History's Greatest

I am a sucker for the Junkies radio show in the mornings. I have been a fan for almost 10 years now and they still appeal to all of my sophmoric "guy interests." One of the funny, yet very uninspiring, weekly things they do is a contest called Bet On Brett. Brett is their young-ish producer who it appears didn't pay very much attention during his college courses. The guys ask Brett a general trivia question and callers bet on whether or not he will know the answer. Which he doesn't.

Anyway one of today's questions was, who stabbed Julius Ceasar? Cake, right? Wrong. He definitely didn't know the answer but some of the guys we're going on about how that isn't really common knowledge. (I won't even begin to address that.) Yadda, yadda, yadda the topic then switched gears to the Top 10 historical figures of all time which I think is intriguing. Jesus garnered top honors which I think is a fair enough assertion. He is the sole subject of one half of the most printed text in the history of the written word. So I can roll with that choice. (As an aside, I enjoy Bible Politics. Things really get heated when you get into literary criticism of the Bible and how the sources were edited over time. But I always wonder how an everyday Jew feels about an enormous addendum being tacked on to the end of his/her holy scripture. That's pretty audacious if you ask me.) Back to the lecture at hand.

After Jesus, the list of history's most notable figures can go wildly in just about every direction. Is there a cultural bias towards figures from Western Civilization? How strongly do we weigh the contributions of those whose legacies are more mythical than substantive? How important is it to recognize the guy who discovered penicillin? Etc. So I figure the easiest way settle the issue is to defer to two authorities on the matter; Bill S. Preston, Esquire and Ted Theodore Logan. They are Wyld Stallyns!

According to Bill & Ted, the most important figures in history are as follows (in no particular order):

• Napoleon - a short dead dude
• Socrates (so - krates) - "Like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives."
• Billy the Kid - aka Mr. The Kid
• Beethoven (beeth - oven)
• Sigmund Freud - aka Siggy
• Abraham Lincoln - "Be excellent to each other. And...PARTY ON DUDES!!"
• Joan of Arc - she does a mean Jane Fonda impression
• Genghis Khan - "Want a twinkie, Genghis Khan?"

I guess that passes for something approximating "authoritative." Who else would you add?