The Book of Lists

AGES OF 25 PEOPLE HAD THEY LIVED TO 2005

1. Dylan Thomas, (1914–53), poet: 91

2. John F. Kennedy (1917–63), president: 88

3. Rocky Marciano (1923–69), boxer: 82

4. Malcolm X (1925–65), civil rights activist: 80

5. Marilyn Monroe (1926–62), actress: 79

6. Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara (1928–67), revolutionary leader: 77

7. Anne Frank (1929–45), diarist: 76

8. Martin Luther King, Jr (1929–68), clergyman and civil rights leader: 76

9. James Dean (1931–55), actor: 74

10. Sylvia Plath (1932–63), poet: 72

11. Elvis Presley (1935–77), singer: 70

12. John Lennon (1940–80), musician: 65

13. Bruce Lee (1940–73), martial artist and actor: 65

14. Otis Redding (1941–67), musician: 64

15. Ritchie Valens (1941–59), singer: 64

16. Jimi Hendrix (1942–70), musician: 63

17. Janis Joplin (1943–70), singer: 62

18. Jim Morrison (1943–71), musician: 62

19. Bob Marley (1945–81), singer: 60

20. Marc Bolan (1947–77), musician: 58

21. John Belushi (1949–82), comedian: 56

22. Douglas Adams (1952–2001), science fiction writer: 53

23. Princess Diana (1961–97), royalty: 44

24. Kurt Cobain (1967–94), musician: 38

25. River Phoenix (1970–93), actor: 35

10 MEN WHO CRIED IN PUBLIC

After Lazarus died, Jesus led his disciples to visit Lazarus’s sisters, Mary and Martha. When the friends of Lazarus agreed to show Jesus the cave where Lazarus’s body was laid, Jesus wept.

On the morning of his inauguration, President Clinton and his family attended services at Washington’s Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal church. As the choir sang hymns, tears rolled down Clinton’s cheeks. Clinton teared up frequently as his years in office continued. Once, when caught on camera laughing and joking at a funeral, Clinton suddenly realised he was being filmed. Having learned ‘the Nixon lesson’, he instantly grew serious and tears came to his eyes. Right-wing TV host Rush Limbaugh played the tape in slow motion repeatedly, sending his studio audience into fits of mirth. Tom Lutz, the author of Crying: The Natural & Cultural History of Tears, observed that crying for male politicians was ‘a 1990s version of kissing babies’.

When David and his troops returned to the city of Ziklag, after being sent home by the princes of the Philistines, they discovered that the Amalekites had invaded the city and taken captive all of the women and children, including David’s two wives. David and his followers immediately ‘lifted up their voices and wept until they had no more power to weep’.

Paul Gascoigne arrived at the Italia 90 World Cup as an up-and-coming young footballer with a gift for the unexpected on the field and a reputation for being, in his manager’s words, ‘as daft as a brush’ off it. He left it a national folk hero. And all because millions of English football fans, glued to their TV sets back home, saw him weep. In the semi-final England were playing old rivals Germany — then still just West Germany. Gazza, whose performances in earlier rounds had helped his team to overcome a poor start to the competition, was again playing like a man inspired. Then tragedy struck. Gascoigne was booked for a reckless tackle. Even if England made it to the final, he would not play in the match. As the realisation hit home, Gazza’s face crumpled and the tears began to flow. England went on to lose the match on penalties but Gazza had been taken to the nation’s hearts and all the sorry antics of his later career have been unable quite to destroy that earlier image of him as a little boy lost on the world football stage.

Hooker, the revered American blues musician, told an interviewer in 1998, ‘You can’t get no deeper than me and my guitar. I open my mouth, and it’s there. I get so deep the teardrops come to my eyes. That’s why I wear my dark glasses, so you won’t see the teardrops.’

Michael Jordan cried openly when, while playing with the Chicago Bulls, he won his first NBA title in 1991 and this drew no comment from the press. hen, when he won his fourth title in 1996, he wept once more, falling onto the floor in a foetal position and sobbing when the game ended. This time TV announcers explained that Jordan’s father had been murdered a year and a half before; the game was played on Father’s Day, and Jordan had made an incredible comeback after retiring for two years.

During a 1977 television interview, Nixon told David Frost, ‘I never cry — except in public.’ Nixon’s most famous public weep occurred in 1952 after he made his notorious ‘Checkers speech’ and Dwight Eisenhower decided to allow him to remain on the Republican ticket as the vice-presidential candidate. Watching this performance, Nixon’s college drama coach, Albert Upton, who had taught the future politician how to cry, remarked, ‘Here goes my actor.’

Presley cried so frequently in public that his nicknames included ‘The Cry Guy’, ‘The Prince of Wails’, ‘The Golden Tearjerker’, ‘The Cheerful Tearful’, ‘Squirt-Gun Eyes’ and ‘America’s Number One Public Weeper’.

Ryzhkov was Prime Minister during Mikhail Gorbachev’s reign. He received his nickname, ‘The Weeping Bolshevik’, for crying in front of the press when visiting Armenia after the brutal earthquake of 1988. Opposition critics treated him as an object of ridicule, a pathetic clown. Running for Parliament in 1995, he countered accusations that tears proved him too weak to hold a position of power, implying others would have wept had they seen the same horrors. By changing public opinion to that of viewing tears not as a weakness but as a sign of humanity, Ryzhkov won the election.

Towards the end of the 1991 Persian Gulf War, General Schwarzkopf was interviewed on television by Barbara Walters. His eyes welled up with tears as he answered personal questions. Walters said, ‘Generals don’t cry’. Schwarzkopf replied, ‘Grant, after Shiloh, went back and cried. Sherman went back and cried… and these are tough old guys… Lincoln cried.’ He added that he held back his tears in front of his troops during the war for the purpose of morale; although he could cry in front of them during a Christmas Eve service, where he was embodying the role of father figure, rather than commanding officer.

IF 27 FAMOUS MEN WERE KNOWN BY THEIR MOTHERS’ MAIDEN NAMES

In our society a married woman loses part of her identity through taking her husband’s family name. Should her children happen to become famous, her husband’s family is immortalised while her own family is consigned to oblivion. (Picasso is one of the few famous men who chose to use his mother’s name, partly because it was less common than Ruiz, his father’s name.) It seems fitting to turn the spotlight, for once, upon the maternal branch responsible for contributing half the genetic endowment of the world’s immortals and mortals.

• William Arden (Shakespeare)

• Isaac Ayscough (Newton)

• Johann Sebastian Lämmerhirt (Bach)

• George Ball (Washington)

• Thomas Randolph (Jefferson)

• Johann Wolfgang Textor (von Goethe)

• Wolfgang Amadeus Pertl (Mozart)

• Napoleon Ramolino (Bonaparte)

• Ludwig Keverich (van Beethoven)

• Abraham Hanks (Lincoln)

• Charles Wedgwood (Darwin)

• Charles Barrow (Dickens)

• Karl Pressburg (Marx)

• Sigmund Nathanson (Freud)

• George Bernard Gurly (Shaw)

• Winston Jerome (Churchill)

• Albert Koch (Einstein)

• Charlie Hill (Chaplin)

• Ernest Hall (Hemingway)

• Frank Garaventi (Sinatra)

• Mick Scutts (Jagger)

• Sylvester Labofish (Stallone)

• Stephen Pillsbury (King)

• Arnold Jedrny (Schwarzenegger)

• Michael Scruse (Jackson)

• Osama Ghanem (bin Laden)

• Tiger Punsawad (Woods)

9 PEOPLE WITH EXTRA LIMBS AND DIGITS

‘The woman from Texas with four legs’ was the only freak who could challenge the ‘King of Freaks’ Frank Lentini as a box-office attraction. (‘Freak’ expresses dramatic physical deviation from the norm and was not offensive to those in the sideshows.) The body of a twin grew from between Myrtle’s legs, well developed from the waist down and completely functional. Myrtle was married and, according to her billing, had five children — three from her own body and two from her twin’s.

Born in Cuba, Jean (or Juan) was a good-looking, well-proportioned boy who happened to have two fully-functioning penises and an extra pair of legs behind and between his own, united along their length. His mental and physical capacities were considered above normal and so, according to one report, was his ‘animal passion’ and sexual functioning. He was exhibited in Havana in 1865 and later in Paris, where he is alleged to have had an affair with the three-legged courtesan, Blanche Dumas, who had two vaginas.

Written up in the book called Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine in 1896, the Foldi family was described as living in the tribe of the Hyabites in ‘Arabia’ for many generations. Each member of the large family had 24 digits. They confined their marriages to other members of the tribe, so the trait was usually inherited. In fact, if a baby was born with only 10 fingers and 10 toes, it was sacrificed as the product of adultery.

Laloo was a Muslim born in Oovonin, Oudh, India. He had an extra set of arms, legs and sex organs from a headless twin attached to his body at the neck. He, too, travelled with carnivals and circuses in the US and Europe and was written up in many medical textbooks. He married in Philadelphia in 1894 and his wife travelled with him. His ‘parasitic twin’ was male, but the circuses liked to advertise it as female to add to Laloo’s strangeness.

For years acknowledged as the ‘King of Freaks’, Frank Lentini had three legs, two sets of genital organs, four feet and sixteen toes. In order to counter his depression at being deformed, Lentini’s parents took him to an institution for handicapped children, where he saw boys and girls who were far worse off than he was. ‘From that time to this,’ he would later recall, ‘I’ve never complained. I think life is beautiful and I enjoy living it.’ He could use the third leg, which grew out of the base of his spine, as a stool. In his circus act he used it to kick a football the length of the sideshow tent. Born in Rosolini, Sicily, he moved to the US at the age of nine. He married and raised four children.

‘The Man with Two Bodies’ was born in Rome. He travelled with several circuses displaying his miniature ‘twin’, named Jacques. Jacques had hips, thighs, arms and legs. A German doctor using X-rays found a rudimentary structure resembling a head inside Jean’s body. Jean covered Jacques with a cape when he went out. Walking with his wife and four children he looked just like any other family man.

Known as ‘La Dame á Quatre Jambes’ (‘the lady with four legs’), Louise was born in France. Attached to her pelvis was a second, rudimentary pelvis from which grew two atrophied legs. There were two rudimentary breasts where the legs joined her body. In spite of this handicap, Louise not only married but gave birth to two healthy daughters.

A young woman from Karnataka, India, Shivshankari has a third leg with nine toes growing out of the middle of her body. She views her anomaly as a divine blessing and supports her family by exhibiting herself locally.

Betty Lou Williams was the daughter of poor black sharecroppers. She looked pretty and shapely in her two-piece bathing suit on the sideshow stage — but growing out of her left side was the bottom half of a body, with two legs and one misplaced arm. Betty, who died at the age of 23, made a good living during the Depression. Her friends say she died of a broken heart, jilted by a man she loved. However, the more probable cause of her death was complications from an asthma attack, aggravated by the second head inside her body.

10 FAMOUS NOSES

According to one historian of anatomy, Rudolf ‘had so large a nose that no artist would ever paint its full dimension’.

Michelangelo’s nose was so squashed against his face that, in the words of one historian, ‘his forehead almost overhangs the nose’. As a boy, Michelangelo had mercilessly teased the painter Pietro Torrigiano while Torrigiano was trying to study some art inside a church. Angered, Torrigiano turned on young Michelangelo and, in his own words, ‘dealt him such a blow on the nose that I felt the bone and the cartilage yield under my fist as if they had been made of crisp wafer. And so he’ll go with my mark on him to his dying day’.

Matthew Parker’s name entered the English language as ‘Nosey’ Parker — meaning someone who pokes his nose into other people’s business. Parker was Archbishop of Canterbury under Queen Elizabeth I. Though shy and modest, he was over-inquisitive about Church matters, and his enemies began to call him ‘Nosey’ Parker.

Brahe lost the bridge of his nose in a swordfight when he was 20 and replaced it with a silver one.

He really was a living person. He is said to have fought 1,000 duels over insults concerning his enormous nose.

Wedders had the longest-known nose of any human being in history. It measured 7½ inches in length. He was exhibited throughout England and was said to be mentally retarded.

Nicknamed ‘The Bohemian’, Mysliveček was known for his operas Armida and Il Bellerofonte, and for the fact that he had no nose. In 1777, suffering from a venereal disease, he went to a third-rate doctor who told him that the only way to cure the disease was to remove his nose. So off it came. This led to the collapse of his career and he died in poverty.

In addition to the more familiar (and more respectful) nickname of ‘The Iron Duke’, Wellington was also called ‘Old Nosey’ by many of his soldiers because of his prominent nose. During the Peninsular War, Wellington was riding near the frontlines when he was challenged by a sentry. Unfortunately, he had forgotten the day’s password. Fortunately, the sentry recognised his nose. ‘God bless your crooked nose, sir,’ the soldier is said to have remarked. ‘I would rather see it than 10,000 men.’

Elder was famous in the Wild West as ‘Big Nose’ Kate. Her nose was of the bulbous variety. She ran a house of ill repute in Dodge City, Kansas, and was the mistress of bad man Doc Holliday. Once when Holliday, in an argument over a poker hand, slit his opponent’s throat and was about to be arrested, ‘Big Nose’ Kate set the livery stable afire, creating a distraction that allowed her lover to escape.

Ozyurek is the only two-time winner of the Longest Nose competition in Rise, Turkey. Proudly displaying his 3½-inch nose, he won the inaugural contest in 1997 and then regained the title in 2000.

10 MEETINGS BETWEEN FAMOUS PEOPLE AND PEOPLE NOT YET FAMOUS

As the President browsed in a Broadway shop, a servant of the Irving family spotted him from the street and hustled inside with six-year-old Washington Irving in tow. Informed that the lad had been named after him, the Chief Executive stroked the head that later would conjure up Rip Van Winkle and wished the boy well. Note: This pat on the head has been passed on through generations of Americans to the present-day recipient. An older Washington Irving bestowed it upon his publisher, George Putnam, who in turn gave it to young Allan Nevins, the future Pulitzer Prize-winning historian. Years later, at an informal gathering at the Irving Wallace home, Nevins conferred the historic pat on 10-year-old Amy Wallace saying, ‘Amy, I pat you on behalf of General George Washington.’ Amy refused to wash her hair for a week afterwards. As The Book of Lists was going to print, she bestowed the historic pat upon baby Daniel, son of the owners of Clementines, one of Los Angeles’ most popular restaurants.

Elizabeth Barrett, not yet either married to Robert Browning or very well-known, was a great admirer of Wordsworth. John Kenyon, a friend of the Barrett family, arranged for Elizabeth to attend a dinner in the poet’s honour. Although she was nervous (she said that she trembled ‘in my soul and my body’) about being seated next to Wordsworth, he was kind and even recited one of Dante’s sonnets for her entertainment. Eight years later, Barrett paid tribute to Wordsworth by mentioning him in ‘Lady Geraldine’s Courtship’.

The 18-year-old Maupassant, later one of France’s greatest writers, witnessed the near-drowning of a swimmer who turned out to be the eccentric English poet Swinburne. (According to some versions of the incident, including Maupassant’s own, he was actually in on the rescue, but this is disputed by more objective accounts.) When Maupassant introduced himself, the poet invited him to dinner at his villa. Swinburne’s guest was shocked by the main dish — roast monkey — and the presence of a large ape, which pushed the young Frenchman’s head aside whenever he tried to drink.

Near the beginning of his career, Caruso was hired by Arturo Lisciarelli to star as Rudolfo in a production of Puccini’s La Boheme. Lisciarelli took advantage of Caruso’s eagerness to sing the part by booking him for a mere 15 lire per performance, but added, rather vaguely, that the fee would be increased to 1,000 lire if Puccini liked him. When Caruso found out that Puccini lived nearby, he made a 25-mile trip to see the composer at his villa. After Caruso sang several measures, Puccini exclaimed, ‘Who sent you? God?’ Despite the composer’s praises, Lisciarelli held Caruso to the original terms of his contract.

Before going west to become a star in D.W. Griffith’s epic films, Miss Gish landed a dancing role in Sarah Bernhardt’s show. As they waited together in the wings for the opening curtain, the Divine Sarah stroked the young girl’s delicate curls admiringly and uttered something to her in French, a language Miss Gish had never before heard.

Gable dated the future first lady — then known as Nancy Davis and an aspiring actress — on three occasions during a visit to New York. Although gossip columnists speculated about a possible marriage, the relationship never was particularly romantic. Gable simply enjoyed seeing the town with Nancy and making her laugh, while she hero-worshipped Gable and wondered how long it would last. Once when they attended a party, she was convinced that Gable would leave her the moment a more glamorous woman appeared. When he stayed, it gave her self-confidence a great boost.

Ruth was in New Haven to donate a signed manuscript of The Babe Ruth Story to the Yale library. Ruth presented the book to the captain of the Yale baseball team, first baseman George Bush. Later that day, with the Sultan of Swat watching from the stands, the future US president went two-for-four and led Yale to a 14–2 blowout over Princeton.

When future rock star Petty was 11 years old, Elvis arrived in his hometown to shoot scenes for the movie Follow That Dream. Since his uncle was involved with making the film, Petty was able to visit the set and meet the king of rock and roll. Petty remembered, ‘He didn’t have much to say to us, but for a kid at an impressionable age, he was an incredible sight.’ Straightaway, Petty traded his slingshot for a friend’s collection of Elvis records.

In the summer of 1963, Clinton was named one of the delegates to Boys Nation, an American Legion program in which a select group of high school juniors travelled to Washington to watch national politics in action. The highlight of the trip was the delegates’ visit to the White House, where a gangly, crew-cut Clinton briefly shook hands with President Kennedy. The moment was recorded for posterity (and future Clinton campaigns) in a photo and on film. When Clinton returned home to Arkansas, he was set on a political career. His mother, Virginia Kelley, remembered, ‘I’d never seen him so excited about something. When he came back from Washington, holding this picture of himself with Jack Kennedy, and the expression on his face — I just knew that politics was the answer for him.’

When bestselling author John Fowles was on the verge of success, but not yet famous, he was a panellist at the Cheltenham Festival. He was prepared to attack the famous authoress Iris Murdoch, but instead found her ‘a gentle creature with a good mind’. Mrs Fowles felt Murdoch ignored them. Years later, when Fowles’ fame was enormous, Murdoch invited the Fowleses to lunch. He recorded the following exchange in his diary:

17 FAMOUS PEOPLE WHO WERE EXPELLED FROM SCHOOL

At the age of five, Amos was the youngest person accepted to the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, Maryland. Six years later, she was expelled for refusing to read sheet music. The experience inspired the title of her first album, Y Kant Tori Read?

American actor John Barrymore was 16 when he was expelled from Georgetown Academy in Washington, DC. A faculty member recognised him, in the company of several other young men, entering a bordello where they had gone to celebrate Washington’s Birthday. The next day, when asked to name the other men, Barrymore refused and was expelled.

The son of a successful physician with inherited wealth, young Bogart was sent to Phillips Academy of Andover, Massachusetts, and after a year was thrown out for ‘irreverence’ and ‘uncontrollable high spirits’. Since attending Yale was suddenly out of the question, Bogie joined the US Navy.

Former editor-in-chief of Vanity Fair and currently editor-in-chief of the New Yorker, Brown was expelled from three boarding schools by the time she was 16. ‘I got other girls to run away,’ she recalled, ‘and I organised protests because we weren’t allowed to change our underpants.’ At one school the headmistress found her diary, ‘and opened it where I had described her bosom as an unidentified flying object’.

At 16, Collins was expelled from Francis Holland School in England for (among other crimes) truancy, smoking behind a tree during lacrosse, selling readings from her diary of naughty limericks and waving at the neighbourhood flasher. Says Collins, ‘I was a bad girl.’ She later sent her own daughters to the same school.

In 1926 Spanish ultra-modernist painter Salvador Dali was expelled from the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid when he refused to allow his professors to critique his paintings.

Daltrey was expelled from Acton County Grammar School in England. ‘I was an evil little so-and-so,’ he remembers, ‘I didn’t fit in.’ The headmaster who expelled him commented, ‘When you have 500 boys in uniform, and one in a teddy boy outfit, no wonder he didn’t fit in.’

The 18-year-old Flaubert was first in his philosophy class at the College Royal. Nevertheless, he led a revolt against a substitute teacher, and when the noisy students were ordered to copy 1,000 lines of poetry as punishment, Flaubert organised a petition in protest. The headmaster was unmoved, and Flaubert and two other boys were expelled.

In 1885, American newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst was expelled from Harvard, halfway through his junior year. He had given each of his professors a chamber pot adorned with the professor’s name and picture.

Killy began skiing at the age of three, and by the time he was a teenager he often cut school to attend ski competitions. ‘Once you start racing in France,’ he said, ‘your schooling is finished.’ He was expelled at 15 because of chronic truancy.

At the age of nine, Mussolini was sent 20 miles from home to a boarding school in Faenza, Italy, run by Salesian priests. The recalcitrant youth was nearly expelled for throwing an inkpot at a teacher who had struck him with a ruler. Finally he went too far — he stabbed a fellow student in the buttocks with a knife. The future dictator was permanently dismissed.

In 1831 American author and poet Edgar Allan Poe was expelled from West Point when he refused to attend drills and classes for several weeks.

Pryor was expelled from a Catholic grammar school in Peoria, Illinois, when the nuns discovered that his grandmother ran a string of brothels. At 16, he was expelled from Central High School for punching a science teacher named Mr Think.

In 1811, while a student at Oxford, the poet Shelley and his close friend Thomas Jefferson Hogg sent a pamphlet entitled ‘The Necessity of Atheism’, a summary of the arguments of John Locke and David Hume, to the heads of the colleges. When both students refused to answer questions about the pamphlet, they were summarily expelled.

At approximately the age of 10, Russian Communist leader Leon Trotsky was expelled from secondary school in Odessa, Russia, after he incited his classmates to howl at their teacher. Trotsky, however, was the school’s best pupil and was readmitted the following year.

Wilson was expelled from prep school after he and two friends stole the answers to a maths exam. ‘I got called into the headmaster’s office and he handed me a geometry problem and told me to do it. When I couldn’t, he pointed out I had just completed a similar one on the exam.’ The next year, Wilson was enrolled in the New Mexico Military Institute, where, he noted, ‘I learned to follow rules, even the ones I thought were stupid.’

In 1883, during the sixth grade, American inventor and aviator Orville Wright was expelled from his elementary school in Richmond, Indiana, for mischievous behaviour.

9 TATTOOED CELEBRITIES

Beckham has a large crucified figure in the centre of his back. Above and below are the names of his sons, Romeo and Brooklyn. Among his other tattoos are his wife’s name misspelled in Hindi and the Roman numeral VII, representing his number when he played for Manchester United.

On his back is a monitor lizard wearing a top hat.

Had an anchor on his arm. His mother, Jenny, had a snake on her right wrist.

The singer has several tattoos including one on his wrist that says ‘Slit Here’, three in honour of his daughter and an open grave with the words ‘Rot in Pieces’ dedicated to his ex-wife.

Just below her bikini line she has what appears to be Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse having sex.

When the actors in The Lord of the Rings were tattooed with an Elfish design for ‘The 9’ to represent the Fellowship of the Ring, director Jackson was tattooed with an Elfish ‘10’.

The singer has Jesus on his right arm and Woody Woodpecker on his left.

Among his dozen tattoos are an open zipper with an eyeball peering out and, on his chest, a note that says ‘Back in 15 minutes’.

Besides the obvious Maori-style tattoo on his face, Tyson has pictures of Mao Tse Tung on his right arm, tennis player Arthur Ashe on his left arm, Che Guevara on his stomach and his second wife, Dr Monica Turner, on his left forearm.

10 PEOPLE WITH THE MOST SQUARE MILES OF THE EARTH’S SURFACE NAMED AFTER THEM

1. AMERIGO VESPUCCI, Italian explorer

Total area: 16,243,000

North America: 9,360,000

South America: 6,883,000

2. VICTORIA, British queen

Total area: 1,188,100

Queensland (Australia): 666,790

Victoria (Australia): 227,620

Great Victoria Desert (Australia): 127,000

Victoria Island (Canada): 83,000

Victoria Island (Antarctica): 60,000

Lake Victoria (Africa): 26,000

Victoria Strait (Canada): 6,000

3. MAUD, Norwegian queen

Total area: 1,102,000

Queen Maud Land (Antarctica): 1,081,000

Queen Maud Mountains (Antarctica): 15,000

Queen Maud Gulf (Canada): 6,000

4. JAMES WEDDELL, British seal hunter and explorer Weddell Sea (Antarctica): 1,080,000

5. ABEL JANZOON TASMAN, Dutch explorer

Total area: 925,100

Tasman Sea (Pacific Ocean): 900,000

Tasmania (Australia): 24,900

Tasman Peninsula (Australia): 200

6. CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS, Italian explorer

Total area: 920,200

Colombia: 440,830

British Columbia (Canada): 365,950

Columbia Plateau (US): 100,000

Colon department (Honduras): 3,430

Colon department (Panama): 3,150

District of Columbia and 10 US counties named for Columbus (combined area): 6,790

7. VITUS BERING, Russian explorer

Bering Sea (Arctic Ocean): 879,000

8. IBN-SAUD, Saudi king

Saudi Arabia: 865,000

9. CHARLES WILKES, US naval officer

Wilkes Land (Antarctica): 660,000

10. WILLEM BARENTS, Dutch explorer

Barents Sea (Arctic Ocean): 592,000

8 UNNAMED WOMEN OF THE BIBLE

She is mentioned five times in the book of Genesis, but only in the context of being one of a group who is present. This is surprising considering how talented and efficient she must have been to have been suddenly uprooted from her home and asked to set up housekeeping in a gopherwood ark filled with birds, snakes, insects and full-grown animals of every species. This woman, who kept everything in order in the ark for 12 months, is known to us today, not by her own name, but only as ‘Noah’s wife’, (Gen. 6:18; 7:7 and 13; 8:16 and 18).

Her father, probably Ramses II, decreed that it was necessary to kill all male children born to the Hebrews because the Hebrew population in Egypt was growing too quickly. One day the pharaoh’s daughter was bathing in the Nile with her attendants when she noticed a basket containing a three-month-old baby boy. She realised that he was a Hebrew child and decided to raise him rather than allow him to be killed by her father. The baby’s sister, Miriam, was standing nearby and offered to find a Hebrew woman to suckle the child. The baby’s mother, Jochebed, conveniently close at hand, was summoned and hired as a nurse to care for the child. The pharaoh’s daughter later named the baby Moshe, or Moses, and he grew up to become the greatest leader and teacher in the history of the Jews. The woman who saved his life and raised and educated him was known in various history books as Thermuthis, Myrrina or Mercis. However, the authors of the Bible referred to her only as ‘the pharaoh’s daughter’. (Exod. 2:5–10)

Abimelech was a tyrant who ruled over Shechem for three years during the twelfth century BC. Having taken power by slaughtering 69 of his 79 brothers, he continued his bloody ways by killing the entire population of the town of Shechem when they revolted against him. Moving on to the neighbouring town of Thebez, he was about to set it ablaze when ‘a certain woman’ appeared on the roof of the town tower and dropped a piece of a millstone on Abimelech’s head, crushing his skull. Humiliated by the prospect of being killed by a woman, Abimelech ordered one of his followers to run him through with a sword. With Abimelech dead, his supporters dispersed and Thebez was saved. (Judg. 9:50–55)

When Sheba, the son of Bichri, led a revolt against King David, David sent his commander-in-chief, Joab, to track down the rebel and kill him. Joab finally found the culprit hiding in the walled city of Abel. Joab and his soldiers began the destruction of the city, but stopped when a wise woman called out to them to discuss the situation. Joab explained that if the people of Abel turned the rebel Sheba over to him, he and his soldiers would leave them alone. The wise woman easily convinced her people that this was a good deal. Sheba was quickly decapitated, his head thrown over the wall to Joab, and the city of Abel was saved. (II Sam. 20:15–22)

When this Gileadite woman married, she retained her own name rather than take her husband’s. In fact, her husband, a priest, took her family’s name. Despite this early display of feminism, or perhaps because of it, the Bible authors do not tell us her name, but refer to her merely as ‘one of the daughters of Barzillai’. (Neh.7:63)

According to some scholars, the Song of Songs tells the story of a young Shulamite maiden who attracted the attention of King Solomon. He forced her to come to Jerusalem and tried to convince her to marry him, but she resisted him and insisted on remaining faithful to her shepherd lover. Eventually Solomon gave up and allowed her to return home, while he was forced to continue living with the 700 women he had already married. (Song of Solomon)

Known to the historian Josephus as Salome, this most famous of all dancers is not given a name in the New Testament. King Herod was so impressed by the dancing of Herodias’ daughter that he offered her any gift, including half his kingdom. After consulting her mother, who was angry with John the Baptist for publicly denouncing her as an incestuous adulterer, she asked for the head of John the Baptist on a platter. She got it and promptly turned over the grisly prize to her mum. (Matt. 14:6; Mark 6:22)

Caught in the act of adultery, this woman was brought before Jesus by the scribes and Pharisees, who pointed out that the law required that such an offence be punished by stoning. Jesus ignored them at first and then said, ‘He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.’ One by one her accusers slithered away, and she was not punished. (John 8:3–ll)

6 PEOPLE WHOSE NAMES WERE CHANGED BY ACCIDENT

He was born Israel Baline, but the sheet music for his first composition, ‘Marie from Sunny Italy’, credited the song to ‘I. Berlin’. Baline preferred the mistake over his actual name.

After William Falkner’s first book, The Marble Faun (1924), was published, he discovered that a ‘u’ had been inserted into his last name. He decided to live with the new spelling rather than go through the hassle of correcting the error.

The future Civil War general was born Hiram Ulysses Grant. The prospect of entering the US Military Academy with the initials ‘H. U.G.’ embarrassed him, so the new cadet reversed the order of his names and started signing himself U.H. Grant. He soon learned that Rep. Thomas L. Hamer, who had sponsored his appointment to West Point, had mistakenly enrolled him as Ulysses Simpson Grant, ‘Simpson’ being the maiden name of Grant’s mother. Grant, finding nothing objectionable in the initials ‘USG’, adopted the new name.

When Charles ‘Buddy’ Holley signed his first contract with Decca Records, his last name was misspelled as ‘Holly’. Reasoning that others in the recording industry would make the same error, Buddy kept the new spelling.

When her first record, ‘Don’t Make Me Over’ was released in 1962, a printing error made Dionne Warrick over into Dionne Warwick.

Her parents intended to name her ‘Orpah’ after Ruth’s sister-in-law in the Old Testament. However, the name was misspelled ‘Oprah’ on her birth certificate. Winfrey has used it ever since.

8 ALMOST INDESTRUCTIBLE PEOPLE

The Russian mystic and orgiast held enormous political power at the court of the Romanovs from 1905 until his murder in 1916. That this decadent, vulgar peasant should hold such sway over the Empress Alexandra infuriated a group of five power-hungry aristocrats, who set out to destroy him. They arranged for Rasputin to take midnight tea at the home of Prince Felix Yussupov. Some accounts say that Rasputin drank voluminous amounts of poisoned or opiated wine and remained unaffected, to Yussupov’s great consternation. The frightened Prince contrived an excuse to go upstairs, where the waiting gang furnished him with a gun, then followed him downstairs. According to Rasputin’s daughter, Maria, the men assaulted her father and ‘used him sexually’. Then Yussupov shot him. Again, according to Maria, they viciously beat Rasputin and castrated him, flinging the famed penis across the room. One of the conspirators — a doctor — pronounced the victim dead; but Yussupov, feeling uneasy, began to shake the body violently. The corpse’s eyelids twitched — and opened. Suddenly, Rasputin jumped to his feet and gripped Yussupov by the shoulders. Terrorised, Prince Felix pulled himself free; Rasputin fell to the floor, and the other men dashed upstairs. In the midst of the brouhaha, they heard noises in the hallway: Rasputin had crawled up the stairs after them. Two more shots were fired into him, and again he was beaten with harrowing violence. The men (still doubting his death) bound Rasputin’s wrists. Carrying him to a frozen river, they thrust his body through a hole in the ice. Rasputin was still alive. The icy water revived him, and he struggled against his bonds. When his body was found two days later, his scarred wrists and water-filled lungs gave this proof, as did his freed right hand, which was frozen in the sign of the cross.

Dombey was a black gravedigger in post-Civil War Orleans. Because he worked for such low rates, his fellow gravediggers decided to put an end to their competition. They called upon a certain Dr Beauregard, reputed to have magical powers, to use his $50 ‘supreme curse’ involving an owl’s head. The next morning, as Dombey began to dig a new grave, he heard a loud explosion. Someone, apparently injured, staggered from a nearby clump of bushes. There Dombey found a gun which, overloaded with buckshot, had blown up. Later, a much-bandaged Dr Beauregard threatened to curse anyone who questioned him. The gravediggers took matters into their own hands. They placed a keg of explosive powder under the cot in the tool shed where Dombey took his daily nap and lit it while he slept. The explosion blasted Dombey out the doorway and plopped him 20 feet away. The tool shed was completely destroyed, but Dombey was unhurt. The local police nicknamed him Indestructible Sam. But the best (or worst) was yet to come: Indestructible Sam was soon captured by masked men and taken in a boat to Lake Pontchartrain. Sam’s hands and feet were tied, and he was dumped into the depths of the lake. These particular depths, however, turned out to be only 2 feet; Sam wriggled free of his bonds and walked ashore. Next, Dombey’s foes tried arson — and as Dombey ran from his burning home, he received a full load of buckshot in his chest. Firemen saved the house and rushed Sam to the hospital, where he lived up to his nickname. Sam had the last laugh. He continued to dig graves, and died at 98, having outlived every one of his jealous competitors.

In 1933, a down-and-out drunken Irishman became the victim of an extraordinary series of murder attempts. Malloy was a bum who frequented the speakeasy of one Anthony Marino in the Bronx. Marino and four of his friends, themselves hard up, had recently pulled off an insurance scam, murdering Marino’s girlfriend and collecting on her policy; pitiful Michael Malloy seemed a good next bet. The gang took out three policies on him. Figuring Malloy would simply drink himself to death, Marino gave him unlimited credit at the bar. This scheme failed — Malloy’s liver knew no bounds. The bartender, Joseph Murphy, was in on the plot and substituted antifreeze for Malloy’s whisky. Malloy asked for a refill and happily put away six shots before passing out on the floor; after a few hours, he perked up and requested another drink. For a week Malloy guzzled antifreeze nonstop. Straight turpentine worked no better, and neither did horse liniment laced with rat poison. A meal of rotten oysters marinated in wood alcohol brought Malloy back for seconds. In an ultimate moment of culinary inspiration, Murphy devised a sandwich for his victim: spoiled sardines mixed with carpet tacks. Malloy came back for more. The gang’s next tactic was to dump the drunk into a bank of wet snow and pour water over him on a night when the temperature had sunk to -14°F. No luck. So Marino hired a professional killer, who drove a taxi straight at Malloy at 45 mph, throwing him into the air — and then ran over him again for good measure. After a disappearance of three weeks, Malloy walked into the bar, told the boys he’d been hospitalised because of a nasty car accident, and was ‘sure ready for drink’. Finally, the desperate murderers succeeded — they stuffed a rubber hose into Malloy’s mouth and attached it to a gas jet until his face turned purple. The scheme was discovered, and four members of the five-man ‘Murder Trust’ (as the tabloids dubbed Marino & Co.) died in the electric chair. One New York reporter speculated that if Mike Malloy had sat in the electric chair, he would have shorted out every circuit in Sing Sing.

Dr Waite was a New York dentist whose wife was the only daughter of a rich drug manufacturer in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Waite decided to remove the only two obstacles in his path to riches: his parents-in-law. The doctor’s efforts are neatly chronicled in Carl Sifakis’s book A Catalogue of Crime. Setting to work on his mother-in-law, Waite took her for a drive in a heavy rain with the windshield open. He put ground glass in her marmalade. He introduced into her food all sorts of bacteria and viruses — those that cause pneumonia, influenza, anthrax and diphtheria. The lady did catch a cold, but that was all. In disgust, Waite shifted his attention to his father-in-law, trying the same disease producers — with absolutely no effect. He filled the old man’s rubber boots with water, dampened his sheets, opened a container of chlorine gas in his bedroom while he slept. Nothing. Then he tried giving the old man calomel, a purgative, to weaken him, and then a throat spray loaded with typhoid bacteria. People started commenting on how well the old man looked. Waite got off the disease kick and switched to arsenic. Amazingly, the poison failed. Finally, Waite polished off the old man by smothering him with a pillow. By now, however, other relatives were suspicious, and an autopsy on the father-in-law’s body was ordered. Heavy traces of arsenic were found; although this was not the cause of death, the arsenic was traced to Waite and he finally confessed to his crime.

This Dallas racketeer earned his nickname after the first nine attempts on his life. He was shot at so often that he was also called ‘The Clay Pigeon’. His third moniker was ‘The Sieve’ because he had been riddled by so many bullets. The murder attempts were made by another Dallas gangster, the crude, illiterate ‘Benny the Cowboy’ Binion. A retired police captain revealed the details of their rivalry to Ed Reid and Ovid Demaris, authors of the Green Felt Jungle, an exposé of Las Vegas crime. Binion was taking a 25% cut of Noble’s crap games and wanted to up it to 40%. Noble refused, and the fireworks began. In a dramatic car chase, Binion’s thugs splattered Noble’s car with bullets, and one slug lodged in Noble’s spine. Binion moved to Las Vegas, but the feud continued long-distance — Benny wanted to save face by employing hired killers to nail Noble. Hollis ‘Lois’ Green, a depraved murderer, succeeded in wounding Noble on his third attempt. The following year, in 1949, explosives were found attached to Noble’s car, and he was soon shot again. Real tragedy struck when Noble’s beloved wife, Mildred, was literally blown to bits by an explosion of nitrogelatin planted in his car. This loss unhinged Noble’s mind — his prematurely grey hair (he was 41) turned snow-white, he lost 50 lbs, and he began to drink heavily. Another shooting put him in the hospital, where he was fired upon from across the street. Noble’s attempts at retaliation included equipping a plane with bombs to drop on Binion’s home, but Noble was shot again before he could carry out his plan. Next, Noble miraculously survived the bombing of his business and a nitroglycerin explosion in one of his planes. Binion finally killed Herbert the same gruesome way he killed Mildred — with nitrogelatin hidden near Noble’s mailbox. On August 7, 1951, the top part of Noble’s body was blown right over a tree — there was nothing left of the bottom. The retired police captain who revealed all this commented, ‘I think Noble had more downright cold-blooded nerve than anyone I’ve ever known. He was ice in water in a tight place.’

The 23-year-old Marine drill instructor was murdered in San Diego on July 21, 1977 — but it wasn’t easy. His wife, 36-year-old Carol, took out an insurance policy on her husband to the tune of $20,000. Her accomplice was 26-year-old Natha Mary Depew. First, the ladies went to the woods to find a rattlesnake; instead they found a tarantula, which they made into a pie. David didn’t really like the taste of the tarantula pie, so he only ate a few pieces. The women then tried to (1) electrocute him in the shower, (2) poison him with lye, (3) run him over with a car and (4) make him hallucinate while driving by putting amphetamines in his beer. Their plan to inject a bubble into his veins with a hypodermic needle — thereby causing a heart attack — failed when the needle broke. They considered putting bullets into the carburettor of David’s truck, but Depew objected because she wanted to keep the truck after his death. Frustrated, they resorted to a more old-fashioned method — they beat him over the head with a 6½-lb metal weight while he slept. This worked. The murderesses were apprehended while trying to dump the body into a river. Depew told the jury, ‘If it had not been for Carol I would never have touched him… He looked so beautiful lying there sleeping.’

Between 1979 and 1981, Peter Scott, a British computer programmer, made seven attempts to kill his 23-year-old wife after taking out a $530,000 insurance policy on her. First he put mercury into a strawberry flan, but he put in so much mercury that it slithered out. Next, Peter served Bernadette a poisoned mackerel, but she survived her meal. Once in Yugoslavia and again in England, Peter tried to get her to sit on the edge of a cliff, but she refused. When Bernadette was in bed with chicken pox, her husband set the house on fire, but the blaze was discovered in time. His next arson attempt met with the same result. Bernadette had her first suspicion of foul play when Peter convinced her to stand in the middle of the street while he drove their car toward her, saying he wanted to ‘test the suspension’. He accelerated, but he swerved away moments before impact. ‘I was going to run her over but I didn’t have the courage’, he later confessed to the police. Pleading guilty to several charges, he was jailed for life. The Scotts had been married for two years.

According to the Daily Mirror, after his wife left him, Urwin, a 46-year-old former miner from Sunderland, England, made seven suicide attempts in a three-month period in 1995. Having survived three drug overdoses, he wound an electrical wire about his body, got into a tub of water, and plugged the wires into an outlet. The fuse blew out and he suffered a minor electric shock. He then tried to hang himself with the same piece of wire, but it snapped and he fell to the floor, very much alive. For his sixth attempt, he broke a gas pipe in his bedroom and lay next to it. When this didn’t kill him, he lit a match. The explosion blew away the gable end of his semi-detached house, along with the windows and part of the roof. He was pulled out of the wreckage suffering nothing worse than some flash burns. He was convicted of arson and placed on two years’ probation. A few months later, he was on speaking terms with his ex-wife and was considerably more cheerful.

13 MOTHERS OF INFAMOUS MEN

Raised by her grandmother, Agrippina was accused of having had incestuous relations with her brother Caligula. Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus (later called Nero) was the product of her first marriage. She was believed to have poisoned her second husband before embarking upon a third marriage, which was to her uncle, Emperor Claudius I. She held such sway over Claudius that she convinced him to set aside his own son and make her son Nero heir to the throne. When Nero was 16, she poisoned Claudius, thus setting the stage for Nero to be proclaimed emperor. Resentful of his mother’s continuing interference, Nero later arranged to have her assassinated.

Hannah belonged to a prominent family and when, as a young widow, she married Benedict Arnold III, she brought with her considerable wealth inherited from her first husband. Unfortunately, her new husband squandered this fortune, and as his ineptitude increased, Hannah assumed a dominant position in the household. She achieved a reputation as a long-suffering, pious woman, and she was pitied by her neighbours. When her young son, Benedict Arnold IV, was sent away to school, she wrote him long letters advising him as to proper Christian behaviour. Hannah lost five of her seven children in a yellow-fever epidemic, and thereafter she was obsessed by fears of death. She continually exhorted young Benedict and his sister to submit to God’s will and urged them to be prepared do die at any moment. Hannah herself died when her son Benedict was 18.

Eighteen-year-old Mary Ann was a London flower girl when she first met Junius Brutus Booth, a talented but dissolute tragedian. Already legally married, Junius fell madly in love with the gentle, warmhearted Mary Ann. In 1821, he accompanied her to the US. Eventually she bore Junius 10 children, and John Wilkes was her ninth and favourite child. Although she was acknowledged as his wife in America, Mary Ann’s existence was kept secret from Junius’s legal wife in England. However, in 1846, his double life was exposed, and in 1851 he obtained a divorce and at last wed Mary Ann. John Wilkes was devoted to his mother, and it is reputed that his dying words after he had assassinated Abraham Lincoln were ‘Tell Mother… tell Mother… I died for my country.’

Born on June 8, 1925, Barbara Pierce grew up in Rye, New York, a wealthy suburb of New York City. Her father was an executive in the publishing industry. When Barbara was 16 years old, she met George Bush at a country club dance. Three years later she dropped out of Smith College so that the two could marry. While her husband pursued a career in the oil industry and eventually entered politics, Barbara gave birth to six children, of whom George Jr was the oldest. (A daughter, Robin, died of leukaemia at the age of four.) George Jr was not a perfect son. Saddled with a serious alcohol problem until the age of 40, he was arrested at least three times, once for stealing a wreath, once for public rowdiness at a Yale–Princeton football game and once, when he was 30 years old, for driving under the influence of alcohol. As First Lady of the United States, Barbara Bush worked hard to promote literacy programmes.

Born in Italy, Teresa emigrated with her husband to New York City, in 1893, where she worked as a seamstress to help support her family in Brooklyn’s Italian colony. Alfonso, Teresa’s fourth son, was forced to take over as head of the household when his father died in 1920. By that time, Al had already begun to establish his underworld connections. Later, during the periods when he was imprisoned, Teresa visited him regularly and she always maintained, ‘Al’s a good boy.’

Marie Élénore, lady-in-waiting in a royal family related to the de Sades, married the Count de Sade in 1733 and gave birth to a son, the future Marquis de Sade, in 1740. By 1750, the count had become increasingly difficult to live with, and as a result Marie Élénore removed herself to a Carmelite convent in Paris, where she remained until her death in 1777. Despite her pleas to the king, her son was imprisoned numerous times for his debauchery. Upon hearing of his mother’s impending death, he escaped from prison and hurried to Paris. Unfortunately, he arrived too late and was rearrested through the efforts of his mother-in-law. During his subsequent 13 years in prison the marquis wrote the books which made him infamous.

Vannozza was the mistress of Cardinal Rodgrigo Borgia (who later became Pope Alexander VI), and bore him at least four children, of whom Cesare was reputedly the first. During the course of her life Vannozza also had four husbands, the last one hand-picked by the pope. Always known for her piety, by the time of her death in 1518 she had left so much money to the Church where she was buried that Augustine monks were still saying masses for her soul 200 years later.

Born in 1856 in a Georgian village, Ekaterina was the daughter of serfs. After her marriage to Beso Dzhugashvili she supported her new family by working as a washerwoman and seamstress. When her son Joseph was born, she hoped he would become a priest, and throughout her life she was disappointed at his choice of a different career. Ekaterina never learned to speak Russian, and even after her son’s rise to power, she had no desire to leave her home in the Caucasus.

A simple, uneducated Bavarian girl, 18-year-old Klara joined the household of her second cousin, ‘Uncle’ Alois Hitler, whose mistress she became and whom she eventually married. Three of her children died in infancy prior to the birth of Adolf, and Klara was always fearful of his death as well. Disappointed in her marriage, she pinned all hopes on her surviving son. When she died of breast cancer in 1908, Hitler was overcome with grief.

Married at the age of 17, Zerelda went west with her husband Robert to homestead in Missouri in the early 1840s. Jesse was their second son. The elder James died while Jesse was still a boy, and Zerelda then married a man named Simms. The marriage failed, but she embarked upon a third marriage, this one to Dr Reuben Samuels. Throughout the bank-robbing careers of Jesse and his younger brother Frank, Zerelda remained loyal to her sons. A very pious woman, Zerelda would often attend church in Jesse’s company. Zerelda was described by a newspaper reporter who interviewed her in later years as ‘graceful in carriage and gesture, calm and quiet in demeanor, with a ripple of fire now and then breaking through the placid surface’. Perhaps it was this fire which she had imparted to her sons.

Born in a small Italian village in 1858, Rosa Maltoni was known for her retiring and gentle disposition. While employed as a schoolteacher in the village of Dovia, she met and married the village blacksmith, Alessandro Mussolini. Benito, their first child, was constantly in trouble and the source of much anxiety to Rosa. She was worn out and disheartened when she died of meningitis in 1905.

The daughter of a Syrian merchant, Alia Ghanem married Mohammed bin Laden, a prominent Saudi citizen of Yemeni origin, when she was 22 years old. Having experienced a more worldly society, she did not fit into the bin Laden family and was known sarcastically as ‘The Slave’. Osama, who was mockingly called ‘The Son of the Slave’, was her only child by bin Laden. Pushed to the outskirts of the bin Laden clan, Alia had to watch as her son was raised by others. Mohammed died when Osama was 10 years old, and it was only then that he was sent to live with his mother. They lived together for only a few months, after which Osama went back to live with an uncle. Alia Ghanem later married another Saudi businessman, but she did remain in contact with her son.

Subha’s husband, Hussein al-Majid, either died or abandoned the family before Saddam’s birth. Subha considered having an abortion, but was talked out of it by a midwife. She gave birth to Saddam in a mud-brick house outside Tikrit belonging to her brother, Khairaillah al-Talfa. Subha, in a deep depression, could not take care of her newborn son, so she left him with Khairaillah. Saddam did not live with his mother until he was three years old, when Khairaillah was imprisoned for taking part in an anti-British, pro-Nazi uprising. By this time, Subha had married her first cousin, Hasan al-Ibrahim, known as ‘Hasan the Liar’. Hasan refused to send his stepson to school and forced him to steal chickens and sheep. At the age of 10 Saddam, wanting to go to school and fed up with his stepfather’s abuse, ran away from home to live with his uncle Khairaillah. Despite her indifferent parenting, when Subha died in 1982 her son ordered a huge shrine built at government expense in Tikrit to honour the ‘Mother of Militants’.