In Bizarro World, where lunatics are shooting up the orphanages, burning down the synagogues and getting elected President of the United States, crazy people are getting a bad name. This is unfortunate since throughout history oddballs and maniacs have occasionally made significant contributions to the wellbeing of mankind, though often noone knew it at the time. And then, of course, there were those who did not.
Take Diogenes, for instance. The early Greeks kept shoddy records, but the fellow was born in the remote colony of Sinope in either 404 or 412 B.C. As a young man, Diogenes worked with his father, minting currency for the local colony until they were both exiled for adulterating the gold and silver content of the coins. He made his way to Corinth in mainland Greece, where he seemed to somehow lose his way. With no job, Diogenes adapted to the life of a homeless beggar, throwing away all his possessions except a wooden bowl for food and drink. He sat in on Plato’s classes, eating as loudly as possible the whole time, the better to disrupt the lessons. He argued loudly with Plato about philosophy and masturbated periodically in public; he also relieved himself whenever and wherever he felt like it, including on Plato’s stool in his own academy. He ate whatever he could pick up off the ground, sharing it with the dogs who followed him everywhere.
Nonetheless, over time Diogenes earned a reputation for being one of the wisest philosophers in all of Greece, quick-witted, with penetrating insight. He often left his challengers, including Plato, looking foolish. Once, Alexander the Great, then the most powerful man in the world, visited Diogenes, looking for advice. He arrived as the philosopher was sunning himself naked on top of the barrel in which he lived. When Alexander asked the famous sunbather if there was anything he could do for him, Diogenes replied, “Yes, you can move out of my light.”
Lord Byron, Bird-Lover
Lord Byron, despite the inconvenience of a deformed right foot, wasn’t supposed to inherit the title of Barony of Byron of Rochdale but by age 10 it was somehow his, along with vast tracts of land and a money bin Scrooge McDuck would have envied. He took an early interest in poetry, which he used as a means to say whatever he wanted without being held accountable. He used his poetry to insult the likes of fellow poets Robert Southey, Coleridge and Whitman, claiming they were talentless twits who only got published because they paid people off.
His private life was even more interesting. When school authorities at the University of Cambridge told him dogs were not allowed in rooms, Byron adopted a pet bear. After a few books had made him the toast of London, he reconnected with and impregnated his long-lost half-sister, then married a rich heiress. When his new wife found him in flagrante delicto with the sister, she deemed him insane and filed for divorce.
After a stint in Switzerland at the home of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Byron moved to Italy, where he taught himself Armenian, then rewrote the Bible with what he called “better stories.” Shelley revealed that while living in Ravenna, Byron let “five peacocks, two guinea hens and an Egyptian crane roam freely through his home,” insisting they were reincarnated souls.
Lord Byron eventually sold an estate he held in Scotland and gave the money to Greece, which was fighting for independence from the Ottoman Empire. He was immediately given an important position in the Greek army despite his complete lack of military experience. He died at age 36 from a fever contracted after the First and Second Sieges of Missolonghi and is still revered by Greeks as a grand folk hero.
Hetty Green got rich during America’s Gilded Age, which was good timing. During the post-Civil War years, millionaires could get away with almost anything, the crazier the better. But even then, Hetty stood out.
Born the daughter of a prosperous whaling family, Ms. Green was always extremely careful with money. Starting with a modest inheritance and a few tips from her grandfather, she amassed a fortune in equity and commodities trading that might have topped one billion dollars, the equivalent of $27 billion today. Despite her vast wealth, Hetty was a notorious piker. She never spent money on an office, preferring to conduct business sitting on the floor of her bank surrounded by paperwork. Paranoid about thievery, Hetty often took hours to walk home from the bank, taking lengthy detours to shake imaginary stalkers. Her detractors called her “The Witch of Wall Street” and spread the story she would only eat oatmeal warmed over her radiator so as to avoid the expense of a coal stove. She once returned a ten-cent broom she’d bought years before because the bristles finally wore out.
When Green’s son Ned broke a leg as a child, Hetty tried to set the leg herself to save on a doctor’s fee. When that didn’t work, she disguised herself and her son as paupers and tried to get help at the free clinic. She finally had to shell out anyway when the boy’s leg became infected and had to be amputated. Okay, that’s our candidate for Miser of the Century, let’s hear yours.
Carl Tanzler, Grave Robber
Carl wasn’t really a bad guy. The Austrian-born physician lived a relatively normal life until the unfortunate day in 1931 that he met and fell in love with a young tuberculosis patient named Maria Elena Milagro de Hoyos. Maria was a 22-year-old Cuban-American woman who was brought into the Key West hospital where Tanzler worked, and when he saw her it was love at first sight.
At the time, tuberculosis was still a deadly disease, so Tanzler immediately set about caring for Hoyos and making every attempt to save her life. In the process, he showered the young girl with gifts and professions of love. The rampant disease was unsympathetic, taking her life a few months later, sending Tanzler into deep remorse. With her parents’ blessing, the doctor purchased an expensive mausoleum for Hoyos to be buried in, keeping the only key.
Carl Tanzler visited his beloved’s body every night for two years. Then, he decided he wanted her closer. In April of 1933, he stole the decaying body from its tomb and brought it home with him. Because Hoyos had been dead for two years, the doctor had to provide extensive upkeep on the body. He used plaster of Paris, glass eyes and wax to maintain the integrity of the face and stabilized the skeletal frame by using coat hangers and wires. Once the hair began to fall out from her decomposing scalp, Tanzler replace it with pieces of real hair. He stuffed the torso full of rags to help it retain its normal shape and cloaked her in copious amounts of perfume to keep the stench at bay.
Carl lived with Hoyos’ dead body for seven (count ‘em--7) years before the woman’s family became suspicious. Hoyos’ sister eventually confronted Tanzler at his home and made the grisly discovery in 1940. The doctor was promptly arrested for grave robbing, but emerged unscathed due to a simple twist of Fate. Carl had kept the body so long, the statute of limitations for his crime had expired, leaving him a free man. Rather than earning scorn and vitriol for his bizarre behavior, he was more often pitied by the public and thought of as just a hopeless romantic, a true wild and crazy guy.
Sawney Bean, Cannibal
Mention Sawney Bean to a Scottish kid and he’ll go running for cover. The legend of cannibal Bean has scared Scottish children for hundreds of years, though some dismiss it as folklore. Most Scots agree the terrifying man and his family really did exist. Legends say that in the 15th and 16th centuries in Scotland, Bean and a female companion hid out in a cave for 25 years, breeding children left and right. Many of the kids had children of their own via incest, leaving the clan with 48 members. Counting Aunt Bea and Papa Charlie, the group is allegedly responsible for (ahem) eating over 1000 people who they caught and brought back to their secluded cave. Compared to this bunch, Jeffrey Daumer was on the Atkins diet.
Sawney Bean was the leader of this macabre band, operating in complete secrecy, only leaving the cave to hunt at night. Once they captured their prey, they took the poor victims back home, dismembered them and put the pot on the stove. The pieces of their victims which weren’t eaten right away were pickled for later snacking.
Once fine night, however, the Beans picked on the wrong meal, attacking a large man highly skilled at combat. He held them off long enough to rouse others nearby to his aid. The cannibals fled back to their cave, but the damage was done. A search party was organized and the family captured and sent to a jail in Edinburgh and finally executed for their sordid crimes. But, as often happens, rumors persist that a couple of family members, perhaps including Sawney, escaped and fled into the countryside never to be heard from again. No wonder little Oliver is scared shitless to take out the nightly garbage.
Tarrare, Glutton
A French peasant boy, known today only as Tarrare, was born near Lyon, France in 1772. From an early age, he was constantly hungry, crying for food even after having just finished a meal. At age 17, the gluttonous but emaciated Tarrare would sneak into village barns to eat the livestock feed. His mouth was enormous, he was always sweating and constantly emitted a putrid stench.
Tarrare’s parents finally kicked him out and he found himself in Paris just before the French Revolution. He parlayed his penchant for binging into a career opportunity, eating strange things in the streets before gathering crowds. He ate all types of unpalatable objects from live animals to large stones and always answered in the affirmative when a food vendor asked him if he’d like fries with that.
Alas, when the Revolution began, the money dried up. Tarrare became a soldier, but unsurprisingly was chronically ill from compulsively eating stray cats and whatever else might be walking by. The field hospital reluctantly fed him quadruple rations until General Alexandre de Beauharnais saw in Tarrare a unique opportunity. He approached the gobbling gourmet with an offer to be a spy, delivering military secrets hidden in his stomach. Tarrare agreed and forthwith ingested a wooden box containing a note for an imprisoned French colonel. Tarrare crossed Prussian lines and was captured within 30 hours and savagely beaten for betraying France.
The Prussians dumped Tarrare close to French lines and he returned to the hospital, where he resorted to drinking stored blood and nibbled on the dead residing in the morgue. Once, he was suspected of eating a toddler, wouldn’t deny it and the hospital chased him out. Tarrare died a horrible death around age 27, his autopsy revealing festering intestines and an entire body that was putrified and filled with pus, His digestive system was freakishly mutated, his stomach beginning at the back of his throat and continuing all the way down, displacing heart and lungs alike. The sickening smell from Tarrare’s innards proved too strong for the pathologist; he fled and the autopsy was cut short before any reason for his condition could be discovered.
Had he lived, Tarrare would have easily destroyed the great Kobayashi and several-times- champion Joey Chestnut, (who ate a mere 63 hotdogs in the Nathan’s 2022 Coney Island dog eating contest). Gluttony, once a sin but now celebrated and televised, arrived as a payday too late for the tragic Tarrare. He was the ultimate man born too soon.
That’s all, folks…
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