders hammered them with machine guns and mortars relentlessly day and night without mercy, vowing to die where they stood rather than concede a single handful of dirt to the American assault. It was during this fight, on the night of April 30th, 1945, Desmond Doss performed one of many feats of heroic bravery when a 5-man squad of B Company soldiers charged up a 40-foot cliff and were mowed down at extreme close range by a Japanese machine gun team: Doss, never one to leave a wounded man behind, got on his belly and army-crawled to his injured comrades &ndash; who, by the way, were less than <em>15 feet</em> from the machine gun (!) &ndash; on four separate occasions, each time dragging a soldier to safety.</p>\r\n<p>Just four days after this mind-blowing act of selfless heroism, Doss and 1st Battalion were on the move again, continuing their inexorable advance up the Maeda Escarpment. This time, however, the Japanese had a trap waiting for them &ndash; the moment the Americans moved into a dangerously-exposed position, two camouflaged trenches filled with Japanese troops threw off their camo netting and opened up with a deadly enfilading fire that raked the American patrol from two directions at once. 500 of the 800 men in 1st Battalion were killed or wounded in action, the rest broke and withdrew in panic, and when the smoke cleared only one American was left standing on the blood-soaked battlefield.</p>\r\n<p>Desmond Doss.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/528487830784/doss5.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br />\"We had a lot of wounded lying around, and I had my buddies there, <br />and I couldn\'t give up. I had a Japanese aid kit, two American aid kits, <br />and my pockets were stuffed with bandages. I couldn\'t just abandon my men. <br />They knew if there was any way possible I could take care of them, I would.\"</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Desmond Doss, alone, aided only by covering fire from the surviving members of the battalion, ran back and forth through a Japanese killzone for FIVE HOURS STRAIGHT, pulling wounded soldiers out of the battlefield, dragging them over to the only means of escaping the death field &ndash; a 40-foot cliff at the edge of the Escarpment &ndash; and then lowering them down to safety using a juryrigged pulley system he tied himself out of ropes. As rifle fire whizzed over his head from both directions, Doss crawled through the crossfire, sometimes to within 30 feet of the Japanese front lines, grabbing the wounded Americans and pulling them back in a Herculean display of hardcore badassitude. The official record states that over the course of five hours of constant work, Doss pulled 75 wounded men out of the battlefield and hand-lowered them 40 feet off a cliff to waiting ambulances below. Doss, always humble, thinks the number is more like 50. The Army Medal of Honor citation initially read 100. I\'d argue it doesn\'t really matter that much &ndash; it\'s not the number that counts, it\'s the fact that this guy ran through a brutal war-torn hellhole, completely unarmed, and dragged badly injured men to safety until he was physically unable to move his legs any more.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/528487830784/doss6.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Two weeks after single-handedly saving 75 human lives, Desmond Doss was back in action again, this time at a position a couple miles past the Escarpment. Unfortunately, that battle wouldn\'t end up as well for him &ndash; a planned American sneak attack went haywire when U.S. artillery started landing on friendly positions, and before long the Japanese were counterattacking and Doss was ducked down in a foxhole trying to give first aid to wounded men. When a Japanese grenade landed in the hole with him, Doss tried to kick it away, but the explosive blew and peppered his legs and back with 17 white-hot shrapnel wounds. Doss treated himself for shock, took care of his wounds, then turned down the opportunity to be evacuated by stretcher because he believed there were other wounded men who needed it more. Instead, he went right back to doing what he did best &ndash; helping the wounded &ndash; running back into the fight and dragging men to safety until a sniper round shattered all three bones in his left arm. Badly wounded, bleeding, and without a usable arm or leg, Doss still managed to walk back to the aid station under his own power.</p>\r\n<p>His biggest regret? The Bible his wife gave him had fallen out of his pocket when he was blown off his feet by the grenade, and he hadn\'t recovered it before saving a bunch of lives and walking away from life-threatening injuries.</p>\r\n<p>It worked out pretty well, though. When his commanding officer came by the hospital to visit Doss and inform him that he was going to receive the Medal of Honor, he brought a present &ndash; a waterlogged, semi-charred pocket Bible. Apparently after the hill had been captured from the Japanese, every man in the Company scoured the field until they\'d found it for him.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/528487830784/doss7.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Links:</span><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/25/national/25doss.html?_r=0\">NY Times Obit</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/25/AR2006032501181.html\">Washington Post</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://historylessons.net/desmond-doss-the-very-definition-of-a-hero\">Bruce\'s History Lessons</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desmond_Doss\">Wikipedia</a></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Sources:</span><br /><br /><span> Collier, Peter and Nick Del Calzo. <em>Medal of Honor</em>. Artisan, 2011.<br /><br /> Willbanks, James H. <em>America\'s Heroes</em>. ABC-CLIO, 2011.<br /><br /> Smith, Larry and Norman Schwarzkopf. <em>Beyond Glory</em>. W.W. Norton, 2004. </span></p>','2013-01-18','528487830784','doss.jpg','doss-small.jpg','Desmond Doss','Combat medic receives the Medal of Honor for single-handedly carrying 75 wounded men out of a raging warzone.','\"The Japanese were out to get the medics.  To them, the most hated men in our army were the medics and the BAR men… they would let anybody get by just to pick us off.  They were taught to kill the medics for the reason it broke down the morale of the men, because if the medic was gone they had no one to take care of them.  All the medics were armed, except me.\"'),('Kennyo Kosa','1543','1592','Osaka, Japan','16th-century Japanese Monk','<p>\"Brutal\", \"fanatical\", \"militant\", and \"sack-cleavingly homicidal\" aren\'t descriptors that are typically attached to our understanding of Buddhism, a holistic set of gluten-free organic free-range spiritual beliefs that by-and-large preach a bunch of one-with-the-universe hippy shit like meditating on the nature of existence, contemplating water as it courses through a quiet stream in a bunny-filled meadow, and generally not ripping your enemies apart limb-by-limb with the razor-sharp blade of a Japanese halberd and then using their gibbed-apart corpses as target practice for your badass corps of arquebus-toting riflemen.</p>\r\n<p>That\'s because not enough people know the story of Kennyo Kosa, the Eleventh Abbot of Ishiyama Hongan-ji, and how his fanatical, militant, sack-cleavingly homicidal Buddhist warriors rocked out an epic, bullet-riddled ten-year resistance to the rule of the infamous Japanese feudal lord Oda Nobunaga that resulted in roughly three-quarters of the Osaka countryside being redecorated with dismembered appendages, fractured skulls, and high-impact samurai blood spatter all over the place like what the fuck.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/75213299666/kennyo1.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>So while we generally don\'t like think of Buddhists as being overly-zealous about anything more intense than militant veganism, excessive abuse of incense, and an uncontrollable urge to own a hybrid automobile, Kennyo Kosa was the awe-inspiring leader of a militant sect of ball-crunching Buddhist warrior-monks that put a distinctly 16th-century Japanese spin on the Five Noble Truths, trading in mundane boring shit like zen karma pseudo-Transcendentalist serenity with nature for a bloody katana blade and an overwhelming belief that death in battle for the Buddha brought instant salvation and any display of cowardice in combat was a decent cause for the earth to open up under your feet and swallow you straight into hell. Which is kind of awesome.</p>\r\n<p>Founded in 1457 in Kaga Prefecture, this \"True Pure Land\" sect of Buddhism was also pretty bitchin\' in that the basic idea behind it was that your typical feudal Japanese peasant\'s life &ndash; which for the most part consisted of growing rice, cooking the rice, eating it, and then immediately being stabbed in the throat by a rampaging samurai who was currently in the process of torching your village into ash and carrying your wife off to be his concubine &ndash; really wasn\'t all that great, and that a big reason for that was because samurai were a bunch of gigantic fucking assholes. So, in 1488, this association of pissed-off farmers, monks, merchants, carpenters, scholars, and other non-samurai-types got super ripshit pissed, grabbed their pitchforks, torches, and homemade bear traps, overthrew the samurai leaders of Kaga Prefecture with a massive revolt, set up a civilian, non-samurai prefectural government for the first time in Japanese History, and then proceeded to administrate it like civilized human beings for the next hundred or so years. It was actually pretty great, right up until the samurai eventually decided they\'d had enough of this bullshit and they were going to remind everyone who was boss.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/75213299666/kennyo2.gif\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>When Kennyo Kosa took over as the 11th Abbot in 1554, he was basically walking face-first into a gigantic whirlwind shitstorm of Japanese history, one that was essentially personified in the character of the \"Demon King\" Oda Nobunaga &ndash; a future badass of the week in his own right and hands-down one of the most ridiculously hardcore human beings who ever lived.</p>\r\n<p>Oh, and if you\'ve never heard of Nobunaga before, and the potentially-too-subtle \"He\'s the Fucking Demon King\" thing doesn\'t tip you off as to what his business was all about, here\'s an example of how he\'s generally portrayed in basically every piece of semi-historical Japanese artwork out there:</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/75213299666/kennyo3.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Nice Dudes from History generally aren\'t portrayed in black plate armor with sinister \'stache\'s holding gigantic glowing swords while overlooking a burning inferno that at one point had to have been a major metropolitan area. This was a man who made it his life goal to crush all of Japan under his iron-plated fist. A man who once met with a bunch of Christian missionaries and the only thing he took away from it was that you could kill a guy by nailing him to a tree &ndash; and from that point on became infamous for crucifying enemy prisoners of war. He was a man who didn\'t have much need for warrior-monks telling peasants that they don\'t have to pay taxes or listen to samurai, and no fucking bullshit hippy commune utopia noise was going to stop him from his badass quest for rampaging glory.</p>\r\n<p>But while Nobunaga had little trouble cleaving his way through the Japanese countryside in a swirling steel inferno of human blood, he failed to realize exactly who he was fucking with when, in early 1570, he marched a massive army of 30,000 men out to lay siege to the capital of the \"True Pure Land\" sect &ndash; for fortress known as Ishiyama Hongan-ji in present-day Osaka.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/75213299666/kennyo4.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /><span>Musket-wielding Japanese warrior-monks.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Commanded by the utterly-fearless, diplomatically-brilliant Abbott Kennyo Kosa, Ishiyama Hongan-ji was an ultra-modern fortress city that had been a center of commerce and learning for decades and was home to roughly fifteen thousand hardcore, fanatical, naginata- and musket-slinging badasses with nothing to lose. In addition to having a Klingon-style belief in combat-related martyrdom, these guys damn well knew that even if they surrendered they were going to end up tasting the pointy end of a katana (when Nobunaga destroyed the monastery on Mt. Hiei he gave the monks two choices &ndash; jump into a fire or have a sword rammed down your throat), and at Kosa\'s urging they all swore to fight Nobunaga with their last breath and to never allow their monastery to fall to the invading samurai armies.</p>\r\n<p>They were pretty well set up for the task, too. Built on an old Imperial Palace, Ishiyama Hongan-ji was a sophisticated series of sturdy stone walls, fortresses, and easily-defensible structures positioned along the slopes of an ultra-steep hill, with moats and creeks blocking the approach and a sheer cliff face dropping off to the ocean guarding the back of the fortress. If it\'s not enough that the final approach to the citadel required Nobunaga\'s men to charge uphill through uneven terrain across open ground while the defenders fired muskets and arrows at them, the Ishiyama Hongan-ji was further surrounded by a network of over 50 watchtowers and guardhouses, plus Kennyo Kosa also managed to have his men booby-trap the entire area with tripwires and clay pots specially designed to break the ankles of enemy warriors and horses, and set up a system of bells and signal fires that allowed him to summon 10,000 of his best warriors to any part of the Branch Davidian Compound within minutes. Thanks to a clever alliance with the nearby Mori Clan, who were masters of naval strategy and combat, Kennyo Kosa ensured that his people were resupplied with bullets, food, and medical supplies by sea, leaving him free to turn the entire mountain slope into one gigantic hellacious deathtrap without worrying about how the hell he was going to get supplies through the 30,000 Oda Clan samurai that now encircled his city by land.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/75213299666/kennyo5.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /><span>The main complex, c. 1574.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Nobunaga ordered the attack. He marched out with tens of thousands of hardened warriors, grizzled from decades of combat against some of Japan\'s toughest warlords, expecting to crush this peasant army under his heel like a C-130 transport aircraft landing wheels-down on a week-old banana.</p>\r\n<p>What he ran in to were fifteen thousand fanatical gunslinging monks, pissed-off peasants, spear-swinging Shinto priests, and badass katana-equipped Ronin warriors, all charging screaming towards them carrying a bowel-weakening assortment of deadly weaponry and displaying banners with Buddhists sayings scrawled on them in human blood. They charged forward for their religion, fighting for their own lives, and for their leader, Kennyo Kosa, a man who was believed to hold the power over who went to Heaven or Hell and who could condemn a man to eternal damnation if he hesitated in battle. Every last man fought to death, never once thinking of retreat or surrender. Psychotic zealots with nothing to lose.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/75213299666/kennyo6.png\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Nobunaga\'s attack was repulsed with massive losses. Then, as he was regrouping, Kosa\'s gunners launched night attacks to harass their camp, torch their siege structures, and instill fear in the men. Then, just to show the Demon King exactly how much he thought of him, Kennyo Kosa mobilized True Pure Land believers in other provinces to rise up and fight alongside any nobles willing to oppose Nobunaga &ndash; including one case in late 1570 when some of his men besieged Nobunaga\'s brother\'s house and forced him to seppuku himself to death. This ability to mobilize forces all throughout the country helped Kosa initiate some powerful alliances with other regional lords, many of whom agreed to attack Nobunaga to help take some of the heat off the siege of Ishiyama Hongan-ji Castle.</p>\r\n<p>For the next four years (!), Nobunaga failed to make any progress. Harassed on all sides by enemies, he couldn\'t put enough troops out to break through Ishiyama Hongan-ji\'s defenses, but he also couldn\'t lift the siege because every time he turned around the monks trashed his forts and caused all kinds of trouble. In 1574, bitter and angry and his repeated failed attempts to take the castle, Nobunaga took on a different strategy, this time attacking outlying cities and anyone who was supporting Kennyo Kosa\'s forces. In once city he forced everyone indoors, set the entire place on fire, then had his men shoot anyone who came out of their homes. A few months after that he attacked a different city and wiped out so many people that, as he wrote in his memoirs, \"You like seriously couldn\'t take a leak without pissing on a corpse&hellip; dude, it was TOTALLY hilarious you shoulda been there bro LOL.\"</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/75213299666/kennyo7.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br />Ah, good times.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>After crushing the surrounding resistance, Nobunaga then attempted to blockade the seaport, attacking the Mori Clan ships that were ferrying supplies to the beleaguered defenders. The Mori, however, were masters of naval combat, and in a major battle in 1576 they destroyed Nobunaga\'s attempt to stop them from pissing him off. When this failed, he sent his best general &ndash; Akechi Mitsuhide &ndash; to launch a full-scale assault with 10,000 heavily-armored samurai warriors, but they were bitch-slapped back down the hill by a throng of 15,000 gun-toting monks. Nobunaga, pissed off that he had to do everything himself, then personally led his army in yet another assault, and not only got thrown back out on his ass, but somehow ended up catching a bullet and getting wounded in combat in the process.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/75213299666/kennyo8.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Well despite all of Kosa\'s tenacity and his troops\' unwillingness to surrender, shit got bad in 1578 when Nobunaga rolled into the harbor with a bunch of psycho iron-clad battleships that proceeded to completely fuck up the Mori fleet like you could not imagine. Nobunaga then blockaded the port, preventing Kosa from resupplying, and the Abbott\'s calls for help and assistance all went unheeded on account of the fact that Nobunaga pretty much already killed every single person who could possibly have helped him.</p>\r\n<p>Still, Kosa refused to surrender. With the walls crumbling beneath him, enemy troops attacking on a daily basis, and his food and ammunition supplies dwindling by the hour, Kosa and the Ishiyami Hongan-ji held out for an incredible two more years, despite having zero support from anyone else in Japan. Nobunaga intensified his attack, concentrating 60,000 soldiers &ndash; the bulk of his army &ndash; on utterly annihilating the warrior-monks, but Kosa\'s men continued to fight like savage demons, firing until the barrels of their muskets turned red and their swords were smashed into more shards than a Triforce.</p>\r\n<p>Finally, after ten years &ndash; the longest siege in Japanese history &ndash; and tens of thousands of lives, Nobunaga made one final appeal. He went to the Emperor himself, and asked His Imperial Majesty to write Kosa a letter begging him to surrender. Despite the obvious coercion involved, this was something that not even the ultra-devout Kennyo Kosa could ignore. He saw the letter, recognized his lost situation, signed the Imperial Decree with his own blood, and ordered his monks to burn the entire Ishiyami Hongan-ji complex to the ground to prevent Nobunaga from being able to claim it. In a ridiculously-rare display of badass-to-badass appreciation, Nobunaga allowed Kosa and his followers to walk out of there alive.</p>\r\n<p>Oh, and then, because it had fucked him up so bad and given him the biggest fight of his career, Nobunaga ordered a castle be built on the ruins of the city. The site would end up becoming Osaka Castle, one of the most famous fortresses in Japanese history.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/75213299666/kennyo9.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Kennyo Kosa, meanwhile, still wasn\'t done. He took his followers south, to friendly lands, and started helping Nobunaga\'s eventual successor, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, providing his monks as irregular combat troops against the enemies of the Shogun. For his loyalty, Hideyoshi rewarded the Abbott in 1591 by allowing him to build a new temple, this time in Kyoto. Today the Nishi Hongan-ji (literally \"Western Temple of the Original Vow,\" though nowadays it\'s just known as \"Dear Mr. West\") is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.</p>\r\n<p>Kennyo Kosa died a year later of natural causes, passing leadership of the sect to his sons.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/75213299666/kennyo10.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Links:</span><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.osakacastle.net/castle_en/haran/isiyama.htm\">OsakaCastle.net</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://wiki.samurai-archives.com/index.php?title=Kennyo_Kosa\">Samurai Archives</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.samurai-archives.com/ikk.html\">Ikko-ikki</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://sengokufieldmanual.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-ikko-ikki-insurgency-as-fortified.html\">Sengoku Field Manual</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishiyama_Hongan-ji\">Wikipedia</a></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Sources:</span><br /><br /><span> Ferejohn, John and Frances Rosenbluth. <em>War and State Building in Medieval Japan</em>. Stanford Univ. Press, 2010.<br /><br /> Hall, John Whitney. <em>The Cambridge History of Japan</em>. Cambridge Univ. Press, 1991.<br /><br /> McClain, James L. <em>Osaka</em>. Cornell Univ. Press, 1999.<br /><br /> Turnbull, Steven. <em>Japanese Fortified Temples</em>. Osprey, 2012.<br /><br /> Turnbull, Steven. <em>Warriors of Medieval Japan</em>. Osprey, 2011. </span></p>','2013-01-25','75213299666','kennyo.jpg','kennyo-small.jpg','Kennyo Kosa','No-nonsense warrior-monk who led a sect of militant Buddhists against the toughest warlord in Japanese history.','\"Renounce this defiled world and attain the pure land.\"'),('Oscar Charleston','October 14, 1896','October 5, 1954','Indianapolis, ID, USA','20th-century American Athlete','<p>One of the infamous \"Four Bad Men\" of Negro League Baseball, Oscar Charleston was a fastball-obliterating, hot-tempered, pitcher-terrifying superstar who, in addition to being one of the greatest and most ruthlessly-efficient five-tool players to ever live, also found time to serve the United States in three armed conflicts, helped scout Jackie Robinson into the Major Leagues, and survived a parking lot brawl against a horde of pissed-off machete-wielding Cubans while armed with nothing more than his own two fists and an uncontrollable urge to punch the hell out of anyone that came within arm\'s reach.</p>\r\n<p>Born on Indianapolis\'s east side in 1896, Oscar Charleston grew up in a big family (some sources say 6 kids, others 10) of seriously tough bastards. His dad was a construction worker, and his brothers were all successful boxers, but while Oscar certainly developed an early interest in connecting his fist to other peoples\' faces as forcefully as possible, he didn\'t really feel much like sticking around his hometown, so at the age of 15 he quit school, lied about his age to the local Army recruiter, joined the service, and was shipped out to the Philippines as part of the U.S. 24th Infantry Regiment. From 1910 to 1915 he was stationed outside Manila as part of the post-Philippines War American occupation, where he could look forward to occasionally having to come face-to-face with psychotically-badass groups of bolo-knife-wielding Filipino berserkers who wanted nothing more than to disembowel every American soldier they could find until the U.S. decided to get the hell out of their country. When he wasn\'t trying to maintain order or keep his intestines in one piece, Oscar Charleston joined the U.S. Army baseball team, where he overcame segregation to become the only black player in the Manila League baseball association. Oh and while he was at it he set an Army record by running the 220-yard dash in 23 seconds, which is pretty fast considering that the 1912 Olympic gold medal time in the 200-meter dash (roughly 218 yards) was 22 seconds.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/76256892766/charleston1.png\" alt=\"\" /><br /><br /><span>\"Some people asked me, \'Why are you playing so close to the right-field foul line?\'<br />What they didn\'t know was that Charleston covered all three fields, and my responsibility was to <br />make sure of balls down the line and those in foul territory.\" <br /><br />-Dave Malarcher</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Charleston came back to the States in 1915 and tried out for his hometown team, the Indianapolis ABCs, an all-black semi-pro \"barnstorming\" baseball club that pre-dated the Negro Leagues by five years, and that made a living basically by driving from city to city in a crappy old bus playing against any moderately-organized team that would share a field with them. Charleston hit a home run in his first game, an exhibition matchup against an all-white team of retired ex-major leaguers, thus kicking off a 40-year baseball career that would take him from pre-Negro Leagues to post-Jackie Robinson.</p>\r\n<p>Of course, what makes Charleston badass isn\'t just that he was an incredible baseball player &ndash; it\'s that this guy was as ball-crushingly tough as they come, and so utterly fearless that nobody messed with him and lived to tell the tale. Described as having steel-gray \"gunfighter eyes\", and a pair of hands so strong they could rip the cover off a baseball, Charleston refused to ever back down for any reason, even when it was probably a really good idea to do so, and his hot temper and penchant for face-punching insanity typically got him into a hell of a lot of trouble pretty much all the time. In his rookie season, he was suspended for a couple games for \"insubordination\" (this is code for \"getting into a damned fistfight with his manager) and then, a few games after he came back, he came to the defense of his second baseman after a hard play at second, and ended up getting completely carried away, punching an ump unconscious with one swing, and causing a brawl that emptied both benches, the grandstands, and the local police station. As the run-of-the-mill baseball fight became a city-wide riot and cops started rolling in with billy clubs, tear gas, and revolvers, Charleston ran for it, evaded capture for a while, then ended up getting tossed in jail while still in his baseball uniform. Once he\'d cooled off a little he wrote a very nice apology letter to the KO\'ed ump, who agreed not to press charges, and the next morning Charleston was on the team bus headed to the next town. He\'d go on to hit .360 in the Black World Series and lead his team to the championship. He took a brief one-year hiatus from baseball in 1918 to go serve as a Corporal in World War I (no big deal I guess), but by 1920, when the Indianapolis ABCs became a charter member of the Negro National League, Oscar Charleston was already the NNL\'s biggest star.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/76256892766/charleston2.png\" alt=\"\" /><br /><span><br />\"Charleston could hit the ball a mile. He didn\'t have a weakness. When he came up, <br />we just threw it and hoped like hell he wouldn\'t get a hold of one and send it out of the park.\" <br />- Dizzy Dean, Hall of Fame pitcher</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>I won\'t get too much into the stats and stuff, except to say that Oscar Charleston was, without question, the greatest five-tool threat the Negro Leagues ever produced. Standing six feet tall and weighing two hundred pounds, Charleston could hit for contact and power, but \"The Hoosier Comet\" could also steal bases at will and covered so much ground in the outfield that many hitters were convinced this guy could legitimately run faster than the ball. He could hit fastballs, curveballs, trick pitches, lefties, righties, and umpires, compiling nine seasons with an average over .350 (one pitcher quipped that the only way to get a pitch past him was to sneak one in while he was arguing with the ump), and anything he made contact with went a long, long way. In 60 games in 1921 he hit a mind-blowing .446, and led the league in doubles, triples, home runs, and stolen bases (i.e., every single damn thing they keep a stat for). A lifetime .348 hitter, Charleston finished his career in the Negro Leagues\' top five in every major all-time statistical category, including his record as the League\'s all-time leader in stolen bases. This was a guy who would club a 450-foot bomb over the center field fence and then run down a fly ball and make an obscene diving barehanded catch at the bottom of that same inning. During one exhibition series against the MLB\'s St. Louis Cardinals &ndash; a series where he faced Hall of Fame big-league pitchers like Bob Feller and Dizzy Dean &ndash; Charleston hit 5 homers in 5 games, batted .458, and on three occasions he knocked a single, yelled to the pitcher that he was going to steal second on the next pitch, and then did it. And while there\'s sadly no footage of him in action, every sports writer who ever saw this guy play said that it was unlike anything they\'d ever seen before &ndash; a hot-tempered, two-fisted asskicker who could hit like Babe Ruth, field like Tris Speaker, and run the bases like Ty Cobb.</p>\r\n<p>Oh yeah, and if that last part doesn\'t mean much to you, here\'s a picture of Ty Cobb running the base paths. He ran angry. So did Charleston. There\'s more than one Negro League third baseman who boasted about the permanent scars on his arms and legs he\'d earned the hard way by standing in front of two hundred pounds of Oscar Charleston hurtling towards him cleats-first like a gigantic barrel-chested freight train with spikes attached to the end of it.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/76256892766/charleston3.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /><br /><span>\"This is a game you\'re supposed to play and you\'re supposed to play it rough <br />and you ain\'t got no business complaining.\"</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Of course, unlike Cobb, who is pretty much notorious for being an all-around complete bastard, it is worth noting that Oscar Charleston is almost universally-described as a good man who was kind to others off the field, and that it was just his ultra-competitive nature and unwillingness to back down from any challenge that made him a demon from hell on it. Regardless, the stories about his exploits are pretty much legendary. I mean, no joke, this guy was so intense on the field that the City of Indianapolis banned inter-racial baseball games because Oscar Charleston had started a bench-clearing brawl during an exhibition against the Cardinals\' farm team because he thought they were beaning his teammates on purpose.</p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">During the Negro League off-season Charleston kept his skills sharp by participating in Winter League Ball in Cuba every year from 1919 to 1928 (interestingly he\'s the Cuban League\'s all-time leader in batting average and stolen bases and was inducted into the Cuban Baseball Hall of Fame in 1997), but apparently the hot weather just exacerbated Charleston\'s temper. During one game, Charleston chased a deep ball all the way to the fence, ran two steps up the wall Bo Jackson-style and snagged the ball just in time to steal a home run away from the hitter, only to have some Cuban Steve Bartman jackass pull the ball right out of his glove. Charleston, slightly enraged over this, then pulled the fan over the wall onto the field and slugged him in the gob. After the game, Charleston was making his way to the team bus, when the fan and a couple of his closest buddies confronted him armed with machetes and prepared to hack the Center Fielder apart Jason Voorhees style. Charleston, no stranger to battling machete-swinging assailants, fought them off with his fists, dropping two of them before the cops showed up and broke it up.</p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><br /><br /><img src=\"/images/76256892766/charleston6.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">A few years later, Charleston was out in Center Field when one of the Cuban team players came in hard on a double play ball and knocked Charleston\'s Second Baseman unconscious with a vicious tackle. Charleston, never one to show much restraint on the field, ran in and clocked the dude, sending him sprawling and kicking off another melee. Unfortunately for Charleston, the unconscious baserunner just so happened to be the brother of a member of the Cuban Army, who had been assigned as security for the game, and no sooner had Charleston landed his swing than a dozen or so fully-armed Cuban military troops were vaulting over the wall after him. Charleston didn\'t blink. According to the story I read, \"He took them out by himself, one after the other, until reinforcements arrived.\"</p>\r\n<p>On yet another occasion, Charleston and a couple of his teammates were leaving a game in Florida when they were confronted in the parking lot by a band of white-robed Klu Klux Klansmen. While the two guys with Charleston were obviously a little shaken about coming face-to-face with angry KKK bastards, Charleston just got pissed. He walked straight up to their leader, ripped the hood off the guy\'s head, and told him and his buddies to piss off.</p>\r\n<p>They did.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/76256892766/charleston4.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /><span><br /></span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>After getting pissed and punching his team owner in the face in a clubhouse argument, Oscar Charleston was traded to the Homestead Grays in 1930, where he was made player-manager of a stacked lineup, hit leadoff, and ended up taking his team to the Negro League Championship. He won the title for the Grays again in 1931, and in 1932 he moved to the Pittsburgh Crawfords, where he hit cleanup, batted .363, and managed a team of five future Hall of Famers to a 99-36 record and his third consecutive Negro League Championship. From 1932-1936 he continued to hold a .340+ average despite being almost 40 years old, managed his team to yet another Negro League World Series championship in 1935, and developed guys like Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson, and Cool Papa Bell into Hall of Fame-caliber talent.</p>\r\n<p>Oscar Charleston took yet another break from baseball, this time to work in the Pennsylvania Quartermaster\'s Department and provide logistical support to American troops fighting during World War II. After the war Charleston was hired by Branch Rickey to work with the Brooklyn Brown Bombers, a farm club associated with the Dodgers, where he was charged with scouting talent to help break the race barrier in Major League Baseball. Rickey knew that nobody knew the Negro Leagues like Oscar Charleston (who\'d had roughly 30 years experience at this point), and with Charleston\'s help Rickey was able to bring guys like Jackie Robinson and Roy Campanella into the pros, integrating Major League Baseball for the first time.</p>\r\n<p>Once black players were in the Majors, the Negro Leagues began to fade away, but that didn\'t stop Oscar Charleston from doing what he loved. He got back into managing, winning two more championships with the Indianapolis Clowns &ndash; one in 1950 and one in 1954. Four months after winning what was (at least) his seventh championship, Oscar Charleston suffered a stroke and died in his home at the age of 57.</p>\r\n<p>He was inducted in the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1976, the first person from Indianapolis and only the second Negro League player to make the Hall (he\'d managed the first one, Josh Gibson).</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/76256892766/charleston5.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><span>\"He wanted to know, was you a crybaby or was you a man. He was that type of manager. <br />He was nice to talk to, he just didn\'t back down from nobody. He knew baseball.\"</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Links:</span><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=4945543\">ESPN</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.negroleaguebaseball.com/players/Charleston.html\">NegroLeagueBaseball.com</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.coe.ksu.edu/nlbemuseum/history/players/charleston.html\">NLB Museum</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Oscar_Charleston\">Baseball-Reference</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://anb.org/articles/19/19-00022.html?a=1&amp;n=oscar%20char*&amp;d=10&amp;ss=0&amp;q=1\">Biography</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.answers.com/topic/oscar-charleston\">Answers.com</a></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Sources:</span><br /><br /><span> DeBono, Paul. <em>The Indianapolis ABC\'s</em>. McFarland, 2007.<br /><br /> Holway, John and Frank Ceresi. <em>Voices from the Great Black Baseball Leagues.</em> Courier Dover, 2010.<br /><br /> Peterson, Robert. <em>Only the Ball Was White</em>. Oxford Univ. Press, 1970.<br /><br /> Porter, David L. <em>African-American Sports Greats</em>. ABC-CLIO, 1995.<br /><br /> Whirty, Ryan. \"Forgotten Son.\" <em>Indianapolis Monthly</em>. October 2004. </span></p>','2013-02-01','76256892766','charleston.png','charleston-small.png','Oscar Charleston','The greatest and most badass baseball player you\'ve never heard of.','\"There were three things Oscar Charleston excelled at on the field: hitting, fielding, and fighting. \r\nHe loved all three, and it’s a toss-up which he was best at.\"\r\n'),('Frederick Hobson','September 23, 1873','August 18, 1917','London, England, UK','20th-century Canadian Soldier','<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">It was a gray, rainy afternoon on August 18<sup>th</sup>, 1917, when 41-year old Sergeant Frederick Hobson of the 20<sup>th</sup> Battalion (Central Ontario), 2<sup>nd</sup> Canadian Division peered out of his front-line communications bunker at the fog of war surrounding the German trench network.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>A hardcore veteran who had fought with the Wiltshire Regiment during the Second Boer War and who had already survived the epic Battle of the Somme a few years earlier, Hobson was no stranger to combat, and he was a hardcore, awesomely-mustachioed badass who knew he had to do whatever the hell needed to be done to destroy all who opposed him, and who could not possibly be deterred by something as mundane as hardcore World War I German artillery shelling.</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Today\'s artillery barrage, however, had been a little different.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>Thousands of rounds of anti-personnel high explosives falling out of the sky seemingly at random, blowing the hell out of everything, then followed up with heavy iron canisters that spewed sulfuric mustard gas.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>The shelling went on for hours, softening up the Canadian trench network in Hobson\'s sector, presumably for the inevitable full-scale assault of German stormtroopers that was sure to follow.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>Hobson, resolute as ever, just threw on his gas mask, readied his bolt-action Enfield rifle, surveyed the smoke-filled horizon, and prepared to go to work.</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: center;\"><img src=\"/images/89276120691/hobson1.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: center;\">Tell me that isn\'t terrifying.</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">It was the middle of the Battle for Hill 70 &ndash; a hardcore, ten-day death-fest that pitted the Canadian Corps against five full-strength Divisions of front-line German infantry.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>The British had been launching an attack on Ypres, and, seeing as how things weren\'t going so great, they ordered the Canadian Expeditionary Force to head around the side, capture this giant hill named Hill 70, then set up a bunch of artillery on it so they could teabag the Kaiser\'s henchmen with it.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>Sure, the attacking Canadian troops were badly outnumbered by hardcore German soldiers in entrenched positions, but what the hell, the British were a little busy anyways so screw it.</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">The Canadians were under the command of General Arthur Currie &ndash; a future Badass of the Week, Canada\'s most famous and successful war hero since the days of Isaac Brock, and a man who should not by any circumstances be confused with Arthur Curry aka Aquaman &ndash; and despite the grim task before them these psychotic Canucks set out about it like a gun-toting mob of lumberjack hockey enforcers being ordered to take out the knees of the opposing team\'s best playmaker.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>With their artillery (and apparently catapults and trebuchets?) launching massive canisters of poison gas, drums of burning petroleum, and entire unopened six-packs of whoop-ass at the German positions on Hill 70 in a righteous flurry of barrel-hurling madness, the Canadian 1<sup>st</sup> and 2<sup>nd</sup> Divisions charged in the fray like banshees, blitzing into the German positions and capturing the first line of German trenches after some fairly ferocious bayonet-to-face combat.</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">But the Germans, as you might have heard at some point or another in your unwavering dedication to the study of world military history, are actually a pretty damned hardcore group of warmongering hardasses, and they weren\'t going to let a little thing like \"being nailed in the face with a burning oil drum and then being showered in exploding gasoline\" stop them from fighting their guts out for ultimate King of the Hill supremacy of this position.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>With the first line of trenches swarmed by screaming Canadians, the Germans fell back to their second line of defense, regrouped in a new network of hardened trenches, and then launched a ridiculous <em style=\"mso-bidi-font-style: normal;\">twenty-one</em> counter-attacks aimed at retaking the summit of Hill 70.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>Over the course of three days, seven full battalions of German infantry charged ahead with flamethrowers, grenades, and rifles, desperately trying to incinerate the Commonwealth troops into Soylent Green Canadian Bacon &ndash; but nothing like what Sergeant Hobson was about to see.</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: center;\"><img src=\"/images/89276120691/hobson2.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: center;\">WWI German flamethrower teams in action.</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">The shelling went on for an eternity, until the entire sector was completely clogged with smoke and poisonous gas capable of burning out your lungs from the inside.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>Still, Hobson held fast, ordering his men to stay calm as their buddies blew up into tiny bite-sized morsels around them, nearby heavy weapons and artillery teams had their guns and crews exploded. and artillery fire severed all communications with central command.</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Then, suddenly, a German shell hammered down very close to Hobson\'s position, completely wiping out the crew of the sector\'s last Lewis Gun &ndash; a heavy machine gun the Canadians desperately needed to have in semi-functioning condition if they were ever going to have any hope of getting out of this battle without a spiked German helmet implanted in their sternum.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>Hobson, understanding the gravity of the situation, did the sort of balls-out thing that separates true badasses from regular men.</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">He got out of his trench, pulled out his entrenching tool (basically just a small, super-sharp shovel), and began to dig the Lewis Gun crew out from underneath a pile of dirt, shrapnel, and other debris.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">As he was working on digging out the gun, a poison gas smoke canister hit near his position, once again covering the sector with fog.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>Only this time ,through the fog, he could make out movement.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>German soldiers.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>Advancing fast, rifles and grenades at the ready.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">This is made only marginally more terrifying by the fact that gas-mask-equipped WWI German stormtrooper assault squads basically looked like Helghast:</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: center;\"><img src=\"/images/89276120691/hobson3.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Hobson somehow managed to dig out the one and only surviving member of the gun crew, and while that guy was trying to get his balls reattached and figure out what the hell century he was living in, Sergeant Hobson dug out the gun, turned it on the enemy, and opened fire, and despite the fact that he had absolutely no training in how to operate a Lewis Gun (and this is a big deal at a time when automatic weapons were considered new and complicated pieces of equipment) began laying down a withering hail of fire that forced the Germans to hit the deck and pay attention to the dude with the gas mask and the assault rifle currently spraying them with several thousand rounds per minute of large-caliber machine gun ammunition.</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">It also kind of caused every German in the immediate vicinity to direct their fire towards the only functioning machine gun in this part of the Canadian defensive line.</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: center;\"><img src=\"/images/89276120691/hobson4.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: center;\">Lewis Gun in action.</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Despite having roughly every weapon on the Western Front pointed in his general direction, Hobson didn\'t even pretend to give a crap.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>He took a bullet in the chest at one point, which apparently failed to slow him down in any noticeable manner, and he continued firing like a madman while the now-semi-functional crew member loaded fresh magazines of ammunition into the weapon.</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">The Germans regrouped, continued to lay down fire, and then slowly began to advance on Hobson\'s position.</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">He waited until they reached the open, leveled his sights on the squad leader, and pulled the trigger.</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Click.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>The gun jammed.</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Sergeant Frederick Hobson, a 20+ year veteran of wars across two continents, handed the weapon to the crew member, looked him hard in the eyes, and said something to the effect of, \"You get that gun online.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>I\'m going to buy you as much time as I can.\"</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: center;\"><img src=\"/images/89276120691/hobson5.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">So, as if it wasn\'t crazy enough that this one 41-year-old Canadian Sergeant had braved a barrage of high-explosive shrapnel-laden artillery to save the life of one of his comrades, dug out the only functioning machine gun in his combat sector and got it operational again, and then used it to single-handedly hold off an entire German assault, now that the chips were out he was running straight-on into the middle of an entire battalion of German stormtroopers despite being armed with nothing more than his rifle and a bayonet, launching a balls-to-the-wall one-man suicide charged aimed at holding back their advance Horde Mode style and taking as many of those Hun bastards with him as possible.</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">The Germans swarmed Hobson as he blasted in every direction with his rifle, firing from the hip while charging forward Rambo style.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>When he blew through his small ammunition clip, Hobson lunged out with his bayonet and rifle, bashing skulls and shanking fools as he unleashed his righteous Canadian fury on anything that moved around him &ndash; something that probably looked exceedingly extra-badass considering he was doing it in a gas mask while surrounded by stormtroopers.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: center;\"><img src=\"/images/89276120691/hobson6.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">One (admittedly non-primary) source puts the number of Germans Hobson took out in his last stand at 14, and since that\'s the only number I can find that\'s the one I\'m going with.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>Surrounded on all sides by men with busted faces or lacerated abdomens, Hobson fought like a demon, piling up corpses around him in every direction, until finally he was hit with a bullet in a very uncomfortable place and died gloriously on the battlefield, covered in the blood of his enemies.</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">As he hit the ground, the Germans looked past his body to see a Canadian machine gunner racking the slide on the Lewis Gun.</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: center;\"><img src=\"/images/89276120691/hobson7.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">By the time Hobson\'s insane one-man last stand was over, the Lewis Gun was back in operational condition, spraying bullets everywhere.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>Meanwhile, other Canadian troops had heard the carnage taking place in this section and had managed to reinforce the depleted lines, so when the demoralized Germans finally got past Hobson and preceeded to launch their assault on the Canadian trench, instead of facing a blasted-to-hell line of corpses, they were staring at hundreds of rifle barrels and a bunch of pumped-up Canadians.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>The line held, the counterattack was repulsed, and the Hill remained in Canadian hands for the remainder of the war.</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Frederick Hobson\'s Victoria Cross is now on display at the Canadian War Museum in Ontario.</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: center;\">&nbsp;<br /><img src=\"/images/89276120691/hobson8.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Links:</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Hobson</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">http://legionmagazine.com/en/index.php/2005/03/hand-to-hand-on-hill-70/</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">http://www.veterans.gc.ca/eng/collections/virtualmem/detail/1569282</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">http://www.ontarioplaques.com/Plaques_VWZ/Plaque_Waterloo05.html</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Sources:</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><em style=\"mso-bidi-font-style: normal;\">Canada in the Great World War</em>.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>United Publishers of Canada, 1921.</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Hopkins, John Castella.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span><em style=\"mso-bidi-font-style: normal;\">The Canadian Annual Review of Public Affairs</em>.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>Annual Review, 1919.</p>\r\n<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>\r\n <o:OfficeDocumentSettings>\r\n  <o:AllowPNG/>\r\n </o:OfficeDocumentSettings>\r\n</xml><![endif]-->\r\n<p>Castella.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span><em style=\"mso-bidi-font-style: normal;\">The Canadian Annual Review of Public Affairs</em>.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>Annual Review, 1919.</p>\r\n<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>\r\n <w:WordDocument>\r\n  <w:View>Normal</w:View>\r\n  <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom>\r\n  <w:TrackMoves/>\r\n  <w:TrackFormatting/>\r\n  <w:PunctuationKerning/>\r\n  <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/>\r\n  <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>\r\n  <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent>\r\n  <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>\r\n  <w:DoNotPromoteQF/>\r\n  <w:LidThemeOther>EN-US</w:LidThemeOther>\r\n  <w:LidThemeAsian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian>\r\n  <w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript>\r\n  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citizen, and one image pops into their heads above all others &ndash; that of a ridiculously-gigantor, 325-pound, bald, bearded, sunglasses-wearing leather jacket motherfucker with tatted-up arms the size of telephone poles tearing ass down the highway doing 120 on chrome-plated custom Harley, the road behind him shredding apart into a rapidly-expanding earthquake fissure stuffed with chrome and blood and the meat he\'d hand-ripped from the torsos of his eviscerated enemies.&nbsp; This is a reputation that is not earned lightly.&nbsp; Even though I haven\'t written about many bikers on this site, my father owned an Outlaws MC-affiliated bar in Florida for over a decade, and, while I had a fairly limited connection with the goings-on there, I will tell you one thing &ndash; even though everyone I met was always incredibly nice and polite to me I would have rather self-amputated both of my legs with a rusty pizza wheel than piss one of them off because holy shit these guys were more terrifying than a cybernetic genetically-modified Centaur made out of a grizzly bear and Danny Trejo and every single one of them looked like they literally could rip a chunk out of the mahogany bar counter with their teeth and then use it to pummel you into a viscous pink slurry of human entrails.</p>\r\n<p>So, naturally, when the editor of my book BADASS called me up about a month ago to tell me that the new book he was working on was an autobiography about a private citizen who had the balls to infiltrate the Vagos Motorcycle Club on behalf of the ATF, becoming a psychotic Harley-writing madman while simultaneously Donnie Brasco\'ing shit up and compiling enough evidence for the Feds to indict the biker gang on 42 felony charges, I of course told him I was interested.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img src=\"/images/73815184029/rowe1.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Of course, while George Rowe was in fact the first private civilian in ATF history to ever successfully infiltrate an Outlaw Motorcycle Gang, don\'t let that delude you into thinking that this guy was some average Joe asshole who wears a collared shirt when he pays his mortgage and spends his weekends sipping double-shot soy non-fat mocha frappuccinos while window-shopping for floral-patterned table runners at the Crate and Barrel by the mall.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>He was a tough bastard, and, by his own account, went through the first 40-plus years of his life being basically a hardcore, mostly-evil motherfucker.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>This was a guy who dropped out of Kindergarten to go off into the forest and learn first-hand wilderness survival skills from his Yaqui Indian war hero dad and grew up hanging out in Hell\'s Angels biker bars getting into fistfights with strangers over minor transgressions.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>He was exactly the sort of ridiculously-jacked, bald-headed, white-knuckled ass-whomper I mentioned in the first paragraph, the only difference between him and your typical <em style=\"mso-bidi-font-style: normal;\">Sons of Anarchy </em>shit being that he didn\'t have any biker gang colors stitched to the back of his jacket.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">In his early life, Rowe had been a total son of a bitch.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>When he wasn\'t fighting for cash in California\'s underground bare-knuckled boxing circuit, he was known as the \"U-Haul Bandit\" &ndash; a drug-dealing bastard who cooked meth in the desert <em style=\"mso-bidi-font-style: normal;\">Breaking Bad</em>-style, sold it to any tweakers who promised they were good for the money, and then collecting unpaid debts by rolling a U-Haul truck up to their apartments in the middle of the night, stealing all their shit, putting it in a storage locker, and telling them they weren\'t getting it back until they\'d made good on what they owed him.</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Like I said, this wasn\'t the sort of guy who was going to tutor six year-olds at the Boys and Girls Club or mentor you on your quest to finally get your Helping Old Ladies Cross the Street merit badge.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>He was a stone-cold bastard, which, incidentally, is actually what ended up making him perfect for this operation.</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: center;\"><br /><img src=\"/images/73815184029/rowe22.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Well, if his autobiography is to be believed (and, judging by the comments on some of the articles I\'ve listed below, the veracity of his claims are widely dependent upon your position regarding one-percenter motorcycle clubs... I\'ll argue that history is <em style=\"mso-bidi-font-style: normal;\">always</em> subjective and have chosen to accept the story at face value for lack of any evidence to the contrary), at some point George Rowe decided that he was done being a scourge on society and was going to clean his act up.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>He stopped fighting for money.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>He got sober.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>He quit making meth and beating up strangers.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>He started looking for ways to atone for a lifetime of horrible deeds.</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">In 2003 he found a unique opportunity to make amends.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>He had been drinking at his local bar &ndash; a place that was also a hangout for the local Vagos Motorcycle Club chapter &ndash; attending a party to celebrate the fact that one of his good childhood friends was about to become a father for the third time.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>The dad-to-be was playing pool, minding his own business, when suddenly the local Vagos chapter president and some of his comrades came in and demanded the table.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>The guy told them to piss off, so they beat the fuck out of him in front of his wife and kids.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>He was released from the hospital two days later, then disappeared, presumably whacked by the Vagos and left in a shallow grave in the desert outside Hemet, California.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">George Rowe got pissed.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>He\'d seen the Vagos fuck with citizens of Hemet before, but this was too much.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>He decided it was time to do something.</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">So he went to the ATF with a proposal:<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>I\'m going to infiltrate the gang, dig up all the dirt I can, and bring them down from the inside.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>Give me what I need to make that happen.</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: center;\"><img src=\"/images/73815184029/rowe4.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Now I feel like it bears mentioning here that I don\'t typically have a ton of respect for snitches, rats, and other backstabbing jackasses who sell their friends out to save their own hides... I generally tend to prefer the type of tale I wrote about last week, where the cops find a Mafiosi riddled with machine gun bullets and his response to the cops is \"nobody shot me.\"<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span><span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp;</span>However, it\'s one thing the be a member of a hardcore criminal organization, do a bunch of horrible shit, then spend the rest of your life living in a nice taxpayer-funded three-bedroom home because you were the only member of your gang that was willing to throw all of his friends under the bus, and another thing entirely to go undercover with the explicit purpose of infiltrating and ripping a gang apart &ndash; especially if your motivation is sweet, delicious, chocolate-covered vengeance drizzled with raspberry jam and a handful of rainbow sprinkles.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>Whether you\'re a federal agent or just a guy with a chip on his shoulder, that\'s something I can get on board with.</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">And George Rowe was dedicated to the mission.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>Despite tons of close calls &ndash; including several times when he was almost killed and/or had his cover blown &ndash; he spent the next three years of his life running an elaborate operation, getting in close with the Vagos leadership and infiltrating the club while simultaneously keeping his ATF contact informed of Vagos movements and operations in the region.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>During the day, he\'d be jumping into bar fights to get his fellow Vagos\'s backs, getting sucked into nasty turf wars with the hated Hell\'s Angels, and hauling ass down the highway in massive biker rallies, then at night he\'d try to make contact with Agents to report what was going on and keep them up-to-date on his mission.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>The outlaw motorcycle club lifestyle is dangerous enough as it is, but when you\'re spending your free time with ultra-dangerous, cop-hating asskickers capable of making human beings disappear, your entire apartment is lined with hidden government cameras, and you go around town with a high-powered multi-directional microphone taped to your balls it might as well be suicide.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: center;\"><img src=\"/images/73815184029/rowe6.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /><br />This is, honestly, the definition of badass.</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">While Rowe wasn\'t allowed (or typically interested) in participating in Vagos beat-downs of unsuspecting civilians, intimidating uncooperative drug dealers, or ripping patches off the jackets of rival biker gang members, as you can probably imagine he saw some crazy shit during his three-year stint undercover for the Feds.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>One time Rowe used the cast on his broken arm to club a pool cue-swinging biker to the ground.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>Another time he pissed off the president of a Vagos-affiliated chapter in a different city and was ordered to face off against four members of that chapter\'s toughest guys (he beat the shit out of them, one after the other).<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>On yet another occasion he found himself in a Hell\'s Angels bar, ended up starting a huge brawl with the Angels in order to preserve his cover, then was very nearly handed over to them to atone for his crimes &ndash; a sentence that would have meant his own slow, painful death.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>All the while he rose from \"hang-around\" to Prospect to full-patched Vagos member, constantly preserving his cover and feeding the ATF information regarding the club\'s illegal gun running and drug smuggling operations, and even uncovering evidence that would be used to gain three murder convictions.</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">For three years, George Rowe fought, rode, and desperately tried to carry out his mission.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>He got his home turned into the headquarters of the local chapter.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>He recorded all of their top-level officers\' meetings.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>Then, finally, at 6 AM on the morning of March 9, 2006, he woke up his pregnant fianc&eacute;, and dropped a nuclear warhead on her &ndash; sorry, baby, I\'m not who you think I am.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>I\'m a federal informant who has been working for the ATF for the past three years, gathering intel on the Vagos criminal operations, and now we\'re finally about to bring this entire organization down.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>As we speak, 700 federal agents are preparing to swarm through this town, arresting everyone associated with the Vagos, and then they\'re going to take me off to Witness Protection, never to be heard from again.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>You have 15 minutes to decide if you want to come with me or not.</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: center;\"><img src=\"/images/73815184029/rowe5.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">On March 6, 2006, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms conducted 72 raids across 5 counties in Southern California, arresting 42 members of the Vagos motorcycle club, including seven Chapter Presidents, and seizing a hundred illegal firearms, two stolen motorcycles, thousands of dollars in cash, and a couple stashes of cocaine, methamphetamine, and marijuana.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>Four men were given massive prison sentences for murder.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>Others served multi-year terms for their participation in weapon and drug operations.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>The Vagos in Hemet, California &ndash; Rowe\'s home town &ndash; were all either imprisoned, fled the state, or simply just quit the gang.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>The Vagos would eventually rebuild their organization in the years between then and now, but for the moment George Rowe\'s operation had been a success.</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Rowe left for Witness Protection, got a new identity, and now lives on a secret Moon Base or something.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>His book was ghost-written by a dude who, as I understand it, has never actually met my editor, and their only correspondence is via snail mail sent to a solitary mailbox in the middle of a forest somewhere.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>Which is actually pretty sweet.</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: center;\"><img src=\"/images/73815184029/rowe31.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><strong style=\"mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;\"><span style=\"color: red;\">Links</span></strong>:</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/vagos-gang-infiltrator-fist-respect-article-1.1253922</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/authors/interviews/article/56036-full-throttle-pw-talk-to-george-rowe.html</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">http://articles.latimes.com/2006/mar/10/local/me-vagos10</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">http://www.cyclematters.com/motorcycle-blog/books-magazines/gods-of-mischief-book-review-.cfm</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">http://www.latimes.com/features/books/jacketcopy/la-ca-jc-george-rowe-charles-falco-20130217,0,2801672.story</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/george-rowe/gods-of-mischief/</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/atf-california-sheriffs-arrest-members-of-vagos-outlaw-motorcycle-gang-55315477.html</p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">&nbsp;</p>','2013-02-22','73815184029','rowe.jpg','rowe-small.jpg','George Rowe','The only private citizen to ever successfully infiltrate an outlaw motorcycle gang.','\"Here\'s something you should know about me.  The only time I remember crying tears of sorrow was the day my old man keeled over and died on my lap.  I was ten years old.  From that day on, if there were tears in my eyes, it meant just one thing; somebody was about to get hurt.\"'),('The St. Valentine\'s Day Massacre','February 14, 1929','February 14, 1929','Chicago, IL, USA','20th-century American Gunfight','<p>I am currently on vacation in Key West sipping a fruity-looking tropical drink poolside next to a pretty girl, so rather than spend my Friday stressing out about World War II I\'ll post a timely story I wrote earlier this week for HistoryRoll.com about one of the most romantic things to ever happen to 1920s gangland Chicago:&nbsp; The St. Valentine\'s Day Massacre.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The article can be found here:</p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://historyroll.com/?p=660\">http://historyroll.com/?p=660</a></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>I\'ll be back next week with a badass Sons of Anarchy-style story about a guy who infiltrated one of the world\'s most insane motorcycle gangs so that he could bring them down from the inside.&nbsp; It\'ll be fucking nuts.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>In the mean time, here\'s a picture of me on vacation.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img src=\"/images/253670715623/IMG_7403.JPG\" alt=\"\" /></p>','2013-02-15','253670715623','valentines.jpg','valentines-small.jpg','The Valentine\'s Day Massacre','The most romantic thing to ever happen to 1920s-era Gangland Chicago.','“These murders went out of the comprehension of a civilized city. The butchering of seven men by open daylight raises this question for Chicago: Is it helpless?”  -The Chicago Tribune, February 15, 1929'),('Galen','Several billion years BC','N/A','Planet Taa','Fictional Alien Supervillain','<p>Have you ever been hungry?&nbsp; Like really fucking hungry?&nbsp; Like holy shit I could eat an entire full-sized horse stuffed with a family of refugees and then saut&eacute;ed in chicken broth over the burning ruins of an animal shelter drizzled with hollandaise sauce and sprinkled with a pinch of paprika?&nbsp; So has Galactus.&nbsp; Only when Galactus gets hungry, he makes your stupid idiotic bullshit hunger look like an anorexic supermodel starvation diet being snack attacked by the offensive line of the 1982 Washington Redskins after they\'ve been turned into undying vampires whose ultra-unquenchable thirst can only be slaked by feasting on the blood of humans.</p>\r\n<p>So as I sit here at my booth behind a stack of eminently pimpable merch, waiting for the doors of Emerald City Comic-Con 2013 to open, with nothing but my murderous desire for a fifteen-pound cheeseburger consuming the majority of my thoughts, I attempt to divert my mind with a raging internal debate about badass comic book heroes (Author\'s Note, 3/2:&nbsp; The con did not feature free wi-fi, and last night I just moved into a new apartment and have yet to get internet set up there, so I apologize for the lateness in posting this article).&nbsp; I considered the classics &ndash; guys like the Joker and the Hulk &ndash; but, honestly, if you\'re talking sheer raw unstoppable galaxy-obliterating power, it\'s hard to argue with the unlimited badass potential of Galactus, the gigantic, galaxy-sized god-like being who runs around the universe in a purple Pope hat (boom, current events reference biaaaaatch) and whose primary claim to power is that he EATS FUCKING PLANETS.</p>\r\n<p>PLANETS.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img src=\"../images/290314930441/galactus1.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Here are the basics:&nbsp; Galactus began life as Galen, a badass Steve Austin / Buck Rogers space explorer on the planet Taa, where even though he was basically some average schmuck he had all kinds of awesome Flash Gordon adventures hauling ass around the universe trying to explore the galaxy and be fucking awesome for his people.&nbsp; Well, one day Galen came across some massive radiation plague that was wiping out every planet in the galaxy, and, when he realized that this plague was actually the entire fucking universe collapsing into itself, Galen decided, fuck it, let\'s go out in a blaze of badass glory, load a bunch of assholes into a spaceship, and crash head-on into the fucking end of the universe like Jimmy Dean plowing the steering wheel of his Porsche 550 Spyder (too soon?&nbsp; I can never tell...).</p>\r\n<p>Well the universe has a funny way of rewarding people who completely lose their fucking minds and do badass shit just for the hell of it, and instead of being crushed into sub-atomic nonexistence by the compounding destruction of reality like the rest of the dumbasses who agreed to fly into their own deaths alongside him, Galen transcended into badass Nirvana, survived the Big Crunch of the Universe, and was encased in cryostasis in the Cosmic Egg that formed the catalyst of the Big Bang and created our current universe.&nbsp; Galen, now fused with the physical embodiment of the metaphysical aspects of Eternity and Death (yes, both of them), exploded out into the new universe like a blackhead being popped off God\'s ass, hurtling through the cosmos in his apparently-indestructible starship.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img src=\"../images/290314930441/galactus2.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Galen\'s ship eventually fell into orbit around some random bullshit planet in some asshole region of the universe, and when that planet got all-out invaded by some other random, equally-assholic civilization , both sides were all like \"what the fuck is up with this random alien spaceship\" and fired pound-you-in-the-ass surface-to-space missiles at it.&nbsp; The missiles hit the ship and woke up Galen, who, apparently bitter about not being able to sleep in for another couple millennia, transcended his own mortality, became a living god known as Galactus, and promptly exterminated the entire militaries of both sides WITH HIS MIND because he\'s fucking just completely insane like that.&nbsp; Then, just to be an asshole, he ATE THE PLANET because seriously fuck that place.&nbsp; Oh yeah, then he built a spaceship the size of an entire planetary star system and took off on a mission to visit new worlds and civilizations and basically eat everyone he could find because fuck it what the hell are they gonna do about it anyways.</p>\r\n<p>Well, as you might guess, a reputation for woofing down planets like Daryl Hannah from <em>Splash </em>bodyslamming her face into Red Lobster\'s all-you-can-eat popcorn shrimp feast can earn a guy some pretty badass nicknames, and before long Galactus was known as the World Devourer, World-Eater, and other things that involve planets and eating and HOLY SHIT--</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img src=\"../images/290314930441/galactus3.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">As I was typing this story this person walked<br /> past my Comic-Con table I SHIT YOU NOT.</p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Ok whatever, let\'s say you\'re not into the cosmic shit and you aren\'t fully convinced by the FUCKING RADNESS of thte fact that Galactus randomly decided to turn a guy named Norrin Radd into a silver glowing dude who flies around the universe on a warp-drive-equipped surfboard, then used this so-called \"Silver Surfer\" to careen around the galaxy in the most bitchin\' manner possible so he could warn &nbsp;planets that they\'re about to get popped like a Xanax in the name of Galactus\'s unquenchable hunger for the life blood of all organic life in the universe.&nbsp; Even if that were the case &ndash; and it\'s a stretch, my friends &ndash; let\'s still take a moment and attempt to rationally examine Galactus\'s power by theoretically pitting him against a rogue\'s gallery of popular superheroes.</p>\r\n<p><strong>Galactus vs. Wolverine:</strong>&nbsp; Wolverine has adamantium claws and mutant healing factor.&nbsp; Galactus EATS PLANETS.</p>\r\n<p><strong>Galactus vs. Superman:&nbsp; </strong>Superman can fly, has x-ray vision, inexplicable cold breath, can crush coal into diamonds with his thighs, and once deflected a bullet with his face.&nbsp; Galactus wields the Power Cosmic, can levitate, teleport anywhere in the universe at will, restructure his molecular makeup, project concussive energy with unmeasurable force anywhere in known space, is telepathic, can raise the dead, create solar systems, and create interdimensional portals whenever he wants.&nbsp; He\'s also invulnerable, possesses godlike power, and can punch you so fast it breaks whatever the Sound Barrier equivalent is for the Speed of Light.</p>\r\n<p><strong>Galactus vs. Batman:</strong>&nbsp; Batman is a regular guy with a bulletproof caped suit, sweet detective skills, a cool turbocharged Batmobile, and a seemingly-endless supply of titanium boomerangs shaped like his personal insignia.&nbsp; Galactus travels the universe in a ship the size of our Solar System and derives his powers from forcibly ripping out the life essence of entire civilizations with his mind, then crushing their utterly-drained, comatose planets into asteroid dust WITH HIS GODDAMNED TEETH.</p>\r\n<p><strong>Galactus vs. Punisher:&nbsp; </strong>&nbsp;The Punisher can dual-wield M249 SAW machine guns while simultaneously pulling an RPG trigger with his teeth and kicking a crocodile in the face with an explosive-arrow-tipped knife strapped to the heel of his boot.&nbsp; Galactus died once when the combined military might of the ENTIRE UNIVERSE simultaneously nuked him with weapons of mass destruction, except that by \"died\" I mean he dispersed into cosmic energy only to be re-integrated at a later date and resume his inexorable quest to stomp out all life in existence with his unabashedly-purple man-boots.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img src=\"../images/290314930441/galactus4.gif\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p><br />&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Let\'s look at the track record.&nbsp; He eats Kallreich the Unconquerable, a guy who by definition was unconquerable.&nbsp; He eats the Throneworld of the Skrulls, a ruthless race of warlike assholes, just because he needs to prove a point about something.&nbsp; When Dr. Doom usurped the Silver Surfer\'s powers and became Doctor Silver Surfer of Doom Galactus just banished him back to Latveria with a wave of his hand (this, by the way, is part of why I love Doctor Doom).&nbsp; He fought Thor, Loki, most of the Norse gods, and crushed out the Elders of the Universe when they tried to overstep their bounds and tell Galactus that some guy who mysteriously ascended to godhood should stop dictating the order of the universe by devouring planets.&nbsp; When some jackass created an alternate universe to house the Secret Wars, Galactus showed up and almost ate Battleworld &ndash; you know, the place where EVERY SUPERHERO EVER was fighting each other &ndash; but was eventually talked out of it and quit only because he decided it wasn\'t worth the effort (apathy ftw).&nbsp; He surfs black holes.&nbsp; He created the Silver Surfer, then dumped him and took on the Girl Human Torch as a sidekick.&nbsp; He imbues people with the Power Cosmic on a whim, then takes it away without warning, and every time he\'s pissed he threatens to eat Earth until Reed Richards and the Fantastic Four do whatever random bullshit thing he wants them to do.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Galactus\'s only weakness (if you can call it that) is that he starts to lose power when he hasn\'t eaten planets in a while, and every once in a while some asshole like Thanos gets a cheap shot in on him while he\'s weakened and almost kills him.&nbsp; Well, one of the awesome things is that Galactus is such a hardcore planet-murdering bastard that when Reed Richards saved him from imminent death, an intergalactic tribunal was called to indict Richards for intergalactic war crimes simply for the transgression of showing mercy to this asshole.&nbsp; That\'s pretty baller.&nbsp; Richards defended Galactus for a while, but eventually Galactus was like FUCK THIS SHIT, showed up, took the stand in his own defense, and \"you can\'t handle the truth\"-ed everyone into realizing that he was a stabilizing force in the galaxy and that the people of the universe actually NEEDED to be forcibly shoved down his cosmic esophagus and slowly digested by his ridiculous planet-dissolving stomach acids.&nbsp; Oh, then he wiped everyone\'s minds so that they were like what the hell just happened, leaving the tribunal with just the vague recollection that maybe they shouldn\'t fucking fuck with cosmic entities capable of ripping reality apart with their fists.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img src=\"../images/290314930441/galactus5.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Even though Galactus was created as Jack Kirby\'s weird bizarro interpretation of a semi-sadistic purple-pope-hatted Judeo-Christian God, probably the best thing about him is that he\'s such an all-powerful entity that even though we see him in a blue jumpsuit, other civilizations across the galaxy perceive him differently.&nbsp; The theory is that he\'s so omnipotent that alien cultures simply just view him as the most terrifying and awe-inspiring thing ever, and that\'s how he likes it.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>And yeah, that\'s pretty badass if you ask me.</p>\r\n<p>Now where the FUCK is that cheeseburger.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img src=\"../images/290314930441/galactus6.png\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><strong>Links:</strong></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://marvel.com/universe/Galactus\">http://marvel.com/universe/Galactus</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.comicvine.com/galactus/29-2149/\">http://www.comicvine.com/galactus/29-2149/</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://marvel.wikia.com/Galactus_%28Earth-616%29\">http://marvel.wikia.com/Galactus_%28Earth-616%29</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galactus\">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galactus</a></p>\r\n<p>Special thanks to Matt Harding of Where the Hell is Matt? for his invaluable input</p>','2013-03-02','290314930441','galactus.jpg','galactus-small.jpg','Galactus','Galactus eats planets.','\"KNOW FEAR!\"'),('Raul P. Benavidez, Jr.','August 5, 1935','November 29, 1998','Cuero, TX, USA','20th-century American Soldier','<p>(In antipation of the release of my new book <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0062112341/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=0062112341&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=badofthewee-20\" target=\"_blank\">BADASS: ULTIMATE DEATHMATCH</a> next Tuesday (pre-orders available now pimp pimp HLAUAUGHGAHGH), I\'m including a chapter from the book as my article this week.&nbsp; Behold the story of Roy Benavidez, a man who is probably the most-requested person I\'ve ever received in my 8+ years of running this website.)</p>\r\n<p>---</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"line-height: 200%;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;\"><span style=\"font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; font-family: \'Arial\',\'sans-serif\';\">It was supposed to be a simple recon mission.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>A small team of ultra-elite asskicking American Green Berets, infiltrating deep into the thick jungles several miles beyond the Cambodian border on a super-classified stealth mission to gather information on North Vietnamese Army troop movements.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>But when the evac choppers limped back to base looking like they\'d just been run through a gigantic, helicopter-sized microwave, it was obvious that things hadn\'t gone all that smoothly for the men of the 1<sup>st</sup> Special Forces.</span></span></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"line-height: 200%;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;\"><span style=\"font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; font-family: \'Arial\',\'sans-serif\';\">33-year-old Master Sergeant Roy P. Benavidez was off-duty attending church services when the fighting began, but he\'d spent the last ten minutes anxiously monitoring the radio chatter from the front.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>The 12-man squad of Green Berets had stumbled into an intense firefight, and now Benavidez\'s brochachos suddenly found themselves surrounded and pinned down by a full battalion of North Vietnamese infantry &ndash; somewhere between 500 and 1,500 veteran soldiers who weren\'t in the mood to sling their rifles and politely ask the Americans why the hell they were traipsing around Eastern Cambodia with M-16s, cameras, and walkie-talkies.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>Nearly every man in the American unit had been wounded or killed in the early rounds of fighting, and the three rescue choppers sent in to extract the team were driven off by intense ground fire from heavy machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades.</span></span></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"line-height: 200%;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;\"><span style=\"font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; font-family: \'Arial\',\'sans-serif\';\"><br /></span></span></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"line-height: 200%; text-align: center;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;\"><span style=\"font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; font-family: \'Arial\',\'sans-serif\';\"><img src=\"/images/50095485956/McC6802-Vietnam03.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></span></span></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"line-height: 200%; text-align: center;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;\"><span style=\"font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; font-family: \'Arial\',\'sans-serif\';\"><br /></span></span></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"line-height: 200%;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;\"><span style=\"font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; font-family: \'Arial\',\'sans-serif\';\">But if there\'s one thing you should probably know about the U.S. Army Special Forces, it\'s that the Green Berets don\'t screw around when it comes to kicking asses, and they don\'t leave a man behind for anything.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>So, when Sergeant Benavidez saw the remains of the crippled evacuation helicopters screeching to a halt on the base runway, he knew what he had to do.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>There was no way in hell he was leaving his good friends &ndash; his brothers &ndash; to die alone out there in the middle of the jungle surrounded by their enemies.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>The off-duty Texan grabbed a rifle and as many medical bags as he could carry, and jumped onto the deck of the first chopper headed back to the front lines.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>Maybe he wasn\'t going to hold back the entire battalion by himself, but the least he could do was try.<br /><br /></span></span></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"line-height: 200%; text-align: center;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;\"><span style=\"font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; font-family: \'Arial\',\'sans-serif\';\"><img src=\"/images/50095485956/benavidez3.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></span></span></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"line-height: 200%;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;\"><span style=\"font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; font-family: \'Arial\',\'sans-serif\';\"><br />When the helicopters reached the extraction zone, Benavidez got a good look at the situation on the ground, and it wasn\'t exactly a bunch of unicorns and rainbows frolicking in a lush meadow with a bunch of topless babes.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>Every man from the Special Forces squad had been wounded, many beyond the ability to fight, and they were completely surrounded and trapped by entrenched enemy troops with mortars and heavy machine guns.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>Benavidez, who was known by the badass code name Tango Mike-Mike, knew that these men weren\'t going to be able to get out to the LZ, and the overabundance of large North Vietnamese death implements meant that the rescue helicopters weren\'t going to be able to get anywhere near the firefight without exploding into dust.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; <br /></span></span></span></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"line-height: 200%;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;\"><span style=\"font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; font-family: \'Arial\',\'sans-serif\';\">So Sergeant Roy P. Benavidez did something that most sane people would never have even considered attempting &ndash; he told the pilot to find a nearby clearing and put him on the ground.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>Maybe he was only one Green Beret surrounded by enemy soldiers, but so was John Rambo &ndash; and while Tango Mike-Mike never blew a dude up with an explosive-tipped arrow, the similarities between these two men would soon become painfully obvious to the NVA soldiers unlucky enough to be standing in his way.<br /><br /></span></span></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"line-height: 200%; text-align: center;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;\"><span style=\"font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; font-family: \'Arial\',\'sans-serif\';\"><img src=\"/images/50095485956/p025.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></span></span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"line-height: 200%;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;\"><span style=\"font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; font-family: \'Arial\',\'sans-serif\';\">Benavidez jumped down from the hovering chopper to the grass below, his rifle slung over his shoulder and his arms loaded with as many medical supplies and first aid kits as he could carry.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>This one-man whirlwhind of awesome then proceeded to sprint 75 meters under heavy enemy fire, hauling ass through fields of tracer bullets and stunned NVA troops looking at him like, \"Who the hell is this guy?\", his eyes never turning from his objective.</span></span></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"line-height: 200%;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;\"><span style=\"font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; font-family: \'Arial\',\'sans-serif\';\">When Benavidez reached the Green Berets\' position, he\'d already taken a few bullets and some shrapnel in his face, arms, and head, but he was still upright and ready to bite off the enemy\'s faces and transform those faces into fertilizing manure using the transformative power of digestion.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>The situation wasn\'t good &ndash; everyone was hurt badly (including one hardass warrior who was somehow still fighting even though one of his eyes had been shot out), and now it was basically down to Sergeant Benavidez to organize this beat-to-hell team and hold off an entire NVA battalion almost entirely by himself.</span></span></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"line-height: 200%;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;\"><span style=\"font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; font-family: \'Arial\',\'sans-serif\';\">He immediately sprung into action.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>Surrounded by a thousand or so NVA troops attacking him with AK-47s, RPGs, BFGs, mortars, hand grenades, and everything else this side of the Cerberal Bore from <em style=\"mso-bidi-font-style: normal;\"><span style=\"font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-style: normal;\">Turok: Dinosaur Hunter, </span></em>Benavidez provided morphine and first aid to the wounded, got the troops to a more defensible position, and directed their fire against enemy weapons teams.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>Despite intense fire, Benavidez went guns blazing with his rifle, and when his M-16 ran out of bullets, he picked up an AK off a dead NVA trooper and continued his one-man war against a horde of Commie bastards, holding them off and clearing a path for the team to be extracted to safety.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>Once the way out was clear, Benavidez threw some smoke canisters, signaling the rescue helicopter, and when a brave pilot landed to get the wounded men out of there, Benavidez personally carried the wounded men to the evac point, making six separate trips to assist wounded soldiers and recover classified documents that had accidentally been dropped in the middle of the warzone.<br /><br /></span></span></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"line-height: 200%; text-align: center;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;\"><span style=\"font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; font-family: \'Arial\',\'sans-serif\';\"><img src=\"/images/50095485956/benavidez1.png\" alt=\"\" /><br />Original book artwork by <a href=\"http://www.stevenbelledin.com\" target=\"_blank\">Steven Belledin</a>.</span></span></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"line-height: 200%; text-align: center;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;\"><span style=\"font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; font-family: \'Arial\',\'sans-serif\';\"><br /></span></span></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"line-height: 200%;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;\"><span style=\"font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; font-family: \'Arial\',\'sans-serif\';\">While he was providing covering fire for the last of the Green Berets to board the chopper, however, disaster struck &ndash; an NVA frag grenade landed super-close to Benavidez, blowing this insane warrior off his feet and racking his back with shrapnel.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>As he hit the ground, an AK-47 bullet struck him in the abdomen.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>He lost consciousness, but only briefly.</span></span></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"line-height: 200%;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;\"><span style=\"font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; font-family: \'Arial\',\'sans-serif\';\">When he came too moments later, he looked up to see a flaming, smoking wreck where the rescue helicopter had once been.</span></span></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"line-height: 200%;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;\"><span style=\"font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; font-family: \'Arial\',\'sans-serif\';\">Now Roy Benavidez was a warrior in all aspects of his life.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>This was a man who had seen adversity, looked it square in the face, then kicked it in the Guybrush Threepwood and did a tap dance on its lifeless, ball-less corpse.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>A man of Mexican and Yaqui Indian heritage who had battled racism nearly every day of his early adult life, this guy had somehow survived despite losing both of his parents by the time he was 7 &ndash; when times had been too hard and food was scarce, he\'d dropped out of middle school to work back-breaking labor picking cotton to support himself and his brothers and sisters.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>In his sixteen years of military service, he had been through a lot of horrible stuff, but he\'d always pulled through, no matter what the odds.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>Just four years earlier, when he was still with the 82<sup>nd</sup> Airborne, he\'d stepped on a land mine during a patrol &ndash; the doctors told him he would never walk again.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>Not only did he walk out of the hospital, but he marched straight to the Green Berets office, volunteered for the Special Forces, and survived some of the toughest training the United States military had to offer.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>This is a guy who never gave the hell up for anything ever, and this would be no exception.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>If the North Vietnamese wanted him off their backs, they were going to have to do a hell of a lot better than just shooting him four times, blowing him up with a hand grenade, and shooting down the helicopter he\'d just loaded up with wounded soldiers.<br /><br /></span></span></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"line-height: 200%; text-align: center;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;\"><span style=\"font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; font-family: \'Arial\',\'sans-serif\';\"><img src=\"/images/50095485956/benavidez5.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></span></span></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"line-height: 200%; text-align: center;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;\"><span style=\"font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; font-family: \'Arial\',\'sans-serif\';\"><br /></span></span></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"line-height: 200%;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;\"><span style=\"font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; font-family: \'Arial\',\'sans-serif\';\">Within seconds of coming to, Sergeant Roy P. Benavidez was back on his feet, pulling survivors out of the flaming wreckage of the helicopter and organizing the stunned soldiers to set up a perimeter around the crash site.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>After checking on the injured guys, giving ammo to the men still capable of holding a rifle, and administering morphine and water to those who needed it, Benavidez immediately got back to the herculean task of holding off a battalion of enemy infantry and heavy weapons basically by himself.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>Taking yet another bullet in the thigh and bleeding badly, Benavidez got on the radio and started calling down tactical air strikes, attack helicopters, and napalm strafing runs on positions just a few meters away.</span></span></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"line-height: 200%;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;\"><span style=\"font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; font-family: \'Arial\',\'sans-serif\';\">By the time the second set of rescue helicopters arrived, Tango Mike-Mike had been fighting non-stop for almost six hours straight.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>When the chopper hovered over the LZ, Benavidez once again started pulling men to the helicopter, loading the wounded on for extraction.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>The North Vietnamese, seeing their enemy escaping, decided to mount one final full-on human wave charge to crush these annoying Green Berets once and for all.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>With a terrifying yell, suddenly enemy troops came running in from every direction, bayonets fixed. </span></span></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"line-height: 200%;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;\"><span style=\"font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; font-family: \'Arial\',\'sans-serif\';\">Benavidez was waiting for them.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>He\'d been through too much to lose now.</span></span></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"line-height: 200%;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;\"><span style=\"font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; font-family: \'Arial\',\'sans-serif\';\"><br /></span></span></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"line-height: 200%; text-align: center;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;\"><span style=\"font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; font-family: \'Arial\',\'sans-serif\';\"><img src=\"/images/50095485956/500px-HH-SKS-bayonetA.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></span></span></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"line-height: 200%; text-align: center;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;\"><span style=\"font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; font-family: \'Arial\',\'sans-serif\';\"><br /></span></span></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"line-height: 200%;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;\"><span style=\"font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; font-family: \'Arial\',\'sans-serif\';\">In intense, no-holds-barred hand-to-hand combat, Roy Benavidez was bayoneted a couple times and had his jaw broken by a rifle butt, but he somehow continued to fight off a horde of swarming enemies with a bayonet and a pistol while the remainder of his profusely-bleeding Green Beret comrades got onto the rescue helicopter.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>Suffering from 37 bayonet, bullet, and shrapnel wounds in various parts of his body, Benavidez used the last of his strength to pull himself on board the helicopter, the last man to leave the battlefield.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>The helicopter was completely riddled with holes, covered in blood, and without any functioning instruments, but the pilot somehow took off and got the team out of there.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>Benavidez lost consciousness as soon as he knew they were clear.</span></span></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"line-height: 200%;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;\"><span style=\"font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; font-family: \'Arial\',\'sans-serif\';\">Sergeant Roy P. Benavidez of the 1<sup>st</sup> Special Forces was credited with single-handedly saving the lives of eight men during six hours of non-stop battle.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>When a recovery team went through the site a few days later they discovered over 30 empty NVA foxholes with heavy weapons, and saw the battlefield littered with more dead than they had time to count. <br /><br /></span></span></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"line-height: 200%; text-align: center;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;\"><span style=\"font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; font-family: \'Arial\',\'sans-serif\';\"><img src=\"/images/50095485956/benavidez21.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></span></span></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"line-height: 200%; text-align: center;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;\"><span style=\"font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; font-family: \'Arial\',\'sans-serif\';\"><br /></span></span></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"line-height: 200%;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;\"><span style=\"font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; font-family: \'Arial\',\'sans-serif\';\">After the rescue helicopters landed at the base, Roy Benavidez\'s motionless body was carried off the helicopter, and after a preliminary inspection by the medical personnel on-site, the hero was gently laid onto a gurney and wheeled into the coroner\'s office.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span></span></span></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"line-height: 200%;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;\"><span style=\"font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; font-family: \'Arial\',\'sans-serif\';\">Just as they were zipping up his body bag, Benavidez used the last of his energy to spit in the doctor\'s face.</span></span></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"line-height: 200%;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;\"><span style=\"font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; font-family: \'Arial\',\'sans-serif\';\">The mostly-dead Benavidez was rushed into surgery immediately, then transferred to Saigon for many months of intensive rehabilitation.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>He received the Distinguished Service Cross for his heroic balls-out actions, and once the full details of the battle came declassified the award was upgraded to the Medal of Honor, the highest award for military bravery offered by the United States military.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>He lived to be 63.<br /><br /></span></span></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"line-height: 200%; text-align: center;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;\"><span style=\"font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; font-family: \'Arial\',\'sans-serif\';\"><img src=\"/images/50095485956/benavidez6.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /></span></span></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"line-height: 200%;\">&nbsp;</p>','2013-03-08','50095485956','benavidez.jpg','benavidez-small.jpg','Roy Benavidez','One of the toughest war heroes in American history.','\"Sergeant Benavidez\' gallant choice to join voluntarily his comrades who were in critical straits, to expose himself constantly to withering enemy fire, and his refusal to be stopped despite numerous severe wounds, saved the lives of at least eight men. His fearless personal leadership, tenacious devotion to duty, and extremely valorous actions in the face of overwhelming odds were in keeping with the highest traditions of the military service, and reflect the utmost credit on him and the United States Army.\"\r\n\r\n- Medal of Honor citation\r\n'),('Edith Margaret Garrud','1872','1971','Bath, England, UK','20th-century British Martial Artist','<p class=\"MsoNormal\">It wasn\'t just that Edith Garrud was the first female martial arts instructor in the Western world.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>It wasn\'t just that this hardcore, pipe-hitting, 4\'11\" tall chick went out there in an Edwardian hoop skirt and a massive floppy hat and judo-flipped the hell out of armed men who outweighed her two-to-one, that she was one of the first fight choreographers in British film history, or that she kept a damned bowling pin under her dress and almost always wore three inches of cardboard armor under her dress that was capable of protecting her ribs from a direct hit by a mahogany club.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>It\'s that this hell-raising martial arts master was using her powers of feminine asskicking to smash the faces of London police officers who tried to violently break up women\'s suffrage rallies, and that her skills and techniques were used to train a 30-woman-strong bodyguard of ju-jitsu face-breaker suffragettes who could be assembled at a moment\'s notice and immediately start pummeling the balls of any jackasses who thought they could stand in the way of a woman\'s right to vote.</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Oh yeah, and this was going down in 1908, at a time when women were only considered \"well-behaved\" when they were knee-deep in sandwiches and/or human progeny and when they weren\'t supposed to give a crap about things like voting or politics or literature or complaining about getting beat up by their husbands.</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">The only hors d\'oeuvres Edith Garrud was interested in serving, however, involved a couple steaming hot plates of knuckle sandwiches shoved violently down the esophagus of anyone stupid enough to fuck with her.</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: center;\"><img src=\"/images/808628531966/garrud1.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: center;\">I said she\'ll flip ya.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>Flip ya for real.</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Edith Margaret Williams was born in Somerset in 1872, but moved to Wales not long after that and eventually ended up hooking up with a strapping young physical education instructor named William Garrud &ndash; a ripped-to-shreds boxer, wrestler, and badass martial arts instructor who wrote a book about ju-jitsu and used to spend his days training Welsh athletes in the fine art of one-armed pull-ups and climbing the rope in gym class without getting Indian burns on their scrotums.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>Edith and William got hitched, he taught her a bunch of hardcore wrist locks and hip tosses (I am really trying hard to resist a couple choice foreplay jokes here) , and before long this chick was using bone-crunching MMA Anderson Silva shit to fuck up dudes twice her size and then kick them in the jaw once they were incapacitated and emasculated.</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">At some point during their early married life, the Garruds met William Barton-Wright &ndash; a fellow gym coach and the inventor of an unbelievably-awesome martial art style known as Bartitsu.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>If that name rings a bell, it\'s probably because this combination of stick fighting, gentlemanly bare-knuckled boxing, French savate, and Kobe-style Ju-Jitsu is the same style of martial arts Sherlock Holmes used to ball-punch his way through every overly-complex crime London had to offer during this time period.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>If that\'s not enough to insta-boner you, this should do the trick &ndash; here\'s the picture that you always see associated with the art of Bartitsu:</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: center;\"><img src=\"/images/808628531966/garrud2.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: center;\">Oh yeah, it\'s gonna be <em style=\"mso-bidi-font-style: normal;\">that </em>kind of party.</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">After training in Bartitsu from the <em style=\"mso-bidi-font-style: normal;\">dude that invented it</em> (yes, Barton-Wright is the dude with the master \'stache at the center of the pic above), she then went to Soho and studied Tokyo-style Ju-Jitsu with Sadakazu Uyenishi, the first ju-jitsu master to ever teach pupils outside of Japan.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>She became a master in using leverage and mechanics to overpower larger men and perform incredible feats of strength, and by 1907 the 35 year-old Mrs. Garrud\'s shit was so tight (she\'d already been studying martial arts for roughly 14 years) that she actually starred in the United Kingdom\'s first martial arts film &ndash; a silent movie called \"Jujitsu Takes Down the Footpads\" where some douchebag hoodlum tries to jack her purse and she goes Jackie Chan on his ass until he\'s a de-ballsacked bloody smear quivering on the sidewalk crying for his momma.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp;&nbsp; </span></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Well performing public displays of badassery, opening a couple of ju-jitsu training facilities, and becoming England\'s first Michelle Yeoh was great and all, but around 1908 shit got serious for Edith Garrud, and her services suddenly became desperately needed by the quickly-ramping-up Women\'s Suffrage movement in England.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>Basically, this was the deal &ndash; women in England thought it would be pretty cool if they could vote, inherit land, ask for a divorce, and have some kind of legal precedent established preventing them from being put to work at eight years old.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>A bunch of guys thought this was bullshit, so every time a group of women would get together and demand this stuff these guys would show up with a bunch of cops and beat the shit out of them.</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: center;\"><img src=\"/images/808628531966/garrud3.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">This was kind of a problem for Edith Garrud, so from 1907 through 1914 she opened the doors of her ju-jitsu school to train Suffragettes to fight back, and I don\'t mean in the non-violent Gandhi turn the other cheek way &ndash; I mean in the \"any part of you that touches me is going to be detached from your body\" sense.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>Running her women-only training halls, she assembled a band of 30 hardcore women that she trained intensely in martial arts, hand-to-hand combat, and general badassery, equipped them with weapons and armor, and then assigned these \"Ju-Jitsu Suffragettes\" to serve as the personal bodyguard of a Suffragette leader named Emmeline Pankhurst.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">The leader of the Women\'s Social and Political Union, Emmeline Pankhurst was kind of like the Susan B. Anthony of England, only if Susan B. Anthony urged her followers to smash the windows out of police stations with Molotov cocktails, broke into Congress and the White House to yell at politicians, and spent half of her activist career breaking out of no fewer than seven federal prisons.</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: center;\"><img src=\"/images/808628531966/garrud4.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: center;\">\"I have reached London tonight in spite of armies of police. <br />I am here tonight, and not a man is going to protect me, because this is a woman&rsquo;s fight, <br />and we are going to protect ourselves! I am coming out amongst you in a <br />few minutes and I challenge the government to re-arrest me!\"<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; <br /></span>- Emmeline Pankhurst</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Here\'s roughly how it worked &ndash; Pankhurst would have a suffrage rally, get arrested for \"disturbing the peace or some bullshit\", starve herself to death in prison, force them to release her for health reasons, and then go right back out and do it again.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>Eventually, hordes of cops and \"unpleasant young men\" opposed to the idea of women voting became such a big deal that Edith Garrud was called in to layeth the smacketh down.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>Garrud responded by assembling the Bodyguard &ndash; 30 women, trained in ju-jitsu and capable of using improvised weapons to fight off any jerkburger who tried to mess with Pankhurst.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>The women would be out there in big dresses and hats, looking totally normal, but underneath their heavy wool dresses they\'d have three inches of cardboard wrapped around their midsections to prevent them from breaking ribs when they were clubbed by police truncheons.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Oh right, and under their dresses they\'d be packing Indian clubs, which are basically bowling pin-looking things that really really seem like they\'d hurt like a motherfucker if you got popped in the dome by one:</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: center;\"><img src=\"/images/808628531966/garrud5.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">You can say what you want about the ethics of fighting the cops or whatever, but the Bodyguard\'s record is pretty damn badass if you ask me.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>Meeting in attics and basements and taking long routes home to keep police inspectors from following them and learning their identities, the women of the guard not only planned cunning disguise and decoy operations to through the fuzz off Pankhurst\'s trail, they also got out there and mixed it up with The Man on dozens of occasions.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>Like one time Pankhurst was giving a talk at a town hall, and 50 cops came running in with clubs to break it up &ndash; they were faced off by 25 women with Indian clubs, swinging like maniacs, bashing in heads left and right.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>When the cops tried to climb up on the stage after Pankhurst, they quickly learned that the garlands of flowers draped around the stage weren\'t decorative, but actually concealed barbed wire fencing that ripped them up and funneled them all into a choke point where the Guard could stand their ground.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>Another time a small group of the Guard were attacked while escorting Pankhurst to a different talk, and had to take on over a dozen armed cops.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>The cops eventually overpowered the women, knocked Pankhurst unconscious and fought through the horde of club-swinging suffragettes only to later learn that the woman they\'d arrested was actually Pankhurst\'s body double.</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">While Garrud herself was rarely involved in these frays herself (her position in the organization was too important to risk her being arrested and imprisoned so she had to keep her nose clean), there is more than one recorded instance of her flipping cops weighing at least 180 pounds.</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><img style=\"display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;\" src=\"/images/808628531966/garrud6.png\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: center;\"><img src=\"/images/808628531966/garrud7.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: center;\">\"Women using jiu-jitsu have brought great burly cowards nearly <br />twice their size to their feet and made them howl for mercy.\"</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: left;\">The militant suffragette movement took a break for the Great War in 1914, but their voices were heard loud and clear, and before the War was over an Act was passed that granted over 8 million British women the right to vote.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>Garrud, no longer needing to organize an underground female fight club trained in the fine art of punching cops, continued running her schools, wrote a couple magazine articles about self-defense, and ran the woman athlete\'s branch of the Women\'s Freedom League.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>Later in life she taught classes to London police officers (they were curious what that whole ju-jitsu cop-flipping thing was all about, and once she knew the techniques weren\'t going to be used to oppress her friends Edith was happy to oblige them), and worked as a martial arts fight choreographer for stage and film.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: left;\">She lived the be 99 years old, passing away in 1971.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>In one of her final interviews, the 93 year-old martial artist responded to the interviewer\'s questions by giving him the recipe she\'d just used for her birthday cake.</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: left;\">In June 2012, her home town of Islington installed a plaque at the site of her former home.</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: left;\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><img style=\"display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;\" src=\"/images/808628531966/garrud8.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: left;\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: red;\">Links:</span></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: left;\"><a href=\"http://ejmas.com/jnc/jncart_garrud_1299.htm\">Damsel vs. Desperado</a></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: left;\"><a href=\"http://londonist.com/2012/06/jiu-jitsuing-suffragette-gets-peoples-plaque-in-islington.php\">The Londonist</a></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: left;\"><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/jun/25/edith-garrud-suffragette-martial-arts\">The Guardian</a></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: left;\"><a href=\"http://www.bartitsu.org/index.php/2012/07/the-amazons-of-edwardian-london-martial-arts-trained-suffragette-bodyguards/\">Bartitsu.org</a></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: left;\"><a href=\"http://www.islington.gov.uk/islington/history-heritage/heritage_borough/bor_plaques/recent_plaques/Pages/Edith-Garrud.aspx\">Islington.gov</a></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: left;\"><a href=\"http://www.badreputation.org.uk/2011/09/12/revolting-women-the-ju-jutsuffragettes/\">BadReputation.org</a></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: left;\"><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edith_Margaret_Garrud\">Wikipedia</a></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: left;\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: red;\">Sources:</span></p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: left;\">Crawford, Elizabeth.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span><em style=\"mso-bidi-font-style: normal;\">The Womens\' Suffrage Movement</em>.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>Routledge, 2002.</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: left;\">Godfrey, Emelyne.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span><em style=\"mso-bidi-font-style: normal;\">Femininity, Crime and Self-Defence in Victorian Literature and Society.</em><span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>Palgrave, 2012.</p>\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Green, Thomas A. and Joseph R. Smith.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span><em style=\"mso-bidi-font-style: normal;\">Martial Arts of the World</em>.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">&nbsp; </span>ABC-CLIO, 2010.</p>\r\n<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>\r\n <o:OfficeDocumentSettings>\r\n  <o:AllowPNG/>\r\n </o:OfficeDocumentSettings>\r\n</xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>\r\n <w:WordDocument>\r\n  <w:View>Normal</w:View>\r\n  <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom>\r\n  <w:TrackMoves/>\r\n  <w:TrackFormatting/>\r\n  <w:PunctuationKerning/>\r\n  <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/>\r\n  <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>\r\n  <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent>\r\n  <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>\r\n  <w:DoNotPromoteQF/>\r\n  <w:LidThemeOther>EN-US</w:LidThemeOther>\r\n  <w:LidThemeAsian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian>\r\n  <w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript>\r\n  <w:Compatibility>\r\n   <w:BreakWrappedTables/>\r\n   <w:SnapToGridInCell/>\r\n   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1601, the Danish astronomer, mathematician, and alchemist Tycho Brahe was the most respected scientist in the world.&nbsp; He had devoted his life to the intense study of the stars, observed the passage of hundreds of celestial bodies through the cosmos, coined the word <em>nova </em>(as in <em>supernova</em>), definitively disproved Aristotle\'s theory of an unchanging celestial realm, and laid the groundwork for what would eventually become Kepler\'s Laws of Planetary Motion.</p>\r\n<p>He also had most of his nose chopped off by a broadsword during a duel with a rival mathematician, lived on his own private island in a massive castle complete with trap doors, and army of astronomer henchmen, and a dungeon where he could extrajudicially imprison anyone who pissed him off whenever he wanted, had a pet moose that got drunk at parties, was best friends with a psychic dwarf who lived under his dining room table, and accurately predicted the cosmic trajectories of over seven hundred stars despite the fact that he was performing his observations with his naked eye because he was working <em>before the invention of the telescope</em>.</p>\r\n<p>So if you think semi-insane, self-aggrandizing evil geniuses are pretty much the most totally friggin\' sweet thing ever, let me introduce you to Tycho Brahe and his similarly-insane out-of-control \'stache, because this psychotic ultragenius Dane was basically the 16<sup>th</sup>-century equivalent of Dr. Julius No, only instead of atomic robot hands and bikini-clad Ursula Andresses, Brahe had one of those sweet ruffley Shakepearean neck doilies, a wall-mounted quadrant the size of a Disneyland roller coaster, and at least one drunken moose falling down the stairs of his subterranean observatory.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/953840117351/brahe1.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Born to prominent Danish nobility in 1546, when Tycho was two years old he was kidnapped by his childless uncle &ndash; another wealthy aristocrat and a man who would eventually became famous for drunkenly diving into the Baltic Sea to save the life of the King of Denmark.&nbsp; Tycho\'s uncle and dad somehow made peace with the whole child abduction thing, Tycho was raised by the uncle, and when he turned 13 he went off to Doogie Houser it up, first at the University of Copenhagen, then at the University of Leipzig.&nbsp; As a good member of the aristocracy, Brahe was supposed to study law and war and how to do other good princely things like tax the balls off of the peasantry and then blow them up with cannons, but instead he got caught up in a crazy misguided love of astronomy and mathematics and other complicated things.&nbsp; He bought all the major astronomy books of the time, reading up on Ptolemy, Aristotle, and Copernicus, but in 1563 when he used his own instruments to observe Saturn and Jupiter passing in front of each other, he was slightly pissed off when he noticed this high-altitude celestial high-five had gone down a couple weeks before the Ptolemaic and Copernican tables had predicted it would.&nbsp; After observing this, Brahe naturally came to the realization that these guys were a bunch of fraudulent jackasses, and figured he could do a much better job than any of those jokers when it came to predicting the movement of the cosmos.&nbsp; So that\'s what he set out to do.</p>\r\n<p>This is what I love about Tycho.&nbsp; Like any good megalomaniac, this guy was utterly convinced that nobody was as smart as him, and anyone who doubted him would RUE THE DAY THEY CROSSED HIM MUAHAHAHAHA.&nbsp; Here\'s a good example of that:&nbsp; One time, Tycho and some other math geeks were at a wedding reception in this huge castle in Germany when suddenly a huge argument broke out between Tycho and some other asshole about who was better at math.&nbsp; Tycho, in a psychotic fit of uncontrollable nerd rage, drew his broadsword in the middle of the dining hall, chased the other dude outside while loudly screaming about trigonometric functions, and then proceeded to drunkenly swordfight his rival mathematician in the light of the full moon outside a 16<sup>th</sup>-century Teutonic castle while the assembled wedding guests stood around in a circle chanting \"Fight! Fight! Fight!\".&nbsp; This, of course, is totally awesome.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/953840117351/brahe2.JPG\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Unfortunately for Tycho, his brainpower was slightly better than his sword arm, and a lucky swing from his rival struck Brahe in the bridge of his nose and lopped pretty much the entire thing off.&nbsp; Tycho, never one to let something like being horribly disfigured slow him down, went out and constructed a fake metal nose out of gold, silver, and brass alloys, then developed a special wax ointment to keep it attached to his face.</p>\r\n<p>From this point on, Tycho Brahe had a metal fucking nose.&nbsp; I think we can all hopefully agree that this is totally rad.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>While we don\'t know much of the details surrounding what this thing looked like (the men that would paint his portrait in later years would be <em>incredibly</em> kind in how they portrayed his hardcore-awesome Terminator steel nose), we can get a little bit of an idea from this etching:</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/953840117351/brahe3.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Brahe returned to Denmark in 1570, disappointed his family by not becoming some boring court administrator, and then went to work building the most insanely-badass observatory ever created.&nbsp; He ordered the construction of a 20-foot-tall wooden quadrant that took 20 men to assemble, and build 6-foot sextants with brass hinges, scales calibrated to the sixtieth of a degree, and a table for performing troubleshooting corrections on the fly.&nbsp; Using these tools, the 28-year-old Tycho Brahe was one of the first people to see a supernova in 1572, when he used his naked eye to discover a \"new star\" somewhere in the Cassiopeia constellation that was actually a goddamned STAR DETONATING IN A MASSIVE GALAXY-SPANNING THERMONUCLEAR FUSION DETONATION (his term for this phenomenon, \"nova stella\", meaning \"new star\", is the origin of the terms \"nova\", \"supernova\", and <a href=\"http://image.chevyhiperformance.com/f/26522407/0912chp_01_z+1971_chevy_nova_ss+front_grill.jpg\">1971 Chevy Nova</a>)</p>\r\n<p>Now, witnessing a supernova or a comet (which Brahe also observed in 1577) was a big deal, because before Tycho Brahe the scientific world believed two things &ndash; first, that the universe revolved around the Earth (Copernicus had tried to disprove this a few years ago, claiming that everything revolved around the sun, but people weren\'t quite convinced yet), and second, that the stars never changed and that everything beyond the Moon stayed constant forever.&nbsp; Brahe\'s observations &ndash; and the data he gathered to back it up &ndash; blew apart Aristotle\'s theories and disproved roughly two thousand years of scientific thinking.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/953840117351/brahe4.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>After spending a couple years giving lectures at the University of Copenhagen &ndash; not because he wanted to, but because the KING OF DENMARK ordered him to &ndash; Tycho accepted an offer from the King to build the most insanely-badass observatory the world had ever seen.&nbsp; He was given a three-mile-wide island&nbsp; off the coast of Copenhagen as his own private fiefdom, and immediately went to work building Uraniborg, the \"Castle of Urania\".&nbsp; Featuring six towers, two libraries, a mad scientist alchemy laboratory, and 250-foot-tall red brick walls, one of which had a quadrant mounted on it that spanned the entire height of the wall, Tycho packed his island fortress lair with hundreds of crazy new astronomical devices he designed, built, and calibrated himself by hand.&nbsp; He had his own alchemical medicinal herb garden, a printing press, the most accurate globe on the planet, a dormitory housing for his massive staff of astronomers, cooks, and servants, and an ultramax subterranean dungeon complete with torture devices, steel bars, and chains.&nbsp; Next to the castle itself he constructed a subterranean observatory known as Stjerneborg, meaning \"Star Castle\", where he kept any measuring tools that could have been thrown out of whack by the wind.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/953840117351/brahe5.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">Uraniborg Castle.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>From his island lair, Tycho was basically a mad scientist evil genius commanding an army of henchmen intent on measuring the stars.&nbsp; His castle was full of secret passages that could only be accessed by turning hidden mechanisms (i.e. \"put the candle back!\"), all of his team\'s measurements were kept under lock-and-key in his private study, and any time one of his astronomy nerds would cross him Brahe would have that jackass and his entire family bound up in chains and thrown into his personal dungeon without a trial and without any regard for the law of Denmark or the King himself.&nbsp; While his teams worked away collecting data, this hard-drinking, hard-fighting , tenured astronomer would throw huge parties, highlighted by the soothsayings of Brahe\'s personal psychic dwarf jester named Jeppe (who lived under the dining room table and only popped out to make prophecies) and an 800-pound domesticated moose who would get drunk and run madly through the halls of Uraniborg doing moosely things (the moose eventually died when it got hammered on a shit-ton of beer and fell down the stairs).</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/953840117351/brahe6.GIF\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Using the most accurate instrumentation the world had ever seen &ndash; instruments Brahe had invented himself &ndash; the astronomers at Uraniborg were able to track the orbits and positions of 777 celestial bodies.&nbsp; Thanks to his painstaking detail, and his understanding that he would need to correct his readings for atmospheric refraction (i.e. that the Earth\'s atmosphere changes the trajectory of incoming light) we now know that some of Brahe\'s readings were accurate to one-half of an arc minute... which is a big fucking deal considering that he was doing this in 1570, at a time when we didn\'t know there were any planets in our solar system beyond Saturn.&nbsp; He was measuring this shit using his naked eye at a time when tangent, cosing and sine hadn\'t been defined yet, the slide rule was 50 years away from being developed, North America wasn\'t even being<em> scouted for colonies</em>.&nbsp; I mean, the fucking TELESCOPE wasn\'t even invented until 7 years after Tycho\'s death, but this guy was still tracking the position and movement of damned celestial bodies millions of light years away &ndash; and he was doing it with only <em>slightly </em>less accuracy than modern-day NASA technicians.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/953840117351/brahe7.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Denmark got a new king in 1597, a warlike asskicker who wasn\'t particularly interested in this fruity science crap, and Tycho was forced to abandon Uraniborg and \"get a real job\".&nbsp; He traveled Europe for a couple years, eventually settling in Prague in 1599 where he served as the Imperial Mathematician (an awesome title, by the way) for Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II.&nbsp; Tycho lived in a really sweet castle outside Prague, and continued to impregnate his common-law peasant wife (they had eight kids together, none of which were legitimate because he was a noble and she was a peasant), but the greatest astronomer of his day eventually died in 1601 from partying too hard &ndash; he got really hammered at a party, held his pee too long, and died of a bladder infection.&nbsp; Which is weird.&nbsp; His work was continued by his top assistant, a dude named Johannes Kepler, who used Tycho\'s observations and equipment (coupled with the invention of a new device known as the telescope) to create Kepler\'s Laws of Planetary Motion &ndash; one of the fundamental tenets of modern astronomy.</p>\r\n<p>Nowadays Tycho is best known either as a crater on the Moon, that guy from Penny Arcade, or the basis for my friend Scott\'s Shakespearean assassination story <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1936850362/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=1936850362&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=badofthewee-20\">The Astrologer</a>.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;<img style=\"display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;\" src=\"/images/953840117351/brahe8.JPG\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Links:</p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://galileo.rice.edu/sci/brahe.html\">The Galileo Project</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://galileoandeinstein.physics.virginia.edu/1995/lectures/tychob.html\">University of Virginia Physics</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.space.com/19623-tycho-brahe-biography.html\">Space.com Bio</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Biographies/Brahe.html\">History of Mathematics Bio</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tycho_Brahe\">Wikipedia</a></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Sources:</p>\r\n<p>Kusky, Timothy M. and Katherine E. Cullen.&nbsp; <em>Encyclopedia of earth and Space Science</em>.&nbsp; Infobase, 2010.</p>\r\n<p>Nardo, Don.&nbsp; <em>Tycho Brahe: Pioneer of Astronomy</em>.&nbsp; Capstone, 2008.</p>\r\n<p>Thoren, Victor E.&nbsp; <em>The Lord of Uraniborg</em>.&nbsp; Cambridge Univ. Press, 1990.</p>','2013-03-22','953840117351','brahe.jpg','brahe-small.jpg','Tycho Brahe','Mad scientist, evil genius, pioneer of astronomy.','\"May I not seemed to have lived in vain.\"'),('Robert Crisp','May 28, 1911','March, 3, 1994','Calcutta, India','20th-century South African Athlete','<p>I don\'t know a damn thing about cricket.&nbsp; Like all good American men worthy of their Direct TV NASCAR Superfan UltraPasses Xtreme Hardcore Digitally-Remastered Widescreen Edition I can power-eat hamburgers like a freedom-fueled beef-devouring murder engine, my urine stream comes out in some variant of red, white, and/or blue, and a diagram of a cricket pitch (field?&nbsp; stadium?&nbsp; destructitorium?) makes about as much sense to me as dog sweaters or the Metric System.&nbsp; Seriously, <a href=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-bFus7_Di4d0/TcKvWupu5MI/AAAAAAAAA-M/igC887347OE/s1600/cricket-field-positions.gif\">this</a> is like staring into the mandibled fangs of insanity and asking it to explain the physics of Dark Matter. &nbsp;I could <em>probably </em>identify a cricket bat if someone was in the process of ruthlessly pummeling me to death with it.&nbsp; Through some weird substance-abuse-induced circumstances I think I saw <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNX1beRgwJ8\">Lagaan</a> once but I don\'t remember much about it except that all the white guys in it are pompous, ridiculously-mustachioed sadistic evil bastards. &nbsp;I know that wickets are a thing, although to be honest I\'m not even certain that I\'m not confusing cricket with croquet.&nbsp; Which is possible.</p>\r\n<p>Here\'s what I do know &ndash; Bob Crisp played cricket for the South African national team, and even though I have no idea how this game even works I can say with every possible degree of confidence that he is a complete and total badass.</p>\r\n<p>It probably has less to do with his bowling ability and more to do with the fact that this British Army Major beat cancer with nothing more than alcohol and a donkey, bedded more women than (the appropriately-named) Magic Johnson, wrote three books, founded a couple magazines, and &ndash; oh yeah &ndash; also killed hundreds of <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/index.cgi?id=306302826147\">Rommel\'s</a> goose-stepping Afrika Korps Nazis with a tank despite operating in battles commanding tank crews that had never even fired their weapons before.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/876960529664/crisp1.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Robert Crisp summited Mount Kilimanjaro twice.&nbsp; He\'s the only professional Test Cricket player to ever do this.&nbsp; The first time was in the early 1930s, when he was about 20.&nbsp; Crisp was walking through Tanzania for some reason, just minding his own business, when he suddenly happened to run into a friend of his.&nbsp; The guy was like, \"Hey, have you ever been to the top of Kilimanjaro?&nbsp; It\'s pretty sweet!\", so Crisp responded with, \"Ok, cool, let\'s go do it.\"&nbsp; So, with no mountaineering gear, food, or supplies on him, he just walked over to Mount Kilimanjaro, and these two guys proceeded to nonchalantly climb to the summit of the highest mountain on the African Continent.&nbsp; Crisp\'s friend slipped on a banana peel a couple hundred meters from the top of the mountain, but instead of pussy out and seek medical attention for his crippled friend Robert Crisp hoisted the dude on his back, carried him to the top (Crisp had come to see the summit, and by God he was going to do it), then carried the guy down and walked him into a hospital that was &ndash; I presume &ndash; dozens if not hundreds of miles away.</p>\r\n<p>OK.&nbsp; This is Mount Kilimanjaro.&nbsp; Keep in mind that Robert Crisp is the sort of guy that looks at something like this in the distance, says, \"Bitchin\', that sounds like fun,\" and then does it.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/876960529664/crisp21.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Bob Crisp was born in 1911 in Calcutta, India, which probably explains why he likes cricket so much.&nbsp; He moved to Rhodesia as a child and was raised in the general vicinity of South Africa, started playing the game in 1929, and was apparently fairly decent at it by most accounts from people that know things about this. &nbsp;As a bowler (basically cricket\'s version of a pitcher) he took nine wickets in 64 run in 1933 while playing first-class, is the only bowler in first-class cricket to ever take four wickets in four balls more than once, and hit 276 wickets at under twenty in his career while presumably also getting double-digits in jipjorps, mega-runs, and nega-fails at the same time.&nbsp; In 1935, he was on the South African national team and, during South Africa\'s tour of England, bowled the South African team to their first victory against the Brits.&nbsp; He appeared in nine test matches between 1933 and 1938, mentored Australian National Hero Keith Miller (who, as far as I can tell, became basically the Cy Young of Australia), and did some other things that I assume are really impressive because they get him mentioned by professional cricket journalists in books about great cricket players from history.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>He also is the first &ndash; and presumably only &ndash; cricket player to bang 100 women in a single three-month cricket tour.</p>\r\n<p>Because that\'s how he rolled. Get it?&nbsp; ROLLED?&nbsp; BECAUSE HE BOWLS LOLOLOLOL</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/876960529664/crisp3.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">A bowler prepping to launch and/or roll a cricket ball at something.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>When semi-famous German Chancellor Adolf Hitler got all weird about that annoying \"why isn\'t whole part of the German Reich\" thing and started dropping high explosive air-to-ground warheads on Polish people in 1939, Robert Crisp &ndash; despite being a professional cricket player in South Africa who was already pushing 30 &ndash; decided, eh, fuck it, let\'s show these Hun bastards what happens when you start hurling explosives around Europe all willy-nilly like some kind of disrespectful bastard.&nbsp; He enlisted in the British Army, then spent the early part of his distinguished British Military Career chilling in Alexandria, Egypt, where he blew all his paychecks on gambling bets and booze and covered the difference in his bar tab by either singing songs for the bartender or seducing any woman in the bar with a twenty-pound note in her pocket.&nbsp; World War II got a little more serious (and became slightly less about beers and cleavage) in 1940, when Crisp was deployed to Yugoslavia to stop the Nazi onslaught that was currently attempting to overrun the country on an endless tidal wave of human blood and entrails.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Sitting in the Commander\'s chair of an M3 Stuart Tank (he once said the tank was \"a real honey\", inadvertently coining a piece of military jargon in the process that has resulted in Brits still to this day referring to Stuarts as \"Honeys\") , Crisp served with the 3<sup>rd</sup> Royal Tank Regiment as they went toe-to-toe with hardcore, ball-crushing SS Panzer Divisions across Yugoslavia and Greece.&nbsp; During the action in the Balkans, Bob Crisp managed to have three tanks (tanks!) shot out from under him (he bailed out and survived with minor burns/shrapnel wounds all three times), fired a .38-caliber revolver at a German Mark IV Panzer on more than one occasion, killed a dozen enemy tanks, and miraculously shot down a twin-engine Henkel Bomber with a cupola-mounted .50-caliber Browning machine gun right as it was about to make a bombing run on a British Armored Column.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/876960529664/crisp4.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Thanks in no small part to his amazing ability to successfully command lightly-armored British tanks in combat against technologically-superior German Armored Divisions without exploding into flames and dying ingloriously on the battlefield, Bob Crisp was promoted to serve as a company commanderin the 3<sup>rd</sup> Regiment.&nbsp; Shortly afterwards, thanks in no small part to his amazing ability to successfully sleep with dozens of women, gamble away his paycheck, spend his nights drunk in bars, disobey direct orders, and publicly insult and/or pilfer personal items from his commanding officers in front of their troops, Crisp was demoted back down to Lieutenant.&nbsp; Then he was promoted back.&nbsp; Then demoted immediately.</p>\r\n<p>He was busted down three times, but, in what can only be a testament to his personal charm and incredible capacity to kick the shit out of Hun Motherfuckers anywhere and everywhere they could be located, Crisp was a Major in command of a company when he was redeployed with the British Eighth Army and sent to North Africa to stop German ultra-genius Erwin Rommel from steamrolling the entire continent in a wave of Nazified destruction.&nbsp; Sent out to relieve the siege of Tobruk in 1941, Major Crisp launched himself 29 days of non-stop tank-on-tank action, battling the elite, battle-hardened German Panzer Divisions that had previously spent their free time teabagging the countries of Europe with their tank treads.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/876960529664/crisp5.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>At the fight for Sidi Rezegh, Bob Crisp\'s lone Honey Tank single-handedly charged an entire formation of German Panzers, launching a balls-out one-vehicle attack across a wide-open airfield that completely encircled the enemy formation and attempted to cut off their supply line.&nbsp; The Germans, seeing a tank at the rear of their formation, thought they were dealing with more than one guy, and subsequently halted their advance &ndash; Bob Crisp, operating on his own without any orders, had single-handedly stopped a formation of 70 German tanks from assaulting a badly-outnumbered British force.</p>\r\n<p>You\'d think he\'d have no way of topping this.&nbsp; You\'d be wrong.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The <em>very next day</em> Crisp was walking along on foot when he noticed a position of three German anti-tank cannons that were in position to hit the British forces hard.&nbsp; So this guy, who had been separated from his tank, flagged down a Signals Corps tank &ndash; a non-combatant vehicle that had ever so much as fired a single round through the barrel of their coaxial machine gun.&nbsp; Crisp pulled the tank commander out, commandeered the tank, and told the clean-shaven kids inside that they were about to go balls-first into a trio of German artillery guns, any one of which was capable of turning the Honey Tank into a gigantic intestine-filled inferno.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>He attacked the guns, commanded his men in action, wiped out all three guns, captured their crews single-handedly, and inadvertently freed a truck full of British 8<sup>th</sup> Army Prisoners of War in the process.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/876960529664/crisp6.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">And that\'s how you do it, eh boys?</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>During World War II, Bob Crisp had six tanks blown up from underneath him, was wounded five times, and was only knocked out of action when his entire skull was embedded with white-hot shrapnel, and then only when those gruesome gushing head wounds then became infected.&nbsp; He was nominated for the Victoria Cross for his actions, but the personal intervention of Overall British Army Commander Bernard Montgomery ensured that Crisp (a personal enemy of Monty thanks to his constant insubordination) didn\'t actually ever receive it.&nbsp; Instead he got the DSO (Britain\'s second-highest award for bravery) and the Military Cross (their Silver Star).&nbsp; When the King Himself handed Crisp the DSO, he asked if the cricketer would ever be able to play the sport again.&nbsp; Crisp\'s response?&nbsp; \"Sure, only my head was injured.\"</p>\r\n<p>After the war, Crisp wrote for a couple of newspapers, founded and edited the a magazine in South Africa, bought a mink farm (!), abandoned it, then went to Greece for a while.&nbsp; When he was diagnosed with terminal cancer in the 1970s, the 60+ year old Crisp was spending his days in a bar surrounded by local women, who he then proceeded to take home to his goat herder\'s hut on the beach.&nbsp; He took the news well, grabbed a vial of the experimental proto-chemotherapy fluid the doctors offered him, mixed it with 100-proof whiskey, slammed the whole thing in two swigs, then decided to cross an item off his bucket list by walking a donkey around the entire island of Crete.</p>\r\n<p>So, naturally, that\'s what he did.&nbsp; He funded the expedition by proto-blogging about it in a London newspaper.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/876960529664/crisp7.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Only Robert Crisp didn\'t die.&nbsp; He lived 25 more years, and after his walk through Crete his symptoms had completely disappeared.&nbsp; It was so nuts that the Royal Medical Service flew him around to different hospitals in the US and UK to see if maybe he\'d accidentally cured cancer with his crazy booze/chemo/donkey cocktail.</p>\r\n<p>He hadn\'t, but still.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Robert Crisp, the war hero, professional international cricket player, swashbuckling adventurer and ultraprolific fornicator, proceeded to write two books on his life experiences, another one about the historical founding of Johannesburg, and hundreds of newspaper articles.&nbsp; He died in his sleep in Essex, England in 1994 at the age of 82... his only possessions were the morning paper and a 20-pound bet on the big cricket match.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>It\'s probably how he would have wanted to go out.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/876960529664/crisp8.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><strong>Links:</strong></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2013/mar/05/the-spin-bob-crisp-amazing-life\">Amazing Guardian.co.uk Article on Crisp</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.espncricinfo.com/usa/content/player/44481.html\">ESPN Cricket Profile</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Crisp\">Wikipedia</a></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><strong>Sources:</strong></p>\r\n<p>Crisp, Bob.&nbsp; <em>Brazen Chariots</em>.&nbsp; W.W. Norton, 2005.</p>\r\n<p>Crisp, Bob.&nbsp; <em>The Gods Were Neutral</em>.&nbsp; Norton, 1961.</p>\r\n<p>Delaforce, Patrick.&nbsp; <em>Battles With Panzers</em>.&nbsp; Sutton, 2003.</p>\r\n<p>Haigh, Gideon.&nbsp; <em>Silent Revolutions</em>.&nbsp; Black Inc, 2006.</p>\r\n<p>Mallett, Ashley.&nbsp; <em>Eleven</em>.&nbsp; Univ. of Queensland Press, 2001.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>','2013-03-29','876960529664','crisp.jpg','crisp-small.jpg','Bob Crisp','Professional cricket player who smoked Nazis with a tank.','\"Many lives in one, all of them worth living.\"  – Gideon Haigh , Silent Revolutions.'),('Clifford Wooldridge','1988','N/A','Port Angeles, WA, USA','21st-century American Marine','<p>June 18, 2010 had already started out pretty miserably for Corporal Clifford Wooldridge of the 3<sup>rd</sup> Battalion, 7<sup>th</sup> Marines.&nbsp; Not five minutes after leaving the secure Coalition-held perimeter into enemy territory, he&rsquo;d had his Humvee blown out from under him by a Taliban IED.&nbsp; Slightly annoyed by this, he&rsquo;d re-loaded his squad into another vehicle, which was of course then subsequently blown up by another IED (jeez, and you think <em>you&rsquo;re </em>having a rough Friday!), and now, even though he was leading a convoy of four vehicles through a particularly Taliban-infested valley where enemy ambush was about as common as hipster mustaches at trendy downtown \"dive\" bars, Corporal Wooldridge was basically just happy not to have to pick twisted pieces of his vehicle\'s chassis out of the soles of his combat boots.</p>\r\n<p>Saying that the Marine occupation of Musa Qala hadn\'t really gone as planned would be kind of like saying that being mauled to death by a rabid T-Rex would kind of suck ass.&nbsp; Located in the middle of Helmand Province, Afghanistan, Musa Qala was prime poppy-growing country, and since the Taliban make most of their coin off of illegal heroin and opium sales, they weren\'t exactly excited about the idea of a bunch of American and Afghan soldiers rolling in there and setting fire to their favorite cash crop.&nbsp; The Marines had been sent in to talk with the townspeople in the valley, assess the situation, and try to persuade the local leadership to ally with the Afghan government and stop providing aid to the Taliban.</p>\r\n<p>When they reached the valley, they found every townsperson had (perhaps wisely) fled their homes in fear of the insanity that was about to go down, and instead of walking into a delicious dinner with the locals the 125-man detachment of 3/7 Marines rolled up on 250 well-trained, well-equipped, battle-hardened Taliban fighters entrenched in ambush-friendly mountain bunkers with dozens more troops streaming across the Pakistani border every day.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/46360524988/wooldridge1.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">Helmand Province, Afghanistan</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>It was about a week into the Marine offensive when Corporal Woolridge led his four-vehicle mounted patrol on a mission to circle around and capture a critical hill that would be necessary for controlling the region.&nbsp; Obviously, the Taliban weren\'t interested in handing it over.&nbsp; They opened fire from positions in the mountains to the front and the abandoned village to the side, hammering the Marine convoy with rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons while the Humvee turret gunners returned the favor with a heavy-handed helping of hot lead from their .50 caliber machine guns.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>While the gunners laid down fire, Wooldridge bailed out of his vehicle, grabbed his M-249 SAW (a squad light machine gun), told his fire team to hang tight, and prepared to do something really really insane.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/46360524988/wooldridge2.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Correctly realizing that in previous fights the Taliban would attack, fire all their RPG ammo, then fade back into the mountains to hide and wait for the next ambush, Corporal Wooldridge (seen at the top of this article holding a cigarette in his mouth and looking admittedly badass while doing so) decided that, naturally, the best course of action wouldn\'t be to return fire, fight for his life, and try not to put himself in a position where he could easily be killed by bullets, but instead to <em>charge across an open field firing his machine gun at the enemy </em>in an effort to flank them and cut off their escape route.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>So that\'s of course exactly what he did.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The 23 year-old from Port Angeles, Washington charged across an open field, gun blazing, hit the treeline, drilled a guy with a white-hot burst of 5.56mm NATO death, then hit the deck and laid down suppressing fire while the rest of his fire team raced across the field to join him.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/46360524988/wooldridge3.png\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>With his four-man squad now assembled in a position behind the flank of the enemy, Wooldridge spotted a team of at least 15 enemy troops armed with heavy weapons and RPGs hiding in the abandoned village preparing to ambush the Marine Humvees.&nbsp; Not about to let that sort of aggression abide, Wooldridge rallied his team and led them on a daring charge straight across open ground once again, firing his machine gun straight into the crowd of unsuspecting Taliban.&nbsp; His attack shredded the enemy weapons team, killing 8 of the enemy (including the RPG operator) and sending the rest of them scattering into the village, but as Wooldridge\'s team prepared to secure the area the Marine Corporal stopped them cold in their tracks.</p>\r\n<p>He\'d heard something.&nbsp; Voices.&nbsp; And they were close.</p>\r\n<p>Wooldridge was certain they were hostiles &ndash; Taliban prepping a counter-attack &ndash; and that the voices were coming from behind a nearby wall.&nbsp; He told his men to hold tight, gripped his weapon, and charged balls-out around the side of the wall.</p>\r\n<p>He came face-to-face with four heavily-equipped Taliban fighters carrying AK-47s, RPGs, and a Soviet-built PKM 7.62-caliber heavy machine gun &ndash; and they were all standing within 10 feet of him.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/46360524988/wooldridge4.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Now, the Taliban are definitely &ndash; definitely &ndash; not a bunch of pussies.&nbsp; I know I write a lot of stuff on this site about Americans and British and Gurkhas or whoever defeating them in combat, but that\'s mostly because the uncontrollable Captain America jingo tendencies in me make it excruciatingly difficult to glorify people who shoot at Americans on a daily basis.&nbsp; But look &ndash; these are battle-hardened, well-trained, unquestionably-devoted warriors who live in brutal mountain conditions and descend from men that have successfully fought off everyone from Cyrus the Great to Alexander the Great to Queen Victoria to the entirety of the Soviet Union.&nbsp; At a range of ten feet, any one of these guys is capable of squeezing a trigger and blowing away even the toughest United States Marine.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Not that this stopped Corporal Clifford Wooldridge from doing this.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/46360524988/wooldridge5.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">Semi-related note:&nbsp; GO SEE THE NEW G.I. JOE MOVIE.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>That\'s right.&nbsp; Staring four men down Old West Wyatt Earp-style, Corporal Wooldridge hoisted his SAW, hammered down the trigger, and didn\'t let go until he\'d fired every last round remaining in the weapon.</p>\r\n<p>Unfortunately, this wasn\'t enough bullets to kill all four enemy fighters.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Wooldridge smoked the first three guys in the span of roughly a split second, but when he swung the weapon to the fourth enemy soldier &ndash; the one packing the PKM heavy machine gun &ndash; his mag had run dry.&nbsp; Wooldridge tried to bluff him, motioning for the dude to drop his weapon, but he wasn\'t buying it.&nbsp; The guy raised his gun and fired off a burst, but not before Wooldridge dove back behind the wall, taking cover as bullets ripped the wall up around him.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/46360524988/wooldridge6.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Now, as anyone who likes <em>Call of Duty 4: Modern Xtreme 2 Black Ops 4 Warfare Hyper Championship Special Edition</em> can probably tell you, reloading an M249 SAW isn\'t exactly a simple operation.&nbsp; You aren\'t swapping out battery packs in an Xbox controller, you\'re securing and then manually feeding a 100-round box of ammunition into a weapon that weighs the same as a fully-grown adult beagle.&nbsp; Wooldridge threw his back against the wall and went to work trying to reload his weapon, but when he saw the barrel of the PKM slowly peeking around the side of the wall, he knew he was going to have to act fast.</p>\r\n<p>So he dropped his gun, ran over, and <em>grabbed the barrel of the Taliban dude\'s machine gun</em>.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Huh?</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/46360524988/wooldridge7.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">Kind of like this, only marginally more intense.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Wooldridge grabbed the gun and the dude was like, \"uh let go,\" but Wooldridge was like, \"no way\", and instead of giving the guy his weapon back he slammed the Taliban fighter up against the wall and before long both men hit the ground still holding the gun.&nbsp; Now, I\'m not sure how big this Taliban guy was, but Clifford Wooldridge was a high school football-playing diesel mechanic who used to repair those things lumberjacks use to chop down forests in the Pacific Northwest, and before long Wooldridge was kind of kicking the crap out of the other guy.&nbsp; The Taliban warrior, locked in hand-to-hand fist-fight old-school combat with a dude who was obviously beating the hell out of him, decided that if he was going down the Marine was coming with him, and he took one hand off his machine gun and reached up to pull the pin on one of the hand grenades strapped to the outside of Wooldridge\'s tactical vest.</p>\r\n<p>That was the opening Wooldridge needed.&nbsp; He ripped the PKM out of the guy\'s hands and then proceeded to beat the dude to death with his own machine gun.&nbsp; Which is pretty badass.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/46360524988/wooldridge8.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>By the time the rest of the Marines rounded the corner and found Wooldridge standing there amid a pile of dead enemy soldiers, the enemy ambush had been thwarted and the coast was clear.&nbsp;&nbsp; In the battle Corporal Clifford Wooldridge had personally taken out 13 enemy troops, flanked their position, and, perhaps more importantly, broke their fighting spirit &ndash; Afghan interpreters would later relay to American commanders in the region that the story of Wooldridge\'s hand-to-hand action effectively crushed the morale of the region\'s defenders.</p>\r\n<p>For his actions in the battle, Clifford Wooldridge would receive the Navy Cross &ndash; the second-highest award for valor available to Marines &ndash; and was selected the USO Marine of the Year for 2012.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/46360524988/wooldridge9.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><strong>Links/Sources:</strong></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://projects.militarytimes.com/citations-medals-awards/recipient.php?recipientid=204838\">Navy Cross Citation</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2012/11/10/marine-valor-award-veteran/1674665/\">USA Today</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/Clifford-Wooldridge-Navy-Cross-Marine-Twentynine-Palms-151729115.html\">NBC San Diego</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.dvidshub.net/news/96824/sgt-clifford-m-wooldridge-named-uso-marine-year#.UV4l81eyCZQ\">DVDIS Hub</a></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>','2013-04-05','46360524988','wooldridge.jpg','wooldridge-small.jpg','Clifford Wooldridge','U.S. Marine beats Taliban fighter to death with his own machine gun.  Do you need anything more than that?','\"The Marines I have seen around the world have the cleanest bodies, the filthiest minds, the highest morale, and the lowest morals of any group of animals I have ever seen. Thank God for the United States Marine Corps!\"  -Eleanor Roosevelt'),('Ivajlo','Unknown','1281','Dobrudja, Bulgaria','Medieval Bulgarian Emperor','<p>Take it from a guy who knows about this sort of thing &ndash; being a feudal peasant in late-13<sup>th</sup> century Bulgaria sucked gigantic donkey balls.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Imagine the worst job you can possibly think of.&nbsp; Pig herder, for instance.&nbsp; In the summertime you work all day slopping around in knee-deep mud being attacked by angry pigs while the blazing sun and oppressive ten thousand percent humidity makes you wish those five hundred pound walking chunks of future bacon would just get it over with, tear out your Achilles tendon with their pig-teeth, and slowly devour your entire body.&nbsp; In the wintertime, temperatures get so cold that your urine flash-freezes mid-stream and your only pair of homemade shoes protects you about as well against negative-twenty temperatures as a baseball cap protects you from being dropped head-first off the roof of a fifteen story building into a swimming pool full of liquid nitrogen.&nbsp; You\'re ostensibly under the protection of your local feudal lord, whose primary job is to keep other people from burning your town to the ground and punching your mom in the head, but all that dickhead cares about is taxing your non-existent profits, and any time you can\'t pay he burns down your village, punches your mom in the head, and tells you he\'ll do it again unless you can somehow find gold somewhere.&nbsp; Meanwhile the Orthodox Church changes up their customs and beliefs every couple months or so, and if you don\'t get the memo that now we\'re making the sign of the cross with three fingers instead of two your bitchy next-door neighbor will label you a heretic and set you on fire.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Oh right, and then every couple of months these guys ride into town and plunder/burninate/enslave anyone and anything they can find.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/84324331289/ivajlo1.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Those are Mongol warriors of the Golden Horde (not to be with the Evil Horde, the legendary enemies of She-Ra), and throughout the years 1276 and 1277 they rode roughshod through the Dobrudja region of the northeastern Bulgarian Empire, pillaging and raiding and enslaving the populace without any regard to how this was going to be perceived by the international community.&nbsp; The Byzantine Empire, long-time <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/basil.html\">haters of the Bulgarians</a>, were totally chill wit it, and the Bulgarian Emperor, Constantine Tikh, was too busy complaining about some lame hunting injury to do anything to protect his own populace, and didn\'t even send an army to try and fight the Mongols.&nbsp; Not that it would have mattered of course &ndash; the Mongols had never, in the history of the Mongol Empire up until this point, been defeated on the field of battle by a Bulgarian military force.</p>\r\n<p>Well one Bulgarian peasant had enough of this bullshit.&nbsp; He was sick of being pillaged and running around with this hat on fire while Tatar assholes on horseback took potshots at him with compound shortbows, and he resolved he was going to do something about it or die trying.&nbsp; If the Emperor and our local lord won\'t help us, fuck \'em.&nbsp; We got rakes and hatchets and pitchforks and that can fuck a Mongol up just as good as anything they got anyways.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/84324331289/ivajlo2.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Ivajlo was a dirt-poor, illiterate swineherd who, up until 1277, had accomplished nothing with his life more impressive than turning pigs into salami.&nbsp; But this ham farmer was tired of the bullshit going down in his country, grabbed a torch and a pitchfork, and organized every able-bodied man in his region to take up arms, stand together, and fight for their homes and lives against the full might of a Mongol Horde raiding party.&nbsp; Which, in 1277 AD, is kind of like saying you\'re going to take your little sister\'s third-grade P.E. class and train them to compete for the Stanley Cup against the 1976 Philadelphia Flyers.</p>\r\n<p>Nevertheless, Ivajlo, some unknown peasant jobber from nowhere, led his rag-tag makeshift army of farmer-warriors into battle against a rampaging force of the same Mongol cavalry that had spent the previous twenty-five years treating the most elite professional armies in Europe and Asia like bowling pins being smashed into subatomic dust with a crane-mounted wrecking ball made out of dynamite.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>He kicked the shit out of them.&nbsp; The entire Mongol force was annihilated.</p>\r\n<p>Two days later, the Mongol Khan sent a second force to avenge the inexcusable defeat.</p>\r\n<p>Ivajlo destroyed that army too.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/84324331289/ivajlo3.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">Always strapped</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>When it turned out that an illiterate pork herder was more effective at quelling barbarian incursions than the Emperor of Bulgaria, people started to think maybe there was something more to this Ivajlo character.&nbsp; Ivajlo, who by now was going by the equally-awesome/ridiculous/unflattering nicknames \"Bardokva\" (Bulgarian for \"radish\" and/or \"lettuce\" depending on whether or not the Bulgarians have separate words for those two distinctly different vegetables) and \"Lakhanas\" (Greek for \"cabbage\" or \"kale\" or something equally leafy and green), immediately became a local legend, as peasants and lower-level nobles flocked to join him in his asskicking adventures.&nbsp; Ivajlo, realizing he had this shit down, told his followers he was blessed by the Saints and should probably just be the Emperor of Bulgaria or something, and those guys were all pretty much like, \"Whatever dude go nuts as long as you keep the Mongols from looting our homes and shit.\"&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Naturally, this Cabbage Emperor thing didn\'t sit all that well with the reigning Tsar of Bulgaria, and once he got word that an unruly horde of commoners was marching towards the capital, Emperor Constantine Tikh got off his ass, put together his professional army, and marched out to kick the shit out of this upstart asshole.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Ivajlo ambushed the Tsar during his march, captured him and all of his closest advisors, personally executed the friggin\' Emperor of Bulgaria with his own weapon, destroyed his demoralized army in battle (it helped that most of the soldiers defected to Ivajlo\'s side as soon as the battle started), entered the capital, married the now-widowed Empress (her idea, not his &ndash; she was one of those Circe Lannister types who never really liked her husband anyways and enjoyed being Empress a hell of a lot more than she enjoyed being exiled&hellip;), and in 1278 was formally coronated Emperor Ivajlo of Bulgaria.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/84324331289/ivajlo4.png\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Now, remember how I said the Byzantine Empire hated the Bulgarians?&nbsp; Well Emperor Michael VIII of Byzantium wasn\'t all that thrilled that some peasant jerkass named Ivajlo the Cabbage was cleaning up the place and uniting all the Bulgarians under one battle flag, so Michael VIII decided to step in and regulate with the realness.&nbsp; He sent a huge army into Bulgaria to kick Ivajlo\'s ass and put Michael\'s son-in-law, some inept dickweed named John Asen, on the throne.&nbsp; Then, as if one gigantic Byzantine Army wasn\'t bad enough, the Golden Horde Mongols launched a massive attack as well, seeking revenge for the victories Ivajlo had just gained.&nbsp; Two armies invaded Bulgaria from separate directions at the same time, each one seeking to crush the usurper at all costs.</p>\r\n<p>Ivajlo the Cabbage met the Byzantine Emperor\'s son-in-law on the field of battle, arraying a motley assortment of peasants and Bulgarian Army regulars against a professional force of heavily-armored warriors from the richest and most powerful Empire in Europe.</p>\r\n<p>He annihilated them.</p>\r\n<p>They sent reinforcements.</p>\r\n<p>He fucked them up too.</p>\r\n<p>Then the Mongols showed up.</p>\r\n<p>He kicked their asses as well.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Then he celebrated by spinning around a massive pile of enemy corpses and human skulls while performing the new dance he invented &ndash; a famous undulating jig now known to history as the Cabbage Patch.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/84324331289/ivajlo5.gif\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The next year or so was pretty quiet, but then in 1280 the Mongols rolled into town YET AGAIN, this time managing to blockade Ivajlo in a fortress along the Danube and laying siege to him for over three months.&nbsp; With no word from Ivajlo, the Byzantines started circulating rumors of Ivajlo\'s untimely demise in battle, claiming that the Emperor was dead so why don\'t we put that John Asen guy on the throne instead?</p>\r\n<p>The Bulgarian nobles weren\'t convinced, mostly because John Asen totally sucked and was about as Bulgarian as Kim Jong Un, and they told the Byzantines they liked another guy instead &ndash; Georg Terterii, a prominent noble from a well-respected family who had a winning smile and was really delightful to talk to.</p>\r\n<p>The Byzantines, who were basically just looking for a reason anyways, launched an attack.&nbsp; Without Ivajlo to help them, the Bulgarians were defeated, the Byzantines took over the capital, and put Asen on the throne.</p>\r\n<p>The next morning, John Asen looked out the window of his palace.&nbsp; Any idea what he saw?</p>\r\n<p>How about Ivajlo the Fucking Cabbage standing there at the head of a massive army.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/84324331289/ivajlo6.png\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">Medieval Bulgarian warrior.<br />Picture like twenty thousand of this in a battle line.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>John Asen dispatched a Byzantine force out to attack.&nbsp; Obviously, they failed, were crushed in a humiliating and hilarious manner, and John Asen was forced to run crying back to his father-in-law in Constantinople.</p>\r\n<p>Ivajlo was once again the hero of his people, but this time they weren\'t waiting for him with open arms &ndash; he\'d brought them a lot of war and heartache, and besides, haven\'t you met Georg yet?&nbsp; He\'s pretty great.</p>\r\n<p>With the entire nobility allied against him, and not wanting to cause another civil war that would destroy his country, Ivajlo the Cabbage left Bulgaria, spent a little time hanging out with the Khan of the Mongols, and then was beheaded by a Byzantine assassin.&nbsp; Nowadays he\'s revered as a folk hero across the country.</p>\r\n<p>Not bad for a man who lived the majority of his life as an impoverished swineherd.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/84324331289/ivajlo7.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><strong>Links/Sources:</strong></p>\r\n<p>Bury, J.B.&nbsp; <em>The Cambridge Medieval History</em>.&nbsp; Cambridge Univ. Press, 2011.</p>\r\n<p>Fine, John V.A.&nbsp; <em>The Late Medieval Balkans</em>.&nbsp; Univ. of Michigan Press, 1994.</p>\r\n<p>Helmot, Hans Ferdinand.&nbsp; <em>The World\'s History</em>.&nbsp; W. Heineman, 1907.</p>\r\n<p>\"The Bulgarians\".&nbsp; <em>Fraser\'s Magazine</em>.&nbsp; Longmans, Green, 1876.</p>\r\n<p>Vasary, Istvan.&nbsp; <em>Cumans and Tatars</em>.&nbsp; Cambridge Univ. Press, 2005.</p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivaylo_of_Bulgaria\">Wikipedia</a></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>','2013-04-12','84324331289','ivajlo.jpg','ivajlo-small.jpg','Ivajlo the Cabbage','Illiterate pig farmer defeats the Mongols, marries an Empress, becomes Emperor of Bulgaria.','\r\n\r\n\"Lahana engaged a Mongol falanga, attacked it with the men he led, crushed them thoroughly and again attacked another unit. Thus, in a few days he covered with glory.\" - Georgius Pachymeres'),('John S. Keller, Jr.','c. 1968','N/A','New Orleans, LA, USA','21st-century American Marine','<p>John Keller is a 6-foot-8, 250-pound Marine who found himself in the middle of the most catastrophic natural disaster in American history and responded by personally rescuing over 240 elderly and disabled people from a partially-submerged apartment building &ndash; not only protecting the terrified residents from looters, thugs, and rushing floodwaters, but also making sure that they received all the food and medical supplies they needed until he was able to single-handedly evacuate them on a boat he\'d hotwired and then piloted through the most dangerous waters of downtown New Orleans.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>After attending an elite boarding school where he served as class President and captain of the Yacht Team, John S. Keller Jr. went to Xavier University to study marine biology, but dropped out in 1990 so he could serve as a radio operator in the 1<sup>st</sup> Recon Battalion, 1<sup>st</sup> Marines during Operation Desert Storm.&nbsp; Now, for those of you who don\'t know what Marine Recon is all about, these are the motherfuckers the Marines send in first whenever they want to kill the shit out of someone.&nbsp; Think about that for a second &ndash; this guy was part of a balls-out six-man SpecOps team that charged head-first into Iraqi Republican Guard units, and he fought so well with a radio strapped to his back that the Corps cited him for bravery under fire.&nbsp; So he had to be pretty damn tough.&nbsp; After he finished serving his country, Lance Corporal Keller came home, finished his degree, opened a successful commercial development firm, and spent his free time teaching underprivileged inner-city juvenile delinquents how to scuba dive and then working with them at soup kitchens to feed the homeless.&nbsp; Yes, you read all of that correctly, and I am not hyperbolizing the shit out of it just for emphasis.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/214908723486/keller1.png\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>On the morning of August 30, 2006, John Keller woke up to the sound of three assholes trying to kick in the front door of his apartment.&nbsp; The night before, Keller had weathered the most destructive natural disaster America ever faced &ndash; Hurricane Katrina &ndash; and the morning after somehow surviving the destruction of the New Orleans levees, this former Marine now had to deal with the fact that a trio of twenty-something thugs was about to take advantage of the post-destruction anarchy, bust in his door with their boots, kick the shit out of him, and rob him blind.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>What they weren\'t expecting to find on the other side of the door was a Marine Recon operative built like Jaws from <em>Moonraker</em>.&nbsp; Keller timed the crashing sound of kicks against his still-closed door, threw it open at the exact moment he predicted the next kick was going to come, and then when the three goons stumbled into his apartment Keller kicked the shit out of them, dragged them out of the apartment complex, and threw them out the front door into 11 feet of fetid standing water.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>For most rational human beings, looking out into the submerged watery ruins of mid-town New Orleans and seeing the carnage, anarchy, and hellish insanity swirling around in every direction would make us want to grab the first rowboat we could get our hands on and sail the fuck out of town like we were fleeing the zombie apocalypse.&nbsp; But, even though John Keller was a USMC combat diver who happened to own a kayak, this thought barely crossed his mind &ndash; all he could think about &nbsp;is how he wasn\'t about to leave the 170 elderly and disabled residents of his semi-doomed apartment building to the mercy of looters like the ones he\'d just kicked the shit out of.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/214908723486/keller2.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">\"I couldn\'t have lived with myself knowing I could have saved everybody in here but I left.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">You know what I\'m saying? How could I have done that?\"</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The situation was bad.&nbsp; The American Can Apartment Building &ndash; Keller\'s home &ndash; was under 11 feet of water, and the flood level was rising a couple inches every hour or so.&nbsp; He was in the middle of an aquatic wasteland that could only be accessed by boat or helicopter, and there were fish, sea turtles, and poisonous aquatic snakes were swimming through the downstairs lobby.&nbsp; There were 244 people sheltered inside the structure &ndash; 170 residents, plus 74 people from the low-income housing projects nearby who took refuge in the five-story American Can building when their own homes went the way of Atlantis.&nbsp; Of this group, about half of them were over the age of 65, a quarter of them were confined to wheelchairs, and another quarter of them were seriously fucking sketchy dudes from the projects who couldn\'t really be trusted (the three men Keller had just tossed out the window were from this group).&nbsp; His people desperately needed oxygen, insulin, and other medications, not to mention basic food and water, and one of the women living there was nine months pregnant and about to deliver her kid at any moment.&nbsp; As the most charismatic, imposing, resourceful man in the entire building, they all looked to Keller for support and guidance, and he knew the people there wouldn&rsquo;t make it through this disaster without his help.&nbsp; He wasn\'t about to abandon them.</p>\r\n<p>John Keller\'s first step was to collect all the guns in the building and organize a group of people who would defend the building against marauding bands of armed looters.&nbsp; His chief concern was with the restaurant located on the ground floor of the building &ndash; the walk-in freezer there was still operational, and since all of their perishables were housed there it needed to guarded at all times &ndash; and on more than one occasion John Keller needed to kick his Marine Corps training into high gear to fight off bands of guys trying to steal his shit.&nbsp; Then he painted requests for aid on the roof by cracking open a fire extinguisher and using the powder to scrawl notes that could be seen by passing aid helicopters.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/214908723486/keller31.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Still, despite mentioning that he needed food and water for 200+ residents, there were no supply drops for 4 days.&nbsp; If Keller wanted to keep his people alive, he needed to resort to drastic measures.</p>\r\n<p>With medical supplies and food dwindling, and resupply looking further and further like a pipe dream, John Keller fucking swam to the grocery store, tied together nine coolers filled with food, charcoal and supplies, swam back with the stocked-as-hell coolers strapped to his back, set up a couple charcoal grills, and cooked food for everyone there.&nbsp; Then he collected all the prescription bottles from his tenants, broke out his kayak, and paddled 7 hours through ultra-deadly waters filled with unseen dangers to get to the local hospital and have the prescriptions filled.&nbsp; The hospital told him there was nothing they could do &ndash; they already had 45 dead patients in the building and were low on every possible medication.&nbsp; When he heard that, he paddled over to the US military aid station and tried to sweet-talk a Blackhawk crew chief into coming and taking a look at the situation for himself, but that didn\'t work out either.&nbsp; Orders were orders.</p>\r\n<p>Oh yeah, and as if all this bullshit wasn\'t enough, Keller also had to deal with Dawn of the Dead-style internal bickering among his tenants, as the scared, hungry residents got jumpy, angry, and irritable.&nbsp; He tried his best to keep his tenants optimistic and hopeful, routinely telling them that help was on the way even though he damn well knew it wasn\'t, but even so he still repeatedly had to break up disputes &ndash; generally through reason, but occasionally through threats and sheer intimidation of the more belligerent parties.&nbsp; Either way, it was becoming painfully obvious that the only way to keep his people alive was to get them the hell out of the disaster area as soon as possible.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/214908723486/keller41.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Unable to get the attention of the National Guard, on the fifth day John Keller started picking up all the old people in wheelchairs, carrying them up five flights of stairs to the roof, and then setting them out there so the Guard could see exactly what the hell was going on.&nbsp; That did the trick &ndash; once he started putting old folks in wheelchairs up there, the Army started dropping medicine, food, and potable water.&nbsp; Keller got the crew chief\'s attention, convinced him the urgency of the situation, organized a complete helicopter evacuation, carried 70 disabled and elderly people up to the roof for evac, and then learned that the roof was set at such a weird angle that it was impossible to land a chopper there, and that a helicopter evac would actually be impossible (sorry about that).</p>\r\n<p>This, of course, still failed to stop John Keller from saving the lives of all 244 people under his control.&nbsp; Fuck that.&nbsp; He just swam over to a nearby home, hotwired a speedboat, and spent 12 hours ferrying every single person in the apartment complex to a staging area so they could be airlifted to safety.&nbsp; When he ran out of gas, he siphoned it out of cars and other boats.&nbsp; When he got tired, he fought through it.&nbsp; When he had a dude from the projects shove an AK-47 in his face and try to hijack the boat out from under him, Lance Corporal John Fucking Keller (who had stared down the barrel of quite a few AKs in Desert Storm) pulled his .45-caliber pistol, aimed it at the would-be pirate, and said, \"I\'ve been battle-tested and I don\'t miss.&nbsp; Don\'t try me.\"</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/214908723486/keller51.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Thanks to his fearless efforts and unlimited resourcefulness, John Keller saved 244 people &ndash; half of whom were elderly and/or disabled &ndash; from what would probably have amounted to certain death.&nbsp; He did it not because he had to, or because it was his job, but because he felt an obligation to help those in need &ndash; and nothing was going to stop him from keeping his people safe.</p>\r\n<p>He still lives in the building today.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/214908723486/keller61.JPG\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">\"It sure wasn\'t for money.&nbsp; It wasn\'t for recognition.</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">It wasn\'t to be no damn hero.&nbsp; What made me stay was the old people.</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">I just realized that nobody else in here could have gotten those people out.</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">They would have sat in here for five more days.</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">And they didn\'t have five more days.\"</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Links/Sources:</p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://blog.nola.com/elizabethmullener/2007/03/john_keller_was_hanging_out.html\">http://blog.nola.com/elizabethmullener/2007/03/john_keller_was_hanging_out.html</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.backdoorfilms.com/can/JohnKellerPressKit.pdf\">http://www.backdoorfilms.com/can/JohnKellerPressKit.pdf</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.nola.com/movies/index.ssf/2009/05/will_smith_to_play_katrina_her.html\">http://www.nola.com/movies/index.ssf/2009/05/will_smith_to_play_katrina_her.html</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4l8pZsdCrE0\">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4l8pZsdCrE0</a></p>','2013-04-19','214908723486','keller.png','keller-small.png','John Keller','The USMC veteran who saved 244 people from the mostly-submerged ruins of post-Katrina New Orleans.','\"I went buck crazy on him. I told him I\'d whip his ass on this roof and toss him off. When you\'re in control of lunatics, you know, you\'ve got to be the biggest lunatic.\"'),('Nancy Grace Augusta Wake','August 30, 1912','August 7, 2011','Wellington, New Zealand','20th-century War Hero','<p>Nancy Wake was a hard-drinking, hard-fighting World War II special agent, saboteur, and resistance commander who survived four days of Gestapo interrogation, saved over two hundred downed Allied pilots from falling into the clutches of the Nazi penal system, blew up a couple German supply depots, had a bounty of five million Francs placed on her head, and then killed an SS stormtrooper with her bare hands by apparently dishing out a hardcore Austin Powers judo chop to the throat.</p>\r\n<p>Born to a dirt-poor family in New Zealand in 1912, Nancy Wake\'s family moved her to Australia at the age of two.&nbsp; Then her dad promptly abandoned Nancy, her mom, and her five brothers and sisters.&nbsp; Growing up in poverty, Wake left home at 16 to go work as a nurse in Sydney, then at 20 she moved to London with about $300 in her pocket to try and make a new life.&nbsp; By 22 this globetrotting Aussie/Kiwi was living in Paris, working as a freelance newspaper journalist during the day and &nbsp;then rocking out at the hottest Parisian nightclubs after dark.&nbsp; A tough-as-hell chick who could rarely be found without a double gin and tonic in her hand and designer cosmetics in her purse, Wake had a reputation for drinking hard, telling dirty jokes, and then getting a tall, dark, and handsome Frenchman pick up the tab for her.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/27450552861/wake1.JPG\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>In 1933, Wake\'s newspaper beat took her to Vienna to do a story on the new German Chancellor, some guy named Adolf Hitler or something like that, so she headed out to see what the big deal was.&nbsp; Wake interviewed Hitler, got the official party line, and then watched as gangs of Nazi thugs roamed the streets of Vienna beating the crap out of Jewish men and women for no good reason.&nbsp; Wake, horrified by what she was seeing, vowed to oppose this Hitler fellow at any opportunity.</p>\r\n<p>It wouldn\'t take long until she had her chance.</p>\r\n<p>In 1940 the German Reich invaded Belgium, the Netherlands, and France as part of their whole \"hey let\'s conquer the entire world\" strategy of planetary domination.&nbsp; By this point Wake had been married to a millionaire French industrialist for a few years, and when her husband was called up to service and ordered to desperately hurl himself in front of the Nazi War Machine in hopes that his crumpled-up mashed-to-paste corpse would perhaps clog up the gears of one of their Panzers and possibly slow it down by a couple miles per hour, Wake headed straight to the recruiting office and signed up to work as a nurse.&nbsp; She drove an ambulance during the invasion of Belgium, watched the Nazis steamroll everything before them in a cloud of Teutonic dust, and then used her truck to help ferry British, Aussie, and New Zealand soldiers to the evacuation points at Dunkirk after it became painfully obvious that France was toast.</p>\r\n<p>Nancy Wake, however, refused to evacuate with the rest of the English and Commonwealth forces.&nbsp; She stayed behind in France, watched in horror as Hitler seized Paris and teabagged the Arc d\'Triomphe with stormtroopers, and then she immediately started making plans to do whatever she could to get these Kraut bastards out of her new home and send them back to Bavaria in body bags.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/27450552861/wake2.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Wake got to work almost immediately, using her and her husband\'s considerable wealth to shelter Royal Air Force pilots who had been shot down by Nazi anti-aircraft defenses in France.&nbsp; Working out of a safe house she\'d purchased outside Marseilles, Nancy Wake spent the first three years of the war recovering downed pilots, getting them fake papers, fabricated identification cards, new clothes, and false identities, and then ferrying them across the Pyrenees Mountains to Spain by sneaking them in trucks, bribing guards with huge stacks of cash, and doing whatever the hell she needed to do to get these pilots back to Britain safely.&nbsp; Her operation became such a major pain in Germany\'s ass that they put a five million Franc reward out on her head, and known only by her nickname \"The White Mouse\", Wake at one point was on the top of the Gestapo\'s Most Wanted List.&nbsp; Which is a bad place to be, honestly.</p>\r\n<p>Finally, in 1943, the Germans started to figure out who the hell The White Mouse really was, and they then, in their typical German Gestapo way, decided the best thing to do would be to capture her, line her up against a brick wall, and shoot her in the back of the skull until she died from it.&nbsp; Luckily for Ms. Wake\'s skull, the British spymasters intercepted the Gestapo communication ordering her arrest, and were able to relay the \"GTFO\" message to Nancy before the damned Nazis knocked on her front door.&nbsp; Wake ran for it, made a break for the Pyrenees, and then, despite leaping from a moving train to evade them, she was shot at and captured by the Germans and hauled off to the local Gestapo police station.</p>\r\n<p>They tortured her for four days.&nbsp; She gave them nothing.&nbsp; Not even her real name.</p>\r\n<p>They let her go.&nbsp; A few weeks later she was driving through the Pyrenees in the back of a coal truck, and from there it was just a quick boat ride through U-Boat infested waters until she was back in London.</p>\r\n<p>Her husband, unfortunately, wasn\'t so lucky.&nbsp; He was captured, tortured, and killed by the Nazis.</p>\r\n<p>This, naturally, only made Nancy Wake more pissed off.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/27450552861/wake3.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>In London, the now-famous White Mouse was brought in to the Special Operations Executive &ndash; Britain\'s special office dealing with badass spy shit.&nbsp; She was trained in espionage, sabotage, and other awesome things, then in April 1944 she jumped out the back of a B-24 bomber and parachuted into Central France carrying a pistol, a radio, and a fat stack of cash.&nbsp; Her chute got stuck in a tree on the way down, and when the local French resistance leader said some asinine thing like \"I wish all trees grew such beautiful fruit,\" or something equally cheesy she gave him the finger and said (in perfect French no less), \"Don\'t give me that French shit.\"</p>\r\n<p>When the first group of Maquis she met (as in the French Resistance fighters, not the <em>Star Trek: Deep Space Nine</em> guys) chivalrously decided to say, \"Eh forget this war thing, let\'s just kill this bitch and take all her cash\", Nancy Wake escaped, fled across Central France on foot in the middle of the night, linked up with another, more gentlemanly maquis cell, and then proceeded to impress every man there with her fearlessness in combat and her ability to drink them all under the table.</p>\r\n<p>In less than two months, she was a high-level officer responsible for acquiring and distributing weapons, ammunition, and communications equipment for an army of about 7,000 hardcore French Resistance fighters.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/27450552861/wake4.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">\"I had never seen anyone drink like that, and I don\'t think the maquis had either.<br />We just couldn\'t work out where it all went.\"</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>At the head of a group of dedicated, gun-toting Frenchmen, Nancy Wake spent most of 1944 &ndash; both before and after D-Day &ndash; leading daring guerilla attacks on Nazi supply depots, rail stations, and communications facilities deep behind enemy lines.&nbsp; She sabotaged factories, raided depots, cut train tracks, and performed countless espionage and sabotage missions against the enemy.&nbsp; In one raid she killed a Nazi with her bare hands before he raised an alarm.&nbsp; In another attack she and some Maquis fighters rolled up to the local Gestapo headquarters in Montlucon, France, shot the place up, lobbed some grenades, and killed 38 members of the Reich\'s notorious secret police.&nbsp; When enemy spies were captured, Wake was the one who interrogated them and determined whether they would live or die.&nbsp; When supply drops were parachuted behind enemy lines by Allied transport planes, Wake was the one who received the coordinates, made sure guys were there to pick up the gear, and distributed it to the men.&nbsp; One time, when her cell was attacked by over 10,000 Germans from the 2<sup>nd</sup> SS Panzer Division, Wake\'s radio was destroyed when the truck she was driving was strafed by a Nazi dive-bomber &ndash; she responded by stealing a bicycle, riding it 125 miles in 72 hours to hook up with another Maquis cell, and immediately radioed London for assistance.&nbsp; On yet another occasion, Wake took command of a battle after her section leader died, then coordinated a strategic withdrawal that got her men out of a hardcore shootout with SS stormtroopers without taking any further casualties.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/27450552861/wake5.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>When the war finally ended and it was time to hand out the medals, Nancy Wake found herself the most decorated Allied woman of World War II.&nbsp; She received the British George Medal, the American Medal of Freedom, the French Legion d\'Honneur, and three Croix de Guerres.&nbsp; She was made a member of the Order of Australia.&nbsp; New Zealand named a street after her.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Naturally, not giving a crap about awards and stuff like that, Wake sold off her medals and lived off the money for the rest of her life.&nbsp; When asked why the hell she sold a trio of Croix de Guerres, she said, \"There\'s no point in keeping them&hellip; I\'ll probably go the hell and they\'d melt anyways.\"</p>\r\n<p>She lived to be 98 years old.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/27450552861/wake6.JPG\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">\"Freedom is the only thing worth living for. While I was doing that work,<br />I used to think it didn\'t matter if I died, because without freedom there was no point in living\"</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Links:</p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-21735824\">BBC Obit</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/aug/08/nancy-wake-obituary\">The Guardian</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2011-08-09/local/35271015_1_french-resistance-arms-factory-maquisards\">Washington Post</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.voicesfortroops.org/MOAA_Voices/Learn_More/Personal_Stories/Personal_Story__Nancy_Wake.html\">Voices for Troops</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Wake\">Wikipedia</a></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Sources:</p>\r\n<p>Atwood, Kathryn J.&nbsp; <em>Women Heroes of World War II</em>.&nbsp; Chicago Review Press, 2004.</p>\r\n<p>Braddon, Russell.&nbsp; <em>Nancy Wake</em>.&nbsp; Sutton Publishing Limited, 2005.</p>\r\n<p>Breuer, William B.&nbsp; <em>Daring Mission of World War II</em>.&nbsp; John Wiley &amp; Sons, 2001.</p>','2013-04-26','27450552861','wake.jpg','wake-small.JPG','Nancy Wake','The most decorated Allied servicewoman of World War II.','\"I don’t see why we women should just wave our men a proud goodbye and then knit them balaclavas.\"'),('Michiel Adriaenszoon','March 24, 1607','April 29, 1676','Vlissingen, Netherlands','17th-century Dutch Admiral','<p>Unless you\'re either an Amsterdam-dwelling pothead or an inexplicably-massive fan of 17<sup>th</sup>-century Dutch maritime history, Admiral Michiel de Ruyter is probably the greatest naval commander you\'ve never heard of.&nbsp; Sure, I know what you\'re thinking, what\'s so badass about clogs and windmills, but stick a sock in it &ndash; this dude is one of the toughest motherfuckers to ever come out of the Low Countries, and one of the most amazing seaborne murder-machines to ever pound his enemies to death with his massive (cannon) balls.&nbsp; In nearly 60 years sailing on the high seas during the Golden Age of Dutch Badassery, this Netherlandian (Netherlanderthal?) aquatic destruction-monger served in seven wars, led warships into combat in over forty engagements, and fought more than fifteen massive full-scale naval battles against the toughest sailors Earth has ever seen.&nbsp; He swordfought Muslim corsairs on the Barbary Coast, traded broadsides with French frigates in the Bay of Biscay, ballknocked scurvy pirate vessels in the Caribbean, invented the concept of the Marine Corps, and once sailed a fleet of warships up the Thames River into the heart of England, burned half their fleet while it was still in port, and then <em>stole the fucking flagship of the English Navy </em>&ndash; and you can be pretty damned sure that it ain\'t all that easy to roll up against the most fearsome navy in the world and somehow gank an 80-gun, 130-foot-long warship out from under their noses&hellip; especially when that ship is named after the reigning King of England.</p>\r\n<p>So that\'s something.</p>\r\n<p>Michiel de Ruyter was born in the Netherlands province of Zeeland in 1607, the 4<sup>th</sup> of 11 kids born in a port town to a humble guy who worked as basically a 17<sup>th</sup> century beer keg delivery man.&nbsp; Eager for something a little more exciting than a life of carting casks of hootch around town for a bunch of rich assholes, Michiel joined on with as a cabin boy with a local whaling crew at the age of 11, where he\'d sail the high seas, harpoon gigantic whales on the high seas of the North Atlantic <em>Moby-Dick</em> style, then try to somehow get back home alive before a Spanish warship or an English pirate could board his vessel, kill the entire crew, and rob them of their hard-earned paychecks.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/579429818534/deruyter1.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">And this was the easy part.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>By the time he was just 15 de Ruyter was already a Hoogbootsmansjongen, which is the Dutch word for \"petty officer\", and I only even include it here because Dutch is one of the most amazing written languages ever and I fully intend to include as many Dutch words as possible in the writing of this article.&nbsp; Well around this time the Spanish military was besieging the Dutch fortress at Bergen-op-Zoom during one of those seemingly-infinite inter-European wars of the Early Modern Era, so de Ruyter\'s whaling ship was loaded up with cannons and conscripted to help break the siege.&nbsp; De Ruyter got his first taste of battle during this engagement, when he served as a deck gunner and hammered the Spanish troops with something called chain shot, which is basically two cannonballs tied together by a barbed chain.&nbsp; Think of them like cannonball nunchucks that are fired at you at incredibly high velocities, and the chain is strong enough to cut a man in half through the pelvis.</p>\r\n<p>With terrifying weapons like that at his disposal De Ruyter helped break the siege of Bergen-op-Zoom, but then a few months later his whaling ship was attacked and captured by Spanish pirates and the young Hoobootsmansjongen was wounded in the head by shrapnel and subsequently taken prisoner.&nbsp; As you\'d expect, he escaped his captors, swam to shore despite, you know, having been shot in the head with a cannon, and then hitched his way through Spain, across the Pyrenees, through France, and back to the Netherlands.&nbsp; Thanks in no small part to his familiarity with badass pirate shit, de Ruyter was then promoted to First Mate, then Captain, and finally recruited by the guys who owned his ship to hunt out a group of pirates known in Dutch as the \"Duinkerker Kapers\" who were operating off the coast of Dunkirk.&nbsp; De Ruyter didn\'t blink &ndash; he took on this pirate caper by sailing straight into their turf, greasing up the deck of his vessel with rancid butter, and then having his men wear special socks that would give them better grip on the surface.&nbsp; When the pirates eventually boarded him, they were sliding all over the place like dumbasses, giving his pirate-hunting Dutchmen plenty of opportunity to walk over there and cap them in the face at point-blank range.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/579429818534/deruyter2.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">Dramatization.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>De Ruyter\'s exploits were already so badass that he was given command of his own Dutch Navy warship, and by 1641 the 34 year-old was already a Rear Admiral and third in command of the entire Navy.&nbsp; He fought against the Spanish at the Battle of Cape St. Vincent, but when that fight was inconclusive (thanks, according to De Ruyter, to the cowardice and loserly-ness of the rest of the Dutch high command), he got fed up with the politics and other bullshit, quit the navy, bought his own boat, and became a merchant trader.&nbsp; He sailed the West Indies and Mediterranean, made a ton of money, kicked the Barbary Pirates\' asses so hard in a series of naval and hand-to-hand combat engagements that they eventually negotiated a deal to leave him alone, and ultimately became so wealthy that in 1652, when he married his third wife, he quit sailing and decided to live in Holland in a gigantic mansion on top of piles of gold with a beautiful woman for the rest of his life.</p>\r\n<p>His retirement lasted about seven months.</p>\r\n<p>De Ruyter was called out of retirement later that same year, when the King of England started authorizing privateers to raid Dutch shipping all willy-nilly like they didn\'t give a crap, and the Dutch responded by declaring war.&nbsp; De Ruyter was called in, reluctantly agreed, and then immediately kicked the shit out of a massive English fleet at the Battle of Plymouth, getting the best of a fleet that outnumbered him two-to-one and that was crewed by some of the best sailors and gunners on earth.&nbsp; He commanded squadrons in three more massive battles, fought through the end of the war, and then subsequently turned down an offer to be the senior Admiral in charge of the entire Dutch Navy.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/579429818534/deruyter3.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">Running shit.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Having turned down the highest position Holland had to offer, de Ruyter was given command of the seemingly-unpronounceable warship <em>Tijdverdrijf</em> and unleashed to wreak brutal havoc on all the enemies of the United Provinces.&nbsp; He spent two years beating the shit out of the Barbary Pirates off the coast of Morocco.&nbsp; He commanded the blockade of Portugal when the Portuguese were fucking with Holland.&nbsp; He attacked an English fort on the coast of Benin, Africa, and beat their asses so hard that the British commanding officer was thrown in the Tower of London when he got home.&nbsp; He helped Denmark fight the Swedes by first destroying the Swedish Navy off the coast of Funen in 1659, then deploying rifle-toting soldiers from rowboats to capture the fort in one of the first amphibious invasions of the modern era.&nbsp; The attack went so well that de Ruyter then ordered the construction of a special unit of infantrymen trained specifically to assault enemy positions from the sea.&nbsp; It was the first time this had ever been done in the Modern Era.&nbsp; He called these dudes Sea Soldiers, but nowadays they\'re known as Marines.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>In 1665, the English, fresh off their little Civil War thingie, once again started fucking with Dutch shipping and ordering their pirates to go apeshit on anything bearing a Dutch flag.&nbsp; The English King Charles II commissioned hundreds of privateers, sunk 17 Dutch ships in a single battle, inflicted millions of dollars in damages to Dutch trade, and then captured the Dutch New World colony of New Amsterdam and renamed it New York City.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The Dutch sent de Ruyter to regulate.&nbsp; He crossed the Atlantic, sacked Barbados, and sent his Marines to raid Canada, then came back to European waters and destroyed 17 English ships in an epic four-day naval bloodbath that pitted almost 160 warships against each other.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/579429818534/deruyter4.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">EXPLOSIONS EVERYWHEREZ</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>When the overall commander of the Dutch fleet was defeated pretty badly at the Battle of St. James Day, that jackass was stripped of command and De Ruyter was promoted to overall commander.&nbsp; After escaping from an assassination attempt instigated by the man he\'d just replaced (seriously), Michiel de Ruyter launched the most balls-out naval attack of all time &ndash; the Raid on the Medway.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Basically, here\'s what went down &ndash; de Ruyter took 62 gigantic warships, 15 sloops-of-war, and 12 fire boats, and sailed them straight up the Thames River into the heart of England itself.&nbsp; After defeating&nbsp; a small defensive force (the English weren\'t exactly expecting to have a Dutch Fleet rammed up their tailpipes), de Ruyter then attacked every naval base he could find, burning the countryside and lighting basically the entire English navy on fire while they were still stuck in port with their pants down.&nbsp; He burned dozens of ships, then, just to add insult to injury, he hooked up the <em>Royal Charles </em>&ndash; the 80-gun pride of the English Navy that, oh yeah, just so happened to be named after the fucking King &ndash; to a winch and towed it back to Holland with him as a prize.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>It would be the biggest humiliation in English Naval history.&nbsp; They sued for peace almost immediately.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/579429818534/deruyter5.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">\"No King will heed our warnings,<br />No Court will pay our claims &ndash;<br />Our King and Court for their disport<br />Do sell the very Thames!<br />For, now De Ruyter&rsquo;s topsails<br />Off naked Chatham show,<br />We dare not meet him with our fleet &ndash;<br />And this the Dutchmen know!\"</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">- Rudyard Kipling, \"The Dutch in the Medway\"</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The English tried to get revenge a few years later, when they made a secret treaty with Louis XIV of France and attacked Holland with a navy that outnumbered the Dutch fleet by more than three-to-one.&nbsp; Their plan was to wipe Holland off the map entirely, then divide the smoldering wreckage up between England and France.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>It didn\'t work.&nbsp; Michiel de Ruyter used brilliant tactics to divide their navies and engage them piecemeal in battles that he had the upper hand.&nbsp; He beat them in four major battles, one after the other, broke the British blockade, destroyed over a dozen enemy ships, crippled their ability to launch an amphibious invasion of Holland, and then, just to be a dick, he sailed across the Atlantic and attacked the French colony of Martinique.&nbsp;&nbsp; When he was done with that he took part in a political action in Hungary that made everyone there so happy they built a statue of him, because why the fuck not.</p>\r\n<p>Michiel de Ruyter\'s luck eventually ran out in 1676, when he was helping the Spanish fight the French in the Mediterranean.&nbsp; While engaged in a battle with the overall commander of the French Fleet &ndash; a former pupil of de Ruyter\'s &ndash; Michiel de Ruyter was shot in the leg by a cannonball and mortally wounded. &nbsp;When the French commander heard the news that his former mentor was wounded, he called off the attack and sent two of his strongest ships to escort the wounded Dutch Admiral back home.&nbsp; Along the way, King Louis XIV ordered every French warship to fire a salute as the Dutch fleet passed.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Michiel de Ruyter died of gangrene en route back to Holland, was given a state funeral, and is now remembered as not only the national hero of Holland, but a man who is almost solely responsible for the continued existence of the Netherlands as a sovereign country.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/579429818534/deruyter6.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">\"A Dutch fleet under de Ruyter can enter a moonless night in<br />heavy wind and fog and emerge the next day in perfect line ahead.\"</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Links:</p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://militaryhistory.about.com/od/naval/p/deruyter.htm\">About.com Biography</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.deruyter.org/ENGLISH_SECTION%20_%20Chronology.html\">Chronology of de Ruyter\'s Career</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Ruyter\">Wikipedia</a></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Sources:</p>\r\n<p>Grant, R.G.&nbsp; <em>Commanders</em>.&nbsp; DK Publishing, 2010.</p>\r\n<p>Stewart, William<em>.&nbsp; Admirals of the World</em>.&nbsp; McFarland, 2009.</p>\r\n<p>Sweetman, Jack.&nbsp; <em>The Great Admirals</em>.&nbsp; Naval Institute Press, 1997.</p>','2013-05-03','579429818534','deruyter.jpg','deruyter-small.jpg','Michiel de Ruyter','Dutch Admiral who commanded ships in 7 wars and once stole the flagship of the English Navy from its home port.','\"You might see the heads of some, the arms, legs or thighs of others shot off, and others…..cut off by the middle with a chain-shot breathing out their last anguish and pain; some burning in ships fired, and others exposed to the mercy of the liquid Element, some of them sinking, whilst others who have learnt the art of swimming, lift up their heads above water and implore pity from their very enemies, entreating them to save their lives\"'),('U.S. Navy Task Group Taffy-3','October 25, 1944','n/a','Strait of Samar, Philippines','20th-century American Sailors','<p><em>(Note:&nbsp; Sorry for the late posting this week... I am super sick barfing my face off, and even with a full day\'s rest I\'m still feeling terrible.&nbsp; So instead of writing a new one this week, here\'s one of my favorite chapters from my new book, <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0062112341/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=0062112341&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=badofthewee-20\">Badass: Ultimate Deathmatch</a>.)<br /><br /></em></p>\r\n<p>United States Navy Task Group Taffy-3 was not designed to engage enemy warships in combat. Comprised of just six carrier escorts (basically just ordinary merchant ships, each equipped with a flight deck and a complement of thirty aircraft), three destroyers, and four destroyer escorts, Taffy-3&rsquo;s primary mission during the American operation to retake the Philippines was to hang around off the coast of Leyte Island and launch ground attack aircraft to support the infantry assault. If a submarine or two came knocking on the door looking for a nice meaty carrier to deep-six, or some stray squadron of Japanese fighter-bombers stuck its nose where it didn&rsquo;t belong, the destroyers were equipped to handle it.</p>\r\n<p>So, naturally, when Rear Admiral Clifton &ldquo;Ziggy&rdquo; Sprague, Taffy-3&rsquo;s commander, received a frantic radio call from one of his reconnaissance pilots reporting that the largest and most heavily armed assortment of surface-sailing battle cruisers ever assembled was bearing down on a collision course with Taffy-3, he was a little concerned. Unfortunately, there wasn&rsquo;t a damn thing he could do about it&mdash;the Japanese superbattleship <em>Yamato</em> was out there, accompanied by three massive battleships, eight cruisers, and eleven destroyers, bearing three-four-zero, range twenty miles, closing fast on his position at thirty knots.</p>\r\n<p>Huh?</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/52657811114/taffy1.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Five minutes later, a trio of armor-piercing shells eighteen inches in diameter threw up a towering wall of water just off the bow of Sprague&rsquo;s flagship. It had been launched by the <em>Yamato</em>, the largest battleship ever built in the history of naval warfare&mdash;seventy-two thousand tons of steel-plated intimidation equipped with massive cannons that could launch a bullet the size of a Volkswagen over fifteen miles. This heavily armored, virtually indestructible behemoth of imperial justice outweighed the entire Taffy-3 task force <em>by itself</em>, and those planet-killing guns it was popping off like bottle rockets were more than baller enough to completely vaporize any ship in the American task force with a single round. Meanwhile, the biggest guns in Taffy-3 were the Mark 12 5-inch/38-caliber guns mounted on the decks of the destroyers and destroyer escorts&mdash;midsized crew-operated cannons designed for use against aircraft and lightly armored targets like surfaced submarines. A direct hit from one of those things couldn&rsquo;t have even dented the cooking utensils on the <em>Yamato</em>.</p>\r\n<p>Of course, it&rsquo;s not as if that was going to stop the Americans from giving this massive Japanese battleship fleet a hell of a fight.</p>\r\n<p>It should be mentioned here that there was a hell of a lot more at stake here than just those six carrier escorts (although these were to be defended at all costs). Earlier in the day a masterful Japanese feint had succeeded in drawing the entire U.S. Third Fleet away from the Philippines on some wild-goose chase snipe hunt into the middle of nowhere, and with Third Fleet&rsquo;s unexpected departure the only thing keeping this gigantic Japanese armada from donkey-punching the two hundred thousand American soldiers and marines fighting on Leyte Island in the kidneys with artillery shells the size of refrigerators were the tiny antisubmarine warships of Taffy-3. Defeat here would give Japanese admiral Takeo Kurita&rsquo;s battleships a free run to annihilate the landing craft and troop transports currently ferrying reinforcements and supplies to the island, massacring an entire division of U.S. Marines in their ships, crippling the operation to retake the Philippines and quite possibly turning the tide of the war in the Pacific back against the Allies.</p>\r\n<p>The men of Taffy-3 weren&rsquo;t about to let that happen.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/52657811114/taffy2.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Sprague&rsquo;s carriers turned east into the wind so they could launch their fighters, then the entire Taffy-3 group turned south and ran toward Leyte as fast as they could go, zigzagging between enemy shells while roughly half of the Japanese navy took potshots at their asses. The destroyers all started pumping black smoke out of their smokestacks in a desperate effort to conceal the carriers from enemy gunners, hanging tight around the ships they&rsquo;d been ordered to protect as salvos from the unstoppable enemy armada churned up the water around them so hard it looked like they were sailing through a glass of Alka-Seltzer, but it quickly became obvious that running wasn&rsquo;t going to be enough&mdash;the Japanese cruisers could easily haul ass at twice the speed of the carrier escorts, and their guns were more than enough to shred the unarmored carriers as if they were paper targets in a shooting range. And they were closing in fast.</p>\r\n<p>Then, suddenly, out of the black smoke spewed forth by the destroyer screen, burst the bow of the DD-557&mdash;the U.S.S. <em>Johnston</em>. A fifteen-thousand-ton Fletcher-class destroyer on a one-ship suicide run straight into the teeth of the most heavily armed surface fleet ever assembled. It was commanded by Captain Ernest E. Evans, a Cherokee Indian who had vowed never to take one step back from the Japanese no matter how miserable a situation he found himself in, and now that he was presented with the opportunity to stick it to the enemy this infinitely hardcore warrior brave was launching a freakishly dangerous lone-wolf suicide attack head-on against a twenty-three-ship armada, hoping that his desperate effort to ruin their asses would delay the enemy long enough for his task force to escape.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/52657811114/taffy3.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Still way out of range for her little five-inch guns or torpedoes, <em>Johnston</em> determinedly zigzagged at flank speed through a barrage of concentrated fire from twenty-three enemy ships, knowing full damned well that she needed to cross twenty miles of open water to get within range and that a single hit from any enemy ship would rip her hull a new one and send her careening to the ocean floor in minutes. Still, seemingly completely oblivious to any form of danger, Captain Evans raced on.</p>\r\n<p>Six squadrons of American fighter-bomber aircraft screamed through the air over <em>Johnston</em>, making their way toward the Japanese fleet despite a hail of tracer fire and airburst shrapnel exploding all around them. Undaunted by a sky full of explosions, bullets, and other horrible crap capable of disintegrating the fuselage of even the toughest aircraft like a wet paper towel in a bowl of sulfuric acid, the Avenger attack craft and Hellcat fighters streaked in at two hundred miles an hour, strafing the enemy ships with everything they could bring to bear&mdash;which wasn&rsquo;t all that much, considering that these planes had been kitted out for antipersonnel and antisubmarine warfare and the ground crews hadn&rsquo;t had time to rearm them with something more useful. But the American pilots didn&rsquo;t give a crap&mdash;with literally five hundred heavy machine guns and antiaircraft cannons ripping up the skies around them, Avenger pilots were dropping depth charges on heavy cruisers and Hellcat fighters were diving out of the clouds to strafe armored battleships with .50-caliber machine guns, just hoping that maybe they could maybe just shoot someone important or knock out some critical piece of exposed equipment.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/52657811114/taffy4.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Back on the ocean surface, <em>Johnston</em> had somehow miraculously made its way through the carnage and closed within range to begin its attack. Desperate for delicious vengeance and single-mindedly intent on doing as much damage as its armament would allow, <em>Johnston</em> opened up on the lead Japanese heavy cruiser, blasting all five of her five-inch guns at the <em>Kumano</em>, a hulking warship that outweighed the little <em>Johnston</em><em> </em>by a factor of seven. Undeterred, <em>Johnston</em> ripped off two hundred rounds of five-inch ammunition in just five minutes, hammering the enemy superstructure, destroying a couple of her heavy gun mounts, and then following that flurry of blows up with a ten-torpedo salvo that smashed into <em>Kumano</em>\'s balls, ripped her hull up, and blasted off her bow, splitting the cruiser force&rsquo;s flagship nearly in half. First blood had been drawn, and it was Little Mac getting the Star Power uppercut on Mike Tyson himself.</p>\r\n<p>Having now expended all of her torpedoes&mdash;the only weapons capable of legitimately damaging the enemy heavies&mdash;<em>Johnston</em> cranked the emergency brake, turned about, and started screaming ass back toward Taffy-3, still blasting hundreds of rounds from her five-inch cannons at anything with a rising sun emblazoned on the hull.</p>\r\n<p>Unfortunately, <em>Johnston</em>&rsquo;s luck finally ran out, and, at extreme close range with the enemy she took a direct hit from the ridiculously massive Japanese battleship <em>Kongo</em>. Heavy sixteen-inch shells punched through <em>Johnston</em>&rsquo;s hull, destroyed a boiler, and cut the American ship&rsquo;s speed in half. Another round from a heavy cruiser then smashed into the crippled American ship, igniting a magazine of forty-millimeter antiaircraft ammunition that exploded and spewed shrapnel across several decks, and then yet another round from some other enemy ship slammed directly into the ship&rsquo;s bridge, snapping the mast and destroying her communications and radar capabilities. Captain Evans lost two fingers and took a ridiculous spray of white-hot burning metal shrapnel to his face, chest, and hands, but this tack-eating hardcase just got up, dusted himself off, walked out to the deck like he didn\'t even notice half his body was burning, and kept shouting orders, commanding his ship even though his shirt had been blown off like when James T. Kirk fought the Gorn lizard man Captain on the surface of that asteroid.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/52657811114/taffy5.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Overhead, the Avengers and Hellcats continued their strafing attacks, diving down at high speeds on the enemy, releasing their ship-humping bomb loads, then pulling out of their dives and trying not to black out from the ferocious amount of Gs that were trying to crush their skulls. The cruiser <em>Suzuya</em> was hit with two air-to-ground bombs and badly damaged, pulling out of formation alongside the similarly crippled <em>Kumano</em>. Even the pilots whose bomb bay holds had been loaded with propaganda leaflets and other useless objects found a way to contribute to the battle&mdash;these guys opened their (empty) torpedo bays and made fake torpedo runs on the enemy cruisers&mdash;the Japanese, of course, didn&rsquo;t know that these pilots weren&rsquo;t carrying weapons, and were forced to take evasive maneuvers just in case, throwing them off their game and buying the American fleet just a little more time to make their escape.</p>\r\n<p>Inspired by the example of the <em>Johnston</em>, the rest of Taffy-3&rsquo;s destroyer screen soon decided, Screw it, these guys aren\'t going to have all the fun, we&rsquo;re also going to join the fight and get in on some of this sweet sweet asskicking goodness. The American destroyers <em>Heerman</em> and <em>Hoel</em> threw themselves through the smoke screen into battle, joined by the destroyer escort <em>Samuel B. Roberts</em>&mdash;a supertiny, superslow, lightly armed, virtually unarmored antisubmarine ship that under any other circumstances would stand up about as well in toe-to-toe surface combat with an imperial battleship as a paddle-operated swan boat crewed by two guys with steel helmets and nine-millimeter handguns. To give you some indication of scale here, the splashes of water thrown up by off-target Japanese battleship rounds were taller than the mast of the <em>Roberts</em>.</p>\r\n<p>As the second American attack wave closed to torpedo range, they passed the crippled <em>Johnston</em>, still trying to limp back to the carriers. The bleeding, half-dead Captain Evans was standing at attention on the deck saluting them as they hurtled toward almost-certain death. After the destroyers had passed him, Evans gritted his teeth, got pumped up out of his mind, and ordered the <em>Johnston</em> to turn around and go <em>back into the fray</em>, bringing up the rear of the formation and providing covering fire with whatever ammo was left in her five-inch guns despite the ship basically just being held together by duct tape and bumper stickers at this point.</p>\r\n<p>The American destroyers steamed flank speed through the deadly spray of enemy artillery shells straight into the midst of the Japanese formation, their assortment of antiaircraft and antisubmarine guns blazing for everything they were worth. The <em>Hoel</em> launched her torpedoes at the battleship <em>Kongo</em> but missed, then started trading point-blank salvos with the gimongous imperial cruiser <em>Haguro</em>&mdash;a losing proposition on the best of days, let alone when you&rsquo;re outnumbered twenty-three to three. The <em>Heerman</em> charged straight into four Japanese battleships, hitting them with a barrage of fifty-four-pound shells from its five-inch guns, and then fired seven torpedoes at the behemoth <em>Yamato</em>. The imperial flagship, seeing more than a half-dozen torpedoes streaking through the sea toward her, peeled off to evade, a maneuver that sent the ship&mdash;and Admiral Kurita&mdash;sailing out of the battle in the wrong direction. Kurita, observing the battlefield in his rearview mirror and realizing he wasn&rsquo;t going to be around to command and control the action, simply ordered a &ldquo;general attack,&rdquo; meaning basically every Japanese captain was on his own to figure out what the hell he was supposed to be shooting at. <em>Heerman</em> then hit the battleship <em>Haruma</em> with another torpedo barrage, damaging her hull with a high-explosive underwater kick to the junk. The little <em>Samuel B. Roberts</em> got involved as well, closing with the heavy cruiser <em>Chokai</em>, hammering it with torpedoes, and trading gunfire with it at point-blank range. The <em>Roberts</em> was so small that at such a close range, the <em>Chokai</em> couldn&rsquo;t depress its guns low enough to hit it, allowing <em>Roberts</em> to get in some sweet shots at <em>Chokai</em>&rsquo;s soft peanut-buttery underbelly.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;<img style=\"display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;\" src=\"/images/52657811114/taffy6.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>As the swirling ship-to-ship free-for-all melee ensued, with three tiny American destroyers engaging a dozen enemy heavy cruisers and battleships at extreme close range, Captain Evans noticed that a group of five Japanese destroyers&mdash;ships comparable in size and weaponry to the <em>Johnston</em>&mdash;had peeled off from the enemy formation and were preparing to make a torpedo attack on the American carriers. <em>Johnston</em> was crippled and without electrical power (the engine had to be hand-cranked by two strong men while ocean water seeped into the engine room around them), but Evans knew she was the only ship with any prayer of making it there in time. He ordered his ship to turn and attack, diving straight into the formation, guns blazing, firing madly despite being outnumbered five to one by ships in much better fighting shape than his. In his desperate charge, Evans successfully threw the entire Japanese destroyer column off course as they reacted to the heavy shells pounding into their hulls, distracting their aim and sending their entire torpedo complement sailing well wide of the American carriers.</p>\r\n<p>Back in the gun battle now engulfing the seas off Samar Island, the destroyer escorts <em>Dennis</em>, <em>Raymond</em>, and <em>John C. Butler</em> also steamed ahead and joined their sister ship <em>Samuel B. Roberts</em>, powering straight into the teeth of the epic naval duel that now raged across the ocean. The tiny American ships did everything they could to get in the way of the Japanese heavies and keep them away from the carriers, firing with everything they had as planes were diving in and out all over the place blasting away with their guns and bombs. The <em>Heerman</em> was trading fire with two heavy cruisers at point-blank range, <em>Hoel</em> was fighting for her life against impossible odds as three warships hammered her from different sides, and the little <em>Samuel B. Roberts</em> was firing at a rate that would see her expend six hundred rounds from her two guns in the span of just an hour, most of them hammering the heavy cruiser <em>Chokai</em> so hard it actually somehow knocked her out of the battle.</p>\r\n<p>For the next hour the fighting was fast and furious, but the situation was getting darker and darker by the minute. The <em>Heerman</em> and the destroyer escorts damaged the cruiser <em>Chikuma</em>, which turned to escape and was promptly torpedoed into a coral reef by Avenger aircraft, but aside from that, things were slowly starting to turn against the American fleet. <em>Heerman</em> then took a round to the bridge, but continued to fight despite being totally on fire and boxed in by a trio of Japanese destroyers.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/52657811114/taffy7.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Swarmed by battleships and cruisers, the <em>Hoel</em> was hit by the battleship <em>Kongo</em>, a trio of heavy fourteen-inch shells smashing her aft engine and guns and rendering her navigation system inoperable. <em>Hoel</em>, virtually dead in the water, still continued on and opened fire with her final torpedoes&mdash;aimed manually because the electronics were all toast&mdash;the torps striking the cruiser <em>Haguro</em>, detonating some of her lower decks, and forcing her to peel out of formation. But <em>Hoel</em> was in deep trouble. Unable to evade her attackers and with most of her weapons either depleted of ammunition or broken beyond repair, <em>Hoel</em> was struck forty times during the one-hour battle and smashed to bits. The captain finally ordered the crew to abandon ship, but the <em>Hoel</em>&rsquo;s gun crews refused, still firing as the ship sank beneath them, reloading the guns manually because the ammo lifting machines were offline.&nbsp; They were finally silenced only when an enemy round went into the magazine and blew up the ammunition stores. The little <em>Roberts</em> was hit as well, a three-round salvo of massive armor-piercing shells forcing her to call to abandon ship, putting an abrupt end to her heroic struggle.</p>\r\n<p>Back in the carrier fleet the American carrier <em>Gambier</em><em> Bay</em> became the only U.S. carrier ever sunk by surface fire after taking a stray round from a Japanese battleship. Though the <em>Kalinin Bay</em> was struck fifteen times by enemy shells, she kept floating, which is impressive considering that it only takes five hits to kill a carrier in a game of Battleship, but aside from those two setbacks the rest of the escort carriers continued their desperate sprint to safety, taking full advantage of the brave destroyer escorts now sacrificing themselves to save the day. A second torpedo run by Japanese destroyers was thwarted by quick maneuvering on the part of the escort carriers and by some heroic sharpshooting pilots shooting the torpedoes out of the water with machine gun fire while hauling ass at two hundred miles an hour.</p>\r\n<p>Elsewhere on the battlefield, <em>Johnston</em> was valiantly fighting her last stand, firing wildly in every direction, surrounded by four destroyers hammering the superstructure without mercy. Finally, with all of her guns knocked out and her engines flooded, Evans gave the abandon ship order, then subsequently vanished from history, never to be seen again. As the Japanese destroyers sailed off to rejoin the rest of the battle, their men came on deck and saluted the American sailors as they floated in the water.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/52657811114/taffy8.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>In a two-and-a-half hour melee off the coast of Samar Island, the Americans lost four ships&mdash;the destroyers <em>Johnston</em> and <em>Hoel</em>, the destroyer escort <em>Samuel B. Roberts</em>, and the escort carrier <em>Gambier</em><em> Bay</em>. The Japanese, who had gone into the battle with an unimaginably more powerful force, suffered similar losses&mdash;two heavy cruisers were dead (<em>Chokai </em>and <em>Chikuma</em>) two more were badly damaged (<em>Kumano</em> and <em>Suzuya</em>), and the battleship <em>Haruma</em> sustained severe damage to her superstructure and hull. Deciding that his attack wasn&rsquo;t worth the losses he was taking&mdash;and realizing that reinforcements were rapidly approaching in the form of fresh American fighter aircraft and warships&mdash;Admiral Kurita called off the attack. Taffy-3 had somehow held off the largest gunship fleet ever assembled, and they&rsquo;d done it with just six escort carriers and seven destroyers.</p>\r\n<p>Taffy-3 suffered 792 men dead and 768 wounded, and those men who had abandoned ship were stuck spending seventy hours in shark-infested waters before being rescued. But, against all odds, they had accomplished their mission&mdash;the carriers and the Leyte landing craft were safe, and the Japanese Center Force had been turned back in one of the most heroic naval battles ever fought. The entire unit received the Presidential Unit Citation, and Captain Ernest E. Evans of the USS <em>Johnston</em> was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor.</p>\r\n<p>Throughout the Battle off Samar, Admiral Kurita had thought he&rsquo;d been fighting fleet carriers escorted by American heavy cruisers. He had no idea he was actually fighting units half that size.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/52657811114/taffy9.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p><em><br /></em></p>','2013-05-11','52657811114','taffy.jpg','taffy-small.jpg','Battle off Samar','With the American invasion of the Philippines hanging in the balance, seven daring destroyer captains desperately hurl themselves against the biggest Japanese battleship fleet ever put to sea.','This will be a fight against overwhelming odds from which survival cannot be expected.\r\nWe will do what damage we can.\r\n—Lieutenant Commander Robert W. Copeland, commanding officer, USS Samuel B. Roberts\r\n'),('Roald Engebreth Gravning Amundsen','July 16, 1872','June 18, 1928','Borge, Norway','20th-century Norwegian Explorer','<p>Antarctica is <a href=\"http://weather.noaa.gov/weather/current/NZSP.html\">really friggin\' cold</a>.&nbsp; According to that link, at the time of this posting the current temperature there is -74 degrees Fahrenheit (-59 C), with 14mph winds blowing in from the East at a wind chill of negative 113.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Negative one hundred and thirteen degrees.</p>\r\n<p>Given this ridiculousness, you can probably imagine that it would be kind of an heroic feat of human endurance to survive on this godforsaken chunk of frozen misery for over a year and a half, especially at a time in history when the most advanced piece of warm clothing available on the open market was a pelt of fur-covered animal skin hand-carved from the carcass of a dead beast.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Well Norwegian explorer Roald Engebreth Gravning Amundsen not only survived year-long stays on Antarctica in the early 20<sup>th</sup>-century &ndash; he did it twice.&nbsp; Oh yeah, and then, to prove that just wasn\'t enough for him, he then also managed to cross the length of the continent on dog sleds in 1911, traversing frozen glaciers and snow-packed mountain passes despite temperatures so cold it broke his compasses and froze his <em>sled dogs</em> to death.&nbsp; Despite entering a part of the Earth so insanely frigid that it cannot support animal or plant life of any kind, this hardcore Viking descendent somehow withstood the most hellacious freezing temperatures the Planet has to offer, overcame every obstacle in his path, and become the first human being ever to successfully reach the South Pole.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/698235630628/amundsen1.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The \"Last of the Vikings\" was born in 1872 to a family of wealthy Norwegian ship owners near Oslo.&nbsp; Even as a kid, this guy knew he wanted to be a badass polar explorer, so in order to prep himself for a lifetime of ball-freezing misery he slept with the windows open every single night, letting the hellacious Norwegian arctic breezes fill his room with temperatures so cold it turned his breath into icicles.&nbsp; Then, of course, he\'d get up, brush the frost off him, go for a nice ski down a treacherous ice-packed mountain, then cool off with a nice swim through the goddamned North Sea.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>At 17, Amundsen went to see one of his heroes, <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/nansen.html\">Fritjof Nansen</a>, return home from his famously/ridiculously-dangerous Greenland crossing, and when Amundsen saw the crowds assembled to welcome their countryman home as a hero Amundsen knew that his insane dreams of being a polar explorer were exactly what he wanted.&nbsp; He signed up to become a deck hand on a seal-hunting ship when he was 21, crossed the Arctic Ocean a couple times whacking seals, and got used to the idea of being on a boat with ocean spray and wind chills in the negative triple-digits pounding him in the face like he was standing inside a Slurpee machine.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/698235630628/amundsen2.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>In 1897, Amundsen heard that a Belgian dude named Adrien de Gerlache was putting together a trip to go check out what the hell the big deal was with Antarctica, and of course the 25-year-old Amundsen wanted in.&nbsp; He sent a letter to Gerlache offering to join the crew for free, and when the <em>Belgica</em> departed for Antartcia on August 16, 1897, Amundsen was already second mate on the 19-man crew.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The trip didn\'t go so well.</p>\r\n<p>First, there were nasty storms, one of which ended up knocking the first mate overboard and sending him to his death.&nbsp; Then, after making nearly 20 separate landings along the continent and the islands surrounding it, Gerlache accidentally got his ship lodged into a solid chunk of ice that froze around the ship, locking it into place so that it became a permanent fixture of the Antarctic landscape.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/698235630628/amundsen3.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> Oops.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The <em>Belgica </em>would be lodged in the ice, drifting aimlessly with the tides for 13 months.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Thirteen months.&nbsp; In the winter.&nbsp; In Antarctica.&nbsp; On a frozen boat that only brought enough supplies to get there and back.</p>\r\n<p>During this year of frozen wintery misery, another guy froze to death and the rest of the crew got scurvy, but Amundsen and the ship\'s doctor were able to cure them by hunting seals and penguins and feeding the Vitamin C-rich blubber to the men.&nbsp; They continued to drift, killing the time with cards and hockey games and skiing and god knows whatever the hell else it is Norwegians do for fun, and they were only able to make it through by waiting out the Antarctic winter, dragging their ship cross the ice, and hand-carving a channel by hacking away ice with saws and pickaxes in sub-zero temperatures.&nbsp; Which I imagine sucked balls.&nbsp; <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/shackleton.html\">Shackleton</a> would have a similar experience a few years later, but <em>Belgica</em> was the first ship to ever survive a winter stuck in the ice in Antarctica.&nbsp; Of the three Norwegians on the 19-man crew, one of them went insane, one froze to death on the way home, and only Amundsen returned home intact, having spent the last two years on a massive, extended Antarctic expedition from hell.</p>\r\n<p>Naturally, this horrific experience stuck in a frozen wasteland with no escape and no hope of rescue only got Roald Amundsen pumped up to go out and do it all over again a year later.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/698235630628/amundsen4.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>In 1900, Amundsen bought a 70-foot fishing boat, outfitted it with a crew of six and a couple tons of supplies, and set out to sail around Greenland, through the Canadian Arctic, reach the Magnetic North Pole, then become the first person to traverse the Northwest Passage, a semi-mythical waterway linking Greenland to Alaska through the Canadian arctic that had cost literally hundreds of explorers their lives ever since some dumbass first tried to navigate it in 1497.&nbsp; Amundsen, undeterred by the fact that he was attempting something that was basically impossible, sailed to King William Island, spent two years there building two more boats, taking observations and measurements, and learning survival skills from the Netsilik Inuit Indians like how to build an igloo and how to not die of frostbite every time you walk outside your igloo.&nbsp;&nbsp; Once he was happy with his boats/skills/pump-up training, Amundsen and his little boat reached the Magnetic North Pole (which, incidentally, was 30 miles away from where it had been a few years ago, marking the first time in recorded scientific history that we observed a shift in the Earth\'s Magnetic North), lodged his ship in the ice-pack of the Canadian arctic, then survived a year (!!) drifting with the tides until the ice pack thawed enough that he could sail away.&nbsp; He landed in Nome, Alaska, in 1906, then went 500 miles on skis across the Alaskan countryside to find a telegraph station so he could inform the King of Norway that he was officially the first human being to navigate the Northwest Passage.&nbsp; Then he skied another 500 miles back to his ship and went home.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Of the six men on the trip, only one died, and that was when he ruptured his appendix and didn&rsquo;t <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/index.cgi?id=648589523132\">Leonid Rogozov</a> himself.&nbsp; Amundsen returned home a hero.</p>\r\n<p>But he wasn\'t done yet.&nbsp; He still needed to conquer Antarctica and the South Pole.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/698235630628/amundsen5.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> This is the boat he crossed the Arctic in.<br /> Dude was hardcore.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Four years after returning from the Northwest Passage Expedition, Roald Amundsen loaded up Nansen\'s old boat <em>Fram </em>with nine hand-selected men, 97 Siberian Huskies, 10 tons of supplies, and set out on the four-month voyage to Antarctica\'s Ross Ice Shelf.&nbsp; Once he got there he set up Framheim, a base camp for his Antarctic expedition, and directed his crew to spend the next four months setting up a series of supply depots along the way so &nbsp;that when it was showtime the team could travel light and re-equip during their push for the Pole.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Then they spent the next six or seven months camping out in Antarctica waiting for winter to pass.&nbsp; No bigs, it\'s just living in friggin\' Antarctica in the damned winter in the year 1911, so who cares.</p>\r\n<p>On October 18<sup>th</sup>, 1911, Roald Amundsen departed Framheim with five men, three sledges, and 52 sled dogs on his charge towards the South Pole.&nbsp; Temperatures were negative-71 Fahrenheit &ndash; so cold it cracked some of the expedition\'s compasses.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/698235630628/amundsen6.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>For the next two months (!) Amundsen and his men blitzed through the frozen wasteland of Antarctica, braving horrific blizzards, looming crevasses, treacherous glaciers, and extreme cold temperatures in their single-minded quest to accomplish badass things.&nbsp; They climbed a mountain range with an altitude above 10,000 feet.&nbsp; They traversed ice-packed glaciers and plateaus.&nbsp; Some of the dogs froze to death, and the men ate them for food.&nbsp; Most of the guys got frostbite on their faces, fingers, and toes, and some crew would end up losing the appendages.</p>\r\n<p>On skis, sleds, and foot, the daring men of Roald Amundsen\'s expedition pushed on, fighting the elements, pushing their bodies to the limits of human endurance in the most inhospitable terrain on the planet.&nbsp; They refused to slow down or turn back for anything, crossing 20 miles a day with just 5 hours of sunlight, and then, finally, after months of constant struggle, the team reached the Earth\'s South Pole at 3pm on December 14, 1911.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/698235630628/amundsen7.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">Not exactly the MTV Astronaut, but you get the idea.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Amundsen stayed at the South Pole for 9 days, chilling (literally) at the bottom of the world making observations and doing other science stuff.&nbsp; They then made the equally-arduous journey back, arriving at their base camp on January 25, 1912, 99 days and 1,860 miles after their initial departure.</p>\r\n<p>After the expedition, Amundsen made a bunch of money shipping supplies during World War I, and then after the war he bought an airplane, received Norway\'s first civilian pilot\'s license, and then flew over the North Pole in this blimp in 1926:</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/698235630628/amundsen8.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>It would be the first Trans-Arctic flight of any kind made while traversing the North Pole, and Roald Amundsen would become the first person on earth to ever cross over both the North and South Poles.&nbsp; Then, as if that wasn\'t enough, he became just the third person to ever travel the Northeast Passage, sailing a ship through the Arctic Ocean by way of Siberia, but that seems like small potatoes at this point because jeez it\'s like he was the <em>third </em>person so whatever.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Roald Amundsen, one of the greatest heroes of the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration, died in 1928, when he was flying a rescue mission to save the crew of a downed blimp and his plane crashed into the Arctic Ocean.&nbsp; Nowadays the primary research station on Antarctica bears his name and he is renowned as one of the greatest non-Viking-marauder heroes of Norwegian history.</p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">&nbsp;<br /><img src=\"/images/698235630628/amundsen9.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Links:</p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/ice/peopleevents/pandeAMEX87.html\">PBS.org</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.enchantedlearning.com/explorers/page/a/amundsen.shtml\">Enchanted Learning</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.south-pole.com/p0000101.htm\">South-Pole.com</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.coolantarctica.com/Antarctica%20fact%20file/History/roald%20amundsen.htm\">CoolAntarctica.com</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roald_Amundsen\">Wikipedia</a></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Sources:</p>\r\n<p>Amundsen, Roald.&nbsp; <em>The South Pole</em>.&nbsp; J. Murray, 1913.</p>\r\n<p>Riffenburgh, Beau.&nbsp; <em>Encyclopedia of the Antarctic</em>.&nbsp; CRC Press, 2007.</p>\r\n<p>Turney, Chris.&nbsp; <em>1912</em>.&nbsp; Counterpoint, 2012.</p>','2013-05-17','698235630628','amundsen.jpg','amundsen-small.jpg','Roald Amundsen','The first man to conquer the South Pole.','\"Victory awaits him who has everything in order – people call it luck.  Defeat is certain for him who has neglected to take the necessary precautions in time; this is called bad luck.\"'),('Harald Hildetand','c. 590 AD','c. 740 AD','Zealand, Denmark','Medieval Viking King','<p>Harald Wartooth was a gigantic fucking Viking Berserker King who, in addition to running into battle completely unarmored and having spears and axes and other bullshit bounce off his fucking skin like his ridiculously-calloused, potentially-cyborged-out hide was constructed out of the titanium plating hand-shredded off the chassis of planet-vaporizing robots, was famous for being one of the first motherfuckers to ever unite all the frozen lands of Scandinavia under the banner of Viking Badassitude, conquering armies from England to Finland with tactics he\'d been taught from the Norse Gods themselves, charging head-long into battle during the Viking version of the Battle of Troy despite the notable setback that he was like so fucking old he couldn\'t see past his epic white beard, and then having his skull gloriously clubbed into explosive shards by Odin while he was standing in a pile of human corpses he\'d created with a pair of swords and his own furious death stare.<br /><br />The Viking equivalent of King Arthur or Tupac Shakur, Harald Wartooth is one of these dudes we like to call \"semi-legendary kings\", which is a fancy, pseudo-academic way for smartypants tightwads to say, \"This dude was almost certainly a real person at one time in history but shit got out of control over the last couple years and now we\'re pretty sure he didn\'t actually lop off heads with liquid metal blade arms, transform into Bear Mode at will, hang out with a dude who could transform men into frogs, or project his life essence into the Astral Plane and transfer his existence into hologram form\", without sounding like a psychotic dumbass.&nbsp; We are like 90% sure Harald Wartooth was a real person, and if he wasn\'t, he was at least based on a real guy, because he\'s mentioned in a couple different places from a couple different Nordic civilizations.&nbsp; We know he lived around the 8<sup>th</sup> century, probably in the early 700s AD.&nbsp; We know he united the Viking Kingdoms.&nbsp; And we know he KICKED THE FUCKING SHIT OUT OF EVERYONE, because even 1,300 years after the WARTOOTHPOCALYPSE went down we have the bones and wreckage to prove it.&nbsp; &nbsp;Most historians just aren\'t exactly convinced that he communicated directly with the Norse God Odin, or that he lived to be 150 years old, or that he allowed himself to die simply because he was really fucking old and wanted to go to Valhalla rather than die a coward\'s death alone in his bed like a chump.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/434873628949/wartooth1.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>According to the tale of notable 13<sup>th</sup>-century Viking historian Saxo Grammaticus (the guy responsible for writing the original version of <em>Hamlet </em>that Bill Shakespeare re-made into a play a few centuries later), &nbsp;Harald Wartooth first came into prominence when his grandfather, a Viking explorer/pillager/badass/nobleman/maniac named Ivar the Wide-Grasping, accidentally killed himself while trying to fight a mythical sea monster that, by definition, could only be killed by the Norse God Thor.&nbsp; Ivar, who I\'m pretty sure gets his wide-grasping epithet because he was literally able to grope TWO BOOBS AT THE SAME TIME, was like some super-old bastard who got into a Walter Matheau &ndash; Jack Lemmon-caliber argument with some other old geezer over something asinine like how to interpret a weird dream, and the way they decided to resolve the conflict was by jumping off a pier into the freezing-fucking-cold North Sea and engaging in hand-to-hand combat with the Midgard Serpent, a sea monster so intensely tremendor that it\'s body circled the entire earth, and a fearsome beast with fangs the size of skyscrapers that were poisonous enough to kill the Gods Themselves.&nbsp; Ivar and his buddy both drowned like dumbshits almost immediately, so 15-year-old Harald, the only surviving male from his family (and a member of the royalty both through Ivar and because his mom was a princess or some bullshit), walked into Denmark and told everyone he was in charge now so you n00b chumps better start getting used to the idea.&nbsp; The assembled Viking beards saw this teenage punk coming in and were all like, \"Yeah OK cool story bro that sounds great but how about rather than pay tribute to your dumb ass we SHOVE AN AXEHANDLE UP YOUR URETHRA AND BEAT YOUR MOTHER TO DEATH BY SWINGING YOUR IMPALED-PENISED CORPSE AROUND LIKE A MEAT SLEDGEHAMMER INSTEAD??!?!?!?!11111\"&nbsp; <br /><br />Harald Wartooth, who at this point was just going by Harald, stood there, his expression unchanging.&nbsp; He nodded understandingly, did a couple surreptitious finger-stretching exercises, calmly looked around at everyone before him, and casually unsheathed the Danish two-handed longaxe from the holster that slung it across his back.<br /><br />Then he DESTROYED THEM ALL UTTERLY.<br /><br />Parasailing through Northern Europe on a <a href=\"http://vortex.accuweather.com/adc2004/pub/includes/columns/topstory/2012/400x266_09181455_firedevil.jpg\">fire-nado</a> of human carnage and tempered-steel implements of , the unstoppable Viking warlord conquered every territory in Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, crushed armies and cut huge swaths of territory out for himself in Northern Germany and Eastern England, installed his own kinsmen as jarls of the devastated territories, and forced everyone he\'d subjugated to pay tribute to him so that they never, ever forgot who had the biggest nutsack in the North Sea.&nbsp; They agreed.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/434873628949/wartooth2.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Harald was famous for being a hardcore Berserker, meaning that he became so psychotically pissed and filled with the furious rage of Odin\'s killbonerrific spirit that he transcended anything mortal humans should be capable of and became an unflinching, unstoppable murder machine capable of grinding entire battalions of enemy warriors into mulch with a frenzy of blood-soaked deathstrokes.&nbsp; A young, impetuous, hardcore fighter, Harald always led his armies personally, screaming into battle like a madman and refusing to wear armor of any kind because he claimed Odin Himself would blind his foes and blunt their spears against him.&nbsp; When he was in full-on PCP Berserker Beast Mode, mostly naked and slathered in human blood and cream cheese, Harald was allegedly immune to fire and steel, incapable of feeling pain, and utterly unstoppable in combat.&nbsp; He wielded heavy oak clubs most of the time because he was notorious for hitting his enemies so hard that he would break his sword, once gave proof of his bravery by <em>allowing the enemy to stab him with spears just to prove he could take it</em>, and got his nickname, \"Wartooth\", supposedly from losing two teeth to an enemy sword and then having two brand new teeth SPONTANEOUSLY FUCKING GROW TO REPLACE THEM.&nbsp; I envision this going down in slow-motion with a super-extreme-close-up as he grows huge fangs to replace his busted teeth while a flaming 80s guitar solo wails in the background and the sound effect of a wolf howling at the moon blows the speakers on your TV into screaming shards of superheated shrapnel that embed themselves into your shitty couch and CATCH YOUR FUCKING APARTMENT ON FUCKING FIRE BECAUSE HE\'S HARALD WARTOOTH NOW.<br /><br />In addition to granting secret mutant powers of superhuman carnage-creation, Odin also supposedly personally came to Harald before battles and told him how to win.&nbsp; Typically this involved forming his men in a wedge and having them run straight ahead into the middle of the enemy forces screaming and swinging their axes and spears like their lives depended on it, which seems like a pretty straightforward tactic but apparently wasn\'t super common at the time because only one person ever used that strategy back against Harald.&nbsp; All the Lord of Valhalla asked in return was for Harald Wartooth to brutally sacrifice all captured Prisoners of War to Odin by hand-cleaving out their screaming guts on a stone altar with a sharp rock and pulling out their entrails.&nbsp; Harald was happy to oblige.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img src=\"/images/434873628949/wartooth3.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Unsurprisingly, after conquering his foes to shreds, Harald Wartooth ruled unopposed for over 50 years.&nbsp; The only action his warriors saw was when they went on their infamous raids throughout the North Sea and the Mediterranean.<br /><br />Well one day, when Harald was allegedly 150 years old (this seems unlikely), his nephew, a guy named Sigurd Hring who was related to Harald through Harald\'s mother\'s second marriage to a guy named Radbeard (seriously!), decided he was sick of paying tribute and bullshit to the Wartooth.&nbsp; Sigurd Hring had been put in charge of the Swedes and the Goths, and he was getting all butthurt about not being the King of Denmark so he told Wartooth they should fucking fight it out in search of the One True Hring.&nbsp; Wartooth, who was old as hell and just survived an assassination attempt where a couple dumbasses tried to kill him while he was taking a bath, was happy to have the opportunity to die a Warrior\'s Death, and was also more than willing to take his uppity nephew, turn him inside-out and SHOVE HIM UP HIS OWN FUCKING ASS.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img src=\"/images/434873628949/wartooth7.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The two Kings assembled every fighting man in Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Iceland.&nbsp; They recruited mercenaries from Saxony, Germany, England, Russia, and Eastern Europe.&nbsp; Harald Wartooth chopped down two entire forests to build a fleet of dragon ships so massive that if you laid them all out next to each other you could have walked from Denmark to Sweden without stepping on the water.<br /><br />What went down would be the biggest inter-Viking battle ever recorded, either in history or in the sagas.&nbsp; It\'s the Norse version of Troy or the Mahabarta.&nbsp; The language used for the battle by Norse skalds closely resembles that of the description of Ragnarok, the battle at the End of the World.&nbsp; And Harald Wartooth plays the starring role.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img src=\"/images/434873628949/wartooth4.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The two opposing armies stood across from each other.&nbsp; When Harald Wartooth noticed Sigurd Hring had positioned his men in a wedge as well, Harald got a little worried.&nbsp; This did not stop him from wedging up his men, and going point-to-point to hump his foes into submission.<br /><br />The battle that followed is worthy of the greatest epics in literary history.&nbsp; Harald\'s warriors, Are the One-Eyed, Dag the Fat, Hothbodd the Indomitable, and many other awesomely-named motherfuckers cleaved their way through the greatest warriors Hring had to offer.&nbsp; Wartooth\'s greatest champion, Ubbe from Friesland, waded into the meat of the action, covered in blood up to his shoulders, killing 22 men and wounding 11 more \"warriors of note\" (Saxo differentiates \"warriors of note\" from \"nameless jobber nobodies\") with a gigantic waraxe before being gloriously massacred to death by four sword cuts and two dozen arrow wounds.&nbsp; Wartooth\'s warrior-babe Veborg, a tough-as-shit chick who commanded a battalion of 300 hardass shieldmaidens, sliced Hring\'s greatest warriors so hard that she bifurcated his face at the jaw and the guy ran off carrying his beard around like a loaf of bread, then double-killed Thorkell the Stubborn after \"many wounds and much verbal arguing.\" <br /><br />Despite these acts of towering badassitude, the battle was turning against Wartooth, and, rather than sit back and let all his lieutenants have all the fun, the old-as-fuck, half-blind Berserker King decided, fuck it, I\'m getting in on this bullshit.&nbsp; Seated in his Royal Chariot, the ancient king pulled himself up onto his knees, drew an iron sword in each hand, spurred his horses ahead, and kneeboarded straight-on in the center of the action, ready to kick fucking asses and then senile-y forget the names.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/434873628949/wartooth5.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> \"When Harald saw the great slaughter among his troops, <br /> he threw himself on his knees on his chariot, being unable to stand, <br /> and took a short sword in each hand; he then caused the chariot <br /> to be driven into the thickest of the fight, hewing and striking on both sides, <br /> in this manner killing many, and he was considered very valiant, <br /> and to have done mighty deeds for his great age.\"</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>After eviscerating a swath through the enemy army with an epic drive-by cleaving, Harald Wartooth, the greatest of the Viking Kings, was mortally wounded when, according to the story, Odin Himself clubbed him in the back of the head with an axe, knocking him out of the chariot.&nbsp; When Sigurd Hring saw the empty royal chariot scream past him, he immediately ordered a cease-fire.&nbsp; Both armies stopped in their tracks, and spend the rest of the morning searching for the body of the fallen king to prove the Wartooth was no more.&nbsp; They found him, covered in blood, lying dead under a stack of corpses that were piled so high you couldn\'t drive a wagon in there because the bodies were stacked higher than the wagon\'s axle.<br /><br />That night, a huge funeral pyre was built for the fallen king, and every man and woman on the field threw one item onto the blaze to honor their dead king.&nbsp; Sigurd would take over as King of Denmark.&nbsp; His son, Ragnar Hairy-Breeches, is the guy that History Channel <em>Vikings </em>show is about, and Sigurd\'s grandson, <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/index.cgi?ccpage=1\">Ivar the Boneless</a>, is the man responsible for conquering the rest of England in the 9<sup>th</sup> century.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/434873628949/wartooth6.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Sources:</p>\r\n<p>Cronholm, Neander Nicolas.&nbsp; <em>A History of Sweden from the Earliest Times to the Present Day</em>.&nbsp; 1902.</p>\r\n<p>Geijer, Erik Gustav.&nbsp; <em>The History of the Swedes</em>.&nbsp; Whittaker and Company, 1845.</p>\r\n<p>Howorth, Henry Hoyle.&nbsp; <em>The Early History of Sweden</em>.&nbsp; 1881.</p>\r\n<p>Jones, Gwyn.&nbsp; <em>History of the Vikings</em>.&nbsp; Oxford University Press, 2001.</p>\r\n<p>Speidel, Michael P.&nbsp; <em>Ancient Germanic Warriors</em>.&nbsp; Routledge, 2002.</p>','2013-05-24','434873628949','wartooth.jpg','wartooth-small.jpg','Harald Wartooth','The Viking King Arthur.','\"Clad in a red cloak, his hair held by a band tricked out with gold, he advanced on the enemy, quietly trusting to the knowledge of his luck rather than weapons – so much that he seemed dressed for a party, not war.  But his mind was unlike his outfit, for unarmored, wearing only his royal insignia, he went before the armed battalions and gave the raging dangers of war a chance.  Yet the spears flung at him could no more harm him then if their blades pointed backwards.  When others saw this fighter\'s woundlessness, they were taken aback and shame spurred them to attack him still more fiercely.  Harald, unwounded, killed them with his sword or sent them fleeing.\"'),('Nzinga Mbande','c. 1580','December 17, 1663','Luanda, Angola','17th-century Angolan Queen','<p><em>Apologies for the ultra-late post this week.&nbsp; The cooling fan and heat sink broke off my CPU processor and smashed into my graphics card on Friday morning and the shock somehow jolted my motherboard in a way that rendered my hard drive inoperable without some hardcore repairs.&nbsp; Between replacing damaged parts and waiting for the repair on the hard drive it\'s been a nightmare weekend getting everything up and running again.&nbsp; Rather than cop out with an old post I still wanted to try and put something new together, so here it is.&nbsp; </em></p>\r\n<p><em></em>Nzinga Mbande was a 17<sup>th</sup>-century African battle queen and all-around shit-kicking destroyer of human rectums who used her massive throbbing girl-balls to seize ultimate iron-fisted power of her tribe from her ultra-douchebag inept pushover brother, successfully led spear-wielding tribal warriors into hardcore fucking&nbsp; close-quarters combat with rifle-equipped colonial European armies on several occasions, stole her enemies\' power by decapitating them with a machete and drinking their blood&nbsp; Nosferatu-style, and amazingly ended up becoming one of the rare instances in human history where a badass native warrior face-wrecker somehow managed to make it through their entire life without righteously being fucked over, double-crossed, and unceremoniously executed by bullshit treachery.</p>\r\n<p>She was also infamous for having a harem of 60 men at her beck and call, a personal bodyguard of elite Dutch mercenary riflemen, and once took a machete into hand-to-hand combat against a tribe of (literally) baby-eating African cannibals.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/491565226842/nzinga3.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>In the early 1600s, the Southwest African region we now know as Angola was divided up between two powerful, incredibly warlike tribes with rhyming names who hated each other\'s guts with a righteous fury &ndash; the Ndongo and the Kongo.&nbsp; Nzinga, who is also known by Jinga, Singa, Zhinga, and Njinga (but never Njzhsinga) was the daughter of the King of the Ndongo, a misguided idiot who thought the best way to get a leg up on the Kongo was to trust a bunch of fucking Europeans who had come knocking on his door promising to give him all the money and handjobs he wanted if he would just let them cripple his economy, end his dynastic line, obliterate all traces of his native religion and enslave his entire population out from under him.</p>\r\n<p>In the case of Angola it was the Portuguese who came blowing through on the European Civilization V 4X Colonization Exploitation World Tour 1621.&nbsp;&nbsp; Most people probably don\'t think of the Portuguese as the pillage/plunder/etc. sort, but in the 17<sup>th</sup> century these guys came to Angola first as missionaries, then as colonists, then as slave traders, then as full-on occupiers.&nbsp; At first they were kind of working with the King of Ndongo to capture slaves that could be brought to Portuguese mines and plantation in Brazil (which worked for the King as long as the people being deported were his enemies), but before long they realized fuck it, we don\'t really need to go through a middle man here, and when the King died the Portuguese threw his son into prison on some island and seized control of the kingdom by force.</p>\r\n<p>The King\'s daughter, Princess Nzinga Mbande of Ndongo, marched into the Portuguese governor\'s office to demand the safe return of her brother and the departure of all Portuguese officials in Angola.&nbsp; When she approached the governor to negotiate, he refused to give her a chair to sit on.&nbsp; Nzinga snapped her fingers, and one of her servants got down on all fours so the Queen could sit on her back.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/491565226842/nzinga8.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">Mine\'s the one that says \"Bad Mother Fucker\" on it.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Once the negotiations were over, Nzinga stood up, ordered the servant to stand, and then cut the servant\'s neck in full view of the horrified Portuguese administrators.&nbsp; As everyone stood there in stunned silence for a second thinking to themselves, \"seriously, what the fuck just happened here,\" Nzinga calmly informed the Governor that the Goddamned Queen of Ndongo never sits on the same chair twice.</p>\r\n<p>She got her brother back.&nbsp; She then had him murdered in his sleep so she could take the throne for herself.&nbsp; Then she killed her brother\'s son &ndash; the only other potential heir to the throne &ndash; and ate his heart, believing this would help her absorb his power.&nbsp; Mola Ram style.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/491565226842/nzinga4.JPG\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Well the Portuguese weren\'t exactly about to crap themselves because some psycho cannibal chick was eating the internal organs of her unwanted family members, and they rolled into town with a shitting fuck balls-ton of Marines who proceeded to burn and cap everyone in their way.&nbsp; Queen Nzinga had to bolt out of town, taking only a trusted bodyguard of hardcore warriors with her.</p>\r\n<p>They headed south, where they ran into the much-feared Jaga Tribe &ndash; an understandably-avoided society of freaky Hannibal Lecter motherfuckers who ate human flesh and didn\'t have any laws preventing you from killing your own children if you thought they weren\'t going to grow up to be badass enough for your liking.</p>\r\n<p>Nzinga Mbande and her Ndongo Warrior Brigade saw these sadistic mass-murdering maniacs, laughed their nuts off, then <em>utterly destroyed them as a tribe</em>.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/491565226842/nzinga2.png\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>From her new base in the south, Nzinga Mbande sat around most of the time bitterly hating the Portuguese and preparing to skewer their testicles on her machete and then impale them with their own nuts.&nbsp; She trained an elite cadre of male and female warriors, and imported a hardened crew of sixty Dutch mercenaries &ndash; hardcore, trained European warriors with guns, rifles, and professional training &ndash; to act as the core of her new army and her own personal bodyguard on the front line of battle.&nbsp; Most of these Dutchmen were a little horrified by Nzinga\'s pre-battle tendency to decapitate slaves and drink the arterial blood spray as it shot out from their necks like a middle school water fountain, but her money was good so they were willing to accept little eccentricities like cannibalism and borderline-insanity.&nbsp; They also tried to ignore the 50-60 dudes she had hanging out as her own personal harem any time she got bored.</p>\r\n<p>Next, she made deals with nearby African tribes to shut off the Portuguese slave trade in the heart of Angola by cutting off their access to roads and trading posts, choking off the Europeans\' income and crippling the colonial economy.&nbsp; When Portuguese troops marched in to re-open the roads by force, they were hit by badass guerilla attacks from Dutch riflemen and spear-slinging African tribal warriors with nothing to lose.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/491565226842/nzinga5.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Carrying a bow, sword, and axe, and dressed in animal skins, Nzinga Mbande led her men into combat against the Portuguese, defeating them in pitched battles in 1645, 1647, and 1648, at one point even helping a Dutch Marines force re-take her old palace from the Portuguese Governor who had given her so much trouble previously.</p>\r\n<p>Despite a number of victories against the Portuguese, she never fully reclaimed her throne as Queen of Ndongo, but she was also never beaten by the European colonials &ndash; a notable achievement for any native uprising at a time in the world where natives had sharp spears and rocks and Europeans were packing cannons, black powder shotguns and steel bayonets.&nbsp; Eventually, the Portuguese got so sick of dealing with Nzinga that they gave up entirely &ndash; in 1656 they called her to a meeting, gave her a chair (they didn\'t want more servant\'s blood staining their carpets), and asked for a truce.&nbsp; Nzinga Mbande allowed missionaries and slavers to come to her lands, and the Portuguese agreed not only to leave her alone, but to send their own troops to help her destroy any rival tribes that were pissing her off.</p>\r\n<p>For the last seven years of her life, Nzinga Mbande\'s people lived in peace, unconquered by European colonialism.</p>\r\n<p>Nzinga Mbande died in 1663, allegedly with a bow and arrow in her hands.&nbsp; She is still seen as a symbol of African resistance in Angola and the Western African countries.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/491565226842/nzinga6.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Sources:</p>\r\n<p>Cross, Robin, and Rosalind Miles.&nbsp; <em>Hell Hath No Fury</em>.&nbsp; Three Rivers, 2008.</p>\r\n<p>De Pauw, Linda Grant.&nbsp; <em>Battle Cries and Lullabies</em>.&nbsp; Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1998.</p>\r\n<p>Fraser, Antonia.&nbsp; <em>The Warrior Queens</em>.&nbsp; Anchor, 1990.</p>\r\n<p>Miles, Rosalind and Robin Cross.&nbsp; <em>Warrior Women</em>.&nbsp; Metro, 2011.</p>','2013-12-16','491565226842','nzinga.jpg','nzinga-small.jpg','Nzinga Mbande','Blood-drinking, Portuguese-slaying African warrior Queen.',''),('Saint Nicholas','c. 270 AD','December 6, 343 AD','Parara, Turkey','Medieval Greek Saint','<p>Fourth-century Orthodox Christian Saint Nicholas the Wondermaker was the patron saint of sailors, merchants, travelers, children, thieves, pirates, pawn shops, Russia, baked goods, prostitutes, badass Viking warriors, and the phone call from the governor that keeps the warden from frying your balls into <a href=\"http://danishpancakes.com/\">Danish pancakes</a> with eighty thousand volts of divine retribution.&nbsp; He survived the cruelest tortures the Roman Empire had to offer, became a Bishop without ever having even been a priest, was worshipped as an analogue of <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/poseidon.html\">Poseidon</a> by Greek sailors for centuries after his death, and allegedly once cracked notorious heretic Arian in his stupid face with a fat knuckle sandwich because Nick was convinced that idiot would know the Holy Friggin&rsquo; Trinity if he ground it down into powder and smoked it along with whatever brand of back-alley street crack he was obviously already inhaling on a regular basis.</p>\r\n<p>And when he wasn&rsquo;t rolling through the Council of Nicea rocking the gobs of apostates with thunderous uppercuts, Saint Nick was so damn charitable that to this day his dead body <em>literally excretes some kind of fluid</em> that people rub on themselves or drink or something because they think it will cure their life-threatening diseases.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Let&rsquo;s see Santa Claus beat that.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/32109327065/saintnicholas1.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>It bears mentioning here that most of what we know about Saint Nicholas the Wondermaker is pretty suspect, since most of it was written several hundred years after he died and was jotted down by people who were already actively in the process of praying for Nick to intervene and make God do nice stuff for them.&nbsp; Like, for instance, we can&rsquo;t even confirm that he was <em>even at the Council of Nicea</em>, let alone that he ran up and shoryuken&rsquo;ed the balls off Arian while 300 Bishops and the Emperor Constantine the Great stood there cheering like those hopefully-off-duty army guys who hang around in the background of Guile&rsquo;s level in <em>Street Fighter II</em>.&nbsp; &nbsp;But we can&rsquo;t confirm that he <em>didn&rsquo;t </em>do this either, and I&rsquo;ll argue that the inclusion of an epic face-punch in the Saint Nicholas mythology is testament enough to how tough this dude was.</p>\r\n<p>Nick was born to a totally-loaded Greek family in Parara, a nice enough town on the coast of present-day Turkey.&nbsp; When he was still a boy Nick&rsquo;s parents contracted some weird like syndrome or something and unexpectedly beefed it, leaving Nicholas enough money to buy himself a Ferrari 458, wrap it around a telephone pole at 95 miles an hour, and then buy a <em>second </em>Ferrari and crash that into the flaming wreckage of his first one.&nbsp; He opted not to do this, however, and instead he became a monk and gave every last piece of gold he had to charities, beggars, homeless people, orphans, single moms, sad-looking puppies, non-union manual laborers, down-on-their-luck street performers and half-dead liberal arts majors.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/32109327065/saintnicholas2.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>One day Nicholas was hanging out in the Mediterranean port city of Myra and all the Catholics there decided this guy was so cool and holy and stuff that he should be the Bishop, even though he was only like 20 years old, had never even been a priest and, quite possibly, might never have even been to Myra before.&nbsp; But, who cares, he became the Bishop of Myra because he was good like that apparently.&nbsp; Which was pretty cool until the Roman Emperor Diocletian suddenly decided he really hated Christians and had all the Bishops in the Roman Empire bound with chains, thrown into prison, and beaten repeatedly about the face and chest with red-hot pokers and other implements of cruel and unusual punishment until they couldn&rsquo;t remember the difference between the Holy Ghost and a white-hot poker in the eye.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Surviving a badass medieval Roman torture chamber for a few months was no party, but he was eventually saved from the dungeon of horrors when Diocletian abdicated the throne and new emperor Constantine the Great passed an Imperial Edict saying that Christianity was cool again.&nbsp; Constantine let him go, and Saint Nicholas began Walking the Earth doing great things to help out anyone who needed his charitable assistance.&nbsp; After his ordeal, one of Nick\'s main missions was to seek tolerance and justice for wrongfully-convicted prisoners, and on more than one occasions he rushed in and stopped an execution by grabbing the sword of the would-be executioner in dramatic fashion.&nbsp; So now he\'s the patron saint of that too.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/32109327065/stnicholas9.png\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>One of his first acts after his freedom was to help out this poor family in his town by becoming the Patron Saint of Huge Balls.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Apparently there was this super-nice poor old farmer dude who couldn&rsquo;t afford a good dowry for his daughters and was all worried that if he couldn&rsquo;t marry them off to nice boys they&rsquo;d end up becoming hookers or slaves or something, so Saint Nick came to their house in the middle of the night and threw three big balls of gold in his window, each one landing in the sock of a different girl.&nbsp; The next morning the farmer woke up and saw the Saint Nick&rsquo;s balls and he was really happy for his daughters because now they weren&rsquo;t going to have to become prostitutes.&nbsp; But, if things had gone differently, Nick is still the patron saint of prostitutes so he\'d still take care of them anyways because he\'s chill like that.</p>\r\n<p>Nowadays people in Europe commemorate Nick&rsquo;s midnight skylight gold-plated balls attack by putting oranges in their kids&rsquo; stockings on the Feast Day of Saint Nicholas.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/32109327065/saintnicholas3.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> ST NICK BE MAKIN&rsquo; IT RAIN BALLZ</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Interestingly, this was not the weirdest Miracle Saint Nicholas has been credited with.&nbsp; No, that honor goes to the time he busted a serial killer and brought three kids back from the dead like some kind of <em>Law &amp; Order: SVU</em> episode where the guest star is a 13<sup>th</sup>-level Dungeons &amp; Dragons cleric.</p>\r\n<p>That story goes like this:&nbsp; There was this psychotic butcher who killed three kids, cut them up into tiny pieces, and kept them in a barrel of brine because he was going to cook them up like hams.&nbsp; Nicholas, being imparted with unspeakable divine power, brought the three kids back from the dead.&nbsp; The butcher, horrified by what he did, immediately repented.</p>\r\n<p>Like I said, some of these stories are hard to verify.&nbsp; But in some parts of Europe, Saint Nicholas&rsquo;s day is celebrated by Nick giving out presents to the good kids and this dude beating the bad ones with a stick until they cry.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/32109327065/saintnicholas4.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> I am not joking about this.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Nicholas is also the Patron Saint of sailors, not only because of the charity work he did at the docks throughout his life, but because he also apparently had the power to calm the ocean.&nbsp; One time he was coming back from a pilgrimage to Egypt and Palestine, and the waves got really bad, so he prayed for God to calm the ocean.&nbsp; And he did.&nbsp; The sailors were so impressed that they started using him as a saintly analogue for Poseidon, and built churches to Saint Nick in port towns from Russia to Italy.&nbsp; To this day, Saint Nicholas is the patron saint of the Greek Navy.</p>\r\n<p>Of course, even though he had this connection to Poseidon don&rsquo;t go thinking he was soft on any of that heresy nonsense.&nbsp; One story has him destroying the Greek Temple of Artemis and chasing out demons with a stick, and those assholes got off easy compared to the ultra-heretic Arian.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/32109327065/saintnicholas5.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The Council of Nicea met in 325 to discuss the Arian Question, which sounds like a racially-charged propaganda booklet but was actually a Catholic debate over whether Jesus was the son of god AND ALSO god himself or if he was a separate also-God entity that was related to God God but not really the same thing.&nbsp; Naturally the way to solve this was by getting 300 bishops and the emperor together and fistfighting it out, and it was at this council that the afore-mentioned alleged HOLY BEATDOWN occurred.&nbsp; In addition to pimp-slapping a heretic, Nicholas also helped form the Nicene Creed, a statement of faith still repeated in Catholic and Orthodox Churches to this day.</p>\r\n<p>Nicholas died around 343 AD, and was Sainted a few years later.&nbsp; His body was guarded by the Varangian Guard of Constantinople &ndash; a badass set of hardcore Swedish and Russian Viking warriors who served as the bodyguards of the Byzantine Emperors.&nbsp; The Vikings guarded Saint Nick&rsquo;s body until the 11<sup>th</sup> century, when security got lax after <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/alparslan.html\">Alp Arslan</a> whipped the Byzantines&rsquo; balls at the Battle of Manzikert and captured all of Asia Minor, and in 1087 a random group of Venetian sailors broke into his tomb, stole half of Saint Nicholas&rsquo;s skeleton, moved it to a the Italian town of Bari, and built a church on top of it.&nbsp; The skeleton, which can still be seen today, is famous for producing<em> manna di S. Nicola</em>&mdash;a weird oily substance that excretes from the deceased holy man&rsquo;s bones and can allegedly be used as medicine to cure life-threatening diseases.&nbsp; I&rsquo;m not sure whether you drink it or use it as eye drops or rub in on you like Icy Hot or what but if you&rsquo;re ever in Bari you can buy a vial of it and see what happens I guess.</p>\r\n<p>The church became one of the most popular pilgrimage spots of the Middle Ages and was visited during most of the Crusades.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/32109327065/saintnicholas6.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Links:</p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=371\">http://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=371</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11063b.htm\">http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11063b.htm</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.stnicholascenter.org/pages/who-is-st-nicholas/\">http://www.stnicholascenter.org/pages/who-is-st-nicholas/</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Nicholas\">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Nicholas</a></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Sources:</p>\r\n<p>Dixon-Kelly, Mike.&nbsp; <em>Encyclopedia of Russian and Slavic Myth and Legend</em>.&nbsp; ABC-CLIO, 1998.</p>\r\n<p>Melton, J. Gordon. <em>&nbsp;Encyclopedia of Religious Phenomena</em>.&nbsp; Visible Ink, 2007.</p>\r\n<p><em>New Catholic Encyclopedia</em>.&nbsp; Thomson/Gale, 2003.</p>','2013-12-20','32109327065','saintnicholas.jpg','saintnicholas-small.jpg','Saint Nicholas','The patron saint of prostitutes, murderers, children, sailors, and punching heretics in the face.','“The West as well as the East acclaims and glorifies him. Wherever there are people, in the country and the town, in the villages, in the isles, in the furthest parts of the earth, his name is revered and churches are built in his honor… his favors, which know no limit of time and continue from age to age, are poured out over all the earth; the Scythians know them, as do the Indians and the barbarians, the Africans as well as the Italians.”'),('Mithridates VI Eupator','132 BC','63 BC','Sinope, Kingdom of Pontus','Ancient Pontic King','<p>Mithridates VI, the Great King of Pontus, was the most hardcore threat to Roman superiority since the good old days of Hannibal Barca bodysurfing armored pachyderms across the Tiber River with rafts made out of corpses of dead Roman citizens and then teabagging everything he encountered on the other side.&nbsp; Known as The Poison King, Mithridates opposed three of the greatest generals from the most powerful civilization in the world, successfully fucked with Rome for over 40 years, conquered lands spanning across Central Asia and Eastern Europe with an armada of badass, scary-as-hell scythed war chariots, helped the Spartans and Athenians successfully revolt against the Romans, commanded an armada of loyal pirates that marauded the entire Mediterranean, and was so fucking hardcore that he made himself completely immune to all forms of poison through a daily training regimen consisting essentially of <em>eating lethal doses of poison and then not dying from it</em>.</p>\r\n<p>The Poison King was from a weird, nebulous place called Pontus, which is located in Turkey but was founded by Alexander the Great\'s Macedonians (who thought they were Greek) but who also claimed descent from Darius the Great of Persia, but Mithridates\'s mom was a Syrian princess too so honestly who the fuck knows what the hell was going on with that place anyways.&nbsp; Ambiguous ethnography aside, we know that Mithridates assumed the throne of Pontus in 120 BC at the age of 12, when his mom assassinated his dad, seized power as regent, and sent Mithridates running off into the forest to hide before some asshole with a sword showed up and sent him on a one-way trip to visit his pops.&nbsp; Mithridates hid out in the freezing, ultra-dangerous mountains of northern Turkey, training hard in horsemanship, swordfighting, and javelin throwing, learning dozens of languages, and toughening himself up with one-armed pull-ups, biceps curls, and baconized wheat grass protein shakes.&nbsp; As soon as he was done with his badass training montage, Mithridates marched into his rightful throne room, imprisoned and executed his own mother, had his only brother whacked out by a hitman, seized sole power of the Kingdom of Pontus, and prepared to animorph a relatively small Kingdom in backwoods Asia Minor into an Empire that would rival Rome herself.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/36045588092/mithridates1.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> The Pontic Army.<br /> P.S. the prerelease screenshots for <em>Rome: Total War II</em> kind of give me a boner.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Starting with his days chilling in the forest punching rocks and wrestling bears, Mithridates got the excellent, <em>Princess Bride-</em>style idea of developing an immunity to poisons by ingesting small amounts of lethal toxins every morning with his orange juice, then slowly ratcheting it up to the point where he was bombing arsenic keg stands and freshening his breath with cyanide mouthwash.&nbsp; His obsession with poisons was so intense that the longest-lasting impact of his life is concoction he invented known as the Antidotum Mithridaticum, a bizarre antidote cocktail of 54 ingredients ranging from acacia and cinnamon to duck blood and something called \"Gallic Nard\" that I really hope isn\'t what I think it is.&nbsp; Throughout his reign, Mithridates perfected the recipe by testing it out by giving it to convicted criminals and prisoners of war and then seeing if they died from lethal doses of poison.&nbsp; This sounds fucked up, but this shit is so crazy that the Antidotum Mithridaticum was still being used as a poison antidote in England until 1745 and in Germany and France until about 1900.&nbsp; As in 1900 AD, roughly two thousand years after this duck blood smoothie was invented.</p>\r\n<p>Oh yeah, and if you think this was all just some paranoid delusional bullshit that seemed to be pretty common with ancient kings, think again &ndash; Mithridates survived at least two assassination attempts during his 57-year reign.&nbsp; In both cases he had the perpetrators tortured to death, then executed their entire extended families.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/36045588092/mithridates2.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> This is the first thing that comes up <br /> when you Google \"Gallic Nard\".</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Ok so Mithridates Six inherited a decent-sized kingdom, but he had pretty hardcore ambitions to be all that he could be in terms of kicking ass and conquering Asia.&nbsp; A guy who loved his old-school Greek and Persian heritage and thought all this newfangled Roman Republic hipster bullshit was pretty much the lamest thing since ancient Sumeria, Mithridates\'s master plan was to basically be Alexander the Great (the guy was so hardcore about it that he even wore Alexander the Great\'s cloak around like a throwback jersey so that should tell you something) stomping balls from Persia to Athens.&nbsp; Already fairly wealthy thanks to his control of trade on the Black Sea, Mithridates hired a shit-ton of mercenaries from across Asia and Europe, kitted his forces out with everything from Scythian horse archers and scythed war chariots to Macedonian-style infantry phalanxes, and went to work making sure the rest of the world never forgot where the hell Pontus was and what it was all about.&nbsp; He intervened in a war in Crimea, ended up conquering the region for himself, then took both warring countries into his empire as protectorates.&nbsp; He kicked the Scythians in the balls, destroyed the armies of Colchis, captured territory all around the Black Sea, and married his daughter off in a political alliance with the king of Armenia.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>He marched his army into Cappadocia, and, just as the Cappadocian army was lining up against him, one of Mithridates\'s assassins shanked their king in the ass in front of his entire army and the Cappadocians quit the field, surrendered without a fight, and kinda just sat there with their mouths open like dumbasses while Mithridates put his 8 year-old son on the throne and blew the hell outta there in time for <em>Jeopardy</em>.&nbsp; When the Cappadocians rebelled against this King Joffrey bullshit a few years later and nominated a replacement king, Mithridates had that guy poisoned to death without even getting out of his gold-plated recliner.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/36045588092/mithridates3.png\" alt=\"\" /><br /> The Pontic Empire.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Well all this conquering and asskicking and pureeing enemy warriors into chowder with spinning scythe chariot blades understandably got Rome a little nervous, so they eventually got around to sending a guy named Manius Aquilius out there to get this Poison King bullshit under control.&nbsp; Aquilius casually rode out there with five legions and told Mithridates to get the hell out of Cappadocia and a couple other places and settle down with this massacre/killing thing.&nbsp; Mithridates wasn\'t really looking to fuck with Rome just yet, so he said, \"yeah, sure thing,\" and withdrew his forces back to Pontus.&nbsp; Aquilius, thinking he was the biggest shit ever, started power-tripping balls, installed Roman-allied governors in the area, shut down economic trade, blocked the entrance to the Black Sea, and stupidly acted like a total dick to the most powerful ruler in Asia Minor.</p>\r\n<p>Mithridates asked Aquilius to reconsider.&nbsp; Aquilius told him to fuck off.</p>\r\n<p>Wrong answer.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/36045588092/mithridates4.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> Ok fuckers, that\'s how we\'re going to play it, huh?<br /> HERE\'S A SCYTHED WAR CHARIOT, FOOL</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>At the head of a fleet of warships, a thundering herd of horsemen, and a sea of face-shanking phalanx soldiers, Mithridates the Great, King of Pontus, rode out from his borders in 89 BC, crushed the Romans and their allies, reconquered the land he\'d oh-so-reasonably just withdrew from, killed Aquilius by pouring molten gold down his throat, and then unflinchingly ordered the summary execution of all 80,000 Romans and Italians living within his borders.&nbsp; Then he went on the march.&nbsp; Cities he encountered had two options:&nbsp; Surrender and hand over any Roman officers within your walls and not only will you be unharmed, but I\'ll make sure you pay less taxes than you were paying to Rome.&nbsp; Resist and die.</p>\r\n<p>Mithridates busted through the Romans, sent troops to Athens and Sparta to help them overthrow their Roman rulers, marched into Macedonia and Eastern Europe, plundered Roman stores and sanctuaries, and then, when he was done, he danced like Tom Cruise in <em>Tropic Thunder</em>.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/36045588092/mithridates5.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br /> You will need a United Nations fucking resolution to <br /> keep me from fucking destroying you.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Ok, well, slaughtering tens of thousands of Romans, getting high-fives from Spartans, and carving a swath of destruction at the head of a mighty army was sweet and all, but let\'s face it:&nbsp; Rome is still Rome, and Rome does what Rome does and what Rome does is beat the shit out of everything else in the world.&nbsp; Eventually a dude named Sulla (who I intend to write much more about later) showed up, defeated Mithridates in two massive battles, put the King of Pontus in his place, and then blew outta there with a relatively lenient peace treaty considering how much trouble Mithridates had caused.&nbsp; When he got home, everyone thought Sulla was so awesome that they made him Consul, then Dictator.</p>\r\n<p>Well while lesser Kings might have lost their shit over something like this, it just made Mithridates more angry.&nbsp; First, he had to deal with a couple jackasses in his own empire that thought they could overthrow him (they couldn\'t &ndash; he crushed them on the battlefield, then invited anyone he suspected of being disloyal to a huge banquet in the royal palace, where he subsequently had the doors barred and everyone slaughtered in an episode that should sound somewhat familiar).&nbsp; Then, once he\'d proved that he hadn\'t lost his nerve to kill everything in sight, Mithridates went to work fucking with Rome in every way short of direct military intervention.&nbsp; He sent money to rebels in Hispania.&nbsp; He befriended the Gauls and had them start investigating invasion routes into Italy.&nbsp; He allied with Ptolemaic Egypt and Thracian war chiefs.&nbsp; He even sent an envoy to fucking Spartacus to see if that guy wanted a hand with anything.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>He also started fucking with Roman sea trade by building a huge armada of pirate ships, allying himself with the Pirate King of Sicily, and encouraging every seaman with an eyepatch and/or sword to pillage Roman trade in the Black Sea and Mediterranean.&nbsp; It got so bad that Rome actually sent another general, Lucius Licinius Murena, to send an expeditionary force to raid inside Pontus borders, but the second Murena set foot in Mithrdates\' kingdom the Poison King met him on the field of battle and smashed his army and mailed it back to Rome in cookie dough tubes.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/36045588092/mithridates6.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>Well as tends to happen with these things, everything eventually boiled down to one epic showdown for ultimate control of Eastern Europe and Asia Minor, and unfortunately there was very little in the world that could stand up to the Roman war machine once it got it\'s shit together.&nbsp; First, an army under Marcus Aurelius Cotta went after Mithridates and failed miserably in their mission to not be violently massacred at spear-point or ball-shanked with fire arrows, but following this victory for Mithridates, Rome sent two of her most badass military geniuses &ndash; Lucius Lucullus and Pompey the Great &ndash;with a half-dozen hardcore, veteran Roman legions that defeated Mithridates\'s generals and sent him into flight.&nbsp; The Poison King took a boat, sailed it across the Black Sea, and asked his son (who he\'d installed as King of Scythia) for help.&nbsp; When he realized that his own kid had been bought out by the Romans Mithridates personally executed him and just continued trying to rally support, hoping to unite the Thracians and Scythians and launch a desperate, last-ditch invasion of Rome.&nbsp; Before he could get that far, however, he was discovered and cornered by Roman agents.&nbsp; Seeing that the end was near, the 69 year-old Mithridates VI of Pontus tried to kill himself, but it didn\'t work, because he was immune to poison, and even though he chugged enough Drano to kill a horse it still didn\'t put him down, and he died, sword in hand, being cut down by Roman assassins.&nbsp; He had been King of Pontus for 57 years, and an enemy of Rome for 40, which is about 39 years longer than most people stayed enemies of Rome during this time period.</p>\r\n<p>Because he had defeated the longest-running enemy in Rome\'s history, when Pompey returned home he was officially given the name \"Pompey the Great\", and was thrown a triumph that lasted two full days.&nbsp; Mithridates\' possessions &ndash; items ranging from gold-plated couches to nine-foot statues of the Poison King, to a collection of 2,000 goblets made of pure Onyx and studded with jewels &ndash; were paraded through the streets.&nbsp; Mithridates\' death would mark the end of large-scale organized opposition to Roman rule in Asia.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"../images/36045588092/mithridates7.png\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Links:</p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.livius.org/mi-mn/mithridates/mithridates.htm\">Livius.org</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/mithridates/a/aa053000a.htm\">About.com Ancient History</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/mithradates1.asp\">Ancient History Sourcebook</a></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Sources:</p>\r\n<p>Bury, John Bagnell.&nbsp; <em>The Cambridge Ancient History</em>.&nbsp; Cambridge University Press, 1994.</p>\r\n<p>Gibbon, Edward.&nbsp; <em>The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire</em>.&nbsp; Penguin, 2001.</p>\r\n<p>Keaveney, Arthur.&nbsp; <em>Sulla</em>.&nbsp; Psychology Press, 2005.</p>\r\n<p>Mayor, Adrienne.&nbsp; <em>The Poison King</em>.&nbsp; Princeton University Press, 2009.</p>\r\n<p>Plutarch.&nbsp; <em>Lives</em>.&nbsp; Oxford University Press, 1999.</p>','2013-06-07','36045588092','mithridates.jpg','mithridates-small.jpg','Mithridates VI','The Poison King who fought Rome for 40 years and drank poison until he was immune to it.','\"In short, he left nothing within the power of man undone or untried to start the greatest possible movement, extending from the Orient to the Occident, to vex, so to speak, the whole world, which was warred upon, tangled in alliances, harassed by pirates, or vexed by the neighborhood of the warfare.\"  - Appian'),('Camazotz the Death Bat','c. 100 BC','N/A','Oaxaca, Mexico','Mythological Mayan God','<p>Camazotz was the gigantic genocidal head-lopping gross fucking ancient Mayan bat god associated with death, sacrifices, caves, blood, and, uh, corn.&nbsp; Equipped with two human arms (one of which holds a knife-like prison shank), razor sharp claws, bat wings, and big goddamned Dracula teeth, Camazotz lived in a huge awesome blood-drenched cave filled with man-sized bloodsucking vampire bats, ruled over the twilight and death realms, wiped out an entire civilization of humankind as punishment for their sins, and once ripped the head off of the most important God in Mayan history and LITERALLY FUCKING REVERSE 360-TOMAHAWK SLAMMED IT THROUGH A REGULATION-SIZE BASKETBALL HOOP just to fuck with the decapitated God&rsquo;s brother and show humanity that if you try and ball with a bus-sized flying Demon Bat he will rain ungodly Monster Jams on your shit so hard you&rsquo;ll need a truck-mounted motorized spatula, a can of Pam the size of a soda machine, and a team of Yugoslavian Master Chefs to peel your ass off the hardwood in one piece.</p>\r\n<p>AND IT WASN&rsquo;T THE SHOES BECAUSE FUCKING BATS DON&rsquo;T EVEN WEAR SHOES WTF</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><iframe src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/g6zqHKd265E\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\"></iframe><br /> BOOM-SHAKA-LAKA!!!!!</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Camazotz&rsquo;s name means either &ldquo;Snatch Bat&rdquo;, &ldquo;Death Bat&rdquo;, or &ldquo;Sudden Bloodletter&rdquo; depending on how you want to translate it, and even though those three things all conjure up wildly different mental images of what the hell was going on here one thing is certain &ndash; you don&rsquo;t want to fuck with the Snatch Bat.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>A ferocious video-gameboss-style Master Demon that lived in the Mayan Underworld of Xibalba, Camazotz the Death Bat was usually depicted with a Vampire Bat face and two arms, one which was carrying a sacrificial victim and the other holding a shank like he knows how to use it.&nbsp; He turned into a statue during the day or went back to a huge Underworld cave known as the House of Bats where the walls dripped with blood and the guano flowed freely, but at night this dude came out, dive bombed his enemies, and sucked them entirely of blood Chupacabra-style.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/537935724254/camazotz2.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The story goes that in the early days of Human History, Camazotz lived in the Underworld and commanded armies of Demons to fight against the Gods.&nbsp; In order for the gods to keep fighting, they demanded human sacrifices from the people, because human blood is kind of like Red Bull and Vodka to Mayan Gods, and they&rsquo;d get ripshit turbocharged in human speedball and have the energy to kick the shit out of the vicious minions of a slam-dunking Underworld demon god.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Well one day the Mayans were being total babies and told the gods they weren&rsquo;t going to sacrifice people anymore, so the gods were like, &ldquo;ok assholes, suit yourself&rdquo; and opened up a Hellmouth that barfed out demons like that fucking shit from <em>Doom II</em> where those big flying Madballs pop out of the thing and shoot lightning at you.&nbsp; Camazotz busted through the portal and IMMEDIATELY KILLED EVERY SINGLE GODDAMNED HUMAN ON THE PLANET.&nbsp; After the &ldquo;impious&rdquo; race of Man had been genocided out in a frenzy of bat fangs and razor-sharp claws, the gods made a bunch of new humans to rule and Camazotz went back to chilling in the Blood Cave.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/537935724254/camazotz3.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Camazotz is of course based on the idea of Vampire Bats, an incredibly cool and disgusting species of bloodsucking nightmare that only exists in the jungles of Central and South America and preys on everything from goats and pigs to humans and cattle.&nbsp; Vampire bats are ugly as fuck, with weird-shaped faces and pig snouts, and their primary food is the life blood of other living organisms.</p>\r\n<p>Here&rsquo;s what a Vampire Bat looks like:</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/537935724254/camazotz5.JPG\" alt=\"\" /><br /> Truly it is the least cutest of all the fur-covered mammals.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Vampire bats are pretty awesome because they&rsquo;re ugly as fuck, and also because they&rsquo;re evolutionarily adapted specifically to drain the gore of other creatures while they&rsquo;re sleeping.&nbsp; Their echolocation is way less powerful than that of regular, stupider breeds of bat, and instead their brain is wired to hear the breathing noises made by large sleeping animals while flying at high speeds through the Central American jungle.&nbsp; They can see infrared radiation like the Predator and detect heat signatures of large mammals, fly almost completely silently, and their saliva has an anticoagulant some jerk scientist oh-so-cleverly named Draculin that makes it so that bite wounds don&rsquo;t clot and just keep on bleeding and bleeding until the bat is done sucking the life out of you.</p>\r\n<p>Oh, this is also cool.&nbsp; Vampire bats are also the only species of bat capable of moving without flying.&nbsp; They run on all fours, and it&rsquo;s goddamned terrifying.&nbsp; Here&rsquo;s a video:</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/qWOUZAa5vlQ\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\"></iframe></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Vampire bats can run across the ground at a decent speed, and can climb walls the same way.&nbsp; Their primary mode of attack is to glide through the forest at the height of about 3 feet off the ground, surveying for prey like horses or pigs.&nbsp; Once they&rsquo;ve found something, they silently land nearby, creepily run over to it like that video above, then sink their fangs in.&nbsp; The bat will drink half its body weight in blood in one sitting, process the blood through its system incredibly fast, excrete out the plasma it doesn&rsquo;t need, then fly off and leave you laying in a filthy pool of blood and bat piss.</p>\r\n<p>Luckily, vampire bats aren&rsquo;t very big, and, aside from the occasional rabies infection, they don&rsquo;t kill humans or anything.&nbsp; They have about a 14-18 inch wingspan, which isn&rsquo;t too bad.&nbsp; Scientists have found fossilized remains of a prehistoric species of Vampire bat known as the Giant Vampire Bat, but it was only like 30% bigger so that&rsquo;s what like two feet across or something?&nbsp; Still not exactly the second coming of Mothra.</p>\r\n<p>None of that seems too horrific and gruesome, and even though some humans have tried to burn out vampire bat populations by taking blowtorches into caves, it&rsquo;s really not worth it.</p>\r\n<p>Now, if the bats were man-sized&hellip; and they were like real vampire bats and lived in colonies ranging from 100 to 2,000 bats&hellip;&nbsp; well, you can see why the Mayan peoples were terrified of caves.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/537935724254/camazotz8.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/537935724254/camazotz6.jpg\" alt=\"\" /><br />Like this, only not totally fake.</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/537935724254/camazotz7.PNG\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/537935724254/camazotz9.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Camazotz shows up again later on in Mayan mythology, playing a minor yet awesome role in the religious text <em>Popol Vuh</em>.&nbsp; The story goes like this:&nbsp; One day this guy and his brother were really awesome at the <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesoamerican_ballgame\">Mayan Ball Game</a>, but they were dunking so hard it pissed off the gods of Xibalba so the Demons challenged the brothers to a <em>Space Jam</em> style deathmatch.&nbsp; The Demons posterized the brothers, schooling them so hard they both died.</p>\r\n<p>Well one day some lady was walking around in the Underworld and she saw the skull of one of the brothers.&nbsp; The skull came to life like <em>Monkey Island </em>and hocked a loogie on the lady, which made her pregnant with twin boys somehow.&nbsp; When the boys were born their half-brothers left them on an anthill to die, but they survived, learned a bunch of magic spells, turned their half-brothers into howler monkeys, and then went after the gods to avenge their fallen father by finally winning the epic streetball showdown against the Mayan Hoops Gods.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;<img style=\"display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;\" src=\"/images/537935724254/camazotz1.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Things were going OK for the brothers, who passed test after test until they came to the House of Bats, where fucking insane vampire bats were flying around all over the place and the bros had to hide out by jumping into a big tube.&nbsp; Well one of the brothers got impatient and popped his head out, and the second he stuck it out there fucking CAMAZOTZ THE DUNK MACHINE swooped in, popped the kid&rsquo;s head off, and double-pump reverse between-the-legs fucking 720 MONSTER JAMMED it while all the other gods stood up and yelled and were all like &ldquo;Ohhhh my!!!&nbsp; The nail in the coffin!!!!&rdquo;</p>\r\n<p>The surviving brother ended up making a fake head for his bro out of a hollowed-out squash, but when the Big Epic Showdown Hoops Game went down the next day the Gods awesomely insisted on using the decapitated head as the ball.&nbsp; Which kicks fucking ass and you know it.&nbsp; The kids of course eventually win, get the head back, defeat the demons, and then morph themselves into the Sun and Moon.</p>\r\n<p>Anyways, that&rsquo;s how our solar system works.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"/images/537935724254/camazotz4.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Links:</p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.mythical-creatures-and-beasts.com/camazotz.html\">http://www.mythical-creatures-and-beasts.com/camazotz.html</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.blueroadrunner.com/camazotz.htm\">http://www.blueroadrunner.com/camazotz.htm</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://demonhunterscompendium.blogspot.com/2012/12/camazotz-death-bat.html\">http://demonhunterscompendium.blogspot.com/2012/12/camazotz-death-bat.html</a></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_Hero_Twins\">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_Hero_Twins</a></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Sources</p>\r\n<p>Bingham, Anne and Jeremy Roberts.&nbsp; <em>South and Meso-American Mythology A to Z</em>.&nbsp; Infobase, 2010.</p>\r\n<p><em>International Wildlife Encyclopedia</em>.&nbsp; Marshall Cavendish, 2002.</p>\r\n<p>Melton, J. Gordon.&nbsp; <em>The Vampire Book</em>.&nbsp; Visible Ink, 2010.</p>\r\n<p><em>Popol Vuh</em>.&nbsp; Trans. Delia Goetz and Sylvanius Griswold Morley.&nbsp; Courier Dover, 2003.</p>\r\n<p>Sykes, Egerton and Alan Kendall.&nbsp; <em>Who&rsquo;s Who in Non-Classical Mythology</em>.&nbsp; Psychology Press, 2002.</p>','2014-01-03','537935724254','camazotz.jpg','camazotz-small.jpg','Camazotz the Death Bat','Blood-sucking Mayan Bat God of death, destruction, and TURBO MONSTER JAMS.','“They then put them into the House of Bats.  There was nothing but bats inside this house, the house of Camazotz, a large animal, whose weapons for killing were like a dry point, and instantly those who came into their presence perished.”'),