History is full of people whose lives sound too bizarre to be true. These kings, soldiers, pirates, mystics, and con artists survived impossible odds, made outrageous choices, and left behind unbelievable stories. Some were brilliant, some were reckless, and all of them proved that reality is often stranger than anything.
#1: Timothy Dexter, the Self-Made Eccentric Millionaire
Timothy Dexter was born in 1748 near Boston and became rich through a string of absurd decisions that somehow worked. He bought worthless Continental currency before it regained value, sold warming pans in the Caribbean as ladles, wrote a bizarre book, and staged his own funeral to see who would cry.
