I love a good eccentric.
Erik Jan Hanussen had this wild life story; he was literally born minutes after his mother was released from jail, and he grew up to become an occultist and astrologer, as well as a fake aristocrat. But most intriguingly he was allegedly clairvoyant -- he predicted the Reichstag fire that heralded Hitler's rise to power, and was assassinated by the SS. He appeared as a minor character in the movie The King's Man, played by Daniel Bruhl.
محمد أحمد ابن عبد الله (1844-1885) |al-Mahdi was a Sudanese Messianic figure. This is the man who the severed head of Gen. Gordon was brought to. Allegedly, al-Mahdi's own head was carried off by Gen. Kitchener.
Heinrich Manfred Ahasverus Adolf Georg von Lehndorff was part of the failed plot to assassinate Hitler. He was executed along with many others. His daughter became the supermodel Veruschka.
Lorenzo Da Ponte, best known for his collaboration with Mozart, was also a musician, failed priest, scalawag, who seems to have known everyone worth knowing in his day.
Anna Eleanora (Franchi) Craufurd was an adventurer who started off in the circus and worked her way up to courtesan. She had two children with the king of Wuerttemberg, married rich twice, and lived in India for some time. She was also a lover of Axel von Fersen and attempted to save him during the French Revolution. Her grandson was the multi-talented Alfred d'Orsay.
Cassius Marcellus Clay may be best known today as the man for whom Muhammad Ali was originally named. All men fantasize about being the baddest man on the planet; Cassius Clay actually was the baddest man on the planet. He freed his slaves, campaigned for abolition, served as a general, saved prisoners of war, fought all comers and survived numerous assassination attempts (usually killing or maiming his attackers in the process) and married a much younger woman in his 80s. This is a man who confronted an angry mob while dueling-wielding pistols and made them stand down.
Justinian II, not the more famous Justinian I, absolutely deserves his moment to shine. He was by no means a hero; he had the thirst for revenge of any 3 Mortal Kombat characters and the self-restraint of Mike Tyson. Justinian issued an arrest warrant for the pope. When he was overthrown, mutilated, and exiled, he came back with a vengeance. He married a Khazar princess (the Khazars were a nomadic Turkic-speaking Jewish tribe) and personally killed two assassins sent to finish him off. He led an army to the gates of Constantinople and entered the city through a secret underground passageway. There he regained his throne and set about wrecking bloody revenge on everyone who had ever crossed him. Justinian had the two men who'd deposed him in the first place, Leontius and Tiberius, trussed like turkeys and used them for footstools. He was double-crossed yet again and this time they beheaded him to make sure.