🇫🇷 France

Émilie du Châtelet translated Newton's *Principia* into French — still the standard translation nearly three centuries later. She funded her work by applying probability theory to gambling. At forty-two, pregnant and knowing the odds, she raced to finish the manuscript before childbirth. She won the race. She died six days after delivery. The translation outlived her by centuries.

Tarrare was so hungry he ate cats, snakes, and live puppies whole. The French military thought a man who could swallow anything could swallow secrets, so they sent him behind enemy lines with documents in his gut. He was captured immediately — he didn't speak German. He died at twenty-six. When surgeons opened him, his gullet was so wide they could see straight into his stomach, and the smell was so terrible they abandoned the autopsy.