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Post by Salzmank on Jun 19, 2022 3:44:25 GMT
I just discovered the story of Aloha Wanderwell, and someone has to— has to!—make it into a movie. The New York Times has a good overview; this site goes into more detail. Long story short: Young Canadian Idris Welch in 1922 answered an ad by a Polish-American adventurer/conman who went by the false name “Walter Wanderwell” and was a suspected German spy during World War I. Wanderwell, who called himself “the Captain,” was starting a round-the-world expedition. Welch, now going by the name “Aloha Wanderwell,” became the face of the expedition. Says the Times: “She clocked 380,000 miles in the 1920s, traversing six continents, often in places where paved roads were unknown. Newspapers called her ‘the Amelia Earhart of the open road.’” Idris/Aloha married Wanderwell in 1926. The two made films of their expedition, which included searching for missing explorer and Lost City of Z subject Percy Fawcett. The expedition ended in December 1932—but only because of, believe it or not, a murder mystery! Walter Wanderwell was shot while aboard his yacht, probably by a stranger in a long gray coat. Says one of Aloha’s biographers: “The list of possible killers with a motive would have made Agatha Christie’s head spin. It could have included husbands, boyfriends, jilted women, jilted business partners, an agent of a foreign power, rogue police, and Aloha herself.” While one disgruntled Wanderwell employee was charged, he was acquitted. The murder is still an unsolved mystery. I’m such a sucker for this stuff. Obvious title, complete with pun: Wanderwell. Come on, Hollywood, get on adapting stories like these! |
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Post by Feologild Oakes on Jul 25, 2022 0:06:01 GMT
Tadeusz KościuszkoAndrzej Tadeusz Bonawentura Kościuszko (English: Andrew Thaddeus Bonaventure Kosciuszko;[note 1] 4 or 12 February 1746 – 15 October 1817) was a Polish military engineer, statesman, and military leader who became a national hero in Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, France and the United States.[3][4][5][6][7] He fought in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth's struggles against Russia and Prussia, and on the US side in the American Revolutionary War. As Supreme Commander of the Polish National Armed Forces, he led the 1794 Kościuszko Uprising. Kościuszko was born in February 1746, in a manor house on the Mereczowszczyzna estate in Brest Litovsk Voivodeship, then Grand Duchy of Lithuania, a part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (now Ivatsevichy District of Belarus).[8] At age 20, he graduated from the Corps of Cadets in Warsaw, Poland. After the start of the civil war in 1768, Kościuszko moved to France in 1769 to study. He returned to the Commonwealth in 1774, two years after the First Partition, and was a tutor in Józef Sylwester Sosnowski's household. In 1776, Kościuszko moved to North America, where he took part in the American Revolutionary War as a colonel in the Continental Army. An accomplished military architect, he designed and oversaw the construction of state-of-the-art fortifications, including those at West Point, New York. In 1783, in recognition of his services, the Continental Congress promoted him to brigadier general. Upon returning to Poland in 1784, Kościuszko was commissioned as a major general in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth Army in 1789. After the Polish–Russian War of 1792 resulted in the Commonwealth's Second Partition, he commanded an uprising against the Russian Empire in March 1794 until he was captured at the Battle of Maciejowice in October 1794. The defeat of the Kościuszko Uprising that November led to Poland's Third Partition in 1795, which ended the Commonwealth. In 1796, following the death of Tsaritsa Catherine II, Kościuszko was pardoned by her successor, Tsar Paul I, and he emigrated to the United States. A close friend of Thomas Jefferson, with whom he shared ideals of human rights, Kościuszko wrote a will in 1798, dedicating his U.S. assets to the education and freedom of the U.S. slaves. Kościuszko eventually returned to Europe and lived in Switzerland until his death in 1817. The execution of his testament later proved difficult, and the funds were never used for the purpose Kościuszko intended. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tadeusz_Ko%C5%9Bciuszko------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sojourner Truth
Sojourner Truth (/soʊˈdʒɜːrnər, ˈsoʊdʒɜːrnər/;[1] born Isabella Baumfree; c. 1797 – November 26, 1883) was an American abolitionist and women's rights activist. Truth was born into slavery in Swartekill, New York, but escaped with her infant daughter to freedom in 1826. After going to court to recover her son in 1828, she became the first black woman to win such a case against a white man. She gave herself the name Sojourner Truth in 1843 after she became convinced that God had called her to leave the city and go into the countryside "testifying the hope that was in her."[2] Her best-known speech was delivered extemporaneously, in 1851, at the Ohio Women's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio. The speech became widely known during the Civil War by the title "Ain't I a Woman?", a variation of the original speech re-written by someone else using a stereotypical Southern dialect, whereas Sojourner Truth was from New York and grew up speaking Dutch as her first language. During the Civil War, Truth helped recruit black troops for the Union Army; after the war, she tried unsuccessfully to secure land grants from the federal government for formerly enslaved people (summarized as the promise of "forty acres and a mule"). She continued to fight on behalf of women and African Americans until her death. As her biographer Nell Irvin Painter wrote, "At a time when most Americans thought of slaves as male and women as white, Truth embodied a fact that still bears repeating: Among the blacks are women; among the women, there are blacks."[3] A memorial bust of Truth was unveiled in 2009 in Emancipation Hall in the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center. She is the first African American woman to have a statue in the Capitol building.[4] In 2014, Truth was included in Smithsonian magazine's list of the "100 Most Significant Americans of All Time en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sojourner_Truth
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Post by Pangolin on Sept 19, 2022 20:13:37 GMT
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Post by Pangolin on Feb 13, 2023 0:28:24 GMT
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Post by politicidal on Feb 13, 2023 1:19:31 GMT
Salzmank agreed 100%. Other explorers, adventurers, and travelers who could use a miniseries (or hell, a movie) include:
Roy Chapman Andrews (closest to a real life Indiana Jones)
Peter Fleming (brother of Ian Fleming who joined expeditions to the Amazon and Central Asia)
Theodore Roosevelt (not about his presidency but for his South American expedition where he and his son Kermit almost died)
William Montgomery McGovern (2nd closet model for Indiana Jones)
Richard Halliburton (swam the Panama Canal; circumnavigated the world with an ace pilot based off a handshake; and disappeared sailing a Chinese Junk in the 1930s)
Frank Buck (animal collector and Hollywood safari guide)
Peter Freuchen (arctic explorer, indigenous rights advocate, and anti-Nazi activist)
Orde Wingate (desert archaeologist and British officer who served in East Africa, Palestine, and Burma.)
Freya Stark (at one point she visited a valley of Assassins)
Martin and Osa Johnson (the 'Steve and Terri Irwin' of the 1930s)
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Post by clusium on Mar 25, 2023 4:41:25 GMT
How about Edgar Allan Poe?
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Post by llanwydd on Mar 25, 2023 5:42:08 GMT
Typhoid Mary
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Post by paulslaugh on Mar 25, 2023 22:09:10 GMT
All these famous fascinating people and we’re getting Hellboy reboots. If these famous people are not killing at John Wick speed without some kind of superpower, no one will go see them. |
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Post by paulslaugh on Mar 25, 2023 22:24:22 GMT
I think the life of actor Peter Lawford would be good, not that his career was much, but considering the people he knew. He was in the Rat Pack while married to JFK’s sister. His parents were scandal ridden, ne’er do well Brits who followed the Windsors around until they were stranded in Palm Beach during WWII. As a youth, his mother essentially whored him out to her socialites friends to pay the rent. He supported his parents his whole life. He had a platonic friendships with women like Marilyn Monroe and Eva Gardner, even though Lawford was a huge womanizer. He and Jack Kennedy were very close.
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Post by Pangolin on Mar 26, 2023 21:19:49 GMT
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Post by Pangolin on Apr 15, 2023 20:02:41 GMT
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Post by Pangolin on May 3, 2023 12:54:06 GMT
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