I’ve always been interested in the age of sail naval battles which of course included the Napoleonic wars but never really read much about the land battles. I stumbled upon Simon Scarrow’s “Young Bloods” series and decided to give them a try. I had very basic knowledge of Wellington so finding out how close he came to dying soon after birth was quite the surprise. If his father hadn’t decided to risk a road trip to a city that had a proper doctor, more then likely Wellington would have passed died very young. Plus while growing up, he seemed like someone you would vote for “least likely to make much of an impression” never mind one in a military career. Pretty fascinating to read how everything turned around for him to such a degree. I knew nothing about his exploits in India. I doubt his death would have had a huge impact on the outcome of the Napoleonic era, somebody equal or even more talented would have filled in for him but I’m certainly not an expert on the subject.
That Charles Lindbergh, one of my childhood heroes, was a polygamist with families on two continents.
Yes, I was a bit surprised to find out about that to. We were in Mauri before Christmas and did the “Road to Hana” trip. When we got back to our hotel, I checked out some videos and somebody mentioned about stopping at Lindberghs grave. What!!?? A quick check and I was kicking myself. I never knew he was buried there and we drove right by it. AARRGGHHH!!!
When Lafayette was eight, he went on walks in the woods, hunting the Beast of Gévaudan due to ‘an enthusiasm for glorious deeds’.
Charles Schulz and his first wife divorced after he had an affair with a 25-year-old woman. He then married yet another woman only a year later.
Making up for lost time, perhaps? 
It’s believed that he was a virgin when he married Anne.
He was also a Nazi sympathizer.
I’ve been there. It’s not much to see, just a flat inscribed stone. And It’s way past Hana.
He campaigned for Isolationism after a tour of Germany, where he saw the new Luftwaffe first hand and was convinced it couldn’t be defeated. Got a special decoration from Hitler and Goering, too (as did, I think, Henry Ford).
After Pearl Harbor, however, he served with some distinction as a civilian in the Pacific, where he was addressed as “Colonel Lindbergh.”
He was apparently also a follower of the eugenics movement. In a recent documentary, it was speculated he actually engineered the kidnapping of his child, who suffered from (IIRC) congenital rickets.
al capone had a brother that was a noted law enforcer in the southwest …
We ended up doing the loop instead of returning the same way so did go by it. It would have been neat to see and explain to the kids the significant role in played in aviation. Just wish I had looked into it more before we did the drive. Must admit that road was getting a bit gnarly and thought we maybe should of returned the way we came but once the worst was out of the way, the scenery was worth it.
Spain has had at least two high-ranking officers known as “half-man” due to their ability to shed body parts: naval officer Blas de Lezo and infantry officer José Millán-Astray. Apparently some guys just can’t figure out where they have their own “stop” button.
Sojourner Truth’s first language was Dutch.
The superintendent of the New Jersey state police who led the investigation into the Lindbergh kidnapping was Norman Schwarzkopf, Sr., the father of General Norman Schwarzkopf, Jr., the leader of the armed forces during Operation Desert Storm.
[Moderating]
Since this is about non-fictional people, it’s probably better in MPSIMS.
Charles Lindberg was extremely moralistic about his first family, insisting his daughters act correctly, and berating Anne for dating two boys at the same time when she was in college. His daughter Reeve’s book “Forward From Here” is a fantastic read, and from which I got this tidbit:
Reeve and her infant son John were visiting her mother Anne, and the baby died suddenly during the night. After calling the authorities, Anne insisted on sitting with the baby in the nursery. Reeve would rather have been anywhere doing anything else, but she did what her mother told her. As the women were sitting there, Anne suddenly said “I never got to do this with my son. I never saw him after he died. I never got to say goodbye.”
Mixed in with Reeve’s grief was the joy of giving her mother something she had needed for decades.
I read a fascinating story about Sergei Rachmaninoff. In 1931 he was staying at a very posh hotel in Los Angeles called the Garden of Allah. He wanted to practice the piano, but was annoyed by the musician in the next bungalow who also wanted to practice. They got on each other’s nerves so much that the neighbor kept playing the one piece he knew Rachmaninoff hated, Rachmaninoff’s own Prelude in C Sharp Minor. Eventually Rachmaninoff gave up and moved to a different bungalow on the far side of the property.
His tormentor?Harpo Marx.
John Sutter, the guy on whose California gold was found in 1848, leading to the gold Rush, was born in Germany and grew up in Switzerland, got a French passport and emigrated to the United States, then moved to Alta California in what was then Mexico, becoming a Mexican citizen. He set up what was practically his own little country of New Helvetia, where he made peace with the local Maida Indians, but employed enslaved Hawaiians (Kanakas) and Miwok (and Maidus) to work for him (some 600-800). He formed a paramilitary corps of them wearing Russian uniforms and commanded in German.
Roald Dahl was a fighter pilot on World War II, and wrote up some notes when requested to do so by C.S. Forrester, who had been commissioned to do a story on the subject by the Saturday Evening Post. Dahl had his names typed up, sent them to Forrester and forgot about it.
Two weeks later, he gets a letter from Forrester, say he had sold the story in iDahl’s original form to the Post, asking “Did you know you are a gifted writer.” Attached to the letter was a check for $900 (a fortune back in those days). Dahl’s first thought on the subject was “It cannot be this easy.”
Yes, it can, but only if you are Roald Dahl. It led to his career as a writer, something he had never though of being.
King John of England (life dates 1166 --1216) was an ardent bibliophile and collector of books – a rather rare avocation in that time and place. I find this a feature at least a bit endearing, about someone who was by most accounts a pretty unpleasant human being, and an oppressive yet ineffective monarch.
As a kid, one of my very favourite authors was Arthur Ransome, who wrote the Swallows and Amazons books, a (mostly) fairly realistic series about pretty normal kids messing about in boats. Boy was that a surprise when I looked more into the author as an adult.
His own life story reads like the sort of overly dramatic nonsense that leaves you going ‘Oh, come on’; he once brokered a peace deal between Estonia and the Bolsheviks as part of a successful plan to elope with Trotsky’s secretary, sneaking across the Russian border- an active war zone- on foot, on the way out the pair was suspected of smuggling diamonds. Oh, and he was possibly a double agent working for both MI5 and the KGB (MI5 admits he worked for them, Russia apparently claims the file on him was lost in a fire). Then he retired to writing jolly children’s stories involving kids playing make-believe in boats.