My apologies, friends. Work has been all-consuming, as have been my post-work naps. But thanks be to Milo for providing the steely-eyed fodder that inspired the completion of another post.
HISTORIC BONER NO. 22 Sir Henry Wellcome, American-British pharmaceutical entrepreneur
The Evidence:
It should come as no surprise (to me) that following some actual research—beyond my ever-so-thorough aesthetic analyses of portraits—I found Sir Wellcome to be rather unattractive in character. The man and his life were a series of contradictions: a trained pharmacist who made his fortune from the packaging of drugs rather than from their effectiveness; a “devoted” father who temporarily abandoned his son at the age of three because he was “sickly;” a fundamentalist Christian with some freaky preferences in the bedroom (though--perhaps--that should come as no surprise). Case in point: Henry’s habit of (allegedly) beating his wife with a cattle whip, even when she was with child. And the fact that he once employed a labor force of 3,000 to dig up (and, essentially, loot) artifacts from Sudan for the build-up of his personal collection, perhaps resulting from an inferiority complex derived from his, well, inferior beginnings. BUT I was too far along in my "process" to abandon the subject (read: I had finished reading his Wiki page), and if I’ve included Stalin here, well then I can’t deny the man who founded the richest charity in the United Kingdom. And then there’s that whole HIV/AIDS treatment thing. So, you know.
FYI, a few of these Sir Henry Wellcome Postdoctoral Fellows are quite easy on the eyes, as well. If only I were intelligent, I could infiltrate the system and find myself a hot researcher boyfriend. Because that's the only reason to pursue a postdoc. Obviously. Welcome to my logic.
And can you believe I went the whole entry without even mentioning this mustache?
Next Time: A Welsh sailor
