Curio Cabinet / Person, Place, or Thing

Chicago's first black mayor fought an entrenched white establishment with dignity and determination—and remains a revered figure three decades after his death.

There was still much Harold Washington, who would have been 96 today, had planned to accomplish when he died just seven months into his second mayoral term. Still, his success fighting the Chicago machine, bringing polarized political factions together, and delivering a measure of hope to marginalized minority communities surprised supporters and detractors alike—and changed the city forever.  

Washington, a native of Chicago's south side, was the son of a lawyer and precinct ward captain; he was still a teenager when he became involved in local politics himself. In 1980, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, then ran for Chicago mayor in 1983. It was an ugly battle and his Republican opponent, Bernard Epton, didn't hesitate to fan racial fears with negative campaign slogans—like the one that darkly warned, "Bernard Epton…before it's too late."  

During one campaign stop in northwest Chicago, Washington was loudly booed by an angry white crowd outside a church. "It was as vicious and ugly as anything you would have seen in the old South," according to David Axelrod, then a campaign aide. Washington earned a narrow victory with a vote that broke down almost entirely along racial lines; 98 percent of the city's African Americans supported him.  

Washington initially faced rabid opposition from a group of white aldermen who were determined to thwart his policies. But the new mayor, charismatic and larger-than-life, methodically undermined their efforts by forging alliances with Latino leaders, white businesspeople, and other constituencies. During his first term, he balanced the city budget; he also boosted contracts to minority-owned businesses, hired a record number of minority employees, and created an ethics ordinance. When he began his second term in 1987 after another tough race, he thought he was just getting started.  

Washington, a former smoker, struggled with his weight and was a lifelong workaholic; friends often urged him to take better care of himself. Still, when he was struck down by a heart attack at his desk at just 65, it shook the entire city. The Chicago Tribune described portraits of grief on the streets as citizens absorbed the news: "Women sank, sobbing, onto plaza benches. A man sat and buried his head in his hands."  

Long after his death, Washington's influence continues to be felt beyond the borders of Chicago. As a young man, Barack Obama was inspired by Washington's ability to create alliances with the broader community, and some believe he would never have become president if the older man hadn't forged the path as a successful African-American leader.  

Today, as Chicago struggles with gun violence and poverty on the one hand and gentrification and high housing prices on the other, Chicagoans' memories of their first black mayor still seem remarkably fresh—as does their grief. According to Luis Gutiérrez, a former Chicago alderman who is now a U.S. Representative, "He was human, like all of us. He had every frailty that every human being and politician has. But hell if I remember any of them. You wanted him to succeed because you felt he was fighting for you."  

Below: a police officer outside the Mayor Washington’s office hours after his death.
 

Image credit & copyright: Chicago Reader; Chris Walker, Chicago Tribune
 

A Victorian doctor discovers a curious method of predicting the weather—with the help of his writhing pets.

To this day, humanity remains mystified by the "natural knowledge" of animals, including their uncanny ability to predict storms. Dr. George Merryweather—born April 10 in 1794—was one of the first to scientifically prove the phenomenon with his three-foot-tall Tempest Prognosticator, an ornate weather-predicting mechanism assembled from polished French mahogany, domed glass, silver, and brass. Oh, and prophetic leeches.
 

As a doctor in Whitby, England, Merryweather was a leech connoisseur. Medical leeches were used in the treatment of almost all ailments, sometimes with 80 applied at a time. The bloodsuckers' alleged healing powers were so vouched for, that people waded into ditches for them, Germany exported 30 million leeches into America, and the species almost faced extinction in the wild. Merryweather foresaw a new meteorological use for the creatures after reading a poetic verse written by famed doctor Edward Jenner: "The leech, disturbed, is newly risen, / Quite to the summit of his prison." In other words, leeches were known to become agitated when it rained.
 

He designed an aesthetically pleasing apparatus to appeal to future investors (and his worms). Knowing leeches breach water during rain, Merryweather arrayed 12 glass bottles around the circular perimeter of his device, each pint-sized bottle containing a single leech in a few inches of rainwater. When storms brewed, the leeches would inch to the mouth of their bottles, dislodging a whale bone pin. Rigged to a chain, the disturbed pin would sound a bell, signaling the coming torrent.
 

Some worms proved to be little weather forecasters; others were dunces—or, as Merryweather wrote, "absolutely stupid." Regardless, the inventor fretted over their well-being, choosing transparent glass for his prognosticator so the leeches could commune and "not endure the affliction of solitary confinement." According to Merryweather, he and the leeches built such a rapport, they ceased to bite him and danced in his presence.
 

In October of 1950, Merryweather's Tempest Prognosticator predicted a particularly wicked storm before the Whitby Philosophical Society, so the mechanism was exhibited at London's Hyde Park. Swelling with grandiosity, Merryweather planned to rig the prognosticator to the gigantic bell at London's St. Paul's Cathedral, but he never got the chance. Sadly for Merryweather (but luckily for the isolated leeches), his machine was overlooked by the British Meteorological Office (and quickly forgotten by the public), who absolutely detested the idea of having to feed and water leeches!
 

Below: a schematic depicting a rising leech releasing the pin and ringing the bell; the prognosticator replica resting in a glass dome.
 

Image credit & copyright: Alamy
 

The hare-y origins of the Easter egg courier.

Hoppy Easter! Many children's noses will be atwich this morning, as they hunt for eggs the Easter Bunny hid. Today, we're also searching for something the Easter Bunny left behind: a rich cultural history of the spring holiday.
 

The origins of the bushy-tailed symbol of spring go way back. In Northern European pagan tradition, common hares were associated with wily instincts and new life (hares and rabbits have a fast 30-day pregnancy cycle). The little animals came to represent both the Germanic goddess of spring, named Eostre or Ostara, and the month-long celebration in her honor following the lunar equinox.
 

In the eighth century, a monk named Bede wrote about Eostre's festival, and how it used to take place during Passover. Pagan and Christian traditions melded in Easter celebrations throughout Germany, leading to the myth of the Osterhase. Physician Georg Franck von Franckenau described the Osterhase in 1722: an Easter hare who woke up after a long winter's nap and hid decorated eggs for children to find. When German immigrants came to America in the 18th century, they brought with them the practice of making nests for Osterhase to lay its colored eggs.
 

As Easter festivities spread across the U.S., so did the desire to market the hippity-hoppity holiday. And when postage services became affordable in the 19th century, a domesticated version of the Osterhase, the Easter Bunny, began appearing on early greeting cards. An even sweeter way to celebrate the spring holiday arrived in the 1890s after Robert L. Strohecker put a huge, five-foot-tall chocolate Easter Bunny on display in his drugstore. From there, chocolate hollow-bodied rabbits came into popularity in the late 1930s. The confection often decorated in shiny pastel foils sometimes deceives children who expect far more chocolatey goodness in their first bite (which is, statistically, a chomp on the ear). It appears the Osterhase is still fond of trickery!

 

Image credit & copyright: Bhofack2 / Thinkstock / Getty Images
 

A memoirist's hardened willpower carries her through a traumatic life.

"The more you know of your history, the more liberated you are." Poet, memoirist, and civil rights activist Maya Angelou once spoke those hard-earned words; and what a personal history she had. Turning 90 this week, the late writer endured countless torments at the hands of society, men—and even her family.
 

Born Marguerite Annie Johnson in St. Louis, Missouri, three-year-old Angelou was sent to her grandma's in Arkansas after her parents' chaotic divorce. There, she experienced rampant racism from locals; but her family would damage her the worst. When Angelou's mother visited, she brought along her boyfriend, who would rape Angelou. After Angelou's uncle killed the boyfriend in retaliation, the child took a vow of silence for five years.
 

Angelou refused to speak until she befriended Mrs. Flowers, an educated black woman who taught her in school. With Flowers acting as a guiding figure, Angelou excelled in class. She graduated from high school at 17, but only after bearing a son. To provide for the child, Angelou "worked as a shake dancer in night clubs, fry cook in hamburger joints, dinner cook in a Creole restaurant and once had a job in a mechanic's shop, taking the paint off cars with my hands."
 

The young mother struggled financially before joining the Harlem Writers Guild in the late '50s. As a member, she befriended famous African-American writers and activists like James Baldwin. She also worked as a civil rights activist for Martin Luther King, Jr., and temporarily relocated with her son to Africa. Eventually, she returned to the U.S. in 1964 and published her first autobiographical work in 1969, the gut-wrenching I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. The book's unflinching depiction of her childhood and adolescence floored a generation of Americans.
 

The memoirist released six more acclaimed autobiographies and a plethora of poetry. These works championed black beauty, the strength of women, and the human spirit—all of them made excruciatingly palpable by her struggles. Having died in 2014, Angelou is remembered as one of the greatest nonfiction writers of the 20th century, one who could make every word of her bittersweet books sing. But unlike most prolific writers, Angelou readily admitted how hard she worked at her craft—and she took great pride in that hustle. In her own words: "Nothing will work unless you do."
 

Image credit & copyright: Going Home With Maya Angelou
 

It's Flashback Friday! Enjoy this favorite from the Curio Cabinet archives.
 

The spiritual commune thriving in the middle of Iowa.

Amongst a rustic backdrop of corn and cattle lies the town of Maharishi Vedic City, Iowa. Incorporated on this day in 2001, Maharishi is a small society of communal living dedicated to the late Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, whose name translates to "the great seer."
 

Maharishi, the yogi, found fame in the sixties for spreading transcendental meditation to the Western world, due in no small part to celebrities like The Beatles. He had studied math and science as a child prior to enlightenment, and later made spiritual calculations. He concluded that if a certain percentage of the population turned to meditation, world peace would become actualized. A lofty goal, but the Maharishi society's transcendental meditation set the standard for casual meditation as many understand it today.
 

In 1974, Maharishi-adhering students from East and West Coast universities flocked to rural Iowa, aiming to build their own community dedicated to the man's Vedic tenets. Vedic refers to the Vedas, a large collection of Sanskrit texts from ancient India. The followers founded their own college, the Maharishi University of Management, a school that still offers degrees in everything from computer science to creative writing. Slowly, a spiritual community determined to eat organically and utilize solar energy has amassed around the school.
 

This now burgeoning locality consists of near-uniform housing, with every building facing eastward towards the sun, like all houses of the Vedic tradition. Maharishi Vastu Architecture, as it's called, places emphasis on the arrangement of rooms to ensure the right amount of sunlight strikes each area of the house according to its uses. Last, but not least, little golden pinnacles top each roof.
 

But the town of Maharishi isn't free of controversy. Everything in the community has a price tag, whether it be a meditation session, attendance to gatherings, or classes—and the town profits. The entrepreneurial nature of Maharishi can be traced back to Maharishi himself, who once said, "Americans don't value things unless they pay a lot of money for them." The great seer faced criticism for his service fees, but perhaps there's some truth to his words. Whatever the case, don't envision the town as a village of freeloading hippies or dangerous cult worshipers—followers are free to leave as they please. But with a town that specializes in peace of mind, why ever leave?
 

Image credit & copyright: Ken Chawkin
 

The hoodie evolved from practical winter clothing to symbol of solidarity.

Despite its outer simplicity, this piece of clothing has a lot under its hood. First worn in the 1930s for solely functional reasons, the anonymity and comfort provided by the hoodie have since attracted wearers from all backgrounds. As many wait for the days to get warmer, everyone from high school students and stay-at-home moms to tech titans and Hollywood celebrities will be savoring the warmth of the hoodie. But the cozy clothing represents a whole lot more than physical comfort.
 
Though monks have worn hooded cloaks for centuries, the modern American hoodie got its start in upstate New York in the 1930s, when the Knickerbocker Knitting Company (now known as Champion) produced them for warehouse laborers who worked in freezing conditions. It was quickly adopted by athletes, as well. As high school football players and track stars started sharing their comfy sweatshirts with their girlfriends, the clothing entered the mainstream.
 
It wouldn't remain innocuous for long. Graffiti artists lent an edgier association when they started wearing hoodies in the 1970s to protect their identities and evade law enforcement. The hoodie's reputation as a sinister item was cemented in 1987, when a composite sketch of the Unabomber wearing one along with sunglasses was widely released. Though it still provided soft, cuddly warmth to all who wore it, it seemed like this particular kind of sweatshirt was destined to be associated with crime and the seedier side of life.
 
The hoodie paradoxically still remains both a practical, everyday sort of item and a heavily charged piece of clothing. In 2012, African-American teenager Trayvon Martin was shot and killed while walking home from a convenience store by a man who had found his "dark hoodie" suspicious. Protests against the shooting featured an image of Martin in his hooded sweatshirt, which again took on a new meaning; donning one became a sign of solidarity with those struggling against racial injustice. Next time we layer up with a hoodie, we'll be thinking of its many historical layers.
 

Image credit & copyright: United Artists
 

Established 280 years ago, it was the first legal black settlement in North America—and a sanctuary for escaped slaves seeking freedom.

Most of us think the Underground Railroad ran south to north—a pathway for black people escaping the slave states. But more than a century before the Civil War, the passage to freedom ran south: from the Carolinas to a Florida settlement called Fort Mose (pronounced Mo-Say), where people fleeing slavery got their first taste of liberty on the North American continent.  
When Fort Mose was settled in March 1738, the U.S. wasn't even a country yet. The region that now comprises North and South Carolina was an English colony, while the Spanish occupied what is now Florida. The relationship between the two powers was tense, and disputes often broke out on their shared border.  
Though the Spanish held slaves themselves, they offered refuge to escaped slaves from the English colony beginning in the late 1600s. They likely did this less out of a sense of morality than a desire to fortify their border and destabilize their enemy. After the Spanish established Fort Mose two miles north of St. Augustine, English slaves who made their way there were permitted to live freely, as long as they agreed to convert to Catholicism. Approximately 100 black men and their families inhabited the settlement, which became the Spanish colony's first line of defense against the British.  
That line of defense was critical In 1740, when war broke out between the two powers. The British sent soldiers and ships to attack St. Augustine, and the former slaves at Fort Mose, who were fierce fighters, according to historical accounts, joined the people of St. Augustine to defend the Spanish colony. After 27 days, the British were finally driven away, allowing the inhabitants of Fort Mose to maintain their freedom.  
In 1763, the Treaty of Paris forced the Spanish to leave Florida; they were granted Cuba in return. The inhabitants of Fort Mose abandoned their Florida refuge and fled to Cuba with other Spanish settlers. Fort Mose was destroyed by the British, and the site was gradually reclaimed by the Florida marshlands. Then, in 1987, archeologists used 18th-century documents to pinpoint the fort's exact location, two miles north of St. Augustine. They discovered the remains of earthen walls, a moat, and a watchtower.  
Today, Fort Mose is a historic landmark and a tourist destination. Reenactors conduct monthly musket firing demonstrations on land where former slaves once took up arms to protect their liberty. We know little about the people who lived there, but when they first arrived at the settlement, it's likely they felt some semblance of the elation expressed in the Fort Mose brochure: Welcome to Freedom!  

Below: reenactors fire muskets at Fort Mose.
 

Image credit & copyright: Visit St. Augustine; New York Times
 

A writer pranks the Pope with a wild conspiracy theory.

French writer and journalist Léo Taxil concocted the joke of a century. Born on this day in 1854, he fooled the public, the Pope, and the entire Vatican with a series of libelous books that accused Freemasons of being Satanists.
 

Born Marie Joseph Gabriel Antoine Jogand-Pagès in Marseilles, France, Paxil was placed in a Catholic seminary at age five. His time there dramatically shaped his distaste for religion. As an adult, he chose Paxil as a pen name and wrote novels publicly critiquing the church.
 

His most ambitious idea came in 1884, after Pope Leo XIII published his Humanum genus—a papal letter condemning the mysterious Freemason fraternal order. Since 1738, the Catholics had barred its own members from becoming Freemasons, finding the masonic philosophy to have pagan influences at odds with Catholic doctrine. Paxil, still sore about his unsavory time in the seminary, set to work fanning the fire.
 

He concocted characters for several books written under different pseudonyms. Aided by at least two real allies, he perpetrated libelous stories about the Freemasons that corroborated one another. In his novels, Paxil painted Freemasons as libertine Satanists who ingested drugs and cavorted in secret lairs. In Diana Vaughan: Mémoires d’une Ex-Palladiste, his make-believe colleague Diana Vaughn speaks about how Freemasons in the American South gave her opium, causing her to see all sorts of wicked phantasmagoria—including the devil, himself.
 

The anti-Freemason thrillers were quickly embraced by the Pope, who invited Taxil to read them aloud in the Vatican. There, Taxil publicly apologized for his prior critiques of religion, converted, and was redeemed under the Catholic Church. It only took twelve years for people to wonder why Vaughn never showed herself; eventually, the Vatican demanded Taxil summon her.
 

Finally, on April 19, 1897—before press, clergy, freemasons, and the public—Taxil strolled into the Vatican wearing a fez hat and gave a gut-busting press conference. After thanking the Vatican and flattering everyone in the audience, he revealed his grand sham piece by piece, allowing gaps of silence as listeners either laughed or booed. He then thanked them for being "too willing dupes," before fleeing the scene. Paxil honestly didn't understand why anyone ever believed him. In his own words: "I thought everybody would see the joke and give me credit for originating a new line of humor." Unfortunately, some people still believe the Freemasons are Satanists to this day!
 

Below: one of Léo Taxil's subversive works.
 

It identified a deep and growing racial divide in America. Fifty years later, how much has changed?

President Lyndon Johnson created the Kerner Commission after race riots swept American cities in the late 1960s. The Commission's findings, published in March 1968, blamed white racism and discriminatory policies for the unrest, and called for comprehensive reform. On the fiftieth anniversary of the Kerner Report, a new study concludes we still have a long way to go.  

In 1967, Detroit was torn apart by five days of race riots, leaving 43 people dead and over 1,400 buildings destroyed. Detroit wasn't the only city to burn: Newark and Watts were also ravaged by urban disorder. A week after the Detroit violence, Lyndon Johnson created the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, known as the Kerner Commission, to determine the causes of the unrest.  

Johnson was expecting the Commission to recommend reforms, but to also commend his social programs and Civil Rights measures. He packed the group with allies; in Johnson fashion, he warned one member that if he wasn't loyal, he would cut off an extremity with a pocketknife. But when the Commission sent researchers to the cities where the riots occurred, they were shocked by the level of poverty and hopelessness they found. They chronicled high levels of discrimination, unemployment, and police violence.  

When the Kerner Report was published, its findings were stark and uncompromising. The commission blamed white racism for the unrest, declaring, "Our Nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white—separate and unequal". Commissioners called for increased spending on education, employment, and housing.  

Now, a new book offers a bleak assessment of how far we've come since Kerner. Healing a Divided Society found that there was some progress following the Kerner Report, but conditions for African Americans have worsened again. The authors point to increased school segregation, the growing gap between rich and poor, and mass incarceration. Healing a Divided Society was co-edited by former senator Fred Harris, the only living member of the original commission. Harris told NPR, "Whoever thought that 50 years later, we'd still be talking about the same things?"  

It remains to be seen how—or if— Washington will respond to the new findings. Fifty years ago, Johnson was furious about the Kerner conclusions because they didn't credit his reforms; he barely acknowledged the report. But that didn't stop word from getting out: the report became an overnight sensation, selling one million copies in two weeks—an extraordinary response to a government report.  

Below: a photo taken during the 1967 Detroit riot.
 

Image credit & copyright: WBUR; Detroit Journalism Cooperative
 

She secured a seat on the Supreme Court against all odds—and has no intention of forfeiting it any time soon.

She just speaks her piece, keeps her peace. She's Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a.k.a "The Notorious R.B.G.," a Supreme Court Justice known for her collected restraint on the bench—and her soft-spoken but devastating dissents. Born this week in 1933, she's argued a half-dozen landmark cases and decided even more.
 

A Brooklyn native, Ginsburg cites her mother, Celia, as her inspiration—a brilliant woman forced into blue-collar work to send Ginsburg's uncle through college instead of herself. Invigorated by her mother's plight, Ginsburg attended Cornell, followed by Harvard Law School as just one of nine women in a class of 500. There, the dean's sexist chiding drove her to transfer to Columbia, where she finished top of her class while looking after her daughter and a husband battling cancer.
 

But Ginsburg's glowing recommendations from professors meant little to male employers when women comprised only three percent of the legal profession. After federal judges refused to grant her clerkships, a lower-ranking district court judge relented. She went on to teach at Rutgers and Columbia, while simultaneously serving as director of the Women's Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union. As director, she stood before the Supreme Court and argued six landmark gender-equality cases. One of her five victories granted widows the same Social Security benefits as widowers.
 

It was only a matter of time before she attracted the president's attention. In 1980, Jimmy Carter appointed her to the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, where she served until President Bill Clinton selected her as the 107th Supreme Court Justice in 1993. Only the second female admitted, Ginsburg has made her voice heard in several crucial rulings, including: United States v. Virginia, where she wrote the majority decision that eradicated gender-exclusive admissions policies; Ledbetter v. Goodyear, where her dissent inspired the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which streamlined pay discrimination claims for employees; and Obergefell v. Hodges, where she spearheaded the legalization of same-sex marriage nationwide.
 

At 85 years old and having survived cancer (twice), R.B.G. shows no signs of slowing down (just check out her workout regimen!). In her own words: "I will retire when it's time. And, when is it time? When I can't do the job full-steam." Mic drop.
 

Below: an artist's representation of R.B.G. getting her swole on.
 

Image credit & copyright: Sebastian Kim for TIME
 

It's Flashback Friday! Enjoy this favorite from the Curio Cabinet archives.
 

The world's most notorious playboy may deserve a little more credit.

Giovanni Giacomo Casanova was sentenced to five years of imprisonment on this day in 1755 for gambling and blasphemy. But of course he was: he was Casanova, after all, the dissolute philanderer who wooed over 120 women, from milkmaids to nuns to countesses—and a few men as well. But there's more to Casanova than meets the eye.

 

Casanova was born in Venice in 1725 into a family of actors. A sickly child prone to frequent nosebleeds, he was sent to another Italian city to improve his health. It was in the city of Padua where an 11-year-old Casanova had his first sexual encounter with a priest's sister, an experience he recalled fondly in his memoirs, and which he credited with sparking his lifelong obsession.
 

By the time Casanova returned to Venice, his wild side had been formed. However, many don't know that Casanova also had a sweeter side: His twelve-volume memoirs are both an account of his exploits and a love letter to women, with Casanova writing at length of his appreciation of women's personalities and intelligence. "Without speech, the pleasure of love is diminished by at least two-thirds,'' he wrote. Casanova stayed in touch with former lovers and respected his paramours' privacy, going to extreme lengths to conceal the names of women he slept with.
 

Later in life, Casanova worked as a spy and librarian. He struck up a friendship with French philosopher Voltaire in 1760, debated with Benjamin Franklin, and was asked to help Mozart with his opera Don Giovanni. He even worked on a translation of the Iliad. And as part of an amnesty deal for his bad deeds, he spied for Venetian inquisitors from 1774 to 1782 in order to return from exile to his hometown of Venice.
 

Casanova's sensitive and intellectual sides were buried in history until recent years, when the full manuscript of his twelve-volume, 3,500 page memoirs resurfaced. Scholars consider his memoirs an authoritative account of life in 18th-century Europe. Casanova moved from city to city to escape his debts, living in Paris, Prague, Vienna, and Dresden. The upside of this instability was that he documented life in several parts of Europe at a time when most people never traveled farther than 50 miles from their birthplace. So, we're sort of glad this playboy got around—we just wish his memoirs didn't go into so much detail.
 

The noted Roman general shrewdly allied himself with the common man while seizing power from the ruling classes.

Julius Caesar definitely knew how to see and conquer, but it took more than that to centralize control of the Roman Republic. Born into a patrician family, Caesar appealed to the masses to set himself apart from nobility (who were busy fighting amongst themselves). Though antagonizing his fellow blue bloods cost him his life, Caesar's style of power set the tone for the next 1,500 years of Roman history.
 
Born into a wealthy family believed to be descended from the goddess Aphrodite, Caesar was influenced early on by his uncle, the noted general Gaius Marius. When Caesar's father died unexpectedly, and Caesar became the head of household at 16, he was thrown squarely into the conflict of the day. Discord between his uncle, Gaius Marius, and another noble called Sulla had sparked civil war in Rome. When Sulla gained power, he quickly pursued Marius and his supporters; Caesar lost his inheritance and his privileges as a high priest of Jupiter.
 
Caesar's exile—which he imposed on himself for his own protection—ended up being the making of him; the young soldier distinguished himself in several military campaigns, including the battle to regain control of a port city on the island of Lesbos (in modern-day Greece). When he returned to Rome following the death of Sulla, Caesar worked in law, delivering orations that earned praise even from Cicero.
But this golden boy wasn't happy with such successes (or even his celebrated vanquishing of a pirate crew). Legend has it that when Caesar saw a statue of Alexander the Great while serving in Spain in his early 30s, he began crying. "Do you think I have not just cause to weep, when I consider that Alexander at my age had conquered so many nations, and I have all this time done nothing that is memorable?" he said.
 
He need not have feared; his ambition came to fruition—and then some. Caesar used his military victories, including the conquering of Gaul (France), to distinguish himself from other nobles and drum up support with the public. By his 50s, he had reached the position of dictator. Though it was typically considered a temporary slot, Caesar made it clear he intended to remain in the position for as long as possible, angering his peers and contributing to his assassination. This populist leader certainly knew his Greek mythology—but perhaps he'd forgotten the story of Icarus.

Image credit & copyright: NewPost