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Unlicensed historians Andrew Heaton and Andrew Young sort out characters from the Earth's history into categories of failures, fakes, and rascals. Funny but technically informative.
Zog I of Albania was that country's youngest prime minister, and eventually its king. He chainsmoked a mind-boggling amount of cigarettes ev...
Alfalfa Bill Murray declared martial law over thirty times, and wrote an autobiography so embarassing that his family would steal it out of...
Gregor MacGregor was a Scotsman who joined revolutionary causes in South America, slowly morphed into a coward, THEN evolved into a fantabul...
Gregor MacGregor was a Scotsman who joined revolutionary causes in South America, slowly morphed into a coward, THEN evolved into a fantabul...
Daniel Edgar Sickles was an American Civil War general, and later, a U.S. congressman. While serving in Congress he gunned down a man in bro...
Michael Goleniewski was a Polish intelligence agent but ALSO spying on the Poles on behalf of the Soviets BUT ALSO reporting on all of it to...
Karl Wilhelm Naurndorff made a compelling case that he was the dauphin of France, spirited away by Talleyrand or some other insider after th...
Cassie Chadwick went from a Canadian nobody to a psychic to the opulent heiress presumed to be Andrew Carnegie's natural born daughter. At t...
In this second installment on the life and times of John Romulus Brinkley, quack, we follow his incredible career trajectory as he becomes a...
John Romulus Brinkley became wealthy, famous, and powerful as one of America's most colorful, ludicrous quacks. He made his fortune by "curi...
What could you get away with if you looked the part? What if you're trying to trick a bunch of German soldiers with a sense of blind obedien...
Saparmurat Niyazov was a Soviet thug turned insane dictator of Turkmenistan. And as their leader he made sure to hit all the classics. Built...
Maximillian I was the "other" Hapsburg son. The one who was born second and didn't get to be Emperor of Austria. But he thought he'd found t...
Most of us have heard about the Ponzi Scheme. But what of the man who gave it his name? Charles Ponzi, was an Italian immigrant who never qu...
Was Zorro real? You bet he was! Except he was Irish. And didn't wear a mask. And Probably couldn't carve a "Z" with his sword. And proclaime...
In popular film Mary, Queen of Scots is lionized or victimized or both. However there's some good evidence she A) killed a lot of people and...
The best con man can sell you anything. A car, a boat, a Nigerian fortune. But what about a bridge connecting Manhattan to Brooklyn? Well, G...
The Pirate Life was a tough life for the most hardened of men in the 1700s. But what if you were a woman on the high seas? Zheng Yi Sao was...
Christina of Sweden was hard to categorize. Never a servant to gender rules or accepted behavior of monarchs, she only ever had a passing in...
What makes a good Pope? Certainly not the wisdom of youth. John XII and Benedict IX both found themselves wearing the white hat well before...
Carlos II was terribly inbred! Horribly so. The most quantifiably overbred Hapsburg to date, he was *more* inbred than if a brother and sist...
Samuel Palacci (c. 1550 - 1615) was a diplomat, merchant, pirate, and double agent. He worked in the employ of the Sultan of Morocco, then a...
The eccentric Joshua Abraham Norton wound up proclaiming himself Emperor of the United States, and Protector of Mexico. While few people eve...
Justinian II of the Byzantine Empire should have been disqualified from the crown after a usurper cut his nose off. But nope! He climbed bac...
Torquemada kicked off the Spanish Inquisition, which is regarded by many historians as "not very fun" for the people afflicted by it. Unlice...
Claudius (10 BC to AD 54) was the unlikeliest of aspirants to the Roman imperium. He suffered from what was probably Cerebral Palsy, which e...
No one knows what happened to the "Princes in the Tower." Presumably Richard III had them snuffed. Unfortunately for the English monarchy, d...
WTF is Krampus? How does a third-century bishop become the Arctic gift-giving character at the mall? What on Earth does he have to do with p...
If William Augustus Bowles' plans had come true, the independent State of Muscogee would have separated Spanish Florida from American advanc...
William Armstrong Custer was a meteoric success. . . until he very much wasn't. Comedians Andrew Heaton and Andrew Young analyze the general...
Richard I of England (r. 1189 - 1199) is lionized in British history and modern film. But he was a *horrible* king, and an awful person. Com...
Victor Lustig is the Moses of conmen--he even wrote a "Ten Commandments for Conmen." While his scams are numerous and colorful, his most not...
We're on a mission to sort all of history's miscreants into three categories: failures, frauds, and rascals. Join unlicensed historians Andr...