#5: Timothy Dexter (1747–1806)
A wildly eccentric businessman from Massachusetts, Dexter made fortunes from laughable ideas. He shipped bed-warmers to the Caribbean, which locals repurposed as molasses ladles, and sent coal to Newcastle—right before a miners’ strike created demand. He styled himself “Lord Timothy,” built bizarre statues in his yard, and wrote a rambling, punctuation-free autobiography.
