Today I read about: Mary Frith (Moll Cutpurse), Richard Feynman, Genghis Khan, Robert E. Peary, and Mary Kingsley.

Mary Frith (1584-1659) is a woman who lived in London and eventually became the leader of the Thames underworld. There seemed to be nothing about her that suggested Old English decorum. She dressed, talked, and lived as a man, but continually referred to herself as a woman. Basically, going by the name Moll Cutpurse, she was England's most famous cross-dresser before Eddie Izzard. She would hang out in streets with a pipe between her teeth playing the lyre and singing songs or telling stories. She was BIIIG into Bear Gardens, so much that she raised her own Mastiffs for fighting and took care of them as if they were her children. Apparently she requested to be buried with her nose in the coffin saying, "as I have in my Life been preposterous, so I may be in my Death."

Richard Feynman(1918-1988) is one of those bad-at-school-genius types. Feynman to Physics is like Raphael to Italian Renaissance. He took the work of others and simplified it to an understandable level of grace. He achieved perfect scores in Math and Science for the Princeton entrance exam (never before done then or since) and he was involved with the Manhattan Project, but was bored to death so he left. He became a teacher and absolutely loved it, and also taught himself the bongos and to read Mayan hieroglyphics. He was the type to never do anything that would bore him. His last words were, "I'd hate to die twice. It's so boring."

Genghis Khan (about 1162-1227) is a well known figure, but what I read about him today focused on the details of his early life and how he was able to create the Mongolian Empire. It went into detail about Mongol military tactics and their laws concerning captives and pillaging.

Robert E. Peary or "the man who claimed he found the north pole" (1856-1920) was a Freudian headcase. Being deeply... deeply... attached to his mother and having no father, his ventures seemed to lead back to proving something to a father (the world) he never had. He was so close to his mother, that she even went on his HONEYMOON. Whaaaat? Anyway, he spent majority of his time in Greenland and even took to a fourteen year old Inuit who had two sons by him. He abandoned them. He never bothered to learn the language or any of the cultural customs. By the time his final expedition rolled around, only 5 people made it the length of the journey he was willing to go. As his travel log progresses, the page that should have marked the day he arrived at the North Pole was empty... or simply very vague. He later added a little leaf to assert the validity of his travels. Riiight. The guy died with only two toes (the rest were frost-bitten off).

Mary Kingsley (1862-1900) is a Victorian explorer who never acclimated her dress for the environment. She was self-taught and driven to explore western Africa. And she did. PLUS she never changed out of her black silk Victorian dress. There are stories of her bashing in a crocodile with a paddle as it jumped on her canoe, whacking a frying pan over the head of a leopard, and having a surprisingly open mind to tribal polygamy and cannibalism (whether she participated is unknown). But she kept a positive eye to every encounter she had with every tribe. She died alone of Typhoid.

These were some cool people.