Sep 29
Posted by krumble on September 29th, 2008 in Uncategorized
This morning I was thinking about different ways that people become famous. Not just celebrity fame, but the fame that lasts through death and sometimes even through the fall of your civilization. People like Alexander, Caesar, Genghis Khan, and Wilt Chamberlain. So I decided to make a list of 20 human beings of lasting fame and why I know their fame.
- Emperor Hadrian - Ruler of the largest empire in his time, made paved roads commonplace, had a lot of walls.
- Socrates - Philosopher of ethics, killed himself by drinking hemlock, was featured in a Bill & Ted movie.
- Euclid - Was really good at math, may be singlehandedly responsible for a majority of modern homework.
- Issac Newton - Also really good at math, but got hit on the head by an apple and invented gravity.
- Confucius - Started a philosophy/religion based on common sense.
- Abraham - Patriarch of the Israelites, basically started all these religions where only your own one is right.
- Jesus of Nazareth - Most famous carpenter of all time, was in a book or something.
- Mohammad - Warrior turned prophet who started a religion of peace famous for holy wars, hated having his picture taken.
- Montezuma - Aztec ruler who wasn’t too fond of Cortez, Gave everyone diarrhea because of it.
- Genghis Khan - Woke up one day and decided to rape and pillage instead of going to work, got pretty far with it.
- Hannibal - Military genius of Carthage, for some reason took elephants into the largest mountain range in Europe which didn’t work out so well.
- Leonardo da Vinci - Did some anatomy drawings, planned a helicopter, apparently was really into coding.
- Ludwig van Beethoven - Wrote a lot of very beautiful music, suffered from hearing loss, and a dog in a movie was named after him!
- William Shakespeare - Humankind’s most famous playwright, the answer to thousands of questions on Jeopardy, and was very likely completely full of himself.
- Mahatma Gandhi - Loved peace but not eating.
- George Washington - First American president, on the quarter and the dollar, couldn’t tell a lie, and had wooden teeth.
- Abraham Lincoln - American president credited with freeing the slaves, was really tall, and bitch got shot at the theatre.
- John Wilkes Booth - He shot that punk Lincoln!
- John D. Rockefeller - Made a lot of money, that’s really it.
I think my list shows that while not everyone gets famous, some people’s fame comes from basically nothing. As Dave Chappelle said about Clinton & Lewinsky, you know you’re big time when people get famous from giving you head. Or in Lincoln’s case, putting a hole in your head.
