Chances are, this man's face is totally unfamiliar to you. And yet he came within a hairsbreadth of altering the course of global history in the aftermath of World War I.
Take your best guess as to his claim to fame, then find out his story after the jump.
This photo feature ran in a lot of newspapers back in July 1953. But the Woodside Community Mission church seems to have disappeared soon after. I can't imagine why.
If you follow this link, you come to a page containing the names of over 150 such zines. Click on any title and be presented with a gallery of cover images like the one above.
If you're into ghost stories, this one seems fairly tame. In 1891, a passenger train derailed on a bridge near Statesville, North Carolina, killing approximately thirty people. The story claims that on the anniversary of the wreck, the sound of the crash and screaming passengers can be heard. A number of people come to the bridge for a chance to prove the legend each year. But this year, the story took an even more tragic turn when one of the "ghost hunters" was killed... by a train. You can read the details here.
These contests were made for us WUvians! Let's start with the the International Birdman Competition, held each year in Worthing, England. Contestants have to design a personal flying machine and jump off a pier to see who can get the most air time. Don't like to fly? Then you should look into The One-Foot High Kick, an event that is part of the annual Eskimo-Indian Olympics in Fairbanks, Alaska. Atheletes have to kick a suspended object (some as high as a basketball net) with one foot and then land on that same foot. But if strenuous exercise is not for you, there's always the Papa Look-Alike Contest, held in Key West, Florida, in July each year. This contest only requires that you be a mature, heavy-set man with a full beard (in other words, look like Ernest Hemingway). And ladies, if you can't conjure a beer belly and a full beard, you can participate in The Sauna World Championships, held in Heinola, Finland in August. We can take the heat! For more crazy contests, check out the slideshow on Travel and Leisure Magazine's website.
Category: Daredevils, Stuntpeople and Thrillseekers, Disguises, Impersonations, Mimics and Forgeries, Government, Diplomacy and Foreign Relations, Politics, 1910's