Some Cool People from History

By: Thomas Huff

Some of history's most interesting and incredible figures are, for some reason or other, names that you probably don't recognize. There may well be many, but I picked a few here that inspired me. These are truly amazing people with truly amazing stories, and the fact that they've all but been forgotten by the general populous is -- well -- truly amazing. In a bad way.

My first subject is an inventor named Nikola Tesla (1856-1943). To quickly summarize his inventions would be simply to say that he invented the 20th century. Almost everything you use today is, in some way, based on his inventions. He was a world famous superstar in his day, putting his rival, Thomas Edison, to shame time and time again. Edison, in fact, was so embarrassed by Tesla's inventions, that attempting to discredit poor Tesla became nearly a full time job for him. Tesla, out of sheer nothingness, invented things that had no theoretical basis. He was a man so far ahead of his time, that here in the 21st century, he's still ahead of his time. Recently, there have been several new inventions that have been sent to the patent offices only to discover that Tesla patented nearly identical ideas over 100 years ago. Here's another interesting fact -- Guglielmo Marconi won a Nobel Prize in 1911 for inventing the radio, which Tesla patented in 1897. Although the Supreme Court later revoked Marconi's redundant patent, many people still credit Marconi as radio's inventor.

Suggested Reading: Tesla: The Man Out of Time by Margaret Cheney, My Inventions by Nikola Tesla
Suggested Viewings: Tesla: Master of Lightning
Website: Master of Lightning, Tesla's Patents

The most incredible story ever conceived was put together by a man named Ernest Shackleton (1874-1922). He wrote it over the course of just about two years and referred to it, at the time, as -- well -- his diary. Mainly, he called it this because it is the story of himself and his crew during their Antarctic expedition, an expedition that quickly deteriorated into such a catastrophic disaster that it became an impossible success. Shackleton's journey is not just the greatest survival story the world will ever know, it also serves as a lesson in sociology executed to a T.

Suggested Reading: South: The Endurance Expedition by Sir Ernest Shackleton, The Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition by Caroline Alexander
Suggested Viewing: Shackleton's Antarctic Adventure (40 minutes), Shackleton starring Kenneth Braragh (4 hours)
Website: Voyage of Endurance, The Expedition

Preston Tucker (1903-1956) developed a car so far ahead of its time that the large car manufacturers were forced to bribe Congress to shut him down. Much like Shackleton, Tucker was forced to switch course halfway to his goal. He was going to offer a safe, fast, high-quality and inexpensive car to the world. Unfortunately, when the other manufacturers sicced Congress on him, he was forced to change his objective to proving it could be done by finishing the first 50 cars that he had already promised. He did this on the run from the law; that's right, guerrilla style car assembly. He ultimately ended up in court having to prove that the 50 cars, parked outside the courtroom window, existed. Unfortunately, the judge would not allow the jury to look out the window. Tucker would go on to win the battle but he'd already lost the war. However, the 1948 Tucker Torpedo will always remain one of the coolest cars ever built. Tucker's "car of tomorrow" was so well constructed that 47 of his 50 cars still remain operational to this day, more than a half century later.

Suggested Viewing: Tucker: The Man and His Dream
Website: Tucker
*Another great tale of man vs. government is the story of Howard Hughes. However, Howard won his war.

Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?) was a master of macabre and a king of satire. His stories are genuinely creepy, sometimes even scary, always good for a snippet of perfect irony, and, best of all, they're short. And that's where he has his contemporaries, such as Edgar Allan Poe, beat. Bierce's classic, "John Mortonson's Funeral," is less than 700 words. In his dictionary, Bierce defines "novel" as "a padded short story." He believed that you could make each word, in a story, do the work of four merely by selecting precisely the perfect one. So next time you have ten free minutes or so, you might consider getting lost in this eerie 19th century world of candlelit cabins in the forest where strange things tend to happen.

Suggested Reading: The Complete Short Stories of Ambrose Bierce by Ambrose Bierce
Website: Bierce, Master of Macabre