Hey all, the You Choose episode for August will be a choice from one of the following.

 The newspapers tell me Indy is turning 40 this year – Raiders of the Lost Ark of course released in 1981. My understanding is, while Spielberg and Lucas have spoken at length on the fictional influences on the character (everything from Charlton Heston in The Secret of the Incas, to early Scrooge McDuck.. in both cases check out that hat and jacket!), it’s always been assumed several real life adventurers were also in the mix. 

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Sooner or later I’m bound to write on Percy Fawcett and his Lost city of Z, so I’m taking him out of contention… Roy Chapman Andrews, Hiram Bingham III, Carl Akeley? etc I don’t know. Maybe we’ll get to those guys if Tales runs long enough… In a couple of decades maybe? 

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Ok, Carl Akeley in less than a paragraph. Akeley was the taxidermist who stuffed Jumbo the elephant, after Jumbo was killed by a train. He went on safari with Teddy Roosevelt; and once choked an attacking leopard to death with his bare hands – not getting at all wounded in the exchange (see picture).. A lot of the ‘real life Indy’s’, I think, could be similarly covered… Most of them are interesting, but few of them have ever struck me as being as interesting as a Henry Morton Stanley, Richard Francis Burton or even a Mungo Park. 

Some characters however, seem very worthy of this own short Tale.

One – Frederick Russell Burnham. 

 Not only did he literally teach Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the Boy Scouts, a thing or two, and serve as an inspiration for H.Rider Haggard’s Allan Quartermain, he got into a load of scrapes across the globe. Burnham was involved in the Pleasant Valley War (a Wild West feud mentioned briefly in the post on Tom Horn), and the Apache Wars before moving to South Africa where he… well, vote to find out. 

Two – Giovanni Batista Belzoni.

An Italian giant, and one time circus strongman with a formal education in civil engineering – Belzoni made one hell of a grave robber. Among the items he stole away with is that famous 7 tonne bust of Ramesses II everyone has probably seen at some time or other. He had many adventures in Egypt, before travelling to West Africa… Want to know more? Vote Belzoni.  

Voting Closes midday NZ time 21st June 2021.