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General Butt Naked

Joshua Milton Blahyi, better known by his nom de guerre General Butt Naked, was originally a tribal priest before becoming a Liberian warlord-turned-preacher. He was a fiercely violent and eccentric leader on the side of Roosevelt Johnson in the First Liberian Civil War in the first half of the 1990s. At age 11, he claims, he was initiated as a tribal priest and participated in his first human sacrifice. During the course of the three day ritual that followed, Blahyi says that he had a vision in which he was told by the Devil that he would become a great warrior and that he should continue to practice human sacrifice and cannibalism to increase his power. Blahyi has said he led his troops naked except for shoes and a gun. Apparently, he believed that his nakedness was a source of protection from bullets.

Helene Schjerfbeck

Helena Sofia Schjerfbeck was a Finnish painter. A modernist painter, she is known for her realist works and self-portraits, and also for her landscapes and still lifes.

Oz

Oz was first published as a satirical humour magazine between 1963 and 1969 in Sydney, Australia and, in its second and better known incarnation, became a "psychedelic hippy" magazine from 1967 to 1973 in London.

Franco Campo

Franco Campo was an Italian furniture designer.

Deborah Turbeville

Deborah Turbeville was an American fashion photographer. Although she started out as a fashion editor at Harper's Bazaar, she became a photographer in the 1970s.

Paul Erdös

Erdös was a Hungarian mathematician. Erdős published more papers than any other mathematician in history, working with hundreds of collaborators. He is also known for his eccentric personality. Possessions meant little to Erdős; most of his belongings would fit in a suitcase, as dictated by his itinerant lifestyle. Awards and other earnings were generally donated to people in need and various worthy causes. He spent most of his life as a vagabond, traveling between scientific conferences and the homes of colleagues all over the world. He would typically show up at a colleague's doorstep and announce "my brain is open," staying long enough to collaborate on a few papers before moving on a few days later.

Osbert Sitwell

Osbert Sitwell was a man whose pride in his aristocratic ancestry coexisted uneasily with his conviction that the artist was the sole truly superior being. Only in his autobiography, where his background and upbringing were triumphantly transmuted into art, did these two ill-suited elements achieve complete reconciliation.

Stu Ungar

Stu Ungar was a professional poker and gin rummy player, widely regarded to have been the greatest Texas hold 'em and gin rummy player of all time. Ungar was infamous for his arrogance and for routinely criticizing aloud the play of opponents he felt were beneath him—which included just about anyone. One of Ungar's most famous quotes sums up his competitiveness: "I never want to be called a 'good loser.' Show me a good loser and I'll just show you a loser." Ungar's genius-level IQ and eidetic memory. contributed to his blackjack abilities, which were so sharp that he was frequently banned from playing in casinos; he was eventually unable to play blackjack in Las Vegas or anywhere else.

Ralph Greenleaf

Ralph Greenleaf was an American professional pool and carom billiards player, a twenty-time World Pocket Billiards Champion, whose ability and charisma dominated the sport during his heyday.

Desert Mothers

Desert Mothers were female Christian ascetics living in the desert of Egypt, Palestine, and Syria in the 4th and 5th centuries CE. They typically lived in the monastic communities that began forming during that time, though sometimes they lived as hermits.

Opus

Encyclopædia of the sublime