[Loch-Ruadh] Which Historical Lunatic Are You?

[Clint Gallon]

Which Historical Lunatic Are You?  

*You are Joshua Abraham Norton, first and only Emperor of the United States 
of America!* 

Born in England sometime in the second decade of the nineteenth century, you 
carved a notable business career, in South Africa and later San Francisco, 
until an entry into the rice market wiped out your fortune in 1854. After 
this, you became quite different. The first sign of this came on September 
17, 1859, when you expressed your dissatisfaction with the political 
situation in America by declaring yourself Norton I, Emperor of the USA. You 
remained as such, unchallenged, for twenty-one years. 

Within a month you had decreed the dissolution of Congress. When this was 
largely ignored, you summoned all interested parties to discuss the matter 
in a music hall, and then summoned the army to quell the rebellious leaders 
in Washington. This did not work. Magnanimously, you decreed (eventually) 
that Congress could remain for the time being. However, you disbanded both 
major political parties in 1869, as well as instituting a fine of $25 for 
using the abominable nickname "Frisco" for your home city. 

Your days consisted of parading around your domain - the San Francisco 
streets - in a uniform of royal blue with gold epaulettes. This was set off 
by a beaver hat and umbrella. You dispensed philosophy and inspected the 
state of sidewalks and the police with equal aplomb. You were a great ally 
of the maligned Chinese of the city, and once dispersed a riot by standing 
between the Chinese and their would-be assailants and reciting the Lord's 
Prayer quietly, head bowed.

Once arrested, you were swiftly pardoned by the Police Chief with all 
apologies, after which all policemen were ordered to salute you on the 
street. Your renown grew. Proprietors of respectable establishments fixed 
brass plaques to their walls proclaiming your patronage; musical and 
theatrical performances invariably reserved seats for you and your two dogs. 
(As an aside, you were a good friend of Mark Twain, who wrote an epitaph for 
one of your faithful hounds, Bummer.) The Census of 1870 listed your 
occupation as "Emperor". 

The Board of Supervisors of San Francisco, upon noticing the slightly 
delapidated state of your attire, replaced it at their own expense. You 
responded graciously by granting a patent of nobility to each member. Your 
death, collapsing on the street on January 8, 1880, made front page news 
under the headline "Le Roi est Mort". Aside from what you had on your 
person, your possessions amounted to a single sovereign, a collection of 
walking sticks, an old sabre, your correspondence with Queen Victoria and 
1,098,235 shares of stock in a worthless gold mine. Your funeral cortege was 
of 30,000 people and over two miles long. 

The burial was marked by a total eclipse of the sun. 


On 5/13/05, Alric and Fiona <sidhe01 at swbell.net> wrote: 
> 
> now who would have believed this of me. Alric
> 
> You are Nicola Tesla, inventor of the Tesla Coil!
> 
> A minister's son from Simljan in Austria-Hungary, you were precocious from
> an early age. At three you could multiply three-digit numbers in your head
> and calculate how many seconds visitors to your home had lived. In awe of
> your older brother Dane, you shot a pea-shooter at his horse, causing it 
> to
> throw him and inflict injuries from which he later died. This tragedy
> haunted you ever after. You frequently suffered bouts of illness with
> hallucinations throughout your life. During one affliction of cholera, you
> encountered the writing of Mark Twain, with whom you were later to be 
> close
> friends. Later, another, this time mystery, illness inexplicably 
> heightened
> your senses to a painful extent, only relenting when you hit upon the idea
> of the alternating current motor.
> 
> You developed an aversion to human contact, particularly involving hair, 
> and
> a fear of pearls; when one would-be lover kissed you, you ran away in 
> agony.
> Later, you insisted that any repeated actions in your day-to-day life had 
> to
> be divisible by three, or, better yet, twenty-seven. You would, for 
> example,
> continue walking until you had executed the required number of footsteps.
> You refused to eat anything until you had calculated its exact volume.
> Saltine crackers were a favourite for their uniformity in this respect. In
> the midst of important work, you forgot trivial details such as eating,
> sleeping or, on one memorable occasion, who you were.
> 
> Your inventions, always eccentric, began on a suitably bizarre note. The
> first was a frog-catching device that was so successful, and hence so
> emulated by your fellow children, that local frogs were almost eradicated.
> You also created a turbine powered by gluing sixteen May bugs to a tiny
> windmill. The insects panicked and flapped their wings furiously, powering
> the contraption for hours on end. This worked admirably until a small 
> child
> came along and ate all the creatures alive, after which you never again
> touched another insect.
> 
> Prompted by dreams of attaining the then-ridiculed goal of achieving an
> alternating-current motor, you went to America in the hope of teaming up
> with Thomas Edison. Edison snubbed you, but promised fifty thousand 
> dollars
> if you could improve his own direct-current motor by 20% efficiency. You
> succeeded. Edison did not pay up. It was not long until you created an AC
> motor by yourself.
> 
> Now successful, you set up a small laboratory, with a few assistants and
> almost no written records whatsoever. Despite it being destroyed by fire,
> you invented the Tesla Coil, impressing even the least astute observer 
> with
> man-made lightning and lights lit seemingly by magic. Moving to Colorado
> Springs, you created a machine capable of sending ten million volts into 
> the
> Earth's surface, which even while being started up caused lightning to 
> shoot
> from fire hydrants and sparks to singe feet through shoes all over the 
> town.
> When calibrated to be in tune with the planet's resonance, it created what
> is still the largest man-made electrical surge ever, an arc over 130 feet
> long. Unfortunately, it set the local power plant aflame.
> 
> You returned to New York, incidentally toying with the nascent idea of
> something eerily like today's internet. Although the wealthiest man in
> America withdrew funding for a larger, more powerful resonator in short
> order, it did not stop you announcing the ability to split the world in 
> two.
> You grew ever more diverse in your inventions: remote-controlled boats and
> submarines, bladeless turbines, and, finally, a death ray.
> 
> While whether the ray ever existed is still doubtful, it is said that you
> notified the Peary polar expedition to report anything strange in the
> tundra, and turned on the ray. First, nothing happened; then it
> disintegrated an owl; finally, reports reached you of the mysterious
> Tunguska explosion, upon which news you dismantled the apparatus
> immediately. An offer during WWII to recreate it was, thankfully, never
> acted upon by then-President Wilson. Turning to other matters, you
> investigated the forerunner of radar, to widespread derision.
> 
> Your inventions grew stranger. One oscillator caused earthquakes in
> Manhattan. You adapted this for medical purposes, claiming various health
> benefits for your devices. You found they let you work for days without
> sleep; Mark Twain enjoyed the experience until the sudden onset of
> diarrhoea. You claimed to receive signals in quasi-Morse Code from Mars,
> explored the initial stages of quantum physics; proposed a "wall of 
> light",
> using carefully-calibrated electromagnetic radiation, that would allegedly
> enable teleportation, anti-gravity airships and time travel; and proposed 
> a
> basic design for a machine for photographing thoughts. You died aged 87 in
> New York, sharing an apartment with the flock of pigeons who were by then
> your only friends.
> 
> Ridiculed throughout your life (Superman fought the evil Dr. Tesla in 
> 1940s
> comics), you were posthumously declared the father of the fluorescent 
> bulb,
> the vacuum tube amplifier and the X-ray machine, and the Supreme Court 
> named
> you as the legal inventor of the radio in place of Marconi. Wardenclyffe,
> the tower once housing your death ray, was dynamited several times to stop
> it falling into the hands of spies. It was strangely hard to topple, and
> even then could not be broken up.
> 
> 
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