('Yagyu Jubei Mitsuyoshi','1607','April 12, 1650','Yagyu no Sato, Nara Prefecture','17th-century Japanese Samurai','<p>The Ninjas vs. Pirates debate is one that will probably rage on until the end of time.&nbsp; I have previously proffered forth <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/email-ninjapirate.html\">my own take on the subject</a> on the subject, one which I hoped would be somewhat definitive, but it seems as though some arguments can be settled by nothing short of tremendous amounts of bloodshed and dead bodies.&nbsp; Since the Internet as a gladiatorial medium isn\'t particularly exactly equipped to deal with any acts of violence more substantial than \"OMG F U HOMO\", this is probably one meaningless dispute which will remain forever contested.</p>\r\n<p>So, what if I were to tell you that there was once a man &ndash; a Japanese samurai no less &ndash; who embodied the best aspects of BOTH ninjas AND pirates, while actually possessing neither?&nbsp; If your answer was, \"I\'d shit a brick,\" then you are probably correct.</p>\r\n<p>Yagyu Jubei Mitsuyoshi was a hardcore swordsman who wandered the countryside of 17th century Feudal Japan searching for faces that needed to be forcibly hacked in half longways.&nbsp; During his career as a katana-swinging maniac, he earned a reputation as a stone-cold asskicker who was almost peerless in his mastery of the blade, and was also rightly feared by the populace because of the intimidating-as-shit pirate-style eyepatch he wore over his left eye at all times.&nbsp; According to legend, he suffered a pretty serious case of getting his eye poked out while undergoing a particularly brutal training exercise, and he is said to have personally fashioned a makeshift patch out of the sword guard of a katana blade.&nbsp; So that\'s the pirate shit.&nbsp; As for the ninjas, the fact that much of this man\'s life is a complete mystery has lead to a great deal of somewhat-plausible circumstantial evidence that he spent twelve years as a shinobi, going on crazy secret, off-the-books undercover operations for the Tokugawa Shogunate.</p>\r\n<p>Of course, I should also mention that Jubei probably wasn\'t a ninja or a pirate.&nbsp; A lot of people with fancy-pants \"History PhDs\" or whatever stupidly believe that he didn\'t actually wear an eyepatch or work as a ninja, but that seems like bullshit to me, because this is an awesome angle and I really REALLY want it to be true.&nbsp; But fuck them.&nbsp; What we do know is that this badass swordsman came from pretty righteous stock.&nbsp; His grandfather was kind of a big dog in the ranks of Imperial Japan, having written several highly-respected tomes of military strategy, and his dad was a battle-hardened samurai face-melter who had distinguished himself as a peerless asskicker fighting alongside the Tokugawas at the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600.&nbsp; When fellow badass Ieyasu Tokugawa conquered all of Japan and unified it under one shogun for the first time in I think like a thousand years or something, he brought Jubei\'s dad in to teach swordery to his family and his most trusted advisors.&nbsp; Now, you KNOW that during these days motherfucking samurai took their swordplay seriously, so to be honored as the personal asskicking instructor to the Shogun of Japan was kind of a big deal.&nbsp; Jubei\'s dad served three different Shoguns with honor, and when he eventually kicked it, he passed the mantle on to his son.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/jubei2.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Jubei was a pretty decent choice to teach the fine arts of face-beatery to the ruler of Japan &ndash; this guy spent every day of his youth learning the fine art of strategic appendage-severing from his father (the highest-ranking swordmaster in Japan) and, as you can imagine, by the time he was ready to take over as the head honcho, he was seriously fucking awesome.&nbsp; One legend that effectively summarizes this point goes a little something like this:</p>\r\n<p>Once upon a time, Jubei visited a wealthy and powerful feudal lord, and the lord&rsquo;s top champion challenged Jubei to a friendly sparring match.&nbsp; The two men took up wooden swords, stood across from each other, and then proceeded to lash out simultaneously with lightning-quick strikes.&nbsp; In one movement, both men smashed their weapons together, and then Jubei stood back and bowed.&nbsp; The samurai brought his weapon back up, not fully understanding what was going on, and lunged at Jubei once more.&nbsp; Again, the swords clashed in a single strike that was almost too quick for the human eye, and again, Jubei stood back and bowed.&nbsp; The samurai was totally pissed now &ndash; &ldquo;Why the fuck are you bowing and shit, you douche!&rdquo; and Jubei was just like, &ldquo;Well, because I totally pwned your ass, bitch, so deal with that.&rdquo;</p>\r\n<p>Well the moron samurai was super ripshit pissed at this point, because he seriously thought both fights were stalemates (idiot).&nbsp; Jubei calmly informed the samurai that if he honestly thought both fights were even, then he was obviously an incompetent ass-head.&nbsp; So the samurai pulled out his real sword, and challenged Jubei to fight for real.&nbsp; Jubei rolled his eyes, sighed, and promptly sliced the dude in half Darth Maul-style with one swing of his blade.</p>\r\n<p>Kurosawa later adapted this tale into <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DR45hbTSUIQ\">that totally awesome scene</a> from the Seven Samurai, a battle that still stands out as one of the best duels in the history of samurai cinema.</p>\r\n<p>When he wasn\'t violently bifurcating any dumbshits that foolishly thought they could mess with him, Jubei went out and invented a badass weapon &ndash; the Yagyuzue (it was so awesome and hardcore that apparently he was honor-bound to name it after himself).&nbsp; Basically, this shit looks like an innocuous lacquered bamboo walking stick roughly four feet in length, but it was specially designed, hardened, and reinforced so that it could break bones and deflect glancing blows from a fucking samurai sword.&nbsp; So here you think you&rsquo;re going to make a quick buck taking advantage of some old half-blind crazy person with bad knees, and then next thing you know, Jubei is flipping out, parrying your pathetic attempt at an attack, capping you in the kneecap with a steel-reinforced death club, and generally just caning the fuck out of you like an out-of-control Singaporean prison warden.&nbsp; The sweet thing was that the Yagyuzue was actually longer than a katana, giving Jubei a small (but significant) reach advantage over most samurai, and he was known for his ability to knock the swords of out peoples&rsquo; hands with his cane and then shatter their femurs with a well-placed swing.&nbsp; As if you needed any more convincing as to why this is totally rad to the max, this technique of hardcore, back-alley cane-fighting would later be adapted by badasses such as <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/jackson.html\">Andrew Jackson</a> and Sherlock Holmes to wreak serious blunt force trauma on the craniums of their puny enemies, which utterly rocks.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/jubei4.gif\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>Re-enactment.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>That\'s just how Japan\'s ultimate one-eyed asskicker operated.&nbsp; This motherfucker was all about using deceptive weapons for strategic ass-smashing purposes, and basically just killing you repeatedly with many different kinds of regular household items and everyday implements.&nbsp; For instance, one legend claims that he once pissed off a hardcore ninja, and the ninja whipped out ten shurikens and pitched them at Jubei&rsquo;s face in rapid succession.&nbsp; Jubei didn&rsquo;t even flinch &ndash; he whipped out a fucking metal fan (!!), and used it to slap all ten ninja stars out of mid-air.&nbsp; Then I assume he rammed the fan so far up the guy&rsquo;s ass that the dude could have been used as an umbrella, but the sources aren\'t really clear about that.</p>\r\n<p>His non-flashy, straight-for-the-jugular style of fighting also translated to his personal life as well -- Jubei was known to be a no-bullshit kind of guy who told always called it like he saw it, which is something I think everyone can probably respect.&nbsp; He never sugar-coated his opinions, didn\'t suck up to his superiors, and didn\'t give a shit whether you liked him or not.</p>\r\n<p>Well, this attitude, while certainly epitomizing badassitude, eventually backfired rather spectacularly for our hero - despite being spontaneously awesome all of the goddamned time, the shogun eventually dismissed Jubei from his service for being a total jackass.&nbsp; Apparently, according to the story, Jubei drank a shitload of sake at a party, got totally hammered, and gave a toast in the Shogun&rsquo;s honor that was so inappropriate and blatantly offensive that he was fired on the spot.&nbsp; It was all good though &ndash; twelve years later, the shogun changed his mind and brought Jubei back into Imperial service &ndash; and Yagyu, for his part, never made another toast in his entire life.&nbsp; This was probably a wise idea.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/jubei1.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>So, this begs the question:&nbsp; What happened in the twelve years in between?&nbsp; Well, quite honestly, we have no fucking clue.&nbsp; The dude simply vanished off the face of the earth for over a decade, and absolutely no record exists of his movements or travels during this period.&nbsp; Isn&rsquo;t that nuts?&nbsp; This mysterious absence from the mortal realm is what has led to the legends that he turned to the life of a Shadow Warrior &ndash; a lot of people think he went off and did some awesome flying/stabbing hardcore ninja shit, working as a secret agent for the Tokugawa and doing all kinds of CIA black-ops insanity, but quite honestly for all we know he could just as easily have ventured to the underwater city of Atlantis and single-handedly executed a complete genocide of all Merfolk on the face of the Earth.&nbsp; It&rsquo;s really anybody&rsquo;s guess.&nbsp; The safe money is probably on him donning some nondescript clothing and traveling the Japanese countryside honing his skills as a badass swordfighter and having crazy, <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/musashi.html\">Miyamoto Musashi</a>-style adventures chopping people into shark chum.&nbsp; Wherever he was, and whatever he was doing, it worked, because when he showed up back on the scene in 1629 pretty much everybody in Japan recognized the fact that he was totally sweet.</p>\r\n<p>Yagyu Jubei triumphantly returned from the ether, served as the martial arts instructor to the shogun for a while, taught his school of fighting to a ton of students, wrote a bunch of books about how to effectively kick asses, and then abruptly died in 1650 when he became so awesome that his heart spontaneously combusted.&nbsp; Nowadays, the image of the mysterious one-eyed ninja/samurai roaming the land busting peoples\' asses with a giant ass-busting katana has become highly romanticized by people with a lot of imagination and not much primary source material, which is cool with me.&nbsp; Hell, like I said, a lot of folks out there are still arguing about whether or not he even actually wore an eyepatch, so that pretty much shows you what we know about this dude\'s life.&nbsp; Still, despite the notable setback that most historians probably couldn\'t pick this guy out of a lineup, Yagyu appears in all kinds of pop culture shit, video games, anime, blah blah blah, and is still the subject of tons of wild/awesome/ridiculous speculation.&nbsp; For his part, what we do know definitively is that during his day he was considered the greatest swordsman to walk the face of Japan, which was a pretty hefty compliment back in a time where pretty much every Japanese man with at least one functioning appendage knew how to swing a katana with enough force to decapitate an emu.&nbsp; His swordmanship techniques are still studied today by martial arts masters throughout Japan, and the legend surrounding his mysterious and badass life only continues to swell with time.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/jubei.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Links:</span><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yagyu_Jubei\">Wikipedia</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://mll.kenyon.edu/%7Ejapanese02/J28f99/schamise/Yagyu/Jubei.htm\">Yagyu Mitsuyoshi</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.japan-101.com/history/yagyu_jubei_mitsuyoshi.htm\">Japan 101</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> Lowry, Dave.&nbsp; &ldquo;Bottoms Up&rdquo;.&nbsp; <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Black Belt Magazine</span>.&nbsp; June 1988.<br /><br /> Lowry, Dave.&nbsp; <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Traditions</span>.&nbsp; Tuttle, 2002.<br /><br /> Mol, Serge.&nbsp; <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Classical Weaponry of Japan</span>.&nbsp; Kodansha International, 2003.<br /><br /> Turnbull, Steven.&nbsp; <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">The Samurai Swordsman</span>.&nbsp; Tuttle, 2008. </span></p>','2009-05-29','516368524906','jubei3.jpg','jubei3 - Copy.jpg','Yagyu Jubei Mitsuyoshi','Wandering samurai/ninja/pirate of Feudal Japan.',''),('Robert Blair Mayne','January 11, 1915','December 14, 1955','County Down, Northern Ireland, UK','WWII British Commando','<p>Robert Blair \"Paddy\" Mayne\'s story starts much in the same way as the opening scene of the first <em>Gears of War</em> game &ndash; the grizzled, jaded, ludicrously-muscular hero sits alone in a dark, rat-infested cell with no hope of escape and only his own violent angstiness to keep him company, when suddenly, a light appears at the door, and an old friend shows up with a double-edged proposition &ndash; sit here and rot to death like a chump, or undertake a mega-dangerous mission so insurvivable and ultra-violent that the only way you\'re coming home is in a Chinese restaurant take-out box.</p>\r\n<p>In the case of Major Mayne, a 6\'2\", 200-pound British Commando with a thirst for violence rivaled only by his thirst for Guiness, rotting in a prison cell in Egypt awaiting court-martial wasn\'t all it was cracked up to be.&nbsp; Sure, it was for an incident in which he coldcocked a superior officer and then chased that motherfucker out of the officers\' mess while swinging a bayonet like a knife and unleashing an epic stream of profanity so withering that it caused the guy\'s mother to spontaneously burst into tears from three thousand miles away, but a little bit of Colonel-punching should be enough to keep him from tearing Nazis in half with his fists.&nbsp; Of course, this hadn\'t been the Ulsterman\'s first run-in with authority either &ndash; a few months before the attempted stabbing of a superior asshole, Mayne had gotten some less-than-stellar service from a bartender, and instead of just stiffing the dude on the tip he grabbed the guy by the throat, dragged him to the middle of the crowded nightclub, and made the guy \"dance\" while emptying his revolver around the guy\'s feet &ndash; but it was certainly looking like this would be the one that was going to send Paddy Mayne packing back home to Northern Ireland with a dishonorable discharge, a criminal record, and a probably-unhealthy amount of pent-up rage.</p>\r\n<p>That is, until the intrepid Sir Colonel Captain Lord Master of the Sith David Stirling showed up at Mayne\'s prison cell with an inescapably badass <em>Dirty Dozen</em>-style offer:&nbsp; I can get the charges dropped for you old boy, but only if you agree to serve as my second-in-command in a dangerous new covert unit I\'m developing.&nbsp; The mission?&nbsp; Leading a small, elite squad of 8-10 battle-hardened soldiers on foot through the Sahara Desert, infiltrating deep behind German lines, fucking shit up, and hopefully getting back to base before Jerry gets his act together and chops you into ground beef with a large assortment of various machine guns.&nbsp; The unit?&nbsp; Simply known as \"L\" Detachment &ndash; though today we know it by a different name &ndash; the British Special Air Service.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/mayne1.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>SAS guys looking hard as fuck.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>As a founding member of the SAS, it was Paddy Mayne\'s job to lead small, fast-moving teams of hard-hitting demolitions experts through the fucking Sahara, brave 130-degree temperatures during the day and sub-zero temps at night, climb hundred foot-high dunes, endure bugs, sandstorms, flash floods, dehydration, and enough sand in the underwear to build a friggin\' award-winning sand castle, then infiltrate <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/rommel.html\">Rommel</a>\'s airfields and do battle with a superior force without any hope of reinforcement or rescue.&nbsp; The task was super fucking dangerous &ndash; on the SAS\'s first mission, six teams of 10 men parachuted into a desert storm in the middle of the night and only a third of the men ended up escaping with their lives, but that didn\'t deter Mayne from kicking ass.&nbsp; This guy was the 1936 Irish Universities\' Heavyweight Boxing Champion and a man who had made a name for himself playing international rugby tournaments for the British and Irish National Team, and he wasn\'t about to back down just because he lost 40 of his 60 soldiers on his first mission, no matter how much that sounded like it might have been a good idea.</p>\r\n<p>Realizing that skydiving into sandstorms bit a giant goat nutsack, Mayne and Stirling changed their tactics and started taking open-top jeeps behind enemy lines, approaching German installations on foot in the middle of the night, sabotaging all the aircraft they could find, and then escaping back to their vehicles and hauling ass through the sands road rally style.&nbsp; When this proved to be super successful and the Germans and Italians stepped up their defenses, the SAS started equipping their jeeps with twin-linked Vickers machine guns and making their raids even MORE fucking balls-out, riding a squadron of these machine gun cars in formation right onto the fucking enemy airstrip in broad daylight, guns blazing, shooting up the planes on the runway, and then hauling ass outta there while the Fascist ground crews tried to figure out their dicks from their spanners.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/mayne2.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>When it came to being awesome desert-combat style, the hard-drinking, hard-fighting Paddy Mayne was the fucking shit.&nbsp; Like on one mission this guy crawled through barbed wire (probably shredding it apart with his teeth in the process), personally destroyed 24 German fighter planes with thermite grenades (not to be confused with Thermal Detonators), then kicked in the door to the pilots\' rec room and hosed the entire place down with a Tommy Gun until all that was left was dead bodies and half-eaten lasagna.&nbsp; While expressionlessly walking away from the fiery carnage in super slow-motion (not looking at the explosions, of course), Mayne happened to find one Me-109 that somehow hadn\'t been blown to shit, so, realizing that he was out of handheld explosives, the big Irishman just casually walked over to the aircraft, ripped the fucking control panel out of the cockpit with his bare fucking hands, and walked out into the desert holding it like it was the severed head of a slain enemy.&nbsp; And no, I\'m not making that part up &ndash; this is seriously a thing that happened in real life. A week later, Mayne drove his jeep army onto a different airfield and personally destroyed another 27 fighters, giving him 51 aircraft kills in two days.&nbsp; If he had done that shit from the cockpit of a Spitfire Mark I, he\'d have been a fighter ace 10 times over.&nbsp; By the time the SAS was done, they\'d leveled over 100 enemy aircraft.</p>\r\n<p>After doing this shit for a few months/years and battering the German and Italian war machine from deep behind their own lines, Colonel Stirling ended up getting captured during a raid and Paddy Mayne took over as commander of the 1st SAS Regiment.&nbsp; 1 SAS folded in with the Special Boat Service to form the Special Raiding Squadron, and as the leader of the SRS Mayne undertook a shitload of insanely dangerous missions to spearhead the Allied landings on Sicily and mainland Italy in 1943.&nbsp; On one raid, Mayne and his team hit the beach, climbed up a sheer cliff face in the middle of the night, attacked an Italian coastal defense base, captured 700 soldiers, destroyed all of their artillery, and drank all their best wine.&nbsp; Another time he went a little less with the sneaky, personally led the SAS and Royal Marines off an assault craft under heavy enemy machine gun fire, captured the town of Termoli, and held out for three days against an intense series of counter-attacks by elite German infantry units.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/mayne3.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Once Italy was under control, Mayne continued his streak of being involved at the center of every fucking military operation in the Western Theater by parachuting into France to sabotage rail networks, coordinate missions with the French Resistance, and destroy German communications and transportation lines so that the Nazis wouldn\'t be able to bring reinforcements to their units on the Normandy coast (this was a pretty important mission, BT-Dubs).&nbsp; Mayne\'s commander had initially told the gung-ho Lieutenant-Colonel that he was way too high a rank to be infiltrating deep behind enemy lines, but Mayne managed to convince his boss to let him go by promising that he wouldn\'t get involved with any direct-fire actions.</p>\r\n<p>A few months later, Mayne single-handedly captured the town of Oldenburg armed only with a fucking jeep and a Bren gun.</p>\r\n<p>Paddy had been leading 1 SAS ahead to clear a path for the Canadian 4th Armored Division when he heard reports that the lead vehicles in the convoy had been ambushed.&nbsp; Mayne hauled ass to the front lines to find that the Germans had cut off a large element of his force and had them surrounded, outnumbered, and pinned down by a large force of Nazi knob-goblins.</p>\r\n<p>Mayne immediately jumped out of the jeep, ran into the closest house, cleared it out with his fucking Colt .45 pistol, grabbed a Bren machine gun off a dead dude, and sprinted back to his jeep.&nbsp; He jumped in, ordered a guy to man the Vickers on the back of the jeep, and then hauled ass right into the middle of the fucking ambush like the Master Chief tearing through a Covenant-Flood warzone on a goddamned Warthog.&nbsp; Blowing through the Germans, Paddy Effin\' Mayne held the wheel with one hand and rested the Bren gun on the dash so he could shoot and drive at the same time and in the most Xtreme baller way possible.&nbsp; When he reached the cut-off section of his unit, Mayne had his gunner provide covering fire while he personally loaded his wounded men into the jeep, and once everyone was on board he burned rubber out of there and got his boys back to friendly lines.</p>\r\n<p>Oh, and then he regrouped his unit and personally led an attack that flanked the German defenders, wiped out their entire force, and captured the town.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/mayne4.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>\"What the fuck is that?\"<br />\"That\'s me Bren gun.\"<br />\"Couldn\'t you have thought of something a little more practical?\"</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>After a long and glorious career kicking the shit out of Nazi cocksuckers everywhere he could find them and somehow managing to survive through the most hellaciously ass-sucking environments and missions the Second World War could throw at him, Mayne finally retired from the SAS in 1945 and took up a much tamer career as a chicken farmer / Antarctic polar explorer.&nbsp; He remains the only person in the British military to receive the Distinguished Service Order four times.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/mayne5.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.sasspecialairservice.com/paddy-mayne.html\">SAS Men</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/rugby_union/article6908948.ece\">Sunday Times</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paddy_Mayne\">Wikipedia</a></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Sources:</span><br /><br /><span> Arostegui, Martin C. <em>Twilight Warriors</em>. Macmillan, 1997.<br /><br /> Brinkley, Douglas. <em>The WWII Desk Reference</em>. HarperCollins, 2004.<br /><br /> Cawthorne, Nigel. <em>Military Commanders</em>. Enchanted Lion, 2004.<br /><br /> Scholey, Pete and Frederick Forsyth. <em>Who Dares Wins</em>. Osprey, 2008<br /><br /> Shortt, James. <em>The Special Air Service</em>. Osprey, 1981. </span></p>','2011-09-02','54504828545','mayne2.jpg','mayne.jpg','Paddy Mayne','Founding member of the SAS and hardcore WWII commando.','\"When you enter a room full of the enemy, kill the first one that moves –\r\nhe has started to think and is therefore dangerous.\"'),('Ronald C. Speirs','April 20, 1920','April 11, 2007','Edinburgh, Scotland','WWII American Soldier','<p>It\'s Memorial Day weekend here in the United States -- a special time of the year when we all take a moment to honor the memories of all those brave men and women who died in the service of our country.&nbsp; Our friends at the History Channel, for their part, generally choose to acknowledge this solemn day by basically running the incredible HBO miniseries Band of Brothers non-stop for like seventy-two hours straight, which, quite honestly, is something pretty much all of us should be able to get behind.</p>\r\n<p>So I guess let me start by saying that American paratroopers are seriously fucking badass.&nbsp; I mean, there really aren\'t a whole lot of people out there willing to jump out of a fast-moving airplane several hundred feet above the ground under ideal conditions, let alone attempt it in the middle of the pitch-black goddamned night wearing sixty pounds of battle gear while crazy Germans are trying to ram a bunch of anti-aircraft flak cannons up your ass.&nbsp; While you&rsquo;d think it would be basically impossible to get anybody to actually <em>volunteer</em> for this line of duty, the paratroopers don\'t seem to give a shit.&nbsp; These guys just go out there and do their job, and they don\'t really give a crap about trivial garbage like blindly leaping into unfamiliar territory teeming with hidden enemy soldiers or constantly being surrounded by people trying to kill them.</p>\r\n<p>Now, among this aforementioned brotherhood of hard-drinking, hard-fighting badasses, few men have been more respected or feared than Captain Ronald Speirs of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division.&nbsp; This tough-as-fuck Scottish-born Bostonian crotch-stomped his way across Europe in World War II, generally just kicking asses, ruining German lives, and making a name for himself as a completely fucking insane asskicker who didn\'t show fear, didn\'t back down, and didn\'t hesitate to pop a cap in the face of anyone who pissed him off for any reason.</p>\r\n<p>Speirs was a Lieutenant in Company D of the 506th when he combat dropped into France in 1944 and immediately went to work softening up Nazi positions for the D-Day assault on the beaches of Normandy.&nbsp; He probably best effected this when he and Captain Dick Winters led a dozen men on the Brecourt Manor Assault &ndash; single-handedly attacking the four German 105mm artillery guns that were shelling the American positions on Utah Beach.&nbsp; During the battle, it was Spiers and his boys that captured the fourth artillery piece in an appropriately badass manner - by charging across a couple hundred feet of open ground (running full-speed towards a gargantuan gun barrel roughly the width of a pimped-out Volkswagen), leaping muzzle-first into the German entrenchments, and taking down a couple squads of elite Nazi paratroopers by bodyslamming them onto some TNT.&nbsp; To this day, the Brecourt Manor Assault is studied at West Point as one of the best examples of small-unit tactics and large-testicled badassitude ever demonstrated.&nbsp; In fact, I\'m pretty sure the after-action report is required reading in Asskicking 101.</p>\r\n<p>That\'s just how Speirs operated &ndash; the dude was completely fearless, aggressive, and didn\'t give a shit about trivial things like bullets flying around his head or artillery shells blowing up in his face.&nbsp; He was going to kick serious asses, and nothing was going to deter him from his mission to grab a couple SS troopers and crack their helmets together so hard that their heads exploded.&nbsp; And by the same token, Speirs inspired the sort of fear that you generally don\'t hear about any more these days.&nbsp; Countless rumors circulated about this guy being an insane, cold-blooded asskicker &ndash; some claimed that he once lined up twenty to thirty German prisoners of war, gave them cigarettes, and then gunned down all but on of them.&nbsp; Another rumor circulated that he shot one of his own Sergeants in the head for being drunk and/or repeatedly disobeying direct orders on the battlefield.&nbsp; Speirs, for his part, did nothing to dissuade these rumors.&nbsp; He, like a real badass, didn\'t need to talk about his about how fucking hardcore he was, and the fact that he never confirmed or denied any of these rumors only made everybody under his command fear him that much more.&nbsp; Sure, maybe earning a reputation as a man who will just whip out his sidearm and shoot you in the balls for the most trivial of offenses might not be the most ethical way to keep your men in line, but you really can\'t dispute its effectiveness.&nbsp; Nobody wants to argue with the meanest, toughest son-of-a-bitch in the whole regiment.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/speirs2.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Speirs also won the Silver Star during the Arnhem Campaign for going on a borderline-insane one-man &ldquo;lone wolf&rdquo; reconnaissance mission deep into enemy territory.&nbsp; When he was ordered to scout enemy positions on the far side of the Neder Rijn River near Rendijk, Holland, Spiers (in the true balls-out fashion we&rsquo;ve all come to expect from the man) just waited until the middle of the night, jumped in the water, swam across the river, and started sneaking around the enemy camp like a ninja with a Tommy gun.&nbsp; He scouted out positions of enemy machine gun nests, mortar teams, and artillery positions, stole an inflatable raft, and then burned rubber out of there while the German gunners took potshots at him.&nbsp; He got capped by an MG-42 while hauling ass across the river, but this apparently only served to make him more angry and bitter.&nbsp; Speirs made it back to Allied lines intact, and his intel was vital to the combat operations of his unit.</p>\r\n<p>What Ron Speirs is best known for, however, is the utterly fucking badass way he handled the assault on the Belgian town of Foy during the infamous Battle of the Bulge. After somehow surviving a brutal siege of Bastogne in the dead of winter, where the 101st Airborne was completely surrounded and getting pounded day and night by the most elite SS Panzer Regiments the Germans had to offer, the men of Company E of the 506th Parachute Infantry launched a counter-attack on Foy.&nbsp; Well their commanding officer, Lieutenant Norman Dike, was basically a worthless moron who couldn\'t lead his way out of a quart-sized Ziploc freezer bag if you gave him a welding torch and a machete.&nbsp; Dike split up the assault team into two forces, and promptly went about getting both sides of his divided force utterly ass-reamed by German tanks and artillery.&nbsp; After a couple minutes of watching his best buddies get torn apart by the Nazis, Major Dick Winters had enough of that bullshit.&nbsp; He grabbed the first officer he saw, who just so happened to be Ronald Speirs, and told him to go deal with the situation.</p>\r\n<p>Speirs didn\'t even fucking blink.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/speirs3.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The young, battle-hardened officer just grabbed his submachine gun and started sprinting across the field toward Foy, determined to bail out the pinned-down Americans and shove his foot up some Nazi asses.&nbsp; He ran over to Lieutenant Dike, who at this point was basically so shell-shocked and brain-dead that he probably couldn\'t remember how to tie his bootlaces, and told him he was taking over as company commander.&nbsp; Dike, utterly awed by being in the presence of such an unflinching hardass who obviously meant business, simply nodded.</p>\r\n<p>Spiers ran over, gave out orders for a mortar team to take out a German sniper position, regrouped the soldiers, and provided Easy Company with some much-needed tactical direction.&nbsp; The assault continued, morale was bolstered, and the Americans stopped getting their fucking asses handed to them on a silver platter.</p>\r\n<p>Then there was this whole issue of the assault force being stupidly divided into two teams, neither one really coordinating properly with the other. Speirs had a plan there, too, and it\'s got to be one of the most awesome/badass/crazy battlefield plans ever devised &ndash; Ron Speirs just grabbed his rifle and fucking ran directly through the German positions to reach the Americans on the other side.&nbsp; No shit, he fucking blew past Nazi artillery crews, riflemen, and Tiger tanks like he was out for a run around Boston Common on a quiet Sunday morning.</p>\r\n<p>At this point basically every German firearm in the town of Foy was trying to bust a chunk of lead into Lieutenant Speirs\' brain, but he didn\'t give a crap.&nbsp; He ran through the streets, bullets and explosions going off all around him, and reached the Americans on the other side.&nbsp; Then, once he gave them his updated orders, he fucking ran BACK THROUGH THE GODDAMNED TOWN to his original position.&nbsp; How nuts do you have to be?!</p>\r\n<p>The plan worked;&nbsp; Speirs emerged unharmed, and the 101st captured Foy.&nbsp; Not only is this completely awesome, but it also makes for <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_XSQ_kQedQ\">the greatest scene</a> in the entire Band of Brothers miniseries.&nbsp; I just love the look on the faces of those 88 crewmen when Speirs blows by them like a camouflaged lightning bolt.</p>\r\n<p>Speirs made Captain after the battle, and was placed in command of Company E.&nbsp; He led Easy Company through the rest of the war, oversaw the capture of Hitler\'s Eagle\'s Nest, and beat the shit out of some punk soldier who flipped out and shot one of his own men (\"When you talk to an officer, you say \'sir\'.\")&nbsp; After the fall of the Third Reich, He still hadn\'t had his fill of ass-kicking, so he decided to stay in Europe despite the fact that he had more than enough \"points\" to go home.&nbsp; Hell, he didn\'t even limit his face-wrecking to the Nazis &ndash; after World War II, he commanded a rifle company in the Korean War, fought in Laos, served as an intelligence officer working against the Soviets in the Cold War, and was the US ambassador of Spandau Prison in Berlin, where he personally ensured that ex-Nazi prisoners-of-war didn\'t escape (they didn\'t).&nbsp; He passed away in April 2007, one of the toughest motherfuckers to ever wear the uniform and a man that nobody &ndash; even the most hardcore US Army Paratroopers &ndash; wanted to cross.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/speirs4.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Links:</span><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Speirs\" target=\"blank\">Wikipedia</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.heroesforever.nl/Ronald%20C.%20Speirs.htm\" target=\"blank\">Heroes Forever</a></p>\r\n<p><br /><br /></p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Sources:</span><br /><br /><span> Ambrose, Stephen.&nbsp; <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Band of Brothers</span>.&nbsp; Simon &amp; Schuster, 2001.<br /><br /> Winters, Richard D.&nbsp; <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Beyond Band of Brothers</span>.&nbsp; Berkley, 2006. </span></p>','2009-05-22','97098792515','speirs.jpg','speirs - Copy.jpg','Ron Speirs','The cold-blooded Captain of Easy Company.','\"The only hope you have is to accept the fact that you\'re already dead.  The sooner you accept that, the sooner you\'ll be able to function as a soldier is supposed to function: without mercy, without compassion, without remorse.  All war depends upon it.\"'),('Isabella of France','1295','August 22, 1358','Paris, France','Medieval French Politician','<p>Queen Isabella, the infamous \"She-Wolf of France\", was born in 1295 in... well, France.&nbsp; The daughter of the French King Philip le Bel and descended from the great Norman asskicker William the Conqueror, Isabella\'s destiny was to be far more exciting and bloody than that of most Medieval noblewomen &ndash; her crazy, insane life smashing peoples\' asses across the British countryside would include giant booze-laden parties, face-crushing vengeance, and wild monkey sex, and by the time she was done she would be forever remembered as the only Queen of England to ever order the execution of the English King.</p>\r\n<p>Life started out innocuously enough for the young woman known as Isabella of France (or, alternately, Isabella the Fair).&nbsp; At the age of fourteen she was set-up in an arranged marriage with the twenty-three year old King Edward II of England, who by all accounts he was considered to be the handsomest man in Europe.&nbsp; So she could have done worse.&nbsp; They were married in an opulent ceremony in Boulogne, France, and everybody was totally pumped up because she was a totally smoking-hot babe and everybody thought these royal newlyweds were like the Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston of fourteenth-century Europe.</p>\r\n<p>However, things didn\'t work out that great for the happy couple.&nbsp; You see, it turns out that in this particular real-life soap opera, the role of Angelina Jolie was actually played by some dude named Piers Gaveston.&nbsp; No sooner had the joyful newlyweds arrived in England than Eddie went out and gave Gaveston a bunch of jewels and shit that he received as part of Isabella\'s dowry, and told him how much better he was than his annoying wife.&nbsp; This was a serious slap in the face to the young Queen, but insult was soon added to injury, and before long Gaveston actually held a higher position of honor in the King\'s court than that of Queen Isabella.</p>\r\n<p>That shit would not fly, and as we will see, Queen Isabella wasn\'t the sort of chick you wanted to step to.&nbsp; It didn\'t take long for the vengeful monarch to associate herself with a bunch of jealous-ass nobles who completely hated Gaveston\'s guts (the dude was kind of an arrogant prick, and pretty much all nobles are inherently jealous of anybody with more influence over the king than themselves), and when Edward II didn\'t have the good sense to banish Gaveston from the realm for his heinous douchebaggery, Isabella and her homedogs snatched the dude up, dragged him screaming from his castle, chopped off his dome, and paraded his headless corpse around town strapped to a ladder for some reason.&nbsp; When the King got super-pissed and wanted to have the barons executed for treason, Isabella worked her magic and made sure he pardoned them instead.</p>\r\n<p>With Gaveston out of the way, there was a period of general marital peace in England that lasted roughly ten years.&nbsp; The couple drank a bunch of mead, wore some awesome-looking hats, fought a couple wars against the Scottish, and partied hardier than an Andrew W.K. album. Eventually Isabella had a kid (the future King Edward III), who would go on to be a super-badass war hero who would lead the English to epic victories in the Hundred Years\' War, and everybody thought that this was totally sweet to the max because, as we all know, Queens in the Middle Ages were typically measured solely based on their abilities to successfully produce human male children.&nbsp; We\'re pretty sure that Edward was the dad, but the 1990s Hollywood blockbuster <em>Braveheart</em> seems to think that <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/wallace.html\">William Wallace</a> might need Maury Povitch to come out and give him a paternity test.&nbsp; If there were any truth to that hypothesis (which there isn\'t), that could only count as serious bonus points for Queen Izzy.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/isabella2.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Anyways, despite the fact that she popped out a future heir to the English throne, it wasn\'t long before Isabella once again had to compete for her own husband\'s attention.&nbsp; This time, her chief opponent was a dude named Hugh Despenser - a guy who nowadays is pretty much hatefully remembered by all Britons as a complete fucking bastard - and his father, also named Hugh Despenser, who was also utterly douchey.&nbsp; Between all of the King Edwards and all of the Hugh Despensers, you kind of get the impression that Medieval Englishmen weren\'t really very creative in their naming conventions, but I guess that\'s really beside the point.</p>\r\n<p>Anyways, the Hugh Despensers were basically little more than opportunistic dillholes who enjoyed using their elevated positions of power to confiscate money and land from the less fortunate and then take a dump on their heads for no reason at all.&nbsp; These guys were wardens of the forests, and they loved to arrest innocent people for \"poaching\", kill them, imprison their children, and steal all of their land.&nbsp; They also extorted funds from the Church, pimp-slapped Gandhi, kicked puppies, and left the toilet seat up in the Royal Washroom like ALL THE FUCKING TIME.&nbsp; Isabella thought that all of this was pretty horrible shit, but every time she tried to talk smack to them, the King responded with some variation of the time-honored slogan \"Bros before hos\".</p>\r\n<p>Frustrated that her protests were going nowhere, Isabella just decided to deal with the situation in the same manner in which badasses handle shit.&nbsp; She was the fucking Queen, and wasn\'t going to be blown off for some nutsack aristocrat jackasses who thought they could front on the goddamned She-Wolf of France.&nbsp; She rounded up the afore-mentioned disgruntled nobility (who really had nothing better to do), chased the Despensers from England, confiscated their funds, torched all of their castles to embers, auctioned off their possessions, and had their closest associates brutally tortured until they died painfully from it.</p>\r\n<p>That\'s just how Queen Isabella rolled.&nbsp; She didn\'t tolerate people trying to dick her over, and anyone who wanted a piece ended up getting their faces stamped into giant puddles of liquid pwned.&nbsp; Like this one time Isabella was on a pilgrimage to visit the shrine of St. Thomas of Canterbury, and some bitch known as the Lady Badlesmere denied our Queen access to the castle at Leeds.&nbsp; Isabella got pissed, chucked Lady Badlesmere in the Tower of London, and had eleven of her closest advisors publicly hanged outside the gates of their castle.</p>\r\n<p>Despite being a vengeful, hate-filled asskicker, it should be noted that Isabella was actually pretty well-liked by the general populace, and was known for helping the poor and donating money to support institutions that cared for the sick and the needy.&nbsp; So yeah, basically anybody who wasn\'t in the process of having their shit wrecked by her pretty much thought she was alright.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/isabella1.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Well the King eventually had enough of the disgruntled Barons beating up on his best buddies, and the two factions finally decided to duke it out old-school with swords and catapults and ninja stars and shit.&nbsp; So Isabella, not being a gigantic axe-hurling dominatrix capable of single-handedly slaughtering an entire army with little more than a broken-off corset bone, took refuge in the Tower of London, which, while a formidable dungeon, was also pretty much the safest place you could be when every able-bodied man within a two hundred mile radius is stabbing each other in the eye socket with a longsword.&nbsp; While she was there, she met a handsome, dashing young prisoner named Roger Mortimer.&nbsp; Mortimer had been jailed for crotch-punching Hugh Despenser on a dare, and was currently serving a sentence of death by starvation.&nbsp; Isabella brought him some food, spoke some French with him, and their mutual hatred of the Despensers made them close friends&hellip; and eventually, friends with benefits.</p>\r\n<p>King Edward won the war against the nobles, and immediately brought Hugh Despenser back to England.&nbsp; Big surprise.&nbsp; Hugh, being the arrogant jackass that he was, started flexing his nuts and doing everything he could to place himself above the queen.&nbsp; He fired all of Isabella\'s staff, bad-mouthed her to the King, publicly insulted her, and started stealing all of her money and property.&nbsp; Well the Queen was sick of King Eddie\'s weak sauce bullshit, and she wasn\'t going to let anybody treat her like that.&nbsp; She busted Roger Mortimer out of prison, and had her agents secretly ferry him across the Channel to France.&nbsp; Then she asked the King for permission to take their son to France to meet his grandpa, and the King said, \"Sure, what the hell.\"&nbsp; Once safely in France, Isabella basically came out and called Edward a sackless doofus, told him she had no intention of going back to her bullshit life in England.&nbsp; She and Mortimer raised an army, and in 1327 she headed back across the Channel William the Conqueror-style for the explicit purpose of ripping the King\'s face off with her bare hands and barfing into his brain pan.</p>\r\n<p>The people of England were also sick of Hugh Despenser\'s bullshit, and they quickly responded to the battle-cry of their omega-furious, badass queen.&nbsp; The nobility and the peasantry alike flocked to her banner as soon as she landed her invasion force, and at the head of a huge army, Isabella and Mortimer chased Edward out of London.&nbsp; Edward wasn\'t done though &ndash; he threatened that he would be the one to personally slay the She-Wolf of France, and told all of his buddies he would choke her out with his bare hands if he had to.&nbsp; Well, that\'s not really how shit played out for our boy Ed.&nbsp; He never got his a chance to show off his mad domestic violence skills, because Mortimer and Isabella beat the crap out of the King\'s army and captured him and the Despensers in 1327.&nbsp; Despenser Senior was drawn apart, hanged, and then beheaded, and he was the one who got off easy &ndash; the Younger Despenser was led through the streets in a mock parade while peasants threw food and trash at him, and then he was publicly executed in a really horrific manner so brutal that it would make the fucking Terminator cringe:</p>\r\n<table style=\"width: 600px;\" align=\"center\">\r\n<tbody>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td><span> \"Hugh, you have been judged a traitor since you have threatened all the good people of the realm, great and small, rich and poor, and by common assent you are also a thief.&nbsp; As a thief you will hang, and as a traitor you will be drawn and quartered, and your quarters will be sent throughout the realm.&nbsp; And because you prevailed upon our lord the king, and by common assent you returned to the court without warrant, you will be beheaded.&nbsp; And because you were always disloyal and procured discord between our lord the king and our very honourable lady the queen, and between other people of the realm, you will be disemboweled, and then your entrails will be burnt.&nbsp; Go to meet you fate, traitor, tyrant, renegade; go to your own justice, traitor, evil man, criminal!\" </span></td>\r\n</tr>\r\n</tbody>\r\n</table>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/isabella4.bmp\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span style=\"color: #0000cc;\"><strong>Hugh Despenser:</strong></span>&nbsp; <span>d00d WTF OW</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>So&hellip; yeah. Don&rsquo;t fuck with Queen Isabella.&nbsp; The King, for what it\'s worth, was imprisoned, stripped of his regalia, and forcibly coerced to pass the crown to his and Isabella\'s son, who was coronated King Edward III.</p>\r\n<p>That was all well and good, but once Isabella got in control she kind of turned into a crazy, bloodthirsty bitch-o-rama.&nbsp; Ruling as regents for the fourteen year-old Edward III, she and Mortimer first executed a bunch of high-ranking nobles for no good reason, and then had the King dragged out into a field and burned to death with red-hot pokers.&nbsp; Eventually, everybody basically had enough of it.&nbsp; Edward III grew a pair, imprisoned his mom, had Mortimer whacked, and called it a day.&nbsp; Isabella lived under house arrest in her lavish resort of a castle for twenty-seven more years.&nbsp; When she died, she asked to be entombed with Mortimer\'s heart placed in her casket, which is morbid as all shit but still kind of romantic if you really think about it.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/isabella.png\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>Isabella, seen here trying not to act crazy.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Links:</span><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isabella_of_France\" target=\"blank\">Wikipedia</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://womenshistory.about.com/library/bio/blbio_isabella_of_france.htm\" target=\"blank\">About.com</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.channel4.com/history/microsites/M/monarchy/biogs/isabella.html\" target=\"blank\">Channel 4</a></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Sources:</span><br /><br /><span> Fines, John.&nbsp; <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Who\'s Who in the Middle Ages.</span>&nbsp; Barnes &amp; Noble Publishing, 1995.<br /><br /> Howitt, Mary Botham.&nbsp; <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Biographical Sketches of the Queens of Great Britain.</span>&nbsp; Bohn, 1862.<br /><br /> Jones, Michael.&nbsp; <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">The Cambridge Medieval History.</span>&nbsp; Cambridge University Press, 2005.<br /><br /> Mortimer, Ian.&nbsp; <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">The Greatest Traitor.</span>&nbsp; Macmillan, 2006. </span></p>','2009-05-14','70795762947','isabella3.jpg','isabella3 - Copy.jpg','Isabella of France','The British Queen who deposed and executed the King.','\"No man ever excited her resentment who did not perish under its effect;\r\nthe king himself forming no exception to this fact.\"'),('The 4th Australian Light Horse Brigade','October 31, 1917','N/A','Australia','WWI Australian Soldier','<p>The 800 men of the 4th Australian Light Horse Brigade looked out at the imposing walls of the desert fortress of Beersheba.&nbsp; Between them and their distant objective lay four miles of wide-open, coverless terrain &ndash; a veritable shooting gallery for the thousands of rifles, machine guns, and heavy artillery pieces that garrisoned this strategically-important city.&nbsp; Their mission was simple &ndash; charge forward, attack the town, and capture it intact.&nbsp; Blitzing on horseback towards a few dozen automatic weapons amounted to little more than a crazy suicide mission, but no one present on this day questioned his duty.&nbsp; Every man aligned on this fateful battlefield knew that this would be his final charge, and his finest hour.&nbsp; They were determined to make sure it was one that would be remembered for years to come.</p>\r\n<p>With the clusterhump of World War One slowly grinding down to a giant disgusting bloody halt in Western Europe, the Allies were hoping that a major victory against the Ottoman Turkish Empire in Palestine would break through the stalemate and turn the tide of war in their favor.&nbsp; Success on the Palestinian Front, however, would hinge on the capture of Beersheba.&nbsp; Situated on the extreme right of the Turkish flank, and therefore a critical target, this heavily-defended town was also home to nineteen full-functioning water wells.&nbsp; In case you didn\'t know, Palestine is about as hot as Lucifer\'s balls, and with the British headquarters situated 200 miles away in Cairo, Egypt, supply problems were a total pain in the nuts.&nbsp; Drinkable water was at a premium in the British Army, which was kind of a problem.&nbsp; Without it, you know, people kind of tend to die horrific, excruciating deaths, and the Brits were kind of trying to avoid that if at all possible.</p>\r\n<p>The element of surprise was on their side.&nbsp; The Turks certainly had to suspect an attack would be coming on this crucial strategic position, but they couldn\'t have predicted the direction of the attack.&nbsp; You see, Beersheba is located on the edge of a giant goddamned desert, and the Turks correctly assumed that nobody in their right freaking minds would ever have been foolish/suicidal enough to ride through the white-hot, searing sands of Palestine and attack the fortress from the desert side.&nbsp; Unfortunately for the Turks, nobody has ever accused the Aussies of being in their right minds &ndash; these tough-ass bastards spent all day riding sixty miles through the harsh, unforgiving Judean Desert, and this evening they were prepared to attack the town from the side the defenders least expected.</p>\r\n<p>Still, even from this angle the Turkish defenses were more formidable than an axe-swinging Minotaur, and the Light Horse wasn\'t exactly designed (or equipped) for the sort of utterly balls-out mission they were soon about to undertake.&nbsp; You see, cavalry in World War I worked great in terms of getting soldiers from place to place quickly, but most sane people didn\'t still fight on horseback.&nbsp; The general tactic was to ride to the scene, get off the horse, and fight as regular infantry.&nbsp; If it helps, just think of the horses as giant hair-covered Humvees that yell really loudly and crap all over the place.&nbsp; Hell, the men of the Australian Light Horse didn\'t even carry lances or sabers or anything.&nbsp; For this mission, these crazy warriors simply sharpened and polished their SMLE Pattern 1907 Bayonets &ndash; two-foot long blades more akin to Short Swords +1 than a proper cavalry saber &ndash; and psyched themselves up about spending Halloween 1917 going Michael Meyers on their long-time foes.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/lighthorse2a.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Now the Turks had encountered British cavalry before, but only in their aforementioned function as dismounted infantry.&nbsp; So when the Turkish and German commanders at Beersheba saw the Aussies amassing in the desert, their orders were simple &ndash; wait for these jerks to get off of their horses, and then ram some hot lead up their urethras at high velocities.&nbsp; So 800 Australian cavalrymen galloped forward, spurring on their epic mounts, pushing it to the limit (and also to the max), and the Turks held.&nbsp; And held.&nbsp; And held.&nbsp; As the cloud of dust and the thunderous sound of hooves grew louder, and the shocked defenders caught the glint of the evening sun reflect off the blades of the badass Australian sword-bayonets, a sickening feeling welled up in the pits of their stomachs &ndash; they had realized all too late that these crazy psychos rapidly charging towards them had absolutely no intention of stopping until they\'d reached into the eye-holes of the city\'s defenders and manually turned their faces inside-out.</p>\r\n<p>The Turks began firing wildly at the crazy nutjobs with the giant swords, desperately trying to fend off the insane onslaught before they found out first-hand what it was like to be disemboweled with a weapon that had been obsolete since the days of <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/wallace.html\">William Wallace</a>.&nbsp; But the Aussies are freaking crazy, and they just didn\'t even give a crap.&nbsp; These men came from <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/australia.html\">a murderous land</a> filled with ultra-venomous creatures, wombats, killer arachnids, man-killing trees, and stinging platypuses, and they faced more perilous danger than this pretty much every time they went out into the woods to take a leak.&nbsp; The men of the Australian Light Horse were more than ready for whatever insane crap the Turkish Empire could fling at them, and they didn\'t even flinch as machine gun bullets and artillery shells ripped past their heads.&nbsp; They charged through blistering heavy weapons fire, their only goal to reach the enemy trench line with their appendages intact enough that they could swing their bayonets and cause some massive carnage.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/lighthorse1.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>With a tremendous crash the horses leapt over a row of barbed wire, and then somehow vaulted across two rows of enemy trenches (no small feat of awesome in and of itself &ndash; these trenches were four feet wide by ten feet deep, and filled to the brim with angry Turkish riflemen).&nbsp; As soon as they\'d passed through the machine guns\' field of fire, the Aussies leapt down from their horses and dove headlong into the Turkish fortifications, bayonets at the ready.&nbsp; Hordes of crazy Aussies brutally slashed their way through the defensive positions, hacking at the shocked defenders with their short swords and basically ruining the lives of anybody unfortunate enough to be standing in their path.&nbsp; Turkish morale was smashed, and after a quick and incredibly bloody knife-fight, Beersheba was firmly in the bloody-soaked hands of the Australian Light Horse.</p>\r\n<p>Of the 800 cavalrymen who participated in this unbelievable charge, the Australians suffered just 31 troopers killed and 36 wounded.&nbsp; They captured 750 Turks, 9 artillery pieces, 3 machine guns, and tons of other munitions and supplies.&nbsp; Even more importantly, they seized 17 of the 19 wells intact, recovering 90,000 gallons of fresh, drinkable water from the town.&nbsp; In addition to giving the army a chance to stave off death by dehydration, victory at Beersheba turned the Ottoman flank, allowing the British Army to eventually roll up the enemy forces and defeat them once and for all.&nbsp; Jerusalem fell two months later, and all of Palestine crumbled soon afterwards.&nbsp; The defeat in Palestine caused the Ottoman Empire to drop out of the war, and ultimately caused the destabilization and collapse of a 500 year-old Empire dating back to the days of <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/barbarossa.html\">Hayreddin Barbarossa</a>.&nbsp; With the stalemate still holding strong in the West, this was a major moral victory for the Allies as well as a military one.&nbsp; The Great War would be over within a year.</p>\r\n<p>Nowadays there is some debate as to whether launching the balls-out cavalry charge at Beersheba was the most tactically brilliant move the Allies could have undertaken during the Palestine Campaign.&nbsp; Many revisionist military historians with too much time on their hands complain that this insane charge was a lot of wasted effort (historians just love to argue about hypothetical nonsense), and that this crazy suicide attack could have just as easily have blown up in everybody\'s faces.&nbsp; Sure, while galloping full-speed towards a half-dozen machine guns might not have been the smartest idea anyone ever came up with, nobody in their right minds could ever doubt the bravery or toughness of the men of the Australian Light Horse &ndash; these guys were stone-cold hardasses who took a seemingly-foolhardy suicide attack and turned it into the last great cavalry charge in history.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/lighthorse.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Links:</span><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Beersheba\" target=\"blank\">Wikipedia</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.lighthorse.org.au/histbatt/beersheba.htm\" target=\"blank\">The Light Horse Charge at Beersheba</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.historyofwar.org/articles/battles_beersheba.html\" target=\"blank\">History of War:&nbsp; Beersheba</a></p>\r\n<p><br /><br /></p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Sources:</span><br /><br /><span> Bevin, Alexander.&nbsp; <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">How Great Generals Win</span>.&nbsp; W.W. Norton, 2002.<br /><br /> Cowley, Robert and Geoffrey Parker.&nbsp; <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Reader\'s Companion to Military History</span>.&nbsp; Houghton Mifflin, 2001.<br /><br /> Hughes, Matthew.&nbsp; <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Allenby and British Strategy in the Middle East</span>.&nbsp; Taylor &amp; Francis, 1999.<br /><br /> Laffin, John and Mike Chappell.&nbsp; <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">The Australian Army at War</span>.&nbsp; Osprey, 1982.<br /><br /> Preston, R.M.P.&nbsp; <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">The Desert Mounted Corps</span>.&nbsp; Kessinger, 2007.<br /><br /> Tucker, Spencer and Priscilla Mary Roberts.&nbsp; <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">World War I</span>.&nbsp; ABC-CLIO, 2005.<br /><br /> Whitaker, Julie.&nbsp; <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">The Horse</span>.&nbsp; Macmillan, 2007.<br /><br /> Woodward, David.&nbsp; <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Hell in the Holy Land</span>.&nbsp; University of Kentucky Press, 2006. </span></p>','2009-05-08','32929083874','lighthorse3.jpg','lighthorse3 - Copy.jpg','Australian Light Horse','The story of the last great cavalry charge in military history.','\"It was growing dark, and the enemy trenches were outlined in fire by the flashes of their rifles.  Beyond, and a little above them, blazed the bigger, deeper flashes of their field guns, and our own shells burst like a row of red stars over the Turkish positions.  In front, the long lines of cavalry swept forward at racing speed, half-obscured in clouds of reddish dust.  Amid the deafening noise all around, they seemed to move silently, like some splendid, swift machine.  Over the Turks they went, leaping the two lines of deep trenches, and, dismounting on the further side, flung themselves into the trenches with the bayonet.\"\r\n\r\n- Lieutenant-Colonel R.M.P. Preston'),('Ernesto Guevara','June 14, 1928','October 9, 1967','Rosario, Argentina','20th-century Argentinian Guerilla','<p>With May Day falling on a Friday this year, I figured what better way to recognize the <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Workers%27_Day\">Commie Fourth of July</a> than by posting an article about the most widely-marketed Socialist in the history of Marxism?&nbsp; Seemingly-arbitrarily beloved by armchair revolutionaries, counter-culturalists, punk rockers, and various assorted posers across this great land (many of whom recognize this man solely as the \"guy from that one t-shirt\"), Che Guevara\'s legacy has lost quite a bit of its meaning over the years. While today this once-defiant freedom fighter is now relegated to massive, heaping piles of over-commercialized crap, the real Che was actually a tough-ass motherfucker who took no shit from anybody, never backed down from a struggle no matter how insanely the odds were stacked against him, and represented the ultimate sacrifice in the struggle of the Third World against the remnants of colonialism.&nbsp; Here\'s the tale of the man behind the stupid hipster Andy Warhol posters &ndash; a dude who overthrew countries, filled millions with intense feelings of hope and/or contempt, and ruthlessly executed anybody who fucked with him by drilling them in the chops with a giant heaping dose of large-caliber handgun ammunition.</p>\r\n<p>Born in Argentina in 1928, Che Guevara was another <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/doc.html\">Doc Holliday</a>-type who graduated from medical school and didn\'t really know what the fuck to do with himself afterwards.&nbsp; So, much like Doc, Che decided that rather than settling into a boring career in medicine and helping people overcome their stupid bullshit medical illnesses, he\'d go out and have a bunch of crazy adventures traveling the land and shooting people in the face at close range.&nbsp; After he received his M.D., the 23 year-old soon-to-be revolutionary celebrated by getting together with his best friend and taking a badass cross-country motorcycle trip around South America, where they popped a bunch of sweet wheelies, lit their bike on fire, hit a ramp, and jumped over a Piranha-infested section of the Amazon River just to be awesome.&nbsp; During his trip, Che was shocked to encounter a seemingly-endless string of ultra-corrupt South American dictatorships oppressing the populace, and he also noticed a tremendous divide between rich and poor that dominated South American society.&nbsp; Che kind of thought that this was totally bullshit, so, like many idealistic college students, he bought a used copy of Karl Marx\'s Manifesto and decided to become a hardcore communist.</p>\r\n<p>In studying about the struggles of the oppressed proletariat at the hands of their cruel bourgeoisie masters, Che apparently decided that violent revolution and the forceful overthrow of tyrannical imperialist dictators was the Latin American peoples\' greatest hope of breaking out of their perpetual cycle of misery.&nbsp; So he took the next logical step &ndash; he went to Mexico, met up with a dude named Fidel Castro, got some friends together, and invaded Cuba.&nbsp; You know, just for the hell of it.</p>\r\n<p>In 1956, Che Guevara and 82 other men arrived on the shores of Cuba in a leaky old wooden boat, and immediately got busy with the business of overthrowing the all-powerful government of the brutal Dictator Fulgencio Batista.&nbsp; While Guevara was initially supposed to serve the party as a combat medic, he quickly got involved in the fighting, and proved himself to be such a hardcore face-wrecker that Uncle Fidel appointed him second-in-command of the Revolutionary Army.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/che1.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Guevara didn\'t fuck around.&nbsp; Outnumbered almost ten to one and operating out of a base deep in the Cuban mountains, El Che\'s mobile bands of guerilla troops wreaked havoc across the countryside, and Guevara repeatedly led his troops to victory in battle - serving up piping-hot Molotov cocktails to anything even remotely flammable, winning over the hearts of the populace, harassing the nationalist army every time they stopped to take a leak, and smashing the morale of anyone who tried to stand against his crazy rampaging throng of pissed-off peasants.&nbsp; He moked out the well-trained Cuban army like it weren\'t no thang, and his innovations and tactics in the fields of guerilla warfare were so balls-out and effective that they are still studied in military academies across the globe as an example of what it means to be the fucking shit.&nbsp; Today, he is believed by many to be the 20th century\'s foremost theoretician and tactician in guerilla warfare, which is kind of impressive, considering that he never received any formal military training.</p>\r\n<p>In addition to dropping his enemies nuts-first onto an automatic fruit-juicing machine, Che was also respected and feared as a ruthless executioner who didn\'t hesitate to pull out his nine and gun down deserters, quitters, cowards, IT guys, donkeys, trombonists, and anybody else who didn\'t support him or like him or appreciate the fact that Karl Marx was totally sweet to the max.&nbsp; In the Cuban Revolution, Che was the guy who personally made sure that the badass old Joseph Stalin axiom rang true:&nbsp; \"In the Red Army, it takes more courage to retreat than advance.\"</p>\r\n<p>Batista\'s army eventually decided they couldn\'t fight Che in the mountains or the countryside without getting their teeth punched out through the backs of their faces, so they retreated to the cities.&nbsp; So of course Guevara just went in, surrounded the cities, perpetually attacked the demoralized military, and started taking the urban centers one-by-one, capturing many of them without a shot.&nbsp; He just showed up at the gates, whipped out his huge nutsack, and the terrified defenders raised the white flag immediately.</p>\r\n<p>After years of campaigning, in December 1958 Che\'s revolutionary forces assaulted Santa Clara &ndash; the final stronghold of the Cuban Nationalist army.&nbsp; This heavily-fortified military instillation was garrisoned by 6,000 soldiers, a dozen tanks, an airfield full of bombers, an armored train, a lance of Assault-Class BattleMechs, and countless other assorted heavy weapons, but Che was apparently all out of give-a-fuck.&nbsp; He led just a few hundred men into the city, captured the train, surrounded the key military and government installations, and drove off or killed the defenders.&nbsp; Batista, knowing his number was about to be up, shit himself and fled the country immediately after hearing about the fall of Santa Clara.&nbsp; Castro and Che entered Havana in 1959, and the first successful Socialist revolution in the Western Hemisphere was over.</p>\r\n<p>As an interesting side note, the borderline-insane and crazy-awesome Nintendo game <em>Guerilla War</em>, strongly believed by all people named Amazing Ben to be one of the top-five greatest and most ridiculous top-down shooters ever created, was based off of Che and Fidel\'s balls-out two-man invasion of Cuba (in Japan, the game is called <em>Guevara</em>, but they couldn\'t really get away with releasing it under that name here in the States).&nbsp; If the game is any indication of historical fact (which it isn\'t), these men actually achieved the task of Communist overthrow of the Cuban Dictatorship by running around all over the place like madmen, shooting fully-automatic missile launchers at armored bulldozers, lassoing people from the back of a speeding mine cart, and crushing hordes of soldiers under the treads of a tank that has a flamethrower attached to its turret.&nbsp; <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/guerillawar.nes\">Here\'s a copy of the ROM file</a>, if you\'re interested.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/che3.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>Artist\'s interpretation.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Now, you can say what you want about Che Guevara\'s radical, extremist Pinko Commie political beliefs, but you have to admit that it\'s pretty fucking sweet that he and Fidel almost single-handedly overthrew a third-world country despite having virtually no prior military experience or training.&nbsp; Seriously, that\'s the kind of shit that almost every high school-age guy wishes he could do &ndash; get some of his buddies together, invade an island, and install himself as supreme dictator over his own country.&nbsp; Che Guevara just fucking went out and did it, which kind of rocks.</p>\r\n<p>After the revolution, Che was appointed the chief of La Cabana prison, where he tried and summarily executed a couple hundred government and military employees who were pissing him off.&nbsp; In case you were wondering, this mostly-arbitrary, <em>Judge Dredd</em>-style system of justice is why pretty much every Cuban exile completely fucking hates this guy\'s guts with an uncontrollable shaking hate-rage.&nbsp; To them, he\'s known as the \"Butcher of La Cabana\", which quite honestly sounds like the title of a bad sci-fi horror movie about a guy who kills bikini-clad spring break co-eds by prowling the swimming pools at some posh five-star party resort.&nbsp; Still, any time you have someone with a nickname that features the word \"Butcher\" in it, it\'s a pretty good indication that this person really isn\'t to be fucked around with.</p>\r\n<p>After La Cabana, Che served as the President of the National Bank, the Cuban Minister of Finance, and a bunch of other crazy shit.&nbsp; He went on diplomatic missions throughout the world, yelled at the United Nations a bunch of times, fought off the Bay of Pigs invasion, and tried to get the Soviet Union to ship him a few hundred intermediate-ranged nuclear warheads (this last part <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Missile_Crisis\">didn&rsquo;t really work out so well</a>).&nbsp; When a Communist revolution broke out in the Congo in 1964, he headed out there to see what was shaking.&nbsp; He arrived in Africa with 120 Cuban advisors, linked up with the rebel army, and helped them fight against hardcore CIA-trained mercenaries deep in the jungles of one of the world\'s most formidable jungles.&nbsp; The revolution failed, but hey, you can\'t win \'em all.</p>\r\n<p>In 1966 Guevara swam to Bolivia with sixteen other guerilla warfare experts, and together they tried to incite a revolution that would instigate another Vietnam-type response from the United States.&nbsp; He thought his actions (and the eventual American intervention) would inspire the entire Bolivian populace to revolt, but it didn\'t really work out so well for him.&nbsp; Instead of sending the entire military, the US sent a detachment of CIA operatives and badass Army Rangers to hunt him down and take him out.&nbsp; Che was wounded twice in an intense gunfight in October 1967, and was summarily executed by Bolivian soldiers outside the town of La Higuera.&nbsp; When his would-be executioner hesitated to pull the trigger and end the life of this hardcore revolutionary, Che defiantly shouted his badass final words:</p>\r\n<p>\"Shoot, coward!&nbsp; You are only killing a man!\"</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/che4.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Sources:</span><br /><br /><span> Anderson, John Lee.&nbsp; <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Che Guevara</span>.&nbsp; Grove, 1997.<br /><br /> Dorfman, Ariel.&nbsp; \"<a href=\"http://www.time.com/time/time100/heroes/profile/guevara01.html\">Che Guevara</a>\".&nbsp; <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Time</span>. June 14, 1999.<br /><br /> Guevara, Che.&nbsp; <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Guerilla Warfare</span>.&nbsp; Rowman &amp; Littlefield, 1997.<br /><br /> Van Dijk, Rudd.&nbsp; <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Encyclopedia of the Cold War</span>.&nbsp; Taylor &amp; Francis, 2008. </span></p>','2009-05-01','52333403958','che.jpg','che - Copy.jpg','Che Guevara','Revolutionary, guerrilla fighter, and bloody executioner -- the man behind the t-shirt.','\"I carry with me the faith that you taught me, the revolutionary spirit of our people, and the conviction that I am fulfilling the most sacred of the duties:  The fight against imperialism wherever it may be.\"'),('Han Solo','A Long, Long Time Ago','N/A','Corellia','Fictional Alien Mercenary','<p>Han Solo is the fucking nuts.&nbsp; I\'m sure I don\'t need to tell you guys this, but it\'s the god-honest truth. This badass, gunslinging space cowboy doesn\'t give a shit about anything, and is so unassailably cool that I could probably get away with just posting this dude\'s name and walking away.&nbsp; He\'s that fucking awesome.</p>\r\n<p>The great thing about Han is that he\'s just a regular guy with no superpowers, and he somehow manages to hold his own in a galaxy filled with giant monsters, crazy technology and angry motherfuckers with lightsabers who can move objects with their minds and set people on fire just by thinking about it.&nbsp; People are getting Force Choked the fuck out all over the place, entire planets are being blown up by giant universe-killing space stations, Luke is doing backflips in his sleep while bench-pressing Yoda, and in the middle of all this futuristic ridiculous space-insanity is Han Solo, who has little more to offer than piloting skills and a pistol, and he\'s taking care of business, saving Jedi Luke\'s hide from certain death, and generally just making everyone around him his bitches.&nbsp; Not only that, but HE\'S the guy who ends up nailing the Princess.&nbsp; And shit, he just acts like getting with royalty is no big deal - when Leia finally professes her undying love for him before he goes into a Carbonite deep freeze, his only reaction is a sly smile and the words, \"I know.\"</p>\r\n<p>I also appreciate the fact that Han is a \"good guy\", but he\'s not so annoyingly righteous that you want to start vomiting blood every time he appears on camera.&nbsp; While he maintains loyalty to the Rebel cause, there\'s no denying the fact that Solo is a streetwise smuggler who hangs out in seedy bars, gets into trouble wherever he goes, surrounds himself with shady business associates, and doesn\'t constrict himself to some arbitrary bullshit code of honor.&nbsp; He does what he needs to do to get by.&nbsp; Honestly, one of my favorite film scenes of all time (and the event that perfectly sums up that badassitude of Han Solo) is when he fucking pops Greedo in the Mos Eisley cantina.&nbsp; That alien dude is going off in his messed-up gobbledegook language like, \"Yeah I\'m going to bring you in fool, Jabba\'s going to give me a sweet reward for handing you over to him\", and then all of a sudden Solo\'s like POW WAZZAP BITCHES! and frags that fucker in the middle of a crowded bar.&nbsp; Then he nonchalantly walks out of there and throws the bartender a quarter to clean the mess up, acting like this really isn\'t the first time he\'s busted a cap in someone who was annoying him.&nbsp; Fuck your revisionist bullshit &ndash; <a href=\"http://www.fecundity.com/pmagnus/greedo.html\">Han shot first</a>, and we loved him for it because it was badass as hell.</p>\r\n<p>Now, great heroes are only as good as their supporting cast, and Han isn\'t tooling around when it comes to surrounding himself with badass shit.&nbsp; For a sidekick, he has one of the most eye-gougingly hardcore warriors inhabiting the galaxy:&nbsp; the Wookie face-wrecker known only as Chewbacca.&nbsp; Not a lot of guys out there can say that their hetero life-mate is a seven-foot tall hair monster who shoots a laser-gun crossbow and enjoys pulling peoples\' appendages off of their torsos with his bare hands just for the fuck of it, but Han had this massive beast as his own personal bodyguard.&nbsp; Anytime someone pisses him off, Han just has to wave his hand and Chewie is over there forcibly closing that motherfucker\'s windpipe with his giant Bigfoot hands until either the dude asphyxiates or Han tells him to lay off.&nbsp; That\'s pretty sweet.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/solo1.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>He also has a couple of excellent nemeses &ndash; Boba Fett and Jabba the Hutt.&nbsp; While winding up on the wrong side of a giant, murderous, disgusting space slug who commands a massive, galaxy-spanning criminal enterprise is bad enough, the infamous bounty hunter Boba Fett is pretty much believed by religious zealot Star Wars fanboys to be one of the most badass motherfuckers to ever strap a bazooka to his wrist and fly a jetpack across the Atlantic Ocean.&nbsp; I mean, that dude has more gadgets than James Bond wearing Batman\'s utility belt, but when he steps to Han Solo, our hero doesn\'t even give a fuck.&nbsp; Shit, Han didn\'t even need two eyes to dump that motherfucker face-first into the gaping maw of a giant man-eating worm monster and call it a day.&nbsp; I\'m told that the Fett gets far more badass in the expanded universe stuff, but all I know is that from what I\'ve seen on screen it didn\'t take much effort for Han Effing Solo to own that guy with a lower-case \"p\", shoot the tentacle off the Sarlacc, and fly off into the sunset while Jabba\'s entire operation literally goes up in a giant fireball.&nbsp; Maybe that\'s just a testament to how fucking awesome Solo is.</p>\r\n<p>If it isn\'t sweet enough that he\'s fighting off intergalactic bounty hunters dispatched by a giant gastropodal Al Capone, judo-throwing Stormtroopers, and destroying the Galactic Imperium alongside the goddamned missing link, Han also pilots the Millenium Falcon &ndash; the most badass (and fastest) ship in the galaxy.&nbsp; This thing is basically a lightspeed-capable piece-of-shit cargo ship that\'s been kitted out and modified to be totally awesome.&nbsp; Its retarededly fast, seemingly impervious to laser fire, and sports everything from swivel-mounted gun turrets to concussion missile launchers.&nbsp; The Falcon is like a modern-day mix between a sweet El Camino, the Spy Hunter car, and something out of a Bond flick, which rocks. And it blows up the second Death Star.&nbsp; Oh, and takes out Darth Vader\'s TIE Fighter.</p>\r\n<p>Basically, Han Solo is like the ultimate hero for the average guy.&nbsp; He doesn\'t have any special powers or equipment, yet somehow no situation is ever hopeless as long as he\'s around&hellip; he\'s always got a crazy plan, a trick up his sleeve, or a shady contact that can bail him out at the last moment.&nbsp; He kicks ass, never loses his cool, routinely fights off the galaxy\'s most dangerous super-villains, and gets the girl. What\'s not to like about that?</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/solo2.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>\"Never tell me the odds.\"</span></p>','2005-08-05','10728794035','solo.jpg','solo - Copy.jpg','Han Solo','The badass gunslinger from a galaxy far, far away.','\"Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid.\"'),('Hannah Duston','December 23, 1657','1736','Haverhill, MA, USA','18th-century American Adventurer','<p>Despite what Riverdale Elementary School\'s annual First-Grade Thanksgiving Day Class Play might have you believe, early Colonial America wasn\'t all one giant super happy mecha fun time made out of maize, delicious roasted turkey breast, and Pocahontas teaching John Smith the meaning of friendship and cooperation by baking pumpkin pies and putting out on the Sabbath &ndash; it was a sick, murderous hellhole of suck where freezing temperatures and near-constant warfare meant death was an omnipresent threat every time you stepped foot outside your crappy, poorly-insulated, makeshift shelter.&nbsp; On the one hand you had the Puritans &ndash; crazy, whacked-out European religious zealots intent on exerting their inflexible will over the New World one Smallpox-infected blanket at a time.&nbsp; Standing opposed to them were the Native Americans, who voiced their displeasure at this tactic by winging tomahawks into peoples\' faces, murdering their families, and torching their settlements to cinders.&nbsp; Living in a frontier town in Haverhill, Massachusetts, a young woman named Mrs. Hannah Duston was caught in the middle of this raging death-sanity, and when she was swept up in the tide of senseless violence that ravaged the Northeast in the seventeenth-century, she made a name for herself as a completely insane-o-bot madwoman who was absolutely not to be fucked with for any reason.</p>\r\n<p>In March of 1697, Hannah Duston\'s tiny farm was attacked by a marauding band of Abenaki Indians (alternate sources say they were Mohawks, who are widely believed to be among the most badass and ruthless of all the North American Indian tribes).&nbsp; The battle-raging warrior braves attacked Hannah\'s husband Thomas while he was out working in the field, but he managed to run back to the farmhouse and warn his wife of the impending raid.&nbsp; Unfortunately, Hannah was unable to escape &ndash; she had just given birth to a child a couple days prior, and wasn\'t in any condition to be moved at this time.&nbsp; Hannah, her nursemaid, and her newborn stayed behind, and she encouraged her husband to get the fuck out of there and flee with their eight other children while they still could.</p>\r\n<p>Now, the fact that this woman gave birth to nine fucking kids back in a time when anesthesia involved little more than taking a swig of whiskey and biting down on a stick really hard should give you some indication of how tough Hannah Duston was.&nbsp; Despite the fact that she could usually headbutt an antelope unconscious with one swing of her head, on this day she wasn\'t in any position to fight off a swarming horde of pissed-off warriors, and was quickly captured and forced out of her home.&nbsp; Her house was plundered and torched to the ground, and a subsequent raid on the village of Haverhill resulted in forty additional settlers being killed or captured by the Abenaki.</p>\r\n<p>But Hannah\'s adventure in getting worked over by the natives was just beginning.&nbsp; Along with the other captives, she was forced at gunpoint to walk north towards Canada.&nbsp; For several days they walked through ankle-deep snow and bitter, nut-freezing cold, traveling nearly fifty miles from Haverhill to present-day Concord, New Hampshire.&nbsp; Anybody who couldn\'t keep up was brained in the face with a hatchet, and when Hannah\'s child wouldn\'t stop crying, her captors gave the kid a post-partum abortion by smacking it against a tree (they weren\'t screwing around).&nbsp; By the time the party left Concord and started traveling by canoe up the Merrimack River, all that remained of the captives were Hannah, her nursemaid, and some fourteen-year old kid they\'d picked up along the way.</p>\r\n<p>Sure, she\'d been beat to shit by this super-long crazy death march, but Hannah Duston was a tough New England broad, and she wasn\'t going to let anybody fuck with her like that and get away with it.&nbsp; Knowing that all she really had to look forward to at the end of her journey was being killed and/or sold into slavery to French Canadians (the worst kind of Canadian), and realizing that she wouldn\'t be able to keep up this grueling travel pace for too much longer, she resolved to teach her captors what it felt like to be on the receiving end of a Puritanical boot up the ass.</p>\r\n<p>The next night, while all of the warrior braves were sleeping, Hannah sought her vengeance.&nbsp; She somehow broke free from her restraints and slowly tiptoed her way across the campsite.&nbsp; Using extreme caution, she held her breath, quietly reached into the pack of one of a nearby warrior, closed her fingers around the wooden handle of a razor-sharp tomahawk, and silently pulled it out into the night air.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/duston1.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The weapon in her hand, Hannah Duston completely fucking flipped out, Hulked up (Hogan or Banner, your call), and went Lizzy Borden on her captors like Anakin Skywalker venting his irrepressible teen angst by butchering the Sand People all over the desert landscape of Tatooine.&nbsp; Before anybody knew what the fucking shit was going on, Hannah Motherfucking Duston was in the midst of their campfire whirling and slashing at everything she could reach.&nbsp; In the span of just a few seconds, she had killed ten people with a tomahawk and sent two other warriors sprinting off into the woods screaming their heads off.</p>\r\n<p>That&rsquo;s right, bitches.&nbsp; This crazy Puritan axe-murderer violently took out an entire raiding party by herself without even blinking.&nbsp; I told you they shouldn\'t have screwed with her.</p>\r\n<p>Well, moking out a bunch of people with a hatchet and rescuing your captured friends is great and all, but now the small party was completely stranded on an island in the middle of the Merrimack River, and the two men who ran off were sure to be returning in the relatively near future, presumably with a large party of their incredibly distraught (and heavily-armed) colleagues.&nbsp; It probably made sense for the Puritans to not be sitting around a giant pile of corpses when they returned.&nbsp; Luckily for Hannah, she was well-equipped to deal with the situation.&nbsp; She assembled her friends, grabbed a rifle and some food from the campsite, carjacked a canoe <em>Grand Theft Auto</em>-style, and headed back towards Haverhill as quickly as possible.&nbsp; Oh, just in case you didn\'t pick up on the fact that this chick was a stone-cold badass, I should mention that she went back and scalped the dead before heading out. In the canoe, the small group of fugitives paddled their asses of, desperately trying to get down river before they were caught, recaptured, and harshly executed.&nbsp; They traveled at night, hiding the canoe and sleeping in the bushes during the day, constantly surrounded by uncharted territory and unforgiving wilderness.&nbsp; Finally, after a couple days of this nocturnal adventuring, they reached the New Hampshire town of Bradley Cove, where they convinced a local farmer to provide them with food and shelter for the night.&nbsp; From there, they headed out for home, walking the remaining 30+ miles to Haverhill.&nbsp; The group was received as heroes by the populace, none of whom ever expected to see Mrs. Duston alive again.</p>\r\n<p>Hannah Duston was a crazy hardass who really didn\'t take kindly to being captured, force-marched, and having her kid brutally murdered right in front of her.&nbsp; This tough lady traveled over a hundred miles on foot just days after giving birth, pushed her body to the limit, and didn\'t even flinch when it came to single-handedly rescuing her friends by slaughtering an entire raiding party of battle-hardened warrior braves with a fucking hatchet.&nbsp; To commemorate the adventures of this face-smashing, take-no-bullshit frontierswoman, in 1879 an appropriately-grim-looking statue of Mrs. Duston was erected (huh huh) in downtown Haverhill.&nbsp; She is believed to be the first American woman to have a public monument built in her honor.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/duston2.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Sources:</span><br /><br /><span> Cook, Bernard.&nbsp; <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Women and War</span>.&nbsp; ABC-CLIO, 2006.<br /><br /> James, Edward T., et al.&nbsp; <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Notable American Women</span>.&nbsp; Harvard Univ. Press, 1971.<br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.hannahdustin.com/index2.html\">The Story of Hannah Dustin</a> </span></p>','2009-04-24','64854004219','duston.jpg','duston - Copy.jpg','Hannah Duston','Frontierswoman escapes from her captors by killing them all with an axe.',''),('Ben Nyaumbe','1979','N/A','Malindi, Kenya','21st-century Kenyan Adventurer','<p>A couple weeks ago I put together an erotic slash nerd fanfic article about Jack Churchill <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/churchillvsboa.html\">taking on a TITANOBOA</a>.&nbsp; Well over Easter weekend (Latin Easter, not Greek Easter, so \"Opa!\" to all of my Eastern Orthodox readers out there), a Kenyan man named Ben Nyaumbe experienced a first-hand reenactment of that epic struggle, only somehow the real thing was even more over-the-top insane than the most insane, whacked-out shit that could come out of the deepest corners of my already-whacked-out brain.</p>\r\n<p>Ben was just chilling on the farm he worked at in rural Kenya.&nbsp; The guy had been the manager here for the last ten years running, and as usual, he was the last guy there, working until about 7:30 p.m.&nbsp; But he didn\'t really give a shit.&nbsp; No big deal, just another day at the office.&nbsp; That is of course, until as he was walking back from the field, he felt something squishy under his feet.</p>\r\n<p>The next thing he knew, he was being leg-sweeped by a goddamned thirteen-foot long python from hell.</p>\r\n<p>The massive beast tripped Nyaumbe up, knocked him to the ground, and immediately started wrapping itself around him like the giant man-eating Anaconda snake from that crazy 1990s movie with Ice Cube (I think it was cleverly titled <em>Anaconda</em>).&nbsp; Ben tried to fight it off, but the powerful creature pinned his left arm to his torso and started squeezing the ever-loving fuck out of him like crazy.</p>\r\n<p>Now, I\'m not sure how much you guys know about pythons, but these things are seriously fucking vicious.&nbsp; This sort of tremendous, muscular beast generally eats things like sheep, goats, and dogs, plus the occasional kangaroo.&nbsp; There was one incident where an overly-ambitious python actually killed and tried to eat a <a href=\"http://www.petandwildlife.com/alligators/13ft-python-eats-6-foot-gator.html\">six-foot gator</a>, and there are several documented cases where constrictor snakes of equal size have <a href=\"http://hamptonroads.com/2008/10/pet-python-blamed-virginia-beach-womans-strangulation\">killed</a> the <a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/1996/10/10/nyregion/13-foot-long-pet-python-kills-its-caretaker.html\">shit</a> out of <a href=\"http://www.blnz.com/news/2006/12/19/13-foot_kills_owner_Ohio_Ohio.html\">careless</a> <a href=\"http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/2622427/Python-kills-careless-student-zookeeper-in-Caracas.html\">humans</a>.&nbsp; Needless to say, caught off guard and firmly in the clenched iron coils of this giant skull-crushing python, with only one usable appendage, things were looking pretty bad for our friend.</p>\r\n<p>But Ben Nyaumbe wasn\'t going to just keel over and asphyxiate like some kind of chump.&nbsp; He was going to punch this thing in the fuck till it shit.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/nyaumbe1.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>A thirteen-foot python.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>His first order of business was to let this giant abomination from the sick asshole of Mother Nature know that he wasn\'t going to punk out and die without a fight.&nbsp; When the snake began to tighten itself around Nyaumbe, he did the one thing he could to inflict damage on this hideous monstrosity &ndash; he bit the fuck out of it.</p>\r\n<p>That\'s right, this dude attacked a killer python with his teeth, chowing down on it like a giant, scaly, carnivorous Big Mac.</p>\r\n<p>The python wasn\'t really a big fan of having its tail chomped, so it started fucking pulling this dude across the ground.&nbsp; I have no idea how the shit this would work logistically, but apparently this giant man-eating snake held onto Ben with its abdomen and began dragging him towards a nearby tree.&nbsp; Well, Nyaumbe wasn\'t done yet. As he was being pulled, he grabbed onto a nearby tree trunk and held on for dear life.&nbsp; He held on tenaciously, fighting this thing off for almost an hour.</p>\r\n<p>This alone should give you some indication of how tough Ben Nyaumbe is.&nbsp; The man has spent the last ten-plus years doing hard labor in the fields, and is probably in pretty goddamned incredible shape.&nbsp; This is a fact you can further glean from the fact that he hung onto a tree trunk with one arm for over an hour while a ridiculous thirteen-foot long snake choked him the fuck out.&nbsp; Sure, this thing wasn\'t exactly a 40-foot <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/titanoboa.html\">TITANOBOA</a>, but it was so pissed-off, violent, and horrifically mean it might as well have been called the SATANOBOA.&nbsp; So yeah, while most people can\'t hang from a chin-up bar with one hand for like five minutes, this guy somehow managed to resist this beast from Hell for an hour.</p>\r\n<p>Eventually Nyaumbe\'s strength gave out, and he lost his grip on the tree.&nbsp; The monster then pulled this dude a short ways across the field, and then somehow <em>pulled this dude up into the branches of another tree</em>!&nbsp; No kidding, this thing dragged poor Ben up like ten feet off the ground into a tree like a crazy homicidal reptilian lumberjack.</p>\r\n<p>Thinking that it had Ben sufficiently weakened, the python unhinged its jaw and got ready to return the favor and bite the fuck out of Ben Nyaumbe\'s face until he died from it.&nbsp; But, as we\'ve already seen, this guy wasn\'t going to sit there and let himself become dinner for some horrible killer monster the likes of which you don\'t generally see outside of an Epic-Level D&amp;D quest.&nbsp; Right as this thing was going to impale his face with its fangs, Ben freed his other arm, pulled off his shirt, and wrapped it around the monster\'s face.</p>\r\n<p>With the Kenyan equivalent of Mankind\'s \"Socko\" stuck to its face, the python wasn\'t able to see, much less get its jaws around Ben Nyaumbe\'s cranium.&nbsp; So Ben was holding this thing with one arm, trying desperately to control it, while with the other hand he reached into his pocket and busted out his cell phone.&nbsp; He sent his best friend a text saying something along the lines of: OMG SNAKE EATIN MY HEAD</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/nyaumbe3.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>Dramatization.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>As Ben Nyaumbe and the SATANOBOA are desperately fighting for their lives, slugging it out like the final rounds of the Rocky-<a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/drago.html\">Drago</a> bout, both men on their last legs, drawing from their last reserves of energy, his friend goes and gets two police officers, and together they rush to the scene of the epic battle.&nbsp; They all leap out of the cop car and head towards the tree.&nbsp; One of the officers takes one look at this gigantic goddamned snake locked in mortal combat with this poor farmer and is so terrified by this physical incarnation of evil that he seriously fucking ran back to his police car and locked himself inside.</p>\r\n<p>Undeterred by the fact that an officer of the law just failed his saving throw vs. fear, Ben calls out to the men for help.&nbsp; The one remaining cop throws a rope up into the tree for our hero, who manages to somehow get the rope tied around the vicious snake\'s neck.&nbsp; He throws the other end down to his friend, and the two men at the bottom of the tree manage to yank hard enough to send both Ben Nyaumbe and SATANOBOA crashing to the earth.&nbsp; Together, the three men subdue the monster, and the police ship it off to a nearby animal preserve.</p>\r\n<p>All told, the duel lasted for roughly three hours.&nbsp; Ben Nyaumbe had not only managed to survive the violent, prolonged conflict with one of the planet\'s deadliest and most ruthless predators - he made that monster his bitch.</p>\r\n<p>But the story doesn\'t end there.&nbsp; The next morning, when rangers at the preserve went back to take a closer look at the snake, they found that its cage was empty.&nbsp; SATANOBOA had escaped.</p>\r\n<p>If the monster comes back seeking vengeance, Ben Nyaumbe will be ready.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/nyaumbe2.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://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7999909.stm\" target=\"blank\">BBC News</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.nation.co.ke/News/-/1056/560504/-/item/0/-/ad6oaoz/-/index.html\" target=\"blank\">Man Bites Snake</a></p>','2009-04-17','2587624276','nyaumbe.jpg','nyaumbe - Copy.jpg','Ben Nyaumbe','Man battles a giant, thirteen-foot, man-eating python for over three hours.',''),('Paul Rusesabagina','June 15, 1954','N/A','Murama, Rwanda','20th-century Rwandan Humanitarian','<p>When you peruse the five years (!) worth of content now located on this website, more often than not you\'re face-punched by stories of some of the most insane assbeaters that our ultra-xtreme warlike species has ever produced. These neck-snapping shitkickers have <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/toloza.html\">stabbed people in the fucking face</a>, <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/stamfordbridge.html\">hacked warriors to pieces</a>, <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/crecy.html\">machine-gunned Nazis by the dozen</a>, and generally just made their mark on history by pummeling the fuck out of their enemies until all that was left was an increasingly-long trail of severed appendages, shredded armor, and empty shell casings.</p>\r\n<p>That said, it may come as a surprise to hear that amassing towering piles of limbless corpses while riding on the back of a nuclear-powered buzzsaw-rocket isn\'t necessarily a prerequisite for badassitude.&nbsp; In fact, in the case of Paul Rusesabagina, the exact opposite is true;&nbsp; this fearless hardass actually risked his life to <em>prevent</em> machete-wielding maniacs from going <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/voorhees.html\">Voorhees</a> on everything with a pulse by standing up to heavily-armed thugs time and time again, even when the situation seemed insanely hopeless &ndash; an act of bravery that requires a gigantic, planet-sized nutsack and an incredible display of testicular fortitude that makes this man a total badass in his own right.</p>\r\n<p>The first thing you should know about the sub-Saharan African nation of Rwanda is that it\'s dominated by two tribal ethnic groups &ndash; the Hutu and the Tutsi.&nbsp; Even though these two factions are from the same ancestral land, speak the same language, and are about as physiologically different as a pair of identical twin dopplegangers, they still seriously hate each other\'s guts out with the fiery rage of a million suns for some stupid reason I can\'t be bothered to look up right now.&nbsp; The smart money is probably on European colonization being the root of the problem, but who knows &ndash; I pretty much tend to blame Europeans for everything from nuclear war and hand grenades to reality television and colon cancer.&nbsp; But whatever, the point here is that these two remarkably-similar cultural groups basically go together like a high-powered nail gun and an unsuspecting crotch.</p>\r\n<p>Well in 1994 the Hutu got really sick of the situation and decided to do something about it.&nbsp; All of a sudden one morning they flipped out like the zombies at the beginning of <em>Dawn of the Dead</em>, grabbed the pointiest things they could find, and started massacring Tutsis across the country.</p>\r\n<p>Paul Rusesabagina was a Hutu, but for some reason he really just couldn\'t bring himself to jump axe-first onto the genocide bandwagon and start brutally executing his neighbors just because some douchebag with a megaphone told him to.&nbsp; Arbitrary manslaughter just wasn\'t really his bag, which I guess is pretty understandable I suppose.&nbsp; Instead, this oppositional-defiant civil disobeyer decided that he was going to sack up and do whatever it took to protect himself, his family, and anybody else that required his assistance.</p>\r\n<p>Unlike many of his countrymen who were forced into service by the unruly hordes, Rusesabagina was actually in a pretty good situation to tell the rampaging killbots to get bent like a horseshoe magnet.&nbsp; He was the manager of a posh Belgian-owned, super-mega obscenely expensive luxury hotel in the city of Kigali known as the Mille Collines.&nbsp; Since the Belgians pretty much hauled ass out of there on their jetpacks as soon as they caught sight of the vengeful machete-swinging hordes, Paul decided to move his family into the hotel and hunker down for the inevitable siege.&nbsp; He loaded his family and friends up in a hotel van and hauled ass through Kigali like the APC scene from <em>Aliens</em>, breaking through roadblocks and power-sliding into the Mille Collines parking garage at fifty miles an hour.&nbsp; Once inside, he opened the hotel\'s doors to persecuted Rwandans across the countryside, regardless of ethnic background, and made a determined effort to do everything in his power to keep the men and women in the hotel from having their heads chopped off in a really violent manner by a bunch of sick sadistic freaks with bladed weapons.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/rusesabagina1.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>The Hotel.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>While copious amounts of complete and utter batshit mayhem surrounded the Mille Collines, Rusesabagina and the denizens of the Mille Collines did what they could with what they had available.&nbsp; Running water and electricity were at a premium, so they used the chlorinated water from the hotel swimming pool for cleaning, cooking, and drinking purposes.&nbsp; Rusesabagina\'s personal safety was threatened almost daily by heavy machine guns, Molotov cocktails, and fucking three-foot long knives, yet this undaunted, apparently-fearless Rwandan humanitarian made the most of the two main weapons at his disposal &ndash; the hotel wine cellar, and the one working phone line that miraculously avoiding being cut by the angry Hutu militia.&nbsp; When enemy troops came too close or threatened direct action against Rusesabagina and the hundreds of people under his care, he bought off their commanders with priceless bottles of French Burgundy and Bordeaux in exchange for peace.&nbsp; At any spare moment in which he wasn\'t bribing someone not to kill him or his friends, Paul was on the phone or the fax sending out pleas to anybody and everybody who would listen &ndash; the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the press, the United Nations... shit, he even got on the horn with the fucking White House somehow.</p>\r\n<p>When news got out that Paul Rusesabagina had built a fortified sanctuary against the madness sweeping across the country, people flocked to the Hotel Mille Collines seeking his aid.&nbsp; Over the 11 week siege in which the embattled hotel was completely surrounded by militia forces actively seeking to utterly and completely murder every human being inside, the Hotel\'s 1,268 tenants stood strong.&nbsp; Hutu forces routinely threatened full-scale invasion, broke windows, ransacked Paul\'s hotel room, sent assassins into the hotel hallways, and basically did everything they could to try and overwhelm the Hotel, but Paul Rusesabagina always responded with an unwavering middle finger salute.&nbsp; He never backed down, cashed in every favor anybody owed him, bartered with every item at his disposal, and reached out for help in every possible direction.&nbsp; Somehow, he incredibly found a way to hold off the seemingly-inevitable invasion during 70+ days of sociopathic anarchy.&nbsp; Rwandan government forces eventually regained control over the city of Kigali, and the people of the hotel were allowed to escape to freedom.&nbsp; Of the 1,268 people under his care, not a single one was killed or captured by the militia.</p>\r\n<p>The Rwandan Civil War was completely fucking nuts &ndash; conservative estimates suggest that over 800,000 people were killed in the span of just 100 days.&nbsp; Yet in the midst of this ridiculous insanity, one man &ndash; Paul Rusesabagina &ndash; managed to overcome the odds and save the lives of over a thousand people without even so much as lifting a firearm.&nbsp; And that, my friends, is what makes you a badass.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/rusesabagina3.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>The movie <em>Hotel Rwanda</em> is based off of Paul Rusesabagina\'s life.<br />And just for the record, Don Cheadle is also badass.</span></p>\r\n<p><br /><br /></p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Sources:</span><br /><br /><span> Gourevitch, Richard.&nbsp; <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families.</span>&nbsp; Macmillan, 1999.<br /><br /> Rusesabagina, Paul, and Zoellner, Tom.&nbsp; <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">An Ordinary Man</span>.&nbsp; Viking, 2006.<br /><br /> Totten, Samuel, et al.&nbsp; <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Dictionary of Genocide</span>.&nbsp; Greenwood, 2008. </span></p>','2009-04-10','24092664445','rusesabagina.jpg','rusesabagina - Copy.jpg','Paul Rusesabagina','The hero of the Rwandan Genocide saved over a thousand people from crazy machete-toting maniacs.','Real badasses aren\'t afraid to rock the bow-tie.'),('John Henry Holliday','August 14, 1851','November 8, 1887','Griffin, GA, USA','19th-century American Doctor','<p>Considering how many people out there are scared shitless by root canals and tooth extractions, holding the dubious moniker of \"history\'s most fearsome dentist\" isn\'t exactly a hollow accolade.&nbsp; Plying his trade at a time when oral surgery resembled something out of the darkest chronicles of the Medieval Inquisition, Dr. John Holliday, DDS was a man desensitized to even the most horrific bloodshed and violence.&nbsp; In his short, eventful life wandering the American West in search of adventure, danger, and untreated cavities, the man known only as \"Doc\" would make a name for himself as one of the country\'s deadliest gunslingers.</p>\r\n<p>Born in Georgia in 1852, young John Holliday came down with a severe (and at the time untreatable) case of Tuberculosis soon after graduating from Dental School, and was given a couple months to live.&nbsp; Hoping that the warm, dry climates of the Wild Wild West would prolong that \"couple months\" into something a little more substantial, Doc decided to move out to Texas and spend what little time he had left on this Earth being completely fucking awesome all of the time and shooting motherfuckers in the face whenever he damn well felt like it.</p>\r\n<p>Holliday was a dentist by trade, but it turns out that it&rsquo;s very difficult to practice dentistry when you suffer from an incurable, highly-contagious, highly-noticeable disease like TB that makes you constantly look and sound like you&rsquo;re about to hack up a black lung at any moment.&nbsp; Apparently patients don\'t like it when sick doctors cough infectious diseases directly into their mouths. Go figure.</p>\r\n<p>Well Doc had to pay off his probably-astronomical student loans somehow, so he eventually decided to say, \"fuck it,\" and settled into the life of a professional gambler and gunfighter.&nbsp; He bounced around the West, stopping in lawless places like Dallas, Cheyenne, Dodge City, Leadville, Tuscon and Tombstone, getting into fights, sexing up hot babes, joining badass posses, and drinking all the opium-laced whiskey he could pack into his increasingly infrequently-utilized doctor\'s bag.</p>\r\n<p>The way Doc saw it, he was already going to die, so why not go down with guns blazing on the field of honor?&nbsp; He was a man with nothing to lose, so he just went completely balls-to-the-wall like a wild man all the goddamned time.&nbsp; He got into fights, jumped at every opportunity to fire his six-shooter at varmints, horse thieves, and cattle rustlers, and never backed down from any man, any life-or-death situation, or any drink for any reason.&nbsp; His antics got him arrested on 17 different occasions, but he never served any serious jail time, which is also pretty fucking awesome.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/doc1.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Here\'s an example of why you didn\'t fuck with Doc if you knew what was good for you.&nbsp; At one point during his colorful career, Holliday owned and operated a saloon in Las Vegas, New Mexico.&nbsp; One of the babes that worked there had a crazy ex-boyfriend who had just been discharged from the Army, and this guy wanted her to stop working as a Hooters Girl and getting ogled by a bunch of middle-aged perverts.&nbsp; When she told him to go violent hump a chainsaw, he got pissed, went outside the saloon, and started shooting out this windows with his pistol.&nbsp; Doc didn&rsquo;t even fucking flinch.&nbsp; He calmly put down the beer mug he was polishing, drew his Colt Peacemaker revolver, sauntered outside, and dropped the punk with one shot.&nbsp; Then he probably went off and slept with the dead guy&rsquo;s ex-girlfriend just to be a dick.</p>\r\n<p>While he was generally on the \"posse\" side of the Old West\'s flavor of badass vigilante justice, there was also some evidence indicating that Doc was once involved in a big-time stagecoach robbery in 1879.&nbsp; Allegedly, he stole $26,000 in gold bullion from a Wells Fargo wagon (in terms of inflation this is probably like two bajikizillion dollars in today&rsquo;s money) and got away with it.&nbsp; This could be a wild rumor, however &ndash; one time a saloonkeeper in Tombstone named Mike Joyce accused Doc of being involved in the robbery, so Holliday busted into the dude&rsquo;s bar in the middle of the day and opened fire, popping Mike in the hand and hitting some random d-bag patron in the foot with forty-five calibers of hot lead.&nbsp; It&rsquo;s tough to say whether Doc was just that offended that he&rsquo;d been implicated in a Grand Theft Stagecoach, or if he was just the sort of motherfucker who busted bitches in the eye when they talked shit about him behind his back.&nbsp; It could really go either way.</p>\r\n<p>As far as his 1337 gunfighting sk1llz0rz went, Doc was lightning-fast on the draw, but by all accounts he wasn\'t really a great shot &ndash; a theory that probably can be bolstered by the fact that he opened fire on a guy in a crowded saloon and somehow managed to put a bullet into the boot of an innocent bystander on the other side of the room.&nbsp; One can only assume this was a by-product of his rampant laudanum addiction and near-constant state of drunkenness.&nbsp; Of course, most of the time Doc\'s beer goggles double-vision didn\'t really matter, because in his most famous gunfights he was usually packing a totally sweet double-barrel twelve-gauge that bore a striking resemblance to the <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/doc-supershotgun.jpg\">Super Shotgun from the Doom games</a> - a fearsome weapon of face-melting destruction that basically liquidated pretty much anything it was pointed in the general vicinity of.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/doc3.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Of course, the most famous Doc Holliday shotgun-blast insanity took place during the Gunfight at the OK Corral in 1881.&nbsp; Doc\'s buddy Wyatt Earp and his brothers had started some shit with the Ike Clanton gang, so the Earps decided to show them what it was like to suck on a half-dozen large-caliber bullets.&nbsp; Doc always had his friends\' backs, and he went along for the ride, showing up at the showdown with the aforementioned one-man arsenal of cowboy-vaporizing asskickery.&nbsp; When the firing started, Doc ventilated Tom McLaury\'s abdomen with a nice heaping charge of buckshot at close range.&nbsp; Tom\'s brother Frank took a potshot at Doc, hitting the Avenging Dentist in the side, but Doc spun, dropped the shotgun, quick-drew his Colt and returned fire, hitting Frank in his bitch neck and killing him on the spot.</p>\r\n<p>Even though Doc Holliday had personally fucked up two members of their gang at the OK Corral, Clanton and his boys didn\'t get the memo that he was fucking awesome, and they decided to get some kind of lame revenge.&nbsp; They killed Morgan Earp in a vicious 2Pac-style drive by on the streets of Tombstone, so Wyatt and Doc did what they did best &ndash; got fucking ripshit pissed off &ndash; and went out to show the Clanton Gang the proper way to exact bloody vengeance on your deserving enemies.&nbsp; Together they rode through the West hunting down the men responsible for Morgan\'s death one by one and gunning them down on the spot like a posse of Old West Punishers with no remorse and no mercy.&nbsp; In one of the few confirmed killings from the Vengeance Ride, they chased some dipshit through a train station and shot him down in the middle of the day &ndash; the Sherriff later found 20 bullets and a charge of buckshot lodged in the guy&rsquo;s corpse.&nbsp; Nobody knows for sure how many men were killed by Wyatt and Doc during their freak out hell ride, but knowing what I know about Doc Holliday, my somewhat-educated guess would be is that it was a lot.</p>\r\n<p>Despite his crazy life as an face-kicking kill-maniac who went out of his way looking for fights, the gunfighting alcoholic gambling dentist with a short fuse died peacefully in his bed in 1887 at the age of 35, one of the Old West\'s most interesting and hardcore badasses.&nbsp; His life is now the stuff of the best Old West legends.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/doc2.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<center><span>\"My fight\'s not with you, Holliday.\"<br /> \"I beg to differ, sir. We started a game we never got to finish. \'Play for Blood,\' remember?\"<br /> \"Oh that. I was just foolin\' about.\"<br /> \"I wasn\'t.\"</span></center>\r\n<p><br /> <br /><br /></p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Sources:</span><br /><br /><span> Meyers, John.&nbsp; <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Doc Holliday</span>.&nbsp; Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1955.<br /><br /> O&rsquo;Neal, Bill.&nbsp; <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Encyclopedia of Western Gunfighters</span>.&nbsp; Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1991.<br /><br /> Patterson, Richard M.&nbsp; <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Historical Atlas of the Outlaw West</span>.&nbsp; Big Earth, 1984. </span></p>','2005-02-11','81279965017','doc.jpg','doc - Copy.jpg','Doc Holliday','The infamous half-insane, alcoholic, gunfighting dentist.','\"There was something very peculiar about Doc. He was gentlemanly, a good dentist, a friendly man and yet, outside of us boys, I don\'t think he had a friend in the Territory.  Tales were told that he had murdered men in different parts of the country;  that he had robbed and committed all manner of crimes, and yet, when persons were asked how they knew it, they could only admit it was hearsay, and that nothing of the kind could really be traced to Doc\'s account.  He was a slender, sickly fellow, but whenever a stage was robbed or a row started, and help was needed, Doc was one of the first to saddle his horse and report for duty.\"\r\n\r\n– Virgil Earp'),('Hizir Reis','1478','July 4, 1546','Midilli, Turkey','16th-century Turkish Admiral','<p>The Battle of Preveza in 1538 was a major turning point in the history of naval power in the Mediterranean.&nbsp; Taking place on the same body of water where <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/augustus.html\">Caesar Augustus</a> claimed final power during the Battle of Actium in 31 BCE, this climactic battle of the ongoing Turkish-European war would be an epic conflict that would definitively determine jurisdiction over the Greek coast, ultimate dominion over the planet\'s most coveted and lucrative naval trade routes, and near-infinite bragging rights around the beer coolers at the next annual Turkish-Venetian Super Bowl Barbeque Bash.</p>\r\n<p>On one side was the great Italian Admiral and <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Angelo_Bronzino_048.jpg\">perpetually-shirtless</a> egomaniac Andrea Doria.&nbsp; Widely believed to be the most brilliant seaman Christianity had to offer, this dauntless, self-aggrandizing gut-buster had been whomping Turkish asses up and down the coast of Southern Greece for years, crushing Ottoman warships into sawdust and whacking babies in the face with his pimp-cane, and he now sought to finally exert his power over his hated rivals once and for all by incinerating all that remained of the Turkish Fleet.&nbsp; At his command was a seemingly-endless Death Armada of crusading vessels from the European nations that comprised the powerful Holy League;&nbsp; 300 badass warships from Papacy-Approved locales like Spain, Venice, Genoa, and Malta.&nbsp; Hell, when the Pope heard about the assbeating that was about to go down, he decided to get in on the action himself, sending over a dozen of his own battleships to fight the heathen Turks, and prove once and for all that the Christian God indeed was an Awesome God.</p>\r\n<p>This of course was back in the day when the Pope had his own army and navy.&nbsp; Can you imagine what the world would be like today if Benedict XVI could send a strafing run of A-10s every time somebody pissed him off?</p>\r\n<p>Well this masturbatory Grand Showcase of naval might was great and all, but as Harvey Keitel would say, \"let\'s not start sucking each other\'s dicks quite yet, gentlemen.\"&nbsp; You see, across the Gulf of Arta stood the most badass Muslim warlord to ever sail the high seas - a man known to his countrymen simply as Kheir-ed-Din &ndash; The Defender of the Faith.&nbsp; Outnumbered and heavily outgunned, on this day the Grand Admiral of the Turkish Navy remained unimpressed by his enemies\' vulgar display of power.&nbsp; This brilliant tactician and naval asskicker was determined to smite the fuck out of the infidel crusaders to the fullest extent of his impressive abilities.&nbsp; His beleaguered fleet of 122 battle-hardened warships stood at the ready, eagerly waiting his command.&nbsp; It wouldn\'t be long before they\'d have an opportunity to show the European Nations what it was like to be on the receiving end of a <a href=\"http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7796047.stm\">Turkish shoe to the fucking face</a>.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/barbarossa-1.gif\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The boy who would become the Defender of the Faith was born on the Isle of Lesbos in the Aegean Sea at the end of the 15th century.&nbsp; Coming from lower-class parents on a tiny, isolated island more well-known for its etymological association with the word \"lesbianism\" than for it\'s penchant for producing epic skull-crushing hardasses, young Hizir Reis was more or less received as just one in a long line of male children produced by a nondescript family of little to no importance.&nbsp; His rise to prominence as Grand Admiral started from very humble beginnings - with minimal opportunity for fiscal advancement through legitimate means, the young Reis boys initially opted to turn to adventure, glory, fame, and money by buying a boat, recruiting a crew of cutthroats, and turning to a life of badass piracy on the high seas of the Mediterranean.</p>\r\n<p>Operating of the Tunisian coast in the early 1500s, Hizir Reis and his band of bloodthirsty buccaneer brothers got busy bashing peoples\' faces in with their scimitars on a daily basis.&nbsp; Over time, these enterprising asskickers built up a pretty sweet pirate empire, preying on European shipping, kicking the heads off of the Knights Hospitaller, and plundering with relative impunity all over the place like crazy whoah.&nbsp; As news of their success spread, they gained the support of local Moorish seafaring warriors, fought against Spanish expansion into North Africa, and pummeled a bunch of Christian knights unconscious with their own crucifixes.</p>\r\n<p>Hizir eventually took over control of the ever-expanding criminal enterprise after the death of his older brother, and decided to ally himself with the Ottoman Turkish Empire.&nbsp; You see, back in the 16th century, the Turks really had their shit together. The Sultan basically went around to the most badass Muslim pirates in the Middle East and told them, \"Hey dude if you promise only to fuck up the Christians and leave Turkish shipping alone, I\'ll give you a bunch of troops, cannons, supplies, and money in return.\"&nbsp; This government-sanctioned piracy worked out pretty well for everybody - the Turks gained a powerful ally, and corsairs like Hizir Reis pretty much had free reign to wreak havoc on anybody and everybody who was pissing them off.&nbsp; It was as a badass Turkish privateer that this ferocious corsair made a name for himself as a serious face-melting assbeater, crushing the enemies of the Ottoman Empire like empty soda cans and basically crotchpunching the European powers up and down the coastlines of the Mediterranean.</p>\r\n<p>The notorious Muslim pirate, known to the Europeans as Barbarossa (\"Red Beard\", because he had, well, red hair.&nbsp; And a beard), became an overnight celebrity when he put together a massive pirate army and captured the heavily-fortified North African city of Algiers in 1517.&nbsp; The Sultan was so mega pumped-up about that awesome shit that he appointed Barbarossa Governor of Algiers and commander of the entire fucking Western Ottoman Fleet, and sent him out to do what he did best &ndash; smash European ships until they were no longer capable of flotation.&nbsp; The Empire&rsquo;s newest admiral got his Darth Vader on pretty much immediately, conquering basically all of North Africa by 1529.&nbsp; The Hapsburg King-Emperor Charles V tried to retake the areas that had fallen to the Turks, but ended up getting kicked in the balls repeatedly by the unstoppable Peasant-turned-Pirate-turned-Admiral.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/barbarossa-2.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>A sweet-looking Ottoman gunship.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>It was around this time that our buddy Andrea Doria arrived on the scene. At this point in time, Doria&rsquo;s name wasn&rsquo;t yet synonymous with <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Andrea_Doria\">sinking ships</a>, but that situation that would soon be remedied by Admiral Barbarossa and his cannon-laden, shit-wrecking warships.</p>\r\n<p>Doria decided he was going to liberate Greece from the Turkish yoke, sailing into the port city of Coron in 1532 and capturing it with relative ease. After hearing about this defeat, the Turkish Sultan was like, \"that&rsquo;s fucking it.\"&nbsp; He slammed his fist down on a table, swore loudly in basically every language he could think of, and immediately promoted Barbarossa to the position of Grand Mega Super Inane Admiral of the Entire Goddamned Turkish Navy.</p>\r\n<p>Barbarossa didn&rsquo;t fuck around.&nbsp; He built a huge fleet, relentlessly trained his men, and set out for action.&nbsp; In 1535 he re-captured Coron, conquered Tunis, blew up Sicily, and plundered the shit out of the Italian coast.&nbsp; His raids and assbeatery pissed off the Europeans so badly that they sent Andrea Doria to dish out some much-needed retaliation.&nbsp; Doria assembled a massive Christian Fleet, sailed out to the afore-mentioned harbor of Preveza, and prepared to teach the Muslims a lesson in getting their faces kicked in with a chainmailed boot.</p>\r\n<p>Well Andrea Doria needed to recognize that stepping to Barbarossa is a good way to get one\'s eye swole up.&nbsp; Off the coast of Preveza in 1538, the Allied galleys of the Holy League were face-smashed into driftwood by the gigantic nutbag of Hayreddin Barbarossa and his Ottoman Fleet.&nbsp; Outnumbered more than three-to-one (six-to-one according to some accounts), Barbarossa not only demolished the invasion force &ndash; he made the combined naval might of five mighty Christian nations look like that <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/jul/12/arctic\">adorable fleet of rubber duckies</a> that menaced the shores of New England a couple years ago.&nbsp; The Allies were crushed in a humiliating manner, their ships were sunk and/or captured, its galleys were plundered &ndash; shit, the Republic of Venice was fucked up so hard it was forced to pay war reparations to the Turks and publicly apologize for wasting Barbarossa&rsquo;s time with such a pitiful, insignificant military effort.</p>\r\n<p>For his success, Barbarossa was given the top honors of the Ottoman Empire.&nbsp; He was even awarded the right to sit on the Imperial Council and help run the higher-workings of the government.&nbsp; His victory also established the might of the Turkish Navy in the Mediterranean - from that point on, Ottoman ships dominated the Adriatic and Aegean Seas, and the Sultan held sole power over some of the world\'s most profitable trade routes.&nbsp; Barbarossa continued his adventures for a couple years, sacking Sicilian cities, meddling in petty European succession wars, and plundering Spanish galley squadrons.&nbsp; He eventually retired to a life of luxury, and died in 1546 at the age of 68, the greatest and most successful naval commander in the history of Islam.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/barbarossa-3.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Sources:</span><br /><br /><span> Askan, Virginia H., and Goffman, Daniel.&nbsp; <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">The Early Modern Ottomans</span>.&nbsp; Cambridge Univ. Press, 2007.<br /><br /> Glete, Jan.&nbsp; <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Warfare at Sea, 1500-1650</span>.&nbsp; Routledge, 2000.<br /><br /> Jardin, Lisa.&nbsp; <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Worldly Goods</span>.&nbsp; W.W. Norton, 1998.<br /><br /> Shaw, Ezel Kural.&nbsp; <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey</span>.&nbsp; Cambridge Univ. Press, 1977.<br /><br /> Somel, Selcuk.&nbsp; <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Historical Dictionary of the Ottoman Empire</span>.&nbsp; Rowman &amp; Littlefield, 2003. </span></p>','2009-04-03','29600885073','barbarossa.jpg','barbarossa - Copy.jpg','Hayreddin Barbarossa','The peasant who became a pirate, and then became the Grand Admiral of the Turkish Navy.','Barbarossa carrying a Trident.  He was just good like that.'),('Seth E. Howard','Unknown','N/A','Unknown','21st-century American Soldier','<p>On the morning of 6 April 2008, a pair of American Chinook helicopters zoomed in low over the Shok Valley in the unforgiving mountains of rural Afghanistan.&nbsp; This impenetrable, rocky ravine was unfamiliar and unfriendly territory to the Western powers &ndash; a heavily-fortified network of caves laced the canyon walls, concealing a massive network of terrorist freedom-and-pie-hating insurgents from the prying eyes of Allied warplanes and satellites.&nbsp; No NATO force had ever dared venture into this daunting region, and even the Soviets had been repeatedly turned away from this area by <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/massoud.html\">determined Mujahedeen fighters</a> when the Russkies had launched their ill-fated invasion in the 80s.&nbsp; Today, things would be different.</p>\r\n<p>Staff Sergeant Seth E. Howard of the 3rd Battalion, 3rd Special Forces wasn&rsquo;t impressed by this harsh bastion&rsquo;s seemingly-terrifying reputation.&nbsp; He was a fucking Green Beret.&nbsp; He was part of the same unit as uber-yet-fictional badass John Rambo, and the rest of the world had to worry about him.&nbsp; Not the other way around.</p>\r\n<p>The treacherous, rocky canyon floor wasn&rsquo;t conducive to setting down a couple of giant twin-propellered transport choppers, but the twelve men of Howard&rsquo;s Special Forces team couldn&rsquo;t have cared less if you&rsquo;d paid them to.&nbsp; These ridiculous hardasses just strapped on sixty pounds of battle gear, grabbed their rifles, and fucking jumped ten feet down from the chopper door to the uneven rocks below.&nbsp; They didn&rsquo;t even use ropes or anything, because apparently things like &ldquo;safety&rdquo; and &ldquo;not breaking your ankles&rdquo; is for total pussies.</p>\r\n<p>With the men on the ground, the choppers took off and headed for home.&nbsp; The team broke into two squads &ndash; one group, led by the unit&rsquo;s commanding officer Captain Kyle Walton, began working their way up a narrow mountain pass towards a nearby village known to be a bastion of the afore-mentioned terrorist guerillas.&nbsp; Howard stayed on the canyon floor, keeping an eye out for possible Taliban snipers, while the command squad worked their way towards their objective.</p>\r\n<p>Well when you\'re a heavily-armed guerilla fighter, you don\'t spend twenty years living in a place like the Shok Valley without preparing for the possibility of being attacked by some badass commandos.&nbsp; Suddenly, out of nowhere, a few hundred guerilla troops opened fire on the Americans with AK-47s, rocket-propelled grenades, slingshots, handguns, sniper rifles, and Super Soaker 9000s (the most badass of all super soakers).&nbsp; The opening salvo struck the Afghani interpreter attached to the Special Forces command squad, killing him instantly and sending the poor guy face-first into the dirt like a lump of meat.&nbsp; Captain Walton and the rest of his team scrambled for cover, but were basically completely fucked, sitting out in the open while an entire army of insurgents used their gourds for target practice.</p>\r\n<p>Well screw that.&nbsp; From his position at the bottom of the canyon, Seth Howard decided it was time to show those motherfuckers what it felt like to be on the receiving end of a running ballnock of Democracy. He grabbed his weapons &ndash; a totally sweet sniper rifle, a combat knife, and an 84mm recoilless rifle, and went to work turning terrorist brains into giant grayish-colored cranial explosions.</p>\r\n<p>Now, before we go a whole lot further, let me clarify something.&nbsp; I assume that everybody who reads this website knows what a sniper rifle is, but before you go thinking that a &ldquo;recoilless rifle&rdquo; is some kind of sissy cross between a bolt-action .22 and a BB gun, here&rsquo;s a picture to illustrate what this weapon looks like:</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/sethhoward1.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>This isn&rsquo;t a dinky paintball gun, my friends.&nbsp; It&rsquo;s a fucking rocket launcher.&nbsp; So Sgt. Howard was out there switching between anti-personnel and high-explosive weapons like a frenetic first-person shooter protagonist, blasting terrorist fortifications with insane death missiles and using his badass sniper weapon to pick off anybody stupid enough to stick their heads out from their hiding places.&nbsp; When he wasn&rsquo;t killing people personally with some random variety of pain-causing instrument of asskickery, he was coordinating gunfire on the Taliban positions, repositioning the remaining members of his squad, or dunking the fuck out of a basketball.</p>\r\n<p>Thanks in no small part to Sgt. Howard&rsquo;s powers of asskickery, the command squad was able to get to cover in a small cave near the top of the pass.&nbsp; Unfortunately, while the initial threat of being overwhelmed by superior numbers had temporarily subsided, shit was still looking pretty bleak for Captain Walton and his homedogs.&nbsp; Guys were taking hits all over the place, enemy reinforcements were rolling in, Walton&rsquo;s rifle barrel had been blown in half, and the command squad was in a very real danger of being overrun by the guerillas.&nbsp; Shit, at one point one of the Special Forces operators had the lower half of his leg blown off in an explosion (in an insanely epic act of badassitude, the guy actually used his boot laces to tie the leg onto his thigh so he wouldn&rsquo;t lose it and then just kept on fighting.&nbsp; How hardcore is that?), and yet another member of the team was also critically wounded by shrapnel and gunfire.&nbsp; Howard soon realized he was going to need to bust a move and do something epic if he was going to save his team members.</p>\r\n<p>So Sergeant Seth Howard flipped out like the hardcore assbeater that he was, jumped out from behind his cover, and ran along the edge of a 60-foot high cliff towards his wounded allies.&nbsp; Bullets were flying all over the place, fucking shit is exploding like nuts, and he&rsquo;s firing from the hip in the general vicinity of the enemy while sprinting towards his imperiled team members and doing his best to not plummet to his death below.</p>\r\n<p>Luckily, this berserking Green Beret was more bulletproof than a Steven Segal movie, and he reached the small cave where the wounded men were taking cover and tenaciously fighting for their lives.&nbsp; With dozens of kill-crazy guerilla fighters bearing down on the Americans&rsquo; position, Sgt. Howard unhesitatingly rushed forward and placed himself between his wounded comrades and the enemy.&nbsp; He pushed ahead, alternately taking cover behind the body of the incredibly-dead interpreter and a small, 12-inch-high boulder, all the while directing accurate sniper and rocket fire on the oncoming rebel hordes with his one-man arsenal of balls-out terrorist nut-destruction.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/sethhoward3.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>Special Forces soldiers at the Shok Valley</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Meanwhile, the rest of the command team had formulated a daring plan &ndash; they were going to make a break for it.&nbsp; The seriously jacked-up soldiers started making their way down the sheer cliff face towards the floor of the canyon, nearly 60 feet below.&nbsp; While Captain Walton and his team began evacuating the wounded, Sgt. Howard kept up his fire on the enemy, trying to draw their attention away from the wounded Americans. He knew that eventually the Taliban were going to need to pay attention to the ripshit pissed-off motherfucker with the bazooka.&nbsp; He was right.&nbsp; This one-man demolition derby was blasting fortified positions with rockets, popping dudes&rsquo; heads off with his rifle, and marking targets for US air strikes, which were now being called down almost directly on top of his position.&nbsp; Shit, at one point, a 2,000-pound bomb landed about 300 feet away from him and nearly blew him off the edge of the cliff, but a little something like &ldquo;almost becoming human charcoal&rdquo; wasn&rsquo;t going to deter this guy from his mission.&nbsp; He continued providing suppressing fire while the command team made its way down, destroying several enemy weapons teams and wasting over 20 enemy troops &ndash; including 4 highly-trained Taliban snipers.</p>\r\n<p>Even though he was almost completely out of bullets, Howard continued to defend his position, single-handedly holding off the insurgent fighters while the rest of his team escaped.&nbsp; It was only after the command squad was at the extraction point that he began to pull back, making his way down the cliff to safety and using the bombs from the F-15s and Apache Gunships as cover.&nbsp; He would wait for the explosions, and then move during the confusion.&nbsp; Bombs were going off everywhere, and this guy was like fucking Stallone running in slow motion in front of a fiery explosion in some kind of over-the-top awesome action movie.&nbsp; He eventually made it down to the LZ and was extracted with the rest of his team.</p>\r\n<p>For their insane actions battling terrorists in the Shok Valley, the members of the 3rd Special Forces were awarded 10 Silver Stars &ndash; the most issued in a single day since the Vietnam War.&nbsp; Six soldiers were wounded &ndash; four critically &ndash; but they took down over 200 of the enemy, with Sergeant Seth Howard personally accounting for dozens of enemy troops, snipers, and RPG nests.&nbsp; For successfully preventing the command squad from being overrun by the enemy on two separate occasions, Howard also won the Silver Star &ndash; the third highest award for bravery offered by the United States.</p>\r\n<p>More importantly, every member of his unit survived the battle.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/sethhoward1a.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.armytimes.com/news/2008/12/ap_silver_stars_121208/\" target=\"blank\">Army Times Story</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/11/AR2008121104080.html\" target=\"blank\">Washington Post</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/12/army_howardss_121508w/\" target=\"blank\">Silver Star Citation</a></p>','2009-03-27','83513735160','sethhoward.jpg','sethhoward - Copy.jpg','Seth E. Howard','Green Beret fought off terrorist ambush with a sniper rifle and a rocket launcher.',''),('Mata Bhag Kaur','18th Century','Unknown','India','18th-century Sikh Warrior','<p>If there\'s one thing I hope this website has taught you about the <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/babadeepsingh.html\">Sikhs</a>, it should be that they don\'t really get along with the <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/babur.html\">Mughals</a>.&nbsp; I\'m not an expert on Indian history, but it may have something to do with the descendents of <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/tamerlane.html\">Tamerlane</a> rolling into town, conquering the hell out of everything, subjugating the people, and actively trying to exterminate all traces of their religion.&nbsp; The fact that the Mughals had a standing cash bounty on severed Sikh heads probably didn\'t help diplomatic relations much either.</p>\r\n<p>Well in 1704 the Galactic Mughal Imperial Empire decided that they were going to wipe out Sikhism once and for all.&nbsp; They freaked out, crushed a couple soda cans on their heads, and dispatched the Mughal Darth Vader to surround the city of Amritsar, lay siege to the Guru of the Sikhs, and destroy the entire religion by killing it\'s head honcho in a ridiculously over-the-top violent manner.</p>\r\n<p>(The fact that there are currently 20 million Sikhs in the world should give you some indication of how successful the Mughals were in their endeavors.&nbsp; It just took them a while to realize that you don\'t fuck with these people unless you want to be on the receiving end of a Macho Man Randy Savage-style top-rope elbow drop to the nutsack.)</p>\r\n<p>Now the afore-mentionedleader of Sikhism was a man named Guru Gobind Singh.&nbsp; Think of this dude kind of like the Sikh Pope (though perhaps the Sikh Buddha would be a more appropriate analogy).&nbsp; There are only ten Gurus in the entire history of Sikhism, so yeah, you can be pretty sure that this guy was a pretty big deal. He was a pretty serious assbeater in his own right, but to make things worse for the Mughals he was also constantly surrounded by a badass bodyguard of fighters known as \"warrior-saints\".&nbsp; These dudes were kind of like the Apostles, only if Saint Peter went around shooting sword-swinging Centurions in the balls with RPG launchers and liberated his people from the chains of the Roman Empire.&nbsp; These righteous soldiers were like Sikh Paladins with muskets and totally sweet beards, and they sure as shit weren\'t going to just let the Mughals waltz into Amritsar and decapitate the Holiest man in their religion.&nbsp; They took up arms, fortified the city, and dared the Mughal Empire to step to them.</p>\r\n<p>This battle that ensued was completely off the chain.&nbsp; It was like the Alamo with turbans.&nbsp; The Mughals hurled wave after wave of soldiers at the walls of Amritsar, but failed to break through the ranks of the battle-hardened Warrior-Saints and their wide assortment of pointy death-instruments. After several days of increasingly brutal fighting, however, the Mughals slowly began to wear down the town\'s defenses.&nbsp; Eventually, a small group of shell-shocked, war-weary Sikh soldiers decided they\'d had enough.&nbsp; Forty once-stalwart soldiers called it quits, publicly renounced their faith, and peaced out to the nearest place that didn\'t have pissed-off Muslims stabbing people in the faces with scimitars every ten seconds.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/maibhago1a.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>The Duchess Camilla watching a demonstration of Sikh martial arts.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Well there was one badass chick that wasn\'t going to stand for that weak sauce bullshit.&nbsp; Mai Bhago was a tough-ass babe from a town near Amritsar who had spent most of her adult life training in the fine arts of awesomeness and studying about badassitude, and she wasn\'t about to just sit around and let a bunch of ex-Sikh warrior-saints slack off in the facial destruction department - especially when they could be out there dishing out chokeslams and shooting arrows into peoples\' eyes with enough velocity to puncture plexiglass.&nbsp; Almost immediately upon hearing that there was a group of guys heading towards town who had \"gotten bored of fighting the Mughals\" and decided they \"didn\'t feel like\" slicing peoples\' necks in half anymore, she go super-pissed off and rode out to meet them.</p>\r\n<p>Mai Bhago came across this sad, disgraceful group of ex-Sikhs not long after she left her town.&nbsp; As soon as she saw this sorry lot moping around mumbling shit like, \"Game over man - game over!\", she jumped off her horse, confidently strode up to the closest guy, and then, out of nowhere, she hauled off and open-hand pimp-slapped the dude in the face really really fucking hard. While the rest of the astonished group stood around with their mouths hanging open, she looked each of them in the eye, one by one.&nbsp; Then, in a tone of voice that only thinly veiled her seething rage, she said something to the effect of, \"If you\'re going to act like bitches, then I\'m going to fucking treat you like bitches.\"&nbsp; Then she spit, kneed another dude in the junk, and told everybody they needed to sack up and start conducting themselves like the fucking badass Sikh warriors that they were.</p>\r\n<p>Through a delicate, subtle mix of taunting, insults, and hardcore professional wrestling-style pump-up speeches, Mai Bhago made these jerks realize that they had a job to do, and they just needed to pop a couple Zoloft and fucking get out there and do it.&nbsp; The Guru was badass and all, but he wasn\'t exactly going to flash-fry the entire Mughal army by firing a matching set of Proton Torpedoes into the exhaust port of the Taj Mahal while screaming overhead at Mach 2 - he needed his warrior-saints at his side; not to bail out on him right when he was in the middle of what could potentially have been his last stand.</p>\r\n<p>After getting slapped around verbally, physically, and emotionally by our take-no-bullshit, fresh-to-death heroine, the forty ex-Sikhs realized that they needed to snap out of it and get back to the business of violently lacerating the tracheas of their much-hated enemies.&nbsp; Of course, Mai Bhago wasn\'t the sort of hardcore warrior-chick who was just going to be happy to go back to town knowing that she\'d done her good deed for the day - no, she fucking put on her wargear, grabbed a sword and a musket, and rode out there at the head of this company of Sikh hardasses to cause a little estrogen-fueled havoc of her own. She was going to show these guys how it was done.</p>\r\n<p>Well without forty of his toughest hombres, the Guru\'s situation in Amritsar eventually became untenable.&nbsp; He (and what little was left of his bodyguard) withdrew from the town, and decided to make a mad, desperate dash for safety. The entire Mughal Army pursued them across India for a couple days, harassing them at every turn, and shit was looking pretty fucking bleak for Guru Gobind Singh and the proponents of Sikhism.</p>\r\n<p>It was at this point that the Guru saw Mai Bhago riding up at the head of a small battalion of re-devoted tough-as-shit Sikh warriors.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/maibhago1.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Mai Bhago led her men out past the Guru, and right into the face of the entire fucking Mughal Army.&nbsp; At the Battle of Mukhtsar in 1704, she and her warriors charged into the enemy lines, hacking, slashing, and popping peoples\' heads off with muskets at point-blank range.&nbsp; Even the Guru got in on the action, sending a golden shower of auric-tipped arrows down on the enemy from a sniper\'s nest on a nearby hill.&nbsp; Mai Bhago herself was credited with taking down something like a half-dozen dudes herself in the exceedingly bloody fighting that ensued. Like I said, this chick meant business.</p>\r\n<p>I came across several conflicting reports of how the battle transpired, ranging from \"The Mughals got tired and ran away\" to \"God came down and smote the entire Imperial army\", but the outcome is always the same - the Mughals were driven from the battlefield, the Guru lived to fight another day, and every member of the Sikh contingent was killed in action.&nbsp; Well, every Sikh except Mai Bhago. When Guru Gobind Singh went down to survey the epic carnage, he found her lying on top of a heaping pile of dead Mughals, barely clinging to life.&nbsp; The Guru forgave the forty Sikhs for their moment of weakness, and was so pumped up about how hardcore Mai Bhago was that he gave her a healing potion, restored all of her Hit Points, and brought her into his service as one of his personal bodyguards.&nbsp; She spent the rest of her life traveling with the Guru, serving as a warrior-saint of the Sikh Religion, and the Sikh <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/joanofarc.html\">Joan of Arc</a> is now revered among her people as a holy warrior who offered disgraced warriors a chance at redemption and fought bravely in the defense of her people.</p>\r\n<p>To this day, the Sikhs still celebrate the anniversary of the battle.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/maibhago2.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.info-sikh.com/PageMukht.html\" target=\"blank\">Info-Sikh.com</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.sikh-history.com/sikhhist/warriors/bhago.html\" target=\"blank\">Sikh-History.com</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.sikhism.us/history-of-sikhism/2938-mai-bhago-noble-brave-sikh-women.html\" target=\"blank\">Sikh Forum Post</a></p>\r\n<p><br /><br /></p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Sources:</span><br /><br /><span> Gandhi, Surjit Singh.&nbsp; <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">History of the Sikh Gurus</span>.&nbsp; Atlantic, 2007.<br /><br /> Holm, Jean, and Bowker, John.&nbsp; <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Women in Religion</span>.&nbsp; Continuum, 2000.<br /><br /> Ralhan, O.B.&nbsp; <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">The Great Gurus of the Sikhs</span>.&nbsp; Anmol, 1997. </span></p>','2009-03-20','44522685331','maibhago.jpg','maibhago - Copy.jpg','Mai Bhago','Sikh warrior-saint led a group of deserters to bloody redemption.','\"Everybody has to die.  Why not die like a brave person?\"'),('Moses','4th Century AD','4th Century AD','Ethiopia','Ancient Ethiopian Humanitarian','<p>When most people think, \"Orthodox Christian Saint\", the first phrase that pops into their heads generally isn\'t \"skull-crushing badass\".&nbsp; Saints are supposed to be skinny bearded dudes in ratty burlap robes who sit around in caves surrounded by lepers.&nbsp; These poor hermits generally earn the right to carry the mantle of Sainthood for accomplishing some crazy abstract nonsense like philosophizing about the nature of the Trinity, writing a bunch of incomprehensible dogmatic theses about God-knows-what, and/or generally just talking about how awesome the Church is.&nbsp; That\'s just the nature of Christianity; you don\'t get served Holy Bacon Strips at Jesus\' breakfast table when you spend your life face-punching jerks unconscious, setting farmhouses on fire, and threatening people with knives.&nbsp; That is, unless you\'re Saint Moses the Black.</p>\r\n<p>Moses was a big, jacked Ethiopian hardass who left his Central African home in the middle of the 4th century in search of adventures and excitement in the fascinating and mysterious lands of Medieval Egypt.&nbsp; While he was probably expecting to discover secret underground tombs in the Valley of the Kings or kick the nose off of the Sphinx with his sandals, what he found instead was a job as a lowly house-servant under the employ of some wealthy douchebasket Egyptian landowner.&nbsp; Despite being shoehorned into a crappy minimum-wage job (assuming that he actually made any money at all) that he hated, Moses decided to make the best of his somewhat-miserable situation.&nbsp; He accomplished this by frequently robbing the landowner while the dude was out at work, and then pawning all of his employer\'s favorite shit in exchange for giant chests full of gold, silver, jewels, and hot babes.&nbsp; This arrangement was working out pretty well for Moses, until such time as his dumbass boss caught on and fired him.</p>\r\n<p>Since Moses didn\'t really feel like returning to a life of menial servitude, he decided to pursue his talents in the exceedingly-lucrative field of ripping people off.&nbsp; He moved to the outskirts of town, gathered up a group of like-minded followers, and his band of surly brigands promptly began terrorizing the countryside in a mad rampage of destruction, cock-punching, and cattle-thievery.&nbsp; These fearless bandits tore ass up and down the Nile, robbing farmers, ransacking villages, illicitly acquiring giant sacks bursting with gold coins, and generally just making all of Egypt their bitches.</p>\r\n<p>Moses took his new profession pretty seriously.&nbsp; That\'s just the kind of guy he was.&nbsp; This super-intense Abyssinian shit-wrecker never half-assed anything in his entire life, and he wasn\'t going to make an exception for serious business like being a badass Medieval crime boss.&nbsp; For instance, one time he was trying to rob this dude\'s house and the guy\'s dog started flipping out and barking like crazy at the giant muscular warrior climbing around in the backyard.&nbsp; I assume this was because Moses was part <a href=\"http://www.terminatorforum.com/general-sarah-connor-chronicles-chat/61-dogs-hate-terminators.html\">Terminator</a>, but I really wasn\'t able to track down any documents that support that theory.&nbsp; Moses managed to get away before the cops arrived, but the brigand leader swore vengeance at all costs.&nbsp; The next night, the take-no-bullshit Ethiopian gangster put a giant-ass dagger in his teeth and swam across the fucking Nile River to attack this guy\'s farmstead from the other side.&nbsp; He wasn\'t able to find the dude in his home (the guy probably fled the day before after catching one glimpse of Moses), so Moses satiated his thirst for revenge by slaughtering four of the dudes\' prized rams and eating them.&nbsp; The score appropriately settled, Moses then swam <em>back</em> across the largest river in Africa, and walked 50 miles to meet up with his crew at a pre-appointed rendezvous site.&nbsp; Like I said, this guy was completely balls-out all of the time.</p>\r\n<p>Unfortunately for our anti-hero, the long arm of the law eventually got around to the serious business of bitch-slapping Moses and his gang of head-cleaving land-pirates.&nbsp; So with the strangle-happy fingers of the Egyptian police department slowly beginning to close around Moses\' neck, he did the one thing that would keep him from prison time and possible execution &ndash; he ran off to a remote monastery in the middle of the Egyptian desert and became a Coptic Orthodox monk.</p>\r\n<p>Well I guess adopting the holy orders and devoting your life to God is great and all, but when you\'ve spent your entire natural life chokeslamming dillholes spine-first onto the Great Pyramid of Cheops, some times old habits are a little hard to break.&nbsp; Not long after Moses joined the monastic community, a group of four cutthroat thieves broke into the church and started looting holy artifacts and stealing money from the collection plate.&nbsp; Well, as we have noted previously, Moses fully dedicated himself to whatever it was he was doing all of the goddamned time.&nbsp; He may have become a monk to escape prosecution, but he was devoted to his calling - and a dude like Moses sure as shit wasn\'t going to sit around and let some punk hoodlums disrespect his new home.&nbsp; He stood up, cracked his knucles, spit, and took two steps towards the assembled, dagger-wielding cabal of robbers and murderers.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/stmoses1.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The four bandits jumped the monk, but he responded by beating their fucking heads in with his bare hands.&nbsp; All four dudes ended up getting their faces wrecked as the Ethiopian hardass gave them an epic beatdown of Biblical proportions.&nbsp; I like to imagine that the main theme from <em>Halo</em> was playing in the background while this was going on.&nbsp; Moses took the thugs down, tied them up, and dragged all four of their pummeled carcasses to the main altar of the monastery, where he threw them down at the feet of the horrified/astounded monks.&nbsp; When the senior brother looked up at Moses with his mouth hanging open, Moses responded by basically saying something to the effect of, \"I\'m pretty sure it wouldn\'t be very Christian of me to kill these punks, so what do you recommend we do with them?\"</p>\r\n<p>When the goons finally came to their senses, they were impressed not only that Moses had caved their faces in with his <em>Holy Strength +5</em>, but also that he didn\'t just kill them on the spot.&nbsp; Moses and the monks offered forgiveness to the men, and they actually decided to convert and become monks themselves.</p>\r\n<p>Brother Moses eventually got the hang of the \"God doesn\'t really like it when you punch peoples\' heads off\" thing, and became a spiritual leader among the brothers of the monastery.&nbsp; He went on to preach forgiveness, saying that he had once been a giant brain-destroying assbeater, but had changed his ways and learned that it\'s also badass to be cool to people and not be a total dickhead to everybody all the time.&nbsp; Basically, he was like the <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/winnfield.html\">Jules Winnfield</a> of the Orthodox Church.</p>\r\n<p>Moses went on to live a long and prosperous life among the monks of Egypt, though according to one source I found, he \"suffered greatly from the constant temptations of fornication\". I guess when you\'re as hardcore as Moses, hot chicks just throw themselves at you all the time.&nbsp; Our pious hero combated this ongoing onslaught of monk-groupies by directing his energy elsewhere - at any given time, you could find Moses busting his ass working around the monestary, day and night, carrying water from the well and repairing structures.</p>\r\n<p>Saint Moses was killed in the year 405 when his monastery came under attack by a marauding band of Berber warriors.&nbsp; The 75 year-old Moses managed to evacuate 70 monks from the compound before the attack, and he remained behind with seven others to defend the holy artifacts.&nbsp; The elderly Ethiopian cleric was slain by the invaders and declared a martyr and a Saint by the Orthodox Church. Nowadays he is considered a patron saint of forgiveness and nonviolence, which is actually kind of impressive considering the fact that he used to work as a face-stabbing brigand leader and once beat the snot out of four dudes at the same time with his bare knuckles.</p>\r\n<p>Personally, I prefer to think of him as the Patron Saint of Mushroom Cloud Layin\' Motherfuckers.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/stmoses2.png\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Sources:</span><br /><br /><span> Butler, Alban, and Burns, Paul. <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Butler\'s Lives of the Saints</span>. Continuum, 1995.<br /><br /> O\'Leary, De Lacy. <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">The Saints of Egypt</span>. Kessinger, 2005.<br /><br /> O\'Malley, Vincent J. <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Saints of Africa</span>. Our Sunday Visitor, 2001. </span></p>','2009-03-13','83331335499','stmoses.jpg','stmoses - Copy.jpg','St. Moses the Black','The Patron Saint of Asskicking.',''),('Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill','November 30, 1874','January 24, 1965','Woodstock, England','WWII British Politician','<p>Winston Churchill - known to the Russians as \"The British Bulldog\" for his unyielding tenaciousness and his awesome ability to train killer attack hounds to run up and bite Fascists in the jugular when they weren\'t looking - was one of the most badass world leaders of the modern era.&nbsp; This dude was a totally righteous asskicker who enjoyed puffing on Cuban cigars, shooting guns, drinking copious amounts of booze, and kicking Nazis in the fucking balls with a Size 10 steel-toed boot, and he didn\'t give a crap about anything that didn\'t further his goal of accomplishing one of those four tasks.&nbsp; He fought hard, partied hard, wore a lot of totally awesome suits, and pretty much always looked like he\'d just stepped out of a badass 1930s pulp fiction detective story.</p>\r\n<p>Winston was directly descended from an epic 17th century face-wrecker named John Churchill.&nbsp; John will eventually have a page on this site as well, but since I haven\'t gotten around to writing it yet here\'s a brief rundown of that dude\'s life:&nbsp; He was born into extreme poverty, joined the army as a lowly page, worked his way up through the ranks to command the entire British military, was knighted, became a Duke, served under five different Kings, beat the snot out of Louis XIV\'s allegedly-invincible army, and is now remembered (along with <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/wellington.html\">Wellington</a>) as Britain\'s greatest and most brilliant military commander.&nbsp; So that guy was a tough act to follow.&nbsp; Winston didn\'t disappoint.</p>\r\n<p>Winston Churchill graduated from the Royal Military Academy in 1894, and was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the 4th Queen\'s Own Hussars cavalry regiment.&nbsp; He was his school\'s fencing champion (no small feat considering that every man there was actively training in the arts of war) and the best polo player in the entire regiment (almost equally as impressive seeing as how you\'d think professional cavalrymen would be pretty fucking good at polo).&nbsp; As part of the 4th Hussars, Churchill saw action on battlefields in Cuba, India, and Afghanistan.&nbsp; When he wasn\'t stabbing motherfuckers in the neck with a saber or trampling them beneath the hooves of his Epic Mount, he worked as a war correspondent for a newspaper back in England.&nbsp; This, of course, was back in the days when war reporters weren\'t interested in stupid shit like impartiality, staying out of the crossfire, and not shooting peoples\' faces off with a rifle.&nbsp; Churchill out go out, fight the battle, kill a bunch of people, and then go back to base to write an article about how awesome it was. He\'d then send his story out, the British papers would print it, and everybody would think that he was the fucking balls.</p>\r\n<p>Well one day a dude claiming to be the Mahdi (the Shi\'a Islamic messiah) incited a massive rebellion in the Sudan and started having British governors beaten down like garter snakes during Whacking Day, so Winston Effing Churchill was transfered to the 21st Lancers and shipped out to Africa to dish out some vigorous assbeatings.&nbsp; \"The British Bustnuts\" was on the field during the Battle of Omdurman in 1898, and holds the distinct honor of participating in the last great cavalry charge of the British Empire.&nbsp; 400 of Churchill\'s Lancers were chasing down a small group of fleeing Mahdists, when all of a sudden a giant group of about 2,500 dervishes came out of nowhere ambushed them.&nbsp; The Lancers didn\'t even break stride &ndash; they fucking plowed into the enemy line, despite being outnumbered six-to-one, and somehow actually managed to drive the defenders from the field.&nbsp; According to legend, Churchill turned the tide of the fight when he activated his special attack and skewered ten Mahdists with his magical Lightning Spear of Dervish-Slaying +2.</p>\r\n<p>A couple years later, Winston was unleashed upon South Africa to fight in the Boer Wars.&nbsp; Things were going pretty well for a while, until one day Churchill decided to be completely awesome and start riding around in an armor-plated Death Train.&nbsp; The Boers ambushed the train, and Churchill fought them off for a while, but he was eventually overpowered, captured, and sent to a prison camp in Pretoria.&nbsp; Well fuck that shit.&nbsp; Churchill busted out of there pretty much immediately, probably by smashing through a ten-foot high brick wall with his forehead, and made his way 300 miles through uncharted enemy territory until he made it back to English lines.&nbsp; He rejoined the army, fought in the Siege of Ladysmith, and returned to Pretoria as an officer in a British cavalry regiment.&nbsp; He raced ahead of the main body of the army and personally accepted the surrender of 52 camp guards from the prison in which he had been incarcerated.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/winstonchurchill1.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>\"A prisoner of war is a man who tries to kill you and fails, and then asks you not to kill him.\"</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>After a brief stint fighting on the front lines as a battalion commander in the Grenadier Guards &ndash; one of the most prestigious and elite military units in the British Army &ndash; for the entirety of World War I (no big deal, right?), Churchill was elected to the British Parliament.&nbsp; Thanks for his oratory skill and his generally-unassailable badassery, Churchill worked his way up through the ranks, constantly pushing for the construction of tanks, aircraft, and warships (Spoiler Alert: This foresight would actually work out pretty well for Winston down the line).&nbsp; He also took every possible opportunity to tell Communism and Nazism to \"suck it\" because Churchill fucking loved Democracy and Capitalism and that\'s just how he rolled.</p>\r\n<p>Well between World War I and World War II, the Prime Minister of England was a dude named Neville Chamberlain, who is now pretty much universally-recognized as the neutral-aligned dipshit who stood idly by and let Hitler have his way with Europe.&nbsp; Chamberlain was all about appeasing the Nazis, and as a result the Third Reich conquered half of the continent in about twelve hours, and Hitler started talking all kinds of shit about how awesome he was.&nbsp; Fuck that.&nbsp; Winston Churchill wasn\'t interested in appeasement, neutrality, or diplomacy &ndash; he was only interested in kicking Hitler in the fucking balls until he passed out from the pain and then ruthlessly smashing his unconscious body repeatedly in the face with a tire iron.&nbsp; Chamberlain was fired for incompetence, Churchill was elected PM, and the new leader of England immediately started giving a bunch of awesome pump-up speeches that got everybody in the British Isles totally stoked about face-punching Nazi bitches.</p>\r\n<p>Now the situation in England was pretty shitty when Churchill took over.&nbsp; France had capitulated, Poland and Czechoslovakia were in German hands, and Hitler hadn\'t invaded Russia yet, so the full might of the Nazi war machine was bearing down exclusively on the British Isles.&nbsp; Planes and rockets were buzzing over London day and night, a small force of British pilots were doing their best to fight off the near-constant aerial bombardments, and air raid sirens were the soundtrack to most peoples\' daily lives.&nbsp; It was obvious that Hitler was just softening up the island for an invasion.&nbsp; Despite the bleak forecast, and with little or no help from the United States in sight, Churchill still refused to surrender of back down.&nbsp; When he wasn\'t vowing to resist Nazi aggression with every resource available or inspiring the citizens of England to fight to the death against any possible invasion, he was out there photocopying his bare ass and faxing copies of it to the fucking Reichstag\'s main office number.&nbsp; He inspired his people to resist, and thanks to the determination of the British people, Hitler never managed to gain a foothold on the island.&nbsp; The Battle of Britain was a decisive victory for the pilots and the citizens of England, and any hope the Fuhrer had of fucking with Britain was effectively crotchstomped.&nbsp; Frustrated by his defeat, Hitler invaded Russia, and we all know how that worked out for him.</p>\r\n<p>During the war, Churchill worked hard to secure supplies and aid from the US, built up relations with the Allied nations, and encouraged the creation of units like the Special Operations Executive and the Commandos.&nbsp; Shit, he even negotiated an alliance with Stalin, because, as Churchill put it, \"If Hitler were to invade Hell, I should find occasion to make a favorable reference to the Devil.\"&nbsp; He went to conferences across the globe, directed the war effort, and decided the future of the world in the post-war era.&nbsp; Thanks in no small part to his efforts, the Allies emerged victorious.</p>\r\n<p>After the war, Churchill continued his political career, wrote a bunch of history books, won the Nobel Prize for Literature, and basically kept doing a bunch of awesome shit.&nbsp; He died in 1965 at the age of 90, and is now remembered as one of the greatest leaders in the long and illustrious history of the British Commonwealth.</p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><br /> <img style=\"display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;\" src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/winstonchurchill2.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>\"What General Weygand called the Battle of France is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, \'This was their finest hour.\'\"</span></p>','2009-03-06','14580395745','winstonchurchill.jpg','winstonchurchill - Copy.jpg','Winston Churchill','The greatest British ruler since the days of King Arthur.','\"Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail.  We shall go on to the end.  We shall fight in France.  We shall fight on the seas and oceans.  We shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air.  We shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be.  We shall fight on the beaches.  We shall fight on the landing grounds.  We shall fight in the fields and in the streets.  We shall fight in the hills.  We shall never surrender.\" '),('Vassilis Paleokostas','1966','N/A','Moschofyto, Greece','21st-century Greek Outlaw','<p>This crazy, utterly fearless dude is public enemy number one in Greece, and probably one of the most badass motherfuckers to come from the country since the days of our friend <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/spartans.html\">Leonidas</a>.</p>\r\n<p>Vassilis\' story starts back in the early 90s, when he went on an insane crime spree of delicious armed robbery, blackmail, extortion, and kidnapping.&nbsp; Basically, his <em>modus operandi</em> was to kidnap a super-rich bastard, hold him for a ridiculous ransom, and then sell him back to his stupid family in exchange for giant piles of cold, hard cash.&nbsp; Then, he\'d take that bling, keep a small percentage of it for himself, and distribute the rest of his newly-acquired wealth to impoverished farmers of the tiny rural province in which he grew up.&nbsp; The dude quickly made a name for himself as the Robin Hood of Greece, and was beloved by fans of badassery, the people of the lower classes, and pretty much anybody else he wasn\'t in the process of robbing or extorting for money.&nbsp; Shit, even the fucking people he kidnapped came out later and said that he was very polite and respectful to them while they were in captivity, and that it was pretty much the most pleasant kidnapping they\'d ever experienced.&nbsp; That should give you some indication of what this dude was all about &ndash; steal from the rich, give to the poor, make a profit in the process, and be completely awesome all of the goddamned time.&nbsp; He also made a vow never to harm a member of the public in his criminal escapades.&nbsp; He\'s been true to his word.</p>\r\n<p>In true badass fashion, Vassilis Paleokostas also has a trusty sidekick &ndash; a lunatic Albanian named Alket Rizai.&nbsp; Rizai is like the Friar Tuck in this story, only if instead of being a benevolent, staff-swinging priest, the clergyman was a crazy gunman with a hair-trigger and a penchant for firing automatic weapons at heavily-armed tactical police officers. Rizai is currently up on charges for murder, though I haven\'t really been able to track down any details about any of that (that\'s the problem with trying to research current events, I suppose).&nbsp; My assumption is that he was being attacked by some evil corrupt officers sent by the Sherriff of Nottingham and responded by burning a full clip of Uzi ammunition into them, jumping through a plate glass window, rescuing a damsel in distress, and swinging off on a chandelier with a hot babe clinging to his rippling biceps.&nbsp; According to a Greek friend of mine, this guy once blew up a known Mafia hangout by shooting it with a fucking rocket launcher.</p>\r\n<p>Of course, the downside to being a career criminal &ndash; even a happy-go-lucky one who commits non-violent crimes in the name of the oppressed populace &ndash; is that eventually the long arm of the law is going to bitch-slap you in the fucking face really really hard. In 1995, Vassilis Paleokostas was caught by the fuzz, convicted of kidnapping, robbery, and weapons charges, and hauled off to a federal pound-me-in-the-ass penitentiary known as Korydallos Prison.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/paleokostas1.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Now over the years, Korydallos Prison has gained a reputation as being one of the harshest and most brutal prisons in Greece. This place is like a mix between Andersonville, Oz, and that stupid plastic box they keep Magneto inside in the X-Men movies. The warden is a hardass son-of-a-bitch, the guards don\'t give a shit, and people that go inside the facility never come out.</p>\r\n<p>Except Vassilis Paleokostas.</p>\r\n<p>In June 2006, Paleokostas\' older brother (another pathological criminal who is now serving jail time on 16 counts of armed robbery) commandeered a helicopter, and landed it right in the middle of the fucking exercise yard of the prison in broad daylight. The armed guards at Korydallos, not expecting to be subjected to such an unbelievable display of gigantic steel-plated testicles, assumed that this chopper belonged to the warden or the Chief of Prisons or something, and instead of investigating it they all decided to make sure their shoes were appropriately spit-shined so as not to incur a citation from their wrathful bosses. Vassilis (who had orchestrated the entire operation from the beginning) and his Albanian buddy simply walked up to the helicopter, hopped inside, and lifted off.&nbsp; By the time the guards got their heads out of their asses and started firing their guns at the bird, it was already too late.&nbsp; Paleokostas had escaped.</p>\r\n<p>So the Greek police put out an all-points bulletin, and a nation-wide manhunt began for the Greek Robin Hood.&nbsp; Officers, dogs, and federal agents scoured the countryside for this fugitive day and night, relentlessly following leads and doing everything in their power to bring this wanted criminal to justice.</p>\r\n<p>Paleokostas evaded them for two and a half years.&nbsp; He lived in the mountains outside Athens, evaded all attempts to recapture him, and even orchestrated another high-profile kidnapping in the process &ndash; snatching a powerful jackass CEO industrialist, ransoming him for a huge wad of cash, and once again distributing the loot to local farmers and families.&nbsp; There are also rumors that he planned and executed another kidnapping while he was still incarcerated, which is bonus points no matter how you look at it.</p>\r\n<p>In August 2008, Paleokostas was tracked down and re-captured by the Greek police.&nbsp; He was placed in a different maximum security facility, where he was held for another six months, awaiting trial for his brazen escape in 2006.&nbsp; On 21 February 2009, Vassilis Paleokostas was transferred back to his old home &ndash; Korydallos Prison.&nbsp; His trial was to begin on the 23rd, and he was to stay in his former holding area while he stood trial for this crime.</p>\r\n<p>But he never made it to trial.&nbsp; The very next day, 22 February, ANOTHER FUCKING HELICOPTER showed up in the skies above Korydallos Prison.&nbsp; It flew over a large tower of the prison, lowered a long rope ladder, and Vassilis Paleokostas and Alket Rizai climbed up into the chopper.&nbsp; As the helicopter flew off into the sunset, the prisoners of Korydallos cheered.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/paleokostas2.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Greek police opened fire on the chopper as it flew off, but a woman returned fire with an AK-47 assault rifle.&nbsp; Now having hot Greek babes with automatic weapons come save your ass from prison isn\'t the sort of thing that happens to normal people every day, but that\'s just how things work out for you when you\'re a badass like Vassilis Paleokostas.</p>\r\n<p>The police eventually tracked down the helicopter, and found that it had ditched on the side of the road outside Athens with a bullet hole in the gas tank.&nbsp; According to the pilot, Paleokostas and his associates left the chopper and drove off on totally sweet motorcycles to an undisclosed location.&nbsp; They also popped some totally bitchin\' wheelies while doing so.</p>\r\n<p>Vassilis not only earned his freedom for the second time, and once again showed the world that his ballsack is roughly the size of a small continent, but he also got some sweet delicious revenge on the motherfuckers in charge of the Greek prison system at the same time.&nbsp; For allowing the same guy to escape the same prison in the same manner twice in a row, the Greek government fired the country\'s Chief of Prisons, the Inspector-General of Prisons, the warden of Korydallos, and three guards at the facility.&nbsp; They all learned what it means to step to somebody as awesome as the Greek Robin Hood.</p>\r\n<p>Vassilis Paleokostas is fully rad because he kicked ass, won the respect of the people, said \"fuck you\" to the police, and managed to single-handedly place the country\'s three top-ranking prison officials in the back of the unemployment line.</p>\r\n<p>He is still at large.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/paleokostas3.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.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article5789568.ece\" target=\"blank\">Greece\'s Best Jailbreaker Does It Again</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7904963.stm\" target=\"blank\">Manhunt After Greek Prison Break</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasilis_Paleokostas\" target=\"blank\">Wikipedia</a></p>','2009-02-27','29600886975','paleokostas.jpg','paleokostas - Copy.jpg','Vassilis Paleokostas','The Greek Robin Hood escaped from prison in a helicopter.  Twice.','What do you get when you cross Jesse James, Robin Hood, and Jack Bauer in the body of a giant, bearded, bald Greek man?\r\nMeet Vassilis Paleokostas.'),('Harriet Tubman','March 1822','March 10, 1913','Dorchester County, MD, USA','19th-century American Humanitarian','<p>It\'s a proven fact that you can\'t take one credit hour of American History anywhere in the United States without at least hearing your boring teacher drone on about <em>something</em> remotely connected to the Underground Railroad, yet still to this day many people don\'t realize how insanely balls-out this over-the-top 19th century liberation movement actually was.&nbsp; A clandestine network of super-secret safehouses and crazy Jack Bauer-type CTU \"WHERE IS THE BOMB?!\"-type shit, the Underground is well known for having transported thousands of African slaves to freedom, but the commonly-utilized, and decidedly-unbadass term \"Railroad\" really makes the whole thing sound a hell of a lot less dangerous and life-threatening than it actually was.&nbsp; We\'re not talking about the fucking <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_Tunnel\">Chunnel</a> here, folks - this was dangerous-as-hell work deep behind enemy lines, where the slightest misstep could result in the destruction of the entire Railroad system and capture meant a lifetime of savage beatings and humiliating, backbreaking servitude.&nbsp; This wasn\'t an enterprise taken up by spineless douchebags, a fact that was never more well-illustrated than by the face-meltingly unbelievable story of Harriet Tubman.</p>\r\n<p>Born into slavery on a Maryland plantation, Harriet spent her first twenty-five years living under the watchful gaze of a number of different jackass overseers and housemistresses.&nbsp; While this five-foot tall woman may not have been the most physically imposing specimen this side of the She-Hulk exploding with \'roid rage, hard work made her tough as hell &ndash; she toned her body and her muscles working grueling manual labor twelve hours a day, seven days a week.&nbsp; Out in the unforgiving Maryland sun, she beat the hell out of trees with an axe, hacked up firewood, plowed an endless assortment fields, and drove unwieldy ox-carts.&nbsp; Before long, her physical strength matched her unshakable willpower.</p>\r\n<p>Despite facing a lifetime of cruel bondage, Harriet Tubman never took fucking shit from anybody ever.&nbsp; Her stubbornness and refusal to back down generally resulted in her suffering endless beatings and physical abuse, including one time when she was smashed in the head with a lead weight for defending a fellow slave (a wound that left her suffering dizzy spells and light-headedness for the rest of her life), but she simply refused to have her spirit broken by a bunch of jackass rednecks on a power trip.&nbsp; Finally, one cloudy night in 1849, Harriet Tubman had enough of it.&nbsp; She made a break for freedom.&nbsp; Fleeing into the darkness, Tubman traveled for several days through the unfamiliar Maryland wilderness, and didn\'t look back until she reached the friendly, we-promise-we-won\'t-enslave-you confines of Philadelphia.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/tubman2.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>As awesome as it was to no longer live in slavery, there was still one problem &ndash; Harriet left behind her mother, father, and nine siblings. While most people would have just shrugged and said, \"fuck it dudes, you\'re on your own,\" Harriet Tubman did the unbelievable &ndash; she fucking went BACK to the plantation, tracked down her family, and led THEM to freedom.&nbsp; That\'s just how she rolled, bitches.</p>\r\n<p>Once Harried saw that she was capable of leading a large band of fugitive slaves safely to freedom (seriously, ten kids! Her family was almost as prolific as those crazy nutjobs in Utah who named all their kids with the letter J!) Harriet decided that she couldn\'t enjoy her freedom while her people remained in bondage.&nbsp; Using the code name \"Moses\", she returned to Maryland TWENTY more times, each time delivering her people from the chains of slavery to the promised land (which in this case was Niagara Falls, Canada, a 350-mile walk from the Maryland border) where they didn\'t have to worry about shit like getting whipped for insubordination or not having enough food to eat.&nbsp; Tubman rescued over 300 slaves over the course of 20 years, and was one of the greatest and most fearless heroines of antebellum America.</p>\r\n<p>The Underground Railroad was some serious shit.&nbsp; Deep behind unfriendly lines for days and weeks at a time, Tubman and her crew slept in swamps, hid during the day, and moved under the cover of darkness.&nbsp; Travelling with women and children, young and old, and being pursued relentlessly by police, soldiers, attack dogs, bounty hunters, and slave-catchers barely caused her to flinch.&nbsp; She urged her people on, led them to freedom, and threatened to fucking face-shoot anybody who suggested giving up or turning back (seriously - if one member was caught or returned, it jeopardized the entire Railroad, and she would rather have capped someone in the face than seen that shit go down).&nbsp; Although she was illiterate and uneducated, Harriet Tubman was by no means stupid &ndash; she cleverly hid from her would-be captors, outsmarted the entire population of Maryland nearly two dozen times, and told everybody else to get bent harder than Uri Geller\'s silverware collection.&nbsp; She made her escapes on Saturdays, which bought her a one-day head start because wanted posters could not legally be posted on Sundays &ndash; and twenty-four hours was all she needed to leave her enemies in her dust.&nbsp; Despite the fact that there was a $40,000 reward for the \"black ghost\" (a figure that today equates to a cool $4 mil), she was never caught, never defeated, and never lost a single person she escorted to freedom.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/tubman3.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>When Tubman wasn\'t risking her life trying to save people from bondage or biting live Piranha in half, she spoke out publicly against slavery, worked at a hotel, and helped John Brown plan and finance his attack on the federal arsenal at Harper\'s Ferry.&nbsp; When the Civil War blew up like whoa, she fucking signed on as a scout with the Union Army, serving as a reconnaissance officer for Colonel James Montgomery.&nbsp; As a scout and spy, Tubman helped slaves escape the South, provided them with medical attention, and encouraged them to seek vengeance on their former masters by enlisting in the Federal army.&nbsp; She also participated in a number of military engagements, including the Raid on Combahee Ferry in 1863, when she personally helped liberate 800 slaves in a single battle.&nbsp; Amazingly, she wasn\'t even paid for her work, preferring to earn her money brewing badass root beer for the soldiers.&nbsp; Man, I fucking love root beer.</p>\r\n<p>In the 1890s Tubman had fucking brain surgery, without anesthesia&nbsp; She allegedly bit down on a bullet for the pain.&nbsp; Is that tough enough for you?</p>\r\n<p>After the war she received a military pension, built a house in upstate New York, and opened up a rest/retirement home for elderly black men and women.&nbsp; Even into her later years she stood up for her rights, fighting for women\'s suffrage alongside no-bullshit chicks like Susan B. Anthony and Emily Howland.&nbsp; Harriet Tubman died in 1913 at the age of 93, and was buried with full military honors.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/tubman1.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>\"I know of no one who has encountered more perils and hardships to save our people.\"<br />- Frederick Douglas</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Sources:</span><br /><br /><span> Bales, Kevin.&nbsp; <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">New Slavery</span>.&nbsp; ABC-CLIO, 2004.<br /><br /> Brown, Hallie Quinn.&nbsp; <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Homespun Heroines</span>.&nbsp; Oxford Univ. Press, 1988.<br /><br /> Hakim, Joy.&nbsp; <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">A History of US</span>.&nbsp; Oxford Univ. Press, 2002.<br /><br /> Harper, Judith E.&nbsp; <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Women During the Civil War</span>.&nbsp; Taylor &amp; Francis, 2004. </span></p>','2009-02-20','96763947519','tubman.jpg','tubman - Copy.jpg','Harriet Tubman','Fearless conductor of the Underground Railroad.','\"There was one of two things I had a right to – liberty, or death.\r\nIf I could not have one I would have the other; for no man should take me alive.\"'),('Jason Voorhees','Unknown','Multiple','United States','Fictional American Supervillain','<p>Young Jason Voorhees fell out of a boat during a summer trip to Camp Crystal Lake and died because his jacknut camp counselors were far too busy drinking old bong water and fornicating like wild animals in heat.&nbsp; Totally ripshit pissed that he was killed in such an un-badass manner, Jason now constantly seeks bloody vengeance by ruthlessly disemboweling camp counselors, negligent authority figures, drug addicts, prostitutes, teenagers, and anybody who is either drinking, partying, having sex, breathing, or generally just hanging around being not dead.&nbsp; When he\'s not living underwater like an undead, sword-swinging <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/godzilla.html\">Godzilla</a>, Voorhees enjoys stabbing people in the gonads, breaking windows, and/or getting struck by lightning.</p>\r\n<p>A six and a half foot tall mountain man running around in the woods wearing a hockey mask and carrying a machete pretty much demands to be taken seriously, and Jason Voorhees is certainly no exception to this ancient rule.&nbsp; In addition to perpetually looking like a demonic, fucked-up cross between <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/voorhees-hextall.bmp\">Ron Hextall</a> and a <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/voorhees-tiller.jpg\">rotary tiller</a>, he\'s also got all of the necessary aspects of \"badass attitude\" down to a science - this gigantic monster of an emotionless automaton doesn\'t talk, he doesn\'t crack a bunch of lame-ass jokes, and he\'s hideously ugly underneath his mask, which can only count for bonus points as far as I\'m concerned.&nbsp; Hell, he doesn\'t even have a good reason for killing people.&nbsp; It\'s not like he suffers from some kind of crazy misplaced rage or has a wicked chip on his shoulder about anything in particular &ndash; he\'s just an unfeeling, merciless, pointy death machine who breaks partying teenagers in half just because he\'s really got nothing else going on in his life.&nbsp; We can probably assume that he likes hockey, seeing as he does have access to a hockey mask (either through legitimate means or by crushing a goalkeeper\'s face with his bare hands), but it\'s pretty safe to say that\'s pretty much the only thing he really gives a crap about.&nbsp; And hey, he\'s not even that die-hard of a fan &ndash; in the second movie he doesn\'t even don the mask, rather preferring to wear a burlap sack over his head instead.&nbsp; That\'s right, you thought Resident Evil invented that shit, but Jason fucking Voorhees was rocking that look back in the early 80s, bitches.&nbsp; He\'s that much of a fucking trendsetter.</p>\r\n<p>Also in true badass fashion, Jason doesn\'t run for shit.&nbsp; This is partly because real gangsta-ass slashers can\'t run fast, but also because he\'s usually pretty confident that you\'re going to die painfully whether you flee or not, and doesn\'t really feel like working up a sweat trying to kill your dumb ass.&nbsp; It\'s a given - it doesn\'t matter how fast you run or how well you can dance the robot, Jason Voorhees is still going to fuck your ass up like a car accident and leave your mutilated corpse out in the woods to rot. He\'s like the Pepe Le Pew of violent homicide.&nbsp; Also, he never seems to mind that he\'s pretty much constantly being rained on, and - in case you didn\'t know this already - standing outside in the freezing-ass cold rain acting like it doesn\'t bother you is one of the primary tenets of badassitude.</p>\r\n<p>I also find it interesting that he\'s a master of stealth and espionage.&nbsp; You wouldn\'t think he\'d be so good at hiding and sneaking up on people, seeing as how he\'s a two hundred and fifty pound undead axe-murderer with a raging blood-vendetta against anything and anyone who isn\'t currently dead, but apparently that\'s just how Jason Voorhees rolls.&nbsp; He\'s like <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/snakeeyes.html\">Snake Eyes</a> or some shit.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/voorhees4.bmp\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Jason\'s primary implement of trauma-inducing devastation is the machete &ndash; a solid, time-honored method of killing people that\'s been effectively utilized for centuries.&nbsp; Not only is Voorhees quite efficient at decapitating fools with the thing, or impaling both you and your girlfriend while you\'re in the middle of doing it, he can also hurl it with deadly accuracy, which is totally sweet.&nbsp; As awesome as it is to slice a guy in half while he\'s walking around on his hands or hack up a kid in a wheelchair and kick him down some stairs, Jason doesn\'t even need his three-foot long blade to ruin co-eds weekends worse than a DEA raid on a Cancun beach resort in the middle of Spring Break &ndash; he\'s more than capable of using anything and everything at his disposal to quickly wreck the shit of dumbass teenagers anywhere he finds them.&nbsp; Over the years, he\'s killed folks with meat cleavers, pitchforks, knitting needles, hacksaws, corkscrews, scalpels, spears, tent pegs, scythes, harpoons, wrenches, ice picks, and hypodermic needles.&nbsp; One time he actually wrapped a girl up in a sleeping bag and smacked it against a tree, just to be a jackass.&nbsp; Another time he popped a dude\'s eye out by squeezing his head, and yet another time he punched a professional boxer\'s head off with a right hook.&nbsp; Shit, even Freddy Krueger couldn\'t stop this motherfucker &ndash; Jason pulled Freddy\'s arm off, impaled him with his own glove, and made off with the iconic villain\'s severed head.</p>\r\n<p>He\'s also an expert marksman with a crossbow, which is pretty rad, and it seems like everywhere he goes chicks end up taking their shirts off.&nbsp; No shit, his entire life is like a cross between <em>CSI</em> and <em>Girls Gone Slutty: Ultimate Xtreme Mardi Gras OMG Boobs HURRR</em>.&nbsp; I\'m relatively certain that this has nothing to do with Jason being a babe magnet , but still, it\'s pretty difficult for any self-respecting heterosexual male film aficionado to argue with gratuitous female toplessness.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/voorhees2.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>LOL U FORGOT SOMETHING</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>You can\'t kill this bastard, either.&nbsp; He\'s been shot, blown up, drowned, burned, electrocuted, and beaten down with everything from axes to hammers, but he just takes a lickin\' and keeps on decapitating co-eds with a machete.&nbsp; Even when you drown his ass or stab him in the brain with a nail gun, he just gets struck by fucking lightning and pops right back up again like nothing\'s wrong. Hell, they even cryogenically froze him once and shot him into space, but this homicidal lunatic just defrosted several thousand years in the future, became a fucking cyborg somehow, and went right back to his nasty habit of murdering college students while they\'re off having sex.</p>\r\n<p>It takes a certain kind of badass to make horny teenage boys afraid of running off into the woods to get it on with hot naked babes, but Jason Voorhees has been accomplishing just that for 29 years and counting.&nbsp; According to the official Friday the 13th website, he\'s racked up 146 kills during his blood-splattered film career (not including the new movie), a pretty astonishing total considering that many wannabe professional actors are lucky to get 146 minutes of screen time in their entire careers.&nbsp; Jason has terrified two generations of motherfuckers, single-handedly made hockey masks frightening, and has succeeded in becoming one of the most iconic movie slashers in film history.&nbsp; As if all that shit isn\'t badass enough, as an added bonus the actor who played him could literally vomit on command, which is so unassailably awesome that it might actually cause things to spontaneously combust.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/voorhees.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://campblood.shiversofhorror.com/index2.htm\" target=\"blank\">Camp Blood</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.fridaythe13thfilms.com/home.html\" target=\"blank\">Official Site</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0002146/\" target=\"blank\">IMDB</a></p>','2009-02-13','82556788237','voorhees1.jpg','voorhees1 - Copy.jpg','Jason Voorhees','Happy Friday the 13th.',''),('Titanoboa Cerrejonensis','65 Million BC','55 Million BC','Amazon Rainforest, Brazil','Prehistoric Dinosaur Monster','<p>It seems like every time you hear about that Amazon rainforest, it\'s in connection with some environmentally-conscious Captain Planet organization pleading for the populace to donate money to save the lush, tropical jungle from wanton deforestation and destruction by giant evil logging corporations.&nbsp; These depressing, heart-wrenching cries generally involves some minor celebrity reciting a list of increasingly-morbid facts about how ten billion bunnies die every second of every day, and how the environment is going to get so pissed at us for this malicious tragedy that the entire planet is going to spontaneously combust into a giant fireball and launch itself into the Sun any day now.</p>\r\n<p>Now I love the environment as much as anybody, and I definitely support any efforts to save the rainforest, but I\'m also going to warn you not be fooled by all of this \"woe is me\" publicity surrounding the Amazon - don\'t start thinking that this is some kind of pussy jungle full of frolicking animals and magical singing rainbows;&nbsp; this thing is a horrible, human-destroying demon bitch filled with some of the deadliest and most insane beasts this side of an out-of-control Greek myth about Hydra and Cerberus teaming up to eat Mount Olympus.&nbsp; The Amazonian Death-Jungle is over two million square miles of Piranha-infested rivers, head-shrinking cannibals, and dense tropical nightmare filled with jaguars ready to jump down out of trees and bite you in the damn brain with their razor-sharp fangs while you\'re taking a leak. This dank hellhole is home to electric eels, vampire bats, angry, eye-pecking Macaws, malaria-infected mosquitoes, and more bowel-clearing dysentery than you can shake a half-filled canteen at.&nbsp; Hell, even the cute little amphibians are malevolent beasts capable of wanton destruction at a moment\'s notice &ndash; a two-inch long Poison Dart Frog secretes venom from its pores powerful enough to kill ten men.&nbsp; It\'s one of the most highly-toxic creatures on the Earth\'s surface, and it\'s the size of a goddamned paper clip.</p>\r\n<p>To rule the land in an environment tits-deep in venomous, aggressive, and/or carnivorous beasts just looking for one good opportunity to tear out your jugular with their toothy mouths, you need to be an unstoppable killing machine. You need a rock-hard hide, good camouflage, lighting-quick speed, enough strength to overpower even the toughest predators, and a fearsome, borderline-psychotic stare that oozes one unmistakable statement:&nbsp; Don\'t fuck with me.</p>\r\n<p>Ladies and gentlemen, introducing the most badass reptile of all time:</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/titanoboa1.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>That\'s a vertebra from the recently-discovered TITANOBOA &ndash; the largest snake in Earth\'s history - compared to a vertebra of a neck-crushing, ten-foot long, kill-crazy Amazonian boa constrictor.&nbsp; If this quaint, bloodless photograph doesn\'t sufficiently illustrate the size of this ridiculously-gigantor behemoth, how about this?:</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/titanoboa2.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Still not doing it for you?&nbsp; Ok, fool, here\'s a cutting-edge masterpiece of post-modern expressionism I put together to give you some idea of the size and scope of this insanely ridiculous reptilian bastard:</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/titanoboa3.bmp\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /> <br /><br /> <img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/titanoboa3a.bmp\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>That\'s right, stickman.&nbsp; If this snake was on a plane, it would crush the entire thing like a ten-gallon drum of thermonuclear whoop-ass being dropped onto an empty beer can.&nbsp; Terrorizing the rivers and forests of South America over 60 million years ago, this ass-ruining, thankfully-extinct death serpent was 43 feet long and weighed in at over 2,500 pounds. This makes TITANOBOA 15 feet longer than the largest reticulated python ever discovered, almost twice the size of any South American constrictor snake on record, and bigger than the largest Tyrannosaurus Rex yet unearthed by Paleontologists.&nbsp; This thing is even bigger than the snake from the movie <em>Anaconda</em>, a disaster/horror/monster movie about a goddamned snake that, at the time, was presumed to be <em>impossibly big</em>.&nbsp; Hell, I\'d be willing to bet that if this bastard came back to life <em>Jurassic Park</em>-style, he\'d probably singled-handedly make humanity extinct in about a half-hour and then eat Mount Rushmore for dessert.&nbsp; It\'s torso was roughly four feet in diameter, it couldn\'t fit through most doors, and it was more than capable of popping a human\'s head off by squeezing him really hard around the abdomen.</p>\r\n<p>TITANOBOA presumably functioned like most modern South American Anacondas, concealing itself under the water and waiting for something to step into striking distance before lunging, wrapping itself around its prey, and choking the poor sap\'s shit out with its powerful abdominal muscles.&nbsp; Amazonian anacondas, however, never really get bigger than 25 feet long, and those dudes are known to eat things like Jaguars, crocodiles, and deer -- so who knows what TITANOBOA could have chowed down on?&nbsp; Scientists\' best guess is that he feasted on crocs and giant turtles, he could also easily have eaten cows, bison, and small Japanese automobiles without even having to unhinge his jaw.&nbsp; People would have been like delicious beer-battered popcorn shrimp to this motherfucker.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<table cellpadding=\"8\" align=\"center\">\r\n<tbody>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/titanoboa4.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></td>\r\n<td align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/titanoboa4a.jpg\" alt=\"\" /></td>\r\n</tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td colspan=\"2\" align=\"center\"><span>J-Lo and Ice Cube fighting TITANOBOA\'s puny little brother.</span></td>\r\n</tr>\r\n</tbody>\r\n</table>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>I also love the fact that the scientists, when presented with the most monstrous reptile this side of <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/godzilla.html\">Godzilla</a>, didn\'t screw around when it came time to give a name to this foul creature from the darkest recesses of the Nine Hells.&nbsp; The name TITANOBOA, short for ULTRA TITANIC KILLBONER-CONSTRICTOR of the order <em>Killbonerus</em>, is a name that you don\'t step to. There\'s no mistaking the fact that TITANOBOA is a serious name for a seriously enormo snake that could crush all 206 bones in your body with the same unsuspecting effortlessness as an eighteen-wheeler creating some fresh roadkill.&nbsp; It\'s a name that can also double as the title of the inevitable <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/scifi.html\">Sci-Fi Channel Original Movie</a> based off the creature.&nbsp; It\'s a name that <em>demands</em> to be typed with the Shift key firmly pressed down with enough force to short-circuit your keyboard.</p>\r\n<p>It\'s the name of the most badass snake to have ever lived.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/titanoboa5.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><br /><span>\"My anaconda don\'t want none unless you got buns, hon.\"<br /><br />- Admiral Lord Sir Mix-a-Lot</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://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090204/ap_on_sc/sci_monster_snake\" target=\"blank\">AP Story</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2009-02/largest-snake-earth-uncovered?page=\" target=\"blank\">Popular Science</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-sci-snake5-2009feb05,0,6550292.story\" target=\"blank\">L.A. Times</a></p>','2009-02-06','65864718905','titanoboa - Copy.jpg','titanoboa.jpg','The Titanoboa','A 43 foot-long, 2,500-pound prehistoric kill-snake from Hell.',''),('Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin','January 22, 1869','December 29, 1916','Pokrovskoye, Russia','20th-century Russian Supervilain','<p>Grigory Efimovich Rasputin was born in a dank bog in rural Siberia - a lush, magical, unicorn-breeding ground of an inhabitable wasteland (I mentioned it briefly when talking about <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/zaitsev.html\">Vasily Zaitsev</a>), where the temperature never gets above freezing and the people are made out of a combination of battle-hardened asbestos and malfunctioning robot parts &ndash; and his crazy adventures fornicating with Russian nobility, frightening children, and absorbing dozens of large-caliber gunshot wounds would go on to make him pretty much the most infamous monk this side of the Spanish Fucking Inquisition.&nbsp; From his crazy, out-of-control beard to his wild hypnotic maniac eyes, this mystical and mysterious holy man was notorious for his physical and mental strength, his political stranglehold on the Russian Imperial Family, and his incredible ability to read peoples\' weaknesses and manipulate them to carrying out his evil will.</p>\r\n<p>When he entered the gates of Saint Petersburg in 1903, Rasputin was an illiterate peasant nobody who had spent his entire life randomly wandering around the Russian countryside searching for God one horny, sex-crazed maiden at a time (or sometimes two or three at a time, depending on how energetic he was feeling).&nbsp; Carrying only a Bible and a backpack and wearing little more than beat-up, tar-covered boots and a cheap gray overcoat, this impoverished, half-insane priest decided to settle down in the capital city of Imperial Russia and enter the country\'s most prominent monastery.&nbsp; It wasn\'t long before his powerful, commanding personality and creepy-weird magical powers asserted themselves among Rasputin\'s holy brothers &ndash; even the fucking Archbishop of Imperial Russia was convinced that this crazy mysterious monk had the power to control the weather and call down thunderstorms at his whim.&nbsp; Rasputin grew in power, was introduced to a Countess in the imperial court, and immediately started humping every hot aristocratic babe in sight.</p>\r\n<p>While Rasputin quickly developed a reputation for his heavy drinking, all-night carousing, and unabashed womanizing (one of his best pickup lines was to tell women that they would be purified of all their sins if they had crazy monkey sex with him), it was his powers as a mystic that caught the attention of Empress Alexandra of Russia.&nbsp; Her son, thanks to centuries of rampant disgusting inbreeding on behalf of the European nobility, was born with hemophilia and was pretty much constantly in danger of bleeding to death at any given moment.&nbsp; Seriously, this punk kid almost fucking died of a fatal case of fucking road rash every time he beefed it off his skateboard.&nbsp; Alexandra brought Rasputin in to cure the Tsarovitch\'s lingering ailment, and, somewhat amazingly, it turned out that the \"mad monk\" was really fucking awesome at kicking the ass of hemophilia.&nbsp; His ability to save the child\'s life every couple of weeks catapulted Rasputin into the position of Chief Awesome Bastard of Imperial Russia, and the Tsar\'s family eventually asked the unwashed, sex-crazed priest to move into their home.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/rasputin.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>Would you want this guy sleeping in your guest room?</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Seeing as how he alone controlled whether the heir to the throne of Russia lived or died, Rasputin quickly became the most powerful motherfucker in Russia.&nbsp; He used his position close to the Tsar\'s family to exert his will over the government, ensure that men loyal to him were installed in the highest cabinet positions, and quickly quash any formal attempts to investigate his background, his private life, or his ridiculously-sketchy past.&nbsp; His somewhat-incredulous powers of chick magnetism apparently also held sway over the Empress herself, and it wasn\'t long before Rasputin held Tsarina Alexandra in the palm of his hand - both literally and figuratively.</p>\r\n<p>His near-limitless influence and power and ability to bang the Empress whenever he felt like it led to quite a bit of prestige for Rasputin.&nbsp; Foppish courtiers hung on his every word, desperate nymphomaniac babes flung themselves at him every time he stepped foot outside his house, and pretty much everybody wanted to invite him to all their totally sweet house parties.&nbsp; Rasputin, for his part, didn\'t give a shit about anything &ndash; he did his own thing, and didn\'t cater to the prissy bullshit of the aristocracy.&nbsp; He wore his regular old clothes, talked to nobles the same way he spoke to peasants, and generally did whatever the fuck he wanted all the time and anybody who didn\'t like it could lick his balls.</p>\r\n<p>Outside the highest circles of the government, Rasputin was looked upon as a creepy evil bastard who was basically a totally jacked-up cross between John Holmes, a grizzly bear and the physical embodiment of the Anti-Christ.&nbsp; He was believed to be so evil that his name wasn\'t spoken in public &ndash; people referred to him as \"The Unmentionable\" or \"The Nameless One\", which is some seriously badass shit.&nbsp; Numerous rumors of varying degrees of truthfulness began circling about him &ndash; his frightened enemies claimed that he was nailing the Empress\' daughters (as well as the Empress, which he probably was), and that he seduced women with black magic and subconsciously forced them to participate in wild sex orgies with him every Thursday afternoon (also possible).&nbsp; They also claimed that he used to go on drive-by shootings around downtown Saint Pete, and when he got bored of capping fools with his gatt he went into local convents, stripped nuns naked, beat them with a cat o\' nine tails and had his way with them (this seems somewhat less likely).</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/rasputin2.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>Pimpin\' ain\'t easy.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The greatest rumor of course was about his hyper-magical mega-penis &ndash; a 13\" monstrosity of a dong so infamous that it actually has its own goddamned <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rasputin%27s_penis\">Wikipedia entry</a>.&nbsp; According to legend, after Rasputin\'s death in 1916 his penis was actually stolen by a local woman and placed in a jar of formaldehyde.&nbsp; Throughout the 1920s, a group of Russian women in Paris kept the mystical wang as a holy relic for a while, and now it\'s actually on display in a museum in St. Petersburg, which is a claim not many famous people can make.&nbsp; He also once whipped his junk out in a crowded restaurant and angrily waved it at a bunch of police officers Jim Morrison-style, which is also pretty bitchin\'.</p>\r\n<p>What Grigory Rasputin is most famous, however, for his ability to not die despite being surrounded by people actively seeking to kill him in an incredibly fucking violent manner.&nbsp; In 1914 he survived being stabbed in the stomach by a crazy woman, but two years later a group of pissed-off Russian nobles took it upon themselves to finish the job.&nbsp; The Prince of Russia invited Rasputin over for dinner and fed him a bunch of cupcakes and wine laced with cyanide. Rasputin ate all the poisonous goodies, but was completely unaffected, so the Prince decided to off the monk the old-fashioned way and shot him in the back with a pistol at point-blank range.&nbsp; Rasputin simply pulled himself up off the floor, smashed the Prince up against a wall, and started choking the shit out of him with his bare hands.&nbsp; The nobles fought the mad monk off before he could summon some kind of crazy winged asskicking demon to incinerate them all in unholy fire, and chased Rasputin outside, where they shot him three times, beat him down with clubs, tied him up, and threw him in a river.&nbsp; When his body was discovered the next day, they found that Rasputin had broken free of his bonds and was struggling to swim to safety.&nbsp; His official cause of death was hypothermia.</p>\r\n<p>Interestingly, while Rasputin\'s death was celebrated by the aristocracy, it pissed off the common people of Russia.&nbsp; They saw him as one of them &ndash; an oppressed peasant who had clawed his way to power only to be assassinated by a bunch of fucking jackasses with small penis complexes and too much time on their hands.&nbsp; A couple years later everybody had enough and revolted, killed the Tsar, and turned Russia into the Soviet Union.&nbsp; These are the consequences of killing an evil monk with a thirteen-inch cock for no good reason.&nbsp; You get shot in the face by fucking Communists.</p>\r\n<p>Rasputin was a badass sex god who came from nothing, banged the Empress, held power over all of Russia, and was so ruthlessly evil that the mere mention of his name was considered to bring about ill omens.&nbsp; He fought his way to the top through a combination of bizarre mystic powers and an unquenchable sex drive, was tougher to kill than the T-1000, and broke free from his shitty station in life to stick it to the nobility in every possible meaning of the word.&nbsp; Truly badass.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/rasputin3.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>\"Do you know that I shall soon die in terrible pain?<br /> But what can I do?&nbsp; God has sent me to save our dear sovereign and Holy Russia.<br />Despite my terrible sins, I am a Christ in miniature.\"</span></p>\r\n<p><br /><br /></p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Sources:</span><br /><br /><span> Bell, Jeffrey A.&nbsp; <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Industrialism and Imperialism 1800-1914</span>.&nbsp; Greenwood, 2002.<br /><br /> Boese, Alex.&nbsp; <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Hippo Eats Dwarf</span>.&nbsp; Houghton Mifflin, 2006.<br /><br /> Moynahan, Brian.&nbsp; <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Rasputin: Saint Who Sinned</span>.&nbsp; Da Capo, 1999. </span></p>','2009-01-30','21000639687','rasputin1.jpg','rasputin1 - Copy.jpg','Grigory Rasputin','Infamous \"Mad Monk\" of Imperial Russia.','\"Certainly our Savior and Holy Fathers have denounced sin, since it is the work of the Evil One.\r\nBut how can you drive out evil except by sincere repentance?\r\nAnd how can you sincerely repent if you have not sinned?\"'),('John Lawrence Sullivan','October 15, 1858','February 2, 1918','Roxbury, MA, USA','19th-century American Athlete','<p>Back in the days before Ultimate Fighting, Ultimate Frisbee, Ultimate Xtreme Face-Kicking, or any number of other sports that may or may not include the word \"Ultimate\" in the title, the most testosterone-laden, mega-asskicking competition available to humans was bareknuckle boxing.&nbsp; This badass, <em>Fight Club</em>-style face-smashery is as old as time itself, and back before everybody thought it would be cool to put the sport on skates and call it professional ice hockey, hardasses across the planet spent their days ruthlessly dishing out knuckle sandwiches like pissed-off chefs at the International House of Asskicking.&nbsp; For as long as <em>Homo sapiens</em> have had opposable thumbs (and therefore the ability to close their fingers into a fist), men have used the time-honored tradition of face-punching to appropriately determine who, in fact, truly is the most hardcore bastard out there.</p>\r\n<p>If we choose to go by that criterion, then John L. Sullivan is probably the manliest man in American history, and the most hardcore bastard to ever sucker-punch a Gorilla in the chops for no good reason and then go off to a bar and celebrate by pounding a fifth of Jameson\'s, breaking the bottle over someone\'s head, and nailing some skanky, corseted 1880s street prostitute.&nbsp; Sullivan was the last of the great bareknuckle boxers, the first gloved boxing world champion, and a man so badass he could have detonated those giant blocks at Stonehenge into rock dust with a right hook and still have enough energy left over to resurrect the Druids, punch their heads off, and then go back to pounding whiskey until he passed out from being too awesome.</p>\r\n<p>Born in Roxbury, Massachusetts in 1858, Sullivan was the son of ridiculously-poor first-generation Irish dirt farmers.&nbsp;He bounced around at a couple different crappy jobs early in his life, but his healthy disrespect for authority and uncontrollable Bruce Banner-like anger really hampered his professional career.&nbsp; Like for instance, one time an irate factory foreman kicked John L. in the ass for coming back late from his break.&nbsp; The 17 year-old Sullivan responded by punching his boss so hard that the guy broke his jaw and flew backwards through a glass window like an action movie extra getting blasted in the intestines with a shotgun at close range.</p>\r\n<p>When he wasn\'t beating down authority figures or farm animals, Sullivan was also pretty notorious for hitting up the Boston bars, getting trashed, and boasting that he could \"kick the ass of anyone in this room.\"&nbsp; Whenever people took an affront to his wild egomaniacal boasting, he took them out into the alley behind the pub, thrashed them senseless, and threw their unconscious bodies into a dumpster.&nbsp; He was also a competitive keg-tosser, meaning that he could throw a full keg of beer farther than pretty much anybody in Suffolk County, which is pretty sweet.</p>\r\n<p>Eventually Sully fell into a career as a boxer, not by choice, but more or less because beating the hell out of people was pretty much the only thing he really excelled at.&nbsp; When he was 19 he went to see a boxing demonstration, and some jackass professional fighter got up on stage and offered to fistfight members of the audience to prove how giant his nuts were.&nbsp; Sullivan, being the crazy fight-hungry Irish hooligan that he was, obviously took this dumbass up on the offer.&nbsp; The jackass boxer sucker-punched Sullivan in the face during the pre-fight handshake, so John L. responded by knocking the guy out of the ring with a huge Little Mac-style uppercut, sending him face-first into the orchestra pit, where he crashed through a baby grand piano.</p>\r\n<p>From that point onwards it was on like neckbone for John L. Sullivan.&nbsp; Known as, \"The Boston Strongboy,\" the 5\'10\", 196-pound Sully started traveling around, fighting anybody stupid enough to stand toe-to-toe with him, and beating the hell out of amateur and professional boxers across the Northeast.&nbsp; He quickly became well-known for his berserker, hard-punching style (he once KO\'ed a dude with two punches), his endurance, his speed, and his innate ability to take a ludicrous amount of physical damage while still remaining upright.&nbsp; Seriously, the guy had like 200 Hit Points and his unprotected, punch-hardened skin was roughly Armor Class 20.</p>\r\n<p>Now during the late 19th century, bareknuckle boxing was illegal in the United States &ndash; and therefore even more badass &ndash; but this also meant that a lot of fights had to take place in situations where the cops couldn\'t bust them up and arrest the fighters for assault and battery (\"The first rule of fight club is you do not talk about fight club\"-type crap).&nbsp; On one such occasion Sullivan boxed a guy while riding on a barge in the middle of the Hudson River, beating down a dude known as, \"The Bull\'s Head Terror\", in a fight that lasted over an hour.&nbsp; I find this pretty damn impressive, because with a nickname like \"The Bull\'s Head Terror\", I\'m picturing Sullivan fistfighting a freaking Minotaur.&nbsp; This may or may not be out of the realm of possibility.</p>\r\n<p>Sullivan also traveled the country on the rails, traversing the United States on three separate occasions, putting on demonstrations and exhibitions, challenging anybody and everybody to come on stage and fight him, and offering a prize to any challenger who could last four rounds in the ring with him.&nbsp; On his three trips only one man ever made it the full four rounds &ndash; most of the others didn\'t last ten minutes before they had their brains rattled around inside their skulls until they started barfing and forgot their Social Security Numbers.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/sully1.bmp\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>Sully getting ready to pwn someone 19th Century-Style.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>John L. was pretty much an ultra mega superstar at this point, and had become legendary for his badassitude as a back-alley underground boxing champion.&nbsp; He won the American Bareknuckle Championship in 1882, only needing about ten minutes to bash in the face of the old champ, and won the world title in 1889 despite arriving at the fight after a long night of drinking, partying, and scoring with chicks.&nbsp; Sullivan showed up looking like he\'d gone 36 hours without sleep (which he might have), and drank whiskey and tea in his corner between rounds.&nbsp; He barfed over the side of the ring in the middle of the 44th round, but kept in there, pushed it to the limit, and won the fight in the 75th round (!) when the other dude was too exhausted and pummeled to continue fighting.</p>\r\n<p>Eventually they thought maybe they could curb the limitless concussive force of his rock-hard fists by making him wear gloves, but John L. Sullivan wasn\'t going to be nerfed by something as trivial as a two ounces of foam &ndash; in fact, he preferred the hard leather of the gloves because they protected his knuckles from getting cut up on his opponents\' mutilated faces.&nbsp; The dude went out, put on his gloves, beat down a couple chumps, and took the Gloved Boxing Title as well, making him not only the last of the great Bareknuckle Boxing Champions, but the first real Heavyweight Gloved Boxing World Champion as well.&nbsp; Shove that in your crack pipe and set it on fire, bitches.</p>\r\n<p>The life of hard-drinking and hard-fighting eventually caught up with John L. Sullivan.&nbsp; The Boston Strongboy lost his first fight at the age of 29, going down in the 21st round.&nbsp; I still find this pretty goddamned impressive &ndash; I\'m 29, and consider myself to be in pretty descent shape, but I think I\'d start complaining about my fingers hurting if I went 21 rounds in freaking <a href=\"http://www.videogamecritic.net/2600bb.htm#Boxing\">Atari Boxing</a>, let alone actually having some 200-pound jerk wailing on my face with his lightly-padded fists for about an hour.&nbsp; After this bout, Sullivan still did some promotional exhibition-type stuff, but this was more-or-less the end of his professional fighting career.</p>\r\n<p>During his fourteen years as a fighter, John L. Sullivan was the champion for ten &ndash; seven years as a gloved fighter, and seven years as a bareknuckle brawler (he held both titles simultaneously from 1885-1889).&nbsp; He retired as one of the world\'s most popular and wealthiest sports heroes, helped bring gloved boxing into prominence as a professional sport, and was actually really good friends with <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/roosevelt.html\">Teddy Roosevelt</a>, which can only be considered bonus points no matter how you slice it.&nbsp; His final, official record as a fighter was 38-1 with 33 knockouts, but that number doesn\'t take into accout his many unofficial, off-the-books fights - the majority of which resulted in his enemies having to find an amateur doctor to help wire their jaws shut or extract their faces from their abdominal cavities.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/sully2.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>\"When Sullivan struck me, I thought that a telegraph pole had been shoved against me endways.\"</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Sources:</span><br /><br /><span> Pollack, Adam J. <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">John L. Sullivan</span>. McFarland, 2006. <br /><br /> Roberts, Randy. <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">The Rock, the Curse, and the Hub</span>. Harvard Univ. Press, 2005. <br /><br /> Roberts, James B. <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">The Boxing Register</span>. McBooks, 2006. <br /><br /> Sugar, Bert. <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Boxing\'s Greatest Fighters</span>. Globe Pequot, 2006. </span></p>','2009-01-23','389651110746','sully.bmp','sully - Copy.bmp','John L. Sullivan','Last of the great bare-knuckle boxers.','\"Do what we will with him, the man is a natural fighting animal.\"'),('Goyathlay','June 16, 1829','February 17, 1909','Gila River, AZ, USA','19th-century Amerindian Warrior','<p>Peacefully living in the quiet village of Kaskiyeh, things were going well for young Goyathlay of the Chiricahua Apache in 1858. He had a hot young wife, three kids, and was surrounded by a compassionate and loving tribe. Then, one day, while he was out in town trading for some much-needed supplies, a company of jackass Mexican soldiers marched on his home for no reason at all and started wantonly slaughtering the Apache women and children, destroying their food supplies, and capturing their weapons, horses, and medicine. Goyathlay returned to find his home in flames, his mother murdered, and his wife and children slain.</p>\r\n<p>Goyathlay, the 27-year old Apache brave, did what any badass worthy of that moniker would have done. He clenched his fists, buried his family, shed a single tear, and swore Frank Castle-style justice on the men who had brutally laid waste to his people, his family, and his home. They would soon learn that they had screwed with the wrong man.</p>\r\n<p>Donning his bitchin\' war-paint, Goyathlay ventured out to the other Apache tribes in the region and recruited support for his personal vendetta against Mexico. The women and children of his people were re-located and hidden deep in a vast cave network in the Arizona wilderness to protect them from any vengeful Mexican soldiers, and the united Apaches went on the warpath. Traveling on foot, the revenge-hungry Indian braves covered over forty-five miles a day, stopping only to sleep and hunt, and crossed the border from Apache territory into Mexico. When they reached the outskirts of the settlement of Arispe, the Mexican garrison sent eight soldiers out under a white flag to negotiate a truce with the Apache. These men were killed and scalped on the spot.</p>\r\n<p>The next morning, eight companies of Mexican Infantry marched forth to do battle with Goyathlay and the Apache. When Goyathlay saw that some of these soldiers were from the same company that perpetrated the massacre at Kaskiyeh, he got even more violently angry. This time, instead of having the sheltered luxury of viciously slaughtering defenseless civilians, these soldiers now found themselves up against a man so incredibly pissed off that he made the Incredible Hulk look like Ned Flanders on Quaaludes. Goyathlay, being the one who had suffered the greatest loss in the massacre, was chosen to lead the Apache into battle. He charged balls-out at an entire company of riflemen, ignoring the deadly bullets zinging all around his head (many Mexican soldiers later swore that he was actually impervious to all forms of gunfire), and hurling himself into their ranks armed only with a goddamned hunting knife. In the midst of the enemy, Goyathlay proceeded to go Jason Vorhees on the confused and terrified soldiers, slashing and shivving more people than a screwed-up mix between Oz and West Side Story. Their screams and helpless pleas to Saint Jerome to save them from this crazy, knife-wielding psycho only fueled Goyathlay\'s rage, and from that day forth, just to prove to everyone in the world how over-the-top insane-o badass he was, he later took the death-cries of his slain victims &ndash; \"Jeronimo!\" &ndash; as his new name.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/geronimo1.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>At the end of the battle, every enemy soldier had been slain. Geronimo stood alone on the battlefield, knee-deep in the dead, holding a dull knife, the shaft of a spear he had broken-off in the body of another soldier, and a crimson-stained saber he had pried from the hands of an enemy cavalryman. The Apache warriors, who saw how furiously he battled in his quest for vengeance asked him to be the war leader of their people. His first order was to scalp the dead. The legend of Geronimo was born.</p>\r\n<p>However, simply amassing a towering pile of mutilated corpses wasn\'t enough to satiate Geronimo\'s blood-lust, and he dedicated the rest of his life to battling his hated enemies. Between 1858 and 1868 he led dozens of war parties on daring, balls-out raids into Mexican territory. These small assault teams, usually ranging somewhere between five and thirty braves, killed soldiers wherever they could find them and pillaged border settlements and supply trains for weapons, guns, horses, cattle, and food before escaping back to Apache territory with their captured booty.</p>\r\n<p>Geronimo\'s daring acts of badassitude helped him capture some booty on the home front as well, and during his career he had eight different wives. He was usually married to two women at the same time &ndash; he claimed that he was always too busy killing Mexicans to have been able to handle more than that (which is kind of understandable). He became notorious to the Mexicans, who posted a generous bounty on Apache scalps and launched raids of their own into Arizona in unsuccessful attempts to crush the Natives, most of which resulted in them having their faces busted up with the realness.</p>\r\n<p>Geronimo\'s fighting style can best be exemplified in his victory at the Battle of White Hill in 1879, when two companies of Mexican cavalrymen went up against a war party of about fifty Indian warriors. Geronimo simply ducked behind cover, firing his rifle intermittently at his enemies, and waited for the Mexicans to run out of ammunition. Once their bullets were exhausted, the Apache just leapt out and closed on them with lightning speed, engaging the enemy in brutal hand-to-hand combat and massacring the riflemen with spears, tomahawks, and knives.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/geronimo2.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Of course, the Apache weren\'t just at war with our NAFTA partners to the south &ndash; they also had to deal with the encroachment of U.S. forces into their territory as well. From the time that the war-chief Cochise was betrayed under a flag of truce in 1861, Geronimo and his tribe were in the business of beating the hell out of the United States. War parties and skirmishes broke out across the Southwest for over two decades as Geronimo refused to observe the arbitrary boundaries of the bullcrap \"reservation\" the Americans had set up for his people. On four separate occasions between 1872 and 1887, he led parties of warrior braves off the reservation and on the warpath, launching raids from hidden bases deep in the Sierra Madres Mountains. His name soon struck terror into the hearts of soldiers and settlers across the American Southwest and Northern Mexico, who feared his uncontrollable wrath.</p>\r\n<p>This reputation was well-deserved &ndash; Geronimo was hardcore. During his wars, he was shot six times, hit in the leg with a saber, and knocked unconscious by a rifle butt. He was also fearless, daring, an expert marksman, and his raids accumulated large herds of cattle, horses, food, guns, boots, and whiskey for his people. Under his command, the Apache traveled rapidly over vast distances without leaving any trace of their presence. They would ambush cowboys seemingly out of nowhere, and when pursued, every warrior would run off in a different direction, making it impossible to catch them. Then the braves would rendezvous at a predetermined location after they had each successfully evaded capture. They knew all the ravines, mountains and caves of Arizona like the back of their hands, and were better at hiding out than Osama bin Laden with a Klingon cloaking device attached to his chest.</p>\r\n<p>Unfortunately for Geronimo, the Apache were ultimately fighting a losing battle. No matter how many bastards they killed, how many battles they won, and how much plunder they accumulated, they were simply unable to replace their fallen warriors. Their numbers dwindled over time, and when the 58 year-old Geronimo surrendered to the Americans for the fourth and final time in 1887 he was leading a tribe of only 35 braves. He had resisted the armies of two powerful westernized nations for over thirty years, but the Last of the Apache, and the last of the Native American chiefs to surrender to the United States, lived out the rest of his life in Fort Still, Oklahoma, passing away in 1909 at the age of 85. As he died, he whispered the names of the brave warriors who had fought alongside him during his struggle.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/geronimo3.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Sources:</span><br /><br /><span> Brown, Dee Alexander. <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.</span> Macmillan, 2001.<br /><br /> Geronimo, and Barrett, Stephen Melvil. <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Geronimo\'s Story of His Life.</span> Duffield &amp; Co., 1906.<br /><br /> Hoxie, Frederick E. <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Encyclopedia of North American Indians.</span> Houghton Mifflin, 1996. </span></p>','2009-01-16','723642411240','geronimo.jpg','geronimo - Copy.jpg','Geronimo','Apache warrior fought a twenty-five year war against both the U.S. and Mexico.','\"Our arrows were all gone, our spears broken off in the bodies of dead enemies. We had only our hands and knives with which to fight, but all who stood around us were dead… Still covered with the blood of my enemies, still holding my conquered weapon, still hot with the joy of battle, victory, and vengeance, I was surrounded by the Apache braves and made war chief of all Apaches. Then I gave orders for scalping the slain.\"'),('Nikola Tesla','July 10, 1856','January 7, 1943','Smiljan, Croatia','19th-century Serbian Scientist','<p>Pretty much everybody even remotely associated with real-time strategy games has heard the name Tesla before &ndash; the <a href=\"http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/5167054.stm\">Serbian</a> God of Lightning\'s omnipresent, ever-zapping coils have been ruining the lives of digital Allied soldiers and gibbing U.S. war machines into spare parts since the release of <em>Command &amp; Conquer: Red Alert</em> in 1996 &ndash; but surprisingly few people these days are familiar with the life and times of one of humankind\'s most eccentric, badass, and volumetrically-insane scientific super-geniuses.</p>\r\n<p>First off, Nikola Tesla was brilliant.&nbsp; And not just like Ken Jennings brilliant, either - I mean like, \"holy crap my head just exploded (from all the awesome)\" brilliant.&nbsp; The Croatian-born engineer spoke eight languages, almost single-handedly developed technology that harnessed the power of electricity for household use, and invented things like electrical generators, FM radio, remote control, robots, spark plugs, fluorescent lights, and giant-ass machines that shoot enormous, brain-frying lightning bolts all over the place like crazy.&nbsp; He had an unyielding, steel-trap photographic memory and an insane ability to visualize even the most complex pieces of machinery &ndash; the guy did advanced calculus and physics equations in his damn head, memorized entire books at a time, and successfully pulled off scientific experiments that modern-day technology STILL can\'t replicate.&nbsp; For instance, in 2007 a group of lesser geniuses at MIT got all pumped up out of their minds because they <a href=\"http://rinf.com/alt-news/sicence-technology/tesla-proven-right-as-technology-is-transmitted-wirelessly/\" target=\"blank\">wirelessly transmitted energy a distance seven feet</a> through the air. Nikola Tesla once lit 200 lightbulbs from a power source 26 miles away, and he did it in 1899 with a machine he built from spare parts in the middle of the god-forsaken desert.&nbsp; To this day, nobody can really figure out how the hell he pulled that shit off, because two-thirds of the schematics only existed in the darkest recesses of Tesla\'s all-powerful brain.</p>\r\n<p>Of course, much like many other eccentric giga-geniuses and diabolical masterminds, Tesla was also completely insane.&nbsp; He was prone to nervous breakdowns, claimed to receive weird visions in the middle of the night, spoke to pigeons, and occasionally thought he was receiving electromagnetic signals from extraterrestrials on Mars.&nbsp; He was also obsessive-compulsive and hated round objects, human hair, jewelry, and anything that wasn\'t divisible by three. He was also asexual and celibate for his entire life.&nbsp; Basically, Nikola Tesla was the ultimate mad scientist, which is seriously awesome.</p>\r\n<p>Another sweet thing about Tesla is that he conducted the sort of crazy experiments that generally result in hordes of angry villagers breaking down the door to your lab with torches and pitchforks.&nbsp; One time, while he was working on magnetic resonance, he discovered the resonant frequency of the Earth and caused an earthquake so powerful that it almost obliterated the 5th Avenue New York building that housed his Frankenstein Castle of a laboratory.&nbsp; Stuff was flying off the walls, the drywall was breaking apart, the cops were coming after him, and Tesla had to smash his device with a sledge hammer to keep it from demolishing an entire city block.&nbsp; Later, he boasted that he could have built a device powerful enough to split the Earth in two.&nbsp; Nobody dared him to prove it.</p>\r\n<p>Tesla also ordered the construction of the Wardenclyffe Tesla Tower, a giant building <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/tesla-penistower.png\">shaped like an erect penis</a> that would have housed the largest Tesla coil ever built.&nbsp; The massive structure, ostensibly designed to wirelessly transmit power, has been cited as a potential cause of the mysterious 1908 Tunguska Event &ndash; a ten-megaton blast that detonated in the wastelands above central Russia that completely obliterated and deforested everything unlucky enough to be located within a several hundred mile radius.&nbsp; While nothing has ever successfully proven Tesla\'s involvement in the ass-destroyingly huge explosion, it\'s pretty awesome that this guy could potentially have detonated a weapon 1,000 times more powerful than the nuclear bomb that destroyed Hiroshima, and have done it back before they\'d even invented the submachine gun.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/tesla1.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>Tesla in his lab.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>During his adventures blinding half of the world with science, Nikola Tesla harnessed the power of Niagara Falls into the first hydroelectric power plant, constructed a bath designed to cleanse the human body of germs using nothing but electricity, and created a 130-foot long bolt of lightning from one of his massive coils (a feat which to this day remains the world record for man-made lightning), but perhaps his most badass invention was his face-melting, tank-destroying, super-secret Atomic Death Ray.&nbsp; In the 1920s he claimed to be working on a tower that could potentially have spewed forth a gigantic beam of ionized particles capable of disintegrating aircraft from 200 miles away and blinking most men out of existence like something out of a Flash Gordon or Buck Rogers comic.&nbsp; His weapon, known as the \"Teleforce Beam\", allegedly shot ball lightning at 60 million volts, liquefying its targets with enough power to vaporize steel, and, while it could shoot further than 200 miles, its effectiveness beyond that range was limited only by the curvature of the Earth.&nbsp; Luckily for all humans, this crazy insanity never came to fruition &ndash; most of the schematics and plans existed only in Tesla\'s head, and when he died of heart failure in 1943, little hard data on the project existed.&nbsp; Still, J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI confiscated all his personal stuff and locked it away anyways, just to be safe.</p>\r\n<p>Despite being incredibly popular during his day, now Tesla remains largely overlooked among lists of the greatest inventors and scientists of the modern era.&nbsp; Thomas Edison gets all the glory for discovering the lightbulb, but it was his one-time assistant and life-long arch-nemesis, Nikola Tesla, who made the breakthroughs in alternating-current technology that allowed for people to cheaply use electricity to power appliances and lighting in their homes.&nbsp; They constantly fought about whether to use alternating or direct-currents (their bitter blood feud resulted in both men being snubbed by the Nobel Prize committee), but ultimately Tesla was the one who delivered the fatal kick-to-the-crotch that ended the battle &ndash; at the 1893 World\'s Fair in Chicago, his AC generators illuminated the entire experience, marking the first time that an event of that magnitude had ever taken place under the glow of artificial light.&nbsp; Today, all homes and applicances run on Tesla\'s AC current.</p>\r\n<p>Nikola Tesla was one of those super-genius badasses whose intellect placed him dangerously on the precipice between \"great scientific mind\" and \"utter madness\".&nbsp; He held 700 patents at the time of his death, made groundbreaking discoveries in the fields of physics, robotics, steam turbine engineering, and magnetism, and once melted one of his assistants\' hands by overloading it with X-rays - which isn\'t really scientific, but is still pretty cool.&nbsp; And honestly, if there were one man on this planet who was ever capable of single-handedly destroying the entire planet through his insane scientific discoveries, it was Tesla.&nbsp; That alone should qualify him as a pretty righteous badass.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/tesla2.gif\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>The caption reads:&nbsp; \"Nikola Tesla holding in his hands balls of flame.\"</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.pbs.org/tesla/ll/index.html\" target=\"blank\">Tesla: Life and Legacy</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.tesla-coil-builder.com/Articles/july_11_1934b.htm\" target=\"blank\">TIME Article on the Death Ray</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.teslauniverse.com/\" target=\"blank\">Tesla Universe</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://amasci.com/tesla/tesla.html\" target=\"blank\">Nikola Tesla Page</a></p>\r\n<p><br /><br /></p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Sources:</span><br /><br /><span> Seifer, Marc J.&nbsp; <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla</span>.&nbsp; Citadel, 1999.<br /><br /> Tesla, Nikola.&nbsp; <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">My Inventions</span>.&nbsp; Filiquarian, 2006. </span></p>','2009-01-09','848205111672','tesla.jpg','tesla - Copy.jpg','Nikola Tesla','King of the mad scientists.',''),('John Garrison','1824','January 21, 1900','Little York, NJ, USA','19th-century American Adventurer','<p>The American frontier was a badass bitch of an unforgiving wilderness that feasted on the hollowed-out husks of cowards and weaklings and laughed demonically every time some jackass who thought he was the toughest shit since over-cooked turkey ended up on the wrong side of a mouth full of grizzly bear teeth. Between a carnivorous menagerie of miscellaneous flesh-consuming beasts, dense forests dotted with craggy cliffs and Drow-infested caves, and badass <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/crazyhorse.html\">indigenous peoples</a> who were more than a little disgruntled about the fact that white men decided to encroach on their ancestral lands, traveling West of the Mississippi was usually about as hazardous to your health as urinating directly into a power outlet. Well, while the West was pretty much making everybody its bitch, the man known as Liver-Eating Johnson made a name for himself by becoming the most hardcore, violently insane motherfucker to ever strap on a Bowie Knife and kick a deer in half while simultaneously skinning an unidentified member of the genus <em>Canis</em>.</p>\r\n<p>John Garrison was born in New Jersey of all places, but it became pretty fucking obvious that he wasn\'t cut out for life on the East Coast. He enlisted in the Navy at sixteen and soon thereafter deserted his post after he punched out his commanding officer. In order to avoid being brought up on charges for skipping out on his military duties and beating the fuck out of his Captain, Garrison rode the rails out West, settled in the Rocky Mountains, and changed his name to John \"Jonathan\" Johnson Johnston John\'s Son Tson.</p>\r\n<p>Of course, today that guy is pretty much universally referred to as \"Liver-Eating Johnson\", so, even assuming that this is just a clever name (which it\'s not &ndash; I\'ll get to that in due time) it\'s still pretty safe to say that he was completely fucking nuts. Well, first off, this guy didn\'t look like the sort of guy you invite over for cheese and wine and talking about how much everybody has grown up since college. This six-foot tall, 200-pound, ripped-ass fucking mountain man wore buckskin clothing, sported a massive red beard, and carried a twelve-inch Bowie knife, a hand-carved tomahawk, a rifle, and a Walker Colt pistol. He was a professional hunter, trapper, and fur trader, and he was damn good at what he did. He lived off the land, fought Indians and grizzly bears, drank enough rotgut booze to burn a hole through a six-inch plate of sheet metal, and learned the fine art of scalping from the Arapaho Indian tribe. He married a Salish Indian woman in 1846, built a log cabin out of trees he uprooted with his nutsack, and was basically regarded as the toughest and most badass motherfucker in town.</p>\r\n<p>Well, apparently the Crow Indians didn\'t get the memo &ndash; they attacked his home one day while he was out in the wilderness, killed his vastly pregnant wife, scalped her corpse, and burned his house to the ground.</p>\r\n<p>This was not a wise move.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/livereating1.bmp\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>The 1972 film <em>Jeremiah Johnson</em> is (loosely) based off of the life of Liver-Eating Johnson.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Johnson completely fucking lost it. He flipped out and started killing Crow warriors wherever he could find them, and then, just to be even more fucking insane, he would cut out the livers of his slain enemies and fucking eat them. Sure, this is pretty disgusting, and I certainly don\'t advocate the wanton slaughter of Native Americans, but you kind of have to appreciate how super ripshit pissed / borderline-psychotic this motherfucker was to start consuming crazy cannibal man-haggis as a symbol of his mad desire for vengeance.</p>\r\n<p>During the course of his twenty-five year blood feud with the entire Crow Nation, Johnson claims to have killed something on the order of 300 braves, including one time when he took out an entire raiding party of 20 warriors who had been sent to ambush and kill him. He was soon known as \"Dapiek Absaroka\" (\"Crow-Killer\") by the Crow, \"Liver-Eating Johnson\" by his fellow frontiersmen, and \"That Fucking Insane Cannibal Mountain Man\" by pretty much everybody else.</p>\r\n<p>One story claims that Johnson was ambushed by Blackfoot Indians while en route to deliver 40 gallons of whiskey to a remote wilderness settlement. The Blackfoots grabbed him, tied him up, and decide to hand him over to the Crow so that they could finally exact revenge on their much-hated adversary. Well, that night Liver-Eating Fucking Johnson chewed through his rawhide bindings, killed the guard assigned to watch him, cut the dude\'s fucking leg off, and escaped 200 miles through the snow in the middle of winter. When he got hungry he gnawed on the leg, and at one point he actually used the thing to fend off a mountain lion (!!).</p>\r\n<p>Now I should mention that most of these stories are probably bullcrap tall tales told by frontiersmen with nothing better to do. There are no real contemporary records of what this motherfucker was all about, and it has been theorized that he used to actually \"fake\" that he was eating livers just to terrify and strike fear into Indians and frontiersmen alike, but you have to kind of respect the fact that this guy made such a name for himself as a completely insane hardass that pretty much everybody was afraid of him.</p>\r\n<p>In 1864 Johnson enlisted in the Union Army, where he served as a scout and a sniper on the Western Front. He was discharged after a year, when he returned home and got right back to having insane adventures. He eventually made peace with the Crow, became sheriff of Coulson, Montana, told Buffalo Bill\'s Wild West Show to go fuck itself, and continued living the life of a mountain man hunter. For all of his violent ways, he died of illness in 1900 at the age of 77, one of most colorful nutcases in American history.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/livereating2.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>What the fuck are you looking at?</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Sources:</span><br /><br /><span> McLoughlin, Denis.&nbsp; <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">The Encyclopedia of the Old West</span>.&nbsp; Taylor &amp; Francis, 1977.<br /><br /> Slatta, Richard W.&nbsp; <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">The Mythical West</span>.&nbsp; ABC-CLIO, 2001.<br /><br /> Thrapp, Dan L.&nbsp; <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Encyclopedia of Frontier Biography</span>.&nbsp; Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1991. </span></p>','2009-01-02','430334912047','livereating.bmp','livereating - Copy.bmp','Liver-Eating Johnson','It\'s not just a clever name.',''),('David of Bethlehem','11th Century BC','10th Century BC','Bethlehem, Israel','Biblical Israeli Warrior','<p>In the late 11th century BCE, young David of Bethlehem wasn\'t exactly on the fast track to babes, riches, and using the skulls of his enemies as ornamental wine goblets adorning a table filled with fucking badass lemon meringue pies, ostrich burgers, and other delicious shit along those lines.&nbsp; No, instead the man who would become King David of Israel was stuck tending sheep on his father\'s crappy farm in the middle of ass nowhere, kind of like Luke Skywalker fucking tooling around Tatooine when he should have been out there slicing the faces off of weird disgusting aliens and crushing peoples\' colons with his mind.&nbsp; This kind of work didn\'t really give David an opportunity to showcase his powers of Yahweh-powered, Philistine-smashing badassitude, but he did develop a reputation for being kind, charismatic, strong, and brave enough to fight off rabid, sheep-eating wolves with little more than a giant fucking stick and a disregard for the slavering fangs of nature\'s most perfect predators.&nbsp; Pretty much everybody who met him realized that there was something special about this kid, even if they didn\'t exactly realize that the Force was strong with this one.</p>\r\n<p>In addition to being able to smash coyotes and other lupine/canine sheepavores over the head with a stick until they started convulsing, David also had a reputation for being a pretty ultra-bitchin\' lyre player.&nbsp; One day King Saul of Judah was bumming hard about some stupid crap that was pissing him off, so he called David in to wail out a couple of flaming solos and cheer up the depressed monarch.&nbsp; David busted out some insane Van Halen shit, and Saul was so pumped up by this kid\'s sick chops that he hired him on as his personal house musician.&nbsp; David hung out for a while, learning the ways of war and impressing hot babes with his awesome and inspirational power ballads, until one day Israel went to war with a group of people known as the Phlistines.</p>\r\n<p>In case you\'re not down with the Old Testament, the Philistines were basically a bunch of jackasses who spent the better part of the Bible fucking with the Israelites, killing their people, and exerting their will over the Chosen People of God for no reason at all.&nbsp; The toughest and most hardcore of these guys was a dude named Goliath of Geth - a gargantuan, scrotum-crushing maniac who was like a Biblical mix between Chewbacca and a planet-eating robot.&nbsp; Basically, Goliath was a fucking dick who thought he was the baddest shit ever created.&nbsp; Before the war even got started, this monster of a man stepped forward wearing a full suit of spiked metal armor and carrying a sword large enough to slice open the space-time continuum, thumped his chest, and dared anybody in Israel to fuck with him</p>\r\n<p>Even though nobody really wanted a piece of this roid-raging psycho, David was not impressed.&nbsp; He called Goliath\'s bluff, walked out to meet the bastard, and prepared to give this guy the righteous assbeating he was obviously asking for.&nbsp; This kid probably looked like Adam Sandler going up against <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/drago.html\">Ivan Drago</a> when he stepped out onto the battlefield, but David didn\'t even give a shit.&nbsp; He took two steps forward, pulled out his fucking sling, and winged a goddamned rock into Goliath\'s face with enough force to explode the giant\'s brains out the back of his head.&nbsp; After watching this heinous shit go down, the Philistines quickly decided that they didn\'t want anything to do with a guy who could use a fucking rock to generate the same force as a twelve-gauge shotgun, so they dropped their spears and ran for it like a bunch of bitches. David hacked the giant\'s head off with his own sword and carried his hard-earned trophy around to impress the ladies and show his friends who the toughest motherfucker in the Middle East really was.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/kingdavid3.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>David pwns Goliath by stepping on his face <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/stmichael.html\">St. Michael</a>-style.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>David\'s improbable, badass, \"Appalachian State defeats Michigan\"-style victory earned him the respect of his people, and he soon became incredibly popular and universally recognized as an ultimate Israelite badass.&nbsp; Dudes dug the fact that he went on to become a General and lead Israel\'s armies to victory on numerous occasions, while chicks were all about his movie star good looks.&nbsp; Even King Saul\'s daughter was all about David - when she basically threw herself at the Hero of Israel, he asked for the chick\'s hand in marriage.&nbsp; King Saul told David that he could only marry his daughter if he killed 100 Philistines.&nbsp; David went out, killed them all, cut off their junk, and brought a huge sack of severed dongs back to Saul.&nbsp; Saul, for his part, had a tough time turning down the request when presented with such compelling evidence.</p>\r\n<p>Eventually Saul got jealous and drunk and pissed and tried to assassinate David, but our hero escaped and fled into the Wilderness.&nbsp; He went on some RPG video game-style adventures out there, championing the underprivileged, defending Jewish settlements from desert raiders, and plundering the camps of marauding Dark Elf tribesmen, and became so popular with the people that when King Saul was killed in battle with the Philistines the Hero returned home and was placed on the throne of Judea.</p>\r\n<p>As the totally righteous King of Israel (and I use the term \"righteous\" to mean both \"holy\" and \"bitchin\"), David did a bunch of awesome shit like conquer/build Jerusalem, bring the Ark of the Covenant into town, and marry a shitload of hot Jewish bikini babes.&nbsp; When he wasn\'t overthrowing the Philistines, conquering any neighboring civilization stupid enough to alert him to their presence and forging a massive empire from the blood of his enemies, he also found time to write pretty much all the Psalms in the Bible.&nbsp; Psalms is like the hugest section of the entire Good Book (there are like a thousand of them or some shit), so you know this guy was so face-meltingly eloquent it made Shakespeare look like an off-the-boat New York cabbie with a speech impediment and a very rudimentary understanding of the English language.&nbsp; David kind of pissed God off when he banged some guy\'s wife and then sent the dude off to die on the front lines of a war, but eventually it was all good in the hood - David married the chick, knocked her up, and their second kid went on to become King Solomon, the dude who built the Temple and apparently some mines or something as well.&nbsp; Solomon was kind of a big deal.</p>\r\n<p>King David ruled Israel for 40 years, brought his people to prominence as a force to be reckoned with in the Middle East, and is now remembered as a kind, just, and respected ruler who administered his court with honor and crushed his enemies by smashing them repeatedly in the face with a Medieval cattle prod cranked up to ten billion jiggawatts.&nbsp; He established the first Jewish Kingdom in Israel, died peacefully of old age on a gold-encrusted bed surrounded by thousands of hot women, and is now considered a total badass by all three Abrahamic Traditions.</p>\r\n<p>Shit, even the Mormon\'s think he\'s cool.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/kingdavid2.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>David teaching a guy how to be less lame.</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.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=82&amp;letter=D#260\">Jewish Encyclopedia</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/David.html\">Jewish Virtual Library</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04642b.htm\">Catholic Encyclopedia</a></p>','2008-12-26','981394612313','kingdavid.jpg','kingdavid - Copy.jpg','King David','Poor shepherd killed a giant and became Israel\'s greatest King.','\"This day will the Lord deliver thee into mine hand;  and I will smite thee, and take thine head from thee;  and I will give the carcasses of the host of the Philistines this day unto the fowls of the air, and to the wild beasts of the earth;  that all the Earth may know that there is a God in Israel.\"\r\n\r\n- 1 Samuel 17:46'),('Cloelia','6th Century BC','Unknown','Rome, Italy','Ancient Roman Adventurer','<p>Back before Rome was Queen Bitch of the Universe, she was just some town in Italy that constantly got its shit jacked-up by a group of people known as the <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/charun.html\">Etruscans</a>.&nbsp; Now, we don\'t really know a hell of a lot about the citizens of Etruria, but, that being said, it\'s still pretty safe to say that in the year 509 BCE they were more or less in the business of making all of Latium their bitches.&nbsp; These dudes would basically sit back, let Rome acquire a bunch of money and goods, and then they\'d beat the hell out of the Romans and steal all their hard-earned shit.&nbsp; That\'s just how things worked back in antiquity.</p>\r\n<p>Well, eventually the Romans got pissed off and overthrew the Etruscan tyrant, a dude known as Tarquinius Superbus.&nbsp; I only mention this guy, of course, because his name sounds like a 1970s funk album or a man-eating Transformer from Hell that morphs into a school bus with stinger missile launchers attached to those swing-out stop signs with the flashing lights.&nbsp; The Superbus was pretty much a giant raging bastard, but even though this guy got what was coming to him when he was deposed and forced into exile, the Etruscans were still a little sore about the prospect of the Romans trying to grow a pair of cojones and telling them to get bent.</p>\r\n<p>The King of the Etruscans was Lars Porsena.&nbsp; While we\'re on the subject of names here, I\'ll mention that all I really know about this guy is based off of his moniker, so in my mind he\'s a seven-foot tall Viking who wears spiked epaulets, drinks rodent blood out of a Sigg bottle and plays his custom <a href=\"http://www.bcrich.com/bass_nt_beast.asp\">Warlock bass</a> in an underground thrash metal band.&nbsp; Well Lars got pretty pissed off and decided he was going to march his armies on the Roman Republic, crush the pancreases (pancreii?) of everyone he found, and put an end to their wacky bullshit once and for all.</p>\r\n<p>Well the Romans had other ideas.&nbsp; First, they prevented Porsena from crossing the Tiber River into Rome in the most badass way imaginable &ndash; by staging a fucking awesome <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/stamfordbridge.html\">Viking at Stamford Bridge</a>-style defense of their homeland.&nbsp; A dude named Horatius Cocles (also known as Horatius the Cyclops), a one-eyed badass with nothing to lose, held off the entire Etruscan army while Roman sappers destroyed the only bridge across the Tiber. Amazingly, they fucking brought the entire bridge down while Horatius was still standing astride it, sending both the Roman hero and much of Porsena\'s army into the raging waters of the Tiber, but the Cyclops swam back to safety &ndash; in full armor, carrying a sword, and with a broken Etruscan spear sticking out of his thigh.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/cloelia1.gif\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>Horatius at the Bridge</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>But this face-cleaving hardass and his bloodbath clusterfuck of a last stand only afforded the Romans a brief respite &ndash; Lars was super ultra ripshit pissed, and it wouldn\'t be long before he built a new bridge, marched across it, and slaughtered everybody he could get his hands on by stabbing them in the brain with a corkscrew.&nbsp; The Romans finally decided to strike a deal with the rampaging, murder-hungry kill-maniac:&nbsp; They would give him twenty of their hottest young virgins if he would please leave and promise not to burn their entire city to embers and then urinate on the embers until they were no longer on fire.&nbsp; Lars, being a fan of hot young virgins, agreed to these terms.</p>\r\n<p>And now, six hundred words into my article, we finally get to the main character - a teenage Roman girl named Cloelia who went from an obscure nobody to the badass Ancient Roman version of Steve McQueen riding around on a motorcycle and kicking Nazis in the nutsack.&nbsp; Unfortunately, history doesn\'t really give us a whole lot of insight into who this badass chick really was.&nbsp; Seeing as how she was ransomed off to Lars as part of the afore-mentioned deal, we can assume she was one of Rome\'s hottest young virgins, but aside from that she\'s pretty much a complete mystery wrapped in an enigma and then stuffed in the Shroud of Turin and thrown into a black hole of mysterious alien origin.</p>\r\n<p>Cloelia was a badass, self-actualized woman who wasn\'t going to take fucking shit from anybody &ndash; least of all a dude named Lars &ndash; and she sure as fuck wasn\'t going to let herself be auctioned off like cattle or baseball cards or some shit just because some total jackass thought he was tough enough to stamp Rome underneath his giant man-sandals.&nbsp; Fuck that.&nbsp; One night, not long after her imprisonment, Cloelia decided she\'d had enough of this bullshit. She was going home, and anybody who wanted to stop her could go fuck themselves with a power drill.</p>\r\n<p>In the middle of the night, Cloelia freed herself from her bonds.&nbsp; She snuck around, quietly rescued some of the other girls, evaded a couple of military patrols, and led them through the Etruscan camp.&nbsp; They stealthily made their way to the edge of the camp, and then sprinted the short distance towards the river bank.</p>\r\n<p>Well you can be pretty fucking sure that the Etruscan sentries noticed a dozen teenage girls sprinting through the night in their petticoats or togas or whatever, and the guards weren\'t too excited about King Lars chopping their balls off for letting the hostages escape, so they ran after the fleeing women.&nbsp; The girls reached the river banks, and then, at Cloelia\'s urging, they dove into the freezing water of the Tiber River and began their desperate swim towards freedom.</p>\r\n<p>Cloelia was the last woman in the river, waiting to make sure that all her compatriots had successfully made it out of the camp, and not long after she dove from the muddy bank into the swirling rapids the Etruscans showed up.&nbsp; Since the soldiers weren\'t suicidal enough to try breaststroking across the river in full suits of armor, they just decided to start launching arrows, darts, spears, and other large pointy objects at the fleeing hostages.&nbsp; Cloelia shouted pump-up words of encouragement to get these chicks totally psyched up out of their minds about not being impaled by arrows, and soon all the women made it across the river to safety.&nbsp; Cloelia lead them back to Rome and ensured that they reached the homes of their families.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/cloelia1.png\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>Cloelia leads the jailbreak</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Well, this badass virgin toga prison break was great and heroic and noble all, but there was still one little problem &ndash; Lars Porsena was still out there, and now he was <em>even more fucking pissed off</em> than he was before. He didn\'t even send a messenger to tell Rome how angry he was &ndash; he probably just fucking screamed so loud that his vocal chords doubled as a 500-watt megaphone that could rupture the eardrums of everybody within a five-mile radius.&nbsp; He let out a furious, over-acted primal scream, thumped his chest like an NFL player impersonating Tarzan, and demanded that the woman behind this escape be brought to him so that she might face his uncontrollable and terrible wrath.</p>\r\n<p>Cloelia, being a teenage girl, simply shrugged her shoulders and said, \"Whatever.\"&nbsp; She\'d just had thirty fucking Etruscan archers whizzing arrows past her face for an hour while she struggled to fight the current of the fucking Tiber River, and she wasn\'t going to just roll over and beg for mercy because some impotent king thought he was the baddest motherfucker since Samuel L. Jackson.&nbsp; As soon as she heard that Lars was looking for her, she didn\'t even need to be asked &ndash; she just got on a horse and rode out there to give that motherfucker a piece of her mind.</p>\r\n<p>We don\'t know what happened during the meeting between Lars Porsena and Cloelia the Ex-Hostage, but it\'s pretty safe to say that Lars got fucking told with the realness.&nbsp; When their meeting was over, the Etruscan King had been so thoroughly impressed with Cloelia\'s gigantic steel ovaries that he not only allowed her to return home unharmed, but he also let her bring half of the remaining hostages back to Rome with her.&nbsp; Apparently he had been verbally emasculated so thoroughly by this feminine badass that he could no longer manufacture testosterone, because after this event he never fucked with Rome again.&nbsp; He made peace with the Republic, went back to Etruria, and vanished into obscurity.</p>\r\n<p>Cloelia, for her part, was now a hero of Rome who bitch-slapped the invading King back to his currently-non-existent civilization.&nbsp; When the Romans saw her riding back into town with even more liberated captives, they probably all put her on their shoulders and carried her around like the kid at the end of <em>Rudy</em>.&nbsp; Her fearless badassitude and complete teenaged disrespect for authority made her such a legend among her people that they built a giant statue of her clad in a toga and riding a horse and they placed it at the head of the Sacred Way.</p>\r\n<p>She was the first woman to ever be honored this way by the citizens of Rome.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/cloelia2.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>I\'m pretty sure that this isn\'t her, but you get the idea.<br /><br />(As a side note, never run a Google Image Search for \"mounted roman girl\" on your work computer.)</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Links:</span><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloelia\" target=\"blank\">Wikipedia</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.dl.ket.org/latinlit/historia/people/cloelia01.htm\" target=\"blank\">Roman Heroes</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.vroma.org/%7Ebmcmanus/livy_english.html\" target=\"blank\">Story of Cloelia</a></p>\r\n<p><br /><br /></p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Sources:</span><br /><br /><span> Lefkowitz, Mary R., and Fant, Maureen B.&nbsp; <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Women\'s Life in Greece and Rome</span>.&nbsp; JHU Press, 2005.<br /><br /> Livy.&nbsp; <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">The History of Rome</span>.&nbsp; Trans. Baker, George.&nbsp; J.M. Dent, 1921.<br /><br /> Plutarch.&nbsp; <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Life of Poplicola</span>.&nbsp; Trans. Stewart, Aubrey.&nbsp; BiblioBazaar, 2007.</span></p>','2008-12-19','679654212768','cloelia.jpg','cloelia - Copy.gif','Cloelia the Hostage','Heroine of the Roman Republic led a group of captive women to freedom.','\"A young lady called Cloelia, one of the hostages, evaded the vigilance of the guards, and, at the head of a band of her companions, swam across the Tiber, through a shower of darts discharged at them by the enemy, and restored them all, in safety, to their friends at Rome.\"\r\n\r\n- Livy, Ab Urbe Condita'),('Ernest A. Smith','May 3, 1914','August 3, 2005','New Westminster, BC, Canada','WWII Canadian Soldier','<p>Canada gets a bad rap these days, with many Americans looking down on them as our pussier, slightly-British neighbors to the North, but anybody whose <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxzimDYlTCs&amp;feature=related\" target=\"blank\">ever watched footage</a> of the 1970\'s Philadelphia Flyers teams knows that Canadians can be some seriously hardcore motherfuckers who would just as soon cold-cock you in the chops as slash you between the legs with a goalie stick.&nbsp; These crazy bastards have an underappreciated history of badassery, and nowadays we don\'t really respect the fact that Canadians can be hard-drinking, hard-fighting, lumber-jacking motherfuckers who destroy all who oppose them in a flurry of bare knuckles, bizarre accents, and the Metric System.&nbsp; Nobody really represents this quite like an asskicking Canadian soldier named Ernest A. Smith.</p>\r\n<p>(Oh, and in case that video ever ends up getting taken down, it\'s a five minute clip of the Broad Street Bullies beating the ever-loving bejeezus out of the 1976 USSR Red Army team &ndash; crazy, no-helmet-wearing Canucks are seriously knocking Commies to the ice all over the place like whoah and cheap-shotting the fucking Reds so bad that they walked off the ice in the middle of the game.)</p>\r\n<p>Smith, better known as \"Smokey\" because of his blazing footspeed as a member of his high school track team, enlisted in the Canadian Seaforth Highlanders Regiment when World War II broke out in 1940.&nbsp; The Seaforths weren\'t his local military unit, but Smith was such an insubordinate badass that he volunteered for the regiment simply because had absolutely no intention of fighting in the same unit as his former high school teachers.&nbsp; He was stationed on the ground when Nazi V-2s and Me-109s were blowing the hell out of London, but it\'s not like a little something as insignificant as motherfucking air raid sirens kept Smokey from hitting the bars, macking on British babes, and getting into fistfights with strangers.&nbsp; You can get some indication of how hardcore this guy was when you realize that in just two years in the service he was promoted to Corporal nine times &ndash; and every time he was promoted, he was busted back to Private almost immediately.</p>\r\n<p>Smokey Smith participated in the amphibious Allied invasions of Sicily and mainland Italy, and had already been wounded twice by the time Mussolini was deposed in 1943.&nbsp; He, along with the rest of the 2nd Canadian Infantry Brigade, fought in brutal street-to-street fighting as the Germans resisted them every step of the way, but Smokey made do with what he had available &ndash; as a member of his company\'s anti-tank platoon, his favorite tactic was to blast through the walls of fortified German strongholds with a freaking rocket launcher, making it easier for his buddies to storm the building.</p>\r\n<p>Smokey\'s finest hour came during the fight for the River Savio in Northern Italy.&nbsp; Another Canadian unit, the Princess Patricia\'s Canadian Light Infantry (I fucking love the crazy names the Brits give their regiments) was sent to cross the large river, but they suffered seriously massive casualties when they unknowingly walked into a Nazi ambush.&nbsp; Oh, and a freaking gigantic minefield.&nbsp; Dudes were exploding all over the place, machine gun fire was freaking out, and the PPCLI soon found themselves pinned down on the German side of the river.&nbsp; It was up to the Seaforth Highlanders to get up there and relieve their comrades.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/ernestsmith3.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>A Seaforth Highlander in Italy.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The Seaforths crossed the Savio a little further upstream, swimming across the river in the middle of the night during a torrential goddamned rainstorm.&nbsp; The Germans, not suspecting that the Canucks would be fucking insane enough to attempt something this borderline-suicidal, were caught completely off-guard.&nbsp; In fact, one battalion of Nazis left their posts in the morning for breakfast, and returned to find a company of Seaforths in their base killin their d00dz.&nbsp; The Canadians captured the astonished Germans, cut the telephone lines, and then captured the Nazi communications team sent to repair the damaged phone wire.&nbsp; This has very little to do with Private Smith, but I still find this story seriously freaking hilarious nonetheless.</p>\r\n<p>Anyways, the Seaforths secured the bridgehead, but if you know anything about Nazi Germany you can probably guess that the Fascists weren\'t just going to roll over and start sobbing uncontrollably into their sauerkraut just because some jackasses pointed a couple guns in their faces.&nbsp; No, they mounted a massive counterattack, sending a large unit of Panzergrenadiers to jack up the Canadians and send them running back to the Great White North.</p>\r\n<p>Well, screw that.&nbsp; Smokey Smith had other plans.&nbsp; He was laying motionless in a small ditch when he saw half a dozen armored vehicles rolling up in his direction, looking for shit to wreak havoc on.&nbsp; Well one fucking battle tank, a badass <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/panther.html\">Panther</a>, had the audacity to fire its machine guns at Smokey and put a couple of bullets into his best buddy.</p>\r\n<p>That was fucking it.&nbsp; Smith jumped to his feet and pulled out his PIAT &ndash; a fucking spring-loaded anti-tank weapon that was kind of like the piece-of-shit bastard child of an RPG, a bazooka, and a Nerf bow-and-arrow.&nbsp; This thing was roughly about as accurate as trying to hock a loogie into the freaking coin collection basket of a toll booth while blowing there at sixty miles an hour.&nbsp; Still, from just thirty feet away, Smokey\'s aim was true.&nbsp; He fired the weapon, which (in my imagination at least) discharges with a hilarious \"BOING!\" sound, and completely fucking exploded the Panther tank.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/ernestsmith1.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>Canadian AT team getting ready to hwang a Panzer with a PIAT.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>At this point, a group of about ten German soldiers jumped off the back of the tank and started running towards Smith with their submachine guns blazing.&nbsp; Smith laughed his fucking ass off, then opened up on them with his awesome gangster-style Tommy Gun, killing four motherfuckers and sending the rest of them running off like bitches.&nbsp; Smith used the brief respite to return to the ditch and check on his wounded buddy, but before long the Jerrys returned &ndash; this time with a little help.&nbsp; Namely, another fucking tank and like thirty guys.</p>\r\n<p>But Ernest Smith didn\'t give a shit.&nbsp; He boing-ed another PIAT round that damaged the Panther and sent it full-throttle in reverse, and then burned a couple clips of SMG ammo to disperse the German assault on this insane one-man Canadian wrecking ball of awesome.</p>\r\n<p>When a third tank rolled up looking for trouble, Ernest Smith had enough.&nbsp; He was out of PIAT rounds, so he grabbed his fallen ally and pulled the guy to safety while shit was exploding all over the place.&nbsp; He carried his friend to get medical attention before grabbing another PIAT and heading back into action.&nbsp; At the end of the day, Ernest Smith\'s small anti-tank platoon (about 20-30 dudes) combined to destroy three Panther Tanks, two self-propelled artillery pieces, a half-track, a scout car, and quite a few Germans.&nbsp; The counter-attack was repulsed and the Canadians secured the bridgehead.</p>\r\n<p>For his actions during the battle, Ernest Smith became the only Canadian Private to win the Victoria Cross during World War II.&nbsp; He was informed of this honor by the Military Police, who were instructed to place him in jail in order to make sure he didn\'t personally destroy the entire city of Naples with his insane partying.&nbsp; He was awarded the medal by the King Himself, lived to be 91, and at the time of his death in 2005 he was the last surviving Canadian recipient of the Victoria Cross.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/ernestsmith2.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>\"I liked to party.&nbsp; I\'d have a big goddamn party and they\'d say, <br />\"Where is he now?&nbsp; Oh, he\'s drunk downtown.\'\'\'</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.vac-acc.gc.ca/remembers/sub.cfm?source=feature/smokysmith\" target=\"blank\">Canadian Veterans Affairs Site</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.okmilmuseum.ca/okmilmuseumbiosmith.htm\" target=\"blank\">Okanagan Military Museum and Official Citation</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.blackfive.net/main/2005/08/godspeed_smokey.html\" target=\"blank\">Blackfive Interview Excerpts</a></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Sources:</span><br /><br /><span> Gardham, John.&nbsp; <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Canadians in War and Peace</span>.&nbsp; General Store, 2000.<br /><br /> Goddard, Lance.&nbsp; <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Hell and High Water</span>.&nbsp; Dundurn Press, 2007.<br /><br /> Granatstein, J.L.&nbsp; <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">The Last Good War</span>.&nbsp; Douglas &amp; MacIntyre, 2005. </span></p>','2008-12-12','258479613229','ernestsmith.png','ernestsmith - Copy.png','Smokey Smith','Canadian hero of World War II took on an entire company of Panzers... and won.','\"I don\'t take prisoners, period.  I\'m not paid to take prisoners. \r\nI\'m paid to kill them.  That\'s all there is to it.\"'),('Edwin J. Hill','October 4, 1894','December 7, 1941','Philadelphia, PA, USA','WWII American Sailor','<p>On December 7th, 1941, the United States Navy Pacific Fleet stationed in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii got seriously horsecocked in a massive surprise attack by a fleet of 353 super-pissed Japanese fighter and bomber aircraft.&nbsp; The Empire of Japan, correctly believing that American naval power was a serious threat to their ability to completely donkey-slap the entire Eastern Hemisphere around with their raging kill-boners, launched an utterly balls-out sneak attack on the U.S., seeking to cripple the nine American battleships and three aircraft carriers stationed on the island base.</p>\r\n<p>At the end of \"Battleship Row\" sat the monolithic vessel with the designation BB-36 &ndash; the USS <em>Nevada</em>.&nbsp; With the American carrier fleet fortuitously out at sea when the Japanese bombers rolled into town, she, along with her sister ships, were the prime targets for getting Imperially fucked up by the Axis Powers.&nbsp; At 8:05am, when the first wave of Zeroes streaked across the skies above Hawaii like gasoline-powered turbopropped bats out of hell, a torpedo plane from the Japanese Carrier <em>Chairman Kaga</em> zoomed overhead unexpectedly, releasing a powerful bomb that scored a direct hit on the massive battleship\'s hull and smashed a gigantic sucking chest wound in the side of the <em>Nevada</em>.&nbsp; Crews rushed to seal off decks and keep the ship from taking on water, but before anybody even knew what the fucking balls was going on, a second wave of Japanese planes ran up and took a dump on Battleship Row.</p>\r\n<p>Another Imperial torpedo splashed down in the water beside <em>Nevada</em>, the explosion sending giant shards of shrapnel careening into the side of the damaged warship, but that bullshit seemed positively uninteresting compared to what happened next &ndash; a fucking giant-ass torpedo scored a direct hit to the forward magazine of the ship sitting in the docking berth next to <em>Nevada</em>, the USS <em>Arizona</em>.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/edwinhill1.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The incredible, \"this would be awesome if it wasn\'t happening to my next-door neighbor,\" action movie-style explosion rocked the entire harbor like a hurricane, the force of the blast knocking many of <em>Nevada</em>\'s sailors to the deck.&nbsp; At this point, completely surrounded by carnage, explosions, fire, and smoke, the <em>Nevada</em>\'s commanding officer decided to say, \"fuck these assholes.\"&nbsp; He wasn\'t going to be a sitting duck for a bunch of jackasses to use for fucking target practice. He was going to make a break for it.</p>\r\n<p>Unfortunately, there was a problem &ndash; the ship was tied up to the docks by several heavy-ass fucking ropes.</p>\r\n<p>It was then that the <em>Nevada</em>\'s Chief Boatswain, Edwin J. Hill, sprung into action.&nbsp; He took a crew of sailors, sprinted from the bridge down to the pier and untethered the ship, probably by karate-chopping through two feet of cordage with a single knife-fisted strike.&nbsp; With all this fucking insane shit going on around him, things exploding, people screaming, and Zeroes strafing the ground with machine guns, Hill unhooked the ropes and watched the <em>Nevada</em> slowly begin to pull away from the docks on her mad dash to freedom.</p>\r\n<p>But Chief Edwin Hill wasn\'t the sort of motherfucker who was going to let his men go to war without him. &nbsp; As the <em>Nevada</em> pulled out of her berth, Hill sprinted across the dock, swan-dived into the waters of Pearl Harbor, and swam like he had never swam before.&nbsp; He reached the ship, pulled himself on board, and got right back to manning his post.</p>\r\n<p>Thanks largely to Hill\'s quick actions, the USS <em>Nevada</em> was the only battleship to pull away from the dock during the entire Pearl Harbor raid.&nbsp; With every other battleship in the Pacific Fleet burning, listing, or taking on water, she was going to make a fucking run for it.&nbsp; The sailors, Marines, and civilian personnel who saw this valiant ship steaming towards the open water were inspired by the courage of these brave crewmen, her balls-out gambit to escape the utter devastation surrounding her serving as a slight glimmer of hope among a day of tragedy, infamy, and suck.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/edwinhill1.bmp\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span><em>Nevada</em>, seen here looking pretty fucked up.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>With <em>Nevada</em> clear of her berth and charging towards the sea, the Japanese intensified their attacks on the severely-jacked-up warship.&nbsp; Another wave of 23 Japanese bombers ominously took up positions for their run, as the anti-aircraft weapons on the deck barked like pissed-off German Shepherds threatening a mailman made entirely out of beef.&nbsp; Some of the AA guns found their mark, but there were simply too many bombers &ndash; explosions rippled across the bow as several torpedoes struck the wounded warship.&nbsp; Amidst the wreckage strewn across the harbor, the <em>Nevada</em>, burning and taking on water, continued limping towards freedom.</p>\r\n<p>It was the third wave of <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aichi_D3A\">Vals</a> that knocked <em>Nevada</em> out on her feet.&nbsp; Their strafing run cockpunched the forecastle and the rear tripod mast, killed hundreds of sailors, and ignited fires in the gun casemate.&nbsp; This is a bad place for fires.&nbsp; <em>Nevada</em>\'s commander decided the only way to save the ship was to beach her.&nbsp; He ordered the ship to get as close as it could to the shore and attempt to drop anchor.</p>\r\n<p>Edwin J. Hill was there once again.&nbsp; He had been troubleshooting the countless issues on the deck during <em>Nevada</em>\'s valiant escape attempt, desperately trying to manage his crew despite all the sucktastic fucking destruction and death around him, and now the ship depended on his expertise yet again.&nbsp; He quickly ran to his station, helped get the ship into position, and personally dropped the anchor in a way that would be most advantageous for the ship to, you know, not fucking sink to the bottom of Pearl Harbor.</p>\r\n<p>Chief Hill didn\'t survive the battle &ndash; he was hit by a bomb almost immediately after getting the anchor deployed &ndash; but his mission was ultimately a success.&nbsp; <em>Nevada</em> had survived to seek bloody, murderous revenge another day.&nbsp; Hill was posthumously honored as one of fourteen Medal of Honor winners, all of whom displayed unquestionable courage during the Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/edwinhill2.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The final death toll at Pearl Harbor was pretty fucking mind-blowing &ndash; the United States suffered 2,403 dead and 1,178 wounded, while Japan lost like two guys to heat exhaustion or something.&nbsp; 118 American planes were destroyed, many more were damaged, and the mighty Battleships <em>Oklahoma, West Virginia, Arizona</em>, and <em>California</em> were either sunk or irreparably damaged.&nbsp; Of course, we all know how the tale ends &ndash; America got completely pissed of like out of their minds crazy, mobilized, re-built, stomped through the Pacific one island at a time, crippled the Imperial Fleet at Midway, and ultimately exacted some Texas-sized vengeance on the Japanese Empire.</p>\r\n<p>But that\'s not what this story is about.&nbsp; It\'s about Chief Edwin J. Hill, a man whose actions on this day were not only inspirational to the demoralized men and women stationed on the doomed Hawaiian naval base, but had even farther-reaching implications for the war as a whole.&nbsp; You see, partly because of his insanely brave actions on December 7th, the USS <em>Nevada</em> survived to be one of just three Battleships stationed at the Harbor that lived to fight.&nbsp; She participated in seven major military engagements during World War II, ranging from Okinawa to Western Europe, and holds the honored distinction of being the first Allied warship to fire on the coastline during the D-Day operation.&nbsp; Her constant bombardment in the hours leading up to the Normandy Campaign - pounding artillery positions, busting through walls, and detonating Nazi soldiers like giant man-sized beef grenades - helped soften up Utah Beach for the Allied invasion of Germany, and jump-started the battle that would turn the tide of the War in Europe.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/edwinhill3.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<table style=\"width: 500px;\" align=\"center\">\r\n<tbody>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td><span><span>\"What these men saw was the <em>Nevada</em>wreathed in clouds of her own amber smoke, uprooting gun emplacements, scattering pillboxes, and smashing tank and troop concentrations, but what you, as the only newspaperman aboard this American battleship in this invasion, saw was men rather than a machine that did all of this.\"</span></span><center><br /><br />- W.C. Heinz, <em>When We Were One</em></center></td>\r\n</tr>\r\n</tbody>\r\n</table>\r\n<p><br /><br /></p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Sources:</span> <span> <br /></span></p>\r\n<p><span> Bonner, Kermit.&nbsp; <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Final Voyages</span>.&nbsp; Turner Publishing, 1997.<br /><br /> Cressman, Robert.&nbsp; <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">The Official Chronology of the US Navy in World War II</span>&nbsp; Naval Institute, 2000.<br /><br /> Goldstein, Donald M.&nbsp; <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">The Way It Was</span>.&nbsp; Brassey\'s, 2001.<br /><br /> Heinz, W.C. &nbsp; <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">When We Were One</span>.&nbsp; Basic Books, 2003.<br /><br /> Smith, Carl.&nbsp; <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Pearl Harbor 1941</span>.&nbsp; Osprey, 2001.</span></p>','2008-12-05','497348213665','edwinhill.jpg','edwinhill - Copy.jpg','Edwin J. Hill','Navy Boatswain saved his ship from destruction during the raid on Pearl Harbor.','\"Against all odds, and against the backdrop of total devastation, a lone survivor defied what seemed to be an overwhelming enemy victory.  This sight inspired thousands, and was forever etched in the memory of those present.\"\r\n\r\n- Kermit Bonner, \"Final Voyages\"'),('Michael Groves','1966','N/A','West Midlands, England','21st-century British Humanitarian','<p>Somali pirates are pretty fucking badass.&nbsp; First off, they\'re pirates.&nbsp; With assault rifles, rocket launchers, and outboard motors.&nbsp; Secondly, they net some pretty goddamned big prizes these days.&nbsp; Sure, there aren\'t Spanish galleons loaded with gold doubloons floating around all over the place just asking to be pillaged and plundered, but, then again, capturing a goddamned <a href=\"http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7650415.stm\">container ship filled with Russian tanks</a> can be more lucrative than you\'d think.&nbsp; According to that article I just linked to (the one with all the blue letters up there), these pirates basically capture ships, ransom them for something on the order of $2 million a pop, and then go home to their mansions, bang their supermodel mistresses, and buy all the newest video games the day they come out.&nbsp; It\'s yo ho, yo ho, a pirates\' life for these scurvy bastards, and business is good - they make a ton of money, terrorize the seas, and sailors pretty much everywhere fear them.</p>\r\n<p>Well, there\'s one man who isn\'t impressed.</p>\r\n<p>In November 2005 Michael Groves was the master-at-arms aboard the luxury cruise ship <em>Seaborne Spirit</em>, cruising about 100 miles off the coast of Africa, when all of a sudden he received a report on his radio that two speedboats were tearing ass full-speed towards the ship.&nbsp; Groves ran out onto the deck to see what the fuckballs was going on, and was promptly greeted by a hail of bullets.&nbsp; Roughly a dozen badass, murderous Somali pirates were on their way to fuck <em>Seaborne Spirit</em>\'s ass up, and Groves, a British ex-cop, now found himself in <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/mcclane.html\">John McClane</a>\'s shoes - one man, up against a small, well-organized group of balls-out motherfucking terrorists with machine guns.</p>\r\n<p>The only difference:&nbsp; Michael Groves didn\'t have a gun.&nbsp; Also, this was real life.</p>\r\n<p>The <em>Seaborne Spirit</em>, being a high-end, id=\"mce_marker\",000-a-night luxury ship, didn\'t exactly leave port outfitted with depth charges, surface-to-surface torpedoes, and heavy machine guns mounted on the deck rails every hundred yards or so, and it certainly wasn\'t one of those crazy-ass sci-fi ships that can transform into a giant surfing robot with plasma missile launchers on its shoulders that smashes battleships into driftwood by swings Humpback Whales around like baseball bats.&nbsp; But Michael Groves knew that he was the only line of defense between these bloodthirsty buccaneers and the 300 men and women aboard his ship, so he improvised - he grabbed the first thing he could get his hands on, which just so happened to be the ship\'s fucking high-pressure fire hose, charged to the railing while AK-47 fire zipped around his head, and let those motherfuckers have it:</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/groves1.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br />\"You get to drink... from the FIRE HOSE!\"</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Groves blasted the pirates\' speedboat with a high-velocity stream of water so powerful that it\'s capable of stripping paint off a ship\'s hull.&nbsp; Getting nailed by a cruise ship fire hose is kind of like having your buddy pump a SuperSoaker BFG 9000 like eight million times and then shooting you in the face with it from about six inches away.&nbsp; This stream blew the shit out of the pirates, driving them back, but Groves knew this wouldn\'t be enough to contain the badassitude of some non-parrot-wearing nautial terrorists.&nbsp; He ran back to the ship\'s armory to grab another tried-and-true Anti-Pirate Device - an apparatus known as a Long-Range Acoustic Device.&nbsp; Also known by the clever acronym LRAD, this badass futuristic non-lethal weapon emits a brain-crushing wave of sound louder than roughly two thousand Ozzfests taking place inside your skull <em>at the same time</em>.</p>\r\n<p>Well, the pirates weren\'t fucking around any more either.&nbsp; When the salty sea-dogs got finished peeling their faces off the sides of their motorboats, they fired a broadside of rocket-propelled grenades at the feisty cruise ship.&nbsp; An RPG smashed into the ship, knocking Groves to the deck.&nbsp; His fellow security officer, and ex-Gurkha named Som Badhur Gurung, ran up, grabbed the LRAD, set it up on the railing of the ship, and promptly got shot in the fucking face by an AK-47.</p>\r\n<p>That was fucking it.&nbsp; Groves got ultra giga ripshit cheesed off, jumped back up to his feet, grabbed his seriously-wounded comrade, pulled the dude to safety, and immediately headed back to operate the LRAD.&nbsp; Around this time, a SECOND fucking barrage of rocket-y crunchy death cockslapped the cruise ship, sending everybody to the deck again and probably making the terrified passengers completely seasick in the process.&nbsp; Michael Groves didn\'t give a shit.&nbsp; He ran over to the railing, and from his completely-exposed position he blasted the pirates with a solid wall of sound -- 150 decibels of ear-splitting, hysteria-inducing screeching.&nbsp; The Somali pirates had their hair blown to the back of the auditorium pretty much immediately.&nbsp; They weren\'t funky enough to handle the hot beats of a constant stream of sound ranging somewhere between \"Pain Begins\" and \"Death of Hearing Tissue\" on the <a href=\"http://www.gcaudio.com/resources/howtos/loudness.html\">decibel loudness comparison chart</a>, so they bugged out and headed home.</p>\r\n<p>Michael Groves was a badass motherfucker who defended the innocent people of his ship from modern-day pirates by <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_note\">brown-noting</a> their asses until they packed up their shit and fucked off.&nbsp; For his selfless heroism and insane fearlessness rescuing a wounded man and single-handedly running off two ships loaded with rocket launcher-toting African terrorists usting nothing more than a couple of improvised non-military weapons and some really foul language, Michael Groves was personally awarded the Queens Gallantry Medal at Buckingham Palace by the British monarch herself.&nbsp; He\'s a modern-day civilian hero of the War on Terrorism, and the most recent in a long-line of hardcore, scrotum-crushing, pirate-killing motherfuckers.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/groves2.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>A photo of the pirates, taken by a passenger aboard the <em>Seaborn Spirit</em>.</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://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6664677.stm\" target=\"blank\">BBC Article</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-455343/The-sailors-hosepipe-sent-pirates-packing.html\" target=\"blank\">Daily Mail Article</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seabourn_Spirit\" target=\"blank\">Wikipedia Entry on the Seaborn Spirit</a></p>','2008-11-28','715703014369','groves.jpg','groves - Copy.jpg','Michael Groves','One man fought off a dozen Somali pirates with a fire hose.',''),('Joseph William Kittinger II','July 27, 1928','N/A','Tampa, FL, USA','20th-century American Pilot','<p>Joseph Kittinger joined the United States Air Force because he wanted to pull some serious G\'s, barrel roll around like a maniac, tear ass through the skies, dismantle bullshit Soviet MiGs with his autocannons and fly it right into the fucking danger zone like a bastard in the process.&nbsp; A former competitive speedboat racer, Kittinger enlisted as a USAF cadet in 1949, made Lieutenant within a year, and was flying fighter jets in the 86th Squadron in West Germany at a time when it was a very real possibility that he was going to need to frag the shit out of a bunch of Russkies some time in the near future.</p>\r\n<p>Luckily for Russia, he never got the chance.&nbsp; He ended up getting called back to New Mexico and stationed at a USAF missile development center for a couple of years, working with badass engineers who were constantly trying to go as fast as fucking possible all the goddamned time just for the hell of it.&nbsp; Kittinger piloted an observation plane when mad scientist/lunatic John Paul Stapp\'s rocket-powered psycho-sled set the still-standing land speed record, traveling 632 miles an hour through the desert of Arizona or New Mexico or some shit.&nbsp; Stapp was pretty pumped up about how awesome Kittinger was at not erupting into a flaming explosion while traveling at such high speeds, so he recommended the man with the giant swollen steel-plated nutbag for a super-secret test on the effects of ridiculously high-altitudes on the human body.&nbsp; Kittinger, apparently being utterly fearless, jumped on the first hot-air balloon he could find.&nbsp; In 1957, he set a world record by taking a balloon up 96,000 feet into the Troposphere (or whatever the hell that layer of the atmosphere is called).&nbsp; This is roughly three times higher than the cruising altitude of a standard 747, but Kittinger didn\'t give a crap. He calmly annihilated the record and won the Distinguished Flying Cross for his brazen display of steel-plated brass-ballitude.</p>\r\n<p>Because he was a total badass, Kittinger simply shrugged his shoulders and said, \"meh\", about being up that high, so he decided to push it to the limit to the ultimate gonzo max and take the next step &ndash; literally.&nbsp; In 1958 he took a goddamned balloon 76,400 feet into the air, strapped on a parachute, and fucking jumped out the basket like a crazy person.&nbsp; Unsatisfied with the fact that he blacked out during his descent (having your cranial cavity compressed by 22 times the force of gravity while a malfunctioning parachute is wrapped around your throat and your entire body is helicoptering around like John Elway in the Super Bowl has a tendency to do that to some people), Kittinger went back and did it again <em>twenty-five days later</em>, this time without passing out.&nbsp; On the way down, he tested another experimental Air Force parachute designed to save the lives of jet pilots bailing out of their awesome U-2s and <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SR-71\">SR-71 Blackbirds</a> at Mach ten billion.</p>\r\n<p>That&rsquo;s right, not only was Joseph Kittenger voluntarily jumping out of a goddamned helium balloon fourteen and a half miles in the air - he was doing it with an untested prototype parachute serving as the only thing preventing him from hitting the ground at Mach 1 and detonating on impact.&nbsp; If that doesn\'t take nerves and/or balls of steel, than nothing does.</p>\r\n<p>Somewhat amazingly, that wasn\'t even the most insane thing that this adrenaline-addicted badass ever attempted.&nbsp; In August of 1960, he put on a fucking spacesuit and jumped from 102,800 feet.&nbsp; This was &ndash; and is &ndash; the highest altitude at which any man has ever been crazy enough to jump out of a moving vehicle.&nbsp; Seriously, any higher, and he might as well have been leaping out of the freaking Space Shuttle.&nbsp; He was in freefall for four and a half minutes, traveling over 714 miles per hour and withstanding temperatures close to -100 degrees Fahrenheit.&nbsp; While hurtling head-first towards the earth like Wile E. Coyote on a bad peyote trip he became the first man to exceed the speed of sound without a vehicle.&nbsp; Re-read that sentence again, and give it a minute for the complete utter insanity of that statement to sink in.&nbsp; This guy was literally traveling faster than a speeding fucking bullet.&nbsp; The entire trip, from balloon to pavement, took thirteen and a half minutes.&nbsp; He lived, probably through sheer force of will alone.&nbsp; Two years later, he took an astronomer high enough into the atmosphere that the dude was able to discover previously-uncharted regions of deep space using little more than a high-powered telescope, and stayed in the upper atmosphere for something like 18 hours.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/kittinger1.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Here\'s what Joseph Kittinger liked:&nbsp; Chewing tacks, flying really high in balloons, jumping out of things, and shooting motherfuckers from the cockpit of a fighter plane.&nbsp; When the U.S. got \"in the shit\" in Vietnam, he volunteered for a tour of duty in the South Pacific.&nbsp; Three times.&nbsp; He commanded the famous 555th Tactical Fighter Squadron, flew 483 combat missions, dogfighted (dogfought?) a bunch of NVA MiGs, and survived being shot down and spending 11 months as a prisoner of war in the infamous \"Hanoi Hilton\" &ndash; one of the most ruthless and shitty dungeons this side of the Middle Ages.</p>\r\n<p>Kittinger continued in the USAF after his experience in North Vietnam, finally retiring in 1978 at the age of 50.&nbsp; He spent his retirement hanging out in Orlando, enjoying the sun, and becoming the first man to fly solo across the Atlantic in a hot air balloon.&nbsp; Suck it, Jules Verne!</p>\r\n<p>Joseph Kittinger was a badass who not only skydived from lower orbit and performed more towering acts of fearlessness on his way to the men\'s room than most people accomplish in their entire lives, but also was a pioneer in the technology of manned space flight.&nbsp; His early work &ndash; going really goddamned high up in balloons and jumping out of them &ndash; proved to scientists that it was actually possible for human beings to survive at ultra-high altitudes (there was some doubt when he embarked on the mission, but nothing as trivial as \'potentially dying\' could keep JK from doing something awesome) and research from these missions proved instrumental in the beginnings of the American Space Program.&nbsp; Even though he\'s a pretty obscure character, he is truly an American hero on par with guys like <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/yeager.html\">Chuck Yeager</a> and Neil Armstrong.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/kittinger2.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<table style=\"width: 500px;\" align=\"center\">\r\n<tbody>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td><span>\"We did it for air crews and astronauts - for the learning, not to set a record.&nbsp; [Others] will be going up as skydivers. Somebody will beat it someday.&nbsp; Records are made to be busted.&nbsp; And I\'ll be elated.&nbsp; But I\'ll also be concerned that they\'re properly trained.&nbsp; If they\'re not, they\'re taking a heck of a risk.\"</span></td>\r\n</tr>\r\n</tbody>\r\n</table>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Links:</span><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.af.mil/history/person.asp?dec=&amp;pid=123006518\" target=\"blank\">USAF Site</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.centennialofflight.gov/essay/Explorers_Record_Setters_and_Daredevils/Kittinger/EX31.htm\" target=\"blank\">Centennial of Flight</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,939169,00.html\" target=\"blank\">TIME Magazine</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.nmspacemuseum.org/halloffame/detail.php?id=99\" target=\"blank\">National Space Museum</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Kittinger\" target=\"blank\">Wikipedia</a></p>','2008-11-21','34802515170','kittinger.jpg','kittinger - Copy.jpg','Joseph Kittinger','USAF test pilot skydived from lower orbit.','\"The most fascinating thing is that it\'s just black overhead - the transition from normal blue to black is very stark... I was struck with the beauty of it.  But I was also struck by how hostile it is:  more than 100 degrees below zero, no air.  If my protection suit failed, I would be dead in a few seconds.  Blood actually boils above 62,000 feet.\"'),('Beowulf','7th Century','N/A','Geatland, Sweden','Mythological Viking Warrior','<p>For twelve long years the mysterious man-eating monster Grendel terrorized the poor citizens of Denmark, busting into their homes in the middle of the night, eating their chips, and then biting their faces off with his giant gleaming yellow fangs.&nbsp; Over time, pretty much everybody got used to having their relatives devoured by a giant disgusting super-powerful monster, and no hero was tough enough to take that motherfucker out and liberate the Danes from the oppression of this wretched beast.&nbsp; Well, while the Danes had grown complacent over time, when word finally reached the distant Kingdom of the Geats, one badass took a particular interest as to what was transpiring on the shores of this mysterious land, and he decided he was going to fucking do something about it.</p>\r\n<p>Beowulf did what any video game protagonist would have done in a similar situation - he put together a raiding party of hardcore motherfuckers, strapped on his most righteous battle-gear, and went out to kill himself some fucking demons.&nbsp; The Geat hero was no stranger to wiping the floor with mythical beasts (he had already slain everything from sea monsters to water demons), but he\'d never tested his mettle against something this hardcore before.&nbsp; It was an awesome challenge so hardcore that he got mega pumped up just thinking about it, so Beowulf put together a badass Led Zeppelin mix tape, jumped on his boat, and went to find out what the fuck was rotten in the state of Denmark.</p>\r\n<p>Beowulf and his homedogs crashed onto the shore and immediately made their way out to tell the King what was what.&nbsp; When the big bossman heard Beowulf\'s noble intentions, he held a giant feast in the hero\'s honor, complete with kegs of booze and giant carved Thanksgiving turkeys and cranberry sauce and all that good shit, and people ate meat right off the bone like the barbarian badasses they were.&nbsp; Everything was going pretty well until some jackass had the mind-numbingly dumbshit idea that he should call Beowulf out right in front of everyone.&nbsp; This dude got up and started talking shit about how he heard that Beowulf had lost a swimming race against a lesser warrior.&nbsp; The room fell silent at this accusation.&nbsp; All eyes turned towards the newcomer, who leaned forward in his chair, his face hard as poured concrete, his expression as grim as a funeral.</p>\r\n<p>Beowulf slowly rose to his feet, pounded his fist on the table, and said, \"Go fuck yourself, asshole - when I\'m in the water I\'m like a goddamned cross between Michael Phelps and a blender permanently stuck on the \"melt faces\" setting.&nbsp; Not only did I whip that guy\'s ass in the swimming race, but I also set the World Record in the 100-meter butterfly AND had time to choke out a sea monster with my bare hands in the process.&nbsp; Oh yeah, then this giant fucking Kraken tried to drown my ass by wrapping me up with its tentacles, so I sucker-punched that motherfucker in the eye until it was comatose!&nbsp; What have you ever done, bitch?&nbsp; You\'re obviously not out there killing any Grendels, that\'s for fucking sure, so why don\'t you just sit here complaining about your sore ovaries and let a real man go out there and show you how a fucking badass handles shit?\"</p>\r\n<p>Then somebody in the audience yelled, \"OH SNAP!\" because this douchebag just got seriously told.&nbsp; The dude ran off crying into his handkerchief, and everyone else went back to their epic feast and got wasted on mead and Tryptophan.</p>\r\n<p>Well, as luck would have it, Beowulf wouldn\'t have to go far to get the fight he was looking for.&nbsp; The monster Grendel just so happened to show up that night while everyone was asleep, and he immediately started slaughtering dozens of battle-hardened warriors like they were pre-packaged containers of cooked beef.&nbsp; The demon then kicked in the door to Beowulf\'s hotel room and ate one of his soldiers, but our hero, despite having spent the entire night chugging enough ale to intoxicate most inanimate objects, popped out of bed without a hangover or anything.&nbsp; Grendel reached for this fearless challenger, but Beowulf grabbed the monster\'s arm and tore it off with his bare fucking hands.&nbsp; The monster ran away and crawled into a hole to die, and Beowulf hung the severed limb in the Danish King\'s dining hall, turning the feasting room into one of those family-dining-style chain restaurants with all the wacky crap hanging off the walls.&nbsp; For defeating the horrific creature in such a badass manner, the King gave the warrior-hero more weapons, armor, gold, and jewelry than he could carry.&nbsp; Then they had another huge party and everybody got trashed again, because that\'s what people did back in the Dark Ages.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/beowulf1.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>PWND</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Well, it turned out that shit wasn\'t over yet for the good people of Denmark, because Grendel\'s mom got all pissed off (you know how parents can be about their kids) and decided to exact bloody retribution on the people who brutally dismembered her son.&nbsp; She showed up in the middle of the night, super pissed off, killed a bunch of sleeping Danes, and ganked the disembodied arm off the wall of the King\'s dining room.&nbsp; The next morning, when everybody saw the carnage, Beowulf knew what he had to do.&nbsp; He put together a badass force of warriors and rode out to the swamp to teach that old witch a lesson in manners.</p>\r\n<p>The adventurers rode out to this super scary-ass swamp in the middle of nowhere.&nbsp; Fog covered the entire ground, the dead vegetation was littered with dried blood, snakes, bat shit, and human remains, and everybody pretty much had a myocardial infarction right there on the spot.&nbsp; Everybody except Beowulf.&nbsp; He took one long look at this nasty-ass swamp, put on his armor, and dove into the freezing-cold stagnant black water of a disgusting lake.</p>\r\n<p>Beowulf swam down to the bottom of the bog, where he busted into the foul lair of Grendel\'s crazy-ass mom.&nbsp; She freaked out and started trying to kick him in the balls, but he grabbed a sword and lopped her head off like a bitch.&nbsp; Then, when he noticed that the now-deceased mommy dearest had dragged Grendel\'s armless corpse down to the bottom of the lake with her, Beowulf chopped Grendel\'s head off as well, just for the hell of it.</p>\r\n<p>Back on the surface, everybody pretty much thought Beowulf was dead, because holy shit how can someone hold their breath for that long?&nbsp; Right when they were getting ready to say, \"Fuck it,\" and head back home, Beowulf emerged from the murky waters carrying the severed heads of his slain enemies.&nbsp; He returned to the King\'s palace, where he was lauded as a hero.&nbsp; With the face of Denmark scoured of unholy flesh-eating monsters, Beowulf decided to head back home.</p>\r\n<p>When Beowulf got back to Geatland, he gave most of his treasure to the King and Queen, because that\'s what good noble heroes are supposed to do.&nbsp; The King kept Beowulf as his right-hand man, heaped rewards on him, and sent him out at the head of his army to battle the Swedes in a couple of wars.&nbsp; Eventually, the old King died, and for his service and bravery to the throne, the dying King handed the crown over to his greatest champion.</p>\r\n<p>King Beowulf ruled justly and honorably for 50 years, and everybody thought he was totally awesome.&nbsp; Then one day, all of a sudden this massive fucking fire-breathing dragon showed up and started laying waste to the countryside like a mother.&nbsp; Beowulf, now like 70 years old and knowing that his time here on the Earth is growing short, donned his war gear for the last time and rode out to the dragon\'s not-so-secret lair.&nbsp; When none of his fellow warriors had the balls to take this creature on, Beowulf just charged balls-out into the foreboding cave, screaming at the top of his lungs, and took on the dragon in single combat.&nbsp; This thing breathed a huge fireball right in Beowulf\'s fucking face and bit him in the shoulder with its poisonous fangs, but Beowulf still managed to stab this thing in the heart repeatedly.&nbsp; The last of his energy expended in the badass act of killing a fucking giant man-eating monster, Beowulf died, going out in a badass blaze of glory.&nbsp; His body was burned on a funeral pyre, <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/vader.html\">Darth Vader</a>-style, and then buried under a large hill, along with a bunch of the dragon\'s treasure for some reason.</p>\r\n<p>Beowulf was pretty fucking awesome because he didn\'t let something like \"being seriously decrepitly old\" stand in the way of performing towering works of heroic asskickery.&nbsp; He beat the shit out of a bunch of epic monsters, destroyed anything that stood in his way, and voluntarily sought out adventures that would make most people soil their chainmail.&nbsp; Despite all of these legendary tales of face-smashing awesomeness, however, perhaps the most badass thing about Beowulf is that his story is the oldest tale written in the English language.&nbsp; This not only proves that humans have intensely loved badasses since the beginning of time, but it also means that his story is required reading in most high school English classes.&nbsp; With all that lame-ass existentialist symbolism Ralph Waldo Emerson bullcrap literature out there, how cool is it when you get to read about a pissed-off warrior who rips monsters\' arms out of their sockets like an angry Wookie, decapitates dragons, and then forcibly urinates on all of their collective corpses?</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/beowulf2.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://books.google.com/books?id=Nj5aAAAAMAAJ&amp;printsec=frontcover&amp;dq=Beowulf&amp;as_brr=1%22\">Beowulf</a></p>','2008-11-14','191466415452','beowulf.jpg','beowulf - Copy.jpg','Beowulf','Mythical monster-killing hero pulled a demon\'s arm off with his bare hands.','\"Wise sir, do not grieve.  It is always better to avenge dear ones than to indulge in mourning.  For every one of us, living in this world means waiting for our end.  Let whoever can win glory before death.  When a warrior is gone, that will be his best and only bulwark.\"'),('Vasily Grigoryevich Zaytsev','March 23, 1915','December 15, 1991','Yeleninskoye, Russia','WWII Russian Soldier','<p>Snipers, once affectionately known in elite <em>Counter-Strike</em> circles as \"spawn-camping haxing n00b homos omg wtf die in hell u loser\", are some of the deadliest motherfuckers in the history of warfare.&nbsp; Sitting motionless in their cleverly-concealed perches, lying in wait for anyone stupid enough to stroll into the crosshairs of their telescopic sights, and controlling their breathing and their heart rate to ensure the steadiness of their aim, these insane man-hunters are more than capable of blowing your face out with a well-placed rifle round from hundreds of yards away.&nbsp; By the time the sound of the gunshot reaches you, you\'re already dead.</p>\r\n<p>I\'ve mentioned <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/hayha.html\">Hayha</a> and <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/pavlichenko.html\">Pavlichenko</a> before, but no discussion of badass snipers would be complete without one of the most famous and effective practitioners of the craft &ndash; Soviet Lieutenant Vasily Zaitsev.</p>\r\n<p>Vasily grew up in Siberia, where he spent his early days working as a humble shepherd.&nbsp; For those of you unfamiliar with Siberia, let me take a moment to paint you a little mental image.&nbsp; First, picture the most desolate, inhospitable, unforgiving hellhole of a wasteland you could possibly imagine.&nbsp; Then times that by eleven, bury the entire godforsaken terrain underneath about fifteen feet of solid ice, top that off with a foot-thick layer of wet snow, drop the temperature to a level so ball-chillingly cold that your urine freezes mid-stream, and populate the entire landscape with man-eating bears.&nbsp; Siberia is like the unholy bastard child of Mordor and the North Pole &ndash; a place so remote and bitter that it makes up 80% of Russia\'s landmass but only houses about 30% of its population.&nbsp; This vast disparity in size to population is generally because human beings aren\'t fucking programmed to survive in an environment where the yearly average temperature is five degrees below zero and goddamned bears and tigers bite your appendages off every time you step foot outside of your shitty fur hut.&nbsp; While living in this region for any period longer than fifteen minutes might make the average person beg for the sweet release of death, it pretty much goes without saying that the indigenous people who hail from this region of the world are definitely not pussies.</p>\r\n<p><br /><br /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/zaitsev1.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>Siberia in the midst of a July heat wave.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Vasily left his home and joined the Soviet army to take part in what the USSR referred to as \"The Great Patriotic War.\"&nbsp; He, like many Commie Pinko Russkies, was more than eager to defend his people and his civilization from the onslaught of the German Army and the douchebaggery of Adolph Hitler.&nbsp; Well, shit didn\'t go quite as planned for Junior Lieutenant Zaitsev - instead of valiantly going down in flames while machinegunning never-ending waves of fascist Nazi stormtroopers to death from the cupola of a badass T-34 tank, he soon found himself sitting on a boat in the fucking Baltic Sea doing bullshit paperwork for the Russian Navy.&nbsp; This bit goat nuts, and it wasn\'t long before he requested a transfer to front-line duty.&nbsp; He asked to be sent to assist in the tenacious defense of Stalingrad, a critical city along the Volga River and the site of an increasingly bloody conflict between the Nazis and the Soviets.</p>\r\n<p>Just so that you can understand how fucking insane/badass it is that Zaitsev actually <em>requested</em> a transfer from the peaceful confines of his cushy desk job to the war-torn rubble of Stalingrad, here is a fun fact &ndash; the Battle of Stalingrad is the bloodiest single military action in human history.&nbsp; Roughly two million people were killed in the span of about eight months during the brutal fighting.&nbsp; This is like taking every single article posted on Wikipedia, transforming those articles into people, and then shooting them all in the face.&nbsp; And this guy volunteered to serve there.&nbsp; Of course, the Battle of Stalingrad was also the turning point of World War II, thanks in no small part to the balls-out actions of Vasily Zaitsev stealthily climbing through the blown-out buildings and rubble-strewn streets, eliminating high-ranking Nazi officers and NCOs one by one.</p>\r\n<p>Upon his arrival in Stalingrad, Zaitsev grabbed his standard-issue Mosin-Nagant rifle and went to work as part of the Soviet 1047th Rifle Regiment.&nbsp; He made a name for himself pretty quickly, killing forty German soldiers over the course of ten days.&nbsp; Eventually he got his hands on a badass sniper rifle and started headshotting motherfuckers all over the place like an insane long-range version of \"Whack-a-Mole\", wreaking so much havoc that the Germans actually dispatched their most badass sniper out from Berlin to take Zaitsev down.&nbsp; Vasily responded by instant-messaging a chunk of hot lead into the guy\'s frontal lobe and stealing his telescopic sight as a trophy.</p>\r\n<p>As the mad Russian killer\'s body count crept towards the triple digits, Soviet High Command decided that he should go to work training more snipers in the badass art of hunting the most dangerous game.&nbsp; He set up a makeshift school in the heart of downtown Stalingrad, teaching a new cadre male and female soldiers in sniper tactics and giving them plenty of on-the-job training.&nbsp; He also started banging one of his students, a babe named Tania Chernova, so that\'s something as well.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/zaitsev2.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Zaitsev ran the school of hard knocks, where mistakes and slacking-off on your homework resulted in you getting your fucking balls shot off by a German machine gun.&nbsp; One time he gave his students orders to sit motionless in a destroyed warehouse all day and just watch the enemy through the scope of their rifles to study their movements and actions.&nbsp; Well, after a couple hours of this, Tania got impatient and opened fire on the German positions.&nbsp; The Nazis responded by shelling the warehouse with artillery and wiping out half of the entrenched snipers.&nbsp; She barely escaped with her life, and ran to tell Zaitsev what had happened.&nbsp; When he heard the story he said nothing, looked at her emotionlessly for a few seconds, and then fucking bitch-slapped her right in the face.&nbsp; Shit, if this guy was willing to do that to his own girlfriend, you can only imagine how tough he was on the students he wasn\'t getting it on with.</p>\r\n<p>The rigorous training paid off however, and Zaitsev turned out a hardcore cadre of snipers who went out and inflicted death on the Germans, terrorizing them to the point where the mere act of raising one\'s head to survey the surroundings became a frightening prospect to many Nazi infantrymen.&nbsp; Vasily continued going nuts with his own rifle as well, recording a mind-destroyingly insane 242 confirmed kills in the span of four fucking months &ndash; including at least 11 German snipers.&nbsp; Tania notched another 80 dead bodies, and it\'s generally accepted that the snipers trained by Zaitsev went on to kill thousands of enemy soldiers and snipers.&nbsp; The defenders of Stalingrad held the line, and the German Army was repulsed.&nbsp; It was the furthest the Nazis would reach in their offensive against the Soviet Union.</p>\r\n<p>After Stalingrad, Vasily Zaitsev continued fighting the Fascists, pushing them out of the heart o the Soviet Union and chasing them all the way back to Germany.&nbsp; He got kind of fucked up when he stepped on a landmine at one point, but while most people would have called it quits after having the ass blown out of them, Zaitsev got right back into action as soon as the doctors cleared him for service.&nbsp; He marched with the Red Army all the way to Berlin.</p>\r\n<p>Lieutenant Vasily Zaitsev was awarded the Gold Star of the Hero of the Soviet Union &ndash; the highest award for bravery offered by the USSR.&nbsp; After the war he ran an engineering school and a factory in the Ukraine, and lived to be 76 years old.&nbsp; He was a national hero, an expert marksman, and a badass sniper who voluntarily put himself into the middle of the deadliest warzone the planet has ever seen -- and did his part to make the whole thing just a little deadlier for his enemies.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/zaitsev3.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Links:</span><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasily_Zaitsev\">Wikipedia</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.vor.ru/Russia/Stalingraders/Defenders_8_eng.html\">Voice of Russia</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.snipersparadise.com/history/vasili.htm\">Sniper\'s Paradise</a></p>','2008-11-07','764387718804','zaitsev.jpg','zaitsev - Copy.jpg','Vasily Zaitsev','One of history\'s most successful and well-known snipers.','\"There is no ground for us beyond the Volga.\"'),('Abraham Van Helsing','Unknown','Unknown','Holland','Fictional Dutch Doctor','<p>Nothing says \"Halloween\" quite like a huge spooky castle, a dark and stormy night, and a terrifying pale-faced blood-sucking Eastern European nobleman with slicked-back hair puncturing the necks of beautiful women with his gleaming, over-developed canine teeth.&nbsp; Count Dracula, and the hordes of assorted vampires spawned by him, have been terrifying teenagers, duchesses, and college Freshmen for decades with their blood-chugging antics, terrible fake accents, and varying degrees of rampant metrosexuality.&nbsp; These creatures of the night have feasted on thousands of unsuspecting victims over the years, and have been excel in everything from feats of physical strength to technical skill on the electric guitar.</p>\r\n<p>However, for as long as there has been Dracula, there has been Professor Abraham Van Helsing.&nbsp; This Dutch scientist, physician, philosopher, and eccentric occult genius is the Original Gangsta of badass fucking vampire killers - a man so dedicated to his work that he left no stone unturned in his unwavering quest to find and exterminate all forms of the undead, and a badass hero who paved the way for the Dracula-stabbing exploits of everyone from Simon Belmont to Buffy Summers.</p>\r\n<p>First off, Van Helsing is fucking brilliant.&nbsp; He is highly educated in a wide variety of mostly-useless information ranging from classical literature to hypnotism, and has a well-rounded fund of knowledge in philosophy, vampire lore, and obscure diseases.&nbsp; In addition to being a walking intellectual cross between Wikipedia and the <em>Dungeons &amp; Dragons Monster Manual</em>, Van Helsing also realized that he needed to be tough as shit if he was going to go up and try to crack a bunch of undead heads together like over-ripened coconuts.&nbsp; Despite the fact that he was what doctors like to refer to as, \"pretty fucking old\" (we never know what his actual age is, but it\'s pretty safe to say that this guy wasn\'t exactly going to get carded while trying to buy booze at the 7-11 down the street), he still busted his balls all day long to turn himself into an insane vampire-slaughtering motherfucker.&nbsp; He was big, broad-shouldered, tough, and so manly that he could induce puberty in adolescent boys just by slapping them in the face really hard.&nbsp; He also was fearless, dedicated to lacerating the aortas of Nosferatus with everything from railway spikes to Philips-head screwdrivers, and so morally righteous that he could easily resist the scantily-clad legion of hot topless vampire babes Dracula sent to seduce and/or bite his face off.&nbsp; He spent countless hours studying vampire lore and training in the weapons and tactics necessary to combat these monsters, constantly kept in fighting shape, and his strength of will was the only thing that stood between the vile bloodsucker and the rest of the civilized world.</p>\r\n<p><br /><br /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/vanhelsing1.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Dr. Van Helsing was called to London by a former student to investigate a mysterious illness plaguing the guy\'s slutty girlfriend.&nbsp; When Abe first arrived and noticed two giant fang-holes in this chick\'s neck, he knew she was totally boned in a way she had not yet been boned before.&nbsp; Realizing he couldn\'t save her, but not wanting to tell the guy what\'s up and risk sounding like a fucking whack-job, Van Helsing did what he could to treat her symptoms.&nbsp; Of course, she eventually died, and AVH didn\'t have a problem staking her in the heart and beheading her once she came back as a vampire.&nbsp; Sorry about your girlfriend, dude, but that\'s just how it goes sometimes.</p>\r\n<p>So Van Helsing, now seeking revenge for the dead girl and more than eager to rid the world of the scourge of vampirism, put together a team of able-bodied average Joes, briefed them on what they were up against, gave them the necessary bloodsucker-killing weapons and equipment, and led a balls-out assault on Dracula\'s lair. After traveling halfway across the world and gunning down a couple of gypsies who for some dumbshit reason were trying to protect the Prince of Fucking Darkness, Van Helsing and his crew did battle with Count Dracula himself. The undead nobleman didn\'t stand a chance against this high-level Fighter/Cleric and his posse of slayers, and Drac met a grisly end when he was stabbed in the right ventricle and had his neck slashed off with a machete.</p>\r\n<p>Professor Van Helsing was a badass vampire hunter ready to take on Dracula, Blacula, Dr. Acula, Robo-Dracula, and pretty much any other bipedal fanged creature that can be killed by ramming a sharpened wooden spike into its chest (a tactic that is actually highly effective against a wide range of creatures, both living and undead). He was the first man to take on Nosferatu and emerge victorious, setting the precedent and creating the blueprint for the countless hunters and slayers that followed him, and showed the world that not even the most badass undead monster out there could stand up to a good old-fashioned mortal man with a bad attitude and a big pointy fucking stick.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/vanhelsing2.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Links:</span><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Van_Helsing\">Wikipedia</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.ucs.mun.ca/%7Eemiller/van_helsing.html\">Abraham Van Helsing</a></p>','2008-10-31','390355919059','vanhelsing.jpg','vanhelsing - Copy.jpg','Abraham Van Helsing','The original gangsta of vampire hunting.','\"He is a philosopher and a metaphysician, and one of the most advanced scientists of his day... this, with an iron nerve, a temper of the ice-brook, and indomitable resolution, self-command, and toleration exalted from virtues to blessings, and the kindliest and truest heart that beats, these form his equipment for the noble work that he is doing for mankind, work both in theory and practice, for his views are as wide as his all-embracing sympathy.\"'),('Hassan-i Sabbah','1050','1124','Qom, Iran','Medieval Persian Outlaw','<p>Sir Conrad of Montferrat confidently strode through the courtyard of the fortress city of Tyre, flanked by a heavily-armed entourage of mailed knights and dressed in the lavish garments and expensive silks indicative of his lofty status.&nbsp; The King of Jerusalem was one of the most powerful men in the world - as commander of all Crusader forces in the Middle East, even the famous king Richard the Lion-Hearted was honor-bound to recognize Conrad\'s authority.&nbsp; His anointing had been blessed by the Pope Himself, the armies of the Muslim infidel had been shattered by the might of his blade, and at his command the Warriors of Christendom went forth to conquer all that lay before them.</p>\r\n<p>From a small side alley two nondescript monks approached, their heads bowed low as they almost inaudibly chanted traditional Latin hymns, their fingers dexterously working their wooden prayer beads beneath their flowing brown robes.&nbsp; They quietly walked towards the center of the courtyard, seemingly too absorbed in their prayers to notice Sir Conrad and his bodyguards.&nbsp; Then, suddenly, the monks doubled their pace.&nbsp; They closed quickly, sprinting the last few feet towards the Lord of Tyre.&nbsp; There was a flash of steel, the glint of the afternoon sun gently reflecting off of a well-polished dagger blade.&nbsp; Within seconds the King of Jerusalem was silently lying crumpled on the road in a pool of his own blood.&nbsp; The most imposing, merciless, and untouchable man in the Holy Land was dead.</p>\r\n<p>Hassan al-Sabbah was a charismatic leader, a brilliant mathematician, a devoted religious scholar, an awesomely diabolical mastermind, and the founder and first Grand Master of one of history\'s deadliest and most lethal mystery cults - the Hashashin, the secret Order of Assassins.&nbsp; From the darkest recesses of the thousand year-old impenetrable mountain fortress of Alamut (meaning either \"Eagle Peak\" or \"Death Mountain\" - I prefer the latter, but only because it sounds way more fucking badass), The Lord of the Mountain directed a covert brotherhood of fearless insane warriors completely dedicated to his cause, willing to carry out his every order and, if necessary, die for him willingly and without hesitation.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/hashashin1.bmp\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Very little is known about what went on behind the impregnable walls of Death Mountain, but several medieval sources describe the initiation process thusly:&nbsp; Recruits came to Alamut to study the mysterious ways of the Isma\'ili, and Hassan housed them in small, modest, windowless apartments deep beneath the mountain.&nbsp; They stayed there for a while, studying shit and learning, until one day a servant arrived with a magical potion for the initiate to drink.&nbsp; The guy would fucking chug this potion (the key ingredients of which were hashish, LSD, and dirty bong water) and pass out.&nbsp; When the initiate awoke he found himself stoned off his ass in the most beautiful garden this side of Babylon &ndash; a glorious place full of wine, honey, fountains, palm trees, daiquiris, and super mega hot topless bellydancing virgins fucking gyrating around like crazy all over the place.&nbsp; The guy basked in this Earthly Paradise for several hours, at the end of which Hassan appeared to him and said something to the effect of, \"This is what I have to offer you.&nbsp; Follow my teaching and submit to my will and I shall show you the way to Heaven.\"&nbsp; Then the fucker was drugged again and thrown back into his shitty studio apartment.&nbsp; When he awoke, Hassan appeared to him again, this time asking if the initiate was willing to obey him.&nbsp; They usually agreed, for obvious reasons.</p>\r\n<p>From this point on, Hassan commanded their absolute fucking obedience, as they truly believed that he held the key to Heaven.&nbsp; His acolytes were so fanatically loyal that more than one account exists where Hassan ordered one of his men to take a swan dive off of the parapet of Alamut, and the dude responding by unhesitatingly fucking face-planting the asphalt from thirty stories up.&nbsp; And you pussies think bungee jumping is balls-out.</p>\r\n<p>It would be a mistake to write the Hashashin off as a disorganized association of pothead stoner dropouts, however, and Alamut wasn\'t exactly a goddamned Cheech &amp; Chong movie with blacklight posters everywhere and a fucking flaming car made out of hemp.&nbsp; These guys were elite warriors trained in all the badass ninja techniques required to wreak havoc on the most powerful men in the Middle East, and they were awesome at it.&nbsp; They studied martial arts, poison, disguise, infiltration, espionage and fucking hardcore knife-fighting, and could speak several languages fluently.&nbsp; When a death writ was issued for some poor bastard, the medieval hitman was given a specialized dagger to complete his mission.&nbsp; In true badass fashion, the Order of Assassins opted to do their dirty work up close and personal, preferably in public places in front of hundreds of people in order to maximize the shock value and intimidation factor.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/hashashin2.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>The Fortress of Alamut</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>As the bloody, murderous arm of Hassan al-Sabbah, the Assassins went to work destroying the enemies of their Grandmaster, killing pretty much anybody he told them to.&nbsp; Now the Seljuk Turks and the Abbasid Caliphate, the two most powerful Muslim Empires during this time, were Sunni Muslims, and they quickly declared that the Shi\'ite Hassan and his radical sect of lethal face-stabbing ninja assassins were heretics and infidels, etc.&nbsp; (you know how super-religious types can be), so Hassan responded by having the Sultan and the Vizier teabagged while they slept and/or stabbed to death in their own palaces.&nbsp; When the European Crusaders rolled into town acting like they fucking owned the place and swinging their nuts around by slaughtering everyone who didn&rsquo;t believe in Jeebus, the Order of Assassins showed them what it felt like to wind up on the pointy end of a kitchen knife, Fatal Attraction-style.&nbsp; From the citadel at Alamut, the calculating mastermind Hassan al-Sabbah orchestrated a secretive web of lethal executioners fanatically devoted to his will, and eventually established splinter groups in Syria and Persia to continue his mission to kill everyone that ever pissed him off for any reason ever.&nbsp; The Hashashin soon became a major political faction, exerting their dominance over the world through fear and merciless eye-poking badassitude.</p>\r\n<p>Under the direction of Hassan and his successors, the Assassins killed Sultans, Viziers, Caliphs, Patriarchs, and Counts, barely giving their victims enough time to yell, \"Holy Shi\'ite!\"&nbsp; before getting a fucking shiv in the ribcage.&nbsp; The Grandmaster of the Knights Hospitaller was stabbed to death in a public square in front of dozens of horrified onlookers.&nbsp; The English King Edward Longshanks was wounded within an inch of his life by the blade of an Assassin outside the walls of Jerusalem, and even <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/saladin.html\">Saladin</a>, the fucking badass Muslim hero of the Third Crusade and the man responsible for pushing the Europeans out of the Holy Land, had more than one close call with these mysterious killers.&nbsp; Nobody was safe, a point that became painfully obvious to those political leaders unlucky enough to wake up in the morning and find an Assassin&rsquo;s dagger lying on his pillow with a note attached to it reading, \"We fucking rule you, bitch.\"</p>\r\n<p>Hassan\'s lethal and mysterious Order exerted its power across the Middle East, and continued its fearsome dominance long after the death of its founder and Grand Master.&nbsp; In fact, the fortress of Alamut was never captured by hostile forces &ndash; the Mongols surrounded it in 1256, but were unable to launch a successful assault on the mountain stronghold.&nbsp; The Hashashin held out for three fucking years, finally surrendering only once they had completely run out of provisions.&nbsp; The Mongol leader Hulagu Khan had them all executed for causing him so much damn trouble, and that, as they say, was the end of that.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/hashashin3.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Links:</span><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hassan_i_Sabbah\" target=\"blank\">Wikipedia</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashashin\" target=\"blank\">The Hashashin</a></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Sources:</span><br /><br /></p>\r\n<p><span> Benjamin of Tudela. <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">The Itenerary of Benjamin of Tudela</span>. Trans. Adler, Marcus Nathan. P. Feldheim, 1964.<br /> Daftary, Farhad. <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">The Assassin Legends</span>. I.B. Tauris, 1995.<br /> Hogsdon-Marshall, G.S. <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">The Secret Order of Assassins</span>. Mouton, 1955.<br /> Lewis, Bernard. <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">The Assassins: A Radical Sect in Islam</span>. Basic Books, 2003.<br /> Polo, Marco. <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">The Travels of Marco Polo</span>. Cosimo, Inc. 2007.<br /> </span></p>','2008-10-24','77865319309','hashashin.jpg','hashashin - Copy.jpg','Hassan ibn al-Sabbah','Founder of the Hashashin, the secret Order of Assassins.','\"They call him Shaykh-al-Hashishim.  He is their Elder, and upon his command all of the men of the mountain come out or go in...\r\nthey are believers of the word of their elder and everyone everywhere fears them, because they even kill kings.\"\r\n\r\n- Benjamin of Tudela '),('Marcus Cassius Scaeva','1st Century BC','Unknown','Rome, Italy','Ancient Roman Soldier','<p>Pretty much everybody who\'s ever tripped over a small dog and fallen face-first onto a history book is at least marignally familiar with the story of notable badass <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/caesar.html\">Julius Caesar</a>.&nbsp; How he came, saw, and conquered some stuff, crotchstomped his foes\' scrotums into a thick crimson slurry, took the pussy-ass Republic out behind the proverbial woodshed, and killed more people than both World Wars combined (with a side order of Arab-Israeli Conflict).&nbsp; His improbable victories and insane, balls-out conquests have rightly cemented his legacy as one of the greatest generals and military commanders in human history.&nbsp; Basically, he was fucking awesome.</p>\r\n<p>But Julius Caesar didn\'t single-handedly incinerate entire tribes of bloodlusted barbarian warriors by shooting giant gelatinous fireballs out of his hands (though, if he did, it would have been TOTALLY FUCKING AWESOME), and he wasn\'t leading an army of 20 Hit-Die Cyborg T-Rexes with buzzsaws for hands and frickin\' laser beams attached to their heads &ndash; he was commanding men, and his mighty legions contained some of the bravest, toughest, most badass soldiers ever assembled.&nbsp; One of those men was a motherfucker named Marcus Cassius Scaeva, and his story is so nuts that it needs its own wing of the Bellvue Psychiatric Facility.</p>\r\n<p>Now we don\'t really know shit about Cassius Scaeva prior to his service in the Roman Army.&nbsp; It\'s safe to assume that he was a \"lifer\", since he was on the muster rolls before J-Dog even showed up to take charge of the Legions in Gaul, but that\'s really all the backstory you\'re going to get on this guy. For all intents and purposes, that\'s enough.</p>\r\n<p>Scaeva served in the front lines during Caesar\'s battles in Gaul and Germany, locking shields with his comrades, stabbing jackasses in the face with his short sword and hurling javelins at anything with a beard.&nbsp; One day, Caesar decided that he wanted to sail out to the island of Britain and see if there were any motherfuckers there that needed to be killed, and he assigned Scaeva\'s Legion (I hear conflicting reports as to whether he was in Legio XI or Legio XII&hellip; not that it really fucking matters in the long run) to secure the beachhead. Cassius and his men landed on the shore, but it wasn\'t exactly like fucking Omaha Beach out there. Nothing was going on, so they left Scaeva to stand guard while everybody else went and made camp.</p>\r\n<p>Pretty much immediately after the Romans left, a fucking huge horde of pissed-off Britons came pouring out of the fucking forest and started hurling themselves as Scaeva. Well, this was a motherfucker who dedicated his entire life to beating the fucking shit out of the most vicious barbarians the world had to offer, and he wasn\'t about to start slacking off on the job now. The Britons fired a volley of darts at him, but he caught most of the missiles on his shield. They closed on him rapidly, and all of a sudden this dude found himself surrounded by motherfuckers.&nbsp; He bravely fought like a caged wolverine on PCP, hacking at them violently in close quarters. During the battle his helmet was knocked off, his shield was shredded, and he broke his spear off in the abdomen of someone he was in the process of impaling. Unarmed, wounded, and unarmored, Scaeva somehow managed to escape and flee back to Caesar\'s camp, leaving several dead jackasses in his wake.&nbsp; Rather than talk about how fucking awesome he was for single-handedly fighting off an entire tribe of ripped-ass warriors, he instead begged forgiveness for losing his gear and not having the balls to die valiantly like a man on the battlefield.&nbsp; Caesar was just like, \"hey lighten up, Rambo!\" and promoted him to the rank of Centurion. This was a good move &ndash; Cassius Scaeva served bravely throughout the Gallic campaigns, and showed his valor once again in the Roman Civil War that followed.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/scaeva1.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>\"Having forgotten loyalty, young men, won\'t you at least hold your ground out of anger?\"</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>When Julius Caesar and Gnaius Pompey were slugging it out at the Battle of Dyrrhachium in 48 BCE, Cassius Scaeva\'s Cohort (roughly 480 men) was tasked with defending a small, rickety, makeshift gate positioned on a redoubt from an onslaught of enemy soldiers.&nbsp; The legionnaires did as they were ordered, but pretty much everyone shit a fucking brick when they saw an entire Legion of Pompeian soldiers (about 6,000 men) come marching up the hill towards them.</p>\r\n<p>Everyone except Cassius Scaeva, that is.</p>\r\n<p>When Scaeva saw the soldiers under his command freaking out, screaming \"game over man, game over!\" like sniveling, mewling pussies who completely lost their shit, he told them to fucking suck it up and face their deaths like they actually had a pair. He whipped them into shape, got them pumped up, and when the enemy legions were in range, he personally led the defenders into battle.</p>\r\n<p>The fighting was more brutal than a fucking free-for-all backstage at the Jerry Springer Show.&nbsp; Guys were hacking each other\'s colons out left and right, dudes were getting shot in the kidneys with arrows, and there was more blood than a shitty low-budget horror flick.&nbsp; During the battle, Scaeva killed so many guys that his sword became blunt, so he cut one guy\'s hand off with a single blow from his knife, and crushed another man\'s skull with a fucking giant rock.&nbsp; He was getting nailed from all sides during the fight &ndash; his helmet was destroyed, his shield was bristling with arrows, he was stabbed in the shoulder with a javelin, hit in thigh by a sword, and fucking shot in the left eye socket with a goddamned arrow.&nbsp; Amazingly, this only made him more ripshit pissed off.&nbsp; He pulled the fucking arrow <em>out of his own eye</em>, threw it down, and resumed with the asskickings like a blood-lusted cyclops.</p>\r\n<p>Finally, after over an hour of fierce fighting, the loss of blood started to get to Scaeva. He collapsed, fell to his knees, and struggled to stand. The enemy legions, seeing that the commander was down for the TKO, called for a break in the fighting. The two Pompeian commanders approached Scaeva, their hands outstretched to accept his surrender. They triumphantly asked him if he was ready to yield to them.</p>\r\n<p>Scaeva responded by drawing his blunt-ass sword, slashing one guy\'s throat with it, and cleaving the other guy in half from shoulder to groin.</p>\r\n<p>The fighting resumed immediately, and at a time when the rest of Caesar\'s army was breaking apart under the relentless onslaught, Marcus Cassius Scaeva\'s men held the line. Pompey was denied total victory, and a few days later Caesar was able to utterly annihilate his adversary at the Battle of Pharsalus. Scaeva, who somehow miraculously survived his wounds, was promoted to the rank of <em>Primus Pilus</em> - the highest-ranking Centurion in the Legion, and given a gift of 200,000 sesterces (I have no idea what the dollars-to-sesterces conversion rate is these days, but I assume this is a lot of money). His brave Cohort &ndash; every single member of which was wounded during the fighting &ndash; was awarded double-pay for life.</p>\r\n<p>Scaeva continued fighting with Caesar, and after Julius was stabbed to death by assholes his loyal Centurion joined the armies of <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/augustus.html\">Octavian</a> and got revenge on the conspirators at the Battle of Actium.&nbsp; Marcus Cassius Scaeva was an unsung hero of Rome, and a fucking insane badass who could take more bizarre wounds than a Three Stooges skit and somehow continue busting fucking asses up and down the battlefield. A total badass.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/scaeva2.gif\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>\"Does it not shame you to be missing from the stack where slaughtered heroes lie?\"</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Sources:</span><br /><br /> Cowan, Ross. <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">For the Glory of Rome</span>. MBI Publishing, 2007.<br /><br /> Lucan. <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Civil War</span>. Trans. Braund, Susan H. Oxford Univ. Press, 1999.<br /><br /> Plutarch. <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Fall of the Roman Republic: Six Lives</span>. Trans. Seager, Robin. Penguin, 2006.<br /><br /> Southern, Pat. <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">The Roman Army</span>. Oxford Univ. Press, 2007.<br /><br /> Suetonius. <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">The Twelve Caesars</span>. Trans. Graves, Robert. Penguin, 2003.<br /><br /> Valerius. <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Memorable Deeds and Sayings</span>. Trans. Bailey, D.R. Shackleton. Loeb Classical Library, 2003.</p>','2008-10-17','300855119543','scaeva.jpg','scaeva - Copy.jpg','Marcus Cassius Scaeva','The most badass of Julius Caesar\'s Centurions.','\"We are the chosen few through whom the foe would break. Unbought by blood, this day will not be theirs.\"'),('Arthur Wellesley','May 1, 1769','September 14, 1852','Dublin, Ireland','19th-century British General','<p>Arthur Wellesley was one of history\'s most badass military commanders, a hero of the British Army, and a member of pretty much every single Knightly Order ever offered by the British Crown.&nbsp; Born in Dublin in 1769, Wellesley was commissioned into the army as an Ensign, where he served as the aide-de-camp to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland -- the top British motherfucker in the Emerald Isle.&nbsp; In his spare time, when he wasn\'t being awesome and smashing mahogany desks into driftwood with his forehead, Wellesley also became a Member of the Irish Parliament, just so he\'d have something to do when he got bored of armwrestling bears and using Frenchmen as target practice.&nbsp; One day, the dashing young officer asked this total hot giga-babe named Kitty Pakenham to marry him, but her brother told him that he was a pathetic nobody loser who should go fuck himself with a chainsaw and then smash his head shut in a car door.&nbsp; Getting epically cock-blocked only succeeded in making Wellesley sincerely fucking pissed, however, so he went and took all of that insane pent-up sexual frustration out on the Dutch.&nbsp; As a Lieutenant Colonel in the 33rd Infantry Regiment of Foot Soldiers Who Fight on Their Feet (But Not So Much <em>With</em> Their Feet), Arthur face-kicked a bunch of stoners and prostitutes in the Netherlands in 1795 before going off to Calcutta to assist the British Empire on it\'s quest to constantly dick over the indigenous peoples of India.</p>\r\n<p>Now, around this time the Indian Mysore Empire didn\'t fully understand that it was in their best interests to grant the British East India Company a complete monopoly on trade in their nation and to tell the French to go fuck themselves whenever the opportunity presented itself, so Colonel Wellesley took it upon himself to tenderize their faces with a large splintery wooden mallet.&nbsp; The 33rd Regiment marched 250 miles through the dense jungles of Southern India, defeated the armies of the Mysore Sultan Tippu, breached the walls of his palace, destroyed all of the defenders, and stole his DVD collection.&nbsp; During the battle, the Sultan came running out at the head of his army armed with a shitty, out-of-date hunting rifle, so Wellesley\'s men busted a cap in his brain until he died from it.</p>\r\n<p>Of course, Arthur Wellesley represented the badass knightly virtues that the people of his country seem to hold so dear, and, as such, in addition to being a fucking ass-destroying ballsmasher on the battlefield he was also a noble and righteous motherfucker as well.&nbsp; When the British troops started sacking and plundering everything in India following their victory, Wellesley ordered the men responsible for this complete lack of discipline to be flogged, beaten, teabagged, and/or hanged, because they were being fucking jackasses to everybody.&nbsp; Since he was the man responsible for single-handedly rocking so many nutsacks, Wellesley was appointed Governor of Mysore, took up residence in the lavish palace of the Sultan he had just finished pwning, and spent his days annihilating rebels, stomping the colons of jackass mercenaries, and administering Charles Bronson-style justice to gangs of murderous brigands.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/wellington1.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Some motherfuckers never learn, however, and a few years later the armies of the Indian Maratha Empire decided to fuck with the English for some asinine reason I\'ll never understand.&nbsp; Once again, it was up to Wellesley to kick more balls than Manchester United.&nbsp; At the battle of Assaye in 1803, Wellesley\'s small force of about 7,000 soldiers launched an unexpected surprise assault on an Indian force numbering over 40,000 men, and somehow managed to drive them from the field and capture 98 of their cannons.&nbsp; This is pretty goddamned impressive, considering that the British only brought 20 artillery pieces to the battlefield that day, but it\'s all in a day\'s work for this hardcore badass.&nbsp; The British marched on, crushed the Indians, and Wellesley returned to England as a conquering awesome war hero.&nbsp; When he got home, Wellesley went to the home of Kitty Pakenham, pimp-slapped her brother until he was unconscious, and asked her to marry him.&nbsp; She pretty much tore her dress off right on the spot.</p>\r\n<p>Wellesley wouldn\'t have long to enjoy boning his new wife up and down the English countryside (more like \"Packin\' Ham\" if you know what I mean <span>HEH HEH HEH HURRRRRR</span>), because some seriously whack-ass shit was going down in mainland Europe.&nbsp; Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte had seized control of France, beat the ever-loving shitballs out of the toughest armies in Europe, and sent his cronies out to conquer and pillage pretty much every living thing in the Iberian Peninsula.&nbsp; Once again it was up to our boy A-Dub to thump some colons.&nbsp; He arrived in Portugal in 1809 with a force of only about 20,000 soldiers (the <em>Grande Armee</em> was roughly eight or nine hundred times the size of this), and immediately proceeded to charge balls-out at the enemy with everything he had.&nbsp; He fought a masterful defensive campaign, grinding the French invasion to a halt, and then pushed them back out with an insane series of epic military asswhompings.&nbsp; Along the way, Wellesley recruited Spanish soldiers and freedom fighters into his army (including guerillas like Ms. <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/agustina.html\">Agustina de Aragon</a>), and dealt the critical-hit deathblow to French ambitions in Spain at the Battle of Vitoria in 1813.&nbsp; Just to give you some kind of idea how hardcore Wellesley was, the allied army in the final battle numbered over 100,000 men &ndash; and you know you\'re a fucking geezer when you can wage a war lasting five years and you end up with <em>more soldiers than you had when you started fighting</em>.&nbsp; As a result of this display of asskickery, Wellesley was promoted to Field Marshal and awarded the title, \"The First Duke of Wellington\".</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/wellington3.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>But there was still some unsettled shit to take care of.&nbsp; Sure, Napoleon had been defeated by the Russkies and went off to exile on the island of Elba, but this planet was simply too small for two badasses like Wellington and Napoleon to not square off in an epic battle.&nbsp; It\'s a well-known fact that people need to see badass motherfuckers throw down with each other &ndash; what kind of sick, twisted, screwed-up asshole of a world would we live in if there were no awesome battles between Batman and The Joker, Frazier and <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/ali.html\">Ali</a>, <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/godzilla.html\">Godzilla</a> and Mothra, or the Red Sox and the Yankees?&nbsp; Well, to rectify the situation, Napoleon busted out of exile, returned to mainland Europe, re-assembled his army, and prepared for war. And our boy Wellington was right there to face him.</p>\r\n<p>Wellington marched out at the head of a combined army of British, Dutch, Belgian, and Prussian soldiers, and prepared for the epic battle that would shape the course of Europe for the next century.&nbsp; The British Infantry formed up in a defensive line, and despite repeated balls-out attacks by the French forces, they somehow managed to hold their positions.&nbsp; When Napoleon\'s cavalry launched an all-out charge to try and drive Wellington\'s men from the field, they ran head-first into a wall of bayonets and cannon fire.&nbsp; When the vaunted and invincible French Imperial Guard was brought in to smash the Allied front, they were defeated for the first - and only - time in their highly-successful career.&nbsp; After an entire day worth of some of the most hardcore and brutal fighting this side of the Second World War, The Iron Duke destroyed the French army, captured Napoleon, and sent him off into exile for good.</p>\r\n<p>This insane victory cemented Wellington as one of the greatest military commanders of his era.&nbsp; He had won battles on two continents, crushed his foes wherever he found them, and had personally taken on one of the most brilliant tactical minds in history and emerged victorious.&nbsp; After returning home as one of England\'s greatest heroes, \"The Beef\" was elected to two terms as the British Prime Minister, and held the prestigious office of Commander-in-chief of the British Army until his death in 1852 at the age of 83.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/wellington2.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Links:</span><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Wellesley,_1st_Duke_of_Wellington\" target=\"blank\">Wikipedia</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Waterloo\" target=\"blank\">Waterloo 1815</a></p>','2008-10-10','792003720206','wellington.jpg','wellington - Copy.jpg','The Duke of Wellington','One of Britain\'s all-time greatest heroes and the man who put an end to Napoleon\'s antics.',''),('Zachary Taylor','November 24, 1784','July 9, 1850','Barboursville, VA, USA','19th-century American General','<p>When people talk about badass American Presidents, they usually refer to the \"big three\"; <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/washington.html\">George Washington</a> single-handedly winning the Revolution by swinging his ballsack around like a pillowcase full of bricks, <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/roosevelt.html\">Teddy Roosevelt</a> bludgeoning people into submission with an oar, and <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/jackson.html\">Andrew Jackson</a> dueling everybody from American Indians to U.S. Senators.&nbsp; A lot of people, however, fail to realize that Zachary Taylor - known as \"Old Rough and Ready\" - was one of the most hardcore motherfuckers to ever take the oath of office.</p>\r\n<p>Born in a log cabin in rural Virginia in 1784, the unstoppable urge to kick fucking asses led Zack to join the U.S. Army in 1808.&nbsp; He was garrisoned in Indiana when the War of 1812 broke out and the British started whipping American balls all over North America, but Taylor didn\'t give a shit.&nbsp; When a massive screaming horde of over 600 rifle-toting, British-led American Indians launched a raid on Taylor\'s garrison at Fort Harrison, he just loaded his rifle and ran a stars-and-stripes up the flagpole.&nbsp; Taylor only had 15 guys under his command, 5 of whom were sick as hell and puking their goddamned guts out like a frat brother with alcohol poisoning, but he told his men to bust their fucking nuts and kill anything that moved.&nbsp; The Native Americans even set fire to the fort at one point, but Taylor and his men extinguished the flames and chased off the army of badass Indian braves.&nbsp; This was the first American military victory of the War of 1812, and it helped inspire Taylor\'s countrymen to flip out, stop being such goddamned pussies, and fight off the British invasion.</p>\r\n<p>Zachary Taylor went up against the Indians again in the Black Hawk War, and later served with distinction against <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/osceola.html\">Osceola</a>\'s successors in the Second Seminole War.&nbsp; His no-bullshit, balls-out attitude earned him the nickname \"Old Rough and Ready\", because even though he was a fucking General at this point, he didn\'t give a shit about his appearance.&nbsp; He wore rumpled clothes, an old beat-up hat, and was ready to fistfight anybody, anytime, anywhere, for any reason.</p>\r\n<p>General Taylor got the perfect opportunity to brush up on his face-smashing skills in 1845, when he was sent to defend the borders of Texas against the Mexicans.&nbsp; <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/travis.html\">William Travis</a> and Sam Houston had done their thing and declared independence for Texas, but the Mexicans were still pretty fucking cheesed off about the whole thing, so they decided to take the territory back.&nbsp; Fuck that.&nbsp; ZT showed up with an army, garrisoned the Rio Grande, and coolly asked the punks across the river whether or not they felt lucky.&nbsp; They foolishly stepped to him, attacking a detachment of U.S. cavalrymen and besieging Fort Texas, so it was up to Old Rough and Ready to crack some motherfuckers\' heads together like unripened coconuts.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/taylor1.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>At the Battle of Resaca de la Palma, Zack led 1700 badass hardcore frontiersmen in a balls-out cavalry charge against 4000 Mexican troops, engaged them in hand-to-hand combat, and beat their asses down with the realness.&nbsp; Then he marched across the Rio Grande and forced his way south towards Mexico City.&nbsp; Monterrey fell after tough-ass street-to-street fighting, and the city of Saltillo wasn\'t far behind. Well this really pissed off General Santa Anna, who was in command of all Mexican forces in the area.&nbsp; You should probably remember this guy as the motherfucker who beat the shit out of the Texans at the Alamo, killing every person he could find and taking no prisoners.&nbsp; Santa Anna put together 20,000 pissed-off motherfuckers and marched them on Taylor\'s army of only 4,500.&nbsp; Taylor didn\'t exactly have a fucking panic attack and start hyperventilating into a paper bag however - he ordered his cannons to use double-loads of <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/grapeshot\">grapeshot</a> and blow the shit out of anything that moved.&nbsp; Despite being flanked by the enemy, Taylor somehow pulled a victory out of his ass, inflicting over 2500 casualties on the enemy and crushing the main body of the Mexican Army.&nbsp; The war ended a few months later, and Taylor was honored as a real American war hero.</p>\r\n<p>Mexico surrendered to the U.S. and ceded the territories that became the states of Utah, Nevada, Arizona, and California, and New Mexico.&nbsp; Taylor decided it was time to end his 40-year military career, having led American troops to victory in four wars, and retired in 1848.&nbsp; Even though he didn\'t really even give a shit about politics he was nominated for the Presidency by the Whig party, who hoped to ride his badassitude all the way to the Oval Office.&nbsp; Taylor won, despite his indifference, because back in the 19th century the American public wasn\'t content to be led by a guy who hadn\'t personally stabbed another man to death with a bayonet.&nbsp; The Whigs, thinking that Taylor didn\'t give a crap, believed that once he was in power they would be able to use him as a puppet President, and immediately started telling him what they wanted him to do.&nbsp; He told them to go fuck themselves.&nbsp; He was a fucking badass war hero, and he wasn\'t going to be pushed around by a bunch of soft, overweight senatorial dumbasses.&nbsp; The contentious 12th President went completely against many core Whig beliefs, opposed the spread of slavery into the newly-acquired territories, and told everyone else to get bent.&nbsp; If people didn\'t like it, tough shit.&nbsp; He said that if any dumbasses even thought about seceding from the Union he would personally resign his post and mercilessly march his army all over the country, crushing anybody foolish enough to willingly incur his wrath.</p>\r\n<p>Unfortunately, he never got the chance.&nbsp; President Taylor stroked out and died 16 months into his term, and one of the toughest, most badass generals and commanders in American history was replaced by some dude named Millard.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/taylor2.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Links:</span><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zachary_Taylor\" target=\"blank\">Wikipedia</a></p>','2008-10-03','704326920336','taylor.jpg','taylor - Copy.jpg','Zachary Taylor','40-year military veteran, war hero, and 12th President of the United States.','\"Double-shot your guns and give \'em Hell.\"'),('Jean Parisot de Valette','1498','August 21, 1568','France','16th-century Crusader General','<p>While the Knights Templar may be considered by many to be the sexier 11th century military order (in so much as a brotherhood of celibate monks can be considered \"sexy\"), a lot of people don\'t realize that the Knights Hospitaller were seriously fucking harsh.&nbsp; Founded in 1080 and initially tasked with aiding poor, sick, and wounded knights and pilgrims traveling in the Holy Land, these warrior-monks quickly discovered that it\'s way more awesome (not to mention easier) to inflict traumatic gaping flesh wounds rather than treat them.&nbsp; Wearing their trademarked black tunics emblazoned with white crosses, these asskicking motherfuckers busted nutsacks up and down the Levant throughout the Middle Ages with everything from broadswords to bone saws, and the family of Jean de Valette was right in the middle of all the asskicking fun during this time, having served the Knights with distinction in five different Crusades.</p>\r\n<p>In the 1520\'s this young warrior was more than happy to take up the onyx mantle of the Knights Hospitallers, and it wasn\'t long into his tenure with these badass warriors that he found himself right in the middle of a massive unholy shitstorm.&nbsp; The Knights&rsquo; headquarters on the Greek island of Rhodes came under a massive siege by the Ottoman Turks in 1522, who, under the command of badass, trachea-destroying sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, sent an army of roughly 100,000 screaming, angry Muslim warriors to destroy all life on the island and reduce the Palace of the Grand Master of the Hospitallers to a giant pile of bloody rubble.&nbsp; There were only 700 Knights of Rhodes and about 7,000 foot soldiers defending the citadel, but they were willing to bust their nutsacks to keep the infidels out of their heavily-fortified bastion of holy Christiandom.&nbsp; The Turks, expecting to plow through the defenders like a hot dog-eating champion assaulting a Nathan\'s stand, hurled themselves repeatedly at the walls of the island, but ended up bashing their heads into a solid brick wall of Go Fuck Yourself.&nbsp; Their ships launched cannonballs from every direction, pounding the stone walls of Rhodes, but every time the artillery managed to bust a hole in the fortifications, the Turks poured into the breach only to have the Knights Hospitaller - and Jean de Valette - standing there, swords drawn, ready to drop-kick their heathen Jesus-hating asses back into the Mediterranean. For six months the battle raged on, but the Turks were never able to penetrate the fortress at Rhodes.&nbsp; Unfortunately, it&rsquo;s not all roses for the heroes of this particular story - the Knights were eventually forced to surrender when they ran out of food and supplies (but not until after they\'d inflicted significant casualties on the enemy, so that&rsquo;s something).</p>\r\n<p>The Knights withdrew to Sicily, and then went to the Mediterranean isle of Malta, where they re-established their base of operations.&nbsp; As if he wasn\'t already hardcore and badass enough, life on Malta toughened Valette up even more.&nbsp; One time he unchivalrously beat the fucking snot out of a guy who was pissing him off, so the knights threw him in a hole for four months.&nbsp; Another time, he was captured by Barbary pirates and had to spend a year serving as a lowly galley slave for the legendary Turkish corsair Turgut Reis.&nbsp; Valette eventually escaped, swearing revenge on those motherfuckers for imprisoning him, enslaving him, and destroying the headquarters of his beloved military order.</p>\r\n<p>Back on Malta, Jean de Valette took command of a ship filled with badass armored knights and set sail looking for fucking asses to demolish.&nbsp; For over a decade, this grim, humorless assortment of holy paladins roamed the seas doing battle with badass Turkish corsairs like Barbarossa, and Valette repeatedly distinguished himself as the greatest and most balls-out of the Christian sea-warriors.&nbsp; He stomped colons wherever he could find them, was appointed Admiral of the Malta Fleet, and eventually was elected Grand Master of the Knights Hospitaller in 1557.</p>\r\n<p>Well it wasn\'t long before shit was going to come screaming back to Jean de Valette like a bad acid trip or a Vietnam flashback -- the Turks were coming to wrench the island of Malta from his cold, dead hands.&nbsp; In 1565 Suleiman assembled a massive armada of 40,000 Ottoman warriors, and prepared to slash Valette\'s face off with the realness and destroy the Order of the Knights Hospitaller once and for fucking all.&nbsp; But fuck that.&nbsp; Jean de Valette didn\'t spend his entire life battling these motherfuckers just to bend over and take it like a man when they came knocking on his door - he was going to make them pay for every inch of land they wanted to try and gank from him.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/valette1.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>The island fortress of Malta</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Staring down at an insane armada of tens of thousands of Turks was a force of only 500 Knights, led by the immovable resolve of Jean Parisot de la Valette.&nbsp; This badass warrior knew the odds were hopelessly stacked against him, but he did everything he could to try and hold off the oncoming tides of pointy death.&nbsp; First, he recruited a makeshift militia of 6,000 citizens from the island, and gave them some basic miltiary training: &ldquo;This is a cannon.&nbsp; You point it and shoot it at any motherfucker not wearing black armor.&rdquo;&nbsp; Then he built up the fortifications as best he could, and ordered all the grain on the island be harvested and all the wells be poisoned - this would keep the Turks from living off the land during their siege.&nbsp; He told his men to offer no quarter and expect none - this would be a fight to the death, and the Knights Hospitaller were not going to take a single step backwards in the face of the enemy.</p>\r\n<p>The battle for Malta began with a massive, round-the-clock artillery bombardment by the Turkish Navy, followed by wave after wave of pissed-of Ottoman warriors charging balls-out at the walls of the island\'s fortresses.&nbsp; Now Malta was garissoned by three main outposts:&nbsp; St. Angelo, St. Elmo, and <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/stmichael.html\">St. Michael</a>.&nbsp; St. Elmo fell relatively early in the siege, after fierce hand-to-hand fighting in which the garrison\'s knights were all slain to the last man.&nbsp; During the fighting, however, the brave defenders of St. Elmo were able to take out the Turkish Admiral Turgut Reis, as well as 2,000 of the badass elite Turkish Janissaries - tough-as-shit musketeers known for their epic assbeating powers.&nbsp; The intense shelling was then directed at the remaining two forts.&nbsp; At one point during the brutal struggle, the Turks broke through the defenses at St. Michael, but Jean de Valette pulled his long sword and personally led the charge that pushed the onslaught back.</p>\r\n<p>The battle raged across the countryside night and day in a near-constant stream of death and swordfighting, until finally, four months after they arrived, the Turkish army decided to pack up their shit and head home.&nbsp; They had lost and estimated 25,000 warriors to fighting and disease, and they didn&rsquo;t have any more fight left in them.&nbsp; The Island of Malta lost a third of its entire population and only 300 Hospitallers walked away from the battle, but they had defied all odds and somehow emerged victorious.</p>\r\n<p>After the battle, Jean Parisot de la Valette was celebrated across the western world as a hero and the champion of European Christendom.&nbsp; He turned down an opportunity to be made a fucking Cardinal - he was much more content to be a badass armor-wearing, sword-swinging warrior-monk - and dedicated the rest of his life to rebuilding the devastated island of Malta.&nbsp; He died peacefully in 1568 at the age of 74, one of the greatest unsung heroes of the Late Middle Ages and a totally badass motherfucker who spent fifty years of his life hacking the faces off of his hated arch-enemies.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/valette.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Links:</span><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Parisot_de_la_Valette\" target=\"blank\">Wikipedia</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Siege_of_Malta\" target=\"blank\">The Great Siege of Malta</a></p>','2008-09-26','688941620423','valette3.jpg','valette3 - Copy.jpg','Jean de Valette','Medieval commander who led 100 Knights Hospitaller in a brave defense against 200,000 Turkish warriors.','Worthy of eternal honor, he who was once the scourge of Africa and Asia,\r\nand the shield of Europe, whence he expelled the barbarians by his Holy Arms.'),('Baba Deep Singh','1682','November 11, 1757','Pohuwind, India','18th-century Sikh Warrior','<p>I\'m going to go out on a limb here and assume that the majority of my readers aren\'t exactly experts on Indian history, so it\'s probably a safe assumption that you\'re not familiar with the story of the Sikh martyr Baba Deep Singh.&nbsp; Well, it\'s time to get educated -- because this dude is one of the most hardcore freedom fighters to ever live, and a guy so extreme balls-out in his insatiable quest for vengeance that something as inconsequentially-trivial as <em>being fucking decapitated</em> couldn\'t stop him from crushing his enemies to death with his nutsack.</p>\r\n<p>Deep Singh (Baba is a term of reverence roughly equivalent to \"Saint\") was baptized a Sikh in 1700, and quickly got busy training in badass martial skills like swordfighting, hand-to-hand combat, horsemanship, resisting torture, circle-strafing, and punching people in the crotch with enough force to blow a hole in a brick wall.&nbsp; In case many of you out there aren\'t down with <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/email-sikhism.html\">Sikhism</a>, it\'s pretty much one of the most badass religions this side of Valhalla -- practioners are given a goddamned sword when they are baptized, and they are bound by their religion to carry this implement of pointed death with them everywhere they go.&nbsp; They also have to grow super-long awesome beards and badass Rollie Fingers-style handlebar moustaches.&nbsp; After going through a rigorous and intense initiation training so hardcore that it makes ancient Spartan initiations look like Home Economics Merit Badge Day for Girl Scout Troop 666, Baba Deep Singh retired to a nice quiet life studying the teachings of the great hallowed Gurus, hand-scribing copies of the Sikh holy scriptures, and fighting in large-scale revolutions against the oppressive and tyrannical Mughal Empire.</p>\r\n<p>See, dudes like <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/babur.html\">Babur</a> and <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/akbar.html\">Akbar</a> were pretty badass in their own right, but the Sikhs weren\'t really down with being ruled over by some godless heathen Muslims, and if there\'s one thing you should take from this article it\'s that you should generally try to avoid fucking with the Sikhs whenever you get the chance.&nbsp; One of Baba Deep Singh\'s homeboys kicked off a revolution in the Punjab region of India, and it was on like neckbone.&nbsp; BDS and his dudes jacked up the Mughals and chased them out of their homelands.</p>\r\n<p>But whatever.&nbsp; This website is full of folks who threw off the yoke of oppression by lopping off their enemies\' heads with hacksaws and then suplexing their decapitated corpses onto a bed of hot coals.&nbsp; What separates Baba Deep Singh is his mad desire for righteous vengeance, and the lengths he would go to accomplish said feat.&nbsp; It all got started in 1757, when the Mughal warlord Ahmad Shah Durrani started launching a bunch of raids into India.&nbsp; He busted in, pillaged, plundered, etc., sacked the city of Delhi, and began triumphantly processing back to Mughal-ville with a newly-acquired trove of plundered goods, stolen religious artifacts, and hot, screaming, kidnapped Indian babes.&nbsp; Fuck that.&nbsp; Baba Deep wasn\'t going to let that shit fly.&nbsp; He and his men launched a guerrilla raid on the Mughals while they were on the march, ambushing them, kicking their asses and pulling out their tracheas with their bare hands.&nbsp; The religious artifacts (and hot babes) were all returned to their rightful locations, and all seemed well with the world once again.</p>\r\n<p>Not so fast.</p>\r\n<p>The Mughals are descended from a dude named <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/khan.html\">Genghis Khan</a>.&nbsp; Maybe you\'ve heard of him.&nbsp; Well motherfuckers with a pedigree of ultimate extreme asskickings don\'t take stuff like this lightly.&nbsp; Ahmad Shah Durrani, despoiled of all of the shit he worked so hard to steal from teeming throngs of unarmed defenseless peasants, took out his revenge the best way he knew how -- by seriously jacking up the Golden Temple of God in the city of Amritsar; the holiest and most hallowed site in the Sikh religion.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/babadeepsingh1.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The Mughals first blew the shrine up with their cannons, then they slaughtered a bunch of cattle and filled the sacred pools of the temple with cow blood and guts.&nbsp; Now, most Sikhs don\'t hold cows sacred like the Hindus do, but you don\'t need to worship at the altar of a bovine god to agree that this is still pretty disgusting and obnoxious.&nbsp; A large force of soldiers hung around to defend the shrine and prevent the Sikhs from reclaiming the desecrated temple, and the douchebag Mughal ruler picture-messaged pictures of the carnage to Baba Deep Singh\'s cell phone.</p>\r\n<p>Our man Baba Deep Singh was seventy-five years old at this time, but he hadn\'t lost a step -- the only thing his excessively old age did for him was give him a totally awesome beard.&nbsp; As soon as he heard that the Golden Temple had been profaned and destroyed, he pulled his old, beat-up, thirty-pound Khanda sword off the wall and started walking towards Amritsar.&nbsp; Along the way, he stopped in at every village he came across, recruiting a huge mob of pitchfork and torch-bearing warriors ready to go Dr. Frankenstein on those Mughal bastards who fucked up their holy monument.&nbsp; These dudes set out to avenge their temple <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/brucelee.html\">Bruce Lee</a>-style, and nothing was going to stop them.</p>\r\n<p>The improvised peasant army hurled themselves at the hardened Mughal warriors, and insane bloodshed ensued with the unholy realness.&nbsp; The Mughals were a well-trained force of asskickers, but the Sikhs were super omega ripshit pissed off, and they were flipping out like assassins on those poor bastards, tearing them new assholes with daggers, tridents, and cordless power drills.&nbsp; During the fighting, however, Baba Deep Singh launched himself at the commander of the Mughal garrison and both men delivered terrible blows at one another, kind of like the intro to <em>Ninja Gaiden</em> on the old-school Nintendo.&nbsp; The Mughal\'s head slid off of his neck onto the floor with a disgusting <em>squish</em>.&nbsp; Baba Deep Singh didn\'t fare much better -- his head had been almost completely severed from his body.&nbsp; The only thing holding his cranium upright was his left hand.</p>\r\n<p>Baba Deep Singh, however, was a Mughal-killing madman, and he didn\'t even give a shit.&nbsp; He <em>kept fighting</em>, holding his barely-attached head onto his torso with one hand and hacking people in half with his other.&nbsp; The sight of this dude, sword in one hand, bloody head in the other, must have been pretty goddamned unnerving to the dudes facing him, and the Sikhs cut a swath through the Mughals, driving them from the halls of the sacred temple.&nbsp; Some legends claim that Baba Deep\'s head actually came off at one point, and that he held the disembodied head in his left hand while he fought -- sort of like how a chicken with it\'s head cut off continues to run around for a while, vengeance was so ingrained into the very fabric of this guy\'s being that his wild post-mortem twitching involved lopping off appendages and stabbing people in the brain.</p>\r\n<p>With the Mughals defeated, Baba Deep Singh died on the floor of the Golden Temple of God.&nbsp; The temple was re-consecrated by Sikh priests, and the spot where Singh fell is now a shrine where pilgrims come from across India to pay their respects to one of their religion\'s greatest martyrs.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/babadeepsingh2.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>\"There is hardly a mode of torture which the Sikhs have not suffered, and not one has cried in pain or relented.\"</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Links:</span><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baba_Deep_Singh\" target=\"blank\">Wikipedia</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.sikh-history.com/sikhhist/warriors/deep.html\" target=\"blank\">Sikh-History.com</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.sikhismguide.org/babadeepsingh.shtml\" target=\"blank\">Sikhism Guide</a></p>','2008-09-19','920214520551','babadeepsingh4.jpg','babadeepsingh4 - Copy.jpg','Baba Deep Singh','Not even chopping this guy\'s head off could stop him from avenging his faith.','\"Once you step onto this path, you may well give up your head rather than the cause.\"'),('Imre Lichtenfeld','May 26, 1910','January 9, 1998','Budapest, Hungary','20th-century Israeli Athlete','<p>Most people think the shortest book in the world would be a book on famous Jewish athletes.&nbsp; Fuck that.&nbsp; Imi Lichtenfeld was not only an accomplished athlete, he came up with one of the most ripshit-badass martial arts styles in the world, Krav Maga, which should be Hebrew for \"I\'m going to fuck you up so bad your grandsons are gonna be born without ballsacks.\" (really it means \'close combat\')</p>\r\n<p>Born in 1910, Lichtenfeld grew up in the town of Bratislava in what was once the Austro-Hungarian Empire.&nbsp; His dad had joined the circus when he was 13 (yeah, the motherfucker ran away to the goddamn circus), where he learned about martial arts, wrestling, gymnastics, fire-eating, weightlifting, and how to properly pound a hot Central European contortionist.&nbsp; After dedicating 20 to years mastering the ninja-like arts of Ultimate Badassery, all of these lessons were then passed on to his son Imi, who we\'re focusing on today.</p>\r\n<p>At his dad\'s encouragement, Lichtenfeld got into a wide variety of sports and worked his ass off to be a champion boxer, wrestler, and gymnast (you kind of have to be a gymnast to have 1337 N1NJ4 5K177zorz) in the late 1920s and early 30s.&nbsp; Unfortunately, being a Jew in Central Europe during this time was fucking hazardous to one\'s health, because Adolf Goddamned Hitler was throwing his nuts around like he owned the place.&nbsp; This convinced a bunch of other Aryan anti-Semite assholes to start trying to stomp nuts in Jewish neighborhoods just to be total dicks. Being a natural badass, Lichtenfeld got a bunch of his boxing and wrestling buddies together to convince these Teutonic fuckwads that it was ill-advised to fuck with the Chosen People of God Almighty.&nbsp; Shit, you&rsquo;d think someone would pick up a history book one day and take a look at what happens to people who fuck with the Jews - the Persians, Babylonians, Romans, Assyrians, Philistines, Midianites, and Egyptians all got a taste, and look what happened to them - but the Nazis decided to give it a good honest college try anyway.&nbsp; Well while in the process of suplexing jackasses through tables and laying out motherfuckers with his massive right hook, Lichtenfeld noticed that even though his combat skills were fucking awesome, boxing and wrestling weren\'t the Supreme Embodiment of Ultimate Asskicking because they relied on stupid shit, like rules.&nbsp; In order to optimize his face-destroying potential, he came up with the concept of Krav Maga, a badass fucking martial art that consists of four basic principles:</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<ol><ol>\r\n<li>Do as much damage in as little time as possible.</li>\r\n</ol></ol>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<ol><ol>\r\n<li>Change from defending to attacking as quickly as possible (including simultaneously).</li>\r\n</ol></ol>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<ol><ol>\r\n<li>Use items around you as weapons.</li>\r\n</ol></ol>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<ol><ol>\r\n<li>Be aware of everything that is happening around you.</li>\r\n</ol></ol>\r\n<p><br /><br /></p>\r\n<p>You don&rsquo;t see anything in those principles about love for other people, meditating on your navel to become one with the universe or flowing like water.&nbsp; No, the main focus is: \"GET SUPER-FUCKING PISSED AND SMACK THAT DOUCHEBAG IN THE HEAD WITH A BRICK.\"&nbsp; This isn\'t a hobby or a sport; It\'s a tool to help you maim, cripple, and destroy your enemies.</p>\r\n<p>Krav Maga is based on the assumption of No Quarter, meaning that you have to assume that your enemy is trying to kill you.&nbsp; Your objective is to control the situation, neutralize your enemy by kicking him in the balls until he coughs up his prostate, break every major joint on his body, and escape.&nbsp; There are no holds barred, no illegal strikes, and no such thing as excessive force.&nbsp; Students are trained in techniques to defend against knife attacks, guns, shotguns, and hostage situations.&nbsp; Fuck, they even have an entire series of maneuvers designed to take out a motherfucker who is jamming an assault rifle in your face.&nbsp; This fighting style does not screw around.</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/lichtenfeld1.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Anyway, with all this shit going down in his neighborhood Lichtenfeld went underground and started fucking up Anti-Semites whenever he got the chance (It\'s important to note that not all non-Jews living in Central Europe were anti-Semitic.&nbsp; Most people are pretty content to live their lives without fucking with anyone else as long as they are not fucked with themselves), but since the Nazis were running Central Europe at the time, and Indiana Jones wasn&rsquo;t about to go kick Hitler in the dick, Lichtenfeld eventually caught the last ship out of Eastern Europe.&nbsp; Oh, and during his two-year voyage to British Palestine one of Imi\'s friends fell overboard in the middle of a storm, so Lichtenfeld unhesitantly jumped in the freezing cold fucking water and pulled the dude to safety.</p>\r\n<p>Naturally, once he was in Palestine Lichtenfeld wanted to help out with kicking some Nazi ass, so he flexed his pecs, grabbed a rifle and went to go fight with the Jewish forces serving under the British.&nbsp; This dude was such a badass that he was teaching hand-to-hand combat to the already British commando-trained Palmach, a secret underground core of supreme assbeaters that would eventually become the Israeli Special Forces.&nbsp; After the Nazis got their asses handed to them by the Allied Forces of Sheer Baddassiosity, the Brits decided they didn\'t want to get between the Jews and Palestinians who were fighting for a piece of land about the size of New Jersey so they packed their shit and left in 1947.&nbsp; That was promptly followed by an Israeli-Arab war for independence and the eventual establishment of the State of Israel.&nbsp; In 1948, Imi Lichtenfeld was named Chief Asskicking Instructor for the entire Israeli military, mostly because he was a hardcore motherfucker who could teach most people to fight their way out of being buried alive.&nbsp; He taught the badass IDF forces 20 years before retiring from military service and teaching Krav Maga to the general public.</p>\r\n<p>Lichtenfeld wasn\'t just a badass just because he could pimp-slap Hitler and make him ask for seconds. He wasn\'t even a badass just because he fought in a bunch of wars, liberated his people, fought the Nazis, and defended his neighbors against hate-filled street gangs by kneeing his foes in the solar plexus until they barfed.&nbsp; Imi Lichtenfeld was a badass because he played Mr. Miyagi to an entire nation, spending 30 years teaching people how to reach down some asshole\'s throat and pull out a hand clenching an inverted nutsack.&nbsp; He\'s a badass because he adapted a fighting style to fit his peoples\' needs, innovated the Supreme Art of the Beat Down in ways that others could only attempt to emulate, and had a really cool mustache.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/lichtenfeld2.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.krav-maga.com/imi.htm\" target=\"blank\">Krav Maga</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imi_Lichtenfeld\" target=\"blank\">Wikipedia</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-FgH5uPYu8&amp;feature=related\" target=\"blank\">YouTube: Knife to the Throat Defense</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1C3XNDyVXRg&amp;feature=related\" target=\"blank\">YouTube: Gun to the Head while Kneeling Defense</a></p>','2008-09-05','425312224105','lichtenfeld.jpg','lichtenfeld - Copy.jpg','Imi Lichtenfeld','Israeli national hero and founder of the badass martial art Krav Maga.',''),('Cyril Richard Rescorla','May 27, 1939','September 11, 2001','Hayle, Cornwall, UK','20th-century British Soldier','<p>From both a military and a civilian capacity, it\'s hard to argue with the statement that Rick Rescorla is one of the greatest heroes in modern American history.&nbsp; This is pretty damn impressive, especially considering that he was British and everything.</p>\r\n<p>Cyril Richard Rescorla was born in Cornwall, on the southeast tip of England, in 1939.&nbsp; A rugby star and high school shot put champion growing up, it soon became apparent that the whole book-learning thing really wasn\'t as appealing to young Rick as a good old-fashioned ass-whipping was.&nbsp; So as soon as this adventure-hungry athlete turned 16 he quit school, joined the British military, and dedicated the majority of his life to pummeling the ever-loving cock-and-balls off of Communist douchebags wherever he could find them.</p>\r\n<p>Rescorla\'s first deployment in Her Majesty\'s Service was as a Military Intelligence officer on the island of Cyprus, where he spent the period from 1957 to 1960 digging up intel on Communist activities and doing a bunch of other presumably-badass clandestine shit that I wasn\'t able to dig much info up about.&nbsp; After that ended, he transferred to British Rhodesia in 1960, where he spent the next three years running through the bush with an assault rifle battling Communists in Angola and Zimbabwe as a member of the British South African Police.&nbsp; Serving as a military policeman in a brutal conflict between British-backed South African security forces and Soviet-sponsored Commie pinko bastards, Rescorla proved himself a capable warrior, a natural leader, and a hardcore battering ram of a human being, and he gained valuable combat experience putting his spit-shined shoes and an Enfield rifle straight up the asses of anyone who didn\'t think that Karl Marx was a fucking jackass in the first place.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/rescorla1.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>After transferring out of Rhodesia in 1963, Rick Rescorla suddenly found himself in something of a dilemma:&nbsp; He\'d run out of asses to kick.&nbsp; This was only a temporary problem, however, because even though there was a short lull in the seemingly-never-ending British blood feud with the forces of Marxism, (according to him, Britain was simply \"fresh out of wars to fight\"), Rick Rescorla went out and did the rational thing, which was of course to move to the United States and enlist in the American army so that he could fucking ship out to Southeast Asia and fight in the goddamned Vietnam War.</p>\r\n<p>Now think about this shit for a second.&nbsp; Vietnam is one of the most horrifically brutal conflicts the United States has ever been involved in.&nbsp; Thousands of good men died in the blood-soaked jungles of \'Nam, battling a cunning enemy in miserable conditions in a conflict that was largely unsupported by civilians on the home front.&nbsp; Many people in the States &ndash; actual native-born Americans &ndash; were burning their draft cards and bras and a bunch of other random flammable shit and then running away to Canada to listen to Hippie music just so that they could avoid having to go over there and get their balls blown off by bouncing betty mines, yet here Rick Rescorla was, voluntarily transferring his national allegiance solely for the purposes of serving as an infantry officer in a war where the average life expectancy for a new Lieutenant on combat patrol was about 16 minutes.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/rescorla2.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Rescorla was on the ground at the very beginning of the Vietnam Shitstorm, and as a platoon leader in the 7th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Air Cavalry Division, he ended up participating in the first major American battle in \'Nam &ndash; the bloody Battle of Ia Drang in November of 1965.&nbsp; While serving in the same Regiment that used to belong to George Armstrong Custer (and the same Division as the fictional Colonel Kilgore from <em>Apocalypse Now</em>), Rescorla found himself in a desperate position, fighting over a small chunk of ground about 10 miles from the Cambodian Border.&nbsp; The 2nd Battalion of the 7th Cav had been manning a defensive line when suddenly, in the middle of the night, they found themselves face-to-face with three full regiments of crack North Vietnamese Army soldiers.&nbsp; The NVA troops launched a massive assault at the entire battalion line, badly mauling C Company over the course of the evening.&nbsp; Rescorla was in B Company, which had managed to hold the line despite being badly outnumbered, but now he and his already-exhausted soldiers were called over to reinforce the weakened position once held by C Company.</p>\r\n<p>Now, Rick Rescorla was a lifelong soldier, and while many of his men were seeing their first live-fire combat action and were dangerously close to losing their shit, this guy was already an old pro, and he knew how to handle frightened soldiers.&nbsp; Belting out traditional Cornish folk songs in his mighty British accent, Rescorla personally got out there to dig foxholes, clear the brush to establish firing lanes, and reinforced the defensive perimeter like he was out pulling fucking dandelions from his garden back home.&nbsp; His men were encouraged by the sight, and that night, when the 100 men of B Company were bum-rush attacked by over 2,000 NVA soldiers, Rescorla kept singing, inspiring his exhausted men to hold off four separate large-scale assaults between 4 and 6am.&nbsp; Then, as if beating down a 20-to-1 onslaught of AK-47 wielding hardened troops wasn\'t enough, once the sun came up Rick Rescorla, who by this point was Jack Bauer-ing it on 48 hours of non-stop fighting without sleep, personally rallied his men led a goddamned <em>bayonet charge</em> that drove off the last remnants of the enemy troops.&nbsp; Calling out orders like he was fucking <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/wellington.html\">Wellington</a> at Waterloo, this guy kept his men in formation to \"charge bayonets\", and, after the attack drove the enemy out of the position, he went on to single-handedly wipe out a machine gun nest with a grenade in just for good measure (chucking grenades, incidentally, isn\'t much different than hefting a shot put).</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/rescorla3.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>The image of Rescorla advancing with bayonet was used as the cover<br />of <em>We Were Soldiers Once.. And Young</em></span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>But staring down three Regiments with a single Company and killing over 200 of the enemy while losing just 6 men wounded from his own unit wasn\'t the only fighting Rescorla would see during Ia Drang.&nbsp; As he and his worn-out troops were being evacuated from their positions by helicopter, riding off into the sunset like the end of <em>Contra</em>, Rescorla got the word that the main body of the battalion was being hit hard by a night attack ambush.&nbsp; This guy wasn\'t about to let that shit go down &ndash; he ordered his chopper pilot to get right into the middle of the clusterfuck and drop him off so he could commence shit-kicking immediately.</p>\r\n<p>The pilot circled around, Rescorla and the men in his bird jumped the 10 feet to the ground amid a swirling cross-fire of machine gun and mortar fire, and ten minutes later the British-American Lieutenant was seen casually sauntering up to the American foxholes holding an M79 Grenade Launcher in one hand and an M-16 assault rifle in the other.&nbsp; From what I understand, this is a man who loved the smell of napalm in the morning.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/rescorla4.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>Rescorla fought off the attack, then captured a French bugle from a dead NVA officer.<br />He didn\'t officially become a U.S. citizen until 2 years after the battle.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>According to Hal Moore, the Vietnam vet author of <em>We Were Soldiers</em>, Rescorla was, \"the greatest platoon commander I have ever seen,\" but it was the crazy stories about this guy that really made him a semi-mythical entity among the American troops.&nbsp; I mean, the fucking guy\'s call sign was \"Hard Corps One-Six,\" for crying out loud.&nbsp; This is a man who would be out there running laps barefoot every morning, and allegedly the soles of his feet were so toughened up from this regimen that he could put a campfire out by stepping on it.&nbsp; There are stories of him walking into an NVA foxhole, seeing a bunch of enemy officers, and calmly saying, \"Oh, pardon me,\" before smoking the room with machine gun fire.&nbsp; Another tale has some Private flipping out Vincent D\'Onofrio style and pulling a .45 on his commanding officer, and Rescorla (who was sharpening his Bowie knife at the time) just got up, walked right over to the guy, and just said, \"Put.&nbsp; The gun.&nbsp; Down.\"&nbsp; The dude did, and Rescorla went back to sharpening his knife.</p>\r\n<p>After serving as a platoon leader, Rescorla became a recon scout for the battalion.&nbsp; Basically, him and three other dudes would run around the wilderness scouting ahead, looking for ambushes, minefields, and other horrible shit, and then if they didn\'t accidentally fall into the trap they\'d come back and report.&nbsp; This wasn\'t easy (duh), but Rescorla was so good at it that he ended up teaching classes in reconnaissance and guerilla warfare at Fort Benning.&nbsp; Also, he survived the war, which should also give you an indication of how hardcore this dude was.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/rescorla5.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<table style=\"width: 500px;\" align=\"center\">\r\n<tbody>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td><span>\"I knew him as a hundred-and-eighty-pound, six-foot-one piece of human machinery that would not quit, that did not know defeat, that would not back off one inch.&nbsp; In the middle of the greatest battle of Vietnam, he was singing to the troops, saying we&rsquo;re going to rip them a new asshole, when everyone else was worrying about dying.\"</span></td>\r\n</tr>\r\n</tbody>\r\n</table>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Hard Corps One-Six left \'Nam with a Silver Star and a Bronze Star, got a law degree in Oklahoma, taught Criminal Justice at the University of South Carolina, and retired from the Army reserve in 1990 with the rank of Colonel.&nbsp; He later got a job as director of security for Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, where he was tasked with ensuring employee safety for one of the world\'s largest financial institutions.</p>\r\n<p>Rick Rescorla died almost exactly 10 years ago today.&nbsp; He was at his post on the 44th floor of World Trade Center Tower 1 on September 11, 2001, when a psychotic madman flew a passenger airliner into the building.&nbsp; When the Port Authority came over the loudspeaker in the building and ordered everyone inside to stay put, Rescorla muttered \"Bugger that Blimy Poppycock\" (or something equally British) under his breath, and flipped his brain right back into Commanding Officer mode.&nbsp; It wasn\'t his first time dealing with a terrorist attack on his place of employment &ndash; in 1993, when a truck bomb went off in the basement of the Tower, Rescorla had evacuated his offices, helping everyone out until he was the last man to leave the building &ndash; and he wasn\'t taking any chances this time either.&nbsp; He grabbed a bullhorn and personally ran up and down the 22 floors that encompassed Morgan Stanley Dean Witter headquarters, quickly and calmly getting everyone out of their cubes and down the stairs.&nbsp; Rushing up and down the building despite the fact that he was 62 years old and dying from terminal bone marrow cancer, Rescorla didn\'t even consider slowing down until all 2,700 of his co-workers were safely out of the burning building.&nbsp; When he saw how terrified the men and women he worked with were, he went back to his old standby of singing British folk songs to try and cheer them up.</p>\r\n<p>He was last seen on the tenth floor of the World Trade Center, headed up.&nbsp; Of the 2,700 people he had been charged with protecting, all but 6 survived the terrorist attack.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/rescorla6.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<center><span>\"Men of Cornwall stop your dreaming; <br /> Can\'t you see their spearpoints gleaming?<br /> See their warriors\' pennants streaming <br /> To this battlefield. <br /><br /> Men of Cornwall stand ye steady; <br /> It cannot be ever said ye <br /> for the battle were not ready; <br /> Stand and never yield!\"</span></center><center><span><br /></span></center>','2011-09-09','670124511166','rescorla.jpg','rescorla1.jpg','Rick Rescorla','A true American hero (from Britain).','\"My God, it was like Little Big Horn.  We were all cowering in the bottom of our foxholes, expecting to get overrun.  Rescorla gave us courage to face the coming dawn.  He looked me in the eye and said, \'When the sun comes up, we\'re gonna kick some ass.\'\"'),('M3 the Wolverine','c. 2002','n/a','Glacier Nat\'l Park, MT, USA','21st-century American Monster','<p>There\'s a reason why Patrick Swayze and his rag-tag band of anti-Communist rebel suburban Russkie-blasting guerillas called themselves Wolverines, and it\'s not just because their high school intramural class-six-A women\'s volleyball team had the word emblazoned across their sports bras during competition play &ndash; it\'s because wolverines are some of the most serious, hardcore, face-obliterating badasses of the animal world. Ferocious, two-foot-tall killing machines capable of dismembering all who oppose them in a frenzied torrent of gnashing sharp pointy teeth and adorable malevolence and then trotting off into the snow-covered sub-zero wasteland like a pissed-off cartoon character. And of this particular breed of ultimate organic quadripedal embodiment of vicious destruction, one ferocious hero has arisen, crushed his opposition, and publicly declared himself the most over-the-top sub-thirty-pound asskicker North America has to offer &ndash; Glacier National Park\'s awesomely-named Male Number 3, better known simply by a two-character name that strikes fear into the hearts of all who stand in his ever-widening path of unconquered determination: M3.</p>\r\n<p>The semi-related North American, Arctic Circle cousins of the infamous <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/honeybadger.html\">Honey Badgers</a>, Wolverines are the largest member of the weasel family, which, quite honestly, doesn\'t sound all that badass &ndash; it\'s like being a Mega Hamster or the World\'s Biggest Titmouse or something. And honestly, they really don\'t look like much &ndash; these furry critters stand about two feet tall and weigh in at 25 to 35 pounds, making them roughly the same size as a Bulldog or a Beagle, only they kind of just look like stuffed-animal Disney version of giant ferrets:</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/m3wolverine1.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>You might have a hard time believing that this thing is more badass than you.<br />You\'d probably be wrong.</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>In reality, Wolverines have a tooth that points ninety-degrees straight back towards the inside of their mouths that can be deployed with enough force to crack a moose femur that\'s been frozen in Carbonite for over a year. Wolverines are 35-pound insane killing machines capable of &ndash; and more than willing to &ndash; attack every goddamned thing that they see. They\'ve been known to eat fast little varmints such as birds and rabbits, but also routinely devour lynx, coyotes, deer, beavers, caribou, and live moose, running these gigantic, sometimes-predatory beasts down in a flash of brown-furred ultra-kill-fury, ripping them a few new breathing tubes, and then shredding their corpses so goddamned voraciously that the German word for Wolverine translates to \"devours much\" and the Hungarian word for them means \"Gluttonous Badger\" (which is pretty damn awesome if you ask me).</p>\r\n<p>Now, just to remind you folks who don\'t live in the godforsaken wastes of the Yukon, this is a moose:</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/m3wolverine2.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>It\'s a nine-foot-tall, 600-pound antler-clad vegetarian eating machine that has been known to be on the wrong side of a car accident, obliterate the front end of a fucking Hyundai hauling ass at 60 miles per hour, and then walk away unscathed while the poor chump driving the vehicle is left wondering whether or not his insurance covers something like a head-on collision with North America\'s largest and weirdest-looking plant eater.</p>\r\n<p>This is a wolverine:</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/m3wolverine3.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Yet, somehow, despite the notable setback of giving up a 200-to-1 weight advantage to the moose, the wolverines run those fuckers down and maul the shit out of them in the land equivalent of being de-meated by a Piranha feeding frenzy consisting of a single animal.</p>\r\n<p>When they\'re not murdering creatures fifteen steps up on the food chain from them, Wolverines generally prey on carrion, eating the corpses of the wussier animals that can\'t hack the insanely-cold temperatures in the Wolverines\' natural habitats. If scavenging doesn\'t sound all that badass, try this on for size &ndash; usually the best way to get a fresh kill is to find an already-dead motherfucker, get pissed as hell, and then fight and chase off the apex predator that brought the dead creature down in the first place. Wolverines don\'t have a problem with this. They routinely fight of packs of Gray Wolves (by themselves!), kill Cougars, and have been known on several well-documented occasions to fight off Black Bears, Grizzlies, and GODAMNED POLAR BEARS &ndash; no big deal, just the biggest fucking bear on Earth, but whatever. Scientists also believe that in prehistoric times, the ancestors of Wolverines routinely fought Saber-Toothed Cats, Dire Wolves, and Mega-Bears. Now, I have no fucking clue what a Mega-Bear is, but it sounds gooddamned terrifying, and you don\'t expect it being bested in tooth-to-tooth combat with this little guy:</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/m3wolverine4.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>We actually don\'t really know much about the <em>Gulo Gulo</em> -- they\'re super elusive, cross ridiculously huge distances in short periods of time, and there are only like 300-500 left in the Lower 48 United States. We do know that their gigantic oversized claws work like climbing crampons (when they aren\'t dismembering corpses), and that they don\'t actually go <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/wolverine.html\">SNIKT SNIKT</a> when deployed. We know they\'re insanely strong for their size &ndash; one of the greatest documented size-to-strength ratios ever recorded, according to the people who record those things professionally. They can resist sub-zero temperatures, and they have anal scent glands that make them smell almost as bad as skunks, a detail that has gained them the awesome-sounding nickname \"Nasty Cats\". If you were really into puns, you might say they would be truly bad ass, but that would be really terrible.</p>\r\n<p>They\'re also ferociously hardcore. The most famous story about them, of course, is that when a wolverine gets one of his paws stuck in a bear trap, he\'s been known to GNAW HIS OWN LEG OFF Aron Ralston-style to escape. Are you kidding me?</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/m3wolverine5.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>A lot of what we do know about Wolverines comes from research that\'s being done on the wolverine populations of Glacier National Park, and of those creatures studied, none comes come close to Male Number 3 in terms of ultimate badassitude.</p>\r\n<p>It\'s fitting that M3 has the world \"Male\" in his official given scientific name, because this Alpha Male beast is a raging cesspool of testosterone production who is so ultra-aggressive that the researchers working on the project simply nicknamed him \"Mr. Badass\".</p>\r\n<p>Basically the story goes like this: The scientists at Glacier are trapping Wolverines in ultra-heavy traps constructed from eight-inch-thick wooden logs, luring the creatures in by tempting them with a nice fresh beaver carcass, then tagging them and releasing them back into the wild. Plenty of the wolverines trapped this way have been known to break out of the fucking cage by clawing and/or chewing through the walls overnight. M3 is the only one to ever break INTO one that way. Oh yeah, and it wasn\'t because this apex predator was dying to dig into that beaver carcass either &ndash; it was because M3\'s arch-nemesis (Male Number 6, basically M3\'s version of Trevelyan from <em>Goldeneye</em>) had been trapped in there and M3 wasn\'t fucking above cleaving his way through eight solid inches of timber to get a chance to attack his hated enemy and chief rival. Forget mercy. Forget kicking someone when they\'re down &ndash; this guy will shred your damned face off the second he gets the opportunity. He\'s just hard like that. So don\'t fuck with him.</p>\r\n<p>He\'s also so wide ranging, covering an Empire of Badassitude that spans about 500 square miles, and is so adept at evading capture and detecting (even <em>with</em> a GPS chip in his ear) that the following clip is the only footage available of this ferocious killer in his natural habitat &ndash; it\'s a clip of M3 the Wolverine blood-raging after a cameraman and his team of researchers. If this animals\' guttural battle-cry doesn\'t totally fucking terrify you, you are incapable of knowing fear:</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><object style=\"display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\" class=\"mceItemMedia mceItemFlash\" data=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/3Lad3xHD970\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\"><param name=\"src\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/3Lad3xHD970\" /></object></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Born around 2002, M3 is now the Alpha Male wolverine in Glacier National Park and the ultimate symbol of wolverine badassitude. Not only is he more drug resistant than Ozzy, but in the weeks after being fitted with a GPS tracker by an enterprising, stupidly-brave, presumably-deceased scientist armed with a ten-foot pole and a suit of <a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/dndfornonmajors.html\">+2 Chainmail</a>, he summited the highest peak in Glacier National Park &ndash; 10,466 feet &ndash; covering the last 4,900-feet by running straight up a sheer cliff face in the span of 90 minutes. Through 20-inch deep snow. In the middle of January, when temperatures were in the single digits. His tracker didn\'t explain why, but we can only assume the answer involves teabagging the summit just out of principle.</p>\r\n<p>Traveling alone, or with his son M23 (kind of like how Logan\'s daughter was named X-23 I presume?), M3 ranges about 500 miles up and down the Montana/Alberta border, covering a territory that\'s about twice as large as the predatory range of your average Grizzly bear. He passes river basins, scales ice falls, crosses glaciers, and digs out of avalanches, constantly ranging the North American wilderness in an endless quest for battle, food, and whatever passes for hot wolverine babes these days.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/m3wolverine6.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.patagonia.com/us/patagonia.go?assetid=29178\">The Wolverine Way</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.patagonia.com/us/patagonia.go?&amp;assetid=52527\">The One Thing Wolverines Can\'t Take On</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/wolverine-chasing-the-phantom/introduction/5759/\">Chasing the Phantom</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://egulo.wordpress.com/2010/10/15/the-phantom-and-the-filmmaker/\">The Phantom and the Filmmaker</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://missoulanews.bigskypress.com/missoula/wither-the-wolverine/Content?oid=1138707\">Wither the Wolverine</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/wolverine/\">National Geographic</a><br /><br /> <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolverine\">Wikipedia</a></p>','2012-01-13','535838729020','m3wolverine.jpg','m3wolverine5-small.jpg','M3 the Wolverine','The Alpha Male of the most insane family of ferocious mammals North America has to offer.','\"During the course of the research, which began in 2002 and continues today, I\'d followed signals from his radio through remote valleys in the park but never glimpsed him. Oh, he\'s big, they told me, heavier than his dad, M1 (who lays claim to the center of Glacier and to three girlfriends there). Most wolverines are explosive inside a trap, but they said that M3 went completely nuclear, that trying to jab him with a syringe-tipped pole would demolish your nerves, that it took twice the expected drug dose to knock him down.\"'),('Josey Wales','19th Century','N/A','Missouri, USA','Fictional American Outlaw','<p>One of the first articles I wrote for this site was in honor of the Ultimate Badass and the Consummate Man, a dude so insanely manly that he sweats raw testosterone and can kill most people without actually flexing a single muscle in his body - Clint Fucking Eastwood.&nbsp; However, as many of you know, the early articles on this website were short and shitty, and the two paragraphs I horked up into HTML didn\'t do this man the justice that he so rightly deserved.&nbsp; I don\'t necessarily believe this article will either, but I will still endeavor to give you a more complete picture of how epically fucking badass Clint Eastwood is, and how he made an entire multi-million dollar career out of drinking whisky right out of the bottle, giving people an icy-cold, unflinching, intimidating stare, and plugging dirtbags in the fucking face with a barrel full of large-caliber revolver ammunition.</p>\r\n<p>Just as God is God and is also a bunch of other entities at the same time who are both God and not God at the same time depending on who He decides to morph into at any particular moment in the space-time continuum, the Mystery of Clint Eastwood is much the same.&nbsp; Attempting to describe this paragon of asskicking in a single article might create such a gravitational force of insane badassitude that the entire internet might collapse upon itself and catapult the planet back into a new Dark Age, so instead I will break this modern-day pillar of face-smashing crotchstompery down into three separate articles encompassing the Holy Trinity of Eastwood, a metaphysical suckerpunch to the kidneys with a spiked gauntlet that revolves around three of the top ten most badass movie characters ever invented in the history of the universe - \"Dirty\" Harry Callahan, The Man With No Name, and The Outlaw Josey Wales.&nbsp; I\'ll begin with my personal favorite, because this is my website and I do whatever I want.</p>\r\n<p>Josey Wales was just a regular old dude, minding his own business on a Missouri farm in the middle of Butt-Fuck Egypt until one day his family got fucked the shit up by a group of punk-ass Yankee cavalrymen known as the Kansas Redlegs.&nbsp; The Redlegs were a bunch of fucking assholes who got a boner out of torching shit for no reason at all, but when they showed up out of nowhere and brutally morphed the Wales homestead into a giant pile of charred ash, smashed Josey in the face with a shovel, kicked his kid down a well and carried off his wife, they apparently failed to realize that they were screwing with the wrong motherfucker.&nbsp; Little did they know that Josey Wales was a fucking hardass only capable of feeling two emotions - Apathy and Anger - and he was about to go&nbsp;<a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/punisher.html\">Frank Castle</a>&nbsp;on their asses, as well as the asses of several individuals who had no association with the Kansas Redlegs but who just so happened to be standing in the way of his mad, unstoppable quest for vengeance.</p>\r\n<p>Josey immediately joined up with a group of Confederate Missouri guerillas led by a motherfucking madman known as \"Bloody Bill\" Anderson.&nbsp; Now Bloody Bill is a guy who will eventually get an article on this site all to himself, but in order to give you some kind of idea as to what sort of outfit Josey was riding around, with here\'s a fun fact:&nbsp; Bloody Bill once looted the Union-sympathizing town of Centralia, burned the supply depot to the ground and stole all the whiskey he could get his hands on.&nbsp; When a Union train rolled into town to investigate, he stopped the train, robbed everybody, gunned down twenty-three Union officers in cold blood, scalped their dead bodies and then hung the scalps from the saddle of his horse.&nbsp; This guy was not the sort of man that you fucked with for any reason ever, and the Missouri guerillas were like combining&nbsp;<a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/khan.html\">Genghis Khan</a>and Jason Vorhees and giving them an assload of guns and beards.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/wales1.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>\"Dyin\' ain\'t much of a livin\', boy.\"</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>After riding around smoking Yankees and wreaking havoc all over the place for a couple years, the American Civil War of Northern Aggression Between the States eventually ended.&nbsp; When an offer of amnesty was extended to Rebel soldiers, most of Wales\' guerrillas surrendered to the Kansas Redlegs, handed over their weapons, and were promptly gunned down where they stood.&nbsp; Josey, who in true badass fashion refused to surrender to anyone for any reason, saw this go down and obviously got super giga-pissed off.&nbsp; He rode into the Union camp, grabbed a Gatling gun and layed waste to an entire company of Redlegs.&nbsp; Then he promptly rode off to safety, heading for the border of Mexico so he could escape retribution for taking out like eight hundred U.S. soldiers in the span of ninety seconds.</p>\r\n<p>During his insane journey, wanted by the government and hunted by pretty much everyone capable of lifting a rifle, the Outlaw Josey Wales rode across the American West taking on comancheros, bandits, bounty hunters, Indians, and everything else with a pulse, taking on hundreds of guys - sometimes ten or twelve at a time - and blasting them all into another zip code with his matching set of 1847 Walker Colt Revolvers.&nbsp; He always carried at least four pistols on him at a time, and he didn\'t hesitate to use them on anybody who fucking pissed him off.&nbsp; Since he was a true badass who only spoke in threats, insults, and withering sarcasm, he only warning you would get it that he would spit a giant disgusting stream of tobacco juice onto the ground - that\'s how you knew it was on.&nbsp; One more word out of your mouth, and Josey was going to quick-draw his pistol, put a round of forty-four caliber ammunition right between your fucking eyes, and go back to drinking whisky and spitting on dogs.</p>\r\n<p>But it wasn\'t not all about busting faces with Josey Wales. He also knew when to be chill with people as well. Throughout his adventures he pulled together people from all different walks of life - Jayhawkers, American Indians, old ladies, cowboys, hookers and hot babes were all united by the ultimate badassitude of Clint Motherfucking Eastwood, joining his crew even though he spent most of the movie telling them to get bent. He brought an entire caravan of people (along with a few cases of whiskey) to Mexico where everybody could hang out, work on a farm, drink margaritas and spend their evening playing the banjo and getting shitfaced, and God help anyone that got in the way of the new life he\'d built for himself and his friends. When the violent natives living near his new home threatened to start beating the fuck out of his friends, Josey didn\'t even blink. He just rode right up to the chief while he was surrounded by thousands of his toughest braves and gave him two options - be cool, or get shot in the fucking face until you die from it. Ten Bears decided to be cool, and from then on the two groups co-existed in peace. When the fucking Redlegs rolled into town trying to jack everything up and piss on Josey\'s parade for a second time, he busted caps in anything that moved and impaled their leader with his own saber. The man didn\'t take shit from anyone, and still stands as the ultimate badass role-model.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><object width=\"425\" height=\"344\" data=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/rj121Frlc2w&amp;hl=en&amp;fs=1\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\"><param name=\"src\" value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/rj121Frlc2w&amp;hl=en&amp;fs=1\" /><param name=\"allowfullscreen\" value=\"true\" /></object></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Links:</span><br /><br /><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Outlaw_Josey_Wales\" target=\"blank\">Wikipedia</a></p>','2008-08-29','63373921623','wales0.jpg','wales - Copy.jpg','Josey Wales','Joined a band of Confederate guerillas to avenge the murder of his wife and son.','\"I always heard there were three kinds of suns in Kansas; Sunshine, sunflowers, and sons-of-bitches.\"'),('Eric Pianka','January 23, 1939','N/A','Siskiyou County, CA, USA','20th-century American Scientist','<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><br /><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Links:</span><br /><br /><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mims-Pianka_controversy\" target=\"blank\">Ebola Controversy</a><br /><br /><a href=\"http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~varanus/obit.html\" target=\"blank\">Personal Website and Obituary</a>Eric Pianka is a respected herpetologist and evolutionary ecologist.&nbsp; He specializes in lizards from all over the world, but he focuses mainly on those from the desert.&nbsp; He also is an important evolutionary theorist.&nbsp; He was one of the originators of the ideas of r-selected and k-selected species (in terms of population characteristics and adaptations to either life history strategy).&nbsp; These were the original reasons why he became a famous ecologist.&nbsp; Later, I will get to why he became infamous.</p>\r\n<p>Eric Pianka&rsquo;s badassitude began when he was a child, growing up in the mountains of Northern California.&nbsp; He lived near an army base, or proving ground or firing range or something, and he and his brother would go collect spent shell casings, and other cool things when the army dudes were finished.&nbsp; One day they found the holy grail of firing range leavings: an intact bazooka shell.&nbsp; As all boys would, they thought this was the coolest shit ever, and went around their neighborhood showing anyone who would look.&nbsp; Eventually they made it home, whereupon he dropped the shell and it exploded his leg off.&nbsp; He was seen by all of his town&rsquo;s doctors, who rebuilt most of his leg - they found all of it but 10cm of tibia.&nbsp; However, that became gangrenous, and he required many more surgeries before he settled back to normal life.&nbsp; However, his leg never fully healed and it led to severe, spinal scoliosis and other assorted problems, in addition to the constant pain he felt walking on a jigsaw leg.&nbsp; He says it would have been better for him in the long run if they had just amputated it.</p>\r\n<p>Many people, when suffering a crippling injury such as this, might give up on the idea of becoming a field biologist.&nbsp; Field biologists often have some of the most physically and mentally challenging work in the world.&nbsp; They must travel to remote locations, deal with poisonous and ferocious animals, all the while obeying the Prime Directive.&nbsp; A badass like Pianka said &ldquo;fuck you&rdquo; to pain and &ldquo;fuck you&rdquo; to danger, and hobbled his broken-ass leg out into the most terrifying deserts in the world with just his walking cane and a big bag for all the reptiles that he planned on catching.&nbsp; He hiked into such deserts as the Great Basin, Mojave, and Sonora Deserts in North America;&nbsp; the Kalahari in Africa;&nbsp; and the Great Victoria Desert in Western Australia.&nbsp; While he was there, he caught the most poisonous snakes on earth and bagged the most pissed off lizards.&nbsp; I am fairly certain he did most of this alone and for weeks at a time with no supplies except a Bowie knife.</p>\r\n<p>So \"The Lizard Man\" built up all this badass cred, and used that to leverage himself a sweet set-up at the University of Texas, Austin.&nbsp; As he settled into life as a college professor, he decided he needed some hobbies.&nbsp; He looked at all the hobbies that his contemporaries were using to pass their free time and realized that none of them lived up to the danger and awesomeness of vast open deserts, so he invented a new one:&nbsp; Bison wrasslin&rsquo;.&nbsp; He went out to the prairies of the western US, and herded his own herd of Buffalo.&nbsp; The biggest and meanest (and thus his favorite) was christened &ldquo;Lucifer&rdquo;.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/pianka1.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>\"We really need to take control and be stewards of this planet rather than conquerors and rapists.\"</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Apparently at this time he also took up falconry and chess.&nbsp; I imagine the reason for this is that he wanted to prove his skills in strategy and controlling the birds in the sky.&nbsp; Not bad.</p>\r\n<p>I was privileged to be a part of a group of scholars who invited Pianka to give a presentation as part of a distinguished lecture series.&nbsp; When researching his past for the visit, I came across his website (which unfortunately has been cleaned up a lot since then).&nbsp; It is a sprawling, endless tangle of cross references and links, which provided hours-worth of great reading, including such topics as a first hand account of his bazooka injury, an obituary that he wrote for himself, should he ever die (not likely, for this tough old bastard) and many, many angry rants against many different entities (including politicians that de-fund the sciences;&nbsp; they should be afraid.&nbsp; Very afraid).</p>\r\n<p>The best thing he has now is a rant against the world population, in which he proposes that the Earth would be better off if he could get a bio-engineer to develop an airborne version of the Ebola virus that would be highly contagious and 90% lethal.&nbsp; He believes that this is the best way to reduce the impact of humans on Earth and thus save the planet.&nbsp; Keep in mind there are two things this man does not do:&nbsp; joke or cry.</p>\r\n<p>He presented a lecture version of this rant to our academic department.&nbsp; As he finished, there was an awed hush amongst the crowd.&nbsp; Here we were an elite group of ecologists and evolutionary biologists that expected one of the founders of the field of evolutionary ecology (and author of a textbook of that name) to give a coherent, logical and scientific talk.&nbsp; Instead he gave an insane rant and advocated for global goddamn pandemic.&nbsp; A great mind seemed to have been lost to madness.&nbsp; This was a major subject of conversation among us even before it made the news.&nbsp; A few months after his visit to my department, he gave apparently the same lecture to the Texas Academy of Sciences.&nbsp; The erupting controversy was broadcasted widely among the creationist and anti-science crowd as an example of the way Godless scientists think and behave.&nbsp; Pianka did not back down, however, despite being reported to Homeland Security by his critics and having his name dragged through all kinds of shit-mud by the ass-hats at Fox and Friends and the like.&nbsp; He stood right up to their ugly faces and told them that he meant it and that he hoped they were the first infected.</p>\r\n<p>Eric Pianka is a tough old bastard who didn&rsquo;t let the obliteration of his leg stop him from kicking the asses of all the reptiles in the desert.&nbsp; He is now a crazy old lunatic who advocates global pandemic.&nbsp; He is the most badass scientist I have ever met.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><br /><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/pianka2.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"15\" /></p>\r\n<table style=\"width: 500px;\" align=\"center\">\r\n<tbody>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td><span>\"You need to hone your survival skills.&nbsp; The first thing you should do when you go home tonight is get a real tarp, one that\'s made out of canvas that\'s waterproof.&nbsp; Don\'t get one of those dumb plastic ones - they deteriorate too fast.&nbsp; Start packing it with the absolute necessities that you think you have to have for life.&nbsp; That would include a blanket and some sharp knives and some string and some twine.&nbsp; I\'m not talking toothpaste.&nbsp; I\'m not talking a lot of things.&nbsp; Wrap it up and figure out how you can carry it on your own two shoulders because you are not going to be able to take public transport or drive your car when the time comes.&nbsp; Then you want to get as far away as you can from any other human being, and try to snare a rabbit, if there is still a rabbit out there.&nbsp; I can give you some other tips on your survival kit, but I don\'t have time.\"</span></td>\r\n</tr>\r\n</tbody>\r\n</table>\r\n<p><br /><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Links:</span><br /><br /><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mims-Pianka_controversy\" target=\"blank\">Ebola Controversy</a><br /><br /><a href=\"http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~varanus/obit.html\" target=\"blank\">Personal Website and Obituary</a></p>','2008-08-22','823069124272','pianka.gif','pianka - Copy.gif','Eric Pianka','Field biologist who specializes in desert reptiles, buffalo, and falconry; and when he\'s not wrestling deadly animals he\'s working on his theories on human population control.','\"We are doomed.  The microbes are going to get us.  We are a great big immerging substrate just waiting for microbes to grow on us, and even though we are still homo sapiens — you know what sapiens means, it means smart — I\'d say we\'re not.  I\'d say we\'re dumb because we\'re letting our population grow just like bacteria grow on an agar plate until they\'ve reached the limits;  and that\'s dumb.\"'),('Tiberius Caesar','November 16, 42 BC','March 16, 37 AD','Rome','Ancient Roman Politician','<p>Tiberius\' parents were about as well off as a Roman family could be, kind of like a Classical Age version of the Kennedys, only without the terrible accents.&nbsp; His father, Tiberius Claudius Nero, had not only fought with Julius Caesar, but was also elected Praetor, meaning he was directly beneath the&nbsp;<a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/augustus.html\">Emperor Augustus</a>&nbsp;himself.&nbsp; Tiberius\' mother was the sort of social-climbing debutante bitch who couldn\'t handle her man being second best, however, so she quickly divorced that worthless piece of crap and married Augustus.&nbsp; So not only was Tiberius born with a silver spoon in his mouth, but thanks to his gold-digging mom, he upgraded to one made of solid diamond-encrusted platinum.&nbsp; Augustus himself didn\'t have any sons, so he adopted Tiberius and his brother Drusus.&nbsp; Why not?&nbsp; Someone had to run the show after Augustus croaked.&nbsp; As the son of the Emperor, Tiberius quickly became that spoiled little rich brat who received everything he wanted, who never got in trouble, and who everybody completely fucking hated.</p>\r\n<p>Tiberius was pretty much utterly worthless until he got married to Vipsania Agrippina, the daughter of one of Augustus\' BFFs.&nbsp; Now that he had a wife, a studio apartment, etc., Tiberius decided that he might want to actually do something with his life instead of sitting around watching Maury, scratching his balls, thinking about how great he is, and eating handfuls of beef jerky right out of the bag.&nbsp; He took command of some badass Legions, marched north, and yadda yadda yadda beat the hell out of the Germans and the Gauls and discovered the source of the Danube River.&nbsp; No biggie.&nbsp; Whatever.&nbsp; After this display of badassery Augustus had such a boner for this guy that he couldn\'t just settle for having him married to one of his friend\'s daughters, so the Emperor hooked Tiberius up with his own daughter, Julia the Elder.&nbsp; Hey, I guess it\'s not really incest if you\'re adopted (not that they would fucking care anyways).&nbsp; Things were still up in the air as to who was going to run Rome after the Emperor beefed it, and the last thing the Romans wanted was another bloody civil war or the clusterfuck that happened when&nbsp;<a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/alexander.html\">Alexander</a>&nbsp;died and the diodachi said that all his forts were belong to them.&nbsp; Now that Tiberius was not only Augustus\' son, but was also his son-in-law (can I stress enough how messed up this is?) he was a shoo-in for the nomination.&nbsp; Everything was coming up roses for this spoiled douchebag.</p>\r\n<p>There was only one problem, though - Tiberius wanted nothing to do with it.&nbsp; Here\'s how it went down in the Julian household:</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<blockquote>\r\n<blockquote><span style=\"color: #0000cc;\"><strong>Augustus:</strong></span>:&nbsp; Oh, Tiberius, you sure are swell.&nbsp; Please run Rome when I\'m gone.\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000;\"><strong>Tiberius:</strong></span>&nbsp; Whatever dad.&nbsp; I\'ll take care of that about the same time I learn to properly fucking conjugate the verb possumus in the pluperfect.&nbsp; Leave me alone.</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #0000cc;\"><strong>Augustus:</strong></span>:&nbsp; Hahaha, what a sense of humor on this kid.&nbsp; Say, isn\'t your birthday next month?&nbsp; Why don\'t I give you your present now.&nbsp; Here.</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000;\"><strong>Tiberius:</strong></span>&nbsp; What the hell is this?</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #0000cc;\"><strong>Augustus:</strong></span>:&nbsp; Surprise!&nbsp; You now control half of the Roman world.&nbsp; Take command of my Legions in Greece, conquer the rest of the world, come back a triumphant hero and the people will love you as Emperor when I\'m gone.</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000;\"><strong>Tiberius:</strong></span>&nbsp; Yeah, well Caius got socks for his birthday.&nbsp; Do you know how well socks go with sandals?&nbsp; God, why couldn\'t you have gotten me a cool gift like that?</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #0000cc;\"><strong>Augustus:</strong></span>:&nbsp; What a kidder.&nbsp; My little jokester.&nbsp; Haha.</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000;\"><strong>Tiberius:</strong></span>&nbsp; Screw you, dad.&nbsp; I\'m gonna go get drunk and nail bitches on Rhodes.&nbsp; Give your shitty gift to Drusus or something.&nbsp; I\'m Audi 5000.</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #0000cc;\"><strong>Augustus:</strong></span>:&nbsp; WTF?</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n</blockquote>\r\n</blockquote>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/tiberius1.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>So, our hero-ish figure went to the luxurious isle of Rhodes, partied with floozies, snorted X off of dead hookers and got really pissed at his wife for not being OK with them having an \"open relationship\".&nbsp; He pretty much gave the finger to the prospect of becoming Emperor (and thereby doing an honest day\'s work just once in his entire lifetime), and moved out of town to do whatever the fuck he wanted.&nbsp; Meanwhile, back in Rome, Augustus\' grandsons both died.&nbsp; The Emperor was really fucking old at this point and was scrambling around looking for someone to take over his gig when he died.&nbsp; Tiberius\' scheming mother convinced everyone that he would make a good heir to the throne, and right before the old man peaced out, he named you know who as his replacement.&nbsp; Tiberius still didn\'t want it.&nbsp; He tried to convince the Senate to only give him a part of the Empire to rule, a request that probably involved quite a bit of gesturing towards his crotch, but they insisted.&nbsp; He finally accepted, but that didn\'t mean he had to actually do anything.</p>\r\n<p>Tiberius took a laissez-faire approach to Emperorship.&nbsp; He didn\'t pay the armies.&nbsp; They mutinied and someone else took care of the rebellion.&nbsp; When this someone, his nephew Germanicus, came back to Rome as a hero, the new Emperor sent the young man to the eastern frontier and then had him killed just to make sure his free ride would stay intact.&nbsp; Bored with being Emperor, Tiberius moved out to the resort island of Capri to relax in the villas he owned there.&nbsp; One of his head honchos, a dude named Sejanus, took advantage of the Emperor\'s absence and started picking up the slack around Rome.&nbsp; Tiberius seemed pretty appreciative of his friend lending a helping hand and started referring to him as his equal.&nbsp; Sejanus, being the little ass-kisser that he was, basked in the compliments and kept running the Empire as if it were his own, and Tiberius loved him for it.</p>\r\n<p>Until he got pissed off, that is. Tiberius called Sejanus on the phone:</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<blockquote>\r\n<blockquote><span style=\"color: #00cc00;\"><strong>Sejanus:</strong></span>&nbsp; Hello?\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000;\"><strong>Tiberius:</strong></span>&nbsp; Hey, CJ, it\'s TC.&nbsp; What\'s up?</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #00cc00;\"><strong>Sejanus:</strong></span>&nbsp; It\'s like 4 in the morning man, what\'s your problem?</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000;\"><strong>Tiberius:</strong></span>&nbsp; Just got done with a drunken orgy, wanted to see how things are going for you?</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #00cc00;\"><strong>Sejanus:</strong></span>&nbsp; Fine.&nbsp; Just got done paying off the debt you built up from all your coke parties.</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000;\"><strong>Tiberius:</strong></span>&nbsp; Cool.&nbsp; You know what, you\'re great.&nbsp; Seriously.&nbsp; You should get a medal or something.</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #00cc00;\"><strong>Sejanus:</strong></span>&nbsp; I\'m just doing your job, Tiberius.&nbsp; Someone has to.</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000;\"><strong>Tiberius:</strong></span>&nbsp; I know - I\'m sure as hell not going to.&nbsp; Hey, tell you what, after work tomorrow, you go to the Senate and I\'ll make them read a list of good things about you, absolutely free.</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #00cc00;\"><strong>Sejanus:</strong></span>&nbsp; Well, I guess you do owe me.&nbsp; I was kind of disappointed with the last 400 statutes you built in my honor.</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000;\"><strong>Tiberius:</strong></span>&nbsp; Hey, it\'s the least I can do, man.&nbsp; I gotta go though.&nbsp; TTYL.</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #00cc00;\"><strong>Sejanus:</strong></span>&nbsp; Bye.&nbsp; &ndash;click- Jackass.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n</blockquote>\r\n</blockquote>\r\n<p>Sejanus walked into the Senate the next day and had a bunch of nice things said about him... then a bunch of mediocre things... then some terrible things... and by the time the senate was done reading Tiberius\' e-mail, they all thought Sejanus was sexing all of their wives, killing all of their sons, and stealing all of their money.&nbsp; On top of that, he didn\'t recycle, only used Styrofoam cups, and drove a crappy, environmentally-unfriendly car that only got like five miles to the gallon.&nbsp; Almost immediately he was fucking strangled to death, kicked down the steps of the forum and his corpse was left to rot and be poked at by hobos in a dirty gutter somewhere.&nbsp; Meanwhile, Tiberius was in a hammock in Capri with a cask of expensive wine on one side of him and a couple dozen beautiful ladies on the other.</p>\r\n<p>Even though he was a total bastard, Tiberius was badass because he was a fucking gangster.&nbsp; He wasn\'t crazy, like Al Pacino in&nbsp;<em>Scarface</em>&nbsp;or Joe Pesci in&nbsp;<em>Goodfellas</em>&nbsp;- overachievers who went balls-out all the fucking time and ended up in an early grave.&nbsp; No, Tiberius did absolutely none of the work and got all of the benefits.&nbsp; He was more like Marlon Brando as Don Corlione in&nbsp;<em>The Godfather</em>.&nbsp; Just because of who he was, he got whatever he wanted, did whatever he wanted, and had sex with whatever he wanted.&nbsp; He ruled most of the known world while barely lifting a finger, spent all day eating fermented grapes on top of piles of money and women, and utterly fucking destroyed anybody who displeased him or even remotely appeared to be a threat to his power.&nbsp; True badasses know to dominate their subjects with an iron fist, but to do it from their couches, surrounded by plasma screen HDTVs and so many hot naked drunk babes that it makes the&nbsp;<em>Girls Gone Wild</em>&nbsp;series look like a recruiting film for Mormon missionaries.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/tiberius2.gif\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><span>BIG PIMPIN\'</span></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><span><br /></span></p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\" align=\"center\"><span><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Links:</span><br /><br /><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiberius\" target=\"blank\">Wikipedia</a></span></p>','2008-08-15','424875426215','tiberius.jpg','fcphoto.png','Emperor Tiberius Caesar','Way too cool to handle the task of running the Roman Empire, so instead he partied all over the empire, drinking and having orgies the Roman way.',''),('Jesse Owens','September 12, 1913','March 31, 1980','Oakville, AL, USA','20th-century American Athlete','<p style=\"text-align: left;\" align=\"center\">Being a black man in the United States in the 1930s was about as much fun as having your nuts smashed shut in a vice grip while creepy leprechauns throw horseshoes at you and insult your virility.&nbsp; There was little opportunity for any social or financial advancement, few chances to improve your station in life, and the time-honored American Traditions of rampant unabashed racism and segregation forever were still incredibly&nbsp;popular with dumbass white people in pretty much every corner of our great country.&nbsp; In this atmosphere of hatred, ignorance, and general dumbassitude, Jesse Owens, the grandson of a slave and the son of a sharecropper (the term used to refer to slaves in the 30s), went from being an impoverished gas station attendant to become an Olympic legend, an American hero, and a fucking badass who overcame a shitstorm of adversity to shove his foot up Hitler\'s ass and prove to the world that he was the greatest athlete alive.</p>\r\n<p>Owens first exploded onto the national scene like an atomic bomb of awesome when he tied the world record in the 100-meter dash as a lowly high school student in 1933.&nbsp; In college, he continued to be fucking faster than a sportscar with a racing stripe and flames painted down the side, winning a record eight NCAA track titles in only two years at Ohio State University.&nbsp; Four national titles in a single meet is still the collegiate record, and Jesse fucking did it&nbsp;<em>twice in a row</em>.&nbsp; He was also tougher than the fucking MCATs - one week after badly injuring his back falling down a flight of stairs, Owens went to the Big Ten Championship meet and set four world records in the span of fucking forty-five minutes.&nbsp; That\'s one world record every ten minutes.&nbsp; Holy shit, in the time it\'s taken me that long to write one and a half paragraphs of text for my shitty website Jesse Owens would have already broken three world fucking records.&nbsp; He was so goddamned fast that at one point in his career he held the world record for every single sprint distance recorded by the IAAF, which, as far as I can tell, is the International Association for Atheletes that run Fucking fast and who are also otherwise awesome.</p>\r\n<p>Despite the fact that he generally made the fastest men on the planet look like liquefied shit running uphill, Jesse was still treated like a second-class citizen in his own hometown.&nbsp; For some dumbshit reason he was never awarded a scholarship at OSU, so he had to work bullshit part-time jobs as a gas station attendant and a shoe repairman to pay his way through school.&nbsp; Thanks to the magic of segregation, when Jesse traveled with the team he wasn\'t even allowed to sleep in the same hotels or eat at the same restaurants as the white athletes, which is total bullcrap.&nbsp; Even though he fucking got the royal shaft-job everywhere he went, Jesse Owens never backed down - he just channeled all of his get-pissed powers into running faster than a cheetah on meth being chased by the boulder from&nbsp;<em>Raiders of the Lost Ark</em>, and proved his ability on the world\'s largest stage - the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/owens2.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /><br /><span>PWND</span></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Adolph Hitler pretty much used the \'36 games as a way of trying to prove to the world that Nazi Germany was really fucking awesome and that the Aryan Race was somehow superior to all other flavors of humanity on the planet.&nbsp; He even went so far as to bar non-Aryans from competing for the German team because they weren\'t honk enough for his tastes and he wanted a team that was so white that other nations would become blind simply by gazing upon them.&nbsp; Hitler also made up fake competitions and started giving Germany gold medals in everything from Road-Building to Sodomy, and you can also be pretty sure that he was also pumping his home-grown Nazi Hate Machine &Uuml;bermenches full of HGH, Lycanthropy, and the same exact mutagen that made the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles so goddamned powerful and able to kung fu the shit out of ninja robots and anthropomorphic livestock.&nbsp; Basically, Jesse Owens was going up against an entire army of Fascist&nbsp;<a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/drago.html\">Ivan Drago</a>s, but he didn\'t even give two rats\' nutsacks.&nbsp; He made Hitler look like a fucking assclown in front of the entire world, exposing his so-called \"Master Race\" for what they were - a bunch of slow-ass white guys that weren\'t fit to hold his jock strap.&nbsp; He won four track and field gold medals at the games, a feat that was remained unequaled for forty-eight years, and by the end of the Olympics even the most sieg heiling bastard Germans were cheering him on.&nbsp; Hell, even Hitler himself waved to him.&nbsp; Owens returned home to a ticker-tape parade down the streets of New York City and was recieved as a national hero.</p>\r\n<p>Unfortunately, most U.S. businesses at that time were run by a bunch of uptight stodgy white guys with bad attitudes and incredibly small dicks, and instead of appearing on a bunch of hilarious SportsCenter commercials or pimping \"Air Jesse\" sneakers to everybody from albino computer software engineers to Kindergardeners, Owens got totally shafted in terms of sweet-ass endorsement deals back in the States.&nbsp; There were no tricked-out Bentleys, no visits to the White House, and no multi-million dollar mansions made out of gold-plated diamonds, but Jesse didn\'t give a flying fuck at a rolling donut - he just made some extra by putting on badass displays of his incredible speed.&nbsp; He was famous for beating thoroughbred racing horses in the 100 meter dash, which is fucking awesome, and he also had a deal with Negro League Baseball where he would come out and race some of the game\'s fastest players.&nbsp; He would spot them ten meters in the hundred meters, and still kick their asses - even though at this point in his life he was a pack-a-day smoker.&nbsp; Once he got too old to make Kentucky Derby champions eat his dust, Jesse had a successful career as a motivational public speaker, served as a goodwill ambassador to India on behalf of the State Department, and won the Presidential Medal of Freedom (the highest civilian award offered by the USA) in 1976.&nbsp; Shit, they even named a street after him in downtown Berlin.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/owens1.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Links:</span><br /><br /><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Owens\" target=\"blank\">Wikipedia</a><br /><br /><a href=\"http://www.jesseowens.com/\" target=\"blank\">JesseOwens.com</a></p>','2008-08-08','470493829112','owens.jpg','owens - Copy.jpg','Jesse Owens','Athlete who gave Hitler a run for his dirty Nazi money during the 1936 Olympic Games.',''),('Tsutsui no J&#333;my&#333; Meish&#363;','11th Century','Unknown','Japan','Medieval Japanese Samurai','<p style=\"text-align: left;\" align=\"center\">When you talk about feudal Japan, most of the discussion about shit being \"awesome\" and \"totally fucking awesome\" is directed towards&nbsp;<a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/musashi.html\">Samurai</a>and&nbsp;<a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/hanzo.html\">Ninjas</a>&nbsp;- two badass professions that have more media attention heaped on them than Brett Favre\'s last bowel movement.&nbsp; What a lot of people don\'t realize is that medieval Japanese Buddhist warrior-monks were seriously fucking harsh.&nbsp; Nowadays, when you think about Buddhism, you picture a bunch of skinny little Asian guys in funny costumes with shaved heads sitting cross-legged in front of a giant stone carving humming to themselves, burning incense, picking daisies and trying not to accidentally crush poor, harmless insects while they\'re in the process of attaining spiritual enlightenment and harmony with the universe.&nbsp; Fuck that.&nbsp; Back in the day, Buddhist warrior-monks were hardcore motherfuckers who lived alone in the mountains, spent all day breaking cinderblocks over their heads, drinking home-made wine, getting it on with concubines, and training in all different forms of martial arts.&nbsp; They played a critical role in Japanese history, often times rushing down from the mountains to beat the shit out of motherfucking samurai warlords who pissed them off by not being \"Buddhist enough\", beating up Christian missionaries, or smashing non-believers into shrapnel with their foreheads.&nbsp; Not even the Emperor was safe - these guys would come down and warn him that if he didn\'t change his policies they would ballnock him into the next galaxy, and if he didn\'t listen to him they would break into his palace at night and assassinate him with their boners.</p>\r\n<p>As a military organization, the warrior-monks were fucking hard as hell.&nbsp; Every major clan in history fought against them, but no matter how many monasteries they burned to the ground, more would just pop right back up again.&nbsp; In the 16th century, they defied the mighty Oda Nobunaga, and he ended up laying seige to the temple at&nbsp;<a href=\"http://www.geocities.com/azuchiwind/monks.htm\">Honganji</a>&nbsp;for&nbsp;<em>ten years</em>&nbsp;before finally capturing it.&nbsp; Shit, even today the Buddhist monks are more hardcore than the U.S. Marine Corps Xtreme Sports Surfing Team - try reading about the fucking&nbsp;<a href=\"http://www.lehigh.edu/~dmd1/holly.html\">Marathon Monks</a>&nbsp;of Mt. Hiei some time.&nbsp; Those guys run around the mountains for 1,000 days straight with only three hours sleep a night.&nbsp; Then they mediate for another 1,000 days in a row.&nbsp; Oh, and that\'s just the initiation ritual.&nbsp; Basically, what I\'m trying to say is that warrior-monks are pretty goddamned badass, and perhaps the most balls-out of these dudes was a guy known as Jomyo Meishu of Tsutsui.</p>\r\n<p>Clad from head-to-toe in black samurai armor with a black scabbard hanging from his sword-belt, a quiver of black-feathered arrows on his shoulder and a well-worn&nbsp;<a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naginata\">Naginata</a>&nbsp;clenched firmly in his hands, the warrior-monk Tsutsui Jomyo Meishu stood on the banks of the Uji River staring out at the horde of samurai on the other side of the raging water.&nbsp; Behind him was his monastery, a place he called home - where he had spent his entire life in training and careful meditation about the nature of badassitude.&nbsp; Tsutsui and his fellow monks had formed up in their battle gear this day to defend their temple - and the Emperor\'s young son, who was hidden in the halls of the monastery - from the blood-soaked katanas of the vengeful Taira Clan samurai.&nbsp; The monks had already pulled up the planks of the bridge over the Uji River, leaving only two narrow support beams not more than six inches in width, thereby making it impossible for the Taira horsemen to ride into the monastery and wreak havoc.&nbsp; But this was only a temporary solution.&nbsp; The Taira would eventually find a way to cross the river, and when they did it would spell the complete fucking destruction of the temple.&nbsp; No, Tsutsui Jomyo Meishu was going to take these fuckers down while he still had a fighting chance.&nbsp; He took two steps forward and called out to his enemy:</p>\r\n<blockquote><span>Let those at a distance listen, and those that are near me see;&nbsp; I am Tsutsui Jomyo Meishu, the worker-monk.&nbsp; Who here dares to fight me, a warrior worth a thousand?&nbsp; Come out, anyone who thinks himself worthy!\"</span></blockquote>\r\n<p>The men on the other side jeered at him, so he pulled out his longbow, nocked an arrow, and let it fly through the throat of one of his enemies.&nbsp; The Taira archers opened fire on the monks, sending seemingly-endless waves of arrows after them, but Jomyo Meishu remained steadfast in his determination.&nbsp; He continued firing like a badass medieval sniper, each arrow finding its mark.&nbsp; Of the twenty-four arrows he launched at the enemy, he killed twelve men and wounded another eleven.&nbsp; Since that only accounts for twenty-three casualties and he fired twenty-four arrows, I\'m assuming that one of the guys in the \"wounded\" column must have actually had&nbsp;<em>both</em>&nbsp;of his eye sockets turned into giant erupting geysers of blood.</p>\r\n<p>As a badass fucking warrior-monk, merely shooting more people than a 1980s Chuck Norris movie only really succeeded in getting Jomyo\'s blood-lust activated, and now he needed to satisfy his honor with some serious hand-to-hand combat.&nbsp; He kicked off his armored boots and ran barefoot across the six-inch beam over the river like a homicidal Olympic gymnast, crossing rapidly without so much as taking a single mis-step.&nbsp; As he reached the far side, he pulled out his weapon and prepared to do battle with the Taira.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/tsutsui1.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Jomyo\'s naginata whirled through the air, dealing death to anyone foolish enough to be standing in his wheelhouse.&nbsp; In a flash of steel, five brave samurai fell into the river, their necks and faces slashed like prices at a discount retail store.&nbsp; Jomyo then ducked out of the way of a mighty sword blow and jammed the pointy part of the spear right through the torso of his attacker.&nbsp; When he attempted to retrieve it, the pole snapped in half.&nbsp; Jomyo then rolled out of the way of another attack, pulled out his sword and waded directly into the throng of samurai that now surrounded him.&nbsp; He bravely fought like a goddamned crazy person, utilising styles such as the cross-cut, the dragonfly reverse, the waterwheel, and probably a bunch of other maneuvers that sound like they should be the names of special moves in some kind of crazy video game.</p>\r\n<p>In a frenzy of blood, death, and Japanese profanity, Jomyo rapidly dispatched another eight warriors.&nbsp; With his fellow warrior-monks now rushing across the remnants of the bridge to assist him, our hero slashed another samurai on the top of his head with his sword, dealing a blow so completely fucking massive that it split the guy\'s head open and shattered the blade in Jomyo\'s hands.&nbsp; Realistically, you\'d think this would have been the end of poor Jomyo, but holy shit - he pulled out his fucking&nbsp;<em>knife</em>&nbsp;and continued fighting.&nbsp; When this last-resort weapon became hopelessly lodged between the plates of his enemies\' armor, he resorted to punches, knee strikes and flying side kicks.&nbsp; Eventually, exhausted and out of weapons, one of Jomyo\'s comerades physically grabbed him and pulled him from the fray.</p>\r\n<p>Even though the inspired warrior-monks were continuing to savagely battle the Taira samurai on the far bank of the river, Jomyo\'s knuckles hurt like a motherfucker and he knew he didn\'t have any more fight left in him.&nbsp; Tired and worn down, he slowly removed his armor.&nbsp; Upon examination, he found sixty-three dents, including five arrows that were still lodged in the metal plates.&nbsp; Jomyo Meishu, the man who had just single-handedly killed twenty-seven men and wounded dozens more, simply laughed, put his priestly garments back on, and walked off the field of battle, quietly chanting Buddhist hymns to himself and he went.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/tsutsui2.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\" align=\"center\"><br /><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Links:</span><br /><br /><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsutsui_Jomyo_Meishu\" target=\"blank\">Wikipedia</a><br /><br /><a href=\"http://books.google.com/books?id=D5Oqj3TsMlUC&amp;pg=PA153&amp;lpg=PA153&amp;dq=jomyo+meishu&amp;source=web&amp;ots=uTmLyhYNuZ&amp;sig=t7ad-e5N-KzFX370XvGTg4jvv3o&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;oi=book_result&amp;resnum=9&amp;ct=result\" target=\"blank\">The Tale of the Heike</a></p>','2008-08-01','783477930833','tsutsui.jpg','tsutsui - Copy.jpg','Jomyo Meishu','Buddhist monk who makes John Woo movies look like C-SPAN sessions, and kicked Taira clan ass in the battle of Uji.',''),('Charles Elwood Yeager','February 13, 1923','N/A','Myra, WV, USA','20th-century American Pilot','<p style=\"text-align: left;\" align=\"center\">If you were to look up the words \"balls-out\" or \"fearless\" in the Great Big Encyclopedia of Ultimate Badassitude, you\'d probably just see a giant picture of Chuck Yeager\'s scrotum.&nbsp; The man was the world\'s premier test pilot for over three decades, literally getting into giant rocket-propelled flying deathtraps with wings, embarking on the most dangerous flights ever attempted, and blasting through the stratosphere at ludicrous speeds so fast that most lesser people would have their brains blast right out the backs of their heads.&nbsp; The man is an aviation legend, a pioneer in the field of \"going as fast as fucking possible just for the sake of being totally awesome\", and a guy who made a living out of giving the Grim Reaper the finger, spitting in his eye, and/or pounding him in the balls with a two-by-four.</p>\r\n<p>Chuck Yeager\'s adventure in badassitude started in 1941 when he got sick of the Axis powers\' bullshit and enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Forces as an aircraft mechanic.&nbsp; Fixing planes and tightening nuts quickly got boring for Yeager, probably because he didn\'t have to spend every waking hour warding off the ominous Black Hand of Death, so he transferred to aviation and became a fighter pilot instead.&nbsp; On just his eighth combat mission Yeager\'s P-51 was shot down over the French countryside, but he didn\'t even give a crap.&nbsp; Chuck joined up with the French Resistance, helped them make some bombs to throw at the Nazis, and eventually escaped back to England.&nbsp; Oh yeah, and he won the Bronze Star for throwing a seriously-wounded American pilot over his shoulder and carrying this dude across the motherfucking Pyrenees Mountains.</p>\r\n<p>Getting shot down by the fucking Krauts only served to get Chuck Yeager really really ripshit pissed off, and he immediately went back and became one of the war\'s few \"Aces in a Day\", blasting the shit out of five German Me-109s in just a couple of hours.&nbsp; Not long after that he won the Distinguished Flying Cross for being one of the first Americans to ever take down a badass Nazi Me-262 jet fighter.&nbsp; During the war, he recorded 13 official aircraft kills over the course of 61 missions, and by the time he was sent back home he had already achieved the rank of Captain.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/yeager2.bmp\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>But shit was just getting started for Chuck Yeager in terms of limitless badassitude and pushing-it-to-the-limit-ness.&nbsp; His experience as both a mechanic and a badass fucking fighter pilot got him attached to the Aeronautical Systems Flight Test Division back in the States, where his chief duty was to test-fly repaired aircraft to make sure they were airworthy - an exercise that was basically one step removed from playing Russian Roulette with an automatic pistol.&nbsp; During his tenure flying around in a bunch of \"hopefully functional\" airplanes, Yeager so greatly impressed his superiors with his amazing ability to not die in a giant flaming inferno that he was selected to test-fly the new rocket-powered experimental Bell X-1 prototype aircraft.&nbsp; This was a pretty big deal, since he was chosen from a field of 125 senior pilots with buttloads of flying experience, and he definitely lived up to the task.&nbsp; Even though he had broken two ribs the day before and was in so much pain that he could barely get the cockpit hatch closed, Chuck Yeager sat behind the controls of this giant flying explosion and prepared to do what no man had ever done before - break the sound barrier.&nbsp; On 14 October 1947 Yeager went completely balls-out full-throttle, hitting Mach 1.07 and becoming the first man to ever travel faster than the speed of sound, proving that it was possible, in fact, to travel that fast without having all of your internal organs disintegrate and turn into a thick disgusting soup (before this, scientists weren\'t so sure).&nbsp; For his amazing fearlessness in the face of probably-certain death, he won the Congressional Silver Medal of Honor.&nbsp; To give you some indication of how fucking huge this accomplishment was, his MoH citation states that it is, \"For consipicuous gallantry and a total disregard for his own personal safety.\"</p>\r\n<p>Awesome.</p>\r\n<p>Some dude broke Yeager\'s air speed record by busting out Mach 2 in 1953, but Chuck wasn\'t the sort of total fucking badass who was going to roll over and die just because someone stole his claim to being the \"Fastest Man Alive.\"&nbsp; No, he sought vengeance pretty much immediately.&nbsp; A mere<em>two months</em>&nbsp;after his record was broken, Chuck Yeager hit Mach 2.44 in a Bell X-1A.&nbsp; He went so fucking completely over-the-top balls-out that immedately after he hit the fastest speed ever recorded, the plane went completely out of control, plummeting 51,000 feet in the span of 51 seconds (!!) but Chuck didn\'t even blink.&nbsp; He just said, \"fuck you plane!\", pulled out of the dive mere feet from the ground, and flew back to safety.</p>\r\n<p>After serving as the United States\' premier test pilot for over nine years Yeager became the first-ever commandant of the USAF Aerospace Research Pilot School, where he trained the first generation of badass NASA astronauts.&nbsp; He also served as an Air Force squadron commander in Europe for a while, and led the 405th Tactical Fighter Wing in the Vietnam War - personally logging 127 combat missions in a B-57 bomber.&nbsp; He retired as a Brigadier General in 1975 and spent much of his free time afterwards working as a consultant for the USAF and NASA.&nbsp; His final flight was in 1997 - the 50th anniversary of breaking the sound barrier - when he hit Mach 1 in an F-15 Eagle at the age of 74.&nbsp; During his decades-spanning career, Chuck Yeager logged over 10,000 hours of flight in 155 different military aircraft and completely re-defined what it meant to be badass, fearless, and balls-to-the-wall all the goddamned time.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/yeager1.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Links:</span><br /><br /><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Yeager\" target=\"blank\">Wikipedia</a><br /><br /><a href=\"http://www.medalofhonor.com/ChuckYeager.htm\" target=\"blank\">MedalofHonor.com</a></p>','2008-07-25','51042864959','yeager.jpg','yeager - Copy.jpg','Chuck Yeager','World War 2 pilot and the first person to ever break the sound barrier, Chuck tested planes, broke speed records, and trained astronauts for the United States for 3 decades. ',''),('Marvin Heemeyer','October 28, 1951','June 4, 2004','Granby, CO, USA','21st-centur American Outlaw','<p>Marvin Heemeyer was a professional welder living in the quiet Colorado town of Granby, just trying to make a living for himself running a small muffler repair shop.&nbsp; Unfortunately, he was also in the business of getting royally fucked over by everyone in town, ranging from the paperboy to the asshats in City Hall who wouldn\'t compromise with him on some crazy fucking wacky zoning issues he was trying to work out.&nbsp; Eventually, after years of petitions, appeals and negotiations that proved about as fruitful as smashing his face into a cinderblock, the bastards at the Granby Zoning Commission basically told Marv that he could go fuck himself gently with a chainsaw.&nbsp; They were going to build a concrete plant adjacent to Heemeyer\'s muffler shop, cut off his business\' sewer line, slap him with a bunch of increasingly-massive fines, and ultimately run his ass out of town on a fucking rail.</p>\r\n<p>But Marvin Heemeyer wasn\'t the sort of mewling pussy coward who was going to sit there and let a bunch of stuffed-suit bastards fuck him over like a little bitch.&nbsp; He was an insane badass motherfucker with an arc welder and a mad desire for vengeance at all costs, and he decided he wasn\'t going to take it anymore.&nbsp; Heemeyer paid his $2,500 fine to City Hall, scribbling the word \"cowards\" in the memo portion of the check.&nbsp; Then he bought a massive bulldozer, sold his business, and spent the next year and a half turning this gigantic piece of construction equipment into the most insanely fucking awesome vehicle ever constructed by human hands:&nbsp; The KILLDOZER.&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>The Killdozer was every bit as badass as its name would imply.&nbsp; First, Heemeyer constructed composite armor for the outside of the Caterpillar - one foot of solid concrete sandwiched between half-inch sheets of unforgiving steel.&nbsp; Since the entire outside of the dozer was encased in an unflinching layer of bazooka-proof armor, he also welded two cameras to the outside of the machine and linked them up to a series of monitors in the cabin.&nbsp; This juryrigged system allowed him to remotely see outside and steer this juggernaut effectively.&nbsp; He placed food, water, air conditioning and life support in the cabin, and also installed gun ports in the front, sides and back of the monstrosity - one with a .50 caliber Barrett M82 sniper rifle, one with a .223 caliber assault rifle, and one with a scoped .308 caliber rifle.&nbsp; He also kept a 9mm pistol in the glove box and a .357 revolver in a holster on his belt.&nbsp; The weapons were all welded into place, and thick sheets of balls-out bulletproof plexiglass were in place to facilitate accurate aiming.&nbsp; Basically this thing was like a badass fucking combination of a&nbsp;<a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/panther.html\">Panther tank</a>, a garbage truck, the antagonist from&nbsp;<em>Maximum Overdrive</em>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/optimusprime.html\">Optimus Prime</a>&nbsp;in truck mode.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/heemeyer3.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Despite having enough guns and ammunition to choke a dozen hippies, Marvin Heemeyer\'s mission wasn\'t one of death.&nbsp; He wanted revenge, sure, and he was going to go about it in the most over-the-top way imaginable, but he gets bonus badassitude points because he wasn\'t going to kill any innocent bystanders in his pursuit of sweet sweet vengeance.&nbsp; He was, however, going to royally fuck up the town of Granby, Colorado in a manner that the residents wouldn\'t soon forget.&nbsp; On the morning of 4 June 2004, the KILLDOZER rolled out from its dark lair and began smashing buildings at full-speed like a giant mechanical wrecking ball made out of nuclear missiles and HGH.&nbsp; Heemeyer\'s hitlist was basically anybody who had ever fucked him over - thirteen buildings ranging from Town Hall to the offices of a newspaper that railed against him were eviscerated by this giant monstrous hulk of self-propelled metal death.&nbsp; Heemeyer fired the built-in rifles at propane tanks and power transformers, trying to get them to explode into some badass Hollywood fireballs and level entire city blocks, but unfortunately there weren\'t any massive raging infernos to be had on this day.&nbsp; According to eyewitnesses, Heemeyer went out of his way to avoid injuring innocent bystanders, but did manage to cause over $7 million in damages to the city during his insane badass rampage.&nbsp; He crushed squad cars, steamrolled trees and obliterated entire buildings.&nbsp; At one point, the police put a gigantic piece of construction equipment out to block Heemeyer\'s path, but the Killdozer just fucking made that shit its bitch, tossing it aside and nearly flipping it on its back like a cheap hooker in the process.</p>\r\n<p>The Killdozer was immune to all forms of small-arms fire, and was highly resistant to explosives.&nbsp; The local police and the Denver SWAT Team fired about 200 rounds of rifle and handgun ammunition at this thing, but all of the bullets harmlessly bounced off of the Killdozer\'s impenetrable metal hide.&nbsp; Flashbangs and frag grenades were chucked at this thing to no effect.&nbsp; Eventually, the machine dropped a tread into the basement of a building it was demolishing and became hopelessly stuck.&nbsp; His rampage effectively over, Heemeyer didn\'t want to give his enemies the satisfaction of capturing him alive, so he capped himself in the dome with the .357.&nbsp; He was the only person killed or wounded during the attack.</p>\r\n<p>It took the cops twelve hours to cut through the armor of the Killdozer and retrieve Heemeyer\'s body.&nbsp; As if that wasn\'t badass enough, there are rumors that at the time Marv popped himself in the head the National Guard was only minutes away from calling in a fucking airstrike on this thing.</p>\r\n<p>Some people would question the badassitude of turning a bulldozer into a tank and then using it to completely demolish an entire city, but deep down I think that everyone has to respect the fact that Marvin Heemeyer wasn\'t going to put up with any more bullshit from anyone.&nbsp; He had been jerked around enough, and he was fucking going to do something about it.&nbsp; Sure, his quest for revenge was a little misguided, but it was also completely fucking awesome, and he made a hell of a fucking statement without hurting anybody but himself.&nbsp; In the end, the desire to \"go that extra mile\" in the pursuit of vengeance is one of the fundamental tenants of ultimate badassitude, and Marvin Heemeyer walks a fine line between being a fucking nutcase and living the American dream of crushing your enemies beneath the treads of your badass fucking awesome home-made tank.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/heemeyer2.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Links:</span><br /><br /><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_Heemeyer\" target=\"blank\">Wikipedia</a><br /><br /><a href=\"http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5139598/\" target=\"blank\">MSNBC News Story</a><br /><br /><a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24n77GgRtrw\" target=\"blank\">YouTube</a><br /><br /><a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Csv0QCAsMYM&amp;feature=related\" target=\"blank\">Killdozer Rides Again!</a></p>','2008-07-14','53070449297','heemeyer.jpg','heemeyer2.jpg','Marvin Heemeyer','After getting dicked up and down by City Hall, Marvin took matters into his own hands and welded together a killdozer (you heard me) to stick it to the man.','\"Sometimes reasonable men must do unreasonable things.\"'),('Hiroo Onoda','March 19, 1922','January 17, 2014','Kainan, Wakayama Prefecture, Japan','WWII Japanese Soldier','<p style=\"text-align: left;\" align=\"center\">Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda of the Japanese Imperial Army\'s Intelligence Division was sent to the Philippine Island of Lubang in 1944 with a top-secret mission - to stay out of sight, collect information on Allied troop movements on the island, launch guerilla attacks, disrupt the enemy and generally just be completely fucking nuts.&nbsp; He took this mission so seriously that he ended up fighting for his life well after everyone else had called it a day and went home.&nbsp; If the delicate line between insanity and badassitude is measured by determination, then Lt. Hiroo is probably high in the running for being one of the most badassed men of World War II.</p>\r\n<p>Onoda and his small, elite four-man reconnaissance team were initially tasked with exploding the airfield and pier on the island, but not long after they deployed the entire Philippines was overrun by American forces.&nbsp; Onoda\'s men managed to elude capture and retreat back into the dense jungles on the outskirts of the island, where they were forced to live off of the land to avoid detection by enemy scouts and patrols looking to shove their guns up some Japanese asses.&nbsp; From this super-secret base of death, destruction and mayhem, Onodo and his men conducted lightning raids against the occupying armies, engaging in numerous gun battles with U.S. troops garrisoned on the island as well as the local Filipino police force.&nbsp; They survived on rice, coconuts and bananas foraged from the underbrush, and occasionally made daring night raids into town to steal beer and other supplies from peoples\' outdoor fridges.</p>\r\n<p>For a year and a half Onoda and his team avoided detection and fought sporatic skirmishes with the local garrison, until one day, in August 1945, a plane flew over the jungle dropping hundreds of leaflets.&nbsp; The leaflets basically said, \"Hey jackasses, the war is over.&nbsp; Come out and surrender already.\"&nbsp; Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda immediately believed this to be a ploy by the Allies to trick him and his men into surrendering their positions.&nbsp; The citizens of Japan were all being trained to fight to the death and to protect the homeland and the Emperor at all costs - how could the Imperial Army have possibly surrendered so quickly?!&nbsp; It was inconcievable.&nbsp; No, Lt. Hiroo had strict orders to stay put until he heard from a superior officer, and that\'s exactly what he was going to do.&nbsp; Unfortunately for him (and the people living on the island of Lubang), it appears that the Japanese High Command forgot to copy Onoda on the memo that he needed to stop rigging transport ships with explosives and indiscriminately shooting anything that moved.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/onoda1.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>For years these brave, misguided souls hung out in the jungle, kicking peoples\' asses and executing balls-out guerilla raids against the local police station.&nbsp; The Japanese and Filipinos left numerous pamphlets, leaflets and newspaper clippings indicating the end of the War in the Pacific, but Hiroo wasn\'t in the mood to hear these stupid bullshit fucking lies.&nbsp; He continued to stab faces and lead his men in their mission to the Empire.&nbsp; In 1950, one of his men decided he was sick of sleeping in the jungle and eating fucking coconuts three times a day, and he surrendered to the Filipino authorities.&nbsp; Four years after that, the second man in Hiroo\'s unit went down, killed in a particularly nasty gun battle with local police.&nbsp; By 1959, Lieutenant Hiroo\'s military status in Japan was changed from \"Missing in Action\" to \"Killed in Action\", because to the Japanese military, it seemed perfectly reasonable to pronounce him dead - especially since they hadn\'t fucking heard from him in fifteen years.</p>\r\n<p>Meanwhile, back on the island of Lubang, Onoda and his final surviving team member were still strategizing plans of attack, collecting critical reconnaissance data, eating more raw bananas than a soccer team comprised entirely of ravenous monkeys, robbing convenience stores for food, and firing their bolt-action rifles at pretty much anybody they deemed an \"enemy combatant\".&nbsp; In 1972, the final member of Onoda\'s squad was killed by the cops.&nbsp; Hiroo continued to evade \"enemy patrols\" sent to look for him (some of which were actually teams of Japanese diplomats sent to bring this fucking guy back to the mainland) and fight occasional gun battles with enemy scouts.&nbsp; He was, quite literally, an \"Army of One\" - kind of like Rambo or&nbsp;<a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/matrix.html\">John Matrix</a>, only instead of killing terrorists or Commie pinko bastards he was shooting more cops than the Italian Mafia.</p>\r\n<p>Finally, in 1974 a Japanese college student named Norio Suzuki came across Lieutenant Hiroo\'s hideout deep in the impenetrable Filipino jungle.&nbsp; Norio told Hiroo that the war was over, but Hiroo refused to believe it.&nbsp; He told this kid that he refused to surrender until he recieved orders from a superior officer.&nbsp; Norio Suzuki promptly returned to Japan, found Hiroo\'s former commander (he was now an old man working in a bookstore), and the Japanese government flew this dude out to tell Onoda that World War II had been over for 29 years.</p>\r\n<p>On 10 March 1975, Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda came out of the jungle wearing his immaculately-kept full military dress uniform and surrendered his sword to Filipino President Ferdinand Marcos.&nbsp; During his time on the island he and his men had killed over 30 Filipinos and Americans and wounded over 100 more people, but given the extenuating circumstances he was officially pardoned for his crimes.&nbsp; Onoda returned to the island of Lubang in 1996 to donate id=\"mce_marker\"0,000 to local scholarship funds, but as you can probably imagine the people of the Philippines pretty much completely fucking hate this guy\'s guts.</p>\r\n<p>Hiroo Onoda is awesome because he\'s also completely fucking insane.&nbsp; This guy fought World War II for 30 fucking years, which is a claim that not even some of the most hardcore fucking WWII re-enactors can make.&nbsp; He survived in the jungle for three decades with no supplies, no reinforcements, and no official orders, he refused to give up even when pretty much everybody from the Emperor to his own mother were telling him to come home, and he basically represents the physical embodiment of the mantra \"refuse to lose\".&nbsp; As far as I\'m concerned, that\'s pretty badass.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/onoda2.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\" align=\"center\"><br /><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Links:</span><br /><br /><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroo_Onoda\" target=\"blank\">Wikipedia</a><br /><br /><a href=\"http://history1900s.about.com/od/worldwarii/a/soldiersurr.htm\" target=\"blank\">About.com Article</a></p>','2008-07-17','11736356862','onoda.jpg','onoda - Copy.jpg','Hiroo Onoda','After refusing to believe that the Second World War was over, Hiroo continued to collect intel on Allied troop movement in the Philippines until 1974.',''),('Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette','September 6, 1757','May 20, 1834','Chavaniac, France','18th-century French General','<p>Americans fucking love to talk shit about France and how we bailed their asses out after Germany kicked the holy living bejeezus out of them in World War II, but we tend to forget that if it wasn\'t for France - and particularly a motherfucker known as the Marquis de Lafayette - we here in the States would all still be speaking with crazy unintelligible British accents and eating a whole lot of spotted dick on our buttered crumpets fish and chips.</p>\r\n<p>Lafayette\'s dad was exploded by a cannonball while battling the English, so you can be pretty fucking sure that the Marquis didn\'t have any love for the Brits.&nbsp; Eager to exact vengeance as soon as he possibly could, he enlisted in the French Army on his 16th birthday.&nbsp; By 19, he was already a Captain in the dragoons - one of the most badass cavalry units in the world at the time.&nbsp; To be promoted through the ranks so quickly (and at such a young age) is evidence of the fact that Lafayette didn\'t fuck around about anything and wasn\'t a man to be messed with.</p>\r\n<p>It was around this time that the American Revolution broke out.&nbsp; Lafayette was so pumped up about kicking British asses and helping the oppressed colonists battle for their freedom that he immediately put together a company of soldiers to sail across the Atlantic and get busy with the asskickings.&nbsp; Unfortunately, France was being total prudes at the beginning of the war, and Lafayette - being a member of French royalty - was officially forbidden from committing any of his soldiers to the American Revolution.&nbsp; Lafayette responded to this order by text-messaging his superiors a picture of his taint.&nbsp; Dudes were sent to arrest him and stop him from single-handedly dragging France into the Revolutionary War, but Lafayette escaped them by disguising himself and 11 of his closest homeboys as FedEx International couriers.&nbsp; During the middle of the night, this small crew left on a tiny ship and sailed two months across the Atlantic, where they were constantly pursued by British ships determined to keep them from their destination.</p>\r\n<p>Lafayette and his crew busted onto American soil on 13 June 1777 and immediately started looking for faces to smash.&nbsp; It wasn\'t long before the Marquis met up with fellow badass&nbsp;<a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/washington.html\">George Washington</a>, and the two quickly became the Thelma and Louise of kicking British ass.&nbsp; When the Colonial government told Lafayette they didn\'t really have any money to pay him or his soldiers, Lafayette basically told them, \"fuck it dudes, I\'m fucking loaded already, and giving me the opportunity to jam my cavalry sabre into motherfuckers\' faces is all the payment I need!\"&nbsp; He was promoted to Major-General, attached to part of Washington\'s staff, and immediately set out to sever some crotches.&nbsp; At the Battle of Brandywine in 1777 he was capped in the leg while leading his men in a balls-out charge, and at the Battle of Barren Hill later that year Lafayette\'s forces managed to stop the British Army from capturing Valley Forge.&nbsp; Another time, he was ambushed by a much larger force of British soldiers who were trying to capture and execute him as a spy, but Lafayette managed to fight his way out of the situation, probably by head-butting twenty guys so hard that their brains exploded out the backs of their heads and then kneeing another ten guys in the balls with enough force to crack a coconut.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/lafayette1.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p>Despite all of his face-smashing asskicking prowess, perhaps the Marquis de Lafayette\'s greatest contribution to the American Revolution was his ability to get the French Crown off its ass to help bail our shit out.&nbsp; Lafayette pretty much sent e-mails to the King every day telling him to send money and supplies to fund the war effort, and most of the time they gave in just to get him to shut the fuck up about it.&nbsp; He rallied his gang on the EAST SIIIIIIDE of the Atlantic, contributed $200,000 of his own money to the cause, and eventually convinced the French to join in on all the sweet face-melting action in the U.S. of A.&nbsp; Once France officially declared war on England, Lafayette briefly returned home to organize the fleet and dispatch&nbsp;<a href=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/%E2%80%9Djohnpauljones.html%E2%80%9D\">John Paul Jones</a>&nbsp;on his awesome mission to sack towns on the British coast, but he returned to the colonies just in time to help organize the defense of Virginia.&nbsp; At only 21 years of age, Lafayette participated in the Yorktown Campaign and helped the United States gain its independence from Great Britain.</p>\r\n<p>After the war, Lafayette thought that sweet, delicious freedom was so goddamned awesome that he helped author the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citizens &ndash; one of the documents that kicked off the French Revolution.&nbsp; During his own country\'s struggle for liberty, he was the commander of the French National Guard, and he advocated religious tolerance, popular representation, trial by jury, emancipation of slaves and freedom of the press &ndash; the same sweet-ass ideals he kicked ass for in the colonies.&nbsp; Unfortunately, shit got out of hand pretty quickly when the psycho Jacobins started chopping everyone\'s head off with the guillotine, and Lafayette was eventually thrown into an Austrian prison.&nbsp; He would sit for five years until finally being busted out by Napoleon, a man who knew a good badass when he saw one.&nbsp; Lafayette spent the final years of his life living in a gigantic fucking mansion, where he would sometimes shelter refugees trying to escape execution at the hands of murderous revolutionaries.&nbsp; He died in 1834.</p>\r\n<p>The Marquis de Lafayette is probably one of the only Frenchmen to ever be declared a national hero in the United States - a statistic that is badass in and of itself.&nbsp; Roughly 40 cities in America are named after him, he has numerous statues across the country, and he is fondly remembered as a motherfucker who helped us gain our independence from our oppressive British masters.&nbsp; He was also a goddamned badass who kicked nuts, refused to let anybody stand in the way of his mission to bring freedom to the common man, and bravely fought for liberty and equality - even when it didn\'t pay dick.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/lafayette2.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Links:</span><br /><br /><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marquis_de_Lafayette\" target=\"blank\">Wikipedia</a></p>','2008-07-04','122491921189','lafayette.jpg','lafayette - Copy.jpg','Marquis de Lafayette','With a major axe to grind on England\'s face, Lafayette joined forces with George Washington during the American Revolution to help cock slap the British.','\"He is sensible, discreet in his manners, has made great proficiency in our language, and from the disposition he discovered at the battle of Brandywine possesses a large share of bravery and military ardour.\"\r\n\r\n-George Washington'),('James Macrae','1677','July 1744','Ayrshire, Scotland','18th-century Scottish Sailor','<p>Few things made 18th century sailors blast a load of grapeshot into their trousers with greater ferocity than the sight of a giant ominous black flag fluttering in the breeze from the mast of a badass warship teeming with unshaven, hook-handed, face-slashing, ball-stomping Pirate ass destroyers. So you can probably imagine what was going through the mind of James Macrae, Captain of the East India Company ship Cassandra when he saw not one, but two Jolly Rogers pulling into the port on Johanna Island and floating towards him on a warm afternoon in August 1720. Macrae and his crew had pulled into port on tiny island off the coast of Madagascar looking to replenish their stores of food, casks of water, and kegs of top-shelf Bacardi, but now they all of a sudden found themselves neck-high in crap without their inflatable water wings.</p>\r\n<p>Macrae hailed another East Indiaman that was in the port, the Cassandra\'s sister ship Greenwich, but the coward asshole Captain of the Greenwich was like, \"so long fuckfaces, I\'m out of here&hellip; enjoy having your colon annihilated. See you in Hell.\" Macrae screamed untold obscenities at the Greenwich, even going so far as to fire a volley at her while she ran for her life like a little bitch, but she evaporated in a cloud of smoke like something out of a goddamned Scooby-Doo re-run.</p>\r\n<p>Cassandra now found herself boxed in by two of the Golden Age of Piracy\'s most successful cutthroats. Fancy, commanded by Edward England, and Victory under Captain John Taylor. Neither of these men were particularly known for being real-life analogues of Barney the Dinosaur, a detail you could probably divine from the fact that they were both murderous fucking pirates who would just as soon pull out your eyes with a claw hammer than piss on you. Macrae and his crewmen weren\'t exactly hardcore SAS paratroopers with rocket launchers for arms and cybernetic muscle implants allowing them to vault over small dinosaurs with a single ridiculous leap, but they also weren\'t the kind of fucking chumps that going to sit back and let a group of scurvy assholes eviscerate them with cutlasses either. Macrae unflinchingly ordered his men load their cannons, and as soon as Victory was within range Cassandra turned and blasted her with a devastating broadside.</p>\r\n<p>The initial impact of being pounded by dozens of giant balls sent Victory reeling, and the second cannonade from Cassandra blew off part of her main sail. The Pirates dropped twenty sets of oars into the water in an attempt to row their damaged ship close enough to board Macrae\'s vessel, but luckily a third volley of lead death blew those oars into splinters. Even this didn\'t deter the pirates from their mission to slit the throats over every sailor aboard Cassandra, and the now-crippled Victory continued to limp towards them like a shambling undead zombie. Around this time Fancy pulled into range and released a volley of her own at Cassandra. Fragments of the deck hurtled throughout the ship with deadly velocity, killing several of Macrae\'s men as they furiously attempted to reload their weapons. Before Cassandra could even wheel about for a broadside on this new opponent, Victory had pulled in close enough to unleash a bombardment of her own. Cassandra was getting smacked with more balls than a passed-out sorority girl.</p>\r\n<p>For over two hours Macrae traded fire with Fancy and Victory as these mighty sailing ships pummeled the fucking crap out of each other relentlessly, but the situation aboard Cassandra was becoming increasingly desperate. Her surviving crewmen were now pouring musket as well as cannon fire at the rapidly-closing Pirate ships, but casualties were quickly mounting, and Captain Macrae knew that his men wouldn\'t stand a chance in close-quarters combat with those bloodthirsty, heavily-armed, battle-hardened motherfuckers. He ordered his ship to sail full-speed towards the shore, where his men could hopefully escape into the dense jungles on the island\'s interior, but Captain England of the Fancy was quick to realize what Macrae was attempting. Fancy moved to take the angle and cut Cassandra off, but she struck a shoal and became lodged in the sand. Cassandra attempted to go around Fancy, but she too became grounded on a sandbar, wedged into the surf mere feet from the Pirate vessel. From point-blank range, the two vessels exchanged several brutal broadsides, causing more structural damage than an intoxicated Kool-Aid Man. Ammunition was running low on board Cassandra, and even though he had taken a musket ball off the skull and was bleeding profusely from a massive head wound, Macrae still had his men loading the cannons with chains, nails, broken beer bottles, handfuls of rifle bullets, and anything else they could find to shoot at Fancy.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/macrae1.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p><br /><br /></p>\r\n<p>Both ships were almost completely destroyed at this point, and now Victory was limping towards the immobilized Cassandra, unleashing volleys of musket fire and shouting intimidating insults about the crew\'s collective mothers. When the Pirates on board Victory threw their hooks over the side of Cassandra and prepared to haul themselves on board, Macrae knew that the battle was lost. He was completely outnumbered by bloodlusted motherfucking pirates, and his surviving crewmen didn\'t exactly resemble the set of Wrestlemania X. He ordered the men to throw a double-load of powder into the cannons, and when they fired their final volley, he used the smoke screen to cover his crew\'s escape. The men scrambled to their ships or swam to shore, where they then ran deep into the tropical jungle of Johanna Island. Jackass Pirates swarmed over the decks of Cassandra, slashing the throats of any wounded or dying men they came across and plundering the cargo hold of nearly id=\"mce_marker\"50,000 worth of precious goods from India and China.</p>\r\n<p>Unfortunately for our hero, Pirates don\'t give up that easily - especially after taking a beating like the one Captain Macrae had ever-so righteously lain upon them. Squads of Pirates combed the jungles of the island searching for the Captain and his men, intent on avenging their fallen brethren. Macrae and his starving, war-weary, wounded crew evaded these patrols, living off the land deep in the inhospitable jungle for ten days before Macrae finally decided to say, \"fuck it. I\'ve had enough of this bullshit.\" Then, in one of the most brazen display of brass balls ever recorded, Captain Macrae put on his full dress uniform and strode towards the coast. A large group of Pirates were standing on the docks, completely astonished that the man they had been searching for so intently was now walking right up to them. The Captain confidently marched right up to the Pirate commanders, stated his name and rank, unflinchingly demanded the return of his ship and cargo, and requested safe passage for himself and his crew.</p>\r\n<p>Obviously the Pirate Captains didn\'t know what the fuck to make of this shit. On one hand, the man standing before them was personally responsible for the deaths of over 100 Pirates while suffering only 37 casualties of his own. Many believed deserved to be tied to the mast and beaten to death with herrings. However, everyone also had to respect the enormous ballsack full of badassitude that Macrae evidently possessed. Luckily as it turned out, quite a few of the Pirates aboard Fancy and Victory had actually once served under Captain Macrae, and they all remembered him as being a fair and just leader who commanded the respect of his men.</p>\r\n<p>Eventually, the Pirates decided that they couldn\'t possibly commit the cold-blooded murder of man with as much badassitude as Captain James Macrae. They kept his ship, but allowed safe passage for his men, returned one-half of the supplies aboard Cassandra, and sailed off, leaving him with the half-destroyed Fancy. Macrae and his men performed some emergency repairs and then set off with little more than a skeleton crew to operate the ship. For 48 days the starving, dehydrated, half-dead men sailed on a barely-seaworthy vessel, finally reaching Bombay in October 1720, where they were greeted as heroes by the local British administration. For his amazing courage, Captain Macrae was promoted by the East India Company and eventually became the Governor of Madras, an extremely prestigious post within the British Empire. While in office he fought corruption, and eventually retired to Scotland an incredibly wealthy man. One year after this battle, Captain John Taylor would use Macrae\'s ship, Cassandra, to capture the single greatest pirate treasure in history &ndash; stealing $2 million worth of diamonds and goods from some jackass Portuguese Count. Taylor, a badass in his own right, would receive a pardon from the Spanish Crown and retire to live a life of luxury in South America.</p>\r\n<p>Captain James Macrae wasn\'t a hardcore cutthroat pirate sailing the seas, plundering enemy ships and slashing Spanish sailors\' guts out with a fishing gaffe made out of gold doubloons - he was a regular man who found unbelievable testicular fortitude at a time when most men would have just urinated themselves and ended up having their severed heads used for decoration by a crew of hardcore Pirate motherfuckers. He didn\'t hesitate to stick it to those Pirate bastards, didn\'t back down when he faced odds that would have left most people cowering, he whipped his group of civilian sailors into a force that inflicted three times the number of casualties they received, and he put forth an amazing display of bravery so balls-out that it bordered on foolhardiness. Totally badass.</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://www.badassoftheweek.com/macrae2.jpg\" alt=\"\" vspace=\"8\" /></p>\r\n<p><br /><br /></p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Links:</span><br /><br /><a href=\"http://www.clan-macrae.org.uk/scotland/articles.cfm?ID=92\" target=\"blank\">Clan Macrae</a><br /><br /><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_England\" target=\"blank\">Edward England\'s Wikipedia Page</a>&nbsp;(There currently isn\'t one for Macrae)</p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\r\n<p><span style=\"color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;\">Suggested Reading:</span><br /><br />Botting, Douglas.&nbsp;&nbsp;<span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">The Pirates</span>.&nbsp; Time-Life Books, 1978.</p>','2008-06-27','354064327180','macrae.jpg','macrae - Copy.jpg','Captain James Macrae','In the face of a dick load of pirates, Macrae fought tooth and nail to keep his crew safe.',''),