Impressive People: Stories of Remarkable Lives - Sykalo Eugen 2025
The Man Who Refused to Stay Home: Ibn Battuta’s Beautiful, Dangerous, Impossible Journey
The Footsteps of Egeria: How a Roman Woman Rewrote the Rules of Pilgrimage
The Cartographer of Secrets: Freya Stark and the Poetry of Wild Terrain
The Ghost King of Palmares
The Blood-Stained Velvet of Gilles de Rais
The Woman Who Tried to Rewrite Love: Alexandra Kollontai’s Dangerous Heart
The Aristocratic Pyromaniac Who Rode a Bear to Dinner: The Mad, Glorious Life of John Mytton
The Caged Smile of Ota Benga
Hilma af Klint: The Woman Who Painted the Future, Then Hid It in a Box
The Ghost Conductor: Étienne-Gaspard Robert and the Dark Art of Light
Mary Somerville – A 19th-century self-taught mathematician who helped invent astrophysics
The Man Who Spoke for the Dead: Jean-François Champollion and the Fever of Decoding
The Man Who Bent Space: János Bolyai and the Geometry That Broke the World
The Man Who Saw Atoms Before They Were Cool: The Strange Genius of Roger Joseph Boscovich
Oloudah Equiano – A kidnapped African who bought his freedom and wrote a bestselling memoir in 18th-century Britain
Sylvia Pankhurst: The Rebel Who Wouldn’t Behave
The Woman Who Leapt First: The Spycraft and Spell of Krystyna Skarbek
Maurice Wilson – A WWI veteran who tried to fly a tiny plane to Everest, then climb it solo
Chevalier d'Éon – A French diplomat, spy, and soldier who lived as both man and woman
The Woman Who Could Hear the Enemy: The Myth and Memory of Lozen, Apache Warrior Prophet
The Man in the Iron Suit: How Ned Kelly Became Australia’s Most Wanted Folk Hero
Simone Weil: The Woman Who Wouldn’t Look Away
G.I. Gurdjieff: The Trickster Prophet Who Tried to Wake the Dead
The Mad Monk of Kyoto: Ikkyū Sōjun and the Beautiful Profanity of Enlightenment
The Revolutionary Life and Quiet Power of Jean-Baptiste Belley
The Woman Who Would Not Wait to Be Remembered: Mary Seacole’s War on the World’s Forgetting
The Prince Who Gave It All Away: The Wild Life of Peter Kropotkin
Claude Cahun – Surrealist artist, Nazi resister, gender-bending photographer — half-forgotten, now iconic
The Scandalous Waltz of Lola Montez
Lev Nussimbaum (aka Kurban Said) – A Jewish writer who converted to Islam and wrote a bestselling Azerbaijani romance
The Desert Had a Name for Her: Isabelle Eberhardt’s Strange, Burning Life
Josephine Baker – Dancer, Resistance spy, mother to a “Rainbow Tribe” of adopted children from all over the world
Jim Thompson – American spy turned Thai silk tycoon who vanished without a trace in the Malaysian jungle
The Private Agony of a Saint: The Secret Sorrows of Mother Teresa
Yevno Azef – Russian revolutionary, police spy, and double agent who betrayed everyone — and vanished
Maria Bohuszewiczówna – A 19th-century teenage revolutionary who led a Polish workers’ uprising and died in prison at 21
Soghomon Tehlirian – Survivor of the Armenian genocide who assassinated its architect — and was acquitted in a dramatic trial
Ishi – The “last wild Indian” of North America, who emerged from the forest in 1911 and lived his final years in a museum
Qiu Jin – A Chinese poet, swordswoman, and feminist who plotted a revolution and was executed in her twenties
Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz – A self-taught scholar and nun in colonial Mexico who defied the Church with poetry and philosophy
Mary Anning – An impoverished fossil hunter whose discoveries transformed paleontology — but were claimed by others
Mariya Oktyabrskaya – A Soviet housewife who bought a tank to avenge her husband’s death and became a WWII hero
Käthe Kollwitz – German artist whose harrowing portraits of war, death, and motherhood speak louder than propaganda
The Man Who Mapped Heaven: The Strange, Beautiful Mind of Emanuel Swedenborg
Rudolf Steiner: The Architect of Invisible Worlds
The Curious Legacy of Marcel Griaule and the Dogon Mystery
Artemidorus Daldianus and the Ancient Art of Psychological Fortune-Telling
Emma Kunz – Swiss healer, artist, prophet — she believed her geometric drawings healed people through vibrations
The legend of Bass Reeves, the real-life outlaw hunter who might’ve worn the first silver star in the Wild West — and maybe the first mask, too
The Thin Republic of One Man: William Walker, Filibuster King
Julie d’Aubigny (La Maupin) – Opera singer, duelist, cross-dresser, arsonist — and romantic chaos incarnate
Alexander von Humboldt – A Prussian naturalist who basically invented environmentalism — and inspired Darwin
The Fire in His Bones: John Brown’s War Against Slavery
The Illusionist of Flame: Inside the Rise and Fall of Ivar Kreuger, the Match King of Sweden
Ludwig II of Bavaria – The “mad king” who built fairytale castles, idolized Wagner, and died in a lake under mysterious circumstances
Richard Francis Burton – British explorer who spoke 29 languages, translated the Kama Sutra, and snuck into Mecca in disguise
The Woman Who Wouldn’t Die: The Arctic Solitude of Ada Blackjack
Sarah Baartman – Taken from South Africa, exhibited across Europe as the “Hottentot Venus,” and died far from home
Gregor MacGregor – A conman who sold British investors bonds and land in a fictional country he invented: “Poyais”
Nicolas Bourbaki – A fictional French mathematician whose “collective” authored major works of 20th-century math
Arthur Cravan – Boxer, poet, art critic, anarchist — and probable spy — who vanished off the coast of Mexico in 1918
Dian Fossey – Scientist who lived among gorillas, fought poachers like a vigilante, and was murdered under murky circumstances
Wilhelm Reich – Freud’s wildest student, inventor of the “orgone box,” and jailed by the U.S. government
Simon Rodia – An Italian immigrant who spent 33 years building the Watts Towers from trash, alone
Antoni Gaudí – Architect of the Sagrada Família, who lived like a hermit and died in rags, unrecognized
Clémentine Delait – A bearded Frenchwoman in the Belle Époque who became a national celebrity for embracing her difference
Yayoi Kusama – Japanese artist who checked herself into a mental hospital — and never left — while becoming an international star
Forugh Farrokhzad – Iranian poet and filmmaker whose modernist, feminist work broke taboos and cost her dearly
Aleister Crowley – Occultist, mountaineer, poet, and provocateur who inspired both The Beatles and Satanists
Gertrude Bell – Explorer, archaeologist, and imperial political advisor in the Middle East — smarter than Lawrence of Arabia
Knud Rasmussen – Arctic explorer of Danish-Inuit heritage who preserved Inuit mythology and crossed Greenland by dogsled
Alexandra David-Néel – Belgian-French explorer, the first European woman to enter Lhasa in disguise
Matthew Henson – African American Arctic explorer who likely reached the North Pole first — but history forgot him
Christine de Pizan – Medieval poet who became Europe’s first professional female writer — and wrote The Book of the City of Ladies
Archibald Belaney (Grey Owl) – An Englishman who reinvented himself as an Indigenous conservationist in Canada
Jack Parsons – Rocket engineer, Thelemite occultist, friend of L. Ron Hubbard — and explosion victim
Barbara Follett – Literary prodigy who published a novel at 12, vanished at 25, and left behind a paper trail of longing
Eugene Bullard – First Black fighter pilot (WWI), jazz club owner in Paris, and elevator operator in America
Tehching Hsieh – Performance artist who spent a year in a cage, another punching a timeclock every hour, and a third tied to another person
Witold Pilecki – Volunteered to enter Auschwitz, organized resistance, escaped — and was executed for telling the truth
The Baroness Who Made the Urinal: The Wild Genius of Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven
Nellie Bly – The Woman Who Went Mad on Purpose
Mina Loy – Radical modernist poet, artist, inventor, designer, lover of Futurists
Ambrose Bierce – American writer who walked into Mexico during the revolution and was never seen again
Agatha Christie’s Vanishing Act: The 11 Days She Erased Herself
Jean-Baptiste Grenouille (based on legend) – Possibly inspired the real-life Perfume story — lived only to smell
Henry Darger – Janitor who left behind a 15,000-page fantasy epic with armies of little girls and monsters
Lucía Sánchez Saornil – Spanish anarchist poet and co-founder of Mujeres Libres, erased from history for being queer and radical
Raymond Roussel – Wealthy French eccentric who locked himself in hotels and wrote unreadable masterpieces
Leonora Carrington – Surrealist painter and writer, who fled WWII, escaped asylums, and created mystical art in Mexico.
Pasqual Piñón – A man with a large tumor that was exhibited as his “second head” in freak shows
Mata Hari – Exotic dancer, accused double agent, and executed by firing squad — but was she guilty?
Ferdinand Cheval – Postman who spent 33 years building a fantastical palace from stones he picked up during deliveries
Rachel Carson – Quiet marine biologist whose Silent Spring started the environmental movement — and death threats
Alexis Thérèse Petit – 19th-century physicist who died at 28 but revolutionized thermodynamics
Joseph Merrick (The Elephant Man) – Misunderstood Victorian man with severe deformities who yearned for kindness
Princess Caraboo – A beggar woman in 1817 England who convinced society she was royalty from a faraway land