It’s not exactly a startling, ground-breaking revelation to suggest that the Vikings were pretty much the most face-rockingly hardcore bastards to ever beat a bunch of monks to death with their own iron church bells, throw them through a stained-glass window onto some pointy rocks, and carry off all of their valuable artifacts. We all know that these psychotic, axe-wielding Norsemen are more or less the epitome of everything it means to be tough as hell, what with their looting and pillaging and huge beards and all, but it never really hurts to drive home the point every once in a while that these guys totally kicked ass.

So, in order to promote the release of my new book BADASS: A Relentless Onslaught of the Toughest Warlords, Vikings, Samurai, Pirates, Gunfighters, and Military Commanders to Ever Live, I’ve been given the opportunity to write a list of badass Vikings for my friends here at ty.rannosaur.us. As the exceedingly-lengthy title of the book would imply, there are a couple of Vikings described within the pages. I discuss King Harald Hardrada of Norway and the anonymous Viking at Stamford Bridge, but there are so many other great stories of sea-raiding warlords that qualify as righteous, jugular-rending badasses. Here are some of their stories.

1. Rurik

The Viking nobleman known as Rurik, which I’m told is apparently some utterly-bastardized derivative of the name Hroerkr somehow, was a massive, badass, face-smashing Norseman who terrorized the countryside with his freakalicious murderous rampages, plundered with a high degree of impunity, and enthusiastically destroyed all who opposed him. As that sort of mayhem, while pretty righteous, generally isn’t the sort of thing that would set him apart from his fellow medieval Norsemen, he is also now widely credited with inventing the country of Russia, which is pretty sweet.

Back in the 9th century the Vikings were having a blast sailing their totally rad dragon-headed longships down the twisting waterways of present-day Russia, cruising around and stopping every so often to bludgeon the holy living bejeezus out of anything stupid enough to be situated on waterfront property and steal anything more valuable than a pile of dirt. Their basic m.o. was to plunder, incinerate, slaughter people, gank all their valuables, and then sell the captured slaves, furs, and honey off to Constantinople for a one-hundred percent profit. While this is a pretty excellent business plan on the part of these forward-thinking bloodthirsty pillagers, it turns out that the Slavic peoples of Russia weren’t huge fans of this rather one-sided arrangement. So, one day the citizens of the wealthy trading city of Novgorod went up to a our friend Rurik – a guy who had been a pretty notorious plunderer and sea-raider in his own right – and asked him to use his powers of crotchal annihilation to protect them from his berserker brethren. Rurik jumped at the chance to make an assload of gold running a cushy medieval protection racket, and moved right in to the babe-filled hut the Novgorodians had prepared for him.

Rurik lived the good life for a while, but eventually got bored of everyone fawning over him and paying him tribute to keep them safe so went back to Scandinavia to resume his old life of drinking mead and freezing his balls off like a good Norseman. The Novgorodians went out and recruited another Viking to serve as their minister of defense, but that guy was a totally incompetent douchebag, so they fired him and went back to ask Rurik to return. Rurik told them he was kind of busy with the ball-freezing and all, but when the people of Novgorod promised him more gold than he could pack into a rented U-Haul, he decided he could probably take a little bit of time out of his day to return to Russia and rule as the Defense Minister of Novgorod.

Unfortunately for our boy Hroerkr/Rurik, when he got back to Novgorod in 862 he didn’t find the piles of gold and babes that had been promised him. Of course, his natural reaction was to freak out and start setting stuff on fire and swear that he would never stop killing people until his demands were met. A Novgorodian nobleman named Vadim rode out with an army to try and placate Rurik by smashing him in the face with a sword a few bajillion times, but Rurik crunched that dillhole’s balls into paste, destroyed the Novgorodian Army, and seized complete and total control over aspects of Novgorodian life. So by flipping out like a bearded ninja, Rurik had essentially upgraded his position from Public Safety Official to Iron-Fisted Autocrat. Rurik and his descendents would continue to conquer territory, annex lands, and dominate the country as merciless tyrants for seven hundred years – a dynasty of neck-punching Tsars that would finally end with a dude named Ivan the Terrible. Now there’s a legacy you can be proud of.

2. Ivar the Boneless

Ivar the Boneless was just one in a long line of excellently-epitheted Viking badasses. The son of Ragnar Hairy-Breeches, and brother of Sigurd Snake-in-the-Eye and Bjorn Ironside, Ivar invaded England in the 860s to avenge the exceedingly brutal murder of his somewhat-misguided but unquestionably-manly father. Apparently, the Hairy-Breeched One had got some crazy notion in his head that he was such a mega flaming hardass that he could conquer all of Great Britain with an invasion force consisting of just two longships and his own apparently-raging testosterone production glands. This was a plan that, not surprisingly, backfired somewhat spectacularly. Ragnar’s laughably-puny force was annihilated out of hand by the Northumbrians, and their King, a total jerkburger named Aella, captured Ragnar and executed him Bond-villain style by throwing him into an elaborate pit filled with hundreds of venomous snakes. I’d say that this “totally bit ass”, but that would be really cheesy and I am simply above those sorts of groan-inducingly terrible puns, no matter how hilarious they may or may not be.

Upon hearing about the gruesome, untimely demise of his poor hair-covered dad, Ivar did what any face-cleaving Viking son would have done and swore bloody delicious vengeance on King Aella of Northumbria. He crash-landed his ships on the shores of England at Mach 3.5, looted East Anglia, captured York, and destroyed any armies dumb enough to stand between him by headbutting their skulls out the backs of their faces.

I should mention that Ivar the Boneless got his sweet nickname because he had a degenerative disease that left him unable to stand, and not because he needed to talk to his doctor about Cialis or anything like that. However, as a badass medieval sea-raiding shitwrecker, Ivar wasn’t going to let a little thing like “not being able to use his legs” stop him from raining death on his enemies at every turn. All Norse kings were expected to do battle with the men, and Ivar did this in a most excellent manner – he had his men carry him around on his shield, and he fired his longbow from a seated position. I think we can all agree that this pretty much kicks ass. I should probably mention that there’s still some debate among scholars as to whether this version of events is accurate, but I think it is awesome and I really really want it to be true, so I’m just going to roll with it.

Either way, Ivar the Boneless shattered the spines of his opponents, slaughtered the Northumbrian Army, captured King Aella, and ritualistically eviscerated him by chopping open his ribcage with an axe, pulling out his still-pulsating lungs, and leaving him to die a slow, painful, unconstitutionally-cruel-and-unusual death. Ivar had so much fun putting Aella out of his misery in this manner that he later went out and did the same thing to King Edmund of East Anglia, putting the “martyr” in “St. Edmund the Martyr.” Ivar also captured Northumbria, Mercia, and much of Anglia, headed out to Ireland, beat up some Celts, conquered Dublin, and subsequently died of some mysterious illness. With his quest for bloody vengeance complete, I guess he had nothing left to live for.

3. Rollo the Dane

Rollo the Dane, also known as Rollo the Viking, Rollo the Norseman, and Rollo the Homicidal Psychopath, was a gigantic axe-swinging maniac who was a trailblazing pioneer in the timeless art of amphibiously invading the Normandy coast. It was way back in the year 885 that Rollo – a man whose name isn’t really Rollo (he changed it to Robert after he was baptized), and who may not even have been a Dane (some people believe he was from Norway) – decided that he was really pissed off with the French for some reason I just can’t seem to figure out. As any Viking worthy of his animal hide loin cloth did when he flipped out and decided he needed to pulverize cities into grave dust with his junkbag, Rollo put together a fleet of 700 ships and led 30,000 bloodthirsty barbarian warriors on a balls-out invasion of the French countryside. The massive Viking armada plundered Northern France, captured Rouen, and headed down the Seine River in a six-mile-long convoy of longboats, axes, colorful shields, burning villages, and wild out-of-control beards. Eventually they reached Paris, and decided that they definitely needed to destroy that place, so they laid siege to it relentlessly over the course of thirteen months. Luckily for the medieval Parisians, the Vikings weren’t able to penetrate the unscalable city walls, and eventually Rollo and his associates got sick of waiting around and headed back home.

Well if there’s one thing Hagar the Horrible has taught us about the Vikings, it’s that they don’t just give up and start crying into their ale simply because they spent over a year of their lives bashing their heads into an impenetrable network of heavily-reinforced stone walls and getting assorted food products thrown at them by their toxic harpy wives. Rollo returned in 911 with another equally-impressive army of bloodlusting berserkers, and this time they were even more cantankerous than they’d ever been before. The assault force plundered the countryside, razed cities, and destroyed everything they could get their hands on, and it looked like nothing was going to stop them in their mad desire to incinerate every living person and torch all the inanimate objects in the Frankish Kingdom.

Despite his unfortunate name, it’s obvious that the Frankish King Charles the Senseless apparently wasn’t a complete raging moron. This famously-moronic ruler did see the benefit of not being hewn into tiny pieces, so he came out and offered Rollo a huge tract of land on the French coastline to rule as his own as long as he promised to stop killing, plundering, and disemboweling French people. Rollo was down with this agreement, and spared Paris once again. He moved in to the coastal area near the conquered city of Rouen, and renamed the area Normandy. Rollo and the Vikings would remain in this area for generations, and Rollo’s descendant – William the Conqueror – would go on to stomp faces across the Channel, invading Britain, defeating the Saxons, and taking over as King of England in 1066. I talk about William in the book, but the short version of the story is that he was awesome.

4. Egil Skallagrimsson

Egil was a psychotic, super-aggravated Icelandic warrior skald with a massive, misshapen head that kind of resembled an eggplant. This hell-raising Juggernaut of Violence flipped out and went berserk on anything with a pulse pretty much every fifteen minutes, and never stopped swinging his axe around wildly until everyone within a ten-foot radius was missing at least one appendage. Egil killed his first man at age seven, and by the time he died of old age at 80 he had won nearly a hundred duels, fought in a dozen wars, plundered countless cities, and amassed a veritable fortune in plundered gold and silver.

Egil was known for his sunny disposition and his tendency to take a hatchet to anything he didn’t like, appreciate, or understand. Eventually, this got him on the wrong end of King Erik Bloodaxe of Norway, and while you and I would understand that you don’t want to screw with a man known as “Bloodaxe”, Egil was a fearless bastard who didn’t stop to consider things like epithets once his battle-rage took over and he started groin-shotting his enemies in the nards with a spear. King Bloodaxe voiced his frustration with Egil’s wacky antics by sending a raiding party out to kill him with swords, but this didn’t work out so hot – when Egil heard about the assassins, he turned his ship around, hunted THEM down, ambushed them in their camp, slaughtered all of them in combat, and stole all of their ships and plunder.

During his adventures pissing off everyone in Scandinavia, Egil placed a curse on the ruling family of Norway, burned down the home of a prominent noble, destroyed towns along the British coastline, killed a Scottish Earl in a battle, and survived an ambush by killing fourteen men by himself. He also fought a legendary berserker in a duel, and when they both smashed their swords and shields to pieces, Egil took the guy down like Lawrence Taylor destroying Joe Theisman on Monday Night Football and then tore out the dude’s jugular with his teeth. He was pretty serious.

Another interesting aspect of Egil Skallagrimsson is that he is considered to be one of the most eloquent warrior-poets of the Dark Ages, which is something you probably wouldn’t expect from a guy who spent most of his time cleaving people’s torsos in half with an axe. Of course, Egil was the kind of guy who tended to use his intelligence simply for his own advantage – one time he used a poem to convince his captors not to execute him, and in his numerous duels he routinely sang insulting, derogatory songs directed at his enemies in an effort to get them so pissed off that they would make mistakes – but his writings, as published in the Viking epic Egill’s Saga, are still studied today by many Scandinavian scholars and are held up as some of the most eloquent literature medieval Iceland has to offer. So that’s something.

5. Knut the Great

Knut was the second son of King Svein Forkbeard of Denmark and Queen Gunhild the Haughty, and grew up to become the “King of All the English, and of Denmark, and of the Norwegians, and Some of the Swedes,” which is quite honestly one of the greatest kingly titles ever devised by any human being living or dead. Trained from a young age in the fine art of bifurcating peoples’ brains with a battleaxe, Knut was raised in a secluded fortress and educated in the badass arts by some of Denmark’s toughest and most brutal Viking warriors – a skill that would serve him well in his career as a knut-smashing master of carnage.

In the year 1002, King Ethelred the Unready of England got really sick of these annoying Vikings raiding his towns and torching all of his subjects to death, so he decided to celebrate the obscure festival of Saint Brice’s Day by ordering the bloody massacre of all Danes living in England. Svein Forkbeard took quite a bit of umbrage with this decree, especially since his sister and brother-in-law spent the holiday being locked inside of a church and burned to death, so he decided to head over and show Ethelred the Unready that ordering a Viking genocide is kind of a bad idea… unless of course you enjoy having a broadsword rammed so far down your throat that you’re stapled to your own throne.

Knut, Svein, and the Viking army crushed Ethelred, who by definition was unready for the asskicking he so generously received, and when King Svein died a few years later Knut took over as the all-powerful ruler of England. Ethelred’s son Edmund Ironside got his panties in a wad about the whole thing and tried to re-take the throne from the Danish berserker, but Knut dragon-punched that jerkwad so hard that his decapitated head sailed across the channel, passed forward in time a few hundred years, and landed eye-first on the Eiffel Tower. Then he married the guy’s widow just to rub it in.

Special K’s first order of business was to exile, execute, and/or imprison all of Edmund Ironside’s relatives and supporters, mostly because it’s never a good idea to have people hanging around swearing blood oaths to avenge their friends’ deaths by stabbing you in the balls until you die from it. Then, despite the fact that this new King of England had come from a long line of people who made names for themselves by wading through knee-deep rivers of blood, Knut established a twenty-year period of unprecedented peace in England, where he went around to the different cities and counties building churches and merry-go-rounds and giving everybody high-fives. He ruled fairly and justly, and is now remembered as being a pious and holy man because he gave lots of gold to the Church, only assassinated people that deserved it, and only took good Christian women to be his mistresses. He later went back to the old country, took over the throne of Denmark, almost single-handedly turned back an invasion by the Norwegians, conquered Norway, annexed the parts of Sweden that he liked, and died at the age of 40.

6. Erik the Red

Erik the Red is famous for discovering Greenland, a feat he accomplished simply by being such a compete mega-bastard that he was exiled from every civilized nation in Scandinavia and had nowhere else to go. Erik was originally from Norway, but was exiled for having really loud parties, drunk-texting people pictures of his taint at two in the morning, and brutally murdering a bunch of Viking warriors who were pissing him off. No longer welcome in Norway, Erik – who was totally Metal to the extreme gonzo back at a time when metal was simply an implement for making weapons – got in his boat and headed West until he hit Iceland. The red-bearded Viking ass-wrecker hung out there for a while, but one day one of his jackass neighbors borrowed his lawn mower and forgot to return it in a timely manner, so Erik went out and killed him and his entire family with a broadsword. So, once again, Erik was banished, and once again he just got in a boat and headed west. This time he bumped into Greenland, which was really only a semi-mythical place at this point in history, so good for him for finding it.

It turns out that Greenland is actually just a gigantic hunk of inhospitable ice, but Erik had the good sense to name it Greenland because then he could potentially trick people into coming there. This worked out pretty well, and he eventually established a decent-sized Viking colony there, where ruled over the area as chieftain. This was a pretty good idea, considering how he was usually on the wrong side of the law, and my guess would be that one of his first acts as all-powerful ruler would have been to pull the trigger and legalize violent homicide as long as you can provide one good reason why the victim deserved a hatchet implanted in their brain.

Erik’s son was a guy named Leif the Lucky, who is the dude that’s nowadays credited with discovering North America. Leif had heard about all the success his father had simply getting in a boat, sailing west, and discovering things, so he decided he’d try his hand at aimlessly stumbling across the ocean in the general direction of the setting sun. As his name would imply, Leif got lucky and hit land. He called the place Vinland because it had wine, which he liked, but eventually Italians, Spanish, and Portuguese discovered it again and decided that Vinland was a stupid name so they changed it to America, which is way better.

7. Freydis Ericsdottr

Sure, Leif was cool and all, but if you want to talk about badass Vikings, you should really give a shout-out to his sister Freydis because she had an insane, vengeful penchant for slaughtering people with an axe that would have brought a single tear of manly joy to her old father’s cheek.

When Leif and his crew were looking for Canada, Freydis decided to tag along because Greenland was kind of a crappy hellhole and she didn’t really have a whole lot else going on at the time. It turns out that discovering new stuff isn’t quite as safe as it may seem, because not long after discovering Vinland, the Vikings realized that it was already inhabited by indigenous peoples, some of whom presumably had discovered the land even before Leif or the Portuguese had. The Vikings didn’t know what to call these crazy tomahawk-hucking natives, so they called them Skrellings, which was the default word the Norse used for pretty much anything they couldn’t identify. Well these Skrellings decided they weren’t huge fans of having Viking raiders patrolling their land, so they put together a war band and made a concerted attempt to forcibly evict Leif and his buddies by beating their faces in until they passed out and died face-down in a pool of their own blood.

So Leif and his homies were just chilling, when all of a sudden out of nowhere these Skrellings came flying in from every direction, attacking them with slings, axes, and strange exotic weapons the Vikings had never seen before. Many of the big ripped Viking warriors decided they didn’t want to fight demons or whatever the hell Skrelling people were and started hauling ass outta there at top speed.

As these big, bad Vikings were fleeing for their lives like horror movie vixens in high heels, only one of the Norsemen decided to make a stand and see whether or not these Skrellings were susceptible to conventional weapons – Freydis Ericsdottr. This hardcore Viking woman was pregnant, pissed off, and didn’t feel like running away from anything. She faced the fleeing Vikings and derisively shouted:

Why do ye run, stout men as ye are, before these miserable wretches, whom I thought ye would knock down like cattle? If I had weapons, methinks I could fight better than any of ye!

This pump-up speech went pretty much nowhere, and the Vikings didn’t even give a little stutter-step as they were rapidly fleeing from the oncoming Skrellings. Well, forget that. Freydis decided to show them she meant business. She grabbed a sword off a dead Viking, got super-psyched up about killing people, ripped open her shirt for some reason, and banged the sword against her chest Tarzan-style while screaming like a goddamned banshee. For the record, taking off your shirt and staring down an army of mysterious warriors by yourself is the definition of “tits-out”, which is like the estrogen-fuelled version of “balls-out”. The Skrellings saw this crazy chick daring them to screw with her and got so freaked out that they turned and fled. Freydis had saved the day, and proved that she had the biggest nuts of all the Vikings in the process.

But that’s not even the end of it. On a different expedition to Vinland, a couple total doucheheads bros were totally pissing her off, so she led a Viking raiding party out in the middle of the night to kill them and their families, steal all of their stuff, and bring it back to Greenland so she could sell it. When none of the Viking warriors in her party had the cojones required to kill the women, she sacked them in the groin with a steel-toed boot, grabbed an axe, and killed five women herself. She ended up taking a lot of heat for this stone-cold quintuple homicide once she got back to civilization, but it was totally worth it.

You might also like the following:

• 10 Badasses From the Pages of History
• 10 Historic Badasses (Who Never Hurt a Fly)
• 10 Historic Badasses (Ass-Kicking Edition)
• 8 Popular Pirates Who Were Actually Huge Losers
• 7 Unbelievably Vain Historic Figures

Vanity is a billion dollar industry. Together, cosmetic surgery, beauty conglomerates, and fashion houses create the fourth largest economy on the planet. Catering to human vanity isn’t a recent phenomenon though; Mesopotamian men spent hours with curling irons to create elaborate rings in their beards. The following 7 historic figures took the search for attractiveness to extremes that few have been able to match.

1. Dioscorides’ Mouthwash

Pedanius Dioscorides, an early Greek pharmacist, wrote that gargling with human urine whitened teeth, reversed leprosy, and cured the plague. The promise of white teeth was extremely popular with Roman aristocracy. Portuguese urine was rumored to whiten the best, and commanded exorbitant prices. Dioscorides’ mouthwash was popularized again under the Tudor dynasty, who expanded it to all forms of urine: Dog urine was thought to be a fountain of youth, horse urine was supposed to treat hair loss, and human urine was touted as the Viagra of the time.

2. Edward VI of England Popularizes the Codpiece

Under Edward VI of England‘s reign in medieval England, fashion dictated that nobles’ rank be matched by the size of their endowment. Aristocrats wore tunics that were designed to expose the genitals, and there was even a cottage industry devoted to making freakishly large flesh colored falsies for gentlemen who felt that they didn’t quite measure up. This became such a big issue that the young Edward passed a law banning any man below the rank of lord from displaying his “privy member and buttokkes“. As a result, the codpiece became popular among low ranking nobility.

3. Francis Galton’s Beauty Map

Sir Francis Galton was an eccentric inventor who pioneered work in various areas including polling, meteorology, and finger printing. Galton created a “beauty map” of the 18th-century British Isles to track where unattractive and attractive women resided. For record keeping, he used a machine that pricked a piece of paper. Women marked on the right hand side were attractive, while women on the left hand side were unattractive. After years of work, Galton announced that the least attractive women could be found in Aberdeen. He then devoted years to measuring the asses of African women to test a measurement device.

4. Elizabeth Báthory’s Beauty Secrets

17th-century Hungarian countess Elizabeth Báthory is one of history’s most notorious woman serial killers. She earned this dubious honor by acting like a Disney movie villain. Báthory was a vain woman who spent a large portion of her day staring at herself in the mirror and trying to turn back the ravages of time. When nothing worked, she turned to black magic. Specifically, she tortured and sacrificed young virgin girls. When authorities went to arrest her, the first thing they found was a starving young girl who had been drained of her blood. Many historians peg Báthory’s body count as high as 650.

5. Elizabeth I of England’s Wig

Elizabeth I of England had the Anglican Church ban cosmetics and other vanities so women would not be subjected to questions ” of her majesty in marriage”. However, the threat of being burned at the stake as a witch didn’t curb her own vanity. Elizabeth’s ladies in waiting spent every morning tracing her veins with blue dye, powdering her until she was a pale white, and smothering her with a lead based skin whitening cream called Venetian Ceruse. Her extensive use of it, coupled with smallpox, caused her hair to fall out, forcing her to wear her now iconic wig. Elizabeth also favored dresses that exposed her breasts, the fashion of her youth, well into her 70s.

6. Cleopatra’s Stinky Beauty Secret

While Cleopatra VII Philopator would be considered homely by modern standards, she was considered an exotic beauty by Roman aristocrats. She famously smuggled herself into Caesar’s bedroom, where he was immediately enraptured with her. Cleopatra made history by deftly using her looks and her way with words to ensure that debt-strapped Egypt enjoyed a cordial relationship with Rome. The secret to her beauty? Crocodile dung (also used as a contraceptive at the time) and donkey milk face masks. The price of live crocodiles, to produce the dung, skyrocketed when Roman women learned about her technique.

7. Liberace’s Eyelids

Liberace was the highest paid entertainer in the world even while Elvis and the Beatles were at the peak of their popularity. His wealth allowed Liberace the vanity to indulge in plastic surgery, which was just starting to come into vogue with aging Hollywood celebrities. Liberace was so vain that he forced a lover to get plastic surgery so that his face looked the singer’s. Liberace reputedly had so much work done on himself that he was unable to close his eyes after his final face lift. He was reduced to spending his final years using eye-drops throughout the night to keep his eyeballs from drying out.

Edit: Used the wrong picture for Elizabeth Báthory! Whoops!

You might also like the following:

• 15 Famously Filthy People From the Pages of History
• 10 Incidents of Cannibalism
• 10 Historic Badasses (Who Never Hurt a Fly)
• 7 Badass Vikings
• 6 (Literally) Retarded Monarchs

A lot of people said we were glorifying violence in our last entry about violent badasses. While that isn’t true, we are making up for it by putting together a list of (slightly obscure) people who never resorted to violence. The following is a list of 10 people who were badasses and never harmed a fly, they simply didn’t need it.

1. Lawrence of Rome

Lawrence of Rome, the deacon of the early Roman church, was a Christian before it was cool – in fact, before it was legal. He was in charge of all the wealth of the church and many believe he was given the task of protecting the Holy Chalice. The prefect of Rome gave Lawrence three days to turn over all the wealth of the Roman church. Lawrence spent those days distributing the jewels and riches to the sick, poor, and crippled – pissing off Republicans for years to come. On the third day, when asked to bring the treasure, Lawrence brought the poor with him, proudly proclaiming: “The Church is truly rich, far richer than your emperor.” The prefect didn’t find this funny and had Lawrence executed by grilling him on a large gridiron over burning coals. Too badass to just die, halfway through this gruesome death, Lawrence called out: “Assum est, inquit, versa et manduca!” (“This side’s done, turn me over and have a bite!”)

2. Thích Quảng Đức

Vietnam in the ’60s was a crappy place to live in: besides the obvious war, the Roman Catholic president practically outlawed Buddhism, the majority religion. Protests from monks were crushed in ways that only a 3rd world dictator could: Through massacres. This is when Quảng Đức sprang into action. Accompanied by 350 monks, Quảng Đức marched to a busy intersection, knelt on a cushion, recited a prayer, and had a five-gallon can of gasoline poured on him. He then lit himself on fire. Quảng Đức burned for approximately 10 minutes – during which time he didn’t move, speak, or flinch. The photograph of Quảng Đức serenely sitting while burning won a Pulitzer, forced the West take notice of the Buddhist crisis, and ruined Diem’s reputation. It is one of the most powerful images in history, but most know it today as the cover of Rage Against the Machine’s self-titled debut.

3. Tank Man

Tank Man, the Chinese student protester, has one of the most kick-ass names (even though it’s a pseudonym) on this or any list. Following the collapse of Communist regimes around the world, the Chinese government decided to remind its citizens that it had no regard for their lives. In a show of force, a Chinese tank column rolled down the middle of Tiananmen Square after it had been cleared by massacring an atrocious number of student protesters. Tank Man wasn’t having any of this shit, and marched up to the leading tank and blocked its way, unconcerned that it could easily drive over him. Miraculously, the tank tried to drive around him, but Tank Man stepped in front of it again. He then climbed into the tank and had a chat with the driver. Tank Man was eventually dragged away by protesters concerned with his life, and he disappeared forever. Some believe he was executed a few days later, but I like to believe he is lurking in Beijing, waiting for the right moment to strike.

4. Joseph Kittinger

Joseph Kittinger, the retired USAF officer, was one of the first humans to reach the edge of space. In Project Manhigh – which, despite the name, was not a cannabis festival – he rode a balloon into the stratosphere to study what cosmic rays did to the human body. The only Fantastic Four-esque powers these cosmic rays gave him were balls the size of the balloons that carried him into the heavens. During Project Excelsior, he tested a high-altitude parachute. In case you’re not a high-altitude parachute enthusiast, here’s what this testing involved: a balloon floated Kittinger into the stratosphere, and he jumped off it and attempted to deploy his chute. The key word here is “attempted”. During his final jump, a suit malfunction caused his hand to swell up to twice its size, but he didn’t tell anyone out of fear that the test would be aborted. Instead, he broke records for the highest balloon ascent, highest parachute jump, longest free-fall, and fastest speed by man through the atmosphere – all of which he still holds.

5. Diego Maradona

Diego Maradona, the retired Argentine soccer player, popularized the Argentine soccer style, which features a more fluid approach to the game. Born into poverty, Maradona’s stocky build, surprising speed, and trademark rabona – a flashy kick completed by wrapping the kicking leg around the back of the standing leg – propelled him to the professional leagues. But it was two goals during a quarter- final match in the 1986 World Cup, which took place during an intense soccer rivalry following Argentina losing the Falklands War to England, that cemented his legend. As if borrowing notes from the Cobra Kai, Maradona scored the first goal, called The Hand of God, by cheating: he handballed it in and kept quiet when it became apparent that the referee had not seen it. So, how can a cheater make into this list? Because he scored another goal, literally moments later, by dribbling the ball halfway down the field and past 6 English players. This goal was voted the The Goal of the Century by FIFA.

6. Jahangir Khan

Jahangir Khan, the retired Pakistani squash player, still holds the world record for most consecutive wins in any sport – an astonishing 555 in a row. Long before the thickly mustachioed men from tribal villages in Pakistan picked up terrorism, they picked up squash by watching stationed British troops and a few went on to become international players. But Khan’s aggressive approach to wearing down players transformed quash from a stuffy country club pastime to a competitive sport played by actual athletes. It started in 1979, when he was told he was too weak to enter the professional championship, so he entered himself and became the youngest person to win the amateur title. The same year his brother died of a heart attack while competing in the Australian open; Khan swore to never play again, but 2 years later he started his winning streak in his brother’s memory. He also has the best mustache on this list.

7. Thor Heyerdahl

Thor Heyerdahl, the Norwegian adventurer, was a man with love for exploration with a scientific bent. He was also named Thor, which is excellent enough on its own because it conjures up images of a giant bearded man using a giant hammer to break shit. Heyerdahl’s hammer was the Kon-Tiki voyage. He built a raft based on ancient Polynesian specifications and sailed it 4,300 miles from Peru to Australia just to prove an arcane anthropological point. And, in contrast to most contemporary anthropologists and archaeologists, Heyerdahl put forth a theory of Pacific colonization based on an apocryphal Incan myth, suggesting that an ancient race of fair-skinned “long-eared” people were the original settlers of Polynesia. While this theory holds about as much water as those regarding Atlantis and Mu with legitimate anthropologists, because of Heyerdahl’s popularity and badassery, it actually managed to gain some traction among less stodgy types during his lifetime.

8. Richard Feynman

Richard Feynman, the American physicist, was barely out of college when he was contracted to work on the Manhattan Project. Niels Bohr used to hang out with Feynman because he was the only physicist not too in awe to speak. He eventually got bored and took up lock-picking and bongo playing to pass the time, breaking in to several of his colleague’s lockers and playing practical jokes on them. After the war ended, Feynman began a successful academic career, during which he worked on subjects as diverse as quantum electrodynamics, nanotechnology, string theory, quantum computing and theoretical physics. In his free time he studied biology, art, juggling, percussion, lock-picking and Maya hieroglyphs. Sadly, he contracted two rare forms of cancer and died (because one didn’t have the power to finish him off), but not before he could utter his famous last words: “I’d hate to die twice. It’s so boring.” His books are still excellent reads.

9. Pheidippides

Pheidippides, the Athenian herald, was the inspiration behind the modern marathon. Most of the history surrounding him is written down as fluffy hyperbole, but it is likely that most of his accomplishments are true. Greece’s rocky terrain made delivering messages by horse difficult, so messengers were used to sprint short distances between cities to deliver messages. Pheidippides was as fast as his name was unpronounceable, and during the Battle of Marathon he was selected to run to Sparta to ask for help. The Spartans were observing 10 days of peace - which really boggles the mind, considering that the Spartans were really violent fuckers – so, Pheidippides ran back to Marathon. He covered 150 miles in two days and arrived just in time to catch the magnificent Athenian victory over Persia. Pheidippides was then sent to report the news to Athens, so he ran 26 miles and collapsed dead after delivering the news in a single word: “Νενικήκαμεν!” (“We are victorious!”)

10. Demosthenes

Demosthenes, the Athenian statesman, used his first legal speech at the age of 20 to literally talk his guardians out of his inheritance. Other statesmen were promoting appeasement when Philip II of Macedon started conquering Greece, but Demosthenes, unconcerned that Phillip was a dirty ruthless bastard, wrote scathing attacks on Phillip’s motives and character. Thebes was harshly punished for resisting, while his efforts allowed Athens to make peace on favorable terms. Demosthenes then focused his efforts on advocating resistance to Alexander the Great, even going so far as to promote a rebellion. It failed miserably. Again, Thebes was razed, and Athens spared. Demosthenes and his supporters were banished, but despite being Alexander the Great’s main detractor, Demosthenes was granted a gold crown for his service to the city. He outlived Alexander, but chose to commit suicide rather than be caught and killed by his successor.

Thanks go out to Robert for helping out with this entry. Check out his blog.

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What have you accomplished so far in your life?  Graduated college, working a nice 9-5 job, and hanging out at the poshest clubs, bars, and lounges around town?  Fancy yourself to be a bit of a badass, right?  Well, you aren’t.  This is a list of 10 individuals that were so amazing at what they did that calling them anything less than a badass is an insult.

10 ) Cale Yarborough

Yarborough made NASCAR interesting by getting into a fist fight during the first televised race. Over the years he has been shot, bitten by a rattlesnake, struck by lightning, and nearly mauled to death by a bear while flying an airplane. His shining moment came in 1958 while working as a skydiver in Jacksonville.  During a 5,000 foot jump his chute didn’t deploy until 200 feet when it provided him with minimal drag.  He walked away, later saying: “Lucky for me, I landed on a patch of high grass and mud, which gave me a little bit of a cushion. I walked away with a chipped elbow.”

9 ) Nikola Tesla

Everything that makes the modern world “modern” – radio, wireless technology, light bulbs, induction motors, remote controls, and the microwave oven to name a few – were invented by a Serbian scientist. Tesla was so devoted to science that he stayed celibate so he could attempt to harness TS waves to use the Earth as a tuning fork to transmit energy anywhere for free, control the weather, and destroy areas at will. Even though this is all in the realm of mad science the government was interested and he spent his final years developing a death ray that would allow him to destroy planes from over 250 miles away. His first tests coincided with the Tunguska Event and people have theorized that he had something to do with it.

8 ) Khalid ibn al-Walid

It is too easy to pick Leonidas, Shaka Zulu, and the like, the “Sword of Islam” never lost a battle and cut through the Byzantine, Roman, and Persian empires even when vastly outnumbered and outarmed. Al-Walid answered Fergie by killing valuable camels to drink the water stored in their humps so he could make it across desert expanses to attack enemies from their unguarded side. He chose to become a foot solider after being dismissed as a general until he was asked to resign completely because Caliph Umar was afraid that the personality cult surrounding al-Walid was rivaling devotion to Allah. His final words were: “May the eyes of the cowards never sleep.”

7 ) Jack Churchill

If you were to mix Derek Zoolander, Rambo, and a Viking you would end up with Fighting Jack Churchill. After getting bored with military life he became a male model, honed his archery skills, and and started playing bagpipes even though he wasn’t Scottish. When WWII started he signed up as a commando even though he wasn’t sure what it entailed – it sounded dangerous, so he signed up. He preferred going into battle with his bagpipes, a Claymore sword, war bow, and arrows. In 1943, armed with only a sword and belt, he convinced 42 Nazi soldiers armed to the teeth to give up. After the war he briefly worked as a stunt archer before he devoted his life to surfing. Eat your heart out Chuck Norris.

6 ) Fred Rogers

How am I going from the insanity of Jack Churchill to the sweaters of Mister Rogers? Because the soft spoken Mister Rogers did the impossible by convincing the morass of Congress to do something positive. When they were considering cutting funding for public television he put on his shoes and gave testimony over why he believed that television gave children hope and made them more productive members of society. Congress ended up increasing funding instead. When Congress gave into pressure from the MPAA over the legality of VCRs recording show, he convinced them that it allowed working parents to enjoy his shows with their children as a family. The world could use another Mister Rogers.

5 ) Sonya Carson

In the same vein as Fred Rogers, the mother of Dr. Ben Carson is a testament to awesome mothers everywhere. Ben was born into poverty, had anger issues, and was failing as the only black kid in all white schools. Even though she worked numerous part-time jobs, Sonya Carson wasn’t going to let her children become Detroit statistics.  She wouldn’t allow Ben to watch television, forced him to read two books a week, got him to write book reports over them, and then graded each of the reports.  He ended up going to Yale and became a world famous surgeon that pioneered surgeries that separated conjoined twins. Did I mention that she was functionally illiterate and only had a 3rd grade education?

4 ) Buford Pusser

McNairy County, Tennessee had an organized crime problem in ’60s and Sheriff Buford Pusser had an idea to solve it: he got a 4×4, carved it into a club, and used it beat the living crap out of criminals. He jailed 7,500 criminals over 6 years by targeting illegal gambling dens, prostitution rings, and moonshine stills. Even after they killed his wife, shot him 8 times, and stabbed him 7 times he kept beating the living crap out of organized crime.  He once jumped onto a the hood of a car that tried to run him over, smashed the window, and beat the crap out of the driver.

3 ) Ferdinand Magellan

In an age of frilly shirted European explorers Magellan was crabby, ruthless, and quick to fight anyone that didn’t listen to him.  In 1521 he demonstrated that shock and awe is always a successful tactic by taking on 1,500 Cebu natives with 49 sailors. They were quickly overpowered and Magellan was hit in the leg with a poison dart.  After ordering his men to escape he stayed behind with 6-7 of his most loyal men and fought to his death. Occasionally turning to check if his men had boarded the ship, he somehow found the strength to impale a man with a lance even after getting hit in the face with a bamboo spear.

2 ) Francois l’Ollonais

L’Ollonais will replace your favorite pirate because he understood that the job entailed being completely bloodthirsty.  In the 1660′s, he was the only survivor after his crew was slaughtered by Spanish troops and got his revenge by holding Tortuga for ransom, beheading everyone but one man on the ship that was sent to capture him, and then sending that man back with a message saying he would never give a Spaniard quarter again. He kept his promise by constantly pillaging Spanish settlements. During an interrogation he pulled out the heart of a Spaniard, gnawed at it, and promised the rest to do the same to him if they didn’t provide him with safe passage.

1 ) Theodore Roosevelt

Teddy Roosevelt’s life is full of so many awesome stories that it is almost impossible to pick just a few.  While working as deputy sheriff his boat was stolen by outlaws. He tracked them down, captured them, and decided to take them to the authorities. He ended up guarding them without sleep for 40 hours and read Tolstoy to keep awake. When has War and Peace NOT put someone to sleep?! He was given the Congressional Medal of Honor for charging Juan Hill on foot and later given the Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating the end of the Russo-Japanese War. Yes, he won an award for violence and another for peace.

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