Ben Franklin was fucking nuts.

Scientist, statesman, and filthy pervert.

When he went to England he fell in with the notorious Hellfire Club.

These guys would hire ruffians to steal corpses, then do autopsy parties, because "science."

https://youtu.be/Rm7iBSGNc74

Diogenes. Guy had it right and also produced some of the sickest burns in history.

Jonas Salk

Spent 7 years developing a vaccine for polio. Didn't patent it or attempt to make any money from it. Polio transmission eradicated in the US 25 years after his vaccine. Spent the later part of his life researching a vaccine for HIV/AIDS.

John Brown. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Brown_(abolitionist)

He believed that he was "an instrument of God",[3] raised to strike the "death blow" to slavery in the United States, a "sacred obligation".[4] Brown was the leading exponent of violence in the American abolitionist movement,[5] believing it was necessary to end slavery after decades of peaceful efforts had failed.[6][7]

Stede Bonnet, Gentleman Pirate. The HBO show Our Flag Means Death was a highly fictionalized accounting of his story, but the general outline is right: wealthy landowner gets tired/bored of life with his family and buys a ship to go become a pirate. He is, understandably, terrible at it, and runs into Actual Goddamned Blackbeard, who pretty much just steals his lunch money then and there, but after a time decides to help a brother out and actually teaches Stede to be a not completely shit pirate. Neither one lasts much longer before getting caught and executed, but what a bizarre and hilarious journey.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-gentleman-pirate-159418520/

William Tecumseh Sherman

Because he went scorched earth on the 19th century's version of MAGAts.

When I was younger I really liked Mata Hari. She was the ultimate badass... But as I got older the sad reality ruined the image. Now she is more like a used discarded person - very human and a victim.
Nowadays I like visionaries and philosophers because they were thinking differently from their peers.

Big big big fan of Josephine Baker.

For those who don't know, she was a woman of color who fled the US right before WW2 and moved to France, where she flourished as a burlesque dancer. After Hitler rose to power and invaded northern France, she used her stardom to become a spy for the allied forces and to secretly help escaping refugees. Fantastic force of nature and an absolute icon.

Unfortunately, to no one's surprise, the US remained hostile towards her

Leonardo da Vinci.

… his love for animals, likely including vegetarianism and … a habit of purchasing caged birds and releasing them.

Cassius Marcellus Clay. No, not the name Mohamed Ali was given at birth. Cassius was a badass abolitionist who fought slavery with a printing press when possible and a gun/cannon/big knife when not.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassius_Marcellus_Clay

George Washington Carver. Born enslaved, became a chemist, and proceeded to look around his community and ask, "What do we need? What do we have?" Most famously, what they needed was crop rotation. What they had to rotate in was peanuts, so they needed a market for peanuts, so GWC set out to create a bunch of peanut- and peanut-oil-based products. That's just the most famous example out of many; he spent his whole adult life doing this over and over.

Caliph Al-Ma'mun for his groundwork of advancing science and philosophy during the Golden Age of Islam (establishing the House of Wisdom etc)

I wouldn't consider him necessarily historic in an important person kinda way, but Carl Tanzler. Mostly for how weird his story is, despite the whole obsession with a corpse thing. Man was a radiology technologist and fell in love with a wonen who was slated to die of tuberculosis because there wasn't a cure back then. Basically, from my understanding, somehow convinced the family to let him visit to try and cure her, despite not being the type of doctor who could. Ended up showering her with gifts, which seems kinda cruel to do to someone so close to death IMO.

I believe after her death, he paid for an above ground mausoleum for her and convinced them to give him a bag of her hair. Ended up visiting the corpse for a while until one day deciding to take it with him. Ended up, who knows how long later, getting caught with it. Police couldn't charge him with anything because statute of limitations or something similar, so all they did was take away the corpse. Man did, at one point, apparently make an effigy of her, even using the hair he got from the family to make a wig.

I'd say the story is more disturbing than anything, but that's weirdos for you.

Feel free to correct me if I got anything wrong.

Edit:

The wig was from before the police took the body. Also, no evidence of necrophelia, so only grave robbing would have applied, but statute of limitaions and all that.

Bismarck. Because he is controversial.

Being german my first exposure to Bismarck was "He's the father of our Nation. His schemes allowed the geman states to become one" which is true. But later we learned how he created out-groups as a tool to unite people. Groups like "jews" or "catholics", and probably many others I don't recall.

He is not my favourite because he is such a golden boy, but because he is the complete opposite. And because the way he was discussed in history class throughout the years: It was a wonderful decunstruction of his myth.

Aneurin Bevan, a true Cymro and a humanitarian. Focused on the local ideal of providing healthcare to all no matter.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aneurin_Bevan

Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, also known as Lenin.

MLK jr.

Tie between William Marshal and Talleyrand.

Favourite? Kondiaronk as introduced to me by Graeber and Wengrow in The Dawn of Everything.

I have spent 6 years reflecting on the state of European society and I still can’t think of a single way they act that is not inhuman and I generally think this can only be the case as long as you stick to your distinctions of “mine” and “thine.” I affirm that what you call “money” is the devil of devils, the tyrant of the French, the source of all evils, the bane of souls and slaughterhouse of the living. To imagine one can live in the country of money and preserve one’s soul is like imagining one can preserve one’s life at the bottom of a lake. Money is the father of luxury, lasciviousness, intrigues, trickery, lies, betrayal, insincerity—of all the world’s worst behavior.

Most ... (I don't even know what to say about this guy except to say I'm surprised he exists): Adrian Carton de Wiart

Just... look him up. Served in six wars including BOTH World Wars.

YouTube videos have titles including, "The Unkillable Soldier", "The Man Who Would Not Die", "Invincible".

Actually, here's one quote from the top of his Wikipedia page:

He served in the Boer War, First World War, and Second World War. He was shot in the face, head, stomach, groin, ankle, leg, hip, and ear. He was also blinded in his left eye, survived two plane crashes, tunnelled out of a prisoner-of-war camp, and ripped off his own severely injured fingers when a doctor declined to amputate them. Describing his experiences in the First World War, he wrote, "Frankly, I had enjoyed the war."

Caligula, hands down.

I dunno about favorite, but liked reading about St. Augustine of Hippo. Really interesting life.

Shi Pei Pu was a legendary spy.

Likely Sokrates. Seems like he had figured people and society out already. We didn't really learn much since then it seems.

steinmetz comes to mind but its a toughie.

Sherlock Holmes!

Are you trying to reset my password somewhere that asks these security questions?