The Man No One Could Stop
Sir Richard Francis Burton spoke twenty-nine languages, snuck into Mecca disguised as a merchant, translated the unexpurgated *Arabian Nights*, and pulled a javelin through his own face during a fight in Somaliland. He spent forty years filling journals with observations and translations no one else dared publish. When he died in 1890, his devoutly Catholic wife burned them all — convinced she was saving his soul.
