Some of history’s biggest figures weren’t content simply making history so they attempted to live forever through their offspring. The following 7 men managed to make their mark in history in the most fecund of manners.

1. Borjigin Temüjin

Borjigin Temüjin, better known as Genghis Khan, was a 13th century Mongol warlord who ruled over the largest contiguous empire in history. He is remembered for his brilliant use of extreme brutality and psychological warfare. Genghis also sired an incredible amount of children throughout his conquered lands. Outside of his four official sons, he had anywhere from 700 to 1000 unofficial children roaming around his empire. He further complicated things by saying that even unacknowledged children had a right to claim his throne. Genghis spread his seed so far and wide that there are 16 million descendants of Genghis Khan in Asia today.

2. Augustus II the Strong

Augustus II the Strong was 17th century Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth king who transformed Dresden into an artistic center. He was well educated and earned his cognomen on account of his herculean physical strength. Augustus could break apart horseshoes with his bare hands and competed in fox tossing matches (which is exactly what it sounds like) with a single finger. When he wasn’t busy fighting the Turks, he was busy making children. Over 50 years, Augustus fathered at least 382 bastards and one legitimate heir. He had such a hard time keeping track of his children that he ended up in an incestuous relationship with at least one.

3. Ramesses the Great

Ramesses the Great was a 12th century Pharoah who had the longest uninterrupted reign in Egypt’s history. Hotly debated to be the Pharoah of the Exodus, Ramesses spent a good portion of his life warring with neighboring states. After signing the first peace treaty in history, he focused on city building and his harem. Ramesses’ successors called him “Great Ancestor”, which isn’t far off since he fathered at least 100 known children. Like Augustus, Ramesses also had incestuous relationships but entered into them by choice. Entire generations had grown up under Ramesses’ rule and his death at 90 sparked waves of terror.

4. Ismail Ibn Sharif

Ismail Ibn Sharif was a late-17th century sultan who who solidified Moroccan independence by defeating the Ottomans in battle. Extremely shrewd and bloodthirsty, Ismail used Christian slaves to build his capital and then sold them back to European powers at inflated prices. He funded a golden age of Barbary pirates and built one of the largest, organized slave armies. Ismail also spent a mind-boggling amount of time impregnating women in his Meknes harem. He fathered at least 889 acknowledged children and an unknown amount of unacknowledged children during his reign. Experts estimate that he had to have sex at least twice a day during his 60 year reign to produce that many children.

5. Mongkut

Mongkut was a 19th century king of Siam who spent most of his reign modernizing his kingdom. Mongkut renovated various temples, increased women’s rights, and focused on building relations with the British Empire. Interestingly, the inspiration behind The King and I almost didn’t become king. Following tradition, he became a celibate monk at the age of 20 and stayed one for 27 years after becoming disenchanted with political intrigues. He eventually found the support of powerful nobles who ensured his ascension and made up for lost time by fathering 81 children.

6. Abdul-Aziz bin Saud

Abdul-Aziz bin Saud, better known as Ibn Saud, was the first monarch of the Third Saudi State. Exiled in Kuwait from the age of 14, Ibn Saud made ends meet by raiding the Nejd. He leveraged this experience to build a ruthless militia and conquered most of the Arabian Peninsula by 1932. Oil was discovered a few years later, transforming the House of Saud from a band of desert raiders into the richest family on the planet. Over the course of his lifetime, Ibn Saud had at least 22 wives, from which he had a 37 boys and an unknown amount of daughters.

7. Niall of the Nine Hostages

Niall of the Nine Hostages was a late 4th century Irish king who set up political alliances with his enemies through hostages. Following a successful raid, Niall would promise to leave them alone as long as they sent him a hostage. Most of what we know about Niall comes from an epic scroll where he seduces a bog hag to become king. Not that this type of activity would have been surprising for Niall. He sired 12 official sons, an unknown amount of daughters, and an unknown amount of unofficial children. Although the amount of children he had in total is unknown, 3 million Irishmen descended from him.

History is full of figures with popular stature or political influence who were plagued with scandals. Most of their offenses end up getting hushed up or forgotten, but sex scandals always seem to linger. The following are 7 (alleged) sex offenders and how they managed to get away with it.

1. Pope Sixtus III

Pope Sixtus III spent most of his reign repairing the damage done to Rome after the Visigoths sacked the city in 410. In his spare time, he reputedly enjoyed sleeping with nuns, a habit which caught up with him in 440 AD when he was charged with the seduction of a nun. Sixtus’ defense was based entirely on the Biblical Story of Mary Magdalene; he dramatically ended his testimony by quoting the Bible: “Let him who is without fault among you throw the first stone.” He was acquitted, not because he knew how to quote the Bible, but because no one witnessed him raping the nun in question. Sixtus died a few months later.

2. Geoffrey Chaucer

Geoffrey Chaucer was an English author best known for The Canterbury Tales. Some of his most famous stories involve rape – at that time, “rape” meant the same as “abduction” does today – so it is ironic that in 1380, Chaucer himself was charged with the rape of a baker’s daughter, Cecily Chaumpaigne. The charges shocked his supporters who rallied to support the writer and smeared Chaumpaigne. In an effort to make the story disappear, Chaucer paid Chaumpaigne an exorbitant sum of money (10 pounds!) to sign a contract agreeing to drop the charges. This contract came to light in 1873 and is the only evidence about Chaucer’s “raptus”.

3. Ernest Augustus I of Hanover

Ernest Augustus I of Hanover was an unpopular king whose entire reign was marked with sex scandals. It started when rumors of him carrying on a gay love affair with his valet ended with the valet’s death. A few months later, a man appeared claiming that he was the result of an incestuous affair between Ernest and his sister. But it was Ernest’s attempted rape of the Lord Chancellor’s wife which caused the biggest uproar. The victim died a few months after the fact and Ernest was never charged, leading historians to forever debate over the authenticity of the charges.

4. Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston

Henry John Temple, better known as Lord Palmerston, was a controversial British Prime Minister who advocated crushing foreign governments to increase the British Empire’s power. His supporters lovingly called him “Lord Pam” while his detractors called him “Lord Cupid”. The latter was a reference to Palmerston unabashedly attempts to seduce young women wherever he went. He famously forced himself onto one of Queen Victoria’s ladies-in-waiting during a visit to Windsor Castle and had to be ejected by Lord Melbourne. Palmerston managed to beat charges, saying that he had simply forgotten that it wasn’t his room.

5. Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle

Roscoe Arbuckle was the highest paid silent-film actor of the ’20s. His career dramatically imploded when he was charged with the rape and manslaughter of a young starlet, Virginia Rappe. Reality quickly became warped as tabloids spread conflicting eyewitness testimonies that claimed the quiet actor had done everything from smothered Rappe to death with his weight to violating her with a champagne bottle. Although acquitted after three trials, Arbuckle was blackballed from Hollywood, broke, and treated like a pariah by the public. His final years were spend spiraling into alcoholism and attempting to muster a comeback as a director.

6. Errol Flynn

Errol Flynn was a Hollywood actor who filled a successful career with swashbuckling roles. He used his means to support his much publicized hedonistic private life; the phrase “In like Flynn” is refers to his supposed exploits. Flynn’s reputation caught up with him in 1942, when he was accused of statutory rape by two 17-year-old girls. Unlike Arbuckle, Hollywood rallied to Flynn’s defense and even created a legal fund for him called the “American Boys’ Club for the Defense of Errol Flynn” (A.B.C.D.E.F.). A large portion of Flynn’s defense was that he was Errol Flynn and what woman could resist him? In spite of mountains of evidence, he was miraculously acquitted and the scandal only bolstered Flynn’s reputation as a ladies man.

7. Chuck Berry

Chuck Berry is one of the original pioneers of rock and roll. Like any good rock star, his entire career was built on scandal. He spent 5 years in jail early in his career for pimping a 14-year-old. He resurrected his career after being released, but ended up in jail again on tax evasion charges. After being released again, Berry started touring heavily but quickly found himself embroiled in the largest controversy of his career. 59 women came forward to claim that Berry had filmed them with hidden cameras in two of his restaurants. Berry managed to bury the accusations, at a cost of almost $1.2 million .

Bonus: Michael Jackson

The most successful entertainer in history, Michael Jackson‘s eccentric career earned him approximately half a billion dollars and 24-hour tabloid attention. In the late-’80s, “The King of Pop” built Neverland Ranch into a sprawling property that included a menagerie and amusement park… and invited young fans to spend time with him. Tabloid speculation went absolutely insane in 1993, when the father of one of Jackson’s fans accused him of sexually abusing his son. While claiming innocence, Jackson paid off the family in an effort to avoid an O.J. Simpson-esque trial. That trial came 10 years later, after the controversial Living with Michael Jackson. The boy Jackson was seen holding hands with in the documentary accused the singer of abuse. Eventually acquitted, Jackson became a bigger recluse and could never manage to shake off the allegations. It was one of the most hotly debated topics when his death brought the Internet to its knees.

Weeee, finally back in the swing of things! Keep the motivating e-mails coming.

History is full of epic mustaches. The Babylonians believed that a man’s virility was proportional to the thickness of his mustache and even swore oaths upon their beards. This tradition continued into Saddam Hussein’s reign, where mustaches were practically mandated. At times, one wonders if it is the man or the mustache. The following are notable examples of humanity’s timeless mustache heritage.

1. Socrates

Ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome were not fond of facial hair. A well kept man of the time was expected to be athletic, cleanly shaved, and with cropped hair. Socrates was a short, ugly drunkard with a bristly mustache. Along with his full beard and receding hairline, Socrates’ mustache witnessed the dissemination of the Athenian philosopher’s wisdom and of rhetoric that challenged the state-defined preconceptions of the time. Ultimately put to death for “corrupting” the youth of Athens, Socrates heralded the return of the philosopher beard and is credited as the father of western philosophy.

2. Charlemagne

The Middle Ages were full of barbarians rampaging through Europe with raggedy and unkempt facial bushes. Towering over everyone else at 7 feet tall was the mustachioed Charlemagne. Although he fit the ancient description of “barbarian“, he became the first “civilized” leader outside of traditional Roman political culture by handing everyone else their asses. Charlemagne’s mustache inspired him to crush the other invaders of the former Roman Empire so ruthlessly that Pope Leo III made him Emperor of Rome. As his mustache developed into a beard, Charlemagne fostered a period of untold artistic expansion known as the Carolingian Renaissance.

3. Genghis Khan

Genghis Khan started growing his mustache after murdering his brother in a dispute about fish. Considered a symbol of wisdom, Genghis’ mustache helped him spread his aegis over most of China, all of Central Asia, most of the Middle East, and even all the way to the modern-day Czech Republic. Genghis’ empire was the largest ever seen then or ever since. Unfortunately, infighting, Japanese and Muslim resistance as well as his mustache’s traditional desire to die with its ancestors led Genghis to stop his expansion, pack up his things, and return his army home to die. His less epically mustachioed successors would have moderate success but a century later, the Mongolian Empire would be no more.

4. Otto von Bismarck

One amongst a plethora of mustachioed German statesman, Otto von Bismarck’s trademark “Kaiser” mustache quickly became symbolic of Prussian manhood. Even Hitler sported one through World War I until he was possibly ordered to whittle it down. As the architect of a united Germany in 1871, von Bismarck became known as the “Iron Chancellor” for his tough isolationist policies and hostile attitude towards all other forces in Europe. Perhaps intimidated by his lady-tickler, Russia, France, and England were cowed into forming an unlikely alliance against an aggressive German power. The web of alliances and hostility engaged by von Bismarck became one of the main catalysts of World War I where millions of mustaches would be left dying on the battlefields.

5. Ambrose Burnside

Ambrose Burnside was an inventor and politician from Rhode Island who not only promoted his Scottish ancestry with a fierce mustache but grew it so full and so distinctive that his heavy ‘stache blended into a high beard and into his hair, promoting a new term for facial hair: the “Sideburn“. The constantly smiling Burnside made friends everywhere he went and made it a point to remember everyone’s name. Unfortunately, not even his epic whiskers could prepare him for the Civil War. His inability to command troops led to an abysmal track record and a morale crushing defeat at Fredericksburg. Years later, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s attempt to emulate Burnside’s facial hair was met with laughter.

6. Friedrich Nietzsche

Bismarck’s countryman, philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche may very well have owned the brushiest, bushiest, fullest, most lip-hidingest mustache of the era. What didn’t kill Nietzsche became part of his mustache. Under his mustache, Nietzsche is remembered for many works of thought provoking insight, especially his eminently quotable statement “God is dead” immortalized in The Gay Science and Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Perhaps made confident by his lip shield, Nietzsche claimed that religious institutions were dead and that mankind would never again find solace in their auspices.

7. Theodore Roosevelt

The 26th President of the United States and arguably the most badass world leader of his time, Theodore Roosevelt’s finely groomed mustache has been immortalized in stone on Mount Rushmore. The man may have been the top statesman of his time, but his crumb-catcher is better commemorated by Roosevelt’s exploits as boxer, naturalist, and hunter. Boxing his way through a Harvard diploma in history and government studies, the President’s naturalist ambitions brought him to a 1909 hunting expedition in Africa. Bringing back specimens and carcasses of over 11,000 animals, we would surely have demonized him in 2009, but at the time, these exploits actually became (and remain) the base of the Smithsonian and the American Museum of Natural History‘s exhibits.

8. Charlie Chaplin

There may have been a more obvious embodiment of the Toothbrush mustache but it was our man Chaplin who popularized it at the turn of the 20th century. He not only pioneered and fostered comedy acting for over 75 years, but also founded United Artists in 1919 and may very well have inspired the facial grooming preferences of a young German corporal. Unfortunately, following the invention of the “talkies” in the 1920-30s, Chaplin’s comically twitching little mustache was retired and Chaplin shifted his focus to behind the cameras due to his “unappealing” voice. There, sans mustache, he still managed to find success as a producer and filmmaker.

9. Josef Stalin

20th century dictators are notorious for using their ample lip hair for evil ends. Veiled behind his mustache, Stalin was a participant in Russia’s Communist revolution of 1917 and following the death of Lenin, became the architect of Soviet Russia. From his disastrous “five-year plans” and radical nationalization that caused the starvation of millions of his people to his alliance with Hitler destined to divide up Poland and to his eventual conquest of Eastern Europe, this graying and impossibly symmetrical mustache is remembered as one of the most ruthless mustaches in history. That being said, the victims of Stalin’s regime and historians in general are dismayed to see his image is being progressively rehabilitated in today’s Russia. Indeed, a recent poll declared him the third greatest Russian of all-time.

10. Salvador Dali

This Spanish artist’s crazy mustache may very well have inspired the mind-boggling qualities of his oeuvre. Dali grew his mustache as a marketing tool, he knew he would stand out a zany artist if he had bizarre facial hair. He called it his “antennae” when asked about it, saying that he grew inspiration from it. From “The Persistence of Memory” to “Shirley Temple: The Youngest, Most Sacred Monster”, the melty clocks, and demon-children of this mustache’s pieces have made it an enduring part of popular culture. In the end, the surrealist eccentric and his crazy mustache spent their lives shocking the world. Accordingly, Dali died both hated and loved but left no one indifferent and remains universally famous.

Bonus: Ned Flanders

Assuredly not an actual person and most definitely not a historic figure, Ned Flanders’ left-handed mustache in The Simpsons has graced worldwide screens since 1989. More than a caricature of the Christian right, Stupid Flanders has been an omnipresent critique as well as an invitation to question our tenets of morality and ethics for the better part of two decades. The result of appearing on a show that is now aired in most countries on earth at least several times a day is evident: despite not being a main character, his name, his persona, and his mustache are known worldwide. Furthermore, keeping in mind that television signals travel at the speed of light when breaking free of our atmosphere, Flanders’ soup strainer may be famous in an interstellar way at this point. Bringing warmth, friendliness and a blanket-feeling of honesty, the Flanders mustache ends our list as a true testament to the power of facial hair throughout history.

Jonathan is a historian with his own blog over at The End is Coming.

Founded in 1980 to fight for the rights of animals, PETA made headlines in 1981 by publicizing the Silver Spring monkeys. They apparently blew their idea wad early and have since come up with some ridiculous stunts to promote themselves. This article looks back at the 8 most retarded PETA stunts.

1. Save the Sea Kittens

PETA decided that people eat fish because they aren’t adorable enough (and not because they’re delicious) so they tried to give them a more cuddly image. They produced plush dolls and cute pictures of “Sea Kittens” frolicking like Snorks along with a plethora of sea kitten facts, including gems like: “Sea kittens talk to each other through squeaks, squeals, and other low-frequency sounds that humans can only hear through special instruments. Most ichthyologists – scientists who specialize in sea kitten biology – agree that this is just about the cutest thing ever.” They capped off the insanity by asking jam band Phish to rename themselves “Sea Kittens”. Phish was presumably too stoned to respond. The campaign didn’t resonate with anyone. In fact, only 14,000 people signed the petition and considering that PETA’s membership is over 2 million (by their own numbers), that means that less than 1% of their own organization gave a shit about the campaign.

2. Feeding kids meat is child abuse

News stories made it sound like poor 14-year-old Alexander Draper ballooned to 555-lbs because his mother, Jerri Gray, fed him like a goose being prepared for foie gras. It put him at risk for serious health problems – including potentially needing a liver transplant – and caused a lot of angry talk radio listeners to call in and rant about the disintegration of America. Not wanting to miss an opportunity to cash in on someone’s misfortune, PETA launched an ad campaign that blamed the obesity epidemic on meat. Most of the mouth-frothing died down when interviews with Gray showed that Draper’s obesity was partially due to poverty. Gray worked an astronomical amount of hours to make ends meet and simply did not have time to cook. She brought fast food home because it was affordable and time saving. PETA responded by sending her a copy of Meatless Meals for Working People, a book that mostly contains lists of vegetarian items one can select at fast food places.

3. Westminster Kennel Club dog show protest

Someone at PETA sat up and said: “Hey, we haven’t pissed off anyone lately, what can we do that is terribly offensive?” The result was a bizarre protest at the 133rd annual Westminster Kennel Club dog show where protesters dressed as the KKK. You see, according to PETA’s logic, selective dog breeding is equivalent to the white supremacist ethnic purity stance that the KKK espouses. Protesters stood outside the show handing out leaflets, carrying signs, and generally being pleasant, except for dressing as one of the most violent and intolerant groups in history. Admittedly, some dog breeding can produce unpleasant and painful effects for the dogs in question, but the AKC doesn’t burn crosses or lynch mutts in the street for being impure. Fortunately for the forces of logic, no one seemed to get the point of the protest. According to the AP: “Most passers-by seemed more puzzled than offended”. In the end, no one really paid attention to the protesters, except as interesting curiosities, and PETA failed not only to spread awareness or help the cause of purebred dogs, but they failed to piss anyone off significantly.

4. Cooking Mama

Cooking Mama is your typically bizarre (yet fun) Nintendo game where the player “cooks” various meals using the Nintendo DS’s touch screen. The stylus is used to move objects around, chop veggies, and slice meat. PETA thought that the fun, E-rated game would be a great platform to protest eating meat from, so they released a Flash version of the game called Cooking Mama: Mama Kills Animals where the player prepares a turkey by plucking feathers, ripping out innards, and cutting its head off. The insane PETA version of the game is a lot more fun than the original, possibly because there is something viscerally exciting about tearing the insides out of a turkey and then eating it. Response to the “unauthorized” version of the game was small, limited only to gaming sites trying to figure out what PETA was trying to accomplish. Once again, people seemed more bemused and uncertain than shocked and offended by PETA’s actions, so it once again begs the question: what was PETA was trying to accomplish?

5. NASCAR chicken dance

NASCAR is an event best left alone unless you have a mullet. Its fans are strange, its appeal is… evasive, but thankfully it is mostly avoidable outside of certain sites beneath the Mason-Dixon line. That’s why the rest off the world ignores it when NASCAR fans attempt to break the world record for something. Unless, of course, you’re PETA, in which case, you protest it with vigor. KFC sponsored an attempt to break the world record for most people chicken dancing at a 2009 event at the Talledega Speedway. PETA immediately took issue with this harmless event. The reason? Failure to adopt “even modest human reforms” with regards to the care and treatment of KFC’s chickens. You would think that someone at PETA would have realized that protesting KFC directly would have been a better idea than a high-profile attack on a large event that was barely related to chickens to begin with. Again, no one really paid attention to the protest. NASCAR: 1, KFC: 0.

6. Holocaust on Your Plate

Unless you are a Holocaust denier, member of 4chan, or 4chan member who also happens to be a Holocaust denier, joking about the Holocaust is considered off limits. That is unless, you guessed it, you are PETA. They thought it would be appropriate to compare the raising and slaughter of farm animals to this rather unpleasant event in human history. While there are a thousand appropriate ways to make the comparison, PETA went balls to the wall inappropriate: PETA toured a giant display that consisted of eight 60-square-foot panels where chickens, cow, and pig carcasses were juxtaposed with photos of Holocaust victims. Genius. Once again, this action produced little but a resounding “What the fuck?” from the community at large, and several pissed off statements from Jews and actual Holocaust survivors.

7. Obama’s fly swat

In mid-2009, Obama swatted down a fly during an interview with CNBC. “That was pretty impressive, wasn’t it? I got the sucker,” Obama riffed. Not even Birthers found issue with the event outside of the press fawning over his lighting fast reflexes. A few blogs decided that this was something PETA had to do something about. Falling for the troll bait, PETA found it inexcusable. They declared it an “execution” and demanded that Obama show a little more compassion to even “the least sympathetic animals.” The declaration largely became fodder to make fun of PETA so they backpedaled a bit and released the following statement: “In a nutshell, our position is this: He isn’t the Buddha, he’s a human being, and human beings have a long way to go before they think before they act.” They then sent him a “humane” flytrap.

8. WoW seal clubbing

World of Warcraft can quickly turn into a grinding process to level up and generally become a neckbeard. Players find inventive ways to combat the boredom and entertain themselves such as raiding in game funerals. One of the most popular pastimes is slaughtering a server’s wildlife for shits and giggles. A few Canadian players decided to host an in game seal hunt and PETA flipped a wig when they found out about it. While the slaughter of actual seals is frowned upon by the general public because baby seals are adorable, WoW seals aren’t real so no one really cares if they are attacked. So instead of directly protesting groups that club seals in Canada, PETA decided to raid the event because it would somehow open the eyes of Canadians who supported the killing of cute pups. Again, no one really seemed to care.

9. PETA’s lobster nightmare

Only poor coastal Americans ate lobster before lobster houses started opening up in-land. Americans couldn’t boil enough of the little crustaceans and fishermen almost wiped out the population to meet demand. These days, the “poor man’s chicken” enjoys a gourmet status and is often used in fundraisers, much like the one that the Child and Family Resources holds each year. In 2009, PETA arranged for the Child and Family Resources to use the “humane” $3,500 CrustaStun, which electrocutes the lobsters in less than a second. They flew in the inventor and generally acted smug until disaster struck: the machines didn’t arrive in time so the agency decided to boil the 1,800 lobsters instead. “It’s a total nightmare,” said a spokesperson for PETA.

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.