Awesome lives

[Anacardo]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_...ce_Chamberlain

If by 'awesome' you mean 'well-lived,' this guy is my gold standard.

[BigPoppa]

Byron "Whizzer" White

Rhodes Scholar
All-American Running Back (Colorado)
Led NFL in Rushing Yardage twice (1938/1940)
Quit Football to be Intelligence Officer in WWII
15 years as practicing Attorney
31 years on United States Supreme Court

[BigPoppa]

Sir Richard Burton [ QUOTE ]
Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton KCMG FRGS (March 19, 1821 – October 20, 1890) was a British explorer, translator, writer, soldier, orientalist, ethnologist, linguist, poet, hypnotist, fencer and diplomat. He was known for his travels and explorations within Asia and Africa as well as his extraordinary knowledge of languages and cultures. According to one count, he spoke twenty-nine European, Asian, and African languages.

Burton's best-known achievements include traveling in disguise to Mecca, making an unexpurgated translation of The Book of One Thousand Nights and A Night (the collection is more commonly called The Arabian Nights in English because of Andrew Lang's abridgment) and the Kama Sutra and journeying with John Hanning Speke to discover the Great Lakes of Africa in search of the source of the Nile. He was a prolific author and wrote numerous books and scholarly articles about subjects including travel, fencing and ethnography.

He was a captain in the army of the East India Company serving in India (and later, briefly, in the Crimean War). Following this he was engaged by the Royal Geographical Society to explore the east coast of Africa and led an expedition which discovered Lake Tanganyika. In later life he served as British consul in Fernando Po, Damascus and, finally, Trieste. He was a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and was awarded a knighthood (KCMG) in 1886. Burton was considered a controversial figure in his day and, while some considered him a hero, others considered him a scoundrel.



[/ QUOTE ]

[Anacardo]

Whizzer! <3 Whizzer.

[Anacardo]

Dude your heroes are v. well chosen.

[fanmail]

He is relatively famous, but he fits this category very well imo - Lamar Hunt

[amplify]

Since Dean mentioned Churchill in passing, I'd stress how amazing his life was. One small excerpt from his Wiki entry:

[ QUOTE ]
After Churchill's failure at the election in Oldham he went to South Africa in 1899 to report on the Second Boer War as a war correspondent. On 12 October 1899, the war between Britain and the Boer Republics broke out in South Africa. Churchill was captured and held in a POW camp, which was actually the Staats Model School in Pretoria. Churchill escaped from his prison camp and travelled almost 300 miles (480 km) to Portuguese Lourenço Marques in Delagoa Bay, with the assistance of an English mine manager. His escape made him a minor national hero for a time in Britain, though instead of returning home, he rejoined General Redvers Buller's army on its march to relieve Ladysmith and take Pretoria.

[/ QUOTE ]

And his whole life was stuff like that.

Other heroes (mostly well known but whatever:

Simon Kenton (The Frontiersmen by Alan Eckert)
Teddy Roosevelt (Edmund Morris)
Tecumseh (A Sorrow in Our Heart by Alan Eckert)
William S. Burroughs (Literary Outlaw by Ted Morgan)
Kit Carson (Blood and Thunder by Hampton Sides)
Richard Feynman (Genius by James Gleick or any of Feynman's own books)

[burningyen]

Robert Evans
Jack Nicholson

Robert McNamara's life would be way down on the list of lives I would want.

[amplify]

Frank "Bunny" Allen

[ QUOTE ]
During the filming, Bunny allegedly had affairs with both Grace Kelly and Ava Gardner, while the latter's then-husband, Frank Sinatra, prowled the set.

[/ QUOTE ]

Homina.

[Anacardo]

Grace Kelly was a total slore. Soooo hot though.