Posted on 07/11/2013 1:25:29 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Most Interesting Man in the World, meet your match.
On Sunday, Twitter user Matthew Barrett created something of a sensation by linking to the obscure Wikipedia biography of the British army officer Sir Adrian Carton de Wiart. His tweet -- "This guy surely has the best opening paragraph of any Wikipedia biography ever" -- has been retweeted more than 3,200 times over the past several days.
So just how mind-blowing is the introduction? Judge for yourself:
Lieutenant-General Sir Adrian Paul Ghislain Carton de Wiart[1] VC, KBE, CB, CMG, DSO (5 May 1880 - 5 June 1963), was a British Army officer of Belgian and Irish descent. He fought in the Boer War, World War I, and World War II, was shot in the face, head, stomach, ankle, leg, hip and ear, survived a plane crash, tunneled out of a POW camp, and bit off his own fingers when a doctor wouldn't amputate them. He later said "frankly I had enjoyed the war." [2]
On Twitter, some are simply in awe, while others are pointing out that the rest of the bio is pretty stellar too:
(Excerpt) Read more at blog.foreignpolicy.com ...
It’s Tom Selleck!
I enjoyed this sentence from Wiki - “He enjoyed sports, especially shooting and pig sticking.” I would think “pig sticking” was a sport to hunt and kill wild feral Hogs and could be very dangerous.
he had an iron-stiff upper lip
I see it not. Back when the Wikipedia folks blacked themselves out in protest of SOPA, I disabled JavaScript in my browser for wikipedia.org. Never turned it on again. Wikipedia is basically a static site, so I don't see what value enabling JS adds to it anyway (except, apparently, to see their begging popups).
Ah, never mind. I should have looked closer at the link in the article and seen that you weren’t referring to the Wikipedia page. Sorry.
Reminds me of a character from one of my favorite films...
"Life contains a particle of risk"
Martin Balsam as Alardice T. Merriweather in "Little Big Man"
The Countess should have married the composer Johann Gambolputty de von Ausfern-schplenden-schlitter-crasscrenbon-fried-digger-dingle-dangle- dongle-dungle-burstein-von-knacker-thrasher-apple-banger-horowitz- ticolensic-grander-knotty-spelltinkle-grandlich-grumblemeyer- spelterwasser-kurstlich-himbleeisen-bahnwagen-gutenabend-bitte-ein- nurnburger-bratwustle-gernspurten-mitz-weimache-luber-hundsfut- gumberaber-shonedanker-kalbsfleisch-mittler-aucher von Hautkopft of Ulm.
The she’d be the Countess Friederike Maria Karoline Henriette Rosa Sabina Franziska Fugger von Babenhausen-Gambolputty de von Ausfern-schplenden-schlitter-crasscrenbon-fried-digger-dingle-dangle- dongle-dungle-burstein-von-knacker-thrasher-apple-banger-horowitz- ticolensic-grander-knotty-spelltinkle-grandlich-grumblemeyer- spelterwasser-kurstlich-himbleeisen-bahnwagen-gutenabend-bitte-ein- nurnburger-bratwustle-gernspurten-mitz-weimache-luber-hundsfut- gumberaber-shonedanker-kalbsfleisch-mittler-aucher von Hautkopft of Ulm!
Ed
Dude did you read her name? Countess Friederike Maria Karoline Henriette Rosa Sabina Franziska Fugger von Babenhausen would require half an inkwell just to write out.
And she probably would have been annoyed if he had called her Fred.
Bflr
Thanks nickcarraway.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_Carton_de_Wiart
https://www.google.com/search?q=Sir%20Adrian%20Carton%20de%20Wiart
“And she probably would have been annoyed if he had called her Fred.”
Dude
“my loving wife”, “my oldest daughter”, “my youngest daughter”, “my wife and children”. etc, etc
calls NO ONE buy name
His memoirs make NO MENTION AT ALL IN ANY WAY AT ALL, much less “by name”, of his wife and daughters.
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