Hürrem Sultan (Roxelana). She was born a Ruthenian (modern-day Ukrainian) commoner, captured by Crimean Tatars in a slave raid as a teenager, and taken to Constantinople, where she entered the imperial harem. She eventually became Sultan Suleiman’s favorite concubine. In a complete break with Ottoman tradition, Suleiman freed and married her, making her his legal wife. Until then, sultans generally married freeborn foreign noblewomen, if they married at all, and had children with slave concubines instead. Hürrem went on to become one of the most powerful and influential women in Ottoman history and the first of the prominent women of the Sultanate of Women. She’s widely considered the first, and perhaps the most powerful, Haseki Sultan. It’s probably the most fairy tale-like rags-to-riches story I’ve ever come across.
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Tie between William Marshal and Talleyrand.
Spent 7 years developing a vaccine for polio. Didn’t patent it or attempt to make any money from it. Polio transmission eradicated in the US 25 years after his vaccine. Spent the later part of his life researching a vaccine for HIV/AIDS.
My grandpa was in Korea when polio hit his family. Four siblings dead within 10 days, and just a few months before the Salk vaccine was available. It was a huge story at the time, you can find old articles about them. I won’t post them here because I’m kinda doxxing myself already just by posting this.
I only remember him because an online friend of mine went to a school named after him. So glad there have been people like this throughout history who didn’t decide to just profit off of others suffering.
Are you trying to reset my password somewhere that asks these security questions?
Sherlock Holmes!
Historical, not fictional
Woah! You better check your facts there. Fictional? Who took care of the business with giant dog that was eating everybody? It wasn’t Watson!
Don’t tell me. I suppose he was fictional, too? Maybe there was no giant dog, lol!
You missed the question and decided to double down?
Not everyone will get the reference.
Thanks for the context. I hadn’t seen this before.
You should watch all of IT Crowd. It’s magnificent.
Shi Pei Pu was a legendary spy.
Don’t mind me, just commenting so I’ll see later if this post gets deleted by the author.
It’s rarely the author, it’s usually mods.
It’s also mods, but in my experience, in ask Lemmy a lot of times general questions are asked, the OP doesn’t respond to anyone replying, and two days later if you browse through your history you see “deleted by author”. Which is a shame, because if I now see it’s from this community I’ll be hesitant to reply.
I see “deleted by author” even when deleted by mods. Which I guess is why so many people keep thinking there is this rash of people deleting their own posts despite it almost always turning out to be mods.
I DO see lots of cases where OP doesn’t reply much or for a few days. Which was always like that on Reddit too. But that’s a bit different.
You can also “save” post, that way you don’t have to draw attention.
Diogenes. Guy had it right and also produced some of the sickest burns in history.
Caliph Al-Ma’mun for his groundwork of advancing science and philosophy during the Golden Age of Islam (establishing the House of Wisdom etc)
Ben Franklin was fucking nuts.
Scientist, statesman, and filthy pervert.
When he went to England he fell in with the notorious Hellfire Club.
These guys would hire ruffians to steal corpses, then do autopsy parties, because “science.”
Franklin also published abortion recipes. And fucked his way all over paris.
truly a renaissance man.
https://www.npr.org/2022/05/18/1099542962/abortion-ben-franklin-roe-wade-supreme-court-leak
No! All the Founding Fathers were devote Christians who believe everything Donald Trump told them to.
man I’d love to see Trump get time-travelled to the constitutional convention with a list of his crimes and watch the OG racist freedom lovers beat the ever lasting shit out of him for his heresies against our nation
MLK jr.
Bismarck. Because he is controversial.
Being german my first exposure to Bismarck was “He’s the father of our Nation. His schemes allowed the geman states to become one” which is true. But later we learned how he created out-groups as a tool to unite people. Groups like “jews” or “catholics”, and probably many others I don’t recall.
He is not my favourite because he is such a golden boy, but because he is the complete opposite. And because the way he was discussed in history class throughout the years: It was a wonderful decunstruction of his myth.
Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, also known as Lenin.
I am the walrus
Shut the fuck up, Donny
Stede Bonnet, Gentleman Pirate. The HBO show Our Flag Means Death was a highly fictionalized accounting of his story, but the general outline is right: wealthy landowner gets tired/bored of life with his family and buys a ship to go become a pirate. He is, understandably, terrible at it, and runs into Actual Goddamned Blackbeard, who pretty much just steals his lunch money then and there, but after a time decides to help a brother out and actually teaches Stede to be a not completely shit pirate. Neither one lasts much longer before getting caught and executed, but what a bizarre and hilarious journey.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-gentleman-pirate-159418520/
Cassius Marcellus Clay. No, not the name Mohamed Ali was given at birth. Cassius was a badass abolitionist who fought slavery with a printing press when possible and a gun/cannon/big knife when not.
Leonardo da Vinci.
… his love for animals, likely including vegetarianism and … a habit of purchasing caged birds and releasing them.
