recklessness
People who set themselves on fire and quoted Sophocles.
Peter the Hermit and the Donkey
What kind of person gets caught deserting during a famine, weeps, is pardoned, and then gets promoted to diplomat?
The Man Who Called for a Fictional Doctor
A man who had invented 2,472 people died asking one of them to save him.
The Woman Who Thanked the Taxi Driver
She was in a taxi crash at seventy-five and discovered she could now sing a higher F than ever before. She did not sue. She sent cigars.
The Man Who Drank the Plague
He built a small closet, filled it with the vomit of the dying, and sat inside breathing deeply — all to prove yellow fever wasn't contagious.
The Man Who Set Himself on Fire to Cure Hiccups
He inherited 132,000 acres at age two and died in a debtors' prison at thirty-seven, and those are not the strange parts.
The Man Who Ate Everything
William Buckland was a leading scientist who also made eating animals a research side quest.