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Larger Than Life! Real people who could be pulp heroes.


freakboy6117

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Reading some of Christopher Lees Obituaries after yesterday I find myself thinking about real people who would make for interesting pulp heroes.

 

In lee's case RAF intelligence officer seconded to the SAS (possibly one of the inspirations for James bond) , expert fencer, multilingual, professional actor and Stuntman direct descendant of Charlemagne.

 

Also 

 

Buster Keaton Physical Phenomenon pioneering stunt man jackie chan before there was a jackie chan Parkourist before parkour

 

watch this video and tell me he wouldn't be an amazing pulp hero

 

 

so who else would you suggest 

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A contemporary one but certainly has potential Lonnie Johnson is an African American inventor and engineer who holds more than 80 patents who worked on the stealth bomber and for NASA Before becoming a multi-millionaire by inventing the Super Soaker and NERF guns. I'm imagining if he had been born a little under 20 years earlier and ended up as a genius inventor with the Tuskegee Airmen

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The truly amazing thing is how many amazing people there are and have been. We could be here all year.

 

One of my personal favorite heroes is Eugene Bullard.

 

An African-American born in Georgia, he ran away from home as a teenager, supported himself as a jockey among other things, travelled for a time with gypsies, eventually stowed away to Scotland, in another year or two made it to France, became a boxer, enlisted in the French Foreign Legion during the First World War when Germany invaded France, was wounded in combat, while recovering seized an opportunity to train as a pilot (note on the famous Tuskegee Airmen who came later, in the next world war: the Tuskegee Airmen were the first African-Americans to fly for the U.S. - Bullard fought and flew for France, making him the first African-American combat aviator, and before him had been an African-NOT-American in the Ottoman Air Force.) He flew in combat and was shot down at least once, but when the U.S.A. entered the war, he was the only one of the American volunteer fliers who were NOT incorporated into the American Army Air Corps. Between the wars he was a jazz drummer, owned and managed both a night club and an athletic club (his wounds had ended his career as a boxer) and married into a wealthy French family, fathering two daughters. He had learned German (as well as obviously French, English being his native tongue) and his nightclub proved popular with Germans, making him valuable to French intelligence as the next war loomed on the horizon. The reason I personally consider him a hero I admire is that when everyone in Paris was fleeing before the German invasion of 1940, Bullard gave his daughters to a friend he trusted to get them out of the country while he packed up some food and money and headed TOWARD the fighting, to volunteer to fight the Germans again. He was no longer a young man, he still bore the wounds of the last war that had ended his athletic career, no one in France could have pointed to him and said "You, Bullard, you have not done enough for France!" but he went out and put his life on the line again. After being wounded yet again, to the point he really couldn't keep fighting (his back would give him trouble the rest of his life) he finally fell back, made his way to Spain and took passage back to America, the land he had left more than twenty years earlier. He spent his last two decades in America in relative poverty and obscurity in between trips back to France for little things like accepting their highest military honors and accolades or being invited to rekindle the flame at the Tomb of their Unknown Soldier, but even on his deathbed one of his friends remarked that he looked less like an old man dying of cancer, and more like a prizefighter just resting between bouts.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

I have an excellent biography of the man somewhere around here, if the palindromedary hasn't eaten it....

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I am sure that I have mentioned him before but Reg "Snowy" Baker. Multi sport phenomenon , represented Australia in international competition in five sports, took part in 29 different sports, silent movie star, hollywood stunt man. Olympic silver medal (boxing 1908, middleweight) . The circumstances of this were somewhat controversial as his oponent's(JWHT Douglas), father in law was the referee and had the deciding vote in a split decision !

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I'm reading a book about this guy at the moment Colonel Percy Fawcett. Explorer who disappeared into the wilds of Brazil in the 1920's while searching for "The Lost City Of Z". (He got a mention in "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull" from memory). Also his great rival Dr Alexander Hamilton Rice.

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They did a documentary on Fawcett on the 2nd History Channel I saw a while ago.   (I believe his son went with him to boot)

 

 

Edit: On another note, those are the things I'd like to see on a history channel, but they get thrown aside for another special episode of Ancient Aliens

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