Friday, April 30, 2010

Sir Richard Francis Burton - BADASS

from the Worthy Blog of Note:

PowellsBooks.Blog


Why can't I write inspired sh*t like this? - S.L.


Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton was a completely crazy nutjob who had more adventures on his way to the bathroom in the middle of the night than most lesser humans manage to cram into a two-week vacation inside the stomach of a still-breathing whale. This author, soldier, adventurer, explorer, geographer, translator, linguist, fencer, duelist, anthropologist, and pretty much anything else you can ever think of –ist spoke a mind-crushing 29 different languages and dialects fluently, wrote 50+ books ranging in content and sanity from travelogues to erotic fiction, explored uncharted lands in India, Africa, and the Middle East, and was the first person to translate the borderline-pornographic content of The Kama Sutra and The Arabian Nights into English. He also had a gnarly attitude, a glorious beard, and a hot temper that drove him to kill more people than a Dirty Harry movie.


MORE of this glorious MADNESS continues here . . .



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4 comments:

  1. Just... dayam.

    Click the fricking link.

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  2. Sean,
    Sean,
    I've read of many of the Badasses portrait in this book of Badasses and have found some truly great stories. As far as this guy is concerned, I'm thinking he's a typical type A personality with a penchant for adventure, danger, madness, understanding and languages. In today’s world, he'd make a great Special Forces Operator. In the future, he’ll just be an example of a type of man for whom the world was his oyster, and is extinct…....jd

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  3. Byron Farwell writes a very good bio of him. Great story, they left out how he got a spear wound through his cheek. His tomb is actually a tent that his wife erected for him. It looks like the one in Tomb raider with Angelina Jolie.

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    Replies
    1. you are right he was a complete bad ass! an expert with firearms!

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